Ghetto Fabulous

Thank goodness Alan and I invested in our new-to-us Honda Accord earlier this year. We knew we'd need a reliable vehicle, especially with a baby on the way, and we knew that the Saturn wasn't the young pup she once was. But the Saturn has been great for running errands and getting groceries during the day. Until the day Alan broke down.

He was basically shifting gears when the gear stick shifted no more. Went limp as a noodle. He was lucky to be in second gear when it happened because he managed to get it home, and we managed to get it to the shop. Where we were told it would be about $500 to fix.

Now $500 here and there to keep a car running is no biggie. Except when you're doing it so frequently that you might as well be making car payments for a car that's not all limpy-gimpy. And except when Alan's done a little online research and is convinced that it's much simpler than the mechanic has made it to be, meaning the mechanic wants to give us a gold tooth when we just need a cavity filled. So we told the mechanic to forget about it, and he told us that he could rig it to where we'd be able to get it home.

Using plastic cable ties, he was able to rig it so that we could get home. Which we did, with no problems. I could even go to the grocery store!

So I did.

And the plastic tie came loose. Leaving me at a stoplight in the middle lane of the busiest three-lane highway on crack by our house with a non-shifting gear stick.

Do you know how quickly your body reacts to stress? It's immediate. Because my hands were immediately shaking, and I was immediately wondering what the %@&#!@ I was going to do. And, by the way, how many New Jersey jerks would honk at a pregnant lady with a trunk full of groceries?

Luckily I didn't have to find out because as I sat at the stoplight, I slooowly tried to inch forward. It appeared that even though I couldn't shift, I, by a miracle of all miracles, was also in second gear. After waiting what seemed like an eternity for the light to change, the car slowly groaned forward, and I quickly booked it to the next available exit and took the remaining 3-minute drive home on side streets.

Remember how I called having a second car a luxury? Luxury this:


Will I still drive it once Alan gets the necessary part and replaces the console? You betcha. Will we get a second car seat base and take our first-born child for rides in the Saturn? I think it's safe to say our baby will be a Honda-only baby.

TGIT

Thank God it's Thursday. Or, more accurately: Thank God It's Not Yesterday Anymore. Yesterday was such a comedy of errors that I really felt like the world was messing with me.

A little background. Over the weekend, Alan and I decided to tackle the kitchen wallpaper. We had a three-day weekend and no major plans, so why not? As most of our home improvement projects go, there is always a little more to it than meets the eye. The wallpaper, miraculously, came up easily. But after pulling our first major piece of wallpaper off, we came across an ominous note: Beware of the Plurb.

Oh no. What was the Plurb?

Was it this?

Nope, that's not the Plurb. As soon as I sprayed a littler farther over, I discovered the Plurb, a lovely vegetable-type person with caveman feet and eyes, dating back to March 20, 1965:


The Plurb turned out to be the least of our problems. Once the wallpaper was gone, it was a terrifying scene. The walls are made of some parts plaster, some parts cracks, and some parts we have no idea as the material is unlike any other I've ever seen. However, we didn't let the Plurb or any of that scare us, we plugged along, and Alan spent a day sanding to get the walls somewhat ready to repair and prime.

The sanding? Got plaster dust into almost every single kitchen cabinet, even though we put up plastic. So I've spent the last three days cleaning every single dish in the house. And every utensil. And every appliance.

So all of this leads up to yesterday, day three of cleaning the kitchen to get it into a usable state again. Add in record-breaking heat and humidity and pregnancy hormones, and you might have some sort of idea of my mental state yesterday.

So yesterday. I had to pay an E-Z Pass toll by check because our pass didn't get picked up recently. To do that, I needed our account number. I tried to log in online to get it, but I got locked out after the PIN number didn't work three times. So I call. She confirms that the PIN I am using is correct, but she can't give me the account number. So I have to go outside and get my E-Z Pass from the car to log in. No big deal really, but cue first mini-meltdown. Had I known what the rest of the day had in store, I would have punched myself and said to save it for later.

Later, I'm downstairs finishing up cleaning the kitchen. A nearly fully bottle of kitchen cleaner is on top of the refrigerator. Open fridge, bottle falls to the ground and breaks the nozzle. Must now wait until I have an empty bottle or sprayer nozzle to be able to use cleaner.

Head downstairs to do some laundry. I'd put a brand-new bottle of laundry detergent at the bottom of the laundry hamper so I'd remember to take it downstairs. Of course I forgot it was there, so I dump it out on the laundry room floor. When I pick up the container, liquid soap is going everywhere. So I discover the crack and lay the bottle on the dryer so that I can transfer it to the old bottle once it's empty.

Appointment with Comcast is supposed to take place between 1 p.m. and 3 p.m. This appointment window comes and goes with a Comcast no-show. Annoying. I call. Comcast says someone will be calling me immediately. No one does.

I head out to the car to toss in the blanket and three pillows Alan and I need to take to our childbirth class. Discover cream cheese in the trunk from yesterday's trip to the grocery store. Steaming hot.

Alan calls as he's leaving work. "Oh shit. The car is broken."

We hang up. Mini-meltdown no more, sobs instead. My hair tie snaps in half just to punctuate the event.

Alan drives the whole way home in second gear.

I shower quickly because I'm a sweaty mess. Get out, get dressed. Comcast guys show up. "I can't do the appointment today," I say. "May we ask why?" "BECAUSE YOU WERE SUPPOSED TO BE HERE AT 3 AND IT'S NOW 6 AND I HAVE PLACES TO BE." Jerks.

Childbirth class. Uneventful, except that we switched locations and had to walk a mile to find the classroom and then got lost in the parking garage on the way back to our car.

Get home. Go downstairs to put laundry in the dryer. Notice a whole lot of laundry soap on the dryer. Turns out the detergent also had a hole in the lid, so turning the bottle on its side just caused it to leak out of the other hole. I wipe up soap, Alan comes down and helps after he realizes it shouldn't take 10 minutes for me to transfer laundry.

I go to bed so the day will end.

All Growned Up

I leave for just a few days and I come back to my garden to find this, maybe the cutest cucumber ever:

I'm so proud. At the same time, I'm quite scared: While it may look cute, those cucumber plants branch out and attack anything in their path. And their crazy little tentacles have quite the strong grip. I found one squeezing the life out of my cilantro.

Also, my tomato plants have all gone insane, and I'm going to be eating tomatoes for breakfast, lunch and dinner as soon as they ripen up. Hold me.

Pillow Power

This is what our bed currently looks like:


What? Seven pillows for two people isn't normal?

I could say it's our take on the headboard. But really, it's just the number of pillows required for comfort these days.

The Potatoes Have Eyes

I did some serious kitchen reorganization recently. (If this sounds like the beginning of the most boring blog post ever, just bear with me.) After having lived in our house for six months, I finally had a handle on what I liked and didn't like with how the kitchen was organized. So I spent a chunk of time switching, changing and rearranging pots and pans and blenders and spices until I felt like the cabinets made sense.

You know how sometimes you go on a cleaning extravaganza and you're cleaning out the refrigerator and you come across a carton of sour cream that is growing a fuzzy green life form inside? Well, when I was reorganizing my cabinets, I came across some potatoes. That, honest to God, were no more than a month old. And I realized that potatoes could actually turn into alien beings.

If that image isn't frightening enough, I've got another. I told Alan about the alien potatoes, and needing proof, he dug them out of the trash.

I mean, really. I feel like the tentacles may reach out and attack Alan at any moment. That thing could set records at state fairs.

So what else have I been up to besides neglecting my potato disposal duties? A brief update!

1) Because I can grow crazy potatoes through sheer neglect, I thought I'd try my hand at gardening. Amazingly, minus a couple of watermelon seedlings getting snagged by birds or squirrels, everything is growing well. I've got blooming cucumbers, a few green tomatoes getting bigger, green onions on their way to success, and spinach almost ready for munching. Plus, my backup watermelon seeds have sprouted, so we'll see if anything happens there.

Gardening is seriously backbreaking work. But luckily, I have a friendly little helper.

Besides having fun with clumps of soil and mulch, Marti found a headless Pooh Bear in the yard to keep her occupied as I work.


2) We've been super busy this last month. It was like we were making up for months of not having visitors by having everyone we knew come visit in a span of weeks. Kyle came out in early May (huge props to him for rocking the San Diego marathon and coming in 49th overall and 3rd in his age group, by the way). Then we had Alan's parents earlier this month and just days later spent the weekend hanging out with some of our California friends. Very fun, very busy.

3) Besides picking weeds, which is a never-ending chore, the baby and I have also been growing like them.


Pregnancy is still treating me well, with only a few minor complaints. Heartburn is now my constant companion, and I hate him. I've resorted to eating Tums Smoothies like it's my job and sleeping in a nearly upright position until at least my 4 a.m. bathroom break, lest I wake up with acid in my throat half an hour after falling asleep, which has happened several times and shoots me out of bed like a rocket. I've also started waking up every morning with near-Charley horses in my calves, but if these are my major complaints, I'll take it.

The best side effect of the growing baby by far has been feeling the twitches and bumps of the baby turn into full-body stretches, hiccups and acrobatics. The movement can now be both seen and felt from the outside, so Alan has fun poking the baby and having him/her kick back.

27 weeks and growing!


Some days I feel so large and in charge that I'm not sure how it's possible that there are still almost three months until the due date. Then the next day, I'm so glad that there are still three months to go because there is so much to do, like figuring out how to get in and out of Babies R Us without having a total hormonal meltdown.

Hare Today, Gone Tomorrow?

So it turns out that either Mama Bunny managed to wrangle all of her baby bunnies and coax them to come back or the bunnies have better instincts than I gave them credit for and made their way back to the nest. Last night, Alan was looking out the kitchen window and said he saw bunnies—plural. I didn't believe him because I only saw one, but I'd been looking at the nest and they were in a tall grassy patch by the nest. Now that I know they're all survivors, I'm ready for them to leave.

Also, what does it tell you about Marti that the bunny decided that our yard was the safest place to raise her family? I guess this face just isn't terrifying enough.

Happy Mother's Day, Mama Rabbit

So I was out doing yard work last week. And since we don't have a weed eater yet, I went around raking some of the long grass around our porch so that I could run it over with the mower. Yes, I am mowing the lawn. Pregnant. I am woman, hear me roar.

When I was raking near our porch, I stopped when I saw a nest of some sort. When I leaned down and saw the nest move, I ran the other direction. I figured it was something cute and tiny, but I wasn't willing to take the risk on the chance that it was a pile of snakes.

So yesterday, Alan came upstairs, hands cupped, proclaiming that he'd discovered what was in the nest. In his hands was the cutest baby bunny ever. He'd been watering some grass seed when about four bunnies went scampering out of their cozy nest. We headed back outside to put the bunny back in its nest. And to gather the scattered bunnies and put them back in their home. Because what if they weren't ready for freedom? What if they couldn't fend for themselves? I couldn't have the deaths of four baby bunnies on my conscience. Plus, what if Mama Bunny (who we'd seen hop into our yard awhile back although we didn't know she was a mommy at the time) came home to no baby bunnies? The day after Mother's Day? Too sad for me to contemplate.

So with one bunny back in the nest, we went looking for more runaway bunnies. One, having the survival instincts of a Marti, was tucked right behind the tire of our car. Two others were huddled by the house behind a bush. We wrangled two of those three, but one wily wittle wabbit ran for the hills. It took going into a neighbor's yard, but Alan managed to return him to the nest as well. Feeling like we'd done our duty, we left them to survive in the wild. When we checked the nest later though, we didn't see any bunnies. We were left to hope that the little ones had learned enough to fend for themselves in the big, bad world.

Tonight, I was at the kitchen sink and who do I see when I look out the window? Mama Bunny (pictured). Sitting just feet away from her empty nest. As she sat there munching on grass, I felt so bad. But then! She jumped away and I saw a little baby bunny that had been sitting next to her! Sweet relief! I was so glad that she didn't have a completely bunny-less nest. I do think it is the only bunny that hasn't jumped the coop, but at least she's got one bunny left to show for her month-long gestation period.


I have a feeling I'll need to be reminded about my sympathy for the "poor rabbits" when there are 20 of them making a feast of my garden.