Tuesday, February 16, 2010
Bunny shoot
Well, an Nestie friend wanted to see some more pictures of Monkey and Nunu and I realized that we haven't taken pictures of them in a while. Hence, a bunny photo shoot. Enjoy!
Mark's B-day/Valentine's Celebration and a crazy lap dog
Well, I was of course working on Mark's birthday (Feb 12) so we had a nice celebration weekend. We went out to Olive Garden on Saturday night with my parents and grandmother, which was delicious as usual. On Sunday night, we had Mark's brother, his girlfriend, and Mark's cousin come over for a birthday dinner. We made some salad and pizza and I made a yummy cake with nutella buttercream frosting. Of course, I didn't have cocoa powder so I used Swiss Miss hot chocolate powder, which Mark laughed at me about, but the cake came out delicious. Overall, it was a lovely celebration.
On a completely unrelated note, Onyx decided he's a lap dog now so.......
My handsome boys....
Kisses for little Fitey Bitey....
On a completely unrelated note, Onyx decided he's a lap dog now so.......
My handsome boys....
Kisses for little Fitey Bitey....
Friday, February 12, 2010
It's been a while
Well, I've never been one to keep a journal or diary of any sort so it isn't a total shock that I would keep up with a blog that great either. Anyway, here's a recap of what's been going on since I last posted.
On January 28, we drove over to Providence in a snow storm to go see Jeff Dunham. The show was awesome. At the very end, he brought out Bubba J and the audience knew the jokes and said them along with Bubba J. It was hilarious.
Work is same as ever, sometimes good nights, sometimes not so good nights. I love my patients/residents though (well, most of them anyway).
We're in the process of refinancing our house so we had an appraisal done on Tuesday morning. Onyx was, of course, very happy to meet a new friend and was jumping all over the guy outside. Thankfully, the guy liked him and wasn't too bothered, although I had to grab Onyx by the collar and keep him under control. We ended up with an awesome estimate on our house and can move forward with our refinance.
My student loans are going to be due soon for repayment. UGH! There goes a bunch of our money for a good 7-10 years. At least I got 2 Bachelor's degrees out of it, right?
Last night, we were running some errands and Mark decided he wanted grilled chicken salad and garlic bread for dinner. I figured, since I'm working tonight and it's Mark's birthday today, I'll make him a nice dinner. Since we were food shopping anyway, we got all the necessary ingredients and came home and made it. We grilled the chicken covered in spices and flour on the George Foreman and the salad ended up really good. We even had enough left over for lunch for Mark today and dinner for me.
Well, I'm off to get ready for work.
Happy birthday to my wonderful husband! I hope we celebrate many many many more together.
On January 28, we drove over to Providence in a snow storm to go see Jeff Dunham. The show was awesome. At the very end, he brought out Bubba J and the audience knew the jokes and said them along with Bubba J. It was hilarious.
Work is same as ever, sometimes good nights, sometimes not so good nights. I love my patients/residents though (well, most of them anyway).
We're in the process of refinancing our house so we had an appraisal done on Tuesday morning. Onyx was, of course, very happy to meet a new friend and was jumping all over the guy outside. Thankfully, the guy liked him and wasn't too bothered, although I had to grab Onyx by the collar and keep him under control. We ended up with an awesome estimate on our house and can move forward with our refinance.
My student loans are going to be due soon for repayment. UGH! There goes a bunch of our money for a good 7-10 years. At least I got 2 Bachelor's degrees out of it, right?
Last night, we were running some errands and Mark decided he wanted grilled chicken salad and garlic bread for dinner. I figured, since I'm working tonight and it's Mark's birthday today, I'll make him a nice dinner. Since we were food shopping anyway, we got all the necessary ingredients and came home and made it. We grilled the chicken covered in spices and flour on the George Foreman and the salad ended up really good. We even had enough left over for lunch for Mark today and dinner for me.
Well, I'm off to get ready for work.
Happy birthday to my wonderful husband! I hope we celebrate many many many more together.
Wednesday, January 20, 2010
For all the nosy, judgemental people in the world....
Those that know me well know that I have a slightly unhealthy obsession with pregnancy, maternity, babies, and all things related and now those of you that don't know me that well know too. BTW, no, we are not pregnant or even starting to try yet. I have wanted to work with infants/toddlers for most of my life and my current goal in life is to be a maternity nurse on an LDRP (labor, delivery, recovery, post-partum) unit, where the woman goes through everything in one room, unless she needs a C-section, of course. I tell people that my goal in life is to play with babies for a living. Anyway, I came upon this interesting Newsweek article on a local discussion board that I frequent and thought it was very informative and witty. This is the original site with the article.
_______________________________________________________________
Why do we treat women’s bodies as public property when they’re pregnant? The question has been debated (and debated and debated) in the context of abortion; the ACLU and the state of Vermont are currently parsing its subtler legal implications. But when it comes to issues of etiquette, few people even bother to think about why it’s so common for strangers to pile on pregnant women and ask alarmingly personal questions, lecturing about health-related matters of opinion and treating the women not as the bearers of children but as children themselves.
As The New York Times once put it, pregnant women are “slow-moving targets for strangers who judge.” Is it garden-variety boorishness that drives this? Surely it can’t be; that would mean far too many people who are thoughtful in other circumstances are boors in this one. Most of us know better than to comment on a nonpregnant woman’s weight gain, at least to her face. But we also greet pregnant women with cries of “You’re huge!” We have a sense of respect and common decency. It’s just that the urge to examine every last aspect of an expectant mother’s health runs roughshod all over it.
Maybe these are the good intentions with which the road to hell is paved. We all have an interest in the continuation of the species and an instinct to protect the vulnerable; we all have a stake in whether a baby is born healthy. And having a stake, of course, means needing to control—wanting, directly or indirectly, to have a say in how pregnant women treat their fetuses and thus themselves.
There’s a rub here, though: except for some obvious principles (don’t drink very much, don’t smoke), we don’t really know how to control the health of a child in utero. The science just isn’t there—which means people have to fall back on their personal opinions about how pregnant women should behave. In other words, they can’t help but judge.
Take that Starbucks cup, for instance. Pretend it’s filled with real, caffeinated coffee. Now look at the research on whether a pregnant woman should be drinking it. You’ll find plenty of scary studies; some are even about humans instead of lab rats. But they’re almost entirely about heavy caffeine consumption, five cups a day or more; there are almost no good data to suggest that a cup a day will hurt. This is not the kind of science that should make a stranger leap to a fetus’s defense just because its mother has a latte cup in her hand. But if you have a strong belief that any level of caffeine is bad for a fetus, and you know that the science is inconclusive, your belief is going to outweigh that science every time. And with strong beliefs comes the tendency to foist them on others.
Similarly, no one knows what the exact effect of a (singular, one) glass of wine is on a fetus, especially after the first trimester. But every doctor I’ve ever talked to has said it’s almost certainly negligible. This does not keep people from giving pregnant women the evil eye at dinner if there’s a nice pinot on the table.
I’m hopeful that better science might someday solve this—that, once the risks of various maternal behaviors are made clearer, we’ll all stop judging each other because we’ll be looking at the same data. This long-needed study is a good start.
In the meantime, though, I’d like to encourage the pregnant women of America to try a little experiment. The next time someone admonishes you for eating Brie or sipping a cappuccino, turn the judgment and invasion of privacy back on the other person. Tell him fatty cheese and coffee aren't good for anyone, and you really don't think he should eat or drink them either. If someone says you've gained a lot of weight, respond, "At least I have an excuse." And if, say, a near-stranger asks you if you’re lactating yet, answer the question, then smile earnestly and ask him about his breast fetish. I promise you, he won't bother you again.
_______________________________________________________________
Until We Have Better Science, Please Shut Up About My Pregnancy Pinot Grigio
Mary Carmichael
When I decided to have my first child, my friends who were already parents warned me that I’d soon have someone constantly making demands of me, someone who didn’t care about my autonomy, dignity, or privacy. Sadly, they didn’t mean the baby. As soon as I began showing, my health was no longer solely my business. Strangers looked askance at my Starbucks cup (no matter that it was filled with decaf) and my plate of sushi (never mind that I had the OK from my OB, the chief of maternal-fetal medicine at Massachusetts General Hospital). When they weren’t criticizing me for gaining too much weight, they were carping that I hadn’t gained enough. I met a brand-new acquaintance for dinner at an upscale Cambridge, Mass., restaurant. Halfway through the meal, he looked at me and said, “So, have you started lactating?”Why do we treat women’s bodies as public property when they’re pregnant? The question has been debated (and debated and debated) in the context of abortion; the ACLU and the state of Vermont are currently parsing its subtler legal implications. But when it comes to issues of etiquette, few people even bother to think about why it’s so common for strangers to pile on pregnant women and ask alarmingly personal questions, lecturing about health-related matters of opinion and treating the women not as the bearers of children but as children themselves.
As The New York Times once put it, pregnant women are “slow-moving targets for strangers who judge.” Is it garden-variety boorishness that drives this? Surely it can’t be; that would mean far too many people who are thoughtful in other circumstances are boors in this one. Most of us know better than to comment on a nonpregnant woman’s weight gain, at least to her face. But we also greet pregnant women with cries of “You’re huge!” We have a sense of respect and common decency. It’s just that the urge to examine every last aspect of an expectant mother’s health runs roughshod all over it.
Maybe these are the good intentions with which the road to hell is paved. We all have an interest in the continuation of the species and an instinct to protect the vulnerable; we all have a stake in whether a baby is born healthy. And having a stake, of course, means needing to control—wanting, directly or indirectly, to have a say in how pregnant women treat their fetuses and thus themselves.
There’s a rub here, though: except for some obvious principles (don’t drink very much, don’t smoke), we don’t really know how to control the health of a child in utero. The science just isn’t there—which means people have to fall back on their personal opinions about how pregnant women should behave. In other words, they can’t help but judge.
Take that Starbucks cup, for instance. Pretend it’s filled with real, caffeinated coffee. Now look at the research on whether a pregnant woman should be drinking it. You’ll find plenty of scary studies; some are even about humans instead of lab rats. But they’re almost entirely about heavy caffeine consumption, five cups a day or more; there are almost no good data to suggest that a cup a day will hurt. This is not the kind of science that should make a stranger leap to a fetus’s defense just because its mother has a latte cup in her hand. But if you have a strong belief that any level of caffeine is bad for a fetus, and you know that the science is inconclusive, your belief is going to outweigh that science every time. And with strong beliefs comes the tendency to foist them on others.
Similarly, no one knows what the exact effect of a (singular, one) glass of wine is on a fetus, especially after the first trimester. But every doctor I’ve ever talked to has said it’s almost certainly negligible. This does not keep people from giving pregnant women the evil eye at dinner if there’s a nice pinot on the table.
I’m hopeful that better science might someday solve this—that, once the risks of various maternal behaviors are made clearer, we’ll all stop judging each other because we’ll be looking at the same data. This long-needed study is a good start.
In the meantime, though, I’d like to encourage the pregnant women of America to try a little experiment. The next time someone admonishes you for eating Brie or sipping a cappuccino, turn the judgment and invasion of privacy back on the other person. Tell him fatty cheese and coffee aren't good for anyone, and you really don't think he should eat or drink them either. If someone says you've gained a lot of weight, respond, "At least I have an excuse." And if, say, a near-stranger asks you if you’re lactating yet, answer the question, then smile earnestly and ask him about his breast fetish. I promise you, he won't bother you again.
Friday, January 15, 2010
Root Beer Roast
Well, between work and going out with the hubby, I've been gone for a few days. We went out to Olive Garden on Wednesday night, which is always delicious. I very highly suggest the Manicotti Formaggio with Shrimp. It's soooooo good!
Last night, I decided to make something that I found on a friend's blog that she got out of the book "Fix It and Forget It Lightly." I think the regular recipe calls it Pepsi Pot Roast, but I used root beer because it was either that or Dr. Pepper. I also made some young red garlic mashed potatoes with the skins. The hubby didn't really like the root beer gravy that the roast made. I thought it was pretty good, although it was quite an interesting flavor. I think that I'm going to use the cola next time.
Ingredients
- 3 lb pot roast
- 2 10.75 cans of cream of mushroom soup
- 1 envelope dry onion soup mix
- 4 cups soda (as I said, I used root beer, but the original recipe calls for a cola)
Combine everything but the roast in a bowl. Put the roast in a crockpot. Cover with mixture. Set on high for 4-6 hours.
Last night, I decided to make something that I found on a friend's blog that she got out of the book "Fix It and Forget It Lightly." I think the regular recipe calls it Pepsi Pot Roast, but I used root beer because it was either that or Dr. Pepper. I also made some young red garlic mashed potatoes with the skins. The hubby didn't really like the root beer gravy that the roast made. I thought it was pretty good, although it was quite an interesting flavor. I think that I'm going to use the cola next time.
Ingredients
- 3 lb pot roast
- 2 10.75 cans of cream of mushroom soup
- 1 envelope dry onion soup mix
- 4 cups soda (as I said, I used root beer, but the original recipe calls for a cola)
Combine everything but the roast in a bowl. Put the roast in a crockpot. Cover with mixture. Set on high for 4-6 hours.
Sunday, January 10, 2010
Just another day
Well, I've been pretty busy working and, of course, work is crazy as it always with when you work with old people with dementia. I love my job though and I love most of my patients/residents. There's always the select few that you just want to give a good kick to. Of course, you never do it because then you lose your job, license, etc. However, such is life and you learn to deal with the crazies and the pleasantly confused.
On another note, our Jeff Dunham tickets came in the mail today. Yay! We're really excited for a nice night out. We definitely need it.
Well, I need to get some sleep. Good night, computer world.
On another note, our Jeff Dunham tickets came in the mail today. Yay! We're really excited for a nice night out. We definitely need it.
Well, I need to get some sleep. Good night, computer world.
Wednesday, January 6, 2010
January Festivities
So some time at the end of December, Mark sent me a link to a Ticket Master page. Well, turns out that Jeff Dunham is coming to "da Dunk" in Providence at the end of January. After considering it for about 5 minutes and pricing out the tickets, we decided that it would be a great night out for us. So excited! For those that aren't familiar with Jeff Dunham, do yourself a favor and look him up. He's hilarious! You won't be sorry.
Well, I'm off to be a nice wifey and clean up a little before I need to leave for work. No yummy food post today. Mark is on his own tonight with the leftovers.
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