Year: 2014

Health update.

Edda: she’s the healthiest of us all.  Well, as long as you overlook the Rett Syndrome, which granted, is something large to overlook, but I do it all the time.  I mean if you count the Rett Syndrome, then she’s the sickest all the time which just seems unfair for a little girl with abs of steel and an immune system that kicks ass.  (OK, I’ve totally jinxed myself now.  She’s going down with something soon.)

******

Vince: Missed school on Friday due to stomach issues.  Maybe due to the indordinate amount of candy he ate while making the gingerbread house.  Slept until 11am that day.  Missed the weekend campout.  Spent the weekend chillaxing.

******

Jeremy: Stomach issues too.  We’ll leave it at that.  Not terrible.  A little queasy.

******

Doris:  I’ve devolved into a flare-up of mouth sores (which I’ve had for my whole life on/off) which prevent me from eating happily.  I’ve noticed that for the past few years, whenever these flare-ups happen – it’s usually because I’m stressed and then it is painful and completely wipes me out.  So I’ve been sleeping a lot.  I have my big, last exam tomorrow.  I’m trying to study, but I keep closing my eyes.  I’m trying not to worry about it.  I hate being underprepared, but it is what it is.  It’s not the end of the world.

*******

Ruby:  I really thought she was on death’s door last week.  So much poop.  She didn’t want to get up.  She didn’t want to wag her tail.  But then we got a batch of prescription food and some antibiotics for her and it cleared right up.  She’s back to her old self.  I hate wet food.  It makes me nauseous.  In order for me to spend the least amout of time with the wet food, I served Ruby’s food to her like this:

********

Maxi:  She had the same thing Ruby had, but it cleared up on its own.  She was jealous that Ruby got wet food and she got only kibble.

Mahjong Game

Yesterday afternoon, Mom called me and, evidently, she was very excited in the phone because she was the only winner in their old-lady Mahjong game.  I guess she rarely wins anything – good job.

I always think that Mom’s characters and personality don’t belong to those types of persons that can win games (cold, calculated, expression-less, etc).  Of course, this is just my thought.  Oops!  what did I just say …  I am in trouble already 🙂

But, I think in a way it is a great compliment – she is nice indeed.

Gingerbread house.

I want to be a person who loves December. I don’t love December – even when I tell myself it’s all about hope, joy and love which I’m perfectly capable of successfully reminding myself the other 11 months of the year (mostly). I’m trying all the things: eating carbs/not eating carbs, exercising/not exercising, napping/not napping, working more/working less, more social/less social (which means curling up under the covers). Gah. The shortening of the days and the forced holiday joyfulness makes me moody and melancholy.

*******

But!  Holiday cheerfulness still abounds in the house.  Sam and Hannah were over today making gingerbread houses.  Note:  I did not coordinate this fun.  It was all Vince and Nat’s idea and Sam and Hannah just happened to stumble by because they accidentally locked themselves out of their house.

There was even a youtube fireplace going on in the background.

*******

Here’s Donald having some fun at his work holiday party.  It’s a proven fact that people have more fun in California.  Jeremy’s work party is next week.  I’m pretty sure we won’t be having this much fun.

Misc.

My mother brought over some take-out roasted chicken this past weekend.  I ate a bunch of chicken parts and I thought to myself, this is the most delicious chicken EVER!  So juicy, fatty and savory! When has chicken ever tasted this good? I was very happy eating my chicken and then I got to the bottom of the take out container and found a duck head looking at me.  Chicken is really tasty when it’s really duck.

*********

We got a real, live Chrismas tree from the firemen down the street.  Vince can’t ever remember having a live tree in the house.  We are having a blowout Christmas extravaganza this year – it’s going to be memorable.  You are going to have to wait and see how awesome it’s going to be (hopefully).

******

I did wear my sequins again on Sunday.  Here I am doing my best impression of a Hong Kong tai tai.

******

Ruby is still having gut issues (so much poop.  so much.):

We took her to the vet today.  I hope it’s nothing.  Or something we can do something about.  I hope it’s not something we can do nothing about.

********

I would be remiss to not post a picture of the amazing garage clean up Jeremy did this weekend while I studied.

Harmonizers.

Went to see the Harmonizers yesterday.  I think we may be outgrowing this tradition as well.  Santa was a good sport and let my heavy kids sit on his knees.  Edda’s asking for her missing guanine like she does every year (location on the X-chromosome, the long arm, not the short one, MECP2 gene, exact location: 806delG, 4th and final exon – causing frame shift and resulting in an early stop codon. I think Santa tries pretty hard every year for her, but it’s hard to find and often out of stock.)

Here we are in our Christmas glory.  Red and green all around.  Not too shabby.  I’m even wearing sequins.  And guess what?  I’m wearing it again today!

Home Coming, Windy, Damp, Cold and Lonesome

Last Friday (12/5), I flew back home to Washington State at noon time.  It was a very windy, damp and cold day (41 F).  Our house had no water (shut off to save a minimum monthly charge of ~$40.00 ?) & no heat (turned off during the Winter time intentionally).

A couple, friends of ours, were graciously enough to feed me two hot meals and asked me to stay with them, one night. I was kind of feeling of not bothering them too much.  So decided to stay in my own place.  I had two dawn blankets on top of me, a form blanket underneath me.  It was very warm indeed in a 41 F environment.  Of course, before reaching home to bed, I went to a nearby Safeway first to use their rest room.

Next morning (Saturday, 12/6), when I woke up around 4:00 AM, it was very, very cold and I rushed to Portland Airport (PDX) without any delay.  At least, it was warm there and equipped with many rest rooms.  Boy, was I glad when I was there after returning my rental car.  This airport at that moment, was the best airport that I have visited – nice, warm and with hot water.

I imagine that there was something wrong with me NOW because when I was a kid – no heat, no hot water year long. Dawn blankets?  Forget it.  Well, while staying in bed, I did feel the night was just windy, damp and cold. On top of that, I did feel lonesome 🙂 and almost called Rena (too bed her time would pass midnight, swapping geographical locations?).

Btw, in my outbound flight, I almost collect $500.00 for voluntarily yielding my seat for the next flight.  Finally the airlines thought I wasn’t that overweight.  They could take one more passenger.  In inbound flight, I turned down an offer of $300 taking the next day flight.

Also, I liked to write this blog in my house but my fingers were too numb to type.

Next year in January, I will take the same journey.  Hopefully, it will be warmer with clear sky.

Sleepover. Blue.

Vince arranged his own sleepover last night.  Texted his friends and then they showed up at the door at 9:30 pm.  Practically my own bedtime.  Vince also made breakfast for them this morning.

********

We are wading through an impassable swamp to fix Edda’s wheelchair.  It is really frustrating to work with the people who are suppose to come and repair it.  We call and leave phone numbers and email addresses and don’t hear from them for weeks because they are calling us back on an old phone number that hasn’t existed for five years.  We are told that brakes will be shipped in three days because they are under warranty, but then it turns out that they aren’t under warranty but they really don’t have an idea how long the ordering will take.  And then the prescription that was written from our pediatrician to the repair place might have just said “repair wheelchair” and not “repair wheelchair and parts” so we might need to get a new prescription in order for them to order the parts, but again, no one can find the prescription to figure out what it said.  Jeremy and I are capable people, we have all the resources necessary to perform this efficiently and it’s driving us crazy.

********

Edda fell at school yesterday.  She hasn’t fallen in a long, long time.  Of course, when she falls, everyone feels terrible.  It’s happened on my watch, on Jeremy’s watch, on all the au pair watches and at school where there is practically one adult to every kid.  There is a dent in our own living room drywall from the last time Edda fell in our house.  It’s a tricky balance to allow Edda enough freedom to walk around and then to protect her too.

*******

I was looking at Edda’s hands and feet today.

I’ve been better at putting lotion on Edda’s feet at night.   I just want her feet to be beautiful.  We’ve noticed that Edda’s toes and ankles are kind of permanently splayed out because she inherited my duck walk – I’m going to try to make an appointment (hopefully before the new year) to get her some AFOs (ankle-foot orthotics).  Maybe they can be like how braces work on teeth and gently move (or keep) her feet back to “normal” or just have them be less “not normal”.