C got my files off my laptop. Hooray! Not so good --we'll have to replace the hard disk.

I have a nagging headache from the flurry of tree pollen brought on by the rains.

However I have small joys.
C is better and is in fact raking leaves as we speak. A rather useless task IMO but one that brings him satisfaction.

My CCI buddy graduated with hearing dog Naomi aka Meme.
The first hearing dog I ever met was named Maya and she graduated with hearing dogs Macon and Muffey. I have running joke with Maya's proud owner that all hearing dogs' true name begins with "M" and so Meme fits.

Also my best friend in high school called herself by her middle name Naomi. Then in college and beyond she started calling herself by her first name Maia (pronounced the same as Maya)

Mori caught the upper respiratory disease --he's sneezy and has weepy eyes. He's also moving very slowly and sleeping a lot. Fortunately he still seems to be eating and drinking. I called the vet and the tech said as long as he's eating and drinking, he should be okay.

C is slowly getting better. He got out of bed for 3 hours yesterday, which was too much. I keep telling him to go back to bed.

I want to say it's just not my week. And I mean that in both senses of the word. I'm about the same. It's all other people. Special K is much better. My mom came for 24 hours from Wednesday to Thursday and gave us all a little TLC.

Sadly C appears to be getting worse. His breathing and cough worsen. He blacked out yesterday (his words) and a very kind friend took him to Urgent Care while I stayed home with the kids. Urgent Care (UC) said he was dehydrated and gave him IV fluids. Ironically my cat received the same treatment earlier in the week. UC also thought he had pneumonia. He still has a low-grade fever and night sweats. Unfortunately his chest x-ray on Tuesday didn't show pneumonia. Urgent Care took another x-ray. The preliminary results from that x-ray didn't show pneumonia either. Maddening. Regardless the antibiotics don't appear to be doing anything and on Saturday he'll have been sick for four weeks and getting worse. We go again to the doctor tomorrow.

And the brightest spot in my week is not my story to tell. But today I was reminded why I get on the computer.

I may have mentioned C has been sick for a long time over 3 weeks. He was just diagnosed with pneumonia.

Ironically there's a possibility my cat Mori may also have the cat equivalent of pneumonia. We must wait and see.

Yesterday was our anniversary and we had a lovely day. Thanks to Parents Helping Parents, we got some free tickets to Disney on Ice:Finding Nemo. Special K loved the show. We thought it was okay. The ice skating especially for the jellyfish section was at times beautiful and for some reason I found myself moved when Nemo was reunited with his dad. Afterwards we stumbled across a crowded Vietnamese restaurant that served delicious soup.

C and were planning to go out on a romantic dinner, but our respite care worker called in with a cold. So instead all four of us went to dinner with friends. Little T hasn't been to a restaurant in ages. However I remembered we have a booster seat and Little T is gradually getting weaned off steroids, so he's less and less immuno-compromised and we would be in a large group in a large restaurant so away from crowds. Unfortunately Little T was too fat for his booster seat. And C was too busy dealing with both kids to enjoy himself. However I enjoyed myself.

I also got two lovely flower cards from two members of the List that also brightened my day.

Thanks to my brother and his SIL, C and I had an evening out on Saturday. We had a lovely time together as always. Unfortunately the food at Amber India was mediocre and the movie we saw Syriana had several flaws.
In critiquing someone's synopsis, Miss Snark blogged "Even when you make stuff up, you have to get all the details just right so we’re focused on the things you want us to be thinking about, not wondering why something doesn’t make sense."
Unfortunately one of my key problems with Syriana was the 'government is really stupid' and plot holes kept reminding me it was just a movie.

( Full review with spoilers )

Sorry for the silence. Christmas was somewhat stressful, but it's over now. We're still all sick. I'm in danger of developing a sinus infection, so I've been getting steamed four times a day at the suggestion of my doctor. You pour boiling water into a bowl, stick your face over the bowl, cover your head with a towel and then breathe in the steam for five minutes. He also told me about Mucinex. I didn't know they had time-release tussin. It's improved my life a great deal. I originally went to the doctor to get cough medicine with codeine, but I ended up only needing it one night so far.

C plays World of Warcraft with a hunter character. Special K and I watch. Special K likes the hunter's pet bear and killing the animals. Special K says "You can make different faces and dress them up." i.e. play different characters, usually dwarves or gnomes, little people. She kills lots of animals. She makes them jump and dance. She also enjoys making the hunter jump and run around in circles. She finds new and interesting ways to get the hunter killed like running the hunter into the loch and getting eaten by the loch ness monster. I like the hunter, because she lives off the land skinning animals. C likes exploring the world and solving problems that don't involve work or Little T.

C took me out to dinner for my birthday so we actually got to spend a couple hours alone, a rare treat these days. C gave me the new Madonna album "Confessions on The Dance Floor" It goes back to her old 80's dance roots, except as C says "now she can sing". I enjoyed the album, especially "Hung Up". C also gave me some amber.

Thanksgiving was somewhat stressful. No family drama or anything. Though we did have an expected visitor who stayed on Friday for 4 hours. We could only stay one night, so that cut down our family time a lot. It's very difficult and stressful to sleep with Little T. His pump is very loud. He wakes up easily, so he woke up when we came to bed. Special K sleeps with us and gropes us in bed. So nobody slept well.

First Non-fiction Manuscript
26,146 / 80,000 (32.7%)

It's a waning moon and very bad stuff is going down with a friend of C's. C is helping as best he can and he can't take the kids along. So I can't be gone for hours and hours next weekend. My ankle's slowly getting better, but not better enough to navigate the extensive walking needed for public transportation. I can't drive that far. It also turns out that none of the other participants is coming down from the peninsula, so I can't get a ride. Bottom line: I can't go to the writing workshop next week. I'm really bummed about it, but it wasn't meant to be right now. One bad thing happening, okay? But three things are coinciding to make this not happen. There will be other workshops. This is a fiction workshop. And my current obssession is my non-fiction book.

I could sort of it see it coming when I sprained my ankle. I figured that sweetie that he is, C would drive me if it came down it. But it just felt a chain of events had been set in motion. Don't get me wrong. I do believe in free will. But I also believe in chaos theory. I believe a butterfly's wing can change the pattern of the weather in the amazon three thousand miles away.

shadesong blogged about how she and her husband shared an inside joke. My husband C and I share a lot too. A lot of them wouldn't even seem funny to outsiders even if we explained the whole story. It takes a special person and a special situation to laugh in the ER. We make a lot of jokes about death too. I think it stems entirely from the past year. We make a lot of jokes that relate to stuff the kids do. The kids have a wide range of peculiar gestures and noises that they make at various stages of development. Sadly I can't blog about most of them lest the teenaged versions of these kids google this blog and descend upon me with all the wrath of outraged adolescence. But you dear reader would laugh and find them sweet and cute.

Well okay I'll share two things with you. Right now Little T is so delighted with the sheer ability to move. Just before he leans forward to move he gives this little grunt of sheer effort mixed pleasure. Sometimes we'll grunt in the same way.

When both kids are particularly outraged about something, they'll fall silent and open their mouths wide to draw in a lung full of air so they can scream their loudest. Special K was kicked out of the nursery for being too loud. And Little T was the loudest in the NICU until he got his first dose of Interferon. C and I will now open our mouths wide to express manic outrage.

Today is C's 39th birthday. I hope he has many more years left in him. Lots of love.

Little T just learned how to raspberry. He raspberries with great concentration and effort with a very serious expression. Then he grins hugely. It's really cute. He also said "bah" once for the first time yesterday. Perhaps the two are related. In any case, I think raspberries are a milestone. His OTs keep asking if he does them.

I told Special K a month or so ago that she must never go into someone's house or car unless Mummy or Daddy says it's okay, even if it's someone she knows. Today she told me that our nanny asked her if she would go with her to her friend's house and she said no. Now this may be the same incident that I talked to her and our nanny about a month ago. Special K's sense of time is a little strange. However it does mean that the lesson has stayed with her. I consider this her first lesson in personal safety. It's too bad I have to start teaching her so young.

For the first time since Little T was born, C is more than a hundred miles away and will be gone more than 24 hours. Definitely a milestone. He's at my brother's bachelor's weekend and will be back later today. So far so good.

And I'll end on a kid-related, but non-milestone related note: As soon as Special K falls asleep, Little T wakes up. How does he know? He's upstairs in his cot. She's downstairs sleeping on the couch.

I just realised I'm much more nervous about being a bridesmaid at my brother's wedding than a bride at my own. I knew I was marrying the right guy, so the rest was gravy. I figured if I made a total idiot of myself at my wedding, at least I'd end up with C at the end of it.

We had a lovely wedding, even though apparently someone did try to ruin it by making a big fuss. However we didn't hear about it until afterwards and this person fortunately only seemed to affect those immediately around them.

It was one of the best days of my life. I was filled with joy. People blog all the time about love and sometimes it sounds so simple and it isn't really. But I do have one simple thing to say about love. To me, love means that occasionally if it's only for a moment, you honestly and truly believe the person is the most amazing being on earth and it's because they did something that lights you up. For me, one of those moments was my wedding day. But weddings are often like that. There have to be others. Another for me was when C truly laughed at my silly jokes when Little T was so sick.

Sometimes people mistake love for I think X is the most amazing being on earth, because I love X. That's not love. That's tautology. If you never feel that way about your SO, it's not love, it's desperation or low self-esteem or something else that keeps you with that person. These feelings of amazement are usually fleeting and they never last. But those moments keep me going in the bad times. IMO sheer will power won't do it alone if you never have the moments of joyful amazement. It's also not worth it. Making a marriage last is hard work. Why do it if not for joy?

Some folks who've been married for a long time say you need to be able to fall in love again. I think I'm saying the same thing.

Yesterday my husband C mowed the lawn with a push mower and accidentally maimed a salamander. I guess C mows the lawn so rarely that the salamander didn't run away and its face got sliced by the blades. He put it in a jar with some water, rocks and grass and it hung out with us. It's probably an arboreal salamander "Aneides Lugubris". It was bleeding for a while, then it stopped and moved around a little. I'm not sure how long it'll survive with only one eye and half a mouth, but this morning C will release to a friend's house that has a pond and no grass to mow. Good luck and long life to you, little salamander.

I got stressed out today, because

Little T had granulation tissue from his g-tube, but at first we couldn't figure out what it was.

Little T cried a lot and refused to be put down for hours from all the poking about from us figuring things out

My sister sent me an email that the top for our bridesmaids' costumes for my brother's wedding is on sale and therefore going out of stock quickly. The web site claimed that a nearby store had it, but when I called, they said they didn't. I'm between sizes, so I need to try two sizes on to see which one fits. Stress stress.

I realised I don't have a dress to wear for my hs reunion this weekend. C said "You have opera clothes." Yes, but these are a) for San Francisco and b) too formal for a hs reunion dinner. More panic and stress.

Clothes shopping stresses me out, because it's never clear that throwing more money, or more time at the problem will achieve the desired result, a me that looks good. I'm 5'8" and have an hourglass figure. Well, okay, I used to have an hourglass figure before two kids. Now I have a figure that looks great in the right clothes, but in the wrong clothes, I look fat, and worse pregnant. Not that being pregnant is so bad, but it's highly embarrassing for both of you if someone says you are and you're not. Most clothes are designed for shorter women, or fatter women, or unreal women like Barbie. I'm not tall enough for "tall women clothing".

So I go shopping in the vain hope I can find something that fits and I like. I wish I knew how to accomplish, except by going to stores and trying things on. I wish there was some sort of Amazon thing for clothes "If you liked this dress, here's another dress you may like." IMO clothes are still in the preInternet era. Some marketing guru figures that women love to shop. Maybe some other women. Not me. If you hate to shop for clothes too, shout it out, sister! Fundamentally, to me, clothes shopping is flailing in the dark. I hate that.

It's stressful. Here's how I react to stress. First my heart starts pounding and my breathing quickens. Then I get a headache. Then my stomach starts to hurt and finally if I get stressed enough, I feel light-headed and nauseated. Under extreme cases, I simply shut down. This is different from remaining calm. I'm far from calm. I'm a soda pop bottle. If you can get me to open up, I fizz all over the place. It's messy and inchoate and quite ineffectual. With C, I don't shut down, I just start yelling at him. Needless to say, he doesn't appreciate it. This time I didn't yell. I just fizzled for a bit until C got me to calm down and decide what to do.

C called the nurse who said that the cream I got from Little T's last GI apt should suffice.

I ordered the two sizes online. I have to pay $10 in shipping, and I have to return the one that doesn't fit, but at least in that case, throwing more $$ and time at the problem seems to have solved it.

At C's suggestion, I called a friend to go shopping with tomorrow. I still may not find a dress, but at least I get to spend time with a friend.

My movement disorder worsens under stress, but a friend from hs commented that it was a lot better when she saw me after an absence of several years. I no longer try to control the amount of stress I experience. After Little T was born, that was impossible anyway. I try to control my actions and take better care of myself.

When I gave birth, waves of pain cascaded over me and sometimes I thought I couldn't handle it, then I'd start to panic and everything would get worse. I learned to try to remain calm and just ride the wave, because eventually it would pass. For me, the feeling that this moment of intense pain will never end is the worse. But all things in life pass. So if I know what I'm supposed to do, I usually remain relatively calm under intense situations or crises. It's when I don't know what to do that I freak out. Fortunately as I get older, I encounter more situations and learn better what to do in each. Or at least I have C to calm me down while I figure things out. I love that man.

Poor C had to take Little T to the hospital at 6am for T's 7:30am surgery. Thanks to our nanny, I was able to have breakfast with K, then drive over to the hospital just in time to see T before he was sent off to surgergy. Our nanny dropped off K at preschool. The operation went well. The surgeon said there was no bleeding either removing the Broviac or putting in the Mic-key gastronomy tube. T took a long time to wake up, but when he finally did, he started crying loudly. This actually reassured me, because with the bad anesthesia experiences he's had, he just whimpers or worse just stares up at me, scared. It took some time to calm him down. Clearly he was hungry, because when I held him, he still cried, but Daddy was okay. Even though I'm no longer a source of food, he still expects me to feed him.

It took a while for us to get a room and it's very noisy next to the nurses' station and another crying baby, but hopefully we'll only be there 48 hours. T is quite fussy, because his stomach hurts from the stitches and because he's not allowed to have anything in it for 24 hours. Also the Broviac site hurts too. Unfortunately it all hurts badly enough that he needs morphine to deal with the pain. He's already tried pulling out the stitches, but fortunately they appear to be firmly sutured in. And it's good he's well enough to protest.

I have more to say about the day, including the fact that C gave blood for the first time in over a decade, but I'm really quite exhausted. Both C and I had trouble sleeping last night. And C had to set the alarm at 5am in order to get up. I didn't really get back to sleep after that. I would have gone with him, but I didn't want to wake Special K up at 5am.

On Saturday C and I had our first evening out in months. We dined at Sauce. It's a new restaurant and it was fairly quiet. The staff was pretty efficient and very pleasant. Unfortunately the food had problems. Maybe we just picked the wrong dishes, or maybe it just needs to work things out. The ingredients were all fresh and things were cooked properly, but the different tastes and texture didn't meld well together.

The concept of the restaurant is comfort food meets Californian Asian-Fusion cuisine. The theme ingredient a la Iron Chef was bacon. Now I love bacon, but bacon has a very strong flavor and can overwhelm any dish. My entree was tender warm salmon over a bed of spinach. The bacon in the spinach drowned out the delicate flavour of the salmon, so I ate the salmon separately. Unfortunately the bacon combined with horseradish dressing overwhelmed me. C's meatloaf was also wrapped in bacon, but it fared better. My starter, chicken soup, was delicious and subtle, but at first I thought it was bland. I was eating it with the bits of roast chicken that came with the soup. Unfortunately the roast chicken was very dry and sucked the taste out of my mouth. Once I set it aside, I enjoyed my soup a lot more.

Then we went to our first opera of the summer season, The Pearl Fishers It's one of Bizet's early works and it's no Carmen. The first half of the opera I kept getting distracted by the clunky plot and the clearly Christian metaphors and concepts with Hindu gods occasionally thrown in. I read part of a review in the program that said the relationship between Zurga and Nadir was all about Leila. Then the second half, the opera finally made sense and I was sucked into the opera. ( Warning: spoilers ahead. )

This morning at breakfast C gave me an anniversary present a few months late. He had given me a DVD on our actual anniversary of February 23, but it wasn't in theme. We give gifts based on the theme of the anniversary either traditional or modern. Quite silly, but it's led to gifts we wouldn't otherwise give or creative interpretation of gifts. This year I gave C a lovely leather jacket. And he gave me a leather case, which contained a Canon PowerShot SD400 digital camera. It's much smaller than our old Powershot S30 and takes pictures much faster too. I love it!

Using my new camera, C. took some videos of Special K jumping up and down and she hammed it up! She kept asking to see the video again and again and shrieked with delight at seeing herself. Half an hour later she said she was tired and needed to go to bed. Maybe we should take videos every night!

C has been sick since Labour Day and I'm going insane.
C pushed himself hard at work to meet a deadline and afterwards he got sick. He finally went to the doctor on Tuesday and got some antibiotics. Every time he starts to get better. He has a relapse and gets worse again. I don't know how mothers with two kids do it. Normally I don't feel C is a kid, but right now I do. I have to keep making him go to bed.

I'm going insane. Special K is teething which makes her very fussy and demanding. Yesterday I got a plugged duct and it was sooo painful!! I soaked it in warm salt water and had Special K breastfeed from it a lot and it was feeling better. But then last night while breasfeeding, she started fussing a lot and thrashing around, and kicked and hit my very sore boob. I started crying because it hurt so bad. Then C got all grumpy about it, because he was trying to sleep.

Normally I go talk to my mama, but she's out of the country and not reachable.