Hodge Podge

I really enjoy my Friday evenings. Mark goes bowling in a league with one of his brothers and some friends on Fridays. That’s when I get some stuff done. Or not. When the weather was colder, I’d watch girly movies, like In Her Shoes, which is my favorite girly movie. Today I napped on and off from 5 pm to 6 pm, I watched an episode of M*A*S*H and then walked to the grocery.

Snuggly into my backpack fit six yogurts, a toothpaste, two L’Oreal Wrinkle De-crease eye creams—one for night and one with SPF for the day, a box of cereal, a container of strawberries, and some grapes. Oh, and pretzels. It was quite a heavy load for the two miles back home, but when my back would start hurting, I’d remember hiking Tongariro Crossing in New Zealand on Christmas Eve—10 and a half miles between two mountains! And that inspired me; I knew I’d be home before long, and I wouldn’t be as spent as after that hike.

Tomorrow morning I’m thinking of going to a group Pilates class at 8:30 am. It’s near where I work, not far from home. Mark and I are going to his nephew’s H.S. baseball game too. And I also want to go to Kohl’s. They’re having a sale! (That’s a joke, because if you’ll notice, Kohl’s has a “sale” every freakin’ weekend.)

At Mom’s on Thursday morning, I looked at the mailer advertising what all would be on sale. There’s a thing called an anti-gravity chair that I think I want. Also, if I’m going to start going to Pilates/yoga classes on the weekends, I should get a yoga mat while I’m at Kohl’s. Who knows, maybe it’ll be on sale too.

I was at Mom’s Thursday morning because I didn’t have to be at work until noon, and the National Honor Society induction ceremony at my former high school, where I was the speaker this year, was over at 10 am. My speech went fine. My mom and my brother and sister-in-law were there—not to see me (well, Mom was) but to see Seth, their son, my nephew, get inducted. How neat was it that I got to speak the year he got inducted?

I saw plenty people I know, including Angela L, whose son, Kyle, is in NHS. And little Molly, who Angela adopted from Russia. So cute. I saw them at church on Sunday too. She’ll be four in August, and my cousin’s little girl will be four just two months prior. It’s neat knowing they’ll grow up together; anyone in the little town of Carlisle, Ohio who is the same age grows up together. See Molly and Me (if link doesn't work, go to August 07, 2006 entry) for a blog entry about her. She’s almost three in the picture. Little because of her disease, I guess. Or maybe my cousin's little girl, who I'm using as a reference, is big.

Odd, Foreign Creatures

For 22 days including Christmas and the beginning of the New Year, Mark and I traveled around New Zealand on a big blue bus with a group of people. The tour company was Flying Kiwi, which is a clever name as kiwis are the national bird and they are land-bound (they do not fly). If someone took a muskmelon, covered it with spiky, dull brown hair and stuck a beak, two eyes, and some chicken feet on it, people in-the-know might actually mistake it for a kiwi—because that’s what one looks like—a brown, hairy melon with a long beak, a set of eyes, and a pair of legs.
Before visiting the Auckland Zoo, which we did the day before joining the tour, I, myself, had never even seen a picture of a kiwi. Quite the odd little creature. They’re nocturnal so were housed in their own little dark room in a building like the insect or reptile house at a zoo in the States. Their nostrils are at the end of their long beaks so that they can sniff out their prey since they can’t see well at night to hunt.

I was planning to write about a term some Englishman on the tour used to describe one of the Russians; I found it really funny. But I’ll save that story for another time as this post has turned to odd looking creatures.

We saw lots of colorful birds, and even a kookaburra, whose dirty gray and white feathers were not too vibrant. The kookaburra looked like the evolutionary middleman between a kiwi and what you and I think of as a bird today; the kookaburra had a bird shape, about the size of a large crow, only bushy. Its covering looked less like hair than the kiwi’s yet not quite a quilled feather.

Towards the end of our tour in New Zealand Mark and I visited a small sanctuary for birds native to New Zealand. One was the takahe (tock-a-HEE), actually, two were takahe, a male and female. The takahe has an amazing story of rediscovery. They were thought to have gone extinct around about the turn of the twentieth century. YET, in 1950 a doctor hiking in Fjordlands National Park, which everyone who visits New Zealand MUST SEE for the exquisite, snow-blanketed peaks, the tallest of which, Mt. Cook, dominates the rare clear sky. OK. Wait. I got off track again. OK. So a doctor—I guess a Ph.D. in avian science or something—this doctor was hiking, and A TAKAHE WONDERED ACROSS THE PATH HE WAS TRODDING! UNBELIEVABLE, RIGHT?! Can you imagine finding an animal that was, for the last 50 years, believed to be extinct? So exciting. Now there are 150 – 200 takahes in the wild in New Zealand. Go, takahes! They’re kiwi-shaped, however, a bit larger. Their plumage looks like feathers rather than hair, and they have big chicken legs and a turkey face. Odd odd.

Finally, I have to throw this picture in because an essay about odd looking creatures would not be complete without this picture.

Posted on http://www.cuteoverload.com/ about halfway down June 2006 archive is this picture of a baby llama (alpaca?) Notice the toothy grin. Some say he looks like Napoleon Dynamite, some say Barney Fife or Mr. Furley, both portrayed by comedic genius Don Knotts. This picture brings me a smile every time.

Good Baby News

I’m ovulating!

Mark and I had a consultation with my gynecologist last Wednesday, expecting to hear that another cycle had passed without my ovaries giving up any of their cargo. We decided before we started trying to get pregnant that we would not do anything invasive. I’m taking clomid to help myself ovulate (but in the previous two cycles I hadn’t), and I thought even that was maybe more invasive than I wanted to go. But, obviously, I chose to take it.

Since the first two cycles resulted in ‘nada,’ I took the highest dosage of clomid that is prescribed this past cycle. During the consult, Dr. Busacco looked at the results of my blood progesterone levels and told us that I had indeed ovulated. Good news though not overjoyous yet.

Because clomid encourages eggs to exit the ovaries, sometimes more than one at a time and because a woman has only a set number of eggs in there to begin with, six months is the longest I can take the medicine. So we have five more months. I’m pretty confident it will happen in that time—though I still appreciate everyone praying for us—because Mark has lots of healthy, eager sperm, my shy eggs have decided to stop playing hard-to-get, and the procedure performed last year showed that the path Mr. Sperm must take to meet Ms. Ovum is wide open with only a couple minor curves. I wouldn’t mind if Mr. and Ms. brought friends along to double date; I am 37 and we want two. The incidence of a woman having twins is seven times higher than normal when she takes clomid.

Small-town Weeklies

For those of you brand new to this blog, please check out www.OurNationsTreasures.blogspot.com There I post travel stories, usually with lots of pictures. The stories run every other week in four small-town papers in southwest Ohio.

My issue of The Franklin Chronicle is waiting in my mailbox when I get home today. After retrieving the mail, I walk into the house, kiss my husband hello, and sit at one end of the couch. Mark reclines on the other section, covered with his afghan watching basketball.

Mark makes fun of The Chronicle—because it is just a hometown paper, so any little accomplishment a resident makes gets featured. For instance, when My Lost Summer was published, The Chronicle ran half-page spreads about it two weeks in a row--not to say not to say recovering from a coma, writing a book about it, and having it published is a small accomplishment--but half-page articles two weeks in a row? Wow. And that was before I started writing for the paper.

On the front page of this week’s paper is a smiling photo of a young guy—from Franklin—who will be manager at the Wal-Mart opening on State Route 73 right behind some property my mom owns. See, he grew up in Franklin, went to U. of Cincinnati and worked at a Wal-Mart while he was in school. After he graduated he earned a spot in Wal-Mart manager’s training and then moved to a store in Dayton. Now he’s moving back to Franklin and going to be head honcho in his hometown. It is a cute story, kind of “local boy makes big.”

Mark good-naturedly comments, “That’s front page news? You are from such a ho-dunk town.”

Deeper into the paper I read a story about a Franklin man who has worked at the local mattress factory for 10 years, and it takes him just four minutes to make a hospital bed while constructing a regular mattress that you and I might sleep on requires 30 to 40 minutes. You might think this guy’s job pretty ho-hum, and he agrees that the work is monotonous, but what makes it all worthwhile are the occasional special orders for oddly shaped mattresses. Above the story is a picture of the mattress builder and the owner of the mattress store holding up a big mattress shaped kind of like a scallop shell. A home builder ordered it special for his daughter to put in a house he’s building in Indian Hills, the most up-scale neighborhood in Cincinnati. It’s where the movie Traffic was set (and filmed right here in Cinci).

When I thought about it, that made me laugh a little—that a man making a mattress made the paper. Mark just rolled his eyes and shook his head.

As the final seconds of the basketball games ticked away, I turned to the columns page to read something by Matt Reese, who lives in Pickerington, Ohio, which is not near here. His column is sponsored by Ohio’s agricultural industry and is likely syndicated to papers all over Ohio. Anyway, I like reading Matt. I’m not really an aggie but I enjoy reading good writing, and I can tell Matt has had training in how to pen words together—or he has a good editor at least.

So I’m reading along and being quiet when UNLV calls a time out. With no action to watch, Mark looks over at me and asks, “What’re you reading about now?” I turn my head to him and crack a smile at what I’m about to say.

“A raccoon dinner being organized by a local Lion’s Club.” We both get a good laugh at that one. (The dinner started in the 1940s as a joke but has grown from there. The Lions serve 500-600 people on raccoon dinner night.)

But Franklin is not such a ho-dunk town. After all, Wal-Mart opens next month.

The NHS at CHS

Scholarship, service, leadership, and character—The foundation upon which the National Honor Society is built. I was selected as a member my sophomore year of high school.
Last month a teacher at my former school contacted me to see if I would speak at the induction ceremony this year. I met the three criteria: (1) I graduated from CHS, (2) I was a member of NHS, and (3) I’ve accomplished something unique—as in writing a book and gaining some local notoriety for it.

The teacher reminded me of the four foundations of NHS and told me I could speak about all four or just one, and the speech should be between 10 and 20 minutes long. I should be able to come up with something. I’m sure the speech will be to an audience larger than I’ve ever spoken to before, and I’m a little nervous about that, but, you know what, I don’t remember who spoke or what about when I was inducted, so it’s not like it has to be earth-moving.

On Tuesday morning and Wednesday evening of this week I spoke about my recovery from a coma at University Hospital to a room full of social workers. About 30 people showed for the morning session, and 12 or 15 showed the following evening. I was more nervous then because these social workers were earning Continuing Education Units for attending. However, the general depression I’ve been feeling of late dampened my nervousness somewhat. Is it possible to experience depression and nervousness at the same time? I think I never have. I think when I’m depressed, I don’t really care what happens; therefore, I’m not nervous. I knew presenting the CEU at U. Hospital would be important, but I thought, “It’s not a big deal if I mess up.” Also, my mom spoke too about her experience with my recovery, and I knew I could rely on her to carry me if I needed it. But all went well.

In April I’ll be speaking at a meeting of the Brain Injury Association of Cincinnati. The organizer said to speak about publishing my story. That’ll be easy.

Tomorrow the local Kroger store is hosting me for a book signing. I usually sell 11 copies in a couple hours at Kroger. Did I tell you that I sold 14 copies at a signing at Waldenbooks in Newark, Delaware on a Saturday in February? I sold one today to a lady at work. It’s an emotional, true story describing the family dynamics between my divorced parents, a brother who had moved to Maine just weeks before my accident, both sets of grandparents, and my 19-year-old brother, who visited me every day. It hasn’t gotten a bad review anywhere. Hurry and get yours. OK. You don’t have to hurry, but go ahead and get one!