Damn You Pinterest Halloween edition

Justin has now informed me that I've become "that mother that the other mothers hate." Oops. Anyway, here are the pins that I did for the kids's school treats:

The Pin: "Jell-O flavoured popcorn balls."

The Verdict: This totally worked! I however wrapped my popcorn balls around pretzels instead of tootsie rolls for the stems and decided to forego the leaf, something I regret because you can't really see the pretzel very well (should have used pretzel rods instead of sticks) and it makes it just that much more cute. But it tastes.....overworked. By the time the popcorn has cooled, it's nasty anyway, then you add a liquid and microwave it some more and form it into balls. When you're finished, the popcorn has been through the wringer and tastes exactly like Jell-O flavoured popcorn. But they're very cute.

The Pin: "Cute Idea- Always looking for party ideas that don't involve candy! Draw jack-o-lantern faces on mandarin oranges for a school party."

The Verdict: Okay, so there really wasn't anyway this one wasn't going to work out. It took me a xl QI episode (about 45 minutes) to do two Costco bags of oranges. The only problem that I had was that the oil from the peel kept making my pen not work until I cleaned it off onto paper, so I went through about 2 sharpies. But once they dried, there was no smearing. It did look like I was being stalked by a horde of oranges when I got done: 

The Pin: Pumpkin Chocolate Chip Pudding Cookie, a chocolate chip cookie flavoured with pumpkin spice pudding mix. Nicely soft and chewy.

The Verdict: The baking of this went okay. It was a remarkably forgiving cookie. I had to bake it for 12 minutes instead of 8 since I stuck my dough back into the fridge because it was too soft. Even with the extra baking time, they stayed soft and chewy. However, they aren't earth shattering taste wise. There's a little bit of a cinnamon taste but not much more. Maybe doubling the pudding amount? Still pretty good.

So this is what I ended up with:

The orange thing on the left is a juice box wrapped in a napkin. So it's a pumpkin full of pumpkin stuff. Aaaaaaand now you can hate me.

So Justin woke me up AGAIN when he went to bed. It was 2 am this time. Around four I gave up trying to go back to sleep and went into the kitchen to start cleaning. At 6 am, Justin found me on the stairs steam cleaning the carpet. I finally took a nap when Liam went off to school in the afternoon, but I woke up about 2 hours later. I'm running out of things to clean because of my nervous energy. Despite all this mania though, I still haven't folded the damn laundry.

Today:

Made popcorn balls and pumpkin pudding cookies

Drew faces on 20 juice boxes, 20 paper bags, and 12 lbs worth of oranges

Cleaned my kitchen (twice) and steamed the floor

Steam cleaned the carpet stairs

Vacuumed the upstairs

Repaired my purse. I love this bag. It's one of the last thing I bought in Singapore. I want to be buried with this bag.

Cleaned and organized Alana's room

Grocery store

Curry

Lorelai: "What about Paris? Does she ever sleep?"
Rory: "I think she periodically makes a whirring noise and then just shuts down." 

-Gilmore Girls, "The Bracebridge Dinner" 

I think that I'm about ready to make that whirring noise. Last night, Justin woke me up when he went to bed at 2:30 (!!!!) and I didn't go back to sleep until 6:30. But I woke up at the usual time feeling fine. Today I took the kids to Alana's speech therapy, then to the post office, and then got to Costco with the intent of picking up more pills and oranges. But when I got there, I figured I'd look at the phones since we needed to upgrade them. I noticed that they not only had the phones we wanted, but at a cheaper price, no activation fee and they gave you a free bundle of "stuff". As if I didn't love Costco enough before. I called Justin to get his butt over there as fast as possible, did the rest of our shopping, and then we bought some phones (seriously, easiest thing in the world). Then we fed the kids a costco deli lunch, and then Justin went home for a phone call and I took the kids back to the therapist for Liam's appointment. Then I went home and thought about raking leaves, ignored them, moved a shelf from my garage into the back shed, thought about moving stuff from the garage onto the new shelf, ignored it, ignore the boxes of clothes I keep meaning to repack into plastic containers and then went inside to make curry and rotis.

So my productive day ended up being not so productive and I didn't get to the gym or ballet class, which was really my goal today. Oh well. Anyway, here is my recipe for yellow chicken curry and roti (a fried Indian bread):

Taken with my new phone, but still doesn't change the fact I'm a crappy photographer.

Yellow Chicken Curry (adapted from this recipe), makes 6 servings

Ingredients

Yellow curry paste:

1 tsp cumin seeds

1 tsp coriander seeds (crushed with a pestle)

2 tbsp hot madras curry powder (regular curry works too, but hot madras really adds to the flavour. If using regular curry powder, use 3 tbsp)

2 tsp crushed red pepper

2 tsp salt

1/2 tsp ground ginger

1/4 tsp cinnamon

1/2 tsp ground cloves

1 small onion, peeled and quartered

4 large garlic cloves (or minced equivalent)

Put all  ingredients into a blender. Add 1-2 Tbsp of water to help the ingredients mix better. Process until smooth, scraping down the sides with a spatula as necessary. Set aside.

Curry:

2 Tbsp neutral vegetable oil

4 boneless, skinless chicken thighs, cut into 1" chunks

1 small onion, chopped

1 recipe yellow curry paste (see above)

1 can of coconut milk (14 oz / 400 mL)

6 golden potatoes (yes it really makes a difference to have yellow potatoes), cut into 1" chunks

2-4 carrots, cut on the 1/2" bias

1 red bell pepper (optional because I hate bell peppers), seeded and chopped into 1/2" chunks

1/2 tsp sugar

Instructions

In a large skillet, heat the oil over high heat until it shimmers. Add the chicken and chopped onion, sprinkle liberally with salt, and saute just until the point no pink remains. Transfer the chicken pieces into a bowl and set aside.

Reduce the heat to medium. Scrape in the curry sauce from the blender jar (be careful - it may splatter if the pan is too hot). Stirring constantly, cook until the liquid evaporates and only a fragrant, golden brown paste remains, 3-4 minutes.

Carefully pour in half a can of coconut milk and stir until the curry paste is dissolved.

Add the potatoes and carrots, the rest of the coconut milk, and the sugar. Heat until the coconut milk begins to bubble.

Reduce the heat to medium-low. Simmer until the potatoes and carrots are tender, 10-15 minutes.

Add the chicken, any accumulated juices in the bowl, and the red pepper. Stir to coat with curry sauce, and simmer 5 minutes, or until the chicken is just done.

Serve with jasmine or basmati rice.

Roti (from this recipe), makes 8-10 rotis


Ingredients

1 1/2 cup whole wheat flour
1/2 cup all purpose flour
1/2 tsp. Baking powder
1/2 tsp salt
2 tbsp melted butter
1/4-1/2 cup water
vegetable oil

Instructions
1. Mix wheat flour, all purpose flour, baking powder, and salt, and sieve them together.
2. Pour melted butter in the flour and add water bit by bit and make a smooth & elastic dough and set aside covered with moist muslin cloth for 1/2 an hour.
3. Cut off small balls of dough, slightly bigger than a golf ball, and roll out thinly into circles of about 10" diameter, dusting with AP flour.
4. Heat an oil in a frying pan or electric skillet until hot. Place the roti carefully over it and cook for about 1 minute. The bottom will puff out a little bit and the edges will start to bubble a little. Flip and cook about 1 minute on the other side. Removed from oil onto a plate.

A variation of this is to beat a couple of eggs with water and dip the rotis into the egg before frying. The egg cooks on the outside of the roti, giving it more flavour.

Mania and why I hate Halloween

So that past couple of days I've woken up (before my alarm went off) feeling like I could take on the world. Is this how normal people feel? For the past year, I've been dragging myself out of bed, obsessed when the next time I could take a nap was, and feeling like everything I did, I did moving through waist deep mud. I'm thinking that I AM going through a manic period that I occasionally get, but it's just a euphoric mania instead of a dysphoric one. Dysphoric mania usually ends up with me fighting with everyone and trying to rip up the furniture with the bread knife.

The rare times I get manias (maybe once a year) usually are marked by me spending a lot of money and starting a bunch of projects, convinced that I can do everything. Sometimes I sign up to be costume director of a play. Or a color guard instructor. Or painting half my kitchen and then forgetting about the rest of it for a year and a half. You know, the usual stuff. I also get really jittery, have a tendency to lose weight really easily because I forget to eat, and get really impatient people because they are too slow. Basically, I turn into Paris Gellar from Gilmore Girls.

I'm going to still list my accomplishments because this has become an interesting exercise in what I actually get done in my day, but you can expect my lists to get very sporratic and probably to stop making sense (why sure, I totally thought that the roof needed to be scrubbed down with a toothbrush).

I also hate Halloween. I think this holiday embodies everything that is wrong with our society. I hate the slutty costumes, the stupid scary movies, the idiot teenagers that show up on my doorstep at 10 at night with no costumes expecting candy. I told off a teenager at the trunk or treat tonight because he tried to get candy from my multiple times and he wasn't even wearing a costume. Seriously?

Yesterday I:

Scrubbed out my fridge
Sewed- 2 skirts, 1 dress, one bow for Minnie Mouse ears, one pillow cover, a tabard, and got halfway through a doublet.

Today:

Went to my ballet class
Finished the doublet
Took the kids to a trunk or treat

Antsy

I need to get back to the gym. I'm getting antsy and restless. I need motivation. I'm getting fat again, I guess that's my motivation. I'm tired.

Today I went on a field trip with Alana's class. The local grocery store re-branded themselves and they're doing tours for the local schools. It was actually really cute because the manager came out and gave us a tour around the different sections of the store where the kids received a small item like a cookie from the bakery or an apple from produce and then "paid" a dollar (the fee for the field trip) at the check out. It was very fun for 12 very small, confused, excitable 3-4 year olds. We walked back and forth from the school since it was only three blocks and I talked to Alana's teacher a little bit. She's amazing. She has a 3 and 5 year at home as well, watches her nephew AND teaches pre-school part time. I get exhausted doing laundry. I need to start doing more.

Today I:

Went on Alana's school trip
Rented a hand snake and unplugged my shower drain that had stopped draining.
Scrubbed the pot that I'd burned rice in two days ago for over and hour and FINALLY got all the burned rice off and saved the pot. Yay for barkeeper's friend.
Couple loads of laundry
Cleaned my kitchen from top to bottom. Expect to last this about 30 seconds.

10/24

Today I:

Washed all the laundry in the house in between watching episodes of Suburgatory and Nevermind the Buzzcocks.

Casualties

So today, I burned the rice. Add this to the pot I burned last week and the one before that, and it's starting to look like I have about a 50% average. So why not buy a rice cooker you ask? HA. Well, one is that those puny rice cookers that you can buy in American stores don't make enough. And I've already killed three of them over the course of our marriage.

I started to think about the appliances I've killed over the past 8 1/2 years. So far it's been:

1 clothing iron
2 crock pots (one melted and the other started on fire. No, seriously.)
4 hand mixers (and one on the way out)
3 rice cookers
1 sewing machine (that was brought back to life)
2 toasters
1 sandwich maker (to be fair, that one was Justin)
2 waffle irons
1 blender (that predated marriage)
1 mini food processor

Whew. That's quite a list. I really am not that hard on small appliances. I think they're just crap most of the time and made to die. The best one was when I plugged in the last crock pot and it sparked and started smoking. How on earth did that happen?!? I am currently without a blender, rice cooker, crock pot, waffle iron or toaster. Anyone have a brand/model they love?

Today I:

Medical appointment
Hobby lobby (which deserves it's own blog post)
Library to return and pick up books
Costco to return a coat

The Ultimate Mommy Confession

So since I'm a stay at home mom, I really don't have a hard life. Plus Justin can work at home, which he does every Monday and usually at least one other day a week, so it's not like I'm really knowing what it's like for my working/single counterparts.

So why do I need a break from the kids?!?!?!? They are driving me CrAzY. Maybe it's the medication, maybe it's because the last time I left them with someone else was June, maybe it's the fact that I haven't ever had an overnight from the kids (seriously, I've never left my kids overnight ever. Liam is 5). The only time I spend away from kids right now is shopping or medical appointments. And getting poked in the chest is only marginally better than hauling around whiny kids.

Looking through blogs, parenting sites, facebook, etc. it's not shameful to admit to wanting to get away from kids. But heaven forbid you should actually take it. Apparently these two little monsters are supposed to be my greatest accomplishment or something. But my schedule is so wrecked right now since I have to be here 4 times a day at scheduled times to get the kids on and off the bus, and the one day a week they don't have school is taken up with speech therapy appointments 4 hours apart. Maybe I should pull them out of school for a day, leave them with someone, and actually have a day I could go into the city.

This is probably the point that I should warn Mindy that when she comes back from Utah, she'll likely be that person. Anyway, this is my post psychotic break, stream of consciousness, after sugar low and then rush blog post.

Today I:

Laundry
Grocery
Scrubbed out my hearth with tri sodium phosphate for 3 hours. It now looks worse than before.

You know those days

That you start thinking and feel depressed and start getting mad about everything and before long you're pissed at pretty much everyone you've ever met and you feel like punching the next person who crosses your path and yet you haven't said a word to anyone? That's a good description of my week. So I'm going to sit here with a pot noodle and old QI episodes to try to cheer myself up instead of verbally combusting on people who well and truly deserve it.

Today I went to:

Grocery store
Korean store
Joanns
Bank
City offices to pay utility bill

Cioppino

So, cioppino. A seafood soup from Fisherman's Wharf, the original San Francisco treat (forget that rice-a-roni stuff). There are two origins of the name, one is a bastardization of the Italian seafood soup "ciuppin". The other is when the fishermen would come back with their catches, and someone would start a soup for dinner and the fishermen would "chip in, no?" (which is how I remember how it's pronounced). Either way, it's tasty and very messy. Frozen seafood is okay, fresh is better (Costco's selection is excellent), clams and shrimp are probably the least expensive, and ultimately, it's whatever you like. The recipe I adapted is from here.

Makes 4 dinner size portions
Prep Time: 30 minutes

Cook Time: 1 hour

Total Time: 1 hour, 30 minutes

Ingredients:

1/4 cup olive oil
1/4 cup butter
2 ribs celery, chopped
1 onion, diced
1 can crushed tomatoes (28 oz)
2 cups clam juice or fish stock (or substitute chicken or veggie broth)
2 cups chicken or veggie broth or water
4 cloves crushed or minced garlic equivalent
1/2 lb baby or 2-3 gold potatoes, cubed into 1" chunks (optional, but nice to stretch it out if you are lacking seafood or want it to be a little more "full")
1 lemon, juiced or 2 tbsps lemon juice
2 teaspoons Worcestershire sauce
2 bay leaves
2 teaspoons dried basil
2 teaspoons dried oregano
1 teaspoon red pepper flakes, or to taste
2 teaspoons salt
1 teaspoon ground pepper

3-5 lbs seafood, my breakdown is usually something like this:

     1 Dungeness crab (about 2-lbs), cracked and cleaned (save the shells)

     1 to 1 1/2 lbs pounds a white fish (halibut, cod, etc), skinned and cut into 1" chunks
     1 to 1 1/2 lbs large prawns, peeled and de-veined (I like the kinds with heads and save the shells)
     1-2 lbs mussels and/or clams; soaked, scrubbed and debearded

     Other options are squid, scallops, salmon, snapper, cockles, oysters, canned clams or basically anything you want.

1/2 bunch Italian parsley, chopped for garnish, but it does add a nice crunch at the end
lemons
sourdough bread

Preparation:

Clean seafood. Combine soft parts of crab shells, and shrimp heads and shells into a saucepan, cover with water and simmer until shrimp shells are spent and soft. Drain out shells and save broth.

Meanwhile in a large pot, melt the butter with the olive oil and saute the celery and onions until soft. Add crushed tomatoes, all broths (fish stock, canned, and chicken), garlic, potatoes, lemon juice, Worcestershire sauce, and all spices. Simmer on low for one hour. Add more chicken stock if it gets thick (should be stew-like)

Add the crab, shrimp, and fish, and simmer another five minutes. Add the shellfish, cover the pot and simmer for 5 minutes more, or until the mussels and/or clams open and fish is tender. Serve hot with parsley and lemons and lots and lots of sourdough bread.

Stabby

I'd normally blog about tonight, but this has been one of those days that something must die. And to make sure it's not you, gentle reader, I will save the blogging for tomorrow. Maybe I'll even post my cioppino recipe.

Seafood diet

So the increased appetite side effect kicked in today. I was in the grocery store when I felt the need to try to buy and eat EVERYTHING. I tried to buy my weight in sushi, seafood, and pot noodles. Most of the fish went into cioppino tonight and the sushi was devoured for lunch along with a grilled cheese. I'm hoping that I won't weigh a thousand pounds before this course of prednisone is over. Fortunately, I talked my doctor into prescribing metformin for me (which is going to be a long term medication) which will off set any appetite issues. I can't start it for another day because she wanted me to be on the prednisone for a week to make sure there weren't any bad side effects. In the mean time, a can of olives is a perfectly valid bedtime snack, right guys?

Today I:

Took both kids to speech therapy
Washed all of Alana's bedding
Grocery store
Made some kick-ass cioppino

Good news/bad news

So the good news is that the prednisone is obviously working since my lump is shrinking quickly. The bad news is that I've had a consistent and sometimes very painful ache in my lower back which makes me immediately freak out about kidney failure brought on by the prednisone. And of course it has to be the weekend so I can't call the nurse.

Today I:

Sewing with Mindy
Lunch with Mindy and my mom
Laundry (three loads so far)
Cleaned my counters, glass top, and floors. Then cooked dinner and realized you can't tell I did anything today.

10/10

Today I:

Sewing with Mindy
Grocery store
Parent's night for the kids's school

Side Effects

Difficulty controlling emotion
Difficulty in maintaining train of thought
Weight gain
Facial swelling
Depression, mania, psychosis, or other psychiatric symptoms
Unusual fatigue or weakness
Mental confusion / indecisiveness
Blurred vision
Abdominal pain
Peptic ulcer
Infections
Painful hips or shoulders
Steroid-induced osteoporosis
Stretch marks
Osteonecrosis
Long-term migraines
Insomnia
Severe joint pain
Cataracts or glaucoma
Anxiety
Stomach pain or bloating
Severe swelling
Mouth sores or dry mouth
Nervousness
Acne
Rash
Increased appetite
Hyperactivity
Frequent urination
Diarrhea
Leg pain/cramps
Sensitive teeth

These are all side effects of prednisone. Guess what I got prescribed today. I went to my appointment with the Martha Clay, the RN that I was referred to after being diagnosed with granuloma mastitis. This time I gave myself plenty of time to get down there, arriving 45 minutes before my check in time which was a half hour before my actually appointment. So I bought myself a sub because I hadn't eaten breakfast or lunch, then waited around for a very long time. I got back to the exam room and was asked about my records, which is when I realized I had left them in the my car....which was at home because I had taken Justin's car. ARGH. So she read through the pathology report, felt me up, and then left so I could get dressed. She came back to talk to me about my options. Option 1 was to wait and see if this would go away. Chances were miniscule this was going to happen. More likely, she said was going to happen would be the tissue would start to deteriorate, and I could get fistulas through the skin so the granuloma could drain out in the form of pus (???!!??). This would be painful and icky. Option 2 was to take massive amounts of prednisone, an immunosuppressive steroid that would probably cause the inflammation to go away but had a laundry list of side effects that are very common. Option 3 was to take methotrexate, a drug that is used to treat autoimmune disorders, as well as cancer, multiple sclerosis, and to induce abortions. This would most definitely take care of the granuloma, but she would have to refer me to a rheumatologist to get a prescription and I could have to get regular liver function tests to make sure I wasn't killing my liver.

Since driving to get my blood drawn every day isn't really an option, and I didn't really want to see pus leaking fistulas on my boob, I went with option 2. Which means I get to be on a powerful drug that will make my insomnia worse, my depression and anxiety very apparent, and put stress on my already screwy glucose levels. Woot.

I forgot to mention that somehow I lost the parking time stamp ticket and was frantically ripping my car apart when I was supposed to pay. Fortunately, the very kind parking attendant took me at my word and just charged me for the time I was supposedly parked.

Today I:
Survived downtown to be poked by yet another person who is only interested in me for my body.
Returned books to the library.
Went to Costco to fill a prescription.

Damn you Pinterest!

So it's probably no secret that I (like the rest of the female, and some of the male, population) am addicted to Pinterest. However, I love the websites Pinstrocity, CraftFail, and PinterestFail. Not all pins are winners, obviously. So I'm starting a series called "Damn you Pinterest" which is my personal experiences with my pinterest finds.

The Pin: "How to Whiten Your Teeth Cheaply with Hydrogen Peroxide as a Mouthwash... I like this version better. Rinse first (don't dilute) and then brush teeth."

The Verdict: This actually worked! But not as quickly as sometimes stated.. I've been doing it for probably a couple of months. When I started, I brushed in on my teeth with Q-tips a couple of times a day, but eventually got brave enough to rinse my mouth with it. I don't know if too many years of kim chi stained my teeth too badly to work quickly but it was about 2 weeks before I noticed it was working at all, and now 2 months in, my teeth are now a couple of shades lighter, but still not white. I'm doubtful about the claims of being healthier for your gums and preventing cavities, but 3% peroxide isn't going to hurt you unless you drink it. Don't drink it.

The Pin: "Transport cupcakes in disposable cups"

The Verdict: Cute and definitely transport friendly, but then getting the cupcake out later is a PITA. Not bad if you don't mind frosting on your hands later.

The Pin: "Make your own 50-hour candles for less than 2 dollars a piece."

The Verdict: This tutorial was pretty easy to follow, but making candles isn't exactly rocket science. However, the cost and the time claims were pretty week. I had a hard time find soy wax as cheaply as he was claiming, and the start up costs of getting the jars and the tabs were much steeper. I used larger jars (peach jars from Costco) that I already had, the cost was about $27 for just the wax and wicks (I had leftover wicks and tabs though). Then Justin and I started to burn one, and it burned pretty well, but it seemed like it was going to burn through much faster than the 150 hours my jar size was supposed be able to last.

The Pin: "This naughty Bloomin' Onion Bread has cheese stuffed in every crack and is cut just like the Bloomin' Onion from Outback. My family loved this but really it's enough to feed a small army. It's a fun way to serve bread because everyone can just pull off a piece of cheesy onion bread. This would be a great appetizer or bread for a meal."

The Verdict: This was pretty good, but a pain to make. Cutting the bread was difficult, the sliced cheese wouldn't stay put and then it was A LOT of bread and it wasn't very tasty the next day. My solution would be to use grated cheese and it use dinner rolls, perfect for one person's serving.

The Pin: "Toss with olive oil, and salt. Coat a microwave-safe plate with spray oil, then spread a single layer of potatoes on the plate. Nuke, turn the potatoes over, and nuke again. That’s it. As they come off the hot plate and start to cool, they will crisp up even more. Indeed, they were still crispy the next day, too."

The Verdict: Justin and I tried this twice. Both times it was a big, fat FAIL. They came out soggy or burned and none in between. We tried various potato types, microwavable plates, and times. We found a perfectly flat plate worked the best, the yukon gold potatoes worked a little better, and a longer initial nuking and shorter second one. But none turned out very well.

Anyway, I'll post more of these later, or possibly lose interest like most things I do.

Today I:

Scrubbed out my washing machine

Cleaned my oven (started yesterday) which I'm pretty sure has never been cleaned

Went to the grocery store

When body isn't trying to actively kill me

it keeps busy making sure I don't get too comfortable. Since Justin has the immune system of an ox and Liam has a flu shot, that left Alana and I to get the flu this week. I was an evil mommy and still sent Alana to school (she wasn't that bad until Thursday and there wasn't school today). So when I haven't had things that I really needed to do, I've been crawling into my bed and dozing while Liam plays with Lego bricks in the living room.

Today the kids didn't have school so Justin and I took the kids over to the cheap theater because Brave was playing. Since Liam has forever been traumatized by Queen Victoria, he spent the first half hour saying audibly, "I need to go out." When I refused to take him out, he would fake cry for a few seconds to the delight of the other patrons (hey, it was a matinee on Friday at a second rate theater and there were only about five other people). When that didn't work, he actually would watch mesmerized until something scary happened. I loved the movie, but it was a lot more sinister than I was expecting and Liam did NOT like the bears. Any of them. We had to take him out of the theater twice for the scary bits, but I stood my ground that we had to stay until the end. One, Liam needed to see the mom turn back into a human or he would forever think the mom was stuck as a bear and two, he needed to learn that not all movies were scary (even the short at the beginning freaked him out. Seriously, it was about the moon). So we held out and after the movie, he was all smiles and giggles. ARGH, kid, ARGH.

This week (from Tuesday onwards) I:

Took Alana to speech therapy
Got to the district offices to donate software
Got my blood drawn
Sat with my sister-in-law for two sewing sessions
Went to the library
Carved pumpkins with the kids, or the kids started to help me, lost interest and then stole some capri-sun while I worked, covered in pumpkin guts.
Picked up my medical records from the breast center and made an appointment with the next RN for treatment (seriously, why doesn't anyone pick up a phone at a doctor's office anymore?!?)

It's not cancer

Someone page Doctor House for me. Mostly because I want to meet Hugh Laurie.

So I got a call this afternoon from the very sweet RN at the breast clinic, who much have brow beat the pathologist into rushing my sample because it was done a day earlier than it was supposed to. First thing she did was assure me that it was not cancer. She informed it was something called a granulomatous mastitis, which was just a fancy name for a lump in the breast (ummmm, no kidding, Sherlock). She referred me to yet another clinic downtown where I'd talk to another RN to see about treatment/surgery. They are going to have to do more tests to see if the cause is bacterial or fungal, then put me on a round of steroids to see if it'll shrink the granuloma. If not, then it'll have to be removed. So yay, not cancer, and boo, more testing.

So like the genius that I am, I googled granulomatous mastitis. Wikipedia informed me that it was caused by a variety of things including TUBERCULOSIS. Ummmm, I'm not sure that I ever got my DTAP. I also kind of failed a TB test about seven years (had to get them yearly working in a hospital). Okay, I didn't really fail, but I didn't pass. Closest thing that the doctor could figure out was that I was allergic to the test. Both of them because they tried two different types. But no, I don't have TB. I think.

If it seems like I've had a ton of medical pseudo-crises, um, I sort have. I've had so far: an abnormal pap smear, pre-eclampsia, a couple undetermined TB tests, and now a granuloma. And I'm only 27. Seriously universe?

So now I get to try to contact another clinic that never answers their phone. I also get to contact my original doctor that I saw last Tuesday, who very kindly called this morning to see how I was doing. She told me that my thyroid result was slightly abnormal, but probably not enough to cause problems. So I have to go back for more blood testing, possible an ultrasound of ovaries, and pharmacological sampling. Yay, fun!

Today I:

Took both kids to speech therapy
Too many loads of laundry
Mended some shirts. Just call me Laura Ingalls.