This weekend is gonna be awesome.
That’s all for now:)
This weekend is gonna be awesome.
That’s all for now:)
Even though my birthday was over a week ago, we have been trying to plan a birthday dinner with our Dallas friends for quite a while now- only, ever since my birthday, I’ve been SICK! It started while Ben was here. I had a sore throat, which, on the day he left, was accompanied by a bad cough. By Monday (which I took off work, hallelujah!!) my voice decided to completely leave as well. I managed to croak my way through lessons on Tuesday, but felt completely wretched by Wednesday.
It was by this time that I decided to visit the Minute Clinic. In case you haven’t heard, these are the “doc-in-a-box” centers inside your neighborhood CVS Pharmacy. They are very limited to what they can treat, it turns out. We went to the one only a block away from us, only to be turned away the minute I mentioned “wheezing” as one of my symptoms. Turns out, if the patient even shows a hint of pneumonia, they have to refer them without even taking a blood pressure. This is for legal reasons since they can’t test for oxygen intake or take a xray of your lungs and such.
Anyways, being referred to pay $200+ at an ER or a CareNow clinic doesn’t look like much fun, especially when you have no insurance (alright, I’ve been a bit of a slow poke about getting the paperwork done…) and when you’re mom’s a nurse who’s had pneumonia a million+ times and is pretty sure you don’t have it.
So, while we don’t advocate this kind of behavior, we simply drove to another Minute Clinic 20 mi. away and didn’t mention the wheezing:) For 59 bucks they diagnosed me as having bronchitis and sinusitis. Both of these did not take a genius to figure out, based on the fact that the entire area around my nose and forehead was and still is swollen up like a tomato (…eww??) and I was coughing up my lungs. SO I got my antibiotics and my lung-numbing pearl-like pills and was on my way. Kind of a scary concept, those lung numbing pills. What if I swallow a spoon??? How will I know or cough it up?? There are lots of things to ponder when you’re sick.
The long and short is, I only worked a total of 15 hours this week, and, as a result, had many many lessons to make up. I rescheduled them all for this Saturday morning, only to come down with ANOTHER fever Friday night!!! SO not fair. I had to cancel everything, along with our confession appt. with Father John and the birthday dinner we had planned with our friends.
But it turned out okay. We rescheduled for tonight, and surprisingly, everyone was able to make it on short notice. We went to Chili’s and had a great time talking about philosophies of education (hey, Josh, Photius and I are all High School English Teachers, so what’d you expect??) and listening to Photius go on about the theologians he hates most- the “Three A’s- Augustine, Aquinas and Anselm”. Obviously Allanah had a bit of a problem with this, seeing as she’s Catholic and her closest brother is actually NAMED Anselm after the man himself, but she was able to take it all with a grain of salt and chuckle as we rose to their defense. Maybe a better word than defense would be a “more moderate” opinion.
Anyways, here are a few pictures if you want to see!
Here is my birthday dessert:
Here is the human vacuum finishing off my dessert after everyone had taken a bite:)
This one is just the girls, if you discount screaming Isaac and also absent little Genevieve who was with her daddy across the table. From left to right- Allanah, me, Heather, Jenny and Carissa.
Here is all of us together. Not the grandest of pictures, but my camera battery was dying.
That’s all! Here’s hoping I won’t get sick like this again this season, but also being thankful for the fact that we have friends who were willing to reschedule so many times for my birthday:)
This last weekend, the Ben came to visit Jesse and I. He flew in late Thursday night, then went to Greek with Jesse on Friday while I went to work for 3 hours. After that, we all went “castle sight-seeing” and ended at Cheddar’s for dinner.
Once Jesse and I had eaten tons of shrimp and Ben lots of steak (grr for fast days!!!) we went on a hunt for beer. Now, this sounds easier than it actually turned out to be, for Irving and its surrounding cities are dry. So, after much driving, we finally found an Alberstons in the middle of Carrollton that understood our plight and gave us alcohol. Back at the apartment, Jesse and Ben smoked cigars and drank beer while I walked on the treadmill and talked to Miss “I-Just-Worked-21-hours” Courtney.
On Saturday morning, Jesse and Ben made a very yummy eggs and bacon breakfast while I slept in. I was feeling the beginnings of some sort of illness coming on, and I figured, what with 75% of my students getting ill, that my time was up. The boys went out to buy more cigars rather than looking for Pax 3 Vapes at 180Smoke.ca and buying them avoiding this process on the whole, and they later came back to smoke and drink by the pool. I FINALLY felt pretty satisfied with the weather, as it was a sunny but not muggy 70 degrees. It made for pleasant relaxation.
Around 5pm we went to Vespers at St. Seraphim, drove around a bit of downtown Dallas, and ended at El Chico where we stuffed our faces with made-at-your-table-guacamole and queso dip. We went home, rented a movie which Jesse and I love called, “Once”, and went to sleep exhausted.
Sunday morning, I was feeling pretty ill, but still went to church with the boys. And man, if I had missed it, I would have been disappointed. It was quite a sight to behold! There had been a conference at St. Seraphim this weekend in preparation for Lent (which starts in 4 weeks! boohoo!!) and so there were tons of people from other churches there along with the normal crowd. Picture a place built for 300 squeezing in over 500!! Good thing everyone stands the entire service (yes, even the homily!). You can fit a lot more people in that way. The whole place reminded me of a herd of elephants, especially when it was time for communion- the normal 3 chalices was upped to 5, with 2 in the back for those who couldn’t even MAKE it to the front. On top of that, His Eminence was presiding over the service, and when he is there it’s always cool, with different singing and all. There were also a lot of famous people there, including one who stood next to Ben the entire time. He turned out to be one of the monks from St. Katherine’s at Mt. Sinai who accompanied all of the icons over to the Getty last spring!
As if we hadn’t overwhelmed Ben enough, we brought him to La Madeleine’s where we actually fit over 16 people around one table! We had our normal crowd- Katie and Noel, Curtis, John, James and Benjamin, but I had also invited our new young people friends Carissa and Photius and their two darling children along with Jenny, Heather and Josh. It was CROWDED!!!
After we finished at La Madeleine’s, we went home to rest. I needed it, especially considering the fact that I had all but completely lost my voice and had a sore throat to match it. We rested in the apartment by reading, and then went and sat by the pool again. As evening started to approach and we gradually came to terms with the fact that Ben was going to be leaving us soon, we decided to give him one final Texas experience- a real Texas barbecue. Dickey’s is wonderful, because on Sat. and Sun. they give you any meat sandwich on their menu with the exception of ribs for only 1.99. They also give you free icecream afterwards:)
Alas, all good things must come to an end. At 7:45, we reluctantly brought Ben back to DFW. With the exception of Mirabelle who even took to hissing at his BACKPACK, we really really enjoyed having him here.
WOW, what a crazy finish to a game! I used to think our friend Heather was quiet and reserved, but that was until I saw her jumping off the sofa in excitement (okay, I didn’t see her because I was jumping up and down too..).
We had our friends Carissa and Photius and their two kids, Isaac and Genevieve over, along with their sister Jenny and our newly chrismated friend Heather (her husband Josh couldn’t make it, seeing as he had SERIOUS amounts of homework due tomorrow for grad school). Isaac and Genevieve were absolute terrors, but so cute and fun that it was quite a delight. Actually, Mirabelle didn’t think so- she spent some serious time growling and hissing at them. Genevieve kept trying to pet her!! Oh well, this just means that next time we’ll need safer “toys” (or pets) for them to play with!
A plus- we finally opened our first bottle of wine since coming to Dallas! I know I know…..anyways, it was a Paso Robles Zin, and all of them were like, “Wow! What great wine!” It’s always fun to say, “Yeah, that came from our hometown!”
Here are a few pictures, but for all of them, go to my Facebook.
I am very proud of all the cooking we did- I personally homemade cookies, spinach dip, and baked brie with brown sugar and pecans. Jesse experimented and made excellent buffalo wings. Admittedly, it was with with resigned humor that all of us girls got to talking instead of even remotely paying attention to the game! Oh well, the first 3 quarters were basically a stale-mate anyways. All that changed in those final 10 minutes- so exciting!!!! I am glad Heather is a fellow football fan- we both love the Colts. I never thought my hands could hurt so much from clapping.
Even if we didn’t pay attention to the entire game, it was wonderful to have people to talk to. I’m glad Jesse and I finally made a commitment to reach out this semester!
So far, “Project Socialization” – success!