Archive for May 2006

Wow, has today ever been busy. And seeing as how I’m running at about half speed these days (and that’s being incredibly generous, I think), a busy day means a tired, hot, swollen pregnant woman. And yes, busy as in out in the world and the usual busy which is just sitting here work, work, working. Which is just as busy as being out in the world but less physically demanding. Sometimes. (Depends on the client) We had MOPS in the morning, then lunch out at KFC (H’s favorite, bless his heart) and a shopping trip to Walmart that darn near killed me.

To my credit, I didn’t bitch and whine too much. But halfway through the store I was starting to hurt in a bad way. My back hurt, my hips were sore (hence the waddling) and my feet were aching. I sat down at one point, to catch my breath when I noticed my ankles. Most particularly, my right ankle that I broke last year. It was swollen up to twice it’s size, I kid you not. Even now, five hours later, it’s still swollen but at least resembles the ankle that it was. Yowzers. I never had a problem with swelling, really, my last two pregnancies so this is new territory for me. Seeing as how today was merely in the low 80’s, I can see this is going to be an issue from here on out. And that? Freaks me out just a little.

Guys? I’m only just barely 32 weeks along. I have a little less than 6 weeks left. I think I’m in trouble. Just wait until this belly REALLY starts to pop. Things are going to get obscene around here, quick.

I may be complaining a bit, but really, the pregnancy is going well. The belly gets larger, I swear, every day. I get lots and lots of great kicks from the little bean and that makes me feel so much more secure. I’m recognizing the “schedule” this kid is on, and what I can do to stimulate him or her. I always get a reaction from ice cream and orange juice. And the baby is always active when I lay down at night to go to sleep. That’s playtime! Even my Braxton-Hicks are getting predictable. Of course, I always get them when I particularly exert myself (such as today). But regardless of my activity level, I always get the bulk of the contractions in the evenings. Every evening. Without fail. :) And I’m getting a baby shower on Saturday. That’ll be so fun. :)

I have an appointment tomorrow. Will I have gained any weight? Furthermore, am I supposed to hope that I did? ;) There’s a slim chance we could get another ultrasound, but I highly doubt it. And really? I don’t care. I bought a horrifically adorable girl outfit at Walmart today. Am I throwing away the receipt? Nope. But I’m glad I got it. Girl, boy…. who really cares, right? What difference will it make? Very little, from where I’m sitting. I’ll have a baby and that’s what I care about.

In the end, that’s truly all that matters. Swelling, aching backs, silly waddling… it’s temporary. And the end result is so, so worth it. Even if my sleep for the next six weeks (and beyond ;) ) is less than ideal, it’ll be all worth it. And I wouldn’t trade an achy, miserable, sweating moment for the world.

Filed under Pregnant? |

Now that I have my super-incredibly-cool design up and going…? I almost don’t know what to post next.? Because I hate the thought of not living up to my fabulous new look, maybe?? Beats me.? At any rate, I’m having a hard time thinking of what to write about today.? And this is after taking two whole days off of blogging!

I guess I can update you on my weekend.? It was a good weekend.? We didn’t do a whole lot of anything.? Trying to save money and not having the energy to do a whole lot stood in our way.? K did manage to get the ceiling fan hung and wired in H’s room so that was an accomplishment.? Of course, it meant trips to Home Depot *and* Lowes.? And we all know how fun that can be.? We didn’t make it to church on Sunday because we were so darned tired.? I slept until nearly 10 am myself.? And if I’m not awake to wake up K on the weekends, I doubt he’d ever wake up at all. ;) Even H was a lay-a-bed that day.? Yesterday was fun, though.? We had a bbq with our neighbors which included the making of ice cream.? I haven’t had homemade ice cream in ages and it tasted just as good as I remember it.? It was nice to hang out with friendly people all day, talk, eat and just relax and enjoy.

I’d worked somewhat through the weekend, wanting to get/stay caught up with my design jobs.? I’m hoping to clear my backlog and not have a whole lot of people waiting for designs come July. My hope is to take the month of July off.? Which isn’t to say that I won’t do any work.? Because I know me and I know I can’t *not* work for that long.? But officially, I’m taking that month off.? I’m hoping to come back after BlogHer so I’ll be all systems go come August.? We’ll see how things shake down.

I’m having my doubts this powder bath will get done before the baby comes.? It’s a two person job and I just am not able to help K with what he needs help with.? He needs someone who knows what they’re doing, for one thing. ;)? So we may be out of luck on that for a while.? I’m not going to hold my breath.? But I’m still hoping K can get his computer out of the nursery so we can move some of the baby stuff we have up there and I can at least try to feel we’re somewhat ready for this child. ;) We have a ways to go towards that.? Even so, if these next 6 weeks passed in the blink of an eye and we had nothing ready, I’d be happy as a clam.? I hate this waiting.? I want that baby now, darnit. :)

Okay, terribly sorry for the boring boring boring entry.? I’m hoping I get some sort of inspiration in the next day and can give you something somewhat interesting to read. In the meantime, enjoy the new look, the new features, have a peek around and let me know what you think!

Filed under General Snark |

Filed under General Snark |

Okay, remember that new look I mentioned the other day? Well, in case you hadn’t noticed, I put it up this morning. There’s still a few kinks to work out and issues to solve. (Why does it say “archive page 1 up top”??) I’m thinking of moving the whole date and time thing because it’s kinda obnoxious and I’m trying to figure out how to bold some of the text down in the footer/navigation thingie. But in the meantime, don’t be afraid, embrace the new-ness and have a peek around. There’s some new features here and a lot of things that used to be here aren’t anymore. For instance:

• There is no skin chooser anymore. Which means you can’t change how you’re seeing this site. Sorry bout that. And I know people come over from Lilac Pixels to see the skins before downloading them. I may get them up on a “test blog” but until then, tough luck. But I doubt many people used it anyhow.
• No more “reading”, “watching”, “listening”, etc. I know everyone will miss that. ;)
• No more Blog Explosion tenants. I enjoyed it, truly did. But… I’m tired of it.
• No more “Last Laugh”.
• Drastic reduction in the # of subscription buttons. I may reduce it even further. The point is, if you click the orange button it’ll take you to my feed and you can subscribe to whichever service to your heart’s content from there. It just takes up too much room here. :)
• Looking for links? Just click the “links” page link down at the bottom under Menu. They’re still here, they’ve just “moved”.
• Only one post per page. Cleaner. You want to see older entries either browse the archives at the bottom or click one of the “Recent Posts” links.
• I still need to put some footer information. Copywrite, design credits, etc and so forth.

But how about what’s new? What’s fantastic and exciting? Because there is much of that. Here’s the rundown:

• I now have “livesearch”! Which means, theoretically, you type what you’re looking for into the search box down under “Browsing” and if you wait a second, a little box will pop up with a list of the posts that pertain that to that subject. Click on the link and VOILA! Sometimes this works, sometimes not. Not sure why, but there you have it. Conversely, you can type in what you’re looking for and hit “enter” (no submit button!) and it’ll bring up a search results page.
• The archives page is very fancy. Click “archives” under “Menu” at the bottom of the page and you (should) see a page that allows you to select whether to view archives by date or by category and it’s all fancy and woo-woo. Check it out. Hopefully it’ll work. If it doesn’t…. well… I don’t know what. LOL. But it should work.
• Flickr RSS. :) It’s so cool. Down beneath the posts but above the footer area you’ll see a row of six thumbnails showing my most recent flickr photos. They have a neato hover effect and just click on any one to see it bigger at my flickr page. Loving that feature so far.
• Speaking of nifty hover effects, I have one on the title of the blog. Woo! :)
• A lot of your site browsing is down in the bottom area. You’ve got search, archives, categories, latest comments, page links and subscribe buttons.
• You’ll also notice the ads on the side. There’ll soon be more there. I picked this template for that reason, so I could have the ads highlighted on each page. I might also put some in some other places, but so far, that’s the plan.
• When you click on each post link, you’ll see a couple new things beneath the posts. One is a listing of “functions” you can perform with that post, including adding it to Del.icio.us. I don’t know half of what those functions *do* but they’re neato.
• The other new thing you’ll see beneath posts on their own respective pages is a listing of “related posts”. There’ll be links to the posts as well as excerpts. I’m not entirely sure how they determine what posts are related, but there you have it. :)
• The recent comments down at the bottom are different as well. It lists the four most recently commented posts with how many comments those posts have and beneath, a listing of who has commented with links to their comments. Whew!
• There’s a “noteworthy” feature too. When I select a post to be “noteworthy” there’ll be a little “heart” icon next to the title. You can browse all noteworthy posts by selecting it as a “category” from the “categories” dropdown list or the “archives” page. Confused yet?
• I added more page links up at the top (the fancy lookin’ pictures) and down at the bottom just above the credits.? Hopefully that’ll make things simpler too. :)

I think that’s all, though it’s conceivable I may have missed a thing or two. At any rate, enjoy the new look and let me know if you run into any snags, problems, etc and so forth. (I *do* have a nifty contact page) There are bound to be some issues in the first few days but hopefully your visit will be a pleasant one. Don’t be scared off! This is a *good* change! I promise you. :)

Filed under Boring Site Stuff |