Celeb Sightings and more

It has been a while since my last post. My teaching job at Cal State Long Beach University started again a couple weeks ago and the prep part has kept me pretty busy. I had to set up this whole website thing and review a million pages of school policies and hospital policies. Since i am the newest one to our pediatric group of professors I was bumped to the night class. I now teach every friday night from 3pm-11:30pm. Nice thing is i have no traffic at those hours so my commute is only 35 minutes, but it is sad to know that every friday night Tristan will be all by his lonesome. His best friend just moved and now he has nobody to hang out with. I told him, "Great, you can study the entire time I am gone." To which he replied, "I don't study on fridays, its my day off." So i told him he could clean the entire house and do the laundry then. He actually did clean the whole house this week and he always does the dishes. It was so nice to come home after a 12 hour shift and find the house clean but more importantly to know that i did not have to worry about cleaning it the next day on my one day off.

Moving to my exciting day last week. CHOC (Children's Hospital Orange County) has a radio station inside it called Radio Lollipop. The kids can listen to it in their rooms and call in and make requests. It is a neat program they have and once a year KIIS FM comes down and broadcasts from our station inside the hospital to fund raise. I was listening to it as i drove to work that morning excited for the event. We were given a strict lecture on working and not stalking the crew that was coming. I had no idea celebs were going to be there, i just thought it would be Ryan Seacrest and Ellen K. As i walked through the lobby to the elevators it was mad chaos to just get inside, but there on the other side of the glass, about two feet from me was Ryan Seacrest and Ellen K. Ellen K had her back to everyone the whole time, how rude. But Seacreast was front and center he looked up and smiled. Boy he is really short, i only saw him sitting down, but he barely reached the table sitting. I went on to work, examining patients and rounding on them, then i left about an hour later to go to a conference at a different part of the hospital. Who is walking right next to me outside, Spencer from the MTV show "The Hills" and Heidi was not far behind him. I started laughing and said "Are you kidding me?" He said what, why. I told them thanks for coming out so early (8am) and helping with the kids. They are not even celebs in my book, but i still was in this weird sureal mode. All i have to say is although I thought that he is a jerk in real life, he was actually very nice. Heidi was the snob which surprised me and boy if you have ever seen the show and thought she has a lot of makeup on multiply that times 10. I don't know how anyone can stand having that much crap on there face. GROSS! I also got to hear Jesse Mcartney (don't know how to spell) perform and some other upcoming artists came. Then some young actor from the new 90210 came up to our unit to see the kids. It was a fun day, but I just wish real celebs could have been there.

On a more somber note, people have been asking me for an update on my sister. I also know that some extended family members read this blog and would probably care to know. About a 6 weeks ago heather had another full body scan as it was her half way point for her chemo treatment (this is her second time of chemo). The scan showed that 70% of the cancer in her lung was gone, but there were still a couple significant tumors. The bad news is the scan also showed some spots on her liver. The doctor is not sure if it is cancer or just artifact picked up by the machine. It is nice to think it would just be stuff picked up by the machine that is not really there, but that is what they told us last december about one small spot on her lungs. We believed it was just from the machine or maybe some radiation damage, scar tissue. Two months later (feb) heather had significant cancer in her lungs, showing it was not what the physicians had thought. So it makes me hesitant to accept this theory on the spots on her liver. They are treating it as if it was in her liver. Instead of chemo every three weeks, she now gets weekly chemo for three weeks and then one week off. They are not going to rescan her until december. So for about four and a half months heather will be making weekly trips for chemo. Over all her spirits are fair and she is not giving up. Thank you for everyone's concern.

House Pictures

Ok, So this post will probably be most appreciated by Sarah as she keeps asking for the pictures. It is not completely done and if i took the pictures i think they would have shown more what the house looks like. But since Tristan took the pictures and he is a photographer he likes to do different shots than i would have picked. This is not his real work so don't judge his photo skills off the house pics. He is actually an amazing photographer and some of his work is hanging in our house. When i talked with Sarah last weekend she asked for the pics and Tristan took them right then. Unfortunately it has taken me a week to get around to blogging.

Here they are:
1. View from our bedroom window



2. Livingroom/formal dinig room. It is all one big room when you walk in the house. You can't really tell that from the picture. We painted accent walls yellow since our furniture we already had is so dark.


3. Kitchen

4. Family room


5.Master bedroom, not a good idea of what the room looks like at all. It is pretty roomy.

6. Master bathroom

7. Walk in closet. Are there any of Tristan's clothes in there???

8. Office or as Tristan calls it, " the man room" Please note the dark shade of gray in this office. He picked it out all on his own. I gave him two light grays to choose from, but he came home with a dark gray called "silver bullet." Once i heard the name, I knew why.

9. Front of house. We just got a new garage door a couple weeks ago. What a difference it makes, we may not have to rush to paint the outside of the house anymore.

10.Backyard.

There are three bathrooms total, figured you did not need to see them all, there is also a third bedroom that has absolutely nothing in it at this time. Hopefully one day it will be Tristan's office and i can turn his big man room into a nursery.

Happy Birthday Tristan

Today is Tristan's 26th birthday. I am excited because that means as of today I am only one year older than him. Unfortunately that only lasts for two months. It is nice to have a low key weekend and spend time with family, especially since Tristan starts school again tomorrow. He only had two weeks off between summer school and he spent it working, interning, and doing repairs and decorating the house (he hangs things where i tell him to).

We just celebrated our one year anniversary on August 3rd. The picture of the cake above is not actually Tristan's Birthday cake. It is the top of our wedding cake that had been frozen for one year. Surprisingly it was extremely delicious. Tristan and i both looked at each other when we unwrapped it and said, " Did we have a pink wedding cake?" Yep, apparently we did, the frosting was light pink. I guess we could not see that in the photos due to the dimmed lights of the reception.

Having just celebrated our anniversary, and now Tristan's birthday. I would just like to say how grateful I am that I found my husband. It took a long time to find someone I wanted to spend eternity with, but it was definitely worth the wait. I am grateful to heavenly father for getting rid of all the crazies I dated and keeping me around to meet Tristan. I had to wait for him to be old enough to marry since i am the senior of the pair.

My Ancestors

Well a few weeks ago I went to the dentist in garden grove. This was a new experience as I normally get my check ups done by my brother who is a dentist in Utah. Seeing as we are not going to be in Utah anytime soon I decided to just find a local dentist near our apartment. I figured how bad can someone mess up a routine teeth cleaning. I had only been seated in the chair a few moments with the dentist just looking in my mouth and feeling around. All of a sudden she sits up the chair, pulls off her mask and says with a serious face, " I need to ask you a personal question." So at that point i ma thinking all sorts of things like, is my breath really that bad, or are my teeth so yellow she is going to ask me about smoking and using tobacco, does she think i lied on my information sheet when I said I did not use any of that stuff.

Oh no, I could of never come up with what she was thinking, not in a million years. Her personal question for me was, " What nationality are you?" OK for those of you who don't know, that is the number one question i get asked. Which is so silly cause I am so obviously pasty white. I have been asked if I was Mexican, Spanish, Gypsy (which i don't think is an ethnicity), Greek, Mediteranean, Jewish, Islander, and even was asked if I was part Asian. I pretty much thought I had heard it all. Thanks to my sweet little Asian dentist I have a new one. When I told her I was German and English she said is that it?. Then she asked if I had any mixed blood besides being white girl that has been waterd down over the years. I told her no, just a white girl. She kept persisting, trying to be nice and finally she just said, "Do you have any African American blood in you?" I started laughing so hard i almost fell out of the dental chair. That is the one ethnicity i never thought anyone would mistake me for.

Apparently the structure of the bones of my mouth and my teeth, as well as the coloring of my gums is common in African American people. But since i am white only it is abnormal and I now have to go to an oral surgeon and have my gums biopsied to see if they are normal. I called my brother who was a dentist and he said the lady is just paranoid, that my teeth and gums have been that way since he started doing my teeth 10 years ago. I just thought i would share this story for those of you whoe have been with me when i have had these type of interesting experiences. Sarah witnessed me getting chewed out in Spanish while on a trip to London. Apparently the guard thought I was from Spain and was being courteous to yell at me in my "native language." Then my parents were with me in a new york city train station when a girl came up and asked me in hebrew where her train was. She was shocked i did not speak hebrew and told my parents that i look like everyone at home in tel-aviv, Isreal. And the best, one day at the hospital I walked into my patient's room and a doctor said, " oh great the farsee interpreter is here, we can start." these are just a few of my never ending ethnic stories.

Back up and running

Well, we moved on Sat. July 12 and life has been crazy ever since. I had to work almost every day last week, and we just got the internet a few days ago. Now i can finally blog. I know people want to see pictures of the place, but although most everything is unpacked, it is not finished being painted or decorated. Truth is the decorating has not even started. I am waiting until we finish painting to even go there. We are experiencing commuting and it really has not been bad. We had one horrible night of a long commute due to a deadly accident on the freeway. We pulled off and shopped and ate and visited heather. We got back on the freeway at 9:00 at night and it was still packed. Luckily we only have to brave one exit from heather's house to ours. We cleaned out the garage yesterday and now we can get both cars in it, Tristan was definitely pleased with himself. Most everything that is left to be put away is his junk so I have to remind myself to be patient. He has two more summer school classes he is in right now and once they are over in a couple of weeks he will be home for two weeks and can finish the unpacking.

That is pretty much what we have been up to. I have had a migrain for the last week. Good thing is i can't eat anything cause my stomach is so upset from it, so i have lost 5 pounds. too bad that is only temporary. Once you start eating solids again the weight comes right back. Once again, our lives are not very exciting. But here are a few things we experienced recently:

1. A new ward that we absolutely love.
2. A 5.6 earthquake today in southern california
3. I put in my first central venous catheter yesterday. You are probably thinking what? It is a huge long IV that goes in your groin and threads up the vein toward your heart. Only doctors can put them in, not nurses. However, Nurse Practitioners are being allowed to do this now and i got to yesterday. It was such a rush of adrenaline. I also did my first spinal tap or lumbar puncture a couple weeks ago.
4. Tristan finished one session of summer school and started a second one. He is doing well in his classes right now and i am so proud of him for giving up a whole summer.
5. We will be celebrating our one year anniversary on Sunday. I can't believe it. It came way too quick. But when you are having so much fun together i guess that is how it should be.

Exhaustion!

Well, as of this afternoon, we are officially home owners. Escrow closed yesterday but it then takes a day to record it with the county before it is completely official. We originally were to close on July 2nd. The escrow company the man we bought the house from chose to use was absolutely horrible. They are so slow and because of their slowness, they offered to extend escrow to the 9th. Tristan and i decided we wanted to keep the date the 2nd so we could clean, paint, and have the tile laid before we move. We should of known that when the escrow company suggested the 9th that it would be the day they would decide no matter what we said to get their act together and complete escrow. We signed papers and wired the money on July 1st and it has taken this long for the escrow company to stamp the pages and look over everything. Now we are in a bit of a crunch to get things done before we move in.
I should of known that nothing i plan goes smoothly and now we will be painting and fixing things up while moving in for a while. Oh well, it is do able but i hate when my perfect plans get botched up. I have been at the house almost everyday since last Thursday cleaning. I went back to work yesterday and apparently i looked awful cause even parents of my patient's were asking me if i was ok. I am exhausted and my back is killing me from bending over for the last five days. Tristan has school so he gets out of helping quite a bit. Between packing, cleaning two places, moving, and trying to arrange everything for the construction workers and painting, I have not been able to blog. Just thought i would let everyone know we are still alive. We are moving on Saturday so i probably will be out of the blogging world for another couple of weeks while we get settled in.

Big News!

Well, most of you may be thinking i am going to announce that i am pregnant due to the title of big news. Give me a few more months before that good news is in the works. At least when we do make that announcement, we will have a room for the baby in our new house. Tristan was making fun of me because i wanted a 4 bedroom house so i have plenty of room for all our kids. He had to keep reminding me that we were not having them all at once and that three bedrooms and 1700 sq feet is plenty big for our little family even when there are a couple of kids in it.

We are really excited and even more scared, nervous and stressed out. Our offer was accepted the beginning of June, but we have been trying to decide if we really want to move. We love our location (close to work and school), our apartment, and our friends. Plus i hate packing, moving, unpacking, and decorating. Yes you read that last part correctly, i hate decorating. It means that i have to make more decisions, which is not easy for me. We decided this week that we will buck up and move (or in my case i will part with all of my money and be dirt poor). We are moving one exit outside of orange county, at the start of corona. I never thought i would live out there and rely on the 91 freeway as my mode of transportation. That alone was almost the deal breaker. It needs some paint and new flooring, but over all it is in great shape. Even better it is in an awesome neighborhood and an area with canyons, parks and tons of hiking and biking. I will be sure to show pictures after the house is all done and moved in.