andrew cries a lot.
my mom and i spent the night at my sister's last night, and then came back here after a super early CT scan appointment for my mom (we had to leave at 6:45am!). i went shopping with my sister and alex for a couple hours and impulse bought a black peacoat kind of jacket (i was looking for something more casual, but then again, i need a jacket like this, and i have 180 days to return it. it's very preppy. we'll see. i am starting to sort of accept that i am a boring corporate lawyer and this is more suitable than the other jackets i was looking at. *sigh*)
now my sister and paul are off to a dixie chicks concert, and my mom and i are babysitting. i just put alex to bed -- he is so freaking cute it is ridiculous. i took him to the park today and got some adorable photos of him playing and running around. it's so endearing how he'll lean forward and hug me when i'm holding him -- i love how comfortable he is with me. i will post those pics soon.
andrew has quieted down now, but he's one loud baby when he is crying. it's cute how his face is filling out because he no longer looks like a miniature alex -- he's going to look different, we just don't know how yet.
anyway. that's all i have to talk about. tomorrow i'm going to go look at another condo. i have to say i was pretty sad not to just be able to impulse buy and have a condo by the end of the month. oh well. then i may go shopping some more with my sister, and then i'm getting drinks in weho. man i love how long this weekend feels.
happy thanksgiving!
i am in a food coma right now. i came down to torrance today to spend the day at my sister's. i made the turkey and mashed potatoes, my sister and i did the veggies together, my mom made a fantastic sticky-rice stuffing, and my mom ordered an egg-free pumpkin pie that i think we have forgotten to eat. i also got some cranberry sauce that didn't make it to the table. we had bread. oh, and we forgot the corn on the cob. and we affirmatively decided to ditch the yams. oh well. we are all full.
back in college i had a christmas dinner at my sister's once, and ayumi, sean, mike, josh, sahar and i (i think that was everyone) made turkey, mashed potatoes, stuffing, corn, yams, pumpkin pie, and various other things that go with turkey dinners. we used a turkey recipe that came from one of our college friends -- it involved putting chicken broth and cut up potatoes, carrots, celery, etc. in the pan around the turkey, and covering the turkey with bacon. we also used a needle and syringe (my sister and her roommates were all doctors, and they had such things lying around) to not only baste but also frequently inject the turkey with the juices around it. it was the most amazing fall-off-the-bone moist and tasty turkey i have ever had in my life. i tried to recreate the turkey a few weeks later at my dad's, sans syringe. it was not the same.
i decided to make the same turkey again this year, only i don't have the recipe anymore. so i sort of winged it. the turkey was good, but nothing spectacular. again, no syringe. :( i thought the breast meat was dry, but my sister said it looks the way breast meat usually does (neither of us like white meat because of the dryness). anyway. that's what i did today. i made very, very standard mashed potatoes. and i helped do various other things for what my mom was making. it feels like i did a lot more, though, because i am freaking exhausted.
maybe i'm tired because i'm kind of sick (but, i feel like i'm toward the end of it, so that's good). oh, and i guess because i haven't really been sleeping. i checked out a new lesbian venue last night. it was in silverlake. very, um, different from the weho crowd (seriously -- check out this poster -- $1.50 domestic beer!), but it was fun. we played an embarassing game of cutthroat, which i ended up winning, and i got a free green beater that says "midori" on it.
that's all. i hope you all had a great day. i'm going to forego the let's-discuss-the-things-for-which-i-am-thankful discussion (but i am thankful for a lot of things), and go pass out instead. bye!
i'm sick. my throat has been phlegmy and itchy-unhappy so i've been drinking lots of green tea to sort of burn it away and keep myself from developing into a cough (i feel like once you break that coughing seal, you're done). after that much tea i start to feel groggy and out of it. or maybe i feel out of it because i'm sick. and i'm starting to cough.
i just spilled a big cup of hot green tea all over my desk.
i'm so out of it. i leave soon to go to a board meeting for an aclu-related thing i'm joining. then i am going drinking. i'm thinking that i should maybe stick to greyhounds (vitamin c!) instead of beer tonight because it will be better on my throat. :)
yay poor judgment! i'm going to be sick all weekend, i can feel it. :)
bho thoughtfully e-mailed to see if i was alright so i thought i should update that i'm fine. my tailbone STILL hurts, but not as much, so i don't appear to have suffered from a hairline fracture or anything.
i am doing pretty well. i am exhausted because i have been going out a little too much (i went out drinking six nights last week), but i've been making friends and having fun. and i got some good news to offset some bad news last week. and there are still complicated happenings going on but in a much healthier way than last week. so in that entirely vague and non-revealing way, i'm saying that i'm overall doing well, just tired.
*yawn*
and i think i'm getting sick. which is too bad, because i have to go drinking tonight. oh well.
bye!
i just... um... fell. i partially stood to reach from the bookcase above my monitor in front of me, and my heel must have pushed the chair away without my realizing it, so when i sat back down, there was no chair, and all my weight went into a collision between my tailbone and, as it turns out, the very, very, very hard floor.
of course, as soon as this occurs a secretary ran in to see if i was okay and kept clucking around me, and then a coworker came in, and i asked to them to leave, but my coworker refused, and all the while i'm laid out on the ground because i can't get up because of the pain emanating from my tailbone and... oh... at least i got my coworker to close the door.
later someone came by to see if i was okay because the secretary apparently went off to tell other people that i fell in my office. fantastic.
ooouuuccccchhhhhhh... my head is, like, foggy from the fall. :(
yesterday was /bad/. i mean, there's the overriding thing going on that's very bad. then there was another thing to deal with that made me sad. and then a surprise(!) out-of-NOwhere thing that is scary to contend with now. and then there were little things that just sort of cemented life being not so cheery.
ARGHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHH...
choke...
death rattle...
:(
funny how life changes week to week.
at least i have good friends.
dems take the house AND the senate! prop 85 is defeated! AND, arizona didn't pass its gay marriage ban!!!! (seriously -- what?! go arizona! who knew?) (of course, gay marriage bans passed everywhere else they were presented. but what can you do -- at least there's some good to focus on right now.)
now if i can just finish this brief i'm drafting i can go home and relax and be happy. i'm exhausted -- too much staying up late and drinking and hanging out and all that. need to sleep.
i read nick hornby's "a long way down." it's pretty funny -- it's about four people who go to kill themselves by jumping off of a building known for suicide, but then they run into each other. i also read "devil wears prada" a couple weeks ago after seeing most of it on the plane back from georgetown, south carolina (did i blog about that? population 8000. i was driven around by a huge dude who called me "miss connie"). that was pretty cute. the movie ending is better, though (i know, i know, what a sellout. but hey, sometimes things benefit from that.)
i should stop babbling and go back and write that brief. i'm full now. i just had some really spicy shrimp tom yum ramen. mmmm... i think that's my favorite ramen flavor ever -- even surpasses the kimchi bowl ramen i've loved since college.
oy. stomach all spicy now. bye bye!
yesterday was my mom's 61st birthday. we went to monterey park and had a big birthday banquet with my great aunt and uncle, my uncle and cousin, some of my mom's friend, and my sister, brother-in-law and nephews. afterward my mom and i went to my sister's, and we hung out for the rest of the day/evening. it was very nice and i was glad we could all spend the day with each other. my mom was really happy.
one of my mom's friends who came was her first roommate that she ever had in the US. i love this lady. she lived in missouri most of the time we knew her, so we used to drive to st. louis when i was little and visit their family. my sister used to have a crush on her son (when they were, like, four). my mom told me that she told her friend that i'm gay, but that her friend still wants me to marry her son (now that wendy is taken, of course). she is now working in LA (just moved out here almost a year ago). we don't see her very much but it has been really great having her near through all this with my mom. when my mom was in the hospital in january, this friend was the only visitor who comforted wendy and me and made us feel like there was a grown-up present (in contrast to the unnamed relative(s) that some of you know about who made everything through that period much, much harder due to unbelievable selfishness and immaturity). anyway. i'm always really happy to see this woman. we talked about in vitro (she works in an in vitro lab), same-sex family arrangements, real estate and food dehydrating.
this morning i'm going to go look at condos. i'm excited. well, really, i'm tired. but overall i'm excited.
anyway. happy birthday mom.
i just notice that i didn't blog at all in the entire month of october. i kept meaning to, but then more and more crap kept happening, and it felt like whatever update entry i did had to be longer and longer, and i just kept putting it off. now it's been so long that i can give a very cursory account.
my sister had her second baby. his name is andrew, and he came out screaming. he was 32 days early, but is healthy, and was 5 lbs 8 oz.
my dad's wife had an emergency appendectomy. she's okay now.
my uncle on my father's side had a massive heart attack and passed away on october 12. he was a central figure in my father's family, and we miss him. the service was a couple weekends ago, and it was pretty gnarly. though really, what got me the most was watching his four grown sons sobbing uncontrollably. my uncle's unfortunate passing during this time in my life brought up a lot of introspection about events in my life and things that i will have to be facing soon.
(for some perspective, what made this all very overwhelming is that the unexpected c-section, appendectomy and heart attack all occurred within one week.)
my mom and i went to a chi-gong retreat. she has been in good spirits and enthusiastic about the chi-gong. i am glad for that, but we also have gotten some discouraging test results lately that have me battling a lot of sadness and fear.
other than that, i did a lot of random stuff. i karaoked. i went to see ayumi perform with her taiko group. i saw molly ringwald sing and dance in sweet charity. i hung out and drank. i had a super fun pumpkin carving night. i went to the west hollywood halloween carnaval.
that's the long and the short of my october (whatever that means). it was a rollercoaster. i'll try to blog a little more frequently in the future.