39 weeks.

I took this Thursday morning before we went to the hospital. Needless to say, I still look about the same right now. Not a great picture, but it gives you an idea of how much my belly has grown since the last photos I posted at around 30 weeks.



In other news, a red-shouldered hawk landed on the corner of our deck this morning, which was pretty neat. He was a big fella. I didn't have my camera handy, sadly.

GAAAH! I stepped on a bug this morning...

...in my BARE FEET!

*barf*

I seriously thought I was going to lose it. I'm always a little gaggy in the mornings when I first get up anyway, and this DID NOT HELP.

I think it was already dead, but I couldn't look at it again after I realized what it was. I just had to leave it for Jon to get (or one of the animals to eat) later.

So nasty. I don't recommend it.

Doin' battle

We had switched to a new cell phone company last month, and before doing so, I had called our old company to verify when our contract would be up and to make sure we wouldn't get hit w/an early termination fee. Well, I found out that when Jon had to get a replacement phone about 1.5 yrs after we initally set up the contract, that had extended his contract for an additional 2 years! So his line wasn't set to expire until 2009...however, this extension was never disclosed to us when he got the phone. So after talking w/the rep, he said he'd go ahead and adjust the date and make notes on the account to indicate that both line's contracts were up at the same time, and that there wouldn't be any sort of fees. Great, right?

I called back a few days later before we actually set up service w/the new company just to verify AGAIN that the notes were there, and that the changes had been made, and there were no problems. Again, I was assured that everything was good.

So yesterday, I get home from work and in the mail is a bill from the old company, which included -- guess what -- a $200 early term fee on Jon's line!

I was livid.

I got on the phone, spoke w/a nice girl who was able to locate all the same notes as the previous people, and she says that she has to xfer me to the cancellations dept, as they're the only people who can issue the credit. OK.

I get xferred to cancellations, and all of a sudden, ALL the notes that everyone else had been able to see w/no issues had magically disappeared! There just weren't ANY notes there validating anything that I was claiming, and there was no way to credit the $200 back.

I lost it. BIG time. Up till that point, I'd been keeping myself in check pretty well, even though I was pissed. But that pushed me over the edge. And when I asked to speak w/the guy's supervisor, he thought it would be a great idea to HANG UP on me.

Wrong move, buddy.

I called back, asked for a supervisor immediately, explained the situation to the guy, and he wound up not only crediting back the early term fee, he wiped out the entire balance on the account.

That was 1 of just 3 calls I had to make to various companies last night to get crap like this taken care of. The other ones went much more smoothly ;)

What not to call your new medicine.

There's a commercial I've seen for a new acid reducer that's out on the market, and the name of the drug is AcipHex.

It's pronounced "Ass-effects". Whose brilliant marketing idea was that?

Anyway. I worked more in the spare room today, and somehow, it looks worse now than it did when I started. I cleaned a bunch of stuff out of the dresser, cleaned out what I could reach in the closet w/o having to climb, and put all the baby stuff away. I have a ton of stuff piled up ready to go to Goodwill later this week.

By the way, if you don't know about this already, I highly recommend using It's Deductible from TurboTax to help track any charitable donations you make throughout the year. It's great b/c they actually will price donations for you, like clothes and household stuff, so you don't have to do the research yourself. Makes it nice when tax time rolls around, because it tells you exactly what your deduction is.

Some general updates

The child has been doing some internal gymnastics today... either that or she's just trying to pummel me to death from the inside :)

I discovered tonight that I have the grossest varicose vein on the back of my left calf. At least I think that's what it is... it's hard to see. Yay pregnancy! From what I've read, though, it should go away after I give birth.

In other news, I'm liking my new job at work quite a lot (aside from one woman I have been dealing with who is SUCH a thorn in my side). So that's a good thing. I don't know yet if it's just the allure of doing something new, or if I really like it. Hard to say this early on.

I've been cleaning (okay, nesting!) more over this past weekend. The desk is FINALLY organized, save a stack of papers I have to file. I got a new (bigger) organizer caddy thing at Target, and it's awesome... just what I needed. I've been keeping the kitchen much cleaner.. dishes in the dishwasher every night when I get home from work, counters tidy. And I cleaned out and organized the fake closet off the kitchen last night... you can actually FIND stuff in there now, which is a minor miracle. I had done a good deal of cleaning in what will be Eleanor's room a few weeks ago, but there's still a ton of work to do in there, so I think that's my next project.

Weird things I found while cleaning tonight.

-an old school Dr Mario cartridge for the original Game Boy. I have no clue where it came from. I had a Game Boy years and YEARS ago, when I was like 14.

-travel documents from trips that we took close to 5 years ago. Really, there is no need for those to be sitting around. Into the shredder they went!

-our engagement photos! Not really weird, but just unexpected.

-our rental agreement from Florida... noooooooooooooo! Shredded!

-tons and tons of pictures that have never been filed, including some from 1999! Sheesh!

Several things.

1) We're back from vacation, and we had SUCH a great time. More on that later.

2) Apparently while we were ON vacation, we left the back door unlocked the whole time. Nice work.

3) I had a horrific migraine the other night... so bad that I was throwing up. As a result, I discovered today that I now have a lovely busted blood vessel in my left eye. It's right in the corner, though, so you can't really see it unless I turn my head (or my eye, I guess).

4) I'm actually starting to SHOW, finally! Yay for not just looking fat (or somewhat, anyway). Also, I've started to feel her kicking around in there a little bit, which is neat :)

5) I got my promotion at work! Woohoo! Of course, I missed the training since I was on vacation, and while I was there on Sunday, I missed Monday due to above referenced migraine, and am off today. So I'm sort of behind the curve. Oh well. I'm a quick study.

Turn up the heat

Lately, we've been having some seriously cold weather, at least for NC. I know all you people up in the northeast and midwest are used to these kind of Arctic temperatures, but 22 degrees (the current outside temperature) is bone-chilling cold to me. Maybe we should get a gas portable heaters...it would certainly make things toastier in the house, where we have hardwood floors... SO COLD in the mornings. A portable heater would also be a good thing to have if the power went out, heaven forbid. We could shut off the back of the house and be pretty comfortable in the living room, probably.

A perfectly lovely Saturday.

I met Sara for lunch in Durham today. We went to PF Chang's, which was delicious as always. Afterwards, we went over and poked around at the mall for a little while. I went to Macy's and managed to find another sweater like the one I shrunk to Barbie proportions in the dryer...and it was on sale, so woohoo!

The Hurricanes won tonight, after getting off to a sluggish start. My man Rod Brind'Amour had 2 goals :)

All in all, a very nice Saturday. And I still have one more day to sleep late. Woo!

Never let it be said that cake doesn't keep.

It's a long story, but when we moved to FL, we didn't take the top of our wedding cake... we left it at mom and dad's in their freezer. So we missed eating it on our 1st anniversary, and just decided to wait till our 2nd.

Fast forward to last month. We were both sick on our anniversary and didn't feel much like eating anything, much less cake. Then my schedule got switched around at work for 3 weeks, so I have been working days, while Jon was working nights. We FINALLY had a night off together last night where one or the other of us wasn't sick, so we hacked into it.

Chocolate cake w/peanut butter and chocolate ganache and buttercream icing! It tasted pretty good, believe it or not.

Jon ate my pizza, and as retalliation, I decided to burn down the kitchen.

Well, not really, but that's kind of the events of the evening.

I'd ordered pizza last night, and was all set to eat the rest of it tonight, only to find an empty box when I got home. Boooo.

So I preheated the oven to at least have the leftover cheesesticks, and I didn't know what else. I went to put them in, and there was a big-ass flame on the bottom of the oven!

!!!!!

Apparently some foodstuff had fallen down by the heating element and caught aflame. I was able to blow it out, but it scared be bejebus out of me.

Now I'm traumatized, and have ordered a replacement pizza. No more cooking tonight.

Humming along...

This week, Wednesday *is* actually HumpDay for me, since I'm working a human schedule.

I'm glad we didn't buy any candy (we're kind of Hallowe'en scrooges)... we haven't had a single trick-or-treater! I thought we'd probably have a few rings of the ol' doorbell, but it's going on 8:30, and nothing! I wouldn't expect anything at this point. We didn't even seen any little spooks walking around as we were driving to/from dinner. Maybe kids don't go out as much as they used to... more parties and church funtions and whatnot.

We're watching the Canes game, which during the first people was terribly uneventful. Here's hoping the 2nd period isn't so sluggish.

Much better today!

I tell ya, drugs are amazing things.

I'm still coughing a good deal, and my voice comes and goes, but I'm really feeling much better compared to two days ago. Quite a turn. And I actually managec to get a good night's sleep last night too as I stole one of Jon's Ambiens. So I probably was coughing, but I just didn't know it.

It's probably helping that I'm in a training class at work all week (actually for 2 weeks after this as well), so my talking is being kept to a minimum. Resting the voice is a good thing.

Since I've been sick, the house has become a wreck. I couldn't be bothered to clean over the weekend... I kept up w/the laundry and that was about it. I've been trying to weed out my desk tonight... I can see the surface in spots now, so that's a plus!

Let me talk to you about a few things.

1) All-Dressed Chips. These are possibly the most delicious, delectable potato chips ever made. "What?" you say. "I've never heard of these treats." Well, that's because Ruffles, for whatever reason, only sells them in Canada. This is a travesty. People in the States like freaky-flavored chips just as much as the next country, and I have little doubt that they would be a big seller. There's actually an online petition to bring them here, which Jon and I have both signed.

2) Disposable placemats for little ones. Let me tell you how much I hate these things. A freaking lot, that's how much. Really, if your child needs a placemat at a restaurant, is it that much trouble to roll up a plastic one and tuck it in your diaper bag? I understand that some things are for the sake of convienence, but this just takes the cake.

3) Jon and I are both still sick. It's been almost a week now of coughing, sore throats, fevers, chills, and general malaise. A trip to the doctor might be in the near future for both of us.

Happy Anniversary to us!

Today's our 2nd wedding anniversary. How did 2 years go by so quickly?

Unfortunately, Jon and I are both sick today, so we don't feel much like celebrating. We have to work anyway, so any celebration is sort of on hold till the weekend.

Here's a photo from our wedding day :)

Vermin!

I think we might have some kind of vermin in the walls (or possibly the ducts) of our house. I think this for a couple of reasons:

1) Lately, the dogs are entranced with the air vents. They stare at them, and sometimes whine at them. While they are complete nutters, this is pretty unusual behavior, even for them.

2) I thought I heard something scrabbling by the back door the other day. Now, granted, it could have been something out on the deck (very possible, in fact), but the dogs heard it too. They stood guard for a long while, sniffing and snorting and pawing at the baseboards.

So we're going to get some traps or something to put under the house and in the utility room while we're gone to Canada. I hate the idea of using traps, but we don't really have a choice, especially if we're not here to empty a humane trap. Not very humane if the mouse gets in there and just suffocates to death b/c no one's home to take him out.

We're surrounded on 2 sides by woods, and this is an older house, so I'm not really surprised about the whole thing. I just hope they don't get into the duct work and die and start stinking up the joint.

What to do, what to do...

Our anniversary is coming up in a couple of weeks. I don't know what I'm going to be getting Jon yet. He's the kind of guy that if he wants something, he doesn't want to wait to get it, and he usually just goes on out and buys it. So I sometimes have a hard time coming up with gifts for him. I kind of like this Route 66 clock myself.

A vast improvement.

Here's how our closet looks now after I attacked it last night. A big improvement, wouldn't you say?





I should mention that it's not 100% done yet. For instance, I have a number of pairs of shoes that aren't in there yet, and there's some stuff from the other bedroom (luggage, etc) that I need to put on the highest shelves. But it's much better. I should also mention I hauled out a whole garbage bag full of sheer crap, including some medicines that expired back in '03. Oops.





I figure if I keep the stepstool sitting open and ready to go, just tucked away, I won't be as apt to just sling stuff up on to the shelves, since it'll be within easy reach.

The beast that is our closet.

Our closet is a hot mess. It has been on the verge of driving me crazy for awhile now, and I've got to do something about it before it seriously sends me over the brink. Have a look:



Not great. And yeah, those are CLEAN towels on the floor to the right. We have no linen closet, so all that stuff goes in there. We also have no BATHROOM closets, so all THAT stuff goes in there too. It's a lot of stuff.

See? Stuff.





Part of the problem (for me, at least, is that the shelfs are too high to really be practical. The highest one is REALLY out of my reach, and with the lower shelf, I kind of just tend to chuck things up there haphazardly with not a lot of organization. Which isn't a great system in a closet that sort of has to function as 3 closets.





So it's overhaul time. I'm going to get in there and do some serious organizing, culling out, and general cleaning. Wish me luck. I'll post photos when I'm done as well.

PIc-a-nic table

With the summer almost over, it seems a silly time to be thinking about deck furniture. But I guess this really is probably the time of year to get it, since it'd likely be on sale. We gave some thought this year to getting a picnic table for the backyard, but for what they are, they're pricey! If we got one, I'd have to take a look at Picnic Table Covers. I definitely wouldn't want it getting all weathered and worn out from the sun and the rain. Gotta keep it nice and new.