a house without doors

In my head, I wrote a whole opening paragraph for a book with that title.  Like most things that come into my head lately, it is long gone.

What it really refers to is our latest project on the house – we literally have no interior doors attached to the doorways.  Only the exterior doors have ever had paint on them.  We replaced many doors when we moved in, and others the previous owners had replaced but not painted.  This means most were heavily stained (as in, with finger grease) and stark white.  Saturday and Sunday we worked hard to get the doors painted.  It took an incredible amount of time to remove all the doors, remove all the knobs and locks, tape the hinges, and get them moved outside to be painted.  Once everything was ready, the paint sprayer we were going to use leaked.  It took much longer, and we only got one coat on one side of most (not nearly all) doors.  Out of a whole weekend of hard work.  Frustrating.

Do you know how cold a bathroom is when there is no door and the shower curtain doesn’t reach the full length of the enclosure?  It’s cold.  Yesterday I blew a circuit with the heat fan and hairdryer on, trying to warm up and dry off.

Tonight some guys in our small group came and made good progress on painting the doors and the door frames.  Thank you!  Joe plans to put a few of the doors back on tomorrow.

Tomorrow we get to see some old friends who had moved away! I’m hoping that Thursday night I can take pictures of a door and (finally) the bathroom.  I know I’ve been saying bathroom pictures are coming for a while (mom), but here’s the deal.  It really is difficult because I need to find the before pictures (on a computer that is blocked in a room so that the doors could be removed) and then take after pictures from similar angles.  Then download and edit and upload them.  Hopefully I can find some old pictures of the doors so you can also see the difference there, too.

On a positive note, we’ve registered some for the baby room since I have a shower at the end of the month.  Tomorrow on my lunch break a couple of friends with babies are going to help me go back through the registry and pick things we will need.

I’m getting some very strong creative urges lately, and there are so many little projects (either non-house related or only decorative) I’d love to do before the baby comes.  All sorts of things, from songs I want to record to baby things I want to embroider.   I’m not sure how many (if any) of those will happen, but my new goal is to get the house in order (and keep it that way) so that I can feel more free to organize and get things ready for the baby room and less overwhelmed with disorder.

We had another doctor’s visit today, and it went well (I’m 27.5 weeks – entering third trimester).  Despite eating red meat almost every day, my iron levels are borderline low, but everything else looks good.  I’m measuring a week big, continued evidence that he might come early.  Less time to prepare sounds scary, but I’ve had enough pregnant friends to know that at that point I’ll be happy for him to come a little early.

That’s it for random venting tonight.  Thanks to all of you who read my ramblings even when there aren’t pictures!

immortal cells

If I had more comment-happy readers, I’d like to play a game where you read the title of a post and guess what the post is about in the comments.  That’s the game I usually play when I write the title.  This post has a point, but first some personal history and a science lesson. :)

HeLa cells

As an undergrad I did research in a cancer lab for about 2.5 years.  The experiments used tissue culture (basically cells grown in a flask / dish), one from mouse and one from human.  The human line was HeLa cells, and I was told they came from a woman with cervical cancer decades before.  The cells were immortal, not quite cancer cells, but they don’t have a self-limited lifespan like normal cells.

Just to clarify, they are not immortal god-style, more vampire-style.  They will not die on their own when in a good environment (they have food and space).  Bleach most definitely killed the cells I used.  The passing of time did not.

For those of you who are curious, one experiment I repeated several times was called a soft agar assay.  You suspend some cells in the agar (growth medium) and let them grow.  To half the plates you also add a tumor producing agent.  The tumor producing agent is enough to push the immortal cells into cancerous cells – ones that formed masses or tumors (cancer cells no longer have self-imposed limits on multiplication and will grow on top of each other).  After some time (2 weeks, I think), you use a microscope to count the number of cell clumps in each dish.  This literally gave me a headache – the cells are suspended in agar about a half an inch thick, not all in one plane on a dish.  You have to focus in and out to make sure you see all the cells.  If you have a tumor producing agent, there should be a lot more cell clumps than in the control dishes.

On to the part you are potentially more interested in…

I don’t usually read nonfiction books, but I’ve read some reviews of a book that has peaked my interest.  “The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks” by Rebecca Skloots is about the woman from whom those HeLa (get it? Henrietta Lacks) cells came back in 1951.  From the reviews I’ve read (all VERY favorable), this book focuses more on racism and scientific ethics than anything scientific.

Let me know if any of you read it.  I would love to read it with you and talk about it!

(I’ve been overly emotional – thanks pregnancy hormones – today, and it was very nice to distract myself thinking about this for a little while.  Thanks for putting up with all my random posts!)

I took a shower today!

In this!

(I only got one picture before my camera battery died, so you’ll have to wait for more later.  Also, ignore the green tape on the front of the sinks.)

moving and shaking

We have a very active little boy already.  He’s almost always moving around or practicing his punches and kicks.  I told our doctor that at the last visit.  Later in the visit she laughed and said I wasn’t kidding about him moving a lot as she chased him around with the heart rate monitor (just a wand on the outside of my belly).

We’ve also discovered the first characteristic of our son that is both cute and annoying.  If he’s awake and you press against part of my belly, he almost always will kick/hit that area.  He does the same when you make a noise close to my belly.

It’s super cute when Joe talks to him and he’ll follow Joe around my belly with kicks.  It’s super annoying when I wear a seatbelt for a long car ride and he kicks it for 2 hours straight.  Even so, I’m grateful for this little way we can interact with the baby.

Ever had a normal dream where suddenly you felt like you really had to go to the bathroom, and then wake up and realize you really do need to go?  Last night I had a similar dream.  All was normal and then the baby starting kicking really hard in my dream.  I woke up and he was vigorously kicking the belly support pillow I was leaning on.

Joe has joked that it’s a good thing we’re not having twins – the other one would come out black and blue.

Little one, I’m glad you are growing strong.  And Joe is already looking forward to teaching you to kick a soccer ball.

a different white house

Sorry, no political statement today.  I just have a quick entry for my idea book.

Usually, I do not like the current trend of building a stark white home in a normal-looking neighborhood.  If you haven’t seen what I’m talking about, here’s an example.

I think that looks awful.

Somehow this strikes me as absolutely beautiful.  I love the design in the center.

This house in in the Netherlands and was designed by 123DV Architecture (found via Contemporist).

quick sneak peeks – bathroom remodel

We still have a long list of things left to do on the bathroom, but it’s somewhat usable now!  We can use the sinks, tub, and toilet.  We have to wait another couple of days before we can seal the tile, and once that is done we can use the new shower.  There is still a decent amount of painting and caulking to do, but here is a sneak peek at the shower / tub.

before

now (shower area 6′7″ x 3′6″)

a close-up of the tub faucet

While I’m doing updates, Joe’s dad is now home (as of Saturday) and recovering from his hospital scare!  Thank you for your prayers.

coming and going

I wrote this on 12/23/09.

Today we attended the funeral for Joe’s maternal grandmother, Rosalie.  She had been very sick with double pneumonia (along with other chronic health problems), then recovered and was released from the hospital and got to celebrate her birthday with family at her nursing home, then took a bad turn and spent her last few days in the ICU.  Fortunately, she had some good time and was able to talk with her visitors.  Joe and I left Junction (where we celebrated Thanksgiving with my family) early and got to visit her in the hospital a couple of days.

Several of Joe’s family members and family friends (very thoughtful) were at the service.  The funeral home made a slide show with pictures the family brought in.  Joe’s mom was very happy with the way everything went, which is wonderful.

—–

It was strange to attend a funeral while pregnant.  Most of Joe’s family had not seen me since I have been showing, so there was a lot of tummy-rubbing action.  Some ways it was abnormal…

(1) In the room for the service (with open casket up front), many people smiled huge and said congratulations.  It felt a little wrong to feel happy and be smiling so much, but how else could I respond to people excited about our baby? (note – I know at some funerals there is more of a celebratory atmosphere where everyone is smiling and happy, this just wasn’t one of those funerals.)

(2) They announced the surviving great-grandchildren, but our yet-to-be named little boy was not on the list, another reminder that he never had a chance to meet her.

(3) As I stared at her lifeless body, I felt another life-filled body kick inside of me.

—–

I’ll close with the only story / memory I have of Rosalie.

Joe and I have been dating and attending each other’s family events for 10+ years now.  I had never met his grandmother or grandfather (Rosalie and Richard) on his mom’s side.  Joe had not seen them all that time, even though they lived just on the other side of Houston from his parents.  With Rosalie’s declining health, they usually missed family holiday gatherings.  Seven years ago, Rosalie moved into a nursing home, but Richard visited her every day.  Over all that time, he only missed 6 days (during which he was hospitalized).  We tried to visit a few times, but for health reasons they had to cancel each time.  Though not intentionally, we stopped trying to visit.

When we told our families we were pregnant, we decided to mail gifts for our parents and siblings and then to call our grandparents.  Since it had been 10+ years since he had spoken with these grandparents, it was strange for Joe, but he wanted to still call them.  I don’t want to put words in his mouth, so please ask him about this if you’re interested in this part of the story.  From my perspective, Rosalie and Richard were very different from MY grandparents.  Joe doesn’t have memories of weeks in the summers or extended weekends for the holidays together.  They didn’t play games with him as a kid or constantly remind him to visit as an adult.  Things like that.  There was also a perceived distance between them and us that had grown with the years we had been out of touch.  What a blessing it was when Joe put that all aside and called!  They were very happy for us, and eager for us to come visit them the next time we were in town.

We did set up a visit, and got to spend a few hours chatting with Rosalie, Richard, and Joe’s mom!  They were excited about our blob baby ultrasound pictures.  Richard did most of the talking, but Rosalie kept staring at me and smiling.  Although awkward (do I smile back every time I catch her staring?), it was very sweet.  We enjoyed our time with them, and felt no distance between any of us.  They invited us to come visit again soon.  As we were leaving, Joe’s mom said that is the most she has seen her mom smile in years.

Joe and I both felt great about the visit, and were excited about the new relationship that was growing between us and his grandparents.  We looked forward to our baby’s picture being added to the wall in her nursing home room, and dreamed about the relationship they would get to have with our child.  While reconciliation may be too strong of a word (since there was never an intentional break in the relationship) for what had happened, we felt a similar hope for what was to come.

It was just over a month later that I saw them for the second time, this time in the hospital.  Today, after almost a month more passed, we buried Rosalie.  While it is sad to have so much that we hoped for now gone, I cannot express how worthy of praise God is for blessing us with a renewed relationship with Rosalie while we still had the opportunity.

Fun at Work, Part 5: Baby Edition

Yes, I’ve reviving the fun-at-work posts once again (here are parts 1, 2, 3 & 4).  I’m also trying to alternative more between my long-winded posts and these easy-to-read installments.

I work with all men.
With PhDs.
At a medical school.
I enjoy it, and appreciate the general lack-of-drama, but things are… different as they deal with me being pregnant.

—–

For some reason there seems to be an unspoken rule that the way to acknowledge my pregnancy while avoiding awkward topics is to talk about my clothes.  It started with “So, can you still fit into your jeans?” and last week progressed to “So, are those expandable clothes?”  Sure, why not.

—–

Our baby kicks me all the time.  A couple of weeks ago he started with some pretty hard kicks that startled me.  The second time it had ever happened, I was in the middle of talking about something work-related with a co-worker (read another one of our conversations here) when he kicked hard.  I stopped mid-sentence and leaned forward (out of shock – it didn’t hurt that much).  Here’s how it went after that:

Him: and… ? (wanting me to continue)
Me: I’m sorry, he just kicked really hard.
Him: Who? (looking under my desk)
Me: The baby, I’m just not used to it.
Him: Oh. (and he walks out of the room, conversation unfinished)

Somehow, I think he could have dealt with it if there had been a small abusive man hiding under my desk.

updates (with bathroom pictures!)

We’re remodeling our bathroom – I just wanted to put that out there quickly in case someone was wondering what “bathroom pictures” implies.  Here’s an update on my last post.

—–

Joe’s dad is doing well.  Joe posted some about it, so you should check that out.  We’re hoping that he gets moved today from ICU into IMCU (Intermediate Care Unit).  He still needs a small nasal tube with oxygen to keep his O2 levels up, but it seems like he is otherwise improving.  Yesterday he stood and took a few steps several times.  If he gets to switch rooms, I think we won’t have restricted visiting hours (currently 6 specific hours a day) and will have a bathroom.  Praise God that he is restoring Tom’s health.

One part that I’m especially grateful for God’s hand is the issue of sedatives.  When we first visited, he would start to stir a little or open his eyes and immediately a nurse would give him more sedative.  They said he was agitated originally, but seemed to be overdoing it with the drugs.  In short, half the drugs they were giving him were only because of side effects caused by sedatives (and also affected his already weak heart).  Our small group prayed for many related things, but also this specifically last Tuesday (hours after we had seen him given more drugs for moving his shoulder – his arms and hands were in restraints).  I remember one man prayed that God would speak directly to Tom’s spirit and give him peace.  Wednesday morning the doctor said he wanted to try reducing the sedation – our impression the day before was this was not at all being considered!  Tom took to it well, and was calm even though being in the ICU is quite disorienting.  By Thursday morning he was completely off any sedation (and the ventilator!) and able to talk with family members.  I feel like I could write a twice as much about so many aspects of Tom’s healing, but use this one as an example and praise God for what He’s done.

We got to visit Friday night and Saturday morning – read Joe’s post for more on that.  For the first time ever, I saw Tom cry, and I definitely cried with him.  He was overcome by the love so many “good people” (his words) had shown him in the hospital.  It was clear he’d been thinking about our baby a lot.  The funniest part of that is that he earnestly tried to talk Joe into shaving off his beard for the baby.

—–

Okay, bathroom pictures.  It’s been going less-than-good, but progress has been made over the last week and a half. (See, I can make a post without complaining)  A week after it was planned to happen, we finally got the green tag plumbing inspection this afternoon!  On a related note, my “be careful – this person has no problem with / remorse for telling lies” list has gained another member. (Correction: I can make a post without complaining much)  Now we can cover the walls with sheetrock or tile and make some headway.  Here are some more pictures with hints at what is to come.

Our bathroom from the doorway pictures:

1/8/10: original (the sink is on the right closest to the camera and the tub/shower opposite the toilet)  Yes, the floor has been like that since we bought the house – a year and a half ago.  We covered it with bath rugs.

1/13/10: gutted with new plumbing almost done, new window, and no more partial wall.

1/19/10 (this morning): tub deck support built (there will be a cultured marble tub deck), tub seated (soaker tub 6′ long x 20″ deep!), new tub light, moved heat/vent/light, cabinets installed (to immediate left), hardibacker tub surround and floor ready for tiling, toilet drain ready (sticking out of the floor on left), and sink plumbing ready (off camera to the right).

The bathroom sink had been rigged so that the supplies and drain were coming from the tub.

The plumber added new supplies (for two sinks now!) and proper drain / vents.

My Uncle Tony builds custom cabinets for a living (including the cabinets at James Avery stores), and he built us some cabinets and a bathroom vanity for essentially what it cost him!  The vanity has to wait on the tile floor to be installed, but I’ll leave you with a look at the (unpainted) floor-to-ceiling cabinets:

what has been going on lately

I’ve got 6 posts in my draft folder that are either ready to post or I just need to add pictures to, but things have been quite crazy lately.

Monday morning on the way to work, Joe’s mom called and said his dad (Tom) was in the ICU.  He had woken Joe’s mom at 1:30am saying he could hardly breathe and needed to go to the hospital.  We went to work and waited for the doctor’s update.  It came around 11am, and they said that Joe’s dad was near death, with just hours left.  A list of problems originally included severe congestive heart failure, respiratory failure, pulmonary edema, kidney failure, and double pneumonia.  Tom’s heart was hardly functioning at all and his lungs were at 35%.  We left work, threw some clothes in a suitcase, and headed for Houston.  Just before we got there, Tom’s cardiologist (who he had just been in to see Friday, with nothing serious seeming to be on the horizon) said he felt like Tom would recover.

Joe’s parents

When we arrived Monday, Tom had been heavily sedated and was on a ventilator.  They figured out that there was another infection (besides pneumonia), and by Tuesday midday that was the primary concern.  They started a culture Monday and should be able to identify what it is Thursday (and then know how to proceed with treatment).  They did start him on three antibiotics Monday and then an anti-viral Tuesday when the infectious disease specialist got put on the case.  The whole time the doctors / nurses stressed that he was still in critical condition, and even though his condition hadn’t changed much, he was not stable.

Tuesday night Joe and I made the hard choice to return home.  It’s only 2 hours away and we’re keeping our bags packed.  There is a LOT of family staying in Houston to help and be with Joe’s mom and sister.  Our church small group meets Tuesday nights, and we made it there late.  They spent a lot of time praying over us and Joe’s family and dad.  It was such a good thing for us, and I told Joe that even if we had to drive back to Houston first thing in the morning, it was well worth coming home and hearing the prayers, encouragement, and faith of our church family.

There was not much of an update today – the doctors were elusive.  One good report is that they reduced the amount of sedatives they were giving him!  The sedatives cause other health problems and lead to more and more medication, so we’re glad that the doctors decided to try reducing the dosage.  We think that they starting weaning him off the ventilator as well, so maybe now he is not 100% dependent on it.

Joe and I both went to work today (Wednesday), but came home at lunch time.  We were both feeling worn out and tired (even though we did sleep in Houston while we were there).  We slept from 12:30 until 4:00!  I hope Joe’s family in Houston is able to take breaks to rest, especially his sister who is a school teacher (can you imagine 2nd graders all day while getting doctors calls and going to the hospital every free minute?).  Also, we buried Joe’s grandmother just three weeks ago, and a month of hospital ICU visits are fresh on the family’s mind (especially Joe’s mom).  His mom has recently lost her mom, and years ago lost her brother and her oldest daughter, and now her husband is in the ICU.

Please join us in praying for Tom’s recovery.  We are praying in faith for healing.  Pray that the family can have hope beyond trust put in the doctors, hope for God’s hand to heal Tom, and true belief that could happen (including open eyes to see it when it does happen).  I have a mental image of a photograph of Tom holding his first grandson (our baby due early May).  Pray that picture will get to be taken.

——

My parents are in town right now, from last Friday until this coming Monday.  We are remodeling our bathroom and have had this planned for months.  I’m sure there will be a before / after post at some point, but here is what it looks like right now:

The plumber ran into some trouble (apparently the pipes were TOO strong under the house, and he spent hours chipping pieces apart to remove them) Monday, and came back today to finish (it’s now 8pm and he just left… and didn’t finish).  All the plumbing was supposed to be done Monday, so we’re behind schedule.  My dad has to go back to work, but my mom is going to stay next week to help us finish.  Oh, and when I say “we” are working… I mostly mean my parents with Joe’s help when he’s home.  Even though they were using masks / goggles / gloves for demo, I only got a few honorary hits of sheetrock and tile before being kicked out.

I get email updates about our baby’s development, and Saturday it said his hearing was improving and loud noises (they meant things like a dog barking) he is exposed to now probably will seem normal and not bother him as a baby.  So our son should like the sounds of breaking tile, air compressors, drills, saws, and randomly shouted expletives.