Testing positive

So, I heard from my doctor's office with the results on Henry. She said, and I quote, "We received your results. You test positive for a hernia."

Something about the way that news was delivered makes me laugh out loud. Who'd have ever thought one could "test positive" for a hernia? I love it!

Now, her original advice was to get the ultrasound done and then make an appointment with a general surgeon. That wouldn't be a problem, per se. I happen to have a general surgeon (the one she suggested, lo those many years ago when Darth Vader was discovered), but with it being this close to my PET... well, I'd rather wait and get the opinions of my swell docs at MD Anderson before I go scheduling any consults with other surgeons. So, I did what any self-respecting patient with an entire battery of doctors at her disposal... and I asked both SMIL and the doctor's office to send copies of the ultrasound to my beloved.

And then I scripted the following email to let him know it was coming:

Dear Dr. H,

I just wanted to give you a heads up that you should be getting a special delivery from SMIL this week. I'd had a cough for, oh... like a month (read: too dang long), so I went to my primary care doctor a couple weeks ago and walked out with both a prescription for a Z-pack and an order for an abdominal ultrasound. (I was pretty sure I was developing a hernia before I started coughing in October. But the coughing made it worse. So (SO!) much worse.)

I had an ultrasound last Thursday, and had a call from my doctor's office to confirm I am "positive for a hernia" on Friday afternoon.

My doc is advising that I contact a general surgeon and schedule a consult for surgery to correct the hernia. Before I call my old general surgeon (love Dr. Hyde like I do), I would rather wait for the results of my PET scan, to make sure there's nothing else going on. I figure, if I need anything more than hernia repair, Gimbel is my man. (Also, since he is the last doc who opened me up, I'm not about to schedule a surgery with anyone else without his go-ahead.)

Oh, and I like to email you. ;-)

You may receive duplicates, from both SMIL and Dr. Gibson's office. (Because I am the queen of overkill - you may have noticed - I asked both offices to forward them to you.) ... I just wanted to let you know that they were coming your way, and why.

I hope you have a perfectly lovely Thanksgiving holiday this week. I'll see you on Dec 6th.

- Laurie


You can imagine my surprise and delight to receive the following response from my beloved H this afternoon:


I am letting Dr Gimbel know about this

Lets wait to see what your PET shows

i will see you on the 6th

Happy Thanksgiving to you too

JH


Did you see how he signed with his initials, instead of his whole (official) name? ... It's pretty intimate, right? ... Yeah, I thought so, too. (Esp since he took the time to spell out G's whole name.) I'm pretty sure we're getting serious.

Or he's trying to get me to break up with him, and that's why there's not one piece of punctuation in his entire email.

Tomato/tomahto. (He's gonna have to try harder than that if he wants to shake me. I happen to know that English is, like, his fifth language or something. If I'm gonna forgive anyone a lack of punctuation, it's gonna be H! Please.)

May 19

This morning, Jo and I went to Schnepf Farms Peach Festival. Together. Just the two of us.

It was the best time ever.



I mean, E-VER.

The day started with The Breakfast of Champions (Sausage Egg McMuffins and a Coke), and then when we got to Schnepf's, we had dessert.

As in, we ate fruit right off the trees. Hello, sun-ripened fruit.... Where have you been all my life?

(Seriously. Would you look at those peaches?! They were clustered, LIKE GRAPES! And all perfectly ripe and delicous to the taste.)

Also, there were apricot trees. For those of you who aren't lucky enough to be both Blog Stalker AND Facebook Friend, I give you the lovely shot that Jo took of me climbing in the apricot tree. (Yeah, I said climbing. So what if I only made it two feet off the ground before I got too scratched up to go any further? I'm still saying I climbed that sucker.)

And like the fruit wasn't enough of a good time... There was a little booth area where some locals were selling these fine (FINE!) hand-crafted onesies.

Like a 0-3 month old doing the free "My mom's single" advertising isn't WT enough... We have obvious apostrophe errors here, people.

Egads. Who buys this stuff?! (Answer: Not me. I just take pics and then mock the lack of punctuation. Publicly.)

I tell you what, this has been a great day! A solid 4 hours with Jo, all to ourselves to talk and laugh and pick and eat fruit... Seriously, it was the best morning ever.

Now I just need to figure out what to do with the 8 lbs of peaches and 3 lbs of apricots that I have sitting on my kitchen counter...

Argh...

Unnecessary apostrophes are the bane of my existence.



Do these snacks belong to SnackWell? No, I don't think they do. So, why is there an apostrophe there? ... Oh, to make them plural?

That's wrong.

Sick and wrong. And totally unnecessary. (Anybody want to guess what brand of snacks I did not buy, based solely on their improper use of an apostrophe? ... Also, I hate raisins, but that's not the point here.)

I wish I could teach the world a lesson on where and how to appropriately use apostrophes.

The End.

For those who grammar

Amen.

Can I get an "Amen!'?

We all know how much I love bread, right? But when you fry it, and then dip it in sugar... Oh, my. Then I love it even more.



Donuts. They are the 6th food group!

(Also, this may well be my favorite billboard of all time. The one thing I adore more than glazed donuts is a grammatically perfect sign. It is true.)

Amen.

Another pic of my "favorites" & me

Okay, so I realize that this is only going to be funny if you knew my grammy, but I still have to tell you that when I typed the original title for this post, I typed "Another shot of me and my favorites", I heard a little voice in my head asking "are your favorites mean?". Ha! My mom's mom would ask me, every time I used incorrect sentence structure and put myself before the other subjects, if I really thought they were mean. Some examples:

Me: Grammy, can me and Beth have a popsicle?
Grammy: (with a short gasp) Is Beth mean? Why would you want to share a popsicle, if she's mean?

Me: Grammy, can me and Kirk watch a movie?
Grammy: Why would you want to watch a movie with Kirk if he's mean to you?

Me: Grammy, can me and Spencer play in the front yard?
Grammy: I don't understand why you'd want to play with a mean little boy, even if he is your brother.

So, of course, I changed the structure of the title, because my "favorite" aunts are so very far from mean. In fact, they're pretty much the exact opposite of mean. They're nice. (Super nice, in fact.) Behold, they took me for my very first post-operative eating out adventure.



We went to Red Robin, because I love both their fries and their Cobb Salad. (I split the salad with my mom and ate half of Debbie's fries.) It was a pretty perfect night. I love them (even more than I love Cobb Salad and steak fries, which is a lot of love).

An early birthday present (and the best so far!)

A few weeks back I went to do my weekly mail pickup, something I put off as long as I can, since it's never more than a half dozen add leaflets, an envelope full of coupons, and/or a statement for one of the many impulse purchased that I've made over the last 15 years or so that I am still paying for. Anyhoo... since you can imagine the thrill that getting the mail usually is for me, you can imagine the surprise and joy that infused my very soul when I saw that I had a piece of personal mail in the bunch. It was a card, from my friend Genevra, who is an old friend (as in, I've known her since my early 20's, not as in "crotchety old hag", in case you were wondering), who knows me... oh, so very very well. The card was addressed to Grammar Nazi aka: Laurie . By the label alone, I knew it was gonna be good. And, folks, let me tell you... as usual, Genevra Lynn did not disappoint. Get a load of this beauty.

Seriously, is that not just about the funniest thing you've ever seen? Oh my, how I love my friends who know me well enough to know when they've found the perfect card for me. And to have sent it 2 months early? Oh, that made getting it even sweeter. I'm telling ya, this card is a thing of beauty. It's the perfect combination of Grammar Nazi-ism and a well used swear (two of my favorite things). It's like poetry to me. Really funny swear-mouthy poetry, but still, poetry. Thanks Genevra, for being my friend and for knowing me well enough to know exactly how to make my day... nay, month! You rock!

Reason #112 why it's important to marry a man who can spell

Yeah, no FREAKING kidding. Can you believe this dude? Even if he can't spell it on his own, could he not find a piece of mail to read it off of? I can't help but think that it would be easier to read the address off his utility bill than it would be to "drag her on over to Oak Street" so they could "pick her up". Unless, of course, they were living in a one room log cabin without electricity, and there would be no utility bill to be reading the address of off. (Or... maybe he can't read, either?)

*I had a tough time deciding what to title this post. It was between "Why warthogs are not house pets" and "911 calls in Arkansas", but then I thought "What if people looking for info on warthogs and/or Arkansas googled them and were directed to my blog? They might be offended... better not." - and then I went ahead and noted that here, so now they might be directed here anyway. Oh well. If I go missing, you all are hereby assigned to go on a search & rescue. I'll probably be kidnapped and then abandoned & left for dead in the backhills. What a way to go, right?

Kindred Spirits

Did anyone else see this article? Apparently there is an organization (TEAL - the Typo Eradication Advancement League) that has a couple members who've been on a cross-country mission this summer to "stamp out as many typos as we can find, in public signage and other venues where innocent eyes may be befouled by vile stains on the delicate fabric of our language". (How great is that?) I understand they've been traveling cross country this summer, removing typos found on signs along the way. They'd stopped in AZ for some R&R at The Grand Canyon, when on a day off, they came across a sign that begged to be amended. Too bad for them, they got caught this time. Even more too bad for them, this sign was a one-of-a-kind original made by an artist in the 50's and cannot be replaced, so they got into BIG TROUBLE for messing with the sign. Of course, I think the whole thing is pretty hilarious. Also, of course, I have a bit of a love thang going on for this Herson guy right now. I mean, how could I not? He's been cruising the country, taking care of excess commas and inappropriately placed apostrophes (not to mention, in his journal entry, he compared himself to Mr. Gadget, in that he simply cannot "shut it off"). I ask you all, what's not to love?

Because I Grammar

As it's the beginning of a new school year for almost everyone I know, I thought that this might be fun. Here are some timely reminders of my fav grammar "do's & dont's". (For those of you who are wondering... No, I did not write this myself. I simply found it online, laughed out loud as I read it (twice, because I enjoyed it so flippin much), and then promptly posted here for you all to see.)

Grammar Advice for the Coming School Year

1. Verbs HAS to agree with their subjects.
2. Prepositions are not words to end sentences with.
3. And don't start a sentence with a conjunction.
4. It is wrong to ever split an infinitive.
5. Avoid clichés like the plague. (They're old hat.)
6. Also, always avoid annoying alliteration.
7. Be more or less specific.
8. Parenthetical remarks (however relevant) are (usually)
unnecessary.
9. Also too, never, ever use repetitive redundancies.
10. No sentence fragments.
11. Contractions aren't necessary and shouldn't be used unless you don't want to seem too formal.
12. Foreign words and phrases are not always apropos.
13. Do not use more words, phrases, sentences, or other linguistic elements than you, yourself, actually really and definitely need to use or employ when expressing yourself or otherwise giving voice to what you may or may not be thinking when you are trying to say how many words you should use or not use when using words.
14. One should NEVER generalize.
15. Comparisons are as bad as clichés.
16. Don't use no double negatives.
17. Eschew ampersands & abbreviations, i.e. etc.
18. One-word sentences? Eliminate.
19. Analogies in writing are like feathers on a snake.
20. The passive voice is to be ignored.
21. Eliminate commas, that are, not necessary. Parenthetical words however should be enclosed in commas.
22. Never use a big word when a diminutive one would suffice.
23. Kill excessive exclamation points!!!
24. Use words correctly, irregardless of how others elude to them.
25. Understatement is always the absolute best way to put forth earth shaking ideas.
26. Use the apostrophe in it's proper place and omit it when its not needed.
27. Eliminate distracting quotations. As Ralph Waldo Emerson is said to have once remarked, "I hate quotations. Tell me what you know."
28. If you've heard it once, you've heard it a thousand times: Resist hyperbole; not one writer in a million can use it correctly.
29. Puns are for children, not groan readers.
30. Go around the barn at high noon to avoid colloquialisms.
31. Even IF a mixed metaphor sings, it should be derailed.
32. Who needs rhetorical questions?
33. Exaggeration is a billion times worse than understatement.
And finally…
34. Proofread carefully to see if you any words out.