Wednesday, February 18, 2009

I do not think that word means what you think it means.

Just seen on the license plate frame of a Volvo, of all things, "I'm a bitch, I'm just not your's."

Now, even if "your's" was a word, it would mean, "your is," which is still just as incorrect as the contractive form. And this wasn't an email with an accidental apostrophe, it was an object whose production required foresight and special ordering, but apparently no proofreader. The driver of that car certainly isn't the English language's bitch.

Monday, February 16, 2009

Watch out, bottom feeders and scavengers, I'm coming for you.

I can eat shrimp! I tried it again (after having briefly tried it in September), and nothing, not an itch, not a swell, not a hive. I haven't eaten any since that fateful night all those years ago, where an ill-advised trip to an indoor circus ended with an ER visit for one of the worst, scariest asthma attacks in history. The negative associations with that evening led me to avoid shellfish, a beloved food group, for the past 15 years. Shrimp and pasta, shrimp salad sandwiches, barbecued shrimp, fried shrimp, garlic and butter shrimp, OH MY GOD, I can eat at Pike Place Market again! All restaurants serving seafood are no longer off limits to me. Oh, the glory. The deliciousness. The high calorie many-leggedness. So, so happy.

Tuesday, February 10, 2009

Tuesday, February 03, 2009

Stupid, stupid interwebs.

I hate the intertubes.  When I started going to therapy for anxiety, my therapist told me to never, ever do internet research on subjects upon which I had fixated.  Don't keep carting the coals to Newcastle, as it were.  However, when I went online yesterday to look up dosages of tylenol for Viv post-immunization as the bottle only listed doses for babies over 12 months, I wasn't intending to read anything about the immunization controversy, and, in fact, deliberately avoided any website with even the barest mention of autism.  We had already discussed the concerns surrounding vaccinating Viv and had decided to go with the shots as the risks of contracting the illnesses to be immunized against were greater than the risks associated with triggering autism.  In addition, I wasn't able to find any peer-reviewed research published in a reputable journal (using PubMed) that found a plausible link between the two.  

And then, AND THEN, I found website after website claiming an elevated risk of SIDS after one particular immunization.  How could this be possible?  How did I miss this new subject specially engineered to keep me up at night, necessitating me to check Viv's breathing every time I jerked awake from an unwelcome doze, during which I had panic dreams of horrible outcomes?  So, I went to PubMed again, and there were a few case studies of infant deaths that could possibly be associated with this vaccine.  So now I'll be utterly paranoid for the next two months, convinced that any fussiness in our usually placid baby is a sign of impending doom. OK, the next five years.  Let's be realistic.  

Of course, every individual website claiming this link uses the exact same copy and even calls asthma "a condition not unlike SIDS."  That's a head-scratcher.  Still, I'm now very worried.

Monday, February 02, 2009

Stats

When Viv was born, she weighed 6.2 pounds, was 19 inches in length and had a head circumference of 13 inches.

At today's doctor's appointment, she weighed a whopping 12.1 pounds, measured at 24.5 inches her head is a planetoid at 17 inches around.  She's at the 90th percentile for head and length and 80th percentile for her weight.  And here I thought she was so little.   Of course, all the babies I know top out at the 100th percentile at around their 6th hour, so maybe the scale should be slightly altered.