Pregger Clothes

Buying a whole new wardrobe can put a huge stress on one's budget. And this is exactly what I'm finding myself doing now that I'm getting bigger and bigger as the weeks go by. I realized after last week that I still don't have enough large granny panties to wear nor do I have black pants, which was killing me because I have all sorts of odd-colored pants and odd-colored shirts, but they really don't work well with each other unless I want to look like a rainbow.

So we went to the Pleasanton Mall to look for more clothes for me. Unfortunately, the Pleasanton Mall only had one store -- Motherhood -- and while their clothes are really cute, I just wasn't in the mood to spend a lot of money. We were on our way out and I spotted JCPenneys, so I thought I'd try there. Low and behold, they were having some crazy "get rid of all our inventory sale," and I found black capris and the best find yet -- nice work shirts that I can wear until I pop for less than $4.00 each! I'm usually not the type to state how much I spend on things because there really is no reason except to please myself, but that was the most fabulous deal I've ever found. I've been really fortunate to buy most of my maternity clothes on sale, which saves money, but this was the best deal ever!!! So now I have three of the same shirts, but in different colored patterns. And I'm going to wear those suckers until they're tattered!

One Week Left

We have one week left before our vacation. I'm looking forward to it for one main reason: Sleep. Seems our cats don't want us to sleep at night anymore, and at this rate, I'll never get a full night's sleep before Zit is born (and definitely not afterwards, but I do enjoy my naps a lot, so I'm not too worried about it especially with a grandmama who loves her grandbabies and a sister who can't wait to get her hands on a newborn who wails "la, la, la" because it can't do much more than that).

Since our lack of sleep is driving us both nuts, we had the, "won't it be weird to be able to sleep all night without Zoe bashing the blinds or Sophia yowling her head off" conversation. But then I realized I'll miss them both in general for all the cute and cuddly things they do do on a day-to-day basis.

We still aren't ready for the trip, although we have more of a game plan than we did for the UK. Two things we want to do: Go to the Casino de Montreal (which just happens to be right across the river from where we are staying, and even though I say that like it's a hop, skip and a jump from our hotel, I really don't know how far away it is from us), and driving to Quebec City, which we were told by many people we had to drive to because the drive is supposed to be absolutely beautiful as is Quebec City. I was also told that my fancy French language skills wouldn't be needed because people don't speak French in Montreal, but I'm not going to believe that until I get there. I think a nice "merci" and "s'il vous plait" would be good every so often to show I'm not some silly Yank (even though I am, I just got me some book learnin' under my belt).

We just happen to be staying right behind (or in front, depends on where you're standing) of the La basilique Notre-Dame de Montreal. While I'm not a church person, I'm intelligent enough to know I will appreciate it for it's beauty. And we've been told we're right in the middle of everything. So besides what I've mentioned and some museums, I don't know what else lays ahead of us. Eating and shopping and walking, probably.

I'm definitely making my husband eat French food (when in Rome). And I want to go to this oft-mentioned restaurant, Eggspectation, because they're supposed to make the best breakfasts. And they make crepes. And I want to eat a crepe!

I find this interesting

SF Gate had an article about the fabulous "spare the air" days and how BART rides were a free-for-all, oops, I mean were free for whomever put themselves on the train.

Seems us commuters all pretty much feel the same way -- either limit the free rides to commute hours or to just commuters. My biggest complaint is the families, similar to those that go to the mall with everyone in tow who lives in the area and then walk slowly and in wide bunches so you can't get around them, who took advantage of the free rides and also took up all the seats. There was no way it was just a coincidence that those people decided to take a trip to SF with everyone in their family, including small, screaming babies in humungoid strollers. They went because it was free.

The first couple of free says weren't so bad, but as people caught on, it got worse and worse. Going to SF was okay for me since I go so early in the morning, but coming home was a nightmare most of the time. Luckily I was never in a car with a bunch of teenagers acting like young Napoleons and trying to scare the crap out of the normal riders.

So now I'm all for the "free ride in the morning commute, and who cares how you get yourself home in the afternoon" spare the air days like last year. I ride BART 5 days a week; therefore, I get a seat, and I don't care how many small children or old people you've brought with you, you're sitting on the ground.

The Joys of Changing Vacation Plans

So we had to turn in our Euros and British Pounds to get our US dollars back, and well, the joys of exchange rates turned our maximum amount of money spent to a minimum amount received. And the London Passes we bought? Sold them on eBay for not even half of what we paid from them.

Lesson learned: Make sure you don't get pregnant before planning a very expensive trip.

Ultimately we are saving money in the long run by changing our plans, so I can't beat myself up too much.

And we get to eat crepes and say Bon Jour! all the time. Oui!

Cats pretty much out of the bag and it says, "Meow!"

After our friend told my husband that he read in my blog that I was pregnant, and this seemed to bother my husband even though it was completely unintenional that I stole his limelight (because he likes to tell people things), I decided to remove all my posts about my pregnancy. Of course, my doing this gave him the leeway to tell just about everyone he knows and then some, starting with that day and continuing until today. It seems everyone is his "good friend," and well, since it makes him happy, I'm just not going to worry about it. I'd still rather have waiting until exactly 3 months just to make sure zit decided to stick around for the full 9 months, but my husband is a bit of a verbose braggart (in the nicest sense), and it's better he's happy talking about this than being sad keeping it in.

Work is a different story. There are two things going on that's driving both of us to tell people. 1. My husband took it upon himself during some class to share with everyone in that class that we were going to London/Dublin in August, so we are still getting people asking about our trip almost daily, and 2. I'm starting to look like a large football lineman.

Since we cancelled our UK trip last week, and people like to ask us about it, we both knew it was going to get awkward if we just kind of ho-hummed about the whole thing. Me, I would have just said we weren't going because something came up, and then got mad if the person pushed me. Him, he feels like he's got to be truthful to everyone he knows, and hey, then he gets to talk about going to Montreal (which, by the way, he's getting more excited about going to since people are constantly telling him it'll be fun) PLUS he gets to tell people that we're pregnant. Cool beans!

My linebackerness is becoming more and more of a personal issue to me because people hardly look me in the eye anymore. Generally I get a slight eye to eye glance, then their eyes move to my torso, pause, then they go back to my eyes. I stare at their eyes the whole time, and luckily I haven't had anyone ask me yet if I'm pregnant (besides the first time when I really wasn't, and one a few weeks after I found out that I was, but I just looked more chubby than pregnant at that point). I did find out today that someone asked my co-worker if I was, who at the time didn't know, so she said she didn't think so. And then a co-worker friend that does know told me he noticed I was getting "chubby," especially that day we told him.

So yeah, I'd say the cat's out of the bag. I still haven't told one of my good friends, and most of the people I talk to at work don't know, but that's okay. When the time arrives, they'll all find out. When I'm at sumo wrestler size, maybe.

So to save my own sanity and so I can wear comfortable pregnancy clothes that maybe are a bit too big for me, but I don't care cause I really can't wear anything else, I'm just going to let the confusion reign. My husband's doing a good job telling people he talks to a lot, so I figure it'll be around work within the week, if not sooner.

UK Trip #2

Good thing I didn't plan much for our trip cause now we're not going. Long story, one I'm not about to get into on my blog, but we've changed our plans to Montreal instead.

I'm way excited, mostly cause I heard it's like going to Europe without going to Europe, our hotel room looks fabulous, and we can go gambling! I think this will be a great trip, even if we don't get to sit together on the plane because we booked our flight 2 weeks or so before leaving. I could pull some sob story at the airport, which may work, who knows, and then we can sit next to each other.

I get to practice my very limited French too! Oui! Comment ca-va? Je suis une Americaine. J'em appelle Janine! Janine est Francais! J'adore les chats! Ummm...yeah, very limited.

Keeping Kitties cool

It's got to be about 90 plus degrees in our condo today. When it's hot like this, my kitties, Missy Sophia and Zoe, become active during the cool times and extremely inactive during the hot times. Today they mostly spent the day sleeping, with Missy Sophia laying spread-out on the window ledge.

I got up from my work to put my water in the freezer because it got warm almost immediately, and when I walked back to my husband's room (and kitties' room and music room and soon to be zit's room -- I'm slowly leaking again), I glanced into our bedroom to find poor long-haired Missy Sophia collapsed on the ground near the door looking hot and very sad.

I gave her some pats and love, and then went back to my husband's room to send him an e-mail telling him of the sad scene. He told me to suck-it-up and get a rag wet and wipe it on her to cool her down. While I was fearful for my life because Missy Sophia is not one to enjoy being bothered with, especially if water is involved, I decided I should go ahead and get her a bit soaked.

I got a rag wet, went to where she was (back on window ledge), and started squeezing out copious amount of cool water on her. Since she is long haired, most of it ran off onto the window ledge. She looked at me like, "hey, what the f**k! Stop that, woman!" but I kept ringing out water on her and smoothing it out. Finally I rang out water on her head, and this was when she took her chance to run away. I grabbed her, smoothed her out again, and let her go.

Seemed like a grand idea. Worked for another long haired cat we had. But what did Missy Sophia do? She then spent the next 15 minutes licking herself trying to get all the water off her top coat. And since it's hot, having to spend the time trying to remove water from one's fur is not the most fun thing to do. And probably just made her hotter.

I still have all my limbs attached, no scratches, and she doesn't quite hate me as much as I thought she would, so maybe it was okay in the long run.

UK trip

Our UK trip is in a few weeks, and I've decided that I'm not going to really plan anything. One day my husband and I dragged out all the travel books we bought, the London Pass book and my laptop to figure out when we should go where. I realized it's pretty much futile. We simply don't have enough time.

I'm not so worried about Dublin because it's a lot smaller and less things to see, and the only thing my husband really wants to do is go to the Guinness brewery.

I do have a few things I definitely want to while while in London, one being going on an escorted London Walk about the city's ghosts (I'm expecting to see one as well, and if I don't, I'm going to be one sad tourist). I also want to go to the Tower of London and then go to the dungeon. Anything else, if it happens, it happens.

My husband, on the other hand, wants to drink many beers in many pubs.

I still need to gather up all the vacation stuff I put together that my husband squirreled away so kindly, like it likes to do with things. And let someone (mom) know where we will be staying. And signing my passport.

Ah, vacations.

Friends

My cats now have way more friends than I do. Very sad for me.

Zoe was even invited to be part of a forum for cats who love to knead, whereas I'm usually either ignored in forums or attacked for being me (I am a bit much at times).

Maybe I should write a book about being like cats in order to be loved on online friend sites.

Missy

Missy Sophia has her own page now too!

Check it out and leave her even more treats than Zoe (she is older and bossier).

Meeeeooowww... it's Catster

I signed up my baby kitty Zoe to Catster last night (Missy Sophia is next). She has already made many new kitty friends, and it seems cats do way better at making pals than humans do. Although I do think it's a bit like Myspace.com, where people are trying to collect the most "friends."

Check out Zoe's page and leave her some treats.

Avid fans, notice something?

My boss is psychic, I've decided (she thought so early this week), when she asked my yesterday, "Don't people here read your blog?"

Now, if you've been reading my blog, you know why she would ask me that question. If you haven't, then too bad for you. Relish in the mystery.

I said no, that people rarely read it, and I wasn't concerned.

Then today, a friend of ours mentioned to my husband about what I was writing. This made me decide that public blogs are just that, public, so I decided to remove many of my posts from the past weeks.

Never fear! I will be back soon with just as many fun and wonderful stories to tell about that specific topic, but until then, you just have to read those fun, everyday occurrences that seem to happen less and less as I'm constantly with my husband (I swear, alone, I am a weirdo magnet, with him, nothing happens).

Sleep

Do you know what it's like being woken up at 11pm by a child screaming its head off while running around what would be the master bedroom right above your own master bedroom? If you don't because you've been lucky enough to never have to live on the first floor in an apartment or condo complex, then I'll tell you. It sounds like a small horse galloping at full speed while screetching in pain. Over and over and over again.

Needless to say, this will wake most people up, including me, who is having a major issue lately with feeling rested while going through her day because she's either waking up to pee or waking up to round up noise-making kitties to lock them in the other room.

So we had three choices last night:

1. Call the cops and complain about a screaming child and we're not sure if its being tortured or not (I'm sure the parents would have loved that -- child protection services showing up to ask them a million questions).

2. Go upstairs, knock loudly on door, wait for whomever to answer, then yell at them.

3. Get the broom and proceed to whack the ceiling a bazillion times so that they'd get the point that we can hear their small horse galloping around at 11pm.

Since this is not the first time we've encountered this issue, we went with #3 because it tends to be the easiest and gets the point across well. Unfortunately there are some people who don't take kindly to the broom handle beating the ceiling, their floor, and revolt, which is what happened last night. Instead of quieting down immediately, they started stomping as loudly as they could for about 20-30 seconds, off and on.

I ran away to the living room since they seemed to be holed up in the bedroom above ours. I need to sleep. I must sleep. So if I have to sleep on the couch, I will sleep on the couch.

After a while they stopped, and my husband came out and got me. During this time, my guardian angel, aka Zoe, was sitting on the TV table that was near my head, staring at me. I told her to get back to bed, and she took off running like a bat out of hell (she gets real nervous-like when there are weird noises, and horses galloping above her would fall into that category).

So here I am today, deadly tired, ready to blow and not really talking to anyone, and if I do, it's more of a complaint or snippy comment than a friendly hello.

Beware.

Grr!

SALE!

I'm having a huge sale in my etsy shop, zoesoph jewelry & friends, so please stop buy, have a gander and maybe buy something!

Help buy zit some books!

Frontier Village

I found out last night that when I was a wee child, about 4 or 5, my grandmother took my sister and I to her work picnic at Frontier Village in San Jose, California, and as soon as we got into the gates, or maybe near the picnic area, we were handed over to a stranger/co-worker of my Grandmother's to be toted around all day like rent-a-children.

I remember going to Frontier Village, and I remember getting a t-shirt made for my mom that had a picture of myself and my sis on it, but I don't remember the part of being toted around by a stranger all day.

And I wonder why I have issues.

MySpace

I signed up for Myspace.com in order to look at someone else's profile. One day I got it in my head to actually fill out my profile, although it's nothing compared to other people's with their flashy backgrounds and streaming videos. I only have one picture up, and that's the same one I pretty much use on all web sites, and the one you can view by looking to your right.

Since I updated my profile, no one's been bugging me -- until today. Today I received many, many, MANY (and sometimes repetitive) requests to be people's friends. Three were from bands (one I actually know of and reviewed their CD a while back, but who annoyed the heck out of me, so there is no way I want to be their friend, which really means allowing them to be an advertising spot on my Myspace.com page), one was from some person who had no info about her/himself but just seemed to like friends, and one was for some guy in a wheelchair who has a fund (the "jordan fund") and seems to only want attractive, blonde chickies to be his friend, and since I am not blonde, nor very attractive, I declined.

After I declined Jordan, he asked me to be his friend again. I guess he's suffering from short-term memory loss besides whatever ailment that put him in a wheelchair.

I always wondered how people had a million friends on Myspace, but I guess it's like trading cards -- you just collect as many friends as you possible can so you look really good.

But I don't need any friends. Especially weirdeos like this guy:



Who not only plays extremely bad music, but also looks like a child molester to me.

Pssttt...you like secrets?

If you have an Old Navy credit card, you can get money back for money spent. Most places do this.

I learned today that if you buy stuff online and use your gift certificate thing, you can then go to the store and use it again.

Obviously this doesn't work in the reverse since the clerks take the gift certificate thing from you and hold it permanently hostage.

Pssstttt...pass it on.

Too funny