Saying Goodbye to the Ice Cream

My last two days off went nothing like I planned for them to go. After a rather difficult week at work, and spending the last month of days off trying to get things painted, or off traipsing around I envisioned two days of being able to relax and do nothing more strenuous than the laundry. Somehow it didn’t work out that way.

On Tuesday I planned to run a couple of errands and then go to my 28 week checkup and take my glucose tolerance test. I spent the morning trying to relax, because I kept getting Braxton-Hicks contractions. I then went off to the mall to have my tennis bracelet and ring inspected at the jewelry store for their six month inspection. (Back story- both pieces are under warranty as long as I have them checked every six months. Last May my husband took my bracelet in because I had lost a diamond. I had forgotten to have it inspected in time and we had to buy a new diamond. After he yelled at me and told me not to do that again I have made sure to write down on the calendar when I need to have my jewelry inspections done by. I remember taking in both pieces somewhere around last October.) They inspected everything and discovered that the bracelet has a loose chipped stone. They also discovered that whoever inspected my jewelry in October didn’t document it properly and I have to pay for this diamond too. I was too tired to argue with them and just told them to have it sent in for an estimate. It was beyond frustrating and makes me never want to go back to that store again. I did specifically ask them what documentation I needed to get to insure that this doesn’t happen in the future. Well, after that fiasco I went off to my checkup. The doctor said that I seem fine and the baby seems fine. I had to wait around extra for the glucose test, which I failed. The lab tech set up another test for me to take the following day.

On Wednesday I went in at 8am to take my 3 hour glucose test. I brought my cross-stitch to work on since I was stuck in the lab for 3 hours. It made the time pass by quickly and I felt productive. Unfortunately I failed my glucose test again. I have been diagnosed with gestational diabetes, which isn’t the end of the world for me or the baby. I do have to cut out all sugar and meet with a dietician soon. I’ll miss my nightly bowl of ice cream, but the baby is the most important thing and I’ll do what I have to do to keep him healthy. That pretty much just wiped me out. Of course I picked this afternoon to do our taxes and that just finished me for the rest of the day. I’m kind of ready just to go to bed and start fresh with another day!!

Animal Update

Baby fish seems to be doing well. She (of course it could be a he, we'll know when he's older) has ventured out of the plants. She doesn't swim freely around the tank yet because she is still pretty tiny, but she's not solely hiding in the plants anymore. I think she'll be just fine.

My husband got up this morning and noticed the other cat (the one who doesn't go outside) staring intently at something downstairs. Turns out it was a live garden snake inside the house. Ick!! I'm so glad that I didn't find it. He said that the cat followed him around "yelling" at him for awhile because he took her toy away. I'm hoping that we don't have some hole somewhere that the snake slithered in to gain entry to the house. My husband has been in and out a lot this past week working on stuff around the house, and I'm sure that he hasn't left the door closed all of the time. Hopefully we won't have any more "toys" in the house.

We sort of have a new dog. A little over a week ago I pulled into our driveway and was staring eye to eye with a Great Dane-Dalmation mix dog. It was a little shocking and I stayed in my car until my husband came to save me. The dog was returned to the owners who apparently live nearby. Well, the other morning we went outside to find the same dog in our yard playing with our dog. We left them for awhile because we had to run errands and finally called the owners in the early afternoon to retrieve their dog. Unless they keep him securely locked up I wouldn't be surprised to see him again some morning. He's a sweet dog, just huge!!

Dealing with the Dark Side of Life

My heart aches for the girl whose life was changed forever today. I hope that the police are able to bring justice to her. She is in my thoughts and prayers tonight.

That’s the sad and difficult part of my job- finding out about the darker side of human life. They’re not details that I ever wanted to know, but now they are details that will help me effectively obtain information if I ever am on the receiving end of a call that is similar. I pray that if that situation ever arises God will give me the strength and grace to be effective and help the person on the other end of the line.

Odds and Ends

Yesterday was my first day back to work after my moment of fame. I ended up taking a shower the night before and going to work with a messy bun. My reason was different from before, though. I received a call at 8:40 the night before asking me to go in to work at 4am. I wasn’t going to wake up any earlier that I had to just to wash and blow dry my hair in the morning, especially when I have a 30 minute drive to work! Today should be much different, though, since I will be working a swing shift this afternoon. It was kind of nice to sleep in this morning. I think I was able to sleep for 11 hours overnight. Or at least I was in bed for that long. It is hard to sleep in the middle of the night when your belly gets a case of the hiccups for 20 minutes.

My husband thinks that this baby is going to have finger size dents in his head when he’s born. The baby is running out of room and apparently so am I. He frequently parks his little butt on my right side making my belly lopsided. That’s not necessarily so bad as long as he doesn’t play with my ribs as well. Most of the time he leaves the ribs alone and just hangs out on that side. His head, however, is a different story. Several times a day he will push out with his head, which I can feel mid stomach above my belly button. He seems to push out as hard as he can and it feels like I will soon be a part of the Aliens movies. My response to this is to rub the area and push back hoping that he’ll get the point and knock it off. Usually it works and I’m not worried that I’m going to be denting his head. We still have three months left. I can’t begin to imagine how cramped we’re both going to be!

My cat has apparently turned into a snake hunter. We let him go outside and play when the weather is nice. He loves being outside and so far has never brought us anything home. Yesterday my husband said he spent the majority of the day outside playing. When it was time to come in my husband said he ran towards the house with something in his mouth. Thankfully he didn’t let the cat just run into the house. Apparently the cat had caught a live snake and was running around carrying it. We will definitely need to make sure when he comes in he has no extra “toys” accompanying him.

We have an aquarium and about a month ago I bought some fish to replace some of the ones that didn’t make it through the winter. I bought a plecostamus and three pineapple swordtails. We ended up with a free zebra danio that had the misfortune of getting caught in the net at the fish store. Neither one of us minded since we already had a zebra danio in the tank. A week or so after my husband noticed a tiny baby swordtail in the tank and that one of the females looked thinner. We watched it for about half a minute before it seemed to get sucked up in the bubbles. Both of us thought it was long gone until last night. My husband noticed the baby, this time much larger hiding in the plants. Apparently he was smart enough to survive. It’s kind of exciting that we got two free fish from the pet store!

Shot at Fame

Last week I tried an experiment. I decided to shower every night before bed instead of every morning. This new change of my schedule gave me the opportunity to sleep in an extra half hour every morning. However, because I wasn’t showering in the morning, I didn’t really do much with my hair and usually threw it up in a messy bun or ponytail. After five days of this experiment I have decided not to continue it any longer, mainly for two reasons. The first reason being that the extra half hour really didn’t seem to do much for me anyway. I would wake up every morning at my usual time and lie in bed awake for the extra half hour. I still came home almost every day and needed to take another half hour nap after work. The second reason that my experiment failed is that I ended up on TV on Monday. I was at work, minding my own business, when my supervisor realized that a dispatcher needed to go to the law board meeting to accept a certificate of appreciation for Telecommunications Week. She was supposed to go, but decided she would rather not since she had a flat tire that morning and had stood out in the rain for awhile. I was elected to go instead. Of course I was told about this with 10 minutes to get from the police station to city hall. I made it but not with much time to stop and do anything else including fixing my hair. The law board meeting is televised on the local city cable station for all in the area to see. As I was accepting the award, I could see the shot of myself on a larger screen. I realized that my hair was falling out of its bun and my belly looked huge, both thoughts that made me want to laugh at the time. I would’ve preferred some advance warning, but I also would have felt much better if my hair was not in a messy bun. I really don’t think this situation will happen again, but it’s enough to put me back on my regular schedule!

Done Painting

I have officially completed my last painting project before the baby comes. The hallway was quite the chore. It wasn't a huge area, but my energy level has dropped through the floor. Any other painting projects will have to wait until after the baby arrives. My only project left that I wish to complete before the baby is born is a cross stitch Christmas stocking. I can work on that in the recliner with my feet propped up. I think that's is a reasonable project for my last three months.

The weather these past two days has been amazing. The temperature was in the high 60's and the sun was out and shining. I was happy to open up windows and air out the house. I even wore shorts and sandals. I am afraid this weather was just a tease, because I just looked at the forecast for the rest of the week. The forecast for Saturday is in the 40's with a chance of snow. I am ready for warmer weather, green grass, buds on the trees and flowers sprouting from the ground.

Ready for the weekend

The last two days at work have been terrible. The local bar district picks a Saturday around St Patrick’s Day and celebrates the day by opening at 7am and serving Green Beer. Yesterday was the day. We were busy non-stop the entire day taking calls all related to the festivities in the bar district. Today we spent the entire day taking calls from the aftermath, i.e.- stolen vehicles, damaged property and vehicles, people calling and wanting to know where their cars were towed to, and people calling looking for their belongings. It was crazy.

Make the life of your local law enforcement and dispatchers a lot easier- quit leaving your vehicles unlocked, and don’t leave your keys in the vehicle. Your vehicle is also not a secure place to leave anything of value, so take the extra five seconds to remove your purses and wallets from your car.

And on a side note- I am a terrible dispatcher. We had a stolen vehicle today that we were dealing with. The vehicle was recovered by the end of our shift. The sad thing is that I saw the vehicle on my way to work. I drove right by it. I think driving in the pitch black again in the morning really threw me off. Maybe if it hadn’t been daylight savings time I would’ve actually seen what the vehicle was sitting there on the side of the road. Oh well!

Blessings

I feel blessed today. So many things have happened today and I have been able to see God’s hand in everything.

Not too long ago I told my parents how I was feeling a little overwhelmed by the things that we still needed to buy in preparation for the baby in three months. (Three months can you believe it?) My husband is graduating from college in May and has been in school off and on for the past seven years. We have no idea what direction God will take us. We might be moving or we might be staying. Life is a little unknown right now and I am trying not to worry about it because God knows that we have a baby arriving in June and this is all part of His plan. However, a part of me still gets concerned when I think about all of the things one needs for a baby and all of the expenses that come with finding a job and finishing the last semester of college. I had a great talk with my mom yesterday. She told me not to worry because God always comes through with what you need.

This morning I was getting ready to leave when my phone rang. It was my husband’s sister-in-law. She asked if I could use their play yard. She said it was blue and white checked, has the bassinet attachment and was hardly ever used. Her youngest is five. Never in a million years would I dream she had any baby gear that we might be able to use. She’s sending it with my mother-in-law so we should get it sometime shortly after the baby is born. My sister-in-law also asked if we had picked out a car seat and told me that she would like to get us the car seat. I have thought a lot lately about what we needed and had decided that we should buy some of the big ticket items over the next three months so that we weren’t in the last month of pregnancy scrambling to buy expensive items that we didn't have. I was planning on purchasing the car seat this month and the play yard next month. Now I don’t have to worry about either one.

The weather is still cold here with random days of warmer temperatures. Even though it is cold outside my work for some reason in the last couple of weeks has become miserably hot inside. Either that or my temperature is running a lot warmer. Most of my maternity clothes are long sleeve and all of them are getting to be too small. Today a friend of mine brought me some of her maternity clothes which included five short sleeve/summer weight shirts, two pairs of capris and a couple pairs of shorts and lounge pants. A couple of months ago these clothes would have been way too big for me, but the way I’m carrying this baby these clothes will be perfect to wear over the next three months as I get even larger and the weather gets warmer.

I have also had some glimpses into ways that God will continue to provide for and bless us over the next couple of months. I won't mention those yet, because some of them are still in the works and affect other people.

It has been such a great day!

Randomness

I really hope it does not snow today or on Thursday. I am really tired of the snow. I am ready to wear sandals and capris. Except I am having difficulty reaching my toes, so painting my toenails will be a chore.

It is pretty hard to choose a paint color for a hallway when there is virtually no light in the dark brown hallway. I do think I have it narrowed down to two choices, though.

This baby seems to be trying to kick his way out of my belly.

That prenatal massage I had yesterday was amazing. What a wonderful birthday gift. I wish I could go back today for another one.

I wish I knew where my cat’s collar is. I really do not want to buy him a new one because I know I will find it someday in a random place.

It is 0909 and I am ready to go back to bed for a nap.

I will be glad when May rolls around. I am really missing my husband. This semester is full of major projects, group meetings and exams.

Watch Where You Put Your Head

The other night my husband and I were lying in bed reading. I was flipping through a pregnancy book and came upon a part that said you might be able to hear the baby’s heartbeat if you put your head to my stomach. I relayed this to my husband and he leans over and puts his head on my stomach. He proceeds to tell me about all of the stomach noises he can hear but nothing that sounds like a heartbeat. Just then the baby kicks him in the head. My husband is still walking around upset that he was kicked in the head by the baby. I still can’t stop laughing.