First comes love, then comes marriage...

...here comes *wink-wink-not-me* with a baby carriage!

So, this is turning out to be the year of weddings. My uncle JM finally married April in March. My mother is remarrying next week, a nice guy named Brian, a Harley-Davidson rider who drives a lumber truck for a living. He has a 19 year old son and a 14 year old son. The 19 year old lives with them and goes to college, and the 14 year old lives with his mom but visits. Mom and Brian have been together for about a year now, I think. He bought her a nice engagement ring, bought her flowers on Mother's Day, takes her out to dinner, etc. I've got my fingers crossed that things will go well for them. He's the only guy she's dated in a while that I don't worry about being around Natalee.

June 14th, my sister Kara is marrying her boyfriend of three years. Trevor's a nice guy. His family is very Mormon, although he's something of a D&D nerd. (I can say that with love, since my own hub was a D&D nerd. And possibly still is.) But Trevor's still in the thick of being a D&D nerd. Which suits Kara fine. If Trevor was completely whitebread Mormon, Kara would've left it at flirting three years ago. So, after long urging, they're getting married. They're holding a small ceremony in Trevor's family's house. Jennifer will be the maid of honor (which is how it should be, since they've been peanut butter and jelly for most of their lives). Kara's friend Danny and I will be her bridesmaids. And Natalee will be her flower girl. And then Trevor's friends will be the groomsmen. They're holding a bigger reception at their ward. I'll be baking banana bread, rolls, and cookies to help cut down food costs. I'll have to negotiate with my grandmother to invade her kitchen with my stand mixer. Hoping I'll be able to turn her head with the idea of fresh breads and cookies and their aromas in her home. I like baking in my kitchen, where I know where everything is, how clean the counters are behind the appliances, if there are bugs, and how much of the ingredients I have on hand. Since I can't bring my kitchen with me, I'll settle with borrowing Gammie's scrupulously clean and spacious kitchen. Plus I know my way around her kitchen since I lived there on breaks during college. So, with a month to go, my mind is full of recipes, where to get Natalee's dress, where are we going to find matching green dresses, has anyone figured out the flowers yet?...etc.

And then, once all the hoopla of Kara's wedding is over, we'll be going to Branson, Missouri the week of July 4th for Pam and Eric's wedding. We've been looking forward to it for a while. We're going to Dolly Parton's Dixie Stampede! dinner theatre. Eric has reserved a luxury suite for us to share at a nice lake front resort. Daniel will be the best man, Matt and Brent the groomsmen. It's going to be great, all of us being able to get together and hang out for a few days, in Branson, in awesome rooms, and for a fantastic reason. There's an amusement park and specialty shops selling hand-crafted items like hand-woven baskets, blown glass, homemade ice cream, and bakeries. (I think I'll be visiting the bakeries.) Matt's parents are coming, too, so if Matt and I want some time together without the tot, they've already offered to take her. They're really excited about the trip. They used to go on vacations every year, but haven't really traveled anywhere in a long time. Plus Mom is doing well enough now that she can. This is the first big trip she's gone on since she was diagnosed with cancer last year. (She's doing really well, by the way.) We're all really excited about having a vacation somewhere else, but it'll be great no matter what just to be hang out with our friends. We always have a good time together, and we haven't gotten to spend much time together since we moved from College Station.

So, lots of good things happening this summer!

Lately, we've been working on Natalee's potty training still. I know we've been 'working' on it forever, but Natalee is a very smart little girl who knows how to hold it until she has a diaper on or she's far enough out of our sight to wet her panties...and the bed or the couch or the rug. But we know she knows how! Last week, she and I had taken a shower, and she was sitting in the tub after I dried her off while I dried off, when she told me "I go poo poo," and pointed to the potty chair. She's done this before without results, but I went ahead and stuck her on her potty chair. She got a look of intense concentration on her face...and then practically filled the bowl with pee. You could have heard my shrieks of joy throughout the apartment building. We made a huge deal of it, bought her new panties with kitties and puppies on them, and told everyone about it. And she hasn't done it again since. And anyone who calls now asks if she's peed in the potty chair again. Argh. One step forward and about four back. It's hard because, yes, I was around to help with Kara and Jennifer's potty training, but my parents spanked my sisters if they wet their pants. We don't spank Natalee. We've started putting her nose in the corner, but it doesn't seem right to do that about something she doesn't really understand. But we might have to rethink how much she understands peeing in the potty chair since she managed to do it last week. I think I'm going to try something else first - I'll find a special toy she only gets to play with on the potty chair to encourage her to stay on it until she pees. If that doesn't work, we might have to start putting her nose in the corner for wet panties...and floors and beds and couches. (When I say bed, I'm not talking bedtime. I mean her jumping up and down on our bed and peeing while she's doing it. Urgh.) We'll see.

In the meantime, I have some wedding presents to shop for, dresses to find, and a toy to buy to encourage toilet training. Busy days ahead.

You are now a NINJA

I'm feeling pretty butt-kicking happy right now, so I thought I'd share how to become a true warrior in cotton. This is something that a very good long-distance friend in college shared with me, and it just hasn't gotten old.

Went to the cardiologist today. And hurray! It looks like I have nothing worse than a very irregular heartbeat. Huzzah! I have a little valve regurgitation, but that's not un-normal. The irregular heartbeat can cause the problems I've been having, supposedly, and as long as nothing else is going wrong with my heart, I'm fine. (Meaning as long as I stay healthy and take care of myself, I shouldn't have a problem, is how I understand it.) I'll have to have check-ups every four months for now, but my stress tests and echos, etc., all came back fine. I still have to go in for a carotid exam this Friday to make sure there isn't anything going on in my neck that's causing my dizziness and shoulder pains. And I should still wear my monitor if I have a bad day with my heart, since I've already paid for a full month with the monitoring company. But....YAY! I don't have to wear that evil thing all the time any more. And I can stop making myself sick with worry about my heart spazzes. *happy sigh*

We just got back from a four day visit up in Azle. We ran around a lot, visiting family and going out with family, but we had a really good visit. Matt's mom is in pretty good health, considering she just celebrated having her one year anniversary for her cancer surgery. She's back to shopping with friends and seems to be enjoying her retirement again, and her hair is starting to grow back. And Dad/David seems to be doing better now that Mom is.

We got to see Kara's new apartment and take her out to lunch and bought her a new plunger for her bathroom. (What are big sisters and brother-in-laws for?) Natalee and I saw my grandparents for a little while, playing on the floor with toys and picking flowers out of their yard. We went out to eat with Matt's parents and my own two different nights. And we went Easter egg hunting with Brent, his two little boys, Eric, Pam, and their daughter Kaitlyn, and Daniel and Gabby. Natalee conquered the Easter egg field, but Matt and I (and all the other guys) stunk it up practicing golf swings in the backyard. Well, I did more than the others. We had a really good time, we're all sunburned, and Natalee's got a whole bunch of Easter goodies. Plus we had Jennifer over for most of last week, helping me with the Natster and shopping for her prom regalia. All-in-all, it's been a really great week.

So now we should all kick butt like ninjas to celebrate. *strikes an interesting, yet threatening ninja pose*

On a better note...

Check out my bread! I made it two weeks ago or thereabouts, but it kind of got displaced with all the heart stuff. It was my first time to make focacia bread, but I think it came out very well. Next time I'll have to preheat the stone so that the outside crust will be a little crisper. And for some reason, it was a little sweet. I'll have to mess with that some. It made awesome panini sandwiches. Yum! I was so proud, I took pictures of it. The rosemary in it smelled divine, and I daydreamed about having my own little bakery or cafe while it baked. Fat chance though it be. Matt ate a piece every morning for breakfast. We finished off two loaves in less than a week between the three of us.

Natalee has definitely entered the terrible twos. Everything is "MINE!" or "No!" or "I'm stuck!" She rarely eats her meals, vegetables, or fruits nowadays, things that once were her favorites. But she's suddenly liking meat. She was begging for the taco meat that fell out of Matt's tacos at dinner. She used to despise any kind of meat besides McDonald's chicken nuggets, so Matt and I are a little confused. She's learning her colors and still working on her vocabulary. She doesn't speak in her gibberish language so much anymore, thankfully. But oh man, I'm grateful Jennifer's coming to hang out with us next week. Admittedly, Matt's been wrangling the Natster a lot more this week, to help me out. But she's a handful. A much-loved handful. Even when she's her worst, I can still cry with gratitude for her at the end of the day.

I'm making zucchini bread and hopefully whole wheat bread this weekend. Maybe even some chocolate whole wheat waffles. (I made some plain whole wheat ones that came out pretty well a few weeks ago.) I'll try to post up a recipe or two of anything that comes out well.

Hurled a big lemon..take that as you like

I have recently been hurled a great big lemon. Figuratively speaking. I've been dealing with symptoms normally associated with heart attacks. Racing heart. Heart palpitations. Heart beating so hard that you can see my chest bouncing. Shortness of breath. Tight feeling in the chest. Soreness in my chest, shoulder, and left arm. Thankfully, this doesn't happen on an everyday basis. Just on days when I take my propranolol late (a low level beta-blocker I originally started taking for my tremors) or I get stressed out, like I was today.

I started seeing a cardiologist last week. Today, I had an echocardiogram, a stress test, another smaller echocardiagram, an ultrasound that is pretty much the same thing as an echocardiagram, and had an event monitor strapped on me. My day, from the moment I got up, till I got out of the doctor's office at nearly three p.m., sucked. No holding the onions or stinky feet cheese.

Heart problems, having all these tests done, waiting for answers, terrify me. I watched my little sister Elizabeth go through so many tests, so many trials due to her heart problems, watched my parents and close relations constantly falling apart with anxiety, during the fourteen months of her life. So much was done to try to help her, so much was done to her tiny, frail little body in the hopes of giving her a semi-normal life, and she still passed away. I was six when she died. And I didn't realize how much of a phobia I had built up about heart problems and the resulting procedures until this past week, and especially today.

So things that shouldn't have been so bad today, were horribly frightening. I feel burpy just thinking about it. (I burp when I'm nervous. Matt has to pee a lot. And I burp and hope that this one won't bring something up with it.) But now that they're over, I'm glad they're done. And pray to God I don't have to do them again.

I had to arrive, fasting, at the hospital at noon. (Pity my poor family who had to deal with me beforehand. I was bad.) We had to get registered at the Heart Center and pay the whopping $400+ bill that was after the insurance covered its part. The registrar was nice, but didn't help saying things like 'you poor thing.' I started getting twitchy thinking I was possibly in for worse if a hospital employee was trying to be sympathetic AFTER she got our money. I clipped off my nails last week after my last bout of heart-related nervousness, so I had to pretend to bite my nails and pretend that that helped. Yes, seriously, I did. Ask Matt.

Thankfully the wait was short once we paid up. We went back to a nuclear lab in the heart center. Matt had to wait in a tiny waiting room next door, because the lab/stress room was hardly bigger than the waiting room. I had to strip my top half and put on one of the ubiquitous thin cotton, back-tied gowns so fashionable at hospitals and lay down on my left side on a very skinny bed. A Russian-accented technician/nurse then proceeded to do my full echocardiagram. An echocardiagram is, as far as I can tell, a lot like an ultrasound. In fact, I really don't know the difference. I watched my heart on the little slice-of-cone window for a few moments before I had to turn my head. The normal heart says something like "lub-dub" for every beat. My heart says "lubdublub." This is because, according to my cardiologist, the lower ventricles of my heart are trying to stay in time with the top ones of my heart. So I get an extra beat every other or so. And let me tell you, my heart beat was already a little high from anxiety. Watching my heart and knowing it wasn't right made it speed up and my breath to become shorter. The echo tech and the lady administering my stress test were both very nice and polite. Unfortunately, the echo tech was of the school of thought that the closer you can get your little ultrasound wand to the heart, the better. So she jammed it as hard as she could against my breast, under my breast, and the thin skin of my chest. It felt like Natalee was elbowing my really painfully and really hard in the chest. Repeatedly. So my chest feels bruised now, and I have some pretty little red spots where I bled just under the skin.

The first echo. took 20 to 30 minutes. Afterwards, once my cardiologist showed up, was my stress test. It should have been a lot easier than it was, but it wasn't. A stress test is where they put you on a tread mill with electrodes to an EKG hooked up on your chest (still wearing only a hospital gown and the bottom half of your clothes), and they try to make you work hard enough that your heart races hard so they can get a really good look at its beats on an echocardiagram. They angle up the treadmill and speed it up every three minutes. Still shouldn't've been hard. But I had been lying there on my left side (which isn't comfortable for me nowadays with my heart probs) for thirty minutes. To lie there for thirty minutes, with my heart phobic-ly racing already, and then be expected to get on a tilted treadmill and start off at a good clip, was beyond my abilities. I was on the treadmill for six minutes before I felt like I was going to pass out from shortness of breath. And so the pictures from my second echocardiagram weren't as good as they could be. Hopefully they'll be well enough. I won't know till I talk to the cardiologist on the 24th. After being jabbed with that ultrasound wand for so long, I was ready to leave.

Matt drove me over to the cardiologist's office after that. I got to sit in the waiting room, wolfing down a Snickers marathon bar while all the cardiology patients glared at me for it. I had an ultrasound on my heart done there at the office by a lady who has been doing it for thirty years. Thankfully, she is not of the school of stabbing you with the wand. Yay. She said she couldn't really say what's wrong with my heart, since she's not a doctor, but it looks like mitral valve prolapse to her. (My aunt has this. You can learn about it here: http://www.mayoclinic.com/health/mitral-valve-prolapse/DS00504. It has a tendency to run in families, so it's not entirely surprising.) And then, joy of joys, I got outfitted with an event monitor. Three more little electrode stickers with wires were stuck on my chest, attached to a MP3 player-sized electronic recorder that monitors my heart beat. And I get to wear it for thirty days. Maybe more. It's like a class pet that I wear on my hip and poke when I start feeling unwell. And then I write down my side of the story, and I call up the company so it can screech its side of the story to its.....tech on duty, I guess. It's not so terrible. It just makes me focus more on my heart problems, something I've been trying to avoid. And it's so avant-garde-fashionable to go out with a pedometer looking thing attached to my hip, with wires hanging out from the bottom of my shirt. Maybe people will think I'm some greenie nut who powers her pedometer with body heat or heartbeats. Who knows?

Matt's been really wonderful to me, helping me, doing a lot of the dirty work around here, especially with Natalee, taking me out to lunch. But the day still wore me out. So I'm going to finish sipping my nighttime, no-caffeine herbal tea that really isn't tea, and go to bed. Huzzah.

Newsweek

Okay, through some randomly connected links across websites, I came across Newsweek's articles about Mormons and the LDS church. Newsweek reported on the death of the President and Prophet of the Mormon church, Gordon B. Hinckley. And I see it nowhere else on the news websites. You'd think it would make the news, since the LDS church is one of the largest and fastest growing in the nation. It makes you realize which magazines and online news sites turn the proverbial cold shoulder to Mormons.

But, on the other hand, great big kudos to Newsweek. They write articles sensitive and open to the Mormon church. They try to view the topics under discussion objectively, but with respect that is sorely lacking in other online magazines' articles. So I think I might be visiting Newsweek's website a little more often than the other online mags I used to read regularly. *cough*Time*cough*

I haven't been an active church member during a large part of Gordon B. Hinckley's presidency. But I can respect what he did for the church, the changes he made in order to halt the erosion of the moral values of church members and the cohesiveness of the family. He was a good man who spoke with honesty and openness of the church, who encouraged doubts and discussion as a way to build faith. He was an excellent example of what a latter-day prophet should be. He will be missed.

Here are a few of the Newsweek articles I came across about Mormons, Gordon B. Hinckley, and the choosing of a new prophet.

http://www.newsweek.com/id/105857
http://www.newsweek.com/id/50844
http://www.newsweek.com/id/50728

Wow!

Wow! Finally, Time magazine has put up an article that isn't wholly aimed at tearing down Mitt Romney.

http://www.time.com/time/politics/article/0,8599,1707342,00.html?xid=site-cnn-partner

Happy 2008

I'm having one of those days when I'm so infuriated by a few people that I feel like I should have steam coming from my ears and tongues of flame from my nostrils, but I'm trying to set it aside.

Happy 2008! 2007 was an eventful year, bad in some ways, but good in others. It's always good to look back as the new year begins and try to remember the good things that have occurred and the obstacles you have overcome in the past year.

We had a very good Christmas. Natalee got a lot of toys and clothes and books that she's littered across our apartment several times now. Matt and I got gift cards along with a lot of other nice things, like kitchen gadgets, new sneakers, computer gadgets, and things for our home. With Christmas money and gift cards I was able to go buy a beautiful new rug, wall sconces, and couch pillows for our living room. And Matt's holding on to his gift card, watching and waiting for a good HDTV to come on sale. It'll be a relief to get a new TV. The one we have in the living room now is nice, but nothing special. The one in our bedroom, on the other hand, is so old and has been moved so often that the shell of it is falling apart. It's been superglued a few times, but the superglue will no longer hold it together. So we can't ever move it again, besides out to the trash. So whenever Matt finally finds a TV to his particular standards and price range, we'll be moving the old TV out of the living room to the bedroom and tossing out the TV in the bedroom. Hurray!

We welcomed another cousin to the family a little over a week ago. My uncle JM and his fiancee April had a healthy little girl named Samantha on December 28th. Matt, Natalee, and I got to visit them and their 6 year old daughter Taylor at the hospital, and I got to be a baby hog and held Samantha for a while. It was a shock to hold a baby small enough to keep in the crook of my arm again. It really is true - you don't realize how big your own kid has gotten until you hold a little one again. Right now it's looking like I'll be babysitting Samantha when April goes back to work in a few months. It'll give me a baby to play with, Natalee some big sister practice, and us some extra money. All nice things. I'm looking forward to taking care of a child that spends most of the day sleeping. Ah, what bliss! I took it too much for granted when Natalee was that young.

Christmas is great and all, and I am sad to see all the anticipation go, but I'm glad the holidays are over. It's good to be home, to sweep and mop and catch up on laundry. To have friends over for dinner. To enjoy cooking and baking for the sake of it again. All the things you really can't do with all the hustle and bustle of the holidays. It's good to be home, away from all the relatives and rude opinions and obligations that visiting during the holidays seem to entail. JM and April recently bought a house and stayed home with Taylor for Christmas. When they told us their plans, I was a little shocked, thinking 'Staying home on Christmas?!' But wow, it sounds divine now. I haven't had a Christmas at home since I was 17 or 18. Maybe someday soon we'll have a Christmas at home ourselves.

So, for 2008, I'm appreciating feathering my nest. My resolution this year, after some instances that caught me in the teeth and made me think, is to take care of myself. Spend more time on myself, doing things like fixing my hair, ironing my clothes, talking to and spending time with my friends, worrying about myself. I will still take care of my family, first and foremost, but I'm going to stop feeling guilty for spending time on myself. It's a luxury I can have now that Natalee's two.

So, what's your new year's resolution? Anything that made you feel really stupid or that you regret from the past year that you resolve not to let happen in the new year? I think my resolution, and my private, half-thought ones, have more to do with that than making a fresh start. Learning from your mistakes and blind spots is always a good resolution.