Mmm, sputum.

One of the best things about biotech companies is the freebies they give out. I have gotten a free pink Nalgene bottle (love it, seriously), numerous free T-shirts (which will eventually get incorporated into a T-shirt quilt, one way or another...), oodles of magnets (my favorite is on my desk, it's a meerkat and says something about miRCAT miRNA stuff...), a box of kleenex, some stress squeezie things, a giant inflatable dinosaur (Neil, the Intelligent Designosaur, if you were wondering), candy, an insulated lunch bag, and two mugs. I am currently sipping some Gingerbread Celestial Seasonings tea (yes, left from Christmas, but it's very much like decaf chai in my opinion) out of my yellow VWR mug.

Why the yellow mug and not the black one?

Because I am currently hacking up yellow sputum. If I was hacking up black stuff I highly doubt I would be using my black mug, though, I'd much more likely be in the hospital trying to figure out why the hell I was hacking up black sputum.

Gross, yes, but whatever. Better than a headcold. I am wondering if you can catch bronchitis, as one of my coworkers has had that for about 2 weeks now, and it started out a lot like this did. C told me that I sound pretty terrible when he called to let me know he was on his way home from his second gig this weekend (yay for 2 gigs in a weekend!!). I do cough a lot. I'm sure J always wanted Mommy to read him his bedtime story in a genuine monster voice, right? Or maybe he thought I was trying to perfect my own zombie sheep impression, however inappropriate that may be for the Tawny Scrawny Lion.

I did discover some yummy organic honey and menthol throat drops. Mmm. I've also drank (drunk?) my way through a half gallon of OJ since yesterday afternoon, which was enough that the last glass made my throat burn a bit, so I will be taking a break from the OJ for a little bit. Ah well. This chest cold has also managed to mess up my cycle, since I got it right around when I should have ovulated but can't tell whether I had a temp shift as a result of ovulation or as a result of being sick/slight fever/not sleeping well. Blah. Back to my book about the sexy cavemen. That's C's description of the Earth's Children series, not mine.

Emergency fax?

We get mass emails on a pretty much daily basis, telling everyone at work that someone is faxing to a wrong number, and that they should stop. Today's wrong number?

911.

Thanks for the laugh, unknown idiot at work.

A Scientist in Training?

J got a balloon animal at my annual company picnic- it was a duck, with a yellow body and an orange beak. Something I couldn't possibly manage to create, since my entire repertoire of balloon animals consists of snakes. :-p

Anyway, J was sitting on the floor in our living room the day after the picnic playing with his duck (cuack cuack...) and after about 30 minutes he says "Uh oh." J runs up to Daddy with the duck in one hand, and the beak in the other. Neither balloon popped, and I really have no idea how he managed to separate them without making them come unfolded, but he did. Not terribly surprising, given his general enthrallment with how things work and how things fit together. In spite of his "fix dis plees" Daddy could not fix it, so now J has a funny beakless duck balloon.

5 Free MP3s!!

Just spotted on MoneySavingMom.com!

Order the Big Kahuna Reef Game (for free!) on Amazon.com right now, and they will give you $5 in free MP3 credits! The credits are added directly to your Amazon.com account. You don't even need to download the game, just order it. Once the order goes through (no need to enter any payment info or anything) you will receive an email confirmation of your $5 MP3 credit. You may need to download the Amazon MP3 Downloader, but once you do that it automatically sends your songs to iTunes or whatever you use.

I've already got my 5 songs :-).

Update

Baby Andrew is home!

Prayers for Preemies

My nephew Andrew is not home yet, he's still in the NICU after being born at 35 weeks one week ago. Juju, prayers, anything to encourage him to eat lots and get to go home soon are appreciated.

Baby Gabriel entered the world far too soon and left his parents last night. Please pray for EAS at CottonSocks for a speedy physical recovery and that she and her husband are able to find some peace following this terrible tragedy. My heart is broken for her, I feel her loss as keenly as I did for my SIL D when she lost her babies.

The God of Small Things: A Review

The God of Small Things by Arundhati Roy


My rating: 5 of 5 stars
There should be a category other than "good" for books that are so deeply, thoroughly unsettling as this one. The language is in a world of its own, taking English and various Indian languages and reinventing them. Moments of horror that make you want to vomit, haunting imagery, descriptions so vivid you can see/hear/smell things come together to create this utterly story that is bitter-spicy-sweet and bitter again. I don't know that I will ever read this book again, but I don't know why I didn't read it sooner.

*****
I have now read 38 books of my goal of 50 this year! Yay me!

Happy Hump Day!

Happy Wednesday! It seems that a lot has happened this week, so here goes a crazy summary!

My nephew Andrew made his debut into the world 5 weeks early on Monday. He's doing reasonably well, for all that he's a preemie, and he is getting better at eating every day. However, since he is a preemie, he doesn't have any clothes that will fit him (since his big brother and J were both much bigger than 5 pounds at birth), and after an appeal on a message board I frequent, some incredible women reached out to send/bring clothes for him. So little Andrew will not have to be a nakey baby! (Really though, Nesties are some of the kindest and most generous women on the planet.)

J and I went to Once Upon A Child to get an idea of their preemie selection and to get a couple more onesies for the new baby, and afterward went next door to meet C at the liquor store. We walked in the door, and J saw the wall of little "individual" wine bottles. He excitedly pointed and yelled "BEER!" That's right, folks, my 19-month-old son knows that bottles that size hold beer. He is his father's son, no?

This is a picture of about 1/3 of C's beer bottle collection. I cannot imagine where J got the idea that shelves of bottles might be equivalent to beer...

J also has recently learned what a horse is, thanks to a bank that features horses in their ads, and he quite happily chirps "hearse!" when we point out a picture of a horse now. He's getting more adept at symbol recognition now, where he will pick out a cartoon of an animal and tell us what animal it is (as long as it's a duck, dog, bird, or horse). At this point, J is pretty much weaned. Just as soon as I think he's totally done nursing, and goes a week without even asking to nurse, he randomly asks out of the blue, like this morning. His tummy has been a bit upset due to a recent round of antibiotics, so I think that had something to do with it. He still knows how to latch, but I was surprised at how quickly my nipples had lost their toughness! I definitely feel it much more than I used to, and I think that if he nursed for more than about 10 minutes it would leave me a bit sore.

It seems like J has suddenly hit toddlerhood full steam ahead. He climbs all over things now, and likes to ask to sit on "lap please" once he's climbed up on the couch. He gets to watch about 30 minutes of cartoons/movie a day, so that Daddy can get some cleaning done, and he really likes movies about animals. Babe is a big hit, and J imitates the sheep by making a strange growling noise (I guess they're zombie sheep?).

The Grocery Goddess Returns!

I took last week off, more or less, from blogging, but now I'm back! I am so proud of myself for this week's grocery shopping savings! I actually had a hard time fitting all of the food on the island in our kitchen, yay!

King Soopers (Kroger):

• Milk, $1.58
• Santa Cruz Lemonade, 3 at 10/$10, total $3
• 1 orange and 1 red bell pepper, also 10/$10, total $2
• Gigantic sweet onion, $0.69/lb, total $1
• Foster Farms chicken breasts, on sale for $1.99/lb, total $6.05
• Dole Mandarin Oranges, on sale for $1.99 plus coupon for $0.55 doubled to $1, total $0.99
• Mott's individual applesauce cups, 6 pk on sale for $1.85 plus coupon for $0.50 doubled to $1, total $0.85

Total spent (after tax) $15.63

Safeway:

• Welch's Grape juice, on sale at $2.50, plus store coupon for $0.51, plus $1 off coupon, total $0.99
• Sandwich flatbread, sale for $2.50
• Pork chops, on sale for $1.47/lb, total $6.39

Total spent (after tax) $10.81

Albertsons:

• Cheerios (2 boxes), on sale for $1.49 ea, plus $1/2 coupon, total $2
• Locally grown sweet corn, 6/$1, total $1

Total (after tax) $3.o5

Sunflower Farmers Market:

• BoarsHead Mozzarella, in the bits and pieces bin, $1.70
• Bananas, $0.59/lb, total $1.99
• 2 Green Bell Peppers, 2/$1, total $1
• Colorado Peacher, $1.88/lb, total $3.23
• Yogurt for J (goat milk yogurt) $1.99
• Hummus, on sale for $2.99/lb, total $2.06
• Rocky Ford Cantaloupe, $1.50

Total (after tax) $13.47

Total overall? $42.96

I did go over a little, but I saved about $40, so I think that is pretty darn good.

Can I Have My Weekend Back?

I don't know how it is Monday again, but it is. I miss my weekend already.

The Importance of a Good Cry

I just spent the last almost hour bawling my eyes out as I read the end of Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince. I feel much better about things in general now, though I wasn't feeling particularly badly about them to begin with. Damnit that book is sad. And onto the final one...

Small Successes Thursday

1. Finished re-reading Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix and started re-reading the next one.
2. Took J to the doctor for a small concern (yes, he's fine, gets to take Keflex for a week. FWIW it comes in berry flavor, which seems to be J's flavor of choice, and I didn't know this and had Target make it grape flavored. It smells about as repulsive as you'd think, and I don't think it tastes very good) and went and got his Rx.
3. Sorted out some work-stuff.

Whee. I lead such an exciting life...

Garden Goodies

Today a few people shared the bounty of their gardens with me. I got about a half-gallon of green beans and a few tomatoes from one couple, then my mom gave me 4 pounds (once it was cut up) of rhubarb from her garden (well, I harvested it, but it was from her garden). Lots of goodies to be enjoyed!