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...

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...

Well, my first attempt at National November Writing Month was an utter FAIL... unless, of course, you consider it a success to write 25k in words when the goal is 50. When you look at it that way , I only half failed. Awesomespice. (I'm pretty sure I'll only add spice onto words when being sarcastic, Jayme. I want to use it correctly, but I just can't. I hate to say it, but I think it's like fetch : it's just never going to happen. Sorry, Gretchen Weiners.) Yes, it's Monday and I am moody. I feel like someone took a hacksaw to my sinus cavities last night while I was sleeping, and when they were finished with that torture, they went ahead and stuck a hot poker in my bronchial areas. It's all grim and phlegm over here at musings of amber murphy today. Still, I vow to accentuate the positive. Look out for LoDecWriMo, which stands for Local December Writing Month, and is my own little venture to write fifty thousand words in the same month as Chri...