Cleaty

Business as Usual

2010-02-25T16:32:00.000-08:00

I finally got rid of the baby sex poll I had on the right. I put it up 13 months ago. Which means the Peanut being 13 months old. We still call him the Peanut or the baby a lot. The husband also likes to call him the Fuss, especially if he makes a fussy peep. El Jefe never caught on. I was thinking of calling him El Campeon on this blog (the Champion), which is what one of my relatives calls him every time she sees him.

We've been making and experimenting with pizzas a lot. Before El Campeon was born, we had one pizza recipe and never dared change it. Our pizzas used to be piled high with onions, garlic, sundried tomatoes, and artichoke hearts. But now we are going simpler. We are perfecting a basil pizza that simply has a tiny amount of Prego sauce, a can of crushed tomatoes (drained), and lots of basil. We keep forgetting to put garlic on the pizza, so that's our next experiment. And I recently discovered roasted, crushed canned tomatoes which added nice flavor to a pasta sauce recipe. The crust is usually Boboli or whatever premade (fresh or frozen) crust I can find. In the past we used to buy the Trader Joe's pizza dough you would roll out yourself, but nowadays, the extra 5 minutes and flour mess might not be worth it. But then again, most premade crusts are too thick for me so maybe over the weekend we can try a Trader Joe's pizza dough ball. Oh, and we always use the mozzarella balls, sliced, instead of the shredded mozzarella. There's a huge difference in flavor and texture.

As a teaser...we are thinking about a puppy... Stay tuned for more.

The Last Post of 2009

2009-12-31T12:07:00.001-08:00

We had a great Christmas. El Jefe got loads of presents and while he didn't care much for opening them, but has really enjoyed playing with them.

I made prime rib for Christmas dinner and although it took a lot longer to cook than I anticipated and I wasn't happy with the rub nor the au jus, everyone else seemed quite pleased with the way it turned out. Oh, and El Jefe slept through the night on Christmas night. We were planning on repeating the gift opening the next day so he would sleep well again, but then I realized that I had actually had a couple of glasses of wine with Christmas dinner, and that was probably the reason he slept so well.

This year the husband and I gave each other an "experience" gift and we went out on a date! It was fun. We had a sushi lunch and saw Avatar in Imax 3D. The movie was good. I would definitely recommend it. It had some great themes and messages in it and it definitely made me think about the environment and our impact on it. I hope we manage to keep the earth habitable for at least my son's lifetime.

I had a great 2009 with it's ups and downs. But in the big picture, my ups were definitely a lot more plentiful than the downs, so I am blessed in that regard. I hope 2010 turns out just as great, or better!!

Pictures coming in 2010!

Musings

2009-12-02T18:10:00.001-08:00

I haven't posted in forever. That seems to be the general theme of my blog. Whatever. Been busy. Life is pretty good. El Jefe still doesn't sleep through the night. We don't want to do a "cry it out" sleep training method, but everything else requires more time and patience, and it's hard to stick to a plan in the middle of the night, when you are up for the 4th time. It's much easier to stick him on the breast and fall asleep next to him. When we wean El Jefe from breastmilk to cow's milk, it will probably be easier, because he'll be waking up to a sippy cup instead of the breast.

At the same time, I kind of enjoy cuddling next to El Jefe. It's like our quiet, peaceful bonding time.

Someone asked me what was surprising about becoming a parent. My first response was the time it takes. Wow. I'm mourning the loss of most of my hobbies (have kind of been playing soccer), but I'll always have time for scrapbooking and cardmaking. My time with an infant at home is limited. And most of the mom's I meet who are scrapbooking are already grandma's or have children who sleep through the night or have family nearby to care for the little ones while they indulge in crafts.

The second most shocking thing about becoming a parent was the love you feel for your child. Amazing. And for us it wasn't an instant love, it took time. In the beginning, we were more in provider mode, meeting the baby's needs. Now, it's just amazing. I've had glimpses of these profound love...towards my husband, towards my parents in their unconditional love. But the love you have for your child is really beyond description.

Being sane when you have a baby can be hard. I'll blame mommy-brain on the fact that all week I thought the freezing temperature was 42 degrees F, not 32. The husband and I sometimes have trouble seeing the big picture and we get caught up in the little things over which we disagree. But over the weekend, the husband said something profound to keep things in perspective: we have our health and a beautiful son, let's not get caught up in the little things and be grateful for what we have; hings could be a lot worse and this will probably be the easiest we'll have it.

Maybe from now on I'll stop commenting on how I never post and just blog when I can. And hopefully you guys will just keep coming back when you can.

Had A Great Weekend

2009-10-19T13:16:00.001-07:00

Husband's birthday. Ice cream cake. Dinner with friends. Football watching (does it snow in TN??). Soccer playing. Couch shopping. Made chili. Slept in. Picnic in the park. Only 4 more days till the next weekend!

Dear Loyal Followers,

2009-10-18T10:13:00.000-07:00

I am alive. Just busy. But know that I think of you guys every day. Well, not each one of you individually, but all of you, as a collection.

Anyway, just busy with work and being a mom. So you want to know what my typical day is like?

5:30 am - Husband goes to work and I typically am half awake (I'm a sensitive sleeper).

7 am - typical wake up time for El Jefe; if we're lucky, like we have been the last week, he'll either sleep through the night or only wake up 1 or 2 times.

7 - 8 am - keep him in bed with me as long as possible (usually 5-15 minutes), but this usually happens if he wakes up around 6 am, breastfeeds, and then goes back to sleep in bed with me; diaper change; clothing change (?); play with kitties; chase the El Jefe around the living room; MAYBE try to get a load of laundry going; or make the bed (a significant achievement, trust me).

8:30 am - feed the kitties, El Jefe, and me.

8:50 am - do a second attempt at feeding El Jefe, if he didn't finish his food the first time around.

9 am - shower; put El Jefe in the bassinet or in his exersaucer; get ready for work.

9:30 am - breastfeed El Jefe; sometimes he'll fall asleep.

10 am - nanny arrives, tell her what's going on; last few minutes of cuddle time if El Jefe is awake.

10:30 am - 6:30 pm - relax, eat, pump, relax, pump; OR work; actually, work has been quite hectic lately so it hasn't been relaxing.

7 - 10 pm - arrive home; breastfeed El Jefe; (make?) eat dinner; wash pump dishes; play with El Jefe; breastfeed El Jefe, bathe him, feed him, he sacks, maybe watch a little bit of a movie or try to do some stuff on the computer; go to sleep.

On days I'm lucky or work is slow, then I go home around 6 pm and get a little bit more time to do other stuff, like meet up with a friend, go for a walk, go to the store with El Jefe. But generally, that's it. That's life right now. And we are loving it.

Kitties, Here I Come

2009-09-05T22:37:00.001-07:00

Thank God

2009-08-30T09:49:00.000-07:00

For the past 6 month, my brother has been in jail on DUI charges. At 1:11 am this morning, I got the call from him that he was out. The Peanut and I are about to fly south to see him. I can't wait.

Yes, I am Alive

2009-08-18T22:38:00.000-07:00

Yup, I’m still alive. I’ve just been busy. In the past month we went to Orange County, Boston, and started looking for a nanny.

Both trips were fun. We saw loads of family and friends and the Peanut had a wonderful time meeting lots of people. Highlights include:

Splashing in a kiddie pool; hanging out with big kids (the Peanut’s highlight), eating lots of ice cream at Cabot’s in Newton, seeing lots of friends (thank you to those who traveled long distances to see us), going to the Boston aquarium, getting lost trying to drive through the Boston suburbs (fortunately the Peanut slept right through it).

At his 6 month birth anniversary we decided we could no longer call our son Peanut. He was too old. Not only did he no longer look like a Peanut (big head, poufy diaper), but we didn’t want the name to stick. So we’ve been trying out other names that include Calabazita (pumpkin) and El Jefe (the boss). Unfortunately we still tend to call him Peanut or the Fuss.

The nanny interviewing process has been going pretty well. We were happy with our pool of nannies until we realized that we don’t really know any of these people. And how well can you really get to know anyone in less than 1 month? So we are kind of stressed out right now, trying to figure all this out. Before the Peanut was born, I figured I would have no trouble sending him to daycare. And I think the husband felt exactly the same way, until he stayed at home with the Peanut for 10 weeks. My husband fears the nanny will be careless or abandon our child and my fear is that the nanny will kidnap him. We’ve decided to offset our work schedules so that the Peanut is only with a nanny for 6 hours a day, 4 days a week. Most likely nothing will happen, and the nanny will become an integral part of our family and the Peanut’s life. What more could we ask for than a nanny that the Peanut is happy to see? Wish us luck!

Other highlights from the past month include:

First food – rice cereal with breastmilk! We didn’t get any of the funny faces. On the contrary, the Peanut really seemed to enjoy the food. We have gotten some classic faces with pureed carrots, but we don’t have any pictures of that.

We got a backpack carrier which the Peanut really seems to love.

We checked out some horses!

We used the potty (but I’ll only show the Peanut’s picture). Ok, so we are not one of those families that is crazy about one parenting theory over another. For a while there, the Peanut tended to leak his diaper every morning. So instead of waiting for a leak, or trying to do a change midway through the deed, we decided to sit him on the potty. And it worked! Was that too much info? We’ve actually only tried this once. But it was a cute picture!

The Peanut got his first drug rug!

And these baseball hat pictures are adorable!

And of course, priceless.

Since I haven’t posted in a long time, I’m going to make this a long one.

My birthday was last week! This was actually a pretty bad birthday of all the birthday’s I’ve had. It got better as the day neared an end. In the past I have always loved my birthday and I was really looking forward to this birthday. But this birthday all I really wanted to do was go home and sit on the couch and stare at the wall. However, I was stuck at work, with a lot of stressful things going on, until much later than I wanted to. When I finally left work, my parents helped me organize the garage. That actually made me happy. Am I old or just domesticated? We finally ended up going downtown, to partake in the once a month summer festivities (band, farmer’s market, etc.), and had dinner at The Tied House, our local brewpub. Thanks to Will and Christine who joined us. But then, as we were heading home, I felt really sick. It must have been something I ate? Who knows. Fortunately the ill feelings passed quickly.

Oh, 3 weekends ago I went to a soccer camp put on the by the local women’s professional team. It was my first time playing soccer in about 1 year and it was fun. I did roll my ankle but it only took a couple of minutes to get over the pain and back onto the field. There were about 18 women at the camp coached by Tiffeny Millbret and Christine Sinclair. I was probably the most skilled player on the field. But it was a great way for me to get back into the soccer mood. I’ve signed up for a women’s league starting in 1 month. I can’t wait.

Speaking of rolling my ankle...I’ve always been worried about what would happen if we tripped as we were carrying the Peanut. Would we throw the Peanut in the air so that we could free our hands to break our fall? Would we do a move defying the laws of physics and somehow end up under the Peanut to break his fall? Well, the other day I was carrying the Peanut when my foot found a hole in the ground and I rolled my ankle. I heard lots of popping noises. And it hurt. But the Peanut barely moved in my arms. And I watched the husband do a similar thing. He was sitting on the ground and tried to stand up while holding the Peanut, lost his balance, but somehow managed to land back on the ground, in a completely different position, but the Peanut barely moved in space. I guess when you are holding such precious cargo, your body is aware of that and it reacts accordingly.

Well, I had planned on making this post A LOT longer, but to get it finished and published, I'll stop here. At least I got the pics up and that's all anyone cares about anyway.

Link Roundup

2009-06-25T13:07:00.000-07:00

"I want these two hypocrites to apologize to all of my gay and lesbian friends who want to be able to marry the one they love, rather than being scapegoated as threatening traditional marriage. Seriously."

Amen!

I am so glad I was born in a country with good healthcare. And I am fortunate to have access to the healthcare I needed while I was pregnant. There's so much I can say but it's easier for you to just think for yourself:

"Childbirth in Tanzania." (no gory pictures)

"It’s not easy to hear the truth, that your child is indeed different. Some parents do not even hear the doctor’s words: “Your child has superpowers.” It is natural to feel afraid, and even to seek a second opinion. But it is within every parent’s power to handle such an occurrence. Indeed, you will likely come to find your life with a superpowered child an enriching one, in addition to never fearing street toughs again."

Phew! Questions answered. via The Morrissey Chronicles.

"here isn't enough money to go around, and to try to help everyone a little bit—to observe the principle of universality—isn't as cost-effective as helping a few people a lot."

Sometimes the solution isn't fair. via Alkaline Earth.

"And then we dismantled the most ancient of human laws, the law against usury, which had existed in some form in every civilization from the time of the Babylonian Empire to the end of Jimmy Carter's term, and which had been so taken for granted that no one ever even mentioned it to us in law school. That's when we found out what happens when an advanced industrial economy tries to function with no cap at all on interest rates."

Good read on the current economic crisis. via Alkaline Earth.

And finally, here are some pictures. The Peanut absolutely loves his exersaucer. We call it his office since he always looks as if he's working pretty hard and having way too much fun.

Some Insights

2009-06-22T21:06:00.000-07:00

I finally have made time to read. And now it's my second favorite thing to do. I have read a couple of books already, a couple of mystery thrillers: Coffin Dancer by Jefferey Deaver and Fatal Voyage by Kathy Reichs. They were both great books and I often stayed up too late to read a few more pages. Now I'm reading a Skeleton Crew by Steven King. I've read The Mist - great story but I didn't like the ending. But as the husband said, there's no better way to end that story. Now I am reading The Monkey, and I'm surprised I haven't had nightmares. Stories about children's toys gone bad really scare me. Always have.

I installed Quicken on my laptop and have started to track our finances beginning in June. I am super excited about this it's almost scary. Maybe I should have been an accountant. I want to track every single penny we spend. Hopefully I won't drive my husband crazy. On the plus side, this will help us decide whether we're financially stable enough to have one of us become a stay-at-home parent.

I'm on Facebook, but not on Twitter. I checked out the twitter page today for the first time, and it really stressed me out. It took me a while to get on Facebook, and now I love it. I'm always thinking of new people to look up. However, I don't think I can handle another online social network application/website/whatever you call it.

The Peanut has woken up only once during the night for 4 of the last 5 nights. Wow! We are excited. I, on the other hand, wake up a lot more, for various reasons. We finally stopped bedsharing and put him back in the bassinet in our room and the first night, much to our surprise, he only woke up once. I woke up 3 times, because I was used to it and I really needed to nurse. But I waited it out and only had to feed once. Monkey was really annoying last night, scratching at the door, and whining to come into our room. We've been kicking the cats out of our room because Monkey and Fattie keep jumping into the Peanut's crib. Monkey is bi-polar and she could easily scratch the Peanut and Fattie is, well, he's almost 30 lbs. So if my body is not waking me up, it's the kitties. But at least it's not the Peanut and that's a good thing.

The husband survived his first day back at work. He's quite bummed that his paternity leave is over. He did an awesome job taking care of the Peanut and I'm so glad that he got to stay at home. I think all daddies should stay at home for a few weeks. And if you live in CA, you can even get paid for some of the leave. I had my concerns when I first went back to work and left the boys alone. I was mostly worried about the Peanut missing me and the husband not knowing how to soothe him. The Peanut did miss me but the husband found his own way to soothe the Peanut and everything worked out. Now I see my husband going through the same emotions that I did when I went back to work.

Bits and Pieces

2009-06-19T17:07:00.000-07:00

For the second time in his life, the Peanut only woke up 1 time last night and slept 7 hours straight. I, on the other hand, woke up about 4 times, wondering why the Peanut had not yet awoken and to check on him. The funny thing is that we had been bedsharing once again for the past week (we enjoy bedsharing so much we can't stop), and last night was the first time we put the Peanut back in his bassinet. We'll probably have him sleep in his bassinet again, and we'll see what happens tonight.

As I was leaving for work one morning last week, I noticed the husband was setting up the xBox and projector to watch a movie:

Me: Oh, what movie are you guys going to watch?
The Husband: Jackass.
Me: Ummm, I don't think that's a good movie.
The Husband: No, it's a good one, it has good music.
Me: Ok. (and I walked out the door)

When I returned that evening, it turned out that Jackass was in fact not a good choice. Oh well. Live and learn. But the Peanut had been watching a lot of Cosmos. Whenever Carl Sagan is on the screen, the Peanut starts talking back. It's soo cute.

My mom and the husband teamed up to care for the Peanut last week. I think it was a good week for everyone. The husband goes back to work on Monday and he's already missing the Peanut. The transition is hard but it does get easier as time goes by. My mom will be flying back and forth every week to take care of the Peanut this summer. Then we'll have to figure out what we do...daycare, nanny, stay at home mom/dad...decisions, decisions.

Well, that's it for now. I'm so glad it's Friday. I'll try to get more pictures up soon.

Coolness

2009-06-06T21:28:00.001-07:00

Getting ready to go swimming.

He really likes his shades.

I'm tired!

We Haven't Laughed This Hard Ever

2009-06-01T21:38:00.000-07:00

Sorry for the poor video quality. We have a high-def camera but can't figure out how to make better quality, but smaller sized videos. This one is about 2.5 minutes long and the image gets better when we turn on the light about 30 seconds into the video. Be sure to have the sound on. Enjoy!

It's Been a Great Month

2009-05-31T20:29:00.000-07:00

Lots of playing. Lots of walks. Lots of fun. Even some swimming! I can't wait for the days to come.

Weird

2009-05-19T17:05:00.000-07:00

On my way in to work this morning, I was driving behind an old, teal sedan. While we waited at a stoplight, the driver threw her cigarette butt out the window. Bad. We continued driving, I was listening to NPR (note to self, time to pledge) and had the windows rolled down because it was nice outside. I started smelling gas fumes. The smell continued for a few blocks and I started watching my gas gauge, to make sure it wasn't me. I then realized it was the car in front of me. The car wasn't dripping gas, it was spewing gas. It was really gross. I switched lanes to try to pull up next to the driver and let her know she was leaking gas, but traffic prevented me from pulling up beside her. We finally reached the street where I had to make a right turn and the leaky car got in the lane to make a left turn. Even though we were a couple of lanes apart, I noticed that not only was the car spewing gas, it was also smoking. I looked up to see if the driver was looking in my direction, and I saw her roll down the window and reach for a cigarette. I started honking to get her attention and when I did, I signaled and mouthed that she was leaking gas. She nodded her head and mouthed "I know." I made my right turn and drove away as fast as I could. What was she doing throwing her cigarette butt out the window if she knew she was leaking gas??!!

Oh No!

2009-05-17T09:25:00.000-07:00

What happens when I leave the boys alone??? The Peanut gets a new outfit.

That's right, that's an old pair of Hanes, with arm holes.

This is a great sight to come home to.

Working Mom

2009-05-08T10:01:00.000-07:00

I've been back at work for 2 weeks now. The first couple of days were easy. The next few were hard. Being at work isn't so hard, it's when I go home and I see what I'm missing that I sometimes feel sad. I tend to only get 2-3 hours with the Peanut of play time before it's time to go to bed. So now my weeknights and weekends have a whole new meaning. I used to have a long list of things of stuff I wanted to do on the weekends, but now all I want to do is hangout with the Peanut. And not getting enough rest at night just adds to the emotional stress. But we're managing.

By the second week, stuff at work got a lot more stressful. I went from hanging out with my son 24/7 to working on developing a numerical model of a bullet for new and improved armor designs. So work is challenging. My boss was in my office a few days ago, and we were trying to figure out how a material model was working and he said: "blah, blah, blah, that's right, because what is the log of 1...?" Huh, the log of 1? Uhhhhhhh?? What's a log? I blanked. The only logs I had been thinking of for 3 months were pooppy and nursing logs. And my boss was referring to something completely different. And I've had more than a few similar incidents. Hopefully my boss doesn't think I'm a total idiot now.

The husband is doing great at home. And the Peanut and husband are developing a great relationship. The husband is now becoming the Peanut expert. But fortunately I still have the boobs so the Peanut still enjoys seeing me come home.

I can't believe I'm a working mom now. So much has changed in the last 4 months. I honestly can't remember what we did with our time before the Peanut was born. And my little joys in life are different now. I am happy to see mustard yellow poops in my son's diaper (the best color to have). I cheer when I can pull a booger out of the Peanut's nose. Before the Peanut I was indifferent to baby clothes and didn't care too much about other babies, especially if they didn't belong to friends or family. Now I love baby clothes and all things babies. And when I see another baby I either reminisce about when the Peanut was that young or imagine what the Peanut will be like when he's older.

Well, it's Friday and I can't wait for the weekend to start. Pictures later.

What We Have Been Up To

2009-04-20T16:21:00.000-07:00

This is my last week on maternity leave. I am sad. I can't believe I am going to have to leave the Peanut. The good thing is that he'll stay with someone that loves him as much as I do, his daddy. I'm sure the two boys will have lots of fun together. The Peanut will have a much easier time parting than I will - as long as he gets fed when he wants it and his diaper changed when he needs it.

Over Easter weekend we went to the OC to visit my family. The Peanut was great on the flight. He ate, slept, sucked on his pacifier, and looked around. And of course he charmed a few people. A lady sitting behind us commented to her travel mate that the Peanut was a cute baby. :) The Peanut got lots of love from the family and friends. One of my aunties nicknamed him the blender since he loves to get bounced and swayed.

The husband's brother met up with us in the OC and we all flew back together. During his visit, we went to the new California Academy of Sciences at Golden Gate Park. It was awesome. We didn't get to see a lot because we got there late and it was crowded, but the Peanut loved the fish. However, after about 30 minutes of fish he got a little over stimulated and needed to take a nap. But we had so much fun showing him the fish at the aquarium that today we took him to the pet store to check out more fish. But the store fish weren't as cool.

The Peanut is now 3 months. He's able to mostly support his head, but he doesn't have much control with it and he still often bangs his head against our shoulder or head. So we still try to support it. The Peanut has also started holding on to things, like a rattle. He doesn't yet reach for anything, but I expect that is a couple weeks away. We've also started teaching the Peanut some sign language. We are keeping it simple with words like mommy, daddy, baby, nurse, milk, happy, love. We are using signs from a baby sign language book we got, but I don't think they are appropriate American Sign Language signs (at least not all of them). Hopefully the three languages we are using won't be too much for the Peanut.

And now, for more exciting stuff...PICTURES!!!

Puppy Kiss!!!

Close-up

Hanging out with some oranges in the OC.

What the???

Family Easter picture.

Yummy fist.

Artistic bath picture.

Check out the fish!

Co-Sleeping

2009-04-09T21:27:00.000-07:00

A few weekends ago we decided to co-sleep with the Peanut. He gave us 6 hours between feedings which was awesome. But, we were so worried about squishing the baby that we barely slept. The following weekend, we tried it again. The second time around we loved it and were hooked. We've been co-sleeping since. It's so much fun. It's like a little slumber party every night. The only thing is that since we are not planning on co-sleeping in the long term, we probably need to go back to having the Peanut sleep in his crib. But maybe we'll enjoy it for another few weeks.

This weekend we are going to OC to visit family. It's the Peanut's first trip. We are quite excited. We were thinking of visiting the in-laws in Italy later this month (but decided it would have been too logistically difficult), so the Peanut already has his passport. He is set!

Today we went to the San Jose Museum of Art and checked out an Andy Warhol exhibit. The Peanut was awake and observant the whole time. There were certain paintings he liked and would stare and smile and others that made him fuss. He's already an art critic.

In non-baby news, over the weekend I went to the openning game of the new Women's Professional Soccer (WPS) league. It was a fun game and it was awesome to see some of the veterans like Brandi Chastain and Tiffany Milbrett still playing so late in their careers. Chastain turns 41 this year. Wow! Before the game, a friend of ours had a tailgating party at her house. Now, since most of my readers are not from the mid-west, let me tell you a little something about mid-west cuisine (my friend is from the mid-west). If you live in the mid-west, on special occasions, next to your meat and potatoes, you might find a jello dish. My friend had talked about these dishes before and I never quite believed her. She described dishes that included ingredients like jello, fruits, pistachios, carrots, and other stuff you would probably not use in the same sentence with jello. Well, this particular jello dish had baked pretzels layered with a whipped cream, cream cheese, and sugar filling, and then topped with jello with strawberry chunks. It was actually quite good. Sweet and tart at the same time. So not that bad. UNTIL I realized that the dish is a side dish and NOT a desert. I had some leftovers but I ate my jello dish for desert.

Happy Easter everyone!!

Bits and Pieces

2009-04-03T09:31:00.000-07:00

I walked into our bedroom last night to find Monkey sitting on the husbands laptop. She had Googled "]67" and there was drool on the laptop.

A few nights ago, around 3:30 am, I had fed the Peanut and had changed his diaper. I was sleepily putting his clothes back on with all the lights off except the nightlight. As I was finishing, I glanced up at his face and realized he was staring at me with a very concerned look on his face. He looked really cute and I smiled. He smiled back at me with his big, toothless grin. My heart melted.

I am getting better and faster with the one handed typing.

There's a "big sale" at the trailer park near our house. Hmmm.

Oh, did anyone participate in Earth Hour last weekend? We did. The husband bottle fed the Peanut by candlelight while I read Walt Whitman out loud. It was fun, except for the Whitman part. His poetry is kind of depressing.

I was pretty sure I had a lot more stuff but I can't seem to remember any of it right now. So instead, I present and Ode to Brady Part II (Part I is here).

Brady???

Brady!!!

Daddy and son.

Babies are Fun!

2009-03-25T13:03:00.001-07:00

2 Months!

2009-03-24T14:45:00.000-07:00

2 months already! Wow! As someone in our new mom's group said, "the days are long, but the years are short." So true. The days are long and not. Sometimes I'll look up at the clock and be amazed that it's already 3 pm (didn't we just get up an hour ago??). By 7 or 8 pm I'm exhausted, but feel as if I didn't accomplish anything. I guess the diapering and feeding is all part of my routine now (like brushing my teeth), so it's not something that's on my list of to-do's from day to day.

Baby massage is going well. During the first class the peanut was quite fussy, as were most of the babies. That's not really what you would expect at a massage class. Last week's class was great. We got a lot of massage done and the Peanut LOVED it.

We finally narrowed our cloth diaper options to pocket diapers. They are pretty easy. So here's a quick tutorial on cloth diapers - there are 4 basic kinds: flatfolds (a big rectangular piece of fabric that you fold/wrap around a baby, secure, and then put a "waterproof" cover on), prefolds (already folded/contoured and also require a cover), pockets (a cover with a pocket so you can vary your stuffing/absorbency), and all-in-ones (these are most like disposables). We went with pocket diapers, mostly because the layer that touches the baby's bum is made of a material that wicks moisture away so it feels dry. Since we struggle with diaper rash on the Peanut, we need that area to stay as dry as possible. There are a ton of different manufacturers of pocket diapers, but I narrowed it down to a few and bought a couple of each brand to try out - Happy Heinys, Fuzzi Bunz, BumGenius, and TinyTush. With names like that, why wouldn't you want to use cloth diapers? After that, you have a few more, simpler choices...snaps vs. velcro, color, etc.

So scratch that. When I first started writing this post last week, I was all excited about cloth diapers. We had already been using them for a while in conjunction with disposables since I had not yet purchased enough to use them all the time (and we were still deciding on a brand). But, since we are always battling diaper rash, we need to keep the Peanut's bum lathered with diaper rash cream, which is terrible for cloth diapers. Diaper rash cream creates a water proof barrier on the baby's bum...and so any that gets on the diaper will create a water proof barrier on the diaper itself. That's bad. Some of the organic creams will wash out of the diaper, but not the heavy duty stuff we need. So we stopped using cloth diapers and also switched up the disposable diaper brand. We've tried the popular brands like Huggies and Pampers and were using the Whole Foods brand (no chemicals). But over the weekend we switched it up to the Seventh Generation brand (also no chemicals), and the rash is almost all gone. Yay! We still need to keep using the diaper rash cream, even if the rash is gone, just to add a layer of protection (as the pediatrician recommended). Cloth diapers are supposed to prevent diaper rash better than disposables, and we would still love to use cloth vs. disposable, but I think we'll need to wait a little while, to see if the baby's bum "toughens up".

So parents don't talk in high-pitched baby talk because they like to, but because it works. If I try to explain to the Peanut that I need to put his socks on before I feed him, "I need to put your socks on" doesn't work. Now if I say "I need to put on your little sockies on your little toesies that are soo cutie" in a high-pitched voice with lots of animation (think smiling like crazy, waving the socks around), then I'll get an extra few seconds to put the socks on before he starts screaming. The only problem is that after talking in such a manner for 10+ hours, it's hard to turn off when I talk to an adult (aka, the husband).

I recently learned I can stuff 7 tortellinis in my mouth at once. The Peanut was hungry but so was I.

The Peanut has been awake and playful a lot more. He's generally very happy in the mornings or after naps. He's even started to wake up during walks (he tends to sleep as soon as he's rocked in the car or stroller). Last night I took him to meet my indoor team and watch the game and he was alert and watching the whole time. It's a lot more work now that he's awake a lot more but it's also a lot more fun.

I finally got back into pilates. My back was starting to bother me and after a couple of pilates and physical therapy sessions, I feel so much better. Pilates is a lot harder now that I am not pregnant. I no longer have a wedge to lie on which makes the ab work a lot easier. And when I do push ups, I have a lot further down to go so those are harder too. The only thing that is easier is the balance.

Here's a couple more pictures: Superbaby and cute hands

MAN and His Many Moods

2009-03-24T13:59:00.000-07:00

It's been a while...

2009-03-09T12:28:00.001-07:00

I didn't realize it's been so long since I've posted. Wow. We've had a busy couple of weeks. Now that it's sunnier and the Peanut is bigger, we are going out a lot more. It's great to be out and about. I can't help but have a huge grin on my face as I push the stroller around. The Peanut doesn't have any friends yet but hopefully we'll get some by default soon enough. We just joined a new mothers support group. We meet once a week with a facilitator that basically has all the answers to the questions we may have (how do we get the babies to sleep through the night?, etc.). There are about 8 of us, and the Peanut is the only boy. He'll be popular one day.

This week we also start a baby massage class. I know it sounds stupid, but I want to do everything I can with the Peanut before I have to go back to work. I never thought I would feel like this, but I would love to be a stay-at-home mom. At least until the Peanut goes on to school. But in this area we can't afford it. Oh well.

Here's a video of the baby hanging out with Major:

Oh, and here's a little cartoon strip our friend made for us:

What else is new...my parents were in town over the weekend. The husband and I went out on a date on Saturday night. We went out for desert and a drink. And we ran into my boss and his wife who were doing the same thing. I had a beer. It was good. But maybe not worth it. When I got home, I had to pump and dump. I have more than enough milk, but I still felt bad about throwing it away.

Our days are starting to get some structure. We have consistently (last 2 days) gotten 4.5 hours between feedings. Which means I get 3 hours of sleep in a row. So he'll usually feed around 8:30 pm and then again at 1 am. Then 4 am, and then again around 7 am. So we only have 2 night feedings. But in the late afternoons, early evenings, we start cluster feeding, and he'll eat every 1.5 - 2 hours, getting himself ready for the long stretch. It's worth it. Feeding often helps me wind down (it's peaceful to feed). Sometimes the husband does a bottle feeding in the evening, which gives me extra time to do whatever.

In the mornings, he is often awake from 6 or 7 am until 11 am or 1 pm. And during that time it's mostly constant attention. He likes to get bounced (which means I bounce too) and he loves looking at stuff (windows, picture frames, mirror).

Being a mommy is soo much fun!

More cute pictures:

The brothers take a nap!

Noodles looks over the baby (in the polka dot sleep sack).

Check out my bald spot.

Go Red Sox!

Another Week

2009-02-26T16:13:00.000-08:00

Tomorrow is Friday. I am glad. But at the same time it means another week has gone by and I am one week closer to having to go back to work. I think I will add an extra couple of weeks to my 12 week leave. In CA you get a total of 18 weeks, 12 of those paid (at 55% of your salary). When I go back the husband will take 6-12 weeks off. He gets a total of 12 but only 6 of those are paid. Towards the end of the summer I will probably take another month off. Despite the long, intense days and nights the Peanut and I have together, I can't believe I am going to have to give that all up. But I guess that's life.

As I write this, the Peanut is sleeping on the husband's chest. It's a cute sight. I should be sleeping but I need the break to do something different.

So, when I feed the baby, I sometimes watch DVD's. I've been watching Showtime's The Tudors, which is basically a porno with great costumes (when they wear clothes). I got into the Henry VIII saga when I read The Other Boleyn Girl and watched the movie (book is better). I also watched Goal! The Dream Begins, which is a soccer movie about an illegal Mexican from LA making it big with Newcastle. It's a good movie for a sports movie. That movie actually required more concentration than The Tudors (because of all the soccer moves), so I ended up watching half the movie while the baby slept. Nursing does take some concentration so I need to watch something that I can sometimes tune out without missing anything that major. I was thinking of Lost or Grey's Anatomy, but both of those seem like they will require concentration. Any recommendations? Anyone seen Coupling?

Lesson Learned

2009-02-21T15:28:00.000-08:00

We learned an important lesson on Friday night:

NEVER wake a sleeping baby. NEVER.

If the baby is not in his crib, well, then you sit there until he wakes up. If you are holding the baby and your arm is asleep, too bad. And you have to go to the bathroom? Even worse for you.

NEVER wake a sleeping baby.

The baby is napping. I better sleep...but first I'll check email...

Quick Update

2009-02-18T09:53:00.000-08:00

So today is the munchkin's 1 month anniversary. I can't believe he's one month already. On the one hand it feels like time is flying, but at the same time, I can't really remember life before our son arrived.

My parents, brother, and his girlfriend were in town this week. We had a good time. My mom loves hanging out with her grandson, so apart from my feeding the peanut, she'll do everything else - burp, change the diaper, whatever. I actually managed to get some rest while she was here. But it was also great to be with family the whole weekend.

I have been talking to Capitán Cacahuete in Spanish a little more than 50% of the time. It's not 100% of the time, but it's better than I expected to do. My husband has also been using some Spanish. He hears me say stuff like "mas leche" and "no llores" and the husband will start repeating it to Capitán Cacahuete.

The Peanut has still been eating a ton of milk. And as you can see from the picture below, it's going straight to his cheeks.

Searching for ~~surf~~ nurse.

We were using flatfold cloth diapers but we were unhappy with them, so we canceled the service. I just ordered a trial kit of different, more sophisticated cloth diapers and we just tried the first diaper. The cloth diapers are super soft and I really hope we are happy with them (and the extra work it will entail to wash them ourselves) because I definitely want something that soft against my son's skin. We'll probably still use disposables for outings and travel.

We still try to swaddle the Peanut because his motor skills are still developing so he scares himself by flailing his arms around as he tries to sleep. A blanket swaddle won't hold him, so we have this special blanket with Velcro that is "inescapable". But as you can see, that's not really the case with the Peanut.

No swaddle can hold me.

And here's another cute picture.

Looking for nurse! Again!

Priceless

2009-02-09T19:23:00.000-08:00

I love my husband.

"[Roethlisberger] bumbles around defenders like an old man looking for his glasses, stumbles out of the pocket like it was a dive bar at closing time, and then completes a pass to whoever while I’m off getting a beer because I can’t watch that Vaudeville crap anymore."

Be sure to watch the video, with the sound on, at the end of the post.

Sleepy Parents

2009-02-08T18:17:00.000-08:00

So we are surviving parenthood. The lack of sleep is tough, but not as tough as some of the pregnancy changes were for me. Plus, it's hard to be overwhelmed by the lack of sleep when you have a cute little baby staring up at you. The biggest challenge is getting anything done in addition to feeding the baby. He eats every 3 hours, and a feeding session will take 1-1.5 hours. If I'm lucky and we are efficient, it might only take 45 minutes, giving me over 2 hours before the next session. A feeding session usually consists of nursing, burping, changing the diaper, nursing, burping, and sometimes another nurse and or diaper change.

Diaper changes are ok. Half the time the baby throws a tantrum on the changing table so that makes things tough. I don't mind the poopy diapers, but I do mind the water works that catches me unprepared and results in a change of clothes in addition to a change of diaper. As much as I prepare with a pee-pee teepee or a washcloth, he still manages to get something important pretty wet. Thank goodness he has lots of clothes because he often goes through four outfits a day.

Everyone says to sleep when the baby sleeps, but that's nearly impossible. First off it's really hard to just turn off when the baby falls asleep. And second, there's so much else to do...eat, shower, wash clothes, check email.

Here are some pictures from our latest photo shoot.

Check out my Hammer pants!

Brotherly love. Major is a pretty good pillow!

Michael Alexander

2009-01-28T12:26:00.000-08:00

Our son was born on Sunday, January 18 at 11:33 pm. He weighed 5 lb. and 15 oz. and measured 20.25 in. long. He was born at week 37 plus 1 day. He was sweet enough to wait to be a term baby but not too long so that mommy wouldn't have to be on bed rest for much longer.

Here are lots of pictures.

"Hello world!" - 2 hours and 6 minutes of life.

Throwing gang signs in the nursery.

Getting checked out by Noodles. Check out the calf muscles on my son - future soccer superstar!

Baby's first dress. Actually, it's a Christening gown that was first worn by the husband's grandfather.

Tummy time!

Being a mom is quite amazing. I need to keep this entry short but I hope to continue adding pictures and blogging about parenthood in the coming weeks and months.

It's a ...

2009-01-16T21:37:00.000-08:00

Boy. By a narrow margin you voted for a boy. Thanks for voting.

I think I'm close. My "menstrual cramps" are getting more intense, but they are still quite bearable.

Lazy Update

2009-01-16T16:19:00.000-08:00

So I've gotten through a week of doing nothing. Mostly. My doctor could tell I had been resting because I lost 4 lbs. in a week - all muscle mass. Great. These couple of weeks will erase all the effort I put in working out and doing pilates. Oh well. I guess it's also preparation for life with kids - things don't always go the way you want them to.

I've actually accomplished quite a bit these last few days. The first 2 days of this week were easy, the next 2 were emotionally challenging, and today it's a little better. I've practiced typing with 1 hand quite a bit. I read The Other Boleyn Girl (waiting for the Netflix movie to arrive). I've watched 1/2 of the first season of Dexter. I've done a lot more research on cloth vs. disposable diapers and am now really happy with our decision - we'll do a diaper service for the first month and then we'll buy our own cloth diapers. And I've talked on the phone and texted a lot. The kitties have been ecstatic to have me home all day. And a couple of days I actually napped and really enjoyed it.

In other baby news, my sister-in-law and her husband got picked to adopt a baby. The baby will be born any day now, just like ours, so I'll become a mom and aunt at the same time. Exciting!

So I've started to develop cramps. They are not contractions, just menstrual-like cramps that are more annoying than painful. Contractions, my doctor told me, will be a lot more painful. Next I wait for my water to break or contractions to start. Bring it on!

Help. So. Bored.

2009-01-11T20:06:00.000-08:00

So I got put on bed rest. My last day at work was Friday. Here are the doctor's orders: lay on your left side, get up to use the restroom, eat, and take a 3 minute shower, and you can take a 5 minute walk if you need to stretch your legs. Excuse me? Needless to stay, I have not been following orders completely. I tend to linger at the table after eating for a little while and I get up often at least to stretch or to get something to do. I've also been laying on my right side a lot, trying to switch it up. The doctor said I should keep myself busy with DVD's, books, and a laptop. But it's actually hard to use a laptop when you don't have a lap to prop it on (I'm trying right now).

I talked to my uncle who's a doctor and he thought the orders were a little extreme. He empahsized the importance of rest, but he said I shouldn't feel guilty if I need to sit up or get up to stretch.

Tomorrow I'll start watching some DVD's - I'll probably start with Sex and the City and Dexter. I've also got loads of books to read; I'm starting with The Other Boleyn Girl and How Soccer Explains the World.

I cheated big time today and attended a lovely shower hosted by two friends. It was a ladies-only shower (the husband decided he didn't want to attend), with lots of great games. My favorite was "Ooops, my water broke": everyone got assigned a baby (a plastic soccer figurine) frozen in a cup of ice and everyone had to guess which baby would break free of the ice first. We also played a "name the baby food" game which consisted of items such as prunes, mac and cheese (yuck!), green beans, and vegetable risotto with cheese.

One good thing about the high blood pressure and the bed rest is that unless the baby comes before, we are inducing in 3 weeks (a week ahead of schedule). So we'll be parents in 3 weeks. Yay!! We really can't wait to meet the baby.

Vote!

2009-01-09T20:04:00.000-08:00

So I discovered the poll feature on blogger. Please vote and let me know what you think the baby will be.

Dr.'s Orders - Go to Work!

2009-01-07T16:06:00.000-08:00

I may have mentioned that the last time I went to the doctor, about 8 days ago, my blood pressure was a little high. A second reading 5 minutes later yielded a much lower blood pressure. When a pregnant woman's blood pressure reaches 140/90, they start to worry. High blood pressure could cause stroke among other bad things. My first blood pressure reading was 130/90. The second was 117/76. But I was told that if at my next visit (this Friday) my first blood pressure reading was still high, I might get taken off work. Of course I don't want that. Not because I would miss work but because I would have to lay around all day on my left side. That's not for me. And second, the time I took off work before the baby was born would deduct from the time I would be able to take off from work once the baby arrived. Not only do I feel great right now (haven't felt better throughout the pregnancy), but I don't have any other preeclampsia symptoms - headaches, protein in urine, dizziness.

So for the past 8 days I've been resting a lot, eating healthy, and trying to get lots of exercise in (pilates and walking). I've been eating lots of oranges (vitamin C might help) and taking 1 tablespoon of olive oil every day (also heard it might help). I've also been monitoring my blood pressure and it's been fairly consistent in the high 130/80 ranges. In general I have high blood pressure. My husband has low blood pressure. We balance each other out.

Well, now I have a good argument for not getting taken off work. It seems like I'm more relaxed at work than at home. When I first got up this morning, my blood pressure reading was 136/88. I've taken my blood pressure 3 times at work today and the readings have been 130/80, 127/82, and 136/83. So the diastolic blood pressure (second number and of bigger concern) has been going up consistently, but I am at the end of the day and it hasn't increased that much. I'm going to measure again tomorrow and take this data with me to the doctor.

As a side note, a preeclampsia story...my friend was telling me that when she delivered, her blood pressure spiked to 210/150. Yikes! She was immediately given some heavy metal (can't remember which one) to equilibrate her system. The doctors actually lost her once and her daughter twice during the delivery. That must have been scary.

Outsourcing - Because Everyone's Doing It

2009-01-07T11:59:00.000-08:00

Right before Christmas our friend Tim came for a visit. He stayed with us through the weekend and we had a fun time driving around the area and taking lots of pictures. Tim is our camera expert and we consulted him for advice before we bought our SLR.

I had been meaning to post about his visit, but I am way behind on posts. So, since Tim has a nice post about it on his website, I will link to that instead. He has a play-by-play of our weekend together, in addition to lots of great pictures. But I have a warning, some of the pictures make me look like a beached whale, which is actually the way I feel sometimes. You know how the camera adds 10 lbs., well, I think that's 10 lbs. per person - 10 for me and 10 for baby - in addition to the pregnancy weight I've added. Enjoy!

Mmmm

2009-01-02T13:19:00.000-08:00

I'm craving some fish & chips. Unfortunately, the only ones that would do the trick are from Greenwich Village in NY. Someone please go to A Salt and Battery for me. I only recommend these because it would be a lot harder to go to the UK for authentic fish & chips.

Happy New Year

2009-01-01T20:40:00.001-08:00

I'm still alive and not in labor. I've just been busy with the holidays, organizing our place, and resting. Yup, me who hates naps in the middle of the day and can't wait to get up to get stuff done has to slow down. My blood pressure is a little high and it's of concern to the doctor so she suggested I try to get more rest. If it's still high in a week, they might put me on bed rest. Aghhhh! That really is what it sounds like...I would lay around on my left side (and right sometimes to switch it up) all day. I'm hoping it doesn't come to that so I've been busy laying around as much as I can these past couple of days. On to better news...

My parents came to visit for the Christmas holiday. On Christmas Eve we went out for lobster. There's a local place that flies in lobster from Maine and it's sooo good.

Here we are enjoying our Christmas Eve dinner.

Christmas Day we baked lots of cookies and lounged around. My mom and I baked pistachio cranberry biscotti, peanut butter cookies, pistachio sugar cookies, and cranberry oatmeal cookies. They all turned out yummy and when my parents headed home, they took most of the cookies with them to give to my aunts and uncles.

The kitties had a pretty good Christmas. I put all their favorite things in their stockings. Monkey got a bag of treats, Major got a bag of catnip and a furmination, and Noodles got some grass. I'm not sure who had a better Christmas - Major rolling around in catnip, getting brushed, or Noodles chomping on his grass under the tree.

The only other highlight of our long weekend was watching the Patriots play a very good game against Buffalo. Despite their win, they didn't make the playoffs and are only the second team in recent NFL history to finish 11-5 and not make the playoffs. The clincher was Brett Favre playing a terrible game causing the Jets to loose to Miami and allow Miami to stay in 1st place. While we watched the Jets game as Favre fans for 3 hours, we caught glimpses of the Eagles vs. Cowboys game. Ouch! Poor Cowboys fans - sorry Pablo and Jaime. Maybe next year.

We've been playing around a lot with our digital camera. It's been fun. Here's a good Monkey picture that initially looked like a mistake because it was all washed out but is actually pretty nice.

Happy New Year!!

5 Day Weekend!!

2008-12-23T14:48:00.000-08:00

I am about to leave work to start my 5 day weekend. Yay!! The husband is very lucky because he actually doesn't go back to work until January 5.

Here's the plan for my extended weekend: my parents will be visiting for Christmas, I'm baking lots of cookies and maybe even some biscotti, I will do lots of crafty stuff like scrapbooking and card making, and I'll play around with our new camera. Oh, and my new laptop arrives tomorrow so I'll have fun with that.

Happy Holidays!!

Lots to Do

2008-12-16T12:19:00.000-08:00

We had a very busy weekend! We got our Christmas tree on Saturday. Noodles is the only one that really noticed when the tree arrived and he was quite hesitant at first. But now he loves to sit by it, sniff it, play with the water in the watering dish, and knock off ornaments.

On Saturday morning, the husband joined me at pilates. He was quite impressed with the intensity of the workout and was still a little sore on Monday.

Christmas came early this year – we bought a Canon SLR! It’s the Rebel XSi and we love it. Now we are ready for the baby! We got lots of practice taking cat pictures this weekend. The weather was rainy and cold, otherwise we would have taken the cats outside for a photo shoot. And we actually watched the informational video that came with the camera (it’s about 1.5 hours long) and got lots of great pointers.

So here are some pictures:

Noodles likes to sleep in the tent next to the Christmas tree.

Nice picture of Noodles.

I will have more later. Most of the pictures we’ve already taken are in raw format and we still need to install the camera software onto our computer to convert these images.

Over the weekend we also rearranged the guest/baby room in preparation for our visitor this weekend.

And finally on Sunday we watched the Patriots kills the Raiders. We watched the broadcast on our tiny tv at home. The reception was bad, but at least we didn't have to eat bar food this weekend. Oh, and I just found out that Eli Manning got sacked 8 times in the Cowboys vs. Giants game on Saturday. Nice! The Cowboys are now my second favorite team.

My Dreams

2008-12-11T16:24:00.001-08:00

Another pregnancy change that I’ve discovered is that my dreams are a lot more vivid and … sometimes weird. I don’t have nightmares and I rarely dream about the baby. Instead, my dreams are more about everyday stuff – some realistic and others not really. I had two dreams last night that I remember; one was stressful and unlikely to happen and the other had my husband laughing on our way in to work in the morning. I’m also amazed at who makes an appearance in my dreams. I think most people I know have been in my dreams at one time or another. In retrospect I try to figure out why that person was in my dream. Most likely it’s because I thought about them or had some contact with them (exchanged emails, etc.) during the day.

So let me know if you want to show up in my dreams. I’m sure it will be an interesting story.

Pregnancy Tidbits

2008-12-10T17:47:00.000-08:00

A few weeks ago, I started noticing that the baby was quite active as I was getting ready to fall asleep in bed. But if I tossed and turned during the night or got up to drink water, I would rarely feel the baby move. I was quite please with this because usually a baby's routine in utero will be similar to a baby's initial routine outside the womb. However, the past week I've been getting kicked a lot more as I fall asleep and it's getting painful. I don't know what organs the baby is poking, but they sure are sensitive. And, I got up during the night last night and when I got back in bed, I got poked. Not good.

To conclude our labor and delivery classes, we went on a tour of the hospital's labor and maternity wards. Our local hospital has a nice facility. You are guaranteed a private delivery room, equipped with rocking chair, tv, shower, tub, and lots of other goodies. You will also get either a private or semi-private recovery room. A typical stay for a vaginal delivery is 2 days and for a c-section is 4 days. Oh, yeah, I really don't want a c-section. But I guess 1 in 4 women end up with a c-section, so I'm trying to mentally prepare for that possibility.

The hospital also allows two other visitors in the delivery room, in addition to the partner. Oh, and most deliveries are not the way they are depicted in the movies - with loads of screaming and swearing. Most likely the mom will become almost entranced as she enters the final stage of labor - pushing - which can last from 5 minutes to 1 hour. By this time, the contractions and urge to push are 3-5 minutes apart.

So there's your pregnancy lesson for tonight.

What Else Have Do You Have for Us, Mr. Bush?

2008-12-10T17:03:00.000-08:00

"The Bush administration has rushed through a last-minute gun rule...The Interior Department published a rule last week that will allow loaded, concealed weapons in nearly all of this country’s national parks."

"Right now, the National Parks are among the very safest places in this country, according to the F.B.I. The presence of concealed, loaded weapons is likely to change that, and it also is likely to pose an increased threat to wildlife."

I guess we'll wait until Obama repeals that law to take our Yosemite vacation. From The New York Times.

Another Week

2008-12-08T20:22:00.000-08:00

Once again I won more free burritos at Chipotle. Note that I’ve only been to Chipotle twice since the last time I won (sometime over the summer), and I’ve only put my business card in the fishbowl once. I’m starting to get a little creeped out. But my coworkers are always happy with the free food. Maybe it’s just karma for all the loyalty the husband and I (and any classmates who would join us) showed Chipotle during our grad school days – we would eat there almost every day.

Saturday night my friend, Christine, and I made paella. It turned out pretty good. The paella flavor was a little bland so next time we’ll need to add a little more salt (or appropriate spice). Christine went to Spain over the summer and she was our authenticity check. She liked the paella. As an appetizer we made patatas bravas, which is like home fries in a mayo based sauce with lots of different spices – thyme, paprika, Tabasco, parsley. The patatas bravas were really good, but next time I would use a lower sauce to potatoes ratio.

On Sunday we watched the Patriots vs. Seahawks game. It was great to watch the Patriots win, but they really need to work on their defense. The Pats defense made Seattle look good (and not like a 2-10 team). We also watched bits of the Cowboys vs. Steelers game. The bar was full of both sets of fans and it was quite an exciting game. However, I was really disappointed that the Steelers won. This was a hard game for me to pick a side, but I decided I hate Steelers fans more than I don’t like the Cowboys. Plus, I kind of like some of the Cowboys fans (Jaime, Pablo), and I’m happy when they are happy.

Over the weekend we tried to install the car seat and we had a really hard time. I’m afraid our car seat won’t be compatible with our old, 1996 Toyota Corolla. We got the top of the line car seat (highly recommended by Consumer Reports), but maybe now we need to get a better car (I vote for a Toyota Rav 4). On Wednesday we have a consultation with a car seat expert at Stanford’s Lucille Packard Children’s Hospital. It’s a free service in case anyone in the area is interested.

During our second labor and delivery class last week, we discussed all the drug options – narcotics, epidural, etc. Before the class I was convinced I wanted to get an epidural as soon as I checked into the hospital. Now I want a drug-free delivery. An epidural would be the best option since it only affects the mother. But there is a narrow window of administration (not too early nor late), it takes a while to take effect, and it will usually draw make the labor longer. Narcotics can be administered at any time, but they have a potential of suppressing the baby’s respiration. But what motivates me to have a drug-free delivery is the challenge. I know this sounds kind of morbid, but I feel up to the challenge of labor and feel that I can get through it. The class has prepared me with great techniques for getting through painful contractions and having my husband around as my coach will really motivate me.

But then again, I’m trying to keep an open mind and trying not to equate my use of drugs as a failure. I’m sure that after 16+ hours of labor, with slow progress, I (and my doctors) might be thinking differently. The husband, on the other hand, thinks epidurals should also be administered to spouses.

Here are a few more tidbits/observations:
Last week we had spotty internet service, at best. It was ok for the first couple of days. But as the week progressed and we lost our networking ability (no access to our computer cluster, the printers, etc.), it got really difficult to make any progress. My coworkers and I were walking around the office with our memory sticks, trying to get files from each other. On the other hand, our Google wifi at home has been working great.

Gas is so cheap nowadays. We paid $1.89 on Friday. Wow! How low can it go?

In the last few months I’ve noticed that drivers have been worse than usual. Cell phones are usually the reason, although California has a law that you can’t use your cell phone as you drive (you must use a hands-free device). I see cars swerving, not yielding correctly, getting cut-off by another car and purposely cutting-off the car back for revenge – on the freeway!

We had sushi for dinner tonight. I mostly stuck to the cooked rolls, but I did cheat a little. It was sooo good.

Monkey is Sooo Bad

2008-12-03T11:01:00.001-08:00

She came home without her collar last night. That's the second collar she's lost.

Monkey slept on top of me all night. Any time I moved she would scream, hiss, and growl.

Gotta love the Monkey.

A Holiday Weekend

2008-12-02T13:45:00.000-08:00

Thanksgiving was great this year. We headed south about 1 hour to hang out with the husband’s cousins. The wife is a horse vet and they have a nice, new spread with lots of land, 4 horses, 4 dogs, and 2 cats. Most of the dinner ingredients were either grown by the cousins or bought locally and you could really taste the difference. Dinner included turkey, stuffing with andouille sausage, mashed potatoes, gravy, cranberry sauce, fresh baked bread, squash soup, roasted squash, roasted beets, green beans, asparagus, and cornbread. Despite the copious amounts of food, the 6 of us at dinner managed to make a big dent in the food. For desert we had a pumpkin roll and a pumpkin-chocolate-pecan cake I made that was actually quite good (NY Times recipe). And of course, there was a lot of great wine (I sniffed a lot of good wine). The wine provoked a couple hour discussion on the biggest American band of all time. I’m not sure what the consensus was.

There weren’t a lot of Thanksgiving leftovers, so I didn’t have an over-fill of Thanksgiving food, and now I’m craving turkey, mashed potatoes, stuffing, gravy. I don’t expect any restaurant will have food that’s as good as what we had over the weekend.

The rest of the weekend was spent doing not very much. I had a super long to-do list but didn’t get many items crossed off my list. My friend Christine and I went shopping in Union Square in San Francisco. We checked out the huge Macy’s Christmas tree and hit a bunch of stores. I didn’t buy any Christmas presents, but mostly bought goodies for me. I used to think I wasn’t much of a shopper. And I’m not when it comes to clothes for myself. But I love shopping for house stuff. I bought a paella pan and a Spanish paella and tapas recipe book. I can’t wait to try out my new toys this weekend.

I have some pictures. These aren’t relevant to anything I’ve written about in this post, but I haven’t put up pictures in a while, so here you go:

Here’s Monkey sleeping on the warm dishwasher door. She has a funny way of sleeping where she likes to place her chin flat on the ground, instead of propping it on her paws.

And here is Monkey wearing her Santa’s Little Helper shirt.

To end on a depressing note, did anyone watch the Patriots vs. Steelers game on Sunday? The first half was good. The second half was a joke. I lost track of the Patriots’ turnovers and horrible plays. The worst thing about the loss was losing to the Steelers. I really don’t like Steelers fans. The Steelers are a good team and they deserved the win, but the Steelers fans went crazy happy when Welker was taken out of the game with a late hit. The hit wasn’t that dirty, it was just late. And it was little Wes Welker vs. a huge Steelers’ player. Still, a good fan would not cheer when a player is injured. But then again, I am talking about Steelers fans.

Happy Thanksgiving!

2008-11-26T15:39:00.000-08:00

Both a weekend and midweek update in one day!

I am happy to report that we are now Comcast free!! We managed to get the free Google wifi working for us, using a signal booster. Since we don’t really watch tv, we figured we could cancel Comcast altogether. Yay!!

We just started watching season 5 of The Wire. We are half way through and totally hooked. They definitely are going out with a bang! If you haven’t seen this HBO series, I definitely recommend it. It took us a few episodes in season 1 to get into the series, so don’t give up too early. The Wire is probably my favorite HBO series, followed by Rome, Curb Your Enthusiasm, and The Sopranos. Deadwood is another good series, but it can be a little gory and intense for me. If you watch Deadwood, pay attention to the dialogue because it’s really good, almost Shakespearean.

We started our labor and delivery class last night. It’s a 9 hour class over 3 days. We watched a birth on video last night. I was a little nervous it would gross me out because I tend to get queasy with gross stuff, but actually it was quite fascinating. The husband, on the other hand, is more convinced that he needs to be somewhere else during delivery. Too bad he doesn’t really have a choice. During the video, when the mom saw her baby, she said “that doesn’t look like a baby.” And it was true. When babies are born, they are usually covered in a layer of something (can’t remember what it’s called) that kind of looks like Crisco. It’s to protect and help get their skin used to the new environment. But it also makes the baby look like a white alien.

In addition to the typical signs for the onset of labor (water breaking, labor pains), there are a few other ones that could signal the start of labor. These signs included a nesting behavior, where the mom suddenly goes into a getting ready frenzy. This kind of freaked me out because over the weekend, I had a bit of a nesting frenzy myself. I started reorganizing the house and was hanging up pictures, moving stuff into the garage, organizing my crafts. I had also noticed a shift in the baby’s position and now I feel as if I’m carrying the baby lower (the baby “dropping” is another sign of labor). But I’m hopefully just being paranoid because we are only at 29.5 weeks and the baby needs to bake for another 2 months.

In taking these classes, we’ve figured out that most people find out the sex of the baby before it’s born. We tend to be the only couple waiting for a surprise out of 10-15 couples. I find that odd. But then again, I find it very odd that I myself am really excited about waiting. I guess my competitive self beat out the control freak in me.

I love mole, especially when my dad makes it. Making mole is a very involved process, so I don’t usually request that my dad make it for me. But it’s become customary for my dad to have 1 or 2 frozen containers of mole for us to bring home whenever we visit him. The recipe calls for at least 4 different types of dried chilies, sesame seeds, roasted peanuts, and chocolate, in addition to another 10-15 ingredients. There are different types of mole, too, such as sweeter, spicier, and even green mole. Each region in Mexico has its own unique style of mole. My dad’s tends to be spicier with the flavor of the chilies really obvious. Mole is usually made with chicken, but my uncle’s tell me that my grandmother’s signature recipe is turkey mole (I’ve never had it). I’ve also had mole with fish (the fish choice wasn’t great) and with potatoes (fantastic). My dad has also mentioned mole with different kinds of squash. Maybe with leftover turkey, I’ll try to make mole. Oh, and what’s the best beverage to accompany mole?? Coke. Seriously.

Happy Thanksgiving, everyone!!!

Another Good But Busy Weekend

2008-11-26T11:14:00.000-08:00

Here’s the highlight reel:

We completed another one of our baby classes – baby care. I am really glad we took the class because I feel a lot more confident that we won’t screw up too badly. I am sure we’ll constantly do things wrong but hopefully they will all be minor mistakes and we’ll be smart enough and observant enough to not mess up with the big things. Here is an interesting tidbit...did you know that babies knead? Yup, soon after they are born they start kneading very similar to cats to help get the milk going for breastfeeding. For the first week or so, not only will we need to monitor the baby’s milk consumption, we’ll also have to keep track of the pees and poos. The instructor passed around a chart with pictures of…well, you can imagine. They also taught us how to swaddle and soothe the baby. We saw part of The Happiest Baby on the Block and it was amazing to see a baby go from screaming to completely quiet and relaxed in a matter of seconds. The trick – swaddling and the reverse football hold (imagine carrying a football, except the baby’s face faces away from your body).

We also got the crib delivered this weekend. We inherited our friend’s crib and it’s absolutely gorgeous. Once we get the guest/baby room more organized, we’ll be sure to send out pictures. Surprisingly, the cats haven’t jumped in the crib yet. They probably associate the crib with my friend’s two little girls who gave the cats more attention than they wanted. But the cats were great. They tolerated all the petting, holding, and running around without a single scratch. Phew! I think they will be excellent with the baby.

Over the weekend we went to the Computer History Museum with our friend Leonard, who was visiting from NY. It was ok. Definitely not my thing, but there were a couple of great highlights. I enjoyed the demonstration of the Babbage Difference Engine No. 2. It’s really a remarkable machine made of over 8000 parts. Mr. Babbage came up with the design over 150 years ago but it was finally built in 2002. It takes a brilliant mind to design something so complicated (so many moving pieces!) without the help of computers. I also enjoyed some of the old computers they had on display such as the recipe organizer from the 70’s that cost $10,000 but you had to input/output everything in binary. Useful.

Weekend Update

2008-11-18T16:49:00.000-08:00

So this weekend we did something that we rarely do...we went to the movies. On Sunday afternoon we checked out the new Bond movie. It was pretty good – action packed but not too over the top and not too long. Plus, the new Bond guy is hot.

Overall the weekend was quite busy but fun. We had brunch with some friends in San Jose and then strolled through the San Jose Rose Garden. It was a gorgeous day and the smell of the roses was very pleasant.

On Saturday afternoon we had a baby class – breastfeeding. It was basically all you ever wanted to know about breasts and then some. The husband tried to get out of the class but I made him go, and I am glad he went because I was a little overwhelmed with all the info. Plus, it was a couples class so my husband was not the only man in the class and not the only one making weird/shocked/disgusted faces.

Saturday evening I took my coaches out to dinner as a thank you for being my assistants. After dinner I became DD for the husband’s poker night.

On Sunday we also sorted through baby clothes and tried to figure out what we already have and what we need. Since we didn’t actually know the names of most of the clothing items, our inventory descriptions read like this: “one piece thing with a zipper down the front, long sleeves and long legs and little feet.” The clothes are actually really cute and really small. The other baby thing we did was unpack and assemble the stroller. We got a stroller/car seat travel system, so the car seat can either click into the stroller or you can take the baby out and put it into the stroller. The car seat is a little bulky when it’s folded so we had a hard time getting it into the trunk. I think we might end up getting a smaller frame that adapts to the car seat and use that when we don’t need the full stroller.

In other thoughts:
Costco rules. The husband bought a sweet, custom built HP laptop through Costco. A couple of weeks ago, the laptop died. So we called Costco’s Concierge Service and they put us through to HP. HP sent us a box and next day FedEx label. I shipped the laptop on Thursday evening and we got it back, fixed, on Monday. Amazing! The best part was not getting transferred overseas for customer support. Yay for Costco.

I think I prefer Facebook over all the other friends sites such as My Space and Linked In.

There are a lot of spiders all over the place. I think they are making their final push before they all die.

Great Game Last Night

2008-11-14T12:37:00.000-08:00

The Patriots vs. Jets game last night was really good. The Pats lost in overtime, which was a bummer. But the Jets did win the OT coin toss. Don Banks has a good recap of the game here. Well, once you get over the nauseous “Bret Favre is a god” section. The NFL network announcers have a huge man-crush on Favre. It’s really weird.

I guess I am a little biased, but I lost respect for Favre after all his drama between seasons.

"For one game, the Favre magic was real, and he delivered when it mattered most."

Not really. The Jets got lucky, after blowing a 24-6 lead. I can’t imagine an unbiased person saying that Favre was really the hero. If anything, Favre should thank Keller who was wide open at their last opportunity in OT and the Pats’ defense for screwing up and leaving Keller open. Without that play, the Jets would have turned the ball over and given the Pats an opportunity in OT.

Anyway, the game was good. Welker didn’t do awesome but he was fairly reliable. Moss didn’t do much until the game tying touchdown catch with 1 second left. That was pretty awesome. And Cassell had an awesome game with over 400 yards throwing and 62 yards rushing. I guess that’s a sole NFL record. If I were a quarter back, I would run a lot like Cassell. Now, don’t think Cassell is my new hero. I still prefer Brady’s precision and elegance as a quarterback. But Cassell is stepping it up. Plus, Welker is still my favorite player.

Pregnant Updates

2008-11-13T13:03:00.000-08:00

I woke up on Tuesday morning with incredible back pain. I was walking around like I had a stick up my butt. I have a bad lower back and I was afraid the added pregnancy weight and the changing center of gravity would really mess up my back. That’s why I was doing pilates up to 3 times a week, to keep my core muscles strong. While I wasn’t able to avoid back pain altogether, I have no doubt that pilates really helped me avoid it thus far.

My doctor checked me out and ruled out pre-term labor. I was pretty certain that it was back pain and not pre-term labor, but at the same time I hadn’t felt the baby move all morning and it was a little concerning. But we listened for the heartbeat and everything was fine. At 27.5 weeks, we would prefer it if the baby stayed inside to cook for another couple of months.

I went to Physical Therapy and it turns out the left side of my pelvis was rotated forward and causing all the strain in my lower back. The rotation was probably due to sleeping on it wrong and relaxed ligaments in my body (due to pregnancy). So the therapist massaged my back and gave me a few stretches to do. The next day my lower back was almost all better, but my mid-back was super sore from compensating for my lower back. I felt as if I did 1000 situps. After another PT session that included more massage, I am almost back to 100% today. Phew!

We took our first baby class yesterday. It was the infant and child CPR class. This is the class you hope to never have to use, but it’s good to know what to do in an emergency. Choking is a big concern, especially with small children. We have a bunch more classes this month – breastfeeding on Saturday and next week we start the labor class. The labor class is the one the doctor said we should really take (all others were optional), and it’s a 9 hour class over 3 days. I can’t imagine that we need that much time to discuss labor.

We are also trying to figure out if we want to bank the baby’s cord for potential future use. It sounds like a great idea in theory, but we are not convinced yet.

Pros:
Why wouldn’t you do everything you can to help your children?
There’s a 75% chance this baby’s cord could help other children we have, and a smaller but viable chance it could help us as parents and others in the family.

Cons:
The up front fee is over $2000 and the yearly fee is ~$125. Insurance will not cover any of it.
The probability that you will actually use it is small due to the limited number of standard procedures cord blood can be used for, but at the same time this is changing constantly with increased research.
It seems like a standard procedure might use up all the cord blood, thus making it only available for 1 treatment/person/etc.

The investment actually doesn’t sound that bad. But at the same time it could be ~$5000 for a 20 year investment for 1 child. The big question is, will we regret it if a situation arises and we don’t have cord blood available. Maybe. But you can’t prepare for everything, right? Even when you weigh the pros and cons of any situation and feel as if you made the right choice, sometimes the decision you make will still end up being the bad one. I expect this is the first of many hard decisions we will make as parents. It’s definitely a lot easier to make a decision for yourself, but when you have to make a decision that so directly affects another human being, it gets a lot tougher.

We’ll continue to do the research and probably ask new parents who were faced with the same question and see what they decided and why.

Bitter-Sweet Celebration

2008-11-12T12:26:00.000-08:00

The husband and I couldn't be happier that Obama will be our next president. Early on election day morning we walked over to our local polling place and connected our arrows. We used to vote using touch-screen machines, but this time around, at a new place, we had the huge ballots - they were about 2 feet tall and made out of heavy-weight paper. Talk about old school.

California has a weird process where the citizens vote on a lot of stuff you would expect the state government to take care of. There are always a ton of measures and propositions (some that can even amend the constitution) on the ballot. This really annoys the husband. Makes you kind of wonder what the legislative body does all day.

This year we voted a definite YES on proposition 2, for the improvement of living conditions for farm animals. It passed with a pretty strong majority. It's a start for farm animal well-being.

We voted no on proposition 4, to not require parental notification before the termination of a minor's pregnancy. The husband and I both support abortion rights. I'm actually surprised this didn't pass (no notification will be required), but I expect it was the strong young voter turnout. There were actually quite a few measures and propositions around the country relating to limiting abortion rights and none of them passed. That's an even bigger surprise.

One of the bigger political disappointments I have experienced is the passage of proposition 8, amending the California constitution to ban gay marriage. Wow. How hateful and unjust. In banning gay marriage, California is basically telling gay people all over the world that they are second class citizens. Melissa Etheridge doesn't believe she should pay taxes as a second class citizen.

I can think of two reasons why the propositions passed. The first is because the "Yes on Proposition 8" campaign ads claimed that unless proposition 8 passed, all schools would be required to teach about same-sex marriage. That's BS. I learned about marriage in high school, but that's because I went to a private, Catholic HS. We never discussed marriage in K-8 grades, not even in sex-ed.

The second reason proposition 8 passed is because of the church influence. Fine, believe that marriage is only between a man and a woman because that's what God intended. It turns out that the Bible does have a few passages that mention homosexuality, but the big surprise is that Jesus said nothing about it. You would think that if it was such a big issue, that God would make sure Jesus did not forget to mention it. Huh, miscommunication? And same-sex marriage is not what's ruining the American family. Sumana counters this quite well:

"I say to those opponents of same-sex marriage: If you care about the stability and happiness of the American family, then work to subsidize daycare, lengthen paternal and maternal leave and move us to single-payer healthcare. If you care about the sanctity of marriage, then work to institute a federal waiting period and separate the civil contract of marriage from your religion's requirements and ceremonies. Widows, grandparents, uncles, nannies, foster children, step-parents and same-sex partners all contribute to and sustain households everywhere."

I love my husband. I know that even if we weren't married, I would still be happy on whatever other path in life I had chosen. But I can't believe that another path would be as fulfilling and as happy as the one we chose together. And now that we are a few months away from growing as a family, I can't imagine a greater joy we might experience. To deny a group of people this right to happiness is heartbreaking to me, to say the least.

Sorry about the rant. I feel a little guilty that maybe I didn't do enough to help stop the passage of proposition 8. I could have talked to more people or perhaps I could have had better answers to the religious arguments. Hopefully California's judicial system will recognize that it's unconstitutional to deny a minority group their right to happiness.

I know this post is over a week late but I had been working on it for a while. Just had a enough time to proofread and publish.

Weekend Fun

2008-11-04T13:00:00.000-08:00

Over the weekend we went down to Orange County to hang out with my family and the very excited grandparents-, uncles-, aunts-, granduncles-, and grandaunts-to-be. My family threw us a baby shower and it was loads of fun. The shower was coed so it was fun to see the brother, cousins, and husband participate in all the shower games. One of my favorite games was when people would measure out toilet paper to try to guess the circumference of my waist. There was a three-way tie, and the tie-breaker was to guess the husband’s waist circumference. I am happy to report that his waist was only one toilet paper square smaller than mine. Now I don’t feel like a giant blimp. At least compared to the husband.

It was a little weird to have a lot of people fawning over my belly, giving it rubs, and talking to it in baby talk. But I didn’t freak out with all the touching as I expected to. As long as I see a hand coming, I can kind of brace myself. It’s a little weirder if I’m hugging someone and they start groping my belly unexpectedly.

We had a guest poll to see what everyone thought we were having. The tally was girls – 11, boys – 18. So if my family is right, we’re having a boy. But a couple of women my mom knows, that I would consider modern-day sages (in tune with nature, spiritual, you know what I mean), both said we are having a girl. So that still leaves me undecided. I used to always picture us with a baby boy, but now I’m starting to picture us with either.

Pregnancy Updates

2008-10-28T16:22:00.000-07:00

25.5 weeks and counting...

I went to the dentist last week and I am happy to say that everything looks great. Pregnancy can cause problems in the mouth, such as bleeding gums, more plaque buildup, etc. But my oral hygiene has been great. Phew!

Most people that see me are surprised that I am already 25 weeks into the pregnancy. Everyone says I look great. I'm not sure whether or not I should believe them. What else would they say..."wow, you look more like you are in your 30th week"?? I have actually gained more weight than I should have. Well, that's according to mine and my doctor's plan. I am close to 20 lbs. with 3 months to go and my doctor suggested I gain 20 - 25 lbs. total. Although most people say 25 - 35 lbs. is average. The good thing is that I can still do my pilates workouts (I'm pretty good at the plank) and I can still run, although my stamina is way down.

Don't you just love the feeling you have when you stretch your body the first thing after you wake up. You point your toes, stretch your arms, and then the bloody pain of a cramp in your calf hits. If you are pregnant, that happens to you every morning until you learn to stretch with your heels flexed and toes pointed up. I'm not sure people know why your calves turn into a muscle spasm waiting to happen. Some people say it's the imbalance of hormones and nutrients in the body while others say it's dehydration. I've been eating more bananas and that seems to help. But I definitely think dehydration is a factor because during the night I pee a lot and don't drink much water. I tend to loose 3-4 lbs. overnight, and I think it's mostly water weight.

We are finally putting together a list of stuff to buy. And we are discovering that there is A LOT of baby stuff out there. It's almost overwhelming. It's kind of like the car industry, you have lots of different types of cars you can buy (sedan, suv, truck, etc.). And within each type you have loads of brands to choose from (Ford, Toyota, Honda, etc.). Well, the same goes for any baby product. If you are looking for a stroller, there are lots of options including traditional, travel system with car seat and other functions, double strollers, and a couple other more specific-function strollers. For a traditional stroller, Consumer Reports has rated 32 different strollers. Yikes! And the prices vary from $35 to $900. Double yikes. We are trying to keep things simple, so I've armed myself with Consumer Reports, a baby stuff buying guide, and the internets.

I am back to being tired a lot. But it's not the same feeling as it was in the first trimester. Now, by around 9 pm, I am ready for bed. And I am tired as if I had a long day full of activities. I can push myself if I really have to (like staying up well past midnight last Saturday night for multiple Halloween parties). And I am still sleeping terribly. I am not yet uncomfortable, as I probably will be in the last few weeks. It's different. I usually sleep about 6 hours, with a bathroom break, but then after 6 hours I wake up and can't turn my brain off for 1 or 2 hours. I'm not stressed out about stuff, I just can't stop thinking...about everything...work, soccer, movies I've seen, when to do laundry. Some people say it's practice for when the baby comes but I'm sure that whether or not I get plenty of sleep these last few months, I am still going to be tired when the baby is around. So I prefer the sleep. I'll eventually get back to sleep and will wake up between 7 and 8 am, without an alarm.

Soccer Week and Weekend

2008-10-28T14:13:00.000-07:00

My girls’ team played on Sunday to a decisive 3-0 victory. It felt great to win, especially since we beat the team that had tied us in the last minutes of our previous game against them, which dropped us to 2nd place. We have two games left in the season. I am looking forward to the end of the season so I will have more time to do other stuff (scrapbooking, baby planning, etc.).

I have been a little annoyed lately with the lack of players at practice. We tend to only have 6-8 players at practice, out of 17. And I often get emails or texts an hour before the game letting me know that a player isn’t going to make it. I guess this is only recreational soccer but it’s still kind of rude. Regardless, I still have been having a great time coaching and I will miss the girls when the season is over.

We had an English soccer trainer, Rhys, stay with us the past week. He was fun to have around. I talked lots of soccer with him and the husband played lots of xBox with Rhys. Even the cats were happy to have another set of hands to pet them. Except Monkey. She was very unhappy to have to share the guest bed with an actual guest.

Tough Loss

2008-10-20T12:30:00.001-07:00

The girls team I coach finally lost. We lost 2-1 in rematch against the other city team. The last time we played the team we beat them 3-2. The other team just wanted the game more than we did and it showed. Even though this game is our only loss, we have a tie while the other team has no ties, so the result bumps them up to first. We tied against the second-to-last place team in the final minutes of the game. We had no subs and the girls were just tired. It sucks that our season will be determined by a few minutes of one game. Oh well, that’s soccer. Now we just look forward to our last 3 games, win those games, and hope the other team looses or at least ties a game.

Regardless of the loss, I am still having more fun coaching than I imagined I would. Coaching at this level is a lot more satisfying than coaching at the younger levels because the players just get it. We tell them to do something or teach them new strategy and they adapt pretty well.

I can’t wait to be a soccer mom. And no, I don’t mean the suburban driving, warm-up suit wearing, Starbuck’s drinking, Republican voting soccer mom, but a real soccer mom. One that actually coaches soccer and watches the games.

Latest Cravings

2008-10-16T16:27:00.000-07:00

~~I have~~ The baby has been craving Mexican food lately. Fortunately I can only stand it for 1 meal.

The husband calls the baby el bebe. It's cute.

The baby has been quite busy in my belly and I can even feel the motions when I put my hand on my abdomen. But every time the husband tries to feel, the baby stops moving. I wonder if the baby can tell that someone different has put their hand on my belly.

We have two books we've started reading to the baby: Make Way for Ducklings and La Oruga Muy Hambrienta (The Hungry Caterpillar).

Boston Highlights

2008-10-16T11:26:00.000-07:00

Our week in Boston was a lot of fun. It was definitely the break we needed. We didn’t have a lot of downtime because we were busy hanging out with friends and family. Although it was hard to be back at work on Monday morning, I did feel refreshed.

My high school friends Kelly and Linette, and Kelly’s friend Joni, met up with us in Boston. It was fun to have Bostonian visitors around because we ended up doing a lot of the touristy stuff ourselves.

I think the highlight of our trip was Tuesday. We started off the day with a tour of the Christian Science Church. For those of you who have never been to Boston, the Christian Science Church grounds take up a huge city block. The tour was mostly an excuse for me to use the toilet. Our tour guide was an extremely friendly old lady who started off by saying that the Christian Science religion is not Scientology. They never explained that. There was actually a point in time when we were supposedly finished with our tour and were moving towards the exit down a narrow stairwell behind the altar when I wondered if perhaps a couple of us should have stayed back just in case. Fortunately we all made it out of there alive and non-converts.

The next tour was at the Berklee School of Music. The husband and I skipped out of this tour since our only excuse at music is that I listen to it and he sings in the shower. I promised I would bring my kid back in 18 years but I lied because my baby is going to be a superathlete.

In the evening, we went to a Boston Symphony Orchestra performance of Previn, Stravinsky, and Beethoven. I was wary of the Previn piece since it’s a modern piece, but it was actually pretty good. The best description I can think of is that it was organic and it reminded me of nature. I guess that makes sense since it was titled Owls. The baby liked Stravinsky’s Violin Concerto the best, especially the 4th movement. And the Beethoven’s Symphony No. 4 was ok. I prefer Beethoven’s more common pieces.

After the symphony we moved on to Wally’s Cafe, a hole-in-the-wall jazz club a few blocks away. It was loud but the music was really great. We only stayed about 1 hour, since that’s the exposure limit to loud music that the baby should have.

So we moved on to Jacque’s Cabaret Drag Karaoke. The husband knew of the place – how, I don’t know. But it was loads of fun. We arrived shortly before the place closed down, so we didn’t have a chance to perform a piece. Next time!

After drag karaoke, we went to a 24 hour bowling place for candlepin bowling. For those of you who have never played candlepin bowling (it’s a New England thing), it is a lot of fun. It’s the same lane as regular bowling, but the pins (same number, I think) are narrow and cylindrical (2”-3” in diameter), and you get three tries, but the pins that have fallen aren’t cleared between tries. And the ball is much smaller so you can palm it and even throw it if you want to.

Other highlights included a yummy Italian dinner in the North End, a trip to Salem, catching up with the husband’s old friends and getting to know my friends a lot better, and of course hanging out with family and the grandparents-to-be.

2008-10-10T07:45:00.000-07:00

Dear Congress,

The Markets aren't doing well. So I think you should take the $700 billion and save yourselves. It's the least that we, the American people, can do to thank you for all that you've done. It's hard work to run a country and to make decisions about what to do with our money. So please, save yourselves.

Sincerely,
Cleaty

In Boston

2008-10-09T09:04:00.000-07:00

And loving it! We are here for 8 days and having a great time. A couple of my high school friends are also in town so we've been doing a lot of touristy stuff with them.

Over the weekend we went to a wedding on Long Island in NY. It was the fanciest wedding I have ever attended. The ceremony was low key at a local church and the couple's dog, a well-behaved black lab, was the ring bearer. The reception was at a large estate/mansion. What characterized this wedding as fancy for me was that it took place in many rooms of the mansion. First there was the drinks/reception area. Then they opened up two large rooms with heavy (and yummy) appetizers. We spent most of our time in the Library appetizer room, among the Syphilis Illustrated and Women's Diseases books. As we debated whether or not we would get a formal dinner, we were shuffled into the banquet room for dinner.

After dinner, we moved to another two rooms for dancing, cake, and more drinks. The dancing started off with the largest car bomb toast ever (I think). The wedding was loads of fun. The best part was getting together with family we don't get to see all the time.

On Sunday we met up with some old friends who had moved to NY. Sumana and Leonard who we met on the internets and were from the Bay Area and our grad school friend Pablo and his wife AnaMaria. It was nice to hang out with our old friends and just catch up on our lives, relive old memories, and have great conversations.

More about the Boston experience in a future post...

Thursday Tidbits

2008-10-02T12:39:00.000-07:00

So you can see Russia from Alaska. That was Sarah Palin’s claim for why she has foreign policy experience to Katie Couric. And when Couric asked again, she replied “because our neighboring countries are foreign countries.”

The husband has a couple of clips on his blog of the Couric-Palin interview which are priceless. He also included an question-answer session with Ms. South Carolina for comparison. They are just a precursor to the debate tonight. Enjoy them here.

During an NPR interview, McCain was asked what foreign policy qualifications Sarah Palin has. McCain’s response:

“she has the knowledge and background on a broad variety of issues, including probably the major challenge of America, and that's energy independence...She has the world view that I have. She is very highly qualified and very knowledgeable.”

If you have an IT department at work, have you noticed what theme was used in naming your computers at work? We used to have a feline theme, but we started moving towards a professional cyclists name theme. The new trend is because our IT guys are big cyclists. Some other offices from my company have a Lord of the Rings theme.

We are going to Boston and New York for about a week so I may or may not be posting. We’ll be in NY this weekend for a wedding and we hope to see some of you NY people. We’ll spend the rest of the week in Boston. Two of my high school friends also planned their vacation to Boston around the same time as we did, so I’ll get to hang out with them during the week.

Shopping Pains

2008-10-01T12:11:00.000-07:00

I went shopping yesterday after lunch. Who hangs out at the mall midweek during the day? Pregnant ladies and moms with their babies and young children. I was at the mall looking for a semi-formal dress to wear to a wedding in NY this weekend. I was very unsuccessful. Actually, I did fine two really great dresses that were extremely flattering to the pregnant belly, but they were $200 each. I’m not sure I would spend that much on a dress if I wasn’t pregnant and would be able to wear it multiple times.

So I went back to work extremely frustrated. But by the evening my new shopping mission was to find a nice pair of slacks and fancy top. I succeeded. Tonight I go shoe shopping.

While I was out shopping, I also found a great pair of jeans at The Gap. Some The Gaps have maternity (and baby and baby furniture) sections. I highly recommend The Gap for maternity clothes shopping – at least for pants. They are affordable and fit great (but the length may need to be altered a bit). For nice work tops I would go to Motherhood Maternity or Ross. They are cheap and will do the trick for the few months that you need them. If budget is not an issue or you just want to try on some really nice clothes for fun, go to A Pea in the Pod. That’s where I found the $200 dress (and it was on sale). For lounge type of clothes, I would shop at Target or Motherhood Maternity.

Reality Check #17

2008-09-29T12:19:00.001-07:00

On Saturday morning we went to the local fire house's pancake breakfast. We rolled in (on our bikes!) around 9:30 am. It was swarming with kids.

After breakfast I went shopping and the husband played video games.

Around 2 pm, we were both lounging on the bed, when I said to my husband: "You know, we only have about 20 weekends left to do whatever we want."

My husband thought about it a few seconds and then said: "That's right. You don't get weekends off with a baby."

That's right, we won't. But, despite our realization, we are both really excited. And the thought of a baby brings a smile to our faces. Can't wait!!

War, What Is It Good For?

2008-09-25T17:18:00.001-07:00

I recently had to do inventory at work on a bunch of body armor belonging to non-surviving soldiers from Iraq. Here are my observations.

The equipment arrived in a large wooden crate, with sets of armor in large plastic bags. There was sand everywhere. Most sets of armor had front, back, and 2 side plates. The plates are small, maybe about 10 inches x 15 inches, and weigh about 6-10 lbs. On some of the plates you can see bullet holes.

The helmets were a little harder to deal with. A couple of the helmets had bullet entry and exit holes. I noticed one helmet was quite muddy, and then realized it was dried blood. A few of the helmets were no longer the shape they started off.

As I sorted through the equipment I managed to keep my emotions out of it. It took me a lot longer than my boss expected to go through the inventory. I think I was just handling each piece with the utmost care, out of respect for the dead. Later in the day, when I recounted the experience to my husband, I felt a little more emotional about it.

We are going to try to figure out how the armor failed to make improvements to the armor. I am happy that we are doing something to help, but unhappy that we have to make protective equipment for war.

The Sex is a Surprise

2008-09-24T12:53:00.000-07:00

We've decided to not find out the baby's sex until the baby is born. So we'll be calling it "it" for a while more. Actually, the husband really wants to know but I have veto power since I'm the one that's pregnant. The weird thing is that I'm the one of us who's a big planner and almost a control freak while the husband is a lot more easygoing about stuff. We have an idea of what the baby will be, but that's not foolproof. My friend was certain she was having a boy and when the doctor announced it was a girl, she second guessed the doctor.

We had the big anatomy checkout last week and everything looks good. The baby moves around a lot. I am barely starting to feel it and probably only feel the really big motions the baby has. When the baby moves, it feels like little (sometimes big) bubbles popping in my lower abdomen. It's a really neat feeling. Although the first time it happened and I realized what it was, I thought I was going to pass out from the sensation. When you think about it, it's really weird - there's something growing in my belly that's going to turn into a person like you and me. Have you ever seen the Aliens movies??? But now I really like the feeling of the baby moving around. It's most pronounced after I eat and when I am not too active.

So we are coming up with both girl and boy names. Some names that have been vetoed include Beau Flex and Chlamydia Rose (we won't have to worry about her in HS) and Therem (a derivative of Theorem). We'll probably pick something more traditional but we are having trouble agreeing. My maiden name will be the baby's middle name.

Randomness

2008-09-23T17:27:00.001-07:00

Random Thoughts for a Happy Tuesday

You know how sometimes you have to move the mouse a lot to try to find it on your computer screen. Well, now I have two monitors at work so it takes me twice as long to figure out where my mouse is.

Did you ever wonder where the phrase “cockpit” comes from? Is it because traditionally it was a pit full of… I don’t even want to think about it.

Pregnant people have a super sensitive sense of smell. The only thing that causes nausea without fail is something stinky, such as the trash or stagnant water in the kitchen sink. Someone suggested that it is probably a defense mechanism from the cavemen days, when, without refrigeration, people would rely on their senses to figure out if food had gone bad. It’s a good thought.

We bought a camcorder last week, for the baby (and the cats). I think the minivan is next. Actually, the camcorder has been fun since we’ve been doing lots of videos/interviews of each other regarding the baby. It will be interesting to come back to them years from now and see if we actually had a clue about what having a baby was going to be like.

I am really annoyed that the government is considering a bail-out for all the businesses and people who made bad financial decisions. Why should my taxes go to help the idiots who jumped into mortgages they couldn’t afford and the scummy business people who lied to them? We are financially responsible people and we didn’t jump in when everyone else did so why should we have to pay for it? I don’t want to think about it anymore.

I am still doing pilates twice a week. All the ab work is getting harder – a lot harder. Part of it is because my lower abdomen is in the way (like when I try to do a sit-up) and the other part is because those muscles are getting stretched out and they are loosing functionality. There’s not much I can do about it.

I take back what I said about Brady coming back in 3 months after ACL surgery. It turns out he tore 2 ligaments. And I spoke to my athletic trainer friend about it and she said that you can’t beat the science with technology. Your body needs the time. The body will “break down” the ligament and build it back up and that takes time. That’s too bad.

Weekend News

2008-09-22T12:28:00.000-07:00

We had a good weekend. It was mostly relaxing but I got a lot of stuff done. I finally got back into working on my scrapbooks and I made decent progress over the weekend.

On Sunday my girls played. We tied, 1-1. It was a tough tie since we were winning most of the game and they came back and tied us in the last 5 minutes. We had no subs (again) and everyone was just exhausted. Plus, the other team was playing extremely physical – lots of shoving our players off the ball and slide tackling – but I couldn’t get my girls to step up their physical play. The team was from a less nicer city in the area (if we were from Southern Cali, the other team would be from LA and we would be from Laguna Beach), but still, we should have stepped it up. Regardless, the girls played well and I am glad that they managed to survive the whole 90 minute game. Oh, and my other excuse was that the field was quite dense (the grass hadn’t been cut in weeks) and the ball would often just die in the middle of a pass.

I guess that’s all we did this weekend. Oh, I did go to a party with my friend. It was a kickball/BBQ party with a keg at 2nd base. I missed the kickball game so by the time I got there the keg had been floated and everyone was drunk. The food was really, really good – traditional BBQ with some Phillipino lumpia. Yumm!

I just realized I had a dream where I drank half a beer and tried to justify it by saying that most people say it’s ok to drink a little wine while your pregnant (a glass with dinner on special occasions). But everyone was chastising me because I had drunk beer (miller lite, of all beers) instead of wine.

Another interesting happening this weekend was that I bought my first baby gift. I got a little after-bath blanket (it has a little triangular cap in one corner) made of organic, sustainable, yadda, yadda, yadda, cotton at Whole Foods. It’s a creamy gray color with little animals on it. It’s really cute! I almost put it back because I started wondering if it was bad luck to buy baby gifts before the baby is born. And I almost cried when I told the cashier it was for my baby.

Oh, the lowlight of the weekend was the Patriots game. I only got to see the 1st quarter because of the soccer game. That sucks for the Patriots.

My Husband Is Not Very Sympathetic

2008-09-19T10:05:00.000-07:00

Instead of gaining sympathy weight while I'm pregnant (as most husbands do), he's actually lost weight. He rides his bike to work every day and is eating healthier than ever (salads for lunch instead of burgers). And on the days he doesn't work, he often lifts weights with his home gym. My doctor told me to be in the best shape of my life and I think my husband took that as his cue to set an example for me. That way he can nag me about working out without feeling guilty himself. Actually, he looks really good and I'm very proud of him. :)

Soccer Weekend

2008-09-15T14:15:00.000-07:00

On Saturday night I went to the San Jose Earthquakes (new expansion team) vs. Houston Dynamo (old Earthquakes team that moved) soccer game. The game was at Santa Clara University. Although we got super cheap tickets because of an AYSO promotional, the seats were really awesome. The stadium is small so all seats are really good. The game was pretty good with lots of action and lots of yellow cards (and even a red). The only bad part was that since it was an AYSO promo night, there were A LOT of little kids around us. By the end of the night I had sticky blue stuff (cotton candy?) all over my pants.

On Sunday, my GU19 team had their big game against the other city team. Both teams had won their first match by wide margins (6-2 and 8-0) so this was going to be a good game. And it was. We were down 1-0 at half time with 2 game ending injuries resulting in no subs, and about 3 other players that were playing despite their injuries. The other team had pounded our defense with loads of shots but we had managed to hold them at 1 goal.

I’ve decided to try a non-traditional lineup. Most American teams play 4-3-3 or 4-4-2, with a sweeper and three defenders in the back (the lineup notation is the number of defenders-midfielders-forwards). A variation that is often seen in Europe and is starting to catch hold in the US is the flat 4 in the back (without a sweeper). The idea is that there’s always one free defender that can act as the sweeper or last-man back depending on where the play is. I decided to go with a 3-4-3 lineup, with a flat three in the back and two center midfielders – one offensive and one defensive. My idea was that with a strong middle field and lots of forwards, we would be able to maintain most of the play in our offensive half of the field. On defense, the defensive center-mid would come back and act as a fourth defender to help on defense. It had worked great in our first game when we absolutely dominated the match and control of the field for most of the game. But this weekend we were playing a much stronger team and as we discovered once the game started, a much faster team.

I had actually lost some sleep in the days leading up to the game but I consoled myself thinking that we could easily and quickly change the lineup if we needed to. Plus, I was going to play one of my strongest (in skill, speed, and stamina) and hardest working players at center defense. Although, my heart did skip a beat when I got an email from her on Saturday. She was just confirming that she was going to make the game after all (I didn’t know it was an issue).

In the second half we had an unbelievable come back and scored three goals in the third quarter, all off of corners. Due to another injury, we ended up playing the last quarter down 1 player and ended the game 3-2 and with a victory. It felt sooo good to win, especially with such a big comeback.

After the game, as the teams exchanged hand-shakes, there was a bit of confrontation with some name-calling between players from both teams. We tried to resolve the issue from our side as soon as possible with the official “I’m sorry,” but the other player disappeared after the game.

Despite the issue after the game, I was on cloud-9 the rest of Sunday. I even had trouble going to sleep, just playing back the game in my head. I am sooo glad we won!

Last year I coached GU14 and comparing the two age groups is a difference of night and day. The GU14 was fun and mostly relaxing. We never would have had any major issues between players on the same team or between teams. It was usually hard for me to do the post game debrief because the girls were always chatting it up with each other regardless of the score. So far the GU19 age group is a lot more fun for me, despite the drama, which I hope does not become an issue (although I’ve heard the other city team is having a lot of attitude issues). By this age the girls just get it. Most players have been playing for years and they come to the game and practices because they want to not because their parents signed them up. When the coaches tell them something, they listen and incorporate the advice. And they work really hard with minimal complaint. My only complaint is that it seems that at this age they are way busier and so we tend to have trouble having a full roster at practices or games. There’s only 1 player that has come to every practice so far.

I had originally decided to coach the under-19 team because I wanted to be able to play with the girls during practice scrimmages. But now that I’m pregnant, I can’t. Still, I’m having fun. Plus, I have some great assistant coaches that I often feel like a GM. While one coach handles the keepers and the other gets the girls ready for the game, I go over last minute line-up changes and walk around from group to group (forwards, midfielders, etc.) offering advice and trying to get them excited about the game. Too bad I don’t get paid to coach.

Brady Tore His ACL

2008-09-09T21:42:00.000-07:00

Update: I have a new resolve to watch the Patriots play. I will not be one of these women:

"More than 90 percent of female football fans were lost for the season on Sunday...Brady left Sunday's game against Kansas City after suffering an ugly anterior cruciate ligament tear in his incredibly handsome left knee after being hit by merely average-looking Chiefs safety Bernard Pollard."

Original:

As most of your who care have heard, Tom Brady tore his ACL in the first quarter of his first game this season. It sucks. I tore my ACL in my left leg (just like Brady) about 6 years ago. I had a long day of hiking and biking and then played my first coed outdoor soccer game. I was playing right forward and I dribbled the ball down the line and took a cross with my right foot. My upper body turned but my lower left leg did not, tearing my ACL. I'm pretty sure I cried from the pain and I remember it was pretty swollen for a while. I was told that at least it was a nice cross.

After I tore my ACL, I continued to play soccer until my doctor advised me not to since I could cause more damage. So instead I focused on getting the muscles around my knee as strong as possible with bicycle riding and weight lifting, which would help my recovery. I had about 1.5 months to do so before my surgery.

The surgery was a weird experience. As the anesthesia was administered, I remember being told that I would begin feeling a little dizzy. I remember thinking, "I don't feel dizzy," and the next thing I remember was a nurse fussing over my knee. I asked her if the surgery had taken place and when she said it had, I sat up in bed and asked her if she was sure. It was as if I had lost a few hours of my life. It's definitely different from taking a nap and it's probably hard to understand unless you've experience it yourself.

Immediately after surgery my knee was placed in a passive motion machine (I think that's what they are called) which caused my knee to flex and extend in a bike-riding motion. This would get my full range of motion going and prevent scar tissue from building up. My left knee has a few more degrees of motion than my right knee. I also had a morphine drip with a clicker that I could control. I think I was pretty clicker happy but it turns out that I had a 10 minute window so at most I would get a morphine shot (drip?) every 10 minutes. My hospital visitors later told me that I would phase in and out of our conversations.

Anyway, so the whole point of my story was that I think Brady will be back in 3 months. Although my husband just told me that Brady can't come back this season even if a miracle occurred (something about football rules) and we don't really know what happened to his knee. So, assuming Brady did tear his ACL and suffer minor meniscus damage and assuming he can come back this season, he'll be back in 3 months. I was walking without crutches about 2 weeks after surgery (probably shouldn't have) and I was running within 5 (and playing a little hallway soccer instead of studying). I was a lowly graduate student without access to state of the art facilities and doctors as I am sure the NFL has. Plus, I had research to do and I couldn't focus on my recovery.

Another thing, I had a hamstring graft used to replace my ACL. This was a good option for me since the incisions would be small, the recovery would be less painful, and I was only playing intramural soccer. My alternative was a patellar graft which would require a larger incision and make recovery more painful. This would have been a good option if I was play collegiate soccer. There was also the option of using cadaver tissue, but, at least back then, the risk would have been sacrificing the tissue elasticity to sterilize the tissue (prevent the transfer of diseases, etc.). I'm sure Brady will get a graft from one of the many supermodels that are all over him.

I'm almost done talking about Brady, just a bit more. So I keep hearing all this talk about how the NFL lost its marquee player in the first 15 minutes of the season and how that's a really big deal. If Brady is the NFL's marquee player, why the hell are Eli and Peyton Manning in every single commercial on TV?? I am so sick and tired of those guys. I think the biggest fallout of the super bowl, apart from not getting to witness history, is that Eli and Payton are going to dominate commercials for years to come. Ugh!

I really hope Cassel doesn't forget about Wes Welker. Welker is actually my favorite player because he is so under-the-radar and his soccer skills show up in the way he runs and cuts. Cassel seemed to be looking only for Brady at the game on Sunday. Hopefully he worked on looking for other targets this week.

So I go back and forth about being excited for the season. As the husband said, anything can happen and the Brady loss adds excitement to the game and season. The Patriots still have some really good players, so they can still go to the super bowl.

Ok, that's enough. I promise not to take up too much time talking about football.

So Behind!!!

2008-09-08T16:28:00.001-07:00

So I am way behind on my weekend posts and I know everyone is dying to know what I do on my weekends. I’ll try to be brief but we’ve had a lot going on.

Over Labor Day my high school friend Linette came to visit. Linette was probably our second highest frequent visitor (after my mom) when she worked in the central valley. However, it’s been at least a couple of years since she visited last so it was nice to see her again. And she is a cat person too (although she only has 1) so the kitties got lots of love from another human. Linette’s main reason for visiting was to go to a wedding on Sunday afternoon. So Sunday morning we went on a bike ride, I took the husband’s and Linette took mine. We were seconds from getting on the trail I take to work when Linette crashed her bike going down an overpass. All I remember was hearing the crash, jumping off my bike, and running up the hill and almost crying with joy when I saw Linette moving around. Nothing was broken thank goodness but she did have some pretty bad road-rash on her palms, elbow, and knee. We are not sure why it happened, but she flew over the handlebars and skidded to a stop on her belly (she remembers thinking “I wish I had gloves” as she was sliding on the asphalt).

The husband came to pick us up so we could take Linette to the hospital and a nice lady offered us her truck to take the bikes home. Even some nice off-duty firemen stopped to talk to Linette and make sure she hadn’t hit her head and was suffering from a concussion. In addition to her road rash, Linette also had a bruised heel (there was an actual bruise on her heel – never seen that before). The emergency room is about 1.5 miles from our place and I was happy to find out how professional and expedient they were. We were there in the early morning hours which is actually the least busiest time of the day (note to self, go to the ER in the morning). Linette had both of her hands bandaged up (kind of like the prewrap boxers wear), with some white mesh gloves over the bandages. It actually matched the dress she was wore to the wedding and most people assumed it was a fashion thing until they noticed the elbow and kneed bandages.

When Linette left our house, she headed east to the central valley for a business trip. Linette is a wildlife biologist and was doing some construction inspection. On Thursday she called me to let me know that her rental SUV had be run over by a tractor. Luckily she wasn’t in it. We think Linette’s luck is about to turn because that’s her third accident in a few weeks (she got rear-ended a few days before the biking accident). We suggested she buy some lottery tickets.

Over this weekend, Linette came back and we went to the downtown art and wine festival. It was very hot so we spent more time inside the local bars and restaurants than outside with the vendors. I got a wood frame that I can use to make a cork board out of the hundreds of corks I have from drinking too much wine. I've been collecting them for over 4 years now. Now all I need is a glue gun.

I'm coaching a girls under-19 soccer team, so basically high school girls. It's been fun so far. The only annoying thing is that only 1 girl has come to every practice and I tend to get only half the team at practice each day, and half of them are late. We had our first game this weekend and we won, 6-2. The team we played wasn't very strong and we'll have a much more challenging game this coming weekend, against the rival city team. I know the coach and I DON'T want to loose to him.

We are fostering a couple of kittens right now. We actually haven't taken any pictures of them yet but I'll work on that in the next couple of days. We wanted another kitten to keep Noodles busy so he would leave us alone but I think it's backfiring. More later.

Well, I'll keep it at that for right now and I'll expand on other stuff later.

My Morning

2008-09-03T13:37:00.001-07:00

I woke up this morning to the sound of the alarm clock. Ever since I found out I was pregnant, I’ve refused to use the alarm clock – I need my sleep! I am usually awake by 7:30 am anyway. I picked out what I was going to wear – black (maternity) pants with a green blouse. I noticed the blouse was a little wrinkled so I threw it in the dryer for a few minutes and continued to get ready for work. I had a teleconference at 8 am so I wanted to be sure to have my cheerios before then. When I tried to put my blouse on, I realized it didn’t fit anymore. I don’t know about you guys, but when I figure out what I want to wear in the morning, it’s really hard to change to something else. I tend to know my clothes inventory pretty well (what’s clean, etc.) so I tend to know what I want to wear even before I start getting the clothes out. I even had a dream about the shirt (won’t go into the details of how it was involved in my dream). As is expected, I am having a bad hair day too.

If I were to psychoanalyze my response this morning, I would say that the underlying issue might be that I am having trouble letting the pregnancy take over my body. Even though I am super excited to be pregnant, I could be having trouble accepting that my body has become a baby making machine and everything else is secondary. I may be feeling that it’s enough that I have to give up soccer and drinking, adding disproportional weight gain to the equation could make someone quite depressed. Fortunately these would just be my thoughts were I a psychologist and I am way beyond that.

On a happier note, my BellaBand arrived today. Thanks Sumana for the great find!

The Foods I Crave

2008-08-28T17:27:00.000-07:00

I get a lot of questions about whether or not I’ve started getting food cravings now that I am pregnant. The short answer is no. At least I don’t have any of the "I want chocolate ice cream with pickles" cravings. Usually my cravings are pretty short lived and they tend to be quite attainable. If we go out to eat and I look through the menu, I might suddenly crave French fries or a salad with ranch dressing. A few weeks ago I really craved taco bell and had to have it for lunch. Fortunately that only lasted a couple of days.

Fruit is the food I can’t get enough of. I love and crave citrus fruit, peaches, nectarines, melons, and especially plums. Unfortunately fruit doesn’t really satiate my grumbling tummy so I tend to only eat it between my every-two-hours meals. I need to have a protein rich food when I’m hungry otherwise I will still be hungry.

I like sweets like chocolate and ice cream, but during my pregnancy I have been fortunate enough not to crave them (they aren’t very nutrient rich). I will probably eat them if they are in front of me. My coworker brought brownies to work today and I had one. But I won’t go out and buy them. If I do want some sort of a treat, I’ll probably have a croissant or a turnover. I tend to prefer the buttery, salty food that is bad for me.

The only other weird thing is that I get very frustrated if the husband and I can’t figure out where we want to go when we go out to eat. I can’t decide because the possibilities are endless (Thai, Indian, Mexican, sushi,…) and that seems to frustrate me to no end. However, once we decide and I have a menu in front of me, I tend to decide on my meal almost immediately. Before I was pregnant I used to have a hard time deciding from a menu and I would often have regrets (I should have had the quesadilla).

Speaking of food, there’s a long list of things that I should not eat, including:

Alcohol – duh, and I’ve had no trouble remembering

Deli meats, cheeses, and unpasteurized items – I’ve eaten these quite a lot, not intentionally, but I am getting better; the risk here is Listeria; pregnant women are more likely to get Listeria, which can cause early labor among other things; I also need to wash my fruits and veggies properly

Sushi – this is a controversial one and if I do indulge in sushi, I tend to eat the cooked rolls; the risk here is the same to everyone – parasite infection; the only riskier bit for a pregnant woman is that major abdomen surgery (to remove the parasite along with part of the intestine, if necessary) would be bad

Anything but well-cooked meats – again I run the risk of infection of certain bacteria that would be bad for me and the baby

Caffeine – has been shown to increase the risk of miscarriage if consuming more than 200 mg/day; I am not a coffee drinker, so no problem there, but I do feel that I have been drinking a lot of caffeine in teas and coke; however, even on a bad day, I am not exceeding 200 mg of caffeine

Seafood – there’s complicated table of what seafood products are low in mercury and sustainable and the subset of the two is pretty small; even still, I shouldn’t have more than 2-3 servings per week; this is too bad because seafood is a great means for me to get protein and keep the fat/calorie count low

I have still been eating all the time. I am struggling a bit with my calcium intake. I get the extra calcium milk, OJ, and yogurt but it’s still a little tough to get 1200 mg/day. Tums are probably the greatest invention because one little tablet has 400 mg of calcium. The only bad thing is that I tend to forget to eat 1 or 2 a day and I think they are pretty gross – chalky, yuck!

Protein is also tough. I think I end up getting all the protein I need, but I have no craving for a big hunk of meat. The husband and I were trying to become vegetarians before I got pregnant but we decided to put that off so that I could get as much protein as possible. I love fish and seafood but I can’t have too much of that.

The final order my doctor gave me was to consume enough iron. I need to have either a large handful of spinach or a 6 oz lean meat serving every other day. This has not been much of a problem. Beef is the meat I struggle the least with (at least in it’s barest form) and I love fresh spinach.

Just One of Them Days

2008-08-26T10:13:00.000-07:00

Today is one of those days when sleep sounds so much better than eating. But it's been 3 hours since I've had breakfast and my stomach is grumbling. I'll have to figure out what to do about lunch. Blah!

The Baby Bulge

2008-08-21T14:43:00.000-07:00

I woke up on Monday morning and my belly bump was a little bigger than when I went to bed on Sunday night. I woke up this morning and it was significantly bigger. I had a couple of pairs of jeans that used to fit me since they were stretchy and sat low on the hips, but they don't fit anymore. I need to go shopping for more maternity clothes, or fatty clothes as I like to refer to them. Oh, and I can't suck in the belly any more. It's weird.

I am supposed to gain 20-25 lbs. during the pregnancy. The breakdown is: 3-5 lbs. in the first trimester, 1 lbs. every 2 weeks for weeks 13-36, and 1 lb./week for the last 4 weeks. Give or take a few lbs. of course. This means I should add about 300 calories to my diet every day, which is not a lot of food. I've basically been eating when I get hungry and my weight gain has been what I would like. I'm at the end of week 15 and I've probably gained about 5 lbs. It's actually kind of hard to really tell because I have a big fluctuation in weight between night and morning (about 3 lbs.). Since I tend not to drink a lot of water during the night, but I do pee at least twice during the night, it must all be water weight.

My mom was surprised that I'm not a lot heavier considering how much I eat. But I think what helps is that I have tried to stay pretty active. My doctor recommended that I get at least 30 minutes of exercise a day. I go on walks or walk/runs, ride my bike to work, and just started pilates.

I used to have time in a day to come home from work, go to the gym, make dinner, and even work on my crafts or watch a movie. Now I barely have enough time to do a couple of those things. Everything I do just takes a lot longer - figuring out what to wear in the morning, unloading the dishwasher, standing in front of the stove barefoot and pregnant, it all takes so much time.

Productive Weekend

2008-08-19T16:30:00.000-07:00

I had a great week and weekend. My mom was in town all week and then my dad joined us for the weekend. It was great to have my mom around. I always had a workout partner and while we were at work she did stuff around the house. I think the kittens will miss her now that she’s back at home, especially Noodles. I am sure he enjoyed having a person around all day.

My dad arrived on Thursday night and so we spent most of Friday and Saturday doing stuff around the house. My mom and I tackled the boxes that we still had in the guest/computer room (and will soon also be a baby room) and the husband and my dad installed a new door and finished setting up the projector and screen. The new door replaced the old laundry room door. The project turned out to be a major pain since we got the cheapest door available at Home Depot and it didn’t have the hinge grooves marked off. Plus, the door frame wasn’t quite right so my dad and husband had to grind down part of the door. They also installed a kitty door in the laundry room door so that we can keep the door closed to keep the litter dust contained. We’ve been working on the kitty door with the cats, using food, treats, and catnip to coax them through the door.

It’s nice having the projector mounted on the ceiling and the screen on the wall. We finally have our coffee table back (which doubles as a dinner table). The projector looks really, really nice. Especially movies and pictures and computer stuff. TV doesn’t look that much better (something about HDTV not really being HD). We watched Casino Royale in blue-ray last night and it really looked amazing.

Has anyone been watching the Olympics? Particularly the swimming? We saw three amazing Olympic races over the weekend, and even the husband was impressed. The first was Michael Phelps’ incredible finish over the Serbian swimmer. When we first saw the finish, I seriously thought it was the Serb who had won the race. But the frame-by-frame footage actually showed Phelps touched ahead of the Serb. The other priceless image from that race was Phelps’ mom’s reaction. You have to check it out here. I get a kick out of her and his coach’s reactions. The other great swimming race we saw was the 400 m relay medley, that the US won to give Phelps his 8th gold medal.

So I am not totally biased towards Olympics swimming (I liked it even before Phelps made it cooler). I also like watching track and field events, especially the sprints. We watched the Jamaican Usain Bolt win the 100 m dash and break his own world record by 0.03 s. This may not seem like a lot, but it's significant in a 9 second race. The most incredible part about this was that Bolt actually started celebrating with 20 m to go in the race. While everyone else around him was going full speed, Bolt had stretched his arms out (creating some drag, I'm sure) and then pounding his chest in excitement. I can only wonder what the world record would have been had he gone full force for the entire 100 m. Bolt definitely left himself some room for improvement.

Must Be in the Water

2008-08-14T09:23:00.001-07:00

So I know of at least 8 babies, including ours, that are due in January or February. I know of a baby on the way that is due in October and another baby that I have no idea when it’s due. Either spring is a good time for making babies or there’s something in the water. Drink at your own risk.

My New Favorite Phrases

2008-08-12T09:36:00.000-07:00

“mommy brain” – it’s a justification for why I forget things. I haven’t used it myself but our secretary uses it often to justify why I forget things. I think there is some truth to the “mommy brain”. My body is too busy making a little person to remember why I walked into my boss’ office.

“but I’m pregnant” – it’s a good thing to say when the husband is giving me a hard time for not riding my bike to work (6+ miles each way, uphill both ways) or when I want to watch something on tv while he wants to channel surf. It doesn’t work 100% of the time but it’s pretty effective.

“it’s what the baby wants” – one of my favorites. This is usually 100% effective but I try not to overuse it. Unfortunately the husband now claims to also know what the baby wants and it’s often in contradiction to what I understood the baby to want (Indian food for dinner, going for a walk).

Good Week

2008-08-08T19:47:00.001-07:00

Had a good week. I had enough energy to make it through the day on about half the days and nowadays that's a good thing. Fortunately I've switched to a more flexible schedule at work and so I can leave early if I need to.

They Olympics are starting. Yay! I love the Olympics. I love the concept of the Olympics - athletes from around the world coming together to compete in the sports they are passionate about. I don't like that the US wins a lot, I prefer to spread the happiness. But I do love all personal stories. My favorite sports are soccer, swimming, diving, track, and gymnastics.

I won free burritos again at Chipotle. Without even trying. They hold the contest every week, but the last time I went to Chipotle was about 3 weeks ago, and I didn't even drop a business card in the bowl. Nevertheless, my coworkers were pleased with the free food.

Big News, Big News!

2008-08-05T20:46:00.000-07:00

So the husband and I have a secret that we're finally revealing...I'm pregnant!!! I am in week 13 so we decided it was safe to share the news. We've already seen a couple of ultra sounds of the baby and we've both seen and heard the heart beat. I've gained a couple of pounds and I've moved into maternity pants (they are so comfy!). So slowly but surely it's starting to feel more real.

I plan on relating the pregnancy adventure on my blog, leaving out the gory details, of course. I'll present more of a G-rated version and let you find out the other details for yourself (if you don't already know) when you or someone close to you gets pregnant.

So what are a few things I've discovered about pregnancy so far:

First and foremost, fatigue. It's like nothing I've ever experienced. Sure, I've been tired before and had to push myself to get through the day. But this is different. It's not really a feeling of sleepiness, just exhaustion, both physically and mentally. For the first time in my life I actually started taking naps during the day. I usually didn't sleep for very long, but being able to put my head down for at least a few minutes was very refreshing. It's been very weird. Even the husband was taken aback by my constant desire to sit on the couch and do nothing. Fortunately, that has mostly passed. I seriously woke up at week 12 and felt normal again. While I've had a few days where I still feel tired and need to rest in the middle of the day, I mostly have my energy back.

The need to eat when hunger strikes. I used to have days at work where I would be too busy to have breakfast and would have my first meal around lunch time. That happens no more. Now I usually eat a good sized snack every couple of hours (sometimes more often depending on the protein quality of the snack or mini-meal). If hunger strikes (my stomach growls), I have about 5-10 minutes to eat something, otherwise I start to loose it. Now I always carry around snacks and water with me, much to my husband's amusement.

Heartburn! I shiver at the thought. Around week 7 I discovered heart burn. It sucks! It's basically due to a relaxation of the ligaments and muscles in the body (don't quote me on that) that will allow my hips to expand for delivery (too much detail??) but that has other consequences including heartburn (and loose joints). So no more marinara sauce and spicy foods (two staples in my diet). I discovered I hated heartburn more than I loved spicy foods. The good news is that I think the heartburn is passing a bit. I've started introducing spicy foods back into my diet and so far so good.

So there you have it. Stay tuned for more in the coming months.

A Tribute

2008-08-03T11:30:00.000-07:00

I wanted to say how proud I am of my husband. Last week he rode his bike to and from work on 4 out of the 5 days. It's about 3.5 miles each way. I know that doesn't sound like a lot, but from experience when I was trying to ride my bike to work from our old house (all 1.5 miles each way), it's often easier said than done. It's mostly a motivational factor, versus time or effort. If the husband drops me off at work and then takes the car himself, it usually takes him longer than if he were to just let me take the car and ride in to work. Usually by the time he gets off work and heads him, the afternoon wind has picked up so he'll have an extremely strong headwind for about 1 mile. But by that time he's pretty excited to be going home and that gives him energy. So the hardest part is getting up in the morning and convincing yourself to ride your bike to work.

Great job, honey!

Update: The husband just corrected me on the mileage. It's actually 4.1 miles each way. And it takes him between 20 and 25 minutes each way. I'm even more proud!

Funny

2008-07-31T17:30:00.001-07:00

Good conversation lead to great bumper sticker line:

"I'm not happy because the world sucks."

Would work on a t-shirt too.

Exciting Time of the Year

2008-07-30T12:49:00.001-07:00

So I am a few days away from the big 3-0. I’m fairly excited. 30 sounds fun and promising. 35 sounds a little scary. 40 is way to far away to even imagine.

I love birthdays. Especially mine. When the husband and I first started dating, we would have competitions for each other’s birthdays, to see who could outdo each other. I typically won, but considering that it was his birthday I was planning, we were both winners. He got me a great tv and alarm clock for my birthday once. I still have and use both of them. The alarm clock was one of the best gifts ever because I can wake up to a burbling stream or the sounds of the ocean instead of an annoying beeping. One of my favorite gifts to the husband was a kitten footprint painting. I got a blank canvas, some paint, and I had the kittens Monkey and Major dip their paws in pain and walk all over the canvas. The husband became concerned when he found green stuff on Monkey’s paw. Fortunately the paint was non-toxic (children’s finger paint) and the husband forgot about it until he got the painting.

This year I’ve requested a dinner at Benihanna and an ice cream cake.

Weekend News

2008-07-28T11:46:00.001-07:00

Had a great weekend. We didn’t do one big thing but lots of little things that added up to lots of fun. Now granted, most of the fun things we did were very domestic in nature but I guess we’ve moved on to that stage in life. I overheard the husband telling one of his friends that now he would get excited over fancy ranges and huge refrigerators and modern couches and he didn’t understand why. He’s friend responded with “yeah, it’s called a wife.”

Friday I went to Sacramento with my boss for a meeting. We drove 2.5 hours for a 2 hour meeting and lunch and then drove another 2.5 hours to get home. This wasn’t very environmentally conscious, I know, but it was worth it. We had a great meeting and will even get more funding to do more work. Another agency had done work similar to us but had gotten different results, but it turns out that they did a lot of things differently so we would have been comparing apples to oranges. Friday evening we worked out in the husband’s home gym and then went for a walk around the park, which was filled with families and little kids.

On Saturday we went for a 3 hour bike ride. Our mission was to return something to Costco. We took my usual path to work (a hike/bike trail) for most of our ride and had an awesome experience. The hike and bike trail was bustling with cyclists and pedestrians. I typically see about 10 people during my 6 mile ride in to work and on Saturday morning we saw 10 people in the first 30 seconds. I guess the trail is the place to be on Saturday morning. We saw a really cute all black bunny along the side of the trail. He (or she) appeared to be someone’s ex-pet since he wasn’t shy at all until the husband tried to pick him up, and then he only hopped out of reach. The bunny drew quite a crowd and it turns out the bunny and some of his friends have been on the trail for about 1 month. By the time we continued on our trip, there were three ladies who had gone home to get supplies to try to trap and rescue the bunny. When we returned on our way home, we saw some lady walking around with a carrier and some veggies but there was no sign of the bunny.

The rest of Saturday we just hung around and did a few things around the house.

On Sunday we went to The Home Depot and Ikea. We tried The Home Depot closest to us but it’s a smaller store than the one we used to shop at and it didn’t have a big selection of some of the things we were looking for, so we went to our usual Home Depot. We bought a storage/shelve thing for the garage, a tool box for our current tools, and a cat door the husband will hopefully install in the door leading to the laundry room/litter box so that we can keep that door closed to keep out the chills (there’s a big vent in there) and the liter dust. We then went to the Ikea across the street and were exhausted, hungry, and dehydrated by the time we found the exit (and we even took the shortcut). We didn’t buy anything at Ikea.

This morning I rode my bike in to work. It was great a ride. The weather was cool and I felt I was going pretty fast but I still couldn’t get my ride time to less than 35 minutes. Oh well. I feel great right now so we’ll see how I feel in a few hours.

On my ride, I was thinking about the differences between conservatives and liberals. I always figured the conservatives are just the people who don’t know – the ones that don’t travel, have lived in the same small town all their lives, don’t have any friends who are different from them, and are probably religious. But I figured that you could still be really religious and liberal, as long as you respected other people and other people’s views. For example, you can be a devout Catholic, but still respect other people’s religious views and understand that this country was founded on religious freedom. Often this respect for other people and their views comes from traveling and meeting other people who are different from you and realizing that while they may attend different churches, have different activities at family reunions, eat different things, they really want the same thing as you – the opportunity to provide the best life for themselves and their families. The thing is that I’ve met quite a few people who are well traveled and have done lots of different things (like the peace corp and living, and not just traveling, in other countries) who are still quite conservative. The only other reason I can think of for being conservative is that you are super rich and you don’t want too much government involvement in your everyday activities. It doesn’t pay to be poor or middle class and a conservative. So that’s my political two-cents for this week. I used to always listen to my ipod on my bike rides, but I’ve been lazy about updating it and charging the battery. So now it's just me and my thoughts.

I can’t believe it’s a Monday again and that it’s another 4 days before the weekend. Happy Monday!

Blah...Can't Think of a Good Title

2008-07-22T16:38:00.000-07:00

My mom was in town over the weekend and it was nice to see her. We mostly just hung out. We went to the farmer’s market and church on Sunday. It had been a long time since I had been to a Catholic mass and it was not as bad as I was expecting. Before each reading, the reader would give context to the meaning by explaining where it came from and what the source was about in general. After the brief introduction, and a long pause, the reader would say, “And now, a reading from…” I found that bit a little silly. The priest’s sermon was also pretty good. It was brief and he discussed some of the major topics of today – capital punishment, gay marriage – without sounding preachy. The priest basically said that the church is starting to get involved in the discussions of today’s important topics and that it may lead towards reform. That would be a good thing.

Noodles has been extremely whiney the past week. We think he misses his little friend Biscuit. Monkey and Major don’t give him any attention and when Noodles gets in their way too much, they tend to beat him up (Major smacks him and Monkey hisses and growls at him). We got Noodles a new toy (a fish with feathers on a string attached to a stick) which he loves, but we have to play with him constantly. We probably played a few hours with him over the weekend (everyone would take turns). He barely got tired and was whiney when we stopped. We are considering fostering another kitten to keep Noodles busy.

I learned a new word today, locavore. A locavore is a person who wants to consume food that is produced locally. And that has generated a new business:

“But who has time to get to the farmer’s market, let alone plant a garden?

That is where Trevor Paque comes in. For a fee, Mr. Paque, who lives in San Francisco, will build an organic garden in your backyard, weed it weekly and even harvest the bounty, gently placing a box of vegetables on the back porch when he leaves.”

Not only does eating locally support the local business, but it’s good for the environment. We were pretty good at killing our plants in the past, but we now have a basil plant that has survived for almost 1 month. The key is to not do anything to it apart from giving it water (in other words, don’t pick it’s leaves).

Mostly Uneventful Weekend

2008-07-15T12:43:00.000-07:00

We had a nice, relaxing weekend. The weather was pretty good, not too hot. So let’s see, what happened…Biscuit got adopted. A lady had come late last week to visit with Biscuit and she fell in love, so she wanted to adopt him. We arranged to deliver Biscuit during the weekend. The next day we got an email from the lady who had changed her mind after much soul-searching. Oh well. On Sunday, a very nice couple from the city drove down to meet with Biscuit. They immediately fell in love and we were very pleased with them, too. They even brought pictures of their other cats to show off – just the kind of cat people we like. Biscuit was captured pretty late for a kitten – he was probably around 7 weeks old. We had him for about 2.5 weeks and he was still quite shy of us (we would have to be sneaky to catch him). He loved Noodles and would spend his day chasing Noodles around, but while he was interested in us, he preferred to keep his distance. The lady in the couple who adopted Biscuit was very nice and gentle with him. We heard that by the next day, Biscuit was purring away in her lap. We were sad to see Biscuit leave, but we know he found a great, loving home. We couldn’t be more pleased about that. As soon as Biscuit left, Noodles stretched out on the living room floor and took a long nap. He was probably quite relieved to have a good nap without the risk of a kitten attacking him.

We really didn’t do anything over the weekend worth sharing. We had a pretty boring, unsocial weekend. Which was fine with me.

Oh, but the husband did get and partially set up the projector last night and I have to admit that it looks pretty good. Currently it’s sitting on the coffee table and hopefully by this weekend he’ll hang the projector (from the ceiling) and screen (from the wall). Then we have to get a short piece of furniture to place at the base of the screen for the computer, speaker, xbox, and a few media items (probably dvd’s). I wish we had the skill and tools to actually build the furniture, so we could get exactly what we want.

Holy Crap!

2008-07-11T15:56:00.000-07:00

Is this guy for real?

"The American leader, who has been condemned throughout his presidency for failing to tackle climate change, ended a private meeting with the words: "Goodbye from the world's biggest polluter."

He then punched the air while grinning widely, as the rest of those present including Gordon Brown and Nicolas Sarkozy looked on in shock."

I don't know what to say. Found by Alkaline Earth.

Domestic Bliss

2008-07-08T17:50:00.000-07:00

Over the weekend, the husband and I went on a little shopping spree to fill some of our domestic needs. Our first major purchase was an LG washer/dryer set. We have a proper laundry room (doubles as the litter box room) in our new place but for the first two months we continued to go to the Laundromat to get our clothes washed. I considered user reviews online (like at Sear’s and Home Depot) along with professional reviews to settle on the LG brand. I then borrowed a friend’s Consumer Reports and was pleased to find out that LG was three of their top 10 washer models. The washer model we settled on was CR #8; it’s the lower end front-loader (WM2016C). I really wanted the higher-end front loader (CR #1) which was a steam washer but I couldn’t justify the ~$1300 extra it would have cost apart from using the "I really want it" argument (the husband used his veto power). We got the matching dryer, which was not ranked by CR, but getting it would allow us to stack the machines, giving us (and the kitties) more space in the laundry room. So far I’m quite pleased with the machines. The washer has a very long cycle but it uses little water and front loaders are gentler on clothes in general. Ask me in a month how I feel about the machines.

Another item we purchased over the weekend was a new vacuum. It is awesome. It’s the Kenmore Progressive Upright with Inteli-Clean System vacuum. I had always wanted a Dyson vacuum cleaner and swore that when my vacuumed died, I would get a Dyson. However, after reading the consumer reports, I opted for their #1 pick (Dyson was much lower on the list, but still top 15, I think). The bagless version was ranked #2 and about $60 more expensive. The vacuum does a great job with fur and dirt. It has a sensor that tells you how much dirt is left and adjusts sucking power accordingly. The vacuum came with a few really good attachments (although a couple of them do not have a home on the vacuum which is annoying), it has a power switch on the handle which is really convenient, and it’s really easy to roll. It’s a little on the heavy side but since I don’t have to haul up and down the stairs anymore, I don’t care. The vacuum is definitely a step up but so far I’m quite pleased.

Now on to the husband’s new toys…after much begging and pleading from my husband, I finally gave in and let him buy a projector to replace our current, non-digital tv. Our current TV is an old, 50”+ projection tv that works just fine, in my opinion. But now the husband says we’ll have a 110” HD image projected in our living room. I don’t know anything about the projector or surround sound speakers, computer, screen, and projector mount he bought (and I think I’m fine not knowing), but hopefully it will be a pretty sweet system. It will probably be another month or so before everything is up and running so I’ll give an update then and let you know whether I like the system or not.

Cat Update

2008-07-07T12:09:00.000-07:00

I have a lot of cat news. We are fostering a very cute, very tiny flame point kitten that we’ve name Benjamin Buttermilk Biscuit, or just Biscuit for short. Monkey and Major hate the new, but temporary addition. Noodles took a few days to warm up to him and now he’s usually quite pleased to have him around. I think Noodles likes being an older brother, except when Biscuit is on Noodles like a shadow and Noodles doesn’t want to partake in kitteny things. At times like that Noodles will usually run around and try to loose Biscuit. It works sometimes. Here are some cute pics.

Monkey went out on Friday morning and didn’t come back until this morning. I remember sitting in bed shortly before Monkey arrived, thinking how peaceful the house was. Major was sprawled on the bed at my feet, Noodles was on the cat perch next to the window, and Biscuit was sleeping in a little tent next to the bed. There had been no interruptions in the middle of the night either by Monkey screaming to go out or her banging around in the kitchen being obnoxiously loud. I had obviously worried about Monkey and had gone around the neighborhood Saturday and Sunday evening, looking for her (note to self and others, consider how stupid you sound yelling your pet’s name in the middle of the street when coming up with a new pet name). But aside from my worry, I think the stress level in the house was a lot lower than usual. I am really curious as to where she went. Sometimes when she comes home she’s covered in spider webs. As much as I worry about her when she’s gone for more than 24 hours, that’s just what Monkey does.

Last week we trapped, neutered, and returned our first feral cat. It was a big tomcat that had scratched Monkey a bit and terrorized our back yard. He would visit often in the middle of the night, driving our cats crazy. Major would go insane, yelling and growling at the cat through the kitchen glass door and of course we would all wake up trying to figure out what was going on. The cat was extremely feral and aggressive and so our friend who helped us get him neutered named him Satan. After he got fixed, tested, and vaccinated, we brought him home and later that night we released Satan (I love the sound of that). Over the weekend as I was looking for Monkey, I saw Satan sitting on the front porch a couple houses down, engrossed in a bath.

Still Alive

2008-06-23T13:13:00.000-07:00

Again, it's been quite a long time since I've posted. I was ready with an apology, but you know what, no more apologies. I will post when I can (I am always thinking about it but not always near the computer with free time). I thank all my loyal readers and I hope you still come back often to see what I'm doing (who knows, maybe now that I've taken the pressure off I'll post more often).

A lot has happened, where to start...

We went to Lake Tahoe for a few days with the husband's cousins. It was great. We rented a house on a little lake north of Lake Tahoe and we had our own private beach. The lake was small but motor boats were not allowed so that kept things quiet. The house came well furnished and with a couple of canoes so we spent the days and nights canoing, eating, drinking, and hanging out. I figured out that I'm not quite as adventurous as I think I am. I was terrified every time I went out on the canoes, afraid they were going to tip over. I had a life jacket on and the lakes weren't that deep nor that big, but still, I was afraid of the inconvenience of falling into the lake. So maybe I'm still adventurous, just not willing to get dirty.

Last weekend we went to the OC to hang out with my family. The husband needed to fly once on Southwest before the end of the month to get a free ticket. So we decided to take the short, cheap flight to Southern California and use the free ticket for a trip to Boston. It was hot down south. Fortunately my parents have AC in the family room so that's where I spent most of my time. I noticed that there was very little traffic in LA, and I'm guessing it's because of the cost of fuel. It was a little weird, but convenient! We went to a wedding with my parents. Since we were last minute guests, I was afraid we would screw up the seating arrangement, but fortunately Mexican weddings have open seating. I swear my parents knew everyone at the wedding. We were only a little late (before dinner) but most people arrived late so our dinner was spent standing up and introductions. I don't think we sat down for more than a couple of minutes at a time during dinner. Still, I got to see my extended family and the food was very good.

We watched a lot of basketball during the last couple of weeks. Mainly the Celtics vs. Lakers finals. That was a great series. A lot of good basketball, a lot of blowouts, a lot of comebacks. Once it was over, I was bummed to not have any more sports to watch. The UEFA Euro 2008 is on right now but most games are during the middle of the day (the EuroCup is like the European World Cup - every 4 years). Over the weekend my brother and I watched Russia upset Holland. It was an exciting game and it was great to watch it with my brother. Oh, we flew in to LAX over the weekend, and for our flight in, the husband wore his Celtics Larry Bird shirt. I told the husband I would probably not defend him if he got in trouble in Laker country. But I think most LA people were still too embarrassed from Game 6, or hadn't cared enough in the first place.

The bosses were not in the office today, which resulted in a quiet (no phone ringing), relaxing day in the office. Since I'm quite tired, I think I'll go home early (only 8 hours worked!).

On Friday it was quite hot. When I got home, Monkey was still gone so I went around the neighborhood, looking for her. By the time I returned home, she was waiting for me at the door. As soon as she walked in, she laid down on the kitchen floor, with her paws in the air. She was in a position we like to refer to as "raided", kind of like the cockroaches in the Raid commercials. I got a wet wash cloth and put it on her belly. She didn't mind at all, and stayed there for about 1/2 an hour. It was that hot.

Fortunately it has cooled off a bit. It's no longer pushing 100 degrees F.

It's Been a While

2008-06-09T13:13:00.000-07:00

Sheesh, it’s been a while since I've posted. I didn’t realize how long. Anyway, had a busy week and weekend, so here goes...

My indoor coed team had an undefeated season. We played against the 4th place team in the semifinals and lost 4-3 in sudden-death overtime. It was a good game and we were shooting like crazy, but we just kept hitting the “posts” instead of the net. Oh well. The final was between the 3rd and 4th place teams. The 3rd place team won. That’s soccer.

I haven’t been to the movies in a long time, maybe in about 3.5 years. And in 1 week I went to 2 movies. The first movie I saw was Sex and the City. I loved it. I think I had a high expectation going in and my expectation was exceeded. The movie was a lot of fun to watch. I definitely recommend it whether or not you were into and have seen the series. Even the guys might like it. To prepare for the movie, I started rewatching the last season of the series. I would tend to watch while the husband was vegged on the couch, playing on his laptop. As I watched, he would often snicker at the dialogue. As the episodes and days progressed, he started to look up every once in a while if something big happened. Towards the last of the episodes I watched, he would actually move his laptop out of the way so that he could watch for a few minutes at a time. That made me happy. I can’t wait for the DVD to come out.

The second movie I saw was Indiana Jones. Now this was a big risk considering that my concuño really hated the movie and I trust his judgment. I love the Indiana Jones movies and I went in a little hesitant. Perhaps it was my low expectations, but the husband and I both enjoyed the movie. It wasn’t a masterpiece and it wasn’t as great as the first one (according to the husband) but it was at least as good as the third Indiana Jones movie (again, according to the husband) which was the worst in the series (I like them all).

We finished off our Saturday afternoon by going to a 3-year old’s birthday party. It was at the park and the weather was great. I think the kids multiplied, at least compared to the birthday party last year. Or maybe it was that the kids got older and so it was harder to contain them in one small area and it seemed like there were a lot more little kids running around.

On Sunday, I bribed my husband into taking a long walk with me by buying him lunch and beer at the Tied House, our local brew-pub. He ended up not getting beer with lunch but we did fill up our growler with the Oatmeal Stout. I hate really dark beers like Guinness, but I really like the Oatmeal Stout at the Tied House. To make up for his non-beer lunch, the husband drank the entire growler all by himself while watching the Lakers vs. Celtics game – that’s over 4 pints! The game was pretty good. Although I am disappointed that the Celtics blew such a huge lead. My family lives in Southern Cali and they are HUGE Lakers fans, especially my brother and cousins. My husband is from Boston and while he isn’t a die-hard Celtics fan (not like he is a 2007 Patriots fan), he hates the Lakers. Since I live with my husband, I kind of want the Celtics to win. Last night my fan-ness was 70-30 for the Celtics. It varies from game to game.

The final highlight from Sunday was the end of the year party for the AYSO all star team I was helping to coach. It was a short but lovely BBQ at the beautiful home of one of the girls (it must be nice to have bought a house years ago in CA). When I left the girls were trying to get the coach in the pool. They tried to give me a very big, wet bear hug but I managed to get away. As a thank you I got a nice bottle of Zinfandel. Sweet!

We did a lot of bike riding and walking over the weekend and used it as our mode of transportation. It was great. The husband convinced me to ride my bike to work this morning so that he could take the car. Hmmm...,well, at least I got a workout. Actually, he hast to take Noodles to the vet later so that he can get his second Leukemia shot.

So here’s the moral question of the day: if you find something in a public area, is it considered stealing if you take it? We went to Costco on Friday and as we were loading up our car, we noticed a cart with a package of paper towels and 2 huge boxes of cereal (probably about $30 worth of groceries). There wasn’t another car around. The guy collecting the carts asked us if the groceries were ours. When we said no, he looked around, and then said he was going to return the groceries to the store. Should we have said yes? Would that have been bad? On Sunday morning, I went to Whole Foods. As I was packing up my car, I noticed a body wash in the otherwise empty cart in the empty parking spot next to my car. Again, there wasn’t a car around. This time I grabbed the body wash, sniffed it, and decided to take it. Was that bad? Am I a horrible person, lacking in morals? Just wondering.

Goodbye Sluggo

2008-06-01T09:56:00.001-07:00

On Thursday, the husband and I had to say goodbye to our sweet, little munchkin Sluggo. The blood transfusions and procrit (red blood cell production stimulant) were just not working. What was keeping him going was probably the prednisone steroid med he was taking. After the blood transfusion, Sluggo was back to his almost normal self. He woke me up one morning around 2 am to play fetch. I happily obliged.

After about one week, Sluggo started to deteriorate quickly. He lost the pinkness in his nose and pads he had gained with the transfusion and laid down in the corner of our closet. I made him a little bed in there with food and water. On Wednesday morning he wasn’t excited about food and only licked the gravy off his canned food. On Thursday morning he refused to eat anything. He was still drinking water but had very little energy.

Sluggo spent his last hours staring out the window, perched on his new window seat. He saw a few birds, including a hummingbird. He would react when I would talk to him or pet him but his movements were very slow.

The husband and I struggled with the decision of when to take him to the vet. We wanted him to be at home with us for as much as possible, as long as he wasn’t in pain. As hard as it was to say goodbye, we feel we made the right choice and our happy that we were able to do one last good thing for Sluggo.

The house seems quite empty without him. We only had him for 1.5 years but his presence was always felt since he was super active. Except in the middle of the day – he was a great at taking naps. He loved playing fetch with his special cat nip stuffed carrot and favorite hair bands. He would love to “help” us change the sheets on the beds but it was more of a game for him in which he would get under the sheets, lay upside down, and stick his legs straight up, claws piercing through the sheets. He always took offense to Monkey’s growls and hisses and he would let Noodles steal his treats every once in a while (but not his toys). When we would sit on the couch, watching TV, he would come over and sit in our laps, kneading super fast, digging his claws into our legs. We would have to use a blanket to protect our skin. He would give us gentle but determined bites on our hands to get us to pet him.

I’m not sure if the other cats know what’s going on. They started keeping their distance pretty early on, except when they would go into the closet to try to steal Sluggo’s leftover food. Major and Noodles are being very friendly and loving towards us and Monkey isn’t as whiny.

Here are a bunch of great pictures of Sluggo, and his BFF Noodles.

Here's a close-up of Noddles (front) and Sluggo (back) a few days after we adopted Sluggo. Noodles was 20 days older than Sluggo and we adopted him about 2-3 weeks before Sluggo.

The kittens really were inseparable until almost the end.

We would joke that we got Sluggo as a chew toy for Noodles. When Sluggo first came home, Noodles was on him like a shadow.

Sluggo came with ringworm (we found out a few days after we adopted him), which is a fungal, skin infection. Ringworm doesn't really bother the cats but is pretty gross and highly contagious (to people too), so we had to give the kittens weekly baths, and daily application of ointment and oral meds. Their "quarantine" lasted about 3.5 months.

Great picture taken at ~1 year of age by my brother-in-law. You can really see the intensity in his eyes.

Sluggo was quite photogenic, despite his solid color.

This is one of my favorite pictures of Sluggo. His nose and ears were very pink.

St. Paul Highlights

2008-05-25T15:47:00.000-07:00

The highlight and reason for our weekend in St. Paul was Magnus' and Anita's wedding. What a beautiful, happy couple. We hadn't seen Magnus in over 4 years and it was great to be reunited with him and with Dominik and Frauke. The ceremony was held at a Unitarian church and it was simple and meaningful in both English and Swedish. The reception was held at the Science Museum where there was great food, good music and dancing (the groom can dance!) and many great speeches.

I was quite excited about visiting St. Paul since I am a fan of A Prairie Home Companion. I was surprised by how pretty and diverse the city is. And it was also very clean. However, at the same time, it seemed quite dead and I'm wondering if most people headed out of town for the long weekend. Either that or St. Paul is the first city I see staying ahead of the population growth curve (there's no traffic, everything is clean). And as far as the diversity, I expected to see a lot of Norwegians, but instead I've seen a lot of people from different cultures and a lot of Irish pubs.

We took the red-eye out here and spent most of Friday relaxing and walking around a bit. On Saturday we checked out the Science musuem and attended the wedding. Sunday we spent most of the day vegging in front of the tv, with a little walking around (ate at Mickey's famous diner and checked out the Fitzgerald theater) and monitoring of the weather. Every channel on TV had weather updates and tornado watches. As we sat looking out the window in our hotel room, we had a scary storm pass by with big, dark clouds, a little rain, and lots of wind, including small funnel clouds. But it only lasted about 15 minutes.

Looking Ahead to the Weekend

2008-05-22T16:42:00.000-07:00

Over the weekend I had the wonderful pleasure of watching both my mom and brother graduate from California State University at Fullerton. My mom earned her BS in Child and Adolescent Studies, cum laude. It took her quite a few years to get to where she is now and I am so very proud of her. She started taking classes to earn her GED when I was in high school and she’s basically taken at least one, sometimes 3 or 4, college courses since then, in addition to working part time, volunteering a lot of her time, and being a mom and wife which included cooking dinner, cleaning, and driving us to too many soccer practices, games, and tournaments to count. She’s talked about pursuing a Master’s degree but at the same time I think she’s hoping to get a job as a Community Liaison (I think) at the school district where she works. As a community Liaison she would help parents take a proactive role in their children’s’ education. I think after 15 years working as a Teacher’s Aide she’s realized that a child’s educational success starts with the parents and home life.

My brother earned his BA in Liberal Studies with a Sociology minor. He’s ideal job would be a social worker at the county. I am very excited for him to become a social worker. He enjoys working with children and has in the past done an awesome job as a recreational coordinator for the city. I think being a social worker is a very emotionally demanding job, but I can’t think of anyone better than my brother to fill that job. He is a very compassionate person but he also has the ability to emotionally separate himself from the situation which would be very useful in social work. He is also considering going for a Master’s degree or joining the Peace Corp. If it were up to me, I’d probably ship my brother off to Latin America or Africa with the Peace Corp. I think everyone should have some sort of “study abroad” experience early in their lives.

I think witnessing my brother’s and mom’s graduation was a very moving experience for my dad. I can only imagine what it feels like to have your kids be done with school and then to add in your wife?? On our way to graduation (at 7:30 am at the start of our 5 hour roast in close to 100 degree F weather), my father expressed his satisfaction at having both his children and wife be college graduates. Again, congrats to my mom and my brother and thanks to my dad. My dad has always worked long, hard hours, and despite this, his put aside tiredness to be our number one fan.

In other graduation news, congrats to Sumana (or should I say Sumanabams) for earning her Masters in Technology Management while working full time. Whoo, Sumana!!!

In more ordinary news, my indoor game on Monday night went pretty well. We won 9-0. I unfortunately didn’t score but had lots of great shots (stopped by great goalie saves) and assists. As a team we played really well, moving the ball around a lot with lots of great communication. Personally, I had trouble going one-on-one. Whenever we play weak teams, I have a hard time being too aggressive and tend to play down and almost give up the ball. I think I feel sorry for the other team and I don’t want to show off or make them feel worse. However, at the same time I was trying pretty hard to score.

I may have mentioned before that I tend stay away from chain restaurants. One of the few exceptions is Chipotle, the gourmet burrito place. I love their vegetarian burritos and all their meats are humanely raised. I tend to eat there about once every 2 months. I had Chipotle for lunch today. At our Chipotle they have a “drop your business card and win 10 free burritos” contest every week. I’ve dropped about 4 cards into the bowl over the last 1.5 years, and I’ve won three times. It makes my coworkers very happy.

We are going to St. Paul, MN, this weekend for a friend’s wedding. After this, we don’t have any major travel plans for a while.

Check out Susan McCarthy’s, The Nature of the Beast. It’s a weblog of “short remarks about creatures, wildlife, and the environment.” McCarthy cowrote When Elephants Weep: The Emotional Lives of Animals and she wrote Becoming a Tiger: How Baby Animals Learn to Live in the Wild. I met McCarthy’s husband at a party once, a few days after I had gone to the used bookstore, searching for When Elephants Weep, which I was unable to find it but that was probably due to poor memory – I knew the book title had “elephants” and “crying” in it. When McCarthy’s husband told me his wife was a writer, I asked if she had written any books I might know (I’m not good at remembering names) and even before he started answering my question, I knew he was going to say When Elephants Weep. I'm either psychic or was thinking too much of the book. I didn’t have much of a conversation with McCarthy herself – the party and house were large and I didn’t want to “stalk” her. I look forward to reading her weblog. Thanks for the find, Sumana and Leonard.

Pinkness Update: The vet was very happy with Sluggo’s pinkness level. He had more blood drawn and we’ll have a better idea of what’s going on and what his future holds after we get the results tomorrow. Sluggo and I have been playing a lot of fetch lately, mostly around 2 am. I don’t mind at all. Monkey on the other hand, is driving us crazy. She is incessant with her whining to get out of the house. We spoke to the vet about this and she suggested that we try to keep Monkey in for her safety and that of Sluggo’s (we don’t want her bringing in any disease). However, at the same time we need to consider her quality of life (and ours).

Happy Memorial Day Weekend!

Little Sluggo

2008-05-19T12:31:00.000-07:00

Sluggo has Leukemia. He received a blood transfusion over the weekend and so he is currently doing much better. The vet expected the transfusion would last between one and three months. We have a vet appointment later this week to find out how his body accepted the transfusion. We’ve discussed options with the vet, but they really don’t recommend trying to do monthly transfusions to try to keep Sluggo comfortable and healthy. At least when it’s time he won’t feel pain, he’ll just be very tired.

Sluggo is 21 months old. When he was a kitten his test for Leukemia came back negative, but the vets think his disease started in his bone marrow so a blood test wouldn’t indicate any illness. I am very sad. I don’t want to loose our kitten. And I don’t want Noodles to loose his brother, his BFF. This afternoon we’re taking Monkey, Major, and Noodles to the vet to get tested. Leukemia is contagious between cats. There is a vaccination against Leukemia, but it is only recommended for indoor/outdoor cats. Monkey and Major have been vaccinated, Noodles and Sluggo were not.

For the time being, Sluggo is mostly back to his normal, spunky self. He loves to run around and play fetch. His favorite toys are one of my hair rubber bands, his catnip-stuffed carrot, and a rainbow colored mouse that makes noise when you shake it. He loves bananas and will gnaw on anything he can find. When I wake up on my own in the morning, I usually find him wedged between my legs. Otherwise, he’ll start kneading on me and he’ll wake me up with his razor-sharp claws. Sluggo loves to get petted and as a thank you he’ll give you lots of love bites (soft little nibbles on your hand). He’s a big love munchkin. I’ll probably be posting lots of pictures of him in the next few months.

Sluggo and his BFF Noodles. This was taken at my parents' house when they were taking care of them during their ringworm phase (hence the brown spots). The kittens got into the fireplace and were covered in soot. So my mom gave them a bath (she only got one little scratch in return) and they sat in the cupboards, recovering.

Furry Thoughts

2008-05-16T10:47:00.000-07:00

Our white fur ball is very sick. Sluggo has really bad anemia and it doesn't look like it's the good or easy to care for kind. He's going to a specialist later today and they will redo some blood analysis. The blood analysis last night yielded results that were very grim (the lowest counts the vet had ever seen). It's probably premature to worry since they don't have a definite diagnosis yet but when the vet mentions bone marrow transfusions, it really makes me worry. Please keep him in your thoughts.

He's lost the pink in his nose.

Cool Wheels!

2008-05-14T20:48:00.000-07:00

My commute to work this morning was 45 minutes. Typical California commute, you say? Time-wise, yes. Path-wise, no. I rode my bike along the Steven’s Creek Trail. I had about 3/4 of a mile on residential streets and then the rest of the time was along the hike/bike path that had bridges, streams, and lots of other cyclists and pedestrians. I think I can take at least 10 minutes off my commute since I went slow (I got passed by a little girl on her tricycle going to school), was unsure on a couple of the turns, and there were quite a few bugs. I hit a couple of gnat clouds, but the worse was actually the ones that were just pounding me like little pellets. Thank goodness for sunglasses. Maybe I’ll wear a welder mask took keep the bugs out of nose and mouth. But at least I got some protein.

Here are some pictures (click on the picture for nicer, larger views):

The first part of the trail has a great tree canopy and is really cool. There are lots of turnoffs in this area that lead to residential areas, schools, or parks.

I ride over two bridges, one along the streets where I catch the trail and this one which is a bike/pedestrian bridge. I hit the bridge about 10 minutes into my commute to work and can go over it no problem; but on the way home I'm usually quite tired and struggle a bit.

I ride alongside the freeway for about 50 feet. It's very noisy in this area and the sound of the cars wash out my iPod.

At one point in time the trail crosses a major street.

The second third of my ride is along this stream. There are barely any trees in this area and a lot of bugs. But I also get to see ducks and some cool landmarks.

The large oval shaped building (from the top) with the black top used to be a blimp hangar for either NASA Ames or Moffet Field (Naval air base). Old people tell us that the city used to lose power whenever they would open or close the doors of the hangar. The buildings at the far left of the picture is the husband's work (Lockheed).

Nice view.

Cool truck (eye-candy for the husband).

The last third of my commute is partially along a golf course. On the right is the clubhouse for the course.

Google is to the left and another high-tech company is to the right.

This is where I get off the trail, right next to Intuit (TurboTax and Quicken).

I am proud of my commute to work. So far I've only ridden once a week due to soccer and other stuff I've had to do. I am surprised it takes me so long, but I tend to go slow, especially downhill. I am afraid of going to fast and falling off my bike. As I ride more, I'll probably get my commute time down. When I first started running on the treadmill, I had to hold on to the bar to keep from falling off. Now I can watch tv while I run on the treadmill.

In other news, I found Monkey all the way down and across the street as I was coming home from dinner. She was probably about 8 houses down. She was thinking about crossing the street as I drove by but pulled back as she saw/heard my car. I drove home, parked my car, and walked back to get her. She seemed a little confused and hesitant to let me pick her up. I am not happy that she went so far and across the street but maybe this was a one-time thing (since she seemed confused and disoriented). Whenever we try to keep her in for more than a few days, she tends to make some clear statements (icky statements) and she drives us crazy with her constant howling at the door. We've been through this debate before in trying to figure out if we should let Monkey out or not. We've escaped the dog that terrorized our old neighborhood but now we have the fear of cars. But at least Monkey is pretty street savvy and she still freaks out when she hears a car drive by. Being a mommy is hard.

Weekend Highlights

2008-05-13T09:39:00.000-07:00

We had a pretty busy weekend. On Friday night I made enchiladas to celebrate Cinco de Mayo (a few days late). They were yummy.

Saturday I coached my girls. That was our last weekend practice. We have two tournaments the next two weekends, but I will miss them both because I have other, personal commitments. I am glad the season is almost over because I’ll get my weekends back, but I’m already starting to miss the girls. In the afternoon we ran lots of errands and got new glasses (glasses for the husband and sunglasses for me). We also stopped by Bed, Bath, and Beyond/Best Buy. I shopped for house stuff and the husband shopped for Grand Theft Auto IV (he may have had to grab the last copy from the hands of a 7 year old, but as long as the hubby is happy and will shop at BB&B with me, that’s all that matters).

On Sunday I went to the local laundromat and washed clothes. I still haven’t picked out a washer/dryer set and I am putting that off because all the options are overwhelming. It’s a big investment and I want to do as much research before we buy anything. In the afternoon, we checked out our local park and played a few rounds of tennis. We did a pretty good job despite not having played for a while. We finished off Mother’s Day with sushi. The kittens didn’t get me anything, but I did notice that there was less growling and hissing in general. What more could I ask for?

The rest of our free time was either spent vegging in front of the TV or unpacking boxes. We are almost done but we have a lot more books than bookshelves (how did that happen?). We watched the end of Extreme Makeover: Home Edition. It’s always great to watch families who have been through a lot walk into their new home for the first time. Shows like this make me feel good about humans. Another good but sad show we watched was Heart of Lioness, an Animal Planet show in which a lioness adopts a baby oryx (would be her food in normal circumstances). The story is quite touching although hard to watch at times. I was quite impressed with the narrators objectivity and her ability to stay out of the way even when things looked grim for the pair. I definitely recommend the show. I am misty eyed just thinking about the story.

Indoor last night was good. We came from behind to tie and then win the game in the last couple of minutes. I played like crap. I just kept making the wrong decision (pass instead of shoot). I had an early practice with the little girls, and we just kept going over the 1 touch shot once they are in the penalty box. For the little girls it’s easier and more comfortable to pass than to be aggressive and take a shot. I got a beautiful pass right in the penalty box and no one was on me and instead of shooting, I thought “my teammate will get a better shot,” and I passed it back to my teammate who had 2 people marking him.

Hooray for Thursday!

2008-05-08T14:52:00.001-07:00

We’ve had a busy week. On Monday night, I had an indoor game and the husband came along to play too. He did pretty good for not being a soccer player. He had a few good passes and he almost had an assist but I missed the goal. The game was very intense and we came from behind to tie 3-3. Nine guys showed up to play and only 3 get to play on the field at once. So there was some tension during the game, but most people quickly got over that and we all went for some pizza and beer to celebrate our game and Cinco de Mayo.

On Tuesday night I had an outdoor coed game and I really wasn’t in the mood to play. I ended up playing only about 30 minutes of the game, which was fine. I wish I could be more like a guy in the sense that I would always play hard even if I wasn’t up for it. Sorry to generalize, but it’s true. The guys on my team always “fight” to get playing time whereas the girls “fight” to stay on the bench. It’s probably because females are more social and don’t want to take anyone else’s spot on the field. Again, sorry for generalizing, but I think it’s true.

On Wednesday, both the husband and I had our yearly eye exams. I love going to the eye doctor because the doctor is really cool. He’s well traveled, very talkative, and does a lot of humanitarian work. He always has great stories to tell. We had our pupils dilated and the doctor needed to use 3 times the normal amount of drops to get my eyes to dilate. It had something to do with my dark colored irises requiring more drops (they are thicker than lighter colored irises, or something like that). So for about 4 hours afterwards, I had to wear my sunglasses (even at the grocery store).

I really like all our doctors and I would love to spend time with them outside their practice. The husband describes them as total nerds and really into their profession. The only thing wrong with that is that a typical appointment will take a really long time. Our dentist averages close to 2 hours for a cleaning. They have all sorts of gadgets and like to explain things. The only doctor that doesn’t give us that much time is the primary care doctor but that’s usually because it’s not really needed (I tend to know what’s wrong with me before I go in so I usually only need meds). She has a small practice and we can usually get an appointment the day we call. We also really love our vet, but she’s leaving so we’ll have to find a new one. I have always appreciated the care the vet takes with our cats and how she coos over them. We actually saw another vet in the same practice (because of a scheduling error) and we liked her too. But we found out later that she’s a little crazy (there’s lots of evidence). So now that we’ve moved we’ll try to find a place that’s closer to home.

Our closest supermarket is Lucky and I went there yesterday. I prefer Safeway or Albertson's. I'm not sure which is cheaper, but at least at Safeway I get United miles when I shop. Over the weekend I had Pho for the first time. It was very, very good. It's the only soup I've seen my husband enjoy. I am glad it's Thursday!

Moving is a Royal Pain in the ...

2008-05-05T13:53:00.000-07:00

But we survived. The move itself wasn’t so bad. We had pro movers who worked fast, were very strong, and really cute. They were nice enough to fix the broken wheel on our gigantic tv which makes repositioning it so much easier. When they were done with the move, they met all the kitties and cooed at them (which is every mom’s dream). The hardest part about moving was having the 40+ hour job and a small car. We made nightly trips to the place with as much stuff as we could fit in our Corolla. We were lucky to have about 1 week overlap so we were able to get a lot of stuff setup, like the kitchen. And having a garage made it easy to just dump a bunch of boxes in the garage and keep the house clear for the movers.

After the movers left and we let the kitties out of the laundry room, we went out for lunch. When we came back, Monkey was sprawled on the couch and she looked quite pleased to see us. She started meowing and rolling on the ground and playing with her tail. We were happy but surprised with the new Monkey. A few minutes later we noticed that none of the other kitties, the boys, had come to greet us. So we started calling out to them. Nothing. We opened a little can of food. Nothing. We spent about 10 minutes looking and finally found Major under one of the beds. But Sluggo and Noodles were still missing. Meanwhile, Monkey is following us around, being very talkative and loving. I’m starting to get worried, thinking that maybe the movers came back to steal the kittens. I know it’s stupid, but there aren’t a lot of places to hide. The kittens ended up being in the box springs of the guest bed. We finally found them when we shined a flashlight under the bed and saw a couple of lumps hanging under the box frame. When the boys started coming out a few hours later, Monkey returned to her bitchy self and started growling and hissing at everyone and everything.

The days after the move have been hectic and will continue to be so we’ll have a lot of boxes around for a while. Hopefully we’ll get them cleared by the time my brother-in-law comes to visit later this month. We probably should have spent the weekend unpacking as much as possible but instead I coached soccer, had to work, we set up the husband's new home gym (it’s pretty sweet), enjoyed our HBO on demand (we started John Adams and Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas) and we went to a soccer BBQ.

For lunch on Sunday we went to an Indian restaurant/cafeteria that I had been to when I first moved to Mountain View and was staying at a hotel in the neighborhood. I remembered it being very good and full of Indian people (always a good sign at an Indian restaurant). The restaurant was the kind of place where you walk up to the counter, order and pay, take your seat, and then your food is delivered. The menu was a text list of a lot of words I had not seen before so I just went for the Sunday special (vegetable Biryani) and the husband ordered something that sounded familiar. When our food arrived, my dish turned out to be a vegetable and rice mixture with a yogurt and onion sauce. It was very good. The husband's dish was a couple of round dumplings (maybe corn) with 4 sauces for dipping. A few minutes later:

Waiter: Mango lassi.
Me: We didn’t order a lassi.
Waiter: Yes you did.
Me: No we diddn’t.
Waiter: Yes you did.

The waiter then put the lassi on our table and walked away. It was a good lassi. A few minutes later, another waiter arrived with a huge crispy crepe that was almost 2 feet long. I said "great!" and took the plate from him. I wasn't going to argue this time. The crepe was good but very spicy. Everything was very good so we would definitely go back. I wonder if we could duplicate the experience by ordering the same stuff.

We’ve only been at our new place a couple of days and here’s what I think so far:

Pros
It’s a house! It is a duplex but it’s a house nonetheless.
It’s a real neighborhood – people are always walking, jogging, pushing strollers.
We have a garage to put all our crap in. And any other crap we might buy.
The kitchen. It’s bigger than our old kitchen.
It’s all on 1 floor. I enjoyed having stairs, but it will be easier to clean without the stairs. Plus, in a place where real estate is premium, it’s nice to not have any lost space around the stairs.
The laundry room/kittenarium. It’s nice to have a separate room, far away, where we can put the litter box.
My bike ride to work will now be on a hike/bike trail.

Cons
Cars. There are very few cars on our street, but the ones that drive by we can hear. Both the kitties and I stopped what we were doing the first time we realized a car was driving by (we all ran under the bed). At our old place we were on a really busy avenue, but we were at the very back so we never heard anything (except the constant ambulances at the retirement community next door) and we had an empty lot behind us.
Our neighbors are really close to us. All our windows seem to face their windows so we can easily look into each other’s houses, especially at night. And there’s a huge window at torso level in the shower (the glass is frosted but it’s hard to vent the bathroom when you are showering).
We are further away from my work and just a little bit closer to the husband’s work. Not everything is still in a 1.5 mile radius from where we used to live – Whole Foods, Trader Joe’s, my work, the gym, Costco.

Pictures will be coming as soon as we get our computer set up, which unfortunately is pretty far down the list.