my mom and sister threw me the most awesome baby shower on saturday!
(mom, gram, britt)
it was a blast, to say the least!! it was so beautiful and so much fun! brittany did a great job. and she made me this amazing slide show (that made me cry) and an adorable banner to hang in bella's room. (pictures forthcoming)
the shower itself was such a blessing and between all of our gifts and gift cards from the showers, and all the gently used hand-me-downs we've received from our friends, we have almost everything we need for baby bella's arrival, including her beautiful crib! the only thing i still need to order is the crib mattress and the cradle mattress and sheets, which is a simple purchase.
we are so lucky and so excited for her arrival! and i cant believe how quickly the time is flying (and crawling at the same time)...i only have 7 weeks left until my due date; unbelievable!! and somehow, i am starting to feel like its never going to get here. im sure that has at least a little to do with how crappy i feel about fifty percent of the time.
im tired, i waddle, i ache, i have heartburn, im TIIIIIIRED (did i mention that im tired?) i fall asleep all the time - its like the minute i sit down, im sleeping. and when i wake up i feel groggy and just...blah. i feel like i have no energy to get anything done.
but, at least the house is pretty much done (mike still has to paint a few doors) and we'll be putting together bella's room either later this week or early next week (im SO excited to do that!)
bugs. and always the worst kinds. either spiders ::shudder:: ....or sprickets, (really called camel crickets) which i think might actually be worse to me and cause a more paralyzing fear for me than spiders have my whole life. (shocking, i know!) they are horrible and terrifying and possessed. they attack! (though, i dont think they bite) ... if you're not familiar with what a camel cricket is, google it.
i thought about posting a picture but then i think i would have to stop coming to my own blog. ugh. they are so gross. and right now there is one hiding my bathroom, behind the toilet, and i really have to pee.
: /
earlier, while i was in the bathroom, this same spricket was sitting on the window sill, waiting for me. when i realized it was there i jumped and started backing out of the bathroom mutter a few choice words under my breath. and this little monster jumped AT me. twice. missing me by millimeters. i felt like i was going to have a heart attack!
...which, speaking of my heart - my cardiologist's appointment is tomorrow at 2.
in other news, i just found a delicious recipe for cream cheese ice cream.
ingredients
5 cups half-and-half or light cream
2-1/2 cups sugar
4 beaten eggs
3 8-ounce packages cream cheese or reduced-fat cream
cheese (Neufchatel), softened
1 teaspoon finely shredded lemon peel
2 tablespoons lemon juice
2 teaspoons vanilla
Fresh blueberries, nectarines, and/or dark cherries (optional)
directions
In a large saucepan combine 3 cups of the half-and-half or light cream, the sugar, and eggs. Cook and stir over medium heat just until boiling. In a large mixing bowl beat cream cheese with an electric mixer until smooth; gradually beat in hot mixture. Cover and chill thoroughly.
Stir in remaining half-and-half, lemon peel, lemon juice, and vanilla. Freeze in a 4- or 5-quart ice cream freezer according to the directions. Ripen 4 hours. Garnish each serving with choice of fresh fruit, if desired. Makes about 3 quarts (24 servings).
it looks and sounds delicious. so now i need an ice cream maker! cuisinart makes a pretty good one, so it seems. maybe i'll add that to my christmas list!
now its back to waiting for mike to handle the spricket situation so i can go to the bathroom, brush my teeth, and go to bed. another open is waiting for me tomorrow! oh how i love getting up at 4 am. N O T. but at least work was less stressful today. and ive decided to not let the dumb stuff get to me. the stuff i cant change. the stuff that doesnt have to do with me. the stuff that, in light of everything else going on in my world, actually matters very little.
i feel like my house is a commercial for behr paint! no joke. and i feel like the actress they hired to just walk or sit around looking so thoroughly pleased with herself and her new surroundings that it just makes you feel the need to redo your own kitchen/bathroom/dining room...or all of them!
ahh. i feel so so accomplished! and relieved that its done. and my house just looks and feels fresh, lively, bright, and YOUNG! almost like a new house - almost. we still have some clean up to do (not from painting though - i already did that) to put the house JUST RIGHT and get rid of more stuff we dont want or need!
then it will be time to set up the nursery!
we still need to get new curtains to match all of our new colors but angela, my best friend in the world, who now has a sewing machine and the skill and patience to use it, said she would make all the curtains for me if i would just buy all the fabrics! soo exciting! :) we have a great new store in salisbury called hobby lobby - like a michaels but bigger - and they have SO MUCH FABRIC! in such awesome patterns! i cant wait.
but now, its time for breakfast. and coffee. or, if youre me...decaf. :/
we successfully painted almost the entire house in roughly 12 hours today! we still have three doors and two doorways to paint, and that's IT!
and i must say, it looks LOVELY! i am so excited to have some color on the walls! i think it looks beautiful! and i also am so happy that the house is mostly put back together, too...(still waiting on the paint to dry in our bedroom, and dont worry all my wonderful, concerned, friends and family, im not sleeping in the fume-y bedroom with wet paint...!)
for as exhausted as i am right now, i feel VERY satisfied. i had a great day! painting went relatively quick and the company was awesome. atreyu acted like a jerk, most of the day (he's pretty much in love with raye and followed her around the whole time she was here)...he's now the dog of many colors - he walked into pretty much every wall and paintbrush he could get his fur on...he looks absurd.
raye totally killed it with the cutting in! (and the yellow in my kitchen looks absolutely delicious!) mike paints like a tortoise, but you know what they say - slow and steady wins the race. well, maybe not the race, but his work looks flawless. (which is more than i can say for what happens if you put a paint BRUSH in my hand - disaster! but give me a roller and i'll blow your mind!) ang helped me roll a couple of walls and then painted the beadboarding and our windows with a fresh coat of white and they look lovely! and i was so grateful because i cant paint those things to save my life! my mom primed some windows and painted the high and low parts of the hallway that i couldnt reach! she also did some awesome doorway painting/patching and made our hallway look brand new...ahh! im so excited about all of it! and then, dominick came over and helped mike cut in in our bedroom and then helped me with some post painting cleanup which was awesome of him.
i think mike and angela were totally high for a small window of time while painting our bedroom which obviously wasnt well ventilated enough...
thank you guys for helping us out!! we really appreciate all of you and love you a ton!
and for more on the story, check out my blog update on the GPA blog:
tomorrow is the big day! we're painting the WHOLE house and i cant wait to see it with a fresh coat of paint! its going to look like a completely different house!! and i feel like its just what we need to welcome bella home in november (or, as i keep saying, maybe a little earlier...) and to finally feel a sense of ownership in this house.
even though we rent, mike and i have lived in this house for four years and we havent really had a lot of creative freedom - we havent been able to paint which has made decorating uninteresting and uninspiring. but NOW we are really starting to see some of our personality come through (like in the bathroom and hallway, for starters) and im so excited about that. i just cant wait to see some color on these walls!
so, after this whole (traumatic!) waterspout/tornado incident today and the hurricane a few weeks ago, i got thinking about weather and general, and specifically weather at the beach.
i know that weather gets crazy everywhere, and here we dont have tornadoes that often, or earthquakes (though, in the past month we've had both!?)...but weather on the beach is a totally different experience - from fog that goes from non existent to pea-soup thick, temperatures that drop 10 degrees or more in under a mile, hurricanes, nor'easters, etc...and i thought it would be cool to put up a few videos of what the weather is like where i live for our family who doesnt live on the coast. for me, its easy to forget that not everyone has an ocean with storm surges and flooding inlets and rip currents and swells that are incredible on their own, but the effects of that monster on the weather, well - its pretty awesome.
(all pulled from youtube)
(a sudden storm in 2009)
(sea foam!! this is from our recent hurricane, irene!)
(a nor'easter (which in ocmd is usually worse than a hurricane) in nov of 2009 - that's the ocean coming up to the boardwalk! the ocean usually stops about 100 yards from the boardwalk at high tide.)
(flooding after a thunderstorm)
(a washed up humpback that had died at sea.)
(seals - or maybe two videos of one seal - that came ashore last year around 58th street! there were four or five incidents of this last year up and down our coast!)
(a whale and a HUGE school (or, shoal, mike argues) of fish seen from the 19th floor of a hotel - we saw one last summer, too! from up high! pretty incredible)
and because i cant resist - some videos of sharks! i actually know a lot of the people in the second video (the one with all the photos)! all of the fish (and sharks and stingrays!!) in that video are caught FROM THE SHORE...pulled, literally, right out of the surf...where we swim. (did i ever tell you about the skate, or potential shark, i punched last summer?!)
(uhhh...HAMMERHEAD!?)
and finally some of my own pictures from the day after hurricane earl last year!
liv and i have a shoot on saturday night and to prepare im practicing with my new camera and the flash that raye lent me. my house after 5 pm is a great time to practice with flash because we dont get a lot of natural light in the afternoon/evening and our walls are still a pretty muted color (until next week!)
but since mike was at work, i didnt have anyone to take pictures of. so i practiced on atreyu. cant you just tell by the look on his face how much he LOVED that idea?
(sad eyes)
im not sure they were too fond of the idea of being my models.
when i was younger i used to REFUSE to take naps. i think part of me thought or worried that i would miss something fun, exciting, or important. not to mention, i never feel great after a nap. i usually have a headache and an acidy feeling in my stomach, kind of like indigestion. so i just stayed away from napping, as a general rule.
i never really grew out of that feeling, either. not to mention (pre-pregnancy) ive never been one for sleeping. i like to get up early and stay up late. i feel 'the best' when i sleep about six hours - anything more or less and i just dont feel quite as rested. so ive never really needed naps, either. no need for naps = no worries about missing things!
enter pregnancy!
when i got pregnant, all that about napping completely changed. i was tired all the time to the point where if i was sitting down/laying down resting or watching tv, there was no fighting falling asleep. sometimes i would fall asleep in the car while mike was driving on even the shortest trips. at first i tried to fight it, but for anyone who has ever been pregnant before you realize that's the biggest joke ever. there is no fighting it.
so i gave in. i started napping. i napped all the time through the first trimester. i was working about 50 hours a week then and when i wasnt working, i was sleeping or feeling sick. once the second trimester was in full swing, though, i got some of my energy back and didnt nap QUITE as much. granted, i felt like i was still napping a lot (for my standards) but that was mostly because i was working about 65 hours a week or so.
then, i hit the beast that is the third trimester - which to be fair is really bittersweet - i feel bella move all the time, which is awesome. but my belly is getting heavy, and hard to move around. its hard to stay comfortable or to be on my feet at work. but its cool to be able to see that the end is getting near, which is also a tease because its coming SO SLOW now (the last two weeks have been a DRAG and i have 8 left!)
but because of all the extra work my body is doing now, even though im 'only' working about 35-45 hours a week (some of those are at a desk, dont worry!) i am almost as tired as i was in the first trimester!! (now my hours are getting substantially cut down every week from this point on until im at 8-12 hours for my last few weeks at work before maternity leave) and once again i find myself NAPPING ALL THE TIME!! which in itself isnt a bad thing, and i feel like i have finally (recently) come to not only accept my need to nap during pregnancy, but have embraced it and started almost (ALMOST) looking forward to my (almost daily) naps...
its funny because mike has, in the time we've known each other, tried to talk me into napping when i really need to. he always says to me, 'just take a nap. you need to. you're tired. its good for you. stop being so silly, you're not going to miss anything important....'
except today......i missed this:
...
ummm.
in case you didnt notice...that's a tornado. or (maybe technically) a water spout? but it came onto land. so i think that makes it a tornado.
an EFFING (somehow, that word is NOT quite strong enough) TORNADO.
for those of you who dont know this. . . i have a few...quirks in my personality. shocking, i know.
im a little ocd. i have a little bit of a texture...uhh...i dont like to call it a disorder, per se...so lets just say im texture sensitive. i have a LITTLE bit of anxiety about silly things...i guess you could call them phobias...specifically relating to spiders, heights, airplanes...oh, and tornadoes.
like the one i slept through this afternoon.
i'll never nap again.
at least until tomorrow.
xo.
m.
this footage is on 65th street, just north of the rt 90 bridge. apparently the funnel came off the bay (see picture above) and crossed over coastal highway. luckily (as far as ive heard) no one was injured....
i opened this morning (ugh) and worked until 11ish. when i got off, i ran home, changed my clothes and headed to the studio.
i spent almost 4 hours editing and then kris showed up and she and raye surprised me with a kelly moore bag stuffed with baby goodies and a camera!! how ecstatic was i? take a guess.
then, raye and i headed to ocean city for an e-session on the boardwalk/beach.
the couple was fabulous, and gorgeous...but let me just tell you how NOT EASY it is to walk across the sand when you're eight months pregnant. no joke, i felt like i was wading...er...waddling...through mud or rubber cement. my body does NOT move the way that it used to last summer. which is a little depressing, considering the kind of work outs i was doing last summer (side note: hello, has anyone seen the crossfit games? i LOVE it and want to do it)...but not surprising, considering im 8 months pregnant!
i was stoked to shoot, none the less, and once i got to where i was going, i felt fine. the weather was lovely, the light was delicious, the couple was stunning (the whole shoot reminded me of a polo or ralph lauren ad), and the whole thing was just SO FUN!
after we wrapped up i stopped at starbucks, had some water, and cooled down. glen was about to get off work so i talked him into getting dinner with me - i feel like i havent seen him all summer and we WORK TOGETHER! we had good food but our waitress was crap. she moved slower than molasses and was kind of a jerk. no bueno.
now im home with my feet up because my left foot looks like a sausage. bleh. :/
we started painting yesterday and finished the whole hallway and the bathroom, too. they look fantastic - it feels like a whole new house! unbelievable. we'll be prepping the rest of the house this week and painting everything else at our "painting party" monday (and tuesday if we dont finish) and i CAN NOT WAIT! i cant wait for the whole project to be done.
after the shower, we'll be putting the nursery together!! i cant believe bella is going to be here in 8 weeks, or less!! (or, er, maybe more, but i really hope not!)
im so excited to meet her!
now to rest/elevate my kankles for a while, then a shower, and then off to bed.
so far this pregnancy i've been really lucky to not have experienced very much swelling, even in the hottest parts of the summer.
for some reason though, the past few days have been an exception to that. yesterday and today after work my feet have been SO puffy - specifically my left foot/ankle (i prop my right foot up a lot at work to relieve pressure on my sciatic nerve - pregnant or not, so i think that's why its mostly on my one side)...
so i came home, put my feet up, took a nap. when i woke up, my feet (foot!) was still pretty swollen, but not nearly as bad. now it at least doesnt LOOK like my foot belongs to a totally different person, but it still feels gross. so i bought a bag of epsom salts and am going to give soaking my feet a try - even if it doesnt reduce the swelling, it will feel awesome on my aching feet!!
i love epsom salts, actually! i used to use them all the time to make my own bath salts (adding fragrance and color, etc) when i was younger. if you've never tried them, you should!! although i am a HUGE fan of the original mr.bubble brand bubble bath, using epsom salts is actually much better for you if you take a bubble bath regularly. and its so so good for sore muscles and feels great on your skin too. recently, ive realized how much i LOVE baths and how stress relieving and calming they are - mentally and physically - and i was thinking about how i never really take the time to take a bath. and no one i know really does either - so if youre feeling tired or stressed or just in need of a good pampering - turn of the tv, grab a book, and go run yourself a nice hot bath. for an added perk - dump some epsom salts into the water (you can get them anywhere for about $1 a pound.)
do it. indulge. and enjoy...
in other news, my dog seems to be reverting back to his days of puppy-hood...
when i first got atreyu i lived in an apartment with a roommate. and i took him EVERYWHERE. and i mean everywhere. my bathroom was connected to my bedroom, so when i would shower, i would shut my bedroom door and leave him in there so that atreyu couldnt get into any trouble - but soon i realized that while he wasnt getting into trouble necessarily, he was crying and screaming when he was left alone and i was in the shower...so i started bringing him into the bathroom with me and he would lay on the floor on his blanket while i was in the shower and be perfectly content.
atreyu is almost five now and doesnt care what i do anymore, he never feels that NEED to be where i am; he's pretty independent. when i first got pregnant, he got even more distant. he stopped sleeping on the bedroom floor, as a matter of fact, he would hardly come into the room at all. he wouldnt get on the couch or come near me very much - i assume because he could tell i was pregnant and he knows im the alpha? it was pretty interesting to watch. but recently, and the closer it gets to bella's arrival, the more his attitude seems to be changing toward me, again. he's relaxed a little bit. he sleeps in the bedroom more. he lays beside me if im on the couch. and the real funny thing, the thing that makes me say he's acting like a puppy again, is anytime im in the shower he comes into the bathroom and sticks his head in the shower. he used to do that all the time when he was little - like he was trying to figure out what i was doing. and it was funny to watch, because he doesnt really like water very much. but no matter where i go, he's started "checking on me" and following me around.
i think that he is going to make a great nanny! and i just love his big dumb head so much!!
in other news - i havent seen my husband in almost a week. :/ he's working his second double in a row right now and both yesterday and today i had to leave for work before he got home. working opposites all the time kind of sucks.
and tomorrow is my fifth day of work in a row. i have to open, again. and i have to work 8 hours. ugh. im dreading it. its getting really really hard for me to keep up with my responsibilities at work, especially when its busy like it was this past weekend. its bike week, our last big hoorah (except for sunfest, when i WON'T be working, because its my baby shower!) the business on the weekdays has already died down so much. we have pumpkin spice back. all things say its almost fall...my favorite time of year! i can't wait. so many exciting things to look forward to this year!
i had big plans of writing a decent length blog post tonight.
i also had plans of working on my book.
and for going through all of my photos and picking out a selection to print, frame and hang around the house.
i did that, at least. and i cleaned out my closet. and did two loads of laundry. and cooked dinner. i wrote a few emails. and now, as im sitting down to recap on my day and talk about a few random thoughts that have been spinning through my head today, ive decided im a little too tired. and my back hurts a little too much. so instead im flaking on my blogging plans and going to take a nice hot shower and going to bed. work comes early when work comes at 5am.
as many of you know, i've been to labor and delivery twice during this pregnancy (because the symptoms happened after typical office hours). once was in july because i was having really awful stomach pains which turned out to be some overworked muscles. it was at that point that i had to start working a little bit less and a little bit less intensely, too.
the second time was about three weeks ago because i was dizzy and my resting pulse rate was 120 and holding, even after laying down for an hour. the doctor i saw at L&D said that it would be a good idea to keep an eye on the palpitations to see what happens. it could be "just pregnancy" or it could be something else.
i had a regular appointment a few days later and talked to my doctor about being seen and L&D and she suggested i "keep track" of how often the palpitations are happening and for how long and suggested that if it kept up i would be referred to a cardiologist to get checked out.
at my appointment today, the doctor asked how my palpitations have been. i told her that the racing heart feeling has been happening pretty frequently, mostly when im not doing anything at all. my heart will just jump to 120 or more and hang out there for anywhere from fifteen minutes to a few hours before just coming back down on its own - and that sometimes i would just wake up that way out of a dead sleep. i also told her about this "other thing" ive been noticing, which is that sometimes when im laying down, my heart will just start beating really really HARD - not fast, just hard and it makes my body feel like its shaking and it makes me feel winded, like im short of breath and i have to sit up or get up and walk around to feel better.
so, she decided it would be a good idea to send me to see a cardiologist so they could do a "complete work up" including an EKG and hook me up to a heart monitor. she said that things like this can happen and be "normal" for some women during pregnancy, but its still worth getting checked out. ive had palpitations occasionally in the past, not to mention the fact that both my mom and grandmother have arrhythmia, which makes me predisposed to having one also and that in a lot of women, pregnancy is the arrhythmia trigger. so...that's that.
so, thats the plan. i go to see a cardiologist. they tell me what they think. we go from there. the doctor (today) said they might find nothing, or they might find an arrhythmia that requires a beta blocker for the rest of my pregnancy. they are also checking my thyroid, which can also be the culprit.
:/
all in all, a little stressful but bella is healthy and all that scary "what if" heart stuff aside, im still feeling pretty great! i hardly have any swelling. im still working a lot (and feeling good enough to do so). the season is finally slowing down and im backing off on my schedule at work, slowly but surely. we're starting to get everything ready at the house too! our "spring clean" is under way in stages and we're picking out paint this week!
and for the record, im not drinking caffeine anymore! (and haven't been for a while, not just because of my heart!)
so, GPA has been asked by the atlantic hotel to be the featured artist for september's 'second friday' which is an arts night in berlin. the exhibit is a portrait exhibit and raye has asked me to pick two portraits to submit.
... no pressure.
i guess its fair to say that i get a little stressed out in situations like these. its not that i dont think my work is good, its just that (because im hyper critical of myself) i never think any of my work is good ENOUGH.
so, ive spent the last two plus hours looking through what photos i DO have (since my hard drive is temporarily out of commission) trying to come up with some that i like enough to go over with raye so that we can pick something...these are just a few of my favorites:
...and about 50 more!! but im no closer to deciding on a second photo (i think i've decided on one for sure.)
in other news, its labor day weekend and we were slammed at work today. i spend seven straight hours on the bar making drinks and i have to say that for as much as i love being busy behind the bar, i'm glad that this weekend is our last really busy weekend because i, for one, am ready for a break. granted, being seven months pregnant makes it harder to work behind that bar, i think i would feel the same at the end of this summer, pregnant or not.
now, its time for a[nother] hot (wonderfully relaxing) bath and then bed!
today was just one of those days. i woke up in a funk.
but, mike was off work and so was i, which was the silver lining in my bad-mood-day. he was sweet to me and tolerant of my im-too-tired induced state of grumpy.
he cooked breakfast, helped me clean up the yard, helped me sort through a tub of baby clothes that were given to us second hand, swept the floor, and did some laundry. then i decided that i was done being productive for the day and was ready to be lazy! sooo... we went for coffee and when we came home, mike pulled up videos of cute husky puppies to make me laugh. then we ate a little lunch, and watched the newest episode of haven that we'd recorded last night. all in all, even though i was tired, not feeling so hot, and kinda cranky, it hasnt been a bad day. and its so nice to just have some time to spend with him, uninterrupted by work.
now im here, looking up pictures and watching recorded re-runs of ghost whisperer, trying to ignore my backache, which isnt really working. what IS working [on my mood] is the smell of the dinner my amazing husband is cooking (steak and veggies on the grill)....and this:
im not taking credit for this shot, i actually grabbed it off of a mortgage company's website after googling images for 'rockport, ma'...
there's just something about new england - its quaint, charming, and beautiful. and sometimes [a picture of it] is exactly what i need to inspire me and improve my mood.
now its time to unwind with a good book in a hot bath to ease this spasm in my back - i cant think of a better way to wrap up this day.
'there is no need to go to india or anywhere else to find peace. you will find that deep place of silence in your room, your garden, or even your bathtub.' -elisabeth kubler-ross
