11.29.04

Update

Posted in Uncategorized at 7:37 pm by Anne

I’m still recuperating, long story, but wanted to get out the good word:

Emma was
born November 26, 2004
07:10 am
6 pounds, 7.5 ounces
19 inches long

Life is just good.

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11.26.04

The Zero Hour

Posted in Uncategorized at 4:58 am by Anne

So I feel it is my duty and my obligation to describe a minor scene that occurred moments ago while I was combing my hair. Shan walks into the bathroom holding a plate. A plate of food. A plate decorated with salty doritos and a nice ham sandwich on whole wheat bread. I look at the plate. He looks at the plate. And then he asks,” Oh, is this rude?”

Holy crap I nearly pummeled him to death.

Thanks to all of you for your kind words and enthusiasm. I’m hoping this anxiety passes without any conclusion into the real world and will write when I’m back home in a few days.

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11.25.04

Happy Thanksgiving Ya’ll!

Posted in Uncategorized at 9:09 am by Anne

No breakfast for the guests this morning. I started the punkin gooey cakes and then uploaded a bunch of pics to adobe for tweaking so that my memory card will be free for today. You see, I have a plan for Shan’s grandmother’s Christmas present this year: today I will take lots of pics of the family and then next week will upload and make a photo book with the concise title of “Thanksgiving 2004″ or something like it. Ofoto has never let me down, not since the very first time Cecily introduced us. And the best part is my new lens just came in yesterday!

Meanwhile, I am very much looking forward to roast turkey and dressing and sweet potatoes and an assemblage of desserts as a last meal before settling in at the hospital tomorrow morning. I still need to pack a bag, make sure I have all my camera and video equipment, bring my book and go through my to-do list. Oh yes, and it will be nice to see lots of family today as well, though I can’t help but remember that the last time I saw my Dad was at Thanksgiving last year, so everything is colored bittersweet, even the excitement. I miss him every day and most poignantly when I have a chemistry question (which is surprisingly often) or when I catch Mom doing something that makes me laugh/cringe.

And let’s try to stop it with the bullshit today. Appreciate all that you have and give thanks. So many have it much worse and this time is painfully brief.

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11.24.04

no sleepy

Posted in Uncategorized at 5:34 am by Anne

Woke up before 5 this morning and having Lily come in talking about ‘buppy-gog’ pretty well clinched it for me that I needed to just get the hell up. So I’ve posted invoices this morning, looked over the latest news bulletins (Hello exploding cellphones!), and just happened to remember that I have to get to the drs this morning by 10:30! Sheeze…

So my options are to make some tea and just chill with my latest interest, though not a new one, more of one reclaimed and rediscovered, like that necklace you thought you had lost so long ago until it turns up under your dresser up to surprise you. I know he was one of my Dad’s favorite authors and so his poems and short stories take on a slightly different import as I read through them again. The sad thing is that my favorite pieces are not available on the internet so Ican’t just link you there but I can send you to the seeminging clearing house of RB info…though it is a little uninspiring. However, this is a good one.

Time for some tea and solitude.

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11.23.04

Rain, Rainy, Raining

Posted in Uncategorized at 10:35 am by Anne

I don�t believe there is anything so sublimely wonderful as my daughter in a red raincoat, bluejeans, and a pair of black converse all-stars. We have been getting bucketloads of rain for the past 12 days but to be honest, I am kind of getting tired of the perpetual gunmetal gray sky whether it is drizzling or just pouring down rain.

Just found out that tomorrow we are going to Thanksgiving #1 at Shan�s parents house, which will be followed by the Original Thanksgiving on Thursday at Shan�s Grandmother�s house (number 2). I had plans to bake a sweet potato pie and some pumpkin gooey cakes for the second one and I just signed up to do an old fashioned pumpkin pie for tomorrow night. Good thing I have nothing else to do but lay around the house in curlers and a bathrobe. Not.

In fact, I still have a shopping list of jobs to complete before Friday morning, which is THE BIG DAY. We are supposed to get to the hospital at 5:30 AM and the scheduled delivery of Baby Emma will commence at 7AM! Unbelievable. The heartbreaking soul-wrenching intensity of love I have for my Lily will be just as strong and astonishing for the new baby, I know it, but at the same time it is hard to wrap my mind around, another whole person to love so incredibly much! It amazes me when I stop to think about it.

But there is little time for that now, I have so much still to do. People coming up in a day or two, a house to clean, more things to bake or store in the larder, a hospital bag to pack, the final round of invoices to print and have ready to mail Friday, and on and on. And my sweet Lily to love and adore. Gramma is again the hugest help around. I�m going to have to get her something really good for Christmas this year.

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11.20.04

Saturday Cleansweep

Posted in Uncategorized at 11:52 am by Anne

Somehow we wound up with an ant problem. It is particularly vexing since I noticed a few ants months ago, milling around the dining room window sill. Then a month ago I found a few humming in and out of my keyboard. It’s not like there is any food in the office; no one eats in here! Then, the last straw: my Mom finds ants crawling around the floor in the nursery, last week. So we start killing them on sight. And Shan sprays outside the house, repeatedly. But still, there are ants. Not a colony, but about 10 a day, enough to really infuriate me. So this morning, (after a late night- I’ll try to post about THAT later), we dismantle the twin beds and haul them out of the nursery, move the toys, and pick up the happy colorful spongy-tile letter floor, haul it all outside and get to cleaning. I started vaccuuming, Mom took over, then I followed behind her with heavily-lysol scented water and a mop. Hopefully this has taken care of the problem. In fact, Mom is still vaccuuming the rest of the house while Lily sleeps on me. Next we will scrub the foam tiles and re-assemble the room.

Good lord.

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11.19.04

TGIF

Posted in Uncategorized at 9:05 am by Anne

I’m off to work for a few hours but wanted to put this up, in light of all we are hearing from Scandinavia lately. It’s very long.

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11.18.04

night from hell

Posted in Uncategorized at 8:56 am by Anne

So I went to bed early in a foul temper (don’t ask) and woke up around 1AM desirous of sleeping elsewhere. sO I grabbed the ol pregnancy pillow and stumbled down the hall to the couch where I tried to get comfortable. My lower back was hurting for some reason. After a while of trying to sleep, it hit me, these back spasms were coming and going and baby was moving like a crazy girl, and wait a minute, I feel a little crampy too. So basically, I think last night was the start of contractions. Not that I think it’s going anywhere fast; odds are the scheduled delivery for next friday will still hold, this is just an additional bit of discomfort to make me that much more pleased in general.

Maybe I will stay on the couch for the next week; it’s kinda nice.

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11.17.04

outlet fever

Posted in Uncategorized at 2:27 pm by Anne

This morning Mom, Lily, and I headed over to the outlets for clothing. My Mom. She needs threads. Everytime she visits, we go shopping for her, but this time, as a huge pregnant lady, I was terribly snippy with her.

The first brassiere store we went into only had one single bra to Mom’s specs. She HAS to have a front closing dealie bob, and it HAS to be more than one hook…you know, something an old lady would wear. (cough) So she’s trying this on and Lily is all over the place running and playing. At one point she crawled under the door to a dressing room door (which are locked from the outside), and I had to bribe her with views of my purse and cell phone, to get her close enough to nab. Then, while pulling her out from beneath the door, she knocked her head on the door. It was nice.

Then we went into a coat store (everything was ‘too casual, too sloppy’), a shoe store ‘not high enough for my arches’, another bra store (paydirt- she found exactly what she was looking for thank GOD), and another shoe store (didn’t like the feel of this or that, not high enough in the arches, etcetcetc). By the end of this, Lily had missed the window for her nap, we hadn’t had lunch yet, and in one hour I had a drs appointment. And oh yeah, I was pissed off. I even told my Mom, “You are entirely too difficult to go shopping with.” After re-thinking the whole debacle, however, I’ve decided it wasn’t my Mom, it was me. I was just letting her make me insane and that has a lot to do with me being a huge and somewhat sketchy pregnant lady. read: hormonal

I have a bad habit of allowing my Mom to drive me nuts. It’s just her mannerisms, speech patterns, likes, dislikes, and opinions. Last night we were having a huge argument-discussion and by the end I just said, “Look Mom, even if I agree with you about something, I can’t allow you to know I agree.” It’s totally mental but I love her and she surprisingly still loves me. And I still want her to move back to Tejas.

Speaking of Mom. I had been worried for a while that since the last time Lily saw her was in June that she wouldn’t remember her. And that this would result in shyness/disinterest in her part, which would wind up hurting my Mom’s feelings and blablabla. I’d spent the past week showing Lily pictures and trying to get her to say ‘Gramma’ and she just wouldn’t ever cooperate. When Shan and I got to the airport, Lily slept so I went in to get her. WThen, while walking back to the truck and towing her suitcases, Shan met us with Lily and Lily piped up with ‘Hi Dama!” It was awesome. From the moment she saw her, Lily has been all over Gramma like a cheap suit and I couldn’t be more pleased. And Gramma is crazy for her too. “She is so much fun now, Anne!” I have a feeling that Lily is going to be the major impetus (besides having my Dad buried here- we went to see the grave last night) behind getting Mom to move here.

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11.14.04

Sunday

Posted in Uncategorized at 6:08 am by Anne

I am up and at ‘em while little girl and husband sleep in abject bliss. Weird dreams coupled with a pressurized bladder completely got me up and for the past hour I’ve been noodling around on the internet, thinking about breakfast and a cup of tea. Today we have a lot to do. Set up the extra twin bed in Lily’s room so my Mom will have a place to sleep (she is flying in monday), mop the floors, re-pot some houseplants, and Shan needs to mow and clean up all the freaking leaf/vine cuttings laying brazenly in the flowerbeds. It is rainy and cold and bascially wonderful; I’ve longed for a change from the typical southern heat and here it is.

Lily is still sick with her bad nose and for the first time, a rather productive cough. I plan on taking her to the dr on monday just to make sure it’s not bacterial and am praying that oral antibiotics won’t be perscribed. Getting her to swallow them is just a complete nightmare. The combination humidifier and propping her up on a thin pillow seems to help somewhat with drainage but it is still hearbreaking to hear her ratchety cough through the day.

Speaking of toys, Aunt Kris brought over infant cousins to LEGO, and a lot of them. A plastic wagon full of mega blox and a crate of duplo-blox, in addition to a bunch of wooden puzzles. Having Kris for an aunt is awesome, I tell you. Her kids outgrow something and *BAM*!

At the local wal-mart megastore yesterday, we walked down the dvd aisle and I looked for the first Toy Story since our VCR seems to be on the fritz. They didn’t have it but they did have a Buzz Lightyear toy that Lily immediately spied, so I picked it up and walked around the store with her pushing the buttons and pre-occupied the whole time. It was great. And I got another Christmas present that she forgot all about on the drive home.

Now how about that tea?!

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