1. My tonsils are swollen, which is either a sign of Heap Big Sickness coming my way, or a sign that something is stuck in them. I hate my tonsils. HATE them. I am so ready to have them taken out - but my understanding is that tonsillectomies on adults require about a week of recovery, with a lot of pain, and no talking. With two kids at ages 3 and 1, I am not sure how the no talking thing would work. So I’m waiting until they are older. Plus, with my allergy to medication, I can only take Percocet or Tylenol. I’m a fan of Mistress Percocet, but it makes me stupid loopy, and I would want to be the primary caregiver to either one of the dudes while I’m hopped on the loopies.

2. We’re going to get another 3” of snow today. I’d love to have a big dumpus storm. That would be awesome. A good foot and a half? Word.

3. I have a new windshield thing for my car. We don’t have a garage and I park in a public lot to catch the bus, and on days when there’s ice and snow, it’s a lot of work to excavate my car. I’m curious if this new thing, which wraps around the sides of the windshield so I can shut the door on it, will help at all. It’s amazing how few people sell windshield covers that actually look like they’ll work.

4. The Accutane adventure continues. I’m now back to wiping Vaseline in my nostrils and compulsively stocking lipbalm in strategic locations. While I was on the cruise last week, I worked out and then went in the steam room. The steam room was about the most blissfully wonderful thing I could have experienced on Accutane. OMG. Bliss.

The best part comes up next: any blackheads or skin congestion starts to get squeezed out so my skin feels like sandpaper. Until you look closely, and then: ew. And also, wow. 

Got my prescription. That was no sweat. But the quiz?!

I had to take a freaking QUIZ on birth control options. Holy crap. Male condoms, IUD inspection schedule, and my personal favorite, “I can get pregnant any time and anywhere I have sex, especially unprotected sex. Yes/No.”

Well, yes and no, people. Yes, SOME people can get pregnant any time and anywhere. But I’ll bet you four Intrauterine Inseminations and a bill from my endocrinologist that not everyone can. So put that in your uterus and smoke it.

Now to the pharmacist, who will have to special order the drugs, and then I have, like, 12 minutes and 42 seconds to pick them up. Sheesh.

In a few weeks (after a short vacation that will take me directly into the sun, pretty much) I’m going to be starting a 20 week course of Accutane. This is my second treatment. The first time I went on it, it was 2002, and all I remember is being insanely attached to my lip balm, and being so free of the normal amount of oil my head produces that I could go 2 days without washing my hair. Believe me, this is nothing short of a full miracle. Normally I can only go about 24 hours before I start getting itchy and irritated.

Tomorrow I go to get my prescription, and holy hopping shitcakes you would not BELIEVE the insanity that is getting an Accutane prescription. I have to sign up for some exclusive registration number and present my ID for the prescription oversight program to the pharmacist each time I fill and pick up the prescription. AND there’s a window within which I must fill the prescription, and if I do not, I have to go through the whole routine again, from my dermatologist squeezing me in (Ha! Squeezing! Zit joke!) to getting a pregnancy test AND a blood test, to getting to the pharmacy, etc. It is a LOT more difficult this go around. And the root cause: I’m a woman of childbearing age. No matter that I’m 33 and have an IUD and no desire to have additional children. To anyone having anything to do with Accutane: I’m 17 years old and stupid.

I won’t be starting till nearly the end of the month but I must say: every pimple that ever thought of being a pimple on my head must have been given the red alert (ha! zit joke!) because JESUS am I broken out. What, I ask, the fucking hell? Every time I see a new blemish I’m thinking, “Just you wait. You’re all going to molt at once and then I won’t see you again. Hopefully ever! HA!”

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Holy shit! I just found my old journal link in an Acne for Dummies book on Google:Books. HA!

Guess I better put the old journal back up, eh?