Cardiogirl: 19% body fat 100% fun

Oy vey. I’m never getting a cat; it’s just not in the cards for me. Why, you ask? Because my oldest kid has asthma and is allergic to cats but you probably already knew that.

These days my middle kid is flirting with asthma. It’s definitely not as severe as my oldest kid’s but it’s questionable and that is why we visited my old buddy the allergist. It seems my middle kid occasionally feels like an elephant is sitting on her chest and when that happens puffing on the oldest kid’s inhaler seems to help.

Sounds like an open and shut case, right? Wrong. Her symptoms are not consistent, I cannot find a trigger of any sort and I’m wondering if the inhaler is having a placebo effect on her. The doctor agreed but did not discount her tight chest so we left with a peak flow monitor, a spacer and an inhaler.

That was almost it until he looked up her prescription history on the computer and discovered the pediatrician had prescribed Flonase nasal spray in the spring. “Does she have allergies?” he asked.

“I’m not sure; she sneezes a lot in the spring.”

“Let’s do a scratch test before you leave,” he said.

Have you ever had a scratch test? It’s not really a scratch. It’s more of digging-a-needle-in-the-skin-and-then-scraping-it-back-out test. Four rows of six on her back.

The results came back like this: allergies to all trees, leaves and pollen which is why she sneezes a lot in the spring. The next row on her back showed up as dust mites. And row three was the domestic cat. Damnation.

So in addition to never having a cat again, I now have to worry about dust mites making a shanty town in the bed skirts. I also need to buy a few mattress covers for two mattresses and two box springs since she shares a room with her younger sister who, as of yet, is not allergic to cats or dust mites.

Now that I’m going on a shopping spree maybe I should break the bank and buy some satin pillowcases while I’m at it. Although those things are pretty slippery, aren’t they? I don’t need her sliding out of bed in the middle of the night, banging her head on the floor and spiraling into an asthma attack.

I’ll just keep using cotton pillowcases and wait for those dust mites to trigger an attack.

At least then I won’t have to deal with a concussion.

As you may know, Friday is supposed to be The Book of Questions Day around these parts. They always come from “The Book of Questions” by Gregory Stock, Ph.D.

But things are not running smoothly over here so I’m becoming a blogging maverick and I’m making my own questions up on Saturday whenever I remember that it is, indeed, Saturday.

So here’s the faux question.

The neighbor who lives behind you has a large dog that resembles a semi-albino German Shepherd with icy-cold blue eyes. The neighbor leaves the dog outside, many times per day, long enough for the dog to issue incessant bark-whines while sitting in front of the sliding doors on the deck.

Do you confront the neighbor?

As you may have guessed, this happens multiple times per day, every day. I hear it in the summer when I have the windows open and we’re swimming in the backyard. I hear it in fall, winter and spring when the windows are closed and the furnace is running. Occasionally, I hear it in my sleep.

So far I’ve done nothing besides bitch about it to Mr. C and, now, to you. I’ve timed the length of the barks; they average around 13 minutes. I came close to writing a note so I could leave it in their mailbox with the hopes that they would then submit it to PassiveAggressiveNotes.com but I chickened out.

I then considered knocking on that person’s front door and gently mentioning that the dog seems to want to come in and perhaps the owner did not hear the dog barking. If someone knocked on my door for that reason — and was nice about it — I’d want to know. But then I figured most people are assholes when it comes to face-to-face confrontations so I skipped that route.

So far I’ve done nothing. However, I do think my best bet is to leave a fun, brightly decorated passive-aggressive note complete with doodles.

Of course I’d have to leave the note at three in the morning.

To: Facebook
From: Cardiogirl
Re: My profile banner

Usually I start a memo on a positive note so as not to make the recipient defensive. I cannot, nay, I. Will. Not. Do that today Facebook. You drive me effing insane. I hate you!

You’re not quite a necessary evil, but you’re a tool I should probably use to network. Now that I’ve been working on some extreme blog makeovers (and actually making enough to buy a few pairs of new Converse) I have to figure out how to hogtie you into doing what I want for the client.

And that is the only reason why I have an account.

I just want to express myself

Just like everyone else out there, I want my page to reflect me. I’ve got my ponytail in there and I’m not even going to say thank you for allowing that.

Being able to choose my own profile picture — without incident — is an inalienable right on Facebook. Yep, I said it loud and proud, gingah.

But I should be able to choose, and tag, the stupid photos that I want to show on my banner. AND EVERYONE ELSE SHOULD BE ABLE TO SEE THEM! It’s not like I’m trying to add crazy S&M photos. And yes, I’ve tried that stupid fbanners.com. It imports the photo in five pieces and it stays in order but only *I* can see it. No one else can.

You need to fix the banner issue on fan pages, too

So then I tried a trick that works on fan pages since you cannot import one full picture in order. By the way, that sucks FB. You should be able to do that. But you can’t. Because it’s a stupid fan page and not a personal account.

Here’s the trick that works on fan pages. You have to create a Note and then add five separate photos that are cropped in the correct size (98 x 67 pixels.) Once you do that, you will force FB to show those five photos in the banner on the fan page.

But. BUT! They’ll jumble out of order every time you refresh the page. So you cannot create one wide photo that will stay in order.

Fine.

So that’s what I did on my personal page. Now *I* can see it. But no one else can.

Is it so much to ask that the rest of the people on FB can see this?

No. It is not too much to ask, effer. And in the interest of full disclosure, I’ll be working on a Facebook voodoo doll this afternoon.