For anyone out there who has been following our plight through my husband’s medical issues, we have good news!  Here is a copy of the email I sent to our friends and family:

Hi everyone,
Chris had his medical tests today and they went well.  They didn’t find anything horrible – just some inflammation in the stomach and esophagus.  The dr prescribed some medication that will hopefully take his pain away soon.  They did take a sample to send for biopsy looking for any cell abnormality, but we won’t find anything out from that for about 2 weeks; they don’t expect that they will find anything abnormal.  Thank you so much for all your thoughts and prayers and support while we were going through this – we really appreciate it and love all of you.  We can’t ask for better friends or family!  Thank you so much!
Love,
Lisa

I felt too restless to write blogs, but I’m too tired to take the kids anywhere, so it’s either write in my blog or sit here on my computer looking up scary ailments that could be afflicting my husband.  So blogging it is…

As you may have read on other tangents.org blogs, our community theater is about to open its production of The Nerd – an (I still hate putting the word “an” in front of hilarious, but oh well) hilarious comedy written by Larry Shue.  My husband is portraying the Nerd, a character named Rick Steadman, who is without any social ettiquette whatsoever, to put it mildly.  He does an excellent job at the part, if I do say so myself, and that’s a compliment, really it is – he’s not a nerd in real life!  In the play, Rick has an autographed picture of Hugh Downs, and all this time during rehearsal, I’ve been wondering, who is Hugh Downs?  The name sounds familiar, but I didn’t know anything about him, so I looked him up.  Turns out he is a fellow Ohioan, born in Akron, went to high school in Lima, and he’s still alive.  He anchored the newsmagazine show 20/20, hosted the Today show, was the announcer for The Tonight Show with Jack Paar, and he also hosted the game show Concentration.

So having an autographed picture of Hugh Downs is quite nerdy.  But then again, I looked him up on wikipedia, so what does that make me?

I have a few drafts of blog posts started, but I haven’t really felt like writing lately – too much effort when my mind is so preoccupied.  Then I got this fun forward in my email and thought it would make a good blog post.  Little effort on my part, which is great because I’m so tired from not being able to sleep.  And it is actually a pretty fun forward; I looked it up for each of my kids and put them at the bottom of the list – enjoy:

THIS IS REALLY FUN!

Yes, a fun day indeed, if you read Jamiahsh’s blog, then you know what I’m talking about.  To get our minds off of certain medical dramas (not like House or Grey’s Anatomy or anything like that – our real-life medical dramas taking place right now are much worse than some crappy tv), we decided to have a day of fun.  It began with go-carting, which is always fun but even more so if you can fill up the track and drive with people you know – which we were able to do.  I like the place we went to because they don’t charge any extra if you take a kid along with you, and seeing as how we had a few nice adults who didn’t mind chauffering some little kids, all 3 of our daughters got to go around the track a bunch of times.  But I’m the dummy who forgot my camera, so I didn’t get a picture of my little almost 2-year-old in a go-cart like I wanted.  It’s funny because I had the camera with me, just forgot to use it, which should signal how scatter-brained I’ve been lately because of the worry and lack of sleep resulting from my husband’s as-yet-unidentified medical condition.  And while we’re on that subject, we won’t know anything until next week now, because they’ve ordered further tests for Thursday, and they won’t get the results back until next week.  But they’ve eliminated gallstones, so at least we know that much.  He blogged a little update here.

But anyway, enough tangents, back to the fun day.  After go-carting, we decided to practice in the batting cages for our upcoming annual theater softball game.  The batting cages reminded me how hilarious last year’s game was – I mean, theater people playing softball?  It was a riot!

After that, we went to a nice little restaurant we like on the river.  If you sit outside, you get to enjoy the beautiful weather, the view, and a game of cornhole while you wait for your food.  I like cornhole; if anyone has a set, we should bring it to the theater family fun day and play that along with softball…  Why is it called cornhole?  Is that a NW Ohio term for it?  They have that where I come from in Illinois too, but I don’t think they call it cornhole.  In case you aren’t from NW Ohio and you don’t know what I’m talking about, I’m referring to the game with the wooden ramps with holes in them…  you have 2 of these and station them about 15-20 feet apart with half of the team at each end; then you throw bean bags into the holes – hopefully.

After dinner, the kids fell apart (what else is new?  They’ve been acting HORRIBLY lately!), so we had to leave, but I hear the rest of the group went mini-golfing.  I was actually tempted to mini-golf earlier in the day but I knew the kids would drive me nuts because they get bored of it after about 6 holes.  So we left, thinking maybe the kids would fall asleep in the car, giving me and hubby a much-deserved and needed night alone together to watch a movie.  Didn’t happen.  And starting with the kids spazzing out at the restaurant about bees (and there weren’t that many – our almost 9-year-old is a wimp about certain things and her craziness got her sisters going – don’t you love how they chain-react to one another?  Hence the name of my blog), things went from bad to worse.

I’m going to blame Carol and Megan for this one, since they brought it up earlier in the day, but what a coincidence – we got pulled over on the way home.  So thanks Carol and Megan for jinxing us!!  Just kidding, of course it’s not your fault…  I guess poor Chris really got used to putting the pedal to the metal on those darn go-carts.  The state highway patrol officer who pulled us over had the personality of a housefly, and she wasn’t going to act like a human being and be thankful we weren’t drunk driving or even think about giving us a break on labor day, so our fun day ended up being pretty expensive when you include the $100 speeding ticket.  Our luck SUCKS lately, but if we can get the all-clear on my husband’s health, then I will stop complaining.

Oh yeah, so anyway, when we got home, our almost-2-year-old was the last one awake, and since she had only napped for about 10 minutes during the day, we thought we were almost home-free for a nice evening together – WRONG!  About 30 minutes into the movie, our oldest came down, asking for a snack.  No biggie, but “Did you wake your sister?” we asked her, panicked beyond belief because our 4-year-old has been a little hellian again lately.  She said she didn’t think she woke her up, but 5 minutes later, guess what happens?  Sammie comes down the stairs, and now we’re in the middle of an R rated movie with all 3 kids awake and downstairs.  So much for our peaceful early night, sigh.  We sent the oldest 2 upstairs, and that’s actually the last we heard from Sammie, believe it or not.  Disney, the youngest besides the baby (and he’s not old enough to cause any trouble yet, thank goodness!), got so OVER-tired that she started crying for about 45 minutes straight until she finally fell asleep.  But then Taylor, the oldest, must have come down the stairs at least 3 more times because she was worried about various bugs that were in her room and in the house, according to her anyway.  If this were still the age of the VCR, our movie would have been eaten by the VCR by now because of all the pausing and unpausing we were doing…  but ultimately, we just gave up anyway because I was falling asleep during the first part of the movie, and we could tell Taylor was going to be “bugging” us all night…  So we missed the end of No Escape – some crappy Ray Liotta action film from the 90’s.  I think it was crappy anyway, I really didn’t see much of it – let me know if it’s any good and maybe we’ll go back to it.

But for what it was worth, the day provided a nice destraction from the worries that have been plaguing us lately, so thanks to all who participated.  Now we just have to wait another week to find out more medical test results…  ugh, I hate the waiting!

My husband and I are worried sick.  It started about a week ago, when he began experiencing a terrible stomach ache.  In the past week, we’ve been to the ER and several doctors, and they’ve run various tests, but we haven’t gotten any results back yet, in part because it’s a darn holiday weekend.  So meanwhile, we are both worried SICK, which is an understatement.  The internet is acting as both a blessing and a curse, with us obsessing over his symptoms and making ourselves crazy with thoughts of one horrible diagnosis (mainly involving colon cancer) after another.  So I’m writing this quick post as a way of hopefully using the internet as a blessing rather than a curse and putting out this call for prayer.  Please, please pray for our family that my husband’s illness is nothing serious, and that we will be able to find the cause and the cure in a timely fashion.  We have 4 little children, and it’s been really difficult to function as a family with one of us sick and both of us so worried and terrified.  It’s probably nothing, but I thank you so much for your thoughts and prayers. 

As I’m sure you’ve heard, the movie Tropic Thunder received much hype in the media because of several controversies.  Part of this hype is a normal side effect of a movie’s release – spin doctors go to work; sometimes even people who are associated with the movie spread their own rumors because there’s a saying that goes, “There’s no such thing as bad publicity”.  Tropic Thunder is under scrutiny for two reasons:  Robert Downey Jr., a white actor, plays a white man in the movie who undergoes pigment infusion in order to portray an African-American man in the movie within a movie.  I guess I should go back and give a summary of the plot so that my explanation of the controversies of Tropic Thunder make more sense.

A group of quirky actors are filming a big budget war movie in Vietnam, and they get stuck there – that’s basically the plot and explains why we have a movie within a movie.  Before seeing the movie, I was under the impression that the actors didn’t know they were on their own in Vietnam and that’s when the hilarity would ensue.  But I was wrong on both accounts.  The actors knew they were no longer filming the movie pretty much right off the bat, and Tropic Thunder is not funny.  It is violent and crude; two things I could handle if the movie had other appealing qualities, but this one does not.  I do not recommend Tropic Thunder to anyone.  I can’t see who would like this film since it’s not funny nor is it really an action film – it just seems like a poor excuse for total crudeness and senseless violence.  I’m surprised about this because of its major star power: it was directed by Ben Stiller who also stars in the movie, along with Jack Black, Robert Downey Jr., Matthew McConaughey (who has a difficult name to spell, by the way!), Nick Nolte, and Tom Cruise, who makes a “special” appearance.  Turns out what is so special about Cruise’s appearance is the audience getting to see an A-list actor spewing out apallingly crude lines.  I have to admit though, they do a good job of disguising Mr. Cruise, and since I hadn’t heard he’d be in the film, I only recognized him because his voice was familiar and my husband leaned over and asked me, “Isn’t that Tom Cruise?”  Seeing Tom Cruise as a middle-aged bald jerk barking out insults and orders was probably the only entertaining thing in the whole movie but still not nearly enough to make it worth seeing.  Not quite so bad as to be put on my famous movie stinkers list, but it was a close call!

And that was going to be the end of my post until I realized that I forgot to go back and write more about the controversies surrounding this movie.  There was the one about Robert Downey Jr. portraying an African-American; I guess the feeling was why couldn’t they hire someone who was really African-American to play the role.  And then there was the controversy about the use of the word (and please forgive me if I offend you, I’m just repeating what I heard in the media) “retard”.  I can see how people would be offended by both circumstances; mostly I’m all for people lightening up about being politically correct and those kind of things, but perhaps these complaints have merit, especially the latter.  The movie’s portrayal of a “special” person and use of the word “retard” was quite condescending and like the rest of the movie, not the least bit funny.  But what I would say to the people who were offended is don’t waste your time because this movie’s not worth it, especially if the “no such thing as bad publicity” theory pans out – why give this bad movie any more press than it’s already gotten?  Waste of money.  Period.  Not a waste of time, however, but only because I saw it in good company 🙂

There are some really busy railroad tracks that run along the north border of the town where I live.  There are basically 3 roads that go out of town to the north; only one of which has an overpass for the tracks so cars don’t have to stop for every train that passes by.  This morning on our way back into town, we got stuck by a train.  Taking the route with the overpass is not an option right now because the other road we would need for that route is currently under construction and closed.  So we were stuck by the train, and it was a lengthy freighter (aren’t they all when you live in the country?), and it decided to stop – it was at a standstill on the tracks.  Not knowing how long the train was going to be stopped and because we were running low on gas, our only option was to turn around and try the third route.  Thank goodness it wasn’t being blocked by the stopped train also, which could have very well happened given the way these roads are laid out.  And talk about timing – right as we were going over the tracks, the bells and whistles on the gates sounded because yet another train was coming!  So if we had waited just a few more seconds to turn around, we would have gotten stuck by another train and probably run out of gas.  I didn’t realize we were so low on gas – I think there’s something wrong with our gas gauge because it fluctuates a lot.  But anyway, the point of this story is not to keep a full tank of gas – at today’s gas prices, who could afford that?  But I really hope they finish the construction soon so we can go back to taking the route where you don’t have to bother with the train crossings – I’m so not used to sitting in traffic, even if it is just waiting for a train to pass!

*UPDATE* – This afternoon as I traveled toward the north edge of town, the construction seemed to have been completed, thus opening the route that goes under the railroad tracks!  Maybe ODOT read my blog…

I love animals…  all animals, even ones I’m afraid of like frogs.  I can honestly say I would not want to see harm come to a frog even though I don’t like them.  I really love cats, even though I’m allergic to them.  When I was growing up, I always wanted a cat, so as soon as I moved out of my parents’ house I got one.  I had her for over 10 years, her name was Mally, and she was a sweetheart.  She passed away last January, and I miss her very much.  While she was alive, I couldn’t pet her as much as I wanted to because of my allergies, and that’s the only reason why I haven’t gotten another cat – I really like them.  Except for my neighbor’s cat.

When we moved in 2 years ago, we saw Phoebe the neighbor’s cat roaming around and we thought it was kind of cool to have a neighborhood cat.  That was before we saw how mischievous she can be.  Phoebe likes to sit on our window sill because she knows it makes the dogs crazy.  She also sits on the kids’ slide in the backyard which is just out of the dogs reach, further aggravating them.  One day, our dog Charity got loose and treed the cat.  I felt a little badly although part of me enjoyed the surprised (and pissed) look on that cat’s face when she was in the tree because she wasn’t expecting the dog to get loose and chase her.  One time, I noticed the front door was open and she was peeking in our house!  Don’t know how she managed that one; maybe one of the kids left the door open or something.  I used to have a bird house and a bird feeder in the tree in our side yard.  I would go out there and sprinkle seed, and we had a nice menagerie of creatures that would visit, giving our parrot some friends to look at out his window.  But then I saw Phoebe out there stalking the squirrels and birds that frequented the tree, and I stopped putting seed out because I no longer wanted to lure animals into her lair.  One day, I saw her playing with a baby bunny.  The bunny was alive, but not moving, so we scooped it up and took it to this lady who rehabs wildlife nearby.  Her place is really neat; she has raccoons, bandicoots, squirrels, rabbits, geese, ducks, and even a few bears!  Anyway, she said the bunny looked to be in bad shape and she didn’t expect it to survive.  Hopefully it defied the odds…

Being an animal lover, I was really sad when Phoebe hurt the baby bunny.  I was even more sad when I saw what she did the other day.  I was outside with my daughter, and Phoebe started to climb the tree in the front of our house.  I thought it was really cute, so I pointed to her and showed my daughter the cat.  But then I saw what she was doing – there were 2 doves sitting silently in the tree, and she was stalking them.  Suddenly one of the doves flew off the branch or at least tried to.  He flapped to the ground; I don’t know if he hit his wing on a branch or if he was hurt before he tried to fly away, but he landed on the ground, and Phoebe chased him.  He got lift a few more times, but he couldn’t fly.  Phoebe was chasing him until they both disappeared around the side of the neighbor’s house.  I grabbed my daughter and followed them, but I didn’t see anything.  When I got back to the front of the house, I saw the other dove in the tree, just sitting there waiting for her mate to come back.  She was there all day, just waiting, and it was the saddest thing because I didn’t think he’d be coming back.  The next day, she was gone, so I don’t know if she just gave up or what.  Maybe he survived the cat attack and they found each other again…  doubtful, but I am hopeful that’s the case because I don’t know what happened.  What I do know is that I don’t like Phoebe the cat.  She’s not even friendly; she never lets my kids pet her.  I’ve considered leaving a note on the neighbor’s door asking them to please corral their cat a little better…  but I don’t want to be one of those people.  For now, I just hold onto the hope the neighbors will move and take Phoebe with them, and when that day comes, I will promptly set up my wildlife area once again.

HOW DO YOU DECIDE WHO TO MARRY?
You got to find somebody who likes the same stuff. Like, if you like
sports, she should like it that you like sports, and she should keep the
chips and dip coming.


stuck with.