This is why we need movie intermissions

The boy and I went to the movies yesterday, as it was too hot to go for a walk. I've been wanting to see Finding Neverland for ages now, but the boy was in the mood for a laugh so we chose to watch Team America instead.

It was true to the Southpark style of humour, although nothing in this movie could beat the Saddam/Satan romance in Southpark, the movie.

I really should have known that it would be a mistake to take a super-size drink into the movie with me, but I did it anyway. I slipped away at the beginning of what I expected to be a tender love scene between Lisa and the actor hero, thinking I'd just miss a bit of cheesy smooching. Apparently what I missed was a puppet montage of every porno sex scene I've never watched (and that's all of them).

Team America isn't good enough for me to want to see it twice, but now I'm really disappointed to have missed out on what could have been a moment of hilarity to rival the Santa-having-sex-in-the-dressing-room scene in Bad Santa.

a chicken run

Ever since my mum found out I was pregnant, she's been careful of how much shopping she gives me to carry. Normally, on a Sunday morning I'd take her to the produce market where she'd buy about half a dozen table hens (she REALLY likes chicken) and enough fresh vegetables to last her for the week. Nowadays, she still buys at least as much but now she makes me carry the stuff to my car over five or six trips. As far as she's concerned, she's helping me to avoid the heavy lifting while at the same time increasing the amount of exercise I do.

This week she wanted the poultry stallholder to save her some live chickens for next week. I nearly translated the whole request for her before remembering what a horrible pain in the arse it is to transport live chickens. And in my condition, too. I argued loudly and convincingly; I reminded her of how hard it is to carry a box full of scared fowl, held at arm's length to avoid the poo. I told her that there wouldn't be any room in the boot for both a bunch of beasts intent on escaping AND several bags of produce. Then I stamped my foot and went all red in the face and flatout refused. That worked.

Shopping for tents

Now that I'm too big for my normal clothes, though not oddly-shaped enough to justify wearing tents and mumus , I've been in a bit of a dilemma as to how I should dress myself. Basically there is one skirt, one pair of track pants, one pair of full length trousers and sever al tops which fit me, and that's it.

So I decided to check out the preggie clothes, just in case they have stuff that I can wear starting from now. I had visions of pants with big frontal pouches in my head as I went down the road to the local Baby Star shop. The prices were the main eye-opener. Sure, I expected a few designer items which only women with money to burn would purchase - but I was hoping for the K-Mart versions too, and there weren't any.

Fortunately there was a pre-loved rack and a sale bin.

Carefully avoiding the giant-sized nursing bras, I flicked through the (mainly black) tops and bottoms until I found a pair of capris, a pair of spangly denims (not my usual taste, but perhaps the hormones picked 'em) and a singlet-shorts all-in-one (again with the hormones?). My new super-stretchy and comfy gear cost me a total of forty-nine little buckaroos, surely a bargain when the full-priced capris cost twice that much.

I've always found the idea of wearing someone else's pre-sweated clothing slightly unattractive, but it is after all only a temporary wardrobe. Mind you, these'll make great fat-day clothes, post-baby.

doing lunch and strolling

It's really been a long time since I've been able to lunch with friends during the week. My last job was so far away from town that only friends visiting from overseas would bother to drop in to have lunch with me in my neck of the woods. Now I have two days per week in which I am free to lunch, and in a couple of weeks' time I won't have study to distract me. I'm so looking forward to being more socially busy.

Even getting to walk home from walk makes me happy. On a hot sunny day, going home now means working on my tan, getting fresh air and exercise, and saving a bus fare. In contrast, going home on a hot sunny day used to mean sitting in a hot, stuffy car for up to an hour.

On my walk home today I came across a group of Semi-clad Teenage Girls. This particular sub-culture is guaranteed to turn the heads of males, whether they are schoolboys or middle-aged builders with bum cleavage. Not that I disapprove - simply that next to Semi-clad Teenage Girls I feel old and frumpy, especially now. A glimmer of hope lies in the high probability that they will grow up to be old tarts.

The fear, the tiredness and the sleep deprivation (and that's just the first trimester)

Thanks to everyone who left me nice messages about my impending motherhood. Such positive feedback only encourages me to go into the gory details (so if you're bored by what follows then you only have yourselves to blame)...

I'm due in early August, which means that if I gamely work through until the baby is ready to pop out then I'll just qualify for the state-paid maternity leave (hooray). It'll be a Rooster; perhaps mini-me will grow up to run a restaurant.

The worse things so far have been:
1. Eating uncontrollably - one week it was a box of chocolates, the next it was several days' worth of leftover Christmas turkey. This, combined with an appropriately toned-down gym programme, has meant that I am already too fat for most of my trousers and skirts.
2. Frequently feeling over-heated, dehydrated and way too mentally busy to sleep at night.
3. The first scan. I was warned about the discomfort of having to arrive at the clinic with a full bladder, but I didn't realise it would feel like a white folks' equivalent of ancient Chinese water-torture (which is probably a Japanese invention - the Cantonese would simply nag you to death). I will never forget the severe pressure which my pelvic floor muscles were under, while the clinician pressed the scan-thing into my just-about-ready-to-burst bladder. My bladder still has not forgiven me.

Also, it's meant that I won't be enrolling in any library studies courses this year. I'm going to have enough to worry about. So, at least for a while, this is not going to be the blog of a librarian-in-training, but rather the blog of a lady-in-waiting.

I'm excited and happy. But I still find those full-frontal birth pictures more than a little scary.

Mini-me, maybe

So, you might be wondering how my first day at my new job went.

The people are nice, the work is interesting and the location is close to several good cafes and clothes shops. It is pretty stuffy in the office, though, and it was hard to fight the urge to squirt water all over my head just to get cool.

Oh, yeah - I also had to tell my new boss some awkward news. I'm pregnant.

Go Wayne!

Apparently the latest work from my ex-photography tutor (back in my short-lived art-student days) is causing a bit of strife with the local Jewish community. Sure, there are swastikas in his works, but he's right in the fact that, before the Nazis appropriated it, it was a Hindu symbol of peace. When I was in Bali years ago there were still hotels named after this symbol, and these guys sure as hell weren't Nazi sympathisers or anti-Zionists. He probably couldn't have chosen a better example to illustrate his statement about the mis-appropriation of cultural symbols.

I haven't seen the exhibition mentioned, but I have seen some of his other works and this I know for sure. Wayne Youle is a stirrer.

My creative neighbourhood

The boy and I ventured over the road to a house party last night. It was a very un-wild affair, which is what you expect when the hosts, and most of the guests, haven't seen thirty in a long time. Nevertheless, we both had lots of fun. I got to catch up old friends, including one who is three months away from being a dad for the first time and another who seems to be playing the field at the ripe old age of 43. The boy got to meet the hosts for the first time even though they've been living mere metres away for a couple of years now.

It turned out that the boy and E. share an interest in poetry. While the boy had a couple of poems published back in the UK, E. is wondering how to get his own poems out in the world. His wife is also artistic - she's a photographer.

There're quite a few artistic people living around my street. H. next door was a playwright and is now a cyberformer (on-line performance using chatroom software); J. across the road makes wearable art; next door is her is an abstract painter; then there was T. who I only got to know at her leaving party - she'd sold her house and moved to Wanganui to study art full-time. And I'm a creative blogger :-)

The end of the world might be nigher than I'd like to think

There was another earthquake early this morning, this time strong enough to make me whip off the bed covers and make for the bedroom door. The house stopped shaking as soon as I got there, but I've started to worry. There were apparently nine of the buggers on Wednesday - nine shakes in nine hours - are we on our way to The Big One after all? Even the boy was concerned enough to tell me that if there's another one like that today I'm to call him so he'll know I'm okay. I myself am concerned enough to call my mum and reminded her what she's supposed to do (crouch under the dining table, or stand under a door frame - but not too close to windows), though I'm sure she'd either forget in the panic or just forget 'cos she's old and forgetful.

Perhaps that's why I'm finding it especially hard to get going on my assignment this morning. Okay, probably not.

Tremors

That fact that I live on a faultline is easy to put to the back of my mind. Despite frequent reminders on television to Be Prepared, we still haven't gotten about to fastening all our large moveable objects so that they don't fall on us in the next big quake.

There was a series of quakes last night, some strong enough to make me consider ducking under the door frame (but not quite). It brought to mind a couple of earthquake stories from the past.

When I was in my teens, there was a big quake strong enough to make the coffee table (on which my brother and I were playing mini-table tennis) skid from one end of the lounge to the other.

Another time, still in my youth, the whole house shook so hard I really thought it was going to be the big one. And I was in the worse possible position for such an event. I was sitting on the toilet. I was agnostic then as well as now, but I prayed to God not to let me die with my pants around my ankles.

Several years ago, there was an earthquake while I was at work. The only person in the vicinity who didn't notice was an effervescent workmate who was jumping up and down in frustration (really).

It's not that I'm completely unprepared for the big, overdue earthquake-which-will-sink-the-North-Island. I still have my emergency box from the Year 2000 scare.

Silly stuff

I've just finished watching Zoolander for the umpteenth time; it's the best thing to do when trying to avoid doing any study. Choice picks for scenes to distract the mind are:
1. Derek and his male model flatmates having fun at the petrol station - a major piss-take of every Coke ad you ever seen in which hordes of beautiful young people have incredible fun (with added the explosion)
3. Derek after a hard day's work at the coal mine where his father and two brothers work, and the huge mound of used cotton pads after he's done cleaning the coal off his face
4. The walk-off between rival Derek and Hansel - the darker side of male modelling
5. Derek at the secret day spa, where he gets an unusually enjoyable massage from a strangely shaped woman
6. Derek and Hansel using their makeup know-how to disguise themselves as an intense yound black man and a cross-eyed Indian gentleman (I think) respectively

And as though life couldn't imitate art, there are sillier things in the US military it seems. Some of the strategies brain-stormed within the walls of the Pentagon include inventing an aphrodisiac to turn the enemy soldiers into raving homosexuals...

a frolic at the beach

Being the gorgeous day that it is, today seemed the perfect day to venture out to one of the nearby beaches. First we had to make a shopping trip to replace our mop (so that the boy would finally have no excuse to put off cleaning the kitchen floor), buy a new cover for the ironing board (so that ironing clothes would result in removing creases and not creating extra ones) and a large saw (to cut away the branches from Noisy Neighbour's tree, which are crowding out my poor wee lemon tree). Chores done, it was down to the nearest beach to get our feet wet in the surf.

The wind sure was up. The walk down to the water's edge was like a stroll past a row of sandblasters. But once we got there, it was just what I wanted - warm water lapping over my bare feet, with the occasional threat of getting the bottom of my trousers wet.

No chance of going in above the ankles though - the water around here is absolutely freezing all year 'round.

It's a beautiful day but I still hate my Noisy Neighbours

The neighbours on one side of us are cool, interesting, friendly and considerate. The neighbours on the other side of us are loud, inconsiderate and boorish. The Noisy Neighbours out there now with their equally boorish friends, laughing like imbeciles. They're smoking so much that the stink of it travels the ten metres around the corner and into my study if I open the window. Their radio is on loudly - it's almost tolerable when it's music, but surely the advertisments don't have to be at full blast do they? Grumble grumble...

The last day

It was quite timely, that my boss had scheduled our first team lunch since I've been working at the library, on my last day of work. In my absence, the rest of the team had voted to go to a local trendy cafe (even in this relatively un-trendy city, there are trendy cafes - well, at least two). This place was so trendy it had outdoor tables which weren't on the footpath.

I'd had my heart set on a warm Thai beef salad - something protein-y and salad-y. They didn't have any, but the vegetarian paninis were quite nice. So was the spider (a frothy concoction barely mixing ice-cream and cola), which took me back to my childhood when ice creams were five cents and you could buy two sweets for one cent.

It was a scorching hot day. Temperature-wise it only somewhere between 24 and 29 degrees Celsius, but around these ozone-less parts that's enough to fry even an olive-skinned local in ten minutes. Fortunately I was well-covered by a t-shirt, but my co-worker in the sundress is going to have a very uncomfortable hot shower tonight.

I was allowed to scoot off an hour early, on the understanding that this was to enable me to say my goodbyes to everyone. I'd actually only intended to say goodbye to whomever I saw on my way out, but I felt obliged to do the rounds and was rewarded by bear hugs and the kind of nice things people always say to you when they know they'll never have to lay eyes on you again (really folks, it's been nice). Then it was time to go to the art supplies shop and spend my gift voucher.

Buying paints, canvases and stuff didn't appeal because I knew I wasn't going to get around to using them; they'd just sit next to the paints and canvases I already have, indefinitely. So I decided to get some scrapbooking gear and use it to turn my travel diaries into a book.

After buying custom-cut book covers, acid-free plastic sleeves, special glue and acid-free photo stick-y things, I had enough credit left over to purchase some yummy dark red handmade paper with diamond-y bits on it (very India)- to cover the cover - and a greeting card with a photo of spices on it (also very India). Now that I have it at home, I almost can't wait to get stuck in. But first there're those pesky MLIS assignments to start and finish.

The post-Firefly pre-last-work-day morning tea

Even though my last day at work is tomorrow, my morning tea was this morning (no, I didn't schedule a doctor's appointment on my last day at work on purpose).

The last woman who resigned received a voucher for a facial as her leaving gift; exactly what she'd wanted. I wondered whether anyone at work knew me well enough to get me something as appropriate. Well, I got a voucher for an art supplies shop. This is great, even though I haven't painted for almost a year now - but it's redeemable only in that one shop which is near the library (and very far from home - too far to go if I didn't already work in the area). I'll just have to go shopping before I get to work tomorrow - I may be quite late in, but the boss will understand.

At lunchtime, a group of us were sitting around talking about what kind of library we'd like to work in. T. thought that I'd prefer to be in an academic library because I seemed to her to be the kind of person who gets annoyed with "dumb people asking dumb questions". I was shocked that I was so transparent.

TV3 is screening the Firefly series at long last. At 11pm on a week night. I made the boy program the VCR to record it (because I can't make the VCR do anything), and we watched it last night. It's very different from BtVS and Angel, but the humour is kinda familiar. I liked it.

The last bus run ever

The gods smiled on me this week by ensuring that, not only would I only have to drive the library bus once, but I would be accompanied by a workmate whom I count on to do all the heavy lifting for me.

In the post-Violet bus roster, said workmate will be taking over my Wednesday afternoon bus run. So just to make sure that he knew about all the quirky customers (the frail, the smelly, the child-like and the grumpy), he was assigned to come with me this afternoon. He was very obliging; it took only a minimum of manipulation to get him to do all the driving, most of the checking in and out of books and, of course, the carrying of three large crates heaped full of hardback books.

It was a really warm day for a change, and it was just as well that I had a full bottle of water with me. Apart from squirting some of it on my head when the heat got oppressive, I drank the whole lot and didn't even need to pee for four hours. I joked that, if I had a better figure I would be driving the bus in a bikini. M. replied that he didn't know what the city's chief PR man would make of that. I thought that M might've been secretly glad that I wasn't about to strip down to my underwear despite my un-model-like shape.

One of my regular customers, on hearing that I was leaving my job, promptly went home and returned with a little present for me. A box of mini-Moro bars and packet of cinnamon cookies. I should leave more often.

Three days to go

After this week, no more will I have to burn forty-odd bucks worth of petrol each week, just getting to work and back; no more will I be expected to pick up after other people's kids, or shelf-check (that's making sure every single book is in Dewey order) the messiest of shelves in the children's library; no more will I have to be nice to the grumpy Maori woman who demands much but never thanks me (and who keeps on walking out even when she sets off the security gate alarm); no more will I need to find family sagas for all the old ladies at the old folks' home; no more will I have to pretend that I'm interested in encouraging kids to read (if they wanna read, let 'em - if they don't, I don't care).

Sure, I'll miss some of my workmates; I'll miss the patrons who are genuinely nice and grateful for my assistance; I'll miss earning enough to enable me to buy new clothes occasionally.

But if they make me do a speech at morning-tea, I'm not going to pretend that I'll be sad to go. Oh, no.

Nepalese dinner party

A friend of mine and her sister are back from Thailand - both survivors of the Boxing Day tsunami - we were invited to have dinner with them and their friends at a local Nepalese restaurant.

R had on a complete silk Vietname outfit, which went surprisingly well with her dreadlocks. She's also just finished her PhD, so there were plenty of silly requests from the table to check out their respective rashes.

The food served in this place is truly mountainous. I'm usually quite a piggy when I eat out, but my mains defeated me - I can't recall what the name of it was, but there was a heaped plate fish (surely not a traditional Nepalese menu option), rice, veges, Chinese parsley or coriander or something, potatoes...I probably was only a third of the way through it before giving up.

The boy was happily reminiscing about England - specifically Swindon, don't ask me why - with the couple opposite us. He even managed to throw in a tidbit about his past life as a bad boy - something about driving through Paris in a TVR with a Dutch blonde...

It was a lovely evening (sigh).

After the hols

Incredibly, I managed to not only wake up in time to get to work punctually, but I actually work up before the alarm. Isn't one's body clock amazing?

I may even still be awake when I do my on-line distance class tonight, after I get home. It's one of those classes where you can't get away with just turning up and staying out of all the discussions, so that's going to be a challenge.

What's going on in my head today

We're babysitting tonight, for my brother and his partner. They don't have a DVD player, but apparently they're leaving us something on video. I won't be telling the boy that they're also leaving us a bottle of wine (which he will scoff) and the game Civilisation on their computer.

One of those niggling questions which aren't at all important but which bother me anyway - when Darla (of BtVS and Angel) was first turned into a vampire by the Master, she was dying of a syphilitic heart condition. Being really ill and all, she wasn't at all pretty to look at and surely her blood would have tasted a bit off too. So why the hell did he choose to turn her?

I spent about an hour going through some crinkled clothes which I haven't worn since last summer. Thinking there'd be no point in ironing any item which didn't fit me any more, I tried them on first. I ended up with very little to iron.

It sure is hard to go to the gym if you haven't been for about two weeks.

I had another laundry mishap. I have a towel which is pretty much falling to pieces but I won't throw it away because I have so few towels. Every time I put it in the washing maching, the rest of the load ends up covered in little pink fluff balls. It is just about impossible to remove all the little pink fluff balls from a polar fleece jacket. Somehow, I am too stingy to spend ten bucks on a new towel (thus minimising future laundry fluff) but not too stingy to spend ten bucks on a second-hand Buffy novel.

He's very sorry

I got a call from the police a couple of days ago, relating to the case of The Little Shit. They said I could choose to hear an apology for his nasty behaviour if I wanted, or else ask for an apology in writing. Having no wish to ever set eyes on the kid again, I chose the latter.

And this morning, it arrived. Enclosed in an envelope which also contained a cover letter from the police youth liason officer, was a short, handwritten letter from the little criminal. It's dated December 25th, which would be significant except for the fact that he and his family are probably Muslim and don't celebrate Christmas.

"Dear Lady", he writes, "I am writing to telly you that I am very sorry...". The next two sentences tell me he's sorry, and he's also written "p.s. I am very sorry".

I almost forgive him.

Those evil red shorts

I don't know why I didn't chuck them out years ago, those cheap red three-quarter pants which I later cut-down into long shorts. They never fit that well, although being a bit on the loose side rather than a bit on the tight side probably made a difference. The thing is, I almost never wear shorts any more anyway, due to my paranoid fear of skin cancer (you know - Southern hemisphere summer + ozone hole = big time UV).

And I have a really big reason to get rid of them, too. They leak red colour every single time I put them in the washing machine. This was not been a problem at first, because almost none of my clothes are white (there's a reason for that, and it's got something to do with the likelihood of spilling coffee over oneself).

Unfortunately, my evil red shorts are a real problem now, because the boy has taken a liking to wearing white t-shirts. He only complained a little when, one Saturday, I presented him with two pairs of pink socks. He started to get a little irritated when I turned his red and white shirt into a red and pink shirt. When I turned his worn-once-only ninety-dollar black and white shirt into a - you guessed it - black and pink shirt, the boy announced he would do his laundry from now on (not that I'd hold him to it - I'm still waiting for him to mop the kitchen floor, which he hasn't done for three months).

I shouldn't blame the shorts, really. It's my own fault for forgetting, after owning them for maybe four years, that they tend to share their rosiness. All the same, I'm going to throw them out...just as soon as they finish drying on the line. And my New Year's Resolution is to always properly sort the laundry.

An unlucky year to get married

Apparently, because the Chinese New Year doesn't start until after lichun, which marks the beginning of spring (in China anyway), couples in China a rushing to get married in the next few days while it's still the Year of the Monkey.

Hmmm...so 2005 (the Year of the Rooster) is going to be a quiet year for marriage celebrants and honeymoon suites then.

Getting born in the Year of the Rooster (which starts February 9, the day after my last assignment is due in - yay) isn't unnecessarily unlucky though. According to this site, Rooster people are

"hard-working and definite about their decisions. Roosters are not afraid to speak their minds and can therefore sometimes come across as boastful. They make good restaurant owners and world travellers."

So if you're going to be the proud parent of a Rooster, you won't have to worry about your little darling growing up to be a dole-bludging layabout who can't make their minds up or say what they think. Congratulations.

Back to productivity

My break is coming to a close, with deadlines of two as-yet-unstarted assignments looming, so it's time to crank my intellect into gear again. It's been out of action for a seemingly huge stretch of time (DVD-watching is no brain strain), and of course being sick tends to limit my thoughts to the objective of obtaining comfort-food. But all that will have to change starting from today.

For today is officially After The New Year, which means that my Art of the Book lecturer might actually answer all the questions that students have sent her via email and the discussion list. It also means that I can get hold of a university reference librarian at long last, to help me find past theses on NZ Chinese print culture and possibly some examples of past LIS research proposals. And it means that, now that the government offices are open again, I can go to the National Library to look at their entire collection of NZ Chinese newspapers and newsletters.

In other words, I can start work on my assignments. I have a little over five weeks to produce a 2500-word research proposal (though I haven't done the course on research methods yet, and have never done a thesis of any sort), and a 1000-word review of an on-line exhibition (whatever that is), so - no more excuses.

Is that stress I feel creeping up behind me?

Things I do when I'm sick and at home

In the last couple of days when I've been relatively incapacitated with a pulled back muscle,a cold and accompanying high temperatures, these are the things I have tended to do:

* Feel sorry for myself
* Snack because I feel sorry for myself, and bored
* Watch DVDs (but not soap operas), or re-runs of Moonlighting if I'm lucky
* Read - I've actually run out of books to read, so I'm reading some of the boy's books e.g. Laurell Hamilton's Anita Blake, Vampire Hunter series
* Consume a lot of hot drinks, as a lower-calorie subsitute for Grainwaves, non-dairy ice cream and toast (oh yeah, and to keep the fluids intake up)
* Surf the 'Net and blog
* Wander restlessly from room to room, wanting to go for a walk but staying indoors because I look like shit
* Leaf through old glossy magazines and staring at the pictures of food
* Touch my face to determine whether I've got a high temperature, and wonder whether that means I'm burning enough energy to justify eating more toast

At this point, normal life just sounds like an effective way to distract myself from overeating doesn't it?

Long lost friends

I'm always pleasantly surprised to hear from people whom I haven't been in touch with for ages. I can get a bit slack about keeping contact because I become preoccupied with the day-to-day business of working, studying, sleeping and eating.

An old friend rang me up yesterday whom I hadn't spoken to for at least a year. It turned out she'd just got back from nine months backpacking around Asia and Central and South America. The last time I saw her, she'd been away three years - by then I'd already felt that our friendship had pretty much died from lack of contact. Also, my own backpacking days were over so what were we going to talk about anyway?

Well, soon I'm going to have to listen enviously while she tells me of her latest adventures abroad, with only years-old reminicences of my own to offer.

Someone please tell me this is a joke site

I came across a website promoting body modification for pets i.e. Bonsai Kittens. It's surely a big hoax, to give instructions on how to seal very young kittens into large glass jars (apparently it's easy when their bones are still soft and malleable), but geez - there are some weird people out there...

As if it weren't bad enough being sick during the holidays...

During the night, I found that every movement I made caused a sharp pain somewhere on the left side of my back. It hurt when I tried to change sleeping positions, cough or even breathe deeply. It hurt when I got out of bed to go to the toilet, and it hurt when I got back into bed. Unfortunately, the boy was sleeping so well that he was immune to my pitiful cries of pain. I had to wait until early this morning, and actually tell him in words that something was wrong.

Actually, I was convinced that I was suffering from pleurisy - not because it's fairly uncommon ailment which I don't get to hear about often, but because I've had it before (on my birthday a few years back, to be specific).

The boy tried massaging the pain away, but it didn't seem to work; I had him convinced it was pleurisy too. So, amidst more cries of pain (getting in the car, trying to shut the passenger door, reaching for the seatbelt), we set off for the After Hours Medical Centre (it is a public holiday after all).

I don't know if he used any funny acronyms in his notes about me, but, in his very soothing bedside manner, the doctor diagnosed my problem as being a pulled muscle.

So the bad news is, I have to rely on Paracetamol for pain relief but nothing to quickly fix it, while every urge to cough brings an anticipation of tortuous pain; the good news is ...um...that at least I'm not going to die from it.

Doctor Slang

A library school pal sent me this link to an article about doctor slang, which is truly too funny to ignore.

I showed it to the boy, who pointed out that TUBE was not on the list (Totally Unnecessary Breast Examination).