Casual Thoughts
No baby yet, and my favorite quotes from this morning’s weather guy:
Feb 12th
There’s no baby yet. Ryan and I feel like we need to clarify that right away with whoever we are speaking to (unless we see/talk to them every day). He called his parents last night, and I think he said “No baby yet” before he even said hello. I have a feeling that will continue until he shows up.
I had to laugh at the weather guy this morning. I like this guy; he doesn’t have a weird shtick or make lame jokes (usually), and he can speak well on television (no small feat for some people). The reason he cracked me up was more about our expectations and feelings about what constitutes “nice” weather in Minnesota in February.
*While the television is showing that the current temperature is -5* “It’s going to be a nice day today!” – Why do I have trouble believing this right now?
“The wind is blowing a little around the lake shore, causing windchill factors only 5-10* lower than the actual temperature, so we aren’t getting into the -20’s, -30’s, or even the dangerous -40’s.” – Yes, -40’s are dangerous, but he made it sound like the other temperatures were decent as long as you didn’t get THAT low. And the fact that we wouldn’t be surprised if the windchill factor was that bad…well, I don’t know why we all continue to live here. My coworkers say it keeps the riff-raff out. I have my doubts.
“The air is trying to move toward the lake because the air above the lake is in the 20’s and 30’s due to that NICE WARM LAKE WATER.” [Emphasis mine] HAHAHAHAHAHA. The same lake that in August will turn your feet blue in seconds and has people surfing and using jet skis in wetsuits all summer long. Compared to the air temps I guess it is warm, but the fact that anyone says Lake Superior ever has “nice, warm lake water” cracks me up.
Rereading this it occurs to me that it’s probably not as amusing to anyone else as it was in my head. I think that happens to me a lot. Unfortunately for you, it’s what I’ve got this morning. I got up at 5 so that I could go into work early because I have a LOT of stuff I want to get done before the baby comes and I don’t want to chance leaving it over the weekend. So I’m a little tired, a little spacey from the last weeks of pregnancy (or maybe I’m always a little spacey – but I’m blaming it on the pregnancy while I can), and already thinking about work. My judgment of what is funny is not to be trusted.
Except for this: this is funny. And I will be printing out her pain chart to bring with me to the hospital so that when someone asks me how much it hurts I can point to one of these faces.
This is kind of awesome.
Jan 20th
I lost my phone over the weekend. It totally disappeared. Obviously going without a phone is a bad idea; especially these days. So Monday Ryan and I went up to the Verizon store to beg them to let me upgrade early. They were awesomely helpful, and I came home with a new phone.
I previously had the LG Chocolate, which I liked, but since we were planning on upgrading me to a smartphone when my contract expired in September anyway, I got an HTC Droid. And so far I love it. In fact I’m writing from it right now.
The major downside to this story is that unless Ryan has your phone number I don’t have it anymore. So if you could email it to me that would be awesome.
Anyone else out there have a Droid? What do you think?
Conversations
Jan 5th
Ryan: I have to go up to [apartment complex his workplace services] today after work. I’ll drop you off at home and head up there. (We carpool to work)
Me: OK. How long do you think you’ll be?
Ryan: Between 20 minutes and 5 hours.
Sadly, this is not a surprising answer, and he wasn’t really joking. It’s been over an hour so far. This does not bode well for the apartment cleaning we were going to get done, although the overtime is nice. Especially with my maternity leave coming up.
What’s that? You think I should do the cleaning on my own while he’s gone? HAHAHAHA. I can barely put my own socks and shoes on these days so picking stuff up off the floor is definitely out, and I can hardly reach the faucet to turn on the water, much less stand over the sink to do the dishes. I was going to sweep/mop and dry the dishes after Ryan washed them, so it’ll have to wait.
In exciting news, the cloth diapers we will be using arrived in today’s mail, and they are SO CUTE. Seriously – adorable. We have 6 different colors, and I like them all. I’m sure they’ll be much less adorable once they are in use and full of poop. We ordered the BumGenius 3.0 diapers. We have some friends who use them, and they like them a lot. I’ll try to remember to let you know how they work for us. One word of advice they did give us was to not let the diaper pail sit for more than a day. Apparently it is not pleasant. I can only imagine.
We also had my 34 week appointment today. The baby is head down, and I’m measuring exactly right. The Doctor asked if we had the hospital bag packed yet. We don’t, and she suggested that we should probably have it ready by our next appointment in 2 weeks. That makes it all even more real. At most I have 8 weeks left of being pregnant. More likely it’ll be less than that. Yikes.
Well, I suppose I should get to the picking up I can do around here. Ryan just called and is on his way home with Erberts & Gerberts (only an hour and a half tonight! woo!).
Happy New Year!
Jan 4th
A few days late maybe, but better late than never. We’re trying out a new theme for the new year. Let us know what you think. (For good or bad, it is one of the most popular themes on the WordPress site right now)
Christmas Meme
Dec 20th
I got this from Swistle, and it looked fun. Also, I am too lazy to write a real entry tonight. I’m playing the pregnancy card.
Eggnog or hot chocolate? I prefer hot chocolate, although I do like to try a glass of eggnog once a year.
Does Santa wrap the presents or leave them open under the tree? Santa hasn’t visited Ryan and I at our apartment, since we always are at one of our respective parents’ house for Christmas. At my parents’ house Santa doesn’t wrap gifts – he leaves them under the tree with our names marked on them or in our stockings. At Ryan’s parents’ house he wraps them – even the ones in the stockings. I’m not sure what will happen if he ever visits us here…maybe some of each?
Colored lights on a tree or white? We have some of each, and I like it that way.
Do you hang mistletoe? Nope.
When do you put your decorations up? Since we are usually out of town for Thanksgiving we don’t usually put them up until during that next week or the following weekend. Whenever we get our tree from Pappy’s Trees (this cute old guy that sells trees out of his yard).
What is your favorite holiday dish? Lefse. Mmm…real lefse with butter and sugar (probably made by Lutherans in the church basement – that’s the best kind, you know).
Do you open a gift on Christmas Eve? My family opens our gifts on Christmas eve, after a light dinner (usually just hors d’oeuvres) before Midnight Mass. Ryan’s family opens gifts on Christmas eve too. Christmas day is for Santa/church/relaxing.
How do you decorate your Christmas tree? Usually I string lights right up next to the trunk and then come out from there, so there are a lot of lights all through the tree. Our ornaments are mostly things that we’ve gotten as gifts. Last year it was pretty sparse, but Ryan’s sister got us a few boxes of pretty ornaments to add to our collection, so this year it’s much better.
Snow: love it or hate it? I love it as long as I don’t have to deal with it. Especially now that we have a 4-wheel drive vehicle. It’s the cold I can’t stand.
Can you ice skate? HA. I grew up in a town where the high school hockey games were THE events to be at. We went skating for gym class in the winter, and until I was in 7th grade we lived next to a river and would make our own rink on the frozen river every year. I’m not very good though, for all that learning.
What is your favorite holiday dessert? Pie. I love pie. Although the candies my mom makes are a close second.
What is your favorite holiday tradition? Eating a light meal on Christmas eve for dinner before opening gifts. Cheeseball and crackers and meat and candy. Yum.
Candy canes: yum or yuck? Traditional ones are ok. I really like the Starburst ones, but I don’t buy candy canes because the stickiness drives me crazy. There’s no good way to eat them without getting completely sticky.
Favorite Christmas show? How the Grinch Stole Christmas. Always the cartoon version. Although A Christmas Story is a close second. “You’ll shoot your eye out!” HAHAHA. My sister and I got bb guns for Christmas one year. I don’t think anyone told us that though. And we were (are) good shots.
Phone people
Dec 15th
I am not a phone person. I think you all know what I mean. There are some people that love to talk on the phone. They can visit for hours at a time, always thinking of something new to talk about, and they are usually good at multitasking while they do it. My sister comes to mind (only one of them). She calls me once or twice a week, usually, and its a good thing, because I don’t call anyone, ever. She updates me on the funny things her kids are up to (her kids are awesome), and asks me questions about my life, and talks about her school work and their dairy farm and the neighbors and the people she knows from her job at the nursing home. You will notice that her life is considerably busy – she has 2 kids that live with them full-time and 2 other kids that come and go, along with a dairy farm that she and her husband run, a part-time job at the nursing home, and she’s currently taking 18 credits at a local college to get her degree in social work. The woman is seriously motivated. Anyway, even with all of this going on, she calls me. And she calls my mom and my other sisters. She is a phone person (and it’s a good thing, because I get most of my family news through her).
I, on the other hand, am not a phone person. It’s not that I’m too busy – we don’t have any kids (yet), I only have my one full-time job, and it’s a strictly 8-4:30 gig M-F. I was volunteering at the library twice a week, but I quit doing that when all the bending over was making me dizzy (sometime around 15 weeks pregnant or so). I just don’t enjoy talking on the phone much, I guess. I view it as a very utilitarian thing. I call someone if I need to talk to them about something – where are you, what time are we meeting, how do I make this, etc. Or if I need to share news, and usually I try to call if it’s a special occasion (birthdays, for example), but I’m not great at that either.
It’s not that I don’t like talking to the people I know. I love visiting with people in person, and I’m great at email…I just don’t like the phone. I’m not very good at making small talk. I ask a lot of stupid questions like “So, what’s up?” over and over if I get the sense that the other person expects me to stay on the phone, or if they call me and the conversation lags. I’m just not good with down-time on the phone. Usually I call, ask the obligatory question about how things are going, and get right to my reason for calling. And then I hang up.
Are you a phone person? Do you know someone who is different than you are, and does it bother you, or fascinate you (or some of each)?
We aren’t dead or anything; I promise.
Dec 14th
Things have been busy around our place, between getting all the Christmas shopping done (we weren’t able to do it all online) and catching up on stuff that should have gotten done the week after Thanksgiving but got put off because we were in class most of the week. We are finally mostly caught up, but over the weekend we had Ryan’s company Christmas party, and I didn’t get nearly as much done yesterday as I wanted to. I had big plans to be making candy and stuff all day, and then I just didn’t want to. I did get the caramel made for chocolate covered caramels (it has to refrigerate overnight before I can dip it), but that’s about it. Although I made a real dinner, so that should count. My mom’s beef stroganoff recipe is AWESOME, and I really wanted some yesterday, so I ran to the store and grabbed enough stuff to make it twice. One recipe is enough for Ryan and I to eat our fill and still have a few lunches out of it, so that’s exciting.
I can tell that I’ve become more comfortable in my cooking because I remember when she first gave me this recipe I was like “What do you MEAN you don’t know the exact measurement of flour/ketchup/whatever ingredient!?” I’ve always been a big recipe follower (which is why I like to bake so much). And in the past I’ve stressed over the stroganoff because I wanted it to turn out, but I was so afraid that it wouldn’t because I would use 2 tablespoons of ketchup instead of 3, or I would put too much flour in the beef broth or whatever. This time I didn’t worry about it. I didn’t even measure those things really. And it turned out great. Just goes to show that I should just chill out. That is the story of my life.
My work Christmas party is this Friday. We leave the office at noon to head over to a local restaurant and eat and drink all afternoon while exchanging gifts and generally just hanging out. Afterward, those of us that drink go out to the bar where the spouses join us. While I’m obviously not drinking this year, I still plan on going out afterward because it’s part of the tradition and I would feel lame just going home. Of course, true to tradition it is also supposed to snow on Friday. Lucky for Ryan he doesn’t have to pick my drunk butt up anywhere. He can actually just come drink with my coworkers if he wants to.
I have a lot of stuff to get done this week; Christmas cards need to be mailed, candy needs to be made, packages need to be shipped, and I drew a coworker’s birthday (we exchange names) that happens to fall on Saturday, so I have to come up with a treat that needs to be either made or purchased and brought in to work at some point. Thankfully I already have her gift ready to go. A few of us from work are also volunteering one night at Bentleyville (a huge light display down by the lake done by a guy in town and free to attend – it’s pretty awesome). I think it might be Wednesday, but we don’t know for sure yet, so that will take one night out of consideration. All of this stuff will make the week go by quickly, that’s for sure. Which is awesome, because then it’s a really short week and then it’s Christmas!
Funny
Nov 19th
I just saw this blog entry, and I think you should check it out because it is frickin’ hilarious. Ninjas. heh.
Also, I was just sitting here, browsing the internet when Ryan says out of nowhere in a high voice, “Look! It’s my little polar bear friend!” Um…yah. On World of Warcraft he has a pet polar bear. And a pet penguin.
Completely unrelated: we are planning on doing as much of our christmas shopping online this year as possible. The stores are already insane, and so as much as we can we would like to avoid them. It’ll be a challenge, but fun, I think. And theoretically it’ll mean we’ll get things done early since we need to allow time for shipping. I’ll let you know how it goes.
I just saw another add for New Moon. I read all the Twilight books, and really enjoyed them for their escapist feel. But those movies all look kind of ridiculous. Maybe they are better than they appear, but even reading the books I was thinking “this would be almost impossible to portray in a movie without getting totally CGI/totally cheesey/whatever.” Anyway…if you’ve seen the movie/movies and thought they did the books justice let me know.
I want to talk about the books I’ve been reading, but I don’t know what I want to say right now, so maybe I’ll wait a little while.
As a final note, the commercial for Al Gore going on 30 Rock is cracking me up. “There is an old African proverb that I invented…” HAHAHA.
2 things
Nov 11th
1.) I got my glucose screening test results back while I was on vacation, and all your positive thoughts worked, because my sugar was at 101, which they said was good. Or good enough. Whatever. I don’t have to do the extra test. Yippee!
2.) I have come up with the best idea EVER. Workplaces should be more like airplanes. And I don’t mean being strapped into a seat right next to/on top of the person next to you while breathing germy recycled air. I think that every once in a while someone should come around with a cart and offer you something to drink. Seriously – I am a genius, I know.
On that note, back to the grindstone. I need a job where they pay me to read novels. Or even non-fiction books. But some sort of real books. Not insurance policies. And I would like to do it at home while lazing around in my pajamas drinking Dr Pepper and eating ice cream with the yummy (accidental) chocolate fudgey syrup that I made (yay for happy cooking accidents!). Is that too much to ask, world? I would probably eat some “healthy” food too, if that would help my cause. No? Fine. Water while sitting in my cubicle it is.
We are home!
Nov 9th
And I have the plague! I’m pretty sure I caught it from a hobo in New York City, although I don’t remember seeing any hobos, which means that either they don’t live in the touristy parts of town or I am EXTREMELY unobservant. Um, let’s think this through for a moment…which is more likely? Unobservant for the win!
Fortunately it is not the flu (no fever), but it is kicking my butt. It would help if I could take something so that I would feel human during the day, but they don’t make any of the good drugs for pregnant women. I went in to work for an hour this morning, just to make sure there wasn’t anything that had to get taken care of right away, and I think that I’ll probably go in late tomorrow since I’m still feeling pretty crappy. But I obviously can’t be missing a bunch of work right after I just got back from a week’s vacation.
You can tell I’m not feeling well because I’ve been very quiet compared to my normal self. Also, I haven’t gotten around to posting any pictures, and my answers when people ask about our vacation are short. We had such a good time all week, even after I got sick, but I just don’t have the energy to describe it all right now. Plus, whenever I try to talk for more than a couple words I start hacking up a lung.
Today is Ryan’s birthday, and he’s 30! We went up to Best Buy and got his birthday present (a new receiver for the living room). And for dinner we just had fried chicken from the grocery store deli. It has been a very laid back evening. I think we’ll be going out for dinner later this week with friends, which works out well – hopefully I’ll be feeling better by then so he won’t have to deal with sicko-wife and her smokers’ cough.
Anyway, time for bed. It’s amazing how energy sapping laying on the couch is.
