maybe tomorrow
quick update: good food & hospital tour

Just ate out at a vegan restaurant we hadn’t tried yet. It was so good! I’m happy now.

Also went to tour the hospital where the bambino will be born. It was reassuring in many ways; I’m not so nervous about a hospital birth now, but there are still some things that I have issues with.

Gotta run. Going to look for new maternity clothes because my only maternity jeans are just about too small now, and I need some shorts and dresses and other light clothes for hot weather.

More about above topics later.

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electronic cravings

Me see; me want.

Wow.. that is just.. wow.

(by way of Alanna.)

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no weeding tonight

I was just sitting here thinking that I should go out and weed the backyard when I glanced at the clock and discovered that it is after ten.

This staying light so late thing messes my sense of time up really badly. It just shouldn’t be light enough to weed the yard at ten at night. My whole life having it this light at this time of year has meant that it is around eight or so in the evening, so that’s the time my internal clock wants to believe it is.

No weeding for me tonight though. It is still light enough at the moment, but will be too dark within half an hour or so.

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up just to eat

One of the things that sucks about being pregnant is that I’m constantly stuffing something in my mouth. It’s been worse than usual this past week; I think the bambino must be going through a growth spurt or something.

I’ve been trying to go back to sleep for the last two hours or so, but finally I had to admit that I was just too hungry to stay in bed, so I got up. I think that my extreme hunger may have gotten in the way of my judgement. I made myself a bagel and brought it up to the computer to eat while I looked over some of the forums I post/lurk in.

I noticed from the first bite that the cream cheese tasted a little funny. It didn’t taste bad or like it was going sour or anything, just not quite what I was used to. I thought briefly of tossing it, but there isn’t much else in the house that’s convenient, and I was too hungry to wait while I actually made something that took longer than a minute or ran to the store for more quick foods… so I ate it.

Now I’m thinking maybe I shouldn’t have. Just wanted to put it on record that if I get horribly sick from food poisoning, it’s my own damn fault.

Now I’m off to drink about a gallon of water. Then it’s back to bed for me for a bit.

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back from the doctor

Well “I went to the doctor and guess what he told me, guess what he told me. He said ‘girl you better try to have fun no matter what you do,’” oh wait.. that’s not what he - and he is actually a she - told me. Now I have that stupid song stuck in my head.

I left the house this morning and immediately freaked out because I didn’t see the car. On days when he knows I don’t need the car for anything, M sometimes drives to the park-and-ride and takes the LRT to work instead of the bus that comes by our house. I thought he’d forgotten about my doctors appointment and done that today, but fortunately it turned out that he’d just parked the car a little further down the street than he normally did, so I couldn’t see it from in front of our house. I’m an idiot.

Anyway, everything is fine. Yay! I don’t have any signs of gestational diabetes and my hemoglobin levels are fine. She also reassured me that my descriptions of the baby’s movements are perfectly normal, so yes I am just being paranoid (though she didn’t call it that). She also gave me a chart for tracking the babies movements which she said should reassure me if I start to worry since I will be able to see exactly when the baby moved last instead of just thinking that it’s been a while.. so long as I remember to chart it anyway.

In other bambino news, we attend our first prenatal class tonight. I can’t believe it’s time for those to start already. We also are scheduled to tour the hospital on Saturday. I wish I’d gotten in to do that a little earlier to do that; I’m sure I’ll have lots of questions for my doctors once I learn what the actual hospital policies are, and I’m not sure that I’ll get a chance to talk with all of them again. I’m far enough along that they want to have me come in every two weeks now instead of every four, and I think they will want me to start seeing the same doctor every time from now on.
(more…)

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off to the doctor and dreams of such

I have a doctor’s appointment today. Knowing about my appointment today caused me to dream of it in advance last night which was very strange.

In my dream, I went to the doctor’s office and the nurse at the front desk told me to go and wait in exam room 123. I went through the door to the exam rooms, and it was a huge maze back there. I looked all over for room 123, but I couldn’t find it.

Eventually I went back to the front and said “I must be some kind of idiot or something, because I can’t find it.” The nurse took me back to show me where it was, but then she couldn’t find it either.

Eventually we did find it tucked away in some corner. The doctor came in and I suddenly realized I’d made a mistake. I was at a doctor at the clinic at my university (apparently I was back in school again - I’d actually had to leave a class, which was inexplicably being taught by my high school English teacher, a little early to go to the appointment), rather than at the doctor I’ve been seeing for my pregnancy checkups. What’s worse, I was there to have my prescription for birth control renewed, which I suddenly realized didn’t make any sense since I was already six months pregnant.

I tried to figure out what exactly I was doing there and what I had been thinking when I made the appointment. I also tried to figure out some way to explain what was going on that wouldn’t leave me looking like the biggest idiot alive, but I failed on both accounts. Fortunately, I woke soon after.

Today I should get the results from the one hour glucose test and other bloodwork back (I probably could have called and gotten them sooner, but I didn’t). Cross your fingers for me.
(more…)

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twenty-six weeks strikes again

The week counter on the left started showing week twenty-six again, so I finally figured out what was wrong with it. Last time I just reuploaded the file and suddenly it was working again. This time I actually looked around and discovered that for some reason I’d originally made the include file that holds the baby stuff a template in MT for some reason, but I’d neglected to uncheck the “rebuild wih index files” box, so then every time I added a new entry or someone added a comment the automated version, which I’d just FTPed online without bothering with MT templates, was replaced by the old version. D’oh! I am an idiot.

Anyway, as long as I’m messing around with stuff, my skins need a lot of cleaning up and there are several bits of code I’ve been meaning to mess with, so I might as well do some of that now. If things look messed up, come back later. All will be back to normal soon.

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what I’m reading..

The other night I was sitting at my computer half asleep trying to remember what in the world I was doing. I’d keep going up to the address bar with an address just on the tip of my fingers to type, but I’d forget what I was going to do by the time I moved my hand from the mouse to the keyboard. I’d go off to check some forum or another or look at a blog, then I’d find myself going to the address bar again just knowing that there was something I really needed to do online.

Today I remembered what it was. I’d meant to log onto the library’s website to renew books that were due the other day. D’oh! Hello late fees, I really hadn’t missed you.

I’ve now returned all overdue books, dodged paying the fines (I will pay them later.. but I didn’t have any cash and it didn’t seem worth pulling out Interac for just a few dollars), and picked up a couple of books that I had on reserve.

I now have out:

  • Guards! Guards! by Terry Pratchett. The Discworld is really a bunch of small series that intertwine. Fortunately, while they do build off each other, they don’t actually depend on each other, so order isn’t that important when reading them. This is the first book of the books that focus on teh Nightwatch. They’re my favorites, and I’ve read most of the rest, but this one was missing from the library so I couldn’t read it until now when the copy they had on order came in…
  • The Druid of Shannara by Terry Brooks. I just read the following two books in the series a week or two ago because I’d had all three on reserve and the other two came in first. It’s a little annoying reading this when I already know what happens in the future.

The Tery Pratchett book contaisn a paragraph about the library at the Unseen University and libraries bookstores in general that I just love. The footnote relating to it is even better; the footnotes generally are the best part of the Discworld books.

It was said that, since vast amounts of magic can seriously distort the mundane world, and hte Library did not obey the normal rules fo space and time. It went on forever. It was said that you could wander for days amont the distant shelves, that there were lost tribes of research students somewhere in there, that strange things lurked in forgotten alcoves and were preyed on by other things that were even stranger.*

* All this was untrue. The truth is that even big collections of ordinary books distort space, as can reaily be proved by anyone who has been around a really old-fashioned secondhand bookshop, one of thos ethat look as though they were designed by M. Escher on a bad day and has more staircases than storyes and thos e rows of shelves which end in little doors that are surely too small for a full-sized human to enter. The relevent equation is: Knowledge = power = energy = matter = mass; a good bookshop is just a genteel Black Hole that knows how to read.

Terry Prachett Guards! Guards! Page 8
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no Harry Potter for persephone

Hmm.. it’s 12:58 now, and I’m reading reports of Squishettes who have aquired Harry Potter tonight. I’m a little tempted to try and find out which bookstores in my area had midnight sales tonight and driving out to see if any are still open….

But nope, not going to do it. I have that much self control at least.

I’m off to drink a couple gallons of water in the hopes that it will clear some of the caffein from my system…

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caffeine overdose continued

You know that embarassed feeling you get when you haven’t had a drink in a while and you order one with dinner and three-quarters of the way through it you start to feel a little dizzy? Then you try to hide it because you don’t want everyone to know that you are a total lightweight who get’s drunk off a single drink (not even whole one at that) but everyone can totally tell…

I’m so like that with the caffeine jitters right now.

I’d forgotten just how much caffeine iced caps have in them. Tea, which is pretty much the only source of caffeine I’ve consumed lately - and even that just on rare occasions, doesn’t even come close.

Really, I did know that it would cause problems, but I didn’t realize that it would be this bad. I had had the good intentions of only drinking half of it tonight and putting the rest in the fridge for tomorrow, but the damn thing was so yummy that I couldn’t stop.

Oh well. It’s starting to wear off now, so I think that I’ll be able to go to bed soon.

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speaking of sugar and stuff

People were discussing Tim Horton’s iced cappuccinos in one of the forums in which I lurk. People are cruel and evil. I see mention of iced cap; I want iced cap. That’s the way it works.

Fortunately, my husband is not cruel and evil. He is in fact wonderful. He just returned from a quick run to Tim Horton’s to get me an iced cap and sandwhich in order to save me from having to get off my lazy ass and changing out of my pajamas to go get one myself.

Of course, I absolutely should not be having an iced cap right now. I’ve been pretty good so far since getting knocked up. I think this is maybe my third iced cap of the pregnancy, and I’ve had a few mugs of real tea and a few of hot chocolate, but other than that I’ve avoided caffeine. I’m not going to feel bad about having a little now, other than I’m really not used to it any more, and it’s eleven-thirty at night…

I’m tired. I want to go to bed, but at the same time I’m all jittery and I know there is no way I am going to be able to fall asleep any time soon.

D’oh!

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prescription orange soda

One of the things I meant to write about last week was that I went in for the one hour glucose test. This involves drinking something sweet, waiting an hour, then getting blood drawn to test blood sugar levels. If they are too high, it could indicate gestational diabetes.

Could you imagine me with diabetes of any sort? Me? The quintessential sugar addict? I’d go mad, I tell you, mad like a.. like a.. something that is very mad. I seem to be stuck for a simile tonight. Someone suggest one so I can go back and edit and sound clever, pretty please?

Anyway, I was worried that whatever they gave me to drink would be gross and thick or something and I’d have trouble getting it down. No worries. It was just extra-sweet orange soda.

The funny thing about it was something I noticed while reading the label. I’m an obsessive label reader for some reason; probably due to boredom in general. Anyway, I read the ingredients and it had glucose and dextrose and various artificial colors and flavors. That wasn’t the funny part.

At the top of the label, above the ingredients, it had a warning that said somethign to the effect that it was illegal to dispense it without a prescription.

Who’d have thought that extra-sugary orange soda was such a dangerous thing?

Do we need to start watching out for dealers on the street trying to sell purloined extra-sugary orange soda along with speed and crack and various illegally obtained prescription drugs? Is anyone doing anything about labs where they make their own by adding sugar to normal orange soda? Is this the crime of the future?

A mosquito just bit me on the very tip of my big toe. Ow. It hurts a lot.

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no peeking

I love the way my hair feels as it brushes across my bare shoulders..

Oh, did I mention that we finally got a blind for this window so I can sit here topless with no fear of anyone peeking in? It’s nice.

My fan is nice.

Just thought I’d share.

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it’s not week twenty-six

I’m twenty-eight weeks pregnant as of today.

A couple of weeks ago, I finally got around to writing the php to automate the week counter on the right. It would appear that there is a little bug in it.

Too late to look at the code tonight. I’ll try to fix it tomorrow.

I suck sometimes.

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checking in

It’s hot here. Really, it’s probably just warm by anyone else’s standards, but it feels unbearably hot to me. My fan is my friend. I wish I could make friends with an air conditioner as well.

Dehydration is my enemy. I fight it by trying to count the glasses of water I drink in a day and forcing myself to down more when the number falls short. The other day I wasn’t forceful enough with myself and consumed only a glass or two he whole day. I paid for it the next day. First I couldn’t seem to wake up, then I was ready to go back to bed just an hour after rising. I slept for a few hours more, despite having gotten plenty of sleep the night before. When I woke I was still unable to keep my eyes open for more than a few minutes, and I realized I had to take action or suffer all day.

Four cold glasses of water later I had some energy again. Still, I suffered a headache the rest of the day as a result of my carelessness. I won’t let it happen again.

I have stuff to write about. Stuff from last week and stuff from this weekend. The heat saps my energy though, and for some reason I find that it takes a lot of energy just to type. I suppose it’s not the typing that is so hard, it’s the composing what I want to say.

Anyway, expect a real journal entry soon.

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storm rising

This morning was sunny and hot and oppressive. I felt as if I carried a weight on my shoulders.

Now the sky’s darkened over and the wind has picked up. I hear the rumble of thunder in the distance.

I feel like I can breath again.

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Bush defeated by Segway

*giggle*

I really shouldn’t find this nearly as funny as I do…

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yay Toronto

From the article:

The city of Toronto started issuing marriage licenses to gay couples on Tuesday after an Ontario provincial court issued a landmark ruling setting aside the heterosexual definition of marriage.

If the ruling is not appealed, the province of Ontario would be the first jurisdiction in North America to legalize gay marriage. Vermont and Quebec have allowed gay civil unions but not full marriage.

I really expect that gay marriages will be recognized all over Canada within the next few years. If I’m right and things go that way, want to bet the US tries to bully us into going back to the dark ages on that as well?

When I first moved up here, I always made a point of ensuring that everyone knew I was still an American and the only real reason I was up here was because it worked out better for me to move up than for my husband to move down to the States, but just lately I find that I’m really not so quick to make my citizenship known anymore.

I still love the States for many things, and I still really want to move back to Oregon, but in the past I’ve always thought that the the US was a great country that still had tons of room for improvement, all I’ve seen the past few years is things going downhill.

Canada, on the other hand, is just so cool.

Health care for all! Yay!

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expert confirmation - vegetarian diet is healthy

(via the veg blog.)

It’s nice to have what you already believe you know confirmed by the people who really do know.

The American Dietetic Association released a new report on vegetarian diets. It says they are of the good!

From the abstract:

It is the position of the American Dietetic Association and Dietitians of Canada that appropriately planned vegetarian diets are healthful, nutritionally adequate, and provide health benefits in the prevention and treatment of certain diseases. Approximately 2.5% of adults in the United States and 4% of adults in Canada follow vegetarian diets.

I didn’t know that Canada had a higher proportion of vegetarians than the US. You learn something new every day.

It also addresses vegan diets and the use of such diets throughout the lifecycle:

Well-planned vegan and other types of vegetarian diets are appropriate for all stages of the life cycle, including during pregnancy, lactation, infancy, childhood, and adolescence.

(more…)

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if my site doesn’t look right…

I’m doing some major messing around with my templates and directory structure in order to try and bring some resemblence to order among my files..

If things don’t look right, come back later. This really shouldn’t take that long.

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