Category Archives: Blah-blah-blah

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.

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.

ho-higgity-hum

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I really have almost nothing to write about this week. I worry that my blog content is getting too baby-focused lately, and I don’t want to bore you guys with stupid little details, like:

* I don’t have gestational diabetes. Which, I suppose, means that I drank that nasty orange syrup for nothing. Hmph.

* I had my first experience with baby hiccups (little spasms every few seconds), and I thought they were cool, although I imagine that the novelty will wear off quickly when they start happening at 3 a.m.

Aaaand, that’s about it. See? Boring.

Random funny: A friend sent me this link about bad baby names today, which I’ve seen before – heck, I’ve probably linked to it here before. But the site has been updated since the last time I saw it, so I was crying from laughing again. This person takes legitimate baby names, either ones that she digs up on baby-naming bulletin board sites, or names that people send her, and then she makes her own snarky comments under them. Example:

I once met a lady named Rodana. I think she runs a successful internet business.

In her spare time she destroys Tokyo.

You get the idea. I’m pretty sure that none of our top 10 names are on that site, which is a relief. (We aren’t 100% settled on a name yet, but most of our top choices are a bit on the traditional side. I don’t think we’ll be having a little McKynzy or Kayleigh on our hands anytime soon.) But man, reading through that site, you just have to wonder about some of these people. The parents, I mean, not the kids. You just feel sorry for the kids.

Other stuff: There are a few things happening at work that I could talk about (office moves, new bosses, etc.), but I’ve sort of hit the point where I realize that I’m only going to be there for another five weeks, so… meh. There isn’t much about my job that really phases me at this point. It’s fine, no big complaints, blah blah yawn.

The one weird thing about work is that I’m pretty sure this is the first time in my adult life that I know exactly when my job is ending (very soon), and I’m not frantically scrambling around, updating my resume and searching for a new job before the current one ends. That’s kind of a weird feeling.

And who knows, next summer I might be scrambling to get the resume up and out again. I have no idea how that’ll play out, and I’m still determined to not make any decisions about it now. Dave and I will figure it all out when the time comes. (I hope.)

religion, hair, all the important stuff

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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.)

seafood drama

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I forgot to mention that since I had been craving crab legs since before Labor Day, last Friday I managed to drag Kris out to dinner with me. I bribed her by offering to pay. That girl is a sucker for a free meal.

I did some digging around online, looking for local seafood restaurants that:
(a) served crab legs – online menus are my new favorite thing.
(b) was in a semi-reasonable price range – yes, I’m having a pregnancy craving, but $45 for crab legs? Um, no.
(c) was located within a reasonable commute of both me and Kris, since we were coming from different directions and had already decided to meet at the restaurant.

I found a place. I had been there once before, but it was at least four years ago, so I didn’t really remember anything about it. Still, it got a decent review on CitySearch, and it met all of my criteria, so it looked like a safe bet.

Kris and I met up there, got a table, and ordered our food; she got the halibut, and I got the 2-pound whole dungeness crab. Mmm, yum. I couldn’t wait, I was practically bouncing in my seat from the anticipation. I had been daydreaming about this meal all week long.

Then we waited. And waited. And waited some more. Good thing they bring you rolls at this place, otherwise I would’ve fallen over. Finally, our waiter came over and apologized for the delay. He said that there was a problem with my crab – he was about to bring it out to me, when the restaurant manager walked by and noticed that it smelled “off.” So they were making me a new, fresh crab.

Umm, ok. I guess that’s fine. Kris and I were both surprised that he basically admitted that they have spoiled food in their kitchen, but it was nice that he was honest.

A few minutes later, he came out with both of our entrees. Since the waiter had told me that they were making me a “fresh” crab, it didn’t even occur to me that maybe I should sniff it before I ate it.

In retrospect, I really should have. I had the first bite and it was… wrong. It was too dry, and sort of spongy. It was not at all like crab is supposed to taste. I guess I didn’t notice the smell because I had dipped it in butter. But when I picked up the remainder of the crab leg and sniffed it, it smelled vaguely like ammonia. Oh god.

The waiter, of course, whisked it away immediately when I told him. He offered the Alaskan king crab instead of the dungeness, but before I agreed, I grilled him with questions: “But are you absolutely sure that it’s fresh? Because I’m five months pregnant, and I have been craving crab legs for the past two weeks, and if this meal is going to suck, I might cry in the middle of your restaurant.”

(Incidentally, Dave was horrified when I told him that I said that to the waiter. Kris, on the other hand, was sitting directly across from me, and she was all, “That’s right, you BETTER bring her some fresh crab!” I guess that just goes to show how women understand important things like food cravings.)

Another half hour later (after Kris had long since finished her meal), I finally got my Alaskan king crab. It was ok, just sort of meh. I think they served melted margarine instead of real butter, which honestly just ruins the whole thing. If I compare the expensive restaurant meal to my grocery store “krab” with real melted butter? I think the faux-crab wins. That’s pathetic.

Also? Even after all of the inconveniences, the waiter didn’t comp a single thing on our check. He billed us for every last nickel of it, including Kris’s diet coke. (Except my rotten crab, he was kind enough to deduct that.) He got a less than stellar tip.

Just in case any of you who read this are on Seattle’s Eastside, this was the place. Avoid it at all costs.

Oh, and for the record? Since that meal didn’t quite live up to the fantasy in my head, I’m still sort of craving crab legs. Sigh.