beacuse i'm easily amused today...

wtf is with this picture of dirty harry? hehe... hehehehehehehehehe.

i can't help it

this news headline from this morning probably shouldn't be funny to me, but it totally is.

junk mail WIN.

so this morning in my inbox at work i received the following message:

Subject: she will scurry home. Get

First week or two, Betty took little pains to conceal the fact that she and the Grants had a new interest in common. Then one day Becky did not come over, though the white handkerchief was displayed betimes; and when, as soon as possible, Betty hurried over to see what the matter was, Becky showed unmistakable signs of briefness and grumpiness of speech, and declared that she was busy at home, and evidently did not care for the news that an old AEolian harp had been discovered on a high upper shelf and carried to one of the dormer windows, where it was then wailing. The plaintive strains of it would have suited Becky's spirit and temper of mind excellently. It did not occur to Betty until she was going home, disappointed, that the club was beginning to make trouble; then her own good temper was spoiled for that day, and she was angry with Becky for thinking that she had no right to be intimate with anybody else. So serious a disagreement had never parted them before.


... i don't know what exactly this means, but it is awesome. i have so many questions. are betty and the grants swingers? is the white handkerchief their secret sign for "come and get it?" what club is betty coming home from, and what the hell is with the harp? is becky, becky grant? is this some kind of love triangle between becky, betty, and the harp? all junk mail should be like this. nothing else to report, sorry guys.

no explanation

just a neat postcard image my friend saw in brussels. i love it when he sends us mail because he addresses it to "my interweb friends." somehow his letters always arrive so i'm assuming that our postman doesn't care. or doesn't read it. either way.

i'm still here...

i haven't forgotten about you. i'm just... waiting. i mean honestly at this point i don't have a lot else on my mind besides, "hmmm, that feels strange, is anything going to happen today!?" and how many times can i really write that out before it gets annoying? once, maybe twice.

things are fine/good. at my doctor's appointment this morning they confirmed yet again that i seem to be the healthiest pregnant person alive and ok goodbye call us if anything interesting happens. i've been having contractions like mad all week but nothing particularly productive. i do think that he officially "dropped" yesterday, which was crazy because we saw it. i feel great. just... waiting for stuff to decide it's really time and not just practicing time. if i took a stiff walk around the block we could probably have a baby by tomorrow but that really sounds like a lot of work.

i think we're as ready as we're going to be. my list of "things to do" is down to only a few items and at this point i'm not really sure how much i care about them anyway. the house is (mostly) clean. my bag has been packed for a few weeks now and i charged all the various camera batteries over the weekend. and, hooray! the hospital has wireless internet. and i got a hair cut saturday, against jon's advice, but i'm very happy that i won't have to worry about it again for a while.

friday we interviewed the last of the babysitters and WINNER. i LOVE her. so that has been a HUGE load off my mind. we have a super-organic hippie daycare lady lined up, you can breath freely now, though i have no idea how we'll pay her. and we put in the carseat-

ok no, we didn't. but we tried! i was vacuuming the car while jon read the instructions and then it started raining so we went back inside and watched tv. eh, whatever.

so... just hanging around waiting for time to pass. resting and cleaning. i can't promise i'll have a lot to tell you in the next few days if they continue on like they have been. i go back and forth between getting really excited for him to come and then feeling really not ready. i'm still not feeling that whole "get this baby out!" thing that apparently most pregnant people feel by now. i'm weird, what can i say? jude is huge and kicking me and some time sooner or later he will come out of there. the end.

aftermath

after posting monday's belly photos i had to go into my flickr account and un-label them because they were being added by "hot sexy pregnant belly" photo groups.

EWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWW.

consider me officially grossed out. i mean, i'm glad people think i'm hot and all but that was NOT my intention. yuck. keep your fetishes to yourselves, pervs.

any day now, jude update

this is the world's tiniest, cutest, t-shirt. gah!

so this week is week, ummm... 38? 39? yeah something like that. two weeks till my due date. last monday at my doctor's appointment we were officially told that any time he wants to come he is good to go. however, he doesn't really seem into that and that's ok by me. you know what's scary? that tiny shirt has probably fit him for more than a month. it might even be too small when he comes out, which would be so sad because freaking LOOK at it.

he is doing good in there, as far as i can tell. he kicks around still but now it is STRONG and HURTS and OMG IS THAT YOUR LEG PUT THAT BACK IN THERE RIGHT NOW YOUNG MAN! things down there are achy but i guess that's to be expected. last week my feet finally started swelling during the day but i guess i was pretty damned lucky to only have it happen in my last few weeks. what else?? just waiting along. feeling ok. big and tired. i'm not quite ready for him to come out of there yet. i feel like there are so many things i still want to do, like dust and vacuum and scrub the bathroom floor and install the car seat and sew curtains and you know, generally freak out about things. and ps, we don't have daycare lined up yet for after my maternity leave, can i tell you how much that is freaking me out? SO MUCH.

but you know how many of those things i have done in the last few days? NONE. you know why? no air conditioning. it was 95° in our house yesterday. i refused to leave the bedroom and cried and cried. i would say that i'm really happy and feeling good at this point in my pregnancy... as long as i'm in an air conditioned room. when i'm not things seem to deteriorate rapidly into sweating and crying. the repair guy is supposed to come out tomorrow and look at it again to see if our home warranty will cover the repair. cross your fingers.

you know what DID happen over the weekend? we finally finished tiling the kitchen floor. forever ago the first thing we did in the new kitchen was tile the floor except around the radiator and in the pantry because they are both a huge pain in the ass. they are finally tiled and grouted and we even tiled the movie closet with the leftover slate. score!

are you ready for this? it's a little alarming...

here's the belly at week 8, week 15, week 28, and today at week 39. and just so you can see how totally crazy my belly looks, here it is again, in my vanity mirror:


saturday before our friends threw us a baby shower party i was getting ready and happened to glance over at myself in the mirror and- SHABAM- stretch marks. i have some on my hips which were there before from a childhood growth spurt. but apparently there are now a few under my belly and i had no idea because i can't see anything below my boobs. that was a fun surprise. what! hey! how long have you been there?! what's going on down there! it's very strange not to be able to see large portions of your body at all and forget about shaving, it's a lost cause at this point.

i have another doctor's checkup today in a few minutes but they are so boring these days i'm not even going to wait to post this. i'll wait in the waiting room forever, they will take my blood pressure, i'll pee in a cup, the end.


so any time now we could have a baby. like, tonight. a baby. or in three weeks. who knows? i like this part it feels very adventure-y. and i don't feel like there's too much hurry to rush him out any time soon. in fact it would be better if he could stay in there either until this god-awful heat ends or the air conditioning is fixed, because pregnant person in the heat? bad. newborn in the heat? probably worse. then there would be cranky three of us instead of cranky two of us.

so stay in there, sir! at least for the next few days. and heads up internet- if you care about this whole thing in detail i will probably be twittering during labor, at least in the beginning. so if you're wondering what the scoop is check there first for any exciting developments, otherwise you can probably assume that i'm moping around somewhere in the heat worrying about the cleanliness of my floors.

friday find

... in case you're confused about what's happening here, yes, that's a lion riding in a side car.

in other news, carcass is sort of a gross word. i really want a haircut but jon says i can't get one because i'm "emotionally unstable" and i'll be sorry later... BUT I WON'T... ok maybe i would... but i REALLY want a haircut all of a sudden. enjoy your friday.

brain FAIL

i'm sorry sir, but your shirt alone tells me everything i need to know about you...

... sigh

bad news. air conditioner = super broken. i'm going to hold it together for another hour and half or so and then have a mental breakdown. wheeee!

i couldn't resist

my plan yesterday was to take belly photos for you (and do a lot of other things) but, during the heat advisory that has been issued in cincinnati, our air conditioning broke. so no, i didn't take any photos. i didn't really do anything besides lay around covered in bags of ice, moaning with sadness. the repair people are supposed to hit us up this afternoon so hopefully everything will be ok and it won't cost a bazillion dollars to fix, or i will cry and stand in the cold cold shower again for many hours.

anyway, in lieu of the nice photos i wanted to show you, i bought this yesterday on etsy:


i couldn't resist. organic wood "brass knuckle" teething ring, yeah! and then when i came to work this morning someone left an envelope on my desk with $20 in it since they couldn't make it to my work shower. i wonder how she would feel if she knew her gift money went to buy this very important item... high priority? i think definitely yes.

i'm going to go back to feeling sorry for myself and my incredibly crappy night of sleep now and then it's off to the doctor this afternoon. bye!

a strongly worded message to you, internets.

alright internet, i can't take it anymore.

if one more fucking person comes here from googling geof manthorne or geof manthorne girlfriend i am going to lose my mind.

I DON'T KNOW GEOF MANTHORNE. I AM NOT AFFILIATED WITH HIM IN ANY WAY. I DO NOT HAVE INFORMATION ABOUT HIS PERSONAL LIFE!

i watch ace of cakes, the show that he is on, pretty often. and i think he looks like mathieu amalric. that is all. i even wrote a message to him on their website letting them know that his marital status is a hot topic and can you please make your own freakin web page about it so people will stop coming here and being all disappointed.

so, person visiting me here from the search "does geoffrey manthorne have a girlfriend?" the answer is I DON'T FUCKING KNOW. but please feel free to stay here and read about dogs and jude and other random crap from my life, it would make me feel better.


ps: people who came here from searching "weird nudes archive" and "giant fat man big belly button" i don't have any of that either, just fyi. but i'm not sure i want you to stay.

dark moments.

i can't read any more about natural birth. i don't want to read, see, or talk to anyone who is going to shake my resolve- no more articles, books, or birth stories. i don't want to run across someone's offhand comment at the bottom of an article about how their doctor didn't listen to them in the hospital or one more negative opinion about crunchy hippie births. i don't want any extra thoughts going into my mind in this last month that aren't completely positive. i feel vulnerable. the only things i can handle right now are reading my bradley book over and over and, now, reading dooce's birth story.

all of a sudden the past few days i feel hyper-emotional about the whole thing, which is really very unlike me. i'm on edge, wondering if i can really do this. all my energy is going inward focused on preparing myself for what's going to happen. i tear up thinking about how desperately i'm going to need jon's support. i'm tearing up now just writing that out in real words. if we're lucky enough that nothing goes wrong that needs medical intervention i wonder if i can handle it. i know that i will need to be stronger than i have ever had to be before. it feels like a delicate balance, flip flopping between moments when i feel super determined and times when i feel like i need all the outside support i can get to bolster my resolve. and you know, pregnant people are crazy (uh yeah, clearly). so by tomorrow i *might* feel totally different. but for the past three nights i dream over and over about going into labor so obviously i'm a little concerned, and at least for today the stress seems very overwhelmingly stressful.

every night i sit on the floor for hours at a time doing pelvic stretches and sitting in tailor pose. in my entire life i've never been able to touch my toes and now i do it every night. that's amazing, because i'm seriously one of the least flexible people ever. i'm working hard to make this happen. if sheer will and determination are enough, i can do this.

dream of the day

last night i dreamed that i was talking to jon and then all of a sudden i blacked out. and when i woke back up i was in the hospital and jon was there taking care of me. and apparently i had gone into preterm labor so they had put me into a coma and delivered jude and then left me like that for 3 more weeks. so i missed the birth and jon had been taking care of our tiny preterm baby in the hospital all alone and i had never even met him and i cried and cried.

it was a horrible dream, but of course when i told jon about it this morning he just laughed because dude, jude is only days away from being not pre-term. and he is plenty big. dreams are weird.

TMI tuesday

(heads up adam and other men, you'll probably want to stop reading right about now.)

have you ever worn more than one tampon at once, by accident? let me tell you, that was one of the most horrific and mortifying moments of my life. some sleepy morning i put another one in without (apparently) taking the other one out. and then when i went to check on things later they BOTH came out. cringe, yell, cry, eww.

i feel slightly better about this based on one of blogher's community keynotes, Stuck in the Middle with You by Knotty Yarn. but, not that much better. cheers.

the builders and the gerbils

jon convinced me last week to go to the builders and the butchers concert with him and a some of our friends. their music is all old-timey style, pretty much the show carnivale in music form which is amazing. plus it was $5. the down side was the show was at a bar in kentucky, and across the river in redneckland you can still smoke in bars. sad times, as cigarettes, besides being stinky and gross, make pregnant-me very queasy.

we showed up at the place which i had heard from a friend was pretty skeevy. you have. no. idea. it clearly used to be a strip club. everything had neon blue and pink lights around it accented here and there with glass block walls. and the carpet (yes, i said carpet) was totally roller rink carpet and i'm really glad i never had to touch it with my feet at any time. the bathroom? i mean i'm pretty tough, we've traveled across the country, i've been in tons of truck stops and diners and whatever other horrible bathrooms you can imagine, but seriously, this bathroom was the worst ive ever seen. and of course i had to pee within 5 minutes of getting there. but i figured hey, it's early! maybe it won't be too bad yet. well yes, that would be true if they had ever cleaned it from the night/week/month before. but clearly that was not the case. let me tell you that the pregnant hover-pee is ever so challenging. a while later one of our friends needed to pee and i warned him ahead of time and he rolled up his pant legs above his shoes in fear, and he was glad that he did when he came back out.

this crap was supposed to start at 8 and we showed up around then. they hadn't even opened the doors. by 930 there were still no bands playing. eventually some girl got up there and sang by herself. and she was pretty good, though her name made me hate her before i even heard her play. wonky tonk? really? honey you can sing, please get yourself another name. and apparently her band didn't show up? but i missed that and i thought she was joking about "sounding better with her band" so i kept saying things like, "shut up and play! we don't care about you talking!"

and then the next opening band came on... pilgrim. apparently that's their name. (which i have renamed them Nazerdune, because it's much funnier) it was the worst jam band i've ever heard and it just went on and on and on and on and i kept going outside for the fresh air. and then i would come back inside and it actually smelled better because 10,000 gerbils must have died/peed somewhere outside that bar. and everyone around me apologized profusely to jude for him having to hear their crappy playing while in womb. i tried to find them online for you but *thank god* they don't appear to have a website. it's probably for the best.

and when the builders and the butchers finally played it was awesome. they are totally entertaining to watch and the crowd was all happy not to be listening to CRAP anymore, and we dragged a stool out in front of the stage so i didn't have to stand up.

and then i started having contractions.

yeah seriously.

smokey crap bar + really loud drum music = braxton hicks.

so after they were done playing i had to drive us straight home, because of course i was dd, and then lay down and drink water and go to bed. but since then nothing, and the doctor was not at all concerned. so uh, that's that.