I'm going to keep this essentially friends only, please comment to be added.  I'm not picky and even if I don't know you, I'll probably add you if you just tell me why you want me to.  I just don't want to have to worry about censoring myself when blowing off steam about irritating people in my life (one of the important functions of this journal), and I don't want pictures and information about myself and my family to risk falling into creepy hands.
Cheers!

The baby has graduating from tickling me to fully kicking me.  That didn't take long.  On Wednesday night, I was lying on the couch with my hand on my belly when I felt a kick -- with my hand.  I was not expecting it so I wasn't sure if I imagined it or what, but I started concentrating and about five minutes later, I felt three right in a row.  I was sure John would be able to feel them but he wasn't there.  When he got home the baby wasn't doing too much, so we waited until last night to spend some time with him trying to feel them.  He had very little patience so about 30 seconds after he got himself all settled with his hand on my belly, and nothing happened, he pulled out a $100 bill and started rustling it around, saying, "Come on baby, most babies don't make that in a year!"  The baby doesn't care about money evidently (cool!), but a while later John got to feel it and it was a really neat moment.

Only 10 more days until we get to (hopefully) find out what it is!

18w4d

I just had a really dumb thought.  I wonder if we brought our year-old wedding cake to a restaurant and wanted to have it for dessert on our anniversary, they would call it "cakage?"

I know, sorry.  But I'm working alone so I couldn't bounce that stupid pun off Lauren.

:-)

Wah.  Another migraine.  I had the one yesterday but I did pretty well after drinking coffee.   Just before I was about to go to bed last night I got the sparkly shimmery vision disturbance that means one is coming down the line.  I actually thought to myself, "ooh, at least I can tell it's going to be on the left side of my head, that's a welcome break."  (The last three have been in the same spot on my right and I felt like I was wearing a hole through my head.)

Pity me, for I have this pathological unwillingness to be perceived as flaky or irresponsible but there is just nothing I can do about this.  I've missed way too much work for my taste (this is day 4 in a week and a half, and I only made up about a day all told by working at home and on the weekend) and therefore this morning I forced myself to churn out a report from home, even though I don't think that was the best idea because I feel worse now.  I especially don't want my boss to think I'm succumbing to slackitude because I'm going to be leaving when the baby is born - I don't want him to view me as he has several employees who have left in the past, where during their two weeks both of us agree that we need to watch them extra carefully because they don't give a shit anymore.  In truth, I don't have a fire for my job anymore and I am looking forward to leaving, but I'll be damned if anybody can say I'm not doing just as good a job for the remainder of my time.  So I stress.

I don't have a heck of a lot that I can articulate about this, but I just feel so very sad about Steve Irwin's untimely death.  What a passionate conservationist, proud father and all around good guy.  Just imagine what a wonderful world it would be if more people were like him.  John and I have had such a fondness for him over the years that when we refer to him we just say "Steve" because he was our #1 Steve - seriously!  We felt like we knew him.  When I found out about his passing yesterday, John was out but when he got home I told him the news.  All I had to say was, "Steve died" and he knew what I meant.

Then today, my boss, who is not generally shy about talking about things he knows nothing about, came in and started blathering about how he would have been fine if he had just left the stingray's barb in him and not pulled it out.  Um, I haven't bothered to check out this theory but I think the POISON flowing into his body would be a concern.  Even if he was right I probably wouldn't want to hear it because I just immediately had this internal pissed off response that my boss, who is not a naturalist by any stretch of the imagination, had the gall to second guess poor Steve about what the proper reaction is in that situation.  It's just that to him, it was a news item and to me it was much more.  I can't explain it.

This just really touches me.  Wah.  So sad.

For no particular reason:

I like:
* sneezing.
* getting to the end of folding all the laundry when you can finally match up all the stray socks.

I do NOT like:
* when people prematurely stop the microwave and leave the unused time sitting on the display so you don't know what time it is.
* when people don't move to the side so you can comfortably pass on the sidewalk but rather, continue to barrel towards you as if they own the place.  I usually try to almost run into people who do this.

Also, apropos of not much, I must divulge that my boobies are getting way out of control.  They're everywhere.  And it's not only that they're bigger, they also feel much denser and heavier.  But if you think that being married to me would allow you to touch them, at this point you would be wrong.

I am worth $1,762,236 on HumanForSale.com

I always thought you could only place a value of like 72 cents on a person for all their mineral makeup etc.? Although I do deal with the insurance business day in and day out...I think I'll go get myself a policy.

So two weeks ago I wiped out on the stairs while taking out the trash and twisted my knee really bad. I hoped it was a soft tissue thing but it hasn't gotten better at all and I'm still limping, can't straighten it fully, kills me on stairs, and I feel like it's going to give out all the time. So yesterday I went to the doctor and he said I need to go to an orthopedist and get an MRI and also have the orthopedist stick a needle in my joint and drain the fluid looking for blood.  That's not something I'm into but I suppose it's gotta be done.  I have had a really good streak -- I haven't had to get stuck with a needle (besides novocaine at the dentist, which for some reason I really don't mind) for 13 years!

I do have a needle phobia and some types of sticks are worse than others for me - the absolute worst would be getting blood drawn from my arm.  I can't even be touched in my inner elbow.  I thought about getting some kind of hypnosis or treatment to make me get over it (primarily because I know I'll have to do it when I have kids, which I want to do within about 1-2 years) but then I thought, "I can't do that!  They'll make me face it and go through it!"  Well, duh.

I'll be able to handle this knee-draining thing without going into a real panic, I think, but I'm still not looking forward to it.  But I just don't want this stupid injury to be the start of having a lifelong bad knee.  I don't know, if it's cartilage or a torn meniscus then I don't think there's much that can be done short of surgery.  Ugh.  But I shouldn't get ahead of myself.

John and I bought a washing machine yesterday. The thing is, we didn't really have to do it even though our old one broke, because our landlord is responsible for that and it was theirs to begin with. But, apparently we're so old and domesticated that we got thrilled by the idea of getting a really good one, and we knew the landlord would just replace it with the absolute bottom of the line model (at their leisure; they're not very good about that kind of thing. Good thing my husband is handy). So we went and spent around $750 after rebates on something that we totally didn't need to spend money on, and which isn't even fun or cool. (It is a really nice model, though!)

I think that's a good indication that we already have EVERYTHING, and now we're just consumers with some disposable income that we feel compelled to throw back into the mix. I still feel like the same college or even high school kid I was 5-10 years ago but around me everything has changed...John and I got married, moved out of the city to a bigger place in a regular type neighborhood, traded in our car for a total familymobile, and then of course we can't have less than one vehicle per capita if we're going to live where there are parking lots and everything's more spread out, so we bought a truck too. (Well, John is trying to get his business going so that's a really good move for that but still, it proves my point too - we're starting a business! Old!)

And now I own my own washing machine. I guess moving ourselves next time around was already a lost cause anyway.