The Fatty Blues

If someone says to you:
By having sex there is a good chance you will end up having to spend the better part of a year

-gaining loads of weight
-being REALLY gassy
-eating everything you come in contact with
-crying at the drop of a hat
-Laughing hysterically at inappropriate movies
-either completely uninterested in sex, or overly interested in sex
-swollen feet, ankles and sinuses
-avoiding alcohol, smokey rooms, loud music, and anything that requires you to stay up late
(which just happens to be where all your friends are)
-having to pass up your favorite foods
-getting stretch marks
-getting vericose veins
-worrying that you'll never be sexy again
-getting nose bleeds
-interminable headaches (for which you shouldn't take pain killers)
-shortness of breath
-aching back, neck, and every other part of your body
-long sleepless nights
-general discomfort
-being woozy
-being mean
-being either way hotter or way colder than everyone else in the room
-not fitting between the driver seat and the steering wheel of your car
-looking like a hippo
-having strangers touch you
-getting unwanted advice from complete morons and strangers and strange morons
-and worrying that you're doing it all wrong

Then all that will end with an episode of more pain than you could possibly ever imagine. You will be ripped in half starting with your vagina just to allow this little tyrant out into the world and then for the next six months you're going to have cracked, chapped, sore nipples and feel like a dairy cow and at any given point in the day be covered in shit, piss, sour milk, vomit, or otherwise... and then you will spend the rest of your life scared shitless for this little being...

Do you think it'd make a difference? You're right...probably not...

Ivillage Idiots

According to my "Pregnancy Calendar" on Ivillage.com my baby is the size of a gerbil.

WHY WOULD THEY COMPARE MY BABY TO A GERBIL?????!!!!!!!!

Tids and Bits

-As Jen reminded me it was Administrative Professionals Day or what was previously known as Secretarys' Day. Did you hug your secretary or personal assistant yesterday? You'd better do it now (make sure they aren't armed first). My boss, after i reminded her, bought be a gift certificate to target.

-Unique-Stephen (complete stranger) brought this to my attention which is absolutely marvelous and darned funny. Thank you US, and who are you and how did you find me?

-If anyone is interested this is where we're going to be having the baby. I know, I know having the being born in Pennsylvania does hinder the kid's coolness and good dental hygiene future, but at least I don't have to be afraid that they will cut off the kid's foreskin without my permission. Our next check-up is May 9th, I'll let you know if anything interesting happens.

-For all those of you who read this who may have to make the trek to come to our Wedding reception/ Baby shower/ Housewarming/ Welcome Home/ Stuff yourself stupid and give us a hug-shindig-- the plan is to go for late August to accomodate (see how much i love you) those who aren't able to make it in early and mid August (perhaps the 26th,27th)

-For all those of you who i have not formally invited or mentioned this to, consider yourselves all formally invited and informed. I will keep you posted.

-The Fairie Festival at Spoutwood Farms in Glenrock, PA is May 6&7 for those of you who would like to come and visit me, or hide behind the nearest tree and point and laugh.

-Our newest baby name choice for a boy is Aiden, any comments?

Hello Gas, Goodbye Savings

So I leave for work this morning, get to the gas station where it's a whopping $3.09/gallon and I think to myself oh, well the other day it was $3.01 at the gas station near work, I'll just go there. I get to the gas station by work and it's at $3.11. Meanwhile i'm on empty in my inherited stupid green sedan. I decide to bite the bullet and pay for at least some gas so I can at least get home and I realize I don't have my wallet.

(don't worry i'm not stranded, i borrowed some $ from a co-worker who i'll pay back tomorrow)

However, this little saga got me to thinking: How did gas prices go up 10 cents in less than two days. So i looked it up.

Turns out for the last three days the price of crude has reached increasing record highs and they predict it'll go up to $80 per barrel before the end of June!! (It's currently at $72, i think)

Also: Bush has halted the environmental law that was passed forcing gas refineries to mix gasoline with ethanol to reduce air and water pollution to try and reduce gas prices.

Also: The average retail price of gasoline nationwide is $2.80 a gallon, though stations are charging more than $3 a gallon in many parts of the country.

Excerpt from MSNBC article:

The biggest factor underpinning higher gasoline prices is the roughly 38 percent rise in crude oil costs over the past year. On an inflation-adjusted basis, oil prices would have to rise above $90 to exceed the all-time highs set a quarter century ago when supplies became tight in the aftermath of a revolution in Iran and a war between Iraq and Iran.
Analysts said the market psychology would likely remain bullish until there is either a significant dropoff in demand or resolution to a variety of geopolitical uncertainties, particularly the West’s nuclear dispute with Iran and output disruptions in Nigeria.
“The worries of Iran won’t go away any time soon, and in that sort of environment very few people are willing to be short on oil,” said Tobin Gorey, a commodities analyst with the Commonwealth Bank of Australia in Sydney.

Read more here

Knocked up update

14 weeks and 4 days knocked up.

Feeling good for the most part. The last two weeks I've felt like i'm getting bigger everyday, except no one but me can tell. I weighed myself at my grandmother's house (we don't have a scale) and I've gained 4.5 lbs so far.

I've had to borrow pants because my own are very tight these days. I did end up buying a few maternity things we'll see how far they get me.

This inbetween stage is the hardest I think. Feeling fat but not looking pregnant quite yet (at least not to strangers) and anticipating the rest of the pregnancy. I feel like it must get more fun somewhere along the way.

Shopaphobia

So it seems i have a severe fear of shopping. The only kind of shopping I actually enjoy is food shopping. Dont get me wrong. I am indeed in love with shoes and there's something about new clothes (new or new to me) that makes me excited to actually put on clothes in the morning, however, for the most part it is hell trying to get myself to go into a store.

Luckily enough (actually that's debatable since it makes it so easy) for me and those like me INTERNET SHOPPING exists.

So for the last couple of weeks, as i find my pants becoming tighter and tighter, I've been internet window shopping for maternity clothes. Unfortunately, I recently bought myself some new clothes for my office job (seeing as how all my college clothes were holey, dirty, stained, smudgy, a little too small, and weird). So, now comes the dilema (I also bought myself a giant rubber ball earlier this week to sit on at work) do I spend even MORE money on clothes (clothes that I will only end up wearing for the next few months) or do I stick it out for as long as i can and hope that my local Good Will has a few passable shirts?

(Basically i'm pleading for someone to help me justify a $73.00 purchase of a bella band, a long sleeve shirt, a polo shirt, a cute fancy shirt, and a bra which if it still fits when my milk comes in can be used as a nursing bra. I'm hoping the Bella Band will help me stay in my regular pants at least a couple more months)

My Belly and Boobs are Growing out of my clothes Wishlish

Not necessarily in order of appearance:

1. The Bella Band - for those of us who are too small for maternity clothes but too big for our own pants, and too cheap to go out and buy bigger pants.
2. Various t-shirts from American Apparel that seem as though they would work well for this inbetween phase and later for nursing etc.
3. a not so ugly hippo-suit. (I'm anticipating going to the ocean as much as possible this summer. I hear it's good for the baby, okay not true, but being in landlocked Arizona has made me ocean sick and after Sunday's brief romp on the sand I realized what i had been missing all these years)

Diary of a Pod

14 weeks. Feeling fat.

Post-Graduate Wasteland

If you go HERE you can see my hot and incredibly cool friends whom i don't deserve living it up.

I miss them.

I miss them so much i'm going to crawl under my desk and weep until lunch time at which point i will eat a burrito.

You think one New Castle would hurt the little one? just kidding.

Happy Easter Everyone

Things that Have Happened recently

1) My truck is up for sale (without the cap) on old York Rd in front of a friend's house.
2) i'm driving Ben's brother's stupid green dodge sedan that he sold to us for $100.00 when he left for the army a week and a half ago. I hate it.
3) We have cleaned out, and de-sided the Little House. It looks almost as bad as it ever will and we continue to find problems that will make this project that much more difficult and continue to be depressed about it while trying to make some leeway.
4) I am definitely getting fatter. I've officially gained 2.5 lbs and i'm all soft and doughy around the middle.
5) I contributed quite a bit to the RFP (request for funding proposal, ie: grant) that the company i work for has to do every eight years to get funding from the county to continue their noble work. And to say the least i'm damn glad it's over. We had three weeks to write a three inch proposal. :P
6) The weather is finally warming up more consistently, however, it's still fickle as all hell and was incredibly rainy and cold on saturday.
7) I am officially 12 weeks pregnant. Come this weekend it'll be goodbye first trimester!


That's about all i can come up with. Sorry it's not very witty or exciting. I'm feeling neither of those things right now mostly humdrum and a little anxious about the Little House... and antsy about living with my folks, most of the time it's pretty good, lately i've been feeling claustrophobic when it comes to the cabin and my folks... Maybe the time is coming to move to the Tee Pee...

Quick Update

I'm in the middle of writing a grant for work so I probably won't get a chance to actually update until tuesday or there abouts.

Church Mice

I found this article while in the process of checking my e-mail. This is very interesting.

All those who think that many Americans have a spending addiction raise your hand.

In anticipation of Ben, myself, and Lou all living off one meager income for 5+ years this article hits home. Now granted, I would sooner hurl myself into a pit of wrything crawly things than purchase pants for $117.00, however, what is it that i deem as a "necessity" that really isn't.

Honestly, how much can we do without? Will I die without q-tips? If Ben is forced to start buying Folgers instead of Avalon Organic will he eventually get used to it or will he hate me for not working every morning he pulls down that blue tin of sandy granules that turn his hot water slightly yellowish-brown?

Also to add my Idealism to the heap of random thoughts for the day:
Wouldn't it be nice if policy makers didn't HAVE to be the ones ensuring that our decisions as consumers were always environmentally, financially responsible purchases. Is it the government's job to save us from ourselves?

Despite the fact that i'm super excited about the Federal Government putting new gas mileage regulations on new cars, should they really have that power?? and if they do who's to say they can't keep us from choosing to have abortions, etc?

I realize those two things are very unrelated, but I guess i'm picking at that age old scab: If the government's job is to protect us, how far does it go? Should they be allowed to protect us from ourselves? Who are they to say what we need protecting from?

I really just don't know...

Heart of My Heart

So we went to Birth Care Midwife Center lastnight... oh it was awesome. It's a trailer in Pennsylvania... okay that's not quite true. And they're moving in the next month to a new location which is supposedly bigger AND they have birthing pools. But right now it looks like a trailer on a farm. But they are super awesome people. We got to hear the babys heart beat!!!

Here let me reenact the scene for you:

Jill the RN: now don't be dissapointed if we don't hear the heart beat, you're only 11 weeks along and it wouldn't be surprising if we didn't. okay?
Libby: Okay... But we're gunna try right.
Jill: Right
(Ben is sitting at the end of the table watching her squirt blue jelly on my tummy and feel around for the baby)

She takes the little sensor thinger and as soon as it touches my belly we hear *choo choo choo choo choo choo choo*

Jill: that's it that's the baby. Wow, that's a first. Usually we don't hear it right away. That is a good strong heart beat. Uh-oh, he's swimmin' away.
(we all hold our breath while she moves the sensor thing around a bit looking for the heart beat)

*choo choo choo choo choo choo choo choo* and in the background * wooooooosh..................... woooooooooooosh..........* (that's my heart beat) it sounds like a little tiny train driving along the beach (my heart beat being the ocean and the baby being the little train).

well i'm crying by this point or leaking at the eyes at least. And Ben is squeezing my hand...and there it is our little baby with it's super strong heart beat....



So on the ride home (it's an hour and a half from mom and dads) we drive right into an amazing thunderstorm and we're watching the big fat rain drops splatter everywhere and dodging the frogs in the road... and every couple of minutes one of us turns to the other and says "choo choo choo choo choo"

And we decide to start calling the baby Lou so as to not genderize it yet cause we inadvertantly keep saying "he"

Monday-ne!

I'm being really horrible and drinking hot chocolate, but i blame it on daylight savings.
I agree with Jen, Daylight savings sucks. I had to pinch myself to stay awake on the beltway this morning.

We started on the little house this weekend. I took a few pictures that i promise to post when i get my act together and get over to my Fatherinlaws in order to get the camera cable. It was quite a lot of work, and let me tell you I am a lucky, lucky girl to have Ben-The-Machine for a husband... well when it comes to hard labor that is... the boy is unreal!

So saturday and sunday found us covered in fiberglass insulation grossness and squirrel crap. I had to call it quits around 3pm both days because i couldn't stay awake any longer.

Today at 7 is our first baby check up with the ladies at Birth Care in Quarryville. I'll let you know how it goes, i'm hoping we'll get to hear the baby's heart beat.

Something Smells Good

The office is being permeated by someone's mocha coffee drink and it smells so good i could sniff it out and drink it for them.

List of Things I can't have:
Coffee and Caffinated things
Alcohol (even though my father-in-law swears up and down that a little wine is good for the blood and that gweneth paltrow or some tall blonde actor lady drank stout while she was pregnant because it's a good source of iron)
Cigarettes
Meat (mostly just cause it makes me nauseas, this kid might be a vegetarian)
too much sugar (according to "what to expect when you're expecting")
dairy (cause alergy season is coming up and it makes me super snotty, not cause the baby)

List of Things I can't do:
Wrestle
drive crazy
stay up past 9pm (mostly cause i'm incapable of it, this kid might also be a narcoleptic)
go running (cause when you get knocked up your boobs grow and grow and grow and hurt and hurt and hurt)
Be in situations that require me to have a whole lot of patience (maybe it's just an excuse, but since i found out i'm pregnant my fuse has been shortened to microscopic proportions and everyone has suddenly become an idiot--- sorry if i've lost my temper with anyone lately (poor Ben especially), i don't mean it at all, i'm just a nut job)
Watch/listen/talk about anyone killing or hurting babies (any kind of babies, if i see someone eating veal i'll probably start crying)
Go 20minutes without having to pee.

*Not one of you that reads this is pregnant, and i'm sure i'm boring the pants off of most of you. And... I am completely aware that since this whole thing started I haven't seemed to be able to talk about much more than the weird gross things that are happening to my body, how much i have to pee and babies. I would like to apologize to all of you. I'd also like to say, this isn't likely to stop any time soon.

Daylight Schmaylight

Guess what this weekend is, sunday to be exact... that's right Daylight savings time.

You know, in Arizona they don't believe in Daylight savings time... If i didn't know better i'd say Arizona really had their shit together... but in the end it's just the Daylight savings time thing they're right about.

So my fellow rest of the US excluding Arizona (which, ironically, is where most of my readers are) don't forget to set your clock forward saturday night before going to bed.

Is today Monday?

Today feels longer than the rest of the week put together.

Watching the News

I was watching the news this morning while eating my breakfast of brown rice, two fried eggs and fried plantains and as it would have it they did a piece on the new rage in births.

It seems that 10% of C-sections these days are for convenience NOT due to medical necesity. America has the highest rate of C-section births in the world.

They interviewed a woman who had all her children via C-section because she did not want to have trouble peeing after a vaginal birth!!!! She'd much rather have major abdominal surgery!!!! The really messed up thing is, SHE'S AN OB!!!!!!!!

I would just like to say: WHAT IN HOLY HELL IS THIS WORLD COMING TO????!!!!!!!!!

Women who stop their menstral cycle because it's an inconvenience. Women who SCHEDULE when their baby is born so that they don't have to deal with the inconvenience of labor and recovery.

THIS IS WHAT OUR BODIES WERE DESIGNED TO DO!!!!

oh... and just for the record there have been some (though not extensive) studies about children who were C-sections and children who were vaginal and how their birth effected them. They're may be a coorelation between C-sections and certain mental disabilities.... (again i don't know how reliable this is so don't quote me on it).

Perhaps i'm just so worked up about this because there's a little human inside me that will have to come out some day and I fully intend on doing it the best most natural way possible. As a mother nothing is convenient or about what's best or easiest for you, it's about that little person you hope beyond all hope will out live you.

Rowen,
I too am outraged, appalled, enraged, etc over this. Such utter crap! I am fucking proud and empowered to be female, to bleed, to be a woman, to be able to give life.

Our disconnection from ourselves is disgusting! I refuse to have any part of it!

i've been tagged, actually i was tagged like two weeks ago and haven't gotten around to it until now.

3 things you wish for (just for you)
~ that the little house will be done before October
~ that spring will hurry up and get here already
~ that everything will go smoothly with the pregnancy, birth and every after

3 things you would do to/for yourself if there was no one to judge you (or if you had the guts to do it!)
~ cover my whole body in tattoos (but i'd probably get bored with it too quickly)
~ I can't think of anything else
~

3 bad habits you have
~ I smoked until i found out i was pregnant. I don't know if this is the end for good or not but i think about cigarettes sometimes still.
~ I crave/love with all my heart cheese despite my allergies and snottiness
~ I tend to get really mad at other drivers and can't seem to let it go until i get to where i'm going.


3 talents/skills you wish you had
~ supreme flexibility (Contortionist style), no real reason for this but i always thought it was cool.
~ being able to grow large amazing fruits and vegetables seemingly without effort.
~ excellent sight and hearing. I always wanted to be like one of the old tracker guides in old movies about Danny Boon or someone.


3 things that you would do if you had more time
~ clean out the back of my truck
~ turn over the garden
~ go to the library

3 things that bring you peace/relaxation
~ good food
~ camping/backpacking/climbing/kayaking/etc
~ reading/writing

3 things that spark your creativity
~ reading/writing
~ listening to Ben play/sing
~ hot baths

HOLY CRAP!

I just received word that I've won first place in Alligator Juniper's Literary Journal Creative Nonfiction contest.

I get $125.00

and

I am going to be PUBLISHED!!!

For those of you who have a copy of my book it's for Belle of the Ball. For those of you who don't, I'm really sorry i promise to get you a copy soon, it costs a lot to make copies and I haven't gotten around to doing them yet. I do promise to get you one though, just keep bugging me.

Kirstin -- Congrats on getting your photo published too!!!!!!!!

Fatty Fatkins

i just went a little hog wild internet shopping.

Being forced to live out of a small duffle bag of clothes for 4 months, you would think one would want to get RID of things, however, not the case.

I am slowly coming to the conculsion that my work clothes aren't quite worky enough... most everything i own has holes, paint, food stains, or all three. As much as i don't really want to admit it, my grungy days are being put on temporary hold or at least restrained to cell phone hours (evenings and weekends).

Also, as i was making these purchases, i decided to buy a pair of jeans one size too big to accomodate my growing-ness. Despite all my feeling fat and the slow tightening of the waists of my pants, i still only weigh 98lbs. It'll be interesting to see how long that lasts, i give it a week.

Jes, can i borrow those give-away jeans for a bit? i'll give them back in a year or so.

I think this weekend, since it'll most likely be raining, will find me going through the various boxes and bags of clothing in reserve and hauling them off to goodwill. Anyone want give-aways?

Tonight is guy night which means, yes, you guessed it: Ben, Dad, Rex (ben's dad) and Casey (ben's brother) are all headed to the Eklo Inn (scarey red-neck bar) for a night of bad beer and schmoozing. And I, the prego-wife-o will be all alone in the big house we're house-sitting in with the gi-normous bathtub and the book I am desperate to finish. Poor me.

I wouldn't mind if i woke up tomorrow and it was April. March is such a silly month, it's like Tuesday (not as bad as monday but still the beginning of the week).

Come-ON spring! I double-dog-dare you to show your face and make it all warm, green, and growing.

FIRSTLY AND IN OTHER BABY NEWS:

Thanks for voting everyone. You had me a little worried there when i didn't get any response for a bit. Turns out i didn't realize it was spring break in so many places.

It looks like our winners are:
Calder Lee
Ada Rae

We have set up our first appointment with the birthcenter in Quarryville for April 4th. Rowen, is it common for midwives to not see clients until their 12th week?

Everything is moving along smoothly. I'm still tired but haven't felt the least bit queasy in a long while. My belly is starting to change, although not quite show. I have a little pooch that is rock hard and i can't suck in.

WEEKEND UPDATE:

So this past weekend was jam-packed full of stuff. All fun stuff, but for some reason when all you want to do is sleep everything feels like an obligation when you're preparing for it.

Saturday morning Mom, Dad, Ben and I went to the bagel shop to alleviate my week-long bagel craving and then we went to the hardware store for the oh-so-necessary power tools. Mom got her first circular saw and a work bench which she promptly set up in her studio. Ben and I got a wire brush head and enamel for the Isuzu where the Baltimore County School Bus kissed us. We also got sandpaper for the desk i'm refinishing.

Then it was to home with Mom and I while Ben and Dad went to work and the tax guy's place. Mom and I made food (Chilaquillas) to take to Oa's (my grandmother's) house that night for the March Birthday party extravaganza. Ben and Dad came home and Ben and I napped for a bit and then i woke up whining about how sick of cold i am. Then I got up and Mom and I packed up the food and we drove down to silver spring to her mom's to visit with her family.

My cousin Rachel's (who is briefly back in the States after a year in Africa) boyfriend (who she met while she was over there and is an austrailian, ex-military, civilian de-miner in Sudan) is in town and was introduced to the family during our little march circus. It was an evening full of wrestling, gorging ourselves, and dirty joke telling about nuns. Poor Richard.

Sunday Richard and Rachel came over for brunch/lunch. We had bagels, fruit, chocolate, almonds, and tea. We chatted about everywhere they had traveled, about how they met (at a UN meeting). We goofed off and sat in the sun. Jes and Ian came and hung out as well.

Ian, Ben, Richard and Rachel decided to take a walk in the woods and didn't invite Jes and I so Jes and I dressed up in camo, filled our pockets with walnuts and stalked them. We ambushed them on the old fire road by the dog graves and i accidentally hit Richard on the head with a walnut... oops! poor Richard.

Everyone left around 4ish and then Mom, Dad, Ben and I went over to Nina and Spiders (my sort of serogate grandparents on my father's side). When we arrived there were 17 deer in their backyard which you could see from the picture window in their living room. It looked like they were raising them. We ate chinese food and bitched about the state of the country and the idiots who run it. It was lovely.

Then it was home to sleep and wonder where the time had gone.

Anyone have an extra 6K or a used one of these?

Interesting

So it looks like no one really cares what we name the baby... that's cool. Don't read my blog... i don't care...

Harumph.

Taking a Poll

Here is a list of names we are considering for the kid.

Girls:
Ada Rae
(lots of different spellings on this one: Aida, Adah, Rae, Ray, Rey)
Hunter Leigh
Holiday (I haven't actually asked Ben about this one yet)
Adeline (instead of Ada)

Boys:
Jamsie Blue
Hunter Lee
Owen Lee
Calder Lee
Calder Owen

Please click the comment link below to put in your vote.

Hissy Fit.

After a lot of crying, screaming, kicking, walking in the woods, writing, talking, lying in bed and staring at the ceiling this weekend we've decided to not move into the little white house on york road.

On Friday the landlord lady called me and said it would be not one week but two more weeks until we could get in there. This is the 5th time they've changed our move in date. If they had meant what they said from the very beginning we would have moved into the first house over two months ago. SO, with all this in mind we decided that we didn't want to be their tennants.

Driving home from work on friday I began to worry about trying to find another place to live, how we were going to pay for it, how we were going to live the life we want to, etc, etc... and then it occurred to me that this baby will be arriving into this world in 7 months (give or take a week or two). That is not long. It also occurred to me that no way in a million years do i want to move into a house for 6 months and then move right back out.

So we've decided to stick it out at the cabin. We will continue to live with my folks as we fix up the little house. This will also allow us to save money so that we will not have to borrow money to fix it up. Also we can keep a garden in the hollow this summer as well. Once the weather gets warm we may move out to the Teepee, we'll see. In the mean time, wish us luck, patience, tolerance and good weather.

We start work on the Little House weekend after this coming. We will be:
-putting a new roof on
-putting in a floor
-puttin on new siding and insulating from the outside.
-redoing the loft
-straightening it out, there's a special term for this but i forget what it is, basically it's really crooked and we're making it straight.

Next spring we will add an addition to the back.
We are also hoping to get a couple nanny goats and a few hens next spring. And maybe next summer we'll have a HUGE party and redig the pond.

This is what the baby will look like next thursday, just before it's mom and dad finally (hopefully, maybe) will move into their new place. (Yes, the pushed the move-in date back yet ANOTHER week... i hope they get lice)
Today is officially the end of the first 7 weeks of my pregnancy. Whoo hoo... what a long way to go we have.

I miss Prescott.

A Call to All of my Knitter friends

I've decided to put a call out to my knitting friends. There are some things that would be awsome to have for the kid. I realize it's a bit premature (badum' bum' ching) but if you're anything like me you are a procrastinating knitter and it took you at least two years to finish that last scarf.

so here are some fun patterns if you feel like playing around with them. If you find something else feel free to do that. Or if you could care less, feel free to do that too.

Baby Booties

Bug Hat
Soakers

If you're feeling really adventurous:
Pants

Hoodie

Another Weekend Update

Friday night Ben and I went to pick up Ben's Dad, Rex and his Dad's girlfriend, Dolores from the airport on their way home from New Zealand. They have spent the last three and a half weeks in that glorious and sheep infested country. Am I ever jealous.

Since Ben and I drive little trucks with room enough for three if you squeeze and aren't shy, we decided to borrow Rex's 4-runner to pick them up in. Unfortunately for us Ben's little brother had borrowed the 4-runner and left it with out gas. He did however thoughtfully call us to say it didn't have gas in it and he was leaving us $6 on the kitchen counter for gas. $6.00, not a clue what that was supposed to cover really... Basically Ben's brother is careless and thoughtless and generally difficult to be around due to his neediness, and self-absorbtion.

Anyhow, we picked up Rex and Dolores and after getting lost in the airport (because we confused c4 with 4c in the parking area) we finally made our way back home. We told Rex that he's going to be a grandfather while walking through baggage claim where he promptly dropped his suitcase and hemmed and hawed a bit. He seemed happy enough, nervous though... On the ride home however, he did not understand why he couldn't smoke in the car. sigh. We got home at 2am. This is about 5hours past our usual bedtime. Yes, we are boring people that are usually in bed by 9pm and up by 6am. Needless to say we were pretty grumpy and it was late.

We slept in the next morning though and Jes came over and climbed in bed with us and ate grits and venison. Then Jes and I took a walk in the woods and chatted about the more annoying parts of our lives. The walk was nice and long though and the fresh air did us a world of good. Then we drove to Taneytown and dropped in to visit with her family. We wrestled with the boys, walked down the street to the coffee shop for lunch, watched them play Star Wars monopoly, and picked her mother's brain about her nine pregnancies. Her mom, my Aunt Nini also is an RN and delivers babies and has for years. I've decided to have her present at my birth. She's so awesome. She also gave me a really amazing book called "Spiritual Midwifery" which has the most amazing pictures.

I was home by 5:30, Jes went to her home and i made a quick meal of spaghetti and was tucked into bed and dozing by 8:30pm. An old friend called and invited me to a bon-fire and if i had though i would have made it there without falling asleep on the drive i'd have gone. I couldn't even rouse myself enough to close down the fire for the night and was diminished to begging my darling husband into doing it for me.

Sunday found us up early to pick up Ben's brother, head to the city to meet Ben's sister and then all four of us heading down to Fruitland (Salisbury area) to visit Ben's mom for the day. That was fun but again i found myself wanting to do nothing but sleep. I napped on the drive down. Once we got there I fell asleep on the sofa while watching season one of the Muppet Show. I love that show... so many memories. And then I woke up long enough to eat and get in the car and then i slept on the way home. You would think after a long day of sleeping wouldn't have been able to konk out the way i did when i got home. But 11:30 found my nestled into bed and sound asleep, most likely snoring.

So the tales of sleeping, eating and peeing continue, as that is what my life has been reduced to.

Hope you all had a glorious weekend too.

gads and gobs

Things are better, or looking up, or maybe i'm just too tired to freak out any further. It could also be that those happy hormones that they say pregnant women produce have started to flood my system. I suppose it doesn't really matter at this point...

Ben (my totally awsome favoritest person in the world) got to a tag and title place yesterday and was able to sort out (mostly) all of our truck stuff. We've been having some bad luck when it comes to cars recently. Both of them have been in minor accidents neither of which were our fault (and Ben was driving both times, it's a wonder he can get behind the wheel at all and not feel as though everyone's out to get him). My truck got a ticket a couple weeks ago for having expired tags... turns out that Ben when he renewed our registration on the Isuzu put the new sticker on the Toyota and now my truck looks like it isn't registered. Luckily i work with police officers and i had them run the tags and at least make sure the truck is actually registered, which it is. Anyhow, we've been having trouble getting them registered in MD, but i think we finally have it all sorted out. I can start driving my car to work again and we can begin thinking about how to get a car with a back seat. Anyone want to buy a little white pick-up?

Meanwhile there are gobs of people out there giving me the same damned speech about how I shouldn't worry, how everything's going to be fine, about how their parents didn't have any money, about how we're going to be awsome parents.... etc. etc. etc... and as much as I love all these people, i think i'm tired of it...

Why does everyone tell you to "stop freaking out"??? i mean freaking out is probably a good thing. I would rather get it all out in one fell swoop, worry my brains out, be totally convinced we're fucked, and then once it feels as though we haven't a snow-ball's-chance-in-a-woodstove i'll be too tired to carry it on much longer.

I'm good at freaking out, i'm good at worrying and panicking...

I really and truely appreciate everyone being supportive, loving, etc... but just like the whole "don't cry" thing... i'm gunna. I'm gunna and there's nothing you can do about it so sit with me while i freak out, and maybe tell me "you know you're completely right, you're 100% fucked, you may as well give up now."

PS: West! Welcome to the e-gads of people who have nothing better to do but spill their beans on the internet... Now we can blab all day to each other!

The Urinator

During the 15-16 hrs i was awake yesterday I peed over 20 times. I didn't realize that the human body was capable of such things.

In the mean time. I need help brainstorming how to take care of the kid that is currently only a bundle of cells latched onto the lining of my uterus once it's born into the world as a little humanoid critter, while still meeting my financial responsibilites of $400 a week (after taxes)...

Do i get a new job? Do i find out if i can bring the kid to work with me (that would only be until it started becoming more noisy and fidgety and needed to crawl around... then what?
Do i find people who need a nanny and watch other people's kids along with my own?
Do i find a really well paying part time job?
Do i find a daycare? (not my favorite choice).

Do we move back in with my parents so we can live off of Ben's income alone so i can stay home with the little person? (also not my favorite choice, living with them now is driving me up a wall).

and here i thought cloth diapers vs. plastic diapers was the biggest choice i'd have to make... (not really).

I have peed seven times in the last five hours.

Flaming Wreck

I am a flaming wreck. I am on some sort of emotional rollercoaster about this pregnancy. After leaving the grocery store with the positive results in a paper bag on my lap Jes and I drove around my work parkinglot while i cried.

I had forgotten that being pregnant could be a good thing. Then When I got home from work that night Ben had gotten all my favorite foods (eel sushi and cheese) and fake champagne and had decorated the living room. he even put a zero candle in the middle of the sushi. He's ecstatic and terribly cute.

Unfortunately... the practicality of it all is getting to me today. How are we going to pay for this baby? Will my health insurance from my new job (which doesn't kick in until april) cover the pregnancy? What are we going to do with the child after my maternity leave is up?

Hell, we don't even own a car with a backseat!

You know the "Everything happens for a reason" concept that people use for faith? I was trying to think of a reason we would get knocked up now... the only thing i can come up with is a forced way for me to learn how to RELAX.

So I've been holding my breath for various reasons since last august. I guess if i don't exhale now and stop waiting for shit in order to be happy or relaxed, i'll end up suffocating myself.

So here's to relaxing. Cheers.

Family Resemblance

That's right my darlings, I'm Pregnant. Found out yesterday after peeing on a stick in the bathroom of the grocery store across the street from where i work.

Dead Bunnies

Nowadays
a woman who wants to find out if she's pregnant need only make a quick trip to the local drug, grocery, or convenience store; purchase an over-the-counter home pregnancy test kit; and perform a simple test; and she'll know the results within a matter of minutes. Not so long ago, however, it wasn't nearly so quick or easy: A woman who thought she might be with child had to schedule an appointment with her doctor, make a trip to his office, give a urine sample, go home, then spend an anxious couple of days waiting for the office to telephone with the test results.

In the movies and television, a positive result was usually revealed by having a character burst into a scene and announce dramatically, "The rabbit died!" (This phrase was either shouted excitedly or whispered in a hushed tone, depending upon whether or not a positive result was the one the woman desired.) But why a rabbit? And why did it die if the woman was pregnant?

The origins of the "rabbit test" lie with the discovery in the 1920s that a woman starts producing a hormone known as human chorionic gonadotropin (hCG) shortly after a fertilized egg implants itself in the uterine wall. (It was later discovered that the presence of hCG causes the placenta to produce progesterone after implantation, necessary to prevent rejection of the developing embryo.) In 1927, medical researchers found that not only is hCG present in the urine of pregnant women, but that female rabbits injected with urine containing hCG would, within a few days, display distinct ovarian changes. Thus the "rabbit test" was born, and with it the misconception that the rabbit's death was an indicator of a positive result. In those early tests, the rabbit always died, because the animal had to be killed before its ovaries could be examined. Later refinements to the test enabled clinicians to inspect the ovaries without having to kill the rabbits first, but as the example cited above demonstrates, the misconception that the test rabbit died only if the woman was pregnant is still with us today, even though the "rabbit test" itself is not.

Modern pregnancy tests are still based on measuring the amount of hCG present in urine, but they do so directly, without the need of an animal intermediary to serve as a test subject. (Blood can also be tested for hCG; in fact, this type of test is more accurate and can be performed earlier in the pregnancy, but urine tests are still used in home pregnancy kits because they're much easier to self-administer.)

So, save for old movies, the rabbit test is now passé, and about the only time we hear about dead rabbits is when someone repeats the Hare Dryer legend.

Isn't it Roooomantic?

For Valentine's day i got a 20 gauge Mossberg shotgun and a tin of chocolates with Elvis on the lid.

Shit.

I just found out one of my dear, dear friends has colon cancer. Some of you have met her before and know how much i owe her. She saved me from myself time and time again. Here is her story:


Dear Friends,



I’m sorry to email you all together like this, but you can see that you are part of a select group, unlike the massive story emails I usually send around at random. This too is a story email, but of a vastly different sort than I usually send. Yes, it is a tale of adventure, and it is full of news and other Kit updates. The adventure is scary and interesting and entirely unlike any other I have ever found, but I didn’t go looking for this one. The news is shocking and not all bad. In fact, the news, relatively speaking, is all good. I’ve prattled on for long enough now, I’m sorry. I don’t really know how to share this news, so I may as well just spit (or type) it out…



I have colon cancer. I’m sorry to blindside you, but there’s really no good way to share this news. I didn’t mean to keep this from you, but didn’t really know how to tell you, and then I began treatment before I could really get my head straight enough to tell the story, and then once I was in treatment, I couldn’t stay awake for long enough to write it. These are excuses. The truth is I dreaded writing this email.



The details in a nutshell are: I WILL LIVE. There is no doubt about this oh so important detail. My prognosis is excellent, partly due to my very good health (cancer aside), and partly due to the fact that on average I’m half, or less, the age of the people in cancer treatment. Lucky me. I am in treatment at Boston Medical Center in Boston, Massachusetts. I have a team of extraordinary doctors whom I trust completely. I was diagnosed in the first week of October (I’m sorry to remain silent for so long, I truly am…), and began appointments in Boston by Halloween. I have completed 6 weeks of radiation treatment and chemotherapy, and now I am nearing the end of my 6 week break for recovery, and I have surgery one week from today, February 16th.



The details out of the nutshell are: I have been diagnosed with a condition called FAP (familial adenomatous polyposis). The fun part of the story is that this is supposed to be an inherited genetic mutation, but since I always do things that are unexpected, I get to be the one to establish the family history of colon cancer. Bonus! I was kind of sick all this summer, but never thought anything of it, since I’ve never been sick before, ever. I lost about 10 lbs. during the month of June, but still didn’t worry. Those of you who know the story of The Hotdog Lady and my ongoing battles to remain in business realize why I attributed my weight loss to the stress I was under all summer in the midst of the chaos of small town politics and bureaucracy. It was July before I even noticed that something was wrong with me, and that my stomach’s reaction to food was abnormal. It was late August before I decided to pay a visit to my brother’s doctor (I didn’t even have my own…), and mid-September before I was able to get an appointment with the gastroenterologist he referred me to. That lovely and compassionate man looked at me for 10 minutes, charged me $130.00 and told me to come back for a follow-up in the middle of November. On Thursday, October 6th I ended up in the Emergency Room after an episode of lots of blood coming from somewhere that it’s not supposed to. I was admitted and had a colonoscopy done the following morning, after being reassured by another gastroenterologist (this one actually WAS lovely and compassionate) that it was better to know what was wrong with me after I asked if I should be nervous about what he would find, since it certainly wouldn’t be cancer.



I woke up after the colonoscopy to find my 2 nurses and my gastroenterologist, Dr. Flavin, on the verge of tears as they told me that they had found hundreds of polyps and two masses that they’d biopsied because they were nearly definitely cancer. Wow. Dr. Flavin kept me in the hospital through the following day for additional tests and scans, and I returned home on Saturday afternoon and found my perspective of my world as I knew it changed.



I spent the rest of the weekend studying online, and found just enough information to make me dangerous in a doctor’s office, but not enough to reassure me, yet. Dr. Flavin was fantastic. Before I left the hospital he promised me he wouldn’t drop the ball, and he never has. He went to work immediately to get me the information I so desperately craved, and also to find a doctor who was capable of treating me. Before the week was finished, he has the positive results of my biopsies in hand, confirming my worst fears, and had also made progress with my insurance company to make sure that I would be treated in Boston instead of in Portland, Maine like they preferred. If I have learned anything at all in this process, I’ve learned that if you’re unlucky enough to be diagnosed with cancer, just be certain that you’re lucky enough to be within driving distance of Boston. It’s the most wonderful thing, driving into Boston and feeling all the medical brains crackling all around you, just waiting for a chance to fix you.



Dr. Flavin wrote letters. He faxed letters. He made phone calls, and by the beginning of the following week had confirmed that I would be treated at Boston Medical Center, the teaching hospital for Boston University, my insurance would cover it completely, and that my surgeon would be Dr. James Becker, the Surgeon-in-Chief of BMC who just happened to specialize in colon cancer.



Dr. Becker is a wonderful man and I trust him entirely. My first appointment with him was on Halloween, go figure, and I never doubted for one second that I was in the best possible place for my treatment. My comfort was also bolstered by his resident, Dr. Kelly Tyler, who gave me her cell phone number when I left the exam room and told me to call her with any questions, and then proceeded to call me every day for the first week and ask what questions I had thought of. She has since rotated out of Dr. Becker’s office, but has told me that she will come back for my surgery, and that makes me happy.



I have two tumors, double fun, and thankfully only 2 lymph nodes involved, and so far, no further spread. I began radiation therapy on November 14 (happy birthday Daniel) and chemotherapy on November 16 (happy birthday Kit). The radiation was a total of 28 treatments, 5 days a week. It’s a funny thing, the word RADIATION sounds like this big scary intimidating word, and yes both the machine and table were very intimidating, but the treatment itself was very anti-climactic. My treatments took about 30 seconds per day, but it took about 10 minutes to get me all lined up properly on the table. My radiation therapists were phenomenal…It takes extraordinary people to make radiation so much better than it so easily could be, and in fact to actually make you look forward to radiation, and they succeeded. I love them all. My chemotherapy was surprisingly and similarly simple too. I now have a portacath (port) in my chest, which is really just a titanium and silicone funnel for drugs so my veins don’t freak out with too many needles. It’s the size of a bottle cap under my skin. Because I have a port, my oncologist was able to send me home with a nifty little pump contraption full of chemo that would provide a slow and steady drip through a tube and needle into my port so that I wouldn’t have to sit in the oncology clinic for hours. By taking the pump home with me (I carried over my shoulder it just like a little purse) I was able to minimize the side effects of the chemo itself. I didn’t lose my hair. I carried the pump for 5 ½ days, and then had 1 ½ days totally free and disconnected. It was a long, long, long six weeks. I slept a lot. I ate very little. I finished my radiation treatment on December 23rd and I finished my chemo on December 24th (the best Christmas present I could have wished for!).



After I finished my first phase (out of a total of 3, hopefully), I earned a 6 week break to recover, and let the radiation and chemo residuals continue to battle the alien in my belly. I slept through the first week, and then decided to take advantage of my only opportunity to leave New England this year and I had a wonderful 2 week trip to California with my sister Dinah, our nearly sister Tana, and my oldest friend, Daniel. Dinah moved out to Los Angeles just before Thanksgiving, and came home for Christmas, and then we all served as couriers to help her move her belongings west. We took a 5 day trip by train from Boston to Chicago to Denver to San Francisco to Los Angeles that was total bliss. We moved a vast amount of stuff, each of us being allowed to check 100 lbs. of luggage, and crossed 3 mountain ranges in the heart of winter. What fun! We arrived in Los Angeles and spent the next week being warm, loving our flip-flops and pilfering every Goodwill we could find in search of furniture for Dinah’s fantastic studio apartment in Hollywood. If the rental car agents could only have seen the strange loads we transported in their compact cars! Another perk of the trip was that I could forget that I was supposed to be sick, and I felt better than I had in months.



I returned home 3 weeks ago and have been immersed in the hospital world ever since. I am constantly being scanned and scoped and tested and sampled in preparation for my upcoming surgery. They can’t tell for sure how my tumors have responded to the radiation and chemo, but they know that they have responded, so that’s good news. I kept holding onto the vision during my first phase that if my treatment was making me feel so crummy, just think about how those god****ed tumors must feel!!!



My surgery will be a complete ileostomy. In real words, that means they will be removing my entire colon. In olden days, that would mean that I would have an ostomy bag for life, but modern medicine being the amazing thing that it is, that is not necessarily my only option. Dr. Becker pioneered a new type of reconstructive surgery called a J-pouch that allows bowels to function in a completely normal capacity even when missing the entire colon, and until this innovation, the only possibility for colon cancer survivors was a colostomy bag. Now, thanks to Dr. Becker and others, many survivors have the option for reconstructive surgery after a colostomy or ileostomy, and hopefully I will be among those candidates. My lower tumor is low enough that he won’t know until he is doing my surgery if I am a candidate for a J-pouch, but he has told me that there is every reason to hope for one, and I take comfort in that. In fact, though, either option is fine with me, as long as it allows me to continue to live and breathe and travel and write and swim, and both options give me all of those luxuries.



I just read back through this story and I’m shocked at how long it’s become. I’m sorry to have been out of touch for so long, and now you know why, or sort of...and if you’re reading this email, then you know me well enough to understand how I disappear under rocks from time to time and need to be coaxed back out again…



I hope this finds you all well, and I love you all.



Fondly,

Kit

Ahh. These were the days.

The Modern Mullet

Luke Skywalker and I have the same hair cut.
The funny thing is that when i found this picture the URL said
"mullet madness"

Oh dear... what have I done?

Tagged

Tagged by Seeks So here it goes.

FOUR JOBS I'VE HAD
1998-Assistant Manager of a Bed and Breakfast in Sedona,AZ
1999-Admin Assistant by day and Techie Crew by night for a Repertory Theatre in Portsmouth, NH
2002-Manager of a Web Hosting Company in Rockville, MD
2003-Events Coordinator for the Adult and Master's degree programs for Prescott College in Prescott, AZ

FOUR MOVIES I CAN WATCH OVER AND OVER
Rushmore-and all movies by said director including (Life Aquatic, Royal Tenenbaums)
Last of the Mohicans- I still cry when I see Alice jump
Lilo and Stitch- because it's really, really funny.
The Princess and the Warrior-german, really good.

FOUR PLACES I HAVE LIVED
250yr old log cabin in the middle of protected watershed in the last bit of rural Maryland between Baltimore and NY.
Sedona, AZ- first place I moved after I left home at seventeen. It was beautiful and waaaay too expensive for me so shortly thereafter i ended up moving to the less expensive and less beautiful but not far away town of Cottonwood.
Portsmouth, NH- After about a year in Sedona I left with my restored '78 F250 and drove east stopping in Boulder and the like for fun. Then somehow in the next 5 months I ended up in Portsmouth, NH living in a subsidized house with at one point 5 men and me.
Prescott, AZ-I moved to Prescott to go to school. I lived in the best apartment in a building that was built in 1909 and very crooked. I had all sorts of Rock climbing in my back yard, adventure, adventure, adventure. I think perhaps those were the golden days.


FOUR TV SHOWS I LOVE TO WATCH
I only have three because I don't really watch TV and the episodes i do see are all on video.
-Six Feet Under- if you haven't seen it, you should. Really awesome and sometimes really messed up.
-Scrubs-very funny. I love internal dialog, even if it is cheesy.
-Dharma and Greg- It's not on the air any more. This is my embarassing fetish. It's really funny... i know i'm a dork.


FOUR PLACES I HAVE VACATIONED
-Russia-St. Petersburg and Moscow
-Scottland/England-London, Inverness, Edinburgh, Bath, Stonehenge, Drumnadrochit, Lochness, Ullapool.
-Alaska-Juneau, Sitka, the Yukon(i know, Canada), Anak Tuvuk Pass(inside the Arctic Circle, Brooks Range), Prince William Sound, Fairbanks, Anchorage, and much, much more.
-Telluride, CO-when i was 18 my boyfriend's dad was rich and took us skiing for a week in Telluride.


FOUR OF MY FAVORITE DISHES
-Longanesa with Rice and Eggs-it's a filipino sausage, really good, very fattening.
-Ben's Thai Curry-we made a deal that if he cooked me one good meal he would be allowed kitchen priveledges (up to this point he wasn't allowed to cook in MY kitchen, i'm a little OCD). So he made me an amazing curry, now it's all I crave but he hasn't made it since. :(
-My father's Venison Tenderloin with onions, mushrooms, and potatoes from the garden-oh my, i'm drooling
-Grits, eggs, venison sausage- good fat country breakfast
(oh and because i looooove food i can't leave it at 4 things) Mexican anything!!!

FOUR SITES I VISIT DAILY
Craigs List-Because i'm furniture shopping for our new house
Hotmail- checkin' e-mail
My own blog-I'm so egotistical
Santegroup.org-that's my work website, i use it to get to databases, e-mail, etc.

FOUR PLACES I'D RATHER BE RIGHT NOW
Anywhere
home with Ben
Playing in the snow (which doesn't seem to exist)
in my office (I forgot my keys to my office and am waiting for someone to let me in... i might be waiting for a while).

Tagging Becky, Heidi, Rowen, and Jesse

Craziness

As always things have picked up and I envy past Libby's boredom. It's been an interesting few days at work as the network has been down since last friday and very little can be done without it.

February has come in like gang busters. This weekend is a Welcome Home Girl party at my Aunt Mary's house for my cousin Rachel who has just returned from a year in Africa doing AIDS and HIV education and intervention. It's wonderful to have her home.

Next weekend is the Mid-winter Ball

Weekend after that my sister comes home for a visit

Weekend after that Ben and I move into our new place and My folks leave for Costa Rica

And Weekend after that it's March. Where does the time go??

Meanwhile i'm plugging away.

And in response to Becky's question: no, it's the last little white house going south on York Rd.

All About My House

In response to Heidi, here's all about the house we'll be living in by March.

It's a small (and i mean very small for a house) two bedroom, one bathroom house. It's pretty old and built as a company house for some company I can't remember the name of. My father's Godmother (she's dead now) used to own those houses and sold them sometime in the seventies i think. Now a couple from Canton, MD own them and have fully are in the process of restoring them. There are four of them all in a row (but not row houses, they're not attached). They are on York Rd in Parkton, MD about fifteen minutes south of Pennsylvania (for those of you who don't know York Rd is a major road that runs north/south and goes from PA down into Baltimore.

You park on the side of the road and you walk down two little stairs and across a couple feet of sunken brick and you're on my front porch. There's a window to either side of the door. You open the front door and you're in the living/dining room. To the right the room is slightly longer to the left it's smaller with a bay window that looks out into the space between the two houses. The floors are hardwood and the ceilings aren't too low. Directly across from the front entrance is a hallway that takes you back to the kitchen and bathroom. As you saunter down the hallway (it's narrow and only four feet long, max) to the right is a narrow stairway leading down to the basement. Just before you enter the kitchen there's a door on the left that is the bathroom, complete with old claw foot bathtub and free hanging sink. The kitchen is tiny but perfect the refridgerator is the the kid brother of your average sized refridgerator. The cabinets above the sink are just slightly too high for me to reach. The counters are just a little too tall but not bad. There's a window that looks down into the back yard behind the sink. As you turn to the right and about face there is a stairwell leading up. You mount the carpeted stairs (I don't know why they're carpeted the rest of the house is hardwood, but whatever, i'm not complaining, i fall down the stairs alot and could use the padding), you notice that above you the stairway abruptly ends on an impossibly tiny landing and you can go either left or right. My friend, you are standing outside the bedrooms. To the left will be our bedroom because that's the sunny side of the house, to the right is the guest bedroom. The bedrooms have attic ceilings so that as you reach the halfway point as you stroll to the other side of the room to look out the windows you may (if you're normal sized) have to duck. The windows you'll notice are the equivalent to the refridgerator, tiny little things that don't have enough room to stand up between the floor and the ceiling. It's really quite cute if you're not six feet tall (which, thankfully neither of us are).

What about the basement you ask? Well after you're finished exploring our enchanting upstairs you bowl yourself down the stairs careful not to crash on the last few stairs and fall headlong into the tiny little refridgerator (you don't want to hurt it, it's smaller than you are), you make yourway back to the decending stairs. Once you've successfully arrived in the basement you will look around and notice that it is an unfinished drafty kind of basement with tile flooring. There is a backdoor that leads to stairs that lead into the backyard, which is small but quaint and beyond it there are woods and wisteria jungles and a small creek. We have neighbors on one side that are good friends of my family and have two small (or at least i remember them being small) children. On the other side there is a big red barn but i don't know who that belongs to.

So... Come spring we'll need visitors. We have a guest room, no more sleeping in the living room on the floor, now you'll be sleeping in the guest room, on the floor.

Home Sweet Home

WE HAVE A PLACE TO LIVE!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! YEEEEEE-HAAAAAAAA

Good Morning:

My morning:

Ben gets up at 5:30 (as per usual). I wake briefly and peek at him dressing in the dark. Then I drift back into a drowsy sleep ocasionally waking to hear the sounds of everyone getting ready to go to work (everyone leaves earlier than I do so I have an extra 30-40minutes in the morning than they do).
My father (known to wake up singing completely off-key songs he doesn't know the words to, loud enough to wake the neighbors, of which we have none) for some reason, decided that he was british this morning and everything was said in a Cockney/Baltimore Hillbilly accent. Every couple of moments i would be yanked out of a peaceful dose to hear, "By-gum, I 'elieve 'e draynk the lest o' te Coffee."
At 6:15 Ben comes back upstairs to give me goodbye kisses. Every morning he wakes me up for real by saying goodbye. He kisses me and tells me to be safe and that he'll see me tonight. I ususally respond with either a smart ass remark or tell him to be safe also.
"You be safe out there driving" he says.
This morning I opt for the smart ass remark. "No I don't think I will," I yawn at him. "I still have a couple guard rails I have to take out on Perry Hall Blvd."
"Seriously, there's snow out there."
"Yeah right," i say. This is a common joke of ours. Whenever i want to distract him from something I say, "LOOK! Snow!"
"No Really."
"Uh-Huh. I love you. Have a good day."
He stands and shrugs and blows me a kiss and walks out.
Twenty minutes later I wake up and dress and go down stairs and what's outside the window??? SNOW!!!!!!!!
Okay. So not too exciting for most of you, but I love snow, psychotically love it. And for the last three years I have been pretty deprived of a proper winter. Granted, Prescott does have more of a winter than say Phoenix does but, it's still nothing like a good solid snowy, crappy-weather-out-the-hoo-haa, kind of winter.
It's not much, less than an inch... can't even make a proper snowball... But it will do.

Another Glorious Weekend

It was another glorious weekend of NOT-January weather. Warm and sunny.

On Saturday Ben and I went to his Dad's house and hung out with him and Ben's brother, Casey. (Yes his brother and my sister are both named Casey.)All of our stuff is in Rex's (my father-in-law)basement and we had to grab our various Tax, receipt, write-off files seeing as how tax season is rearing it's oh-so-ugly head.

Ben's Brother is a bit of a nut and going through that stage in his life that most of us have gone through, The "I'm not sure where i'm going or what i'm doing but i'm pretty sure that I am the center of the universe" stage. I sympathize, but that doesn't keep him from driving me completely batty. He gets so "poor me" and i can't really handle it so I yell at him and punch him in the chest. Which, oddly enough, causes him to laugh. Oh well.

So then Ben and I left (with a bunch of tax files and the deposit money from our old rental company that had arrived at Rex's earlier in the week) and proceeded to drive around looking for that perfect house, which continues to elude us. After a couple hours of that, we were more than ready to go home and curl up with popcorn and a bad movie (Red Sonia, for those fellow bad movie lovers).

Sunday was not much more exciting. We spent the majority of the day splitting firewood, sitting around on the woodpile, and doing Sudoku puzzles. I am thoroughly addicted to those things.

And now it's Monday morning and I'm at work, where there's nothing to do but day dream.

Every part of me misses Prescott.

New E-mail

So here's the skinny, I work for a place that is High Security so i cannot access Hotmail and by the time i get home i don't really want to.

SOOO e-mail me at work! ejones@santegroup.org. Careful what you send though. You don't want to get me fired.

Today does not feel like it's going to end.... grrrrr.

Weekday Update

Hello all three of my avid and completely dedicated readers.

I have started my new job. It's great. After a month of living out of my truck and duffel bags it's nice to have somewhere to go where i can be as anal-retentive as i'd like(Feed my OCD).

Due to my uncanny inability to estimate how much time it will take me to arrive at work each morning I am sparatic in my arrival but often between two hours and five minutes early. Traffic being the inconsistent beast that it is.

Nonetheless, everyone is very nice, if a bit burned out on what they do.

Ben and I put in another rental application for another house (Kirstin, it's the one on the other end of the four white houses we looked at).

So this time next month (as it won't be ready for a month)Ben and I (fingers crossed) will be moving into the first house we will have ever lived in and not shared with other people.

Big Epiphany for the week: I quit my job as the manager of a webhosting business to go to school. $64,000 and three years later I return to the job market and am awarded by making the same amount of money, and doing the same things that i did before.
Upside: Being an administrative assistant is WAY easier than college ever was.

I miss you all. I promise to call soon. I'm sorry I'm such a dud when it comes to making phone calls (Heidi).

-me

Sorry for the Delay

Hullo all. I'm sorry it's taken me so long to update. You know how it is, (insert a few excuses here that are all valid but none of which could not have been overcome with a little bit of effort on my part.)

And now for the news:
there is none.
I'm living at Mom and Dad's. Ben works for Dad (they're framing an addition at a friend's farm). I work in the city for the Baltimore City Crisis Response Center in White Marsh. It's a commute. We're still trying to come up with a living-situation-game-plan. We're thinking of renting something for a year or so until we can get the Little House (the pine cabin in the hollow where i grew up) in liveable condition. We're even considering putting plumbing and electricity in it (All thems modern conveniences, whew!) However, we're still deliberating about a great many things. We're taking our time, figuring things out... feeling crazy... Do we buy an ugly house we don't want to live in, Do we buy property and build, Do we rebuild the Little House, Do we rent while we re-build or build or do we continue to stay here... So many questions, and for once Money is not the most significant deciding matter.

Ben and I spent yesterday splitting firewood. It was really really nice. The weather was perfect, cold and windy but not too cold and so clear. We had a tea party on the big stumps of wood and I felt like we were the mice and toads of childrens' books sitting down to a formal tea on toadstools.

A few things occurred to me yesterday that i thought might be fun to share:
1. Even though Ben can split over twice as fast as i can, it would still take him an extra four hours of work to split what we did together, by himself.
2. Splitting wood is a full body work out (boy am i sore).
3. By the time we called it quits I was too tired to over think, stress out, freak out or otherwise lose my shit.
4. If it came down to it, I think Ben and I would be happy living in a fort in the woodpile. Who needs a house?

a request

Hey everyone.
I have a request.
If anyone has any extra love, patience, peace of mind, or strength could you send it my way? I feel like i'm losing my mind.

My Day.

I had a weird class where I think i yelled at too many people for being naieve (yeah. Look who's talking.)

Then I had to run errands during which i encountered a complete bitch and threatened to set her on fire and ranted that the entire world was against me and if she had had the week i am having she'd kill herself... right... it's only monday.

Then I burst into tears while smoking a cigarette outside the art building
Then i burst into tears again in my mentor/advisor's office

Then i wrestled with a copy machine for forty minutes which almost sent me into a complete hissy fit, tears and all.

Then i went to baccalaureate practice where i read what i'm reading for friday and everyone else almost burst into tears.

Then I came home to a huffy husband.

Then i wrote three of the four short papers that are due by wednesday in 45 minutes.

Now i'm going to watch three episodes of Six Feet Under and relax before someone bursts into tears.

This Week in the Life of Libby

Monday:
8:00-10:20 Homework
10:30-12:45 Class
1:00- Drop by Ben's Shop
1:30- Format Manuscript to go to Printers
1:30- Drop stuff at DAV
2:00- Meeting with Kenny
3:00- 6:00 Baccalaureate Practice
6:00 Homework

Tuesday:
8:00- Homework
9:00- Drop stuff off at Printers and pick up Cartridge for printer at home
9:30- Write big paper for LSD
11:00- Continue Packing
12:30- Write all speeches and practice them
2:00- Pick up Podium, PA, Mic and Mic stand
2:30- Meet with Kenny to practice Baccalaureate speech
3:30-5:45- Class
6:00-10:00 Set up at Sam Hill for Senior Show/Reading

Wednesday:
8:00- Final Portfolio stuff together for LSD
10:30-12:45- Class (LSD) at Dinner Bell
1:00-Pick up CSA order and take to Heidi's
? Continue Packing and Cleaning Apartment
Laundry

Thursday:
7:30am- drop off truck at Mechanics
8:00-10:00am- Costco shopping with K for stuff for Senior Show/Reading
1:00pm- Pick up Mom and Dad from Shuttle get some lunch
2:45-5:00- drop off Mom and Dad at home and go to YC Performing for Bacc. Practice
Go to lunch with them and hang out until it's time to get ready for Show/Reading
5:30- Be at Sam Hill for prep and audience arrival
6:30-7:00 Go pick up Mom and Dad and bring them to Sam Hill
8:00pm My Reading... *panic*

Friday:
Hang out with folks.
practice Baccalaureate speech
Be at YC Perform. Arts Hall at 3:00pm
4:00pm Baccalaureate presentations start. *gulp*

Saturday:
Hang out, sleep in.
Pack stuff.
I probably have to be at the Elks by noonish or something.
3:30pm Graduation begins at the Elks Theater.

Mason and Corbin

just came back from steve and sarah's house. She just had Mason on Monday. Three day old baby...

I spent the whole morning with them hanging out and goofing off.

Now i'm gunna spend all afternoon poking holes in the condoms.

Goodbye Linda.

I learned to ride horses at her house when i was about eight. I fell off once. Sprained an ankle and landed in mud. She cleaned me up. Dressed my wounds. She held the horse by the bridle while i rode it around in circles getting my courage back together.

I was hoping to see her again before she left us. But i suppose Leah was waiting for her.

Ahh Too-s-dae

On Saturday Mike gave us a going away party. It was fantastic. All our good friends were there, a couple of my professors, the guys Ben works with. It was a great saturday night. Fully of conversation, food, friends, and yes, beer. Mike is such a sweet heart. Biggest heart i've seen on a human in a while. Yeah Mike! Now we just have to figure out a way to convince you to move to Maryland.

One week from today I will probably be covered in hives and panicking my brains out.
Next week is the senior show/reading, baccalaureate, and graduation. I haven't worked on a speech/presentation for any of them.

We got the trucks all checked out and fixed up. I got new brakes (whoo hoo!) and have been stopping all over town. It cost us over twice as much as rent. Sigh. (digs imaginary dagger from heart and chucks it over shoulder with a devil-may-care attitude).

As i continue to slowly, slowly pack up the apartment and toss out the junk that has made this place home for the last three years, it occurs to me what a pack rat i can be. It also occurs to me that we don't really have anything nice. This includes my wardrobe. All my pants have holes in them and most of them have paint on them. All my shirts have grease and/or pit stains. Damn me and my refusal to use anti-perspirant.

I think that this weekend i'm going to have a packing/yard sale party and invite all my friends over to help me junk stuff. Then maybe i won't feel so panicked next week.

Mom and Dad will be arriving on the 15th in the afternoon. It will be great to see them. I worry that i will be too busy to really hang out though. I'm sure it will be fine.

thirteen days until this is all over with. and two more tacked to that until we leave behind this cute little desert christmas town...

http://www.poundy.com/foxnews.html

how i feel...

Count Down

The count down has begun. 2 and a 1/2 more weeks until graduation. 19 days until we begin the three day drive home.

Things i still have to do:
1. finish this first big revision on manuscript
2. finish reading "primal teen" the psych book for my human development class
3. throw together a presentation for human development class
4. write two short responses for the southwest writer's series readings.
5. write a paper for human development class, i don't know when this is due or what it's even on, just that it was in the syllabus.
6. place facilities request for senior show.
7. final revision, layout, print, and bind manuscript (decide how many copies there needs to be).
8. Write a speech for baccalaureate. (As if i didn't have enough to do i have been chosen to present at baccalaureate, for those of you who don't know what that is, it's basically like being valedictorian for your area of study only instead of being based on grades since this is a non-grade based school it's based on your teachers' assesment of you)
9. find a decent opening joke for my reading on the 15th.
10. Write a short speech for the graduation ceremony thanking everyone.


Things that are making my life difficult:
1. We don't really have any money and basically our whole move home and Christmas is a credit card supported endeavor.
2. We still have WAY too much packing to do.
3. My hair is ugly
4. We have to take the cars in to be checked up and what not and that'll also cost time and money.
5. Since we don't have any money everyone is getting Christmas Cards from us this year instead of presents.
6. I can't seem to sleep.
7. We have no junk food in the house it's all brown rice and bulgar wheat...
8. My allergies are driving me nuts. I guess the juniper has decided to have one last hurrah before winter sets in.

I'm sure there's more but it's making me depressed just thinking about it. I guess I'd better get to work. I have plenty to do.

I miss everyone and can't wait to be home, hopefully no one will mind that we are so freakin' poor.

Happy Opening Day Everyone!!!!!

2 years Nov. 28th

The happy couple will have been legally married for
two years on the 28th of Nov., 3 years illegally on Jan 1st
and will have been together for 5 years in may or something like that...

We're such goons.

i think i need a haircut

I Want!!!!!!!

Why can't this be for sale in Parkton??

The Cover of my Book

My Beautiful Quiche

I've been Tagged.

Does that mean I'm it? Are they doing it?

Actually I've been tagged by Seeks and now have to list 20 random things about myself.
1. I have to go to yoga in less than an hour.
2. My husband, good ole' Benny-boy is sick...
3. ...and as cute and sad as that is he kept me awake all night with his coughing and snoring. I do feel bad for him, but i'm also embarassed to say a little annoyed.
4. I spent the weekend writing rejection letters for those who submitted their written work to Alligator Juniper (Literary Journal).
5. I went and played with pre-k kids today at Primavera school. (one asked me if i was 50 years old, hehehe.)
6. I usually neglect to fill up my gas tank until the red light goes on.
7. I too am 3/8 filipino.
8. I'm moving away from my home (of the last three years) back to my home town, Bmore.
9. When I was eight years old I used to practice saying the alphabet backwards to impress people. (yes I still remember how).
10. I don't weigh enough to give blood. (I might be bragging, I'm not sure).
11. Sometimes I actively spy on my neighbors
12. I am working on a 200 page manuscript. Trying to write a books is hard.
13. My favorite band of the week is Belle and Sebastian
14. I lost my Spinto Band cd
15. I don't have any place to live or job prospects in Baltimore (where we're moving in six weeks).
16. I know Sam Reed.
17. I stopped by Target last week to get one of those packets of white hanes t-shirts for little boys and the computers were down so some lady gave me a $3.00 coupon and told me to come back another day. Why didn't they just lock their doors?
18. I have been thinking about applying to the Teach For America program.
19. With out my calendar i'd be lost!
20. My hair always looks funny, it's in that awkward growing out phase -- i'm trying to look as though i did it on purpose.

I'm supposed to tag 5 people after this. But I'm not sure i know 5 people. I'll start with tagging Becky

Halloween Party

Halloweenie

HAPPY HALLOWEENIE

Neck of the girl who bit you.

Seriously, my neck is creeping me out. Especially the one where i'm picking up the guitar. Weird!

Hypochondriac

Turns out when i get stressed i'm a total hypochondriac. In the middle of a meeting last week the right side of my jaw started to hurt pretty bad and that night while i was brushing me teeth it looked like there was a crack down the middle of my molar. Turns out it's fine, no crack. I went to a very sweet dentist who was very sensitive to my anxiety around people sticking things in my mouth. We chatted and i don't floss enough but apparently i have "very healthy, good lookin' teeth."

So cheers!

Firstly: In Response to all of you who commented on last weeks entry.
I would like to say that there is no point. For the most part i am having fun. I love arizona, i love rock climbing, learning things, reading lots, etc. I would also like to point out that no one ever said that college was just for those who wanted some money making career. I fully, and always have, intended to be poor. I just sometimes forget that it's not about graduating, or getting a job. Sometimes i let all the crap that's put on us by the place we live seep in and that's alright.

Secondly: West, Heidi and I started a band. We are a sucky version of chick rock and like to butcher Veruca Salt covers. It's the greatest thing ever though. I couldn't ask for a better way to start my thursday nights.

To Quote Ian

To quote Ian who is indeed, and as always right in these philosophical ponderings, "Fuck Graduating." That's right fuck it up it's stupid ass.

I don't know what the big hang up is anyhow... I've been at this for what, seven years now? Well ok, only three actually, or dedicatedly. Look at my fancinatingly handsome husband, he made it through all of half of a semester of high school and called it quits, now look at him go. I should have taken my lentils from him since the start. Unfortunately, something about school makes me feel like i'm getting some where. It's like putting a large screen television with a looped production of unending roads in front of a stationary cyclist. I know it's a fraud. I know that the number of Sam Reeds in this world are limited and that i am indeed not one. But then again, who really wants to be one of forty elves in a hot tub anyhow?

In the mean time... i while away the hours between classes wishing for inspiration or to be possessed by whatever spirit will stop the apathy and make my doldrum fingers pick up a goddamned pen (metaphor for start writing, which i use the computer for, not a pen).

But when this is all over (in three months) i will undoubtled drop the mortarboard and pick up the bonnet. It is to home with me, back to the kitchens like in 1945. Watch me go. Barefoot and knocked up here i come!!

fall slump

I've been oddly depressed for the last four days or so. It's been getting better since yesterday, but it was pretty bad for a bit. I just can't seem to want to do anything. I'm cynical and angry and full of contempt for everything.
Yesterday i decided to take the bull by the ... and i started cleaning the house. I didn't clean clean, I dug into those little piles of things that i am too lazy to put away otherwise. My front hall is now full of things to give away. The pile is going to grow too. I've decided to start going through all the closests and nooks and what not and chuck stuff. It's hard to know what to chuck since i may (This is a picture from our camping trip) need some of it before we leave here....

So. It's the first day of quarter classes i have class at 1030. It's called Life Cycle Development. It's a psyc type course. I wish i could drop it but apparently it's required for me to graduate. This is when it starts. It's just a small hiccup in my stomach but it grows and grows and grows and then i don't have any more time, or humor left.