Amazing Race All-Star Edition?

I just read on TWoP (and this article) that there are rumors about an Amazing Race All-Star edition. That would be great. What would not be great would be if I had to again deal with teams that I couldn't stand.

Topping this list would be:
1. B.J. and Tyler - the 'hippies' and winners of the last season of TAR. I've watched all 9 seasons of TAR, and I've never found another team that annoyed me quite this much. Tyler apparently wrote:

"What would be ironic is if someone were putting together an all-star version of the race and contacted teams like [now married former The Amazing Race 7 competitors] Lynn [Warren] & Alex [Ali] and [fellow seventh season competitors] Brian & Greg [Smith], but did not contact us, the most popular and amazing team of all time, about it."

Most popular and amazing team of all time, my ass. If I have to watch these two morons for another season, I might just gouge my eyeballs out with a spoon.

2. Jonathan and Victoria - the abusive husband and his wife. They are married, right? I think I blocked out everything I knew about them.

3. Charla and Mirna - The midget (dwarf? I don't know!) and her irritating cousin. Charla, the one who was the actual midget/dwarf was fine, it was her cousin Mirna who I couldn't stand. Constantly haranguing Charla, bitching about how the other teams weren't babying them enough, please. Its a race. When Phil got teary during their elimination, it was tears of joy.

Wow. I really can't think of that many teams that I really, passionately hated. I'm probably just forgetting. I didn't like the Guidos at the time, but have come to accept them.

I would like to see:
Colin/Christie
Hayden/Aaron
Kevin/Drew
Rob/Brennan
Brian/Greg
Kris/Jon

I'm sure no one else who reads this watches this show as obsessively as I do, except Becky. So, what do you think?

Someone just take me out back and shoot me

I made it through most of my pregnancy with nary a problem - some heartburn, some sciatica, but nothing major. Not so these last few weeks. Now I'm completely falling apart!

This week we went on our tour of the labor and delivery unit at the hospital where we'll have Studs. That was on Tuesday night. It was very exciting. Brian wheeled me around in a wheelchair, as walking and standing for extended periods of time are not my strong point lately. Also, wheeling me around in a wheelchair is not Brian's strong point. I kept thinking he was going to run my other foot into something. So anyhow, we saw the laboring rooms (nice!) and the postpartum rooms (not as nice!) and the nursery, which had a few little tiny babies in it. Holy crap - we're going to have to take one of those home with us in 7 weeks or so. And of course, we learned about how to check into the hospital and all that.

Well, on Thursday night we got to PRACTICE checking into the hospital. I started to feel sick at around 4pm that day. My stomach was really crampy and sore and I was having some... GI issues. I just wanted to go home, but I didn't feel like I was going to be able to drive myself, so I hung around at work for a while. I struggled with trying to decide whether I should call the doctor or not. I was having some major stomach cramps and some other possible symptoms of preterm labor, except I wasn't really sure whether these were contractions or just stomach pains. Like I know what contractions feel like! I have no idea. I decided to call, and the doctor said I should drink a few glasses of water and lay down for a while and call her back if it didn't get better. By this point it was 6:30, and I REALLY had to go home to let the dog out (Brian had to be at a dinner for work, so he wasn't coming home), and also to do this whole laying down thing, so I managed to drive myself home.

When I got home I drank my water, laid on the couch and starting taking notes of how frequently I was having the severe stomach pains. I did this for about 45 minutes and then I started throwing up, so I figured this was a stomach issue and not a baby issue. I called the doctor back and gave her all this information, but since the stomach pains had been coming at fairly regular 4 minute intervals, she told me to come in just to make sure I wasn't having contractions. Brian was on his way home from dinner, and we went to the hospital as soon as he got back - about 9pm. We registered (we hadn't gotten to our pre-registration form yet) and they took us up to labor and delivery. The nurse hooked me up to some monitors to check on the baby and to check for contractions. Well, luckily it wasn't contractions and the baby seemed fine. I tried to drink some water and threw up some more. They had given me one of those little kidney shaped basins, but that was not big enough and I ended up overflowing all over myself, more than once. Poor Brian was trying to empty out the basin and keep up with me, but there was no chance. So yay, now I am sitting in the hospital bed covered in puke. The call button wasn't working or something, so no nurses came. Brian was digging around in the cabinets in the room trying to find some new sheets or something - he ended up finding some towels that we spread over the wet spots on the mattress. Finally a nurse came back in and helped us out. They gave me some anti-nausea medication and some ginger ale, which I was able to keep down, unlike the water. We stayed there until about midnight when I asked to go home. They let me because I hadn't thrown up for about 2 hours and had kept down some fluids, so they sent me home with some more anti-nausea meds and instructions to call back if I continued to not be able to keep any fluids down - the biggest concern being that I was really dehydrated which can trigger contractions.

So I'm glad it wasn't a baby-related issue. I hadn't planned on being back at labor and delivery so soon, but the nurses and all were really nice and I felt better knowing that the doctors err on the side of caution and wanted me to come in. I was still sick for the rest of the night and spent most of Friday sleeping, eating saltines, and drinking ginger ale and gatorade. Brian was suppossed to be at UNC giving a seminar, but they were really nice and rescheduled it so that he could stay home with me. I guess it was some 24 hr stomach bug? Or something I ate? Who knows.

Broken foot-o-rama: the pictures!

I know you've been sitting there for the last few days thinking to yourself... 'Its all well and good that Lisa broke her foot and has a cast, but what good is this to me if I cannot see this myself, for my own amusement?' I'm here to tell you that your wait has ended - I had Brian take a picture of me this morning.

First, we have a picture of the toes. I didn't get a chance to take a picture of my foot before the cast went on, mostly because on that fateful Friday morning, I never suspected that I'd never see my foot again. Lucky for you my toes are hanging out of the front of my cast (so that I can constantly stub them) and you can at least see what they look like. Remember, I didn't hurt my toes, but they still look bad. Of course, my pedicure looks good though. Phew.



Next we have your full-body picture. In retrospect, this wasn't the best location to take the picture, because I'm wearing a brown shirt and my belly then gets obscured by the dark bathroom at the end of the hall. We might have to do a re-shoot, because I think you really need to see both of these features clearly to appreciate the full ridiculousness of this whole thing.



Finally, here's my 32 weeks belly picture.



I went to the OB yesterday, and he said (after pushing on my belly for a while) that the baby's head was now in the down position. Locked and loaded!! I'm going to trust him. I couldn't tell you where the baby's head was, thats for sure. There's some big body part (which I'm guessing is the baby butt) near my belly button that moves around sometimes (from one side of me to the other). The other night, the butt pushed itself so far out that I thought a baby butt might explode out of my belly.

Also, the OB said that if I needed to get a pin put in my foot, that was certainly do-able. So I called my orthopedist yesterday to discuss this, but I'm still waiting for him to call back. For some reason I don't think he's in the office on Mondays. I'd rather do that now for several reasons: a) hate the stupid cast, b) don't want to have to recover from a broken foot twice - once now, once when I end up needing the pin after I have the baby anyway and c) did I mention how much I hate the stupid cast? So hopefully sometime soon I will be having foot surgery and having a cast taken off of my stupid foot.

WHEN WORLDS COLLIDE!!!

As you've probably seen, I've got a whole list of other people's blogs over there. Those are all the blogs that I check every day. Most of those people I actually know, but not all of them. We've got Roger and Brian (who are friends of Karl's), and we've got Annie and Adrienne. Annie found my blog during the Naughty Nauseef discussion, and now we keep up on eachothers blogs. Annie actually lives in Durham, so we're hoping to get together when schedules permit. And Adrienne is Annie's friend, who lives in Baltimore. Where, incidentally, Karl/Roger/Brian also live.
I got an email from Adrienne yesterday. She plays in the Hopkins Symphony Orchestra, which I'm a little bit jealous that I don't get to be in too. Oh, especially since I see you're playing De Falla - 'El Amor Brujo', which I love. We played it when I was in state honors orchestra, or MYSO, or something. Oh, thats not true actually. We played 'El Sombrero de Tres Picos', but I have a recording of that and 'El Amor Brujo' is the other piece on the CD. Thats why I got confused.
Anyhow! Also apparently in the JHSO is Roger (I think Karl's wife Aimee is too), and the other day at practice Roger met Adrienne. That is pretty crazy. The whole blog universe is collapsing in on itself!

A big pink cast

Well, I just got back from my trip to the orthopedist. Who, first of all, was horrified that they didn't fit me in until today, 6 days after I broke the damn thing. I had to have another X-ray to make sure that the bone hadn't moved any further out given that I'd been hobbling around on it since I broke it. Which it hadn't. But that still didn't change the inevitable end to this: I have a cast now. Hurrah.

Actually, I have a cast now, and we'll see how it goes but I may still end up needing the surgery and the screw to get it to heal. Apparently the broken off part was pulled pretty far away from where it should be. That seemed to be sort of the determining factor in how it was treated. If it hadn't been that bad, I would have stayed with the stupid velcro shoe until it healed. But it was pulled far enough out that he didn't think the shoe would give it enough support. He said that if I wasn't pregnant, he probably would have just wanted to do the surgery straight off, but since I was, he thought we should try the cast first and then see how it heals. I asked how long I was going to be in the cast for, and he laughed and said that he might meet me in the delivery room to take it off. HA. so its going to be 6-8 weeks. Terrific. At least I got to pick the color of the cast, which is (of course) pink.

The news of needing a cast very nearly triggered another bursting into tears episode, but I did manage to hold off until I got to the car and called Brian. Next, I called my mom who said 'I guess you thought your blog wasn't interesting enough.' Haha.

I'm guessing if people laughed at big old pregnant me hobbling around on the little velcro shoe, they're REALLY going to laugh at me when I've got a cast on. It goes all the way up to my knee too. I didn't know it needed to go up that far, but what do I know anyhow? Nothing.

And just so you know? If you see me, you're totally signing it.

Foot, jackasses, and maternity pants.

Well, things are starting to calm down a bit around here. The out-of-town visits are coming to an end (until Thanksgiving), the review I was working on (and immensely stressed about) is almost done. Now I'm working on my paper again, and I have to give a talk on the 30th. And thats about it as far as work goes. Phew!

My foot still hurts a lot and is all bizarrely bruised. The bruise is a traveling bruise too - when this first happened, my toes and ankle were completely unaffected, but now the bruise has migrated into toes AND ankle. Its lovely. I'll take a picture of it for you. I just hope you're not eating when you look at it. I have been managing to hobble around work, some days are better than others. I can tell today is going to be a bad day because its already hurting pretty badly, and I haven't even been walking around yet. I had a few days of feeling extremely sorry for myself. On more than one occasion, someone would ask me how I was doing and I would burst into tears. Which people love, I know. My friend at work was teasing me about being in a bad mood, but I think if she were 7 months pregnant with a broken foot, she might be a little bit pissy too. Anyhow, I'm feeling a little better about life now, so its probably safe to talk to me.

Last night was the Project Runway finale, which we'll get to watch today when it comes out on iTunes. I had every intention of not finding out who won, until I went over to E! online and saw a news headline telling me. Well, damn. And a word to the wise, if you don't know who won yet either, you might not want to read the rest of this paragraph because you'll be able to figure it out. Anyhow, I thought it was early enough in the AM that they wouldn't have anything up yet, but I guess not. Oh well. It was not who I wanted to win but who I thought might win anyhow, even though he's a humungous jackass. I guess this still stands: If you are evil, you will win.

I went maternity clothes shopping yesterday which was totally not fun. I actually went maternity clothes RETURNING yesterday. I have a bunch of maternity pants, but they're mostly shorts and capris. Now that its starting to get cooler (although its 85 today) I need some long pants. I'm having a hard time finding what I want, because now I'm big enough to really be picky about the kind of waistband on the pants - I only want that full panel, thanks. Mid-belly panel is workable as long as its not a crappy one that keeps folding over. I looked around a bit, but I actually had a hard time finding something that fit these criteria. But when Melissa was here, I bought a pair of jeans from Mimi Maternity. I paid full price for them ($68) which I hate because I'm only going to be wearing them for 2 more months + some postpartum time. I've had a fairly difficult time finding clothes, but not impossible. I have been able to wear size L pants for most of pregnancy but now I really need the XL, although many stores don't carry this size, which is crappy. Mimi Maternity, in general, does not carry XL, but they do apparently have a few styles that come in XL. So I got pretty much the only pair of jeans in the store that was a size XL. I put them on last week, and the little adjustable drawstring in the top broke the first time I tried to adjust it. Of course, I was already out of the house at this point, so the rest of the evening was spent hiking my pants back up. Maternity stores have crazy return policies. You can't return anything that you bought on sale. You have only 10 days to return things. You can't get a refund, only an exchange or a merchandise credit. Its a little bit ridiculous. I was still within my 10 day return period, so I wanted to return the broken pants. Since I didn't want to do any more walking than needed, I called them first to clarify their return policy for damaged items. It turns out that damaged items can only be exchanged for other items, you can't even get a credit. I was worried about this because I knew there weren't even that many things in the store in my size to start with. What if I couldn't find anything? I can't wear the shirts in there either, because no shirt encompasses my two-sizes-bigger-than-prepregnancy chest. Anyhow, I hobbled around and tried on practically every pair of L and XL pants in the store. I ended up getting two pairs of corduroys (which are in addition to a pair I bought the first time around). It was a lot of fun to try on pants with a broken foot, I have to tell you.

Grace is my middle name

I'm incredibly graceful. I'm being sarcastic. When I was in college, I was on the dance team, and I don't think my mom completely believed me until I showed her some video of us performing. Now that I'm 7 months pregnant, I'm even more graceful than usual.

So, this weekend we had all these visitors: my brother and his girlfriend were here Thursday-Sunday for a wedding, and Eve was here (well, she's still here as I'm writing this) Friday-Monday, also for a wedding. This is a popular weekend for weddings in the Triangle area, I guess. On Saturday, Brian and I went out for lunch with Jim and Sara. We went down to Cosmic Cantina for some awesome burritos. Cosmic Cantina is up on the 2nd floor, so you have to climb two flights of stairs to get there.

As soon as you walk in, there is a small step down to the main floor. I'm not sure what I did exactly, but I missed the step somehow. I felt myself falling and I tried to make myself fall backwards, so I didn't land on Studs or anything. Brian and Jim caught me too, but I was a little too heavy for them to fully rescue. But I did fall pretty slowly. And my left foot hurt like hell. It started swelling up immediately. On the top of the foot, right on the outside, there was a big lump that eventually took over most of the top of my foot. Two nice women asked how I was and gave me their glass of water, which was good because I also got all hot and sweaty all of the sudden. They gave me a bag of ice - and our lunch for free - and I sat there while we waited for the food, which we took home. Then Jim and Brian had to help me get back DOWN the two flights of stairs - that was fun. I spent the rest of the day sitting on my couch with my foot up and ice on it, then we wrapped it up before I went to bed.

This morning I got up and it still hurt, just as badly as it had the day before. I started to wonder if it was just sprained or if it was broken or something, so we went to the urgent care. Where I found out that, yes, I broke my foot. Awesome. The doctor said this was a common injury for athletes or dancers, so I may pretend that I was doing something exciting like ballet. They gave me one of those hard-soled velcro shoes to wear, which has made hobbling around a little bit easier. I have to go to an orthopedist this week to see what to do next - apparently they'll often do nothing, but sometimes will put a cast on it. If I really were a dancer or an athlete, he said they'd put a screw in to help it heal properly. We'll see what happens. I'm really looking forward to trying to get from the parking lot into work - its not THAT long of a walk, but long enough. Hopefully they'll give me some sort of temporary pass to park near the front of the building or something.

Baby names

People can obviously not be trusted to make decisions on their own. Thats the only reason I can think of that Crocs are so popular. Because, are you gardening people? Are you working in a hospital? Are you in fact Mario Batali? No. You are not. So why in the hell would you think that these are a good fashion choice? It is becase you are obviously blind. And also because someone told you they were 'cool' and you completely lack the capacity to form an independent opinion about it. I hate to break it to you folks, you look like idiots. This could be even more idiotic than the recent 'bohemian skirt' craze which made everyone look like they had HUGE ASSES.

With the baby anticipated in 9 weeks (NINE WEEKS OMG!), we spend a lot of time thinking of names. Rather, I spend a lot of time thinking of names, and then I present my shortlist to Brian. We're down to two by the way, and no I'm not going to tell you what they are. Anyhow. You would not believe how many websites are devoted to baby names, the discussion of proposed baby names, baby name meanings, etc. A lot. A lot of websites. Usually when I read these websites I become concerned about the future of the planet, because this generation of kids is going to have some totally messed up names. First of all, no one can spell a name in any normal way. Second, no one can pick a normal name, period. As a result, we're going to end up with a whole generation of people with "Wal-Mart names" spelled in unpronounceable ways (Seriously, one discussion I read this morning concerned someone who wanted to name their boy 'Lyric' (gag) but then decided to go with 'Lyre' instead, pronouced 'Leer' which a) isn't the way you pronounce 'lyre' and b) why would you want your child to be named Leer?).

I found this website that commented on a bunch of these baby name polls, and its hilarous.

A discussion of baby names would be incomplete without mentioning my friend S who wants to have a daughter named 'Pita'. Only if she names her next child 'Hummus', I think.

If you're going to fight over someone, at least make sure its someone worth having.

People? This is who Paris and that chick from Dancing with the Stars got into a fight over.

Please.

My super power: rambling blog posts!

Nothing too exciting to report. Last night was 'Nursery Decor Showdown!' Ok, it wasn't really a showdown, but that makes it sound more dramatic. We moved the furniture all around to try and figure out how we want the room set up. We've been leaving the door shut so the cats can't get in (thus increasing the room's mystique), but when we had it open ALL FOUR cats were in there - even Beamish, the invisi-cat. Think we've got the furniture all sorted out, now we're thinking about where to hang pictures...

...which we'll do this weekend when Matt and Melissa are here visiting! They're coming out for the World Beer Festival in Durham, aka the Best! Day! Ever! Again, I'm the designated driver. I think I'm getting in a lot of bonus points for when I can drink again. Actually, this is a big month for out of town visitors, as my brother and his girlfriend and also my friend Eve are visiting, but the next weekend. Hurrah!

I had so been looking forward to the arrival of the new Killers album, which came out yesterday. I'm disappointed though, I thought it kinda sucked. Boo.

Oh, the other thing: Even though I was trying not to develop any new TV addictions, we started watching Heroes, which had gotten good reviews. And it is really good. Very simply, its about a bunch of regular people who are just realizing that they have super powers. Obvy there is much more to it than that because there's also a bad guy who freezes people and removes their brains? And a guy who seems like he must be nefarious in some way but who is also the father of a girl who spontaneously heals when she gets injured?

Also, tonight is a big night for favorite Chadwick TV shows: The season premiere of Lost (!) and the Project Runway reunion episode, which is sure to be chock full of drama! I won't get to watch PR until tomorrow night (damn you Time Warner-Durham and your crappy no Bravo-ness!), but my mom will almost certainly call me tomorrow morning and say (in a teasing, singsongy voice) "I got to watch Project Runway and yooooouuuu didn't!"