Meetzorp

Apparently driving a stickshift one day re-trains me immediately.

It’s pretty well established that I don’t drive much. It stresses me out, I get lost, etc. But when we were up visiting my folks, I drove Dad’s Jetta – we needed to go in to town and pick some stuff up, and Dad wasn’t up to driving, being in a sling after rotator-cuff surgery. Joel doesn’t drive stick, and Mom’s car (or Joel’s truck) is a little small for three people when one of the three is 6’5″. So, the Jetta, with me at the wheel, it was.

Dad’s Jetta is a 1990, two-door, Diesel sedan. It’s a little boxy piece of business that basically looks like a Rabbit with a trunk, which is basically what it is. But it gets about 40mpg and it goes pretty well for an old Diesel, so there you go. And while it’s kind of a lackluster little car, Dad quite likes the thing, truth be told.

So I drove the Jetta up to and around in Chadron and back home without incident.

Then, today, I had to drive Joel’s truck, ’cause I’m having a mysterious lung complaint and tried to go see a doctor about it (more later) and kept accidentally brake-checking the darn thing, going for a clutch that isn’t there. ONE trip in the damnable Jetta, and I’m back to habitually driving as if the automatic transmission was never invented.

So. About the lung complaint.
I don’t know what it is. Probably some sort of congestion-bred bacterial infection clogging up the ol’ bronchial tubes. Whatever it is, I’ve been coughing like I have hairballs to no good effect and feeling slightly winded all the time. Not full-blown asthma-attack territory, but definitely lung-y. As if an asthma attack is an option that my lungs would be willing to consider if I don’t concede to their demands, whatever those might be. So I thought I’d go to the walk-in pseudo-doctor in CVS and see if they would agree to antibiotic me up upon request. But when the NP there heard the big “A” word, she said there was nothing she could do to me and told me to get my not-as-yet-wheezing lungs down to an urgent-care clinic.

Turns out there’s an urgent care clinic on my way to work, so I’m going to stop in there tomorrow on my way to work and hope they can get me in and out quickly and deal with whatever evil is festering in my chest.

The bummer thing about today’s pseudo-doctor experience is that it went the same way pretty much EVERY trip I’ve ever made to the doctor goes. The Doctor/NP/Quack is almost invariably utterly dismissive of my concerns, doesn’t listen, or insists that something else is the matter with me.

The doctor-person today insisted that I was suffering from the flu, though I have not had a fever, chills, or achy joints. What I have had was a cold…I am almost certain of it. I started off with a sore throat, then I got really snotty and sneezed a LOT. Then I had a lot of coughing and head and chest congestion, which I still have. Only the chest part has gotten worse. Enough so that I am kind of concerned, ’cause I’ve had this happen before and I ended up going to the ER with a full blown asthma attack, plus bronchitis. Twice before. I know what it feels like. I know what it the matter with me. I have experience with these things. To be told that something entirely different is ailing me, when I am almost 100% certain of what is wrong with me is dismissive, obnoxious, and unhelpful.

What I most likely need, and what will probably be prescribed for me, is a dose of antibiotics to kill off the infection, and possibly a stronger inhaler for the meanwhile. What I got today was a lot of attitude from their quasi-doctor and 10 sheets of computer print outs for various urgent-care offices in the region, which I could have gotten for myself, at home, in 1/3 of the time.

Anyway, I’m not terrible bad off and should be able to get this taken care of tomorrow morning before work. Assuming the urgent-care doc doesn’t brush me off and tell me to go to the ER and waste even more of my time and money.

Oh, and the title for today’s entry? That’s a line from an old Ren & Stimpy cartoon with Powdered Toast Man. PTM had rescued the Pope and was giving him a lift back to the Vatican. PTM only flew backwards, and had perched the Pope on his rear and instructed the Pope to “cling tenaciously to (PTM’s) buttocks.”

Shit, I can’t describe/recap this properly. You’ve just got to watch it. Just watch it. All will become clear.

So, have you watched it? We’re clear now?

Okay, so today I’m wearing a pair of jeans I made…brown corduroy “skinny jeans,” and they do mighty-mighty things for my rump.

So, I remarked to Joel that these jeans “cling tenaciously to my buttocks,” which in fact they do.

And since then, for the rest of the day so far, the phrase “cling tenaciously to my buttocks” has been roving around my poor, addled brain. I thought I could possibly purge it via this entry, so there you have it.