March 2010 Archives

after spending the weekend with my mom in downtown dullsville, i came home to a new time, a full day back at the office and a trip into deep, dark surrey to attend the symphony.

now, i'm sleepy.

friday, i picked up the boy after work and we blitzed over to north van and scarfed down fatburgers before my dad picked me up to take me to the ferry boat.  i didn't know quite what to do with myself on the trip over as my usual m.o. is to get a crispy chicken burger and nurse my fries for 90 minutes while sitting the cafeteria.  luckily, i snagged a computer station (i like tables), read & played games on my phone all the way over.  it was all good until the couple three seats away decided that it was totally acceptable to play something really loudly on their laptop and the stinky, drunk guy sat behind me and started drunk dialing people on his cell phone after cracking open a couple of brewskis.

i hate technology sometimes.

mom picked me up on the other side and we zipped up island, catching up on giggles and promptly going to bed upon arrival at her place.

saturday, i spent some time playing with her new 40" lcd television.  holy crap, that thing is HUGE.  and shiny.  and crisp (on hd channels, that is).  i don't know if i could put a tv that big in my apartment.  it'd just dominate the living area!  but, i can just imagine playing wii or watching dvds on it... *drool*   after my aunt came for a whirlwind visit, mom & i headed down to nanaimochuk for a little shopping and to see the new Alice in Wonderland in 3D.

go see it.  it's awesome.  Avatar wasn't nearly as good as Alice is.

after the show -- which was almost ruined by the frigid arctic air blowing on us in the theatre, brr -- we zipped home and i made yakisoba for dinner, followed by hockey in hd.  holy hell.  hockey in hd is... well, it's so good, i didn't mind watching it.  that tells you something right there because i'm almost entirely off the bandwagon.   after the game, we changed the clocks and went to bed; but, not before i caught the new Iron Man 2 trailer.  mm, robert downey jr.-y goodness.  i cannot wait for that movie to come out!

sunday, was lazy.  chilled with mom, packed up and headed home.  once i got there, i had some pizza with the boy, did some laundry and got ready for work on monday.  btw, there are bunches of people retiring this year and i'm SO JEALOUS.  c'mon lotto max!  come to mama!

yesterday was pretty okay, too.  work was work.  my boss is back from vacation, so the energy level got bumped up a notch or ten from last week, but i got my vacation requests for the year approved so i'm happy.  afterwards, i had an awesome roasted chicken dinner at christopher's before we headed out to newton - not just surrey! - to see the VSO perform Holst's The Planets at the Bell Centre, which is a theatre attached, no IN, a highschool.  how weird.  we took our very back of the balcony seats, adjusted to the vertigo induced by the view and settled in for some culture with the grey hairs.

i've loved The Planets (especially the fourth movement: Jupiter) since i was twelve years old.  it was on a cassette tape my sixth grade music teacher made each member of our band with a whole mix of different musics with the thought to expose us to new and different things.  ever since hearing it that first time, i've had a strong emotional reaction to it.  last night was no different.  as soon as the first few notes were played, my eyes welled up with tears and my whole body tensed up with anticipation.  i must have looked like a dork with my nose running and tears streaming down my face, but i didn't care.  i was entirely overcome by the music.  ahh!

the long, long drive back home was totally worth it just for those two hours of awesomeness.   i love the symphony!

i got home about 11:30, glad i'd had that pre-concert latte or i might have fallen asleep at the wheel and died in a fiery crash somewhere in burnaby.  by the time i got horizontal it was after midnight.  have i ever mentioned that i get up at 5:30am?  yeah, not a lot of sleep last night.  on top of the time change, i'm a wee bit knackered today.

luckily, i only have to go home, cook the biggest stirfry in the world and then go see my doctor to discuss all the other things which are wrong with me now that my lungs are clot-free.

see?  i really am a party animal!  *snarf*

so, i've officially become old and boring.

between the $100 Ikea gift card and $200 unallocated portion of my income tax refund due to me, i've been trying to figure out just what i'm going to spend all this "free" money on at my favourite swedish store for a few months now.

i've been eyeing the TOBO tv bench for almost a year.  it's not too big and with the drawers and sliding glass door, i can hide all my assorted multimedia crap from view which makes my neat-freak heart squeal a little with joy.  but, i just couldn't justify the $200 price tag when the tv solution i currently have is perfectly suitable, if not visually sparse.

i was *this* close to buying it when i was at meatball-land last week, but i wanted to hold off until after my credit card billing period ended (so i'd have another month to pay it off, duh).  then i started thinking... i don't need a new tv stand.  what do i actually need which 1) might ordinarily be just a little too expensive to fetch at the last moment; or, 2) might not ever be available ever again and would make me sad to miss out on?

the answer was:  a second new pair of Nike Air Zoom Vomero+ 3 shoes.

i bought my first pair of these just after i re-borked my knee and got my first pair of orthotics, two years ago.  they turned out to be the most comfortable things i'd ever put on my feet and i've worn them nearly every day for the last twenty months.

when i went to buy a new pair last month, i discovered, to my horror, that they were no longer made and had been replaced by the Nike Air Zoom Vomero+ 4.  the internet told me there were very minor changes to the design and fit should be practically identical and i believed them.  until i tried a pair on at the Nike store in West Van.  they hurt!  and i was so upset, i didn't know what to do.  then i remembered:  eBay has everything.

i received my new pair of 3's last week and i couldn't be more pleased.  they are just as dreamy to my tootsies as my old pair; they're just shiny new and blue instead of neon green.  AND!  they cost $40 less than my old pair i bought locally!

after getting my all-clear from the doctor last week, i started seriously thinking about joining a gym to get back into fitness (now that i know i won't suddenly drop dead on the treadmill).  then i started thinking about my new shoes.  shouldn't i have an "inside pair" for the gym?   so, instead of buying a tv bench which would make me happy in my house, but isn't really needed; i've ordered a second pair of super-comfy, good-for-my-feet shoes which will, hopefully, be an incentive to get healthier in the months to come.

so, there goes most of that tax refund.  i've still got the $100 gift card to spend at the blue & yellow store, but i think most of that will go to a dutch oven and a fancy frying pan to replace the one my cousin ruined with his egg-making adventures.

oh god, i'm practical.  killmenow.

six months ago (minus three days), a blood clot which formed in the back of my left leg after my knee surgery broke off, zoomed up my leg, through my heart and got stuck in my lung. it went from being a DVT to a PE in a millisecond. and it almost killed me.

for the last six months (minus three days), i've been taking a daily dose of rat poison to thin my blood enough so that i wouldn't form another clot and to buy my body time to "deal with" the clot that now resided in my lung, like a ticking time bomb.

every week for the last six months (minus three days), i've had to go to the lab and get poked with needles (sometimes multiple times) to draw my blood to ensure that i was taking enough rat poison to keep the clot(s) at bay.

every minute of every day for the last six months (minus three days), i've worried about that clot in my lung. the doctor in the hospital said one of three things could happen to it:

1) it could just go away;
2) it could get scarified and permanently attached inside my lung; or,
3) it could, in some cases, get bigger.

he also said they wouldn't do any follow-up CT scan or testing to find out what it did after my six months of anti-coagulant treatment. take the pills and then stop taking the pills and you'll be fine, he said. so, i lived with the fear that it was just growing and getting more and more ominous because that's what i do. i worry and practice hypochondria.

today, i got the news.

my lovely and wonderful hematologist told me that the radioactive fog i breathed in and radioactive solution i got shot up with two weeks ago showed that my lungs are completely clear. my clot is gone! my lungs are absolutely normal and i am not going to die at some random moment because i exerted myself too much and dislodged my unwanted lung tenant! i can eat broccoli and take vitamins with abandon! i can have beer! i can go jump on a treadmill and not fear heavy breathing!

i started to cry as i walked to the car. i knew i'd been depressed and anxious the last six months (minus three days) and that i was under some extreme stress, but this news, those three little words, have lifted a giant weight from my shoulders. as i told my dad, there aren't enough exclamation points in the world to express just how happy this makes me.

I AM NORMAL!!!

and i'm so happy i could almost float. =)