Where am I?

Do you ever wake up in the middle of the night and feel completely disoriented? It happens to me a lot. Last night, I resisted the temptation to really wake up and find out -- for about 10 seconds.

"Ranch? Hawaii? Dogfather's? LA? Humboldt? Tokyo? Paris? Where the heck am I?"

And then I opened my eyes and looked around. LA. Oh yeah. I came here for a doctor's appointment. I remember now. The drive via Lancaster (Sunday was Father's Day so we stopped by the DogFather's) and then Monday's sci-fi moment where they had my left breast in a vise, under a hole in a table. It was a freaky, nightmarish experience. Sort of like being abducted, I guess. (If any of you have ever been abducted by aliens, you can tell me if this is the case or not.)

"I'm Youlanda," the assistant kept saying to me. I thought it was Yolanda until I saw her name tag. YOUlanda. She told me her name several times. Later on, I realized that I was supposed to say, "Hi Youlanda. My name's…" but I didn't feel the need to tell her my first name. My legal names, which no one ever uses (including me,) were on the charts if she needed my name and I didn't feel the need to fake a relationship with strangers, but as I lay awake, remembering the pain in my left breast came from that needle biopsy and not a heartache, I thought, "Maybe I should have. Maybe she was being extra mean to me for NOT being friendlier. Maybe if I had told her my first name right off, the whole thing might have been less painful…"

These thoughts kept me up forever.