sick day

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So, it turns out that I might not be as much of a hypochondriac as I thought. The tummy issues that I was having last week (which we will not discuss in detail, because I’m sorry, but some things are just too gross even for me)? Well, that never really let up entirely – it’d go away for a while, then come back with a vengeance. I had noticed that with all the rain we’ve been having, our tap water had turned sort of cloudy, which is one of the problems that comes with getting your water supply from a well. I thought maybe that had something to do with my stomach problems, so I switched to bottled water over the weekend. No change.

Last night, after I got home from work, I started to feel really awful. I barely ate anything and went to bed early.

This morning, in addition to the stomach problems, I also had a fever (99.8 is pretty high for me, since my temp is usually in the 97’s) and even though I was warm, I couldn’t stop shaking. Dave took one look at me and ordered me back to bed, which was fine by me, since I don’t think I could’ve driven anyway. I emailed my boss to let him know I wouldn’t be in, and called my OB’s office.

Basically, the over-the-phone diagnosis from the nurse went like this:
* Bleeding? Nope.
* Discharge? Nope.
* Baby still kicking? Oh yeah, like a champ.

Then, she said, I just have the flu, and it’s nothing pregnancy-related. She said that if my fever went over 100.4, I should go see my primary care doctor, but in the meantime, I should take some tylenol, keep myself hydrated, yadda yadda.

I tried to eat some chicken soup, which made me completely ill, and I went back to bed for a few hours. When I woke up, my fever had dropped to 97.9, which is much more normal for me. My stomach is still iffy, but I mostly feel better. I don’t think it’s the flu, since historically, the flu equals major sinus problems for me, and I’m not having any of that. So really, I have no idea what’s going on with me right now. 

Hopefully I can get back to work tomorrow, though, since I only have a few days left before my official Reign of Unemployment begins (next Wednesday the 29th is my last day, for those of you keeping track).

Speaking of work, Dave’s phone interviews have been going very well (see? I told you he was a smarty-pants), and I don’t want to jinx anything, but everyone keep your fingers and toes crossed. Hopefully we’ll have some news on that front next week-ish.

hypochondriac much?

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I came home from work yesterday with a splitting headache. I took a nap for a couple of hours, and it was worse when I woke up. My OB has given me the ok to take one of the two types of migraine medications that I used to take (pre-baby, that is), but I always feel guilty about taking it. I know it’s safe, just… eh. It worries me. Still, I was desparate, so I took one of my headache pills and lay down on the couch for a while.

I sent Dave off to get Chinese food for dinner, since there was no way I was going to be cooking anything. A few hours later, I started feeling really nauseated – almost like I was going to throw up, which I never do. (One of the perks of gastric bypass, as it turns out.) I tried to go to sleep, but by then, the headache pill had worn off, and the nausea had gotten worse. Now, if I had thought about this logically, I would’ve come to the following conclusions:

1. I am a person who is already pre-disposed to having severe headaches, so this is not really anything new, and should not be interpreted as anything pregnancy-related.
2. I had Chinese food for dinner, from a restaurant in our podunk little town that is not always known for using the freshest ingredients. Hence, that would explain the nausea.
3. I should really just take another headache pill and some Pepto-Bismol, and go to freakin’ sleep already.

Instead, what did I do? I decided to ask Dr. Google: third trimester, headache, nausea. Because really, when you feel like crap and can’t sleep, there’s nothing better to calm your nerves at 1 a.m. than reading a bunch of worst-case scenarios to thoroughly convince yourself that you are going to die within the next few hours.

I was actually sitting at my laptop having this little internal debate: hmm, should I call 911 now? Or wait until Dave finds me unconscious on the floor?

Exhaustion finally won out and I went to sleep, only to have the most gruesome nightmares about pregnancy complications and dead babies and all kinds of other horrible things that I have ever had in my life. (Thanks, hormones!) I can’t even think about some of the things I dreamed last night, it makes me shudder. So even though by the time I woke up, my headache was mostly gone and the nausea had mostly passed, I still felt horrible since sleep wasn’t exactly the restful and restorative experience that it’s supposed to be.

Dave was watching TV downstairs when I woke up. Instead of a “good morning,” he was greeted with a “I don’t feel good and I need lots of hugs RIGHT NOW.” That probably doesn’t bode well for the rest of the day, does it?  

Oh, and tonight I’m supposed to meet up with the girls for dessert. Hopefully I can squeeze in a (dream-free) nap this afternoon; otherwise I’m sure I won’t be a whole heck of a lot of fun to be around.   

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

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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.

how much longer until I'm unemployed?

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I really feel like I should be writing here more often, but there are a couple of major problems with that:

1. The crappy weather lately means that our crappy Internet connection is even crappier than usual. So our connection is, as Dave puts it, up and down like a whore’s drawers. I cannot think of anything more infuriating than typing out a whole long entry just to lose it all with a “server not found” page the second that I hit Publish. So I’m trying not to write too much when I’m at home. I could (cough) potentially (cough cough) update my blog while I’m at work, but I try not to do that either, because I’m a paranoid freak. Plus, the girl who’ll be replacing me at my job started yesterday, so she’s been hovering around my monitor a lot lately – since, you know, I’m training her and all – and that makes blogging even more problematic.

2. There is this one major thing that’s kinda-sorta-maybe-potentially going to happen within the next week or two, which really affects Dave more than me, but I’m not allowed to talk about it until things are at least somewhat more official. I hate being all vague and mysterious, but them’s the rules. Anyhow, that’s been taking up the majority of my brain-space lately.

So, new topic: Thanksgiving! It’s going to be pretty mellow this year, just me, Dave and Kris (it’s her first Thanksgiving on her own, so I invited her to come over and join us). However, I’m going to be doubling up on most of the things that I cook, so I can freeze half of it for Christmas. Since my entire family is going to be descending on us for the holidays, and I’m going to be something like 35 weeks pregnant then, it makes sense to get as much of the work as possible done in advance.

Which brings me to the very bizarre conversation that I had with my mom recently. I was looking over my Grandmother’s stuffing recipe (we call it dressing in the south, thank you very much), and I saw that it required one major ingredient – Pepperidge Farm cornbread stuffing mix – that isn’t available anywhere around here. I know this because I tried to make it for Christmas last year, and I had to use the herbed stuffing mix instead, and let me tell you, that is just not the same thing.

When I told my mom that I couldn’t find the exact type of stuffing mix, she decided to take matters into her own hands. She went to the grocery store in Mississippi, bought the cornbread stuffing mix, and MAILED IT TO ME. Because lord help us all, we cannot have my dad grumbling over the dinner table that my dressing isn’t as good as my Grandmother’s. I think my mom did it more for my benefit than anyone else’s, since I’m already a ball of hormones and if anyone gripes about my cooking, I just might lunge across the table and stab them in the eye with a slotted serving spoon.

Or, you know, maybe she just wants to make sure that her husband lives long enough to meet his first grandchild. Six of one, half dozen of the other…

28 weeks

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I had my 28-week pregnancy check-up today. Note: It is still. Raining. All the damn time. So our street? Is still flooded. But luckily my detour route was open, so it only took about 20 minutes longer to get to my doctor’s office than it should have. Grr.

Anyway, to sum up: Baby Girl’s heartbeat is perfect, everything seems to be going well, and I’ve gained a pound and a half in the past month. That brings the grand total up to 14 pounds. Again, I still don’t know how that’s possible because I feel enormous, but I’m not complaining. If I were underweight to begin with, there might be some concern that I’m not gaining enough. But since I was (ahem) nowhere near being underweight when I got pregnant, it’s fine. It just means it’ll be that much easier to lose the weight after the baby arrives, which I am quite honestly thrilled about. (Yes, I’m shallow. Don’t judge me.)

Oh, and remember how I said last month that I had found a lump in my right breast? I didn’t mention it to my doctor at my last appointment because I thought it had gone away. Well, apparently it didn’t go away, and now it’s a bit tender. So I asked her about it, and she poked around on my boob for a while to investigate. She said that it doesn’t seem like anything to worry about, it’s probably a milk duct or a lymph node. That was what I had originally thought, but it’s reassuring to hear it from a doctor.

This is the part where I learned something new: while she was checking out the lump in my breast, she said, “oh, and look, you’re already lactating.” Uh, what?? I looked down, and sure enough, there was… liquid. On my boob. Liquid that wasn’t there the minute before. I guess it was a result of all the poking around, but it was the first time I’d ever seen anything like that. So that was weird.

Although I must admit that I did enjoy telling Dave about it when I got home and watching him get all squicked out. Hee. Boys are so funny.

I really wasn't kidding about that ark

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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?

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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.