April Showers bring more May Showers?

Holy Hannah, have we had some crazy storms here the past few days. We just can't seem to get a weather break for more than a day! The month of May has consisted of two straight weeks of rain (and subsequent flooding in a lot of the lower lying areas), followed by about 2 days of sunshine. Then more rain, and now a whole WEEK of storms!

Luckily none of these storms have spawned tornadoes in Columbus, but there have been tornadoes north of us, south of us, east of us, and west of us. Ridiculous! We are on pins and needles here, people!

Luckily, we are well prepared for a disaster. Well, compared to most people, probably. We have 72 hour kits, and a bunch of water all stored in our nice basement. Oh, how grateful I am to have a basement in a state that gets so many tornadoes! After we saw all the footage from the Alabama and Joplin tornadoes, I told Ben that as long as we still live in tornado alley, we WILL live in a place with a basement. That's the only way you could survive a really bad tornado!

OK, enough about tornadoes, already! In fun news, we are going down to North Carolina tomorrow to spend the weekend there! Ben's sister is leaving for her mission soon to go to THAILAND and she is going through the temple for the first time this weekend. So, we are going to go down for that! We are SO excited for her, she is going to be the BEST missionary! Also, because she is going to Thailand, that means all of the kids in the Carper family who went on missions got called to foreign missions! Ben and another brother of his both went to Brazil. Ben's oldest brother went to the Philippines, and his younger brother went to New Zealand-Mandarin Speaking! Between them all, they know a bunch of languages!

Also, one of my cousins just got called on a mission to South Dakota! And another one of my cousins is currently on a mission in Minnesota! And all these new missionaries are women! I'm so proud of my cousins/sister-in-law! Way to represent the ladies!

OK, that's it. I'll keep you all posted on the storms.

Wussy Injury Update

Remember that time I went to Urgent Care for cutting my lip open with my reading light? And the doctors probably secretly mocked me? And then told me it was no big deal and that I didn't need a stitch and that it would heal up just fine and in a couple of days?

Well, it's been about a month, and I still have a scar. And I think it's going to be permanent. Stupid Urgent Care.

Battlefield: Cincinnati!

Favorite Cousin Erin, reporting in from Battlefield Cincinnati!

I have been honored and privileged this week to serve under the command of the "Little Warrior" Marky Jeanes and his troops (a.k.a. Lynette, his mom)! Mark came out to see a special doctor at Cincinnati Children's hospital who knew how to do a special test. This hospital is Numero Uno in the nation for GI/Colorectal stuff, so our not-so-little anymore "Little Warrior" was in great hands!

Mark and Netti arrived Tuesday afternoon at the Cincinnati/Kentucky airport, and left Sunday morning. Tuesday night we got to spend hangin' out and discovering all the cool stuff at the Cincinnati Ronald McDonald house. That place was AWESOME! Wednesday through Friday were spent on the battle front at Cincinnati Children's hospital, during which Mark led the troops valiantly and bravely to a glorious victory Friday afternoon! It rained during the whole "battle", but was totally sunny and beautiful when Mark and the troops got out of the hospital. During the hospital stay we spent a lot of time watching cool movies like Green Beret & Independence Day, and we shared annoying videos with each other like "Annoying Orange" & "Friday".

After bustin outta that joint Friday afternoon, Mark & the troops spent some time in the beautiful Cincinnati sunshine! Saturday, favorite cousin-in-law Ben came down and we all went to visit the Cincinnati Zoo! We got mooned by a lot of animals! We followed the Zoo trip with a trip to Micky D's for a Black Angus Burger and shakes. Mmmm mmmm! We really were lovin' it! After an awesome game of hide-and-go-seek in the super cool RMH playground, where Mark & cousin-in-law Ben showed off there amazing hiding skillz, Ben & Erin had to leave to go back to Columbus. And the next day, Mark & Lynette flew back to the home base in Utah.

While we loved having the Little Warrior and his support troops here for their deployment in the Ohio, we sincerely hope the next time we see them, they won't have to have any hospitals involved! :)

Marky, it was a pleasure and honor serving under your command! And, one more thing:

Wazzzzzuuuuuuuuupppppp!!!

I'm trying to stay awake so I will blog.

I'm trying to stay awake as long as I can, because we have a gigantic line of tornado producing thunderstorms heading our way. Because Ohio is awesome, these storms will be hitting the Columbus area around 2am, right in the middle of when we're sleeping! Ben could sleep through a train coming through our bedroom, and I can't sleep without a fan on, which blocks out the noise of the tornado warning sirens. So, I'm going to stay up and watch the weather reports to make sure we'll be OK and so I can hear the tornado sirens if they go off. We live right next to a high school where one set of the city's sirens are located, so when they go off we can hear them nice and loud, unless we're sleeping! So, I'm trying to do things to keep myself awake, and blogging is on the list!

Here are things of note in the Carper household, in no particular order:

1. I have rediscovered Fresca. And consequently am making it my personal mission to drink enough of that sweet nectar to fully stock up our supply of emergency water storage containers.

2. We bought a car. Turns out we both have amazing credit (my credit score is one point better than Ben's--I'm just sayin') and we got a great interest rate on a loan through our Credit Union. And we desperately needed a new car. So, good credit + tax return + desperate need = New Car for the Carpers! It's a 2008 Ford Focus, it is a not-ugly color of green, and we love it. It makes the pot-hole ridden streets of Columbus much more pleasant to drive! And it has a CD player with an auxiliary port for our iPod. And apparently it has some sort of voice "sync"-ing thing that allows you to use your voice to have the car turn stuff on, or make calls on your phone. I don't think we'll ever use that. Now if only we can keep this car from being broken into, everything will be great! Knock on wood. Here is a picture of it. We've already driven it to Cincinnati and back.

3. We went to Cincinnati! We went to visit our good friend Mary Ellen (a former grad. school buddy) who now lives and works in Cinci. She has season tickets to the Reds games, and invited us down for a Saturday game. It was both Ben and my second MLB game EVER! They played the Pittsburgh Pirates, and WON! And there was even a GRAND SLAM during the game! It was freezing cold and a little bit rainy, but we had great seats and enjoyed all the classic baseball game fare like overpriced hot dogs and singing "Take me out to the ball game" during the 7th inning stretch. Awesome. Thanks Mary Ellen!

4. I might end up having up to 6 piano students in the fall! One of my fellow church members teaches piano, and has too many students already and wants to send some potential students my way. Yes, please!

And that's all for now.

I'm so tired. I hope I can make it until the storms pass . . . Zzzzzzzzzzzzzz.

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!