Last Blog

This is it! So long and good night! It has been fun.

I wish anyone who reads this peace, love, joy happiness, laughter, and truth.

Peace out!

Friends

I love my friends. Over the years I have collected some very special people who know me well and really get me, an I them.  This is so special. True and deep connections with others is so great when you can have that. Wherever I am in my journey of life my friends are there to just be there with me. They allow me to see myself in my greatness when I am at my lowest and call me on my shit when I am out of line. They are my soul sister's and brother's and I am so grateful to share my life with them.

Christmas is almost here!

We are already trying to get holiday cards out, planning the Christmas meal, and thinking about Christmas gifts. Where did the year go? It seems like last week that it was summer. I am having Christmas eve at my house this year. I am going to cook something yummy. The tree is already up and decorations are hung. I am not looking forward to holiday shopping. The crowds never used to bother me but now that my time is so precious, I can barely stand waiting in lines to indulge in the mainstream consumerism. But, I will. One day I will live in the middle of no where and just live without hustling in this rat race. Until then, Merry Christmas and Happy Everything!

My boy is growing up

I cannot believe that my little boy is turning 5! Time goes by so fast now that I have a child. No really, it's all a blur. He is super smart and he keeps me on my toes for sure. We will have a party for him at our house with a few of his friends. It usually rains on his birthday and with this years weather I am pretty sure it will rain again. My son wants a Peter Pan party this year, what a surprise. This kid is Peter Pan crazy. I think it's kinda cool that he is into book characters. He has actually never seen the cartoon or film. He has only read the book and seen the recorded play.  He is really getting good at sword fighting too.

To Christmas tree or not to Christmas tree that was the question

Well we got the tree. I had a hard time deciding if I wanted to get a living tree or not. But I justified my actions of pulling a dead tree into my house by the fact that thousands and thousands of pine trees are planted each year to appease this holiday tradition, which is so nostalgic to many of us, and that this is sort of green. All of the oxygen that is being produced from these temporary trees is good right? I don't know. The tree looks nice though.

Ghostbusters!

Bill Murray, Dan Akroid and Segourney Weaver? Come on! This movie was hilarious and awesome. Dan Akroid was one of the writer's of this film along with Harold Ramis and Rick Moranis (R.M. not credited) Of course it was spoofy ass ghost movie but please, it had a ginormous marshmallow man that terrorized New York! I love it! If you were born anytime between the 50"s and early 80's you know you liked it too.

4 AM Call Time

My Hubby has been getting his butt up at 3 AM to get to work at 4 AM. This is crazy to me. Then he gets home at about 5:30 PM. He works so hard and really long hours. The good thing is, is that we get to see him at dinner time. Usually, he start between 6 or 8 in the morning and wont get home until we are in bed already. It's kind of strange to live with someone that you never see. Anyway, the film biz is crazy with its hours but it pay well.

Twin Placentas

I am dehydrating twin placentas! I think this is so cool! These babies were born at 32 weeks and they will spend time in the NICU. The capsule that will come from these amazing organs will give the mom hormone balancing, which will balance her mood and increase milk production.  These placentas were much smaller than what I am used to so to me they were cute. Haha! I know that must sound weird but when you look at the regular sized ones all the time I guess the mini's are just, well... cute!

Mouser

My cat, Flower, is the best mouser. When we moved into out place it was infested with rats and field mice. I didn't want to leave poison or those nasty glue traps, so instead we adopted some cats. The first cat we rescued is an all black male named, Ducky-Chocolate. He is pretty much good for cuddling and playing. From time to time he will hunt an easy prey. But he never goes out of his way. Flower on the other-hand is a cold-hearted killer. She kills anythings that moves if it is smaller than her. Since we brought Flower home all the mice and rats went away. My neighbors even said that she chases there rodents away too. So I guess Flower is actually the neighborhood hero. Go Flower!

no grains

Every time I eat grains I feel like crap. I am serious. Though I continue to eat them. I do have periods where I go without and I feel great during those times. I have tried many different diets. I was vegan for two years, that didn't feel good for my body. Then I was pescitarian, I liked that, butt something was missing. Then I went back to all meat but no dairy. Inn recent years I have found, through juice detoxing and food reintroduction, that the major killers for me are garlic, sugar, grains, and animal milk products. So basically, I am a meat and vegetable girl. I am pretty paleo I guess.

Conspiracy?

This video shows that if you fold a U.S. $20 bill in to an airplane that the falling twin towers are depicted on it. There is a new video about the $100 bill as well as others.  I know you can make anything look like something if you believe it enough but this actually does look very similar. I don't know if I can get on board with the whole devil, end times scare but I do believe that the government is corrupt. I also know that 9/11 was planned because the buildings fell in a way that buildings fall only in a planned demolition with explosives. I also know that the heat from the flames would not ever get hot enough to make a building collapse like that. I call bullshit for sure. I do believe that people really did die so I am not trying to disrespect anyone who lost someone in 9/11. I'm just saying that the shit show was staged and a strategic move on the governments part. 

The Croods

I put on The Croods today for my kid while I was writing and I noticed something strange. This movie is about cave people but the women in the movie had no armpit hair. I personally rock the armpit hair and I am damn proud of it. I am also glad that my son will have the imprint that women are supposed to have hair on their bodies. I mean what the hell? These are friggen cave people! Dreamworks couldn't even sex it down a little for the cave girl? So friggen lame!

T.V.

I make it a rule to not let my kid watch T.V. but today I had to let him have hours of it to finish my essay. Luckily he is really into Peter Pan, so I just bought the Broadway play recording and he actually watched it about three times. I figured that is at least real people acting without editing or crazy cartoon characters doing things that my son will physically be able to do. Have you ever seen kids try to reenact the movements that cartoons do? For instance when a cartoon character is going to run real fast and their legs start spinning in place like wheels, then they take off zooming? It's kind of fun to watch but it's scary to think that they are wasting their brain space on crap that is absolutely of no use to the a and completely contradictory to reality.

Ishmael

I wan to thank my professor for instructing me to read Ishmael. It has been recommended to me over the years but I just never picked it up. Now I feel like I wasted a bunch of time. I could of had this great read in my psyche for years now. I am seriously grateful though. I loved this book so much. I talk about it all the time and share about it with my friends. I am totally a fan and now recommend this book. I love that Ishmael is a gorilla who speaks telepathically to his students. Sometimes while I was reading the book, I forgot that it was written by a human. Quinn breaks down our culture so well and really opens the readers eyes to what we look like from an outside perspective. If anyone is into soul searching and self-analyzation, they know that having a grasp on your patterns and behaviors is major in making real changes in who you are. Quinn paints a great picture of who we were and what we have become as a species so well that it is almost depressing to take it all in. There is something inspiring though about knowing that if enough people got on this same trip that we might be able to save this sinking ship, which is going down fast.

Compare and Contrast essay

I seriously did not think I would be able to finish my essay that was due. I had a busy weekend and prior work week. Plus, I had a three day cluster headache which put me in urgent care and completely set me back. I am so relieved that I finished it. I want to thank my class buddy, Denise, for helping me out by staying connected through phone and email. You rock! I am excited to start on my final essay tomorrow. I hope to get this one done before the deadline but who the hell knows what life may bring this week. I can only hope for the best.

Cluster headache part 2

Wednesday morning, I open my eyes and my headache was still there. It is so fricking annoying to wake up with the same headache for days. I was supposed drop off the tests I did the day before at the midwife's office, then meet the new nanny at the par to get my son acquainted. Somehow I managed to get out of the house but my eye was pounding with pain and closing by the minute. I made it to the midwife's office and dropped off the test. The second I got in the car I called our soon to be nanny and asked if she could meet us at urgent care instead of the park  I booked it downtown to the urgent care that has seen me before and the nanny agreed to meet us there. I was so grateful that my son was in a fairly good mood and was putting up with my unavailability. I set up an audiobook and he made the best of it. The nanny showed up and played with my son while I rocked back and forth with my head in my hands, moaning in agony.  I waited 45 minutes for them to assess me then another 15 minutes to be seen. Once I was in the room the nurse and doctor were asking me questions to assess my needs. I hate this part. I know what the hell I need and I want the friggen drug STAT! I know it is just standard of practice and that they have to do that. Anyway, I finally got my injection of immunitex and anti-nausea medication that I later found out was originally created as an anti-psychotic. Oh well, after about 20 minutes I started to feel minimal pain.  I thanked my new childcare and took my soon to the park after that. It was a pretty rough couple of days but somehow I made it.

Cluster Headache part one

Tuesday night during the last 3rd day visit I had to do, the headache I had all day turned into a cluster headache. My right eye started swelling and throbbing with pain. I started doing my deep breathing exercises and I took three tylenol and three ibuprofen.  I still had to make dinner and put my kid to bed. I fixed up something fast to eat and started getting my kid ready for bed.  I noticed my son had green mucus in his eye. "Oh crap!" I thought. My son had friggen pin eye and I had to treat it before I went to bed. I put some drops of breastmilk in his eyes and put him to bed. Once he fell a sleep I went to my bed and tried to relax to keep the headache from hell at bay. With breathing exercises I finally fell asleep waking up from time to time throughout the night, hoping I would make it through the night.

PKU

Once I attend a birth for the midwife I usually have to do the 3rd day postpartum visit at the client's home. This involves checking mom and babies vitals but also performing a PKU test on the baby. The PKU test is part of the California Newborn Screening program. A state mandated test which check for over 70 different metabolic diseases, which are all very rare but treatable if caught in time.
I really don't like doing the test that much because I have to poke the little babies foot. Sometimes I need to poke the babies foot 6 or seven times. The best scenario is when I only have to poke once.  It all depends on how fast the baby coagulates or not. There are six circles, about the size of a penny, that need to be completely saturated blood, front and back.  Some babies sleep through the whole thing, while others scream bloody murder. Sometimes the parents cry too. It is important that I remain calm and confident no matter how dramatic things get. Actually, I fell that I have gotten genuinely confident and that I cam able to handle any situation that may arise when performing that test.  I also know that at home we are doing things as humanely as possible because the mom is holding the baby the whole time and can breastfeed them if the baby wants to nurse. In the hospital the babies are separated from the moms and laid flat on their backs until the test is done.  I like the way we do the test and I am glad we offer an alternatives.

Back to back births

On Sat 11-30-13 I was called to two births back to back. I accrued very little sleep that day but I was in awe of both of the mamas. The first woman's water broke but had no labor contractions for a long time. But boy once they started things really moved, the baby was born just three hours later. This is very fast for a first time mama. The next mama had a more average length labor, around 18 hours. She was so calm though. Even when here baby's head was emerging none of us knew, except for the when the mama said ever so casually, "The baby's coming out now" in the same tone one would ask for someone to pass the butter at a dinner table. Both of the babies were little girls and very cute. I love being able to witness such an amazing, intimate time in peoples lives.

L.A. Hideaway

I love the fact that we have a place like Griffith Park in the Los Angeles area. Every time I take a hike in that area I get a little reprieve from the hectic life of the city. This particular day really felt like fall. It was a cloudy day with leaves out all over the ground and the creek. My son and I walk around  trying to find fairies.

Sometimes I meet colleagues up there for gatherings and meetings, as well as friends for hikes and catch-up time with the girls. There is a little coffee/tea shop up there called the Trails Café. They make great scones, quiches, and muffins that are so delicious. I am so grateful for this wonderful nature spot that we have so close to us in this big city.

Mmmm Thanksgiving

My stuffed, prosciutto wrapped pork loin was a success on thanksgiving. After three years I really have gotten this recipe down. After we enjoyed all the fixings, we finished off the meal with homemade apple pie. My son helped me roll out the dough.  It's fun to make memories like that together. My mom ate with us and then when we were done we drove over to my aunts for dessert. There we were joined with my cousins and my 92-year-old grandma. I love any excuse to spend time with my family especially when there's good food involved. 

I'm not sure what I'm going to cook for Christmas eve yet but I'm sure it'll be something great. I truly enjoy cooking for people I love, it must be the Italian in me. 

Christmas Parade

Ah, the annual Hollywood Christmas parade. It was nice to get out of the house for a second with the family and check out all the floats and participating marchers. It was so fun to watch my kid jump around, dance and get excited about all the different characters coming down the street. Also, it was great to see the Hollywood community gather for a local event. It was a good way to bring in the holiday cheer and to get ready for all of the Christmas hustle and bustle.