Updates

1. We still don't have our laptop back. So no photos of the snow covering our Halloween decorations out on the lawn. The snow that cancelled all of our weekend plans. Grrr.

2. Auto correct is the devil.

3. It's soup season. I love soup. Yesterday we made 8 quarts of vegetable beef soup. I'm curious to see how long this will last us. Especially considering it's damn good and I can't stay out of it.

4. It's Halloween, y'all! Best holiday of the year! Trick or treat is tonight! Hope you have a good one.

Can a Fetus Have Anger Issues?

Can the unborn have rage issues?
Can infants have inch long claws?
Can a human female be accidentally impregnated by a groundhog?  (baby was created in a Dr office, you never know!)

These are the questions that roll thru my mind at moments like this.  Moments where I swear it feels like Mongo is trying to burrow his way to freedom.  Surely my womb can't be all that bad.  I have been assured by a few sources that these disturbing movements happen and he can't possibly do either of us any damage.  But Lord, it don't feel natural.

Perhaps all those naughty little fantasies of mine have come true and Hugh Jackman came around to donate his Wolverine sperm to me.  Yes, this is how I will think of it.

I Has iPAD

Hubby held true to his foolish statement and took me out to get an iPad while best buy was having a special this weekend! The laptop is still in the shop and we hope to get it back by Friday, but that might be wishful thinking. All of this led to my husband saying something so shocking that I could barely believe the words had escaped his mouth.

"In a few years we may have to bite the bullet and just get an apple laptop. I'm tired of all these problems we keep having with windows compatable products. Pieces of crap."

This from the mouth of a diehard "Apple is for Hipsters" man. Wow.

So I is happy and fumbling around on my new toy. And I'm happy to now have my own copy of Plants vs. Zombies!

Score & Fail

Score:  Craigslist is a good thing.  I have started looking for those larger baby items (stroller, pack & play, etc.) on Craigslist since the yard sale route seems to be producing items that are a little too well loved and broken in.  Wednesday night I scored a really nice high chair for $30!  It has 2 dishwasher safe trays, adjustable seat position so you can lean the baby back to sleep if he nods off, adjustable straps and height, and it's GREEN!  I am trying to get everything in a green color pattern so it can be reused.. . you know. . .if we decide to go thru this PCOS journey all over again. 

Fail:  Our laptop is in the shop getting the power supply fixed.  This is really sad considering we just bought this laptop in April.  So we will be without a home computer till end of next week.  Which means yes, I am using my office computer to do this right now.  Oops.  Perhaps this will help ween me off the internets a little bit.  Or the husband can see this as the perfect time to gift me with my gestation gender reward! 

Yes, he was serious when he said girl child would yield me nothing.  So I'm holding him to his promise for baking a boy.  :)

Say Goodbye to the Pink

As promised, I got rid of the pink blog design.  No more pink everywhere.

Why?

We're having a boy!


Yeah, I'm stupid excited.  Now where's that ipad Morgan said he would buy me if I gestated him a son?

Strasburg Railroad Trip

The annual scenic train ride was this Sunday in Strasburg, Pa.  Amish country.  The land of horse poop and butter churns.  Also the home of this old steam engine and restored passenger cars.

It was a quick 45 minute ride past farms, pumpkin patches, and a park.  Just long enough for the boys to enjoy a drink and for Karen and I to trade cameras for couples shots.  Speaking of which - Yes, Morgan is wearing a Hamburglar t-shirt and I broke out my maternity Halloween shirt early.  Deal with it.  (actually people were stopping me all day to ask about the shirt and take pictures.  Mehe)

I now have a new appreciation for steam engines and the power that is required to move them.  Too bad my camera batteries were crapping out when they first started it.  It was pretty impressive.  But I did manage to get a few seconds of video.

One train ride isn't good enough for boys with gin in them.  So yeah.  This happened.

They also have a really nice train museum which we enjoyed going through.  I'll skip the mind numbing detail and just say they have lots of trains.  And model trains.  And a train yard to walk around looking at old, rusting retired trains.

But no pooping in the retired trains!

Then it was off to The Amish Village.  Which essentially was a tourist trap with sad, sad little animals.  Lets ignore that and look at the gayness.

Love these boys.

Captain of Industry

Yesterday was a hell of a lot of fun.  I'll be able to post about it later, but wanted to share this one thing this morning.  "Nothing like gut rot gin and the smell of burning coal.  Ahhhh, smells like Industry!"

Yard Sale Hit and Miss

A month ago I woke my husband up on a Saturday at some god awful hour with the excuse of we were going yard sale shopping.  He was not happy.  An hour later, I was not happy.  That day was a total waste of time.  Oh, there was baby stuff to be had.  If you don't mind poop stains, mold growing on strollers, or food bits from the previous owner still clinging to every surface.  To say I was disappointed would be an understatement.

Today, the yard sale concept redeemed itself.  We gave it one more try and walked away with a few gender neutral outfits, a wipe warmer, a fancy nursing cover, and a few other odds and ends.  No large items like pack & plays or strollers, but I still walked away a happy woman.  It's a start.

Hopefully there will be more yard sales happening in the coming weeks.  Cause we find out what this little Mongo is in 3 days!  And then the outfit madness will begin.

You Can Buy Funeral Supplies at Costco

I learned this little fact while shopping the Costco website for cookie packs to give away as tenant treats on Black Friday.  You can get caskets, urns, flowers, and other decorative funeral items at very reasonable prices.  Just make sure you order your casket by 12 noon to ensure timely delivery.  Not sure why, but this creeps me out so much.

I also learned, along with my work friend Candace, that our conversations in her office can be heard across the hall in the Director of Operations office.  There's a vent for the AC system that apparently has perfect acoustics.  Oh No.  Candace's office is where most of our bitch sessions take place.  So for the past few years that Director has learned QUITE a bit about us that we normally would not share with others in the office.  It's a good thing we both have a high opinion of this man and I'm sure he knows this by listening to our conversations.  Otherwise, he could easily get us both in a heap of trouble.  Nonetheless, I think we need to find a new location for our therapeutic venting sessions.

And now we have a very touchy subject.  I have an employee who I should have been allowed to fire about 3 months ago due to customer complaints about attitude.  However, Crazy Ass Boss Lady would not let me fire her at that time because she didn't want us to be short handed.  Now we have 3 employees we are getting ready to bring in as seasonal help.  Now she is on the bandwagon for firing the girl.  Now is NOT the time.  This poor woman just got back from Puerto Rico because her mom passed away.  She is grieving.  And CABL wants to fire her as soon as she returns to work.  After an entire day of CABL coming to me every hour with a different approach for letting this woman go, I put my foot down and said I won't be a part of it.  If we ignored her poor performance for 3 months, we can ignore it till we get another complaint about her.  And of course CABL can't get her own hands dirty with such things, so my employee is safe for now.  But damn.  How heartless is that?

And that's all for now, folks!  Let's hope the rest of this week goes by fast, eh?

In Which I Question All That is Sacred

I work in a mall.  It is October 11th.  Sears is completely decked out and selling Christmas decorations and gifts.  Brookstone has been blasting the Christmas music all day.  Both The Children's Place and Gymobree have their holiday finest on display in the front window.

I can understand Santa being at the mall before Thanksgiving.  I can see the reasoning behind pre-Black Friday sales.  But not this.  It's not even Halloween yet, people! 

MIL is Moved, plus some random stuff

Her new place is much nicer than what she had described it as.  Yes, it is much smaller than her old place.  But it's nicer than any apartment I lived by myself at.

New and improved features include a handicap shower.  No more struggling to get in and out of the shower over the edge of a tub.  No more hurting her leg or risking a fall just to be able to do something we take for granted.

As expected, we had some issues getting her moved.  She was exhausted and moody.  But luckily we had a small army of Aunt's and Uncle's to help.  Thanks to them the entire move from picking up the U-haul to dropping it off later was only a span of 5 hours.  And she happily kicked us all out of her new place so she could go pass out.  So far so good.  We didn't loose any cats and her neighbors seem nice.

Now On To The Random Stuff

You know you're pregnant when in the early morning hours your loving husband offers to make you anything you want for breakfast and you ask him to reheat the leftover Chili Lime Hot Wings from Hard Times Cafe.  God it was good.

Speaking of pregnancy - I had my first really strong baby movement Saturday night.  It shocked me how much stronger that little bump was than anything else I have felt.  I laughed, but I was so grossed out by it at the same time.

And I end with a tiny apple.  Our grocery store was selling these, pictured next to a quarter for size comparison, and I simply could not resist the cute!

Entertain Me

Here is a collection of things that have been shared with me this week that I really liked.  First up - teaching jumping jacks to overseas military.

Next we have Bad Lip Reading.  Bad Lip Reading is a channel on Youtube that is endless fun.  I would try to explain, but it's easier to just watch and laugh.

You're Welcome.  Here, have a tissue to dry your tears of laughter.  Now get back to work.

18 Weeks and Counting

I had my 18 week OB appointment this morning.  Everything is fine and Mongo is bumping around and growing.  She confirmed the leg and hip issues I have been having for a week now are sciatic nerve pain.  I also talked to the Dr about this sharp pain I have been having on the right side of my uterus for a few days now.  She thinks it's just growing pains.  It could be related to the cyst I know I have on the right side, but she didn't check it today.  That will get done at my 20 week anatomy scan.

That's right!  The much anticipated 20 week anatomy ultrasound and gender determination will occur on Oct 18th!

Anyone care to give a guess?  What do you think, boy or girl?

Beef Bourguignon

We broke out the cookbook today.  To be more exact, we broke out the Julia Child Beef Bourguignon recipe.  My God.  No really.  I had no idea it was this good.  If you have a few hours to kill do yourself a favor and make this.  If you really want to impress someone have them over for dinner and serve this.  If you want to induce a food coma of ecstasy, serve this.

Let us begin.

You'll need to hit the grocery store and the liquor store if you happen to live in a state where the two can't be purchased at the same place.  Like Maryland.  And pick up some crusty bread for sopping up sauce.  You'll thank me for that one.

You are going to do a lot of cooking in stages.  This seems wasteful.  But it builds a wonderful fond on the bottom of your pan and I think the end result is totally worth the extra effort.  Brown chopped bacon.

Remove bacon, brown cubed stew beef.  See the fond?

Remove meat, brown onions and carrots in same pot/drippings/FOND.

Now you can combine everything together again and deglaze with just about an entire bottle of red wine and add to that some beef stock.  We found unsalted beef stock to control the sodium level and I would do the same next time.

This is what you are left with.  A disgusting purple soup that really doesn't smell very good.  It looks like crap.  I was worried at this point.  But it's okay.  Shove it in the oven for two and a half hours and work on your onions and mushrooms in the meantime.  Cause at the end of that long wait, after you have stirred in your sauted mushrooms and onions, you have this.

Savory from the wine, beefy, sweet from the onion, and bread sopping good.  Eat it as a stew and make sure you have a comfy napping spot ready.  You'll need it when the food coma kicks in.

Venting is Supposed to Make You Feel Better

We had a big kids event today.  A carnival themed kids event.  We had roughly 300 families come thru the two hour event.  Now I will list the reasons why today made me hate Crazy Ass Boss Lady even more.

1.  We started the event 10 minutes late because CABL disappeared and we couldn't open the event until all the stations were set up and ready.  That would include the one CABL was supposed to be working.

2.  The game that I was working, a Plinko style carnival game, was by far the most popular at the event.  Because of this people were using all of their carnival tickets with me instead of using one ticket at each station.  We had warned CABL that this would likely happen, she didn't listen to us and laughed at the idea that someone would skip other stations.  Well it happened, and I had no back up because she refused to plan for this.

3.  Despite CABL being the closest person to me.  Despite CABL hearing all the yelling going on at my station.  Despite the fact that the event was over and I still had a line 35 people deep.  She decided she was done working and went back to the office to eat her lunch instead of helping me.

4.  The prizes given away at my Plinko game were all inflated things.  I ran out of pre-inflated items and had to inflate each item as it was won.  I had to use a hand pump to do this.  A very difficult to use hand pump that requires MUCH force to use.  Which is something I should not be doing considering I am pregnant.  CABL was eating lunch.  Thank God one of my employees and eventually Candace came over to help and I didn't have to use the pump for too long.

5.  After staying at the event a good 40 minutes after it ended to get thru the line of people who wanted to use all of their tickets at the Plinko game, we were finally done.  CABL was still eating her lunch.

6.  Exhausted, thirsty, angry, and sweaty we all made our way back to the office to pack up and go home for the day.  CABL comes out of her office still chewing on something and asks how things went.  Apparently my death stare wasn't good enough of an explanation.

7.  I explained to CABL that I should not have been using that hand pump.  She didn't understand why me being pregnant would make any difference at all.  You know, cause her pregnancy was the most wonderful time of her life and she never had to do anything differently.  To which I reminded her that I have had complications in the past, that I am an infertility patient, and that I am following my Dr's suggestions very carefully.  She still didn't understand.

Yeah, that was my afternoon in a nutshell.  I still don't feel much better.  I would really enjoy my job and everything about it if only I had a different boss.  One that would listen to reason.  One that was just a little understanding.  One that was not crazy.  I can dream, can't I?