the time i thought i had melanoma.

DISCLAIMER: This story has some gross things in it and all also a buttload of my stupidity, if you don't like one or more of those things, I suggest you turn back now.

a couple of weeks ago i was just minding my own business when i started to itch near my ankle/cankle. it kind of felt like i got bit by something and the skin became sensitive and it started to seem like I scratched it (like as injury rather than the action). The next day it kind of scabbed over and was a little tender. i was sitting in my car waiting to meet up with Tayl for lunch when i looked at it and it looked like I had a small black growth on one of the freckles, and it appeared as though the light part of the freckle was spreading near where I was itching. I asked Tay if it looked like skin cancer and he said yes. I immediately became upset and was looking up stuff about it during lunch on my phone. Of course, this made me more upset and i was nearly in tears at the end of lunch. I tried calling almost every dermatologist in the area and most were closed or couldn't get me in last minute on a Friday afternoon. So all I could do was the worst thing any potential cancer victim could possibly do; research on the internet. After about an hour of research I had self diagnosed myself with melanoma. I watched this VIDEO:





Which obviously caused me to cry my eyes out/curse my teenage self for thinking it was important to take advantage of the free and unlimited tanning at my aunt's salon..

Unfortunatel,y I had to deal with my upcoming and imminent death and the cancerous growth on my leg until I could get to a doctor on Monday. It was hard. I cried a lot and and I prayed a lot, "Please Heavenly Father, if I live through this, I will become a sunscreen/anti-tanning advocate."

I also had Taylor take a picture of it with his backward lens macro technique, for the record, to make sure it didn't grow over the weekend.

please ignore the hairs. i promise i shave. sometimes.
I MEAN THAT TOTALLY LOOKS LIKE CANCER RIGHT?!

So, after a weekend of worrying, crying, making jokes about my death, letting Taylor know that contrary to what people might say, I definitely did not want him to be happy or remarry after I died, and praying; Monday rolled around and I scheduled an appointment for right when I got done babysitting. Then I went to babysit and I went on a walk with baby...

While on the walk I stopped at a park bench to reassess my cancer. I looked closely at it and started to pick at it and suddenly, the black dot just fell off.  IT WAS A SCAB THAT HAPPENED TO BE RIGHT ON A FRECKLE!

I WAS GOING TO LIVE!!

I called my best friend to tell her what an idiot I was, then cancelled the doctor's appointment. 

I decided just to be safe that I would make sure everything healed properly  before I wrote this blog in case I did have skin cancer (Because a wound that won't heal can be a sign of melanoma, something I learned in my extensive googling). That would be real awkward if I was like "I THOUGHT I HAD CANCER! I'M DUMB." But then I really did.

I am happy to report that all has healed and only the freckle remains. 

I realize that it's possible that I DID have skin cancer and because of my excessive prayers I was miraculously healed. But I feel like that would be pretty extreme, but just to be safe, I will keep my word. I will from now on ALWAYS use sunscreen and I will never use a tanning bed again and I will DEFINITELY judge and/or lecture you if you use them. Being tan is not worth getting cancer and dying, nor is it worth thinking you have cancer and spending a few days crying thinking you are going to die before your 25th birthday.

a bee sting, a stupid concert, and the slaying of an armadillo.

I know I haven't blogged in awhile and now that I am about to, I'm going to be complaining. 

you know when you find a recipe you want to make and you have all the right ingredients for it and you're totally excited but somewhere in the process something goes horribly wrong and your souffle (or whatever) turns into basically dinosaur poop? Well that was pretty much how my day went on Saturday.

I can't pin point exactly what went wrong but I know that when we got home in the wee hours of the morn and got into bed I wished I had never gotten out of it.

 Here were the ingredients for my "wonderful" Saturday:

1. Sleep in

2. Receive my make-up stuff I ordered online from Urban Decay

3. Get lunch at Zunzi's

4. Go to City and Colour concert in Charleston, SC

5. Walk around Charleston and get dinner before concert

That sounds awesome, RIGHT?

I guess you could say it all started to go downhill when I got up kind of late and since we were going to eat lunch pretty soon, I decided to skip breakfast. (Chill out health freaks. I know how important breakfast is.) But then we didn't eat lunch quite as soon as I had expected. So naturally, I turned into a monster. Because I am absolutely the opposite of delightful when I am hungry. (FATTY GOTTA EAT!) Zunzi's is a take out place so you walk in, order, pay, and take your food to either sit outside or leave. We decided we were going to stay and I walked outside to the corner to where Taylor was. I had my back turned to the building and Taylor goes, "Hey, watch out." (VERY CALMLY, the kind of tone you would use to say, "hey watch out you're about to step on hundred dollar bill.") and points to the side of me. I turn to see what I am about to step on and right as I look down I see a red wasp and and I get stung on my arm. (Mind you, this is while I am still a hungry monster) I immediately become enraged and obviously put all of the blame on Taylor. Now looking back on this with a clear head, I realized that it wasn't entirely his fault but if he would have just said, "WASP" I would have ran away and probably avoided being stung. So. Kinda his fault.

the victim: my right arm. not pictured: my pouty face.

At this point, my arm was throbbing and I was trying to hold back tears. Have you ever tried to eat while crying or on the verge of crying? It makes food not taste as good. So that was crappy too. Luckily where we parked downtown there was a CVS right across the road so I got some benedryl spray and it helped a lot, even though my sting still hurt a little on and off through out the day.

We arrived in Charleston, walked around. Had dinner. Went to the show which was at the Music Farm. The Music Farm is a very cool little venue. The show was at 9 and the doors opened at 8. We got there at about 7 45. When we walked in there was this spot about 6 inches higher than the rest of the main floor and there was railing so to me, it was as good as being in the very front because I could actually see and not have to be crowded by people. 

Finally at 9, the opener walked on. He plays the guitar for city and colour but he was doing some solo stuff. MUCH to my dismay, it was country. It was absolutely the most torturous opening act I have ever sat through in my entire life. It wasn't that he wasn't talented in his own right, but good lawd, I HATE HATE HATE country music. And unfortunately, I think it set a really bad precedent for the rest of the show, HOW COULD DALLAS GREEN SUBJECT ME TO THIS FOR AN HOUR? I know I'm getting old when I no longer feel that the musicians I adore can do no wrong. He did me wrong, and I don't know if I'll ever forgive him fully.

So basically we had to stand for about 2 and half hours before City and Colour came on. I was feeling really uncomfortable and a little nauseated so I decided to sit down for just a second. I was sitting there when behind me a really drunk troll like guy, came up to Taylor and was barely coherent and sad something about Taylor being too tall. Then instead of walking behind us and around he decided wanted to climb through the railing where I was sitting so he could get down to the main floor. Then he yelled, "MOVE!" at me and I instantly became furious, I turned around and briefly considered punching him in his knee caps. I shouted at him that I wasn't moving one inch until he asked me like a normal person. Then he leaned down and said very calmly, "You're a person." I rolled my eyes at him and scooted over so he could crawl through the rails. I hate drunk strangers almost as much as I hate country music. 

Almost immediately after that, this girl who had been standing down in front of the railing below us with her boyfriend acting like idiots making out and looking at each other dramatically crouched down through the railing and was like "HEY HEY COME HERE" like all excited and she was like "YOU GOTTA GET UP ITS DALLAS GREEN." I stared at her for few seconds and asked her if it was starting because I was really confused about her motives. She said "No not yet but it's about to, come on get up!" And I was like, "No." and I couldn't totally hear her but all I heard was, "Okay look my boyfriend is standing here so it's awkward." Or something and I was like, "I'm not getting up yet, I was here first." But I wanted to choke her and tried to convey that in my tone to her and I think she picked up on it cause she was like, "okay okay" and backed away and then they left. I was kind of hoping she threw a drink on me after the show so we could scrap like Jersey Shore style cause I was in that kind of mood, but it didn't happen. But just so you guys know, if it did go down like that, I would have won.

They finally came out and after one song I was ready to leave. The people in the audience were some of the most annoying and retarded people I've ever experienced in my life.

Where the idiot couple once stood there was now a girl. She was much more concerned about her instagram and facebook friends knowing that she was at the concert than anything else going on around her. She checked her facebook at least 2000 times, and she was texting her friend about how she had slept with this guy and bought them tickets to the show but he met up with his best friend, talked about other girls in front of her, and ditched her to be alone at the concert. But she kept saying how she liked him. WHAT IS WRONG WITH WOMEN IN THE WORLD? More on that in another blog on another day.

Anyway, it was 1 AM before the show got over and we had a 2 hour drive home. On the way home April was driving and she ran over an armadillo. I didn't see it because I was turned around talking to Tayl in the backseat. But I felt like it was a pretty good way to sum up how I felt about that day.

Oh and to answer the burning question, no not even the concert made it worth it. It was way better in London.