Did you ever know that you’re my hero…

LOVE THEM!

This is what it sounds like…when fleas die.

As promised. The story of what happened to my feet. Or, why I am so itchy. Or, what $70 can buy you if you as lucky as me.

If you remember, I wrote a couple weeks ago about how my lovely roommate (love you Aaron!) let one of the cats out on accident. Apparently Mia picked up something else besides a taste for the great outdoors on her adventure…and brought in FLEAS! Eeeeew. I have never had to treat Basil for fleas in the year and a half I have had him…nor have I had to treat Mia in the time she has been under my care (as she is my surrogate cat, until my brother is back in a living situation where he can have her). So imagine my surprise when last week on Monday, Aaron casually goes, “oh, I think I just saw a flea.” Hmm. I thought, oh I will just go pick up some Advantage at the vet by my house tomorrow after work. Unfortunetly, that was the day I had to leave work at lunchtime to go help my sick mother survive her staph infection, so I stayed at work a little later to make up for that… not making it back to the neighb by 7pm (closing time for the vet) I figured, no big deal. I would just go Wednesday. So I get home, change into my pajamas, and sit down in the living room. I look down at my feet. There are about three fleas on each foot. Itty, bitty, little, teeny tiny fleas. Ew. I grab them all and throw them in the toilet. Drown, suckers. I walk back out. Again. Fleas on each foot. AACK! This happens about four or five more times in the next fifteen minutes. I am freaking out. I run out to my car, in my pajamas, and drive out to Delta Park to Petco. Advantage comes four to a pack. $70. yay. I buy it, along with some organic rosemary carpet spray. I race back home, thinking of my poor, itchy cats. I treat both of the cats and spray the carpet. The difference is drastic, and immediate. We have seen maybe one or two fleas a day since then. I actually haven’t seen any in the past couple days. I think all of the evil little things are DEAD. Phew. However. The damage was done. My feet look seriously BAD. I have about fifteen bites on each foot, five on each ankle, two or three on each leg, and a couple on my arms and sides. But my feet. Are. The. Worst. It doesn’t help matters that, being nine months pregnant, I can’t wear shoes to hide them. It’s flip-flops, everyday. It also doesn’t help that I itch itch itch myself like I am a third-grader with the chicken-pox. So bites turn into sores, sores into scabs. Lovely. I am such a beauty queen. This weekend my mom took one look at my feet and said, “I’m sorry. But you look like white trash.” They are starting to go away, but I fear I might have permanent scarring from this little adventure. I would take a picture but I am too embarrassed. It’s like the universe said, “How can we make Alexia even LESS attractive these days? Oh I know. Let’s make her look like she has an infectious foot disease.” Thanks, Universe.

31 Days

My due date is one month from tomorrow. HOORAY.

The past two weeks have been extremely hard on me physically. I never imagined that the simple acts of moving around and going about my day would be so draining. The pain in my pelvis no longer just feels uncomforable. It feels broken. My broken pelvis. My roving tendonitis has popped up in my left arm, and it’s worse than any other tendonitis I have had before. And, I am sorry, but Tylenol sucks. I am up to four pepcid AC’s a day for heartburn. Four. Eating anything immediately makes me sick. And I have outgrown 75% of my maternity clothes. WOW BEING PREGNANT IS SO AWESOME. Don’t even get me started on the heat. Needless to say, I am pretty excited that my due date is only a month away. Also, despite all the crappiness of being pregnant, last week was actually a good week. At 35 weeks, my baby is much lower than my doctor was expecting when he checked at my appointment friday, and he told me that I am 50% effaced. Woooooo. I am crossing my fingers that she will come early. I also got a promotion last week, discovered (thanks Eva!) a new restaurant to eat lunch at downtown (panini w/melted goat and sheep cheese, avocado and pickles? YES please! Or, as Alana called it, “A Pregnant Woman’s Dream”), bought a fabulous pair of sunglasses at Nordstrom’s Anniversary Sale (the last thing I needed before Holland arrives. I am now officially ready, expensive accessories in place), Holland started getting the hiccups every single day (highly entertaining) and I started my birth class (also very entertaining and deserving of its own blog entry). Other noteworthy news items from the week of July 13-19 include Flea Infestation 2008 (I may blog about this fully later because it is actually pretty funny. And gross. We’ll see) and my mom managed to contract a staph infection (she also needs to sue her dermatologist, but that is just my opinion) and she almost burned the house down on Wednesday (thank GOD my brother happened to have come home sick that day.) Speaking of the house that almost burned down, that is precisely where I am moving to next weekend (I am eternally thankful that it is still standing). Back to Vancouver I go, with two cats and an almost-born baby in tow. I just hope I can make it through the next 31 days.

Until she gets her own blog.

My mother’s medical drama. Taken from an email she sent out recently explaining her week-long absence.

• Friday: Went in to have two benign lesions removed (vanity)
• Sunday: became feeling very ill.
• Monday: went back in to same dermatologist’s office for scheduled psoriasis treatment and asked that someone look at the site on my leg which is now an angry, red, oozing 6 inch circle of dead and dying skin.
• RN looks at and dresses it and sends me on my way dismissing my flu symptoms as…well…the flu
• Monday, continued: go home and proceed to settle into raging fever, chills, can’t sit up, can’t walk without help from wall type of “flu”
• Tuesday: don’t remember anything but fingertips turning white.
• Wednesday: am able to fix soup. I find this very encouraging. Go back to bed. Joe wakes up and finds house filled with smoke…I hadn’t turned the stove off and caught dish towel on fire. (McCoy will not be on the next episode of Amazing Animal Alerts Mistress of House on Fire) Will be installing smoke alarms still in boxes in garage this weekend. Becoming worried about this “flu” and pain in leg.
• Thursday: Go to PCP who looks concerned, asks lots of questions and who then calls dermatologists to see me next morning and prescribes antibiotic.
• Today: see dermatologist who also looks concerned, takes culture, prescribes “speicial” ointments to be mixed and applied twice daily, then wrap with gauze NO TAPE ON THAT SKIN…Tylenol 3 is called into pharmacy and a standing weekly appointment from now until Thanksgiving (?)…I am advised that this will take a “very long time to heal” and I am to call if anything looks or feels wrong. Dermotologist comes back in exam room to tell me to be sure and CALL HIM IF ANYTHING LOOKS OR FEELS WRONG. I am getting the picture.
• So I have a staph infection. I am feeling better. Thank you. I will write more later.

Breech No More, Or, Holland’s 33 Week Ultrasound

Tuesday was my 33 week prenatal appointment, and, more excitingly, my ultrasound to see if Baby Got Breech. During the exam my doctor said he could feel by her position that she had flipped, but told me to go ahead and get my ultrasound anyway since they are fun. This is very true. I love my doctor. The tech did some measurements and checked on how she is doing in there. Holland is measuring at five pounds right now, and she is looking awfully smooshed. Moreso than she was at my 3D ultrasound back at 29 weeks. Also, she has hair! Just like me when I was a newborn. She was awake during the ultrasound, and kept sticking her tongue out. She even started sucking her thumb. Pretty cute. I scanned a couple of my ultrasound pictures. They are the least clear ones I have gotten, since she is getting so big, but they are still pretty cute.

Here is her chubby little profile. She has my forehead and nose, but I don’t know where those lips came from.

And her little legs. I love that she has her feet crossed. I also love that at my ultrasounds the techs always remark on how long her legs are.

So, no scheduled C-section for me…which means I will be waiting out the month of August until she decides to arrive. I have 7 weeks left until my due date, which seems like an incredibly long time. I am so miserable and achey and sick all the time. Extra-strength tylenol and pepcid AC are my saviors (two of each, every day!) I have been having contractions tonight, and part of me wishes that they were real, even though I know it’s too early. SOOOOOO tired of being pregnant. The end.

Memorial Day Sleep-A-Thon

If I could sleep all the way until August I would. I have barely gotten out of bed this weekend. My doctor’s recommendation of taking Dramamine for my evening nausea has worked for me…also, just eating less has made me feel a lot better. It has also made me lose five pounds! Maybe I won’t take the record for weight gain in a pregnancy after all. Hopefully I won’t have to fill the prescription for the real nausea medication my doctor wrote me…still debating whether or not to fill the vicodin he prescribed for my tendonitis (which, he thinks is also the culprit of the pain in my foot). I can’t exactly take it during the day, which is when I need it the most. I might just tough it out until august when I can take ibuprofen again. I am also going to be seeing a podiatrist soon, so I want to see what he has to say about my foot. I am sure it will be something along the lines of “Your foot is hurt and you are pregnant so we can’t do anything for you. Sorry!”  

I LOVE LOVE LOVE this weather. I know it is crappy and rainy and I am sure everyone is so sad that the weather isn’t nice for the holiday weekend (wah), but you know what? If I can’t have fun, no one else should be able to either. It also makes sleeping all day easier when it is dark and rainy out. I love it!

And finally: I posted this a couple years ago on my myspace blog and thought I would repost it to see if anyone new wanted to do it. I think it is kind of interesting.

http://kevan.org/johari?name=alexialysandra

Coming soon: details of Alexia’s First Blood Draw (I survived!), plus: how much ice cream can one person eat? An experiment.

dinner

pre-natal vitamins, two ice cream sandwiches and a dramamine.

goodnight!!!!!