cindy's world

I was out having a late lunch with Mr. W, his newly graduated son (B.S. in Bio), and his daughter on Friday when I got a text from an old district attorney pal that I hadn’t had contact with in awhile.
DA Joe: Are you at Open Sesame right now?
me: No, at Ruth’s Chris in Irvine. Do I have a doppelganger?
DA Joe: There is a woman who looks like you but eyesight is not what it used to be
DA Joe: You do, I should take a picture
me: Take a picture! 😀 If she’s hideous I’ll have to hunt you down and kick you.
(I was thinking about this.)
DA Joe: No she is hot
me: Whew! Really, take a pic!
DA Joe: Kind of afraid to take a picture
DA Joe: If I can do it subtly I will
DA Joe: I think my lunch companions would trip
me: “Excuse me, I’m sorry to bother you, but I thought you were a friend of mine until I just texted her & found out she’s not here. She wants a picture, do you mind if we take one together? My name’s Joe, I’m harmless, I promise.”
(I figured that’d help him hook up, too, if that’s what he wants.)
DA Joe: Too late she just left
me: Gah! What a tease you are.

Where the heck is Open Sesame? Has anyone seen “me” there? Send me a picture!

Yesterday I posted about my grandma’s little adventure with the emergency room, which came into existence because she was going to have a foot surgery today and was too stubborn to miss out on an overly competitive ping pong match on Sunday, knowing she’d be out of commission post-surgery.

I just spoke to my mom. She and my dad dropped off my grandma for her 8am surgery and my two parents are now hanging out at a park across the street from the hospital. I knew my mom was nervous about driving to the hospital, because it was in a city she’d never been to, and despite her insistence that we all go out and look at cars on Saturday so she could buy the luxury SUV she’d had her eye on, and the fact that she immediately made the decision she wanted that car and bought it on Saturday, she is too scared to drive it. She was lamenting the bad timing of having to drive to this hospital with a new car. I told her it was PERFECT timing, as the new car has a navigation system to help her. But she is totally intimidated by the car. So apparently she made my dad take the day off and drive.
“So where did grandma go yesterday?” I asked.
“Oh! She went to the senior citizen center! Her FRIEND had a BIRTHDAY PARTY! It wasn’t her birthday but she wanted to go.”
“Did she drive, or did someone else take her?”
“She drove! She got a long scolding from me.” Of course my grandma had to go. She’s a socialite and she LOVES cake. She loves sugar. We watched her pour a tablespoon of white sugar into a half bowl of porridge on Saturday for lunch. She uses 4-5 packets of sugar per teacup of coffee. “Your grandma is awesome, man,” my bridesmaid Sandy had remarked upon seeing the coffee thing at our wedding rehearsal dinner. We certainly don’t have the courage to spike our insulin like that, but grandma is fit and her blood test results are consistently better than just about everyone else’s.
“She’s just like a kid,” my mom went on. “My supervisor told me that after her foot surgery, I should take her car keys away and hide them.”
“She’d be mad…”
“Yeah,” my mom sighed. Doesn’t sound like my mom’s going to be mean like that, but she does seem resigned to be chasing around her mother now as if she’d gained a second child.

Yesterday morning, I got news that my maternal grandma had fallen while playing ping pong at the senior living apartments where she lives. She plays ping pong regularly with the people there, and is reigning champion. I guess what had happened was that she fell mid-game, hit the back of her head on the ground, and then another person fell on top of her. She experienced dizziness and trouble standing/walking, but refused to let them call for an ambulance. So my mom was contacted early Sunday morning, she and my dad rushed over, and THEY called 911. By the time I found out about this, mom, grandma, and a family friend were already at the ER.

Grandma was released later the same day — no concussion, no evidence of blood clot/stroke/aneurism, but she did sustain a minor lower back fracture. There’s no way to put a cast on that, so she was given painkillers and told to take it easy. I called my grandma to check on her soon after my parents took her back to her apartment. “It’s the first time I’ve ever ridden in an ambulance!” she told me with almost child-like glee. She explained that there was nothing else wrong with her except for the small fracture, and that she considered the event an opportunity to get her entire body checked, and came out clean. Such a well-adjusted tough old bird. “Your mom was soooo mad at me,” she said discreetly.
“Why would she be mad?!” I asked. Grandma didn’t get into it, but soon got off the phone to take her usual afternoon nap. I figured she misunderstood my mom’s concern.

I talked to my mom today, and mom mentioned that grandma had been really happy I’d called her. I said, “She said you were mad at her!”
“I was sooooooo mad at her!” my mom corroborated.
“You were? Why?”
“She’s a 91-year-old woman, she was already scheduled to have foot surgery on Tuesday, and I TOLD her to stop doing stupid things like playing ping pong! She doesn’t listen! She’s like a child! And you know when she plays sports, she’s aggressive and competitive, she won’t just play casually. This isn’t even the first time she fell. And the person she plays with! They’re always fighting for the ball and pushing and shoving each other. I told her to take it easy and not play but she said she won’t be able to play after her foot surgery so she wanted to get this last game in!” I could picture my grandma (who taught me my killer unreturnable serve, but whom I’ve NEVER been able to beat at either ping pong or tennis despite being 1/3 her age), crouching low at her end of the ping pong table, eagle eyes keen on the ball, about to slice some poor ball invisible before it whacks the opponent on an unsuspecting body part.
“Is she still going to do the foot surgery tomorrow?”
“Yeah, I’m taking her tomorrow. She’ll have to rest completely for a month or so after the surgery, and I told her to take it easy NOW and not go out, because if her driving is impaired by her back fracture and she gets into an accident, she’ll cause more damage to herself AND to someone else. But when I called her earlier, she DIDN’T PICK UP THE PHONE! So she didn’t listen to me AGAIN and SHE WENT OUT! I’m SO MAD!!”
“You don’t know that, maybe she was napping and didn’t hear the phone.”
“She didn’t call me back and I left a message!”
“Did you try her cell phone?”
“No, because I know her — if she’s driving and her cell phone rings, she’ll pick it up! So I never call her when she may be driving.” My mom’s unsaid I-told-her-not-to-drive-and-talk-but-she-doesn’t-listen hung in the air.
“So what are you going to do?”
“I’m going to wait until closer to her nap time and then call her again. She’s just like a kid!” Someone’s gonna get yelled at. Poor grandma.

Mr. W found this whole thing to be HILARIOUS. Not grandma’s fall and injury, of course, but the whole dynamic between my mother and her mother. “Let her live and have fun!” he said.
“Not if it’s causing her injury and risking her life,” I said. I agree with my mom on that point. But mom and I are more conservative than Mr. W and, apparently, grandma.
“I wish I hung out bars where people play ping pong and stuff so I can actually say to people, ‘You call that playing ping pong? My grandma could beat you!’ ”
“Um, people don’t play ping pong at bars.” Maybe in Chicago, where he’s from. But that is a pretty cool concept. We’d tell some cocky table tennis player that my grandma could whip your ass at this thing, and then we’d go to the car and bring out nonegenarian grandma, and she’d proceed to whip his ass with lightning ball blurs. King’s Court was never fun with Grandma, cuz she’d beat me and every one of my friends in succession, then gawk at us when we’re too tired to keep playing her.

If she recovers soon and defies my mom again to play ping pong with the same ridiculous competitive pro attitude, I’m gonna try to video her and post it on YouTube.

I had a checkup this morning at 15 weeks of pregnancy, and got to see Halloween Riley. His bones are developing very well, and structurally, he looks like a little (perfect) skeleton. There’s a big heart beating away in the middle of his ribcage. The head (skeleton skull) is clearly defined now, as with the neck bones, vertebrae, hips, etc. He was lying face-down again, his favorite position, and when I’d laugh or tighten my stomach, he’d do a little dance, nod his head up and down, bring his hands in and pump it a little like he’s housing. (Remember “housing” to stuff like C+C Music Factory, my 90s friends?) The doctor noted that he’s an active li’l thing and asked if I’ve been feeling his movements yet. Turns out that the minor uterine spasms and twitches and “gas bubbles” I’d been feeling for weeks now WAS the kid moving about. And people say I can’t feel movement until 18 weeks.
The doctor also checked the length of my cervix. Since I’ve had a big chunk of cervix taken out in the LEEP some years ago, they want to make sure I don’t have an incompetent cervix that will droop and start opening with the pressure of a fetus. I was warned that LEEPs come with a small risk of future premature labor/miscarriage. Since I started this baby project, various doctors have checked and been comfortable with the length of my cervix (which I guess was luckily long to begin with), and today, my OB measured it at 4cm, “totally normal,” he said. Whew.

The human body is an amazing thing (when you’re in tune with it). I still haven’t thrown up, and I’ve been listening to my body. I give it the basic substance of what it’s asking for, and avoid the thing it says it doesn’t want, without questioning, but I later discover that I’d been doing the right things. For example, my sprouts aversion early on confused Mr. W, because it’d been one of my favorite things to eat — I just read last nite that I should be avoiding sprouts, ESPECIALLY alfalfa sprouts, during pregnancy. (It didn’t say why.) And for the past month or so, I’d been wanting lemonade, tomato-based sauces, etc. I’ve been drinking some lemonade (natural when I can get it) and I made spaghetti (not out of a jar) over the weekend. Yesterday, in my reading, I also found that I need to eat lycopene (found in tomatos) and 10 teaspoons of tomato sauce a week oughta do it. AND, turned out, the cravings for sour has to do with my pH balance being more alkaline than normal during pregnancy, so my body was trying to balance back, and apparently tried to warn me to be more acidic (which I’d been careful about because I’d had a stomach ulcer in the past), but I didn’t do it enough because I ended up with a common woman infection last week thanks to the pH in the infected area not being acidic enough, as I later learned.

I still get insomnia here and there, but based on the checkup this morning, the doctor says I’m right on track and doing well. He’s placed my target weight gain at 20 lbs for the entire pregnancy. I think I’m finally up a pound or two, but still not really showing. Mr. W’s besties came by over the weekend to help him with his computer upgrade, and the woman bestie greeted me with a hug, then looked down and said disappointedly that she couldn’t even tell I was preggers. “I wanted to take pictures of your belly,” she said. Doctor said this morning I should start showing at 20 weeks. That’s 5 weeks away. To me, it’s worth celebrating cuz I get to procrastinate another 5 weeks before having to shop for maternity clothes.

It wasn’t my choice to come to this country, because I was too young to be involved in decision-making at age 6…but this has truly been the best decision made on my behalf. Thanks, mom and dad, for the immigration and citizenship, and thank you to our troops, past, present and future, for making this country everything that it has been, is, and will be. Happy Memorial Day, God bless America.

The home PC’s going thru some issues. Mr. W is working on fixing it. Today will be the 3rd consecutive day we’d visit his favorite computer parts store after work. He expects to basically rebuild his PC with all new upgraded parts by the end of this Memorial Day weekend. Until then, I won’t really have access to the PC to blog about the road trip. Plus, he’s got photos on his cameraphone he hasn’t sent me yet. =P (Neither of us brought our “real” cameras.) Why don’t I just post from work? Well, cuz work suck ASS right now. I was so pissed yesterday about it that I gagged. Maybe I’ll blog about it, but for now, I’m just too venomous to put it all in writing in detail. BUT…I will leave you with this, cuz it’s more positive than I can be at the moment.

Rebecca posted this, and at first I thought, “What a spoiled little kitten, with its very own leopard print blankie.” And then, it just got better. And better.

Best minute you’ve spent all week? Me, too.

I’m back from a weeklong+ roadtrip from home to Vancouver, Canada and back! Gosh darn if the pants I packed and wore at the beginning of the road trip aren’t snugger now, 11 days later. And the doctor said that the baby is too small for me to feel moving around, but I feel deep nerve twinges and muscle twitches, the latter kind of like an air bubble going through the intestine (sorry to imply gas), and I know they’re involuntary cuz they happen when I’m not doing anything. I’m not looking forward to clothes-shopping, but I’m estimating that I have about a week or two left in these regular slacks. That gives me enough time to go into denial and procrastinate another few days. Weight gain is still minimal-to-none at this point, 14 weeks in, but my body dimensions are changing so I’m doing my best to keep stretch marks at bay with daily cocoa butter slatherings. I’ll post road trip stuff soon.

Some quick highlights:
* bought my first baby item (well, item-and-a-half) at Pike Marketplace in Seattle, WA
* found future dream retirement community in Ashland, OR
* over Vancouver, Canada. Over.it.
* enjoyed time spent with NorCal friends, and discovering a long-desired treat: Magnum Bars (Had fun with that one on the social networking site.)
* had a very different homecoming this time compared to the last one upon our return from Italy.

Me: I was wondering why this couple I’m doing a divorce case on filed for divorce 4 months after they got married. Then I looked at his mailing address and realized it’s North Kern State Prison. She had him served in prison with her divorce papers 4 months after they got married so he must’ve gotten incarcerated right before she filed. Haha, so much for “stand by your man.”
Mr. W: Or maybe he’s in prison BECAUSE of her.
Me: What do you mean? Like he took the rap for something she did?
Mr. W: No, like maybe he hit her. That’s why she filed.
Me: OooOOOOoooh. Interesting.

I had my genetic counseling appointment and genetic testing appointment yesterday. The two are recommended for anyone giving birth at or after the age of 35 (I’ll be 35 and almost 5 months at Riley’s due date). The genetic counselor took down my family history and Mr. W’s family history as far as health and birth defects, and drew them on a giant family tree. Mr. W wasn’t there, so turned out his half of the family tree (as told by me to the counselor) is largely wrong. I don’t know/remember how many siblings each of his parents have and when/what they died from and what kids each of them had. 🙁 They’re out of state. Looking broadly at the tree, however, the genetic counselor wasn’t concerned with birth defects, although she was slightly alarmed by the number of my mom’s miscarriages and the number of people in Mr. W’s family with high cholesterol, hypertension and heart disease. I don’t think my mom’s miscarriages are due to chromosomal abnormalities, tho. I think the incompetent doctors in Taiwan messed her up when they aborted the twins she almost had after me. (One had died in utero so they had to abort the other one.)

After the genetic counselor talked to me about my odds of an abnormal baby and the prenatal testing available, I went to my genetic testing appointment. I had already opted for the full integrated screen, which means they draw my blood to test for problem markers in the first trimester (they already did that last week), combine that with the results of a nuchal transparency ultrasound (yesterday’s 2nd apptmt), and give me a preliminary assessment. Then they take more blood in the 2nd trimester, compare those results to the blood results from the 1st trimester, and give me with pretty good accuracy my odds of having a kid with certain common types of birth defects. So I had my first abdominal ultrasound yesterday for the nuchal transparency test. What they’re looking for is to measure the thickness of the back of the baby’s neck; extra space back there at this point in the development means possible Down syndrome. Ideally, the baby should be on its back, turned about 3/4 away from the screen. As active as Riley was in the ultrasound last week, yesterday he would not cooperate. He first showed up face-down and nearly upside-down as if in a forehead-plant, his butt angled up at my belly button as I laid on my back. It took a few minutes for him to turn around and settle onto his back, but he was so perfectly profile that the ultrasound tech couldn’t get a good picture of the back of his neck. She tapped my stomach repeatedly with the ultrasound wand, had me cough, waited, jostled my stomach again, and he would NOT move. She even had me go to the restroom to empty my bladder to change the dimensions in there, hoping he’d resettle into a position she could use. When I returned to the table to resume the ultrasound, Riley was again face-down in his forehead-plant. The nurse thought it was funny that he flips that way when I’m up and printed out that photo to give me, then called the doctor in to see if she would have more luck. The doctor managed to take a useable photo of his neck, albeit upside-down, and took the rest of his measurements with him in that position. After she finished, she suddenly turned the screen toward me and said, “See, we can’t do a thing to make them move, but they’ll just do it on their own.” I watched Riley slowly turn, kicking with his little feet, and finally lay face-up on his back. She checked out a few more structural things in closeup like his hands, arms, heart. I heard the heartbeat for the first time, a portion of which they recorded and measured. And then I was told my preliminary results.
They had tested for some typical and ethnically common birth defects, given my race and Mr. W’s, looking for markers in my blood. All those came out negative.
A “positive screen” for Down syndrome is considered a probability result of 1 in 100; my probability came out as 1 in 400-some.
A “positive screen” for Trisomy-18 (like Down, an extra chromosome that causes mental developmental problems) is considered a probability result of 1 in 50; my probability came out 1 in 62,000-some.
This is great news preliminarily, and if the 2nd trimester blood test confirms these low odds, I can skip the invasive diagnostic amniocentesis and chorionic villi sampling tests.

Something odd, though: Riley’s measuring developmentally 3-4 days ahead. He was supposed to be 12 weeks 0 days old, but measured 12 weeks 3-4 days old, although the doctor said the extra length may be due to the fact that he was floating face-down, elongating his neck. Maybe he wants to come out and play a little earlier than scheduled.

Mr. W and I took my mom, grandma, and dad out for dinner on Friday night for Mother’s Day. I felt bad because with all the doctor appointments and running around we did in the past week and a half, I hadn’t been able to buy my mom and grandma a Mother’s Day gift. They’re also really cheap dates; Grandma chose Boston Cafe (although it turned out she meant the affiliated restaurant Boston Kitchen a few miles away, oops), so the entire dinner with tax and tip included came out to just over $50.

Mr. W and I drove out early Saturday morning to spend the weekend with his side of the family in Vegas and just returned today. We gave his dad a 1-day advance warning (we were supposed to be on vacation all next week, but changed our minds last minute and gave the days back, altho keeping Monday to drive home) that we were coming, and his dad said that just the day before, my mother-in-law had remarked, “I have a feeling they’re coming down to see us this weekend.” Very intuitive of her! We arrived Saturday late morning and ate lunch at Mr. W’s must-have restaurant every time we go to Vegas: Aurelio’s Chicago pizza. Mr. W’s parents and Gamer Bro were with us. Then Sunday, most of the family (all those who didn’t have to work) took my MIL to a champagne brunch buffet at South Point Hotel & Casino. There’s free mimosas and champagne with our meal, pre-poured, and Mr. W and his mom both told me that given my inability to drink, I should grab a champagne/mimosa anyway and give it to them. All of us walked up to the beverage table and got an OJ and a champagne, or so we thought. Turned out the OJ was a mimosa so we ended up with WAY too much alcohol at the table. Mr. W, his mom, and Rocker Brother did their best to drink the table dry, but didn’t do all that well; Gamer Bro finished what he took, his wife and I didn’t drink either one, and the kids’ end of the table drank surprisingly little given that they’re used to drinking and partying. I guess champagne isn’t their thing. Mr. W drank so much that he ended the brunch with a cartwheel at the elevator lobby and dance-swirled his way to the car in the parking structure while holding a laughing 2-year-old niece. Now I know how to get him to take care of babies. I’ll make sure the house is fully stocked with champagne.

This weekend also marks the day I “came out” on the social networking site. I had been pondering how to do it, and thought maybe I’d just jump right into it with a status message that says, “Cindy says goodbye to the first trimester and hello to the second.” However, Mr. W gave me an unexpected opening opportunity. I posted this photo instead, with the following caption:

Hubby surprised me with my first Mother’s Day present.

At first the only comments that drew were from people who already knew, such as Rebecca (who knew before we had even begun the process to get pregnant) and some coworkers (I’ve already been outed at work). I started to think that my coming out post was too subtle. But soon, and then like wildfire, others caught on. I got a bunch of congratulatory remarks, questions, comments, and a bunch of Happy Mother’s Day well-wishes. I hadn’t considered this my first Mother’s Day, but everyone else said it counts, including Mr. W. I even received a voice mail from my cousin Olivia, who put both her young daughters on the phone to wish me a happy first Mother’s Day. It was very sweet. 🙂