You know what's kind of awkward? Sitting and watching a travel show with your mom wherein the host consumes a fish head and then says "Everyone needs more good head in their lives." (Which is okay...Bourdain being Bourdain. And Mom and I used to watch SATC all the time so it's not like the phrase is foreign. But my mom is a hippie mom so...) Quite frankly, I could do without my mom's "Anything you want to talk about, sweetie?" face at such moments. You know? Especially since her advice to me is more like "Boys suck...throw rocks at them," than anything I could ever really use.

Thanks everyone for the kind words yesterday. Today is going to be a better day, I so decree. I stayed up until 3am finishing an urban fantasy series I've been addicted to this past week (Karen Moning's Fever series=CRACK!), slept in until 10:30, and now am going to say screw getting the official approval from the insurance company--I'm getting a rental.

And because it deserves its own post, Chronic Bitchface is AWESOME.

My favorite part of Chronic Bitchface is the bit where there are bluebirds tying ribbons in her hair in how she feels. Hee.

And because it deserves its own post, Chronic Bitchface is AWESOME.

That.

Also, I'm shoving cabana boys in Erin's direction via the intertubes, AIFG. I tried to make it sound as less dirty as possible, but fuck it, we're bitches.

Aw, you guys. I'm sorry some of y'all are having such a hard time.

I am unduly happy that I found out Paul Gross has an importance value of 1 or 2 in our database.

Well, I have good news: the biopsy of my ladyparts already came back, and it's something called benign hyperplasia (sometimes squamous hyperplasia). Key word being "benign," thank god.

Honestly, being told "I'm going to biopsy this" is a bone-chilling phrase, no matter how much I tried to tell myself it was probably nothing.

And it's not *nothing* -- it's just that it's a *benign* something. Basically it's some abnormal cell growth and inflammation due to an irritant -- could be squeezing into jeans that are not exactly as loose as they used to be, could be enthusiastic oral sex (SRSLY; the man could be in the olympics), could be from using only the bike at the gym instead of switching between the bike and the track. The treatment is a topical steroid for a month or two.

I'm mentally relieved, though still physically uncomfortable, though hopefully that won't last much longer. Also still sore from the biopsy. Between this and the acupuncture, I'm a little sick of needles.

Oh good, Steph! So they no longer think it's the other?

That sounds like good news, Steph. I'm glad the results came back benign.

So they no longer think it's the other?

I didn't catch the phone call in time, so my doctor left me a detailed message about what I *do* have. She didn't say one way or the other if it's HSV, but now I'm thinking maybe not. I think the only way to know for sure is a blood test in a few more months, to see if I have antibodies for it.

It never did look like pictures of HSV, although, frankly, the pictures that make it into medical textbooks aren't going to be the ones that are a minor case. They're always the ones that make you run screaming into the night. But it looked nothing like it, and the culture was negative (although the explanation for that was that since I had been having symptoms for at least 2-3 weeks, there was probably not enough actively replicating virus left for a good culture).

Still, I sorta think no.