Thanks, y'all, for all the support and the war stories and the encouragement on the last entry. It helps so so so so much to know that so many people have slogged through The Not-Sleeping and lived to tell about it. You're all phenomenal, and it's comforting just to know that I can always come here and vent and commiserate and you'll BE HERE for me. Yay.
So! Birthing class. Installment One was actually really informative and enjoyable and...well, even with the mullet-tastic video involving women making farm animal sounds and close-up shots of The Business, it was sort of comforting, in a very odd and surprising way. And, if I can say this without punching myself in the face, I feel sort of excited about the labor and delivery process, in the way that I get excited about running a marathon -- I know I am going to be pushed to my limits in a million different and unexpected ways and I'll have the chance to see what I am mentally and physically capable of, regardless of the method by which the baby ends up having to come out. I know it will quite possibly suck in all sorts of ways, but hey, FINALLY meeting our baby is one pretty great finish line, you know?
Meanwhile, I'm sure you've been wondering whether I've used the immersion blender and slow cooker I got for Christmas. I should let you out of your suspense and tell you that yes! Yes, I have. And they are rather awesome.
In the slow-cooker, I've made barbecue pulled pork (transcendant), Boston baked beans (yum), classic beef stew (good, but the recipe needs some tweaking), Indian curry (delish), chicken masala (mmm) and chicken and dumplings (regrettable). (All from the cookbook that came out of this blog). I love how once you've thrown everything into the cooker, your dinner obligation is pretty much complete. I also love how tender the meat comes out after simmering all day, how the flavors blend together with the longer cooking time, how there is usually enough for two nights of dinners and how you can get a full complement of protein and veggies in if you use the right recipe. In short, the slow cooker was a definite score.
I've also made good use of the stick blender, primarily for smoothies on the weekends (during the week, it's all I can do to shove a yogurt and a Balance Bar into my bag before trudging off to work). I put a bunch of frozen peaches in the little blendy-cup thing they give you, maybe cut up a banana as well, swirl in a bit of honey, sprinkle in cinnamon and flax seed, and slosh some milk over it all, then blend for a few minutes until it's frothy and thick and milkshake-y. Oh, yes.
I used to sometimes get a hankering for a Jamba Juice-esque blended beverage, but never felt like hauling out the big old blender and having to wash all the parts afterward (or, for that matter, walking over to Jamba Juice and standing on their ENDLESS line) and OH, the LABOR was TOO MUCH, so this is perfect for making the Lazy Woman's Smoothie. I have also used the stick to blend soups, which again had seemed unreasonably labor-intensive when a real blender was involved, but now I don't have to remove anything from the pot until it's ready to serve. Wonders!
Separately, I would like to take a moment to note that I have just as many issues with maternity clothing sizes as I did with normal clothes. Evidently it is too much to ask that things be sized consistently -- I have this one pair of Gap maternity jeans that I bought in my pre-pregnancy size (which they tell you to do at the outset, although I found that half the shirts in my regular size fit fine and half were too small, and of course you GROW during pregnancy, so the whole thing is counter-intuitive and stupid) and they fit great (although, as one might expect, they are becoming a hair more snug as time passes), so I ordered a second pair in the same size but a different wash and when they arrived I put them on and could not MOVE. So back they went and, just to be safe, I ordered TWO sizes up as a replacement, so naturally that pair is ENORMOUS and falls off me as I walk, but I couldn't be bothered to send them back a second time so I just deal (and I'm sure I will be grateful for the extra room soon).
The other thing is that they have all these different styles of waistbands for pants -- no-panel, hidden panel, demi-panel, over-the-head panel -- but what no one bothered to mention was that the no-panel kind don't really WORK when your belly gets past a certain size, because there's nowhere for the pants to GO, nothing for them to grab onto, so they basically just fall right off. Which means I have three pairs of pregnancy pants that are utterly useless now.
Plus, with the demi-panel, sometimes the elastic is not really as strong as it should be (I'm looking at you, Gap), so once again you have the southward-moving pants problem -- you're walking along and suddenly you feel like there is WIND passing over your drawers, so you have to hitch up your trousers every two minutes, which really adds to the look of sophistication you're going for as a waddling pregnant woman in a tent-sized coat. Yet you don't want to wear full-panel all the time (or add on a Bella Band), because my God the ITCHING. On the up side, I have found that dresses work well as a wardrobe option, although it's not every day that you want to wrestle yourself into maternity tights so that only takes you so far.
Oh! Also! I wanted to tell you that I have butt ointment on my face. My doctor recommended that I use A+D Ointment on those dry, rashy spots on my chin, and it seems to be working. They're not totally gone, but they're much less red and angry looking. And I smell like a clean baby's butt, so there is that.
By the way, apropos of nothing, I have to note that I really miss running. I do. SO much. Power-walking and workout DVDs are keeping me from losing my mind entirely, but I am a little melancholy over the absence of running in my life. It just feels so GOOD and there is simply no substitute for even a brief four-mile trot in the park to clear the head and energize the body. I can't wait to get back into it.
But then it hit me this morning that it's not like the baby will pop out and I'll be out for a run the next morning or even the next week or possibly the next MONTH OR MORE. And when I am finally able to get out there, I may have...ISSUES resulting from the baby's exit, and it may take a really long time for things to normalize, so running may not be the joyous romp that I am pining for now. Oh, BIOLOGY. How you toy with me.
Finally, I don't usually like to blog ABOUT blogging, but I've been meaning to put up some kind of entry or additional page or...something to explain the whole adoption story, since newcomers or people looking for information about adoption don't have much of a way to unearth the old posts about that stuff seeing as (a) I got rid of the category for it and (b) I deleted a lot of those old entries in a fit of pique when everything went haywire in the fall of 2008. I DO have a nutshell summary on the About page, but it doesn't get into the nitty-gritty. So that may be coming soon, although it also kind of makes me tired to think about writing and executing it. I will have to be in the right mood, perhaps.
I've also been thinking about whether to have my site redesigned, but there again the idea of finding someone to hire for the project and doing...whatever it is you do to implement such a plan (or even just fiddling with Typepad templates) also makes me weary. And there is something oddly comforting to me about my sad, plain little blue website, without ads or adornment of any kind except Miles's little face up there in the corner. On the one hand, I want to make my readers feel welcome and happy when they come here; on the other, I know most people probably follow along in Reader or don't come here for the design anyway, so I wonder if it even matters. Fret, fret, fret.
