poker? i hardly know her!

tried acupuncture this afternoon as a way to kickstart real labor. have a follow-up appointment on saturday if i'm still pregnant then.

i've never tried acupuncture before. really wasn't bad.

deck us all....

Deck us all with Boston Charlie,
Walla Walla, Wash., an' Kalamazoo!
Nora's freezin' on the trolley,
Swaller dollar cauliflower alley-garoo!

Don't we know archaic barrel,
Lullaby Lilla boy, Louisville Lou?
Trolley Molly don't love Harold,
Boola boola Pensacoola hullabaloo!

Bark us all bow-wows of folly,
Polly wolly cracker n' too-da-loo!
Hunky Dory's pop is lolly gaggin' on the wagon,
Willy, folly go through!

Donkey Bonny brays a carol,
Antelope Cantaloup, 'lope with you!
Chollie's collie barks at Barrow,
Harum scarum five alarum bung-a-loo!

- Walt Kelly.

the baby is a tease

i am really getting sick of the daily 'here's some contractions for ya, now i'm done' pattern. by this point i'll probably ignore them when the real thing happens. "yeah right baby, you're not playing me for a fool any longer!"

i'm mildly annoyed because i'm coming down with a cold. some family was in the midwifery waiting room while we waiting more than half an hour for my appointment (the practice was having a particularly chaotic day), and among the four kids was a boy about a year younger than boo. boo starts playing with the boy, after which the father tells me that boy has a cold. i pull boo to the other side of the room. father allows boy to play with all doorknobs in the place. i ask the receptionist for a sanitizing wipe the second the family leaves. i'm sorry, but if your kid has a cold and you have another parent around, don't stay in the freaking waiting room full of pregnant women!

another moment of 'ewww' - for some reason, i couldn't find the breast pump i used last time. i know i kept it. but i bought a manual one just in case i need one again. i researched them on amazon and saw that lovely 'new and used starting at....' pricing. used??? eewwwww...... eeked me out more than the concept of used bluetooth headsets for cellphones. ewwww. ewwww!

dorota's easy quiche recipe

made this tonight with asparagus and swiss. yum!

-1 frozen deep-dish pie crust
- 3 eggs
- 1 cup milk
- 1 Tablespoon flour
- 1/4 teaspoon salt
- 1/8 teaspoon pepper
- "a dash" of ground nutmeg
- about 1 1/2 cups grated cheese (Swiss, cheddar, whatever...) *note: too much cheese can make it runny!
- either fried onion (or green onion)
- a bunch (a cup or so?) of cubed ham, or cooked turkey, chicken, whatever... spinach, mushrooms? whatever sounds good.

bake pie crust. Mix up eggs, then mix that up with all the other stuff, and pour into hot crust. Bake at 350 for 35-45 or so minutes, stick a knife into the center and if it comes out clean it's done.

--let it sit for some time to cool, otherwise it'll be runny if you try to serve it right away.



this was really easy, as described. i think earlier quiche failures stemmed from an intimidating recipe in a old version of the moosewood cookbook, and a bizarre real simple magazine version that used eggbeaters and a bottle of blue cheese salad dressing. i also tend to add too much cheese to just about anything, and probably tried putting in too much veggies as well.

nothing yet

just a bunch o' contractions, like last night.... not at the magic 10-minutes-apart, usually 20, but not super-consistent.

had a midwifery appointment this afternoon, they've checked and not much is actually going on. but they kinda hinted that this on-again, off-again contraction thing tends to happen a couple of days before the real thing....

pattycake, pattycake, bakerman

realized something yesterday:

boo enjoys cooking quite a bit, particularly soup and cookies. while he'll chow down on a couple of bowls of soup for lunch or dinner after we make it, he doesn't eat so many cookies. currently the kitchen is overflowing with gingerbread and chocolate chip, but he'll still ask for an oreo instead.

miracle on lombard st

boo and i came home after school yesterday to find that the drug house two doors down has been boarded up.

turns out that the nonprofit land trust that owns the land under the house was able to evict the homeowner (who would have been in foreclosure on her mortgage anyway) on the grounds that illegal activities at the property violated her agreement with the trust. i talked to the exec director of the trust, who was apologetic that the process took so long - they had been working with their legal team for five months to make this happen.

well, it was faster than multiple calls to the police.

the activities in the house were worse than we had suspected. based on a conversation with a neighborhood (but alas, not my neighborhood) cop, we thought it was pot - all the activity was at night, nobody around during the day, people seemed to be carrying baggies. lo and behold, it was crack and prostitution.

last night was the first night in many, many months with no driveup traffic on our street. even the amount of driveby traffic seemed to be less. "honey, look at the nothing!" i exclaimed to my husband.

the land trust will buy the house back from the mortgage company, renovate it, and resell it over the summer.

it's a huge, huge relief to us, and we are incredibly grateful to the portland community land trust for doing this. best holiday present we could have received.

no news = no news

for the billions of you who read this,

nothing's going on. no baby yet. a bunch of 'holy heck it's a contraction' but nothing in a pattern yet. i'm running around like a headless chicken getting last-minute stuff done, trying not to panic as the new house stuff seems to be getting delayed, and as usual trying to figure out how to be in 3 places at once.

so i'm takin' half a unisom, and hoping for some sleep.

i'm too sexy for PWC

a former coworker emailed me to say that the filter on the county's internet connection has blocked my blog for sex acts.

i feel so..... dirrrrty.

less hysterical, but still in pain

i knew i was miserable and nuts yesterday, so i put off making a decision on this until i could try to sleep and see if i felt better this morning. i'm not in quite as excruciating pain as yesterday, but still in enough pain that i made the call and have stopped working from now until sometime this spring....

i love my job, i love what i do, and there's a part of me that truly has a hard time letting go of it. but i can't walk without wincing! it's time to give up and stay off my feet as much as possible.

stupid, stupid, stupid

just got back from midwives appointment.

no, they won't change my due date, despite what the ultrasound that THEY ORDERED BECAUSE THEY THOUGHT I WAS TOO LARGE FOR THEIR DUE DATE said. ("late ultrasounds are notoriously inaccurate." good, because i will not pay for it when the bill comes.) gee, maybe i could consult with their doctor next week and talk about scheduling a c-section. however, since they're not changing my due date, and they won't want to do a c-sec until i'm 39 weeks, which they think is a month from now. as opposed to 2 weeks from now.

oh, and the pain which keeps me from sleeping? take tylenol! and ambien??

panic

thankfully i'm headed to a midwives' appointment this morning.

i've had insomnia throughout the pregnancy, but last night was something else. (it's 5:30 am and should still be 'tonight', actually.) i'm really miserably uncomfortable, and the heating pad and tylenol have done nothing. i usually haven't been in pain to the point that i can't sleep, and i certainly haven't been in pain to the point of tears until now. i know the hormones are going bezerk right now - my skin's breaking out again, i can feel that i'm getting ready to lactate again - but i'm not going to be able to get through much more of this. supposedly, this isn't labor yet. we had 'childbirth refresher class' over the weekend, where my main concern was being able to recognize labor since i didn't go through it at all last time.

i worked sunday and although i'm scheduled for several more shifts between now and the 17th - which i though was a safe end-date for working, when i was due mid-jan - i think i'm going to have to bail.

a not-so-small part of me is hoping that they either tell me i'm dilating and this will be over very soon, or for some reason they feel they should schedule a delivery well before the end of the month. as it is, i'm worried about keeping myself together this morning while getting boo ready for school and getting him to class. i could handle it if i didn't have to talk to anyone, but running the phalanx of kindergarten moms asking me how i am doing is a little more than i can deal with right now. that balls into the horrible feeling of disappointment i have about how that's gone, socially - it's a tense and divided group, essentially split between those who put up with Disastified Mom's crap and those who seek to avoid it - and I think that if we weren't all tiptoeing around the toxic one, some better friendships might have been made. As it stands now, however, I don't feel like I can call on anyone for help in that group, ang g-d knows nobody's offered any. Maybe if anyone had said, hey, what are your plans for boo when you're in the hospital delivering, can I help with that, I'd feel a hell of a lot better. Or at least able to tolerate a half-dozen half-hearted 'how are you feeling' queries every freaking morning.

6 am now. maybe i can feign some sleep for an hour.