Weird Times at Costco....

So I worked yesterday. Yeah, I know, what else is new? Anyway, a series of bizarre, or at least uncommon things occurred. First, I got to work, clocked in, and was walking back to the lovely clothing area, and a fellow employee told me that he had a dream about us folding clothes together. Not sure if he was joking or serious, but either way, kind of strange.

Then after I had been folding for 5-10 minutes a five year old little boy, named Jackson came crying over to me because he had lost his grandpa. So we walked around the store for a few minutes and finally found him. It's weird when kids get lost in Costco because they're generally terrified and crying, etc., etc. and their parents generally don't even realize their kid is missing. It's pretty sad. In fact, one day this eight year old girl was lost, and was so upset, and when we found her parents, they were going through the check-out line, and didn't seem the least bit worried. It actually irritates me quite a bit. Anyway, back to yesterday.

Next, I was sent up front to help out because they are always short-handed. Which is another annoyance of mine, but I'll save that for another day. Anyway, I was up there helping load someone's cart and I smashed my finger between two ginormous cans of peaches. Don't worry, I didn't scream profanities, in fact, I didn't say anything at all, but it hurt. After a little while up front I was "sent" back to clothes.

So a little while later I was answering some clothing questions for this old couple, and the old man gave me a piece of candy. Kind of creepy. First off, I'm not even supposed to accept "gifts" or "tips," but what was I supposed to do? And no, I didn't eat it. Sickos.

A few hours later, this little boy who was probably a year and a half old came trotting towards me saying, "Mommy, Mommy, Mommy, Mommy!" At first I just shrugged it off, thinking I was probably wearing something his mom had that day. But then his dad said, "Yeah...she does look like mommy, but I'm doubting it's her." Okay, that's not awkward at all!

TAGGED

1. What I was doing 10 years ago.
   · Let’s see…I would have been 9 turning ten, so that would have been the summer following my 3rd grade year. I'm sure I was just beboppin' around and getting ready for my brother Nathan and my sister-in law Tegan's wedding.
   

2. Five things on my to-do list.

· Shopping

· Laundry

· Find something to make for lunch

· Send health information release

· Write a letter to my friend Jimmy

3. If I were a billionaire I would…

· Start my own business

· Invest my money in high-yielding CDs or mutual funds

· Begin saving college funds for my future kids

4. Bad habits

· Impatience

· OCDness

· Grumpiness when tired

· Sleeping a lot

5. Five places I've lived.

· Aurora, MO

· Park City, UT

· Chino Valley, AZ

· Stark City, MO

· Provo, UT

6. Six Jobs I've had.

· Cleaning up the Safeway Center

· Cleaning house for Orba Pearce

· Selling produce at our stand

· Typing pages of a nursing home manual

· BYU Creamery on Ninth

· Costco

Terrible at Updating!

Alright, alright, I know I'm the world's worst blog updater! In fact, Aimee just recently talked to me about my blogging failings. I do mean to post more frequently, but I don't really have any fascinating stories to tell. Perhaps I will have to begin fabricating some...

I recently began working at Costco again. It's nice to have a job, but it's not exactly the one that I've dreamed of having. I basically just stand around for eight hours and fold clothes. At first I loathed my job, positively hated it, but after a while I learned to turn off my brain and just run on automatic. In fact, I think that's why I despised my position at first. There's nothing particularly challenging about folding clothes, which gives me eight hours of time alone with my thoughts. Who wants that? Not me! So, currently I've been spending the time reciting things to myself. Sadly, it's mostly been poems, and SNL sketches that humor me. I've begun "The Raven" I don't know how many times, but I can never get beyond the 1st or 2nd stanza. And I must say that while the "Van Down by the River" or the "Gore vs. Bush Debates" are humorous, they're not very funny after the 4th or 5th recitation in an hour. So, when those cease to humor me, I begin singing. I’m generally forced to stop fairly quickly though because of the awkward glances I receive from nearby ‘members.’

Hmmm…well that’s pretty much my life in a nut-shell. Not too much is going on, but I’m staying busy, and I’m making money, so it can’t be all bad, right?

99 Balloons

I just stumbled upon this video and found it quite touching and inspiring!

http://youtube.com/watch?v=th6Njr-qkq0

Study Links Preemies, Long-Term Risks

By CARLA K. JOHNSON
Associated Press Writer

The largest-ever study of the long-term consequences of premature birth finds that children born early have higher death rates in childhood and are more likely to be childless in adulthood.

Experts called the research significant because it followed 1.2 million Norwegian births over decades. It also raises questions about future risks for even tinier babies saved today by modern medicine.

New drugs and therapies first used widely in the 1990s now save smaller and sicker babies. So the babies in the study may have been healthier, on average, than children born premature in recent years, experts said.

"Are we improving their survival but at the expense of significant problems down the road?" asked study leader Dr. Geeta Swamy of Duke University Medical Center.

Most preemies grow up to have good health and normal reproduction, but the researchers found heightened risks compared with babies born at full term from 1967 to 1988. The findings add to known consequences of prematurity such as lung problems, disabilities, mental retardation and school delays.

U.S. rates of premature births climbed steadily during the past two decades reaching an estimated 12.8 percent of births in 2006, government figures show. More than 540,000 babies were born premature that year. Fertility treatments that result in multiple births and older mothers contributed to the rise. (The rate of premature births in Norway that year was 7 percent.)

"In the United States, there is an epidemic of preterm birth, and prevention is absolutely critical," said Dr. Alan Fleischman of the March of Dimes. He was not involved in the study.

Fleischman said prevention efforts include hormone treatment for women with a history of giving premature birth, avoiding inducing labor unless medically necessary and reducing the number of embryos implanted at one time during fertility treatments.

In the study, appearing in Wednesday's Journal of the American Medical Association, more than 60,000 Norwegian children were born premature, about 5 percent overall. Only single births were included.

As expected, babies born early were more likely to die during the first year of life compared with babies born at term.

Surprisingly, their increased risk of death persisted as they aged.

The children who were born five to nine weeks early (28 to 32 weeks into the pregnancy) showed a doubled risk of death from ages 1 to 5 compared with children born at normal term. (The overall risk of death was low: 33 of the 5,880 children in the premature group died.)

When the researchers looked at boys and girls separately, they found a stronger link in boys between premature birth and higher death rates in childhood.

The causes of childhood deaths are still being analyzed, but birth defects and childhood cancers played a role, Swamy said.

In adulthood, other differences showed up. Prematurity was linked to lower levels of education and more childlessness in both men and women in a subset of more than 580,000 births from 1967 through 1976.

Women who were preemies had a higher risk of giving birth to premature babies themselves. The risk of next-generation premature births increased with the severity of prematurity in the mothers.

The study didn't examine reasons for these greater risks. Possible culprits include genetic differences, birth defects, economic factors and social obstacles, Swamy said.

As in other studies, there were more premature births among single mothers and those with less education.

The research was based on data from Norwegian birth, death and other records.

Norway's homogenous population and its universal access to medical care make the findings a "best case scenario," said Dr. Wanda Barfield of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. She co-authored an accompanying editorial in the journal.

In the United States, premature birth rates among black mothers are higher than among white mothers, she said.

The findings suggest people may want to tell their doctors if they were born early.

"That may help doctors to manage adult health and reproductive conditions for future generations," Barfield said.

It's Easter Time!

Hmm...well I haven't blogged in a long time! Mostly because my life is fairly uneventful, and I don't have any good stories. So, I guess I will try to fabricate some now.

I cut my hair off. It had been bugging me for a while, and finally I just made an appointment to have it chopped. It was weird because I generally go in with several reservations, and I am super nervous because I don't want too much removed, or too drastic a change. This time, however, I showed her a picture, but let her take artistic license with it. She did a good job, and I like it, although it is a bit shorter than what I had initially desired or anticipated.

My roommate, Heather, and I threw a St. Patrick's Day party! We held it on the 14th, which was actually the eve of St. Patty's this year. For those of you who don't know the Pope moved the holiday this year from the 17th to the 15th as not to conflict with Holy Week. Regardless of the change, several people did not believe me, and pinched me the 17th because of my lack of green attire. Yeah...kind of annoying. Anyway, the party was fun! We had lots of green food, listened to some Irish music, and played some fun games. The adorable rainbow cookies were made by my good friend Kristin, who couldn't attend the party, but volunteered to bring something delectable anyway! Oh yeah, and Heather made an amazing Leprechaun out of balloons for one of our decorations! Thank you both for your amazing skills! Anyway, for some reason 'States' was a very well-liked game, and we ended up playing it for most of the party. It got pretty intense with the amount of people, and I may have become a wee bit violent...

In other news...this week is going to be insane! I have 3 tests, a quiz, and a huge paper I have to complete by Wednesday! Haha! I know, I'm totally laughing at myself because I am in no way prepared. I still have no idea how it's all going to work out, perhaps I'll just have to stay awake for 40+ hours like I did another week earlier in the semester!

Anyway, I can't believe today is already Easter! It's crazy how early it came this year! In fact, I got to go listen to a talk by Bruce C. Hafen on Friday, and he said that the last time Easter was this on March 23 was in 1913, and that the next time it would fall on that day would be in the year 2228! Crazy huh?! I thought so. Anyway, listening to Elder Hafen was great. He gave a talk about Discipleship and Scholarship which was rather inspiring. In it he told several stories, some about his own life, and several about Elder Neal A. Maxwell's that encouraged me to do better.

Tonight I had the opportunity to attend a spring concert for the BYU Singers and the BYU Concert Choir, of which Nicholas is a part. Again, another great experience! They sang an interesting collection of songs, some fun, and others more chorally challenging. I enjoyed them all and was reminded of the reason for Easter. It was also nice to be accompanied by Brandon and Ashley!

Well...that's about all I can think of for now. Life is good, but busy. I'm doing all of the fun things that are associated with the end of a semester; finding housing, finishing off schoolwork, and making work decisions! It's definitely a fun time! Hope you all are doing well, and enjoy and celebrate Easter with the resurrection in mind.

A Very Long Night...

So last night a friend came by around 10:15 P.M. and asked me and my roommate Heather and our friend Emily who was at our apartment if we wanted to go with a group of people and go to the "Tumble Gym." For those of you who don't know, the "Tumble Gym" is every kid's dream place, or at least mine. It's filled with spring boards, trampolines, foam pits, blow up toys, etc.! It's amazingly fun, but apparently it's amazingly easy to get hurt. In fact, you have to sign a waver upon entry for legal purposes (ahem). Anyway, so Heather and I ended up going with the group of kids! It was a blast! We were having a great time, jumping around on the trampoline, doing tricks into the foam, and playing on giant blow-up teeter-totters, and hamster wheels.

Around 12:30ish, it was time to leave, but Heather wanted to jump on the trampoline one more time. Well, she did, and it was definitely the last time. As she took off from one trampoline to jump to the other she twisted her ankle, and felt her leg snap. As she explained, her foot was "flopping" as she flew through the air, and then landed on it on the other trampoline. As soon as she hit the trampoline, she started yelling out in pain. She was definitely hurt. I ran over there to see what I could do. She was pretty upset and kept moaning and groaning. After using a few "choice" words (hehe), she struggled to prop herself up to examine the damage. She reached down and used her hands to pull her knee and lower leg off of the trampoline. As she did so everything from about 4 inches above her ankle fell. It was awful. It just simply flopped, a clear indication that the bones were completely snapped in two! Well, after she yelled at the owner of the gym about 6 times to call the 911, he finally did. At this point, I was doing as she asked and holding her leg together. Not the most fun thing to do. Imagine trying to hold a person's leg in place to prevent things from moving, as well as to prevent the bone from coming through the skin. Yeah...it was pretty intense. As we waited for help to arrive, a couple guys were able to give her a blessing.

About 10 minutes later a couple fire trucks pulled up to the scene. They came in and asked her some questions, and made her wiggle her toes about 10 times. I'm guessing it was pretty painful because she didn't seem to keen on continuing doing so. Anyway, then they took some vitals and managed to place an air cast on her leg, as I held it in place. They placed a sheet under her, lifted her from the trampoline, which was also painful because her leg was continuously jostled, and set her on the stretcher. They got her outside, where it was conveniently snowing, and placed her in the firetruck. I climbed in front, and then we took off to the hospital. Surprisingly, at least to me, firetrucks don't drive very smoothly. As I guessed, and was told later, it was kind of a bumpy, painful ride for Heather.

We arrived at the hospital a little while later, and she was examined and x-rayed, another uncomfortable process. Let me just say, wow! The x-rays were pretty crazy, bones shouldn't snap like that, but they do. She was pretty lucky though that the bone hardly penetrated the skin. She just had a little tiny bit of blood on the surface. Anyway, they didn't splint it or anything because they wanted to get her right into surgery. So, they suited her up, AKA put her in a sheet with a hole in it for her head, and prepared her for surgery. Because her family wasn't there, I got to go with her and meet the Orthopedic Surgeon, her Anesthesiologist, and wait with her in the "holding" room until they took her in for surgery.

All of it was pretty exciting, but she was a total trooper! She seriously handled it all so well! She was able to answer all of their questions, and remember significant things like her birthday, etc. I was totally impressed. I think if it had been me I would've been in shock! Anyway...they got her ready and took her in for surgery.

From there, I'm not sure what happened, except that they put her out, inserted a catheter, and an air-tube down her throat. Then they made an incision near her knee shoved a titanium rod down into the tibia, and made two more incisions, one at the top and one at the bottom to screw it into the bone! Apparently, the surgery went perfectly, so that's good news.

Anyway, while Dr. Bacon was performing the surgery, Heather's parents arrived and we sat in the waiting room together and just chatted. After a couple of hours the surgeon came out and described the process to us, and told her that she was waking up. After 20 or so more minutes we were able to go see her. She awoke, and they moved her to recovery. After getting her settled in, I left around 5:30 AM. It was quite the night!

She's now recovering in the hospital and will be there until Sunday or Monday. She will likely be on crutches for the next 3 months, and will not be able to drive. She broke the left leg, but she has a stick-shift car, basically making it impossible! Anyway, at least things went well with the surgery, and she'll be able to heal properly, but things are going to be a bit different for her for the next little while! Anyway...a fun time was had by all...or not.