here. have a heart.

That's about as Valentinsey as I'm going to get.
(make your own damn candy hearts here)

I've never been into Valentine's Day (well, except as a little kid in school when we'd have those decorated cardboard shoebox/mailboxes on our desks and play mailman...but those days are long gone). It's not that I'm anti-Valentine's Day.
I have a terrible weakness for candy conversation hearts.
Today is a holiday that cranks out some of my most favorite handmade crafts.
And I'd never in a million years turn down a love note from my sweetie.
Or flowers.
Or dressing up for a fancy dinner out.
But those things mean so much more to me when they show up on some random day rather than some pre-designated commercialized day in February.

Oddly enough, even though I don't personally celebrate Valentine's Day, I actually have some bizarre thing going on where I enjoy watching other people celebrate it. I'm not quite sure what that says about me, but feel free to psychoanalyze.

Anyhow. I'm very lucky that my heart belongs to a Boy that feels the same way about holidays that I do, or today would be a bit odd!

So....To TheMostImportantGuy...since my heart belongs to You...here it is:



~~~~~~~~~~~

I have some knitting to show, but it's going to need to wait for the next post.

Today I am still recovering from this:



A day in the emergency room.
And I am now going to ramble on about it.


Monday night MyFavoriteKid and I picked up some fast food. I won't say from where, but I will say it was supposed to be "Finger Lickin' Good." TheMostImportantGuy came by later that night so we could tuck in and watch the last few episodes of Six Feet Under, which we are very close to completing.

About 10pm, I started getting sharp abdominal pains, right below my ribcage. I was thinking it was some sort of gassy thing, so I popped some antacids and then had a few sips of some really fizzy soda water to make myself burp. By midnight, I was out on the sofa performing the hourly tossing-of-the-cookies. I couldn't keep a single thing down. Not even anti-vommitting medication, or even those tiny sips of water they always suggest.

Now, I've had food poisoning before, and I've had stomach flus, but what was really unusual about this was the quality, the location, and the intensity of the abdominal pain. I could not find one solitary position I could be in where it didn't hurt. Match that with the fact that I had no fever, and I didn't have the typical accomanying trots, if ya' know what I mean. I was up the entire night, except for a couple 10 minute catnaps between hurling sessions.

Around 6:30am Tuesday morning, I called the advice nurse to see if there was something I was forgetting to do, and to see if could make an appointment to come down and get an injection of this medication that stops the puking (I remembered this from the last food poisoning episode--which I got from frozen green beans, no less). Anyhow, after many questions and answers, the nurse put me on hold to review things with a doctor on duty, and they decided I needed to come to the emergency room, stat. Lovely. Why? Because it sounded like I needed an IV to replace lost fluids, and they don't do those in the clinic.

So TheMIG helped me pack MyFK off to school, and then drove me down to the ER. After a good long wait to get admitted and settled into a room, the doc comes in and wants to poke around my belly and that's when he asks about the scar. During my big 'ol traumatic event of a few years ago, they opened me up from sternum to pelvis to resuscitate me.
Heh. Don't ask me how I forget about that when I list my now very long list of previous surgeries. It's only like 18" long. I mean, it is definitely a feature LOL. It didn't even occur to me to mention it to the advice nurse over the phone earlier in the morning. But hey, since I'm in the ER throwing up, and nothing is exiting the normal channels if ya' know what I mean, they are now concerned about there being some sort of blockage caused by the previous injuries and surgeries. That didn't even occur to me, although it makes logical sense.

Well, 4 or 5 long naps, 3 IV's given, 2 x-rays taken, 1 injection for barfing (and a partidge in a pear treeeeeeee), and I'm fine. There was no obstruction. And there is no way to know what the actual cause of my illness was.
I hate that.

TheMIG stayed with me at the hospital all day, missing an entire day of work, just watching the drip of the IV and me napping, I suppose. He really didn't have to be there. I was asleep the whole time, but it was verrrry comforting to have a warm smiling face looking at me every time I cruised in and out of sleepyland (see!! Pfffft on Valentines Day...these are the days that warm my heart and show true love). At least TheMIG brought a good book. He was reading something that was making his laugh so hard that a few times he was practically crying, and he said that one time the nurse came in to check on things and he had to straighten himself up for fear he'd look like he was upset about my being in the hospital hahahaha.

After I was discharged, TheMIG brought me home and then left to catch up on his work day. MyFK's dad stepped in and came by to help the kiddo with homework. Somewhere in that timeframe, I crawled into bed and fell alseep again. When I woke up I thought it was sunrise of the next morning, but it was really just sunset of the same day. I always freak out when that happens. So there I was scrambling to get dressed, and yelling out to my child to wake up and get ready for school, and then I really freaked because my child wasn't even in the house! Once I got my wits about me, I realized that his dad had taken him out to dinner and to guitar lessons. I guess they tried to wake me up to say goodbye, I was down for the count.

Once MyFK returned home from dinner, I started getting hungry (a good sign) but didnt have anything in the house that sounded tasty. My body was craving protein, but everything I had in that category was difficult to digest. I wanted to go out and pick up a smoothie. MyFK didn't want to go out again, as he had just returned, so he offered to make me a "Steak Shake" out of found ingredients in the kitchen. Ummmmm...yah. I managed to talk him out of that, and we took a ride to the local Jamba Juice for a gi-normous protein shake. When we got home we watched a little Lord Of The Rings Trilogy and somewhere in there TreeBeard talked me to sleep.

So that brings me to today.

Conversation hearts sound utterly disgusting, as does the thought of gourmet chocolates in a shiny box with a red ribbon (which is a clear indication to me that I am still not back to normal--this girl never refuses chocolate), so it's a good thing nobody's getting either of those things for me anyhow.

My body is stiff from too many hours wretching and trying to curl up on an uncomfortable couch or a hospital bed, I have a bit of a headache, and a sour stomach. But I'm here typing a blogpost, so I must not be all that bad.

If my heart was all warm and fuzzy and lovely today for Valentine's Day, I'd never know it.

So it's a very good thing I can be warm and fuzzy and lovey every other day of the year.