Vanessa Alter : random thoughts

I took my cat to the vet today.  She’s been having eye issues… pretty sure she’s going blind.  But she’s old, so I’m not too surprised.  Her regular vet wants me to take her to an animal eye doctor.  I called the office to see how much an eye exam is, thinking it would be pretty comparable to the eye appointments that Nathan and I get.  We pay about $90 per year for an eye exam AND contact lens fitting.  How much do you think the Cat’s eye exam is?  ***********$200**********  I’m shocked!  Do cats and dogs get better eye care than humans?  So yeah, needless to say, Nathan and I both think that the cat is old, and yes, she’s going blind, but as long as she’s not in pain and is living a pretty normal life, we’ll forego the $200 exam.

When I was pregnant with Sean, I had the most outrageous, funny and entertaining dreams.  They were often pretty bizarre and very amusing.  This time around, I’ve started having nightmares.  Nothing baby related, thankfully, but nightmares, nonetheless.  In one dream, we were planning to go camping, but that morning I had a few contractions.  We started timing the contractions and they seemed to have gone away.  So we went ahead and went camping.  Nathan was fishing in a stream near the campsite and Sean was playing with the rocks and sticks in the grass nearby when he started screaming about a big black spider.  I ran over to Sean  and saw a huge black widow spider.  I tried to stomp on it and it jumped out of the way, and suddenly it turned into 2 spiders.  I tried to step on them again and then there were 3… you get the picture.  And just so you know, I don’t like spiders much.

Another dream involved lots of snakes and one that bit my kitty cat.  Another dream involved a mass murdering samurai dude who I was hiding from and trying to escape from.  Everywhere I hid, I found another one of his victims.  Last night Nathan and I seemed to be stuck in a Jurassic Park type dream where we couldn’t get away from the T-rex.  I was so scared, but Nathan kept telling me not to move so the T-rex wouldn’t see me.  I was shivering in fear so bad, I was sure I was going to be seen and get eaten.  The T-rex finally went away and we were running to a safe area and all these little dinosaurs were following us and nipping at our heels.  I was beating them with my purse.  Then I woke up.

I don’t so much like these dreams.  I want my funny dreams back.

I love a pedicure as much as the next person… the lotioning, soaking, and massaging… ahhh!  But I read this article on Cnn.com about fish pedicures.  Yes, you read that right… fish pedicures.  That’s just plain weird to me.

I had another prenatal appointment today.  My doc couldn’t hear the heartbeat with the doppler machine at the clinic, so I had to go to OB triage at the hospital to have an ultrasound.  Neither I nor my doc were worried that anything was wrong.  We figured it was just a little too early or the baby could have been hiding behind the placenta.  Anyways, I got to see the little munchkin again and saw the heart valves fluttering away.  The baby was also pretty wiggly, so that was cool to see.  I can’t wait to feel the baby moving in there!  So things are going well.  The only complication so far is glucose intolerance, so I have to watch my diet and get some exercise.  Other than that, I’m feeling good.  My next appointment is in a month.

Had an ultrasound the other day to confirm how far along I am in the pregnancy.  I’m am confirmed to be about 9 and a half weeks along.  Here’s the pics from the ultrasound.  The baby is the white blob in the black area.  The head lies to the right and the rump is to the left with what appears to be the legs pointing upwards.  I got to see the heart fluttering on ultrasound and hear it beating via doppler as well.  I LOVE THAT!  It just confirms that there’s this little person growing inside.  Still no morning sickness or nausea.  I get indigestion every once in a while, but never real bad.  I have very few negative symptoms of pregnancy, so I’m very blessed.  Next appointment will be July 21st, and I will be 12 weeks along by then (heading into 2nd trimester!)

Okay, 7 weeks pregnant and counting.  I go in for a dating ultrasound in a couple days to get a more accurate due date.  So far, no morning sickness (yay!).  I did get a call from my doc today and she said that my 1 hour glucose tolerance test result was high, which means that my body isn’t clearing out a high sugar load very efficiently.  The remedy?  I have to stick to a diabetic diet (boo!).  The good news is that I currently have less of a sweet tooth than pre-pregnancy and I’ve been craving salads (with some kind of meat in them) a whole lot.  The problem is that I’ve lately been too tired (or lazy… whichever you prefer) to make them myself and not very creative in putting salads together.  I’m often even too tired to go to the farmer’s market or grocery store to get the stuff.  So… I guess I just need to git er done and buy some salad ingredients and keep them in stock.  If anyone has a yummy and EASY salad recipe for me, please share!

We’ve recently had some visiting relatives and a friend from Singapore stop into town.  We had TONS of fun showing them around some of New Mexico.  I also learned that Singapore is an island country, a little smaller than Albuquerque, but with a population that is about twice what we have in all of New Mexico.  Pretty crowded place, I guess.  We got to try some of the food from Singapore when my cousin and his classmate cooked a really delicious dinner for us, and I think they were pretty happy to try some authentic New Mexican food with all the green chile deliciousness as well.  While we had visitors, we did some hiking in the mountains, went to Santa Fe, the VLA near Socorro, Stone Age Climbing gym, and the guys did some caving at Junction Cave at Malpais National Monument near Grants, NM.  Fun, fun, fun.  Check out my pictures page for some pics.

In other news, I took a neat picture last week.

Yippee Skippy!!!!  We’re excited!

Nathan mentioned Bacos and bacon on his site the other day.  It reminded me of a t-shirt I saw Rick Bayless (chef) wearing on his show last week.  It said “bacon is meat candy”.  I thought that was funny… and true.  So I googled “bacon meat candy” and found this site where you can get a t-shirt of your very own, plus bacon air fresheners and bacon bandaids for that bacon enthusiast in your life.  Air fresheners and bandages are also great gifts for the vegetarians in your life (you know they miss the smell of bacon, afterall, who wouldn’t?).  Go on… you know you want to.

I’ve been thinking of using fabric as wall decor, so I started  researching it a bit online.  At first I thought I’d use a plain white canvas and attach the fabric to that, but this website has a better idea.  Now to decide on a fabric…

Sean and I were at the library the other day and apparently, some guy thought he recognized me.  I was still in the car talking on my cell phone, and he walked to the front of the car and started waving and making googley faces at me like he knew me really well.  It was very strange.  I got kinda scared to get out of the car since there was no one else passing by at the moment, so I kept talking on the cell phone and took off my sunglasses so he would see that I’m not who he thought I was.  He finally did and he walked away like it never happened.  Very odd… so anyways, before you start waving at someone like a maniac and making googley eyes at them, make sure you know them first.