Month: August 2004

It’s all my brother’s fault. He was obsessed with this game earlier this summer. I downloaded it, forgot about it, then just rediscovered it a few days ago. Now I’m obsessively playing it. Seriously. I haven’t knit anything in about three days, because all of my sitting-down-doing-nothing time has been taken up with this silly card game. I swear it’s impossible. (OK, I’ve won it once, but I think that was sheer dumb luck!)

You’ve been warned.

Go here, click on the link “Mike’s Cards” for your operating system, download the Lite version or the free demo version, and start playing Spider. I dare you. And if you win it more than once in 50 games, I just really don’t want to know about it!

(And if you think I’m kidding about how addictive it is, Denis is over there with his laptop saying “ok, this is the last game”. He’s said that for the past 5 or 6 by now…)

Last night I had a really bizarre dream. Apparently, the church decided that they needed to increase the number of people going, and the best way to do this was to add a bunch of “features” to mass. First, there were the sports announcers, who were literally doing play-by-play descriptions of everything: “Oh, look, there’s the alter boy lighting the candles. He’s really got a great technique down for not letting the match burn out before the candle is lit!” Then, all of the hymns had the same words, but they were set to Star Wars melodies – think “Joyful, Joyful” to the Imperial March. Finally, they had the big screen, where they kept putting up views of parishioners in the pews – people who were nodding off, etc. Unfortunately, they decided to single me out, because I had to keep getting up to use the bathroom, so I was up on the big screen a lot. Oh, and they padded the pews, and after the last time I went to the bathroom, someone else had taken over my entire pew for a nap.

I think maybe I was feeling guilty for not going to mass yesterday…

Yesterday, I made it through the whole day without crying! Yippee! (Today, not so good. Oh, well.)

The baby’s room is almost empty of non-baby things, and the dresser and crib are in the garage waiting to be moved up to the room – hopefully tomorrow, because I’m sure the excessively humid garage isn’t a good place to store wood furniture for too long. I’m going to resist setting up the crib just yet, although I will unpack it to make sure all the pieces are in the box and in good condition. Then I have to make a final decision on paint colors – which is going to be hard, because I want it to coordinate with the bedding, but since we put that on the registry, I don’t actually have it in my possession yet. I guess a trip to Babies ‘R’ Us with paint chip samples is in order…

I’ve also got about half the hood on the orange cabled hoodie knit (knitted?) so far – and I have to go break out my last skein of yarn to finish it. Of course, that last skein of yarn is the one I bought as an extra “just in case”. Thank goodness I’ve gotten in to the habit of doing that – despite the fact that most of the time I end up with two skeins extra because the designer also added a fudge factor, I would have been mighty upset if I’d gotten the entire sweater done but only had enough yarn to finish half the hood! I mean, I did a fairly generous gauge swatch, but not nearly half a hood’s worth.

Once again, I feel like I need to make myself a t-shirt that says “I’m not crazy, I’m just pregnant!” (Although, by now, I suppose it’s obvious – I’m either pregnant, or I swallowed a whole basketball for lunch. Other women have even let me cut in line in the ladies’ room lately – not necessary, but definitely appreciated!)

Anyway, I’ve been trying to remember when the last day was that I managed to get through the entire day without crying…and I can’t. It has to be at least a few weeks now. Sometimes I have a good reason to cry, but most of the time I don’t. I can tell I’m acting like a lunatic, but I can’t do anything to stop it. Is this what multiple personality disorder is like?

Don’t get me wrong, I’m absolutely loving the experience of being pregnant – feeling my baby move and kick always makes me smile – but this is ridiculously bad PMS times 100, every single day. I have to admit, it would be nice to get off this hormonal roller coaster one of these days!

Not that they weren’t before, of course. It’s just that I’ve installed the new version of MT-Blacklist, so I theoretically no longer need to moderate comments to control the massive amounts of comment spam I receive every day. Which is a good thing, because I hate moderating comments. (Don’t worry, I was only moderating, not censoring – comments that weren’t trying to sell male enhancement products, encourage online gambling or other such things inappropriate to this blog were posted without changes.)

Things that will still be moderated: comments on posts older than 14 days, comments which contain 5 or more links, and comments which are exact duplicates of other comments. And any comments which contain links to sites I have banned will just be outright rejected. Fair enough? (Even if it’s not, it is my blog after all!)

Oh, and on the knitting front, the pieces of the orange cabled hoodie are blocking as I type. Hopefully, tomorrow I’ll be able to get started on the hood, and then all that’s left will be seaming!

Our yard has been taken over by something very large, that creates very large and deep holes to live in… OK, not really, our fence is finally being put in, and the workmen arrived this morning with this really cool auger-thingy on a bobcat that made very short work of digging 5′ deep holes in our heavy clay soil. For that alone, it was worth hiring out this job!

The current estimate is to have the fence done by the end of this week, assuming the weather holds (which it’s supposed to – knock wood). Then we’re going to have to put lattice panels up under the deck so the doggies stay in the fenced area. I’m envisioning some great games of fetch this weekend. Oh, and probably chase, because the dogs don’t come when called. Ever.

I guess we’ll have to work on that…

Childbirth class was…interesting. The video wasn’t nearly as bad as I expected, but the “floor exercises” seemed just plain silly. I mean, does saying the word “hoot” really help? I suppose if it makes me feel really idiotic and laugh, that might be helpful.

The best part was how much she wanted us all to share. Because a room full of complete strangers really need to know how the video made me feel. (Hmm…squirmy?) Oh, well. We’ll keep going, because I imagine there will be some better pain management techniques in the rest of the classes. There has to be, otherwise nobody would go to them.

So far, though, yoga wins hands down for relaxation techniques. Not once have I heard the word “hoot” escape my teacher’s lips, and that class certainly has never broken out in fits of giggles rather than doing what we were supposed to!

I am lucky enough to not only live near a lot of my family, but to have family members who have a large farm, part of which is still active. This means that there is an abundance of many kinds of vegetables, all summer long. Apparently, zucchini and green beans have been quite prolific in the past couple of weeks, so I was gifted with several pounds of each. (Along with a few dozen gladiolas, which I have stuffed into anything resembling a vase and placed all over my house!)

What does one do with so much zucchini?

Try tasty new recipes, of course! That first link is probably the all-time yummiest thing I’ve ever done with zucchini, which is saying something – I love zucchini and could eat it in just about any form.

The only problem with allrecipes.com is that I have a tendency to see many more tasty-looking recipes than I could ever make, and then I start wandering off and finding recipes for things which I don’t really need to make, but sound really fantastic to my pregnant taste buds, like chicken pot pie and beef stew.

Must focus. Several pounds of green beans are sitting in the fridge, awaiting their cooking fate…