"I'm your Huckleberry."

Welp, folks, by the grace and good nature of God we have fanagled a way for me to wait until this afternoon to take the RAI dose, thus saving a day of time off at work. There actually wasn't much fanagling about it-- one of the nuke med technicians showed up yesterday afternoon and asked if I'd like to save my time and take the pill in the afternoon, to which I heartily agreed.

So I've been helping with projects that don't require me to remember my name. I've forgotten it twice this week already, and things aren't getting any prettier the longer I'm off my meds and my TSH continues to rise. (I've resorted to a script on a post-it, taped to my phone, so I won't sound like an idiot and forget my name again.) I've been making copies (on the machine that isn't posessed) and wearing the gopher hat today. These are easy tasks that don't require me to think, which are right down my alley.

My short term memory is shot. But somehow my movie trivia files are almost completely intact. Ask me to remember three items for ten minutes is a bust. Ask me about a plot line in a movie from the 80s or 90s, and I'm all over it. It's funny how our brains work.

The mental fog is so annoying for me, not because I'm some kind of genius, but because the fog makes me feel like an idiot. My short term memory is shot. I can't remember things without a mountain of post-its. I'm no longer any real help in the kitchen because I read what I need, turn around and walk towards the pantry, stare at the shelf, only to come back to the book and try it all over again. We can laugh about it, but it's still a pain in the neck. My endo said this was good practice for going through menopause.

I'd like to note that, although I appreciated the humor, she thought that joke was funnier than I did.

When thinking of this post, I had planned a neat transition between this story and the next part, but I didn't write it down. So imagine a pointed, slightly witty, and creatively smooth transition that had something to do with the next part.

(Insert it here.)

My high school Chemistry teacher was a bad instructor. I think we watched more movies than had lectures, which at the time was fantastic. We weren't watching anything relevant to class stuff - but whatever Disney cartoon was out or the film 8 Seconds.* I think we watched 8 Seconds, a movie about a real-life rodeo bull rider, 3 or 4 times during class time. It wasn't a particularly good movie, but we were in southern TN where it was cool to wear Ropers (although I never had any).

In the movie the main character, what's his name, had to rise up the ranks of the rodeo world. There was an especially mean bull who bucked everybody, and he was so tough that the community considered a ride of 8 seconds to be a major victory for anyone who tried to ride him. (or something like that- the bull was a serious hoss with which to be reckoned) There's a scene where one of the bulls ends up smashing one guy's nuts. There are several scenes of people being thrown from bucking bulls. Some people get hurt. There are rodeo clowns running around, but I don't remember them doing any real tricks, other than distracting bulls from pummeling their riders.

Anywho, what's his name wants to ride the big bull for 8 seconds. People say he can't do it. Insert dialogue. Insert plot twist, with an on-again, off-again, love interest. Somewhere along the way he coins the phrase "cowboy up", and then he rides the bull for 8 seconds before the bull throws him and kills him. He ended up placing in the competetion, which nobody thought he would do. The end.

In the back of my mind, I'm lacing up my ropers today. My mind is on the clock and the beast of a pill that's sitting inside a lead cyllinder.

It's time for me to cowboy up.

* We may have watched Toombstone, too. We really did watch more movies than do work in there, which leads me to believe that my teacher had a thing for Luke Perry. Lord only knows how I got through nursing school pre-requisits without a good foundation in chemistry.