An announcement.

Wondering about my long absence? Blame morning sickness. 

(That’s right! We are having a baby!)

We got through the first trimester with only a prescription for Zofran. That was our only intervention.

The second trimester has not been so easy.

Thursday, at 16 weeks 4 days, I began to have breakthrough bleeding while I was at work. Needless to say, I was terrified. My sweet friend Robin drove me (sobbing, shaking, unable to speak) to the ER and they immediately scheduled me for a battery of blood tests and an ultrasound.

After a tense few hours this is what we knew: the baby was fine – strong heartbeat, movement in the ultrasound. The bleeding was slowing down but hadn’t stopped.

What we didn’t know, however, was why it had started in the first place.

I was discharged from the ER in the early afternoon and put on strict bed rest (except for to go see my OB) for the rest of the weekend.

The next day at the OB, they did more tests and another ultrasound.

Turns out, I had a subchorionic bleed (meaning there was an accumulation of blood within the folds of the outer fetal membrane, next to the placenta or within the layers of the placenta itself) and I now have a 5cm blood clot in my uterus that is supposed to dissolve in the next 4 weeks or so.

So that means: more bleeding to come. It also means I am on modified bed-rest until my 22 week ultrasound (that’s right… 6 weeks) when they can determine if the clot has dissolved or not. I am allowed to go to and from work, but when I’m not there I am supposed to be sitting or laying down (read: can’t chase after 2 year old, can’t cook or clean house, can’t even pick Parker up).

I’m having a really hard time with all of this, to be honest. My bravery is wearing thin and I’m starting to feel flat-out sad. It’s hard to feel like your own body is betraying you. That might sound dramatic, but here’s some real talk: we are not out of the woods yet. We are praying like crazy and hoping for the best, but there are still risks and hurdles we have to get over before we can start congratulating ourselves on a new addition to our family. So now I’m afraid to be happy or excited because I’m too scared.

Sorry for the vent session – I knew you all would understand. Prayers and words of encouragement are appreciated J

Thursdays are the worst day of the week.

In honor of Thursdays. Which suck.

Also, be sure to check out this video. 

I always tell my work wife that I'm never happy until Thursday after lunch, when I can finally see the light at the end of the tunnel.  

And this week will be no exception. 

140 Characters or Less

That's right... tonight, we're talking Twitter.

For those of you that know me, you know that I am a huge Twitter fan. I like being able to keep up with friends near and far, I think it's great when people know to use Twitter instead of sharing every moment of their lives on Facebook (I call those people that FGATs.... As in, "I don't want to know that you just ate a sandwich for lunch, F-ing Get A Twitter already!"), and I am compelled to keep up with the daily lives of certain celebrities and quasi-celebrities (Kim Zolciak, I am talking about you!).

I got to thinking the other day... it's actually kind of telling what people choose to post in the mere 140 characters they have on Twitter to share their thoughts, fears, ideas, apprehensions, jokes, anxieties, sarcasms, rants, etc. Then I also got to thinking how much my life has changed since I got my Twitter account way back in 2009 (did we even have blogs then?), and I decided to post what I feel are my Twitter "Greatest Hits," the 140 or less character posts that most define me.

So here we go...

2009

Mustangs, Camaros, and Chargers should have an application process that includes rules about max age and min attractiveness

My obsession with True Blood and Big Love is super complicated by the fact that I'm too cheap to pay for HBO. Something's gotta give.

Is it a false sense of accomplishment that I'm totally proud I can read all the French on my shampoo bottle?

My T9 Word is finally starting to understand me... today when I tried to type "hottie" it autocorrected to "hogtie" instead of "hoagie."

Hello pot, meet kettle.

It's zero points if your boyfriend don't know.

Still waiting for that moment when all the annoying crap my parents do becomes endearing. Not there yet.

2010

"Miss Truvy, I promise that I will not let my personal tragedy interfere with my ability to do good hair."

All I do is clean. Literally all the time. I just invent things that need cleaning.

Best and worst part of music? When you suddenly realize you know exactly how the person who wrote the  song was feeling when they wrote it.

Let's play a little game called respect is a two-way street.

Scrubbing bathrooms and Braxton-Hicks Contractions... Starting the day off right? Next in my exciting life: Vacuuming!

Full moon tomorrow night. You know what that means. Fingers crossed, people.

2011

Twitter is my passive-aggressive outlet and I'm not sorry. Too many grown-ups are my Facebook friends so that doesn't fly anymore.

Process, not content. Process, not content.

My favorite part of the day is rocking you to sleep.

He is my light, my strength, my song.

No one else could ever mean half as much to me as you do now.

I am a to-do list addict.

I like to think I have a design vision, but really I just watch too much HGTV.

Don't need your approval, but some support would be nice.

2012


Someone text me and remind me to schedule Parker's pictures. My brain is more like a screen door than a sponge at this point.

It's only a bad day if I let it be.

Things I worry about: If you won't kill a spider, will you protect us from bad guys? Time to invest in Orkin and ADT.

As my mentor says, "Jesus be a fence around me."

Just a little post to say...

... that I am pretty (totally, completely, insanely) in love with my men.

It's the absent-Hubby Shuffle!

Left to my own devices, I get bored. When I am bored, I often decide to do radical things "just for fun." Case in point: tonight, I decided to chop almost all of my hair off.

It started like this:

Here is me with my Papa.

See, nice and long. And a few (thousand) snips later (no, for those of you who are wondering, I did NOT attempt to cut my own hair. My lovely MIL did it for me), it looked like this:

So what do you think?! Big shock right? At first, I was like that too. My initial reaction was something like this:

And it took me a minute to decide if I actually liked it. While contemplating I looked something like this:

And then I realized I LOOOOVED IT! It's cute, and easy to take care of an super versatile. Check this out:

I can pull it back

It's even cute when it's a little messy

And I can make that goofy "I'm-taking-my-own-photo-for-my-blog-let-me-suck-my-cheeks-in-unnaturally" face NO PROBLEMO

So what do y'all think?

For another absent-Hubby inspired transformation, go check out my work wife's blog HERE. She is doing something super groovy to her hair as we speak! 

Confession: Nicknames

I have a bad habit that I want to confess to. I give people nicknames. And I take my time choosing them, because they have to fit just right.

Here’s another thing:  When I choose them, they stick. Like, if I meet you once and give you a nickname because of something I notice about you, and then we later become friends, I will secretly (and by secretly I mean to myself and my husband… and a select few friends who understand my bad habit) always refer to you by your nickname, not by your real name.

And I want to take a minute and say to all of you: I’m sorry.

I’m sorry, Bubba, that you were the fifth Megan on my soccer team in 5^th grade and you needed a nickname for Coach’s yelling purposes that had nothing to do/sounded nothing like “Megan.”

I apologize, Jiggy, that you happened to start/be really excited about Irish dance the year I met you. I’m also sorry that I called you Jiggy in front of your fiancé last year when I randomly saw you at a fall festival after not having seen you since 7^th grade.

Forgive me, Mannequin (aka Manny/Quinn, depending on who was around and was in on the joke), for noticing one day in high school that the DAY after American Eagle put up a new mannequin at the mall, you were always wearing the exact outfit that the mannequin was, even though you were nowhere near the standard mannequin size of 2 and some of those low-rise jeans looked like they were being eaten by your tushie. Really I was probably jealous that my mom wouldn’t buy all of my clothes from the trendy stores, but that’s for another post. Another marathon post.  (Oh and another thing: I’m sorry I nicknamed your boyfriend Dancing Queen. But let’s be fair… you chose to date a boy who lettered in Dance Team.) (I shouldn’t say things like that since I lettered in Academics and Choir… *cough* GEEK.)

Mea culpa, Mail Order Bride, that you met/cybered (ok -- we were all in middle school once, we ALL know what that means) your now-husband ON FACEBOOK while he was Facebook-officially “In a Relationship” with someone else. I’m sorry, but that’s trashy.

Point of Order, Jack (name that movie, y’all): I’m not really sorry RE: Mail Order Bride.

And finally, I beseech you, Joseph, Kia, and FTP, to forgive those of us who came up with your nicknames because of the fact that our small colony of cubes makes it impossible for us to ignore your idiosyncrasies.

So there. I said it. Still love me? 

Craigslist: I love you, I love you not...

I love you…

… for finding awesome, nice, really-in-need people to buy our extra washer and dryer, and for the fact that they didn’t haggle me to death.

… for being an online site where I can browse cheap furniture to fill the voids in my home caused by going from an 1250 square foot home to a 2600 square foot home.

… for providing endless entertainment for my (childish) husband and I when we read Casual Encounters to each other in a sexy voice, just to see who breaks character first.

… for the way you provide things right when I need them, like a home last June, or a jogging stroller yesterday…

Which brings me to…..

I love you NOT…

… for allowing married to post in the personals ad seeking “discreet” second relationships. Gross.

… for The Craigslist Killer. Seriously, Lifetime Movie Network, why did you have to do that to me? Now every time I’m selling something and people are coming to look at it, I’m also acutely aware of where the nearest baseball bat/knife/heavy-object –that-I-can-turn-into-a-weapon is.

To protect the (not-so) innocent, this is not the jogging stroller in question.

… for the woman I had to deal with today RE: aforementioned jogging stroller. So here’s the backstory: I want a jogging stroller because I have some baby jiggle around the middle yet to lose, and I just moved to a street that has a butt-kicking hill that I can burn some major calories (read: I eat Nutella every day)on. So I logged onto Craigslist yesterday at work, checked under the “baby&kids” section, and VIOLA, there it was, a $30 jogging stroller.  So I text the woman who is selling it (her request, not mine… I would have rather made a phone call, but ok, jogging-stroller-owner, we’ll play it your way). She is super standoffish when I ask if she is ever in Charlottesville, and waits a full 12 hours to text me back and tell me, “You can pick it up today if you want, but I won’t hold it. It’s first-come first-served.” Which is followed two hours later by one word: “Sold.”  Um, excuse me? I know for a FACT that I responded first to your ad, since I texted you less than 30 minutes after you posted it – so have a little bit of sales integrity and don’t sell it to the first person who can get to you.  Especially since the reason I don’t have much time to work out (aka I need to be able to take my baby with me when I work out and not pay for a gym membership AND childcare at said gym) BECAUSE I WORK ALL DAY. I do not have time to drive 25 miles in the middle of the day to get your stroller. I was temped to text her right back and say, “Well that was rude of you. I was going to give you $50 for it.” Instead, I decided to take the high road and vent via this blog instead. Though I would be lying if I said I didn’t stick out my tongue at my cell phone in a not-so-nice way.