Thursday, June 28, 2007

No News is Good News

I don't watch the news that often. We don't have cable, so that keeps me blissfully unaware most of the time. I read the newspaper semi-regularly, but it's not the same as the non-stop news blitz on the TV. Well today David and I went over to my parents' house to check our email. Actually, I usually drop him off at the McAllister center and he works out while I go to my parents' house one block away, and he meets me there after his workouts.

Anyway, while he was checking his email I decided to turn on my parents' TV and it was on CNN. The first story I see is an uplifting little ditty about a seven year old boy who is getting a face transplant. He has silicone implants in his cheeks so his skin will stretch out over other parts of his face. The skin around his eyes is so tight that I don't think the poor thing can blink. Why is this boy getting a face transplant? Oh, because a flesh eating bacteria ate his face off. It ate his whole face off. How did this boy come to be infected with a flesh eating bacteria? Was he slashing his way through the rainforest? Nope. Was he playing around at a hazardous waste site? No. He bumped his lip while playing basketball with his friends. And he got his face eaten off. I called to David in the other room and told him all about it. He replied, "See, that just goes to show you that you shouldn't worry about such things because no one knows when or how they will happen". I'm a hypochondriac by the way. To me, this story meant just the opposite: I should live in a bubble and bathe in Purell because you never know when or how these things will happen.

Next story up- A huge toothpaste recall. Anyone who has any toothpaste made in China (this includes all the major American brands) should throw it out because it could have poison in it. Specifically, it has an ingredient in it that is usually reserved for non-mouth cleansing items like antifreeze. So now I'm freaking out because I don't know if our ghetto Pepsodent toothpaste has poison in it or if I'll even have a mouth to use it on because of some crazy flesh eating bacteria.

At this point David told me that I should not under any circumstances watch the news. And I know this is pretty much true. I am a sucker for sensationalism. A couple of years ago he said I shouldn't watch Dateline or 20/20 because every time I did I became convinced that I would die under mysterious circumstances or be stricken with a rare but fatal form of cancer or both. So I guess I'll just stick to reading the newspaper for now. Did I mention that just yesterday I was reading that the parents of a 15 year old Indian boy were arrested because they let their child perform a C-section on one of their patients?

Thursday, June 21, 2007

Just Another Day at Work

I'm pretty much convinced that I work on the set of a sitcom and I haven't been made aware of it yet. The following is what happened the last time I went to take notes in a COM class at the community college where I work. First, I need to say that I love the girl who I take notes for and her sister is also really cool. I don't have any problems with them. I even think we could be friends. It's just some of the other students... well, you'll see.

Last Com class, the teacher wanted to show students how to make an outline for an informative speech. He decided to pick the topic of travel and vacation destinations, and then asked the kids what locations they would want to go for vacation. Remember, I'm just there to take notes. So the first person raises their hand and yells out, "The Superbowl"! The Superbowl? I had no idea the Superbowl was a place that had its own zip code and everything. Neither did the teacher because he didn't write it down. The second person yells out, "Mardi Gras". Again, I didn't know Mardi Gras was a place where you could live. This one was a little more forgivable because Mardi Gras and New Orleans are almost synonymous, but still. After a couple of legitimate locations, another person yelled out, "Costa Rica". One second later the girl behind me starts yelling "why would you want to go there!! That's where they cut off people's legs and sell them for diamonds"! Perhaps I should have expected it from this girl because in the last class she asked the teacher how to talk to black people without offending them because, "sometimes I try to give them a compliment and they just get mad". Anyway, she keeps yelling, "Costa Rica is where they cut off people's legs for diamonds"! At this point I am biting my tongue to keep from laughing, and she's getting more and more indignant because someone wants to take a vacation where they chop people's legs off for diamonds. The teacher is avoiding her all together and moving on to other people's suggestions while she is still raving. At this point I turned around and said, "That's not Costa Rica, It's Sierra Leone". After saying this I felt really stupid because as far as I know Sierra Leone does not have a diamonds for legs trade. They have a diamonds for arms trade, but that is something entirely different. I wanted to tell her that people do chop off other people's limbs, but it is used as a way to make others submit, not as a means of currency. She seemed to shut up though, so I didn't go on. Other students keep calling out destinations and one older lady said she would like to go to Rome. Upon this, the girl behind me said that she thinks Rome is totally overrated. I don't know how she knows this, but I'm willing to be that she's never been there. What was her suggestion for a vacation? Las Vegas. That's right, Rome is totally overrated when there are slots to play.

After about 15 destinations, the teacher had the class take a vote, and the top three destinations would become the three main points of the speech. Vote number 1: The Bahamas. Vote number 2: Hawaii. Vote number 3: Australia. Now I love the beach as much as any other girl with blond hair, blue eyes, pale skin and a frighteningly high number of relatives with skin cancer, but this was a little ridiculous. That became even more apparent when the class had to give reasons for wanting to visit each place. It sounded a little something like this: beaches, swimming, fishing, shopping, beaches, swimming, fishing, shopping, beaches, swimming, fishing, shopping. So essentially all three locations were boiled down to beach activities without a mention of any cultural offerings, museums, art, etc that each place might have. I don't get it. I like the beach but not enough to it make my top three vacation destinations.

From this little glimpse, I hope you can see how fun and funny is it at my job. I'm gonna miss it when I have to move.

Sunday, June 17, 2007

Jr. Update

The doctor's say that our little Anthony is starting to recover from his intestine surgery and things look pretty good. Talk about a miracle. His breathing hasn't been doing to well lately as they have bumped him up to 38-45 percent oxygen. The doctors say it's a little higher than they would like (he's usually at 25% oxygen) but that his lungs only show signs of immaturity and not signs of serious lung complications. My brother and sister-in-law just got the bill for Anthony Jr's two week stay at Home hospital:124,000 dollars!!! Luckily the bill is taken care of and they don't have to pay for it. I'm interested to see what the bill for a three month stay at St. Vincent's NICU will be. The baby also "opened his eyes" a couple of days ago. I put the opened his eyes in quotations because his eyes have been open for a couple of weeks now. However, his eyes used to be all black, and then over night his eyes changed to blue and look like regular eyes. Of course, his eye color could change, but it's nice to see them whatever color they are.

Now for other baby related news. Today right after Mass I was hanging out in the church with my dad because it's Father's Day and I wanted to see him. While beside him, a very nice parishioner, who we've known for years and will remain nameless, passed by, and my father flagged her down. He wanted to show her the newest pictures of Anthony Jr. Well, after ooohing and ahhing over the pictures, she turns to me and says, "how many months early did you have the baby"? After picking my jaw up from off the floor, I remarked that I don't have any children and that the pictures were of my nephew. I then suffered through the most awkward couple of minutes of small talk in my life while my dad was speaking to this woman's husband. Sigh. It's depressing to know that I look postpartum. No offense to any stunning and dazzling postpartum women out there reading this post. I think I'll hit the pilates tomorrow. At least Father Vath hasn't started to bless my gut when I go up for communion.

Friday, June 15, 2007

celebrity look-alikes



I thought this was a pretty neat little thing.

Monday, June 11, 2007

Babies, Babies, Babies, and Bees

This was a baby filled weekend.

On Saturday I went to visit Anne and Charles in the hospital. Charles is one cute baby. Notice I didn't say cute and "little". That's because Anne gave birth to a giant baby. I won't post the weight because Anne might want to tell you all about it herself, and I don't want to get in trouble with a new mama. However, if you do want to see the weight, go to Christine's blog. Oh, and if you want to see pictures of this darling baby, go to Laura's blog. Anne and Charles are both doing fine.

Later that night David and I went to see Knocked Up. As you might have guessed from the title, this movie is about a woman who has an unexpected pregnancy. The movie uses crude humor, drug humor, nudity, and a constant stream of the f-bomb, and yet I loved it. The reason is that despite all the vulgarity, the movie has an overwhelming pro-life message. At every turn it reinforces that even in the most undesirable circumstances, an unborn child still deserves to live. That, and I did think the movie was pretty funny. I don't think all that pro-life stuff was just wishful thinking or reading too much in to it on my part. If any of you see it, you'll have to tell me what you thought. Don't say I didn't warn you about all the cusses though.

Then, on Sunday I finally got to meet my nephew. David and I went down to St. Vincent's with my parents and we met my brother and sister-in-law there. Leah and I went in first because only two people are allowed to see him at a time and one of those people has to be the parent. Well, I was just overwhelmed with emotion when I saw Anthony Jr. He is even smaller than I imagined and he is so precious. You can tell that he doesn't like visitors a lot because when you look in his incubator he covers his face with his little hands and starts to squirm. If you visit him for too long his heart rate will drop and that's pretty much how he lets you know that he's had enough of you. The only bad part about it is that when it happens the doctors have to come over and breath for him until his heart rate comes back up. I would love to see Anthony Jr. again and I think about him all the time, but I would hate to cause his heart rate to drop like that again. It's just that my mother wanted us to meet the baby once in case the unthinkable happens. We had to wait about an hour for the baby's heart rate to stabilize before David could go in with my brother. It's funny, but when David came back he said that the baby was bigger than he imagined, which was the exact opposite of my reaction. I describe the baby this way: Imagine a 20 fl oz water bottle with thick pens for arms and legs. That's how small he is. When we were leaving the NICU David noticed a "lactation booth", which is a room that women, well you know what it's for. Anyway, when the room is open, it has a little sign in English and in Spanish saying so. When we passed this room it in fact was open so the sign said, "Lactation Booth: Open Abra". Well, David noticed this, pointed it out and said, "lactation booth: open a bra, hahahahahahaha". My mom thought it was hilarious and even my dad cracked a smile.

After all the babies this weekend, it's not surprising that David has come down with a pretty bad case of Baby Fever. Because of my own experience, graduate school, and Leah and Anthony's experience with Anthony Jr., until recently my baby temperature has been at about 32 degrees. But since I've graduated from school, my temperature has risen to about 98.6, so I'm at normal right now. Normal. We'll see what happens, but I'll predict trying for a baby before year's end. So I know that will make some people happy.

Oh, and now for the bees. Well, most of you know how we had a bat fly in though an open window in our bedroom a couple of weeks back. If you don't, scroll down through a couple of posts and you can get the whole story. We made sure to close that window so that a bat wouldn't fly through again. But there is still a problem with the window where the screen doesn't meet the glass correctly. Normally that wouldn't be a problem because even if something flew in though the gap, it wouldn't make it through the glass when the window is closed. Or so we thought. The window was closed, but we have those old fashioned locks where when you turn the window lock it leaves a little hole. So here's what happened. A swarm of bees, a swarm, not two or three but fifty bees, flew through the gap between the outside screen and the glass, and then flew up to the little hole by the window lock, evidently waited in line and came in three at a time (because the hole is not that big) and then started swarming around the room. Luckily I was at work because if I had been home I would have done something stupid like call 911 or scream incoherently or both. But David was home. Not only was he home, he was in the bedroom reading a book! He heard a buzzing sound by the window and looked to see these bees flying in. He dropped his book, ran to the kitchen to get some ant spray because it was either that or Windex, and started spraying it at the bees. In his running shorts. That is all the clothing he had on. Running shorts. Just imagine that for a second. My husband in his running shorts spraying ant spray wildly at an obviously homicidal swarm of bees. But it worked! He killed all the bees and wasn't stung even once. I was telling my friends Kristin and Jocelyn about this, and Jocelyn said that if anything else weird happens in our apartment, don't even bother calling the landlord, just call an exorcist. I'm beginning to think she's got the right idea.

Thursday, June 07, 2007

Summertime Routine

Everything has been pretty mundane lately. I'm beginning to think that funny things only happen to me at school. I usually wait to update until something funny has happened to me. Well, nothing has lately. I don't have any antics to relate, so I guess I'll just give a boring life update.

I've been sleeping in until about 10:30 every morning.

David and I are on a new diet/ health plan called "The Schwarzbein Principal". An Endocrinologist who is evidently obsessed with her name came up with it. She's written about four books and they all have "Schwarzbein" in the title. In all seriousness, she pretty much advocates the things your grandmother tells you to do. You can't skip meals, you have to eat a balance of protein, carbs, veggies, and healthy fats, and you need to keep your blood sugar balanced. You do this by eating five times a day instead of three. Her theory is that most people have a damaged metabolism. If you repair your metabolism, you will automatically burn enough calories to attain or stay at an ideal body weight in addition to becoming super healthy. You cannot have sugar, fake sugar, alcohol, tobacco, or caffeine while on this diet. So, I automatically hated it from the start. I pretty much thought I was going to die. But eating five meals a day full of healthy stuff really does keep down my cravings for bad stuff. The only drawback is that I feel like half our life is devoted to cooking and shopping. Ol' Schwarzy, as I call the doctor who wrote this plan, says people with fairly healthy metabolisms can heal in about 1-3 months, so I'm hoping I'm in that category. I don't know why though. Ol' Schwarzy says that you can 't go back to your old ways after you are healed or you'll just ruin your metabolism again. So it looks like I'm on the straight and narrow. Sigh. I've never really liked the straight and narrow.

David and I are also in the middle of watching the top 50 movies of all time. We receive this travel magazine that we don't subscribe to called the Conde Nast. I think anyone who leaves the country for a trip automatically receives it. David and I like to call it the Conde Nasty or just The Nasty. I know, we're geniuses. Anyhow, I was looking through it one day to see what the top 100 snorkeling destinations are or something equally stupid. As I was looking, I came across this advertisement for Kettle One Vodka. The ad started, "Dear Kettle One Vodka Drinker". My eyes lit up at this because this was a couple of weeks ago before I cleaned myself up, got saved, and went on the Schwarzbein Principal. The rest of the ad read, "Are these the top 50 films of all time?" So, I ripped the list out and we've been watching the movies ever since. Granted, the list does ask whether the movies are top 50, and I'm not sure what sources compiled the list, so there are some crap movies on the list. However, most of them seem good. Our favorites so far are Chinatown and Deer Hunter. Our least favorite is 2001: A Space Odyssey. By the way, if I had said that title instead of written it, I would have called it a Space Oddity because I love David Bowie and always get the titles mixed up. Now, I don't care what you say about this movie. It was crap. I've heard a lot of people say that 2001 was an "important" movie. What this usually means is that some pretentious bastard made a piece of shit movie and people are too afraid of being called philistines to say so. Other people have said that I didn't get the point of the movie. No, I got the point. I understand. It's just that the point is stupid, the script is terrible, the acting is worse, and Stanley Kubric is a pretentious bastard. We're having fun watching the movies anyway. The best part is that all the older movies at Family Video are either two for a dollar or a dollar.

Let's see, hmmm. Besides sleeping a lot, being on a diet, and watching our movies, there's not much more.

Saturday, June 02, 2007

Baby Update

I just want to give all of you an update on baby Anthony.

On Wednesday Anthony Jr. was rushed to St. Vincent's in Indianapolis because his intestine ruptured and he was dying. The doctors did surgery and told my brother and his wife it would take nothing short of a miracle for Anthony Jr. to even make it through the night. Well, the first miracle was achieved, many thanks in part to your prayers, because Anthony Jr. is alive but in critical condition. The doctors say that his intestine has to show signs of healing before they can upgrade his condition. If his intestine does not start to heal the doctors say he will die. To make matters worse, the little hole the baby has in his heart is impeding the healing process and his recovery from the surgery. Therefore, Anthony Jr. will undergo another surgery next week to repair the hole in his heart. This is extremely serious because the doctors must do the surgery even though they aren't sure how much more stress the baby's body can take.

Please, I beg you to keep Anthony Jr. and my family in your prayers. The situation is quite dire.