Kellie’s Blog

Moving blog locations again!

From now on, you can read my blogs at:

http://www.kiddnation.com/profile/KellieRasberry

Oh, my aching back…….

I admit it was immature and completely embarrassing, but I was crying over my floors on Thursday. The flooring guy even said in all of his years putting down floors, he has never had them reject polyurethane like mine did. It just kept sucking it in…sucking it in…coat after coat. The solution? Start over from scratch.  That meant I had to cancel my furniture delivery to the house and have everything moved into a storage unit, and then I packed up my child and moved in with my best friend for the weekend.

Within 15 minutes of moving in with Amy, I fell down the stairs. I was curled up in the fetal position on her floor while my daughter was giving me binky kisses and my best friend was laughing hysterically. I’m not mad at her for that. I would’ve laughed hysterically, too. What else can you do when someone falls like that? So after a couple of minutes, I got up the nerve to move and assess the damage. I jarred myself pretty badly. My right wrist hurt, but my lower back was feeling the most damage. I ate a handful of Advil and hoped for the best. And now it’s Monday morning and my wrist feels fine. I have a small bruise on the small of my back and my hips feel “off.” I’m also really achy through my shoulder blades, like I’ve been lifting weights and my muscles are sore. (Like I know what THAT feels like…) 

After the laughter died, Amy got on the phone with her insurance agent hubby who’s first question, obviously, was “Is she going to sue us??” His concern brought a tear to my eye….and more laughter to Amy. “My best friend would NEVER sue me!” Uh…….did I mention my hips feel a little off? Kidding! I kid.

Anyway, I am now back in my home and my floors are GORGEOUS. And now I can have my furniture moved back in and start calling my house a home again.  With all the financial turmoil going on, I sure picked a great time to bleed money, didn’t I? 2008 has been the year of ridiculous spending. 2009 will be the year of living frugally. And I know me! When I put my mind to it, I can be a cheap little B.

XO
Kellie

October 1, 2008

I’m heading to the hotel to get checked in. Just found out yesterday that they were going to come back and put another coat of whatever that stinky varnish-like stuff is on there on Friday or Saturday, which sort of put the ix-nay on me having my furniture delivered back to the house on Thursday. So after many frustrated phone calls, we moved the floor varnishing up to today and moved the furniture delivery to Friday and now I’m going to go check into the hotel to empty out the mini-bar. I don’t care what’s in there — I’ll drink it or eat it or shoot it or snort it. I just want to gorge myself on all things bad and take a long nap.  I know my problems don’t compare to all the sickness, starvation and strife going on in the world, but they’re MY problems and I’d like to avoid them for a while, please.

The good news is, Emma Kelly’s fever is gone. She’s feeling better, so that makes me feel a little better.  Man, you REALLY feel like a parent when you have a sick kid, don’t you? It’s like all your mothering instincts and your emotions just multiply and explode all over the place.  Poor little thing has had no appetite and hardly any energy, but she seems to be getting back to normal now. And that’s more important that any remodeling issue I may face today.

XO
Kellie

I can’t believe it’s the end of September…..

….and my house is still not finished. ARRRRGH!

My floors look really good, and except for the splintered section and the nail sticking up that I found last nght. I’m just tired and ready to have my house back now.

My daughter is back!! YEA!!! Since we had to move out all weekend because of wet floors and fumes, Nanny Laura asked if she could take her down to San Antonio to visit her family. She brags so much about Emma Kelly that it would simply be a sin to let their lives continue without having met her. So off she went for her first road trip. And Emma Kelly was, of course, a blessing to all who met her. (That’s an inside joke between me and my parents…..they’ll get it.) I’m just so happy she’s back. And while she was gone, she went poo-poo in the potty!!! YEA!!! Lots of poo-poo-in-the-potty presents for her when she got home! She and I spent the majority of the night jumping on the bed like monkeys. That was fun. I know she won’t remember any of this time in her life, but I will. And it’s all going so fast!! I can’t believe she’s going to be 2 next month. So fun and so sad all at the same time.

My girlfriends and I are all taking our daughters to a screening of “Tinkerbell” this weekend. That’s going to be interesting!! Will a group of 2- to 4-year-olds sit through an entire movie? We’ll find out. As long as I keep mine loaded up with popcorn, she’ll be just fine. I hate that she’s getting so big so fast, but I love that I’m able to do more and more stuff with her as she gets older.

I’m off to do something productive.

XO
Kellie

Going to bed as soon as I type my name…

I is tired. That’s when you’re so tired you can’t even use proper English. I was up all night last night checking on Emma Kelly, making sure she didn’t have a concussion because yes, I almost killed her Sunday afternoon.

It was an accident. Aren’t they always accidents? I was standing right there next to her. I was supposed to be protecting her from herself because she was blessed/cursed with that daredevil gene that somehow missed me. She was hopping up and down on this jiggly bridge contraption when another kid jumped, threw Emma Kelly off balance, and sent her sailing backward a good 3-4 feet onto the ground where she landed on the back of her head. She’s hysterical, but somehow God gave me grace and I remained calm as I called my pediatrician, asking him what signs I needed to be looking for to make sure she didn’t have a concussion or bleeding on her brain. Voice mail. Ninety-nine percent of the time, I LOVE voice mail. It’s so convenient, isn’t it? You just say your piece without any interaction whatsoever. Such a timesaver. But when I think I may have just killed my child, I don’t want voice mail. I WANT A DOCTOR, DAMMIT!!!

Since he wasn’t available, I made the next logical call…..to my chiropractor. She said what’s hard about checking to see if a baby has a concussion is that they can’t communicate with you. If you’re dealing with an adult, you can ask him who the president is or what day of the week it is. Then she had a brilliant idea — ask Emma Kelly to do her animal sounds! She knew them, so I felt a whole lot better, but then I still had that nagging sense of “What if there’s some damage in there that is happening so slowly that we won’t realize it’s fatal until it’s too late??” So Dr. Mary goes into crisis management mode with me and starts calling every doctor she knows and every friend with a baby to see if I can talk to somebody who deals with these types of injuries.

Meantime, I headed to the Doc in the Box. Closed. I thought those things were open 24/7! Thankfully, my pediatrician called back and then every doctor Mary tracked down started calling me back. They all convinced me that God made babies heads hard for a reason and that she was probably okay. But I needed to watch for slurred speech, wandering or crossing eyes, favoring one side over the other, and I had to wake her every few hours during the night to make sure she was okay. Thankfully, she is great and she’s back to her old daredevil self. She even begged to go to the playground again today, but I took her to a different one. I just can’t go back to that same one again right now.

Anyway, that was my drama. That’s why I’m wiped out. And that’s why I will end this now and head to bed.

XO
Kellie

Home from Austin

I am really tired and I get to go to bed super early tonight. Yea! Who would’ve thought I’d be happy to be in bed by 9pm on a Friday night…

I’m so sad about Krista Brewer’s passing. That poor little girl fought with cancer her entire life and her body finally gave out on her. We were playing back some of the recordings we had done with her over the air today and it was just SO SAD. At the time, we were all so upbeat because it looked like she was doing better and she was sounding so great, and listening back now, it’s just heart breaking. I can’t even begin to imagine her mother’s pain. I hope I never have to feel that. Just makes you want to question God, but then my strict Baptist upbringing kicks in with “You should NEVER question God!” But sometimes I do, don’t you? Sometimes I have a hard time seeing the lesson He most certainly must be trying to teach me because I can’t think of any other reason why He would allow me to go through some pretty awful stuff. But I’ve never had to go through something so horrible as losing a child…I know I’m supposed to look at the bigger picture and realize how many lives Krista touched, but it’s really hard to accept the fact that that little girl had to fight each and every day of her life. I’m so thankful that we got to meet her and her family and that in some small way we made her life better for a few moments. But this is just a really really hard one to accept.

I remember a while back, Krista was into Webkins. And come hell or high water, we were going to find her some of these elusive Webkins if it killed us! The listeners responded overwhelmingly and Krista was inundated wtih them. But she took one of the little ones — a little white puppy — and wanted me to give it to Emma Kelly. How sweet was that child!!! Emma Kelly doesn’t have a clue what a Webkin is, but one day when she’s old enough, I will explain to her where her first one came from and how special the little girl was who wanted to make sure she got it.

If you want to know more about this precious little girl, her family set up www.kristabrewer.com.

And we will miss you always, Krista. Kidd’s Kids is even more special to me because of you. And I can’t wait to see you again in Heaven one day.

XO
Kellie

whoa

Wasn’t quite prepared for so much negative reaction to my getting a “mommy makeover.” I understand where concern comes in, but some of the postings have been downright hateful. Who “deserves” plastic surgery? I would say those who are born with horrible disfigurements. Those people deserve it. Everybody else just wants it. And I want it. I’m scared to death. But I want it.

I went to the mall today to check out all the new fall stuff and didn’t buy a single thing. I want to wait until I’m all tucked and pulled and looking however I’m going to look before I buy one more stitch of clothing. It’s so funny, because everything I picked up off the rack is the stuff I usually go for — whatever’s black and loose and flowy and camouflages my protruding belly. I’ll be honest, God blessed me with some pretty good legs. And highlighting skinny legs while wearing a lot of black flowy stuff up top goes a long way when you’re trying to pull off an illusion. I’ve become a master at it! I tell you what, I cannot WAIT to wear a belt!! And I cannot WAIT to wear something that clings to my belly! And I cannot WAIT to donate all my waist-free outfits to charity and go shopping!

I look around at friends of mine who’ve had the same procedures. I don’t think any of them are bad people. They’re not evil. They didn’t set the women’s movement back a hundred years. But they look damn good in their clothes! And what do they look like naked? I haven’t got the faintest idea. Only their gynecologist and their husbands know. And that’s a pretty small percentage of people. Everybody else is thinking like me — Damn, they look good in their clothes!!

What’s the next man that sees me naked going to think? I don’t know. He’ll probably be the one giving me my annual breast exam and giving the undercarriage a little “How’s your father?” And he very well may look at my scar and be horrified. But that’s between me and him and my permanent medical record. I’m just going to get up off that table, put on my clingy shirt and belt and walk out of there like my poop don’t stink. But it does. Everybody’s does.

XO
Kellie

nervous

I’m really starting to get nervous about this whole tummy tuck and boob job thing. First of all, it’s completely elective and totally driven by vanity and if — God forbid — anything went wrong, how will I ever be able to justify it in my head? I’m scared! I’m volunteering for extreme pain! And now, it looks like I could possibly be dealing with this on national TV?!?!

I went for my consultation with Dr. Scott Harris, who I’ve known for a decade and have shared many holidays and celebrations. So for the first time in all these years, I let that man see me practically naked. AWKWARD. But I got through it. He thinks he can make my tummy fabulous, and I believe him. It’s just GETTING to fabulous that I’m freaking out about. And as far as the boobs, I really don’t want to have the ones that everybody looks at and goes “daaaaaa-yum!” I don’t want them to be in your face AT ALL. I just want them to sit a little higher. But I think I’m more worried about the boob job than the tummy tuck because I’m putting something in rather than taking something out. What’s it going to feel like? What am I going to look like? I’m thinking too much about it, so either I’m just going to have to suck it up and do it or tell them all to forget it.

So we had Dr. Phil and his son Jay on the show to talk about The Doctors, and Dr. Phil offered to let me get my “mommy makeover” on the show. WOW. So I’d get the procedure for free, but the tradeoff is I have to fly out to LA to do it, have it nationally televised, and then try to recover even faster because I’d have to hurry to get back home. I don’t know what to do!! And do I want everybody to see me doing it??

I’m going to go lie down now and obsess about it some more.

XO
Kellie

stuff

For those wondering why the heck I messed with a perfectly fine kitchen and living room — it wasn’t perfectly fine for me. The kitchen was redone by the previous owners to look good. That’s about it. Except he did cream cabinets with white appliances. Ick. And the cabinets were falling apart. The contractor I hired even said we should try to reuse them to save money. I told him there would be no way because they were falling apart. No, he assured me his cabinet guy could do it. Well, guess what? He couldn’t. They were literally falling apart and couldn’t be reused. And the one pantry I DID have? It was so deep — literally stretched back a good 3 feet — that I’d forget what was back there until it had rotted. And the previous owners had used the right half for garbage. There’s only so much scrubbing you can do before you give up on certain stains.  And the granite countertops? A piece literally fell off the day I was cleaning out the kitchen prior to the demolition. And the tile floor? Besides the fact that they were cracking and I had zero replacement tiles, I just wanted hard wood floors and I won’t apologize for that. And the walls? Painted panelling from 1972. The ceiling? Vaulted. With a sky light. Do you know how hot it gets in Texas and then you and add a freaking SKYLIGHT?? I felt like a fire ant sitting under some bratty kid’s magnifying glass! And it actually turned out to be a blessing that I decided to redo the ceiling because that led to them redoing the wires in the attic. I was pretty much living underneath a ticking time bomb from all the half-butt rigging that went on up there over the past three decades. The fireplace? The gas ignition was completely stuck. I was told by the guy who installed the logs we’d have to take out the bricks to put in a new key anyway, so for the past two winters, I haven’t even been able to use the fireplace. And did you see that massive wall of bricks???? A bit much, don’t you think?

So I wanted to remodel my house. And I’m going to love it. And yes, it costs stupid money and I’ve regretted it since the day I started. But from what I hear, that’s normal. I see a light at the end of the tunnel and we should be wrapping up in another 3-4 weeks and I am going to love it. So there.

I am really excited because I think I’m almost better. This cough has been the weirdest thing healthwise that I’ve ever dealt with. And I’ve been wearing this super cool electrode thing under my shirt that’s been sending little signals to my bruised rib and pulled muscle, and that seems to be working. So I’m getting all excited now because this guy who owns a gym wants to put me and my friend Dr. Mary through six weeks of butt-kicking and I think I’m close to being able to get started. Only I’m not as excited as I once was because Mary says he likes to keep shaking things up and wants us to participate in dodge ball. Uh, not just no — HELL no. Does he not know my history with balls? I’m not going near them. Escpecially the ones that come flying at my face.

XO
Kellie

Here’s where I’ve been.