Shuffle | Corrine Kenner's Tarot Blog

Easter Cards

Yes, I know the Roman soldiers cast lots at Jesus' crucifixion. I didn't realize, though, that gambling is apparently a modern Easter tradition, too -- until I spotted this display at my neighborhood Walgreens:

The sign above the cards says, "A little chick told me It's Easter Sunday, April 12."

Christmas in the Hospital

Everything is okay now, but my oldest daughter, Katie, wound up in the hospital all weekend with pancreatitis.

Even when she's sick, she has a sense of humor. She kept telling me she was going to make a Lifetime movie of her experience, and title it, "Christmas in the Hospital." (And in the photo above, she practiced for her cameo.)

Katie, who's 18, had been feeling sick for the last two weeks. After the first week, her dad took her to urgent care and she was diagnosed with costochondritis -- a painful inflammation of the cartilage that connects the ribs to the breastbone. The urgent care doctor prescribed rest, Tylenol 3s, and prescription antacids.

Katie didn't get better, though. Last Thursday, she ran out of Tylenol 3 and switched to Motrin and Excedrin. By Friday night she was throwing up everything she ate or drink -- even small sips of water -- and she could hardly sit up. She was obviously dehydrated, and she had a splitting headache.

I took her to the emergency room at Fairview Southdale. There they did x-rays, which showed her pancreas was enlarged, and blood tests that showed elevated lipase levels. The ER doctor suspected gallstones, so they did a full set of ultrasounds, but luckily she didn't have any.

Even so, pancreatitis is bad enough. The doctor put Katie on morphine and a saline IV, and admitted her right away so she could have a few days of "bowel rest" with nothing to eat or drink -- just the I.V.

Ultimately, the doctors concluded that she started out with costochondritis, but all of the pain relievers she took irritated her system and inflamed her pancreas.

"Bowel rest" sounds incredibly disgusting, but it worked. After a day and a half, she started eating beef and chicken broth, and gradually worked back up to real food. We came home from the hospital on Christmas Eve. 

Katie is still tired and sore all over, but she's eating well. She even got into the Christmas chocolates last night -- against my better judgment, but her doctors did say, "no restrictions." She's also taking just one medication a day, a form of Prilosec.

It was a long weekend. Today my parents are going to come stay with Katie while the rest of us -- my husband and two younger daughters -- go to my sister's house a couple of hours away for a belated Christmas gift exchange.

Suspended Animation

I haven't been writing much lately. Instead, I've been learning how to maneuver with this oversized plastic splint on my arm. (I photographed it with our Christmas tree in the background, to add a festive holiday touch to the image.)

I hurt my hand more than a month ago, and while I thought it was getting better, any sort of movement seemed to screw it up again. Last week I finally gave up with the home remedies and found a doctor. Believe it or not, the verdict was ... arthritis. Arthritis! I'm hardly out of my 30s! I'm in the prime of life! Well, maybe not ... especially since the orthopedic specialist I consulted actually had a nose ring. That little piece of jewelry in her right nostril made me feel older than the diagnosis did. Technically, she said I have carpal metacarpal degeneration in my thumb, combined with swollen ligaments in my wrist.  Now, for a professional writer and tarot reader, doesn't that sound like a career-threatening injury? But all hope is not lost. All I have to do is wear this custom-molded plastic splint for a month, 24/7, except when I'm showering or doing housework. I'm kidding! I can't do any housework with this thing on my arm! We're wallowing in filth! (I am still taking showers, though.) The splint totally immobilizes my thumb and wrist, which is supposed to make the swelling go down and the pain go away. And in the meantime, I hired a housecleaner.

Don ' t drink and divine

"If you can't be a good example, then you'll just have to be a horrible warning."

-- My mother

You won't believe what I just did. I was going over the final draft of my fortune telling book, which features three Llewellyn/Lo Scarabeo decks -- the Universal Tarot, the Llewellyn Tarot, and the Liber T. I had all of the cards spread out on a big wooden tray, so I could double-check the accuracy of all of my card descriptions. And then ... I spilled a Diet Coke over all of them.

Because of the way I had them laid out in the tray, they all got hit, just as if I'd had them sitting in a bathtub. Now they're warping, and falling apart on the edges, and those that were touching are sticking together. What a mess.

I emailed my forgiving publicists at Llewellyn, and three replacement decks are already on the way.

That doesn't ease the shame much, though. I am a poor example to tarot readers everywhere.

No. Please. No.

The fake blood on the Three of Swords is bad enough.

Fall Out Boy are set to create specially designed Tarot Cards with artwork done in their own blood.

The emo favourites are pledging their support to blood drives –- the US name for blood donation by making the cards.

In total they will create 45 designs made from a mix of red ink and their own bodily fluid which they’ll be giving away to lucky fans on their upcoming tour.

The designs will be based on the Tarot Cards inside the sleeve of their new album ‘Infinity on High’ and will be individually numbered.

Expect to have to sell an arm and a leg to buy them on eBay.

Hitting the Sauce

One of my biggest pet peeves lately is ... sauce. Not sauce in and of itself. I love a good red sauce on my ravioli, or a tangy green sauce on my enchilada. I like hollandaise sauce on my asparagus, and of course, I like a little chocolate sauce on my ice cream.

But the key word, in all of those sauce descriptions, is on. I simply don't want sauce next to my food, or under it, or God forbid, swirling around in some sort of psuedo-framework on the edge of my plate.

Good luck. Lately, it seems as though restaurant chefs are all trying to outdo each other with their saucy little designs and decorations. Am I the only one who resents it when good sauce misses the mark? Since when did "plating" a dish become more important than "cooking" it?

Ultimately, I've got three problems with sauce on my plate:

1. If the sauce comes coasting along beside my food in any sort of design, I'm going to feel compelled to read the symbolism inherent in that design. "Look," I'll say to my husband. "It's a spiral. The chef is intrigued by the cyclical nature of life, as well as our earthly connections to the sacred feminine. Oh, and by the way ... Don't eat that little flourish on the left. The waiter had his thumb stuck right in the middle of it."
2. When I see sauce swirled precisely on a plate, I also know that the design came out of a plastic bottle. Yuck. When I eat out, I want the chef to ladle my food on the plate, hot from the stove, with a spoon. (And I want to imagine him doing so with love.)
3. Most importantly, sauce on my plate inevitably signals that I'm going to be denied a part of my meal. After all, there's no good way to scrape sauce up from the bottom of the plate. Sauce is a liquid. Once it's on a flat surface, it will always run away faster than you can chase it down with your silverware. Sure, I could soak the sauce up with a piece of bread -- and don't think I haven't tried that approach -- but by the time our entrees come, our bread is usually gone. I've also been tempted, more than once, to lick the plate ... but my husband only lets me do that at home.

Call me unsophisticated, but I eagerly await the day when this sauce decoration phase passes from our public lives, and we all go back to making little gravy lakes in our mashed potatoes.

Fug money

Aaaagh! I hate it! It looks like Monopoly money! It's so cheeeesy! Aaaagh!

It's a good thing I don't hold on to $10 bills for very long at a time, or I'd have to walk around screaming at my own money.

Source: http://www.startribune.com/484/story/280296.html

Ewww ...

That's all. Just ewww:

Ice worms: They're real, and they're hot

Ben Lee is stalking a creature most people think is a myth — if they've heard of it at all.

"I don't know what we'll see," he warned, loading an ice ax and snow shovel into his backpack. "Nobody knows what ice worms do in winter."

Lee, a senior at the University of Puget Sound, has come to Mount Rainier to find out.

Read the rest.