Wednesday Hodgepodge

1. What's surprised you most about your life or life in general? 

I'm not sure anything surprises me anymore. To be sure, this isn't what I expected, but it is what it is.

2.  Sweet potato fries, sweet potato casserole, a baked sweet potato, a bowl of butternut squash soup, a caramel apple or a slice of pumpkin pie...you have to order one thing on this list right now. Which one do you go for?

A baked sweet potato, please.  I do love sweet potatoes.  (I love pumpkin pie, too, don't get me wrong...but...)

3. What's a famous book set in your home state? Have you read it? On a scale of 1-5 (5 is fantastic) how many stars does it rate?

The Wonderful Wizard of Oz.  On the scale, I'd rate it a 4--it was a good book, but it didn't compel me to pick up any of the other books in the series.

4. There are 60 days until Christmas...have you started your shopping? How do you stay organized for the holidays?

HAHAHAHAHA!  Oh, you were serious.  Um, no, I haven't started shopping yet; and organization is a thing of the past.

5. October 26th is National Tennessee Day. Have you ever lived or spent any time in Tennessee? Is this a state you'd like to visit one day? The top rated tourist attractions in Tennessee are-

The Great Smoky Mountain National Park (Gatlinburg area), Elvis's Graceland (Memphis), Birth of the Music Biz (Memphis and Nashville), Dollywood (Pigeon Forge), Tennessee's Military Heritage (many battlefields), The Hermitage (Andrew Jackson's home), The Parthenon (Nashville), Oak Ridge American Museum of Science and Energy, Chattagnooa and the Tennessee Valley Railroad, Downtown Knoxville, Lookout Mountain, The Titanic Museum (Pigeon Forge), The Museum of Appalachia (Clinton), and The Lost Sea Adventure (Sweetwater)

How many on this list have you seen? Which one on the list would you most like to see?

I've never seen any of them, though I hear a great deal about the Great Smoky Mountain National Park...so I suppose I'll choose that one.

6.  Insert your own random thought here.

Fall is finally here, and I'm glad it is...but honestly, I wish it had arrived on a day when I could stay home and make chicken noodle soup for dinner instead of running everywhere...

My ray of sunshine

This tale starts on a Wednesday morning.

I was heavily pregnant.  My high-risk doctor had scheduled me for an appointment, so I was wobbling my way through the parking lot at the hospital (where his office was).  I know it was 11:00, because the state of Kansas tests the tornado sirens the first Wednesday of every month at 11:00.  And the sirens had started to go off in the distance.

I chuckled to myself and called my boss.  We were fortunate enough to share a workspace situated directly below one of those sirens, and it always brought work to a grinding halt for a few minutes because the sirens were so loud, we literally couldn't do anything else but wait for it to be over.  So I called her and jokingly asked, "So are the sirens working?" because that's the kind of rapport we had.

I won't repeat her reply, because it's family-unfriendly.  Because that's the kind of rapport we had.

Anyway, I signed in for my appointment and situated myself on the table for my bazillionth ultrasound for this pregnancy.  I was lucky enough to live near a high-risk prenatal specialist with all the equipment on hand, and they used it enthusiastically.

"Good morning," he said as he walked in.  "38 weeks...let's take some measurements."

I agreed and settled back for what had become routine.  I barely listened as he called out numbers to the nurse sitting at the computer behind him.  But it got my attention when he turned to her and said, "So, where are we at?"

The nurse didn't reply immediately.  When she did, she said "Second percentile."

The temperature in the room dropped by about fifteen degrees.  "Say again?"

She didn't say it.  She didn't have to.  The doctor had walked over to the computer to review everything.  I was whisked down the hall to a room with a large, squashy chair in it but not much else and told to have a seat.

When the doctor came in, it was with the news that something was going very, very wrong.  The baby that I'd been trying so hard to take care of was measuring at about 15 weeks, and they needed to get her out before tragedy struck our family again.

"Okay, when?" I asked stupidly.  It wasn't that I hadn't caught on, it was that I was in denial.

"As soon as possible.  If not, sooner."

Five frantic hours later, I'd rushed home, packed a bag, told my boss, set my away message on my work phone, picked up my son from day care, run him over to my sister's, and rushed back to the hospital.  The baby never stopped moving.  The whole time, she thrashed and struggled as if to tell me that she was still there and things were still okay.

An hour after that, doctors placed a nearly-seven-pound bundle into my husband's arms.  She was here, and she was healthy, and the doctor shrugged and phoned in a request for his instruments to be checked.

Today, Sunshine is eight years old, and she's just as unstoppable now as she was then.

Wait, what?

Really? A non-Hodgepodge post?  Yup...

I talked briefly a while back about when that tree came down on our house a few weeks ago (on my 37th birthday, in fact)...repairs are done, and the room that will eventually belong to Sunshine is well underway.  The floor is getting redone, and I finally got all her favorite My Little Pony characters traced onto the walls, and I should be able to start painting those tomorrow.

Meanwhile, take a look at a fun thing we got to do over the weekend...

The people who organize our local marathon also organize a few other races throughout the year, and we decided to give the Flyby 5K a try.  There's two races--the 5K itself, and an untimed 2-mile "fun run" that we were more comfortable participating in.  All four of us were signed up.  Scout and my husband were a minute ahead of us.  Sunshine and I made a deal ahead of time to run across the finish line, no matter what, and that's what we did--in a time of almost exactly 34 minutes.  The race itself was along a runway at the airport, and it was a fascinating ground-level view of a lot of things I've never seen up close before.  At the end of it, we all got medals, and we all agreed we were in for it next year.

Running is not exactly a "passion" of mine, per se.  But I do enjoy it, and I'm so grateful I finally got my family to go along with me.