12th of never

12th of never
women's murder club #12
james patterson & maxine paetro
fiction/mystery
little brown & co.
published 2013

Lindsay Boxer's beautiful baby is born! But after only a week at home with her new daughter, Lindsay is forced to return to work to face two of the biggest cases of her career.

A rising star football player for the San Francisco 49ers is the prime suspect in a grisly murder. At the same time, Lindsay is confronted with the strangest story she's ever heard: An eccentric English professor has been having vivid nightmares about a violent murder and he's convinced is real. Lindsay doesn't believe him, but then a shooting is called in-and it fits the professor's description to the last detail.

Lindsay doesn't have much time to stop a terrifying future from unfolding. But all the crimes in the world seem like nothing when Lindsay is suddenly faced with the possibility of the most devastating loss of her life.

This was the biggest mess of a WMC book ever.

There was so much going on that I forgot about certain parts.  Nothing felt completely fleshed out and nothing was interesting because it was all over the freaking place.

We start out with Lindsay going into labor and of course she can't just have a normal delivery *eyeroll*.  Then there's a case of a woman getting shot in her car, a man who can predict future murders, a serial killer who wants to take Lindsay to the bodies he's buried, Lindsay's baby possibly being ill, Richie & Cindy's relationship woes, Claire's job misfortune, the kidnapping/murder case that Yuki is trying.

They just tried to shove too many things into one book and then rushed the ending after dragging everything out for the entire book.  It was, by far, the worst WMC book I've ever read.

And while I'm on the subject....how does Yuki still have a job?  Has she ever won a trial?  Can she maybe take a case to trial that has been resolved?  Where there's evidence besides circumstantial hearsay?

The most interesting part of the book was the professor who could predict the future.  And that was resolved in two lines at the end as an afterthought and it still doesn't make sense.

Ugh.  Worst.  Book.  Ever.

i've got your number

i've got your number
sophie kinsella
fiction/chick lit/idiotic ramblings
random house
published 2012

Poppy Wyatt has never felt luckier. She is about to marry her ideal man, Magnus Tavish, but in one afternoon her “happily ever after” begins to fall apart. Not only has she lost her engagement ring in a hotel fire drill, but in the panic that follows, her phone is stolen. As she paces shakily around the lobby, she spots an abandoned phone in a trash can. Finders keepers! Now she can leave a number for the hotel to contact her when they find her ring. Perfect!

When it comes to Sophie Kinsella we sort of have this love/hate relationship.  I hate the Shopaholic books.  I loved Remember Me? and The Undomestic Goddess.  Twenties Girl was okay.  Unfortunately, I've Got Your Number falls into the 'hated it' category.  And the saddest part?  I only got to page 21.

Sophie Kinsella has a knack for writing the most asinine, bubbleheaded, idiot female characters.  At first, with Shopaholic it was endearing, but by the time I started in on the 4th book she was the same idiot she'd been before.  She didn't learn anything.  She didn't change for the better.  She was still making the same idiotic mistakes!  It drove me nuts.  So I picked up The Undomestic Goddess because my sister liked it and I was surprised to find I liked it too!  Then I read Remember Me? and decided it must just be that I have to take Kinsella's characters in single serving doses.

But then first I was annoyed by the footnotes.  Since I was reading this on my Nook it requires me to touch the footnote number, read the footnote and then go back to the page I was reading.  I couldn't just glace down to read the stupid footnote that she added because the character thought it was clever.  Uh-noying.

And then the character, Poppy is almost more irritating than Becky Bloomwood.  She finds a phone in the garbage and when she's called out that it's not her phone she uses the 'possession is 9/10ths of the law'.  Are you serious?  She continually does this thing where if she just ignores the problem it will go away or the solution will just fall into her lap.  She acts like she's a 5 year old who knows she's going to get in trouble.  Is this supposed to be cute?  Is this what chick lit has come to?

So I closed out of the book, removed it from my library and decided that was the last attempt I make at reading a Kinsella book.

The end.

the cat's out of the bag

....And by 'cat' I mean cancer and by 'out of the bag' I mean my uterus.

So yeah, got myself a tiny case of cervical cancer.  More specifically, adenocarcinoma in situ.  It's been an interesting journey with the woman parts. 

*****Just in case you're wondering, this could be a tmi post so don't say I didn't warn you.  You're about to learn waaaaay to much about the whole area down there.*****

After I had Olivia I had my regular pap by a slightly odd male doctor.  Not my first choice, but I had gone in urgent care for some unusual pain I was having a couple of weeks after the c-section.  Since I was there he figured I should get my pap done.  They called a few days later to let me know that I had some unusual results and he wanted me to come back in to get a colposcopy.  He was quite to assure me that it was 'unusual, but it wasn't cancer.'  Dummy.

For those (like me) who don't know what a colposcopy is:  They use a vinegar solution to 'dye' the cervix.  It shows the areas that are abnormal and then the doctor uses a microscope type thing to look at those areas.  If the doctor feels like it merits she'll do a biopsy of those areas.  It's unpleasant, but not the end of the world.

I really had no worries.  My gyno said she felt like she didn't see anything too crazy and thought it would be low grade junk and stuff.  Imagine my surprise when she came back and said I had to come back in to get a LEEP done.  She said that there were high grade lesions and some abnormal glandular cells.  The LEEP was similar to the coposcolpy except they use a heated wire to slice out a bigger portion of the cervix.  They numb the cervix beforehand so I thought, dude, no big, right?

WRONG!!!!  Numbing the cervix SUCKS ASSHOLES.  That was by far one of the worst things so far.  BY FAR.  Once that was done I couldn't feel anything.  That was better.

A week later I got a message on my phone from my doc saying she sent me an email and that I had something called adenocarcinoma in situ.  I called my mom (a RN) and she said she was pretty sure that's precancerous cells.  No big.

I got home & read her email and 'cancer' was all over the place.  I read the literature and, holy crap on a cracker, everyone's calling this cancer.  This is cancer?!  Jeez maneez.

Generally what happens after the diagnosis is a cone biopsy.  Here they take a much larger portion of the cervix, almost removing it altogether.  That gets tested to see how invasive the cancer is.  Once that's determined you either get a simple hysterectomy or a radical hysterectomy.  Stellar.

I got the cone biopsy almost three weeks ago and the tests came back with really low margins.  They didn't find any cancer deeper in the cervix or very low in the uterus so it's looking like I get the simple hysterectomy.  After they remove my uterus they'll check that thoroughly to see if they find anything there. If they do I'll get radiation, if not, I'm good to go.

I'm super lucky.  Adenocarinoma in situ is really aggressive.  If you go a year or more without finding it you're looking at a very low chance of survival.  My survival rate is as close to 100% as you can get.  And to add icing to the cake, NO MORE PERIODS!  Since you can't see me right now, I'm doing the dance of joy.  I'm thankful that we were able to have our two munchkins.  I've been reading about so many 20-somethings who have to gamble with the cone biopsy in order to preserve their fertility.  We're done having kids so my uterus is just excess baggage.

Really, they should have just kept it when they took Olivia out.  Would've saved me some trouble.  I guess it just doesn't work like that.

So that's been the nuts that I've been going through these past few months.  I don't feel like I've really stressed about it, though I haven't been getting much sleep and I think I've had a headache for a month.  Mostly, I worry about what to do with 2 kiddos while I recover from surgery without inconveniencing my family & friends.  The biggest pain is the actual pain I've had and the bleeding that's been going on off and on for the past two months and having to wear a pad for two months during the summer.  Don't be gross, it's not the same pad for two months.

But if that's the worst of it, I count my lucky stars.  I'm grateful to my wonderful husband and family for dropping everything at a moment's notice to take me to the hospital or take the girls while I sleep for four days.  My friends for checking up on me, sending prayers and love and dealing with my never ending fountain of sarcasm.

I'm a lucky girl.  (No sarcasm there.  Seriously.)

true blood: all together now

true blood: all together now, volume one
alan ball, david tischman, mariah huehner & david messina
graphics/horror
idw publishing
published 2011

Sookie & the rest of the regular cast are hanging around Merlotte's when a squid like monster traps them inside the bar killing patrons and forcing them to tell their stories of shame.

Oh.  My.  God.  This sucked SO HARD.  At first I thought, wow, Sookie and Bill are just as annoying in comic book form as they are in TV show form.  Then as I read more and more I realized that the entire book was shite.  Serious shite.

They tried to make it sound like Tara from the show, or Lafayette, Sam, Eric & Jason, but it didn't sound like any of them.  Nothing that came out of their cartoon mouths was anything I could imagine them saying on the show.  And certainly not the books.  wth.

I just can't get over how holy freaking horrible that was.  Poor Charlaine Harris.

well, i've finally done it

There are very few, if any, books that I've gotten a third of the way into and stopped reading.  A couple of years ago I instituted my own reading process.  I read 6 books at a time.  I split the books into thirds, start with one, read up to the bookmark, move onto the next and so on and so forth.  My thought was if I get to the end of the first third and haven't gotten interested chances are the book isn't for me.  I can't remember a time when I've gotten to that point and quit.

But I've found the book that did it to me.

clockwork prince
the infernal devices series #2
cassandra clare
ya/sci-fi/fantasy/romance
mcelderry books
published 2011

First of all, y'all know I'm a sucker for book cover art and this one, my friends, is awful.  This is one of those rare instances where due to the fact that I already read Cassandra Clare's Mortal Instrument series and the first in this series Clockwork Angel, I picked up this book.  Were it the first in the series I never would have given it a second glace.  I mean, come on!  Ugh.  It's awful.  It makes me mad just looking at it and that's before I started reading it.  A book shouldn't do that to you.

Secondly, I feel like Clare is cheating.  I feel like she's taking the success of The Mortal Instrument series (which should have ended at 3 - the fact that she wrote more to that series should speak volumes to her cheater ways) and expounding on it.  It would be like if Stephenie Meyer went and started writing books about everything that happened before Edward & Bella.  Yes, a prequel novel is nice, but an entire series?  No thanks.

And the characters all feel like washed out versions of characters we saw in the MI series.  Tessa is Clary, Will is Jace, Jem is Alec, Jessie is Isabelle.  They're just not as bright, not as interesting as their MI counterparts.  Sure she's tweaked them a bit, different hair color, different redeeming/bad qualities, whatever.  They're the same characters and they're doing the SAME THINGS.  At least, that's what it feels like to me.

So instead of wasting my time slogging through this book only to forget about it 2 seconds after writing my review I decided to stop and return it to the library and breathe a great sigh of relief.  When she's done ripping off her own work, I'll go through and read the entire series so I don't have to try to remember what happened in the last.  And if I don't think they're getting any better, well I guess I'll just ditch the series and chalk it up to a one-hit wonder, author style.

To paraphase Tiffani DeBartolo & my favorite quote of all time - there are too many mediocre things in life and books shouldn't be one of them.

books vs. movies

There are two types of people.  Those who read books and those who wait until those books are turned into movies.  Back in the day there wasn't too much of this, or if it was it wasn't so widely advertised.

Now, thanks to Harry Potter & Twilight movie rights for books are being snapped up as soon as it hits the Best Seller's List or before it's actually published and now, before it's actually written.

For awhile I was a little irritated by these practices.  I want those movie watching people to come up with their own ideas.  Aren't they supposed to be creative?  I want to protect my book reading people.  We'll still be called nerds, but dang it we should have GOOD books to read.  Of course, I have no qualms about the Harry Potter or Twilight movies.  Duh, I'm a potterhead, or a tweirdo ... however you want to define me.  While I want the movies to be as true to the books as they can be I also understand they can't always and to me the movies have been a wonderfully illustrated companion to the book.  I know that Twilight and all the movies thereafter are not winning any Oscars, but I love them because it's what was in my head while I was reading played out on the screen.

I think the only time I was upset was after seeing Harry Potter & the Half-Blood Prince.  The Dumbledore-Harry-Malfoy-Snape scene in the end literally had me gripping my hands over my mouth to keep from screaming obscenities.  But it is what it is.

2011 saw a ton of books-turned-movies and 2012 isn't going to be any different.  What bugs me is that stuff is getting turned into movies before I can even get my hands on the books!  Though, sometimes that's not always a bad thing.

Amanda Hocking began writing during her free time and finished 17 novels.  In April of 2010 she began self-publishing them in eBook format and by March of 2011 she had sold over a million copies of 9 books and made two million dollars in sales.  Pretty impressive for a self published author.  When I saw that her Trylle trilogy was purchased to turn into a movie I was intrigued.  The cover art was interesting and the story sounded good.  Even better, I saw Hocking as a determined young woman who made her dreams come true, right?

Unfortunately (and of course this is only my opinion), the first book, Switched was a flaming pile of crap.  The story IS interesting.  A young girl, whose mother tried to kill her when she was 6 discovers she's a changeling and returns to the world she was taken from to live the life she was meant to live.  The writing however, was awful.  It read like something a middle school student wrote for a school project.  It was the worst book I read in 2011.

And now it's going to be a movie? 

I get that someone else will write the screenplay and it's just her idea that the movie will be based on, but come on!  What's even more impressive is that she made two million dollars off books she was charging $1.99 for!  And now, the Trylle trilogy is going to be published in hardcover.  I cannot believe that the literary world is so hurting for material that they will print this stuff!

Stephenie Meyer's The Host will be coming out in movie form soon.  I'm sure the next in the HORRIBLE I Am Number Four series will get crapped out as a movie.  They're still trying to make Pride & Prejudice & Zombies, though for some reason that one seems to be jinxed.  The screenplay for A Discovery of Witches will be penned by Proof writer David Auburn and even The Great Gatsby is getting a Hollywood makeover this year.

I don't know.  It seems that everywhere people are running out of originality.  I'd just like to find a few more books that blow my mind.  Is there anything out there like that anymore?

a sad, sad day

Today has been a very emotional day that was far beyond my reach.  Very early this morning a man opened fire at his job killing two people and wounding others.  He then escaped by foot after shooting another woman in a failed carjacking attempt.  As of 4:53 pm today he is still at large somewhere.  My brother, my uncle, aunt and cousins live in Cupertino where this man was this morning and my sister works there as well.  My brother was at work in Fremont and my sister was working from home today so that was a relief.  My aunt answered the phone when I called and assured me that they were all home and safe.  She kept the kids home after going to the school and finding out the police were on their way to put the school on lockdown.

But everyone I knew was safe and sound so that was a relief.

Then, just a few minutes ago I saw a news report that Steve Jobs, founder and former CEO of Apple Computers has passed away.  And maybe it's the pregnancy or he weird emotional day, but I am sitting here crying.

I grew up in an Apple family.  My husband thinks it's more like Apple brainwashing, but I loved the company.  My father worked there, I did and my sister currently does.  And Steve Jobs was a genius.  People can say what they want about him and the way he ran things, but he was a genius when it came to giving Apple a place in the world.  A huge place.

When Michael Jackson passed away I cried for my past.  For being a kid and loving him and all the memories his songs held for me, but that was it.  Today I cry for the future. Today I am saddened by the loss this world has experienced. 

We will miss you Mr. Jobs.

i'm going to take this moment to bitch...a lot.

This week I have three doctor appointments.  By Friday I will have poked myself with a tiny, mean little needle 16 times from today.  Unless something is off then I'll have to do it more times.  To add to all the fun-ness that is this pregnancy I have pretty much constant acid reflux.  I didn't even really know what that was until now.  I guess that's fitting considering that I didn't know what heartburn was until I was pregnant with Emma.

When I was pregnant with Emma, near the end I started swelling like a balloon.  It was INSANE!  It lasted for about a week after she was born.  My brother-in-law and I were talking about it this weekend.  He said he just remembered how swollen I got and how he didn't think someone could get that swollen.  I told him I remembered him standing over my legs as they were propped up on the ottoman commenting on how nuts it looked.  I'm starting to get there again a bit.

And the leg cramps.  They started a couple of nights ago and I've had one every night since.  A friend of mine said if I took my calcium pills at night that would help so I've got to try that.  It's also a dehydration thing, but if I drink too much water before bed the acid reflux just loooooves that.

Saturday night I woke up around 3:00 a.m. thanks to my good pal acid reflux, but things just went downhill from there and I was actually throwing up in Ray's little office garbage can.  Why the garbage can, you ask?  Because I was also partaking in a little diarrhea removal.  Yes!  So fun!  I find that sitting in the shower when I feel like crap always helps so that's what I did.  Felt a little better when I got out and got into bed where I began shivering uncontrollably.  I could not get warm!  And I sleep with 7 blankets.

So what I've learned from all this is that I basically can't eat anything.  Not too much salt because it will make me swell.  Not too much sugar because things will go bad for the baby.  No tomatoes, lemon, vinegar, spicy, et al. because of the acid reflux.

But I know that the pay off is greater than all this.  That I signed up for this and wanted it (and still do) so badly.  That even though she's at the stage where she is seriously trying to cause great bodily damage to my internal organs with her little pointy elbows and feet it is all worth it. 

On the bright side, with the three appointments I think I only have to pee in a cup for one.  Yipee!!

and the fun keeps coming

Today I had my first appointment with the High Risk Pregnancy NP.  It was quite informative.  Quite.  Never in the time that we were trying to get pregnant or when I was pregnant with Emma did I think this would be something I would have to worry about.  I always kind of went with the idea that ‘that won’t happen to me’ and to be perfectly honest, in the grand scheme of things all of this is not really that bad.  Everything could always be worse…it’s just frustrating.

My blood sugar levels have been really good all day long, but during the night when your pancreas ups your hormones it’s too busy making crazy preggo hormones that it’s completely ignoring the fact that I need insulin.  I’m supposed to have a snack right before I go to bed to help keep my blood levels down then when I wake up in the morning I have to test my blood and those numbers should be relatively low.  Unfortunately, mine have not been consistent.  I haven’t been in the danger zone, but I have been close and then I’ll have a couple of days where everything’s fine and then it will spike up again.

And there is nothing I can do about it.  It isn’t something that can be fixed by changing my diet.  They’re all very quick to assure me that it’s nothing that I’m doing, it’s just my pancreas.  (In case you’re wondering, my pancreas and I?  We’re not friends right now)  So because I’m only got about 9 weeks left it’s time to take action before it gets too late.

Which means medication.  For the duration of my pregnancy I’ll be taking a very small dosage of a medicine that will stimulate my frenemy Pancreas to release more insulin.  Hopefully, this works.  If I don’t see any improvement they’ll up my dosage.  If there still isn’t any improvement I’ll have to start giving myself insulin injections every night.  BOOOOOOOOOOOO!!!  Once I had to give myself one of my fertility injections because I forgot to bring it with me to the office.  It was NO FUN.  I thought I would take it to my mom (she’s an RN) and she’d do it for me, but she said no way.

But I’m optimistic that this medication will be fine.  The other complication is if this medication makes my pancreas release too much insulin.  Then they’ll just pull me off and stick me (literally) with insulin.  So we’re rooting for that not happening.

With all this fun stuff comes bi-weekly appointments for stress tests where they monitor the baby to see how she’s coping in there and at least one, but most likely two more ultrasounds to measure her belly.  If her belly gets too big at 36 weeks they’ll have to pull her out of there.  So we may have a September baby instead of October.

Like I said, I’m optimistic.  My blood sugar levels have been excellent after every meal and I’ve felt really good.  With Emma in school now I’ve been either walking or riding my bike to pick her up so my NP was very excited about all that exercise.  Hopefully, things will be just fine.

But for right now, me and my pancreas are gonna fight.

fun & sugar free?

This pregnancy has been quite different than my last.  Last time I gained 60 pounds.  At about this time in my pregnancy I was probably up by at least 40 pounds.  This time, going into my last 10 weeks I’ve gained 17 pounds.

Woohoo me!

This time the ‘morning sickness’ lasted much longer.  I’ve been more tired, sleep is harder to come by and the back aches and just all around body aches are killing me.  Then to top it all off I came in a few points (2, actually) high on my glucose test which grants me with the awesomeness that is gestational diabetes.

Woohoo me.

The glucose test is by far one of the most unfun things about pregnancy.  If you’ve never had it, let me tell you about it.  You go in sometime during the day, preferably before you’ve eaten anything.  You get to drink this sugary sweet drink either in orange flavor or lemon lime flavor.  Then you sit and wait around for an hour and then they draw blood to see what your glucose levels are.  If you’re lucky enough to pass that yipee!  If not, you have to go back for the dreaded three hour test.

This time you have to eat half a sandwich and a glass of milk around 10 p.m. the night before your test.  Then you have to make sure that you eat nothing for at least eight hours, but no more than 10.  You hightail it over to the lab and they draw blood to show your levels after fasting.  Then they give you the lovely drink (which really isn’t that bad.  Think flat orange soda) and you sit around for an hour and they draw your blood.  Then you sit around for another hour and draw your blood and then the whole thing repeats itself one more time.

I got to do both of these.  Then six months after the baby’s born I go back in to do a two hour test to see if the diabetes has stuck around.  See, with your body producing so many hormones while your pregnant sometimes your pancreas just can’t keep up and there goes your glucose levels.  Most often it lasts only the duration of the pregnancy, but for some it can become a permanent condition.

So I got this little gadget.

It’s my glucose meter.  It’s not really as fun of a gadget as say my camera or iPad, but it’s got parts and pieces and stabs me every few hours.  What could be more fun than that?

Today I had my appointment with a diabetes nurse and a dietician to go over how to use my meter and what kinds of meals I should be eating.  Not so fun, but not so bad either.  Today was my first day checking my blood.  I have to check in the morning before breakfast and then an hour after each meal.  All of my checks were well below the max levels so I’m a happy camper.  I didn’t do too much to change my diet today except for staying away from soda.  Go figure.  Biggest Loser was right!

Ray also sent me an app that lets me track my counts and the times I test so I don’t have to make sure I always have this booklet that they gave me.  Every Monday at a certain time a nurse will call me to get all my readings for the week, answer any questions and check on my kick counts for the baby.

So yeah, way different pregnancy this time.  But eh, what are you going to do?  This will force me not to become a giant blimp by the end of the pregnancy and eat better.  Maybe I’ll become one of those heath nut weirdos.  Well, I did discover sugar free Oreos today (they are AMAZING!) so that probably won’t really happen, but who know, right?

expectations

There are people in your life that you expect to behave or do things in a certain fashion.  They run the gamut from friends & family to your mail carriers or even complete strangers.  You expect people to act with common courtesy or to put the mail in your mail box and take the outgoing mail with them.  You just expect that because, well it’s the way things should be, right?

But then there are those who DON’T do what you think they should do.  And this can also go either way.  They are either inconsiderate or you’re just expecting too much.  And it can drive you crazy.  Maybe it drives you crazy because it’s making your life crazy to plan around this person or fix the mistakes this person is creating in your life.  Or maybe it drives you crazy because you see the train wreck that is about to happen and no matter how loud you scream or how animated you wave your arms around it doesn’t stop the wreck from happening.

And I have one of those expectations.  And it is driving me crazy.  Or at least it was, until I realized that the only person being driven crazy in this instance is me.  And really it is difficult to not jump up and down and wave my arms and scream for the train to stop (though surprisingly being pregnant does not make me the least bit partial to jumping up and down), but I have to ignore it.

That’s pretty close to impossible for me.  I’m pretty much a busybody.  When something (or someone) is broken I want to fix them and truly believe (somewhat delusionally) that I KNOW how to fix them when in fact, I haven’t the slightest clue.  These urges have gotten me in trouble from time to time.  For instance, falling into a relationship with a person so irrevocably broken because I felt I could make them better only to find that what was broken in them wanted to break me.

Or being in a restaurant and seeing a table act like a bunch of assholes to their overworked waitress.  Or working with an overworked waitress and watching an asshole customer be, well, an ass.  Despite my small size I was never one to back down from a fight or afraid to stand up for someone I thought was being wronged.

And now, older and wanting less drama in my life I’ve come to the conclusion that people cannot be fixed.  Especially when they themselves do not care.  And since I do not want to be crazed anymore they can just stay on those tracks and meet their disaster.  Sure, I might be there to help pick up the pieces because I am not an asshole, but I can’t stop them from chugging along anymore.

*end random rant*

i don’t like this turn of events

A couple of weeks ago when Ray was in Burlingame I had put Emma to bed and was in the living room on my computer or something.  Out of the corner of my eye I saw something fly by me up to the window we have next to the TV.  At first I thought it was 2 mosquito eaters making out … it was really big.  I went and grabbed a fly swatter and when I got closer I discovered it was not two mosquito eaters, but one of these:


Of course, in this picture it looks huge, but you know what, that is pretty freaking close to life sized right there.  It’s about an inch and a half to two inches long and though it looks pretty frail with its weird skinny stick body I had to hit it full on 5 times before it died.  I sucked it up with the dust buster (which in our house is merely a bug vacuum) and was creeped out for awhile.

Then today while Emma was eating her lunch ANOTHER ONE flew by in the living room!!  I called out to Ray and grabbed the vacuum this time thinking I would just vacuum the thing up.  I did that.  Let the vacuum run for awhile and it was STILL ALIVE in there.  We have a Dyson.  It’s supposed to be all-powerful.  This wasp is more powerful!

It’s called a mud wasp and they build their nests on the overhang of your roof.  While we haven’t found a nest anywhere we have this awful climbing, flowering plant that grows up along the sides of our garage and partially covers the overhang.  I’m pretty sure that’s where they’re lurking planning out their world domination.  Or at least domination over our house.

Stupid bugs.

let’s chat

I’m thinking about writing a blog post, but I am completely distracted by the Glee Project and not in a good way.

I’ve come to the realization that I don’t like actor wannabes.  I don’t think I spelled that right, but whatever, you get the point.  I love Glee and I know that they’re going to have to introduce new characters and not everyone is going to be Darren Criss.  I thought if I watched this show that would endear one of them to me so that when they eventually end up on the show I won’t hate them.

It’s not working so far.

Half of them creep me out, most of them make me think of cheap imitations of the original cast.  There’s a Santana, a Rachel, a Mercedes, an Artie and none of them are nearly as good as who they wish they were.  I’ll give it a chance, maybe I’ll end up liking someone.

Tomorrow Emma and I are going to take the train to meet Ray.  We have to leave the house around 6:30-ish.  That should be an adventure.  Emma’s been on the light rail, but not the train so I’m excited to take her though she might just want to sleep since she is my late waking baby.  But she’s super excited to see her Daddy.  We’ll be right next door to the It’s-It Factory.  We’ll be stopping by there of course.  Ray will be in meetings for the day so we’ll have to find some stuff to keep us busy.  I’d like to go into the city, but I am a mess when it comes to taking public transportation.  I’ll let you know if we get lost.

If you’ve never read a Jack Reacher novel go out and get one right now.  You should start with the first one, The Killing Floor, but my favorite is probably the second book Die Trying.  While reading that book I had to set it down so I could exclaim to anyone within hearing distance that I LOVE Jack Reacher.  He is a bad ass good guy.

Let me give you a little background on this guy.

Jack Reacher has spent almost all of his life in the military.  His father was a Marine and he eventually joined the Army.  He’s 6’5” with a 50-inch chest and can break a man’s neck with one hand, kill a man with a single punch.  Blond, blue-eyed.  He mustered out of the Army in the late 90’s and since he’d spent all of his life on some sort of military base, mostly outside of the US he decided he would just drift from town to town and see the country he was a citizen of, but barely knew.

Somehow he always finds trouble.  Part of his problem is that he cannot stand to see injustice.  Can’t stand to see someone weaker being bullied or threatened by someone stronger.  Despite his desire to keep to himself and just meander through the rest of his life his conscience won’t let him walk away.  Sometimes he comes across as cold and uncaring, but he’s definitely the opposite.

All in all, Jack Reacher is one of the best book characters.  I always thought I would love to see Lee Child’s novels turned into a movie just so I could see Reacher in action.

Now I wish it will never come to be.

Why, you ask?  Because the actor they’re considering to play Jack Reacher is Tom Cruise.  I’m not joking.  It sounds like a joke.  Tom Cruise is literally the antithesis of Jack Reacher.  And I don’t like Tom Cruise.  I should like the actor who plays Reacher.  To be honest I cannot think of anyone who could play Reacher.  And apparently, that’s the problem they’ve always had.  Lee Child’s books were optioned years and years ago, but there was never any clue as to who could play Reacher.  I guess they gave up and are trying to hire the guy who was available.

If I don’t sound upset enough it’s because I can’t properly express to you how devastating this news is to me.  When they cast Josh Hutcherson as Peeta I was upset.  And I still am, but really, I could care less.  I don’t think I will be as excited about The Hunger Games movies as I would have been about seeing Reacher on the big screen.  If Tom Cruise is actually cast I won’t see the movie.  Period.  I don’t mind some altering going on.  A movie can’t be a complete copy of the book, but this is the main character!  This is why the books are written!  Why they’re as good as they are!  AND TOM CRUISE IS NOT GOOD!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

BOO!!!!!

So let’s see…..something good……I got nothing.

Let’s move on.  Actually, let’s not.  This post is way too long as it is.  So there you are.  Several paragraphs of rambling for your amusement, ridicule or for you to ignore completely.

blahs

It’s been a few days since I’ve posted.  At first I told myself it was because I was so busy over the weekend.  Emma’s birthday party was a huge success, although quite exhausting.  Then it was Mother’s Day and we juggled spending time with my mom, aunts & grandmother and Ray’s mom & sisters.

But then the days passed and I just don’t feel like doing much.  I don’t really feel like finishing the last of the six books I’m 100 pages from finishing.  I don’t feel like playing the new LEGO Pirates of the Caribbean game Ray got for me, nor am I super gung-ho about putting together the LEGO set of Diagon Alley I got for Mother’s Day.  And I’m sad to say that I have put little effort into taking pictures for my 365 project.

Normally, I would chalk it up to depression, but I’ve been there and know what that feels like and this isn’t it.  I’m just so tired and so tired of feeling yucky.  Since conception I don’t think there has been one full day of this pregnancy where I have felt good and not fighting the urge to throw up.  What makes me the most unhappy is that I love to eat good food and so far I have been unable to eat all the things that I love.  Nothing tastes good. 

It feels blasphemous to complain about not loving every minute of this pregnancy since we worked so hard to get here and went through so much.  I feel ungrateful and as if I’m tempting fate.  I worry because I’m not gaining weight, in fact have lost some weight.  I’m back to wearing non maternity pants.  I worry because I haven’t felt the baby move yet, though I’m only 15 weeks and some say you can’t feel the baby until around 16-17 weeks.

I always thought that the second pregnancy would be worse than the first.  With the first you literally have no idea what to expect.  But with the second, you know and may have experienced all the scary & bad things that can happen and you worry the whole time about those bad & scary things.  And I am a worrier by nature.  So as you can imagine despite the tiny logical part of my brain I’m quite stressed out about ridiculous things.

And I haven’t felt like blogging.

So bear with me and my intermittent postings.  I’ll try my best to get back in the writing groove.

can you really kill 2 birds with 1 stone?

I’m not a hunter.  I don’t understand sport hunting at all.  The closest I get would be fishing I guess, though I don’t do that very often at all.  And I usually don’t keep anything I catch except for one time when I couldn’t get the hook out of the fish and freaked out.  We had that fish for dinner.

Anyway.  There is a bird outside that has made our tree in the backyard his home.  It’s just the one bird and he is LOUD.  He begins screaming at around 4 am and doesn’t stop until sometime around midnight.

I can hear him right now.  Doors and windows closed.

I would like to kill this bird.

Now.

scary kari gets scared

I wrote this post about the award that Ixy gave me the other day and I mentioned my fear of clowns.  Ixy was intrigued.  Then only of my other fave bloggers Busy Bee Lauren did a post about things that scare the crap out of her so I thought I would do a little post about scary stuff.

There really isn’t a lot that scares me I think.  Off the top of my head I can think of two books, 3 movie moments and then of course there’s my Coulrophobia.  No, I did not know that word off the top of my head.  I had to google that and just freaked myself out by the lovely pictures that accompanied that. 

I really don’t know when my fear of clowns started.  I feel like I’ve always hated them.  I do know that I read It by Stephen King at a REALLY young age so that must be where it comes from, however I don’t really remember being scared by that book.  I mostly remember being confused because he kept flip flopping from past to present and the events were so similar I kept getting lost.  Anyhoo…that is my only explanation for this.  And I can read about them.  It doesn’t really scare me to read about clowns or hear the word ‘clown’, but seeing them….well, that’s a whole ‘nother story.

There is something terribly wrong about a man covering up their face with makeup, creating a whole new expression on their face to hang around with children.  There is something off putting to me about anyone covering their face for any reason.  Generally, if I can see them coming I can brace myself and deal with it.  My family is really good at helping me.  My brother and I watch a lot of the same TV shows.  If there’s a clown on a show he would warn me beforehand.  My parents once gave me a cookbook by these two guys who dressed up as clowns.  My dad went through the book and covered up all the clown pictures.  Ray will avert my attention whenever we come across some clown picture of actual clown person.  It actually happens a lot more than you’d think.

Now when I’m taken by surprise mostly bad things happen.  I was at Blockbuster once scanning the movies and my eyes glanced right over a cover of a documentary on John Wayne Gacy.  I was going to post a picture of the cover here, but I couldn’t do it.  So you can see it here if you like.  So I glanced at it and moved on, but for some reason my eyes drifted back before I could grasp what I was seeing.  Then everything kind of went black and there was a guy next to me trying to help me up off the floor asking me if I was okay.  It’s a really freaky cover people.

I hate clowns.

Even just writing about it now is bothering me.  And like I said, it doesn’t even have to be the standard clown.  I so badly wanted to see Tim Burton’s Alice in Wonderland that I spent the year before the movie came out desensitizing myself to Johnny Depp’s Mad Hatter and even then there were some iffy parts.

The funny thing is scary movies don’t scare me.  Horror genre books bore me.  So when I say I am scared of clowns, believe me that to me there is nothing scarier than a clown.

Stupid clowns.