Category Archives: Current Events

let's just lump one more major life transition in there

Posted on by

As for that thing that I hinted at yesterday, which I said affected Dave more than me? Well, that turned out to have a very different outcome than what I was expecting.

The big secret was that Dave has started looking for a new job. His company is in the middle of a merger, he hasn’t been happy with his role there for a while and it wasn’t showing signs of improvement – in fact, it looked like things were only going to get worse after the merger – and it just seemed like the right time to move on. This was something that we had talked about months ago, and he’d been studying up on a lot of new technologies in his field so that he would be well-versed when it came time to start doing interviews.

As luck would have it, he started shopping his resume around last Friday, and over the next few days he was absolutely inundated with interview possibilities. (What can I say, I married a smarty-pants with a very impressive resume.) Some of the prospects seem quite promising, which is why this has been taking up a lot of our thoughts.

The catch that I personally wasn’t expecting? Dave got laid off from his current job yesterday. I think he had an idea that it was coming, but it certainly surprised me. It’s not a reflection on him at all, it’s just part of the whole “restructuring” thing that they’re doing as part of the company merger. Dave’s boss is basically a good guy, and he knows that I’m 7 months pregnant, and I think he felt a bit guilty for laying Dave off right before the holidays when we have a baby on the way. So the good news is that he got a really kick-ass severance package. Financially, we should be ok for quite some time. In fact, the way things are progressing with Dave’s job search, it looks like he’ll get an offer long before we have to start worrying about money.

So really, it’s not that bad, and considering my worrywart tendencies, I’m surprisingly calm about the whole thing. I’m kind of at peace with the idea that everything will work out for the best, and that we’ll end up wherever we’re supposed to be.

Which reminds me: Some of those promising job prospects are local, and obviously, those are the ones that I’m rooting for. (There’s one in particular that I have a good feeling about, so we’ll have to wait & see what happens there.) But some of them aren’t, and the non-local jobs seem to be in California for the most part. Which, ok, I love Seattle and I’d really like to stay here, but if we have to move, then that’s what we’ll do. The idea of getting our house ready to put on the market in the next few months, not to mention the idea of moving out-of-state with a newborn? That’s a bit stressful. But it’s manageable.

My attitude toward this is all about weighing our respective goals: I want to be able to stay home with the baby for at least the first 6 months (the first year, if possible). In order for that to happen, Dave needs to have a job where he’s happy, so that he doesn’t feel pressured into some kind of “sole breadwinner” role. I’d feel guilty for putting him in that position, he’d feel resentful toward me and the baby, and it just wouldn’t work. Yes, we could compromise – he could take a lesser-paying local job, I could go back to work full-time, and we could put the baby in day care. And I know that situation works out beautifully for a lot of families, but it’s not what either of us wants.

So if this all boils down to him taking a job in California, so that he’s happy and we’re financially able to allow me to stay home with the baby? Well… look out, California.

I really wasn't kidding about that ark

Posted on by

You know how yesterday I was hitting refresh over and over on the site that listed all county road closures? Good thing I did. Around 2:30 yesterday afternoon, I saw that not only was my normal route flooded, but even my detour had flooded. (I knew it was possible, I saw the water rising when I drove across that bridge on my way to work.) I mentioned it to my manager, and he told me that I should go home because traffic was going to get crazy. I told him that depending on road conditions, I may not be in the office today, and he said that was fine.

(Please, I’m going to be there for 3 more weeks. What are they going to do, fire me?)

I called Dave at work, and he said that he would head out at the same time. There’s only one other road that connects to our teeny little podunk town to the rest of the world, a 2-lane state highway. We couldn’t go south and take the road north toward home because everything that way was flooded. (Aside for the locals: that town south of us would be Carnation. The road I’m referring to is 203.) So our only choice was to go to this little town north of us (Monroe), and then try to head southward. This meant that my normally 11-mile commute was going to be about 35 miles instead. Fun!

I left work around 3:15 p.m. By 7:30, we’d officially given up. The town north of us had been flooded out too, so we were stuck. We found a highway patrolman, and he confirmed that there was absolutely no way into or out of Duvall that night. Great.

We went back to Dave’s office and started calling hotels. (Incidentally, four hours in a car only to end up back where you started? I almost burst into tears on several occasions.) All of the hotels were booked because a whole lot of other people were in the exact same situation as us. We finally found a room, and I grabbed a t-shirt from Dave’s office, because I can’t stand to sleep topless and my little frilly maternity shirt wasn’t going to cut it. (Good thing about Dave’s company, you can usually find some kind of promotional t-shirt lying around.)

I called one of our neighbors, who happened to be stranded in Duvall rather than outside of it like us, and since she has a key to our house, she said she’d go check on the kitties for us. I love her. Seriously, I’m going to have to bake something for her.

Then I called my friend Janet, who’s also pregnant (I don’t know if I’ve ever mentioned that here before because I was trying to protect her privacy during her first trimester, but she’s over 20 weeks now, so I think I can safely say it – they’re having a girl too, so yay!). She and her husband live right near Dave’s office, so I asked if I could steal a prenatal vitamin, because I didn’t want to go buy a whole new bottle. She was like, “Um, yes of course, but you do realize that you can skip it for one night and it won’t do any harm, right?” I don’t know why I panicked about it, she’s totally right. It’s not like the vitamins are probably even doing all that much at this stage in the game, it was probably way more important in the beginning, but whatever.

The hotel turned out to be really nice. (Another aside for the locals: the Clarion Inn in Kirkland. It rocked. Send all of your out-of-town guests there.) The Indian ladies who ran the place were fantastic – maybe they felt all maternal toward me because I’m pregnant, I don’t know. But the manager lady brought me extra pillows and warm chocolate chip cookies, so I loved her.

But even though it was a nice hotel, the bed wasn’t my bed, and even with the extra pillows, I couldn’t get comfortable. (And for the record, that t-shirt I snagged from Dave’s office? It was a large and I should’ve gotten an XL, because I looked like I was in some sort of weird maternity tube dress. It was neither flattering nor comfy.)

I finally fell asleep around midnight. Dave woke up at 4:30, which woke me up too. He went back to sleep soon after that, and I tried to, but Baby Girl decided that 5 a.m. was the perfect time to start dancing an Irish jig. I have never had baby kicks keep me awake before, and yeah ok it was all sweet and cute, but at the same time – dear god, knock it off so I can sleep already! The one good thing is that Dave almost never gets to feel her kick, because as soon as I tell him to put his hand on my stomach, she stops. So he’d only felt her one time before this morning. Today he felt her about 20 times. I guess that was a good thing.

Since Dave fell asleep and I couldn’t, I turned on the local news to try to find out the latest on the roads. At 7 a.m., I heard them say that one of the roads had opened. I woke Dave up, we got our free complimentary hotel breakfast (again, love the lovely Indian ladies who know how to make a seriously kick-ass cheese omelet), and we headed out. We finally got home around 10 a.m. I took a nap for about an hour, but I still feel like absolute hell. I think I’ll be recovering from this experience for the next few days.

We headed down to take pictures of the damage at the bottom of the hill we live on. You can see them here, or click on this picture and it’ll take you to the beginning of the set.

We also made a little video of the whole thing, but the 5-minute video is something like 400 MB, so I need to figure out some kind of compression settings or something, because that just isn’t right. (Which means that Dave needs to figure it out, because that’s really his department.)

anyone have a spare ark?

Posted on by

Our street this morning looked something like New Orleans circa last September. The road was completely flooded – luckily our house is at the top of a hill, so we’re safe, but the pastures down the street are not so fortunate. I hear that all of the horses and other livestock got moved to higher ground before things got really bad, and I hope that’s true. I usually pass a herd or two of cows on that street, so I’m praying that the little baby calves and their mamas are all ok.

I really need to go take pictures at the bottom of the hill for photographic evidence. This is apparently the worst flood we’ve had in the past decade. I’m not sure how tall the average speed limit sign is (maybe six feet or more?), but the water had risen to just a couple of inches below the sign. Crazy.

So as a result of all this flooding, my usual commute to work required a nice little ten-mile detour, which is always fun. And apparently even my alternate route might possibly flood later this afternoon if the rain doesn’t let up, so I have the web page that lists all county road closures open, and I keep hitting refresh. I have no idea how I’m going to get home if that happens.

The up side is that the detour required me to drive past the place where I needed to go vote today, so I went ahead and did that before work. Our polling place is at a church that happens to also have a pre-school. I got there between 8:30 and 9:00, and apparently pre-school starts at 9, so there were a lot of parents there voting before dropping their kids off at school. All of the other times that I’ve voted in the past, the rooms have been very quiet and somber, but today there were a bunch of two to four year-olds running around shrieking their heads off. It was kind of funny. One little boy, who I’m guessing was about 3 years old, plowed headfirst into the back of my right knee, and I almost wiped out on the floor of my little voting booth. His mother apologized, I just laughed and said it was fine. Which it was. I caught my balance before I fell, so no big deal. He just surprised me more than anything. You don’t really expect to get tackled by a small child while electing your local government officials.

Not much else going on. The Indigo Girls concert was fun, although as I expected, they only played about four songs that I knew, everything else was from the last two albums. It was still a good show, I just got home really late and felt like hell on Monday morning.

One moment of the concert that thorougly pissed me off: there was this old lady usher who checked everyone’s tickets before letting them in. She kind of eyed me up and down, then said, “Now don’t you go havin’ that baby tonight.” I told her that I certainly hoped not, since I still had a couple more months to go. Still, I sort of felt like my god, am I that huge that people expect my water to break at any given moment? What the hell?  

Of course, when I told Dave this, he said, “Well, it’s good that she could tell that you were pregnant and didn’t think that you were just fat.” Um, yeah. Thanks, sweetie. I feel all better now.

religion, hair, all the important stuff

Posted on by

Thank you all for your suggestions on the previous post. I found an Episcopal church that’s relatively nearby, and I went ahead and called them to ask what the services are like, because I really don’t like walking in not knowing what to expect. It sounds good, and the guy on the phone promised that they have no bongos. (Yes, I specifically asked.) I think I’m going to give them a test run on Sunday, and I’ll report back afterward.

Honestly, I don’t know why I hadn’t thought of the Episcopal church before. It’s essentially the American version of the Anglican church, which is how Dave was raised, so it makes sense to at least check it out and see how it feels.

I should add, though, that one of the Methodist churches that Kris and I tried was actually pretty nice. It was a little modernized, but not to a scary degree like that last one. I liked the minister, they do lots of really good local community work, and they had a church member who’s been HIV-positive for the last 12 years get up to speak because she had just gotten back from the United Methodist Church’s nationwide summit on global AIDS in Washington, D.C. Who knew that such a thing even existed, but Kris and I both thought it was cool.

In other, totally unrelated news, I am having some major issues with my hair lately. Ever since my gastric bypass surgery (four and a half years ago), I have noticed two very strange changes with my hair: it grows crazy fast, but it also falls out in large amounts. This means that there’s always a pretty large amount of “new growth” sprouting up on my head, causing those annoying little fly-away hairs that stick straight up. For the last four years, it’s been irritating, but at least somewhat manageable.

However, it would seem that another side effect of pregnancy is the acquisition of thicker hair, which means that I now have even more new growth showing up on my head. I’m honestly not too excited about the prospect of thicker hair, since my hair was plenty thick before I got knocked up. And besides, I hear that it all falls out when you’re three or four months post-partum anyway. So I’m not getting attached to this new stuff.

In the meantime, it’s everywhere, and it’s driving me insane. The worst place is right around my forehead – I have all of these short little hairs along my hairline that make it look like I started to go for bangs, and then changed my mind when I was about 20% there.

So, I gave up. I called the salon, made an appointment, and tomorrow: I am getting bangs.

I’m sure this will all end in tears, since I usually hate the way bangs look on me. But if bangs can make the stupid new hairs a little less obvious, I’ll give them a try. And I love my hairstylist, so if anyone can make bangs look halfway decent on me, I think she’s the one who can pull it off.

Pray for me. (See how I tied it back to the religion thing? Wasn’t that clever? Yeah, I know.)

for all my feminist readers

Posted on by

I don’t usually bother with getting all political on here, because I figure that that most of the people who read my blog have the same general beliefs that I do. And if you don’t, what’s the point of arguing about it? You’ll never change my mind and I’ll never change yours, so it’s really all just a waste of breath. It’s like when they have the Aryan nation guys on talk shows, and the audience just boos and hollers at them until the skinheads “sieg heil” and storm offstage. You’ll never manage to convince them that racism is a bad thing, so why bother?

So, I have been genuinely trying to let this go since I read it last week, but I cannot get it out of my head because it astounds me that people like this even exist in our so-called modern society. I first heard a reference to something called “Prairie Muffins” over on flea’s blog (that post, btw, is totally mind-blowing and worth reading in its own right), and clicking a couple of links blog-hopped me over to the blog of a Prairie Muffin. (Apologies if you’ve already read all about this.)

What is a Prairie Muffin, you ask? In this case, it’s a woman who calls herself a “reformed Christian” (I grew up in the Bible Belt, and I had never heard that term before; google it if you like, they might even be scarier than southern Baptists), she homeschools her ten (10!) children, and she lives in California (of all places).

Ok, so it seems a little fundamentalist Christian-y, but no harm so far, right? She’s just doing her thing, whatever. Then, a whole big slew of controversy got stirred up on her site because of this post, which is just a regular ol’ standard blog meme. But then this question came up:

If you could change one thing about the world, regardless of guilt and politics, what would you do?

Now, if you’re a fundamentalist Christian, there are about a million possible responses to this question. I would imagine that converting the world to Christianity is way up at the top of the list. But even if it isn’t, what about things like putting an end to war, world hunger, child abuse, or disease? No, the Prairie Muffin cannot be bothered with such trifles. This is her response to that question.

Hoo-boy, this is where I get in trouble, and that starts with “T” and that rhymes with “P” and that stands for “pool.” I’d like to jump in a pool right now. Some may tell me to jump in a river for this one: I would remove women’s suffrage, and I might even consider making voting rights tied to property ownership.

Really? Of all the things in the world that you could potentially change, taking away a woman’s right to vote is the one thing that you’d pick?

(I have to stop here and give some credit: this site makes some truly excellent remarks on the whole subject, and if you have time to read through it and all the comments, it’s well worth it.)

So after my initial “blu-bu-whaaa???” reaction, I read through her comments, and it seems like there are an awful lot of people on her site who agree with her. Oddly, they’re all women. How much hatred must these women have for their own gender, that they don’t even believe themselves worthy of the right to vote?

Oh, except they all do vote. Because their husbands want them to. Ooooo-kay.

More digging around led me to the Prairie Muffin Manifesto (yes, they have a manifesto). You absolutely have to click that link, but you should probably first put a pillow on your desk because otherwise, it might hurt when your jaw hits it. Here are a few of my favorite items on the list:

3) Prairie Muffins are aware that God is in control of their ability to conceive and bear children, and they are content to allow Him to bless them as He chooses in this area.

Easily said by a woman with ten children. I wonder what the infertility bloggers would think of that statement.

9) Prairie Muffins do not reflect badly on their husbands by neglecting their appearance; they work with the clay God has given, molding it into an attractive package for the pleasure of their husbands.

Dave thought this was hilarious. I was somewhat disturbed by it, because I thought the reason that I never left the house without mascara was because I’m southern and vain. Turns out, I’m apparently a Prairie Muffin. Funny how I never thought that my make-up (or lack of ) was a reflection on Dave, though.

Here are two in a row that make me want to scream:

17) Prairie Muffins place their husbands’ needs and desires above other obligations, arranging their schedules and responsibilities so that they do not neglect the one who provides for and protects them and their children.

18) Prairie Muffins are fiercely submissive to God and to their husbands.

Right. I don’t need a life or any sense of self-awareness, I’ll just devote myself to my husband. And then he’ll leave me because I’ll be boring as all get-out. And I’m sorry, #18 is just flat-out kinky. (So is #29, if you go read that site.)

32) Though we abhor the idea of women being involved in the military and fighting battles which men are commanded to fight, Prairie Muffins recognize that there is a real battle in which they are on the front lines: the battle of the seed of the woman against the seed of the serpent. In this most-important conflict, we gratefully serve King Jesus in the capacity He has given us, waving our wooden spoons and rallying our children to stand alongside us in the battle, training them to be mighty warriors in the defense and furthering of God’s kingdom.

The waving of wooden spoons almost made me fall out of my chair laughing.

36) Prairie Muffins are happy to be girls—they rejoice in the distinctives which God sovereignly bestowed on them which make them feminine. They are also happy that their husbands are masculine, and they do not diminish that masculinity by harping on habits which emanate from the fact that boys will be boys, even when they grow up. In addition, Prairie Muffins are careful not to use their feminine, hormotional weaknesses to excuse sinful attitudes and actions, but learn to depend more and more on God’s grace and strength in the midst of any monthly trials.

Ah, the hybrid word. I get that they were trying to combine hormonal and emotional, but… “hormotional”? I honestly thought she made that word up, and I was shocked that Dave had actually heard it before. I think his church back in the UK was a bit more “fundie” than where I grew up.

Also, I am totally going to start referring to my period as my “monthly trial.” I love that.

There’s a million other things I could quote from that site that just generally give me the heebie-jeebies, but I think y’all probably get the idea. What’s amazing is that the few commenters she got who disagreed with her were very polite in their objections, and it didn’t turn into an all-out flame war. Still, she said in a later post that she’ll be praying for all of her dissenters. I wonder how the liberal feminist agnostics feel about that.

These types of people make me ashamed to call myself a Christian.

the biggest news

Posted on by

So, there’s this thing. Which I haven’t written about, and which I’m dying to write about, because it’s pretty much all that’s on my mind these days. And I’ve been all, “Noooo, no one can know about it, because if we speak of it out loud, then that makes it real, and then the Jinx Fairy will rain sorrow and misfortune down upon our heads. And lo, the many tears we will shed.”

Instead, I’ve been writing about nothing – like a trip to Target or working in the yard – just to fill in the space so that no one would think that I fell off the planet.

Then it occurred to me that the people who read this blog, who also know me in real life? I think nearly all of them already know about this. So really, when I say that I can’t talk about it, I’m totally full of crap.

So in light of this whole “ah hell, even my dad’s golf buddies know about it now” development, I’ve decided that I might as well go ahead and make the official announcement.

Here it is.

The big announcement.

I was going to suggest that you sit down first, but if you’re reading this online, I think the odds are pretty high that you’re already seated.

But seriously, if you’re standing, find a soft place to land just in case this bit of news shocks the knees right out from under you.

It’s ok. I’ll wait.

You ready?
Continue reading →

the weekend and such

Posted on by

I’m starting to feel somewhat normal again. Meaning, my sinuses are still whacked out, but I’m not feeling quite so verge-of-death and I’m sleeping through the night, so things have improved about a thousand percent. Oh, and speaking of sleeping? That cough syrup with codeine gives me the weirdest dreams. I only occasionally remember my dreams, but the last few nights have all been very vivid, and I’ve been waking up confused, thinking that whatever was happening in the dream is still happening in real life. I’m honestly not a huge fan of being all disoriented first thing in the morning, but if this is what it takes to get a good night’s sleep, so be it.

Switching abruptly to the topic of trying-to-get-pregnant: I recently ordered this book. (Thanks, Sarcomical!) For whatever reason, our stupid postman was too lazy to bring the box to our doorstep and leave it there (hate him), so instead I got one of those notices in our mailbox that said I had to go to the post office to pick it up. Our post office sucks, every time I’ve had to go there to pick up a package, they’ve never been able to find it. We live in a very small town, so the post office is also small, and you’d think that it would be difficult to lose someone’s mail there. Ha! Last year, one of my friends sent us a wedding present a couple of days before the wedding itself, and it was a few days after the wedding when I was able to go pick it up. By the time I got there, they had actually mailed the package back. So yeah. Hate.

On this particular occasion, the line was out the door of the post office (whose idea is it to have one employee working at 4:00 on a Friday afternoon?), but when I finally got to the front of the line, it only took them a couple of minutes to find my package. Hooray. On my way out, carrying my new book about “taking charge of my fertility” under my arm, I passed a pregnant woman. I hope it was a good omen, because it honestly just kind of pissed me off at the time. But I think I already had a chip on my shoulder about having to go to the stupid post office in the first place.

But this book? Is pretty darn cool. (Although I do need to stop reading it before bed, because again, the dreams, they are a-freaky.) There are all kinds of things about my body that I never knew, and all kinds of very scary diagrams. The thing is, I’m totally fascinated by it, but I’m not allowed to talk about most of it with Dave. Anytime the subject of my cervix comes up, he tends to plug his ears and yell “la-la-la-la-I-can’t-hear-you-la-la-la!!” And I suppose that’s ok, he doesn’t really need to know the graphic details of how things work “down there”. But it’s made me glad that Kris is around, because at least I have someone with whom I can be all, “hey, did you know such-and-such, etc.?” She seems totally unphased by pretty much anything I tell her, so that’s cool.

Other than that, our weekend wasn’t too terribly eventful. We went to our local sports bar for dinner on Saturday night, and saw the worst band in the history of the world. (And guess what? They have a website! Thanks, Google!) Seriously, they were awful. Classic rock cover band, led by a guy with a horrible voice, who didn’t even seem to know most of the lyrics of the songs they were covering. Case in point: during “Drive” by the Cars, there’s a line that goes: “who’s going to plug their ears when you scream?” This dude said, “who’s going to hold your hands when you scream?” Um, what? I know it shouldn’t matter – their cover would’ve sucked regardless if he knew the words or not, just because they were that bad. But I’m sort of OCD about song lyrics, and it just grated on my nerves when he got them wrong.

Last night, we watched “The Squid and the Whale”. Wow. I don’t know that I have ever disliked Jeff Daniels that much, I just wanted to hit him. That movie is intense, I kept sort of curling into a ball and willing them to just please STOP already. I suppose it was well done and all that, but man, it was depressing. Not sure if I’d recommend it or not.

And now, it’s Monday morning. Back to the grind and all that. Yadda yadda. Whee.