I think I mentioned on Facebook that I suggested to my mother that she start a blog to write down all the family stories since I never really paid attention to them. So that in fact created a blog monster and I really should be working on adding a print button to her blog because some of her friends want to print some of them out. The other day she wrote about my favorite book. I am going to copy and paste what she said because I would hate to be busted plagiarizing my own mother. That would be AWKWARD!

Somewhere along the way Mrs. Mugford had given Larry the book “The Bernstein Bears Picnic”. Mom didn’t dare throw it away because the Mugfords were at their house every other Saturday night and she wouldn’t want them to know she did (Larry was the biggest “tattle tale” I ever knew). John and I were both avid readers and we started reading books to Rachel before she could walk and Rachel loved books. When she was around two, she found “The Bernstein Bears Picnic” where Mom kept it next to Daddy’s Bible and she came into the kitchen carrying the book. She walked up to where Daddy was sitting and just stood there until he looked down and saw her. She handed him the book so, he picked her up and took her to “his” chair in the living room and sat down and read it to her. Now you haven’t had a story read to you unless you have had Daddy read one to you. We all thoroughly enjoyed it. When he finished, he told her “now go put it back where it goes” and she did. About an hour later here she came again with the book and stood beside him until he picked her up and took her to his chair and read it to her. From that day until she started school and had her own books to read, every time we went to Mom and Daddy’s, she would wait about an hour or so, then go get the book and stand beside “his” chair in the living room until he would see her there and come read it to her. Usually twice was enough, but I don’t think she ever ever said anything out loud about him reading the book to her.

I wish I could remember the way my grandpa read it. I know it was fantastic. I often stare at this page fascinated and I am sure he said some crazy stuff. Maybe I just like to pick the garbage out of the trash pile. My cousin Eddie is seven years older than Emily. His father “Uncle Larry” is seven years older than me. I know at some point I bought this book and mailed it to him in Pennsylvania. I have no idea if he ever read it or liked it. You know in this day of instant connection I could text and ask him. Wow I’m smarter than I look. Anyway I just love this book and I shall read it again tonight. I think when I first get to Heaven I’m going to walk straight up to Grandpa Miller with this book in my hand and stand there till he notices me and reads it to me. Then I am going to tell him to sing the dog and cat song for all of heaven to hear. He sounded like real dogs and cats in a fight. And then he can walk around on his hands and do a one arm push up and pick up a match stick with his teeth. That is if they have matches in heaven. We might have to drop into hell and pick one up! Ok its late and I am getting down right silly. Time for bed but first I am reading the best book in the whole world!

Today was the Big Stuf Olympics. I think I have attended every year I went to camp except for maybe once. I have always been a spectator except for the first year I think I did some judging. It’s just a fun afternoon for the kids to meet each other before they share a room at camp. They are divided up into groups by grade year and boys and girls. They then compete in some crazy games and the winner of the boys and the girls gets to get on the bus first. This means better seats. It seems like every year it is always insanely hot and today was no different. Because I have spent little time outside this summer due to my surgery, it seemed even hotter than usual. It was a Disney theme this year and Allyson’s group was Pocahontas and Sierra’s was Snow White. (Allyson has never seen Pocahontas so we must watch that movie soon!) One group of boys was the Lion King. At the beginning they had to put on a little show. The Lion King was great. The Olympics were held at Rockport Elementary so one boy stood on the top of the slide with a stuffed lion in his and while they all sung that song with the weird words. It was great. They did an egg toss, water balloon toss and some other stuff. They ended with which group could drink nasty looking concoctions the fastest. Allyson volunteered and picked this stuff that kind of looked like milk (all the stuff was food processed) little did she know it was tunafish. She got about half of it in her mouth and if I only had my phone out for pictures. Her face was hilarious. Herc was convinced she was going to puke. She managed to get it all down and her group was the fastest. They also won so she’s first on the bus. I secretly called Brian and told him when we get home and we ask whats for dinner to say he decided to make tunafish. I thought she was going to hurl when he said it. Then we told him what happened! This time next week we will be at camp all checked into the hotel. Allyson, Sierra and I cannot wait!

I just finished reading the book Popular: Boys Booze and Jesus. It was recommended by either Herc or Tom. I can’t ever keep their book wars straight. I cheated and bought it on Kindle so it didn’t help them out. Oh Herc and Tom are brothers and Pastors at my church and each month they recommend a book and put it on sale for 1/2 price in the church bookstore. They can be extremely competitive. Anyway, the book is really written for young adults but since I am still twenty in my head, I enjoy young adult books. The book is about the authors road to be popular in high school. Yep kind of glad i was never in the popular crowd. It would have been way too much work to be someone I am not. And I’ve never felt normal in my life. The author’s dad is the one who said that normal is a setting on a washing machine and it’s true. I am not sure normal even exists. Every single family no matter how perfect on the outside has something in the closet. It’s just some people’s closets are way more interesting than others! Nope, not discussing mine! Bahahahaha.

It all started a couple of days ago when I got a text from Emily (keep in mind she’s a college graduate who is in PT school currently) that said what if it’s       sir rye oh sis. (I can’t remember how to spell it). Allyson sees this text at the same time I did and said tell Emily she is worse at spelling than I am. Even I, CR the worst speller in the world can spell psoriasis. This is most likely due to the fact it is a medical term but who cares I can spell it.

So last night I screen shot the text and send it to Meg who cracks up laughing and then texts me back Dis funk shun al. Now we had just had an argument/discussion about how a dictionary is not helpful for those of us who cannot spell. She still owns one and I do not. So then the next words I get is Dick shun ary and Thu sar us. So even though it’s close to midnight I have to screen shot these conversations and send them to Emily. And so the picture is what I get back from Emily. I was cracking up! So we moles are easily entertained and now you have an idea of what we do for fun!

This morning I looked at the schedule and they were five away from needing me so once I again I thought to myself score I won’t be needed until three (I’m trying to baby my foot, normally I am wanting to work every day at 11) and once again I was wrong. There were 8 early surgeries so I went in at normal time. As I was getting ready to leave Allyson says to me can’t you stay home and take care of me? I said I was home all day yesterday doesn’t that count? Apparently not. So I told her I had to go in but I was off tomorrow and get ready to go swimming suit shopping. She needs a one piece for Big Stuf. She only agreed to this by stating she was getting a new Nintendo 3ds game. So I said ok why not. I mean after all I’m back at work so might as well spend all the money. Hahahaha.

Today was a high carb day. I felt this is pretty doable until I realized Big Stuf is like two weeks away and the food down there is basically high carb kid food. This could be tough but if I plan out ahead of time, I might just be able to pull it off. After I got home from work I realized my Piyo (its pilates and yoga combined) did not arrive via Fed X like it was supposed to so I went to tracking. Are you ready for this. It shipped from Grove City OH to Martinsburg WV and then back to Grove City OH and then to Earth City MO and now is currently at the Arnold Post office. Says it should be here in two days. I have considered doing a poll with the choices it will be here never, in six months and maybe a month. This makes me wonder where the insurance claim is on Emily’s book. Let me go check that out so I can get worked up again! No movement on the claim of course and I am sure the package is still saying its in the Arnold post office. So I have my doubts the Piyo will ever make it here. However I can’t do it just yet. Today at work was not nearly as bad as last week. My limp is so much better and my foot wasn’t throbbing after an hour. So hopefully soon I will be back to normal. Ok normal doesn’t really exist in my world. How about a normal kind of crazy!

Today was get my old lady gray hair done at the hair place. I arrive and Hollie says what do you want to do with your hair? I said I don’t care. She says do you want to go extreme red or something like that. I said sure let me go to the bathroom. When I return she is having a conversation with Kandace who always has cool hair about how to do this. Well it turns out it will be a two color process. Because I swear I have all gray hair underneath this mess she has to do the roots with one color. That sat for 45 minutes. Then she cut my hair and dried it. My roots were fiery red and the rest of the hair was like a brown color. Then color number two happened and 45 minutes later I ended up with this awesome red color. Hollie said it’s so everyone can find the nurse at Big Stuf next week. My appointment was at noon so I told my mom come over by two, my hair won’t take that long, I’m not that ugly. So when I walked up to the front porch at 2:30 I said I guess I am uglier than I realized. Yes I said it before she had a chance to say it. The apple doesn’t fall far from the cart. I know it’s the apple doesn’t fall far from the tree but one day when texting Meg I said the cart and she died laughing. And for total proof of this I posted on Facebook today that I got the letter that Kayla has been kicked out of the pediatric practice. Kayla says she’s never leaving Dr. Sato. So my mom responds  hurry up and have a baby Kayla and you won’t have to leave him.

After complaining about my foot yesterday and wanting to hack it off, it did not hurt until five this evening. I was walking this morning and forgot I had even had surgery because I was pain-free. That was so nice and gave me hope that this chapter in my life might soon be over. I followed low carb today and let me just say can’t wait for high carb tomorrow. I think I can handle it every other day. It’s the first time ever my nutrition chart was even for protein,carbs and fats. (Usually it’s 60% carbs) I made it on the exercise bike for thirty minutes today. I tried watching prison porn for a while and finally said screw it and scrolled on Facebook. Now that I have this bright funky red hair, I’m staying out of the pool. Don’t want the chlorine fading this. Because after all as Brian always says “Better dead than red!”

Well the rest of the Moles arrived home in shifts. Kayla had driven separately with her friend Rachel and she was home long enough to stink up the hall bathroom and then leave for a graduation swim party. Allyson and Brian arrived a couple hours later and the dog and I were quite happy to see them. They had a nice weekend. Allyson brought one of her friends and they spent a lot of time fishing. They went both Friday and Saturday night by boat to watch fireworks. Everyone seemed to have a great time.

They asked me what I did. I said nothing and it was heavenly. I watched some recorded TV uninterrupted. My dad suggested two new shows. One is The Night Shift which is on channel 5 and almost over for the season. I had to watch the first four episodes on the computer. I have two left on DVR and there are two episodes left after that. He also suggested Chasing Life on abc family. It recently started so I watched all four episodes of that show and it is awesome. At church today my dad said he could suggest a lot more shows to waste time on. I was sad that Nurse Jackie on showtime has already ended. I swear they only made 8 episodes this year. I started watching Catfish as well. I cannot believe how many people believe the person they are talking to are real and honest. Then again am I? Unless you really know me this whole entire blog could be total bullshit.

It was nice to have my computer when I wanted it. I also read Chris Powells new book and am looking forward to changing up my diet. After three years I have gotten into the rut of eating the exact same stuff and I’m bored with it and it is no longer working. I also start a 21 day challenge tomorrow with a friend from high school. It’s a group thing with a bunch of people. He made me do my measurements and I made him swear he would not put them on the internet. After that I kind of felt like a manly man. I am in desperate need of a waist! BAHAHAHAHA.

I am starting back on exercise tomorrow after five weeks off. I was really hoping to be able to either do Jillian killer buns and thighs or my new Piyo DVD that isn’t here yet. My foot is bad today, so that is a pipe dream. I will ride the exercise bike in the basement instead. Today I must have been walking on the outside of my foot because it hurts worse than the incision side. This seems to be a never ending nightmare. I try not to complain too much but feel like I am constantly wining and complaining. I really wish I would have just hacked the thing off. Ok I know that is really extreme and I am full of crap but this is taking forever. I think of my one friend who had it done. I swear she was back at work at three weeks and took one vicodin. Here I am at five weeks, still needing a 1/2 a percocet after work or too much activity and thinking it will never be better. After I had my hysterectomy I was having horrible left sided pain. I had a CT scan and then Dr. Veronikis told me he wanted me to come to his office. That was the day he told me my pathology on my uterus came back bad and he had already called Dr. Chobanian. Before he left the room he asked if he could do anything for me. I looked at him dead serious and said “Could you just get a gun and shoot me.” OMG the look on his face, I will never forget but he told me he couldn’t. If he only would have done has I wished. My dang foot wouldn’t be an issue but I would have missed a lot of stuff with my girls so I guess it’s a good thing he didn’t listen to me.

Tomorrow is a new day. I am off and getting my hair done. Maybe I will go up to the rec center and resume my membership. It was up the end of April and since I knew I was having surgery I did not renew. Now is the time.

It has been a very quiet day for me. I stayed up last night until two am playing stupid candy crush. I thought to myself why not. After all, it’s just me and the dog and I promised myself I would stay off of my foot so I had nowhere to go today. Except of course the gas station to get my coffee. I haven’t watched Prisoner Cell Block H in at least six weeks. A bunch of stuff happened and then I got really busy with graduation and surgery. So today I was going to scrapbook and watch at the same time. I didn’t last five minutes scrapbooking. I couldn’t find the cricut cartridge I was looking for and not in the mood to search all over the house so I said screw it and just watched the show. Brian loves to call it prison porn and if I watch it on my phone while he is trying to watch TV he will yell random things like tell the prison bitches to shut up, or tell them their riot will not work.

My foot doesn’t hurt as bad today as yesterday but it is still swollen and my arch touches the ground when I walk if I don’t have it wrapped. Now that is just the most bizarre feeling in the world. I have iced today as well. One day this foot will be back to normal. My dad called and my bike is ready, so tomorrow I will venture out to his house and pick it up. Maybe I will even go for a short ride since the weather is nice. Not sure how that will feel on my foot though. I am planning on resuming exercising on Monday. Not exactly sure how that will look but I know I will post about it.

Now back to peace and quite and a little bit of prison. Happy 4th of July to all. The fireworks are just starting down in good old Jefferson County!

Today I went to Ugas to get my morning coffee. I have seriously considered given up this habit and using the money for something else. However, nothing compares to the concoction I whip up there so I just can’t seem to quit it. I suppose it’s better than smoking. Anyway Allyson asked me to get her flaming hot cheetos. Yep that would be her breakfast. Chalk me up for parent of the year! So I bring in a five dollar bill and four pennies. That way no matter what the total, I wouldn’t be getting pennies back or even worse the cashier giving me a nickel back instead. (Ok we all know I have weird issues). So she rings it up and it’s 5.29. I said well crap let me go get a quarter out of the car. She says go ahead and take it, I know you will be back. So I dig out a quarter and I am about to walk back in and this guy says hey I paid your quarter, don’t worry about it. Then says this way you don’t have to go back in. I thanked him and I was so surprised and happy by his kindness. My foot was pretty happy too because it knew it was soon up for shift number three.

Not too long after this Emily texts me because she cannot get her paper to attach to her email. She bought herself a Mac before she started PT school and had written a paper in pages. She was finally able to attach it in her non Rockhurst email but then she couldn’t open it. So her friend had her save it in google. I had a bunch of frustrated texts. Next text I get is she can’t get it to print because the internet is down. So she heads over to wherever they print stuff at Rockhurst and is out of print points. She  must have given them a sob story of sorts because they gave her five dollars worth of print points for free. And to top it off you can only buy them with cash.  I really can’t lie in the fact that I was kind of cracking up because I can see so much of myself in her. She wasn’t about to let it go until she figured it out. It’s a good thing and a bad thing to be like this. So I told her at the lake this weekend to hit her dad up for a twenty. He has a whole wallet full of them and if he throws too big of a fit, I would reimburse him when he returns.

I survived my first week back at work. My foot is swollen and hurting but I am now on four days of rest. I asked the second year resident if any of the first year residents were single. He said are you single? I said no I’m married. (I just haven’t worn my rings in forever because they are way too big. I’m paranoid if I get them made smaller, I will gain my weight back again I know I have issues.) So he tells me one guy is single. Another girl asked him his age and he said 28. I said yeah I’m old enough to be all of you residents mother so let me kill myself. Hahaha. I told him I wanted to know so that when the single girls I work with ask me, I will know the answer. Not only am I “smarter than I look”, I seem to know almost everything. I am just in the right place at the right time.

I am a girl with a few nicknames depending on who is around me and what I am doing. One of the more common one is CR which stands for Crazy Rachel. My work gave me this nickname a few years back and I enjoy living up to it. I told one of the residents at work to call me CR. Not too long ago I had one of the patients he was following and when he asked the girls at the desk who had the patient they said Rachel. He said I don’t know anyone named Rachel. When I walked up to the desk they said you know Rachel and he said oh yeah CR, I forgot her real name.

As I posted earlier I read the entire topix thread about the nepotism in the Fox school district. There were only a couple of people that actually posted using their real name and one of them was Sam Ferry who is a former employee of the school district. The thread started with this post from a lady I think:

I am posting this not to start bickering back and forth but am just wanting to post a question and see if there is an informed person out there who would know the answer: is there anything the community can do in order to have an investigation done?

The president of the schoolboard’s daughter-in-law just got a $65,337 a year job when she has no post-secondary education and her experience is a high school diploma and her work at McDonald’s? This is beyond ludicrous. She doesn’t even have the degree needed for the position. Isn’t this illegal or am I wrong?

All throughout the thread Sam’s character was attacked many, many times but instead of attacking back he would simply remind the people the topic was about nepotism and not his personal life. He really impressed me that he never once got involved in the name calling and stuck to the facts. After I was all finished reading and had time to absorb it all, I knew I needed to write him an email. He had put his personal email address in a few of his posts. I got this prompting from God. I know this is crazy and no God did not yell down from heaven “hey CR you need to write an email to Sam.” I just felt a whisper in my heart that I needed to do this. And so I did. I sent him an email saying how impressed I was that he stayed true to the subject and took so much heat during the process. One of his goals was to get a new school board in place and in the past two elections all the seats have been replaced. I think there are only two of the original ones left.

Did he answer my email? yes he did several days later. I am copying and pasting just the beginning because it just kind of confirms that what started out as seeming crazy was indeed the right thing to do.

Nothing new under the sun, nothing in life surprises me, but your email…..that surprised me enough that I wanted to take a thoughtful amount of time before I responded. Thank you! It is so rare that someone actually takes the time to say or do something for an unknown. That makes you interesting right off the bat. You are one of one when it comes to that.

How many times in our lives do we think I should send that person a card, a letter, a text or an email and yet we never do? We just assume those around us know when they have done something good. But in a matter of two seconds when someone does something wrong we point it out, criticize, gossip, and make sure everyone knows. Yet when someone stands up and does the right thing rarely is that person supported.  Just an observation I have made.

Moral of this mole story: If you feel God telling you to do something, you should listen! The results can be amazing!