Too Many Books

thankful that Stella is all better now! Well, I thought I would just be able to blog my little heart out all the way through my maternity leave. Whoops.  Yeah, I'm behind again! After I posted my stellar-musical-performance, all hell broke loose in the Murphy household. My husband had been sick. I got sick. Then, the baby got sick. It was just over a week ago on a Saturday evening when I took her rectal temp to try to make her go poopie... and was shocked that the digital readout said she had a fever of 101.7! (They don't want little babes to have anything over 100.4.) We ended up taking Stella to the emergency room -- thankfully, there's a nice, new offshoot of Kosair Children's Hospital (which is alltheway downtown) out in our neck of the woods. After several hours, a urine cath, blood drawn, an IV in the back of my baby's hand, and a chest x-ray, they ruled out flu and RSV. Next, we had two options: IV antibiotics for 14 days OR a spinal tap to check h...

So, the first part of this TMI will be scary/sad. Don't get weepy. It turns out okay. As you know, I love and adore my almost-86-year-old Grandma, who lives about two hours away from me. She had hip replacement surgery a few weeks ago and was moved to the hospital's rehab unit a few days later. All was going well, until amost two weeks ago on a Sunday night, when my mom got the call that she had been completely unresponsive for over 45 minutes. (All her vitals were okay, but she wouldn't respond to painful stimuli -- like a sterum rub, which supposedly hurts like hell.) (EKG, EEG, all that were normal. A stroke was ruled out. But still.) My whole family RUSHED to Bloomington to be with her that night, fearing the worst. Our fears were 100% justified because she claimed that while she was "out" that she saw the pearly gates! She's all, "Let me tell you how you go; I'm at peace about it; line the box with pink and put me in my pink robe; I'm...

A decade ago, I was minding my own business as a sophomore in college. At the time, I attended the University of Kentucky in Lexington. (That was my lone semester there, and the story I'm about to share made the semester a memorable one.) So. It was November -- in fact, it was the first Tuesday in November -- the day of the Presidential Election. My then-boyfriend then-lived in Louisville, and came over to Lex. for a visit. The day before, I had started to experience intense back pain. The walk from my Monday math class was a literal trek across campus, and I had to stop and take a break because I was in so much pain. I didn't know if I would make it back to my dorm room. My then-boyfriend arrived and we attended a folky concert Monday night. After, I laid in my bed with a heating pad beneath me and moaned and moaned. The next day, I felt only slightly better. The boyfriend and I decided to do something low-key, so we went to a movie. Halfway through th...