The New Years Post

Resolutions are stupid. Two years ago I resolved to go to Iraq. That totally didn't happen. And then last year I decided that this year I would just love people. And I don't really feel like I did that so much either.

This morning while I was sitting in bed blogging in my head (oh be quite, you know you do it too) I decided that maybe the key is making resolutions that you can't help but keep. I could resolve in 2009, for example, that I will:

-- Have a baby
-- Live somewhere where it rains a lot
-- Watch Friends on DVD
-- Go to the gym at least once

But that's cheating.

There are a few things that I really WANT to do in 2009 -- like be awesome looking again by the time my sister in law gets married, meet more wonderful people, build meaningful relationships, laugh and enjoy each moment as much as possible, start working hard to raise a wonderful young man ... you get the picture.

Sigh.

And even BETTER

So what's better than awesome storage shelves?!

A new trash can!

(I know! So exciting).

We were actually trash can shopping yesterday for one of those shiny new stainless steal pop-up cans. I registered for one for my wedding but didn't get it.

But they are soooooo expensive so I didn't buy it. Today I went and looked at another store to see how much it is there. Guess what? Still too expensive. Go figure.

But then... then! ... I got home, and what did I find? A Christmas gift. Luke's sister, Sandy, got it off our wedding registry for us for Christmas!

*Happy dance*

Happiness Is ....

My newly organized storage closet.

While walking through Lowes today in search of a step ladder for me (we had a gift card ...) we passed by the storage shelves.

I said:

"We should think about getting one of these for the kitchen."

And that turned into two -- one for the storage closet and one for the kitchen. And now my closests are BEAUTIFUL! I have wonderful space on my counters ... may even get myself a spice rack! AND I can reach all my kitchen appliances, even without my lovely new step ladder.

Yay.

A Week's Worth of Interesting Things...

... So many interesting things, in fact, that I shall now make an index.

1. The trip to and from Idaho
2. Baby update
3. The Grinch who Tried to Steal Christmas
4. Deliciousness
5. Various Christmas gift highlights
6. Our gift from Comcast


Ok. Now let's get started.

Idaho:

The trip was pretty darn uneventful in and of itself, besides the fact that it took us FOREVER to leave home (we were going to leave at 11 a.m. but then Luke didnt get off until 2:30 p.m. ...) and we got accosted with a flying pebble, hurtling towards us slow motion like and chipping the windshield of Abigail's car on the highway. Erm.

We ended up stopping for the night because, well, I was tired, and driving the rest of the way the next day.

The way home was equally dull and ... dull. And then we got home.

(I realize this was a riveting way to start a post ... keep reading)
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Ah, the baby. Everyone's favorite subject.

He's still in there, using my bladder as a trampoline. They claim he's getting bigger, but it's hard to tell looking at the mirror each morning. I will tell you that he kicks me more after I eat chicken than after I eat other things. Weird, but true. I have a doctor's appointment this coming week, the first in two months where they will weigh me. Day of reckoning. Sigh.
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This year's Christmas grinch brought to you by an out of control semi and an icy Ohio road. In all serious, though, it was not cool. Luke and I were summoned from slumber Christmas Eve morning by a phone call from Luke's sister where all we could hear was her screaming hysterically to someone (not Luke) "WILL THEY BE OK?!?!" ... thats never fun. We hung up and called her back, only to find that they had just been in a really serious car accident. Luke's sister and dad escaped all but unscathed. The driver of another involved car, however, died at the scene, and his mom, who was driving, was in very critical condition for much of the day.

All in all, she she suffered a variety of internal bleeding (stopped through surgery that evening), a shattered leg, shattered pelvic bone and badly crushed hip. She is currently completely sedated and on a ventilator pending a third surgery Monday to start repairs on her pelvic bone. She is also in traction and will likely spend the next several months in the hospital.

Yeah. So that sucks. Please pray for her ...
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Deliciousness = the apparently wonderful banana cream pie I just made for Luke. I am that kind of awesome.
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Christmas was awesome (grinch or not). Luke got me lovely diamond earrings. Going out of business jewelry store sales are my absolute favorite. I also got Luke tickets to see Beethoven's 9th at the Seattle Symphony Jan 4 ... I am REALLY excited about that.

Best part of the day, however, was watching Patsy open her box of dress up clothes. We didnt tell her what the clothes were for, just gave her the box. The first thing she pulled out was a pair of velvet blue shoes that were clearly too big for her.

Shelly: Oh Patsy, do you think those will be too big for you?
Patsy: Well probably, Shell, but I can just use them for dress up.

And that exchange happened exactly like that for the rest of the box, at least 15 or so items. She was so cute. I wonder if she was thinking "you dunces. you got me a bunch of clothes that are too big!" ... but of course she didn't say that. She just said "dont worry, I can use it for dress ups!"

Haha.
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Now, the gift from Comcast is completely unintentional, I'm sure (that or a reeeeally bad marketing strategy). A month or more ago I surprised Luke by getting him basic basic cable, you know, the kind that is network only, so that he could watch a football game on ABC. We would've just used bunny ears, only they wouldn't work. Erm. So we pay $13 a month to get HD Network channels.

Now, at one point in the past we had regular cable, the kind with USA and TNT, but got rid of it when I convinced Luke that we really didn't *need* it (plus I absolutely hate having ESPN on ALL of the time and Luke constantly flips channels which drives me nuts-o).

We had the $13 for a few days before we discovered that we got a few bonus channels including TBS and the Gold Channel (guess which one I like). But TODAY Luke discovered that we pretty much get ALL of the cable channels we don't pay for, including TLC, HG-TV, TNT, ESPN, ESPN 2, etc. (Guess which I'm excited about again).

Obviously I'm not so keen on having those dumb sports channels back, but for almost free ... eh ... I'll live. Plus Luke is SO excited. A few minutes ago he did a happy dance and ran over to give me a high five.

Luke: We have ESPN!!!!!!!(!!!) that's all I care about!!!!(!!!!)
Amy: Yeah, but what about ESPN 2??
Luke: That's just extra bonuses!!!

And then, out of nowhere after several minutes of silence.

Luke: Ah boy! I'm SO HAPPY!!

Haha. Kinda of makes having to watch sports worth it.

I Hate Snow (and other sundry items)

First off, Crazy Cookie Day. It was crazy. It was full of cookies. And it lasted most of the day.

And that's really the long and the short of it. All in all I put together two large platters of cookies and 17 individual plates for soldiers and their wives.

Photographic evidence:

Whoa dang.
~~~~~~~~~~~

One word: snow.

And there is a lot of it. Remember the story about how I almost died? Yeah, that would've happened again today except I knew better. How did I know? Because Luke called from the corner to warn me. He then spent almost a half hour driving about 1/2 mile trying to get to post. I feel like you should see a map demonstrating this.

Red = the distance Luke went in 1/2 hour. Green = where he was trying to turn off. Blue = Where it was backed up to.


That's what I'm talking about.

Grrrr.

I do think it's beautiful the way it's still falling .... I'll give you that. Other than that, I hate it with a PASSION.

Crazy Cookie Eve

Tomorrow is Crazy Cookie Day. That makes today Crazy Cookie Day.

And crazy it was.

I started the day by dashing off to a Christmas cookie exchange with the lady's Bible study small group. That was at 9:15 a.m. From there it was grocery store, post office, craft store and one other stop before heading home by 12:30.

And then the baking started. Between 1 p.m. and dinner time I made three batches of brownies, molasses cookies, gingerbread dough, sugar cookies and chocolate cookies. And fudge.

And then I cleaned the house. And did three loads of laundry and even folded it all. I also vacuumed. And made dinner. And fed my husband and then fed our now neighbor Ash who called after we were done essentially begging for food.

And how could I say "no" to that?

I also wrote thank you notes I've been putting off since, oh, October, and finished wrapping the Christmas gifts AND wrapped my mom and dad's birthday gifts. And made tags to the cookie plates.

And during all of this I even grew part of a human.

In short, today I was Super Amy. I tried to be Super Amy yesterday, but I was thwarted by ice and a plethora of stupid people. No such thwartage today!

And tomorrow I shall do it again! Crazy Cookie Day will start at about 9 a.m. at Natalie's where we shall make two different kinds of brownies and three different kinds of cookies.

For now, I am tired.

The Day I Almost Died

When it snows in D.C. it inevitably brings what we fondly call the "snowpocalypse." Schools close at even the threat of an inch. The government delays opening its offices. The mayor gets up and makes a speech about how DDOT is "ready" to salt the roads against the impending doom. Residents rush the grocery stores and buy bread and milk (I am not kidding about any of this).

When snowpocalypse finally arrives, DDOT takes a few hours to get its rear in gear, the roads are eventually salted and no one that I know of has actually died from lack of bread and milk.

Here in the great Northwest things are pretty similar ... except for one thing: no one ever gets around to fixing the roads. And so by the time delayed everything finally opens guess what? The roads are still covered with ice.

And thus the Day I Almost Died ... no, not from sliding about on the ice. This near death experience was brought by sitting in traffic for no less than 30 minutes and traveling no more than 100 feet.

I am going to detail this on a map for you because I feel it would be beneficial.

Yeah, see the little circle and red line? That was my progress over that time.

Finally I decided that things weren't moving ... yeah, I know, it took me a whole half hour to decide that?! Well, you know you think "If I turn around THEN it will start moving so I should just wait it out."

Obviously that was not going to happen. So I gave up. Harumph. (<---- similar to the noise I made when turning around, only more of them).

Now the real irony of all of this is that I was trying to go to the post office at Madigan to save myself time. I figured, hey, why bother with a post office normal people can go to when I can go to one and not stand in line at all?

I know, serves me right. After I turned around I made my way allllll the way around the highway, through the north part of post, across the highway, alllll the way back to the hospital for the post office. Why? Because I don't give up, dag blasted! That's why!

... Except when I realized that finding parking was going to be the typical guerrilla warfare, only this time, guerrilla warfare on ice (hey! it's like a fun show! except with car crashes!) I threw in the towel. And went to the grocery store ....

.... Where I spent an hour. And then a half hour at the drive through buying my husband lunch, which was cold when they gave it to me so you can imagine how it was when I finally got it to him.

And now I am home. Time for cookies, cookies, cleaning a free crib, putting away the groceries, making dinner, folding laundry, making cards for the cookie plates I'm making Wednesday (more about that insanity later) and other no doubt fun things. Not in that order.

Crib Update

Just so you know, the crib is kinda decent. Well, it's still in pieces on the floor in the baby room/Luke's room for all his crap ... and it needs to be cleaned ... but so far, so good. When I figure out whether it is still good when put together or not ... I'll let you know.

Oh, and since you want to see the bedding, heres a picture I found on an alternate Web site, also out of stock:

Found. Whew.

Rather than updating the last post AGAIN, I thought I'd stop by a new one and say ....

The long lost book is called "The Runaway Teddy Bear." It only took me typing in "bear" as a search in the Amazon.com childrens' book category and scrolling through 70 of Lord knows how many pages to find it. That's dedication, people.

In other news, friend Dana turned me on to Freecycle, a message board where people give their stuff to other people who need it. I was hesitant at first because, well, I don't like message boards. But Dana is *very* persuasive (or I'm just a push over?) and I finally joined up.

My first post was, no, not in search of that dumb book, but rather a crib for the illustrious Baby B (who is reminding me of his presence even now by periodically punching me in the bladder and elsewhere). I reeeeeeeeeally don't want to buy a new crib or even buy a crib at all because the dream is that, by the time we move to Georgia or wherever they send us after Luke gets back from The Bad Place, Almost Toddler B can be persuaded to sleep in our "big boy" twin sized bed and we won't have a to haul a stupid crib across the country. Obviously there is a small chance that we will have a future use for said crib (let's not talk about that now though) so any investment in it would probably persuade me to take it with us.

But if it's freeeee ... yeah, you see my point.

So. Someone responded to my crib request this morning. I'm going to give her a call to get some details. Obviously I am not picky when it comes to landing free stuff, however, when it comes to Baby B *nothing* can be too good. We'll see what comes of this.

Stay tuned.

Things of Childhood

Since I started growing a human I've started contemplating all the wonderful childhood things I need to pass on to him. Christmas, of course, also makes me nostalgic ...

And so I started the great search for things I love ...

This is harder than it sounds, mostly because all that stuff you enjoyed as a little kid you remember by contents, not title. And googling "book where a teddy bear goes to the woods and visits with real bears" doesnt really yield much helpful.

I did manage to find a few books that I want for Baby B:

Caps for Sale
Going on a Bear Hunt
Moongame
Miss Nelson is Missing
Harry the Dirty Dog
Sylvester and the Magic Pebble

I'm sure the list will continue.

Me and my trusty design consultant have pretty much settled on literary monkeys as the room theme. I love saying "literary monkeys" instead of just regular ones. It makes people go "huh?" and getting that reaction is one of my favorite things ever.

By literary monkeys I basically mean Curious George, Pippo of Tom and Pippo, and perhaps Where the Wild Things Are because, well, who doesn't like a rumpus?!

This is the bedding we've pretty much settled on ...

....

WHAT?!? NO!!!

The bedding is gone! It was there yesterday. It was there two days ago. And now ... gasp! ... it is gone! And the link doesn't work.

WHAT IS THE DEAL!?

And it was so lovely, green and brown and all sorts of lovely colors mixed in and not one little stitch of white (all the baby bedding has white as a main color ... and I dont want white. That just says "poop on me" to me).

Ahhhhh noooooooooooo


*We regret that we must prematurely terminate this blog post while Amy goes and consoles herself at the loss of her interior design anchor*

EDIT ---

Phew. Crises avoided. Apparently everyone is just out of stock at exactly the same time and they will have it again when, well, when they have it.

(We hope).

EDIT AGAIN! --

I totally forgot about Old Bear! How could I do this. Yes, I was googling again to find that elusive bear who goes to hang out with the real bears when I came upon Old Bear ... I LOVE Old Bear!

A Gym With No Point

In the experience of Amy there is one reason and one reason alone for going to the gym: to get skinny.

You know the drill, exercise a lot for a few weeks, get up the nerve to get on the scale, find that you've lost way less weight than you thought you had but that you had lost a little. So you keep going and eventually your clothes start to get a little baggier and you start to look in the mirror and see that you are starting to look increasingly awesome.

This is how the world works. Right?

But no. Not when you're growing a human. When you're growing a human everything happens the opposite of how you would expect it should.

This gym business is exactly what I'm talking about. I go at least four or five times a week. I work out for a least 45 minutes. I come home. I avoid the scale at all costs because, let's be honest, the expanding stomach ... and more... can't bode well in that department. And the clothes aren't fitting better ...

So what am I doing? I see no point to continuing the misery, except, well, I really am that bored.

Heh.

Cry Me a River

Maybe it's because I'm so well hydrated. I mean, those three nalgene bottles a day, glasses of milk and post workout Vitamin Water are really doing their thing ... but I cannot stop crying. I mean, I can stop, since I'm not crying right now, but over the last few days that has definitely NOT been the case.

*stupid pregnancy hormones*

But really I've had a reason. I mean, it feels like a reason. In reality, if I was a normal person it probably would not feel like the end of the world. Sigh.
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The reason: I've been fired. Kinda.

My boss, however, is so incredibly passive aggressive that she can't just say "I don't need you anymore, bye." Instead she says "business is slow so I'm not going to put you on the schedule anymore for the month of December. I'll let you know about January in late December."

Awesome. I can see this going on for a while. Like, January comes and she says "we don't need you this month, I'll let you know about February."

Uh-huh.

Now, why this is the End of the World: I now don't have anything to do. I mean, I can clean my house. And watch Friends. And type on this blog. And go to the gym A LOT. But as far as employment goes ... nada.

Or I could go get another job. Except not. Coffee places in the area aren't hiring. And it's not like anyone would hire me anyway. "Hi, I'm an increasingly large pregnant woman who needs to sit down every 20 minutes or so and has to go to the bathroom every half hour. You want to hire me!"

Yeah, I wouldn't hire me either.

Sigh.

Today, thank God, I am not as overly emotional as I have been for the past few days ... so this really seems like a slightly manageable problem. Like maybe NOT the end of the world. But let me tell you, for the past few days, the world has been on the brink of coming to a screeching halt.

The thing about this that really bugs me isn't the income thing ... because let's be honest, my little coffee house gig wasn't paying the rent or anything. Really, it just made me feel good to be doing something. And it wasn't just that I was earning a little money and able to buy groceries or whatever without ever asking Luke for cash ... I got to see and talk to these same, wonderful people every day. I felt like I was somehow adding to their lives.

Sigh.
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Yesterday I ran about one bajillion errands. Instead of going to the gym. I was tired and crying about nothing is more fun in your car by yourself than at the gym.

I was at Target feeling pretty darn sorry for myself when I picked up a book and started reading it. It made me laugh... a lot ... and so I bought it. :-)

In other news, I feel like Target should be given a serious talking to about their product placement. It is NOT Ok that the maternity clothes are intermingled with the plus sized clothes. Like I needed to be bummed out about buying those clothes anymore than I already am ... now I have to look at the tags to tell the difference between a size 1X piece and size medium maternity.

Boo.

The Great Reveal

Well, today was the day. I was so excited about the entire situation that I had trouble sleeping last night, and when Luke left this morning at 5 a.m. I couldn't go back to sleep. Ah. Good thing the appointment was at 8 a.m. My brain might have exploded had I needed to wait any longer.

Well, the big news is that it is a boy. DEFINITELY a boy. There is no secret about this and this child is the opposite from modest. He is chilling butt down in my insides, which apparently is going to be a bad thing later, but maybe he'll flip around.

There is also a tiny thing I could some prayer about ... there is a slight brain abnormality that will probably resolve itself by birth, but could be an indicator of a chromosome 18 abnormality. This could result in a variety of defects including trisomy 18, the most common, which basically means your kid is going to die.

Really, the odds are so low that this will actually end up being something that I shouldn't freak out about it. But in the Fragile State of Amy even little things become a big deal at weak moments... so just pray that I don't freak out for no reason. We are anti-freak out, people... anti-freak out!!

Now for your joy, photos of me looking fat, I mean, pregnant.



I'm a little sad they didn't weigh me today, so there's no way to say "I'm not as fat as I look!" ... sigh. But I totally exercise 3 or 4 days a week for 45 minutes or more at the gym, so let's just assume I'm awesome and skinny.