January, 2009

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For Folks Dealing with Infertility

Tuesday, January 13th, 2009

Infertility sucks.  That is about the only “nice” way to describe infertility.  Dave & I dealt with it for two years exactly and the pain of not knowing if we were going to be one of the blessed who are granted children was really hard.  A friend of ours wrote a blog entry a few days back about her plight with infertility (see Maria’s Blog).  She asks some hard questions and I’m not particularly sure there is an answer to any of them.

Folks she meets probably tell her to keep praying, keep trying, give her advice that worked for themselves, tell her that adoption is an option, maybe God has other plans for her life, “it will happen” or she should just relax.  Let me just say this, those responses really are stinkers.   I’m not even sure there is a good response for someone speaking of infertility difficulties.  Listening is maybe the only good response.

Having children just seems like such an easy thing for so many people.  And let me tell you, when you are dealing with infertility a person can get pretty judgmental about the gals that seem to get pregnant just looking at a fellow.  Speaking as one who has been there, other women’s undesired pregnancies are really tough on the infertile.  My personal favorite was to overhear a conversation where a pregnant gal is complaining about being pregnant again and how annoying her other children are.   I know people who would give their left arm just to have the privileged to be parent to one of those lady’s “rotten” kiddos.

This blog entry doesn’t really have an end purpose, I just read Maria’s blog entry, felt her pain and can tell her that we will continue to pray for she and Ed and listen when she needs to vent, because infertility sucks!

Posted in News | 3 Responses »

Sick Day

Tuesday, January 13th, 2009

Yesterday morning I thought I had a mild case of quickie food poisoning caused by a suspicious orange.  Right after Dave left in the morning, I’d eaten an orange that was a bit on the dry side, but wasn’t bad tasting or anything, just not yummy.  An hour later I totally got sick.  Ya know that Seinfeld episode where he talks about not vomiting for like 15 years?  Well, let’s just say I WAS working on year 14!  After that little yuckiness, I felt fine and went to the midwife’s office.  Then I got home and got to be sick for the whole rest of the day.  Even water wouldn’t stay down.  Dave brought home some ginger ale (that stuff is gross without having an upset stomach), but I have to admit it actually was the only thing that stayed down all day.

Today however, I have been absolutely fine.  Either it was the orange or I had an eight-hour stomach bug which also did not cause a fever.  So weird.  I’m just not a stomach sick type of person so my guts must be more sensitive being pregnant.

But I have a new found respect for all those pregnant gals with morning sickness.  Holy cow, if I had to be like yesterday for like 12 weeks, I’m not sure I’d live through that.  Argh!

Posted in News, Pregnancy | No Responses »

Baby Doing Great!

Monday, January 12th, 2009

I had an appointment this morning with my midwife.  I haven’t gained any weight!  (In my case, that’s a good thing.)  I had a minor few moments of concern though because the midwife couldn’t hear the baby’s heartbeat.  She said, “oh, come on baby” in a concerned voice, then promptly said, “oh, don’t worry, we’ll find it.”  Well, we ended up doing a sonogram because the Doppler just wasn’t finding the heartbeat.  Then with the sonogram, baby wasn’t moving, wasn’t moving, and still wasn’t moving.  FINALLY, babe made a little jump and started moving around.  Gave his/her momma a fright.  The midwife said, “well, that’s strange, I’ve never seen a baby sleeping with “his” legs straight out like that.”  But the baby looks great, bumping and thumping around just fine…after we woke him/her up.  Apparently, baby was just chillin’ and floatin’.  Kind of funny.  My midwife said that at 16 weeks it won’t be as difficult to hear the heartbeat because the baby will be much bigger and higher in my abdomen, so we shouldn’t need to do another sonogram until the 20th week when I go see a perinatologist to make sure all of baby’s parts are in order and functioning properly.  Thus far, baby looks great and altogether normal on the two sonograms I’ve had so far though.

Posted in Pregnancy | 2 Responses »

Ice, Ice, Ice

Thursday, January 8th, 2009

The ground is absolutely covered with at least an inch and in some places considerably more ICE.  The temp got high enough yesterday that the ice melted off the bushes, trees, power lines (at least around us), but then all that water on the ground froze overnight.

I don’t have anything pressing to do outside today, but I really did want to go to Bible Study.  But I have to think intelligently about that…I’m pregnant and really don’t want to fall on my fanny and the Bible Study is entirely made up of old ladies who probably also will not wish to fall on their fannies either.  So will we even have Bible Study today???  And do I have the leader’s telephone number?  NOPE!  Gotta rectify that little fact.  I will wait to see how the weather looks in a few hours and decide, I guess.

Yesterday I had a good day sewing.  I started and completed a little curtain for the bathroom.  I mended two substantially ripped clothing items for Dave.  And I finished two little doily things I told my mother-in-law I’d finish like back in May.  I got frustrated with the machine and never finished that project thus the multi-month hideous from sewing.  I have five more doily things to finish for her and then all my sewing projects that were in queue will be complete.  And I will feel totally free to begin working on baby projects like the homemade fabric-based toys I want to make for those baby’s first few months.

Posted in Homemaking & Recipes, Pregnancy, Sewing & Projects | 1 Response »

Yucky Weather Day Here

Wednesday, January 7th, 2009

The heavens are sending down freezing rain today.  It started overnight so by the time we got up there was 1/10th of an inch of ice covering everything.  That didn’t sound like much until Dave went to scrap his windshield after letting the truck run for 15 minutes and ended up breaking the ice scrapper.  And all I can hear outside is the sound of little tiny pellets of rain/snow hitting the windows and the roof.

So it is an inside day today!  No running errands for me.  Hmmm, a whole day and zillions of little projects all calling my name and me with a bad case of the lazyies.  I am recovering, slowly, from the first trimester tireds, but every once and while I’m still pretty beat.

The other day I started a list of mini-projects and bigger projects that I really need to be working on while I can, before the baby is here.  Oh, good golly.  Does anyone ever actually have their home & belongings in tip-top organizational shape?  That project list just kept getting bigger and bigger and bigger as I walked from room to room.  My mother might be coming out for a week or so after the baby comes and I have this inner compulsion to have everything “perfect” before she gets here.  Thankfully, I’m blessed with a lazy gene which occasionally trumps my “gotta have everything perfect” gene because otherwise I’d drive myself crazy.

So to get back to today.  I could sew the bathroom curtain that I’ve been meaning to tend too for like a year because I’ve had the material that long.  And I have been meaning to get the sewing machine set up in a semi-permanent location here in the office so it is available for me to sew little baby projects.  Plus, there is a hallway curtain that has been needing attention also.

Last night I made yummy hamburgers.  I have a tendency to turn hamburgers into hockey pucks when I cook them on the stove top, but this time I did good!  I used a fatter hamburger (80/20 vs 90/10), then put in 3 tablespoons of horseradish and 1 tablespoon of worcestershire sauce.  And I flattened about an inch  of the center of the hamburgers so they wouldn’t get thick in the middle, as they tend to do during cooking.  They were so juicy, tasty and didn’t even resemble hockey pucks.  We had those with broccoli and “American fries”.

I’m dilly-dallying sitting here on the computer so I am going to get off and get busy doing something.

Posted in Homemaking & Recipes, Marriage/Married Life, Pregnancy, Sewing & Projects | No Responses »

Agenda Today

Monday, January 5th, 2009

LAUNDRY!  My laundry situation has gotten outta control so today I’ve been steaming away on getting that stuff all caught up.  If I would get in the habit of putting a load into the washer every night before bed then first thing in the morning putting it in the dryer, my laundry dilemma would be no more.  But I am undisciplined.  There are about 47,000 different aspects of my life that would be a billion times better if I would just be disciplined.  I can come up with these rather brilliant planning ideas (like just putting a load of laundry in the washer every night before bed), but I follow through like 3 times, get sidetracked or offer myself an excuse why it is okay to skip that night and I’m totally off track.  It is so awful.  And it makes me feel like a failure every time it happens.  Drives me nuts.  But does it stop…NOPE!

The other item on the agenda today is a deep cleaning of the kitchen.  It’s surfaces get cleaned daily, but it needs the floor tended too, miscellaneous stuff put away, counter fronts wiped down etc.  So between running between floors doing laundry, I’m working on kitchen chores.

My parents, when they built the house they live in, were brilliant about one particular design element.  They put the laundry facilities on the same living level as the bedrooms…where the laundry goes when finished.  Whatever goober though putting a washer & dryer in the basement and the bedrooms on the second floor was not thinking.  If ever I have the opportunity, some washer & dryer in my future will be on the living floor where the hampers, closets and bedrooms live.  This business of lugging a heavy basket down two flights of stairs, washing them, then lugging them back up two flights of stairs to be put away is really annoying.  It isn’t efficient either.   See I know how to be efficient and I certainly know how to plan & organize…but follow through on a continual basis eludes me.

Posted in Homemaking & Recipes | 3 Responses »

Our Saturdays These Days

Monday, January 5th, 2009

Most Saturdays from now through the start of the maple sugaring season (in about six weeks) are going to be filled with working in the woods getting ready.  This Saturday we hung three long sections of wire through the woods.  The tubing which will connect the tapped trees to our sap collection sights will hang from this wire so that it doesn’t sag.  The wire is pretty permanent so it was nice to get that almost completely finshed in one Saturday.

I did discover that I absolutely must acquire boots.  Wearing tennis shoes into the snowy woods for hours can cause feet to get wet and really cold.  Actually, we both need to acquire good functional boots for the sugaring season.  While at the JCPenny outlet the other day, I looked for functional boots, but all they had were those high heeled, non-sensical things some gals call boots.  Personally, I’d fall flat on my fanny if I ever tried wearing something like that in snow and/or ice.

Next Saturday we have to cut, load, unload and stack a bunch more firewood that is needed to heat the sap in the evaporator.  And we’ll probably hang some tubing from the wire lines we’ve hung.  I’m not a huge help during all this, but I can help some since I am still feeling pretty great.

Posted in Maple Syrup | No Responses »

Oh, No! No More US Hand-Made Toys??

Monday, January 5th, 2009

I was just reading about this online…never heard about it until today.

On February 10th, 2009 The Consumer Product Safety Improvement Act will go into effect which will put strict safety measures on product made for children and requires that toys and product (even books!) made for children under 12 be tested for safety (specifically lead) content by independent labs and labeled with their material contents.

Okay, this sounds great on the surface.  It means those horrid toys made in China and other developing nations for our US headquartered, outsourcing, mega-toy companies will now finally be tested for stuff harmful to children.  That is great!  Awesome & wonderful! BUT what this law failed to do is protect all those US, Europe & Canada based toy makers that already were making a quality product.

Any product made for use for a child under the age of 12 will have to be tested.  That means the industrious homemaker in Iowa that makes cloth diapers for sale via the internet will now have to have each of her products tested at a cost of $4000/item.  And the garage carpenter that makes wooden trains in Maine also will have to have each of his products tested.

This law effectively will put out of business hundreds of cottage industry toy and clothing makers.  All because some corporate guys got greedy and had their silly toys made for dirt cheap in some country without a conscience.

Dave & I have just started creating our little stash of US, Europe & Canada made quality toys for our future tots and we’re no where ready for these companies to go out of business.  It looks like the fix to this dilemma is for the law to be amended to exclude US, Europe & Canadian companies which already adhere to pretty strict safety regulations.

So today I’m going to find some more facts about this issue and write emails to our local Congressman & Senators.  I’m so bummed.  We literally just found out about all these little toy makers located here in New England and elsewhere that we were hoping to one day soon buy from, but now who knows if they will still exist.

http://www.handmadetoyalliance.org/

http://nationalbankruptcyday.com/

Posted in Catholicism, News | No Responses »

Tonight’s Dinner

Friday, January 2nd, 2009

This evening, I’m trying a new recipe for dinner, something called Shrimp Rolls.  I thought I’d serve it with a salad of quinoa, cucumber, red onion, tomatoes and Italian dressing.  If dinner goes over well with quality control (aka hubbie), I’ll post the recipes below later this evening or tomorrow.

NOTE:  Okay, hubbie liked these, but I don’t think I did.  The recipe was supposed to be a shrimp knock-off of a New England favorite called Lobster Rolls.  Shrimp just doesn’t replace lobster real well in my mind.  So I’ll not post this recipe.

Posted in Homemaking & Recipes | No Responses »

Idea for a Homemade Baby “Toy”

Friday, January 2nd, 2009

I thought I’d try to come up with a few homemade baby toy ideas.  So during this week, I thought through that 0-9 month range in regards to child development to see if I could come up with things to make that would be nice toys to play with and would be an aid to development as well.

My mom told me the other day that she has purchased some patterns to make some maternity tops for me, but she needs me to pick out the fabric.  So when I go to the fabric store, I will see if I can also find a bunch of neat remnants to make the first of my toy ideas.

My first idea is to make a small quilt (of sorts) made of basic squares of fabrics that are visually and texturally different enough to be of interest to a baby.  I don’t plan on this quilt even being particularly pretty, but sensory stimulating to the eyes and skin.   This quilt might be a good place for baby to have “tummy time”.  I know there are mass-produced things out there similar to what I am thinking about, but I think I can make something neat here at home.  I might also see if my mom can cut small squares from some of her more interesting leftover fabrics and send them to me.

Posted in Homemaking & Recipes, Sewing & Projects | 2 Responses »

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