Tory DeMABUHAY!!!!!: Pancakes and placentas

View from my seat at the Pancake House

One of my favorite things in the world is breakfast food. One of my favorite environments, therefore, is the American diner. I miss them. I miss breakfasting so so much. So, I took myself out to breakfast at Pancake House, just like I promised. Good decision, Tory. Good decision.

One of my main goals when ordering breakfast fare is to diversify. I try as hard as possible to cover the basic food groups: salty, savory, sweet, coffee. This is a visual representation of what that looks like minus two plates added with each of the eggs I ordered:

I cheated and looked at some of the answers.

I finished it all.

Defeated! Muhaha hahaha! There was also this awesome used bookstore, Cagnaan Booksales, in this complex, which is called BTC. The cab driver had no idea where I was asking to go by the full title, Banilad Town Center, until I showed it written on my hand. He laughed and laughed. If you want to get there, tell 'em "BTC! And step on it!" I perused books for a long time. They have so many! The medical section was best.

Color! Atlas! Disease!

I think this person was growing a fetus in his ear.

The book on STDs is much, much fatter than the one discussing heart surgeries. As in, there is less information that needs conveying about how to perform a surgery on the heart than there is about diseases acquired from bedfellows. That's abstinence education fodder, if I've ever seen any.

Bought a book on how to do laundry. The whole thing is not my forte, and it was like $5. Trust me, it will pay for itself in crossword puzzle answers.

Grocery shoppin'!

Boxes and boxes of milk.

The grocery store employees laughed at me and felt really uncomfortable about this image, so I hope you like it. I sure do.

I made a successful dinnnnnner!!!!! with a pack of mixed vegetables, the contents of which I am still not clear on, some chicken bullion, eggs, and mung bean noodles. It looked like this:

I ate alll of it. It was so good. There were little green chilis in the veggie mix, as well as some sort of root crop, some green beans, an ear of corn, and something butternut squash slice-looking? All in all, it was delicious.

Then, today

You can see where this is going. Wait; we could have totally different ideas about what me wearing this stuff means. Point is, blood is coming up. Right here.

Workspace

Removing membranes

It was so so so awesome!! I watched a baby get born. A human. That wasn't outside and then was. It was incredible. And, then we got to chop up its placenta. They are really hot when they come out. Wasn't expecting just how hot. And bloodier than I thought. I didn't pass out though, guys! It was a really good feeling. A moment of realizing that I am actually doing this. I made it here; I got the supplies here; I was able to convey our project to hospitals so they would want to be part of it. I went through the whole protocol with people in a hospital. I am doing this and am getting done what I came here to do. That feels really good. It is also incredible to me that I have gotten to be witness to so many stages of the birthing process. I feel pretty humbled by the idea that these women are allowing me to be present.

All the ladies did wonderfully with the training!! I am feeling pretty good about this as a start of the whole thing.

I closed the evening with some of this:

The door to the apartment was open (screen closed; damn cockroachies almost made it in), and it was super hot. Watching ridiculous horror flicks on TV while hot is just summer magic. I really hope Chicago is primed for this when I get home. 8 days.

More training tomorrow. More sleep now. I close with this: