Just finished making peppermint bark and peppermint chocolate sugar cookies. I made slice and bake cookies, then drizzled them with dark and white chocolate and sprinkled them with crushed peppermints. So easy, especially since I was doing the chocolate for the bark anyway.

Yeah, it's been off and on nice and then storming like mad today. Sadly I think it's going to be "Ark-like rain" when I have to go back out soon.

One of these folders was very important.

Ouch.

We have dumbo rats in our classroom. A couple of weeks ago, I noticed a fairly large sized lump on the oldest rat's side. Her name is Star. She's been pretty okay the past few weeks, but she's is on her last legs and I won't be surprised if she dies tonight.

Anyway ...

The teacher who usually cleans the rat cage has been kind of lax in doing it lately and today, I was holding Star, trying to get her eat, and all of a sudden my forearms were covered in a blotchy rash and welts/hives like woah. I don't even know. I gave Star to one of our students who had long sleeves on and is AMAZING with animals and went to the nurse. She gave me 2 Benadryl. Dudes - I almost fell asleep driving home and when Em and I did get home, I crashed for three hours.

Is there such a thing as Benadryl hangover? I am all achey and my head is killing me. I've eaten and had caffiene.

Don't handle the rats, Aimee.

Is there such a thing as Benadryl hangover?

Oh, yeah.

I've been handling them daily since I started. Today was the first time I've ever had this reaction.

Yeah, but you can develop an allergy all of a sudden. It sucks, but it can happen.

Steph! Quick question: my doctor is suspecting I may have trouble absorbing some B vitamin (details r lost, folate, I think) and I wonder if something like Align might help with that nutrient-absorbtion problem? Any ideas?

Steph! Quick question: my doctor is suspecting I may have trouble absorbing some B vitamin (details r lost, folate, I think) and I wonder if something like Align might help with that nutrient-absorbtion problem? Any ideas?

Some GI problems definitely can fuck up absorption of nutrients. I don't know if the answer is probiotics -- or, that's not how I want to say it.

I'm not sure what the right steps are, and in what order, to heal an unhappy gut. (Leaky Gut syndrome, for instance, is real, and it definitely makes you not absorb nutrients as well as someone whose (semi)colon is healthy.) There might be something you would need to do *before* you take probiotics, but I don't know what that might be. But my feeling is, probiotics are generally a good thing. (Well, if you took too many at one time, you might get gnarly diarrhea, but it's not like OD-ing on painkillers or something.)

Do you have GI problems?

Also, I am not ditching you, but I'm trying to stick to my plan of going to bed early until this cold is gone, so I'm folding up the laptop for the night. (Unless I wake up at 4 a.m. and can't fall back asleep, like I did last night.)