M mötte Lassie (this subject brought to you by M.)

[same_sky]

My headaches have been a little better of late, but I was hit with another of the Bad Sort this afternoon. It was out of the blue, too. At my last prenatal visit, the midwife assured me that I shouldn't worry about taking as much Tylenol as I needed (well, every four hours, following the normal dosages, etc, of course) which made me feel better. I had been attempting to only take them when I was sure it wouldn't go away on its own, and by then, it was so bad that it couldn't touch the pain. Since then, I have made more of an effort to take it at the first sign of a headache coming on (which is made easier by the fact that I now know that it never worked, hoping it would go away on its own) and it seems to keep them at bay, for the most part. This did not so much work today, and by the time I got home, I was miserable, and took a very long nap indeed. Naps almost never help my headaches but I'm compelled to try it now and then anyway--at the very least, you're not aware of the raging headache while asleep so I figure it works itself out. I was so out of it that I could not remember when I originally took the Tylenol, or when my head actually started hurting, so I had to wait until at least six before taking more. I mean, I couldn't even remember if it was before or after lunch. Anyway, M came home, and fetched a roast beef sandwich for me, and I drank two full cans of Pepsi* and took my booster pills of Tylenol, and miraculously, the headache is gone. It feels really lovely. I don't ask for much. :)

M had a tiny brush with localized fame yesterday at his job. He got a phone call from a customer, and the customer started spelling out his last name before saying it. (Uncommon names of the world, unite!) "D-u-d-e-n--" he began, and then paused for M to catch up. To his surprise, M said, "-b-o-s-t-e-l?" Because you know, Dudenbostel is a name that most people expect to hear! It turned out to be a cousin of the famous (again, localized fame) Dudenbostel that prompted M to guess at the ending--a luthier so well-known and so in demand that he apparently shut his website down because his backlog was already too long. DIY network has featured him on a series about handmade instruments, including three shows on mandolins. After the ten year wait, you can buy one of his mandolins for twenty thousand or so, btw, and he's at least as well-known, if not more so, for his guitars. It's just one of those unexpected little stories that need so many things to be true for it to work. The odds of M guessing the guy's name--slim. The odds of it actually being a relative--even slimmer. And even more amusingly, the customer really hadn't talked to the luthier cousin in many years, so M sort of caught him up on just what a name in the luthier world he actually is. Pretty neat, we thought--even more so than the email he replied to in Norwegian. What are the odds of him talking to a Norwegian customer while working at a weaponry supply location in Kentucky? :)

I have somehow spent an hour on this post, and I'm not sure how, except that I had to verify my facts for the previous story, which prompted some conversation, and link-finding. Strictly speaking, it's now time for bed, but I find that I'm less sleepy than I expected to be, after my long nap this afternoon. I totally got up on the wrong side of the bed this morning. I may have kicked the door frame in frustration that it was a workday. Maybe. And maybe that's not a good idea when one is wearing no shoes, btw. So now I will stay up late enough tonight that I feel just as out of sorts tomorrow. Great planning!

Belly update--looking much more pregnant. I don't look ridiculous in maternity shirts anymore, though I've only worn one and can still wear most of my old shirts. All of my maternity shirts (purchased by a cousin on a serious sale) are a tiny bit too casual for work, unfortunately. I may be able to get away with it occasionally I am beginning to enter the not-co-comfortable stage where it's pretty hard to maneuver myself up from a prone position, and lying on my back makes my back hurt. It's not really inconvenient yet, though, which is good. I am just so pleased that I am actually here that it is hard to complain too seriously. I've had worse problems.

*As much as I do enjoy my Pepsi, I have made a serious effort to cut down on the caffeine while pregnant. Actually, I had already cut down on the pop in general in the last few years, sticking to two per day, on average. My pregnancy rule is no more than one caffeinated beverage per day, usually for dinner. I have eliminated lunchmeat from my diet, I have stopped drinking tap water*, I have avoided peanut products when possible, I have practiced stricter food safety rules than ever before (including switching spatulas three times while cooking, and throwing away any food item that is at all questionable to me), I have fretted over how much protein I am getting and I haven't taken an allergy pill in months. Thirty-six milligrams of caffeine? Eh. Risk of miscarriage "may" be increased at three hundred, but no proof.

**Tap water is really, really scary. Google it if you want, but if you're prone to worrying, I wouldn't. Somewhere around the time I read about male fish producing eggs due to the high levels of estrogen in the water system, I started buying bottled water. Now that I'm out of the first trimester, I've been a little more lax about it (ie, I stopped boiling pasta in bottled water, and I refuse to think about it outside of my house much) but honestly, I'm not sure how long it will take me, if ever, to stop thinking about it.

Comments

[courtesy.livejournal.com]

Ewwww estrogen in water??? Bizarrely I also watched this video yesterday which made me swear off from buying bottled water other than for convenience, which, I totally don't do anyway....

Watch the second video.

http://throwawayyourtv.com/2006/05/bottled-water-is-bullshit.html

I just don't get pop :)

[same-sky.livejournal.com]

Great, make me paranoid. ;) No, I'm kidding, no worries. Our water here is heavily chlorinated, and when the chlorine taste fades, it still tastes metallic. We were filtering our own tap water for a while, and bottling it individually to put in the fridge, but then we stopped drinking water because it just doesn't taste very good (regardless of what the video said!) I imagine that this is highly dependent upon location. Apparently, the filters that could remove these things from the water supply are expensive, and most areas don't use them because they're not required. I don't know if bottled water is actually significantly better or not as far as that goes--but I always bought individual bottles for taste more than anything else. I started buying gallons for cooking recently because there is research linking tap water to an increased risk of miscarriage. I don't know how accurate or even how statistically important that would be, but at the time, I didn't much care since it wasn't that big of an expense (we've spent fifteen bucks, maybe, on this since September) or hassle. There are gaps in my logic all over the place on the water issue but I figure you can just do what you can. (Like the punch, at Christmas, and my mom made tea. All with tap water. I'm much less picky about it now that the first trimester is over, though, which helps.)

[queensheba.livejournal.com]

My last name is Hall. When I say it to people, I usually say "Hall. H-A-L-L." to prevent them from thinking "Hull, Hill, Hole," whatever.

The last time I did that, the person did a double take and said "Okay, that's pronounced "Pachayla"?" I was like, um, no, "Hall." Then I realized he hadn't heard me pronounce the word "Hall" first, he only heard the "H-A-L-L" and tried to figure out what kind of weard name Aichayellell was.

[same-sky.livejournal.com]

I'm sure that wasn't awkward for that person at all, to misunderstand "Hall". ;) That's pretty funny, really.

[ozswede.livejournal.com]

Sorry to hear about the headaches. Ironically in view of your aversion to tap water, I get headaches if I don't drink enough water. I dehydrate I guess. Pop is also scary if you read about it - is nothing safe anymore?

I loved M's story - what a small world we live in.

[same-sky.livejournal.com]

I actually drink quite a lot of water, and will usually go for it instead of pop, but it has to be bottled, in individual bottles no less! We bought a filter at some point, and we were bottling our own individual bottles and putting them in the fridge, but we stopped because we both stopped drinking it. Our water is heavily chlorinated here, and even filtered water tastes metallic. Not good. I'm sure there's some level of scam in the bottled water industry, but at the same time.. even if I'm paying as much for it as soda, at least it's better for me. (I do have environmental concerns about the waste involved, plus a wariness of plastic that I refuse to give in to in the slightest, but that's another story. I just don't have time to worry about everything.)

And yes, pop is terrifying, too, but I pretend not to know about that for the same reason...