The "Fludge"

If you haven't heard, there's been major flooding in our area. Major. Luckily for our family, we live up on a hill and we have a dry basement--unlike just about everyone else I know, and we're all safe. Other than being ordered to boil all of our water, conserve water and electricity, all is well. Though the storms are over, the rivers and creeks are still continuing to rise. Hundreds, maybe thousands of people have been evacuated and even though the kids haven't been able to go to school for the past 2 days and have been cooped up inside and ARE DRVING ME AND EACH OTHER CRAZY, I'm grateful to be in our safe home.

Here is a slide show of the devastation in our area. Most of the places show are places I frequent and roads I drive on a daily basis. Word of advise: mute your speakers. The music is awful.

My Firefighter Brother Will Appreciate This One

How Not To Light Your Daughter's Easter Basket On Fire:

Step One: Tell the Easter Bunny not to hide the basket in the oven.

Step Two: If the Easter Bunny ignores you, make sure the next morning, you do not get up before the kids and make breakfast.

Step Three: If you choose to ignore Step Two, while you are making breakfast, do not preheat your oven with your daughter's Easter basket roasting inside.

Just a Word of Advice

If you're extremely sensitive to caffeine, and foolishly decide at 10 pm to eat the last slice of Bittersweet Chocolate Flour-less Cake, it would be wise after still lying awake at 1:30 am, to heed the sage advice from your husband when he suggests taking a sleep aid. And then, after retorting* "YOUR MOM should take some Melatonin," you should not stalk into the bathroom and decide to trim your bangs. You might walk out looking like a person hopped up on caffeine who picked up some scissors and went to town...with their eyes closed. And then, after becoming 50% distraught over your new insane-asylum-patient look and 50% distraught over the fact that you actually don't really care that much and why don't you care because you should care and what does this say about yourself and why are you so lame lately, you should not lie awake until 5 am watching Youtube videos of Korean girls trimming their bangs.

*Tena, if you're reading this, I wasn't specifically talking about YOU. This is a joke 30-somethings say to each other as a sassy and extremely intelligent and mature comeback, along the lines of "I know you are but what am I?" to shut the other person up. But let's be honest, you probably really should take a Melatonin.

This Is What Happens When I Try To Do Stuff

I am now just 2 degrees away from Kevin Bacon. Would you like to know how?

Let me start by making a long story short:

Today, due to two nights of only sleeping for 3 hours, was the first morning I felt alive enough to get up early-early and work on the 1/10 of a novel I have started.

That's the shortened part.

This morning my alarm was set for 5:30 but Olive woke up at 5:15 screaming. I got her settled down and was walking back to my room as my alarm was going off. "Well that wasn't that bad. Let's do this thing." I flip on my bed side lamp, set up my headrest, my two pillows, pull out my lap top and settle in, open up my Word doc and..."WAAAAAAAAH!" Olive again. I attempt to work but a crying baby isn't really conducive to creating compelling characters. So I get up, change her diaper, get her a drink, put socks on her feet, rock her and get her down again. Then back to work. I settle in again, stare at my screen, trying to get into the zone. I take a deep breath and lay my head back on my headrest and what to do I see?

My 2 degrees from Kevin Bacon. Kevin Bacon was in the movie Tremors with this fellow:



That fellow was up on my ceiling. I jump out of bed because this guy's going to fall on my face any moment, I just know it. I run to the closet, grab one of my husband's size 12 1/2 shoes, thinking "Bigger really is better!" and I jump onto my bed and smash the shoe against the ceiling, hopefully squashing this thing in the process. I twist and smash. There's no way this thing is getting out alive. Since the shoe is so big, I can't really see if he's dead or alive, so cautiously, I take the shoe off the ceiling and inspect the damage. There are no bug guts on the ceiling. I check the bottom of Go's shoe. Clean as a whistle. GAHK! I jump around on the bed, ripping away the layers of head rest, pillows, blankets but no creature is to be found. I feel a slight tickle on my scalp. I bend over my bed hyperventilating and manically rake through my hair. Nothing. I feel something on my back. I arch back and hop around, wiggling all over, scratching on top of my clothes, then underneath my clothes. THIS THING IS ON ME! Nope. False alarm. I look around everywhere, behind the bed, behind my nightstand, under the bed. I have no idea where this guy went. I stand there and listen for the scurrying of a million creepy tiny feet but the silence is deafening. I decide not to let this ruin my potentially productive morning. It's time to get to work. I pile on headrest and pillows again. I nestle down in my bed. Laptop on my lap. I stare at my screen. "WAAAAAAAH!" Hello Olive. Ugh. I let her cry and stare at my screen. She continues crying and I decide to reread what I've written already. I do this for a couple of minutes put she's building in intensity, making it impossible to think at all and putting her sister's slumber at risk. I go in again and rock her until she's just about asleep, something I normally don't do but desperate times, desperate measures, people. I sneak out of her room. Ok, ready to write. Get into bed, laptop at the ready. Cursor blinking. I stare at my screen, conjuring something to come. All of a sudden, there's a tickle on my toe. I fly out of bed, yelping and throwing off the blankets. Again, nothing. This thing's inside my head now and I feel like there are bugs crawling all over me. NO! I will not let a silly bug, that yes, may look like an alien, ruin my productivity. I am up! There's still time! I need to write, dang it! I put back my blankets, get into bed, place my lap top on my lap with determination, look at my screen and type one word. The wrong word. Delete, delete. What word should I use? I look up, deep in thought and hello Tremor Worm. You are on the opposite wall now. And now you must die. How did he get over there so fast? There must be two. Maybe even little baby Tremor Monsters. Fantastic. I jump up again, grabbing one of my smaller shoes this time so I can witness his slow and hopefully agonizing death and right as I'm approaching him, coming in for the kill, he senses my thirst for weird-alien blood and drops from the wall and down behind the dresser where I can't get to him. CURSES!!! I throw the shoe down on the floor in frustration. "WAAAAAAH!" This child is going to be the death of me. And so is this alien bug. I grab Go's sound-eliminating head phones, the ones he wears on the airplane while I wrestle our kids, the ones that make me want to reach over the aisle and strangle him while saying "YOU'RE NOT HELPING ME!", the ones that when I look over at him and give him the look that says "I'm going to strangle you if you don't start helping me," he says really loudly over his music "I CAN DO WHATEVER YOU NEED ME TO DO WHILE I LISTEN TO MUSIC" and I shake my head at him, like "No you can't" and he smiles and nods his head like "Yes, I can" and puts out his hands like "I'll prove it. Give one of them to me," and I shake my head again, then mouth the words: "Watermelon, watermelon, watermelon" and he yells "WHAT?" and I mouth "Watermelon, watermelon, watermelon" again and he looks so confused as he takes out the ear buds and says in a normal register "What?" and I say "Exactly." So I grab those, shove them in my ears, get in my bed, get my lap top, and stare at my screen. I look at the clock. It's almost 7. I write one freaking paragraph and Ruby comes in, hungry for breakfast and of course she does because for some unknown reason she wakes up with a blood sugar in the 400's, which is sky high and not good. Sigh. At this rate, this thing won't get published until they make Tremors 9: The Return of the Great-Great-Great-Great-Great-Great-Great Grandchild of the Original Tremors Monster. And in the meantime, I will be wiggling and scratching at myself all day long because I swear this thing is still on me.

A Long Story and Then Watch How I Get All Deep on Your A's

When we moved to PA just a few weeks after Ruby was diagnosed with Diabetes, our new pediatric endocrinologist here in PA ordered a myriad of blood tests to be done on Ruby to screen for a bunch of random stuff. We got the tests done but didn't hear anything back, which we didn't think anything of. One doesn't expect to have a diagnosis of Diabetes AND something else simultaneously. What we didn't know then was that the tests did indeed indicate that she had another disease that needed diagnosing: Celiac Disease. But it was overlooked. I don't know what happened, but no one said a word about it. Almost four years later to the day, which was a couple of weeks ago, on a whim, I had piggybacked an appointment for Ruby onto Olive's 15 month well-check for her to have her eczema checked out. A resident pediatrician peered at Ruby's rashy knee and said "Hmmm. I'm not sure this is eczema." Ruby has had eczema her whole life and when written a prescription for the proper ointment, it goes away, but we were out of the ointment and it had flared up again. I inwardly groaned and thought "Rookie." She turned to me and asked "Has she ever been checked for Celiac Disease?" "I don't think so. Maybe. I don't know?..." (Ruby gets blood tests for her thyroid and other things every couple of months, so I really had no idea.) The resident "hm'ed" and "ha'ed" and then proceeded to tell me to put over-the-counter steroid cream on it. "What a waste of time," I thought as we walked out prescription-less.

But that appointment ended up being the opposite of a waste of time. A couple of days after the appointment, I got a call from the resident. "Something just kept bugging me about that rash so I looked back through all of Ruby's labs (which are PAGES, bless her) and found that in 2006 she was tested for Celiac Disease." She proceeded to tell me that the test indicated that she had tested positive...in 2006. Four years ago. Grrrr. She wanted to have Ruby tested agin. I went straight to the internet to start my research. Once you have Celiac Disease, you have it for life and the only way to make it better is to eliminate gluten from your diet, which is a protein found in wheat, barley and rye and is found in...most things, unfortunately. It's autoimmune. It's not uncommon for those with Diabetes to also have Celiac Disease. The main symptoms are GI problems, like chronic diarrhea, which Ruby never had, but she had been complaining about stomach aches which I chalked up to hypochondria and wanting to go down to see her *awesome* school nurse during the day when she was bored in class. She also had complained that her throat hurt most nights, which again, I chalked up to hypochondria and not wanting to go to bed. She also made this weird sound with her throat like she had a hard time swallowing but Ruby is so over-aware of herself and what's going on within her body because of her Diabetes (thinking about if her blood sugar is too low or too high), I didn't think anything of it, other than she had recently become aware of the act of swallowing and was exaggerating the process...if that makes sense. What really perked my interest were the less common symptoms such as mood swings and changes in behavior. All of a sudden, a light bulb went on. This is when the sun broke through the clouds, a chorus of choir boys could be heard and dare I say, I saw a rainbow with a fatty pot of gold at the end with little green leprechauns dancing around.

For the past year, I have asked myself on a daily basis "Where has my child gone?" Ruby has been really, really tough to deal with and our relationship has suffered which has been our main struggle. She's been moody, she's been irrational, she's been extremely difficult. "What if this is the answer?" I thought. We jumped on the gluten-free bandwagon right away. The next day, Go took her out on a date and broke the news to her. He took her to the grocery store and showed her the gluten-free aisle, had her pick out a gluten-free treat and took her to a movie. She's used to having to be more restrictive with her diet than other kids and has always handled it with amazing grace and this was no exception. The next morning we went to a better grocery store and went to town and filled the cart with gluten-free goods. She pointed out things at the store that she loved but could no longer eat with a matter-of-fact attitude. Her strength and her goodness never ceases to amaze me. We took her in to get her blood tested again, per the doc's request and waited for the results. For a week, she was gluten-free and: her rash has almost disappeared. No complaints about stomach aches. No complaints about her throat hurting. No weird sound from her throat. What was the best thing, though, was that her demeanor has improved. She has been more cheerful and more rational and I've seen more than just glimpses of my happy, cheerful Ruby.

And this is why I love her new diagnosis: even though the news of yet another thing being wrong with my child's body was a slam, it was worth it to get her "back."

A couple of days after her tests, we got a call from the ped's resident with the results from the blood test and her antibodies were sky-high, indicating Celiac Disease. So we have an appointment with a peds GI doc this Wednesday, an appointment with anesthesia next Tuesday and she'll get her scope/biopsy the next day, Wednesday. She'll be under anesthesia during the scope, they'll get a biopsy and see what the damage is. For the next week and a half, until her procedure, they want her back on gluten to get definitive results.

I am 100% positive she has Celiac Disease and that gluten is harmful to her body and this is an example of why: Knowing that they want her back on gluten until her tests, today I gave her her first bit of gluten in a week: 1o pretzels. In just 3 hours afterwards, she was itching again, she was irritable, she was complaining that her throat hurt and making that weird sound. This shows me how important it is to stick to her gluten-free diet. It's not going to be easy. It's a HUGE hassle, not to mention a big fat bummer for her. No pizza parties. No Happy Meals. No birthday cake. No pancakes. No refreshments at church functions. No ice cream unless it's gluten-free, which is basically Haagen Daz and Dryers. No normal chocolate chip cookies. No normal bread. No candy bars. No dinner rolls. No pot stickers. No brownies. No sacrament bread. Nothing with flour. Not even a speck. Her own gluten-free bread must be toasted in a separate toaster so that absolutely no speck of normal bread gets on there, because the tiniest bit causes a flare up.

It's so not fun and heaven knows this family doesn't need another health issue thrown into the mix, but that being said, the bigger part of me is SO grateful that the resident went with her gut and looked back in her files and caught this mistake. This could have gone undiagnosed for YEARS, which could have eventually caused cancer and all other sorts of ravaging. But mostly, this is the step we needed to get our Ruby back. All this time, I thought it was me and poor mothering skills. It would keep me up at night, wondering what the problem was, did something happen to her, was there something she's not telling me, what was I doing wrong? etc. I wondered how our relationship could go on like this; if it was like this when she's 6 and 7, how in the world would it be when she's 14 and 15? Now, so many things are making sense. The dots are connecting. So even though the news of Celiac Disease is a hard one to swallow (pun intended), I'm grateful for it, because to me it was a definite answer to my biggest current prayer--what is going on with my child and what do I need to do to improve our relationship? And Celiac Disease was the answer. Once again, I am shown that God is aware of me and my struggles and He's aware of my family. In every hardship our family has had to endure so far, I can honestly say "the silver lining" always ends up being worth it's weight in gold...or, uh silver, rather...

And there you have it.

Today Was Crazy: Friday Photo Postponed Until Tomorrow

That announcement was mainly for my Mom.

*After an extremely busy morning, I was given the news that Ruby has Celiac Disease and spent most of the afternoon researching it on the internet, which yes, isn't always the best idea, but Dr. Go was unavailable for questioning and my inquiring mind wanted to know what we were in for. More on this later. Blah. Thank goodness for awkwardfamilyphotos.com.

With Great Remorse, I Hang My Head in Defeat and Crown My Upbringing Victorious

I really need to start wearing an apron when I cook.
It goes against my principles
but I cannot afford to keep ruining my clothes.
It's going on the list of stuff-to-make.
(wince.)
Near the top.
(double wince.)

GAH.

Just for kicks and giggles, I decided to see what a countdown would look like set for the end of Go's residency.

I wouldn't recommend any of my resident friends doing this, especially if you are on a strict diet for it made me want to drown my sorrows in a piping hot pan of brownies.

The countdown looked something like this:

767		days
18,424		hours
1,105,471		minutes
66,328,309		seconds

Well, that was depressing.

Today: The Good, the Bad, and the Ugly

The Good:
I lost 5 1/2 pounds last week. And that was while I was on my period, when I retain water like Sponge Bob Square Pants. (Gross! She just said "period!"...and "Sponge Bob Square Pants!") So far I'm loving this Kristi Approved Program--it's the first diet I've been on where I'm not hungry and I don't feel deprived and am loving the resistance training. Click here to read more about it if you're interested. Let me know if you want to do it with me, I'll set you up with great ladies at Kristi Approved. Oh, and my before pictures? I won't be posting those bad boys until I have something better to put next to it side by side. Especially "the back" view picture. Holy crap.

The Bad:
Olive is teething and was up a lot last night--I got about 4 hours of sleep. When I'm tired, I get clumsy. I was running out the door today to take Ruby to school after she was just seconds from missing the bus. Blast! I was going to go to the gym to teach my class straight from taking her to school. I had my blueberry protein shake in one hand and was putting Olive in her car seat with the other and ended up dumping my shake, sending it EVERY WHERE. My car (which, yay!, has very absorbent fabric upholstery) Olive's car seat, Olive and myself looked liked an Oompa Loompa just poked the bloated Violet Beauregarde with a pin. I didn't want to be late for my class so I took care of myself and Olive but left most of the mess to clean up afterward, which took over two hours out of my day scrubbing that purple gunk out.

The Ugly:
So I wipe Olive and myself off, change Olive's clothes, get to the gym and am dropping off the girls at the child care when a cute little girl runs up and points at me, shrieking "Ew! You're all mole-y!" I smile and say "It looks that way, huh? I actually splattered blueberry shake all over myself a couple of minutes ago." But then I looked down and realized that I had, in fact, done a really good job cleaning myself off and yes, ew!, I am just really mole-y.

It's Official: We Need Caller I.D.

Phone: ring! ring!
Me: Hello?
Mystery Caller: Hey Annie. This is Mmmferrferrferrferr. How are you?
[I did not catch her name, though at this point, I reckon I'll be able to figure out who's calling after a couple of seconds]
Me: Uh...good! And you?
Mystery Caller: Pretty good, pretty good. So how was your Thanksgiving?
[Nope. Still no clue who I'm talking to.]
Me: Um...wonderful. How was yours?
Mystery Caller: It was fun. Hey, I was wondering if you and your girls would like to come over for a play date tomorrow.
[Still clueless.]
Me: Uhhh...remind me where you live again?
Mystery Caller: Oh, we live right off of BlahBlahBlah Street.
[This tells me nothing. It could be anyone.]
Me: Um...yah. Ok. That would be...uh...um...Can you hold on for just a minute?
[I put down the phone and sit there like a dummy. After a couple of seconds, I come up with this genius gem:]
Me: Hi. I'm back. Ok, this is so incredibly lame but...who is this again?

Seriously. How lame am I? GAAAAAH.

"Embarassed" Just Doesn't Quite Cut It

How do you put into words the feeling that comes over you when you
discover you've been walking around the gymnastics waiting area with
your Henley-style shirt unknowingly unbuttoned all the way, talking to
the director, chatting with other parents, and playing peek-a-boo with
their babies? Peek-a-boo indeed.

Sent from my iPhone

The Most Random Dinner Ever

I fancy myself a decent cook, but a decent cook needs ingredients. What is served for dinner when the decent cook is 5 days past due for a grocery shopping trip due to a sick kid, not feeling very well herself and a husband who repeatedly cannot come home until it's way too late?

Behold.

Boo. Hiss.

March.
In like a lion.
Blah, blah, blah.

ew.

Insomnia has again reared its ugly head again and so at 4 in the morning, I found myself lugging baby items out of the garage, most of which had lots of fun surprises to go along with them, like cobwebs, dust, and grime--all of which I could handle, except for one: Ruby's and May's Graco car seat? A mouse had chewed through the plastic bag I put it in, crawled down to the bottom of the seat, chewed through that and even left me some poop to let me know for sure that yes, he had been there. Thanks, mouse. Now I can easily shake off the guilt I've been carrying around all this time for killing you in that trap last year.

Needless to say, I was creeped out and horrified at the thought of my baby sitting in a seat that once held mouse poo and had been gnawed through with mouse teeth. So, like any woman after promptly throwing it in the washing machine, my mind wandered to retail therapy and I hopped online to look at shiny, new Graco car seats. Ones that had not been touched my rodents and also, had not been through two kids already. Then reality reached through the computer screen and slapped me in the face. They're expensive. (This is where I wish I could insert an audio clip of a woman with a nasally, southern accent saying: "Too rich for my blood!")

So much for being done with sewing projects. So, um...yah...anyone know how to sew a car seat cover? booooo...

P.S.-I've never been one to long for a super glamorous lifestyle, but this is just ridiculous.

Oh For FUN!

Just now I dug through a huge trashcan full of stinky, wet trash for an envelope with my name on it containing $80 in cash but did not find it. After the twenty-fifth minute of scrubbing my hands with an SOS pad and boiling water, the answer came to me where the envelope was--somewhere a lot less stinky and a lot less wet. Yahoo! $80!

I do no think I was crazy for digging through nasty trash for $80.

So here are my questions (that I was pondering over during my eighteenth minute of hand-scrubbing):

Would you, dear reader, dig through stinky, wet trash for $80? For $50? For $20? $10?

Just In Case You Were In Need of a Chuckle

Picture me, a poor, poor pregnant lady, chasing my rolling trash cans and recycling bins down the street for about 8 blocks--the gusting wind is faster than my swollen feet. It's also pouring rain. Oh, and I'm very obviously wearing pajamas.

By the way, you've got a sick sense of humor.

Tenderness

For a very short and unfortunate blip in my life, I dated a boy who called me "Tenderness." It started out as a joke, but then quickly stuck during the few months of our courtship, so much so that he probably even forgot my real name, which is why I feel I can totally blog about him because if he was ever creepy enough to Google me, he couldn't. Anyway, the relationship didn't end very well. I'd like to think that if I saw mostly any guy I dated years ago, today I could give him a friendly high-five and crack a joke about how weird it is that his wife looks exactly like me, proceeded by some overly exaggerated awkward winking, of course. But I can't because if I saw the boy who called me "Tenderness" today, I would just turn around and walk the other way. Even if I was in line for something good, like chocolate truffles. Or a grilled cheese sandwich.

Yesterday while at the grocery store, I was minding my own business, you know, cursing the pineapple for poking me or sticking some celery stalks up my nose, when an older couple strolled by with rickety elbows interlocked and I couldn't help but smile. Then, to my horror, the man turns to his wife and says "Tenderness, would you like me to bag the asparagus?" Ack! Memories! No thank you! I proceeded to flee the produce section immediately. I didn't even stop to get that head of lettuce I had wanted to play soccer with in the parking lot afterwards. Shoot.

Dear Black Fleece Pants,

You tricked me. A year ago when I spied you on sale at Target, you looked oh so enticing--comfortable, relaxed, the epitome of low maintenance lounge wear. Oh, you sneaky little devil pair of pants.






When I tried you on in the Target dressing room all cozy and aglow with rosy redness, I took a gander in the mirror, turned around, turned to the side, turned to the other side and thought "Dang, girl! These actually look good!" You see Black Fleece Pants, you were long but not too long. Not too tight, not too loose. Soft. Squishy, even. Just plain comfy. And you were like $5. Divine.

I took you home. I washed you. You shrunk. Like A LOT. We're talking well above my cankles, which is not a good look whether you have ankles or cankles but a definite no-no for cankles. Then you started collecting lint, dust, hair, picking up every little bit of goob you could get your fibers on. Then you started having major static cling issues, so much so that you rode all the way from my cankles up to my calves, not to mention bunching up around my crotch, which pants should not do. Nor should anything else for that matter.

What the heck? Why did you turn on me? You know what, I don't even want to know. I don't care anymore. I've had enough. You and me, black fleece pants. We're through.

Good riddance,
Annie

The Flood

My old stomping grounds in Iowa are under water. I keep looking at pictures on different sites and though I keep seeing the same exact thing, which are buildings and streets and homes and cars underwater, I can't stop even though it just sickens my heart.

This is where everyone except me would buy their scrapbooking stuff. My friends in Iowa were very scrapbooky and they made the most beautiful things with the products they bought here. I bet some of them went to this huge closeout sale.


That red brick building in the back is where Go would go with his study buddies to "study," which come to find out, really meant eat lots and lots of chicken wings.



My Mom bought me a big glazed ochre planter from this garden shop when she helped us move into our little condo there six years ago. It was such a cute little shop.



Though it wasn't my favorite place (only because of my low and wimpy tolerance for their horrible, awful winters) I hold a place in my heart for Iowa. It is where both of my babies were born and where Go labored and learned. I only know a hand full of people that are still there, since the majority of our friends were generally made up of transient medical, dental and law students but I hope my pals still there are ok. The few I have heard from are fine but many have had to leave. I hope they have dry homes and a strong community when they get back. If how I perceived the folks of Iowa to be is correct, they will get through this--they are strong, kind and hard working and I hope it doesn't take long for them to rebuild their cities. I saddens me to see such awful images and I'm so grateful that my friends are safe.

Word Verificationqpfwvrl

Dear bloggy friends with enabled word verification,

I have to type in that gobbledygook at least three times when I leave a comment on your blog which leaves me a little frustrated sometimes. I just thought you'd like to know because maybe it would make my comments to you seem that much sweeter and precious. I'm not blaming you for enabling your word verification; it is most disconcerting when Davi from Sao Paulo, Brazil has an exciting enterprise he wants to share with you and likes your site and will add you to his blogroll immediately. I just wish I was able to either type jibberjabber words more accurately or be able to decipher what the letters actually are when they're all slanted and squished together, that's all.

I'd also like you to know that when I get to like, the fourth time of having to enter in all that nonsense into the verification box, I either go back to my comment, add a little more sass and go back and try again or just give up all together, which is sad when that happens because you never even get to read the sassy goodness that I was going leave you five minutes before I hurled my keyboard across the room.

Sincerely,
The deep lunger who is currently sporting a unitard and super gluing her computer back together piece by piece