metal

well well well...it's too bad for aubrey that i don't have a picture of my new braces yet, but most of you have already seen them anyway. my parents have this idea that once the other two get their braces on, there will be some sort of mandatory photoshoot of our four metal mouths. so i'm holding off on any pictures until then. ;)

beth is almost flipping out right now because she claims that mom told her that, hypothetically, it would be fine for us (i mean beth) to get a small house dog. if you san antonians remember back a few years ago, "a small house dog" is how luther and ellie started out and now we're a week away from shipping ellie off to friends in west texas. and we're already talking about another *inside* dog? i have yet to thoroughly investigate this alleged conversation between beth and mom, but on the offchance that i don't know my mother nearly as well as i thought, would any of you mind if i came and camped out at your house?
i guess i'm really not a dog type of person. i'm an ant farm person. wait...nevermind.

since dad left today for a tdy to maryland, i figured it was my turn to make sure something horrible happened while he was away. nathan got his chance last week, mom and sam got theirs the week before, and so i was next on the list. after only 3 hours at work this morning, i had to all but crawl to the back office to call mom because i was having another of those blackout/seizure episodes that was bad enough to cut off my vision, hearing, speech, limited my overall balance, movement, and coherence, and of course made all of the regular symptoms and pain worse. mom was great and came to drive me home and we've been trying to decide what to do ever since. the weird thing is, i don't have a doctor right now due to pcsing, iraq, and general tricare dumbness. they let me slip through all their cracks again so dad, even though he's in maryland, has been on the phone with the hospital all day trying to get me back into a doc rotation. i would rather get right back into the clinics without going through the er again. if you think about it, please pray that some of the neurologists will take a chance and agree to see me soon (like, this week) and that God will give them wisdom for how to proceed and how to make this stop. needless to say, we're so tired of the same old "take a bunch of drugs and nap alot" routine and would really like some real answers.