What I'm Doing at 5 a.m.

Eating a homemade cinnamon roll... (thank you, Tiffany! very, very yummy!) and drinking green chocolate milk. (The milk is green because I added liquid chlorophyll, something my midwife recommended to help raise my hemoglobin, the part of the red blood cell that carries oxygen to the body.)

The Case of the Missing Oregano

I had someone call me today looking for fresh oregano. (I frequently get herb-related phone calls because I give them away to friends and family since I can't use all that I grow. I enjoy growing herbs immensely more than vegetables, probably because they are so low maintenance.)

This year, I have not spent much time in my herb garden aside from the initial planting. Since my parents have moved in next door, my dad has pretty much taken over all gardening related tasks. Truth be told, he does a better job than me, so I have just quit all together. It is a strange phenomenon, actually. One has to wonder why I would quit doing something I love just because I have help doing it.

I didn't think I missed it that much, until today, when I ventured out to the garden to get the oregano... Only to find that it was gone, completely smothered under my gigantic basil plant that I quit cutting back since I hadn't been out to the garden much. Poor, poor oregano. I felt like a very bad herb mother.

And so... I cried. Yes, the joys of pregnancy!!! I cried for the oregano, dead without the benefit of sunlight... I cried for all the times I had looked out the window and decided not to go work in the garden... I cried for all the missed times digging in the dirt with my sweet son that my dad had experienced instead... I cried for the little piece of my soul that always felt so connected to God when I had the joy of nurturing something to grow.

If my husband read my blog, he would tease me forever about this post. He would remind me of all the times that I fussed over having to go work in the garden in the hot sun. He would remind me of the first year I planted a garden where we only harvested two tomatoes because that was all we could get to among the weeds. He would remind me of all the times I begged him to go water the garden because I was too tired to do so.

But... my silly pregnant heart can't help but miss my garden, however much of a nuisance it may be.

Coupons

One of my earliest blog posts was about my inability to select a fast-moving line in the grocery store, specifically getting behind the lady with all the coupons. This afternoon I had an even more bizarre coupon experience.

I must preface this with the fact that my two-year-old fell asleep in the car on the way to the store. I had to wake him up to take him in. He was so upset that I ended up carrying him for the first ten minutes of the trip, pushing the cart with a combination of one hand and my fat, pregnant stomach. So... I was maybe a little cranky already.

Anyway, Wal-Mart was packed. I try to go in the mornings when things are slower, but since my husband is working evening shifts, I have been trying to find things to keep me occupied during that time, especially as the weekend approaches.

Well, despite the ultra-busy store, I lucked out: I found an empty register! It was a small miracle, and I thanked God for it before hurrying over to unload my cart. Then a strange thing happened... as the cashier rang up my items, she kept skipping some and setting them to the side. "I'll get to those," she said. I was a little confused as to why my pineapple and toothpaste were being singled out by this woman, to say the least.

So, once most of my goods were scanned and bagged, she pulled out a notebook, divided with tabs into about twenty categories: produce, hygiene, cleaning, etc. The notebook was stuffed with hundreds of coupons. Coupons she had clipped herself for her customers. She starts slooooowwwwwwlllllllllllyyyyyyy, painstakingly sorting through her coupons to find the ones for what I was buying. While I have a toddler wanting to sit on my loaf of bread. I felt like a really bad person because 1.) How unthrifty am I that I don't take the time to clip my own coupons? and 2.) Why am I being ungrateful that this sweet woman takes the time to clip, sort, and add to her memory coupons for nearly every product that Wal-Mart carries? She ended up saving me two entire dollars, in fact. And reminding me again how I need to be more patient. And more friendly to others. This is why I hate going to the grocery. :)

Yesterday...

We harvested our first grapes from our vines.




















We painted our kitchen floors, which you might recall that we stripped out this time last year.

Addictions

I was looking for a picture in my iPhoto library today when I stumbled across this one from a few months ago. I took it to preserve the evidence that I'm not the only one in my family with a problem.

You see, once upon a time, in between my junior and senior year of high school, I went away for five weeks to live on a college campus. While there, I ran up a teensy, eensy phone bill (of about fifteen hundred dollars). I really missed home. A lot. And no one had really told me exactly how much the phone calls I was making to all my friends were costing, so I just kept making them. I couldn't help myself, really, and we weren't allowed internet access in our dorms, so it wasn't like I could have been emailing all that time. (I did write letters. Lots and lots of letters.) This is something I have been harrassed about ever since at family dinners.

So, imagine my glee (yes, glee!) when someone else in my family managed to talk (or, in this case, text) more than me! My parents let my sixteen-year-old nephew get a phone on their plan with unlimited text messaging. I was visiting at their house the next month when a box came in the mail. A box with their cell phone bill in it. A box that cost the cell phone company $6.80 to mail. A box that listed all 15,829 text messages he had sent and received that month. I snapped this picture and meant to blog about it but never did. Now I am. If you'd like some help with the math, that's 527 messages a day, or 21 messages per hour (if he never sleeps). Call me crazy... but I think he may have a problem. Or maybe, like his dear Aunt Jamie, he just has an addiction to the written word. A really, really bad one. :)

I love you, dishwasher!

Well... after months and months (and months) of our dishwasher being broken, we finally broke down and spent the money to have it repaired. I honestly wasn't that concerned about it because it was never really that great at washing dishes anyway... But the thought of a newborn baby and dishes piling up in the sink was enough to make me want to fix it.

The irony of it all is this: I'm pretty sure it has been broken all along—as in, since we bought it four years ago. I just always thought it did a bad job because it was a cheap dishwasher, but apparently not. Whatever they fixed made it work better than it ever has. All of our dishes come out nice and shiny now! And the repairs didn't even cost a hundred dollars, leaving me to wonder why I always have to be so cheap. Mmmm.... let me rephrase that: why do I always spend money on weird things (like fabric for projects I never end up doing) instead of on things that would actually be worth the cost? (I think it is inherited perhaps, because my Dad tends to do the same thing... why change the oil in your truck—when it is four thousand miles past due—if you can buy some more flowers for your garden or a new tool that you don't need? I blame him for my misordered priorities.)

My First Off-Roading Adventure

Well, after months and months of pining, my husband finally purchased a Jeep. It has been the topic of most conversations at our house since it came home. All those months of reading JP Magazine at the breakfast table have finally paid off for me because I do manage to have some idea of what he is talking about. (I will sadly read anything that comes into the house, including Game Informer magazine. I am a walking encyclopedia of video game reviews.)

Of course, the Jeep wasn't home long before the much-dreaded question was asked: "So, when are you going to go out on the trail with me?"

My head was saying, "Seven months pregnant... long, hot, bumpy off-road trail... Bad combination."

My heart was saying, "Be the adventurous wife! Support your husband!" I also heard my dad's voice in the back of my head saying, "If you stay home, you won't be the tough girl that I raised." I won't even mention the voices of my dear brother and my almost-brother friend that would have teased me endlessly if I said no.

So I said yes.

Bad. Idea.

I will admit that it was fun. It was fun to go out with the family and our friends and spend the day outdoors. I like the outdoors, so that part was very pleasant. It wasn't even too hot in the woods. However, feeling like I had to hold onto my stomach to keep the baby in there, not so much fun! Wondering just exactly how safe I was, not so fun. Trying not to freak out so that my toddler didn't freak out, not fun.

So, I guess sometimes it actually is best to trust your instincts and not try to overcome your fears. Still, I kind of want to do it again, I'll admit. Just shorter and safer and maybe a little less pregnant.

(Oh, yes, and this is the one picture that my hubby came home with. There is lots of video footage, but I don't think anyone wants to hear my squeaking from the passenger's seat. Haha.)