From Diane Setterfield's The Thirteenth Tale

People disappear when they die. Their voices, their laughter, the warmth of their breath. Their flesh. Eventually their bones. All living mempry of them ceases. This is both dreadful and natural. Yet for some there is an exception to this annihilation. For in the books they write they continut to exist. We can rediscover them. Their humour, their tone of voice, their moods. Through the written word they can anger you or make you happy. They can comfort you. They can perplex you. They can alter you. All this, even though they are dead. Like flies in amber, like corpses frozen in ice, that which according to the laws of nature should pass away is, by the miracle of ink on paper, preserved. It is a kind of magic.

--Diane Setterfield



Saturday, November 22, 2008

This weekend has been pretty good...

This week several people have said that I look bigger, so it didn't surprise me to learn that I had gained about 6 lbs in two weeks. That's a big jump from gaining 2 lbs every 3 weeks... and now I know where those stretch marks are coming from. :) ( I only have a few on the very bottom of my belly) Someone also said my hair looks darker, she asked if I dyed it... huh.

We had a Dr. appointment and after waiting and waiting for an appearance, Dr. Maxey came in singing about how he was leaving later for Disney World. I told him I know someone who works there, someone who currently has long red hair. We discussed the possibility of Rachel (soon to be Rachel Snyder, congrats!!) being Ariel and I said I'd have Ariel say hi to his little girl, Kennedy. Oh, shoot I should probably do that! BRB!

Okay, I've sent an e-mail... Hope that helps... :/

So we were talking and all the while he had the heart monitor on Jaedyn. She is doing well. We go back in two weeks and do a sonogram to see how big she is and how much fluid she has...
Scott was asking about inducing early and Dr. Maxey didn't think it was a good idea, but he said if there was a medical reason why we should he'd feel better about it.

The deal is that our insurance will change from really good, with almost no co-pay and no deductible to 90/10 at the first of the year. I think that is a really stupid reason to induce, just to not pay hundreds or thousands of dollars in hospital bills. But with our budget the way it is... it would be nice if SHE happened to WANT to come before the first of the year. So we brought it up just so we are informed and have all our options laid out before us.
Still.
I'm healthy, she's healthy. Why risk NICU time? We'd probably end up paying just as much for NICU as for a regular healthy birth. Ah the dilemmas of our time!

Thursday I found out my Mom's dad is / has gone into surgery for a triple bypass. It is pretty bad. One valve is 99% blocked! A sister in our ward had a baby that was not doing so well, and my little cousin-once-removed was also born with several complications. My sister has also been battling a stomach bug for months. Sunday we had a great lesson from our Home Teachers on Prayer and we decided to focus our prayers on others. It sure seems like there are a lot of people out there that need our prayers. Much more than I need prayers focused on me.

I had a performance evaluation at work on Friday. I totally stressed out about it because the last eval. I had, my boss had me in tears, and it was a really bad experience. I bawled about it Thursday night. Friday I almost had a wad of tissues in hand as I walked into Jeff's office. But I forgot them on the way out the door that morning and so had to face my evaluation empty handed. Yikes! And I was late!
Getting up in the mornings is hard, really hard; and I usually don't make it into the office on time. But Friday I got there with time to spare, and as I was in charge of a birthday celebration set up, I was working on that when Jeff sought me out and asked if we had a meeting scheduled. Whoops! Things were NOT looking good and I'm sure I looked pretty scared. We went to his office and I promptly apologized for losing track of time and he said something to the effect of, 'Hey, that's NOT a big deal. You see how often I'M late to things.'
The rest of the eval. was a breeze! He is very happy with the work I do and the opportunities for improvement he noted (as Scott so cleverly saw) were not so much things for me to work on my work performance. They were ways I could facilitate others getting their work done. So. Could I help him put together a task chart for all the managers? Could I help him manage the unexpected 'emergency' items that come up? Can I get there on time for our Wednesday morning meetings? He likes the notes I take and feels bad when he forgets to wait for me. Really it's not hard stuff and I was able to say 'Sure, have you used this application in our e-mail system that is a task tracker? No?, well I have full access your calendar and I can input the tasks for you and you can mark them off when they are complete.' He seemed really grateful. I was on such a high as I left the office. No tears and my only bitter thought was, 'Dude, Jeff, can you go down and teach our HR manager how to do these performance evaluations? 'Cauz, seriously, yours was infinitely better than hers.' I have really, honestly, been blessed with a multitude of the best bosses ever! I think back on the different jobs I've had and for the most part they have been enjoyable and I have liked working for the people I work for. I've written posts dedicated to thanking individual bosses for how great they are. I go on and on about how much I liked working with them to co-workers.
I think it's gotten to the point that if I start to talk about working with UAMC, or Raf, or the Browns, people have begun to roll their eyes and chant along with me how much I loved them and how I'd totally go back in a heartbeat if I could. :)

Funny story from this morning: I LOVE the family I nannied for in Salt Lake. They are the awesomest and coolest. It's a running joke betwixt Scott and myself that if I really want something, if I really think it's a cool item, it is because the Brown's had it. Imitation is the sincerest form of flattery, right? so if they had a electric teapot from Williams Sanoma, then I must have the same kind. A sit on the stove and whistle, tea pot will never do! and I NEED to get this kind of oatmeal, because it's the kind that the Borwn's got, and my memory is that their oatmeal was better than any oatmeal I'd ever had. Scott conceded that they had fine taste, so he cannot argue with the 'but the Brown's had it' logic. So Oatmeal. simple right? I went out and bought the brand they had and it was still as divine as I remembered it being. Then a week or so ago I saw the same brand at Walmart (score!) and bought it again. But there was a slight difference, I bought the tin of oatmeal not the box. When I got to work I was dismayed to see I could not just stick it in the microwave or use the hot water form the coffee machine. NOR could I OPEN the thing. It was sealed like a paint can!! So today I decided to pull out the oatmeal and finally used it. I had Scott pry it open and (gasp) it was chopped oats! not rolled oats! but I figured that it would be just as good so I started to cook them up. And then I read the directions. (note to self, this is a dumb way to go about cooking!) The directions said to boil them until they got porridge-y and THEN simmer the oatmeal for 30(!!) minutes! How did I miss that!
About 20 minutes later the oatmeal was sticking to the bottom of the pot and I had to take it off. Scott liked it well enough,but I am thinking I'll go back and get the box kind... After all the Brown's had the box kind...


Last night Scott and I went to the closest movie theater around and saw Twilight. I had made tentative plans to see it as a double date with some friends and to see it with a group of girlfriends. But It was just a regular date night for me and my husband. I'm glad it was just us. Not that I didn't want to see it with everyone else, but it was so NICE to just go out the two of us and do something. We used to live glued to the hip and now we don't get to go out just the two of us much.
We got there just in time to get the remaining seats, which happened to be on the front row. Then the manager came in and said that the projector was having issues and we were being moved to another theater. All the kids jumped up and dashed for the exit.
I was amazed at the number of teeny-bopper boys there were. Not on dates, just there is groups. Scott reminded me that boys join Home Ec. for the same reason that they would come to this movie. ohh, yeah... I had totally forgotten about that! However I was amazed at these kids. When the manager came in they were back talking him, too softly for him to hear of course, but they were totally just spouting off phrases. They obviously had no idea what they were saying. They didn't even make sense! It was a sobering moment for me. Poor kids. I really think they had NO idea what they were saying.
In the new theater we had seats in the lower middle of the room, where all the handicapped spaces are. It was perfect. RIGHT in the middle, not too far front and no neighbors!
The movie was good, obviously not as good as the book, but I think they did a great job of making it a movie. Scott was moved by the music and was very quiet the rest of the night. He missed his sister.
I am actually just as happy about the timing of the movie release as anything else about it. The original release date was Megan's birthday, the one year and one day anniversary of her death. I wanted to be supportive of Scott's grief, but I also REALLY wanted to just go see the movie with out feeling guilty about enjoying myself. So the movie came out a week before my birthday, we saw it as my birthday present and there is no guilt! How awesome is that!?!

Yup, it's beena pretty good weekend so far!

1 comment:

Janika said...

I'm so jealous--of everyone! Why does it seem like I'm the only one who hasn't seen it yet? I am sure I will this week.