1.) I got up at an hour during which the clock still read 5:XX.  FIVE. I did that because 2.) I needed to be at work extra early because I was bailing out for a few hours to 3.) go to the gynecologist.  There are three reasons right there.  And OH IF IT ONLY STOPPED THERE.  But it doesn’t.  4.) I left work to drive to the gyno and it started raining the moment I stepped foot outside.  5.) It continued to rain the entire way there, and raining hard, only to stop the moment that I stepped foot inside the office. 5b.) I forgot my umbrella. Of course.

Once I was in the gyno, 6.) I got a pap smear.  Awesome!  Then, during the breast exam, I pointed out this weird skin spot that I have had on my shoulder for the last year to my doctor.  I fully expected him to say, “Sarah, that is a zit.”  7.) Instead, he said, “Well, I guess that could be cancer.  We’ll go ahead and remove that while you’re here.”  Double awesome.  My shoulder (and its weird skin spot) was subsequently numbed, cylindrically sliced and lopped off with swift efficiency. (Admittedly, the swiftness and the numbness were all bright points in this otherwise bleak day.  Had the dr. removed a skin spot from my shoulder poorly or without numbing medicine, that would have been cause for a much, much angrier post.)  While I was at the office, I also got a shot.  The doc recommended that I go ahead and get the “One Less” vaccine.  Nevermind that I’m married and happy and not planning on having sex with anyone but my husband for the rest of my life, I decided to go ahead and get it anyway.  I guess it never hurts to protect myself from worst case scenarios, right?  Besides.  I don’t mind shots.  And my insurance pays for it totally.  And it’s just one shot, right?  That’s where point #8 comes in.  8.) Gardasil is not just one shot.  It is 3 shots administered over 6 months, each vaccine being “increasingly more painful than the last as your body builds immunity against the viruses.”  Also, Gardasil requires that you sit still for 15 minutes after administration of the shot because people have noticed a lot of “fainting and dizziness” immediately following the shot.  My routine visit to the Gyno turned into a 3-hour marathon visit in which I was poked and prodded and lopped and scraped.  Bonkers visit to the doctor.

9.) Then I went back to work.

10.) Then I left work to go to the district headquarters for an afternoon of training.  This wouldn’t have been so bad except every single thing that they taught me was straight off of a “how to guide” that is located on the district’s help website.  They literally read the “how to” to us, out loud, pausing to teach us things like “how to create a folder on your C: drive, and how to re-name that folder.” I wanted to gouge my eyes out for each one of the 4-hours that I sat in that room learning absolutely nothing.  That training deserves to be Point #11, too.  It was that bad.  Two bullet points bad.  In fact, I’ll even say 12.) the instructor for the class thinks she’s Jim Carrey.  But she’s not.  That’s worthy of another point right there.

13.) LUCKY THIRTEEN.  I got home from work and decided that I was going to do the first run of my new training program. Even though this training program doesn’t call for the 5-minute warm-up walk that the other program called for, I did one anyway.  I’m kind of addicted to the 5-minute warm up walk.  During our (Scout and me) warm up walk on Tuesday, I crossed a street.  There happens to be a red-light at this particular intersection, and I happened to have a green-light in the direction I was crossing.  However, as every one of you knows, it’s legal in the state of Texas (and maybe in the whole US?) to turn Right on Red.  And there was a lady in a white Ford Mustang to decided to do exactly that.  Only, that lady did not look for pedestrian traffic when she decided to turn right at that particular red light.  So that’s how THIRTEEN.) I GOT HIT BY A CAR.

Granted, she didn’t hit me very hard.  She had been at a complete stop at the red light when I started to walk across the cross walk.  I was looking forward and walking when I felt some heat/air blowing on my leg, I looked left and then she ran into me.  She couldn’t have been going any faster than an Idle-Crawl, but nevertheless, it was enough to scare the total shit out of me.  I immediately threw both of my hands on her hood, whirling my body 90 degrees to the left to face her.  She, a middle aged blonde lady, was so flabbergasted that she had just run into me, that she couldn’t even move.  I, on the other hand, was just totally pissed.  I launched into “Big Arms,” with the fervor of a New York Mobster, yelling at her through her windshield.  I can’t remember what I actually said, but I was surprised with the lack of profanity.  Retrospectively, a proper response might have been something like, “WHAT THE EFFING EFF ARE YOU DOING YOU SON OF A B TWO BIT @#*& WE*(&#  SE*(&S*&)( SD WITH UGLY W*(#)&!!!!”  Instead I think I said something really eloquent and memorable like, “WHAT DO YOU THINK YOU’RE DOING?” After yelling at her (or, as she heard it, mouthing words at her), I just continued walking.  I thought about stopping and writing down all her information and all that crap.  But I didn’t.  I was too annoyed, and really, she didn’t hit me that hard.  It’s cool.

So then, Scout and I rounded the ’5-minute’ corner, and we started to run.  I could see in the distance a girl jogging towards us with a dog.  I tightened my grip on Scout’s leash so that she wouldn’t try to go play with the other dog.  I secretly hoped to myself that the person running towards me would do the same thing.  As I got closer to her, it became apparent that 14.) her dog wasn’t on a leash at all.  The very moment I pieced all that together, the dog looked up and saw us coming towards him.  And that’s when the dog took off at lightening speeds.  Towards me.  Barking and snarling his teeth.  The dog lunged at me and I instinctively did what any kind and loving dog owner would do.  I physically shoved Scout between me and the other dog.  Scout actively engaged the other dog in some ferocious barking and fighting, occasionally glancing up towards me with looks of, “REALLY? WHY DID YOU DO THIS TO ME?”  All of this has happened in about .2 seconds, of course, and in the mean time, I’m standing in the middle of a neighborhood street with my foot cocked back and ready to kick the LIVING CRAP out of some dog if it gets bored with Scout and tries to come at me.  After a few seconds of this, the dog’s owner comes and calls the dog off of Scout.  I pick up where her dog left off, snarling and barking at her.  Livid that she would walk her (obviously angry) dog in this (usually) pedestrian-friendly area without a leash, I grit my teeth together as I growl at her that she needs to keep her damn dog on a leash while she’s walking.  I’d tell you if she looked smug or apologetic, but I can’t remember because I was so FREAKED OUT TO THE MAX that I had almost just been eaten alive by a dog.  I leaned down and hugged Scout for taking the brunt of that one for me.  She was like, “It’s cool, thanks for taking the brunt of the car hit for me.”  And I was like, “Hey, no biggie.”