Bit of Ivory

Am munching on a S’more made from a marshmallow toasted on the leftover charcoal from our hamburgers tonight and a couple of the digestive biscuits that I picked up from London Market a while back. It hurts to swallow them, but after living on baked beans, cracked wheat cereal, yogurt and pasta for the past two weeks, I’m willing to put up with the pain. I finally ate a hamburger tonight, and it tasted wonderful. I had to forgo the potato chips & dip, as well as the tortilla chips and fresh homeade salsa, though. I might be up to actually eating the ice cream my best friend (Burnt Almond Fudge, my favorite) and Relief Society President (Caramel Caribou, very yummy) which I haven’t been able to eat because they have nuts or prailines that I haven’t been able to swallow. I’ve really only had a bit of raspberry sherbet– not nearly as much ice cream as I was planning on. I eat more ice cream when I’m healthy than I have these past two weeks.

My lack of food has left me feeling weak. That, combined with my still-tender throat, is really the only thing that’s still bothering me from my surgery. I did a bit of research and discovered that the recovery time from the UPPP is longer than for just a plain tonsilectomy, and really, my soft palate area is the only part of my throat that still hurts. It’s rotten, though. Don’t like recovering from surgery.

The M*A*S*H* episode I watched today is the one where Radar has to get his tonsils out. I felt his pain.

Need to finish betaing AP15b. Going now.

I’m sorry, Lou. Instead of working on AP15b, I’m afraid I made a new LJ icon, which is now in my sidebar. I’ll be changing it daily, right before I go to bed, so the day will be accurate no matter how late I get up in the morning.

Oh, and for those of you who don’t usually check new comments after you’ve posted yours, make sure to read the last comment on yesterdays entry. You’ll gain a whole new insight into the weirdness that is the Bytheway family. Notice: It’s all my grandpa’s fault.

Well. Am finally feeling up to writing, so I can finally fill in some details of the surgery. Still get a bit dizzy when I read, which makes me nauseated, so it may take a while to actually type this.

So. Day of the surgery, I was scheduled at 1:45, which meant that I couldn’t eat all morning. We got there and they were behind, so I didn’t actually get into the operating room until about 3:30. They’d also forgotten to tell me that they were also going to do a uvulopalatopharyngoplasty (UPPP), which involves cutting away part of my uvula and soft pallate to get rid of extra tissue. It was a rather mild one, though, because according to the internet, it usually takes about an hour and involves an overnight stay, and my surgery only took 15 minutes. Anyway, that added some more pain. I woke up feeling pretty awful. I threw up as soon as we got home, and then again at about midnight. Stayed in my room rather than joining the crowd in the family room.

Next day threw up twice. Stayed in my room almost all day, sleeping on and off. Drank a lot of Gatorade and ate a little raspberry sherbet.

On Wednesday I took a shower, which wiped me out so completely that I slept the whole rest of the day. Had more sherbet and drank more Gatorade. Didn’t throw up at all.

Thursday got a very high fever– over 102. Drank as much as I could, took some Tylenol and got the fever down. Was NOT a fun day.

Friday and Saturday and Sunday are all blurring together in my mind. Must not have had anything distinctive happen.

Monday, got the hiccups. 3 times. It hurt a *lot*. I was actually doing pretty good that morning, but my first batch of hiccups made me so weak it wrecked the rest of the day. Tried to read a little, but made myself so nauseous I ended up throwing up that night.

Yesterday, my soft palate area was so tender from my hiccups that I was pretty miserable. Couldn’t eat or drink much of anything, even the Macaroni Grill that mom bought for lunch, or the chicken that Dad grilled that night.

This morning, went to the doctor to get a check up. He says I’m actually healing pretty well, and that I won’t hate him very much longer. He gave me a prescription for the nausea. The pain has gone down quite a bit, but I still get nauseous when I try to read. I just took my prescription, so I hope it’ll get better.

I keep getting cravings for food I can’t eat. Like a thick, juicy steak. Or chocolate almond clusters from Costco. Pecan Sandies. French Fries. Grilled chicken sandwich from East Coast Subs. Darn. I’m hungry.

One of my regular blog readers, Laura, sent me this. I laughed my head off.

Top 30 List of “You Know You’re a Harry Potter Fanatic When….”

1. You refer to other people as “Muggles.”

And this is a bad thing?

2. You search your garden for gnomes.

3. You take your broom outside and say “UP!” until you get tired.

4. You go to King’s Cross-station on Sept. 1 and watch for Hogwarts students.

5. You break both arms trying to get to platform 9 3/4.

6. You know more about Quidditch than any actual, real-life sport.

I’m not much for most sports (except football), so this is probably pretty accurate.

7. You talk about Harry Potter so much that your friends are either sick of hearing about it or they finally read they books and become Harry Potter fans as well.

Guilty. But I think I’ve converted more people than I drive crazy.

8. You read the books out loud to yourself in a British accent.

Oh, come one, it’s so fun!

9. You spend 10 hours a day writing e-mails and such for Harry Potter message boards and RPGs.

So?

10. You go into withdrawal if you haven’t visited something Harry Potter related in the past 1 hour.

So I check the Leaky Cauldron every 15 minutes. This is bad?

11. You go to the a movie you don’t really want to see just for the H.P. trailer.

I’ve never actually done this, but I have considered it.

12. Every time your computer says, “You’ve got mail” you run outside, looking for owls.

13. Every little thing reminds you of something in Harry Potter.

We were watching Anne of Avonlea, and my dad remarked “Jen Pringle has Hermione hair.” It’s everywhere, I tell you!

14. You can recite passages from the books by heart.

Can’t everyone?

15. You frequently dare people: “Come on, quiz me, quiz me on HP!”

Never gotten one wrong yet.

16. You KNOW the title of the seventh book.

17. You’ve been arrested (more than once) for breaking into Mrs. Rowlings¹ house and searching for the last paragraph of HP 7. (She says it would be a disaster if it were published. I wonder what it contains?)

18. You say a password before entering your house.

I don’t now, but I will from now on. Great idea!

19. You say “Lumos” before you turn on the lights.

Ditto on this one.

20. Whenever someone uses the phrase “you-know-who,” you instinctively think “Voldemort.”

Every single time.

21. You have a cat named Crookshanks, a rat named Scabbers or Wormtail, a lizard named Norbert, and a dog named Fluffy, Snuffles, or Padfoot.

No, but I have a car named You-Know-Who, a stuffed monkey named Gilderoy, a stuffed elephant named Albus, a stuffed dog named Dobby and three stuffed cats named Hermione, Ginny and Angelina, an HP destop named Harry and a notebook named Ginny. And more that I can’t think of now.

22. You go to the zoo and try to speak to the boa constrictor.

23. You made Butterbeer and served it to your friends

24. You tried to make Pumpkin Juice.

I’ve thought about it.

25. You’ve taken a pencil, pointed it to the television remote, & shouted: “Accio Remote,” becoming disapointed when it wouldn’t come.

Well, I don’t get dissapointed, but I do pretend to summon things all the time.

26. You seriously think about which Harry Potter character you could play in the movie, and memorize all their lines.

No, but I have taken on a persona from the books.

27. You’re an American and you start using Britishn slang terms like “git,” “bloody,” “nutters,” and “prat.”

So? What’s wrong with that? The British have much better slang than we do, anyway.

28. Your first question to every new person you meet is, “Have you read the Harry Potter series?” If they have, you’d just made a new best friend & if not, your opinion of them falls drastically.

Any guy I date has to either have read them and enjoyed them or be willing to read them. I refuse to marry anyone who doesn’t like Harry. We wouldn’t have enough in common.

29. You’ve stayed up all night reading HP FanFics.

Several times.

30. You think the next 23 days are going to be the longest in your life!!

Can’t. Wait. Can’t. WAIT!!!

21 out of 30. As my dad would say, I’m over the top.

Lou just sent me a nasty e-mail saying she’s worried. I’ve been feeling better, but not much up to typing. You see, it requires sitting up for more than 5 min. at a time, which is still difficult for me.

My fever went down the same day I got it. I’ve had a slightly elevated temp since, but nothing like that day. Wednesday, was it? Or maybe Thursday. Days are getting blurry, much like this screen. Can’t hold out much longer.

Anyway, am slowly recovering. I’m feeling overall better than my first few days, but my actual throat has been hurting a lot more lately. I’ve had a small amount of bleeding, but nothing too serious as of yet. Mostly I’ve been sleeping. I wake up long enough to take my pain medication and eat a little, then it’s back to beddy-bye. Haven’t even been able to read a lot, as moving my eyes that fast makes me dizzy. Is v. sad.

Will update again soon.

although doing slightly better. Was puxing for the first two days, now am dehydrated with v. high fever. Well, I was. Fever has gone down a bit.

All I can say is I better be losing some weight with all this stuff I’m putting up with here.

There were lots of lovely new fanfic chapters to keep me busy, though.

Ow. Head still hurts. Is v. difficult to type. More later.

Throat hurts. Otherwise fine. Going to sleep now.

In approximately 2 hours, I’ll be getting my tonsils out. So I probably won’t be online a whole lot in the next couple of days. Once I feel up to it, though, I’ll be right back in the saddle. That’s why I bought my wireless network card, after all.

I will get on later today and let you know how the surgery went, even if it’s only a few sentences. Lou said she’d worry if I didn’t.

So I’ll see you all soon!

I finally had a chance to upload the pictures that my mom took clear back on Chamber of Secrets Day– November 15, in other words. They’ve been on her computer for ages, but I’ve been in Provo, and when I was here, I was running around trying to get things done. So these are rather late, but I hope you’ll forgive me.

(Left to Right) Front Row: Laura, Lisa
Back Row: Ben, Jen, Alisa, Emily

Same people, but let me give their personas:
Front Row: Katie Bell, Hannah Abbot
Back Row: Draco Malfoy, Ginny Weasley, Umm. . .Some Slytherin, Penelope Clearwater

The four houses as represented by the Bytheway children– Ben, Emily, Lisa, Laura

Four houses again. We’re in birth order, can you tell?

Gosh, Draco. Smile, won’t you?

Not quite fair, I know– or is it?

You can really see Ben’s sneer when he’s facing this way. He was walking around the theater like that, scaring the little kids.

The twins together– Laura on the left, Lisa on the right.

Another of Lisa and Laura. Cute, aren’t they?

Now kids, no magic in the corridors. Remember?

Joesther is really cool. We had a great time chatting about canon and movie casting and how we first were introduced to HP and what we were going to do for OotP and how 33 days is just way too long to wait. We also talked about the various cute guys we would like to see in the HP movies (Colin Firth, Jeremy Northam, Anthony Andrews, etc. . . .) and who had the most HP merchandise (I think Jo wins). After lunch I went with her to her apartment and looked at some of her merchandise and met her cat, Hermione. I also showed her the singing scene from The Importance of Being Earnest, which she owned but had never watched. After I recover from my tonsilectomy, we might go to What a Girl Wants together.

Meeting Jo just made me all the more excited for Nimbus. Apart from kixing some H/H’er butt, the coolest thing about Nimbus will be meeting Lou and Leslie and Angua and– well, everyone. I can’t wait.

I thought of something very interesting a couple of nights ago, but I almost forgot to blog about it. I was born in 1980, right? Well, having a birth year that ends in a 0 has made my life much easier. When everyone else had to do complicated math to figure out how old they would be in 2000, I just said “Well, it ends with a zero, so I’ll be 20.” The last digit of the year is always the last digit of my age. Cool, but not that cool, right?

Except, now that it’s the twenty-first century, it got even cooler. Remember back in the 20th century, how we used to say “nineteen ninety-eight” instead of “one thousand nine hundred and ninety-eight”? I’m sure we’ll start doing that again after we get out of this pesky “ought” decade. Anyway, if you split up a year, any year, in the twenty-first century, like that– into two numbers–and add them together, you will get my age for that year. So in 2069, I’ll be 89 years old. Is that cool or what?

Jen, my math-major best friend, was very impressed that I could come up with that.

I’m sitting here in the family room, without a wire in site, blogging. This means that I got my wireless network card, and I am in heaven. My batteries are running low, so I’ll have to plug in soon, but no more wires for Ginny while I’m at home! I’m ever so happy. Otherwise I would be able to be online much in the next couple of weeks– depending on how I feel after my tonsilectomy on Monday, that is. I hope I’m not *really* down for two weeks straight. Although with Ginny I’ll be able to get a lot done. I’ll beta-read AP 15b (I might actually be able to do that on Saturday), write IFL, and get started on editing my first freelance editing job.

But I don’t plan on writing all the time. No, I’m using this time to catch up on my reading as well. I know many people who will be very happy to find out that I went to the library yesterday and checked out the entire Vorkosigan Saga. I read Shards of Honor back in October, but I was so incredibly busy that I didn’t get a chance to read any of the rest of the series. I’m very much looking forward to it, although my mom looked at me like I was crazy when I walked up with 13 books. She shouldn’t be surprised. I’ve checked out more books than that before.

Tomorrow I’m going to meet Joesther in person! We’re going to do lunch. It’ll be my first time meeting someone from the internet, so I’m really excited. Hooray!