so less than one week before our scheduled vegas departure, my partner in crime at work, ali, turns up pregnant (more yay!) and can't go to a meeting in germany because her allergist and her ob have not yet coordinated and she just had a massive er-visit allergy attack and they do not want her out of the country in case it happens again. which is understandable. which meant i got one week notice that i would have to leave for germany the day after i got back to nyc from vegas. ali felt so totally guilty but whatever - it's not like she hasn't picked up my slack for the last five years, you know?

so basically it went like this:
sunday - mom and dad arrive from texas
monday - three oldest kids leave with mom and dad to texas
wednesday - me and d. leave for vegas
saturday - me and d. come back to nyc from vegas
sunday - i go to germany
tuesday - i come back from germany (after an 8-hour meeting)

wow. i was wrecked just from changing time zones so much.

vegas was amazing. we will definitely go back over and over. i know this because we bought a time share there (shhhh! don't tell our families, they would yell at us! and the kids don't know either because, well, they would tell our families, and they would yell at us!) i called j. and l., our new friend-couple, to tell them we should go there together next year. they love vegas and sounded like they thought it would be great. i have always longed to go on a real vacation, adults only, with friend-couples. that seems so mature and like real grown-ups do it. sometimes i want to be a real grown-up. mgm grand was gorgeous and nicely priced and huge with a river pool (which rapidly became fratboy city in the afternoon, ugh). it also had emeril's and we ate there and we were both very impressed, even d. who doesn't do impressed about anything. the hotel was too far on one end of the strip though - i would rather have had something more central (bellagio, venetian, etc.). possibly this is why those cost more...

the hotel in germany was like five feet from the airport (but somehow a 30 minute shuttle ride??) and there was, no shit, an airplane on top of it every three minutes. i live fifteen minutes from both jfk and laguardia and am totally used to the planes overhead, but these were so close i nearly shat myself. between the planes (fearful me conjured up scenes of the concorde crashing into that paris hotel) and the dogs (big loud scary junkyard dog types, whole packs of them) which were always set off by the planes, i got no freaking sleep at all. at two a.m. (german time, i think?) i got bored with trying. i turned on bbc world news (one of two english channels, all katrina all the time) and read the second sisterhood of traveling pants book. i am getting bored with it only two books in... so that was last week.

i have caught the baby bug again and am freaking out a little. binkey just had her second beautiful baby boy a few weeks ago. ali is expecting a st. patrick's day baby. my sister-in-law just had a gorgeous baby girl early yesterday morning.

i am stupidly excited for ali. she showed me the sonogram the other day and i literally burst into tears right at my desk. i am a dork supreme! i begged her to let me be her doula (i am dying to support someone in childbirth for some reason!) and she said yes!! but she has her wonderful boyfriend so she probably was kidding.

my SIL called me friday night at like half past midnight (i was still up). she called me after calling her sister, who also has four kids and knows a little(!) about birthing. she said she'd been having contractions for three hours and that for the past 30 minutes they had been every 5 minutes. i asked if she was dilated, she said 2-3 cm at the previous day's exam (with my ob/gyn, to whom i referred her with glowing reviews, and who told her when she called him to have a glass of wine and go to bed!! the horror!!) she said the contractions were painful and that she felt them in her bottom. i told her ignore dr. lush and go to the hospital like NOW. turns out i was right - she delivered my niece about four hours later. i was hoping she wouldn't get there in time for an epidural so she could share my exuberance about natural childbirth which i had to find by accident, but she did get one. and so i am still the freak who doesn't like pain meds...

at the hospital today her husband's family showed up while d. and i were there. and it sort of boggled me that i was uncomfortable sharing her with them. i noticed that while it was just me and d. she was all splayed on the bed totally comfortably and didn't bother to cover her legs with the sheet or fix her hair, and i thought it was odd. then when her in-laws arrived, i noticed she covered up, fiddled with her bun, cleared off the bed and her table to look nicer, etc. and when talking with them she seemed very very polite and possibly uncomfortable. they are nice people, don't get me wrong. but the fact that she has come to consider me part of the family in that a) she asked me for a referral to my ob, b) she called to get my opinion on her labor situation, and c) she seemed more comfortable with me and d. around than with her in-laws, all makes me feel very good. we have come a nice long way since i charged into the family ten years ago.

also. since the gas prices went so high (nearly $4/gallon here now!) d. thought we should buy a little economy car since i do most of the driving and usually alone or with only a couple of kids. this way he could have the minivan during the day if he needed it too. and the money we spend on gas will be much much less. we looked at a 2000 kia sephia today, it was a really cute car and a nice ride, only 60k miles. d. doesn't want it though, i think we both kind of have our hearts set on a saturn or a volkswagen. we are looking to buy privately now, having been burned by the last two dealerships we bought from. i've been looking at the ads for the past three days online, and so far 2 out of 3 that i responded to were wire transfer scams (there is a whole page on craigslist devoted to this stuff, but not on Yahoo! Autos which is where they were listed). craigslist seems pretty clean and is where i found the kia. the guy selling it was totally cool and nice and knew how to write and spell and stuff. i hate that i have to call him and tell him we're passing on it.

the volkswagens and the saturns are going to be hard to find in our price range i think. i want ideally a 2000 or newer, but will settle for a 98 or 99 at the right mileage (60k or less). and i only want to spend $2-3k, with $4k being absolute max. so i think we will probably never find it. but if we spend months looking, and in the process i find a great celica or civic or something like that i will settle.

i also found out that my cousin's apartment nearly got demolished by katrina in biloxi. he and his pregnant wife had to evacuate and take shelter at the army base with no electricity for five days. while they were there the men had to fend off armed would-be intruders (my cousin is military also) and when they got back home the complex was almost completely leveled. his building was standing but nothing past it all the way to the beach. and there was a six foot high pile of debris in front of his door that they moved and found a lady buried in. she was alive when they found her but sadly passed away later that day.

so it is weird, because even living in new york, september 11 fortunately did not personally touch me in any way except that i live in new york. it didn't happen to anyone i know, etc. but katrina kicked the ass of someone i used to babysit when i was in junior high and threatened his family.

life is so weird.

1 Comments:

Add a comment