Bare belly shot?  Ain’t ever going to happen my friends.

My medical chart now officially says “Difficult”. My doctor was back to insisting on seeing me weekly and I was back to refusing. She finally said she would simply put in my chart that despite her advice, I refused to come in next week. Uh-oh. Do you think that will end up in my permanent record from high school? Everything looks good with the baby. Still no definite girl/boy shots but the quick view we had led my doctor to again speculate that it might be a girl.

I’ve been getting threats requests for one of those humiliating belly shots. I can’t believe I am going to do this on the internet but my sister has threatened to call my husband for one if she doesn’t see something soon. So for her and all of those emailing and saying “pretty please” here we go. I cropped it so no one can say I look “cute” or anything like that. I’m not fishing for compliments – I’m satisfying everyone’s curiosity. I’m turning into a whale and I don’t need the internets to tell me otherwise, m’kay? Thanks.

First, a shot to prove that when wearing my former fat clothes current “maternity” wear, I just look like I’ve been on a long ice cream sandwich bender.  This is 20 weeks and a couple of days:

Here is the money shot. I can’t guarantee how long I will leave these up so point and laugh while you can. (And I’ve never had an ass…it isn’t a pregnancy thing, just a sad piece of genetic code inherited from both of my parents. So the part sticking out would be the stomach not the butt as on normal folks.)

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Lastly, I do need an opinion from the great, wise internet realm. My husband has twice in the past 2 days mentioned that he needs to shed some of his winter pounds. While I support this endeavor, it bothers me to hear him discuss it. I’ve told him that I think it is insensitive when I am watching myself expand daily to discuss his desire to lose weight. He thinks I am being irrational because the discussion has nothing to do with me (doesn’t he know everything has to do with me when I am knocked up?). I say it just reminds me how out of control I feel over what is happening to my body. So, be honest, am I being silly for being sensitive about this or is he just not getting it?

Ms. Fussypants had a clip of a comedian poking fun at AC/DC today.  I told her to ask me about my first wedding AC/DC story next time we had dinner.  Thinking about it made me chuckle and I thought “What the heck, I don’t have anything else to post today!”

Let me set the scene a bit here.  About a decade ago, I married Mr. Wrong-For-Me.  Who knew?  Apparently everyone except me but that is another story entirely.  We did the whole shebang – big white dress, veil, cake and all.  We are both of Scottish descent so he wanted the guys to wear kilts.  The kilt thing was a little out of the ordinary in rural Ohio a decade ago.  I see more and more weddings with that theme now in my home town but hadn’t heard of many back then.

I have only one physical photo from the wedding – it is of my father and I.  My mom has one of her and I.  And I have a couple scanned on my laptop which is in the Geek Squad hospital.  I think my ex burned the rest.  But I scanned this one (ignore the poor quality – I have no idea how to use the scanner) to set the scene for you:

Trust me.  It is much funnier if you can picture me in full bridal regalia for the rest of the story.

For weeks, my ex was talking about going across the street from the reception hall to a favorite bar after the reception wound down.  I vetoed that idea – it was our wedding night!  But after a few bottles glasses of champagne, I told him if I could buy a pack of cigarettes, we could all go over to the bar.  (I had promised to quit on our wedding day.)  So he bought me smokes and the wedding party was off.  Girls in bridesmaid dresses, guys in kilts, me in the big white freaking dress and veil (it was superglued to my head with hairspray I think).   In we walk to a very casual sports bar – quite the site.

There was a band playing that night and the place was packed.  Everyone wanted to buy us drinks.  I was flat out drunk at this point.  My ex looked around and said to some friends “have you seen my wife?” and they pointed at the stage.  There I am, on stage with the band in front of a couple hundred people, in my wedding dress, beer in one hand, cigarette in the other, belting out AC/DC ‘You Shook Me All Night Long’ into the mic with the lead singer (I CAN NOT sing).  I’m the epitome of class, am I not?

My husband insists we should wear orange instead of green…but I didn’t grow up in an area that differentiated the catholic/protestant irish roots by color on St. Patrick’s Day.  I had never heard of such a thing until I married Steve…so I stick to green.  Sabrina allowed the headband to say on her head for almost 15 minutes – that must be a record of some sort!

Dear Ebay sellers:

I understand that the cost of shipping items has risen but let’s be reasonable here.  I am consistently finding that with your high starting bids and ridiculous shipping costs I could buy a similar item for less in the store on the sales rack and I could touch it and try it on before purchasing it.  Why would you believe that charging $10.00 to put one shirt in a manilla envelope is going to generate bids?

We have been happy together for many years.  It has been a win-win relationship.  You get rid of stuff you don’t need anymore and make a little cash.  I get stuff that I don’t need and save some money.   Why are you messing with our happy formula?

Signed,

Disappointed Frugal Girl who doesn’t want to spend a bunch of $$ on covering her expanding self

Dear PayPal:

I think it was rather sneaky of you to change my debit mastercard to echeck option without notifying me so that you could save the $.03 credit card fee.  I keep forgetting to change it back and had 3 transactions that I had to wait 7 days for the “check” to clear before my items were shipped.  Today when I remembered to change it back to credit card, you tried to talk me out of it.  I understand it is cheaper for you but it is more of a hassle for me and the sellers if we have to wait for funds to clear.  And we all love you for your hassle free transactions.  So knock it off or I’ll find another money man.

Signed,

The pregnant lady with not a lot to wear so don’t hold up my clothes while my “check” clears

As Sabrina gets older, I find myself missing some of the baby stuff. I miss her wanting nothing more than to cuddle in my lap (okay at the time I think I called her velcro baby and it might have gotten a little old – sue me). Now she is just way too busy to cuddle for more than 10 seconds unless she is really tired.

But there are some cool things that come with her getting older. I love that we can go for a family walk now. Steve, Sabrina, the dog and I all headed out for a walk yesterday afternoon. It was nice that she could walk most of the way herself. (At her pace it is more of a stroll.) It is also cool that she understands the things I say to her. If I make a simple request, she can comply – assuming she wants to. It is also great that she can, at least some of the time, find a way to communicate what it is that she wants.

But some of the ways she is asserting her independence make me a little nuts.  Each and every meal lasts 60-90 minutes.  Our apartment doesn’t have an open enough floor plan to allow me to accomplish much while she is restrained (I’m afraid she will choke if I can’t see her – it has happened twice so it isn’t just paranoid mommy) so I sit in a chair and watch the child eat for 3-5 hours a day.  I used to play on my laptop during that time but we all know what happened to that diversion.

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Still hunting for a house to rent.  My biggest problem is that the management companies don’t seem to want my business.  Phone calls aren’t returned and that doesn’t bode well for future assistance if we need maintenance.  I packed the first 2 boxes of this move last night.  I really wish we had less stuff.  But I like my stuff – it makes it home.   I keep telling myself this move will be easier because there is no basement full of crap and some of our stuff is still packed up in storage.

Think I need to call our realtor friend.  (No Sarcastic Mom, she doesn’t work for that company.  Trust me, I will steer clear.  Good luck on your move.)

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Like many women, I’ve struggled with my weight most of my life.  I reached a point where I was happy before I met my husband.  When we started trying to get pregnant, I put weight on again – partially from meds and partially from self-medicating with food.  After we began the adoption, I started to lose it.  Living in Antigua got me almost back to where I wanted to be.   Of course being pregnant and on bed rest for 3 months, I had to let go of a lot of my issues around that.  This week, I got out a box of my fat clothes and found I could wear many of them.  I’m not sure if I should be depressed from a vanity standpoint that I was that fat just a couple of years ago.  Or if I should be excited from a frugal standpoint that I have increased my wardrobe a bit without spending any money.

Sorry – no Sabrina cuteness today.  I’m not sure how to upload photos on my hubby’s computer.

I can now access my primary email but I don’t have my address book so I can’t email anyone – I can only reply.  I don’t even know if I can get into my blog feed reader yet…but I am trying to make myself at home on Steve’s big old clunky (but functioning and probably scarily powerful) desktop.

The good news in all of this is that when Steve bought the laptop (it was a first anniversary gift…may not sound romantic but when it is from a computer geek it doesn’t get any sweeter), he purchased the extended warranty.  So best case scenario is they fix my computer for free.  Worst case is they lose it or can’t fix it and I get credit toward a new one.  It is just painful in the interim having to share.  But I don’t imagine most families have a computer for every adult in the house so I guess I’ll just have to suck it up and deal.

Does anyone else find it a little ironic that the Geek Squad guy at the store couldn’t figure out how to change our phone number in the system and had to wait for another guy to show him how tomorrow?  Anyone want to take bets on whether or not I might have poked fun at him for that?

My beautiful, wonderful, lovely laptop is sick.  It has to go to the computer hospital tonight.  My computer genius husband claims that he doesn’t know anything about laptop hardware despite building his own desktop so I have to trust her with strangers.  Sigh…

And those of you who know me a bit, I can’t access my regular email right now.  That means I can’t respond to comments and anyone who wants to be in touch should use my yahoo address if you have it.  I will be reading comments though so I’m not out of touch.

Last night, our little group of N’ville mommy bloggers got together for dinner again.  And I enjoyed it even more this time around.  Yes, we talked about blogging and kids and husbands but we talked about non-mommy related things too.  It is a great group of diverse women.  We laughed.  We ate.  No one had to cut up anyone else’s food.  It was lovely.  We ended up spending 3 hours just hanging out and enjoying a little grown up time.  Thanks Alli for organizing!  I adore Sabrina but sometimes it is nice to recall that she isn’t a permanently attached appendage.

Speaking of Ms. Fussypants, I won a contest on her blog for a piece of her fabulous heirloom photo jewelry and got the goods last night.  I was so excited!  I adore it…now if only I could get Sabrina to leave it alone when I wear it!

And speaking of Miss Sabrina – ever since those couple of nice days we had last week, she is obsessed with going outside.  We’ve had a couple of near tantrums when she had brought me her coat and shoes and I’ve told her no we aren’t going anywhere.  Here is a picture of her this weekend waiting not-so-patiently for mommy and daddy to get everything together to go out.

My post about blogland being similar to high school sparked a lot of comments and email. Many people said they don’t usually like that comparison because high school was awful. One friend emailed and asked if blogland was really like that and if so she was glad not to participate.

Whenever high school comes up, people cringe. I have started to wonder if I am the only one who not only escaped high school unscathed but liked it. Yes, I liked high school. I thought it was fun. And no, I wasn’t any thing close to the prom queen or cheerleader. I was only slightly above average on the popularity scale. But keep in mind that I went to a small school in rural Ohio. There were only 130 people in my graduating class and I knew every one of them. Classes were relatively easy and required very little effort on my part (which caused college to be a bit of a shock). I went to school to socialize, worked in the evenings and weekends to earn hairspray money, partied in my free time – it was a good time.

We had our stereotypes and cliques like any other school but they were much more fluid than John Hughes movies would have us believe. Some of them stuck – the cheerleader and basketball star got married, both became teachers, and teach together back at our old alma mater. But when a “geek” and a popular person got together, the world didn’t end, friends didn’t shun the them, it wasn’t a huge scandal. It caused some buzz for a couple of days because there was little else to talk about and then we accepted the new couple and moved on.

I vaguely recall some dramas that at the time seemed huge. It wasn’t all roses. I only had 1 or 2 boyfriends in my entire high school career and they didn’t last long. I struggled with my weight and my complexion and to keep my hair at the correct height (it was the 80’s after all…and I believe my personal Aquanet usage may very well be responsible for a large portion of the hole in the ozone layer – sorry about that). And I spent my sophomore year lost at a very large high school in NJ and was miserable. If I had remained there rather than returning home, I probably would also cringe at the memory of high school.

So what about it blogland? Am I alone in my fond memories of high school? Are there any others out there who enjoyed it or at least escaped without too much trauma?
*Disclaimer* I may have had fun but I wouldn’t want to do it again – especially in this day and age.