Chocolate: A Self-Help Guide

Starting week three of being unemployed.

I didn't know what to do with myself today.  I've applied for dozens of jobs, and I'm sure a fitting position will open for me soon.  But it was weird.  I couldn't relax, or do things that I wanted to do, because I felt like I needed to get a job.  But a job isn't something you can just reach out and grab.  You have to wait for it.  I have a hard time waiting.

I felt like a waste of space.

Then I read this Thomas Jefferson quote (I keep a Jefferson quote blog):

"I have sometimes asked myself whether my country is the better for my having lived at all?  I do not know that it is.  I have been the instrument of doing the following things; but they would have been done by others; some of them, perhaps a little better."

He then goes on to list his accomplishments.

"The Declaration of Independence."
"I proposed the demolition of the church establishment, and the freedom of religion."
"The act prohibiting the importation of slaves."

If it's ok for Jefferson to feel like a waste of space, then it's ok for me to have blah days as well

A wise man told me that depression is a healthy, normal, and necessary time for reflection.

And I'd add to that: chocolate.  Depression is a time for chocolate.  The cause, and cure, of my current predicament.

Bicycle/Handcart to Kolob

I rode my bike over 140 miles this week. If I keep this up, I'll be in Nauvoo by October. That is, if I weren't riding in circles.

I've just been riding to and from work. If I were riding across the country it might be newsworthy. So it is with many of our actions. What we do may garner no attention from thronging sweaty teenage fans, but it matters.

Especially with our children. My wife works 8 hours a day for our kid, then I come home, and she works another 8 hours for me and the kid. I make sure to talk to her during commercial breaks.
Seriously, though, that's a lot of work. And it may appear to be no more than a freezer full of pumped milk and a garbage can full of poopy diapers, but it will result in a child equipped with all that is necessary to inherit the throne of God and to reign for the rest of eternity over worlds without end. Pretty damn important.

motherhood will teach me this again, won't it

I made a long list of things I needed (read: wanted) to accomplish before the baby came.

Then the universe laughed at me. No, our gummi bear did not come early. I just got super sick. I've spent the last week moving from my bed to my couch and back again, with detours to the bathroom for more tissues and throat lozenges.

And the list?

Maybe it was a bit ambitious—even for a healthy pregnant lady. Looks like I planned on sewing, cooking, cleaning, writing, and decorating everything in the universe until the second the baby crowned. I'm working on deleting some items from the list.

I do this often: make plans too big for any person and then feel disappointed when I find out I'm not superhuman. Kind of like this little frustration:



















I took on a project I wasn't prepared for, with instructions that were difficult to follow, and expected myself to finish in an afternoon. It eventually turned out, but only after weeks of tearing out seams and sewing them back up again crooked. I probably should have re-evaluated my progress halfway through and just gone to the store to buy a stupid diaper bag like a normal person.

I have a feeling that motherhood will demand that I re-evaluate and abandon overblown plans more often than I currently do. Just like this week's virus made me chuck my list, my little gummi bear will do the same when she throws up or falls down or just wants me to put down the to-do list to cuddle with her. I hope I figure it out.

out of the woods

Whew! Gummi Bear gave us a little scare this past week—appropriately timed for Halloween. We got a little worried that she was already trying to join us, and it's far too soon.

I went to the doctor, took my medicine, stayed in bed, flaked out on my classes, and told my students to not even think about asking me when I would finish grading their papers. I talked Baby Gummi into waiting until March. She seems cool with it.

I think she's just excited to get here. Let's hope she's equally excited to embrace sleeping through the night and potty training.

dear boy in the library,

If you really felt as ill as you said you did to the person on the other end of your cell phone, while you walked up and down the literature section on the 5th floor (where I was), why didn't you stay home for a few days? Don't sniffle your way around the books anymore. Stop wiping your runny nose with the back of your hand and then running that hand along the shelf.

Your eyes looked so swollen and your nose so red. I'm sure some sleep and some soup would have done you good. It sure would have helped out the library patrons, too. Some of us are pregnant around here and really not looking forward to flu season.

Take care.

Sincerely,
A pregnant lady who is NOT happy to be home with a sore throat and burny eyes today

am i a wimp...

...if my favorite part of yoga is the part at the end, when we lie on the floor?









I like to think that I'm learning how to better appreciate the resting part of hard work. I mean, lying on the floor after my body works hard is more than just lying on the floor. It feels earned and lovely and necessary.

Or. It could just mean I'm a wimp.

No Swine Flu for me

I felt really sick yesterday, but thought nothing of it, until I read my cousin's blog. He's a doctor, and he and his son got swine flu. I planned on babysitting my nephew visiting my grandma on Friday, and I didn't want to accidentally kill them.

My nephew and his pet lion
-

I'm averse to going to the doctor because I'm a man. Dave Barry said something to the effect that a man won't go to the doctor unless he has a gunshot wound, and then only at the persistent nagging of his wife. Then he'll go to the doctor, and the doctor will say, "You have a gunshot wound." And the man will say, "That's what I thought. I'll just put some more duct tape on it."

I called the health center to make an appointment, they told me to just come in. It was closing soon so I hurried in. The receptionist said that they're closed. I told them that I was going to babysit my nephew, and wanted to find out if I had swine flu. She smiled but just wanted me to go away. Instead of being assertive and saying, "So you'd rather have my nephew die from swine flu than be inconvenienced?" I just walked away.

Rant: If health care were a local issue, instead of a federal issue, if you knew your doctor, he wouldn't turn you away at the door. But the health care system has little incentive to care about you because the majority of their money comes from insurance companies.

I stopped by the health center for a swine flu test. The nurse stuck a half a foot of q-tip up my nose. I'd never had anything go up that far into my nostril. It brought tears to my eyes. She scrapped the back of my brain and brought the q-tip back out.

It came back negative. Hurray. I just have normal flu. I posted on my other blog about the origins of swine flu.

Kathy has taken really good care of me.

i sometimes wear shoes that are bad for me

And when I do so, my husband protests.

Him: "I'm racist against high heels."
Me: "High heels aren't a race."
Him: "A race of shoe."

Endometriosis: A kick in the nuts

Kathy has been in pain since September. She just dealt with it. She had exploratory surgery on Thursday, to find out what it was. It was endometriosis, so the Doc was able to take care of it right then.

Endometriosis looks like this.




Dr. Glenn just cut off the extra tissue.

The growths were on Kath's right ovary and uterus. The ovaries are the female equivalent of the male testes. So she's been feeling a kick in the nuts since September.

She's amazing.

She's still sore and recovering from the surgery, but now the pain will be gone. And she won't have to feel stupid every week when people ask if she's feeling better. She won't have to worry that she has ovarian cancer, or that she's making it all up.

Hurray.

anesthesia: your sense of humor's shot in the arm

I don't remember coming out of anesthesia after my surgery this week, but Christopher and my mom were both around to see it. Apparently, the anesthesiologist helped me overcome my natural word limit. I talked and talked and talked. And I sounded like a goof.

Christopher told me the doc had found endometriosis and removed the problems during surgery. Apparently, I put on a goofy grin and said, "Endometriosis? That's better than cancer!" Too bad they didn't write down all the other drugged up things I said.

I don't remember any of it. I just remember waking up to laughter that had apparently gone on in the ten minutes between my mouth starting and my brain finally catching up. Turns out, I might actually be pretty funny; I just have to be zonked out from surgery to do it.

the inner organs of my new year's goals

If I had known that Body Worlds would be the perfect New Year’s Eve activity, I would have recommended it to all of you beforehand. But I didn’t know. You can still go before they pack it up on January 11th.

The show was a perfect ring-in-another-january thing to do, mainly because it tweaked my age-old, lose-some-weight New Year’s goal cliché. The Body Worlds exhibit displayed the inner workings of the human body in a way I had never seen. And when I saw how intricate and intertwined the body’s systems really are, I wanted to take care of my own like never before.

Yesterday, I ate cucumbers and exercised. I could imagine the way my stomach needed to break down food; the thought made me chew more thoroughly. While I moved around, I could vividly picture my heart and the millions of little capillaries pumping blood all around inside of me. Even now, the quick, coordinated movements of my typing fingers astound me.

Body Worlds inspired me to take better care of this body of mine. Whoever said that knowledge is power must have been good at keeping their New Year’s resolutions.

Another email to a professor

Dr. Steele teaches Food Microbiology. This week we learned about microbes that cause food poisoning. I got food poisoning this same week, and sent him this email on Saturday:

Dr. Steele,

I think I should get a little extra credit for an out-of-class activity I'm doing right now. I'm experiencing a case of food poisoning.

I'm guessing it's foodborne intoxication, most likely Staphylococcus aureus, because it was quick onset, with mostly upper digestive tract symptoms, i.e. vomiting.

Thanks,
Christopher West

He replied:

Sorry to hear of your extracurricular experiences. Isn’t it great to be educated in your illnesses!

My Friendsh

God smote me Monday for being such fervent Obama supporter, by giving me empathy for John McCain.

I hadn't worked out my upper body for a good two years, since the last time my tennis elbow flared up really bad. Monday I went to the gym with my cousin Mike, and pushed myself until it hurt.

And it was a good hurt, until later that night. I woke up at 3am, in too much pain to sleep. My arms killed. The next night I downed some NyQuil to help me get to sleep. Kathy got upset, but I argued that though I wasn't "sniffly, sneezing, aching, sore throat," I was definitely aching. But I gave in and didn't take any the next day. I did argue with Kath that we should keep an emergency bottle of whiskey around for situations like this. She disagreed.

The next day I couldn't put my arms all the way down, and I couldn't reach them up very high. I basically had them pointed forward like John McCain does when he's making a point.
When I would reach to get my coat off of the hanger, or to get my toothbrush off of the shelf behind the mirror, I would have to stand on my tiptoes and angle my body funny, because I couldn't raise my arms above my shoulders.

Kathy commented that I looked like a T-rex.
I thought I looked more like an extra on Michael Jackson's Thriller.
I slept well last night without any whiskey or NyQuil, and I am feeling much better, my friendsh.

the great thing about feeling icky

Sometimes I feel like I can only blog about the happiest things, making my life look perfect (at least to the internet). I'm resisting that notion today:

I've felt like crap lately.

I have. It's been painful to get out of bed. My head and my stomach have hated me since last Tuesday. The medicine I had to take made me even more sick. And I almost cried about it in one of my professor's offices. I wished I could take my body off for a while, just to take a break.

But here's the thing. If you wake up as sludge every morning, you NOTICE the morning when you don't. You notice the way your muscles move. You notice how fast you can walk down the street. You notice how lovely sunshine feels. You notice individual leaves on trees that changed color so much since the last time you noticed.

You discover that feeling icky helped you pay attention today.
And somehow, that's great.

The 7 year old girl workout

Two years ago, I ran a marathon. Today, I ran a finger across my fat, hairy belly, and realized I wasn't in shape. I've decided to take up the 7 year old girl workout: jump-roping.A coworker said that jump-roping isn't a 7 year old girl workout. She said in elementary school she watched a video about athletes who jump-rope.

I said, "So when you were a little girl in elementary school you learned that jump-roping is a good workout?"

Good point.

I work and go to school. With that kind of time-crunch working out has become a dilemma between being fat and smelling good.

If I work out, I'll stink, but I'll be in shape. If I don't, I'll smell good, but be fat.

The worst part is, for the first few months, I'll be fat and smell bad.
Too bad our society places so much emphasis on smelling good. Fortunately Kathy has a terrible sense of smell.

tell me your worst nightmare

Fat people frighten me. Not overweight people, not jiggly people; I can understand those. I'm talking about people who have not seen their feet for a decade—people who would weigh 100 pounds on the moon. I don't fear them out of prejudice or some other misguided pride; I'm afraid because I don't want to become one. I'll tell you my most recent nightmare:

I needed to dress up for an important event. I tried on outfit after outfit. And every time I donned a new outfit, I instantly gained 15 pounds or so, meaning I couldn't go back to any previous outfits I had liked because they no longer fit. I almost feel like this happens daily with the items in my closet. Christopher has to reassure me every couple of days that, indeed, I have not ever remotely approached the size of a tank.

Between my unexplainable hormonal imbalance, two inert semesters without consistent exercise, and the handful of M&Ms in my mouth right now, I have every right to be afraid. I think I'm going to go do some push-ups.

Elephant in the Room

I had a friend who went out East to sell security systems with her husband a few years ago. Out East she got pregnant. She called three doctors, all three refused to see her. She said she felt like Mary in the Bible, no room in the inn.

Now the same thing has happened to my cousins. They are out selling in Texas for the summer. The wife got pregnant, they called over a dozen doctors, but none of them would help her. They plan on going to Fetal Photo to see if their baby is okay.

Something is wrong with our health care system if doctors are too worried about profit to help a pregnant lady and her baby.

Body Switchers

Kath said she'd like to switch her body for a new one while the old is fixed. Just like when your car is in the shop, they usually pay for you to use a rental car.

olive butter

I slather butter on my bread. It's a Finnish/American tradition. But today I decided to switch to olive oil.

Butter is solid at room temperature. It melts at about 90°F. This means it is more likely to form solid globules and clumps in your arteries, like the ones that killed Tim Russert.

I got the idea from Dolce Vita, the Italian restaurant that I endorse. Their appetizer was bread served with an olive oil and vinegar dip. I didn't have vinegar at my house, so I substituted grape juice, which is the same color, and lemon juice, which is about the same acidity. I then put a capful of olive oil on top, and dipped some of Kathy's homemade wheat bread in.















Mmm, delicious.

Our taste for fats and oils is acquired, so your preference can be changed in about eight weeks. I suggest the switch for your heart's sake.

The dip is a little messy, but a heart-attack more so.

Dr.pedia

Kathy and I have injured our feet. Kathy likely has a lisfranc fracture, which was discovered by a doctor who worked for Napoleon's army. Napoleon's troops got it by hopping off their horses so they'd land with one foot on the ground, but the other still in the stirrup.


Kathy dismounted four cement stairs on our porch in the same manner, with her left foot still on the top and her right on the bottom. It was an icy January night. The speed of the dismount gave the tendon enough force to snap bone off of the foot.
If caught on time, the lisfranc fracture can be treated in six weeks. Unfortunately it is the most misdiagnosed foot fracture. Kathy's is no exception. It was a family member/doctor who gave the diagnosis, our local health center doctors are still guessing. We plan on telling them the diagnosis on Thursday.

I have plantar faciitis, which is like tennis elbow of the heel. I just need to take it easy for a while. I self-diagnosed myself with the help of google and wikipedia, which are faster, more patient, and perhaps more reliable than most doctors.