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Tuesday, October 26, 2004

Whoa, what was that?

Last night my "cold" turned into a full blown nastiness, complete with a mild fever, major sinus pain, all over weakness and more mucous. It was gross. I could barely lay on the cough & watch "Celebrity Poker Showdown" with Jeff without wincing in pain everytime someone spoke loudly near my head. It felt as if someone was banging a gong right near my ear, it resonated in my head like an echo.
Jeff finally told me to just go to bed around 8:30pm. As I was trying to go to sleep, I heard Emma upstairs coughing. I then decided that she would be staying home from school tomorrow. I didn't want her to get all the other kids sick. Plus, that way I didn't have to get up and drive Jeff to work, and we could all sleep in. I had thought Jeff was going to call in sick today, but I guess he decided not to. Poor guy, he's got so much going on right now. I feel really bad for him. I've been trying to help as much as I can, but I was pretty much useless yesterday. I do feel better this morning, though. Fever's gone, as is the weakness. Still have a little bit of the sinus pain and of course, the mucous, always the mucous. It's never ending. My friend also has an online blog & apparently she was really sick last week. I think something she said can sum up how I feel. "Why is it that my nose is so stuffed up and congested that I am certain I am going to suffocate and die, no air whatsoever can pass through my nostrils because they are swollen completly shut, and yet, copious amounts of liquid are able to pour out of my nose with abandon. No problem for the liquid to get out, only the air to get in." Yes, that's exactly how it is. I don't understand the logic of it. Whenever I have a cold and can't breathe through my nose, I also have this nightmare of being taken hostage and being bound and gagged, where someone puts tape or something over my mouth, which would force me to breathe through my nose, which of course, being sick, I can't do, and I die. How sad is that? I must have something seriously wrong with me that my brain thinks up this crazy stuff.
Anyways, Emma just came in & wants me to play "Go Fish" with her Disney Princess cards so I must be off. She's had two Krispy Kreme donuts this morning & she has glaze flakes in her hair & on her eyelash. Too funny.

Monday, October 25, 2004

Why is it always me?

I woke up yesterday morning with a monstrously nasty cold. It came on like a thief in the night, out of nowhere. I'd had a little sniffles the past few days, but nothing that would prepare me for the onslaught of mucous that I would wake up to. It seems to be worse in the morning, but since a lot of things happen in the morning, that doesn't help. I could barely get out of bed this morning to take Jeff to work/school.
We all went to see "SharkTale" last night. We took Sarah with us and since it was a late evening show, we figured there wouldn't be many people there to bother in case she decided to be difficult. There were only 2 other people in the theater with us. The movie was pretty good. There were a few moments when I just burst out laughing and one in particular where it took me about 2 minutes to stop. This girl fish, named Angie, voiced by Renee Zellweger, is really mad at this guy fish, Oscar, voiced by Will Smith. She says to him,"Sometimes, I just want to take your stupid head and...." and she does this motion where she's punching her fist into the palm of her other hand really fast. I suppose you kinda had to be there, but it was funny. Mostly because I've been there with Jeff. I love him but sometimes I want to strangle him. I think everyone's been there at least once in their life.

Thursday, October 21, 2004

P.S.

I think I broke my toe.

First sniffles

Well, it's official. Sarah has her first cold. She's been congested since yesterday, and her breathing's been a little weird. Nothing to worry about. All she's pretty much wanted to do it eat & sleep today. Which is fine with me. I know she needs her rest. She's got a little bit of the watery eyes and boogers. It's actually kinda cute at how docile she is. Even more than usual. It's allowed me to work on "helping" Jeff with his English paper. "Helping" is a technical term for "Honey, can you DO this for me?" In his defense, he did start it. He gave me about a page a half, most of which was his name and all his class information, and said,"Here, make this 5 pages." Thank goodness I'd actually read the story he/we're doing this paper on. In fact, I read it first. I read about 4 short stories, helping him decide which ones to do. I suppose it could be worse, he could be asking me to "help" with his math. Yuck.
Emma is having her class pictures done today at preschool. She looked so cute when I dropped her off. She's wearing her black dress (which is about a size too big for her, but she wears it all the time at home), tights & her black Mary Jane's. Her hair is up a little & I curled her bangs and the ends of her hair. These class pictures are getting expensive. It was $36 for one of the smallest packages. But hopefully they'll turn out ok & we'll be able to send them in about a month.
I think we've decided that Emma's going to be getting her Speech Therapy at the preschool, like the other kids there. I didn't like that idea at first, because I didn't want her to be taken out of class to do it. But it's just not working out well with the group setting. And it's becoming unfair to the other kids, who aren't able to get their individual time with the teacher. And when it comes right down to it, the individual time she'll get at school equals the amount of individual time she got in the group. They try not to make a big deal of it when they take the kids out of school. In fact, they usually just do the speech right there in the classroom, away from the other kids. So, hopefully she won't notice too big of a change.
Jeff's going politiking tonight. He was asked by the local MoveOn.org people to go around and see who random people are voting for. It's basically a Pro-Kerry organization, but without being blatant about it. You don't even say anything about Kerry unless they say they are most likely going to vote for him, or something like that. My biggest concern was getting yelled at by people and having a shotgun shoved in my face and being told to "get off my property". So, I'll be staying in the car with the kids and Jeff and a friend will be knocking on the doors. On second thought, maybe Jeff should take a kid with him. Makes the chances of being threatened a little lower.

Tuesday, October 19, 2004

Another trip...

We just can't seem to stay home on the weekends. This last Saturday we drove down to Cedar Point amusement park in Sandusky, OH to meet some friends from the Navy. Chris & Katie just got married last month & are on their honeymoon. Another friend, Eric, lives in Wisconsin and drove down with his girlfriend. It was fun. Freezing cold, since we were directly on Lake Erie, but fun. It was a little rainy, and windy, but we still went on a bunch of rides. Emma had a blast in the kiddie area. Cedar Point is pretty much known as the roller coaster capital of the US. They have 16 roller coasters, including the tallest one in the world right now, the Top Thrill Dragster (which unfortunately was closed that day, along with a few others). But the next biggest one is Millennium Force, which goes up 310 ft. and them plummets down at an 80 degree angle. It was awesome. It goes about 90 MPH, and with the intense winds that we had that day, felt a lot faster.
It was a fun trip, albeit short. We came home on Sunday afternoon. Just enough time for Jeff to finish his homework (with me helping) and go to bed. Maybe this weekend we'll be able to stay home.

We went to see a play at the college last week. It was "I Hate Hamlet". It was really good. Andrew Rally is a TV actor who's popular show has just been cancelled, and he's gone to New York to be in some plays to beef up his resume while waiting for his next big break. He's asked to play Hamlet in Shakespeare in the Park. But he despises Hamlet and doesn't want to do it. All the while, he's renting John Barrymore's old apartment and his ghost comes back to help Nadrew prepare for the role. It's pretty funny.
The girls stayed at home with a couple friends of ours from the college, Andrea & Gary. Andrea watched Emma last February when Jeff & I went to a concert. They got married in May. I was able to get Sarah to eat out of a bottle for a little while so they could feed her while we were gone, just in case. She did pretty well & Emma loved having someone new to play with. Maybe now we'll be able to go out every once in a while.

Wednesday, October 13, 2004

We're back...

from Orlando. It was a quick trip for the girls & I. We left Thursday morning & were back home by very early Sunday morning. It was a whirlwind but it was fun.
We were able to see Jon & Jenn Parker on Thursday evening. Jeff hadn't seen them since their wedding almost 7 years ago. Emma & their daughter Jordan had a blast together. They saw each other last year, but I don't know if either of them remembered it. We had dinner at the hotel, the Disney Swan where Jeff was staying. It included a couple appearances by Disney characters Goofy & Pluto. The restaurant wasn't all that busy, so they were able to stay with each table for quite awhile. Pluto came back twice, as did Goofy. The girls posed for a picture with Pluto (on the website), one on each side of him, with his arms around them. After I took the picture, he stood up, picking up the girls under his arms and started to walk off with them. It was cute. Even though Jon & Jenn were only able to stay for a few hours, it was nice to see them again.
The next day we went to Disneyworld. Emma decided she wanted to wear her Snow White outfit the whole day. I mistakenly thought she might be one of only a few kids to be wearing costumes before the Halloween thing that night. I was wrong. I saw no less than 50-100 kids wearing a myriad of costumes, mostly Disney Princess ones. There were even a few adults dressed up.
We had fun. Emma was adamant about going on the Dumbo ride and the carousel. We didn't get on Dumbo until late in the evening, as it was one of the most popular rides in the park with the longest line. Emma ended up not liking half of the "kiddie rides", i.e. Peter Pan's Flight & Snow White's Adeventure. She did like the Winnie the Pooh one, though. I'm not sure why she wasn't thrilled about the other ones. They have a new one for Buzz Lightyear. It's pretty cool. You're on a car, like the other ones, but you have a stick shift & are able to turn the car around on a 360 degree access and shoot at targets with 2 onboard laser guns. It keeps a tally of how many you hit & gives you a score at the end of the ride. It's pretty neat.
They also have a new 3-D show called "Disney's Philharmonic". It was Jeff's favorite. We went twice. I think even Sarah liked it, although I felt bad that she had to see it blurry, as she didn't have any 3-D glasses.
Emma was a little upset when we stood in line for 45 minutes to get a picture with Cinderella (her favorite) only to have Cinderella leave when there were only 3 people in front of us. I think she had a show to do, and Disney has a policy that 2 people playing the same character aren't allowed out in public at the same time. We went and saw her show and before it started, some of the villains came out to give autographs & pose for pictures. The Evil Queen from Snow White was there & as she was passing Emma (we were in the front row), she just stared at her & gave her the evil eye. I'm assuming it was because she was dressed as Snow White. It was pretty funny. Emma didn't think so, though and got scared. It was kinda cool, there were adults dressed up as Maleficent (from Sleeping Beauty), Cruella DeVil, and the Evil Queen. They each went to their respective villain & posed for a picture. I thought that was kinda neat.
We had a blast and can't wait to go back. It's definitely different than Disneyland.

Tuesday, October 05, 2004

On our own

Well, Jeff's in Florida for 6 days. So the girls & I are alone for a few days, until we fly out there to meet him on Thursday. So far, his conference has been "fun". They have the schedule pretty booked with technical and propaganda meetings. He's gotten a few free t-shirts out of the deal, so I guess it's not a total loss. He's mostly looking forward to the final night party at Universal Studios tomorrow evening.
We're going to meet up with Jon & Jenn Parker on Thursday night. They're driving down from Jacksonville to have dinner with us. It'll be nice to see them. Jeff hasn't seen them since their wedding, I believe. That was almost 7 years ago. Emma & I saw them last year in Sacramento. Jordan & Emma got along pretty well. We got a picture of them hugging & it looks like Jordan's strangling Emma, but it was cute.
So far, we really haven't done much with Jeff not being here. It was nice to sleep in (well, 7:30am when Emma woke Sarah & I up), and not have to take Jeff to work. I stayed up until 1:30am playing my video game. Haven't done that in awhile. Jeff did the same thing while the girls & I were CA. But he did that for a month. I have 3 days. I have to make the most of it. Hehe
Emma & I are going to make cookies sometime today. I'm going to bribe my next door neighbor into getting my mail & bringing in my trash bins while I'm gone.
I think Fall has officially "fell" here. Last Friday, the temp was about 70 degrees. On Saturday, it dropped to about 55. I was totally unprepared for it. We went to the Buddy Walk on Saturday in Lansing & we freezed our butts off. Emma, Sarah & I were lucky. I had brought blankets & (light) jackets for us. But Jeff hadn't brought anything, nor did I think to bring anything for him. Needless to say, we didn't stay long after the walk. But we had a fun time, even though it was cold. There are pics on the website.
So, it'll be nice to go to Florida for a few days & be sweaty rather than chilly. Jeff says it's really humid. Oh fun. I told him before he left that I wouldn't mind living in Florida. He said he didn't like the idea of huge bugs. Or the hurricanes. I said I'd take the bugs over the snow. Hurricanes you can evacuate from & there's always bug spray for the humungous insects. Snow is just there, all the time.
Our wonderful neighbor next door (the one we share a wall with) was kind enough to mow our lawn the other day. He was using a riding lawn mower & was doing a great job. Only one problem-he ran over a huge rock, and the mower hurled it at our lower floor window, putting a huge hole in one of the panes. That was fun & interesting. Scared me to death when I heard it. Thank goodness it didn't go through both panes & right into our living room, where the kids were playing. Sarah's swing was in front of the window & it would have hit that. So we called our landlord & he came right over. He said they'd try to get it fixed before we leave. Never a dull moment around here.