Aaaaaaack!

I added some page elements to the side not too long ago and found myself strangely and semi-addicted to them. ;) (Cluster map, blog list, etc...) Then, I changed the background of the blog a few days ago and I think that wiped out the add ons, as they were gone today when I checked in.

Aaaaaaaack!

I've added them back, but realized I didn't miss them for the entire weekend and beginning of this week! (Hence the SEMI-addicted comment above.)

I guess I'm not obsessing about it, but I do find it interesting to see where all the people are from that visit the blog. I think it's fun to see where some clicked in from. I wonder if they are people I know or if something I wrote elsewhere made them curious as to who I am outside this little box.

I see some cities pop up over and over, and, while I know who some of those frequent visitors are, there are a few mysterious regulars on "Lisa Carries On."

Feel free to say hi in the comments if you want. ;) My curiosity is getting the best of me.

Rest in Peace

I finished my pint of ice cream today. It lived a long life, from April 14-May 24, in my freezer. I could have made it last a little longer, but I fell for 2 bad habits. One, it was going to go gooey, so instead of throwing it out, I finished it last night. Two, I was stuck in the house all day yesterday, and fell into the boredom eating trap.

However, I'm still fairly well happy with the end result of how long it lasted, given my prior inability to restrain myself.

"Feeling Left Out" Update

I was over at my in-laws Monday after visiting my aunt. I actually ended up mentioning ever-so-casually that it upset me that they went out to dinner in my neighborhood and didn't bother to call me.

Her response?

She said her daughter wanted to take them out for their wedding anniversary and wanted to surprise my husband by stopping by to see him.

Uh, ok. That's the best you can do? None of that changes the fact that you knew you were going to have dinner, you knew you were going to be close, and you either didn't think to call, or else you DID think to call and left me at home like the dog.

I'm still butt-hurt about it either way.

I just am.

Feeling Left Out

My sister-in-law was here this week. She got here Thursday and left today. She has 2 daughters, 3 years and 9 months. Abby is 2, so she loves playing with her cousin.

I drove out to my mother-in-law's to see them on Friday after work, and on Monday after work. We had them over here on Sunday for Mother's Day and on Tuesday they met Marti half way at the park for a couple of hours so the girls could ride the trains and the merry-go-round.

About half way through the day on Tuesday, I thought since my house was already cleaned up for Mother's Day, and since they were leaving the next day, and since my mother-in-law mentioned on Monday that she didn't want to cook, that I'd invite them over again for dinner Tuesday night. I texted my mother-in-law but didn't get a reply. As the day went on, I found myself getting a little tired and thought it was just as well if she didn't get the message since I didn't feel like cooking anymore. I went home and went to bed at 10 pm - early for me.

The next morning, Marti mentioned that they were in to see him Tuesday night for dinner. (He is a bartender at a local restaurant about 10 minutes from our house.) At first I was annoyed. I mean, I asked them to come to dinner, but they didn't reply and then went out without me.

But then, I really thought about it. Even IF they didn't get my invitation to come over, if they came ALL THE WAY OUT HERE and visited the restaurant where my husband works, you think they'd give me a call and have me come meet them, right? So, while I sat at home, the night before my sister-in-law and Abby's cousin go back to the east coast, they were a mere 10 minutes away, dining without us.

Sometimes it feels like my mother-in-law sees her other grand daughter(s) more than Abby, and they live across the country. Abby is only 25-45 minutes away depending on traffic. Some of this is due to the fact that we don't go over there much because they don't have a real pool fence. Some of this is due to the fact that they rarely come over here. Needless to say, this is causing a bit of a rift between us, whether we say it out loud or not.

Anyway, I found myself (who normally could give a shit) in the bathroom at work today crying about it because I felt so unwanted (and felt like my daughter was somewhat unimportant to them) after hearing they were eating in my neighborhood and didn't bother to call. Luckily, my boss is so fun to work with that she snapped me out of it without even trying.

Go figure -- my work cheers me up from my personal issues! Normally people retreat to their personal lives to forget about work issues!

Now THAT is an awesome job, huh?

MONKEY, MONKEY! I LOVE YOU!

Tiffany took us to the zoo last weekend for her company picnic. It was fun and everything was free! :)


This is my favorite picture of the day. Tiffany took it in the petting zoo. Let's just say she's got a better camera (oh, and skills) than I do. ;)




The lions cooperated and posed for pictures like never before. The tram driver even stopped to let everyone off to take a picture, it was so unusual to see them both out there like that.







Apparently Abby has some monkey love. When we were looking at the monkey island, she just started YELLING at them out of the blue! It was so cute, funny, and disturbing all at once. This isn't nearly as good as when she spontaneously did it on her own, but I still love watching her yell at the monkeys. :)

That's Some Crazy Shit!

I just got back from the mani/pedi that Marti got for me today. Ahhhh! Such a treat to wake up to THAT! :) Thanks sweetie!

Anyway, the reason I'm writing now is because the lady next to me was talking to the woman doing her feet and we heard some seriously crazy talk!!!

Apparently she was a surrogate mom! That's not the crazy talk, but that was VERY interesting! I've never known a surrogate before.

So, apparently it was ORIGINALLY for her brother and his wife that she did this. No, I'm not saying the first time she did it was for them, it was the only time she did it. So, what's with the "originally" crap?

WELL, apparently, at about 9 months, the brother and sister-in-law CANCELED on her! WHAT.THE.FUCK!?!?!?!?! NOW WHAT???!!!???!!!

She was in her 40s and not prepared to keep a child, so after talking with her own nearly grown kids, she decided to put her up for adoption.

Crazy, huh???? I can understand carrying someone else's child and not keeping it at that point in her life, especially knowing where the child was going to and being able to see her a few times a year.

What I don't understand is the brother and the sister-in-law just walking away like that.

THEN, the brother and sister-in-law adopted what this woman called a "crack baby" and then divorced shortly after that. She says in hindsight, she thinks the sister-in-law knew they were getting a divorce, but still wanted a baby, but knew if they took the "surrogate" baby, the brother would get the child in the divorce and she would be left without a child.

What I don't know is who contributed to the biological makeup of this baby. That could change my opinion on the matter. I do know the brother was not the father, as she said she chose a very tall guy. So, was it her egg, or did they do donor eggs as well? If not, then that was her bio-child that she put up for adoption, not just some egg and sperm she was babysitting for 9 months.

As I was typing this out and talking to Marti, I realized something stupid. I was thinking that she chose a sperm donor because it would be weird to inject her own brother's sperm into her. UH, HELLO!?!?! You can't have a baby with your own brother ANYWAY!!!!! WTF was I thinking (or not thinking)????? It only occurred to me that it would be kind of gross to think about your brother's sperm in there. It didn't occur to me until later that the baby would be like the product of incest. Duh.

So, I wonder if it was just a sperm donor and her egg or if they did in vitro with someone else's egg. I just may have to go back for another pedicure to find out. Maybe it's better if I don't know. I don't want to know that she put her kid up for adoption.

In Case You're Wondering...

I still have most of the half pint of dulce de leche in the freezer!

I am a restraint rock star!!!!!!

I've been having chicken for lunch and I don't even like chicken most of the time. Go figure.

I'm not really on a mission, but I do miss doing whatever I want. And I still have not taken on "organized exercise" to reach this undefined goal of getting back into shape.

But, if it crept on to me slowly, maybe it will creep off slowly if I make small changes.

Birth Story

Not mine, but a friend's birth story. I asked Jess and she said it was OK to post here. It was an incredible story, so I thought you might like to read it. Her sister wrote this out for her.

Stella’s Birth Story: Tachi’s Version, written April 21, 2008

April 15th Tuesday Tax Day, Stella’s Due Date, and Daddy Eugene is going on week four with a stubborn case of pneumonia.

April 16th Wednesday
Doc. gives Jessica a check-up; doesn’t seem like the baby is in any hurry whatsoever to show her face. Jessica is anxious to see the end of this pregnancy but wants to give her body a chance to do its thing naturally. We set an appointment to induce Jessica a week from today just in case. In the meantime, we wait some more. . .

April 17th Thursday
2 1/2 year-old brother Everett suddenly woke up from a nap unable to breathe sufficiently. He was taken to the ER and then admitted to the hospital for acute respiratory problems (somehow not related to Dad’s pneumonia). Our poor toddler spent 48 hours hooked up to oxygen, an IV, and confined to bed with mask-administered breathing treatments every couple of hours that left him shaky and unable to sleep.

April 18th Friday night
At Everett’s bedside, a trooper but exhausted, three days past due to give birth to baby Stella, Mama Jessica started having regular contractions. No one at this hospital was excited about potentially having to catch a baby, so we drove to Jessica’s maternity ward to have her checked out. At 10:30pm she was still only dilated 2 centimeters - hmph! We walked briskly in the hospital corridors and stairwells for an hour trying to bring on real labor. No luck and an irritating extra hour of baby monitoring and unnecessary minor starvation of hungry mom later, we returned home at 1am to try and get some sleep.

April 19th Saturday
Thank goodness, Everett was released from the hospital. He had a really rough afternoon at home with hyperactive reactions to his breathing medicine. Combine this with sleep deprivation and he was absolutely out of his mind – along with the rest of us.
That night, Eugene made a delicious dinner and we all had a therapeutic glass of white wine out on the breezy patio, mixed with a few tears.
At 10:30pm Jess was having contractions strong enough to call Grandma and PopPop Birchler to come down from Prescott to stay with Everett. Jess did not want to go to the hospital again to be told she wasn’t quite ready yet. . . so she labored at home for as long as she could stand it.

April 20th Midnight
By the time we got into the car with a 40 minute drive ahead of us, Jessica was makin’ quite a bit of noise and squirming all over the back seat. 5 minutes into the drive, I was informed with much conviction that there would no longer be an attempt at natural delivery. Epidural ASAP.
We hit freeway construction complete with a detour just as Jessica started yelling for AIR !!!! Put the windows down, now up, back down NOW! with the forceful rhythm of her contractions. Turn the radio on, then turn it OFF, put Norah Jones on, OFF, blast the air conditioning! Gasp: “How can anyone DO this??” She started to outright scream, told me the baby was coming. . .
I was calling upon my inner midwife while trying to operate window switches, DJ, be a safe, steady, calm driver awaiting the violent flash of a photo-radar speeding ticket. Jess did not desire verbal coaching, which was all I could offer. We were WAY BEYOND soothing words and visualization techniques. When I encouraged her to relax, she shouted “SHUSH !”, which was a startlingly polite choice of words under the circumstances. (Either she’s been around little children too much or she was editing herself a teensy bit for my sake.)
Whatever visual monitoring I could manage through the rear view mirror revealed my sister in a state of panic, ready to crawl through the roof of the car. I asked her if she was feeling the urge to push and she said she couldn’t help it – her body was already pushing. We still had a few minutes to go before landing on hospital turf. In a frantic call to Eugene on the cell phone I asked for guidance. Could he order someone at the hospital to rescue us in the parking lot??
I nearly missed the hospital and would have turned into the maze of a shopping mall, but Jessica saved herself with champion back-seat driving skills. We parked at the back door of the ER. I was afraid to walk away, thinking I was going to have to intercept a slippery infant from flying out the open car door onto the pavement. Jessica screamed “GET OUT! GET HELP!” so I ran to the closed doors of the ER and battered every button I saw while my brain registered the printed words “intercom”. I pressed that button and spit out: “My sister is having a baby in the car right outside here!” Out came orderlies with a wheelchair. Jessica’s screams were getting louder and included the word HELP!! We wheeled her writhing body down a long hallway, into and out of an elevator, and then down the most endless corridor on earth. One of the attendants guiding us was a tall, dark, calm man who’s hand Jessica grabbed at as if it were the only thing that could keep her from being sucked down into hell. We miraculously made it to the maternity ward. She kicked her flip flops to opposite corners of the room, ripped her dress off, climbed onto the bed whimpering for pain killers, numbing, something? Please??? No time at all. Through three more back-to-back contractions my sister’s desperate voice filled the room and beyond, pushing baby Stella’s head out sunny side up. Her dark bluish eyes opened and looked towards her mommy as a whole child slid into the outside world.
Ahhh the beauty of Relief on my sister’s lovely face!! It happened so fast, Jessica wasn’t even sweaty or puffy or appearing laborish at all. Wow.
Shockingly, it was over. Within seconds, Jess was presented with 7lbs 2oz, 21 long inches of miracle. And all this occurred in the wee hours of a full moon morning. Perhaps that is what this little honey bun lunar goddess was waiting for, after all.