Short post – we’ve got to get ready and leave for the water park!
This is the Flickr photo set that we’ll be uploading our Disney photos into.
If you look right now, you’ll find that the majority of the pictures are of Garrett proposing to my sister Amy! You can see a low quality version of the video on the internet.
Okay – we’re heading out. More later.
Lesha is staying with us. She came up later on Friday and then stayed the night. For those of you who don’t know, Lesha has been my friend since the third grade. In spite of us rarely getting to see each other, she remains one of the people dearest to my heart. We went to the Rosepepper Cantina (yup, again!) and stayed up chatting about what’s going on in our lives. It is wonderful to me how well she and Ian get along… like some brother and sister act.
She’s staying with us some, if not most, of this Saturday. We’re going to take her around a little bit of Nashville and show her some of the charm away from the bustle (well, maybe a little of the bustle). Yay! Then she’s going to pack up and head for Atlanta to spend some time with another friend of hers. I is a happy, happy girl.
We are gearing up for Disney. I could barely contain myself at work. It was good that we were really rather busy (Fridays always are) as it left me little time to clock-watch. My coworker, poor Kathryn, had to put up with a very excited, ecstatic pregnant woman. With swollen feet. They decided to balloon up yesterday like it was nobody’s business. They are much improved now. Which is good as I intend to waddle all over Disney World!! I think Ian is bringing his laptop, so we may be able to post some from the park. If so, I’ll try to keep you updated on the “Happiest Place on Earth” from a pregger’s perspective.
Also, muchos gracias to Mark and Laurie. They are going to step in and check on our little Mooch while we’re out living it up. Laurie, if you will recall, is much, MUCH further in her pregnancy than I and her last day at work was this past Friday. Good for her! Now she has only a couple of weeks until their dear little boy is a part of the world. Life is so good.
We got to see some friends from Chattanooga this week, since they stayed with us following a concert that went late into the night. That was very nice. I’m sure they were excited about seeing Susan, as well, since they hadn’t see her belly in a month or so.
We’ve been getting used to our fridge, but not too much – we’ve been hesitant to go grocery shopping due to the upcoming vacation time. I’m not sure either of us have moved much of anything in or out of it. We have, however, shown a great interest in the in-door dispenser.
I had my last hockey class of the summer last night – that was sort of bittersweet, as I’m not sure I’ll take any of the classes during the fall and winter in order to save some time and money.
I’m certainly excited about the trip to Disney… I’ve even gotten to the point to counting hours until we leave! 
I have a feeling that this day at work is going to be a little on the long side…
I suppose that’s about it. Susie is doing well, going to work regularly and still enjoying it, even on the busy days. She often lumbers around like a good pregnant woman should, and she has plenty of difficulty rising from the bed or chairs.
It showed up today at 12:30 – a half hour into the delivery window… can you believe it? There was only one guy involved in the delivery, so I pitched in to get it all done. He was able to move the old fridge to the basement, via the backyard, and we sat it up on a couple of pieces wood to keep it from getting wet.
Then he brought the new fridge in – after removing the handles to get it past the bar, it went right into place. That is to say – all the way back like it should. Turns out the height measurement was the highest part of the fridge, which is the front where the hinge covers are. The back of the fridge fits under the cabinets just fine! He also hooked up the water, so right away we had the dispenser working.
It’ll be a change to use the side-by-side instead of the full width, but we can already see some improvement in the amount of space we have.
I’ll try to post a picture soon…
We did have a doctor’s appt this morning. It had to be the quickest office visit we’ve had since I became pregnant. They weighed me (no, I’m not telling), took my vitals, and measured my belly. No u/s this time. That also marks the first visit we’ve had where there was no imaging done. It was pretty nice, though I know our families will be sorely missing the snapshots. There won’t be an u/s next visit either. There will be a glucose tolerance test. I can tell you how much I’m looking forward to that…
…but Mom would make me wash my mouth out afterwards.
First – no sign of snow so far. 
Second, the light fixture in the nursery uses a fluorescent bulb, not a standard one. Its an odd shaped plug, too. I don’t know that we’ll have many options for different bulbs that cast a less artificial light.
Third, it seems that I didn’t consider the height of the new fridge. It seems it’ll be about an inch or two taller than the cabinets over the fridge. I’m not going to try to do anything just yet – I want the fridge to actually show up and prove itself to be too tall. I have, however, taken a look at what we could do and just how we’ll remove them if need be.
Fourth – we played more music for Olive today. She calmed down tremendously, again, when we played Lyle Lovett for her. We gave her some music from the book that Angela gave us, Dog Express – it was an Allison Kraus tune, and then a tune called Dragonfire. We then played Lyle, John Coltrane, Louis Armstrong, and even a little bit of Justin Wilson comedy! I got to watch her wiggle a bit and felt her move occasionally.
Fifth, Garrett’s project management tool is pretty handy. I think we’ll be able to keep up with “the list” pretty well this way. Of course it would be just as easy to use paper, but we would likely end up misplacing that.
Sixth, we finished our little laundry for Olivia – that stuff is tiny!
Google’s weather forecast for tomorrow is calling for snow and 97 degrees in Nashville.
(Click on the picture for a larger, more readable version)
So today was a great day for getting things done around the house. Or, well, that is to say, today I got a lot of things done… there are plenty of days that are good for that, but I don’t commonly answer the call.
I’m sort of cheating a bit… the light fixture I actually installed last weekend, and just didn’t mention it. We’ve had it around the house for a weeks before that even, I’ve just not been motivated enough to install it. Its quite nice to have something react to the light switch that you instinctualy reach for, but I will admit that it casts a very bright and artificial light across the room.
Next on the list of accomplishments for the day, I unpacked all of the china from my grandmother and put it in the cabinet. It isn’t the prettiest way to display it, but it is a functional way! I’ve managed to get every bit of it inside the cabinet so I didn’t have to come up with any new storage options. I think it would be nice to have a place to hang the wine glasses at some point, but we’re doing okay without that so far.
After the china cabinet, I dove into finally fixing my closet. Its been months since my last attempt came crashing down. Its even been weeks since I got all the hardware to make my next attempt, yet it came down to today to get it done… and I did! I think this new method, as suggested by my lovely mother, will stand the test of (at least a little more than last time) time. The hang bar is mounted with 6 bolts and each of the four rails is mounted into a stud, so I hope all of this will hold up better than the four weenie bars that were there before. I have great hopes of having a closet for more than a week or two.
Then, being on such a productive kick, I moved into Olive’s room and hung up her Pooh curtains that Susan’s mom had given us several months ago. (Are you seeing a trend on the time line?) This, of course, was a pretty quick and easy project, so I also took the time to prepare all of the gifts Olive has received lately. I snipped the tags off all the blankets, clothes, and stuffed animals. We ran our first load of little clothes today, too! Boy… those little clothes make a little load of laundry.
I was mentioning to Susan that it’ll be nice when we have the crib in the room so we have a better feel for what it will look like as a whole. I think we’ll probably have that in place some time in the next month, possible not until October, though. We’ll also be picking up a bassinet and a soothing swing from our friends Ken & Val while we’re in Orlando, so that’s a few other things to add to the room. We’re certainly getting excited about our little Olivia coming.
After all our productivity, we then headed out to dinner with Mark & Laurie. That was a lovely dinner at the Family Wash, and then dessert at the Pied Piper Creamery. They’ve also very kindly agreed to keep an eye on Moochie, the flowers, and the house while we’re away in Disney World. We also swapped stories of false alarms and the difficulties of not having people local…
I just noticed that our post rate has dropped off to 2 or 3 times a week at this point. But then I thought about our lives over the past couple of weeks and realize that there hasn’t been an awful lot to share.
Last night I had hockey class and Susan had dinner with her family. When I got home, I ate her leftovers and watered the flowers in the front yard. I spoke to the people that are going to deliver our fridge yesterday and we’re scheduled for sometime on Tuesday. I also got an estimate on removing the tree debris from our yard. ($600!)
Wednesday… I spoke to the alarm company about having someone check out the motion sensor causing the false alarms. Someone is supposed to call by Friday evening to schedule an appointment.
The other parts of the week… well… they don’t stand out. We’ve spent a fair amount of time talking over our trip to Disney World that will start in 9 days. We’ve given ourselves a general idea of where we want to go and when during the trip. We’re quite excited about the trip and I’ve been counting the days down here at work.
Speaking of the trip, I’ve ordered a couple of interesting books to help make Susan’s trip a little more exciting since she won’t be able to ride the thrill rides. The first one, PassPorter’s Treasure Hunt, is from the same company that makes our favorite guidebook. The other one is a book of Hidden Mickey’s – the parks are full of Mickey Mouse icons, and I think we can make a great contest out of seeking them out. Susan and I already know about the (likely) oldest and most difficult Hidden Mickey in the park.
5 paragraphs and two about Disney – what’s on my mind?
Oh yeah – big news – I saw Olive kicking Susan the other night! Its not too dramatic, like Alias Mother’s daughter stretching out, but it was still pretty cool! I’ve been trying to talk with Olivia as often as possible so she can make sure to recognize my voice as soon as she arrives. We’ve even discussed playing other people’s voices to her if we were to get recordings…
As everyone who reads this regularly knows, I’m back at work. And I am working like a nut. I do intake, but in the last week I’ve done an admission (don’t worry Mom they came to me, not the other way around), intake, and I’ve been subbing in for the supervisor while he goes to meetings. Bleh. I’m fairly tired when I get home and I just haven’t felt up to posting.
It doesn’t help that with all this work, I’ve been a relatively boring girl.
I am now officially showing. I was in Burger King for a quick lunch the other day and a random stranger asked me when I was due and what I was having. That’s the first time that has ever happened and I feel strangely vindicated. People who don’t know me can now distinguish that I’m pregnant, not merely chubby and uncomfortable. My Whopper Jr. kid’s meal never tasted so good.
So as I was monitoring some stuff for work I had a conversation with one of my co-workers in India about his 2 and 1/2 month old daughter – his first as well. We were discussing some of the thing that she did that made him happy and this was one:
“happy noises … she is amused by the way the clothes hanging on the clothes line move … she wants to talk to them.”
I could almost immediately hear my own daughter’s chirps and giggles associated with such a statement. I even began to well up just the tiniest bit thinking of how much fun our Olivia is going to be.
So now work is behind me (I hope) and I’m going to bed… it’s late.
We finally went after the fired green tomatoes tonight – much to Susan’s pleasure. You read that right – Susan ate tomatoes!
We pulled two good sized green tomatoes off the vine and breaded them somewhat poorly. Next time we’ll try to have some corn meal in the house in order to coat them better. Even with the poor coating, they fried nicely and tasted great.
We’ve managed to cook at home tonight and last night, making us feel better about ourselves. The menu is somewhat amusing, too. Both meals had canned goods from my grandmother’s pantry – fried apples tonight and black eyed peas last night.
Outside of making dinner for ourselves, we got out of the house for a while today. The majority of our time as spent at Lowe’s. We got window shades and curtain rods for Olivia’s room. We got a new sprinkler and a watering timer so we can stop having to thinking about the watering each night, plus it’ll take care of itself while we’re away at Disney. I picked up some lumber to stick under the fridge when we move it to the basement and I grabbed some brush clippers so that I can clean up the bushes between our house and the neighbors.
I took a look at the garage epoxy stuff because I’d really like to coat the basement floor. I am a little concerned about the process, though. The instructions have you clean and etch the floor with acid. During that process you’re supposed to wet it with a hose… my concern isn’t the acid, but the water! We’re talking about the basement that is below ground – how am I supposed to get the water out properly? I really, really want the coating, though, because it’ll be so much nicer than the bare concrete.
We dropped by the mall for a bit to eat lunch – I had a Petro’s (it’s been a long time!) and Susie had Sbarro’s. Then we headed over to the Motherhood store so she could get a few more clothes. We’ve been a little hesitant to buy much, but she really needs a variety of items to keep us from having to do laundry all the time!
That was about it… I got the watering stuff set up and we made dinner. That’s about it.
We finally had a tomato get ripe on the vine, so I plucked it off last night because I was hungry. I brought it inside and sliced it up right away. It had a very good taste and was very firm. Susan had a small bite and liked it a little better than a supermarket tomato.
So far there are a lot of green tomatoes on the vine, so I think we’ll have a boom soon. I am a little worried, though, about all those getting ripe while we’re away at Disney.
Maybe my mom will want to house sit for a day or two while we’re away? I’m sure the cat would appreciate it.
Sorry I’ve been quiet the last few days. I’ve been pretty tired. It was a good idea to switch around my jobs because if I’m this pooped taking in referrals at the office all day, I would implode from actually having to go out and admit them. Olivia is always moving. Always. Even if it’s just squirming around to a different position, it’s there. And she’s only getting more noticeable as she gets bigger. It’s pretty distracting, sometimes pretty painful. I imagine that, too, will increase.
Let me tell you, pregnancy is nothing like what I imagined. Ok, so I never in my wildest dreams imagined what it would be like, but if I had… well it would be nothing like this. Not that I’m not thrilled over the eventual outcome, but I can’t wait til my body is my own again. Not to mention my memory. Or my appetite.
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