The box is gone. No sign of it anywhere.

I drew a few words in the sand, but I'm not sure they'll help: "PLEASE BRING THE BOX BACK"

On our way out to the reservoir this afternoon, Lola and I passed the same couple we'd seen yesterday as they walked the opposite direction. The guy stopped me and said, "You know, that was a real nice thing you did out there, picking up that trash and leaving the bags." I said, "Oh, the bags are still out there??" He replied that they were, and that the trash situation had gotten out of control recently, and he was glad someone cared enough to try to clean it up.

I got all misty!

I half expected to find my plastic box and its garbage bags and work gloves to be trashed themselves, or even stolen, but nope, there they were — although moved to a different rock nearby. Someone had obviously taken at least one bag of trash out of there (a trashed lawn chair was gone, along with pieces of lumber they'd used for the campfires), and there was another half-full bag that I added a few items to and took back with me. The entire area was MUCH cleaner than it had been; it was very nearly completely garbage-free.

I guess sometimes a little nudge is nudge enough.

Teenagers/20-somethings have been going out at night and starting campfires, which is bad enough; however, they were also drinking quite a bit and just leaving their cans wherever they fell. There's also a lot of broken beer and liquor bottles littering the ground…I think Lola's cut her paw a few times on them (nothing serious, but still).

Long story short, they volunteered to help me clean the place up a bit. I told them I'd bring out some garbage bags this afternoon, and they said they'd try to meet me out there after lunch to pick up some of the trash.

Well, the boys didn't show, but that's ok. The weather was nice, although warm, and Lola and I were by ourselves, for the most part. I spent an hour or so picking up handfuls of glass; Lola spent an hour or so splashing herself silly in the water. I half-filled a big heavy-duty bag with broken glass and various other bits (including a discarded blanket and some plastic cups that were tossed into one of the campfires to melt).

There's still a lot to be picked up out there, but cleaning up just a small portion of it made me feel awesome.

I left a weatherproof plastic box out there that contains a big box of heavy-duty garbage bags and a few cheap pairs of work gloves. I taped a sign to the inside of the lid; hopefully it will give folks the nudge they need to do the right thing.

My holiday gifts:

• Intuos3 6×11 tablet — OMG, the best present I remember getting, ever
• Dr. Horrible's Sing-Along Blog on DVD — love it!!
• Animal Crossing: City Folk for Wii — really looking forward to giving this a go
• Personal Trainer: Cooking for Nintento DS — another one I'm eager to dig around in
• Eragon by Christopher Paolini (hardcover) — I'll be cracking this one open soon
• A 1GB USB thumb drive leather keychain that would be nice even if it was just a keychain!
• An IOU for Afrika on PS3, if/when it ever arrives in the US (I LOVED Endless Ocean on Wii, and this is along the same lines)

Hmm…did I miss anything?

The Ailments to Date – cue the ominous music!

• Ovarian cysts (15 years and counting)
  • I've had 2 laparoscopies to aspirate them as well as more combinations of birth control pills and hormone therapies to try to control them than I care to count. They're reasonably under control now, but I still have pain a couple times a month. The general concensus is that they're a result of endometriosis.
• Migraines (11 years and counting)
  • Took me forever to find a doctor that was even willing to treat them, but I'm on a cocktail of anti-depressants and blood pressure medications that keep them at bay –  mostly.
• Fibromyalgia (diagnosed August 2008)
  • One walk-in emergency clinic, two PCMs, two rheumatologists, a bone scan, several x-rays, and countless blood tests and physical exams later, it's official: fibro. The joint pain, overwhelming fatigue, body aches, over-sensitivity to certain stimuli (pain, heat, cold), and inability to focus on just about anything most days really isn't all in my head.
• Polycystic Kidney Disease (diagnosed October 2008)
  • All the blood work I'd had done on the way to my fibro diagnosis alerted my various doctors to an unexplained elevated creatinine level. After meeting with a nephrologist and discussing my family and personal medical histories, he ordered an ultrasound to look for cysts. (My dad and his mother both had one non-functioning kidney, probably congenital, and PKD in the remaining one, along with high blood pressure issues; I'd already passed a kidney stone by age 24, and had been in a car accident in '97 that banged them up pretty bad.) Nothing showed on the ultrasound, but he was sure something was going on, so in I went for a CT scan. Sure enough, cysts ahoy. I'm pretty asymptomatic at this point, but my dad's functioning kidney isn't doing so hot, and I remember my grandma living with dialysis for years, so I know what can happen to me down the line. Thankfully, it was caught pretty early, and with medication and diet management, I might never have symptoms. Then again, my kidneys could fail in 5 or 10 years. Good times! :p

I think I'm all listed out. Mmm, clam chowder time…