On being anemic

Hello dear readers,

It's been a while, no? I know you all have just been pining for my wit and words. Ha. So, I have a reason being gone. I won't go into all the gory details but due to some female issues I became anemic. And being anemic. It. Sucks. I mean it really sucks. It feels like it sucks the life out of you; that's how much it sucks. I was tired all the time. Like coming home from work and going directly to bed. Like wanting to sleep all day and all night long. And then when you do wake up all you want to do is eat steak. Or at least that's what I wanted to do.

Luckily for me, I have a good doctor. A sick day of sleeping, some iron pills, red meat and lots of broccoli later, I am feeling much, much better. I still feel myself dragging along throughout the day and around 7pm but it's such a vast improvement from what was that I am not going to complain.

Alas, I have much to tell you about so hopefully you will be getting several posts this week.

Cheers,

Jalehlabad

On Death

I know I haven't been posting much lately. That's mostly due to the fact that my aunt died last week and I was busy helping my cousins settle things. I know I usually talk about silly things like television and books in this space but I need to vent.

It's strange that I am both happy and sad that my aunt is gone. I am happy because I know she's not in anymore pain. But it saddens me that things got to this point for a woman who was relatively young; she wasn't even 60 years old. The thing is all of this could have been prevented. There was no need for her to die in this manner. Maybe I should back up a bit. This story is a bit of a doozy but since my family has only known about it for a few weeks well we are still reeling a bit.

Almost four years ago my aunt was diagnosed with breast cancer. Unlike most women, she chose to not treat her cancer even though she caught it in the earliest of stages. She thought that her prayer and her faith in Jesus would heal her. Sigh. She also chose to not tell a single member of my family about her sickness. Not her kids, not her sisters, not a soul. We all noticed around October that she wasn't looking very healthy and she was clearly not using her left arm but when we directly asked her she denied being ill or sick at all. At Christmas one of my aunts predicted she would die before the next Christmas.

Fast forward to three weeks ago when my aunt was rushed to the hospital because she couldn't breathe. The breast cancer had spread into her lungs, liver, and spinal cord. She was on a respirator for the last three weeks of her life. Her kids rushed into town from Paris, France and Lawrence, KS to be by her side. They had to make terrible, awful decisions while battling almost crippling anger and sadness.

Last Wednesday, my aunt (amazingly enough she was lucid through all of this) chose to take herself off the respirator and a few hours later she died. I've never seen a person die before and I don't relish seeing someone die again. It's strange and humbling and sad.

Amazingly enough some good has come from this horrible experience. I've gotten closer to my cousins than I have been since we were kids. Sad that this is what it took to bring us together. And I now know exactly what my parents desires are should a similar situation befall them. I know where their will is and I know that I am co-executor with my oldest sister. These are things I didn't know three weeks ago. While these aren't the most pleasant conversations to have I urge you all to have these conversations with your parents so you don't end up like my cousins almost having to guess the wishes of a dying parent.

We are all getting older now, my friends. And we don't want to think about these issues at any age but they happen whether we want them to or not. So, my suggestions are this: tell people what you want and ask those who you will have to care for what they want. And for Yahweh's sake; get some damn chemo if you are diagnosed with cancer.

Hillary's got a new boyfriend

Well, it looks like Mann Coulter is putting her weight behind Hillary. One more reason why I hope Obama gets the bid. You know shit is fucked up when MANN COULTER sides with Hillary over McCain.

Take my voice away

Well, this past weekend left the taste of Aleve cold and sinus in my mouth. It started out brilliantly with me getting a speeding ticket about 15 miles from home on my way up to Chicago. (I don't want to hear it, Hanover Crew.) This was just a harbinger of things to come. Some of you may have read over at B-Mart and GYMH's blogs that we failed to pass the VH1 test and therefore will not be dominating the WSoPC. I still am calling bullshit on that one. Le sigh. I would like to post on our activities after our failure but I really think that it would be hard to top Andrew and so I will leave it to him. However, see picture above. And know that I was laughing very hard. Pictured above two persons who can only be a FauxXander and someone channeling Vlad the Impaler. I am still mourning our inability to capture a picture of the douche guy and the girl who looked like she popped out of a really bad Eightie's video.

My body rebelled the next morning by virtually depriving me of all vocal abilities. Therefore, I was not able to adequately yell about the IU loss to Iowa. However, I was able to silently squee at the afternoon trip to Ikea and gasp at the retardedness of the nightly viewing of one of the worst movies of all time, Beerfest. Wow, that was a bad movie. Although, now I am glad that I can delete that crapfest from my netflix queue.

On Sunday, I saw a tie for the worst film of the weekend, Because I Said So. I don't know that I have ever wanted to actually murder Diane Keaton before (even when she chooses to dress like Annie Hall on crack) but I did after wasting those two precious hours of my life. I will never get them back. The only redeeming qualities about this film were Lauren Graham, Mandy Moore, the very cute Gabriel Macht, and a cameo by Tony Hale (aka Buster Bluth). But even all of that does not make up for the utter shit fest that was this movie. The script was crap and again, no one likes a shrill Diane Keaton. NO. ONE. I can say that as a lover of chick flicks that even this one will not go on my secretly watch on Saturday afternoons but tell people I am watching PBS list, like say Bring It On. I think this really illustrates the level of badness, especially when you couple that with my love for Lauren Graham (it knows no bounds, my friends).

I have to say that overall, it was a pretty fun weekend. Many good times were had and I "laughed" as best I could (it really sounded more like wheezing) about all the funny things that happened. Plus, who doesn't like to see friends that they haven't seen in over a year and some friends they saw at X-Mas (Hi, Ang!)? Although, you know you spent the weekend somewhere cold when you come home to the StL and the weather is 11 degrees and you think, "man, it's warm out here."