Despite only having one working arm, and how goofy being on pain meds makes me I have missed blogging. One of my new favorite blogs Clan Donaldson does a "What I am reading Wednesday" and since I am an avid reading and lover of books I decided to give it a go for no mortal surgery or injury will stop me. ( I have a feeling I will faceplam at that comment later.)
Anyway I have been in a HUGE book rut. In the past month I have started about 10 books and have stopped because I have not been able to get into them. A friend of mine is an avid reading and upon perusing his book selection last night I happened upon this:
It sounded really interesting and I was promised it was not a love story. Now I am all for love but am sick of the unrealistic sappy love stories. They end the the same and well we are going to end it their because it is just going to turn into a huge rant. Anywho Elsewhere by Gabrielle Zevin is turning out to be quite enjoyable. It is a fast read and decently written. I also am enjoying the twist on what happens to us after we die. Just in a day time I am about 150 pages in and it is still holding my attention. So the award goes to Gabrielle for being able to hold my attention and also making me realize that my rut is from all books seeming the same to me. So far she is original and I am happy to spend my surgery recovery reading. If you have any suggestion please comment and let me know.
Oh and since I have not done my Sunday funnies is quite some time I leave you with this gem.
This video I stumbled upon and feel in love with. As personally seeing what a family and society does to someone who is gay through my brother and I cried right along with the main character. I dislike how a cruel society can set what is normal, but love this video so, so much. It is 20 min but a promise it feels like 5 and so so worth it.
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The mass amount of picture out there of Pope Francis kissing babies.
Melts my heart every darn time
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This crazy otter picture
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How awesome science is, and how close we are to curing cancer and many related diseases
Today you will be sparred for the boring history lesson because there are about 400 pictures that go along with this post... ok ok maybe not 400 but well you will see...
Now Lets flashback to the time France and more specifically Paris (the place not a person) tried to kill me.
It all started when this beautiful group of people worked our butts off fundraising in all form to raise a couple grand each for a European pilgrimage.
The lovely lady to my left is awesome, and the lovely lady to my right was referred to as my twin and by the end of the trip we just told people we were sister. And Em some things never change hu?
We ate and were merry till the lovely Werner and Meizis families took us to the airport. Where we waiting and stared a lot at this excitedly
And entertainded each other with stories and food and what not
We arrived in grand Paris and Lindsay, Laura and I sang this song over and over again...
However Paris did in fact not hold the key to my heart by the end of the week. But first we had awesome events like....
Seeing this thing
And then getting caught in the rain under it...
And then it raining some more on a boat tour
And eating the best lamb I have ever had
Also an awesome bakery right next to where we were staying. However it would be Paris baked good that would later try to take me out....
Fast forward a few days to when we were on our way to Lourdes. The trip itself was delayed because the train workers were on strike, so we spent the night on a nonmoving train and then the next day waited to run to the train in order to board it and make our way to Lourdes. That morning some Canadians who were Catholic and clung to our group a little bit offered us some of the yummy backed goods above. Now when they got to me I asked, "is that chocolate or Nutella?" They assured me it was chocolate and being a trusting human I took a piece. Instantly upon eating I turned to Lindsay and said, "That was not chocolate, it was Nutella." She responded with a "How do you know?" And I calmly as day said, "Because my throat is closing up." Now it was not that she did not believe me, but I had said it so calmly and was still so calm that it was not until I downed 8 yes 8 Benadryl and told Laura that people started to panic. While my throat was closing I had just taking enough Benadryl to knock out a large Dog and stop it. We also has a nurse with us and my vitals were fine and if I used my EpiPen it meant that we had 30 min to get me to the hospital where we had no idea where it was, and then attempt to get to Lourdes while there was still a strike going on. So we waiting.
I looked like this
Highly red and drugged.. but relief came in a comedic form when a pigeon missing several toes flew in and slid in Tom Cruise Risky Business style
So Lindsay and I gave him the very approperate name of Tom Cruise
And because Tom Cruise the pigeon was such a comic relief I vowed to be nice to them for the rest of the trip....
Anyway about 20 minutes after popping the Benadryl we got the green light to run toward the trains and our group did... with Laura pushing me from behind yelling for me to go and go faster... we successfully made it aboard and I passed out, to wake up when we were arriving here...
Which was quite nice, but due to my severe allergic reaction I had the joy of going to the doctor twice, once for the first reaction and than again for a secondary reaction, and was quite medically high for the rest of the trip, and to this day I swear European Predizone has some more hard core stuff in it than the American kind.
However that did not stop an awesome trip...
And some good "high" quotes from me such as "Laura can do that because she is a soccer player" when she was just waking, and quite a few assisted touring walks from Laura, Linsday and Luke because I could not walk straight. Luke also came to to rescue several times during Mass when I would go to stand and then almost fall over. (See what I mean about the drugs being more hard core?) Alas it was still an amazing trip and would make it again with those amazing peps again but this time no food from strangers. Fast forward a week and I was on the mend under my good old docs care, and finally decided to try out the chew and dispose toothbrush with Lindsay that we got on the trip.
We are going to call this little gem the animal edition, not just because animals are funny but because I have started to hoard collect so many wonderful pictures...
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Another prime example of the evil that is in all cats....
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This sassy backseat driver
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Fabio in lion form
You know he gets all the ladies with a flick of his luscious locks.
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This dog who is staying a step ahead of his minion master
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The real reason why Dinosaurs chased humans in Jurassic Park
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And lastly one of the many reason I am looking forward to fall
Is there something you little heart desires to see in Sunday funnies? Just comment to let me know!
First, let's start out like we did last week by me telling you that on
this day in history American Bombers dropped the
atomic bomb on Hiroshima. The explosion wiped out 90 percent of the city and
immediately killed 80,000 people; tens of thousands more would later die of
radiation exposure and other heath issues. Three days later, a second bomb was dropped on
Nagasaki, killing an estimated 40,000 people. Truman our president at the
time has gone on record saying that he "never regrets" dropping the
bombs. This is not to make Truman out to be a bad man. For him he
was seeing the lesser of two evil, and the fact that Japan killed thousands of
our men in the Pearl Harbor attacks on December 7th 1941.
Had the Japanese not surrendered after the drop,
Operation Downfall, would have happened. This would have been where an organized invasion of the Japanese mainland. Joined with Operation Ketsugo, the Japanese defensive plan,
devastation would have struck both sides. In a study done by the Joint Chief of
Staff during the planning it was estimated that American casualties were an
estimated 1.2 million, with 267,000 fatalities. Japanese civilian casualties
were to be an estimated 5 million, as opposed to the 90,000–166,000 killed in
Hiroshima and the 60,000–80,000 killed in Nagasaki. While the use of nuclear
warfare proved to be devastating and continued to kill after the war was over,
some say the cost has never outweighed the benefit, when one considers the
lives saved on both sides due to President Truman’s decisive actions. ( Source 1 and Source 2)
For me personally it is something that I pray never has to happen again.
And now if you are still with me after that long and sad history lesson I would like the Flash Back to the time I become a Godmother.
It all stated with this girl:
Liking this guy:
So they tied the knot:
And later had their first son:
Who later became a big brother:
To this guy:
Who I am the proud godmother of:
But all that was not made officially until this awesome moment:
Now even back before I knew Sean and Jeanly I knew I wanted to be a godmother. It was on my life goal list and when I was asked I was delighted. Meeting Sean and Jeanly had/ is such a huge blessing on my life in every way and I was overjoyed when they asked me. I prayed everyday for him and his mom, started to write him letters that I will one day give him and was overall extremely excited. Now that he is here I can say that he and his family are one the the best thinks that have entered my life. Elijah is a constant source of joy. He is most often my phone background because just seeing his face makes my day better. I have even told other friends that I cannot imagine what a mother feels for their children because of how much I love that little guy and his brother. I look forward to the joy I will one day feel when he learn to say "Rachel" like his older brother did, but I also look forward to watching him grow up with the guide of his amazing parents. Watching him and helping him learn about his faith, spoiling him and above all making sure that he always knows how awesome he is, how is was chosen for this world even before I dreamed of being a godmother, that he is God's favorite and above all that he will always have a place in my heart and nothing he can ever do will take that away.
