How I Got Tickets to Super Bowl XLVI

I'm very excited today!  Well, I should say, I'M VERY EXCITED TODAY!  Today, I bought tickets to see my NY Giants play in a rematch of Super Bowl XLII against the New England Patriots in Super Bowl XLVI.  My road to the Super Bowl starts on Sunday, after that nail biting finish of the NFC Championship.

Beginning Sunday night, I was trying to convince Hubby to go to the Super Bowl.  I mean, we only live once.  We don't have kids yet but plan to soon, so we really don't have a lot of time left where we can splurge on ourselves.  I thought about it all day Monday and came up with a few plans.  Tickets were "only" $2500 a piece.  We could essentially go on this trip by just giving up our annual vacation (and a little more).  It was not unreasonable to think we could pull this off.

Hubby came home and I started describing my plan.  Any other husband in this country I'm sure would have jumped at his wife wanting to and finding a way to go to the Super Bowl.  But my husband, nope.   My husband told me to put together a spreadsheet of costs and what we would be "willing to give up this year."  I obliged.  Pretty quickly into this sacrifice list, the trip was paid for.  But that of course wasn't good enough for him. The conversation escalated and we nearly got into a fight.

The next morning I was fuming.  I saw on FB that Ellen was running a contest to win tickets to the Super Bowl.  So in 1500 characters or less, I submitted this letter:

I’m a huge NYG fan. I grew up in NJ and have amazing memories of watching games with my dad. I now live in TX. I miss being surrounded by NYG fans and subscribe to DirecTV so I never miss a game. Am I the biggest fan? I don't know, but I can tell you, I've never personally met anyone bigger.

Reasons I should win: 

1. My fan-ness described above. 

2. I grew up comfortably in middle class and now live comfortably in middle class. What this means is I rarely get to win anything. As a kid, I was jealous of camps celebrities started I couldn't be a part of because I was "privileged." I was sick as a kid (let me know if stories about suffering from Asthma could help me at all) but never sick enough that any celebrities would come visit me in the hospital. These tix would be my celebrity hospital visit. 

3. I would win a fight with my husband. I'm the only wife in this country that turned to her husband at the end of Sunday's game & said, "Let's go to the Super Bowl" & he replied, "Can you put together a spreadsheet on costs & reasons why?” When I did, he shot me down. Typical for us, I have to drag him to things kicking & screaming. When all is said & done, he turns to me & admits I was right. The Super Bowl experience would be a trip of a lifetime & I want to prove him wrong. Please help me prove him wrong.

PS Enjoy the attached picture of my rescue dogs in their game day gear.

PPS I struggle with my weight a lot. Let me know if that helps.

I haven't heard back yet.  

Later that morning, I called a couple of friends and yelled about how my Super Bowl dreams were crushed by my lame husband.

THEN

My dad called me in shock.

"I won the lottery... I won the lottery. We're going to the Super Bowl."

After talking to Daddy a few minutes, we confirmed that he did indeed win.  In fact, he won so much that he was taking himself, Hubby, and me to the Super Bowl AND buying himself a new car.

I cried.

And there you have it.  Today I bought tickets to go see the NY Giants in the Super Bowl.

I'm still waiting to wake up because clearly this is a dream.

Misadventures with Doctors

My body's New Year's present to me was an ear infection, or two, or just plain ear pain.  I don't really know.  Why not go to the doctor you ask?  Well, I did and to call him a Quack is a bit of a compliment.

Let me start by saying that I wasn't one of those kids that got ear infections all the time.  In fact, I never had an ear infection until I was 25 years old.  I'm not exactly sure what caused it then but I had just moved to Houston and hadn't splurged on Cobra so I was essentially uninsured. 

Having never had an ear infection before, I could only assume that having some ear pain, a clogged ear, and eventually hearing loss was just that.  I tried some home remedies at first but nothing was cutting it.  So after the pain escalated to losing the ability to chew and waking up every 30 minutes from pain, I decided to suck it up.  A doctor's visit and antibiotics weren't exactly going to break the bank.  Away I went.

After a week of antibiotics, the ear infection was gone.  However, to my dismay, this would be the beginning of constant ear problems.  What I am about to say is going to sound like I am exaggerating.  I assure you, I am not. Since that ear infection 3 1/2 years ago, my ears have itched me.  Not every few weeks I notice my ears are a little itchy. No. This is every day all day for 3 1/2 years my ears have been in a constant state of itchiness.  The fact that I haven't been locked up in an insane asylum yet speaks to my mental stability--although a lot of my other personality traits may hint otherwise.

So in these 3 1/2 years, I have stuck just about everything that I could fit and scratch with into my ear. DON'T JUDGE! A) I know you're not supposed to stick anything smaller than your elbow into your ear for it's own health. B) I know and recognize how gross that sounds.  But the truth is, if you dealt with what I've dealt with over all this time, you too would resort to these actions.

During this time, I have twice been to an ENT because whatever I stuck in my ear pushed the ear wax too far and I ended up with a clogged ear.  Both times, removing the wax was painless both to my ear and as a process.

But whatever happened two weeks ago was not painless.  It seemed that I woke up on New Year's Day with a double ear infection.  I was in terrible pain.  Unsure of what to do and since these came out of nowhere, I again tried to home medicate.  This attempt only lasted about a day.  I was soon on the phone with a GP that I've gone to a few times.  They were able to get me in the next morning.

The next day I saw the doctor.  He walked into the room and asked me about my ears.  I told him that I had been in a lot of pain for about two days.  Then he took a look.

Again, no exaggeration, his exact words: "Did anyone tell you you have narrow ear canals?"
Nope.
"I can't see anything you're ears are too swollen." 

What's up, Captain Obvious? Did you miss the part where I told you that I was here for ear issues. Of course, they're swollen.  I could have read about that on WebMD.  What are you going to do about it??

So he proceded to fumble around and didn't know what to do.  I finally jumped off the seat and showed him the antibiotics that I had been prescribed all those years ago for the original ear infection. He grumbled "Okay" and scribbled down a prescription.

I asked him if there was anything he could do for the pain.  Now mind you, I was there for an ear infection.  The night before I was up the entire night in excruciating pain.  He looked at me as if I was some low-life drug seeker.  He asked if I had taken anything.  When I told him that 3 Advils weren't cutting it, he "prescribed" Extra Strength Tylenol. Thanks. That was helpful.

Then I asked him if there was anything he could tell me to do about my itchy ears. He looked at me like I had two heads, threw his arms up, and told me "No, there's nothing I could do."

Whaaaaa? Talk about thanks for nothing.

So, I left in frustration and headed to the CVS that was literally at the end of the block.  I've never been to CVS before.  Pretty much as long as I can remember, I have gotten my prescriptions from Walgreens.  Unfortunately, they no longer accept my insurance. I was already pretty upset about this prior to this trip to CVS.

I headed to the back of the CVS and handed the Tech my newly written prescription.  He asked me for some identifying information to which I quickly told him that I had never been to CVS before and wouldn't be in the computer.  Take it from someone that has worked in customer service a long time, this was an invitation for the Tech to show me that I should have been going to CVS this whole time and to make me forget all about Walgreens.

Instead, what I got was ::CLICK::CLICK::CLICK:: on his computer.  He walked away. He came back. He walked away again. He came back.  He showed the Pharmacist the script but she was on the phone. He walked away again. He came back.  All the while, never saying a single word to me about what he was doing.

Finally, they both looked at me and said "We don't have this."

Great. Just my luck.

Well, I was headed in the direction of home and there's a Walgreens around the corner from my house.  I walked up to the counter and handed the Tech my script.  She immediately picked up the phone and said to me, "We have to call the doctor.  He didn't write what he was prescribing.  He just wrote the instructions."

So this is how Walgreens helped me determine that the doctor was a Quack and how the CVS I went to had only morons on duty that day.

And those were my misadventures with two ear infections, a doctor, and a pharmacist.  Sounds like the beginning of a bad joke... It sure felt that way.

Dear Me, Happy New Year, and Other News

Well, it's been almost a month since my last post.  Let's just say that I took December off.  Holidays, in-laws, hosting. It can be a rather stressful month and honestly, I didn't think I had anything interesting to say.

Had I started this blog last year.  I could have written quite the piece about my mother-in-law.  But this year, after 10 years of not getting along, we seem to finally be okay.  Of course, I have fallen for this before so there could be something to write at some point this year.  You just never know with her.  One day, I'll have to post my infamous email I sent her.  For those of you that have issues with MILs, I am certain you will enjoy it.  For those of you who don't, you'll probably think I'm an evil bitch.  You win some, you lose some.  But that's for another day.

One interesting thing that I did over the last couple weeks was I wrote a letter to my 16-year-old self.  A friend in New Jersey has a daughter that is turning 16 tomorrow.  While searching for a gift for her, I came across a book, Dear Me: A Letter to My 16-Year-Old Self.  I bought it for her and  flipped through it a little.  It's a really great read.  A bunch of celebrities (some I know and others I didn't) wrote letters to themselves at that age.  Some were funny.  Others were serious.  But either way, I think they had a lot to say about what 16-year-olds think are so tragically important and how much these things really aren't in the grand scheme of things.  So I decided to write my letter and stick it in the book for her.  I hope I had some wise words of wisdom, or at least made her smile a little.  Here it is:

Dear 16-year-old Me,

A few of things: 

1.       You’re currently obsessed with Mariah Carey and have been for nearly 10 years.
2.       You live & breathe for the NY Giants.
3.       You’ve “recently” (about 2 years ago) become obsessed with Matchbox Twenty & Rob Thomas.
4.       Your favorite shows are Friends & Seinfeld.
5.       You have a huge crush on Leonardo DiCaprio.
6.       Your close friends include R***, C**, K***, P****, N****, J**, and J***.

These things don’t really change much in the next 12 years. I’m glad you had such good taste at 16.

Some advice I would give you:

1.       Start thinking about college. You’re guidance counselor at school stinks and won’t be very helpful, and your parents just don’t know much about it because they didn’t do it. I know you don’t have the internet at home but take a walk over to the library and do some research on your own.  Or at least take some time at Daddy’s this weekend and look it up on his computer. Next year (junior year), you should start looking at colleges.  No decisions need to be made yet but this will help you make the decision when it’s time.
2.       That guy you started dating last November, well, he’ll make you cry a lot over the next couple of years.  It’s okay though.  It helps make you the person you become.  I don’t want to ruin the surprise or anything, but in a little over a year you’ll meet the man you’ll marry.
3.       Don’t worry about making mistakes.  You’re a bit of a perfectionist mostly because you don’t want to let your parents down.  It’s okay to make some mistakes.  Not big ones—like ones that will land you a Lifetime Original or an NBC Monday Night movie.  But some are okay.  You put too much pressure on yourself.
4.       You do this already, but I’d like to stress this. Have a lot of fun. You’re 16. Act like it. The memories you’re creating with your friends will last a lifetime. Enjoy every second of living so close to them.  It won’t be long before many of you are in different parts of the country.
Spoiler alert: No matter how much you love NJ, you’re one of the ones that leave. It’s okay but take full advantage of everything NJ has to offer—even being just a train ride away from the greatest city in the world.  One day you will meet a lot of people who have never been to NYC but “always wanted to go.”
5.       Save some money. You’re spoiled and for birthdays, Christmas, and graduations, you get a lot of money. Don’t blow it all.  At the very least, take half and put it in a savings account. Don’t touch it. You may need it while in college or even further down the road.
6.       And most importantly, know that you’re beautiful. You’re about to embark on a rather awkward stage. You’ll come out the other end, a bit of a knockout FYI. But without me telling you this, you won’t know it. You’re self image isn’t terrible but it isn’t as good as it should be. Stop comparing yourself to others around you and stop letting boys’ “disinterest” in you dictate how you feel about yourself.  Even just 12 short years from now, you’ll work pretty hard to try to get that teenage body back. Appreciate it while you have it.

Now you know what I know.

xoxo,

28-year-old Me

I won’t sign my current last name so that I don’t give anything away

PS. Apple Computers and Google. Invest some of that saved money in these. Seriously.

I encourage you to do the same and write a letter.  It was fun.  I even sent it to the website and it's posted on there.  They titled it "Obsessed with Rob Thomas" which is funny because if you know me, my title is more "Obsessed with Mariah Carey".  But since Rob Thomas did write a letter in the book, who knows, maybe he'll somehow read the entry.

Other updates:

I've become obsessed with Revenge (the show, not the act).  

We saw the Music Box Theater's Christmas show, Fruitcakes! and it was fabulous!  This is the second show we've seen of theirs and they did not disappoint.  If you're in Houston and haven't seen them, I highly recommend going to a show.  

My in-laws came and went for Christmas and my dad is here now.  

The Houston Texans are in the playoffs--which is very exciting for the city and their fans as it is their first time in franchise history.  

And most importantly, the NY Giants won the division when everyone picked them to be at the bottom.  GO BIG BLUE!  Rooting for a run like in '07 :)  

Hope everyone had a wonderful holiday season and here's to a great 2012!