Posts tagged with "life"
Friday, 7. December 2007, 00:48:06
baby, life, home life
Nine months ago, I had no idea that the words meconium, vernix or colostrum existed. I knew about labour, epidural, delivery, but the notions were very abstract.
My son is now fast asleep. We've been back home for a week. The hospital kept us for 6 long days ; Adrien had lost more than the usual 10% of his birth weight. He was born on 23 November at 7:37 p.m., 13 days ago. That was less than a half hour after they took me to the delivery room and an hour after we arrived at the hospital. There was no time for an epidural, as I made it all the way to 9 centimeters by the time I got there. I thought I might have the baby in the car! We left home in a hurry. It was time to go, suddenly, as the contractions were happening every two minutes. All day I had had them, every 10 or 15 minutes, sometimes every 5 minutes, but not for two hours. I had had them the night before too. In fact, they started in the afternoon the day before. I was attending the last birth preparation class and I started to experience contractions in the middle of it.
I had a wonderful and easy pregnancy. I was hardly tired and the only nuisance, really, was having to go to the doctor's every month. Only three weeks before the end did I start to walk at a slower pace. I was still at work 2 weeks before the end (only I thought I would have three weeks).
Adrien arrived a week in advance, on 23 November 2007, at 7:37 pm. He weighed 2,990 kg and was 49,5 cm tall. His father held my hand and encouraged me through it all. And since then, he's been as fantastic as ever, helping me and supporting me with the baby.
Thursday, 13. September 2007, 09:30:12
odd, travel, life, work
...
"Gipsy, give me your tears!"
On my way back to the pharmacy just now, a gipsy talked to me. Dude, that was so weird!
I *must* blag about it ;)
She said I would travel abroad, but not just now. Well, I didn't say, but the taxi picks me up in 10 minutes to go to the airport; I'm going to Boston for a few days, for work.
She told me to remember the number "19" because it is going to be important in the upcoming months.
She asked me if the initials M J F meant anything to me and I said no. But she said I should keep them in mind because they will matter soon.
Then she gave me a white plastic "stone" from the Saintes-Marie de la Mer, where she comes from). It's ugly. She said people must treat gipsies right (and she meant "generously"), so I gave her 5 euros. She must have thought she was in potentially good compagny, so she went on and read my palm.
She said I was lucky and other stuff and that I had an excellent memory (wrong!)
She asked me if I had undergone surgery in my life and I said no, and she said I never would. Amen.
That's when she said it usually costs EUR 20 to 30 for palm reading. She was _that_ close to add "otherwise the predictions don't work", I'm sure.
I didn't give her any more money but I'll slip the plastic thingie in my bag, just in case ;)
Update: I just thought I'd mention that the flight attendant, seeing I was pregnent, moved me from a seat at row 11 (exit) to row... 19!
No update on MJF.
Wednesday, 29. August 2007, 10:09:13
life, home life, odd
On the way to lunch yesterday, I was chatting with a colleague and learnt she's moving house this Friday to a tiny town I used to live in back in 2004. Pretty soon in the conversation we found out she's moving exactly in the house I was in! How odd is that?!
I found out that my yucca is still there, healthy, right in front of the living room windows. I had inherited this yucca years ago, in 2000, I think, when a former W3C colleague left for the US and A. This yucca followed me in all the houses I've been in since then (5 different houses) and I left it in the garden of this house when I left. It was obviously in an ideal spot. When my ex moved out of the house a few months ago, he didn't have the heart to unearth the yucca. My colleague will take good care of it, I'm certain.
I also found out that my garden dwarf is still there! Well, it's now in the basement and she's more than happy to give it back to me. What a coincidence! I'm still marvelling at it.
This dwarf also has a story. I received it as a birthday gift in 2002, a joke that I deeply enjoyed. Actually it's a birthday gift that I shared with my ex boyfriend and when I left, I left the garden dwarf, Gringoire. I thought he had left the house with him. Gringoire must be far less shiny now and his colours must have worn off a bit. I'll see soon.
Update 05sep2007: Indeed, far less shiny with worn out colours, but it's Gringoire, all right!
Sunday, 29. April 2007, 22:19:10
silly, life, i don't like, home life
I was reminded of a phobia that I have had for as long as I remember. I meant to look the word up and Amy found it: Chaetophobia, the fear of hair. I don't know how to pronounce it, but I can certainly describe my own version of the phobia.
When I was a kid and my mum was bathing me, I was terrified of floating hair in the water. So I already had long hair at the time. I remember curling up as far as I could from these long, threatening, floating and offensive threats. My word was "thread", as in "there is a thread". My mother had to remove the floating "thread(s)" from the water.
Now I don't curl up so much, but I'm still really bugged by the occasional strand(s) of detached hair. A lot.
I don't mind attached hair at all. How funny to make the distinction.
Sunday, 18. March 2007, 04:55:10
Boston MA, music, musings,
...
Amy and I mentioned inner worlds in a conversation the other day. Mine has music as a background. It is pretty much like the outer world, I reckon. Well, no, scratch this. It's messier.
My inner world has loads of samples of music. When I stop and think about it, I can pinpoint what song, or what melody. And I can trace why this particular one is in my head, most of the time. There is something else than music. There are sounds. Sounds that I heard. They repeat in my head until another sound worth of being repeated takes over. They are jingles. They can be short sentences too. Either ones I've just heard, or ones that I constructed myself. Either I'm practicing my side of the conversation in my head, or it's just my thoughts or bits of my thoughts that play. I move on to thinking about something else, or doing something else, and if I pause, a jingle is still playing. It's not bothering me.
But there are occasions when this is bothering me. For example, when I'm under stress and I'd love to focus on something else than the music or the jingle. Impossible. It's as though the volume is turned all the way up, and any thinking relevant to the conversation or situation at hand is banned from the setting.
In an effort to put a name on this tendency to reproduce jingles and sentences or play them in my heard, I looked up the "symptoms". The closest I found was echolalia.
Echolalia: The involuntary parrotlike repetition (echoing) of a word or phrase just spoken by another person. Echolalia is a feature of schizophrenia (especially the catatonic form), Tourette syndrome, and some other disorders. From echo + the Greek lalia, a form of speech.
In a book by Robert J. Waldinger, "Psychiatry for Medical Students", the part on "Thought Process" ( chapter four, "The Mental Status Examination") is particularly interesting. I think perseveration applies to me.
Rate and flow of idea. Patients frequently use the term racing thoughs to describe being flooded with ideas and unable to keep up with them. This condition is often seen with anxiety as well as in those with psychosis (e.g. mania, schizophrenia.)
Circumstantiality involves thinking that is indirect in reaching a goal or getting to the point. This style is common in obsessional people and in schizophrenic patients.
Blocking is a sudden obstruction or interruption on the spontaneous flow of thought, perceived by the patient as an absence or deprivation of thought. It is seen in patients with schizophrenia and in those with severe anxiety states.
Perseveration is the tendency to emit the same verbal response again and again to varied stimuli. This may range from constant repetition of one word or phrase (e.g. "night and day, night and day, night and day...") to an inabilit to shift fhe focus of conversation away from one particular topic.
Other abnormalities of though process. Abnormalities of thought process may include the following:
Neologisms are new words or condensations of several words that are not readily understood by others. This disturbance is seen in patients with schizophrenia and organic brain syndromes (e.g. a paranoid man used "plickening" to mean "the plot thickens").
Word salad is a jumble of words and phrases lacking comprehensive meaning or logical coherence. It is characteristic of patients with schizophrenia.
Echolalia is a parrotlike repetition of another person's speech. It is observed in patients with mania, among other disorders."
Now I'd love to hear about others' inner worlds :)
Wednesday, 17. January 2007, 20:08:02
life, musings
There are precious things that I want close. And others that I need away.
I found that one of these belongs in a small treasure box that is made of glass.
And that it's better kept away from sight.
Saturday, 6. January 2007, 12:23:09
musings, life
I read a beautiful line yesterday on Goatee's weblog:
Watching for the train speeds only my impatience.
Perfect words to illustrate the waiting.
Tuesday, 26. December 2006, 21:06:58
food, home life, MBTI, i don't like
...
A few reflections that occured to me today:
- merry post-xmas everybody!
- there are two windows of direct sun light in our backyard lately:
a little bit before noon and a little bit around 3 p.m.
- really, I'm a summer creature.
- it's a great loss that James Brown died yesterday.
- the one thing I dislike about the 100 Rolling Papers dispenser
compared to the 50 leaves one, is that when one of the stacks is empty,
the other one has this tendency to move where the other one used to be.
Very frustrating.
- unsurprisingly, I'm still an ISTJ (I78 S50 T12 J56).
- there are 120653 files in my home directory today.
- my Mum's chocolate mousse and coffee cake is simply *awesome*.
Friday, 6. October 2006, 03:38:01
life, bad habit
Mid-August, I started to roll my own cigarettes. Some might say it remains a bad habit. Yes, of course it's a bad habit!
Anyway, that is not the point.
I smoke less than before and I'm happy about it. Less means about 4 times less.
Thursday, 14. September 2006, 09:05:40
travel, life, work
Because of:
- "starbucks coffee caramel macchiato"
- "the ping-pong table at the Stata"
- "Ralph's pretzel jar"
- "clam chowder"
I am moving to Boston. Mmm... caramel macchiato, pretzels :)
I'll visit for 3 months and I'm leaving tomorrow evening. I'll be a visiting scholar at the MIT Computer Science and Artificial Intelligence Laboratory. In effect, nothing will change but my physical location.
This will be so much fun! I'm really looking forward to it.
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