What a depressing day...

I haven't had one like this in a while. One of my patients who has been in heart, liver and kidney failure for a while now spent the day lingering at death's door. She is in so much pain, and its really hard to not be able to do enough to take it all away. One of my other patients was just diagnosed last night with leukemia, so all day long she and her family cried and cried. They had probably 30 family members come visit through out the day, and every time a new one came in they'd have to re-explain what was going on, bringing up all those emotions again.

I also think I'm going to have to take Lucy to the vet tomorrow. She's been having massive diarrhea since yesterday, and she started throwing up today. She's acting like she just doesn't feel good.

My pastor (and my mom's boss for about the last 10 years) also just announced that his wife just found out she has breast cancer. She had a double mastectomy last week, and they thought they'd gotten it all. But when the biopsy came back it showed that the cancer had already spread to her lymph nodes. She'll be doing 8 rounds of chemo (about once a month) over the next year. They are such a sweet and just genuinely good family - I don't understand why things like this happen. Not just to good people, but at all.

I guess that's about it for now. Apparently I'm Debbie Downer of the blogging world tonight. Hopefully I'll wake up on the cheerier side of the bed tomorrow.

Whew!

What a crazy couple of weeks! Logan was discharged from the hospital on Monday, after spending 6 long and boring days there. He wasn't allowed to eat or drink anything for the first three days, and when he was advanced to a clear liquid diet, he absolutely fell in love with the chicken broth. Kept saying it was the best thing he'd ever had in his life. He made such a big deal about it that the lady who brought the meal trays in snuck him FIVE whole extra broth packets - just for him. I mean, he was so obsessed with that broth that when the docs said he could be advanced to a regular diet, he made sure he could still eat as much broth as he wanted. The picture is of Logan chowing down on a grape popsicle. If you look closely, you'll notice he'd already finished his chicken broth of course. As for his health, he's feeling much better. He'll have several doctor's appointments over the next few weeks, including the dreaded colonoscopy to biopsy the abscess in a month or so. He also has another CT next week to make sure the abscess is still shrinking with just the oral antibiotics.

As for me, while Logan was busy causing trouble in the hospital, I got the all-clear from my foot doctor! I'm finally out of that hideous boot! I went back to work this week after having been off for a month, and to tell you the truth, I was glad to be back. Seeing everyone up there was like coming home, as cheesy as that sounds. The people I work with are so important to me - they really are my second family. Now don't get me wrong, I didn't really miss the work. Mostly just the people. :) But now that I think about it, it was nice being around the kiddos again too... they are pretty cute.

One of my best college friends, Jeff, was also in town this week and it was great getting to see him. He just finished his Masters at Berkley and stopped by the good 'ole Lone Star State on the way to Florida to begin his Doctorate. Logan and I took him to brunch at Breadwinners, which he'd surprisingly never eaten at. We got to see him again when we went over to Mike and Leanne's after Mike and Paul's hockey game. I know Jeff hasn't even started at Florida State yet, but I'm ready for him to be done so I can convince him to move back to Dallas! I miss that guy.

At Mike and Leanne's we watched the Olympic women's gymnastics competition. People that can do half the things gymnasts do without killing themselves absolutely amaze me. There are now tons of news reports coming out about half the Chinese team being under the age of 16, which is what we all kept saying the whole time we were watching. What I wanna know is why there's even a question about it!! Isn't it obvious just by looking at them?!? Their team is made up of children, giving them a HUGE advantage, therefore making it completely unfair that they won the gold. If they really are all at least 16, then they deserve the medal, but if they're not (and they aren't) then why aren't the officials taking the gold away from them? You're just pathetic if you have to cheat to win.

One more thing and then I'm done. Lucy has started doing this really weird thing. Whenever I'm drying my hair and I flip my head upside down, she gets up from wherever she is and starts circling my legs and even doing figure eights through them, rubbing her body against me like a cat. She does this the entire time I'm upside down, just rubbing up against me and begging me to pet her, and when I stand back up she goes and lays down again. I think she's confused about what species she is.

One Year Anniversary

Logan and I celebrated our first anniversary this weekend. I can't believe its already been a year! I am so thankful that we met, that he was available... and that he was interested! I've never met anyone as genuine and kind hearted as Logan. I am truly blessed to have him in my life.

Anyway, for our anniversary we went to one of our favorite restaurants, Trulucks. That place is great. Once again, Logan got the Dutch Harbor King Crab, and once again I had to hope that giant crab leg wouldn't walk across the table and attack me. It was HUGE. He actually got a leg and a half this time since it was so good before. Dutch Harbor is where the fishing boats sail out of on the show Deadliest Catch, which we've been addicted to lately. Once you turn it on, you can't stop watching it! Anyway, I'm including a picture of a freshly caught king crab on the show, and then the one on Logan's plate. Who knows... maybe they're related.

I got the filet with mashed potatoes and asparagus - my favorite meal in the world. It was pretty amazing, but the best part of dinner was dessert. Trulucks has the best desserts. We usually get their carrot cake (which you know has to be pretty good if a self professed chocoholic like me will pass up chocolate for carrot cake!), but this time we got the chocolate bag. They make a dark chocolate mold from a paper bag, and fill it with angel food cake, whipped cream, fresh blueberries, strawberries and raspberries. When they bring it out to you, its standing upright. They knock it over in front of you, and cut out the middle so you can get to all the goodness. Then, they drizzle warm chocolate on top. It. Is. Fabulous.

Anyway, we had a great anniversary, and I'm looking forward to many, many more in the future.

Another Milestone...

I had another weigh in today, and as you may have guessed from the picture, I've lost 15 pounds! (15.4 to be exact.) I didn't think I'd done well this week since I've been ordered to stay home and off my foot as much as possible, but whadda ya know?? AND, I'm back in my skinny jeans too. Just wanted to share the good news!

Condo Pictures

It's painted!! Logan and I went to the condo tonight to see the finished product in all its glory, and I have to say... it's perfect. It looks exactly how I imagined it. Logan's friend Brady (who did the painting) even said he and his girlfriend may end up copying our colors at their house, which I take as quite the compliment considering I've never picked out real paint colors before. All of the walls were white before, so it was pretty cool seeing what a difference some color can make. The main color we used was called "relaxed khaki", and its just a neutral tan. My favorite room is the master bedroom because we did an accent wall. The wall that the headboard of the bed will go on is a darker brown, and it looks really, really good. The bathrooms are a light grey/blue color, but it didn't show up well in the pictures. It looks better in person. Not as bright. Same thing with the kitchen color, which is actually a light green color. As promised, I took lots and lots of pictures tonight, so enjoy!

Looking in from the front door:

The living room from the other side:

Kitchen:

I'm including a picture of the stove because its the only one you can see the wall color in. Barely:

Guest Room:

Guest Bathroom:

And because its my favorite, you get two of the master bedroom:

And, the master bathroom:

We Survived Murder Mystery Dinner Theatre

Well, after being cooped up in the apartment for almost two weeks with a broken foot I finally decided I HAD to get out and do something fun, so Saturday night I went to a Murder Mystery Dinner Theatre with Mike and Leanne and some of their friends. I had no idea what to expect - things like this usually end up being either way more fun than you'd expected, or your worst nightmare that just won't end. I'm not sure if it was due to the wine involved, or if it was really that great, but I had a really good time. (Emily, the pregnant member of our group who was obviously not drinking, tells us it was definitely the alcohol that made it more bearable.) Either way, it was entertaining. The actors all overacted... and not that well. I think they thought we were on broadway and therefore yelled all of their lines into the unnecessary microphone. Any time the host wanted to get our attention she produced the loudest blood curdling scream I've ever heard. My ears are still ringing. I thought my food was great - although Emily's vegetarian platter was supposed to be pasta primavera and ended up being a plate of bagged veggies. Not cool for $70. My meal came with a serving of salmon and beef, green beans, rice and a salad. I was really hoping the dessert would involve some sort of chocolate, but it was coconut cream pie, so I had none. Probably for the best. (I lost another 2.6 pounds this week, so my total weight loss is now 14.5 pounds!) I think we all enjoyed it when the "detective" kept blaming DJ for being an obnoxious murder suspect that loves NAMBLA. I mean, all that sounds like a good time, right?? Oh, and between the salad course and the main meal they expected everyone to put on their latex investigation glove and look around the room and in the cubbies for clues as to "who done-it". (Please notice Leanne modeling said glove in the picture.) Stevo got up and investigated, but the rest of us (minus Emily) sat there and enjoyed our drinks while the rest of the room did all the dirty work. I do believe the detective was disappointed in us and needless to say, no one from our table correctly solved the murder.


Now, for your viewing pleasure, I have included a picture of my walking boot - straight off fashion week's runway show for the elderly. Mike and Leanne found it quite humorous watching me hobble in one high heel, and the walking boot. We literally spent at least 10 minutes trying to figure out what shoe looked the least ridiculous to wear with the boot. And this is what we came up with. I had another doctor's appointment today, and after taking the cast off and getting a new x-ray, (and seeing my sad, puny little foot) he decided he wants me to stay off it for another 10 days. So I now have a new cast on, but my same lovely boot.


I'm also posting a couple of new pictures of Lucy. The first one is just a normal posed Lucy, but in the second one she jumped up and ran into my face right as I was taking it. I actually think its pretty cute though. Its a perfect representation of what I see when I wake up in the morning.















Lastly, Logan and I finally have decided on colors to paint the condo, and it is being painted tomorrow and Wednesday. Look for pictures soon!

It's Not Easy Being Beautiful...

Okay, so as you all know, I groom Lucy myself. Not only does it save me $100 bucks, I'm such a perfectionist that when I've had someone else groom her I end up re-doing most of it myself. Well, yesterday was her quarterly grooming day. She should probably be groomed about every 8 weeks, but I always end up putting it off another 4. People (mainly Logan and my family) have asked me why I let her get so shaggy - especially when its 120 degrees outside. I decided to take pictures of the grooming process to show why I don't do it more often. It's a huge ordeal that takes hours to complete, although I've finally gotten it down to two hours from about four. It's also a huge mess. I used to do it in my apartment, and it was just awful. Now I've started taking her to Dirty Dawgs and using their grooming tables and huge bathtubs which makes the process a little better. Anyway, here are the pictures.

Pre-Groom...

Mid-Groom... (look at that mess - and that's only the first half!)

The finished product...