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Victory in 3D
Thursday, December 24th, 2009 | Author: Erika

Sorry about not posting yesterday.  You see, I was too busy celebrating.  With my handsome husband.  Who just so happened to freaking rock the heck out his huge exam yesterday.

That’s right, he met his foe on the battlefield, pitted his wits against it, and emerged victorious with a nearly perfect score.  Take that, Microsoft certification exam!

Now that this exam is behind him, Wes can officially start looking for work as a software developer because not only is he now qualified as a software developer, he also has the credentials to back it up.  He wants to take five more exams after this one so that he’s qualified as a super-hero developer or somesuch, but this was the big one and he nailed it.

We spent the day at the super-fancy mall around here, soaking up the revelry and commerce, and then went to see Avatar in 3D.  It was a really fun movie to watch, but either my eyes are broken or the projectors were slightly out of focus because a lot of the movie just looked kind of blurry.

Needless to say, I’m really going to enjoy watching the movie again on DVD.  When I won’t spend half the movie closing my eyes to avoid the blur, and where I won’t miss crucial parts of the plot because of my many bathroom breaks.

Now we are left with wonderful things to celebrate.  We’re making a special dinner of beef-ale stew with green onion buttermilk dumplings for dinner in honor of it being Christmas Eve and all, we’re spending all day tomorrow with his family to celebrate Christmas, and then on Monday we get to sneak a peek at what our little Squishy is up to.

Seriously, life doesn’t get much better than this.

Category: Lifestyle  | 2 Comments
The Great Bubble Blunder
Thursday, December 10th, 2009 | Author: Erika

Do you remember when I wrote yesterday about my poor frozen washing machine?  Well.  Last night it had the equivalent of the 24 hour flu, what with the vomiting and mess and horror, but now it’s all back to normal and running in tip top shape.

Last night though.  *shudder*  Wes was able to get the hoses leading from the wall-mounted faucets to the washer thawed, but the washer was still unable to get the water to come through.  We concluded this was because something inside the washer was frozen.

To combat this, we decided to run a load of laundry with hot water manually poured into the washer.  This actually worked quite well, and after a rocky start the washer was soon thawing out and humming along quite well.

We congratulated each other and went inside to cook dinner.

Never in our wildest imaginings could we ever have conceived to check to see if the drain hose was likewise frozen.

Oh but it was.  I went out to check the washer and there was an error message in the little digital window and bright white cheerful suds were flowing from the bottom of the washer door onto the garage floor.  The door clicked unlocked and, because I’m curious, I opened the door.

The bloody great deluge!

The bloody great deluge!

In case you’re curious?  If your washing machine starts flashing you ominous error messages and clutching its stomach while saying it’s going to throw up?

Whatever you do, make sure it’s not opening that door.

Unless you have a large bucket handy.  Or just really want to wash your floor with laundry detergent.

Wes was, of course, watching the whole debacle.  This was unfortunate because I happened to be wearing his shoes at the time and it’s entirely possible they wound up as collateral damage thanks to my delay at dodging the great flood of cleanliness.

We wound up with a garage floor that looked like this:

On the plus side, Wes' car's tires were mountain fresh...

On the plus side, Wes' car's tires were mountain fresh...

Because my husband is awesome, he tackled the clean-up (I was excused because of my difficulty at reaching the ground) while I finished dinner.  Wes, being the intrepid troubleshooter he is, refused to give up hope on the washer and, after two more cycles with hot water, was able to defrost the drain pipe and effectively resuscitate our washer.

The question for us now is, what do we do about our garage?  In the four years we’ve owned the house, the garage has never gotten so cold that the washer’s frozen up.

All that’s changed now, so what do we do?  Do we insulate our garage?  Buy a space heater for laundry day?  Wrap our hoses with heat tape and insulation?

These are all big homeowner questions, none of which can be solved with martinis or cookies.  Unacceptable.

Category: Lifestyle  | 5 Comments
Windows and Websites
Wednesday, September 23rd, 2009 | Author: Erika

Wow.  I got schooled in that last poll, didn’t I?  I mean, it wasn’t even a fair fight at all.  Just goes to show you: Let the Internet settle your marital disagreements.

I wish I had more to say at the moment, but unfortunately every time I open my mouth the only thing that comes out is either “Baby!” or “Offbeat Mama!” or “Windows!” because that’s pretty much the majority of what I’m thinking about at any given moment.  Baby because, well, duh.  Offbeat Mama, which is the name of the new site I’m helping to launch, because we’re launching next week and I’m juggling a whole heap of things to get that going.  Windows because we’re getting ours replaced.

I’m actually pretty darn tickled about getting our windows replaced.  Our house has two kinds of windows: vinyl and aluminum frame.  The vinyl windows are newer and work great.  The aluminum ones?  Not so much.

They’re as old as the house and you can certainly tell.  They leak heat like a sieve during the winter, and let it come pouring in during the summer.  The winter is the worst though, because they collect condensed water and then it pools on the window sills and I have to mop it up every morning to prevent it from dripping onto the carpet.  All that moisture eventually leads to mold growth, so every week during the winter I have to disinfect and clean out our window tracts.  Just so you know, winter in Washington?  Lasts a long frigging time.

Adding insult to injury, the seal on the windows in our bedroom broke and now there are little white spots on the insides of the panes of glass.  This means we can no longer see through the windows in our bedroom.  Super fancy nice, huh?

Wes’ brother is an excellent contractor, so he’s going to replace our windows when his schedule clears up.  Not only will this save us buckets of money on our heating bill this winter, it’ll update the heck out of our house and enable us to see clearly through our bedroom windows.

I’m excited about these things, but what I’m most excited about is the prospect of bringing Squishy home in February (the deep, dark depth of winter) and being able to keep the house warm enough.  Also, being able to put the baby to sleep in his/her bassinet next to a window that doesn’t grow mold?  That tickles me too.

Now, as for Offbeat Mama.  I’m really excited about that too.  Ariel and I have been working on it all summer and the official launch is on Monday.  But.  If you want to, you can come sneak a peek extra early-like.  You just need the login / password, which are: mamasays / timeforbed

The site is really fun already.  It’s basically an online community where offbeat parents don’t have to apologize for being who they are and where we can all collectively ooh and ahh over one another’s adorable progeny without wondering whether someone’s judging us for whatever decision they think is weird/wrong/whatever.

So yeah.  Come check it out, at the very least so you can see the adorable shoes I blogged about last week :)

PS: A new belly pic is coming up tomorrow!  I’ve decided I’d like to do those every two weeks, so we’ll see if I can keep it up!

Category: Blogging and Geekdom, Lifestyle  | 4 Comments
Flippant Frugality
Monday, August 24th, 2009 | Author: Erika

Wanna know what I did this weekend besides demolish an entire bag of sour gummy worms because I could and they’re delicious (Gestational diabetes here I come!)?  I went shopping.  I spent money.  I boldly spat in the eye of my budget and said, “You know what, budget?  The best things in life may be free, but this tummy’s not getting any smaller and free maternity clothes are few and far between.”

After a whirlwind shopping adventure that ransacked five different stores, I ended up with the following:

  • A very cute pair of maternity capris
  • A pair of maternity jeans
  • Six cotton t-shirts, all of which are very long and perfect for layering
  • A bacon Whopper with cheese

The cost for this shopping FUNANZA?  $38.  Because the world is a very good place.  The only down side to my little shopping trip is that the maternity pants, which were such a very good steal at $5, are a tad too short.  In fact, all maternity jeans I tried on were too short.

It appears that the manufacturers of maternity pants are cruel, and unusual, because they make maternity pants in the following sizes: S, M, L, XL.  This means that if you’re someone like me who’s leggy and has junk in the trunk but not enough to justify hopping up a size, you’re out of luck.  It’s either swim around in pants that are too big or wear cute socks.

I’m going to throw myself on the mercy of my sewing-whiz mother in law and see if she wouldn’t mind sewing a cute inch or two of fabric around the cuffs of the pants to give them some extra length.  I’ll look like a That 70’s Show cast-off, but at least my ankles won’t freeze.

Wes says I impressed him with my frugality this weekend.  We’re determined to do the whole baby thing as economically as possible, as we figure this little buddy’s going to outgrow most of the things we buy right now anyway, so what’s the point in going hogwild over brand new super-awesome stuff?

We’re going used baby furniture (I refuse to look at shiny new cribs in catalogs and instead browse Craigslist), used stroller, used baby clothes, used toys, etc. all within the realm of safety and recalls.  The only new things we’re getting new are a carseat and crib mattress, because those are the things experts say you should never buy used.

Good thing those are the only two though, because those suckers are expensive!

True to form, I’ve left my blogging until late at night and now I’m tired and soft, like cheese left out on the counter too long.  You can try to scrape me onto a cracker if you want, but I can’t guarantee I won’t give you salmonella.

Category: Fashion, Lifestyle  | 5 Comments
Pooled Resources
Tuesday, August 04th, 2009 | Author: Erika

So.  Heh.  I kind of lost it yesterday, yeah?  Seeing as how my last post was about my Ruffles deprivation-induced rage, it’s really only fitting that my next post be about fitness.  Or my lack thereof.  According to all the pregnancy books, I really shouldn’t be starting any exercise regimens I haven’t been doing on a regular basis for the last year.  This is unfortunate, because my only exercise regimen had been sport eating appetizers at parties and occasional walks with Wes.

I don’t feel comfortable sitting back and watching as my face and body pudgify under the crushing weight of all the salty foods Squishy commands me to eat, however, so I’m stuck with every pregnancy book’s favorite exercise recommendations for pregnant women: walking and swimming.

Walking is fine in the summer for the most part.  Wes and I love walks.  Walks are fun!  During the winter, however, walks are awful.  Biting, freezing wind, frozen patches of black ice on sidewalks, hours of darkness enveloping most of the hours of the day like a depressing, horror-inducing fog.

As for swimming…?  Never have I mourned for my old home state (California) as I do now.  In California, my choices for swimming avenues were plentiful.  I could go swimming at the local lake, or at the pool in my Dad’s complex, or in the ocean, or at any number of community pools located just about everywhere.  Or, I could go to my old high school’s pool.  Pools everywhere!  For free!

Here, though?  Here, the pools that are affordable are outdoors and closed during the winter, which will do nothing to help me endure the cold winter months of pregnancy.  The pools that are indoors cost a pretty penny.  There’s a very nice fitness club down the street from where Wes and I live, which just so happens to have a very nice indoor pool, a world-class weight room, and all the amenities and classes you could ask for.

This very nice fitness club also comes with a very nice price tag, so imagine my crushing disappointment when I learned today that membership would cost far more than Wes and I will ever feel comfortable shelling out.  I must admit, I’m really pretty sad about the whole state of affairs.  I’d gotten all excited about the prospect of using my newly recovered energy swimming freestyle laps at the pool, watching my arms and shoulders get toned while my stomach grew huge.  Such a rosy image.

Now I’m stuck with a not-so-rosy image.  It’s not a good one, so I won’t even share it.  Just imagine a pale ball of dough with arms, legs, and my face.

And they wonder why America is getting so obese!  It’s because gyms hoard fitness and only dole it out to the rich and spendthrift.  The day I can afford to drop a fortune on access to a pool is the day I can afford my own frigging pool.

Category: Aidan Pregnancy, Lifestyle  | 2 Comments
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