REM

I promised to write about Manila, one year later. It's not quite a year, but last night we were walking over to the pizza place where Zac was having his 40th Birthday.  I saw some familiar faces in one corner and walked to see our friends...and there was an extra soul. REM.

Rem was one of the WNS leaders, a manager who helped me buy the wrong phone cards, not entirely his fault, of course--and who walked all over the clear blue sky helping us find an apartment (which we never ended up leasing because it turns out it's against corporate policies to lease an apartment in a foreign country). At any rate, for the 4 weeks we did the WNS program, Rem was partially in charge, always around and indefatigable. He wore a Bruno Mars hat and was generally an OK (if not a bit socially awkward employee)

"Hi Rem, what the heck are you doing on this side of the Pacific ocean?"

He's working for Wells Fargo. After an unexpected series of events led him to a new job opportunity: Wells Fargo is expanding their back office in Manila and he's helping to run the show. We shared stores of Philippines, since we parted ways about 4 weeks into the 6 of the trip to Manila. The Wells Fargo program he's working on is also here in downtown Minneapolis, so he called up one of the managers here and she invited him to the party and on and on. I gave him my Mall of America ride pass and sent him a message saying we'd drive him anywhere.  Hopefully he has fun here for 2 weeks. Next Friday, they're taking him to the strip club.

Lulz.

While pregnant....

So now, at 12 weeks, I am at the perilous point of not showing, not feeling anything, and really wondering if all is ok. Evidently this is a normal feeling for everyone who can't feel their baby's tiny movements when it's the size of a plum. I feel guilty wearing my normal jeans and then feel stupid buying any maternity clothes.

I try to stick to my normal diet but yet it is impossible. I'm hungrier and eat more junk food. Then I counter balance it by eating more vegetables and naked juice.

Sometimes I'm exhausted and convinced I am too weak to merely walk to the bus.
Then sometimes I am at normal energy levels, able to stay up to 11:30 PM watching "The Iron Lady".

Sometimes I miss booze and sushi. Sometimes I eat a california roll anyway and sip and smell the alcohol of my friend's. 

Sometimes I wonder if I am pregnant, but of course, I am....I've heard the little heartbeat.

and most of the time I just wonder how awesome it's going to be to have a child, especially after walking by 2 sets of bad parents on the way to redbox and being rewarded with spying a good parent, lifting his child up to see inside the elementary school. "And this is where you'll go, next year", the daddy whispered to his child.

Oh yes, little Zebra, that's where you'll go, too, after I birth you, feed you, bathe you, read to you, snuggle you, change you and adore you so much that I'll be spoiling you rotten.

Final Destination 5

Final Destination 5 is on HBO right now.
Wait.
This movie is familiar.
Oh, yeah,  I saw it in the Philippines last year, on one of my first weekends there.  Boy do I suck.

I fully plan on blogging about Philippines, probably right around the 1 year anniversary mark.

Iron Man

Have I mentioned Ultimate Frisbee team yet? I'm not sure. We're team Iron Man, you run around a full soccer field and throw discs. Actually, now that I think about it, it's just a half-width field, full length (100 yards).

Our team is undefeated but I don't have much to do with that since I run around looking confused half of the time. By some magical mystery of being in the right place at the right time, I caught a disc and scored a point 2 games ago.

Oh baby, baby....

So, yeah, I'm pregnant. Just hit the 12 week part. I'm still staring at my belly trying to figure out what's up down there.

Thus far, I've spent my pregnancy doing this stuff:
Running a half marathon (now I can blame the baby for my bad time)
Doing my first triathlon (wherein I spent the whole time afraid I was somehow going to kill the baby)
Playing Ultimate Frisbee (even once when I dived for the disc and landed on my belly, after I fell to my knees)
Cleaning and staging the entire 3 story-house-plus-basement while it was 105 in Kansas City (this item was the hardest to complete because I was alone and had to use hireahelper.com to carry the heaviest stuff)
Did a bunch of gardening, took a 12 mile bike ride and lived without air conditioning in Minneapolis's hottest summer of record.

And now I am past the point of no return, which is a huge relief.  (knock on wood) I hope little baby Zebra is ok in there, but right now, I have no way to tell. Somehow I've managed to lose weight, probably due to my time last week in KC on the house. Now then, I'm going to call it off for the next 28 weeks and rest.

HaHaHa. We all know I don't rest.

All clear

As it often goes, the test was a false alarm. It's not surprising, of course. It's relieving, of course.

I read online that only .002 percent of people taking this test have the first false positive and then an indeterminate on the second (different) test.

That's not a lot of people. So when you tell your best girlfriend about it and they say "hmm. I've never heard of that," You start to wonder yourself if the results were positive.

But they weren't. Tuesday, I let them suck away 2 more vials of blood from my arm, one of which was more a vat than a vial. They said they'd send the lab tests away at 10:00 AM. At 11:00 AM, I started checking my email for a published result.  Imagine my blood whirling around the PCR, searching for 4 nucleic acids that shouldn't be there.
Imagine. Imagine.

The results didn't come on Tuesday and of course everything was closed Wednesday. They didn't come on Thursday, though I sent a message to the nurse practitioner asking for them. They didn't come on Friday, either, until 4:10 PM, where we were called back to the office, had my height and weight and blood pressure taken. Boom. She mentioned it right away, a false positive. The PCR said negative. The advanced clinic says you have nothing to worry about.

Such a test looks for 3 antibodies to prove you have the illness--and I was high on one of them.  From what I read online, I didn't want it to be band 24, because that's an early sign of seroconversion. It means that you have the disease but your body hasn't released it yet or quite figured it out yet.

I wasn't high on band 24, it was just a falsey false positive.

Then we did some of the other things I was hoping to do at the doctor's office.  I do not have HIV--but you can see how scared you might be if your result came back positive.
I don't have any other STDs, either, which really comes at no surprise.

Last week I was thinking "please god, give me ANYTHING else but HIV." There are no atheists in foxholes, let me tell you.