i am a good little mormon cookie baker after all!

after several thwarted attempts over the last few weeks, i began to despair that cute rolled sugar cookies, adorably hand-frosted, were somehow outside my reach. today finally redeemed me in that department:

can you even handle the adorability of this wintry scene?
yeah, didn't think so. the ginger-lady, trees, and snow-folk are ashley's doing.
the stars and candy canes are mine.

after a harrowing thanksgiving for which i am only marginally thankful, i spent black friday in the safety of my bed, wrapped in a comforter watching katt williams comedy specials. only after ashley came home from work did i venture out into the world (ok, the living room) where, after a good talk, we decided what we both needed was a little baked goods in our lives. luckily i had mixed up some cookie dough last weekend which was still chilling in the fridge. we busted out the flour, the rolling pin, and my bucket of 100 cookie cutters and went to work.

man-in-tuxedo was ashley's plan, which i matched with fancy-blonde-bangs lady.
they are falling in love beneath the stars, naturally.

i even asked for some christmas music, which pandora lovingly provided. i feel like listening to yuletide carols about once every 900 years, so lets not plan on that happening again any time soon. but tonight, it just felt right!

enjoying the fruits of our labors.

i guess the old saying is true: when life gives you lemons....bake some cookies or something.

right? right.

sad, but true.

i came into work today and was getting settled at my desk when the fancy french attorney walked by and stopped, demanding in a shocked voice,

"why do you look so nice today?!"

i replied,

"well, i decided..."

and what i meant to say was, i decided that being a gimp wasn't an excuse to walk around looking like a dead mommy, that i decided other people have to look at me and i might as well give them something nice to look at, and i decided i'd feel better and have more energy and be happier when times were hard if i put on lipstick and as coco chanel says, i don't understand how a woman can leave the house without fixing herself up a little - if only out of politeness. and then, you never know, maybe that's the day she has a date with destiny. and it's best to be as pretty as possible for destiny, blah blah blah.

but she cut me off and said,

"that you want a boyfriend?"

and i said,

"yeah. that's pretty much it."

those french are some perceptive folks, i tell you what.

happy girl.

no more whiny sad blogging!!

my life is awesome!

here's why!

•i have a bomb-dig job that only involves occasionally making coffee for people who are really nice to me and pay me buttloads.

•my knee is healing, it will make a full recovery, i have insurance to pay for it--and heck, how about the medical knowledge even existing to fix it in the first place? 100 years ago, i could have ended up limping for the rest of my life.

•i have kick-a friends, three of whom are having birthdays this month, and i get to do fun things with them like brunch and movies and parties.

•i'm singing with jonnah on friday (belting my face off=the best medicine)

•my new cute bangs!

•i'm the new ward choir director! (remember when that was my signature look? ghetto librarian/sexy ward choir director? it's making a comeback) we are going to sing the coolest songs for christmas!

•i have lawyers who are dealing with my landlord issues for me (this is where my coffee making skills came in handy--they owed me one).

•miss lily decided to be the cutest ever niece (like she ever wasn't) in the skirt i gave her for her birthday. check it out:

yeah...my life=totally kick-a fairy tale.

probs because i'm so hot, righteous, and hair smart.

death wish.

every time i get an alumni update e-mail from cap21, i want to throw myself out a window.

student loan payments are obviously not enough of a reminder that i am a failure and will be paying for the privilege of being a failure for the next 15-20 years.

my "day" job (meaning i go there during the "day," not implying i'm doing something performance related at "night") has floor to ceiling windows in its reception area on the 20th floor, overlooking the trinity church graveyard. good thing i sit down the hall.

oh my heartpounding.

if loving you is a full-time job, i must be working overtime.

dear landlord:

please, stop suing me for unpaid rent. i've paid my rent and you know it.


i am tired of wasting time, mine and yours, at the housing court building.

love,
rachel

ps. your attorneys are mean.

oh, alright.

you win this round, anonymous. reveal yourself!

a of all, deepest apologies for leaving the most maudlin post in the world up for over a month. my bad. over it.

on the evening of september 12, i had big plans. i was going to go to the institute dance for like 18.5 minutes, get my dance on to some kelly clarkson, and then go blues dancing where i fully intended to win the solo blues contest and be able to go to blues blaze for free (yes i have (had) started blues dancing and i love it so go youtube it or something and be jealous of how cool i am). unfortunately, fate had other ideas.

i was rocking out to, i believe, "since u been gone," when someone (who shall remain nameless but you know who he is since i can't stop talking about it) came dancing up behind me, doing that "i go this way, you go that way and we look like funny disco dancers" move. i played along for a moment but finally wanted to turn around and see who the heck it was and why this was going on so long. big mistake. as i bent to the side and twisted my torso to look back, my rubber soled chuck taylors stuck to the ground while the rest of me...didn't. pop! went my knee and down i went.

i managed to make a total scene and cry and get eyeliner all over the dancefloor and somehow get home with the sweetness of amber henrie. two days later, again with ms. henrie's aid, i went to the emergency room and was put in a brace and crutches, told nothing was broken, and referred to an orthopedist.

the first ortho i went to was a total d-bag. he tapped the effusion in my knee with no anesthetic and poor sterile technique and generally inspired a complete lack of confidence in his ability to be a) a doctor and b) a person. i called my insurance company (oh, yes, my insurance kicked in three days after the fall, so COBRA covered the ER visit and fancyjob insurance has covered everything else, thankyouheavenlyfather) who authorized a second opinion. i made an appointment at the NYU specialty clinic that just happens to be on the 2nd floor of my office building.

"hi, i'm darren."

these were the words that forever endeared me to newawesomeorthopod dr. darren friedman. he spent a lot of time with me examining the knee and asking lots of questions, gave some advice, and referred me for an mri. he also declined to tap the effusion again so as not to traumatize me. and is totally easy on the eyes. le sigh.

post mri we met to go over things: dislocated patella? check. fragment of femur shaved off by my (apparently) razor sharp kneecap during dislocation? check. majorly stretched medial patellar ligament? just for funsies. we scheduled surgery for the following week, i called mom, mom bought a plane ticket, cue week of furious getting ready activities, including the purchase of an orthopedic foam wedge for elevating the leg from amazon.com (thanks leah and som).

wednesday i started having a few second thoughts about the surgery (scheduled for thursday). i was walking better and better, my pain was less and less, and i wondered if it was really going to be worth all the trouble. that night as i waited for my poor mother to arrive from the airport (who knew the C train stopped running at 10:50pm? not me) the fragment got lodged between my femoral condyle and kneecap and i couldn't bend my knee almost at all. it was a good reminder that the surgery was necessary and helped reassure me. also, sweet tamara's sweet man friend came over and gave me a blessing which was exactly what i needed. who needs a man friend of my own when i can borrow other people's instead? uh, me.

yesterday mom (who finally arrived, thank goodness) and i headed to new york downtown hospital in rush hour subway crowds (nightmare) and got checked in. word to the wise: that place is a dump--if it wasn't going to take over a month to get on the schedule at NYU hospital, i would so not have gone to downtown. but, time was of the essence so i tried to make the best of it. i found the closer i got to the OR the more competent the staff became. after epic waiting in like three separate areas, we finally sat down with dreamy dr. friedman and the anesthesiologist and discussed details. we decided to go with an epidural and sedation rather than general anesthesia, to protect la voce and then got down to business. the best part was while they were prepping me they gave me a small bolus of versed in my IV to calm me down before placing the spinal catheter so i got a few minutes of feeling reaaaaaaalllllyyyyyyy good before i was out like a light. ps, epidurals hurt like crazy, but work incredibly well. i can totally understand why some ladies like them so much.

i woke up as they were finishing putting the dressing on, complete with anti-embollism stocking (i wish i could find a clip of principal figgins' mumbai air commercial). i was wide awake and feeling fine when they took me to recovery, but had to wait there for like two hours while the epidural wore off, which was fine with me because i wasn't puking from general like the poor lady next to me. a physical therapist came and put a brace on, which was nice because my leg was still numb so i didn't feel how much it would eventually HURT to straighten my leg. they took me back to ambulatory recovery, pulled out my IV, mom helped me get dressed, and the security guards downstairs called us a car. we got home, i made it out of the car ok, and hobbled up to my house.

aaron, my home teacher, brought over some dinner and we settled in. the rest of the epidural finally wore off and i was faced with how much this mess actually hurt. dr. friedman ended up removing not one but THREE fragments, one from my femur and two from my kneecap, drilled all the fragment sites, and put stitches in to shorten my stretched ligament. i was expecting to get up from the couch and sleep in my bed tonight, but that was not happening. we tried a couple times, and i even took half of an oxycodone (i'm trying to do this without narcotics as much as possible to avoid ending up on mtv true life) and finally, on the advice of sister dr. leah, i just stayed on the couch. we turned on "it could happen to you" and i eventually fell in and out of sleep until now, when i woke up having to pee, and decided to blog to keep my mind off it since getting up unassisted is not an option and i don't want to wake mom up.

so there, anonymous, more than you ever wanted to know about rachel's extremities. not much of a light summer beach read, but i hope you're happy.