Monday I went in for another ultrasound — does everyone get these many these days? I honestly don’t know. I feel like I’m in for one like clockwork every few weeks. It’s fun, but messy and by the time I get home I just want to lie down.

The Peanut is now 4lbs, 3oz — gaining at a rate of about 1 lb every two weeks. Which, yeah, means if I go to term, hello 8 lb baby. Pro: sleeps through the night sooner, lower risk of SIDS; Con: OMFG PAIN. He is still incredibly active, meaning some days my stomach is excruciatingly sore and I hold ice packs to my ribs—during the ultrasound he yawned, hiccuped and then proceeded to beat me with his tiny fists and feet. “Ooo,” said the tech, “he’s SO active.”

Uh yeah. Welcome to my world. It’s hot (over 90 degrees again today, just kill me already), I’m repeatedly getting beat up and I’m having to get up twice a night to pee. Tomorrow marks 31 weeks. Let’s go team baby!

Very cute profile — I think he has my nose.

Front face shot — much less like Gollum.

And per my sister who has been requesting this picture for months, my giant ever-expanding belly.

Every since we had the nasty rains in March, our basement has been disaster zone numero uno. We had it dried out rather quickly (10 days worth of fans), but picking a company to due prevention AND picking a company to finish it again was a pain in the ass. Fortunately, the drains and new pumps are in and now it’s just a matter of having it turned back into the space it was. That starts in a week and a half and today we spent part of the morning visiting tile stores and trying to envision 1000 sq ft of finished space.

Initially I planned to buy the tile online, which seemed like a fabulous idea… until they wanted to charge $700 for delivery. Oy. So now we’re buying it local, which will cost a touch more per sq ft, but less than if we had to pay an extra $700 for shipping.

The worst part is I’m due in less than two months and it’s not done yet. They tell us it’ll take two weeks, and they can start in the first week of August (awesome, I can’t wait to have people walking around when it’s this freaking hot and all I want to do is where boxers and a tank top), but we can’t move the basement stuff downstairs until it’s over… and so the nursery is full of boxes. And cats. Argh.

I’m itching to finish the nursery and wash and put away all the cute stuff we have—perhaps I’m nesting, but I think it’s just because I like to plan. Not having stuff done makes me slightly anxious, especially because babies do not have the best record for timing.

We’re in day four of the second heat wave of the past month and I want to die. Being pregnant in the summer is quite possibly the worst time—especially if you don’t have central a/c and you work with a laptop (hello heat wave on the legs).

Thursday marks 30 weeks of being pregnant, and the past couple of been my least favorite. I passed the first glucose test, but just barely, so they made me take it again. Some BS about my liver and blah blah and the next thing you know I’m sitting in a hospital for 3.5 hours, getting my blood drawn every hour. This, after fasting since the night before and swigging 100 ML of the nastiest orange drink known to man. Friday was a rough day.

Our last ultrasound was about a week and a half ago (I know, I know, I’m behind), and I’ve decided my baby looks like Gollum:

The tech helpfully took a picture of his foot, too, seeing as how it’s permanently affixed to the underside of my ribs:

They tell me the kicking is a good sign that he might come early, and honestly, it is my one desire. Four weeks early kid, you can do it!

Yet another fun aspect of pregnancy? Pregnancy brain. (And yes, that is the technical term for it.) Basically the brain swells a bit when you are pregnant and certain aspects, namely memory, become hampered. Fortunately it goes away once the baby is born, but for now, I’m stuck with a worse-than-usual short-term memory (ie, I literally have to right everything down from a 10 minute meeting or I forget everything from the first 5 minutes) and an odd habit of just forgetting words in the middle of sentences.

The Chop thinks this is awesome. Particularly today when I said, “yippity do da doo bird,” or something along those lines. Basically I make no sense. It’s highly irritating to me, but highly entertaining to those I work and live with—yet another aspect of pregnancy that they don’t tell you occurs.

When we were in Provincetown I went and got a pedicure at a local salon, where two early-20-year-olds were working. They ooh’d and aah’d about my stomach, felt the baby kick and we discussed all the stuff that nobody mentions about pregnancy…

Your feet hurt, your back hurts, your stomach hurts, you can’t get up by yourself, putting on pants is painful, you don’t sleep well (or at all), it’s freaking hot, you get random heartburn FOR NO REASON (even if you just drink water), your feet swell if you’re on them too much, you can’t shave your legs comfortably, you run into things constantly and, oh yeah, sex becomes a logistical nightmare.

Happy Fourth of July!

Today it is 87 degrees, well on it’s way to being way-too-fucking-hot-to-live, and so the Chop is celebrating Father’s Day by sitting on the couch in front of the air conditioner. It’s supposed to be high 80s all week, which really sucks when you’re pregnant.

The Peanut has gotten very good at kicking regularly now, and slowly but surely, my belly button is getting shallower—which is really bizarre. I read an article the other day about how, yes, a lot of women love pregnancy, but a lot of women really hate it. It’s uncomfortable, painful, hot and irritating—and yeah, I think I fall into group B. Pregnancy? Not my favorite thing. I’m looking forward to having a baby, but the nine months wait time is a pain in the freaking ass.

An old friend of ours recently had a pre-eclampsia event that resulted in her delivering by C-section right around 29 weeks (she was four weeks farther along than me). The baby is doing great, no longer intubated I believe and now that he’s a week old, about 2 lbs. I know it’s stressful for them, but part of me thinks, hmm, early delivery might not be so bad.

My goal is 35 weeks—the doctors have discussed inducing me a bit early depending on my liver—which means I have 10 weeks to go. 10 of the hottest weeks of the summer, sigh, 10 weeks where I have to ideally finish four major projects. Ugh.

One of the worst things about moving one year and getting pregnant the next? Cravings.

In college I became addicted to nime chow, an Asian soft roll, with shrimp, bean sprouts, etc., and the most amazing vinegar-type sauce with peanuts. Sadly the only two restaurants that I’ve ever found who carry it… an hour+ away. Fortunately there’s a branch of one of those restaurants about 30 minutes away, but after a day of working, 30 minutes seems like forever.

Then there’s two of our favorite restaurants in Newport, both eclectic, one with more Mexican flavors—the best fish tacos of all time. Chop’s mom was in town last weekend, so after a lighthouse tour on a boat (surprisingly, I did not get sick—go baby), we ended up over there, Chop in tears as he ate some incredibly hot jalapenos.

My goal every weekend is to convince Chop that going south for dinner (or lunch), is a great idea. I’ve only succeeded once, lol. An hour and a half, he says, for dinner? I guess if you really want, but let’s get all this done first. Stuff which ends up taking most of the day and by 4PM, I’m ready for a nap.

Word to the wise, don’t move and get pregnant right away. You will be sooo sorry, lol.

Last weekend the Chop and I went to a local hardware store to get some paint samples. I, of course, completely forgot about the low/no VOC nonsense, so yesterday we ended up at Home Depot. Two gallons of (pregnancy-friendly) paint and supplies later and the nursery is about to begin.

The best part is that we’re not the greatest painters and the Chop would prefer to be cleaning the house (and mowing the lawn and doing anything else besides painting, omg, the horror), so he is currently killing time by getting coffee and taking grass clippings to the dump and I’m debating the best way to drop cloth the floor.

During the testing phase, I got two colors up just fine, but the darkest one managed to splatter everywhere—the floor, the baseboard, the door (wtf)—so we decided it’d be best to cover whatever we could.

So far, it is not going well.

When we bought our house, we knew our gardens were going to be a pain in the ass… but they were so nice, and beautifully landscaped… and half a freaking acre. The guy who owned the house was a contractor/handyman type and it’s evident in all the awesome details (hardwood floors, gorgeous kitchen, three bathrooms) and in the yard. We have huge trees (perfect for tree houses), buckets of different flowers, lots of grass, and our own well with built in sprinklers — we also have a company that weeds, mulches, etc. and a company that maintains the sprinklers. Hi, home ownership? Fucking expensive.

Sadly the sprinklers in the backyard went on this morning around 4 and haven’t shut off, despite me flipping the turn off valve, so now my backyard is like Jungle Book and the cats are having a party. So far cardinals, bluejays, some random black birds, squirrels and two bunnies have decided that our backyard is their new sanctuary. Aside from the incessant chirping, I’m highly entertained. It is 85 degrees (on it’s way to a high of 90, thank you fucking hot wave! I LOVE 90 degrees when I’m 5 1/2 months pregnant) though, so I get the love affair they’re all having with water spouting from the ground. On the other hand, two squirrels are copulating and that’s really kinda creepy.

In more entertaining news, the baby is finally kicking enough for other people to feel him (I’ve felt him for a couple of weeks), so after I had a crazy dream where the baby’s foot was formed and pushing enough that I thought I could feel his toes and see his full foot and ankle near my belly button (pregnancy dreams = insane), I woke the Chop up.

So if you’re in the neighborhood and bored at 7AM, feel free to drop by. There’s a Mariachi band that seems to start playing about that time.

When I was about 17 the alternator gave out on the Jeep I was driving. Highly terrifying, I was lucky to have it happen right before I got on a bridge, and right above a street that descended to the house of a friend. When your alternator stops working, your entire car stops working. All the dials go to zero, no radio, air, the car powers itself off — and you can’t turn your wheel either.

This morning, going about 75 on the freeway, my alternator, for lack of a better word, fluxed. My car shut down and using the momentum I had, I attempted to exit the freeway, forgetting that my wheel was not so keen to turn. I ended up pulling off in the middle of a turning exit lane (awesome, I know), cruising over a cement barrier and settling in the dirt.

And then, I tried to turn my car back on. Which, admittedly, might’ve been a bad idea… except it turned on. I pulled back onto the road, turned around and got back onto the freeway and arrived at work with no other problems.

So I’ve decided a) someone set off an EMP of some sort that temporarily knocked out the power of my car (and yeah, sure, no one else was affected, but it was aimed at me!) or b) my car had some sort of crazy hiccup and now it’s fine.

I have my fingers crossed I’ll be able to turn it on and get home, because I don’t really want to have it towed 45 miles back to the mechanic where we live. And the Chop really doesn’t want to have to come and get me, lol.

Personally, I see sex. Now, that could be because I’m “adult” or because I’m pregnant and horny, but still, dolphins? It took me a little while to see the damn dolphins.

From BoingBoing.net: “Scientific American is doing a whole issue on optical illusions and they’ve got a sampling up on their website as a slideshow. It’s interesting to see how some illusions are created by physical tricks of the eyes, while others are, apparently, psychological in nature. This illusion, for instance, is supposed to be influenced by the way sexual maturity changes your frame of mind—kids see dolphins and grown-ups see, well, sex.”