Alien Spouse

A Hit, A Very Palpable Hit.

You know, as a cat owner, one hears horror stories all the time about how much cats dislike change, and how carefully one must introduce new brands of litter or food.

What you don't hear about so much is the horror of changing to a dry cat food that your precious kitties adore, and the mayhem that ensues if you then run low, as we did this week. We had just enough last night to serve dinner and breakfast, but not generous portions for either meal. We were to pay for our error of food management.

At 3:30 this morning we were woken by some very persistent loving' from Edith, who wanted a snack. On the way home this evening we made a special detour to get the new dried cavier, and that was definitely a good move. The food bowls were shiny from the cats licking them to get every last bit of biscuit dust.

They REALLY like this new stuff.

My Coffee Knife's Former Life.

The reason I have a scalpel-like craft knife on my desk : It was unearthed during the clearing out of a retiring professor's office.

The reason an English professor had a scalpel-like craft knife in his office (along with many other very sharp things) : Unknown.

What I use the scalpel-like craft knife for : It's my Coffee Knife. I use it to enlarge the air hole on the disposable plastic lids of my take-away coffee or tea. In my experience with these lids the size of the sipping hole is uniformly fine, but the air hole (which is necessary to avoid creating a vacuum in the paper cup, thanks rudimentary knowledge of physics!) is often too small to be effective, and then each sip taken is far too much work. I used to use a paper clip for this task, but this is not ideal.

What the English professor used the scalpel-like craft knife for : Unknown, but then he also had half a dozen letter openers; perhaps years of working with paper makes you just want to slice it into little pieces?

My Point: None, other than I use that craft knife fairly often, and I always wonder about it.

Fetus Overlord Decrees a Sick Day.

Last week I referred on Facebook to the Fetus Overlord, because the little bugger is just bossy as hell sometimes. This morning is an excellent example actually, I was getting ready for work as usual and was at the make-up application stage of the proceedings I suddenly felt bloody awful.

The kid had the common courtesy to wait until I'd finished applying my liquid eye liner (even the unborn apparently realise that a wonky cat's eye is a bad start to the day), but shortly after that I became really light-headed and queasy. I really tried to push through it and got as far as the car before Doc C decided I looked like hell, and told me I was staying at home today. So I went back into the house, lay down on the sofa and slept for 4 hours (Over the past 72 hours I've probably slept, on and off, for about 40. This whole being pregnant thing is much like mono, but with more indigestion and annoyingly hot hands).

Fortunately I already had a doctor's appointment for today, and all of that is totally normal. We also got to hear the fetus' heartbeat, which was going like the clappers and sounded pretty healthy apparently. I just hope the little darling is pleased with itself.

Nancy!

I sometimes feel guilty I post so many more photos of Edith than of Nancy. Then I remember that there are two excellent reasons for this.

1) Nancy spends between 18 and 22 hours on the bed, she likes her alone time. Edith is nearly always where the humans are, and she's always trying to get our attention.
2) Edith has an inherent understanding of posing for the camera, Nancy just does not get it.

Here is the best photo I was able to get of Nancy today; she's almost looking at the camera in this one, and had only just started to move her head, so the blurring is minimal. Well done Nance!

Rosemary's Baby (1968).

The DVD of "Rosemary's Baby" arrived from Netflix yesterday, and we started watching it the minute we got home. What a great film! Of course we spent a good deal of our viewing time admiring their apartment and I drooled over some of the fab outfits (not that red velvet trouser suit though. Ugh.) that Mia gets to wear through out. Naturally we had a brief discussion about how on earth the Woodhouses can afford such a great apartment in the Dakota, but Doc C's theory that Guy's acting career was doing reasonably well is spot on the money according to an IMDB commentator's exhaustative comparison of the film to the book. 

Doc C mildly suggested that, perhaps, we should stop watching films about evil babies now. I don't know about that, if only because we've got so many more to catch up on! I also realised that although Rosemary is bearing the child of Satan, which can't be any fun at all, she clearly doesn't have to worry about maternity leave because she's not working, or the cost of health care, or any of the stuff that I'm trying not to stress out about (Stress is bad for the baby, as we all know, and yet there is a surprising amount of it waiting to nobble you when you get preggers.) One of the few things I'm really not worried about producing an evil kid, so actually some demonic gestation drama is a pleasant change of pace to the real life boring nonsense.

As some of you know I've long held grand plans to dress as a heavily pregnant Rosemary Woodhouse for Halloween, but now I realise that her third trimester is during a blazing hot New York summer so I'd have been running around in a thin cotton dress in October. Good call on my kid's part to be a summer baby and therefore avoid that freezing debacle.

Stock Market Prediction.

Now would be a great time to invest in ginger ale stocks.

 

This is the mini-fridge in Chris' office, which he has thoughtfully filled up for me because nowhere on campus sells ginger ale. One of the shelves in our fridge at home looks pretty similar, but with the addition of a jar of the obligatory pickles.

 

A Promise Promptly Broken.

I promise I'm not going to become a "Mommy Blogger" because a) I think that's dismissive sub-division of blogging that the patriarchy invented, b) my child will not be calling me Mommy, I am British so clearly I'll be Mum, c) I am just not. Having said that, pregnancy is a very odd. Obviously I'm not the only pregnant woman ever, or even right this minute, but it is an unique experience for me and so obviously I'm thinking about it a lot!

***You can probably skip the rest of this post - It's a bit of a preggers rant. Clearly I feel the need to vent. Hello captive audience! ***

Recently I've noticed that health care professionals (although not my two main doctors who are sensible) seem to like to try and find something to tell you off about.

Allow me to explain how it works; I've never smoked, I'm currently not drinking alchohol, I am drinking plenty of water, I'm careful about what I eat and I'm trying to get more exercise (although that is in area I must try harder in). Pretty good! So then it feels like there is a search to find any small thing to make me feel guilty about, e.g. coffee. I actually checked with my doctor about coffee when I decided to come off my ani-depressants, because I felt that I needed something, you know? But now I'm being told to choose between my morning cup of coffee or my afternoon cup of tea, but without any specific reasons being given. This is just inhuman! Who makes a person choose between coffee and tea

Also, well before I got pregnant, I asked specifically to be tested for toxicplasmosis. This is something that you can catch from contact with cat feces, and, whilst it's not a problem most of the time, catching it whilst pregnant can cause birth defects. So I asked if I could be tested to see if I already had it, and no doctor I spoke to seemed to have any idea if that were possible. Besides, I was told, my current felines are indoor cats and I had outdoor cats as a child, so I more than likely already have it and that wouldn't be an issue.

Fast forward to actually being pregnant, and I am asked repeatedly if I have cats. Yes, yes I do. Cue healthcare professionals freaking out about my scooping litter, and asking if I'd been screened for toxicplasmosis before getting pregnant. Oh, for pity's sake! I asked about that! No one knew anything about testing for it then! What's happened in the last six months? Have there been enormous advances in this area of maternal care since I asked this very question? Hmmmmm?

I swear it's a conspiracy.

A Festival of Film.

This weekend we were planning on watching "Rosemary's Baby", but the disk was cracked so we had to send it back to Netflix. Instead we watched a very entertaining Spanish super-natural thriller called "The Baby's Room".

There is a definite theme to my film preferences at the present moment.

Cat Pose.

Edith is my personal yoga coach, and she has a very paws on approach. If you look closely, you can see where she has checked the density of the blocks by giving the corners a bit of a chew.

Money Baby.

A few weeks ago I got a newsletter from my healthcare provider, which is usually something I barely skim before recycling; this time I noticed a reward scheme for pregnant women.

I called today to register for the scheme and had a nice chat with a maternity coach, she's going to send me a whole bunch of stuff and she booked a time or another phone all in six weeks. Basically if I speak to the maternity coach another couple of times, then the co-pay on my delivery will be waived - And that's $233 dollars! Essentially I'm saving us $77 with each phone call! Awesome!

Also, my friend Keith announced on Twitter that he's going to become a father, so I tweeted back "Race you!" After a bit more banter on the same lines we discovered that both babies are due on the same day. How weird is that? Of course, now I'm thinking we need to put some money on this!

Dark Room.

Yesterday evening I noticed that the light in the bathroom was making an unhappy noise. I looked at it, noted that it was a six foot long fluorescent light bulb and I thought "Hmmm... It would be quite annoying if that bulb blew!"

Later, as I was getting ready for bed, the bulb blew. And let me tell you, having a shower in a dark bathroom is no fun at all! Who on earth lights a bathroom with a single light fixture? And decides it should be the type of light fixture that no normal person woud have a spare bulb for? Oh, wait probably the same people who chose to have no light fixtures whatsoever in the bedroom, so it's lit only by our bedside lamps.  Grumble grumble grumble.

Naturally, we went to buy a new bulb after work... And they only had four foot or seven foot bulbs. sigh. So now we have Doc C's bedside lamp on the side of the sink in the bathroom, and I am trying REALLY hard not to think about how dangerous that probably (definitely) is.

***Post Script***

I must admit, gentle reader, to having told a deliberate mis-truth in the interests of brevity. The hardware store did, in point of fact, have a six foot fluorescent bulb, but it had only one contact point on each end and Doc C was firmly of the opinion we needed a six foot bulb with two points. The only lengths available with two points were four foot and seven foot. With me so far? Do you understand why I cut that scintillating detail out in my first telling of the tale?

The reason I bring this up is because, as the bulb was only $8, I said let's just buy it on the off-chance it might work and if it doesn't, we can just bring it back. Doc refused, on the grounds that transporting a six foot glass tube in the Mini was not going to be easy, so he didn't want to risk having to do it twice.

When we got home, without a bulb, I set up the bedside lamp in the bathroom, wrote my blog post and no more was said of the matter.  Until Doc went to get ready for bed, and decided he may as well take the bulb out. It was at this point he discovered that it was a one point bulb, and the ones they had in stock would have fitted perfectly.

There are times when you really do have to crow that perhaps people should listen to you once in a while, because you are really quite sensible. Hmmmmmm?

My First Batman T-Shirt.

 

 

We went yesterday for the tests that I was most worried about, and apparently everything is fine - So I can finally relax, a bit, and announce that Doc C and I are expecting a baby at the end of August.

We don't know if it's a boy or a girl yet, but we are quite certain that, with us as parents, it will be a nerd.

Please Be Patient.

I read a few different blogs, and they have all gone through the occasional fallow period which is kind of annoying when you want something new to read every day.

One of the very few celebrity blogs I follow is Wil Wheaton's, and from time to time he will write a post that essentially says "I have something to blog about, but it's a secret for the time being, so I can't blog about it right now, ok?" 

Well, that's where I am right now - I have STUFF to blog about, but, for some quite excellent reasons, I'm reluctant to for a few weeks more and nothing else is really interesting me quite as much (Ooh, apart from "Mod Nation Racers" on the PS3. Doc C and I have been racing each other every evening this week and I even beat him once! Amazing!) 

So, um, stay tuned and I'll hopefully get more entertaining in a little while! Thanks!

Hot Hands.

Yawwwn.

Well, I slept all week-end, it's the only explanation for it's vanishing like scotch mist, and that was lovely - except my body has this delightful trick of promptly forgetting how to sleep on a Sunday night. It's ridiculous, all week-end I'm able to drop off at a moment's notice but the minute I get into my pyjamas (andthese were my new super cool Batgirl pyjamas as well!) on a Sunday it's impossible.

At the moment what's happening is my body temperature is all over the place, so I'm either far too hot or absolutely freezing. There is no comfortable middle ground. Last night my hands felt as though they were made from hot coals, and simply refused to be reasonable about things.

 

This evening I intend to try sleeping with a fan on my bedside table, and maybe a damp flannel within easy reach. Let's hope that works.

On Returning to Work After a Short Illness.

When you've been out of the office because of a short illness, it's likely you are going to go back in before you are really at full strength. So you really are hoping that the first few days will involve coasting on some simple jobs, the work equivalent of a soft-boiled egg with soldiers, or tomato soup with cheese-on-toast. The reality, however, is invariably an assualt of hard-to-digest 3 course meals of to do lists, spreadsheets and un-read e-mail.

sigh.

On top of that, there is inavariably some piece of office politics that just makes you want to beat your head against a wall (hmmm, maybe that would have helped clear my sinuses - note to self for next time).