Kathryn

We’re getting a new roof today. I’m not talking new shingles. They’re actually tearing off our entire roof with what sound like giant nail files and throwing it into a bin placed conveniently below one of our front windows. Dan woke the kids up this morning to reassure them that everything was okay when the home pedicure started . OKAY?! OKAY?! There are giant pieces of crap flying off our roof into a bin and WE CAN WATCH IT FROM THE FRONT WINDOWS???!!!! They consider it to be more than “Okay”. This may be the best day of their lives.

We have a giant “bird’s” nest in the attic and every year in the spring some morning around 4am we hear a terrible splintering splitting noise as the giant “birds” come back to rip the cedar shakes off our roof and re-enter their home. The nest is located right above our bed so we know when they come back and it’s an unnerving feeling. We’ve had the ancient disintegrating roof cleaned and repaired but the “birds” always come back and our roof cleaner has gotten to the point where he won’t come back to clean until we hire someone to put on a new roof. It’s on the verge of falling to pieces.

When we had our inspection done on the house before buying it, the inspector (who was apparently fully owned by our shrewd realtor) told us the roof was only 5-years old. This helped push the deal through but was a bit disheartening when we moved in, had leaks and found out that it was actually 20 years old and remaining on its deathbed only through frequent resuscitation and hospice care.

So we stretched out the inevitable for 3 years and now we start the joy, the adventure, the second mortgage that is a new roof.

Well, when I told the contractors bidding on the roof job about the “birds,” they all laughed at me. They said there was no way that any kind of bird could tear up a roof like that. It had to be something with hands… like a raccoon… an animal which builds giant nests… like a raccoon. They asked if there were any raccoon sightings around. “Oh yeah,” I said. “They live in the forest behind our house and we see them in our yard all the time.”

Yeah. Apparently they don’t live “in the forest.” When we told the kids that raccoons were living in the attic, they could not have been happier. But they were also terrified with excitement. “What if they claw their way through the ceiling in the night?!” they grimace/grinned.

“Yeah. What if!?” I periodically think as I lay in bed at night listening to the house creak and staring up at the ceiling.

So this morning as Laylee saw the first large piece of brown debris fly over the edge of the house she exclaimed, “OH WOW! I bet that was one of the raccoons!” PETA be merciful. Mama needs a new pair-a-shingles.

My abdomen has gotten to the point where it both looks and feels like a tightly-packed rubber bag full of small and very active ninjas.

It’s a strange feeling and one I know I’ll miss when it turns back into vacant jelly belly in just over 2 months.

Baby Wanda and I are becoming very close in all the ways and although I sometimes still think she’s a boy, rarely feed her vegetables and can’t for the life of me think of a suitable offline name for her, I find myself liking her very much… especially when she keeps the nunchucks and throwing stars stowed safely in her back pocket.

We had a blast last week at Grandma’s house, a place where Mom and Dad have to work hard to stay oblivious to the crazy things the kids are doing.

[Read more at Parenting.com]

We do not have the cable. Our television has two wires on top of it in the form of an antenna. Sometimes it’s dressed in foil. We decided to try and live without cable for a few months when we bought this house… 3 years ago. Once you go without that bill for a while it’s just so hard to justify adding it in again. Do I really need to watch reruns of Trading Spaces whenever I’m a wee bit bored? Do I need it $40 worth? Am I enjoying reading books and you know, having a life?

So we stuck with our rabbit ears. When we heard that the digital transition was coming, we got our magic box and waited. When it finally happened, we lost channel NINE! THE PBS WAS NO LONGER WITH US! Channel 9 is our favorite channel not only for the great documentaries, motivational speakers and antiques road show, but also because it has cartoons the kids can watch and learn something from with no offensive content and no obnoxious commercials.

Well the digital box didn’t pick up PBS but it did pick up a station playing reruns of the A-Team and Airwolf and one that seems to play Dances with Wolves about half the time. There was also a cartoon station called Qubo that I was excited for. It could be just like PBS in the mornings only different.

The difference comes in the lesser quality of the programs and the fact that it’s chock full of commercials and not just commercials but annoying obnoxious commercials about selling all of your spare gold to make a fortune or infomercials about fabulous must-have beauty products.

I left the kids watching Qubo for the first time and went upstairs to take a shower. When I got back, Laylee was bursting at the seams.

“I just saw the BEST. COMMERCIAL. EVER!”

“Oh yeah?”

She then proceeded to describe a magical product she had discovered called something like “Heel Magic.”

“It’s a kind of a stick that you rub against your feet and it takes off all the cracked dead skin and yucky stuff. You can have perfect smooth feet. Dad can use it. You can use it. We can all use it and our feet will be beautiful!

“It only costs $20 and it comes with a nail file and all this other free stuff!”

“Wow. That’s pretty cool,” I said.

“But it gets better. If you order NOW, it only costs $10! I mean $20 is pretty good but $10 is practically nothing.”

I told Laylee seriously, “You know I hate those kinds of commercials. They always make the stuff they’re selling look way better than it really is. I’m sure that magic heel stick really isn’t as good as they say it is.”

“Yeah. You’re probably right. But imagine if it WERE. Then we’d buy it for sure.” She looked dreamy.

So, um, no unsupervised Qubo watching for now. My kids are just way too easily shaped by the media they see. And besides, Dan figured out which direction to point our antenna and pick up channel nine. We have to sacrifice one of the major network stations to get nine but it’s not hurting us any and the kids are back to learning to read via the magical blue box of light.

Today I took the dreaded glucose test, or as the instructions on the bottle of sugar-water read, the test that you just fit into your daily routine without any inconvenience. (I’m paraphrasing there a bit.)

The bottle basically says to go about your business as usual, eat your breakfast and/or lunch as usual, then wait exactly two hours, then drink the bottle of putrid sugar water that’s supposed to be lemon/lime flavored but really tastes like rancid sugar dissolved in barely-potable water. You must drink it all in 5-10 minutes, stand on your head, not vomit, begin driving the 40 minutes to the blood draw facility where you should tell the employees exactly when you finished drinking it so they can take out half of your body’s total quantity of blood at exactly 60 minutes past the time that you finished your last drop of liquid. You should continue not vomiting and not eating until after your blood has been taken.

I’m not sure what all those vials of blood were for. I know one is to test for gestational diabetes, which is what the sugar-water is for. (Am I the only person who thinks of Edgar’s wife from Men in Black when I say “sugar-water”?) I suspect the other 13 vials are either just to make you feel like your whole trip was worthwhile or to continue the Jane Austeny tradition of “bleeding” someone to get the oogies out of their system.

I had an OB appointment directly following the glucose test in the same building so I wanted to plan to get done with the blood work and to the doctor at precisely the correct time, which meant I made a plan where I followed the directions backwards from the time of my appointment, figuring out when exactly I had to eat breakfast in order for all the planets to align.

It worked. My blood has been taken and I visited with my doctor. I told him that the test went fine but I’d rather have taken my glucose in some other way, like by eating a pound of peach rings. He said someone has actually calculated the exact number of jelly beans a pregnant woman has to eat to equal the amount of glucose in one of those drinks. I told him that next time I’d take the jelly bean route.

“Next time? There’s going to be a next time?” he said with raised eyebrows.

“Well, you know, if,” I backpedaled. I told him that a next time would be much more likely if he could help relieve some of the symptoms I’ve been having lately. So I’m off to physical therapy, water aerobics with old people, and he even gave me a little something that’s supposed to stop me from waking up coughing on my own stomach acid at night. Such a helpful lad.

Only 12 more weeks to go, peeps.