quest for a faerie child

yikes, I say...

The move to half-time was approved and I've been working a bit from home this week.  Tomorrow is my full day in at the office and in some ways I'm looking forward to it, but in others I feel a profound sense of sadness.  The idea of being separated from Max for any length of time is extremely distressing to me.  However, it could be worse... no?

It could be worse.

I mean, we could have to seek out daycare and the thought of placing his fragile little life in someone else's hands just tears me apart.  At least Moose will be home with him, caring for him in our little home.  No daycare for the emperor.  Just loving care in the hands of momma and daddy.

We bit the bullet and purchased a new desktop this week, from which I am currently posting.  My beloved laptop is just getting a little too weary to handle the multiple applications I need to have open at any given time in order to do my job.  It's still great for online endeavors and for writing, but for heavy duty work... we needed to call in the big guns.

In Max land, things are still going well with the feedings.   Max had an appointment with Dr. Hudson to check on the vesicostomy.  He also had an ultrasound and things looked unchanged, which is good.  The vesicostomy looked good and it would appear that he has no infection, since the culture was taken on Monday and I've heard nothing to date that would indicate there were any nasty bacteria lurking around.  We rode the tram for the first time that day and the ride up found Max sleeping soundly.  However, he awakened for the ultrasound to stretch, wiggle around and stare at everything in the room.  So, on the ride back down he was awake, the sun was out and he enjoyed the swaying motion of the tram.

In the last week, I've begun to consider writing again.  It's been so long since I've been able to focus my creative energies in that realm.  However, I've had ideas swirling around and I'm beginning to feel that longing feeling which overwhelms me when I've gone too long without weaving words into stories.  Perhaps I'll find myself back in that frame of mind soon...  one can only hope.  How can you call yourself a writer when the only words you (sparingly) write happen to be about the daily/weekly endeavor of caring for your special-needs child.   I guess you could turn that into a non-fiction piece of work. However, I would say my talent tends to lie more towards the realm of fiction.

Last night I found myself in an unbelievable world of pain, the origin of which I cannot truly determine.  When I would move, the pain was similar to that of just after the c-section.  It seems odd to me that it would pop up almost 10 weeks later.  I didn't overly stress myself yesterday, so I'm feeling utterly clueless on this.  It was so bad, though, that I honestly thought I was going to wake up in the middle of the night needing to have Moose take me to the hospital.  He thought the same thing, given that I was almost moaning when we finally laid down to bed.  He took care of Max overnight, which made for an incredibly dead Moose at work.  He is now passed out on the couch.

I felt terrible that he had to take care of Max all night, but I just could not get up to do it.  I must admit, it was amazing to get about a 6 hour stretch of straight sleep, despite the pain before I could get to sleep.

Tonight he's doing Max duty again since I will be up and out the door by 550am... yikes.

Yikes, I say.

exhaustion rears its ugly head

I am so incredibly exhausted I almost can't see straight.  Despite the fact that I ended up having two days off last week (Tuesday/Wednesday), I still can't get used to having to work on Friday and only having a two day weekend.  I know, I know...life is rough.  Actually though, I was incredibly busy at work on Thursday and Friday and then I was incredibly busy over my weekend.  So, my exhaustion is understandable, as opposed to those many weekends wherein I do nothing but laze around and am still exhausted.

Saturday, Moose and I went with Kathryn to the Pear Festival in the Gorge and wandered around from farm to farm, tasting, choosing and purchasing massive amounts of apples and pears, which we then began canning on Sunday.  The plan was to make apple sauce and apple butter yesterday and to make pear butter next weekend.  After four and a half hours of apple sauce making/canning, we put off the apple butter to next week.  I will say, it was the most amazing apple sauce I've ever tasted.

I've never canned before because something about it has always frightened me.  The fear of accidentally poisoning me and everyone who partakes is a big part of it.  The other part is that I fear using a pressure cooker.  I have a very nice one, a very very large one, one made specifically for canning. But have I ever used it in the two years since I got it for christmas?  No... no I have not.

However, this experience was completely easy.  We used boil canning process and therefore, I didn't have to tackle the big bad pressure cooker.  Well, I say it was easy.  It was easy in the sense that the directions made sense and were simple.  It was a pain in the ass in the sense that we peeled and cored too many pounds of apples to count.  But we walked away with 2 quarts + 6 pints of apple sauce each.

Next week.... curried apple chutney, apple butter and pear butter are on the agenda.  We'll see how far we get on that.

I've begun the arduous task of a baby registry.  I consider it arduous because I honestly have no idea what I am doing.  It seems odd to me.  I mean, I honestly grew up around babies.  I worked as a nanny in college.  I have numerous nieces and nephews as well as a little sister.  However, in none of those cases was I actually responsible for purchasing items for their care.  And now, I am just floundering a little bit.  I mean sure, I can figure out the majority of things.  However, I took a look at a coworker's registery and I felt like a desperate underachiever because some of the things on there, I had no idea what they were.  Absolutely NO idea and NO idea what they were for.

I've gotten a list from a friend of essentials and that helps.  But beyond that..... ?  Yikes.

Saturday night, I awakened to noises outside my window and the realization that someone was walking underneath it and then attempting to get in the window.  Yeah, I was quite freaked out.  However,  I'm going to leave that story for the next post, because I'm too damn tired to spend another moment composing absolute crap because I have not a creative spark in my body at 7am on Monday morning.

I wish I were home.... or at the very least, out amongst this beauty:

stuffed by chocolate

It is 7:57pm and I am feeling mightily stuffed.  I feel like I should be rolled out of the house and down the stairs so that I can take a good, long, roll around the neighborhood.  That brownie tart is so sinful that it makes me almost vomit thinking about it.  Talk about a chocolate sugar rush.  Oh, and somehow I neglected to think about the fact that the tart is about 7/8 chocolate and 1/8 flour, sugar, eggs and butter.  I neglected to think about that when I left the tart out on the counter all day.  It was in the mid 90's today.  The kitchen is not air-conditioned.

Consequently, cutting the tart and serving it was more like scooping a concoction located somewhere on the spectrum between pudding and the moistest (I don't think that's a word) cake you've ever come across, leaning heavily towards the pudding end of the spectrum.  The tart is now safely ensconsed in the fridge.

---Except for the scoop located in my belly at the moment and causing me to feel uncomfortably full, uncomfortably chocolated, just plain uncomfortable.

Ah well... it was a gift.   It was a gift for the chocolate lover.  And it was greatly appreciated.

In other news, the next-door neighbors were robbed during the day on Wednesday.  Joy.  The joy was even greater to contemplate because I came home to find the back door unlocked, about which I promptly notified Moose, to which he promptly replied he must have forgotten.  Later that night came the news of the break-in next door.  So, the neighbors get robbed and our backdoor is open to the world.  How's that for serendipity?

back in the saddle again

Ah Friday...have I told you lately how much I love you?  I feel compelled to tell you this right now because I fear my blissful non-working Fridays are a thing of the past for the month of September after today.  Days off will become a Tuesday or Wednesday tragedy due to overwhelming overscheduling of the month of September at the horror show, also known as work.

I hit a milestone this week, a milestone commonly referred to as quickening.  I adore that term.  It makes me think of ancient times.  It makes me think of a little old herbal woman in a cottage by a small pond, doling out herbs to pregnant villagers.  It also makes me think of The Highlander, but that's not as nice a thought.

Anyway...I was sitting at work Wednesday, minding my own business, thinking I was feeling something weird for most of the day and not really understanding what it was until I suddenly felt two jabs in succession, facing downwards towards my cervix and then I knew what I was feeling.  It was movement and it absolutely could not be confused with gas.  It wasn't the butterfly sensation I've been feeling for a couple weeks, the sensation where you lie there and think, 'was that...?'

No, this was a definite kick.  That night, I could actually feel it with my hands on my belly, as could others.  Ever since then, I've been feeling constant sensations, sensations that make me believe I am incubating a gymnast or a circus tumbler, or something of that ilk.  Yesterday, I got to see the doodlebug for a couple minutes when I went in to get severe back pain checked out and the student midwife couldn't find the heartbeat.  I wanted to grab the doppler out of her hand and do it myself, because I am, yanno, an expert at it by now and because I'm impatient.  If it weren't for the fact that I can hear the heartbeat every day and that I was feeling the bug moving around, I would have started to seriously freak. 

However, she went to get the midwife who is also the director of our Midwifery program, director of our advanced practice graduate nursing program and a woman with whom I have worked fairly closely over the years.  It's a rare treat that she's in clinic as the midwife on call, so I was happy to have been able to see her.

The director came in with a new ultrasound machine proclaiming, 'I'm really into ultrasound right now because I was just looking at ultrasound pictures of my new grandchild, so let's take a look.'

Of course everything was fine, the backpain is diagonsed as a result of increased hormones and softening connective tissue and not preterm labor.  I thought she might be able to tell me the sex, but we couldn't get a good view.  I guess I'll have to wait until next Thursday, still!  But, I did get to see the bebe and we're looking quite a big bigger, even from 3 weeks ago and that was pretty cool.  I don't think I'll ever get over that.

Last night found me slowly making an italian sausage and wild mushroom risotto.  This morning found me making an absolutely sinful brownie tart a'la Barefoot Contessa and I have plans to make a batch of cranberry, walnut, lemon scones tomorrow morning.  Yes, I think me and my cooking are finally back in business and I can't tell you how happy that makes me.  Actually, I can.  It makes me delieriously happy.  It pleases me in a way I simply do not find in any other endeavor, even writing.

Even writing.

I watched The Piano last night for the first time in quite awhile.  I forgot how truly intense and moving it was in certain parts.  In fact, it sparked the melancholy of last night's post and then aided me in the sometimes freakish, sometimes all too real cinematic experience that has become my dream state in recent months.

I came to a conclusion as I was watching it, and that is my mind starts working when I surround myself with experiences which move me.  Well, duh.   That took me a good long while to figure out, didn't it?  Perhaps when writer's block finds me all stymied and upset, I should pull out a deeply moving movie and get lost for a bit.  I almost always emerge with a billion thoughts and ideas.  Go figure.  Surround yourself with greatness.

the incredible numbness of being

Officially, I am the mother of a singleton, a singleton who is normal sized and spent the majority of my ultrasound face-down looking at my cervix.  I drank a tiny amount of caffeine at about 630am and we didn't end up having the scan until close to 1230.  I also ate around 630 and was beginning to feel a tad bit hungry by that time.

So, it seems the doodlebug was just hanging out, not moving around a lot and not being the most cooperative when it comes to finding out the sex.  What we did not see were boy parts.  However, the tech and the doctor wanted to wait until the full anatomy scan in 3 weeks to say it's a girl for sure.

In the meantime, I will hold the possibility of a girl close to my heart.  I swear, when I saw the sillouhette of her head flashed up on the screen, I fell soo deeply in love it was hard for me to breathe.  Even now, I keep looking at her little pictures and I am moved in a way I have not yet been.  I mean, seriously, I can see her nose.  I can see her nose!  How sweet is that?

Ah, I really don't want to spend an entire post being schmoopy, but I feel that way damnit.  We saw her humerus and her femur.  We saw her heart and its chambers.  We saw her bladder and her kidneys and her spine, her clavicles, and she has my eyes.

Right, I'm teasing there.

Anyway.  Apparently, I have a possible fibroid which accounts for the hyperextended uterus.  We'll see if it is still there at next scan.  But I'm still on track.  January 27th is the day.  We'll see if she comes on time (note my excessive use of she.  I'm just going to continue on in that vein until I'm proven she's not).

Over on the ant front, we've not seen hide nor hair in over 24 hours.  I'm willing to put the faerie stamp of approval on the use of cinnamon in ant warfare.  The only thing that kind of bothers me about the whole escapade (alright REALLY bothers me), is that I have cinnamon in the cracks between my floor and the baseboards and I tell you, it's all I can do not to go around and vacuum that shit up.  Seriously.  I sit in the living room and look in the kitchen and even though I can't see the cinnamon, I know it is there and I want to clean it.

Gah.

Now, I'm left wondering how long I'll have to, you know, leave it there.  I mean would a couple days be ok?  I'd really hate to clean it up and then have the ants come marching home again, hoorah, hoorah.  I suppose this is something I could research on the glorious web.  But honestly, I'm not into that. Moose can find all the hippy information.  I'll just abide by it, thank you very much.

On the numb and tingling front, my fingers feel like they don't belong to my hands and my lower legs feel back to normal as do most of my thighs.  My torso, however is one numb mother, as are my fingers.  It's the traveling numbness.  I am left wondering if it's just going to move its way up my body until my head is numb.  Could my brain get numb?

Perhaps before long, I'll have an excuse for my writer's block.  I'll just say my brain is numb due to pregnancy.  My uterus is sitting on a smart plug or something.  Would that work?

Would it?

we likes it lots

Well how 'bout that?  I went an entire day without whining about my pregnant ass in some way or another.  I posted two whole things on this blog and one whole thing on another without talking about my damn pregnancy. Alert the presses, please.

Ground cinnamon is currently a keeper in this house.  Oh yes, we likes it lots.  We likes it long time.  So far, anyway.  I've not seen one of those teensy creatures in well over 15 hours (but who's counting).  I need a piece of wood to knock on, like now.  Please?

Busy morning leaves little time to blog.  More later.  Lots going on today, oh me, oh my.

hello, my name is slug

Looking at yesterday's postings, I would have to diagnose myself as having been a bit crabby.  That's probably an understatement.  I also realized my faculty post had a secretarial ring to it.  But, I must insist that I am not a secretary.  Oh no.  There are no secretaries in the school.  We might be peons.  But we are not secretaries.  Because, yanno, anyone who doesn't carry an alphabet soup behind their names, regardless of their college education, is considered a bit of a peon.  I happen to be a little higher on the Peon pole than others, but I am, afterall, still a peon in the grand peon scheme of things.

I'm ok with that, though, despite what this post sounds like.  I had my career ---the one where I put everything in my life behind it and worked myself into the ground, while making fabulous sums of money.  I left that  life when I realized that I really wanted to have something more to show for myself besides a paycheck and an incredibly stressed out countenance.

Now, after working here for almost five years, I have my own office, which automatically sets you a bit higher on the peon scale and I have an amazing amount of autonomy.  I work 4 tens, with every lovely Friday off and I've worked that schedule for 2 and a half years.  I have a lovely balcony outside my office with a view of the valley and, if I move to the correct spot, the eastern slope of Mt. St. Helens.  One of my best friends is my boss.  My opinion's are generally respected and sought. I've got it pretty good.

Too bad I'm trying desperately to make the decision about whether or not I should return to work after delivery.  I suspect the answer will not make itself truly known until I have the bebe in my arms.  However, at the present time, it is driving me absolutely bonkers.

I managed to exercise (aka walk) for 30 minutes this morning, which is a huge accomplishment in the life of this unbelievably lazy slackass.  In three and a half months, I have managed to wipe out the effects of a full two years worth of physical activity.  I am so beyond sluggish that it is difficult to even describe.  I stress that I am not exaggerating.  I am telling the ugly truth here, unfortunately.

The only good thing about starting out as a slug is that you can begin doing the slightest activity and you'll see a benefit.  So, I guess I should look at it that way.

You know it is bad when you feel as if every step you take, you're having to drag your legs forward.  That's bad, right?

Sometimes I disgust myself, seriously.

Charmed Schmarmed

I am seriously the biggest slack alive at this point in time.  Though, I promise I'm not about to make a blog-hop or anything like that.  I just can't seem to get my thoughts in gear in any way, shape or form.  I also seem to be completely incapable of thinking about a thing besides work, my pregnancy or whether or not I've seen every possible episode of Charmed. 

Yeah, I said Charmed.  Don't ask me where the hell that obsession came from because I honestly have no idea.  I never watched it after the first couple episodes when it first started and now, I find myself strangely obsessed with it.  It's completely ridiculous and absolutely slaughters the idea of paganism or wicca, which should disturb me on a fundamental level and yet, I sit here and watch it.  I also find it seriously detrimental to women and their intelligence.  But, whatever.

It's entertainment, I guess.

Even now, I find myself unable to fully concentrate on a post because I'm watching that damn show.  God help me.

a sight and sound

So, it is exactly 7:17pm.  The temperature outside is 92.  The temperature in my living room is 88.3.  The temperature in my bedroom is 70.1.  Oh yeah.  70.1.  It was 68, but then I realized that keeping it at 68, simply because I could, was ridiculous.  It was ridiculous when I found myself huddled under sheets and bedspread, curled cozily against my mama pregnancy pillow and freezing my pregnant ass off.

The operative phrase, though, is "freezing my pregnant ass off."

In my own home.  My own home!

I plan on enshrining myself here for the entire weekend beginning right now.  I have visions of moving my desk in here so that I can work on my class from the cool confines of my dark, delicious, deep-frozen temple.  I'll consider that in the morning.

For now, I am reveling in the fact that all of this was made partially possible by our crazed telephone and then car jaunt around town this morning.  Yes, that was part of it.  But the reason why I am reclining in calm, cool, collected comfort is because I have a Moose, who came home two hours before me to install my new goddess and get the room to 72 degrees before I ever stepped foot in it.  Yes, instead of working until his customary 7 or 8pm, he was home by 2, for me. 

Well, it was probably also for him because I am hell on wheels when I'm hot and miserable.  Oh yes sir.... I am a sight and sound to behold.