Punch Cards

What ever happened to punch cards? You know..... you eat here 9 times and the 10th one is on us! They used to exist, but I never see them anymore! Panera used to have one for hot drinks (of course Starbucks is too good for this....) but it disappeared almost a year ago. I think it was a great idea! A kind of "frequent buyers" card. Never the less, they are not found at the places I frequent.... and the past 10 weeks for me it's been Chick-fil-a. They do have the calendar, but they load the front half of the year with the good coupons and by November all you get is a free coke zero or a bottle of Dasani water. Seriously? You think I want to come to Chick-fil-a for bottled water? I think not. Why the rant, Courtney? Well.....


As you can see from picture.... we're pregnant (Steven Edward is holding a picture that says, "I'm going to be a Big Brother). I'm a bit over 14 weeks right now and this baby is making me earn it. If you had asked me in my first two pregnancies if I had morning sickness I would have responded by saying, "it usually comes in the afternoons, but yeah." But now, I scoff at the idea that what I had with the boys was even close to nausea. This time I've been suffering since about four weeks, wearing sea-sick bands daily since about 5 weeks, breaking blood vessels in my eye and making my nose bleed... I'll stop there. I suppose the point is it could be worse. It is often hard to believe that it could be worse in the middle of it, but when my eye had popped a blood vessel, I had a friend tell me about someone who had all 4 parts of her whites red (unlike mine - which was only one!). I had another friend detail for me her sickness runs in the corners of the subway stations in Manhattan.... luckily mine has been outside, on the side of roads, but mostly in the comfort of my very own bathrooms (if you can call crouching on the cold tile floor with your hair pulled back and glasses off comfort).


Eventually my doctor prescribed a medicine that I can take to help with the nausea. I hesitated to take it at first, but eventually I started taking it daily - as it seems that once the day starts to go bad it is hard to recover it. But before I was taking that the only thing I could keep down was Chick-fil-a. I went from running all the time and being a reasonably healthy person.... to refusing vegetables and water, and only desiring things fried in peanut oil topped with a pickle. It is a bit sad really. As I wait in the drive-through line I can feel myself getting fatter... but as any pregnant woman will tell you.... at the time, you don't care. I can't run, I can't enjoy a glass of wine with my husband, and I'm generally miserable all the time, so why not get a number one from Chick-fil-a with a half and half sprite/lemonade (not that I've done that before). Who cares about the food budget (show me a family who has had a sick pregnant woman in the house who has stayed within that!) or the amount of calories I'm taking in? Give me pancakes every morning, protein all day long, and chick-fil-a when I can't stomach anything else.


Well - I'm 14 weeks and this should hopefully be ending soon. I tried to go a day (today) without taking my medicine....

11am - start to feel gross
11:15am - take medicine
11:30am - vomiting
11:45am - take medicine again because you're sure the first never made it in your system
12:30.... waiting in a drive through line.

I actually saw a friend through the plate glass window and she looked at me with a knowing smile. Hopefully in a couple weeks this will be gone right? I'll like vegetables again, think hydrogenated oils are icky, and carry my Nalgene around full of water? Only time will tell.