Happy Halloween!

(More pics at the twins' blog.)

It takes a lot of nerve.

This was going to be a rant about the bill I received from the hospital today (see above). However, when I called the hospital's billing department to rant and rave and threaten legal action, I was denied delivery of my carefully scripted tirade. (Imagine it: "You don't really want me calling every local news station in town and telling them about how you endangered my adorable, photogenic two-year-old's life, do you?") The helpful and friendly woman on the other end of the line insisted that no, no, this account has a $0 balance, no balance due, nothing to pay. And she would not elaborate further. Huh. I guess the hospital is smarter than I thought.

Free Rice

I've killed far too much time on this site today. Go. Check it out. Improve your vocabulary and save the world. Oh, and if you're up for a bit of competition, we can discuss vocabulary levels in the comments. (I'm shaking out to be a solid 43.)

News?

The question: Are these reporters extremely credulous? Or are they just hoping that we are?

Cow-eating trees

Dolphins used to look like humans and lived in Atlantis

Thanks to Fark for the links.

An Open Letter to L'Oreal Paris

Dear L'Oreal Paris,

I purchased your L'Oreal Superior Preference Fade-Defying Color & Shine System in 8G Golden Blonde, looking forward to the promised eight weeks of true color. However, use of your product resulted in something less like 8G Golden Blonde and more like 75R Raggedy Ann. Thus, I'm wondering just how iron-clad this eight-week promise is. Can we negotiate? Because, really, I'm willing to let you out of your contract early.

Sincerely,
Kelly

Rainbow Books

I can't get over how beautiful these pictures are. If ever I have a home where I have room to actually display my books, this is what I'm going to do. Dewey decimal be damned.

Right vs. Left

Here's a fun link. Check it out and determine whether you're more of a left-brain or right-brain thinker.

According to the link, I'm a right-brain type, which surprises me. I've always thought of myself as a left-brain thinker, seeing as I value logic, words, and language so highly. And one of the traits for right-brain thinkers is "believes" -- uh, not so much.

How about you? Clockwise or counterclockwise?

Thanks for the link, Airan!

Sometimes a wand is just a wand.

According to J.K. Rowling, Albus Dumbledore is gay. Admit it: You've wondered. The flowing robes, the attention to personal appearance, the lilting way he sashays through Hogwarts -- all the signs were there.

Kidding aside, I have to say this seems perfectly consistent with the books, and I love that Rowling has now outed Dumbledore, although I'm also glad that it didn't come up in the books. The Harry Potter books are all about tolerance and acceptance, so Dumbledore's orientation should rightly be of no consequence. Well done, J.K.

Now all those Harry Potter haters will have a whole new round of ammunition.

Public Service Announcement

Food poisoning sucks.

What's going on?

My life has been a bit of a blur lately. Just to keep you all in the know on the minutia of my life (because that's what you come here for, right?), here's an update.

• Evelyn is recovering nicely. She's back to her old self, other than being even more pale than she was to start with. This will pass. Still no word on whether the hospital will be sending us a bill for their "services."
  
  
• My bottom right eyelid has been twitching for six days.
  
  
• We got a new used minivan, and it is a thing of beauty. It is also a behemoth, but I guess that's par for the course.
  
  
• We had our last Game Night with Julie before she moves to St. Paul. She'll be back in town for next month's Game Night, but it still feels like the end of an era. I blame Tomkin.
  
  
• Fall is well and truly here in the Windy City, and I love it. Good riddance, summer!
  

How are you?

An Inconvenient Nobel Laureate

I love that Al Gore was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize for his work in drawing attention to climate change. And I love that the Nobel committee plays politics when awarding their prizes. Did you hear that, George Bush? And you, global-warming deniers? Aw, snap.

Evelyn's Ordeal

Many of you have already heard the story of Evelyn's ordeal by now. Humor me while I relive it again, savoring the terror, the fury, and the eventual sense of relief (tempered with a gnawing desire to kick some anesthesiologist ass).

This adorable girl (smiling in her hospital bed post-ordeal) was scheduled for a routine MRI yesterday (one that her father and I were entirely convinced was unnecessary, but that we were going through with to satisfy doctors who were most likely just covering their own asses). Because she is so young, she had to be sedated for the procedure. You can't expect a two-year-old to just hang out for an hour while you run scans of her brain.

What could go wrong? Glad you asked. Tiny girls such as Evelyn are completely swallowed up by the MRI machine. You know they're in there, but you can't see them. So if, for example, her IV becomes somehow disconnected and she's lying unconscious in the machine, bleeding freely for no one knows how long, you wouldn't be able to tell. Not until you take her out and find her lying in a puddle of her own blood. Yes, enjoy that image -- it keeps replaying in my mind. I'm glad I didn't see the actual event, but my imagination fills in the blanks quite nicely.

When the doctor retrieved me from the waiting area to tell me what had happened, he played it cool, but even he couldn't pretend that this was at all routine or normal or OK. This doesn't happen. Little ones such as Evelyn don't have a lot of blood to spare, so when they lose a large amount, the quantity of which is unknown in this case, it is dangerous and scary. (Scary, yes -- that is an understatement.) The nurse confessed, in panicked tones, that in her 28 years as a nurse, she'd never seen anything like it. (Bedside Manner 101: Don't say things like that to scared parents.)

In the end, Evelyn is fine. She had to stay in the hospital overnight for observation, and she's likely to be pale and wan for a few days while she rebuilds her blood supply, but no lasting harm was done.

But how does this happen? I know human error is unavoidable. There's no knowing when it will strike. And we can't expect doctors and nurses to be superhuman. But how is it that there's no safeguard that keeps this from happening? As Pop-pop and others have said to me, this seems to be yet another sign that something is seriously wrong with our health care system, that important, essential details are being overlooked and lives are being endangered as a result.

All involved parties expressed a great deal of remorse and concern, leading me to believe they are as mystified as I am about how this happened. I'm glad Evelyn is fine, but what if she weren't? What if she'd lost more blood? What if she'd been abandoned on the table for hours while unconscious and bleeding?

How do we prevent this sort of thing?

Persnickety

A general note to the blogosphere:

Lightning

and

Lightening

are not the same word.

That is all.

Disappointed

If you know me at all, you know I'm not a sports fan. Quite the reverse. I have not just apathy concerning sports, but even active animosity for them. I can't really tell you why. It could be that, because I've never been able to participate in sports, I've developed a dislike of them in order to protect myself from feeling any sadness over being left out. That would be like me.

Whatever the cause, I'm no sports fan -- except for the Olympics. I love them. Every other year, I'm glued to the TV for two weeks, rooting for my favorite athletes as they struggle for gold. Some personalities really grab you (perhaps because the media inundates us with their life stories come Olympics time), and you can't help but care for them.

Ah, Marion Jones. How I loved her. How I wanted her to win those medals. How I believed her claims to be steroid free. I guess I can't be surprised by her admission of guilt. Rather, it causes me to wonder anew how many of our celebrated athletes are using performance-enhancing drugs.
More than we might guess, I think.

But that might just be my anti-sports attitude talking.

Updated to add: What Dreams brings up a good point. Marion Jones has shown great courage over the last few days, for which we must be proud of her. Her bravery might help to end the culture of steroid use among athletes. We can hope so.

Educating Mommy

My girls are a couple of Chatty Cathys. They talk up a storm all day long. They have a lot to say, and they're getting better and better at expressing themselves.

Because they're coming along so nicely with their vocabulary and sentence-building skills, I've decided it's time to start eradicating some of those baby-talk mispronunciations that they've outgrown and yet still cling to. "Wellow" is cute, but the rest of the world recognizes it as "yellow." Most of you are probably unaware that "beebras" are striped equines, and you can take a ride in a Radio Flyer "lagon." Caterpillars, those hungry creatures, mature into "fuh-flies."

Yes, yes, this is all very cute, but the girls are perfectly capable of saying the real words. They have the phonemes. It's time to start putting them to use. So I've been spending a lot of time lately saying things like "BUH-ter-fly" and "WUH-WUH-WAgon," with mixed results. I hear a lot of "wuh-wuh-LAgon!" and "zuh-zuh-BEEbra!" in return.

Evie seems to really enjoy this process, so much so that she decided it's time to start working on some of Mommy's mispronunciations. We sat down this afternoon to eat some peanut butter and jelly sandwiches (or "danniches" in Eviespeak, "narriches" in Sophiespeak). Evie turned to me, with earnest expression and urgent tone, showed me her sandwich, and said, "Duh-duh-dannich! Dannich! Now you, Mommy! You, Mommy!" And she was not satisfied until I repeated back to her, "Duh-duh-dannich!" Not to be left out, Sophie chimed in with her own version: "Duh-duh-narrich!"

These poor, sad kids, saddled with a mother who doesn't know how to say "sandwich."