Belle

04:01 pm: On a lighter note...
A few weeks ago, I bought these happening shoes....

 click to see

What do you think?  Alexandra, now 12, also ears a size 9 shoe and is constantly wearing these.  They look fabulous with black tights and a black dress or black skirt.

Tags: cool shoes

04:05 pm: Hola People!

It has been a long time since I've been here; I certainly hope you all are well.  I am still busy at the hospital, I started working on artwork again, dealing with my dad's drug and alcohol issues as always, and I now live more than half of my life without my husband.  He is working at an Army base in the hot California desert and he leaves Monday AM and returns Thursday PM or Friday AM.  He has lately been rather full of himself.  He met a guy that was a former middle weight boxing champ while at the Army base and he has been training with him for a few months.  He's lost weight and it's all he talks about,  On the other hand, in the last few months I stopped taking steroids for my kidney problem, now diagnosed as renal tubular acidosis, amd I am starting to take off the weight I gained.  I lost 11 pounds over the past month, which makes me happy, but hearing "Guess how much I weigh today?" when my husband phones me is a little more than I can take.  I think he may be in the middle of a midlife crisis.  He takes off quite a bit during the weekends when he could be home and joined some colorful mens' group called The Clampers.  They go camping, drink, and engage in general tomfoolery.  I refer to this as William's HOAF (Harmless Outlet Away from Family).   My own HOAFs include planespotting, going in the early morning to the beach to find and check out stuff  (shells, anemones, starfish and such), taking drives to investigate interesting things, and walking at the track near home to lose some of the junk in my trunk.   Right now, I am beyond curvy and I want to get back the curves I am happy with.  My ass is fat!  But I have to do it sensibly, not just for myself but because Alexandra is 12 now and I don't want her to have unrealistic ideas about female shape and weight loss.  In the old days, I would've skipped meals, popped some diet pills, exercised my ass off and reached my goal rather quickly, but I also didn't have someone looking to me for guidance.  Now, I try to eat sensibly and exercise.  It's (the weight) coming off more gradually but steadily and this is a better nessage for her.
So please sign in and say "Hi", and tell me what's new in your life so I don't have to muck through 8 months of your entries to find out.  That would take too long. 

Note to K.M. - send me an email with your phone # so I can catch up with you.  It's been months and I want to hear about everything. 

Tags: art, body issues, haof, long time

11:00 pm: I am a hot, hot woman

We are in the middle of a massive (500,000+ people + lots of animals)  evacuation for these crazy fires and we made the executive decision to return home today.  William, Alexandra and our 3 cats and 3 birds were delighted to come home tonight.  The fires are raging on to the East and North of us but here in Del Mar I had heard accounts of looting and break ins and we are still far enough away that I feel safe deciding to come home.  Del Mar had been under mandatory evacuation but this evening we got reports that our area was now just a voluntary evacuation.  My mother is still evacuated, but she hopes she will make it home tomorrow.  Oddly, she is just 2 miles east of me.

Tonight we drove over the peak to see how close the nearest flames loomed.  I live blocks from the beach and it seems odd to think the fire could travel so far.  I think we have more to worry about the fire that's burning on the coast about 20 miles north.  I saw embers and flames and we were stopped by law officials in HumVees anytime we attempted to drive East by more than 8 miles or so.  It was surreal to travel these areas and face confrontation by officials; as a native here I've always gone everywhere and felt safe.  Tonight it all felt strange. 

These fires are scarier than the last big ones in San Diego (10-26-03).  I always remember the date because I've had to write it so many times when analysing and submitting the operative reports for the patients we saw at my hospital during that fire.  Now I hear there are several burn patients in our hospital, several more than we had 4 years ago, and I will be very busy once I return to work.  Many of our inpatients are firefighters that were injured.  I haven't heard anything else about the patients.  But I know they are in good hands.  

I hope this entry finds all of you in good health and that are doing well.    Juliebelle

Tags: fires

07:29 pm: The Things We Do For Lust.....

My dad will be the death of me.  I swear it.  I owe every gray hair on my head (now thankfully dyed) to this insanely impractical man.  His last boyfriend, Rich, left him and said simply "I can not be a partner on your self-destructive life path".  At the time I thought it was just about the drugs and drinking.  I think now it may be more about his (lack of) common sense.

Dad decided that he wanted a roommate, which actually translates to "Maybe if I live with a guy he will fall in love with me and thus I won't have to put on my pretty clothes, sport my game face and go out to the usual gay haunts in search of a lover".  So he placed an ad late July on a national gay website advertising for a room for rent in a "gay friendly home". He got 4 emails that day.  The first email was from a guy living in South Carolina who worked as a cable TV installer.  His email said he was 29 years old, 6 foot 2 inches and liked to lift weights.  Guess what?  That was all my dad needed to know!  JonTrevor is moving cross country to San Diego to live with my dad.  They talk everyday by phone, send emails daily and dad has spent, no exaggeration, thousands of dollars renovating the room so it will be just what JonTrevor wants!  

JonTrevor is moving in Tuesday.  He's riding his motorcycle crosscountry.  My dad called me today to suggest that William, Alex and I come to dinner next weekend to meet JonTrevor before my dad leaves for 2 weeks to Europe.  WTF???!!! My dad is leaving his home in the hands of some guy we know nothing about whatsoever.  I am absolutely beside myself.  I am not a person that naturally distrusts others but I think this situation could go south really quickly.  He told me, "Ofcourse JonTrevor already knows you!"  "What?"  I said, "Yes, he knows you from the emails and pictures I've sent him!" he told me proudly.   My GOD!  I told my dad to remember he had said this was just to be a renter/landlord situation.  He told me it may be too late for that.   

So I'll soon be meeting Dad's 29 year old renter/piece of ass.  I'm really pretty freaked.

Tags: dad, jontrevor, lover, renter

08:09 pm: Sex, Weirdness, Changes,etc...
So it turns out we are not moving.  William's company decided to merge the inland empire/desert off and laid off several people at the coastal office and William was one of them.  He will get 3 months severance pay plus his bonus.  So here I stay in Del Mar.  I had to tell everyone at work on Friday that I wasn't leaving.  Luckily, they all seemed delighted, with the exception of my boss.  But you cannot expect anything different from that guy. I opted not to tell them why, at William's request.  He says that even if he gets another job in Orange County, he will likely just commute.  

I sometimes wonder if I made a mistake in getting married.  I have no doubt that I love him.  It's just that when things aren't going his way he yells, and I truly despise this.  Yelling and fighting are activities I naturally avoid so my tendency is to walk out while he seems to find yelling oddly cathartic.  I told him over the past few weeks that I cannot take the yelling and the overreaction over minor things and if things don't change I will have to consider making a few changes myself.  Lest you thing I am an abused wife, I'm most certainly not.  I just resent that if we disagree about something so minor as what to watch on TV, he often starts yelling.  Each time it happens I really want to say "fuck off" and leave.  

The sex is good, I don't deny that.  I believe that at the wonderful age of 40 I have most certainly hit some kind of peak, in terms of desire, openness and lack of limits.  It's a strange thing to have great sex with someone you love that pisses you off so much.  I think about sex with other people, and I do not know that the sex would be at the flavor I have come to be accustomed to. 

I'm still trying to get a second job at that place in Beverly Hills.  I would work from home and do coding (reading operative reports, assigned codes for billers) and send the completed reports back by fax.  The guy who owns the company has given 2 tests, one of which I passed, and the other I have not heard back on.  If I pass the tests, and I want to work full time, he estimates I will make about $100K year.  If I could do this in addition to my regular job at the hospital, that would be excellent.  This guy pays by the number of reports I complete, not hours spent, which is great for an insomniac like me.

The last weird thing is that I cannot log onto LiveJournal from work anymore--I now get an error message that says "Access Denied- Social Networking/Mature Content" blah, blah, blah... Oddly I can log on using other work computers which tells me this ban is strictly personal, likely initiated by my dumbass boss.  Also, ebay is still accessible which to me is far bigger waste of worker time..

10:53 am: Something Strange is Brewing
It's been a strange, strange summer. It's been in the 90s, raining, and Oh! The Humidity! Southern California is generally pretty dry and in my many earth years this past month has been the oddest, weather wise. My grandma, who'd be 99 this summer, used to say that with weather changes come earthquakes. "Something strange is brewing..." she'd warn and we'd know that she meant "an earthquake's coming!" But earthquakes aside, I have seen some odd things, nature-wise as a result of this odd weather.

I work on a canyon and when I wander out to the balcony I encounter a colorful variety of insects, some with wings, some 6-legged, some of the diabolical 8-legged sort.  Today I saw a beattle-threesome on the way to the bathroom. Leaving the bathroom, I spied a moth that was the color of a green highlighter marker! I have never seen such things!

At the beach, water temperatures have been really warm and we have had an increase in washed-up arthropods, including little shrimp-krill things, bright red pelagic crabs and even lobster. Recall that on my side of the US lobsters are smaller and have no claws, they look like this:
The other interesting thing is that I have seen a real increase in is the quantity, color and size variety of the starfish that appear on piers and rocks:
And, we have seen more jellyfish here, too! I love when that happens! It's so interesting to see these close up. I am positively fascinatied by them.

Anyway, other than worrying about the move to Orange County, which we think will take place in 5-6 weeks now, and figuring out when my last day of work here will be, things are fine. Oh, that and the stress about the earthquake that my grandma would swear is coming.


Tags: arthropods, earthquake, starfish, strange weather

07:01 pm: My Beautiful Baby Girl!

Tags: beautiful baby girl

02:52 pm: My Office, which does not seem like an office

I'm pretty busy with the end of the month tasks right now, but I thought I'd post a quick picture of my office.  I just took a pic of one corner but most of the walls and ceiling are decorated, too.  Since there seems to be no decor code at work, I sort of turned my office into a fish-themed area several years ago.  The fish never stop moving and sometimes while I am on the phone I shoot rubberbands at them.  People refer to my office as the aquarium. 



We are going through rolling blackouts in San Diego and some of the buildings at the hospital are completely in the dark.  I'm still OK, but I think the power is out near my home.

Tags: fish, office

05:51 pm: Stuck at home with the Stones
No, not Mick and Keith, Renal and Ureteral, and the really sucky part is that vicodin is just taking the edge off my pain. Tomorrow I get to stay home with my pain pills, my pee strainer and my kitty and hope my TV offers some groovy programming.  I have hydronephrosis and 3 stones on the left and 4 stones on the right.  The thing about this is that I am now considered to be a "Chronic Calculus Former", meaning that I just keep making kidney stones.  Since my stones are phosphate stones and not comprised of high amounts of calcium or oxalate, there are a few dietary changes I can make (I'm supposed to avoid nuts, aged cheese. all beans and legumes, all colas and red wine which I already do) but basically, unless I have Renal Tubular Acidosis or a Parathyroid Disorder, which I do not, I will likely just keep being a stoner.  That equals suckage maximus.

Today at the doctor's office I picked up a nifty little pamphlet entitled "How to Know When a Friend Has a Heroin or Opiate Problem". It was super-informative as it provided many street names for oxycontin, vicodin, morphine and percocet that I had never heard of. For instance, "Dude, Have you seen the schoolboy?" actually means "Hey, hook me up with some codeine!" Or, "Hey, can I score some Watson-387?" translates to "Hello, I find myself in need of some Vicodin or its generic, hydrocodone."  But, when you have stones and especially when they're hung up in your uretervesical junction, there really is nothing, short of an opiate, that will kick the pain.  At all times I have a bottle of Vicodin in my purse.  So, I wonder if someday I will become an addict.  Hell, maybe the fact that I am afraid to go anywhere sans vicodin means that I am infact an addict now.  It's not that I take one everyday.  But I probably need one every week.   The questions in the pamphlet are of little use to me.  1) Do you feel the need to cut down on your use of the drug? 2) Do you skip activities so you can use the drug? 3) Are you spending more time on activities to obtain this drug? 4) Have you used this drug despite negative consequences?  I can only answer "yes" to question #4;  I once had so much pain that I could not eat but I hurled from having taking vicodin on an empty stomach--I would call that a negative consequence.  But wait, this whole pamphlet is weird because it almost suggests that heroin could be OK if it was used in small doses.  As long as none of the four criteria above were true, one could argue, "Yes, I partake in Heroin but it is not a problem as I exhibit no extreme drug-seeking, anti-social or self-destructive behavior".  I have read through the entire handout and there is not one place where it says, "Heroin is not OK".  

My dad, would argue that there exists a safe dosage for nearly every illicit drug known to man, but the problem is a  lack of education and lack of regulation in the manufacturing of such substances.  Thus, he has found, along with his bizarre web newgroups buddies. a series of legal homeade highs.  He'll tell me, "It's a legal high and it's unregulated.  The government doesn't know about it.   With a solid chemistry background, this drug is an easy cheap high".  Usually these "highs"  are a mixture of some regular OTC or prescription drug, plus one or more other easily obtained ingredients.   People and their drugs! 




Tags: drug abuse, drug use, heroin, the stones, vicodin

09:15 am: I Had to Be Seen at the ER at Work and People I Knew Saw my Underwear!
I knew it was bound to happen one of these days! On friday, I just sort of felt crappy all day. I had this bad lower back pain on my right side and when I peed it was the color of pink lemonade. I went about my day, getting through with Aleve (naproxyn sodium) and chocolate. I called my regular urologist, who does not work here at this hospital and his office said he was off, but to go to urgent care if the pain got too bad. I was pretty sure I had another kidney stone. At 3:45PM I hit this wall of pain and I was sitting at my desk and I felt like I did the day I was in labor with Alexandra. It hurt in such a sharp awful way that I was moaning. A friend stopped by my office and took one look at me and walked me over to the ER. And wouldn't you know it? I got checked by two male doctors that I see everyday. And yes, they saw my bra and panties. Thank God they matched and looked good.

I knew there would come this day and I am always prepared. I had on and aqua bra and aqua laci tango panties. It was embarrasing enough to have them see me and now have to see them again and work with them :(



It turns out it was another kidney stone, I've had them before, and I passed it on Saturday night.

Tags: er, kidney stones, matching bra and panties, pain

02:19 pm: Going to a Plane Spotting Break from Work
Oh my Gosh! There is currently a Japan Airlines 747-400 at my airport. I was talking to another plane enthusiast here and he is going down the hill with me to see it. We were talking and have realized the last time a 747 was in San Diego was 8 years ago, it was a British Airways flight.

These kinds of great events are wonderful surprises! I'm so glad I work downtown, near the airport!
I'm also so glad I have that contact in the Noise Abatement department at the airport who calls me whenever great planes will be landing here!

Here's a picture of the plane as I expect it to look:



Update: 4:24 PM
Here's an actual photo from today's outing:



Tags: 747-400