cindy's world

“Bat” and Jordan are coming on Friday and I’ve got all kinds of things planned for the weekend, so I’m terribly excited about that. It also gives me a “clean up the house” deadline of Thursday. I was already doing laundry on Monday with my clothes in various piles on the spare room bed categorized by color and severity of agitation they’d get in the washer. By Tuesday, I had my “delicates” hanging on a drying rack in the spare room, with some remaining piles of clothes to be laundered still on the bed. I knew I was going to lose Wednesday night to do what I had to because Mr. W made our tax appointment super-early for Wednesday after work, so I also needed to get my tax documents in order on Tuesday evening. I could do that while laundry is going, no problem, except that since it was so early, I hadn’t received any tax documents in the mail from my banks and mortgages, yet. I’d managed to pull some 1099s from online, and just needed my mortgage statement for my old house. I couldn’t pull that from online since I don’t have an online account with that lender who had recently bought over my loan from my original lender. So I was a little stressed about that. On the drive home Tuesday, while I had all this on my mind, Mr. W said that his son had decided to come over that night and stay over. “Maybe he’ll already be there when we get home, and then we can all go out for dinner!” he said. I immediately thought of the lingerie hanging on the drying rack in the spare room (where Son normally stays when he’s over) and the piles of dirty laundry on what would be his bed. Crap!! All my financial stuff is also kept in that room, so I’ll have to pull all that out of there FAST to get out of Son’s way. I hoped Son wouldn’t already be there, cuz I don’t want him to walk into a room with embarrassing laundry all over the place and then my having to kick him out of the room so I can pull receipts and statements. So…things to do ASAP:
* finish laundry
* pull tax stuff
* see if the mortgage statement miraculously made it into our mail box; if not, then get on mortgage lender’s website and make a new account so that I can download the statement immediately

It also occurred to me, as I’m thinking of all this, that I’ll have to wait until Son leaves to clean up the guest room and bathroom, launder the bedsheets, etc, and I can’t do it Wednesday because of the tax appointment, so I’d have to do it Thursday. So Thursday, I gotta clean the house and guest rooms, get fresh sheets put on, find time for a haircut, AND oh, crap, Mr. W’s daughter needs black work clothes for a new job she got as a singing hostess at an upscale restaurant. She needs this before the weekend, and I’m busy all Friday with my out-of-towners, so that only leaves Thursday, too. I felt the stress mounting with all these impending deadlines, and a rare headache started creeping in. That car ride home seemed interminable. I have things to DO, man!!
“I don’t think I’m gonna be able to go out for dinner with you guys,” I told Mr. W. “I have too much crap to do.”

When we got home, Son wasn’t there yet, so I immediately went to work putting stuff on my drying rack away. On one trip downstairs, I noticed Mr. W by the front door, hand on the doorknob. He said to Daughter, “You ready?”
I asked, “Where’re you guys going?”
He said, “To dinner. Wanna come?”
I said, “I can’t. I’ve got too much stuff to do before [Son] gets here.”
So they left, and as Mr. W didn’t extend an offer to bring me back dinner, I figured I’ll just find something really quick and simple to eat while I’m at home. It started as a productive evening; I put in a new load of clothes and moved the remaining load to our bedroom, then boiled some instant Ramen on the stove and added yolkless Eggbeaters and baby spinach. While that was cooking, I pulled tax documents from the spare room upstairs so I could be out of Son’s way ASAP when he got there. I ate the ramen straight from the pot as I worked on the tax documents. Then I got online to register for a new account with my mortgage lender bank since indeed, my mortgage tax statement was not in the mail. At the final step, I was eager to get into my account and download the last missing item for the tax appointment the next evening. Instead, I was aghast when I read on the monitor, “Your password will be mailed to you within 5-7 business days. You may then come back to this website, put in your login, and enter that password to access your account online.” I don’t have FIVE TO SEVEN BUSINESS DAYS!!!

An unfeminine word escaped my lips. The headache was greater, and I felt sick. I was feeling sick pretty soon after I ate the ramen, but it was more than just a nuisance now. It was incapacitating. By this point Mr. W and Daughter had come home from dinner, and I showed him the message on the screen. He said the same unclassy word, and was upset about my inability to be prepared for the tax appointment the next day. I teetered upstairs and fell over sideways on the bed, hoping to ride out the sickness within a few minutes. An hour went by. Another hour. I told myself I’d be up to move my laundry from the washer to dryer once the clock reached 8:15p. Everything hurt at 8:15 and I was severely nauseated, so I stayed in the same prostrate position. (I couldn’t tell if the body pain was sickness-induced, or due to the 4-mile hilly run I took Daughter on the day before, or maybe it was the heavy weightlifting I did at the gym at lunch.) I heard Son arrive. Soon Mr. W came to see what had happened to me. I mumbled that I needed to get downstairs and see about my clothes in the washer, but that I couldn’t move. He asked if they just had to go into the dryer, and I said I’m not sure, I’d have to see what the clothes were because some may have to be air-dried on the drying rack. He left. I receded from reality again, and was soon after aware of the sounds of the washer and drying going downstairs, so I knew that Mr. W had put in additional laundry, which meant he took mine out of the washer and likely put the load in the dryer. I forced myself up to go downstairs, opened the dryer and pulled the damp, hot clothes out of there, closed the dryer, and went back upstairs to put them all on the drying rack. Mr. W said something about how they’re not dry yet, and I responded that if this particular load dried in the dryer at the setting he had, all the clothes would shrink. I arranged the wet mass on the drying rack, and then went in the bathroom and threw up.
Half an hour later, I threw up again.
Fucking ramen. I figured I’d been eating so well now for so long that my body totally rejected the preservatives, chemicals, sodium and MSG in the instant ramen, which I’d always known is one of the worst things one could eat, but there was one package left and SOMEONE had to eat it so it doesn’t go to waste. It was soooo not worth it.

The next day, despite not sleeping well at all, I forced myself to go to work, knowing I was going to abandon my judge on Friday to pick up Jordan at the airport, and we’re in trial so he’s very anxious about my not being there. He even offered his WIFE to pick Jordan up so that I didn’t have to take the day off, but of course I couldn’t let her do that. I threw up at home before we left, and felt so much better after doing so that I figured I was fine for the rest of the day, but was wrong and threw up again at work. I’ve never vomited 4 times like that in memory. Fucking ramen. I couldn’t believe I still had ramen to throw up after 14 hours; my body was obviously not letting any of it go down. I pensively sipped at only a mug of cool tea all day on Wednesday. Mr. W ended up trading our tax appointment with one of his friends, who had a March appointment, so at least that pressure was gone.
Around lunchtime, I’d totally forgotten it was yoga/pilates day at work, which I normally participate in, but I couldn’t do it. I instead crawled into the jury room to nap at lunchtime, and dry heaved a little upon waking, but didn’t vomit again. I could just feel the pregnancy rumors starting at work.

I did get better throughout the day, enough to try a small bowl of plain miso soup for dinner, and altho my stomach protested a little with a small stab of pain, it didn’t come back up, so that’s a good sign. Mr. W and I also went to some clothing stores and got Daughter her work clothes on our way home yesterday, and shopping is much faster without her, so that’s out of the way. She was happy with our purchases. This morning, I was dying of thirst and weak from malnutrition, so I sucked up two cups of soy milk for breakfast. My stomach protested a little, but insignificantly, so now I’m having more tea at work. I’m slowly expanding my food capacity again. Today, Daughter and I will go get haircuts after work and she needs her work shoes and I wanted to get her running shoes, so maybe that can all be done in one shot. Then Mr. W will help me clean the house. It’ll be okay, I tell myself.

I vowed to never eat instant ramen again.

I just blacklisted someone’s IP address for the first time on here. Some psycho left a bizarre and barely coherent comment in one of my pages here. I can’t tell who she’s cussing at (me or the myriad commenters on that string), but I don’t tolerate hostility like that, even tho she’s either so uneducated or so drunk that she can barely put a sentence together. I categorized her message as spam AND blocked her IP address, so if one filter doesn’t catch her, another will.

Felt good.

See Saturday in NorCal, here.

By the time I woke up, showered and went downstairs at Diana’s house on Sunday morning, everyone else was already watching the Cowboys-Vikings football game. Dardy and I had talked tentatively about where to watch the game (he was watching at his place and invited us over), but since Diana had Tivo’ed it, everyone (Eric, Diana, Mr. W) settled down in her living room to watch on delay so they could skip the commericals. We made plans to meet up with Dardy at Pizz’a Chicago after the game. He texted grimly that we’re not missing much; the first half had sucked. Mr. W discovered the “skip ahead 7 minutes” button on the Tivo remote, and watched the rest of the game that way. We braced ourselves for a very bummed-out Dardy (huge Cowboys fan) at lunch. He met us there and seemed fine, although disappointed. We ordered a couple of pizzas and watched the Chargers-Jets game there. Eric had money on the Chargers and they started out strong, but waned…and never recovered…and lost. So nobody’s teams won that day. I found out that Dardy didn’t eat cilantro, as we ordered a Great Chicago Fire pizza half regular (Italian sausage, sport peppers, fresh garlic & cilantro) and half no cilantro at Dardy’s request. He’s only the 2nd ever person I’ve met who doesn’t like cilantro!

After lunch Dardy went to his friend’s house to finish watching football, and the rest of us went back to Diana’s. Diana and Eric cozied up on the couch (where she ended up taking a nap to sleep off the carb coma) and Mr. W and I went to explore the new shopping areas of her neighborhood, which was under construction but had really interesting stuff. Late afternoon, Mr. W and I went to Mike and Christi’s house to meet Kyden and Koda for the first time. They made a fresh sushi dinner for us and I got to play with the first baby boy to come in my immediate friends group.
Here’s Kyden with mommy.

And here’s Kyden with daddy.

I thought it’d be weird that some of us actually HAVE one of these, but the two parents are complete naturals. It was weird how UNweird it was. I’m happy to have been a fan and admiring spectator of their relationship from the beginning, to their wedding (you can see my collection of posts surrounding their Hawaii destination wedding, which we made into one of our vacation trips, here), to the development of their family thus far.
Mike and Christi knew me well, and busted out what they knew I’d been dying to try…DJ HERO!!!

It was harder than I’d expected, less intuitive than Guitar Hero or Rock Band, although my cousin Mark disagrees. Then again, he DID use to DJ with a turntable.

Monday was time to leave. Diana stayed home from work that day, and the three of us went to a local restaurant in Sunnyvale for breakfast. Eric ditched out on a morning meeting and met us there. We said our goodbyes, and Mr. W and I started the long drive back to SoCal. We avoided the inland freeways and did the coastal route, which was a good thing, because due to the rainfall, the Grapevine would have likely been snowed out and closed. We stopped at the famous Cannery Row in Monterey for lunch at The Fish Hopper. The portion sizes are unbelievable.

(his)

(mine)
The restaurant had a gorgeous view of the water, and there were sea otters frolicking and rolling around the sea kelp on the waves, but when I went out to get a closer look, I FROZE to death.

I couldn’t even pretend to be a character from John Steinbeck’s novel “Cannery Row” cuz I was too busy trying to thaw out my fingers. Some hot crepes with Nutella on our way back to the car helped, though.

I don’t remember much about the drive back. I waited too long to blog this trip from mid-January.

Today, Mr. W and I went to have lunch with my parents and grandma to celebrate my dad’s and grandmother’s birthdays. My dad had always gone by his Chinese birthdate (on the lunar calendar), which falls on a different day every year on our regular calendar, and this year my mom decided she was tired of looking up what day it’d fall on and emailing me as she’d done the years prior. So she researched all the way back to my dad’s birthyear in the 1940s to figure out exactly what regular calendar day it was that he was born on. Turned out it was January 30, so she announced that we are all gonna base our celebrations of his birthday on that date from now on. He protested, and she waved him off. He accused her of having too many birthdates of her own to remember (her lunar birthdate, her regular calendar birthdate, the erroneous birthdate someone in immigration had put on her information that she’d just lived with rather than correct, and some other date that falls on a leap year so that she actually only gets that date once every 4 years), but she said that’s different and refused to budge. I also found out that my dad’s office coworkers celebrate his birthday every year on December 20. Why? I got no explanation, but I think I did receive a shrug and a “they just do.” I complained that I only have one birthday, and that I feel unspecial. They offered to look up my lunar calendar birthdate for me, and thinking about how my dad’s birthday celebrations had ranged from December to February, I passed.

My grandmother’s birthday was a few days ago, and she turned 80. My mother had wanted to do a dinner banquet for her, inviting family and friends to a Chinese restaurant, but grandma passed on the idea. I had wondered whether she refused it to be polite while in secret hoping for a big to-do, but my mom answered that her mother really wanted to pass. Apparently grandma was afraid that if a big celebration in honor of her birthday occurred, that it would draw the gods’ attention to the fact that she’s still here and aging, and they’d go, “Oh! We’d forgotten about you! Thanks for the reminder, old lady!” and take her away from this mortal coil. For obvious reasons, then, she’d KILL me if she found out I just broadcasted her birthday on the internet. Gotta love Chinese superstition.

Grandma got me back, though. Throughout lunch, she kept staring at me from across the table and saying to my mom in Mandarin as if I weren’t there or as if I didn’t understand the language (which is a very Asian parent thing to do, cuz kids don’t “count”), “Eh? I think maybe Cindy’s gotten pretty. How did that happen? That’s so strange.” I did what I’d always done; pretended not to hear the grownups talking, because that’s how they treated us and expected us to behave in return.
But she kept going on and on about it that my mom got offended and snapped, “What are you TALKING about? What’s so weird about that?!”
Later in the privacy of Mr. W’s car (where I was sole passenger), I translated that for him. He laughed about it, thinking it absurd. “You were already pretty when I met you,” he claimed.
“I think I got pretty after I met you,” I said thoughtfully.
“No, if you weren’t already pretty, I wouldn’t have asked you out,” he said in typical tactless guy fashion.
I pretended to balk. “YOU’d told me that what attracted you to me was my ASS!” I said accusingly (which was true, he did say that). Now, he backpedaled a bit.
“It’s the PACKAGE,” he said. “Your ass is a PART of the PACKAGE.” Right.

After lunch we all went to my grandma’s so Mr. W could set up my gift for her, a large digital photo frame in which I’d already preloaded photos and Mr. W had programmed to play slideshows with Jim Brickman’s “Angel Eyes” as background music. My dad also got to play with his presents: 3 nice Cubavera style shirts and a wooden 3-D puzzle (which he solved in like 10 minutes). Then Mr. W and I regrouped my parents’ house and caught some movies. We watched “Management,” which is a Jennifer Aniston movie that I’d never heard of. (I give it **1/2 out of ****) We also saw “The Blind Side,” the Michael Oher movie starring Sandra Bullock. (****!) It was SO good that I want to watch it again right now! The acting was superb, and comedy was conveyed impeccably by things such as simple timing and a look. I didn’t think I’d like a football movie as much as I’d enjoyed “The Longest Yard” (remake), but this movie is so much more. Maybe I should give “Rudy” a shot next.

… I got a great reminder of just why yesterday.

Anny had made plans to see the 7:15p Imax 3-D screening of “Avatar” yesterday at the Irvine Spectrum, and it was an enjoyable movie the first time (regular screen, 3-D), so I tagged along, bringing Mr. W and his daughter. Mr. W and I got there first and bought advance tickets, then we had delicious crepes and coffee as we passed the time. Ann then arrived and we got to hang out for the first time in awhile, and we walked around poking into random stores as we chatted, waiting for the movie to start. (Mr. W was generously holding our place in line as he waited for his daughter to arrive.) There was a great sale at Hollister, I was happy to see that the maternity clothing look in women’s fashion appears to be on its way out, but the tops are still super-long. All the shirts would look like dresses on me. Daughter showed up as we returned to the theatre, and we all started the movie in a great mood, marveling at the gigantic screen. The movie was ridiculously crowded. We had one empty seat to our left, and before the show started, that seat was filled. Since the screen is so large, the state-of-the-art theatre had seatbacks that reclined slightly so people can see the whole screen without having to crane their necks to look up.

Halfway through the movie I was ripped out of my Pandora-flying reverie by a pulling against the back of my seat. I waited for whomever was behind me to settle down, except it never really happened. Throughout the rest of the movie, my seatback was pushed, kicked, bumped, moved. And then when I tried to get myself back into my original position of a slight recline, I realized the person behind me had locked up against the back of my seat to where the back absolutely was forced upright and unable to budge whatsoever. I was PISSED. This reminded me of the whole airplane fiasco with childhood friend Sandy, when we flew to New York on a red-eye and two Cheetos munching middle-eastern men behind us refused to let her recline her seat and kept pushing her back up, the one behind her finally locking her seat up with his knees. I pushed back against the seat, it gave a little, and then the jerk locked up tighter and prevented the seat from moving again. And then there were the bumps. Mr. W is over 6′ tall and he said there is no way his knees even came close to touching the back of the seat in front of him, so he didn’t understand how it was possible that someone had to be totally up against the back of my seat and headrest. I pushed back consistently and hard, using my legs on the ground to brace me. So there was this stupid battle going on through the entire second half of the movie. Seeing my body move here and there from being bumped and watching me struggle back, Mr. W turned around a few times but it didn’t stop. After the movie, I told Ann what had been happening, and she turned and said that there it was some chick behind me. WTF! There’s no way she could’ve needed the extra legroom unless she were 7 feet tall, so she must’ve put her feet up against the back of my chair and used it as legrest. What a BITCH. I think people have no business being in public these days with their absolute lack of boundaries and manners. This is why I hate going to the movies.

Mr. W and I went to Northern California to visit friends over the long weekend. It was a nice 5.5 hr drive during most of which Mr. W listened to an audiobook with headphones attached to his iPhone, and I texted friends for entertainment. Time passed swiftly. We stopped at our usual Marie Callender’s at Magic Mountain for lunch, which meal was nothing compared to the sake-marinated Chilean seabass college roommie prepared for dinner that night! The four of us (including Diana’s boyfriend Eric) had a leisurely dinner with lots of wine and a specialty cupcake dessert. Good thing we were staying there! I really like Sunnyvale.

Saturday, Diana had planned for us a visit to San Francisco to see the King Tut exhibit at the De Young Museum in Golden Gate Park. I bought us audiotours and Diana treated us to the admission, which tickets are sold and scheduled in half-hour increments, and we got a late enough entry time so that we could have lunch at a nearby pho restaurant. Mr. W and I had seen the exhibit before, but can’t remember where. We’re thinking it was probably in Fort Lauderdale in ‘05, during the same vacation where I met Jordan. (Speaking of Jordan, she decided yesterday to come visit the same weekend Bat is coming to visit, so YAY, par-TAY! Did I mention it’s also her birthday weekend? I’m so excited!) Despite the museum’s best efforts to stagger visitors, it was very crowded and as usual because of my lack of vertical prowess, I saw lots of lower backs and asses. Live ones, not even exciting wrapped mummified ones. After the museum, we took a stroll in Golden Gate Park and visited various gardens on the grounds.

This garden had a few rules.

After leaving Golden Gate Park, we were off to the second activity Diana had planned for the day. She had suggested we bike ride across Golden Gate Bridge, but given all the rain predicted for the weekend, we didn’t set it in stone. Since Saturday turned out to be a beautiful day, we decided to just walk it. Eric would drive the car across and meet us at the other side.

Diana was a little pensive and Eric reassured her he won’t drive off without hearing from her first, but I didn’t think anything of it. Here we are about to start.

The Bridge was a wide paved 6+ lane highway with a separately fenced off pedestrian walkway along the outskirt. We started walking, and just as we were ALMOST over water, a large truck drove by and its weight vibrated along the bridge where we stood. Diana had already been slowing down, and now she froze. “I’m sweating,” she announced. And then, “I can’t do it.” She whipped out her cell phone and called Eric, who luckily had not left to drive over to the other side yet. She instructed us where to meet them on the other side and practically ran off back to the parking lot where Eric was with the car. I had no idea she was THAT serious about her acrophobia until then. I mean, the girl climbed the pyramid at Chichen Itza with me! She voluntarily leaps off tall mountains on her snowboard! I did learn later on in the weekend from Mike that Diana had attempted that same pedestrian crossing before, and also aborted that mission before making it very far.

Mr. W and I made the walk across, taking photos along the way — he with his camera which yielded the weekend’s photos that you see here, and I with my cameraphone since I forgot my camera. Halfway across, Diana and Eric overtook us on the bridge, honking and waving at us. They joined us on the other side as light sprinkling started. Perfect timing!

One of the cool things about hanging with locals is they know the best spots for photos.

Eric drove us up a mountain road to this great spot overlooking everything, and up there, Eric smacked Diana’s arm, Diana punched him in the face, it rained on Mr. W’s camera, and we got thrown out by a cop. Good times.
Next, we drove deeper into the City (San Francisco) to meet up with people for dinner. We had some time before our reservations, so we stopped for drinks and appetizers at Yoshi’s Jazz Bar a few doors down from the restaurant. We had to park a ways, and got rained on walking there, but it went with the atmosphere of San Francisco.

Soon, we were joined by Dardy, Jimmy and Sabrina.

And then Andrae, Dwaine’s twin brother, showed up. I was happy he put all his crazy plans on hold so that he could come spend some time at dinner with us. I hadn’t seen him since the wedding!

We walked down the street for dinner at 1300 at Fillmore (the address AND the name of the restaurant! What a koinkidink!), which served Southern food done up fancy. There, we met up with Jen and Caroline. Yes, I’m texting. Mr. W thought it would be funny to take a picture of me with Andrae on my cell and send it to Dwaine with the message, “Remember when we met up in San Francisco?” I don’t think Dwaine found it that amusing, cuz I never got a response. =P

One of the most noticeable differences in hanging with these people now, is that after dinner, we all hugged and waved our goodbyes, and went home to bed. If we were in our 20s, this meeting would’ve no doubt moved on to bar/club hopping as it had before. Aww, we’re all grown up now.

It’s been raining off and on since last weekend. The weather forecasted several consecutive El Nino storm patterns to hit the entirety of California. Luckily it wasn’t too bad on our drive to NorCal (photos forthcoming) and it didn’t rain out much of our activity while we were there, and although rain fell off and on during our drive back home on Monday, it wasn’t debilitating rain. This week, however, California had decided it’d reached full capacity on all the rain it wants to endure and things got a little freaky. There were flash flood warnings over areas that had been burned earlier last year, and on Tuesday, while Claudio and I were enjoying a nice long workout at the gym followed by all-you-can-eat sushi at Minato Sushi (the sushi chef/restaurant owner James remembered me and gave us total special treatment with lots of expensive freebies), he got notice that nearby Santa Ana was issued a tornado watch warning with orders to stay indoors, and when we were driving out of the restaurant, we saw that a part of the street was closed off as it was severely flooded and a car was trapped in water nearly halfway up its windshield.

The next day, Wednesday, as the skies remained open for buckets of water to fall on us, I drove to Pasadena for my dental appointment with Andy. I gave myself about 2 hours to make the hour drive, and due to zero traffic, was there an hour early. After I parked, I pulled back the internal covering of the sunroof to admire the water hitting the glass moonroof. I was first inspired to take a photo, and then inspired to write a poem. So I sent this out via MMS to a few friends:

playful percussion
of rain dance on my moonroof
in pasadena
(impromptu haiku)

So typically Californian…you can still see palm trees behind the wintery leafless tree. Dentist Andy was among the people I sent the above picture message to, and I’d expected him to text me back with “Stop goofing off and get in here,” but he didn’t. When I saw him he only chuckled about it. It was beautiful out there and I enjoyed the drive. Mr. W is working 11-hour shifts this week, so I didn’t carpool with him. On the drive in to work this morning, I heard on the radio that the cold front following the most recent storm coming from the coast this afternoon will create hail. I’m a little concerned about hail denting my car on the drive home… =/

Last weekend was a long weekend, so Mr. W and I drove up to Northern California to visit some friends. I finally met Mike & Christi’s little 3.5 month old boy, Kyden! I’d always thought the photos of Kyden’s little face looked uniquely intelligent. I felt like I ought to ask him for advice or something. So I was surprised the first time I saw him, gurgling happily to himself laying on his back swatting at his colorful dangly toys, how tiny he really is. Soon, I was again surprised at how ADVANCED his development is. When he’s sitting up (of course he needs to be assisted), he holds his own head up. He likes to stand and make walking motions with his kicky little (but strong!) legs. AND…his bottom front teeth broke through his gums already! Whoa. I know my niece Lydia has just started teething, but she’s 8 months. What’s Kyden’s big hurry to grow up?

I told Mike and Christi that if anyone would have a super-advanced baby, it’d be the two of them. I’m always one for introducing and welcome new bloggers, but this has GOT to be the youngest one of ‘em all… Say hello to Kyden’s Korner!

After I had my crazy nauseating vertigo on Saturday, I’d expected it to be gone on Sunday, but it wasn’t. I had occasional 1-minute dizzy spells through the day. Monday, same thing, even tho I made sure to stay hydrated. Tuesday, same thing, with very little hydration. I’d noticed that the bouts of spinning would be preceded by a buzzing sensation in my brain. It got REALLY bad on Wednesday despite my drinking a ton of fluids and eating a small lunch; instead of the occasional spinning, I’d be consistently loopy with regular bouts of significant spinning lasting up to 10 minutes or more, the more significant of the bouts would make me nauseated (altho still not to the extreme of Saturday’s onset). I described the sensation as a buzzing that felt like my brain was trying to peel itself away from my skull and crawl down my spine, and then everything would spin as gravity pulled me from the side (usually right side). An attorney in my courtroom with a medical background suggested I get a ear-nose-throat specialist to examine me, and that he doesn’t buy that it’s dehydration-related. He said they’ll likely give me a pack of steroid pills that I’m to take over the course of about 5 days that specifically addresses this vertigo symptom. So I called and made an evening appointment with my primary care doc (who’d [mis?]diagnosed me with GERD) for tonight, to request a referral to an ENT specialist.

Meanwhile, I’m still trying to isolate the vertigo trigger myself. This morning, I drank a cup of water (in case it’s dehydration), a protein shake (in case it’s malnutrition), and am wearing glasses instead of contacts (in case Jordan’s right and something’s suddenly wrong with my contact prescription, since the disorientation was first noticed immediately after I put in my contacts on Saturday morning). So far, I’ve gotten the brain buzzing once in the car on the drive to work, I feel a TINY bit detached/medicine-head-y, but that’s it. So either I’ve mitigated the problem, or it’s getting better on its own.

In email, I received something called “Home Remedies” and I was hoping there’d be something in there to address vertigo, but no such luck, cuz here’s what the email said:
~ * ~
AMAZINGLY SIMPLE HOME REMEDIES (That Really Work!)
1. AVOID CUTTING YOURSELF WHEN SLICING VEGETABLES BY GETTING SOMEONE ELSE TO HOLD THE VEGETABLES WHILE YOU SLICE.
2. AVOID ARGUMENTS WITH THE FEMALES ABOUT LIFTING THE TOILET SEAT BY USING THE SINK.
3. FOR HIGH BLOOD PRESSURE SUFFERERS ~ SIMPLY CUT YOURSELF AND BLEED FOR A FEW MINUTES, THUS REDUCING THE PRESSURE ON YOUR VEINS. REMEMBER TO USE A TIMER.
4. A MOUSE TRAP PLACED ON TOP OF YOUR ALARM CLOCK WILL PREVENT YOU FROM ROLLING OVER AND GOING BACK TO SLEEP AFTER YOU HIT THE SNOOZE BUTTON.
5. IF YOU HAVE A BAD COUGH, TAKE A LARGE DOSE OF LAXATIVES. THEN YOU’LL BE AFRAID TO COUGH.
6. YOU ONLY NEED TWO TOOLS IN LIFE – WD-40 AND DUCT TAPE. IF IT DOESN’T MOVE AND SHOULD, USE THE WD-40. IF IT SHOULDN’T MOVE AND DOES, USE THE DUCT TAPE.
7. IF YOU CAN’T FIX IT WITH A HAMMER, YOU’VE GOT AN ELECTRICAL PROBLEM.

DAILY THOUGHT: SOME PEOPLE ARE LIKE SLINKIES – NOT REALLY GOOD FOR ANYTHING BUT THEY BRING A SMILE TO YOUR FACE WHEN YOU WATCH ‘EM FALL DOWN THE STAIRS.
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I spent much of Saturday afternoon in Urgent Care due to severe vertigo. It had only happened to me once before a couple of years ago when I was in NorCal visiting college roommie Diana, but I didn’t care to ever go thru that again. Like that makes a difference. I stumbled a bit Saturday morning after putting in my contacts, but I figured my eyes just needed to adjust to the contacts for whatever reason. I then proceeded to drive to WalMart to buy a laundry hamper. The road was spinning around my head and I felt off-kilter. I suddenly recognized this as a mild version of the first time. I managed to get thru WalMart fairly normally and drive home (altho upon exiting the car and walking, I did fall left back into it), taking good care to leave space cushions around me on the road. Mr. W thought it may be dizziness due to sugar low, so I had a bowl of cereal and felt a little better. We then plopped on the couch to watch some Ally McBeal. Some time went by and when I sat up again, the spinning was back, and worse. He tried to convince me I needed medical attention as I tried to convince him I was fine. To prove my point, I got up to continue my laundry chores, but in transferring clothes from the washer to the dryer, everything spun so severely I had to brace myself against the washer and try hard to focus on one point, and even then the dizziness got me so nauseated I wobbled upstairs to the bathroom and hugged the toilet, breathing erratically, waiting for the cereal to make its way back up. As soon as I sat still, leaning my head sideways against the tub, I felt better. Things were still moving on their own, but at least the nausea was gone. I pulled myself up to look in the mirror. The motion alone brought the spinning sickness back and I observed I’d never seen my face and lips so colorless. I slumped back down. Mr. W found me in the bathroom like that a few minutes later and this time when he insisted I needed to go to Urgent Care, I was too weak to deny it.

At the hospital, the nurse weighed me (I apparently lost weight since being flakey on the gym the past few months, which could only mean I lost muscle mass, damn it — at least I returned to the gym on Friday), took my blood pressure (108/69, pulse 64), checked my oxygen saturation (98%). All vital signs looked normal, healthy even, as usual. I was sent back to wait in the lobby for the doctor. Hours went by and the spinning lessened until I was comfortable walking steadily to the restroom on my own. When the doctor finally saw me, though, he gave me a lot of time and very thorough testing. Mr. W saw that as an opportunity to rat on me to the emergency doctor. “She doesn’t eat breakfast, doesn’t eat lunch, and works out at the gym at lunchtime. She only eats once a day. She won’t listen to me!” I gave him a flat look. The doctor (as other doctors before him) didn’t seem concerned with my level of nutrition, especially after I told him I start every weekday morning with a hot mug of chia seeds in water. He checked my reflexes, walking, balance, took blood pressure laying down, sitting, and standing (pretty minimal changes), checked in my ears (no inner ear infection) and nose (passed the booger test). Then he had this tuning fork thing he put on various parts of my body to ask if I could feel and/or hear it. And then, Mr. W thought he’d pipe in and tattle on me about my recent omnipresent breathing difficulties and tried to relate it to malnutrition. The doctor looked over my past medical records on the computer, going back 6 years. Then he took an ECG (my heart’s normal, too) and listened to my lungs. So here’s his bottom line:

Looking at the progression of data from past blood tests to present, I apparently am dehydrated. This is why in such an otherwise normal healthy person, my sodium and potassium are in the high-normal range. Concentrated blood. He said this is also the reason why my pulse and blood pressure are so low (and I thought it was just cuz I’m athletic). He also noted that in more recent blood tests compared to before, my kidney function has gone down gradually, and he attributes their not doing as much filtering to that I’m not supplying them the tool with which they filter things — water. He asked what color my urine usually is. I couldn’t tell him, considering I pee probably twice or three times a day so I don’t notice. He balked. Now I’m QUITE dehydrated. Having ruled out everything else, he diagnosed the dizziness as Benign Paroxysmal Positional Vertigo (calcium stones that detect balance float on fluid in the inner ear, and when one’s dehydrated, the fluid level drops), and gave me a printout of Care Instructions for the next time this happens. Apparently you just do Brandt-Daroff exercises, really easy stuff. You sit on the edge of a bed or something, and lay down quickly to the side that causes vertigo (for me, this time I fell left). Stay there with that ear flat on the bed at least 30 seconds as the vertigo subsides, then sit up. If vertigo is still there, go quickly down on the opposite side. If things spin then, wait for it to stop, then flop back to the 1st side. You just do this like 10 times. I guess it dislodges the little calcium stones that perceive balance in your inner ear or something. For the nausea, he recommends over-the-counter anti-motion-sickness medication meclizine, which we already have at home as Mr. W’s Disneyland roller coaster rides excuse-eliminator.

Now here’s the interesting part. As for my breathing difficulties, which I described to him as feeling like my lungs won’t expand when I breathe so I respond by taking deeper and deeper breaths until I’m lightheaded, he could find no organic cause. So he thinks it’s psychological. I said the other doctor there had diagnosed it as GERD. He doesn’t think it’s GERD. He said being full may put some pressure upward but that it shouldn’t impact my diaphragm to where I feel like it won’t expand outward. He thinks I’m having unconscious anxiety attacks. But I’m not stressed or anxious, I tell him, and even Mr. W agreed. He said to start writing down what I was doing when I find myself gasping for air, and note what I was thinking right before. I tell him it’s usually immediately after I’ve eaten that I have symptoms, sometimes I’m just sitting there after eating, watching TV, when I start the breathing struggle, hence GERD, right? He still didn’t think so. He said it’s likely a more deeply rooted issue than a conscious awareness of something that causes me stress or anxiety, or I’d have stopped the trigger myself by now. So a new theory was born.
Maybe the anorexia has come back, but only subconsciously. I’m so (subconsciously) freaked out that I’d overeat and get fat, that I don’t eat often, and when I do, the feeling of fullness triggers guilt, and that guilt triggers an anxiety attack that gives me the only consciously noticeable symptom: difficulty breathing. Hmm.

Today, Sunday, I was involved in a major furniture exchange. My parents gave me their current newish dining room set, I gave our too-large dining set to my aunt’s family, gave my parents our credenza, matching coffee table, bookshelf, and gave Kevin and his U$C roommates our leather living room couches (I visited enemy territory on Trojan turf for the first time today — can the place USE any more bricks?! It looks like the 3rd little pig put the campus together.). Our new couches will be delivered on Tuesday (yay!). I was talking to my mom about my recent hospital visit, and it turns out she’s had acid reflux and vertigo for most of her life! “So it’s a genetic thing! So this is all YOUR fault!” I joked, pointing a finger at her. As a matter of fact, she’d even had a random attack of vertigo Saturday night right after I’d recovered from mine. “You passed it on to me! So this is YOUR fault!” she accused, pointing back at me. The last stop was my aunt’s house to deliver the dining table, and she had us all sit around it and kept feeding us tea and junk food. After all the furniture was delivered and exchanged, I drove home and found myself again gasping for breath in the car. It suddenly occurred to me to relax my diaphragm and stomach. My full tummy extended. And breathing got easier.
Oh.my.God. I didn’t even realize I was sucking in my stomach. Thinking about it, when do I most tend to suck in? When I’m full, cuz that’s when I feel fat with my protruding tummy. I also suck in when I’m sitting, because that’s when fat folds over (blech) and is the most obvious. So if I’m wearing fitted clothes, feeling fat, sitting at work, my diaphragm is constantly being restricted from expansion — by ME! I’m gonna test out this theory. So far I’ve ended two bouts of breathing issues tonight by forcing myself to relax my stomach. It’s not the most attractive thing in the world, but at least I can stop gasping. I’m not subconsciously anorexic; just subconsciously vain.