The Desk Has Been Cleaned

Today is my last day of work. The beginning of my maternity leave. For 6 months. Man, that's wild to say! The longest "break" I've had from the working world since I started at this job 10 years ago (well 9.5...it will have been 10 years at the beginning of December) is 2 weeks at a time for my 2 longest vacations in Australia and Africa. It's a little bizarre to have a 6 month "vacation." Now, granted, my life is about to change completely and those 6 months will be spent trying to figure out what to do with a baby, not being on a carefree vacation, but still, I won't be "clocking in" to work for 6 whole months. I have to admit, I'm pretty excited and ready for the break.

In this day and age, I KNOW I'm extremely lucky to have a wonderful job at a wonderful company that compensates me well and allows me to live very comfortably. I have never underestimated that. However, I must admit, after almost 10 years at this company, I have experienced a little bit of burn out. Now, I've definitely have had periods of burn out over the span of this job, but I normally bounce back into my super motivated self in no time. However, since becoming pregnant, I have been dreading coming in almost every day. Now, likely, a lot of that has to be attributed to the fatigue that pregnancy brings...it doesn't exactly help you want to do anything. But, some of it, I'm sure, is just plain old burn out.

Something I do know about myself, though, is that I need to be a busy person....with endeavors that involve intellectual pursuits and adult socialization. Those are not things that really fall at the top of the child care ladder. Not to say it's not possible, but it's definitely more work to seek those things out if you were to be a primary caregiver for a child. So, I do think a working mom is what I want to be. Not that I have a choice given mine and Mike's current employment situation (ie, I have a paying job and he has not been able to find one since his lay off) but, choice or not, it is what I think I will prefer to do.

So, not only am I looking forward to having 6 months out of the working world, but I'm also looking forward to those 6 months being a time to begin to truly appreciate, again, the enjoyment of my career and to look forward to getting back to it in January 2010.

OK, I'm ready!

Well, it's definitely nearing the end of pregnant time. I've been doing my darndest to get as ready as possible for a baby. Ok, well maybe I haven't been "studying" enough child rearing or parenting books, but I figure I'd be better at absorbing those things on an "as needed" basis. Plus, I don't want to drive myself crazy from the get go trying to do the whole parenting "right." I figure we'll figure out how to be parents as we need to and don't want to worry about it too much.

Other than that, though, we've got the nursery done, of course, and have as many belongings as we think we really need to get started on the whole baby business. Everything is organized, cleaned and ready for a baby.

In addition, as you've seen on other postings, the house projects have been attended to as much as possible so we don't have to waste precious time on those with a newborn in the house.

I've also been doing as much as I can think of to get ready to not have time for myself for a while once the baby comes and life as we know it is turned upside down until we start to get a feel for this whole parenting business. In the last few weeks, I've gotten a haircut, had my check up at the dentist, socialized as much as I had the energy for, been reading books like mad and I even got a pedicure yesterday (in a lovely shade of blue to celebrate the new boy soon to be in my life) so that I won't even have to worry about my toes for a bit. Not to mention, I'm really over this whole being pregnant thing. So, I guess I'm as ready as I'm ever going to be. Come on baby! We're waiting!

The good news is that it literally could happen any day now. At 38.5 weeks, he's considered fully cooked and, not to get too gross and specific, all the signs of soon to be labor are here. Things are moving along. But, of course, babies come when they're ready so no one can tell us when. However, I can assure you that labor WILL happen sometime between now and the next few weeks! Crazy. I'm officially anxious.

More House Progress!

We've been working hard to get through some items on our home improvement project list since it will likely remain untouched for a while after baby boy is born. Mike, my wonderful stay at home husband, has been taking the reigns on most of it, of course. Here is a quick list of some of the completed projects from the last month:

1) Recessed lights installed in the lounge

2) New post light installed in front yard (involved Mike digging a big trench to run the electrical line). This and the above were done by a professional.

3) Mike and I installed a new light fixture in the front screened in porch area. What should have been a quick, 15 minute job, turned into 2 hours and a trip to home depot. The fixture that was there previously had some very questionable electrical work so we worked together and made it "up to code."

4) The inside stairs risers have been refinished. Towards the end of our renovation, we found out that the stair refinishing quote didn't include this part of the stairs. They wanted $15 per riser! Since we were already over budget and not looking to spend more, we opted to take on this project ourselves. So, one year later, Mike got them all scraped down, sanded and poly urethaned.

5) New windows for our "lounge" (which still need to be stained) and our basement (great improvement for our taped up window panes down there).

Basement Window "Before"

Basement Window "After"

6) New stair rail on front stairway.

New Railings and Lamp Post

So, as you can tell, Mike's been a very busy guy! Somehow, he still makes time to have dinner ready for me when I get home. I like this spoiled life!

A Story of a Latch

This is the story of the antique latch on our built in dining room hutch. It's not likely an interesting story to anyone but myself and Mike. However, I'm so personally thrilled about this project that I'm going to bore you with the details anyway (unless of course you take my advice and stop reading now). If you've ever had any kind of household project that was tedious and difficult and you were able to overcome it with a fantastic result, then you'll have an idea of why I'm so excited about this.

It was approximately 4 and a half years ago that I bought our lovely home and knew that it needed a lot of updating. What I loved, though, is that it still had a lot of it's original charm, including lovely built in's like the china hutch. Unfortunately, the house had been rented for a while and things were beaten up a bit, including the latch on the china hutch which was missing a pin. So, for the last 4 plus years, the door has either been permanently shut (we couldn't easily open it), rubber banded shut or standing open.

The "Before" Latch Picture

Trying to figure out how to fix this has been occupying my thoughts on and off all of that 4 plus years of time. I've looked into finding replacement pieces, replacement whole parts (but nothing looked the same) or finding someone that did this kind of repair. None of the antique stores, online searches nor specialty hardware stores brought up anything that could help

Finally, last week, I spoke with the owner of a wonderful store in Boston called Restoration Resources that "saves" beautiful parts of old Boston homes and sells them salvage style. I'd visited the store before but their hardware section was hidden away so I didn't know they might have something that could help with the latch issue. However, I thought of them again since I've been on a renewed mission to get this latched fixed after my Dad and Mike installed the bead board in the interior...the latch was the only missing component to complete the hutch restoration

The owner of Restoration Resources I spoke to said "sure, we probably have something that can help you out...come on in." So, Monday a week ago I did only to find them closed (the hours listed on their web site are obviously incorrect). Mike and I went back last Saturday and another man that worked there said he had no idea what the owner might have been referring to but he didn't have anything like our latch. Great, two wasted trips. However, he did say he knew someone that might be able to repair it. While writing down the info of this person, he mentioned that he got some of the parts that they needed from the store. After I inquired further, I found out that they have a box of old latches in the back so I asked to look through them. Low and behold there was one latch in this box that had the same interior mechanisms ours was supposed to have and it was somewhat similar in size. So, we bought it for $5 and left

On Monday we attacked the project to see what we could do. After studying it for a while, we thought there might be a small chance we would be successfully able to use the parts from the latch we bought, so we started to take apart the latch we had purchased. Since trying to describe the interior fittings and the whole project end to end would be incredibly difficult, tedious and even more boring than this story has already been, here's the shortened version.

Several hours Monday, drilling metal, tin snips, metal filing, trips to Home Depot, Lowe's and a craft store for more supplies; Tuesday, a couple more hours, lots of hammering, more filing metal, weld adhesive, WD-40, lots of little tweaks and about an hour of Mike polishing, we had a working, beautiful, newly restored latch for our built in hutch! I can't even tell you how excited I was! It really made my week (sad, I know).

The Latch "After"....Beautifully Restored and Fully Functional

It's such an incredibly great feeling to have this long pending project completed. Yay!

Baby Luci

My parents recently shipped us the family bassinet (the ones my brothers and I all used as babies). Mike and I got it set up in the bedroom so it's ready for our baby. But, before baby boy Hines comes home, there's one other "baby" in the house that wanted to get some use out of it.

Yesterday, we found little Luci curled up in half of it. (The "junk" seen on the other side is where I've been creating my "to go to the hospital pile.") Isn't she a precious baby?!?!

The Happy, Expecting Couple

We didn't have one nice picture of Mike and I together with baby in the belly. On Sunday, we enjoyed a "cook-in" (it was pouring rain so Mike and his Dad were the only ones out braving the rain by the grill) at Mike's sister's to celebrate niece Emily's b'day, Mike's Dad's b'day and Fathers Day for all the fathers in the family (including Mike, of course). We took the opportunity of looking nice and having another person around to take a picture of us to get one. So, here we are!

Kara (at 37.5 weeks) and Mike

Viva La Revolution!

It's rare that I see commercials these days. With the miracle that is TIVO, I blissfully fast forward through their existence. However, this one caught my eye in super speed and I went back to watch it. I'm SO glad I did! Of course, I then shared it with Mike.

Being chinchilla owners, this commercial is flipping hilarious to us! However, we're going to refrain from letting our little feisty chinchilla, Smokey Josephina, see it lest she gets any crazy ideas. Enjoy!

Waiting Line for an IPhone? Who Would Do That?

Well, not me, but my husband sure would! In fact, two years ago he did just that and bought us both new iphones the day they came out. In addition to being a bit of a tech geek, he had also just gotten laid off by Palm, so I think it was also a move to "get back at the man" and get a smart phone from a different and better company.

So, we've had iphones since. It took me a while to appreciate this gift from him since I didn't think they were worth the money (yes, I was seriously bitter at the huge price drop a few months later) and since I quite enjoyed my Verizon phone service, which I had to give up for AT&T. However, 2 years later, I have definitely come to appreciate a lot of the functions the iphone has to offer.

Today is the big launch of the iphone. Let's step back a few months though, shall we? My tech geek husband has been religiously following Mac rumors and other blog sites dropping hints about the new phones. He also, very excitedly, read the live blog from the Mac meeting (or whatever it was called) a couple of weeks ago (?) announcing the new features of the phone and stating the official release day - today.

Let me tell you, Mike has been MORE excited than a kid at Christmas.....counting down the days with glee. But, is he waiting in line today like many others? Nope. He's actually got our new, activated, iphones in possession, courtesy of early reserve delivery! The phones got to our house this morning and he excitedly called me as each one arrived. Such a little tech boy at heart!

The Bright Side of the Dreary Weather

True, it feels like it has rained just about every day this June. It's been cloudy and rainy and a lot of folks are really over it. I must admit, although I would prefer to see Mr. Sun now and then, there is a huge benefit to the rainy weather I am truly appreciating - cool weather!

I have officially entered the hot pregnant lady phase. Even though I'm aware that it's not necessarily warm in a place, the air often feels stagnant, suffocating and I easily start getting overheated. Yes, just another joy of pregnancy.

When we announced we were pregnant back in December and folks asked about the due date, I would always respond, "July 8th.....I'm crossing my fingers for a nice cool June!" So far, I have gotten my wish!

Here's an exerpt from an article in the Boston Globe today about it:

Halfway through June, the weather has indeed gotten worse, according to the National Weather Service in Taunton. Compared with previous Boston Junes, this one has been colder, and, depending on how you measure it, rainier. "It doesn't look like it's going to hit 80 degrees anytime soon," said Neal Strauss, a weather service meteorologist.

Strauss said the average temperature this month so far has been 62.2 degrees, 3.5 degrees cooler than usual.

Though rainfall is also 0.45 inches below average, "that's misleading," said Strauss, "because the frequency of the precipitation has been rather high." In other words, he said, stating the obvious: "It's been raining almost every day."

For our current 10 day forecast, the highest high is still only 75, which means it still gets nice and cool at night....better weather for the hot pregnant lady to sleep in! And, although a lot of folks are bitter about still having to wear jackets, I have been leaving mine at home and just enjoying the comfortable weather! Now, if I could only get the air around my desk at work to stay cooler.

And a message for my Texas peeps. This is why I prefer to live here. Although winters can sometimes be challenging to get through, our summers are just grand! Enjoy your 100 degree weather!

Took a Nosedive

That's what my energy level has done, folks. Up until a couple of weeks ago, I was doing my darnedest to keep up with my work out schedule (5-6 days a week) along with trying to lead a somewhat normal life in relation to work and social events. Now, I feel like just getting through the day takes every bit of energy I have.

Two weeks ago, I decided I could no longer attend my yoga class. It was a tough class. The teacher also taught prenatal classes (though not at a time I could take them) and was great about giving me alternate positions to accommodate my growing belly. However, I started to not be able to do some of the core positions the class required (like going from down dog and stepping or jumping to the front of the mat which we do about 20 times per class). Until about that time, I was also still going to my weight lifting class once a week (and yes, I looked pretty ridiculous). I may still try and do that one, but if I continue with the energy I've had in the last week, I'm doubting that will happen again until post baby.

Even the stationary bike is not comfortable (my knees pretty much hit my belly on each rotation), nor is the treadmill (my sciatic inevitably starts hurting after walking for a bit), nor can I do the elliptical for long (even with no resistance and moving pretty slowly, my heart rate gets up to high). So, I'm truly running out of things to do at the gym. I did get through my prenatal yoga dvd ok on Saturday and my prenatal cardio workout dvd the week before. Perhaps I still will be able to do some activity, but just stick to those things specifically designed for pregnancy. But, for the most part, it looks like I'm hanging up my gym shoes until the baby comes around.

Not to mention, my usual gym time is during my lunch break at work. One day last week, I opted to drive home and take a nap instead. I've gotten that tired. Even in my first trimester when I was more tired than I could ever imagine being, I could get through the work day somewhat ok. Over the last couple of days, I've been able to do things for a few hours in the morning but that's about all I've got in me. I guess just growing the baby this last little bit and getting this big pregnant body around my day is all I've got in me right now.

Inspiration to Make it Through the Day

It's one of those days. I went looking for something to help get me through this day with lots of discomforts after little to no sleep. I found this little poem. It's short, sweet, a reminder of the wonderful reason I'm going through all of this and will hopefully help me make it through. Thought I'd share.

A Note To My Son
© Dacia Lockwood
Time is moving slowly,
The day is almost here.

The anxiety and joy is building up,
For my baby boy will soon appear.

I can't wait to see your smiling face,
And hold your little hand.

Just then I'll know deep inside
that you’re my little man.

I have so much to share with you
day after day.

And to you my son I will give my love
in each and every way.

"Final" Weekend in NH (at least for a while)

If you've talked to me at all in the last two years or read my blog on a somewhat regular basis, you'll know that Mike and I LOVE to get away to our condo in the White Mountains of NH. We love experiencing the beautiful scenery and great outdoors in all seasons. It truly is a relaxing and refreshing get away for us. So, it's with much sadness that we won't be able to go back for a while.

Apparently, if I want my insurance company to cover the costs of the birth of our child, we have to stay within their coverage range for the last 4 weeks of my pregnancy. Unfortunately, their coverage range doesn't reach into the mountains of NH. We would have to drive at least an hour from our place there to get close to a hospital they'll cover. So, until we have a baby boy to take up with us, we won't be visiting our place in NH. We'll really miss it!

So, the weekend before last, in spite of the fact that I'm growing so large that doing anything is becoming increasingly difficult, we decided to have one last weekend there. We had to play it by ear as to what we'd do there, if anything, since we just don't know from day to day what, er, "joys" (ie aches, pains and discomforts) the pregnancy will bring. Somehow, the stars fell into place and the full Saturday we were to be there, I felt better than I had in a while. So, time to play!

We have tennis courts at our complex there. The last time we played any tennis was our February vacation in Puerto Rico when my belly was quite a bit smaller. But, we decided to give it a try. I obviously can't run around too much and zig-zag around the court, so Mike and I just hit the ball around - he aimed for right around me and I aimed away from him so that at least he could run around and get in a fun workout. It actually worked out great! Amazingly, playing tennis was easier for me (mostly on my sciatic) than walking is! So, we had a great time hitting the ball around for about an hour.

After going back to the condo, cooling off and having some water, I decided that I just couldn't have my last weekend here without some time in the woods\mountains. So, we decided on an easy (ie mostly flat) trail that's close to our house and we've only been on in winter (snowshoeing). First, getting some lunch was in order. We went to our favorite local store to grab some deli sandwiches and were heartbroken to find out that the economy had grabbed it as it's latest local victim...it had closed 2 weeks earlier! Sadness. So, we headed to another, not so exciting, sandwich shop for some grub and headed into the woods for a little picnic. We found a nice rock next to a stream and had a view of a small, runoff waterfall in the distance. After filling our bellies, we headed off making lots of stops for pictures.

Mossy Ledge by the Stream

Ventured Down from the Ledge into the Stream

Mike by the Brook Looking up from the Brook at the Moss Covered Rocks

After Mike helped push me back up the little hill from the brook to the trail, we continued on. The second "half" of the trail was mostly in the woods and not as scenic. It being mile 2 of the trek, I was fine not stopping much because I was getting a tiny bit tired of walking and ready to get to the end. Unfortunately, we didn't bring our map and were relying on our obviously not reliable memories because when we got to the "end" of that trail, we were still 1.2 miles from our parking area! Ugh! The upside to our little mistake is that we got to see this little waterfall.

Did I mention the monstrous mosquitoes that attacked us? There were a couple of times when I had to stop to rest. The second we stopped moving, they swarmed in! Normally, mosquitoes don't notice Mike when I'm around (apparently my blood smells sweeter) but they were even giving him a hard time. So, we tried to keep moving and get back to the car as quickly as my tired self could go.

Even though it was a bit more of a strenuous day than I had planned, I was really happy to have taken advantage of it being a nice day, feeling physically well (those days are pretty limited right now) and getting to enjoy several of the aspects that I'll miss about our NH place for the next few months.

What's in a Name??

Well, a lot if you're in charge of assigning one to a little person that they'll have for the rest of their life! We've obviously given a lot of thought as to what we're going to name our little guy, but we can't imagine tacking that name to him until we actually see\meet him. So, our plan is to go to the hospital armed with a small list of favorites and decide after the birth. We've narrowed down the list to each of our top five (well, I've got 7...couldn't quite edit it down to 5 yet) and are playing with middle name combinations. I thought we were making pretty good progress....until yesterday.

Yesterday, which was a beautiful Sunday and I was feeling better than I had most of last week, we had my good friend and her husband and 8 month old daughter over for a little afternoon cookout. It was a great lunch with great people and I enjoyed it immensely! However, I knew that she had delivered her adorable little girl early and remembered to ask her how far along she was when she had her. Her answer....36 weeks! Uh, yeah, that's where I'll be in 2 short days! Yikes! Perhaps we should work hard on 2 things this week - packing some sort of hospital bag and working on our name list!

Oh, and we're not sharing our name list so don't even bother to ask. With all due respect to friends, coworkers, family and even complete strangers, I'm not interested in opinions on our names. We're making this decision together....just the two of us with no outside influences. Love y'all though!

Our New Neighbor

I am always completely stunned that in such an urban setting (ok, we're in the burbs but we're still in the city of Boston city limits, not even the actual suburbs) that we see so much wildlife. Before moving to Boston, I used to see lots of interesting animals in Texas as roadkill on the long stretches of highway in between cities and "normal" city animals such as opossum, raccoons and squirrels actually within the city limits (even in Austin which I consider to be a lot less urban than Dallas). Since moving to Boston, though, I see a lot more wildlife at home.

When I lived in Jamaica Plain (granted, across from a very large park with lots of wooded areas), I used to get skunks in our yard pretty often. I always carefully walked up the back steps to my door after finding one on the porch one time. Since moving to West Roxbury, though, I've seen what I consider to be more "wild" wildlife. There are the wild turkey flocks that are around my home and work areas. I've also seen, of all the strange things, a coyote running down the middle of my street. One of our more frequent visitors are the wild rabbits that live about. We spotted one just out the back door last week. Luci, always at her back door post, somehow missed it because he was as still as can be. However, Mike saw him clearly and snuck out to get a great picture of him. What a cutey!

A Relaxing Memorial Day Weekend

As I've mentioned before, the long weekend we had with my parents was great but definitely took a toll on me. So, on the menu for Memorial Day weekend was lots of relaxation! It was spent the way the inaugural weekend of summer should be spent - being lazy, bbq's with friends, being outside and having fun!

One of the things I did that weekend was to cash in on part of my Valentine's Day present from my hubby - a day at the zoo with a picnic. We pass the Stone Zoo just about every time we go to Mike's parents' or sister's house. I've never been to it and Mike hadn't been in probably 20 years. It was time to drop back in!

The weather was absolutely beautiful that day and we had a great time walking around and looking at the animals. Below is the llama. I know, not the most exciting animal to be pictured, but he reminded me of the Llama Song (classic online sensation). If you haven't listened to it lately (or ever), it's time you did!

Not surprisingly, our usual favorites at the zoo are the large cats. This jaguar was napping right by the plexiglass so we got a good close look at him. He also did some super adorable stretches....he may have even stolen the moves from Mr. O.

Also cat napping in close view were the cougars. They were too darned cute! I have to keep reminding myself sometimes that these guys could literally rip my head off.....their bellies just looked like they were asking to be rubbed!

One of the highlights of the day was the Birds of Prey show we went to. We got to see lots of cool birds literally fly right over our heads or parade in front of us. Of course, it was also educational and we learned lots of fun facts. Here were some of our favorites from the show.

Egyptian Vulture - One of Few Species to Use Tools to Crack Ostrich Eggs

Vulture - His "Walk" Was Laughably Goofy

European Eagle Owl - Biggest Owl (He Was Beautiful)

Barn Owl - He Was Stunning!

At the end of the show, their "gimmick" to get you to donate was that they had a bird (can't remember the kind) "take" your donation and put it in the box. Well, it worked. There was a long line to donate dollars and I was in it.

After our trip to the zoo, we dropped by Mike's parents house for a little chat and a walk to the local ice cream parlor. Great weather, fun day at the zoo and ice cream...it was a GOOD day!

Kitties and Kid Stuff

For the most part, the cats have been pretty uninterested in all the baby stuff that's been flooding into the house. Sure, they pretty much now live in the baby's room, but it is the coolest room in the house now so who can blame them? However, all the swings, bouncers and activity centers that arrived and were assembled were untouched by the cats. I considered that a pretty good thing...no big territorial fights would happen between kitties and new baby arrival.

However, when this gift arrived (thanks AMF!), Luci quickly decided SHE had a new toy! Uh-oh! While we did get some amusement out of seeing her excitedly play with the mobile and "crunchy" toy on the tummy mat, I'm wondering what will happen when baby is on the mat.

I'm hoping that a slobbering, screaming baby will scare her desire to play with the mat away. I guess only time will tell!

Happy June and Welcome to the Countdown!

5 weeks people...that's (approximately) what's left of my time to be pregnant. That also means I'll have a baby to care for in that amount of time but that's a whole 'nother story! 5 weeks. Wow! Some may say that's not much time at all. I think it seems like a ways to go, well, depending on the day. Some days, I get to sleep and feel pretty good and it doesn't seem so bad. Others....well....let's just say that 5 weeks could be excruciatingly long. I guess that's natures way, though. You have to get to the miserable point to be willing to go through all the pain it's going to take to get the baby out of your body!

After the fury of activity the 5 days my parents were in town, we took it easy for a while and I, obviously, neglected the blog for a few weeks. I've got stories and pictures to catch up on the last couple of weeks and will be posting those in the next few days, as long as I have relatively "good" days that allow some energy left at the end of them to do so. Cross your fingers for all around me that I do have more good days than bad or cranky Kara might be coming out some more! And nobody wants that.....