Category Archives: Blah-blah-blah

Labor Day summary

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The weekend housework report:
* I worked in the garage for a couple of hours on Friday, but it was just too hot, so I gave up pretty quickly. According to the forecast, this weekend is supposed to be in the low 70’s, so hopefully I can finish it up then.

* On Friday, I ordered new doors, baseboards, casing and crown moulding for our entire house. It’s all part of the big Pre-Baby House Renovation Project. But fear not: we have a contractor who’s going to install the stuff, we aren’t going to do it ourselves. For one thing, we want the work to actually be finished by the time the baby arrives. For another, we don’t want it to look like crap. However, the price tag on this little project is steadily climbing. I’m really glad that I get frequent flyer miles whenever I use my credit card.

* Yesterday, I cleaned out our bedroom closet. That’s actually a much bigger feat than you might imagine. But it’s a small space, so it felt really good to start and finish a project in one day. And now Dave will never be able to find his clothes because (gasp!) they’re all on hangers in the closet, rather than on the floor or in the laundry basket.

* Speaking of the laundry basket, I folded a good three or four loads of laundry yesterday, which my lower back really didn’t appreciate.

* I also made my first-ever attempt at cooking lasagna, since I thought that might be a good dish that I could potentially make and freeze for after the baby arrives. This was just a trial run to make sure it would be edible. And it wasn’t bad, but I need to remember to add more salt in the future.

Other odds and ends:

I’ve been having problems with an internal application at work, so this afternoon I had to call our helpdesk. While I was on hold, I heard muzak/instrumental versions of “Fernando” by ABBA, one of the “Fame” songs by Irene Cara (I’m not sure which one), and “Your Song” by Elton John. The music of my childhood has been deemed appropriate for elevators and hold music. I suddenly feel very, very old.

The news about the Crocodile Hunter made me incredibly, inexplicably sad. I suppose it was bound to happen eventually. Mostly I just feel sad for his family.

On Saturday, I bought and paid for Dave’s birthday present, although I don’t actually have it in my possession yet. It’s driving him crazy because he has no idea what I’m getting him, he just has a few vague hints that I’ve dropped. And it’s a really good present, too; I’m quite proud of myself for thinking of it. I’m going to enjoy dragging this one out for the next two weeks.

Which reminds me: two more weeks until we know if the sprog is a boy or a girl! Aaahhh!!! I’m so excited, I can’t wait. I honestly don’t care either way, I just need to know. It’s driving me crazy every time I pass through the baby section at Target. Also, my dad has been forewarned that if my instincts are wrong and this baby happens to be a girl, and he dares to make one reference to Gone With the Wind, I will hang up on him, and he will not be welcome in our home at Christmas.

[For those of you who didn’t catch that reference: When Scarlett gave birth to Bonnie Blue Butler, Mammy said, “I apologize, Mr. Rhett, for it bein’ a girl.” My dad thinks that line is hilarious. Obviously, I feel otherwise.]

[Also: when I first told my parents that I was pregnant, my dad quoted Luca Brasi from The Godfather and said, “I hope your first child will be a masculine child.” Ever the movie buff, that guy. I didn’t really think that was funny, either.]

[Actually, I suppose either of those jokes would be funny, if you didn’t know my dad and you hadn’t already heard both of those movie quotes about thirty-seven gazillion times during the course of your life.]

[And what is up with me and brackets today? Weird.]

Random pregnancy tidbit of the day: I am craving crab legs in a big, bad way. Dave won’t eat shellfish at all – and is, in fact, repulsed when I eat crab legs because he thinks the whole shell-cracking thing is barbaric – so I think I’m going to have to enlist Kris to go out to dinner with me. It’s gotten so bad that last week, I actually bought fake crab (you know, “krab”) at the grocery store, and dipped it in melted butter. I even managed to gross out myself with that one, but I was desparate. I think it’s time to treat myself to the real thing.

CHAOS! at the hair salon

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So, there’s this big holiday weekend approaching – which is technically a four-day weekend for me, since I don’t work on Fridays – and we have absolutely no plans. Because it appears that we are the Boring Household.

Ok, so that’s not entirely true. Dave and I are both getting haircuts on Saturday, and then afterward he’s meeting up with one of his friends at a local brewery. I volunteered to be their designated driver, because I’m nice like that. I haven’t decided if I’ll go back home and watch TV while they’re out getting sloppy drunk on expensive microbrews, or if I’ll go shopping and keep myself busy in the general vicinity of the brewery. Probably the latter.

** Random Story Alert **
I was supposed to get a haircut on Tuesday evening, but it didn’t happen. I went to the salon, got my eyebrows waxed (I was long overdue), and then when I was waiting for my hairstylist, the power went out. I have no idea why, there was no bad weather or anything.

You know the constant white noise of hair dryers that exists in most salons? It was suddenly rendered silent.

And the Gwen Stefani background music? Muted. Which, to me, was sort of a blessing.

I thought it was hilarious to sit back and watch all of the gorgeous size-two stylists in their high heels running around all aflutter because they didn’t know what to do. (That’s another random aside in itself: how do those girls wear those shoes when they work on their feet all day? I cannot imagine how much pain they must be in. Or maybe they’ve done it for so long that their nerve endings are irreparably damaged and they have no sensation in their feet anymore. I can’t figure it out.)

I’m sure the power outage would have been infinitely less amusing if I had been in the middle of getting highlights and was sitting under a hair dryer with a head full of tin foil. But I haven’t colored my hair since 2003, so that didn’t even occur to me until someone else pointed it out. I suppose I should be grateful that my haircut hadn’t even started yet.

Anyway, my hairstylist found me (in the dark! go her!), and we decided to just reschedule since nobody knew how long the power would be out. So now I’m getting a haircut at the same time as Dave on Saturday. Still, that was quite possibly one of the strangest hair salon experiences I’ve ever had.
** End of Random Story **

Ok, back to this weekend: haircut, designated driving… what else? Oh, one of Kris’s friends from Memphis is visiting this weekend, so I’ll be meeting up with them on Sunday for dinner. Aaaand, that’s about it. See? Boring.

Although, last weekend I started cleaning out our garage, which is a pretty huge feat, so I might be continuing that little project this weekend. There are still a lot of boxes of things from my old apartment that I never unpacked when I moved in with Dave, and because they’ve been left around for so long, now they have to be thrown out. Anyone need a toaster filled with cobwebs or a bottle of Pepto-Bismol that expired in 2005? I didn’t think so.

Of course, if you read this post and then just read the above paragraph, you have by now figured out that I am a bit of a hoarder. I have a very difficult time throwing things away. But that seems to be one of the perks of pregnancy, I’m now running around shoving everything that I don’t absolutely need into trash cans. I’m trying not to throw away any of Dave’s stuff unless he’s given me express permission to do so, but it’s really difficult.

a little late for spring cleaning, but..

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I’m not a really messy person. I know Dave is cracking up that I just wrote that, but I’m really not. I’m pretty bad about clutter – for example, I tend to let mail pile up on the kitchen table, and my clothes spend more time on the floor than on hangers – but I’m usually good about making sure that dirt is kept to a minimum. I can’t stand to leave food out, which I think is due to my southern upbringing, where uncovered food overnight equals a mighty cockroach infestation by sunrise. When Dave leaves a coffee mug on the counter with a tiny bit of coffee in the bottom? It drives me crazy. And not in a good way.

And actually, since we got a housekeeper, I’ve gotten a lot better about the clutter aspect. Every two weeks, I have to make sure that I put all of my clutter away so our housekeeper doesn’t have to clean around it. (I haven’t figured out what I’m going to do next year, if we decide to make a go of me staying at home with the baby, which means we won’t be able to afford a housekeeper anymore. But that decision – whether I’ll go back to work or not – is still very much up in the air, and I don’t see the point of worrying about it now.)

However, as reasonably tidy as I am about the house, when it comes to my car, all bets are off. My backseat is my trash can and my recycle bin. I don’t know exactly when it got so bad. At some point in my life, I kept my car spotless all the time. I think it was probably during the first year or so that I had it, since it was the first new car that I had ever owned. But for the last couple of years, it’s been embarassingly bad. Like to the point where I park my car in the employee garage at work, and then I worry that anyone walking past it might look inside and wonder if the owner of said car is mentally ill. It’s that messy.

But recently, I got into an email conversation with my cousin about infant car seats (which, in all fairness, I started), and I panicked. My backseat is so filthy that you couldn’t possibly put a car seat in there if you wanted to. And yes, I realize that I have five and a half months before I need to have a car seat in my car, but being rational isn’t exactly my strong suit these days.

So when I got home yesterday, I cleaned out the entire car. Here are some of the things I found, because I’m generous and therefore willing to publish my embarassment on the Internet for your amusement:
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oh my achin' back

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There hasn’t been a whole lot to write about this week because I’ve been in too much pain to do anything interesting. It appears that my energy level only showed up long enough to kick my ass. I really managed to do a number on my back when I was painting last weekend, and doing prenatal yoga to stretch only seemed to make it worse. What is up with that? How can stretching to relieve pain actually aggravate it instead?

Someone please remind me that the next time my nesting instinct kicks in, I need to tell it to take a big fat hike.

It got to the point where yesterday, I was leaning over the kitchen counter making Dave dig his fists into my lower back to try to relieve some of the pressure. I hear tennis balls are supposed to be good for that, I think I need to get some.

But! I got my very first prenatal massage today, and it was quite awesome. So awesome, in fact, that all I can think about is crawling back into bed for a nice two-hour nap. Which is exactly what I’m about to do.

Maybe I’ll think of something interesting to write about over the weekend. Here’s hoping.

ah, sweet george

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I suppose it’s common knowledge that pregnant women have all sorts of crazy dreams, right? And I have been having more than my share of them. Most of them are just bizarre, although I’ve had several nightmares. And not just any nightmares, these are the type that haunt me for the next day or two and give me the chills whenever I think about them. Not fun.

Last week, though, I had the Best. Dream. Ever.

I dreamt that I met George Clooney, and I had the opportunity to hook up with him. I’m not sure how exactly that happened, but he was there and he wanted me. Not a bad way to start off a dream, eh? Alas, I turned poor George down. I explained to him that I loved my husband, so I couldn’t have sex with him. But, I figured that Dave would probably be able to forgive me if George and I kissed for a little while.

I mean, come ON, it’s George freakin’ Clooney. Dave couldn’t possibly hold a grudge for me not being able to pass up an opportunity like this:

The Clooney

If any of you ladies could turn that down, you are of stronger moral fiber than I.

So, George and I made out. It was totally PG-rated, there wasn’t even any over-the-sweater action. But it was awesome.

Ok, so it’s actually kind of lame, but at least it was better than flea’s Clooney dream.

P.S. to Dave: I love you and I promise that George wouldn’t have a chance in real life. Honest.

for all my feminist readers

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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 term "sister-wives" does still freak me out, though

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One of the perks of my starting a part-time job was that it would give me a lot of free time to do the million or so projects around the house that need to be done before the baby gets here. I mean, three-day weekends every week, right? And even the four days of the week that I do work, I’m only there for 5 or 6 hours.

Clearly, with so much time on my hands, I should be getting all kinds of things done. But, HA! My butt hardly left the couch for three solid days this weekend.

First of all, I had DVR’ed the entire first season of Big Love a long time ago, but I had never gotten around to watching it. Have you seen this show? Do you know how addictive it is? I watched all twelve episodes in three days. The last few nights, I’ve even been dreaming about polygamists, although luckily, they’ve been the types of dreams where I’m an observer, not where I’m actually involved in what’s happening. But man, that show is awesome, and I’m totally annoyed that I don’t even know when season two is going to begin.

One scary moment while doing my “Big Love” marathon yesterday – I got up off the couch to refill my water glass. I had a head rush when I stood up, but I get those fairly often. (Moreso since I got pregnant.) Usually I can just grab on to the wall or some nearby piece of furniture to steady myself until it passes. Yesterday, though, my legs gave out. I just fell down, landed on all fours, and suddenly tears were involuntarily coming out of my eyes and I was gasping for breath. It was the strangest sensation, and I still don’t know what it was. I didn’t lose consciousness, so I can’t say that I fainted – I guess it was just a near-faint?

I yelled for Dave; I think it freaked him out to find me on the floor between the dining room and the kitchen. He got my glass of water for me and I crawled (literally, I was scared to stand up) back to the couch. For the rest of the day, though, I had to be really careful every time I stood up. I couldn’t seem to get rid of that shaky feeling in my legs. I thought I was supposed to be getting over that stuff now that I’m almost in my second trimester, but I guess “almost” doesn’t count.

Abruptly switching topics back to fun stuff: while I’ve been camping out with my butt glued to the couch, there have been movies too. Recaps!
* Shopgirl – A little disappointing, only because I don’t care for Jason Schwartzman at all and I really thought that Claire Danes could do better. But it was ok.

* The Three Burials of Melquiades Estrada – This is one that Dave picked, but I watched it because I generally like Tommy Lee Jones. I really hated this movie, though. I liked the beginning because it started off as kind of a sad story. Then it turned into some weird gross-out/torture flick and I just couldn’t handle it. I covered my face for a pretty significant portion of the second half of the movie. Oh, and also? The ending sucked.

* Transamerica – Ok, technically we watched this over a week ago, but I’m including it here because I loved it. I now think that Felicity Huffman should’ve won the Oscar for Best Actress. Great movie.

* Eight Below – I coerced Dave into watching this with me last night. And yeah, I know, it’s a Disney movie. But oh, how I cried. I mean, the human actors, meh. I didn’t really give a flip about them or their lame little storyline. But the dogs! The pretty huskies and malamutes with the beautiful doggie faces! They broke my heart. I sobbed – a lot.

And as much as I hate to admit it, I have kind of a new respect for Paul Walker. He was so good with the dogs that it made me think that he must love animals in real life. Because honestly, he’s not a good actor by any stretch, so I just can’t imagine that he could’ve pulled it off if he wasn’t really a dog person.