Sadness and frustration

So, some of you know that my mom has this crazy chronic disease called Hashimoto's Encephalitis. Basically, this disease causes her own body to attack her thyroid gland, which releases lots of thyroid hormone. Then, the thyroid hormone imbalance causes her brain to swell. Thus, the encephalitis. She is OK most of the time as long as she takes medicine, but when her body gets stressed out for some reason (this could even be caused by the weather), she has a Hashimoto's attack. For the last month, she has been having a constant attack and the doctor couldn't figure out why until recently. Finally, she was able to start taking this new thyroid medication that is time-release and it has pretty much cured the problem. So this is good news.
The sadness and frustration for me is that I have the same genes as her and have just been diagnosed with the exact same disease. Apparently, whenever I get stressed out for too long, my body will go into attack mode too. This happened just this morning—I feel awful. I woke up with this horrible headache that I thought was a migraine (but I've never had a migraine so I didn't know what it was exactly). The left side of my body was sort of numb starting from my left ear outward. I'd never known what it was like to have a numb elbow. It was weird. Advil didn't do anything for the pain or the numbness, so I just lay around in bed all morning and Joel made me food. I couldn't see straight out of my left eye. It kept closing on me without me telling it to, just the left one. Weird. I'm kind of freaked out. I never want to feel like this again.
At least now, I'm feeling better. Sorry these thoughts are not very coherent though.

Everybody's ranting at me!

I don't like being the mediator between all of these politely angry adults anymore. Editing is difficult enough without being caught in the middle of a storm of frustration. I guess that's part of any job, but man, I hope it's over soon.

Fire in the toaster oven

So, this morning, I made toast. Rewind. I was in a gigantic hurry and very stressed and I tried to make toast, but burnt it badly. In my aggravation, I pulled my toast out of the toaster oven and brutally turned the knob to the off position, or thought I turned it to off. It turns out that I had actually turned it past off to the highest setting of bake--oops. Within a few minutes, due to the charcoly, fallen pieces of food on the floor of the oven, the machine had caught on fire and was spewing flames that kept growing larger and larger. I was on the phone with a PhD student whose dissertation I was editing and all I could think to do was to turn off the oven (for real this time). The fire didn't go out, so I told the guy on the other end of the line to hold on and ran and woke up Joel who was sleeping. "There's a fire! The toaster oven! The toaster oven's on fire!" I whispered as I shook him, pointing toward the kitchen. Luckily, even in his half awake state, Joel had the presence of mind to unplug the oven. First step toward success beautifully executed. Unfortunately, the fire still didn't go out and actually got bigger. So Joel took a pot of water and dumped it over the oven. This second step toward fire safety certainly put out the fire but we figured out after the fact that electrical fires should never be put out with water. Oh well. Next time (hopefully not) we will use baking soda.

In the LDS news the other month . . .

The LDS news had a story over Christmas break about a Brazilian woman who didn't join the church until she was 108 years old. Her family thought she would be gone soon after, but the paper showed a picture of her celebrating her 119th birthday.

More proverbs

Getting away won't solve your problems, but it'll sure make everyone around you a lot happier.

One day the meek shall inherit the Earth . . . then they too will beat the crap out of me.

The more I give of myself to others, the more I realize there wasn't much of me to begin with.

If I never try I'll never find out what else I could have failed at.

I have to live my life for me, although I'm sure someone else could do a much better job.

I do not know what the future holds for me, but I know it's gonna hurt . . . and it's gonna hurt bad.

God grant me the serenity to accept the things I cannot change, the courage to change the things I can, and the wisdom to know that I really can't do either.

Proverbs . . . Almost

As you shall make your bed so shall you . . . mess it up.
A miss is as good as a . . . Mr.
Strike while the . . . bug is close.
It's always darkest before . . . daylight savings time.
Never underestimate the power of . . . termites.
You can't teach an old dog new . . . math.
If you lie down with the dogs, you'll . . . stink in the morning.
Love all, trust . . . me.
The pen is Mightier than the . . . pigs.
An idle mind is . . . the best way to relax.
Where there's smoke, there's . . . pollution.
A penny saved is . . . not much.
Two's company, three's . . . The Musketeers.
Don't put off tomorrow what . . . you put on to go to bed.
Laugh and the whole world laughs with you, cry and . . . you have to blow your nose.
None are so blind as . . . Helen Keller.
Children should be seen and not . . . spanked or grounded.
If at first you don't succeed . . . get new batteries.
When the blind leadeth the blind . . . get out of the way.
Don't bite the hand that . . . looks dirty.
You can lead a horse to water but . . . how?