A Day in the Life of Maria

hey! i didn't know what in the world to update with, but megan gave me some ideas. this is a pic of arianna's first birthday. i love how her outfit matched the wrapping paper and her birthday plates and stuff. tonya had a good idea. she looked irrestible!

these are the flowers ben sent me for leap day. isn't that sweet?! i love them especially the color of the roses. this pic represents me so well. flowers, books, two things to paint, and my fave calendar - a beatrix potter one! i miss not seeing the movie, Miss Potter. i can watch it over and over again. all my movies somehow got left behind in texas, though. argh.

here's one of my fave pics of ben i wanted to share with y'all. i love the caps - looks so much more manly than those awful berets. too bad he can only wear them in iraq! lol

ok that's it.

lol not really. ummm let's see. megan suggested a day in the life of ME! just what you want to hear about!!! aren't you excited! i can feel it all the way over here.... ok here goes.

i woke up. big surprise there, right? well, i kept on waking up and going back to sleep b/c i didn't want to just wake up when my nurse, karen, came. very unpleasant and so restful. you know how those days go. then mom washed my hair, and i climbed back into bed and read a book thinking yay! karen wouldn't see me with dirty hair again. all you women out there understand that feeling. you feel so exposed, right? that's what happened to me last time she came. i had literally JUST gotten up and had dirty hair, glasses on, and a very sleepy face with lines on it probably. oh, yeah, it was a beautiful site. too bad y'all missed it. oh, i checked my e-mail, too.

karen arrived a little later than she did last time. (since i woke up early, of course!) she asked me all the usual boring questions and set up the stuff to clean my dressing and take my blood. i itched like crazy last week so my bandage and skin got torn up. so she gave me another covering for my PICC line, and i'm not itching too bad. can you believe it?! she told me it was such a nice, warm day (it was in the 70s) that i should go out and do something.

so i did, but first i packed ben another box. this one is flat rate, and i save a dollar b/c it's being sent to somebody in the military. mom will mail it for me tomorrow. mom and i took tonya some lunch and went to fayetteville so i could exchange some stuff at JCPenney. but before we could shop, mom had to hook me up to a new bag of TPN. she's becoming an expert at doing it in the car that's for sure. adding the vitamins, unhooking and flushing both lines, priming the new bag, and hooking me up again. it takes a good 20-30 minutes. we had no success shopping. i did find a sweatshirt i liked, but i really wanted my hair trimmed so i didn't get it. and here's the best part - i never got my hair trimmed!!! the one thing i did want to do today! there was a 30 minute wait, and i was way too tired for that. sigh.

i got a call from ben on the way home. for some reason we laughed like crazy this time. oh, i remember what it was! i got twelve letters from ben in one day!!! they were postmarked different but the mail apparently didn't know that little detail. and i already had two that i couldn't open b/c they weren't in order. i had to get two other letters before i could read them. yeah, he numbers them for me. i guess b/c the mail is so weird! so when i got home i read them all. it was like talking to him again. four of the letters were fun things to do.

i checked my e-mail and got some good ones! one from megan, ben, and anne! and some others i was waiting for. boring stuff. you know what i mean. a little later mom and i sat down and figured out how to get some calories in me that i can handle so i can get weaned off of TPN. then the phone rang. none of us recognized the number. dad was like who's that??? he answered it, and he says, it's for you mer. i couldn't figure out who was calling and answered it cautiously. and it was ben! they let him off early. nice surprise! i'm talking to him while i finish this.

soon i will hop into bed and travel to la la land. ta da! a day in the life of maria. i'll talk at ya later.