Pictures

How was everyone's Memorial Day weekend? We had a great time. I think I've had my fill of hot dogs and hamburgers for awhile now. Thought I would put up some pictures we took this weekend in lieu of a post. Can't really think of anything to write about at the moment. Where's a good meme when you need it?
Grandma and the girls
Ruby and Olivia with Papa
My Brother David and Billy.
Me with my good looking guys.

Ruby's Birth Story

Ruby's birthday is tomorrow and what a perfect opportunity to share her birth story. Let me get right down to it and bring out my drama queen: I almost died.
It started out relatively normal. I was laying on the couch watching tv when my water broke. I called my doctor's office and let them know and before we headed off to the hospital I had Jim run out and get some food. Having done this before I knew that if I didn't eat now it could be a long time before my next meal.
When we got to the hospital the nurse did an examination to check for amniotic fluid. When the ph strip didn't turn the right color they told me that my water had not broke and that I could go home. I refused to accept that. With all three of my previous babies the first thing to happen was the water breaking. I knew that my water had broke and I was not going to be told otherwise. They finally did a sonogram to measure the amniotic fluid. Yeah like I told them, my water had broke.
By the time I got settled in my room it was later in the evening. The nurse told me they could go ahead and give me petocin and we could have this baby tonight. I asked if my doctor would be here and I was told that it was the nurse midwife who was on call from my doctor's practice. Knowing the complications of my previous births I told the nurse I would feel more comfortable waiting for Dr. Reynolds to be here. Later on I would realize this was of the best decisions I ever made.
The next morning the petocin was started and soon after that the contractions came on fast and furious. Before too long I was ready for the epidural and the anesthesiologist came in to stick me in the spine. I had an epidural with all three of my previous births and they were great. This time it didn't work. They tried and tried over and over again but they weren't getting it in the right spot. I was not happy, I didn't want natural childbirth! After a couple of hours of petocin strength contractions the assholes finally got it right, just in time for me to start pushing. This part went pretty easy and after a few pushes our little girl was born.
This is when things started going downhill and my memory is spotty. While the nurses were weighing Ruby and cleaning her up Dr. Reynolds was working on getting the placenta out. It was not coming out very easily and I was bleeding a lot. At some point the bleeding became excessive. The nurses handed the baby to Jim and there were a lot of people in the room. Dr. Reynolds was still working on the placenta and at this point I had lost so much blood I was going in and out of consciousness. Jim said it was like mass chaos had erupted and he felt helpless just watching. Dr. Reynolds called out for a blood transfusion and shortly after that I was wheeled away for an emergency hysterectomy. Jim said there was blood everywhere and a trail of blood coming off the bed as I was wheeled away. Even though I was mostly out of it I was still aware enough to know that things were not good. I told Dr. Reynolds to not let me die.
After the surgery I was taken to the recovery room. Jim came down to see me for a few minutes, it was so good to see his face and to see the person who went through this with me. We were both in a "What the hell just happened?" state. I sent him back upstairs to be with our baby. The hour I spent in recovery was on of the longest of my life. I couldn't wait to get back up to my room and to hold my new baby and be with my family.

All in all I lost 3 liters of blood (yep, that's more than half). I was also left with a nasty scar on my stomach. Since the surgery was an emergency there was no time to make a neat and pretty incision. I have a big scar that starts right under my belly button down about 5 inches. I've gotten used to it though, I consider it a life tattoo. A reminder of the difficult day my beautiful baby girl came into my world. Happy Birthday to my Ruby.












Our first picture together.
(I had a really good excuse for looking this bad.)

Win Some Stuff

Mothergoosemouse is having a contest. She gives you a snippet of lyrics and you have to come up with the song title and artist. It's so much harder than you think. A few of them sounded so familiar but I just couldn't figure them out, it drove me crazy. Go ahead and give it a try.

It Was Just A Dream (or was it?)

I had a dream last night that a hacker broke into my blog and put 50,000 posts of nothing but nonsense on it. Hmmm? Does that one need analyzed?
Check out Ramses was a playa. I found it entertaining, hope you like it too.
C'mon now, Samuel L. Jackson as the burning bush? How could you not?

Chit Chat

It was a crappy week. I've been sick and tired, therefore no closets were cleaned and no Summer clothes were dug out. This is the first day I've felt halfway normal, maybe things are on the upward swing.
But just because I was sick didn't mean things weren't happening around here. My baby boy had a run in with a spider this week. He was in the basement playing in his tent. I was upstairs and heard his blood-curdling screams. I ran downstairs and Jim was asking if he was hurt, Billy didn't answer he just kept on screaming. Jim looked in the tent and the ugliest, biggest and blackest spider was hanging out in there. Poor Billy, he inherited my arachniphobia. It's funny, this happened just a few days after reading Domesticator's frightening tale of her spider battle. I got the heebie-jeebies just reading her post and comments. At least my oldest son is not scared of spiders, he's my spider hunter when Jim is gone.
My oldest Daughter took part in the female rite of passage called hair removal. I tried to talk her out of it. I appealed to her rebellious side, "Why do want to be like everyone else?" I tried to appeal to her common sense side, "Once you start you can never stop!" I even told her how much I loved her little blonde fuzzy legs (that one probably pushed her to it). I finally relented. How can I expect her to fight the power on this one when I caved and am still caving myself. The day after she wore a skirt for the first time this year. *sigh* My daughter is growing up *sigh
Which brings me to my baby girl. Ruby is turning two next week. Did I tell you I think she's going to be bartender. Thanks to her Dad she knows the difference (by sight, thank you very much) between wine, beer and vaka (vodka, as she calls it). I'm so proud.

I'm Done!

"Now here we go dropping science, dropping it all over. Like bumping around the town like when you're driving a Range Rover" - Beastie Boys

I took my final last night and now I have nothing taking up every single minute of my free time (what little of it there is). First on the agenda? Switch out Winter and Summer clothes and clean out some closets. That may sound boring, but as long as it has nothing to do with molarity and titration it sounds wonderful to me!

There's Always Mom

Did you know that Laurie Anderson and Lou Reed are a couple? You won't read that in "In Touch" magazine.
Now this isn't a gossip post it's going to be a Mother's Day post and as I sit writing this I can tell it's not going to be that great of a day for me. I have a cold, I got less than 6 hours sleep last night, my kids woke up at 6:30 this morning, my husband is working today and I have to study all day for my final exam tomorrow. I guess you could say it's a true Mother's Day, no delusions of grandeur around here.

Oh well. One bright thought for today is that I'm happy to say my Mom has always been there for me and in honor of her on Mother's Day I would like to share some of my favorite facts about my Mom as a person and a Mother.

My Mom grew up in a small, country town of about 30 people.

She graduated Valedictorian of her class.

She attended Vassar College on a scholarship.

I came into her life when she was just 20 years old (bye-bye Vassar).

My Mom started her own consulting company when she was 30 years old.

She's been to all 50 states and many countries, including Australia, Tahiti, New Zealand, England and France. She's planning to go to China this Summer.

My Mom is a talented seamstress. She made some really cool Halloween costumes for me when I was young.












My Mother would read to me a LOT. Some of my favorites were the Oz books and "The Hobbit".

She sold her company in 1995 and retired for 9 years.

She's working again. She likes to work.

My Mom accepts me for who I am and if she was ever disappointed by my choices I never knew it.



I want my Mom to know how proud I am of her, how much I love her and how grateful I am for everything she's done for me. Hopefully when she reads this today she will.

I Miss Bill

Where is our Kenneth Starr? Why hasn't the left wing conspiracy spent millions of tax dollars to dig up any and all dirt that they can on Bush? Why hasn't Bush been hounded like Clinton was from the day he started campaigning?

I have heard the pundits and talking heads say many times that the Democrats have been effectively neutered. The Dems better find their balls, figure out their platform and get their shit together real quick or we are going to have eight more years of oil royalty in the White House.

I Did My Part

When a baby is born everyone likes to play the game "Who does she/he look like?" Looking for the familiar signs of your features and heritage can be an entertaining pastime.
Genes are a funny thing. There was a couple up the street who had fraternal twins. The Mother was from South America and had dark skin and dark hair and the Dad was red headed and had fair skin with freckles. Their twins? One was a carbon copy of Mom the other an exact match of his Dad. It was like there was no mixing of the genes at all.

My son Billy doesn't look like me, he looks more like his Daddy. When I've been out with him alone people have asked if he was adopted. The weird thing is that he looks more than a quarter Korean, it's more like half. Usually by the time your down to just a quarter most of the Korean traits are very subtle. Case in point is our Daughter Ruby. If you know she's part Korean you can see it. If you didn't? You would have no idea. I've seen many quarter Korean kids and that seems to be common. But not Billy.
I have my theory on why he looks so Asian. He got the extra push from my gene pool. I have Norwegian heritage in my family and if you have ever seen Northern Europeans you will notice they sometimes have Asian features in their eyes and bone structure. Here is a picture of my great Aunt Bonnie.











When it comes to Ruby people don't think she looks like Jim. I wonder if that's because she doesn't have strong Korean features like her brother.
Ruby does look like me. But here is proof that Jim did his part too.

Blogger Problems?

Is any one else having a problem with blogger or is it just picking on me? When I am trying to write a post and I click on the compose or preview button they don't work. It figures Blogger is acting up, I was just saying to myself how easy it's been lately with no glitches whatsoever. I should of found a piece of wood to knock on. My bad:(

God Bless America

Read about the injustice here. I think the old saying "As American as Apple Pie" is outdated. "As American as All You Can Eat Buffet" sounds so much more appropriate.

Daydreaming

I bought several House and Garden magazines at the thriftstore yesterday. This picture was in one of them. Could you imagine this being your garden? It blows my mind. This is the kind of picture I wish I could climb into. Especially when things are crazy around here.
Calgon anyone?

That's what friends are for

Cameo and I have known each other for 20 years now and we are still finding out new things about one another.
A few months ago we got on the subject of Miss Piggy. We found out that we were both big fans of hers back in the early 80's and we both had the Miss Piggy sheets and the Miss Piggy mug. We also wondered if Miss Piggy had any effect on our emerging preteen psyches, the same way we have discussed the effect Maddona may have had on our teenage sexuality.
Well enough with the pop culture psych. The real reason for this post is to show off my May Day gift. Cameo found this Miss Piggy mug at a garage sale. Needless to say it makes me very happy.
It's nice to have a friend you can connect with on many levels, especially if one of them is a mutual preteen love for a bossy ass, frog smothering, egotistical pig.

Silly me.....I forgot where I was.

I live in a red state. In the heart of bible belt country. These facts had never been so real to me as they were tonight. During chemistry class tonight my teacher said that when she HAD to teach evolution she reminded her students that there were other theories out there. WTF! I was shocked! So there goes my respect for the science teacher. A SCIENCE TEACHER for god sakes! Then here comes my big mistake, I had to open my mouth.
I have developed a semi-friendship with the woman who sits next to me. We have studied together and talked on the phone a few times. I turned to her and said that it sounds like our teacher was a bible beater. This is how the conversation went:
Her-"What do you mean?"
Me- "When she HAD to teach evolution?"
Her- "I think if they teach evolution they should also teach creationism."
Me-"Shouldn't that be taught in church?"
Her-"No, it should be taught in school along with evolution"
Me-"It has no basis in science."
Her-"Evolution hasn't been proven so why is it taught in school?"
Me-"It's a scientific theory supported by scientific facts"
Her-"Well it's only fair to teach creationism too"
Me-"Well then we need to teach the hindu, muslim and buddhist creation stories too."
Her- (in a snotty tone) "They probably will."
At that point I said that we should quit talking about it and she had a pissed off look on her face.

I feel so foolish for thinking that everyone feels the way I do. I will be polite to this person when I see her again but anything else will be impossible for me. I cannot be friends with someone who has that kind of short sighted view of the world. Maybe that is short sighted of me but I can't help it. I also know that arguing about isn't going to change anyone's mind and that I never should of said anything about it in the first place. As I was driving home from class tonight I felt sick to my stomach. This shit is for real. These people are for real.

And if they ever start teaching creationism in public school?
I'm pulling my kids out.

Words. They Come and Go.

Have you ever read any books from the 19th/early 20th century like "Uncle Tom's Cabin" or "The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn"? The word truck is used in both of them and it obviously doesn't have the same meaning it does today. I asked a teacher back in high school and she told me to figure it out on my own. (Ahhh, the joys of learning) I came to the conclusion that "truck" meant "stuff" . In every sentence you could exchange truck for stuff and it made sense. I did an internet search today on the past meaning of "truck" and found out "truck" was also a word for business.
Which brings me to an ongoing pastime that Cameo and I have. We have come up with many words that we heard our grandparents say that are no longer used.(Yep, we're dorks like that) Here are the ones I could think of this morning.

Icebox.........Fridge
Pocketbook.........Purse
Housecoat.........Robe
Filling Station.........Gas Station
Devann.........Couch
Slacks.........Pants
Trade.........Shop
Cream Rinse (very 70's).........Conditioner
Sweeper.........Vacuum
Can you think of any?

I wonder what words we use now will have our grand kids saying "huh?".