July 2008 Archives
Kind reader Erik sent me this and it's so fantastic I have to post about it immediately. Alas, the Flickr user doesn't allow people to blog his photos, so you'll have to click through to see for yourself. Trust me, you won't regret it.
2007 Kentucky State Fair Blue Ribbon-Winning Muppet Cake
One thing I guess I never explained here is how Brad and I came upon The Muppet as a descriptor for our progeny. It's one of those things that doesn't come through in blog form very well, but sometimes when I'm acting goofy, I apparently sound like a Muppet. You'll have to take Brad's word for it, I guess. So I guess that means I'm gestating a little Muppet-to-be. Many people in our lives have grown attached to the nickname The Muppet, although to tell you the truth, Brad and I more often refer to the fetus as Blobby (as that's about all it looked like at our 8-week ultrasound).
So there you go.
I kind of can't actually believe it, but I just made the last payment on my student loan.
Whoa.
Too bad I couldn't get this done before getting knocked up so I could actually do something frivolous with the extra money I'll have now! Looks like it will be going straight into a college fund for the Muppet. Darn responsibility.
Why is it that "three months pregnant" sounds like I'm so much farther along than if I say I'm 12 weeks pregnant?
This week I feel like I'm finally being delivered from the worst of the pregnancy symptoms. With each day that goes by painlessly, I tell myself that maybe it's just a good day and I shouldn't expect it to last. But so far, it seems to be lasting.
My belly is reaching that stage where I'm starting to get some looks, and several coworkers have commented that I'm showing. It won't be long now before I look unquestionably pregnant. It's also rounding out and firming up so that it feels less like a paunch and more like there's actually something in there.
These are all good things.
It's getting me thinking that I need to start working on the house and on some of the other things we need to get done pre-baby (like some financial planning). Neither one of us is very handy or very excited about doing any work on the house. Unless some nesting instinct kicks in, it will be an act of sheer willpower. But I keep telling myself that it'll be a lot less miserable to get it done in the next few months rather than when I'm whale-like.
This weekend I have an out, though. Brad's getting his wisdom teeth pulled on Friday, so we'll probably spend most of the weekend watching Dr. Who and eating soft foods rather than moving furniture and organizing closets. Way to take one for the team, Brad.
mental_floss on the origins of 10 of your favorite Muppets.
My favorite bits:
- The first Kermit was made out of Henson's mom's coat and some ping pong balls.
- Real Swedish Chef Lars "Kuprik" Backman claims he was the inspiration for the Swedish Chef. (This claim has apparently never been corroborated).
- The voice of Oscar the Grouch said he based Oscar's cranky voice on a particular NYC cab driver he once had the pleasure of riding with.
, originally uploaded by AMK.
I haven't been on many neighborhood walks this spring and summer due to pregnancy blahs, but I've started taking a few walks lately. I missed out on the early season flowers, but luckily haven't missed out on the thistles.
Thistles always remind me of the Hans Christian Anderson story The Eleven Swans, about a princess whose eleven brothers were transformed into swans. She spins flax out of thistles and makes eleven shirts for them out of the flax, which will turn them back into princes.
The story captivated me not so much because of the story itself, but because the book I had was illustrated with such marvelous watercolors. I don't have that book anymore, nor can I find any evidence of that edition on the internet. I still remember a page with midnight blue sky and eleven swans flying through a pine forest. I loved that picture so much, I painted a copy of it in 7th grade which, like the book, I don't have anymore.
Brad and I carpool to work. We've been doing this since last September when he broke his collarbone and was incapable of driving for a few months. By the time he could drive again, we'd fallen into a routine. Besides, our second car was a 1991 Honda Civic without a working heater or air conditioner. And no airbags. After Brad had already dealt with one broken bone, I didn't feel right making him drive an unsafe (and uncomfortable) car. And there was no way I was going to go from the 2007 Honda Civic to the 1991 one, especially in the bitter Minnesota winter. So we donated the car and have gotten by just fine with one car ever since.
And all of that is relevant because the fact that we carpooled to work yesterday was not in any way unusual.
Yet I left work a little late last night, happily listening to a story on public radio as I drove, pulled into my garage and sat there for ten minutes to hear the end of the story I was listening to, and then my phone rang. It was Brad. Wondering where I was.
I had left my husband stranded at work.
Let's just hope that in several months you aren't hearing about me on the news as one of those neglectful mothers who left her baby on top of the car and drove off, or something.
Back in the spring, I got all my containers prepared for flower planting and it turned out I didn't have enough flowers to fill all the containers I had ready. So I had two planters that just had dirt in them, and I was planning to buy some more flowers the next weekend.
The next weekend, I found out I was pregnant. I had already started to feel a bit tired, but by the time I found out, I was exhausted. Work was busy and I was reeling with my news and planting flowers was the last thing on my mind.
Time went by and I still didn't have any flowers planted, but I noticed two distinctly different crops of weeds were growing in my two containers. One batch of weeds was particularly interesting, so I decided to just keep an eye on them.
A couple of weeks ago, the weeds had grown so big and so interesting that I decided to weed out the other kinds of weeds from the container, start watering them, and see what they developed into.
In the last few days, they've started developing something that looks like large flower buds. I was starting to suspect that perhaps they were some volunteer sundials, as the foliage looked similar.
But then I noticed tiny tendrils were growing, and on the ends of a few of these tiny tendrils were some minuscule purple flowers.
I'm now stumped. Every day I come home from work and check on my weeds to see if they'll ever reveal what they actually are. They've quickly become much more interesting than the flowers I intentionally planted. I can only hope there will be a satisfying conclusion to this cultivation conundrum.
My department has worked with a particular sales rep from printing company for the last several years. We see or talk to him pretty often, and he's kind of a goofball so we've developed a camaraderie with him. He does things like call one of us and ask to be put on spearkerphone so he can tell us some groanworthy knock-knock joke. Or arrive at our office and make a dramatic entrance as the elevator is opening because he knows we can see the elevator on the security camera.
So he called my coworker yesterday and she told him that I'm pregnant. He asked to be put on speakerphone and said congratulations. "Oh," I said, "I thought you were going to tell a knock-knock joke about babies."
My other coworker piped up: "That would be a knocked-up joke!"
It's a party! A sandwich party!
Brad and I were planning to have some friends over on Saturday and as I tried to come up with ideas for food, it occurred to me: it's Sandwich Party weekend. So we bought twice as many sandwich fixins as we actually needed and everyone concocted their own sandwiches.
Naturally, I liked mine the best (that's the beauty of being able to make your own, I guess).
Take two slices of marble rye. Cover one slice with roasted red pepper hummus, and the other with an olive tapenade:
Top with tomatoes, sliced cucumbers, provolone cheese, and some iceberg lettuce (for crunch):
Don't forget the pickle:
I was inspired to make this sandwich after having made a lot of olive hummus lately. I wasn't in the mood to actually cook anything, and I haven't found any place that sells olive hummus, so I tried the hummus plus olive tapenade compromise. It was fantastic. I will definitely be making this sandwich again.
[Seriously, they're making a sequel to Sisterhood of the Traveling Pants? I guess Hollywood has finally run out of ideas.]
