Steph, when you had your back surgery, what did they do and what was your injury? If I may be so bold as to ask?

Hairless cats are cats, but it's weird to me to think of petting something hairless. Maybe that is why I am still single.

BWAH!!!

The only difference is that there is no cat.

Hmm...may be changing my tagline soon.

Yay cookbook! What kind of a recipe should we be contributing?

Whatever you want to share with folks.

Another cookbook question: I know people post recipes here and in Natter (mostly here). Should we try to collect those up for the cookbook? Or collect them up and then ask the person who posted each for permission to include?

what did they do

They shaved her bones!

Emmett had a major growth spurt last year. Suddenly all his jeans were hitting him at mid-shin. I'm still so pleased with his Little Wooden Boy.

Here's the inspiration: The Little Wooden Boy

healing food pyrimid

[link]

my mom sent me the link. It is the most logical one I've seen. for example - it puts grains and starcy veggies on the same level - and puts the servings at 4- 11 not 6- 11. It still isn't low- carb in the atkins sense, but for those that need to pay attention to the amount of carbohydrates- it makes more sense. It also includes alcohol , tea and chocolate.

With the usual caveats about being thousands of miles away and not really understanding all the circumstances, my gut reaction to this is to run screaming toward you, crying, "Eek! No! Don't do it!"

Heh. Well, I know the shitty parts of that job. And there are shitty parts aplenty, but otoh I thoroughly enjoyed working there. And I'd rather be teaching, ideally, you know? Both because I enjoy it, and because I want to keep getting better as a teacher. I would only go back if he could meet or beat the salary and benefits the other place is giving me, mind. But if I go with the job the other place is offering, I'm going to be very isolated, and probably quite bored. Whereas one of my dearest friends (the lovely K) still works for Evil Boss, as do several other good eggs, including my former Teaching Assistant. And the new staff that he does manage to lure out to Cairo deserve to have events organised, and be shown around town and so forth - that would be fun. Plus, God help us, I'd be just about the longest-serving member of his staff by that point - there are maybe 2 other people who have been there as long/longer at this point. I do like the idea of working with K, and probably commuting with him - it's good, being able to go home and bitch about the latest insane thing that's happened.

It's not ideal, by a long chalk, but at least I'd be teaching, and working with friends. The alternatives seem to be (1) non-teaching job, in which I work closely with the new Principle and, hopefully, we get on well. This would give me a good overview of how to make the school work, and it would be valuable down the line if I'm going for positions of responsibility within the school...but I can't think how we can stretch it out for a whole year. Huh. (2) Move back to Britain and get Supply Work, leaving behind friends, social life, cat etc. (3) Move to Moscow/Taiwan/Somewhere else for a year's teaching, either primary or efl. This runs the risk of being just as dodgy as Evil Boss's school, because anywhere that's still recruiting is likely pretty dodgy. (4) Post an LJ entry requesting fandom to sponsor me to sit on my arse for a year and write the Next Great English Novel.

...oh. Cousinjean did that already. Right. Fine.

Please to someone shooting me? Please???

no guns here, sorry.

Steph, when you had your back surgery, what did they do and what was your injury? If I may be so bold as to ask?

They shaved her bones!

He's not wrong.

My injury was that the bottom 2 discs of my vertebrae were herniated (a herniated disc is different from a "slipped" disc, or bulging disc, in that the herniated disc is more severe -- a bulging disc, as the name implies, bulges out beyond the boundaries of the vertebral bone; a herniated disc is where the wall of the disc ruptures and some of the squooshy material inside the disc -- think of it as a breast implant that sprung a leak -- leaks out towards the nerves and so forth).

Anyway. My discs had herniated so badly that they were compressing my sciatic nerve on the left side, which ended up causing so much pain that I couldn't sit and could barely walk. All the pain was down the back of my left leg, and not in my back.

I had a laminectomy and discectomy to fix me up. A laminectomy involves shaving/grinding off part of the vertebral bone -- NOT the vertebrae themselves; the "prong-y" things that stick off to the sides of the spine -- so that the doctor can get to the discs that are being problematic. Apparently he had to take off part of 3 of my laminae.

The discectomy, as the name implies, is where the doctor removes the disc material that squooshed out, and then they stuck something -- a needle, I assume -- into the 2 offending discs to teach them a lesson to remove a little more of the disc material, which is supposed to greatly reduce the chances of re-herniating.

They *did* leave me with some disc at both locations, though, which means I did NOT have to have a spinal fusion. Booyah.

My injury was, they tell me, pretty severe, and that's why I have a 6-inch scar -- they had to get the squooshed-out disc material from a lot of places. My co-worker, who had the same surgery about 5 years ago, has an itty-bitty teeny-tiny scar that I'm totally jealous of.

If I may be so bold as to ask?

Surely you've learned by now that, given any opening, I will happily natter on at length about my surgery.

Are you having back problems?

the "prong-y" things that stick off to the sides of the spine

What do those things do, anyway?

(1) non-teaching job, in which I work closely with the new Principle and, hopefully, we get on well. This would give me a good overview of how to make the school work, and it would be valuable down the line if I'm going for positions of responsibility within the school...but I can't think how we can stretch it out for a whole year. Huh. (2) Move back to Britain and get Supply Work, leaving behind friends, social life, cat etc.

Is there anyway you could combine 1 and 2, where you find Supply Work in Cairo after the school building with the new Principal runs out of work things? You sounded so thrilled to be working in Egypt, it seems a shame to give that up.