a whole year

it will be clay's birthday on thursday! i can't believe he'll be a whole year old! where did the time go?

never a dull moment...

not at my house. this week, things got a little crazy. the pressure tank wasn't working right, and the pressure built up in an outside line and water backed up into our basement. we had over a foot of water in there.

we were able to get it taken care of, but when i called the well guy, he told us to turn off the power so the pump would stop working. i did, this; however, it presented another problem, because i had been working on a huge project for school -- which was due the next day. so i had to work by the light of a kerosene lamp. remember when i said something about being amish and the life being quaint and it might be nice not to have to depend on electricity? a kerosene lamp is about as brilliant as a 60 watt bulb. not very. not so quaint.

and when the well guy came two hours later, it was determined that the pump was running on the fuses down in the basement, and it was still going.

however, i was not going to mess with the fuses while standing in a foot of water. something told me this would not be a good idea.

i let him do it. :P

we eventually got it sorted out. and the problem turned out to be cheaper than i thought, although the basements a bit of a mess. there was only dirt behind the cellar stairs, and that caved in, so there's like a thick layer of mud down there now. *sigh*

i like old houses. i think we should cut a hole in our pantry floor and make an access point to the basement from there - and close up the outside entrance. or at least not use it.

anyway, that was our adventure for the week. thankfully, since it was an old and musty basement, with dirt floors, we didn't store anything down there. :) so nothing was wrecked ... save for several hundred spider webs. :P

spooky

i think the bathroom at work is haunted. i was in there today... that is to say i was the ONLY one i there, and the faucet on the far left went on for no reason at all (i was at the far right). right after that, the toilet flushed. and there was no one in the stall.

i half expected the mirrors to fog up and some creepy message to appear. i think i've been watching too many stupid movies.

but if for some reason, i have a bizarre, unexplainable death, and am found in the bathroom at work, you know what happened (that is if you've watched too many stupid movies, too).

lol.

pondering onions

my hands smell like fried onions, because i fried up onions and mushrooms with perogis today for lunch. perogis are the best. i get them from schwan's. :)

but i was also late getting out the door for work and didn't bring a lunch. so the fried onion smell is killing me, because i'm starving.

i wonder if i have onion breath? i suppose the only way to tell is if people back away when i talk to them. but my husband didn't say anything when i kissed him goodbye.

neither did clay. but then again, all he says, is "da-da" anyway. for him, da-da is an all encompassing word. i'm da-da, the cat's da-da, daddy is da-da, and the dogs are da-da. food is da-da too. he can say mama, but he doesn't want to. but he has.

well, anyway, i have to get back to work.

far out stuff

i've been on a sewing spree. i've made clay a few cloth nappies, and they are sooo much better than the pathetic cloth pre-folds you get at wal-mart.

but i think my husband is waiting for me to chain myself to an ancient redwood to save it from the loggers. he's afraid i'm turning into a hippy.

folk music, organic gardening, vegitarian cookbook, cloth nappies... i suppose he does wonder about me.

but... he liked the fresh vegetables. he liked the stuffed mushrooms i made (from the veg. cookbook), and he likes not throwing money away on disposable nappies.

so we've come to a compromise. we use cloth during the day (he's even agreed to use them while i'm at work, which he would NOT do before), and he wears disposables at night (for now).

but, we've cut down on trash, and saved money. so that's cool. and you know what else is cool? not being knocked over by horrific dirty diaper smell when you open the trash. so yeah, i do care about the environment, too. a tree hugging hippy. what could be worse? lol.

but no, nick, i'm not joining greenpeace, or dressing up like a giant chicken and handing out PETA pamphlets at the KFC.

so i think he loves me anyway, even if he thinks i'm a hippy. even if he thought it was funny when he saw a t-shirt on t.v. which read, "i hate hippies." he was watching the osbournes. go figure.

i could really get him going, though. i could make clay a miniature pair of bell bottoms out of some really wild polyester. with big, psychadelic colors. dude!

i'm almost done with work, and i'm off to the store for the unglamorous shopping trip of buying bread and toilet paper. i may use cloth diapers for my son, but you gotta draw the line somewhere. in my book, toilet paper is a perfectly legitimate reason to kill trees. so at least my husband doesn't have to worry about the possibility of re-usable t.p. :P not happening. period.

hope everyone has a good night. peace out, dudes (and dudettes).

when smart people do stupid things

my normally intelligent husband announced the other day that if we had more kids it would be "easier" if i just had another c-section.

easier on whom?

going back to the first post partum days with clay, i wouldn't call recovery from the c-section easy. when it hurts to move your stomach and you are trying to take care of a baby, its not easy.

it might have been easier on clay -- he wasn't squeezed through a vice like canal for hours.

then again, my kid was 10lbs... so yeah. maybe a c-section was perhaps, easier.

my friend amy pushed for ages and the baby wouldn't descend; whereupon they determined that the baby was too big and did a c-section anyway.

but i still think it would be easier to be normal. to go into normal labor, without any crap like pictocin or oxytocin or any i.v. junk for that matter.

just to be sitting around and all of the sudden say, "honey, its time!" just like in the movies.

and we get in our little car and race to the hospital and by the time i get there i'm at a 6 and everything progresses smoothly.

nope... next baby, i'm going to TRY and do it naturally. i want to do a water birth, because it's supposed to be easier for the mother - the water actually helps with the pain.

unfortunately, if i have another linebacker sized baby, i may not get my water birth.

and by the way, for all you readers. i'm merely commenting. i'm not preggers. however, everyone around me is, so i can't help thinking about it.

ah, the miracle of life

it was the last day of clinicals, and i finally saw a baby be born. i also saw my classmate pass out. apparently, seeing the woman's water be broken and seeing amniotic fluid splatter onto the doctor and narrowly miss her face was too much for her.

the mom didn't scream once and didn't have any drugs either -- completely natural. she was awesome. and men say women are the weaker sex? ha!

i'd like to see any man do that without screaming in abject misery. you should see my husband when he dislocates a finger.

try having certain parts of your body stretched say... oh about 10 centimeters? we are amazing creatures.

i just had to say it -- women rock. totally.

sad

just read a sad article on how, in some european countries, mentally/physically disabled children in children's homes are confined to cages for most of their lives because they are too "difficult" to manage. below is one of the saddest stories i've read, and i feel compelled to share it with you. i find it hard to believe that anyone could treat children this way. more disturbing is the fact that these are not isolated cases; it is quite common in some of these places.

however, there's a reason i'm posting this: there's another website you can visit, to write to the leaders of these countries, asking them to do something about these horrible conditions that the children are forced to live in.

the article: http://www.timesonline.co.uk/article/0,,8122-1145143,00.html (warning - very disturbing)

here is the website where you can speak out - http://www.mdac.info/cagebeds.htm

also, check out this website. http://www.chlg.info (i've also posted it in my links section)

- nora

my husband is cool

i love nick! yesterday, after clinicals, i stopped at the gas station and bought a pepperidge farm cake. i love those things. and... i don't have to bake them.

so i get home and find out that nick had already made dessert. it was this cool chocolate pudding, with some peanut butter swirled in, sprinkled with almonds. yummy! he is sooo cool! he made something for me just to be nice -- for no reason at all! i'm gonna have to let him experiment in the kitchen more often. this is too cool.

i love my hubby.

things are about to get interesting

well, just got informed by my boss that my job of 10 years is up in the air. apparently, they are laying people off again, and they aren't sure who's going this time. just about half of us. no sweat. *sigh*

so anyway, we can volunteer for a layoff, or we can re-apply and take another interview and go through a selection process.

i have no idea what i'm doing to do. i've applied at other places. but we have a mortgage.

and the jerks knew this was coming. last year, they decided that we would get our vacation pay at the end of the year (on our hire-date anniversary), not when we took vacation. well, guess what that means. since the job is done in december, and my start anniversary is in may, i won't get about 120 hours of vacation pay. how convenient for them.

and my boss advised me that two months was more than enough time to find another job, so our company did not expect to be paying any unemployement. they felt it was unnecessary, since we had so much time to get another job. right. how about it being unnecessary to pay some CEO a 6 figure salary and lay a bunch people off because he doesn't want to take a pay-cut?

however, it could be a blessing in disguise, as i could find a job closer and not have to drive as far. that would be nice. in fact, it would be brilliant. okay, aside from that, i'm depressed about the whole aspect of this.

so if i get laid off, i'm out like... $1400 or something like that of vacation pay. soooo... it will be an interesting year. guess we'll see what happens.

either way, we're going to england this christmas. just got the tickets. maybe we should stay there.

my little guy

here he is... this was awhile back; taken this summer. now he's even bigger. he weighed in at 20 lbs and is 31 inches tall! he's gonna be in the nba when he grows up. lol.