NYC Prep – Have you seen it yet?

I spent a horrifying amount of time watching Bravo yesterday, but was pleased by my find of a new show called NYC Prep.  Actually, the Big A told me about it in the hospital, so I went looking for it.  OMG.  I mean, OMG.  It is about a group of New York City upper east and upper west side high school prep students who basically act and live like adults.  Except they are in high school, don’t work, and have more money than anyone else ever featured on a reality tv show, except for maybe the Donald.  Right away, I knew I was was going to get hooked.  Most of the kids are ungodly rich, not very attractive (By Hollywood standards, calm down) and full of themselves, so I knew it was a good summer show to follow and write about.  Apparently, it is being compared to Gossip Girl, which is the same concept except this show is the real deal.  I smell big trouble for these kids come fall.  Can’t wait to hear the fallout of this show.  You can find out all about this show here:

http://www.bravotv.com/nyc-prep

Some of the cast have blogs on the Bravo website.  This is where you can spend a lot of time, so beware.  Kelli had the funniest quote: As far as what it would be like to live independently with my brother, I have to be honest- I don’t know, because that is not the situation I’m in despite how it may seem. Out of all of my friends, I feel like I have the strictest parents!  People, listen up, she lives in an apartment in NYC with her brother, and they are both teenagers.  Her parents live in the Hamptons.  Who in their right mind thinks it is smart or safe to let your children live alone in New York?  I don’t care if they have a doorman and credit cards.  Where is their supervision?  These kids go out to parties and dinner clubs more than I ever did in my twenties and thirties combined, and they are YOUNG and in HIGH SCHOOL.  Ahhhhhh …. 

That last paragraph should be enough to convince you to watch the show.  However, let me place the cherry on top of this dish of sweet gooey fluff:

There are two so called “hot” guys on the show, Sebastian and PC.  Both have annoying hair, not so much in the personality departments, and have no idea how to date the ladies.  But they think they do, and maybe to high school girls who know nothing they do.  It is hilarious to watch them act like seasoned dating professionals.  PC’s bio says this about him – For PC, money, women and life’s spoils are all he’s ever known, and as such, he can’t wait to get out of the “sandbox” of high school.  How trite.  Sebastian’s bio is even better- Sebastian is known among his circle of friends as the guy who constantly hooks up with the hottest girls – either in the City or at his place in the Hamptons.  As a native French speaker, girls swoon at his surfer good looks and impeccable accent.  I think he looks like Justin Timberlake when he does his Gibb brothers skit with Jimmy Fallon on SNL, but way worse.  And his hair is like Donald’s Trump, a total comb over that is so not hot. 

Michael Jackson: Man, Myth, Moonwalker and Alleged Molester

After hearing the news from my hospital bed that Michael Jackson, King of Pop had died, I instantly thought of three things.  One, his children may have a chance at a normal childhood; two, his music catalog would have to be sold and Paul McCartney finally may own his own music; and three, what did Michael Jackson’s life and music mean to me?   All of these things made me smile, and then I watched in horror as the media exploded with non stop coverage, old videos, even .  Again, a celebrity who has fallen from grace was given massive media coverage, overexposure and adoration in death.  Did any of you catch the 2009 BET Awards or the Larry King celebrity special with Cher on Michael Jackson last night?  Spare me.  The Michael Jackson who died last week was not the Michael Jackson I grew up with.  My Michael Jackson had the moves, tunes and those damn sparkly socks and glove that every kid either had or secretly desired.  I owned the socks myself and would wear them for my choir performances in middle school.  This is the man I am going to miss, not the alleged child molester and man with the every changing face.

Before knowing Michael from Thriller or from the fantastic Off The Wall, we met when he was a young boy singing with The Jackson Five, the black and better version of The Osmunds.  Growing up in Detroit and L.A., my mom had the best musical taste of any mother I will ever meet and I was lucky enough to share her love of music.  Not only did she introduce me to the best rock bands of all time, she introduced me to the Motown Sound and I was singing and dancing to everyone from Stevie Wonder to Marvin Gaye.  Some of my early performances came from my own versions of The Jackson Five songs.  God, how Michael could sing like an adult with soul.  I can still picture myself, in my mothers groovy clothes from the 60s and 70s, singing and dancing my little butt off in our living room while my mom and brother were watching and clapping along to my favorite J5 song I’ll Be There.   That is what I did, nonstop, until the big divorce in fifth grade when my step father took our record player and most of our albums.    I’m now sad thinking about how much I loved to sing for an audience and regret not joining choir in high school.  Karaoke did the trick for me for a few years, but I am an old woman now who has misplaced her singing voice and I am missing those living room concerts.

By the time Michael came out with his single P.Y.T., my cousins were trying to teach me the dance moves.  I was never good with group choreography, since I was a solo act, so I shrugged it off and grew wary of Thriller.  I knew it was like the biggest album I had ever experienced in my young lifetime, so of course I grew a little disgusted with the Michael Jackson craze.  Back then I hated things that were popular, like any other girl who was a little alternative on the inside.  I’m not saying that I didn’t love Beat It or seeing Michael perform Billie Jean at the Motown 25  concert, I mean, my god, who else could dance and sing and do the moonwalk like him?  It was a fantastic performance, and one I got to see again on tv and online this weekend.  I clearly remember the day my friend, The Big A saw my first ever music pin, one of my then favorite band Van Halen.  She asked me, and I quote, why didn’t you get a Michael Jackson pin, he’s way better than themand I roared with laughter.  My mom bought me a Michael Jackson book and I kept laughing, because I couldn’t understand how EVERYONE in the world adored him.  But we all did, on some level I think.  I wouldn’t own several of his cds if it weren’t the case.

As an adult, I got to see my old musician friend fall from grace and become a joke of a man.  King of Pop no more.  He began turning white, lost his nose and he was unrecognizable and just flat out weird.  My husband said it best when he said that Michael Jackson died for him in 1993.  Of course, you all remember when Michael settled his child sexual abuse lawsuit and paid the family of a thirteen year old boy $22 million dollars.  That is a lot of money to make something go away.  You have to be thinking what I’m thinking.  Even though he also escaped prosecution for the same thing in 2005, I believe most people know that he did it and got away with it, just like other celebrities get off on criminal charges.  If there is one thing that makes me madder than anything it is hearing about any child getting abused or sexually assaulted.

I know that Michael must have lived a hard life, always performing and living in the spotlight, and I believe that some weird sexual things happened to him as well, but I can’t forgive him and forget about the bad things he was accused of in his lifetime.  It is hard for me to see others people do the same and just praise him and ignore the bad stuff simply because he died.  While watching that tv movie (twice) yesterday about the Jackson’s where Washington from Welcome Back Kotter plays his father, I was terrorized all over again.  Who does that to a child?  Who forces them to play in bars late at night, go to school, and perform and practice and steal their childhood away from them?  I watched an interview where Michael said he was sometimes in the same hotel room as his brothers while they were having sex right in front of him.  Oh my god, that is just not right.  Still, Michael needs to be accountable for his actions, and I just can’t sit here and write a gushy post about a man that forced his kids to wear disguises in public or dangled his baby over a railing.  While he provided me many years of musical joy, and a win for best Halloween Costume in 2007 @ work, I am still sick to my stomach thinking there may be children out there that we don’t even know about who could have been victims of his alleged abuse.

Shame on all of these people who chose to ignore the bad things Michael Jackson did.  Even in death, people need to tell it like it really is.  At least Cher kept it real and spoke how weird he had become.  I can appreciate the good things that Michael Jackson did just as well as the bad things he did or was accused of.  Do us all a favor and start doing the same!  No celebrity in death is a saint.  Not John Lennon, who ignored his first child, but made brilliant music and inspired millions of people, or Anna Nicole Smith, who died a skinny mother, who had watched her son die and left an infant behind.  Well, maybe Princess Dianna, who came close, but even she had her flaws.   We are all human, and never forget it.  None of us are perfect, and especially not Michael Jackson.

Recovery

I’m tired, dizzy, sick to my stomach, and sweating like a pig.  Apparently, my Dysautonomia is flaring, or my pain medicines are making me sick.  I am having trouble sitting up, let alone standing or doing things like take a shower.  My in laws had to visit me today in my bedroom, and I hate to drag people in their seventies up a flight of stairs into the world’s hottest bedroom.

I felt good the day after my surgery, I mean, better than I expected to feel.  But before the surgery, the nurse put a line in my arm and it fell out of the vein, and instantly freaked me out and swelled up and hurt like a bitch.  Then my surgery took longer, somehow my uterus was tucked way into my pelvis and was harder to remove.  Froze my bowls.  No strength to look up on line just what this means.  To you readers, all you need to know is that having severe gas pain and being forced to take softeners and having nurses stick things in my bum was no fun at all.  I drew the line at warm prune juice.  I can only be humiliated so much.  But back to the surgery: My ovarian cyst had ruptured and was gone by my surgery, so my doctor was sure that I didn’t have PSOS, and I got to keep the ovaries and not go into menopause.  So there is that to be happy about.  I was on oxygen for about fifteen hours, which is weird.  Who knows why?  All I know is that I feel like crap and hope it will get better soon.  I can handle surgical pain, but not the dizziness, sweating, and that sick to my tummy feeling.  My gas pain comes and goes.  I’ve stopped most of my meds trying to find what makes me the least sick or what helps the most. I have determined that my actual pain meds are doing it, and since they don’t let you leave with liquid morphine, the only pain medication that makes me feel good, I’m screwed and have to take them.   Twice in the hospital I had the spins so bad (And chest pain I didn’t mention, because I was going home Friday no matter what) that they gave me several medicine which didn’t work.  Sigh.  I knew this was going to happen.  As you can see here even my hair is a disaster.

I’ve spent hours laying in bed, being forced to watch every moment of Michael Jackson’s life.  I have to write about it, and will soon.  Just not today.  Still thinking about what I’ve seen and experienced with him through the years.  Just expect it soon.

My friends and family have been so nice to me.  Hubby is working around the clock as my nurse, and blending me up my favorite fruit smoothie shakes from Costco.  Sadly he is working double duty today, as our little one is sick with a fever, again, so I am trying to lay low and not demand too much.  The In laws just brought me flowers, which I loved.  They were trying to bring more food, but I begged them not too, as we have a ton of stuff.  The Big A made me and my family several meals, and I am dying at how good her mac n cheese is.  Some of the girls from work sent me a group card or sent their own card, and another even brought me flowers and a tabloid to the hospital.  My friend’s fiancee is sending me a book.  More friends called or just responded to my endless texts from my hospital bed, which I always appreciate.  I get bored just laying around.  I am so happy to have people be nice to me, you have no idea what this is doing for me.

Hysterectomy Update

Sometime tonight my real life friend The Big A will be posting a comment here to let you all know how my surgery went.   Like a dumb ass, I wrote down 20 instead of 2:00 hours for the surgery.  Imagine my surprise when I asked how long and the nurse told me as long as two and a half hours for the procedure.  Whoops!

So, yesterday afternoon my stepdaughter called me and wanted to know why I was having this surgery again.  Since I have so many health problems, none of us can keep it straight.  I’ll forget to tell my doctors what diseases I have all the time, so this was no biggie that she had to ask this.  After giving her the run down, I thought maybe I should tell all of you, just in case you weren’t sure why I was having this done, and why it is such a big deal.  So, here goes:

• Fibroids – 2.
• Polyps – To quote my doctor in 2005 “I’m chock full of them.”
• Twenty four years of heavy bleeding – 10 days periods every 21 days.
• Three failed D & C’s and a failed endometrial ablation.  My periods have come back, now up to four days every two or three weeks.
• Ovarian cysts.  I get them all the time.  Painful and right now I have one that is bigger than my actual left ovary.
• Septate Uterus.  Yep, my uterus has split in half.  Soon to rupture.
• I’ve been peeing out tissue from uterus for the past two years.  They are sure it is not from my bladder.
•  Adenomyosis, a severe form of Endometriosis, where the genes have gotten mixed up, and the Endometriosis is inside the muscle of the uterus and scarring occurs from the inside to the outside of the organ.  It also makes the entire uterus grow huge.  My endometrium has actually grown back, and she thinks it is also in the, um, lower area, causing severe pain you know when.
• Tilted uterus.  As if I needed one more thing.  If you look at me closely, you can see how the left side of me sticks out more than the right.  Hubby wants me to ask for it back in a glass jar, lol.  I’ve seen pictures of it, and damn, it is scary looking, all scarred up like a man whose been in battle or something.

The only choice you have when you have Adenomyosis is to yank it out.  No other options.  I’m now having the big tummy cut, so that I can be under less time.  And now I’m keeping my cervix.  I may have to get rid of the ovaries as well because of the cysts.  I do not want to go into menopause at my age, so let us pray she only has to yank one.

Not only is this major surgery, but I have the following concerns:

• Dysautonomia.  My heart rate and blood pressure are not regulated.  It it not good for you to have surgery as a rule.  Last couple of times I woke up from 30 minute procedures gasping for air with a heart rate of 42 and a nurse yelling for me to breathe.  Kind of scary stuff.  The damn doctor didn’t want to put me under and he and his nurses and my gyno and her nurses were duking it out in the hallway.  I gave her a look that said “just do it” and thankfully she won.  I told her no repeats today, that crap stressed me out last October.
•  Bleeding disorder.  When I was at Mayo they found out that I had an abnormal blood Venus Venom test result – a bleeding disorder, which I can agree with.  When I cut my leg open a few years ago I bleed and bleed for about 40 minutes from a tiny cut.  I have had an ER man nurse who was also a medic in the Army ask me if I had this, since when he took my blood I just gushed the blood all over and had instant, severe bruising.  I’m worried if something goes wrong in surgery than what will this do to complicate it.
• Genetic  issues.  Mayo also thinks I have a rare genetic condition involving a loss of collagen.  It is so rare they don’t even test for it, only two other places in the US do.  So far I’ve lost two inches of height, my heart has mild regurgitation in two valves, hearing loss, my retina is torn in a bunch of places (lattice degeneration), I have the whole split uterus thing, and a million other little things because of this.  I’m extremely worried that something is going to go wrong during the surgery because of my weak tissues and muscles.  I’m really hoping I’m going to be ok.

Even while writing this, I’m pretty calm.  I wasn’t able to sleep much last night, but that had more to do with the fact that it was in the 90s upstairs and I was sweating to death.  Stupid heat rising.  We have central air, but you’d never know it in my bedroom.  Summers here are brutal, and now that I have my new fan Beatrice is scared of it and won’t come sleep or visit me at night.

I guess I purged all of this just in case there was bad news and I wanted to prepare you in case something happens.  I’m thinking that I will just be sick and puke from going under, as in the past, and that I’ll be ok.  However, I know too many people who have had bad things happen in hospitals from “simple surgeries” so I wanted you all to be prepared, because I am dramatic and crazy like that.

I have no idea how long I’m going to be offline.  I’m staying in the hospital until Thursday, and hopefully by this weekend I will have time to post or at least read comments.  I appreciate all the good thoughts, prayers and kind words you all have been telling me for months now.  Thank you so much for allowing me to vent on here and for reading what I have to say.

Jon and Kate Gosselin are FINALLY Getting Divorced

My god, I had to watch Jon & Kate Plus 8tonight and come out of my semi-retirement and talk some SMACK TALK about KON.  Well, I listened to it, as I was online rather than watching the bullshit with the little houses.  But I watched to see the emotionless face of Kate Gosselin as she refused to even cry when discussing her future divorce from the man she vowed to just last summer to always be with.  I’m just horrified to hear that she only cried a half day, and woke up and was fine with it; she won’t be without her kids on holidays, meaning, Jon she won’t share them with Jon like any other normal divorced couple; and the worst of all, the damn show is still going to continue while they are legally separated.  Imagine my horror when I heard the following quote by that bad haired, controlling freak of a woman “the show must go on.“  Honey, you’ve lost your husband, and you are still concerned about the show and the almighty dollars you make from it?  SHAME ON YOU.  When will people learn to stop going on reality tv shows?  Because this is just another pathetic example how fame changes and destroys people.  Why do any of you fools want to meet her, let alone buy her books on how to have a happy family?  She wasn’t happy with Jon, and we all know Jon wasn’t happy with her bossing him around all the time, either.  He wouldn’t be publicaly running around with young girls and skipping Kate’s birthday unless he was done with Kate.  Who is even still watching this fake ass stupid fucking show about two people who don’t love and possibly hate each other and are forced to continue filming a tv show together in order to avoid working real jobs so that they can “provide” for their children?  Gosselins, all you have provided for them is the end of their family.  No amount of money in the world will ever replace daddy or mommy being with them every day.

By the way, are all you KON fans and freaks who have blindly supported this sham of a marriage at home right now sobbing because what I’ve been speculating and writing about for months has finally come true?  People, even the producer slipped and mentioned Jon’s own house, just like we read about in the tabloids.  Jon mentioned that they haven’t been together for seven or eight months, meaning before the holidays last year.  Hello!!!  I’m laughing, because within minutes of this show beginning, one of my loyal readers pointed out to me that I was just a couple months off with the below post when I predicted their divorce filing date of November 21, 2009.  I will only say this to the crazy KON supporters and be done with it “Ha ha, I was so right, and you all are idiots for believing that this marriage was real and for ignoring what the tabloids had to say about it.  The tabloids were right, so suck it.”   

http://thegirlfromtheghetto.wordpress.com/2009/03/11/when-will-jon-gosselin-divorce-kate-gosselin/

For more entertainment, watch their renewal of vows in Hawaii that aired during a month that they weren’t even together.  You can see how miserable they were last August when this was filmed.  I’ve been talking about them long before the news shows and talk shows were.

http://thegirlfromtheghetto.wordpress.com/2008/11/18/jon-kate-plus-8-miserable-hawaiian-wedding-on-tlc/