i'm running but i can't catch up

last week my friend christy was visiting from canada. we were talking about periods of loneliness in our lives and how things have changed so much for both of us. i told her about how homesick i was during my first year of marriage. i had no green card, no job, no vehicle, no friends. i can remember sitting at home, trying to think of things to do for that day and quietly crying. i knew that things would change for me, but it definitely took time. eventually, i got my green card and, after a few trials and errors, found a job that i liked. i started this blog, which was a huge outlet for me and also a vital connection to my old friends back home who i missed so much. we bought my little blue honda civic, which i still drive and i slowly began making new friends.

i've always had a difficult time making friends. i prefer quality over quantity, and quality is difficult to find when you don't really know the person. when i read back in my archives and find posts like this one, the awkward feelings come flooding back to me. of course, in hindsight, i can now see that i wasn't really doing my part to go out of my way to make friends, but being an Introvert Terrified of Rejection sort of put a damper on enthusiasm.

so, as i said earlier, my friend christy visited last week. during that time i didn't do much in the way of calling friends, checking emails, facebook, reading blogs or (obviously) writing blogs. it felt great to have a week "off" of the computer. and then christy left and i found that catching up wasn't the 1 hour ordeal that i thought it would be. i'm not sure i'm ever going to catch up! i had emails buried beneath piles of other emails in my inbox that i hadn't responded to, phone numbers that i had lost, invitations that i hadn't rsvp'd to in time and many, many, many blogs to read. in my overwhelmed state, i took a deep breath and suddenly realized the amazing blessings that God has given to me in the way of friends. i have friends! some i've never met in person, some i haven't seen in years, some i talk to every week. but they're all people i care enough about to want to know what is happening in their lives and they want to know what is happening in mine! no awkwardness included. i am so thankful.

since its been awhile and there's been all sorts of random things happening around here, i'm going to write the rest of this post in point form.

*a couple of weeks ago josh, who was already feeling sick, suddenly began having intense chest pain that radiated into his left arm! it was around 9:30pm and tristan was already in bed. after a few phone calls and searches online to see how serious this was, we decided that he needed to go to the hospital to get checked out. josh's folks came over to stay here with our sleeping little boy and i drove josh down to the nearest hospital 45 min away. we didn't emerge from the emergency room until 4 hours later. everything took a long time, but thankfully after an ekg, x-ray, a shot and some icky medicine, it was determined that his heart was fine (thank GOD!) and that he was developing the beginning stages of pneumonia in his left lung, hence the chest pain. he got on antibiotics right away and only missed 1 day of work. (plus plenty hours of sleep)

*while christy was here, tristan got a cold with his usual sniffles and coughs and all-around grumpiness. the only difference this time was that we could hear his little lungs wheezing when he breathed, and his breathing seemed to be a little more laborious than normal. christy and i took him down to his pediatrician and it was determined that he'd need an inhaler. the dr. said that babies are allowed to wheeze once and that could be it, but if he wheezes again, then yup, its asthma. i'm SO thankful that christy was with me. she works with kids and has asthma herself, so she was so calm about the whole thing, whereas if i had been by myself, i know i would have panicked. tristan is now feeling much better and no longer needs his inhaler :)

*after dropping christy off at the airport on thursday, tristan and i had a little "date" down at san diego's sea port village. its a cute little area right on the water with shops and live music and fun restaurants. josh proposed to me there over looking the water. so, tristan and i had a delicious lunch, then had fun wandering in the shops and chasing pigeons (ok, so i had fun in the shops and tristan had fun with the pigeons). though he's normally a little stinker in the car, whining and fussing until we get home, this time he actually giggled to himself back there and was happy as a clam. it was a lovely day.

*i gave tristan his first haircut the other day. oh dear. it looks AWFUL. i did it while he was in the bathtub so that his hair would be wet and so he'd be distracted by the toys. how hard can it be to trim some bangs and sides? well, it turns out that its very difficult because i will NEVER EVER touch my child's hair with scissors ever again. that's all i'm going to say about that. i may post a picture of his new do on his blog, if i feel brave enough to do so.


*josh and i were able to go on a much-needed date yesterday. joshs' folks watched tristan at their house while we escaped and saw the movie "juno". we both enjoyed it IMMENSELY. since the last 2 dvd's we saw were "gone baby gone" and "we own the night",we were thrilled to finally laugh our heads off. (i cried a bit too, at the end and suddenly got a huge surge of baby fever, but i'm happy to report that i've fully recovered). it was just SO funny and clever! and it had a lot of heart. i now want the soundtrack.

* i sadly had to return my skinny b!tch book to the library today, but i spent a good deal of time re-reading many of the chapters before it was due. i'm not following their advice to the letter, but i'm definitely eating and feeling better. my goal isn't so much to lose weight as it is to become more healthy. i no longer read the fat grams or calories on each box of food that i pick up at the grocery store. instead, i simply read the list of ingredients to make sure that everything i'm ingesting is God-created, simple and healthy food. its really not that hard! breakfast and lunch are a snap since i'm only making those meals for myself, but dinner is still a bit of a challenge since my husband isn't exactly on the same page as me, food-wise. so, i'm just wondering if anyone out there has some good meal ideas. please comment and let me know what they are! first, they need to be EASY, secondly, they need to contain NO RED MEAT and thirdly, they need to TASTE GOOD! i took some vegetarian cookbooks out of the library today, but they're a little bit intimidating with their pictures of gourmet dishes, so i feel as if i'm slightly out of my league.

okay, this post is long enough. i'm off to enjoy a spinach salad...