Consult #2

On Monday I arranged to meet Liz, a friend from work who just moved to the east coast, at the bookstore at 8:30. I waited for 45 minutes and after buying four books, I went home. It wasn’t so bad getting stuck in a bookstore while waiting for someone--I think it will be my future BKM. Liz was stressed at being told that we would no longer support 100% remote workers and that she would have to quit or move back here. My other friend, Kim, is in the same situation. It really does suck but I hope they find something that they are really passionate about. I suppose that I could get cut in this next round. I don’t think they will cut me but you never know. And if they do, I would do program management in a different industry. Something more interesting than the semiconductor industry.

On Tuesday I did Pilates at the Y. Pilates is my new love and I am able to do it 2x/week—once at the Y (Tues) and once at work (Thurs). The unfortunate thing about the Tuesday class is that it is from 6:30 – 7:30 and it comes with guilt for not spending that time with the kids.

I got to hook up with Liz for about an hour on Thursday night and then headed to my volleyball tournament. We ranked third in the league and that is really good for us. We have a four person team with three women and let’s be honest here, it hard for a team with three women to kill the ball with every play like a 6’ 5” male player. It was a single elimination tournament and we lost the first match so that was that. We have had such fun playing together the last 2 – 3 seasons that we are going for it again. We have a good time and laugh a lot, and we still play pretty well.

On Friday, I was playing on the floor with Ty and wrestling a little bit. His hand reached out towards my nose and I thought he was just going to grab my nose but instead he stuck his little razor sharp finger up my nose which hurt like hell and the next thing I know, I have a nosebleed. What a Stinker! My nose hurt for hours afterwards. We went to the mall on Friday night which was probably a mistake because I had a really bad sinus headache, plus a cold and my nose really hurt on top of that. We did the normal: eat dinner, go to the book store and Pottery Barn Kids. We went home and I was in so much pain with my headache, that I lay down on the floor of Jack’s room and didn’t push him to get dressed. He got a pillow down from his bed and a blanket and “tucked” me in. He gave me his doggie and then got a chair and put it outside the door of his room. He turned off the light and closed the door and sat down on the chair (like I do sometimes). I thought it was really cute. Unfortunately I saw his feet disappear under the door and I had to figure out what he was up to. He was determined to put me in bed, so I decided that I should go to bed (at 8:30) and so Brian ended up putting Jack in bed. I like it that Jack was so concerned about me.

I woke up 11 hours later feeling 100% better than the night before and my cold seemed to have disappeared. Brian took Jack to soccer and I hung out with Ty. During the kids’ naps I ran some errands for Jack’s birthday which is August 26. Later in the day, Sarah came over and we went swimming, had dinner, put the kids to bed and then watched the movie “Center Stage” or something like that. It was OK. Kind of cheesy but there was dancing in it so I liked it.

Sunday was a big day. Brian hiked Camelback and left around 6 AM so I had to get up with the kids. At noon, I met Annette G at the mall for a focused shopping trip. I’ve been down to about one outfit that I felt good in and because I liked Annette’s clothes and we have similar builds, and she is practically a professional shopper, I asked her to help me find some clothes. I used to love shopping and would spend hours doing it but now I hate it. Nothing seems to fit and I don’t have time or the desire to shop. When I got the mall, Annette had already pulled some clothes for me. So for the next four hours straight, I tried on clothes. I have to give Annette credit—I think she only tried on one shirt. She was very focused on getting clothes for me, picking the right thing, finding the right colors, pushing me to try new things and she expedited everything by hanging up the clothes after I tried them on. After 3 hours, I weakly said that I was hungry, and Annette whipped a South Beach protein bar out of her purse and we split it, enabling us to continue on for another hour. Now that’s a professional. Afterwards I felt like I had run a marathon, but I had many tops and one bottom and a potential other bottom. Definitely a worthwhile trip. If I had gone by myself, I would have been sitting in Starbucks after 30 minutes. The next step is to go through my closet and see what can be purged and what can be saved. Being pregnant and breastfeeding over the past four years has resulted in clothes that don’t fit and a lot of outdated clothes. Also, I think I will look for another pair of jeans.

Work has been very intense lately and we are really busy. But I made time on Tuesday to go to my second consult. Now I think I said before that most of the people I know have only done one consult and went with that doctor. Being the engineer that I am, I felt like I had to get three consults to find the best doctor for me, even though these doctors charge for consults now. This consult was like night and day from the first one. The first one I waited 2 hours to see the doctor, and he told me I needed a lift and recommended 275 to 300 cc’s. He didn’t do any measurements and didn’t take a photo and didn’t have me look at any photos and didn’t have me try the implant in my bra to see what I liked. In the second consult, the guy came in immediately, and to the chagrin of his assistant, I didn’t even have my robe on. He says, Take off your shirt. Well he was going to look at my breasts anyway… who cares if he sees me take my shirt off? This would be like the ob/gyn coming into the room saying, Take your pants off. I guess it sounds bad, even though the end result is the same—he sees your cha cha either way. Back to the plastic surgeon… Then he does all these measurements and leaves. The assistant says he is doing his “analysis”. He comes back in and we look at pictures, talk about what size, try some in my bra, etc. He says, Absolutely no lift, 330 cc’s would be conservative to average and it is $4K less than the other guy. He would also do the incision under the breast, which is my preference because I am concerned about nerve damage. So at this point, I am very happy that I have a third consultation to see what he says. I’m finding this a big confusing.

Tuesday night I went to Jill’s to pick up my jewelry and visited for a while. I like these spontaneous kinds of visits where I pick up the phone and call someone, in this case Jill at around 8:30 PM.

K: Hey what are doing?
J: Putting the kids to bed
K: Is this a good time to come over?
J: Yes but I’ll warn you, I’m not wearing a bra.
K: That’s OK, I’ve already seen your boobs.
J: Ha! See you in a few minutes.

On Thursday night I went to Tami’s house for her “Sex and the City” party. She served cosmos (which I did not touch) and we watched some of people’s favorite episodes. This was a lot of fun and I would like to get the complete set myself.

A Night Out on the Town

On Friday morning I picked up Annette H from the airport. I arrived late because I underestimated just how bad the rush hour traffic was on the 101 and 202. I am thankful that I have a very short commute to work. The airport was amazingly calm considering the heightened security. We went to Einstein Bagels for breakfast then headed back to the house for a massage. Annette gave me massages while I was pregnant with Ty and she is so good I begged her to give me a massage when she came down here. It felt great. Tracy came over for a massage too and when they were done, she took Annette to Jill’s, who I have decided is a Matriarch. Now there are two definitions of matriarch: n 1: a female head of a family or tribe [syn: materfamilias] 2: a feisty older woman with a big bosom (as drawn in cartoons). I actually don’t think Jill would be offended by the second definition with the exception of the word “older” and would actually be pleased by the “big bosom” part, but alas I was thinking of the first definition. Her house seems to be a home base for traveling souls.

I had my yearly ob/gyn appointment at noon and waited an hour and a half to see the doctor. I think that’s the downside of seeing an ob/gyn versus a general practitioner… the doctors are off delivering babies while you’re sitting in the exam room wearing a flimsy robe. I love this doctor so I forgave him when he came into the room. He never rushes which is why he is easy to forgive for running behind. These appointments used to be about birth control and then they turned into having babies and now the topic: mammograms and osteoporosis. I felt really old.


At 5:30, Jill and Annette picked me up to take me to Annette G’s for Tracy’s non-surprise party. Tracy turned 36 and we decided to celebrate with a stretch Hummer for the evening. I was a little apprehensive about this evening because I knew we were going to be out until 1 AM and our kids get up as early at 5 AM but I decided that life shouldn’t stop just because you have kids.

Brian joined us in the limo and 13 of us headed to Sugar Daddies where the most memorable moment was a woman challenging Tracy to an arm wrestling match. Now, I haven’t been to a bar or club in a long time but in my day, we weren’t into arm wrestling. Tracy held her own despite being a bit inebriated and then Jeanette crushed another challenger.
Here is Annette coming back into the limo from her short visit with the driver.
Our next stop was a bar called E4 or Environments or something like that. I didn’t really get the place. They had rooms for fire, water, oxygen and earth. This is where Jill accused Shannon of putting eyeliner on her lips and Shannon insisted that it was lip liner, even though it was a blue-grey color. Fortunately, no fight ensued.
We moved on to Barcelona which was supposed to be for 30something people but I saw, no kidding, a man who was like 80 years old. That didn’t deter us from having fun even though the dance floor was 130 degrees and completely packed. I hit the wall about midnight and was ready to go to bed. Fortunately, we were at the front of the limo and told the limo driver to go to our house first so I was in bed by 1 AM. Ty woke up every 5 – 10 minutes from 3 AM to 5:30 AM and finally went to sleep but Jack then woke up for good. So I didn’t get to sleep much at all.

On Saturday I spent the day with the boys and we went to the mall. They had closed the gate at Barnes and Noble because a mother lost her child. I must be PMSing because just thinking about that made me want to cry. I stopped by Jill’s for a jewelry party before rushing home to get to the Benefit Show that my work puts on. We’ve gone every year for 10 years and don’t miss it. It’s for a good cause and I used to perform in it before having kids. This year, there was a lot of dancing, so I liked that a lot.

Brian usually gets up with the kids but I felt like spending more time with the boys so I got up with them (Jack woke up at 5:00). I met the girls (6 of us) at Wildflower for breakfast and I think at some point, we may be banned from eating there because of all the jocularity and noise that comes from our table. So sue us. We will have several interesting months of Nancy going through her first pregnancy and Pam getting engaged and married.

I took Jack back to the mall later in the day for some 1:1 time. We went to Rubio’s and the GAP and then to Barnes and Noble where we listened to CD’s, read some books and shared a cupcake. I love going to the bookstore with Jack because we always have so much fun and I have to drag him out of there because he loves it so much. Brian and I watched the movie “Man on Fire” which I thought was really good and is worth checking out.

A Week at the Beach

I think my last blog entry was July 22! I am a little behind on posting because I took the week off last week to go to La Jolla, CA. We rented a beach house with another couple who also have two boys. Their boys are 2 ½ and 2 months. It was a great week. I didn’t check my email once and didn’t think about work at all. The only big activity we did was Sea World which was fun but a bit challenging with the boys’ nap schedules. We were reminded of the repercussions of skipping naps. You can get through the day, yes, but then your toddler will wake up at 3 AM and not want to go back to sleep. So for the rest of the week, we mostly just went to the beach and hung out, or the playground, or wandered around downtown La Jolla. Now spending the week with another couple, especially with kids involved, is always a little scary the first time. We quickly realized that we weren’t going to be able to everything together because the nap schedules were completely different but we managed to synch up a few times for some trips to the beach and playground and then we were entertained watching the boys play in the grassy backyard of the house after dinner and before bedtime. Overall, it was a great trip and I would love to do it again next year and even stay for 2 weeks! Heck, 3 months would be nice.

The week before the trip I was driving the boys to swimming lessons and the car started to jerk. I knew immediately something was up with the transmission. Fortunately I had noticed a couple weird things the day before and had a 7:30 AM appointment with Acura to check out the car. I managed to get to swimming lessons and back driving in 1st and 2nd gear. Well, it did turn out to be the transmission and even though the car is not still under warranty, Acura said the transmission was (they must have had problems with these) and so we got a brand new Acura TL courtesy vehicle to drive to San Diego. That was really nice. It had XM satellite radio so we could listen to something other than the two Mexican radio stations when we were driving through Yuma. Now of course, my car seems kind of ghetto but I need to get over that because if any car is replaced, it would be Brian’s 1997 Rav4. I hate that car but I only drive it once every 3 months or so and always under duress.

On car trips: we learned that Ty does not nap in the car like 99.9% of all other toddlers. We also learned that Jack gets car sick as demonstrated by the big puke on the way there and one on the way back.

Well, that’s all I have time for right now. I’m still catching up from being off work for so long.