Animal Crossing - City Folk

Do you play this game? I think I'm more addicted than my children! I shot down a space ship today - woo hoo! I hear that is quite a feat - most people don't ever see one - and those that do rarely get it shot down. I'll find out what my "gift" is tomorrow. But I must admit that I was pretty smug about it - chalking it all up to Karma - I always turn in my fish & bugs to the museum - the first time I catch anything new. Well after all the smugness I caught a Stringfish - worth 15,000 Bells - tonight for the first time, and then 2 minutes later I caught a football fish - not sure what they are worth but it was my first one of those too. And then on my way to the museum I caught a Koi. I don't know how much that one is worth either - but even Blathers made some comment about how much I could have sold it for. Oh well!

So - I dutifully took them all to the museum. Not sure how many bells I gave up, but If I'm going to continue to feel I'm reaping the rewards of good Karma - I'd better keep holding up my end of the deal.

If anyone would like to venture out & visit my family's town -

Friend Code: 3867 2618 3266
Name: Sherlyn
Town: Iowa

You'll have to leave your Friend Code, name & town in a comment for me to add to my friend roster - so we can meet!


I couldn't help myself - I just googled it and looked up the value of the fish - Football Fish - 2500 Bells & the Koi was worth 4000! That is over 21k I gave up to the museum today all in the name of Karma - that better be one really cool gift from the alien tomorrow!

Added the next morning - here is a shot of my character & the fallen space ship!

Am I Hysterical?

This salmonella outbreak in peanut products is about to get the best of me.

Most days I just go on my merry way living with the fact that people consider me one of those hysterical peanut people. I don't allow my children to come into contact with peanuts. I don't allow them to eat things from other people's homes. I don't allow them to eat things that have been manufactured in a facility that also manufactures foods containing peanuts. I have a VERY strict comfort zone when it comes to feeding my children - but I've only had to witness anaphylaxis once - the day we found out about the allergy. We haven't had any known exposures or reactions to nuts since. This knowledge that people think I’m hysterical is a price I'm willing to pay in order to keep my children alive.

I know that I'm not crazy - I've seen what anaphylaxis can do to a child. I see the results of the yearly blood tests drawn on my children that says that one of my kids results are literally off the charts. In allergy tests any thing over 0.35 means a child is allergic - anything over a 2.0 means it could be life threatening - BabyB's number is often > 100 - that's all it says - they stop counting when it gets that high.

I read the accounts of the approximately 200 Americans that die each year from reactions to peanuts - a huge percentage of them being children in schools. I read how over 2000 Americans are hospitalized every year because of it. I keep all of this to myself most days because once again - I am aware that the world thinks I'm hysterical.

Now - is the rest of the world considered hysterical because they don't want their children to eat anything that might have salmonella? So far 9 people have died and over 500 people have been hospitalized because of this outbreak.

Some schools have even gone so far as to remove the Smuckers PB&J sandwiches from the menu they normally serve. It's known that these particular products aren't affected by the salmonella - but the schools thought that they didn't want to cause any stress to any of the children or their parents so they took them off the menu. Of course these same schools said that they couldn't possibly take PB&J off the menu in order to keep a few peanut allergic children safe or less stressed. One of the many reasons always stated in these arguments is that some children will eat ONLY peanut butter - these children might go hungry! Gasp! As you can imagine - the thought of a child choosing to not eat anything other than peanut butter who might miss his meal - compared to the fact that other children might actually stop breathing..... that doesn't really impress me much. What is poor little Billy eating now that they have temporarily removed the beloved PB&J? Has he starved yet?

I can't even imagine how these school officials that have made these recent decisions can look some of the parents in the face. You can remove an item from the school menu because it might stress some kids out - but you can't even imagine removing the same item because it can actually kill some of your students? What about the mental health of the allergic kids? There are fewer of them so you just flat out don't care?

The fact that Delta Airlines is making a big public flap about serving peanuts again on their flights because they are based out of Atlanta isn't really helping my mood this week either. My fear is that this will continue until some one actually dies on an airplane. Won't that be so much fun for all those that get to witness it! Then and only then – after having to pay out tons of money because they knew they might kill some one and chose to serve the silly peanuts anyway – then Delta and other airlines will stop serving them on their flights.

My family and a lot of other hysterical peanut folks will just choose to not fly on their airlines until that happens.

I should add as a side note – my family has been very lucky. Our school took PB off the school menu the day we stepped into the school. We didn’t even have to ask much less fight them on it. I only raise these issues because being part of this hysterical peanut community – I read and hear so many stories of parents trying to keep their children safe every day that it breaks my heart.

Plus – my one hope out of this current catastrophe is that the FDA will start figuring out how to force companies to start labeling for possible cross contamination. Since this has all began – they have finally figured out that they have no way of knowing what non-peanut foods might have been contaminated by the salmonella in the peanuts. They are finding out that in many factories it depends on the whim of the shift manager as to what gets ran on what lines that day. So it is very difficult to find out if things got ran on the same lines that salmonella was running on the hour before. Welcome to our hysterical world everyone!

All is well .... for now

The tooth got fixed! The dentist says that these fixes last on average 5 to 6 years now-a-days. We'll see how long it lasts. When I had mine fixed the first time - it lasted a week. My brother and & I were playing tug-of-war with a gavel and he let go, and it of course smacked me in the mouth - knocking off the piece of porcelain. But back to BabyA - they didn't even have to numb him up or anything - just slapped the stuff on there, shaped it up, and then did their thing with that special light they use. He's as good as new!

We took the boys out of school half an hour early this afternoon. They had a small ceremony for the torch being carried to the Special Olympics. It was pretty cool. I'm afraid to say that there were more people on the stage than in the seats watching - but it was still pretty cool. The special athletes seemed happy to be there - and I guess that is what really matters.

Never the thing you worry about!

I know this is a weird thing to think about - but every now and then I have worried that God will trip my son, BabyB, knocking his teeth out. I just can't help myself from worrying about this. BabyB is just plain gorgeous. He has gorgeous red hair, he is tall and slim, he has cute freckles, and he has these perfectly straight teeth. When I think of how handsome he is, I always fear that God might smite me and knock his teeth out just to prove a point - the point being I shouldn't take such pride in the looks of one of my children. I especially shouldn't take this much pride in only one of my twins! In all fairness - I think BabyA is cute too - he's just a different kind of cute. He has LOTS of freckles, auburn hair, and a smile that could melt any mother's heart. He also has loads of attitude that make all the girls think he is HOT! But in this mother's eyes - BabyB is the true looker - even though it is BabyA that has all the girls chasing after him.

Some days I think that I must be a complete narcissist - hoping that God surely wouldn't knock my child's teeth out just to prove a point to me. Other days - I think I'm just paranoid about it because I knocked half of my front tooth off as a 9 year old, and was taken to a horrible dentist repeatedly in order to get it fixed. I screamed and cried for my daddy to save me from the torture chamber of the dentist office. To fully understand the horror this put my Aunt through - who was sitting out in the waiting room during all this - you would need to know that I had been orphaned about 6 months prior to this. This tooth still causes me trouble to this day! My tooth has 2 pins in it - one horizontal & one vertical to try and hold on to the piece of porcelain attached to it. But every so often I bite into an apple or something else and it breaks off.

So - this is the backdrop to yesterday’s happenings.

Both boys go to a friend’s house down the block to play basketball. About 20 minutes later BabyA comes running in screaming that BabyB knocked his tooth out! I immediately ask - "BabyB knocked who's tooth out?" MINE!!!! He screams showing me his teeth and bloody lip. Sure enough about half of BabyA's front tooth is missing. Lovely. It never occurred to me that BabyA would have his teeth knocked out - he has wild looking bucked teeth that will most certainly need braces. But he was standing in front of me with half his tooth gone. E-gads!

So I'm not sure what the moral of the story is - other than the tried and true rule - of it's never the thing you worry about - it's always something else that sneaks up behind you and grabs you in the gut when you aren't looking.

The dentist that we go to has a migraine today - so we have an appointment first thing tomorrow morning. Wish us (all of us) luck!

I will try to get a photo of this today – but I doubt that he’ll be into it. I told him yesterday we should take a photo of him and send it to his Grandma Sara – (my Aunt) – and ask if it brought back old memories. He just started crying and went and hid in his closet until I came in and apologized.

As you can see here - he did let me take his photo today. He wasn't happy about it - but I promised him that he would want to see what it looked like when he is 30.