- Remember when Penny was in the hospital in August and I was all cryptic about what was wrong with her? That was because I didn’t want your reassurances. I know, that makes me sound like an asshole. But the thing is, I had (and have) genuine concerns, and sometimes a person just needs to worry them through without being told “oh, my aunt had that and she’s fine so obviously your kid will be fine!” Anyway, we worried through it all, and now I’ll tell you – Penny has vesicoureteral reflux – or VUR – or kidney reflux. And we’ve gone ahead and scheduled her for surgery for July 5th. It was just one of several possible options, but it was the best option for us. I think. I’m pretty sure. I mean, logically, I’m sure.
BUT SHE’S SO TEENY AND SHE’LL BE HAVING SURGERY OH MY LANDS YOU GUYS.
This is how I intend to distract you from the impending lack of content.
- Okay, remember when I was in the hospital and you were a total jerk about it? Well, I went (or more like, had Phil take me to) the ER because I was dealing with insane vertigo. More than dizziness. I mean the whole world was just whipping around me. It was so miserable. Nonetheless, I was still surprised when I was admitted to the hospital. They made me use a walker and wouldn’t let me pee by myself. Honestly, if I had blogged it in a timely fashion, it would have been some hilarious stuff. In a sad-for-me kind of way, but that’s usually my best stuff. I want you to know that it bothers me that I just ended two sentences in a row with the same word, but I just sat my kid in the middle of the floor with a whole cheeseburger and some french fries so while normally anal about such things, it’s a bit low on my give a damn chart at the moment. Just want you to know that I know.
Moving on, I had a CT scan and an MRI and both were perfectly clear, which is why I didn’t feel the need to alert any of my east coast family that I was in the hospital – I mean, come on. So they could worry over nothing? So I would have to call them multiple times a day to update them on my nothing? I told Phil that if it had turned out to be a brain tumor, he could call them. It didn’t, so he didn’t. Long story short, my mom threatened the shit out of him when we were in Pennsylvania for Penny’s birthday.
Internet, I need your honest opinion on this. Is it my job, as a 30 year old lady, to inform my family, on the other side of the country, of all of my medical issues? Some of them? Where’s the line? Colds? Fevers? ER trips? Broken bones? Admissions? How many days? Keep in mind that YOU CAN’T DO ANYTHING from across the country and also family across the country wants CONTINUAL UPDATES from the person WHO IS SICK and DOES NOT WANT TO UPDATE. Seriously. What is an adult’s duty to family when it comes to medical issues, disclosure thereof?
So, the vertigo would have remained a mystery, had the neurologist not arrived right when a ripping headache that the floor doctor refused to treat in case it would mask symptoms was about to kill me. He quickly diagnosed vestibular migraine, which you can Google if you want, and then you’ll know exactly as much as I do, which is about nothing. When I got out of the hospital, the dizziness and vertigo took so long to fade I was resigning myself to the fact that I was going to be desperately clinging to walls for the rest of my life like all of the other sad stories I had managed to find online. Then… it was gone. Mostly. Most of the time. Lots of headaches and some mild dizziness, but no big episodes.
I don’t want to say a lot about vestibular migraines, because as of right now, I don’t have a lot of information. When I was looking for information myself, all I found was horror stories or just more people looking for information themselves. So. Nothing like that from me. I will say that my neurologist is going to be running a couple more tests and as of right now, thinks I’m an excellent candidate for migraine management with medication, so I’ve started on Topamax. I’ve taken it in the past and I know it’s a brutal medication, so we’ll have to see if the benefits outweigh the drawbacks. I have high hopes of no headaches. Well, fewer headaches, since Phil has no plans of moving out.
AAAHAHAHAHA GET IT? PHIL IS MY HUSBAND!
BUH DUM CHING!
- Remember all those times you told me, “You know, you really should go to the eye doctor, and you should let the eye doctor look in your eyes, and also you should do the puff test?” Well, I don’t like to do any of those things. I like to order my glasses online and never discuss it with anyone, ever. But I unfortunately have birthed a violent hooligan who slaps my $8 Zenni Optical frames off my face on the regular and they finally gave up the ghost on Saturday night, when Phil and I were supposed to be having a real live adult date while my mother (who flew back from Pennsylvania with Penny and I under the guise of helping me since Phil had flown back a week early but UNDER THE REALITY of soaking up my adorable child) had the only kind of grandparent-grandbaby bonding time that really counts – the kind where the parents are nowhere to be seen.
I would have loved to order from Zenni again, but with the whole headache mess, I couldn’t deal with being glassesless for any length of time and thus had to deal with the OPPRESSIVE NATURE of shopping for glasses in the real world, where they refuse to just GIVE YOU SOME and instead insist on peering straight into your head.
And you know what? Go ahead and say you told me so. Just get it out of the way. Because guess what? The doctor looked in there? AND SOMETHING WAS WRONG. He referred me to a specialist for papilledema, which as I basically understand it, means my eyeballs are going to explode. But that’s not the CRAZY part.
Like any normal person, before calling any specialist, I of course went home and googled (this was yesterday). This papilledema is caused by high pressure inside your brain bag, and you know what one of the main causes of THAT is?
TUMOR.
Except? I had a CT and an MRI just a couple of weeks ago and there WAS no tumor.
Obvious conclusion?
THE FULL BODY SCANNER AT THE AIRPORT GAVE ME A TUMOR.
(Please note: no tumor has been confirmed and is, in fact, only suspected by the part of me that is convinced that everything from an earache to stubbing my toe is probably caused by a tumor, but when you think about it, what other conclusion could there be?)
There was going to be more here today, including some deeply philosophical questions about leaning your seat back on airplanes, but guys – I am not even shitting you right now – I just got back from urgent care and I have strep throat.
I have crazy migraine managed with the medication from hell, exploding eyeball most likely caused by the naked cancer box at the airport and NOT EVEN FUCKING WITH YOU STREP THROAT.
I have this to do list of things that I am supposed to have put here by now, so sit back and listen to me tell you why I haven’t put them here.
1. Penny’s 8 month post. I know I’m not going to keep these posts up forever, and like last month, I’m wondering if this is going to be the month that it finally stops, but I HAVE GOOD INTENTIONS. It’s just that every time I go to take the picture with the bears? Penny throws up on herself. Enough to ruin a picture, but not enough to justify changing her outfit.
“Oh my GOD. I ALWAYS change my baby’s clothes when he pukes on himself! ALWAYS!!”
WELL INVITE ME TO YOUR AWARD CEREMONY FOR MOTHER OF THE PLANET AND I PROMISE TO FEEL SUITABLY INFERIOR.
I hope this isn’t the month I finally allow my true laziness to come through, though, since this was the month that contained Penny’s first Christmas, as well as some actual milestones. Like WAVING. You guys. She waves and waves. Last night she wouldn’t sleep, so she was laying in our bed, and it was like she was COMPELLED TO WAVE. And she waved and waved, but she only waves with her left hand, and she was laying down. So it wasn’t so much waving as it was a rhythmic slapping of Phil’s face while he tried to sleep.
I’m not going to lie, Internet. It was hilarious.
Seriously, though. She wants to wave when she should be sleeping. I don’t know how to communicate to her that she’s pretty much nailed it and doesn’t need to practice anymore. Not very Tiger Mom of me, I know.
2. Our trip to Pennsylvania for Penny’s first Christmas. Penny was an amazing traveler. She got all kinds of compliments about her behavior on the planes. It was much easier than we possibly could have hoped, with the only real difficulties being ill-timed poops and how uncomfortable it is to hold a lap baby in those small seats. Even travel with cloth diapers wasn’t especially terrible.
Santa only brought Penny a couple of things, including some new pajamas and a PARACHUTE.
The pajamas are particularly awesome:
The whole of the Christmas trip would be a bit too much to cover at the moment, and to be honest, one very small thing has really soured me on the memory of it all. I’d rather write about her first Christmas when I’m a little less irritated. Irritated is a very gentle word for it.
I assure you, though, Santa came out looking like a chump with his few simple gifts. Grandparents, aunts and uncles filled in where Santa was stingy and Penny now owns, among other things, her very own iPhone case and apps, a baby doll and stroller, and an entire new wardrobe.
Santa got schooled.
3. Baby led weaning. This style of feeding the baby is really working out well for us, especially since Penny popped up a couple of fangs over the holidays. She’s sitting behind me right now, enjoying a mid-morning snack of apple scrapings.
Do you see her scrapings? She just learned how to do that yesterday. And she was DELIGHTED. Shrieks of glee. She positively gorged herself on teeny, painstakingly fanged scrapings of apple. It was hilarious, as you could tell that she was totally shocked – she’s used to just sucking and gumming on her apples. She was grinning at me around a mouth of apple mush, like she thought she was the first baby in the history of the world to spring teeth and learn how to use them.
She’s gotten very excited and kind of demanding about food. On the plane, Phil and I each had a sandwich and she was giving his the eye. So, as we usually would, he pulled off a small piece of bread and a little turkey shaving for her, and she WAS NOT HAVING IT. She dropped them and strained and reached as far as she could – NOTHING BUT THE ENTIRE SANDWICH WOULD DO.
She wants whatever you’ve got.
Anyway, it’s simple enough to say that Penny is eating anything and everything, but I’ve gotten a good number of questions about the way we choose to feed Penny – what we feed her, if we cut up her food, what about choking, etc – so it would probably be best to do a more detailed post explaining how Penny has handled being thrown into the deep end of food with no spoon feeding and no purees. I will do that. I swear.
4. Cosmo! I’ve had the newest Cosmo for the longest time, and I can’t work up the desire to do this one. Know why? Because Scarlet Johansson is on the cover. I don’t know, something about her really chaps my ass.
You know how people have lists? You know, the people you’re allowed to totally get with and your spouse can’t get mad, because, come on, the list? Phil doesn’t really have a list, but one time when I asked him, he said, “I don’t know… Scarlet Johansson, I guess?”
AND I VETOED HIM. Even though you’re not really allowed to do that with the lists.
I just don’t like her. Something’s not right. She looks like she just smelled her own butt all the time. Unless she’s playing some super cute character, but even then I can’t get into it, because I remember all these pictures of her where she looks like she just smelled her own butt. I feel like if I ever talked to her, I’d be wondering if I smelled like a butt the whole time. She has this air about her that makes me think that SHE thinks that everyone in the world but her smells like butt, but you know what? It’s probably her own butt, because I think she’s up it.
One thing about which I am absolutely, unabashedly, and totally unashamed-ly judgmental: people who talk about working on their tan, and are not talking about a spray tan or a tan from a can or what have you, in the fakey way. No, the ones who talk about deliberately sitting in the sun for an extended period of time with the intent of darkening their skin tone, or who pay to go and lay under UV lights for the same purpose.
I mean, it’s not like I hear it and immediately damn the person to hell or anything. I just raise my eyebrow and think, “Really? Really?”
Because, come on. Really? It’s 2011. Really?
I guess it’s the same way non-smokers look at smokers. But I don’t think tanners get the same lectures.
Anyway, I think it’s stupid. And normally, when someone popped up in the comments and said, “Well, I deliberately tan, but it’s because of X, Y, Z,” I’d say, “Oh, of course I don’t mean YOU. It’s fine if YOU do it.” But not today. Because even if I like you and have told you on multiple occasions that you’re one of the most awesome people I know, I’m still judging the whole tanning thing.
2011!
*****
I did the whole “put Penny down for a nap” thing again yesterday, only I didn’t put her in her bin because I napped with her on the bed. So, for her second nap, of course she wouldn’t go in the bin. Why would she go in the bin, where there’s a whole gigantic bed available to her?
She wasn’t amused.
Both yesterday and the day before, her second nap of the day was basically nothing. Today, I tried once again to stick her to her new schedule, where she goes down to sleep 2 hours after she wakes up in the morning, but she decided to fall asleep less than an hour after she woke up this morning. You guys, I hear this 2-3-4 schedule (or something along those hourly lines, kid-dependent) is fantastic, but my baby is not on board. I don’t know how I’m supposed to tell her that I don’t care if she’s tired, she’s not allowed to sleep. She gets so mad, you guys. So, so mad.
Yeah, so, she’s sleeping in her swing right now, setting her own terribly inconvenient schedule. I totally plan to be the boss of my own kid someday, but she’s seriously a little tyrant right now. I just don’t know what I’m supposed to do. I can’t really complain because night time sleep is pretty okay and we’re generally well-rested around here these days, but daytime sleep is crap. And she gets so tired and so whiney about being so tired, yet refuses to be molded into a sensible sleeping schedule. I can’t get through to her that she is ONLY SCREWING HERSELF by not letting ME dictate appropriate sleep hours.
And I guess I could let it slide, for a while, at least, because so what if she doesn’t sleep much in the day (seriously – one kind of long nap, then 10 minutes here and there), if she’s doing well at night? It would be fine if she didn’t require constant eyeball-to-eyeball when she was awake. She KNOWS if she doesn’t have 100% of your attention. She attempts to kick my Kindle out of my hand on the regular. SHE KNOWS.
*****
Let me tell you about a thing that happens to me: Sleep paralysis.
Has this ever happened to you? If it has, you probably googled it a hundred years ago and right now, you’re all, “YES. SHIT. YES.”
If it hasn’t happened to you before, let me tell you what it’s like: you’re laying there, sleeping along, doing your sleep thing, and then you wake up. Like, wide awake.
Except, you’re not totally awake. Well, you’re awake, but you’re not. Your brain is up, your body is asleep. Totally asleep. You can’t make it do anything, but you’re totally aware of everything around you.
I remember the first time it happened to me. I was in high school, I think, or home from college for the summer, and I was laying on my parents’ couch, napping, with the phone on my stomach. My sister was sitting on another couch, watching television.
When I woke up, I could hear the TV, I could hear her moving around, I could feel the phone on my chest. I couldn’t move, though. At all. I couldn’t speak, either. I tried so hard to get my sister’s attention to tell her I was obviously… dying? frozen? under a witch’s spell? But, obviously, couldn’t make a sound. I tried to move my hands to knock the phone off my stomach to get her to look over and see something was wrong, but I couldn’t. I guess, from her perspective, I just looked like I was still asleep.
I don’t really remember how that episode ended. I assume I went back to sleep and when I woke up, I was normal again.
That’s scary enough, right? Well, those of you who have experienced sleep paralysis a few times know that it can get a lot worse.
I lived in this apartment for my last couple years of college, on the ground floor of a building, and one winter, a mouse chewed his way in. He came into my bedroom where the baseboards met in a corner of my room, and we had such a stand off, he and I. I would stand on furniture and see his nose peeking out from under something, and he could stay like that for AGES, only to make his mad dash across the floor when I least expected it.
I’m not going to tell you what happened to the mouse, except that I killed it with a trap. Well, that’s pretty much what happened to the mouse. I was afraid there would be more, but after that one died, there wasn’t another siting for the next two years I lived here. Maybe they were hiding out, or maybe I got a rep as an amazing mouse killer, what with my laying of traps and tiptoeing around corners in the morning to peep through my fingers and see if there was anything dead in the traps, and when there was, calling my friend Jeff to come from 10 minutes away in the middle of the night to dispose of the whole deal.
Anyway, the mouse that I killed was gone when I had this sleep paralysis experience. It started like it always does – I realize that I’m awake before I open my eyes. You know how waking up and opening your eyes are usually happening at the same time, or at least it seems like they happen at the same time? Well, when this happens, I become aware that I’m awake while my eyes are still closed and am tipped off that NOOOOOOO THIS AGAAAAAAAIIIIIN is happening when I try to open my eyes and it doesn’t happen.
By that point in my life, it had happened enough that while it was still really scary, I was aware that it wasn’t permanent and everything was going to be fine eventually. I just needed to wait it out.
Except this time was different. I was laying there, waiting it out, unable to move at all, when I felt something moving in my mattress. I don’t know how exactly to describe it, but I KNEW there was a mouse in my mattress, and he was CHEWING. OUT. Up towards me. And I couldn’t move. I felt the chomping and I felt him bust through the mattress, right near my face, and he ran onto my pillow and into my hair, and crawled/wriggled himself under my neck, between me and the pillow, and I COULDN’T MOVE AT ALL.
I had to just LAY THERE while a mouse chewed through my bed and got into my hair and under me and ran all around me.
Oh, man. I CAN STILL FEEL IT. Exactly how it felt when the mouse went under my neck and wiggled around under there.
Just like always, I had to wait it out, nothing I could do, until I fell back asleep and woke up normally.
I woke up to find no hole in my mattress, no mouse to be seen, not even any ruffling of my hair. So, that never happened. But I am not skilled enough with words to describe to you how ABSOLUTELY REAL it felt. I am not kidding when I tell you I can STILL feel it. I remember everything about it, from the mattress chewing to the mouse-on-neck contact. SO real. So horrifying.
There can be hallucinations, you guys. Sleep paralysis alone is not terrifying enough. There can also be incredibly real hallucinations.
This isn’t something that happens all the time, or even a lot. It’s probably happened 5 times total that I can think of. Doesn’t matter how rare it is, though – if I ever feel myself awake when my eyes are closed, no matter how close I am to drifting back to sleep, I have to make sure they open. HAVE TO.
So, the question is, does sleep paralysis actually happen, or is it some kind of terrible, extremely vivid, absolutely realistic, recurring dream? I don’t know. I do know, though, that once I became an internetty person, I found several other people online who had experienced the same kind of thing, and when I wrote about it on my last blog, “sleep paralysis” remained one of the top search hits for the entire life of the site.
So I’m writing about it now for two reasons:
1. Has sleep paralysis ever happened to you? Do you know what I’m talking about, or do I sound like a lunatic right now? If sleep paralysis has never happened to you, have you ever experienced some kind of physical phenomenon that will make ME be all, “what the HELL?” If you can’t sympathize on the sleep paralysis, at least share your freakitude with me.
2. I figure writing about sleep paralysis will finally knock “KY Yours & Mine review” out of the top spot for search results.
I have avoided talking too much about my work or what I do all day because frankly, work is boring. However, as with all jobs, eventually things begin to get under your skin, and since I have no employer who would be horrified about the thought of me complaining to the internet about my job, I think I might just start doing it.
Being unemployed at the moment, I’ve had the time, between frantic bouts of throwing away everything I own, to do some intense and serious internet research. And by that, I mean that I smash the crap out of my StumbleUpon button for a good bit of time every day.
Couple of weeks ago, I came across the videos of this woman, Sarah Haskins, on current.com. She does a bunch of things, but she has a series, her own little segment, called Target Women. It’s a whole bunch of short videos about advertising targeted at women.
Now, being a woman, and being the target of said advertising, I can’t say I’ve ever really thought about the particular marketing genius that goes into making women in particular want to buy things, but after watching a few of Sarah’s videos I can tell you two things:
1. Marketers have most likely never met an actual woman and
2. This shit is hilarious.
The videos are funny, and there’s one video in particular, the Target Women Special – it was the first one I saw – that combines segmnets from all of her best videos into one long epic on How to Be a Perfect Woman. I laughed out loud so many times that I watched all the rest of her videos as well.
But while Sarah’s scripts and tones are obviously meant to be humorous, at the same time they manage to make you realize how ridiculous marketing towards women really is. I have thought “Wait a second – this is the shit they sell to me, and THAT’S how they choose to sell it?” so many times since I’ve started watching her videos. But I also can’t think of a way to improve it. I mean, if I was a guy – show me electronics or women or beer or sports or some one getting hit in the nuts, hey, hilarious, I’ll buy that product. But as a female, not only do I find these commercials ridiculous (now that I’ve thought about them – it really never occurred to me before), I’ve realized that marketers must have a tough job because I can’t tell you what I want to see, what is likely to make we want to buy a product, but I can tell you that it’s certainly not PICTURES OF SCIENCE!
Anyway. Make sure you check her out for the pure hilarity factor, along with the “Holy crap, I never actually thought about that!” factor as well. And since I’ve been puzzling over it for a while, since I started watching her videos, I would also like to know what women (that would be some of you guys) think WOULD work for them as far as advertising goes. I suppose that somewhere some demographic research or something like that has indicated that I respond well to “sciencey words” and pictures of women laughing with their friends because their yogurt is so good. BUT DO I? DO I REALLY?
There are a whole bunch more, though. Check them out, Internet. Have I ever steered you wrong? Don’t you remember how I directed you with all the subtlety of a sledgehammer towards Julia Nunes? Trust me!
So I’ve been tagged for this about 782 times on various blogs and facebooks, so why the hell not.
25 Things You Didn’t Know About Me (and probably could have lived without knowing)
1. I do not eat sausage. At all. Period. Ever. If I suspect there might be sausage in a food item, no matter how many times I am assured there is none, I will not be able to eat it. Not any kind of sausage. Some people make the mistake of thinking that I just do not eat meat that is in a tubular shape, but it goes deeper than that. The same rule that I apply to sausage applies to bologna as well, which I also do not eat. See, sausage is a meat that can be made from numerous other meats and still be called sausage. Bologna is the same. Anything that falls into that category is something I will not eat. That is not WHY I do not eat those things, but it is a safe bet that if you come across such a food, it will not be eaten by me.
3. I am never naked. When it is time to shower, I have a mitten. I put the mitten on my right hand, stick my right hand out of the shower so the mitten does not get wet and gross, and wash my left side. When I am done with the left side, I switch the mitten to the left hand and stick my left hand out of the shower and repeat.
4. From age 16 to 18, I had three legal guardians.
5. I have seen Bon Jovi in concert 6 times. And it was awesome every time.
6. When I was in college, I came home for the weekend, 250 miles, specifically to see Shaun Klush – The Best Elvis This Side of Heaven. Seriously, check him out:
7. I have two callouses, one each at the base of my middle and ring fingers on the palm of my left hand, from opening diet soda bottles.
8. One time, to relieve summer boredom, my sister and two friends of ours bought a giant old school boombox from a good will store. The batteries for it cost more than it did. We then recorded the Rocky theme on a cassette tape and went out looking for joggers. We found a few, and we would hold the boom box up to the window and play the song for them. A couple were pissed, but at least one of them raised his fists and really got into it.
9. When I was in the 6th grade, my sister cut off the top of my finger with a pair of scissors.
10. Speaking of fingers, I might have mentioned this at one point when it was officially diagnosed, but I have a vasovagal syncope – basically, with certain triggers, I faint. For me, it happens when I pinch or crush my finger in something. The first time I remember it happening, I was sitting in a little wooden chair in kindergarten, holding the seat and bouncing up and down. The seat separated from the legs a bit and came down on my finger, and the next thing I knew I was in the nurse’s office with my feet in the air. Another time it happened, I was on a date and driving on the Scranton Expressway. I woke up to “YOU HAVE TO PUT YOUR FOOT ON THE BRAKE!!” I’m much more careful with my fingers these days, and also better at recognizing when I’m going to faint – I’m usually able to get down on the ground quickly and avoid the actual fainting part totally.
11. I have gotten a ridiculous number of people to believe #3 over the years.
12. The “Hi TJ!” signs are my favorite part about having this website.
13. I have never owned a dog, but I have owned 2 cats (that someone stole!), a guinea pig, 2 hamsters, and many fish. Two of the fish were named Aufbau and Avagadro. I am also a nerd.
14. There are certain feelings that I have only because after being told about them, I believe I am supposed to have them. For example, sentimental attachment to items. I do not truly feel any attatchment to physical items – when I think about it, the concept seems silly to me. However, over time I have learned that other people do, so I also do. It has lead to me holding on to a lot of junk because I think I am supposed to want to.
15. My nervous system does not work the same way yours does. Of course, I can’t truly know how yours works, but apparently mine is different. It hurts when my mother hugs me, I can’t really always localize where pain is coming from, and my skin can hear. Yeah, trying to explain this one and the previous one was a poorly thought out idea.
16. I’ve been blogging for 10 years. I used to be a LOT funnier.
17. I won a math competition and a spelling bee in the 4th grade.
18. I peaked in the 4th grade.
19. I applied to 8 colleges and got into 7. I was extremely apathetic my senior year of high school and let my guidance counsler send an application anywhere he wanted. I had never heard of the University of Maryland til I applied. My mother is still convinced I decided to go there because it was the last school we saw in an epic 5 day journey up and down the east coast looking at schools. I don’t truthfully know why I decided to go to UMD.
20. I find headlights in my rearview mirror to be ominous, no matter what the situation or circumstances.
21. I went through a 3 month phase of sleeping the short way across the foot of my bed about a year or so ago.
22. I look exactly like my maternal grandmother. Not a slight resemblance, but the exact same face, to the point that I was asked to step out of the nursing home where my great aunt lives, as she has Alzheimer’s and could only recognize me as her sister and it was upsetting her.
23. I am the shortest full grown person in my family, on all sides. I am about 5’2″. Cousins range as high as 6’7″.
24. People can tell my sister and I are sisters based simply on the WAY we talk. The rhythm and inflection of our speech is identical. I’ve been recognized as Kate’s sister in a record store I had never been in, when I had been living out of state for years, and she was not around, just because the clerk heard me ask my mother a question.
I haven't found a convenient, easy to update method of displaying a list of links to all of the blogs I read, nor am I interested in getting all wrapped up in the politics of who is listed and who is not, so here is a link to a single blog that I do, in fact, read, to be updated randomly and completely at my own whim, for no particular reason or reasons I DON'T FEEL I NEED TO DISCUSS WITH YOU, INTERNET, but you can rest assured that I would not maliciously steer you wrong.
Hello! I'm TJ and this is my blog. The picture is a joke, get it? Because I'm INSIDE the INTERNET?
I'm 30 years old and I live in Arizona with my husband and our two big dogs. I've been married for just over a year, and we have a 7 month old daughter named Penelope. You can do the math. It's okay. We don't mind.
Read my stuff. You'll like it.
I know that at some point, this section of my site will be out of date. I promise you in advance, I'm aware of that.
