Blasé

Things to never tell a hypochondriac (if you're an OB): "Your pregnancy is as high risk as they get."  Wait - what?  Thus far, my principle concerns have been related to the minivan, whether my Land of Nod order will come in time to set up the Big Yam's new room, and the fact that I look like I'm 7 months pregnant (from the front only!!!).  I have also had concerns that the global food supply is insufficient for my current needs (where, like a newborn, I'm ravenously hungry every hour on the hour) and at AYCE sushi on Saturday with my family, THEY  were concerned that I was going to Hulk-smash the f**k out of the place when our food didn't materialize on the table immediately and when our salmon sushi order was mistakenly placed as 2 pieces instead of two orders.

Which is all to say, that even though my OB is really nice and laid-back, I guess I wasn't taking the whole monochorionic-diamniotic dimension of the twerps seriously enough.  The major issue is the Twin to Twin Transfusion Syndrome, which happens in 30% of my type of pregnancy AND if severe and left untreated has a 60-100% morbidity rate (*knocks on wood a billion, trillion times*)  There's the issue of them sharing a placenta, and the placenta giving out.  As an aside: how crazy are placentas??? Your body like, GROWS a new organ that has a shelf life.  Then there's the risk of my cervix thinning too much and the twerps falling out of my body (or something).  Ugh.  It was definitely a bit of a wake-up call.  I guess I've been pretty blasé so far and worried about the wrong things.

I don't think there's anything I can do about it though, so there's that.  I should start seeing the multiples clinic soon and they have crazy state-of-the-art ultrasounds to make sure things are copacetic in there.  In the meantime I'll continue to preoccupy myself with the weird statistical anomaly concerns that I generally bring to the table (prolapsed cord, DIC).  Living with a midwife I tells ya - it will mess you up good.

The other thing is that I'll have to give birth in a full operating room, which is a step up from the hospital room I was in last time.  There'll be a tonne of people around.  If all goes well the OB will let the midwife deliver the first baby (provided twerp A is presenting head down) and then usually steps in for twerp B.  She said that she usually recommends an epidural, which gave me pause.  I didn't have one the first time and I'm more freaked out by that than what I remember of labour and delivery.  Induced labours with oxytocin tend to be more intense and painful than non-induced labours and since I rode out the first one okay, then I feel like I can handle it.  The recommendation for the epidural is because if twerp B is breach, then the OB has to basically fist me and pull the baby out by its' feet.  DRAMAS!  I dunno...I still am way more freaked out by the epidural (who wants a needle in their spine?!) than the whole fisting thing.  Like, after pushing a baby out, can you even feel a hand going in?  I checked my OB's hands (although she might not be there for the birth), and they're pretty delicate.  Obviously, she can't force me to do anything, but that was her recommendation.  I'll think about it (in between calculating how many Oreos I'm going to eat tonight dunked in milk, and how many I'm going to eat straight-up).

So on to the good news: we had a lovely weekend around here.  We were up in Markham on Friday evening and all of Saturday hanging with my sis and the niece and nephews and eating delicious Chinese food at Congee Queen, and AYCE sushi, and an awesome banquet dinner for my mum's birthday Saturday night. So much good food!  I made my mum a tres leches cake which went over about as well as anything I've ever made for her, which is high praise indeed as she tends to be hyper-critical.

One of my favourite moments from the weekend was pulling out an old piano book and learning a Bach minuet with the Dotytron.  We did two right hands (me treble clef and him bass clef part).  It was SO. MUCH. FUN.  Yes, we are giant nerdlingers.  You would have overheard us saying stuff like: "This is really pretty," "I know right?  I can't wait to hear it come together,"  "It's Bach - he makes statues cry," and we practised and practised until we got it down and it was SO REWARDING.  It's made me so hungry for a piano I can't even tell you.  I want one, like yesterday.  Playing a piano is like playing golf - each time you have a chance to get it perfect.  I am totally the kind of personality to get off on that kind of thing.

Sunday was a lazy day of laundry, hanging outside with the neighbourhood kidlets, yoga, and making Sunday supper.  I made us spinach and ricotta stuffed shells (the filling was extra and frozen, as was the sauce, so this was relatively painless to put together), an arugula salad with lemon juice and grated parm, and toasted Ace bakery olive bread, buttered.  So good.

Tonight for dinner I made us a mulligatawny soup with chunks of sweet potato and chicken breast, that we had topped with a squeeze of lime, some yogurt, and toasted coconut.  The Dotytron and the Big Yam bought samosas to go with.

Fin.

Let's get physical

I had my physical yesterday.  Let me tell you: NOBODY gets more out of their health tax dollars than me.  I grilled my doctor!  My agenda:

1) my suspicions about the new guidelines that moved pap screenings from yearly to every three years (if you've had 3 normal paps in a row)
2) how I'd only lost 5lbs from last year even though I'd taken up running 5km 3 times a week and bike 12km 5 days a week
3) the associated risks with CT scans
4) the results of my blood work (my cholesterol is a blip higher than they like to see, but my good cholesterol is higher than my bad cholesterol and my bad cholesterol is well within the normal range, as is the ratio between good and bad
5) assorted lady parts questions
6) assorted questions relating to hypochondriac fears about cancer
7) how the colon is another name for the long intestine

It was epic.  I basically stretched a 45 minute visit into an hour and a half.  But I really like my doctor.  He's super nice and he likes me and is a big proponent of informed consent.

So...I reached my goal of 5km in 30 minutes.  It was kind of anti-climatic since I continue to hate running with every fibre of my being.  Good thing the running has been made slightly more bearable by the cool weather we had this past week.

I got an opportunity to work on a project for a group at work that I could see myself moving to someday (and it's why I got the degree).  I don't know if they envision me joining them, but there's nothing I can do about that.  It's been consuming a lot of my time and resulted in me taking work home a lot this week.  I finally got the project done so I feel so much lighter!  I also feel kind of exposed because the Manager of the branch is going to be editing it and I don't want him (or whoever in the office who is going to be looking at it) to be all like, "Hey Dummy! Why'd you write such a dum-dum dummy paper? Dummy."  Ugh.

Now I just have to finish a wee little 10 page paper next week and I'll be DONE MY DEGREE!!!  WOWEE ZOWEE!!!

So, we've been getting contractors to come by and quote us on jobs.  We've had about 4 quotes back so far  that have been in the 4-5gs range.  I get a quote from this one guy, which is TWENTY THREE THOUSAND DOLLARS.  I was like, "Is you tweaking?!?"  So I wrote him this email where I'm like, "IS YOU TWEAKING?!?" Just kidding, yo.  But I did get all stern-mom on him and was like, uhhh, just so you know, this is about $18,000 more than the other quotes we've received so I think you're misjudging your work, your audience (ie. he came to see our house, it's not like we're living in Forest Hill) and my knowledge of the cost of materials and labour.  So he got all apologetic and is going to come back with his partner to re-quote the job.  LOL!

Tuesday night's dinner was amazing.  I made that rapini (blanched, then sautéed with oil and garlic), fresh mozzarella, and spicy tomato jam panini.  Obsessed!

Tonight we had a lentil, bacon, spinach salad with fried goat's cheese and toast.

I took tomorrow off.  Four day weekend say what.  Although a good portion of it will be spent cleaning our house, which needs an enema of a cleaning.

Somebody thinks they're hilarious.

Fin.

The attack of the killer cat hand

...the thrilling tale of how an over-testosteroned cat almost ruined my weekend. Wednesday afternoon I was sitting out on my neighbour's front lawn doing the usual after-work street hang thing with the Big Yam. The Dotytron opened our screen door to ask me something and I guess Smudge, our cat got outside, immediately saw Lil' Bit, our next door neighbour's cat and started going buck wanting to eat him. Now Smudge is truly the gentlest cat around, INSIDE the house. He routinely sits passively as the Boobla Khan mauls him and cheerfully pulls his tail and yanks out handfuls of his fur. But, outside in the world, he goes a little insane. So I separated the two kitties and then tried to hustle Smudge back into the house, grabbing him by the scruff of the neck. He was so amped up that he turned around and chomped down on my hand, pretty deep, before running into the house. This whole exchange took about 2 minutes. Later on in the evening, as I was eating dinner with our Discerning Coyote friend at Bairrada - my hand started swelling up like crazy and it hurt when I lowered it below my heart level - like the dickens.

Thursday morning I called to make an appointment with my doctor, just to see what was going on - when the receptionist triaged me over the phone and I said "cat bite" she immediately got me an appointment for later that afternoon. I wasn't going to keep the appointment, but am I glad I ever did! Dr. T was scaring the bejeezus out of me and totally stoking the smoldering embers of my hypochrondria. He said that the bite was definitely infected and that he was very glad that I came to see him when I did and that he was going to start me on oral antibiotics but if that didn't work then he wanted me to go IMMEDIATELY to the hospital as the next stage was INTRAVENOUS antibiotics. WTF?!???!! He was saying stuff like, "I want you to have a very low tolerance for seeking emergency help if anything changes." !!!!!!!!!! Who knew?!? He also gave me a new tetanus shot (even though I'd had one just 5 years prior) and he called me on Friday and he wanted me to come back first thing Saturday so he could monitor the situation.

Is that insane or what? I was like, what the hell? Who knew cat bites were so serious? Apparently because cat's teeth are so sharp and thin, they can puncture really deep. Their mouths obviously harbor a lot of bacteria, which means the bacteria can be deposited quite deep into the hand and infect tendons. Hands are also considered "high risk" areas for animal bites, because they don't get great blood flow (extremity) and the network of tendons, musculature, etc. is so complicated, which is why he wanted to re-up my tetanus immunization and why he wanted to make sure the infection didn't spread. So he drew a mark around the redness on my hand and told me to go straight to emergency if the redness spread beyond the outline or if the swelling increased or if I broke a fever. Insane. I couldn't believe it. But when I came back on Thursday and told my neighbour, she said her friend got a cat bite on the hand and it spread to his elbow with his forearm all swollen in like, a couple of hours!!!!!!! So let that be a lesson to you - cat hand is no laughing matter.

I was especially bummed about cat hand ruining my weekend. We had plans to go with Supper Club to the Island for a picnic - luckily, by Canada Day the swelling had greatly reduced and the redness had retreated somewhat. So we loaded up the Chariot and biked to the ferry docks which OF COURSE were INSANE with tonnes of n00bs also going to the Island that day. The lineup stretched all the way back to Queen's Quay. Luckily, everyone is going to Centre Island and the Ward's Island ferry was empty. Unluckily for everyone else, they were all crammed onto the Centre Island ferry like sardines, not realizing that all the islands are connected and that the difference is, as our buddy Fox says, "purely psychological." No matter - we sat on the sandy beach of Ward's which looks onto the Leslie spit, facing away from the city and it's lovely. It was a bit of a hipster hang - everyone around us was like 20nothing and look like they ambled out of an American Apparel ad, but it was a hot, sunny day and we picnic'd like kings. Evidence:

The Dotytron and our friend R pulling daddy daycare duty - Dotytron is sporting a women's sun hat.

Master T sporting Liz's sunglasses

Liz holding T and looking radiant

T's buddy, D.

We left the island in the early evening and had grand plans to go to a lobster boil hosted by B's work friend down the street from us, or to catch drinks with Fox and his gf, but by the time we got home, showered, bathed and fed the Big Yam, we were all exhausted. So we had the roomie over for Pakistani take out and front stoop hangs with the neighbourhood kids. It was a lovely way to spend Canada Day, even if we were asleep by 11pm. I love the feeling of being sun drunk - lying on a blanket in the sun all snoozy and lethargic with heavy limbs. Like you could sleep the whole day away...it's one of the few times I let myself be lazy.

I know I've said it before, but I really think I live on the cutest street in all of Toronto. On Thursday evening a few of the neighbours rounded up their kids and we all walked to the ice cream store together in a little caravan - toting kids in strollers, walking, kids pushing other kids on plastic buggies...it was the cutest!!! I love my street - so lucky we have this.

We headed up to Markham after I got the a-ok from the doctor on Saturday - after begrudgingly spending the night downtown on Friday. We hung out with my sister and her kids and celebrated Poh Poh's 89th birthday:

It was bittersweet. I came home last night all sad and on the verge of crying. Sunday was an emotionally draining day. My sister and I had breakfast with my dad on Sunday morning - an airing of the grievances if you will, that was cathartic but still taxing. Then we had a physically draining excursion with the kids to the splash pad in Markham, and then dinner for Poh Poh at Big Mouth Kee.

I was sad when I came home because I was remembering previous year's celebrations of my Poh Poh's birthday - when Kung Kung would organize a giant banquet and book out the whole restaurant and it was a big to-do with like, 9 or 10 tables of guests and a full day of mah jong. This year was a quieter affair - Poh Poh still played mah jong but the cake cutting during the "afternoon tea" portion was much more subdued. It's natural, I suppose - since Kung Kung was the driving force behind all the ostentatious gaiety. But I was just sad. Then I started remembering how ungrateful I was and how I was a jerk one time to my grandparents (I was a jerk MANY times to my grandparents but I was remembering one time in particular) and I started feeling so guilty about awful ways I behaved as a kid and remorseful that I never had a chance to tell Kung Kung I was sorry. This has been a hard year - with Poppa getting sick around this time last year and Kung Kung passing away...it's definitely had a lasting impact on me. The Dotytron and I were talking about it last night - your 30s are such a transitional time. We have experienced so much joy and love from having the Big Yam and maturing into our relationships with our family and extended friend-family network and at the same time, as you get older the reality of it is that you're going to start losing more and more people and that's just the way it is. I was sad last night because I wasn't sure if Kung Kung died knowing that I loved him and was grateful to him for everything he ever did for me.

It's so weird how these random moments can fill you with guilt after the fact. When we were prepping for my fatburger shower last year, I had filled a piping bag with frosting for the mini cupcakes and my sister perked up and said she wanted to try piping the frosting on. So she was doing it and then I saw that she was getting frosting on the floor of the dining room and she wasn't wielding the piping bag properly so I kind of hustled in and took it out of her hands and took over and I'm like, FILLED WITH GUILT about that to this day. For being such a jerk and being so controlling and bossy and perfectionist when my sister had done SO MUCH for me and was so excited for the arrival of the Big Yam and had been so amazing about throwing me a shower and going so above and beyond. She continues to do so much for me. And look at me. I'm an ingrate. I barely did anything for her when she got married and when she had Miss E because I was a no-good 20 year old raver and an underpaid slave drone in the restaurant industry, respectively, when those seminal events happened. Ugh ugh ugh. Soooo guilty!

Sis - I love you the mostest...and even though I won't cut and paste Facebook status memes out of principle - I hope you realize that you're the best sister to me and I feel guilty all the time for not being half as good to you.

See? I'm an emotional wreck. I don't know if I'm hormonal or what. I'm a total suck now. I blame a combination of: turning 30, the loss of 2 great men in my life in the past year, having a baby, my own maudlin sentimentality, and watching a David Simon series (remember how I got when I was watching The Wire regularly? Treme apparently has the same effect).

The plus side of going to the doctor's on Thursday was that they had a table set up for the East York Senior's services network or something, which has volunteer opportunities for people to connect with and help seniors in the community. So I think I'm going to sign up. There's stuff like visiting seniors in their homes or taking them to appointments. The Dotytron: "That's great beebs. But are you just going to cry the whole time?" (I hadn't thought of that. Note to self: get a handle on crying about old people before volunteering with old people organization).

Here are some shots from the splash pad - I have the cutest niece and nephews in the world. Little Big Cuz was not feeling the water so much:

Thursday night's dinner was boss. Pan fried smoked cured pork chops from the mennonites (it's like eating a thick piece of english bacon/ham), new potatoes boiled and tossed while still warm with creme fraiche and scallions, and sugar snaps steamed and tossed with sesame oil from our CSA.

Finally, here's a video of the Big Yam doing his new fish mouth thing while eating. It's the cutest - he does it at the 23 second mark. He's also showing off his "slap the table" technique for more food. We're trying to do the baby sign language for "more" but he much prefers yelling at us and slapping the high chair tray with his hand. Incidentally, baby sign language is kind of weird. There are a bunch of signs for stuff that has NO PRACTICAL PURPOSE! Like "cow" or "butterfly" or "blueberry." I don't need my kid to tell me when he sees a cow! How is that ever going to come up? I think we're going to try for "more" "water" "please" "poo" - you know, the communication that makes MY life easier.

Our friend Pingy is in town so we're hanging out with her in the afternoon. The drop-in centre we usually go to is closed for the year, but one of the parents organizes a Monday thing that runs all summer in a nearby park with a splash pad, so I think we're going to go to that this morning. Our pool is opened so we have TOO MANY possible things to do during the week now. Yay summer! Bye bye sad, hello being grateful and loving life and the awesome people in it!

Fin.

home alone

have i ever mentioned how much i hate being home alone? i get super-freaked out and scared really easy. technically, i get super-freaked out and scared really easy even when i'm not home alone. like on saturday i was vacuuming and the dotytron came upstairs to where i was and called out "beebs!" like 5 times, and i heard him, backed out from under the bed, took a look at him, and STILL screamed my head off for like, a minute. it's truly bizarre.

our sunday night dinner was a bit of an s**t show. we got mexican fries from great burger kitchen AND burrito's from chino loco's. they skimped us on the cheese on the mexican fries...i find great burger kitchen super inconsistent so i'm not sure that i'm going to continue to frequent them. at the very least, we're on a time out for the moment:




last night the roomie came over to keep me company while l'army was playing ball hockey. have i said already how much i love the roomie? and how good she is at her job? now that i'm exposed more fully as a client to the midwifery practice, seeing how the roomie acts in her profession, how patient she is, how knowledgeable and reassuring she is with me and my inane questions that i don't really want to bother my proper midwife with (the questions fall more into the "irrational worries you talk out with a friend" territory, as opposed to "clinically warranted" territory) it's just so lovely. i'm so lucky! because i have a friend who is QUALIFIED to reassure my irrational worries from a clinical perspective. it's the best case scenario. i really feel like it's deepened our friendship and i say as much to anyone i talk to. having known the roomie since the 2nd year of her undergrad and all this time knowing that she's wanted to be a midwife, and living with her through her last years of midwifery school and her first years of practicing, it's been so gratifying to see someone so well suited to their profession and giving so much of themselves to their work and the community. and that's NOT just the hormones talking!

i'm still barely bumping out - it kind of looks more like a post AYCE-meal food baby, so i've been worried about that. so she helped me learn how to feel where my uterus is and it's in the right place. then she used her doppler so that i could listen to the fatburger's heartbeat again. so aces! i was at dinner with another preggos who was at five months a few months ago, and she was all like, "i think i want to buy a doppler, just so i can check in on the bambino sometimes" and in my head, i was like, "wow white lady, you crazy" but i TOTALLY GET IT. well, the irrational part of me, which constitutes about 21% right now, totally gets it. i wasn't going to do it, but the roomie had it right there in her car and it was easy, so we did it - which was super nice of her just to make my stupid hypochrondriac worrying butt feel better. this time, in addition to the heartbeat, the roomie pointed out these fast swish sounds, which she said was the fatburger kicking to get away from the doppler, apparently they're not super-into it and they tend to swirl away from it and hide - which leads me to think they have sensitivity to super-high pitched sounds? like they can pick up that frequency? kind of weird, right?

i took the leftover white anchovy and chili pasta and reheated it in a pan and then topped it with a poached egg and some of the extra breadcrumb mixture. it was delicious! we ate it with caesar salad.

we've started eating dinner on the front stoop, so we get some outside action and can avoid the terrors of the back deck. so the roomie got a taste of my street in full-on sesame street mode. it's rare that i come home and people aren't hanging out outside, catching up, all up in each other's business. the across the street guy we're obsessed with, R, apparently has a hot tub, a trampoline, and a hammock in their backyard which all the kids love hanging out in - in his words, "it's like the 'price is right' back there" lol! he just finished writing his last CFA exam, he says if he passes he's going to treat himself to a sound system. lol! he also told us this while wearing 3D glasses as shades, and a kid's beaded necklace. double lol! on thursdays and fridays it's not unusual to see a blanket spread out on one of the lawns and everyone congregated there, sitting on the blanket and chiefing it up. it's kind of the best. i hope no one ever moves.

tonight i'm going to eat that leftover flank steak with the black beans and rice and chimichurri, while i get busy prepping the last things for the book club meeting tomorrow.

i'm putting out a spread consisting of a spanish goat's cheese, a triple cream called tuxedo from france, which features a chalky interior, some mortadella, some hard-cured cacciatore, olives, cherries, sliced radishes, roasted garlic eggplant dip, smoky red pepper feta dip, these spicy crispy flatbreads i love, some crostinis, and raspberry brown butter bars. i bought a rosé and a white wine and we have the stuff to make gin and tonics and negronis. i'm also making a strawberry lemonade with mint syrup.

i know i'm probably going crazy and totally over-killing it. but a good portion of the above is going to make up my dinner tomorrow, so i'm personally excited to eat the spread!

fin.

lard + friends = fun

the book club on thursday was fun, albeit surprisingly stacked with academics...of the 10 or so women there, me and this other puppeteer lady were the only one who didn't have phds (actually, i'm not sure...the puppeteer quite possibly could have had a doctorate) and weren't employed by the venerable u of t. it was a little tentative and shy at first, as not everyone knew each other - but it was lovely to be in that little milieu and i'm looking forward to future book club meetings.

my physical went well, in that i have figured out a way to con my g.p. into writing requisitions for the tests that i want. she sent me for some routine blood work and then asked if there was anything else i needed testing for and i suggested, "cholesterol?" and steeled myself to face her piercing, contemplative gaze. her eyes raked over my generally fit form and consulted the chart to re-ascertain my age. "is there a family history of high cholesterol?" she inquired and in a fit of inspiration i blurted, "yes!" and held my breath as she gave me another long, considering look before checking off the cholesterol box on the requisition form for the lab. hypochondriac win!

i totally got pwned by my massage therapist. i fall on the more masochistic side of the massage as relaxation or therapy spectrum - so i like it my massages to be deep and painful - i like to get reefed on. i think it's because i can envision my muscles as tough, tight pieces of meat (hams? eye of round? chuck steak?) and can see the physical tenderizing that needs to occur for the kinks to unwind.

the rest of the day was spent finishing piecing my quilt blocks - i'm all done now...which means that now i can start cutting and piecing the sashing (the strips of fabric that go in between each block). i did this while watching the rest of "mad men" season 2. the dotytron HATES mad men. he finds it the boringest. lol! i find the slow, meditative style and pregnant silences work particularly well as visual/aural distraction when you're doing handwork. it's not engrossing enough to be the sole object of your focus, but as a sidekick to the main activity, it more than acquits itself admirably.


these are the 6 different kinds of quilt blocks for the quilt. each type of quilt block is made with the 6 different orange-blue fabric combinations, resulting in 36 different blocks in total. i had a hard time getting my 1/4" seam allowance so my blocks are going to be 1/2" smaller than the pattern directions. oh well...it's my first time outta the gates, aight? the pale blue plaid in the bottom block of the top photo is from one of the dotytron's late grandpa reid's shirts (did that make sense?)

so after a day of quilting and bathroom cleaning (how to get the film off of tiles with NATURAL cleaner?!?) and kitchen floor mopping, the dotytron came home zonked and we promptly headed over to J & S's house to have a deep-fried dinner courtesy of L. my contribution was 4lbs of lard for frying. it was glorious. lard imparts a very clean taste to fried foods and it burns really clean too - no smoking, easily controlled - delicious. L made us these beer-battered onion rings with vidalia onions that were so addictive and an aioli for dipping. the main course was panko-breaded chicken breast sandwiches on soft cob's buns with a vinegary red cabbage slaw. it was so freakin' good! and then J made us chocolate pudding and i deep-fried hazelnut churros tossed in cinnamon sugar to go with. it was so decadent and we were stuffed after. i wish i had remembered to take photos!!!

i had this weird sparkle vision thing happen as we were noshing on onion rings - it was really bizarre. like flashy lights right in the centre of my vision in both eyes. almost like the burning faded image you get after looking into a bright light, except this was flashing a bit more aggressively. i was kind of worried that i was having a stroke or seizure but i didn't want to draw attention to it or disrupt our dinner (!!!) by saying anything. over the course of 20 minutes or so it gradually moved out of my field of vision before disappearing off to the side. weird, right? only once it was gone did i feel comfortable alerting J & S and L to it. lol! people and social niceties are so weird. i was too embarrassed to mention something that could conceivably have been somewhat serious. my main concern was that i would have to sit through the rest of the evening pretending that this sparkle vision thing wasn't bothering me. anyway, it went away and i attributed it to either low blood sugar or my massage that morning triggering something. i took an aspirin to thin my blood just in case and i'm going to call my doctor for a referral to an opthalmologist.

today has been fairly lowkey...i did another 45 minutes of yoga and ate breakfast and did the grocery shopping with the dotytron and now we're futzing around until we have to get our shiz together for our supper club meeting. we are responsible for picking the restaurant tonight - i chose all you can eat chinese hot pot - it's good for winter and large groups because you all pay the same amount. i hope people like it...i always feel so responsible when i recommend a restaurant or a movie or a book or something. so stressful. after dinner the dotytron and i have decided that we're not in for extended hangs and that we're going to high tail it back home to watch "the hert loxorz" and sleep. sleeping is a high priority for us right now.

fin.

hypochondria chronicles

okay...so for the past year or so, i've had this weird thing where if i don't eat enough and then do physical exertion, sometimes my vision gets a little funny. like, there's this weird blurry patch that's shaped like a lightning bolt or fine, fuzzy hair in my centre-left field of vision. it has the effect where i can't really focus on that particular area (almost like i had just looked at the sun and that spot is not in focus.) usually it goes away if i eat something and then lie down with my eyes closed for a while. it happened to me last night, so i'm kind of freaking out that i've got diabetes (don't ask me why i chalk everything down to diabetes.) wow. i hate google for self-diagnosis...it could be a heart arrhythmia (i totally spelled that right on the first try!)!!!!! or stress!!!!!!! or my retina could be detaching!!!!!! i'm kind of freaking out and i don't know who i should see. should i go to my optometrist? or my family doctor???????

last week when the dotytron was sick, the onset of his flu also happened to coincide with some neck stiffness from sleeping funny, but i freaked out and thought he had meningitis and called home like every half hour with increasingly hysterical directives to "GO TO THE HOSPITAL RIGHT AWAY IF YOU HAVE A FEVER - WHEN IN DOUBT, GO TO EMERGENCY - DON'T EVEN THINK ABOUT GOING TO A WALK-IN CLINIC!!!!!!!" and looking up meningitis somehow led me to flesh eating disease which is like, my worst nightmare. any kind of sepsis is my worst nightmare. i once went through the roomie's medical textbook on birth and pregnancy and scared myself celibate. it was basically an hour of me reading about all these "rare" conditions which consequently lead to me having a breakdown and inundating her with staccato demands that she provide me with statistics on how common they are.

my mum is going in for the cochlear surgery today. i hope she's okay and her transition to having a bionic ear is fairly smooth and intuitive. i'm going to visit her tonight at the hospital if at all possible, but i have to stay late at work to give a presentation so i'm not sure if i'm going to make it there before visiting hours are doneski. the prospect of seeing my mum with a shaved head is more than a little unsettling and makes me sad, even though she tends to keep her hair kind of short. i'm not sure how big the incision is going to be. she had me knit her a hat (very specific instructions - black, with a flower) which i'm going to try to finish up tonight if i don't get a chance to see her.

[edit] big d called and told me that she's sleeping and that visiting hours are only until 8pm [/edit]

i had pizza at work for dinner because i gave a little talk to my boss' class visiting from my old faculty. it was weird!!! i had been in classes with some of these people last year and now i'm like, WORKING IN THE FIELD. bizzare-o.

the dotytron got buzzed with the independent thought alarm today and was hoppin' mad about it. the teacher told him she COULDN'T MARK HIS PAPER because he didn't adequately do what the assignment asked him to do. having read the assignment, i found it hella confusing. you tell me:

"immediately following participation in the event [they had to go as a group to an art event they wouldn't normally go to - the dotytron's group went to nuit blanche] you are required to meet as a group so that you can share you reflections on your experience with other members of your group. as a group you will generate TWO questions about some aspect of the experience that will help you explore what and how you learned from the form, content and nature of your experience of attending your group's selected arts event. the two questions will frame your written personal reflection (6 pages) commenting on your experience as a learning context and exploring the implications that address you in relation to your arts/teaching practice."

i read what he wrote, it was pretty decent. the teacher told him, "look, it was really well written and you gave a lot of great analysis, but i don't know HOW to mark this. i mean, this is the kind of stuff that **i** discuss with my colleagues"  lady!  who talks like that!?!???  

poor dotytron has now felt the sweet, censorious kiss of the independent thought alarm.  poor guy.  it's hard when it comes so late in life.  the independent thought alarm was the soundtrack of my childhood.  good thing i was too much of a pint-sized misanthrope to notice.

i just finished my mum's hat.  i hope she likes it.    i also finished this tudorian neck warmer thing the other day.  i'll post pictures tomorrow.

fin.