A lonely little petunia in an onion patch

Sometimes Ahmed just does not have very good parenting sense... Last night Dahlia was crying herself into a puking fit so I put a basin under her mouth for her to puke into. Ahmed came in snd decided to try to distract her by THROWING HER IN THE AIR then putting her on his shoulders. She proceeded to vomit from a height of 6+ feet. So now instead of puke in a basin i have puke splattered all over the carpet, bed, table, fan, me, dahlia, and him. Ugh! This is why I need a carpet cleaner.

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For the non-Facebook-inclined:









Dahlia... she was born July 4th, 8lbs 10oz, 21" long and nearly 2 weeks past her due date. :)




ETA: Oh yeah, and I graduated and passed my licensing exam. I'm an RN now! Woo!

It has been brought to my attention that I have dropped off the face of the Earth to anyone who isn't on Facebook. Sorry, but FB has been so convenient! I miss the days when I had time to write more than 150 characters at a time. And fortunately, most of my LJ friends have helped me out tremendously by using FB as well. :) Anyway...

I am about nine days away from graduating from nursing school, which cannot come soon enough. I have so very little give-a-damn left in me, that I am struggling to even prepare for a final case study presentation that we have to do on Tuesday. I'm also 19-ish days away from my due date, which blows my mind, because I still find it hard to believe that I am really going to have another kid soon. There's a bassinet sitting in my bedroom and I just look at it sometimes and think, why the hell is there a bassinet in here?!

Ahmed was finally able to find a job a few weeks ago, working at a gas station/convenience store. It was perfect timing, because at the time that he got called for the interview, we were trying to figure out how we were going to pay our rent after the month of June. Hopefully his working will allow me to be able to stay home with the baby for longer than I otherwise would be able to.

Abigail is doing fabulously, she astounds me every day with the way her brain works. She's such a smartie, but then I turn around and find her doing something totally bizarre, like licking the bathroom door handle. Gross. She had to get glasses recently, too, with a prescription waaaaay stronger than mine is. I think maybe that's some of her dad's genes shining through. They look cute, though, even if it is weird to get used to. I should post a picture of her, but I don't have any recent ones on this computer, so that'll have to wait until next year, when I update again. :P

I hope you all are doing well! If you use FB and want to keep in touch, look me up there.

I have spent the last three days at the Oregon State Hospital for the mentally ill. NO, not as a patient, though I think some of the people there are more sane than I am. It's part of our clinical assignment for this term, and as a result of a swine-flu quarantine, I got reassigned from the "transitional" ward (ie, people that are mostly-well and preparing to return to society) to an all-male ward which doesn't allow female patients because most of the patients there are sex offenders. Fortunately (or not?) I was not made aware of this reassignment until just before I got there, so I didn't have time to get anxious about it. I didn't even have that moment of panic after the doors slammed locked behind me and I was left at the mercy of my partner, who was the only one assigned keys.

A mental hospital is an interesting place. I don't know what I was expecting. Something out of One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest, I guess. I mean, it was filmed in that hospital! But it wasn't really like that at all, except for some very delayed games of Rummy, where we would be waiting for the person playing with us to finish consulting his hand with someone the rest of us couldn't see. Is that cheating? For the most part, I could kind of forget I was in a mental hospital, until the guy in the corner started loudly singing "Mellow Yellow", or one of the other patients would tell us about how the radio station KUPL was shut down because they were transmitting radio signals for the American Al Qaida. Then again, I could probably hear that last one from someone in my own family. :)

I think it'll be tougher next week, when my partner and I are split up and left to our own devices to interact with our assigned patients and entertain ourselves. I foresee a lot of Rummy, Yahtzee, and Mellow Yellow.

After that, it's back to the regular hospital, to fend off H1N1 and try to make it through the rest of this term without any more sick days.

Hope you all are well. Sorry I have sucked at keeping up. Everything else is going good. :)

Ok, I have been out of the country for about a month, but I feel a little out of the loop. When I left, the Obama-love was still thick in the air. Now it seems like everyone's pissed off. What's going on? Why would parents be freaking out about the president addressing the nation's kids?

here's a repeat for you facebookers, and new stuff for non-FB people.

we finally made it to the damned pyramids a few days ago! they are only about 20 minutes away by car, but it took us almost a month to arrange a ride there. when you go, you have to either go in your own car, as a group on a bus, or pay for a taxi to come and drive you around inside (it's a bit of a distance between the pyramids and the sphinx, especially in hot weather). we don't have a car, so we ended up doing the latter, but it took some time to arrange everything. the first time, the cab driver we used to use didn't show. second time, i was sick. third time, ahmed and i were too tired. so this was the fourth time, and i knew it was going to be grueling because it was the hottest day all week, and we were fasting, and it involved a lot of walking. I didn't last very long, so we didn't get a lot of pictures, but I am happy with the ones we ended up with. We visited a different pyramid this time, which confused me a lot because it looked different and I kept asking Ahmed why, and he was saying, what? it's a pyramid... a pyramid is a pyramid!

Anyway, photos:





(this is her, OMGPYRAMIDS face, apparently)






More photos here: http://www.flickr.com/photos/amysa…

We went to the Giza zoo today. We were supposed to get an early start, and be home by noon, but due to tummy troubles, we got off to a late start. We didn't head home until around 4pm, which is pretty much the hottest part of the day... not fun. Abigail had a blast seeing all the animals up close, and playing with the kids, and running around like a silly crazy kid. And I got to see my cuddly lion friend from last winter, only he is bigger now, considerably less cuddly due to his large teeth and claws. :)



The same lion that I held last winter... he's gotten a lot bigger!






Baby fox?



Feeding the elephant

More pictures here: http://www.flickr.com/photos/amysa…

By the way, the Neutrogena Waterblock SPF70+ aerosol sunscreen works amazingly well. I put it on Abigail before we left, then reapplied two hours in, and she didn't even get the slightest bit burned in the blistering Egyptian sun.

Abigail, Ahmed and I just got home from going "for a relaxing walk" around downtown Cairo. This [i]relaxing[/i] walk included walking 20 minutes through the bazaar to reach the Metro, 20 minutes on a stinky muggy subway, eating shwarma at a stand-up-and-eat cafe, going to Abd for cookies and ice cream only to discover they were out of ice cream, and they didn't have the cookies we wanted because all they had were Ramadan sweets, nuts, apricots, etc. I was sweating head to toe pretty much the whole time, trying to keep Abigail from darting out into traffic, or trying to keep traffic from darting into her. On the way home the metro was packed, and I started getting nauseated and dizzy from being overheated. I insisted that Ahmed get us a toktok to drive us the 20 minute walk back to the apartment, because I was just wiped out. The heat just sucks the life out of me. We still had to make it up the stairs to the fifth floor, but fortunately we made it without passing out :thumbs: Anyway, if being relaxed means tearing off your clothes as soon as you walk in the door, then collapsing in a heap on the bed while your five-year-old fans you and brings you water, then I was completely and utterly relaxed. :P

PS: Pretty sure this is incoherent. Sorry.

If I were in the US right now, I would hit up my OBGYN, but since I am out of the country, I have to depend on google and LJ. I'm pretty sure they are more reliable than Egyptian doctors, anyway.

Girlie stuff:

I woke up this morning with a SUPER full bladder, so full it was painful. I ran and peed, then went back to bed and laid down. About five minutes later I started having the most awful cramps. They sort of felt like labor pain, I was nauseated, it hurt more when I moved, but still hurt like hell even when I didn't move. The cramps were confined to my pelvic girdle, but the pain radiated inside to the rectal and vaginal area. As I was laying there trying to take deep breaths, not throw up, and slow my racing heart, I started wondering if I could have an ectopic pregnancy or something. I had Abigail go grab my medicine bag and I took a 600mg ibuprofen and a vicodin, then just lay there on my side holding my belly and waiting for it to kick in. After about 30 minutes I started feeling better, though I'm not sure if it's because the cramping stopped or the codeine kicked in.

This has happened a few times in the past, but never for so long, and never so painful. I've had a pelvic ultrasound semi-recently (within the last 6 months) and I didn't have any cysts, adhesions, fibroids, etc. A couple years ago they thought I had interstitial cystitis, but I didn't think that IC could cause this severe of pain... I freaked Ahmed out pretty bad.

So, anyway. Thoughts?

soooo, hey, we made it to egypt! we got here the night before last, but have spent the last couple days trying to acclimate. abigail is currently passed out in the bedroom with the AC, even though it's about 4pm. she hasn't been sleeping well (jetlag? new place? strange noises? heat? crazy-ass rooster crowing every five minutes?) and the heat and lack of sleep have been adding up for a lot of whininess. everything's been going well, aside from the heat, which was expected, and having a hard time finding things for abigail to eat, which again was expected. the flight was miserable for me, as i had to trek across not one, but two international airports hauling four carry-on bags. i have bruises on my shoulders, arms, etc. and for the first day my whole body was sore, but other than that we arrived unscathed. abigail tolerated the flight very well, only a couple near-meltdowns when she got teary from being sleepy and wanting her bed. she and ahmed have become friends very quick, she ran up to him and gave him a huge hug when she first saw him at the airport, and it was very sweet to see. tonight we're going to be leaving the apartment to visit some friends, as soon as the sun goes down and it starts to cool down a bit. i'm sleepy and headachey but i actually woke up at a reasonable hour today so i don't want to ruin it by taking a nap. booo.

we haven't taken many pictures yet, but here are a couple:



Our neighbor across the street is raising a cow on his roof. Abigail looks out the window and moos at it. For those of you wondering how they're gonna get a cow back down the stairs, I invite you to read about Eid al-Adha (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eid_a…) and i guess you will be able to figure it out... But shh, don't tell Abigail.


I brought an inflatable pool from home for Abigail to use as a bath/pool in the bathroom... I wish I'd brought a bigger one so i can climb in.



From the first night. Ahmed looks sleepy.



Abigail and I just before takeoff. Her first time on a plane.



She really loves takeoff!


If you wanna see picturs from our trip sooner than my laziness allows me to post them here, then I suggest finding me on Facebook, where every nanosecond of my life is documented. Amy Short in Salem, OR, of course.