And I keep this world from draggin me down

I am 31 weeks pregnant today, and I had another visit with Jessica, the "backup" midwife I have. My primary is still out of town until the end of the week. It was a good visit. My glucose test came back lower than normal range which is good. My blood pressure continues to be good. I have gained a total of 6 pounds total. Baby Chris is moving around like crazy, but s/he continues to be head down. S/he just flops back and forth.

For the most part, I am enjoying this pregnancy. I just wish I wasn't quite so busy. During the day, it isn't too bad. I get to just be a mom. A few days a week, I have to take Mara to school. The rest of the time, Martin takes her. Otherwise, I get to sleep. Marty is such an easy kid. It may sound bad, but he wakes up in the morning and gets the remote. He brings it to me to turn on the TV and turn it to PBS. He loves the cartoons on there every morning. He watches stuff that has been on for ages...Curious George, Clifford, Sesame Street, and Arthur. He even loves watching the cooking shows that come on after cartoons. He brings me the strawberry breakfast bars ("cookies") to open for him. He even brings me diapers and wipes to change him when he wants to have his diaper changed. It is almost like he knows that mommy won't get to sleep like this much longer. I do, however, much prefer the days that he just comes and curls up with me and goes back to sleep. I am just so exhausted. Today, I got up and made sure the house was clean before my appointment, and then went back to bed until almost time for Jessica to get here. After she left, I went back to bed until time for my nephew to be dropped off at 11:30. After my brother picked him up, I went back to bed until Martin called that he was coming home from work. I sure didn't mean to sleep that much today, but it felt great. I have been ready to go back to bed since I got up the last time, but I just haven't.

Mondays and Wednesdays are the only days right now that I feel that I have "off." Mara is cheerleading for the city, and despite being pregnant and exhausted, I am helping coach the team. The head coach, Bobbie, is someone I adore, and I would do about anything she asked me to, hence why I am helping. Martin and I had an argument the other day about his lack of respect and help. He actually said that he didn't see the value of sports. In case you are wondering, he is not just referring to cheerleading. He is also referring to any other sport. He does not understand the importance of activity, being part of a team, or learning a sport. He just sees it as a waste of time and money. Because of that, he just doesn't care to help around the house when I take Mara to practice. So, after the argument, he agreed to help cook at least on the nights I don't get home to around 8 p.m. That helps a little bit. He also didn't argue when I asked him to move the laundry tonight, and he actually did it. Mara is doing almost all the laundry, because I can't lean over the washing machine anymore. I doubt she really knows just how much I appreciate her helping the way she does. She is so excited about getting to be a big sister again and hopeful that this baby will be a girl.

Unless something comes up, I am going to a friend's on Wednesday. I am looking forward to that too. But, I hate leaving my house. So, I will get over it, and get out of the house by myself for a little bit and leave them all on their own. Scary.

I am still waiting to get the call from Human Resources to come sign the paperwork for the job I have been given. Until they call, I am still a stay-at-home mom, which I am enjoying so very much. I don't really want to go back to work. I had worked with these guys for almost 3 years, and I love every single one of them. I have been not working out of the home for almost 2 years now. They have begged me to come back on a part-time basis. When I was first asked almost a year ago, I would have jumped at the opportunity no matter what. Then, I had second thoughts. Then, I got pregnant finally after trying for over a year. Then, I didn't feel I could turn it down when it came around again and it was finally going to go through. It has taken so long for this to happen, and now that it is almost here, I really want to just stay home with my son and future baby. The only reason I am going to go ahead and take the job is that it is part time and they are supposed to get me a laptop computer to work from home. Hopefully, I will only have to go once a week or less. I will do what I have to, but I am not really as psyched about having a job again as I feel I should be...especially since the opportunity sort of just fell into my lap. I am, however, looking forward to interacting with the guys again.

Why has my cursor disappeared? It is quite aggravating not to have a cursor when I am trying to type. Okay, now I have it back. Talk about stream of thought writing. Of course, I am watching some horrible show on the television. Well, only watching it if you consider it watching television if you just have it on in the background.

On the great to-do list...nothing got done this past week. We did a lot of talking, but no actual working. So, this next weekend should be fun and full of stuff in addition to the normal football games for the cheerleaders.

Okay, that's enough. Now, I will try to get a few minutes to read before I pass out for the night. I am just leaving the kitchen for the night. I just don't have the energy to clean it tonight...not after the scrubbing I had to give it last night.

Night-night...

Where the sky begins the horizon ends

First, I want to say if you have never read the words to Tom Petty's "All the wrong reasons," I suggest you read them. Of course, most of his songs have something to say about something even if you just think it is a song.

Well, I have written out my giant to do list...the list that contains all the things I want to get done before the baby is born. After writing all this down, we managed to get quite a bit done off the list considering how long it is. Martin managed to get the bathroom tub drain to actually drain. We went to my favorite store, Lowes, and got the parts to replace the kitchen sink drain which was done by a drunkard. It had to be because no one with a brain would have hooked it up the way that it was hooked up. It actually regularly fell off with too much water pressure from the sink above. I had dealt with it for years since I bought the house, but that got fixed this weekend, too. Martin changed the brake pads on my van. The changing of the pads actually went well, but the brake hose bolt broke which necessitated another trip to the auto parts store. Of course, the auto parts guy sold him the wrong washers!! Thank goodness Walmart had some, so he was able to fix my brakes. Of course, now, I can't find my keys, so I still haven't driven it.

My biggest, and hopefully most satisfying, project of the weekend was to build from scratch a door. It is just a simple "barn" door, but it looks pretty cool, and we now have a door between our bedroom and the hallway between the bedrooms. Our house is so old (at least 80 years) and has a really odd design plan. The living room is about half of the orginal structure. The other half is the bedrooms with a bathroom between them. The only way to get to the bathroom is to go through a bedroom. So, my newest crusade now is to convince Martin to let me tear out the old chimney stack and put in a door that would lead directly from the living room to the bathroom without going through a bedroom. This would also allow for us close off the existing doorways from the bedrooms to the "hall," making more wall space in the bedrooms.

I am also hoping he will let me redo the living room soon. This would include tearing out all the sheetrock, replacing the electrical wiring and windows, put in insulation, new sheetrock, plaster and paint. The only shortfall of this plan is that I, just a few months ago, built an entertainment center that I would have to take down, but it wouldn't be that huge of a problem.

Of course, all of that rennovation isn't even on the mega to do list.

You might think I am crazy because I am almost 7 months pregnant. However, I thrive on tearing a wall down. I try not to overdo it while pregnant, but I am almost driven to rennovate. It makes me happy like almost nothing else does. While I was pregnant with Marty, we rennovated our bedroom. A year or so before, I tore out the bathroom and completely redid it with brand new plumbing, electrical, tile, etc.

Anyway, where one project ends, another begins...and I can't wait to do the next one.

You believe what you wanna believe

Not sure why I have decided to use one of my favorite lines from Refugee already, but I am. I have discovered so many wonderful lines to Tom Petty songs that always seem to fit what I am thinking. I am saving lines from the The Waiting for November when Chris is due and after s/he is born. But other than that, I normally go through a bunch of songs to find a line that fits my mood. However, with this one, the other day, the song came on the radio, and I thought "blog title," so here it is. Let's see if I can draw some kind of parallels to it in the end.

Well, I am sort of sad about a couple things. I was asked if I could attend a certain person's shower the day before her wedding in a city a couple hours away. As much as I HATE showers of any kind, I would have loved to attend this one because I love this certain friend dearly. However, there is no way in any world that we can afford for me to drive 2 days to this city. I wish that was my biggest reason for not going. Most people know I am slightly phobic of driving. I don't even like to drive 20 minutes to Gainesville. I only drive when I have to. Most of the time, I wait for Martin to be available to drive. So, because of this fear of driving, I'm not going. Of course, this is in addition to the money issue, the finding someone to watch the kids issues, and the fact that I will be exactly 8 months pregnant all alone 2 hours from home. I would be in serious panic attack/anxiety mode. I would have to drive all the way down there and then drive all the way back just to go back the next day with Martin driving. The money issues is only because November is going to be such a big month for us with money between Mara's 9th birthday, niece's birthday, nephew's birthday, hopefully a baby party for Baby Chris, the impending birth of Baby Chris, Thanksgiving in general, and the property taxes on Martin's property in Georgia being due at the end. I think Martin is about to have a stroke or coronary if the fact that he was out walking up and down the street tonight is any indication. But, I do love this certain friend and won't miss her wedding for anything in this entire world (even if I did have to drive all the way down there by myself for that). Finding a dress I can wear 8 months pregnant is going to be a huge (pun intended) chore, especially finding one that doesn't kill our budget.

For some reason, my appointment with my midwife got moved up a week. Instead of coming next Monday, she is coming tomorrow morning. It is actually not with my main midwife who is out of town but the one I had to choose to be her assistant. It's not a huge deal. I have decided to do the glucose test. At least, I don't have to drink some funky drink like it seems most women do. I just have to drink some grape juice. Not sure why I decided to do it since I do not buy into the risks of GD (risks of undiagnosed diabetes mellitus, yes). The fact is that many cases of GD have more to do with the fact that pregnant women simply do not metabolize sugar the same way as nonpregnant people. I'm not going to be strapped to a bed, so I don't really care if my baby is big (though I would be very surprised if I had a big baby considering my first one was 7 something, and my second was 6 something, it will have a long way to go to get to be actually big).

Here we go, I can tie the title in now...I believe in hospital birth for no reason. I am not going to a hospital for any reason save 1 which would be placenta previa. That's it. As I am sure I have said before at some point, I will only have an ultrasound to diagnosis this if my midwives can't bellymap to find the placenta. The only reason I am even slightly concerned/have this on my mind is that I have had a low-lying placenta in the beginning of both my previous pregnancies. Breech baby, don't care, I will birth that way. Both of my previous births have included nuchal cords which is not a cause for intervention. If I go past 42 weeks, so what. If my midwives can't attend me for whatever reason, don't care, still going to birth this baby at home. I do not trust or believe in hospitals. I do not trust doctors in any way, shape, or form. The honest truth is that had I read more about UCing (unassisted childbirth) before I hired my midwives, I wouldn't have hired any. In fact, I am still considering not calling them. I probably will (okay, Martin probably will), but the idea is still there. I don't need anyone but my family around to get me through. I am really excited about the birth and having the baby at home with my family around.

We still have a lot to do before the baby comes, but only because there are little things about it that are bothering me like the disorganization of the pantry and the bins full of books around the house, and the missing light bulbs scattered throughout the house. I also want to build a door to go between our bedroom and the bathroom hall. I really want to get the back room turned into an study/second bedroom for Mara to hid in and do her homework and get away from her little bother...I mean brother. He thinks it is fun to slap her butt and crawl all over her. It drives her up the wall. I feel bad for her, but I can't do all the work getting the heavy stuff out of the back room which has turned into storage.

I finally decided to do a registry, but only because I was bored. We don't NEED anything. There are a few things we want like a new "play yard" thing to use as a crib for naps. I want a new boppy pillow because mine is flat as hell and the cover I have is dirty as hell. I love my Bobby and have used it pretty much for the last 2-1/2 years. I even use it to sit at my computer and type on my lap.

So, I guess I need to stop typing for now. I have less than 10 hours until my appointment and I have to get some sleep, take a shower, and clean my house. Tomorrow is my day to take Mara to school which means getting Marty up earlier than I like to. At least the house is not that bad since I have been trying to keep it clean. It is just mainly a few things the kids threw on the floor and the kitchen from dinner. I also have to clean up the porch a little bit to diminish the effect of it being Martin's smoking place. I did not mean to stay up this late, and I surely didn't mean to spend this much time typing all my thoughts out into cyberspace.

Alright...enough for now.

Well, the moon sank as the wind blew

Well, here we are a couple weeks later, and now, we have Hanna headed towards us...sort of... It seems my good friend Tropical Storm Fay left us a much larger present than I had figured. We thought she had simply taken a giant limb off of our dead oak which had landed partially on the corner of the shed and knocked the shed enough to make the door very difficult to open. Well, when we finally got the door opened on Saturday (more than a week later), Martin heard this funny noise that turned out to be gushing water. We didn't even known we had a water line in the shed. It turns out after much gripping and cursing people long dead that apparently long ago, there was a pump over there for well water. When the city put in the city water, they didn't run the city water directly to the house. They ran it to the shed and hooked into where the pump had sent water into the house.

So, instead of finding the immediate problem and fixing it, Martin and my brother dug a hole in the yard, thinking that it was a sub-line going to the shed from the house, and capped it off. Well, the water was coming from the other direction, so now we had a gush in the shed and a gush in the yard. That night, we had no water.

The next morning, we all went to Lowes and I got the stuff we needed. He fixed the gush in the shed and I took care of the one in the yard, so now we have water again, BUT if they had listened to me to begin with, it would have been fixed the night before and never needed to fix the second spot in the yard. At least Martin agreed that he had screwed up. Honestly, I have done more plumbing that either Martin or my brother, you would think they would have listened. Men....

Anyway, in other news...I am in the midst of a long week. Last week was long as well. While I am a stay-at-home mom, it is definitely my evenings that designate a long week. Last week included a Monday cheerleading practice, a Tuesday awards thing for softball and baseball from last season, Wednesday I got to go "help" a friend, Thursday was open house at Mara's school, and Friday was cheerleading practice again. This week is 4 nights of cheerleading practice culminating in games on Saturday. Luckily, tomorrow is my night off from everything, and I am looking forward to staying home.

I am now 28 weeks pregnant and very happy about it. I get tired in the middle of the day, but other than that, I feel great. Since I stopped doing my medical transcription job at night, I feel so much better and my house is actually clean. On my chore chart (yes, I have one and so does Mara), I actually have a space for doing my yoga DVD and taking a walk which I get stars for doing. I try, but the only time I have actually put in the DVD and did the yoga, I fell asleep on the floor afterwards. Marty has also decided that he wants to watch PBS every morning, and actually brings me the remote to turn the channel for him to it. I hate to make him unhappy by making him miss his Word World and Dragon Tales and Sesame Street. I need to make Mara find their remote so I can let him watch it in their room so that I can get my TV back so I can do my yoga. I can't seem to get the motivation to walk to the school to pick up Mara when my sister isn't walking with me, so 2 days a week, I tend not to walk.

Baby Chris is turning somersaults in my belly. It is quite a strange feeling. He (or she but for the purpose of my sanity him) sleeps most of the day. If I am up, he is asleep. He only really moves when I sit still (like now).

Let me explain the whole fetus sex thing...I do not want to find out. I want the surprise. I also want a girl very badly. My daughter wants a sister very badly as well. It is not that I do not want another boy (cause I want one of those too), but I have decided that calling it a him will combat any sadness I might have at it being a boy when it is born and it is also easier than calling it it. I would not be devastated by having another boy because in reality it would be a lot of fun to have 2 boys so close, but I definitely want another girl. Martin says no to a 4th baby. We will see if I can win that war. If it is a boy, I would also get a little Superman (Christoper Reaves). Martin picks on me cause the last name is not the same, but please, it sounds the same, and that is what matters.

As soon as I get the schedule for games for cheerleading, I get to finally start actually planning Mara's birthday party and the specifics for the baby party. Hopefully, most of the season will be over before the parties start. It is starting in September so hopefully, it will be mostly over before November as far as games go. Competition cheer will be in full swing, but as long as I can have my weekend for my parties, I will be happy.

Anyway, I guess I have finally ran out of things to say. Nothing really exciting happens in my life. I have discovered that I prefer being with my family to almost anything else, so yeah, I don't go out, I don't have traditional "fun" but I have a great life that I love.