Surgery Eve

Tomorrow morning I go to the hospital for my first ever surgery. I really have mixed feelings about the procedure. I'll feel a lot better after my gallbladder's gone, but the idea of having a part of my body removed is disconcerting. That's the part of the surgery I'm most unsure about. I'm not so much afraid (like I was in the emergency room) as I am coming to terms with losing something that was with me since I was born.

Of course, I also think that these feelings are just a bit silly/frivolous. It's not like my gallbladder forms a major part of who I am, and I'll be able to get along just fine without it. Also, I'll have a very interesting story to tell when people inevitably ask what I did this summer. Not very many teenagers can say they've had abdominal surgery, let alone had their gallbladder removed (which is normally a procedure that's done to people at least in their 20s). I'll feel better, and my summer won't be like the other students.

This is what's passing through my mind tonight. Slightly more pressing, though, is the fact that I won't be able to eat or drink after midnight tonight. That's going to be seriously difficult, since I'm always thirstiest after the sun goes down for some reason. Not having breakfast is going to make the whole ordeal much harder, since being hungry makes me incredibly grumpy. The grumpiness will be amplified by getting an IV placed, which is hard on me even when I have normal blood sugar levels (needles? EEK!). But there's a good reason, so I guess I just have to go along with it.

The Adult Child

Comparing me to the rest of my generation is, at the moment, like comparing apples and oranges. I don't listen to popular music. I don't wear popular clothes. I don't use the current catchphrases, like swag or YOLO. I'm not glued to my cell phones like most people my age are. Heck, my phone is dead half the time and I don't even notice. This is why I rarely choose to interact with my peers - I have so little in common with most of them. Instead, I prefer to spend time with adults.

When I was a little girl I would go with my parents to adult events, like dinner parties. I was usually the only kid there, so the conversations and whatnot were about grown-up things, like work, politics, etc. Before I went to kindergarten, this was most of my social life. Sure, I had friends my age, but the majority of my socializing was with my parents (who treated me almost like a little adult, but not in a bad sense) and other people their age.

Could early exposure to adult conversation have helped me mature earlier than the rest of my generation? I'd have to say yes. Seeing adults in their natural environment taught me quite a lot about manners and etiquette, for example. It also made me prefer interacting with adults, since adult conversation is what I was used to. Even though I've grown through the years, this fact about me hasn't really changed. I've learned how to interact with people my age, but I would much rather talk to adults, since that was what I was doing during my most impressionable years.

Rubber and Glue

While I was in the shower today I had an epiphany. There's more truth to the phrase "I'm rubber, you're glue. What you say bounces off of me and sticks to you." than people realize. For example, let's say that somebody is being bullied. That person is the rubber, and the bully's the glue. Even though what the bully does is awful and hurts the person he/she is bullying, the bully will likely get more long-term consequences. The bully's reputation will probably be ruined when the world finds out about it (like what Mitt Romney did to that kid when he was in high school), and people will be less likely to want to be friends with him/her. This is how a bully's actions bounces off of the rubber of the victim (even though the victim will be damaged from it) and sticks to the glue of the bully.

Annual Vacation

I was in Fort Collins this week spending time with my godparents, and I had all sorts of fun. The first thing I did (after going out to lunch at a Greek restaurant named Cafe Athens - yum!) was tag along with my godmother, who was giving a presentation on what an editor does - namely, a lot. Since we were early, I filmed a nice elevator from the 1960s and two bathrooms with brown toilets, although sadly the color on the toilets didn't show up as much as I would have liked.

On Monday, the day after I arrived, the most exciting thing was going grocery shopping. Buying stuff for my breakfasts is much more difficult than it needs to be since I despise most breakfast foods. I spent the rest of Monday annoying the three cats that share my godparents' home and playing Sims 3, which I did a lot of over the course of the week.

Tuesday afternoon was spent in the pool with my godmother. I brought my snorkeling set with me and enjoyed splashing around. Especially throwing water in the air and watching it fall back into the pool. After swimming for hours, we went back to the house and took showers. The shower head in the guest bathroom doesn't have as much pressure as I'm used to, and it took a good 10-20 minutes just to rinse the shampoo and conditioner out of my thick hair. That was annoying, but not nearly as annoying as having an allergic reaction to my body wash. I was bright red when I got out of the shower, so my godmother said. The irony of all that is, the soap was supposedly designed for sensitive skin! Oh well, looks like it'll be an excuse to buy more soap at Bath and Body Works this month...

Wednesday was delightful. In the morning I went to work with my godfather, who works in a lab developing vaccines. He showed me monkey cells that were infected with various amounts of a certain virus. It was so cool to see how the cells reacted to the infection! After being amazed by the wonders of life, my godparents and I went to the Denver Museum of Nature and Science. Before looking inside the museum, we had a picnic in the park next door. Lunch was peanut butter and raspberry jam sandwiches and cherries.

After lunch we bought tickets for the planetarium and the IMAX theater. There was an hour before the planetarium show started, during which time we looked at the rock and gem exhibit. My favorite part of that exhibit was looking at all of the shiny gems that people make jewelry from. They're so beautiful! There was a bit of a connection between seeing diamonds in the museum and the show we watched in the planetarium, which was about weather in space. On Neptune, carbon becomes compressed in the atmosphere, so every now and then it literally rains diamonds! How cool is that?

The IMAX show was about storm chasers. Storm chasers go into dangerous conditions to gather videos and/or data about storms that produce tornadoes. The goal of the data is to figure out more patterns between those storms so tornado warnings can be issued earlier before the tornado hits, giving people more time to get to safety. Given how much destruction those storms can cause, more time to prepare is definitely a good goal.

After the IMAX show, we went to look at the prehistoric life exhibit. The exhibit looked at the evolution of life and the planet from the time when only single-celled organisms lived on Earth to the evolution of humans. I didn't actually learn very much that stuck with me, although I did learn that Wyoming used to be a rainforest. Hard to imagine, no? The most exciting part of that exhibit was finding two very unique, European-style elevators, which I had to film since there just aren't many elevators with that style in America.

Once we looked through the prehistoric life exhibit, my godparents and I took a look at the Russian sculptures carved from different types of gems. They are so beautiful! The amount of detail that the sculptor was able to carve into them is absolutely mind-blowing. I'd definitely suggest seeing them in person if you can, since words really can't do them justice. After we spent what felt like ages admiring the details in the sculptures, we went shopping in the museum shop. I found a gorgeous purple stone necklace that I could not pass up. The museum was near closing when we finished shopping, so we had to go back to my godparents' house and annoy the cats (which we had no complaints doing, since the cats are so easily annoyed).

Thursday was a day of even more shopping. My godmother and I went to lunch at the Taj Mahal, an Indian restaurant that has been a part of my life since I was a very little girl. I completely stuffed myself at the buffet, since I rarely get to go there these days. After lunch, we went shopping in Old Town. I found an awesome cup, with a curly straw included. Again, I could not pass it up. I'm planning on making it my school water bottle, since it can hold a reasonable amount of water. Once I spent all of my money, my godmother took me for ice cream. We made the mistake of buying medium cones at Dairy Queen, which we thought would be smaller than they actually were. I made a royal mess of myself, even though I couldn't finish the cone. I'd forgotten how fun it was to make a mess like that!

Friday was my last full day of vacation. I spent most of the day playing Sims 3, which was a good mental exercise since I couldn't cheat to keep my Sims' needs from decaying. In the afternoon I helped my godmother harvest tomatoes. There's nothing quite like eating food you've harvested yourself! The most exciting part of the harvest was finding a Siamese tomato (two tomatoes that have grown together like Siamese twins). I took quite a lot of pictures, since I've never seen one before. After dinner, my godparents and I played Settlers of Catan, which I'll admit I suck at. I had fun even though I always lost, though.

Every night my godfather and I would watch Big Bang Theory (the only sitcom I can stand - it's hilarious!) while my godmother cooked dinner. During dinner - and for the rest of the evening afterwards - we all watched the Olympics. It was so inspiring, seeing the USA gymnastics team and Gabby Douglas win gold medals. Watching Missy Franklin do such a good job swimming was also amazing, especially since she's from Colorado. She has more medals than some countries in the Olympics, which is quite impressive.

I had so much fun with my godparents this week that it was almost a bit sad to leave. Especially since one of their cats was my cuddle buddy every evening (except Friday for some reason). I'm most definitely going to miss him, since neither of my cats cuddle with me much. I have the good memories of what happened, though, and I'm looking forward to the next time I can stay with my godparents for a week!