The Queen's Rambles

Let’s see if I can bust out an entry with a broken space bar. It works, but only if I really pound it. I am in dire need of some computer maintence. I have an extended warranty and they’ll send someone to my house, but first I need to find theDVD drive that fell out so they can see I am not just jacking parts to sell in a shady online enterprise. Because I look shady, don’t I? Of course, one would assume that the most successful criminals and scam artists look completely honest. We just don’t know it, because they haven’t been caught.

As long time readers know, I have big lumps on my head. They are called pilar cysts and are nothing to worry about. They are sacs filled with keratin. I spent many, many, MANY years poking at them with sharp things. I was reading a post on a forum about someone who was poking at her cyst with a sharp thing and I wanted to tell her how dumb that sounded. Ummmm. So I am dumb and everyone must think I am dumb. What was I thinking, doing home surgery with an exacto knife? Mainly,I don’t want to have my head shaved. That’s worth a lot of dumb points right there.

I actually had success last year with a cyst that was right on the surface. Turns out there is a reason you can’t just lance and drain them. Keratin is not fluid. The cyst looked and felt like a hard plastic pebble. When I cut into it the innards were powdery and dry. Not at all like a giant pimple!

I currently have a cyst that has doubled in size and has been very sore for about a month. I haven’t poked it at all! Instead, I was sensible this morning and called the doctor. I had a consult two hours later and will have surgery on Thursday. I couldn’t get an appointment with my regular dermatologist for six weeks, so I was seen by the PA. She thought she was going to come in and lance it/drain it. She was quite surprised when she realized my diagnosis and action plan was 100% correct. It will be so lovely to have a shaved spot on the back of my head. Better than in my bangs, like the last two times.

I was not expecting surgery this week! I thought it might happen sometime in March. The surgeon had a last minute cancellation, so I was able to get in quickly. I have a babysitter for Elsa, so that shouldn’t be a problem. I guess I will have to recruit Erik to nurse duty if I need anything. I have a feeling a 7 year old will not make a proper nurse.

Mike is out of town this week. Did I mention that? Because it really, really sucks. He is nothappy either. He has to do a big presentation in front of a bunch of people from Famous Government Space Acronym Place (you can put two and two together, can’t you?). I don’t know why he is so nervous. He said there will be no real, live astronauts in the room.

I don’t know what I’m going to do with Elsa in the evenings. Mike always puts her down and deals with her wake-up cries. Not because I don’t want to (but let’s face it, on baby number 2 I am more than happy to turn over that responsibility), but because she refuses to allow me to help her in any way. She yells at me, throws things at me, slams the door in my face. Not good. She also has a pretty miserable cold, which means she was in our bed last night, snoring and losing her breath when her nose was too plugged up to breathe.

At least she wasn’t coughing! She started coughing and couldn’t quit, so I grabbed the Vicks and tried to figure out how to get it on her chest. I remembered reading all over the internet that putting Vicks on a kid’s feet is some kind of miracle cure, but that sounds incredibly implausible and makes NO SENSE. I must have sense!

But I couldn’t get to her chest, so I slapped Vicks on the bottoms of her feet and hoped for the best.

Shocking news: it worked! She didn’t cough at all after that, at least not hard enough to wake me. I don’t understand, but I’m not complaining. I need to google the science behind such a strange phenomenon.