Comfort food

Childbirth class

Women are basically in pain for an entire 24 hours, sometimes more. Not looking forward to it. One woman actually began to cry and left the class after the first video we watched about labor and birth.



We took a class that met one day and lasted 5 hours. I value the information we learned, but the class really didn't seem worth it because all we did was watch a string of videos. There was a brief amount of relaxation and breathing techniques taught, but it was all kind of self-explanatory. Then, at the very end we went for a brief tour of the maternity ward at the hospital. The Women's center is completely new at this hospital and is still being worked on. After the tour our host, along with 6 couples took the elevator back to the first floor when the doors violently shut, allowing only one couple to leave. It then remained shut while we called for help and waited close to half an hour for the maintenance crew to get the doors open. If we had been trapped any longer, things could have gotten bad. It's not a good idea to lock 5 pregnant women in an unventilated elevator for more than 30 minutes.

Don't use your stomach as a table

It's harder to read books since becoming pregnant because my tummy gets in the way. So, I have become accustomed to basically laying the book on my stomach while I read. Problem is, this tends to make the baby uncomfortable because she always seems to move around a lot when I do this. Tonight, I was sipping some hot chocolate and precariously balancing my book when she managed to kick so violently that I spilled all over my shirt and the couch.

Dessert!

I had some friends over for a Cuban-themed dinner of crispy shredded beef with garlic-scented rice and black beans. The food turned out tasty (particularly the rice), but the best part of the dinner was the dessert. I made cream puffs for the first time from the book "The Sweet Spot" by Pichet Ong. I did, however, discover that you should never overfill an icing bag. It makes a mess. The puffs were filled with ginger cream, and lime cream. The ginger cream was from the book made by mixing a ginger-flavored pastry cream with whipped cream. And the lime cream was my spur of the moment filling I made by mixing in some lime curd with the ginger cream. Both were tasty, but the ginger flavor was sooooo mild, you couldn't have known it was there in a blind tasting (except Seth, he has a remarkably good palette). Anyway, I would definitely make the recipe again, but maybe with a green tea filling instead.

Dog-snuggles

Seth's beard is as good as a dog-brush. I can always tell when he's been nuzzling the dog because his beard will turn white with dog hair. Kind of hard to portray in a black and white, simplified cartoon, but I did my best.

Dog-sitting and the past few weeks

Our friend's Shiba Inu had a tendency to stare at me, clearly wanting something that I can't figure out. He came and sat, looking at me for what seemed like forever. I pet him for a half hour, tried to give him treats, food, let him outside, toys, anything. But he just seemed interested in looking at me for a while. I think he misses his mom.



And, on another note, the past month has been crazy hectic because we have finally sold our old house! Yay! But it's been a bittersweet experience. First, the housing market has been so bad for sellers that we did not sell fast, or for what the house was worth. Second, the people who finally signed a contract to buy the house put us through a roller coaster ride of lies and manipulation that has stressed the two of us out for an entire month. But, everything finally went through, and the house is officially sold, money in the bank, and we never have to think about it again! We still hate the new owners' realtor (and the new owners for that matter) for costing us an extra month of house bills, but ultimately it is an incredible weight lifted off our shoulders.



And, to make matters even worse, I managed to hydroplane the car off of the highway on Saturday while driving to work. I entered an extreme downpour while going to fast and hit a river of water (Texas highways are not very well-graded). Even with all-wheel-drive I could not get a grip on the road and had to just sit still in the vehicle until it stopped moving. Luckily, everything is okay, the baby is fine, I didn't even get jostled in the vehicle. I just managed to spin around on the road, then slide off the highway, across the access road, and into a curb which stopped the vehicle. It's amazing, and a blessing, that I didn't hit another vehicle. But I did hit a small traffic sign that shattered the passenger side window, side mirror, dented the door, and busted a tire. After I exited the vehicle, I was that another car had hydroplaned in the exact same spot, but he hit a wall (and I found out that he didn't even see me go off the road). The car is now in the shop, for a long time, but it will be like new when it comes out - with no hail damage!


It's been a crazy few weeks!

Post weeklong parental visit

I basically slept all day on Saturday to make up for last week. I didn't get any solid night's sleep all week and it certainly hit me on the weekend. Loki also spent the day making up for lost sleep.


Sorry about the serious lack of posts. Things have been busy and then my parents visited all of last week and I didn't get around to any catch-up postings. I still need to get up to date, but hopefully these will suffice for now.

The fire alarms work

We had to wait a full 40 minutes before we could remove the SilPat and turn off the oven (we were baking bread and didn't want to remove anything mid-bake). Nice to know the fire alarms work, but it would have been nicer if we could've turned them off. My dad said that the next time I use the silicone mat there should be no problems, but I'm still wary of it.

Hail Storm!

Austin had it's worst hail storm in a long time. Luckily the hail managed to shrink to the size of a golf ball by the time it hit the house and our cars. I managed to get some blankets on the hoods of the cars before the hail started, but I didn't have anything to weigh them down with and the wind blew them off. Once the hail started, however, the rain also started and helped to keep the blankets in place. I made the risky decision to place one more blanket on the hood of the car when the hail let up a bit. The car was covered, but my leg didn't fare so well. Just like getting hit with a paintball, though much larger. Over at Seth's work, the hail was softball-sized and busted the windshields of nearly every car in the parking lot. Thankfully we only got a few large dents in our cars. I'm even more thankful that I or the dog wasn't caught outside when the hail began. Ouch!

Poor wardrobe decision

Getting bigger