Magically Delicious

i cannot even begin to tell you guys out there in internet land what a hellish week i have had. i mentioned that my mom got put in the hospital, and let me tell you guys, pancreatitis is BAD stuff. and she has the worst kind possible. the kind where the chances of survival are basically 50/50. she got moved to baptist hospital in pensacola wednesday, and she was moved into the intensive care unit later that night. her doctor thought she was going to die that night, but he didn't tell us that until thursday. but she didn't. she's still in really bad shape, but they moved her out of ICU saturday and into a private room last night. my whole family flew or drove in. it's like some kind of twisted family reunion. my brother had to go back to tennessee last night, though, and my uncle jimmy had to go back to south carolina. i'm not sure when uncle george is flying back to california. all the demerol and morphine mom was on was making her loopy, and the nurse told me that she woke up sometime last night and didn't even know her name. they've backed off the pain medicine by a lot now to avoid that in the future. when she was in ICU, they had her on so much pain medicine that if they gave her any more she'd stop breathing. she's talking much better now, though. she's still not allowed to eat or drink anything, but they've started to feed her a little bit through a tube in her stomach instead of through her IV. for the first 6 days, they were pumping her stomach constantly. so, there are signs that she's getting better, but she won't be out of the hospital anytime soon. sammi is staying with me and chad until wednesday. the only reason she can't stay after that is that chad and i are going to port st. joe thursday and friday. i feel crazy guilty about it, but i have no choice. i have to go. there's no one else to do it. so, sammi's going to stay with my granny this weekend. i might go pick her up saturday.

on top of all the stuff with my mom, we've been moving. and what a pain in the ass that's been. the house reeked of cigarette smoke after the previous owners moved out, so we were forced to paint the living room as well as the purple fairy room (which chad says is now "thrasher blue", as in the atlanta thrashers - a terrible color on a hockey jersey, but nice on a wall). sammi helped me with that. plus, there was a raging flea infestation... and those little buggers find me magically delicious. i seriously look like i have chicken pox. and kind of feel like it, too. i am covered in flea bites from head to toe. literally. i have them on my neck, back, stomach, arms, legs, feet, hands, chest, and even one right at the top of my butt crack. they decided to get invasive for that one. chad's been putting poison in the yard for days, and we flea bombed the house (we used all 6 foggers in the pack), but they're still on the back porch (despite spreading and spraying a couple of different things). poor krull. he's scratching like crazy. i feel his pain. we're going to ask the vet if he's too young to get a flea pill instead of the puppy spray stuff. it doesn't work worth crap. i even had fleas in my car. chad took care of that last night, though. they seem to be gone from inside the house, so i'm ok now. still itchy, though. chad and sammi don't have anywhere near the number of bites that i do. probably because all the fleas flock to me.

sammi and i have to go and clean up the apartment today so we can turn in the keys. then we can turn to the task of unpacking. our new bedroom suite is being delivered sometime tomorrow, so we can start that while we're waiting for the delivery guys.

all right. time to wake sammi up so she can shower and we can get to work.

Back Again

hi guys. it's been another one of those weeks where i don't have much time for blogging. i went back to port st. joe this past thursday to check on an experiment. i only killed 12 sea urchins this time (compared to the whopping 60 that were dead last time i went out), so i was excited about that. when i go back next week (for the last time this summer) chad is coming with me, so he will finally see exactly what my field work entails and learn why i always come home with so many cuts and bruises.

in other news, chad and i are planning to begin our big move on thursday. i'm going to go and paint the guest room ('cause right now it's a purple fairy room, and i'm just not that into purple fairies), probably wednesday or thursday. i'll take krull with me so he can get a feel for his new yard. he's growing pretty fast, and it's becoming obvious that he was born to be a yard dog. he's still doing ok with the not pottying inside, but he chews on everything, and he's growing like a maniac. i swear he's gained a few pounds since we brought him home a week ago. yep, he's definitely bigger. when he gets rowdy (that is, when he gets bitey), i try to take him outside and let him run off his excess energy. he doesn't, like, bite bite, just little puppy chewing. but it still kind of hurts sometimes. and he shouldn't chew on people. we tell him "no" a lot (using our "we mean business, we're not just playing with you" voices). but, he sits on command, and he fetches (sometimes, when he's in the mood for chasing), and he's really cute when he's kind of sleepy and just licks the crap out of you. he particularly likes feet. he's a big toe-licker. so if you come visit us, beware. krull the warrior king is going to lick your toes. and he might try to eat your shorts. don't let him do that. i refuse to play with him anymore when he starts trying to eat my clothes, no matter how big and pathetic those puppy dog eyes are and no matter how much he whines.

our parents were all planning on coming to help us move this weekend, but i kind of doubt that my mom is going to be able to come. see, my aunt called me last night to tell me that my mom is in the hospital with pancreatitis. yikes. she's on tons of morphine, codeine, and other assorted pain medications with a tube in her stomach. and she's not allowed to eat anything until it clears up. my aunt was supposed to call me back today when she found out how long mom would be in the hospital. i read about pancreatitis, and it seems that it usually clears up after a few days (as long as you get to a doctor before excess bile and stuff leads to an infection), but it hurts a lot while you have it. so, i might be heading over to jay hospital tomorrow to see my mommy. i was also thinking about going to pick my little sis up so she can still come this weekend and help me clean the apartment up after we move and then help me reupholster the couch. sammi (my li'l sis) is currently staying with my granny. i'll call her in a little while and see how things are going over there.

that's about it from latina land. i'll try to post again in a couple of days. adios!

Meet Our Puppy

it's a little sooner than we'd planned, but chad and i now have a puppy. one of his parents' neighbors' dogs had puppies with the bull mastiff that chad's parents somehow adopted from the same neighbors (they fed him, and he hung around), and the puppies aren't being very well taken care of. the puppies are about two months old now, and the owners aren't really feeding them or anything. so chad decided to go ahead and "rescue [the one he wanted] from those pitiful conditions." so one came back to mobile with us. to live in our apartment for about two weeks. until we move and he can live in the back yard. he's a boy, and we named him krull. as in krull the warrior king. from How to Lose a Guy in 10 Days. it makes me laugh.

anyway, he's pretty good at the whole living inside thing. you know, for a dog who has been outside his whole short life. he sleeps a lot. right now he's zonked out on the couch. don't worry, he can wallow on that one all he wants, since i'm about to reupholster it anyway. isn't he cute?


































i left for a couple of hours eariler, and he managed not to potty anywhere in the apartment, so that's pretty good. he whines at the door when he needs to go. we tried to barricade him in the kitchen, but he's pretty crafty. so we just moved everything out of the living room that we didn't want him chewing on and closed the bedroom door so krull can only go in the living room, dining area, and kitchen. i didn't think he could get up on the couch, but when i came home from the lab a little while ago he was sitting on it, wagging his tail at me.

i was worried that he'd go nuts and bark his head off while no one was home (while he's awake, he pretty much insists on being in the same room with us), but he seems to be doing pretty well. hangin' out, sleeping, chewing on some rawhide bones and toys.

and that, my friends, is our vicious guard dog.

Officially Homeowners

chad and i are now officially homeowners. we closed on the house yesterday, and everything went smoothly. it took forever, but it went smoothly. yay! no more papers to sign and initial! we signed or initialed every page in a stack no less than an inch thick. some of the ones from the mortgage company, i would swear we'd signed before. but oh well. all the paperwork is done... and our first mortgage payment isn't due until september 1st. so we're basically getting away without having to pay either rent or a house payment for august. sweet.

we did get keys (but not all of them) yesterday at closing (the rest of them will be left in the house when the current residents finish moving). but the folks who live there now don't close on their new house until next friday, so we won't be able to move in until the week after that. our parents are coming down the 29th to help us move all our big stuff, and my mom and sister will probably stay that night and help us get the apartment spic and span, and then my mom is going to help me reupholster the couch. that will be, like, the busiest weekend ever.

so, the weekend after that is my birthday, but maybe i'll invite some of you peeps over to see the new house then anyway (and celebrate the fabulousness of latina?). or perhaps we will do a weekday dinner party like nessa. we shall see. i'll let you guys (you know who you are) know once we get settled.

for now, it's off to spend the weekend with the 'rents. we haven't seen them in a while (or, i haven't seen my people in a while. we just saw chad's people on the 4th of july). then, the next time we see them, we'll be using them as labor. but they won't mind.

An Awkward Visit to the Gynecologist

yeah, that annual exam deal that most women go through is not typically something i like to talk about. it's unpleasant, but over quickly. and today i feel the need to share. my appointment for the year was this morning. and it sucked.

so, i arrived ten minutes before my appointment, which was at 8:10. and of course, i was called back to an exam room fifteen minutes after my appointment time, and twenty minutes after that, the doctor came in. and he was cute. really cute. he's what you would get if you crossed jordan krestanovich with bill kinkel (for those who know what those two look like).

there should be a rule that says that a male gynecologist is not allowed to be cute. it just seems weird to me to have a cute guy poking around my private parts. my old gynecologist, who was also of the male persuasion, went and retired on me. that bastard. so i have a new gynecologist now. who is male. and who is not at all old. and who is cute. i want my little nerdy old man back. the attractive and not old guy weirds me out. he made me nervous. and he kept cracking little jokes, trying to put me at ease. like, when he listened to my heart, he said, "yep. still there." my little old man used to ask me about grad school and stuff. that's the sort of thing i can talk about with my doctor. i don't need a cute one who makes jokes. have i mentioned that it's weird?

anyway, the second item of business that weirded me out about the cute doctor was the way he introduced himself. oh, and the office has moved to a new building. so, new place, new doc, weirdness. but back to the point, he walks in (while i'm sitting on the exam table, wearing nothing but an open hospital gown with this thin paper blanket covering the exposed bits), and says, "hi. i'm cory." not "hi. i'm dr. jacobs." but "hi. i'm cory. i'm one of the OB/GYNs here." as if i didn't assume that he was a doctor. the doctor with whom i had an appointment. and he was cute. and that was fundamentally weird.

and then, he did the whole exam thing, which took two minutes, and then i was dressed and he was writing me a new birth control prescription, and then i got the hell out of there. because the whole thing was just so weird.

may none of my girls out there ever have a cute gynecologist. it's weird, man.

Greetings

hello all. i know it's been a while since you've heard from me. you must have been going crazy. but here i am, back for a short post. i've been busy lately, so i haven't really had much time for blogging. i was back in port st. joe last wednesday thru friday (where i was sad to discover that i had contributed to the deaths of 60 sea urchins), and i've been busy with house stuff... tons of mortgage papers to sign, questions to ask, meetings to set up, etc. chad and i are meeting with our insurance agent this afternoon to sign more papers, then we're doing the final walk through of the house tomorrow morning. then friday afternoon, it's closing time. and i'm sure there will be tons more papers to sign then. then there will be moving... and the purchasing of a new bedroom suite... and the cleaning of the apartment before we turn in the keys. there may also be reupholstering of the couch. i'm not sure about that yet. i just know that i can't find a slipcover the appropriate shade of green (though i did find a throw the right shade at linens n things). i'll probably hit some fabric stores later this week to consider my options for reupholstery. if it gets done, i'll do it myself. it doesn't look that hard. i did a search yesterday for some DIY instructions, and i really don't think it will be that difficult.

anyway, i have to run off to dauphin island to weigh and scan some seagrass leaves. sorry i don't have time to write more. adios!