Moving

Bear with me as I transfer this blog over to TypePad. You can find me there or simply by typing in www.KidKate.com.

Spinning in circles

I haven’t been spinning recently. First I got busy getting ready to go to Puerto Rico. Then I had a cold, then it was Thanksgiving. I’m about 10 pounds heavier than I was when I got married in July. I think my weight literally went 10-9-8-7-6-5-4-3-2-1-2-3-4-5-6-7-8-9-10 with only the briefest stop at the negative 10 mark. I’ve been stuck at this weight since I turned 28, which is when I suddenly got wrinkled too. Cry me a river, I know, but I swear I wouldn’t care except that my clothes don’t fit properly when there's this much more of me to love.

Poor Yan on the other hand has gained about 30 pounds since we moved in together two and a half years ago. He had a guest spot on CNBC today and a trader friend in Boston caught the show and instant messaged the following:

Boston: how's the food in nyc?
Boston: it's probably just the camera angle
Yan: or the 7 chins.
Yan: one or the other.
Yan: you won't believe this, but i'm off to meet a guy for lunch.
Boston: have fun. u don't have to finish it all.

I have to hand it to Yan--he has a good sense of humor. But then he doesn’t really look bad at all. Call it vanity, but each of us were so consumed with our own weight gain that neither of us noticed the other’s. Or that’s what Yan claims anyway. He’s probably just being nice. As for him, he’s run two marathons so as far as I’m concerned he kicks my ass for life.

Worrying

We spent Thanksgiving weekend at Yan's mom's house on the Cape. They have a cat, Phoebe, and I'm allergic to cats so I spent most of the weekend either sneezing or bleary from Sudafed. I'm also allergic to dogs but with the advent of Flovent, I can live with them without asthma attacks. My only requirement is that they don't lick me because then I break out into hives, though Mandy and I have an agreement where she's allowed to lick my nose. Simon doesn't care about that agreement but being part dachshund he's too short to reach my face very often anyway.

I'm allergic to basically any mammal: Dogs, cats, horses, cows, gerbils, guinea pigs, hamsters, rabbits, etc. Though with the exception of cats, I have outgrown my allergy to most of them, if you count "outgrowing" as hives without full-blown asthma attacks. We've been thinking a lot about having a baby in the next year or two but yesterday it occurred to me: What if the baby is allergic to dogs? When I was a kid, we had two cats and a dog that we had to give away once I was diagnosed with asthma and allergies, and it nearly killed my mom. I honestly cannot comprehend losing Simon--or even Mandy, heathen that she is. I think we'd have to move to a city where we could afford a big house and keep the baby and the dogs in separate wings. Yan and I could alternate nights until the baby outgrew its allergies. That sounds plausible, right?

And for kicks, a picture of Simon

AKA, The Wonder Dog.

I Heart Mandy

The other night I dreamed that I gave Mandy away. One might interpret this as a bad sign, but one would (happily) be wrong. It simply means that I heart Mandy.

I often have these dreams about Simon, in which by some inexplicable logic I've given him away, time has passed, and now I want him back. In these dreams I am invariably hysterical, sobbing uncontrollably and flinging my limbs about. Then I wake up to find Simon snoring happily into my armpit. But I'd never had such a dream about Mandy.

Suffice it to say that Mandy and I did not get off on the best footing. For the uninitiated, adjusting to life with a beagle can be hard. Especially a boy-crazy, eyelash-batting, opera-singing, trash-digging hedonist like Mandy. But somewhere between competing with her for Yan's affection and engaging in hand-to-paw combat over my side of the bed, I fell in love with the little heathen. Potential beagle owners beware.

Island Time

Oh yeah, so we missed our flight out from Vieques to San Juan on the way home from our Puerto Rico trip. This seemed really tragic at the time, as I'd never missed a plane and we couldn't get a flight out until the next day, but in hindsight we survived it quite well. We spent the night in this kind of seedy motel in San Juan that had a cockfighting channel on the TV (egads!) but check out the picture of our patio. Nothing like a little perspective, eh?

In other news, I had my gyno appointment and got my results--sort of. The pap is all clear but I have to come back so they can take more cells for the HPV test (apparently they didn't get enough the first time). Other than being slightly annoyed by this (my gyno is way out of the way and they tried to avoid booking me again until JANUARY), I'm not sure what this could mean. I've tested positive for HPV in the past, but that was accompanied by an abnormal pap--and I was under the impression that once you get HPV it doesn't go away. So if my pap is normal, then doesn't that mean the HPV gods are satiated at the moment? I don't know the answer. Mom wasn't much help either. Guess I'll do some independent research before the December 8 appointment I was finally able to wrangle out of the receptionist.

Must Listen--Or Read, Your Choice

This American Life had a fantastic segment on soldier blogs this past weekend. I don't necessarily go in for that sort of thing, fearing the whole war propaganda machine (soldier blogs, not TAL--Yan and I are total TAL whores), but these were particularly great: humble, poignant, humorous, down-to-earth.

Download and listen to Strangers in a Strange Land from the TAL website, or read the blogs for yourself here, here, and here.

Also, there's a book.

Enjoy (or, insert appropriate word)!