updates on everything

Anthony: He actually walked around the ICU the other day and ate some pureed food. His surgeries are scheduled to commence tomorrow, barring any unforeseen delays.

Me: Suffice to say, Friday was a rough day, probably the roughest my marriage has ever had to withstand so far. To this point, I've never doubted the foundation and strength of my marriage, but the events leading to Friday really put those to the test. I was nervous for the first time in the 10+ years that we've been together.
The end of the day proved to have a positive outcome, but it took a lot of soul-searching and honesty to get there. I'm so glad this happened, as I feel we are even stronger now than ever before.
Dan: Poor Dan. The Chargers lost and he is so sad. He actually took it way better than I anticipated. He is such a sports guy and it's one of those things that I'll kinda support, but never really get into. Unless we're talking hockey....
Lola: she is fabulous. just fabulous.
Elise: also fabulous and ridiculously happy to be home.

A side note: I have eaten so much garlic tonight, I doubt I'll be able to lie down for at least a few more hours due to the wicked garlic-induced heartburn I've brought upon myself. For the football game today I made tapenade, canellini bean with kale spread and artichoke bruschetta toppings. All with loads of garlic. I'm permeating garlic out of my pores.

Green Tomato Pie??? What?

yes, my thoughts exactly!

I was looking for recipes for green tomatoes since I had some in my CSA box recently. I wanted to know what else I could do besides fried green tomatoes and so I found this. As skeptical as I was, I gave it a try. Someone who have reviewed the recipe and had given it 4 stars, said that it was quite similar to apple pie and that the tomatoes actually taste like tart green apples in this recipe.

I happened to have some green apples on hand anyway, and not enough green tomatoes to do the recipe so I mixed it half apples and half tomatoes. It was basically an apple pie recipe so I imagine you should be able to use whatever your favorite apple pie recipe is and just substitute the apples for tomatoes or mix them together like I did.

The verdict? DEEEEE-LISH!

Family Stuff...

There's some crap going on with a family member and I can't even blog about it so I will secretely seethe instead. Everyday it seems that there is new crap to add to the pile of existing crap. It's too bad.

ANTHONY UPDATE: I heard from my aunt and she says Anthony is pretty concious now, but suffered a bump in the recovery road when a lung collapsed yesterday. The doctors were able to restore his lung, but because he is not able to breathe on his own yet, delayed the pending facial reconstruction that was supposed to start.
Once the thingy (sorry don't know what it's called) was removed from his throat he attempted to speak and he demanded to go home. He doesn't remember the accident and doesn't know why he's there and why he is restrained to the bed. It seems he was rather pissed off, very understandably.

more later....

NYC...signing off

We are back home, finally! To see the photos, click here.

I will absolutely need to go back to NYC at least a dozen more times to see more. I think next time we will stay in the upper west side, close to central park. Even though this trip was probably the most stressed I've been in my life, I still really want to back.
But we will wait till the kids are older next time. Definitely!

Update on Anthony

Anthony is in a medically-induced coma and the doctors wake him up every hour to check his cognitive reactions. They will ask him if he's able to hear them, can he move his fingers, etc...he responds appropriately. My aunt had not yet witnessed this until yesterday. She was in the room as the doctors brought him to and they told her to talk to him. She said she loved him and Anthony nodded! Out of lack of knowing what else to say, she also told him the Chargers won yesterday (Anthony is a huge fan) and he lifted his hand and index finger to say "number 1"! That was a very emotional moment for everyone. It was a first very positive sign.

There is still lots of swelling and bleeding on his brain but they think sometime soon they will begin reconstructive surgery on his face. I won't go into detail about the facial fractures, but they are pretty severe.

I cannot imagine how my overwhelmed and devestated my aunt must feel. It's a mother's worst nightmare. The accident itself took place maybe about 150-200 miles from where they live, which sucks on the one hand because he was air-lifted to a hospital that is almost a 2 hour drive for my aunt, but the upside is that this particular hospital is probably one of the best in California for head trauma. Thankfully, she is also able to stay with a friend who lives only 45 min away from the hospital so she won't have to drive so much.

Sad News

You know when you get a phone call at 6:30 am, it's rarely good news. My aunt called me to tell me that her son, my cousin, was in a horrible car crash on Saturday night and have to be life-lined to the hospital. He is stable now, but in critical condition in the ICU.
He has several fractures in his face, a severely bruised lung, blood on the brain with tremendous swelling, and he has had head reconstruction. These will be rechecked in about two days once the swelling goes down and they bring him out of sedation.

He is only 18. I'm praying he will be ok.

wild ride, this last 24 hours!

We are 4 for 4 as far as bad nights go, sheesh! But, let me give you the whole picture, it's been a crazy past 24 hours, mostly in a good way....
The rents stayed home with the sleeping kids, so Dan and I went out. This would be so much better with photos, hmmm. Oh well, I forgot my phone cable so I guess the photos will have to wait till Monday. Anyway, I digress. We found a really neat asian restaurant (I say "asian" because there were so many different styles represented on the menu...from thai to dim sum!). We were the only customers in there because, at 9:30 pm, it seems it was still early for New Yorkers to eat dinner on a Friday night. The place was called Incredi. The food was fantastic and the service could not have been better. The staff were so attentive, but not in that annoying way that can be sometimes! We had dim sum with sake! ha! We ate like kings and when we got our check, our server told us that he knocked off 20% for no particular reason, just because he liked us! The bill was only $50!

We decided to find a place to get a drink. No shortage of places around here! On every corner, there's an Irish pub, at least! We passed some snooty-looking clubs, but that's so not our scene so we found a small bar that looked pretty cool called Maker's. Little did we know how cool it really was! Our bartender, Chris, chatted with us all night. He was way fun and kept buying us rounds too!

All was within stumbling, er, I mean, walking distance to the apartment. When we got home, though, the girls both woke up and just would not go back to sleep. I stayed up with them all night, until about 6 am!

On another note, Elise has eaten so many crayons on this trip, I'm sure she will be pooping in technicolor soon.