thefrapangeeat

If you've ever been pregnant before I think you'll understand what I'm about to talk about.  When you get to the end of your pregnancy - you just feel big.  I personally feel like a bleached whale.  (Yes, I know it is beached - but I have been in violation of speech codes for quite some time, I inevitably end up saying bleached whale or float your goat or all sorts of weird things.  I've given up trying to be proper these days).  Well...yesterday at the Dr.'s office my 2 year old confirmed my  suspicion.  I am not just feeling big - I am big. 

We were sitting in the office for an hour waiting for my appointment.  There were 4 other pregnant women waiting.  My 2 year old is bouncing off the walls showing everyone his batman socks, begging anyone to play lightsabers with him, and intermittently picking his nose when he stopped suddenly.  He turned to me all excited and screamed to everyone, "Look! It's a walrus!"  Shocked, I said, "Excuse me? What did you just say? "  Oh so very clearly he pointed to the picture of a pregnant lady on the wall and said four or five more times - "It's a walrus! It's a walrus! It's a walrus!"  I tried to explain that it was just a picture of a mommy with a baby in her tummy - just like me.  Then I made the mistake of asking him - is that what Mommy's looks like?  His reply, "Yup."  The whole waiting room was laughing at the whole incident.  I'm just grateful he didn't actually point to any specific woman and call them a walrus.  So - my 2 year old has deemed me a walrus.  I don't just feel big - I am.  It doesn't help that I broke the scale the other day, too.  Literally.  I stepped on the scale (bad idea when you are pregnant anyways) - and whalla - it stopped working.  It told me I was 13 pounds lighter than I was a week before.  It hasn't worked since.  Yes, it is probably just a battery problem but I don't want to fix it.  I think I will just glory in being a walrus for a few more weeks and then maybe I'll just get rid of it.   A walrus doesn't use a scale, and I bet they are happier for it.  I think I'll follow suit!

It is hot.  Miserably hot.  I know - I live in this insanely "great" weather (that is intensely boring), and I shouldn't complain, but I am going to.  It was 92 with 86% humidity earlier this week.  That made the heat index nasty.  Being pregnant and not having air conditioning and only having one window facing a different direction from all the others hasn't helped.  It has been the sticky hot  -humid hot- can't cool off- want to run around naked hot. 

Just when I thought things couldn't get any worse - they did.  On top of the heat - I have a cold.  A yucky cold.  So I am hot with a cold.  It has not been fun to say the least.  I can't sleep because I can't breathe.  Last night I took a Sudafed.  Bad idea.  I should have known it would make me crazy.  I don't have the greatest track record with cold medicines.  One time when I took a Benadryl I started crying on the drive to school because the canal was so beautiful.  This last episode....well...I took a Sudafed at 3 A.M. and I have been up ever since.  It is know 7:30 in the evening.  I've been trying pretty hard since 3 to get back to sleep.  No luck yet.  I'm exhausted and can't hold my eyes open, but they won't stay closed either.  This was only half a dose of Sudafed, too! Yikes.  It was the straight Sudafed stuff, too...with nothing added into it.  I just don't do well on cold medicine to say the least....and if you think cold medicine is bad you should see me on Coke.  I have once or twice drunk a can of Coke....yeah that is scary.  The worst was when I drank some Vault.  They had a deal at the grocery store to get a 12 pack of Vault for free.  I read the label, and it said "energy drink" - so I bought it.  I thought, hey, free drink.  The next day,  I was drinking the first can when the home teacher's came over.  I put it aside when they came in, only to have Cadet find it in the middle of their lesson.  He was freaking out, and so I gave him a couple of sips to calm him down.  HAH! Later that night, I called hubby home from an Eldern's Quorum meeting (with one of our home teachers).  I couldn't handle our son or myself.  We were both bouncing off the walls and irritable.  Later I found out that Vault has the highest concentration of caffeine of most any othe soft drink.  The whole thing had our home teachers in stitches the next month when I explained the mis-hap. 

Moral of the story is.....
Caffeine/cold medicines/me = just not good. 

Okay...

With the possibility of moving to Utah looming in the air sometime in this next year I am calling on all Utahns - or anyone that reads this to tell me that it isn't that bad.  I didn't like Utah much growing up - because well they were our neighbors and Idaho HAD to be better.  (I think I've seen the light...I think I would prefer Utah at this point)....but I still am having some major anxieties about life in Utah.  

It has been the plan for some time now to move back to the Utah area where we can be closer to family, and actually afford to buy a home.  (Something cheaper than half a million dollars with more than 2 bedrooms and not in a ghetto sounds pretty appealing.)  Now, when push is coming to shove and the decision is getting closer...I'm freaking out.  I hate change, first off...so this is not good.  I wonder if part of my hesitation to move to Utah is because I just don't want to budge or move anywhere.  I hope that I don't have too many actually legitimate concerns about it. 

I just can't picture it right now.....the idea of living somewhere where you aren't offered coffee or a martini at every turn is foreign to me now.  The idea that people will actually know what Enrichment Night or Family Home Evening night is bizarre....and the fact that I can traipse the grocery aisles with my kid screaming "Jesus wants me for a Sunbeam" without getting odd looks from beer holding collegiates is.....different. Granted I think a lot of these are good things - in many ways being surrounded by more people that are familiar with your values is easier.  It is just different.  I just have to admit the whole Utah culture scares me a little.  I hope it is isn't as bad as it sounds sometimes.  Our ward here is totally ridden with fresh Utah BYU graduate transplants. (Think: every week our chapel and overflow is as big as Stake Conference - with 3 nursuries and almost 100 kids under the age of 5).  We have been the anomoly because ...."You didn't go to BYU??? Why?....Holy cow...you went to Utah State?"  That and the fact that we live in a condo with a garage instead of 700 square foot student housing.  (not by choice, part time students aren't allowed there) but it has set us apart a bit..  It has given me a taste of what a mass rabbit breeding Utahn culture might be like... and actually...I love the people I've met from my ward, and I hope that it will be a lot like it...because they are great.  It does give me a bit of comfort.  I've just also grown to love the opportunities and the people I have met outside of the church.  I have met so many wonderful people through my piano studio, and through my work with the San Diego Children's Choir, and through the Music Teacher's Association, and through my Stroller Strides fitness class.  I have loved building friendships and connections with people outside of my ward, too.  I spend the bulk of my time with these fantastic people.  They aren't of my faith, but so many of them have the same values, and have been such a great support system.  I've loved the variety of people I've come in contact with.  I'm just hoping that I will be able to find the same variety in Utah.  I'm sure the variety is there - its just a matter of coming up with the opportunities to meet different people that is scaring me.  I like having a network of different people.  Its great to have friends that don't think you are wacko when you say you'll take as many kids as you can get (easily said for me - cuz' I know it won't be very many) - and its great to have friends that don't think you are wacko because you don't cook dinner for your husband......not just don't cook...but don't want to....and are totally uninterested in cooking, gardening, changing diapers, scrapbooking, etc.... (I wish I were more interested in these things....they are very practical, and I love and admire people who are really great at them.)  Its just nice to be able to find a variety of friends - similar and different from you.

We'll see......I hope I didn't offend anyone with anything I said.  I'm just a nervous, crazy, hormonally unbalanced pregnant lady speaking out.  Everyone keeps telling me that Utah is a great place to live.  All the people in my ward want to move back, and I have 2 friends that live in San Diego now who are not Mormon who lived in Salt Lake City previously and loved it.....I just hope I do, too.  Heck (Utah lingo) - I've lived in Utah once and loved it, too.  I hope that if we decide to move there again that I can come to love it  just as much. Im just looking for some words of comfort about it all. 

I'm pretty convinced I just hate change.  Period.  No matter where we move, I"m sure that I'll complain about it a little, and worry about finding people that I can connect with.  I freaked out when we moved here and I haven't regretted it at all.  I've loved it so much.  So much...I don't want to go.....I suppose all good things must come to an end, though...for now. 

The subject heading is quite misleading for this post.  I just wanted to post some pictures of the fire we drove past on our way home.  The flames in the pictures are not there anymore - hence the subject title - Old Flames.  This was the fire by Cove Fort in Utah.  My mom had told me I-15 was closed due to a fire.  I blew it off, but then I did check the news, and saw that indeed it had been closed.  On the road my mother in law called to tell us they were closing I-15 again due to a controlled back burn.  Luckily for us, it was delayed or never took place or something.  We drove right by.  I snapped some pictures in my half sleepy state.  It was pretty close.  The flames were just right there.  That was the excitement of the drive home (unless you count the World's Tallest Outdoor Thermometer in Baker - or the casino we stayed at in Primm Nevada).  Fire is really awe inspiring.  But it does smell pretty awful.  I was much more sensitive to this fire smell, being pregnant and all.  When they had terrible wild fires in San Diego 4 or 5 years ago I was almost immune to the smell for a few days.  It was pretty funny - Eric and I were hanging out in our aparment the day the fires started, and then we got a call 20 minutes before church telling us church was cancelled due to the fires.  "Fires? What fires?"  We were convinced the smell was just our neighbors smoking again - and hey - why not just another overcast day?  We finally looked out our window and saw that it was a bit worse than that.  Fire was raging less than 5 miles from our home.  I can now say I've had the opportunity to grab my most important possessions because a fire was coming.  We did load up the car with our valuables - and then we never left.  It never got any closer to us.  It really did make us think about what was important and what wasn't.  We also got a MUCh better 72 hour kit over the next few days.  Its sad you have to be scared into emergency preparedness compliance sometimes.   

We had a fantastic time in Idaho!  We didn't want to leave.  I REALLY didn't want to leave.  16 hours in the car just isn't very much fun when you're pregnant. Go figure. I can never listen to the Imperial March (Darth Vader's Theme) again.  I will go mad - that is - if I haven't gone made from it already!  We saw all 7 of hubby's brothers and sisters, and 3 of my 4 brother and sisters.  We had a great time.  It made us really rethink wether we want to wait a year to move or not.  We had been saying the whole trip - we don't want to move before the baby is born....but the night we got home we realized how nice it is to see family and to play games.  It was a truly enjoyable week. 

It's been a long week indeed.  I very decidedly don't like having my husband out of town, indeed.  He' s been back East on some work trip on a ship actually.  From the sound of it - I think the curtains and beds and communal living are a far cry from the Hiltons and Marriotts he's used to staying in for travel.  I'm just sooooo glad he doesn't have to be on a ship for months like other people.  I'm so grateful for those who serve our country, though.  I can't even imagine - the separation and the anxiety they go through.  I can barely last a week without my other half.  

Things went MUCH better this month than the last time he left me a few weeks ago for travel.  Last time I had a cyst that burst while he was gone, and I thought I was having a miscarriage, and I was still sicker than a dog....but this time we seruvived! Yeah.  We only had a few minor mishaps.......

I had to cancel a piano lesson in the middle because the DVD player in our bedroom broke and the Cadet had a major meltdown that couldn't be quelled.  And then there was my nap.  I need sleep.  I just require it.  Cadet does not.  It's not easy having a 2 year old that goes to bed at Midnight or later and then wakes at 8 A.M.  He only wants 8 hours of sleep at night.  That's just how he functions....and we've kind of trained him to turn into a night owl with us....which works fine when I'm not pregnant.  It's not so great right now.  Lately, I've been going to bed, and the dear husband has been putting him to bed.  Well, since the dear husband was gone, it was all me - and it wasn't so much fun.  One day - I needed a nap and the Cadet just wouldn't take one - so I shut my door kissed him "goo-night" and turned on The Empire Strikes Back for him.  Somehow, despite his incessant screams of the Darth Vader Theme, I drifited off to sleep.  When I woke, he came into my bedroom with his 1st picture he drew for me.  He has been drawing and coloring forever - but he's never actually done one on his own and presented it to me.  It was a piece of paper and he proudly presented it to me as "The Baby in Mom's Womb. - It's for you - isn't it great mom?"  I completely melted.  Until I realized - it was done in a permanent marker brush script pen.  I dashed out to the dining room and sure enough - there was the pen I had left out to complete Certificates for my piano students - and there was the pen marks all over my white tablecloth.  I now have a permanent picture of "The Baby in Mom's Womb."  I wasn't upset at all, though.  How could I be? I was the one who left it out, and it was his first present to me.  Later that night - my mother in law called to tell me she had talked to my son twice for 20 minutes.  Puzzled I was.  (Gads - Yoda is slipping into my speech - too much Star Wars).  I looked in my phonebook and sure enough there were 3 calls to her and a bunch of other garbage numbers.  Luckily Grandma found out that I was sleeping and was kind enough to listen to his gibberish for a while.  Thank heavens! It prolonged my nap I'm sure.  Other than that - we made it through the sleepless blur of this week.  I found out that I love Barnes and Noble at 9 o'clock at night.  People kept looking at me like I was this irresponsible lunatic mother for bringing a 2 year old into their store until 11 P.M. - but hey - it was heaven.  I could read books - sip my Italian Soda - and let the little one run like made playing with their trains and chairs and books.  It turned out to be a haven.  It's much better than sitting at home trying to sleep and being climbed all over and losing your temper. 

I'm just glad its all over.  Welcome Back Husband!