today during work hours I found myself in a stressy state of mind, for two separate reasons. one was work-related: my boss, Robot, had chosen to put off a project that requires a timely response and therefore shoved the whole project on to me. so for most of the work day I was anxiously emailing, faxing, telephoning.

the second reason came when I returned from lunch: I had a voicemail from my gynecologist's office saying to please call for my results. since this never means good news, I started feeling a little bit of trepidation. so I went into a private room and left a message asking the nurse practitioner to call me back before 3:00 (when I leave on Wednesdays to go to the museum).

she did call about a half hour later and said, "I just wanted to let you know that the results of your pap smear were normal--"

and immediately I thought, "ohmygodI'vegotgonorrhea."

she continued, "but we did detect the same precancerous cells that were showing up in your exams earlier."

I thought, "oh what a relief. just the vagina cancer thing again."

which is kind of not really a relief, of course, but since it's preventable when detected early, everything is fine. what really bothers me, however, is that when they detected it for the first time, I did not fit the profile of the normally-affected woman. that is, there was no clear reason why they kept coming up with these results. and when they did the more high-tech examination on me back in May or whenever it was, they didn't find anything. so I thought all was well, but have realized as of today that, until something visible or concrete (ie, removeable) develops, I will just have to keep going in for more-than-regular exams. and that is that.

right now, despite the typing I've been doing, I have cold, waxy-looking hands. it makes me think of when I was still taking piano lessons and would need a period of literally warming up my hands before I could play freely. I wish I could have a piano here in my apartment. when I lived in Connecticut, the family I worked for had a baby grand and I would always play it whenever they were out of the house. it was so loud and impressive-sounding. hopefully when I go home in a few weeks I can get in some good piano time.

in other news, I have had the following songs in head for the past three days :

Scott Walker's "Black Sheep Boy"
Mull Historical Society's "Watching Xanadu"
David Lee Roth's version of "Just A Gigolo"
the "When you do it Eeeeeeee-bay!" version of Sinatra's "My Way"

the first two songs were amongst the CDs I chose to accompany me on my drive to and from Cincinnati. the last one is because of those genius commercials they're showing on the television. the third one? I have no explanation for that.