Happy excuse to do something special day!

Well as everyone knows, I am not a fan of valentine's day. It is simply another day in the year that has convinced everyone in the world to feel required to buy candy and flowers and go out to a fancy dinner with their special someone. Now I know that for the single people in the world this day is yet another reminder of their singledom, but even for some of those in a relationship this day is just forcing love and romance down their throat.

Especially with working on and around holidays at a bakery I am engulfed in each and every holiday of the year so I am over holidays weeks before they actually arrive. So Valentine's day is a long finished holiday in my mind. I don't want heart shaped cookies or cute little candies of valentine's cupcakes. All just overly priced sweets that have no meaning because everybody in the world gets these treats on this oh so special day.

Last week I found out that I would work on the 13th and incredibly I would have the Sunday of Valentine's Day off. Not that I need to the day off to celebrate the occasion, but I decided that Kevin and I would do something "special." So my romantic planning skills yielded the decision that Kevin and I will go to the Campbell Farmers Market on Valentine's day. It is not because it is Valentine's day, it is simply because it is one of the first Sunday's since working at the bakery that I don't have to work and we are not out of town. Kevin and I have each independently gone to the farmer's market but never together and this just seemed like the perfect occasion.

Other than those extravagant plans Kevin and are going to have a casual normal weekend day except that I will cook breakfast. Scary considering I have never cooked bacon before in my life. In addition, Kevin did surprise me with the "All Edge Brownie Pan." He even baked brownies in it during the night so that when I woke up this morning the pan had already been tested. How sweet. I am most excited to have brownies for breakfast.

Here's hoping to a fun day with whatever you may do. Just enjoy the day with the one's you love whether they be a spouse, a friend, a pet, or your children. Take this commercialized holiday and simply spend time together. It is a free and yet very meaningful gift.

Happy "Let's Spend Time Together" Day! :-)

the day has finally arrived!!!

Today is the momentous day of my endoscopy. In just a couple of hours I will have to cease eating and drinking (including water....which is tough b/c i LOVE water). So for about 6 hours I will sit around waiting for my test, but come 3:30 hopefully there will be answers to my illness and pain.

Hoping for a successful and informative day.

**UPDATE: The endoscopy went fine and apparently everything looked normal. No problems on the stomach lining and all of the biopsies came back benign and with no infection. The doctor says great news which makes sense since there is no problem. Unfortunately it leaves me clueless as to why I have been in so much pain lately. I am going to step back from solving the problem for a while and just continue living my life until I am ready to go through more tests.

Hopefully everyone is healthy and happy......I at least have the happy part covered :-)

doctor, doctor.....give me the news

so much for no hospitals this year.....

vacation with my family turned a bit more excited when I landed myself in the E.R. overnight. First, let's cover how wonderful my vacation was. I got to work around the house with my dad which included cleaning up, painting my bathroom, painting the side of the house, patching a hole in a ceiling, and scraping off a popcorn ceiling and painting the ceiling. I also got to visit with my uncle, survive what seemed to be monsoon weather, went to the disneyland, volunteered, bought a dress and overall had an amazing time.

Amazing except for that wednesday night (after disneyland at least). I woke up in extreme pain and I don't mean stomach ache, I mean somebody is repeatedly stabbing me in the stomach from the inside and out. After some coaxing by my parents I agreed to go to the hospital. They took my vitals and gave me a room in the E.R.. A few blood tests, IV and some medication later they still did not know what was wrong with me and told my mom that I would stay overnight until they could do an ultrasound in the morning. I survived the night....in pain, but at least it was pretty entertaining for me with the monitors I was hooked up to. The following morning they rolled me to the ultrasound room....yes I got to be rolled around on a hospital bed. Talk about a super exciting thing :-D. Anyways back to the story. Ultrasound completed I stayed in my room and the shifts changed so I got a new doctor and a new nurse (sad b/c the original staff was super fun and made me laugh, and the doctor was quite good looking). My dad arrived and in no big surprising turn of events the ultrasound showed nothing. Yes they still have no idea what is wrong with me. They prescribed some pain medication and a proton pump inhibitor and said to follow up with my regular doctor and to eventually get an endoscopy.

Well I returned to northern california alive with my stomach still in one piece....I think. I emailed back and forth with my doctor and have now been given a referral to a gastroenterologist. As weird as this sounds....that is like winning the lottery for me. Now I just need to set up an appointment and say a prayer that this doctor will be able to solve my problems and complete the simple task of telling me why I am in pain.

So instead of hoping for a hospital free year.....since that has clearly failed, I will hope for a year in which I find out what is wrong with me and can successfully treat it and/or find ways of managing it. :-)

Hello 2010

Needless to say this year started off interesting....or is it more accurate to say that 2009 ended on a crazy note. Regardless of the technicalities, on new years eve I awoke at 2 am nauseous and proceeded to throw up for 7 hours and endure severe abdominal pain.

For the first time in my life I had to call work, or more accurately, have Kevin call my boss and let her know that there was no way I would be able to be back in northern california for work at 8am on new years day. The call went fine and just a few minutes later I announced that I needed to go to the hospital. Now if you know me, you know that I don't go to the hospital ever. The most recent trip before this was 8 years ago when I had my ulcer and was incapacitated with pain, so understandably I have to be in a great deal of pain to justify going to the hospital. I was in pain.

Kevin, his dad and I arrived in the emergency room easily dealt with the whole Northern vs. Southern CA Kaiser issue and they took my vital signs. No fever, normal blood pressure and a very high pulse. Probably about 15 minutes later I was escorted into one of the rooms in the back to wait for the doctor. I was alone and not sure what was going to happen. After waiting about half an hour Kevin arrived and what a relief that was. A little while after a nurse arrived and proceeded to give me an IV, anti-nausea medicine and morphine. They started all of the tests and I had to wait about 4 more hours for the results. After the whole ordeal, the doctor informed me that all of the tests came back normal. Not what I wanted to hear. I would have been happier to be able to blame the pain on something but alas I was not so lucky. He guessed that it was some form of gastritis and that it may have aggravated my old ulcer but no real conclusions were made.

I was released, picked up a prescription and headed back to Kevin's parents house. I slept, only felt a little pain, until 9 that evening. All of the pain returned and I was about ready to go back to the hospital. The next thing I remember is waking up the next morning on the couch and Kevin asleep on the floor next to me. I felt "ok", this being a relative term since I was still in pain but could at least move around a little bit. I convinced Kevin to pack up the car and we headed back home around 10am. I was glad to be going home and glad the pain had significantly decreased.

We made it home ready to start the new year. In the week or so that has gone by I have returned to work. I am feeling much better although still sick. My stomach does not like it when I eat which is a challenge because I love food. I am on a restricted bland diet which is frustrating because it eliminates some of my favorite foods but it helps with reducing the pain so I will sacrifice for now.

Hopefully as the year progresses my stomach will fully recover and I will be back to eating my normal foods and living my normal life without ridiculous stomach pain, but for I will go and eat some pasta or a turkey sandwich to get me through the day.

I hope everyone had a more pleasant new years than I did and I am hoping that everyone has a fabulous enjoyable and healthy 2010. :-)

What is a food quest?

While I'm sure there is some official term called a food quest, in the lives of Kevin and I it is an adventure that Kevin gets to go on.

Throughout our relationship Kevin has had an amazing to power to make me try and eventually like new foods. Just a few of the new foods in my repertoire are sushi, avocados, gourmet pizza, Indian food, Thai food, Hawaiian food....and I'm sure that list could go on forever.

While we have made good progress expanding my food horizons there is still a long way to go. So a few months back in a spur of the moment decision Kevin and I invented what we know as a "food quest." Simply put it is when Kevin goes out without me to find a place to get takeout but the catch is that the place must be a restaurant that we have never eaten at and the more unique the place the better. I'm not sure what the first food quest was but on the many food quests that have occurred I have been able to try kabobs, a variety of Mexican restaurants, new Indian restaurants, and Yiassoo (Greek food) that is now one of Kevin's favorite restaurants.

I'm sure some of you are asking why must Kevin go out without me and it is because I am too judgmental of restaurants. If Kevin and I went out to eat I would simply keep saying no to restaurants without even knowing what kind of food they have....my decision is based simply on the neighborhood and the building, because I get nervous that I won't like it. If Kevin goes out and gets the food without me, I will not be able to say no. The food he gets is the food we will eat which is a good way to get me to try new food.

Food quests are yet another method to increase my food repertoire and it is also fun for Kevin because he gets to go through yelp reviews and/or drive around aimlessly to find our next food adventure.

May we continue to quest for new and fun food :-)

Saturday Adventures

Starting a few weeks ago Kevin and I decided to start Saturday adventures. The first adventure was going to the Star Trek exhibit at the Tech Museum. Along with visiting the tech museum we always get Pita Pit which is wonderful since it was one of staple food throughout college. We had lunch and got to the museum quite early and made it through the whole exhibit in a reasonable amount of time. After leaving the tech museum we were not sure what to do, so Kevin decided we should go on a driving adventure. We drove up Stevens Creek Blvd into the hills which was fun, we stopped by the Stevens Creek Dam and Reservoir which was quite pretty and then continued through the windy roads. The roads became more narrow and the cliff height increased making me ever more nervous so I had to constantly remind Kevin to slow down. We finally made it out of the hills into Saratoga and we drove around a little bit considering I have never been around downtown Saratoga. After all of this fun driving we finally returned home. It was a completely fun but rather exhausting day....but it was the start of our Saturday adventure tradition :-)

Last Saturday I got to decide what we would do and I decided that we would go to the Harvest Festival in San Mateo. Poor Kevin was woken up early so that we could drive the 45 minutes or so up to the San Mateo fair grounds. We got there early so that hopefully there would not be too many people. Once in we got to see all of the different booths. Most were clothing and jewelry things, and not to mention the excessive amount of Christmas merchandise. We were able to find the food booths which were our focus for the rest of the festival. Kevin ended up tasting a ton of different food, and in the end we ended up purchasing beef jerky, olive oil and vinegar and a few kinds of delicious fudge (very berry raspberry white chocolate fudge is AMAZING!!!). After looking at all of the booths we sat down and got some food. We were able to listen to the musical acts performing while relaxing and eating lunch. After all of these fun times it was only noon....so Kevin decided where we would have a driving adventure too. We got back in the car and headed to the freeway towards Half Moon Bay. Neither Kevin nor myself had ever been there so it was quite fun to drive around, we made it there and then decided to drive down Highway 1. While on the highway Lionel texted Kevin asking if we wanted to go mini golfing....so our adventure continued. We continued down highway 1 to San Gregorio and took a windy road back to the freeway.....the road was relatively empty but quite beautiful. We made it back to freeway after me freaking out that we would run out of gas and we then headed down to Sunnyvale. We met Lionel and Jillian at mini golf and had a rousing game where Kevin showed off his crazy golf skills and Lionel showed off his excessive putting strength. After the round of mini golf Kevin and I played in the arcade and then headed home. We were both exhausted by the time we got home but what a wonderful Saturday it had been.

Today is the third Saturday adventure for us and we are going to walk to downtown Campbell to the Holiday Craft Faire. I'm sure it will be overflowing with Christmas stuff but it should be fun for Kevin and myself.

After weeks of doing nothing on Saturdays I think we have finally figured out how to make the most of our one day a week together. Hopefully this tradition works out and we have tons of fun...and hopefully I panic less in large groups of people. May the new traditions of our relationship continue bringing us years of excitement :-)

Quilt of Memories

Last weekend Kevin and I went down to Los Angeles for our engagement party and to spend the weekend with family. It was all quite nice and we got to show my parents the Unitarian Universalist church where the wedding will be in 2 years.

Anyways, while there I went through more of my stuff in my old room. I didn't get rid of much stuff....i'm too attached to all of my toys and books that I can one day give to my own children. So the toys and books remain on shelves and in boxes waiting to be used again one day. I did bring back a few odds and ends but the most important thing or should I say things is a huge box of old tee shirts and sweatshirts. Each shirt has a personal meaning to me and I have held on to them for nearly 20 years.

Box full of shirts to make a quilt

I decided that instead of leaving them in a drawer or in a box in a closet I would make a quilt out of them. I thought this would be an easy task. A few snip snips, arrange them in a quilt shape and sew together. Needless to say I was wrong.

Once I started sorting through the pile today I found it difficult to even fathom cutting them up, which is odd considering some of them I have never even worn, I have just kept them because I liked the design on the front. Regardless of that, I looked online for how to make a quilt out of tee shirts and everyone makes it sound as easy as I had first thought....but I have way too many shirts to make just one quilt.

As I sorted through the pile figuring out how big the quilt tiles should be I realized that some of the designs are only about 2 inches in size while some are almost 2 feet. So now I am trying to figure out the best way to proceed since I will obviously need more than one quilt. So to get some inspiration I looked online at many t-shirt quilts that people have done and I found one that I especially like. I found it through google images and it is on keywestquilts.com. You can see it below:

Quilt I found online that I really like

It is a classic style and oddly girlish but I love the simplicity of it. Of course I would never use pink as it would clash with everything I own but I think I am going to make my quilts similar to this one.

After more than an hour of obsessing over this t-shirt quilt I was feeling a little overwhelmed, so I piled everything back in the box and put it in the other room. I guess I'll work on it another time, but at least I have narrowed down how I want the quilt to look.....now to just get up the guts to cut my precious t-shirts. Hopefully with time I will realize that the memories in the t-shirts will be transformed into a quilt of memories.