The CD player in our car had started pausing and skipping randomly, even with new CDs. Since it’s still under warranty, we made an appointment to have it replaced at the dealership. The “less than an hour” procedure took about an hour and a half. Just before leaving the parking lot I tried to reload the CD player, and couldn’t. The ‘load’ button doesn’t respond at all. So I drove back around to the service bay, pointed out the problem, and the guy sighed and said they’d have to order yet another one from Nissan.

So, instead of intermittent skipping, we now have a completely non-functional CD player for an indefinite amount of time.

*sigh*

I have been wanting to get Olivia a baby doll since last year, because I am a girly girl and want to live vicariously through my toddler. In particular, I’ve been searching for an Asian all-vinyl or vinyl and cloth doll.

Do you know how many ethnic (besides African American) baby dolls are out there? Almost none! And of the handful that DO exist, many are just caucasian dolls with dark eyes and hair. This Babygadget blog post sums them up nicely, though I think the Fisher Price doll is cute.

I do agree that the Berenguer La Newborn Asian Doll is the most Asian looking of the lot, and it doesn’t have that creepy look that so many baby dolls do. Berenguer also has a larger sized doll that looks good, but at 22″ long, the La Baby is more than 2/3 of Livi’s height; probably too big for her right now.

I am also trying to decide whether to get her a baby doll or one that looks like a toddler. While I think that Berenguer’s Playful Patty has a cute face, her body is awfully chunky.

Despite babygadget’s poor opinion of them, the Little Mommy Asian doll rates 5 out 5 stars on Amazon.com and 4.5 stars on epinions. Today at Target I saw some of the Little Mommy dolls and thought they were pretty nice. They had a toddler doll version with rooted hair (not just a painted scalp) that came in a cute two piece outfit, but though they had the African American and Hispanic dolls, they didn’t have the Asian one on the shelves. I figured I’d find them on the website and order one. However, I have been utterly unsuccessful at finding that particular model from the Little Mommy line, anywhere on the internet. It’s not on Target, Wal-Mart, Amazon, KBToys, ToysRUs, Mattel or Fisher-Price. Various other models are, but not that particular one. The best I’ve been able to find is a thumbnail sized picture by searching Google Images.

I guess I’ll visit a couple of other Targets in the area to see if they have the doll. If not, I guess I’ll just have to decide between the other Little Mommy doll and the Berenguers.

So much effort for a little girl who’d probably be thrilled if I gave her a glob of mud on the end of a stick.

The Second Year
Originally uploaded by monkeyjunkie.

I can’t believe another year has gone by. My baby is TWO YEARS OLD today!

The First Year
Originally uploaded by monkeyjunkie.

Multimedia message
Originally uploaded by monkeyjunkie.

I’m down a gallbladder (surgery was yesterday), but already out of the hospital and feeling relatively well. I’ll feel even better once Dale is back with my Vicodin.

A day or two after we went to Santa Barbara, I woke up early in the morning with a severe pain in my chest and back. The otc pain relievers we had didn’t help. Hot bath helped minorly. We were thinking about going to an ER but after talking to Dale’s mom, we decided it was probably constipation so Dale got some otc stuff and the pain went away once that was dealt with. Then it recurred the next night and several more times during the trip, sometimes happening twice in one night, but always in the very early morning.

The pain episodes continued after we got home, and nothing really seemed to help them once they got started, then they started getting worse and not just early in the morning. In November, I had one start in the late evening and after an hour the pain was so bad it hurt to breath, so Dale and I decided I should take myself to an ER (Livi was already in bed). I did and told them when I checked in that I thought I was having a gallbladder attack, and the bastards had me sit in the waiting area for another TWO HOURS before they saw me, and by then the pain was subsiding. Still, they did bloodwork (normal) and an x-ray (nothing odd), so they sent me home with a painkiller prescription.

The attacks continued and the painkillers didn’t help at all. During another seriously bad one, I went to the ER again (a different one because it was closer, but I took along the lab results from the first ER). This time, the pain was still bad when I was checked in, but it was subsiding (it had been 2 hrs since it started). I got a non-narcotic painkiller injection and some nasty stuff to numb my esophagus, then I was sent home.

The reason I hadn’t been to my regular doctor yet was because Dale lost his job just before the attacks started, and his HR company was taking their sweet damn time activing our COBRA coverage. It took TWO MONTHS to get coverage back.

About a week after the second ER visit, I had another attack start in the late evening on a Friday, and this time, the pain didn’t go away until Sunday. It would just lessen and grow throughout the weekend. Dale and I had had it by then so I went ahead and scheduled a GP office visit even though we didn’t have insurance coverage yet. That doc sent me for an ultrasound (which I had to pay for out of pocket, over $400), which didn’t reveal gallstones but did show that the walls of my gallbladder were constricted and thickened, preventing a good view. The bloodwork she ordered also showed elevated liver enzymes, and I was jaundiced.

She sent me on to a gastroenterologist. Fortunately, by the time I saw him, our insurance had been reinstated. He had me undergo an endoscopy and a HIDA-scan. The endoscopy revealed nothing but a normal digestive system. The HIDA-scan showed decreased gallbladder functioning. Based upon these results, previous test results, and my reported symptoms, he concluded I have gallbladder disease and possibly atypical gallstones. His recommendation was to remove my gallbladder. So he referred me to the surgeon I met with this afternoon.

So, three months to the day after the attacks started, I’ll have my gallbladder removed.

Ironically, I haven’t had an attack since the one that lasted all weekend. After two months of having them every 3-5 days, they stopped the day before I finally went to a doctor.