Mad dash

Firstly, let me tell y'all how much I love cruise control. I never had it on any of the cars I've owned in the past because they were all standards, and well old. (Since I think it can be had on standards now.) So last night I was driving back from Portland (I'll get to that in a moment) and I just set the cruise control to about 3 mph above whatever the posted limit was and called it good. I know that Michelle has done extensive research on gas mileage and cruise control and since I was going up and down a lot of hills I would've been better off without it, but when I first left Portland I discovered that because it was so dark and so quiet and there were not a lot of cars out I would find myself hitting 85 without even realizing it. Also, the Foo Fighters are fun to sing along with at the top of ones lungs totally out of tune. Am I tone deaf because I can hear I'm completely wrong, or are you only tone deaf when you are singing totally wrong and think you sound good? That's an interesting conundrum.

Also, I may honestly hate downtown Portland. I spent 45 minutes lost before I got to where I was going and then I spent another 20 trying to get out. Seriously, they need to do something about the sinage and not have a right turn arrow to get to the 5 freeway right at the exact spot you are supposed to turn right with no warning whatsoever that it is coming. (I'm not at all bitter about that.)

So now why was I in Portland? Let me first say that whenever I think of going to Portland, for some reason I always think it is much farther away than it really is. It is basically a trip to Phoenix for my family and we did that periodically. Maybe because it is a whole other state away. I don't know.... or maybe because when I've gone it has been after work so we've been stuck in I5 traffic until hell froze over. But I've totally digressed.

Michelle IMd me last week asking if I had seen the emails from our friend's mom. And hotmail, being the crappy piece of crap it is, had been sending them to junk so I hadn't seen a one. Apparently our friend (who lives in Juneau) had her next baby and unfortunately he ended up with collapsed lungs and was medevaced shortly after birth to Portland. She followed along a day or two later. So she's been in Portland since Christmas day. Had I known this sooner, I probably could've gone down sooner. So I emailed her mom and asked if it would be okay and then I emailed her directly and offered to come down and hang out. She was agreeable and so on Sunday I rented a car and made a mad dash down there. I stopped along the way for baby presents and even better trashy magazines for her. :) She'd been doing counted cross stitch the whole time she's been there.

The baby is doing so much better. He is still in the NICU which is a little sad, but he only has one more hurdle to go through and he'll be released. He's much better off than all the other babies there. He was full term (and ginormous - 9 lbs 6 ozs - she's little, I don't know how that keeps happening to her). Apparently the doctors think that when he took his first cry he did it with such force he caused a hole in the sac that surrounds the lungs which caused their collapse. Who knew that kind of crazy shit was possible?

There's a little tiny baby on the other side of him who at birth was 1 lb something ozs and only 1 foot long. That's a ruler length. The littler of the two of of my ferrets weighs more than this baby (and is probably longer too). How freaking sad is that? He was the only baby in the area not encased in one of those plastic things. The babies in those plastic things don't even look real. They looked like dolls or something. They never moved or anything. It was very sad.

So the last thing that her baby has to do is learn to eat. He doesn't want to. The first two weeks he was fed through a feeding tube (which is all he has now besides the monitors). She keeps trying to convince him to nurse but he hasn't figured it out yet. He can't leave until he does. So I spent a whole bunch of time with her in the hospital yesterday and I told her if she wants me to come down again just say the word and I'll come to visit. I'm sure it is lonely there for her. She was saying that a lot of the other moms don't come very often and that's sad too. (The 1 lb baby's mama is 13 which is beyond sad.) I was talking to the nurse and she seems to love it, but I honestly couldn't imagine. She does have a rather healthy some things just aren't meant to be kind of attitude which I suppose you need there.