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Dreams

On a daily basis I have several vivid and detailed dreams which I remember the next day. Of course I forget some of them, but I remember a large portion of them and usually can recount them to someone hours later with tons of specifics.

In a lot of my dreams I know it is a dream. I am aware that it isn't real. I have often enjoyed my dreams and compare them to the movies. It's like going to sleep and getting entertained while doing so. The only thing is that I feel like I don't really get as well rested when I so active in my sleep.

The other problem with have extremely vivid dreams is the waking up part. Sometimes, especially with sad dreams, or dreams you have bad arguments in, I wake up so distressed and it's difficult to console myself with the fact that it was just a dream. I remember having a dream many years ago that my nephew was on the beach at twilight and there was this massive storm brewing. I was running to him trying to get him away from the water. A huge wave came and crashed over him and took him away. I totally woke up from that dream sobbing and even months later it made me sad even though he was completely fine in real life and I knew he was. I even talked about it with my church councilor trying to reconcile it with myself so it didn't make me sad.

I hate the ones where I fight with someone in a dream and then woke up and I can't shake the feeling of being pissed off at them, even though they didn't do anything wrong in real life.

I have never talked to anyone who has had dreams the way I do. I don't know why that is. Am I just an anomaly or are there others out there like me?

Last night I had a couple of odd dreams. The first one I only remember part of. I was at a friend's party at their house. The house was a huge beautiful modern mansion. I had gotten pretty toasted and as a result I was, well, interested in engaging in particular activities with my husband. Chris told me he really wasn't in the mood, but maybe his friend (we'll call him "Jack") could take care of me instead (not something that would ever happen in real life). I was shocked and surprised and told him, "hell no!". Later Chris came up to me and told me that I'd hurt "Jack's" feelings by the way I responded and he wondered if I didn't like him or if I thought there was something wrong with him. I told my husband that I was flattered he'd be interested in doing those activities with me, but that actually the problem was that he was just too hot (he is really cute in real life). I was embarrassed by my ugly post-baby body and didn't want him to see me.

Later I decided to take my husband up on his offer, but with a different friend, we'll call him "Joe". So I went to his bedroom. I think at this point it turned out that this was in fact his party and his mansion. So, anyhow, I went to his bedroom, stripped down and got into bed. He was in the middle of painting this massive mural on his ceiling. Instead of getting in bed with me he asked me to paint some of it for him. So I wrapped the sheet around me and got up and started painting. I was painting these big, chunky flowers with oil paints. They were coming out really well.

While I was painting my friend's father came in the room and wanted to talk to him, so he asked me to leave. So I got dressed and I remember being embarrassed when I flashed my naked body at him, thinking again that my post-baby body was so ugly and not what it used to be.

Later I came back into his room and he had finished the mural. My flowers were gone and instead there was this amazing and intricate painting with out of this world cities and planets, etc. It was phenomenal.

The end. That's all I remember about that dream now (it's 4:40 in the afternoon, so that's pretty good, they sometimes fade as the day goes on)...

I then had a completely dis-related dream about being pregnant. Several days went by in my dream and every day I had the cutest maternity outfit on. I was so impressed by my dream maternity outfits and in my dream I wished I had them in real life. I was a hot preggo. One day my sister, my sister-in-law (who was also pregnant in my dream) and my dad decided to go to the mall to get some lotion.

Side note: I know why I had this dream. My brother called me last night to tell me that he and my SIL are expecting their 4th (and unexpected) baby. The poor guy is scheduled for the good ol' snip snip next month-oops. Anyhow, on with the dream.

We went to this one store and my sister brought her stroller for some reason, I'm not sure why as her kids are 16 and 17 years old. We were in the lotion store going over different types of sunscreen and the lady was talking to me like I was a complete idiot. I told her I wasn't even the one buying the sunscreen as I already had it (poof! my baby is now in the dream, too). I showed her my baby and that he's 9.5 months old. Obviously by now I had some sunscreen for him. Anyway, we browsed the store and my SIL finally bought some lotion.

When we left the store the paparazzi was swarming the mall. My sister was bitching about having the stroller saying that she thought she could check it at the first store we stopped at. She was complaining about how things had changed since she had her kids.

It was impossible to maneuver anywhere in the mall as the paps were everywhere (I have no idea why).

That's pretty much all I remember of that one. I remembered more this morning, but I've forgotten now. Oh well.

So, those were the two dreams from last night that I remember parts of. If you catch me first thing in the morning I'll talk your ear off telling you about my dreams from the night before.

I even remember dreams from when I was a little kid. I had a few of nightmares that I still remember clearly. One was when I was 5 or 6 and was about giant bugs, another was from when I was 7 or 8 and my parents died, and another was from around the same time period and was about me being stuck in a house with tons of ghosts outside trying to get me.

I've even noticed that I tend to handle things in a certain way time after time in dreams. Like when I'm being attacked by someone I most often will come up with a knife as my weapon. I will try to stab the person in self-defense and no matter how hard I stab them or how many times the stab wounds are always superficial and they never die. Out of desperation, I usually resort to some disgusting means of defense, generally clawing their eyes out. I've done it several times in various dreams. Also, phones NEVER work in my nightmares. I'll try over and over again to call someone for help and I will not be able to press the buttons properly no matter how much I try, or if I do it'll still come up as being wrong. Ah, it's agonizing.

So, why do I have such vivid dreams? I'm not one for thinking they mean much. I've dreamed I was pregs so many times and I have yet to have that actually coincide with a pregnancy. I've dreamed people have died and the only one that has come true is my mom. But I had the dream when I was 7 or 8. And she only died last year. So...what do they mean?

Okay, so I'm really sucking at posting a picture a day recently...

Life has been pretty busy recently and I've rarely been on the computer. I've been challenged to post a picture a day till July 15th (I think) but recently I've really been sucking at it. I just haven't been on the computer. Between the thousands of emails I have gotten behind in due to being part of way too many talkative groups, and my blog and the POD's I've pretty much given up.

I've been having so much fun the last couple weeks, though. Liam and I started a Kindermusik class calling Singing and Signing. I've been wanting to sign with him, but I haven't known where to start. I've only been to one class but it's already got me going. We've been swimming a ton and going to lots of play dates. I've been trying to have him around as many other children and babies as possible for obvious reasons.

I am also starting to work part time from home doing finances for my brother's company. I started working on it this Wednesday. I'm excited to be able to do some grown-up work during the day. I love playing and hanging out with Liam, but I need grown-up time, too!

Oh, and as you read about below...this week was our anniversary. So that was another thing I was up to.

Anyhow, here are a butt-load of pictures to catch me up on my POD's. The theme for these are things, people, activities, etc. that I love. Some are recent, some are old.

Mom, Dad and Me at the workshop

Tahiti on our honeymoon

Megs

My bro

Me at the Parker in Palm Springs just after Chris and I were married
Sailing with Claude and Amy

My sister and me

The bug, newborn

Liam, seconds after being born

Me in Tahiti on our honeymoon

Liam, one day old

Chinatown

The Getty

The Getty

Chris and Liam at the Halloween parade

Dodger Game

Last night we went to Liam's first Dodger game! He did such a good job. The game didn't start till 7:10, which is basically his bedtime. We stayed till about 9:15. He loved all the people and the banners. I was mostly worried about the cheering as he can be sensitive to loud sudden noises, but he was a champ!

We went with my sister and her boyfriend. We drank beer and ate ice cream and peanuts. Liam had part of a pretzel and some ice cream, too (I know, I know, I'm a terrible mommy).

As for how the Dodger game went...I don't really know. I don't generally actually watch the games. I'm a bad baseball fan. And we like the Padres anyhow...hehe. But when we left I think the Marlins were up by 1.

I forgot my camera, as usual, so I took these with my phone. They came out surprisingly well.

My 2nd Anniversary...and POD for Tuesday

Yesterday was the 2nd anniversary of my marriage. My MIL offered to take the baby home with her for the night as a surprise for my hubby. So I pumped like a crazy lady to make enough bottles for Liam and then I took them to the train station yesterday around 4pm.

My MIL told me that Liam had a blast on the train, that he was fascinated (it was his first train ride) and he was flirting with all the passengers (that's my boy!).

So I made a big meal for Chris and I. I made leg of lamb, mashed potatoes, green beans and sauteed some mushrooms. I also made a salad. And we had some REALLY yummy cab to go with dinner. I was worried I mess the meat up as I've never made leg of lamb before...but it was so good. It turned out to be one of the yummiest meals I've eaten in a long time (fancy restaurants included).
Chris and I then went to the movies and saw Hancock. I'm pretty sure we laughed during many parts that weren't supposed to be funny. Chris was in agony for a large part of the movie. We determined we have missed much in terms of movies in the last 9 months since Liam was born...

We were going to go to a yummy wine bar nearby but it was closed. So instead we headed for a dive bar Chris had always wanted to go to. There we ran into an old friend of mine, Tony, for those of you who know him who are reading this. Talk about a small world. I'd actually been wanting to get in touch with him for a year now so that was pretty cool. We had some beers and then went home.

And the night ended much as you would expect it to...(wink wink)

My Village Green POD for Monday....

On Monday Liam learned how to pull himself up on things and how to sit up from laying down (on his belly). All in about 20 mins, first thing in the morning. It was so cool! He still has a bit of trouble every now and then pulling himself up on things but he's an expert at sitting up. Here he is after he pulled himself up!

My Village Green POD for Sunday....

So it was hot as hell on Sunday and all I wanted to do was just in a pool and go swimming...so we went over to my SIL's house. The pool was so nice. Here's the bug all sunscreened up!After the swim...

For Alex-Our Kitties

Here is the story of my kitties and how they came to be:

Before I moved in with Chris I had a small female black cat. Being the not-quite-as-responsible-as-I-am-now-20 year old I procrastinated on getting her fixed. So she got pregnant relatively quickly (when I was still thinking she was a kitten). She had her kittens. I can't remember how many, like 5 or 6 of them. And then she got really sick. At first we (I was living temporarily with my parents at the time) just thought she was skinny as she'd just had the kittens. But it wasn't so. She was taken to the vet and it turned out that she was really sick and we ended up having to put her down.

The kittens were only a couple weeks old so we were feeding them with little tiny bottles and formula. My mom especially tried to take good care of them. Now that I think of it, I had just moved back out of my parents, so that was why my mom was taking care of them. Anyhow, despite my mom's best efforts the kittens were dying. Each day a new one would go. In the end there was only one little black kitty left and I took him home.

We tried to think of a good name for him...we went through a ton of them, some good, some mean, some funny. None of them ever stuck and he will be forever known as "Kitty". He's always been quite a bit of a menace. He's moody and if you swat him for doing something bad he has no compunction about turning right around on you and attacking you. But he's also very loving. He is sometimes so loving that he's obnoxious. He's a very snuggly cat. He also has moments of insanity...he'll leap into the air like a ghost just pinched his butt when absolutely nothing is going on. Surprisingly, he's also the best with Liam. He lets Liam pull his hair, hit him, etc. and just sits there and takes it like a man. Anyhow, so that is Kitty. He's the short-haired black kitty in the pictures.

I've always told myself I'd NEVER get a long-haired cat as they are just too hairy. It's bad enough with short-haired cat, but dealing with the fur that gets on everything with a long-haired cat is just annoying.

We were over at my SIL's house and my BIL had this little litter of kittens that a feral cat had given birth too in his garage. There was this one little dark grey kitty that was just too cute. I was hooked. Dang kittens are always cuter than the cat they turn out to be. And of course, he was long-haired.

So I brought him home. He used to sleep on me exclusively, he loved me. Then one day he was too good for me and would only sleep on Chris. He refused to let me pet him or snuggle with him. Stinky cat.

At least he has a name. Chris named him Pauly Walnuts after the Sopranos character. He always had these white hairs sticking out of his ears...he looks just like him.

So, these are my kitties...

My Village Green POD's

Okay, so I know I'm totally copying Marlyn, but I couldn't help myself. It's been quite a while since we've made it to our farmer's market and we finally went today. I'm so excited about my bounty! The last time we were going regularly was in the winter when there wasn't that much exciting produce, but now everything that I like is back in season! Yay! Anyhow, here it all is. Yum yum!

My Village Green POD's-July 4th!

I meant to bring my camera and tripod to our 4th of July celebrations yesterday and like the dorfus I am I completely forgot the camera. So I didn't get any pictures of the fireworks. ): But I did find this picture I took of Chris who-knows-when and it is conveniently very red, white and blue.

As is tradition, we went over to my SIL's house out in Chino for the 4th. They always have a big BBQ with an outrageous number of people. I'm sure I see most of them every year on the 4th, but I continue to not know who half of them are. We drank beer and ate brats and when the sun finally went down we had a big firework show. It was a ton of fun and Liam wasn't scared! The poor guy was tired though. We didn't make it through the whole show, but he got to see a lot of it. It was a ton of fun!

I hope everyone else had a great 4th!

My Village Green POD's

I didn't get the pics taken that I wanted to in time for HNT....and now it's Saturday anyhow. So here are my pics of the day for Thursday. I took these when Liam was pretty little. It was incredible how hard it was to take these by myself. The little bugger kept moving!

My Village Green POD's

Okay, so I didn't have any new pics uploaded...but here are my after-the-appendectomy pics. In June of last year, when I was about 6 months pregs I contracted appendicitis.

I remember I had decided to eat healthier. I think I must've gone to my 6 months appt or something that Thursday and I felt like I was gaining wieght too fast. So I on Friday I packed myself a ton of veggies for my lunch along with some carbs that I just can't do without. That night I started having a stomachache. I thought that it must've been because I was suddenly eating so many veggies.

On Saturday I felt better and I even went to a concert that night with my sisters. Sunday morning came and I had the worst case of "indigestion". My stomachache from Friday night had returned. I made Chris go out and get me all sorts of tums and other stuff and I chewed a ton of them up...but they were no help.

Chris wanted to walk to the book store (about a mile away) and I figured I'd walk with him...walking is supposed to help indigestion, right? I got about a block and a half and the pain was literally making the tears run. But instead of turning back, like a normal person would've, I pressed on. When we got to Borders I got giant pretzel, which I found I could hardly eat because now I was nauseous, too. Chris offered to go back and get the car, but I just wanted to go home. I didn't want to wait at Borders. So I painfully walked the mile back.

We called the OB and she told us that it was probably just indigestion and said I should take some pepto and if it didn't go away and we were really concerned we could always go to the ER (but she pretty much just brushed it off as indigestion). We called my mother-in-law and she suggested I lay down and prop up my feet. I was finally able to sleep a bit this way and it felt like my stomach was feeling better-if I didn't move at all. I found that it was incredibly tender on my right side.

I, of course, googled my symptoms and came up with the conclusion that I probably had appendicitis. So as I was still in pain and it was the late afternoon I decided to go to the ER. The whole time I was there I felt like such a dork. I was sure it was just something silly and it felt dumb to be going to the ER. They did an ultrasound on me and lo and behold there was my appendix, ginormous and easily seen on the ultrasound, even by me. So they wheeled me into surgery and cut out my appendix.

Here are the shots of the aftermath. After my appendectomy I always got shots of the pretty side of my tummy and the ugly side...so I have two shots for every stage. I also included some shots of when I was more pregs and healed up some....For my HNT I'll post what my ugly tummy looks like now...

Yesterday and my Village Green POD...

My friend Sarah had posted something about hiding in the internet on her blog and it made me think. I realized I needed to be better about going out and living life instead of sitting on the computer all the time. So yesterday I skipped being on my computer, for the most part. I have a butt-load of emails I have to read, and hopefully one day I'll catch them up.

Liam and I had such a fun day. We took his morning nap together. I love snuggling with him, there's just something about it that is absolutely heavenly. Then we went on a long walk. I decided to spice up our walk a bit by walking through Cal Tech. They have a really pretty campus.

Cal Tech...I usually walk through Cal Tech on the weekends when there are few people there. But today I was walking through around noon so there were tons of people out and about. I people watched and it was pretty interesting what I saw. The first thing I noticed was snobbery. Yes, geeks can be snobs, apparently. Walking with a baby I've grown accustomed to being smiled at. Everyone thinks babies are cute and they always smile. Except for Cal Tech students. I must have passed literally 50-75 people while walking around the campus and it wasn't till I was almost out the other side till I got my one and only smile from a young Asian guy. That was it. Maybe the students and staff resented that I was walking on their campus. I don't know. People with babies take walks on the campus ALL the time. I found it pretty remarkable.

The other thing I was surprised to see were the amount of normal looking people I saw. Ok, so I know I'm stereotyping, but if you lived right next to Cal Tech for 4 years you would start to also. There is a Cal Tech student in our building that if I didn't know he was a student there I'd think he was some sort of little weird serial killer or something. He's a strange guy. We once had a water issue (I tried to give Liam a bath and when I turned on the water it was green). He is in the unit above ours so I asked him if he could turn on his water and see if it was also green. He called me and went into a whole spiel about the this chemical in the water and that chemical and how he ran an analysis on the water, etc. The end result being, no, his water wasn't green.

Anyhow, I saw a fair number of nerdy people there, but I also saw a lot of average-looking people...it was odd. I honestly have never seen that many normal looking people at Cal Tech before. Maybe is a some sort of summer program thing...

Anyhow, my walk through the campus was really pretty. We then continued to walk to get to the major street I wanted to go to so I could get myself some lunch. Which I did. We got home around 2 and Liam and I both ate yummy food. This is a set of condos that I love. If I ever HAD to stay living in a condo I'd want to live here...

In the afternoon I took Liam to his first movie! We saw Wall-E. It was so cute! Liam talked through most of it and was a bit more interested in the cup holder than the movie, but we made it through. He did watch it here and there, especially when there was more talking involved.

That was pretty much our entire day, but it was really nice. We came home and ate some more and Liam took a bath and then he went to bed. And I finally got to relax...

Added bonus picture!! This is the first pic I've taken that I can clearly see Liam's third tooth! Yay!

I wasted $3.00

Ok, so I might be an ass, but I've always believed that no one should get something for nothing. That was how I was raised and I agree with it. I think that if you start giving people stuff and they do nothing to exchange for it, it creates a bad process. I know if someone kept giving me stuff over and over again and I never did anything in return I'd feel like shit. I'd know that I should be doing something for all that stuff they are giving me. Granted, I've always harbored a dream that I'd win the lottery. But I've also always secretly known that I'd feel like such a dork if that was how I became rich. I know I'd have to use that money to actually make a name for myself. Actually make money on my own.

Anyhow, so this way of thinking has always applied to people asking for money on the street. I'm one of those jerks who never gives it. The only exception is if the person is doing something for it, like if they are playing music, singing, etc. something to exchange for the money. Then I think it's only fair that I give them money. And plus, I love that I can walk down old town and hear music all the time.

So, today I went to starbucks because we had no food at home. There was a lady outside, clearly not a bum or anything, asking for money for food. I told her I didn't have any cash on me and she gave me this look like I was BSing her, which I was. For the first time in my life I actually felt guilty for this. So I went inside and I was like, well if she's genuinely hungry, I'll just get her a breakfast sandwich, that way she can't spend the money on something else. So I got her one. It took forever and when I finally came out she was friggin gone!

I finally give in and it was for nothing.

So I drove home with my extra breakfast sandwich and the whole way home I was looking for a bum to stop and give it to. Unfortunately, or fortunately, Pasadena doesn't have a ton of homeless people, so I didn't see a single one on my drive home. Not even the old lady that always sleeps on the library steps...

My extra breakfast sandwich is sitting on my dining room table. Just sitting there. With no one to eat it.