I like to move it, move it.

As my friends know, I like to move it.

Which is why I am SO excited about Dance Dance Revolution.

Which is why I want it for my birthday, which is mid-January.

I have no idea how much this game costs, so I'm thinking that oodles of my friends can all chip in and then we can have a Dance Dance Revolution party. And we can all move it, move it.

Post Script. My friend tells me that if I don't have a Playstation (which I do not), they make plug-and-play versions of this game, but that they're "kinda lame." This displeases me. So, I guess I'll have to go without Dance Dance Revolution. But do not fret! I will soon have a belated (very belated) housewarming gathering, which will surely tun into our very own Saucy Dance Revolution Party and we shall all move it, move it together!

The rest of the world is getting fatter.

I have never been so excited to weigh 146 pounds.

Yup, you heard right. The Saucy Vixen just admitted her weight to all five of her faithful readers out there. And in case you, my Saucy Readers, missed it the first time, I shall state it again: I have never been so excited to weigh 146 pounds.

And now, some history: I am only five-foot-two-inches tall. (I never really had a chance at tallhood, what with my father being 5'4" and my mother measuring in at a whopping 5'1".) In High School, my weight topped out at about 148 pounds. In college, instead of gaining, I lost. I went down to a mere 120, which was extremely difficult to maintain; throughout college I pretty much stayed at 125.

Then I graduated. And started a job I hated for a micro-managing boss with a hardcore Napoleon Complex. I found myself in a two-and-a-half year relationship that was amazingly unhealthy. And my weight soared to 165. The summer before law school, I brought it down to 140. But with the bar and my first job public defending, I ended up at a doctor's weigh-in on September 15, at 156.

So I decided to change my life. I started birth control and quit smoking. I got a new job. I started working out four times a week. And I told myself that I was eating better. But I wasn't eating better. Not better at all. Lean Pockets is not "better." Three bowls of cereal for dinner is not "better."

Frustrated with my lack of progress (as I had somehow managed to talk myself into really really thinking I was eating better), I joined Weight Watchers online almost exactly six weeks ago. At 156 pounds. And in those six weeks I lost ten pounds.

Now that in itself would be awesome, right? But it gets BETTER.

I am at my parents' place in Miami right now soaking up the sun. And I found paperwork documenting the physical I underwent before entering undergrad. At 148 pounds, I was in the 80th percentile of weight for people my age and height. How depressing.

And now? I checked. I'm at about the 40th percentile for people my age and height. Which means that even though I'm the same weight I was in high school, everyone else around me has gotten fatter. Cool, huh?

Which is why I've never been so excited to weigh 146 pounds.

Woo-hoo!

Western Massachusetts.

Here's a tidbit for those of you who don't know:

When people talk about "Western Mass," what they really mean is "West of Boston." They don't even mean "farther West than Worcester." And Worcester is only about a third into the state.

Look at the map, people! There's an entire state out there. Big ol' open spaces. Rolling hillsides. Much more'n the big Can o' Beantown.

Be that as it may, people talk about "Western Mass" as if Boston is the center of the universe. The same way New Yorkers (at least those from The City) refer to Yonkers as "Upstate," not realizing that Dutchess County isn't on another planet. (In fact, it's not even half way up the state.)

How very provincial. When will the city dwellers learn?

Spinal tap update.

Okay, so it's not all rainbows and gumdrops.

I felt a-okay on Tuesday, and so I went downstairs, took out the trash, made myself lunch for the next day, and tinkered about for an hour or so. After which, I had a raging pressure headache.

Yesterday, I woke up to go to work. Showered, got dressed. Then realized that the headache from standing or sitting upright was causing severe nausea. So I called the doctor's office. They told me to stay on my back and drink plenty of caffeine, take Tylenol, and stay hydrated. I explained the nausea, and the doc called in a prescription for anti-nausea meds.

I slept for about an hour thereafter, and woke up feeling sick, sick, sick. Picked up the meds at the pharmacy and took one. Which didn't help with the projectile vomiting. So I called Chris all upset, having convinced myself that I was dying from lack of a stomach lining. He came over and fed me soup and crackers and tea and flat Diet Coke. Which was awesome for him.

The problem? I missed another day of work yesterday, and am not going in today because of the pressure. Which I normally wouldn't mind so much, except that this was supposed to be my first full week of work. AND I'm leaving next Friday for a week to visit my parents. I suppose it's good that with my handy-dandy Mac laptop, I can still type and be flat on my back. Cool, huh? (Don't let that conjure up any unsavory images.)

The moral of this story?

Nope, there isn't one. Except that spinal taps suck and make you miss work.

Bedtime stories.

Last night, being extremely bored, I asked Chris to read me a bedtime story from a children's book I picked up second-hand for a quarter. He read through the options and I chose Hansel and Gretel.

Now, bear in mind, that right before Chris got to bed, I took a sleeping pill. One of the remedies for the post-tap headache is lots of caffeine. So with two cups of coffee coursing through my veins, as well as the tenderness in my back, I knew I'd have a tough go with the whole sleep thing. So I settled in to listen to Chris read Hansel and Gretel, not realizing how loopy the sleeping pill had made me.

The story started off the way it always does, with the children's father all sad because there was not enough food in the larder for all four (the father, step-mother, and two children) to bite or sup. And, of course, the step-mother suggested that they leave the children out in the woods.

At that point, the story that I remembered (and I'd never read this particular version from this particular book) took a strange twist. Hansel got killed, somehow.

So this morning, I e-mailed Chris at work to ask him whether I remembered the strange version correctly. "Did Hansel die in that story you read me?"

He wrote back. "Yes. It was a bit of a twist on the traditional story. A vengeful and jealous God smote Hansel. But his step-mother reanimated him and then the story continued in the regular fashion."

Oh, alright. I accepted that I had come across a very strange version of Hansel and Gretel, and left it at that.

But in my stuck-in-bed boredom, I decided to read the story that I fell asleep during last night. And you know what? God did not smite anyone in this version of Hansel and Gretel! There was no magical reanimation! Chris took advantage of my drug-induced state and deviated from the story, adding religious elements and a not-so-nice God.

I should have him read me bedtime stories more often.

Spinal tap success.

I had my spinal tap yesterday. And I want to start with the comment a kind reader left for me on my first post regarding the dreaded tap:

I still count my spinal tap as the most painful experience of my entire life. Make sure they give you some proper pain medication. If it isn't an opiate of some kind it isn't good enough.

First of all, who writes this to someone? I was worried enough as it was going in, but a comment like this is just mean and thoughtless. But more importantly, it's just downright wrong. I had my spinal tap yesterday, and I can tell anyone who is at all concerned about getting one: Whoever wrote that comment has clearly never suffered any pain greater than a paper cut.

This isn't to say that the procedure was all hearts and flowers, gumdrops and teddy bears. No. The doctor stuck a big ol' needle in my back. But before doing it, he shot me up with a whole lot of numbing stuff. There was some uncomfortable pressure while the needle went it. And then it was over. My back aches and feels a bit tender, but is no worse than lower back pain one gets during menstruation (I can only assume my helpful commenter was of the male persuasion) I get a dull, throbbing headache when I sit or stand up, but as long as I'm lying down for now, it's nothing that a cup of coffee, orange juice and some Tylenol can't take care of.

In fact, the doctor didn't even bother prescribing me opiates (though I can't really take them anyway). And from what I've heard from others, they only jack up to opiates if there is a consistent and extremely painful headache that lasts more than a day-and-a-half.

And so, to those of you who worried or expressed concern: Thanks. I have a bit of a headache, but I'm feeling a-okay. Chris drove me there and back and made me dinner afterwards and read to me when I got bored of having to lie on my back. (I'm still bored of lying on my back, but at least I get to communicate with you, my lovely, wonderful, caring readers; all two of you readers out there).

Another day of this back-lying-boredom, and then it's back to the new job. And that's what we call spinal tap success.

Part II: Justice?

New job.

New state.

Words on the courthouse at the old job: Obedience to law is liberty.

Words on the courthouse at the new job: The welfare of the people is the highest law.

And they wonder why I left.

(See Part I here.)

A city built on Rock n' Roll...

It's the second day of Channukah and I've not gotten any presents yet.

On top of that, my birthday is coming up on January 17. What do I want? I was this t-shirt. It's friggin' awesome!

(And it can be purchased here.)

Enlarge your penis.

I'm trying to convince Chris to take penis-enlarging drugs.

Why?

Because I think it'd be awesome if his penis shot lasers. Like the Monster Cock.

Clarification: No, I don't really want Chris to get a penis enlargement. He already has a Monster Cock. Really, folks. He's hung. Hung like a jury with a seriously nagging doubt. (I love you, Chris. Thanks for putting up with me discussing your genitals in a public forum.)

On Hebrew school and improper word usage.

My parents made me go to Hebrew school when I was a kid. It started off as once a week in Kindergarten. By fourth grade, I was going twice a week. And by sixth, it was thrice weekly.

Hebrew school was awful. We learned bible stories, and the teachers weren't too fond of my questioning the faith. The rabbis? Oh, they loved my silly questions, but the teachers were young do-gooder types who weren't quite sure how to handle my rambunctious ways.

Because of this, my folks let me become a Hebrew School Dropout in the eighth grade. The teacher was an ass and we'd all had enough.

And speaking of asses... The most irritating thing about Hebrew school (to me, at least) was improper word usage. In the seventh grade, we had some sort of ceremony (for what, I do not recall). Each of us presented either an English or Hebrew recitation of one of the Ten Commandments.

Saving the best for last, I was to recite the English text of the Tenth Commandment:

You shall not covet your neighbor's house; you shall not covet your neighbor's wife, his male or female slave, his ox or his ass, or anything that is your neighbor's.

You know what they made me do? They made me say the word "donkey" instead of "ass." If they had let me just go ahead and use the A-word, everything would have gone smoothly. But because I was so very irritated that they changed the text for purposes of political correctness, I was so theatrical and so ridiculous in my recitation, that I was the only reciter who got a laugh from the audience.

The most egregious example of word usage tampering during my religious education was during the translation of my Torah portion during my Bat Mitzvah. I read Leviticus 26.3 through 26.13. To be sure, the text of Leviticus 16.13 is as follows:

I am the Lord your G-d who brought you out from the land of Egypt to be their slaves no more, who broke the bars of your yoke and who made you walk erect.

See the problem? If you guessed it was the word "erect," you are correct. Ding ding! I had to say the word "upright."

We all know of my penchant for proper syntax and my distaste of evolving usage (e.g., the fact that "melancholy" is now used as an adjective instead of a noun, the proper adjective form being "melancholic"). Given this, combined with the tampering with religious text for the sake of cleaning it up, is it really any wonder why I grew to hate organized religion?

"Why I need a spinal tap." Or, "Lenscrafters be damned!"

Back in September, LensCrafters send me a coupon. A huge discount on new frames. Fifty percent off lenses. Yay! Since my glasses are more than two years old, and my visions seems to be a tad blurry in one eye, I went in for an eye exam, and to purchase some new specs.

I got my eye exam, and the optometrist told me that the prescription in my left eye was actually a bit higher than it needed to be. So she wrote up a new prescription. Then she told me that she saw something a bit worrisome in the back of my eyes and wanted to dilate my pupils.

I had never had my pupils dilated before. I get squeamish when it comes to eye drops. Also, I've always been extremely sensitive to light. But because I live only two minutes from LenscCrafters, and because the optometrist was insistent, I reluctantly agreed.

The dilation threw my balance off, and I had to drink a lot of water to keep from throwing up. (Please note that ever since I punctured an eardrum more'n a decade ago, I am particularly affected by anything that has the potential to throw my balance off.) Twenty minutes after the drops went in, I was back in the chair getting lights shined in my eyes.

After that, the optometrist wanted me to take visual fields test to check my peripheral vision.

I failed.

The eye doc sat me down again and explained that she was concerned. I had inflamed optic nerves, the likes of which she had learned about, but never seen. Even more distressing to her what that I seemed to have huge blind spots in my peripheral vision. She referred me to a neuro-opthamologist (there are only two in the state), and wrote him a letter herself.

Last week, I had my appointment. I was given more tests, and my visual fields were tested yet again. And again, I failed. The doc dilated my pupils again and told me the same thing: Inflamed optic nerves. However, he told me my case was "interesting."

"Most patients I have with inflamed optic nerves present with different symptoms," he explained. "They have intense headaches that last for three days. Debilitating headaches with headaches. They also have loss of vision for up to a minute at times. You don't seem to have any of these symptoms."

Right. So what was wrong?

Doc told me that what I have is most likely a congenital defect that I've always had; no one had ever noticed before. The fact that I never noticed a loss of peripheral vision means I've probably always had huge blind spots. The defect is called optic disc drusen. It is un-treatable, yet harmless. However, there is no way to diagnose it.

No way to diagnose it, that is, except for ruling out anything else it could be. Like stuff that would cause pressure on my spinal chord. Like tumors.

Hence the MRI and spinal tap.

Damn, you LensCrafters!