My Life Story for Facebook

(Updated 10/15/2009)

Let's get you up to speed!

Background:
I was born in Fort Smith, Arkansas but moved to Glenpool, OK around the age of 2. I went to school at Glenpool all 13 years and graduated in 1999. It's scary that half of my friends on FB are people I only know from high school because I am definitely not the same person now as I was then. And no, the same cannot be said for everyone.

After high school, I spent my first 1.5 semesters at East Central University before becoming very ill in February 2000. I was eventually diagnosed with an autoimmune disorder. I ended up dropping half of my classes that semester and came crawling back home to Mommy and Daddy. I've been well ever since then, thank you. After moving back home, I split my time between working at the corporate office for a local independent rural telephone company and taking the college courses I needed wherever they were offered for the cheapest price. Thus, I have attended Tulsa Community College and Northeastern State University in Tahlequah, Muskogee, and Broken Arrow. I graduated summa cum laude in May 2003 with a major in Elementary Education and a minor in Psychology. It was not the experience I thought I was going to have both socially (mostly older people attend the night classes I took) and academically (the difficulty level was scarcely more than high school).

After college, I then moved to Houston, Texas, and taught third grade for a year in the Spring Branch ISD district. Aside from making some wonderful friends and getting my first dog, it was not a great year. And teaching was never my long term plan. So yet again, I came crawling back to my Tulsa roots. This time it wasn't with Mommy and Daddy. I took the same job I had while in college. I still work there doing mostly accounting/executive assistant things. And although it wasn't what I thought was planned at all, I really love my job.

As fate/God/the stars would have it, my brothers joined band in middle school. In May 2005, I went to their concert. Some guy I sorta kinda knew in high school was now the assistant director of the band. I ended up chatting with him for nearly 2 hours after the concert. One thing led to another and that guy is now my husband. Doug Reynolds and I were married Cinco de Mayo 2007. I'm quite lucky to have married a very sweet, supportive, loving, caring, smart, nice, and responsible husband who even came with a great set of parents! Who else out there can say they really love their in-laws?

In November 2008, we purchased out first house in Broken Arrow. It's an average house in an average neighborhood.

In April 2009, my mother suffered a relatively major health crisis. She suffered a minor stroke that was due to an 18mm congenital atrial septal defect. That's fancy talk for huge hole between upper chambers of her heart. The hole was repaired with a space-age device called an AMPLATZER Septal Occluder. Although the stroke left her with only 60% of her vision, you'd never know she had one. And because bad things come in threes, a large meningioma (benign brain tumor) was also discovered during this time. It is unclear right now if this will need to be removed with surgery.

I love babies, but we have no babies. We're not planning on having babies anytime soon. And just as much as I respect your decision to have however many children you want, I would appreciate your respect in our decision to remain childless at this time.

We have some big things coming down the pipes in a few years, but those will be revealed when the time is right.

Packing Light

I can pack all I need for a 9-day trip in one carry-on, but it turns out that doesn't make for an interesting post or pictures. The lighting in our room is horrible right now, so the pictures turned out equally as awful. I also didn't have time today at work to fully explain my reasons for wanting to accomplish this crazy thing. The basics are that you roll everything up to avoid wrinkles and take only what you need. Not what you might need. We'll see how well this avoids wrinkles. Yes, I know I'm nowhere near the Rick Steves "three changes of clothes that you wash in the hotel sink level", but one day I might be. Set here.

The Whole Mommy Story, Part II

5/02/2009: Mommy got to go home today and slept a lot of the weekend.

5/05/2009: Mommy was originally scheduled for her ASD surgery at 11:00 today, but I just received an email from my dad that says there is now an opening at 10:00 today. Off I go to the hospital. I will be sending tweets from the hospital. I wonder why there would be a last minute opening at the cath lab. Did someone just die?

The Whole Mommy Story, Part I

Life's funny. This past Sunday my biggest concern in life was devising a plan to keep our house in a relative state of clean just in case company dropped by. Monday's biggest concern was if my mother was going to live.


04/27/2009: I get a call from my dad around 10 am telling me that mom stood up at work, felt pain behind her ear, and lost a significant amount of her peripheral vision. Dad left work and drove my mom to St. John. At the ER, my dad was told my mother either had a migraine or a stroke. BIG difference there. Mom has a CT scan that revealed not a stroke (that bleeds into the brain), but a benign brain tumor of substantial size behind her eyes. Later in the afternoon, an MRI was performed which showed that, in addition to the meningioma, my mother did indeed suffer a stroke. Luckily, it has only affected her peripheral vision. It is unknown if she will regain more of her vision.

04/28/2009: My mother undergoes a transesophageal echocardiogram to determine the cause of the stroke. I receive a sad call from a heartbroken Daddy telling me that they found a hole in my mom's heart. And although it's been there since birth and my mother has had heart symptoms for a while (e.g., tires easily, intolerance to exercise), it was never caught by a doctor.

04/29/2009: My mother undergoes an angiogram to determine if there is blockage in her heart which would preclude her from having a less invasive heart surgery. Thankfully, there is no significant blockage. Dad is excited because this is the first good news we've heard so far. Another test was performed later to find out if there were clots lurking elsewhere in her extremities just waiting to cause another stroke. Thankfully, there are not.

04/30/2009: Heart surgery is scheduled for next Tuesday. This also happens to be my anniversary. It's undetermined if Mom will be able to go home over the weekend. A neurosurgeon says that, because her meningioma is large and will continue to grow, it must be removed. But that surgery will take place at least four months from now. Right now, we all feel really good about the odds of my mother living a normal life after this really safe surgery.

Road Trip!

What's Rachel and Doug been doing lately? Well, instead of finishing up trim painting and completing other much needed home decorating projects, we've been busy making reservations for our big road trip in July. We're beyond excited about spending the 4th of July in Washington DC! I know that once we get there we won't be as excited to due the patriotic crowds and intense heat. Here's our "crazy trip" so far.

We have something far more relaxing for next summer, but for now we've got to get Doug up to speed on the number of states he's traveled to.

All of this travel planning has me even more addicted to bidding for hotel rooms on Priceline. It's like a sad silly kind of game to me wherein I use travel message boards and create my own map to figure out the nicest place to stay for dirt cheap. It's not that we can't afford to pay full price, but why would you when you can pay $55 for a room that costs $179 for the regular crowd?

Chippy

I'm not sure how I let it happen, but I noticed that my movie list has been a draft in Blogger since last MAY! But here's what I've watched recently:

Planet Earth: Complete Series: Disc 2 (2006).

My Best Friend's Girl (2008) = 2/10. I seriously hated the ending. And most of the rest of the movie.


I am privileged to have the opportunity to talk to the wonderful and gracious president of the company where I work on a daily basis. Somehow during my 7 years of employment we have managed to form a food bond in the form of recipe exchanging. This woman KNOWS good food! However, she is very used to shopping at super fancy fine food markets and using upper-class ingredients than she sometimes forgets what we peons have to eat. And the foods we love.

Last week during one of our conversations she gave me a recipe. She said it was fabulous. But...


J: Here are the precise ingredients for this Mexican Lasagna. Now, the very first thing is calls for is a 15-17 oz. bag of, and I'll repeat it exactly as it was written, cheese-flavored corn chips.

Me: Uh huh. [pausing for a moment] You mean...like...Doritos?

J: Well now, Rachel, that is the ONLY thing I found in the entire store that really met that description.


It was hard to keep from laughing. But it is hard for me to imagine a world where the love Doritos is completely lost.

Never in my Wildest...

The two biggest things that happened to me in 2008:

*A person I saw quite often will be spending some time in jail this year.

*An ex-boyfriend that I dated nearly 1.5 years back in 1999-2000 was murdered. MURDERED! Do you know anyone personally who's been murdered? Granted, I hadn't spoke to Adam since we broke up, but still. It's all still extremely surreal. To top it all off, I found out on my birthday.


Predictions/wishes for 2009:

*Rachel and Doug venture out of the USA Proper.

*In December we will still be painting some portion of our new house, probably trim.

*A smaller everything. I recently bought a treadmill that I love and am excited about. OK, mostly I'm just excited that I no longer have to worry about farting while running.

*Participation in the Tulsa Run this year. (Anyone want to join me?)

*One of my brothers finally scores higher on the ACT than me.

*We acquire a new dog. Doug wants one.

*Doug doesn't follow the oral surgeon's advice and gets dry socket when he gets his wisdom teeth taken out.

Drama dog

By now most of you have probably seen the startling video of my dog:




Good news. There's a 97% change that it's "just" a petit mal epileptic seizure! It won't shorten her lifespan and the treatment is free. Dim the lights for her and let her wait it out on her own unless she wants comfort.

We now have negative net worth

May I present...

our first home!

I'm excited to announce that our new house came with its very own garden gnome:

Those crazy Germans, huh? No seriously, the seller was born in Kiel!


I'm also very happy that I can put myself on exhibition while taking a shower:

See the rest here.

Can I Has More Shoes?

It's a very good thing that we're moving in less than two weeks because, as you can see, my shoes have nowhere else to go!

The Road to Homelessness

With our quickly approaching November 14 close date, we gave our thirty day notice to vacate notice to our current moderately craptacular apartments. If things go perfectly, and they won't, we will have a whole week to paint and another whole week to move into our house. And the timing is nice because every time I move it seems like I have a tiny 48 hour window to do it in. But in my world, things never go as planned. My fear is that something will go wrong between now and closing and we will be homeless for a little while. And homelessness at this point probably means moving in with my dear in-laws. I love them dearly, but they definitely don't share the same love for sleeping in until noon on Saturdays or lounging around in just a T-shirt and undies for the better part of all time spent at home. Relearning how to wear clothes all day long would be difficult.

In other news, the work spectacle continues and might continue for another two years. But it hasn't been too bad because I work with such great people.

I went trick-or-treating with my nieces and nephews last night. And I carried new baby Anna in a sling the entire time. I like that experience a little too much.

I need a new back bumper. I had my very first actual collision Wednesday. I was backing out of the parking space at work and into a non-moving vehicle just sitting there. In my defense, he wasn't in a parking space, he had just pulled up behind my car. What's horrible is that I wasn't on the phone, I wasn't messing with my iPod, I LOOKED, but I just completely didn't see it! And that can only mean that all of this recent stress is making me reverse hallucinate things.

Neil Diamond

Since childhood, my father and I have had the pleasurable habit of changing the lyrics of our favorite songs. This was usually done while driving and, as I remember, typically with my mother shaking her head disapprovingly in our general direction.

Not much has changed. Over the years, I have attempted my craft with numerous people, most of them hostage in my passenger seat. However, it seems as though only Doug and my father share this hobby with the same intensity as me. Doug has been changing lyrics since childhood, too. And what better way to spend an afternoon than taking a drive with your husband while singing our special rendition of Tom Petty's lullaby Freeballin'?

Some of my song renditions have been replayed in my head so often that I occasionally forget the real lyrics. I fear that this will not serve me well tonight. I am going to the Neil Diamond concert with my mother-in-law who is quite a bit more prim and proper than I. It's going to take every ounce of strength to remember that the lyrics are really "Sweet Caroline" and not "Sweet Milky Thighs."

The Not a Short Sell Transaction Homebuying Saga, Part II

It looks like we're actually inching closer to home ownership. On Thursday, all manner of inspections were performed and there were only tiny minor things that need to be repaired.

I went across town for a pedicure yesterday and figured that since the house was only 2 1/2 miles away, I would just drive by it to see if there was a sold sign up yet. There is.

The Not a Short Sell Transaction Homebuying Saga, Part I

This was only our second Sunday to look at houses with a competent Realtor instead of trying to get a feel for neighborhoods and houses on our own. And hark! we found another house yesterday (Sunday), put in an offer today at 6:30 and got a counteroffer at 8:15. So, we're nearly in contract again.

And technically, we have two contracts now. We can't get the Realtor on the short sell house to call us back. It's been two weeks. Ridiculous! It's possible we might have to eat $500 of earnest money we weren't even supposed to pay on a short sell we didn't know what a short sell until after we signed the contract, but whatever. This house has far less work that needs to be done to it and there is no chance a car could run off of the turnpike and hit us now.

Keep your fingers crossed this time!

The Homebuying Saga, Part VI (The End?)

You know when you're bidding on a super awesome item on eBay and some twerp outbids you in the last 20 seconds? That's basically what just happened with the house we had a contract on. Another party with another Realtor submitted a contract "slightly higher" than ours. So, unless Countrywide quickly develops a sense of morals and lets us purchase the house because we've had a contract for the longest amount of, we do not have a house. Sad, but it's just a house.

The sucky part is that we cannot get out of the contract until Countrywide OFFICIALLY declines our bid/offer. And who knows how long that could be since we've already been waiting since July 16.

We go house hunting with another Realtor tomorrow. This one actually has experience and has been in the business for nearly 20 years.