a99kitten's Musings

Today is the last day of my Christmas vacation. I’m bummed :( Not at the prospect at going back to work. I don’t mind work. More at the prospect of leaving my winter wonderland. I love my house here. I love my time here. The huskies love their snow time here. Being here makes me happy.

It’s been a fun vacation. Didn’t do everything I wanted to but did a lot. Ice skating was high on my list but it’s so crowded here for the holidays with tourists, it makes more sense to wait a week or 2.

Leading up to my time off, I was so busy and stressed out to get stuff done that I didn’t have time to look forward to my time off! But once I got here, instant decompression. It was a white Christmas which was key for me. Christmas Eve and Day were nice even though husband was sick. Made a yummy ham that we are still eating the leftovers from :) Made some yummy food this vacation – but tooooo terribly unhealthy! The penne with Italian sausage was my favorite I think – numnumnum!

I got some movie watching done which was high on my list too! Watched:

Love Actually (Christmas tradition)
Christmas Story (another tradition)
Die Hard on Christmas morning :)
The Taking of Pelham 123 (Travolta plays such a great bad guy)
Paranormal Activity (boring)
District 9 (good!)
Inglorious Basterds (good!)

I also finished 2 fun books and started another. And even got through one of my past Vanity Fair magazines! I am so behind in my VF reading. Ever since Dominick Dunne stopped writing his column, I don’t rush to open them as quickly as I used to. But still some good articles and nice pictures :)

Friends came up for New Year’s and we had a fun blue moon shoe hike, 2 fun dinners (1 in and 1 out) and a nice New Year’s Eve at 2 mellow neighbor parties and still safely and warmly in bed by 1am :)

Regular season football is coming to end today. This saddens me too. Even though I got knocked out of fantasy – boo!! I won Survivor and 4 weekly pools so far so can’t really complain – fun AND profitable season :) Watched some exciting football games this past 2 weeks for sure (MNF – MIN at CHI was GREAT!) Plus watched the Gators and Tim Tebow dominate in the Sugar Bowl. That was nice :) I would LOVE to see Alabama lose miserably to Texas this week to make that even more fun :)

The most important thing is that I got a LOT of snow play (and exercise!) in with the huskies. That was my main goal :) Every single day we went out for multiple snow walks and hikes. And the weather definitely cooperated. Tons of snow and nice cold weather for the boys. I think this December is one of the best Decembers in recent history for snow. YAY! So hopefully January – March cooperates as well. We walked through our neighborhood pre-plowing so it was deep, we hiked up snow trails, went snowshoeing (well, the huskies don’t use shoes!), played in snow piles and dug snow caves. Pretty sure they had a good time! I know I did :)

So a nice vacation for sure. And thankfully I get to come back next weekend if I want – hopefully to some fresh snow! :)

I don’t make New Year’s resolutions. Never have. I’ve never understood the purpose behind deciding on 1 day to do (or not do) things that should probably be resolved all year (all life?) long. Need more exercise? Why wait until 1/1 to start? Need to eat better? Save more? Stop being a douche? Stop drinking so much? Stop taking drugs? Be nicer to people (these seem to be the common resolutions.) So WHY are you waiting? Plus from what I’ve seen and heard – most people ditch that list by mid-January. Why annual gym memberships are a great business for the gyms…

My new year’s list is more a “things to do” list. If you know me, you know I always one of these. Almost every day starts out with my daily list – my daily battleplan to attack the day. And my things to do list is always a live list. Always stuff to be done, always doing stuff, always more stuff that comes up and has to go on the list. That could almost be a George Carlin routine if you added some curse words.

You could apply my same “why are you waiting?” to this as well. But again, if you know me at all, you know I am *always* doing stuff :) But there are projects I either newly thought of or never really put on the list but I want off the damn list and this will ensure they get done!

Another section of my list is the “things to always make sure are done” section. This section isn’t the obvious junk like house cleaned, bills paid, dry cleaning dropped off/picked up, etc etc. since that list is always running in my head on a permanent loop. No, it’s things like:

take time to read every day if even just for 15-20 minutes.
brush the huskies a little each day so they don’t hate you for 1 BIG brushing session :)
sit down and relax – stop running, running, running and not enjoying.
exercise every day.
spend time with my friends doing fun things – plan them!
look at what you have and not what you don’t. And enjoy it. (this will however not make me not shop!)

I need to keep this list in a place I can see it all the time. Because they are important things to remember and to do. I’ve been *pretty* good on most them all last year but want more of #5 and probably need to work more on #3. I definitely need to concentrate on putting more of an effort into relaxing a bit more…hey…that doesn’t sound so relaxing! ;)

I was exhausted today. I slept 1.5 hours from 6:30am till about 8ish. I was up all night because my SVT kicked up. SVT is Supraventricular Tachycardia. Basically the heart’s electrical system doesn’t work right, causing the heart to beat very fast. The heart beats at least 100 beats per minute and may reach 300 beats per minute. After treatment or on its own, the heart usually returns to a normal rate of 60 to 100 beats a minute. It’s caused by an extra little piece of skin/flesh that gets in the way and short circuits the heart/blood pumping machine. As described quite simply by Dr. kitten courtesy of webmd :)

I have been getting these little “episodes” since I was about 20 or so? Although they used to only ever last 2-5 minutes and I’d get them *maybe* once a year. Now I would say I get them 3-4 times a year and sometimes they last 2-5 minutes and then they have lasted about 8 hours (much like last night’s.) I’m pretty darn healthy (super low blood pressure, super low heart rate, exercise regularly, no smoking, no drugs, drink very little, eat pretty well, no weird issues that have come up) so feel no need to go to the doctor unless I’m bleeding out my eyes.

A chiropractor friend of mine suggested going to the doctor and checking it out since it was a heart issue. He didn’t like my plan of ignoring it with my usual “Ahh..I’m fine”. Ok, fine..sounds like a good idea to get a check-up but I HATE doctors. I like my dermatologist. I’m sure I’d love my plastic surgeon :) But regular doctors – I think they are basically like weathermen. They have all this information and technology and still it’s like throwing a dart at a dartboard.

But I did go in for a physical and asked the doctor about it. She told me it was anxiety. I told her she was wrong. She assured me it was. I told her again she wrong. Not a believer in that. Sorry. She smiled. She said next time it happens, take a walk outside to distract myself. I’m a big believer in taking a walk as a cure for many things but I did not think this was one of them. But, hey – she went to Stanford Medical School and I didn’t. She was the doctor with her own clinic. I wasn’t.

The next time it started I was driving to work. It’s a weird feeling – my heart starts to pump very hard (you can actually see my chest pumping) and my blood is racing. So much so that after a little while, my arms and legs start to feel cold and tingly and I get a bit nauseous and dizzy as no blood is getting to my extremities as it’s been short-circuited. I was only about 15 minutes from work so I got there and decided to try this walk around thing. Turned out exactly as I assumed it would. My heart started pounding more – to where my chest actually hurts. I had the dogs with me. I got them inside and asked one of my co-workers to watch them so I could lie down. She clearly was worried as she called my husband. Now, up until now if I laid down for a couple minutes they always went away. This time it had been going for 25 minutes and wasn’t stopping.

After about 30 minutes of lying down, a friend from work drove me to the ER and on the drive even I started getting a bit worried – like maybe this is a big deal? TIP – if you ever want INSTANT attention in a crowded ER, say it’s your heart. Man alive – I have never seen people move so fast! Was like an episode of ER. The nurse had me taken to the back, on a gurney and hooked up to a machine with 2 other nurses/interns taking vitals, etc in like 3 minutes. And yeah – this will freak you out.

The nurse looked at my heart rate and said “page the doctor!” Great…this sounds good…afterward she told me my heart rate was higher than she has ever seen register. Sheesh…do I get a reward for that? A lollipop at least? As I was laying there, waiting for the doctor it stopped. Bam – just like that. I told them but obviously they were not letting me just get up and go. They let my friend come back to sit with me. The doctor came in and described my symptoms. I said yes – those are it. He explained what he thought it was (SVT) but strongly urged me to see a cardiologist to run tests to confirm. Meh. Ok…he also said my blood sugar was low and asked if I was dieting a lot. No. But I never eat breakfast. He gave me frowny-face. And told my husband (who had arrived by now) to make sure I ate and rested for the rest of the day (Nice! Doctor’s orders!)

So I did go to the cardiologist and he confirmed it was SVT. Not really serious in the grand scheme of things as long as I didn’t get these episodes too frequently. You can’t die from it unless you keep walking while it’s going on and pass out from the lack of blood and then crack open your skull on the sidewalk. Keep walking eh? I told him what the doctor told me about it being anxiety and to go for walks when it started. He said that was the most irresponsible non-diagnosis he had ever heard and was angry that a doctor would say that without running a simple test to check for SVT which is not all that uncommon. Ha! Knew that crazy doctor was wrong! The scary thing is she offered me a prescription for psych drugs then too – you know to “calm me down” if I wanted. How many people just listen to her?

He said when it starts, lay down. Feet up. Stay hydrated and relaxed. There is a medication but he said the side effects are worse than the episodes so unless they are crippling and frequent, he didn’t recommend the meds. You can also get surgery to correct it I think bu I’ll leave the surgery to the elective kind ;-)

Since I now know what it is, it’s not scary. Just annoying. It has happened while I’m on the beach with the huskies (highly annoying as I have to sit down and they are not big on sitting down while at the beach!) and at work. Kinda sorta funny looking to be laying down on the floor in my office.

It happened again a couple years ago and it lasted all night long. This was by far the longest one. Started when I went to bed and by 7am or so it still hadn’t stopped (and I hadn’t slept) so off to the ER I went again. Again – heart – instant service! They gave me IV fluids (which by the way I love as my skin looked SO awesome for days after!) and ran some blood tests to rule stuff out. Hello – I already told you what it is. But you can’t tell doctors your diagnosis…sigh…

Since it wasn’t stopping and my heart was still in full race mode there are 2 ways to stop it: administer a drug via IV or use the de-fib machine to “reset” the heart. Umm…let’s try the drug first. So as the doctor is getting ready to give it to me he says “this will make you feel like you are dying. I just wanted you to know how you will feel so you don’t get upset.” Oh, and he had the nurse bring over the de-fib machine. The medication slows your heart waaay down, so if it goes down too much, they need the de-fib to restart. But they would start by giving me the minimum dose to try and avoid that. Great…

Wow – the doctor described that feeling perfectly. It actually felt like everything was fading away, breathing was more labored (even though he said it wasn’t actually – just how I felt) and the only way to describe it is like light was collapsing into darkness. Tears instantly came to my eyes even though I tried very hard to stop that and tell myself it was all fine. Not something I would recommend for fun…

BUT, then it was fine. That feeling only lasted maybe a minute (although it felt much, much longer) and then my heart was normal. He said my chest and body will hurt for the next day or so as my body just went through the equivalent of running a marathon for 8 hours straight. He said rest, hydrate and eat only. No doing anything else. Luckily this was a Sunday so that was an easy order to follow.

Since then I have had a few episodes that lasted 30-40 minutes, and the rest very quick, but nothing like that one. Until last night. I can always feel them coming on in the few seconds before they start and I was like “oh crap – I don’t have time for this.” But I got a glass of water, into bed and laid there for a bit watching TV. I fell asleep for a few minutes but it’s not so easy to sleep when your heart is racing. Husband was out of town with Angelus so I decided to wait it out and not try the ER. And that’s how it was until 6:26am. And then it just stopped. Storm was still sleeping (yay for my sweet doggie!) So I tried to sleep until about 8:00am and got up.

For 1.5 hours of sleep – I think I’m doing OK today! I must be naturally high on Christmas and the knowledge that my 10 days of holiday time in Tahoe starts in 2 days :) Although my chest and arms are quite sore. The plan was to leave work early but that didn’t really work out. Need to make sure a lot gets done before holidays and year-end. But I didn’t stay too late, got home, put on the game and proceeded to run around and do a few chores. No dummy – SIT DOWN! But now I’m sitting. Hopefully I’ll be sound asleep by 10pm :)

So in conclusion…don’t listen to some doctor’s diagnosis when it sounds completely wrong!

Thanksgiving weekend is drawing to a close. Sad that I have to leave snowy Tahoe but happy it’s now Christmas season! Started on Friday when I put up my tree here. And this week I will buy a tree for home. Very excited!! My tree routine is go pick my tree, get tree home and up, order pizza, put Christmas music on and decorate with a glass of bubbly. I’ve had this routine for years – at home (no bubbly then tho!) and then on my own. When decorated, you sit and look at your pretty tree and smile :) Every night when I come home from work, I will turn the tree lights and Xmas music on. Having my tree makes me happy. Period.

I tried very hard to not play any Christmas music until Friday but then on Friday – Dean Martin, Frank Sinatra, Johnny Mathis and more got plenty of play :) Christmas music really makes me happy. Well, let me re-phrase…I like well done Christmas music. I’ve heard some really bad pop or rap renditions…not a fan…at all. But there is nothing better than the old classics. My dad would play the Bing Crosby, Frank Sinatra and Johnny Mathis records over and over all month long. They are in constant rotation at my house now too :)

Went to our homeowner’s association Tree Lighting last night. They had a pretty big set up at the lodge with s’mores stations, pictures with Santa and plenty of games for kids. We saw Santa’s sleigh land too. Not exactly sure how they did it, but they did make it seem like he landed from the sky – had him come out of the dark forest so it was a good illusion. The kids (ok, me too…) were pretty excited to see it :) I wore my jingle bell antlers headband so the little kids liked to stop and talk to me :) It was sooooo cold out but they had a lot of the outdoor heaters going. It was a very fun event.

Fun football weekend. My Gators won!! The Stanford/Notre Dame game was great and I am on track to win my FF week. Although it will come down to MNF as I have Drew Brees and my opponent has Reggie Bush. I am very, very excited for that game. I am rooting for NO to win!

It’s time to get some Christmas shopping done. I love going to Stanford Shopping Center at Christmas time. They have trees and decorations everywhere, music playing, everything is lit up, the whole place is beautiful. It’s nice and festive and wintery. I actually prefer to get my shopping done online for most things but love going there just for the holiday ambiance. Walk around, get a hot cocoa or hot apple cider and check out all the store displays.

It’s very busy for me at work this time of year. And then you throw in being busy for holiday stuff. It’s so easy to get so busy that you forget to stop and enjoy this time of year. Always take some time to stop and enjoy the season. Watch the snow fall if you can. Or decorate your Christmas tree, even if you can only afford a small one. Or sit down and listen to Bing sing White Christmas. Oh – and watch a cute Christmas movie! Old classics, new classics – whatever tickles you. Find the time for these things. *Especially* if you have kids – they will always remember it. Presents are awesome – everyone loves them, loves to play with them, have them, etc, etc. But they will remember the things they did, trees decorated, visits to Santa, snowballs thrown, family traditions to repeat for years, the times you laughed together at Ralphie and his quest for a Red Ryder or rooted for Rudolph. It’s important. These are the things I remember from my family Christmas’ and always will.

Me and the buds Xmas 2005

Good day today! A great walk with the buds to start it.  It was a gorgeous day out.  Blue sky with a few light, wispy clouds. Then the sun came up. Was breezy but not windy. The waves were crazy. Tons of sets coming in – great whitecaps and crashing into the rocks. Hard to get a good photo as the waves were much bigger IRL but I tried…

Waves 11.7.09

Then drove into SF and saw Wicked. My girlfriends and I have been trying to pick a date to see this show for months but something always came up.  But we finally just picked a date and did it. Not everyone could come :( but we ended up getting PERFECT seats! I think my friend Helen will never want to volunteer to be in charge of the ticket procuring again but she scored great tickets for this!! Center orchestra seats. Perfect view of everything. Close enough to see all details on every costume but not in the first section so you miss anything on the sides. So perfect. Yay for the flu (the original buyer of these tix had 3 of their 4 get the flu so they had to sell.)

The sick people behind us should have sold their tickets and stayed home as well. At least 3 of the people sitting directly behind us kept coughing. And not even bothering to cover their mouths. Who does this? Really? Were you people raised by savages? They were clearly not too bright as they were surprised by the some of the “reveals” of the play. Again…….Really? Yes…these are the same people that vote. Sigh….

But the show was too good and fun for that to effect the mood!

Seats for Wicked

The actress who played Elphaba (aka The Wicked Witch of the West) was so, so good. Her voice was so awesome. She was actually the Standby too. Amazing. Glinda was great too. Was imagining how Kristin Chenoweth was on Broadway – she must have been great in that role!  The cast really did a great job.  Didn’t like Nessarose (character or actress) much though – but since she was the Wicked Witch of the East, I guess that’s right.

I would see this show again. Thoroughly enjoyable. And it did remind me how much I love seeing plays and  musicals. I *hate* going into the city for any reason whatsoever but I would volunteer for a good show. The last play we saw in the city was Phantom. Front row balcony seats – perfect view. Husband fell asleep (?) So now I will just go with friends :)

Going back to the parking lot, we had to take an elevator from street level. The stairwells were locked to, I assume, keep the homeless out (man, I love the cesspool…I mean city…) Apparently we were riding with people who were raised by the same savages. This guy kept squeezing against me to let more people in. If he would have made one more move – I would have clocked him. As it was as soon as soon the elevator door opened I pushed him forward to “help him out.” My friends were across from me so they saw my face. Glad I provided amusement for them :)

After the show, we went and had dinner at Q. Very, very yummy. I got a spinach salad to add a healthy component to my mac and cheese with tater tots entree :)  But I didn’t eat dinner on Friday night and hadn’t eaten yet today so the calorie intake *must* have balanced out somehow, right? :)

Mac & Cheese with tots at Q

Came home to very happy to see me doggies. So I’m just hanging out with them now.  Why a matinee show and early dinner is great – not home too late so doggie time after!!  A great, fun day and then football tomorrow. YAY!

I’ve got nothing to write about…

Sure there are purses and shoes I want…and stocks I invested, or want to invest, in…PLENTY of dumbass things done by regular ol’ stoopid people and our current government that I could rant about (definitely too tired to type all that!)…and of course tons of cute husky moments to go on about :) But nothing says WRITE ABOUT ME. Maybe the urge has passed? Maybe I’ve just been too tired, stressed and busy…

The chest pains and dizzy spells seemed to have passed. That’s good. I really didn’t want to go to a doctor. Hopefully they are gone. I like our vet. I trust our vet. Human doctors – meh. Nice enough. Stanford trained, hoity-toity, blah blah….but still…I’m pretty sure you are in the back throwing darts at a dartboard after seeing me…

Storm does seem happier. That’s good! Very good. This makes his Mom happy :) And let me say – pet insurance was a great investment. It has paid off on both buds over time with their bionic joints and now this. And while I am out of pocket for some money – they have covered a lot more than I expected. So a nice bonus on top of Stormy seeming to react well to the medicine :)

But that’s it. I feel so negligent to my blog over the past few days. I’m sure I’ll come up with something…

I seriously need to build my Halloween costume around these:

PINK boots!!! Not something I could wear around normally, unless I gave up my day job to work as a stripper. But for Halloween? Perfect! Now what could I be that would be work appropriate(ish)? Hmmm….

Last year I didn’t dress up :( The year before I was an Eskimo girl with my 2 huskies – they are very key to my costume :)

Eskimo and her sled dogs

That was a cute costume that was also comfy. Will definitely need to recycle and wear again.

The year before I was Little Red Riding Hood (see – the huskies are key!)

Red 2006

I didn’t like that costume as much (or that picture – look like a frackin’ undead Red!) But it did go well with my little wolves :) And I cannot find a single picture of me with them in that costume. What the heck? I know we took some. It was fun to walk around in that costume with the buds. *Pretty much* everyone got the reference. It’s too big for me now (HA!) but the costume is really great movie-like quality. I need to find the name of that manufacturer and check out their other costumes.

A few years ago I was Jeannie.

brunette Jeannie :)

That’s a very comfy costume to wear actually but it was FREEZING that year so going outside = bad! Plus it’s too big for me now too! (double-HA!) I do like comfy costumes though. Nothing that will make me hot, with a big rubber head/mask, be itchy, stuff like that.

I have always wanted to be Slave Leia but husband’s head would explode if I wore that anywhere. I told him that I WILL wear it to Comic-Con one year (while I’m still able to pull it off!) – even if only for a couple hours. But obviously not a work-appropriate costume.

I have the white Leia dress from Star Wars. But that whole costume is really the hair. and not sure I can get that to how I want it so it looks good. And I don’t think I should *really* use Cinnabons since then the huskies would want to eat my head! :)

Last year I found a cute Indiana Jones-girl costume. And a cute Batgirl so maybe I’ll look for those. I’ve always wanted to be Wonder Woman but the costumes for that are always yucky. You’d think they would make a good one since she is SUCH a popular character.

I can’t think of any other good ones that would go with the huskies. I have always wanted to get them some sheep costumes made. So they can be wolves in sheep’s clothing :) And then I could go as Little Bo Beep :) THAT would be cute!!!

I have never dressed them up except for the 1 year I got them each to sit for a millisecond while I got pictures of them in a Darth Vader costume.

Darth Angelus

Darth Storm

I went through almost a whole bag of liver biscotti to get them to sit long enough to put the costume on and take those pics. They said quite clearly that they are not clowns for our amusement :)

The year before I did put an angel halo on Angelus and devil horns on Storm. Storm shook his off and chewed them :) I can’t find those pics though…my guess is Storm found a way to delete those too :)

If I recycle, I will be the Eskimo girl again I think. This picture always me laugh because we were being inappropriate with the fuzzy popsicle (?) that came with my costume :)

Girls are funny :)

I could get a little toy sled for the buds or something to make it different! Oh well..who knows. I better get on it though. Only a little more than 3 weeks to go!

This morning I made a few trades/investment moves. Not too big of a deal but all of them were spur of the moment things which really brought back memories of how much FUN being in the trading room was. Making trades on gut feelings and intuition, split decisions. Man, I miss that. It’s *such* a high – as much as I know of that feeling anyway (never did any drugs – but finding the perfect pair of shoes on sale is just like it too!)

I used to work at a hedge fund. I learned so much there. Had fun shorting, trading commodities futures, options, etc. Very, very fun. I would love to still be in that business. Working there taught me a lot. Not every day was fun and games mind you. The day to day stress was a lot.

But I can’t even watch Wall Street without still feeling that rush. I remember hearing that some of our clients were interviewed when they were researching the Gekko character. I loved that! Of course there are ethical concerns in that business but you CAN work on Wall Street without being a crook. My old boss was very ethical. Could he have made even more by not being so – I’m sure. But he had no interest in that.

During the beginning of the internet stock craze, I had some FUN trading room days. I remember calling a friend of mine and asking if she wanted in on a buy right before the market close. She was hesitant and I pulled out the Bud Fox line…”What do you want to do? Decide.” and then silence…we had such a good time. We did the trade. And made money. I paid off some credit cards and paid for my wedding and reception with that account over a few months of the market on internet stock Kool Aid. Not so bad :)

Now, I’m not crazy. I have a 401k now too. That is my safe, conservative investment account. But I also still have a stock account that I like to trade a bit. I still keep it on the conservative side – no margin. Have seen waaaay too much pain caused by that. I don’t treat it like I used to treat my stock account – 1 big churning machine. I buy stocks that I think will grow, good investments, etc. But I do make a few riskier trades than in my 401k!

I have thought of going back into that. Even now. But then my safe and conservative side wakes up and says “No dummy!” I definitely have 2 sides. I realized it recently and my friends have mentioned it. I think they can both reside peacefully. Although I sometimes think this is why I don’t sleep so much and can almost never sit still. But this way I get a lot done! Like making a few trades before the doggie walks and my quiet, non-trading room job :)