you're not a tough guy; pull your pants up.

everything has been coming together really nicely on the house since we've been back. it's almost completely ready to be shown to prospective buyers. just some last minute cleaning and rearranging left that can be done in a day. i think i'll put it on the market on saturday after the trash collectors come. cleaning house brings up a lot of junk and we have a bunch of trash already that doesn't fit in the dumpster. i don't want to show the house with all that trash out front.
we refinished the floors in the bedrooms and painted the bedroom walls. we hid all of nathan's tools and staged his bike workshop as *gasp* a bedroom. we made the office/guestroom just an office and put the exerbike in there. last, we rearranged the master bedroom. it was so crowded in there before with the king sized bed and the dresser, so we took the dresser out and moved the bed to another wall. then we put in a nightstand on the opposite wall, because people who wear glasses and own alarm clocks just need nightstands. i forgot to mention that i still have to paint the trim in the bedrooms.
nathan won that camper bus on ebay. i'm thinking of making a sticker for it that says "anti-hippie bus". also, i'll put that casualties sticker that their bassist gave me on it. i was thinking i should have someone make me a jolly rogers to put on it where the vw emblem usually goes, but i don't think this model has that emblem on the front. cars suck anyways...enough of that nonsense.
today was a pretty sucky day. i mean i got to hang out with beth, and that was good, but all these little things kept going wrong, plus the big thing this morning...
i finally decided in boston that it's time for me to go to a regular, non-emergency room doctor for this cough. my mom told me that the way she started having asthma sounds a lot like what's happening to me right now. hers started with just a bad cold that never got better too. so i went to my doctor this morning, who i hate, but it's too much trouble to switch pcms right before nathan gets out of the navy. after an hour and a half of waiting, i was finally seen. i explained what has been going on, and what tests have been done and what treatments have been tried. the doctor listened to my lungs and prescribed me an allergy medication and a steroid inhaler. i asked to be referred to an asthma/allergy specialist because i don't like to be just drugged up without having any tests done and she refused. well, first she asked me if i smoked, or was around smoke, and when i said no, she asked if i had pets. well, of course i have max and girl and i told her that and she said that an allergy specialist will just tell me to get rid of the cat and that will be the end of it. i told her i'd rather be sick forever than get rid of my cat, and she said that there was no point in referring me out. i asked again for a referral and she laughed it off to the other doctors, telling them that i wanted to see an allergist but refused to give up my cat so there was no point. i'm so pissed about crappy healthcare. i don't want to be on the roids...i want to know what the heck is wrong with me and if there is something i can do to stop coughing. to me, just guessing that it's probably the cat is not a scientific analysis of the problem. i told her i've had cats almost my whole life and never a problem, and i've had this specific cat for 3 years and only had problems for the last four months but that didn't even sink into her head. it was like she didn't even hear it.
this can all be blamed on the navy and how it sucks, but i'm not going to say that this time. in all honesty, i've almost never had a doctor even attempt to find out what's causing a problem that i've gone in for. if it resembles any type of cold, they just put you on drugs and if you're lucky, they'll do a strep test. why can't they do bloodwork, or urinalysis? surely some diseases show up on those tests? why can't they do an allergy prick test? i'd sit for it! at least then they could conclusively prove that i'm allergic to cats...or not, as the case most probably is.
doctors are a bunch of quacks. i could do the same job this woman did today. if the extent of the scientific process' practical use in modern medicine is to ask someone if they have a cat and then conclusively state that that must be the problem, then i don't know why i didn't go to medical school. that requires less chemistry than i was forced to take as an elementary education major, and i'd be making about 3 times as much money. i hate doctors. they're unscrupulous.
i don't want asthma. my mom was always weak when i was growing up, and it sucks to have an unenergetic mom. i don't want to be that person. i don't want to be a weak partner to nathan...well, weaker than i already am. despite how premature i was, and all my mom's health problems, i was always basically a healthy person. yeah, i get colds easily, but i was 2 months premature, 2 pounds 10 ounces, and i haven't eaten an orange ever in my life. that's only to be expected. but i don't want to go through the rest of my life with a chronic, disabling disease. and i don't want to use steroids. i want to be better. true, i wouldn't give up my cat or dog to be better, but anything inanimate in my surroundings would be immediately surrendered. asthma isn't cool. henry rollins does not have an inhaler. chance is right: we premature babies should have just been fed to the healthy ones.