Yesterday I did something I’ve never done before – I passed a 3 hour glucose challenge!  I haven’t had a gestational diabetes-free pregnancy since my first-born 8 ½ years ago!  It feels really good to know that I can eat whatever I want for the next few months without having to worry about pairing proteins with carbs and cutting out desserts; I can hardly believe it.  I don’t have to go and speak with the endocrinologist or the dietician, and I won’t be taking non-stress tests at the hospital.  Most importantly, I won’t have to inject my body with insulin – something with which my husband and I were not very comfortable anyway.  And since gestational diabetes often leads to large babies, I am curious to see what this one will weigh.  The previous 2 babies were both 8 lbs. 12 oz, and my first baby (no diabetes) was only 7 lbs. 2 oz.  Of course, she was a little bit early and is still pretty small for her age to this day.  But, I just wanted to share the news because I’m very excited that I have a few less things to worry about, and I know I had people waiting to hear the results of my test.

Took my 3-hour glucose “challenge” today, and since it was SO fun for me (sarcasm adundant), I thought I would spread some of the ‘cheer’ by giving you a run-down of what this medical test entails.

First, why do they call it a glucose challenge?  To provide extra motivation, maybe?  Whatever the reason, I think they should change the name because glucose challenge makes it sound like I was there to run a relay or something.  But the glucose challenge is quite the opposite.  It requires that you sit at the medical office for 3 hours and do nothing.  Literally.  Sure, you can read or sew or Sudoku, but you are not supposed to get out of your chair with the exception of donating a vial of blood every hour.  The test is given to pregnant women to determine whether or not they have gestational diabetes, which is when the pregnancy hormones block the body’s production of insulin, which will make blood sugar skyrocket and potentially lead to a large baby.  Since I’ve had the condition for 2 of my previous pregnancies, I just might be a glucose challenge expert by now.  My husband wanted to know why couldn’t I just skip the one hour test and go right for the 3 hour test since we both knew that I would fail it since I am craving sweets and I’ve failed my last two 1-hour tests.  (MAJOR chocolate malt craving the other night, by the way.  If I do have the diabetes, it will stink to have to fend off one of those cravings with sugar-free chocolate…  somehow it’s just not the same.)  The Dr. wasn’t down with skipping right to the 3 hour test though, so lucky me, I’ve had to do them both.

Sure enough, I failed my 1 hour, which is why I got to spend my whole day at the doctor’s office waiting to get poked with a needle today.  And that’s not even the funnest part.  They make you fast from 10pm the night before until whenever your test is over, which for me wasn’t until 1:30 this afternoon!  They were a little late on my last blood draw, and I was on the verge of wreaking havoc in the office when they finally called me in.  Luckily, my daughter had gone to school with the nurse’s daughter a few years ago, so she recognized me and noticed the desperate look in my eyes, otherwise I think they might have forgotten about me.  One more minute, and I was going to carry out my plan to go to my car and scavenge for crumbs my kids left behind on the road trip to Illinois.  Luckily, it didn’t come to that, but asking a pregnant lady to go without food for over 12 hours is a pretty brave thing to do!

I forgot to mention that for 3 days prior to the test, they put you on a special diet.  I was like, oh great, here we go, but when I got the diet paper home and looked at it, the diet actually turned out to be the best part!  For 3 days, I was under doctor’s orders to load up on carbs, eat anything I wanted, and to make sure that I ate dessert with both lunch and dinner.  No problem, mission accomplished!

And a final note, before I take a nap, since they literally drained the energy from my body today in 3 separate installments…  they have a new flavor of the glucose drink you have to drink.  It used to be just orange, which tasted like orange pop, but today I was offered a cola flavored one also.  So I chose the new one because, what the heck, you only live once, and I’ve had the orange one more than a few times by now.  Which brings me to a question I have:  if there is 50g of dextrose in these little drinks, why don’t they taste better?  It’s not like they taste bad (the orange ones anyway), but shouldn’t something that is basically liquid sugar taste a little better?  I can think of probably about 50 things that would taste much better and have lots of sugar in them.  Why don’t they let me binge on candy and desserts before the glucose test instead of downing that drink?  And if I do have gestational diabetes, is it really the best thing for my body to be ingesting all this sugar just for them to test me?  And what do they need a whole vial of blood for every hour?  I am beginning to feel like someone’s science project!  I guess doctors know best, even though sometimes it’s hard (downright impossible for people like my husband!) to put your trust in them.  But back to my point…  if you ever have to take this test, I would stay away from the cola flavored glucose drink.  It’s not very good, and every time I think about drinking it, I feel nauseous!  It reminds me of the ‘flat cola’ remedy my mom recommended one time when I was sick as a kid.  I felt like I was going to throw up, even though I hadn’t, so she had heard somewhere that I should drink flat cola.  We just happened to have some in the house, so I tried it, promptly vomited everything up, and couldn’t look at cola for months.  And I still remember it.  Sorry Mom…  that one just didn’t work 😉 

Came across a few really cute animal-themed emails lately, so I thought I’d share.  The first one is for people who don’t have a dog or just have a very disobedient one.  Enter a command in the text box and the cute doggie will do it.  Try ‘kiss’.

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Then there’s this video, which features the winning combo of a baby and a dog, awww…  Click here to see “Childproof Drawer”.

Finally, I got these really cute pictures in an email a few weeks ago…  Seems a mommy tiger lost her cubs and “adopted” these piglets to take care of.  See the ‘pork chops’:

I didn’t blog all weekend because we made a few-hundred-miles trek to the Chicago suburbs for my nephew’s 5th birthday party.  We stuffed ourselves silly over there because as much as we love where we live, the restaurant choice can grow kind of boring.  So, being in a different area had us stopping for food every chance we got, but by the end of the weekend, we were a wee bit regretful…  I think that midnight case of White Castles are what did us in.  Since there aren’t any White Castles near us, we had to stock up and buy a whole case since they reheat pretty well.  We stopped there on the way out of the area, and then we had to smell them all the way home – yuck.  They taste good but don’t smell so great, especially when it’s time for bed…  So, as you can see, we did fit in a bit of culture on our trip.  For those who aren’t familiar with White Castle, it’s a fast food chain found in the midwest that specializes in mini-hamburgers, also known as “sliders”.  They aren’t just mini-hamburgers, though, they’re steam-grilled, and they have a very unique taste…  not to mention an, ahem, interesting side effect when you feed them to pets and small children.  I will not elaborate; let’s just say that my kids really like them, but the next day our noses were paying for it.

We also found time to stop at an ethnic grocery store for something my husband has been looking for called Halva, which is a Middle Eastern dessert.  I had never tried it before, and I really like to try ethnic foods, so we picked some up.  It is pretty good!  The halva we got was actually from Macedonia, and though it tastes nothing like it, I would best describe its texture as that of the ‘astronaut’ ice cream.  You know, the freeze dried ice cream that they sell at space museums?

And to round out our cultural experience, my nephew had a pinata at his birthday party.  Pardon my spelling it wrong, I can’t find the special n with the tilday over it they use in the spanish alphabet.  So in my blog, it will be known as a pinata.  Just in case you are not familiar with what a pinata entails, check out Wikipedia’s explanation:  

A succession of blindfolded, stick-wielding children try to break the piñata in order to collect the sweets (traditionally fruit, such as sugarcane) and/or toys inside of it. It has been used for hundreds of years to celebrate special occasions such as birthdays, Christmas and Easter.

Seems that Wikipedia figured out how to do the tilday…  but anyway, yes you read that right – blindfolded, stick-wielding children!  Actually, it’s customary to use a baseball bat instead of a stick, yet oddly enough, I don’t think I’ve ever been part of a pinata party where a parent didn’t have to step in and break it open themselves – this one being no exception.  It went pretty well, though we did almost have a casualty – my nephew took his first whack at the pinata, and his dad had not cleared the area, so CRACK went the bat against the cell phone he was wearing…  but I guess all was well, especially since someone had talked them out of their original plan: giving a bunch of 5-year-olds an aluminum bat with which to whack at the pinata.  Thank goodness for the insight!  If you get a chance, you should check out the pinata scene in the movie Parenthood, it’s hilarious…  the kids at the party lose interest after not being able to get it open, so the scene cuts to Steve Martin beating the heck out of the thing as it lays on the floor.  Nothing like that at my nephew’s party, in fact, his pinata opened rather easily.  And when it did break open, there wasn’t the usual melee either…  the kids were actually quite orderly in picking up the pinata “guts”.  I was a little worried because the last time I was at a birthday party with a pinata, the kids all piled in a heap on top of each other, and the kid at the bottom ended up with a bloody lip.

So, overall, great weekend, even if it lacked sleep – lots of driving and we didn’t get home until 3:30 in the morning!  And I have a few weeks to decide whether or not we will be brave enough to attempt a pinata at my daughter’s 4th birthday party…  maybe that will be enough time for her to forget that her cousin had one…

One thing is for sure, if we have a pinata, we will not have an aluminum bat on the premises!

A couple of quick updates I have to post:

1.  After just one episode, your favorite new show and mine, “Secret Talents of the Stars” was CANCELLED!!!  Just kidding.  At least about the favorite show part – this awful show was actually cancelled after airing just one episode, and we will never find out who wins.  Boo-hoo.  Probably would have been a bigger disappointment to waste more time watching it than it will be not knowing which celebrity won.

2.  I did some research, and didn’t find anything about the Starburst commercial (see my Mediocrity post) and whether or not it stars Steve Buscemi – just LOTS of speculation on the internet, no definite answers – but I watched the commercial again, and I no longer think it’s him.  Unless he’s found a way to age in reverse, that is.  But the actor in question definitely seems to be imitating him, and should probably look into getting a paid gig as a Buscemi impersonator, if he hasn’t already.  Sorry for the misinformation.

It may be cold and rainy outside, but the weather has not affected my emotional state inside!  I’ve had an awesome day!  It is our ninth wedding anniversary today, and so far, the day has been just short of perfect.  The only thing that could make it better is if we could be together all day, but of course with 3.5 kids to support, it’s unrealistic on a weekday to take off work.  Besides, we were able to have a fun family day together yesterday in between the dental work and the tantrums of our 3-year-old.

Today, my husband has left love-note post-its all around the house for me to find.  He sent me a sweet e-card, and I really love the church sign he put on tangents.org of our wedding day.  My almost 18-month-old daughter even let me have a peaceful lunch today – I didn’t even have to interrupt my own lunch once to get her anything and usually I have to get up between 5-15 times!  Oh, wait, I did have 1 lunch “interruption”, but I wouldn’t even call it that.  The doorbell rang with the delivery of a gorgeous vase of flowers my husband sent me for our anniversary!  And lately, the smell of fresh flowers has been completely relaxing for me…  it must be the pregnancy.  I’ve always loved flowers, but lately they’re almost like a drug when I smell them!  So, walking past the eye and nose candy on the dining room table is also keeping my spirits high.  We were going to celebrate with a nice dinner and a night out, then come home and watch the first new Office episode in MONTHS, but the other day, we found out tonight is the monthly meeting for the board of a community agency with which we volunteer – wouldn’t you know April’s meeting had to be tonight!  But no matter…  we can still go out around the meeting, go to the meeting together, and in the age of VCR’s, computers, and all of that, we will find a way to catch the Office later.  So thanks to all the well-wishers who’ve written and called – we’ve had a wonderful day and we will see you next year at the big 10-year anniversary BASH!

If you’ve been to a movie in the theater lately, you may have noticed a very clever and funny Starburst commercial they play during the previews with Steve Buscemi called Ernie the Klepto.  If not, see it here, but watch carefully, the humor is subtle at first and happens quickly!

If I had to name my most useful kitchen tool, I think I would probably choose my retractable Sharpie.  Sharpies are those permanent markers with the thin tip – they’re very useful, and you can use them without making a mess of everything unlike regular permanent markers.  Well, some genius invented a retractable Sharpie – no cap to mess with, just click the end and it’s ready to use – a brilliant invention, really.  I used mine in my kitchen multiple times daily for various things – until it up and disappeared!  I used it mostly for labeling the date on leftovers, among other things, and I had even grown to love the clicking noise it made…  how I miss that!

I have a few suspects; namely three little girls who have been trying to get their hands on my retractable Sharpie since I got it!  But I have no real leads, and no idea where to look for it.  All I know is that I miss it!  Like I said, I used it several times per day, and it’s just not the same to have to open the cap on a regular Sharpie.  Actually, last night I was physically unable to open the cap on the regular Sharpie – had to have my husband do it – because it was on too tight and I injured my finger.  Since I only had one free hand at the time, the retractable Sharpie would have come in handy yet again!  In fact, this will have to be a short post since it hurts to type everything with my left pointer finger ever since I sliced the tip off the other night.  I told you I was terribly uncoordinated – see my previous post if you don’t believe it.  Which is why I NEED my retractable Sharpie back!  If you’ve seen it, please contact me ASAP!  Tipsters will remain annonymous!

All my life I’ve had to deal with a less than optimal anatomy.  In Kindergarten, my teacher wrote on my report card, “lacks hand-eye coordination.”  Not lacking in hand-eye coordination, she definitely wrote LACKS – as if I didn’t have any at all.  My vision hasn’t been the best and neither has my hearing for that matter; due to the multiple ear infections I suffered as a toddler.  The LACK of hand-eye coordination followed me all throughout school.  There were all those skill tests we would have to take every year in gym class…  you know, the mile run, flexed arm hang, shuttle run, 50 yard dash, long jump (the long jump was only a clever name for when people like me tried to take that test and could barely get off the ground, much less produce a long jump), etc.  The weeks we did those tests were the most dreaded weeks of the year for me.  Not only would I look pretty stupid trying to do them, but I would always fail miserably.  They actually based your grades for those tests upon your scores and not upon how hard you tried.  Mine were always off the scale F’s.  Luckily, they weren’t enough to bring my gym grade down too low because I was always a pretty good student and to have that ruined because I LACKED hand-eye coordination, now that just wouldn’t be right.

Now, as an adult, it doesn’t really matter how fast I can run back and forth between 2 lines on the floor while stopping to stoop and touch them.  Not that I’ve tried, which only proves how unimportant something like that is…  but it seems that all those years of falling physically behind my peers has been made up for me by a “gift” my adult body has bestowed upon me: huge, viable veins!  Every time the lab people at the Dr.’s office have to draw my blood, they are extremely impressed by my veins.  In fact, I am often the talk of the lab – hey, Karen, come over here, look what I’ve got to work with! 

Today I had a student drawing my blood (oh, great, just what I wanted to see, someone about to pierce my skin with a needle who is in training to do so!  I realize they have to learn somewhere, but why do they have to learn on me?), and the nurse jokingly told her, wow, you could draw that one in the dark!  Haha, hehe, but please, let’s not try that!

Anyway, I don’t mean to brag to anyone who is less endowed in the vein department, but it’s just nice to finally get my due after falling so far behind physically in every other way for so long.  And it may seem unimportant to you, but I make a lot of friends at the lab this way, and also, my veinly gifts are very useful in my life.  Having had four pregnancies and 2 cases (hopefully only 2; I will find out soon if there will be 3) of gestational diabetes, that means there is lots of blood being drawn from me!  I get poked and prodded so often that I’m starting to think that my veins are actually fun for the lab people to draw from…  or maybe it was no coincidence that the student lab technician had me as a patient to draw from today – maybe they’ve secretly made me the lab student assignment for the hospital!

I should probably introduce myself, but right now I want to talk about something else. I might introduce myself next time. Anyway, I have a friend who at the moment is having a big decision to make. Her brother and sister-in-law have invited her down to Texas to be a live-in-nanny. Her brother is going over seas and her sister-in-law, I guess doesn’t want to come up here, like originally planned. I have a feeling that it might have something to do with me. I was friends once with my friend’s sister-in-law, but as seeing as she married my ex, she feels like I still want him back. If she comes up here, I believe that she is worrying about running into me after all she has said about me. I have been willing to forgive her, but she doesn’t want me to talk to her, so I have just let is slide right now.

Now, where was I? I seemed to have digressed. My friend doesn’t know what she wants to do. She has so many friends up here, plus her family, but jobs seem to be scarce up here and she needs money to keep going to school. School is expensive and she needs to continue to make money. I have been searching for a job for awhile now, but nothing seems to be available for me. Well, except if we both want to be truck drivers. 🙁 So, hopefully something will help her with her decision and we will still stay close while she is away.