Category: Friends

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Baby Books Children Drew Friends Nonfiction Technology Travel Writing

Google Me, Part 2: iPhone search terms

Back in the day, I wrote a post called Google Me about all my iPhone search terms, and I reminisced about why in the world I needed to look up these things. Well, it’s been awhile and I noticed the other day that my search history has been getting kind of eclectic again. So I thought I would share.

skyfall Lincoln – I was looking for this image.

mary reilly imdb – My parents were here the other day and we were naming Julia Roberts movies, and then Drew mentioned this one and it sounded interesting so I looked it up. (Julia Roberts plays Dr. Jekyll’s maid, and she falls in love with both him AND Mr. Hyde!)

healthy horizons burlingame – A breastfeeding center that we went to the other day to weigh the baby

goose goslin – A baseball player with a funny name

peninsula library catalog – I wanted to look up the book Insurgent and see if it was at the library. It is…but I shouldn’t go check it out because I’m already in the middle of 3 books (4 if you count Harry Potter) and I should try to focus a little bit.

obama birthday – When is Obama’s birthday? Answer: August 4th, 1961.

aspirated w – I was checking if this is really the term used when you do that funny/annoying pronunciation of the wh in words like “white” and “wheelhouse.” (It is.)

kellan lutz – He appeared on an episode of 30 Rock, and we had no idea who he played in the Twilight movies.

fontanelle – I needed more info about babies’ “soft spots,” like, Am I going to injure my baby via his fontanelle? And, when will his head get hard so I don’t have to stress out about his fontanelle?

edd – edd.ca.gov, just looking up claim status information.

giants game – My lazy way of just tracking the scores of the World Series’ games on my phone, for the games we weren’t home to watch.

third rock from the sun cast – We were trying to remember the name of French Stewart. (We were thinking Stewart French.)

1 month old baby eyesight – I wanted to know how far he could see at 1 month, and what kind of tracking/focusing skills he “should” have. (To be honest, there were a lot of baby-related searches, but I wanted to show a range here. Just know I google a lot of questions I have about babies.)

robert louis stevenson – We were looking up when he died, because I was thinking his story “The Bottle Imp” was set in the 1940s, but I was way way off – he died in 1894.

walgreens pacifica – My pharmacy. I am constantly googling this to get the phone number.

giants schedule – Self-explanatory.

plutos locations – We were in Lodi, craving Plutos, and wondering if there was one nearby. But Sacramento/Davis seemed too far out of the way. So we just went home.

…Seriously, what did we ever do before smartphones?

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Awesome Drew Fashion Friends Home improvements Memoir

My strongest suit

We’ve been cleaning and reorganizing, and last night Drew dragged out all of our “costume” stuff to consolidate it. For some reason – although maybe this won’t surprise people – we’ve been collecting costume pieces for awhile. We’ve got store-bought Halloween costumes, vintage stuff (mostly old-timey bathing suits and ladies’ gloves) from an estate sale a couple years ago, and the pieces that Drew bought/made in New York for some photos he was taking.

It took us awhile but we finally managed to get everything compressed enough to fit into this one storage tub we have. We’ve been moving certain things out into this cabinet we have in our carport area, which is coming in really handy. We now have things like Halloween and Christmas decorations out there, a tent for camping that we’ve never used, and with a giant box filled with all my stage management binders.

But costumes are irresistible, so before packing up, there was some modeling. Luckily, I was in control of my phone so there aren’t any pictures of me.

My favorite thing about this next picture is that I had to turn my phone on, select the camera app, and take the picture, using my nose, because I was wearing elbow-length charcoal gray gloves, and the touch screen doesn’t work with gloves on. (I hear I could have also used a Slim Jim, but a) we don’t have any here, and b) I don’t want Slim Jim grease all over my phone.)

When I texted this picture to Erin, her response was:

I mean, is there really anything else to say about that?

Categories
Fiction Friends Memoir Not awesome Theatre Work

Lying at a wedding

We went to a wedding yesterday. At the reception – which was a full-on 9-course Chinese banquet, although I counted 11 courses before the cake – the girl next to me started making small talk. Her date (fiancee? husband? boyfriend?) was part of the band and so he was up and down through most of dinner, so somewhere between the shark fin soup and the abalone with mushrooms, she asked me what I do.

When I told her I work at a theatre company, she asked me which one, and it turned out she’s actually kind of into theatre. She’s actually been to see shows that we have put on, the most recent 3 years ago, but that’s still far better than most people I find myself making small talk with. I immediately upgraded my conversation from the standard “talking about my work with people who don’t care about theatre.”

“What have you seen around here that’s good?” she asked me, and I reached out for anything, anything we’ve seen lately.

But it appears I’m a theatre major failure, because it’s been months since I’ve seen anything. Well, I guess I’ve seen shows at my work. I resorted to fibbing and talking about shows at other companies, that I’m sure were very good, but they closed before I had a chance to see them.

Erin recently saw Chinglish at Berkeley Rep, and she raved about it, so I almost said that I’d seen that, but luckily something stopped me, because it turned out that my tablemate LOVES David Henry Hwang and saw Chinglish last week. Yeesh, that could have been messy.

After the reception I got to thinking: we should really see more Bay Area theatre. There is so much here. It’s just that a lot of it is so spread out and/or difficult to get to. And let’s face it. I’m into being at home and in pajamas by 8pm these days. I missed opening night of my own company’s current show, and haven’t actually managed to see it yet – and this is the last week of performances.

But I think I might see if I can get tickets to see Chinglish. I’ve heard such good things.

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"Other people" Drew Friends Memoir Nonfiction Pregnancy Travel

Childbirth preparation – ALL DAY

On Saturday, Drew and I got up at 6:30am and headed to Stockton for a childbirth preparation class. Reasons for going all the way to Stockton?
1. We could attend the class with Liz and Bill, which was a kind of fun thing to do for two couples who never do anything together as couples, and
2. This hospital offers all their classes free of charge, whereas it would have been something like $125 to take the class at our hospital.

We found some good seats and went through the massive amount of available paper resources while we waited for the class to start.

The class consisted of a slideshow presentation, interspersed with videos and some real-life practicing. The woman leading the class was amusing but also over the top, and laughed at all of her own jokes, but I liked her. About an hour into the class we had our first break, and afterwards we got to get down on the floor and practice things like relaxing breathing and massage and using a focal point. I liked this because I got to lie in a pile of pillows, pretending to focus on a “lovely sensation” blowing over me, while Drew rubbed my back. Not a bad way to spend a morning.

But a true thing is that two people on the floor in a pile of pillows takes up a lot more space than two people sitting in two chairs, so it got a little crowded. There was a guy sitting directly in front of me, and I became a lot more acquainted with his bare back (his shirt kept riding up, like, majorly) and his extremely dirty socks than I ever wanted to be. Liz said after her relaxing floor massage, she opened her eyes to see that the couple right behind her was kind of looming over her watching them. That’s pretty awful. And not relaxing. And not the delivery experience you want to have.

We did some other exercises, like swaying and vocalizing and stuff, which was all interesting, but also kind of intimate. When we started doing the swaying stuff, Susie (our teacher) put on some music, which happened to be “The Way You Look Tonight,” and one girl who looked like this pregnancy might be sort of accidental (and who was there with her mom) blurted out “This is the song I got pregnant to!” How are you not supposed to laugh at that? (She and her mom were also cracking up.) (After lunch her husband showed up and the four of us were all happy for them.)

But it was kind of strange to sit in a room full of couples, and practice things like massage and speaking quietly and encouragingly to each other. And know that everyone did something intimate to get into that room, and now we’re all practicing doing something else that’s very intimate (in a different way) with our partner, with whom we’re going to go through yet another experience that’s incredibly personal and (to me at least) somewhat private. It’s kind of like, I had to just block out that there were other people there who might be looking at me or listening to me, and focus on what I needed to learn to get through (what I’ve been told can be) a harrowing experience.

After lunch, we talked about epidurals and analgesics, and c-sections and all the fun medical stuff. Sitting on the floor started to get kind of uncomfortable. Then we did some more practice vocalizing to get through the pain, and she told us how to push without holding your breath. (Something I’ve never really thought about before, but it totally makes sense, and I will definitely keep that in mind.) She went over postpartum depression and how it’s really important to watch for it and treat it. We ended up getting out early, which was definitely nice since we had the entire drive back home.

Overall, I liked the class and I’m glad we went. It was definitely nice to get all the info laid out for us, and to see some videos of different people’s birth experiences. Also I do feel like I learned about some techniques of getting through this things sans epidural. There wasn’t any information in the class that was brand new (thanks to the internet and the last 8 months of one-track thinking), but it was still nice to hear it all in order. I am glad we didn’t pay full price for that same class here, though.

Last night I ordered a second car seat base from Target. The weird thing is, that’s kind of the last thing we “need.” Which means that, I guess we’re ready at this point. I mean, “ready.” Whatever that means…

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Beauty Friends Love Sentiment Theatre

The Loudest Man on Earth

I recently saw a staged reading of a show called The Loudest Man on Earth, by Catherine Rush. The play is about a hearing woman who meets a deaf man and they start a relationship. Her family’s not in love with the relationship, partly because he’s slightly older than she is, and his family seems to be out of the picture. He’s defensive about being deaf, and tends to be angry at the world. They go through a rocky period, and after that I don’t really want to give any spoilers.

The BRILLIANT thing about the play is that the man mainly signs (he does speak occasionally, which is a major plot point). The woman signs and speaks a lot, but there are times she only signs. The play is not interpreted, so there are scenes that are totally spoken, and scenes that are totally signed, and then some scenes are mixed. So it’s unlikely than most audience members would understand every single thing that is said.

It’s about communication, both between these two characters, and also between them and the rest of the world.

There are transitional scenes, where Jordan (the male character) is writing letters to Haylee (the female character), describing scenes from their life together. They’re entirely signed, and completely beautiful. They’re love letters, about their first date, or a story about him watching her while she’s sleeping, but also they’re letters describing his childhood and his relationship with his parents and his difficulties growing up and being completely unable to hear anything.

The play was gorgeous, and it was only a staged reading. I was teary through most of it, and I lost it at the end. I lose it a lot lately, so I know that’s part of it, but seriously, I’ve been so psyched about this script since the first time I read it months ago, and I knew it was going to be great.

I think a lot of what I loved about it was that I am enchanted by American Sign Language. When I was 12 or 13, and working at the camp my family worked at every summer, we met a guy a couple years older than me. He was deaf and most of my friends and I communicated with him primarily by writing. He would carry around a spiral notebook and we would just write back and forth. After the first summer though, a lot of us got interested in ASL and ended up taking classes, so in later years there was some signing (although still a lot of writing – and drawing).

In high school I ended up taking 3 semesters of ASL, which I used for my foreign language grad requirement instead of taking Spanish. As with many high school things, I regret not paying more attention, or practicing more, or sticking with it, or appreciating the opportunity I was given. My parents took the same classes, and it was fun when, for awhile, our family was signing to each other and practicing with each other and going to night classes together.

ASL is fascinating to me for several reasons. I love the grammar structure. I love the beauty of it, of watching someone who is fluent, and the grace and the deliberateness of each gesture. I also love the fact that even though I have forgotten almost everything from those classes 10 years ago, so much of it came back to me so easily. Watching someone tell a story in ASL is so much easier to understand than listening to someone tell a story in another verbal language with which you’re not familiar.

The story of The Loudest Man on Earth is not complicated. It’s a boy-meets-girl story. That’s not to say it’s simple or easy. But the twist to it just makes it something so special, in my mind and, I think, in a lot of other people’s minds as well. I sincerely hope to be able to see a fully-realized production of this play sometime in the future. Fingers crossed.

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Awesome Beginnings Being a girl Dreams Drew Food Friends Love Memoir Pregnancy Sentiment

Baby brain is a very real thing

Last weekend, my two good friends Sam and Erin threw me a baby shower. It was rubber duckie themed and adorable! One of the activities was decorating bibs. Some people were very creative and talented, and some people made up for any lack of talent with their enthusiasm. (I kid.)

I went with a Game of Thrones theme for mine – I was going to do “The stallion that mounts the world,” but horses are difficult to draw, and then we got into a conversation about how I should draw “mounting,” so I went with “My sun and stars” instead.

Then there was also a store-bought bib – but I also really like this picture because you can see my pink and blue nails (which are now a wreck).

The big surprise at this shower was that the dessert was cupcakes from Torino Baking, who did our wedding cake (and consequently, our first and second anniversary cakes!). She is AWESOME and her banana cake is amazing. The cupcakes (some banana and some chocolate) fully lived up to their reputation!

This weekend, Liz had her baby shower in Stockton. Everything was Peter Pan-themed, and super cute. After the shower, we went back to Liz’s house and Erin took some maternity shots for her while I watched and provided the soundtrack/inner monologue.

I am obsessed with our second bedroom. Yes, it’s a lot of bookshelves and it’s still partly storage for stuff we weren’t sure what to do with, but Drew has made great strides in getting the closet cleaned out, and with all the new baby stuff we’ve acquired over the last few weeks, it’s starting to real feel more like a nursery than a library. I keep wandering in there and just standing around. I just like looking at all the baby stuff. Everything is so little and cute…and I’m hard pressed to walk by without sticking my head in and admiring the stroller, or feeling how soft things are, or going through the onesies and making sure they’re still hanging in order from newborn to 12 months.

I try to keep it under control with other people, but I have to admit, my mind is 24/7 thinking about the baby, and about what we need to do, and what we’ve done already, and what the future’s going to be like…it just doesn’t stop. If it’s like this now…what’s it going to be like 7 weeks from now?

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Awesome Beginnings Children Family Food Friends Games Love Memoir Nonfiction Parents Pregnancy Sentiment

Baby shower!

This week (and next week) is crazytown at work. I have given myself over to it, and just accepted that it’s going to mean full days at work, followed by evenings at the theater, but I just had to get that out there. It’s a lot, and I’m looking forward to a little peace and quiet after everything’s over. (Yeah, right.)

Last weekend I went home-home, and had my first baby shower. It was bigger than I expected (I guess I didn’t pay attention to the guest list), and I had a great time! It was lots of women who have (pardon the cliche) watched me grow up, so that’s always fun. My aunt and uncle came up from Napa, and Drew’s mom and her BFF drove up, and I hope everyone had as much fun as I did.

I mean, it’s either one or the other!
We’ve been splitting our time between this (sock) monkey theme and this jungle animals theme. Settling on one theme was never my strong point.
Christy made a diaper cake! Cute AND functional!
Me and Mom!
Me and long-time friends!
With Suzanne and Bonnie – love you guys!
Our travel system, compliments of my parents!

We are incredibly lucky and very blessed to be surrounded by such great, supportive, generous and loving people. The excitement and the joy has been very encouraging. I am grateful that I haven’t had to deal with people saying inconsiderate or negative things. Literally everyone has been positive and respectful.

When I got regular-home from being home-home, I had a carload full of stuff to unload (more boxes of books from my parents among them), and Drew’s mom had brought back a lot of presents that wouldn’t fit in my car. I reworked the nursery (see, I can call it that now, and not just keep calling it the library) and tried to get rid of boxes and bags, and group things into blankets, feeding, bathtime, etc.

We pushed the stroller/carseat in there, and after a moment Drew said, “Wow. I thought we had this room under control.” It’s a bit of a jumble right now, but I’m hoping we can alleviate that over the next month or so. It’s amazing how much stuff we have amassed – and I thought we were being conservative!

We haven’t taken the plastic off the crib mattress yet, or washed the sheets and made the crib up, but it’s still a good place to store certain things…

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Awesome Drew Food Friends Games Memoir Nonfiction Sentiment Sports TV

2012 Olympics

Last night we had an Olympic opening ceremonies party. Drew is absolutely crazy for the Olympics.

He made name tags for everyone, with a fun fact about each country.

I got to choose mine first, before anyone else arrived, so we went with one country that came from another country. Subtle, but effective.

As with the last party we had, back in May, between what we made and what people brought, we had way too much food. And there’s only enough furniture for half the people to be sitting at a time. But the opening ceremonies had all the expected moments of “wow” and also “wtf,” and we had a good time.

Now for two weeks for Olympics games – and then a year and a half until the winter Olympics and our next opening ceremonies party!

(Thanks to Erin for the pictures in this post!)

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"Other people" Beginnings Being a girl Children Drew Family Fashion Friends Love Memoir Nonfiction Parents Pregnancy

Oh brave new world: Babies on the internet

I have a dilemma. And I know it will be one that people have differing opinions on. But I’m trying to figure out how I feel about it, precisely.

You (maybe) know how on your Facebook timeline, you can scroll all the way back to “born 1983,” and you have blank years between, say, 1983 and 2006, when you actually set up your account. But at some point in the not-so-distant future, there is going to be a wave of teenagers with every single year of their lives filled out, thanks to their overenthusiastic parents.

And I guess no one really knows what this is going to mean for the future. And maybe I’m giving Facebook (or whatever comes after Facebook) too much credit. But I think it’s a pretty safe guess that things aren’t going to start turning backward. Everything’s going online.

When Drew and I got married, we got into a small scuffle or two with friends over the fact that we preferred that people not post tons of pictures of the wedding, particularly if they’re, you know, sitting in the back and taking pictures on their phone. Ultimately, yes, some pictures got posted, and it didn’t really bother either of us. But the other day, I saw that a (far-flung) friend of mine had posted 300 pictures into an album called “Wedding,” and my first thought was, “Oh wow, I didn’t even know she was getting married!” and then when I looked at the pictures I realized it was just a wedding that she attended. (I don’t even think she was in it…just a guest. Which seems extreme to me.)

But at least those people are all over 18. Lately, I can’t stop worrying about the whole phenomenon of posting a million pictures of your baby on your Facebook page. Let me just admit, I don’t think I will be able to resist that, for a couple reasons.

1) How can you not show off something like that? How cute would an Instagramed baby be? Am I right?
2) I’m pretty sure that I’m still like halfway in the closet with this whole “being pregnant” thing, and if I post a couple pictures of me and Drew holding an infant, it’s going to make it a lot clearer.

(There’s also a whole other side issue of the “attention wanted” posts, versus the “for entertainment purposes” posts, versus the “for the family members” posts.)

It’s not just the possibility that one day this kid will want to be the president (ha, yeah right), and won’t want pictures of himself or herself naked in a bathtub. It’s also a safety thing. Drew pointed out there are people on Facebook, who we don’t really know in real life…but we know EVERYTHING about their (very young) children. Like, we could probably use the knowledge we have, to kidnap said children. And we would never do that, because we’re cool, but there are people out there who would totally do that.

I can’t claim to be particularly good at staying anonymous – I’m sure that I’ve accidentally let slip too many details here. Things that I didn’t mean to say, but “oops” happens.

And even if I can resist putting a bunch of pictures – there are still all these other people running around with cameras and phones and wanting to post stuff.

I can be kind of private about some things. And delivery is going to be one of those things. I’m good having our parents in and out during labor, and hanging out…but when it comes down to business, it’s really important to me that it’s me and Drew (and I guess some doctors or something). It fits with our whole “we’re a team” thing.

So I’m going to be pretty bummed if I come home two days later and find out that it’s already on Facebook, because someone jumped the gun – purely out of excitement, I’m sure. But how do you put that out there, without sounding like a total bitch? It’s just gotten too hard to put restrictions on things like that.

Friend anecdotes: one friend was very strict about things early on. She didn’t want her kid posted anywhere linked with his name, or with the names of her or her husband. I think she was thinking about safety. But eventually she’s posted more and more pictures and videos of him on her Facebook, which I’m sure has the highest security settings.

Another friend has been strict the whole time, and her kid is 3 years old. She’s also told family members to take things down because she doesn’t want them just floating out there. She also told us a story about a relative posting a video online with the caption, “[Name]’s first steps!!” And all the family members were commenting and loving it, and she had to say, “Hey, listen, she had her first steps a week ago and her father and I were there you can’t just take that away from us.”

I guess that’s my fear. My long-winded fear. I just don’t want this to get away from us. I want the two of us – Drew and me – to be the keepers of the milestones and the reveals. That’s all. I guess. Luckily, none of our parents are really into Facebook, so they won’t go crazy. Other friends and relatives…might be harder to rein in.

Silver lining, which I keep reminding myself: I am so grateful that this kid is arriving into a world of people excited and happy to meet him or her.

PS. He or she has been kicking the whole time I’ve been writing this – perhaps as if to say, “Moooo-oom, you’re embarrassing me” ?

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Awesome Being a girl Drew Exercise Food Friends Memoir Nonfiction Pregnancy Sentiment TV

Dear Diary Update 7/12

Big Brother Season 14 started tonight – one of the best summer traditions.

Drew just demonstrated his excellent planking (the exercise type) posture, while Erin counted slowly to 30. Meanwhile, I threw Hershey’s miniatures at him from across the room in an attempt to distract him or make him laugh enough that he fell. But he didn’t!

I found out today that I officially passed my glucose test, which is a 2-hour series of blood draws they do when you’re pregnant to test for gestational diabetes. No GD here – very happy!

Not much else to say about this evening. TGI(A)F!