door.

this door leads to our basement.
i absolutely love the color of paint on those walls and ceiling.
i took this on sunday
when the sun was blasting through the window.

Yelp.

After reading Chimpo's post about Yelp, I decided to join. You see, I do whatever anyone tells me to do at all times. Also, I like to eat. I guess on Yelp you can also talk about things like the amazing massage you just had, the greatest yoga place in the city, the shittiest dental experience you've ever had, etc. You know, recommend (or not) shit. I never do any of those things so you can count on me for mostly food. I like hearing what people have to say about a restaurant and I also had no idea so many of you dirtbags live down the street from me so now I can find lots of very local places to try. I'm armed with Tums and a belly.

I would like the devious blogger, Jason Preu, to join this site as his food reviews rock. Thanks to his fish & chips endeavor I am now planning to take my roommate and some friends to 75th Street Brewery tonight for dinner. I'd really like to see Happy join this site as well as Sara from noodletown and Kelly (my heartburn comrade) and DLC from KC Lunch Spots and Toast, she knows good food. Of course a lot of those people do major recommending (or not) on their blogs now so maybe they wouldn't wanna mess with this but...Yeah.
So add me on there when you join.

Consume, consume, consume!

SO..
I might've found some things on clearance at Target today..
including:
a stroller for $7.48
take-along swing $9.48
pack & play with changing table that vibrates/plays music/lights: $30.00
newborn glider for $18.00

Any reported cases?

Have you heard of anyone ever dying of heartburn?
'cause I think I might.
die
of heartburn
Boiling acid and flames with just start gurgling and spewing from my mouth
I will now begin to subsist on Tums and water.

wow.

so the simpson's is cracking me up hard tonight.
cute hair, marge!

Hands down the best chili dog I've ever eaten. Ever.

Bear with me.

This is simultaneously one of the bravest and most embarrassing things I've ever done.
I can't really explain to you what a hard thing this was for me.
I feel like I might as well have been naked in these photos.
So exposed.
My god, I showed you like, my waistline and everything!
Geez, could I have chosen a tighter shirt?
Even my disgusting shower doors.

Happy Birthday, Roommate!

Dear Roommate,

Thank you for always taking out the trash and taking it down to the basement and setting it out on the curb on Tuesdays.
Thank you for cleaning out the litter box.
Thank you for buying me books and music.
Thank you for making totally inappropriate jokes about our hybrid.
Thank you for attentively listening to my stories.
Thank you for smiling and hugging me when I come home.
Thank you for unloading the dishwasher when I least suspect it.
Thank you for being friends with my mom.
Thank you for supporting us the entire time I went to nursing school.
Thank you for telling me we'd be fine the day I found out I was pregnant and then actually being fine during.
Thank you for going out for Thai food with me.
Thank you for being so all-around awesome.


In honor of your birthday there is a baby squirrel outside that I could totally fit in my hand and it wants to come inside and make happy chippy-squeaky sounds to you.

love.

Crib Sheet - 1979

Who knew apple picking could be so much fun?

Diaper Bag

So now I start buying a few baby items.
Last night at Target I found this Red Merona Tote Bag for $9.98.
It has lots of pockets, isn't huge, comes with a changing pad, and isn't something my roommate would cringe at touching. Not bad. Also, I walked by the clearance rack of baby clothes (and picked through ONLY browsing) and there were some great items available from $1.50-5.00.

I'm such a consumer lately. I guess that's somewhat inevitable when expecting a hybrid. (Justify!) I found a crib online I want but the taxes and shipping add up to an additional $100 on the price. Oy! I asked Target if I could have it shipped to the store and they said no.

I hate to make this sound like a total advertisement but the store previously mentioned is turning over baby stuff right now so there are quite a few things on clearance (also very picked over). Good news being that they're getting in some new stuff - one of those things being Dwell baby bedding which is (while expensive) freakin' cute. Thankfully, roommate's mom is awesome at sewing and has a pattern for crib sheets so she'll take any fabric and sew it into a crib sheet. She also repaired the stretchy part of my own crib sheet that I had as a baby and will be using for our hybrid. I'll have to take a picture. The 70's turned out some cute baby stuff.

Please..

Please do not buy me the vulva pouch.

Popsicle and Pear -- CUTE.

I might get a monster for someone I know...

Next in our movie line-up -- Fido.
Soylent green surprised me. I liked it.

Heidi

I love this website. It inspires me and makes me want to eat all sorts of healthy, abundant, glorious food. I bought two copies of her cookbook last year - one for my mom and one for myself. There are a lot of times I can't be bothered to scavenge for ingredients her yummy looking recipes call for and lord knows I eat my share of pure, unadulterated crap but I love her site and her book and her photos. Yum!

Also, I showered when I got up this morning but did not ever bother with applying deodorant.

I think we're going to watch Soylent Green now. How have I never seen this?

Tomorrow we're helping roommate's brother move and then my mom is making us all dinner - it's something hearty and warm. Yes! Also, temperatures goin' up this weekend, eh? Score.
xoxo

Ok so I'm not totally crazy.

Roommate came home early from work today sick. One can tell he's seriously feeling awful when he either calls in to work or comes home early. I'm not happy he's sick but am happy that maybe we really do have some legitimate viral crap lingering around us instead of me just being pregnant and whiney. We read books and took multiple naps this afternoon - the best kind of treatment. I'm currently reading Lullabies for Little Criminals. I just finished Child of God. I'm bad at giving any semblance of a review but I can say I enjoyed the latter and am into the former.

Tonight we're doing....?

Sunday is Roommate's birthday.

I have to urinate every few minutes.

Relief?

Sort of.
All my blood tests came back normal. No mono, hemoglobin is nice and normal, thyroid fine, liver functioning as it should, and I passed my glucose tolerance test with flying colors. So now we chalk it up to either "something viral" or pregnancy? Ugh. That's fine. There's some intense nausea floating around in my system. Who knows? I don't know!

Baby Hawk

I'd really like one of these.

I thought of you, Sarah when I was reading about these because you can send them your own fabric for the carrier to be made of! The ones you custom design still only take 10-14 business days to ship. I think I might splurge.

The website has instructions - something I'd totally need to get this on myself. I also like that the carrier can hold from newborn to 40 pounds and you can stick this thing in the washer.

They'll even line it with Minkee Blankee super delicious softness if you want. There are also instock carriers that are ready to be shipped.

-- Update --
I totally just custom ordered one of these. I chose the steely blue straps and the main pattern is the vienna brora (top) and water lotus spinach (bottom) as the reversible side.

If you happen to be looking into doing this - realize as I did not at first that on some of those pages of fabric patterns - there are multiple pages, sometimes 3 pages while I'd have only looked at the first one.

What's going on?

Yesterday afternoon I was sitting on the bed listening to pandora for awhile. I woke up a bit later completely trashed. I felt just dead ass tired. I got up and did some things around here and Roommate came home and la la la. So later I go upstairs to read a book for awhile before letting myself crash in preparation for work today. I read a few pages and crashed. Roommate unintentionally woke me up when he came to bed and I felt drugged. Just kept saying that - explaining how I didn't feel right. It felt like a huge chore just to lift my arms up or to try and sit up in bed. On the rare occasion I take Benadryl, it totally sedates me in no time. It brings on a Sleepy I just can't fight and that's how I felt last night. Finally called my mom trying to explain how I felt and just started crying. Confused and weird. I kept thinking god if I wake up feeling like this there's no way I could even drive my car.

My mom freaked out and concluded I must have carbon monoxide poisoning. After I called the fire department and questioned them about such an event they suggested I call 911 and then have the department come out to check. No, we don't have a detector. Yes, I'll get one. They let me know that if 911 sent out the fire dept. for my symptoms they'd probably go ahead and send an ambulance. I didn't call 911. So, then I considered going to my work and being seen in the ER but what am I going to tell them? Yeah, hi, I'm just...so tired. Join the club, idiot.

Around midnight I decided to call in to work for today. They were peeved and instead of explaining my weirdness I just pulled out the vomiting and diarrhea. Working for a medical facility, if one calls in sick they like to know details, symptoms, temperature, duration, etc. It starts to feel like an interrogation and while they claim it's to track illness and prevent any sort of "break-out" among a group of employees working on the same floor, I imagine it's mostly to curb call-offs.

Today I feel like I've been run over by a truck. I'm weak and nauseated and my lymph nodes feel enlarged. My mom wonders if I was having an anxiety attack? The thought of going in to work tomorrow makes me want to stab my eyes out. I have my regular doctor's appointment on Friday and I'm going to have her draw some blood to check for anemia. Could this be the start of mono? I don't know what's going on with me. My work would be so pissed if I called off tomorrow as well. I sound ridiculous complaining about how tired I am but this goes beyond that and I "just don't feel right." I've had some orange juice this morning. I'm going to try to get myself really hydrated. I just don't know. This feels wrong.

painfully, unbelievably tired.
feels like i can't move

Some morning sunshine.

1) Roommate's office
2) Bathroom
3) Adorable wee bowl from Trisha. It's filled with my favorite pair of earrings, a ring, green butterfly barrettes and my Superhero necklace - "Joy."

Links

Looking here: Some of the "top nursery tours" made me a wee bit sad we're renters.
This color is amazing. More of the tours..though some way more hip/mod than I could ever muster.

I love not martha.

Stamped/personalized things are fun. I got something like this for a friend. also, cute bb spoon.

Couples.

Octopus braise. Seen on eggbeater.

Oh glorious time.

Our current stats:

both showered
both in clean pajamas
both nestled in bed
both warm
both worn sleepy from the day
both barefoot

You ready for this?

I love when the trees are all dark and wiry.
Our backyard has some nice specimens.

Unescapable.

THEORY TIME!
This day has just been a total fuck.
I have spent 90% of it sitting on or laying on the bed.
Finally talked myself into leaving to get carry-out Thai food and it blew.
I mean I ate like 5 bites of the stuff I ordered and then I was 100% over it.

Oh so my theory.
A few months ago I could just sort of drown out any baby stuff because I could "forget."
"Err, remind me again why I haven't had a period for 3 months? OH YEAH!!"
Now the hybrid moves around - constantly reminding me of its existence.
This isn't a bad thing - but it keeps me Aware.
Nudge nudge. Oh yeah, we need a name for you.
Nudge nudge. Place to sleep? Yeah, someday.
Kick prod somersault. Somewhere for the car ride home from the hospital? OK OK.

Anyway, this is all going to work out just fine.
I'm going to relax so that some time will pass.
27 weeks kids.

Argh.

Damn it, sheri!

Sheri's one of my absolute favorite bloggers and I was really excited she was posting again.

Day off

I'm off work today and in an effort to not spend the day obsessing about work tomorrow and all the errors I plan to not make, I need to do something. I really could fill the day with cleaning and organizing and laundering but that doesn't exactly sound appealing. I also thought about taking myself out for Thai food but, eh. I dunno what to do. Yesterday I spent the day with my mom and Roommate's mom looking at baby stuff. I announced in Babies R Us that "this is not fun." I think they both got frustrated with me. The problem is, that was the first time we've gone to look at baby crap at all. Part of me hoped we'd get SOMETHING and be started. I'm trying desperately to be smart about purchases - hence my questions. But after an entire day of two women constantly, constantly, constantly discussing the price of every fucking thing I was just exhausted. If it's $10.00 here but you can drive to four other stores and find it for $7.00, is that efficient? Is that smart purchasing? I'm being careful but this insane obsessing is just fucking annoying. And then how can one of them justify a $152.00 diaper bag to me? Are you kidding? Ugh!!

We did end up buying a handful of clothes so the kid will have something to put on. We went to a JC Penney's that is going out of business and pretty much everything there was 70% off. JC Penney's isn't a place I ever go, I forget it exists, but we were able to get sets of clothes (like a onesie with pants or a onesie with a jacket) all for around $3.50/each. Roommate's mom got some toddler clothes for her nephew's kid and each piece was $1.18. Hoodie/$1.18. Pants/$1.18.

So I sound like an ugrateful brat but I'm reaching a point where 6 months into this deal while I'm not ready to go insane over baby crap I'd like to sort of "start" the process? Or something. I don't know. My blood sugar was probably dipping in Babies R Us and the grump started coming out. My poor mom. She's so patient with me.

Since we're not finding out the sex of the baby I can't decide whether to have a baby shower before or after it is born. Having it before might limit the overload of blue/pink 0-3 mos clothing though.

I was trying so hard to minimize baby talk on here and now it's all I talk about, eh?

**Updated to add link to cute diaper bag. Eh. I'm not really a purse girl and I don't want Roommate to mind holding-the-bag but the print is cute on this one. I also don't want huge. Bag found at Marshmallow Kisses, a cute and incredibly expensive store. Diaper bag - absolute least of my worries right now and...they're not exactly worries BUT.. AGH!**

Aww. Eggs are cute.

Oh, see! This is a crib I can get into. Oh ok. Only $690.
That damn Oeuf baby shit is cute. GARRR!

I looked at the Ikea baby beds, like all 5 of 'em. They sorta look like one would bump into it and it'd tumble to the ground.

I broke our laptop last year when the shoulder strap of the bag I was carrying it in broke. Pretty sure this is not an option for us.
* Roommate just asked me if this zips up.

Instead.

Change of heart. Cookies sound super disgusting now. The little hunk of cheese I ate must've filled me right up. I've been half watching Donnie Darko and half perusing the internet. I was thinking wouldn't it be smart of me to walk to the store if I want to pick up something?

In Donnie Darko, whenever the mom talks I imagine her in Dances With Wolves introducing "Kicking Bird." She struggles to say it -- Kick..kick..kicking bird.

Someone from work asked if I'd be inviting her to my baby shower. I was horrified.

I love the part in Donnie Darko when Drew Barrymore the English teacher goes outside after getting fired and just screams at the top of her lungs.

Professor Snuggle

Food Monday!

I'm eating dill havarti cheese. I've loved this cheese a long time and it's definitely on my list of top 10 cheeses. Everyone should have such a list.

I'm going to bake cookies today and take a bunch to my mom when I see her tomorrow. Maybe we'll venture into one of those stores. You know the kind I'm talkin' about.

Worked all weekend and it was good and crazy busy.

I slept all morning. Pretty amazing.

appendage

I just felt completely overwhelmed.
A rush flooding me.
My mom asked today if I think I should maybe look at baby stuff soon.
I think part of the reason I keep putting that off is to further delay this Reality.
It's just so much. It's so big.
It felt so cliche to be married, graduating from nursing school, moving into this cute house, getting a new job, and then finding myself knocked up. From the outside it looked like I was just busy busy lining all my cute little ducks up in a row but it feels like a whirlwind of crazy.

Roommate and I got married in 2004. We had dated for a few years and I broke up with him a couple of different times. The final time left me broken on the floor of my apartment and him moving away and starting a new job. Time passed - we were living our lives and we made our way back together. It was during that time I'd just quit the jobs I'd had for the past couple years and moved into a new place. I knew I wanted to be with him. There was no doubt. I was unemployed and my parents were ending their 30 year marriage. I started a crap-o job just after I started this here blog. We got married. I quit a handful of jobs - generally by just never showing up to them again. We moved. I started nursing school. My dad got sick. I went to school. My dad died. I finished school. We moved. I got a new job as a nurse. I realized I was pregnant. This bowls me over. Pregnancy has terrified me. It has moved me. It has made me examine my mind, my body, my heart, my intentions, everything about myself.

I'm still shocked when I think about the fact that we're going to be parents in 3 months. We never planned on the 2 car garage, the 2.4 kids, the dog, etc. We didn't plan much of anything really. We were just going along, seeing what happened. Now, it feels so intimate, almost embarrassing (??) to be visibly pregnant and to start trying to figure this all out. I realize I'm struggling with buying things to prepare for a baby because A) I have no idea where to start and B) it makes things much more real. It's getting the plane tickets. There's a part of me still majorly in denial about this. I'm scared and unbelievably excited. I also feel guilty and weird at the same time. This is life I guess.
I'm going on and on here.

Baby Sleeping.

Okay. Be gentle because it feels very vulnerable to me to talk about any sort of child-rearing theories and ideas. It feels vulnerable at any time if those theories are mine or ones I support but even moreso when the hybrid is still nestled inside my womb and I've no idea what I'm going to do when it arrives. I'm going to go into some sort of stream-of-consciousness post here on where our baby is going to sleep. (holy shit. we're having a baby!)

So right now I'm reading Happiest Baby on the Block. This is the first book of any type of "infant care" I've read. I realize that there will be insane amounts of learning and adjusting when we're adrift in reality and our hybrid is wailing. I don't know a lot about "crying it out" or co-sleeping or any of those other baby buzz words right now.

Our house has two stories and our bedroom is the only room on the top floor. It's roomy and there's a bathroom upstairs as well. Downstairs there are two other bedrooms, Roommate's office and a room full of crap the baby's room. I know in the beginning (however long constitutes "the beginning") we'll want the hybrid close to us. I was really interested in getting one of these. (Feels just a wee bit pricey.) I can't tell how long that would be practical though and it seems like really it'd only work for awhile for a newborn. After that I suppose it's something we could convert into a play yard type thing for downstairs? My mom suggested we do whatever we want for the beginning months (bassinet, co-sleeper, whatev) and then when we were ready to do a crib we could just put it in our bedroom for awhile. This is a dilemma to me because while I don't plan to tiptoe around and keep the kid in silence, I also want to feel free in our bedroom - free to flush the toilet at 3 am, free to leave the lights on and read, free to hump loudly, etc.

There is, I realize, the whole issue of sleep and who am I kidding to think the baby's going to be asleep while we read and hump but we're talking about a vision down the road. I don't like bassinets that much but we're getting one that's free and it will be nice for either our bedroom or somewhere downstairs in the beginning. I can't plan "at X months the baby will be out of our room and sleeping downstairs in its crib in its own room" but what are some options/ideas/advice? I also am not sure how I feel about sleepy trips up and down the stairs with or without the baby in our arms with hardwood floors awaiting us at the bottom.

The decision would be somewhat easier without the whole 2 levels thing but still.. I felt like I had more to say about this. I'm sure I will. I'm not mapping out the sleep situation 'cause that would set us all up for failure but I need a place to start - something practical and convenient. I'm not sure what to buy, what to invest in, whether to wait a bit to buy a crib, etc.e

On Wipes Warmers and Peg Perego.

Goin' to work on my day off for a meetin' is bogus, man! I don't think my co-workers have ever seen me in "normal" clothes like you know, jeans and a shirt. My scrubs aren't exactly form-fitting so they also always tell me how not-pregnant I look. I don't think they're ready for this belly. Everyone's always generally grumpy at these meetings because my director spends the entire time going through all that we're doing wrong and how to fix it. We don't totally suck. If I were prepared I would've made treats for the meeting. Treats can sometimes ease the grump. Ha. Obese child in my future? HA! I'm sorry the 4th grade is sucking so hard, Willamina but Mama made you more fudge!

Yesterday I was the epitome of Borefest. I wasn't particularly bored with myself until evening. I spent the day sleeping off and on and eating here and there and avoiding the phone. Gah. Roommate's mom wanted to take me crib shopping and I just couldn't talk myself into it. Let's see, getting dressed? Going out into the cold rain? Being annoyed with overpriced, overdone cribs? Nah.

I really need help on the baby front as far as cribs and car seats and all that other shit they need goes. I like quality things that are reasonably priced and not totally over-the-top unnecessary. When should a person register? What'd you pay for a crib? I'd go for used if it were from someone I know but I just can't dig craigslist for a baby crib. I'd totally end up with the one missing 3 key bolts or something. "Oh it'll be fine! Just make sure the baby doesn't ever actually move in the crib." We're getting a hand-me-down bassinet thing. I really just don't dig one of those 18-in-1 convertible cribs. I know myself and know I won't keep all the parts to convert this into my child's marital bed when he/she turns 35. Work people loooove to talk about baby shit and finally deduced that I must just be planning to toss the hybrid in a laundry basket or an empty drawer. To that I say, and?

But really, any help? I know some of you have spawn and have made wise decisions or could look back now and tell me what wasn't necessary. For instance, one of those books telling me what's absolutely necessary? I deemed that NOT NECESSARY! I'm going to try using my National Geographic boobs for sustenance but what sort of bottles did you like? What kind of pump? All that stuff. Help me out. I'm not into say....cloth diapers but I am into being smart about our purchases and also into only allowing our kid things like twigs and cardboard boxes and rags to play with for the first few years.

Morning at my house and sometimes when my roommate's not here I like to wear his slippers. shh.

Sigh of relief.

For now, this is over.
Done.

Well gross.

Last night I dreamt, as usual, about a couple of different things. These pregnancy dreams are crazy vivid real. One dream involved me working in the emergency department at a hospital. A couple of car wreck victims came in and my only job was to get the guy hooked up to IV fluids. There were these enormous bags of fluid and once I finally found it I then started searching for the tubing. This particular emergency department was located in a very damp/dank warehouse type building. Perhaps there was some field work involved here. Anyway, found the tubing can't get it hooked into the bag. How DO they do this here? I find an example - why they've merely attached it and tied it in a knot and likewise into the patient! While I'm tinkering with this there are people performing CPR. I get the fluids in working order as they cover him with a sheet and inform me he's dead. When I'm alone with the body I poke at it to see if they were right.

-----------------------------------------------------

Have been feeling awfully nauseous since I woke up. Not a new, shocking occurrence, obviously. However, roommate said he was feeling barfy while he was getting ready for work. Mom called this morning to tell me she'd been up in the night puking. She happened to come over yesterday and we cooked dinner. She thinks we all have food poisoning from baby carrots we all ate. Food poisoning not being particularly great for pregnant people I did some googling which ended with me reading about worms on fresh produce even after you wash them. Glug.

Dining in.

Very simple, exceedingly yum.

Cool & Yum.

mi madre's

Fortune

New Year's Day we ordered Chinese Food for dinner.

My fortune said this: "Things just got worse. Think what you have done."

Thanks, Sheri!

I was looking at this earlier today which prompted me to put on my one pair of jeans and head to Whole Foods. I basically had a foodgasm in the store. I was a total piss ant about the crowd though. Geez! People. Everywhere. Not moving enough. That place needs to be bigger. It makes a person feel guilty for stopping in an aisle to look for three seconds because when you do, you're entirely blocking the flow of traffic and goddamn pregnant girl, do you need to study the black beans in such a manner? I do. Yes.

I got all sorts of things to pick at this weekend. Cheese, pita bread, olives, vegetables. I'm realizing I don't think I eat enough right now because often I feel like a grumpy piece of crap and then I drink some orange juice and I'm a new person. I ate part of a thai chicken wrap and dug into this amazing tub of cut up fruit that was expensive but you should've seen the size of those raspberries. After that I fixed myself a bowl of frosted flakes with bananas and blueberries. I really like the Whole Foods brand of frosted flakes because they're super thick and crunchy and don't get soggy in milk.

I love food.

This is mostly about my body.

Since I had my fair share of flub-chub before getting pregnant I've been telling myself this entire time that I still don't look pregnant for real - but more like I eat a lot of cake. However, I think maybe I look pregnant now? I almost kissed a patient the other day when (through much asking about my life outside of work - geez, lady) she found out I was pregnant but couldn't believe it and said wow you must've been small before getting pregnant! Haha, oh lady. C'mhere.

Heartburn.

That topic deserved its own space there. Wow.

So yeah, I'm still amazing that there's a baby in there. Its movement is visible from the outside now which still has its novelty.

I was so ready to be off work today. Wow. It's been a long week. Roommate and I are both worn out.

I desperately wish I could tell you about the awesome patient I had last night but I just can't. It's a great story - woo. Ouch.

Lots of boy predictions on the hybrid.

I have one pair of jeans - literally - I own one pair of jeans and they're getting not so comfortable so I'm wanting some maternity cargo pants or something. Need Pants!

Cribs are expensive, geez! I don't even look now because the cost annoys me.
Names? No idea.

New day. New year. Oh get ready.

Hybrid rocks and rolls and I can see it.
It's warm in here. Warm in there.
Vomited in the bathroom sink - strawberry yogurt.
After - ham sandwich, cheddar, cucumbers, chips.
Hybrid, hybrid.
Now it's time for an oaty bath.
Smells amazing.
The creamy cream soothes itchy belly syndrome.
On the website - nearly twice the price of the products at Target.
I bought the travel bag for $14 to try 4 products - website $25.
$14 felt like quite the splurge.