half birthdays and anaphylactic shock and evil hamsters

I know, strange title, but hey, that's me!

I'll start with the shock one first. - My mother, Marsha, called me two days ago to tell me she almost died from anaphylactic shock. She didn't eat anything strange or get bit by anything that she knows of. She was off on a religious retreat with a bunch of the kids from the youth group she hangs out with. It was her and another adult with the kids. There was also the woman in charge of the dorms they were staying in. She told Dave, the other person from her church, that she felt funny. Her ankles were all blothy and itch. Then it worked it's way up her legs to her whole body. Then she was having _a little_ trouble breathing. It wasn't bad, just harder than it should have been. Dave told her to take two of her Benadryl as he checked on the kids.

He came back to check on her and she wasn't feeling any better, even a little worse. So he drove down to talk to the woman in charge of the place, Martha. Martha was ready for bed until she heard what was going on. Then she changed and drove mom to the hospital. The bad thing was the hospital was 1/2 hour away.

When they got there and the doctor examined mom, he asked what she'd taken for meds. When he found out she took two benadryl he told her it probably saved her life. She might not have made it to the hospital otherwise. By that point her tongue was swelling. The doc gave her a shot and some other meds.

She was back to the dorms in a couple hours feeling fine. The next day she drove the kids back to the west coast of Florida as was planned. She felt fine, as if nothing had happened.

She's still feeling fine and has no idea what caused it. Though she knows to call me next time. Even if there is nothing I can do, even if it's the middle of the night - I don't care, I want to know about it.

Ellie and I were sitting here figuring out our half birthdays and what we should do on them. I was online so I found all sorts of neat things different cultures do for birthdays. It's very interesting. In parts of Canada they ambush the birthday kid and grease his/her nose for good luck. In Italy they pull on the birthday kid's earlobe the same amount of times as the kid's age plus one for good luck - the way we do spankings. It was very cool. I think it was Equador that a 15 year old girl gets a big party and her father puts her first pair of high hells on her and waltzes with her while 14 boys and 14 girls look on. There were a lot of cool ones, but those stuck out at me as ones I'd never heard before.

My half birthday is January 23, Ellie's is May 6. We decided we need to do something fun on those days.

Now, evil hamsters. I picked up a hamster on Friday that I found on Freecycle. I'd been planning on calling her Honey Glazed due to a funny Easter card I got from my mom a couple years ago. That is until we got her home. She beat the crap out of Ellie's hamster Bosco and pulled a chunk of Kapok's fur out when he was leaning too close to her cage. Well, Ellie was trying to think of a famous femal criminal to name her after as the original name just didn't fit any more.

So we decided on Lizzy Borden. She gave Bosco forty whacks, when she saw what she had done, she gave Kapok another one. The evil little thing seems to love her new name. She actually responds to it when you call out to her. When she's awake that is.

We all love her even though she's an evil, psycho hamster.

Guess that's all for now. I really should be writing, but I really don't see it happening tonight. So I guess I'm just gonna surf the net 'till bed.

Later days,
Ken

PS - Does anyone know where the whole "Later days" ending comes from?