not much is new. i usually ask myself, “is this blog-worthy?” and sadly i do not have any blog worthy news in my life. Started back to work, i now get less sleep than ever. I can’t drink caffeine because it makes me jumpy. lame!

i signed up for NaNoWriMo even though i’m 99.5% sure i can’t come up with 50K words. I have a rough idea of a story but i don’t know how it ends and i don’t know what to call it. I sorta want it to take place in ireland but i’ve never been there personally so that would probably be fiction-suicide, right?

my one armed kid is awesome and beautiful. i’m still toe-ing the line separating “normal” and “disabled” and trying to figure out how much help and when to get it for him. i’ve also learned that parents, esp moms, of special needs kids are TOUCHY. now i know why people worry about offending others, because no matter what your intent or what you say, if that mom is having a bad day she will take it as offensive. we have it easy, our difference is obvious. the real suffering moms are those who have kids with invisible differences because those kids are still held to the same [judgemental] standards we have for the masses.

besides that, i can’t believe it’s fall and the year is almost over and where the hell is time going?

what i didn’t mention in the last blog is that i spent that evening soaking in a bubble bath, painting my toenails, etc.  I had a nice little pep talk with my belly, and expressed that though i dislike being fat, i’d miss the belly and movement inside, and that i was excited to meet baby #2.  I felt so at peace and finally ready.

apparently my uterus took that to heart.  less than 2 hours after the first contraction, and 20 minutes after arriving at the hospital, baby Patrick came out.  Almost in the hallway of the maternity ward.  needless to say, i got my drug-free birth.  Almost doctor and private room free too.  He crowned as they pushed my triage gurney down the hallway and the rest of him came out as they were parking my bed next to the real delivery bed in a room.

it was a pretty cool experience, i felt everything, but in a good way.  I could feel him getting lower and coming out.  it didn’t hurt that bad, honestly.  when transition hit my hands got tingly and all my previous preparation went out the window, but i trusted my body to do what it needed to do, and it did so well.  7lb, 6oz baby, no tearing or vag damage, no complications.  My doctor, who showed up late, had some offensive comments for me about refusing a shot of pitocin (he compared me to his ex wife, WTF) so now i’m shopping around for a midwife to take care of my well checks.

Now that i’ve had this kind of birth experience, and yet still paid an assload of money to the hospitals and drs, i’d definitely go for a homebirth next time around.   but i don’t think we’re having more kids.  i kinda want to, just to be a dork and have a homebirth, but that’s not really a good reason to have a mini-human, since you have to commit to 18+ years after whatever birth you end up with.  I’ve been looking into adoption lately and i really think that’d be something to do.

speaking of which, i’m a total sucker for those ads with kids looking for homes.  if my house was bigger i’d take them all.  i saw a “listing” for a 16 year old who just wants a family, someone to take a chance on an older kid.  2 more years and the system will cut him loose.  his chances of getting adopted aren’t that good.  he seems like such a good kid, damnit, i want to be his family.  but then i think about how i’m barely 10 years older than him and how he’s probably 100 pounds more than me and WTF would i do if a 16 year old talked back to me?

crazy, i know.  speaking of which, not a touch of PPD this time.  holyfuck i missed out big time wiht my first.  everything is so different.  i LOVE my baby.  I like him.  i like spending time with him.  his cries don’t mess with my thoughts.  I already miss his newborn old man squishiness.  i feel like he is already growing up so fast, when my first couldn’t grow up and leave home fast enough.

that’s all i have for now.

with my 1st pregnancy i felt great, the last 2 weeks were hard, i went a little past my due date which was kinda meh but all was well.  i had an epi and then was in treatment for almost a year for PPD, very nervous to get pregnant again.

when i was finally ready, i went into this pregnancy, most likely my last, hoping to really appreciate and experience it so I could remember it fondly.  i had a rougher start, more sickness/dizziness and so SO exhausted from trying to take care of #1 while growing #2.  not very appreciative to say the least.

Then we found out this baby has a physical birth defect – he’s missing his left arm/hand below the elbow.  instead of having fewer interventions and dr visits, we found ourselves with more, a lot of frustration and anxiety.

i started doing a hypnobabies home course around 30 weeks.  i’m not totally sure if it’s from that, but i’m feeling so good, so appreciative and calm about everything.  i finally feel like i’ve let go of my control issues and anxiety and am looking forward to seeing what my body can do when labor comes.  i’ve been trying to take care of myself much better this time around since i’ve learned that my mind is the most important organ involved in all of this.  some days are physically more challenging than others but overall i feel awesome considering i’m almost done.

i feel like this is sorta a do-over from my 1st time, i’m optimistic that i can have my intervention free birth, bond with my baby from the beginning and be mentally healthy in the months afterward.

/end rambling

The Ultimate Fast Chocolate Fix
aka: The BETTER 5 Minute Chocolate Cake in a Mug

Ingredients:
1 tbsp all purpose flour
3 tbsp sugar
4 tbsp cocoa powder
pinch of salt
1 egg
3 tbsp milk
2 tbsp oil (i used coconut oil)
1 tbsp brandy (or other liquor, fruit juice or even just more milk)
1 tsp vanilla extract

Directions:
1. Mix flour, sugar, cocoa and salt in a large mug.
2. Add all other ingredients.
3. Cook in microwave for 2 1/2 – 3 minutes. (My microwave cooks hot/fast so I only needed 2 1/2 but you might need the full 3 minutes. You may need to play with this.)
4. Let sit in microwave for 1 minute.
5. Take out, put onto plate and enjoy!

* This cake is a lot like what you would expect out of a flourless chocolate cake. It is very rich and satisfying and you *might* need to share this with someone else. Then again, maybe you won’t want to.

I keep telling the husband to start his own blog about this, so we can keep counts and whatnot.  He’s anti-blog, so for now it will be here.

We were going out for a walk tonight and discovered a youngish scorpion on the floor in our front entryway coat closet.  It must’ve come in the front door, which we’ve never seen happen before as the door seems pretty tight.  We put it in a glass container with some Diatomaceous Earth to see how long it takes to kill it.  (Experiment 1, “kill” #1)

Then we went out for our night time hunt.  Current tools: metal tongs and UV light.  Not very sophisticated but it works.  In the future he would like to get a torch and maybe set a burlap fabric trap for them.  We’ll see.

It’s a bit cool out tonight but we managed to find and kill 3 more.  They were fairly big.

Total count for today: 4

I’m almost 32 weeks pregnant, way fatter than i was the first time, and yet, i haven’t gained hardly any weight.  How annoying!

Let’s see, what else…I finally got my Macbook.  I love it.  Evan hates it.  I think deep down he likes it but it’s ok if he never admits it.  It connects to the internet way better and hasn’t given me a blue screen of death yet so I think this will work out nicely.

I was able to buy the Macbook because we’ve decided to walk away from our first house.  It wasn’t a decision we came to lightly.  At first I felt like the reason we were so upside down was from some people being irresponsible and some walking away when they didn’t have to.  After all, more foreclosures = longer recovery and lower prices.  The problem with that line of thinking is that I get to shoulder all the responsibility and consequences of decisions that I didn’t really make.  In some areas, my original line of thinking might make sense…but here it doesn’t.

Our house is worth 50% less than what it was worth when we bought it, just 4 short years ago.  FIFTY PERCENT.  It boggles the mind.  If we kept it, its 30 year mortgage would be paid off in full in 2026 and it still wouldn’t be worth what we paid on it.  So we can continue paying twice what everyone today is paying, or we can cut our losses and suffer the credit hit.  That part I struggle with too, our credit is really good, like over 800 points good.  We have enough money in savings and another house to live in, so even if our credit cards get taken away we’ll still be ok, logistically.  I used to think that we were contributing to the problem by walking away, but the problem was already there before we even bought.

We consulted with a real estate attorney, and our own real estate agent.  The advice was to pretty much let the bank have it back.  Arizona is one of a few states with laws to protect people like us so we won’t be responsible for paying for anything once it’s done.  That is a big relief.  A lot of people think that people like us are douchenozzles, and that’s fine.  Those people (more than likely) will never know what it’s like to be in a hole that deep, and that’s good for them.

Not much else is going on.  Full speed ahead til the end of the semester!  Almost done.

Not too shabby!

They are from these seeds.

Painting closets is the ultimate bitch.  You know nobody is really going to SEE them but you still have to do it, so that in general it matches and looks clean.  It’s a lot of effort to get in all the damn corners, especially if there are shelves.  And there are.  Probably 5 or 6 of them.

For a small amount of time, I thought that mayhaps we could just leave the carpet in there and call it good.  UM NO WTF WAS I THINKING?!?!

That room is called “The Cat Pee Room” for a reason.  If you lift up the carpet to really get at the trim – and you should, you slacker! – it hits you like a ton of bricks.  NASTY.  Photos cannot capture the overall smarm effect in that room.  So new carpet it is, Fetus 2.0 will be spoiled from the get-go.

Tomorrow I will start on the closet with my fancy smell-free paint and we’ll see how long it takes me to finish the room altogether.  We have family coming to visit in just over a month, mayhaps it will mostly be done by then.

i’m partial to the last one.  i should reserve it now!