??

When someone misspells a word in a status, or especially in a super-aggressive rant, I desperately comb through the comments to see if anyone mentions it. But they never do, because that would be rude. But, can it not be rude? Can we make it, not rude? Isn't it better? If I pronounced something horribly, horribly wrong, isn't it best to tell me? Just put me out of my misery? Doesn't that fall under some sort of ethical responsibility? And can I not be a jerk because of the unwritten rule that if you post something publicly, it's open to scrutiny? That's a thing, right?

Chief Complaint: It's hard to use my words

Me: What brings you to the Emergency Room today?
Patient: Oh you know...
Me: ...is that a question? Because I asked you first...
Patient: Well you know, I just be like not like feelin right, you know. Like I be hot and cold and hot and cold and like my temperature be like all up and down and up and down n shi*.
Me: Mmmk
Patient: You know like I dunno if I be dehydrated or like you know if I be like stressed, you know. Like I be doin things and it aint right. You know like I'm stressed a lot and be like tired n shi*.
Me: K, so you have a fever and your thirsty, and shi*?
Patient: Yeah
Me: ...

What It's Come To

Rob agreed to start taking a daily vitamin if I bought them in gummy form. Realizing it's a new day and getting to take my gummy vitamin has come pretty close to my favorite part of the day. Of course, behind the rewarding stuff and stuff of being a stay-at-home-mom, etc.

My typical route home includes making a left-hand turn off of a busy street. There is a turning lane. We share this turning lane with people coming from the opposite direction. The people coming the other way almost ALWAYS hop into the turning lane like a half a mile away, leaving those of us who are trying to utilize the turning lane correctly, to risk our lives trying to wedge our way into the lane. If my street is literally RIGHT there, I get to be the one in the turning lane. ME. Not you. You have another 5 minutes before your turn. I will kill a man.

I was at the grocery store and my cashier looked just like an Avatar from the game, Just Dance. I told him so. After a few misguided comments I realized it sounded like I was making a serious play at him. So after my face was red enough that I could feel it in my ears, I basically sprinted towards the door. The good thing is, Robbie was with me, just to add a little extra weird.

I went to Whole Foods to pick up sushi for Valentine's day. You don't have to cook it...see where I'm going with this? Anyway, after searching for the sushi stand I asked an employee if they even carried Sushi. I was met with the judging eyes of a disgusted-hipster-passerby who just happened to overhear my question and after looking up from his book, while pushing his cart (seriously), he pointed me in the right direction (without meeting my eyes). Whatever, Whole Foods. It's not like I wasn't wearing Terra Cotta colored ankle skinnies and a chambray button up, I totally was. What more do you want from me? How can I make you feel like I belong? Is it because I forget my reusable grocery bag? Sike, I don't even own one, jokes on you!

I bought a Papyrus card for Rob. They always include a little gold envelope seal with every card. There was no gold seal. What kind of cheap piece of... Banned.

I'm anti Anti-Valentine's day people. You guys suck. "I just hate that I have to be told what day to love my loved ones." Whatever. Shut up. Just buy some flowers, eat some chocolate and don't be the worst." Valentine's day is a manufactured blah blah blah." You hate love, and you hate America. 

I've never seen Rob more excited to meet/talk to anyone than he was to meet a blogger from Grantland.com this past weekend. He saw him on the street and literally hung his head out the window and called out his name. We met him later that night at a restaurant. As you see, it was me that ended up taking a picture with him.

My most recent theory...

Facts:
-Robbie puked from 2 months old-a few weeks ago, 20+ times a day (not spit-up, vomit, bad).
-He's been in the 14 pound range for 6 weeks now and has stayed the same weight for 3 weeks.
-I've tried medication, bottles, formula, feeding times, flavoring, EVERYTHING
-When anything food related touches his mouth he freaks out
-He hates drinking formula but he loves drinking water, and ice. Take away his ice, and he loses his mind
-He wakes up after 12 hours and could take or leave his bottle. He has no interest and no appetite.
-Despite all of this he is extraordinarily pleasant
Theory-
My mom is visiting and she started researching appetite enhancers (specfically the medication, Megace, which you give to anorexic patients, cancer patients or any other patient who is not inclined to eat). Upon researching this we have stumbled upon Zinc deficiency and other vitamin and mineral deficiencies causing appetite suppression. Zinc, specifically, can cause appetite suppression and cause things to taste bitter. Iron deficiencies can cause a condition called PICA where the patient will crave non-nutritive things and often have perpetual craving to eat ice. Vitamin D deficiencies cause malabsorption and poor growth. Patients with renal issues are typically deficient in these areas. I also had a friend who spoke with a pediatrician who explained how common these issues are and how he was surprised that none of these ideas had been explored previously.
Plan-
We've started with blood work to test for these deficiencies and hope that what we will find is that it is in fact the cause for his issues. The solution is simple, and would include supplementing these vitamins and minerals daily.
To be frank, it seems pretty lame that nobody has come up with this before (any of his 3 doctors) when it seems to be such a common side effect with children in his condition. Regardless, we are hoping for the best and that we have hit on something promising. Fingers crossed.


Also, on his free time he enjoys chopping and gathering firewood.

Let's Talk About Some Things...

When I was single Rob used to show up at my apartment, walk in without knocking, sit down on my couch and say, "Let's talk about some things..." After he listed off his various topics and got a sufficient response he usually left. He really took the idea of being "aloof" to a whole other level, and I was apparently super into it.

But really, let's talk about some things:
-Sometimes when I give Robbie a bath I worry that he ingests as much glitter as I find on his person.
-I bought some fancy crackers today and they tasted just like Chicken in a Biskit. I was not disappointed.
-When I work my one shift out of the month I'm in an obnoxiously good mood the whole time. People are like, "Hey Kasey, you're patient doesn't look too good." I'm like, "Sweet, lemme just dannnnce my way back in there then. You're right, there is probably a situation here, cha, cha, cha!"
-If your dog poops in my yard, and then I almost hit it, I feel like an eye for and eye, yeah? That's still a thing, right? Does that apply here? I think it does.
-When my baby pukes in public (he usually reserves it for the grocery store) I pretend that I have no idea why he would be doing that and act completely mortified because he definitely doesn't do that at least 20 times every day. If I stay calm I feel like I'm saying, "Yeah, he puked. So? This is socially acceptable. I knew there was a 90% chance this would happen and I came into the produce section anyway!"
-Fake poinsettias>real poinsettias. Poinsettias are just a high-maintenance and underachieving flower/plant/leaf/whatever. They are seriously impossible to keep alive. Especially if you don't water them, or put them in sunlight. Worst. Plant. Ever. Why can't they ever just be like the cactus and learn to be a little bit more self sufficient?
-Holiday drivers suck. It's Christmas, you buttholes. Give a courtesy wave at the very least after you cut me off.

Call me old fashioned...

I like being a stay-at-home-mom.
I like doing girl things.
I don't ever think, "Man, I wish I was a guy."
I'm okay with being the one who cleans and does the laundry.
I believe in equality within a marriage but that is not to say we have to split all responsibilities down the middle; we have separate responsibilities and that's fine.
If someone makes a remark about my looks I feel like, "Sweet, thanks for noticing."
I believe that "feminism" began as a noble cause to establish equal rights and has now turned into, "we should all be interchangeable beings regardless of gender."
God created us.
There has to be a happy medium between embracing our genders and being treated with equal respect.
Double standards exist. They always will. I'm not offended when a guy wants to open the door for me. Does he expect the same from me? No. Is he going to start a protest about it? Probably not.
Whatevs. Sometimes I just feel like I'm being represented by women who hate being women, and I'm out on that.

Serious blog concluded.

The entrepreneurial spirit

In my younger years I dabbled in the cards game a bit. Greeting cards, that is. It all began with Paint (the windows application). I was nine and I had already procured a desk in the basement where my dad's office was. I had an extensive working knowledge of how to use the phone to call every other desk in the basement and leave detailed messages describing business venture after business venture. I knew one thing, I loved making forms. I used to create tests (history, math, etc) for my family on Paint. I loved the idea of having that kind of control...grading and all of that. It did rub me the wrong way that upon grading everyone was always getting a perfect score. It could have been that I didn't figure out you make all of the blanks in the fill-in-the-blank section equal length. Those jerks didn't even pretend to get one wrong! Or it could have been that I assumed pulling some of the questions from my hardest 4th grade exams would do the trick. But alas, every time I was dolling out 100%s and A+s. I was using up my best stickers and glitter every time I had to grade a perfect paper! I knew something had to give; I was squandering precious Lisa Frank resources! I started to doubt myself as an educator and I think this is about the time I began looking at other options.

As I mentioned, forms were the driving incentive for me. I needed something that would allow me to create form after form and force other people to fill them out. Thus spawned, my most successful business venture of '97, Kasey's Card Shop.

It was genius. The forms included a place for your name, contact info, type of card wished to purchase, personalized message, and even a check box for "glitter," "no glitter." I began my hustle by changing all of the phones in the basement to include my logo next to one of the many lines my dad had. He told me I could use it for my shop, though today, I am a little suspicious that it was being used for non-card related business. Dad? Then of course I made a name plate for my desk out of metallic markers and construction paper. Now I could really get to work. My aunt was working for a paper company at the time so she brought me tons of card stock that would have been wasted otherwise. I gathered my tools, Crayola, Lisa, and Elmer's and began to make prototypes for each season. I figured KCS was like those restaurants that bring out the tray of assorted desserts so you can get a better sensory experience of what you're getting into. Birthdays, Christmas, Easter, Thanksgiving, Get Well, Congratulations, and my personal fav, "Just Because." I also think I had a "blank inside" option just in case you wanted to make sure the recipient felt how personal it was, while also enjoying the famed artwork of a 9 year old.

The final step in really launching the business was to order about a thousand free sample "Kasey's Card Shop" return labels. If my own phone line, desk, and swivel chair didn't make me official, I knew the labels were going to put me over the top.

I began soliciting in a safe space, the kitchen, living room, bedrooms etc. I also attending open-forum activities that would give me the best chance of discovery, Family Home Evening, Family Prayer, Dinner and so on. I then moved to bigger clients, the missionaries, neighbors, my big brother's friends. They all seemed so relieved that they finally found a card shop that could meet all of their needs. Even though I think some of my brothers friends were more interested in sniffing the glue. But either way, I was expanding. I had orders coming in from all over and between juggling the finances, store front (I did have my own Christmas tree for my office complete with a paper chain and homemade ornaments), using the industrial-sized paper cutter to create the perfect forms, AND cutting, coloring, and gluing, I felt like it was the right time to bring on an employee.* My big sister. She would be in charge of all glitter orders. And man, could she glitter. Such precise measuring of how much glitter was necessary, where and when to shake. She was a great asset. However, late in the year, before the surge of Christmas orders, there was an incident and I had to let her go. The details are foggy but I think it involved a bossy, crazed younger sister trying to manager her older sister who was helping as a favor anyway. After I found myself overwhelmed with orders, I went to our HR rep, mom, to mediate a discussion that would hopefully result in the reemployment of said big sister. Feelings were mended and she took her seat next to me as Glitter Extraordinaire once again.

My big break came when my oldest brother ordered 50 Christmas cards for friends. Kjersti and I went to work. We were pulling out all of the stops, the designs included all original artwork, Christmas trees, gifts, bells, holly, nativities etc. We made our deadline and filled the order right in time for Christmas break. It's unclear whether or not the cards made it out that year, but I had done my best work and felt pride in what I had accomplished.

KCS would continue to boom for about a year. I made between$10-20 a month. I'm sure the number of cards I sold had nothing to do with the fact that I'm pretty sure my mom was reimbursing my customers, or that I was, at the time, handicapped with some severe shoulder problems and people felt bad. No, I don't think they were pity purchases that put me on top. I think I just exemplified the American dream of a small business owner. I was local, personable, easy to reach (line 3), proactive customer service (don't like your card, pay me and I'll make you a brand new one!), and if you worked for my dad you received, free of charge, a handcrafted envelope with your paycheck every two weeks (I believed in giving back to the community).

The years I spent at KCS were some of my best. One day, I think I'd like to get back to the basics once again. Glue, glitter, repeat, break for trampoline time where you pretend you're in the Olympics and your performing to the Spice Girls, and then back to the grind. Those really were the good ole days.


*I'm not sure she ever received any of the profits, remind me I owe you, Kj.

For the record, that is not an original from KCS (you should have suspected due to the lack of glitter