I am so very, very sorry!  I THOUGHT I was ready to start school, but I found myself buried in "stuff" every night last week.  Ah - the joys of working for a district that likes to "shake things up" every year!  Anyway, I have shoveled my way out and have decided to celebrate by writing on my blog.  Yippee!!!

So I eluded to a "nose cast" incident in my last post, and I have decided it is time to come clean.  The reason I was sporting a nose cast in high school was because I had....drum roll please...a nose job (also known by the ever glamorous name...rhinoplasty - and no, I am NOT making that up!).  Here's what happened....

I was born almost the spitting image of my Grandpa Stewart.  Never has a more stellar, kind, funny, and loving man walked the face of the earth.  However, he walked that earth with a rather bulbous schnoz that I was lucky enough (?) to inherit.  Did it make it hard to stand up as my center of gravity was always being thrown off?  Sure, but that was okay.  Did I have to turn my head to look at things because it obstructed my view?  Yes, but that was okay too.  I didn't even mind that it was prone to bleeding.  Especially when they tried to "fix" that problem, and I scored the Bionic Woman Barbie doll as a reward for only biting the doctor a little.  But then, it turned on me....

When I was 7, I had my tonsils removed.  That is not all that unusual unless you consider that my tonsils were fine, but my adenoids were invading my whole head.  The tonsils ended up being a bonus prize in a super fun surgery over Christmas break that year.  I'll have to save that story for another day, but it involves Chinese water torture, clowns, and Charlie's Angels!  Fast forward a few years to the lovely day when we discovered that I had a deviated septum.  I don't really know what a septum is or what horrible turn of events caused it to deviate, but it had to punished - and it took me down with it!  Fast forward a few more years to my senior year of high school, when that punk septum deviated again.  Maybe that will be the title of my book - "When Good Septum's Go Bad".  Hmmmm...has more of a Dr. Phil vibe...but I digress (or deviate, if you will).  The ENT, in his infinite wisdom, suggested that we consult an ENT with a special in facial plastics.  I believe it was because my face had been invaded previously and was starting to slide off to one side (!!!), but I secretly think he had just never encountered a nose of such epic proportions.  Here's all I know - I was 17, college was on the horizon, and it sounded to me like a perfectly logical excuse to have a nose job for reasons other than vanity.  BRING IT ON,  BABY!

So there I was...about to get a new nose for Christmas.  The doctor explained all the "in's and out's" (no pun intended) of the surgery, but I don't think I was really listening.  I was too busy imaging the return to school after Christmas break and my peers mistaking me for Cindy Crawford.  My first "surprise" was that I remember falling asleep before the surgery but waking up before it was done.  I kept thinking that some obnoxious person was rambling on and on and desperately wishing that she would be quiet so I could tell the doctor I was awake.  It wasn't until I heard her say, "And if my mom finds out that I am pregnant, she will KILL me" that I realized it was me talking.  Uh...for the record, I had NO reason to believe that I was pregnant.  That Valium is just some kind of crazy!  The next surprise was when the doctor said, "Amy, your deviated septum was more complicated than expected so we haven't broken your nose yet.  Can you feel me touching your nose?".  Yes, Regis - Final answer!!!  Except what I said was, "Nawwwwlllllbbbbblah".  Taking that as a no, he proceeded to break my nose.  I am at a loss as to how to describe what I then felt, but I assure you that "ouch" is NOT the right word.  My next surprise came when the surgery was over and they took the gauze off of my eyes.  I raced, or stumbled - again...Valium - to a mirror and found myself wondering when exactly Cindy Crawford got that hideous!  My face was swollen, my eyes were beginning to blacken, and there was a cast on my nose.  Again, I am sure that "black eyes" and "nose cast" were mentioned in the original appointment, but I'd been in my happy place then and hadn't heard that.  When he gave me the super good news that the cast had to stay on for 6 weeks, I can't tell you how happy I was - mostly because I really, really, really wasn't!

So there I was, the morning of the first day back from Christmas break of my senior year.  I had given my "strategy" for explaining the nose cast a lot of thought and come up with exactly nothing.  Instead, I decided to just conceal it - with concealer.  Today's tip for all of you lovely ladies - foundation on plaster turns a sickly orange.  Write that down.  Oh yeah - and you should also now that in order to help the tip of my nose "set", the doctor had run a string from the outside edge of my nose, through the nostrils, back out the other side, and attached it to the top of the cast.  Can you imagine Daffy Duck doing a Porky Pig impression?  If so...that was me.  So much for Cindy Crawford....

Things were going unexpectedly well despite my hideousness until the fateful day that my yearbook adviser informed me that group pictures had been moved up to meet a deadline.  Can you guess who had decided to join EVERY group she could her senior year?  Yes ma'am - it was me! The good news...group photos were black and white (and NOT because color film hadn't been invented yet!!!), so you can't tell my nose cast is orange.  The bad news...it looks like I have no nose at all.  Again, those "glamor shots" I had imagined were just NOT working out.  And thank goodness it was all immortalized in 2,000 copies of a yearbook!  Phew!!! Then there was the fateful day when the cast decided to plop off my face during debate class.  Do you remember that string I mentioned earlier?  Yeah...ummm...the cast fell off my nose, but not my face.  Luckily (???), my car keys were CLEAR across the high school in my locker, and my car was CLEAR back by my debate class.  Was I able to slip into stealth mode and get to my keys and back without anyone noticing my wrinkly,  nasty nose with an orange cast dangling below it from a string running through my nostrils?  Uh...no..

By the time I had my final appointment with the doctor and he removed the two popsicle sticks (and I am NOT exaggerating that!) from the inside of my nose that had acted as splints, I had determined that all plastic surgery is of the devil - at least for me!. If you have met me,  I don't suppose I had to clarify that that was my one and only attempt at plastic surgery.  Bottom line:  I love and miss you Grandpa.  We'll share a box of tissues when I'm on the other side!