Month: September 2012

Well.

It has been quite the twenty-four hours. Or maybe it’s been forty-eight hours. I really have no idea because that’s what prescription cough medicine will do to you.

I slept fairly well on Monday night, but didn’t feel any better on Tuesday morning. Which was unfortunate since I had a mammogram scheduled and didn’t want to cancel at the last minute. So I hauled myself off the couch and made my way to the imaging center by 9:30 a.m. and that felt like an accomplishment.

But then I got to the actual mammogram part of the mammogram. And it was fine. Except you know what you don’t want to do when you’re in full-blown mammogram position? Cough really hard. And you know what’s hard to do when you have bronchitis? Not cough really hard.

It was an experience I’ll treasure forever.

After that I had to mail off a few packages and figured I was already out and might as well get a few things done. What I didn’t factor in though was that my energy level would plummet and I’d be in desperate need of a nap by 11:00.

So I came home, put my pajamas on, curled back up on the couch where I belonged, and tried to forget about the earlier boob trauma with a few episodes of Friday Night Lights on Netflix. And it helped immensely because there is not much that ails a person that can’t be fixed with a little Dillon, Texas.

Right around the time Caroline got home from school, I began to notice that my eyelid felt kind of tender on the inner corner. So I went to the mirror to check it out and saw that I was beginning to experience a little bit of eye swelling that looked like it might be a sty.

Perfect. There is nothing better than knowing you’re about to be at a conference in front of a bunch of people with a swollen eyelid and a cough that makes people feel like they’d rather be in a room with Typhoid Mary.

And then I found out my blog was broken so I had to do extensive research to figure out the problem. And by extensive research, I mean that I ate four Hershey Special Dark miniatures while emailing my tech person, Cathy, a flurry of emails that read, “HELP ME!!!!!”

Fortunately, my blog was working again and my eye looked better when I woke up in the morning because I was debating going to Dot Mom with a patch over my eye. And people could call me Left Eye Lopes (may she rest in peace). Except it was my right eye and not my left eye.

And she never wore a patch but just had a black mark under her eye.

Whatever. It seemed better to go with Left Eye Lopes than Long John Silver. Although he managed to make a delicious fish with malt vinegar sauce in spite of only having one eye.

(I have no idea if he only had one eye. But he was a pirate so it stands to reason. I basically don’t know what I’m even typing at this point because I need to just go to bed.)

There was actually a time I had to wear a patch over my eye. I was in ninth grade and had somehow gotten a speck of paint on my eye that had to be lasered out or something like that. And then I had to wear a patch to school for FOUR DAYS when I was FOURTEEN. It’s a wonder that I even lived to tell about it.

And now you might be wishing I hadn’t because you just died from boredom.

See y’all tomorrow for Fashion Friday. There’s going to be a giveaway!

And now I’m off to see if I can cram all my clothes and toiletries for the weekend in one carry on bag. Because I enjoy a challenge.

If you’re at Dot Mom this weekend, please come say hi. I promise I’m only a little bit scary with my hacking cough and bad eye.

I wish I could start this out by saying that I feel tons better and all I needed was a good night’s sleep. But that would be a lie.

And even though I was in bed at an hour when chickens are still awake, it’s hard to sleep well when you’ve lost the ability to breathe through your nose. It’s also unattractive, just in case you’re wondering.

Before someone says that I always seem sick, I just want to clarify that this is my first real illness since last October. I mean, sure, since that time I’ve been sick in other ways like sick of going to the grocery store and sick of cooking dinner, but I haven’t been officially diagnosed with those things.

Anyway, I remember that it was last October because it coincided with my visit to Tyndale (my book publisher) and, needless to say, I think they felt pretty good about choosing me to write a book after they heard my smoker’s cough and saw the glassy look in my eyes. Those are the kind of attributes that inspire confidence.

Normally, I would wait this kind of thing out, but since I’m leaving for dotMom on Thursday morning and they are expecting me to have a voice that works, I decided I needed to go ahead and go to the doctor. So that’s what I did. He diagnosed me with bronchitis and gave me an antibiotic and, most importantly, prescription cough medicine. Otherwise known as liquid heaven. I hope he didn’t judge me because I knew to ask for the kind I wanted by name. This ain’t my first bronchitis rodeo.

Needless to say, there isn’t much going on around here.

Yesterday morning Caroline decided she had a case of the Mondays and made a desperate attempt to stay home from school, citing vague symptoms like “I kind of have a stomachache” and “maybe my throat hurts”. There was a time when she was younger that I could immediately tell if she was faking an illness because I’d ask her to list her symptoms. And then once she’d rattled them off, I’d give her a sympathetic look and say, “Poor baby. Does your elbow hurt too?”

I knew if she said that her elbow hurt too that she was just trying to conjure up ill health and felt like the more symptoms the better. But she’s on to me now and that doesn’t work anymore. P had left the house already for an early morning appointment so I had to put on my best tough love face and tell her she was absolutely going to school. To which she replied, “What kind of a person makes a nine-year-old who doesn’t feel good go to school?”

Yes. What kind of person does that?

I’m a monster.

But after texting her teacher to inform her of Caroline’s possible ill health/propensity for drama, she sent me a text back informing me that Caroline had made a miraculous recovery between the walk from my car to her classroom. So while we don’t share a bronchitis diagnosis, we do share a flair for drama.

And that’s probably all for today. I’m going to go get some rest and take some cough medicine. I usually like to take advantage of the current state of my voice to turn into a cranky octogenarian smoker named Hazel. But I’ll be honest with you, things are so out of control in the world right now that I don’t really trust Hazel.

If I let her loose, she may never shut up. She may start with the frustration of carpool lines with no discernible correct way to maneuver through them and move on to the absurdity of standardized testing and how we’ve all bought a bill of goods if we believe that’s the best way to measure a child’s intelligence and, ultimately, she’d move on to the upcoming elections and then she’d never shut up.

Which is why I’m calling it a night. Or a day. Or time for cough medicine.

So it’s Monday.

And I’m just popping in to let you know that I’m not feeling good. It all started with a sore throat on Thursday afternoon and quickly went downhill from there.

What I’m saying is I’m going to go curl up with a bottle of Nyquil and call it a day.

See y’all tomorrow.

Just a few quick things today.

1. I chose the winners for the Living Proof Live Simulcast and have notified them by email. If for some reason I don’t hear back from them then I will choose two more winners.

Is it just me or does that sound like the Miss America pageant when if the winner is unable to fulfill her duties then the first runner up has to step in?

And even if you didn’t win, it’s not too late to sign up to be a part of the simulcast from the comfort of your couch. Here’s the event page with all the information you need. You can also find out on that page if there’s a church that’s hosting it anywhere near you in case you want to venture out and be around people.

Spoken like a true introvert.

2. On a totally different note, I have loved Mrs. Meyers’ cleaning products for a long time. But I’d always bought the geranium scent or the lemon verbena. Then last week I decided to try the basil scent and my whole life changed. It is my hands down new favorite.

3. Caroline’s P.E. coaches occasionally bring in new healthy food for the kids to try. And while she never eats more than the equivalent of one cheese cube at each meal, she is an adventurous eater.

So this is how I’ve ended up buying jicama and dragon fruit and learning that breaking open a coconut is much harder than they made it look on Gilligan’s Island.

It’s also how I discovered that we both love a pomegranate. I’d never bought pomegranates before because I wasn’t really sure how to eat them even though I love to drink pomegranate juice because it makes me feel like I’m negating the effects of beef fajita nachos.

However, I soon learned that getting the seeds out of a pomegranate is a beating. You have to soak it in water and then peel off the white part and then the seeds pop and stain your countertop.

But then Mimi sent me the link to this video on an easier way to eat a pomegranate. I tried it yesterday and it totally works. I’m embarrassed to tell you how excited I was about it.

4. Wow. I just wrote five paragraphs about deseeding a pomegranate.

That feels like a low.

5. I’m leaving a week from today to head to Birmingham, AL for the DotMom Conference. It’s not too late to sign up and join us. It’s a great line up including Jen Hatmaker, Vicki Courtney and Esther Burroughs.

Oh, and Korie Robertson from Duck Dynasty. I’m a little bit beside myself about it.

5. There were so many of y’all who said such sweet things about Jen and even offered her places to stay or to bring meals and prayers. It made me love you that much more. And I asked Jen if it was okay to share the link to her blog wheres she’s detailing her journey and she said it was okay.

It’s called Pink. Pray. Love. She has handled this with so much faith and grace. Love her so much.

6. This is the time of year when the Outdoor Channel airs all of its new episodes of various hunting shows. So guess what’s on our T.V. every night until P goes to bed?

You’ve never seen so much camo or heard so much whispering in your life.

It’s not at all annoying.

7. I’ve been sitting here for twenty minutes and can’t think of what else I wanted to say. I’m taking that as a sign that I need to go to bed.

Have a great day!

Yesterday was one of those days where I just played a lot of catch up and tried to answer a bunch of email and give myself the illusion of being productive. But all I could really think about was that Parenthood was coming on later because it’s my new favorite show. I watched all three seasons this summer on Netflix in a shamefully short amount of time.

I’d tell you how long, but I feel like you might judge me.

I won’t go as far to say that I love it as much as Friday Night Lights because, well, that just isn’t possible. But it is a close second and I feel that the Braverman family has filled a void in my T.V. heart.

So I spent the morning on the internet doing various internet things and came across this headline.Men Caught Smuggling Monkeys in Their Pants. And to give you insight into my maturity level, my first thought was “Is that what they’re calling it these days?”

The truth is that two men were actually trying to smuggle monkeys in their pants and got caught because have you ever observed a monkey? Is there any scenario in which you think you might be able to get away with having one in your pants?

Anyway, that’s not really the point of this post because there is no point to this post. But what I really wanted to tell y’all is that I went to a new beauty salon on Monday. And while I was there I had a consult with an eyebrow specialist. Raise your hand if you knew that existed.

Normally I just get my brows waxed every now and then at the little place where I get an occasional pedicure. And then I tweeze stray hairs every morning and night to keep them in line. I inherited my daddy’s eyebrows which means they could take over my entire face if left to themselves.

But the eyebrow specialist used a stencil to show me the brow shape I should ideally have. I don’t need to tell you that I was sad to discover that my ideal brow shape is not my current brow shape. I guess it stands to reason that when you’re paying $8 to get your brows waxed in the back room of a pedicure place located in a strip center that you may not be getting a proper brow evaluation.

Apparently I have been over-plucking my eyebrows. And now, according to the ideal brow shape stencil, I need to let them grow in at various locations including in between my eyes. Just the thought of it makes me start to twitch.

The eyebrow specialist told me that I need to throw away my magnifying mirror and tweezers for the indefinite future. Which is the equivalent of telling me to quit breathing air. Plucking my eyebrows is one of my hobbies. I guess I’m trying to make up for all those unfortunate years in high school when it looked like two caterpillars were dueling to the death on my forehead.

But I’m going to follow her advice because she admonished me with the warning that thin brows make you look older. And I certainly don’t want my brows giving away my age. That’s what my “laugh lines” are for.

So there’s no real point to this except to tell you that if I seem a little edgy over the next few weeks, it’s because I’m in the arduous process of growing out my eyebrows. Which is a phrase I never thought I’d say.

Right along with “Two men were caught smuggling monkeys in their pants”.