The Thaw

Today there was a thaw.

For a few sweet hours

I could smell

grass

dirt

wet dog

I could hear

slushy puddles

squishy mud

rain drops

I could feel

a not-so-cold breeze

dry concrete under my feet

spring around the corner

And it made me think of this:

And it was good.

And then it made me think of this:

And it was even better.

Shhh....He's hunting wabbits

Today the hubs rolled out of bed at 7:30 and took me with him.

He wanted to hunt some wabbits with his hunting buddy, which meant I had the grueling task of getting out of bed early on a Saturday and the pleasure of spending the day with L. While the menfolk were out hunting, I got to snuggle the cutest little almost one year old ever and we managed to squeeze in a trip to Taco Bellio and a kids consignment shop. I would have purchased 89,435 two dollar outfits from the store, but the cashier was so slow and the line was so long, that by the time it was my turn, I handed her four things I didn't want anymore and only bought two. That's what happens when you make a cranky pregnant lady stand in line while you chat casually about your latest in-store promotion. Sheesh. And now I'm left semi-regretting not buying that little blue onesie with the crab on it. Shoot.

I'm sure you're all wondering if there's a dead wabbit sitting in my refrigerator. The answer is YES. And I'm sure you won't be able to rest tonight until you know how I feel about it. So I'll tell you. Not good. Mostly because one time I walked up on the Hubs skinning a rabbit in the backyard, and now I can't get that picture out of my head. Another contributing factor is that I was a big Bugs fan as a kid, and I don't love the idea that he is now hanging out in some tupperware on the same shelf as my cream cheese and kiwis. Yuck.


Which begs the question the Hubs and I used to ask ourselves when we got cable...what the heck happened to all the good kids cartoons? No Smurfs? No Fraggle Rock? No David the Knome? How do you spell knome? No Gumby or Gummi Bears or Looney Toons or Tale Spin? What is the world coming to?!? We are going to order retro cartoons off of Amazon when the babes gets big enough to enjoy TV without it mushing his brain. Seriously. SpongeBob has nothing on the stinking Gummi Bears. I'm just sayin'.


And on that note, I'm going to go online shopping with the money I saved from the consignment store. Y'all have a great Saturday night!

Dear Baby and/or Chocolate Ice Cream

Dear Baby and/or Chocolate Ice Cream,

Just wanted to say thanks for the enormous amount of weight you've helped me gain since my last doctor's appointment 4 weeks ago. We hit a personal 4 week record, and I, for one, think we deserve a medal. Because HOKEY PETE I can't believe we didn't break the scale this morning at the doctor's office. Swimsuit shopping this season is sure to be a blast. Better than ever. And I have never been more grateful for elastic waistbands.

Thank goodness for that sweet nurse who said it's "just the baby getting bigger". Bless her heart. Baby, if she's right, way to go on the growth spurt! Ice cream, I didn't have the heart to tell her it was most likely the multiple over-doses I have done on you since Biggest Loser started a few weeks ago. Let's just stay in denial a little longer. Please.

Cheers!

Mama

Doctor's Note: Baby looks great, Mama looks huge, and its still OK to eat ice cream because we cleared our glucose test.

It looked like spilled half & half...

...Because it was.

One of my joys in the morning is brewing a warm cup of "I wish this wasn't decaf" coffee and pouring in an torrent of half & half and sugar.

So this morning I had my mug out on the counter and was ready to curl up on the couch to watch some Regis and Kelly when somehow the half & half jumped off the counter and proceeded to pour itself all over my dining room floor. Which is carpet.

Words like

*(&#^%!

and

enzymes!

and

E-Coli!

went flying through my brain, but since I didn't know what they meant, I just said "dangit!" and ran around the kitchen frantically throwing my arms up in the air for a few minutes before I decided a towel would be a good idea.

When I got to the scene of the crime, I realized Opie had assumed full clean-up duty STAT. He was all over that spill like stank on a monkey. I threw the towel on the floor in an effort to help. He scoffed at me as if he had been working for Merry Maids all his life and continued in his clean-up endeavors.

While he licked, I decided I should Google how to get milk out of carpeting because words like E-Coli and enzymes and bacteria scare me.

I found a website that said to use dish detergent and warm water. I figured if my Palmolive can kill the salmonella in my ground beef, then it can probably handle some E-Coli too. So we went for it. (You can just ignore the pile of dishes. I am waiting for the dish fairies to show up because I have things on my list that are just more fun to do than unload and reload the dishwasher today.)

After applying the soap to the carpet, I realized my efforts were futile because, thanks to Opie's haz-mat training, the milk was gone, and I couldn't tell where it had landed in the first place. So I resorted to my end-all be-all method of germ killing:

When in doubt, pull out the Clorox disinfectant spray and go to town. That aerosol can is the best $3.99 I've ever spent.

Turns out everything is OK because my coffee was still warm when me and my Bio-Hazard guru had finished, and I remembered the Hubs had flowers waiting for me last night when I got home. Sigh. He is such a winner.

Finding Nemo

I'm not sure there's anything more fun than feeling your son squirm around in your belly. My bestie L told me it would feel like a little fish swimming all over the place, and she was so right. I love feeling our little Nemo swish around. And he was really going to town yesterday. Which could mean two things: 1) He's a big fan of The Bachelor and 24, which I watched for an embarrassing quantity of time yesterday, or 2) He's really into the Lucky Charms/Fruity Pebble/Golden Graham combo I slammed about every 1/2 hour yesterday. Yesterday was clearly very productive. You know you've really got something done when the Hubs calls at quittin' time to ask what you have been up to and you respond "uh, a whole lotta nothin. Do you want to make dinner?"

That man is such a trooper, folks. I mean, really.

Speaking of "really," this is the pic I found when I googled "Nemo"

REALLY?!?!??? I have never seen anything more creepy under google images. OK, maybe I have. But this thing had me rolling around in the fetal position for 15 minutes before I could get up and start this post. Yikes.

I hope you'll forgive the beach posts lately. I just can't take the cold and ice and snow this year. I want to see grass and smell dirt and have somewhere to take this maniac of a dog to burn off some energy. We have been iced in for a while. When you have a basketball where your hips used to be, walking on icy sidewalks is rough. And being drug down sidewalks by a hyper active puggle is even rougher.

So I'm ready for grass. And sun. And maybe a beach, because I don't even remember what a tan looks like anymore. The pics will probably keep coming. Just to remind me that there's some beach somewhere and not all the world has been covered in a polar ice cap.

I've got a big to-do list today:

-do some stinking laundry. sigh. it's always on the list.

-go to Hobby Lobby and splurge a little on nursery-related craft materials.

-take a nap

-go to childbirth class

-come home and have nightmares about giving birth all over again.

Last week after our first childbirth class, I didn't sleep. We watched a video of a live birth, and all I could think was "You. Have. Got. To. Be. Kidding. Me." I'm so excited to meet this little guy, but I would have preferred to maintain my denial of pain in giving birth a little longer. Oh, well. Our instructor promised to show us how to give good pregnancy back rubs tonight, so I'm on board again. Please no instructional videos. Please.

Well, I better get to that list. So much to do, so little time. That 30 minute round-trip to Hobby Lobby is sure to take a lot out of me.

Ahh...that's better.

Calling Local Bookies...

I'm starting a Book Club. It's something I've wanted to do for a long time, and after reading the entire Twilight series and having no one to sit down with and discuss for hours over drinks and appetizers the ins and outs of being a vampire and all the reasons why Bella was an idiot for ever kissing Jacob, I decided it was time for a remedy.

So I'm starting up a Book Club, and I can't wait. It's kind of like "The Finer Things" club from The Office, only with more food and not in the break room. More food is really the important part because of the massive amount of cereal and chocolate I have consumed in the past month. Food is definitely a priority.

Outside of the food, I'm really excited about the Book Club clip art I stumbled upon while making the invites. Because, after all, it's all about the clip art.

I guess it's kind of about the books too. Which is exciting. Because if I have to read another book with only Opie as my partner in literary criticism, or if I have to go through the agonizing experience of reading Twilight for four days straight only to find that I'm the only one who cares that much about werewolves, I might go bonkers.
We're meeting once a month to eat. Oh, I mean, to eat and talk about whatever book we read for that month. And the best part is that we're having dinner each month based on the theme of the book. I'm hosting the first meeting at my house, and we're reading Beneath A Marble Sky , a book about the building of the Taj Mahal. I'm going to google "rent a tiger" and see if I can get one here for the dinner. Not to eat. Just for ambiance. You know, set the mood. It should be a good time. If you're in the area and interested in joining, get a hold of me and I'll get an invitation to you. We're looking for a group of about 8-12 ladies, and we're a little over half way there. Call me, facebook me, or email me. You do not want to miss out on my Book Club clip art. Trust me.

Cloudy with a high of 34

*Sigh*