Category Archives: Blog Stuff

six things

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I’m pretty sure this is the first time anyone has ever tagged me for a meme. Whee!

So, ok. Six weird things about me. Here goes:

1. I am a compulsive food hoarder. I buy all kinds of junk food, which I mostly don’t eat, it just somehow comforts me to know that it’s there (in case of emergencies or whatever). Which sucks for Dave, because he cannot resist the junk food. So he eats it, and then I have to buy more to hoarde. It’s a vicious cycle. We both need help.

2. I have two tattoos: a wilted lily on my ankle (because I was very sad when I was 21) and the symbol for Capricorn between my shoulders. I also went through a piercing phase in college, which was kind of funny because I had to take all of them out (well, the visible ones) every time I saw my parents. The only one that I miss is my eyebrow ring, because I thought I looked pretty cute with it. I suppose I could get it redone now – the culture of the Pacific Northwest is such that it really wouldn’t be a hindrance to my career at all – but it seems sort of lame to go back to body piercing in my 30’s.

3. I still sleep with the security blanket that I’ve had since I was a week old. And it’s still in one piece. I’ve tried to give it up a few times – particularly during middle and high school, when it was not exactly a cool thing to bring to sleepovers – but I have nightmares when I sleep without it. So the blankie has stuck around. And whenever Dave teasingly takes it away from me, I get really irrationally upset.

4. Before I moved to the boonies, I never left the house without make-up on, ever. I do now, on occasion, if I’m only going to the grocery store or something like that. Believe me, the women that live around here? Even without mascara, I’m still pretty hot by comparison. I guess farm life must make you age prematurely or something – there are some seriously hard-lookin’ ladies in these parts. 

5. This is one that drives Dave absolutely insane: I talk during movies. I’m one of those annoying movie trivia people. “Hey, that’s the guy who was in such-and-such,” that kind of thing. I know it bothers him, so I try to keep my mouth shut, I really do, but I just cannot rein in my random little factoids.

6. One of my favorite foods from my childhood is peanut butter and grape jelly – not on a sandwich, mind you, but spooned into a bowl and then stirred into a disgustingly brown mess. With a glass of (lactose-free) milk on the side. Yum.

People I’m tagging: Cat, Danielle, Cara and Sally. But, you know, only if you want to. No pressure.

still (barely) alive

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I guess it says something about my state of mind lately, that my blog was down all day yesterday and most of today, and I’m just now getting around to doing something about it. Yesterday marked the three-week anniversary of this stomach bug, and I think at this point it’s officially drained my will to live. I’m sleeping over ten hours a night, and still, I can barely move and function. A task as small as going to the supermarket drains me of what little strength I have. There’s just nothing left in me.

So: it’s not a parasite. (Sorry, Angie, you don’t get to name it.) After a week of tests, a consultation with a gastroenterologist who didn’t know a blasted thing about treating pregnant women, and a cross-reference of everything the GI doc said with my obstetrician, I now (drum roll)… have a prescription. Two prescriptions, actually. It’s a small step, but at least I feel like there’s some hope, and I might not wither away to nothing before this baby arrives and figures out entirely new ways to destroy what’s left of my body.

What kills me is that even after all of this, no one knows for sure exactly what’s wrong with me, just “hmmm, seems like it’s bacterial.” Nice.  

Tomorrow, Dave and I have our first (and only) childbirth class. I’m getting increasingly jittery about it, because for the past couple of months I’ve managed to pretty well convince myself that I’m just going to be pregnant forever. The idea that this class is going to force me to acknowledge that there’s only one ultimate end to this whole pregnancy thing… well, quite honestly, it scares the bejeezus out of me. Denial has been working ok for me so far, I’m not sure I’m ready to think about the alternative.

I know Dave is dreading the class too, mostly for the much-feared childbirth video, but I’m honestly glad that husbands/partners are required to attend, because I think I’m going to need someone to hold my hand, pat me on the head and tell me that everything is going to be ok.

Wish us both luck.

upgrades suck

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Ok, that only took ALL FREAKIN’ DAY LONG. Yeesh. (I’m not exaggerating. I started working on it around noon, and I just finished at 10 p.m. I took a break for dinner, but that’s about it.)

If any of you clicked over here and saw that really annoying blank white page today, I’m sorry. I should be all done now, though.

Moral of the story: having Fridays off is not necessarily a good thing, because even though I have very noble intentions of getting out of the house and running errands, I tend to waste my day off getting sucked into some silly project. And all because I wanted the porn-related comment spam to finally stop, already.

And now, I think I’m going to go do some yoga before my hips decide to revolt after sitting my big pregnant butt in a really uncomfortable chair for the last ten hours. Either that or I’m going to go crawl in bed until sometime around midday tomorrow. I can’t decide.

is it Thursday yet?

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Ok, just so y’all aren’t wondering where the update is tomorrow, here’s the timeline for how things are going to go. (I suppose management types would call this “setting expectations.”) This will probably be of no interest to anyone except the five or six people who read this site on a regular basis.

9:00 a.m. – 1:00 p.m.: Work. Me likey half-days.

1:00 p.m.: Leave work, drive to doctor’s office, get there way too early, and proceed to have an anxiety attack over the fact that Dave won’t arrive to meet up with me until 1:58 p.m. (I’ve suggested carpooling to work in the morning, which would solve that issue. But given our very different morning routines, I doubt that’ll work out very well.)

2:00 p.m.: Ultrasound appointment. I am totally snagging a can of juice from the office kitchen before I leave work, and downing it five minutes before the ultrasound. Hopefully, the jolt to my blood sugar will ensure that the sprog is moving around, so we can get a good look at his/her naughty bits.

2:30 p.m.: My regular OB checkup. I need to remember to make a list of questions that I want to ask her.

3 – 4 p.m.-ish: Drive home. It probably won’t take that long, but I’m really tired of cooking this week, so I’m going to stop to grab take-out or something for dinner on the way.

Basically, I don’t think that I’ll be home and online (and hence, able to update this here bloggy thing) until around 5:00 p.m. That’s 8:00 for you east coast folks.

Sorry. Believe me, if I could’ve gotten an appointment earlier in the morning, I would’ve been happy to take it. But hopefully, that little bit of advance notice will save you from abusing your browser’s “refresh” button too much.

Or, if you want, you can just go on with your lives and check back on Friday morning. I promise it won’t hurt my feelings (much).

at our house, we party like it's 1994

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It wasn’t my intention to leave the Prairie Muffin post up at the top for as long as I did, but y’all will just have to forgive me, because I have not had internet access for the past four days. Four days! No internet! Aaaahhhh, withdrawal!

The story: Since we live in the boonies, we have to use a satellite dish for both TV and internet access. That means two different satellite dishes are stuck on the side of our house (as if one isn’t ugly enough). Oh, how I long for DSL… Anyway, the siding guys were out on Thursday tearing the old crappy siding off our house. (The new siding – which we ordered to replace the ugly stuff with big gaping, bubbly seams – will arrive sometime later this week.) When I got home from work on Thursday afternoon, Dave told me that the guys must’ve bumped one of the dishes, because our TV was fine, but we had no internet access. Fantastic.

Since I don’t work on Fridays, I had Dave call the satellite folks to send out a repair guy to fix the dish. I’d be home all day, so no problem, right? Well, they couldn’t get a technician out until Saturday afternoon. Dave stopped on his way home from work on Friday and bought me a couple of new video games to keep me occupied, because I was going crazy without internet access. And for some reason, we couldn’t even get a dial-up connection to work on my laptop. Argh!

Saturday, the technician came out, and the poor guy spent about three hours outside trying to get our dish working again. (Did I mention that we’re having some freakish heat wave right now and it’s been 95 degrees every day? I felt really bad for the guy. But you have no idea how thrilled I am that we got central air-conditioning this year.) Problem is, the dish is about five years old, which in satellite technology means that it’s three or four generations old, and… no luck. The guy couldn’t get it working again.

The thing is, Dave and I have been unhappy with our ISP for a while – our access speed is crazy slow, they have a limit of how much we can download per day, and forget trying to upload anything because dial-up is faster. We had heard that there were other satellite Internet companies in our area that are much better, but to change ISP’s means that you have to shell out the cash for a whole new dish. Since our current one is busted, this gives us a good excuse to go ahead and make the switch to a new ISP. So it’s really not all bad, except for the cost aspect.

Well, that, plus the fact that it will be Wednesday before they can come out to set up the new satellite dish. Cry! So if you don’t hear much from me this week, you’ll know why.

because it's Friday and I'm lazy

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You Were a Koala


You value living life at a slow, peaceful, meditative pace.
You give insightful advice, helping others to overcome obstacles.


Gummy Bears


You may be smooshie and taste unnatural, but you’re so darn cute.


Your Blogging Type is Kind and Harmonious


You’re an approachable blogger who tends to have many online friends.
People new to your blogging circle know they can count on you for support.
You tend to mediate fighting and drama. You set a cooperative tone.
You have a great eye for design – and your blog tends to be the best looking on the block!

Thanks for the inspiration, Cat.