Tag Archives: yay

Thinking

So I’ve been taking some time off. Maybe you noticed, maybe you were grateful that I shut my mouth for once. 😛 But yeah, stuff. I’m going to try a different technique for handling some stuff and see if it works for me. I miss writing here.

I’m nine weeks now. This pregnancy seems pretty willing to stick and that is wonderful. I’m much much much less sick than I was with Shanna (thank all deities everywhere) so I’m even feeling ok. I’m not feeling ‘normal’ and I’m not feeling energetic or anything crazy like that. But I’m not overwhelmingly sick and completely incapacitated so I consider that a win. 🙂 Humble expectations are important. I manage to do an okay job of interacting with Shanna during the day. We do a lot of cuddling on the couch and I am also incredibly grateful that she is so willing and able to entertain herself for long stretches. I know it is unusual. As a result of her playing alone a lot of the day she has been pretty needy in the evenings and the bulk of that is falling to Noah. Let me take a moment to say that my husband has stepped up in a variety of ways and man do I love him. He is doing ALL of the cooking and most of the cleaning and a much larger share of kid-wrangling than usual. As a result this is probably our last kid. That’s… as mixed as that kind of thing might be.

We went to Arizona to see Sarah. That was really awesome. It was occasionally challenging to deal with Shanna, but mostly she was her awesomely obedient and friendly self so it wasn’t too bad. It was really nice to get to sit down and talk to my Sarah again. It’s hard having her so far away. I miss her. Unfortunately we cut the trip a bit short. Has anyone noticed this storm we’re having? Yeah, I had to drive home from Arizona through that and I am really glad I left before things had gotten too established. The drive home was pretty hairy at times and it would have been much worse another day or so later from what I can tell. Also: the Grand Canyon is breathtaking. So far in all of my travels I have set Alaska up as my own personal definition of Most Awe Inspiring Place but the Grand Canyon kicked Alaska’s ass. I would like to go again while not pregnant and seriously hike it.

Oh, side thing: people who bring a two year old on a 2.5 hour train ride without ANY form of amusement or toy are flippin stupid.

I’ve been hibernating a lot more than usual lately. On one hand it’s lonely. On the other hand it feels like what my body needs and I’m drained from the basics of day-to-day life without any extra stress. See, this is why I miss my Sarah so much. I could whine at her about being sad and lonely and not wanting to leave the house and she would come visit. Ok, I’m not really sad. But I am lonely. It’s interesting how sometimes those two things are tied together and sometimes they aren’t. I’m starting to move into that placid slow-moving-brain thing I had when I was pregnant with Shanna. I feel like I’m seeing most of life from under water. Things are just slower and less sharp and that’s kind of nice. I feel … honestly kinda stoned. Ha. But it’s in a very nice way. I’m just drifting through life and that feels ok and good and right. If I could have this mental feel without feeling so physically debilitated I think I would want to be pregnant forever. If I couldn’t talk Noah into being quiverfull I would surrogate over and over. 🙂 But, I don’t get to pick and choose so no permanent pregnancy for me. 🙂

I saw my brother on the drive home from Arizona. That was shocking. I knew I was going to be driving within 2 miles of his house so I called him and asked if he wanted to meet his niece. After double checking that I wasn’t going to force him to deal with our mother he said he wanted to meet her. When I told him that I am not currently speaking with our mother he seemed to feel much better. We had about two and a half hours of sitting around talking. It was a really good conversation. He admitted things out loud that I’ve always suspected. I was shocked and impressed that he has gotten to a point where he can admit those things. He’s grown up a lot. He seemed similarly impressed with my attitude about his behavior of the past few years. I told him that I understand why he has felt he needed to make the choices he made but they still make me sad. I think I managed to convey how much I would like a relationship with him without being pushy or demanding or needy. I’m proud of myself for how I handled my end of things there. I’m really grateful that he gave me a chance. I’m not sure we are going to start having a close relationship any time soon, but maybe it will be a beginning.

My good deed for the day.

One of my awesome former students came to visit me today. I took her to lunch and we chatted and moved closer towards being friends instead of teacher/student. She told me all about her excitement about joining the Navy. I sent her home with The Gift of Fear and told her that she should sign up for an Impact class before she heads to basic training. I am completely supportive of her joining the military but I also think she needs to learn to take care of herself. She was extremely enthusiastic and supportive. I’m glad we got to spend the day together. 🙂

Plugging along

Mudding and sanding are completely done. Today I am going to sweep and mop the garage. Then the kitchen. And then we can vacuum the rest of the house. 🙂 Tonight the garage will get the first coat of primer. I think two coats are a good idea given some of the areas of funk (the wall next to the house is stained and the beams are all pretty foul). The second coat will probably happen on Thursday. The inspector came this morning so I’m about done with this stage of the project. Yay! Decorative painting is going to wait a few months until there is more money in the kitty.

So I will probably start moving stuff out to the garage on Friday and Saturday. I only need help for the biggest pieces and then I can handle the rest of the work by myself over the next week. YAY!

Cookie baking is done. Cinnamon rolls are happening on Saturday.

Christmas cards are completely done and in the mail.

Yesterday I made a whole bunch of Aloo Gobi Mattar and it is really really good. Today I am making corned beef and cabbage (and potatoes, of course). Tomorrow is some cut of beef that Noah took out of the freezer; I should probably figure out how I am cooking that. I should also make veggie soup today or tomorrow and that will use up the vast majority of the veggies in the house. With the generous help of Sarah’s freezer foods I think we will be set for meals (except for Christmas dinner) for basically the rest of the month. That’s kind of awesome. 🙂

Wow. I have cleaning, cooking and wrapping presents left on the agenda for this week and setting up the garage for next week. I think this may be my lowest stress Christmas in years. 🙂 Everything is coming together easily and in advance. Yay!

It’s official

I’m going to Portland. Just to visit people, I’m not moving or anything. 🙂

On the 16th of November I leave my house and drive to Eureka. I will be staying with a friend overnight and chit-chatting. 🙂
On the 17th I drive to Eugene and stay with a different friend. We have lots and lots to talk about because I haven’t seen her since before I got pregnant.
On the 18th I drive up to Dad’s in Vancouver. I am staying there till the Friday after Thanksgiving. It means I am missing Turkeyfest, which is very sad. Noah is thinking he might go without me. 🙂

So, would anyone like to see me up in Portland?

It’s a good thing I have the best husband ever.

The problem is that I’m a pretty hardcore extrovert. It takes a lot of people time before my cup feels full. Noah has been trying really hard lately to help meet my needs. I appreciate that. It’s hard for him. He’s not an extrovert. He needs alone time. But he’s paying great attention to me and I need to focus on that for a bit. Best husband ever!

For all that I’m really frustrated with attempting to be social (and boy howdy I am) I’m overall doing ok with my life. I’m not bitter or miserable minute by minute. Just frustrated when I think about how crappy many people are.

Today is an awesome day

Cookie season is upon us! It’s the time of year when we must all worship Fat Satan. (Blame Noah for that bit.) Six dozen chocolate chip pecan cookies. Shanna is very much Noah’s daughter. She’s kind of obsessed with the cookie dough. It was cute.

Shanna is currently down for her second nap of the day. We haven’t done that in a while. I think it’s because she woke up at FIVE THIRTY THIS MORNING. Freakin kid. Doesn’t she know I was out late drinking? Sheesh. No respect. 😉

I’m really enjoying the “whoo hoo winter is coming” feeling of the day. On that note, I think I’ll go have some hot cocoa. 🙂

I needed this.

{f-locked so it doesn’t port}

SO I found a couple of students on facebook whom I remembered particularly fondly. Then the flood came. And more are coming! And they are going on and on about how wonderful I am and how much I impacted their lives. They think I’m funny. They think I’m brilliant. They think I am insightful. I can feel my ego inflating as I read. I’ve been feeling so bad about myself lately that I practically want to crawl to them and grovel in gratitude.

Despite the fact that most of my ‘friends’ don’t really give me the time of day–my students love me. I’ll take it.

It’s going to be a great day.

Noah and I stayed up far far too late talking about all kinds of deep personal scary stuff. I didn’t know we had so much of that left. It was really nice to feel close like that.

And now Shanna is big enough to wear the ubercute clothes she got last Christmas! She’s wearing one of the awesome one-piece outfits she got from her Uncle Ben. 🙂 I should take pictures. 🙂

I should post pictures. Oy. I’ll do it someday.

And then we got a call from our mortgage broker! Whoo hoo! Rates dropped! I’m terribly excited about this.

Shanna is now saying please with very little prompting! She will even cut the whining to say please. Whoo hoo!

And we have a date night tonight! We so win!

Out of town event

We are thinking about going to the Hoes Down (http://www.hoesdown.org/) hosted by the farm we get our CSA from. It looks like a lot of fun. It’s a drive up on Saturday drive back on Sunday sort of event. It would be a lot of fun to go with other folks. It is the weekend of October 3-4. We have a HUGE tent that could easily hold another two to four people in addition to us depending on how cozy we want to get. We could potentially take one more person up with us if we pack pretty light. 🙂 I’m always up for that sort of challenge.

Would anyone be interested in this?

It was a good weekend! Yay!

Noah and I had a fun time out on Friday and then we drove down to Santa Barbara early on Saturday. We were very mellow. We had good food and visited the zoo and very briefly went to the beach and let Shanna play in the water. We didn’t spend much time at the beach because we all sunburn like nobodies business. 🙂 A little bit was perfect. 🙂

I really enjoyed spending the time with Noah. He’s awesome to talk to. I think the hardest part of the weekend was how difficult it is for Shanna to spend that much time in the car. Oh and the massive disgusting poop explosion on the drive home. Dear god in heaven that was foul. But we cleaned it up fairly well and there was little stressing. w00t.

I think that the next weekend get-away should be a bit closer to home so we have to drive less. 🙂

(Oh: the gelato in Santa Barbara is nowhere near as good as the gelato in New Zealand. It was sad, really.)

Whoo hoo

Adventure! We are going to Santa Barbara for the weekend. I’m excited. I’ve never actually been down there. And I asked the boyfriend of a friend to pick up our farm share and he said sure. Yay! That was a rather easily arranged weekend. 🙂

Today I need to: make banana bread, make jam, and pack.

Tomorrow Shanna has a checkup, more shots. 🙁 Luckily Noah can go with us because I just can’t hold her down for the needle. 🙁 I do believe that the choice we are making is right but it sucks.

And we are going to a festive grown up party tomorrow night. I’ve got some high hopes about that but I’m not completely sure how I would like it to go. There are so many choices! Mmmm I like thinking about my options. 🙂 And I am even more excited that I know some particular people are going because that makes my options so much more appealing. 🙂

Appreciation

Today I am feeling very happy with the world and everything in it, so I’ll talk a little bit about what I appreciate today. 🙂

I appreciate that my wonderful Marcie let me have huge blocks of wood for my yard. Soon I will get around to finishing that project and I will have the coolest sandbox ever!

I appreciate that my darling husband tolerates my ongoing projects and obsessions. 😀

I appreciate that my daughter loves books so much. And that she is picking up words at a prodigious rate. It is getting so much easier to communicate with her.

I appreciate that my house is small enough to be easy to clean. The older I get and the more stuff I have to get done in a day the more I appreciate this. 🙂

I appreciate that Taylor offered to come help me finish the garage. It is almost entirely cleaned out! It will be done by Friday! This is so exciting. (At this point there is probably about an hour of moving stuff and an hour or two of cleaning left.)

I appreciate the heck out of the chest freezer. Man that thing makes my life better. I have a whole mess of (organic) beef and chicken. I have a huge stash of raw milk, butter, cream, and cheese. I have a freak-ton of ice cream (I buy it on sale and stock up). And then there are the ’emergency’ tv-dinner lunches for Noah’s lunch when we have nothing else. It’s so awesome. I think I have enough meat to last me the next six months and maybe longer. This pleases me immensely. We will need more ice cream and milk before then. 🙂

I appreciate the wonderful variety of food available to me here in the bay area. I like that my taste buds have been expanded in ways they wouldn’t have if I lived in middle America.

I appreciate the awesome cookbooks available to me that have taught me how to cook some of the amazing food I enjoy so much. And the baking. *swoon* The baking! I’m pretty good at baking, I have discovered. I really enjoy it.

I appreciate being comfortable financially at a time when many people aren’t. It’s a luxury. I have the luxury of staying home with my kids as long as I want to. It’s really nice.

I appreciate my new roof. Holy crap on toast do I appreciate my new roof. And I really love that we are basically off grid for our electricity usage. That makes me feel good about my impact on the planet. I’m wasteful in other places (like travel and eating meat) so I try to do what I can elsewhere.

I appreciate our wonderful car. It is fantastically efficient and well functioning. It is still pretty through absolutely no effort of mine.

I appreciate having the luxury to sit around and think extensively about what is best for my family. My life is non-stressful and non-traumatic. I get to think about family planning in a safe and comfortable environment where many options are possible. That’s amazing.

I appreciate having yards big enough to worry about. 🙂 It means that Shanna has lots of room to play and explore. And I appreciate how much she loves being outside. That bodes well. 🙂

I appreciate Ikea. My house is turning into an Ikea showroom. It’s kind of funny. But man is it useful and cheap! And I think all the stuff we bought there looks perfectly decent. Yay Ikea!

I appreciate that when I have computer problems I always find a friend to help me fix them. 😀 Man living in the valley rocks. 😀

so much to do and so little time

Today I made dinner. It took pretty much all day. I made pasta, pasta sauce, strawberry mash, and shortcake–all from scratch. That kind of preparation is a pain in the butt. All of the fresh ingredients came from the CSA box, the farmers market, or my back yard. 🙂 I’m tired. I don’t know how people used to cook from scratch every day. This is a pain in the butt.

Yesterday I finished my tattoo. I want to do a full post about that very soon with pictures.

Shanna continues to astound me with her development. I’m thrilled that I have a willing sleeper. When she realized she wasn’t going to get me to go lay down with her “nigh-nigh” “I can’t right now Shanna” she more or less asked to be put on my back and she took her nap there. I’m extremely sore but she’s in a great mood thanks to sleeping and I got my chores done. w00t.

Tomorrow we are going to Friday Night Waltz! I hope to see many people there. 🙂

I should ping because I keep thinking about her. I’m obviously awesome at initiating contact though. Oy.

I’m at day 42 of my cycle. The stupid sticks I’m peeing on still say I’m not pregnant though. This is making me fret for a variety of reasons.

I’ve been ordered PT for my knee and a hearing test to get more of a baseline on my disintegration a la (insert accent mark) Meniere’s. I really like my Kaiser doctor. She said despite my eyes, ears, and knee I am in excellent health. She didn’t even blink hard in the direction of my weight and she told me that I should have a bunch more kids because obviously I’m a great mother. 😀 She thinks I have a great attitude about the Menier’s and I think there is no point in having a poopy attitude. 😀

My house is a mess and I have dinner guests showing up sometime in the next half hour. I should probably get off livejournal. 🙂 I get to see my Sarah! I’m excited. It’s been so long. 🙂

More cheerful

Today I am feeling happy because I have made a bunch of progress out in the shed. I am getting rid of the debris left from when the housemate before the last housemate was here. (I’m not complaining! Thank you for the roses!) This means I am able to organize the stuff I want to put in there. This kind of anal retentive organizing makes me swooningly happy. 😀

And I am going to squash my “I can do it myself!!!” attitude and gratefully accept help from the wondrous Taylor in finishing the garage. This way it will actually get done instead of me just bitching at Noah that I want it to get done. 🙂 Then I get to move on to feeling angsty about my lack of artistic ability. 🙂 That part will be easier to get done I suspect. I’m not sure exactly how I’m going to do the playroom yet but I feel a tantalizing array of options. 😀

Bits and pieces to get them out of my head

Looks like trying to have more of a relationship with my family was a bad idea. 🙁 It’s time to withdraw from that again. Noah gave me some really good advice on how to do it without exploding a drama bomb.

I got into a really bad place for a while there where I was doing the martyr thing full time. That doesn’t help anyone least of all me. I need to knock that crap off. Noah can take care of his own happiness.

Shanna now, quite delightfully, says “owwwww sigh”. For those of you without children this means outside. It’s awesome. She loves her swing so much. I’m thrilled that I got the idea from and and I bought one. 🙂

I’m shifting things around in the house a lot more trying to figure out what arrangements will make me happiest long term because the long term is how long we are here. I really really want to make a cool playroom for the kidlet so I’m looking into that. I have a bunch of cool links that I might post later.

I’m feeling frustrated by the fact that people very very rarely initiate social interaction with me. Why is it that I have to do all of it?

My last tattoo appointment is on August 3rd. We’ll be stopping birth control after that. That means I’m taking advantage of the ability to drink. 🙂

Noah and I had a wonderful date on Monday where we had breathtakingly good food. Being married to a foodie is the best thing ever.

I’m not being good about exercise just lately. This is another thing I need to work on.

Urf and arf. Time to start walking towards the bus stop. I bet Shanna is going to love the trip on BART again. 🙂