Round 2/That’s Not What I Meant…!

If you saw my last post, you’ll know that my husband and I are pregnant!

…well, he’s not, obviously, but then again, he is, because I am, and if I’m going to suffer, by golly, so is he.

Except that so far, my best friend seems to be having all the sympathy pains/symptoms instead of Clint. Guess we know who loves me more, eh (tee hee)?

At any rate, there ought to be a tiny little bundle of joy arriving in approximately eight to nine months. That’s the important thing.

Also important to note here is that God has answered two of my prayers in the form of giving me a child. Well, make that two children now. The first time, I had been praying for a baby for a few years. I didn’t think I could have kids, though I never confirmed that (apparently) with a doctor or anything. I was just assuming, since I’ve heard that when you’re trying for a baby, if it doesn’t happen after a year, you should get checked out- you and your other half, both.

Imagine my surprise when I finally discovered I was pregnant! Woo-hoo! I cried because I was so happy.

So there was one answered prayer.

Now, you’ll remember (or you won’t, whichever) when I was freaking out back in May about the river rafting/camping trip I was to go on (and did go on, a couple weeks ago). At the time I wrote the post on here, my Number One issue was that I would be accompanied by that monthly visitor that plagues women everywhere and shows up when it’s least convenient.

Who wants to be out in the wilderness, using a metal box with a toilet seat attached, no discreet trash can available, for five days and four nights, when they’re on their period?

…Any takers?

Yeah, I didn’t much care for that prospect myself. And so, in one of those realization/aw, crap/please no sort of moments, a quick and silly prayer ran through my mind- “Oh God, please don’t let me have my period during this trip, that just sounds like embarrassment waiting to happen!”

And I thought no more about it, really.

Weh-heh-hell! (That’s ‘well’ drawn out in a “joke’s on me” sort of tone, if you didn’t catch that…)

I had been worried for nothing, as it turned out. The trip down the river was as much fun for me as for everyone else, and it wasn’t until I got home that I stopped to consider WHY it had gone so smoothly.

Possibility #1 seemed most likely: I was losing weight in a fairly rapid fashion, and so maybe my body was in freak-out mode. Yeah, that sounded logical and plausible. I liked that one.

Possibility #2: God had taken me up on my hasty, barely remembered prayer, and things would get back to normal in a couple of days. Yeah, that could’ve been it.

Possibility # 3: God had taken me up on my hasty, barely remembered prayer, and I was pregnant. Ha ha, effective and all, but really?

And then until last Saturday, I put it all out of my mind. You wouldn’t think that would be as easy as it was, would you? Not knowing for sure? Yeah, well, in Clint’s and my marriage, there’ve been a handful of times we both thought for sure I was pregnant, only to be bummed when we found out I wasn’t. So instead of getting our hopes up, or rather, instead of wasting precious time worrying, we did what we do best with worrisome issues…we ignored it until we couldn’t anymore.

We were spending the weekend at Clint’s grandma’s cabin, with his grandma, and his uncle, and his mom. And our kiddo, of course, and a dog. Friday evening, the three of us women took the munchkin for a walk in his stroller, and as we were heading cabin-ward, which also happened to be uphill, which also happened to be in a still-too-hot part of the day, I started feeling pretty dizzy.

I thought, “Dang, I hate climbing hills. Maybe I just won’t push it so hard. Stupid heat. Stupid bugs. Stupid me, not drinking more water.”

And then I was fine.

The next morning, after coffee and breakfast had been consumed, and the cabin got nice and quiet for the little one’s nap, I sprawled on the couch to doze for a little while. A few minutes after I’d closed my eyes, I felt like I’d been drinking for hours and was having bed-spins and I was pretty sure breakfast was going to come back to haunt me.

When the dizziness and nausea didn’t go away after a few more minutes, I gave up on sleep and got up. Still queasy. Roasting. Sweating, in fact, and it wasn’t even all that warm in the cabin. Not dizzy once I stood up, though.

I told Clint about the episode, and he insisted on getting me a pregnancy test as soon as we were back in town the next day.

I assume we all know how that turned out.

Oh, yeah- Note to God: That’s not what I meant! But I trust your judgment. If you think we can survive another kid, we’ll give it a whirl.

 

A Welcome, and A Welcome Surprise…

First of all, I’ve been too busy (lazy) and too hot (lazy) for blogging here recently, and this won’t even be a proper post, so I’m sorry. I’m sure I’ll get back to it if the mid-day temperatures stop being above 100 degrees. And if the temperature inside my house drops below 85 again.

Anyway, two important things today:

1. My very bestest, best friend in the world started a blog on here! She’s a mother of three boys, two dogs, and a husband (yes, I said that the way I meant it), and I don’t know that I’ve ever met anyone who has as bad of luck as she does on a daily basis. She decided maybe she should write about it, because (while I absolutely sympathize with her) it’s kind of hilarious. She’s never done much writing before, so if some of you want to stop by her page and give her some encouragement and feedback, you can find her here:

http://maralouthan.wordpress.com/

2. I took two tests the other day, one to check, and the other to confirm, and here are the results-

No way they’re both wrong, I suppose…

I still have to get in to see a doctor, but as far as I can figure, we’re looking forward to another February baby. And yes, I am in fact reeeeally hoping for a baby girl this time.

Woo hoo!

More about that next time. See you then!

Notes on Marital Bliss

I am madly in love with my husband.

Sometimes, I think I must be mad to love my husband, and sometimes, I’m mad, but I love my husband.

Poor Clint. I’m pretty certain that I drive him insane, and not necessarily in that ‘newly-in-love, gotta-be-near-you’ special kind of way.

This morning, with an audience of Clint’s mom, our son, and a cat or two and maybe a dog, Clint and I yelled at each other. He was trying to collect himself to head out the door for work, and I was sweeping up cat food that I forgot to pick up off the floor and the baby spilled everywhere.

I was in the way.

Clint was in the way.

It’s a very small house, so basically, if we are in the same room together, we’re both in the other person’s way. And man oh man can that get frustrating…apparently to the point where we have a little yelling match in front of the entire household.

Sorry about that, Mom, E, Izzy, Georgie, and Sage. It’s just how Clint and I roll.

We yell.

Actually, I’m usually the one doing the yelling, and Clint snaps or snipes or bowls me over with sarcasm.

It’s a helluva system, but it works for us. Not that Clint would agree with me on that…in fact, Clint doesn’t agree with me on much.

We have an old wooden bench that was found in the shed here and I thought it would be a nice addition to our front yard, if only it were to be painted purple. Clint thinks it would be a nice addition to the yard if only it were NOT painted purple.

So what’s going to happen here? What’s the solution to this little problem?

I’m totally going to paint it purple, and whenever I sit down on it, I’m going to smile slyly to myself and think, “Yes! I WIN!”

…Clint, on the other hand, may one day ‘accidentally’ set fire to it.

Last night, at ohhh, about 10:30 or maybe a bit later, I was cutting Clint’s hair. Due to the fact that he had asked me to do so much earlier in the evening and I completely forgot about it until bed time, Clint was…very deliberately…being a severe pain in the you-know-where. Not holding still, turning his head side to side, leaning forward too far, doing the Hokey-Pokey (yes, he absolutely did).

I say he’s lucky he’s got any hair left at all. He says I should have done the damn hair cut when he asked me to. I say I’ll never cut his hair again and he can go pay 15 bucks or whatever to have someone else do it. He says he’ll just never get another hair cut again.

When I say, “What?” I really, really enunciate that T. “WhaTT?” It annoys Clint something awful, but it’s just how I say it. My whole family says it that way. Even my three-year-old niece says “whaTT?”

When I say, “aggravating”, I tend to really spit out that G. Clint says, “It’s like you put a K at the end! ‘Aggravatingk’! STOP IT!”

Clint says “nucular” just to try my patience, so we’re even.

Clint likes to tell me that I need to weed the garden (he’s right). If I actually listen and go weed the garden when E is down for a nap, Clint will come out to ‘supervise’, and then later, he’ll bring the baby out and inform me that the baby is awake, and so I never get very far with the weeds. I can’t pull weeds AND watch the baby and make sure he’s not like, eating the weeds I just pulled.

I forget EVERYTHING, but most particularly, I forget important information that Clint relays to me.

It makes life more difficult for everyone involved, but I can’t help it. At least, I don’t THINK I can help it. I’ve tried writing myself notes, making lists, all kinds of things, and I still can’t seem to remember that Clint told me he needs…his hair cut, for instance.

Or to pay the phone bill.

Or that he needs his work pants washed.

I’m pretty sure I’m ruining his life, truth be told. Because without me, he would just do these things himself, and lo and behold, they’d actually get DONE. Unlike when I do (not do) them.

You know, I’m not really sure how we’ve managed to get this far in our marriage without one of us getting strangled…or poisoned…or smothered by a pillow in our sleep.

Isn’t marriage fun?

 

 

Lessons on the Green

You’re all going to be very disappointed in me, because I went on that rafting trip I was freaking out about last month and…

I didn’t take a single picture.

Not one.

That’s the bad news out of the way. Phew!

The good news is that I learned an awful lot on this trip. Allow me to share some of those lessons (and, if you’re very curious about the scenery on the Green River, you could always check out Google images and search for things like Gates of Lodore, Hells Half Mile on Green River, Split Mountain, that sort of thing).

– If you are going to spend five days outside, and have to share the sunscreen with another person, TAKE EXTRA. Clint and I bought one can of the spray-on sunscreen, and it was gone on the third day. We borrowed sunscreen once, but that didn’t keep either of us from being cooked on Saturday and Sunday. In fact, my face is blistering and falling off as we speak. There’s that song by Baz Lurhmann, in which he strongly advises wearing sunscreen.

Do it.

– I have a little boat all my own, a ducky, which is pretty much an inflatable kayak of sorts. This trip was only the second time I’ve gotten to use it, and the first time was on a calm lake. This means I had basically no idea what I was doing when we set out…not that it was terribly difficult to figure out, once I was in it and paddling along, but in a ducky, you sit awfully low on the water compared to other boats. And when you sit low on the water, every little ripple looks bigger than it is.

I went through one named rapid in it. I did great, according to on-lookers, and all of those on-lookers have been running their boats far longer than me, so it was a pretty major compliment. However, it was a pretty…tame…rapid. On the third day, I went through a rapid that wasn’t even an actual stinking rapid and got turned sideways (not a good idea in a ducky, as they are apt to fill with water and flip over) and scared the daylights out of myself.

Lesson here? It’s actually pretty easy to find a passenger from one of the boats to take over the running of a ducky. I rode on Clint’s boat for most of the last two days. I didn’t have to do anything but hold on and try to keep my burning arms out of the sun.

– I. Hate. Sand. Sand in my shoes, sand in my clothes, sand in the tent, sand on my pillow, sand in my sleeping bag, sand in my mouth and eyes and food and in my chair. I HATE SAND. I hate trudging uphill in the sand to carry gear, I hate trudging downhill in sand to carry gear, I hate trudging through sand to get to the groover (toilet), I hate trudging through sand to get to the coffee, I hate SAND. HATE IT!

I guess I’ll never be a beach babe…or bum…whatever. #@*! SAND!

– Bumble bees are attracted to white baseball caps. I don’t know if they think maybe it’s a flower, or if I just smelled so lovely they couldn’t help themselves, or what. When I put on my hat (to hide my bad hair, of course) the giant bumble bees flocked to my head. Every stinking time. And do you know what I’m most afraid of?

Bees.

I’m sure the rest of the group got a kick out of watching me flail around every time a bee got within ten feet of me.

– Strawberry moonshine…keep it away from me.

– Dry bags only remain DRY bags if you close them properly. Also, dry bags develop a ‘camping funk’ inside no matter how well you separate dirty clothes from clean ones.

– Big horn sheep are super cool to see, but not when they are walking directly at you. Well, no, it’s still pretty cool, but not knowing if they are considering ramming you or if they are just trying to cross the beach…that’s a little unnerving.

…even if their horns are pretty small. I mean, horns are horns are horns, right?

– An up-river wind is the devil.

– There is such a thing as an unknown animal making such a horrible noise for hours on end that every person in camp is plotting how to hunt it down and put it out of commission. Permanently. After the first hour or two, talk of camouflage and sharp knives and guns begins…or maybe that was just the beer and moonshine and whiskey talking.

– Secret smokers pop out of the woodwork on long trips like this. More specifically, Clint and I thought we were the only smokers on the trip, so we brought just enough cigarettes for ourselves, assuming nobody would be running out of their own and bumming off of us. The last night, however, someone ran out of their chew. Amazing how smoking was suddenly less revolting to him.

– Five days was too long to be away from my kiddo. Maybe when he’s older and mouthier I wouldn’t mind going so much, but it was pretty hard not seeing his smiling baby face every day.

– If you make your husband really, really mad right as you get off the river for the last time, he’s likely to leave you to ride home with strange people all by yourself. And those strange people might be an elderly couple who blast the air conditioning until you’re shivering (thanks to the sunburn), and if you’re really lucky, you won’t be able to find ANYTHING to talk to them about for the entire two or so hour drive.

Don’t make your husband really, really mad.

– If your mother-in-law won’t:

Baby-sit for five days

House-sit for five days

Water the yard and garden for five days

Clean your house

Clean up the yard (sticks and weeds and leaves and junk)

…then you should trade her in. For MY mother-in-law. Except, I’m keeping her, so you’re out of luck.

And now my kiddo is up from his morning nap, so I’ve got to make up for five days of no baby smiles.

Marital Discord and Flowers

Yesterday, I embarked on the project of digging a new flower bed in the front yard. Well, technically, it’s the side yard…the north side of the house, on which there is no door, but it LOOKS like a front yard to me.

I digress. Already.

So, about a month ago, I purchased some flowers at Walmart to put into this flower bed that had not yet been created. Forget-me-nots and two hostas. They sat on the porch, growing and growing and growing, the last few weeks. And Clint, my loving, lovely, wonderful husband, reminded me daily (almost) that I should probably get them planted before they got too big and just up and died for lack of space.

He was so right, of course, and that’s annoying. I hate when he’s right, and he’s right a LOT. The bum.

Anyway, I was putting off the planting of my plants because I had the idea for the flower bed in my head, and it was going to be a lot of work; I wanted a half-circle, up against the front (side, whatever) fence, spanning four fence posts, and encompassing a rotting stump. I was going to place an old metal wash tub on top of the stump to plant MORE flowers in, if I ever got my original project finished.

There was a lot of grass to dig up before any of this could be accomplished. Nice grass. Crab grass. Weeds. Stuff that didn’t want to come out of the ground. I also wanted to install that black plastic garden-edging stuff.

See? Kind of a big project for someone with not a lot of time…ok, well, I DO have a lot of time, which is why I am able to think so often on my projects…

I digress again.

I installed the edging yesterday morning. I dug up the grass around the flower bed area, from one post to the stump, from the stump to the next post. I put the edging in and filled in with dirt. I dug and turned more dirt and pulled grass and dug and turned dirt and grass and set rocks for a path and planted half the flowers and dug and turned MORE STINKING DIRT…

Clint came home from an all-day trip into town, and stood on the porch to watch me digging and turning more and more dirt.

And he said:

“You DO know we have a tiller, right?”

…

There are moments in a marriage where one spouse wishes that there were no witnesses within a hundred miles so that they could maim KILL the other spouse.

Clint knew about my plans for digging the stupid flower bed for nearly a month…a MONTH! And he waits until I’m nearly finished, until I’m sweating buckets and my back is on the verge of going out and my hands and face are dirty and I’m tired and getting dizzy from so much work….

Look at me, the little Drama Queen.

Seriously though, moments like that are what make a marriage…er…special, unique…

Anyway, here’s how the project turned out, and then some…

 

Hmm, a tiller would’ve gotten this done a LOT faster…

The last one was so much fun to dig, I thought I’d do another one. Think I’ll try and fix that corner post and plant a bunch of bulbs once I get the grass out.

The very first flower bed I dug up…as you can see I didn’t bother pulling much grass out.

WHAM! Out of Nowhere!

I hate…HATE…when people from my past pop up out of the blue and start yelling at me, especially when I have no idea why.

I logged on to facebook earlier, and saw that I had a new message. I clicked on it, thinking it was probably my sister, but it wasn’t. It turned out to be someone I was friends with a few years back, someone who I ended up NOT being friends with thanks to a ton of drama that I won’t bore you with.

He informed me that I needed to stop telling his wife things she didn’t need to hear about him.

And that makes perfect sense, I have no business whatsoever contacting this woman and stirring up trouble in their marriage.

The thing is, however…

First of all, last I spoke to this guy, he wasn’t even dating anyone, let alone married. I haven’t heard from him, I haven’t contacted him, I haven’t so much as THOUGHT of him in ages and ages and ages…how was I supposed to know he got married? And how should I even know WHO he married?

I don’t. That’s the fun part of this. Not a clue who his wife is.

And yet, for some reason (one that I’m particularly interested to find out, although I’m not going to push the issue), this guy is convinced that I was the one who wrote (did he mean online? a letter? a text message? Sure wish he’d clarify…) to his wife and passed along what apparently are deep, dark secrets about him.

I keep laughing as I think this all over, because it’s so…dumb. I replied to his accusations, calmly and truthfully, stating that not only did I not do whatever he thinks I did, I don’t even have the time to go causing problems for someone I couldn’t care less about at this point in time.

I have a husband and child and home to care for, plus at least half a dozen projects outside that desperately need my attention, plus a brand new diet/exercise adventure I’ve embarked on, cats to pester, upcoming mini-vacation to think about, naps to take…

Seriously.

Of course, this also brings up a couple questions in my mind…for instance, since I know that I didn’t write/say anything to this unknown woman, who did?

And who blamed it on me?

More importantly, what ever happened to my favorite pair of fuzzy striped socks?

 

Mommy Overload in 10…9…8…

I’m having difficulty finding some kind of a balance between being a mom, being a wifey-poo, and being just a normal human being.

I don’t mean to imply that moms and wives are NOT humans, because we are (although by the end of the day, or sometimes first thing in the morning, or when we’re telling a child ‘NO HITTING’ or ‘NO BITING’ for the hundredth time in an hour, we may not FEEL particularly human). What I mean is, I feel like there are three different, yet not entirely separate, parts of myself that make up Cristen, and those three different, yet not entirely separate, parts of myself don’t always work together very well.

My ‘mommy’ self wakes up between 6:30 and 7:30 each morning to take care of a baby.

My ‘wife’ self wants to wake up between 8:30 and 9:30 each morning and drink coffee sitting outside in the morning sun and admiring the unfinished garden projects, while plotting what kind of honey-do’s I could throw at Clint that day.

My ‘Cristen’ self wants to be going to SLEEP at 6:30 in the morning, after having spent the entire night all by myself, reading or playing Harvest Moon or watching Pride and Prejudice.

By the same token, my ‘mommy’ self falls asleep mentally precisely at 10:00 each night, while the ‘wife’ part of me is at least somewhat awake for another hour, and the ‘me’ part of me tosses and turns until five a.m.

You can see how conflicted I am.

Most of my day is spent in mommy-mode. From the time E wakes up until his first nap at about nine, I’m Mama. From the time he wakes up about an hour later until his afternoon nap around 1:30, I’m Mama. From about four o’clock when he wakes up til 8:00 when he goes to bed, I’m Mama. During his awake hours, I have a really hard time having a conversation with anyone about anything that doesn’t directly involve my child, and while I feel kind of bad about that, I can’t help it. Believe me, I’ve tried.

At 8:00 when E goes to bed, I try really hard to switch into wife-mode. I cook dinner, and try to spend time with Clint, but I’m pretty sure my attempts fail and I mostly only accomplish a whole new persona- ‘vegetable’. I think this is what happens while my brain tries to wrap itself around the concept of not being in mommy-mode and trying to remember what the heck wife-mode is even all about.

The ‘Cristen’ part of me spends a lot of time being ignored. You know, the part of me that would much rather be soaking in the tub for an hour than chasing a child or making sure my husband is fed.

Not that he is incapable of feeding himself…I just don’t like him rifling through the kitchen and leaving cupboards open or condiments on the counter. In fact, it’s probably better for my sanity if he just avoids the kitchen altogether.

There’s a little bit of the wife part of me sneaking out…

I actually do really love being a mom, much as it sometimes sounds otherwise. I don’t really mind all that much that E is the main thing I think about during my day (because he’s pretty darned cute, if I do say so myself). I really enjoy just hanging out with him as he explores the house and figures out how to say/do new things.

But for the sake of the people around me, it would be nice to find a balance, so that I can talk about something besides E’s new teeth. Or his sleeping habits. Or his smelly diapers.

Yesterday, one of my mommy friends posted on facebook, “Adult time!” and I thought, “Ooh, what is THAT? It sounds wonderful!”

I’ve not been away from my son for more than a few hours since he was born a little over 15 months ago. Probably that’s why I’m feeling like this, and probably that means it’s time to get away. Bring on that rafting trip that I was dreading a few weeks ago!

…Get me outta here!