Life to live and explore

Mom’s MRI shows disc between L5 and S1 extruded

Mom’s leg pain has not improved over the last week, so she agrees to see the orthopedic today. The orthopedic recommended going for MRI.

The MRI showed the disc between L5 and S1 has extruded and pressed against the nerves. It is quite bad and the only way to repair such condition is going for a surgery according to the orthopedic.

Mom is not keen to go for surgery. So would bring her to try some alternative medicine in the next few weeks i.e. acupuncture, Chinese herbals and Chiropractic .

The last minute find

We have started talking about looking for a place to move since Jan 2008. After procrastinating for nearly four months, the big boy finally put his acts together and started to look at places for rental seriously 2-3 weeks ago. He found a house a few days before the current lease expired!

Not that we are looking at Manhattan real estate, we are just looking for a rental place in a small town. It really doesn’t have to leave until last minute like this, for many nicer apartments in this university town are fully booked until next fall! It’s a very stressful process and not to mention the uncertainties !

Uncooperative patient

Mom is such an uncooperative patient, just found out that she hasn’t been taking the medication from the orthopedic!

We have an appointment to see the orthopedic today, I don’t know how he is going to evaluate the effectiveness of the medications since she hasn’t been taking it according to the dosage and frequency.

Her leg pain has not been any better, so the orthopedic will probably recommend going for a MRI today.

The children are coming

My niece and nephew are going to be here at my parents’ place starting next week. They are going to stay about 10 days. We are looking forward to see them and enjoy the time with them.

They are good children, they can play together pretty well, of course the cat and dog fights are inevitable. They are also very independent children, they do not need much attention from the adults and indeed are a bundle of joy to be around. :-)

Since they like drawing and coloring, they will be happy to see the few boxes of color pencils and some drawing blocks I have for them. These are leftover from the preschool that recently folded up and finally brought to my parents’ house. I already gave the bottles of marker ink and a few dozens of Papermate pens to their grandfather since the children don’t use those.

In laws are going to visit the Bay area

Though they are originally from the Midwest, my parent-in-laws have spent most of their adult lives in a small town outside San Francisco. My father in law has retired and they have moved back to IL few years ago. However, they missed their friends and the weather, they would return to the Bay area to visit their friends for one whole month in the summer.

A few of their long time friends would take turn to host them for the whole month except when they go downtown. They also plan to go down to San Francisco to attend hobby printer conferences or coins shows. It’s good that they continue to stay active after retirement. In fact, they have quite hectic social schedule compare to many of us who are busy at work. :-)

Quiet weekend at home with parents

All my siblings, in-laws, niece and nephew are not coming home this weekend, it’s a quiet weekend at home. Mom cannot go out due to the leg pain she is having. She has been lazing around watching TV and DVDs, which she doesn’t really like to do when she was well and not in pain.

She went to see another doctor and got back some medications this morning, hopefully the medicine helps to stop the pain. It’s difficult for an active woman who likes to run around to be confined at home watching soaps!

Ready to pack and move

You probably have read about our pending move to IL for a couple of months now. Since the big boy has found a house for us to live in IL, finally it’s time for me to start packing and getting ready to move!

Some of our furniture are at his parents’ basement for storage, we probably need to rent a truck to help with the moving. Do you know of a reliable moving company? Have you ever tried the do-it-yourself Penske moving truck? Apparently, you can get 10% if you reserve the moving truck online at movingorbit.com. May be we should ask for a few quotes from different companies and compare?

Finally, a house he likes

The big boy has finally found a place that he likes. He hasn’t put down a deposit because he wants to make sure both of us agree to live at this place. :-)

He sent me no picture of the inside, just a picture outside of the house. I don’t even know how the interior of the house looks like and whether they have modern furniture or old furniture inside. Am I supposed to decide based on this two pictures?

Yeah, picture outside of the garage! Who is going to live in the garage? Not me.

When is he going to learn this? He doesn’t want to learn the fact that his wife is a visual person, no amount of descriptions on the phone can replace the thousands words that a picture speaks!

Aging parents and their ailments

Most of my friends who are in their late 30s to 40s have aging parents dealing with deteriorating health. While it’s fortunate to have healthy parents, mom’s recent ailment with pain of her leg really alarms us, that they are not young anymore.

Dad was recently diagnosed with mild hypertension and gout, he has to take medications to keep them under control. Fortunately the problems have not been too serious, he was able to get off the medication once the blood pressure and uric acid level went normal.

My friend’s mom recently had a bypass and is recovering from the heart surgery. Many of us are quite ignorant about heart attack risk and wouldn’t know what to do during a sudden cardiac arrest. You may want to check out www.insidecardiacarrest.com, where St. Jude Medical has put up information you need to know about the risk factor, warning signs and treatment of sudden cardiac arrest.

Mom’s leg pain still persists

Mom’s leg pain still persists, not better or worse. She is still taking the medication from the orthopedic. Her next appointment is on next Friday, 30th May 2008.

She may have to go for a MRI scan of her spine to help diagnose the root cause of the pain. According to Dr Y, there are several possibilities for this kind of pain.

She is getting impatient, wants to see another alternative medicine practitioner tomorrow. I am wary of all this alternative practitioners that she has been seeing, the ways they explained the problem just do not sound very convincing to me. In fact, all of them have been saying different things !

He is not stupid, he needs individual attention

Many of you know we have just folded up the tutoring business and getting ready to move to IL. Feeling sad to leave some of my students, especially those who have some learning difficulties. We have worked hard to boost their self esteem and got rid of the labels applied on them.

The mother of the boy who is dyslexic and has attention deficit wants me to talk to the new tutor she is going to to hire. But, it’s kind of hard to communicate when she comes from a different paradigm! She is from the old school, if a student doesn’t perform academically, it’s the problem with his IQ. She doesn’t seem to understand when I told her that this boy is very intelligent (yet can have learning difficulties). He is fine if he has individual attention of an one-on-one Tutor who uses multi-sensory approach. In fact, he has progressed leaps and bounds in the last six months, from a non-reader who can’t read “fish”, he can encode and decode multi-syllable word like “establishment”!.

Mom becomes more patient

Mom couldn’t move around much due to the pain on her left leg. She claims the medication  creates a tingling sensations on her toes, but it doesn’t seem to help much to relieve the pain.

I have been cooking and washing in the past one week. She didn’t even nag me when I left the dishes in the sink, took a shower, then only returned to do the dishes.  When she was well, she would go ahead to finish the dishes and nag me for not working according to “order” and “schedule”.

It’s irony that she is less of a pain when she is in pain! She learns to be a little more patient since she cannot move very fast nor complete everything before anyone has a chance to do it.

Self-publishing a manuscript

As an ex university instructor who had co-authored a manuscript many years ago, I can testify that publishing a book is a hard labor. Self publishing company like AuthorHouse not only bypass the rejection letters, they have professionals to guide you through every step of the process of how to publish a book, from publishing to distribution, thus minimize the magnitude of the labor pain. :-)

If you have always dream to write and publish a Christian book with your name printed on the cover, you might to know that merely 2% of all the unsolicited manuscripts submitted to traditional Christian Publishers are accepted! By self publishing your dream book, you can bypass the rejection letters and literary agents!

Visit to the orthopedic’s office

We left the house at 8.30 a.m this morning to visit the orthopedic, wanted to be early so mom can be the first few patients and no need to wait so long. Mom is an impatient person, she might just decide not to wait if the line gets too long. ;-)

Mom was the second patient, so it was pretty fast. The doctor came in around 9.45 a.m, and by 10.30 am, we were out of the doctor’s office.

Dr Y did some tests and he suspected that mom has problem with her spine, either it’s pressing against some nerves or there are growth on the spine. He prescribed a 10-day medication for mom and asked her to go back after 10 days. If the condition hasn’t improved, mom needs to go for a MRI to diagnose the problem.

She agreed to see an orthopedic

After having pain on her left leg for more than 10 days, on Saturday mom finally couldn’t stand the pain and agreed to see an orthopedic. We managed to get an appointment to see Dr Y, our friend who is an orthopedic on Tuesday 2oth May 2008.

She is concerned about the medical cost, so I have to bluff her about the cost of seeing an orthopedic!

Mom’s left leg in pain

Mom has been complaining about pain on her left leg for more than two weeks. She only feels the pain when she moves, and no pain when she is stationary. From the way she describes the pain, it doesn’t sound like it is a simple problem with her leg.

We wanted to bring her to see an orthopedic. But, she refused to, she kept going back to the general practitioner who prescribed her pain killers. (shaking head)

Help with laptop purchase

We have been looking to buy a laptop computer since two months ago. We have a budget of $1000 to spend, and have done the research on the internet. We were not sure about whether to get a PC or Mac, but at the end decided to get a PC.

The Laptop Computer Buying Guide on ShopWiki is helpful. We were pretty lost but the guide helped us to find the laptop computer with the specifications we need for a price we can afford. So, we are ready to order the Dell XPS M1330 Notebook PC, hopefully before the end of next week!!

The feverish airplanes enthusiast

My brother is an engineer, he is very much into everything related to airplanes. He has what we commonly called “airplane fever” among my family members.:-)

His collection of Vintage Model Airplanes and remote control airplanes is quite impressive. He flies the RC airplanes every weekend and often practice his “flying” skills with simulation programs on his computer.

The cables for the simulation programs, the model and remote control airplanes can be quite expensive, so he tried to source out the cheapest from the manufacturers and suppliers in China. That gave him an idea to start a small business that deals with remote control and model airplanes. Though it was started as a source of income to finance his hobby, it has became his second source of income!

Impatience and procrastinating do not mix well

Here you are, an impatient person married to a procrastinator! Love is blind and the opposites attract theory is true.:-)

It’s a lesson I have learned and still learning: it’s not worth stressing over the uncertainty caused by the inaction of someone else. If it is not a priority to him for us to be reunited, then it is not “urgent” for me .

As long as he continues to take his time to “look” at apartments, there won’t be a plan to move yet. In fact, won’t even start packing stuffs into the luggage bags until he moves into an apartment.

Putting up the house for rental

Finally cleaned up the house and packed up the stuffs, ready to put it up for rental. Just emailed an ex colleague yesterday, asking her to help me to forward the “House to let” ad.

Two people phoned to inquire about the house yesterday itself. One of them mention she has her own furniture and appliances, if she doesn’t need the house to be furnished, can the rental be lower?

Well, we are leaving behind most furniture, electrical appliances and all the fixtures including the curtains and blinds. We did that because it’s not worth the cost to move them to IL. It costs less buying new ones!!

Never ending conflicts

What on earth make me jump back into this never ending conflicts? Shouldn’t I know better, it’s never a good idea to live with them. It must be a joke that everyone told me to move home to live while recuperating from the surgery, even the doctor recommending it, “Your mother can take care of you while you are recuperating!” To hell with that, didn’t I know better than to believe in that fairy tale?

Not only being labeled “lazy” for resting, apparently it’s an offense to suffer from pain and constipation. Never mind that you have to sit up to work in front of the desk when the wounds are hurting, you are just lazy if you don’t live your life according to her schedule.
Will she expect other siblings who work outside of home to do house cleaning according to her schedule which starts at 6.00 a.m? Certainly she won’t. For goodness sake, working at home is working, not just “playing” in front of the computer!! Can someone talks some sense to her, I cannot open my mouth, if I do, she will say I am always a defiance daughter who talks back.

Cute baby clothes for cousin’s newborn

We were at the mall looking for gifts for cousin Veronica’s newborn baby boy. Wanted to get some baby clothes. Wow, didn’t realize that newborn baby clothes can cost as much as the adult ones. So tiny and use so little materials and it cost so much, doesn’t seem logic, does it?

We bought two sets of baby bodysuits, very cute little bodysuits in blue. We are going to visit Veronica and his boy this weekend, if we can afford the time to wait for the shipping, we might just order online next time. Saw some newborn baby clothes on discount at http://www.babymallonline.com, you may check it out!

Mother and daughter

Did something that may get me out of the house sooner!

I talked back!

Have not done that for a while and pretending deaf doesn’t bring me very far. I need to just shut her up!

Couldn’t stand the nagging about how dusty the trash can brought from my house. For goodness sake, the trash can was left outside the yard before I went for surgery, of course dust started to gather! My last draw was : she went on to insult me for my choices in the past 30 years.

So, I told her: why don’t you check out the log in your eyes before you start picking on the dust in mine.

Then, she went on to talk about a lot of irrelevant  things i.e. lazy people work at home in pajamas and I sat in front of the desk daily. I got really mad with this remarks. “May be you can ask your other daughters to come home to do housework during lunch breaks.”

She got angry and stormed out of the house.

Corporate incentive tour to Paris

Bumped into an ex-classmate who also happens to be a distant relative at the bank two weeks ago. She works for her brother who owns the distributorship of a beauty product from France. The irony is that she is overweight and suffers from acne problem, doesn’t seem like the treatments for acne and slimming products they sell are helping her!!

She is quite an arrogant woman. Most of us often have to listen to her brags about her trips to Paris. May be due to inferior complex, she tries so hard to impress people that she is a globe trotter and an important person in the company!

We know that her brother’s company often rewards the local distributors who have good sales performance with corporate incentive travel. We are pretty sure she gets to travel along because her brother owns the company, not anything else. :-)

Sisters who are not close

As expected, my sisters have plans for Mothers’ Day that I am not being included nor being asked to. I would like to say it doesn’t matter to me, but the sadness and feeling of hurt are there,  even though I am not really offended in a big way as it’s kind of expected.

Two of them are very close with each other and have lived together for most part of their lives except for one or two years when they were studying at different towns. Whereas, when they were young, I was the babysitter who disciplined them and make sure they behaved.

I left home to study in the city when they were in their teens and was absent in most part of their lives. I wouldn’t say they hated me, but they do not agree with certain choices I make in my life and often talk down to me in a degrading manner, especially now that both of them are making more money than me and supposedly have more successful careers than me.

You must have health insurance

Many of you know that I am making plan, in fact in the midst moving to IL to be united with my husband. The big boy has a steady job with medical benefit that covers the immediate family, so we would not have to fork out money monthly to pay for health insurance.

If you are working from home and your spouse doesn’t have an employer provided health benefit that extends to spouse and children, you probably need to get an affordable health insurance.

It’s extremely important to have health insurance as medical cost can be very expensive. The recent surgery and the cancer suspicion really scare the big boy to get out of the procrastinating mode and quickly put me on his employer provided health insurance before I am physically in IL. :-)

Sisters are coming home for Mothers’ day

My two sisters are coming home for the Mothers’ Day weekend, they are taking an extra day off work, will only leave on Monday evening. That’s good, may be I can get my second sister to chauffeur me around town running errands.

I have no idea what plans do they have for Mothers’ day. Both of them probably have plans but they don’t usually discuss with me. They don’t always want to talk about their plans, so I just have my own plan. My plan is to give my mom a cash gift, so she can get what she likes.

Excuse me, I don’t fly the airplane

We were talking on the phone, discussing about booking the air ticket to IL. The big boy wanted me to land on certain days when he is less busy or when he is off work. I don’t remember all the constraints he listed because my brain is not a micro sd flash memory card! Excuse me, does he think I fly the airplane and can decide which day to land?

Anyway, if he can’t pick me up at the airport, rent a car or arrange for an airport limousine is equally convenient! It’s not a big deal, no need to put so many constraints on the departure and arrival dates, which will hike up the airfare unnecessary.

Pain, pain, please go away

It has been five weeks since I had a surgery, the wound outside seems completely healed but the wound inside is still healing. I sit down for too long and then try to get up, it still elicits a sharp jolt of excruciating pain from the pelvics and the edge of waist. This kind of pain wasn’t there right after the surgery, but after I drove around two weeks ago, the pain starts and stays until today.

Can’t do any large movement without feeling a sharp jolt of pain. And I really mean pain. I was sleeping fine some nights, but sometime the pain kept me awake at night. I pray that the pain will go away really soon.

No marble fireplace at the apartment

The procrastinator finally decided on two apartments that he is going to apply to. Both of them are two-bedroom apartments, no idea how they look like because the procrastinator has not emailed me pictures of the apartments. Fed up with the recycled excuse: the camera cable is not with him!

Don’t expect our future apartment or town house to have nice marble fireplaces where you can put all the picture frames on top. My only hope is he listens and gets one that has washer dryer hook-up. Really dislike the coin operated laundry mate. It’s so inconvenient not being able to do laundry at your own place, and not to mention the waste of time waiting for the laundry to get done at the laundry mate.