I have reached the tipping point, and not too soon.  My fingers are turning blue, so on went the heat!  Unfortunately for my family, I reached this decision just as they were all leaving for school.  :-O

I often encourage T (our Chinese exchange student) to come with me when I go shopping somewhere new.  It used to be because I thought he would enjoy seeing the different kinds of American markets and shops, but now it’s because he tells me the most fabulous (and by fabulous I mean out-of-control disgusting!) things about where he lives.

We’ve talked about how in China, everything is fresh.  You go to the market and the fish is still alive, or was until as recently as an hour ago.  All the vegetables are just picked, and they go to market every day instead of stocking up like we do.  I bought some canned soups to use in some recipes I make, mostly for gravy, and he said that they even make all their sauces from scratch!

So last night, I took him to the hope and glory that is Trader Joe’s.  I lured him there by telling him they sell healthy foods.  That’s only partially lying.  They do sell healthy foods.  And they also sell junk food make of healthy ingredients.  And lots and lots of fat.  He saw a whole chicken in a bag and wanted to know where the head was.  Let me tell you, they eat some funky things over there!

On our way back home, he asked me if I ever had to kill any of the animals that we eat.  I was like, Um NO.  He said he had and asked me if I knew how they kill chicken.  I was like, “Sure, you whack it’s head off.  Voila!”

Apparently not.

I won’t go into gory details, but let me just say that the over-worked and under-paid factory workers aren’t the only ones receiving inhumane treatment.

My brother IM’ed me yesterday morning-ish and asked if he could come spend the night last night.  I was so excited!!  Until I found out he wouldn’t be here until 1:00 a.m. and had to leave at 4:00 a.m.  Making a quick! round-trip delivery from Utah to San Leandro for work and needed a place for him and his friend to crash.  I wish SO much that they could have stayed, even if it was just until after breakfast; but I was elated that he came at all and as corny as it sounds, I felt honored that I could do that for him.  Even when I woke up and found that damn Dr. Pepper can still in my fridge.

Well, tempus fugit and I think that shower’s warmed up now.  Toodles!

I have a pretty amazing group of people in my life.  There are just certain people (mostly women, sorry guys!) who consistently do and say things to help me feel good about myself.  If you are reading my blog, you are likely one of those people so give yourself a nice smack on the butt for me.    If you don’t think you are included in that bunch, you have two choices:  1 – Pretend you are and give yourself the smack or 2- You ARE and give yourself the smack.

No one can ever replace Ana Banana, but I’ve got Shana the Beautiful and my cripple rock star Mom who are 99.99999999% as awesome and many, many other dear friends (who, sucky for me, do not live anywhere remotely close!) that each have a spark of the Spirit of Ana in them and will help me feel like she’s still here.  It would help more if one or more of you picked up and moved within 80 miles of here, but I’ll take what I can get.

Love to rowdy girls everywhere!!!

• Best Friend; because try as I might, I have an anxiety attack every time I see another status update about the impending doom move.  Pathetic?  C’est moi!
• Mom; because when I did the grocery shopping today I picked candy to hand out to trick-or-treaters instead of the food on my list we need for the rest of this week.
• Student; because I forgot my sweater and scarf this morning and it was soooo bloody cold that I couldn’t manage to wait 50 minutes outside for my next class of the day and went home early.
• Visiting Teacher; because even though I know I would not have made it the past few years without my second mom (a.k.a. Visiting Teacher!) – I still never manage to get mine done.
• Wife; because I always forget to thaw out whatever it is that I need to make a nice dinner for my husband who works so hard and we end up having a lot of “find it and eat it” dinners.

Good thing I see my therapist tomorrow.  She’ll tell me of course I feel like crap, I haven’t been giving myself good self care.  Yeah… that will make me feel better.

You know about my food/mess/germ issues, right?  I don’t like to be (or get!) messy or dirty, and I don’t touch raw meat because, EWW!

This afternoon, we carved pumpkins.

I cleaned off all the seeds so I could roast them with cinnamon and sugar.

I AM STILL ALIVE!!!

Start checking to see if the moon has turned to blood and the four horsemen come riding to town, I hear that happens next.

I hate to cry.

The snot comes forward, the face gets full, suffocation begins and splotchy-ness ensues.  Noses are blown, boxes of tissue are emptied, and pillows are soaked through with the tears of hurt/anger/frustration/loneliness… the worst one is the loneliness.

I hope you’re sitting down, because I am about to tell you something that will shock you to the core:

I don’t have very many friends.

Are you still there?  Everything ok?  Good, let’s get back to me.  I have a personality so fabulous that Shana the Beautiful calls it “the full monty” when it reaches its peak of awesomeness.

Ana Banana is moving away, and now I can’t stop crying.

Um… it’s cold.

And by cold, I mean it is no longer 83′.

At night, like right now (11:24 p.m. PDT) it’s 56′, and THE WIND IS BLOWING.  Not gale force wind, but stronger than a nice breeze, ya know what I’m sayin’?

This does not bode well people.  I should have at least another month of high 70’s – mid80’s temps coming my way before winter rears its ugly head!

I have to go curl up in the fetal position now.

In my bed.

Under sever layers of blankets.

And PJs.

Socks, even.

(sigh)

Goodnight.

Lately I have been having these awesome dreams.

All of these guys that I crushed on in high school have been making appearances, and they’re madly in love with me!  It’s 15+ years later, and all this time they’ve been secretly pining for me.  Their lives have just not been right ever since they let me slip through their grasps and so they’ve hunted me down to declare their affection in the hopes that they’re not too late.

I don’t remember specific details of the dreams, just that I felt beautiful (even at my size!) to know how they ached for my hand and they couldn’t have it because I was already seriously involved with someone else.  Not married, not that unavailable, but definitely long-term enough to not be so shallow as to cast him aside for what could’ve been.

The best part?

I still feel beautiful when I wake up with four men fightinig over who gets to serve me strawberry-topped pancakes in bed.

That’s exactly what I did on Thursday.

I am here in the hotbed of sin known as Salt Lake City, Utah, having a fantastic time sans children, razzing my mom about turning 60, hanging my head in shame at how creative my sister Em and SIL Tres (are as evidenced by the FABULOUS party they threw Mom on Friday), kicking my brother’s butt at Rummikub (that’s right, BRO, yer butt!) and dragging around our Chinese exchange student, Tony all the while.

No worries, tomorrow I’m taking him sight-seeing to make up for the abuse of hanging out with my family.

If you feel I have been remiss in my visits and would like the opportunity to be graced by my presence, don’t call my cell because I forgot to bring the charger.  Reach me at the in-laws, who I now believe to be equally as crazy as me since they are letting us stay with them and use a car, they can be found in the phone book.  The public one and the secret Mormon one.  LOL.  Ok, really.  They’re in the white pages.  You know my last name.  The married one, not the old one.

Reality settles back in on Wednesday, but not until the afternoon and only if I make it through the flight without downing my bottle of xanax.  The magic of flight wore off and I am now terrified.  Just ask the attendants. 

Wait.  Don’t.  I have a certain reputation to uphold.

See you Wednesday!

Or Tuesday, depending on how cool you are.

Well, we visited the pediatric  neurologist in Oakland today.  Can I just tell you how much I hate driving an hour to Oakland and two hours (which all things considered, I’m actually pretty lucky it’s so short!) back in beginning rush hour traffic for a 25 minute appointment?  But that’s not what you came here for.

Dr. Kim says….

He thinks S is doing incredibly well considering how severe his injuries are.  I was able to see the MRI results (friggin’ awesome, I gotta tell ya… especially the eyeball layers!!) and you can totally see this huge white spot where the “contusion” is.  It’s about as big as my wadded-up thumb.  The fracture is actually not a crack like when you break your arm, but an indentation (think smashing your thumb into a hard boiled eggshell).

The thing on his brain stem is called a tectal glioma.  The short answer is:  it’s a very small tumor, but they don’t expect it to grow or become malignant.  We do have to watch out for the same symptoms we’ve been watching for the brain bruise as that can be a sign that it’s grown and is pinching off a pathway for the spinal fluid to get to the brain which could cause him to have blindness, imbalance, nausea, and a bunch of other uninteresting symptoms.  So as of now, no surgery or anything is anticipated.

Also during the examination, he noticed something with S’s eyes/retinas?  He called it “hibbs” or “higgs”, but when I googled it all I got was somebody’s name.  Anyway, he said that when you flash or shine a light in S’s eyes his pupils get really small like they’re supposed to, but then they bounce back & forth rapidly between big & small.  So now we have an appointment with the opthamologist.  Yay, because you know how much I want to get a job to help pay for all this gas we’re using!  Not to mention all the classes I’m going to be missing.  (Sigh…)

I hope that didn’t sound bad.  Of course I am happy to do any and everything to take care of my S, I just wish these appointments were closer to home and I worry about my grades.

Anyway, that’s all I have to report until we see the orthopedic department on the 28th.

Again, I am so grateful for all of your thoughts, prayers, and words of comfort.  I really worry for S.  When we warn him to be careful in all he does instead of it going in one ear and out the other, it never makes it into the ear in the first place because he’s moving too fast.  He got busted by the yard duty yesterday for being in line to play wall ball.  Thank goodness these ladies care so much about the kids they are in charge of instead of resenting how overloaded they are with responsibilities!

Love to all, Me.

Instead of writer’s block.  Because now I can’t shut myself up and keep thinking of all kinds of things I want to blab about!  Like:

• Big Hair Bands.  And I’m not talking about the kind from the hair care aisle at Target, either.  Bon Jovi, Van Halen, or Poison, anyone???
• Holy ’80’s Music Resurgence, Batman! Ok, first of all I am impressed that I didn’t need spell check to tell me how to spell resurgence.  Second of all, I think Michael Jackson’s death just amped up the royalty checks of ’80’s musicians and one-hit wonders across the world!
• Funny Things My Kids Say.  My friend C and her two youngest came thru town Monday night and had a sleepover with us.  D told C that he knew what 1st grade was.  It was “kindergarten with deskes!”
• I wish you all had Twitter, because then it would be like we were having conversations all the time!  And when I have one lyric in my head, I could tweet it and you could tweet back the next line, and it would be like we never left _____ (insert name of town I know you from here)!!!
• Can you hear how hot David Cook looks when he sings like I do???
• Who’s going with me to the Neurology appointment next week?  I’m scared it’s like one of those things where you’re supposed to bring a friend with you so they can tell you everything you didn’t hear after the hot Austrian Dr. says “it’s a toomah”.
• Where are the heirloom tomatoes this year?  My store usually has them earlier than now and I am craving squaw bread & tomato sandwiches!!
• My sister turned the comments off of her blog to make it more freeing for her to write whatever she wants.  I get that.  But I’m an attention whore, is that so wrong???  I mean, I do write this for me because I do like the sound of my own voice sometimes, but I also like knowing people out there read me.  I guess it makes me feel not so alone.
• Am I the only one who thought Adam Lambert would make an AWESOME replacement for Freddie Mercury in Queen?  Think about it.  Get back to me.  But only if your answer is  “Heck yeah, that would be cool!!!”  I don’t have time for the haters.
• I am having serious esteem issues. On the one hand, I’m super excited to go back to school on Monday.  My brain has gotten lazy and needs to be whipped into shape by some Statistics!  On the other hand, I am seriously stressing out that nobody will like me in my classes.  Because, did I mention I’m going to the actual campus this semester?  I’ve outgrown the sattelite building here in town.  On my other left, what am I worried about, these kids are like fresh out of high school!  On the other right, I feel cool when they ask me questions.  SO the drama!!!
• How come nobody told me that once your kids go to school full-time, your dream life begins?  I don’t have to wake up until 8:00!  I can go out to lunch and not worry if I’m back in time to pick someone up!  I can run my errands in the morning or the afternoon!  I can spend longer than 10 minutes at the bookstore!!!!

Ok, I’m dying of thirst.  It’s 9:31 p.m. and it’s stilllllll 84′!  Shoot, it was 93′ just 90 minutes ago!
Toodles!