Believe It.

I'm 12 weeks pregnant today. I keep thinking how weird it is to be this far into a pregnancy.

By the end of this next week, I'll start my first-ever "2nd trimester" that magic middle 3 months of pregnancy where you're not too fat, you get your energy back, and you're supposedly enjoying being pregnant as much as one can.

Sometimes I still can't believe this is happening. If I didn't have the Doppler to listen to Bruiser's heartbeat any time I wanted, it'd be easy to deny.

I asked Brian the other day when he thought I'd believe that I was having a baby, and he cracked "Honey, knowing you, you're going to be changing the baby's diaper saying 'I can't believe I have a baby.'"

That's Brian for you. Analyzes you, and spits it out in the form of a joke. :)

Out of the Mouths of Tweens

My nephew, Erik, who's 10 years old, called the other night to ask about how my ultrasound went. He was quite fascinated as I told him that we're 11 weeks along now, and the baby is about the length of my thumb, but fully formed with fingers & toes and everything.

Then he said "You know, I'm really excited to have a new cousin. It'll be cool to have someone younger than me."

He cheered up even more when I told him that he should also keep in mind that Uncle Jeremy & Aunt Stephanie haven't had their kids yet either -- so there will probably be even MORE cousins younger than him. Yeah, sometimes it just feels good to know you won't always be at the bottom of the totem pole.

I asked him if I should make my baby a boy or a girl, and in a very matter-of-fact tone of voice, he informed me of the truth: "It doesn't matter what WE want, God's already made that decision for you."

Out of the mouths of 'Tweens.

Springtime in Colorado

Today is the first real day of Summer. Sure, it's April 23, but we know summer's on the way because it was 80 degrees a few hours ago, and we have our first thunder, lightning & hailstorm.

It's also about to become Winter, because about 12 hours from now, we're expected to have snow falling.

Ah, Springtime in the Rockies. Schizophrenic weather and the ability to adapt to it, is part of the local tradition.

I've lived in Denver for 5 years, and otherwise spent most of my adult life in Seattle Washington. Denverites are as proud of their ability to adapt to weather changing on a dime -- about as much as Seattleites are proud of their ability to go anywhere in the rain, and people in Maine to being able to throw a barbeque in three feet of snow, or whatever it is that people from Maine do.

The one thing that really amazes me in Denver is the truly diverse ways the clouds can spit out different kinds of moisture.

In Seattle, the clouds generally hang around, and the rain is simply a variation of "lots" to "mist".

Here in Denver, I've seen snow fall while looking directly at a blue sky. I've heard thunder while it's snowing. One time, this weird cold stuff fell out of the sky -- not hail, not rain, not snow, and I stopped a cowboy on the way into a store, and asked what it was. "You're not from here," he announced as if I didn't know. "It's sleet, ma'am."

I often think of how the settlers coming across the Great Plains from neighboring Kansas and Nebraska felt as they saw the wall of Rocky Mountains in front of them. I see why Denver got settled -- as I imagine people saw the soaring cliffs and thought "This is good. We can stop here."

But like the sea -- you can't turn your back on the mountains. You use them as a bellweather for what's coming.

One time, it snowed on June 2 -- I think that was in 2002, just a year after I got here. That was the day that it started out at 65 degrees in the mid-afternoon, and in a half hour my view of the Rocky Mountains completely disappeared, the temperature dropped 30 degrees in that 30 minutes, and it began to snow.

My favorite thing about Spring here in the Rockies is the powerful thunderstorms. It's the announcement that summer hasn't forgotten us and it's well on its way.

I bought some flowers for my flower garden, but because it's snowing tomorrow, I won't plant them until Mother's Day or so.

But just for today, it's Summer. Tomorrow's another story. No worries though. It'll be 80 again by Wednesday.

The Sloppiest But Happiest Sound Recording I've Ever Made!

This is a recording I made of my heartbeat on the Doppler (the slow one that comes first), then it quickly speeds up and you can hear Bruiser's heartbeat!

Enjoy!

Well, at least I HOPE you can hear it enough to enjoy!

I FOUND THE BABY'S HEARTBEAT ON THE DOPPLER TONIGHT!!!

I hadn't tried for a couple days, and I tried it again tonight, and there it is!!!

WOOOSH-WOOOSH-WOOOSH-WOOOSH-WOOOSH-WOOOSH-WOOOSH-WOOOSH-WOOOSH-WOOOSH-WOOOSH-WOOOSH-WOOOSH-WOOOSH-WOOOSH-WOOOSH-WOOOSH-WOOOSH-WOOOSH-WOOOSH-WOOOSH-WOOOSH-WOOOSH-WOOOSH-WOOOSH-WOOOSH-WOOOSH-WOOOSH-WOOOSH-WOOOSH-WOOOSH-WOOOSH-WOOOSH


I LOVE IT!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

Thought O' The Day

Doesn’t it seem ironic that Tom Cruise has to do so much talking to explain Katie’s upcoming “silent birth”?

I thought so.

I guess this is a good test to see what readers we have!

Yes, that's our baby in there!

Surprised? You should have seen ME 6 weeks ago when we found out.

I'm 10 weeks pregnant, and we've seen the heartbeat 4 times now. Yesterday, we got to see him/her MOVE -- arms, legs, even his head bobbed up and down a couple of times.

It's a miracle, that's for sure.

Many but not all my friends know -- most of them don't read my blog anyway, so I figure they can wait a couple more weeks until I'm past that 12-week window. In the meantime here it is for the blogosphere.

I have a pregnancy blog -- but it's far too neurotic to share with most of the world, and I keep it mostly to myself. After three miscarriages, you could probably fathom why I'd be nervous about this pregnancy. Yet, here I am shy of 12 weeks, and I feel like I need to put it here. It's just too big of a part of my life not to put on my regular blog.

The Kid is nicknamed "Bruiser" because I'm doing 2 shots a day into my tummy of Heparin to keep my blood thinned out. The bruising that has resulted is pretty amazing, so hence the name.

So, here's Bruiser folks. If you find this blog, you have a right to know. :)

The Queen of Perk

I'm not easily annoyed by celebrities, although lately I've noticed a trend: Most of the ones who DO annoy me, are generally blonde (or at least have been at some point).

Take Katie Couric.

This picture couldn't be less flattering, but that's why I'm using it. I don't usually spend much energy despising people I don't know, but Katie is pretty far up on the list, in fact only topped by Britney Spears, for a host of different reasons.

First of all it starts in her cheerleader looks: there's the hair, the stupid grin, that level of perkiness that makes people like me want to slap her up side the head.

She's the girl who comes up to you with the drippiest, perkiest "GOOD MORNING!!!" before you've had a chance to go to Starbucks and get that Triple Grande Latte that keeps you from committing murder.

Secondly, there's the pseudo-journalism thing she's got going on.

I'm a big fan of keeping church and state separate, right along with the words "celebrity" and "journalist". Once you become famous for your journalism, you should immediately retire and start writing books.

However, if you start as a celebrity/talk show host, under no circumstances should you be hired to do the evening news -- particularly if you're a news program that actually considers itself based on journalism, not an episode of VH-1's celebrity gossip shows.

No, I can't stand Katie. It's just to easy to picture what an awful person she would be to work with. My brother works at NBC, and long after I started hating Katie, he told me that everyone he's met that works with her can't stand her.

Surprised, I was not.

I know, I know, her husband died of cancer, and she did an on-air colonoscopy to drive home the importance of getting checked with this rather invasive procedure. Great. Fine. If that makes me mean, so be it.

But I'm sure there's some perky, overly happy sappy person out there in TV land you don't like either, right?

RIGHT???

Crazy Dreams

Last night I dreamed that my husband Brian and I were in Paris, France, driving around in his old "Clean Machine" (a 1974 Ford Van), with our pets in tow. We were at a park letting the pets run around, and we were due to fly home to the States the next day.

In this dream, my 23 lb. cat, The Kitten Hopper, Symbol of Feline Inertia, ran after another cat, and climbed a tall tree to get at it.

Several cats were in the tree, and as each came down, I kept having to check them to make sure they weren't my cat. Then I noticed that they were all fat.

How Brian's van got over to Europe I don't know. I just remember that we were going to fly out the next day, and the van was going to stay there.

Weird, huh?

Yeah, it's just one of several freaky dreams lately. It's always amazing to me how I can go through a spate of dreams that are vivid and strange, and largely unexplainable. Then months will pass and I won't dream like that again.

I wonder if Freud could explain them.

I'm sure he would try.

I love these little tests.

Your Five Factor Personality Profile

Extroversion: You have medium extroversion. You're not the life of the party, but you do show up for the party. Sometimes you are full of energy and open to new social experiences. But you also need to hibernate and enjoy your "down time." Conscientiousness: You have high conscientiousness. Intelligent and reliable, you tend to succeed in life. Most things in your life are organized and planned well. But you borderline on being a total perfectionist. Agreeableness: You have medium agreeableness. You're generally a friendly and trusting person. But you also have a healthy dose of cynicism. You get along well with others, as long as they play fair. Neuroticism: You have low neuroticism. You are very emotionally stable and mentally together. Only the greatest setbacks upset you, and you bounce back quickly. Overall, you are typically calm and relaxed - making others feel secure. Openness to experience: Your openness to new experiences is high. In life, you tend to be an early adopter of all new things and ideas. You'll try almost anything interesting, and you're constantly pushing your own limits. A great connoisseir of art and beauty, you can find the positive side of almost anything.

The Five Factor Personality Test

Taco Del Mar is Here! Taco Del Mar is Here!

Oh Man, am I HAPPY.

There was this little taco place, called Taco Del Mar, that made the best fish burritos, and it was right across the street and up a block from my work at The Seattle Times.

That first store on Harrison Street expanded to be in every neighborhood in Seattle during the early 1990s, and by the time I moved to Yakima, it was already moving across the state. Now, whenever I've gone home in recent years, it's hard to miss a Taco Del Mar and its famous fish logo "Carlos" down in Portland and surrounding areas as well.

Well, here I sat in Colorado. Waiting & hoping for the day TDM would come to me. I even thought I'd bring it here myself and looked at their franchising information to see how I could open a store in Denver.

But, I'm a media type, not a open-your-own-restaurant type, so I thought I could wait it out.

Yesterday in the final hours of work, the receptionist said "Taco Del Mar?" and my head winged around so fast I almost got dizzy.

Our receptionist Gary goes through copies of the upcoming paper and saves them all in some sort of order...turns out he just saw an ad with coupons for TDM, and had never heard of it before, so he just said it out loud.

I was so happy I think my co-workers wondered (some more, perhaps) about my mental health.

But I know I'm healthy, ish...and last night Brian drove me up to 98th & Grant in Thornton, and we had our first burritos at TDM in Colorado.

Ahhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhh. Thanks Carlos.

Lucy's Grand Day Out

I woke up in the middle of the night, unable to sleep for various reasons, and decided to get up.

I realized I'd left the dog outside last night and went to the garage to let her in. Well, Lucy wasn't in the garage, where she usually sleeps on her pillow.

I whistled for her, and I didn't hear anything. So in my bathrobe and Crocs, out I went. I whistled again softly -- it is, after all, 4 a.m. and I didn't want to waken the neighbors.

Finally, I hear a jingling noise that I know is her collar, so I know she's close, but she's not coming around the corner from the yard at all. She's outside the fence!

I let her in, then went out front and found the front fence open. Brian must have left it open after he went back there to water some of our bushes.

I was relieved that she stayed so close for so long. Usually dogs can really wander if they're so inclined, and I can't help but wonder how far she did wander. Did she go to the lake? Did she go down to the creek? Did she get to go kick some ass down at that stupid dog PeeWee's house, who comes and pees in our yard? Did she have any close calls with cars? I can't think of a single time in her 7 years that she's gotten out and not been brought back quickly -- maybe a few minutes at the most.

What an adventure for her! She's been moping around since I haven't taken her to the lake recently. After 6 or 7 hours on her own, she bounded in the house like she had a good time, but you could tell she was happy to be back.

Now, 15 minutes later, she's already asleep on her pillow, and I'm sitting here still wide awake.

Oh, the life of a dog.