Thursday, December 20, 2007

Zachary Benjamin Humphries

Here is baby Zac, my newest "nephew", who was born October 27th (Yes, I know I am slack). Oh and some pics of his big brother Rohan too!






Amy and Emma's Birthday Wedding Sensation



Amy and Emma's Birthday party this year was a Suburban Bliss Wedding. Emma was the bride(that should be bridezilla!!!) and Amy was the groom. Guests could be bridal party, mothers of the bride, sleazy uncles etc.

I went as the ultimate white trash bride - fat, knocked up, tattoo on my boob, thongs and wearing a necklace that said "available".

I was hot.




Thursday, October 25, 2007

Why I am so slack?


It is an excellent question. Why has it been since June that I have not posted on this blog?

Is it studies? After all I have started my Masters in July.

Work? Working two jobs can be tough.

Mum's health? I have certainly not been feeling all that much like writing about just how crappy my life has been lately.
Facebook? My name is Lydia, and I am a Facebook addict. Very true. Who knew getting your picture of a vampire to "attack" someone else's picture of a vampire could be so damned addictive? Finding people I went to school with has also been.... Let's just say terrifying and leave it at that.
Really lame G Rated computer games? My addiction to games where I run a diner, build houses or bake cakes is as hilarious as it is sad. I just cannot stop. Beauty salons. Gardening. Pizza shops. You name it, I'll play it. Don't expect me to do real work though.
I guess it is probably all of the above.
So, once again, I pledge to write some of my ramblings on this blog and to occasionally be funny. Damned funny.

Saturday, June 30, 2007

Rohan, aged 1 year

This is my "nephew" Rohan. Isn't he gorgeous!




Debra's Britney Spears Moment

As Debra is going to lose her hair from the chemo, I shaved her head for her the other day. Now she looks like Evie from V for Vendetta or a sane Britney Spears.






I'm a wanted criminal - sort of....


On Tuesday night a group of girls from my weekend work went out for dinner at a restaurant in Clayton. It was a place I had been to many years ago, and they had been shit, but they had changed hands since then, so I figured they might be better now. And we were going there because Linda had an entertainment card which gave us a discount at this place of "Up to $30 or 30% off".

The food was lovely. The service was a bit slow, but nothing too bad. The bill came and they had only given us $18 off - they had given us the cheapest meal as a discount. There was nowhere on the discount voucher stating that this was how they calculated the discount, so Linda went to question the Junior Manager. She was adamant that this was all the discount they give, flashing a laminated sign out of sight of the customers and offered to call the manager. We waited about 10-15 minutes for the manager, but having received no response, Linda gave the waitress $191 ($6.50 less than the total they had asked for) as well as her phone number and we left.

We had made our way to our cars and were all driving off when the Junior Manager and the Chef raced out onto the street and started arguing with us and standing in front of our cars. I drove off from the Chef as he was still yelling at me. I half expected to find the police waiting for me when I got home.

The manager has since rung Linda, demanding the $6.50 and threatening to call the main manager. If I was the owner/main manager of this restaurant I would be sacking these employees as they have guaranteed a huge amount of bad PR for the restaurant. All they had to do was have a sign displayed prominently saying that the discount they had advertised in the entertainment card book was incorrect.
Linda has submitted a complaint to the entertainment card people and if all 7 of us tell ten people, who tell ten people, who tell ten people.... They are going to be out of business VERY soon over less than $1 per person.
Apparently there is a web site where you can give bad restaurant reviews - I'm off to find it now.

Friday, June 29, 2007

All your base are belong to us.

Here is one of my favourite things - All your base are belong to us. It is a bit of a phenomena. Read more about it here.


And now another take - All your snakes are belong to us.

Look around you

I have been recently introduced to the wonders of a BBC2 show called "Look Around You". It's a spoof of the science education shows we were forced to sit through in school.
This one is probably my favourite, but if you look on YouTube, there are many fine episodes. Enjoy!

Friday, June 22, 2007

Cletus the Fetus


Fantastically sick! The perfect present for the religious freak in your life.

Check out the whole range here.

MP4 Engrish




So I got a new MP4 player a couple of weeks ago. I opened the manual for something the other day and low and behold - suberb Engrish!




I won't quote the whole thing as that would be a tad excessive, but here are some of the highlights: (as in original)

"The MP3 figures walkman product that uses our company to you first means a with gratitude!"

"Can be as soon as possible relaxed for the sake of you from if ground the operation this machine, please before you start use this machine careful read the manual that we provide random, for the purpose of your ability the right usage was a machine originally"

"Use don't let the player fall off to fall"

"Want in specially hot, cold and many dusts with damply, the aridity of the environment to use a player"

"... our company is all irresponsible"

"Get stripe the completion retreats and break a conjunction of open the MP3 and PC machine"

"When the conversion progress attains 100% after hint the conversion completion, mean the video frequency converts success, the empress of the conversion of the document delivers through the USB data line to then the hold type medium player, can immedicately start to take a look at"

I know what all of those words mean, but I have no idea what any of that says.

Freakin' BRILLIANT!!!!

Thursday, June 07, 2007

The Big C


So about two weeks ago - about a week after I came out of hospital - mum found a lump in her right breast. It was hot and painful. She made an appointment, but neither of us worried about it too much - we thought it would just be a cyst or mastitis. Cancer is usually not painful.

The first sign things were bad was when the GP examined her and went pale and called in the other doctors in the surgery for second opinions. The next bad sign was when the mammogram/ultrasound chick went pale, and called in the head radiographer to look at the scan.

So there was no great surprises when she was referred to a breast doctor. She said he took one look at her breasts and said "oh yes, there it is". He said it would either be a fibroidenoma (a benign tumour) or an unusual cancer. He took a needle biopsy and booked her in for a proper biopsy on the following Monday.

Monday came, and she went into Mitcham private for day surgery. Three days later we had the results - and it wasn't the good result. Mum, being who she is made two comments "Oh good, now I can live on Marshmallows" (she is diabetic) and "Well I was wondering what to do with my hair. Don't have to worry about that now".

She went in to hospital on Monday of this week to have the lump out and the axillory lymph nodes removed. She has named her breasts lefty and stingy - stingy has been a naughty boob, and lefty is now the favourite.

The lymph node biopsy came back last night and was clear, so the cancer hasn't spread, which is a big relief.

It's been a bit of a fucker of a couple of weeks though, and it's going to be a rough few months.

Hopefully, things can only get better.

Monday, May 28, 2007

My New Mantra




The Snooze button does NOT stop time......


The Snooze button does NOT stop time......


The Snooze button does NOT stop time......


The Snooze button does NOT stop time......


The Snooze button does NOT stop time......




I have overslept by an hour three times in a row....




The Snooze button does NOT stop time......


The Snooze button does NOT stop time......


The Snooze button does NOT stop time......


The Snooze button does NOT stop time......

Sunday, May 20, 2007

God Freaks

A patient handed me this mini-comic today.
I'm not sure whether to laugh or cry.
The patient said he thought the author should be a psych patient.
I tend to agree.
What makes this less dangerous than Muslim propaganda?

























What happens if you tick No?

Saturday, May 19, 2007

Accidental Engrish


I ordered myself a car adaptor for my MP4 player off eBay this week.

It came yesterday, and I didn't really look at it much. On my way to work this morning I picked it up and received the most pleasant surprise - Engrish!!


The front reads "The car stereo set broadcasts to convert the machine".


But it is the back where it truly shines. This is how is reads (Spelling as in original):
"INSTRUCTONS
1. Check if the conect postrtion (side or front entry) if it is, skip to point5.
2. If not,remove the cover of this Adaptor by loosening the screws with a coin.
3. Reposition the cord to the desirded position (top.middle or button)
4. Replace the cover and screws.
5. Insert the Adaptor plug into the LINE OUT jack (or AUX OUT jack) of your CD player.
6. Tum on your cassette play and insert this Adaptor.
7. Press PLAY on your CD player and adjust the casette player volume.
8. When done,aject this Adapior like any casserre."

The funniest part is that sometimes they get it right, then in the very next sentence, they get it oh so wrong.

At least now I can broadcast to convert the machine.

Saturday, May 12, 2007

"I need you to open your bowels for me Kevin"


As a little back story to this post, I have had asthma since I was three, when I had whooping cough. I have never needed to go to hospital - I would usually go to the Emergency Department, have a ventolin Nebuliser and that would fix me.
Last Thursday though I had a full-on mega asthma attack. 8 days in hospital later, I'm home. This is my sorry tale....
Last Tuesday I went with Sarah for her ultrasound appointment for bub number 2 (yay!), so that I could Rohan-wrangle while she had the scan. About two hours after we got home, I had a bit of a runny nose, so I took some olive leaf extract and some echinacea and waited to get better. Wednesday morning I was pretty crap, and I ended up sleeping all day in an attempt to be ready for work on Thursday. Because I had slept all day, I did not realise just how low I was on Ventolin. I ran out about 1am. I spent most of the night looking through my room for old dodgy ventolins, eventually just decided to wait until the chemist opened in the morning. Bad move. By morning my breathing was so bad I could only talk in short sentences and couldn't walk. After some grumping I agreed to let mum take me to the ED at Maroondah Hospital.
When I went to the triage desk, my Oxygen Saturations (O2 Sats) were in the mid 80s (should be 95-100%), so they put me straight onto a ventolin nebuliser (neb). They tried me for a while in the paeds sections, because this is where all the asthma equipment is. After I did not improve, they moved me to one of the resus beds in the ED - the "serious" beds.
They kept giving me neb after neb, and I was not improving - at best my O2 sats stayed on 93%, even while having a neb. They also started giving me IV ventolin. After a couple of hours of this, I started to freak out - why wasn't I getting batter dammit!! I started to panic, and the ED staff decided that I was just being anxious, so they reduced the ventolin and gave me valium. Surprisingly, I got worse.
The next step was a CPAP machine which suctions onto your face and forces O2 down your airways. Very strange, claustrophobic feeling. They had me on that for a while and I was going ok, but then they decided that I needed to have a CT scan to see if I had a pulmonary embolism. This meant lying on my back, still, holding my breath. This is not really possible when you can't breath. They also put me onto a portable CPAP machine that had a delay when I breathed in, feeling like I couldn't get air. Surprisingly I had another panic attack in the CT room, and my O2 stas dropped to 70%. The staff were all yelling at me, but there was not a lot I could do about it - I was freaking out! All up I was in the ED for almost 8 hours, although it felt like about one - all I remember is a bunch of different people all asking me the same thing - "Are you allergic to anything?"
Once I had finished at CT, I was admitted to the Critical Care Unit (CCU) - the closest thing Maroondah has to an ICU. The ED nurse handed over my details in front of me and said "bit of asthma, VERY anxious". Mole.
Being in the CCU meant I was on a bed with my vital signs constantly being monitored - resps, heart rate, O2 sats, hourly BP and so on. I had two drips in, and constant heated humidified oxygen being pumped in - they had decided I didn't need to CPAP machine anymore, which was a relief. Now, in restrospect I know how sick I was, but at the time I was too sick to notice!!!
My first night in the CCU gave me another first - my first ever sponge bath! Now I know I was dirty - I had been too sick to shower for 24 hours, and I sleep with poodles, but the nurse kept sighing and groaning and decided that the poodles were the cause of my problems - she even handed that over to the next nurse on shift! Mole!
The CCU was essentially a long corridor with beds and curtains - why is it that people in hospital think that curtains are sound proof?
The CCU began testing me for various infections - Legionella was one that I heard bandied around - or as the Nurse in Charge pronouced it "Regionerra". This is also when they mentioned that I had patches of collapsed lung.
Most of the nurses in the CCU were brilliant. There were occasional issues - like the fact that they only had one toilet, and I had to be taken by chair to it, so I was often waiting up to three hours to go to the toilet. My bladder may never be the same! There was also the nurse who ripped out my IV while trying to remove some tape. That hurt. A lot. I bled. A lot. Getting an IV put in isn't fun, but having one ripped out is a lot worse.
After six days in the CCU I was going nuts - unlike a normal ward there is no telephone, no TV, no newspapers, just medicine. I had magazines and puzzle books, but I really just needed mindless entertainment. Finally they transferred me to 2 North. The only down side to this was that I was the youngest person in the room by 40+ years. The guy next to me had COAD and was a lovely guy, but the other two weren't really on our planet anymore. That's where the title of this blog has come from - one of the first things a nurse said to one of my room-mates - "I need to you open your bowels for me Kevin". Enough said. Kevin kept trying to put himself back in bed, and Diane next to him, kept trying to get out of bed, even though she didn't know where she was. Thank God for TV.
Oh, and hospital food sucks dogs balls, although I have probably lost 10 kilos. The best thing they had was custard in little tubs.
So after two more days in hospital, they finally let me go home. I am still not right - short of breath, a bit light headed - but I am so much better than I was. My arms also feel like the veins have been sewed up with fishing wire - they are all tight when I move. One of the CCU nurses kept telling me how close I was to being intubated. I try not to think about it.
It has given me a better perspective about what the patients at work go through as well - waiting for doctors, anticipating your meals so much, because that is all you have to look forward to. My empathy factor has increased ten fold.
It's been very scary - for me and everyone around me. I need to take this as a wake up call, and start looking after myself better. I'll let you know how I go!