Christmas Trip

This holiday season had my left brain pitted against my right brain. My logical left brain is a bully and put my emotional right brain in its place.

It all started when I suggested to Brian that we get a Christmas tree in early December. Brian thought that was too early for a tree because one typically puts up the Christmas tree closer to Christmas. Because Brian said that we would need to take it down before our trip to Portland on December 21, my logical response was: why put up a tree at all? For one or two weeks? That’s crazy. So he acquiesced, and we got the tree a little early. I overheard him talking to his mom about getting the tree early and explaining why we got it early. Obviously the timing of getting the tree comes from traditions in his family. Kelly: Logical - 1. Brian: Emotional - 1

So then I am about to decorate the tree and I’m thinking… I’m going through all this work to then turn around and put all this crap away. And we do this year after year after year. As if we don’t have enough work to do around the house. So, I picked the best ornaments, a few balls and a strand of lights to put on the tree, a fraction of what is available to put on a tree. You know what? It looked just as good, if not better, to have quality and not quantity. Kelly: Logical – 2, Emotional – 0

Brian asked me what I wanted for Christmas. I want a ROM machine, that exercise machine that allows you to exercise in 4 minutes. Anything else? No, just a ROM machine. OK, let’s just skip the presents this year. Huge relief. I hate buying presents under pressure. Brian bought a Satellite radio for himself and I bought a $17 sound machine for myself. I did buy Brian a hot air popcorn popper. Kelly: Logical – 3, Emotional – 0

Brian was booking our trip to Portland. After the Thanksgiving trip fiasco, we paid the extra money for a non-stop flight. Prices would be much better if we returned on December 25, I said. Christmas Day is just a day. We can open presents on the 24th. (Kelly: Logical – 4, Emotional - 0) Out of the question, says Brian. (Brian: Logical – 0, Emotional – 2). It must be on Christmas Day. Need to stay for 8 days, says Brian. Have lots of friends to see and Mom and sister want to see the kids and they will do tons of baby-sitting while we go out every day and have a good time. (Brian: Logical – 0, Emotional – 3). 8 days is WAY too long, says Kelly. (Kelly: Logical – 5, Emotional – 0). Brian wins. You can’t argue emotion with logic.

The night before we leave, news from Portland: Brian’s mother is going to work 4 out of the 8 days and we may not have a car to use. Crap. Kelly: Logical – 5, Emotional 1 (outburst)

The airplane trip to Portland was quite uneventful, even without a seat for Ty. I guess anything is bearable for 2 ½ hours. Brian’s mom’s live-in boyfriend Ron, who really isn’t referred to as a boyfriend and the living together arrangement hasn’t really been discussed… he just happens to stay in her bedroom, picked us up in the biggest non-commercial diesel truck I’d ever seen, to be referred to as Big Red. This is our only potential vehicle for our time in Portland (well, Battle Ground, Washington to be exact) so Brian took mental notes on the way home from the airport because I told him he must drive this beast. We get back to his mom’s house which is exquisitely decorated in about a 1000 breakable knick-knacks which Jack thought was quite exciting. The next few hours were stressful as I ran around taking glass angels and ceramic candle holders away from him.

The rest of the time there was a big blur. Ty, who is our mellow child, was pretty much fussy the whole time and woke up every 5 to 30 minutes throughout each night. Was it gas? Teething? Ear infection? By Christmas Eve, I decided he should go to the doctor I didn’t want him to spend the night in the germy ER either so it was Monday before he saw a doctor. Sure enough, bilateral ear infection. His first. I was a little relieved to hear that he had an ear infection, just to explain why he was behaving the way he was. I would lose my mind if they said he was teething since that will go on for months and months.

I made my very first visit ever to Chuck E. Cheese. It was OK but it’s a harsh reality to realize that multiple international trips a year has been replaced by a big mouse and a bunch of arcade games. Jack thought the game was to put the tokens into the games, not to play the game. So he pitched a fit when I wouldn’t let him put all the tokens into one game. The good thing about Chuck E. Cheese is that no one gives you a second glance when your kid throws a temper tantrum.

It rained every single day. I saw the sun for about 2 minutes when we were driving around on the last day. With rain every day, that meant there wasn’t an opportunity to take Jack to a playground or the zoo or anything like that. We were pretty cooped up but managed to take a couple walks and to go to a couple malls. I watched the “40 Year Old Virgin” with my mother-in-law and Ron. That was weird. You don’t watch that movie with your mother or your father or your mother-in-law. I also saw “Mr. and Mrs. Smith” which wasn’t that great.

Of all the people that Brian was planning on seeing on this trip, only one couple came over and we ventured out to see one family. Of course, that family had grown kids so all the breakable Christmas decorations were available to be destroyed by the Drooling Snot-Nosed Toddler Monster.

On top of everything else, the bed I slept on was very soft with a divot in the middle which gave me a huge backache. You know those bad guest beds… they are bad and the owner doesn’t know that they are bad because why would they sleep in the guest room? And no one ever complains because it’s not polite. Well, I encourage everyone to sleep in their guest beds to see what they are subjecting their guests to.

On a positive note, Brian’s sister, Heather, was very good with Jack and Ty and spent quite a bit of time with them while she was there. Jack allowed her to clean his crusted snotty nose, which for me, requires elaborate wrestling moves to accomplish.

The trip was uneventful. Brian admitted that he made some bad decisions around the whole trip without my having to point it out. So I didn’t have to bring it up and say “I told you so.” We had talked about going back to Alaska in 2006 and I had been telling Brian that I only wanted to stay for a few days and not a week. Now he doesn’t want to go at all and I’m actually completely fine with that. In Alaska in the summertime, the sun never goes down which means the kids never sleep. And that is bad. We’re also not traveling for Christmas next year. I am very happy to be here in sunny Arizona where people are still wearing tank tops and flip flops. Logic wins this round.

Crying Baby

Ty does not want to sleep again. We are doing the thing where we are going into his room every 5 minutes but not picking him up. He is screaming. Overall it’s been a pretty horrible week. Ty has not wanted to sleep for several nights before Wednesday. We had a bit of a reprieve Thurs - Sat but now he is doing the same thing as before. He goes from crying to just staring at me. I’m worried that he is such an extrovert that he needs someone in the room with him at all times or else he cries. Wednesday Brian flew to Seattle to spend the day with his sister for her birthday. This meant I had to get the kids to day care and handle them myself in the evening. Normally this wouldn’t be a big deal but we are very sleep deprived and Ty is being difficult. Sure enough, Ty started crying when I put him into bed. I decided it was time to let him “cry it out”. I went into the room every 5 minutes to soothe him and would leave. After over 2 hours, he was still going strong. So I got ready for bed, then went to his room, said “You win.” Picked him up, put him in bed with me and fed him. He promptly fell asleep until 5:30 AM. I hope this is a temporary thing. I can see why people just give up and let their kids sleep in their beds, just to get a good night sleep. He slept better the next few nights but he has been crying for over an hour now (Sunday night). Brian is traveling again on Monday so that will be another lovely evening for me. I will be sure to drink a couple shots of whiskey with dinner.

After spending 3 hours a night for 5 nights in a phone meeting, in addition to working my normal schedule, I took most of Friday off to spend some time with Ty. I got to visit Jill, Tatum and Landon at Jill's new house. It was spacious and had lots of storage which means she can now buy everything from Costco. They are going to use the space under the stairs for toys. I think it would make a nice wine cellar myself. I went to Bed, Bath and Beyond and bought myself a Christmas present... a sound machine for my room. I love the sound of rain or just about any kind of white noise while I am sleeping. It blocks out the TV when Brian stays up late watching it. I don't know why men have to turn the TV up so loud. Does anyone else have this problem? We have sound machines in Ty and Jack's room. This is how you keep your baby from waking up your 2 year old... you make your 2 year old think it's always raining at night, or that there is a big waterfall outside his window. My sister puts on crickets for her 3 year old but I would find that a little distracting.

We went to an outdoor going away party for Annette and her family on Friday night. Brian left work late on Friday and so we missed most of it that was going on during the daylight. Just about every single person at work leaves early on Fridays except for Brian. It was cold and dark by the time we got there. Jack chugged an apple juice and proceeded to puke. He never drinks full strength juice and so doesn't have self-control when it comes to drinking it and obviously doesn't have the stomach for it. We chatted with Annette and Jill and Tracy and their families. We are very sorry to see Annette and her family move to Colorado. :-(

Brian went to an eye doctor appointment and then wanted to spend 2 ½ hours giving blood (he gives the power reds). I was really tired so he stayed at home. I think it’s pretty altruistic of Brian to give blood the second he is eligible every 16 weeks but it’s also a burden on me sometimes since he does it on the weekend. We watched a movie Saturday night which was my first movie since seeing Star Wars at the theater. It was “Mean Girls” with Lindsey Lohan. It wasn’t bad. Sunday Yvonne came over and watched the boys for a couple hours so that Brian and I could be Brian and Kelly and not Dada and Mama. We went to eat and did a little shopping. It was quite luxurious.

I keep hearing people gripe about how people are trying to get rid of Christmas or making people say Happy Holidays instead of Merry Christmas. I’m irritated at the people who are griping. I’m REALLY irritated at the people who are griping about Target not letting the Salvation Army person ring the bell in front of their store (I’m sorry. I find this extremely annoying and think that if someone has time to be spending in front of the store ringing a bell, they could be picking up trash off the highway or visiting sick people or volunteering in a soup kitchen.) And if Target doesn’t want to say Merry Christmas anywhere, let them. There is CLEARLY tons of Christmas stuff in the store. They are HARDLY trying to get rid of Christmas. Why would they? They make a lot of money off Christmas. As someone who did not celebrate Christmas for the first 30 years of her life, I do understand what it is like to not celebrate it, and simply dealing with all the frantic people trying to find gifts, the bad traffic and the crowded malls, and seeing all the displays and all the decorations is pretty much cramming it down people’s throats. Frankly I found this more irritating than people saying Merry Christmas to me. There, I got that off my chest. So in the event that I don’t get a chance to blog over the next week or so because of Christmas (because I now “celebrate” it because my husband is way into it and I think the tree in the house smells good) have a great time doing whatever you do when you get some time off work.

Some Photos

Fake grass photos!



Jack, Ty and his cousins at the beach (over Thanksgiving).

Fake Grass and Parties

This week just flew by… it’s now Sunday night and I’m sitting in a three hour meeting with India. Well, people who work for my company in India. I have one of these meetings every night for five nights. I know, I know… you’re very envious of this little perk of my job. Ha! Well, it’s all part of my illustrious new program manager job which puts me in charge of an $8 million budget next year. I love saying that because usually as a program/project manager, I get people. But for some reason this time around, I get a BUDGET. Which is basically people plus money to spend on some hardware and software. It makes me sound important but it’s really doing the same old crap that I’ve always done which is pretty much bossing people around. I do like telling people what to do and try to do it at home sometimes but Brian calls me on it.

I did a horrible job of exercising last week. I had meetings that encroached on my noon-time aerobic classes so that fell by the wayside. I did manage to get out and walk a couple times last week but that was it. Now I really need that ROM machine. I’m having a really hard time spending more than 4 minutes exercising knowing that I don’t have to.

I really don’t want to offend any of my readers but I have to talk about another quirk I have. I am horrified when I see people (mostly at work) wearing tapered pants, pleated pants, too short pants, or high waisted jeans AKA “mom jeans”. Even clunky heels are getting a small gasp out of me at times although admittedly I haven’t completely purged all of my chunky heels from my closet. This has all come from watching that show on The Learning Channel (TLC) “What Not to Wear”. I have been brainwashed into wearing pointy toes and skinny heels (although I sometimes give in and wear my clogs or Tevas).

I went to our Big Book Club Holiday Party on Friday night. This time I didn’t read the book which turned out to be OK because it wasn’t even mentioned. I drank two Cosmos which is my favorite cocktail and ate some yummy food, chatted with a few people and then we started the gift exchange. The gift exchange is the kind where you draw a number, and you go in that order and you can either pick a new gift or steal from someone who already has a gift. The key to these gift exchanges is to never expect that you will get something you actually like. That way, you won’t be disappointed. In fact, you may even be pleased with the outcome. I mean, how often do you get something that you would actually buy for yourself? About .00001% of the time. I took some small tea light candles and a gift certificate to Starbucks. Now that is something that the average American will use. I managed to select a cool gift… red wine glasses. But they were stolen by the book club host, Tracy. I know Jill really wanted them though. Maybe Jill will end up getting them for Christmas since Tracy is her sister. So I picked another gift: a foot spa thing. Now this actually isn’t a bad gift but it takes up space in your house and I’m not sure how frequently I would use it. We’ll see. Tracy ended up being the only one who stole a gift and she was the hostess. I like giving her a hard time about that. It is true that Brian and I own about 50 wine glasses already…

Saturday morning we went to Jack’s school’s Christmas show which is always very cute. The little kids sing… well, the older kids sing and the younger kids stand up in front of all the adults looking terrified. But the adults all love that kind of thing. Jack was supposed to sing “We Wish You a Merry Christmas” but I never saw his lips move.

Later that morning, a couple guys showed up to install our fake grass. If you have read my blog from day 1, it was my first entry in August or September. It has taken that long to get our grass installed because of a misquote on the job, which is a long story I would rather not get into. I will say that it turned out really great looking and I will attempt to get some photos posted soon.

Saturday night we had our big Christmas party. We have had one every year since 1998. The first one in 1998 was a big drunk fest with a keg and 60+ people in a 1500 square foot house. The parties have changed quite a bit over the years. Now Brian makes a big huge delicious spread and we drink fine wines. Every year a few people drink a little too much but overimbibing is no longer an every weekend occurrence, since most of us have kids. It’s a night to let loose. I think we had about 40 people and the last people left about 12:30. Our recycling bin is full of wine and beer bottles. We didn’t get a baby-sitter because both kids theoretically should have been asleep by 7:30 PM which is the time the party started. Jack was in bed by 7:15 PM but Ty decided he wanted to party and stayed up until about 9:30 PM, the stinker. Fortunately, a couple guests were willing to hold him. I didn’t like spending 30+ minutes with him trying to get him to go to sleep and not spending time with the guests but oh, well. On Sunday, it was a little rough in the morning. I didn’t drink much at all but Ty was up several times during the night. We played in our new grass, I took Jack to the playground and then Jack and I went to get gelato and to the pet store.

Cabin Fever

This past weekend was absolutely torturous without internet. I had decided to make no plans for the weekend since we have so much crap to do around the house. At least with email and the internet, you could lock yourself up in your house for weeks and still communicate with all your friends and family. So not only did we not do anything social with anyone, I couldn’t email or blog. And Cox couldn’t send someone out to help until Monday afternoon. I had horrible cabin fever by Sunday night. At least we got the tree up and decorated, and we got a new chair and ottoman and end table from Costco Home for our living room (to go with the fake fireplace from Costco). Yes, we buy everything from Costco. Brian also hung up the Christmas lights. It was worth the cabin fever to get everything done! Fortunately I had a very nice dinner with my mom’s group on Sunday night at a very good Italian restaurant in Ahwatukee. I had two glasses of wine, and split two entrees with someone else: shrimp stuffed ravioli in vodka sauce and a yummy eggplant dish. The waiter must have liked us because he gave use three desserts for free, plus we each got a very strong shot of some kind of lemon cocktail. It was awesome to not be pregnant so that I could enjoy the wine and not have heartburn for 12 hours after the Italian food.

I’m officially obsessed with something called the ROM machine. ROM stands for Range of Motion. This is an exercise machine. You spend 4 minutes a day exercising on this machine and it’s the equivalent of 30 – 45 minutes of cardio, 1 hour of strength training and 15 minute of stretching. Don’t believe it? I didn’t believe it at first. But I think there is something to it. So now when I am 35 minutes into doing aerobics, feeling a little bored, I think… I don’t have to be here. I could be done with this exercising stuff in 4 MINUTES IF I HAD THIS MACHINE. And it gets you in better shape than any other kind of exercise like running, walking, etc. Check it out: http://www.fastexercise.com/

OK, it’s almost 8 PM and it’s time for my walk. You can bet these walks will come to a screeching halt if I ever get my hands on the ROM!

Compression Socks Are Cool

I realized my addiction to blogging when our internet was down from Friday to Monday afternoon and I couldn't post anything! Turns out our cable modem was fried. But we replaced it and we are back in business.

Written on Friday: I’m sitting here today in a pair of compression pantyhose. Compression socks aren’t foreign to me—I’ve taken 12 – 15 transpacific flights that take about 36 hours duration, most of that flying. If you’ve ever taken a flight like that and taken off your shoes, you know that sometimes you have to walk off the plane in your socks because you can’t get your shoes back on. All that sitting results in the blood pooling in your feet and your feet swell up to twice their normal size. Not pretty. So I do like to wear compression socks when I fly. This sounds crazy but they do make your feet and legs feel like a million bucks. I’m not so keen on the pantyhose type (versus trouser socks) but I got laser vein removal yesterday. The whole thing took less than 15 minutes and it hurt while they were doing it but like laser hair removal, it doesn’t hurt once they are done. Compression socks/pantyhose aren’t required but they said I would get better results if I wore them. I should know in about four weeks if I need another treatment. Thank God it’s winter.

This week was a major milestone for Jack. Over the summer, he went through a lot of changes and adjustments all within about a month. He got a new baby brother, he moved from a crib to his big boy bed, he start using the potty, we had him in ISR, the swimming lessons where you go every day 5 weeks for 10 minutes… so I let him keep sleeping with his pacifier (“binky”). He just loves his binky and only gets to use it at night when he is sleeping. He never tries to take Ty’s binky either. Well, Sunday night I noticed his binky looked a little cruddy and also noticed a little hole. I tore it a little bit more and showed Jack and told him his binky was broken. I asked him if he wanted to try it and he put it in his mouth and spit it out. I guess the big hole didn’t feel that good. I asked him if he wanted to throw it away or if I should throw it away and he wanted me to. And he went asleep without it. It’s now Friday and he slept every night without a binky. He’s asked for one a couple times but it’s been easy to placate him with various other objects. His binky really was his “lovey”. I really thought this was going to be a bigger battle but it seems that waiting for an opportune time was the right thing to do.

On another milestone note: I fed Ty a little rice cereal before Thanksgiving and we’ve been practicing a little since then. I tried sweet potatoes last night. He doesn’t really have the hang of eating just yet as most of the food comes out of his mouth on his tongue. I am really hoping that eating will help him to start sleeping through the night.

On Tuesday I went to my naturopath. A naturopath is a medical doctor who listens to your symptoms and determines what the underlying root cause is, and treats the root cause versus treating the symptoms like a regular MD. For example, I have hyperthyroid (Graves Disease) which as most of you know, resulted in drastic weight loss after Jack was born. The weight loss was really cool for a while especially since I could eat half of a chocolate cake in one sitting and still lose weight but then I completely lost my rear end and that wasn’t attractive. Of course, the heart palpitations were a little scary too. My regular MD put me on something called PTU that stunts the thyroid hormone production. The naturopath tries to figure out why the thyroid starting putting out too much hormone in the first place. They tend to give you weird drops and pellets to take. I believe there is a place for both kinds of medicine and they should be used in conjunction with one another. I went to see the naturopath to see what we could do to prevent my thyroid from going to berserk again because it was in remission during the pregnancy. This is because the endocrinologist wants me to do the radioactive iodine treatment to permanently kill my thyroid, making me hypothyroid and I will have to take synthetic hormones for the rest of my life. She thinks I am having more issues with my pituitary and gave me drops for that. She said it will give me more energy and help me concentrate better. The weird thing is that I have had more energy and you wouldn’t believe the “brilliant” work I have produced this week in record time. (Brilliant was Brian’s word—we sometimes have to work together). So maybe there is something to this pituitary thing.

So the next day I went to the endocrinologist and my thyroid is perfectly normal (the test in August showed that I was hyperthyroid). He thinks it will go out of control again at some point in my life but fortunately I only have to get tested every 6 months unless I start dropping weight in 5 lbs increments like I did before.

On Wednesday night after the kids were in bed, I met up a friend of mine from work who was visiting from Folsom. He was my HR rep several years ago when I was managing people. We bonded because I needed him more than the average manager—he called me a poop magnet because of the various people issues I was encountering. Sometimes I wonder if most other managers just have their heads in the sand most of the time. I guess some people would think it was strange that I would meet a man by myself at a bar without Brian but Brian’s HR rep reports to this guy and Brian knows him so he is cool with that. We like to talk shop about work and because he is a higher ranking HR rep, I can get sometimes get some juicy info out of him.