But now I see!
Thanks to the wonders of modern medicine and a little procedure known as LASIK, my vision was last pronounced 20/15--better than 20/20, much to my Michael's dismay (he wants to go get LASIK just so he can still have better vision than me)! Lynette, aren't you proud of me?
I've been thinking about going under the laser for a while and went for a consultation for LASIK last June, but didn't do it then because Michael was worried that if something bad happened it might ruin our big cross-country trip. So, I held out for a little while. My contacts were just getting more and more uncomfortable (I guess over 20 years of wearing them was getting to my eyes) and I decided that the new year would be a great time to have wonderful new vision.
Here's the low-down on the surgery: piece of cake. Seriously, I was going to be nervous for the whole flap-cutting part but it was over before I even knew it! I thought the doctor was still prepping me when he starting telling me what a beautiful flap had just been cut. I couldn't believe it!
The majority of the recovery happens in that first day of surgery, and for that they give you a Tylenol PM and tell you to go home and take a three hour nap! I must confess that I think I might have been just as excited about taking a three hour nap as I was to get rid of my glasses. I slept for three hours, got up for an hour and a half and went back to bed for another two! It was heavenly. Napping seemed natural anyway, since keeping my eyes open made my eyes water like I was chopping the most potent onion on earth. But thankfully, it wasn't painful. In fact, I would say that there aren't really any painful parts to the whole process.
I can think of three unpleasant aspects to my LASIK journey. First, the smell of my burning eyeball is something I can live without experiencing again. Maybe you didn't know about that part. I know I didn't until sweet Dr. Goel mentioned right before surgery that I might smell "something like burning hair" and that it was "just the laser doing its job." So, yes, while I was laying on the table watching the flashing red light I was thinking, "This wretched smell is actually my eyeball being burned by a laser. Okay." Thankfully, it was over in under a minute and totally worth it. The second unpleasant aspect would be the itchy, crusted remains of the prescribed eye drops on my not-allowed-to-be-washed-or-touched eyelids. Seriously, I just wanted to wash the crust off my eyes, but I couldn't. It passed and it was totally worth it. Last on my list of unpleasantries is the different rates of healing of my two eyes. My left eye is a superstar with near-crystal-clear vision from dawn 'till dusk, but my right eye is mostly a little fuzzy and gets more so as the day goes on. I am sure this is normal and when I go to my next check-up they will tell me to give it more time. I can do that...because even with my right eye being a little fuzzy I still see with 20/15 vision! How incredible is that?
So, here are some snapshots of the last Wednesday:
Here I am putting my glasses away for the last time. I still wake up in the morning reaching for my glasses. And then I remember and smile :)
Michael snapped this of me in the Operating Room.
Here's me (after--love the shades) and the LasikPlus doctor who performed my LASIK, Dr. Goel. He was really nice and had a very soothing voice while I was on the table. "Take a deep breath for me now," "You're doing great, Mendy." He even seemed quite pleased to learn that my 15 minutes with him was going to be the subject of a post on my blog. Like I told him, it's free advertising for him!
So, if you're thinking about getting it done, go to the free consultation and then grab a referral coupon from me ($100 off)!
Okay, so apparently I have offended my loyal fan base by not posting yet this year. My little sister evidently has nothing to do at work if I haven't written a new tidbit on my blog for her to read. Even my dearest Tracy, with whom I talk at least 5 times a day, seems to be lost without a written word from me (although she put it a little more rudely than that).
Anyway, here I am in 2008 with a whole new look. I changed my little "About Me" blurb, not just to switch things up, but because it simply wasn't true anymore. It said I was the aunt of twenty-four and wouldn't you know that already this year, 2008, that number has grown by two! Yes, I have a new niece, Annelise, and a new nephew, Jackson. How wonderful! And don't think the birthing ends there--by the end of spring I will have another new niece and another new nephew born. So many new baby smells, so little time! Happily, I report that I have already gotten to meet (and smell) Annelise and she is divine. So round and soft and utterly kissable! Poor little Jackson is far away and in the NICU but I have faith that he'll be out and ready to be kissed (and smelled) by the time I get to Utah at the end of the month.
Also, because it is a new year, I took off last year's books and put in this year's. Clearly, I am not doing well with my whole "only read two books a month" rule. Believe me, the current condition of my play room and the laundry situation in my house can testify of the necessity of following such a rule. I don't put books down well (as the last six days indicate). That said, I quite enjoyed them all and am trying not to check the library's web site to see if others in my queue are ready for pick up.
So, Happy New Year! I'm back on the blogging horse with a fabulous post coming your way soon.
*Warning* This post is ridiculously long. It started out as just an anniversary post, but grew to cover all the major events in my household over the past two weeks. Really, it's like six different posts. Read it all at once or just one mini-post at a time. I suspect only the most devoted readers will make it to the end.
December 20, 2007 A Blissful Decade
Today is the tenth anniversary of my wedding to my Michael. Wow! Have I really been a married woman for an entire decade? How did this happen to someone as young and spry as myself?
I have never felt more beautiful than I did on my wedding day. My mom did my hair in like 15 minutes and I slapped on my 45 seconds worth of make-up but I felt like a princess. Even if my thigh cannot fit into the waist of my wedding dress anymore, I am so glad for the past ten years and the life I've shared with my Michael. He and I are so different but I think we compliment each other very well. I mean, thank goodness not everyone is as high-strung as I, you know? My Michael is a great example of desiring to do good, being honest, and serving the Lord. Plus, he adores me. And he's funny. I love him.
To celebrate, we went to The Melting Pot. The way I figure it, if you can't go out to a ridiculously expensive meal for your tenth anniversary, when can you? And so we did. Our favorite couple "to date," Tracy and Chris, had their fifteenth anniversary just last week, so we doubled. It was a great night after Chris received CPR for his reaction to the menu prices. My thoughtful mother-in-law and her husband even came to town for a quick visit to babysit for us!
Happy Anniversary, my Michael! Here's to many more decades together...
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Christmas 2007
For Christmas this year we went to Uncle Josiah's house. Boy, did we have fun! We arrived on the afternoon of Christmas Eve in time to enjoy some heavy hors d'oeuvre and Christmas cookie consumption. After the binging, we bundled up in coats for a hay ride! Josiah hitched a big hay-filled wagon to the back of his pick-up and drove us (at a frightening speed) down the street and into a nearby neighborhood to admire the Christmas lights. It was a chilly night and the scent of the exhaust of the truck was more than a little stifling, but it was still a grand time. Oh, how we laughed to keep from freezing!
Once we got back to the house, it was gingerbread house time. There were little graham cracker houses for everyone to decorate. Uncle Chris and Aunt Meredith contributed all the candy, which was in no short supply.
Next, it was time for the Nativity. We used the standard towel costumes and all willing children participated. It's always nice to stop everything else for a quick activity sponsored by the True Meaning of Christmas, you know?
After wrestling kids into pajamas and issuing the standard Christmas Eve Santa-can't-come-until-all-kids-are-asleep threat, we got all 11 cousins to sleep.
Christmas morning was as magical as ever. My kids were thrilled by their 3 gifts from Santa each (Maia: guitar, MP3 player, walkie/talkie thingies; Mason: pogo stick, frog terrarium, walkie/talkie thingies; Marlee: princess bath robe, Hannah Montana Barbie, bike; Mackenna: Aquadoodle mat, Dora bubble machine, FurReal pig). The big surprise was the combined gift for the whole family: a Wii. It's been quite a multi-generational hit, let me tell you!
Allow me a moment to brag about what a thoughtful and wonderful gift I got from my husband. Basically, he made me a little membership into "The Date of the Month" club, if there were such a thing. He went all over buying gift cards to my favorite restaurants and got gift cards to the movie theater, mini golf, batting cages, etc. Then he bought me a little planner and also wrote out the plan for a date a month for the whole year. Some months I have a choice, like go-karting or movie, but other times it is set, like on Valentine's Day he has tickets for us to go to a dinner theater. I am so excited about it! He even said that he is going to arrange all the babysitting for all the dates he pre-bought! Yeah! I can't wait! There is such a variety of activities--from museums in D.C. to horseback riding. It's going to be quite a fun year of dating for us! Isn't that just the cutest gift? I'm rather thrilled, in case you couldn't tell.
Anyway, back to Christmas. The rest of the morning passed in a frenzy of clean-up, new toys, Wii competitions and a trip to the barn to visit the animals. Teensy was chomping at the bit to go feed a bottle to one of the baby goats. Even Maia was up for the excursion...or so she thought. When we got near the orchard and the donkey's pasture Maia made a U-turn and headed back to the house. Teensy and Kenna loved petting the donkey before hitting the barn to see the baby goats. Kenna got knocked around a bit by some goats but still had a grand time. Teensy was a little afraid at first but then braved up and fulfilled her dream of bottle-feeding the goats. 
FInally, after a delicious roast beast worthy of any Who down in Who-ville, we all loaded up our goods and our cars and went home. It was lovely.
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December 29, 2008
HAPPY BIRTHDAY TO MY MICHAEL!
Today is my Michael's birthday (in case you didn't get that from my little subtitle above). Usually, Michael likes his birthday to be all about him but this year that just didn't happen and he was a great sport. I think it helps that he got a good gift: an iPod. He is very excited to have that new little toy, let me tell you. He spent all morning on the computer with me walking past intermittently asking, "Have you spent all your gift card yet?"
In honor of his big day, I thought I'd list 37 things I love about my Michael:
1. He will always weigh more than I do (let's just start with what's most important, shall we?)
2. He has a great sense of humor
3. He can laugh at himself
4. He does a mean impersonation of a Monchichhi--seriously, you gotta see it
5. He's tall, dark, and handsome--how dreamy!
6. He loves to read
7. He works hard at his job
8. He takes Judo with Mason
9. He plays a funny "wild monkey" game with Mason
10. He wears whatever Halloween costume the kids and I come up with for him
11. He has perfect teeth and eyesight (I mean, his genes are important to my progeny, right?)
12. He takes the day off work and takes the kids sledding whenever it snows
13. He calls my chocolate chip cookies "crackies" because they're addictive
14. He doesn't think I'm chubby, even though I am (that BMI chart doesn't lie, my friends)
15. He tries really hard to get me good presents
16. He reads his scriptures daily
17. He lets me pluck and trim his eyebrows when the fancy strikes me
18. He has worked hard to overcome his tendency to have road rage
19. He prays daily
20. He takes the garbage to the curb
21. He mows the lawn
22. He likes to hear me sing
23. He has committed to take a dance class with me
24. He has slumber parties with our children without me
25. He camps with our children without me
26. He only grumbles about me leaving to go somewhere if he feels like he hasn't seen me lately
27. He really tries to magnify his church calling
28. He can build a fire out of nothing
29. He brings me flowers for no good reason
30. He brings me Snickers for no good reason
31. He eats anything
32. He thinks going out to dinner means getting a drink other than water, an appetizer and an entree.
33. He likes to splurge on movie popcorn for the kids when we take them to the theater (I'd rather smuggle in some fruit snacks in my purse and call it good)
34. He is devoted to exercise
35. He is a hypochondriac--but it's part of his charm
36. He is ridiculously honest
37. He loves me
So, there you have 37 reasons to celebrate my Michael on his big day!
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HAPPY NEW YEAR!
It's a Pennsylvania Dutch tradition to eat pork and sauerkraut on New Year's Day. It's supposed to bring good luck in the new year. Of course, my family does this each year. But we have another little tradition for New Year's Eve. It's not German, but Japanese and we call it Karaoke!!!!
Ultra corny, I know, but we do have a grand time. The girls all do each other's make-up and hair (I'm usually the hair gal, but this year we didn't do hair so much). We even put a nice mole somewhere on each girl's face. Not only do my sisters, sisters-in-law and mother get involved, but my grandmother and her friends do it right along with us as well. Yes, my grandmother and her ninety year-old friends let me curl their hair with curling irons and let my sister do their make-up like...ladies of the night. There are lots of laughs, let me tell you! Sadly, Grandma couldn't come this year, but her friend Grace still joined us. How cute is that?
Anyway, we sing for hours. My sister, Amber, is quite a master at the art of karaoke and choreographs each number she performs. This year she added a sequined dress as her costume; I'm sure it's not the last we've seen of that little clearance rack number. We had another new addition this year--my soon-to-be brother-in-law, Shawn, made his karaoke debut. When he took his first turn with the microphone, my previous thoughts were confirmed: he fits right in!
Just before midnight, we turn on the T.V. to watch various things drop simultaneously--the ball in Times Square, the white rose in York, the strawberry in Harrisburg, and my Michael's favorite, the 150 pound bologna in Lebanon. At the stroke of midnight, we clink glasses and drink countless bottles of sparkling cider. I think my favorite flavor this year was the Apple-Pomegranate. Quite yummy!
So, those are our New Year's celebrations! I just know that we'll have a wonderful 2008!
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January 3, 2008
Happy Birthday to me!
It's my birthday and the end of everything. Okay, it's not the end of everything, but it is the end of the two weeks in which we, in our family, celebrate our anniversary, Christmas, my Michael's birthday, New Year's, and my birthday. It's also the end of this ridiculously long post. At this point, I have to assume I have lost all my dear readers and this is now strictly for journaling purposes. I'm okay with that.
So, it's my birthday. Michael and the kids gave me a gift certificate for an hour-long massage (yipee!), a magazine and socks. I taught Teensy's preschool and then Tracy brought me a great lunch and a cute new shirt. I did not feel guilty for not cleaning the kitchen or doing the laundry during nap time. I read a little and then fell asleep. Tonight we went out to dinner at Red, Hot & Blue (or "The Rock-n-Roll Pigs," as my kids call it). After coming home from that, my cute friend Cynthia brought me yummy birthday treats. It's been a nice day. And it's only going to get nicer when my Michael and I snuggle on the couch watching DVD's of The Office.
Today was Mackenna's play group's Christmas party. Basically, that means that we got together to play as usual, but snacked on Christmas cookies and had a gift exchange. I wasn't sure how the exchange would go over because before we left the house Mackenna was insisting that the present she was taking to the party was her present. She had no interest in the whole exchange idea.
Then she saw Teensy open her gift: a metal Dora lunch box. Suddenly, Kenna was willing to trade her wrapped gift from home for something else. Teensy was only too happy to hand the lunch box over to her sister and experience the thrill of opening another present (Kenna had refused to open the one that had been handed to her). Teensy was giddy to receive a Hello Kitty notepad, stamp pad, and rubber stamps.
A Christmas convert! You'd never know that moments before this photo was taken, Mackenna was refusing to participate in the gift exchange. Oh, what magic a Dora lunch box can perform.
My Teensy, whom my friend Laurrel refers to as "Malibu Barbie," was a naughty naughty girl yesterday. She cut her hair. By herself. She truly has the wrong mother for this to be any kind of acceptable act.
Upon discovering the crime, I promptly sent the child to her room for her own safety. I tried to count to ten. That didn't work. I ended somewhere around 1700 and went upstairs to interrogate the perp. Here's the low-down: she went into the kitchen and snagged a pair of scissors, took them up to her room where she gave herself a private make-over and then discarded the ten-inch corn silk tresses in the bathroom trash.
Here's the real kicker. This isn't the first offense of this little perpetrator with scissors and hair. Almost a year ago she and her best friend, Selena, played "beauty shop" once and cut each other's hair. Selena, being laid-back and rather docile, barely got a few snips out of Marlee's hair while Teensy chopped off all but an inch of length off the entire back of Selena's head. That day I cried for an hour and forty minutes straight. My daughter had massacred my friend's kid's hair! I thought that the memory of my shock/horror/anger/disappointment/rage/despair that day was enough to live in her memory forever and that she would never even look at a pair of scissors again. Boy, did I think wrong!
In her little four year-old brain she didn't think I would notice. That she gave herself a mullet. On ninety-percent of the left side of her head. Again, wrong mother. I am a hair-doer. I just am. My favorite time in all of my harried single-parent Sundays is the half-hour in the morning when I coiffe my girls. And that stinker has ruined it!
Okay, she hasn't totally ruined it. In fact, if you've seen her, you probably didn't notice. That, dear friends and devoted readers, is not a testament to the damage being minor, but rather to my skills with hair being major. But I am going to be somewhat limited in my stylings for the next...five years. I'll cope.
There are worse problems in the world. I know this. That said, I would be lying if I said I'd hadn't reacted badly, spoken harshly (including a vow that Santa would be pulling a stocking stuffer from her sock post haste!), and shed tears over Teensy's ugly new 'do.
I repented of yesterday's severe reaction to her hair. I really did. Tonight, no lie, when I was in the kitchen making dinner, I overheard Teensy talking to Kenna and she said the phrase, "when I cut my hair again." Can you believe this child? Happily, I report that I didn't raise my voice when I reminded her that she will never, ever cut her own hair again. Let's all hope that she got it...that time.
*I'm sure that you would like to see pictures of the striking new style my Teense is sporting, but I simply cannot "reward" her action with a photo shoot. Tracy does have pictures of Selena's make-over from last winter though.
My Michael and I are what you might call "Real Tree" people. Yes, I vacuum needles through August. Yes, we have to check the water and keep the level up. But to us, that's just part of Christmas. We love the smell of pine and we love choosing a new tree each year. It's a whole family affair when we take the kids and pick out a tree. (In all actuality, I am very hands-off during the choosing process. Michael cares more than I about the proper height/shape/width proportion, so I just let him at it.) Some years, we go to a tree farm to cut our own fresh tree. This was one of those years. We were up in PA over Thanksgiving, so we stopped at a tree farm in my hometown and grabbed a tree before coming home to MD.
The kids were thrilled when the farmer handed Michael a saw and gave each of them a candy cane to munch on while we strolled through the trees, looking for the perfect one. With the cold air biting us, we made quick work of choosing a tree worthy of our Christmas celebrations. Michael had it sawed down in no time and carried it back to the car like a real He-Man!
Mason was very willing to help his dad tie the tree to the roof of the car. He was dashing around throwing and pulling ropes with a smile on his face until the job was done. What a big boy he is becoming!
I have to say, it's hard to get a perspective on how tall a tree is without the benefit of a ceiling as a reference point. After we got home, Michael actually had to cut two feet off the length of our tree so it would fit in our living room!
Of course, decorating it is our favorite part. We have a hodge-podge tree. I think it's perfect for our family. It would never pass in a department store but I think it's beautiful. While we are trimming, I love to hear the "I remember making this when I was three!" and the "Mom, who gave this to me?" I love to put my little Romanian people on it, one of my favorite mission souvenirs. I think of my aunt who made me an ornament every year growing up while we hang them on the tree. I love to see the lights twinkle in the window as I drive up the street. It's part of the magic of Christmas.
This morning my little girls and I went on a grand adventure to Story Time at the local library. In addition to listening to fun Santa stories, singing great holiday tunes, and making an adorable reindeer tree ornament, we had a visitor from The North Pole: one Kris Kringle!
Mackenna was thrilled to see him. "Hi, Santa! Hi, Santa! Hi!" (with vigorous waving). Marlee, in true form, squeezed my hand until it was bloodless and buried her face in my armpit. When it came time to get a snapshot with The Jolly Elf, Mackenna got afraid. So, we have this photo of all three of us with Santa Claus:
To be fair, by the time we left, Mackenna had conquered her short-lived fear of Santa. "Bye, Santa! Bye, Santa! Bye!" she called to him and even gave him a high-five on her way out the door.
Quotation of the Month
There is no way to be a perfect mother, and a million ways to be a good one.
-Jill Churchill
