Goodbye my car

My beloved husband is off at a car dealership right now- he called about an hour ago to let me know that he bagged the prey- after much negotiating, he got the slightly used car that we've been test driving and looking at on the Internet. And he got a decent trade-in value for my car, which is great, since we only have one parking spot and neither of us has time right now to deal with trying to sell a car.

I'm really excited about our new car. It is big enough for the baby and its stuff, and it has some fun gadgets that will keep Daniel happy. I drove the car yesterday and really liked it. But I'm still sad today about the thought of not seeing my nice little car anymore. It's been such a wonderful, reliable car. I bought it in grad school, and it's faithfully transported me through many adventures since then. And it's weird to be replacing my poor grad student car with a family car. A family car that will soon be driving around a baby. My baby.

We have had a productive day overall- we hit a big consignment sale this morning and got a ton of stuff- some baby clothes, some maternity dresses, a bobby cover, safety latches, a sleep positioner, a diaper bag for Daniel to carry, a crib bedding set ($20!), and a few cute Classic Pooh things. Everything for $78. We were pretty proud of our accomplishments.

Now I have to go get ready for my birthday party tonight. I get to see my friends AND eat cake! What an evening!

Can I ask for your input?

I need opinions on something. Daniel and I had thought, a couple of years ago, about getting a membership to the Seattle Art Museum. We usually like the special exhibits that come to town, so we go every few months. Often enough that the membership would be worth the money. Then the museum shut down for remodeling. It's reopening now- and we again have the option of becoming members. The thing is, I'm not sure how realistic museum visits will be once Lucky arrives. Or do you think it is something I would want to do, to get out of the condo on a rainy day this winter? The museum is a short bus ride from my home, and close to Daniel's office. I thought that maybe I would be able to take myself and the baby there on the bus, walk around, and enjoy being out. Something to do other than driving somewhere and shopping.

Is this completely crazy thinking? We have to decide by the end of April to get the discount on membership. But I don't know how these things work. I don't spend time with babies enough to know what they would want to do on a gloomy November day.

On another note- Wednesday night I read the letter that I had written myself at 20 to be opened on my 30th birthday. It was pretty depressing. My first serious boyfriend had just dumped me in December, and I was still really really sad. It kind of hurts to remember such pain. But it did remind me of how incredibly blessed I am at this point in my life. I don't deserve such wonderful blessings from God, but I am so grateful that He has decided to shower them on me just the same.

Conversations to NOT have when you are pregnant

Since yesterday was my birthday, everyone was reflecting back on 30 years ago, and the "joys" of childbirth.

First, I talked to my mom. We were discussing about what she was doing at that time on the day I was born (about 10 hours after my actual birth). Mom said that by that point in time the midwife (I was born at home) was probably giving her coffee and unfiltered grape juice to help with her iron levels, due to the massive amount of bleeding. Thing I did not want to know #1. Then we were discussing my younger brother, and the fact that he was a 9 pound, 4 oz. baby. Thing I did not want to know #2.

Then I talked to my grandmother. I mentioned to her how glad I was to be not crazy like my parents, and to have no plans to give birth at home with no doctors and no drugs (I know that works for some people, but not for me, thank you very much). We ended up again discussing baby sizes. Grandma informed me that my brother's 9 pound, 4 oz. size wasn't that big, and that my uncle had been somewhere around 10 pounds. Thing I did not want to know #3. THEN!!! she said "oh, we always have big babies in this family. Your great-uncle was 12 or 13 pounds. I think your great-aunt was about that big too." !!!!! MORE THINGS I DID NOT WANT TO KNOW!!!

The important thing to know here is that we are fairly small people. I'm 5 feet tall, my mom is 5'2", my grandmother was a little taller, but my great-grandmother (who produced the 12-13 pounders) was also quite petite. I am praying that Daniel's genetics will counteract the hearty German genes that curse the women in my family to having giant babies.

On a happier note, yesterday was a very nice birthday. I was able to leave work early, and went and did a little shopping, hit the library and actually browsed the shelves, rather than just picking up my books on hold, and then went to a coffee shop and read my book while sipping decaf. Bought some makeup online when I got home- trying to stock up on the expensive stuff now before I'm no longer working and feeling too guilty to buy expensive makeup. And we had a really nice dinner at a Belltown restaurant. In all, a great day.

My birthday!

Since I couldn't make my 30th birthday stay away, I have decided to embrace it! We're having a gorgeous morning here in Seattle, which is nice. I'm hoping it sticks around, as I have plans to go to Sephora and the library and possibly purse shopping this afternoon. Then Daniel and I are going out to a nice restaurant for dinner this evening.

I still cant believe I'm 30. I always expected to feel so much older by the time I reached this milestone. I don't feel much more mature than I did at 18, just a lot more tired :)

No daycare visit yesterday, they ended up having a scheduling conflict, so we weren't able to go. So next week will be our first experience with visiting daycares.

Tuesday morning

We had sunshine this morning when I was driving to work, but now it's all gloomy looking outside again. Come back sunshine!

In the scary countdown update- 14 hours and a collection of minutes until I am 30. Wow.

Daniel and I have our first daycare visit today. We're visiting Kindercare, even though they don't have any openings in January, and may not have any openings in February-March. They seemed confused when I said that I didn't really have a firm "going back to work" date and would just go back when 1) I feel like it or 2) a daycare spot opens up somewhere. They seemed to not even really want us to come tour, but we wanted to see a national chain for purpose of comparison with some of the other littler daycares that we will be looking at in the next few weeks. I doubt we'll use this one anyway, since they charge for 5 days/week no matter what, and I'm not planning on working full time. They also seemed confused that I didn't want to use another Kindercare location that's about 10 miles out of downtown. I pointed out that I live and work downtown, so driving to the suburbs for daycare wasn't really very practical.

I'm trying to eat healthier today. So I'm sitting at my desk fantasizing about sugar cookies. I should go get my box of raisins out of the fridge. Not quite the same thing though.

Our helpful kitten

Daniel says I shouldn't call our younger cat a kitten anymore, since she's almost a year old. But she's still my rotten little baby, so I shall continue to do so.

This morning, evil kitten did the following: 1) woke us up at 5 AM, 2) threw up in the middle of the floor, 3) acted like I was trying to torture her by feeding her dry cat food, 4) was generally annoying by biting me, the other cat, the cord on the blinds, some dust..., 5) pooped in the middle of the litter box merely seconds after Daniel had cleaned it. We decided that she has figured out that there is a baby coming and is trying to prepare us for parenthood. We already get sibling-rivalry training. I find myself saying these things a lot (and yes, I know they're cats and probably cant understand me) "please don't sit on her head, she needs to be able to breathe" and "if you're going to wrestle please try not to knock over anything breakable."

Our 20 week appointment went well today. My doctor claims that I'm not fat, I'm pregnant. Whatever. The weight is not going to my tummy, so I think it's at least 90% me just getting fat. Lucky's heartbeat was good and strong, once the doctor was able to find it. He seems to still be hanging out nearer to my back than my front. We'll see for sure next Tuesday at the BIG ULTRASOUND.

2 days until my birthday. Crap.

A recipe for insomnia

I haven't been sleeping too well lately. It's a combo of several things. 1) I have to go to the bathroom, pretty much all the time. I'm carrying the baby really low, so it's still firmly planted on top of my bladder. So I still wake up in the night a lot, and have to get up and go visit the bathroom. 2) When I wake up and realize that I am in fact pregnant and will in fact be someone's mother! and responsible for raising another human being in 4 months (give or take a bit), tends to bring me to full wakefulness. Which leads to me lying in bed, just generally shocked by the concept of being a parent. 3) and then, while awake (especially the last 2 weeks), I've realized that I'm going to be 30 soon.

It's not even that 30 is so bad- I'm pretty much where I always hoped I would be at this age. I have a great career, an incredible husband, a nice home with two slightly rotten cats, and a baby on the way. I'm incredibly blessed. But still. It's 30. And I'm going to be a mom. And while I am excited about these things during the daytime, at 3:30 AM, it's a whole 'nother story.

Exciting news for the weekend- we bought a new dishwasher yesterday. Fancy adjustable shelves, ability to wash the top rack only, sanitizing cycle, etc. This is very fun and a fairly big thing, since Daniel is Chinese and Asian people (in my experience) tend to not really be dishwasher people. Daniel has actually never used ours, but he still was willing to get me a fancy new one. What a sweetie :)

Friday

I haven't had a snack in an hour. That's huge for me. I've been eating every 15 minutes. But, I am contemplating going downstairs to get a pop of some sort and perhaps more food. I do have a few snacks left in the fridge here, but they're pretty boring.

It's a good day for a nap today. Not such a good day to be in my quiet office reading through a GIANT pile of abstracts that I have to review and summarize. Tonight we have home fellowship, which should be fun. Haven't been there in a while, so it'll be nice to catch up and see what everyone is up to these days.

No big plans for the weekend. Just dinner with some friends of Daniel's from Canada, perhaps some car shopping for Daniel and clothes shopping for me. Hopefully a nap in there somewhere.

***VERY IMPORTANT***
It is now only 5 days until my 30th birthday!!!

Have a good weekend, everyone.

I just don't see it

Back at work- finally made it through most of the things in my inbox that were demanding my attention. Overall, it was a pretty good week to miss work. Not so much going on that I felt guilty not being here for a few days. But a few annoying projects had deadlines while I was out, and they had to be dealt with by others. Which is always nice.

So, last night I went to change clothes before we headed to the grocery store. My sightseeing/plane traveling clothes were getting on my nerves. I went to my closet, pulled out my fat pants (which still zipped last week, but were tight if I tried to fasten them all the way) and they didn't close! At all! I really cant tell that I'm getting any bigger. Daniel keeps telling me that I am, but I just don't see it. Fatter, yes. More pregnant- don't see it. The number that I saw on the scale this morning struck terror into my heart. I think a few more healthy snack options are in order.

Another vacation-related story- on our plane we had access to free satellite TV. This was especially cool for us, because we don't have cable at home. Nothing like channel surfing at 35,000 feet. Yesterday, Daniel and I both ended up watching the show on TLC "Bringing Home Baby." Scariest TV show ever. I am so glad I don't have cable. Really, I don't want to know what I'm in for. Ignorance is bliss.

We're back!

And we're back from New York City. Had a great trip. Saw tons of stuff: Metropolitan Museum of Art (which I've wanted to visit since reading about it in a favorite kids' book), Central Park, Empire State Building, 5th Avenue, United Nations, Chinatown, Little Italy, Times Square, Wall Street, the World Trade Center site and tribute center, and Battery Park (from which we could see the Statue of Liberty). I'm completely exhausted now, since I woke up at 12:45 EST and couldn't get back to sleep. Not a big deal, since we had to get up to leave for the airport at 2:45 AM anyway. It was a easy trip home though, and now I'm in the middle of laundry and trying to figure out some semi-healthy food options for the rest of the week.

Sad news- my online friend delivered her baby at 19w2d. The baby briefly survived, so they had a chance to meet her and then to say goodbye. My friend and her husband went through SO much for this baby, so this is really heartbreaking. Please keep them in your prayers.

Daniel's off at an industry awards dinner now (poor guy), so I'm getting ready to make myself some dinner and to try to stay awake until it's dark here at least. It stays light pretty late, so that's easier said than done.

And it's back to work tomorrow- I got through most of my emails already though, so it shouldn't be too bad. Famous last words, I know.

I don't want to think about it

I'm a big fan of avoiding thinking about unpleasant things. I prefer to focus on the things I can control, obsess over the small things that I cant control, and ignore the big things.

Choosing a daycare is becoming a big thing. And I don't want to deal with it. Unfortunately, I have no choice. Right now I've called 7 daycares and have tours set up with 5. All of them cost almost as much as I will be making when I return to work, and all of them have waiting lists at least a year long. It just makes me tired.

We're going on vacation tomorrow. A short one to NYC. Thank goodness. We're tired, I'm grouchy and feeling overwhelmed. Today Daniel called me to inform me that he also has misplaced his ATM card (neither of us has EVER lost an ATM card before, now this is both of us in one week).

See you in a few days. Hope everyone has a good weekend.

Prayer request

I am a part of a Weight Watchers message board, and there are a bunch of us who are pregnant right now. There's one girl who is due the day before me. She's been through a lot of tough times trying to get pregnant, and finally got pregnant with IVF. Last night she started bleeding a little, and now she's in the hospital, fully dilated. The doctors think it could be an incompetent cervix, and are trying everything they can to keep her baby inside for a while longer. She's such a sweet girl and has such a wonderful outlook on things. Please be praying for her and her baby.

Stupidity

I'm normally one of those frighteningly organized people who has a mental calendar running in her brain, is always on time (or early for things), remembers random information, and generally can be counted on to be responsible.

Not anymore.

I was going to make a list of the stupid things I've done lately. But I cant remember them all. Here are the few that I do remember:
1. Daniel got a phone call from the bank yesterday, saying that they had my debit card. Which I had left in the ATM on Wednesday. Thank goodness someone nice turned it in to the bank right away.
2. Cleaned my earrings and ring the other day. Put them on a towel to dry. Immediately picked up aforementioned towel, shook it out and hung it up. Sending my earrings (2 pairs) and wedding ring flying.
3. Put my snack in the bag this morning. Went to the freezer to get my lunch. Forgot what I was doing on the incredibly long 4 foot walk between the front door and the freezer. Did not bring a lunch to work.

On a good note, we have plane tickets to go see my parents at Thanksgiving. We're using frequent flyer miles, so had to book early. Only one stop each way, which is such a blessing since we'll be travelling with the little one. The airline wanted to know the baby's name and birthday. I had to tell them that I didn't know yet, and I'd call in a few months to give them the info.

It's 8:30 AM and I need a drink

I like my job. Really. But it should be against the law to have to deal with lawyers before 8 AM. I've only been at work for an hour, and I'm already exhausted.

I like planning ahead, but this is a little extreme

So, apparently I'm already behind in the list of things I should be doing. My coworkers have been asking about my daycare plans and making recommendations. Finally, yesterday I emailed a few places to ask questions. About daycare, for the fetus. It's not even 6 inches long yet, and I'm already spending my time trying to figure out which daycare Lucky will be happy in. I don't know, I haven't met the child yet!!!! And there are already waiting lists for next winter, when I will be needing daycare, so I'm behind in what I should be doing, apparently. I was hoping to wait until I at least looked pregnant before I started touring daycare facilities. My mistake.

On Daniel's to-do list for this week: enroll Lucky in the state college savings plan. His idea, not mine.

Genesis 1:1, according to my 3-year old cousin

My cousin loves backhoes. He has piles of books with pictures of construction equipment and can tell us all the parts of a backhoe. I learned last year, when he was 2 and a half, that backhoes have hydraulic cylinders. I can even now identify, for myself, the hydraulic cylinders on a backhoe. Not something I really needed to know, but if Lucky is a boy, I'm sure that knowledge will make me the wisest mom ever.

My cousin wanted to name his baby brother "Backhoe". My aunt and uncle wisely shot that idea down.

Yesterday, Daniel and I were babysitting for a few hours. When we arrived, my cousin recited Genesis 1:1 for us, which he had learned in Sunday School. According to him, the verse goes like this: "1 In the beginning God created the heavens and the earth and the backhoes."

It was a busy weekend, but a good one. We got a lot of those little things crossed off the to-do list that have been on the list so long that no one really remembers putting them on there in the first place. That's a good feeling. And we saw the movie "Amazing Grace" with some church friends. Great movie, I highly recommend it.

We're having computer issues this morning at work. Nothing like dragging yourself out of bed on a gloomy Monday morning to discover that you cant actually do any work because your files have disappeared into an intranet void.

Why people become Republicans

We took our taxes to H&R Block yesterday. Usually we're do-it-yourself tax people, but this year we had bought and sold properties, and gotten married and it was all a little complicated. So we took our taxes in. And found out that, according to the government, we make too much money to claim some of our deductions. And, for the first time in my adult life, I owed money to the government for my taxes. I told the tax preparer that I was pretty sure this is what made people who were undecided into Republicans, when they suddenly find out that in the mind of the government they are "rich" and don't get many tax breaks. (Disclaimer- I'm already the lone Republican in Seattle, so it didn't really change my mind).

After the taxes were done, we went shopping at Goodwill.

Hiding from the fashion people

I cant remember if I've mentioned this before, but I work across the hall from fashion people. They always look fabulous. Effortlessly pulled together and gorgeous all the time. Whereas I start out tolerable in the morning, and go rapidly downhill after that. Today I think I started out somewhere much closer to the bottom of the hill. I'm wearing a maternity t-shirt from Target (love the fact that it's loose just below the "girls", which hides the annoying roll of fat that has accumulated there), my regular jeans, and a tummy sleeve to hold the jeans on. But the jeans are low-cut, so the tummy sleeve is having problems keeping them under control. And the whole combo is pushing my tummy out at a very odd angle. I just look strange.

To top it all off, having some nasty round ligament pain today. Daniel said this morning "well, that's good, since it's normal and means the baby is growing." I informed him that, in the future, telling me that things that HURT! are normal, will not be tolerated. He made me eat healthy food for dinner instead of the mac and cheese that I wanted, so he knew he was already on my bad list and kept quiet after that.

This weekend's fun and excitement- taxes! Thankfully not doing them ourselves. It's been a complicated year, financially, and we don't want to deal with it. I'm so glad to be married to a man who agrees with me about the worth of our time, when it comes to things we don't enjoy doing. If we can save time by paying someone a not-exorbitant amount of money to do the task for us, we're there.

Thing I love about Seattle #2

Green Lake. It's a fabulous 3 mile paved walking/biking/blading trail around a pretty lake. It's been a Seattle favorite spot for about 100 years. It's the only place in Seattle where you can go and see, all in one place: 1) cute puppies, 2) cute babies, 3) bunnies (sometimes), 4) hot shirtless men. And you get to eavesdrop on conversations of people walking past you. One time, a friend and I were walking around. (This was back in my pre-Daniel days) and passed two girls going the other direction. Right when they passed us, one of them said "So I called that cute guy, using the excuse that....". My friend and I almost turned around to follow them. One can never have too many good excuses for calling cute guys. We also heard a man say to a woman "so, I think we need to talk." We scurried away from that pair quite quickly.

I want to eat my leftovers. NOW.

Daniel and I had another nice evening yesterday. Decided to skip the gym and go to Green Lake, a local Seattle recreation spot. By the time we got out, the weather had cooled down to around 60, but it was still nice to be out and walking instead of sitting at this desk. We stopped halfway around to eat Thai food (SO yummy!!) and then had to finish the 3 mile loop in the dark. I've walked around the lake about a million times though, so I know the path well.

Now I'm sitting here at work fantasizing about the leftover yellow curry in the fridge. Unfortunately, it's only 9:45 AM. I do seem to have gotten over my McDonald's cravings. Haven't been even remotely tempted to go there in the past few weeks. Weird.

Speaking of food, we're going out with new friends from church on Sunday. Most of the wives in the group we're going out with are pregnant, and we're going to an Indian restaurant with a buffet, so it should be a fun afternoon for the men of seeing whose pregnant wife can put away the most food. :)

There is no way I'm going to make it to lunchtime before I break down and eat my leftover curry. None at all.

Cool, I figured out how to post the online invite!

I found this online blog party yesterday when I was looking for things to read during one of my breaks. It has lots of info on lots of great blogs- go click on the party invite and check it out!

SUNSHINE!!!!

What a beautiful day! Today it's supposed to get up to 62 degrees here in Seattle. Right now we have a nice blue sky with some puffy white clouds floating by. I havent actually set foot outside yet (went from home parking garage to work parking garage), but my computer toolbar tells me that we're up to 48 degrees already. Hard to believe it snowed here last Wednesday night.

Daniel and I had a nice evening last night. Nothing special, just walked home from work and enjoyed the warm evening. Ate the beef stew that I had made on Sunday and watched TV. But we did decide to leave the computer off. We both have rather obsessive personalities and have trouble disconnecting from our jobs at the end of the day. Which means that we're frequently found on the couch, passing the laptop back and forth, and checking our work email. Daniel also likes to look at cars and houses online, and that can kill hours of the evening. I never worry about finding him looking at naughty pictures, but I do worry about the million dollar houses that he's checking out sometimes :)

Overall, we're trying to get in some good patterns of behavior before Lucky shows up. We need to decide if it's going to be a work email/blackberry blackout right after work, or if there will be a certain time in the evening at which everything has to be turned off, or what. We still have some time to get it decided, but I'm glad we know already that this has to be done. Hopefully we can be through the worst of the email withdrawal by the time August rolls around.

On a side note, I'm sitting in my office with my skirt halfway unzipped. Very classy way to transition between normal clothes and maternity clothes. I think I need to go buy another tummy sleeve at Motherhood.

My Monday so far- and a few more shower details

I'll share a few more details of the shower- now that it's all a happy, rosy memory and not a looming dark cloud. We did have about 25 people there. It was completely packed. A bunch of us ended up standing for most of the event- which was fine, but a little tiring. We ended up with lots of extra food, mostly because the first group of women to go through the line to get food ended up staying in the kitchen/dining area and talking, and then no one else could actually get to the food to eat any. But I think people were fine with that. I told Daniel that I felt like the party was just an excuse for the women to get out of their houses, and the price of admission was a baby gift. Apparently my church doesn't believe in registries- I think the mom only got a few things off her registry, but she did get lots of other nice things. She told me the next day that she woke up at 5:30 AM, completely excited about all of the fun baby things that she had in the other room waiting for her. That was cute.

We played two games- the safety pin game where you can't say "baby". Someone's 7 year old daughter ended up winning that. She was ruthless. And we made them play a "name that nursery rhyme" game as well, which worked mainly to get everyone seated and quiet so that we could get the focus on the mom for a little while. I also had all the women write a message to the mom, which we gathered up and put in a small photo album for her to take home. She was really excited about those as well.

And the punch turned out marvelously- mostly because I did not make it. Thankfully one of the women in my home fellowship agreed to do it. She also had no idea what she was doing, but she was a good sport about it, and it tasted great.

Now I'm back in my wonderfully quiet office, with nothing to do except my piles of work. And of course, my every-30-minutes bathroom trips. Seriously, nice little baby, get off my bladder already!

I did have a fun morning here at work. We just got in some new file cabinets, and had to find places to put those. And we have a bunch of computer stuff that needed moving, in preparation for our IT guy's visit on Wednesday. Since I cannot move heavy furniture, I got to stand around and boss my other three co-workers. And they just had to do whatever I told them to do. Now that's what I call a good day :)

The baby shower is done!

I did it! We got up early this AM, Daniel went off to men's group at church, and I headed to the grocery store. Bought lots of fruits and veggies, then spent the next hours washing and cutting. When he got home, we went and got the cake and more veggies. Everything got transported to the shower fine, and a few other people got there early and helped me set up. They were lifesavers. We ended up with probably about 25 people there- so a very good turnout. I think the mom was pleased. After an hour of socializing, we played the games and she opened gifts. And opened, and opened! I don't know how they're going to get it all home. And the cake was really tasty- my husband did a good job of choosing the bakery and the cake design.

I am completely worn out now- I've been on my feet since about 7:30 this morning. But everything went well and everyone had a good time, and that's what matters.

T minus one day

I full expect that at this time tomorrow I will be standing in my kitchen and brandishing a large knife in the general direction of a vast pile of fruits and veggies. Daniel and I researched veggie and fruit trays last weekend, about had a heart attack at the price, and realized we could make our own trays for a fraction of the cost. So tomorrow, while Daniel is at men's group at church, I'll make grocery store runs and start washing and chopping.

So far I've gotten 5 RSVPs for the party. Out of a list of 34 people. I know there are a few more that told the mother that they'll be there, so I expect about 20 people total. Hopefully it'll all go really smoothly! I think I'm as prepared as I can be.

My major stress right now is-- what to wear! I don't fit in my cute dresses anymore, and my hand-me-down maternity dresses are too big. Today I'm wearing a pair of my usual black pants to work. They're very tight in the tummy. Hopefully tight enough to make it look like a baby belly and not a beer belly. :) Hopefully I'll be able to find a cute loose skirt from the back of my closet, and a reasonably cute top to pair it with. I love dressing up and looking prettier than usual, so it should be fun if I can find something that I feel good in.

I hope everyone has a wonderful weekend!

Have you ever noticed

That computer people are relentless optimists? I started realizing this when I was dating my husband. His company designs and publishes support pages for companies. He'd tell me that they were launching a new webpage (usually in the middle of the night) and that it was expected to take a couple of hours. Inevitably I would talk to him the next morning, and he'd still be at work. After being there all night. And every time, he would be surprised. And say things like "well, there was an unexpected glitch in the coding." Unexpected by whom? I knew there would be a glitch and I know nothing about coding!

Our IT department at work has the same problem. We've been having a connectivity issue ongoing for weeks. Every time they come in to fix it, they assure us that it is completely fixed. After the 4th time, they assured us that this time, they had found the issue and it would not happen again. Anyone want to venture a guess as to what happened last night? In general, one of two things happens 1) they eventually, after weeks and weeks of promising the problem will be fixed that day, just never mention it again. And we learn ways to work around it. Or 2) we don't even bother telling them that something is broken. Because, honestly, things usually get worse before they get better and who has time for that. Then they act shocked and hurt that we didn't trust them with our computer problems because this problem would have been an easy one to solve. Sure.

Seriously, they work hard. And I know computers are evil. I don't blame the IT people for their inability to fix the things that I probably screwed up in the first place. But just be honest with me. Tell me that it will take 3 months and will probably lose my files and still not work right in the end. I think I'd be okay with that.

Snow!

Okay, not actually here in downtown Seattle, but apparently there was quite a bit of snow in the communities just outside the city. My friend who teaches school in an area just 10 miles north of here has no school today. They're going to be in classes until August at this rate. Many many snow days this year. Here downtown I saw a few renegade flakes this morning. The ones that got lost in last night's snow storm and have been slowly wandering down I-5 and finding a nice place to fall.

So, I was thinking yesterday, after I posted. I made a comment about my body growing Lucky while I worked. And the more I thought about it during the day yesterday, the more I realized that I think that feeling is part of my problems right now. I don't really feel like I'm a part of this whole thing. My body is growing this baby just fine, and needs relatively little input from me to make it all go okay. Sure, I have to eat well and exercise, but I did those things before getting pregnant, so I haven't really changed my habits that much. When we were trying to conceive, I had things to do, temperatures to chart, calendars to contemplate. But now, I just wonder at the random feelings in my abdomen and obsessively check my profile in the mirror to see if anyone would ever guess that I was 4 months pregnant (the answer is still no, by the way).

Maybe when the baby starts moving around, I'll feel more connected.