Sprung a leak...

In a pipe underneath our master bathroom. It dripped through the ceiling, into the center of the couch, through the floor, and made a puddle on our dryer in the basement.

The pipe that sprung was a clean water pipe that brings water into the bathroom--so sanitary conditions aren't a concern, but getting everything dry is. When I called Tim to ask him how to turn the water off in the house, he immediately came home. We then called a plumber and filed a claim with our home owners insurance. This all happened around 3-4 pm in the afternoon. By the end of the night the plumber had come and gone, and while the water mitigation people were willing to come out at 10pm, we scheduled them to come first thing in the morning. They have already come and gone--we just need to keep the fans and dehumidifiers running through the weekend. So, apart from a hole in our ceiling, things don't look to bad. The good thing is that hour home owner's insurance is GREAT and everything will be back to normal soon.

In less than 24 hours we've already made so much progress toward repair, the only thing I have to worry about is that I really really love that couch and it might not get salvaged. I love that couch, not because it's pretty or new, but because it was the only comfortable place to sleep while pregnant. It also didn't hurt that it was 10+ years old and apart from Annie setting fire to it, she couldn't do anything to it to mess it up. I guess we'll wait and see if it dries out.

Tortoise and the Hare

The baby is due to arrive next week. I'm excited, I'm already in love but I've also been pretty tired. Resting a lot--but when I rest, I also think. Combine that with the pregnancy hormones and I'm gushy and thinking in lots of different directions and having lots of Pooh Bear's "Deep Thinks." A good friend described me a 'crazy pregified' to refer to how far along I am and how close the delivery is. I think it describes the mental state pretty well too.

Anyway, I thought I'd share a recent thought. Nothing earth-shattering by far, but I guess it is feeling timely and relevant to me. Remember the story of the tortoise and the hare? The moral of the story was, slow and steady win the race. Does that mean a steady dedication to a task will yield better results or that a slow and steady course through life yields the best results? Can you move so quickly through life that it exhausts you and you miss the best parts?



I've been ruminating about how much a person's life can change in just a short while. I'm also thinking about how big and sudden some life changes can seem when you haven't been in touch with a person for awhile. Maybe that's the missing out part, when you are so busy you don't stay in touch with people and everything seems to have passed you by?

Many friends and family and loved ones are going through lots of changes right now. A dear college friend of mine just got engaged; one of my sister's friends is about to be engaged. One of Tim's friends just got married. A friend of mine is trying to launch her own business. The company my SIL worked for just closed so she's making plans to go into business for herself and tackle a few other jobs on the side. Husband and I are expecting our second baby any day now, and good friends are expecting their third. The list goes on and on.

All of these changes are so life-altering that they can loom big and scary while on the horizon, but all of these life-changes are good too. They represent a maturing of each of the individuals involved, they herald the next stage of our lives and they are the natural consequence of being out there and living life. Some of it seems so sudden, as though we're the hare in the race rather than the slow, steady plodding tortoise. Right now I wish things could slow down and we could all be the tortoise and just savor the moments before everything changes again. Being the Hare just seems like a blur.

Catepillars are Ew

Bugs don't bother me,
Bugs don't bother me,
They might bug,
Some of you mugs,
Bugs don't bother me.



I was able to handle the GIANT COCKROACH living in my suitemate's dorm room the freshman year of college. I caught it in a cup and threw it out the window. Very dignified, with a limited amount of screaming, and all that. I'm able to smile indulgently at the weird spider crickets that make first made their way into my basement apartment and now, my basement. I never saw them until I moved north 30 miles. I've even calmly smashed to a mushy pulp dangerous and posionous spiders.

I do not deal well with caterpillars. They used to be pretty cool to play with when I was a kid, but they are tricksy and mistrustful. When I was all of five, I was playing outside and braced my hand on a nearby tree. On the tree was some sort of caterpillar with stingers. Red needlepoint-marks crossed my entire palm and it took months for it to heal completely. I've never seen the same sort of caterpillar since then, but then again, I don't care to look.

Fast forward to present day. I have the bed linens heaped up in a pile on the floor, in front of the washer. The other day, I washed two white mattress pads. When they came out of the dryer, I noticed one had a weird black stain on it. Not knowing where the stain came from, I decided to rewash the mattress pad, and continued running laundry. As I took the bedsheets out of the washer, I noticed something that looked like a big black piece of lint in the bottom of the washer barrel. I fished out--what I thought was lint--and threw it on top of the dryer. When it landed, it landed belly up. It was no giant piece of lint, but a long, black, fuzzy CATERPILLAR!

I allowed myself a mini-freak out. Sent an IM to The Husband, expressing that I could not write 'ew' enough to express both my displeasure at having run wash with a giant caterpillar and my disgust at having touched a CATERPILLAR. The Husband had to dispose of the caterpillar from the top of the dryer when he got home. Only then did more laundry get run.

I'm a little surprised that I found a caterpillar at the beginning of winter though, I thought they were a spring bug. So far, I've only seen one, so I believe this incident is over. The Husband said if I find two, I can assume there are more. If I find a second one, Orkin better come out the same day.

Stay Tuned

I posted earlier about what to wear to a wedding. The wedding is this weekend, and I did find the accessories and put an outfit together. Stay tuned, I'll post some pictures in the next two days so you can see what I wore.

Edited to Add: I forgot to bring my camera, so I didn't get any pictures. Lots of pictures were taken though, so I'll see if I can't get a hold of something to post.

The Countdown is on

I haven't posted in awhile, for a simple and unglamorous reason. I'm tired. The baby is due in four more weeks--December 8! A coworker of Tim's said the last month of pregnancy is designed to make labor and delivery look good. Aint it the truth. I've been neglecting the opportunity to blog so that I can rest or nest.

Cow the Horse

A friend of mine from college bought her very own horse. She recently emailed with news about the horse, how she was thrown, and how she got right back in the saddle. Owning a horse is pretty cool. Horse-ownership is almost every little girl's dream---but not my dream. I never wanted a horse, and here's why...

I fell off a horse as a kid, and I did NOT want to get back on. And it wasn't even a horse-riding lesson where you're learning how to do something cool, like jumping, itw as just a simple trail ride where a sedate, fat old horse walks along a trail!

I was riding second, behind my brother in the saddle. The horse, named "Cow," was known in the stable for sucking air into her belly when being saddled. If a horse does this, the saddle doesn't fit as tightly and it risks sliding out of place. Whatever stable hand saddled her, didn't wait for her to release the air, so the saddle was mounted loose.

As we were riding the pokey old trail, the saddle started to slide waaaay to the left. I was behind the saddle, so I had nothing to hold on to when it started to fall off. Hit the ground with a hard thud. The entire left side hurt, and I had the wind knocked out of me. Otherwise uninjured though. My siblings (who were along for the grand adventure) thought it was hilarious and wouldn't stop laughing. To add insult to injury, my mom also laughed when we got home and the boys told her about "The Great Fall from Cow."

Euphemism for Vomit

I was mulling over a few topics to post about as I sat down at the computer. Looking over the recent comments, I'm going to expand on what Mark wrote.

In case you didn't see the comment he posted:
This probably isn't for public consumption (pun intended), but as long as I'm filling up your blog,here goes:
What with everybody in the world being sick (read: physically ill), I took it upon myself to compile a short list of euphemisms for it.
My favorite is "street spam".

street spam

1. A term to describe any disgusting looking thing on the ground that has an unknown or vague origin.

2. A euphamism for Vomit.
======================================
1. vomit
upchuck
barf
vomit
hurl
ralph
purge
puke
hork
buick
spew
regurgitate
throw up
toss your cookies
lose your lunch
toss a sidewalk pizza
tango with the toilet
make modern art in the toilet
have a technicolor yawn
expunge the contents of your stomach
bare your guts to the world
become a multicolored organic fountain
revisit your breakfast
vomit your victuals
drive the porcelain bus
perform peristaltic pyrotechnics
paint the town red.. and green and orange and pink
have to say "that tasted better going down than coming up"
burp to the ninth power
make the janitor get out the ol’ sawdust bucket
find out just how acidic your stomach contents are
greet your guts
pray to the porcelain god


First, I invite you to add any of your own euphemisms that he might of missed.

Second, I'll explain all this by saying that Annie, Husband, and I were all held hostage for several days by some serious-unfun-GI-bug. Husband seemed to get the most mild case. Annie's illness lingered. Since I'm 34 weeks along, I got to spend Saturday at the hospital to take precautions against dehydration causing pre-term labor. So I got to the hospital so that I could go to the hospital in another few weeks.

Fortunately, everyone is well again and we have moved past this illness.