Judecorp.

Wow, it is Restaurant Week and I didn't even know! How did I miss this? I am so slow.

HOWEVER, I did manage to score a reservation for Saturday night for me, Jen, and Jodie who is visiting from Maine. After scouring all of the menus looking for foods I can eat, of course. (Lots of Asian/Sushi/Seafood stuff up in here.) And foods that the other folks like, too.

Because I am the awesomest wife ever, I made reservations at Caminito Argentinean Steakhouse even though I don't eat beef and don't like the smell of beef cooking all that much. But Jen loves steak and Jodie likes steak and really, how often does Jen get to go to a steakhouse? Pretty much never. Besides, their Restaurant Week menu has a sweet potato ravioli entree that sounds ridiculously delicious. Mmmm, I am hungry already!

Jodie is coming tomorrow and we are going to have so much funnnnnn.

Let me tell you, I am completely /psyched/ that the weather has warmed (finally!) and we can actually open windows and doors to let the fresh air in. It's nice to have the two screen doors and we can get a really awesome breeze. I LOVE IT.

But the breeze comes with a price. All of the cat hair that has been hiding all over the living room and dining room is now swirling everywhere like bad western movie tumbleweed. It's that time of year again, friends - tumbleweed time.

We're planning on majorly de-furring this week anyway because some friends with allergies are coming to stay, so I guess in some ways the fur decided to make itself known in advance. Yikes!

~//~

We made some homemade chicken salad and made sandwiches for dinner. It felt very spring and summery. And delicious. I'm off tuna until I get a baby, and I miss it, but chicken salad is a good substitute for now. Yum.

Food.
Food.
Food.
Food.
Dessert.
Stuffed.
Tired.
Tired.
Tired.

Yeah, that's pretty much it. I ate a ridiculous amount of food until my stomach was pretty much rock hard, and then ate dessert. Then I was in a coma for several hours until a big sugar crash, so I ate a sandwich and suddenly all was well with the world. Good times!

The sun is coming up earlier again, which means I am too. Daylight starts streaming in around 6:30am - I prefer more on the 7:00 end of things because when the sun's up, I'm up... and I'd like to sleep as long as possible, please. Still, it's hard to beat waking up to bright sun (even if it's cold), and I've managed to plow through several loads of laundry and other inane household tasks.

There is a ridiculous amount of MEAT in our refrigerator thanks to Easter leftovers (why aren't there ever any mashed potato leftovers? *sigh*) and my aunt insists on giving us multiple portions of dessert even though a) we asked not to receive any and b) we try not to eat junk like that. I know she doesn't want it in HER house either, but still. Perhaps I can pawn it off on the kids at work or something. Don't college kids inherently love junk? :)

Wow, what a whirlwind. After getting home at 1ish AM on Friday morning and heading into work on Friday, I picked Jen up at her job and we drove on to Boston to crash a staff party at my old job. I was excited to see everyone I used to work with and only a couple of people knew I was coming, so I knew that would be fun. AND IT WAS! My old boss (the host) was completely surprised that I showed up and for a while it was like it was Jen's and my party instead of the work party. Everyone was asking about the house and the baby and saying how much they missed me and it was like being the belle of the ball for a little while. And of course my former boss makes incredible food - lasagne and salad and garlic bread and four different kinds of desserts. Mmmmm. We stayed and closed the party down around 11 and then headed to Marti Maraschino's place to spend the night.

After sleeping fitfully on Marti's guest bed, we got up and took Marti to breakfast at Sorella's. Mmmm. I ate far too many carbs and thought I was going to die. The plan was to drop Marti off, head to Liz and Matt's place to pick up some tools we lent them a while back, and then head to Chris and Jess's place to entertain Chris and Veronica for a bit and pick up a bunch of baby stuff they were going to lend us.

We got the tools, caught Chris right as he was bringing V back in for a walk, and we got chatty. At one point we decided we should do some lunch and Chris brought up the good idea to call Carrie and William and see if they were around. They were, so we went there to get them and little Katherine and then we all went and ate dim sum. I totally gorged which is probably not the best idea ever (man was I feeling slugglish!) and then we drove back.

Man, I'm tired, but I'm so glad we went.

~//~

And talk about loot! Chris and Jess lent us their infant swing, a floor gym, a snap-and-go stroller for an infant car seat, a HUGE bag of baby clothes that Veronica is done with, and a bag of Jess's maternity clothes. Carrie and William passed off a bag of clothes that may have gone from Jenn and Wiley to Jess and Chris to them, so we ended up with MORE clothes. THEN when we got home we had our package from estrange, including the breast pump that we bought from her and some extra goodies like some other clothes, a blanket, and some other assorted things. It was like a baby explosion in our living room for a little bit until I got it all put away - but I guess that's just a glimpse into things to come.

This morning we stopped up at a house in Hatfield to pick up a stroller from Freecycle as well. All of a sudden it's like we're really having a baby!

Dear Insomnia,

You are no friend of mine. I am tired of being wide awake for 1-2 hours between 3 and 5 a.m. It's boring and Jen is sleeping and the cats are sleeping and the baby is sleeping and I just lay there. Sucks.

No love,
me

~//~

Dear Progesterone,

You sure make some interesting dreams. This morning I am especially thankful for the dream where there was a four-alarm fire down the street from my house... and the part where the city came and cut down all of the trees on my property.

Yesterday's was the REAL winner, though, because it was my first "Bad Mama" dream. I don't know how it is at all helpful to dream about losing one's newborn baby for several days, but hey, better in a dream, right?

Amused,
me

~//~

Dear BLT,

You are so delicious. I know that you have almost no nutritional value but I cannot resist you.

Much love,
me

Yesterday was a pretty rockin' day aside from the frigid cold. (I am such a winter wimp it is not even funny.)

I got an e-mail from my boss that he was taking a sick day yesterday, and then I got into the office and pretty much immediately went back out through the snow and slickness to meetings across campus. When I got back, my other coworker and the one work-study that was there were gone. Empty office. So lonely.

So after a while of sitting by myself, hope_persists was lamenting that there was no one around to eat sushi with, so I conned her into bringing the sushi to my work! I called it in, she picked it up and brought it over. It was my second lunch of the day and it was YOM. While waiting for Jessica, a couple more work-studies came in and they were watching some awful lesbo movie and taking care of menial tasks. I have been desperately trying to jazz up this un-jazz-up-able powerpoint presentation but Jessica came and saved me from it. And brought FOOD. <3

On the way home from work I took one of our work-studies to her second job (it was dang cold out there) and it was nice having someone to walk all the way out to the frickin' athletic fields with. I dropped her off and stopped at the grocery store for some milk (we've been going through a whole lotta milk up in the crib) and scored some heavily discounted Valentine roses that I wouldn't have been able to afford otherwise and also some solid chocolate lips. Mmm, lips. So I got all of that home and Jen and I ate some lips and then made dinner. It involved rice-a-roni so it was very processed and tasty. Then a little more eating of the lips and of course there was Survivor watching and even ER wasn't terrible. Then bed.

~//~

In "pregnancy is fun!" news, Jen got a little Valentine's Day gift from the Frankinator when she got to feel a good, hard *thump* on the belly. Frank must have moved out of position again, though, because it hasn't happened since.

In "pregnancy is ow!" news, I think I am starting to get sciatic pain. After a while of sleeping, my left buttcheek just /hurts/. Nothing in the world makes it comfy for very long until I get up. Phooey.

Last night, Eryn and Amy came over to watch the Superbowl (along with Jen's friend Joanna) and they brought a squash pie with them. It is a little known fact that my absolute favorite post-holiday breakfast is some delicious pumpkin pie, and this squash pie is a very close second. Oh my gosh, it is so amazingly good. I actually want to go back and eat more, but I will probably be a good person and have a bowl of cereal instead. Mmmmm, pie.

I made chili yesterday for the game and I usually put about half a bottle of beer in my chili but we don't exactly have beer around the house these days. I was a little nervous about whether or not the chili would still be good, and it was - but it didn't taste as yummy without the beer. Still, I am excited to have some nummy chili leftovers so I can fill my tummy with beans!

Speaking of food, at my midwife appointment on Friday, I learned that I had gained exactly ONE pound since my 14w appointment. I get all of those online "Your Pregnancy This Week" type announcements and one of them said something like "Most people have gained 8-14 pounds by now," and all I could do was laugh. But at them or me, I'm not exactly sure.

1. Jen and I went downtown to meet up with freedumryde today. We had some delicious beverages at Haymarket and then late lunch at Viva Fresh Pasta. My food (cheese tortellini with a sauce of 1/2 tomato, 1/2 alfredo) was the serious YOM. Good times.

2. Jen and I set out on the tedious task of finding me something to wear to (don't laugh) a black-tie wedding reception in two weeks. I thought I was going to die, for real. But I ended up finding this sparkly freaking GOWN and it's quite nice... and stretchy enough and the waist is high enough that unless something really wacky happens should still fit fine in two weeks. Best of all? That bad boy is a size 10!

3. But I still hate the mall.

4. Totally had sex today for the first time since I was about 6w pregnant. Which was NINE WEEKS AGO, people! *dies*

5. This means, of course, that it's been about a week and a half with no bleeding or spotting to speak of. Still scared to jinx anything, but it seems over after that major bleed-out at 12w.

6. Jen got a new shirt for the wedding, too... and she's going to wear her fancy black suit and she will look teh sexxxxxxxxy. Hot.

7. Former coworkers come tomorrow, stacy will be in town tomorrow, catching up with Eryn & Amy for a bit on Monday, and best of all, NO WORK! Awesome.

It is HARD to go out for fancy-pants food when you are knocked up, let me just tell you.

Since Rick and Gretchen were going to be spending NYE with us last night, Rick had asked that I find someplace to eat dinner. Well, I didn't want to go somewhere in downtown N'ton because it was First Night there and it would probably be PACKED. And I looked at some places in the other towns but noplace seemed to have anything special for NYE, and I kind of like going whole hog on NYE when it comes to food. Last year we went out with Olex and Jen and had delicious foodles, there were years where we got into formal wear and ate boatloads of sushi, so yeah... just some reservations at a brewpub were not going to cut it.

I found a place in Sunderland called the Blue Heron that had a quite lovely prix fixe for New Year's Eve. The website made it look like a nice place and I made reservations for a late dinner (9pm). I had quickly looked over the menu for Things A Pregnant Chick Can Eat and called it a go.

Well, when we got there, there were a lot of delicious options but most of them had to be nixed for one reason or another - either for main ingredients like pate or swordfish or lamb (which is never fully cooked) or for ingredients like caviar or booze. And then even when I thought I had something safe (like the salad, I mean, hello, it's salad), the server warned me that the DELICIOUS-looking hunk of bleu cheese was not pasteurized. Dang it!

I ended up having the salad (minus the cheese), an appetizer of a pan-seared sea scallop with bacon and fennel, a main course of quail stuffed with chorizo stuffing over a bed of grits, and a dessert of a trio of chocolate mousses. (My original dessert was a chocolate cake that was too rich for me, and I traded with Gretchen.) All of the dishes were quite tasty, but my body is not used to eating so much rich food and I don't usually eat a four-course meal right before bed! So my slow-moving guts are still a little unhappy with this development.

There was a live band (jazz) that was pretty good, and they had dancing and hats and noisemakers as well. Our server was very perceptive and picked up via eavesdropping that I was pregnant, and aside from the bleu cheese warning, she also brought me sparkling cider in lieu of my champagne toast. Nice.

I highly recommend the Blue Heron, especially for New Year's Eve.

Hello, friends, and Merry Christmas for those who celebrate.

Jen and I took in a good deal of loot this year, even for our lack of holiday spirit and incessant drama. Our biggest gift is of course Frankenfetus, whose heart was going at a good clip this morning. Jen got me a lot of little toys to get through the tedious workday as an office temp, including a mini Bozo-punching-bag and a bunch of little play-dohs. And a Playmobil pirate ship! And the cats got me lots of Todd Parr books! My brother and SIL came through with a new Neil Gaiman short story collection that I hadn't even heard of (I am so behind) and a surprise DVD of season one of ALF. Ha ha ha, I bet I will learn how DUMB that show is even though I loved it as a kid. Man, I loved me some ALF.

We got some gift cards (Macy's, Home Depot, Chili's) and some money which I'm sure we will use. And a lot of other stuff. I didn't get a chance to get a ton of stuff for Jen but she did like the big gifts I scored - a new winter coat and this cool necklace from one of the local art galleries. I wasn't sure if she would like it but she says she does, so I will take that!

Yesterday we all took the grandparents to Foxwoods. It was a pretty good time and fun to be with everyone. (And I won $65 on a nickel slot!) But I'd forgotten how smoky it is there and I spent a lot of time worrying about the baby. That seems to be what I do best.

My grandmother made my favorite snack (peanut butter balls) and gave me an entire tupperware FULL of them. Oh my god, they are so freaking good it is disgusting. I had been asking her to make them for almost the last 20 years and she made them for me this year because I am pregnant. Awwwh! Had I known, I would have gotten knocked up YEARS ago!

Tomorrow is my quick orientation for my new job, where I go fill out tax forms and stuff. I hope they have snacks. And water. And I hope I remember to find my SS card.

~//~

I hope all of you had a wonderful and relaxing day either doing the family/friends thing, or doing the chinese food/movie thing, or whatever. I love you!