AaarrrrRRRRR!

Happy International Talk Like a Pirate Day!

Okay, so I wore Dave's pirate shirt "Pirates of Yore", and attempted to borrow Alli's pirate hat from her Halloween costume for this year. Unfortunately, of all my body parts to be fat, my head is one of the least I'd expect to be! The bloody hat didn't fit.

So I decided to make do instead with the eye patch. Yes. I was sexy and daring. Going around saying "AAaaarr!" and "Avast matey!" all day was certainly a good way to break up the monotony of the workplace.

And no one had to walk the plank. Me be heartily disappointed. Arrrr.

Doctor Updates

So... I saw Dr. Weinshel on Monday.

This is the game plan - not much has changed:

Keep me on Lovenox. (yay)
Come back in 6 weeks so they can do another ultrasound on my left leg.

If a.) the clot or thrombus as its called is the same size, no worries.
If b.) the clot is bigger, I go back on Coumadin and scrap pregnancy for 6 months to a year - if I am not already prego, that is.

There's always hope. I have two cycles then to get knocked up. If not, then we'll wait until after we get married next November. It's all good.

That is all, good people.

Someone's Pregnant...and I'm borrowing her Fertility Monitor

Kathleen is FINALLY pregnant!! YAYYYYYYYYYYY!!! For the first time EVER, in her LIFE, she is prego.

Get it?

Prego! (It's in there.)

Okay, maybe you're too young if you don't get the Prego Spaghetti Sauce reference. Nevermind.

But yay!! So, she's due, funnily enough, at the end of April 2008. hehehe. Like we don't have enough going on in that month, what with MY birthday, Alli's birthday, Kathleen's birthday, Kathleen and Charlie's anniversary.... criminy! Let's just add another birthday in there for the heck of it. Why not?!

So we were talking the other night and she's decided that she's going to let me borrow her fertility monitor since she's pregnant (5 weeks officially ~ they were spreading the word on Monday). She's even giving me some of her pee strips - oh stoppit! They're UN-USED ones. Sheesh.

I think she's hoping I get prego here in the next couple weeks (Yay! I'm fertile the weekend before Alli starts school!) so she and I can share the experience of the nausea, the heartburn, backache, hemorrhoids, and horrendous gas together with a large dose of emotional rollercoaster of feelings on the side.

I have to wonder if we do, will we survive each other's crabbiness, bitchiness, and eating each other out of house and home? Keep you posted.

"The Doctor isn't worried about you at all!"

Oy.

Tuesday night I ran by the ER just to say Hi to all my admirers there at Fairview Southdale. I came ready - pre-packed undies, enough romance novels to read for 10 hours, appropriate Cottonelle clean wipes, and socks...in my Dumbledore's Army bag, no less.

Seriously, I've had a funky feeling in my leg since last Tuesday. And after a day of moving around on it, my left leg began to hurt in the calf. Oh yes, you guessed it dear reader, it's another clot. Yay me!

I spent 3 and 1/2 hours in the ER for them to tell me:
a.) It's a clot
And then called the MOHPA doc on call, Dr. Sang to decide if they wanted to admit me or not. They decided not to, and to have me call my regular Hematologist's office in the morning.
So they:
b.) Sent me home.

Now, the bonuses are that I got to sleep in my own bed and snuggle with my man. The negatives were trying to reconcile the ER docs telling me it's 'a minor clot'. WTF? Whoever heard of a MINOR CLOT???

I played phone tag all day Wednesday as a sat in bed, watching movies with Alli and reading, and generally entertaining us both with this HUGE pack of dry-erase EXPO markers I got - more on that later. Anyways... when it all came down to it, Doc Weinshel's nurse Brianna told me that I can resume all normal activity... they are keeping me on the Lovenox, it's probably a chronic clot that I just happened to notice (sure) and I can go back to work on Thursday without issues, and he's not all that concerned about the clot as it's nonocclusive (which is a fancy word for "not blocking anything") and fairly minor. Brianna kept telling me to wiggle my ankles alot though... Hmm. But yeah...

So this is where it is:

I'm still on Lovenox.
They are not putting me back on Coumadin anytime soon.
We can still try to get pregnant.

But THEN... I've been reading some scary shite the last couple days about the rate of maternal deaths. Most of them are related to c-sections and clotting. Well, DUH that's exactly the two situations I didn't want to see.

But then if you read the article completely, it brings up the fact that most of these women are black, in their late 30's and early 40's, and are unable to have the babies vaginally, and are obese.

I look at myself and think, Hmm...I'm 28, obese, but I would be a planned c-section, and I already take a whole bunch of anticoagulant drugs to keep me where I need to be as far as NOT clotting....oh yeah, and I'm a white chick with no other health problems to speak of...so far.

So in one way, I'm a bit concerned, but in another, I'm not. I would already be labeled a high-risk mother and should already therefore be receiving the best and most specialized care they can offer me.

But then I think about the Perinatologist, Dr. Ney, that I'd spoken to and seen for my D&C. She was so totally on board for me getting pregnant last I saw her. And if Dr. Weinshel is good to go, then I don't see why we shouldn't proceed as planned. I have faith in my doctors, but I'm certainly not ignorant after spending years around them.

Only the God and Goddess can guide us now. Blessings Be to all the harried and adored mothers in the world tonight. :)

What Color is Your Soul?

What color is your soul painted? Purple Your soul is painted the color purple, which embodies the characteristics of sensuality, spirituality, creativity, wealth, royalty, nobility, mystery, enlightenment, arrogance, gaudiness, mourning, confusion, pride, delicacy, power, meditation, religion, and ambition. Purple falls under the element of Earth, and was once a European symbol of royalty; today it symbolizes the divine. Click Here to Take This Quiz

Quizzes and Personality Tests

"Wow, You're really letting your Geek flag fly with that bag..."

... so said one of my co-workers today, commenting on my "Dumbledore's Army" messenger bag. Yes, I AM that nerdy. And paired with a "Dumbledore for President" pin... well, the ensemble was complete!

Anyways... not too much new here. Alli was diagnosed with strep throat on Tuesday thanks to Urgent Care. Yay! She stayed home and bugged Dave Wednesday.... and seems to think if she's good enough, she just might get the Mario RC kart from ThinkGeek. Hm. Who possibly gave her that idea, honey? *Stares Dave down*

Ahh well...it's working as a bribe for now.

I started my Lovenox shots today (YAY!), meaning Dave and I can mambo 'til we drop and conception is a GOOD thing now. I'm taking down the baby-making ticker and replacing it with a wedding one until I have good news about a "wee bairn" to share. I have a doc appt on the 23rd for lab, to make sure the Lovenox dosage they have me on is enough, and then again on the 27th for a full check-over. THEN, on this Monday, I have my yearly fondle and scrape. *shudders* At least I don't have to turn my head and cough. Ain't NO ONE puttin' nothin' up my a$$. It has a sign that proudly hangs above stating quite clearly, "Exit Only".

My honey has ordered my laptop. YAY! Set for arrival at the end of the month. And we finally agreed on a beautiful, but not horribly expensive engagement ring. Yes. I promise to take good care of it.

And last weekend, we finally told my parents. Ahhh lovely Quarry Days weekend....
They seemed happy, showering us with congratulations. We'll see how long it takes before they try to cause issues - although they did agree that we can use their commercial kitchen for our caterers, Chefs Naturally.

It'll be all good. Right?

Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows

*****It took me almost 8 hours to read this book. I'm not intending to release spoilers here!! I promise!!******

I have to say, I loved it. It was fantastic -and only the second or third time ever, that I've cried so hard about characters who have died or been killed.

Such an emotional response is only natural to give to characters that you have known so well over the last 8 -10 years that it's taken to get through all the previous books and wait hungrily to devour the last course.... the Deathly Hallows.

Death is never a joy to write, I'm sure. But I took comfort in the fact that a couple of the people she killed off were a 'couple' and in the romantic style, one could not have gone on without the other. Order members until the end, they fought beside Harry at the Battle of Hogwarts, leaving their newborn child to suffer the same fate as Harry... now a young godfather to a child who would know his parents sacrificed themselves for the defeat of Voldemort.

So much in this book made me cry. I think Alli, to quote Ron, would think mommy "...was mental, that one!". Reading each page and knowing this would likely be the last adventure to share with these characters - human with their flaws, written so well and lovingly drawn. If you are a reader of the Harry Potter series, you sobbed when Dumbledore was killed by Snape, you laughed and snickered when Ron found out about Harry and Ginny and their stolen moments...I'm sure your heart melted a bit, too.

And so, I read through the entire book, trying to process the story as I went, rushing but trying to savor the story, who was doing what, and what I thought was to be the foreshadow of events to come.

When all was said and done, I was happy for the most part. 3 deaths I found unnecessary, but I can see why she wrote them in. The Order needed to suffer losses and a large family has to lose someone, right?

The Epilogue was satisfying in the way that you knew what happened to the central characters - the best that was suspected all along.

Closing the book, it was 11:30pm by the clock. I felt weepy as I realized this was, again, the last adventure at Hogwarts....maybe EVER. Knowing what became of the characters was all well and good, but now I had nothing to look forward to at Hogwarts... or the Burrow.... or Grimmauld Place with Kreacher.

With everything tied up in a neat and tidy bow, I effectively felt left out as I looked inside the crystal ball and realized this was it. A happy exit for those who lived and thrived after Voldemort was destroyed.

I'm still stunned at the amount of reading and the auto comprehension I put my brain through yesterday; from 2:30pm until 4pm and then again from 5:30pm to 11:30pm. But of course, it was entirely worth it. And one day, when I'm not so emotional, I will read it again and hope to enjoy the epilogue more.

I can only wonder how Book 6 and 7 will fare under a screenwriter's script. Book 7 is full of so many places and so many close-calls. There's no telling how they'll be able to fit it all into a 2 and 1/2 hour movie. Maybe they'll make a 6 hour movie, released in two parts to combine Book 6 and 7. Hmm....