This is just getting embarrassing

MB's computer has had some sort of fatal aneurysm, and so we'll be sharing mine for the foreseeable future. My first thought when I found out was As if I wasn't bad enough about finding time to blog. We'll work it out, though, and hopefully there will be something resembling a real post here by the end of the week.

In the meantime, please keep your fingers (or paws, as it were) crossed for my dear blogfriend Meg, who has some big stuff on her plate right now.

Photo Friday

Still not dead, I promise. We are all fine, the baby is fine. We're just ridiculously overscheduled, and preparing to spend the weekend unplugged and camping. Love to all!

View the entire Photo Friday collection on Flickr.

Definitely not dead

Just a busy weekend followed by a busier week. Will try to post soon! xoxo

One more book giveaway

Click here.

Bookworms unite!

I'm planning to do a few giveaways on my book blog in celebration of Book Blogger Appreciation Week. The first book you can win is Homer's Odyssey:  a Fearless Feline Tale, or How I Learned About Life and Love With a Blind Wonder Cat.

Click here to see my review and comment to win!

List of things MB did today

WITHOUT COMPLAINING, Y'ALL

went with me to the grocery store
emptied the fridge and wiped down the shelves and drawers
cooked a huge pot of chili
washed the dishes
gave the dog a bath
grilled pork chops, brats, and hot dogs
clipped the dog's nails
took out the trash
let me watch football
put the chili into tupperware and rinsed out the crock pot
wiped down the stove and counter
carried the laundry upstairs

(And on Friday he cleaned the kitchen and both bathrooms and mopped the basement floor.)

Finding him really was an epic, epic win.

Photo Friday

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I wonder how we can survive this romance

After overhearing this song coming out of MB's headphones:

VBG:  Why do you have that song on your computer?

MB:  You have it on yours.

VBG:  Yeah, but I'm a chick.

MB:  I'm just going through all the stuff I copied over from your computer. Finding things to delete.

VBG:  Uh-huh.

MB:  Clearly this is one of them.

VBG:  Yep.

MB:  I need a manly song. selects one called "Beautiful Green Wild Beast" (It is rather hard rock-y. There are guitars. And lots of drums.)

Nerd, nerd ago in a galaxy far, far away

Backstory: For some reason, MB tends to call Indy "Snoop" or "Snoop-a-loop," taken from Will Ferrell in Old School.

VBG: [singing, to the tune of the Imperial March] Snoop snoop snoop, snoop-a-loop snoop-a-loop. Snoop snoop snoop, snoop-a-loop snoop-a-loop. Snoop! A loop, loop-a-loopimus, a loop-loop-a-loopimus, a loop, snoop-a-loop snoop-a-loop!

MB: He's Qui Gon Indy.

VBG: But he's black, like Darth Vader.

MB: He's Mace Indu!



And then, later, my 50-pound dog climbed up on the back of the couch like a damn housecat:

Sunrise, sunset

I don't know where days go, honestly. It's not like I have a slammin' social life or anything, though I did have yoga class with evilducky on Tuesday night, and spent Thursday afternoon hanging out with my work friend Julia and her delectable 8-week-old son. Because she met me at our house and it was her first visit, I cleaned on Wednesday night. Our house hasn't looked this good since Christmas! I think I need to find a steady supply of first-time visitors so I have continued motivation to keep things looking sharp.

At 22 1/2 weeks, I suspect I have started to look obviously pregnant even when clothed, though I think it might still depend on the shirt. I had a meeting with some ladies I've known since college the other day, and none of them said a word, so maybe they just think I'm a big fan of beer and chili dogs? Hard to say.



I started researching cloth diapers, mostly because I'm interested in not spending half of my income on disposable diapers, and holy bejesus things have changed since 1986. On the positive side, that means the big white Gerber diapers that you have to fold yourself and then cover with rubber pants are kind of passé. On the negative side, there are so many options I don't know where to start. (Opinions, tips, and advice welcome, even if that advice is simply "Run. Run far away. To the land of Huggies.")

After a grand total of about two hours of poking around online, I have to say the Bum Genius one-size diapers (allegedly fitting 7 - 35 pounds worth of kid) look pretty good. I want something that's as close to disposables as possible on the ease-of-use scale, and I don't want to have to lay out a small fortune for these things more than once. As an added bonus, Target carries them online, so in theory we could register for them and people might actually get some for us. All in all, though, I have to admit I'm tempted to take the easy way out and just buy stock in Pampers.

In news not related to the contents of my uterus, we had an apocalyptic rainstorm yesterday that dropped about 3 inches in 2 hours or so. The parking lot at work was so flooded I had to wade to my car in water nearly up to my knees, and so much of it ended up in the floor mats from my shoes and pants that my car now smells like a very, very rank wet dog if I leave it parked with the windows rolled up. Awesome. I'm a huge fan of summer rainstorms, but give me a damn break, you know? Gah. And it's supposed to rain all week, so by the next nice day when I can finally leave it sitting in the sun with the windows down, I'll be lucky if I don't have small mangrove swamps growing under my seats. And that's really only okay if miniature manatees are included.

Speaking of manatees, no wonder my jeans don't fit.

Photo Friday

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Monday night at my house

MB:  We've got it pretty good here, I guess.

VBG:  Yeah. We've got each other. We've got a kickass dog. And the cat hasn't eaten anyone in months!

MB:  Yeah. I imagine when some people first get on Facebook, they see where some of their old friends have ended up and they have regrets. I don't have regrets.

VBG:  I'm glad you don't have regrets.

MB:  Nope, I've got it pretty good.

VBG:  Cuz you've got me, baby!

MB:  Well, I was thinking of Indy Bones. But sure!




Reading:  Twinkie, Deconstructed by Steve Ettlinger

Playing:  the (500) Days of Summer soundtrack, streaming here. If you haven't seen the movie, you should. It's easily the best movie I've seen this year, and possibly in the last several years.

Blue. No! Yellow! *

I grew up with my three cousins, a girl and two boys. Back then, when you bought stuff in a four-pack for kids, you almost always got one each of red, blue, yellow, and green. My oldest cousin, Amethyst, she got red. Anthony got blue, MacGyver got green, and I got yellow. When one of our aunts made each of us a quilt, she made them in our signature colors. When AA&M's mom got plaster handprint kits for the four of us to make, she painted them in our colors (and my mom still has a small yellow circle of plaster with my three-year-old handprint on it). To this day, I still claim yellow as my favorite color.

Now, I suppose it could be true that I like yellow so much because I sort of imprinted on it when I was little, like those birds that have to be fed via hand-puppet parents. But I've heard lots of stories about people who don't like the color that was picked for them as a kid, including my mom, who always wished she could have the blue things they picked out for her sister instead of the red they picked for her. Anyhow, it's not a good color for me to wear, and I try not to overdo its use since MB is not a fan, but I still love yellow. It's just...happy.

What about you guys? Do you have a favorite color? If you do, is there some reason for it, or just a chance thing?



* If you got it, props to you. If not, here.

Photo Friday

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It can't rain all the time

So, to lighten things up around here, a few things that have made me laugh in spite of it all:

1. The ever-awesome Dogblog. I spent two days reading through all the archives once, and it was time well spent.

2. I will fully admit I'm a vast nerd, but this amused me:



3. Tonight I brought Indy a treat and had him sit. As I took a moment to decide what to ask him to do to earn the treat, he tried -- as he tends to do -- to predict what I was going to request. He lifted one front paw in case I wanted a high five, and then the other, so that he was sitting popped upright like a very large meerkat. And then he toppled over backward.


Reading:  Twinkie, Deconstructed by Steve Ettlinger

Playing:  the Iron Man soundtrack

I'm not really the praying kind

But sometimes, you just have to. A friend who was due the week after me has lost her baby. If you could send up a prayer, a healing thought, anything out into the Universe, it would be much appreciated. My heart is breaking for her.

It's a BBPP! *

My parents' puppy had to have one of his front legs amputated this week. He developed a limp in his right front leg which was not caused by a sprain, as was first suspected. While Mom was trying to encourage him to rest so that his ankle could heal, she noticed that his right front paw was quite a bit smaller than his left front paw -- to the point where if he was a person, he'd be wearing two different shoe sizes. The anti-inflammatory meds didn't reduce the limp, and so Mom took him back to the vet for X-rays. All six doctors in the office looked at the X-ray and couldn't make sense of it, so they emailed it to a specialist, who diagnosed him with a damaged growth plate in the limpy leg.

Because his lower leg bone hadn't grown right, it was short and curved and was rubbing against the long upper leg bone. The vet told Mom that her two options were to break and reset the short bone with a gap, hoping it would fill in as it healed and become long enough, or to take a piece out of the longer bone so that the two didn't rub together. With the second option, he'd always have a limp and would probably develop arthritis in his elbow. With either option, he'd have to be on restricted activity for up to eight weeks. I know several people with dogs who have had knee surgery and been on restricted activity for eight weeks, but all of those dogs were full-grown (instead of hyperactive 6-month-olds) and only pets (instead of sharing a home with a cat and another hyperactive dog).

Mom was worried that the only way she'd be able to keep Taran quiet would be to keep him crated most of the time and possibly sedated. She was afraid that he'd end up psychologically damaged from being locked away from his packmates for so long, and the surgeries weren't even guaranteed to work. So she decided to ask the vet if amputation would be a better option. Since Taran was more or less already operating on three legs because his limp was so bad, the vet agreed that he'd likely make a quick adjustment and a complete recovery. In fact, his stitches would come out after 10 days (which sounds crazy to me).

Taran went in for his surgery on Tuesday morning and walked out of the vet on his leash the next evening. Once he got home, he was right back to climbing up and down from the couch and bed, chewing on Maggie (the other dog, a Border Collie mix and Indy's BFF), and even taking the damn stairs. Have you ever heard of such a champ? But he does need to get some rest, and so Maggie was getting bored. Mom called to see if Mags could come over today and run around our backyard for a few hours with Indy, and of course we said yes.








And the aftermath of four hours of Maggie time, a trip to the pet store, and a hot dog at Sonic:



* Big Black Pooch Party

Photo Friday

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I dreamt I saw you walking up a hillside in the snow

As hard as it is for me to believe, yesterday marked the halfway point in my pregnancy. I am now 20 weeks along, and finally starting to look knocked up instead of just chubby:


We had our 20 week ultrasound yesterday, and found out that our baby is a boy. Everything looked healthy as far as I could tell, and though we didn't get any great photos this time, it was wonderful to see the kid again. The tech was able to get shots of everything she was supposed to see, except for a profile of his face. She didn't seem too concerned, and said it would be up to my doctor whether or not we'd need to come back for another try.

On the second attempt at getting him to turn over, she got a shot of him with his hand flung dramatically to his forehead. She had already burned our CD of photos at that point, so I'll have to scan the copy she printed for us. It's pretty hilarious. We also found out that I have an anterior placenta, which explains why I have yet to feel any kicks.

Here's the little dude, now looking more like a real baby than an alien:


Well, maybe still a little bit alien:



In the weeks leading up to the ultrasound, I'd almost become convinced we were having a girl, though I had two dreams in recent days that the baby would be a boy. MB also dreamed about a boy, so I suppose we should have known. I think the news is still sinking in, though I've started to contemplate the wonderful possibility of raising a small version of MB (we should be so lucky).


P.S.
Here's the oh-so-dramatic pose:




Reading:  Homer's Odyssey: a Fearless Feline Tale, or How I Learned About Love and Life With a Blind Wonder Cat by Gwen Cooper

Playing:  K by Kula Shaker (oh, the cheesy earnestness of late-90s music videos!)

Photo Friday

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