Enough

Open letter to my immune system

Dear Motherf*%$#er,

I'm sick of your failures. The initial laryngitis was bad enough, but then you had to add a cold and sinus congestion to it.  That wasn't enough, so you added pink eye to it - bacterial, no less!  Adding a brutal cough that has reset my laryingitis back to week 1 status is the last straw.

I know I haven't done the best at limiting my talk, but you are pulling all this shit in a single month!  That is simply not cool.  Not cool at all. 

Not only do I want to be better by tomorrow, I expect that you will reward me with lots of energy and good sleep to boot.  I deserve it.  Should you fail to deliver, I'm going to turn you into the authorities because I just can't handle this abuse any longer.

Sick of waiting to stop being sick,
Megan

TGFF

Thank goodness for friends.  I called Rachele today at 12:45 to ask if she would be able to take Avery for the afternoon.  My voice is going back down hill fast and my cough is, while not horrible sounding, very intense and annoying.  It's causing my voice to regress.  I'm tired and I'm sick. That's right, I'm sick and tired.

Avery was more than happy to head over to Aunt Chele's for the day.  Elise was super excited to see Avery and vice versa.  And RHG even offered to have Avery stay through dinner.  If the stars align right, D can pick her up on the way home from work.  He's been working and socializing a lot more lately (no complaints here, just a statement of fact), so I'm not sure he'll be able to get to the Gs by 7 to pick her up.  We'll see.  Thank you, RHG!  Not sure what I would have done otherwise.

Religion

I scored better than 93% of the public on my religious knowledge test.  That is pathetic because I really don't know much about the world's religions. If you want to take it, click on it now and don't read on in this section of the post because I give some answers away.

I missed question 6 (Which of the following best describes the Catholic teaching about the bread and wine used for Communion?) and question 15 (Which one of these preachers participated in the period of religious activity known as the First Great Awakening?).

When I answered question 6, I thought there was no way it could be the answer I did not select since that's crazy. The two options were

• The bread and wine actually become the body and blood of Jesus Christ.
• The bread and wine are symbols of the body and blood of Jesus Christ.

The correct answer is the first one. It actually becomes the body and blood of Jesus?  I thought it became poop and urine.  Human Biology wasn't my strongest class, but I'm pretty sure that's how it works.

I find the results of #11 interesting.  The question was, "According to rulings by the U.S. Supreme Court, is a public school teacher permitted to read from the Bible as an example of literature, or not?"  The answer is, of course, yes, it is permitted.  However, this question was the second lowest scoring.  Most Christians answered no.  This doesn't shock me since it seems a lot of American Christians seem to think the government bans anything to do with religion versus banning only the proselytizing of it. Jews and Atheists/Agnostics were much more likely to get this question correct than any other religious affiliation.

House

Deck is stained. Garage doors are painted. House numbers are up. Landscaping is complete except for bushes lining one side of the sidewalk. Lights are being installed ... slooooowwwly.  Getting the wiring from one side of the garage to the other, then outside seems to be time consuming.

It looks good, but I still haven't gotten a good feel for how much better.  The deck is basically the same color as the trim.  It looks more painted than stained because they had to do a different treatment on it since it already had a coat of lighter stain applied to it.  I would have preferred to have the exact same stain as the arbor, but that's the way it goes.

I emailed our designer with one complaint.  When he was here to settle up for most of the remainder of the bill, he asked if we had any complaints.  We both blanked.  Then I realized my biggest complaint hadn't been aired: the railings for the deck are way too close to the pillars.  It looks like the pillars are jammed into this tiny little corner.  The pillars are the right size for the house, but they clearly didn't think through the sizing of the deck.  Since the deck was done before he expanded his company (that expansion is what resulted in the work being completed because we had more than one person to manage things), the subcontractor never received any spec drawings or measurements or anything.  All he got was instructions to build a smaller deck than in the picture.  After six months of what should have been a six week project, I don't have any fight in me left to tell Phil that it needs to be rectified; we're at his mercy in terms of what can be done to fix it.  I've made clear we're not paying any more money. It's such a shame we didn't contact him after his illness and company expansion.  I think the whole process would have been significantly different and more successful.  Overall, I'm happy. I'm just not as happy as I should be for what we paid.