Sienna Hero World Tour!

I think Sienna’s almost ready for Guitar Hero World Tour!

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And here is a cute picture of Sienna at Emma’s house for a playdate. Those are Sienna’s mango snack and Emma loves them too! So nice of Sienna to share! 😉

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More Swaps!

Here are 2 dishcloths I crocheted for a swap on swap-bot. The pattern for the yellow one is here and the pattern the blue one I can’t find right now!

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For the ornament swap, we had 3 different partners and you’re supposed to make 3 different ornaments. I had fun making a gingerbread man, reindeer and snowflake. I used fabric paint to decorate the gingerbread man and reindeer. I forgot to take photos of the ornaments I got in return but there were an ball ornament, butterfly and 2 bells with real bells!

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Sorry the photos of the ornaments didn’t come out so great. I get so impatient!

Oh No! It’s Friday!

The past few Fridays haven’t been terrible but they weren’t very pleasant because they were filled with doctor appointments. The 14th was for Sienna’s chest x-ray and blood test. Her new doctor wanted her to get an x-ray because of the coughing she was still having just to double check. The blood test was to test for lead, apparently that’s a new thing and recommended by the American Association of Pediatrics (I guess her old doctor didn’t follow the AAP). Yves took off to go with me because I didn’t think I could handle the x-ray. Well, the x-ray went smoothly, no tears! It was the blood test that produced tears! Poor thing! They had to get 4 vials of blood (not filled) and by the 3rd one, Sienna wasn’t very happy and no matter how me, Yves or Bob tried to console her, the tears came. We went to the library after that (we were in and out in an hour!!) and she was fine for the rest of the day. Me and Yves were more traumatized and Yves felt like taking a nap! LOL

The next Friday was my turn, going back to see the cardiologist for a follow up. I try not to get annoyed at waiting for 2+ hours to get in but I can’t help it. Either they overbook or the doctor comes in late or something because I always ask for the very first appt. and the assistant assures me I’m getting it yet I still wait so long. UGH!! I was supposed to do a stress test back in October but the insurance wouldn’t cover it so the doctor went to another center and somehow I got in. So the following Friday, the day after Thanksgiving, I went in for a stress test. I couldn’t eat breakfast or have any caffeine and the test took about 2.5 hours. It didn’t feel like that long because I hardly had to wait for anything (how pleasant!). They took a sonogram of my heart, pictures of my heart then I had to walk on the treadmill for about 3 minutes and then they took more pictures of my heart. I had to wear a heart monitor for 24 hours, a little gadget with wires attached to my chest. It’s not a big deal, I had worn it before several years ago when I was getting heart palpitations and that’s how I found out I had mitral valve prolapse. I had to drop off the monitor the next day so we’ll see what happens! I hope these next few Fridays will be doctorless!

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There were 4 more of these plugs on my stomach area

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Here’s the monitor around my waste.

Arigato!

On Sunday I met up with Pete and Joy for some chop chop lunch at Big Wing Wong. I haven’t been there in ages and it did not disappoint! Joy ordered for us and got congee, roast pork, roast duck, wonton noodle soup, rice noodle with roast pork and noodles. YUM! Ya can’t beat that for just $10 each! We headed over to Fay Da to get some pastries (which I ended up bringing home) and then to Ten Ren for hot bubble tea.

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Pete also gave us the things he got for us from his trip to Japan. I had asked him to just pick me up some crafty magazines that he thought would look cool so I can peruse the pictures and just marvel at their ingenouity, since I can’t read Japanese. He ended bringing me back 4 very cool books! 3 were magic shrubber books- crochet and knitting tawashi (used for dish washing/face washing/any kind of dusting and cleaning, etc.)! I couldn’t believe the luck as the term tawashi just started popping up for me. There was a tawashi article in the latest Craft magazine and a tawashi swap on swap-bot (which I just joined). All the patterns also include charts and I’ve never done crochet via chart before. I’m very excited to give it a try! I found some really cool links to help decipher the codes in the chart but the books all have pictures for each symbol showing you how to do it. I already made a cheat sheet on the symbols, except for a couple I couldn’t figure out (although I’m a graphic artist, I can’t seem to learn visually). I decided to give one a try and picked a super duper easy one, a heart!

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The fourth book on the upper right is a pom pom book-make cute creatures out of pom poms. Pete thought it was cute so got that for me too! Aren’t I lucky? Arigato Pete!

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Ok, so this might not be very challenging but I figured the edging might be so I figured I’d dip my toe into it with the heart and maybe by the time I got to the edging, I’d get the hang of looking at the chart. This blog entry really helped!

I also made this flower tawashi to use up the rest of this cotton yarn from a dishcloth I made for a swap:

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Franny’s = YUM

Thursday night I went out to dinner with Brenda and Joy to Franny’s. I’ve been wanting to check this place out since it made Time Out NY’s top 10 pizza places a couple of years ago. It did not disappoint! I ordered their homemade grape soda and it was very good! I’m not a big soda person and it was perfect in that it was overly sweet. For appetizers, we ordered this proscuitto special and the pork sausage. Delicious! We ordered 2 types of pizzas to share, the Buffalo Mozzarella, Garlic and Extra Virgin Olive Oil  (no tomato sauce) and Tomato, Anchovies, Chilies and Parmigiano Reggiano. So good! Thin crust and we had to cut it ourselves (which was entertaining!). We also ordered 2 desserts to share: the Cannolo (which is singular whereas the plural is cannoli) and the Chocolate Sorbetto. YUM! Needless to say, we were all stuffed! Again the pictures aren’t the greatetst because I don’t have much patience!

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(already cut into! the roasted scallions were a great! What a surprise!)

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Looked much nicer before I cut into it!

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New blanket

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I wanted to make Sienna  a new blanket that was square and colorful (as opposed to star shaped and plain) for winter. I got this pattern from Lion Brand and used Homespun yarn. I started it in mid October (I think) and made it halfway through in relatively quick time but then Sienna got sick (something I really don’t want to remember!) and lost my mojo on it. I got it back last week and finished it! Woohoo! The orangey/green yarn in the lower right was some old yarn I had and I liked the color. I went out and bought the blue as an accent color and the other orangey/reddish yarn on the upper left. I thought I was buying the same color  but as you can see, it is not. I guess the old one I had was really old and probably discontinued. I had a total of 3 skeins as the pattern said that’s all I needed but I went a little too far across and ran out for the last edging (which is in a burgundy color) and the old yarn was probably not a full skein, which is why I need the blue to finish off the square! What a mish mash but I think Sienna likes it!

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Got You!


Got You! from Lisa on Vimeo.

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You should have seen the other baby! Just kidding! Sienna is a lover not a fighter!

I’m an old fart!

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I went to see Girl Talk at Terminal 5 last night with Pete and Joy. Talk about feeling super old! More on that in a bit. We ended up having dinner at Ariana Afghan Kebab Restaurant upon Pete’s suggestion.  Not only was the food excellent but the service was super and friendly! We ordered the fried pumpkin and chicken wings for appetizers (the wings were a late addition via Joy and I can’t find it on the menu) and for entrees to share, we got homemade noodles (Aushe Burida), okra with lamb (Barniya Chalow) and Kebab CombinationII (lamp chop, kofta, chicken and lamb tikka). ALL delicious!! And of course the bread was so good!

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Photo by Joy

We got to the venue a little before 9. Right away we all felt like old farts! I swear I’m pretty sure there were only a handful of people there that were probably the same age as us. The majority of them were probably born when I graduated high school. HA! I guess it’s only to be expected since GT is a guy born in 1981! We made it for the end of the 2nd opener, Grand Buffet. They made us laugh because they were so bizarre, corny and terrible. It was entertaining. Girl Talk came out right at 9:30. It was cool that he was mashing live but his set in the beginning bored me a little bit. I was trying to get into it. It got really good 45 minutes into it and I really was starting to rock it out. LOL. That’s around the time Joy took some funny pictures of me. He sampled Kelly Clarkson’s Since You’ve Been Gone and I went wild on that song for Yves. LOL. The crowd had been slowing pushing us back the whole time until we finally all went into the corner. It sounded like his set was ending soon so made our way closer to the front door by 10:45. We left shortly after that and got a taxi to the subway (hey, it was cold and windy!) And no joke, when we walked out of the venue, it looked like there were cars with parents waiting inside to pick up their kid! Oy!

As usual, it was fun going with Pete and Joy. Even if I got teased for trying to coordinate a specific time to leave beforehand! And for not having enough money on me. And for packing them individual slices of pumpkin bread I baked. And for rocking out to Kelly Clarkson.

Poor Skippy!

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On Thursday, yves told me he walked out into the dining room that morning to find what he thought was Neo’s hairball spitups. It happened again Friday morning. Saturday morning around 2:30, I woke up and forgot to bring up the heat for the night so walked out into the dining room to do so and stepped into this mushy mess. I didn’t have my glasses on so I just hobbled into the bathroom to wash my foot in the sink. I was pretty sure it was Skippy’s doing. I went back into the bedroom to get my glasses and slippers and was cursing under my breath as well. I guess that woke Yves up and I told him what happened.

He still wasn’t convinced it was Skippy’s doing because it didn’t smell like stinky poop. I was pretty sure it was. That night, we kept Skippy in the kitchen all night and sure enough, he did some poop on the kitchen floor. It was soft, mushy poop so clearly he ate something that he shouldn’t have. He didn’t have much poops when he was walked either. Then that morning on the family walk, I noticed some blood on Skippy’s rectal area. That got me worried so we went to the vet later that morning.

It must have been a crazy animal day because I waited a little over an hour to see the vet and the receptionist said Sunday’s are usually smooth sailing. Turns out Skippy’s intestine was enlarged probably from eating another dog’s poop or some plastic thing or other, something not food related. Poor guy had to get his temperature taken (the old fashioned place!) and get a spool sample. He had to get 3 painful shots and I never saw him so upset. And to top that off, his teeth have gotten really bad! He’s going to have to get 3-4 teeth taken out! I regretfully have been neglecting his teeth this past year because I remember last year the vet saying his teeth were ok. Sigh. And I also asked the doctor about why he keeps peeing in the house. It’s because he still has his testicles! Apparently, it produces something called testerone (or something like that) and it enlarges his prostrate and he can’t hold his urine or release it all or something like that. Anyway, the only way to fix it is to fix him! Poor guy!

He is taking 4 medications for his diarhea, his vomiting (he did twice Sunday morning) and to temporarly stop his peeing in the house. And then after that is better, he needs to go in for dental maintenance and then after that, he will need to be fixed otherwise the vet said it would only get worse. Sigh. Poor Skippy!!

Potential Custom Carving

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I am hoping that Autumn Whisper can capture this image and carve it for me. She does AMAZING work! Having done some eraser carving myself (and not being very good at it!), I am awed by the detail she can get. I’m not sure if she can get the smaller type but I am flexible on that.

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