Nothing goes as planned

Sunday Melanie went home from the hospital on bed rest with directions to see her doctor twice a week to check her blood pressure and everything. I called her yesterday to see if she wanted me to bring over Casino Royale (awesome movie) that I just got from Netflix. But, I didn't get an answer on the phone. Hm...how hard is it to get a hold of a gal on bedrest? Well, just got a call from her. She's in the hospital again, at St David's. She went to the doctor's on Monday and he said yup, baby's coming today. They did a c-section and everything went ok. Baby Ian (see! told you she'd get her name!) is in the NICU now and was only one pound two ounces at birth. But, luckily she said there aren't any health issues - no upcoming surgeries or anything. He just needs time to grow. She said they usually keep babies in the NICU until their original due date, which for Ian is in mid July. That means he'll probably be in there for about three months. Yikes. I joked that she's going to have the million dollar baby. Thank god for insurance! Now I need to get my ass in gear with making a baby afghan. I started over the weekend and I'm about a third of the way done. Hopefully I'll be done by next week. I'll go see her tomorrow night after work. It seems like so many people nowadays are having premies. Crazy.

Don't do this, don't do that.

It seems like anything you eat is going to kill you. Either you'll get cancer or heart disease or liver/kidney issues. It seems like you can't win no matter what. Just saw a new story on MSN how pregnant women that eat too much beef give birth to sons with low sperm counts.

http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/17815402/wid/11915773?GT1=9145

What the hell? Don't they have something better to do? Like cure cancer? Already pregnant women are so freaked out about what they can and can't do. Don't drink alcohol, don't drink caffeine, don't have too much fish or peanut butter, etc, etc, etc. My mom used to tell a story about how one of my great aunts used to drink a beer everyday when she was pregnant for the 'vitamins'. People didn't have all these rules back then and we survived, right?

Society is getting so phobic. Let's have soft cushy playground equipment, let's not play tag or dodgeball (and I ROCKED at dodgeball!), let's not do anything that could ever cause a moment of stress or sadness or physical injury to our children. Getting hurt is part of growing up. Dealing with getting picked last is part of growing up. When these kids grow up and go into the real world there isn't going to be anyone to hold their hands. I don't think their parents or society are preparing them for dealing with life's hardships and obstacles.

http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/17422250/

Dear lord. Now they don't want kids to read? Any incentive to get kids interested in reading is good enough for me. All these Save Our Kids! protests are getting out of hand.

300...six pack of abs

Saturday I went into the shelter for a bit and then met up with Tony and Nathan down south. We went to dinner at Logan's Roadhouse and I must say that's got to be one of the best meals I have ever had. Extremely well priced and the steak I had was perfect and the grilled squash was seasoned exactly right. Wish I had one up here, but they said the closest was in RR...ok I guess that isn't that far from me. Need to take some of the ANK folks up there sometime.
After dinner we saw 300. We bought our tickets before dinner cause I'd heard how much it'd been selling out and I didn't want us to have to rush through dinner or stand in line. It's a good thing we did get tickets cause our showing completely sold out. Damn, was that movie good. I don't know if it was special effects, prosthetics, makeup, or just good old fashioned working out, but there was some major eye candy walking around in that movie. Every single guy playing a Spartan was ripped. And having them in tiny leather codpieces with a long red cape just helped sell the whole visual. Won't get into it too much since there's been a lot on TV about it, but I will say that I appreciated that the director stayed in one angle for a lot of the action. I hate a lot of the new movies where the camera angles keep changing and the frames are flashing during a fight/action scene. I don't know if they're trying to heighten the tension and drama, but it usually looks to me like they couldn't choreograph a decent scene so they had to just show quick cuts. I'd much rather have a scene where you can see the action play out. They did that quite well with 300. Ok, yes it's a lot of blood, but c'mon, it's CGI blood! And the sword/shield fighting sequences were just amazing. I don't think I'd buy it, but I'd definitely see it again. I don't know what the Iranians are fussing about either. It takes place in like 400 BC when it was Persia and yeah, they're the bad guys, but I didn't think they were portrayed that maliciously. They're just playing it up so the world can get angry at America again. Like they ever need a reason. It's all so stupid.

Sunday we had a pre-Easter dinner at my parent's house since they'll be in CA during Easter. It was good seeing everyone. I can't believe they have my 4 yr old nephew in therapy, but whatever. So glad I'm never having kids. He was acting up, and my sister mentioned talking to some other parents about how kids these days 'have no fear'. My mom replied that's cause she's not getting up and making him stop doing what she was asking him to stop doing. So many parents these days are such wimps. My sister said it's 'easier' to let him have his way. I really hope he doesn't grow into a spoiled brat.

Ian's already causing problems

After getting off work today I was in the mood to do something so I called Melanie. I hadn't seen her in a while though we'd emailed a couple times last week. I called her and said 'Hey, watcha doing?'. She responds with 'Nothing much. I'm in the HOSPITAL.'. Ok, those are my capitals. Luckily she was at NAMC which is just a few minutes from my work. I got there in about 10 minutes and she gave me the scoop.

She's in her 24th week of pregnancy and has dangerously high blood pressure (possibly preeclampsia, though she was vague if it was that or just high blood pressure). She had her normal doctor checkup yesterday and the doctor basically told her to go home, pack a bag, and come back to the hospital - it was that high. They wanted to keep her overnight and test her again today. But, today she was still high and now there's a chance she might be on bed rest in the hospital for the rest of the pregnancy (3 months if the baby's brought to term). She'll find out tomorrow if it'll be bed rest. She has to stay in the hospital because if her blood pressure gets to a certain level, they'll induce the delivery of the baby immediately. The neonatal doctor said 24 weeks is ok, but 25 is better (and certainly any more time is always a good thing when growing a baby). They've given her steriod shots to develop his lungs in case he does have to come early. I was there for over two hours just keeping her company. She didn't want me to bring anything cause she didn't want to get 'comfortable' in case she can go home tomorrow. Uh yeah, I don't think that's happening. They took her blood pressure a couple times while I was there and she didn't want to know the numbers. I saw them, and they were really high. And since Melanie reads this, I won't say the numbers. She knows they were high. I told her to call me tomorrow and let me know what they say. I'll bring some books and stuff to keep her busy and she does have cable tv. The sucky thing is that her room doesn't have a wireless connection - only dial up. If she had wireless she'd be able to work on her laptop doing her QA testing. She can't do testing over dial up, so she's unsure of what her company is going to do if she is on bedrest for the next few months. And when I say bedrest, I mean BEDREST. No getting up and walking down the hall, only a few minutes for a shower, etc. They really mean you stay in bed the whole time. I would go stir crazy. At least it's really close to my work so I'll be able to visit a lot. As for the name, her husband likes Daren, she wants Ian. I vote for Ian. We were joking (rather morbidly now that I look back on it) that if she dies I'll make sure Dan names him Ian. That'll be her 'dying wish'. As it is, with all she's going through, I think she'll be able to guilt him into letting her name the baby Ian. She'll also have some good guilt-trip stories to play on when her kid's being a brat.

Wear t-shirts?

Sometimes I really wish I was a t-shirt kinda gal. I just don't like the way they're cut. But, if YOU are a t-shirt wearing person who lives on the edge, you've gotta check this site out

http://www.tshirthell.com/hell.shtml

Just found it on Jay's blog.

I think some of you would appreciate this one

These are just awesome.

OH MY GOD they have baby stuff too. Hmmm...would Melanie go for these?

What the hell was I thinking?

Sometimes I can do things around the house myself. Sometimes I need an extra pair of hands. Painting and re-hanging my bathroom cabinets is something I really should've gotten help with. As with most home projects, I needed motivation. My big motivation here was getting my house reappraised to try and prove to my mortgage company that I have enough equity to get rid of the PMI. I made the appt Thursday for the guy to come on Monday night. If I'd thought more clearly, I would have scheduled it for later in the week. Come Friday, I realized just how many little projects around the house I wanted to get done before the appraiser came. Would it make a difference in the price? Probably not. But, sometimes I just get into these moods were common sense doesn't matter. I almost didn't go to game night Friday cause I knew I had a lot to do, but I went anyways. It's always so much fun and worth the time.

Besides painting the bathroom cabinets I also needed to do yard work and some other paint projects. My parents came over at 9am on Saturday. I had started weeding the front lawn around 8:30 and already had a fairly full bag. My dad mowed my back lawn and my mom cleared out the flower beds in the back. That freeze in January killed almost everything. I had some really cool plants back there too! I do have this one red flower that's been there for almost two years. Nothing kills that sucker! It's pretty too...maybe I should just plant that everywhere. I filled about three large bags full of weeds from my front yard....yeah I hadn't done yard work in about three months. Shut up! I don't live in an HOA! My yard can look as crappy as I want! My neighbors still like me cause I'm nice and sweet and don't throw loud parties. We did yard work for three hours, I bought my parents lunch from Panda Express, and then they left. Then I got started on the paint projects.

Now, when I say 'paint the bathroom cabinets' I'm not talking about a small bathroom. No no no. It's long with two sinks. The total was 6 drawers and 15 cabinet doors. That's right FIFTEEN. The real reason I'm painting the cabinets is that I wanted to change the hardware. The previous owners had dubious taste and had used gold fixtures everywhere. ugh. quite fugly. I found these cute black/silver leaf handles at Lowes and matching hinges. This was all almost two years ago. When I got home to change out the hardware I found out that even though the hinges LOOKED the same, they were actually SLIGHTLY different...enough to give me a 1/2 inch gap where I had two doors touching. What the hell? My only alternative was to take the doors off, put wood putty in the holes, sand them down, repaint, and redrill the holes so the doors would be closer together. So, for almost two years my bathroom has been half old hardware and half new hardware with one door just leaning against the corner (that was supposed to be my motivation to fix everything...I just got used to it leaning there!)
But with the motivation of the reappraisal, I was all gung-ho to get it done. I've painted tons of things. How hard can it be? Well, painting the doors was a bitch. Saturday was absolutely beautiful and I really enjoyed being in the garage and feeling the weather. I painted the drawers first and a few of the doors. Sunday a huge glorious thunderstorm came in bringing humidity and moisture. The damn paint wouldn't dry. I ended up taking the doors into one of my guest rooms and turning the fan on. What a bitch. All in all the paint job is not to my liking. I really did a piss poor job. I used a brush and a guess I really should have used a roller. There are some spots where the paint dribbled a bit and I probably should have sanded all the old paint off cause some areas were pitted. When it comes down to it, oh well, I'm the only one that will notice. The color I chose was lighter than I thought it'd be too. I was hoping to use the same color in the kitchen, but I want something a tad darker. Ok, now that everything was painted, the holes were filled in, sanded, repainted (and that part turned out really good!) it was time to rehang the doors. I drilled little holes cause I didn't want to split the wood when I put the screws in. The first set turned out perfectly. I thought, hey this isn't that hard! I should've kept my mouth shut. The next four sets of doors came out horribly. One set was crooked so I had to re-drill the holes, one set kept rubbing on the bottom so I got out my little mouse sander and just sanded the hell out of it. The other set needed sanding too. God damnit. It probably would have been good at the re-hanging stage to have someone hold the door steady while I drilled, but I thought it'd be ok. And to top it all off, somehow I was one hinge-set short. What the hell? I know I had the right count when I bought them a long long long time ago. I thought hey no problem, I'll go to Lowes Monday after work, pick up a set and hang the door before the guy gets there. Well gues what? The fuckers at Lowe's don't carry that color of hinge anymore. They still had the handle, but not the hinge. I even went to two different ones. I ended up buying a plain black one (the others are black and silver flecked) and at least you can't really tell the difference. I also painted the bottom trim (kick board?) in the bathroom which has been bugging me since I painted that room and left the trim the old icky yellowed paint. Now it's a shiny white and looks much better. Hell, I even washed my windows and I've NEVER washed my windows. (ok I didn't wash all of them...just the bay window in the kitchen and the front windows in the dining room...wanted the house to look presentable). I'll find out next week what he appraised it for. He said having a brand new roof will really help. I'm crossing my thumbs that it's high enough.

Now I'm so not looking forward to painting the kitchen. I'm really going to have to take my time with that. Maybe next year.......

So not enjoying growing up

This year has not been fun. I do not like this whole 29th year. I hurt my knee in Italy which is still giving me problems on stairs (pop! pop! pop!), I've got more gray hair (thanks mom!) and I had a root canal last week on one of the crowns I got last year (thanks fricking tooth fairy!). Argh. When I told people I was going in for a root canal, EVERYONE was like 'oh you poor dear! that's horrible!!!'. I was expecting some major pain and all around unpleasantness. I assumed if it was that bad I'd be prescribed some narcotics like vicodin and I was actually looking forward to that part. I've never had real pain killers before and was interested to see what it felt like. But, I think they've improved the technique over the past years. They didn't give me any pain killers at all afterwards, and really, I didn't need them.

This was my first root canal and I've got to say, it wasn't that bad. On a scale of 1-10 on pain/freakiness, I'd give it a 4. I was so numbed up I didn't feel much, though the sensations and pressure I felt were squicky when the doc was measuring how deep the roots were and then digging them out. That was just weird. Luckily I brought my mp3 player, so I just turned the volume up when he got the drill going. I have to go back next week to get the rest of it done (they do it in two sessions). All in all, not that bad.

Saturday was Orientation at the shelter. It felt like I'd just done it the week before. It didn't help that Feb is such a short month. Had 15 people for the cats, and a few stayed afterwards which is always a good sign of commitment. That afternoon ANK had a book swap at Jeff & Judy's house. Got some mysteries for my dad and fantasy books for me. Not a bad haul. I brought some books too and a few VHS tapes I had around. Mike had heard of a new gelato place nearby so he, Annette and I went to try it out. No no no. It was NOT the right kind. There are two ways to make gelato. The real Italian way (hot process) or the sucky Americanized way (cold process) and usually people in America don't know the difference. But, after we got back from Italy Mike found a gelato place in RR that did it exactly like the Italians. Texture, flavor, creaminess, everything was right on. We found out last week that it had closed down. (whimper) Now Mike's on a quest to find another gelato place that does it right. So far, no luck.

Later that night we hooked up with Jayne and Matt to watch Snakes on a Plane. If I want a campy monster movie I'll stick with Tremors. It wasn't a great movie, a good movie, or a bad movie. That was the problem. They were trying to be cheesy but just didn't make it. Jayne's attendance was an added bonus cause she pointed out a bunch of stuff on the plane that we wouldn't have noticed. She also did an awesome job of the flight attendant 'here are the exits, here is your seat belt, etc'. I was cracking up.

Sunday I went to the State of TX Art Fair with Jeff and Judy. It was downtown and we were there for about two hours. Saw lots of cool local artisans. I purchased a couple of necklaces and a pottery soap dispenser that will go perfectly in my guest bathroom. Jeff & Judy bought three paintings and a pretty glass mushroom with ladybugs on it for their garden. I love going to art fairs. It wasn't too crowded since the Kite Festival was that day too, so we were able to browse at our leisure and not get pushed around by people. I'm on the lookout for a painting for over my fireplace, but so far no luck.


Have you heard the 'Bud Light Real Men of Genius' radio ads? I love them. There's one for 'Mr. Way Too Proud of Texas Guy'. Someone on YouTube put some images with it. It's funny cause it's true!
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=apMyjOAacyA