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Later
May 2006 entries
05-14-06
05-13-06
05-08-06
05-07-06
Karmic Calendar
• I call Sean
to tell him everything's okay, it's just a bunch of tests, just keep playing
poker, but by the time I get into the hospital bed an hour later, after
going through traffic and parking and admissions and getting lost and
hallways with painted stripes and seeing my midwife in maternity waiting
for me, well, I broke down. I call Sean and say "Okay nevermind,
I need you here." He tells me it's okay, he was losing anyway.
• Two hours with straps to attach the heartbeat monitor (fabulous), uterine contraction monitor (not a thing) and the little thumb-button that I press whenever I feel the baby move (which goes "bink!" so it sounded like "bink! bink-bink! bink-bink-bink! bink! bink! bink! bink-bink! bink! bink-bink-bink-bink! bink!" "Can we stop now? My thumb hurts."), and 6 vials of blood later, it's been determined that I'm simply working on my feet a lot and it's causing hypertension. Options? Stop working (OH HAHAHAHAHA), file for employment insurance leave-type-whatever, which I don't qualify for until I've worked 900 hours in Canada (so, no), start working really part-time and risk not getting my hours needed for maternity leave (errrr, a year off vs. no time off, hmmm....), or keep doing what I'm doing and spend every moment I can with my feet elevated above my heart and resting. So needless to say, I'm propping my feet up a lot and the nursery still looks that same as it did last week.
• Late Friday night, home from the hospital, Hobbes still isn't home.
• Early Saturday morning, head to lab, hungry and tired, and drink 100 grams of sugar in an orange syrupy soda. Lay down with my feet up and have blood drawn over and over again for three hours (you aren't allowed to leave for this test). We finally switched to the veins in both my hands, since the insides of my arms were trashed. Having blood drawn from your hands hurts.
• Eat one of the best cheeseburgers ever.
• Saturday afternoon, Sean attempts to finally unwrap his finger dressing, clean it, and re-wrap it. Only the gauze has grown into his wound. It was vomitous. We head to a clinic to have someone take care of it, since we don't know what to do. Eeeew.
• Saturday night dinner at Dave & Debra's with Uncle Pete. I almost fall asleep watching TV at like 9:30 pm.
• Sunday morning, make the above flyer for Hobbes and tape all around the neighborhood. So far, nothing. I mentioned "expensive meds" just in case someone thought he was homeless and took him home. Which would be CRAZY because Hobbes is really a dick to ANYONE but Sean or I.
Sean is having a very hard time with this. Hobbes is Sean's boy. He is the man of the house. For better or for worse, he's Hobbes, and we love him fiercely, even though he's the most difficult cat we've ever had. Crazy as he is, he is full of personality (and friends and family who have met him are probably nodding their heads in agreement) and we miss him very much. And Dominique WILL NOT STOP YEOWLING.
• link
05-04-06
TRULY STORYTIME!
Tuesday night was fish taco night and I was pretty excited because I had enough time in the afternoon to go to the asian produce market for the veggies, the fish market for the halibut, and the mexican deli for the tortillas. Then the plan was for Sean and I to make fish tacos and paint a couple coats of paint in the nursery. (I've been trying to get in the habit of doing all of my grocery shopping on Hastings Street instead of Safeway to avoid all the unnecessary groceries - plus all of these shops span about 5 blocks so I get some sun and exercise. And the weather has been lovely lately.)
So I'm scheduled to work until 5:30 that night, and I know I will have to shop quickly since a lot of these stores close at 7:00, but then work asks me to stay until 7:15 and I need the hours, so I decided to stay, but call Sean to tell him that dinner is cancelled and I'll grab something quick for us on the way home.
A call to home gives me our sucky answering machine (our answering machine has horrible sound quality and it loves to cut random people off in mid-message, sometimes even after just a few seconds), and a call to Sean's cell goes straight to voice mail. Which means he must be on the phone. I know he's on his way home because it's 5:15. So I just keep trying his cell phone, and MAN he's on his cell for a LONG TIME.
Two hours go by. By now I'm totally confused because we had plans, dammit, so where is he? And why is his cell phone going straight to voice mail?
By the time I get home at 7:30 I know something is wrong because he's still not home or answering his phone. I practically run downstairs to listen to the answering machine.
And there it is.
Stace, it's Dave. I'm at the hospital with Sean, he--
And then it's cut off.
Let me point out that Sean uses a saw at his job.
Then it's me rambling on and on about not being able to make fish tacos tonight and blah blah blah ohmygod I went on forever (am I the only one who cringes when I hear my own voice mail messages?), then another message from Dave where he doesn't say anything but his cell number.
Which I call as fast as my hands can dial.
And it goes straight to voice mail.
I think I left Dave a 9 second voicemail but still managed to drop the F bomb twice and the MF bomb once.
Anyway.
Dave calls back I dunno, maybe 15 minutes later? And says right away that they can't use cell phones in the hospital and I say "WHAT HAPPENED" and he says "Oh Sean thought it would be funny to cut three of his digits off."
Pause.
Longer pause.
Still longer pause.
"Just kidding, he just cut off the padding on his middle finger."
"WHICH HAND."
"His right hand, I think."
And I exhale for the first time in the conversation. Sean is left-handed. And I like his digits and the things they do, and I prefer them not sawed off, thank you.
I later told Sean that Dave's dramatic pause? For comedic effect? During that few seconds I'm pretty sure that our baby lost about seven full IQ points. The first D in math, I'm blaming Dave.
So Sean finally calls me about 45 minutes later, apologizes profusely for not being able to call from the hospital, and says they couldn't even stitch him because he didn't cut his finger, he cut part of it off, and he didn't bring the off part to the hospital with him. So they cleaned it, wrapped it, and gave him NO pain prescription. So after 4+ hours at the ER, he could have gone to the clinic by our house and probably been outta there an hour later.
Anyhoo, here he is the night he got home, and painting the nursery the next night.
The doctor told him his
finger could look normal in about a year.
What's hilarious is that I can hear my Uncle Tim saying "Just put some antibiotic ointment on there and it'll be just fine." Cuts with a saw to my Uncle Tim are like.... hangnails to us.
• link
05-14-06
| It
looks SO MUCH BETTER with the trim, no? And Sean's car was too small
(?) to hold the furniture so I went to Ikea myself and got it all,
and it was all wedged (not by me, of course) into my Honda and now
it's in ready-to-assemble boxes leaning against the wall. But first
the trim needs a coat of white paint and the floor needs to be swept
and scrubbed. Again. The futon is back in it's original place in the living room, and this week I hope to have the baby room ready to go so I can claim my living room as a living room once again. It's been too long. Plus I want to have a party. Which is good motivation for me. I need a pineapple. • link |
 |
05-13-06
 Me & Dawna |
I
do not have gestational diabetes. We still have no Hobbes. Here is a video of the baby moving in my belly (pay attention to the right side at the start of the video). It looks like I'm moving but I swear I'm just laying there. Then Jalen starts moving and it gets difficult to see. The nursery only needs the borders done, then we'll go get the furniture - sometime. Sean's finger is actually healing. It looks more like ground turkey than ground hamburger now. I'm still working at three Starbucks stores. We have enough onesies to stock a village. And socks. But no diapers. Or car seat. Or sling. This baby better make it to term because we are not stocked yet! My family gave us money to buy the baby furniture but we have no way to get it all from Ikea, which is 6 miles from our house. Can't afford to rent a truck; don't want to ask favors of anyone. Including family. I just don't get it. This is not an easy transition. • link |
05-08-06
| Sean
did another two coats of the nursery paint - it looks really dark
but I took this picture at dusk and the lighting ain't so great.
I'm quite happy with it, although I spent this evening Googling
Stewart Moskowitz +ostriches
looking for the painting that we had in the 1970's and it doesn't
exist anywhere. I'd love to show you a picture of it, but... trust
me, it's a really funny painting of ostriches. My feet are better, Sean had his finger re-wrapped again tonight at the clinic (the meaty part is healing!!), and Hobbes has still not come home. We also haven't received any calls from the flyer, which has Sean paranoid that Hobbes is "stuck" somewhere. I just want to know. • link |
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05-07-06
Karmic Calendar
 |
•
Tuesday, as you all recall, Sean cut off the tip of his middle,
right finger. I have a picture of it, but only click it if you can
handle the gross-outedness of it. Okay. You've been warned. Here. • Friday at 4 a.m. I woke up for work and let Hobbes outside. He made his rounds in the early morning, then would come in when Sean would leave for work hours later. Only he never came back from that moment. • Friday after work Sean plays poker and I prepare for my fast starting at 9 pm, because I have to take that horrible second 100 gram-of-sugar glucose/gestational diabetes test on Saturday morning, since I "failed" the first test the week before. It requires 12 hours of fasting. So two things about this day were strange. Hobbes never came home, and also my feet blew up even more than they had been before. • Friday, 8 p.m. I page my midwife while having sushi (the last I can eat before fasting) to tell her that my swollen feet are all tingly and starting to get numb. I'm getting scared. She tells me to meet her at St. Paul's hospital. I start crying at the sushi place. |
• Two hours with straps to attach the heartbeat monitor (fabulous), uterine contraction monitor (not a thing) and the little thumb-button that I press whenever I feel the baby move (which goes "bink!" so it sounded like "bink! bink-bink! bink-bink-bink! bink! bink! bink! bink-bink! bink! bink-bink-bink-bink! bink!" "Can we stop now? My thumb hurts."), and 6 vials of blood later, it's been determined that I'm simply working on my feet a lot and it's causing hypertension. Options? Stop working (OH HAHAHAHAHA), file for employment insurance leave-type-whatever, which I don't qualify for until I've worked 900 hours in Canada (so, no), start working really part-time and risk not getting my hours needed for maternity leave (errrr, a year off vs. no time off, hmmm....), or keep doing what I'm doing and spend every moment I can with my feet elevated above my heart and resting. So needless to say, I'm propping my feet up a lot and the nursery still looks that same as it did last week.
• Late Friday night, home from the hospital, Hobbes still isn't home.
• Early Saturday morning, head to lab, hungry and tired, and drink 100 grams of sugar in an orange syrupy soda. Lay down with my feet up and have blood drawn over and over again for three hours (you aren't allowed to leave for this test). We finally switched to the veins in both my hands, since the insides of my arms were trashed. Having blood drawn from your hands hurts.
• Eat one of the best cheeseburgers ever.
• Saturday afternoon, Sean attempts to finally unwrap his finger dressing, clean it, and re-wrap it. Only the gauze has grown into his wound. It was vomitous. We head to a clinic to have someone take care of it, since we don't know what to do. Eeeew.
• Saturday night dinner at Dave & Debra's with Uncle Pete. I almost fall asleep watching TV at like 9:30 pm.
• Sunday morning, make the above flyer for Hobbes and tape all around the neighborhood. So far, nothing. I mentioned "expensive meds" just in case someone thought he was homeless and took him home. Which would be CRAZY because Hobbes is really a dick to ANYONE but Sean or I.
Sean is having a very hard time with this. Hobbes is Sean's boy. He is the man of the house. For better or for worse, he's Hobbes, and we love him fiercely, even though he's the most difficult cat we've ever had. Crazy as he is, he is full of personality (and friends and family who have met him are probably nodding their heads in agreement) and we miss him very much. And Dominique WILL NOT STOP YEOWLING.
• link
05-04-06
TRULY STORYTIME!
Tuesday night was fish taco night and I was pretty excited because I had enough time in the afternoon to go to the asian produce market for the veggies, the fish market for the halibut, and the mexican deli for the tortillas. Then the plan was for Sean and I to make fish tacos and paint a couple coats of paint in the nursery. (I've been trying to get in the habit of doing all of my grocery shopping on Hastings Street instead of Safeway to avoid all the unnecessary groceries - plus all of these shops span about 5 blocks so I get some sun and exercise. And the weather has been lovely lately.)
So I'm scheduled to work until 5:30 that night, and I know I will have to shop quickly since a lot of these stores close at 7:00, but then work asks me to stay until 7:15 and I need the hours, so I decided to stay, but call Sean to tell him that dinner is cancelled and I'll grab something quick for us on the way home.
A call to home gives me our sucky answering machine (our answering machine has horrible sound quality and it loves to cut random people off in mid-message, sometimes even after just a few seconds), and a call to Sean's cell goes straight to voice mail. Which means he must be on the phone. I know he's on his way home because it's 5:15. So I just keep trying his cell phone, and MAN he's on his cell for a LONG TIME.
Two hours go by. By now I'm totally confused because we had plans, dammit, so where is he? And why is his cell phone going straight to voice mail?
By the time I get home at 7:30 I know something is wrong because he's still not home or answering his phone. I practically run downstairs to listen to the answering machine.
And there it is.
Stace, it's Dave. I'm at the hospital with Sean, he--
And then it's cut off.
Let me point out that Sean uses a saw at his job.
Then it's me rambling on and on about not being able to make fish tacos tonight and blah blah blah ohmygod I went on forever (am I the only one who cringes when I hear my own voice mail messages?), then another message from Dave where he doesn't say anything but his cell number.
Which I call as fast as my hands can dial.
And it goes straight to voice mail.
I think I left Dave a 9 second voicemail but still managed to drop the F bomb twice and the MF bomb once.
Anyway.
Dave calls back I dunno, maybe 15 minutes later? And says right away that they can't use cell phones in the hospital and I say "WHAT HAPPENED" and he says "Oh Sean thought it would be funny to cut three of his digits off."
Pause.
Longer pause.
Still longer pause.
"Just kidding, he just cut off the padding on his middle finger."
"WHICH HAND."
"His right hand, I think."
And I exhale for the first time in the conversation. Sean is left-handed. And I like his digits and the things they do, and I prefer them not sawed off, thank you.
I later told Sean that Dave's dramatic pause? For comedic effect? During that few seconds I'm pretty sure that our baby lost about seven full IQ points. The first D in math, I'm blaming Dave.
So Sean finally calls me about 45 minutes later, apologizes profusely for not being able to call from the hospital, and says they couldn't even stitch him because he didn't cut his finger, he cut part of it off, and he didn't bring the off part to the hospital with him. So they cleaned it, wrapped it, and gave him NO pain prescription. So after 4+ hours at the ER, he could have gone to the clinic by our house and probably been outta there an hour later.
Anyhoo, here he is the night he got home, and painting the nursery the next night.
 |
 |
What's hilarious is that I can hear my Uncle Tim saying "Just put some antibiotic ointment on there and it'll be just fine." Cuts with a saw to my Uncle Tim are like.... hangnails to us.
• link