Dear Heartburn, I Hate Your Guts (Get It? Guts?!?)

Here is the conversation my body has been having with itself lately:

Stomach: Hey, who wants to see what dinner looks like again, this time soaked in gastric acid?

Throat: Ooo, me me me!


Brain: I hate you guys.



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The Cave

I am 12 weeks along today. And I feel like I am slowly coming out of a very dark, very awful cave. Slowly. There is light up ahead. I'm not quite there yet. But I can see the light and smell a bit of fresh air.

Today was a good day. I felt good, I had enough energy to clean the whole house. I even put up a few Halloween decorations. Ya, just a tad late on that. But between the morning sickness and the flu I had last week, I just haven't felt like doing anything. ANYTHING. Getting out of bed? Barely. Put on make-up? Only the bare minimum. Cleaning? Nope. Cooking? Definitely not. Blogging? Emailing? Online shopping? Reading? All the things I usually really enjoy? No, not even those. I swear, this pregnancy has just sucked the life right out of me. Well, all pregnancies, but this one most lately.

It's funny how when you're in the midst of morning sickness and fatigue and general ickiness you can't remember what it was like before and you don't realize how bad it really is. But once you start coming out of it, you realize just how bad your quality of life has been for the last 2 1/2 months. It's a little shocking.

So I apologize to everyone--my few faithful readers, my kids, my cat, my neglected house, my friends and family, and most importantly, my wonderful sweet husband who has taken such excellent care of me during this awfulness.

Hopefully as my will to live is restored, my will to blog and read blogs will too. I've missed it. I've missed YOU. I'm going to go reacquaint myself with that little button at the top of my gmail page: READER.

See you soon....

The Truth About Anti-Depressants

It's not an easy thing for anyone to admit, that they need a little medical help to feel normal. It's something we mostly try to keep under wraps. It's not talked about, though so many suffer from the same problem. So I wanted to write a post to get this topic out in the open.

Everyone gets the blues now and then, right? The problem really occurs when your blues start to change you. When they start to affect everyone around you. When they start making your house a place no one wants to be in. When people start loving you less and avoiding you because of how your behavior affects them. When you might even be driving everyone crazy enough that they secretly want to just lock you away...

Then it's time to step up and get help. Even if that help is in the form of a little pill. If it can fix things, if it can make you return to your happy, playful, non-anxious self, then it's worth it right? At least that's what the doctor said. That's why I went ahead and filled a prescription today.


For Prozac.



For FLOSSIE!




Yes, it's true. My cat has anxiety and depression. Am I living in Beverly Hills or something?! Who ever heard of a cat needing Prozac? AND VALIUM? But that is what Flossie's vet thinks will cure her of her desire to piddle all over the house ever since we moved. Oookay. Well, I'm game. Stuffing a pill into a little chicken-flavored pocket twice a day is better than hunting down cat pee with a black light and enzyme cleaner every night. It has to be. Right???

See, she's looking more mellow (and continent) already.

Love Is In the Air

Or at least allergens. I am beginning to wonder how many times a day a person can blow their nose before the skin literally begins to rub off. My eyes are itchy and watery, my nose is leaking like a tap. I have nearly an entire box of tissues balled up in my trash can. I've been taking allergy medication as often as possible but it doesn't seem to help. What is in the air that is killing me so much?

This is actually the second or third time this spring/summer that I've had a major allergy attack. When I lived in Detroit, I suffered from terrible allergies. Evidently I was allergic to pretty much everything growing there. But once I moved to Utah 18 years ago, it all stopped and I have been mostly allergy free. Then came this year. For some reason I have had several allergy attacks that have lasted for days. Is it just me? Am I regressing? Becoming desensitized (or is it sensitized?) to the local plant life? Or is this just a whopper of a year for allergens?

Sheesh!!!

You can thank me later, Kleenex, for personally keeping you in business.

Sleeping Like A Baby

So here's where it might get a little disturbing for some of you...

I LOVE GOING UNDER ANESTHESIA.

Yes, I'm for real.

No, I'm not sure why. I'm not sure I can even explain it to myself. I just know that I look forward to it every time I know I'm going to go under.

Maybe it's because I really love sleeping so much, and general anesthesia is the deepest, darkest, most velvety sleep you can ever get.

Maybe some twisted part of me likes the rush, the flirtation with death, allowing myself to be made unconscious and waiting to see if I come out again.

Maybe it's because for 5 or 6 hours I get to do absolutely nothing. And have people wait on me hand and foot. To say "I'm thirsty" and have someone bring me some water. And to say, "I want juice" and to have someone take the water away and bring me an array of juices. Or to say "I'm cold" and have someone bring me a freshly baked blanket. (Yeah, that could be it right there. The piping hot blankets are pretty freaking amazing.)

Maybe it's knowing that for half of a day there will be no diapers, no spills, no dirt, no sippy cups, no whining and screaming (except my own, of course, should I feel so inclined) and no one will ask anything more difficult of me than to try to open my eyes now and then.

Whatever it is--I know it must be wrong--but I just can't help but love when they put that mask on my face and say, "Breathe deep. I'm going to give you something to relax..."

Do WHAT to my WHAT?!?

If you use gmail (and possibly if you use other email programs or even web browsers), you may have noticed that there are ads on the sidebar, and that the ads often relate to the subject matter of the email you're writing or reading. At least I have noticed this. If I send someone an email about the zoo, there will be zoo ads on the side bar. If I read an email from someone about Mexican resorts, there will be Mexican resort ads on the sidebar. Well, today while reading an email with some pictures of my Vegas trip from my friend who accompanied me, I saw an add on the sidebar about LABIAPLASTY!!! First of all, RANDOM. There was nothing in either her email or my reply even slightly related to anything remotely having to do with said-plasty. But more importantly, ARE YOU KIDDING ME? Women DO THAT??? AGH! Even after my recent trip to Brazil, where I discovered that the topography wasn't exactly how I had pictured it, I can't imagine being intimately acquainted enough with that area to decide I didn't like the way it looked. And even if I decided that I didn't like the way it looked (though why would I? What do I even have to compare it to??), I can't imagine giving the doc the scalpel and the go ahead to slice and dice down there. I'm thinking surely labiaplasty must be a joke. It's not real, right?

p.s. If it is real, don't tell me. I want to live in a fantasy world where hoohas are not up for that kind of make-over.

Goiterville.

The word goiter is an ugly word, don't you think? GOI-TERRRR. It makes you want to throw up a little bit just saying it, right? And it turns out they are painful too. How do I know? Turns out I have multinodular goiterificitistosiseaerer. I made that last part up. In laymans terms, enlarged thyroid. No one knows why. And by "no one" I mean the several doctors I have gone to already. My thyroid hormone levels are all normal. Yet here I am with this lump on my throat and it hurts so bad I can barely swollow. They say I'll have to get a needle biopsy. On both sides of my thyroid. Gee, doesn't that sound fun? Just to rule out thyroid cancer. Oh, there's a happy thought. Whine whine whine. But, dang, it hurts!

Fortunately, you can't even see it. Yet. I like like this today...


But I might look like this tomorrow...


You never know.)

Watch out, big necked woman coming through!