Up, Down, Upside Down

Oy with the sickness. There is nothing routine in this household, so when someone says routine appendectomy  that isn't us.  So as a result we were home on Thursday and back on Saturday morning where we got to spend 12 hours in two different ER rooms until finally at 11pm Jeff got admitted to St. Marys.  While there are people dying in the ER and I TOTALLY GET THAT but it would be nice if at some point someone would ask you if there was anything that they could do for you, for example we didn't get to eat for the entire 12  hours, were freezing our butts off, had no idea what we were waiting for or what was going to happen, no one could answer any questions, all they kept saying is we'll check on you in like an hour or so... and then we'll look in in another hour. If I don't see a hospital for a really long time I will not be disappointed.  We finally got sent home saying well we are pretty sure it is a colon infection, take this medicine, we can't really do anything about it so if you're not better in a few days give us a call. Oy I tell you Oy

Neither here nor there

I haven't totally disappeared, not that anyone reads this anyway. It has been a CRAZY couple of weeks. I started my new job in La Crosse, and the drive isn't terrible mostly just the cost of gas and getting home at like 6:15 at the super earliest really cuts your evening, and then during the first work party my husband's appendix decides it wants out, he wasn't actually at the party rather at the ER (total downside of working 1.5 hours from home was that I was completely out of the loop while all this is going on) so in the course of roughly 5 hours his stomach started to hurt, he went to the ER and they decided he just might need his appendix out asap! What an awful little organ in that it can do no good only bad, its like the black sheep of organs. Maybe its mad because it doesn't have a purpose so it has evolved into a secret assassin over the years deciding to try to kill its landlord every now and then, yeah I know where do I come up with this crap.  Anyway I am the worse nurse ever, I am a total fixer however I cannot fix this and therefore it frustrates me to no end.  Also we had the meanest nurse ever, she was like trying to push J out the door 3 hours after his surgery, when his blood pressure plummeted and he had trouble breathing she finally laid off him but really I know they like to push people out and all but 3 hours after a 5am surgery when it took til 2am to get the poor guy settled into a room, leaving like no time for sleep the night before is a bit ridiculous.  Then he had to stay over since he wasn't recovering quite fast enough so she was just totally off base trying to boot him like that.  Needless to say it will be a pretty mild labor day weekend here.  Im fighting with all the animals who don't understand why they are being locked out of the bedroom, Ella makes a break for it every chance she can get but she is the most dangerous since her 30 pounds slamming into his stomach would be pretty awful. So here I sit a zookeeper more than anything else for the time.

Fondue You Fondue Me

Does anyone else have random wedding gifts that they have never used.  We have an awesome fondue maker that we actually registered for after having fondue with some friends one night.  We got the fondue maker and alas it has sat in its box for like two years. We figured that it was finally time to bring it out and use it.  The last time we had fondue we remember that the cheese was not very good but everything else turned out great.  We checked out Cost Plus World Market to see if they had any goodies to use for Fondue and they sold all different kinds of chocolate shavings to use for chocolate fondue but the only cheese they sold was a boxed, dry, packaged cheese from switzerland that you had to soak the baggie in water before opening it up and pouring the packaged cheese into the fondue maker, this scared us a bit, let alone the amount of preservatives that must be in that cheese. So basically what Im saying here is if anyone has any advice on where to get great cheese/chocolate for fondue or any awesome fondue recipes we could really use them. Im going to try to see what I can find in Mpls tomorrow when I go and hopefully I can find something good there but I know certain kinds of cheese work better than others so any advice on what anyone has tried and what hasn't or has worked would be great!

Are we getting old?

This weekend I went to see my awesome GPB girls for a reunion. We spent all day in Madison on a pontoon boat on a lake (not the lake since we were not on Mendota but rather a lake). We are all between the ages of I want to see the youngest like 24 to 26 maybe. I think this is still pretty young, none of us on the boat have kids yet though some are starting to plan for that in the near future and others are are avoiding in like the plague but what was more disturbing were the topics of gray hairs and spider veins.  At one point like 6 people on the boat were comparing their spider veins whatever the heck they are, I apparently don't have them and was left out of this discussion, which I guess I didn't mind since I figure better to not have them and not be included than to have them and have to show them to everyone.  I did google them and while there is a chance that I may get varicose veins at some point because they run in my Dad's family I can't really think of anyone in my family with spider veins, so maybe I will remain good there.  But really the point of all this is how is it that we're already getting old this young.  I have no idea if between the highlights I have gray hairs I certainly am not going to comb through my hair looking for them and believe me if I find them Im not sharing, I guess I could see where it would be upsetting to find them but its funny how for a group so set on going out and having fun and being young to have so much talk about how old we're getting, and for me the a-typical 25 year old who doesn't ever go out because she really can't stand the taste of alcohol which like no one on this planet or at least anyone who ever went to WI-Platteville can seem to understand to actually pick up on this was just a little too strange. Speaking of that note Im beginning to think maybe I should just start telling people we're Mormon (no offense in any way to anyone who is Mormon) because maybe then they would get the whole not drinking thing and just lay off, while Im not saying I never drink I do like the occasional sweeter glass of wine, I've never liked the taste of alcohol and I hate beer I pretty much just slammed enough to get instantly wasted in college in order to drink more, J cannot drink due to medical reasons which sucks for him because he would really like to if he could but I just don't understand how something like that can be such a big deal, I mean we have lost friends over it, I guess looking back maybe those friendships were only based on alcohol but if thats the case thats just a sad sack really, and you have to wonder how many friendships out there are only based on a beverage? 

What happened to when Stephanie was Step-on-Me

What is it with people and the crazy baby names these days, while my distant family is equally to blame since my mom's cousin named their kid Autumn Sky like 4 months ago (thankfully they only call her Autumn which I don't mind it's when it's paired with something like Sky that creeps me out) it seems that names today are just plain strange and the spellings just keep getting weirder and weirder. While I am all for unique baby names, I think that there is a certain amount of thought that needs to go into it, for example if you're going to give your child a whacked out first name maybe give them a traditional middle name so if they really hate it they can go by their middle name.  Today when I went to look up the baby picture of a family friend's new little one (with a totally wonderful normal name) I came across this wee little girl named Stormy Sky. Did her parents just look out the window during labor and say whoa its storming lets name her stormy sky or did some amount of legitimate thought go into such a name? Based on her picture and hair and eye color I couldn't think of any ethnic or cultural reason to name her that. Im not really sure which scares me more, that they thought about it and chose that name or that they picked this poor child's name on some kind of whim. Also what is with having 20 different ways to spell Kate, or any other name for that matter. How can you teach your child to read if their name doesn't even phonetically make sense? We used to have to get creative when we were young in order to make fun of someone's name, now the parents are just handing the material right to the kids. Oye I tell you Oye. 

Life Post Bar

Sadly I do not really know what to do with myself these days, I have two weeks off before I start working, though we do have to trek to Oklahoma to J's brothers wedding in like a week or so and there is a GPB reunion this weekend but during the week Im kinda at a loss here.  I really need to catch up on some boring stuff like bills and what not and I've already begun immersing myself in fictional books...

Heres what Im Reading:

Firefly Lane

Letters to my Daughters

Reunion

Heres my List of what I want to read:

All books by Elizabeth Noble

Twilight Series

The Girls

Heres what I have read lately and in general though not everything I have read as that would take forever:

All of Jodi Piccoult's books (great books)

The Hannah Swenson Series

Belong to Me (very good I recommend it)

Amish Grace

Eat Pray Love

Lucy Stone Mysteries

All of Sophie Kinsella's books

The Dark Materials Collection

The Sugar Queen (also super good)

so many others I am beginning to think that I need to start writing them down

If anyone has any suggestions I love reading new books and will try about anything!

Reflections...

Top 5 Things I HATED about the WI Bar Exam

1. The Exam (never again do I want to see a multiple choice question)

2. The lack of organization and mean proctors with creepy fingernails, so much for ever starting on time

3. The Concourse hotels inability to get room service to me on time and making me have to skip breakfast on test day

4. The handle on my door which Im pretty sure I have bruises from trying to get to work

5. The mean stuck up examinees that wouldn't talk to anyone else, like the guy I got stuck sitting next to

Top 5 Things I LOVED about the WI Bar Exam (that have nothing to do with the exam really)

1. Seeing my St. Thomas friends for 3 days, awww it was kinda like being back in school again when they were all close by and you could see them all the time during the day

2. Sitting by the lake at UW it was such a great day even if it did involve essays it was super nice outside and great to just sit down and enjoy the lake and weather

3. State street- while we didn't really eat at any great local restaurants I did get to enjoy some of my favorite chains and look around in some great little shops where I bought a cute pair of turquoise earrings

4. My t-shirt I bought that says It's hard to be humble when your from Wisconsin,  I Love it!

5. Room Service- I could really get used to someone delivering me lunch everyday

Now I just secretly count the days to September in hopes I never have to do that again. Meanwhile I will enjoy my 18 days of summer, tonight Emerson Drive concert in Albert Lea with the little sis and J and neighbors. Perhaps one of these days I will even get a bit of a tan.