My second nerdy injury in under a week.

So, if you suffer through this blog, you most likely read my recent entry about my (wussy) trip to urgent care. Well, because I am all kinds of awesome, I've managed to give myself another (nerdy/wussy) injury, less than a week after my last one.

I've decided to start painting again, and busted out my old art supplies earlier this week. I've been doing some sketching with my charcoal pencils in preparation for a few paintings I want to try. My pencils are old, so I managed to wear down the tips really fast. I lost my sharpener, so yesterday I dragged Ben to a craft store with me to buy a new pencil sharpener. You know, the old school, insert pencil, twist by hand ones? Last night, I sat down to sharpen my pencils, and decided it would be a good idea to sharpen my entire collection. By hand.

Turns out, it's a really quick and efficient way to give your self a fatty thumb blister.

Nerdy Injury #1: Cut open lip with the light you use to read in bed.

Nerdy Injury #2: Blister from sharpening pencils!

Sheesh.

My (Wussy) Trip to Urgent Care

So, Monday morning started out much like any other morning. Ben got up, showered, woke me up to say morning prayers before he left for work around 7am, and I stayed in bed a little longer. I was still half asleep, but needed to test my blood sugar & take some insulin. I turned on this little flashlight thing to help me see that I keep next to my bed and usually use to read by at night.

I must have set the light on my covers while I was fiddling with my insulin pump, because after I was done fiddling, I swooshed the covers back towards me to try to tuck myself back in bed for a few more minutes of sleep, when WHACK! That stupid light smacked me right in the mouth!

At first I thought I had cracked a tooth, because it was so loud! When I felt around my mouth with my tongue, I realized all my teeth were still intact, but I started to taste blood. Grrrrreat. So, I stumbled out of bed (insulin pump trailing behind) and into the bathroom only to see a gigantic, fat, bruised lip with a cut that was bleeding like crazy.

And, instead of rationally dealing with it, I TOTALLY FREAKED OUT! I attribute this to two things:

1) Head/face wounds bleed a LOT more than normal cuts, so they can seem deceptively severe.

2) A few years ago, a co-worker of mine had a daughter that got a small cut on her lip. They were just going to brush it off & let it heal, but decided to go to the doctor just in case, and she ended up having to have a plastic surgeon stitch it up! She explained to us, that while the cut was small and only needed a few stitches, they had to make sure the stitches were super well-placed because of the vermilion boarder on your lip. If you don't stitch it back together just-so, you can end up looking like you have a wonky lip once your lip heals.

I did NOT want to have a messed up vermilion boarder (yes, I'm vain). And, I was too chicken to try to determine how deep the cut was, because it was bleeding all over the place.

So, I called Ben. And made him come home & take me to Urgent Care. And when I got off the phone and was waiting for him to come home, I cried. Hard! In my defense, it really hurt, I had basically woken myself up by smacking myself in the face with a hard plastic object, and it was only 730AM--NOT by best time on a normal day, let alone on a day when I try to beat myself up.

To make a long story short(er), we went to Urgent Care, I iced the crap out of it while waiting to be seen by the doctor, it wasn't deep at all, it didn't even need one stitch, and I'm pretty sure I was the laughing stock of Urgent Care that day. "Hey, did you see that lady who came in for a paper cut on her lip? Haa haa ha ha ha ha!"

Yeah.

Finally!

Whew! A lot has been going on in the Carper household these past few weeks, which is why you haven't heard from me in a while.

Most notably, I finally got both my new insulin pump and my new continuous glucose monitor (CGM)! And today I officially started pumping and CGM-ing!

I will post pictures soon, and will probably write a detailed post about it on my diabetes blog, but can I just tell you how much I'm already loving this? If only I could have had this technology earlier, I think it would have saved a lot of my heart/nerve/liver/kidney/eye cells. ;)

In non-diabetes related news, our good friends in our ward, the D-family, just had a teeny tiny baby girl at the beginning of March, to which we are the unofficial godparents. :) I think we were awarded this title mostly because we helped her mom survive some seriously awful two-weeks of early pregnancy while her dad was in another country. But teeny baby G is super cute, so we'll gladly accept whatever responsibilities come with Mormom God-parenting. (Mostly, I think it just involves doting, at which we are very adept.)

Okay, that's all for now. These next couple of weeks will probably just involve a lot of blood sugar testing, highs, lows and doctors visits, so I probably won't post much on this blog, because it will just be plain boring and tedious. Test, high, bolus, low, eat, high, test, low, bolus, etc. That's just how things go with a new pump until you get all the basal rates right, so I won't bore you to death with the details. But, if anything exciting happens, I'll be sure to let you know!

Hand Carts-Or my yearly political rant. Consider yourself warned.

To quote my friend K's grandma (I think), the world is "going to hell in a hand cart." Or, at least that's what it seems like these days. While I usually try to keep a positive spin on life, because otherwise I'll fall flat on my face and die instantly, there are a few things that have just totally disheartened me lately and/or made my blood boil. In no particular order, they are:

1. I feel like since the moment I turned 18, everything I come in contact to in my life is "out to get me." Every decision about anything remotely important (or even non-important ones) have to be scrutinized with a microscope to make sure no body is trying to screw me over. Case in point: banking. From what I know of banking back in the day (at least, from what Mary Poppins taught be about banks back in the day), it used to be that you put your money in a bank because they were trustworthy, and you felt like they would be responsible with your money and keep it safe. Now days, it seems like you have to pick the bank that will screw you over the least, the one with the least amount of fine print or the least amount of hidden fees, etc. And it's not just banks. It's rental agreements, mortgages, utility bills, insurance or medical bills, and the list goes on. Just an observation.

2. If you haven't been keeping up with the news, Ohio is one of the states where there are big anti-labor union bills being pushed through the legislature, and there are subsequently massive amounts of protests going on every day at the state house here in C-bus. This bills, SB5, infuriates me more than I can even begin to explain. All the arguments for it are totally inane, and while it might end up helping the state's budget deficit in the long run, I don't understand why public workers, particularly those that work in education, are first on the chopping block? What happened to "I believe the children are the future?"

The big argument our governor is using in favor of SB5 is that public workers pay so much less for their benefits than private sector workers and that they get higher wages, too. So, SB5 is supposed to close that gap and make things more "fair." It's no secret that government jobs come with much better benefits that most private sector blue-collar jobs - that's why people take them in the first place. What I don't understand is why we're not trying to pass legislation that will bring the private sector jobs up to the level of the public sector jobs, instead of trying to pull a whole sector of workers down. I also don't understand why we're trying to cut benefits to education and to blue collar workers (those that belong to labor unions) to close the gap in our budget deficit, instead of tapping those who can actually afford it already. Why are we still giving tax breaks to rich people and huge corporations? Oh, yeah, because it supposedly "creates jobs and grows the economy." (Also, I hate that phrase "grow the economy.")

But, really, all of those arguments are moot anyway, because the real reason all of these states are trying to pass these anti-labor union bills are because the Koch brothers, and other Big Corporations like them, are pulling the strings in the GOP. (And that is my Glen Beck-like conspiracy theory rant for the day. Except my rant is founded on more factual things, like the Wisconson governors actual conversation with who he thought was a Koch brother. Ha.)

3. The "Heart Beat Bill". Some members of the Ohio legislature are currently trying to pass a bill that makes it illegal to get an abortion after the first detectable heart beat of the fetus. According to the bill, that is usually around the eighteenth day of pregnancy. Let me first of all state that I love babies, I'm not for abortion, but that I am pro-choice. How can that be, you say? It's easy. I don't think people should get abortions, but I do believe in a woman's right to exercise her own agency, but that she must accept the consequences that that will bring. The thing that I don't like about this particular bill is , that it totally ignores the precedent set by Roe v Wade. Hands down. Hasn't this issue already been decided? Like, back in 1973? If it passes, it will be the strictest abortion legislation in the entire nation. This is why this bill makes me upset. Not to mention my personal belief that this bill is setting women's rights back a billion years.

4.I was going to talk about what's going on in the middle east, but I'm exhausted and I think I need to calm down, so I'll just save that for another day.

5. If I have offended any of you, I'm sorry.

Okay, my rant is over. Done. I feel better now. I really didn't write all of that to convince any of you, dear readers, to think the way I do. I don't really care what your political views are, because they're your views. All I care is that you vote. Mostly, I just wrote it because now that I got it all out of my head, I feel better.

And, I'm off to bed. Zzzzzzzzzzzzzz.

A Pictorial Update

Because I am lazy, and also because I have a load of pictures to share, here is a mostly pictorial account of the last several months. Enjoy!

In order, they are:

1. My first batch of cinnamon rolls I ever made!!! And they were seriously amazing. Mmmm.

2. We visited the Tanners over New Years! I'd never been to Louisville before, but it's a really cool city, and the Tanners are the best! Unfortunately I got super sick and we had to leave early, but it was great!

3. We finally got rid of my Little Red Car! So sad! We donated her to the Goodwill Auto Auction, so hopefully she'll go to a good cause. Sniff, sniff.

4. & 5. I made these bags! They were part of a service project another lady in my ward was doing and she needed help sewing! It was SUPER easy, and the bags are the perfect size and reversible! I'm going to make some just for me!

6. My sweet husband got me my favorite flowers today, just for the heck of it! That's right, he's the best. Be jealous, be very jealous.

Ok! And that brings us up to date! Hooray!

Icepocalypse Update

Isn't this storm crazy?! I've heard that 1/3 of the U.S. has been affected by this gigantic storm! Ridiculous!

Well, the ice came, and the freezing rain came, and then more of it, and more of it, and more of it came!

And on top of that, last night around 4:30pm, I started smelling gas. Again (this happened last winter too). And we called the gas company, they came out, and sure enough, our heater was leaking! So, they shut it off! In this winter storm! We called our landlord, and he sent the repair man right out (well, he didn't get there until about 8 or 9), which was crazy, because the roads were so bad and the ice was really coming down by then! So, I was really impressed that he came out in the storm anyway! He told us that he doesn't mind it, because he doesn't like leaving anyone with out heat! So nice! Also, his repair service is called "Alpha & Omega" Heating Repair and has a picture of the peace dove and a cross on it, so I'm thinking his religiosity might have something to do with how nice he was! But, even though he most obviously had God on his side, he didn't have the part he needed to fix the heater! He said he'd come back the next day, but you could tell he felt so bad that he was going to have to leave us without heat.

Luckily, we just bought a space heater last Saturday, so we knew we would be OK if our electricity stayed on. Things were pretty dicey last night, the power kept flickering, and we were seeing reports on the news that the power was out all over the city (over 50,000 people lost power in our county alone!). Even though our lights flickered a bunch, and at one point the power actually turned off and came back on really quickly, we never lost power all night long! Hurray for small (or large) miracles!

And on top of ALL OF THAT, our back kitchen door frame/kitchen roof & basement started leaking! This has never happened before in our house, even though we've had some pretty intense rain storms. We contacted our landlord, and he said it was probably just caused by ice that was forcing water to drain in ways it wouldn't normally drain (like ice covering a gutter or something), and to just keep it as sopped up as we could and that he'd just fix any problems the water caused. So, between some carefully placed buckets & towels, we kept the leaks at bay, and the only real damage was a little discoloration on the ceiling in the kitchen. The leaks stopped around 11 last night.

The weather warmed up a lot really early this morning, and melted some of the ice on the power lines and trees. There's still some ice on them, but not as much as last night. Ben was able to chip the ice off of his car a little easier today, and get to work. The main roads were just fine, and he waited until about 8:30 or 9 before going in, just to be on the safe side.

The heating guy came back this morning, and our heat is now on again and pumping, and no longer poisoning us! :)

Right now, we're starting to get some snow. It's really started coming down something fierce in the last hour or so, and we have a high wind advisory until 6pm tonight. I think we're supposed to have wind gusts between 30-60 mph. So, unless the high winds knock a branch down or a power line, we should be OK! I think we've ridden out the worst of this storm.

Keep your fingers crossed that the wind won't make us lose power! I just got a call from one of my visiting teachees (an older lady in a nursing home), and she said the power went out at their nursing home last night, and they brought them all extra blankets and told them to stay in bed! Crazy! She's OK, though, and the power is back on. Whew!

Hey, it could be worse. We could be in Chicago, where there are 16 inches of snow on the ground and rolling blackouts across the whole city. I'll count my blessings!

"Icepocalypse"

So, we're hunkering down here in good ole' O-H-I-O for a nasty ice storm. We got the first wave of it last night, starting around 8pm. It took my dear, sweet husband 30 minutes to chisel his car free of the ice enough to drive it to work this morning. So far the roads have been decent, but not great. Apparently the worst is supposed to come tonight. There's already about a quarter of an inch of ice over everything, including the power lines, so we're just kind of waiting around to see what will happen tonight.

Here is a picture of the power lines (sorry, kind of blurry, but you can still see the ice.




And Here is a picture of the ice all over our parking lot:



Columbus is notorious for bad power outages, so we're a little worried that we might lose power at some point. A couple of years ago when we got residual winds from Hurricane Ike, we went with our power for almost a week! A week, people! And that wasn't the worst of it, some parts of Columbus didn't have power for two weeks! Ridiculous. But, we've been pretty good about getting ready for disasters around here lately, so I feel pretty prepared. We've got enough food & water for awhile, we have ways to heat up water if we need to, our car has a full gas tank, and we've even got a plan & supplies to make little make-shift indoor heaters! So, now we just wait. Hopefully it won't be as bad as the news makes it out to be. (Almost nothing is as bad as the local news makes it out to be.)

In totally unrelated news, we went to Ikea for my birthday, and purchased this gem (microwave cart):


How did I ever go through life without this? Seriously, I have so much counter space now, I don't know what to do with it!

Anyway, stay warm, peeps. It's cold out there!