I had my prenatal appointment this morning, the one I'm supposed to have every four weeks but haven't had since October. You know you dislike your job when a doctor's appointment is actually exciting and fun: when the idea of peeing in a cup and having your blood pressure taken is a distinct improvement over a conference call.
There are three or four different obstetricians in the practice that I'm seeing, and their policy is to rotate each patient through each doctor several times for office visits; that way when it comes time to deliver, there's no "Hi, I'm your OB today!" conversation between contractions. I think it makes sense, although it means you're never seeing the same dude twice in a row. Today's doctor is the practice's New Guy, and his accent is surprisingly similar to Dr. Zoidberg's of Futurama, making me wonder if Dr. Zoidberg's accent (which I'd always assumed was made up) is based on some authentic dialect. It it going to be very difficult to NOT think of this doctor as Dr. Zoidberg in my mind, sadly. I like him so far, though, because he seems very diet-and-lifestyle oriented. When I mentioned my insomnia, he talked about what to do and not do before bed; when the prenatal-vitamin-constipation issue came up, he listed prunes, yogurt, fruits and vegetables, instead of medications. I'm more used to doctors throwing prescriptions or samples at me, so it's rather refreshing. He asked me maybe six times if I had any questions, but I don't. Except for the insomnia, I feel fantastic. (Actually, considering the amount of sleep I'm averaging, I feel amazing, like if I got seven hours of sleep sometime, I'd probably be able to fly.) He asked me if I'd had any bleeding or discharge (nope) and then asked, "Is there any reason I should do a cervical check?" Well if I'm not having any bleeding or discharge, why would we need to do that, right? Are there some women that just don't feel like it's a successful doctor's visit if they don't have a gloved hand up their privates?
Getting weighed was really funny. I've gained a good bit of weight (enough where I think I need to start paying more attention or else hit 50 pounds by June, I'm afraid), but that increase is since my 8-week appointment three months ago, the last they have on record for me. The nurse weighs me and starts to record the number, and I watch as her eyes get huge (clearly thinking that I've somehow gained 20 pounds in four weeks-- is that even possible?) then furrowed, as she compares the dates, then relaxed again as she realizes that my chart is just really screwed up. "Haven't been here in awhile, huh?" "Nope."
The problem with watching my weight or my diet, is that food has become amazingly wonderful. ALL food. My appetite is amazing, I think about food and eating fairly constantly. Everything tastes so good, even mundane things like apples or hard-boiled eggs. I have almost said out loud, "Be QUIET, I am concentrating on this apple! MMMmmm... apple." but luckily did not, as I was at work at the time. But it's like that with everything. I distinctly remember having a conversation with a friend who told me about this second-trimester eat-a-thon (she compared it to being stoned, I do believe) and now I'm experiencing it for myself. Well, how hard can it be to lose fifty pounds, anyway? I must go, we're having eggs and sausages for dinner, and they aren't going to cook themselves.... Mmmmm sausages.
Wednesday, February 04, 2009
Monday, February 02, 2009
Recap
All in all January was a fantastic month for getting stuff done. I have scared my husband, who is not used to so much productivity, activity. But he is enjoying the food and the house.
My new bill-paying system is this: When I come home from work, I immediately check the mail. I go through it, recycle the junk, shred the junk with personal information, and then immediately pay any bill. Go to the computer, pay the bill through online banking. If there's not enough money, then put it on a credit card, because staying current on bills trumps the no-debt policy. My problem is that almost all of our bills are paid automatically: the mortgage, electricity, cable, cell phone, Netflix, etc, are all automatically drafted; all I have to do is keep enough money in the bank accounts to cover them. But medical bills keep messing me up. First the hospital sends an "insurance billed" notice, then the insurance sends a "hospital paid" notice, then FINALLY I'll get a bill for whatever is left from the hospital. When your bill-paying system involves throwing all the mail in a big pile and vowing to look at it later, certain things escape... like that last important letter.
I brought my lunch to work almost every day in January, saving about $100.00. Saved a lot of money by meal-planning, making a shopping list, and only buying groceries once a month. It's not that there were NO impulsive purchases, but it's a lot less than when I'm at the store every other day. Also, a lot less of that food is wasted, because I have a plan for any leftovers. Saved some by cutting way back on trips to Starbucks and Barnes & Noble: I still get my morning walk-the-dog mocha but that's it for the day.
This next part will only make sense to fellow messy people: neat folks just won't understand.
I have spent what feels like 1,000 hours cleaning and organizing the house. Have I ever mentioned that it's only 850 square feet or so, and that I've barely touched the living room or spare room? Crazy. I didn't really have a strategy to start with, just jumped in and started scouring the kitchen. But I have a plan now, sort of. First, I'm trying to get rid of more stuff. Like probably everybody, we have too much stuff. Two huge boxes of clothing and a Mr. Coffee have gone to Goodwill, with a lot more to follow. I plan on unloading our VHS player (still works, haven't used it in over two years), getting rid of all of our VHS tapes, and my Agatha Christie collection. (I have almost everything she wrote, and they're not "re-reads".) Second, I'm trying to create a home for every practical thing that we use. Our house is not great with storage, and in trying to clean, I realize that we have no set "place" for a lot of things: light bulbs, batteries, important paperwork, hats and gloves, clean towels, extra toilet paper... The list goes on. I want to get to the point where, no matter what I pick up, it has a place where it belongs: a drawer, a cabinet, a file, a hook, something. I think that the combination of these two concepts will do more in the long run to keep the place clean and clean-able, than all scrubbing and vacuuming. The last bit of my strategy is kind of weird and redundant, but it's working for me so far. Before I start cleaning in a new area, I re-do what is already (mostly) clean. I started this whole project in the kitchen, naturally, so before I clean in the bathroom or bedroom, I go back to the kitchen and do whatever little thing needs to be done to keep it nice-- clean the stove, empty the dish drainer, sweep the floor. That way, what has been cleaned stays pretty, which bolsters my feeling of making progress. When I walk back into the kitchen, everything there is finished. Also, it is starting to get me in the habit of cleaning a little bit every day, which (believe it or not) I've never done. I've been more of a let-it-go-completely-for-three-months-then-do-a-marathon-scrub-and-vacuum-session cleaner. I'm starting to realize how much easier it is to keep a clean space clean, then to start from scratch every time. For example, the first time I cleaned the stove this month, it was hard scrubbing. The second time was also hard, but only because I went deeper, cleaning the black spider-thingies and under the hood where the pilot lights are. But the past few times, I just spray-and-wipe, and it's clean again, just like that. Same thing with everything else. When I tackled the Laundry Monster, it took a full week plus a weekend to get everything washed, dried, folded or hung up, and the stuff we don't wear anymore either donated or thrown away. Since then, the laundry has been ridiculously easy, and the Monster has shrunk to a single basket of hand-wash/dry-clean-onlies. Maintenance. Who knew?
This time, I'm not falling into the trap of what's happened before, of moving from room to room over time, and having the first rooms get trashed again. As of now, my kitchen, bathroom, laundry room, and bedroom are clean, and I will do what needs to be done to keep them that way before moving forward. This is probably why I haven't made a whole lot of progress on the last two rooms, (plus this weekend NOTHING got done due to being bed-ridden with an awful headache all day Saturday, and going to IKEA Sunday) but I know that when I finally get them done, it won't be at the expense of what should already be nice: the whole house can stay clean.
My new bill-paying system is this: When I come home from work, I immediately check the mail. I go through it, recycle the junk, shred the junk with personal information, and then immediately pay any bill. Go to the computer, pay the bill through online banking. If there's not enough money, then put it on a credit card, because staying current on bills trumps the no-debt policy. My problem is that almost all of our bills are paid automatically: the mortgage, electricity, cable, cell phone, Netflix, etc, are all automatically drafted; all I have to do is keep enough money in the bank accounts to cover them. But medical bills keep messing me up. First the hospital sends an "insurance billed" notice, then the insurance sends a "hospital paid" notice, then FINALLY I'll get a bill for whatever is left from the hospital. When your bill-paying system involves throwing all the mail in a big pile and vowing to look at it later, certain things escape... like that last important letter.
I brought my lunch to work almost every day in January, saving about $100.00. Saved a lot of money by meal-planning, making a shopping list, and only buying groceries once a month. It's not that there were NO impulsive purchases, but it's a lot less than when I'm at the store every other day. Also, a lot less of that food is wasted, because I have a plan for any leftovers. Saved some by cutting way back on trips to Starbucks and Barnes & Noble: I still get my morning walk-the-dog mocha but that's it for the day.
This next part will only make sense to fellow messy people: neat folks just won't understand.
I have spent what feels like 1,000 hours cleaning and organizing the house. Have I ever mentioned that it's only 850 square feet or so, and that I've barely touched the living room or spare room? Crazy. I didn't really have a strategy to start with, just jumped in and started scouring the kitchen. But I have a plan now, sort of. First, I'm trying to get rid of more stuff. Like probably everybody, we have too much stuff. Two huge boxes of clothing and a Mr. Coffee have gone to Goodwill, with a lot more to follow. I plan on unloading our VHS player (still works, haven't used it in over two years), getting rid of all of our VHS tapes, and my Agatha Christie collection. (I have almost everything she wrote, and they're not "re-reads".) Second, I'm trying to create a home for every practical thing that we use. Our house is not great with storage, and in trying to clean, I realize that we have no set "place" for a lot of things: light bulbs, batteries, important paperwork, hats and gloves, clean towels, extra toilet paper... The list goes on. I want to get to the point where, no matter what I pick up, it has a place where it belongs: a drawer, a cabinet, a file, a hook, something. I think that the combination of these two concepts will do more in the long run to keep the place clean and clean-able, than all scrubbing and vacuuming. The last bit of my strategy is kind of weird and redundant, but it's working for me so far. Before I start cleaning in a new area, I re-do what is already (mostly) clean. I started this whole project in the kitchen, naturally, so before I clean in the bathroom or bedroom, I go back to the kitchen and do whatever little thing needs to be done to keep it nice-- clean the stove, empty the dish drainer, sweep the floor. That way, what has been cleaned stays pretty, which bolsters my feeling of making progress. When I walk back into the kitchen, everything there is finished. Also, it is starting to get me in the habit of cleaning a little bit every day, which (believe it or not) I've never done. I've been more of a let-it-go-completely-for-three-months-then-do-a-marathon-scrub-and-vacuum-session cleaner. I'm starting to realize how much easier it is to keep a clean space clean, then to start from scratch every time. For example, the first time I cleaned the stove this month, it was hard scrubbing. The second time was also hard, but only because I went deeper, cleaning the black spider-thingies and under the hood where the pilot lights are. But the past few times, I just spray-and-wipe, and it's clean again, just like that. Same thing with everything else. When I tackled the Laundry Monster, it took a full week plus a weekend to get everything washed, dried, folded or hung up, and the stuff we don't wear anymore either donated or thrown away. Since then, the laundry has been ridiculously easy, and the Monster has shrunk to a single basket of hand-wash/dry-clean-onlies. Maintenance. Who knew?
This time, I'm not falling into the trap of what's happened before, of moving from room to room over time, and having the first rooms get trashed again. As of now, my kitchen, bathroom, laundry room, and bedroom are clean, and I will do what needs to be done to keep them that way before moving forward. This is probably why I haven't made a whole lot of progress on the last two rooms, (plus this weekend NOTHING got done due to being bed-ridden with an awful headache all day Saturday, and going to IKEA Sunday) but I know that when I finally get them done, it won't be at the expense of what should already be nice: the whole house can stay clean.
2009 Goals Checkup: January
Money:
1. Finish lower apartment: NOT done, but tons of progress. Don finished all the drywall and priming, and we bought all the cabinets and counter tops: it should be done within two weeks or so... (but where have I heard that before?) But, we DO have a renter coming, so that's good.
2. Financial system: not yet. But, I have made a few decisions that should make it easier: to pay bills a new way, and to get a real file cabinet, with files in it. (Do NOT ask what we've been using.)
3. Taxes: Haven't filed yet, but are on track to do so. We have all of our paperwork together, and are just getting a rec for a good tax person.
4. Credit cards: Progress! Made a full payment in January (no interest, ha!) to the Discover card, and will again next week. Will use my 4th quarter bonus coming on the 13th to start paying down Don's card, which will leave my Visa.
4A. Do NOT get more debt: Unfortunately had to put a past-due medical bill on my Visa, so no.
5. Start working with Don re: combining finances, reducing spending, and living off of one income. YES! We've had several very productive conversations, and I am already seeing results.
6. Cutting expenses: YES,YES, YES! Saved LOTS of money in January! Details to follow.
House:
1. Clean: Yes. I'm not totally done, but after four weekends and many evenings, it is SO much better than before. The only rooms not clean and organized are the living room and the spare room. I could have people over, seriously!
2. Rearrange spare room: not yet, but I'm thinking about it.
3. Garden and new chickens: not yet. But I'm really waiting for spring anyway.
Kitchen:
1. Cook dinners at home: Huge yes! We had only one dinner out in January, my birthday. This is literally the most at-home, from-scratch dinners we've ever had in a row.
2. Plan menus and shop only weekly: Yes. This is really working out well.
3. Keep the dishes done/ kitchen clean: Pretty much. Don is showing some resistance to doing the dishes every night, but he's getting there.
4. Stock freezer: have added 3 meals and some chicken broth.
Pregnancy:
1. Walk every day: yep.
2. Yoga class: No, too expensive and difficult to schedule. But I did get some DVDs and have been trying them out, instead.
3. Special tea: Maybe half the days.
4. Panic less often: doing pretty good.
1. Finish lower apartment: NOT done, but tons of progress. Don finished all the drywall and priming, and we bought all the cabinets and counter tops: it should be done within two weeks or so... (but where have I heard that before?) But, we DO have a renter coming, so that's good.
2. Financial system: not yet. But, I have made a few decisions that should make it easier: to pay bills a new way, and to get a real file cabinet, with files in it. (Do NOT ask what we've been using.)
3. Taxes: Haven't filed yet, but are on track to do so. We have all of our paperwork together, and are just getting a rec for a good tax person.
4. Credit cards: Progress! Made a full payment in January (no interest, ha!) to the Discover card, and will again next week. Will use my 4th quarter bonus coming on the 13th to start paying down Don's card, which will leave my Visa.
4A. Do NOT get more debt: Unfortunately had to put a past-due medical bill on my Visa, so no.
5. Start working with Don re: combining finances, reducing spending, and living off of one income. YES! We've had several very productive conversations, and I am already seeing results.
6. Cutting expenses: YES,YES, YES! Saved LOTS of money in January! Details to follow.
House:
1. Clean: Yes. I'm not totally done, but after four weekends and many evenings, it is SO much better than before. The only rooms not clean and organized are the living room and the spare room. I could have people over, seriously!
2. Rearrange spare room: not yet, but I'm thinking about it.
3. Garden and new chickens: not yet. But I'm really waiting for spring anyway.
Kitchen:
1. Cook dinners at home: Huge yes! We had only one dinner out in January, my birthday. This is literally the most at-home, from-scratch dinners we've ever had in a row.
2. Plan menus and shop only weekly: Yes. This is really working out well.
3. Keep the dishes done/ kitchen clean: Pretty much. Don is showing some resistance to doing the dishes every night, but he's getting there.
4. Stock freezer: have added 3 meals and some chicken broth.
Pregnancy:
1. Walk every day: yep.
2. Yoga class: No, too expensive and difficult to schedule. But I did get some DVDs and have been trying them out, instead.
3. Special tea: Maybe half the days.
4. Panic less often: doing pretty good.
Thursday, January 29, 2009
22 Weeks
I had my 22-week ultrasound yesterday, and everything looks good. Perfect, even. Both the technician and the doctor were great about respecting my desire for a "surprise", so I am still completely in the dark about the gender. But the baby's important bits and parts are all present and accounted for; s/he's measuring "exactly right" for my dates (a relief considering the, ah, considerable weight that I've put on); my placenta* and the cord are just where and how they should be. Since I've been able to feel the baby so much, I was actually more worried about those two parts than about the Passenger, on the grounds that s/he's got to be at least mostly OK to be treating me as though I'm a mosh pit**. Incidentally, my hunch that this little one is more active than is usual was confirmed by the ultrasound tech, who asked, "Good grief, is it always like that?" because every time she stopped the probe to take a picture, she had to start again as she went back to the live image, as the baby was in a different position than before.
Gender prediction update: For those going by fetal heart rate: It was 147 bpm yesterday, for whatever that is worth, which I don't think is much... a little Googling found me this:
I have two little snafus with the medical system, apparently. The first is that at my appointment yesterday, the receptionists forgot to check me in (you know, by doing that thing where they move my chart from the "incoming appointments" area to the "ready and waiting" spot where the doctors/nurses/techs can pick it up and call my name) even though I checked in with them and presented my new insurance card and all. So I waited for more than 40 minutes before finally going back up to the desk to ask what was going on, since I had to get back to work after my visit and all. That's when they realized their little 'oops'...that sucked.
The second is kind of weirder. I just got a call from the wonderful nurse practitioner at my OB's, wondering why I haven't been in for a prenatal visit in forever. Confusing, much! It turns out that the visits to the Prenatal Diagnosis Center are supposed to be in addition to regular, every-four-weeks visits with the obstetricians, which kind of explains why they never weighed me or asked me questions or any of that stuff. Back in the beginning of the pregnancy, when I got booted from the REs to the OBs***, I had an 8/9 week appointment, the "initial visit". On my way out, they had me schedule an ultrasound with the other clinic for 13 weeks. I had that visit, and upon leaving, they had me schedule a 22-week scan, which is the one I had yesterday. Apparently, in addition to those two ultrasounds, I should have been back to the OB at 12 weeks, 16 weeks, and 20 weeks, so I've missed three month's worth of appointments and literally haven't been checked out by a doctor since I was 9 weeks along.
OK, now I'm not completely clueless... I did kinda, sorta know that I was missing an appointment in there somewhere. It was in the back of my mind, that no doctor or nurse had weighed me, checked my urine, my blood pressure, asked how I was feeling, or anything like that since that first visit three months ago. But getting away from work to go to the doctor is a HUGE pain in the ass: the bank is this terrible combination of "retail" and "office". If I worked retail, I would have to work some weekend shifts, and would have a day off (or at least a morning or afternoon) during the week in which I could do things like visit the doctor. If I worked in an office, my hours would be more constricting, but it would be easier to just leave and come back as long as I scheduled well. Like an office, my hours are exactly business hours-- I work 8:30-4:45ish, Monday through Friday-- AKA doctor's-office-hours. Like retail, I can't leave unless we arrange for someone else to cover me; it's shift work. With the bank's hiring freeze, we're perpetually short-staffed, so getting that done is difficult.
The other thing is, I tend to view pregnancy as black-and-white. Either everything is going OK, or everything is ending terribly. I know that later on, there are things to look out for-- warning signals for gestational diabetes, pre-eclamsia, etc. But for the past few months, I knew how I felt; and between the ultrasounds, the textbook-perfect uterine growth, and the fetal movement, that everything was OK with the baby. I know how to eat well, take my vitamins, keep moving, rest. Pregnancy is something that essentially progresses on its own, you know? So I kept the missing-appointments-thing in the back of my brain, and rationalized that if I were supposed to come back, they would have had me schedule an appointment, as they do (somebody in the office really did miss the boat on that one). Until today, when Peggy called me wondering why I hadn't been in for an appointment since October. Whoops.
In other news, a customer brought me a baby present-- a tiny UVA hoodie and booties-- and a card. The card was a really nice thank-you for some things I'd taken care of for her at the bank... it was so sweet and so unexpected that I cried.
I was doing so well with all of my goals and plans lately: bringing lunches, making dinners, saving dollars, cleaning and organizing. Yesterday, though, I totally fell off the wagon. I was so revved up from my ultrasound that the idea of going home to work on the house for awhile just didn't seem appealing. So I went to Barnes & Noble... and bought a slice of cheesecake, a caramel macchiato, and a magazine... and spent the rest of the afternoon and early evening in their cafe, reading books... Thus neatly killing my financial, house-keeping, and dietary goals simultaneously. I am nothing if not efficient, apparently.
*Is the placenta mine, or the baby's? Neither? Or both? It's really the most mysterious part of the whole deal, to me.
** I've heard expectant mothers say that they must have a little soccer player in there. HAH. I think we've got either a little rugby player, or a heavy-metal/ rock concert enthusiast, as it's not little feet I feel but whole head and body slams... ALL THE TIME.
*** Now that you're pregnant we have no further interest in you! Go back to your regular doctor, please!
Gender prediction update: For those going by fetal heart rate: It was 147 bpm yesterday, for whatever that is worth, which I don't think is much... a little Googling found me this:
One of the first questions asked, and easiest answered, was, "Does the
fetal heart rate predict the sex of the baby?" We performed a t-Test of the
means for females and males and found no significant difference (mean for
females = 149.26, males = 149.38; p = 0.929; +/-1SD: females = 13.8, males =
13.1). The means were less than a quarter of a beat per minute (BPM) different,
with two standard deviations being approximately +/- 26 BPM for both genders. A
quarter of a BPM with that much variation is nothing.
I have two little snafus with the medical system, apparently. The first is that at my appointment yesterday, the receptionists forgot to check me in (you know, by doing that thing where they move my chart from the "incoming appointments" area to the "ready and waiting" spot where the doctors/nurses/techs can pick it up and call my name) even though I checked in with them and presented my new insurance card and all. So I waited for more than 40 minutes before finally going back up to the desk to ask what was going on, since I had to get back to work after my visit and all. That's when they realized their little 'oops'...that sucked.
The second is kind of weirder. I just got a call from the wonderful nurse practitioner at my OB's, wondering why I haven't been in for a prenatal visit in forever. Confusing, much! It turns out that the visits to the Prenatal Diagnosis Center are supposed to be in addition to regular, every-four-weeks visits with the obstetricians, which kind of explains why they never weighed me or asked me questions or any of that stuff. Back in the beginning of the pregnancy, when I got booted from the REs to the OBs***, I had an 8/9 week appointment, the "initial visit". On my way out, they had me schedule an ultrasound with the other clinic for 13 weeks. I had that visit, and upon leaving, they had me schedule a 22-week scan, which is the one I had yesterday. Apparently, in addition to those two ultrasounds, I should have been back to the OB at 12 weeks, 16 weeks, and 20 weeks, so I've missed three month's worth of appointments and literally haven't been checked out by a doctor since I was 9 weeks along.
OK, now I'm not completely clueless... I did kinda, sorta know that I was missing an appointment in there somewhere. It was in the back of my mind, that no doctor or nurse had weighed me, checked my urine, my blood pressure, asked how I was feeling, or anything like that since that first visit three months ago. But getting away from work to go to the doctor is a HUGE pain in the ass: the bank is this terrible combination of "retail" and "office". If I worked retail, I would have to work some weekend shifts, and would have a day off (or at least a morning or afternoon) during the week in which I could do things like visit the doctor. If I worked in an office, my hours would be more constricting, but it would be easier to just leave and come back as long as I scheduled well. Like an office, my hours are exactly business hours-- I work 8:30-4:45ish, Monday through Friday-- AKA doctor's-office-hours. Like retail, I can't leave unless we arrange for someone else to cover me; it's shift work. With the bank's hiring freeze, we're perpetually short-staffed, so getting that done is difficult.
The other thing is, I tend to view pregnancy as black-and-white. Either everything is going OK, or everything is ending terribly. I know that later on, there are things to look out for-- warning signals for gestational diabetes, pre-eclamsia, etc. But for the past few months, I knew how I felt; and between the ultrasounds, the textbook-perfect uterine growth, and the fetal movement, that everything was OK with the baby. I know how to eat well, take my vitamins, keep moving, rest. Pregnancy is something that essentially progresses on its own, you know? So I kept the missing-appointments-thing in the back of my brain, and rationalized that if I were supposed to come back, they would have had me schedule an appointment, as they do (somebody in the office really did miss the boat on that one). Until today, when Peggy called me wondering why I hadn't been in for an appointment since October. Whoops.
In other news, a customer brought me a baby present-- a tiny UVA hoodie and booties-- and a card. The card was a really nice thank-you for some things I'd taken care of for her at the bank... it was so sweet and so unexpected that I cried.
I was doing so well with all of my goals and plans lately: bringing lunches, making dinners, saving dollars, cleaning and organizing. Yesterday, though, I totally fell off the wagon. I was so revved up from my ultrasound that the idea of going home to work on the house for awhile just didn't seem appealing. So I went to Barnes & Noble... and bought a slice of cheesecake, a caramel macchiato, and a magazine... and spent the rest of the afternoon and early evening in their cafe, reading books... Thus neatly killing my financial, house-keeping, and dietary goals simultaneously. I am nothing if not efficient, apparently.
*Is the placenta mine, or the baby's? Neither? Or both? It's really the most mysterious part of the whole deal, to me.
** I've heard expectant mothers say that they must have a little soccer player in there. HAH. I think we've got either a little rugby player, or a heavy-metal/ rock concert enthusiast, as it's not little feet I feel but whole head and body slams... ALL THE TIME.
*** Now that you're pregnant we have no further interest in you! Go back to your regular doctor, please!
Friday, January 23, 2009
Boy/Girl Symptom Scorecard
Urgggh I was sick yesterday. I would have guessed the flu, or maybe the plague, except that I really feel fine today. Sinus headache, aches and pains, and a pulled muscle (an ab just below my ribcage, I think from swinging around a few boxes of coin at the bank) just to round things out. It's possible I was dehydrated. I'm also wondering if it was because I wore a pair of new pants without washing them; sometimes I have allergic reactions to the chemical crap they treat new clothing with, but usually pants are OK, being so far from my face and all.
My mom sent me a huge box of maternity clothes and baby clothes for my birthday, just in time because I've outgrown everything I own and can't find ANYTHING here to buy, that will work for work. I tried Target's maternity section: nothing. That was really annoying because it's a long-ish drive up there and I'd received a tip that it was the place to try. I tried Old Navy, and didn't find anything there in their maternity, but I DID find a pair of dark-brown cords for the weekend that fit beautifully, in clearance. (Right now their size 14 fits me just right; usually I would wear a ten.) I didn't realize that it was "take an extra 50% off clearance" day, so when the pants rang up as eight dollars, I almost fell over. Now I have all of these maternity things from mom; I just have to try them on, and, if they fit, wash them before wearing. Totally stoked.
For those keeping track boy/girl:
I'm carrying very low so far, although at 21 weeks it may be too soon to tell.
"Morning sickness" or "pregnancy sickness" was definitely present for the first trimester, but it was never really bad and disappeared by 14 weeks or so. It was much milder, for example, than one friend's and two coworkers, and they all had boys. (You know who you are!)
I'm pregnant in my face-- it's rounder and chubbier than usual!-- but my skin looks good, if I may say so. That's kind of a mixed signal, there.
The fetal heart rate has measured consistently high, in the high 170's to 180's. I have an appointment next week, so we'll see if that is consistent.
Emotions are a mixed bag. For the most part I've been on a pretty even keel, although it is hard to judge these things oneself. I have had less patience with work, but work has gotten considerably more difficult and stressful in the past few months, and that has nothing to do with the pregnancy; I notice that everybody I work with is showing signs of stress and grumpiness. There have been a few episodes, like the recently documented Meatloaf Fight, but I'd say that I really am my usual laid-back self, all things considered, for whatever it's worth.
Anybody that knows me 'in real life' knows that my bum's been pregnant for years; I am so ass-positive that it would be impossible to judge anything from that region. With my overall Hubbard-squash shape, it is hard to tell... Judging by my pants, though, my butt, thighs, and hips are more or less stable so far, compared to my belly. Compounding the issue is the fact that I've been eating like a hippopotamus since getting pregnant, so even if I AM gaining in those areas, it probably has more to do with Ben & Jerry than with the Sprout Within.
My mom sent me a huge box of maternity clothes and baby clothes for my birthday, just in time because I've outgrown everything I own and can't find ANYTHING here to buy, that will work for work. I tried Target's maternity section: nothing. That was really annoying because it's a long-ish drive up there and I'd received a tip that it was the place to try. I tried Old Navy, and didn't find anything there in their maternity, but I DID find a pair of dark-brown cords for the weekend that fit beautifully, in clearance. (Right now their size 14 fits me just right; usually I would wear a ten.) I didn't realize that it was "take an extra 50% off clearance" day, so when the pants rang up as eight dollars, I almost fell over. Now I have all of these maternity things from mom; I just have to try them on, and, if they fit, wash them before wearing. Totally stoked.
For those keeping track boy/girl:
I'm carrying very low so far, although at 21 weeks it may be too soon to tell.
"Morning sickness" or "pregnancy sickness" was definitely present for the first trimester, but it was never really bad and disappeared by 14 weeks or so. It was much milder, for example, than one friend's and two coworkers, and they all had boys. (You know who you are!)
I'm pregnant in my face-- it's rounder and chubbier than usual!-- but my skin looks good, if I may say so. That's kind of a mixed signal, there.
The fetal heart rate has measured consistently high, in the high 170's to 180's. I have an appointment next week, so we'll see if that is consistent.
Emotions are a mixed bag. For the most part I've been on a pretty even keel, although it is hard to judge these things oneself. I have had less patience with work, but work has gotten considerably more difficult and stressful in the past few months, and that has nothing to do with the pregnancy; I notice that everybody I work with is showing signs of stress and grumpiness. There have been a few episodes, like the recently documented Meatloaf Fight, but I'd say that I really am my usual laid-back self, all things considered, for whatever it's worth.
Anybody that knows me 'in real life' knows that my bum's been pregnant for years; I am so ass-positive that it would be impossible to judge anything from that region. With my overall Hubbard-squash shape, it is hard to tell... Judging by my pants, though, my butt, thighs, and hips are more or less stable so far, compared to my belly. Compounding the issue is the fact that I've been eating like a hippopotamus since getting pregnant, so even if I AM gaining in those areas, it probably has more to do with Ben & Jerry than with the Sprout Within.
Monday, January 19, 2009
Birthday
I celebrated my birthday Saturday in typical fashion, by mopping a lake of water from the kitchen floor and doing dishes in the bathtub. Nothing like a frozen, busted pipe to help highlight the day! On the bright side, the kitchen floor has never been cleaner. On the extra-bright side, none of the water seems to have penetrated the down-stairs kitchen, the one that Don has spent six months renovating. When Don and I went to Lowe's yesterday to get the replacement parts he needed to fix the sink, everybody else there seemed to be getting the same stuff, and the stock of valves and hoses looked as though it had been ransacked. Guess we weren't the only ones in the neighborhood to forget about leaving the cabinet doors open and the tap dripping. It just doesn't get that cold here very often, so one forgets the routines.
I also got a pedicure, for the first time in many months. When I walked in, the proprietress looked me up and down and said, "You look different!" This has got to be the best, most discreet inquiry I've heard, because there are so many possible answers: "Well, I'm pregnant!", "I changed my hair", or whatever. So much better than a direct, "Are you pregnant?" that could be embarrassing if the answer were 'no'. I've gotten to the point where I'm visibly pregnant, for the most part; a nice change from just looking ten pounds heavier than usual. The pedicure was a birthday treat (from me), but I also consider it a frugal expenditure, because I get the worst in-grown toenails, and a pedicure is still cheaper than repeated trips to a foot doctor. Then again, I am a master of justification-- just ask me about the Ben & Jerry's that I'm consuming for the calcium. (What?)
This morning the baby was doing his usual acrobatic routine of thumps and kicks, and I could feel one kick quite clearly with my hand that was resting on my belly-- the first time I have felt anything externally. So I woke Don up and made him roll over, so that he could feel. The baby immediately stopped moving. So it's going to be like that, little fella, huh? Being difficult for mama already? There are sometimes these funny little kicks directly to my side, that make me think of when swimmers reach the end of a lap and do that turn-kick thing on the side of the pool to start the next one; I keep waiting to get one on each side so that I can time the laps. Less funny are these new kicks straight down, that I guess are probably hitting my cervix but feel exactly like a punch to the Girl Parts and are about as pleasant as they sound. Still, I welcome any and all movement, even the crotch-kicks, since nothing keeps me calm and relaxed like knowing that the baby is still alive. It's a good feeling.
Don and I reached our goal of no-dinners-out-until-my-birthday, perhaps our longest stretch of home-cooked meals to happen while we were both employed. That bit is going really well, especially since I've been quite good about keeping the kitchen clean, the biggest obstacle to cooking in my home. I've been trying to get some of the other rooms under control, too, and have filled two big boxes with clothes for Goodwill. Today I will actually drive them there and drop them off, which I have discovered through trial and error is the only way to actually get said boxes out of the house. It's funny that just having the good intentions and filling the boxes isn't enough; they will sit in the corner of the bedroom forever without that crucial last step. This should help a little with the ongoing Laundry Issue. I figure the more goals I get done in January, the better, since New Years ideas tend to fade with time.
I also got a pedicure, for the first time in many months. When I walked in, the proprietress looked me up and down and said, "You look different!" This has got to be the best, most discreet inquiry I've heard, because there are so many possible answers: "Well, I'm pregnant!", "I changed my hair", or whatever. So much better than a direct, "Are you pregnant?" that could be embarrassing if the answer were 'no'. I've gotten to the point where I'm visibly pregnant, for the most part; a nice change from just looking ten pounds heavier than usual. The pedicure was a birthday treat (from me), but I also consider it a frugal expenditure, because I get the worst in-grown toenails, and a pedicure is still cheaper than repeated trips to a foot doctor. Then again, I am a master of justification-- just ask me about the Ben & Jerry's that I'm consuming for the calcium. (What?)
This morning the baby was doing his usual acrobatic routine of thumps and kicks, and I could feel one kick quite clearly with my hand that was resting on my belly-- the first time I have felt anything externally. So I woke Don up and made him roll over, so that he could feel. The baby immediately stopped moving. So it's going to be like that, little fella, huh? Being difficult for mama already? There are sometimes these funny little kicks directly to my side, that make me think of when swimmers reach the end of a lap and do that turn-kick thing on the side of the pool to start the next one; I keep waiting to get one on each side so that I can time the laps. Less funny are these new kicks straight down, that I guess are probably hitting my cervix but feel exactly like a punch to the Girl Parts and are about as pleasant as they sound. Still, I welcome any and all movement, even the crotch-kicks, since nothing keeps me calm and relaxed like knowing that the baby is still alive. It's a good feeling.
Don and I reached our goal of no-dinners-out-until-my-birthday, perhaps our longest stretch of home-cooked meals to happen while we were both employed. That bit is going really well, especially since I've been quite good about keeping the kitchen clean, the biggest obstacle to cooking in my home. I've been trying to get some of the other rooms under control, too, and have filled two big boxes with clothes for Goodwill. Today I will actually drive them there and drop them off, which I have discovered through trial and error is the only way to actually get said boxes out of the house. It's funny that just having the good intentions and filling the boxes isn't enough; they will sit in the corner of the bedroom forever without that crucial last step. This should help a little with the ongoing Laundry Issue. I figure the more goals I get done in January, the better, since New Years ideas tend to fade with time.
Wednesday, January 14, 2009
Half-way
We are twenty weeks pregnant, this week. Twenty weeks! Half of the distance to forty! It boggles the mind, really. I feel good, amazing. I worry that I shouldn't feel good, that there should be a high price to pay for successful gestation; I've seen it with my friends and colleagues, their constant sickness, heartburn, enormous ankles. Shouldn't I be feeling like that, too? With the exception of some insomnia, I feel great. If it weren't for this semi-constant, sneakers-tumbling-in-my-dryer feeling and my changing dimensions, it would be easy to forget about the pregnancy entirely. Maybe feeling worse will come again later.
Work is dragging me down, getting more and more stressful just as I start to find that I really don't care about it at all; not the best combination. This is not a great time, apparently, to be in the banking industry, even with a solid company. Wage freezes, hiring freezes, bonuses cancelled... It's grim. We're shorthanded one position that won't be refilled anytime soon, so it is two people doing the work of three. (Except that it isn't, can you guess who has to do more?) With just two people day in and day out, even little things like taking lunch breaks become difficult. This is the first week of the semester, or what we call "Oh Hell, the Students are Back Week"-- one of the busiest times of the year. I just have to think, it will be easier next week, and afterwards.
All my little 2009 projects and goals are a fun distraction from work. It's nice to have the readily visible results that come from cleaning or organizing something (or keeping it clean); from making a substantial credit-card payment; from maintaining a bank account balance. I'm hoping that with enough time, little things like bringing lunch to work will become a habit, rather than something that requires a lot of time and thought, but it's working really well so far.
Work is dragging me down, getting more and more stressful just as I start to find that I really don't care about it at all; not the best combination. This is not a great time, apparently, to be in the banking industry, even with a solid company. Wage freezes, hiring freezes, bonuses cancelled... It's grim. We're shorthanded one position that won't be refilled anytime soon, so it is two people doing the work of three. (Except that it isn't, can you guess who has to do more?) With just two people day in and day out, even little things like taking lunch breaks become difficult. This is the first week of the semester, or what we call "Oh Hell, the Students are Back Week"-- one of the busiest times of the year. I just have to think, it will be easier next week, and afterwards.
All my little 2009 projects and goals are a fun distraction from work. It's nice to have the readily visible results that come from cleaning or organizing something (or keeping it clean); from making a substantial credit-card payment; from maintaining a bank account balance. I'm hoping that with enough time, little things like bringing lunch to work will become a habit, rather than something that requires a lot of time and thought, but it's working really well so far.
Friday, January 09, 2009
Vacation, part 2
So, last night I just made a quiche for dinner and everything was fine.
I have my cellphone back, finally, making the last two weeks the longest I've gone without one since 1999.
I didn't take any pictures at all on my vacation, which was stupid. And sad. See, my brother is a fantastic amateur photographer (with a fancy camera), who takes beautiful, artistic photos of the landscape, the sky, all that jazz. My sister has a cool new digital, one of those flat, pocket-sized, take-anywhere ones that is great for capturing spur-of-the-moment candids. The pictures she got of our sledding adventure, alone, are worth the price of the camera. Parents sledding equal great pictures. Four-months-pregnant sister, looking like the Michelin Man in ski pants and a parka, also sledding, is priceless*. Hopefully she will be emailing these to me soon, so that I can share the hilarity here as well. But my camera is neither impressively hefty and amazing, or sleek and tiny... it's a seven-year-old, 3.14 - megapixel digital that still works well enough but somehow never made it out of my backpack, because theirs were just so much better, why bother? (The answer, apparently, is "because they will forget to share their pictures with you afterwards, and you will have none of your own.")
I managed to get wrong-sized sweaters for half the family. My sister and my mom got each other copies of the same book, which was pretty funny. (There's a lot of reading-material overlap in our family.) My dad's New Year's Eve toast, (which we did at 11:00pm because I couldn't stay up any later, justified by the fact that by then it was midnight in Texas and 1:00am in Virginia) made me cry: "To this time next year, when we will meet here again but will also be joined by the newest member of the family..." There's not too much else to say about the trip, as 85% of it was spent sleeping, eating, and lounging, which while wonderfully relaxing and restorative does not make for amusing blog content. I will post sledding pictures should I ever receive any.
*Thank God nobody has a video camera, or the potential footage of me spreadeagled at the bottom of the hill, entangled in the sled, a foot deep in snow and hollering for help, I would never live down. You know that classic I Love Lucy scene of a heavily pregnant Lucille Ball trying to get out of the easy chair? This was worse.
I have my cellphone back, finally, making the last two weeks the longest I've gone without one since 1999.
I didn't take any pictures at all on my vacation, which was stupid. And sad. See, my brother is a fantastic amateur photographer (with a fancy camera), who takes beautiful, artistic photos of the landscape, the sky, all that jazz. My sister has a cool new digital, one of those flat, pocket-sized, take-anywhere ones that is great for capturing spur-of-the-moment candids. The pictures she got of our sledding adventure, alone, are worth the price of the camera. Parents sledding equal great pictures. Four-months-pregnant sister, looking like the Michelin Man in ski pants and a parka, also sledding, is priceless*. Hopefully she will be emailing these to me soon, so that I can share the hilarity here as well. But my camera is neither impressively hefty and amazing, or sleek and tiny... it's a seven-year-old, 3.14 - megapixel digital that still works well enough but somehow never made it out of my backpack, because theirs were just so much better, why bother? (The answer, apparently, is "because they will forget to share their pictures with you afterwards, and you will have none of your own.")
I managed to get wrong-sized sweaters for half the family. My sister and my mom got each other copies of the same book, which was pretty funny. (There's a lot of reading-material overlap in our family.) My dad's New Year's Eve toast, (which we did at 11:00pm because I couldn't stay up any later, justified by the fact that by then it was midnight in Texas and 1:00am in Virginia) made me cry: "To this time next year, when we will meet here again but will also be joined by the newest member of the family..." There's not too much else to say about the trip, as 85% of it was spent sleeping, eating, and lounging, which while wonderfully relaxing and restorative does not make for amusing blog content. I will post sledding pictures should I ever receive any.
*Thank God nobody has a video camera, or the potential footage of me spreadeagled at the bottom of the hill, entangled in the sled, a foot deep in snow and hollering for help, I would never live down. You know that classic I Love Lucy scene of a heavily pregnant Lucille Ball trying to get out of the easy chair? This was worse.
Thursday, January 08, 2009
Hell in a Meatloaf Basket
"A hint for not buying lunch: make enough dinner that you have leftovers for
lunch the next day. Also, big pots of things (like chili) or baked trays of
things (like lasagnas) are easy and provide ample leftovers for lunch the next
day."
This is what I usually do when I want to brown-bag my lunch. It's a good system usually... until it all fell apart last night. It started when I realized that I hadn't been to a bookstore in over two weeks and was suffering major withdrawal pangs. Since I hadn't planned on giving up that particular addiction any time soon, I headed to Barnes & Noble right after work, knowing that I had plenty of time until Don would be home. There, I found this book. Now, I really liked Chocolat, but then I read Five Quarters of the Orange by the same author (Joanne Harris), and hated that one. This new-ish book, The Girl with No Shadow, was apparently a sequel to Chocolat. It's interesting when an author can vary so widely in his or her own writing, that one of the books is on my favorites list, and the other isn't even on the bookshelf... like Orson Scott Card. I love Ender's Game, but pretty much can't stand anything else he's written. Go figure. I kept trying, though, until something in Ender's Shadow made me throw the book across the room. But Card annoys me by pretty much hacking his own work to death. The Harris books just threw me because the first one I read is rather light and fluffy and fun, and second was dark and disturbing, totally different in tone; not at all what I was expecting.
So to make a long story short, I stayed at B&N way too long, completely engrossed in this novel (which turns out to be a lot darker than Chocolat but really, really good, for anyone interested; not depressing like Five Quarters) when I realized I must head for home--bought the book and the new Mothering magazine, and camped out on the sofa until Don got home. See, we were just going to have pancakes and bacon and maybe some eggs, which doesn't need to be started ahead of time... it's a no-time kind of meal. When Don got home (at close to 9, I think) I was almost done with the book-- it's a psychological thriller in a way, very suspenseful-- and I had to finish it before I could do ANYTHING else, which Don understands because we've been together for eight years so he knows that nothing comes between me and the last two chapters of a book. So he said he could start dinner and make me some tea in the bargain; I said I had planned on bacon and pancakes, did that sound OK? And if he could start the bacon frying I would be done with my book before it finished. And he said OK and wandered off to the kitchen, which is when everything went to hell.
I finished the book in no time, came to the kitchen to check on dinner and my tea, and what is in the frying pan? NOT BACON. The last two slices of meatloaf (our previous night's dinner), mashed and crumbled into bits, and a big bowl of mixed-up eggs on the counter. That meatloaf was supposed to be my lunch for today, alongside a big heaping of the broccoli-rice casserole that went with it. I had tender, loving plans for that last bit of meatloaf, and I WANTED BACON AND PANCAKES THAT NIGHT. (There may have been some pregnancy hormones involved.) In ten unsupervised minutes, Don basically destroyed two whole meals. Naturally he refused to see it that way, claiming that he was "just" trying to use up some leftovers. You would not believe the argument that resulted from this situation, in which I was completely, 100% in the right at all times and Don was a meatloaf-destroying, plan-changing, BAD COOK*. Who didn't even realize that if I HAD wanted eggs, WHICH I DIDN'T, I would have wanted them FRIED which is the ONLY way I've eaten eggs since getting pregnant. We basically resolved the issue (such as it is resolved, although I'm realizing now that I am NOT OVER THIS AT ALL, you just don't fuck around with a pregnant woman's food, OK?) by agreeing that if for some reason the dinner plan changes between the living room sofa and the stove, it will be by mutual agreement, and not UNILATERAL, ARBITRARY, Bush-White-House style decision-making. I mean, it hadn't been thirty seconds since he said, "yeah, I can start the bacon", when he made the indecipherable plan to destroy my meatloaf instead**.
So today I had to buy a bagel sandwich from Bodo's for lunch. And as the husband is banned from the stove, he's on permanent dinner-dishes duty instead.
*Who luckily does not have a blog of his own.
** We have a fundamental difference in theory about what constitutes a "leftover" and how they should be treated. My thinking is that many dishes, like soups, stews, chili, spaghetti sauce, casseroles, and similar lend themselves very nicely to second and even third appearances, often getting even better with time. Others, either because they don't reheat as well or just because they don't make as much at a time, go very well for lunch the next day or two. Sometimes, a single ingredient can be re-purposed, with a little planning; for example the regular brown rice left over one day becomes part of the broccoli-cheese-rice casserole the next, while the purposely doubled batch of cheese sauce from that casserole goes to the freezer for next week's macaroni and cheese; or the intended bacon of last night, of which I was going to fry up the whole package and use the second half in tonight's frittata. Don somehow doesn't see any of that as "leftovers"; to him, it isn't "leftovers" unless you take bits and pieces from several different meals and throw them together to make something new, unrecognizable, and frankly disgusting. During the argument last night, he claimed that we "never have leftovers!", which left me baffled. To me, anything that you spend ONE evening slaving over, but get to enjoy "for free" the next night too, is leftover! We eat leftovers by MY book more often than not: every time I make spaghetti sauce, or chicken soup, or a stew, and we eat it again... and usually again. But I guess to him it isn't leftover if it's not hashed up in a frying pan and mixed with a scrambled egg. I don't get it. I just know that he's banned from unsupervised helping until I feel better about this whole thing.
Wednesday, January 07, 2009
The first week is easy
With typical first-week-of-the-year fervor, I throw myself into my new goals: home-cooked dinners, brown-bag lunches, three days in a row. The dishes, done at night, two days in a row. Don and I have set a mini goal-within-a-goal of no dinners out or meals brought home until my birthday on the 17th. As we usually eat out (or have take-out) two or three times a week, this is no small commitment. I would have tried to make it one month, but we always eat out on birthdays. It's tradition. It's a steakhouse. Come on. Don is the real winner in this deal, because I get off work at 4:30 or so; he gets off around 7:00-- if we're lucky. I go to the grocery store, I cook. He comes home to food. Also, since he pays for most dinners out, it's his bank balance that wins. It's not that he doesn't cook or can't cook, just that he does so on the weekends, if he has a day off. I start thinking about dinner in the morning, if I don't already have a plan. That way I can thaw something, hit the store, whatever, before dinner time. Don starts thinking about dinner when he gets hungry for dinner. I've seen him come home from work at 7:45 in the and take something out of the freezer to thaw... for that night. This is when I get pissy and insist that we go out, since who wants to eat dinner at 11:00pm? I don't know if this is a gender divide, or just a two-different-people thing, but it's easier to just take over dinner and plan the menus. I get no small comfort in knowing, for example, that we're having pancakes tonight, and that we already have all the fixings.
I paid the balance on my Discover card today, too. It's funny that I was complaining about not getting any benefit from these falling interest rates, because apparently, I am. I checked to see what interest rate I would be paying on the card if I didn't make the full payment, and it's a lot lower than I remember-- like 4% lower. So I checked my other card (which also has a balance, boo), and the interest rate on that one has fallen to less than the interest rate on our mortgage. You know how people take out home equity loans to pay off credit card debt? I'd be better off getting cash advances on this card to make mortgage payments! OK not literally, because the cash-advance rate is always higher than the purchase rate, but still, it's quite funny. The rate on that card has always been really low because it's an associate special through the bank, but I guess falling prime rates really do affect credit cards. Who knew?
I paid the balance on my Discover card today, too. It's funny that I was complaining about not getting any benefit from these falling interest rates, because apparently, I am. I checked to see what interest rate I would be paying on the card if I didn't make the full payment, and it's a lot lower than I remember-- like 4% lower. So I checked my other card (which also has a balance, boo), and the interest rate on that one has fallen to less than the interest rate on our mortgage. You know how people take out home equity loans to pay off credit card debt? I'd be better off getting cash advances on this card to make mortgage payments! OK not literally, because the cash-advance rate is always higher than the purchase rate, but still, it's quite funny. The rate on that card has always been really low because it's an associate special through the bank, but I guess falling prime rates really do affect credit cards. Who knew?
Tuesday, January 06, 2009
2009 Goals
Financial
1. Finish lower apartment so that we can rent it: should be done by end of January.
a. Rent said apartment. (Hopefully this is already accomplished but just in case.)
b. Use rental money to help pay mortgage, make extra mortgage payment, and build savings.
2. Figure out some kind of system for organizing finances, other than keeping it all in my brain. This may be a year-long project.
3. File taxes ASAP, using real professional person, not computer software. Hope to be done by mid-February. (Pray for a refund.)
4. Pay off credit cards... AGAIN. (Stupid credit cards. Stupid holidays.) Do not accumulate more debt.
5. Figure out a way of working together with Don, so that we can live off of one income should we want to come baby-time. Right now we each have our own checking accounts and spend our own paychecks, with little if any financial accountability to each other... Somehow we need to come together and create a plan, a system, or a budget that will let us use just the one paycheck for his-n-hers.
6. Which leads to, finding a way to do without my income, pitiful though it may be. Cutting "expenses" like: meals out, coffee-house lattes, new books, and all the other little extras that eat up our pay.
7. Which leads to, making those changes ahead of time, to increase savings before the baby actually comes. (Starting right away, since we're due in May or June.)
Household
1. Get house clean enough for company by end of January, as opposed to the smelly pit that it is currently, so that we can have friends in without shame.
2. Figure out exactly how we're going to arrange spare room to make a combination nursery/guest room/ computer room in a 9x12 space. (This may require a magic wand.) Must be done by end of April.
3. Move futon into said room, buy new sofa for living room. (Ignore contradiction to financial goals above.)
4. Dig and plant garden in the spring.
5. New chickens.
Kitchen
1. Switch hutch with kitchen table.
a. Take laundry room door off hinges, replace with curtain.
b. Baby gate to keep dog out of laundry room.
2. Figure out a way to light fridge.
3. Cook dinners at home.
a. Plan menus a week at a time.
b. Go grocery shopping once a week or so, instead of all the time.
c. Do dinner dishes AFTER DINNER, so that kitchen isn't overwhelmingly messy the next day, leading to another dinner out. This is actually a financial goal.
4. Get freezer and pantry good and stocked up for late pregnancy/ early baby weeks; lots of meals ready-to-eat.
5. Look into getting a big, upright freezer.
Pregnancy
1. Keep walking every day.
2. Maybe sign up for a prenatal yoga class or similar?
3. Drink special tea daily.
4. Try to freak out/ panic less often.
5. Let everything else, like work, just roll off my back and not stress me out.
Work
1. Don't let work stuff (i.e. management, coworkers, and customers) get under my skin. Leave it all at work, so to speak.
2. Get everything in really good condition so that when I leave for maternity, nobody is cursing the mess I left behind.
(That's it. I don't have a lot of work goals right now. Pretty much just, "stay afloat".)
This is a really ambitious list, so I'm not expecting to nail everything on it; I just think it's better to aim high. If I can accomplish half of every category, that would be great.
1. Finish lower apartment so that we can rent it: should be done by end of January.
a. Rent said apartment. (Hopefully this is already accomplished but just in case.)
b. Use rental money to help pay mortgage, make extra mortgage payment, and build savings.
2. Figure out some kind of system for organizing finances, other than keeping it all in my brain. This may be a year-long project.
3. File taxes ASAP, using real professional person, not computer software. Hope to be done by mid-February. (Pray for a refund.)
4. Pay off credit cards... AGAIN. (Stupid credit cards. Stupid holidays.) Do not accumulate more debt.
5. Figure out a way of working together with Don, so that we can live off of one income should we want to come baby-time. Right now we each have our own checking accounts and spend our own paychecks, with little if any financial accountability to each other... Somehow we need to come together and create a plan, a system, or a budget that will let us use just the one paycheck for his-n-hers.
6. Which leads to, finding a way to do without my income, pitiful though it may be. Cutting "expenses" like: meals out, coffee-house lattes, new books, and all the other little extras that eat up our pay.
7. Which leads to, making those changes ahead of time, to increase savings before the baby actually comes. (Starting right away, since we're due in May or June.)
Household
1. Get house clean enough for company by end of January, as opposed to the smelly pit that it is currently, so that we can have friends in without shame.
2. Figure out exactly how we're going to arrange spare room to make a combination nursery/guest room/ computer room in a 9x12 space. (This may require a magic wand.) Must be done by end of April.
3. Move futon into said room, buy new sofa for living room. (Ignore contradiction to financial goals above.)
4. Dig and plant garden in the spring.
5. New chickens.
Kitchen
1. Switch hutch with kitchen table.
a. Take laundry room door off hinges, replace with curtain.
b. Baby gate to keep dog out of laundry room.
2. Figure out a way to light fridge.
3. Cook dinners at home.
a. Plan menus a week at a time.
b. Go grocery shopping once a week or so, instead of all the time.
c. Do dinner dishes AFTER DINNER, so that kitchen isn't overwhelmingly messy the next day, leading to another dinner out. This is actually a financial goal.
4. Get freezer and pantry good and stocked up for late pregnancy/ early baby weeks; lots of meals ready-to-eat.
5. Look into getting a big, upright freezer.
Pregnancy
1. Keep walking every day.
2. Maybe sign up for a prenatal yoga class or similar?
3. Drink special tea daily.
4. Try to freak out/ panic less often.
5. Let everything else, like work, just roll off my back and not stress me out.
Work
1. Don't let work stuff (i.e. management, coworkers, and customers) get under my skin. Leave it all at work, so to speak.
2. Get everything in really good condition so that when I leave for maternity, nobody is cursing the mess I left behind.
(That's it. I don't have a lot of work goals right now. Pretty much just, "stay afloat".)
This is a really ambitious list, so I'm not expecting to nail everything on it; I just think it's better to aim high. If I can accomplish half of every category, that would be great.
Monday, January 05, 2009
Vacation-- Day 1
My flights from New Mexico back to Virginia yesterday, were perfect. Unfortunately, it will take ten perfect air-travel experiences to make up for the horrors of the trip out there. I had to get up very early, before 4 in the morning, in order to drive from here to Richmond. I didn't mind, though, because with the time zones and everything it would still be morning in New Mexico when I would get there, so I would probably be able to catch up with a nap then. Ah, "would", and the conditional tense. Conditions changed.
The first flight, from Richmond to Dallas, seemed to be going along OK until the captain announced that nobody could land at DFW due to thunderstorms. So, we entered a "holding pattern" (read: plane circles the city, tilting and turning until I'm good and sick) for half an hour... Until the captain announces that, actually, we are being re-routed to Austin for the time being. This is a bit upsetting as I have a connecting flight to catch, but I figure that if no planes are able to land, then nobody is taking off either, which should delay my second flight as well.
The landing in Austin takes us down through the far end of whatever storm system is over Dallas, making it rougher and more turbulent than any landing I can remember. I had to use my Little White Bag for the first time in probably ten years. Is there anything more embarrassing than throwing up in public? Let me know, because I sure can't think of it. Once we're on the ground at the Austin airport, we sit. And sit. There are maybe ten other planes in exactly the same situation, having been turned away from DFW airport and waiting to return there.
After about an hour and a half on the tarmac, we finally re--fuel and take off again for Dallas, which takes forever considering you can drive between the two cities in less than three hours. Once again the landing is so rough that I use another bag... eugh. By now the flight that should have taken 2 1/2 hours has taken more than four. I haven't eaten anything except a bag of pretzels, which was wasted anyway. When we land at DFW there is no gate for us, (being that every plane that had been rerouted is back and they're all waiting to de-board) so... we sit, on the tarmac, again. For a long time. It is during this time that I find out that my second flight was not delayed, but cancelled entirely. Why? WHY? It is two days after Christmas, and every flight is completely booked or close to it. How can they cancel a flight and expect to squeeze all 160 people (or however many fit on a 747) on standby for the rest of the (ALSO FULL) flights to that destination? It makes no sense.
By the time I actually de-plane, I'm starving and actually pretty out-of-it. My sister, who was supposed to be on the same (CANCELLED) flight to Albuquerque, met me at my gate and explained the situation to me. She, having been at the gate when the flight was cancelled, managed to get a confirmed seat on a later flight. I, however, had to get on standby, after being told by the gate attendant that not only was every flight to Albuquerque for this day booked solid, but also the next day and the next. And, unfortunately, there are about 90 other people also waiting on standby seats, all in exactly the same position as me. Also, unfortunately, each flight left from the other end of the airport, so I (and the other gazillion people doing the same thing) had to scoot from Terminal C to D, back to C, back to D... repeat as needed. Did I mention that I am still pregnant? And that I carried on all my luggage rather than checking it? Hoofing it all over DFW lugging my baggage, unable to eat, was a BAD combination. I end up waiting on standby for the next three flights, before finally boarding a plane again. I have never been so incredibly glad to actually get on a plane. It just seems so weird to think that you can buy your air tickets four months in advance, check in first thing in the morning to confirm your seats, and still be confronted with the possibility of not getting to your destination. What other industry could work like that?
KK and I were supposed to arrive in Albuquerque about 11:10 am. She ended up getting in about 6:00, and I about 7:30, which isn't bad at all considering that I was afraid of not getting to New Mexico for days. What was bad, was that Albuquerque wasn't our final destination; Mom and Dad's vacation house is about three hours away, north of Taos. So my brother and Dad had set out first thing in the morning to come and get us, and ended up spending all day hanging out at the airport waiting for us. Once we had both finally gotten in, we of course have to drive the three hours back to the house. We get to the house around midnight, which is 2 am Virginia time, making my total awake-time almost 24 hours. The drive from Taos to the house is so mountainous and twisty that I threw up for the third time that day, thankfully at the house and not, say, on the side of the road. Small blessings.
Need it be said that we all of us did nothing the next day, but sleep? Apparently, at some point in the Albuquerque airport, I dropped my cellphone on the floor without realizing it. We couldn't find it that night at the house, but as I was sleep-deprived and barfy I didn't worry about it at the time. The next morning we got a call (on my brother's phone) from a nice lady who had found my phone at the airport and is in the process of mailing it back to me. So, if I've been ignoring anybody's calls, don't take it personally; it's because I've been without cell phone for over a week (a truly strange feeling).
I know that observing human behavior at the airport is passe and over-done, but it really is interesting to see how people react to adverse situations. For three flights, I had to wait with the dozens of other booted passengers desperate to get on a plane. Standby is computerized and in order, so you can see exactly where you are; for example on my first standby I was number 50-something. For each subsequent flight your place in line remains stable, so your number drops as the people ahead of you get on planes. By the time I was on standby for the flight I eventually boarded, I had dropped to number 12. The vast majority of people seem to both understand the system and comply with it, realizing, I guess, that there is nothing else to be done. There is also a lot of commiseration, even camaraderie, among the stranded. But there are always a few folks that just don't know how to act. Their situation is so terrible, they must whine and bitch and moan, loudly, for all to hear. Hello, we are all in exactly the same boat! All of us were supposed to be on that cancelled flight; all of us are in the uncertain position of waiting. All of us had confirmed, paid-for seats at one time that no longer exist, and are now stranded. YOUR problem, that you seem to need to broadcast all over the airport, is no bigger, no different, than that of the other 50 people shuffling from gate to gate with you. You are not as special as you seem to think. Seriously: read the manual, "How to Act".
The first flight, from Richmond to Dallas, seemed to be going along OK until the captain announced that nobody could land at DFW due to thunderstorms. So, we entered a "holding pattern" (read: plane circles the city, tilting and turning until I'm good and sick) for half an hour... Until the captain announces that, actually, we are being re-routed to Austin for the time being. This is a bit upsetting as I have a connecting flight to catch, but I figure that if no planes are able to land, then nobody is taking off either, which should delay my second flight as well.
The landing in Austin takes us down through the far end of whatever storm system is over Dallas, making it rougher and more turbulent than any landing I can remember. I had to use my Little White Bag for the first time in probably ten years. Is there anything more embarrassing than throwing up in public? Let me know, because I sure can't think of it. Once we're on the ground at the Austin airport, we sit. And sit. There are maybe ten other planes in exactly the same situation, having been turned away from DFW airport and waiting to return there.
After about an hour and a half on the tarmac, we finally re--fuel and take off again for Dallas, which takes forever considering you can drive between the two cities in less than three hours. Once again the landing is so rough that I use another bag... eugh. By now the flight that should have taken 2 1/2 hours has taken more than four. I haven't eaten anything except a bag of pretzels, which was wasted anyway. When we land at DFW there is no gate for us, (being that every plane that had been rerouted is back and they're all waiting to de-board) so... we sit, on the tarmac, again. For a long time. It is during this time that I find out that my second flight was not delayed, but cancelled entirely. Why? WHY? It is two days after Christmas, and every flight is completely booked or close to it. How can they cancel a flight and expect to squeeze all 160 people (or however many fit on a 747) on standby for the rest of the (ALSO FULL) flights to that destination? It makes no sense.
By the time I actually de-plane, I'm starving and actually pretty out-of-it. My sister, who was supposed to be on the same (CANCELLED) flight to Albuquerque, met me at my gate and explained the situation to me. She, having been at the gate when the flight was cancelled, managed to get a confirmed seat on a later flight. I, however, had to get on standby, after being told by the gate attendant that not only was every flight to Albuquerque for this day booked solid, but also the next day and the next. And, unfortunately, there are about 90 other people also waiting on standby seats, all in exactly the same position as me. Also, unfortunately, each flight left from the other end of the airport, so I (and the other gazillion people doing the same thing) had to scoot from Terminal C to D, back to C, back to D... repeat as needed. Did I mention that I am still pregnant? And that I carried on all my luggage rather than checking it? Hoofing it all over DFW lugging my baggage, unable to eat, was a BAD combination. I end up waiting on standby for the next three flights, before finally boarding a plane again. I have never been so incredibly glad to actually get on a plane. It just seems so weird to think that you can buy your air tickets four months in advance, check in first thing in the morning to confirm your seats, and still be confronted with the possibility of not getting to your destination. What other industry could work like that?
KK and I were supposed to arrive in Albuquerque about 11:10 am. She ended up getting in about 6:00, and I about 7:30, which isn't bad at all considering that I was afraid of not getting to New Mexico for days. What was bad, was that Albuquerque wasn't our final destination; Mom and Dad's vacation house is about three hours away, north of Taos. So my brother and Dad had set out first thing in the morning to come and get us, and ended up spending all day hanging out at the airport waiting for us. Once we had both finally gotten in, we of course have to drive the three hours back to the house. We get to the house around midnight, which is 2 am Virginia time, making my total awake-time almost 24 hours. The drive from Taos to the house is so mountainous and twisty that I threw up for the third time that day, thankfully at the house and not, say, on the side of the road. Small blessings.
Need it be said that we all of us did nothing the next day, but sleep? Apparently, at some point in the Albuquerque airport, I dropped my cellphone on the floor without realizing it. We couldn't find it that night at the house, but as I was sleep-deprived and barfy I didn't worry about it at the time. The next morning we got a call (on my brother's phone) from a nice lady who had found my phone at the airport and is in the process of mailing it back to me. So, if I've been ignoring anybody's calls, don't take it personally; it's because I've been without cell phone for over a week (a truly strange feeling).
I know that observing human behavior at the airport is passe and over-done, but it really is interesting to see how people react to adverse situations. For three flights, I had to wait with the dozens of other booted passengers desperate to get on a plane. Standby is computerized and in order, so you can see exactly where you are; for example on my first standby I was number 50-something. For each subsequent flight your place in line remains stable, so your number drops as the people ahead of you get on planes. By the time I was on standby for the flight I eventually boarded, I had dropped to number 12. The vast majority of people seem to both understand the system and comply with it, realizing, I guess, that there is nothing else to be done. There is also a lot of commiseration, even camaraderie, among the stranded. But there are always a few folks that just don't know how to act. Their situation is so terrible, they must whine and bitch and moan, loudly, for all to hear. Hello, we are all in exactly the same boat! All of us were supposed to be on that cancelled flight; all of us are in the uncertain position of waiting. All of us had confirmed, paid-for seats at one time that no longer exist, and are now stranded. YOUR problem, that you seem to need to broadcast all over the airport, is no bigger, no different, than that of the other 50 people shuffling from gate to gate with you. You are not as special as you seem to think. Seriously: read the manual, "How to Act".
Friday, December 26, 2008
Maybe Sky-diving, Instead
Don's gifts this year included a few new CDs, on the theory that, for the first time EVER, one of our vehicles has a CD-player and he should try it out sometime. So I got him the new-ish Metallica and a Johnny Cash best-of collection. Don loves it. The dog, apparently, doesn't. She hates Johnny Cash. Who knew? It is only the second time she has ever displayed an opinion about music, the first being when she tried to howl to Aerosmith; but that had the extenuating circumstances of (1) being in the car, (2) I was singing along, and (3) it was that part of "Dream On" that jumps up an octave or three. (No, I can't hit that note-- can anybody?) If Dream On sounds like howling, maybe Johnny Cash sounds like growling. Who knows what musical criteria lurks in the minds of dogs?
In other gifty news, Don's mother sent a box for Christmas... I got a necklace, a bracelet, and these cool kitchen utensils that have my name on the handle. Don got socks, boxer shorts, and jeans. I think it's official: she likes me better than her own son.
I am leaving at the ass-crack of dawn tomorrow for New Mexico--seriously, I have to get up at FOUR AM., that time shouldn't even exist-- where I will spend a long-awaited week with my family*. My mom and I discussed the fact that I don't want to ski, since I haven't been skiing in about twenty years and I don't think it's the thing to take up at four months pregnant. Somehow she has translated this into, "The whole family can just veg out doing jigsaw puzzles and playing Scrabble!"-- or at least, the two of us. I'm not sure if this is an attempt to keep me comfortable, or if she's using me as the perfect excuse to laze out. I said that I'm totally up for snowshoeing, hiking, whatever, that doesn't involve falling down repeatedly; that my nausea is gone and my energy is back, but I don't know if that sunk in at all.
*My natal family, as opposed to the motley crew of husband, dog, cat and various dust bunnies that I have assembled myself over the past eight years or so.
In other gifty news, Don's mother sent a box for Christmas... I got a necklace, a bracelet, and these cool kitchen utensils that have my name on the handle. Don got socks, boxer shorts, and jeans. I think it's official: she likes me better than her own son.
I am leaving at the ass-crack of dawn tomorrow for New Mexico--seriously, I have to get up at FOUR AM., that time shouldn't even exist-- where I will spend a long-awaited week with my family*. My mom and I discussed the fact that I don't want to ski, since I haven't been skiing in about twenty years and I don't think it's the thing to take up at four months pregnant. Somehow she has translated this into, "The whole family can just veg out doing jigsaw puzzles and playing Scrabble!"-- or at least, the two of us. I'm not sure if this is an attempt to keep me comfortable, or if she's using me as the perfect excuse to laze out. I said that I'm totally up for snowshoeing, hiking, whatever, that doesn't involve falling down repeatedly; that my nausea is gone and my energy is back, but I don't know if that sunk in at all.
*My natal family, as opposed to the motley crew of husband, dog, cat and various dust bunnies that I have assembled myself over the past eight years or so.
Monday, December 22, 2008
Baby's First Latkes
Now repeat after me, little passenger: baruch atah Adonai, Eloheinu...
Happy Chanukah, ya'll...
Friday, December 19, 2008
Cookie Monster
When you use powdered sugar, maple syrup, dark brown sugar, light brown sugar, molasses, white sugar, and turbinado sugar (optional) all in one evening... you KNOW it was a good cookie-baking night.
(Maple walnut bars, molasses spice cookies, and good ol' chocolate chip. For work presents. They seem to be a smash hit.)
(Maple walnut bars, molasses spice cookies, and good ol' chocolate chip. For work presents. They seem to be a smash hit.)
Tuesday, December 16, 2008
Money Bad
I don't understand all this interest rate stuff. (For a banker that's probably a bad thing, right?) For one thing, every time some pundit comes on to the tv or radio to discuss What Went Wrong in the economy, he will always begin with "the abundance of cheap credit" in the nineties, which led to X, Y, Z and Hell. So if cheap credit was the first stepping stone on the way to "housing market crisis" and "frozen credit markets", how exactly is cutting the federal interest rate (again) NOW, a good thing? They're talking about making it smaller than it has ever been before, including during those crazy 90's. I don't get it, really*. Secondly, how is it that "rates go down" affects the rate at which I can EARN interest, but seemingly not the rate at which I can borrow? CD rates that were in the 4-5% range over the summer have dropped to 2%... or worse. Savings accounts are a joke. Treasury bonds are even worse. And yet my credit cards are still charging 16% interest. Even if I applied for a new card, the interest wouldn't be any lower than what I would be paying right now. Supposedly mortgage rates will be affected, but they're not going to drop that much, and they've been at "historical lows" for ages now anyway. So I get no benefit as a lender, OR as a borrower. Go figure.
Gift-wrapping PSA: It can be very, very important to use those little to:/from: gift cards as you wrap. For example: in my case, everybody in my family is getting some combination of books and/or sweaters. (Sorry, you guys.) If you're in a situation like that and you wrap too quickly, you'll end up with a pile of square-ish, book-shaped packages, and a similar pile of lumpy, sweater-shaped packages and not know which goes to whom. Luckily I could see where this was going after just one or two presents and broke out the gift tags, but it was a close call. I'm still not entirely sure that my dad and brother's books didn't get swapped.
* Please don't try to explain why it's a good thing now. Just nod your head in agreement with me, please.
Gift-wrapping PSA: It can be very, very important to use those little to:/from: gift cards as you wrap. For example: in my case, everybody in my family is getting some combination of books and/or sweaters. (Sorry, you guys.) If you're in a situation like that and you wrap too quickly, you'll end up with a pile of square-ish, book-shaped packages, and a similar pile of lumpy, sweater-shaped packages and not know which goes to whom. Luckily I could see where this was going after just one or two presents and broke out the gift tags, but it was a close call. I'm still not entirely sure that my dad and brother's books didn't get swapped.
* Please don't try to explain why it's a good thing now. Just nod your head in agreement with me, please.
Saturday, December 13, 2008
Oversharing, as usual
I am now, apparently, qualified for a C-cup bra for the first time. This is exciting in a way that only others who have spent their adult lives comfortably resting in B-cups, will understand. 36C... it's the stuff of legend.
Less exciting is that I also appear to wear size 14 pants, all of a sudden. (I don't know what happened to size 12, I guess I bypassed it entirely.) There is balance in all things, or so it seems... but it doesn't seem quite fair that the boob size went up only ONE, while the ass size went up TWO.
Other news: I am the MacGyver of holiday present wrapping, having just wrapped all of my presents for Don using a glue-stick instead of tape (there was no tape). For the record, the glue-stick works wonderfully well on anything that is firm and square, like small appliances in boxes, books, or CDs, but not as well for random lumpy stuff, (for example a sweater wrapped in tissue paper), in which the tape is really needed to kind of hold everything together. Perhaps I don't have my own gift-wrapping closet like Martha, but I think I'm probably better in an emergency wrapping situation, in which one would have to fashion gift wrap out of random household objects. (Yes, being too lazy to go back out and buy tape is an "emergency".) These are the kind of skills I hope to pass on to kids, someday...
My neighbors across the street just put up their plywood nativity scene. It's kind of funny because while the camels seem to be a clear nod to the Middle-Eastern locale of the First Christmas, Mary appears to be a blue-eyed blonde. (They were ever so common among the Hebrew population 2000 years ago, just as they are today. Why, if you walk the streets of Tel-Aviv, you'd think you were in the Netherlands!) Ah well, as the good book says, man does create God in his own image... or something similar to that.
Less exciting is that I also appear to wear size 14 pants, all of a sudden. (I don't know what happened to size 12, I guess I bypassed it entirely.) There is balance in all things, or so it seems... but it doesn't seem quite fair that the boob size went up only ONE, while the ass size went up TWO.
Other news: I am the MacGyver of holiday present wrapping, having just wrapped all of my presents for Don using a glue-stick instead of tape (there was no tape). For the record, the glue-stick works wonderfully well on anything that is firm and square, like small appliances in boxes, books, or CDs, but not as well for random lumpy stuff, (for example a sweater wrapped in tissue paper), in which the tape is really needed to kind of hold everything together. Perhaps I don't have my own gift-wrapping closet like Martha, but I think I'm probably better in an emergency wrapping situation, in which one would have to fashion gift wrap out of random household objects. (Yes, being too lazy to go back out and buy tape is an "emergency".) These are the kind of skills I hope to pass on to kids, someday...
My neighbors across the street just put up their plywood nativity scene. It's kind of funny because while the camels seem to be a clear nod to the Middle-Eastern locale of the First Christmas, Mary appears to be a blue-eyed blonde. (They were ever so common among the Hebrew population 2000 years ago, just as they are today. Why, if you walk the streets of Tel-Aviv, you'd think you were in the Netherlands!) Ah well, as the good book says, man does create God in his own image... or something similar to that.
Wednesday, December 10, 2008
Confession Time
I've been keeping secrets from my own blog, is that weird? It probably is, but honestly, I've been called weird for bigger things than that. Here's the scoop: I'm pregnant! I know, I know, I'm always getting pregnant, so what else is new, right? So get this: I am 15 WEEKS pregnant. That's right, in the second trimester, baby! I have BEEN pregnant for a long time now-- the longest ever, for me, by several weeks. This might actually be THE pregnancy that results in a real, live baby rather than the blood, testing, and tortured blog posts of the four previous pregnancies. We have had three ultrasounds, at 6 weeks, 9 weeks, and 12 weeks; that last one was the fancy technical one where we got to see everything... heart and stomach, feet and hands, brain, umbilical cord, all the bits and pieces. They were all there, in the right places. We even have a placenta, which is something that I (secretly) think may have gone wrong before. We've had the nuchal translucency test, the first-trimester blood work, all perfectly normal and chromosomally sound. Obviously we're not out of the woods yet, but things are looking decent. I'm starting to "show". I think I feel movement. I'm hopeful.
I didn't tell my family or my work until just recently, which is why I didn't mention it here, on the theory that you never really know who's reading, right? Also I've been tired for the last few months, go figure. So that's it, I'm officially Out of the (knocked-up) Closet.
I didn't tell my family or my work until just recently, which is why I didn't mention it here, on the theory that you never really know who's reading, right? Also I've been tired for the last few months, go figure. So that's it, I'm officially Out of the (knocked-up) Closet.
Friday, December 05, 2008
Annual Christmas Music Rant
1. What were they doing, out in that isolated meadow, to prompt the parson to ask whether they are married?
2. Since when are "scary ghost stories" a traditional part of Christmas? Scary ghost stories belong to Halloween. Halloween is in October.
3. "Baby, It's Cold Outside" = ... so stay here and we can HAVE (scandalous) SEX to warm up! (Always the family-friendly Holiday Message you want to play!)
4. "Santa, Baby" is disturbing enough when sung by a female vocalist; the dude's version just creeps me out.
5. Although I really do love "The 12 Days of Christmas", the idea of giving people as gifts is also faintly disturbing. Speaking of which, I can't be the only person that always has to insert the Muppet-version, "Ba dum dum DUM" before falling into "four calling birds", can I?
2. Since when are "scary ghost stories" a traditional part of Christmas? Scary ghost stories belong to Halloween. Halloween is in October.
3. "Baby, It's Cold Outside" = ... so stay here and we can HAVE (scandalous) SEX to warm up! (Always the family-friendly Holiday Message you want to play!)
4. "Santa, Baby" is disturbing enough when sung by a female vocalist; the dude's version just creeps me out.
5. Although I really do love "The 12 Days of Christmas", the idea of giving people as gifts is also faintly disturbing. Speaking of which, I can't be the only person that always has to insert the Muppet-version, "Ba dum dum DUM" before falling into "four calling birds", can I?
Sunday, November 30, 2008
We Can Rebuild It-- We Have the Technology
Recent events call for a re-build of both the chicken coop and the backyard itself. While I truly appreciate all of the "it's not your fault!" comments, in a way it is. There will always be predators after chickens. Whether they are dogs belonging to someone else, stray dogs, foxes, raccoons, cats, or hawks, it is the chicken keeper's job to protect her birds. We did a lousy job, not because we were lazy or cheap, but because we just didn't know enough yet. Now we do, and we're fixing several things before trying to obtain more birds.
First off, we're replacing the temporary wire gate with a real one, the kind that has pressure-treated posts sunk into concrete, heavy-duty hinges and latches. Nothing but a human will be able to get through this thing, and with the double-latch system that Don is putting together, quite a few people would be baffled as well. It had always been the plan to make a permanent gate at some point, but there were always more pressing projects at hand, primarily fixing the hole in the downstairs apartment before the weather got to freezing. What we had was working "well enough"... until last week.
The rest of the fence is fairly secure: it's 48" woven wire with sturdy metal posts. The only weak spot in the fence is this one section that comes up against the neighbor's front-yard retaining wall: their yard is raised about three feet from the level of our back yard, so the fence is only about a foot tall on the "outside", if that makes any sense, while still being four feet tall "inside". It would be very easy for a medium-sized dog to jump into the yard from the retaining wall at that point, and not be able to get back out. For that section of fence, we're going to make it double-height so that it will stand four feet high on the neighboring side, and be almost eight feet tall measuring from our ground up. Our neighbors to that side are elderly and both are sight-impaired, so I'm hoping they don't notice how weird it's going to look, although hopefully if they say anything I can explain about predators and they'll get it.
Don has explained that electric fencing really won't deter the dogs at all, and is not worth putting in; it was just a vindictive idea on his part. He had also come up with many cruel booby traps for anything going after the chickens, but decided against them on the grounds that they'd be more likely to get me, him, or our animals than the intended victims-- and also because they were downright inhumane. Also considered and dismissed: getting a rooster to protect the flock (he'd be more likely to run at the dogs and scare them, than to run away and entice them), or getting any of the following to do the same: a goat, a gander, a male swan, or an ostrich. Essentially, we decided against a guard creature of any kind. For one thing, being downtown severely limits what animals we can maintain; for another, our 1/8th acre wouldn't sustain much more than chickens, and lastly I don't want anything that would attack me. (I'm scared of swans, to be honest. They're beautiful from a distance, but up close and personal those things are powerful and mean.) It's too bad that we can't use our own dog to guard the chickens, but she would go after them just as these dogs did. Alice is a bird-dog at heart.
Building the gate and reinforcing that one area of fence should make the yard reasonably secure. Our long-term plan involves planting shrubby, thorny bushes around the fences to create a bigger barrier; we're putting raspberry brambles along one edge this spring. The more important thing is to make the coop itself as secure as possible, which really means, completely secure. Don and I both agreed that if the coop itself had held up against the dogs, the girls could have just hidden out in there until the dogs got bored and left. It was the coop being breached, more than the yard, that was the real problem. The "run" half of the coop seems to have held up just fine, ironic since it's just a frame with wire mesh while the "coop" half is heavy-duty lumber and plywood. Don spent yesterday making small changes to it anyway, that make it sturdier and will let it connect with the coop more securely. The latch on the coop's back doors was just not strong enough; it only latched one door to the other to hold them both closed. Don is fixing them so that one door will latch to the house itself, and a two-by-four brace will wrap across both doors and be dead-bolted on the side. I can't exactly picture it, but he bought a lock set for the coop that is better than anything we have on the house. (He feels more than a little guilt about all of this since he built the coop, even though he did the best job he could; we just didn't know.) I pointed out that I will still need to open the back of the coop at least once daily to feed, water, and gather eggs; he asked whether my convenience was more important than the birds' safety. Something tells me that my morning routine just got more complicated.
Once we've finished all of this, I will try to find more chickens, although this is exactly the wrong time of year. If I can find three grown or mostly-grown birds in any of the breeds that I'm interested in, then we will start again.
First off, we're replacing the temporary wire gate with a real one, the kind that has pressure-treated posts sunk into concrete, heavy-duty hinges and latches. Nothing but a human will be able to get through this thing, and with the double-latch system that Don is putting together, quite a few people would be baffled as well. It had always been the plan to make a permanent gate at some point, but there were always more pressing projects at hand, primarily fixing the hole in the downstairs apartment before the weather got to freezing. What we had was working "well enough"... until last week.
The rest of the fence is fairly secure: it's 48" woven wire with sturdy metal posts. The only weak spot in the fence is this one section that comes up against the neighbor's front-yard retaining wall: their yard is raised about three feet from the level of our back yard, so the fence is only about a foot tall on the "outside", if that makes any sense, while still being four feet tall "inside". It would be very easy for a medium-sized dog to jump into the yard from the retaining wall at that point, and not be able to get back out. For that section of fence, we're going to make it double-height so that it will stand four feet high on the neighboring side, and be almost eight feet tall measuring from our ground up. Our neighbors to that side are elderly and both are sight-impaired, so I'm hoping they don't notice how weird it's going to look, although hopefully if they say anything I can explain about predators and they'll get it.
Don has explained that electric fencing really won't deter the dogs at all, and is not worth putting in; it was just a vindictive idea on his part. He had also come up with many cruel booby traps for anything going after the chickens, but decided against them on the grounds that they'd be more likely to get me, him, or our animals than the intended victims-- and also because they were downright inhumane. Also considered and dismissed: getting a rooster to protect the flock (he'd be more likely to run at the dogs and scare them, than to run away and entice them), or getting any of the following to do the same: a goat, a gander, a male swan, or an ostrich. Essentially, we decided against a guard creature of any kind. For one thing, being downtown severely limits what animals we can maintain; for another, our 1/8th acre wouldn't sustain much more than chickens, and lastly I don't want anything that would attack me. (I'm scared of swans, to be honest. They're beautiful from a distance, but up close and personal those things are powerful and mean.) It's too bad that we can't use our own dog to guard the chickens, but she would go after them just as these dogs did. Alice is a bird-dog at heart.
Building the gate and reinforcing that one area of fence should make the yard reasonably secure. Our long-term plan involves planting shrubby, thorny bushes around the fences to create a bigger barrier; we're putting raspberry brambles along one edge this spring. The more important thing is to make the coop itself as secure as possible, which really means, completely secure. Don and I both agreed that if the coop itself had held up against the dogs, the girls could have just hidden out in there until the dogs got bored and left. It was the coop being breached, more than the yard, that was the real problem. The "run" half of the coop seems to have held up just fine, ironic since it's just a frame with wire mesh while the "coop" half is heavy-duty lumber and plywood. Don spent yesterday making small changes to it anyway, that make it sturdier and will let it connect with the coop more securely. The latch on the coop's back doors was just not strong enough; it only latched one door to the other to hold them both closed. Don is fixing them so that one door will latch to the house itself, and a two-by-four brace will wrap across both doors and be dead-bolted on the side. I can't exactly picture it, but he bought a lock set for the coop that is better than anything we have on the house. (He feels more than a little guilt about all of this since he built the coop, even though he did the best job he could; we just didn't know.) I pointed out that I will still need to open the back of the coop at least once daily to feed, water, and gather eggs; he asked whether my convenience was more important than the birds' safety. Something tells me that my morning routine just got more complicated.
Once we've finished all of this, I will try to find more chickens, although this is exactly the wrong time of year. If I can find three grown or mostly-grown birds in any of the breeds that I'm interested in, then we will start again.
Wednesday, November 26, 2008
Neighbor's dogs killed all my chickens.
... I'm devastated and I don't know what to do. My girls were doing so well, everything was going so great with them. Now, just like that, they're gone. My poor babies, what a terrible way to die.
Monday, November 24, 2008
Sunday, November 16, 2008
A Simple Test:
The bank statement arrives in the mail every month. Does it have your name at the top of every page? If it does not, then stop trying to come into the bank to access that account: it is not yours to query, withdraw from, or transfer out of. If you are listed as "PoD" on an account, that means that you can access it once the other person is deceased. "PoD" stands for"payable on death" and does not give you any rights to the account prior to that day. Nobody can open a bank account "for" you: ridiculous concept. Here's another quick test: were you present when the account was opened? Did you present your driver's license, a second form of identification, your address, social security number, and date of birth? Did you have to sign certain documents that simultaneously show your proof of consent to open an account and make a record of your signature, should the bank ever need it? If you have no recollection of going through that process, chances are about 100% that you are not a signer on said account. The only way somebody can open an account in your name is if they have PoA for you, power of attorney. And if that was the case, it is highly unlikely that your able-bodied, able-minded self is going to wander into the bank to use said account. Power of attorney is given when people no longer have the capacity to act on their own behalf: I've never personally seen it apply to a college student. Generally it's used by middle-aged daughters of ailing, aging parents. Here's a third test: look at the debit card that you are trying to present. Is the name printed across the bottom in those raised, metallic letters your name? If there is a photo, is it a picture of you? If the answer to either of those is no, then you are making a grave, grave mistake in trying to present it to a bank teller as your own. Now I'm going to assume that this is not really your mistake so much as your boneheaded parent's. Some idiots will open an account in their name and hand the debit card and pin to their kid to use. Why? Search me. It could be they want total control over the account, but opening a joint account would give them the same level of access, and--hey!-- not be illegal at the same time. Or maybe said parent is just too confused by the fact that at 17 or 18, their little Cindy-Lou is old enough to have legal rights over a bank account. Either way, do NOT come into the bank with your parent's debit card, complaining that the ATM is out of order, that your PIN stopped working, or what have you. Because if you are a 6-foot tall college freshman with a beard and the card is issued to a one Linda X born in 1960, then we have a major problem on our hands. The teller is not "being mean" to you, or being "rude". What you are trying to do is flagrantly illegal, your parents are idiots, and what you are trying to do would get a bank teller fired. Give your mama's debit card back to her, say "thanks but no thanks, Ma", open your own damn bank account like the legal adult that you are, and get a shiny new debit card with your own name on it. It ain't rocket science, folks.
And one more thing. Do not ever, ever, write a check for funds that are not currently in your account. Do not think, "If I write Friday's date on the check, they won't be able to cash it until I get paid!", or "It should take at least three days for them to get this check in the mail, I should have money by then." It just doesn't work that way. Once you give someone a check, s/he can cash it at any point, regardless of what date you wrote. Also: writing "do not cash until: x" on the memo line doesn't do a thing. For some reason when I mail my doctor's bills, the checks get cashed within two days, even though they're being sent to another state. My Netflix sure don't come that fast, and they're only coming from Richmond, an hour and a half away. Go figure. Here's the bald fact: if you don't have the money in your account when you write the check, then you are writing a bad check. And you have absolutely no recourse if and when that check bounces. Now everybody writes bad checks on occasion (at least most of us-- thank God for overdraft protection), but usually it's a mistake, some bad math, an oops. It's only the people who are knowingly, consciously, intentionally writing a bad check and think it's OK that drive me nuts. I had a kid come in awhile back who had run out of checks. I made the usual suggestion: let's order you some checks for future use and make you a money order for whatever check you need to present immediately. (Because nobody ever orders checks until they need to write one.) Problem was, he didn't have the money in his account to make the money order: he had planned on writing a check and post-dating it for when he'd have the funds. And he didn't understand why we couldn't make him a money order with the same concept: can't the bank give me a money order now and just wait until my account has money in it to charge me? Uh, NO.
This is why I grind my teeth in my sleep, honestly.
And one more thing. Do not ever, ever, write a check for funds that are not currently in your account. Do not think, "If I write Friday's date on the check, they won't be able to cash it until I get paid!", or "It should take at least three days for them to get this check in the mail, I should have money by then." It just doesn't work that way. Once you give someone a check, s/he can cash it at any point, regardless of what date you wrote. Also: writing "do not cash until: x" on the memo line doesn't do a thing. For some reason when I mail my doctor's bills, the checks get cashed within two days, even though they're being sent to another state. My Netflix sure don't come that fast, and they're only coming from Richmond, an hour and a half away. Go figure. Here's the bald fact: if you don't have the money in your account when you write the check, then you are writing a bad check. And you have absolutely no recourse if and when that check bounces. Now everybody writes bad checks on occasion (at least most of us-- thank God for overdraft protection), but usually it's a mistake, some bad math, an oops. It's only the people who are knowingly, consciously, intentionally writing a bad check and think it's OK that drive me nuts. I had a kid come in awhile back who had run out of checks. I made the usual suggestion: let's order you some checks for future use and make you a money order for whatever check you need to present immediately. (Because nobody ever orders checks until they need to write one.) Problem was, he didn't have the money in his account to make the money order: he had planned on writing a check and post-dating it for when he'd have the funds. And he didn't understand why we couldn't make him a money order with the same concept: can't the bank give me a money order now and just wait until my account has money in it to charge me? Uh, NO.
This is why I grind my teeth in my sleep, honestly.
Friday, November 14, 2008
Flu
When I was young, my mom used to make chicken soup from scratch: homemade chicken stock, fresh (frozen) vegetables, fat egg noodles, identifiable chunks of chicken or turkey. Campbell's or Progresso, it wasn't. The problem with that kind of thing is that it spoils you for the rest of your life, making it neccessary to either develop those skills yourself, or marry someone who has them. Now Don is very good to me when I'm sick, he'll bring me soup, water, crackers, tea, run me hot baths and refill the vaporizer, but he can't make homemade soup. He might think it's a waste of time and space that I always make stock from our leftover chicken carcasses, since it takes all day and lots of valuable freezer space. But it is all worth it when I am as pathetically sick with the flu as I am today, and can make myself homemade soup in just a few minutes that's as good as my mom's. What was funny is that I tried to go in to work and got sent right back home (oops), so I went straight back to bed and woke up a few hours later completely forgetting about the whole went-to-work bit and thinking that I'd massively overslept and was hours late for work-- why hasn't anyone called me?!-- only to look down and see that I am still wearing my work clothes and not pajamas. The rest of the morning came back to me then. I think the fever is affecting my ability for rational thought, honestly. I'll probably come back and look as this entry and wonder what the heck I was on. (Chicken soup. I'm on chicken soup. hahahahaha) OK time to go back to bed now.
Except: has anyone else seen that Progresso commercial, where a guy is sitting down to what is clearly a bowl of Campbell's chicken noodle, when his wife replaces it with a bowl of Progresso and says, "the kids are gone, honey, it's time for the good stuff"? What is she implying, that it's ok to feed your kids crap and save the good stuff for yourself? It just seems so selfish... I mean she's talking about real food, not Halloween candy or something.
Except: has anyone else seen that Progresso commercial, where a guy is sitting down to what is clearly a bowl of Campbell's chicken noodle, when his wife replaces it with a bowl of Progresso and says, "the kids are gone, honey, it's time for the good stuff"? What is she implying, that it's ok to feed your kids crap and save the good stuff for yourself? It just seems so selfish... I mean she's talking about real food, not Halloween candy or something.
Sunday, November 09, 2008
MORE chicken blathering
I've been stealing bagged leaves from the curb in front of my neighbors' house. I think it's OK because they're just waiting to be picked up by the city anyway; I don't know if they're composted or just added to the dump. It still feels a little weird, though, to scurry across the street and surreptitiously grab a huge bag of leaves. I'm stealing them for my compost heaps, to balance out the bounty of chicken manure in there. I got the birds for essentially two reasons, the eggs and the manure... if they turn out to be as good at producing eggs as they are at shit, then I've really struck gold. I'm not expecting eggs for another six weeks at least, and not really much until spring (because they don't lay in the short, dark days of winter), so we'll see when the time comes.
We've had the girls for a month now, but somehow it seems so normal to have chickens that it feels like we've had them a lot longer. They just fit right into our lives and our backyard: we have a solid routine now, letting them out in the morning, back in at night, moving the whole contraption twice a week, mucking out the inside every weekend. I'm learning a lot about them. Today, for example, I learned that my toes look exactly like tasty, fat white grubs or something similar, and that my Birkenstocks are REALLY not the best footwear when working around the birdies. I thought chickens make more noise than they do; they're really quiet. Maybe when they get older and start laying? Right now they don't cackle or crow, just make little chirping noises. There's so much discussion in some quarters as to whether chickens are all right as urban, backyard pets (banned in a lot of cities, for instance) that I figured that they had to be more troublesome somehow, loud or smelly. But they're completely unobjectionable! Even cleaned only once a week, their house doesn't stink; the cat's litter box is much worse. It might be because they've got plenty of space, inside and outside; when people talk about chickens being smelly they're probably thinking about over-crowded chickens.
Sorry about writing about nothing but the chickens, but that's what's going on around here; everything else is business as usual. Work equals blech. Economy equals double-blech... if Don loses his job we're absolutely screwed. (Not that I think that will happen, it's just my main economic worry.) He's making good progress on the downstairs unit; the hole in the wall is gone. I'm hoping to have it ready to rent for January, especially considering that having rental income was a big part of the can-we-afford-this discussion when we bought the house and we've already made three mortgage payments without that. One thing at a time, though, right?
We've had the girls for a month now, but somehow it seems so normal to have chickens that it feels like we've had them a lot longer. They just fit right into our lives and our backyard: we have a solid routine now, letting them out in the morning, back in at night, moving the whole contraption twice a week, mucking out the inside every weekend. I'm learning a lot about them. Today, for example, I learned that my toes look exactly like tasty, fat white grubs or something similar, and that my Birkenstocks are REALLY not the best footwear when working around the birdies. I thought chickens make more noise than they do; they're really quiet. Maybe when they get older and start laying? Right now they don't cackle or crow, just make little chirping noises. There's so much discussion in some quarters as to whether chickens are all right as urban, backyard pets (banned in a lot of cities, for instance) that I figured that they had to be more troublesome somehow, loud or smelly. But they're completely unobjectionable! Even cleaned only once a week, their house doesn't stink; the cat's litter box is much worse. It might be because they've got plenty of space, inside and outside; when people talk about chickens being smelly they're probably thinking about over-crowded chickens.
Sorry about writing about nothing but the chickens, but that's what's going on around here; everything else is business as usual. Work equals blech. Economy equals double-blech... if Don loses his job we're absolutely screwed. (Not that I think that will happen, it's just my main economic worry.) He's making good progress on the downstairs unit; the hole in the wall is gone. I'm hoping to have it ready to rent for January, especially considering that having rental income was a big part of the can-we-afford-this discussion when we bought the house and we've already made three mortgage payments without that. One thing at a time, though, right?
Wednesday, November 05, 2008
Tuesday, November 04, 2008
Kingsley Shacklebolt for Minister of Magic!
I mean, wait. That's not what I mean.
Go, go, Gryffindors! Gryffindors for the Cup!
No. Crap.
OBAMA FOR PRESIDENT!
Ha. That's what I was trying to say!
You people in Texas think you're all fancy with your early voting. Sure, I had to wait until today to cast my ballot, Virginia being ass-backwards in this respect, but did YOU get a free cup of Starbucks for wearing your "I voted" sticker? I think not! hahahahahaha Also I'm in a swing state and you're not, nyah nyah nyah
It may not have been my first cup today either.
Go, go, Gryffindors! Gryffindors for the Cup!
No. Crap.
OBAMA FOR PRESIDENT!
Ha. That's what I was trying to say!
You people in Texas think you're all fancy with your early voting. Sure, I had to wait until today to cast my ballot, Virginia being ass-backwards in this respect, but did YOU get a free cup of Starbucks for wearing your "I voted" sticker? I think not! hahahahahaha Also I'm in a swing state and you're not, nyah nyah nyah
It may not have been my first cup today either.
Saturday, October 18, 2008
Harriet. The third one is Harriet.
Matilda, Frances and Harriet meet the Great Outdoors. They wouldn't go outside and I (desparately) needed to clean out their coop-- these girls are POOP MACHINES!-- so I finally just grabbed each one and sort of threw her out the door. Each made this awful *squawk* of fear or surprise, then went suddenly silent. I rushed around to the other side to see what they were doing... they had discovered the feed tray and were already eating. Got over the fear fast, it would seem. Tomorrow I'll open the door again and see if today's adventures have lessened the fear of the outdoor-part of the enclosure...Tuesday, October 14, 2008
Mah babies!
We finished the chicken house. We bought the chickens: three lovely, 7-week old Buff Orpington chicks. We are now proud... what? Chicken-owners? Chicken farmers? Parents? Sponsors? Co-habitors? I took this photo from an upstairs window, so it's not very good. They spend a lot of time huddled in the doorway like that, pondering the great outdoors. I hope that they soon make the Great Leap into the run, where they can experience grass and bugs and all that. They're already a lot less terrified of me than they were at first, which is promising. Oh, the bravest one is Matilda, the middle one is Francis, and the scaredy-chicken is as yet unnamed. They look identical to me, so I hope that either their personalities stay constant, or they don't mind switching names occasionally. For more about the coop, it's all on the other blog.Edit: Frances, not Francis. They're all girl chickies... I hope.
Friday, October 10, 2008
So, uh, yeah. Everything's all crazy, somehow... stock market blah blah blah, election blah blah blah. Wow look at all that news. I keep switching between obsessively watching the news, and deciding that I CAN'T WATCH ANY MORE NEWS and turning to Futurama or The Office instead. I tried to watch the presidental debate Tuesday, but it was boring and McCain was annoying me too much to continue. "My friend" this and "my friend" that... Just saying it doesn't make it true, sir.
Speaking of which, this is a SUPER-FUN time to be working in the financial and/or banking industry, let me tell you. Not that I can tell you all that much, since I can't really talk about work issues, but not fun: not even at one of the good, stable banks. Then again, I suppose it wouldn't make much of a difference to be in an industry a little further removed, since everybody seems to be getting hit with the same stuff.
I'm getting my chickens on Saturday. Don has finished the chicken coop and it is lovely-- picture to follow soon, I hope. Everything is moving so slowly on the house, as Don and I try to squeeze things in on weekends; half the time he's working weekends, too, or at least part of it.
Speaking of which, this is a SUPER-FUN time to be working in the financial and/or banking industry, let me tell you. Not that I can tell you all that much, since I can't really talk about work issues, but not fun: not even at one of the good, stable banks. Then again, I suppose it wouldn't make much of a difference to be in an industry a little further removed, since everybody seems to be getting hit with the same stuff.
I'm getting my chickens on Saturday. Don has finished the chicken coop and it is lovely-- picture to follow soon, I hope. Everything is moving so slowly on the house, as Don and I try to squeeze things in on weekends; half the time he's working weekends, too, or at least part of it.
Friday, October 03, 2008
And I stayed up past my bedtime for this?
If Don and I had been but a bit more prepared to watch the Vice-Presidential debate last night, we could have turned it into a drinking game: take a swig for every time Sarah Palin said any one of the following:
"Darn right!"
"Moms and dads"
"Soccer" or "hockey"
"Kitchen table"
"Ain't"
...Or, every time she dropped a 'g': gettin', makin', movin'. I mean sure, we would have been totally sloshed by the time the debate ended, but we're both willing to make that sacrifice for the sake of good politics.
Personally, I found it annoying and patronizing. Is this what "main-stream" (or is it "main-street") America wants: someone who uses the littlest words possible so as not to confuse the audience (or to keep from betraying the fact that she may not know the bigger words either?), talks as though nobody listening to her has the education or intelligence to comprehend the big issues? I know that I'm not "mainstream", for various reasons. But I can't be the only viewer (voter) last night that felt insulted by her attitude towards us, rather than warm-and-fuzzy. Either she's really talking down to the voter, or this really is "her": either insulting or terrifying, depending how ya see it. Don'tcha know.
Edited to add: We could have used 'maverick' for a chaser...
"Darn right!"
"Moms and dads"
"Soccer" or "hockey"
"Kitchen table"
"Ain't"
...Or, every time she dropped a 'g': gettin', makin', movin'. I mean sure, we would have been totally sloshed by the time the debate ended, but we're both willing to make that sacrifice for the sake of good politics.
Personally, I found it annoying and patronizing. Is this what "main-stream" (or is it "main-street") America wants: someone who uses the littlest words possible so as not to confuse the audience (or to keep from betraying the fact that she may not know the bigger words either?), talks as though nobody listening to her has the education or intelligence to comprehend the big issues? I know that I'm not "mainstream", for various reasons. But I can't be the only viewer (voter) last night that felt insulted by her attitude towards us, rather than warm-and-fuzzy. Either she's really talking down to the voter, or this really is "her": either insulting or terrifying, depending how ya see it. Don'tcha know.
Edited to add: We could have used 'maverick' for a chaser...
Tuesday, September 30, 2008
recap
First, thank you everybody who has commented on my blog recently-- Amanda, Rachel, MDC mamas, thank you. Your thoughtful words help me more than you know.
I know what I want. I've always known. I didn't just wake up one day at 25 years old and decide that it would be quite nice to have a baby; it's not because starting a family is next on the to-do list. I have wanted children always; everything else has lead up to getting to a place where it was finally practical to try. It's something that has been in my mind, in my heart, forever. The only reason I'm questioning it now is because it's been so hard, so unexpectedly difficult, to get started-- miscarriage after miscarriage after miscarriage. So I have to ask, is it still worth it? Is it worth it to put myself through this, to put Don through this-- emotionally, physically? But it still is. I don't know at what point it wouldn't be, but we're not there yet.
And, it's not just 'a baby' that I want. Yes, I want a tiny, scrunch-faced, bright-red, nursing newborn, but I also want the toddler. The seven-year-old. The teenager. The adult (although it's hard to imagine.) I want our household dynamic to be less Mad About You and more The Burrow. I want a noisy, chaotic houseful of children... and eventually, for them all to leave and do their own thing.
I know what I want. I've always known. I didn't just wake up one day at 25 years old and decide that it would be quite nice to have a baby; it's not because starting a family is next on the to-do list. I have wanted children always; everything else has lead up to getting to a place where it was finally practical to try. It's something that has been in my mind, in my heart, forever. The only reason I'm questioning it now is because it's been so hard, so unexpectedly difficult, to get started-- miscarriage after miscarriage after miscarriage. So I have to ask, is it still worth it? Is it worth it to put myself through this, to put Don through this-- emotionally, physically? But it still is. I don't know at what point it wouldn't be, but we're not there yet.
And, it's not just 'a baby' that I want. Yes, I want a tiny, scrunch-faced, bright-red, nursing newborn, but I also want the toddler. The seven-year-old. The teenager. The adult (although it's hard to imagine.) I want our household dynamic to be less Mad About You and more The Burrow. I want a noisy, chaotic houseful of children... and eventually, for them all to leave and do their own thing.
Sunday, September 21, 2008
What we don't have
Some people seem to have a single goal, one task to accomplish, to make their lives complete. They think, 'when I _____, then everything will be perfect.' Weight loss is one example; I've known women (well, girls, back then) who believed that if they could get their weight to X pounds, they'd be happy. Everything would be great, everybody would love them. The fact that everything else in life would be the same-- same parents, same friends, same job, same house, whatever-- was always ignored, as though being skinny were a ticket to a whole different life. (If that were true, wouldn't all the thin girls they knew be endlessly joyous already, instead of having their own issues?) I've also seen it with school and work: once I get into this school or get that degree or get hired by this company or get that promotion, life will be grand.
I'm afraid, sometimes, that I'm doing the same thing with starting a family: thinking that once I have a baby (or the four children I wanted before I knew how hard this would be), life will be perfect. Because it's been so unexpectedly difficult, required so much effort and concentration and emotional commitment, it's made the whole issue my raison d'etre instead of the sideshow it started as. For at least a year, getting pregnant and staying pregnant has occupied an enormous amount of my psychic space and has become kind of a monomania: everything will be perfect once we have a baby... and by implication, nothing can really ever be OK until we do.
On the one hand, I'm worried that like so many others, I'll eventually achieve what I want, only to look around and realize that it was a hollow victory after all, and that life (and I) hasn't really changed, except now there's a baby, just like everybody that I know or have read about, who pinned all of their hopes on a single goal only to achieve it and still be unfulfilled. On the other hand, though, maybe it's because everything else really is OK, and the only thing wrong in my life is this whole infertility/ceaseless-miscarriages thing. I mean, I've been ridiculously, embarrassingly blessed overall in terms of parents, family, Don, health, jobs, friends, etc, and this is essentially the first time that I've had real difficulty with anything. I'm not expecting a baby to change anything else-- how people see me, how I see myself-- so maybe that's a difference.
Another thing I've been thinking about is this: a lot of the things I do right now, I do with the expectation that eventually this will all pay off re: babies. What if it didn't? What if I knew right now, that Don and I would never have a family-- what would I do? What would we do? I've been fairly unhappy at work for awhile, but I've stayed because I have my health benefits through this job, because looking for a new job when you're trying to get pregnant (and therefore possibly going to be leaving again soon) is silly. The health insurance is no small thing when you're regularly seeing a specialist, and the new-job-seeking isn't either, if you plan to quit should you have a baby. On a similar note, I've been fairly lazy about moving up even in the same company (it's just over a year now since my last promotion), for a couple of reasons. The first is that, as I mentioned earlier, the infertility stuff is taking up a ton of my time and energy and the thought of trying to master a new position at work is not a good one. The second is sort of bad but I'll come clean: I don't want to upset the income ratio. I'm afraid that if I start making too much more money, whether or not I should "stay home" would start coming under question and I don't want that. Stupid, I know. I didn't even realize that I was thinking like that until the other night. So you see, there are all of these decisions being made based on the theory that soon we'll have a baby. What if we knew we wouldn't? I'd quit my job, no question about that. Find something else, not worry too much about the pay or the benefits. Spend more, save less. Drink more wine, take fewer vitamins. I don't know.
It's just weird to have my life revolving around this center that isn't even a something but the lack of a something.
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On a different note. I've been thinking about what the phrases we all insert into our conversations imply about how we feel. I have a friend that always exclaims, "...I'm serious, you guys!" when she's telling us something. Keeping in mind that we're not questioning it or laughing at her, I think it shows a real fear of not being taken seriously... She also uses the word "literally" all the time. I find myself constantly asking, "... you know what I mean?" or just, "... you know?" at the end of things, which rather hints that I'm scared of being misunderstood. Someone else, who consistently uses the phrase, "I'm the kind of person who ____" instead of just making a declarative sentence, ""I ___" What does it mean? That she needs to reassure herself that she's not alone in her viewpoints? Or that she doesn't have the self-confidence to just declare that she is x or y, or believes a or b. (I'm the kind of person who hates it when people claim to be the kind of person who...) I think we probably all have verbal tics that give away our social fears... personally I'm trying to drop the, "... you know what I mean?"
I'm afraid, sometimes, that I'm doing the same thing with starting a family: thinking that once I have a baby (or the four children I wanted before I knew how hard this would be), life will be perfect. Because it's been so unexpectedly difficult, required so much effort and concentration and emotional commitment, it's made the whole issue my raison d'etre instead of the sideshow it started as. For at least a year, getting pregnant and staying pregnant has occupied an enormous amount of my psychic space and has become kind of a monomania: everything will be perfect once we have a baby... and by implication, nothing can really ever be OK until we do.
On the one hand, I'm worried that like so many others, I'll eventually achieve what I want, only to look around and realize that it was a hollow victory after all, and that life (and I) hasn't really changed, except now there's a baby, just like everybody that I know or have read about, who pinned all of their hopes on a single goal only to achieve it and still be unfulfilled. On the other hand, though, maybe it's because everything else really is OK, and the only thing wrong in my life is this whole infertility/ceaseless-miscarriages thing. I mean, I've been ridiculously, embarrassingly blessed overall in terms of parents, family, Don, health, jobs, friends, etc, and this is essentially the first time that I've had real difficulty with anything. I'm not expecting a baby to change anything else-- how people see me, how I see myself-- so maybe that's a difference.
Another thing I've been thinking about is this: a lot of the things I do right now, I do with the expectation that eventually this will all pay off re: babies. What if it didn't? What if I knew right now, that Don and I would never have a family-- what would I do? What would we do? I've been fairly unhappy at work for awhile, but I've stayed because I have my health benefits through this job, because looking for a new job when you're trying to get pregnant (and therefore possibly going to be leaving again soon) is silly. The health insurance is no small thing when you're regularly seeing a specialist, and the new-job-seeking isn't either, if you plan to quit should you have a baby. On a similar note, I've been fairly lazy about moving up even in the same company (it's just over a year now since my last promotion), for a couple of reasons. The first is that, as I mentioned earlier, the infertility stuff is taking up a ton of my time and energy and the thought of trying to master a new position at work is not a good one. The second is sort of bad but I'll come clean: I don't want to upset the income ratio. I'm afraid that if I start making too much more money, whether or not I should "stay home" would start coming under question and I don't want that. Stupid, I know. I didn't even realize that I was thinking like that until the other night. So you see, there are all of these decisions being made based on the theory that soon we'll have a baby. What if we knew we wouldn't? I'd quit my job, no question about that. Find something else, not worry too much about the pay or the benefits. Spend more, save less. Drink more wine, take fewer vitamins. I don't know.
It's just weird to have my life revolving around this center that isn't even a something but the lack of a something.
***************************
On a different note. I've been thinking about what the phrases we all insert into our conversations imply about how we feel. I have a friend that always exclaims, "...I'm serious, you guys!" when she's telling us something. Keeping in mind that we're not questioning it or laughing at her, I think it shows a real fear of not being taken seriously... She also uses the word "literally" all the time. I find myself constantly asking, "... you know what I mean?" or just, "... you know?" at the end of things, which rather hints that I'm scared of being misunderstood. Someone else, who consistently uses the phrase, "I'm the kind of person who ____" instead of just making a declarative sentence, ""I ___" What does it mean? That she needs to reassure herself that she's not alone in her viewpoints? Or that she doesn't have the self-confidence to just declare that she is x or y, or believes a or b. (I'm the kind of person who hates it when people claim to be the kind of person who...) I think we probably all have verbal tics that give away our social fears... personally I'm trying to drop the, "... you know what I mean?"
Tuesday, September 16, 2008
Completely Unrelated!
Why does Garfield hate Mondays? It's not like he had a job, had to get up and go to work. I don't even remember Jon having a job, really. A Monday to Garfield should be just like a Sunday or a Tuesday. It doesn't really make sense, they're just pandering to us working workers who would feel the empathy.
Plans to get chickens over the weekend fell through, which was probably a good thing as the coop isn't quite finished yet. Still needs wheels, a roof, and the window.
Saw a bumper sticker today that said, "Midwives, they help people out!" which just slayed me. Think about it, it's funny. I wonder if the car belongs to the midwife I talked to in February, before I knew I was a special case (and that I'd lose that pregnancy.) From what I can find, there are maybe four midwives here-- two practices-- so the odds are good, unless there are more around who just don't advertise their services.
We have finished an entire bottle of multivitamins for men, an entire bottle of fish oil, and almost all of the L-Carnitine, which means it's been sixty days since I put Don on all this stuff, which means that it's been more than two months since the last miscarriage.
I could possibly be pregnant again, it's too soon to know. I don't know how I feel about that, except that I feel I have no real choice, as I'm compelled to keep trying by a force stronger than rational decision-making. (Which may not be all that strong anyways, as neither of us are much known for our powers of the rational as it is.) So, wait and see. I have a different mentality now about the chances for each pregnancy. It's sort of hard to explain. Before, I was convinced that each pregnancy was IT, the one that would be our baby. Everything I read, everything the doctors said, reinforced the idea that the odds were in our favor. There's no reason, they said, why your next pregnancy wouldn't work out! Even now, after four miscarriages and no successful pregnancies, the literature claims our chances for a successful try next time are still better than 50-50, and that's not assuming any kind of treatment.
Now I feel like this: clearly, there's something that makes it difficult for me (or us) to hold onto a pregnancy. It may be just the progesterone issue, or maybe it's that plus something else, something the doctors couldn't find or didn't look for. I did the progesterone religiously last time, but to no avail: could be "bad luck" (the doctors' theory), could be some problem with the method (maybe I'm not absorbing it properly, or once it's in me, it doesn't act right, or something-- I'm no scientist), or maybe there's another issue, either in general or with just that pregnancy-- a bad egg or a lousy sperm or a bad implantation. I feel like there's a number out there, that describes our odds of success. The doctors don't know it, nobody does. Is it one-in-ten? One-in-twenty? Or one-in-a-million? I'm veering towards the lower end because there's so much that's not wrong, so much that tested clean. But there's no way to know: it could be impossible but how to find that out without trying again and again? Everything we do is to push those odds higher: the progesterone, the supplements, the specialists. Maybe this next time, it will work because of some little change; maybe all the vitamins I'm force-feeding into Don will make his swimmer straighten up and fly right... if that was ever a problem. Maybe my megadoses of folic acid will make some kind of difference. We don't know. Maybe it will work because statistically, it's just chance, just a million different things falling into place. If our odds are one-in-ten for a good pregnancy, maybe this time the dice will roll right. Or maybe it will fail again. But I think I can be OK with that, maybe. Because I'm no longer telling myself that this next time is IT.
Plans to get chickens over the weekend fell through, which was probably a good thing as the coop isn't quite finished yet. Still needs wheels, a roof, and the window.
Saw a bumper sticker today that said, "Midwives, they help people out!" which just slayed me. Think about it, it's funny. I wonder if the car belongs to the midwife I talked to in February, before I knew I was a special case (and that I'd lose that pregnancy.) From what I can find, there are maybe four midwives here-- two practices-- so the odds are good, unless there are more around who just don't advertise their services.
We have finished an entire bottle of multivitamins for men, an entire bottle of fish oil, and almost all of the L-Carnitine, which means it's been sixty days since I put Don on all this stuff, which means that it's been more than two months since the last miscarriage.
I could possibly be pregnant again, it's too soon to know. I don't know how I feel about that, except that I feel I have no real choice, as I'm compelled to keep trying by a force stronger than rational decision-making. (Which may not be all that strong anyways, as neither of us are much known for our powers of the rational as it is.) So, wait and see. I have a different mentality now about the chances for each pregnancy. It's sort of hard to explain. Before, I was convinced that each pregnancy was IT, the one that would be our baby. Everything I read, everything the doctors said, reinforced the idea that the odds were in our favor. There's no reason, they said, why your next pregnancy wouldn't work out! Even now, after four miscarriages and no successful pregnancies, the literature claims our chances for a successful try next time are still better than 50-50, and that's not assuming any kind of treatment.
Now I feel like this: clearly, there's something that makes it difficult for me (or us) to hold onto a pregnancy. It may be just the progesterone issue, or maybe it's that plus something else, something the doctors couldn't find or didn't look for. I did the progesterone religiously last time, but to no avail: could be "bad luck" (the doctors' theory), could be some problem with the method (maybe I'm not absorbing it properly, or once it's in me, it doesn't act right, or something-- I'm no scientist), or maybe there's another issue, either in general or with just that pregnancy-- a bad egg or a lousy sperm or a bad implantation. I feel like there's a number out there, that describes our odds of success. The doctors don't know it, nobody does. Is it one-in-ten? One-in-twenty? Or one-in-a-million? I'm veering towards the lower end because there's so much that's not wrong, so much that tested clean. But there's no way to know: it could be impossible but how to find that out without trying again and again? Everything we do is to push those odds higher: the progesterone, the supplements, the specialists. Maybe this next time, it will work because of some little change; maybe all the vitamins I'm force-feeding into Don will make his swimmer straighten up and fly right... if that was ever a problem. Maybe my megadoses of folic acid will make some kind of difference. We don't know. Maybe it will work because statistically, it's just chance, just a million different things falling into place. If our odds are one-in-ten for a good pregnancy, maybe this time the dice will roll right. Or maybe it will fail again. But I think I can be OK with that, maybe. Because I'm no longer telling myself that this next time is IT.
Tuesday, September 09, 2008
Ketchup
It seems that I haven't written here in forever. Oops about that. Nothing's wrong or anything, just a confluence of factors conspiring against the blog. It started with a few really hectic weeks at work, with me working overtime all over the place, as well as being really busy while at work. I hate to admit it, but downtime at work is generally when I write in here. Then the camera batteries died, and I really wanted to put up a picture of something... Now I can't remember what. Mostly, though, it's because I've been really struggling with the miscarriage thing (again. or still.) and it makes for such repetitive writing. In a novel or a movie, trauma resolves itself to some kind of conclusion; in a journal it just rehashes itself endlessly.
I didn't want to write much about (or think about) the last miscarriage, because it was awful. So I kind of dealt with it in the most minimal way possible, which worked until a month later when my period came, because that was awful too, and it was like some kind of freaky flashback thing. (Note to self: vocabulary. find some.) I didn't feel like working through that on paper, so to speak. So I just didn't write at all. Then Don and I were confronted with the approach of the Fertile Window and had to decide whether or not we were Trying Again this cycle. After four miscarriages it's become a grim decision, not the joyous one it was the first time, or even the second. I actually said to him, "We need to talk soon about whether to try for our next miscarriage this month, or wait another cycle"... without realizing what I'd said wrong. Well, no point putting off the inevitable; we're going to keep trying so we may as well try as soon as possible.
Good things have been happening, too. I mentioned that we'd done a good bit of work on the fence; now the chicken coop is almost done too. Don took that project over, as predicted, but is following my design pretty well. We were supposed to be getting the actual birds this weekend, but that's up in the air now. The weather's been great, lots of rain from the hurricanes, starting to get into my favorite season now. Got a little raise at work. Plane tickets booked for New Mexico in December; finally get a chance to hang out with my family there for a bit. It hasn't been all five of us since Big Bend 2006. So that's something to look forward to.
I didn't want to write much about (or think about) the last miscarriage, because it was awful. So I kind of dealt with it in the most minimal way possible, which worked until a month later when my period came, because that was awful too, and it was like some kind of freaky flashback thing. (Note to self: vocabulary. find some.) I didn't feel like working through that on paper, so to speak. So I just didn't write at all. Then Don and I were confronted with the approach of the Fertile Window and had to decide whether or not we were Trying Again this cycle. After four miscarriages it's become a grim decision, not the joyous one it was the first time, or even the second. I actually said to him, "We need to talk soon about whether to try for our next miscarriage this month, or wait another cycle"... without realizing what I'd said wrong. Well, no point putting off the inevitable; we're going to keep trying so we may as well try as soon as possible.
Good things have been happening, too. I mentioned that we'd done a good bit of work on the fence; now the chicken coop is almost done too. Don took that project over, as predicted, but is following my design pretty well. We were supposed to be getting the actual birds this weekend, but that's up in the air now. The weather's been great, lots of rain from the hurricanes, starting to get into my favorite season now. Got a little raise at work. Plane tickets booked for New Mexico in December; finally get a chance to hang out with my family there for a bit. It hasn't been all five of us since Big Bend 2006. So that's something to look forward to.
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