My wicked new bling.

Yep, that's right.  Oooh and aaah and check out my giant new finger rock.

It's yellow, and although husband says this makes it "look cheap, why does it need to look cheap?", others have informed me that it's not yellow, it's canary, which is different and fancy and tres tres expensive.

Except, of course, it's not.  It's from Wal-Mart and it cost $8.88, and came attached to a big plastic tag.

But then, can you tell?

Betcha can't.  And if you can, don't.  It's not nice.

I've also had a couple people complain, "but it's too big!" Yes, it's a size 8, to my regular ring size of 5.75, but I'm totally okay with that.  Because I fully intend to get, you know, fatter.  And water-retainyer.  I've got 3 months and 2 days till baby dude arrives, and this is the time for adding over 2 sizes to my pudgy little fingers.  Apparently, according to how I feel this week, it's also the time for waking up in the mornings with still-achey back and feet, and feeling the need to fall immediately into a coma 95% of the day.  Very exciting time of life, let me tell you.

Hope your life is shined up today by some fun blinginess, be it real or of the Wal-Mart variety.  Happy Hump day, y'all!

Too tired to live

I really should be heading out any minute.  I do, in fact, have work to do today.  But I'm so tired.  So, so, soooooo tired.

As of today I am 26 weeks and 4 days pregnant.  That means that this Thursday marks the beginning of week number 27 and trimester number 3.  The last bit, the long slow exhausting sprint towards the finish.

I think I'm an in-between person when it comes to pregnancy.  I definitely don't hate the experience like a lot of people do,  There are some parts that are amazing and fun and totally unique to this experience.  But on the other hand, I'm going to acknowledge that it's painful and exhausting and long and uncomfortable and frequently gross.  I'm sorry other pregnant people, but I don't think the pregnant body looks beautiful.  I think it looks puffy and weird.  No offense. There's something a little horror movie-esque about growing a human in your stomach, and despite all this talk of "pregnancy glow" most of us suffer more from acne, crazed heartburn and gassiness, bloating, and facial hair.  No folks, I don't care what you say, none of this is sexy.

I'm a little bit terrified of this last few months, because lying awake last night gave me lots of chance to reminisce through my last experience.  And what I reminisced was mainly this: having 20 people tell you EVERY DAY to "get your sleep now, because you certainly won't when your little one arrives!"  I'm sorry everyone who has uttered these words ever, but for me, the sleeplessness starts today.  I remember thinking, "gee, catching on sleep sounds like a BRILLIANT plan, if only I could get myself to go to sleep at night. Ever."

I'm sorry anyone who read this.  I know it's rambling and has that unpleasant feel of verbal diarrhea all over it, but this is the best I can do this morning. Now it's time for me to give my poor, over-caffeinated second child a little too much coffee so that I don't fall asleep behind the wheel.  I'm sure he'll forgive me some day.

In the meantime, folks, I hope that your thing adf and the fewf place and the adfcv,mfb∫ffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffff.

READ. THE FREAKIN. FINE. PRINT.

And no, I'm not talking about my husband's rock awesome book, The Fine Print of Christianity (onsaletodayatonlineretailerseverywhere), though you can read that too, cuz it's rock awesome.  What I'm really talking about at the moment is regular fine print.  Or small fonts.  On, you know, some things you use.

Sorry, let me explain.

I'm not cheap, and I'm not *devastatingly* poor.  I am on a budget, and it's totally different.

I never considered myself a big spender.  At least, I didn't consider myself a big spender until I had to learn to pay close attention to my spending habits.  Because even though I didn't buy tons of clothes or great shoes, if I saw something that appealed to me (especially if it cost under 20 bucks), I bought it.  New eye shadow? Gimme.  Different brand of facial lotion? Why the heck not. Cutesy holiday decorations?  More please!!

But now, I have a budget.  I can't just go buy a new pair of shoes, or an outfit for my daughter, or any dang thing unless I sit down during our monthly budget meeting and explain the need for the purchase (then make sure it gets paid for, which may I say, is difficult when you're paying huge maternity doctor bills and paying down student loans and trying to save a few bucks here and there all at the same time).

So in an effort to change my terrible behaviors, and to straighten up one of the nastiest parts of my home all at the same time, a few months ago I cleaned out my bathroom cupboards.  I found loads of make up, hair product, facial and body lotions that I'd half used and forgot about, or decided I'd like to try something else instead or SQUIRREL!    You get the point.  But now, instead of trying to budget in new lotions and products, I've been working through my old stashes.

One thing I like, nay, NEED to do is lotion up my hands and feet before bed every night.  My feet get hot, I can't sleep.  They need lotion.  So, upon running out of my regular lotion, I found half a bottle of Olay Quench and have been applying that every night.  Until last night, that is.  Because yesterday, I happened to take a looksie at the bottom of my left foot, only to discover, well, this:

That's right.  My feet were orange.  A disturbing, probably have some sort of terrifying medical condition shade of orange.  So after the initial horror wore off, I went back to my lotion, and reread the bottle three times before finding the itsy bitsy words near the bottom:  continually moisturizes and subtly enhances skin tone and color.  I have loads of problems with that list of words, but mostly these:  1-not subtle. Very, VERY not subtle. 2: I don't consider oompa loompa orange to be an enhancement on my personal skin color, but then, maybe that's just me.

Ah well.  On the bright side, it's January and I'm wearing exclusively foot-hiding shoes these days, and had I not just told the 10-15 people likely to read this post, no one besides my mortified husband would know what had happened to my sad, discolored feet.

So there's your weekend PSA folks, hope none of you get sneak-attacked by your consumer products!!

Slight encouragement, new goals.

I made a couple of realizations between yesterday and today, and oddly enough, they have been positive and a little awesome.  As of yesterday, I am 26 weeks pregnant.  Not only 26 weeks pregnant, but 26 weeks pregnant with a belly measuring closer to 30 weeks.  Apparently my little guy (who is NOT measuring 30 weeks) needs lots of space in there for all of his dancing.

Anyway, here's the bright side (since been EXCEPTIONALLY large is certainly not the positive news): I've actually lost a couple of pounds this week.  No, I'm not trying to.  No, I'm not starving myself and putting my child in danger.  But I have been eating a little less this week, and I've been a good deal more active.  Finally, FINALLY, over the holiday slump, I'm getting a bit back to normal.  So instead of 172, this morning's scale proclaimed a dainty 169.

Okay, so maybe not dainty, and if you're curious, it's a good 15 pounds MORE than the hubs these days (the skinny jerk), but after bustin through the 160's in roughly 5.2 seconds, it was encouraging to see that number again.  OOH! And I haven't even told you the best part:

About a week shy of 3 years ago, when I discovered I was carrying my first little bundle of joy, I weighed about 2-3 pounds more than I do today.

So, you know. Booyah.

From roughly today's weight, I gained an additional 40ish pounds, to land finally at around 210.  If I gain 20 pounds from now, and then lose 20 right after the baby is born (which is what experience taught me happens), then my next big weight loss journey will begin around 170. Not, I repeat, NOT 190.  But also, if I can manage to restrain myself and gain closer to 10 more pounds over these next 14 weeks, then I can start my journey at only 160.  For my height, 160 pounds is 5 pounds overweight.  That's it.  So I guess what I'm saying is that, if I can manage to go easy on my food intake over the next 3 months, I might be able to wear tank tops this summer.

And no, if you're curious about this, I am not freaking gonna exercise.  I've tried it a few times and every single time I get painful contractions after, which the doctor says is normal since this is my second child but I believe is God telling me that I should not be attempting to bounce my giant self around all day and instead, should probably take more naps.  God's all about more naps. I'm sure of it.

Anyway, weight-wise I was a little give-upy when I signed in on Monday, so I thought I'd be a little more encouraging today.  Happy Friday everyone, and remember what God says about naps.  They're awesome.

Happy New Year (And 2 weeks)!!!!!

Recently, I've had this same experience repeated maybe, 4... or 5... or 6 times.  I said something that was (cross my heart, hope to die) said in total innocence, to people I care about, and I somehow managed to offend someone.  Againandagainandagain.  Once, it seemed to have happened 3 times in the same day.  And the last time it happened, I got yelled at, and couldn't think of a way to explain myself.  So now I feel embarrassed and ashamed and afraid of who else I might hurt so I'd rather just talk to my husband because he's been my best friend for almost 9 years and even if I do hurt his feelings I really think that, at this point, he can take it.  So this tongue tied-ness has expanded, and I've avoided most of the internet except for twitter, because really, what damage can even I do with only 140 characters?  Dear Lord, I hope it's not a lot.  I have been thinking about this blog, and I think about saying something, and I get nervous and scared and decide, that it's probably best to remain silent and be assumed a jerk than to open my mouth and remove all doubt.  That's from the Bible.  Or some president or something.  I'm pretty sure that's right.  Anyway, the point is that I really, really, really don't want to hurt people's feelings.  You crazy bunch of jerks.

:-O

Okay, now that I got the insults out of my system (because maybe it's better to know exactly how I'm being insulting then doing it purely by accident) I can get on to my second reason for not writing here lately.

Basically, it's that I'm not funny anymore.  Was I funny before?  That, my dear, is a fair question which I will not answer because it hurts my feelings.  But what i can say is that I tried.  A bunch.  I wanted this blog to be light hearted and feel good and relatable.  But lately, everything I can think to say is deep and hard hitting and probably (experience dictates) highly insulting.

But for my first (albeit, terribly belated) post of this 2012, by the way, HAPPY NEW YEAR!!!, I'd like to make note of some new years goals I've got happening:

1) Memorize the book of John.  I've forgone reading through my Bible this year and decided to focus on committing this one book to memory. So far, I'm at John 1:34, and it's hard, and it's kind of awesome.  Focusing on a lot more of the words that I might have skimmed right through before.  I can't recommend it till I've done it, but I'll keep you posted on my progress.

2) Stay below 190 for this pregnancy.  No easy feat, considering I'm already at 172 as of this morning.  The pounds have been coming on quick the last few months, and I foresee a great deal of Slim Fast and exercise in my future.  Ah well, weight loss stories are just the most fun things ever, right?

3) See the underside of 140 before 2013.  I got into the 140's this past year.  I never thought I'd see them again.  This year, I'd like to push that even farther.

4) Run to my mom's house again.  It's right around 13 miles away, and though I probably won't do another official half marathon, for a while at least, I want to run that much again soon.  And faster.

5) Cash flow the baby and pay off my next lowest student loan.  We budget now, and we're working Ramsey's "debt snowball", which has just recently finally started to roll.  The downside to having nothing BUT student loan debt is that we have no "little" debts.  We have big chunks of debts that are thousands of dollars each, and take a lot of pushing.

6) Get an Iphone.  Totally disagrees with my last point, I know, but they look like phone.  And my Ipod is crapping out on me, so I think it's time for a replacement anyway, if you think about it.

So that's where this year is, and those are some of the things you can look forward to reading about in the future.  Also, sorry if I start ranting about things like this generation and solid theology and the Church, because that's bound to happen to, unless I find a more appropriate place to empty my brain of all of these thoughts.  But if I do, I'd love some conversation, and some stone cold argument on anything if it's deemed necessary :-)

Hope you're all doing well, and keeping up with some things YOU'VE resolve to this past few weeks!