Wonders never cease!

You won't guess where I am typing from!!! The dark and yucky room that will from now on be our office! Yes, the computer is officially in the basement. That means it is no longer in the nursery!!! There is still a lot of work to be done in there. I really do mean a lot too. But this is a big sign of progress! I hate this room and my husband hates having to walk up and down our crappy stairs to get here. Maybe that will motivate him to go to work so we can get into a bigger house. Maybe. Right now I am happy for the small steps we have taken. Now if we can only agree on the paint color for the nursery. By the way, who would put dark wood panelling on four walls in a basement? I hate panelling to begin with, but in a bedroom in the basement???? It makes it feel even yuckier down here.

OB appointment

I had my 32 week appointment today. I had the nicer of the two nurses that work with my doctor today. I like her. She almost always comes down and assists him in certain surgeries so I know her well. The meaner one only comes down once and awhile. She did voice her concern about my weight. I still think that is funny. I really thought I was going to have gained two pounds since my last visit, but I was wrong. I haven't been feeling very well the last three days and I think I haven't eaten much. I only gained 1/10 of a pound. That means the first three numbers have remained the same on the scale for the last four visits I think. I find this very hard to believe, especially when I look down or at my face in the mirror. Things look rounder than they were before in both cases.

We couldn't hear the heartbeat very well, but the doctor said he probably has his back turned more out and that is why. I was only slightly concerned for a second. When he first listened he only heard me and when he pushed around he got a faint beat for the baby. I know that he was busy all afternoon so it was okay. Too bad we couldn't hear better though because my husband went with me and he doesn't usually go. My blood pressure was the best it has been on any visit to their office ever, so they were happy because it has been something they have wanted to watch. I have told the doctor that whenever I take it, it is well within normal whereas when I go to their office it is higher than you want it. My blood pressure is obviously very reactive to whatever is going on and that isn't what you want to see. But that is how I am over all so it makes sense. I don't even ask what I measure because I'm not worried about it. I feel huge and he has been sitting low forever. I am scared to see how it will be when he drops.

We had a worm work its way through our hospital computer system last night when I was there again most of the night working. It hit more than 1000 computers in the hospital and then computers in doctor's offices as well. It didn't dawn on me that would be the case. I couldn't make another appointment because they can't access anything either. What a pain in the ass. We have become so dependant on computers for everything. My appointment was one of the last of the day. When I talked to the girl at the desk she asked me to call on Monday to make an appointment for my next visit and please keep trying if I have a problem getting through. She said she has more than 100 patients from today that have to call to schedule followup visits. That is a lot of people to come through an office in a day. Not every single patient that comes in has to make a follow up. We had to wait forever because he got backed up due to a delivery. You would think we would all be sympathetic to that wouldn't you. It drove Mike nuts, but it was nice for me because he was there to entertain me. I probably would have just gone to sleep if he hadn't been.

The nurse was concerned about the number of contractions I am having. She asked me to try and pay closer attention to them especially when I am at work. They still seem very irregular and totally vary in length and intensity. I haven't felt anything that makes me think I need to seek medical attention yet. She said I need to think about cutting back. I told her she knows my boss and I won't be able to cut back until it is a doctor's order. My boss carries quite a reputation. This nurse, of course, has direct experience with both my charge nurse and director so she should know how things work there. The doctor didn't seem too worried and just told me to call and come in if things seem to change. He said to come back in two weeks. I was all excited because I was moving to two weeks, but then he said he was going to be gone then so I was more than fine to stretch it to three weeks. I guess I won't be seeing any of the other doctors. I still think I will be having an induction so it will be my doctor in the end. I guess only time will tell...

I have 5 days off now!!!! I am so excited. Then I only work two and get another four days off. But then it will be a nasty stretch which I am still mad about.

Today

Today was my friend's daughter's funeral and it was hard. I have never been to a funeral for such a young person before. It was all handled very well, but I guess that is what those people do. I have never seen so many flowers before. The church was huge and I'm not sure on a good guess as to how many people were there. The sanctuary wasn't big enough to hold every one either. I would think there were at least 800 people there.

Her mom said on Monday that she didn't think they would be able to do an open casket but they did. I have a terrible time looking at dead people, but I think with so many kids there it maybe was good. I think they may have needed it for a couple of reasons. One to see her and know it is real and two to see her and know what can happen to you. I just some how think that once your spirit is free the body left behind looks different. It is just a shell and not you. I don't know. It was just so hard. It didn't look like the beautiful Katy I have known. The hands always bother me. They just never look right. Her hands were all black and blue.

At least my boss worked it out so we were able to close all but two operating rooms so that almost everyone could go. She even stayed and worked in one of the rooms so that one more person could go. I thought that was nice of her. Upon a rare occasion she can do things like that.

It always amazes me how powerful music can be. I don't know who picked all the songs that were played but every single one seemed so appropriate. Again, I know that is what funeral homes do and they are good at that, but I know it was all music that she liked. I just can't imagine her mom was able to make those selections right now. The music had me crying and Jake just going nuts. I don't think it was me being upset because I seem to cry like that all the time right now. He was moving like crazy and I experienced my first through about a million kicks to the ribs while there. Ironically, I was seated next to a nurse practitioner that I was working with today and works at my OB office. She could see that he was beating me up.

I don't know how you can say a funeral was nice but it was. I guess you say a celebration of some one's life. Lots of stories were told and you got a very good picture of this young woman. She was and is a very loved girl. My heart just goes out to her mother. I pray that I am never put in this position, nor is anyone. Her mom is a very strong woman. I have seen her go through a lot in the years that I have known her. I know she can survive this too, but I never seen her like this before. I can't imagine anyone acting any different in this situation. I just hope she will accept the love and support of her friends. Please God, help her through this.

Sad day

Last night turned out to be worse than I imagined, but I didn't truly know how bad it was until this morning. I finally got called back at 945 last evening. I laid down at 935 I think. We got a very bad report from the supervisor so we weren't sure exactly what we were in for until we got there. She got a very little bit of the situation correct. Sadly, that isn't uncommon and we figured it out.

It just took forever to get things going and finished with that surgery. Mostly we just had to clean the poor guy's road rash up. Thank goodness for general anesthetics! But while we were doing this case the Xray tech we had with us showed the surgeon films he had just taken of a child in the ER. Poor little guy needed surgery, but the doctor had to see the little guy and talk to his family. Lucky for us the little guy had pain medicine and had been made comfortable for the rest of the night. He was sound asleep and his parents thought first thing in the morning would be a fine time for surgery. We get this good news but hear there has been a car accident and that we can't leave until we know what is going on with that. We didn't get any information the way we were supposed to be informed so we had to just go find out for ourselves. Good thing we did because no one really cared about us. Funny how they really liked the help when we got there though. We knew the patient and "his buddy" were in an accident and "his buddy" died at the scene. He was flown in and we just needed to know if he needed to come to surgery. The way things happen these days is so fast. You have people before you have stories. You have to try and figure things out as you go. We can get people without names or any information. You wouldn't believe how hard it can be to find a purse, billfold, ID of any sort, vehicle registration, anything at all sometimes. So we work to take care of a person we have in front of us and then the details start coming in as we go.

This patient didn't need surgery, at least at that time, so we got to home. It was 245 in the morning when we clocked out. We started the damn day by 630. We were all so tired and we always feel bad about trauma patients. We knew the patient in the hospital was a teenager. Those of us from my department had figured out that it was a coworker's daughter's boyfriend. We were sad and tired.

This morning I got a call from one of the people there last night. "His buddy" that died was my coworker's fourteen year old daughter. We, those of us there, never even dreamed it could be her daughter. We thought the other person was a guy. I feel terrible for my coworker. Of course I always feel bad when someone loses a family member. It just hit me in a different way this time. I know I am still exhausted so that is part of it, but now I have just an inkling of what it feels like to be a parent. I have yet to meet Jake, but my life would be turned upside down and inside out if he were taken away from me. I haven't even had fourteen years to get to know him and love him. I don't know how you handle something like that, how you care on. I just pray for this poor family. No one should have to do this.

Drama queen

I am exhausted. I worked almost thirteen hours today and am waiting for a call to go back to work right now. They let us go knowing there was an ambulance on the way to get a patient from another hospital with an open fracture. An open fracture means a trip to the OR to at the very least get it washed out. The supervisor let us go so we could at least get something to eat since they close the hospital cafeteria at 2pm on weekends so there is no food available to us. We will see what happens. I am just so tired already.

This week has been another tear filled week. There have been a lot of things going on with my husband's job and so far he has been getting jerked around a lot. That scares me. I can't remember when he worked last, but it hasn't been his doing. They keep moving him around and he is worried. He knows they are sending some people up to Wyoming work from the engineer board and doesn't think it will be him right now. Better now than in a month!!! And he doesn't know how long those people who go will be gone. Great! This is why I have wanted him to get the baby's room done, now, when he has the opportunity. I warned him that he never knew how long he had.

I also have been a big baby because I have felt neglected. He has been home all day and then thinks he needs to go somewhere in the evening because he is sick of being home. Well, I was at work all day and want to be home with my husband in the evening. I'm not invited when he goes to fuck off with his friend I don't like very much. Then he says he is going to stay home for the evening and he does, but he spent the whole night sitting outside smoking and talking to his friend or his dad. That doesn't count. I don't think sitting in front of the TV and eating dinner at the same time counts either. I want some undivided attention. I want to work on the nursery together or just sit and talk without the stupid TV on. One on one time. So the night he spent on the phone I went to bed and was there quite some time before he noticed I shut off all the lights in the house. He came in and found me crying. I was crying about everything, all my worries and fears in addition to my frustration with him. I did not to get in a fight again. This time he was nice and sat and talked to me for awhile. We talked about names and cut the list from four to two and actually leaned towards one.

Then the next day he had a melt down. He is really worried about his job too. He is worried about getting sent away from me. He doesn't want to leave me alone. I don't want that either, but I know we can do it. He thinks he should quit his job and then I may have threatened to kill him or something. No, I didn't but he likes to bring up whenever we disagree about his going to work that he said at the beginning that if this job causes a problem between us he will quit. It isn't the job creating the problem, it is his not going to work that causes a problem. So any he is really worried about what will happen and all we can do is sit and wait. In the meantime they are shifting him around and he can't work when he wants to.

The good news is that we were able to have another nice discussion and Tiger has an actual name now. Apparently I am supposed to stop calling him "Tiger" also. I don't think we are going to tell anyone yet. We haven't decided if we are going to wait until he is born or just until we decided it is the right time. My mom will be a total bitch about whatever name we pick no matter what. Mike suggested I announce it at a shower where both our mothers would be there at the same time so one doesn't know before the other. Good idea, but I'm still not sure I want to tell my mother until the ink is on his birth certificate. Plus, I'm not entirely sure I want our mothers at my shower. I probably will, but... can't I live without them? Actually his mom has "pulled her head out of her ass" (those are my husband's words) and is being much nicer to me. She is making an effort to be nice. Well, that is good.

Oh yeah, Tiger's name is Jacob Wayne. I still don't like Wayne but I can only imagine if I had to make my husband decide on two names and not just one. Too bad we couldn't have used a different family name...

Good news?

My husband called me yesterday while the needles were being stuck into my face. There is clearly a sign on the wall that asks you to please turn off your cell phone for the consideration of other patients. Oops. I apologized profusely but I think a couple of needles may have been put in more like darts than gently placed as before. My mistake. It will probably happen again. So then it isn't as relaxing as you sit there embarrassed and your phone keeps beeping because of the missed call. But I texted my husband (from the bathroom) that I would call him after I got my back adjusted.

So I call and he is so excited and tells me he has good news! My thoughts immediately swing towards our baby. Maybe he miraculously has the baby's room cleaned out. Maybe they called and said the crib is no longer on back order. Maybe the daycare called and said you HAVE a spot. Maybe his dad got all the parts and is ready to start the body work on my car. Maybe... I get a lot of thoughts in before he blurts out that HE BOUGHT A FREAKING CAR!!! This is not what I define as good news at the moment. Yes, I know he has wanted a car that he can drive back and forth to work to save money on gas and wear on the pickup that already has over one hundred thousand miles and still a sizable loan balance. But I am concerned about paying for all the stuff for the baby, not insurance, taxes and licensing, and repairs on yet another stinking vehicle. Again, our priorities don't seem to match. At least the car was cheap. But then I worry because it was cheap. He already had the title in hand when he called so there was no discussing the issue. He bought it from another guy that works for the railroad. He hasn't been there much longer than Mike and he too was a mechanic before he went to the RR. The car needs new front tires and then mostly just a good cleaning. The guy has seven cars at his house and for his wife's sanity he is trying to get rid of several of them. It is a Dodge Intrepid, so it is actually pretty big, but he claims it gets 22mpg city, and 31mpg highway. We will see. It could do a lot worse than that and still be a lot better than the pickup because if we are luck it gets 14-15 on the highway. Not a good work vehicle I do know, but still he is spending where we can ill afford. The guy is nice though. He is going to let Mike pay him a hundred dollars a month for five months and if Mike thinks the car is a piece of crap he can bring it back and he will give him his money back.

When I took the dogs out this morning the car scared me because I forgot it was there. I am not used to the idea yet. The thing that really bothers me is that I feel that Mike still doesn't have his priorities right yet. That scares and worries me. It also leaves me feeling disappointed in myself because of the expectations I have set for someone else.

Happy Father's Day

My husband had to work and I won't get to see him at all today. I bought him a nice card though and got him a dad gift - tools. I got him a new miter box with a hand saw that goes with it. He will like it. He had a crappy little plastic miter box that he was extremely frustrated with when he was trying to do several things for the bathroom. He said then that he would really like a better one. I tucked that into my memory and had my FIL help me pick it out.

I have spent the day trying not to freak out. I definitely keep having anxiety. I really wish we could afford for me to quite my job and then at least 3/4 of what I am stressing about would be gone. Of course I would find something else to worry just as much about, I'm sure. That is just my personality. I still wish I could quite though. I'm more and more worried about physically being able to do my job. I really can't take a minute and take it easy very often. Generally only twice a day, if that. Someone has to physically relieve us to get a break and if there isn't someone to do that in the morning we don't get that. So some days all you can count on is 30 minutes for lunch. I know that at some point my doctor is going to say I have to cut back and that scares me. I worry that it won't happen soon enough and I worry about the financial aspect of having my hours cut. Not to mention my boss holding it over me. The funny this there are some people that are allowed, no expected, to have problems and "we" make allowances for them, but the rest of us... Well good luck, because you get treated like shit. My charge had to be off most of last week because she was seriously ill. She is seriously ill at least every six months. It almost always involves hospitalization. That means the rest of us have to cover right. Well we do and it isn't that big of a deal, but if I am sick, say I need my gallbladder out, I am asked to put it off for two weeks. I still can't believe I waited one week. I was stupid. Anyway, if I had to be hospitalized every six months my boss manage to push me into another job, probably not in her department. Hmm...

So I have gone back to scrubbing today. And a few other things I probably shouldn't have done. I am just mad that I can't get into the garage. I would have finished what I wanted to do if I had. I know what I was doing was stupid for two reasons. One, hello, baby in there. Two, it really isn't smart for me to be standing on even a step ladder in the bathtub when no one else is home (without being pregnant). Awhile ago I bought some supplies to take care of some things in the bathroom that have been bothering me. Are all the things I bought in the garage I can't get into? All but one. I bought some filler stuff to cover up a joint and the nail holes left behind when Mike put in the base boards. I painted the one base board Mike had to replace. I also did all the touching up with that same color I could with the exception of the darned ceiling in the shower. I bought some sanding blocks and tried to smooth these spots in the ceiling that he decided are "good enough" but I'm not good enough to get it done without the electric sander. When ever I sit down on the toilet I would always look down at the base board that wasn't painted and it would irritate me so then I would look up at the ceiling and I could see how bad the plaster was from there. At least now I can look at one of the places and be pleased. These are things that bother me and he doesn't care. I don't know how long it will take him to even notice what I did. He might notice the ceiling before I can get it finished but I doubt it. Now I just have to figure out how I can get the sander out of the garage since he took my key away when his "broke." These are the things that keep me up at night. What kind of mother am I going to be??? That is now always at the back of my mind.

I feel a little bad that I didn't go have dinner at my in laws tonight. I do love my FIL dearly, but I don't think I could handle eatting there just the three of us right now. I know I have done it many times in the past, but I don't think I dare be around my MIL right now without my husband. Somehow I feel like I need another witness. I do feel bad that he didn't have anyone to spend Father's Day with him though. At least my MIL had to work today so he got some peace and quiet!

Another Friday

This morning I woke up with a bad headache and a neck ache. It was very much like the one I woke up with on Friday, April 13. This time however it was the right side of my neck not the left. I didn't want to get out of bed. I was terrified. The pain wasn't quite as bad, but still bad and in the exact same place but mirrored. I wanted to be heavily medicated and just sleep through the day and wake up tomorrow to know what is to be. But since that wasn't going to happen I pulled my ass out of bed and got ready for work. The damn headache just kept getting worse and worse.

I got my room setup at work and then went to find the ENT that was working. He is one on the doctors that has been with me on this since the beginning. I asked him if this could be happening again and he told me no. I reminded him that he said my face wasn't going to be paralysed like this the first time. He said he has only seen it happen once in 30 years and told me it wasn't going to happen to me. I was still scared and anxious most of the morning. The headache kept getting worse and spread up the back of the right side of my head and wrapped around to the front. Sadly this miserable headache was a relief. It was just a bad, no horrible, headache. If this happened to the other side of my face I think it would be more than I could handle. The left side of my face is making progress, but still not at all good. I wouldn't be able to speak and eating would be nightmare, and my poor eyes. I just keep thanking God that things are going well with the baby since the rest of me is falling apart. I know that many of my friends and coworkers are almost as worried as I am about what might happen to me next. I know that we all are aware that there are still a lot of pregnancy related things that could go wrong. I just keep praying that God is going to carry me through this.

What?!? I can't believe my ears!

My husband just called. Well, texted for a bit and then called. His train hasn't moved in over three hours. You tend to get a bit bored when that happens I guess. Apparently it also makes you think about what you would like to name your unborn child. Tiger is getting a real name!!!! I had said a name one time while we were watching something on TV and I guess it stuck with him. I'm pretty sure he made a joke about it at the time. He brought up that name and another name that was on the list of 23 names I gave him to ponder. (he didn't take the list because it was next to his chair where I was sitting). I asked him if he remembered that the name he was considering was my grandmother's last name. (my mother's father died long before I was born and my grandma remarried at least five years later) That would be a nice way to remember, but that wasn't his intention because he didn't remember that. I like the name, but I am mixed because I am still very sad about the death of my grandma this January. I told him the three names I liked the best off the list and he mulled them over for a bit. Long and short, full and nick. He thought they were all pretty good and we could decided from those three. I told him I didn't want to disregard the other name since he felt strongly about it. It is an Irish name after all and that is pleasing to dad. I want to say we have narrowed it down, but that isn't exactly true. Now we HAVE a list to pick a name from. I guess he had to yell and stomp, but he did still hear what I said. I'll be...

I plead insanity!

I believe I have finally gone completely insane. My husband didn't go to work on Saturday or Sunday. He actually didn't go to work until this afternoon. Did he, or rather, did "we" spend Sunday working on the nursery? Well... not really. He managed to get up out of the chair and into the baby's room for an hour maybe an hour and a half total. He did have time to go hang out with his friend that is really pissing my off. He had to just drop something off at his house and be right back. That took two hours. I was fuming by the time he got home. Monday, he did manage to do quite a bit of work and he did finally come to the belief that we can't keep the computer in the baby's room. I had to nudge him just a little bit more, but he mostly had decided that on his own. Yesterday... well... He literally did nothing for the entire day.

We have communication issues. I try to talk to him about what is bothering me or what my problems are and it generally doesn't go well. I try to talk. He gets louder and louder. I cry. He yells and stomps out. Then I cry some more. Some time passes and we try to come to some sort of understanding in a quieter way.

I am tired. My weekend sucked. It was in the upper nineties Sunday and Monday and it didn't cool down much at night. It was also really humid, or way worse than we are used to. I haven't slept well at all. I am so frustrated with my body. I am tired of my face hurting and not getting better. It is all I can do to go back to work each day. Then add in my frustration with my husband. The weather was finally better last night and I got myself off to bed about 940. That is earlier than usual, but my body is really wanting 10-12 hours of sleep right now. That would mean I should be in bed by no later than 7pm and that just isn't going to happen. So I got in bed and out of frustration I cried. My husband never comes to bed with me. That is something I whine about actually. He came to bed not fifteen minutes after I got there so I was still crying. I wasn't sobbing I was just quietly crying, but he figured it out pretty quickly. He wanted to know what was wrong. I said I didn't want to fight and that I was just frustrated with everything right now and I just needed to cry. He wouldn't let me be and said he wouldn't get mad and he wouldn't yell and how could he help if I wouldn't tell him. I told him I really just wanted to go to sleep. He wouldn't let it go and so I selected my words very carefully. I am not trying to be mean. I may be mad, but I'm not going to say mean or hurtful things. It didn't matter. He yelled, he threatened to quit his job and stomped off. He went into the basement and threw a bunch of stuff around. I went to see what he was doing and he said he was getting off his ass and getting some work done. So I cried some more and he yelled at me for crying. I went back to bed, but didn't sleep. I was actually on call last night and for once I just kept hoping the phone would ring and I could get out of the house. It never did. He came to bed after an hour maybe. I still didn't sleep. I don't know if I even got three hours of sleep. I am so tired. He was still sleeping when I left so I didn't get to talk to him and he left before I got home so I didn't get to talk to him. I feel bad. I have broken blood vessels under both of my eyes and on the sides of my nose by my eyes from crying so hard. I didn't know until someone at work asked what the hell happened to me.

I just don't know what to do anymore. I just feel broken on the inside and out. At least it is cooler and cloudy today and not humid for now. I don't go to work until 1100 tomorrow and I am hoping to finally get some sleep tonight. I just hope the dogs will be forgiving for just one morning and let me sleep. They have to be able to tell how thin and tight the thread that is holding me together right now is.

Frustration

I am a basket case today. Well, maybe I am more than just today, but today is worse. I am freaking out about what we don't have done and my husband's lack of ambition. I know he is still very stressed right now about his job and I am trying to just give him a little more time and space but I think I am about to go crazy and cause him physical harm. Instead of that I have been washing walls and scrubbing things. He keeps finding me cleaning something different and he tells me I need to take it easy because I am almost seven and half months pregnant. I am trying so hard not to get start a fight with him because I know he is so on edge, but SOMEONE has to do something around here.

He isn't getting anything done. At least nothing that is important to me. Except that I went in and woke him up at 930 this morning to come kill a wasp in the living room. You would have thought I had asked him to build me a pyramid. He told me to just stay away from it and he would take care of it when he woke up. I am severely allergic to these things. Apparently we have a nest right outside our front door. One flew in the screen he has neglected to fix. I guess he decided that my safety was more important than his sleep because he did get up with in a few minutes and come take care of it. In addition to that he "cleaned" the garage. I only saw him take things out and then put them back in a different messy manner. Whatever. Then he went to "coffee" with his dad.

He is extremely frustrated with how the railroad is handling some staffing right now. I guess some people newer than him have been set up as engineers. They were put in regular pool positions. When he was set up as an engineer he tried to get put in a pool position and he was told that there was no way in hell that was going to happen. So now he is mad. He thinks he should punish them and not go to work. HELLO!!! Last Saturday he came home from work about 1600 and he has only worked one time since then and it wasn't because of the railroad. He doesn't work, he doesn't get paid. Makes sense right? Pregnant wife, bills to pay, essentially nothing bought for baby. He came to me and said that "WE" need to get the baby's room cleaned out. Well, part of "we" has done everything she can. Now he thinks he should get to stay home from work tonight and "we" clean out the room tomorrow.

I just want to scream at him, but I don't. Instead I wash or scrub something. I want to shake him until I jar some sense into his head. Instead I scrub something else. Right now every issue I have with my husband is magnified. All the flaws that I try to accept are screaming out at me. He told me his plan for tomorrow and I started crying out of frustration. Just a couple of tears running down my cheeks and now I am the bad guy. I didn't stomp and yell and tell him he needs to grow up, like I wanted to. So he gets mad at me and throws a little fit and stomps off to the bedroom to go to bed because he is going to have to go to work.

I am just having a harder time dealing with these things right now. All my emotions just seem intensified. It makes me tired!!! I had to vent. But I'm not running short on things to scrub so here I go...

Hormones, work, stress!

I don't know what it is but I have been a mess today. My face is really hurting. I was really sick this morning and I have just been a mess. I had myself a little meltdown at work. I just started crying while listening to a group of grown women bicker for 20 minutes about whose turn it was with the microwave. My head hurt and they just would shut up. I cried and gave up and went back to my OR without getting to eat lunch. There were still two people in front of me in the microwave line. I only get 30 minute lunch! The stupid thing was that half of the people in the room were actually in surgeries. The other half had finished or weren't assigned rooms. Tell me who do you think got the microwave first???

I wasn't even back in my room for 45minutes before one of the unassigned people came and told me I had to go to my boss's office because she needed to talk to me. Great. She started out being all nice, but I knew something was coming since she sent someone in and she closed the door. She said she knew things have been difficult and she heard that I was upset. Is there anything "we" can do for you? Gee, I tried to talk to her before and she was nasty as hell??? Here it comes I am thinking. I took an instrument to the instrument room. It had been labeled incorrectly and when we opened it we didn't want it. The people that work in there said I was rude to them!!! This was the last thing I thought was coming. I didn't do anything. I was trying not to bother two people that were working. I was trying to help them by taking it to where the clean instruments are kept and I couldn't get in the door because it was blocked by a giant cart. So I told them it was clean and that it had just been labeled wrong so it just needed to be put up again. I asked them where I could put it and they told her I was nasty and just slammed it down on these totes. I just stared at my boss. Of the many things I MAY have done this wasn't one of them. She pulls out a whole bunch of instruments like the one I took them and asks me to identify them as to which one is it we were needing and which one I took them, like I didn't know what the hell I was doing. She told me I needed to watch my tone with them because we can't afford to lose any more of our aides. I was shocked because I hadn't done anything wrong, but at the same time, after being around my husband for so long, I wanted to ask her if she thought nurses - experienced and department oriented nurses - grew on trees! My husband was not pleased when I told him my little story. It is funny, or scary, how many of the husbands of my coworkers want to cause physical harm to my boss.

Bouncing boy

I like to yank my shirt up to my bra and watch my belly. Mike thinks I am nuts and laughs at me, but this evening he actually understood. I try and try to get him to watch but Tiger ALWAYS stops when his daddy is watching. I got him to come over and like always he stopped his beating around in there. So Mike walked away and a minute or two later he started up again. I called him back and this time he finally got to see. The movements are getting bigger and more pronounced. It hardly looks (and feels) like there is much of anything in between the wall of my uterus and my skin. What used to be little thumbs in one place are now large whacks that you can see in 2-3 inch movements. Sometimes it is uncomfortable, but it is so cool to watch. What it must be like to have 2 or 3 of them doing that!

I have gone through a book of baby names and highlighted the ones I like. I have presented this to my husband. I don't think he has looked at it yet. I am threatening him that I really will pick my own name and soon if he won't take this more seriously. The problem is there are still to many names that I like. I need for him to say he hates this one or that one is a possibility.

I got scared this weekend. I took Molly for a walk on a different route. We usually go to the end of our street and go up the hill on the busy county road. The speed limit is 55. There is little along the end but tall grass and then a canal and there are many many trees to obstruct a motorists' view of us. This usually isn't too bad and eventually we level out and you can see for quite a distance. But we haven't been going that far for awhile and there is no other way to get back if I get tired. No options. So instead, we walked down to the other end of the street and it loops around to the street just south of our house. It does this a couple of times so it gives us some options for how far we go and the ability to get back home a shorter route if we need to. The disadvantage to this is that there are lots of dogs. Lots of unfenced or tethered dogs. We passed a house of a dog we didn't know. His owners were outside working and he viewed us as a threat and he charged right after us. Molly is generally very happy-go-lucky. Kind of a ditsy blond actually. She has always tended to hide behind me if she thought the dog was aggressive. She might bark loudly and she has a big bark but it was from the farthest point from the other dog. For the most part, she wants to play with that other dog unless they don't like her presence. This was different and she fought. I have developed a tone that can get most dogs to back off and get her under control without much issue but not here. She has become so protective of me and she took this dog on. I didn't know what to do. The owners of the other dog just yelled at him and he didn't care. I got Molly pulled back but it was after she scuffled with him. I was scared. What do you do? We came close another time recently but between her snarling and my shooing the other dog it backed off. The funny thing was that we walked not three houses down the road and she saw another dog, one she knows and was a giant puppy again in less than three minutes. I have always wondered if she had that side in her or not. I mean I assumed she did because she is a dog, but I haven't seen it before. There have been a few times that Mike and I have had some, um, loud discussions and she will put herself right next to me between us and she sits at attention watching him, but I have never been scared before of my own dog. Mostly that I wasn't going to be able to get control of her and that it was such a physically difficult thing for me to do right now with her being such a big girl. The other dog was Lab mix as well, but whatever he was mixed with was a lot smaller than Molly's dad. She probably had about forty pounds on him. I wonder what would have happened if he had been a larger dog...

Okay, I have a baby shower question. One of my friends (J) wants to have a shower for me which is very nice. Another friend suddenly wants to help is telling her what we should do. She is also offering large amounts of money to do this and isn't sure if she will be able to make it. She is saying that J should serve alcohol and telling her what we should and should not do. Has anyone ever been to a baby shower where the guests get all liquored up??? I have not and neither has J. We are thinking that it is inappropriate. It also seems nuts to offer $500 to buy the alcohol and to put towards food. J loves to do brunch parties and have punch and rolls and fruit and that kind of thing. I think that is totally fine, as long as there is cake. She knows I am all about cake right now ;) Put even a champagne punch seems wrong to us. For God's sake I'm PREGNANT!!! Any thoughts or suggestions? It is nice of her to want to be so generous. I don't want to sound greedy but she can just give us a REALLY nice gift instead (a fraction of that would be a really nice gift). Why would you slap out that much money and not plan to be there? Odds are very slim that she is going to come. Anyway what do you think? Any experience with such baby showers?

Yesterday was a yucky day. I only got 2 hours sleep Friday night. Every once and awhile I just can't sleep. Fortunately for me it is usually around a weekend, but not always. I would lay down and when it was apparent no sleep was coming I would get up and do something so at least I was being productive. I don't know how many times I did this. My plan was to let myself sleep as late as I could Saturday even though I said I would go help with the garage sale I dumped my extra crap off at. Well, I would have been on time if I hadn't had given myself extra time to recover from the vomiting.

There are tons of extra people in our community this weekend. We are hosting an annual antique car race that always draws quite a few people. In conjunction, a our local farm and ranch museum hosted an antique tractor show that actually brings quite a few people as well. I have never gone to that but I guess it too is quite a to do. My neighbor laughs because she says that is where her retirement is. She and her husband own a local green house and he has a collection of about 100 antique tractors. I think it is an addiction rather than a collection, but who is splitting hairs. He had to relocate his business a couple of years ago so that he could have enough space to store the tractors. Luckily for us, he only has a couple at home, but his motorcycle collection is here and he has just started collecting cars as well. So, with the extra people in town they also have a big craft show at one of the parks.

So the point to this is, with everything going on, they thought having a garage sale before all the days events would start would be a good idea. Judging by the number of adds in the paper and the number of signs plastered around town, so did a lot of other people. Over all the number of shoppers was disappointing, however, we took over three pickup loads full and one load in my SUV and I left the day with only three boxes of crap left over. I was very pleased since my goal was to get rid of crap. Making money was just an added bonus, so I marked stuff really cheap. I didn't think about that until I got there Saturday morning and saw other people had contributed things in say the same category of crap and their prices were higher. Oh well, I guess my crap went first. It was cold and windy and I don't think that helped business. Of course there are always the die hard garage sale addicts out, but I think the weather deterred some of the more casual shoppers like myself.

I "helped" for about four and half hours and then I went to the craft fair. There wasn't much to do to help. I sat in the garage with people who were either old enough to be my parents or grandparents and worked on Tiger's baby blanket. I knew my mom was coming to town yesterday for the craft fair. She and a friend were supposed to be going together so I thought I was in the clear. Wrong. I get a parking place, stopped for an outrageously priced lemonade and made it only to the second booth before I bumped into my mom all alone. She had been looking for me and boy did she have things to show me! It is obvious to me that my needs have changed. I am totally looking at things in a different way. My mom kept trying to show me jewelry which has never been my thing, but even the many many booths of metal yard decorations barely held my interest. I looked only at baby and nursery type things. I didn't feel very good. It was still cool, but very sunny and I still can't squint my left eye. Even with my ugly sun glasses Mike bought me I still have trouble with light and my left eye. I very quickly got a headache. My back also starts to ache pretty quickly when I am on my feet for awhile when I don't have my support hose on, which I didn't. I didn't buy a thing, but I did manage to spend $19.50. What did I buy? Only three things. Lemonade, an ear of my favorite roasted corn, and an Indian taco. I have never bought one of the tacos before, so I don't know about that, but it seems as though the prices of the others each have gone up since last year. I love the corn, but there are two problems with it. Where is corn in season right now? Unless you have had it, you don't know what you are missing, but there is no corn like sweet corn that is grown in the rich black soil of Iowa. When corn is at its very best here it is never as good. The second lacking with my corn was that I put garlic pepper on it instead of garlic salt, since I got a salt lecture on Friday at my OB visit. I knew I was going to eat something else salty so I thought I would try the pepper instead. Not as good.

My plan then was to go home and rest for a little bit and then head back over to the garage sale like I had told them I would. My mom however told me that we were going to my house to get the crib set for the baby and then we were going to the fabric store to look at fabric for the blanket she is making and fabric for curtains. I told her I really wasn't feeling very well and she said it would only take a few minutes. Of course when she walked in my house she started touching everything and picking at things. She immediately walked over to a garbage bag on the living room floor (that has been there for a LONG time) and started digging through it. I has things I am taking to Good.Will, but I was waiting until after the garage sale to go because I hate going there and I only wanted to make one trip. She thought it was new stuff for the baby. I detest how she just starts digging, literally, in my things!!! So I snapped at her. Then she starts folding my husbands underwear. Oh by the way, we have only the one bathroom in our house, and she took it first. Pregnant lady, who had a 48 oz lemonade two hours ago and no bathrooms other than port a potties at the park, be damned.

I do love my mother. I do feel bad that I can't stand her so much. Many of my long term coworkers are very familiar with my mom both by stories and by having been blessed with her acquaintance. They find her humerus and are all glad she is not their mother. There are a couple of people who have lost their mothers and so I try not to complain about mine in front of them. One is pretty much my age and even though my mother drives me absolutely insane, I can't imagine her not being there, to do just that.

So she drags me, or rather I drive to the fabric store. I have a terrible headache at this point and am very crabby. The left side of my face was hurting something awful and the stupid fabric fibers are driving my sinuses nuts. Then I have start having the pains that the nurse says can't be contractions already, even though she tells me to sit or lay down on my left side and drink a lot when I have them and call the doctor if they don't stop in fifteen minutes. The pains where my entire belly tightens wrapping around my back and lasts for anywhere from 30 seconds to about two minutes. I plopped my ass down and put my face in my hands and just let my mother to continue to pass bolt after bolt of fabric in front of my face. It took her about twenty minutes before it dawned on her that I really didn't feel well and then she gathered up her things, got her fabric cut and paid for. It was still another twenty minutes at least before we were out of the store and one of the ladies working there pointed out to her how awful I looked and that I needed to get home. ????

I drove home. My mom built herself a damn nest on my couch and took my remote and said she was going to take a nap. So I sat in Mike's chair and did take a nap for a bit. Poor Mike got off work and came home to find me sleeping and my mother having taken everything over. He had to take his lunch into the bedroom to watch television for himself and eat in peace. I hate having food in the bedroom, but I obviously understood this time. When I woke up I took each of the whining dogs out and then went to the bedroom myself to feel sorry for my husband who couldn't even relax in his own living room. I told my mom that I was leaving because I had had to go back over to the garage sale. She just said bye from her nest. Mike called an hour or so later to let me know that she had left to go do more shopping and she would be back later. Of course she did come back. Mike was sleeping and she wanted to know if she should stay the night or not. I told her no and she came in and watched about two more hours of my tv before she drove home because we made her leave. It was 8 pm and we had to go check on Mike's grandma because his parents are out of town. We wanted to go earlier but we didn't want to leave my mother alone in our house, plus she had blocked both of our vehicles in the drive way.

I get so frustrated with her. You try to set some boundaries and she disregards them. She is condescending and critical. She doesn't like my husband or my BIL. My husband goes out of the way to say things that he know irritate and by now I don't care. He curses, gets very loud, and uses poor grammar and words she can't stand on purpose. He tells stories that he knows will make her mad. All of these things are on purpose and only fuel why she thinks he isn't good enough for me and why I shouldn' t have children with him. It doesn't drive her away though. It doesn't make her call first. My BIl is very different than my husband. He works too much though and leaves my sister alone too much in their giant house. He does work a lot and he does have to travel a fair amount. However, he provides extremely well for his family and my sister can do whatever she wants. She has been selling ca.bi for a couple years now I think because it is fun for her. She gets to go to meetings twice a year and he takes care of the kids while she is gone. She gets to go back to Texas a couple times a year at least on her own to visit her friends. He does leave for work early everyday before the kids are up so that he can take ever other Friday off to spend with his family. He does do family activities every weekend and many week nights. He does help drive his sons all over the damned city for their activities. He has taken at least one class with each of his sons so they had one on one time together. He is nice to my sister and makes sure that they have time together. He is a bit frugal, but buys her very nice gifts. I don't see how she can not like him and not be happy for her daughter. My BIL made my sister start calling my mom every Sunday about six years ago, even though she doesn't want to because he thinks she should still talk to her mom on a regular basis. They have paid for my mother to come to visit on more than one occasion and she hasn't even said thank you. As a matter of fact she complained about the trip to my nephew who was five at the time, while they were driving to Santa Fe because my mom wanted to go there. This was two weeks after my sister had her youngest. I'm sure the last thing she wanted to do was drive all over to entertain my mother. That is enough gripping, isn't it. She drives us nuts, but she is still here to do it, right and some people don't have that. My sister is lucky that she lives so far away. My mom has to call before she goes to her house.

OB appointment

Well, I went in for my appointment today. Two weeks ago a nurse that I have deal with for work called and said my appointment had to be changed (I'm wondering if I wrote something about this) because my doctor had to help one of his partners in the OR. Okay... She wanted to move my appointment to 1100. That won't work, because that is when I have to be at work and there is no one available to cover for me. I can't stand this woman. She is the one that has to fill out paper work for say, being off work for me and my husband. My husband had to take family medical leave to be off at all. Thank God it exists. I took in the third set of papers for her to fill out for him today, because his work has rejected the last two. We were informed at our first visit by her that "this is what I do everyday, I know how how to fill these out." Mike had tried to explain something to her and got that response. He feels about her the same way I do. So anyway, we will see if the freaking third time is the charm.

So, she tells me she will put me down for a 1015 appointment, and to come in at 0945 and hopefully they can get me seen, but you know how surgery is. Yes, I do know how surgery is. I know that time isn't black and white. I couldn't schedule for another day at that point because I didn't have a work schedule that was completed at that time and they couldn't get me in any other day this week anyway. Next week was actually when my appointment was supposed to be, but my doctor is going to be gone for two weeks. His son that graduated from high school with my husband is graduating from medical school in Chicago and they are moving him to Denver to do his residency. So anyway, I went in thinking I wouldn't even get to see the doctor, but fortunately I was able to see him in a timelier fashion than usual. I begged my coworkers that were in the case he was helping with to do whatever they could to get him the heck out of there. I told them I was impressed.

So back to the important things, the appointment went well. I managed to lose the 0.4 lbs that I gained last month. I still can't believe this. My blood pressure is the same it has been, which is always a little high when I go to their office. We are measuring well and he sounds good. The doctor came in looked at the notes written by the nurse and said "this has sure been a long pregnancy for you hasn't it?" As I am "hopping" up onto the exam table I say "Dr. H, I still have a long time to go." He chuckled and told me I was right. I thought I would be seeing someone in two weeks. At the last appointment we talked about starting every two at thirty, but he said everything was fine and he wanted me to come back in four to see him. That way we are still on the even weeks and I don't see someone else while he is gone. I can tell when I go out to make my next appointment that this is a little unusual, but they always do it. (I mean make all my appointments with just him).

My husband just called. He is on his rest away from home right now. He said he just received a call that he was "bumped." I was confused because he is generally the one that does the bumping. That means that someone has knocked him out of the pool position he is in. To be in a pool means that you have a "job" in a rotation. It makes his going to work a little more predictable if that can be true with the railroad. They also have to go a little less often then the people on the extra board. Those are the people that fill in where ever there are openings in the pool positions. It is tremendously complex and it has taken a bit to grasp all of this. You have to have seniority over someone to be able to bump them out of their pool position. He has enough seniority that there aren't many people that can bump him so I was shocked when he said he was bumped. Two years ago this was a common thing to happen, but not now. He said he was bumped by the railroad when I asked who could have done this to him. He said they called and bumped him to now be an engineer! This is great. This is what all the torture for since last summer has been about. He is nervous because he hasn't driven a train in awhile and now he will have to do it all on his own. I remember how it was when he started as a conductor. He gets really worked up because he wants to do everything perfectly. We want him to do a good job, I mean he IS in a giant coal train speeding down the track, right? He is just meticulous about it when some others might not be so much so. This also puts him back at the bottom of the seniority ladder and that means he will have to work on the extra board and that will suck for awhile. It means he will have less time off in between trips and he won't like that. It will take a lot more time now for him to gain any seniority because there are so many people ahead of him. Oh well, we have nothing but time right?

I can not believe how much Tiger moves now. and how dramatic it is. I love to sit and watch my belly move. It is amazing! He turned some tonight and it was a bit uncomfortable and then he seemed to be "stretching" his arms and legs a lot! I think he is just beating me, but we will call it stretching. Feeling and seeing him move makes this feel so real.