Tuesday, May 31, 2005

ER Again.

So yesterday was half nice and half crap.

Brother, wife and baby came over for Memorial Day. Watched the baby bounce in her walker. It's really cute. She's so used to her Johnny Jumper that she thinks everything operates by bouncing. So she hops up and down to move the walker forward. She's definitely a little Tigger girl.

After they went home, I went to buy a decent memory card for my camera, and I took a mouse over to Jasmin's. As I was pulling up to Jas' house, my mom called. She wanted to go to the emergency room, so I jetted back home and then headed for Ashland.

It wasn't a huge visit. She couldn't breathe well, and they gave her several breathing treatments, took a few x-rays and left us with a prescription for steroids and a z-pak. Mom's not feeling tons better, but she is feeling better enough to be stubborn about going to the doctor. She woke up in a rotten mood today, and refuses to call her doctor.

Irritating.

But anyway, I have to head out to the pharmacy. I'm going to buy the babies a few new ducks to play with while I'm there. For some reason, both of them like their ugly bright yellow duckies best out of all their toys.

Monday, May 30, 2005

Blood Pressure.

This weekend has sort of sucked. Not a whole lot, but sort of, at least.

I've been having terrible nightmares every night since like Wednesday. They got so bad Saturday night that I decided I didn't really need to sleep. So I watched tv all night, and finally fell asleep at like 10:00AM. I woke up at 2:30PM very, very grumpy.

I thought I was just sleepy, so I decided that I should go shopping for my great-nephew's birthday party next Sunday. Anything about Ty usually cheers me up, so it seemed like a good idea. However, I continued to pretty much feel like death.

I was dizzy and had that about-to-faint sensation, so mom talked me into taking my blood pressure. It was 70/53 with a pulse rate of 45. That's not disastrously low or anything, but it will make you feel lousy. Mom started all freaking out about how low it was and trying to make me go to the hospital.

I decided to go buy pizza instead.

I still feel lousy and my blood pressure is still low, but meh. I'm glad tomorrow's Tuesday and life can go back to normal. Sort of.

Saturday, May 28, 2005

Meme.

I'm a bit slow on this one, but, why not?

TrueGrit Meme:

3 names I go by:
Sarah, Sarie, Sarah-Belle (family nickname since birth, though Matt mysteriously re-originated a few years ago - I guess it's meant to be).

3 screen-names I've had:
TrewqazX; AlternateAddress; ChildsFuiiName.

3 physical things I like about myself:
Jasmin's mother says I have "delicate" hands (though to be fair, I believe Ferg used to say I had gorilla palms because they were so big). I have naturally purple fingernails that have continuously given my mother fits over my supposedly imminent heart failure. My hair when I'm caught in a strong wind at Mike's house.

3 physical things I dislike about myself:
All my hair is falling out, for no apparent reason. I keep losing weight, for no apparent reason. I have a papercut on my right-hand ring finger.

3 parts of my heritage:
Irish, Belgian, Frog.

3 things I am wearing right now:
My favorite pair of jeans that are four sizes too large, totally fringed at the bottoms because they're too long, complete with paint stains from remodeling Matt's mum's house last summer. My wicked Pedro the Lion shirt. And, um, the sort of blue jeans-looking shoes that Jasmin made me buy last year because they're "a little bit Sarie, with just a splash of Jazzy," the latter point being of much more importance.

3 favorite bands/musical artists:
At the moment, Matt Maher; Toad the Wet Sprocket; Gillian Welch.

3 favorite songs:
At the moment, "Set Me as a Seal" by Matt Maher; "Rock of Ages" by Gillian Welch; "Jesus on the Mainline" by Mississippi Fred McDowell.

3 things I want in a relationship:
Space; ....; umm, food?

3 physical things about people of the opposite sex that appeal to me:
Big ears (no kidding). Scruffy haircuts. Army pants.

3 of my favorite hobbies:
Reading. Writing. Drunk dialing Jasmin's voice mail.

3 things I want to do really badly right now:
Eat. Sleep. Collin Farrell. HA! Kidding about that last part... Sort of.

3 things that scare me:
Spiders. Clowns. Wide-open spaces. I can keep going...

3 of my everyday essentials:
Chapstick for The Boy. ATM card. Chewy Granola Bars.

3 careers you have considered or are considering:
Social Work. Law. Journalism.

3 places you want to go on vacation:
Sligo, Ireland. Sitka, Alaska. The Holy Land.

3 kids' names you like:
Lilly, Grace and, most unusably, Milo.

3 things you want to do before you die:
Try out for American Idol. Visit Jerusalem. A passable soft-shoe routine.

3 ways I am stereotypically a boy:
Over-reliance on logic. Inattention to fashion. F.O.I.

3 ways I am stereotypically a chick:
I'm told that I have a very girly hand movements. I talk too much on my damn cell phone. I'm a sucker for a cute baby. Honestly, I'm a sucker for a homely baby too. Maybe even more so.

3 celeb crushes:
Spinner from Degrassi. Prince Harry (he is so the hot brother. Joaquin Phoenix.

3 people who I think might like doing this:
Mike, Ferg and NobodyElseBlogsAnymore.

The Grouch.

They were finally able to do Jessica's surgery on Thursday. It was successful; they fixed her aorta. The biggest obstacle in the way of her recovery has been removed, praise God, and we're all incredibly grateful for it. It will still be a long road however. She has kidney and liver damage, and I'm told they had to remove her spleen. Her ribs are all broken, along with her pelvic bone. She will be in the hospital for a very long time. They'll have to put in a trach and probably a feeding tube. But at least we're reasonably sure now that she will recover.

I've been quite grumpy the past few days. Sorry if I've grumped at anyone. It's nothing personal, I'm just going through a lot.

Today I'm going to go to dinner with my mom and sisters. We don't do that very often, so it should be fun. I actually don't remember the last time just the girls have gone out; in fact, maybe we never did before this. Hopefully I'll be able to contain my grump and have a nice time.

My grumpy ass has to go and write a letter to my brother now. He's been writing nasty letters to my mom, and I'm getting sort of sick of it. I'm praying that God uses my grumpiness in an positive manner, and that I'm not just taking all my negativity out on him. He may well deserve to be grumped at; if it doesn't benefit him, however, I'd rather not just add my name to the list of people he's abused and who have abused him back. I've been able to avoid that until this point. I really do believe in charity, and love, and forgiveness. And with all my grumpiness, it's well that I do, because I sure need some of it.

June 10th will be eventful this year. It is, of course, most importantly, my birthday. But it's also the day of Brittany's graduation. It's The Boy's last day of school. It's the day Tony gets out of prison. Hopefully all of these events will be happy ones. I think they will.

Baby Ty's birthday is coming up on the sixth. His party will be the fifth, and I'll hardly be able to call him a baby after that. What are they calling one year-old's these days? Pre-adolescents? Well, if they're not yet, they will be in a few years, when they figure out that people are willing to buy their infants thong underwear. Of course, if science can master the thong diaper, I'm going to be mighty irritated about the continuing prevalence of the common cold.

Well, I'm out for now, on account of I have a papercut on my finger, and I'm being a real sissy about it.

Thursday, May 26, 2005

Jessica's Car Accident.

My problem with blogging is that I don't much like doing it when things are actually going on. I don't like writing until I've had proper time to overanalyze my situation. Then, by the time I actually feel I have something to say, I don't feel like writing about the exciting stuff anymore because it's in the past, and why dwell on the negative?

So all my posts are dry and boring, even though my life is anything but. At least, it's anything but sometimes. My dad told me once that there are television stations where the shows are things like watching the laundry spin, or watching somebody's private fish tank. Sometimes my life is so eventful that I know if I were the star of the Truman Show, or its equivalent, my ratings would fall embarassingly below the spinning laundry network. Because at least on that show, there's movement and something's being accomplished.

Anyway, I'm beginning to think that my family should shun the industrial revolution and abandon our cars. Since March, we've had three extremely serious car accidents, which is more than any family really deserves. My cousin Jessica is in critical condition at Toledo St. Vincent right now and it's still impossible to say whether or not she's going to survive. She pulled out in front of a school bus on Tuesday and was hit. She suffered a torn aorta, a torn kidney, liver damage and a broken pelvic bone, along with a host of more minor injuries. So far they haven't been able to do surgery to fix her torn aorta because of swelling around her heart. They don't know what's causing the swelling around her heart, but they put a tube through her back yesterday to drain it, in hopes of doing surgery sometime today.

A torn aorta can be fatal. From what I understand, it's usually fatal in something like 85% of cases. The good news for Jessica is that her other injuries were severe enough that doctors detected the tear quickly, and she's had emergency care from the beginning. She's spent most of her time in a drug induced coma, ostensibly to immobilize her. She's young, otherwise healthy, and has a strong will to live. Her chances of survival are better than the average for someone in her condition. She's a sweet girl and I'm praying for the very best outcome for her. A lot of people depend on Jessica, and she's always been one of my favorite cousins, so I hope that she'll be able to pull through.

I'm hoping to get to go see her tonight. Toledo is 2 1/2 hours away from here, I think, so it will be a long night if I do get to go. I don't like hospitals very much; I've spent too much time in them. My family is funny about things, and I don't know if I should go or not. I would like to see Jessica, but I'm worried about stressing out my uncle, who's ueber shy about things and probably doesn't want the whole extended family in the hospital waiting room.

On the other hand, this might be my last chance.

Tuesday, May 17, 2005

Application Finally In.

Today was a very good day.

I've been freaking out for over a month over my application to grad school. There's a section on OSU's website that lets you check your application status and mine always reported that I was missing my personal statement. I sent my personal statement in attached to one of the application sheets quite a while ago, and the site never reported the attached application as missing. So I was pretty confused.

I emailed three times and called twice, but no one ever got back to me. I didn't know if my statement was lost, or if I'd done something wrong and needed to redo it. The frustrating part was that no one ever got back to me on the issue. I finally got frustrated and called the director of the program yesterday morning.

She called me back today and said that there had been a personal statement laying around the office without a name on it. I told her what I'd written about it, and she very happily told the rest of the office that they'd finally found the owner. I told her that I'd made several attempts to contact the program office, and she said that a lot of other kids had complained about the communication issue. She encouraged me to call her straightaway if I had any problems in the future.

She also let me know that she had postdated the personal statement from the day they originally received it, because the statement never should have been separated from my application to start. She said that it was their error and not mine, and not to worry about the lateness keeping me out of the program.

In short, she rocks.

Since my packet is complete now, and postdated back to sometime in April, I should have no problem getting into the program.

I'm stoked.

Jasmin and I were talking the other day about how many people we're going to be able to help someday. She's already getting started, working at Social Security. But when I'm an honest-to-God Social Worker, we'll be able to bounce cases off each other, and use each other for references. I'm so excited about that that it's almost silly. I can't wait to really be able to help people.

Yay!

Friday, May 06, 2005

Sorry.

Sorry for the lack of updates. I've been rather busy with family things, and with babysitting. I bought a new camera. I'm pretty stoked about that. Nothing else of much importance to note.

I was surprised to find that I sort of like Creflo A. Dollar. What the hell am I thinking?

I don't have any time to write. Maybe this weekend.