Wednesday, July 1, 2020

Thoughts on masks

I know I haven't been on this blog in forever.  To quickly catch up, I've been pregnant 5 times and have 2 living children.  I have some thoughts about the whole masking thing that's going on now, and I needed an outlet, so here I am.

Firstly, if you're sick, you shouldn't even be out and about to worry about having a mask on, unless you're going to the doctor, so there's that.  Don't be an idiot.

Secondly, if you're not sick and are wearing a mask, you're not "saving a life."  You're not sick.  All you're doing is saving everyone from your morning breath.  Or your after-lunch onion breath.

Thirdly, people who should be masking?  
  • Hair stylists and manicurists.  They're in close proximity with people for a prolonged amount of time and if sick people are idiots and are going out for a mani/pedi, a mask on everyone will be double protection against the virus.  
  • Healthcare workers, for obvious reasons.  If I worked in direct patient care, I would be masking up for all kinds of reasons: flu season, stomach bug, etc.
  • Anyone else who deals with the public face-to-face for longer than a few seconds (bank tellers, realtors, customer service, etc.) because people are dumb (see above about not being an idiot.)
  • Compromised individuals (or people who live with compromised individuals) who need to go out of the house.  Because, again, we can't trust everyone to not be idiots.
Also, for the record, COVID-19 does not spontaneously appear.  If no one is sick at a church, no one's in danger.  The virus does not seek out crowds like a heat-seeking missile.  If I accidentally stand too close to you (long shot, but you never know) the virus doesn't magically spawn.  It's not omniscient or sentient; it's a virus.

I would like for everyone to be as vigilant about symptoms, masking, and quarantining as they are now when flu season comes around, because the same principals should exist for any virus that has a death toll.  

Monday, May 14, 2018

Manicuring has changed...I guess

All of the nail pages/YouTubers I follow have been capping the free end of the nail.  This is a new concept for me.  When I was in beauty school we learned to "feather edge," which meant taking the orange wood stick wrapped in cotton over the free edge to remove any polish that as there.  That was supposed to help prevent chipping.  Now, all the nail people say that capping the free edge helps prevent chipping.

So I'm doing an experiment.  Because most of my nails are pretty short, I knew it would be hard for me to get the free edge without getting a ton of polish on my skin.  So I took some nail forms and did one hand at a time.  It was annoying and messy, but I'm interested to see if it keeps my polish from chipping longer than my usual way.



These pictures were taken on day 2 of the manicure after I washed my hands all day at work and gave Violet a bath.  I have one little chip or wear mark on my left thumb.


We'll see what happens.


Thursday, October 12, 2017

I'm my own worst enemy

September 28, 2017.  I took a pregnancy test because my period was late.  It was positive.  October 2, I made the announcement on Facebook.  October 5, I had my first doctor's appointment and they scheduled my first ultrasound for the 18th.  October 11, I spent a couple hours in the ER with bleeding and the doctor told me I'm probably having a miscarriage.

I hate to admit, but this whole pregnancy (all two and half weeks of it), I had a horrible feeling that something would go wrong.  I held off on telling my students at Penn Highlands, which I'm thankful for now. 

I thought since I had gone through the worst thing that could happen already (losing Matthew) that I was immune from anything else happening.  And now, I'm my own worst enemy.  I'm telling myself everything you're not supposed to say when someone has a miscarriage.

Did I jinx myself by announcing it so early?  Was it because I kept thinking something would go wrong that something DID go wrong?  At least I know I can get pregnant.  At least I have Violet.  At least it happened early on and not later.  Was it something I did?  Maybe I carried Violet too much.  Maybe I didn't eat well enough.  Maybe it's because I follow all kind of baby loss pages on Facebook.  Was it because of my stomach surgery?

Obviously, I realize it has nothing to do with anything I did, but you can't help thinking that.  I tortured myself with what I had done when we got Matthew's diagnosis, even though my doctors assured me it was just a fluke.

And I don't mind that I announced it early and now have to announce the sad news.  Too often, miscarriages are taboo.  No one talks about them, even though 1 in 4 woman have had one.  I want others to know they're not alone.  Just like I don't mind talking about my PCOS and fertility issues.  Anytime I can raise awareness for these issues, I do.

I'm supposed to go to my OB/Gyn on Monday to get another HCG level drawn, but I might see if they'll let me get it done tomorrow sometime.  My HCG levels should be doubling every 48-72 hours.  Mine was only 183 last night at the ER and they couldn't see anything on the ultrasound.

Thursday, August 10, 2017

Updates

I haven't been here in a while.  A lot has gone on.  Thanksgiving 2015 Chris and I announced that we were pregnant again.  This baby was a girl and she was due on July 26th.  She came 10 days early via C section (she has a huge head.)  Her name is Violet Mae and she's a ball of fun and energy.  So, I haven't had much time to sit down and write.

I took down the Fibrous Dysplasia page because, after the nuclear bone scan I had three years ago and recent CT scans of my abdomen (see the Morgagni Hernia page), I'm fairly certain Altoona hospital misdiagnosed me seven or eight years ago when they said that's what I had.

I'm not going to make any promises about keeping this blog up, but I hate to let it sit there since I've had a blog for 16 years now.  We'll see.


Friday, May 1, 2015

Mrs. Dean Winchester

Last night, I had a dream that I was married to Dean Winchester.  Not the actor who plays him (Jensen Ackles) but the character himself.  I went to a Christmas party with friends and was mad at Dean for something so I decided I was going to cheat on him.  I went to a website on my phone where you could "buy" an Italian guy who was in prison.  I ordered one and waited for him to be delivered.  I told one of the other girls at the party that I would only keep him if he were cute.  Turned out he was cute (tall, dark curly hair) and really young.  I can't remember his name, but he only spoke a little English.  He came with a note stating what was wrong with him (he had something wrong with his brain that messed up his balance or something) and, unbeknownst to me, developed a crush on another girl at the party.  Somehow, Dean found out about all this and said he was swinging by.  I panicked and told everyone to say that the Italian guy was the new dishwasher I hired.  Dean came and was making his rounds at the party and guilt overwhelmed me.  I ran up to him while he was talking, put my hands on his waist, and said, "Dean, can I talk to you for a moment?"  He said yeah and we walked away from the party.  I started crying and hugging him, the realization that I was married to freakin' Dean Winchester finally sinking in, and apologized for my stupid moment.

Tuesday, April 21, 2015

My Tumblr Outrage

Editor's note: I don't normally blog about anything really political, but this was weighing on me this past week.

I saw a post on Pinterest that was actually a screen grab from Tumblr, which is 90% of what you find on Pinterest now anyway.  I’m somewhat thankful for this as I don’t like logging on to Tumblr; I feel the same way about it as I do Twitter.  It’s a waste of time and any website where ISIS is able to have an account deserves to be shut down.  Not to mention, Tumblr especially seems to be a breeding ground for young Liberals-in-the-making.

I read the other day this user’s account of one of their college professors explaining privilege.  He put a trash can at the front of the class room and told everyone to crumple a piece of paper into a ball.  Whoever made a basket with their ball would automatically get an A…or something like that.  Immediately, there was outrage.  What about the people sitting in the back?  They were at a disadvantage.  They couldn’t possibly make the trashcan from back there.  The professor continued stating that’s what privilege is: being in the front of the class room.

::Taking a deep breath::  This bothered me on many levels.  One, for the fact that this is what college professors are teaching to our future leaders.  Two, this is clearly implementing circular reasoning which Wikipedia even states is a “logical fallacy.”  In circular reasoning, something is assumed to be true.  In the case of this professor’s example, the assumption is that everyone deserves an A.  Anyone who’s ever been to any kind of school knows that not everyone deserves an A.  For instance, I was forced to take a “spiritual” class since I attended a Catholic college.  I, admittedly, half-assed my way through learning about Saint Francis and got a C.  Frankly, I feel like I deserved to fail for as little effort I put into the class, but volunteering was a big chunk and that bumped me up to a C.

We find circular reasoning other places, too.  For instance, carbon dating.  Scientist and the like use carbon dating to “prove” evolution, but they’re assuming that their reference data is in fact true, when there’s no way they could be absolutely certain because evolution and the Big Bang (and Creation) are theories not facts…and they weren’t alive back then!

So, going back to the privilege analogy: the very concept of privilege is circular reasoning because it assumes everyone deserves –fill in the blank--.  Lots of money, a big house, a nice car, etc.  That’s called entitlement, not privilege, which is going to be the bigger problem with our nation’s youth.  The only privilege we Americans have is being born in America.

I’m sure if people in third world countries could log on to Tumblr and read the teen-angst filled posts about no gender neutral characters in Harry Potter and how “un-privileged” they are because their parents don’t own their own private jet, they’d want to stab themselves in the eye with the one piece of cutlery they (possibly) own.  I’m sure it’ll warm their hearts to read complaints of (gasp) having to wear hand-me-downs or second-hand clothes.  Do you know what kids in third world countries wear?  I’ll tell you.

The Superbowl has been going on for years; not sure of the specific number because I hate football, but you get the drift.  Every year, thousands, possibly millions, of t-shirts, hats, and other memorabilia are stamped out (probably from a factor in China).  Half with one team as the champ, the other half with the other team.  So, when the one team wins, their stuff gets passed out, but what happens to the other half?  The one with the losing team?  It gets shipped to people in impoverished nations, who probably don’t even know what football is, let alone the Superbowl. 

It also bothers me how much hate I see on Tumblr towards America.  There’s a lot of America bashing; some of it towards our language, of all things.  Here’s the gist of the many posts on Tumblr: “The English language beats up other languages in dark alleys, then rifles through their pockets for loose grammar and spare vocabulary.”  There’s also another post floating around that asks the question when we lost our British accents.  Someone replies with the idea that British people took on their accent as a symbol of a higher class; meaning, the American accent is of lower class.

Is any of that true?  I don’t know.  I don’t have the kind of time it would take to research that.  I wish I did.  I wish my brain was an encyclopedia of world history so I could go on Tumblr and tear these kids a new one, but, alas, I have to work.  Because normal people realize nothing in life is guaranteed, even life itself, and so one must work for a living.

America is the best country to live in, especially for a woman, so I get really mad when I see feminist groups on Tumblr complaining about cat calls or not casting a girl in a Legos ad.  At least we’re not being forcibly circumcised and/or have our vaginas sewed shut.  Yeah, that really happens.  I’m not sure if this is still a thing, but in China, a family was only allowed to have one daughter.  If you had another one, that baby is either aborted or killed after birth (which is NOT a woman’s reproductive “right,” but that’s for another blog post).  China is feeling the repercussions now as there are way more Chinese men than women; 30 million more was the figure stated in one article I read.  That’s a lot of bachelor pads.

I went to a private school, and before you bring up any kind of privilege argument with that, know this: my mother taught there and we were allowed to go for free.  That’s the only way we were able to go, otherwise, I would’ve been in public school (where I had gone up until 3rd grade.)  Every year around Christmas we, as a school, took a shoebox and filled it with necessities for kids in third world countries.  While kids in America were making their Christmas lists for iPods and new Nikes, we were buying things like socks, toothbrushes, and underwear for these poor kids.  I always made sure I included pens, pencils, and paper for my little girl.  I wanted her to be able to write, if she could.  And if not, then draw.  Maybe it would take her mind off the fact she was in need of fresh water.

It pains me almost physically to think of the natives of impoverished countries and if they ever even glimpsed at how much we as a society complain about things in America.  We’ve all seen at least one Indian woman in the news who was victim to an acid attack for one stupid reason or another.  There’s pictures online of a girl who escaped from North Korea talking about how she witnessed her mother being raped and believed the government could read her thoughts.  But, no.  Go on, Tumblr users, and please complain more about how J K Rowling should’ve made George “gender fluid” (I still have yet to comprehend what that entails) and post more pictures of your nipples because, heaven forbid, whipping your boobs out in public is frowned upon.  (Something has to be left to the imagination.)

I’m not saying this makes any slight to women ok.  I’m not saying that because it’s better here that nothing’s wrong.  So, what am I saying?  In the case of the America bashing and outrage against cis people (you may have to look that word up) and the new nipple exposure movement, I’m saying (literally, in the latter case) calm your tits.  You’re alive, you (obviously) have a computer, you’re getting some kind of an education, and all of that puts you way ahead and way more privileged than people in Nicaragua, who most likely are wearing 80’s sweater dresses.  Not because they’re back in style, but because that’s what the missionaries bring over: the crap that no one else wants.

Wednesday, April 15, 2015

Bad days

I brought in some pictures of Matthew today at work to put on my bulletin board.  It brought back a wave of emotions.  I broke down a few times today and cried in my office.  I miss him.  It hurts me to think that it was somehow my fault, the Trisomy diagnosis.  I realize it isn't, but I can't help feeling like it is and why did it have to be my baby it happened to?