Ikea had a big sale today because they are moving. We didn’t know about this until M found out when he went there for something else. He just called to say he bought a corner desk (we’ve been looking for one for a long time but not wanting to spend any money) so we can take the big table out of this room and rearange stuff so there might actually be some space!

It’s so cramped in here right now.

Not looking forward to cleaning everything up so we can move furniture around. I’m not sure how we let the office become such a pigsty, but it’s really bad in here.

Eep. He’ll be home in a minute, so time to shut the computer down and get started.

Oh My God! You just knew that someone would actually invent it eventually….

Adults only please click on this link.

LMAO! I don’t know if the site is for real or not, but it certainly made my day. Bwahahahaha!

I had a doctors appointment this morning.

They are pretty short appointments. I go in, they weigh me, measure the uterus height, listen to the heartbeat, then I’m gone.

Heartbeat was 138 today.

The baby had been sleeping before - he/she hadn’t moved all morning, anyway, but all the feeling of my belly must have woken him/her up. When the doctor was listening to the heartbeat, the baby suddenly awoke and gave a humungous kick right beneath the little wand thing they use to listen and nearly knocked it off.

They gave me forms to go take the one-hour test (a test for gestational diabetes) and told me to have it done in about two weeks. I know it’s just routine testing, but the possibility makes me very nervous. I am such a sugar addict.

Oh no! It’s a catastrophe!

It would appear that some sort of explosive device has detonated in the upstairs hallway resulting in a littering of furry creatures. While the only potential witnesses to the actual explosion seem to have been traumatized beyond their ability to say anything but “meow,” the debris at the scene made it apparent what must have happened despite the lack of intelligible statements from eye wittnesses.

We are pleased to report that there were no apparent injuries, and all cats involved have currently wandered downstairs to help M. clean out the basement (”help” is of course defined as “sit on or in any box he’s about to move”).

Silly creatures.
(more…)

Why does the issue of a flag protection amendment keep coming up?

I really don’t understand how destroying a good portion of what a symbol stands for in order to save the symbol itself can be considered by anyone to be an improvement.

Do these same people throw away the presents and keep the wrapping paper every Christmas?

It’s never going to pass, thank goodness, but why in the world does the issue keep coming up?

Today’s high is supposed to be 82 f (the celcius reading still doesn’t mean much to me). It seems like just a week ago it was snowing.

Oh wait.. it WAS snowing just a week ago. It was mixed with rain and didn’t really stick, but still, snow just a week ago, and now it’s hot. The weather up here is seriously screwy.

I’m okay with that though. I found the little fan for the office. It sits a foot away from me on the desk blowing blessed cool air.

I think we’re far enough along that I can get some flowers to plant in the back yard without fear of further frost. Flowers in the yard are worth any sort of upcoming heat, aren’t they?

Vegetables too!

We are so tiny!

Be sure to view the full size picture.

I don’t believe in hate. I do my best to try not to hate anyone.

Even people who behave pretty terribly I try to make excuses for. They behave as they do because of how they were brought up and their life experiences. Hating them won’t do any good. Trying to show them the error of their ways, protesting their actions, and setting a good example might do some good. Hate can only cause further harm.

Still, it’s hard sometimes, so very hard.

I read about things like this, and the feelings inside, the anger inside of me for an instant feels as if it will overwhelm me.

For just one instant, I find myself truly hating that horrible Rev. Phelps.

Then I take a deep breath and remind myself that he is, after all, only human (though a pitifully poor example of the species since he appears to be everything that stands opposite human kindness), and all humans have their foibles and failings and prejudices and shortcomings (some far more harmfull than others), and that hate in me harms no one so much as myself.

The man and his followers truly are despicable, though. His aims seem to be to spread discord and pain in the guise of morality and to heap salt on the terrible wounds left behind by a tragedy.

How can he sleep at night? How can he face himself in the mirror knowing the pain and anguish that he causes?

Perhaps he’s just a poor, twisted excuse for a man who felt trodden upon at one time, so now he must step on others just so he can watch the commotion and the fuss and the anger that results and say “look what I did! Look how powerful I am!”

I haven’t been posting becuase I’ve been too depressed over Buffy ending this week. Really. Maybe.

Okay, perhaps it’s just been my normal laziness.

The entry that I’ve been meaning to post all week requires a picture. This means I need to find my camera, take the picture, perform a series of acrobatics to get to the back of my computer to plug my card reader in (I can’t just leave it plugged in because the drivers are messed up and Windows refuses to start so long as it is plugged in; have to have it unplugged to start my computer), save the picture to my hard drive and mess with the size, then upload it.

See? Isn’t that a lot of work?

Perhaps not.

And I still haven’t found a job, and I have overdue library books again!

I’m pathetic, I know.

Terribly pathetic.

Goal for the rest of the week: be less pathetic! I can do it! Really, I can!

Just watched the last ever Buffy…

I won’t say anything about it since I know that Buffy doesn’t air in the states until tomorrow, but I can’t believe there’s never going to be another new one.

It just doesn’t seem real that it’s over. I’m in shock. Really, I am.

It’s been my favorite show for soooo long. Now what reason do I have to watch TV?

Oh, right, The West Wing.

I seem to be down to one show again. Probably for the best. Having two can’t-miss-an-episode shows had me watching too much TV.

Oh, this is just wonderful. A DVD that is only viewable for two days after opening and then, poof, it’s garbage.

From the article:

Buena Vista hopes the technology will let it crack a wider rental market, since it can sell the DVDs in stores or almost anywhere without setting up a system to get the discs back.

Isn’t that wonderful? Isn’t that exactly what we need? Another way to generate waste because we aren’t squandering nearly enough resources and are landfills are going empty for lack of garbage?

*sigh*

I get so very sad sometimes.

The reason I was at the fabric stores ages ago (when I bought the patterns) was actually to buy material to make a bra from.

You see, a while ago my normal bras just started being way too uncomfortable to wear. I went to a maternity store and found a Bravado maternity/nursing bra which I just love. However, now I have exactly one bra that’s comfortable to wear (it’s worked so far because I’m home so much and I’ve only been bothering to put ona bra when I go out), and since money is tight, I really was not looking forward to buying more at thirty-five (CAD) each.

Then I started thinking that it really was just a fancy sports bra, so how hard could it be to copy? This lead to the trip to the fabric store.

I actually started working on it the other day. It’s going well so far, with a few little trouble spots. I’m almost done with it and should finish it today, if I ever get around to working on it.

Cross your fingers for me that the product of my dubious sewing ability will work. It would be a great money saver if I can make them for myself.

The following was actually something I posted in a forum earlier today…

Grrr… I HATE cliffhangers.

TWW is a great show. There is no way in heck I wouldn’t be back watching it next fall even without the cliffhanger. The evil cliffhanger is not needed to keep me watching; it just frustrates me.

(note: I do like cliffhangers between episodes because I like episodes that span more than one hour, but I can’t stand them between seasons.)

I so loved the bits with Toby. The little hats bit was the greatest. I also loved the scene where he came rushing back from the second hospital visit saying that they had to get the president out of the office. It was great partly because it was more cute stuff about babies and partly because for some reason I always love the scenes where Toby comes rushing in all excited and talking a million miles an hour about how something needs to happen and the others have to tell him three times that it’s already happening before he hears them.

I hate the speaker of the house. I just wanted to smack the arrogant asshole the first instant I saw him with his “they only get one warning” shit and then showing complete disrespect for the white house staff.

I can hear the growling of the lawn mower outside.

Through my barely open window - open just a crack so that the fresh air may enter but the meowers can’t slip out - I smell the green of freshly cut grass. It’s been so long since I’ve encountered that scent, so long that it feels like a first time.

Could winter have come to an end?

It’s absolutely gorgeous out today. The skys are blue with just the occasional whisp of white cloud. Of coures, it’s somewhat less gorgeous here in my very messy computer room.

M’s out running errands (I wasn’t ready to go when he was), but he’s on his way home to get me so that we can go look at more baby stuff. We still aren’t quite ready to start buying stuff, but when we are we are going to know exactly what we want and where we are going to buy it from.

We’ve cut the expense down yet again. Originally I’d planned to buy both a sling and a baby trecker or baby bjorn (the sling looks nice for around the house, but I worried about it being a little insecure for more active stuff like if we went hiking), but after reading that too much time in an upright carrier before a baby is capable of sitting up by itself can cause chiropractic problems in later life, I’ve decided we could probably just start off with a sling and get a different carrier later if we wanted one. Then I decided that why buy what looks like it should be pretty simple to make, so I’ve been looking online for instructions. I found a bunch. I’m probably going to use these instructions, but there are a bunch of others online including some for a padded sling as well (most people who’ve posted in the forums I read lately on the matter prefer unpadded slings to padded).

So, anyway, we plan to spend the afternoon running about to various places to buy baby stuff and comparing prices. I might also look at some more maternity clothes for me as my wearable wardrobe is pretty slim at the moment.

Later this evening, after it’s cooled down a little (it’s not actually hot out; it just feels hot to me), we will probably take advantage of the nice weather and go for a walk. Either that, or it’s off to a friend’s house to play video games. We’re still such children in many ways, but here we are having a baby. How strange is that?

It’s funny going into a seven-eleven here.

On the rare occasion I enter a seve-eleven in the middle of the night, I’m used to seeing everyone else in there buying beer and cigarettes. That’s it, just beer and ciggarettes and maybe the occasional bag of chips to go with the beer. I, of course, was usually on a break from working a late night shift or something and was just going for a snack.

Here it’s different. You can’t buy beer in a 7-11 in Canada. You can’t buy it in a grocery store either. You have to go to the liquor store if you want booze of any sort. One result of this is that I see a heck of a lot more liquor stores around than I ever saw in the states. Another is that you don’t see anyone buying booze in a 7-11 in the middle of the night.

They still all get cigarettes though. And the other customers still tend to be rather scary looking people.

Oooh.. brownies for breakfast are so not a good choice..

My poor stomach..

I really should know better by now.

At least I have yet to spill any water on myself today.

I seem to have developed a serious drinking problem of late.

Have you seen the movie Airplane? It’s that sort of drinking problem. I can find my mouth with the glass, but it seems that I am no longer capable of taking a drink of anything without dumping a decent portion of it down my front.

Usually it’s just a few drops, but just now I spilled enough ice water on my shirt that I had to go change because it was too wet and cold to leave on.

I’ve always been quite the clutz, but this is getting ridiculous.

I’m online again looking for fabric in online stores instead of looking for a job so that I actually will have money to buy fabric.

I was in Fanny’s fabric yesterday and Butterick patterns were on sale for less than three dollars Canadian each, so I just had to buy two patterns for baby clothes (this one and this one if you’re interested). Now I just can’t wait to get started on them. I planned to wait until I was at least in the third trimester before I started buying baby stuff, but I figure I can start making stuff before then because considering how slow my sewing tends to go, I probably need the time. The only problem is that I really shouldn’t be spending money on fabric right now since I need to buy more maternity clothes and stuff for myself and we are pretty broke at the moment.

Myles’s income pays the rent and bills, and we’re slowly paying off the credit cards, but he is sechnically a graduate student since he has yet to complete his thesis, so we have to pay his tuition as well, and I really don’t see how we’re going to be able to buy a crib and car seat and stroller and sling/baby carrier and cloth diapers and all that stuff unless I get a job (temporary position most likely; there isn’t much point in applying for a permanent position right now considering) or at least do some work through a temp agency.

Yet here I sit looking at cute fabric that I can’t afford instead of looking for a job or cleaning the house (it’s pretty close to being a disaster area) or working on one of the zillion half finished sewing projects (anyone remember my quilt?) that I have sitting around…

Does anyone expect anythign else from me?

While looking through the online catalogue to find the patterns I bought yesterday, I came across this one which I somehow missed yesterday and now want. Oh well. I’m sure there will be another sale soon. In fact, I think that they just might be on sale at Fabricland right now…

Friday evening and I’m all by my lonesome.

M is usually home by five or five-thirty, but frequently on Friday’s he has an afterwork “meeting.” This, of course, means going out with a few of his coworkers and having a few drinks. He never drinks much, but still it’s nice that he rides the bus to work so I don’t have to worry about him driving home.

One of these days I’m going to have to go downtown to one of these “meetings” so that I can actually meet some of the people that he works with. Only ginger ale for me, though. I never have much desire to drink in the first place, but I’d worried that since I can’t drink right now I’d suddely start having cravings for alcohol. Fortunately I suffer from no such thing; just the thought of a drink makes me wrinkle up my nose in disgust.

Smoking is another thing. I’ve never liked to be around smokers much because he smell does get to me, but since I’ve been pregnant even just seeing someone smoke on TV makes me feel a little sick and like I need to leave the room. I have to remind myself that it’s only on TV, there’s no actual smoke in the room, so it can’t hurt the baby.