A Beautiful .....moth?

To tell this story, I have to go back a few weeks to a hot day shortly after we arrived here in our fair city. Littleman and I were taking a bicycle ride/ walk in the absolute swelter of the morning sun, this was to my mind a great idea for exercise and to hell with the inevitable sunpoisoning. As we drag ourselves along my little guy notices a wooly caterpillar and shrieking with glee grabs it up to bring home to die. Now I say this because we have a long and painful history with caterpillars, we love them....to death. We give them leaves and sticks and little caterpillar houses, we check on them daily, we take them out to crawl on our joyful hands.....we kill them. Every time.

So, when I saw this unfortunate wooly, I thought..."Not This Time" and promptly took Littleman to the store to get a new caterpillar house. We took great care with this guy; fresh leaves dipped in pool water every morning. New and fun sticks to climb daily. We shook all the poop ( there was a lot!) out of the cage every day to give Wooly a clean house. The kids were obsessed....I was obsessed.

Two weeks ago, Wooly went into a chrysalis (cocoon) and we all got nervous. The cocoon stage is were we lost our last unfortunate friend. The days are slowly ticking by, we are getting more and more nervous and the butterfly fails to appear. Mr. K and I are exchanging looks that mean " should we clean out the cage and say it flew away in the night?". Then, yesterday as I finally decide to just clean out the cage and get it over with, I notice in the corner...A BUTTERFLY!




Wait, a MOTH!


who cares, really? At least we brought it to the end of its life cycle without killing it this time! It was quite pretty actually, a delicate orange color with soft spots, Big and thrilling to the kids who hollared and tried to hold it and gave it copious amounts of new wet leaves for the singular accomplishment of surving.

Hooray for nature!

Wine Fairs and Promethazine

The full story of my sudden and inexplicable illness is long, dramatic and confusing, even for me who lived through it.

In Short:
( a day by day play by play)

Sun Night: start to feel both nauseous and faint, throw up and go to bed.

Mon Morning: Wake up in horrible pain, centering in my belly and back area, freak out and go to ER, where they give me a contrast CAT scan and morphine. Neither makes me happy, both make me cry.

Tues Day: Home feeling better until I am suddenly struck with a blinding headache. I go rapidly to bed.

Wed: Having not slept all night due to headache, I am grouchy and still in horrible pain, I call a doctors office, get rejected thanks to my stupid ny-only insurance and am advised to go directly to the ER....again.

I go and get more CAT scans, more drugs leaving this :



Then my loving and hapless father who happens to be in town comes to pick up my sad self and return me to my bed of pain.

Overall Diagnoses:

Headache...Virus.. I-Have-No-Idea

Either way the next several days have consisted of my taking Tylenol and Motrin in rotation along with my prescription for nausea and drinking plenty of Ensure since solids having been disgusting me.

Today I do feel much better and so My Roomi J and I journeyed out to the Annapolis Fairgrounds to engage in a $22 wine fair. The fair itself was rather sad, with many a redneck and a few soggy, made-in-china nicknacks for sale. the wines were mostly local, and a decent assortment but mostly people were chucking them back like it was water in the desert, not a lot of "wine tasting" going on.



Either way, we tasted and gossiped and then typically, the heavens opened and decided for us that we were done with our foray into 'fancy' wine. Oh well, at least we got out of the house.

Upon our return to our den of doggiesmell and brown furniture, we made some mac and cheese and curled up on the couch for Office Space.

yay sunday

ER X2

What a hideous week!

and its only Thursday! The mysterious stomach virus is making a second pass at my body, this time involving symptoms strong enough to send me to the ER not once, but twice in the span of 3 days. My arms are black and blue, I've had more IV drugs than like to think about, flashed several patients and nurses due to those damn gowns and had 2 CAT scans. I'm exhausted.

What is the diagnoses?

uhmmmm, a virus? maybe?


Fantastic.

On the upside, I had some very nice people taking care of me and my dad came and got me from the ER yesterday and took me home. Hooray for dad's.

Also, I have learned that I could never be a iv drug user, as the feeling of receiving drugs intravenously is so awful that I'd rather be in pain. No joke, it's as if someone just reached in and stopped your heart.

Either way, I'm in much better spirits today and tomorrow I will go back to work! YAY!

Blinded by Barbie

I embarked on what has turned out to be an extremely foolhardy venture; sewing a miniature wardrobe for Barbie. What was I thinking? Firstly, Barbie has changed her shape in recent years, so all patterns made before five years ago do NOT fit her, also conversely old Barbie will not fit into new clothes. NOT AT ALL. Her breasts are simply too large, and her hips? forget about it. I busted an adorable pair of capri's on her fat ass.

This is what i have so far:



Five outfits and hopefully a few more tomorrow if I can go get a Barbie that they will actually fit. BUHHHH


SO now, I will take myself off for martini's with M and a strange group of older people who apparently really enjoy her company. I really enjoy the company of a martini.

OH NO!

I get home yesterday, starving and all wiped out and ready to just curl up with my sewing machine, a bottle of wine and CSI. OH, and some PIZZA. SO, i walk all the way down to the joint where i can get delicious slices of thin cheesy pizza ( which also happens to be next to the liquor store!), get some wonderfully hot and tasty pizza slices and walk back home.

Now, I will note I was carrying my box properly, even tho I was not paying attention because I was on the phone.

The box failed, the pizza went slipping right out the side, into the dirt, cheese side down. I grabbed it up as quick as I could but too late....the cheese was filthy. Seeing as I was starving and desperate,, I brought it home, peeled off the dirty cheese and attempted to eat the slices anyways but to no avail, it was all gritty and I kept worrying about bugs. I would never make it as a homeless person.


It was tragic so I went right to the bottle and sewed and drank my sorrows away.


Now I am up at the crack of dawn...ugh...to engage in a full day of sewing ( I ambegining to think I should have started this project much sooner) and then maybe a wine festival with Roomi J.

Too Early

It's 6:30 and I've been up for an hour already....and by that I mean I woke in a PANIC at 5:30 because I remembered that Mrs. K wanted me here early today. At 6:00. CRAP.. So I put on clothes and hopped into my car and away I went, only to wait on Mrs K till 6:30 as par usual.


sigh


Plus, I hear the little man in his room making noise, which usually means he is dressing himself and this usually means I will find him in several shirts, all of which will be backwards, insideout underwear ( also backwards) and jammi pants. Lord only knows why this is the outfit I find him in every morning, but there it is.


So I will sit here with my coffee and struggle to wake up and wait until get-up time ( 7:15) and then enjoy the tragedy of clothing on him.


In other news: I started fashioning Barbie a wardrobe of 50's dresses last night for the LittleGal's birthday and damn but those old patterns are complicated. I spent three hours and my entire outer shell of a dress is wrong. DAMN rickrack. I will try again with another piece of fabric. The upside is that because the clothes are so small, you can make them fast and with very cheap amounts of fabric. Hopefully, if I have enough time, I can make her a matching dress. Her birthday is only 5 days away.

I also need to find a teeny suitcase for Barbie to put these clothes in. hmmmmmmmmmmmm....



Yep, I have interesting things to say at the wee hours, don't I?

I rode a CAMEL

It's true! I really did.




I took the kids to the Baltimore zoo and I have almost entirely good things to say about it. The habitats are huge and thoughtfully constructed. The animals are healthy and living in packs along with other animals that would live with them in the wild. They have separated animals by continent and also created large learning areas arround certain animals. The only con is the cost. Everything cost money and it was A LOT. I spent 80 on just tickets ( entry, camel ride, carousel) plus I left our packed lunch on the counter in the kitchen so I spent more on food...and ice cream.

The entire park was larger than I like to think about really, with a tram that takes you from the front gate to the actual animals and habitats so large you need binoculars to see some of the animals. This, of course, translates into some very tired babies by the end of the day. They slept happily in the back seat while I endured rush hour alone and listened to Lemony Snicket play to their unconscious bodies. Lovely.

BUT, we had a great time and I GOT TO RIDE A CAMEL.

I also saw this sign on the side of a Police station, aparently their solution to car theft and murder:

Don't get DEAD beacuse your battery is.

I locked the doors and took a picture with my cell...because really.