can time go any slower?

welcome to my weekend.

i absolutely hate weekends when rob is gone. i can feel each second passing and each one is more and more painful. most people love weekends, they tidy up the house or spend lots of quality time with their friends and family. well, my house is tidy enough for my low standards and i'm about up to here with quality time with my own family.

i believe we're down to 11 days til rob gets back. honestly though it feels like forever...i have today (sunday) and then another weekend to go through, and (bonus!) a 4th of july to survive. i should plan some fun outing on the 4th, after all, i'll have a husband to put up with again soon. but i'm to the point in this pregnancy where i just feel like hiding indoors where it's cooler, less humid, and fewer neighbors to see my underwear when i bend over.

i do have a few things i'd like to do...
1. make a poster for rob...i have a cheapy 'welcome home' banner but i want to find some paper rolls and write 'daddy' on there. if it's not raining we might even hang it over the front door. although the thought of me balanced on a stepstool on the front step would just give the neighbors something to laugh themselves silly over. maybe we'll just get 2 sheets of posterboard and staple them together. probably cheaper.
2. go to the furniture store...i want to buy a recliner to put on our main level. i remember coming home from the hospital with cade, that first night all i wanted was a recliner to relax in. our sofa and overstuffed chair were too upright (my poor nether-regions :( ) and i wanted to put my swollen feet up. i wasn't ready to share a bed with rob AND cade yet, so i held cade most of the night...waking up at his every little twitch and sometimes just waking myself up b/c i was sure i had let go of him as i slept. and now that i think of it, my first night with reese was similar. rob had the bed b/c he had to work the next day so i took reese out to the sofa and we cuddled (? worried?) all night. neither of these nights resulted in much sleep for me, so i think a $600+ recliner would maybe allow me to drift off in comfort. and i need to buy another dresser. reese will be sharing a room with the baby and cade will be in a room by himself. the new dresser will be for reese, hopefully i can find something that goes with whatever headboard we might buy her in the future.
3. pick out new bedding for our bed. the cat threw up on our quilt and i have been unable to get the stains out. arg. plus our sheets have faded here & there from some strange facial creams that i used in the past. i can't believe i was putting something on my face that bleached the color of my sheets...i think it might have been the clearasil a few years ago. the sheets were a lilac color, matching some little flowers on the quilt. i'd love to find something similar, but i've kind of fallen in love with this minty teal color that i'm suddenly seeing everywhere. unfortunately, i'm seeing it in the LUXURY section of the bedding...i'm not paying $200 for a comforter and 2 shams. sorry folks. good thing it's summer and we don't need a quilt yet anyway. i doubt i'll be wearing clothes to bed here in a few weeks, that cool breeze from the ceiling fan feels pretty good on a fat belly.
4. edit some stuffed animal toys. reese has a big laundry basket in her closet full of stuffed animals. there's another box on the main level of stuffed animals. she plays with about 10-15 of them on a regular basis. so i'm thiking it might be safe to get rid of some? i mean, we have a dog & a cat in the house, do we really need these stuffed animals at all???


i've also added 'find a baby name' to my unofficial list of things to do. we have the 35,000 baby names book, and i've added it to my bedtime reading. i'm only to the Cs (i started this quest last night...rob is usually the vetoer for my names so i better have a long list ready) but i already really like 'ashlin.' does that sound like a boy's name? maybe i'm thinking ashton for a boy's name...but honestly, we have a girl named reese and a boy named cade, do we care? maybe we should name this girl william or michael and just dare people to look at us funny.

so, add ashlin, belinda, and brenna to my list. not sure about belinda...i have a cousin belinda but last night at 11pm, it sounded pretty.


***holy crap, i forgot another thing to add to the list...baby announcements! i still like to send out announcements to friends and family when babies are born. that way it's not MY fault that they don't know my kids' names at family reunions. it's their own fault for not reading the baby announcement! one of my cousins has 7 kids but truthfully, i only knew about 2 or 3 of their births. those were the kids that were born when my grandma was alive and grandma was the family phone tree caller. anyway, postage is 39 cents but i will be sending out announcements. there's more hope of presents then ;)

still hanging in there

i'm still here. just busy turning into a sweaty mess. i need to tie a fan with a battery pack onto me so i have airflow around me at all times. the temperature isn't too bad, it's the damn humidity. weatherbug and weather.com HAVE to be wrong when they say it's 45% humidity yet you can see a haze over the town. this is just the first few days of heat...i really hope i survive august. actually i hope my family survives august. i'm telling you now that it won't be pretty.

other than sweating and stinking up the place, life is going well. rob has just 15 days left before he heads home (to his 'hot' wife ;)) and the kids haven't killed each other yet, nor have i lost one of them at the mall. truthfully, that is one of my worries. that i'll turn around and one of them will have vanished and i'll have to call rob and say, 'i lost one of them.' he would be quite disappointed, esp b/c i'm not having anymore babies after this one. closed for business.

reese had her birthday last thursday. she's 4 now and it's amazing some of the things that come out of her mouth. she leaves me laughing 1/2 the time and shocked the other 1/2 of the time. just the other day i had to run downstairs and get some bras that had been hang-drying in the laundry closet. i came back upstairs to where the kids were and reese asked, 'did you have to go get your boobs, mom?' nope, the boobs i take with me everywhere, babe. i just told her i had to go get my bras and had a good laugh.

and i'm so proud of her. reese can wipe her own butt! woohoo! i think my child rearing duties are about done with her...she can feed herself, take her dishes to the sink, and wipe her butt...she's ready to move out. :)

cade's birthday is in about 3 weeks. he'll be 2 and i think he's responsible for most of my new grey hair that have popped up since rob has been gone. the problem with 2 year olds is that they get away with a lot, b/c they're so damn cute. i caught him crayoning on the walls yesterday and i was laughing too hard to be mad. ??? it was my own fault for dozing off during 'aladdin' while crayons were available to him. these kids really make life interesting...and profitable for my hair stylist. i plan on making an appt for the day after rob gets back.

crappy day or crappy mood...

i'm not sure which.

i know i'm highly emotional right now, and usually that comes across by being highly pissy with everyone. mostly my kids i'm ashamed to say. but it's starting to come across more and more.

things that have bugged me in the past 24 hours:

1. that smokers hang out right outside entrances/exits of buildings. can you step aside so some of us can CONTINUE breathing fresh air??? they're everywhere...walmart, the grocery store, the damn LIBRARY...hell, a grandpa was sitting in the pickup lane at my daughter's school SMOKING a cigarette on school property. i really hope the dumbass didn't litter too after he was done consuming his carcinogens. and i can't forget the lady who smoked a quick one in the supermarket bathroom and we were the next people to use it. you don't realize how strong and disgusting cigarette smoke is until you're pregnant. this is the SAME lady we saw finishing a cigarette outside the store about 7 minutes before.
2. that after spending almost $80 at subway for a sandwich platter and a wrap platter (and our dinner), i can't get a little assistance taking these big damn platters to my car. they see i'm pregnant with 2 annoying kids, yet they set the platters on the counter and say thank you and then walk away. how much would i have to spend to get some goddamn customer service?!?!? at least ASK if i need help. i probably would have refused, but at least ASK.
3. the kooky family at subway in front of me. a mom, dad and a 17-ish year old son. the line was ridiculously long (as always, arg) and the mom was standing next to me. suddenly she loses her balance, SMACKS ME IN MY UTERUS as she's trying to stop from falling, and ends up on her ass in front of me. i guess she just was stupid and fell down? whatever, but she didn't even realize she hit me (guess she thought it was the pop cooler behind me?!? you know how warm and squishy those are.) and therefore i got no apology from her. i almost started crying right there in subway b/c i was just so upset. but did i have the balls to say, 'hey, you hit me in the stomach, where's my apology?' i just took it. so i guess if you WANT an apology these days you have to ASK for it. is that just CRAP??? am i alone in thinking this? arg.
4. i'm taking everything PERSONALLY. on a parenting board that i've been a part of for almost 5 years, i'm seeing little comments directed at me. maybe it's time to step back from the boards before i say too much back...b/c honestly, they're just DIRECTED. i have a feeling it's all in my pissy little head. and that feeling makes me want to cry b/c then it's just proof that i'm loony. and stressed. did i say i'm stressed? i am.
5. the rest of my bitching pretty much just concerns people who are overly concerned about themselves and people who are in my way. there's a lot of people in both category...most of them are everyone at walmart.

and the worst part? i don't even have a husband to complain to. waaaaah. he's still gone. when we got home from the tummy smacking at subway, i had 2 messages on voice mail. i prepared myself, expecting to hear a message from rob saying that he'll be home on monday or something, that he failed the course. no, it was just subway telling me my fucking platters were done. i don't know how the hell i would have survived an 18 month deployment with rob gone.

but the bright spot in this day is that after worrying so much after the uterus-smacking, baby girl is busy rearranging herself. so she must be ok. and i have one more donut to finish off and maybe i'll be a little more ok.

did you miss me?

probably not.

oh well. i'm going to tell you all about what i've been doing since my last entry.

gardening:
i've been spending quite a bit of time outside, which surprises even myself. i moved our tomato patch to the other side of our yard (not an easy task, do you know how damn many rocks there are in connecticut?!?) and got those in the ground. i put a fancy planting around a utility pole that was in our yard (emphasis on WAS...2 weeks after finishing the planting, the city came & removed the damn pole...now i just have a circle in my yard...and the damn seeds aren't even growing into daisies like they were supposed to. arg).
i've been working on planting things around the house, to hide our foundation. it wasn't too long ago that i didn't even know that was the main purpose of putting plants around a house. i really thought it was a personal preference, either people wanted shit around their house or they preferred to see the concrete. now that i know BETTER, i've decided to plant some shit around our house. i'm pretty much planting whatever our elderly neighbor brings over. probably not a good idea since she spends a lot of her spring cutting back and pruning these plants. however, these plants are FREE. do you know how much plants cost these days?!?!? not cheap, my friend. even at walmart, they're not cheap. so now i have some mums, some lilly of the valley, some iris, and some kind of bush thing with yellow & green leaves (not a hosta, i know what those look like) taking root in the crappy rocky dirt around our house. good thing i have a big damn bag of mulch...it's not a 'planting' in my book til you can smell the cedar mulch.

growing a baby:
baby girl #2 is doing just fine so far. she's getting kind of lazy though, she usually doesn't wake up in the mornings til after i've eaten breakfast and she prefers long naps that tend to worry me. but usually i'm too busy dealing with the house or the kids to stop and think about the last time i felt movement from her. bedtime is still her favorite time to get active (of course).
at the ultrasound at the end of may, she was measuring just under 28 weeks (i was 26 weeks at the time) and was estimated at 2 lbs, 6 oz. she looks a lot like cade in the u/s pictures and is 100% girl. whew, so now i can pass along cade's baby stuff to some other deserving little boys. i wish i could keep it all though. going through reese's baby clothes in preparation for this baby, i remembered so much about every little outfit...even the ones where she had those 'up the back poop explosions'. sigh. but i'd rather see the clothes go to someone i know than end up being pawed through at goodwill. and yes, i am a control freak!
still no names yet for this baby. reese came up with the following names though, in case we needed some help. she added: vanilla, expert, kevin, and duchess. i hope rob & i can come up with something a bit more mainstream...if we end up with a vanilla peters, you'll know who dreamed it up.

killing the car:
rob's acura has bitten the dust. only for a short period though. why is it that i cannot keep a car's battery alive for more than 4 months? when rob was gone for his 6 month deployment, my task was to start up his jetta every so often. i would have driven it but sarah doesn't do stick. (ha ha.) by the time rob got back, the battery was dead and it had to be towed to the dealership to be recoded & etc. i don't remember how much it cost, but it was more expensive than learning how to drive stick shift would have been.
i had been taking rob's acura out every week, usually driving it down to the mall b/c it's so fun on the interstate. last time we drove it, one of the kids didn't shut the back door tightly enough to cancel the interior dome light. and i didn't double check on the kids. i wondered why the automatic lock on the key fob wouldn't lock the damn car...turned out the battery was already dead by then. oops. and the doors were locked and so now i can't even UNLOCK the back door to relock it and shut the door more firmly.
so this means the acura will have to be towed a further distance than the jetta was in order to make a trip to the dealer. and i believe this car has more crap to it than the jetta did, so i'm sure it will be expensive. arg.
rob handled it well when i told him over the phone. i had turned into a blubbering mess, so frustrated at myself for not double checking the doors and not being able to take care of his car while he was gone (and this was an automatic, i thought taking care of the acura would be FUN...not just starting up the car in the driveway for 10 minutes once a week). but no, i failed on this task. sigh.
but at least the kids and cat and dog are still alive! whew.

computer issues:
do not ever put norton 'goback' on your computer. it was part of a norton package i purchased and it downloaded itself with an internal error which proved to be FATAL for my hard drive. arg. i was sans internet for 10 days. do you know how hard it is to go w/o internet COLD TURKEY???? but i learned a lot of things.

1. always make system backup disks. rob is going to teach me this when he returns. he doesn't know it yet, but he is.
2. the techs at gateway are AWESOME. i love them. i wish i could keep one around the house with me at all times.
3. i spend way too much time on the computer. i got a lot of gardening & reading done when my computer died. i stopped drinking general foods international 'coffee' and tried tea instead (not too bad). i drank more water. i drank less pop. i snacked less. i ate meals with the kids. think i'm a little addicted? :/