family, woodworking, photography, K-pop
E.’s still a little under the weather, but I think he’s on the mend. I don’t know if it’s because he’s sick or if it’s just a stage, but he’s been drooling like crazy these last few days. His little chin is getting pretty chapped. He’s also started focusing on his hands a lot and often puts them in his mouth along with anything he can grab–so his drool gets on everything within his reach. Lovely!
Anyway, happy Valentine’s Day from E. and me!
A couple of weeks ago, I received a belated Christmas present from N. It was a song he commissioned and had written for me! Keith John Adams (KJA) is a British musician. He was first in an acoustic guitar/drums/violin outfit called The Horse Doctors, then in Zuno Men, and now he’s on his own. For the release of his new CD, “Unclever,” which came out yesterday, his record label Happy Happy Birthday To Me did a special pre-order. The first 40 people to order “Unclever” would have a personal song written for them by KJA, based on stories they submitted.
When N. was placing his order, he asked me what my go-to anecdote was–the most unique experience I’ve had. I thought for a second that then told him it was probably when I got lost at a Korean Buddhist temple on Buddha’s birthday. Back in the summer of 1999, before N. and I were married or even dating, we both went on a university study abroad trip to Korea. A Korean TV network heard about our trip and decided to make a documentary about our group and so we had a camera crew following us around. Our group visited a lot of Buddhist temples, and even stayed overnight at one of them once.
Anyway, on Buddha’s birthday we were at a temple (Bogwangsa, I think) and a bunch of us decided to hike up the mountain above the temple to see a waterfall. About halfway up I decided to stop and take some photos of the rocks and stream and wait for the others to go up to the waterfall and come back. (I’m afraid that even then I was a pretty wimpy hiker.) Anyway, there was only one trail that led up and back, but somehow the rest of the group and I missed each other when they came back down. I waited by the trail until it started to get dark and I realized that it would be dangerous to try and get down the mountain in the dark by myself. So I headed down the mountain, silently freaking out in my head. My Korean wasn’t fluent by any means and I wasn’t sure how I would get back to the village we were staying at. I didn’t have a lot of money on me, but by the time I reached the temple I had convinced myself that I would be able to get a taxi or bus to the closest town and then from there I would be able to get a taxi out to the little village we were staying at. But I was pretty worried and only hanging on to my composure by a thread.
When I got to the temple, I saw that the procession of the lanterns had begun. As I watched the people streaming by, lit lanterns in hand, I recognized some students from our group. I was so relieved not to be stranded on my own that I promptly burst into tears. And fortunately the camera crew was right there to capture my humiliation! This was the only scene of me that made it into the final documentary. Awesome!
So N. told KJA a brief version of that story. And KJA wrote this song, “Lost in Korea,” about it. (You should see a player right below this. Let me know if it doesn’t work for anyone.)
I am thoroughly charmed by the song. It’s so sweet and fun. I’ve heard some of the other songs KJA wrote and a lot of them are very fun, but I still like mine the best! (Of course I’m a little biased though.)
You can find some of the other songs online at three imaginary girls and you ain’t no picasso. KJA’s record label is supposed to be sending the rest of the personalized songs to other music blogs during the next week or so. A bunch of people that ordered songs are getting together to have a vinyl record of all of the songs custom made. If it happens, I am definitely going to order one.
I have to admit to it; sometimes I can be a little bit grumpy if E. starts burbling away in his crib before 6:30 am or so. However, when I walk in there and see his cheerful little face poking out above his little swaddled body, I can’t help but crack up. E.’s usually super cheerful and chatty and making his favorite noise, “A-goo!”
I can’t believe the weekend’s already over! Along with E., N. has also been sick, so it was a pretty low key weekend with lots of lying about and watching the Food Network. E. is still really congested and a little wheezy, but he doesn’t seem noticeably worse, for which I’m really grateful.
However, now I have to make up for lost time on some reports I have to do for work this week. I’d also like to get some things done around the house, mainly tackle the huge pile of mail and paperwork that I’ve been doing my best to ignore for the last couple of weeks. Our two insurances have finally finished duking it out over who would pay for what with E.’s birth, so now we have to pay the hospital and all of the doctors the remaining balance. For the record, having two sets of insurance does not save you as much money as I thought it would.
Over the weekend I sorted through E.’s clothes – he’s now in 3-to-6 month sized things. Crazy! I’ll have to take some pictures of him in his new duds.
I took E. to the doctor again yesterday (5 visits in 2 weeks, a new personal best! Hopefully this record will stand for a long time.) Anyway, it turns out that the poor little guy has RSV. He has a cough and is a little wheezy, but the oxygen levels in his blood tested okay, so for right now it’s not super serious. I’m still kind of freaked out though because I know his condition can turn pretty quickly. So I’m watching him like a hawk to see if his breathing becomes more labored. The next week or so might be a little rough.
Oh yeah, and he has a double ear infection that he started antibiotics for. And he hates taking the antibiotic and squirms around and gets it everywhere.
Sigh. The good times just keep on coming.
Unfortunately, E.’s has come down with a cold. He’s super congested and it’s hard for him to eat. Poor guy. However, he’s still pretty cheerful. Even so congested, I think he feels better than when he had that high fever last week.
I really enjoy woodworking. I’ve taken an evening class at a local college off and on for the last couple of years. It’s a great class; students can work on whatever they want, the shop has professional grade tools and machinery, and the instructor’s great. I like the fact that I can go to class once a week, work on my project with all of the tools there, and then leave all of my stuff at the shop and come home. I don’t have to drag stuff back and forth or find room in my garage for a bunch of tools.
The projects I’ve made at the class so far (in order) are a coffee table, a large CD shelf, a headboard, and a crib. I’ll take some pictures of them and do a seperate post sometime. The crib was a close one: I finished it when I was about 5 months pregnant. E. seems to enjoy it, though.
I kind of wanted to take the class one more time. N. was very supportive of the idea and so I signed up again. The class is on Wednesdays and tonight is the first class to work in the shop. I think the class runs for 10 weeks. Anyway, our house has slowly filled up with furniture and I wasn’t sure what would be the best piece of furniture to make. I decided on an armoire/pie safe to go in what will be my office/sewing room. I’m going to use it to store yarn, fabric, and other supplies. I figure that it could also be used in a guest room to store linens or even a tv, so it should be fairly useful.
I bought plans for this pie safe online. I am not a huge fan of country style in general, and I want to change it around quite a bit. For instance, I’m going to make solid doors instead of using the tin panels and I’m going to put the drawers at the bottom. I think it will end up looking like a smaller sized armoire. But looking at these plans helped me get an idea of how it will go together.
Earlier this week, I went down to the lumberyard and bought 15 board feet of walnut. I am such a sucker for walnut (it’s what I made the crib out of) and the only way I can afford any walnut furniture is to make it myself.
I’m going to try and take my camera to class every week, so check back in to see my progress!
N.’s brother K. and K.’s wife M. came to visit for the weekend while K. was doing promotional appearances for his new book. Their daughter C. and son D. are a lot of fun to have around. It was fun to introduce them to E.
Note E.’s very hip Sub Pop onesie, a Christmas gift from K. and M. E.’s rocking it with a long-sleeved thermal underneath. He’s the Littlest Hipster!
We went to a Super Bowl party at our friends Earl and Judi’s last night. E. was a trooper and his good humor lasted almost through the whole game. The game’s ending was pretty exciting. I really wanted the Giants to win (or more accurately, I wanted the Patriots to lose) but like most of the country, I didn’t think it would happen. Historic record or no, there’s been something very off-putting to me about the Patriots this year ever since Spygate. They were never apologetic and they acted way too entitled for my tastes. But the Giants? C’mon! Eli Manning looks like he’s still in high school and he often acts that way, pouting and throwing up his hands in exasperation.
But you have to give him credit. He really got it done in the 4th quater. Way to go Eli! Now maybe Archie will love you as much as Peyton!
Huzzah! E.’s fever has gone down. I can tell that he’s feeling a lot better. He’s back to his normal cheerful self, although he still seems a little tired. Phew!
Anyway, here are some links I like:
http://thesartorialist.blogspot.com/ This is a fun photography blog about street fashion by a fashion industry insider. He frequently travels abroad and it’s interesting to see the fashion in different cities.
http://www.unphotographable.com/ During a trip to Ethiopia, there were times that Michael David Murphy was unable to capture the photographs he wanted to because of the taboo against photography in the Muslim communities he was visiting. So he created this site to document the moments he was unable to photograph. The writing is very lyrical and reminds me again why I love photography.
http://1000words.kodak.com/ The Kodak employee photoblog. Sometimes they have fun projects or good tips.
Yesterday I noticed the E. didn’t seem like his normal cheerful self and in the early evening he started to feel pretty warm. I took his temperature and it was 101 and some degrees, and so N. and I took made an appointment with our pediatrician’s after hours clinc. There his temperature was a little over 102, and because he’s so little still they wanted to run some urine and possibly blood tests to find out why.
Here’s the part I’m really ashamed of: when they were going to insert the catheter, they wanted me to sit by him and hold his arms and try and keep him calm. And I just lost it and started crying. I just felt so bad that E. was feeling so awful. He had been whimpering almost constantly for a couple of hours and it was obvious that he was miserable. And the whole catheter thing was freaking me out. E.’s so little! So N. held him. It was pretty bad because E. had just wet his diaper and so they had to stick the catheter way up there to get any pee at all. Of course E. totally freaked out. I still feel bad that I wimped out. I should have been there for him.
After they looked at his urine, they wanted to look at his blood so they sent us over to the hospital to get it drawn. It was now after 9pm and the outpatient lab was closed, so we had to wait in the emergency room for someone to draw it there. We were there for almost an hour before someone could be spared to do it. This time I did better though. I was collected enough to hold him down as they put the little tourniquet on his tiny arm and drew the blood. Argh! The whole thing was so sad.
So after that and around 10pm we were back over the clinic. They close at 10 but were waiting to get E.’s blood results and for us. It turned out that the type of red blood cells that the body releases from bone marrow when it’s fighting an infection were elevated. After talking with the doctor it was decided to give E. a one-time shot of antibiotics. So I had to hold him down again for that. Good times!
We got home a little after 10:30pm. I massaged E.’s thigh where he got his shot (he screamed bloody murder, of course) and gave him some baby Tylenol like the doctor said to and put him to bed. He fussed for a little while and then feel asleep, exhausted. He woke up screaming around 4am this morning and I jumped out of bed in a panic and ran across the hallway to his room, running smack into the door in the process. (I’m so unused to him screaming that it really kind of freaks me out.) But he’s now sleeping in his swing.
*sigh* I am so wiped out! We have a follow up appointment for E. this afternoon. Hopefully we’ll find out that the antibiotic has helped.
Anyway, here are some of E. with his cousins Big E. and Little E. who were visiting this weekend. It was really fun to see them and N.’s sister G. and her husband.
G., who is pregnant, had a craving for chajangmyun (Korean black bean paste noodles) and radish kimchi. Both sounded good to me and so we made some noodles and got out the kimchi. As G. and I were eating, Little E. declared that she wanted some noodles. So G. gave her a taste. And Little E. declared that she wanted more noodles! She ended up eating almost a third of the bowl. I think G. was torn was between annoyance at having to share so many of her noodles and pride that her daughter was eating Korean food; the pride definitely won out. Little E. also wanted to try the kimchi, but that didn’t go over as well!
