mostly just pictures of stuff

So first of all, thanks so much to the South Carolina Medical Association for having me come and speak.  Is it uncool to admit that I've never been a keynote speaker for anything before, so it was just super-exciting for me to say that I was?  Anyway, it was a honor to be there, and the location wasn't bad either.  I figure planning conferences in South Carolina are just full of tough decision, choosing between one incredibly scenic location over another.






Anyway my original intent was to bring Joe and the kids, but I was speaking on a Saturday afternoon, and everyone has school or work on Monday (I'm actually on call tomorrow night), and in the end it didn't make financial sense to buy four plane tickets to fly in for, like, a day and a half.  So instead I just looked at all the other kids on the beach and felt morose.




Anyway, this morning I took a really early morning flight home and took my kids to the playground and Lo, everyone was happy.







Hope you had a good weekend too.  And if you live in Atlanta and are thinking about rupturing your aortic aneurysm anytime soon, please do me a favor and try not to do it tomorrow night OK THANKS BYE.


update, texas-sized edition

You know, it was one of those things after I got back from vacation where three days back into it, I felt like I'd never been on vacation at all.  Anyway, things have been busy at work (and is it really necessary at this point to say yes, I work BOTH IN AND OUT OF THE HOME--but when I talk about being "busy at work," mainly I mean busy at that place that I go to outside of my house for my job where I take care of people to whom I'm not related and for which I earn a salary; and I think most people, including my children, understand that distinction). But let's jump right back into it, shall we?

I flew into San Antionio Monday morning for one of my not-hectic-at-all-minimization-of-dereliction-from-parenting-duties speaking engagements (usually I fly in and out in 24 hours--sometimes I even avoid staying the night if I can but there were actually no available late evening flights available between San Antonio and ATL).  This time I was speaking at the annual meeting for American Academy of Anesthesiology Assistants in San Antonio, a city I'd never been to in a state I'd never visited, except through the window of "Friday Night Lights" and various cryptic tweets I'd read about SXSW.  Like I said, I was only there for 24 hours, and the only reason I even got a chance to walk around was because my flight wasn't until 12:00pm, but here's one thing I learned--the Alamo is actually really small.




I didn't want to pay to go inside because I am CHEAP, but I am told by reputable sources that Pedro and Inez do not actually live inside, making tortillas and fashioning clay pots in the adobe manner, so what's the point?  (If you don't know what I'm talking about, please watch "Pee Wee's Big Adventure."  Then watch it again.  Once you get up to, oh, say, five viewings, then we will be friends.)

Speaking of which, really, the only reason I wanted to go to the Alamo was to see if there was any Pee Wee themed merchandise for sale (t-shirts with a bike on them, maybe those cowhide chaps Pee Wee wore during the rodeo scene, what have you) and yes, I knew they make a shirt like that at Threadless but they are SOLD OUT at the moment.  And anyway, that's cheating.




So basically, most of my sightseeing entailed walking between my hotel and Alamo Plaza three blocks away, but that was fine.  San Antonio, you are sunny and sell a lot of creepy Dia De Los Muertos stuff.  Thanks to you and to the Quad A for being such good hosts, it was a fun time, if fleeting.









Anyway, when I found out about Thing 3 I stopped taking future speaking engagements, but I'd already committed to a few almost a year in advance and as a result I just have one more at the end of this week.  Saturday I'm flying into Myrtle Beach (for 21 hours) to be the keynote speaker at the annual meeting for the South Carolina Medical Association.  And then I'm done with non-Category 1 CME extracurricular business travel. DONE.  It's been really fun and I've met so many interesting people (also as a classic introvert I see it as a good part of my social conditioning to be forced into these kinds of situations--schmooze fests, speaking in front of large groups and the like) but I'm in my third trimester now and I'm going to have three kids and I've used at least three weeks of my own personal vacation time over the last year in order to be able to do these speaking gigs, not to mention the many, many hours at home on the weekends or post-call to work on the slides and the talks themselves.  So like I said, it's been fun, but one's time and energy resources are finite and I need to start taking time from Pool A and start pouring it into Pool B, you know?  (Pool B = the birthing tub.  No, just kidding, I'm not using a birthing tub.  I think they're fine and all, but having seen a number of deliveries not my own, I just have to think--just how, uh, turbid does the water look like in one of those birthing tubs, and how long do you have to sit marinating in it?  OK, sorry, resume your meals.)

(I'm not a prude, I swear.)

(THERE'S POOPING THOUGH.)




SEGUE AHOY!

One of the ways that I will surely spend all my luxurious free time is playing "Draw Something."  I know, I know, I'm behind on this one, but seriously guys, it's super fun.  And this is coming from me, a person who really doesn't play online games at all.  I don't play "Words With Friends."  I tried it out briefly but then lost interest with "Plants vs. Zombies,"  I don't even play "Angry Birds," you guys.  ANGRY BIRDS, the most merchandised, cross-marketed app in the whole universe!  But "Draw Something" is really fun.  It's just Pictionary, basically, but easier, because they tell you how many letters the word has and gives you a pool of possible letters to choose from.  I didn't think it would be very extremely obsessive-making only yes, it is very extremely obsessive-making, and though I don't really draw well, I like to pretend that I draw marginally better than the average person so it's making me OMG#$%^% SUPER COMPETITIVE in ways that are perhaps ultimately unflattering.  I even got these specifically so that I could play "Draw Something" better.


(They're styluses for drawing on capacitive screens, non-nerds.  Only perhaps I have out-nerded even the nerdiest nerd becuase because I keep accidentally calling them "stylets," like HI, THINK ABOUT ANESTHESIA MUCH?)

Anyway, "Draw Something."  It's fun!  We should play!  (And no, this is not sponsored, no one is making me say this--besides, there's a free version too.)  Now someone please tell me how I can get more colors for drawing because how am I supposed to draw anything without green or brown, I ask you?  (I'm pretty sure the answer is to get 50 squijillion more coins, but I can't even figure out where to find the extra colors in the app.)  OK!  Thanks!

And now for this thing:

27 weeks:



28 weeks:




I had my glucose tolerance test yesterday which hopefully goes well (they don't give you the results immediately but they said they'd call if it came back with glucose crystals in it).  You'll remember I failed the initial screening last time with Mack, but that was because they said that I only had to fast for 4 hours and my test wasn't until the afternoon. And since I was at work I was starving and since, again, they said I could eat something that morning I did. And maybe that "thing" was a bagel with cream cheese.

Anyway, this time I got an early appointment and I didn't eat anything, so hopefully I can avoid the time vortex that was the three-hour extended glucose tolerance test.  (I did pass that one with Mack, by the way, at which point the phlebotomist told me that even though they say that you only have to fast for four hours, everyone who has an afternoon lab draw and eats in the morning fails, so...the more you know.  NBC rainbow shooting star graphic, tinkly music.)  Anyway, on the ultrasound yesterday Thing 3 was measuring exactly average for growth (50th percentile) so my concerns about the Diabeetus are minimized versus my first two monster children.  Although...I can't deny that as an Asian parent my first thought when he told me was, "WHAT DO YOU MEAN SHE'S JUST 'AVERAGE'?!  99th PERCENTILE OR BUST!"




OK, I gotta go work on my slides for this last talk on Saturday.  Stay out of trouble, kids.

teaser

I know this is not much of an update and I don't really consider it a real one (more later this week, I promise) but I just wanted to post this 3D ultrasound picture and point out this one little thing:




Holy crap does this new kid look a lot like Mack, right down to the cute-but-glowery expression. (There were some peeks at her face that were less dour, but there was always something in the way--either the cord or her hand or my unphotogenically anterior placenta, like, WHAT THE HELL PLACENTA, WE'RE TRYING TO GET A PICTURE HERE, GET OUT OF MY KID'S FACE--so this is the best view we got.

Mack at 4 days old:




So...how the hell have you been?

all good things

Usually by the end of a week of vacation I'm about ready to get back to work.

This time around...not so much.




We had a lovely time at Hilton Head (not that you can tell from Mack's expression--he looks like he's in the final scene of "The Blair Witch Project" there) but all good things must come to an end, and now we're back. We've already booked our stay for Spring Break next year (taking a little bit of a gamble, in that I don't know precisely when Spring Break 2013 is going to be yet, but historically for the Atlanta Public School system it's the first week of April, so I guess we'll just sit on that week until there are indications that we have miscalculated). I don't think that we've had any real family time off since Thanksgiving, and it was very nice just to be in a quiet sunny place where the kids could have fun and we could just...sit. Sit and be. And poke dead jellyfish with sticks.




Anyway, we got back to Atlanta Thursday afternoon, and Friday I took the kids to Target with me to load up on Easter stuff for our third annual celebration of Easter Sunday since I decided in 2010 that we were going to start celebrating Easter Sunday in the purely sacrilegious, secular sense.  All the candy, none of the guilt and boring church bits!  And I only had to re-hide the eggs once this year!  (I thought Mack would be all into the "hunt" aspect of the Easter egg hunt, but once he figured out there was candy inside them, all he basically wanted to do was open them directly into his gullet.)








Joe's parents are with us, so we're going to have a big family dinner tonight for the holiday, in which a spiral-cut ham will play a prominent role. (I think this is traditional? For Easter? Or maybe just traditional for big family dinners. DON'T ASK ME, I'M NEW.) So I should probably head on down there to see if I can help arranging the cutlery or what have you, but I'll leave you with these past three weeks of belly shots. (Not to be confused with Jell-o shots.) Sharp-eyed readers will note that I don't have a photo for 23 weeks, but that's because I was very busy at work that week and kind of forgot to take one.

24 weeks:



25 weeks:



26 weeks:



As an added bonus, you too now know the secret for extremely cheap but marginally cute non-maternity maternity wear, which is elastic waisted skirts from Forever 21. They are awesomely easy (if not, you know, masters of cut and drape or high-quality fabric) but come on, they only cost, like, $6 each! So just get them, who cares!

spring break 2012

Apologies for the lack of updates, but it’s been a pretty busy few weeks at work leading up to Spring Break—my penultimate entry, the one about organ donation, I actually wrote in my cubicle while on call on a Sunday, killing time between OR cases. But enough of this work talk. I WANT TO LIVE AGAIN.

So…Spring Break!

We’re spending the first half of the week at a rented house on Hilton Head Island, which sharp minds will remember as the exact same place we spend Spring Break last year. But that’s the kind of people we are—it’s the same with restaurants, actually, because once I find something on the menu that I love, it’s very difficult for me not to order the same thing every time. Occasionally I think, “Self, it’s a big menu, maybe I should try something else, and I will like that other thing equally or even more!” But then I think, what if I don’t like it as much, and then I will have wasted one of my eating-outings with a meal that I know I could have enjoyed better? And the worry about that haunts me, for real, because clearly I have psychological problems. So with that, and with things in general, our motto is to stick with what works. Confession: we’ll probably be back here again next year. But maybe, if we’re feeling daring, we’ll rent the house next door. Maybe. ADVENTURE.

Anyway, here are some pictures. You may have seen some of these if you follow my Twitter or Tumblr mini blog (the mini blog is where I post a lot of my pictures on the go—-I know everyone loves them some Instagram but I like to make my own space for archival purposes). And if you’re not following me in those places, well, why the hell not?








The thing I really like about this area is that for a lot of the day, it seems like we're the only ones at the beach. It's actually a pretty busy time at Hilton Head--aside from it being Spring Break, there's also some kind of crazy golf tournament going on--but our rental house is at the end of this little appendage of land in this cove, so we're off the main beach somewhat and it feels very isolated. Which is great, because of my fear and loathing of other humans.  (Mostly fear.)







Like last year, we're here with Joe's parents, which has been really nice for the kids. It also means that they end up with twice as many beach toys as they had originally. Here they are flying their new kites. Mack highly approved of his new Angry Birds kite. (Yes, Mack is wearing 3D glasses as sunglasses for some reason, like some kid in Atomic Age America.)




Mack has this stuffed animal that he likes--a blue Baby Gund soft puppy that I think someone gifted us before Cal was born, in which Mack has started taking some moderate interest these past few months. He calls it, quite imaginatively, "Soft Puppy." I mean, he's not inseparable from it or anything, but he likes it quite a bit.  I asked him, several times, if he wanted me to pack Soft Puppy in our luggage to take to the beach house.

"No, because I don't want him to get sandy," he told me.  Sounded reasonable.  My fault for not just packing the damn dog anyway.

Our first night in, after being on the road for eight hours, Mack asked me if we could go home.  "Can we go home, get Soft Puppy, and then come right back to the beach house?"

Uh...

I explained to him that it wouldn't quite be possible to drive home just to get Soft Puppy, but that he would be safe at home and that we'd see him in a few days. Partially I blame road fatigue, but he just completely decompensated. I'm not going to say anything else about it except at one point I quite calmly told him he should probably stop screaming or one of our neighbors might call the police. Finally we managed to calm him down (luckily I had brought along a collection of his familiar books from home, as well as a cache of prickly plastic dinosaurs that he indeed decided to sleep with instead), but the next day we headed to the nearest local general store and Mack chose this new stopgap measure stuffed animal, which he has named "Sister Bear."




So now he's walking around with a pink bear and that makeup brush to his left.  He likes the feeling of the hair on his fingers, kinda like Lenny from "Of Mice and Men" with the dead mice in his pocket; I got him the makeup brush purely as an act of self-preservation because it was either the brush or having him hang onto my hair like a baby orangutan. My sensitive young man.

Speaking of sensitive young men, here is the other one, asking us sullenly if he could please go into the house and play chess already. On Spring Break. At the beach.




(To be fair, he also was requesting to play "Kung Fu Rabbit" on my iPad in addition to chess.) We quite cruelly forced him to continue playing outside to fortify his anemic humors and rachitic bones, but we're on a vacation with grandparents, so everyone's being a little indulged.




Anyway, we'll be here until Wednesday, and head back to Atlanta on Thursday. Hope you're all doing well and enjoying each other as much as we are. Meanwhile, I will continue to wear a series of increasingly inadvisable tank tops with horizontal stripes.