Mitad Mitad

Keep up with me, Ted, and our Fab Four!

Since the last post (in which I announced that I was pregnant with quadruplets!), I've been blogging over at Four by Two. Stop by sometime and see how much life has changed for us in the past 3 years!

Nothing is the same

As you may have noticed, I have not been posting very frequently lately. I still haven't delivered the Clapton concert recap I promised in my last post (let's just say the story involves an outdoor venue, torrents of rain, a drunk and pushy mob, and a nearby tornado), nor have I written about how I finally made The Big Cut last month (11 inches, baby!). And I honestly don't think I will ever get around to composing either of those posts. The fact is that Mr. G and I have been dealing with some news that has rocked (and will continue to rock) our world:

Check out our quads!

In the months ahead, I will endure an extremely high-risk pregnancy and hopefully deliver four healthy babies. After that, I imagine that our lives will be full and crazy and difficult and fun. But I already see Mitad Mitad as a record of an old life, when things were simpler and much more trivial, and I have no interest in anything but incubating these babies for as long as possible. So this is Guycita, signing out. Thanks for reading, and wish us luck! 

Diagnose me

I've been in pain since Friday afternoon. It hurts so bad that I went to the urgent care center yesterday, and I plan to get a second opinion from my primary care physician in the next day or so. In the meantime, here are my symptoms. What do you think I have?

• Friday afternoon (around 2pm), I was sitting at my desk at work and suddenly got a sharp pain in my right side, just under my ribs, like a stitch that you get when you’re running. It hurt only upon inhaling, and changing positions did not help. The discomfort continued into the evening but did not interfere with my activities (in fact, I went to the Eric Clapton concert with Mr. G, which I will post on later).
• Saturday morning, my side still hurt, and the pain increased as the day wore on. Again, changing positions or stretching did not help. By evening, the pain was constant and no longer caused only by inhaling. In fact, the pain was worst when I exhaled, especially when I coughed, sneezed, or laughed. I did not sleep well that night, waking up often due to pain in my side.
• Sunday morning, my side was slightly tender to the touch, and the pain had not abated. In addition, my right shoulder was feeling achey. I went to the urgent care center, thinking that my symptoms could indicate a gallbladder attack. However, the doctor said that my gallbladder was fine. The nurse took my temperature but did not tell me what it was, so I assume it was also normal. The doctor then gave me a possible diagnosis (to be verified only with the appearance of a symptom that I do not yet have) and instructed me to take Tylenol for the pain. I took some as soon as I got home; it helped for about an hour, and then the pain came back. I stayed in bed almost all day and felt better in the evening, but after sitting at the computer for about a half-hour, I started to hurt again. The pain got worse as the evening drew on and when I laid down to go to sleep, I had three very sharp pains that made me gasp. I thought I wouldn’t be able to sleep, but when I turned on my left side, the pain went away. I ended up sleeping very well.
• Today when I woke up, I felt that the pain was gone. However, by the time I was ready for work, I was in mild pain again. Now the pain in my side is duller and it feels a little deeper than before. My shoulder still feels tense and achey. And it is still painful to breathe deeply or to laugh.
  

A birthday pie for Mr. Guycita

Unlike last year, Mr. G had a specific request for this year's birthday treat: He wanted a cherry pie. Having never made a cherry pie before, I went straight to my America's Test Kitchen cookbooks to find the best recipe.

The ATK folks did not disappoint. Per their recommendation, I hunted up some jars of Trader Joe's Morello cherries, which apparently make the tastiest filling (and they certainly look more lovely than the canned cherries I've bought at the supermarket). I did not end up having the time to make the crust from scratch, but ATK says that refrigerated Pillsbury pie dough is almost as good as homemade (and I know Mr. G loves it, anyway). For the sake of time, I also decided to forego the traditional lattice for the full top crust (it's not as pretty, but having more crust can't be a bad thing!).

Here is the absolutely DELICIOUS end result, which we ate for Mr. G's birthday breakfast today (warmed up and topped with a generous scoop of vanilla frozen custard, of course!):

The only thing missing is the birthday candle

A whole lotta shakin' goin' on

Okay, maybe that's a bit of an exaggeration, but I woke up early this morning and the bed was shaking. I thought that maybe Pepper was taking a very vigorous bath (hee), but she wasn't even on the bed. And Mr. G was laying there like a log. I figured I must still be dreaming, so I went back to sleep. And then 20 minutes later we woke up to the news that we'd had a moderate (5.2-magnitude) earthquake!

When I was living in Peru, I remember waking up in the middle of the night and going out to the dining room, where all the plates were shaking and the room was tilting side to side. I have no idea what the magnitude was, but it was pretty scary for a little kid. I know that there were other earthquakes during the years we lived there, but that's the one I remember.

You'd think that, having experienced a terremoto before, I would have recognized what the bed-shaking meant. But we just don't get earthquakes around here! And I thought animals were supposed to warn you about this kind of thing ... Pepper, you failed!

A very special diaper cake

Today I cohosted a baby shower for a friend who is adopting a little boy from Ethiopia. Although all baby showers are joyful occasions, this one was even more special because my friend and her husband have waited such a long time to be parents. Their journey inspired me to create this:

Flower Child diaper cake

I experimented with using fringe (rather than ribbon) and shredded paper (to cover the tops of the diapers), and I was pretty pleased with the result. Ingredients were mostly purchased from her registry and included 42 diapers, 8 washcloths, 4 receiving blankets, 3 bottles, 2 combs, a brush, baby lip balm, body wash, and lotion.

I had such a good time putting this cake together, but the best part was seeing my friend's reaction to the surprise on top: a miniature baby (hand sculpted by Nancy), nestled in a silk peony and wearing a diaper fastened with beads in the colors of the Ethiopian flag. Here's a close-up:

Not a Cabbage Patch Kid

Noooooooooo!!!!

For five months, I've been plagued with unbearably itchy eyes. I went to the doctor as soon as they started itching because I was worried that I had pink eye (or, worse, one of those scary fungal infections that they say you can get from contact solution). He assured me that my eyes were fine and I just needed some eye drops, but those didn't help at all. 

So, since my eyes were still driving me CRAZY, I finally decided to go back (all these months later) and demand an allergy test. His office just called me with the results. Apparently I had a high reaction to only one thing: cats!

But there's no way I'm giving up Pepper. For this face, I'll gladly become a slave to allergy meds:

"Who, me?"

He sure knows how to spoil me

Guess what! Today Mr. G surprised me with tickets to see Eric Clapton! So now I have two shows to look forward to this year: Clapton in May and Tom Petty & the Heartbreakers in July (that was Mr. G's Valentine's Day gift to me). Isn't he the best?? I wanted to see Bob Dylan when he was in town last summer, so these concerts will kind of make up for missing that one.

I'm also still keeping my fingers crossed for a Paul McCartney or Ringo Starr tour. I'd be willing to travel anywhere in the country to see them—and then we could add another entry (or two) to our list of rock 'n' roll trips. So far we've been to Cleveland (in 2001) to see a John Lennon exhibit at the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame; to Las Vegas (in 2002) to see Paul McCartney play the MGM Grand; to Memphis (in 2005) to see Graceland, Sun Studio, and the Gibson Guitar Factory; and again to Vegas (in 2007) to see Beatles LOVE. 

We've also thought about driving to St. Louis sometime to see Chuck Berry perform at Blueberry Hill. The guy will turn 88 this year and he's still rocking the house once a month. I just hope we don't put off that trip until it's too late ...

I think I'm coming down with something

I've managed to stay well this entire winter, but this morning I woke up with a fever blister.

Granted, being sick isn't the only thing that brings on these annoying blisters, which is exactly why I don't call them "cold sores." They can also pop up when I don't get enough sleep, during times of stress, after being exposed to the sun, and upon experiencing any sort of trauma to the lip area. But since (a) I've been sleeping better lately (thanks, in part, to my braids), (b) we're in the dead of winter, and (c) no one has punched me in the mouth recently, I can only assume one thing: My streak of good health must be coming to an end.

It's really quite amazing how just one little fever blister can make you feel so completely wiped out. Thank goodness for Abreva, which usually clears up my blisters within a couple of days. Before this miracle cream came along, I had to rely on Famvir, a prescription pill for genital herpes (as you can imagine, it was a little embarrassing to have to explain to people that I wasn't taking it for that reason). Before I had Famvir, though, the blisters (and the scabs they left in their wake) would just run rampant on my lips and the surrounding skin—not pretty! So I guess things aren't as bad as they could be.

Mr. G might disagree, though: Because fever blisters are so contagious, I must withhold all smooches until my lips are healed. Sad!

A new 'do for nighttime

One of the little-known perils of having long hair: It may try to strangle you while you sleep. Yes, folks, in the last few weeks, I've started waking up in the middle of the night with my hair hopelessly tangled around my neck. Not the most soothing feeling!

My braids look like this, only a bit shorter

Last night, tired of waking up feeling suffocated, I decided it was time to do something about this problem. Although I'm not very good at braiding, I loosely plaited my hair into two (surprisingly long) pigtails, à la Melissa Gilbert on Little House on the Prairie. Today, I am happy to report that sleeping in braids is quite comfortable—much more so than wearing a sweaty hair-scarf to bed! (Although I'm not sure how Mr. G feels about my new, Laura Ingalls look ...)

In related news, this month marks two years since I started letting my hair grow out to donate (with regular trims to ward off split ends, of course). I still can't decide when to make the Big Cut, though. The practical part of me wants to chop it off now and go back to my cute, shorter hair, but the competitive part of me wants to see just how long I can stand to let it grow. Another year? Two years? Stay tuned!