Slacking Again

But in my defense, it's been a busy month-ish since my last post.

I started a CNA (Certified Nursing Asst.) course about a month ago, and I finished the coursework about two weeks ago. However, the state of Utah has a 75-minimum hour requirement for Nursing Assistant certification, so I get to go to the classroom and sit for four hours a day. I've been taking the homework from my other classes with me (Biology, and Math for Health Sciences), which I suppose will be beneficial when grade time rolls around. But right now, I just want to stay home in my PJs and shlump on the couch. I'm entering the pregnancy phase when NOTHING is comfortable, for several reasons.

First of all, my back is killing me. KILLING ME! I can't bend over easily anymore, so if I drop something, I usually spend a few minutes deciding whether it's worth the pain to pick it up. Usually, it's not, and Jake will come home to a whole plethora of stuff littering the floor. I do pick up anything the dog might decide to eat or destroy, so at least that's something...

Second, I can't really sleep. At all. It's partly the back pain, partly the getting up all night to pee, and partly just can't-sleep-itis. I complain about it, and everyone says, "It's Nature preparing you for having a newborn!" Well, thanks Nature, but you're not helping. If I knew I wasn't going to eat anything for the next week, I wouldn't prepare by starving myself. >:P

Oh, speaking of food ingestion, eating has become somewhat unenjoyable. Everything that I really want to eat... I can't, because it's "bad" for the baby. I want to know how hazardous half this stuff really is. I was Facebooking about being excited about having sushi last week, and I got all kinds of shit for it. "Raw fish? You're going to give your baby salmonella." OK, first of all, there exists cooked sushi (and I loves me some California rolls). Second of all, outta my face. I'm willing to bet pregnant Japanese ladies eat raw sushi all the time, and there's certainly no shortage of Japanese babies. Hey! Maybe eating raw fish makes people really good at putting together electronics.

And I love tea. I grew up in the South, so sweet tea is a part of daily life. Yummmmmm but no. Wah. There's caffeine in it. You know what? I drink it anyway. There's a "safe" amount, according to doctors. Besides, I did some Googling, and the only studies I could find about the effects of caffeine on fetuses involved amounts of caffeine that would be dangerous for an adult, let alone a developing baby. So according to these studies, as long as I don't mainline caffeine, the Beast should be OK. I still try to mix up the tea (green tea, by the way, for the Vitamin C) with water, orange juice, and other good-for-me beverages, so I don't feel too bad about it.

I've been craving nothing but sugar. I had chocolate chip pancakes for breakfast today and yesterday. SO GOOD. When I eat fruits/veggies, it's mostly sweet, like strawberries, cherries, raspberries, etc. Apples, yum. Salad, not so much, UNLESS the dressing is sweet. I try to eat healthy stuff, but I never finish it once I prepare it; I'll put a bite in my mouth, chew a little, and then think, "This tastes like hatred. I'm getting a cookie."

Over Memorial Day Weekend, Jake and I went up to Estes Park, CO to witness the marriage of two of my bestest friends, Tanya and Hutch. It was a small ceremony but beautiful nonetheless, and I was the MOH, even though my dress barely fit over my big fat tummeh. No champagne for me for the toasts, but one can toast just as well with water. I needed the water anyway. When you're at 7,000 ft elevation, the air is SOOOO dry, and it sucks all the moisture right out of you!

When we got back from Estes Park, I discovered that my laptop had become furious with us for leaving it alone over the weekend, and it had stopped operating. I tried troubleshooting for a few hours, until I was about to unleash hormone-fueled rage all over it, and then Jake stepped in and saved the lappy's miserable life. Rather than letting me throw it out the window, he sent me downstairs to get back into a peaceful Zen-like state by staring at my aquarium, while he worked some kind of Asian magic on it. He defragged it overnight, and it was back to it's slow-but-working self in the morning. Yay!

The dog has been having nighttime intestinal troubles for a few weeks now. She never has diarrhea during the day when I'm awake and dressed and prepared to take her outside. She only has diarrhea at 1am when I have to wake up at 5am the next morning. Every hour and a half, she'll need to go out to poo, but when the sun comes up, her diarrhea miraculously changes to solid feces. I'm beginning to think she's some kind of poop-werewolf... the lamest werewolf of all time.

So anyway, there's my excuse(s) for not blogging for so long. Take your pick. I'm going to go eat second breakfast, take a shower, and try to jam myself into some non-pajama clothing. Here goes nothing!

It's My Muhfuggin Birthday

Damn skippy.

No drinking for me on this fine day, but I'm not really a big drinker to begin with, so... meh.

Balls! Bo3bby and Andrea sent me the most adorable dog-themed e-card, but the link won't work. >:(

I'm off... to take a shower and possibly eat ice cream for breakfast. Don't judge me!

Rain, Rain, Go Away

It's raining.

This displeases me greatly.

I love to swim. One of my new favorite things to do is SCUBA dive (not up here in the frozen northlands, however), and as long as the water is warm enough, I don't mind jumping into some H2O and having a little paddle around.

But I hate - HATE - being rained on.

Jake and I were in Key Largo on Halloween last year, diving. The boat took us out to the reef we were to dive upon, and the boat captain gave us the safety speech, and then he looked up behind us and said, "Oh, and those clouds look like they're coming at us. (pause while everyone turns to look at the stormclouds on the horizon) I don't see any lightning, so we're good to dive. It might be raining when you come up, but you'll all already be wet, so it doesn't matter!"

It mattered to me. We jumped in, terrorized fishies for an hour, and when we came up, it was indeed raining. Not too hard, but it's Florida, and Florida doesn't possess wimpy rain. Definitely no misting bullshit like there is in Utah. And it made me miserable. I poked my soaking wet head above the water, felt raindrops, and went back under.

I hate being rained on.

Snow, School, and Stuff

Hmmm it would appear that I'm averaging about a month or so between blog posts. Meh. I actually have a good excuse this time! I started school!

But before we get into schoolin', I have to rant a little bit about the weather here in Utah. It's May 6th, and I have to wear a jacket still. It snowed last week. SNOWED!!! I almost had a stroke when I got up and looked outside and saw snow on the ground. I had been planning to go out and get my car registered that day, but I didn't. It was my way of protesting the weather. Fuck that shit.

OK so, school... I changed my major. Yeah, yeah, I know, I change it like 5 times a semester. But this time, I'm (probably) going to stick with it.

Nursing.

Yes. Be afraid. Be very afraid.

I did this for a few reasons. Namely, there is a nurse shortage, and there has been for years. Which is kinda surprising, because the nursing programs at all of the SLC schools (and probably most of the schools in the country) are full of nursing hopefuls. I think what probably happens is that these people go to nursing school, get their first job at a hospital or whatever, and decide they hate it after a few months, so they quit.

Another reason I moved to nursing is that it's a job I can do anywhere. Jake and I don't have to rock-paper-scissors over where we move for a job.

It will also be handy when we have the baby and Jake inevitably teaches it to do dangerous things. Less hospital visits = good thing.

So I'm in pre-nursing. More specifically, I'm taking a Certified Nurse Assistant (CNA) course at SLCC. Having the NA certification is a requirement for starting the nursing program at SLCC, so I'm going to do it before the baby comes and get it out of the way. It's a self-paced thing, so I can be done in a couple of months easy. Blah blah blah.

Oh, my little seedlings that I talked about in my last posting are now plants... kinda. The cucumbers are doing the best, by far. They're going bananas. The cilantro... not so good. The jalapenos... well, the ones that have lived this long are starting to do better. And the salvia is just gone. They were all doing fine, doing fine, doing fine, DEAD. Overnight DEAD. I blame the snow. All the tomatoes and basil are doing well. I tried to transplant a couple of the oregano and those died, but the ones I left alone are doing great. And the butterfly flower has really taken off.

I can finally feel the Beast kicking me. Most of the time, it's just little flicks and pokes, but once in a while it feels like s/he's going kung-fu ape wild all over the place. When Jake and I went and got the ultrasound, the Beast was wiggling around like crazy, which amused the doctor. It's a really good thing I don't want to know the sex, because the Beast wasn't giving it up that day. I would have been all kinds of bent out of shape had I wanted to know.

Oh... I can't end this blog without a rant at the dumb bitches at acertainbabyforum.com. Someone asked about the link between vaccinations and autism. Everyone pretty much answered that there have been so concrete studies linking the two, saying that the benefits of vaccines outweigh the risks, yadda yadda. OK whatever, I'm not bothered at the point, I'm just reading. Then I read that some chick has posted something along these lines:

It's irresponsible not to vaccinate your children. The fact that parents aren't vaccinating is contributing to more obscure childhood diseases having a re-emegence, such as smallpox and polio.

I had to comment. Fuckin' smallpox and polio?? SMALLPOX??? I did a quick search on the CDC website, to make sure I was getting my facts right, and I reported them to this lady:

Smallpox was declared eradicated in 1979 by the CDC and the WHO (World Health Org., not the band). It's extinct. No one gets vaccinated for it anymore. If you go to your doctor and request the smallpox vaccine for your kids, he's going to look at you like you're some kind of crazy person.

In 2007, there were 1,600 cases of polio WORLDWIDE. The CDC reports that polio currently exists in a wild state (meaning you can catch it from your workplace/school/terrorist training camp) in four countries: Afghanistan, Pakistan, India, and Nigeria. 98% of all polio cases come from these countries, with the other 2% occurring in countries that infected Afghanis/Pakistanis/Indians/Nigerians travel to.

I waited patiently for a response, and I got one. She said she hadn't meant smallpox, she had meant measles (because they're so similar and easily confusable), and she said that ACTUALLY in the UNITED STATES, something called the VDPV (Vaccine-Derived Poliovirus) was being spread because of parents not vaccinating their kids.

I twitched. I actually twitched. Even without looking it up, the very definition of VDPV revolves around those first two letters: Vaccine-Derived. Derived from the vaccine. Coming from the vaccine. Caused by the vaccine.

I Googled it. Apparently, there are two types of polio immunizations: the kind that gets injected to you via needle and syringe, and the kind that involves you swallowing drops of the vaccine. The needle immunization contains dead poliovirus, but the mouth drops are weakened, half-dead but still alive poliovirus. It's kinda like the flu shot we all get. If you get the shot itself, you usually don't get sick. But if you get that goddamn nasal spray (which contains live cultures), you can actually get sick. Do you get the actual flu? No. You get "flu-like symptoms," which won't kill you if you're a normal person. If you have AIDS or something, it might kill you, but most doctors aren't reckless enough to give a live-culture vaccine to immuno-compromised peoples.

So, if you get the mouthdrop polio vaccine as a kid and you have a compromised immune system, you could contract this VDPV. However, VDPV is NOT polio, at least not the kind we all picture in our heads (with the crippling and the wheelchairs). It can be cured very easily by a supplemental vaccine once diagnosed.

According to the website polioeradication.org, between 1997 and 2007, there were less than 200 cases of VDPV in the world, none of which were in the US.

According to the CDC, an immuno-compromised infant in Minnesota was found to have had VDPV in 2005. They reported that it probably caught the virus from someone outside of the United States, since the USA hasn't used the mouthdrop vaccine since 2000.

Either way, I consider ONE case of not-even-for-realsies-polio in an immuno-compromised baby hardly an outbreak due to parents not vaccinating. The moral of the story is, this girl is a fuckin' moron.

April Not-Quite-Fool's

I'm pretty sure that in my first post, I mentioned that I'm terrible at being a consistent blogger. So the fact that it's been over a month since my last post shouldn't surprise any of you fuckers!

OK, 15 weeks 2 days along now. My last post was ranting about fat ladies who use their fledgling pregnancy as an excuse to be heifers. Alas, now, I am a fat heifer. I haven't weighed myself in a while - mostly out of laziness - but I'm going to put my weight at... 125 lbs. Actually, let me go weigh myself now.

BRB.

Ok back. 123.6 lbs. BAM! Take that, fat bitches!

My stomach is definitely sticking out. I've stopped trying to suck it in, mostly because that makes the ever-present feeling of "I need to pee" intensify, and also because it doesn't do a lot of good. Another place that's noticeably bigger? My tits. Jake noticed, too. -.-

Nausea has mostly gone away, but not entirely. It gets bad in the car and if I smell or think about certain foods, like olives, hot dogs, or hamburgers. Barf.

I got some herbs and seeds today to start an herb/veggie/butterfly garden. Rosemary and lavender have been potted and put in the living room. They're already making the apartment smell better. The apartment doesn't smell bad so much as it just smells hfwefwgfwfhajwopq. Every time I walk in, I go, "Ick, it stinks in here." It stinks of new carpet and air freshener. It's supposed to warm up soon, I HOPE, so I can start opening windows to air out that smell.

Current favorite foods are: Ghirardelli caramel-filled chocolate squares, white cheddar Pirate's Booty, fresh strawberries, and red grapes. Mmmm...