bunch o' stuff

1) baby is now, according to ultrasound, due dec 28.

2) restauranteurs, please do me a favor. stop using soup veggie mix. it's freaking obvious when there's square carrots, corn, peas and (bleagh) lima beans what's really in the 'primavera' or the 'navratan korma' or any of the other crappy incarnations i've seen this stuff used in. it's an insult to the intelligence of anyone who's ever been in a grocery store.

3) i got a service award at work for walking. or as the patron put it on the nomination form, "for sarah (big belly - pregnant) - she walked me around the library". i'm not sure what to make of this. um, it's my job.

4) chocolate comes from the cocoa plant. therefore, i'm hereby classifying it as a fruit/vegetable serving.

5) all things are good to go with the new house. yippee!

6) i can't fit into any of my shoes anymore, so i got a couple of pairs of not-too-slipperish-looking slippers. one looks like black shearling boots, and the other looks like black flats. why the heck didn't i think to do this all the time?? beats shoes. and i love shoes.

7) boo quote. after explaining that a sign stating 'no minors' meant that nobody under 21 years old could sit at the bar, he pipes up with 'i think you have to be 100 years old to sit there.' 'oh,' i said, 'so am i old enough?' 'no, mommy, you're nowhere near one hundred years old. you're only halfway there.' thanks, kiddo!!

mystery

gee, as soon as it was the day to leave my hometown after our week-long thanksgiving trip, that horrible pressure disappeared....

it struck boodad and i as funny that when we lived in manassas, going to rhode island was enjoyable enough to consider moving to the providence region (if only there were sufficient tech jobs). however, now that we're in portland, rhode island once again feels like the sleepy little hamlet that i ached to get out of as a teen.

there was also plenty of passive-agressive stuff to deal with, like my mother's insistence on giving me turn-by-turn driving directions when tooling around my old neighborhood. and my parents' out-of-control packratism. i truly, truly fear what will happen when, hopefully many years from now, i am called upon to clear out their house. my mom can't seem to grasp the concept of throwing anything out, or ceasing to accumulate multiples of things that aren't even in use. case in point, her 'sewing room'. it does indeed contain a sewing machine and a serger, as well as a cabinet full of fabrics that she bought while i was in grade school. however, nobody can get to these items, because there are bags and bags of paperwork, old newspaper articles, magazines and god-knows-what filling the floorspace. i have cleared out that room two times on previous visits, so i don't know how it reaccumulates all this gunk. in their bathroom, they have added an additional shelf for the multitudes of lavender and lily of the valley scented powders, bubble baths and body lotions that she's amassed - very few of which have ever been opened. my dad's office and the basement, both of which were bedrooms of mine at various points, are similarly deserving of enter-at-your-own-risk warning signs. i was hoping to dig into an old box of photos during this trip, but couldn't manouver in the basement at all.

we stayed in a hotel and rented a car, and it was worth every penny.

on a completely different note: someone has come up with a scent called in the library. eau de kickstool et dewey!

get. it. out.

magically, the day after the last midwives' appointment, i started feeling very uncomfortable. lots of pressure and it feels like something/someone is heading down. it hurts, but it's not contractions. of course, this started the day i flew out of town for thanksgiving. i'm in new england right now, and not returning to portland until tomorrow night. the ultrasound is the next day. so a little part of me is hoping that i get told 'we can't let you go on much further, this baby comes out next week' or something like that. not another whole month.

carrying too much

last night i dreamed that i was in school again, and i was trying to carry my stuff and a friend's stuff and i just couldn't do it.

today i got told at my midwifery appointment that the baby seems a bit big for the projected due date, and i need an ultrasound to figure out the size and position. this may adjust the due date up, but i don't know by how much.

also, today a very spur-of-the-moment bid we made on a house was accepted. i saw this house when i was getting out of my hair appointment saturday, and was curious enough to look it up. we toured it with our agents later in the afternoon and put a bid on it that evening. the sellers want to close dec 15. we're planning to stay in our current house and move s-l-o-w-l-y and then put this house on the market in april or may. but yeah, a lot to do with a new baby. so we have a little more paperwork to do tonight, and may run out there again to look at phone jacks and electric plugs and things - the inspection will be done while we're gone, and this is a new house that is just being finished - we want to ask for plugs and jacks exactly where we want them.

oh yeah, and i have to pack, too. and i have a parent-teacher conference in 45 minutes. and i'd like to nap. me, carry too much?

i give up on the rawk

only i could go to a $10 show and have it cost me almost $90.

breakdown:

made arrangements to go to show with friend. since the venue's website doesn't list box office hours, and i don't want to ping back and forth between various sides of town all afternoon, i decide to buy the tickets in advance online. so, two tickets plus service charge = $27. total rip, i know, i just get anxious that we'd get there and have it sold out.

friend calls in late afternoon; her girlfriend is quite ill due to bad seafood reaction. no biggie.

call another friend, who happens to be going to the show with housemates. great, he offers to buy the second ticket off me. except his housemates have a no-opening-band-because-we're-too-cool thing, and the band i'm there to see is the second of three playing and i don't want to stay for the headliner because i'm working tomorrow. arranged that he would call when they get to the venue, although this is now becoming if they go to the venue. of course, no call.

get out of show, which was good but eh.... it's my 5th time seeing them. they're getting crisper in their playing and i kinda like it messier. (as i said to the drummer last time, 'what the hell is wrong? i can hear what you're saying after your set, that's not supposed to happen.') get back to car. and yes, i will admit that i saw the 'no parking, loading zone' where i was, but it was at a theatre whose parking lot was completely empty - so i figured no loading was going to be done. i also figured being very close when very pregnant was worth risking a ticket - maybe a $25 fine? turns out that the theatre doing no loading at the time doesn't matter to the police - there's a $60 parking ticket on my windshield. (ps. could you at least use those funds towards answering your 'drug house hotline' at nonabsurd hours? like when i call at 9 pm on a saturday because my next-to-next door neighbors are dealing, and find out you're not taking calls until 6:30 am on monday, and 911 won't dispatch because the money exchanges are happening inside the house?) at least i warned the guy who almost took my space when i left that he'd likely get a ticket too if he stayed.

oh, and add the $2 diet coke. $89 for a ten dollar show. i give up.

screwed priorities weekend

so this weekend there's a few things that i "should" be doing:

- i should be going to orycon to hear guest of honor cory doctorow speak tomorrow. also, i should have gone to see him speak at PSU thursday, but had no sitter and i'm guessing having a 5-yr-old sit through a talk on copyright issues is asking for disaster.

- i should hit the gem fair and restock on some beads.

- i'm working on sunday so these activities would have to happen saturday.

however, life gets in the way:

- i missed a hair appointment on thursday morning because it was a little more important to talk with a contractor about my sometimes-wet basement. i had to reschedule for saturday, noon, which means i won't be able to get from southeast to downtown by the time of cory's reading. (also, i noticed he's not on the booksigning/autograph schedule at all. hmpfh.)

- i'm trying not to spend oodles of money right before our trip back home for thanksgiving, and bead shows tend to be 'spendy for me. i'm also not so critically short on anything that would make it worth walking into a giant convention room of temptation.

so, saturday is haircut day, and at night i'm rawking out to dirty on purpose at the doug fir. wheee! beatrice, get yer earplugs on.

yeah, baby!

i have figured out when the baby will be born.

my ultrasounds say jan 4, my midwives say jan 14. but thanks to a jaunt into town today, i realized the magic date will be jan 8.

why?

because on that date this man will be in portland:


and so i'm imagining that this will be done by 7:30 pm, in time for Mr. Manilow to make his 8 PM Rose Garden show, having already performed the valiant deed of belting out LOOKS LIKE WE MADE IT!!! as Beatrice's head pops out.

how 'bout it, Barry?

storybook dream

during last night's dream i was at work at the library, but not in the usual way things happen there. i had to photocopy the reference desk schedule, but someone started it ahead of me and had screwed up by making it on the wrong size of paper and making way too many copies. and then we were all in a meeting, but we were sitting on the floor and i kept being bothered by the antics of a couple of coworkers who were tumbling around. (shades of boo's kindergarten?) everyone was dressed in black polo shirts and sweatpants, and the content of the meeting was banal. in my annoyance and boredom i grabbed a book of fairy tales and was surprised to find that i could pluck the delicate, fluffy clothing out of it, and put it on. i started wearing layered tutu-ish pink skirts and embroidered jackets straight from the book. there were little notes in the book from my english grandmother encouraging me to find these things, as well as some large cut-glass bottles of perfumes and a pair of shoes that looked like lampworked glass bottles. "have you done something sparkly?", my grandmother had written on top of one of the pages.

who knew, i'm cinderella.

may i have an exception, please?

good news: husband starts great new job at end of this month.

kinda good news: much better health insurance starting dec 1.

but there's a glitch: new health insurance does not have current midwives' practice or hospital where we intend to deliver in their network.

so i am: calling the hospital billing people trying to figure out if which makes more sense: paying more out of pocket, or switching providers and hospitals when i'm 8 months pregnant.

what i'd like: permission to have just one beer, please?


update: have talked to very helpful benefits person at hospital. they're adjusting my rates to come closer to what i'd pay if the hospital was in-network. (and actually, i think this will wind up being less than my current crapola insurance's in-network deal!)

new question: may i have a glass of champagne to celebrate the relief?

a fine author

my son's kindergarten class has a lot of worksheet assignments. one is to read a book (they have buckets at their tables to choose from, including math, science, and poetry), then draw a picture based on the book, copy the title, and write a very brief description of the picture - even if it's a word or two, and they're encouraged to look through the book for words to use. sometimes this kind of exercise is done free-form, where they're making up the story instead of reading a book.

a couple of days ago my son came home with a sheet, and the 'words' he wrote were just jibberish. he hadn't copied the title in any legible way, and the writing below the picture was equally inscrutible. we told him we knew he could do better - especially since we've seen him copy words when he's wanted to write them. he said he was told it was 'okay'. the problem stems from the wide range of abilities in the class - there are several kids who are completely new to writing, and they get told it's okay to copy down a couple of letters, but those who are more capable don't necessarily get pushed to do more. we told him we wanted to see better work from him, since we knew he could do it.

so yesterday he comes home with a free-form story picture. i think from the picture he was trying to describe going trick-or-treating with his friend, felix. the four lines of writing space were filled up, although the bottom three were jibberish again (he told us they say "blahdeblahblah"). the first line? "I WENT POOP."

a fine author.