An Infernal Headache

Actually, cute as that is.... Maybe something like this is a little more accurate.... :)

Well, that's still kind of tame. Hehe. And I don't resemble a boy. But I'm dying of...AN INFERNAL HEADACHE. (Did you read that in a booming voice? Excellent....) A couple months ago I was sick with some sort of virus and every evening I ended up getting an insane headache. INSANE. Kind of weird how it would happen the same time every evening, and kind of weird how insane it was.... Matt thought they seemed like migraines. But out of the blue? Well, maybe a virus-induced migraine that would get better when I didn't feel sick anymore.

Well, after a couple weeks, I was feeling a bad headache all day long. I thought it might be allergies, so I beefed up on sudafed, nose spray, and more allergy drugs. Didn't do a thing. I started taking ibuprofen around the clock. No change. I started taking ibuprofen AND extra-strength tylenol. Nothing! For about a week I was vigilant with all of the above: zyrtec, sudafed, ibuprofen, flonase, nasal decongestant spray, extra-strength tylenol, and diet cokes. :) No help at all! So THEN I thought maybe I was over-medicated (maybe? Ha ha!) and stopped taking everything (except Diet Cokes... :)) with hope that could actually do the trick by now. No such luck.

Matt looked in my eyeballs and satisfied himself that my brain wasn't about to explode or anything. He also concocted a theory that I have West Nile Virus from my Colorado days of not-so-long-ago. Cool! (It would be an even cooler theory if he hadn't already thought that a year ago. Hehe. West Nile Virus twice? Hmmm.... Matt just grins and says that last year he didn't really think it, but this year he does. :))

I finally saw a doctor yesterday, hoping for an MRI to prove I have a brain, but she wanted to try simpler methods first: a bunch of allergy medication, sudafed, nose spray, and antibiotics. Oh, thanks. That's new. Hehe. Actually, I hadn't tried antibiotics yet—if I'm lucky, there's some kind of bacteria up in my sinuses that just needs to be zapped. No fever, though...? And when I was sick, it was clearly a virus...? No snot coming out of my nose, not ever...? I'm skeptical.

I was also a little disappointed when I came home and, when relaying all of my doctor's reasoning for various things, Matt knew more about everything than she did. For instance, after she found out I had had an allergic reaction (rash...) to a certain antibiotic, she no longer wanted to give me amoxicillin because "about 30% of those allergic to the other one will be allergic to amoxicillin and I don't want to take that chance." To which Matt said, "but there's no risk if the reaction was a rash!" Hehe. So now I have to have a yucky antibiotic with worse side effects instead of good ol' amoxicillin. The moral of the story is that I might never have a doctor as competent as Matt. At least when his licensure comes through I can get things like antibiotic prescriptions from him instead of talking to some other random doctor. YES!

So I guess we'll try this. I get to go back in 10 days and, if there's no change, I get to see a neurologist who will hopefully get me an MRI to prove I have a brain. I don't know whether to hope for mysterious bacteria in my face to be obliterated and my headache to go away this week, or for a picture of the insides of my head. Hehe. I think maybe proof of a brain could be worth a two-month headache. :)

Ridi...!

Laugh! Even though your heart is broken! (Even though I'm probably the only one who would read that and have "Vesti la Giubba" run through my head, it makes me feel good to write it anyway. :)) My heart IS broken! The Utah Festival Opera season is ending in another couple of weeks—our favorite event of the year!—and we will have missed it. This is really, really sad for a number of reasons:

1) They're performing Manon Lescaut—one of the few Puccini operas I haven't seen. 

2) Their Puccini is incredible. (Hard to believe, I know. But it's true.)

3) In 14 years, I've only missed one season.

4) This is their best season ever. (A record FIVE shows, and all of them are great: Aida, Manon Lescaut, 1776, Gypsy, and Into the Woods.)

5) Reasons 1-4 again. Times a billion. 

And even though I put a bunch of I's up there because they technically only applied to me, Matt loves theatre as much as I do and is crying, too. Some of our favorite experiences together have been in UFOC shows—we often come away from a performance feeling totally inspired. Sometimes we even sit through an intermission totally speechless other than: "Wow." "Yeah.... WOW." "That was...wow." "Yeah...." Paralysis by awe. Hehe. (Did I mention this would have been our favorite season ever?)

And in case I still haven't been able to adequately express how much we stinking LOVE this opera festival, consider this: that when we drove away from Springville, UT five years ago, we high-fived each other all the way out of the state and made a solemn vow never to return. Hehe. And yet...PTSD in the Salt Lake airport notwithstanding (I'm not entirely joking...), we count our year by the Utah Festival Opera season. I'm not sure I can describe how profound that is. Hehe. :) I'm still wracking my brain for a way to make this work, but my gut tells me we're really missing out. Tears, tears. And more tears! Do you think Oprah or someone would appreciate our "sad" story and make this work for us...? ;)

EARTHQUAKE!!

It's more fun with your hands in the air!! Woo hoo!!

(Nothing major—a 5.4 all the way in L.A. that we somehow got lucky enough to ride on clear down here. We usually miss the tiny stuff so we were glad to just be sitting at home for the excitement. Fun, fun!)

The Great Laundry Disaster of 2008

*Due to the graphic nature of the images, no photographs of the affected articles will be published at this time

Food!

I didn't get enough to eat this morning, so I'm dreaming about restaurants I'd like to go to today! Our favorite finds are always small non-chain restaurants, and usually a foreign cuisine (though I do love a good hamburger every now and then! :)). I haven't branched out quite enough yet, but here's the top ten list of my favorite cuisines so far:

#10: English

Ha ha! I know what you're thinking. Is this some kind of joke? Boiled potatoes, boiled meat, and boiled brussel sprouts at nearly every meal...? Greasy, vinegary fried cod...? It's true that the English dinner suffers immensely. But it might be worth it for dessert! They pour incredibly fatty, yummy, amazing custard (more saucy than we usually have custard here...) on everything. It's killer. Way, WAY better than plopping a scoop of ice cream on pie or something....

#9: Vietnamese

I haven't had too much Vietnamese (usually Thai is served at the same restaurant and I can't resist...) but it's been yummy. Even the fish sauce was tasty until I knew how they make it! Hehe.

#8: Greek/Mediterranean

By that I mean: anything involving hummus and kalamata olives. YUM! (I pass on lamb, though.... Ick.)

#7: Korean

I doubt I'll ever try kimchi again and as much as I want to, I just don't love seafood yet. But when we went to Korea last year, Matt was very skilled at getting food I could fall in love with. It was one of the highlights of the trip! Very, very yummy. The thing they call "Sesame Leaf" (it's really some kind of mint leaf) is TO DIE FOR. Yum!! Next time you're tempted to eat lettuce wraps, I highly recommend finding a Korean market and buying sesame leaves instead. It's one of my favorite treats now....

#6: Italian

Starchy carbs and cheese are always highly, highly satisfying to me. :)

#5: Korean Chinese

Matt has always said that, even though he LOVES Korean food, it's not the Korean food he misses from Korea. What he really misses is Korean Chinese food—because, he says, you can find good Korean restaurants in the U.S. (even Pusan restaurants among all the Seoul stuff...) but what you never see are Korean-owned Chinese restaurants. I couldn't even begin to appreciate what he meant until we went to Korea. The Chinese food there is AMAZING! Not a bit of grease, somehow. Not ever! We couldn't get enough sweet and sour, but everything we tried was amazing. It spoiled me on other Chinese food for forever—now it all seems way too wet and oily and soggy! If anyone ever hears of a Korean-owned Chinese restaurant, let me know! Will travel for Korean Chinese.... :)

#4: Indian

Coconut milk, basmati rice, yogurt, mangoes, golden raisins, yummy breads, fennel, cashews.... Need I say more?

#3: French

By this I mean it's a fancy schmancy restaurant (all the fancy restaurants seem to be French-inspired...) and multiple spices and cheeses are involved. I used to be a gross under-spicer, but now I know better. :) Flavor is yummy! So is cheese. Mmmm....

#2: Thai

I'm more than willing to endure the world's spiciest cuisine to load up on coconut milk, bamboo shoots, jasmine rice (YUM!), peanut sauce, mangoes, and peppers. I could eat Thai food every day! And even when it's too spicy, they at least have good-flavored spice—much better peppers than in other spicy cuisines. We just found a great Thai restaurant here in San Diego so we're happy campers. :)

#1: Mexican

Boring, I know, but I can't help it! The whole carbs and cheese thing again—so satisfying! I'm crazy about Mexican food! We are picky about it, though. We search high and low for good taco shops—the tortillas need to be just right, and the beans flavored well, the meat not too greasy, and the guacamole fresh.... And, shockingly, neither of us is a fan of cumin, so that obviously kills many a taco shop. When we find our taco shop, though, it's always our favorite haunt. We also get excited when a restaurant has killer horchata! Mmmm.... This is making me very hungry.... I should have had some tacos for breakfast. Hehe.

Are we missing out on another awesome cuisine out there...?

What's with the Maternity Clothes...?

I recently went shopping looking for a simple, cute, white shirt.... And all I could find were maternity clothes! I went everywhere. For days...! I tortured myself! But it was just one white maternity shirt after another.... No, they weren't actually labeled "maternity," but that doesn't change the fact that they were, indeed, full-on, no doubt about it, fitted on top and huge in the front maternity tops. The kind that make you say, "oh, look, a pregnant lady." (Except that with so many not-pregnant people wearing maternity clothes, the line might be more like, "oh, look, a...pregnant lady...? Maybe...?" :)) I felt conspicuous enough when I actually WAS pregnant—I just can't bring myself to wear maternity clothes when I'm not.

But I'm in need of new clothes, people! I wish I had better shopping stamina—the kind that wouldn't make me want to die looking through 400 racks at 20 stores for whatever might be there that isn't ridiculous. But I really, really don't. If I think I might find what I want in fewer than 20 stores and 400 racks, I sometimes look forward to and enjoy a little shopping (especially to look for things to decorate with...). But just going shopping to "browse" is not my idea of a good time. It's not even in the same universe as a good time. And going shopping to hunt down the two cute non-maternity tops currently for sale somewhere in Horton Plaza...? At least two or three universes away.... So how to solve my major lack-of-clothing crisis...?! Sigh. I'm stuck, I guess. Stuck until we get through this trend of everyone looking pregnant. Hehe. I just can't go there.

In other wardrobe-related news, my feet were cold just now and I went to get socks out of my "sock drawer." I stood in the middle of my room in a little stupor—aimlessly—and realized . . . I didn't know where my sock drawer was or even if I had one at all! Ha ha! Beautiful. After a bit of searching it turns out that I do have a sock drawer—but I love, LOVE that I hadn't opened it in the two months since we moved. I remember calling my parents from BYU in about, oh, October of my freshman year: "Uh, mom and dad.... It's starting to get cold and I just discovered that I only have one long-sleeved shirt and no socks." Ha ha ha! That was a funny discovery to make. (Not funny to have since become well-stocked in such things—part of my wardrobe crisis has to do with the fact that 90% of my cute tops are sweater-y—but not wearing socks for two months is a fun step in the right direction! :)) My parents were amused enough to make a trip out to see me, just to buy Winter clothes. :) Which is actually the trip when Matt and my parents met for the first time, so that's kind of fun.... Almost ten years ago! Wow. Ten years of me and Matt. And ten years (minus our one paradise year in San Diego before med school :)) of accumulating socks and sweaters. Hehe. That's a long time. :)

Mmmm....

In recent years, I've developed a complex about something I wanted to love to do: baking! Baked goods are yummy. Making them is kind of fun. And it's supposed to be easy—especially if it's just out of a box. Hehe. But it seems like no matter what I do, no matter how closely I follow the recipe (or the instructions on the box :)), something always went wrong! Maybe not a *big* something, but that just made it all the more unidentifiable and mysterious. And since no one had ever been able to figure it out, I figured I just had a curse or something—that baking is just something that will cause me problems.

But now we know! My only curse has been not living by the beach! :) Maybe I was hampered by the high elevation, or the colossal dryness (ew...), or a combination of both. At any rate, being at sea level has made baking AWESOME. I bet I couldn't screw it up even if I wanted to—whatever I do (or don't do), however well I follow the recipe (or not...), everything comes out moist and yummy and excellent. Woo hoo! Very enjoyable. :) 

I've been worried way too long. (And wouldn't you worry? A baking curse?! ¡Què terrible!) It's nice to know everything's gonna be OK! :) 

The Worst Development I Could Imagine....

In the last week, my life has changed more than I can begin to describe. Hehe. (No! NOT hehe. It's not funny. ;))

(And, in case we're the only ones who understand him enough to have caught it, he builds up to his big trick with "one, two, three...!" Hehe.)

Our House

I've been begged for pictures, so here they are.... (And I experimented with uploading them in medium size instead of large—if they're too small, I'm sorry!)

Seth's bedroom.... We hung hammocks in the closet so we could take the closet doors off and not see an ugly closet shelf. Hehe. Kind of fun. (In our Denver place, we had a hammock in Seth's room that you could really use. It was great!) Also, there's supposed to be a pretty blanket hanging on the wall behind the crib, but Seth yanked it down.... Got a bunch of thumb-tacks in his crib. Ha! Not a disaster, luckily, but I think we'll come up with a better way to hang it.  Here's a picture just because Seth is cute. :)And here's a bit of the outside. Where it's always 72 degrees.... :) Hurray! We sometimes put a gate on our walkway to block off the parking lot, and Seth will run through the living room to the front door, ring the doorbell a few times, run down the outside walkway, across to the patio, back into the house, and around and around and around.... Sometimes he stops for a second or two to pick up a rock, or a bug, or to "sniff" a flower (he actually blows on them! ha ha!). Anyway...we love spending the day outside, even if we're at home—we probably spend more time out on the patio than anywhere inside! It's fun. :)

So, there it is. I'd show you a picture of our bedroom, except that we still don't know what we're doing with it.... Oh, and the garage (that's always the guys' favorite :)), but I just didn't take a picture of it. It's so nice to have a garage, though! We had one in Denver, and loved it still, but it was detached and a one-car garage.... It was nice to park our car when it was snowing and was good for a little bit of storage. But this! Ahh.... I never realized how much we were missing! It's attached and a large 2-car. We have everything out and awesomely organized so that we might actually USE our stuff instead of stuffing it away somewhere. We also had room to put outdoor carpet on about a third or half of the garage for Seth's train set and a table and chairs for sewing or laundry or play-doh or whatever.... And the best part is being able to actually be in the house getting Seth in and out of the car. It makes coming and going SO much easier to be able to leave him in the car and run in and out of the house! It's helped me not feel quite so overwhelmed about the idea of being able to come and go if we have more kids someday.... Packing up more than just Seth and heading down condo stairs to a parking lot...? Or with groceries...? I could hardly do it with just Seth! The attached garage is a miracle. Hehe. Who knew...? I didn't. :)

Something Awesome

This video seriously takes me back and makes me feel like a little kid again. I used to LOVE watching this! I remember being totally thrilled by Stevie Wonder, Ray Charles, and Michael Jackson, and mystified—just as delightfully—by Cyndi Lauper and Bruce Springsteen (they just seemed so ODD to me! Hehe.) And it's STILL awesome! The Who's Who of amazing popular artists (with a few extras thrown in :)).

Enjoy! And, just so you know, if you can't name at least 80% of the soloists, you really, REALLY have been missing out! Really. (But you can repent! It's never too late to get some soul in your life. :)) Hehe.

(Hey, Janelle, there's a little Steve Perry in there for you!)

My Favorite Press Release of the Year

Hehehe. Every year I look forward to the Social Security Administration releasing statistics on the previous year's baby names. I love it! I can't explain exactly why, either.... Kind of funny. But I definitely love that their website is so cool, and I also love to giggle and/or be amazed at random cultural trends. The SSA website (it deserves a second hyperlink...! :)) has statistics from 1880! You can type in a name and track its popularity over time. OR, you can type in a year and see the most popular names (by numbers AND percentage... sometimes up to the top 1000 names). OR, you can look at the most popular baby names by state. It's awesome. We have a baby name book that accused Mormons of starting the last-name-as-first-name trend (which, for the record, I detest—I had to say it!) and, if you look at Idaho and Utah in random years, you can giggle at how that appears to be true. (Little sidenote: word of this naming phenomenon has reached the other side of the world! When we were in Wales recently, we laughed our heads off over a really funny radio personality going off on how Americans don't have first names anymore. "So your last name is Hennecher...you're going to name your kid Brandt? Brandt Hennecher...? 'Hello, I'm Brandt Hennecher....' What torture! I'm telling you—Americans these days don't have first names!" Many a funny story was told.... It was great ridicule. :)) 

You can also get a good smile over things like Emma staying #1 after the "Friends" baby was named Emma, or how, for a little while, more than 1 in 50 girls was being named Emily or Emma. Jacob gets well over 1% of the baby boys! In fact, the year Seth was born, the top THREE boy names were all over 1% (and one of those, Joshua, is the only other boy name we even sort of like these days, so...bummer...). That's a lot of boys with the same names.... (You can see how there's so much less to choose from with boys than girls, though. You only get down the 100's and end up with boy names like Oscar, Omar, Edgar, Hector, Sawyer, Maximus, Felix, Holden, Ryker, and other dog and cat names. Hehe. The girl names stay a lot more normal.... :))

Anyway, there is endless amusement to be had at the SSA website. Hehe.

Recently, they released the latest statistics along with a pretty funny press release. The paragraph about puzzling baby name experts around the world and resisting legislative efforts totally cracked me up, as well as the well-placed comment about the name Armani. Ha ha ha!

Simple Pleasures

Have you ever tried rubbing cake and frosting in your hair? Maybe you should! This kiddo of mine sure makes it look fun...! :)

Fake Baby Hair...?

Has anyone noticed something eerily strange about celebrity babies...? And, no, I'm not talking about their $1000 onesies or gold-plated pacifiers (hehe...that would be a bad idea... :)). I'm talking about their hair. They have so much of it! What's the deal...? I've seen the occasional baby with a tremendous head of hair—usually not a white baby—but these celebrity kids seem way out of the ordinary. Have you seen Tom Cruise's kid? That's just not normal. The kid had more hair than I do when she was a few months old. The Brangelina baby...? I think she's Seth's age (who, admittedly, has been more bald than the average kid, but still...) and her hair looks like it's been growing for 10 years. 

I'm thinking...hair extensions...? Wigs...? Hehe. Special $10,000 hair-growth-for-babies creams...?

Has anyone else noticed? Do you think celebrity babies have a higher likelihood of having tons, and tons, and tons of hair...? I think it's bizarre! :)

In Honor of Seth on His Big Day

It's a Big Enough Day to Get TWO Honorings! :)

Is it too soon to be reminiscing already...? Hehe. Here are some fun pics from the last two years! (My attempt at consolidating all these pictures ended up getting really sloppy. Sorry! Amy, I might not be worthy of being called an aesthete today...! Ha ha! :))