renegadeRICEcracker

hmm...

i went to del's tonight, and after several beers i got up to sing cindi lauper's "i drove all night." while singing, i experienced the following realizations:

1. this song is harder to sing than i thought.

2. it's a little out of my range.

3. i sound a lot better in my car with the music drowning me out.

4. i don't know the song as well as i thought.

yeeaaahhhh... uh, sorry to the people who were there. i'm having a birthday karaoke party next weekend, too. sorry to all the people who will be there. yeah.

sad

my assistant's mom was readmitted to the hospital this morning. she's been battling lung cancer, and recently went to the hospital again, and then they moved her to a nursing facility, and now she's back at the hospital, and it doesn't look like she's going to leave. my assistant was upset because they intubated her this morning, and her mom had specifically directed that she not be intubated or have any other life-prolonging procedures done. they're going to try to wean her off the breathing machine and see if she can breathe on her own. in the meantime, through all of this she is mostly unconscious to keep her from feeling much pain.

my assistant is sort of a pulled-together mess. she came into work for a few hours because she wanted to keep busy at least part of the time. she said that they're not doing very well, and all the relatives are calling, and luckily she has her aunt there as an emotional rock, and then she sort of trailed off and said, "well, you know..." and, i mean, i kind of do -- not completely, clearly, since i haven't gone through this part... but this is something that is certainly on my mind... and i just feel so sad for her.

it's also just hitting a little close to home right now, and i'm left with a tight feeling in my chest. and the thing is there's nothing you can really say anymore. they've reached the end, and there's no "i hope she feels better soon" or "i hope she gets to leave the hospital soon," there's just "well at least she's not in a lot of pain," and "at least you were able to spend a lot of time together" and "i'm so, so sorry..." god.

wooooo

i hadn't played poker in a long time so tonight when i got home i played a couple hours of online poker. i won $2.50. clearly a productive use of my time, no?

went bowling, too. sean bowled a turkey. gobble gobble.

my dad is cute

i recently gave my dad a check from both my sister and me for the barbeque we (mostly) bought for him for christmas (we all discussed chipping in for various things for each other and somehow just didn't get around to exchanging money for a long time). i got a card in the mail from him today. he sent a joint birthday card to my sister and me (we are both summer babies) and in it he enclosed my check, with "VOID -- happy birthdays!" written across it. ha.

waaaahhh

i'm hungover today. hung-fucking-over. foggy head, tired eyes, nauseous stomach, overall achey-bad feeling hungover. :-(

i didn't think i drank that much last night, but apparently i did. i went with a friend to taste last night, which was excellent (said friend is now scheming ways for us to return and pick up our waitress), and then we took a walk and ended up at corent pub, to which i had also never been. it was totally fun. we talked and talked and talked and now that yucky feeling i'd been harboring for the last few days has loosened up and dissipated for the time being. so that's good.

but yeah. after i drove home i realized i was trashed and probably shouldn't have driven (at least it was close!), drank two big glasses of water, watched two episodes of family guy, and then threw up. yick.

this morning i felt like ass, so i took some advil, drank water, and upon arriving to work got a fruit smoothie (one of my co-workers swears by them for hangovers) and a wheat bagel to ease my stomach. then i drank water all morning.

I STILL FEEL LIKE ASS (marginally better, though, after lunch). waaaaahhhhh! how the hell do i make this go away? bah. i am never drinking again. (okay, that's not true. but i won't drink as much tonight as i would have otherwise.)

baby alex turns one!

last thursday my baby nephew turned one year old. on saturday we had a joint birthday/mother's day celebration. my dad and ayee flew out for it, and we went out to eat with my mom and great aunt and uncle. during lunch we gave alex one of the soft, pink lotus-paste-filled buns (they are supposed to look like peaches) to play with. he examined it and squeezed it and not once tried to put it in his mouth.

afterward my mom, dad, ayee, sister, brother-in-law, nephew and i went back to my mom's for presents and birthday cake. alex's favorite present was a big box of clothes that my dad and ayee bought him. apparently his favorite thing in the world is to toss clothes behind him. my brother-in-law said that alex does this sometimes while my brother-in-law is trying to fold laundry. my sister said this probably explains why she found a pair of his underwear under the couch in the living room.

afterward we lit a big "1" candle on alex's first ice cream cake and put him in the high chair. by this time the birthday boy was pretty wiped out and sat there resignedly while we sang happy birthday to him. when we finished, alex had his first bite of vanilla ice cream. below is alex's patented you-just-put-something-i-don't-recognize-into-my-mouth expression. he perked up after a couple bites when he realized he actually likes it.

HAPPY FIRST BIRTHDAY, ALEX!!!!

what... the fuck?!

we got my mom's CT results yesterday. not bad. not 100% good, but some solid good components and some bad components. when i found out, i wasn't sure how i felt. part of me was really relieved that we didn't find out that it's all over the liver now and we have only a month to go or something. another part of me wanted to cry -- i think because it's not like we can get "happy" news, it's like, okay, good, it's not the very end, but there's no realistic possibility for "cure" or "miracle" or "fantastic results." so i was trying to sort out what this uncomfortable mix of feelings in my chest was.

anyway. i get out of a meeting yesterday evening, during which my cell phone was going off. like mad. i walk outside, check my voicemail, and my sister has left me a message that my dad is in the hospital because he was having chest pains. they didn't think it was a heart attack (actually, she started coughing when she said this, so i wasn't sure), but they were keeping him there for tests. i went... completely numb. it was this surreal you've-got-to-be-fucking-kidding-me feeling. i was already so drained, so worn out from the last few months, and still trying to sort out all the crap inside, i was like... more? really? really???

[before i go any further, he's okay now.]

i was supposed to go meet ayumi for drinks and part of me thought i should cancel and then i was like, nooooo, no, what you should do is go meet her and have lots of drinks. so i call my dad in the hospital while i'm on my way. he explains that he had chest pains a while ago and they couldn't find anything, and then he had chest pains again yesterday and... vintage dad, he breaks off and asks if i can call back 10 minutes later because the apprentice is ending and he wants to see who they chose. i love my dad.

i call my dad back and he explains that they did some tests that will tell him if he had a heart attack, but if he did, it was very mild. they planned a treadmill test for today. today he called and said that, because of the multiple chest pain episodes, they decided instead to do an angiogram to see if there is blockage.

they do an angiogram and he calls back this afternoon to tell me that they found 80% blockage in the artery where they did a stent angioplasty six years ago (for those of you who don't know/remember, my dad has had two (three?) heart attacks, an angioplasty six years ago (probably more than just that one, but i don't keep as good of track of those things), and an emergency double-bypass six years ago because of 90% and 99% blocked arteries. oh, and his dad died of a heart attack at age 36.). so today they did another stent angioplasty (they stuck another, longer stent into the one already there. he's okay, he just has to lay there with his leg straight until 7 am, and he can go home tomorrow. he's still planning on flying out thursday to visit us.

okay. clearly, i am relieved that my dad is okay. but i'm also not so crazy about the fact that he had 80% blockage despite his very healthy and carefully monitored diet and exercise regime. i am not so crazy about the fact that he needed an angioplasty today. i am not so crazy about this little reminder that my dad has serious heart problems. it's like, another friend and i have several times talked about how we had one parent with heart problems that we worried about but the other parent was so healthy that we were just shocked when they turned out to have cancer, and life just wanted to say, hey, don't speak about it like ah, so ironic, it was your mom that got sick and not your dad, because hey your dad could still get really sick!

on top of some crazy work emergency crap that kept me frantic most of the day, i have been feeling this numb, what-the-fuck?!-i-don't-even-know-how-i-feel feeling all day. i'll be out to dinner soon, though, and there will be wine. that will help. (it's a really good thing that i have such a low tolerance because that way when i indulge in alcohol as a crutch, it's only, like, 2-3 drinks, and not 20 or some other liver-destroying amount.) okay. bye.

why can't i go to sleep?

i am nauseously exhausted but felt the need to check my e-mail and putz around a bit before going to sleep. i just got back from "bowling" night, the "bowling" being in quotes because as it turns out we just hung out at the bowling alley bar because part of our party accidentally went to a different alley and by the time we were together we decided to just drink. while we were there, we noticed that the bartender was making long island after long island after long island. like, 10 in a row. when my friend asked if they were on special and she said, no, they just like how i make them, we knew something was up and ordered some. these were fucking amazing (i didn't actually order one for myself, since i had to drive home). watching her make them, we knew they were, like, 95% alcohol -- and huge, yet they tasted like juice. seriously. i've never had a long island like this. she said she took years perfecting it. jesus.

anyway. i'm also tired because i got up at the buttcrack of dawn this morning to catch my flight back from seattle. my friend and i decided to spend another night in seattle, so last night we ate at the palace kitchen and then grabbed a drink at the w. i love the w. the fairmont was nice, but the w just has a whole different feel -- we had flat screen hd tvs on our walls and everything. by the way, mmm... palace kitchen is good.

okay. goodnight.

ahh, beautiful seattle

i'm in seattle tonight because i have a bunch of work meetings here tomorrow. i love seattle. we got in this evening and a group of us went to etta's, where we had fantastic oysters, a great cheese plate, and good seafood. afterward my coworker and i headed to Triple Door, where they had great live music and a really fun eclectic crowd. i have to say, the seattle crowd is so much more mellow than LA. i felt ridiculously square in my work clothes (i didn't have time to change, and even if i did, i fucking forgot to pack shoes). it was totally fun. we're also in a ridiculously nice hotel -- i'm at the fairmont, in an executive suite with a living room and everything. totally excessive, but fun, and i'm not complaining.

i think we might push to stay tomorrow night too (we have a really late flight tomorrow anyway, so i think we may as well), and that way we can spend a little more time on the town. if we do, i'm fucking going to go buy some funky tennis shoes or something so i don't have to be corporate lawyer all night.

anyway. i have to go to sleep. i'm just trying to drink a bunch of water to stave away the sobering up headache i've got right now. i need to get some sleep though, because i stupidly stayed out until 2 last night (but, again, i fucking love del's).

i'm just babbling now. i love seattle. good night!

*yawn*

i just got back from lunch. one of my coworkers took me and another guy to nick's, this divey little joint i never would have noticed in a million years. it's this little diner covered with barbed wire and bars, with a broken gas grill sitting out back. my coworker said it's where all the cops hang out and, indeed, it was full of them. not in uniform, but, like, detective guys with white shirts and ties and their hair combed down. i got me some corned beef hash with eggs over-easy. i didn't even finish my plate but want to pass the hell out now. it was good.

i'm going to eat spicy sichuan food tonight. yay! and i had really good seabass last night at barefoot bar and grill. apparently when i said i was going to try to spend a little more time away from my mom's i meant that i would jam-pack things into every free moment of my life. but it's been a good distraction. the yucky knot has loosened into a general tingly anxiety in my stomach, so that's somewhat of an improvement.

i need coffee. bye bye.

i have a yucky feeling in my stomach

i think it's a combination of exhaustion, fatigue, and general neuroses/worry. i appear to still be jetlagged. i slept a good 9 1/2 hours on friday night with the aid of one of my coworker's muscle relaxants, which made me all tired the next day as well, so i napped another couple hours on saturday, but after staying out until 2:30 that night i still woke up at 5:00 and then 9:00. yucky. this morning i wanted to sleep in until 8 but instead woke up at 6:30 and got here a few minutes ago. this sucks.

i had a fun weekend, though. epc had a poker night, during which she stood off to the side with me at one point to fill me in and gossip about all the other people there in the room with us. this was entertaining. she introduced me to what may now be a mostly inorganic being who apparently commented once that the only things left that are completely real on her are her feet. the one bit of conversation i overheard between this woman and the other plastic-surgery-happy party attendee was, "yeah, he does forehead lines, too!" scary.

later on i met up with some people at the buffalo club where, against my better judgment, i switched from wine to vodka drinks and slid a shot of patron into the middle there somewhere. this meant that the brickhouse cafe brunch i had with ayumi and brian was gladly welcomed into my hungover body. oy. on the brighter side of things, my tolerance does seem to be going up.

on the more depressing side of things, i think i am starting to get jittery and neurotic about stupid random things in my life because really what i am worried about is my mom's upcoming ct scan on thursday. her tumor marker had gone down (a lot), and then back up some, and then back down a little, but the ct scan will actually tell us what is going on and... well... some part of me just does not want to know. over the last couple months i have sort of "forgotten" about the endpoint of this struggle we are going through (i mean, clearly i still know about it, but it's sort of like this thing that swims around beneath the surface, getting closer and further and closer and further but for the most part not breaking through my surface tension of denial), but with the results of the ct scan we have some sort of answer about how/whether my mom is responding to treatment and how much time we have. i'm also freaked out because these last few months have passed by in a blink, and i can't believe that it's may already. for those of you who remember that 6-month median statistic... we are heading into the beginning of month 5. i mean, it looks like we'll probably have longer than this stupid statistic may indicate... but i don't like how quickly time is slipping by.

anyway. i guess that's what's really on my mind. so apologies to sahar and ayumi for making you listen to long, overanalyzed babble about other things this weekend. i guess i will make use of my jetlag and get to work now. bye!