My Sweet Nieces

Sometimes I wonder if my nieces will ever grow up and fully understand how much I love them. How often I smile just thinking about them. How Elliott's little pronunciations of her "r"s and her "l"s can brighten up my worst of days. How Beckett's eagerness to walk as fast as she can towards me makes me giggle at just the thought of it. I always wonder how it will be possible to love my own children as much as I love them. I know, I know, everyone says, "You'll love your own even MORE! You'll be amazed!" I don't see how that is possible, but anyway. My point is, I love my nieces. They are my miniature best friends. I hope that they grow up to understand just how important to me they are.

It's Been a While

This blog doesn't have much of a point other than the fact that I haven't blogged in months and I'm due for one. I'll bring you up to date a bit on what's going on in my life. Hooper and I are waiting to close on a house, so that's about the most exciting thing that we could have hoped for. Here we had no idea we were anywhere close to buying a house, and things just started to fall into place. We got a new puppy named Alice and she's the best thing since sliced bread. Other than her pooping and peeing everywhere this side of the mason dixon. Today is officially 4 months away from the wedding. We got our honeymoon booked for 6 nights at a Sandals Resort in the Bahamas and I CANNOT wait! We got our engagement pictures taken in Lubbock and we LOVE them! We finally got to go register! It's summer which means it's swimming weather, and I've been doing a lot of that with my girlfriends and Elliott. Elliott is a swimming fool I tell ya. She has no fear what so ever! She's actually quite the fun little swim partner for me. But then again, she and I can have fun doing just about anything together. She calls the pool the "pwwaa". She even calls the lake that. Anna and I just started doing a workout video called "30 Day Shred" and it is kicking my butt. Today was only day 3. I'd like to be shredded by the time of my bachelorette party, but that'll never happen. Speaking of, wouldn't it be sort of neat to keep a weight loss blog, and every day write your weight, and what you ate and did that day to assist in the loss of that weight? I think it would be cool. It would definitely hold you accountable, that's for sure. But I'm not ready for you all to see my number just yet. Maybe some day though. Anyway, this is a poorly written blog, but it's more just like one liners of what's been going on lately. It's far too late for me to think about writing nicely. I actually think I'll go to bed now. Nice to talk to you all again. Hopefully I'll be back here in the blogging world sooner than later. Instead of putting up a picture of me in this moment, I'm going to put up one of our engagement pictures. I look better in it than in person right now. 

Quick Update

Just a quick update... I haven't felt dizzy lately. I haven't felt nauseated lately. And I've rarely had headaches. (With the exception of watching Elliott twirl round and around tonight. That made me feel a bit dizzy.) I went to the Optometrist again today and retook the field test. My results completely took the doctor off guard because they were perfect! He was blown away that a few weeks ago my results were so peculiar and now everything is normal. He is going to send everything to the neuro-opthamologist and see if he can figure out whats going on without actually seeing me. He will let me know as soon as he gets in touch with him. Whatever is or was going on has to do with my head, not my eyes. However, he did inform me today that one of my pupils is bigger than the other. Or at least it was during my appointment. I'll take an enlarged pupil any day though compared to what else I was starting to fear. Oh, and he did tell me that he was really scared I had an aneurysm and how relieved he was about the MRI results AGAIN. He's a really nice man. I sort of wish he was a regular doctor, because I enjoy his company and dry sense of humor more than most doctors. I'll update again when I know more. 

Eyes, Brains, and Questions

I'm going to sum this up as best as I can. Because honestly, it is sort of a long story. Last week I started having blurry vision. It lasted for about 45 minutes. The next day while I was at work the blurriness came back again, only this time MUCH worse. I couldn't even read. I totally freaked out, thinking that I had a brain tumor that was pressing against something that was messing with my vision. (I tend to jump to worst case scenarios. Not necessarily pessimistic. More like an optimist, that jumps to worst case scenarios occasionally. ;)) Anyway, I called the Optometrist, and they got me in later that afternoon. The blurriness faded throughout the day, but luckily it came back a bit at the doctor's office. I wanted it to come back, so that I could truly tell him what was happening to me. After several different tests, he seemed a bit mystified by my results. He said that my eyes were fine, but something was causing my vision to be bad. Not my eyes themselves though. Luckily. In my worst case scenario thoughts, going blind was one of them. Although I did decide that if I had to wear a patch, I'd bedazzle it. :) Anyhow, the doctor said he would call his Opthamologist specialist friend in Ft. Worth and send him my results and see what he said. Later that afternoon, he called me at work and said that the Opthamologist wanted me to have an MRI as soon as possible. That REALLY freaked me out. So fast forward to Friday. I went to my MRI at 1:30. They got me in as soon as they could. And the doctor ordered my results "STAT" which kind of freaked me out too. During the MRI they gave me that shot of dye and I didn't like that at all. It burned in my shoulder a bit. But luckily, it was over very quickly. The MRI guy told me that he would send the results to the doctor and that hopefully, my doc would get with me by the end of the day. Sure enough, the doctor's office called to tell me that my brain was normal. I'd like to think it's a bit better than "normal", but I understand they had to stick with only a few choice terms. :) So that was wonderful news! My Optometrist called me and he told me that it was great news, because he really was beginning to think that I had a leaking blood vessel, a mass, or an aneurysm! So I went to Hooper's show that evening feeling very good about things, but still wondering what the problem was. But in all honesty, the brain thing was the main thing that I was freaked out about. So even though I still had no answers, I was very happy. I went to sleep that night and after about an hour, everything started spinning out of control. I couldn't stand up. I couldn't see that well. Everything was just spinning so fast. I had to get Hooper to help me walk to the bathroom. Once I was in the restroom, I vomited for about an hour and a half. My mom came over with some anti-nausea medicine that made me feel really sleepy. After a while of not vomiting, my mom and Hooper asked me if I wanted to go back to bed. That was the LAST thing I wanted. I was so scared it would all happen again. So I requested a pillow and a blanket and I fell asleep on the bathroom floor. It was the worst I have ever felt in my entire life. Since then, I feel dizzy when I'm standing, have the hint of a headache at all times, but no more nausea. I'll take the dizziness and the headache over the nausea any day. But I still have no answers. Hopefully tomorrow I can get some bloodwork done or something and rule some more things out or find out the problem. Man, I tried to sum this all up and it was still super-duper long. My apologies. I will blog again when I know more. 

Fun Filled Weekend

This past weekend my cousin,  her husband, their son, and my aunt came down. That would be Holly, Blake, Jackson, and Jo Anne. We had the best time ever! We went to dinner Friday night and had a great time catching up. Saturday we woke up to donuts (thanks Mom) and we had all intentions of going to the Jumping Party here in town. We took our sweet time and took the kids to Cici's first and then showed up at the Jumping Party. The lady said, "Are yall here for the birthday party?" and we said "no we are just here to jump." She then might as well tore Jackson's heart out of his chest and stomped on it as she said the words "I'm sorry, we are closed to public jumping this afternoon." He was so upset! Elliott couldn't care less because she had no idea what we were doing anyway. We tried to think of every single thing we could do that might make Jackson happy, and we finally decided on Fossil Rim. We made it there with 3 minutes to spare before they closed the gates. It definitely made Jack happy though. Although, every time he said how cool it was, he quickly reminded us that he liked jump houses too though. Elliott was afraid of every animal there, and rightfully so considering that the first animal we came upon was the ostrich and we all screamed our heads off as it got closer to us. There were signs everywhere that said not to feed the zebras by hand because they bite, so we, being the smart girls we are, fed them out of our hands. This started a huge zebra fight IN ANNA'S WINDOW! It was so scary. They stole our bag of food and then kicked and bucked at each other and ran full speed chasing each other. We were all screaming so loud and Anna accidently smacked Elliott in the face during all of the commotion. At one point they were running straight at the front of Anna's car and I just knew they were going to hit us. I'm telling you, it was intense. Anna said that Elliott cried in her sleep all night long and I'm quite certain her nightmares were probably about ostriches, zebras, and her mom smacking her. LOL. Anyway, it was a good time. Saturday night Eddie and Anna had us over to their house for dominos, steaks, and Apples to Apples. If any of you have not played Apples to Apples, you're totally missing out. Oh yeah, and Eddie and Blake played darts. That's right Mom, darts. Sunday we went fishing and yours truly was the only one that caught anything. After fishing, home videos and more visiting, my family left. :( I wish the weekend could have been longer because I wasn't ready for it to end yet. But hopefully, everybody had as much fun as I did and will come back again soon! I know Jackson will want to come back, because he knows there's a jumping party, and he loves the dogs. 

Picture Blog

I think I've decided that every time I post a blog, I'll add a picture of me at that time. So here I am today. I look a bit red because I just tanned and the bed was HOT. I got my new computer and I'm super pumped about it. It frustrates me every now and then, but it's been fun learning about it. There is really no point to this blog other than to introduce the fact that now I'll have a picture posted of myself every time I blog. Hope all of you are well. More again soon.

Mambaise and Marshley

While I was telling a story to a coworker the other day, she responded to me that she doesn't have an imagination like I do. I thought about that statement for a minute and then drifted off into memories from years ago that involved my imagination.
When I was about 4 or 5 years old, my mom got a new picture frame from the store. She pulled it out of the sack, and without any hesitation I told her that I knew the girl in the photo. She looked at the paper that came in the frame and laughed and asked me how I knew her. I explained to her that her name was Marshley and that she was my friend. I'm sure my mom was thinking, "Oh dear. Here we go. I lucked out and didn't have to deal with the imaginary friend with the other kid, so here it comes." And sure enough, Marshley became someone I talked about frequently. (The strange thing about my memories of this time is that I cannot remember any specific stories about her other than when I told my mom about her existence, and when I told her of her demise.) Apparently I hadn't mentioned Marshley in a while, so my mom hesitantly, yet nonsholantly asked me "You haven't mentioned Marshley in a while. What happened to her?" To which I shot right back not so hesitantly, but a bit even more nonsholant, "Oh. Her house burned down and she was in it." I'm sure my mom was shocked for a number of reasons. One being that I had offed my friend out of my imagination. And two being the painful death that I spoke of so aloofly. Needless to say, I'm sure it was bittersweet for her, because afterall, the death of Marshley meant that the phase had passed.
However, that wasn't the end of my random, imaginative, matter-of-factly stated stories. From the time when I was very small, if I ever had a stomach ache, my stomach was no longer my stomach anymore. It was my mambaise. Out of nowhere I began referring to my aching belly as my mambaise. But ONLY when it was hurting. I would crawl into my mom or dad's lap and whine, "my maaambaaaiiise huuuuurts." There is no rhyme or reason why this word took place of the more common terms, but it just did. I was too young for me to recall where I got this from, but I do remember saying it. I'll still refer to it as my mambaise every now and then, and occasionally in mixed company, I'll forget that not everyone knows what that is.
As you can see, I apparently made up both names from scratch, because I've never heard the name Marshley, and never heard the word mambaise since.
Now that I'm grown, the majority of my imaginative work just stays in my head and my dreams. Maybe someday this very imagination will help me with my book I plan to write.

Hey, come to think of it, maybe Marshley was the one that told me it was called a mambaise. Nah, she couldn't have because the timing doesn't add up.