Why am I being such a brat? I just do not understand myself. One day I hope to be a mature adult but it seems like all I am is a spoiled brat who is not getting her way.

Best Step-Daughters Ever!

I went to Nebraska to be with Dan's daughter Eiryanna. She is 12 and had her gall bladder out. We drove....on the way we picked up his other daughter Jessica. She is 3 years old.

Jessica was jealous of the band-aids Eiryanna had so the nurse gave her a pink one. Then she was pouting in the hall. She was just wonderful. She behaved so well on the long drive (even with a 10 hour delay in Cheyenne due to freeway closures from storms). She did great in the 'hopsital'. All in all it was a great weekend. The girls are great. I dont think I will have to be the evil step mom. These girls are amazing! They are wonderful and I am excited to get to know them better.

Being a step-mom is freaking me out. I just do not know what to do. I hate the negative feelings I have. I hate the inkiness of dealing with an ex-wife and ex-girlfriend. I hate being judged. I hate worrying if the mom's are worried releasing their children into our care. I hate the unknown.

I hate even more that my mom had her gall bladder out yesterday and I was not there. I hate that my brother from Georgia is there and I am not seeing him.

Ok enough hate....10 things I love.

1. my husband

2. my Heavenly Father

3. my family and friends

4. my job

5. spring--the trees here bloomed while we were gone and they are beautiful

6. the LDS gospel. It brings me more peace than I deserve and hope when I feel lost

7. modern bathrooms

8. disinfectants and cleaners

9. my clean house-minus the bathroom (asked Dan to clean it--might have to break down and do it myself)

10. last but not least my truck (which I have to give up-*@%#!!!")

11. Cedar Mountain

12. Souix sandstone--got to touch some in Nebraska

13. birth control

ok I feel much better now.

Lincoln, NE

This week I had the opportunity to visit the Lincoln, Nebraska cemetery. Dan and I kept driving by and I kept drooling over this large cemetery that extended as far as you could see on both sides of the road. I love cemeteries. My favorite holiday is Memorial Day. I am not sick or morbid I just have a lot and I mean a lot of respect for the dead. I appreciate all they did for me to make my life easier and I have the deepest of respect and humble awe for all military service people. So May is the month where the grass greens, flowers and flags are put out. (ok so I dont go for the toys and objects people put on graves...just flowers). I love how it looks.

Back to the cemetery. Every time we drove by I would look further and further back trying to see all the cool above ground head stones and monuments. One of the last times we were going to be driving by I saw this huge man kneeling. Dan asked if I would like to go see it. I jumped on the chance-knowing full well that my husband probably thinks I am a freak getting all giddy about a cemetery. We find the monument after being sidetracked by so many other monuments and mausoleums and creative headstones (I have never seen ones that look like logs). Here it is...A memorial to firefighters. It was ginormous. The boot on this man was bigger than my forearm. It was so wonderful. There were tons of monuments dedicated to men who died in the civil war (that was my fav) and then a general one for all other wars...WWI, WWII, Korea, Vietnam, Desert Storm, Desert Shield. It was wonderful. I wish I could see this place on Memorial Day.

How wonderful to have this memorial to Firefighters. They truly are daily heroes.

This was my favorite headstone. How simple yet classic is this? Kinda weird that it has my name on it but whatever. Mary is too common for me to freak out about. Anyway I really liked this simple memorial grave marker.

All Better...

So my lip is normal. It is a little tender. The swelling has gone down. I look normal. I just have a purple design about 1 inch long on the left side of my upper lip. It looks like a bruise. My lip is peeling probably from all the stretching it did yesterday. All I can say is WEIRD.

Vampire allergy??

Happy St Patrick's Day everyone! I hope you got some good pinching in! This is me. I am totally tired and it shows. Anyway, I have the fattest lip ever. The sad thing is that the swelling has gone down by about 50%.

So I woke up this morning to a fat lip. Here are the events as they happened. 11:30-midnight-ish Dan playfully bit the left side of my upper lip. I said ow! At 3 am I wake up and I feel the left side of my face is swollen.

I get a cold washcloth and go back to bed. I wake up at 5 to get ready for work. I notice my face is huge. The swelling includes part of my cheek. I wake Dan up. I show him the damage and he laughed and went back to sleep. I go to work. I wear a mask and at 8 am I show the office staff. By then the swelling is at its peak. It has shifted to the median. So now my nose is swollen, and right cheek. It feels like I am numb from a maxillary block. It is hard to me to breath through my nose there is so much swelling. It hurts. My skin is stretched to tight I am afraid of bursting or stretch marks on my lips (ha ha ha). I look like a collagen experiment gone wrong! Dr M is worried. He wants to start me on antibiotics and made me take my temperature (only 98.3). He examined the bite and did not find anything.

At 1pm I leave for lunch and a job interview. I am looking for a hygiene job on Mondays. I sent my resume to an office advertising for 1 day a week. They called me. I asked them specifically if the day they were looking for was Monday. They said yes. So Dan picks me up and takes me to my interview, laughing the whole time at my elephant face! The job interview sucked. The Dr said she was looking for Tues and Wed. So 4 seconds later I was on my way back to work. I truly think the Dr took one look at me and prejudged me and did not want me in her office. I am alright with that. She did not even ask me how it happened or anything.

Now I am at home and took the picture around 5:30 pm. The swelling has gone down a lot already. So everyone, how deadly is human spit? I did not think the playful bite during a pleasurable experience broke the skin and did not think it would have caused this much inflammation. I guess I married a vampire and I am allergic. Dan said I am wrong he is a werewolf if his saliva is poison. He is right.....So now I am even more paranoid of patient's spit!

Just a Friday

I know you were hoping for a post about one of my grand adventures. Sorry to disappoint but all I did today was work. It was not bad. It started off with me rushing to the Max (light rail) and missing the train. So while I am waiting for the next one I am thinking I will be about 9 min late and that will be ok. I am not late and so today I will be ok. Then as I board the next train I realize it is Friday and we work at 8:30 am not 7:30 like the rest of the week. I could have slept in!!! I was so sad. So I get to work and let myself in. I turn everything on and sit in the break room and read wishing I could have slept in. ARRGGHHH. This morning wasn't even a good one. I mean the internet would not work and I was frustrated! Then to be late frustrated me, but then I was early so I was frustrated. I just could not win today. Luckily I only had 3 patients today so I did not have to be 'on' very much today. I spent most of the day making our charts HIPPA friendly.

The charts came with the practice so there are years of stuff. I am pulling out old credit card slips. You know the kind where you slid the card and imprinted the number onto the paper. Totally old school. Well I am shredding all that kind of antique stuff. It was pretty fun-ha ha ha.

Last Friday I spent about an hour-60 eternal minutes calling around to different medical clinics looking for a doctor. I am in desperate need of an OB-GYN for some issues I am having. I do not have insurance until I pass my 90 days which will be in April. But I feel I need to get started somewhere because the pain it so bad that I cannot function. Anyway one clinic will take 5 cash paying patients a month and they have already seen those 5, another clinic is OHSU (oregon health science univ) will take cash but you have to apply and then have a board approve your application and then you can only see a student not even a resident. Many of the other clinics will not see cash paying patients. I felt so discriminated against. So I was joking about it at work and Dr M calls me into his office and said since I started in Nov I was now eligible for insurance. How freaking awesome is my doctor? I mean who lets a RDH work 8 hours doing busy work when she has 3 patients scheduled in a row? Who gives an RDH insurance for 3 days of work? And who gives it to her a month early? Shit I am lucky. So now I just have to get an appointment get my records and previous tests from my Utah doctor and get my problems solved....WAHOO!

This Week

Well world this week has had its ups and downs. Basically work was slow, playing was slower and it got cold again. I know spring is not here yet but I really want it to be. Bulb flowers are sprouting here in Portland and some of the bushes are blooming. They smell so good.

Yesterday I made it to the zoo. Being in Oregon the zoo is landscaped in a forest. So in between exhibits there are spots of forest with signs showing elk tracks, a moss covered set of elk antlers--huge ones! and eagle nests etc. It is pretty cool. The reptile collection is smaller than Hogle Zoo in Utah. But other exhibits were much more impressive. It was quite an interesting day. My favorite one was the sea lions. They were having fun swimming around and it was fun to watch. There was a special needs class there also and the kids were adorable. They were so excited they could not speak. They just grunted and made noise, pointed etc. It was so much fun to watch them be excited about snakes, fish and penguins.

I am really liking Portland. I do miss Utah some days but it is less and less each day. Well here is a pic of a bird. You go in the cage and they fly around and land on you. It was fun...I was scared of the poop, but hey whatcha gonna do?

Just Another Week

Life has been hard this week. I have been a bugger. I am so frustrated with myself. I know some if it is adjusting to being married after years and years of solitude....but why in the hell does it bother me that I am the only one who does dishes when I was the only one who did them before? I mean really. I am reminded of a song by Pink 'Im so irritating' and by my beloved Rob Thomas with his band Matchbox 20 sang ' And Im so terrified of no one else but me and Im here all the time I wont go away; its me; and I cant get my self to go away' I fell that so much today.

I am very happy with all my friends and their lovely lives and wonderful moments they are having. I just did not have any this week. I stayed in bed and read on Friday instead of doing a day hike. I scared my husband but we talked about it and today we are doing better. I am lucky to have him and would not change it for the world. So even though life was hard this week I will survive and maybe this week will be better.