Random Thoughts

I have a short attention span tonight. I was at a PTA meeting (I'm one of the teacher reps) until 8:00. Ugh

Just an hour and a half late this morning.

Gonna have to teach a whole freaking day tomorrow.

Two more weeks of school left.

Gonna get most of my shopping done this weekend.

Gonna have a girls night out with Hilary on Saturday!

Looking forward to high school girls night out in a few weeks.

I love prego belly pictures...especially naked ones (conwayupdates.blogspot.com)

Brian's in Reno...home tomorrow morning.

Sorry you have shingles, Lindsay!

Goal for the weekend: try the tub with the jets

Second day at home

I am on my second snow (Ice) day and loving it. Actually, I'm getting a little stir crazy. Tomorrow is looking ify too.

It's really strange to be in a place where snow and ice means the world comes to an end. There are a total of five snow plows for King county (All of Seattle and the East Side = 2 million people). That means we sit and wait until it melts.

My drive home from work on Monday night was one of the scariest of my life. Nora and I left daycare to stop off at Trader Joe's for her favorite breakfast cereal. On our way out of the parking lot, I couldn't decide which way to turn...neither was moving. To go the first mile of our commute it took one hour.

To get over to Woodinville from Kirkland, there is a pretty steep hill. I didn't even think about what was going on as I looked at the 36 on my dashboard thermometer. The beautiful snow that was coming down was starting to melt. All of a sudden, the thermometer dropped to 28 degrees. The road immediately turned to a block of ice and people started going into the ditch left and right. I made it to the top of the hill just in time for the freeze. Unfortunately, I needed to get down the other side.

Everyone else that was on the top of the hill was just as scared as I was. I guess in Washington, that means just sit in your car, or actually get out and walk home. Cars were abandoned all over the place. Seriously, I had to have seen at least 50 people walk by my car in the forty-five minutes it took me to get really upset. After sitting in the line of scared drivers and listening to Nora scream that she was hungry and she had peed her pants, I was pissed. These are some of the stupidest drivers I've ever seen here! What did they think was going to happen? A snow plow sure wasn't going to show up! I turned around in the middle of the road and decided to try to find a way to cut through the neighborhoods to get closer to home.

Before heading down the road, I got out of the car, got some cereal and raisins for Nora, changed her pants, and had her sit on a random coat that was floating around inside the car. She was not a happy camper. We were on hour two of our journey.

As I was turning right into the neighborhood, a man in a small truck stopped me and asked if I knew how to cut around the traffic through the neighborhood. I said I didn't, but I'd follow him if he thought he had some idea. I knew it wasn't going to be easy because there were some massive hills back in the neighborhood, but I knew I wasn't going to sit in the car with Nora for the whole night. I only had a quarter of a tank left and there were no diapers in the car.

We wound through the neighborhood and I finally fell so far behind the guy that I was on my own. I took one final turn before I stopped and started to cry. Nora kept asking, "Mommy, are you ok?" from the back seat. When I looked up, there was a man walking down the road, probably from his abandoned car on the side of the road. I rolled down the window and told him where I lived. Did he have any idea how I could get close to Avondale and 165th? "Honey, you are looking right at Avondale Rd.!"

Nora and I walked in the house 2 hours and 45 minutes after we left the grocery store. Not the best Monday night of my life. Thankfully, Tuesday and Wednesday at home have made up for it! Sound like we'll at least be late for school tomorrow, if not off completely.

This is the same job that Amber and I have had since we were young. Putting up the lights is a tradition, and this time we got to do it in our new home!

Happy Thanksgiving!

Turkey

Corn Bread and Sausage Stuffing

First Course: Squash Soup & Salad

Taking the 18.6 pound turkey out of the brine

Celery Remoulade

Yikes

 

This is one of the things the old owners left behind for our viewing pleasure in our backyard. How quickly do you think we can get rid of these? 

  

Can you believe this?

  

Alone

Tonight will be our first night alone in our new house. I just dropped my dad off at the airport. I'm not sure what we are going to do if something comes up. Dad has fixed or helped fix just about everything needed in the house so far. There hasn't been much, but he has been a wealth of knowledge.

Now comes the hard part: finding a place for everything. Not that there isn't enough space, but I just have to decide where everything should go. I'm already LOVING our new closet! I can walk all the way in, Brian can be standing on the other side of the closet, and I can see all of my clothing at the same time. It is about twice the size of our closet in our condo, minus the 14 foot ceilings!

I'm hoping we can start to fall into a better life routine now. There has been such a feeling of instability for the past year, that I'm really looking forward to feeling like we aren't going anywhere for awhile. Of course, this is typically when we do something to completely stir the pot! So, why not start looking for a new job or thinking about a new baby! I could never let things be stable for too long. Just not in my character :-)

On the subject of a baby, I had to move some baby items from a cardboard box into a tupperware yesterday (some of you my know that I have a need to have everything stored in tupperwares). I could see Brian's look of terror as I was picking up the baby carrier and miracle blanket and looking at them longingly. As we say around here, my uterus was throbbing. My brain is telling me that I need to know what my new career path is going to be before going on maternity leave, but my uterus is screaming "give me a baby!" I'm going to stick with my logical brain and try to keep my uterus under wraps for a little longer. I don't think I could come to grips with our world being turned upside down within months.

I'm also quite worried about delivering early again. I know this pregnancy could be completely different, but I can't get the worries out of my head. I'm going to just stop thinking about my body and a baby for awhile. No more posts about this subject. Damn it.

We're In!

We are in our new home and loving it! Our floors are more than we could have expected. The smell is disapating, but was a bit strong still on Friday.

We are still dodging some boxes, but we are getting the place pretty organized for having just moved in 28 hours ago.

Brian's favorite part of the house, so far, seems to be the jetted tub in our bathroom. For the first time in years, he ran to the bedroom to take a bath lastnight. He can stretch completely out in the tub without having to stick his knees up and out of the water. He was a pretty happy man! It's my turn to bathe tonight ;-)

Finished Product!

Before

Looking into the Family Room from the back yard doors: The fire place is to the left

After the Carpet; Before the Wood

Exciting Weekend!

I have such an exciting weekend coming up!

Brian lands in Seattle tomorrow morning at 7:00 AM from Singapore. We (ok, mostly me) are extremely excited to have him home. I'm looking forward to having a help with Nora and to have an adult to talk to in the evenings!

My dad lands in Seattle on Sunday at 11:00 AM. He is here to help us during our home renovation and impending move. He will be here until the 13th. He has quite the long list of things to do while he's here...hopefully he's been taking it easy in retirement because it's going to be pretty busy ;-)

Also on Sunday, we are taking out the engineered hardwood and some of the carpet in our new house in preparation for the red oak that is going to be laid on Monday. I am SO freaking excited to see that completed. Many of you were privy to the pictures of the casino carpet that plagues our family room. It is very clean and new, but I don't know who the hell would have picked something that should be walked on by blue haired old ladies toting their buckets of quarters and dropping their cigarette butts on it.

This past week, I took Nora to visit our new home for the first time. She eagerly ran from room to room inspecting everything she could. She kissed herself in the mirrored closet doors and flushed both toilets. She was in heaven. The best part was when the pizza was delivered. She ran to the front door yelling, "Pizza Man, Pizza Man!" We parked ourselves atop the ghastly carpet and enjoyed. I purposefully did not bring the paper towels to the floor so our messy hands could be wiped all over the carpet. Man, did that ever feel good! It was just like when Dad re did the bathroom in our Monticello house and he set the three of us loose on the walls with markers. Nora and I felt so naughty!

Hives?

Some of you may know that when Nora was about three months old, I had a horrible case of hives that lasted for almost two months.

I think that all the stress of trying to find a house, moving, and being a single mother for a week and a half in the middle of all of this has taken a toll on my body. My stomach and back are covered with hives again.

I've been waking up in the morning itching like crazy. Thankfully it hasn't required a trip to the ER or even a doctor's visit, but it is still quite annoying. This morning I dug through all the bathroom boxes until I found the Alegra. It reminded me of watching a girl, who used to date Brian's best friend, as she frantically looked for her missing pot. I knew that medicine was going to give me some relief and I was determined to find it. As I was ripping open boxes labeled "Master Bath," Nora looked away from Mr. Rogers long enough to ask, "Mommy, what's wrong?" I must have been oozing desperation.

I caught myself scratching my stomach in the middle of a meeting this afternoon. Thank goodness the hives aren't on my ass or somewhere even worse!