Tulips

When I was 7 or 8, I told my mother that my favorite flowers were tulips. She told me that tulips were "stupid looking" and I was supposed to like Carnations, because they were her favorite O_o so carnations it was. The only time anyone ever gave me flowers was when I was 17 and my boyfriend brought me carnations because my mom told him they were my favorite.
I told my friend, Jaime, about this a week or so ago. And she brought me purple tulips after my surgery! I've never seen tulips up close, and it was night time when she brought them, so they were all closed up for the night...I had to ask if they were tulips :-/
They opened up the next morning (I think they were happy to see me...their new mamma) they were anything but stupid looking. And I named them. All of them. Meet my babies:




Their names are:

Charlotte, Abigail, Juliette, Rose, Lilly, Bambi, Fay, Tabitha, Violet and Amelia

I'm thinking I might plant me some tulips in the front yard this spring! I'll need to break out my baby names book if this happens.


By the way, for those of you who were concerned about me, after reading my last post about the 10 things that could go wrong...most of them did not happen. I'm still waiting on the HIV and Hep C results, though (j/k - I probably won't be tested for those until I donate blood again. Or get married.)

Top 10 things that could go wrong tomorrow

Tomorrow I'm going to have major arthroscopic knee surgery. I've spent the past week worrying about everything that could go wrong, and I am pleased to share with you the Top Ten things that could go wrong, just in case any of my readers are also in the same boat and looking for something worry about.

Here goes:


10. I'll barf all over my friend who drove all the way from Danbury to bring me.

9.) I'll barf all over everyone and everything.

8.) I'll wake up at home in my bed and have absolutely no memory of what happened between the time I "woke up" from surgery and when I woke up in my bed (This would be truly horrible.)

7.) They catheterize me

6.) They won't catheterize me and I pee all over myself.

5.) I'll have that weird thing happen where I'll be wide awake for the surgery but unable to move and no one knows it but me...like in that movie with Jessica Alba.

4.) I'll wake up with no knee (and I guess no lower leg either)


3.) I'll catch MRSA. Or Hep C. Or HIV.

2.) I'll wake up paralyzed.

1.) I'll die



After all of this worrying I am exhausted and really looking forward to being knocked out tomorrow and possibly for the whole weekend.

For Girls

I was at Barnes and Noble yesterday and was pleasantly reminded of a line of books that I absolutely loved when I was a kid. American Girl. They make the famous American Girl Dolls and the American Girl Magazine. They also have several books for girls, ages 8-10+, on growing up, taking care of your body, managing feelings, learning to like yourself, social skills, etc. (Note: These are not the same as the books about the dolls/characters....these are written to and about present day american girls) A lot of them are fill-in-the-blank/journal type books, so it's a great way to inspire writing/journaling and expressing one's self.
As far as I know, when I was that age, they only had a couple of them. Their website shows 4 pages of these awesome books. I bought three of them for my niece's upcoming 9th birthday. I think I'm more excited about this than she will be.
Here's the link:

American Girl

Although I'm the only one I know who had these books, I would still recommend these for any girl, 8-12 years old. Especially any girl who is struggling with growing up, anxiety, school, home life....(pretty much any girl that age) along with

one of these pens

I kinda wanted to buy one of these books for myself, but I'm a grown up, now...:-/

*Hides American Girl book behind Teddy Bear*

Saturated Fat -specifically BACON

I'm not ready to talk about peanut butter yet, as I only just ordered 5 pounds (FIVE.POUNDS) of raw organic peanuts yesterday, and will have to wait until after my surgery to do anything about them. But I was looking up raw peanut butter recipes, because I wasn't crazy about what I found in "Nourishing Traditions"...and there was one blog I happened upon that mentioned nut butters on bacon, though the blogger denied having ever tried such a thing....it made my mouth water and I decided I have to talk about bacon, which is full of saturated fat and "no good for you" according to politically correct nutrition.

I laugh at politically correct nutrition...bwahahahahahaha! Suckers.

I am also entirely too lazy (or my knee hurts and stairs are involved) to get all of my saturated fat info, so I'm going to link to Dr. Mercola's article on 7 reasons to eat more saturated fat because he sounds a lot smarter when he says exactly what I was gonna say, so he might be more convincing. (This is called "lazy blogging")

My main sources of saturated fat are Raw Dairy, Coconut Oil, and Bacon. But bacon is the most important one, because it's the tastiest. I make it often and save the fat in a glass measuring cup and use it for frying potatoes mostly - one of my favorite meals consists of bacon-fried potatoes, spinach and scrambled eggs (or some other animal protein...usually chicken or organic chicken sausage if eggs aren't available) It's easy to make and easy to get everyone else to eat it with me.

What does this have to do with raw peanut butter? I'm gonna put peanut butter on my bacon...I've already done potato chips and nutella (NOT a health food) and Ben and Jerry's Phish Food with potato chips (Also not a health food) so I really don't see what the big deal is, combining these two delicious health foods...

And lookie what I just found in my favorites.... Organic Lard! cheaper than organic bacon (if you're just after the fat), though probably not as tasty.

But remember:

Hypochondriacal Hannah

I was born with a dreadful disease called Hypochondriosis. It's so severe that even placebos don't help. To give you an idea of the rough life I have led, I will give you a "quick" run-down of all the various afflictions I've had.

Since the age of 4 I have had dysphagia (symptoms are mostly under control now) at the age of 5 I was in danger of drowning from all the liquids I drank (my body could only hold so much until it reached my lungs, right?) from 5-10 I was frequently a victim of poisoning from heating oil, cleaning chemicals, and powdered laundry detergent (easy to inhale by accident), at 5 I was pregnant, at 6 I believed I was going to be promiscuous in my sleep with unsuspecting men (I probably had AIDS, too). At 8 I had breast cancer, at 9 I suffered from dwarfism, at 10 I had a brain tumor, at 14 I realized all of my teeth were going to fall out, at 15 I lost almost an entire night's sleep because I believed I would wake up deaf and blind (true story), let's skip a decade or more (Because I actually got real-life sick at some point) just in the past year I've had MS, Brain Damage, Arthritis, bone cancer, lupus, testicular cancer, at least 2 pregnancies (from public toilet seats)and a lobotomy (Courtesy of my acupuncturist)



At the age of 17, my Sister-in-law watched as I filled my little old-lady pill containers with supplements..."What's that for?" she asked, pointing to the fish oil. "My heart" I replied in a tone that I don't think was too over-dramatic. But she laughed hysterically anyway.

*sigh* I am so misunderstood.

Now, if you'll excuse me, I have to go to bed so my adrenal glands can rest up in preparation for the trauma of my upcoming knee surgery during which I will probably die.

How it Was That I Beat up Three Small Children

Tonight I had "Cubbies" (the aforementioned preschoolers that I teach at church) I had 6 of them, and no helper, which wasn't particularly upsetting.
I like it when it's just the kids and me, because then I don't have to worry about impressing any grown ups,and preschoolers are easy to impress. In fact, I've been idolized by at least one of them.
Case in point: 2 weeks ago I got to church a little early and went in to the bathroom where I met one of my cubbies and her Grandma. After a very excited "hello", she went to wash her hands and I went into one of the stalls. And I hear *gasp* "Grandma! I can't believe Miss Hannah goes to the bathroom!"


...I can't believe my secret is out.


Anyway, we were having a great time and most of the important stuff was out of the way. Singing, Bible stories, Coloring...and they were eating their snack, when one boy (L) declares that he didn't like his snack. So he ran back and forth until we started a game in which I grabbed him as he ran by and hugged him and kissed him and then set him free. Lather, rinse, repeat. Three other cubbies abandoned their snacks and joined in for the hugs and kisses (and can you blame them?)
Note: this is the type of game that any responsible adult would have frowned upon. But at this moment there were no responsible adults in the room.
Just as I started to think "Hmmm, this is a bad idea" L and M (a very young cubbie, about 2 years old) clunked heads, so hard that I could hear it (And that's saying a lot, since I don't hear anything). L looked to be in a lot of pain, but M was the one screaming "MOMMY!MOMMY!MOMMMMMYYYYY!" so I had to focus on her...I picked her up, which was no easy thing to do, because she only wanted Mommy and that wasn't me. I picked her up, swung her around....and clonked S in the nose with M's foot. I was aware of this, but still, M was screaming so loud that I had no choice but to ignore the rest .

I finally got M calm, and I sat down with her and all the other Cubbies came up to see how she was doing. S came up to check, and when I declared that M was going to be just fine, she leans in and very gently and quietly says, "Um, I got hit in the nose with her sneaker!" I had to humbly admit to S that it was I who clonked her in the nose with M's sneaker, but I examined her nose and it was fine. In fact, I had the rest of the group examine their noses just in case.

L insisted he didn't need any kisses on his head, but he got one anyway. Did I mention most of the rooms at church have a security camera in them? And the Cubbie room was no exception. Fortunately they're not viewed unless there's a problem. And I informed all of the parents of the accident. So Lord willing, there were no witnesses other than six little cubbies.


As a former 4 year old, I'm pretty sure this night was etched into at least 3 of the Cubbies' memories. Unless they are concussed. Then It's all good...

"Hunny" - a Superfood!

Today I'm gonna talk about honey. Not because I'm an expert or anything, but because I'm eating a spoonful of it at the moment, and I kinda wanted to write something food/health related tonight. (And honestly, I feel all important and stuff when I say "Today I'm going to talk about...")

God's idea of a blessing was a land flowing with milk and honey (I will talk about milk on another day) and that's good enough for me.

For those of you who don't know, I teach preschoolers at church on Friday nights for a couple of hours. We sing songs, learn bible stories, play, eat snacks...one day we were learning about John the Baptist and how he ate locusts and honey. I didn't have any locusts handy, but I did have a jar of raw honey and several spoons, which I brought. I told them that honey was something God gave us because He wanted us to be happy, then I gave them all a taste of honey on their spoon.

You would have thought I'd slipped them Ritalin. It was very quiet except for the occasional *nomnomnom* They sucked their spoons clean and requested more (No double dipping, though. Too bad for them)
The same group of kids were totally un-excited several weeks later when I hid some M&Ms in the bottom of their cup, underneath their cheese puffs (I'm still patting myself on the back for being so clever, even if they weren't excited)

Anyway, according to Jordan Rubin, author of The Great Physician's Rx,

The bible mentions honey or honeycomb more than 40 times...another first rate source of antioxidants, honey plays a role in the prevention of cancer as well as heart disease, and wipes out the bacteria that causes diarrhea. It's best eaten the way God had the bees create it: raw and unheated which preserves the naturally occuring enzymes and bee pollen."

Also, the body digests the sugar in honey more slowly, so it's not likely to cause a spike in your blood sugar.
At 120 degrees, the nutrients in honey is destroyed. I've read that it shouldn't be heated to more than 100 degrees (The highest temp that a beehive gets) but I recently heated some at 110 degrees to make some iced tea a few days ago and nothing bad happened. However, I was reminded that I don't like my tea sweetened, so it's not likely to happen again.


Uuuuh....I can't find the spell check on this thing...so please forgive any spelling mistakes :-)

In Which I Remember all the Times God Forgot About Me

In the spirit of all my worrying, I have decided to list every time in my life that God neglected to take care of me.

Now, I've only been around for 27 years, so this is by no means an exhaustive list, but it's what I've come up with thus far.



Read Carefully.

I Was a Jerk Today...

Today I took my buddy, "T", to the gym to meet a new personal fitness trainer.  T's mom got him a membership at the gym a couple of weeks ago, and the name of a trainer and asked me to schedule him. It's been a good week and a half of playing phone tag with this one guy, who said he could meet with us at 2pm on Monday.  So I left three messages on his VM telling him we were coming. I figured it probably wouldn't work out, but atleast I could corner the guy and schedule with him, right?
As it turns out, he hadn't gotten any of my messages, but the reception staff were able to get him on his cell phone, and he wanted to talk to me.
And I kinda snapped at him.
I was basically upset that I wasn't 100% in charge of the whole thing and therefore didn't really know what was going on and why we just needed this one specific trainer instead of just letting me pick one we could, ya know...schedule.
Clearly, this is totally worth depleting my vulnerable adrenal glands over.

Anyway, it's all kinda fuzzy to me now, but I think I said things like, "well if it's going to be THIS hard to schedule, maybe I should try scheduling somebody else?"  and *dramatic sigh* and *mean vibes*
Anyway, long story short, as soon as I hung up (after he said he was coming right over to meet us) I knew I had to apologize to him. He was very nice on the phone, and when I met him he seemed like a very gentle soul, brushed off my apology and took all blame, T loved him, they had a great work out, we figured out a schedule....and then he explained why it's so hard to schedule him...he's a pastor at a local methodist church.

*facepalm*


My friend, Jaime, told me to just learn from the humbling experience and move on. Don't let it bother me too much. Jaime - are you kidding? To quote my deep and philisophical friends over at Blimey Cow: "JESUS DIED FOR YOUR SINS SO YOU'D NEVER FORGET ABOUT THEM! DEAL WITH IT!" /sarcasm

My First Post....

Isn't everyone's first blog post titled, "My First Post"? alas, I am unoriginal.  I apologize. 
  I guess this is as good a post as any to reveal how insecure I am.  I'm not so sure about the title of my blog ("Heavy Laden").  
  For the first 23 years of my life I was taught that I couldn't make any decisions for myself. I was told what to like and what to think by my mother, because all of my thoughts, desires and decisions were "stupid".  And sadly, at 27 years old, I hear my mother saying "'Heavy Laden' is STUPID!", but since I do not talk to her anymore, I cannot ask her what to call my blog.
  For that, I am thankful.  But still insecure.  I hope you will all forgive me if my blog title offends you in someway....this entire blog will be a challenge to that voice in my head that tells me I can't express my thoughts and feelings and desires. 


I promise my next post will be far more cheery than this one :-)