Kwiddens and The Family

From the left:

Me, Mim, Kwiddens, Em, Jorg

We're a pretty family, if you ask me.

Sorry for short/intermittent posts. Typing still hurts, although I was allowed to take my splint off today :)

Sad Buster

Poor Buster scraped his leg pretty badly. All the hair is gone and the skin is all red and raw on a big spot on his leg. I had to bind it up with gauze and Neosporin and wrap it in an ace bandage, and here is a picture of him glaring at me. Ignore the bottom of my closet, I have way too many shoes!

Hand Pictures

Since my hand hurts pretty badly lately I am limiting my blog posting. So, since a picture is worth a thousand words (I never really liked that cliche), here is a visual chronicling of my hand's progress. If you don't like wounds, don't scroll down.

Here's how it started November 3:
That cast was annoying. Especially because I couldn't get it wet and Kwiddens or Scott had to help me wrap it up in plastic and shower.

Here it is, straight out of the cast:
Six stitches!

After stitch removal (I almost fainted, I feel like such a pansy...):
Then they put glue all over my palm and added these surgical tape strips:
They are supposed to just slowly peel off on their own, and I can get them wet and everything. When the nurse put the glue for the strips on, she didn't clean off the excess glue OR wait for it to dry before throwing me into this new splint:
Fun, huh? So when she put it on, the palm of my hand stuck terribly to the inside of the splint and HOOBOY did it hurt when I had to take the splint off later. I don't know if you can tell from the pictures, but the palm of my hand is one giant bruise and this didn't make it any more comfortable.

This new splint is even more restrictive than the cast was. I can move my fingers a bit more easily, but I can't rotate my wrist at all. So I usually have my wrist held a certain way when I type and write and open doorknobs and crochet and basically EVERYTHING and it makes doing everything really difficult so I am in pain and grumpy.

But I finished my sweater. I took pictures, but Scott has the camera in Hong Kong (he comes home on Thursday! I've missed him SO BAD). So the pictures I took with the camera on my phone kinda suck anyway, so when he gets home I can get him to take a picture of me in it!

Bored

So I got my stitches out, went back to work stoned on Lorotab, spent almost the whole weekend being bored and doing nothing with my hand before I decided that seaming up my sweater would probably be ok with my hand.

So, I spent a few hours seaming and weaving in ends and the sweater is done.

I have pictures of the taking-out-the-stitches and of the finished sweater, but this new splint is even more restrictive than the old one so it's harder to type so this is all for now.

Nice Timing

Dear Swine Flu,

If it's you that forced me to leave work early today even though I am SO in the hole for my PTO I am going to be seriously mad. Seriously. I don't enjoy being on Sudafed, Nyquil, and Benadryl all at the same time but this seems to be the only thing that can help me sleep.

Hate,

Anna

To Blog Or Not To Blog

So when I started this blog I wasn't sure what my intent was. I thought maybe I would write about my feelings. Maybe I would write prose. Maybe I would rant. Maybe this, maybe that.

So far it has been things that happen, general complaints, funny stories, interesting things I found on the internet...well, you've read it.

But there are some things that I would like to talk about, but am afraid to because I might offend someone, or because I'm afraid someone might judge me and stop talking to me because I'm such a heathen (it's happened before, you know).

Here are some examples:

My in-laws

...what if they stumbled across this blog and got all offended and hated me forever and the world ended? My mother-in-law is particularly emotional and I would actually feel bad if I made her cry.

How I'm crazy and such

...people view mental illness differently. Some people understand that it's a disease, caused by a chemical imbalance, just like cancer or diabetes, but some other people think...well, they think you're just crazy. Which is true. But it's because of the chemicals, and they don't understand that. It's hard to explain. It's hard to talk about openly.

Why I'm not Mormon anymore

...when Scott decided to leave the church some of his friends completely alienated him and he's sometimes lonely because of it. I would like to think my Mormon friends aren't like this, but you really never know.

Why I decided to not have children

...there are very valid reasons. Including not wanting to die. And DUDE, children are sticky. And LOUD.

There are many others, I'm sure, but these are just a few I've been mulling over lately.

Gettin' Hitched

So Kwiddens got some exciting (and weird and scary) news: she's having a baby.

I hope it's a girl. I want to knit little pink baby clothes SO BAD.

Ahem.

So she's getting married soon (November 7) and for a wedding present I decided to buy her a ring set since she's totally skint right now and she deserves to have a sparkly of her very own (and anyone who can tell me what movie that's from gets 10 bonus points. Redeemable for...um...mittens).

I tried to take a picture of the rings but I suck at photography, so they just kept coming out blurry...sad. There's a princess cut stone in the center and then two channel-set stones on each side, and then the wedding band has 5 channel-set stones so it lines up with the ones on the other ring. Very pretty. Very sparkly.

Anyway, I'm really excited for them. Isaac seems like a really good guy and they seem very happy together so I hope their relationship continues to bloom and grow.

Also, I will get my baby fix every now and again without actually having to touch a diaper. SCORE!

The only thing is, I will be totally stoned on pain meds that day.

Fun times.

Wow, This Is Fun!

So I had my surgery yesterday. It wasn't so bad, really, I was asleep the whole time and everything was numb when I woke up. But let me tell you, it sure hurts today!

Here's my hand:

I really wanted to get a picture of the stitches but I suppose that will have to wait until next Friday when they take this cast off.

My company was super sweet and had flowers delivered to my house:

Also, some women in my neighborhood have brought some meals by for me and Scott, which is just amazing and super sweet of them and helped a ton.

Now I hadn't thoroughly considered how much help I would need. I keep trying to do things only to get frustrated and have to ask for help. Scott has had to brush my hair, help me put clothes on, get me food, help me eat the food, get me drinks, open my bottles of water and medicine, scratch my back, fill up my ice pack, the list goes on and on and HOLY COW am I lucky to have him around. He just had to help me take a shower. I know we're married and he's seen it all, but it's still really weird to have someone else scrub you! He had to help me wrap up my arm in plastic bags and plastic wrap and packing tape:

See that smile? That's the narcotic pain meds smile. Oh yeah. And see my super awesome plastic stump.

At least I can use my lappie by myself. Although Scott had to plug it in for me. Ha.

Trick Or Treat!

Halloween is one of our very favorite holidays. Each year we buy a few more things to add to our collection and every year it gets more elaborate, even if only by a little.

First we made Scott a long black cloak. It was perfect because Scott could hide his face but still see out.
It reached all the way to the floor. It was so perfect!
We then blacked out Scott's face, neck, and ears:
He put on a long-sleeved black shirt, black scrubs and black socks. We bought a pair of black gloves that had glow-in-the-dark skeleton hands on it, so he wore those too.

Next we set up the front yard. We bought six tombstones and a skeleton pirate for the front lawn. Scott set them up perfectly:
And it's hard to see but I have the cutest outfit on.
Then for the front porch we had some spiderwebs, orange lights, and a door cover.
Also we found a cauldron and put some water and dry ice (and Buster's new chew toy) in it.
While we were doing our shopping for this year we decided we needed a new fog machine. We put it outside, blowing over our graveyard (our camera kinda sucks so it's hard to see)(Scott is going to get us a new one when he goes to Hong Kong next week):
Now, I forgot to take pictures of the inside of the door, but we built a wooden frame around the door and sealed a chamber with sheets and put our other fog machine inside along with a strobe light and a blacklight. We left the fog machine on the whole time and every time kids would come to the door the fog chamber would be ready and Scott would come out:

Next year we plan on getting more tombstones (we totally didn't have enough) and building a little fence around our graveyard and getting a more powerful fog machine and...yeah we're excited!

So Fluffy

I'm getting cut open in the morning. Expect a post about that (typed very slowly of course, with only one hand) and also one about Halloween, and one about upcoming festivities for a certain someone. But, for now, I leave you with Buster.

He likes to hang out exactly where you don't want him to. When you're walking in the house with arms full of grocery bags he's prancing around right in front of your feet. If you're trying to walk somewhere he stands right where you're trying to walk. And of course, here he is hanging out right at the bottom of the stairs. Just look at how long his hair is getting!

Also, I finished all the knitting on the sweater! I even started seaming but then my hand got tired, and I figured I wouldn't be able to wear it until after my brace comes off anyway so I'm not too concerned about it. I'll finish it sometime later. Turns out I have enough yarn to make another one for someone. Maybe Mim? Matching sweaters...I think I'm just dorky enough.