Where in the world is Noumi?

Can you see our little friend, Noumi?

For those of you who know our house, you’d know that he is about 2/3 of the way up the tree and he is above the mantle’s shelf. Very clever cat. Here’s a closer look:

Ugly Christmas Sweater Potluck

Last night we had our ugly christmas sweater potluck. I had invited quite a few people but most of them ended up either not showing up at all or canceling at the last minute. I was pretty disappointed but Darcy, Daisy, and Nicole showed up so we had a fun little time. One of the people who canceled at the last minute is vegan so we ended up with a bunch of vegan/vegetarian things and none of us were vegetarian at all. :) Pretty crazy. We made some vegan chili (which was very good), pigs in a blanket (not quite vegetarian), cookies, and bought some booze. Other people brought salad, guacamole, cheese, veggies, and drinks. It was fun and I got to meet Nicole (she’s one of Patrick’s teacher’s that he works with at ISB).

Click on the photo below to see the album of photos from the party. Enjoy!

Cardinal

The other day, I was getting my bike to leave for work and saw a cardinal on the neighbor’s hedge… so I ran in and got my camera. Check out how cool it looks!

Nathan hearts Santa

Nate went to see Santa today to ask for all the gifts he wants and Christine captured some really great photos. Here are a couple to make you all ohh and ahh.

Nathan and Santa

Checking out the big guy

First real snow of the year.

First real snow of the year., originally uploaded by MelanitaC.

Last night was our first real snow of the year. Today is nice a sunny, and everything is melting. Wednesday’s forecast is as follows:

“Messier storm…snow to ice and rain.”

That ought to be a fun commute.

Happy Thanksgiving

I would tell everyone to have a happy Thanksgiving except I’m in a grouchy mood. So there.

Noumi the incredible

We don’t have children… so take a look at our cute cat!

Thanksgiving and school

Even though I can’t eat much and I’m not supposed to eat anything fatty, Patrick and I are still doing a Thanksgiving celebration this year. I ordered a boneless turkey breast and we’re going to do a turkey roulade with some of my mother’s stuffing in the center. I cannot wait to do this!!! :) We’re also going to have stuffing, mashed potatoes, corn, bread rolls, and PIE! Get excited! I’ve already done all the shopping and now I just have to wait for the big day! Luckily, I get a day off from work so that’ll be fun.

On the culinary school front, I went to get fitted for my uniform and picked up my kit last week. I was pretty excited! My chef’s coats have been sent out to be embroidered with my fabulous name and I only have my chef knife missing from my kit (I get to pick one on the first day of class). I couldn’t be happier that this is coming up in a month or so… I also paid the first payment of my tuition so I was sad about that, but happy about everything else.

Anddddddd….. I had originally planned on doing the professional pastry program, which is a 37 week pastry program and you get a diploma at the end… but I didn’t really care about things like sugar decorations, cake decorating, etc and was trying to figure out what I wanted to do in my future so I decided to change programs. I changed to the certificate culinary program which is a 16 week program where you do savory food and a tiny bit of pastry and get a certificate at the end. I thought this would be more useful to me for what I’d eventually like to do (be a personal/private chef). When I went to pay for my schooling, I was speaking to the lady in the office and we were discussing the costs of doing both certificate programs (culinary and pastry) and it turns out that it’s cheaper than doing just one professional program. This means I had to go home and somehow convince Patrick that I need to do both programs!

So I drive home, get some Subway, and start thinking about how to convince Patrick to let me do 2 programs. :) It was, in fact, going to be cheaper than doing the original plan so this shouldn’t be a big deal, right?!? Yeah right. At first, he thought I was insane… but then he saw the light! And I’m now going to do both programs. I’m going to do the culinary program from January to May and then the pastry program from May to September. Then, I’ll finally be done with school and I’ll be a big girl and get a job. I’m sure Patrick can’t wait for that time. Haha!

Those are our plans for now and nothing else is really going on. Patrick is still enjoying his work and all that jazz and I’m still working away at Whole Foods until I’m done with culinary school. Luckily, I’ll only be working part time while I’m in school. This makes me smile on the inside but I’m supposed to pretend that I’m so sad that I can’t work full time and study at the same time. So… :( (but really it’s :) yay!)

That’s all for now. Watch out for some pictures of food on Thursday. We might take some… we might not!

Health update

So it has been nearly 2 weeks now since my surgery. The first week was probably the grossest. My incisions were sore (especially my belly button… it’s where they sucked out my gallbladder!!) but my mom came to visit. She entertained me for a few days during my recovery. I tested myself with food and got some good and bad results. Basically, if it has fat in it, it shouldn’t go in me. If it’s low in fat or fat free, then it is definitely going to be eaten! I lost a lot of weight (yay!) but clearly that’s not the way to do things in reality. :)

I went back to work 5 days after the surgery. I was trying to do a demo but I didn’t feel very well so I went home after about 3 hours. At least it was a Sunday so it was time and a half! Haha!! The next day, I went back to work but I started to work the holiday table (where people order their turkeys and thanksgiving stuff). It wasn’t that bad. I have been back to work ever since but I’ve only been working the holiday table. Tomorrow will be my first day doing something that isn’t sitting around. I’ll be filling thanksgiving orders and giving people their turkeys. Should be fun!

About a week after the surgery, I did get some weird pain where my gallbladder used to be. Right under my right ribcage, I was feeling some pretty sharp pain. It was so bad that it hurt when I took any deep breaths. It woke me from my sleep and lasted about 24 hours before it went away. Since then, there’s been a sharp pain every now and then but nothing serious. The doctor told me that it was most likely nerves regenerating in my abdomen. That sounds really weird and kinda gross but whatever. She said it was normal and when I get the pain now, I just walk around for a bit and it generally goes away.

My stitches are pretty much useless now too. I can see that the incisions are closed up… and the stitches itch like hell so I’d like to cut them with my cuticle cutter but I think Patrick would flip out. I’m also going to see my doctor on Wednesday to get a check up. I am sure she’ll say that I’m a-OK and I can go back to doing whatever the hell I feel like. :) Right?

Speaking of doing whatever I feel like, I rode my bike today to the grocery store! It was my first time back on my bike since the surgery and I was scared that it might hurt me weak little abs or something. Luckily, it didn’t! The only pain that I felt was when I was picking up my bike to carry it up the steps on the porch. If it wasn’t for that, I would have had a painless ride. Very exciting! I plan on riding my bike to work tomorrow to see how it goes. I’m sure it’ll be magnificent and beautiful and perfect. Wish me luck in case it kills me! :)

Surgery

I’m alive! My gallbladder removal surgery was on Tuesday afternoon at 3:10pm. I actually went to the ER the night before with really bad abdominal pain from a gallbladder attack so I was in the hospital from 5:45am until Wednesday morning at around 9:30am when they finally released me. The surgery went well. I suspect everything is fine as they let me go home the next day. I thought I’d get to go home the day before but they kept me overnight because the anesthesia made me barf. Sweet, right? :)

So I’m hanging out at home now… my mom is on her way to come visit me and take care of my pathetic ass for a couple days and then I go back to work on Sunday. I hope I feel up to it or I might have to bail on the specialty department again. We shall see! I am pretty sore when I walk and my bellybutton hurts like hell. They apparently sucked my gallbladder out of my belly button so I suspect that is why it hurts so much. :) I have 3 other incisions but they don’t hurt at all compared to the sucker outer incision.

In other news, Patrick and I were hanging out watching TV this evening when Noumi came in with a toy in his mouth. He looked pretty excited about it and it’s not like him to walk around with a toy in his mouth so I looked at him more closely. Um. It wasn’t a toy, it was a mouse. Ew. So Noumi let it go and it started to move again so then he played with it and picked it up again. Basically this poor mouse was his toy. He was having a ball! Patrick thought it was awesome and tried to take a picture but he keeps using his loser camera and it didn’t work. So sad! I made Patrick catch the mouse and toss it outside. Now we’re waiting for the landlord to come home so that we can tell him that there’s been a mouse visiting us. Luckily, we have cats so it’s not a big deal because they’ll all end up dead… but still gross. I blame it on the weather turning colder. Oh well… guess we’ll see what the landlord does!

I’ll update more on the recovery process and all that jazz once I feel like sitting at the computer for a longer period of time. :) Peace out for now!