Anna and Troy’s Weblog

Thursday night, in an act of outstanding intelligence and sublime grace, I fell through the baby gate in the kitchen.

I was attempting to make Little Dog Baxter sit before I opened the gate, and as I leaned over to push him down, the gate gave way and I crashed through it. Somehow in the perfectly choreographed splendor of my fall, I got my right foot stuck in one of the vertical metal slats of the gate as tumbled to the ground. OOOOOUUUUUUUCCCCCHHHHHHH.

It was one of those injuries where you just lie on the floor in shock, waiting for the full intensity of the pain to hit you – and then it does. YIKES. As I lay on the floor absorbing the sensations of the moment, I reached down, and was relieved to discover that my foot was in fact facing the correct direction and that it seemed to still be attached to my leg. Good news.

Emerson was already in bed (thank God I wasn’t carrying her – although, I doubt I would have been attempting my dog wrangling acrobatics with her in my arms). Good news.

Also good news was the fact that my very BAD very quick Little Dog had somehow escaped the falling gate and had not been crushed to death beneath the gate and my body. Good news.

As I gathered my wits about me, I realized that I had, in fact, messed up my ankle pretty badly. Weight bearing was a definite NO. It was about 8:20 pm and Troy was at the studio teaching a group class. He was already in the midst of it and wouldn’t be done until 9:00 pm. So I scooted over to my phone (conveniently located nearby) and was able to call our babysitter Kacy, who was on her way home from the studio. She rushed over to give me a hand (got me ice, let the dogs outside, retrieved Emerson when she started crying).

When Troy got home we took a romantic little jaunt to the E.R. The things that you have to do to get a little alone time when you have an eight month old baby!

So it turns out no obvious breaks, just a really bad sprain. Good news.

Crutches and NO WEIGHT bearing for at least 48 hours. BAD news.

8 month old baby + Mommy on crutches = VERY INCONVENIENT.

Yesterday Troy canceled his day and stayed home with me on “full Daddy detail,” which in spite of the unfortunate circumstances, was actually a pretty nice day. Today my friend Andrea is coming over to help me and my mom will be able to be here by the late afternoon. Thank goodness. Good news.

My hope is that I have miraculous healing abilities, and that if I am vigilant about following the doctor’s orders for the next couple of days that my recovery will be very fast. The ankle is already feeling quite a bit better; although, I can definitely feel it when the pain medication wears off. I am sure that in another day or two I will be hobbling around with the best of them!

So, I’ve been tagged with the 20 Questions meme by my pal Chris VanderWal.  So let it be ordered, so let it be done.  Rules:

A)  People who have been tagged must write their answers on their blogs & replace any question that they dislike with a new question. (I haven’t changed any questions.)

B) Tag 8 people to answer the questions.

1. How many songs are on your iPod?

617: Sad, I know.  I am just not much of a techno-phile….but I am trying to learn more.

2. What music would you want played at your funeral?

I haven’t really ever thought about this……I am going to keep answering questions, and maybe I will get back to you.

3. What magazines do you have subscriptions to?

None.  My husband keeps getting Golf Digest, even though his subscription ran out almost 6 months ago.

4. What is your favorite scent?

Lavender Johnson & Johnson baby lotion.  I also SOMETIMES like things that smell like vanilla….but it depends on the vanilla.

5. If you had a million dollars that you could only spend on yourself, what would you do with it?

PAY OFF DEBT!  Pay off our house, or maybe move.  Take a really nice really long (2 weeks maybe?) vacation.

6. What is your theme song?

Again, haven’t thought much about it……maybe this lack of musical thinking is why there are only 617 songs on my ipod.

7. Do you trust easily?

If we are talking about profound, trust with your secrets and your life sort of trust….definitely not.  But I do give people the benefit of the doubt most of the time…..assuming that most people are good at heart…..often this goes on for far too long, and once the tables have turned….and you have gone on my official “bad person” list, it takes an awful lot to get off it.

8. Do you generally think before you act, or act before you think?

I definitely think first, often too much.

9. Is there anything that has made you unhappy these days?

Our very busy weekend travel/work schedule.  I think that the next time we have an “uncommitted” weekend is in the middle of November.  Even though most of our commitments are pretty fun and definitely necessary…..the schedule sort of sucks.

10. Do you have a good body-image?

If you had recently gained 15 pounds all in your belly  would you have a good body image?  If I were surrounded by penguins maybe the story would be different.

11. Is being tagged fun?

I am with Chris, I like reading other people’s answers

12. How do you spend your social networking (Facebook, etc.) time?

I check Facebook at least once a day and I try to read my friend’s blogs at least once a week.

13. What have you been seriously addicted to lately?

Ice cream.

14. What kind of person do you think the person who tagged you is?

I think this question is a blatant “warm fuzzy” machine……but…..that being said……

Chris is a very intelligent funny, warm, and caring sort of guy.  He is committed to staying connected with his friends, often overcoming the challenges of distance and time (I believe this to be a decidedly rare quality).  He is often overly opinionated (one of the reasons I like him) and can talk a blue streak.  He loves dogs, adores his wife, and has a genuinely kind heart and a strong moral compass.

15. What’s the last song that got stuck in your head?

I woke up with that sort of new Rhianna song in my head…..SOS…..strange, I know.   I have no explanation.

16. What’s your favorite item of clothing?

Currently, a pair of super comfy billowy capri length maternity pants that sit under my belly without squeezing me.   I would wear them every day if I could.

17. Do you think Rice Krispies are yummy?

Yes.  Especially when they are made into rice krispy treats.  Yum yum yum.  I also like rice krispy treats made with coco krispies and those toasted coconut marshmallows.  It is a super decadent version of the traditional rice krispy treat.  I highly recommend it.

18. What would you do if you see saw $100 lying on the ground?

Of course I would return it if I knew who it belonged to….otherwise I would probably spend it at Target.  That is really where most of my money goes.  If there was a “Target” piece of pie in my microsoft money pie chart, it would be pretty big.

19. What items could you not go without during the day?

My toothbrush.

20. What should you be doing right now?

Getting ready for work and working on my “plan to make our Arthur Murrays rock big time.”

**  As far as tagging 8 people goes, I am not sure that 8 people actually read my blog.  So I suppose I should just tag everyone that reads my blog and see what happens……

As it turns out, it appears that I am a fair-weather-blogger….. I suppose that extended absences in blogging are not a great idea if you want to maintain regular communication with your blogging friends. I would predict that extended periods of silence would cause the interest of your readers to wane….until no one even checks anymore to see if you have written anything new….. So perhaps I am now blogging to myself, which is probably still a therapeutic experience.

For those of you who may not have known, my extended blogging absence was due to the rather trying first trimester of our first pregnancy! Very very exciting (the pregnancy, not the 24/7 sickness that the pregnancy has produced). We have almost hit the magical 12 week mark (I believe that we are 11 weeks and 4 or 5 days). I am still waiting for the mythical morning of NO MORNING SICKNESS! It has not yet dawned, but I feel hopeful that it is near. It is written in the magical pregnancy texts that with the end of the first trimester comes relief from many first trimester pregnancy symptoms (nausea, extreme tiredness, headaches, etc.). I am hopeful that this is true and not an evil lie that they tell to pregnant women to give them hope. People keep telling me that I will wake up one morning with lots of energy and feeling great (as opposed to feeling green and wanting to sleep for 20 of the 24 hours). I will let you know when this happens. I do have to say that I have been feeling gradually less green (there are now periods of relief, rather than a full-on 24 hour onslaught of pukeyness) over the past few of weeks……so this gives me hope that the prophecy is true.

But other than my discomfort, everything seems to be going according to the grand plan. We have seen our little bean on the ultrasound and it is cooking away……trying hard to shed it’s alien appearance and grow into a more human looking little lump. I hear that we shouldn’t worry, and they do get cuter. It would be good if that is a true story too.

So….further updates to follow!

I had heard from one of my students that Fort Wayne was ranked right up there on the “Fattest Cities in America” list. Having lived here for over a year now, I would have to say that the claim did surprise me a little bit at first, but upon further contemplation, I thought….”well….” There are a lot of fat people in Fort Wayne, and once you start paying a bit of attention, there are A LOT of fat children in Fort Wayne.

So as a woman quickly approaching the age where serious weight gain can sometimes become an issue, I began to wonder why this might be….. First of all, Fort Wayne does love restaurant eating, and not really great restaurant eating……chain restaurant eating. For a city that has a lot of restaurants, the is a surprising lack of variety in the dining landscape. There are an outstanding number of Pizza Huts in Fort Wayne. Secondly, while Fort Wayne is a very nice little city, it is not a spectacularly beautiful city, and there isn’t an extraordinary amount of outdoor activity. In the neighborhood in Michigan where I spent my formative years, if you looked outside on a nice day you would see lots of people outside running, walking dogs, riding their bikes, etc. This is not as true in Fort Wayne. This leads me to believe that there is something in the scenery, climate, general city layout, or general city attitude, that is not outstandingly conducive to an active lifestyle.

Having thought about these things for several weeks, and plotting my exclusion from the Federation of Fatty Fort Waynians, I decided to do a little fact checking and see if we are in deed one of the fattest cities in the country. Because, while there are a lot of pretty obese people in Fort Wayne, I really don’t know if there are any more in Fort Wayne than there are in other cities. If you listen to the news it seems that the waistline of the entire United States is on a steady upswing.

Well, my preliminary research has been a bit inconclusive. Men’s Health lists Houston and Detroit as the two fattest cities in the US, according to their 2008 survey of such things. Fort Wayne was not even on the list of cities ranked. Inconclusive evidence. My first Google search has not turned up much evidence to refute or deny Fort Wayne’s national fattness ranking.

But, if at first you don’t succeed, try, try, again….and viola!

“Called the Dumbest City in America (by Men’s Health in 2005) and the Fourth Fattest City in America (by the Centers for Disease Control in ‘02), Fort Wayne has attractions that are somewhat subtler than Miami’s.” -Sports Illustrated 02/05/2007

FAT AND DUMB!!

“This heartland city of 255,000 has been dubbed the dumbest town in all the land by Men’s Health magazine. It came in dead last, losing out at the bottom of the heap to the likes of Laredo, Texas” -USA Today 01/19/2005

See what you learn when you do a little research into the place where you live? You are fat and dumb.

Obviously these two polls were tallied before I moved to Fort Wayne.