Rachel Callahan

Weak Attempts at Normalcy and Blogging

Posted on Posted by Rachel Callahan Categories A Day in the Life, I embarrass myself just for your amusement., Just My Luck

Today is my day to jump back into life with two feet. . . although my jumping abilities are still a bit awkward.

My pain level has lessened a good deal, but my belly still looks like I was in a battlezone and is swollen in such a way as to make me look like I gained 20 pounds over the weekend. And of course my stamina level is still lower than the OSHA minimum energy requirements to keep up with a one-and-a-half-year-old.

Ali has been looking at me oddly from every direction, trying to figure out why I’m not her usual energetic Mommy:
Ali and I headed up to work today to pick up stuff so that I can hopefully catch up for my two missed days during Ali’s nap, and I’m sure I made a sight – wearing pants two sizes too big (one size to compensate for the swelling and one size to compensate for my gag reflex at anything binding on my belly), and attempting to retract and insert a 26 pound child in and out of her carseat without having her knees digging into my stomach.

One thing is for sure – no one was whispering that they really suspected that I got liposuction instead of having my gall bladder removed. No, that is pretty obviously not the case. Although if my belly doesn’t get back to supporting itself, people might start whispering that I NEED liposuction. I’m certainly starting to feel that way myself.

Also, I’ve not taken any pain medicine today for obvious reasons – Vicodin doesn’t mix well with driving and caring for a toddler. Nor does the anti-nausea medicine that has to accompany it. However, I am having a bit of trouble putting my words together in this post now, so Jennifer, maybe it was the pain PILLS, and not the pain, that you thought made me a better blogger ;). Maybe I’m like Dr. House – he’s supposedly a better doctor on Vicodin, maybe I’m a better blogger on Vicodin.

However, if that is the case, the world will never know.

Speaking of Doctors, here is Doctor Ali, insisting on taking a look at her patient:

God’s Richness in my Weakness

Posted on Posted by Rachel Callahan Categories On a more serious note. . ., Thoughts about Faith

I love how God loves to surprise. He loves to take the simple moments, the bland moments, even the painful moments, and turn them into something beautiful and amazing.

I told Chris last night as we were going to bed that as much pain as I had been in yesterday (it had definitely gotten worse, not better), if there hadn’t been other circumstances, I wouldn’t even consider going to Church today. I would much rather just lay around the house all day and continue to let the five holes in my stomach to heal.

However, there WERE other circumstances, and I am so thankful for that. My good friend A. of 10+ years was getting baptized this morning. And, her Father was coming with her to Church to celebrate this event with her.

This was such an amazing moment – not because Baptism holds any power in and of itself – it is simply obedience to God’s command to be a witness of a changed life. A new direction.

A. has had plenty of things in her life (both in and out of her control) holding her back from being able to fully commit to a changed life, and to truly, 100% living for God. But over the past couple of years, she has been freed from so many of those, due to God’s supernatural power and grace in her life. She has been determined to make right choices and live for God no matter the cost, and a couple of weeks ago, God showed her that He wanted her to publicly profess this through baptism. I am so proud of her, and so excited to see God working in and through her!

It was a powerful morning. I think that her father got to get to know her and appreciate her all over again, and we all got to experience God in a powerful way. I believe that this morning will be a defining moment in their relationship. And for me, it was yet another confirmation of the answer to the most amazing and direct promise that God ever gave me.

The beauty in the symbolism of baptism is unparalleled – a dying to self, and being raised into a new life – a new life with Christ. Just as Christ died and was raised again so that we can have new life, when we commit our lives to Christ, we are raised in that newness of life as well.

Being that I was baptized at a young age (around 6), I don’t know that I ever fully grasped this symbolic picture until this morning. This is the first time that I have been fully aware of both sides of that life – the old life being left behind and dead, and the new life, raised with Christ, and living with Christ.

Does this mean that we are perfect after baptism (or salvation)? Certainly not! I loved how Pastor Walls put it this morning. We are to be growing. Tomorrow I should be closer to Christ than I am today, and so on. There will be ups and downs, setbacks and highs, but the beauty of the symbolism of baptism is that we are saying that it is Christ that allowed us to be raised with Him, and it is Christ that will continue changing and sanctifying us.

A father and young daughter also got baptized this morning, both very new to the faith. The look of utter joy on their faces was amazing. When the little girl went back to her seat, she hugged her Mom with tears of joy. At the end of the service, her Mom knelt at the alter to pray. The Dad AND the little girl went to be with her, embracing her and praying with her. I could barely hold back tears – it was beautiful.

I know that I cannot come close to describing the power of God’s works this morning, so this post may or may not make sense to anyone but those of us who were there, but the bottom line is that I am so thankful to God for giving me a reason to get out of bed this morning and experience Life More Abundant, rather than just life in the recovery room!

Yes, I’m on pain meds, and No, I don’t feel like blogging. . .

Posted on Posted by Rachel Callahan Categories A Day in the Life, I embarrass myself just for your amusement.

. . . but here are a few pictures that Chris, my stand-in cameraman took this weekend:

Watch the amazing transformation of a Gall Bladder Removal!!

Before:
After:
You, too, can have these amazing results, with just a weekend of intense pain and five holes in your belly!!

Ali picked me a “prise” (surprise) of fresh flowers and a fresh ear of corn when we came to pick her up this morning. Fresh, uncooked corn was one of my favorite treats from the garden when I was little. However, I made the mistake of taking a couple of bites and then sharing with Ali. I never got it back.
Ali eating my corn amongst the corn stalks.
Pop happily holding Ali’s flower so that she could devour my corn. Ali begged to “check eggs” before we left. She found two! She was so proud.
“Two Eggs!!!”Ali watching the chickens finish off (my) ear of corn.
Ali and one of her eggs and her flower.
We got home and gave her a bath and put her in her cheerleading outfit just in time for the game. However, she was pretty worn out from the country that she wasn’t much of a cheerleader:

Oh – and one more side note – they’re talking about me* again – the “crazies“, that is. This time, most of the analysis has been much more positive, although there was one guy that apparently got offended. As Chris says, everyone needs to be able to laugh at themselves. No one likes a Geico Caveman. About half my blog posts are making fun of myself – and I certainly wasn’t making fun of the D*C’ers (as explained here), just having fun and entertaining others with their entertaining show. Oh well – at least the VAST MAJORITY of them have been amused by my post.

And, speaking of majority, I just found this out this time around – did you know that around 40,000 people attended Dragon*Con?!!? I had no idea it was THAT big. That’s amazing!! But that does explain why my blog gets so bombarded when my post gets mentioned on their message boards.

* Proceed with caution to this link to the Dragon*Con forum – I certainly cannot vouch for the cleanness of the content there.

Recovery Day

Posted on Posted by Rachel Callahan Categories I embarrass myself just for your amusement., Just My Luck

Ali is still at Gramamma and Pop’s, and Chris is at work. And I am being a completely lazy bum. Just thought you’d like to know. I’m playing on the computer and getting caught up on everyone’s blogs. I should be working if I’m okay enough to play on the computer, but then I wouldn’t be being a lazy bum. And I’m definitely being a lazy bum. But I bet I start to feel guilty and pressured to get some work done soon, and I will give up my bummy ways.

I’m in some pain, but it’s not too bad! I haven’t taken any meds but Tylenol today, which I consider a good sign. Although I probably do need a little of something, but I’m not in the mood to be puking, so I’d have to take Phenergan with it, and I’m not in the mood to be knocked out. I’m in the mood to be a lazy bum. So I’m just a VERY SORE lazy bum.

The doctor said that my surgery went well, but that my gall bladder was very “sickly” – it had lots of scar tissue from all of the gall stones (which, by the way, Chris DID ask for some of the gall stones on the front side, but either they forgot, or right out denied his request. So poor guy, he doesn’t have anything new to add to his “Collection of my Wife’s Body Parts”. My foot bone will stay lonely – hopefully for a while. I don’t like this trend of having a body part surgically removed every other year. Or every year if Ali counts as a removed body part).

The Doc also had to make an extra incision (incision number 5 – between these incisions and my c-section, my belly is going to look like a battlezone) because my liver numbers were high – he was afraid I had a gall stone blocking it as well, but apparently not.

And, I should totally become a hospital reviewer. I have now had five surgeries in five different Birmingham hospitals. Yesterday was St. Vincents. It was the first surgery ever where I have felt NO nausea, so that gives them five stars in the puking department. But the waiting room was so crowded and loud, it felt like an airport terminal. It made me very uncomfortable for even the few minutes that I was in there, and so I really felt sorry for Chris having to be in there for so long.

PLUS they kept making these announcements over the loudspeaker, “Would the McAllen family please come to the front”, and you were afraid to look for fear that they were about to get bad news. And sometimes, they would say “Would ONE member of the McAllen family come up front” and I wondered what the difference was – did they bring just one member up if they had to fess up to amputating the wrong leg? Or what?

So, I’m back to being a lazy bum. If you haven’t watched the short little video on my last post, you should. It is STILL making me laugh out loud every time I watch it. And you can’t blame it on the meds, because I don’t think Tylenol makes things excessively funny.

What Mommies Don’t Do

Posted on Posted by Rachel Callahan Categories I'm No Videographer, Toddlers: The Experience, Utter Silliness

I’m feeling pretty decent considering, and I’ve been dying to post this video from last night. It’s dusk and in the car, which is why it starts out dark, then gets lighter. She was talking to herself, and it was cracking us up, so I videoed a bit of it and prompted her to say what she had been talking about.

Ali is quite intrigued by bodily functions right now. She is all the time commanding Chris and I to yawn, cough, or sneeze. She loves to pretend to do these things as well as talking constantly about someone doing some bodily function or another. Anyway, the other day I taught her what Mommies “no-no” do in passing, and for some reason it stuck.

Thankful Thursday

Posted on Posted by Rachel Callahan Categories Thankful Thursday

It’s time for Thankful Thursday again!!

Well, today is my surgery day. I am thankful that God answered my prayer for a clear diagnosis and treatment! I am hoping to be thankful tomorrow for a successful surgery with no complications!!

And, as always, reason #374 that I am thankful for this stage in Ali’s life:

She loves to be “hepful”.

When we go to the grocery store, there always seems to be a few things on the floor – I actually never even noticed that there were always groceries in the floor, but apparently this is quite normal. Anyway, every time she sees something on the floor, she loudly proclaims, “OH NOOO!!”, tugs on me and runs to the out of place item. She picks it up and puts it in it’s correct spot (assuming she can reach it), then looks up beaming and says, “Ali Hepful!!”. Last time we were at the store, this was repeated FIVE times.

Last night, we were heading upstairs, and Ali stopped at the second stair and looked in the living room. She said, “Teebox! Teebox!”. I didn’t understand, so I let her head off, hoping to understand what she was doing. Then I realized, and I was shocked: we had not put her toys up in her toybox before heading upstairs, and she was going back in the living room to do that. And it wasn’t procrastinating from going to bed, because she LOVES going upstairs for her “wash wash”.

However, being that she has a bit too much “Detail orientedness” in her, thanks to her good ole’ Mom and Dad, she DOES take this clean up thing a bit too far sometimes. We take a walk every afternoon, and without fail, when we pass sticks on the road, it’s, “OH NO!!! TRASH!!”, and when we pass the Muscadine branches where there are always a bunch of smooshed muscadines on the road, it’s “OH NOOO!! MUSC-DINES!!!”

I KNOW that this won’t last forever, so I am EXTREMELY thankful for her current helpfulness!!

SO – what are YOU thankful for this week?? I can’t wait to find out!! Write a blog and link it in using Mr. Linky below, or comment it on this post!!

I look forward to your posts and comments cheering me up tonight when I get home!

to use Mr. Linky, just type in your name in the first slot, then copy and paste the URL of your blog post in the second one and click “Enter” – then there will be a link to your post from my blog!

Dishwashing Freedom!!!

Posted on Posted by Rachel Callahan Categories "Deep" Thoughts by Rachel, Actually Possibly Informational, Anal Retentivity to a Fault

If you’ve been reading my blog for any amount of time, you’ve probably picked up on the fact that I am a bit. . . anal. Or, to be nice, we could call it “Detail Oriented”. And, in my defense, Chris is even more detail oriented than I ever dreamed of being.

I know. Ali doesn’t have a chance, poor kid.

Anyway, due to our analness, and the fact that we have always had REALLY old dishwashers all of our lives, we have always been quite the “scrub before putting into the dishwasher” type.

Which really stinks. Why have a dishwasher if you’ve got to do all the work beforehand? I’m sure that all of you are completely over this, and just stick dishes in as is.

Due to our most recent REALLY old dishwasher dying a few months ago, we had to get a new one. Dishwashers aren’t one of those fun things to shop for. Spending a couple hundred bucks on a dishwasher doesn’t really give you that “consumer high” that shopping for, say, clothes or furniture does. So we got a low end name brand one. We paid just enough to get name brand, but without the frills.

Even though we got a new dishwasher, we still stuck to our old scrubbing ways. I’ve always seen those commercials where the lady sticks the awful, burnt and crusty dishes in the dishwasher and they come out perfectly shiny and clean. And my favorite is when they stick the entire CAKE-IN-PAN in the dishwasher, and when she opens it, there is no trace of cake anywhere to be seen. Her poor sewage pipes. Or wherever dishwasher refuse goes.

I always thought that commercials like the following were like the hamburgers that they show on McDonald’s commercials: Pure and unashamed false advertising. aka LIES.

Back to today. Our fridge reallllllly needed cleaning out (one of my LEAST favorite tasks in the whole world), and I still haven’t been feeling great, so I decided to give our dishwasher (and these commercials) a test.

So I loaded our dishwasher up with a few things from the fridge after only scraping the big parts in the garbage. I left all the goo, all of the dried stuff, and saved myself my least favorite part, the scrubbing.

The two biggest things were glass dishes of what used to be blueberry crisp. BLUEBERRY. Here are what they looked like before going in:
I was concerned that I would open up my dishwasher and discover that the entire inside of my dishwasher was stained a dark purple.

But, alas, I opened up the dishwasher to see this!!!
Ah, it feels wonderful to be free of scrubbing!! I am going to be trying this more often!! But I have a feeling that Chris won’t be able to let go of his “thorough” tendencies. . .

odds and ends

Posted on Posted by Rachel Callahan Categories Football and I have a Complicated Relationship, Newsflash, Toddlers: The Experience

I have random things on my mind, and instead of making them all into separate posts, you get a three chapter post.

Chapter 1. Surgery:
I had my appointment with the surgeon this morning, and he was great. He was very nice and filled with explanations of why I needed to go ahead and have the surgery, what the complications could be, and what the after-effects could be. I am scheduled to have surgery Thursday afternoon. Which, of course, means that I can’t eat OR drink anything after midnight Wednesday night. That should be fun.

Chapter 2: Alabama Crazies:
Lest you thought I was exaggerating in my description of crazie Alabama fans (and for those who thought I was calling Dragon*Con people crazie but NOT Alabama fans crazie), here is one of the guys I was alluding to in my intro on that post: Thanks to Debbie (in photo) for sending me these pictures. This guy is a staple for all Alabama games, home or away. He sits in our section at the home games, and I have yet to be shocked every single time I see him. I bet anyone who goes regularly to the games (or even watches them on TV) has seen this guy before. He’s kinda like the houndstooth twins – a magnet for all cameras. And yes, all of the tattoos (except for the face painting) ARE permanent.

Chapter 3: Puppies
Mystery Solved: Last week I told you about Ali telling me that she played blocks and puppies with Donovan in the nursery during Bible Study. Today when I picked her up from the nursery, I found out two possible origins for her puppy memory.
a. They told me that Ali was calling everyone by name except for Amy Beth, Jennifer’s baby, whom she called “Puppy”, because Amy Beth apparently has a fondness for sticking her tongue out and panting.
b. As they were telling me this, Donovan’s Grandmother walked up and said, “Oh yeah! Donovan pants for every animal sound.”
It’s always fun to find out after the fact what in the world your child is remembering!!

grasping for objectivity in my subjective life: . . . and the crazies descended upon Atlanta.