Like Aesop's Fables, Only No Animals

The doctor called me Wednesday and informed me I had high cholesterol. And I was all, "Um, okay, so, uh, does that cause intermittent severe stomach pain?" and it was her turn to go "Huh?" So I had to remind her that I had gone to see her for really bad stomach pain and that she had run all sorts of blood tests for all sorts of enzymes and all.

Sheesh, am I the one with the MD? No, I am not.

So then she looked at her notes and looked at the other tests and said, "Oh, everything looks perfectly normal here! Liver, pancreas...all that. So we'll see you in 3 months for another cholesterol test. Try to eat low-fat."

Whereupon I had to remind her that I was barely eating AT ALL. So she said to wait for the sonogram that she had scheduled a whole week later to see if anything came up. Apparently, she is not too concerned about my nutrient intake.

So yeah, my budget health insurance is working out just great, y'all.

But that's NOT what I came here to tell you. I came here to tell you about the dangers of self-righteousness. You see, one of the townhouses in my neighborhood is a rental, and it's being renovated between tenants. So the contractors doing the renovations left a huge pile of flooring remnants and boxes next to where we leave our trash cans twice a week for garbage pickup.

The stuff sat there all week, irritating the heck out of everyone, until today, trash pick-up day. And the garbage guys didn't pick it up, because really, they're not supposed to pick up any trash that isn't bagged and the contractors should have disposed of that stuff themselves.

So I went out there this evening, filled with self-righteous indignation over the mess, and started carrying all the trash back to the house it came from. I made sure to dump it in the front yard, right next to the For Rent sign.

Because, yeah, I can be petty sometimes.

This is useful

The job took a while, because it turns out some of the boards were old pieces of shoe molding and baseboards, complete with sharp nails sticking straight out. I marched back and forth with those boards, feeling mounting satisfaction as the pile in the yard grew higher. That'll teach people to mess up our neighborhood, I thought smugly.

I was almost done, just cleaning up some plastic debris and cardboard boxes, when it happened: I stepped on a rusty nail in a tiny piece of shoe molding that I had missed. Because my beloved FitFlops have really thick soles, only the tip of the nail got into my foot, but still - RUSTY. So now I get to pay $30 to go get a tetanus shot at Urgent Care tonight.

Moral: Vigilantism doesn't pay.





[Rusty Nail Chart: Wound Care Society]