footprints in my heart...

but it's amazing how much one can do on a caffeine high. i think i've gotten more work done in the last 2 hours than i have all day yesterday and today. :) my mind is thinking so clearly and quickly. i'm amazing myself with what i've been able to do. hehe, guess i should drink coffee more often.

daym, i forgot that boba milk tea (minus boba) has caffeine in it. and my friend bought me the super big one too. so i've been all jittery all afternoon. i thought it was just cuz i have so much work to do before i leave for hawaii and that i was just nerve-wracked and panicky cuz of it. but as i drink the milk tea sip by sip, i feel the caffeeine totally taking over my body as i type away a million words per minute. i feel like a squirrel, taking small pauses to gather my thoughts and then running off to go move the nuts from tree to tree... i dunno why i thought of that analogy. i'm just imagining a panicky squirrel jumping and running around... okay back to work. gotta move the nuts. that sounds funny. okay, it's the caffeine talking.

from my aunt's email fwd

true story
Brenda was almost halfway to the top of the tremendous granite cliff. She was standing on a ledge where she was taking a breather during this, her first rock climb. As she rested there, the safety rope snapped against her eye and knocked out her contact lens. "Great", she thought. "Here I am on a rock ledge, hundreds of feet from the bottom and hundreds of feet to the top of this cliff, and now my sight is blurry."

She looked and looked, hoping that somehow it had landed on the ledge. But it just wasn't there.

She felt the panic rising in her, so she began praying. She prayed for calm, and she prayed that she may find her contact lens.

When she got to the top, a friend examined her eye and her clothing for the lens, but it was not to be found. Although she was calm now that she was at the top, she was saddened because she could not clearly see across the range of mountains. She thought of the bible verse "The eyes of the Lord run to and fro throughout the whole earth."

She thought, "Lord, You can see all these mountains. You know every stone and leaf, and You know exactly where my contact lens is. Please help me."

Later, when they had hiked down the trail to the bottom of the cliff they met another party of climbers just starting up the face of the cliff. One of them shouted out, "Hey, you guys! Anybody lose a contact lens?"

Well, that would be startling enough, but you know why the climber saw it? An ant was moving slowly across a twig on the face of the rock, carrying it!

The story doesn't end there. Brenda's father is a cartoonist. When she told him the incredible story of the ant, the prayer, and the contact lens, he drew a cartoon of an ant lugging that contact lens with the caption, "Lord, I don't know why You want me to carry this thing. I can't eat it, and it's awfully heavy. But if this is what You want me to do, I'll carry it for You."

I think it would do all of us some good to say, "God, I don't know why You want me to carry this load. I can see no good in it and it's awfully heavy. But, if You want me to carry it, I will."

God doesn't call the qualified, He qualifies the called.

Yes, I do love GOD. He is my source of existence and my Savior. He keeps me functioning
each and every day Without Him, I am nothing, but with Him....I can do all things through Christ which strengthens me. (Phil. 4:13)

i got this fwd a lil while ago, but i just read it today. i thought it succinctly described how the weekend went. for the paxes, the rector and vice-rector and the staff, i think we often prayed for God to deliver us through the weekend. He made miracles happen and as usual, it was incredible... and congrats to kay and cristina on a wonderful weekend. kay, welcome to ex-wRECk-dom!

i know you're all tired from the retreat and all... but blog already! i barely had anything to read when i had a teenie tiny break today.

basta kayo!

i'm dizzy... it's not lack of food, cuz i ate... breakfast and lunch... although it was all rather light. but i'm not too hungry. i'm pretty sure it's related to the bleeding. i get like this every time, but usually a headache accompanies this dizziness. right now, it's just dizziness.

on the bright side, i got an earlier appt for next friday...

aughhhh, i freakin started my period AGAIN!!!!! it's the 3rd freakin time in exactly 6 weeks! i look on my calendar and i have started bleeding every other tuesday! what the hell is wrong with my body?!

i want to go see an actual gynecologist. last time i went, i saw a nurse midwife. she was incredibly quick to "fix" the problem. but i wanna know what's causing this crap! how do i know i don't have some cyst in my ovary that's causing it release more eggs all of a sudden?! and i don't want to lose any more eggs dammit!

tried to make an appt with a doc. i actually already made one last week, but the first available was in sept after i come back from hawaii. i tried again to see if there were any cancellations and nope... next available was like sept 20. :P ob/gyn is apparently the most impacted dept in kaiser. aughhhhh!

oh and to top it off, today, of all days, i chose to wear the most flimsy mesh thong underwear! aughhh! sooo not prepared to bleed!

whoa! i can't believe it's only 2 weeks and 3 days til hawaii! it crept up so fast! i think we still thought it was far away, so we haven't really been booking our activities or felt the need to do so. on friday we finally looked at the luau and were going to book it "later" we said. good thing i just said, well, might as well do it now. and it was such a good thing we did! cuz the old lahaina luau was already booked for their traditional seating (you sit on pillows on the floor with a low table). so we thankfully booked the conventional seating (on regular chairs and tables). we put on the notes that we would like traditional seating if possible, but we were just thankful to get in on the night we wanted to go there. we totally forgot that we're going to be in maui through labor day weekend, so most places will be so crowded. i'm glad we'll be in oahu after the long weekend. i'm hoping that the crowds will be departing on monday, just as we are arriving.

ooh, any good recommendations for anything? i've never been to maui before. henry has, so we're gonna do the normal touristy stuff, snorkeling at molokini, the road to hana drive, and sunrise at haleakala. any other suggestions?

at oahu, i've been there and explored more than henry has, so i'm gonna take him atv-ing, and he really wants to ride the mopeds. i've never done that before and i figured, sure why not? i can ride a bike and the atv thing i picked up on not too slowly, so i should be fine right? well, after cici's crash with the moped's, i'm a bit more nervous about it now. i told henry, let's try just riding a bike first one day and then we'll rent a moped okay? so wish me luck and say a lil prayer that we crash neither bike, nor moped, nor atv okay?

oh and no portuguese man of war stings either please!

hehe, this time, it's drexel who was getting some water play time. first of all, i love these lil kiddie bathing suits! she had this cute greenish one with bright (almost neon) orange piping. and it was a two piece! how sexy naman no? my cousin's birthday party had a slip n' slide and all the lil kids of course were slippin n slidin everywhere. lil drexel just turned 1 in july so she's a pretty good walker too. she liked being with all the bigger kids, but when they tried to bring her toward the slip n' slide, where the water was squirting up, she so did not like the water on her face. she started crying as they tried to coax her to at least walk through it. to them, the squirting water was a bout waist high, but to poor lil drexie, it was shooting her straight in the face! she was crying all the way through and when she got to the end, she sooo wanted to get out, but she wanted her mom to pick her up. auntie laine just stepped back and watched her. she gave some comforting words and soon, drexel figured she was not gonna get her way. so she just plopped herself down on the lil pool of water that was built up at the end of the slide. the kids were really helpful in helping her to get comfy in the water. and they started splashing around, so she started splashing around. then they started introducing her to one stream of water that was squirting up and she started playing with it. soon, the little darling was walking up and down the slip n slide all by herself! hehe, she's so cute, she even laughed when she saw all the kids were laughing. silly auntie laine's newest "trick" for her is to have her fake laugh... so if you start laughing, she'll copy and start laughing too! she's sooo funny!

she was soo not fond of me when we arrived at the party. it's always like that. it's like she forgets who i am after every time i see her. so it was also nice that by the end of the party, lil drexie warmed up to me again. she even fell asleep in my arms. i was afraid to disturb her, but my family was leaving, so i put her down gently on the couch and she fussed a bit, but she was in such sound sleep, that she just adjusted herself all comfy and slept like an angel... ahh precious!

went to chris' bday beach bbq yesterday and i met iya's nephew and niece. such adorable kids! it was their first time at the beach and it was so much fun watching them experience the ocean for the first time! matthew is 2 and samantha is 1. at first they were scared of it, especially samantha. she's walking pretty steadily now, but on the sand, she was all of a sudden so unstable. she would stand, just stuck in the sand, unable to move her feet, and her face had this look, as if to say, what is this stuff? why is the ground not hard?! but as we encouraged her to walk toward the water, she became more secure. matthew was more amused, running around all excited. but when we got to the beach, the waves and the water was a lot to handle for lil samantha. and she didn't wanna go near the water. matthew saw all the big boys and some boys closer to his age, and he was so joyful, just laughing and pointing. he probably wanted to go in too but was too afraid to go closer to the water. as samantha got more comfy, she was actually the more brave one, wanting to let go of her mom to walk closer to the water. i kept picking up the clumps of sand she she could see it was safe. and as we went closer to the water, the little waves would wet her little feet! she didn't like the first wave at all and she ran back to her mom, but then the second wave came and she became more comfortable, and by the time the 3rd wave came, she was just fine with it. and even smiled and giggled!

i was thinking, as adults, we forget such simple joys and the "first time" experiences don't come very often any more. not like when we were kids, when there were sooo many first times! but we experience these joys again when we do have our kids and see their smiling faces when they accomplish something for the first time by themselves or see them discover something new for the first time and tell you all about it with such excitement! hehe, i can't wait to experience their first time joys!

you know when you're just sooo proud of yourself for doing something challenging and getting over the difficulty and accomplishing your goal? i totally feel like that right now! i feel like singing that song from my fair lady that goes, you did it, you did it, they said you couldn't do it but indeed you did! when colonel pickering was congratulating professor higgins on accomplishing their task of turning a common girl into a high society lady.

except my accomplishment was completely and totally nerdy! i'm doing another friend's invitations and the way i asked her to reformat the excel worksheet turned out to be incorrect. so i had to go through so much clean up of the data in excel so that i could get it to merge over to word the way it needs to be. so i was basically cleaning up data for like 1.5-2 hours, but when i imported it over, voila! it turned out exactly how i need it to be! no other modifications needed!!!! oh sooo beautiful! beautiful as in so perfectly functional!

oh my freakin god!!!! last month my electric bill was over $200! it's normally only $78 or so! i thought it was some sort of mistake at first. but this month, it's freakin $293!!! my brothers have got to go back to school where they don't have the computer and tv and air conditioning on all day long!

so i'm working from home today. my butt didn't hear the alarm (it was on silent for goodness' sake!) and i was just so tired that i didn't even wake up until 9am! i called my boss immediately and just asked if i could work from home. people in my dept do it all the time anyway... so i'm glad my boss was flexible to say, oh yes, let's do that. so i've been responding nice and speedily to emails and sending a few out myself. there really wouldn't have been that much stuff to take care of at the office anyway...

oh and i stopped bleeding... now the test will be if things are normal next month. i didn't bother to actually start taking the pill. i'm thinking (hoping) that my body will readjust itself.

dangit, a report request just came in... i do have to work now. :(

i've been to these states:


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okay, so i haven't blogged in a while (again) and my first blog after a while will be to tell you that my body's gone crazy on me. i guess it's been really really stressful the last few months and my body's finally hating me for it. 15 days ago, i thought i got my period.
*you can stop reading now if you're starting to already get grossed out or if it's TMI for you. consider this your only warning*
but from the very beginning, it was allll weird. and you gotta understand that my body is textbook clockwork. i cycle every 28-31 days, alternating 28 then 31 days each month. i bleed for literally 5-7 days, heavy bleeding only the first 2-3 days. and it's blood, regular old watery red stuff. so i notice right away when something's off. it looked funny and weird from the beginning... clumpy and dry. like it was dried blood that was just being shed from the inside... and it wasn't red liquidy blood.. it was like brown thick stuff... so anyway.. i thought it was my period anyway, cuz the amount that was coming out was abundant enough for me to think so. and it started to go away at about day 6, late already i thought. and by day 8 i thought it was weird that i was still spotting a little. but okay, whatever... what totally freaked me out was yesterday, day 14 a whole 2 weeks after the beginning of my first day, i freaking started bleeding! like i woke up kinda wet. i was like wtf?! so i thought maybe i just cut myself or scratched.. i put on a pantiliner and by the time i got to work, i was freakin drenched. i had to ask my friend for a pad, thank god she had one. and right as i got to my desk, i called for an appt. freakin gyn dept in kaiser is apparently the most impacted one. and i wanted the appt for the next day. the lady goes, the next one i have is on sept 15 and i was like, no that doesn't work for me at all. she was like well, i have a cancellation at a different location and the different location was not that far, so i totally took it. i went yesterday for the 4pm appt. thank god payroll was over yesterday and my boss was here to deal with that mess.

so i tell her (the nurse midwife) all that... how i'm very very regular and this is just sooo bizarre... and she asks me about stress level and i told her, naw, i'm actually less stressed nowadays. and she asked how bout last month? oh, well, last month, shoot, i had ate jean and joel's wedding. hell yea, i was stressed out! and she's like, well, there you go. but still! 2 periods in a row? i've never had that! she was guessing at it... but she came to the point of just prescribing me birth control. and i was like what? and it's to regulate the cycle. i'm supposed to take 2 a day for 2 weeks then 1 per day until that 2nd box runs out. duude... seems like such a drastic measure. i told her i don't like to fuss with my body too much and i don't even take tylenol unless my head's actually about to explode. she thought it was silly and said that it doesn't increase the risk for cancer blah blah blah. i understood that... but still. i'd prefer to know the source of the problem and try to see what i can do to prevent it later. i don't just want to medicate it. plus i don't want any of the side effects. after she gets me to agree with it, that's also when she tells me, you may feel some headaches and nausea when you're on this. and i asked what i should do to relieve that... tylenol for the headaches and do like the pregnant women do for the nausea, eat small meals... aughh.. exactly what i don't want to deal with. that's what turns me off about the pill.

dude, so i knew i had to tell my mom about it before they just discover it and start wondering. i told her this morning. and i told her i wasn't sure about it. and she goes, don't take it... you might get addicted! i'm like ma! you don't get addicted to it! i'm supposed to just take it for a month to regulate my cycle again. she's so funny. and she knows all that, cuz she was put on the pill to regulate her cycle once too.

so i'm thinking, i wanna see if this period of bleeding stops in the next 5 days or so, just like a normal period would. if it does, then i'm not gonna take the pill, i'm gonna consider my body reset. if it's still all wacky, then i'll start it next wednesday. and i really gotta find a way to handle my stress better. i know it's bad when my chest tightens up and i can't catch a deep breath. *sigh* and this is supposed to be my slow month. :P