just since last week

This video is my new favorite video. The song is fabulous too. Check it.



I wish I had some exciting things to update you with but mostly I've just been incredibly busy with work, school, and church. I actually pulled an all- nighter on Monday night. I haven't done that since I was about 19. Crazy. I got a bad grade on a paper and it threw my whole game off. Yes it was only a B but I worked my butt off on that paper and I know when I've earned a B and when I have not. This was definitely not a B paper. And I only have 3 grades in that class so a B can really throw things off. And this class is such a joke that if I get a B in it I'm going to be pretty annoyed. I got the paper back on Sunday night and the 2nd paper was due on Tuesday. So Monday I was all sorts of off. Currently I am doing my best to keep things in perspective and hoping that I do better on this next paper.
On another note, after bleeding for 22 days I finally went to the doctor and found out that my hormones are in fact out of whack. Now I have a legitimate excuse for why I'm crazy. I got a hormone replacement something or rather and still haven't taken it. The doctor told me that I could try ibuprofen for 2 -3 days and see if that helped and it did. I am blood free now for like 3 days. Gross but great.
Also, have you ever taken a man with you to the gynocologist office? I've never taken my husband with me for all of these years because I had no idea how he would handle it and also I wanted him to think of my private parts as a place of awe and wonder and not as a place of stirrups and medical devices. Know what I mean? Anyway, last week I hit the bleeding emergency stage and he took me to my lady doctor. It was pretty fabulous. You know how they have giant vaginas on the wall, large enough that you feel like you can walk through them? He couldn't stop staring. His eyes were as wide as they get and he kept saying things like - "Wow there are way more parts to this thing than I even knew about" or "wow what does that thing do?" or "I thought I knew all the words but these are some names I've never heard of". I'm pretty sure men know absolutely nothing about what all we do for them in this area. I also think I'm going to take him to every girl appointment now so he can be educated and I can be entertained. My favorite part was when he started touching one of the displays and like seven parts fell off and he had absolutely no idea where they went in order to put it back together. I kept telling him, Yeah Good, put the ovaries by the belly button. Excellent work. :)
Anyway, have a fabulous Thanksgiving!

my birthday

Well, I pretty much made out like a bandit. I put together a little mosaic of the gifts I received...


Some of them are a little off (as in received a table runner but not that one, type thing) but they are certainly fabulous things, no? I think I'm becoming obsessed with Etsy.
My husband took me to a lovely restaurant Saturday afternoon where I had a delicious meal and his wonderful company. Its called La Jolla Groves. Its amazing.

They had every wonderful detail thought out and the display was almost as incredible as the food. It really was so great. (I actually cried - it was beautiful and my husband is sweet and it was just perfect. And I'm still coming down from the hormonal crash so don't be judgin').


After lunch we walked over to Williams-Sonoma and got some cider spices to mull with our homemade apple juice that we pressed a month or two ago.

Needless to say, the day was just wonderful and my husband went to extra lengths to make it that way. Thanks love!
And thanks to everyone on the FB for all the birthday wishes. I feel loved. :)

genius

I had a great birthday. I will report on that tomorrow or the next day. Mostly I just wanted to tell you all that I found out this weekend that I made the pretentious graduate honor society thing because my GPA is the bomb dot com.Yeah.

I was feeling pretty awesome about myself until I realized that I put my tights on backwards today.



yes. I am a genius.

friday funnies

I'm on the upswing of the Mirena Mood Swing Marathon since removal almost two weeks ago. For the last two days I've been almost annoyingly happy/hyper. In fact, last night I actually woke myself up in the middle of the night from laughing. It was super weird. I have no idea what I was dreaming about or what was going on but I suddenly became conscious of my chuckles and I woke up. Luckily my husband didn't wake up. He's been handling these mood swings like a champ but I think he might draw the line at me creepily laughing in my sleep...
So on Friday afternoons I have a few traditions which mostly include looking at sights that actually make me laugh out loud. These include

www.stuffonmycat.com

www.hyperboleandahalf.blogspot.com - gots some swears sometimes

and my favorite
www.failblog.org - I recommend hitting the G-Rated button at the top, otherwise you get some pretty rank stuff.

Heed the warnings if you are soft at heart - otherwise those are some funny sites.


I hope you all have a fabulous weekend. Its my birthday this weekend. Should be a good time.

country living

There is something about country living that is so incredibly appealing to me. I love big old farmhouses with beautiful surrounding acreage and lots of large, sun-saluting oak trees. The idea of it all is so romantic. My husband and I met in a very small town in the Shenandoah Valley of Virginia and lived there at the beginning of our marriage while I finished up my undergrad. It had the most stunning rolling hills, wide and slow moving rivers, and gorgeous old southern farms. I loved going for drives and just soaking up our surroundings.
Here are some pictures of the EmersonMade Farm (below). I think they are wonderful (completely unrealistic but wonderful nonetheless). I mean, whose laundry room looks like that? And a pantry entirely of glass jars. LOVE IT! But I totally don't have the discipline to take everything out of their original containers and put them in a jar and display them. This is also why I don't think I could have all open shelves in the kitchen. Sometimes you just have ugly products or beat up plastic cereal bowls. Thats life.
Of course, maybe thats not life in the country. I don't really know. It all appears so lovely.
Anyway, this all came about because I'm wearing cowboy boots today and I get made fun of at work just about everytime I wear them. The boys ask if I'm from the country or something and I sort of sigh and say, I wish.










This version of the song Oh Shenandoah almost does justice to the beauty of the area.



I arranged and a played this song at church on the last Sunday we were there. This song still makes me cry every.single.time I hear it. Its been four long years since last I've seen her. Here's praying it won't be seven.

Lets start this off right

Friends. Last week started a bit rough (see here) so this week we are going to start if off right. This is going to be a great week. Its going to be cold but we just got a lovely new alpaca sweater as an early birthday gift from the grandparents. We are teaching a graduate course today on judicial institutions, theoretical pedigrees and approaches, and a brief historical lit. review. We are going to the doctor this week to follow up about bleeding and mood swings and other issues. We are moving efficiently through projects at work. And more importantly, we are going to start thinking about Christmas and the joy of giving the perfect gift. And we are going to start it all off with a lovely song and that beautiful picture of a deer in the apple orchard near my house (above). We walk there at least once a week to see the deer. They are so elegant.
Enjoy!



or maybe you like the original version better

Revenge of the Picture Frame

My week thus far has been bizarre and painful and dumb.

I felt like I was supposed to get my IUD out over fall break. I ignored the feeling because I was scared.

Sunday night I was putting together a picture frame, holding it down about where my ovaries are located (or used to be) and I tried to walk through the door back into the kitchen. I basically lodged myself in the door frame and slammed the picture into my uterus. It was painful and bad words were spoken. I went to sleep uncomfortable but blamed it on my being an idiot.

Flash to Monday morning and I’m having really really hard cramps and I’m bloated like a hot air balloon. I feel around to see if I can feel the string of my IUD and its way over to one side and high up.

I had successfully dislocated my IUD with a picture frame. They tell me the odds of that happening are like 1 in 1 million. I think its God’s way of telling me that its “my way or the highway”.

So I got my IUD out in an emergency procedure at 1:00 on Monday (coincidentally at the exact same time as the class that was cancelled because my teacher wanted to give us some time to “catch up”).

I spent Monday afternoon working from home, watching movies, doing homework and feeling guilty because my good friend Emily did all my grocery shopping for me because Monday was the only time I was going to be able to do it before the grandparents arrived (last night).

Monday night I snapped at my husband and kept thinking how much I disliked him and then within ten minutes was completely sobbing in the bathroom. I was pretty sure this wasn't my normal self so I looked up some info on post IUD experiences. Turns out there is a thing called the Mirena Crash, where your body is trying to re-balance your hormones and you are therefore crazy anywhere from 3 days to 3 weeks.

So for the last few days I have been all over the map. I'm trying to keep my emotions in check as I know they likely are a result of a lot of stress and an unplanned baby barrier being removed and causing my hormones to freak out.

Adding to the fun, I've been interviewing for an assistant at work (making an offer to a woman today - cross your fingers!) and looked down at the end of work last night to see that I had not only started bleeding unexpectedly but had bled heavily and through my nice khaki suit pants. Awesome. I arrived home the moment my husband's grandparents showed up on the doorstep and awkwardly tried to hug them and welcome them whilst covering my entire lower regions. I'm still bleeding very heavy. Tmi but I don't care. I'm giving it till tomorrow before I call the doctor.

So its been a very strange week. I didn't feel at all prepared for this and yet somehow, strangely, I felt prepared for this. I haven't decided if I'm staying off birth control all together or if I'm going to try something else or what exactly I'm going to do. I need to talk to my husband but it will be another two weeks before we won't have guests in our home and I doubt that we will discuss it at much length till then.

I think the moral of the story is LISTEN TO GOD or you’ll get a damn punch in the uterus.

And in honor of the photo wall that I was putting up and the frame that shattered my secure little world, here are some lovely pictures of galley walls:





Here's hoping the week gets better!