Parsley, Sage, and Other Stuff

Last night was movie night at our house, and we put that sucker through its paces. We had (including ourselves) 10 adults and 6 children over for dinner, and other than needing to borrow folding chairs it went pretty well. I saw places where improvements could be made in layout and organization of the kitchen area, but all in all it worked out, and everyone got fed. We may not routinely have that many guests at once, but I'm very happy to see that we can manage. Our duplex was just way to small to accommodate that kind of gathering.

The house quickly emptied by the time the movie was about to start. That's the problem with movie "night". Our group doesn't do night as well as it used to, and by 8pm when the movie is ready to start a lot of people are ready to head out so the kids can climb into bed. Still, some folks might have stayed if I had picked a more kid friendly film. Rosemary's Baby is not kid friendly. Only 4 of us were left by the time the movie came on, and none of us remembered how kid unfriendly it got, or how fast. So any of you thinking about watching it at home, take my warning and don't watch it with the kids. Still, I enjoyed the movie and I'm glad that I picked it because it had been a long time since I saw it. I bet the last time I watched it was on tv and that's why I don't remember some bits, they were probably edited for content. The funniest moment came when Rosemary finds out her due date is June 28th, just a day after my due date. That cracked us all up.

Due dates are a funny thing. Everyone knows that you can't count on that date to be accurate, but we can't help but hope anyway. I've hit the end of my rope with this pregnancy thing, and I'm officially ready for this baby to be born. If I thought he would care I'd threaten or bribe him anyway I could think of in order to convince him that it was time to leave my body. I'm tired of being tired all the time. I'm tired of not being able to bend over, or having it cause me pain or exhaustion. I'm tired of being thumped, kicked, stretched, and otherwise abused from the inside out. I'm tired of having a pain I compare to getting a pap smear done repeatedly for sometimes 30 minutes or more at a time. But not all my feelings are of frustration. I'm excited by the prospect of being able to see what this little creature looks like, and play with his little toes. I'm ready for his dad to be able to hold him and cuddle him, and for me to be able to see them together. I'm ready for him to have a name and to hear other people use it, so maybe we need to settle on a middle name... It would be nice if the nursery were actually ready, but at this point I don't care. I'll take the baby now and the nursery later, thank you very much.

I officially have 12 days to go until the promised due date, but it if were less that would be okay by me.

Marching Along

So Jeff and I have been working on getting the house put together, but I think we're both running out of steam. We worked pretty much non-stop (either at our day jobs or on the house) for a month and a half it seems. This last weekend was a much needed rest. We did do some things around the house, and Jeff got the last full coat of paint put up in our bedroom, but it was nothing like previous weekends. I mean we slept in until 9:30am on Saturday. I can't remember the last time we'd stayed in bed that long.

The cats seem to have settled in. They no longer look forward to being locked up in our bedroom, they want to be left out all day and night to see what they can get into. We're nervous about this, since there are still pieces of furniture that need to be secured so they don't tip over, but we're going to have to let them out sooner or later. It's nice to know that they are ready.

It's time to get the china cabinet secure so the cats can roam free, and it's time to get to work in the nursery. We only have 2 1/2 weeks before our due date so there's no time to lose now. I don't care if it's fully decorated yet, because Jeff does have some grand plans, but I'd like to get the painting done so that I can move in the furniture and have a functional room.

Still, we're finding time for all sorts of little baby worries. I had a great dream the other day that I had a baby girl and the next day I was at work when I realized that since she had been born I hadn't fed her. Oops. Not a real fear I have, I mean I've never even forgotten to feed a cat that long and I have less biological drive to keep them alive. Not to mention that I will use my mind to put out the sun before I go back to work 24 hours after having this baby. The real fears that I have center around doctor visits and what they will say.

I was worried that the ultrasound would find that our boy was still sideways, and that we'd need to schedule an ECV. Although I was almost sure over the weekend he had settled into the correct position. Happily the ultrasound showed he was head down, and Dr Darby is pretty sure he'll stay that way, apparently the baby is pretty well down? (very scientific these docs can be) So now I have a regular OB appt tomorrow and I have new fears. Fear number one is that all of a sudden baby won't be head down anymore, and that he was just performing well for the ultrasound because he's mean and he wants to torment me. I don't think this one is likely, but the nagging worry is there. Fear number two is that although I was dilated to 1 cm last week, and had a couple of decent contractions over the weekend, that tomorrow she'll find that I'm not dilated at all, completely sealed shut. Fear number three is that she'll check and find that I'm dilated to like 4 cm or something and declare that I need to cross the street to go have a baby, and I am not ready for that. So on the one hand I feel pretty calm since I'm not freaking out worrying about crazy things that can go wrong, but on the other hand I feel pretty silly because I'm worrying about relatively trivial things that are unlikely to even happen.

Another Early Morning

5 am is either some sort of cat witching hour, or a time when I am absurdly light in my sleeping. Once again I was wakened by cat mischief. Cats seem to have a magical ability to find mischief in places that you never thought it could exist. I assume they are only rivaled in this ability by some species of monkeys and small children.

This morning I learned that our new bathroom drawers are for cats. The following traits have made them irresistible to Cabbit and Spooky.

• The drawer is eye level with them
• The drawer is easy to grab from the side and pull open with a paw
• The drawer is deep enough to fit a hunkered down cat
• Apparently while inside you can push/pull something to slide your drawer in and out over and over and over and over and over....

So that's how I woke up this morning. The sound of a drawer opening and closing repeatedly. Upon investigation I found a cat inside. While making a pee stop before heading back to bed the sound started again, and when I reopened the drawer there was a different bigger cat inside. To preserve my sanity and keep from chucking any cats out windows at 5 am I used some painters tape to secure all the drawers and climbed back into bed. They've already started to chew through the tape, so this solution won't last for long.

I'm now a little afraid to let them into the rest of the house. I had no idea how much trouble they could find in just our master bath and bedroom. I have ideas on how much trouble they can cause with free roam over the rest of the house, especially since we aren't unpacked yet, but I suppose that's just life right now. I want to let them have a couple days to explore before we have company come over this weekend, and frankly Spooky and Bullet are ready to get out and see what's beyond the bedroom door. Dinah may not wander far, but I'll be happy if I don't find one of those two on a ceiling fan before the day is out. Thank god that cats don't have wings.

4 Days of Work : I Want My Weekend Back

Well this last weekend was a killer. Not literally, except for some ants and weeds, but still pretty brutal for the rest of us. Since Friday we've been packing boxes and moving them over to The House. New baseboards have been purchased and cut to the proper lengths and then painted, some have even been nailed up despite sabotage attempts by a shitty Home Despot nail gun rental. The master bedroom has been painted 3 times (primer and 2 coats of burgundy) and still needs at least one more. Thankfully the nice manager at Sherwin Williams took pity on us and has gifted us with some free rollers and a gallon more of paint to help us get it into shape without laying out even more cash, cause paint is damn costly.

We've packed and unpacked over and over to move stuff from one place to the other, since we 1. don't have enough boxes for all our stuff, and 2. don't have a car big enough to move it all at once anyway. Monday we had Aloha Moving come drag all our furniture and what appliances we own, plus some heavy book boxes and such to The House. I highly recommend these guys, they were very pleasant (at 8am on Memorial Day) and very easy to work with. They were also FAST without being careless with any of our stuff.

There is still so much to do. Baseboards are still laying around the house, turns out our dining table is wobbly (carpet hid this from us), there's a fridge to be delivered tomorrow, book cases need to be secured to walls so that they can be filled with books, we still have a few trips to and from the old duplex to finish grabbing things like computers and millions of comic books. This would all be a bit easier except for the breastfeeding class tonight and the childbirth prep class Thursday night.

Last night was our first night spent sleeping in our new home and it was interesting. Despite vet prescribed dope Cabbit was still unconsolable the entire trip over. I hear that Bullet wasn't all that great himself, my scardy Dinah was however pretty quiet. This is probably because she was catatonic, but quiet is quiet in my book. She came to sometime around 5 in the morning and started crying, when I called her she would come to the bed crawl under the covers with me and purr while I pet her, then she would go look out the window a bit and get back down on the floor and cry some more. Yeah, that was fun. Screaming cat and 5 am, I should make an audio tape of that and sell it for people that need more spice in their lives. Now she's lost. It appears that there are 3 pieces of bedroom furniture that come all the way to the floor in front, but have large openings in back so we think she's under one of them. Either that or an alien space ship beamed her out of the bedroom between 6:30 and 8 today.

Speaking of 8 that's what time I woke up today. Jeff had the dryer running after the great plug fiasco. If you saw his tweets then you should know that the 4th wire is not mojo, it is nothing, neutral, just a way to sell you a new cord set when you move to a house with 4 holes in the socket instead of 3... bastards.

Anyway, the dryer is done now so we really should get going. This is my first time to drive to work from here. I hope the traffic has died down a little bit. I've had enough stress in the last few days, it would be nice if a day of work could be a little relaxing.

Happy Belated Memorial Day!

Spring Knitty

I love Knitty. Not every pattern that gets released there is my cup of tea, but it seems like every quarterly update has at least one or two patterns that I want to knit. I may not get around to it, but the desire is there. This spring's issue has brought with it two patterns that I'm almost positive I will knit at some point. I think my son needs a Steggie, or at least he will sometime after he's born, and given how long we have until a cold day in Austin that gives me plenty of time to complete it. I also need to knit a pair of Target Practice socks. Ever since that pattern came out a few days ago I keep going back to look at it. It looks like a blast to knit, fiddly I'm sure, but totally worth it to watch it come together.

Still In It

I did manage to complete my pair of socks for Sock Madness III Round 3 before my division filled up. On my birthday I snagged spot 11 out of the 12 available, and get to progress on to Round 4. I like my purple socks, even if they don't show off the pattern all that well.

Pardon the whiteness of my legs; I don't tan. To be more exact my skin does not tan easily when exposed to the sun, and my legs have not seen much sun lately.

Round 4 starts Thursday night, and hopefully that will keep me out of trouble. Jeff's parents are coming in town to help fix up the new house this weekend and that means extra people trying to keep me from doing things they don't think I should be doing. If I at least have a pair of socks to distract me, then maybe it won't drive me crazy when they won't let me help with painting and laying flooring. Sometimes being pregnant and having people who care about you can be a real pita.

I'd also like to take a class at Hill Country Weavers this weekend, but it costs money, and we're trying to save money for house stuff, not to mention the whole bit about inlaws coming in town. Although, that's also an excellent reason to sign up for a class that gets me out of the house for a couple of hours each day. I'll hopefully make up my mind one way or another soon, and preferably before the class fills up.

Because I Should be Knitting

I'm still in the Sock Madness competition, so I should be knitting. There are only 3 spaces left in my division and I've only got 1.25 out of 2 socks. Still, I read Julie's House Numerology post and decided that I had to do it too. I promise to go right back to knitting in a minute. This is based off the numbers on the house that we are moving too, not the rented duplex we are moving from because that would just be silly.

House Number 2
Here is a house that creates peace, harmony and balance in anyone's lives. It is a house suited for relationships, and people who are laid back and friendly. This is a great home for new lovers or people who have lived together for a long time. It will aid in the balancing of any relationship.
However sometimes we are so laid back that one may call it laziness. So don't forget to get off the sofa and DO. Do what needs to be done to fix the creaky floorboards and cracks in the pavement with this house.

Positive Colour Suggestions: Cream, Green and White.

Well thank goodness that we've picked green as one of our house colors. I don't know what would have happened otherwise. Perhaps our sloth inducing couch would raise on it's rear legs and force us into slave labor.

Get your house numerology here.