i want to be a pretty pony, but i think i'm about to be as sick as a dog

i love the music that plays in this youtube video montage of Jonathan Keller. i feel like the music should be in one of my favorite movies, like eternal sunshine or stranger than fiction, although i would settle for it being in something like the truman show or punch love drunk, too. but i googled and googled, and i don't think it is featured in any movies. i was disappointed to hear it in some random commercial during a basketball game last month, though.

anyway, jonathan keller's website documents his daily photo project....he takes a picture of himself everyday...for the rest of his life. what does this have to do with me? i started taking antibiotics to make me a pretty pony for my wedding day, and i'm going to attempt to pictorially document how it works on me over the next 6 months. so maybe you'll see a photo montage of me at the end of this. that's the warhol lover in me coming out (coincidentally, see also last post). or maybe not. we'll see

i've been on almost every form of acne treatment out there...commericially available, extemporaneously compounded and otherwise...everything short of accutane and anything acquired through an informericial. i've battled it since i was at least 11 years old, and by the time i was 18 or so and halfway through pharmacy school, i decided to call it quits with the creams and pills because nothing had ever actually taken it away entirely or even come close, and i figured if i kept going from age 11 to age 35 or whenever it decided to naturally subside, i'd be well on my way to skin cancers and severe hormone deficiency and hot flashes at age 50.

quite some time after i'd stopped taking any medicine, my face flared up with acne pretty bad for a few months for whatever reason. bad enough that everyone asked me about it. i was fine with my complexion, and while most people battle with a negative self image of themselves, the source of which everyone around them is completely oblivious of because there is truly no terrible thing visible to the naked eye, i apparently was broadcasting something on my face that was unbeknownst to me. the most common comment i got was "what happened to your face?" people would actually say that. and not just one or two. like every acquaintance i had. friends stayed friends and i looked the same to them no matter what. but i got it from all ends, even strangers. i tried to brush off the question at the post office, but the lady pressed on, "is it a rash?" i used to volunteer at a soup kitchen on vancouver's downtown eastside, and the people there, the people who didn't have a change of clothes, who hadn't showered in several days, who hadn't eaten since hot dogs were served the night before, they asked me what was wrong with my face. it was really hard for me.

so with the re-entry of antibiotics into my life, say hello to yogurt. despite my love for home made smoothies, strawberries, and anything involving whipped cream, i've never been a big fan of yogurt. andrew's mom introduced me to the concept of "whipped yogurt," which i loved, but somehow the expensive brand she buys is tonnes more moussier and creamier than anything i ever justify shelling out the dough for. the other week i came across chocolate mousse yogurt! ohmygoodness. it's almost like, a light, whipped chocolate cheesecake, minus all the fat. it's glorious. but last week i truly fell in love .... guava yogurt by yoplait. it tastes just like my favorite hawaiian drink, which by its own right is wonderfully pulpy-thick. i think that's the only thing that the yogurt is missing - the pulp - i need to have it just like i need real crunchy strawberry seeds in my strawberry novelty items. it would make it the most perfect processed food ever.

so lately it's been yogurt mania. andrew says i'm bordering on becoming like dan's brother, robert, with his strange obsession for yogurt. the last 3 years or so i would get a sinus infection each year like clockwork. and i'd be given something like biaxin (which is surprisingly not the drug of choice in the US), and then i got something i'd never had to deal with before - a yeast infection! hence my new relationship with yogurt and the 7 for $10 section at the supermarket. and so far so good.

speaking of getting sick - i think i managed to get away with not becoming ill at all last year! the year previous i'd been forced to get the flu shot to do my pharmacy rotations to ensure we didn't miss more than 2 days of work but i ended up getting the flu worse than i ever had before. so today i woke up with a shockingly sore throat. i'd been sniffling last night and probably went to bed two hours too late in light of that. everytime i've had something coming on before, my throat has been itchy/scratchy, so i was worried i had something like strep, which i've never experienced. but i had tonnes of energy. so i was like, whatever. but around noon today all the energy suddenly dissipated and i was faced with the truth that i think i've caught the cold. i came home, sadly had to skip my bible study group, and made some chicken soupesque meal, stealing andrew's udon noodles from the fridge for it to try and mimic my mom's homemade ones she very rarely makes with leftover perogi dough.
i have fond memories of making get-healthy effervescent drinks that tasted like orange crush soda pop when i was a kid, all thanks to a fizzy tablet in that retro looking container to the right. i'm sad to say that don't think i've seen that product in the US. wikipedia tells me that it's sold throughout the world, "however, for unknown reasons this product is difficult to find in the USA." canada and the US each have their bullsh*t cold remedies - canada with it's cold fx (ginseng) at $20 or so, and the US with its schoolteacher-invented fizzy vitamin tablet at $8 or so. i've heard that if you take airborne at the recommended doses on the box you'll ingest way too much vitamin C and it will give you diarrhea. it took me about a year to realize that airborne tablets were not for consumption but for fizzing away in a glass of water, so today, with no familiar redox canister in sight, i bought some generic airborne. it kind of makes my cup of water look like my mug from an hour previous, when i threw a cube of oxo poultry soup base in, but at least it's orange flavor.