Thursday, June 30, 2011
Tuesday, June 28, 2011
funny photo of the day
My shaving cream spontaneous imploded last week. We found this, and a funny sizzling noise, in the bathroom....
Hilarious! I guess the bottom started separating or rusting out or something, and slowly but surely all the foam was escaping.
Hilarious! I guess the bottom started separating or rusting out or something, and slowly but surely all the foam was escaping.
Thursday, June 23, 2011
read to the end of this...
Come friends, and sit. Let me tell you a story.
The summer of 2007 was awful. Where to begin?
In July, I took a trip to the Emergency Room with what is called an angioedema -- my face swelled up. I looked like a monkey. My lips were huge. It was an allergic reaction to something; I don't know what. It happened to me a couple times over the course of the summer. They gave me a steroid shot or something and I was back to normal in a few days, but that single event was just the beginning of a lot of allergy problems.
Less severe, but even worse, I started breaking out in hives. Daily. All over my body.
I was terribly embarrassed. If I woke up with hives, sometimes they'd be better by 10 AM and sometimes they'd be worse. I cover myself in calamine lotion. I took Benadryl and Claritin. I did everything I could think of, but nothing helped. I was too embarrassed to go to the gym and work out in shorts and shower. I would wear long sleeves to work in the summer. I'd wear my hair in my face. Hives on my cheeks, on the bottom of my feet, all over my stomach. I cried every day.
The only thing that worked was prednisone. Ooh baby I loved that drug. They went away immediately, and stayed at bay for awhile. But they always came back. And I'd run back to the allergist and beg for more prednisone. They tried other things too, like putting me on a regimen of Allegra and ranitidine. (Ranititine is a heartburn medication, the primary ingredient in Zantac, but it's secondary quality is as a B-histamine blocker. Interesting trivia. Histamines are either A's or B's, and they couldn't tell what was making me have hives, so they tried to block both.)
One friend told me it wasn't hives, it was ringworm. Someone else told me I was too stressed and it was pathological. The allergist finally did a test and said it was autoimmune and there was nothing they could do. I was at my wit's end.
At the same time, there was some snafu with airplane tickets. I bought a set of airplane tickets, then changed my mind and immediately canceled them. Even though you can't do that, the customer service person on the phone told me I could. I bought another set the next day. And was charged for both on my credit card. I had to call the airline to figure out what the heck was going on and fix it. It wasn't my fault they couldn't find my original customer service person "Johnny" and that he was in the Philippines -- he had told me I could cancel my tickets so I wanted my hundreds of dollars back and didn't want to pay a fee. And I fought and fought and finally won the battle.
But, since the sting of a bad mistake can never go away, we had a cell phone with a crappy plan and I made these calls on the cell phone. We got a bill with a hundred dollars in overage charges. A HUNDRED DOLLARS.
I couldn't win. I just could not win at life. I felt defeated in every way. Every force out there was trying to bring us down and destroy us, as people, as a couple, as a family.
Then we found out we were pregnant. We found out October 3, 2007. We were having a baby.
I didn't realize it then, I realize it now, what had happened to us. The adversary, Satan, was trying to bring us down. Something was fighting against us, because it knew, if we won, if we beat all the crappiness in our lives at that moment, we would be ridiculously happy.
And Wesley makes me ridiculously happy. I am so happy that despite all the odds, he was able to come into this world. I love him.
(And by the way, pregnancy fixed my hives. I don't know how. I got a bad set in Summer 2009, but none last year. I hope I never get them again.)
So, here we are today. Let's talk about the winter of 2010.
First, I got a speeding ticket, and had lots of issues trying to pay it (the check was late so it was returned to me; the courthouse was closed; the people on the phone were mean). It was awful. My husband was way mad.
Then, I got into a car accident. All my fault. I am an idiot. Then, our roof got a hole in it. If nothing in the world can stress you out, that will. It was awful. We had a cat who was nuts.
Should I go on? It was terrible. All I wanted was for 2010 to be over.
Does this sound familiar?
I couldn't win. I just could not win at life. I felt defeated in every way. Every force out there was trying to bring us down and destroy us, as people, as a couple, as a family.
Then we found out we were pregnant. We found out April 16, 2011. We are having a baby.
I actually think I realized what was happening... I saw all this stuff falling on our shoulders and knew what it was... it was the same force trying get this precious little baby #2 from happening. I'm so glad that we beat it! We beat those forces!
So. I am on a new adventure. Baby Gottula #2 arrives at Christmas.
The summer of 2007 was awful. Where to begin?
In July, I took a trip to the Emergency Room with what is called an angioedema -- my face swelled up. I looked like a monkey. My lips were huge. It was an allergic reaction to something; I don't know what. It happened to me a couple times over the course of the summer. They gave me a steroid shot or something and I was back to normal in a few days, but that single event was just the beginning of a lot of allergy problems.
Less severe, but even worse, I started breaking out in hives. Daily. All over my body.
I was terribly embarrassed. If I woke up with hives, sometimes they'd be better by 10 AM and sometimes they'd be worse. I cover myself in calamine lotion. I took Benadryl and Claritin. I did everything I could think of, but nothing helped. I was too embarrassed to go to the gym and work out in shorts and shower. I would wear long sleeves to work in the summer. I'd wear my hair in my face. Hives on my cheeks, on the bottom of my feet, all over my stomach. I cried every day.
The only thing that worked was prednisone. Ooh baby I loved that drug. They went away immediately, and stayed at bay for awhile. But they always came back. And I'd run back to the allergist and beg for more prednisone. They tried other things too, like putting me on a regimen of Allegra and ranitidine. (Ranititine is a heartburn medication, the primary ingredient in Zantac, but it's secondary quality is as a B-histamine blocker. Interesting trivia. Histamines are either A's or B's, and they couldn't tell what was making me have hives, so they tried to block both.)
One friend told me it wasn't hives, it was ringworm. Someone else told me I was too stressed and it was pathological. The allergist finally did a test and said it was autoimmune and there was nothing they could do. I was at my wit's end.
At the same time, there was some snafu with airplane tickets. I bought a set of airplane tickets, then changed my mind and immediately canceled them. Even though you can't do that, the customer service person on the phone told me I could. I bought another set the next day. And was charged for both on my credit card. I had to call the airline to figure out what the heck was going on and fix it. It wasn't my fault they couldn't find my original customer service person "Johnny" and that he was in the Philippines -- he had told me I could cancel my tickets so I wanted my hundreds of dollars back and didn't want to pay a fee. And I fought and fought and finally won the battle.
But, since the sting of a bad mistake can never go away, we had a cell phone with a crappy plan and I made these calls on the cell phone. We got a bill with a hundred dollars in overage charges. A HUNDRED DOLLARS.
I couldn't win. I just could not win at life. I felt defeated in every way. Every force out there was trying to bring us down and destroy us, as people, as a couple, as a family.
Then we found out we were pregnant. We found out October 3, 2007. We were having a baby.
I didn't realize it then, I realize it now, what had happened to us. The adversary, Satan, was trying to bring us down. Something was fighting against us, because it knew, if we won, if we beat all the crappiness in our lives at that moment, we would be ridiculously happy.
And Wesley makes me ridiculously happy. I am so happy that despite all the odds, he was able to come into this world. I love him.
(And by the way, pregnancy fixed my hives. I don't know how. I got a bad set in Summer 2009, but none last year. I hope I never get them again.)
So, here we are today. Let's talk about the winter of 2010.
First, I got a speeding ticket, and had lots of issues trying to pay it (the check was late so it was returned to me; the courthouse was closed; the people on the phone were mean). It was awful. My husband was way mad.
Then, I got into a car accident. All my fault. I am an idiot. Then, our roof got a hole in it. If nothing in the world can stress you out, that will. It was awful. We had a cat who was nuts.
Should I go on? It was terrible. All I wanted was for 2010 to be over.
Does this sound familiar?
I couldn't win. I just could not win at life. I felt defeated in every way. Every force out there was trying to bring us down and destroy us, as people, as a couple, as a family.
Then we found out we were pregnant. We found out April 16, 2011. We are having a baby.
I actually think I realized what was happening... I saw all this stuff falling on our shoulders and knew what it was... it was the same force trying get this precious little baby #2 from happening. I'm so glad that we beat it! We beat those forces!
So. I am on a new adventure. Baby Gottula #2 arrives at Christmas.
Tuesday, June 21, 2011
a new fear
A crazy thing happened to me last week.
Most of you know I work part time, and I enjoy it. It's fun to work a bit, and my little guy loves his daycare/preschool, so I've been liking our routine -- even if I am a bit tired or the blog is a bit neglected.
I have this friend from my old ward in Seattle who is wildly ridiculously successful. He had a company he sold for like a billion dollars (OK I have no idea how much, but "having a company" and "selling it" are both successful things), and now he has a new company that is also thriving like crazy. He is a marketing/PR person and his specialty is social media. He leverages Twitter, Facebook, etc., for his clients.
I have a couple other friends who work in his industry, and we've talked about what they do before, and they proceed to use language that is hard for me to follow. "Creative" is a department in a company. "Traffic" has lots of connotations when it refers to the Web and more. Etc. I get lost.
I have done a couple "professional" things with this friend, helped him out on occasion when things were interesting. I never got paid, it was just for fun really. Most of it was Church-related.
So. Imagine my surprise when I got an email from him this last week, saying his firm was landing a new client -- an LDS client -- and he was wondering if he could talk me into meeting with his HR director about a full-time gig. He needed me slash I'd be the perfect person for the job slash the job was mine if I wanted it! Or something like that.
Whooooooa baby. I contemplated it for awhile. On the one hand, I love my current company and feel very secure and happy there. They like me enough to let me do part-time things with no professional pressure. This would be much different -- I imagine I'd work a lot, more than just 40 hours, and maybe travel. I'd have to bust my butt to make it.
Another thing was the job description. At my current company, yes, I'm in a technical field which I'm not trained in (architecture, engineering, and construction), but my job is a lot of technical writing and finding statistics and keeping a database maintained -- all things I knew I could handle from Day 1. This new job, ha!, I don't even KNOW what it includes. I don't think I'd be able to keep up or figure it out or do it well. Maybe for the first time in my life, I realized I was being offered a chance to do something and I wasn't sure I could succeed.
This made me think about myself a little bit. I like to succeed, I like to win. I've always had an idea in my mind of what I could do, what I couldn't do, and I've stuck with it. I kind of like the easy road, because it means instant success. Who doesn't?
I remember worrying about grades in high school and going over my grade in my senior English class and realizing I was headed for a B. That was unacceptable to me, so after class one day I went to my teacher and asked him what I could do to get an A. I didn't know what it meant at a time, but he basically said he graded on a curve, and if anyone in the class was getting an A, it was me. And that was it -- I didn't have to fight for my A. The teacher said I was getting one, so I was happy and left it at that. Even though I technically didn't have an A.
I was reading the BYU Magazine the other month and there was an article about Jimmer Fredette, the incredible basketball player who made a million points per game and won awards all over the country for being awesome. He talked about when he was a kid and he was just learning how to play and getting good at it. He'd go play at the gym at Church at night with his friends. For one drill, he'd dribble the ball down the hallway (in the dark) and his friends/teammates would jump out of classrooms and scare him, and he'd have to keep dribbling and keep going. In the dark.
He and his team came up with this idea because it would make him better. It was something that was scary and hard but he knew if he persevered he'd would ultimately improve.
That really hit a chord with me -- because I don't like scary. I don't like pressure. I like to do things I already know how to do, when I know I can do it well. I like getting the A without actually having to get the A.
I know part of this is silly, I mean some things I have no idea how to do but I do them anyway. Take being a mom for example. No instruction course there! But something in my brain said it would be OK, I was sharp enough to figure it out, and I went ahead and did it. Potty training is kind of the same thing. I know it'll be awful, downright awful, but yeah, it'll work. I'm sure I can handle it (we'll see).
Then there are things I do because I know I can do them, but I fail. Sure I'd like to lose 50 pounds (haha!), but I haven't. Why not? Plenty of reasons. All of which are dumb yet valid in my mind. I know I can eliminate those reasons and actually do it, if I tried harder. So I know I can succeed, even though I haven't. (And believe me, if there was an easier road, I would take it.)
So we're back to the job. I see his job, and I think in my head, I have no idea how to do this. I would fail. Really. I can conceive of a realistic situation where I could pretend I knew what I was doing and other people would buy it!
I suppose it's a moot point, because my life isn't set up in a way now that going back to work would work. I had to pass, grudgingly, although my friend did say if I ever want to come back to work full time I need to call him. Shane has said he'd love to quit his job and stay home if I made enough money, but I've asked him if he'd take Wesley to Kindermusik or on walks around Greenlake and would he do all the grocery shopping and cleaning, and he kinda shirks and knows he wouldn't. I'm better suited to be the mom at home.
So that leaves me sitting here, contemplating my life, and realizing that if something has an easy road and a hard road I usually choose the easy road. And what does that say about me? It's been kind of a hard thing to face, because I want to think I'm brave and confident and capable, but maybe I'm just too afraid of legitimate failure.
Most of you know I work part time, and I enjoy it. It's fun to work a bit, and my little guy loves his daycare/preschool, so I've been liking our routine -- even if I am a bit tired or the blog is a bit neglected.
I have this friend from my old ward in Seattle who is wildly ridiculously successful. He had a company he sold for like a billion dollars (OK I have no idea how much, but "having a company" and "selling it" are both successful things), and now he has a new company that is also thriving like crazy. He is a marketing/PR person and his specialty is social media. He leverages Twitter, Facebook, etc., for his clients.
I have a couple other friends who work in his industry, and we've talked about what they do before, and they proceed to use language that is hard for me to follow. "Creative" is a department in a company. "Traffic" has lots of connotations when it refers to the Web and more. Etc. I get lost.
I have done a couple "professional" things with this friend, helped him out on occasion when things were interesting. I never got paid, it was just for fun really. Most of it was Church-related.
So. Imagine my surprise when I got an email from him this last week, saying his firm was landing a new client -- an LDS client -- and he was wondering if he could talk me into meeting with his HR director about a full-time gig. He needed me slash I'd be the perfect person for the job slash the job was mine if I wanted it! Or something like that.
Whooooooa baby. I contemplated it for awhile. On the one hand, I love my current company and feel very secure and happy there. They like me enough to let me do part-time things with no professional pressure. This would be much different -- I imagine I'd work a lot, more than just 40 hours, and maybe travel. I'd have to bust my butt to make it.
Another thing was the job description. At my current company, yes, I'm in a technical field which I'm not trained in (architecture, engineering, and construction), but my job is a lot of technical writing and finding statistics and keeping a database maintained -- all things I knew I could handle from Day 1. This new job, ha!, I don't even KNOW what it includes. I don't think I'd be able to keep up or figure it out or do it well. Maybe for the first time in my life, I realized I was being offered a chance to do something and I wasn't sure I could succeed.
This made me think about myself a little bit. I like to succeed, I like to win. I've always had an idea in my mind of what I could do, what I couldn't do, and I've stuck with it. I kind of like the easy road, because it means instant success. Who doesn't?
I remember worrying about grades in high school and going over my grade in my senior English class and realizing I was headed for a B. That was unacceptable to me, so after class one day I went to my teacher and asked him what I could do to get an A. I didn't know what it meant at a time, but he basically said he graded on a curve, and if anyone in the class was getting an A, it was me. And that was it -- I didn't have to fight for my A. The teacher said I was getting one, so I was happy and left it at that. Even though I technically didn't have an A.
I was reading the BYU Magazine the other month and there was an article about Jimmer Fredette, the incredible basketball player who made a million points per game and won awards all over the country for being awesome. He talked about when he was a kid and he was just learning how to play and getting good at it. He'd go play at the gym at Church at night with his friends. For one drill, he'd dribble the ball down the hallway (in the dark) and his friends/teammates would jump out of classrooms and scare him, and he'd have to keep dribbling and keep going. In the dark.
He and his team came up with this idea because it would make him better. It was something that was scary and hard but he knew if he persevered he'd would ultimately improve.
That really hit a chord with me -- because I don't like scary. I don't like pressure. I like to do things I already know how to do, when I know I can do it well. I like getting the A without actually having to get the A.
I know part of this is silly, I mean some things I have no idea how to do but I do them anyway. Take being a mom for example. No instruction course there! But something in my brain said it would be OK, I was sharp enough to figure it out, and I went ahead and did it. Potty training is kind of the same thing. I know it'll be awful, downright awful, but yeah, it'll work. I'm sure I can handle it (we'll see).
Then there are things I do because I know I can do them, but I fail. Sure I'd like to lose 50 pounds (haha!), but I haven't. Why not? Plenty of reasons. All of which are dumb yet valid in my mind. I know I can eliminate those reasons and actually do it, if I tried harder. So I know I can succeed, even though I haven't. (And believe me, if there was an easier road, I would take it.)
So we're back to the job. I see his job, and I think in my head, I have no idea how to do this. I would fail. Really. I can conceive of a realistic situation where I could pretend I knew what I was doing and other people would buy it!
I suppose it's a moot point, because my life isn't set up in a way now that going back to work would work. I had to pass, grudgingly, although my friend did say if I ever want to come back to work full time I need to call him. Shane has said he'd love to quit his job and stay home if I made enough money, but I've asked him if he'd take Wesley to Kindermusik or on walks around Greenlake and would he do all the grocery shopping and cleaning, and he kinda shirks and knows he wouldn't. I'm better suited to be the mom at home.
So that leaves me sitting here, contemplating my life, and realizing that if something has an easy road and a hard road I usually choose the easy road. And what does that say about me? It's been kind of a hard thing to face, because I want to think I'm brave and confident and capable, but maybe I'm just too afraid of legitimate failure.
Sunday, June 19, 2011
perfect
Oh golly, I was a bawling mess this morning. I watched the music video for Pink's song, "Perfect." It totally changed the song for me. It was always a good song, but I guess I interpreted it as maybe a boyfriend/husband song or relationship song... but no... it's a mother/child song, a friend song.
Disclaimer!! It's a bit disturbing and hard to watch... but so touching at the same time. I think we are so hard on each other, and at the same time hard on ourselves. It's just not fair.
I finished watching the video and just held Wesley so hard, and told him over and over again how much I loved him. I wish I could protect him from the world. I wish I could protect everyone from the harsh world. I wish there was a way I could instill confidence in every single person out there that they are a child of God, that He loves them and forgives them no matter what, that no one's opinion really matters. You are you and you should never be afraid to be you. As long as you are trying and growing and learning, you are just as you should be.
I don't know if I necessarily agree with the "concept" (??) of the video that you aren't an acceptable person until you get a guy (I don't believe that), but seeing her struggles and her hurt and her ultimate triumph (thank goodness) is just an incredible experience. (haha and I love the fact it's Deb from Napolean Dynamite!) I'm glad she found something she was good at and ran with it. Everyone needs that. We are all "perfect" at something. We just need the confidence to find it.
It just really puts on my shoulders the full weight of what being a mother really means. Wesley needs to know every day that no matter how crazy things get, no matter how bonkers he is, he will always be perfect to me. I love him more than anything. Even when he throws his train tracks at my head and spills his cup of milk all over the floor. Even when. He is so special.
OK, so here it is, if you haven't seen it.
Disclaimer!! It's a bit disturbing and hard to watch... but so touching at the same time. I think we are so hard on each other, and at the same time hard on ourselves. It's just not fair.
I finished watching the video and just held Wesley so hard, and told him over and over again how much I loved him. I wish I could protect him from the world. I wish I could protect everyone from the harsh world. I wish there was a way I could instill confidence in every single person out there that they are a child of God, that He loves them and forgives them no matter what, that no one's opinion really matters. You are you and you should never be afraid to be you. As long as you are trying and growing and learning, you are just as you should be.
I don't know if I necessarily agree with the "concept" (??) of the video that you aren't an acceptable person until you get a guy (I don't believe that), but seeing her struggles and her hurt and her ultimate triumph (thank goodness) is just an incredible experience. (haha and I love the fact it's Deb from Napolean Dynamite!) I'm glad she found something she was good at and ran with it. Everyone needs that. We are all "perfect" at something. We just need the confidence to find it.
It just really puts on my shoulders the full weight of what being a mother really means. Wesley needs to know every day that no matter how crazy things get, no matter how bonkers he is, he will always be perfect to me. I love him more than anything. Even when he throws his train tracks at my head and spills his cup of milk all over the floor. Even when. He is so special.
OK, so here it is, if you haven't seen it.
Tuesday, June 14, 2011
still alive
Yes, I am still alive. And why, you ask? I just cleaned some food out of my fridge -- NONmoldy hummus -- with a "best by" date of 10/05/09. WOW. We are going on a year and a half after it's best-by date and it was still not moldy and still smelled reasonably consumable. I don't think anything that processed can be healthy. And yet hummus is super healthy, right? I never got into it. I'm just not Mediterranean.
I can't believe it's the middle of June and no posts yet this month! I must be tired... and busy... indeed I will try to be better. I know you are itching to hear my thoughts.
I can't believe it's the middle of June and no posts yet this month! I must be tired... and busy... indeed I will try to be better. I know you are itching to hear my thoughts.
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