lots of news!
woot!
Jaiden’s got a tiny lil tooth and you can feel it if you run your finger on the top right-side of his gums. it’s a cute lil sliver.
since my ddr pad broke (and then got run over) I’m doing step-aerobics until we can get a cheapo pad (we’re gonna mod it with some supplies from home despot). nice thing about step aerobics (and my strange workout methods using it): burn calories, and work out key parts of my body. my arms are only a little firmer than they were, but my legs are insanely muscular now. not sure why they build muscle faster? it’s pretty weird. my calves are literally hard as rocks, and the tops of my thighs are just a little less firm. even the underside of my thighs is really really hard. my inner thighs are more toned/firm than they’ve ever been, there’s maybe half a foot of fat compared to most of the way down my thighs. during the pregnancy, my entire body turned to mush, so I’m really happy to be where I am now even if I’m still not happy with my weight. mostly now what I’m concerned about is my “core”, my six-packness. never had a six-pack but I apparently was much much stronger in my middle than I am now. I’m doing that standing-from-a-crouch thing, and though I’m not able to do it as fast as I used to, I’m finally able to! yaay! I feel so FAT if I can’t do that, and I wasn’t able to for a while.
doing things like getting out of a car, getting out of bed, standing up — they all use your stomach muscles, I’ve discovered. if you can imagine having -trouble- doing any of those things, you’ll be able to sympathize with a pregnant/post-partum female. it’s insanely difficult, and very tiring.
in a few months, if I’m near or at where I want my weight to be, I’ll bug my buddy brendan to go to a gym with me a few times a week. I really like lifting weights. my favorites were the butterfly machine, and that one that’s like situps for your legs. I also miss lunges, those’re fun fun. I might start lifting those weight-dealies, like you always see muscleheads doing in the movies, with a spotter. they look fun and impressive 
I remember it being shoved down my throat that you are -not- supposed to start lifting weights until you’re thing/smaller, because once you start lifting weights your goal is to put weight -on-, not lose it. since muscle weighs more than fat, that makes sense. so that’s why I’m trying to restrain myself as far as weight-lifting goes 
I want to lose weight and gain muscle.
considering trying those slim-fast protein shakes/snackbars. they have 14g of protein, which is really really good, and because of my hypoglycemia I need to eat a lot of protein. I figure drinking slim-fast is probably healthier than eating cheese and peanuts. I did lose insane amounts of weight by eating nothing but mac-n-cheese and carrots, and working out on the step for an hour or so every day. My cat, Gachie (she ran away a few years later when I took her to mike’s house, cause he had dogs and she freaked. last I saw she’d jumped their 10 foot fence and left) would help me by running up to me, then leaping back when I’d do a kick. she was sooo cute ;.;
anyway rambling due to hunger stuff. just woke up cause the kid was hungry again. think he’s gonna have to go to 3oz now, cause 2.5 doesn’t seem to satisfy him anymore.
and now for the BESTEST NEWS EVAR!!
so I work at Liteon, and I have since December 2005. my buddy Brendan (who goes by tedrlrod everywhere else) helped me get the job, but it was my 1337 h4x0r skillz that landed me the job 
My position is in the call-center area, a fairly new department of the liteon america’s building. we help customers with their CE and ODD drives. CE is those dvd-recorder deallie-bobs that you connect to a television, and ODD is of course the drives that go into a computer. we’ve got two levels of techies: the ce-only (level one) and the ce-and-odd ones (level two). I’ve been a level two since my first week, when level two calls kept sneaking onto my phone, even though I was set to level one calls only. when I didn’t flounder and drown then, they had me continue to take them. I was a top caller for January, and got a $50 gift card for Costco (which we spent on food. Angie bought a giant flat of pork something or others for ten bucks insane!! and I hate pork! haha XD). I usually take a lot of calls, at -least- 30 a day, and my worst days were some of the tech’s best days (25 calls or so). So they loved me, and I know they had NO plans WHATSOEVER to fire me, which I was absolutely terrified would happen cause I kept getting sick (since I was pregnant), and when I went on maternity leave so early and was gone for over 3 months I was sure they’d find a replacement for me Evidently not, and everybody was very happy to see me again when I went back to work on July 24th. I then bugged my boss for a raise, since I’d been promised one before I went on “Vacation”. There was a meeting the next day, where my boss brought up my raise request. Evidently they also brought my name up many times during that meeting. The next day my boss (will, btw, is my boss) told me in an aside, “you know that raise you asked me about?” (nod) “well I wouldn’t worry about it. in our meeting yesterday your name came up many times. don’t worry, you’ll be taken care of”
so I went insane internally I’ve never been brought up in a meeting except when I was little, and my teacher was telling my mom horrible things about me, and how if I’d just -apply- myself I’d be GREAT — blah blah blah so I got brought up in a positive way and it felt damn good. =^.^=
so thursday that SAME week (you know, my first week back ) the department manager took me into a conference room, into which I shakingly followed him. shaking internally anyway again, I was used to getting pulled aside to be reprimanded. so we sit down, and he starts out telling me all the things he’d like to happen in the future (for the website, an faq database). He proceeds with how we’re going to be handling -all- tech calls now, because we’re obliterating sai (our “secretary”, they take calls when we’ve got huge queues or if we’re not there, since we’re only available from 9-5 on weekdays). He informed me that he’d like me to be in a “lead” position (right below supervisor, I guess?) and basically be a mentor for new hires, and help out the people in my “Group” with any questions they have/come up with (while on the phone, etc). I’ll be very light on the phones, only helping out when there is a high call volume. He brought up the faq database again, and informed me that he wanted me to work with my co-worker/buddy Royce on it. He ended -this- lengthy explanation with “so how does that sound?” and I hurried to let -him- know that it was perfectly fine with me so he THEN went on to inform me that I’d gotten a raise YAAAY. He said, “we seem to have missed giving you one already, so we’re going to give you two at once”, which means I go from one more dollar to TWO more dollars than I’d made previously. I was impressed, particularly since Jason’s raise was 10 cents? I had to restrain myself from jumping up and down, running around, etc.
we had another meeting on thursday this week about the faq-db thing, and royce and I were both there. it basically turns out that we’ve got a deadline (since the faq db is a diversionary tactic for the high volume of calls we’ll be getting, so they’d like the db implemented BEFORE we start getting all the calls). we’ve got until october to put it together. I think that’s plenty of time, but then again, time does have a way of getting away from you.
I’m still part-time, which means no benefits, but I think we’ll be okay. Jason’s got a pretty decent plan, even though it’s exorbitantly expensive (about 300 a month for the three of us, but that’s before taxes, so) it’s still better than paying outright for stuff. Jaiden’s gonna need a plan come his birthday next year (medi-cal is completely covering him for the next year) so it’ll be important, and we can’t get on the plan anyway until feb/march next year. I’ll need new glasses then, and I’ve got a tooth in the back that was never crowned but was supposed to be within 6 months of getting the root-canal. that was 10 years ago, when I was a freshman.
since I’m making more than Jason is now, and I’m only part-time, I think it’ll be okay. we’ll spend his check on medical stuff, and my check on living and I’ll hope and pray that someday I’ll get medical coverage through liteon. =^.^=
so anyway!
just thought I’d retain all my news until I could release it all up on you guys
*does a celebratory dance*
oh, and feel free to come visit Jaiden! ya’ll have my number, give me a call if you wanna see him 
we tend to drag him off to the store (air conditioning!) on occasion, so make sure we’ll be here =^.^=
have fun
