Done Worse

Yes it’s true, Mike and Graglo and I went to Switzerland last week. I had to go for work for a 3 hr meeting, but instead of flying all that way and then turning around and flying back, we figured, hey why not fly early and then have a mini-vacation?

Why not indeed. So we did, and it was good.

Geneva s really nice, but people aren’t kidding when they say it’s expensive. A small pizza a beer and a glass of water: $30. Needless to say, neither of us is gaining weight here! Fortunately, we found a grocery/everything store where you can buy rather delicious pizza slices for $4 and eat them in your hotel room. And if that’s not enough food, well they just happen to have pretty tasty chocolate bars that you can use to supplement the meal 🙂

We spent our first afternoon walking around Geneva (after waking up from our post flight nap) and the next day we took the train to Bern ~ 1.75 hrs away and the capital of Switzerland. It’s a very cute city, and it has the Paul Klee museum which made me very happy. Sadly the next day it poured rain and the temp dropped to about freezing, which is not really our idea of walking around tourist weather, so we took a tourist pseudo-train around the old town Geneva which is also very cute. Basically, they have an expanse of cute here – its just that eating will cost you an arm and a leg. Next time I’m brining cans of tuna and beans I tell you!!

1. Mike at a level of excitement that water bursts outta his brain or standing in front of the jet d’eau in Geneva
2. Mike joyously contemplating the consumption of his roesti- which is essentially 10 lbs of cheese on top of shredded potatoes and then with bacon on top. And yes, he ate the whole thing!
3. Bern
4. Landscape on the train to Bern (really, we’ve seen worse!)
5. Shot of Bern from the bridge
6. Old chocolate factory/condo conversion in Bern (can you think of a better place to live??? I can’t)
7. Rooftops in Bern
8. Mike as Godzilla of the Swiss mountains at the Alpine museum

Aha- so I am now a year older. These things happen I’ve found- usually once a year in fact. So to honor myself, and because I love to have parties and a b-day is always a good excuse, Mike and I threw me a party. The theme -also important to determine for parties- was CAKE! Mmmmm, cake. I decided since this was probably the last year that I would have uninterrupted time to bake cakes for quite some time, that I should really go all out. Get jiggy wit’ it as they say. I made 4 count them, 4 types of cake: Carrot, lemon, ultimate chocolate and brownie meltaways, which are brownies covered with butter cream frosting that is then covered with unsweetened chocolate. Mmmmm. We did some serious grocery beforehand and many pounds of butter were purchased.

I’m happy to say that the cakes all turned out quite delicious and were happily eaten by guests. Also, not all the cake was eaten so Mike and I have happily eaten left over cake as well. In my book everyone wins!

The other joyous surprise of the evening was that Mike got me a print I’d really wanted. We had gone to the Torpedo Factory few weeks earlier, and I’d fallen in love with a fish print. It was a fish — one of my favorites — and it had personal ads inside of it — something else I love. So we didn’t get it at the time, but I spent all week bemoaning that I didn’t have a fish print and I needed a fish print, and we should go buy the fish print and wouldn’t life be better with a fish print? and so on. We went back the next weekend- and it was sold! I was greatly depressed but I still went on — sans fish print. However, I found out on my b-day that the fish print had been sold to my beloved husband who went back to surprise me ’cause he’s just that good. So not only did I have 4 kinds of delicious cake to eat on my birthday, my life was vastly improved by a fish print! Oh, and I wore my tiara. The trifecta of happiness!!

They had a beautiful pool and a tucan in the central garden.

So for work, I went to Cartagena, Colombia from the 11-20th. Well I was supposed to return on the 20th, but I got to return on the 18th. Why you ask? Well, Cartagena was lovely, but then I got some S. American stomach thing and I had to go home early as everyone got worried about me being pregnant and puking and having the runs. Plus I couldn’t really leave my hotel room, so if you’re not actually attending the meetings, what’s the point of being there? Okay I was at the Sofitel Santa Clara, http://www.sofitel.com/sofitel/fichehotel/gb/sof/1871/fiche_hotel.shtml which is BEAUTIFUL, but if you’re not enjoying the facilities (and hanging out in the bathroom does NOT count as ‘enjoying the facilities’ ) then it all sorta loses it’s splendor.

I’m okay now- it sucked though ’cause they had such lovely papaya and pineapple and other fruits and seafood, and beautiful pastas and coconut rice and many other types of delicious food, and by the end I could only eat bread, plain pasta and Gatoraid (I HATE gatoraid, but the things I do for Graglo already…if it comes out grape flavored, I will NOT be held responsible!)

So I got back at midnight on Tuesday and I’ve been eating bland food and recovering ever since. Ah, bland food. I also went to the doc here on Wed just to make sure I’m okay and we decided that I got some sort of S. American stomach crap- literally and that I’ll be fine. I may have to rebel if I’m stuck with bland food much longer, but that’s another sort of story.

So besides all of that drama I’m good. I don’t really like being pregnant I’ve decided, but I’m good. It’s not terrible, but it’s not that ‘moment of joy’ or whatever crap people say and apparently other women feel. It’s actually kinda annoying- your stomach gets big, your boobs get big, they hurt, you feel sick if you don’t eat at the right times, it’s not really a very interesting thing to talk about if you ask me, but people either ask questions or give advice (so far, I don’t mind, I’ve gotten some very helpful advice.) The hardest on me is when they say “aren’t you so excited??” and the answer is ‘no’. I mean, I’m excited that we’re going to have a kid, but it still feels very abstract and surreal- so I’m not running around excited. I’m running around with monster tits, a rapidly growing belly, weird aches in parts of my body: stomach and hips- I think things are shifting around- burping like a fiend. Not really exciting- or attractive. Mike says he now feels like he’s married to a frat boy. I say okay, maybe that’s true, but has he ever seen a frat boy with such a bountiful bosom? I think not!