There are no boundaries!

Now, if I've learned anything from 2Birds1Blog (oh, and I have. I really have), it is that you should never bitch about your job on your blog. So, this will not be a blog post about how completely effed up it was that I had to clean the bathrooms at my place of business yesterday. It's not that it wasn't completely ridiculous and that I'm not completely livid (it was, I am), but I do know that the internet is not the place for these things. Big Brother and all that.

No, this is a post about what happened to me WHILE I was forced to clean the bathrooms yesterday, and how apparently men either have no idea how women's rooms work or have absolutely no boundaries.

There I was, in my business casual outfit and brand new shoes (but hey, that's how we women love to clean, amiright?), dragging a huge garbage can, broom and duster into the men's bathroom of a busy establishment. Holding to what I believe to be a normal sense of decency, every time I entered this room I placed a sign on the door that indicated the bathroom was closed for cleaning. I naively thought this would keep me safe.

To be fair, the gentleman in question DID ask if it was ok for him to come in. It is very possible that he didn't hear me say, "Sure, but GIVE ME A SECOND" so that I had the time to wash my hands (men's rooms, btw, are disgusting) and step out of the room. But even if he didn't hear me, it completely blows my mind that he would still walk over to the urinal and proceed to use it while I was two feet away. Maybe men are used to doing this next to (male) strangers, but rest assured that the women who are being forced to clean your disgusting mess are not! Now, I am not a prude, but being alone in a men's bathroom save for a strange man with unzipped pants is just not a comfortable situation! Not, not, not, not ok. I'm not blaming this dude for not knowing proper co-ed bathroom etiquette, but there just has to be a way to spread the word. Perhaps this begins with not forcing your office employees to clean the bathroom while they have their own g-d work to do, but I guess that is a discussion for another day.

In happier news, I made Michael Emerson laugh. My life is complete.

What's that thing where doctors make you feel better just by talking to you? Bedside manner? Yeah, yours sucks, dude.

I've been so wrapped up in the excitement (and horror) that has been this season's political campaign/economic crisis that I've let this slip just a bit. So back to the idiosyncrasies of living in New York.

So I have had this flu that just refuses to quit (I still blame Sarah Palin). I'm usually pretty anti-medication, but it took a turn for the worse this Thursday morning and I decided to bite the bullet and just go get myself some antibiotics. Yet, what for some might be a relatively routine doctor's visit, for me was all but a three ring circus. For a bit of a back story:

I just began going to this doctor's office, and I actually really like the people, but the service is *slightly* questionable. Like last time, when I tried to have my blood drawn, and two nurses took about 15 minutes to decide that I do not have one vein in my entire body. Oh, until nurse number two felt around the side of my arm and said, "oh, well, this might be a vein. I mean, it COULD be a tendon..." Needless to say, all the blood stayed in my arm that day.

Which brings me to last Thursday. I awoke with lymph nodes the size of golf balls and the inability to swallow, which I explained to the nurse who was examining me. "Let's do a rapid strep test," she suggested, which of course made sense to me. She tried to do the test once, but due to my relatively pronounced gag reflex, gave up and handed me the swab. I proceeded then, to DO MY OWN strep test. Fine, I thought, this can't be that weird, right? I'm not sure I did this right but it should be ok.

I was then called into the doctors office, and as I was walking down the hall, the nurse who had "taken" by rapid strep culture yelled/whispered down the hallway "the test is negative!" Well, that's good news, but seriously? Everyone just heard that. So much for confidentiality. Also, I began to question my ability to swab my own throat.

The doctor sat down with me, and she was a lovely woman, but I couldn't help but notice that her bedside manner was just a little too friendly. Like when she said, "ew" when she looked at my throat the first time, and "wow that's ugly" when she looked again. She then proceeded to ask "are your tonsils normally that huge?" (really? i'm sure it has nothing to do with the fact that I HAVE A SORE THROAT!) and acknowledged that I "can take as many aspirin as I want, at any time." She did another culture (by herself this time!) and informed me that it would take 48 hours for the results. And then, she proceeded to write me a prescription anyway, on "good faith" that I wouldn't fill it until I found the results. Even after she assured me that "the rapid strep test is almost never wrong." Thanks! Could you write me a script for Vicodin too, on the off chance that I break my leg on the walk to the subway?

However, I took the prescription happily, and filled it before I got the results. In the end, you know your body better than any doctor, and my symptoms assured me that the DIY rapid strep culture was wrong. And what do you know, as I was listening to my voicemail last night, the friendly voice of the woman who told me that ODing on advil was safe and my tonsils were ugly informed me that, "yeah, you're going to want to start taking those antibiotics about now..."

Slices of Americana, or "Where culture's defined by the ones least refined"

Coming from a small town, I have grown up with tiny amusement parks and town fairs that provide a day's worth of family friendly, good old fashioned fun. However, it wasn't until I was a bit older that I realized that these parks also provide, hands down, some of the greatest people watching outlets of all time.

My first glimpse of this was when I, as a college sophomore, brought my then-boyfriend to my own little piece of Americana -- the Butler Fair. The Butler Fair is everything you would hope it would be and more: death defying rides (no, seriously. you can hear and watch the bolts falling out), country music concerts, tractor pulls, and, of course, livestock. Lots of livestock. All of this seems harmless enough, but looking back, I should have known what that poor Connecticut boy WASN'T ready for -- Butler's populace. I'm not making any judgment calls, but I guess I never thought that someone from the northeast wouldn't be prepared to see a young girl, no older than 16, about 7-8 months pregnant, wearing a baby-doll tee stating that "I make good boys go bad." More power to ya, sweetie, but you are terrifying my boyfriend. Needless to say, he and I didn't last.

Which brings us to this weekend at Waldameer Park in Erie, PA. I was out visiting one of my closest friends from high school, his wife and children, and various other family members. We enjoyed the rides, outdoor grilling area and carnie games, but mostly (and I must stress this point) the amazing display of colorful characters surrounding us.

First there was middle-aged-possibly-drunk-tone-deaf karaoke guy. In the middle of the day, at a children's amusement park, swaying and rocking out to "New York, New York." "If I can (bum bum) make it there, I'll make it anywhere?" Even if we take the lyrics loosely, you are still about 10 miles from the New York (state) border. And you aren't even making it here.

Then came the most inexplicable player in this little game -- This guy (whose face has been blurred). Special thanks to Laura for posing to make it look like I was taking a picture of her!

Look closely kids, because this dude, for no reason whatsoever, has a small child's pink bikini stuffed down his shirt. Seriously. At least he was with a little girl, presumably his own, making this one million percent less creepy than it could have been.


And finally, the creme de la cream, the piece de la resistance of Waldameer Park, was a woman who could actually take parenting lessons from Britney Spears. After noticing that her infant child was chewing on her empty pack of Parlament Lights, she took the box, tore off the top, and gave the box back to the child. Just in case it wasn't easy enough for little KFed, Jr. to get at those extra tobacco shavings and remnants of nicotine inside.