Death, taxes, and...

In a 1789 letter to French scientist Jean-Baptiste Leroy, Benjamin Franklin wrote, "...in this world nothing can be said to be certain, except death and taxes.”

He missed something. 

Jury duty.

Yes, yours truly was called upon to do her civic duty this week, and do it she did.

I spent a few hours of my Monday at the court house in Martinez--a fascinating building in its own right--standing around waiting, and then answering questions. I was called in an afternoon group, then chosen as part of a group to go into the actual courtroom, and then chosen to be in the first group in the box. This would have been a trial I wouldn't have minded being on, actually, because it was a civil case that would have wrapped up in about three days total. In the end, however, I was excused by the defense, got my slip signed, and was able to go back to the office for the last hour of the day.

By the time I got home Monday night after work-jury duty-work-tap class-ballet class, it was safe to say that it already felt like I had had A Week.

And if Monday was A Week, Tuesday doubled it. I had a long-awaited medical appointment to have a couple of bumps in my right hand examined. One has been there for ages and I had always assumed that it was bursitis, because it showed up after a blunt force trauma to the area. (That sounds way more exciting than it was. I smacked it just right on an open drawer and it hit the soft space between some bones and BOOM, bump.) About a month ago, however, a second one appeared.

When you start growing bumps for no known reason, you go get them looked at, m'kay?

Same hand, but in my wrist this time. Smaller, but visible without having to look very hard. Same feeling when I poked it. Except this time, I couldn't link it to me having thumped myself on something. (I would like to point out that I know better than to jump on WebMD for this kind of thing. WebMD would have told me it was late-onset malignant Stage 17 Lympho-leukemi-melo-carci-CANCER with a side of tennis elbow, and that I should have been dead yesterday.) In any case, I was finally getting these goofy things looked at--and they weren't bursitis at all. They're ganglion cysts. How delightful.

"You can leave them alone, I can send you to ortho and they can remove them surgically--though they may come back, or we can try to aspirate the one on your wrist because that one bothers you more."

We aspirated.

It was really very unpleasant. Do not recommend. 

She only did the one on my wrist because the one in my metacarpal isn't visible, so she'd have had a hell of a time trying to hit it just right, and nobody likes to play pincushion. So she stabbed me once, I went on my merry way, and finished my day out with a couple of dance classes.

Y'all. Remember how I told you that I added an Irish dance class to my mix? I'm taking SEVEN CLASSES A WEEK right now. I am questioning ALL MY LIFE CHOICES. Everything hurts, I'm exhausted, and my laundry has tripled.

It's good fun, though.