I’m trying to check things off The List this month. One of the things on the list was filling the freezer. There’s a chain of make-it-and-take-it dinner shops in California called Dream Dinners. I’ve totally fallen in love.
It works for me because I can book an appointment, show up with a cooler, assemble two months worth of dinners, and take the cooking instructions home with me.
I like it because I’m not the most creative person in the evenings, I can never remember which groceries we already have at home, and which ingredients I need for a recipe. I’m also not a big fan of touching raw meat, or buying a five-dollar jar of sesame seeds to try out one (terrible) recipe.

Oh, and That Guy I Married makes it a little too easy to say “Hey, let’s eat out tonight.”
It comes out to about $12 a meal, since we rarely eat the leftovers. In L.A., that’s a good deal.
I get to look in the freezer and at least feel like an accomplished Domestic Diva.

Finally.
A safe place to store my favoritest things.
These guys have been in a box for over a decade. This is earthquake county, and I’ve never had strudy enough furniture to set these guys out.

Hi Amy,
It was great to see you today! It was nice to get to chat. Here are the pictures of The Dog that you asked me to send you.

Today we decided to take The Dog down to Dog Beach in Belmont Shore.
We stopped on 2nd street to have a panini and then we walked down to the beach.
It was so impressive to pay seventy-five cents for five-and-a-half hours of parking. We were dumbfounded.

We walked down to the beach and turned The Dog loose on the sand. She immediately…

*** OH !@#$. The Dog is peeing on the carpet in the baby’s room! ***

Ok, so I just spent an hour bending over my belly to vaccum up the carpet while That Guy took That Darn Dog down to go pee three more times.

It’s now seven minutes to midnight. To make a long beautiful story very short:

Went to Dog Beach, it was glorious. Yummy lunch. Cheap parking! Sun, sand, waves, breeze: I feel human again. 200 happy dogs doing what dogs love to do. It was FUN.

The Dog actually went swimming in the waves for the first time. Dog drank half of the Pacific Ocean. Dog relieved herself of only 1/4 of the Pacific Ocean while walking to the Dog Wash.

Dog grudgingly accepted bath.

Dog slept while we visited a friend in town. Dog slept in the car. Dog peed when we got home. Dog slept until 9:30 p.m. I thought I felt wet little trails across the livingroom at 9:30. That Guy says “that’s because she was still wet from her bath.” My pregnant brain fails to calculate the FIVE HOURS that have elapsed since she was blow-dried after her bath.

I sat down to send this email and send some pictures. Dog enters room. Before dog even makes it to the computer to nudge my leg, I hear the sound of water running on the… “SHEEEEEEEE’S PEEEEEEEING!”

Apparantly salt water + dog bowel does’t mix. Spent an hour with the Bissell Little Green Spot Cleaner thingy. [GO BUY ONE!] Pregnant, sore, can’t get off the floor. Dog hiding in shame. Husband looking for more heavy boxes to pile on top of paper towels to soak up the remaining mess. Ugh.

Vaccum cleaner woke up the baby. Baby is mimicing future summer olympic heros. I’m too tired to try to sleep whle kid kicks. Going to stay up til kid settles down. Seen any good Youtube videos lately?

Love,
Bloggymommer

I got to spend the morning with this little buggar yesterday. He’s been terrorizing his poor mother for two weeks. He tried to tell me she was lying. He was a perfect little angel for three whole hours.
We were playing Peek-A-Boo while he was in Baby Jail.

I think of him as an East-Coaster, not really a native of Canada.

Yesterday, my husband received notice that he is now a legal permanent resident of the United States. No conditions. Which is kind of good, since it would be inconvenient if My Baby Daddy got deported.

I had no idea what a hoser was before I met my husband. When I was a teenager, a family friend talked his 7-year-old kid into naming their dog “Hoser,” so that he could “yell down the street, ‘Come back here, ya Hoser!’” The seven-year-old was led to believe “Hoser” was a fireman’s dog’s name.

I had some idea that it was some kind of Canadian insult, but I didn’t know what it meant or how insulting of a word it really was. I was absolutely terrified to bring my fiancé home to meet the family with the dog named Hoser.

I sheepishly told him that we’re going to meet a family that I grew up with, and they’re really great, they’re so nice, they really love me, and they’ve always been there for me, and they’re great Christian role models… except that they have this dog… named Hoser.

Fortunately, he laughed uproariously. He put up with the one obligatory Canadian joke from each family member, and that was the end of that.

Mostly, he doesn’t sound like a Canadian. He’s good natured enough to put up with one “hoser” joke when he tells someone he’s from Allover, Canada, but he get’s rightfully annoyed after the third or twelfth joke.

He’s learned to avoid saying words and phrases that would call him out, and bring on the jokes and comments. There’s the tell-tale “oout and aboot,” that brings on the lame (and dated) Rick Moranus jokes. He’s lived in California for eight years, and we’ve been together for five. After a year of introducing my boyfriend, even I was sick of the Rick Moranus jokes.

I’m guilty too. As a graduate student, I debated going into Human Resources. I had two conversations with That Guy about it, and promptly changed my mind because every time the subject came up; he said reZources. “Ack! What is wrong with you, it’s re-Sources-with-an-S!” He’s never said reZources again.

When he gets angry, indignant or flippant, the inevitable “Well, SORE-ry!” will slip out with the requisite huff of air. It doesn’t happen often, but it is really hard not to laugh in his face when that happens. I get an instant mental picture of him as a five-year-old, fighting with his six-year-old sister.

I have trouble distinguishing between differences in pop-culture, and differences in our age. I’d never met anyone under 60 who didn’t grow up listening to the Beatles. I know that Americans eat a lot of crap, but I can’t comprehend that somewhere on Earth, people would actually eat Kraft Peanut Butter. You can’t tell me that stuff isn’t Velveeta flavored with peanut oil. He loves that garbage (if you’d like to send down a care package, he loves Ketchup chips too)!

He’s five years older than I am. Most of his baby pictures are in black and white. Only old people have black and white baby pictures. Last week, I walked into a restaurant bathroom that can only be described as Electric Pink. I hadn’t thought about it in years, so I told him about the perfume marketed to preteens when I was a kid in the 80’s. His response was “Yeah, I had a girlfriend who loved that stuff.” But he was a teenager when I was a preteen.

There are differences in phrases. When we’d tell stories, I’d say “when I was in fifth grade…” He’d say “When I was in grade five…” I made too big a deal out of it, and now he says “When I was in fifth grade…” Part of me feels really awful for that. I took something from him. It makes me sad to hear him say fifth grade.

He likes to follow the elections, and give his opinion about who he would vote for. It sort of makes me feel guilty for having never voted in my life (please don’t hit me). I’ve never voted, and he’s not invited to, so we’d been married for two years before we figured out that he would be a republican, and I would be a democrat*.

A couple of years ago, he got a postcard requiring him to call in for jury duty. He was (the only person I’ve ever met who was) excited about it. He was curious to see what the legal system is like here. When he called in to report, he hung up after hearing computer automated instructions listing the citizenship requirement.

This morning I found Kyran’s guest post on Her Bad Mother’s site. It struck me that it’s hard for me to be mindful of That Guy’s nationality, when it’s too easy to just expect him to assimilate. Kyran laments not knowing where she belongs, feeling Canadian-ish and American-ish. There are a lot of really interesting comments on the post too. I’d hate to think that my husband struggles with the same thing. He’s not much of a whiner, so I don’t think he’d tell me if he did.

—–
*My personal beliefs for myself and my life lean toward Republican, but I am uncomfortable declaring that I know what is morally right for everyone in the country. Even God gives human beings the freedom of choice to follow or not follow his commandments, why can’t the Republicans?

The first crochet project I ever did took me a full YEAR to finish. I had started a layette when we decided to go off The Pill. The layette is beautiful, but it has become something of a prayer shawl, reminding me of a lot of pain and hours spent bargaining with God. I learned to read the pattern as I read it, and undid as many stitches as I completed. I would pick it up when I needed something to do other than obsess over my basal body temperature chart, and I would put it away when I got too depressed to look at anything baby related. I finally finished it and put it away. That layette was more for me than for a Someday baby.

This baby, the one that is here with me, has a name and a heartbeat full of hope and promise. This baby is real, and wakes up in the middle of the night when I have to go to the bathroom. I felt that this baby deserved a few fresh stitches. Stitches untouched by angst and depression. I picked up the easiest sweater pattern and chunkiest yarn I could find, since I don’t have all year to make another layette. This sweater took me a week to finish. I even made the buttons out of Shrinky Dink paper. How’s that for nesting?

That Guy I Married is getting the nesting bug too. This week I looked up the dimensions of the high-chair we bought, then measured the kitchen, the kitchen table, the microwave stand, the trash can and the dog food storage container. I couldn’t figure out how to make it all fit in the space meant for a kitchen table. That Guy decided “Oh, that’s easy” and went about measuring and redrawing. He ended up opening the box and setting up the high chair. Everything just barely kinda sorta fits. But that’s the way we like it.

I’m guest posting for Mrs. Chicken today.
If you’re here from Chicken and Cheese today, hello and welcome!

Tuesday, we went in for an ultrasound. There’s something in my belly. It has a four-chambered heart, a spine, a placenta, a big head, and it kicks a lot. They tell me it’s a baby. I’m not so sure it looks like a baby, so the ultrasound technician took some artistic license and filled in some details for me.

There’s a fairly detailed narcissism fest over here, if you’d like to see more about me.

Please leave a comment and say hello!

Also, if you’ve got a costco.com crib set, please let me know what you think of it. We’ve been offered a generous gift, but I’m nervous about making a huge purchase online based on catalog pictures alone.

So Costco sells some nice looking convertable crib and baby furniture sets online. Well, the pictures are pretty…

Has anyone purchased/received baby furniture from Costco? Is it good? Sturdy? Worth the money? A disappointment? A hassle?

HELP!?

My Father In Law has a thing for random factoids and small talk. I’m just not good at small talk, so last time we went to visit him, I wanted to find a book that might generate some chit-chat.

I went into a bookstore and told the clerk that my FIL was that guy emails nearly every day with pictures from space, random websites, jokes, PowerPoint slideshows, Francine comic strips, or a glitter email with animated gifs of Jesus and puppies. The bored clerk perked right up, said “I know the perfect thing!” and directed me to The Book of Useless Information.

Some of the forwards are hammy, but it is nice to have something other than spam and clearance sale advertisments in my inbox every morning. In honor of yesterday’s prenatal appointment, I thought I would share this morning’s daily email from my Father In Law.

A woman and a baby were in the doctor’s examining room, waiting for the doctor to come in for the baby’s first exam.

The doctor arrived, and examined the baby, checked his weight, and being a little concerned, asked if the baby was breast-fed or bottle-fed.

‘Breast-fed,’ she replied.

‘Well, strip down to your waist,’ the doctor ordered.

She did. He pinched her nipples, pressed, kneaded, and rubbed both breasts for a while in a very professional and detailed examination.

Motioning to her to get dressed, the doctor said, ‘No wonder this baby is underweight. You don’t have any milk.’

I know,’ she said, I’m his Grandma, but I’m glad I came.

That Guy I Married promised Facebook that he would scan and post the ultrasound picture. I’m lazy, so I’ll wait for him to do that, and repost the picture here later.

We drove up the coast today. Usually I’m to antsy to sit still for a mindless drive, but lately I’m too tired to do anything else. It was a really nice drive up PCH. I had no idea that if you drive far enough up the coast, the water is turquoise.

I guess I’m slowing down a lot. I’m out of breath if I try to walk and talk at the same time. Yikes!