When I lived in L.A., and worked in the Biz, I went to Dr. Waxler at the Bob Hope Health Clinic. I liked Waxler a lot - he was easy to talk to, he explained things well, he was responsive to my concerns, and he took the time to listen to me. I often got the impression something happened at his previous employment that affected his confidence, but I liked him enough as a doctor to continue seeing him for a while after I had moved to the Bay Area ("Yeah, my doctor lives 400 miles away from me. No house calls from him.").

On Waxler's desk in his office was a fake breast. It was made to feel like a real breast, and might if the woman's whose breast was being modelled didn't have dense breasts (don't ask). I picked up the breast when I was talking to him at one point, and started playing with it. Waxler commented to me that the breast was a learning tool for helping women find cancer lumps in their breasts.

All women's breasts have some lumps in them. It's a matter of construction since there are different cell types and functions inside the breast. Most women who feel a lump in their breasts for the first time are feeling lumps that have been there all along, but have changed in consistency, and are therefore noticed.

This particular fake boob I was mashing around had a rock in it. Most (not all, mind you) cancerous lumps in breasts are hard, similar to the rock. By finding the rock in the breast, a person could practice breast examinations, and get a feel (pun intended) for the process.

A bit over a year ago, maybe more, when in the shower, I noticed something under my arm, along the outside of my breast. It was hard, but very, very small. I pondered it for a bit, it wasn't there yesterday. Or was it? I asked Kris to check it out. He didn't know what it was. I talked to Lisa about it, she said have it checked out immediately. Good advice.

After a few days of worrying about this little thing (it was about one millimeter across, hard as a rock, and near the surface), I looked at it more closely.

And realized it was a tiny stone stuck in a skin pore. I realized this when it popped out as I was worrying.

Stupid stone.

Kris and I laughed about it, and I forgot about it.

Until tonight.

On the plane heading to Colorado, I was in the restroom (toliet area, lavatory, bathroom, whatever) washing my hands when I noticed a bit of puss at the inside of my right eye. This was unsurprising, so I finished washing my hands, making sure they were particularly clean, and tried to wipe the puss out. It wouldn't budge. Okay, so it's deeper in my eye than I thought it was. When I pulled my lower lid down more and tried again. No luck. What the heck?

After a good minute of futzing with my eye, I finally got the object out. I looked at it very closely, and concluded it was a man-made object. White, with a little knob on one side, it was just over a millimeter long, and hard. When I tried to squish it, it popped out from between my nails.

So, two odd foreign tiny objects. In places where they shouldn't be.

Weird.

I sat for Maeryn tonight while Mike, Kate and Liza dashed off to the Cirq Circus. The giggly happy girl, how hard could sitting for her for two hours be?

I should have clued in on the drive home, when she was crying.

I didn't.

Maeryn was sweet and adorable and cute for the first two minutes after the three of them left. She giggled, and smiled and bounced. After those two minutes, she looked up and realized, holy crap, my mom isn't around. And that big big giant? That Da-Da one? He's gone, too! Even the little giant is gone. There's just this new one that shows up, and, good lord, it's time to cry.

And so she did.

I tried feeding her. That worked for only a few minutes. I tried walking and bouncing with her. That worked only as long as I was moving. I offered the walker. No luck. I offered the swingset. Nope. I tried feeding her mashed peas. Heck, even I'd cry at that one.

I tried changing her, which she needed. Still no luck. I tried burping her. Didn't help. She cried, cried, cried.

The only thing that stopped her was the walk between Maeryn's house and my house. Something about the crisp air and the new sights must have stopped her. For the moment, anyway, because she started up with a fervor when we arrived at my house. Even Kris couldn't distract her. Full lungs blowing, at one point, she tried to cry, burp, screech, cough and sneeze, and actually managed four of them, to my surprise.

After about twenty minutes, I walked Maeryn back to her house. She was quiet for that walk, oh thank goodness! I could only imagine the horror of a screaming child for those four doors. Two seconds after the front door shut, wham! the screaming began again.

I gave up, and plunked her in her crib. Five minutes later, and a few hiccups later, and she was asleep. Whoo hoo!

I'm not so good at this baby thing, so I've been checking in on her every ten minutes. Yep, still breathing.

The walls in our office are really thin, made worse by the loud voice of the guy renting the office next to us. The only thing that truly drowns out his voice, besides SKY.fm blasting through Doyle's system, is the really loud clicks my keyboard makes when I'm typing.

Take tonight's choice quote:

"I see American women who want to be Philipino men."

Something tells me I should be glad I didn't hear the rest of that conversation.

"I didn't know you went to Caltech."

"Sure did."

"For undergraduate, right?"

"Yep."

"I would never have guessed that."

"Uh, I'm not sure how to take that. Maybe I'm a ditz?"

"No, no, I meant that in the best possible way. You have social skills."

"Heh."

"I mean, all the other people I know from Caltech are completely socially stunted."

"Yeah, Tech does that to people."

"Especially the women."

Uh, okay. What idiot travels to Hawaii and doesn't bring a bathing suit?

The ones named Kitt and Kris, of course.

For the trip out to Hawaii, I packed a bag of food. Airline lunch is provided, but Kris takes few chances with such.

For myself, I packed a raspberry yogurt, an Odwalla B Monster, an apple, and a huge salad of lettuce, cashews, cheese and dressing (on the side!). I packed Kris blueberries, a plain yogurt (brown cow!), guacamole and chips, an apple and a scone.

Contrast our bag with the bag of the family of four with a huge group of friends (putting the adult to child ratio at about 1:4) next to us, which consisted of cookies, doritos, cheetos and the token good thing, raisins.

When lunch was served, Kris pulled out his yogurt and his blueberries. After stirring his yogurt (full fat, whole milk yogurt - mmmmmmmmm!), he picked up one of the blueberries, and threw it into his yogurt. As in, he pulled back, snapped his arm down, flicked his wrist, and flung the blueberry into the yogurt at supersonic speed.

It went "blurp!"

And made a nice crater in the yogurt cup.

I turned to watch, giggling as each new blueberry disappeared into the yogurt. After a good dozen blurp!s, the collection of blueberries at the top of the yogurt started to thicken.

The next blueberry didn't embed itself into the yogurt, as the previous ones did. Instead, it bounced off the top blueberry, ricocheting off the closed window and into the row in front of us, presumably onto the lap of the 4 year old in the seat.

Clearly, growing up doesn't mean you can't keep playing with your food.