Thursday, April 23, 2015

Celebrate the Small Things - Elephant edition


Lots to celebrate this week!  Today, my co-workers are throwing a baby shower for me, which is very sweet of them.  We're all so busy with the semester winding down, and I really appreciate them carving the time out of their day to celebrate baby stuff :)

I was looking for some good pictures to post, and I realized I never posted the photos from my elephant encounter.  Last month, Mister and I were in Houston and we took a behind the scenes tour at the Houston Zoo.  Specifically, we took the elephant tour.  We got to get up close and personal with the elephants, and we got to feed and pet one! It was pretty amazing :)  I wanted to take the baby home with us, but Mister said no.  Sometimes, he's just too practical.
Babies are always cute!










So how was your week? Anything exciting going on this weekend?

If you've been reading my blog, you know that Fridays are reserved for a post where I celebrate the little things that have happened during the week. This is a blog hop created by Vikki and now hosted by Lexa Cain, and it's one of my favorite blogging things to do.  I encourage you to check out her blog and the full list of participants, because who doesn't love reading about good things?

Friday, April 10, 2015

Celebrate the Small Things - Sh!t gets real edition :)


Happy Friday everyone!  I hope you all had a good week!

Today, I'm celebrating something that actually happened last week, so please bear with me.

A while back, I saw an article online titled something like "Ten Things You Should NEVER Do In Front of Your Husband."  I clicked, because I was bored and I wanted to find out what terrible, horrible things I should avoid unless I wanted my marriage to crumble faster than a scone (yes, I'm a little hungry right now.)

Needless to say, I was amused to find the article basically told women that we should pretend to have absolutely no bodily functions in front of our husbands, lest we gross them out so much that they run screaming for the hills.  No burping, no farting, and heaven help you if he happens to overhear your bathroom activities.

I shook my head, a little sad to read such things.  Maybe it's because I'm a biologist, but I think bodies are strange and wonderful and gross and amazing things, and to deny that we all share these common functions is to deny something fundamental about what it means to be human.  I certainly don't invite Mister into the bathroom with me, but I'm pretty sure he knows that since everyone poops, I do as well.  So far, this knowledge doesn't seem to bother him.

Fast forward to last week.  On Sunday night, my stomach started bothering me.  I chalked it up to a pregnancy thing, but it kept getting worse.  At around 9 pm, my stomach decided to engage in active revolt, and I raced to the bathroom just in time to expel everything I've ever eaten in my entire life (at least that's what it felt like to me).

As if this wasn't bad enough, I quickly learned that my stomach issue was not isolated to the upper part of my GI tract.  Oh no, this was a full-blown case of gastroenteritis.  For the non-clinically inclined among us, allow me to demonstrate:


Now, while I was in the throes of agony, wishing for the sweet relief of death (or at least unconsciousness), Mister came into the bathroom to check on me.  That's right ladies, my husband saw, heard, and smelled evidence of my bodily functions!  That's a trauma hat trick.  Quelle horreur!  As if that wasn't bad enough, he changed out the vomit filled trash can liners, and brought me water and a wet washcloth!  Oh my. Scandalous!

This scenario was repeated several times during the night.  At one point, I was forced to laugh at the expression on Mister's face.  He was regarding me with a look of horrified awe, as if he couldn't quite believe the severity of my body's reactions.  When I asked him about it, he said, "It's just that I've never seen you sick before!  I didn't think you got sick like this--you've always been so healthy!"

You may remember Mister came down with food poisoning the night after our wedding, and so I had already nursed him through this type of ordeal. Apparently, he'd never considered he might have to reciprocate since I guess he held me up on some kind of immunity pedestal.  Oh, how far the mighty have fallen!

Anyway, I have since gone on to recover, and as far as I can tell, Mister is not contemplating a divorce after being confronted with such graphic knowledge of my bodily functions.  This bodes well for him, as I understand birth is also a rather messy and intimate process, whereby he will see things that are normally not discussed in polite society.  Maybe my illness last week was a warm-up, to prepare his delicate sensibilities?  Who can say?  I'm just glad to be feeling better, and I'm also quite happy that Mister did not come down with the same affliction.

After all, husbands aren't supposed to have bodily functions either.  Or so I've heard...

If you've been reading my blog, you know that Fridays are reserved for a post where I celebrate the little things that have happened during the week. This is a blog hop created by Vikki and now hosted by Lexa Cain, and it's one of my favorite blogging things to do.  I encourage you to check out her blog and the full list of participants, because who doesn't love reading about good things?