Two days of r & r undone in about 20 minutes. This is why I don’t ever do anything nice for myself…
Archive for July, 2009
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Wednesday, July 29th, 2009spoiled
Tuesday, July 28th, 2009i had my first pedicure today. i haven’t been able to cut my nails, let alone put lotion or anything on my feet, so they were pretty grody. they look much better now, and no-chan paid for the deluxe treatment, so the lady exfoliated and did all this other stuff and it felt awesome. it’s not something i’d have ever considered doing for myself, and it was so sweet of no-chan to treat me to that. now that i’ve had it done, though, and it wasn’t crazy expensive, i might actually have it done now and then. after that, we went to lunch, then to the mall so i could get a couple nursing bras. i’ve been wearing a dd throughout my pregnancy, and i know it’s too small, but i was afraid to spend a bunch of money on bras when i didn’t know how big my boobs were going to get. well it turns out the bras weren’t that expensive after all. i got two for about what i pay for one at lane bryant. also, i’m an f-cup now. so, yeah, ouch. 
but now i have a nice night bra sans underwire, and one with underwire for daytime use. aside from the surprise at finding bras for around $20 each, and that i’m wearing a freaking f-size bra, i was also surprised that they even carried them that large. and that my band size is the same.
anyway, i’d better get to bed. got to get up early-ish for another first: a massage! 
it’s okay to objectify women, but don’t you dare kill a fly!
Sunday, July 26th, 2009yet another reason peta annoys the crap out of me. 
one less worry
Friday, July 24th, 2009i remembered what i forgot to mention yesterday. so, it turns out sohei’s brother does want to rent our house. (i won’t kill him for not coming to that decision three or so months ago, as i am grateful that someone is freaking renting it.) he and a friend are renting for $750/month, which means we still have to pay about $200/month on the mortgage, but it’s all they can afford and it’s better than nothing. also, i know he won’t destroy the house, and as we’re still trying to sell, that’s helpful. i’m a little worried that the idiot property manager is going to find out they’re renting (we’ve told them to say they’re just staying there) as i don’t much feel like dealing with a lawsuit right now. but she didn’t do anything to get it rented, so whatevs. and if there is a lawsuit, i’m pretty sure we’d win. i’ve been gathering evidence of her complete lack of effort, and it’s pretty obvious she didn’t do her job. anyway, they’re renting on a monthly basis, so if someone does buy (ha!) they’re fine with having to leave with a couple months’ notice. it’s a pretty good arrangement, and that’s one less thing to worry about for now…
another long update
Thursday, July 23rd, 2009hmm. updatery…
things have been pretty good. i love being back in my house, of course. 
i’m waiting to hear back about the tenant paying to fix the broken closet door. the unpacking has been slow going, as i can barely manage keeping up with chores. i’m huge and sore and tired. the playard sohei’s mum got us arrived yesterday, and we put it together without too much trouble. it was confusing at first, but i think after a couple tries, we’ll be good at packing and unpacking it for trips. i can’t wait to get the crib from no-chan’s house and get it set up, but it’s looking like we won’t be doing that until after sohei finishes his bar exam. (he’s going to be away from me for two days next week. 
) i think the nursery will be pretty cute when it’s all set up. and my mother-in-law and no-chan are throwing me a baby shower in about a week. i already have everything i need except a stroller and carseat. there are some odds and ends i could use, but i have some gift cards and stuff, so it should be fine. so i don’t really need a baby shower, but it’s always nice to see family. there are going to be a bunch of people there i don’t know, too, which is a little awkward. (hi! i don’t know you! give me presents!) but i’m not throwing it, so whatevs.
little bear seems to be doing okay, as far as i can tell. my diabetes is pretty much under control, so i only have to test twice a day, rather than the four times/day i was doing. strangely, my numbers got a lot better, and i haven’t been throwing ketones (i got ketone test sticks at the pharmacy), when i started eating normally again. i read this forum on gestational diabetes, and some women found that eating 1/2 cup of ice cream before bed helped their fasting numbers and ketone issues. so i started doing that on monday, and my fasting numbers have really improved. also, i haven’t had a positive ketone test all week. i tested after eating the ice cream, too, to make sure it wasn’t causing too much of a spike, and my numbers were still under the limit. i was told my numbers would get worse as the pregnancy progressed, and they still might, but now that i’m pretty much back to eating like i used to, everything’s a lot better. that isn’t to say i’m drinking juice and eating donuts and stuff. i don’t consume as much sugar as i did before the diagnosis. but i’m not being as strict, either. i’ve been eating onion bagels with no problems, for example. i put butter and whipped cream cheese on them, which also seems to help, glycemically. i learned in the nutrition class i took as an elective that eating fats with carbs changes the way you digest the carbs, kind of slowing things down. (which means less of a spike.) the stupid nutritionist i talked to told me to limit fats, and when i asked about the fact that fats delay the conversion to glucose, she hemmed and hawed and said something about how it wasn’t worth it or some half-assed thing. it was like she was claiming i’d only done well on a test because i’d cheated by studying for it. 
anyway, i find that if i eat “bad” foods like bagels and ice cream, if they’re good and full of fat, it doesn’t cause a negative impact. i knew that lady was an idiot. even sohei now thinks my gd diagnosis is bullshit. (i was borderline before i got pregnant, and being pregnant made things slightly worse, seems like. i will be eating more carefully from now on – not so many icees and sodas and candy bars – but the diet they had me on is ridiculous.) anyway, i thought this was interesting, considering my dieting history and my mum’s tendency to not eat anything and my resulting low birth weight, and how that all ties into my insulin resistance.
unfortunately, brumby isn’t doing too well. he’s had diarrhea for a couple of days, and threw up today, too. if he’s still doing this tomorrow, i’m going to have to make him a vet appointment. (i don’t know how we’re going to pay for it, considering i can’t even afford to pay all our bills in full this month, but if he’s sick, he needs to go to the vet. ) i just hope it’s a bit of a bug and he’ll be fine…
and in other randomness, i got an invite for google voice, and now have a phone number with “gish” in it. which i got stupidly excited about. (i’m probably going to put a widget on here soon that’ll allow you to call me. i don’t know why you’d want to, but it’s a neat idea.) i fixed whatever was causing the issue that wouldn’t allow me to post pics here from my phone, too. and i got this neat app on my ipod that updates my sidebar music thingy with whatever i’m listening to on my ipod at the time, as long as i have wi-fi access.
i think there was more i was going to talk about, but this has gone rather long, and i need to go get a snack.
My two babies
Thursday, July 23rd, 2009
Brumby and my bump
Z?
Monday, July 20th, 2009Thunder woke me up and I can’t get back to sleep. Also, my throat hurts from my cold, and the reflux I’m still having from last night’s dinner isn’t helping. I was reading my rss feed yesterday, and saw a blog post where this guy was offering his condolences to a friend of his because his wife had just delivered their second stillborn baby. Both times the cause had been the cord wrapped around the baby’s neck. It’s not like I wasn’t aware that could happen, but hearing that it happened twice to the same woman made it feel a lot less rare. And since little bear has days where he doesn’t feel much like moving, that’s going to be a lot more nerve-wracking now. I can’t imagine basically carrying a baby to term, only to have it die like that. Actually, I kind of can, which is part of the reason I’m lying awake right now.
I know that it’s stupid, but I want him to be born now. He’s at least developed enough that he’d live. I can’t stand the thought of making it this far, and loving him this much, only to lose him to some freak occurance.
The other day, over at the pregnancy board I frequent, this lady posted that she’d just lost her baby at 28 weeks to an umbilical knot. And I felt awful for her, and it did freak me out. But as it was the only one I’d heard of, it felt more like an anomaly. But lightning striking the same poor woman twice… Also, I don’t know the statistics on the knot issue, but the nuchal cord thing happens in around 20% of pregnancies. And while it’s usually harmless, clearly sometimes it’s not.
I will be so happy when this is over and I’m holding my alive and well son. I mostly enjoyed my pregnancy, and it’s still not terrible, but it’s becoming more uncomfortable and I’m not getting any less panicky.
how to be an abusive douchebag to your lady
Friday, July 10th, 2009epic. fucking. fail.
btw, i may not be my husband’s physical ideal, but when he grabs my “flab” it’s typically appreciatively, at the very least. (i’ll spare you the details on his favorite grabby situations.) if he pulled any of the shit from those oh so useful suggestions, he’d be missing some teeth.
[edit] also, yes, this.
chill the fuck out – i’ve got this
Thursday, July 9th, 2009Now that I know sohei wants to keep the st. Pete house, too, I’m making it my mission to do that. (not that I wasn’t willing to help out or try before, but I feel a lot less depressed after learning we’re on the same page.)
I’m fed up trying to get the Tallahassee house rented. The property manager is useless and I’ve had to do everything myself or watch her like a hawk the whole time to get shit done. So I decided to contact our realtor and she’s willing to try to sell. Since we can’t afford to pay the mortgage after July, I’m going to lower the rent price to the point we’re taking a big loss but still have some help. Hopefully, with the rent price ridiculously low, someone will be interested. If I had my druthers, we’d pay until sohei’s licensed in September, then just quit paying on it while trying to sell. (it’s harder to sell a house as a rental property, but we haven’t much choice at this point.) anyway, if we sell now, we might break even. I just kind of wish we’d given selling it a go earlier, but stupid me trusted the idiot property manager when she said we’d be able to rent the house out at our original asking price. (yeah, she’s pretty much lied to us from day one.) so it’s not the greatest plan ever, but it’s all I have to work with at this point.
As plans are kind of in place for the Tallahassee house now, I have to try to focus on saving the st. Pete house. I looked into government help today so maybe we can get a new mortgage or something, but i think we’ll have to get rid of the Tallahassee house first. At any rate, once we’re settled back into the house, I’ll be talking options with someone over at this community outreach type place. Also, a rather sizable problem is the $400/mo condo fee, and we just got a letter last night saying it’s going up again. I’ll be going to that meeting, and I’ll be running for a position on the board at the next election.
So things aren’t perfect, but considering the circumstances, I think I’ve got this.
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Tuesday, July 7th, 2009the property manager at the tallahassee house is a fucking idiot. if i did go with sohei on saturday, i’d just burn the fucking place down. i don’t want any more ties to that stupid fucking town or the stupid fucking people therein.
should i stay or should i go?
Tuesday, July 7th, 2009now that the moving stuff is all arranged, i’m not sure i want to leave it to sohei to do by himself. i mean, he’ll have help in both locations. but what if i did end up hiring a psycho or something? also, i have a really hard time being away from sohei these days. i don’t really want him to go to tallahassee by himself. if his dad was sticking around to help, i’d be totally okay with it, but he’s not. on the other hand, i have visions of going into labor halfway there or halfway home and having to have the baby on the side of the road or some podunk hospital. if i did have the baby away from home, i’d be stuck in whatever town i give birth in for the next couple of months while little bear’s in the nicu. i can’t tell you how much that would suck, and it seems like just the sort of thing that would happen to me. but then, making a very bad hiring decision seems like the sort of thing i’d do, too. arg. since i’m incapable of doing anything right these days, i end up being paralyzed with fear most of the time, and unable to make decisions. ultimately, it’s probably not that big of a deal, and everything will probably be fine, but, again, arg.
also, i seem to have a summer cold. ugh.
some progress
Monday, July 6th, 2009okay, i think things might just finally be on track. the pinellas guy seems really friendly, and will be out to the house to help out on sunday morning, with a friend, even. the tallahassee guy seems alright, and should be at the house to help out on saturday afternoon. (i haven’t received confirmation, but it sounds like he was fine with that.) the truck is due to be picked up in tallahassee on friday evening, but i’m calling them tomorrow to see whether sohei can pick it up on saturday morning instead. if not, i don’t know what he and his dad are going to do, but i’m leaving it up to them. as long as he’s there by 4:00 on friday to pick it up, i don’t care. the hard part so far has been finding and coordinating all the labor. if we have a truck and workers, the rest of it can be figured out.
also, i put in a request to have the power turned on at the st. pete house. i just checked the website and it’s done. one less thing to worry about, i guess.
but since i didn’t do any of my damn chores today, i guess i’d better get started on the dishes and dinner…
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Monday, July 6th, 2009jesus christ, can the world just fuck off for five minutes? i finally get a minute to sit down and eat my goddamn lunch, when sohei calls wanting to know if i heard back from the moving guy yet. (i contacted about a dozen people this morning and heard back from one, who wanted $280. uh, no.) i hadn’t heard back from the $16/hr guy and he was all pissed because for some reason his dad – who is the one driving him up to tally to pick up the truck – can’t figure out what he wants to do, and somehow this is my fault/problem. i’ve been waiting since wednesday for them to make their plans so i could start booking shit, and finally just decided to go ahead and do it today and let them deal with it if they don’t like the dates i picked. so now, because i was waiting on them to tell me when they wanted to go do this, suddenly everything’s messed up, and it’s my fucking fault for not booking help sooner. well, excuse the fuck out of me. if i’d just gone and booked people without asking them what days they wanted to do this shit, they’d be pissed off because i picked the wrong goddamn days. i just contacted the mover a few hours ago. maybe he’s at work or something, i don’t know. it’s not my fucking fault that he’s not calling back or emailing me. then he’s pissed off because i won’t call the moving van company to reschedule, when just this fucking morning i asked what time to put on the reservation, and i’m fucking sick of calling people. i’ve been on the phone all day! i figured he could call the damn truck people and change the reservation, since i put his damn name on it, but apparently not. so i’m in the middle of this fucking phone call when the cat decides to start puking everywhere. yum, there’s nothing more appetizing than cleaning up cat puke. i was starving when i sat down to eat, because i wanted to take care of as much stuff as i could before lunch, but now i just have really bad heartburn and feel sick. i’m so fucking tired of dealing with all this shit.
overwhelmed
Monday, July 6th, 2009ugh, i have too much to do today. i already reserved our moving truck for this weekend, and will be calling to confirm this afternoon or tomorrow morning. (on two separate occasions, we’ve had our truck given to someone else despite reserving it, and i can’t deal with that kind of shit this time.) i’ve been looking into moving help for sohei, as well. it’s too bad he couldn’t just get his brother to do it, as it would have been way easier and cheaper, and i know the kid is pretty careful. now i have to find some stranger to do it for cheap, which comes with all sorts of potential problems. what if he’s some kind of creep or weirdo? what if he gets hurt on the job and wants to sue us? what if he does a shit job and breaks our stuff? i am not happy. 
i wish i could just go do it. and of course if something goes wrong, guess whose fault it will be? even though i’m the one who wanted him to ask his brother or a friend to help, or just hire some pros for a couple hours like we did last time. i’d rather shell out $250 and have it done right by people working for an actual moving company than pay around $100 for some jabroni and end up having to pay anyway to replace our broken stuff or owe who knows how much when he sues us for hurting himself. but what do i know?
i also have to call a glass repair place regarding the closet door. i can’t find a replacement door that matches the other one at any store in the area. they all either have gold or white trim (yuck) and the other door is silver/chrome/whatever. so i’m hoping we can just get someone to replace the glass rather than the whole damn door. i’m betting they’re going to want to see the door before giving me a quote, which means dragging sohei back over to pinellas some day this week. w00t.
at some point, i have to get new locks for the front door and get a decently-priced mattress (i.e., a queen size under $300), but i kind of need sohei for that, since my car is undrivable. we actually need the mattress by this weekend, since he’s leaving the old bed in tally, but i’m betting that’s not going to happen. i don’t know how the hell we’re going to pay for all of this, anyway. the truck is $350 (plus whatever fees), the movers are probably going to end up being $200-300 to load and unload the truck, the mattress is another $300 or more… and who knows what else is going to come up. i’m seriously considering taking some kind of part time job for the next month or so just to pay for all the moving-related crap.
i also have a bunch of chores to catch up on… dishes, laundry, dinner… i can’t wait until we’re just settled back in the house, and everything’s fixed and taken care of. also, on days i feel too shitty to wash the dishes or cook, i can just skip it without being a bad house guest. i’m tired of having to choose between feeling guilty and feeling exhausted.
frankly, i think we should just pay real movers to do all this shit, buy a bunch of furniture and stuff, put it all on the credit card, and declare bankruptcy after sohei is licensed in september. (while we’re at it, we could put all the property taxes we owe on the card and have done with that, too.) i honestly don’t know how we’re going to pay for all of this, and still pay the bills this month. i am also incredibly wary about my choices regarding movers, and really wish i didn’t have to make a decision about that. gah, i am so done with all this crap.
too much updatery
Friday, July 3rd, 2009some updatery is necessary, i reckon.
yesterday morning, i went to the doctor. he took a quick look and my numbers, said everything is fine, and pretty much left. i asked about the whole losing five pounds thing, and he said there are ketones in my urine and i’m probably not eating enough and to take it up with the nutritionist. wham, bam, thank you ma’am. (i do not like the male doctors at this practice so far, and am hoping like hell i get dr. miller on delivery day. i told sohei i’m thinking about just arranging for a c-section in advance so i know for sure that she’ll be doing it. )
then we left and went to pick up the keys to our house. we went home, and things mostly looked great! i was sooo relieved. there was a rotten spot near the door, which is not the tenant’s fault, but the condo association’s. you’d think for $400/mo they could fix that shit, but no. and there was a similar spot by the garage door. i’ll be calling about that once i’m back in the house. the carpet was mostly fine with the sort of wear and tear you’d expect with a carpet that age. i still dream of replacing it with a nice, light-colored pergo, but that’ll have to wait until we’re not broke. (also, i want to make sure we’ll be there a couple years before undertaking a bunch of projects.) the walls had chips in places that looked like moving-related damage, but should be easy enough to touch up. the walls were always a little spotty in places, due to the previous owner’s smoking habit, but i lived with it before, i can live with it now. while the house is a bit dated (having been built in ‘89), it’s still the house i remember being madly in love with. again, updating will be nice, but is based on finances and how long we expect to stay. i think sohei remembered how much he loved the house, too, because he was talking about maybe staying 2-3 years. dare i dream? 
also, i think watching the kids play in the fire hydrant in the park across the street and hearing their cries of glee re-endeared him to the neighborhood, and how nice it might be to raise our little guy there.
anyway, the only problem was that one of the bedroom closet doors is shattered. the closet doors in both rooms are glass, and one of the panes in the master bedroom is smashed. i called the property management lady right away (after taking a picture with my camera phone), and she said to have it fixed and let them know how much it costs, so we can be reimbursed out of the deposit. i also think, after looking at the red wall in the bedroom again, that i might paint it to match the rest of the room. i’m not sure i want to change the red in the kitchen, though. i’m also not sure i want to paint little bear’s nursery. i kind of like the color the way it is, and the ceiling is realllly high. i think i’ll just put up some wall art or something. but everything is mostly good, and i’m hoping we stay a few years and i can fix some stuff up a little.
then we went to the sound exchange near our house and got some lunch and went to the nutritionist. (the sound exchange trip also seemed to help reaffirm sohei’s liking of the old neighborhood. this could have been possibly further cemented by a lunch trip to hao wah, but chinese buffets aren’t good eating for diabetics, so we went to chik-fil-a instead.) the nutritionist i saw this time seemed, to me, to be completely grasping at straws the whole time. i asked why my fasting sugar jumped 20 points in two weeks, when i was eating a better diet, and she said my sugars were just going to get worse as the pregnancy progressed. okay, i can kind of buy that, but not by that much. she said my liver was putting out too much glucose overnight. i thought that might be the case, too. and when i showed her the numbers i got when i experimented with taking my sugars every couple of hours one night, she didn’t really have anything to say about the pattern. she also started in on me about my food choices, and said in one instance my numbers were elevated due to eating fried chicken and the breading, etc. i pointed out where it said, right in front of her, that i had taken the skin off and hadn’t eaten the breading at all, but she didn’t have anything to say about that either. (i wouldn’t have eated fried chicken to begin with except that i don’t always have a choice about what to eat for dinner.) then she tried blaming the sugar-free pudding i ate, even though there was no evidence of it raising my numbers at all. i said that, yes, i was absolutely sure it was completely sugar-free, and got pretty snippy at that point considering that she was treating me like a freaking idiot. she pointed out that it has 14 carbs, and i said 1) those come from the fact that it’s a dairy product, which is a perfectly allowable carb, and 2) it’s on the freaking list of approved foods, and as such, i assumed it was okay to eat. i hope if i go back, i get to see the lady i saw the first time, because this one irritated the hell out of me. if you aren’t familiar with your own list of allowed foods, i don’t see why i should trust you regarding anything else. (she said i could fix the ketone issue by eating my morning snack. since it’s an overnight issue, i’d think it has more to do with my bedtime snack not having enough carbs or something, but she didn’t like my bedtime snack choice either. couldn’t really give me a suggestion about what to eat, but again, i was an idiot for eating an approved food on the list and expecting not to go into ketosis overnight, apparently.)
the nurse, however, i love. she was the same one i saw last time, who showed me how to use my meter. we talked about possible solutions to my numbers. and because she didn’t spend the entire time insulting my intelligence and instead gave me actual ideas about solutions, i think i understand better what i need to do. i’m probably going to have to go on insulin, though.
then today i woke up feeling kind of ick. i made my breakfast of yogurt and strawberries, with a sprinkling of no-chan’s homemade granola on top (’twas a good idea, empress, thanks! 
), and ate part of it when my vision suddenly went nuts. sohei was out getting his own breakfast, and i was eating and watching tv. out of nowhere, i was unable to focus my eyes. everything got all blurry and “buzzy” and this weird pattern showed up. i tried squinting and closing my eyes, but it just got worse. then i lost peripheral vision in my right eye. as you can imagine, i freaked right the fuck out. when sohei got home, i told him what was going on, and he said to call the doctor. he was supposed to be studying for the bar, since he had the day off, but that never seems to work out for him, poor guy. i tried lying down and calming myself, but i started feeling this weird pressure behind my eyes, so i gave up and made the call. a pre-ecclampsia symptom is nothing to ignore, after all. i got the answering service (because the 3rd of july is now a holiday as well, apparently) and explained what was going on, and one of the doctors i’d never met called back a few minutes later. i told him what happened, and he said to go to labor and delivery for assessment. shit. (we’re still in brandon, and the hospital is in clearwater, over an hour away.)
by the time we left, my head was starting to hurt pretty bad. sohei drove like a maniac until we hit the expressway, which i both appreciate and fear. we got to the hospital alive, and i got checked in and all. after a couple of urine tests, consistent baby monitoring (yay for listening to his heartbeat for a couple hours) and a lot of waiting, i was told that my blood pressure was fine, and there wasn’t much protein in my first test, and none in my second. (i am so, so relieved by this, because it means i probably don’t have a kidney problem after all. though i will still be checking into it one of these days, to make sure.) the doctor never showed up, but the nurse said it was probably dehydration or something. which i guess makes sense because i totally overdid it yesterday. i mean, i drank tons of water yesterday evening, but whatevs. i have to get a blood pressure cuff to use at home, and no-chan has one, so i’m going to use hers. this is mainly so next time i go blind, i can check and see that my bp is fine before bothering the fine people at the hospital.
so that’s what i’ve been up to the past couple of days. is it any wonder i’ve barely been able to stop sleeping since yesterday evening? 