ugh. the let 2 days have lazy. my weekend was busy with friends (awesome!) but very little sleep. Monday morning saw me with an extra hour at work, an extra caffeine pill, and a doctor appointment in the middle of the day - so no nap. i napped and read not feeling like doing much of anything that afternoon and evening. ordered pizza, watched TV with my Little Man and fell asleep on the couch.

Tuesday morning - hit repeat. at least the lazy fall asleep on couch part. ugh. i had so much i wanted to do, as usual on my day off, and did nada. i suppose it's good that i slept - maybe my body really needed it. i'm going to blame it on the rain (yes i lip-sang that). it's rained both days so far and i had wanted to work outside, walk the dog and i just generally work better in the sunlight. i'm a sunlight kind of girl. the whole kitchen and big room have extra big windows on all the walls with white gauzy curtains. when the sun is out the place is so bright and breezy - you can't help but be positive and inspired to something - anything.

but not the past 2 days. rain. while i have loved the sound of the hard rain showers, my knee and left leg and hands have been really achy.

but you know what's nice? to just had a blah day or two because of the rain and not be depressed. i guess it's a win after all.

At my husbands workplace he was asked by his Vice President to meet with him a very large player, a woman from Japan. My husband says she was super tiny and extremely polite although a bit hard to understand with her heavy accent. i was very proud of him as he whipped out the only Japanese he knew "hajimemashite" (which he got from me)and impressed this important patron. He advised her that he had a wife who wished she was Japanese and she told him that she understood as she had a daughter who was in love with all things American.

Awhile later my husband received a gift from the woman to bring home to me. she gave him a small red bean paste cake and small green tea cake roll. Apparently she always brings food from Japan with her as she doesn't really like American food. Anyway, both were fabulous. the cake part of the red bean pastry was a little chewy,but i do love me some red bean paste. but i just now tried the free tea cake roll - it had a thin spiral of red bean paste in it - heavenly. it was such a light flavor. almost the consistency of a pound cake, if a little lighter. yummy.

my husband is awesome.

I have been practicing my cursive lately. My little man is learning/practicing it in school now and it is really hard for him. i agreed with him that it IS hard. mostly my own distaste for cursive script has come from trying to read other people's handwriting. While some scripts are pretty, i find that most people write in a cursive whose intelligibility is known only to they and sometimes even eludes the writer himself. i may in fact fall into the latter category.

so in a show of solidarity with my son and to be sure that i am not one of those people whose script is beyond recognition, i have been doing some cursive now and then.

I find that my hand hurts a lot. i like to blame it on carpel tunnel, and i'm sure a huge factor is that, but i seem to recall my hand hurting even when i was a youngster. and man and i out of practice! i have to write sooooo slooooooowly. but at the same time i find the process to be ... quiet. internal. almost meditative. i consider now and then that i night like to branch out into calligraphy. i know that among eastern cultures the art of calligraphy is a meditative one. and in my farthest wildest dreams i see myself studying the art of illumination.

squish squash sling that slang
i'm always right back at ya
like my - boomerang

- Sokka, Southern Water Tribe

There is a website out there called Skinny is Curvy. i found it by searching for plus size models. i have been finding that seeing pictures of large women in gorgeous clothes and great poses is really inspiring. plus it's helping for research for a story idea i am tumbling in my head. ANYWAY, this website whose name to m indicated a support of plus size people, had nothing but comment about gross and unhealthy the models looked. i was like WTF...

i have to say that as a large woman i have rarely come in contact with people who were openly rude to me about my weight. i know it's out there ... but i was quite shocked to read the thing these people posted; comments about how plus size people shouldn't wear bikinis because we should have to look at that; how plus size models should all be round and firm; how plus size models are just promoting unhealthy lifestyles; how plus size models obviously don't take care of themselves, eat too much and don't exercise...

i was appalled. mostly because it seemed a site that was supposed to empower large size women. i would like to think that even if you are skinny you would be offended by these comments. please do check it out and let me know what you think.

I have discovered that my medication really does work. And that I really do need to take it everyday, or it stops working. I know this because I didn't take it yesterday. And the day before i took it at the wrong time. and i think i either missed the time or a dose a few days ago too. Today i had a total crash. i knew that sitting around watching TV was not the right thing to do. i knew there things i needed to do, wanted to do even, but couldn't bring myself to leave the couch. my whole body was achy and i felt all i needed to do was sleep and it would be all better. inside my brain was telling myself that this was NOT the case, that i needed to get up and clean the kitchen, take the dog outside, that these things would make me feel better; that i needed to MOVE. but i couldn't just bring myself to care. yet i did care; i feel guilty for not moving, for being like i was. i could see that it would only get worse; i would be having negative personal thoughts soon and i would become truly depressed.

Then it occurred to me about half way through the day that i hadn't taken my meds. I got up, took them, took a shower, took an actual nap (not depression induced lethargic dozing)andy feel so much better. i guess i thought the medicine was something that stayed in your system. i didn't realize that it went through my system so quickly. but apparently it does.

so it has now been reinforced that i am not crazy, that my depression is not all "just in my head". it really is some kind of chemical imbalance. yea for meds.

one year ago yesterday i was rushed to the hospital with a massive blood clot blocking one lung entirely and two-thirds of the other one. the doctors gave me a 10% chance of survival. They told my husband to make "plans". my husband had to call my mother, who was taking care of our son, and tell her they might lose me. my husband sent the night by my side. my father spent the night in the waiting room. I spent the night sitting upright with tubes in my neck, balloons in my sinuses and blood trickling down my throat and out of my nose. i remember leaning forward slightly, breathing out of mouth and trying hard not to swallow because every time i did i felt the balloons at the back of my throat (where the nose enters) and wanted to gag.

the morning came and just like this morning i was still here. and it's good to be so.

My 10 (almost 11) year old son saw the word 'hooker' the other day in something and laughed. My husband asked him why he thought it was funny and did he know what a 'hooker' was. Little Man said that of course he knew what a hooker was. So my husband asked him "what's a hooker?" and Little Man replied "a naked lady hitch-hiking."

My ten year old is having his first sleep over at our house tonight. He is so tickled to have a friend stay the night. We moved the twin mattress from his old room onto the floor next to the bed in the new room and they are up there now in jammies ready for bed either playing with their DSes or using the 3DS to make silly videos, made sillier by then running them backwards. What ever it is they are being pretty quiet. Maybe i should go check on them....

I'm thrilled at how excited the little man is. Nothing makes me happier than to see him happy.

i am spending my Valentine's Day curled up all snuggly warm on the couch with a severely stuffed up nose that burns at the touch of a tissue breathing through my mouth with dry cracked lips a sore scratchy throat and larynx that refuses to vibrate appropriately causing some sort of small squeaky whisper to come out when i talk. My red, teary, leaking and now somewhat sore from rubbing, eyes just add to the beauty that is me on this fabulous feb 14th.

i'm telling you, nothing says love like a bacteria invading your sinuses.