our two year anniversary

Yay! It was our two-year anniversary last week, and we celebrated by going back to the camping spot where we first fell in love.



Here are the highlights:
I am really good at setting up the tent, so I do that while RL set up the "kitchen" (which comprises a cooler, a stove, and a Horseshoes set. Don't ask me why.). Then we have a Jack and Coke and a good conversation.

RL bought a bowsaw on the way out of town so we could saw through just about anything. We go out to forage for dead wood, and start a magnificent pile which we later decide is too big to carry back to our campsite. RL goes and gets his car. When he returns, he's chatting on the phone with a friend (in the middle of nowhere, while camping). I assume he's going to get off soon, but doesn't so I am left piling wood in the car and giving him dirty looks. After that he decides to turn his phone off. Thank God.

Once we get our fire going, it starts to drizzle, so RL decides to put up one of the three tarps we brought with us (we even acquired a new one that someone left behind at the campsite, along with a heck of a lot trash and some basketball shorts). It's dark already, and RL is trying to cut the tarp rope with a Swiss Army Knife (well, a cheap SAK knockoff. I think it may be a Swedish army knife), but he gets the blade the wrong side out, and promptly gets a huge, bloody cut in his knuckle. A couple of dunks in the freezing stream (adjacent to our campsite) and a couple Bandaids later, he's ready to get back to it.

Later on we decide to go for a little walk and see if we can find a spot to look at the stars. A thunderstorm is going crazy over on the other side of the mountains, so even though our sky is clear, we can still see flashes of lightning from over the pass. Have I mentioned how amazing the stars are in the Colorado mountains? Milky Way and everything. And tonight, lightning flashes.

The next morning, RL gets it into his head that he needs to build a "toilet" with all of our leftover wood (there was a lot). See below.



In the end it's a masterpiece, except for he's built it basically in the middle of our campsite. I say that I need to pee, but don't really want to pee in the middle of everything, especially when a vanfull of older people (I think they were Polish) shows up and starts wandering around. Well, finally RL decides he's going to just do it, and afterwards begs me to use it too. He says he'll stand watch. Good thing, too, because I finish up about two seconds before the old Polish women come wandering into our campsite (apparently they were mushroom hunting). Yay for peeing in the middle of nowhere which is not actually the middle of nowhere!

All in all, it was a great camping trip. We tried to reenact our two-week-old-roommate conversations that we had the first time we came here, but it didn't work so well. Turns out you have other conversations as two-year-old-partners that are just as good.

My Visit to the Doctor

It's been awhile since I've been, so I saved up a couple issues to talk to her about (which was fairly disconcerting at the start of the appointment. Front Desk Guy: "Did you tell us you had more than one issue? Because we only have a set amount of time. You might have to come back for another appointment. She only has 15 minutes with you." Then I got to my exam room and go through it all again with the actual doctor: "Did you tell them you had more than one issue? Because we only have a set amount of time. You might have to come back for another appointment. I only have 15 minutes with you." Meanwhile, she got to the office 5 minutes early, and ultimately, we had plenty of time to talk about all of my issues.)

So, all that to say that I have some weird glob of tissue in my eye that seems to be growing scarily close to my iris. The doctor walked in, looked at me and said, "It's a pinquinilla." The doctor knew exactly what it was! She even had one of her own! And I'm not going to go blind! What a relief when a doctor can show you exactly what you're suffering from and can tell you that it's totally benign. She pulled out her book to show me "worst-case scenarios" of said eye infliction.

The weird thing was that she kept saying "pinquinilla." Then when she showed me in the medical book, it was spelled "pinguecula." Does this seem at all like the correct pronunciation for this word? There's no Q, no second N. But she was so confident in her pronunciation that I'm pretty sure she's dyslexic. Great, smartypants doctor has issues.

Well, after the whole eye globule affair, she told me I could only pick one more affliction to deal with today ("because of time constraints"). So I showed her my pinky finger that I jammed playing kickball. It hurts when I bend it certain ways, and the joints healed up funny. She looks at it and, finally, says I probably broke it!

Now, I have never broken a bone in my life. To have broken it playing kickball, of all glorious things, means that I am true hard-core kickballer. I even re-jammed it a week after I jammed it the first time....and KEPT PLAYING!!!

Obviously, I'm looking for a little credit. Since RL's x-rays at the hospital came up with an old fracture in his pelvis that he didn't even know he had, I feel like I deserve a little slap on the back for sacrificing my body. For kickball. Just don't slap too hard. I have a broken finger, you know.

Weird things people ask for at a Mexican restaurant

So I'm still waitressing at the hole-in-the-wall Mexican restaurant I told you about earlier. It's a funny job because you interact with so many different types of people. most of them normal, and some, well, not so normal.

The other day an older couple came in. The woman seemed to have something wrong with her face, like she couldn't stop smiling uncontrollably or crossing her eyes. It took me awhile to adjust to having a conversation with such a person. The first thing she asked me for was cottage cheese, because she wasn't that hungry and didn't want anything spicy. (Apparently she had come out just because her man friend wanted dinner). Unfortunately, most Mexican restaurants don't have cottage cheese. After a long conversation about what else we do have that might fit the bill, she settled on a cheese quesadilla.

In other quesadilla news, a woman and her two young sons were sitting in my section last week. She immediately asked for a grilled cheese sandwich for the kids. I said we didn't really have any bread, just tortillas, and maybe a quesadilla would work? Mommy said the kids don't do tortillas. So she ordered them a plate of French Fries (which we do, randomly, have). Much better option. How about getting your kids to branch out a little? Like, to other wheat flour-based cheese-holding options?

Finally, the first table of my shift on Tuesday was a pair of older men. It was happy hour, so they ended up ordering the cheap tacos, which come with meat, lettuce, tomatoes, and cheese. Pretty basic, but what more do you expect on a taco? Well, when I put the plate down in front of one them, he looked at it and said, "What am I supposed to put on this?" I looked at him, kind of confused, but said maybe he wanted to put some salsa on it?

"Isn't there like a sauce? A Spanish sauce? I mean, a Mexican sauce?" Again, I offer up the salsa (which, in fact, means sauce in Spanish) or suggest a Cholula or Tabasco. He decides the Cholula could probably do, and mows through two tacos only to order another two.

Unfortunately the credit card machine wasn't working at that moment, so Mr. Cholula got away without leaving me a tip. I love this job!