There are some days I know I should've stayed in bed. But when I have that feeling about an entire week? That's when I could really use to not be pregnant for a day so I can have a strong martini. Oh well... I've had worse weeks, I know that for a fact.
On the pregnancy front, I get the "opportunity" to take my second gestational diabetes test on Wednesday morning. Three hours and four pokes later, hopefully I'll just be borderline like I was with our daughter. Keeping my fingers crossed.
I also get my lovely RhoGAM shot on Thursday afternoon. Right on the butt. My husband says he'll make me cabbage noodles that day so I'll feel better. I'm definitely taking him up on that.
In other random news, my art journal isn't becoming the beautiful pseudo-scrapbook artsy fartsy look-what-I-can-do sketchbook I had envisioned. It's becoming my weird what's-going-on-in-my-head dumping ground of emotion, using colored pencils. I guess I have my book choice partially to blame for that. I don't really mind, except that I can't show it off now, like I had originally planned. But I must need the outlet, and I'm still enjoying the process, so it's serving its purpose.
Well, off to bed so I can wake up to Tuesday. At least it was payday today! That makes Monday okay in my book.
Should probably stay in bed this week
Christmas in January
My package is here! My package is here!
I got all kinds of fun little things with the Amazon.com gift card I received from Mom and Dad N. for Christmas. A nice bag for my li'l Acer, a book, a Moleskine sketchbook and watercolor pencils for my art journaling adventure, a Dilbert desk calendar, and a pencil box for our daughter's crayons. It was like Christmas all over again, only a month later. It was fun to get half a dozen little things instead of one big thing. All these fun little boxes, with all those smiley faces on them.
I guess it isn't true that I don't like shopping. I don't like in-store shopping... but I sure love Amazon shopping!
Crap, blood sugar
Well, my OB doctor's office called the house today and needed to talk to me. Most likely, it's with bad news about my first gestational diabetes test, and the request to schedule the second follow-up test (the ridiculously boring four-hour one, with a blood test every hour). I barely passed that one with our daughter; I'm hoping I pass it this time too. Otherwise, it's low-carb everything for the next three months, because I sure as heck am not going the insulin route.
...Not like that's the end of the world, but dang... it's Girl Scout cookie season! Bummer!
Saturday snow day
Though Caroline isn't yet in school, and I certainly never get work cancelled due to weather, we had a nice Saturday snow day yesterday. There were a couple things we had planned on doing, like getting some grocery shopping done and maybe putting snow gear on and playing outside, but it was snowing too hard for the former and was way too cold for the latter.
And you know what? It was kind of nice. We were forced to stay inside, relax, and find indoor things to do while big, fluffy snowflakes fell to the ground all day. Pete and Caroline had an indoor soccer game, there was definitely hot tea drinking and movie watching going on, and Caroline took a nice long nap in the afternoon.
Winter in Michigan isn't so bad when you don't have to go anywhere.
Starting an art journal
I'm embarking on a new endeavor and starting an art journal. I started thinking about it after Mom's post on creating a happiness journal and loved the idea.
I couldn't believe how many art journaling resources are out there though. It's kind of intimidating. A lot of them focus on the artistic nature of it all -- creating beautiful journals from scratch with all kinds of supplies -- but I was able to find a couple good books that start at the very basic beginning. So I dug out an Amazon gift card I got for Christmas and went on a fun-filled Amazon shopping spree. I decided on The Creative Journal by Lucia Capacchione. My package will be arriving next week. Fun!
Yikes, don't skip lunch
I did a silly thing yesterday. I had so many meetings at work that I missed lunch. That's certainly happened to me before, but never while pregnant. However, I was so busy that I didn't even feel hungry, so things were going swimmingly.
I began conducting some project management training in the afternoon, and took a quick break a couple hours in to run to the vending machines and get myself a package of Pop Tarts. (I know, my poor baby... I swear I'll never do this again.) I ate the Pop Tarts during the break and continued training, all while standing up. Well, lo and behold, I suddenly came extremely close to passing out. I'm talking about ears ringing, things starting to go black, breaking out in a cold sweat... all that good stuff. All while standing in front of a huge room of people, so add some slight panic on top of it all. Oh man, what a situation. Luckily it was right before another break, so I let people go for ten minutes and I sat down, regaining my composure.
So I learned my lesson. Mom, if you're reading this, I promise I learned my lesson. No more skipping lunch, no matter what, and definitely not while I'm pregnant. It had worse consequences than I expected, and still ended better than it could have, luckily.
Happiness on a Wednesday
My happy moments today:
- Listening to Caroline sing along to her favorite Elmo and Toddler Tunes songs in the backseat of the car
- Giving one of the best bosses I've ever had a thankful hug at work (even though I only had the good fortune of working for her for a couple months)
- Getting my car back from the mechanic with not only everything fixed and a very reasonable bill, but a cleaned and vacuumed interior and polished dashboard
- Watching the snow fall all day from my own window outside my cube at work
- Hearing that my Uncle Lloyd is recovering quickly from his lung surgery
- Having a warm, delicious meal ready for me from my husband when I arrived home from work
A lesson in futility
fu-til-i-ty (n. pl. fu-til-i-ties): 1. Lack of effectiveness or success. 2. The quality of having no useful result.Recently, for the past month or two, as I leave the office at the end of a work day, it almost blows my mind how busy I am. Everyone is insanely busy. But I've never before experienced such a long stretch of daily growth of my To-Do list, with never a day where I'm able to break even, let alone make the list shorter.
It's truly a frustrating feeling. For every one person I assist on a given day, there's at least one or two people who get zilch from me. Zippo. Nada. As hard as they try, I'm just completely unavailable, buried under an avalanche of other work.
But as tempting as it may get to catch up on a few emails at home in the evening, I've been downright refusing. If I have so much work that I can't get it done in a solid 12-hour workday, I simply have too much, and I won't turn them into 15-hour workdays on my own free will. I won't turn hard work into overwork.
Now if only I could apologize in advance to all my colleagues I'm going to end up ignoring on any given day.
Alone time with my husband
It's not that I don't love my daughter dearly, because I would do absolutely anything for her, and that's not an exaggeration. But "date nights" alone with my husband, enabled by my Mom watching our daughter for a night or two at a time, are so very special. We don't go on spectacular adventures or necessarily do things that we couldn't do with our daughter around, but it's the little things like:
- Having completely uninterrupted conversations
- Eating whatever we want (this one will get us into trouble someday...)
- Being able to clean the house without a mini-tornado behind us
- Playing video games together
- Did I mention the uninterrupted conversations? Those are nice
A new year
I've never taken New Years resolutions very seriously. If I have any at all, it's usually because I feel obligated to have a list of some sort, since everyone else does.
There's not much different this year, but this time I find that I'm actually thinking about them more than a week after January 1, which is a significant change. So now I guess I'll start doing something about them.
1.) Write more, and consistently.
2.) Pray more.
Writing because I've always enjoyed that outlet, but have never, ever been consistent. You should see all the blank paper journals in my basement, with a couple weeks' worth of entries. Praying because I hardly ever do, and find I miss it. I would like it if our kids grew up in a household that established some religious practices of some kind.
Anyway, this blog is an attempt at resolution #1. It will have no overarching theme and no consistent topics. The hope is that it will survive all of 2011 with sufficient activity to be proud of on January 1, 2012.
