9 Weeks

I can’t tell ya how happy I am to have skipped up 5 days in the How Far Along Am I game.
I also can’t tell ya how happy I am to announce that my intense cravings have subsided for the moment -a small, wonderful mercy for the girl who lives in the country and far from any and all grocery stores and restaurant chains.

My dreams are still miles of weird. In last night’s dream, I co-starred in a stage musical with an athlete I graduated High School with, but as soon as I got on stage, I couldn’t remember my parts or my songs. The play I was supposed to be acting out was NOTHING like the play I’d read and rehearsed. My co-star was PIPING mad at me, and yelled at me onstage. I yelled back, and the proceeded to fake my way through a musical number, making it rhyme as I went. It was a disaster… one of those dreams where you feel like you’re in a fog and can’t think straight. Do you ever have those? Next to nightmares, they are the worst.

This n’ That

When Mom is on the couch, you WILL fend for yourself and cut your own slice of bread.

But since we know not to use sharp knives, we will be good and use the butter knives from the drawer and then utterly give up once the mess of crumbs gets too distracting. Mom will understand. After all, we didn’t use the sharp knives.

I catch a lot of crap for my husband-bragging habit… BUT I wonder if I’m as good to him as he is to me. I try to be… I MEAN to be. But I took a step back a few days ago and realized ALL he does for me. I have something to brag about for almost everything because he just GETS me. He gets how to love me. He gets what I need. This last year, our love and marriage have really taken a turn for the magnificent. I’ve been sleeping in almost every morning. The mornings I don’t sleep in, I end up getting sick around 9 am and having to take a 2 hour nap. So either way, I need like 9 hours of sleep at night. This morning I rolled out of bed and found that my husband had gotten up at 5:30, worked out with his buddies, come home, fed himself, and THEN CLEANED THE KITCHEN. Right now, I’m looking at a clean counter and sink.
“Got it all ready for you to mess up,” he said when I hugged him this morning. That means he’s getting more homemade bread, and possibly some fresh strawberry jam. AND snickerdoodles! Gosh, I love me a clean kitchen.

Here’s my boys watching Green Lantern last night.

“Dad,” he said after I snapped the picture, “You’re just a little bit fat, huh?” He patted his Dad’s belly to confirm it.
Not REALLY fat, Dad. Just a LITTLE BIT fat. So take heart.

Per our previous arrangement, we will be hiring housekeeping help! We had a friend recommend a good housekeeper, and I’m so excited to have her come! I’m squirreling money away here and there… and I’m so glad my husband agreed to this before I got pregnant. I really just need someone to come in once and help me do big do-over of the house. That way I can spend a little of my “well” time actually DOING something besides cleaning! Oh, just the thought makes me so giddy. I’ll start stitching up sock monkeys to sell. They’ll pay for the housekeeper. Monkeys For Money. It doesn’t sound like a very noble cause, does it?

I scheduled my first interview yesterday. I’m interviewing my relatives about an accident my mother had when I was a baby (about 6 months old). After all of the interviews are complete, I’m going to compile my very first book. Non-fiction, mind you. I’ll be giving the book to my siblings for Christmas. I’m really excited about it -my mom’s accident was something that changed all of our lives… most of all my mother’s. The more I learn about it, the more respect I have for her and my father. Everyone should be lucky enough to have parents like mine. Everyone.

Last but absolutely NOT least… HERE’S THE LINK to an article written about my husband’s cousin, Chad. His weight loss story is really something worth reading. Check it out! Chad is a great guy.

Mother’s Day and The Snuggly Duckling

My Mother’s Day was the best. My husband kept apologizing because he felt like he hadn’t given me a nice Mother’s Day. He was feeling bad that I picked out my own gift.
“But I really wanted it,” I said, “And I’m really happy with it.” Truth: I’ve only taken it off to shower. Other than that, it has been a constant on my neck (even when I sleep). I’ve been wanting one of these beautiful necklaces for a year (when I ordered two -one for my mom and one for my mother-in-law), but a nest with two eggs just seemed so… empty. I’m not kidding when I say the DAY I got a positive pregnancy test, I gushed, “I can get a bird nests necklace now!”
And so… I did.

I was so excited to get my necklace -I literally DREAMED about it.
During church, one of the speakers read this quote and it made me cry (not hard to do these days, but still…)

“You are the trip I did not take; You are the pearls I cannot buy; You are my blue Italian lake; You are my piece of foreign sky.”
― Anne Campbell

After church, we went to my niece’s 6th birthday party. My brother and his wife grilled hamburgers and hot dogs, and everyone who came brought something to add to the meal. That means I got to eat like mad without having to cook or clean, and THAT, dears, is Utopia.
After lunch, we went up to my Mom’s house with my trusted Lappy and we were able to skype with my sister, Julianne, who has been in the Philippines for not quite 5 months. She’s fluent in the language, by the way, because she’s a champ.

There’s just something about seeing her FACE that makes life seem so much better. She has a year left before she’ll be home, and man. I miss that girl. It’s crazy to think that when she gets home, I’ll have a 5 month old baby. Dad was able to give her a picture slideshow of her horse’s new foal, and Julianne was thrilled.


I’ve been looking forward to her call for months and months -and it did not disappoint. She’s such an amazing person.
My parents gave me a beautiful package.

The paper sticking up out of the book is my husband’s Mother’s Day letter -he writes me one every year. I save them all.
I’ve been reading through President Uchtdorf’s “Forget-me-not” talk, and it really is so simple and beautiful. He talks about our tendency to compare our weaknesses with other’s strengths. Isn’t that the truth? He goes on to say that while we can turn our weaknesses into strengths, it is a long term goal and we need to focus on our small successes along the way and be fully aware that Heavenly Father recognizes our small successes and they are NOT small to Him.
I read that, and (you guessed it) I cried.
One of my biggest weaknesses is my housekeeping abilities. I am not a great housekeeper, and I really want to be. It’s so important to me. I have to work REALLY hard at it, and as the years go on I AM getting better. But I wish I just WAS perfect at housekeeping. I want a clean house for my family.
But as I read that line, I thought… He knows my microwave is clean? He actually cares?

For years, the inside of my microwave was the BANE of my existence. It took at least an hour to clean, and I shriveled with failure every time I opened it and went to pop a bag of pop corn. And then my aunt, who is great at housekeeping, suggested microwaving a wet rag for 5 minutes. She told me if I did that, all the gunk would just wipe right off.
She was SO right.
Now I microwave a small bowl of white vinegar for 5 minutes, let it steam for a while and then wipe everything clean.
My microwave is ALWAYS clean and it only takes me 5 minutes once a week! A small triumph I thought no one cared about, but the fact that my Father in Heaven knows how hard I’m trying… how much better I hope to be… how my microwave is clean now when just 2 years ago it was NOT… it means the world to me.

Yesterday, my husband and I spent the day in the city with our kids. We ALL had doctor appointments, and the day was… exhausting. Our doctor appointments started just before 9 AM and ended just after 3 pm. After that there was banking that needed attending to and a heap of shopping. And for the first time this pregnancy, my husband spent an entire day by my side. Even when he’s off, he’s generally not WITH me with me. He’s usually running around outside or running to the feed store or the hardware store, but yesterday he was stuck.
“I need food,” I said, my stomach turning knots around 11 am.
“Didn’t you eat breakfast?” He asked.
“Yeah, I ate a fat bowl of oatmeal and topped it with raisins, but babe. that was this morning. I’m getting sick.”

We hit up Wendy’s dollar menu. As I ordered, my husband started to say, “That’ll be all” TWICE but I cut him off by adding things to the list.
As we sat down, he looked over the receipt. I had ordered as much food as he had. What’s more: I ate it all.
“It must be a boy growing in there,” he said, “You’re eating like a horse.”

OKAY. Is that not the most offensive thing you could say to a pregnant woman?! It’s not MY fault I have to eat pretty much constantly. If I don’t, I get so sick! And snacks won’t cut it with this kid… I need FOOD. I need MEALS. It’s downright awful. I feel guilty as I shove food into my mouth, thinking about how much extra stuff I’m feeding my baby.
While we were shopping, I timidly told my husband that I needed to eat. He stopped dead in the middle of Sam’s Club.
“Again?” He asked, disbelieving.
It was the horse comment all over again.
Yes, again! I’m Fat Albert!

He fed me again, and watched in wonderment as I packed away a hot dog like it was nothing. He even bought and snacked on popcorn while he enjoyed the show.

The last thing I wanted to do yesterday was step on the scale at the doctor’s office. I’ve been eating SO much and SO often and I’ve taken up soda-sipping (something I usually never do just because I don’t like it much) AND the amount of exercise I’m doing has GREATLY decreased… my poor baby.
And guess what?
I haven’t gained any weight at all (so far). That dang baby is USING all of that FOOD! I could be wrong, but I think I’m growing Captain America in my uterus.
Although from here, the baby just looks like a snuggly duckling. A very hungry, very small, snuggly duckling:

I’m 5 days farther along than I thought. Tomorrow I’ll officially be 9 weeks -three weeks left in the first trimester! Unless I actually AM a horse… in which case, I’ll be gestating a little longer.

And I’ll be honest, if I hadn’t woken up to living room full of folded laundry compliments of my sweet husband, I would have absolutely tortured him to pieces with horse comments.
There’s no end to what this mare can do -just try me.

What Would Happen If…

“Mom,” my daughter said as we were on our morning walk, “What would happen if Jesus just reached through the clouds, down to earth, picked up a car from the road, got a rag from Heaven, washed the car, and then put it back on the road and it drove off?”

“Um,” I couldn’t help but chuckle because she was being so animated about the whole thing, “I have no idea.”

“It would be clean, Mom.”

 


Oh, it was a TRICK question. Of course I didn’t think of the obvious answer.

A Spring Filly

Yesterday, my Pa told me he’d be weighing my steer bright and early this morning. Did you know I had a steer? Well, I don’t. Not actually. I just have dibs on a steer for meat purposes. Every year, we save up and buy half of a steer from my Dad. This year, we’ll be paying about $1.35 a pound which means we’ll be paying close to $700 for half of a steer (including butcher fees).
It sounds like a lot up front, but it’s extremely cheap. Here’s why: we don’t have to buy beef from the store ever. at all.
We always have beef on hand. I’m going to have a fresh load of beef in the next few weeks, and my freezer is still boasting a good 15 pounds of hamburger and a few packages of roasts and steaks. And we paid $1.25 a pound last year. That means we paid $1.25 a pound for SIRLOIN STEAK. And yes, it is 1000 times better than anything you’d get at the store.
So I met up with Dad this morning to see my steer get weighed… it sounds like a morbid thing to do, doesn’t it?
“Goodbye Steer, good luck. I’m most likely to kill you in the morning.”
Well, our steer came to a whopping 1,000 pounds on the dot. We’ll split that with our friends across town, and we’ll all go home happy. I helped Dad and my brother, Jim, load up two of three beefers we weighed this morning. I followed Dad and Jim to the butcher shop.
I inadvertently breathed in the smell of death that rose up from the old blood soaking up in the dirt outside the shop, and then I held my breath and held it tight so as to never go through THAT again.
Dad left his truck and trailer behind, and I gave the boys a ride home in my tiny truck. Once home, my brother hopped out and went to do his morning feeding chores. Dad asked me when I had to be home.
“7:30″ I said. He looked at the clock. 6:58.
“Want to go check Jet?” He asked.
Jet is my sister, Julianne’s, horse. Julianne loves her horse more than… gosh, herself, I think. Ju had been DYING for her horse to get pregnant, and she finally did… but Julianne is REALLY good and math and quickly realized that she’d be on her mission by the time Jet had her foal.
Our emails from Julianne frequently include lines about Jet.
“How’s Jet?”
“Have you been taking pictures of Jet like I asked?”
And the latest: “Unless I’m wrong, and I’m usually not… Jet should have her foal by now.”
Well, she hadn’t. Dad had been loyally checking. As Dad and I bounded through the boonies this morning in my tiny blue truck, Dad kept his eyes peeled for the horses. They were roaming out on the land.
I couldn’t catch a glimpse of them anywhere, but my Dad has these magical eyes that have always been able to spot livestock from deliriously far distances. As a little girl, I tried SO hard to emulate his magic skills, but I never could. Even today as I blinked around the horizon for a hint of something moving, I completely failed.
“There!” He said, “Head up that way. I think I saw a horses head,” my Dad pointed into thin air.
I trusted him implicitly.
And of course, he was right.

“Yep, there’s Lucky… Ribbon… Wimpy…” he knows them all by name, of course. “Where’s Jet? She’s down in the ditch. What’s she doing down in a ditch?” Dad quickly made his way over to the ditch -that had a fair amount of water in it, “She has a little one!” He called out. I hurried over next to him, and saw…
nothing.
I swear. It’s his magic eyes.
Can you see the little one? All I could see was the after-birth which told me she’d JUST had the foal, but where WAS the foal?

Wimpy got in the way, Jet got protective and in the end, Dad and I had to cross a muddy ditch. But it was worth it!
We were able to snap more than a few pictures of the brand new filly!

Years ago, Julianne once said to me, “Horses are so much smarter than people. I mean, when they’re born they already know how to stand AND walk.”
“Yes,” I said, “But that’s only because standing and walking is essential to their survival. If a human infant were to stand and walk, it wouldn’t survive. Probably.”
Of course I was speaking directly from a mother’s perspective and was doing my best to keep from admitting that if my newborn children had walked, I would have been the one who wouldn’t have survived. But moving on:

Jet was very protective of her foal, and while Dad was able to get near the filly… I was most definitely not! Jet did her best to stay between me and her baby… thank goodness for the zoom on my camera. Although the pictures look like I was nice and close… I really wasn’t. And look at Jet’s eyes in the picture I took without the zoom. She wanted to stomp me.

And WHAT a way to spend an early Thursday morning! I came home fully energized and inspired to work on my house and have a full and busy day.
Until halfway through my bowl oatmeal when nausea overtook me and sent me to the couch where I fell back asleep.
Huh.
So much for motivation.
But I’m FOREVER grateful for the chance I had to go see Julianne’s new baby foal. Er, I mean JET’S new foal.
It was a beautiful morning. Steer blood and all.

Plantin’ Time

This is my husband’s season. I don’t see much of him during planting season because he’s outside. He’s covered in sweat and dirt and manure. Our grass gets cut and green. Our garden gets fertilized and plowed. And I sit in the house and do women’s work.
I’m too dainty for manure.

That’s actually not true.
I’m just too sick. Generally I’m in the thick of the manure, but this pregnancy has given me a Get Outta Poop Free card.


My son doesn’t know yet that he shouldn’t be having a ball with that manure. I’m not going to tell him.

 

And as much as I love that we live in the country and GET to shovel manure that we’ve picked up in our own backyard… I was craving a hot, fresh pepperoni pizza (delivery style) yesterday and I suddenly wished I could beam myself to the city.  Enter: my husband.  He stopped by the grocery store on the way home and picked up a Digornio Pepperoni Pizza.  He texted me a picture of the pizza with a message, “I’m on my way home, go ahead and preheat the oven.”

We all sat around and ate pizza and wings for dinner, and then my husband went outside and plowed the garden, and I fell in love all over again.  After all, the way to a pregnant woman’s heart is through her stomach, and besides that… there is nothing better on God’s Green Earth than a man behind a plow.  It’s in the Bible somewhere, I swear it.

7 Weeks

Last week I was excited that my morning sickness was manageable. All I had to do was eat and everything was all better. Oh, the past can be so sweet.
This week, I’m just grateful that I can still eat.
I have found that if I drink enough water, my morning sickness tends to be better with food. If I drink more soda than water… it’s a vicious, sick cycle.
Drink soda when you’re nauseated, feel better for a while, feel nauseated, drink soda when you’re nauseated… and on and on and on.

More than anything, I’m grateful I am sick. It means the baby is growing and thriving and driving my body nuts-o. When I was pregnant with the boy, I showed really soon. Everyone thought I was having twins. Nope!
I think the second my body senses the pregnancy hormone it just gets REALLY excited.
“I know what to do!” It pops out like the annoyingly-over-eager student who sits in the front row and shouts out all the answers before anyone else has a fighting chance. My stomach wants to prove it knows something, I guess.
Also, I wonder if my uterus is tilted forward or something.
I don’t know. All I know is that I’m sleepy. I’m hungry. I’m grumpy.
Hey! Maybe I’m growing 7 dwarfs.

My baby is officially the size of a grape:

Remember When?

A friend of mine texted me two pictures the other day.  They were Homecoming pictures from our Senior Year of High School.  Remember high school?  I hated high school.  Sure, it had it’s high points, and my body was amazing -my metabolism was impeccable.  But even that wasn’t enough to make it the “best” four years of my life.  I love the people I grew up and graduated with, but MAN.  I’m glad we’re onto other things now, even if it means an extra 30 pounds and slower metabolism… it’s a fair trade.

There was some kind of rule, if I remember right (and I could be 100% wrong because I really never paid attention to these kinds of rules) that once someone had been elected to Homecoming Court, they couldn’t be nominated again.  From where I sat in the band section of the bleachers, I always watched my glamorous peers take the half-time walk out onto the track and receive their honors.  I accepted the reality that I’d never take The Walk, and it didn’t really bother me.  I was awkward, mismatched, loud, and seriously lacking in everything the girls who take The Walk had in spades -namely athleticism.  Did I hate myself for everything that I was and wasn’t?  Well, of course.   I mean, I was in HIGH SCHOOL after all.  I fairly died of happiness when a member of the varsity basketball team complimented my CK shirt that I had bought with specific high hopes that one of them MIGHT notice it.  And of course I fairly died of humiliation when my loudness or awkwardness got the better of me and one of the varsity girls pointed it out… not so sweetly.  A person can only hinge their happiness on someone else for so long, you know, before they start to lose themselves completely.

The facts that I’m loud and awkward and mismatched… hate or love them as I might… are some of my mainstay character traits.  They DEFINE me, and I spent two years of my high school career trying to blot them out.  You can imagine the state of my emotional health at the end of those two years.  I hit a sort of rock bottom.  It seemed that no matter how hard I tried, I couldn’t be someone else.  I was completely devastated (oh, I’m laughing as I type that).  I finally accepted the fact that CK and I just couldn’t work together anymore.  Reason being: I always bought my own school clothes, and when I had to pay $30 a shirt… I wasn’t able to buy much more than that, especially since my lovely long legs required at least $50 for one pair of jeans.  They don’t sell my size at Target.

And somewhere around Rock Bottom, I gave up whole-heartedly on the mall.  I went shopping where I knew I could make money stretch the farthest: a second-hand store.  THERE, readers, my life changed.  It was love at first shop, and I filled my cart with zany mismatched clothes that just screamed at me from the racks.  I giggled at the quirky trinkets, and I couldn’t get enough of the shoe department.  I started buying things that called out to ME and not the varsity team (genius, right?) and in so doing found myself decked from shoe to hair in absolute mayhem.  My backpack was Pepto-pink, and when it tore I hand-stitched it with green thread.  When that didn’t hold, I used duct-tape.

My shoes were red.

My scarf was construction orange.

I had a bird I liked to hold.

Okay, that last part isn’t true.  It just sounded like it needed to be there.  When I got bored of my closet (I still don’t know how I could have gotten BORED in my closet), I snuck into my parent’s closet.  Those blessed people had saved the clothes they’d worn when they were first married.  DO YOU KNOW WHAT THAT MEANT?!  My Dad is a cowboy -a real cowboy -and at my fingers were some real out-of-print (so to speak) Wrangler shirts.  Those were my favorites. Once I embraced my mismatchedness, I moved onto loving other parts of me… by the time my Senior Year rolled around, I was one happy cookie -possibly because I knew the end was nigh. I had eliminated activities that brought me down (Stake Dances, sadly) and increased activities that brought me up (involving my friends in creative crap, whether it was screen writing, playing dress up, or writing songs about x-boyfriends).

And then something funny happened.
I took The Walk with two of my closest friends. We joked that because all the good people had already been nominated in past years (thus eliminating them from the running) we were all that was left. Though I will say that there never was a more deserving Homecoming Queen than my Tia -and everyone that knows her would agree. She’s universally adored. We’ve been best friends since my mom had me. Tia was already a month and half old. We traversed life together until my husband ripped us apart. But living as roommates in college was a real life Dream Come True. Didn’t you always secretly wish you could live with your best girl friend? Best. Year. Ever.
And here she is with Me and Erin. I had to cover up my bra… it was blindingly obvious -how embarrassing. Also: I bought my dress at a store full of formal outfits that had mistakes. The Ross of the Prom, so to speak. My entire outfit cost me $15. This was taken not long after the movie Miss Congeniality was released, and I think we spent most of our time wearing our crowns and saying, “World Peace!”

And you know something? When I look at this picture, I see three beautiful girls. When I was in high school, I didn’t see any beauty in me at all. Really, I didn’t. I used to stare into the mirror and WILL beauty to come and erase all of my acne, but it never did. Nine years later, the blinders are off. I was beautiful. Nine years later, the blinders have just been repositioned. There’s nothing like pregnancy to make a girl feel absolutely abhorring. This pregnancy has brought BACK the acne I thought I had long bid farewell to. Ah, well. That’s life and how we grow it, right? Anyway:

Tia had a Queen Staff that we all just loved. Never before had a Homecoming Queen been given a STAFF. It was truly THE item.
I showed the pictures to my husband when he came home from work, and instead of laughing me hugged me tight and told me I was beautiful.
Oh, husbands. Their blinders are always perfectly positioned, and how wonderful for us.
I’m sure in nine years when I’m 36 (WHAT?!) I’ll look back at my pregnant belly and think, “What was my problem? I was beautiful.”
And when I talk about beauty, I hope you won’t misunderstand and think that I’m stroking my vanity… I’m not referring to outward beauty in the least. I just wish I could have seen the goodness I had as a high school kid. I didn’t see it -not at all.
The curse of not seeing my own goodness seems to be a lingering one -one I think we all suffer from.
So today I challenge myself and I challenge you to see yourself today as if it’s 2021 -nine years in the future. Perhaps from there, your present state will seem more advantageous.
And for heaven’s sake -move those blinders!

 

Giveaway Winner Announced!

Thanks to ALL who entered Darah’s giveaway!
Though I always wish you could all win, our one winner is:
KELLY!  There was only one Kelly who entered, so I don’t need to clarify any further, right?
Kelly, email me at storyladyblog@yahoo.com and we’ll get you all squared away! Congrats, girl!

Darah’s creations are so beautiful and worth sharing… remember if you didn’t win that you can still snag a pretty article for 20% from now until Mother’s Day. If you’ve shopped around for crochet items, you know that Darah’s prices are VERY reasonable -especially at 20% off! Checkout code: MOM20

What we’ve been up to over here?
The kids got their first ride in the back of a truck. Daddy let them ride from our driveway to the horse pen that is literally a stone’s throw from our driveway.

Now, I don’t know why but I’m uploading my pictures like I always do and they’re publishing GIGANTIC. I’ve changed the setting and now they’re publishing too small… But this one has to be big. I opened the gate for them to get in the horse pen, and I chuckled at my little babies’ heads BARELY poking up from the truck bed.


The minute Daddy parked the truck, Giselle (The girl’s favorite pet pal) came right over to her little human friends.

My husband loaded the truck full of horse manure for our garden. Delish, right?
Aside from giving out truck rides, my husband also gives out flowers:

All sweet and ready to plant in the yard. He also picked me up some lavender and sweet basil for my herb bed. THAT’S true love.
This morning I dreamed of snipping fresh basil from my garden, mixing it with freshly chopped tomatoes from my garden and making my favorite bruschetta recipe. And then I thought about V8.
I’m still thinking about V8, actually.

The Kids Are All Right

My kids make my day. Yesterday I was sick -no matter what I did or ate, I was sick.
“Mom, you an get me a popsicle,” my son would say.
“Not right now,” I said while I sprawled out on the couch, “Mom is sick.”
“ughhhh,” he’d moan, “BUMMER!”

“Bummer” is the kids’ latest favorite word. They picked it up from 80’s Robot on The Muppets Movie.

It wasn’t like they had the worst day, you know. In fact, they actually had a pretty good day, dancing and singing in the rain.

That’s true Arizona rain. And she had to snag her brother’s Spiderman umbrella because she consistently breaks every one we buy for her.

When I asked her what her favorite part of the day was last night, my daughter just sighed and said… “netflix.”
“Netflix?” I asked. “What about when you played in the water with the umbrella?”
“Oh yeah. That was fun. Today was just SO boring, Mom.”
Yeah, life is pretty boring when Mom is glued to the couch, watching what the kids like to call “Mom movies” (read: old movies).

They were thrilled to the core when Dad finally got home. They bounded out the door, “Dad! Dad! You’re home!”
Finally, someone they can work with! And when I say “work” I mean it very literally.

I took these while sitting on the grass. Watching other people work is fun.

And sometimes cute.

Especially if the worker happens to be three, a boy, and saying, “Here’s your worker boy!”

Hm, time for new shirts I guess…

Anyway, it’s officially time to start hiring cleaning help. I feel so bad for whoever comes into this mess! Yesterday I went through waves of feeling good and waves of nausea. It was, in general, three hours sick, two hours well. I had to spend each “two hours well” cleaning my house! And guess what is super dirty right now?
You guessed it!
My house!
It’s just not worth it. I’d love nothing more than to spend my well hours doing something worthwhile, like cooking or sewing.
But three hours of nausea at a time does have some great perks… I’m going through my Netflix queue faster than a cheetah, and I’m loving that. I absolutely love movies. AND it gives me time to crochet. I don’t usually take much time to crochet.

If I did, I’d be as good as Darah.
Don’t FORGET… today is the VERY LAST DAY to enter her giveaway… odds are pretty good in your favor because (now this is important) my blog doesn’t get much traffic. This isn’t one of those giveaways where you enter along with 1,000 other people and just hope you win.
This is a giveaway where you enter with like 13 other people. I like those odds! Even if you don’t want one for yourself, it’s a FREE gift for the next baby shower you go to! Or, like I said, it’s a great photography prop if you have photography friends, and I know we all have photography friends.
SPEAKING OF WHICH… please clickity click over to Brushfire Photography’s page to see the pictures they just posted of my brother-in-law and new sister-in-law. Their couple wedding shoot is BEAUTIFUL! SEE IT HERE.

And now go and enter Darah’s giveaway! It’s the LAST DAY, and believe you me you won’t get better prices on her crochet crafts… especially at 20% off! Shop around… you’ll see what I mean. Remember to enter the code MOM20 at checkout to get the 20% discount!
HERE’S the GIVEAWAY!

There’s only hours left… make them count!