Life Lately: #5

Hey look, it stopped raining for half a minute.

Reading: The Residence: Inside the Private World of the White House. It's interesting so far, not quite what I expected but entertaining nonetheless. Mostly it's full of anecdotes, in no particular order, about various presidents and their wives/children. The one main thing being drilled into my head while reading this is the fact that White House staff members are extremely private, and it's like pulling teeth to get them to talk about their jobs, let alone tell stories (good or bad) about the presidents and families they've served. While I am on board with not speaking badly in public about your employer (especially if you're still employed), I'm also having a tough time believing that people like the Clintons were mostly peaches and cream to deal with. I guess I was hoping for the information to be a little more juicy and deep, and not just story after story of "every President is ahh-maaaaaaazing as an employer and we just looooooooove them!" Because...yeah, right.

Watching: "Lock Up: Women Behind Bars" on Netflix. Bitches be crazy, y'all.

Listening to: I cannot get enough of Closer by The Chainsmokers/Halsey. It's been on repeat over here and even though it's full of cheesy lines, I love it. It's a good driving song, too, which is perfect because it comes on the radio at least once every day on my drive home from work.



Wearing: Anything that will fit my growing stomach. I think this kid/my uterus must have some very distinct growth spurt days, because sometimes I feel perfectly normal and barely notice my stomach...other days (like today) I'm so uncomfortable, it's tight and crampy, and all I can think about all day are my sweatpants, sitting at home by the side of my bed, calling to me.

Smelling: The gas station across the street. There is nothing worse. I start smelling it between 1 and 2pm almost every single day and it gives me a headache and makes me nauseated and I spend the last two and a half hours at work alternating between breathing into my shirt's neckline and the bottom of my sleeve.

Eating: LOTS of hardboiled eggs. I'm finding it a little difficult to get enough protein without either a ton of eggs or supplementing with protein powder, since most meat still sounds disgusting and lunch meat is off the table. Good thing I like eggs. Also, on a related note, I finally found a foolproof way to make hardboiled eggs, so if you're interested, let me know and I'll share. I've made a batch of 8-10 eggs every single week for the last two-ish months and have only ruined them once, and it was completely my fault.

Loving: That Target sells (and ships!) these metal carts, somewhat akin to the IKEA carts that everyone knows about and loves. Since we don't have an IKEA here, and they won't ship to Alaska either, I was thoroughly thrilled to find a Target alternative. They don't sell them in any fun colors (gray and white only) but I was happy enough to find them in general, so the gray is fine with me.

Not Loving: When grandparents die, and you're 99% sure they weren't born again when they passed away. It's just so much more sad, even if you weren't all that close to them.

Annoyed with: Some family situations that are presently draining my mental energy. Not the aforementioned grandparent situation...just some other stuff that isn't immediately resolving itself and it's kind of getting me down.

Creating: Nothing at the moment, but I think I might attempt something like this. I'm trying to determine whether or not I have the patience for it. 

Wanting: To know if these little flutters I've been feeling for the last few days are baby kicks, or just my intestines shifting around. They're in the same general area every time, they feel...different...than gas bubbles or stomach rumblings, and while they've mostly only been happening in the mid-afternoons while I'm sitting at my desk at work, I felt the same little wiggly feeling last night while watching television. I'm almost 19 weeks along, so...maybe?

Laughing at: This graphic I found online (for the life of me, I can't remember where). I can't say I'm mad at a lot of the things that President (whut?) Trump has done in the first few days of his tenure, but I'm also in favor of calling things like I see them, and the "alternative facts" comment from Kellyanne Conway was, in a nutshell, asinine. Therefore, I found this to be quite hilarious:

Feeling: Overall okay, just uncomfortable, as previously mentioned. And also ready to quit my job like...yesterday. 

Hoping: That Isaiah can get a little bit of time off before this kid is born so we can take a trip to Seattle to see my mom and go on a hike near Mt. Rainier that we've been drooling over. Of course they're already short handed at the department, and now two more people are quitting (with nobody new hired, by the way) and they've all been informed by their lieutenant that "no more leave requests will even be considered until we figure out our staffing situation." Furthermore, they should all expect to work a lot of overtime over the next few months. Boo hiss, and I can't think about it too much or I will angry cry.

Anticipating: The return of The Husband this weekend. He's been in Las Vegas for a work training since Sunday, and the days until Saturday when he gets home have been ddddrrrraaagggiiinnnggg. It's been a struggle not to just eat pints of ice cream for dinner. 

I have things to say about this whole "pregnancy" business.

+ I always knew I had a somewhat small bladder, but holy crap. The last week or two, I've actually started to get a legit baby bump (freaking finally), which naturally is making me have to pee more often. Here's the problem, and why that's especially annoying: Sometimes I have to pee SO BAD, so I go to the bathroom, and then all of ten seconds later, I'm finished. I feel like there should be a whole lot more liquid in there than that, but no. Ten seconds and I'm done, and 30 minutes later I have to do it all over again. Darn you, tiny bladder and increased water intake.

+  When I was a kid, I loved cow milk...I loved it so much that my mom eventually had to turn into the legit milk police and limit me to one cup of milk per meal, otherwise I would go through gallons a week. Then, as I got older, milk somehow turned disgusting to me. I couldn't even stomach the taste of it in my mouth unless it was baked into a cake or something. I haven't had an actual glass of milk in at least a decade, probably longer. Until this morning. I was starving, I ran out of Greek yogurt, I had a bag of granola stashed in my desk drawer and there was a half gallon of 2% milk in the fridge at work, and I thought...what the heck, I'll try it. At least there's protein in milk, right? I figured I could choke it down for the baby.

I have never tasted anything so good in my life. After years of utterly despising that nasty, fatty, milky taste in my mouth, I ate my granola and DOWNED the rest of the milk and had a brief moment where I even considered going back for seconds. I managed to find my self control so I didn't finish the rest of that community container of milk intended for coffee, and I probably won't make a habit of swapping my usual almond milk for cow milk any time soon, but I'm still in shock over this situation.

+ Maternity jeans are life. For the last few weeks, I've just been using the rubberband trick while still wearing my regular jeans. I could have continued doing that, but they were starting to dig into my stomach and cause some serious pain after sitting at my desk at work for any length of time. Cue the maternity jeans. I bought this pair by H&M for half price on eBay (brand new!) and glory hallelujah, I can breathe again and I don't have permanent indents in my waistline from seams and buttons. I should have started wearing them two weeks ago.

+ I'm finally over that hump of feeling just plain old fat and out of shape, praise the Lord. It's been a rough month. Everyone tells you to just embrace it, it won't last, your body's going to change shape anyway so might as well get used to it, yadda yadda, but I've worked HARD for the last two years to get into really good shape. We're talking strict eating habits, going to the gym regularly, reuniting with the treadmill, hiking for miles and miles on mountain after mountain, and so on and so forth. Working that hard to be happy with your body and then suddenly gaining weight and not being able to do jack squat about it is like working for two years to declutter your home, changing your shopping habits, sticking to a strict cleaning schedule, and then having someone bring a truckload of trash to your house, dump it in your living room and say, "There's nothing you can do about this, just get used to it! Embrace it! Live with it! It's for the baby!" Not fun, especially with first trimester sickness and being simultaneously so nauseated and so tired that eating right and working out are not even in the realm of possibility.

But I'm doing better now. I'm working out, I'm back to eating the way I (mostly) like to eat, and these maternity jeans have the added bonus of slimming my waistline while simultaneously making my belly look like there's actually a baby in there, not like I've been eating Thanksgiving dinner every night.

+ I honestly would like to know how people have the patience to wait to find out their baby's sex until it's born. I've been having to stop myself from even looking at baby clothes online, because most gender neutral stuff is not that cute, and it's pointless to shop when we won't know for another couple of weeks what we're having. It's hard when you know your baby has been a boy or girl since the moment of conception, but you have to wait FIVE MONTHS to find out whether he is a he or she is a she.

+ Confession: I am absolutely terrified - terrified - of somehow getting diastisis recti. My stomach and abs (ahem, or lack thereof) have always been the area of my body I've been most self conscious of, and I am paranoid that after the baby is born, I won't be able to go back to working out like I was before. I am paranoid that my abs are going to split apart completely and I'll forever look six months pregnant.

I'm not worried about giving birth. I'm worried about what's going to happen afterward.

+ Confession #2: This might be the most ridiculous baby "must have" that I have ever seen. Whatever did parents do before they had a $165 cushion to lay their baby on!? And don't forget the cover! That'll only run you another $60, turning this into a $200+ miniature mattress. Eyerolls for days, not sorry about it.

It's a good thing minimalism is somewhat popular these days because I don't get as many weird looks when I say that no, we're not buying a swing or Boppy pillow and no, we're not buying a crib and a changing table and a dresser and no, we're not planning to buy $60 crib sheets or $50 baby moccasins and no, we're not buying a stupid Dock-a-Tot.