December 3, 2007

Noses, Underrated

Posted in food, friends at 9:50 pm by Michael

I’m going to rate the nose as the most underrated appendage that we have. It does so many good things – its part in the whole respiration deal, holds up glasses, warms up cold air, filters dusty air, is another appendage to decorate (not my deal, but hey, who am I to be judgy about ANYTHING).

But, most importantly, your nose makes it possible to breath NOT THROUGH YOUR MOUTH all the time. Now, your mouth, also very good. Eating, drinking, plus smoochin’ your sweetie – all good. Now, when running extra hard, the mouth is great to get extra air in so you can keep going. Yea indurance!

However, ask the mouth to do 100% of the breathing for 5+ days, and little rebellions occur. One, it rebels by being dry. Very dry. So dry that its hard to talk. (I basically can’t really talk on the phone right now without taking a drink of water.) Two, it makes your teeth hurt because of the drymouth thing. Then, there’s this whole breathing/swallowing thing that your nose/mouth have all worked out. Try (with a dropcloth nearby – more on this later) to plug your nose – really plug it – don’t just hold it. Then, try to chug anything. Said anything will get blown out of your mouth with extreme rapidity.

The lips are watching all this action, and wanting their piece, so they become co-conspirators in the rebellion, and decide that they want attention NOW! They want lip balm, they want to be dry and cracky. They get super cranky.

So, it was joyous news to me that tomorrow at 9:30am I get my nose packing as well as some of the other bandages off. I’m very excited.

Anh took this picture of me mid-morning today – its better than the one I did last night – the swelling and bruising around my eyes and cheeks are really starting to go down – this is a very good thing, since the new Alvin and the Chipmunks movie has already been shot.

Samwich continued his two-way alimentary canal tricks today. Basically, could only keep down two ounces of formula at a time. Tried yogurt… Yum! I love yogurt – 30 mins later – BLAH. Tried oatmeal… Yum! I love oatmeal – 30 mins later – BLAH. Tried moret than two ounces of formula – same deal. However, I came up with something which I’m sure other parents have done, but I was damn proud of both the concept, and the name. Turns out that while Samwich could hold *down* the formula… he would poop it out – at seemingly high pressure. No lie, he had at least seven blowouts (Blowout: n. an uncontained release outside of the diaper area of poop or pee from a diapered baby. If an undiapered baby releases – see “squirting”). Finally, I said “Eureka! We should “double diaper”! It is what it sounds like. Basically two diapers – one baby butt. Anh had the ingenious add to offset the diapers to create max coverage. Samwich was unable to defeat our double diaper scheme.

Just around noontime, our friends Hillel and Deb flew down for the day to see us from Seattle (very sweet! – thanks again guys). As luck would have it, our friend Jenny was in town too (well both luck and design – she extended a stay to see us – also super sweet!).

We went to go have dim sum way over on the other side of town at Ton Kiang. It was worth the trip! (This was also my first real trip out since Thursday’s facial surgery). I had my first non-jello/pudding/juice since Thursday, and boy, it was good. Little bites never tasted so good. (Here’s a link: http://www.tastingmenu.com/media/2004/20040118-tonkiang/default.htm)

Anyway, the adventure wiped me out, so we came back home, I took a nap, and then Hillel, Deb, Jenny and later Anh’s brother James came over and we watched the Pats go 12-0! Whew… close.

Deb, Hillel and Jenny flew back and I was madly SMS’ing the last drives for the Pats to Hillel… He’s potentially more insane about the Pats than me.

Anyway… everyday is getting better, and I’m feeling stronger! I can’t wait to get home. However, with all the rain in Seattle, our roof has a leak now, and we have a bucket in living room to catch the water… yuk.

The Cocoon house is just amazing, have met a ton of very nice people here, but sleeping in our own bed is something I’m counting down to.