Snakes at a baby shower

Good news, had an awesome baby shower, bad news my dad was bitten by a copperhead. There are three poisonous snakes in North Carolina (copperhead, water moccasin, and rattle snake) and my dad stepped on one (it was dark, he's not a snake praiser) in his backyard. I grew up in this house, my parents have lived here for 18+ years, we've had small green garden snakes, a range in sizes of black snakes, but we've never seen a copperhead anywhere NEAR here(or anywhere in general, except for like NatGeo or animal planet or what not) .Until recently, snakes didn't bother me, I used to chase garden snakes with a stick (classy right?), but uh now a little creeped out. We have a rubber snake that we used to hide around the house to scare each other, not so funny anymore.

So let's recap, this week we've had: earthquakes, hurricanes, rebel forces (okay so that was in Libya, but still a pretty big deal), poisonous snake bites, and a baby shower (I'm not a horrible person, at least not in this case, my dad was really upset we were going to cancel it). 

I've always considered North Carolina a realtively safe state. We don't have a whole lot of terrorist priority targets, we don't normally have earthquakes (we have several fault lines, but they're mostly dorment (I took geography in college (rocks for jocks!)), the outer banks get hurricanes but usually they're just wind and rain by the time they get this far inland, we get tornadoes sometimes but they rarely cause deaths. It's just a calm, relaxed, happy little state.

 I swear I'm not giving birth to Damien. I've been to church a couple of times during my pregnancy and neither me nor my son have burst into flames or caused crosses to turn up side down. We're good.

So for future reference here's a quick fact list about copperhead bites and treatments:

Snake bites happen at odd times, like while my mom and I were making food for the shower and my dad was putting stuff up outside and getting pumped with venom. Not while he's hiking, dirt bike riding, clearing brush, excetra excetra.

Sometimes the first responder will look like your boyfriend and confuse you for a second.

Before the ambulance leaves 10 firefighters will go snake hunting, on purpose, by choice, in the dark with axes and flashlights (not only will they rush into burning buildings, they will kill poisneous sankes, can firefighters get any more hardcore?)

The EMS workers and firefighters will stop by  the ER room when they can to see how the victim is doing. (I need to make them some cookies)

Don't keep the snake in the room with you (it was dead and in a bag), the nurses will all come in and out and squeal at it while the victim is writhering in pain (but the nurses will also be SUPER nice, compassionate, and efficent).

Anti-venom for copperheads is a myth. Unless you're very old or a young child, they will wait at least 24 hours to give it to you, if at all. The medical community is losing faith in it as a healer, it won't help pain, it is just supposed to stop the spread of venom.

The anti-venom cost $5000 a dose, and a full series is at least 4 doses (total cost $20,000).

All other visitors/patients/staff/whatnot will have snake stories and tell us what we did wrong/right and give us LOTS of advice that would have been helpful 48 hours ago not so much now.  

The strongest pain medication available will not stop the pain, but it may make it harder for you to breath.

It's a minimum three day stay in the hospital.

Suggesting we a have a Dunder Mifflin Scranton Meredith Palmer Memorial Celebrity copperhead bite Awareness Pro-Am Fun Run For The Cure, will only be funny on day 5.

Hi, I'm Random, and I have an addiction

I am addicted to food network. I'm so addicted I'll even watch "five ingredient fix"( this is a dumb show, it's always got like 5-6 dishes and none of the ingredients are reused in any of them, so it's really more like 30 ingredient fix) to get a hit.

It's to a point now that I can recognize a show and it's food lineup with in seconds after intro music (which I also can name the show from without even looking).

I'm watching food network  right now and one of the hosts was laughing about being embarrassed because a "recipe" only had two ingredients and it wasn't really a recipe. Sandra Lee would have had a nervous breakdown trying to put that many things together!!

O yes, I know all the host and their little back stories. How pathetic am I?

But I know a TON of recipes. 

Hurricanes, Earthquakes, and rebel forces

Well dang, it's been a busy day in man made and natural disasters. My biggest worry when I woke up was remembering to make it to the post office. A lot of North Carolina (where I live) felt the earthquake, but I'm in the mountains and pretty well insulated so I didn't feel anything.

I've been crazing texting since I saw the earthquake on the news (was originally watching the rebels going in to Gadhafi's stronghold). The vast majority of my family is in central North Carolina (aka the Piedmont/Triad) and not all of them felt it. The people in business buildings seemed more likely to feel it. Crazy huh?

All the people on the news' answer to "what were you thinking" seems to be "I was so relieved it was an earthquake and not a terrorist attack".

**some dumb CNN ditz just asked if it was possibly cause by terrorist- yes, and her name is mother nature.

***also, a lot of very military looking helicopters just  flew over, reinforcing my crazy conspiracy nut theory that there are government bunkers in these here hills. I'm going to go put my aluminum foil helmet on. 

Pineapples

Has anyone else ever noticed how menacing a pineapple looks? I mean look "beyond" the obvious spikes and all and how (at least for me and my mom) it makes the inside of your mouth feel like it was just in a knife fight, but I mean seriously look

                                                     

                                                                      Pineapple

Doesn't it kind of look like a frustrated war monger created it? It looks like a very large grenade. Even the top is just to reiterate was it's supposed to do, it looks like a spiky explosion coming out of the top. 

I'm only focusing on how uncomfortable pineapples are because I got another "Fruit update"  on how big the baby is and they said she (although mines a he) weighs about half a pineapple. Can you think of a more uncomfortable fruit to have in your uterus?  All I can keep thinking about is, what half? the half with the spiky, stabby top or the bottom part that can explode and turn my insides out. I do not like this metaphor. 

I'm a make my own job

Screw it, won't give me a job? Huh punk, I'll make my own! I'm gonna go all hippie and desperate housewives and make things and sale them online. Have you ever noticed that hippies and rich bored housewives generally have the same occupations (neither rich nor a wife, but limited in mobility).

My baby shower is next Sunday and I've been doing A LOT of crafting. I love doing this kind of stuff, party planning and things that involve scrap book paper, glue sticks, and imagination. Why spend $50 on invites when I can make exactly what I want for $20?

So what I'm thinking about selling are the favors I've made. My nursery (or my son's nursery) is being done in a forest theme, heavy on the owls, and I wanted a favor that went along with the theme. Original thought: we'll give everyone saplings to plant! That way my son's first breath would be a little easier, a little cleaner! Of course with almost 40 positive RSVPS, and at $2.50 a pop, that's a little out of my price range. Then I moved on to tree seeds, which are apparently not sold commercially, then fall perennial flowers (I'm due October 10th). When I asked the workers at Lowe's Home Improvement, they said that I could come back in the spring for them.  Final decision: Bird seed! We'll share the love on the day he's born and feed the woodland creatures (The longer I live in the mountains the more hippie-ish I become, I've always maintained it was a contagious disease)!!

To get the seed to my guest, I went to a craft store and bought small brown paper bags (that kind of look like little evelopes when sealed), filled them with bird seed, and made really cool looking "thank you" tags for them. I'm really impressed with my 28 cent favors! So I have 50 creative favors for everyone plus a few spare for $14! I figure I can sale them for $20 for 25? That's standard mark-up. Think that's to much?

OMG

In need a job, I'm very employable, I can make it to final rounds of interviews, face to face. The problem seems to be when people stop looking at my face and start looking at my belly. I am losing my mind with nothing to do all day but cook and clean (I don't really clean that much, the apartment isn't that big and boyfriend will just go over it again due to his OCD). As soon as someone finds out I'm pregnant I'm out of the running, you can see the glaze come over their brains as they continue going through the act of interviewing me.

Technically, right now, I'm protected by the "American's with disabilities act" (which is a GREAT selling point right? "you have to hire me! being pregnant means I'm disabled!"), but a potential employer can give me any number of thinly veiled reasons as to why I'm not getting hired. The most common being "We went with someone who would be a better fit" I know what that would normally mean, but when my body is morphed to hold two people, like a half inverted Siamese twin, getting rejected from a job AND getting called fat, is NOT a good combo. In a town of constant, cheap, renewable,unattached labor, why hire someone who'll need a month off (during the busiest month of the year, great timing right?) and will come to work tired and sore ( no matter how well they'll actually work)?


The end.

The toilet war

warning not for the squeamish, or easily annoyed at run on sentences and rambling. 

Yes, this how exciting my life is now, toilets.

The battle of the bladder 

BY: Corporal Random 

 I was consumed with an all encompassing rage at plumbing. The situation wasn't so dark last night, the enemy only made me uncomfortable. And I would have eventually worked up the nerve to call in reinforcements ( ask the neighbors to borrow their plunger (because surely I am the only one unprepared for a clog in the works (ha!).) Except that the neighbors seemed to be having a little domestic dispute (not in the "COPS"  TV show kind of way, but in the "you freaking didn't take out the garbage AGAIN", overflow (i'm so clever) of everyday irritations that had be piling up. ) and I wasn't going to interrupt that. So I went to bed with a fullish bladder safe in the knowledge that in the morning I'd go to a hardware store, buy a plunger and all would be well with the world, there was nothing more I could do tonight.


However, while I slept, IT plotted. It rallied and increased it's arsenal.  The mysterious toilet paper clog had some how gotten hold of cement, barbed wire, and super glue in the middle of the night (where I don't know, all useful stores where closed. I suspect fowl play, no seriously a bird must have flown it in over night from another town), and quite possibly land mines. Because the five dollar plunger I bought at 8 this morning was no match for it's mighty mutant strength. 


At first it toyed with me, tested my battle lines for weaknesses, the bowl cleared, I saw a light at the end of the pipe, but it was all a ruse. When I flushed, it took my hopes and threw them at my feet.....all over the floor. I had an overflow of emotion....and toilet things. I lost two towels, two good towels, in that initial skirmish, and a mop, but I kept the enemy at bay. Kept him from breaking the battle front and moving into the home front. 


I regrouped, resupplied, and tried to hold on to my breakfast. I spent another 30 minutes at the hardware store carefully reading drain cleaner's directions (the vast majority, apparently, aren't meant for use in toilets), I bought a $8 bottle of un-clogger and a $15 (yes that's FIFTEEN, with three f's) plunger, $15 for something I was going to purposefully stick in a toilet. But I was bringing in the big guns (o, I love old cliches, I'm very original), I would give no quarter (no I was gonna give what, $30 total?), show no mercy.  I was prepared, but La Toilet was more so. It overflowed again. and again. and I cried. And snapped at my boyfriend who called who was only trying to help. 


I tell you my friends, I lost faith in the world during those dark times.I had lost all hope. But I surged onward, it was the only direction left available to me. It was all I knew to do, there was nothing outside that tiny room (except two cats desperate to get in) And I tell you, you may not believe this, I barely believe it, that day (as in today) I won. I was the victor. I don't know how, I suppose fate was on my side,maybe lady luck took a shine to me, but I have never seen water so pristine, so clean, so beautiful as what came rushing into (and out of, the proper way)that bowel. 


And now due to my two new mops, a bottles of pine-sol and clorox, rubber gloves, and scalding hot water I have the cleanest bathroom in three counties. 

Q: What is:

A bad thing to realize you don't own in the middle of the night when you have to pee every 5 minutes.

Answer: a plunger.

Q: What is a bad thing about living in a small town that's population quadruples (no exageration) this week with students moving back in?

Answer: The stores continue to stock their normal year round supply of plungers which means that the 8 plungers the store had in stock are now gone.

Q: What is an awkward way to meet your new neighbors?

Answer: Knock on their door in the middle of the night and ask to borrow their plunger.

Q: What am I currently doing?

Answer: Thinking about the Sahara desert and working up the nerve to meet the neighbors. 

Shows that help me feel like a better parent

Ok, so my kid is still inside me and I haven't really had to deal with any tough parenting dilemmas yet, other than giving up coffee (which I needed to do anyways since my kidneys were cups away from going on strike), but seriously there are some things I don't need to live to know I'll  never do. For example:


"Toddlers and Tiaras"
JonBenet Ramsey. Did these parents learn nothing about making there little girls look 24 when they're 4? Also BULLFUNKY on "my daughter loves it" she just screamed for 3 hours that she didn't want to until you threatened to drugged her when the camera was turned and controlled her with controlled substances (food) for the rest of the time. She is 4, all she wants to do is run around in circles not shake her butt in a two piece bikini because you didn't grow up to be who you wanted to be.

"Dance Moms"
Same as above but with a physical exhaustion level and a slight risk of neck snapping from all the gymnastics. Also what's her name? the dance teacher, is WAY out of line. If a kid is sick let her be sick. She wasn't even complaining (how sad is THAT by the way? that a 8 year old tries to hide that her body is giving out because everyone will yell at her, even her MOM).

"Hoarders"
I'm not a neat freak by any means but when it comes to keeping a dead cat and fifty plastic animals or my child I hope I choose my child. I do believe that these people do have a legitimate problem that needs professional help, but I would hope I'd seek that help before DSS shows up. Makes me feel better (sometimes slightly panicked) when dirty clothes pile up or dishes stay in the sink.

"Jersey Shore"
I hope that my kids know that mom and dad don't want to see them acting that way and giving American's bad names in other countries. His father is 1/2 German and spends a little time every year visiting family back in the fatherland (hehe, my phrasing) and this cast's behavior is not acceptable for him. At least of you're gonna be a drunken mess, have the decency not to broadcast it on international television. And for pete's sake know more than 10 words, please.

"Keeping up with the Kardashian's"
Kids are not a business. The end. (I really hope most of that is just for show for the show)

"I didn't know I was pregnant"
Most of them drank, did drugs, and did all sorts of horrible other things while they "didn't know" and all reports say they have normal, happy, healthy babies. I try to follow all the rules but sometimes I slip. I eat deli meat (now that I'm in the third trimester), I don't always exercise, I have to drive somewhere else and it's 5000 degrees outside. It's usually not bad in the mountains in the summer, but this year has been insane.

"The Desperate housewives of ANYWHERE"
How can you live your life "for your kids" if you never see them and you have 5 nannies to take care of them because you don't have the time (nipping and tucking and shopping and drinking and gossiping take up A LOT of time)? The ones that do spend time with their kids seem to have the same issues as the moms from "Toddlers and Tiaras" and "Dance Moms", their just a tool to make them more famous or richer.



Ok, I absolutely admit to watching all these shows, and knowing way more of the story line than I should, and therefore I am also condoning these parents actions via my commercial advertising dollars, but I can't look away. It's a "How to" book in reverse. It's educational right?

I would also like to ad "Semi-homemade with Sandra Lee" I will put more thought into my kids meals than into mommy's "special happy drink" (seriously I think the food is an afterthought, why else would her meals have two ingredients and her drinks 12?). Frozen pizza+ extra shake of kraft Parmesan cheese DOES NOT equal a recipe. I'm pretty sure everything learned on her show can be learned by reading the back of the box (everything she makes starts with a box, not that I look down on this kind of cooking, I do  quite a bit of it, but I don't try to pass it off as a TV show worthy of half an hour......although maybe I should.....)

Birthing Class

I have decided the most annoying phrase to come out of birthing class is "it's a purposeful pain". Well, no flippin duh, all pain has a purpose, it's to tell you not to do what ever caused something to hurt. OW! That burner's hot and it hurts to touch it, OW! it hurts to break your arm, don't do it! OUCH! IT REALLY FREAKIN' HURTS TO DELIVER, don't do it a lot, the population can't handle it.

It's pain, and although not having delivered yet, I'm pretty sure it's going to hurt a lot and it's not going to be pleasant. I doubt I'll be singing that "I am woman" song while I'm in my 100th hour of labor. Even with the drugs I plan on having pumped into my system. I know I don't handle pain well, I have to be medicated just to get threw menstrual cramps, and you do NOT want to be around me when I have a kidney stone. 

Also I think it gives first time mother's who aren't planning on using drugs ,their choice, an unrealistic sense of what to expect. Maybe if you're like "hey you know what, I shot out a human from my who-ha and it really hurt" they'd have a better chance of making it without the drugs sense they'd be better prepared. That's just a thought. 

Also, when your birthing instructor is a Douala and she brings in one of her clients to talk about her delivery, I tend to doubt the validity of her pain account, not her experience or her emotions, just the part that sounds like an infomercial "and the $800 for (insert instructor's name) to be there and talk to the staff for us and to help me manage the pain was MORE than worth that piddly amount, act now and she'll even throw in a free diaper change!"

Stupid phrasing. 

****edit also, did I mention that the birthing instructor/Douala is also a nurse at the only hospital for like 30 miles sooooooooooooo there's a good chance she'll be there with you for "free" anyways?