Snort

see Sarah Palin pictures

Oh well

My bank failed.

Thank the Gods for the FDIC, is all I can say. Not that I have a whole lot of money in the bank, but the point is, ugh.

Today Citibank purchased Wachovia and that means that I now have a new bank. You know, one shops for banks. I did anyway. I decided on Wachovia purposely. 

I guess that doesn't matter now.

In other news, The Bailout didn't pass, and I'm not certain if that is good or bad. I can tell you that it made me uncomfortable for that much money in taxpayer dollars to be going to this deal. I just don't know what's going on anymore, other than thank the Gods I'm used to having so little already. Thank the Gods I have no stock. 

I just don't know what's going to happen to this country. It sucks.

Safe Journey

I'm finished

I quit smoking on Saturday.

I had my very last cigarette on Friday night, and I have been smoke free ever since. The odd thing is that this time I barely miss it or even want it. I'm not having the nicotine fits that I've had during previous attempts at quitting, so I'm thinking this time will be successful.

I have had bored moments, moments where if I were still smoking I would go outside on the deck and light up just for something to do, but those are far between and easily managed. 

I'm coughing less already. I had been waking myself up coughing all night, and that has stopped now. I am still coughing, but nothing like prior. If I could eat I'm sure food would taste better too.

Speaking of that, I've been far less nauseous since I quit smoking. I'm still barfing in the mornings, but by afternoon I'm feeling better and able to eat a little bit of soup or something. I'm not having the all day nausea that I was having. That's pretty cool. I'd be willing to bet that the sickness was due to poisoning myself and the kid with the smoking. Either way, it's much better now and I couldn't be happier.

Rich is cheating. He's smoking cigars. I don't think that's fair, but whatever. At least he's not inhaling, right? 

So this is it. I'm officially a non smoker. How cool is that?

Soup Is Good Food

And I'm living on it right now.

Y'all might want to buy stock in Campbell's, because it's the only thing that's appealing to me right now. Hopefully this won't last all nine months, but honestly, this is all I can eat. I ordered a won ton soup from King's Wok today and am having that for dinner tonight. Hopefully it'll taste good.

Things aren't going so great this time around. I'm sicker than I have ever been in my life other than a bout with food poisoning, and I can't take feeling this way. I tried Unisom but it didn't help enough to make continuing it worthwhile to me. Also, they no longer have the regular Unisom at Target, and they only have the soft gels which can't be broken in half. They had no store brand.

I'm tired. ALL of the time. Given that the fall TV season just started this is a bit inconvenient, because I'm trying desperately some nights to stay up until 10. I fell asleep last Thursday night before Kitchen Nightmares was over. I did manage to make it through Fringe this week (watch this show). 

I have no energy to do anything around the house. None. I made a casserole the other night and tonight is the third night Rich will have it for dinner (I'm having the aforementioned soup). I just don't have it in me to do anything at all. I did manage to fold laundry and do the dishes yesterday. That was it.

I have more laundry to do tomorrow. How it'll get done I have no idea.

This baby is kicking my ass. I just don't know what to do. I have weeks left of this to contend with, and it's going to suck. 

My first appointment is on the 30th of this month, and I'll report back if they have any useful suggestions. 

Have a great Thursday!

Nada

Zip. Zero. Zilch. The Big Donut Hole.

That's about all I have to offer lately.

I made a promise to myself that this blog wasn't going to become all pregnancy all the time. What else is going on in my life? See above.

Things I can say are:

Livvie's 2nd birthday was Friday. It was just the three of us, and we didn't have cake. She got presents though, and seems to dig them, so all is good there. I can't believe she's 2 already. It's crazy. It seems like just yesterday I was worried about not having socks for her to wear on her way home from the hospital. It occurred to me yesterday that when this next baby is 1 year old Livvie will almost be 4. FOUR. WTF??? Although I'm not much of an infant person, I do sometimes miss when she was portable and didn't talk back. Those were the days. Now I'm trying to figure out how I'm going to wrangle her on election day when I'm trying to fill in my ballot.

That's about it for tonight. I'll try to be more pithy in my next post.

Dagnabit

There have been no naps recently. I'm pretty sure they're done. I will never again enjoy an hour of silence midday, and that's no exaggeration.

So yesterday, due to the no nap thing, I put the kid down at 530. She went right to sleep. HOWEVER, at 621pm she woke up crying enough that I had to go get her and bring her out.

She got a second wind. 

BY 8pm neither Rich nor I could take the noise anymore and I put her back to bed. As of 834 she was still awake, but I didn't care and went to bed. At least she wasn't crying. By 9pm I was asleep, and I would wager I fell asleep before she did.

So I'm pregnant and taking my crazy meds anyway. I have to. If I don't I can't imagine what would happen in this household. I have called my doctor's office FOUR times now to see if my current dosages are safe or not, and I've either not received a call back or not been able to get through at all. How is this OK??? This could be dangerous for crying out loud, and yet the damn doctor doesn't feel the need to call me back? No longer to be known as Headologist #1, she is now to be known as Docfuck. I'm so sick of this. 

How would you handle this when finally reaching Docfuck? Would you call her on it and be somewhat rude? Would you ignore it? My first instinct is to call her on it and let her know how unhappy I am, and I'm not usually one for confrontation. BUT, she's notorious for not returning my calls, and I don't even call that often. Maybe once every three months or so. This is insane.

EDIT: Never mind. I'm going off my meds. I did some research and the instances of birth defects and miscarriages are too high for me to take any chances. I never felt mentally better than the last time I was pregnant, so I'm hoping that'll be the case this time. Wish me luck please. I'm going to need it.

FUCK!

Ok, so there's this story.

I used to work for a large national book store chain, and I was the Merchandizing Manager (sounds grand doesn't it). I had to do all kinds of displays... prior to their selling their souls and bringing in pre-made display work so that every store was a cookie cutter image of every other store...

But I digress.

It was Read a Banned Book Month. I needed to do a window display for Fahrenheit 451.

I bought red and yellow clear tissue paper with which to make flames. I had a pile of books all set and ready to go on the "burn pile." I just needed a thermometer with which to demonstrate the temperature at which books burn.

So I bought a giant length of white PVC pipe, and I turned it into a thermometer. I spray painted the mercury to the 451 degree mark on it with silver paint. I needed a ball for the bottom of the thermometer. What to do?

A balloon. A silver balloon.

I went to party stores and I went to Walmart. No silver balloons anywhere. I was getting quite frustrated when I had a brilliant idea. I got a balloon, blew it up, took it back into the sort room, grabbed my can of silver spray paint, and aimed it at the balloon.

As I pushed the button I thought, "FUCK!" but it was too late. As the paint hit the balloon it instantly degraded the structural integrity of the balloon and it exploded all over my face, into my hair, everywhere. It was even on my eyelids. 

I had paint on me for about a week. 

So you tell me, did you ever have one of those moments when you were in the midst of doing something, just about to dive in with both feet and then think, "FUCK!"? I tend to do that a lot. Sometimes it ends happily, to my surprise, but other times I end up with a silver face and my friends making fun of me for years.

Hanna

On the left is Tropical Storm Hanna, smacking into North Carolina and South Carolina.

Luckily we escaped with no damage at all, and we didn't even lose power. It's been a very rainy morning and afternoon however, and the rain just stopped recently. The last I heard Hanna was now moving through Virginia and on its way up the Atlantic coast.

I'm not too big of a fan of large storms anymore. I was excited to see my first hurricane when I first moved down here, but the first one I saw was a bust. That was Bertha in August of 1996. Twelve years  ago today, on September 6, 1996, Hurricane Fran hit and it was a monster. I even used to have an infrared satellite image of it hanging on my apartment wall just as a reminder of how awful it was.

It struck me as odd that we had such a large, if non-lethal storm move through here today on that anniversary, but I guess stranger things have happened.

Regardless, we are safe and sound, the yard is starting to dry out a bit, and we're going to have to replace a bunch of mulch.

Have a great Saturday folks.

Coming to Terms

I've peed on three sticks now and the result has always been the same, so I'm assuming that I am in fact pregnant. I'm ok with it now. It took a few days to get used to the idea, but once I did I started to care.

This is still going to be tough on us, but I'm pretty sure we'll make it. I guess we have to.

I'm quitting smoking on Monday, and so is Rich. I can't quit unless he does. I have a sneaking suspicion that he'll still smoke at work, however, but what can you do? As long as he doesn't smoke around me I'll be fine.

I miss beer. 

When I was pregnant with Livvie we referred to her as The Manatee because that's what she looked like when she was in her early stages. This one is being referred to as SURPRISE.

That's about it for today. Have a great Friday everyone.

THE STICK IS BLUE!!!!!!

Actually, it's pink, but do you remember that episode of Murphy Brown when she was screaming at Frank when her test came up positive?

Yeah, that was me yesterday.

I burst into tears.

I had no idea what we're going to do. We have very little money and very little space. Those were my primary concerns.

So I've been up since 3am this morning. I couldn't sleep. So many things were rushing through my head that sleep was impossible. These are some of the things that were going through my head:

What if it's twins? I'm old enough now so that's a strong possibility. I don't know what we'd do.

I'm going to be 5 days away from my 38th birthday when this baby is due and Rich will have already turned 45. I just can't believe this is happening.

I guess I have to schedule my first prenatal. That should be in about 4 weeks. I found my old doc, I think I wrote about this, and he's got admittance at an entirely different hospital, so we'll see how that goes.

Rich REALLY doesn't like the name Ronan, so we decided on Brendan Andrew after all. He's not entirely sold on Christine Barbara either, so I'm going to change the middle name and see if that goes over better. Anyone have any good girl names that start with an A? This way the initials for a boy would be BAT and for a girl would be CAT, and it's supposed to be good luck if your child's initials spell a word.

I have supernose. The dog peed on the kitchen rug a few nights ago, and I cleaned it, but sitting here all I can smell is dog piss. I can also smell Livvie's diapers in the trash can as soon as I walk into the kitchen.

I really hope Livvie naps today, but having gone to bed at 545pm I really doubt she will. I wonder to myself how that whole part is going to go. My cousin's daughters were about 17 months apart, and all I can hear in my head is one time on the phone with her she suddenly stopped and hollered, "Erin! Stop kicking your sister in the head!" It made me laugh at the time, but now I wonder if that's what things will be like here.

Livvie will be almost 3 when this kid gets here. Maybe she'll finally be talking. Maybe I'll have been able to potty train her by then. Two kids in diapers is freaking me out. Cost alone is exhorbitant, but what about trying to juggle changing them?

What if Livvie gets jealous because my entire attention isn't focused on her anymore?

What happens if we have to go through colic and reflux again?

What if this kid doesn't sleep either?

WHAT IF IT'S TWINS?????

I've been praying to everyone and everything holy tonight that it's a single baby. I just can't even imagine any other outcome. Well, I can, and the picture ain't pretty. We'd have to move. No two ways about it. Maybe we could get away with 2 more here during the first year, but anything beyond that would be out of the question. And I don't want to move. I love this house. All of my good memories of meeting Rich, getting married, and having Livvie are tied to this house.

Rich doesn't love this house, so I'm sure he wouldn't be overly upset. But I would.

We're both quitting smoking this weekend. I can't quit if Rich doesn't quit so we're both going to do it on his days off so that he won't have to deal with the stress from work. That'll be good. There's diaper money right there.

And man did I want a beer last night. I would have given anything to be able to calm my nerves with a cold one, but that's not going to happen for a long, long time. I did drink some fake beer while I was pregnant with Livvie, so maybe when the urge gets strong enough I can pop open one of those and sit on the deck and relax.

Anyway, that's my story for today. I'm going to sit here today and have a calm nervous breakdown. Hope everyone else has a better day.

Expensive Morning

I spent $150 this morning all before 1030.

I filled the Es-cah-pay with gas, and that was $45 plus change. Got a pack of smokes: $4 and some change. Spent $100 at Target. THAT was fun.

Most of the stuff was for Livvie. I got her 4 long sleeved shirts, another pair of jeans, formula, wrapping paper, bows, a birthday card (her birthday is Sept. 12th) a book and a Frisbee. I also got cat food and pet stain remover. And I KNEW it was going to be $100 before I even got to the register. I hate being right.

I almost got her The Little Mermaid on DVD, but I really can't stand the message it presents that only a man can give you your voice, so I abstained. Also, it's yet another movie showing a jealous, middle aged woman attempting to destroy a young girl's happiness. Does she really need that?

Tomorrow I have to spend another $100. I have to get heartworm prevention for the dogs. Two boxes come to $98. At least they last 6 months.

Livvie is really digging her Frisbee. She's carrying it around everywhere. Best dollar I ever spent I think.

There's a Dirty Jobs marathon on all day today, so that's how I'm going to spend my day. What are your Labor Day plans?

Have a great one.