Seth Rules Pretty Hard

Seth got me this for Christmas. I have wanted it for several years. We got a set of RevereWare for our wedding that was destroyed by crappy rental-unit stoves, which is retiring now that I got this new set. It is so pretty. So Pretty. Shiny, well-designed. I am LOVING this Christmas gift. I didn't even have the gumption to put it on my list this year, but Seth is so awesome that he snuck it in there. I was shocked when I opened it. I was just crying and crying. I love this. I also love not having to wonder how crappy my next rental-unit stove is going to be because I own my own dang stove now. I don't RENT.

Hung For the Holidays

My sister Laurel gave us this CD for Christmas a couple years ago and we finally opened it and listened to it this year. It turns out, I really like it. I like that William Hung, because he has a really good attitude. I hope he made some bucks off being embarrassed. Maybe it's not embarrassing for him. That would work out real well. William sings all the Christmas classics on this disc, and it's good because it's not the same old beautiful Mormon Tabernacle Choir or Bing Crosby or whatever. It's just a regular guy with a fun Asian accent singing like a regular guy. And when I sing along, he makes me sound good. So if you're open-minded and like a novelty, like me, this may be something to check into.

I also got a disc called Bluegrass Christmas at the Dollar Tree several weeks ago but then I misplaced it and haven't been able to listen to it. I still will, though, whenever I find it. Another novelty Christmas disc! I love it!

I Had A Baby

And his name is Scott. Enough already with the carrots, right? I have real news. After causing us trouble all summer and trying to get out early, Scottie finally arrived right on time, Monday December first. It was a super-quick delivery, where we made it to the hospital within 20 or 30 minutes of delivering the baby, and if we had hesitated any more, we could have had a Bad Night. He came whether we liked it or not. I did it without an epidural. So now I've had one of every kind of birth: induced labor, preemie, c-section, vbac with epidural, "natural" delivery. Did I miss anything?

The funny part is that the whole time I was praying for Scott to be born the SUNDAY after Thanksgiving. I need to work on my enunciation or something, because Heavenly Father must have thought I was saying MONDAY that whole time. No sweat, though, because I couldn't have asked for a better birth. I was afraid to ask for a better birth, in fact, because just the timing was blessing enough. But I did sneak in a couple prayers where you're like, So if you want to bless me with such and such a fabulous birth with this baby, that would be great and I would be so grateful.

Everyone's always bloggin' it up about their babies and putting pictures and stuff, and it's not my intention to let Scott take over and dominate my blog. But he is super cute and super cuddly and super sweet. This last saturday night, at age 12 days, Scott slept from 10:30 pm until 7 in the morning. DANG!!! He's a really good blessing and I am super ultra grateful for him.

It's weird, too, because I'm grateful he caused so much trouble. Without it, I wouldn't have been diagnosed with cancer and I would be ignorant or it and it would go on growing and getting nastier and nastier. I had the last pre-surgery ultrasound this morning on my lymph nodes and it looked good, with no obvious signs of contamination. A few more fun tests and we are GO for surgery!

We Grew Carrots...But Not Good Ones

The title pretty much says what happened. On a bit of a whim I planted some carrot seeds and when nothing came up I replanted the row with cucumbers. So halfway through the summer, in between all the cucumber vines, here come these carrot greens growing strong and healthy. My mother-in-law gave me the seeds and told me that when she went to harvest her carrots, they were tiny stumpy nubs, so to leave mine in the ground, which I did. I finally brought them in after Halloween. Here's the entire carrot harvest, from largest to smallest. I was just pleased something grew at all. We...didn't eat the little guys.

Oh, and that IS my big fat old belly there, at the bottom of the picture. Sometimes I think I'm not that huge-looking, and then something will happen like this picture, and I'll know for sure that, yep, I'm tremendous in size. Anyway, here's to a better carrot harvest next year! Cheers!

Tomato Harvest After All

I was really disappointed when it got all frosty one night many weeks ago, so I had Seth go on out to the garden and just retrieve all the tomatoes that were on the bushes, green though they were. He brought them in all in a big bucket and just left the bucket on the kitchen floor. Not too much faith they would actually do much, eh? A couple days later I had a party in here, so I had to clean up stuff. There's not a real good way to make a big old bucket of green tomatoes look party-ish, so I used my Design Sense and lined them all up on the windowsills in the kitchen, living room, and my room. They looked pretty cute, I thought.

So but they sat there, very green and very hard for many many days. And then a couple of them began to blush, just a wee bit. And then the blushers got red. And then MORE started to blush! And it went from there, to where we had some getting actually ripe. My idea in planting five tomato bushes was that we would have an abundant harvest and process them into canning jars or whatnot. But obviously, with that plan dashed, we were still able to have an abundant harvest! I am still pretty pleased with this. Some went the way of all the earth before we were able to consume them, may they rest in pieces out by the tree where Seth chucks bad fruit. Some I made into a colossal batch of homemade tomato soup, which took me SO LONG that I had to put it away for several days before I got up the gumption to get it out and finish making it. Eric actually dug it pretty well and asked for seconds and asked to have it again. Seth said it was really strong, which it was.

Some we were able to use in salad or tacos. And the last of them I ingeniously used to make homemade spaghetti sauce, which when mixed with a can of regular sauce, was not too strong. Pretty good, actually. There was a ton of it and we had it for dinner two times in four days.

So Tomato Bounty after all that worry! It wasn't a nine-dollar salad tomato after all! With all these other brothers and sisters going ripe long after the fact, the average price-per tomato actually went down to where I would consider it a tomato bargain! And, sorry Seth, next year I'm planning to plant the same number of tomato plants, but suck it up and go get them MUCH earlier in the season, and coddle them and poultry-manure them and reap an even more abundant harvest!!!

Sometimes I Make Stuff that's Ugly

The idea was that it would be a football. It's the third or fourth cake I baked in my P-Chef batter bowl. It came out far, far uglier than the others. It stuck to the bowl and turned into a stupid pile of crumbs when I took it out. And then, to make it even doofier, when I cut it in half, I missed the line of symmetry and ended up with a very lumpy , terrible, lopsided footballish-type thing. After that I was all, Seth I love you, but I am not loving this cake, so Sorry! I just slapped on some homegrown brownish frosting and this is the end result. I even forgot to bring candles to Dorothy's for the party so that's a tealight up top. Delightful smell, though! I believe we were all calling it The Turd Cake. Me especially. Next year, Seth, you'll get a decent, respectable cake. Next year.

Modern Maternity Clothes

When I was pregnant with Eric I got me some super-comfy fun maternity clothes. I still have the shirts but the one beloved pants and the other not-as-beloved pants had to go, for style reasons. They were really comfy clothes, with lots of stretch and forgiveness.

So I'm more moderner now and with Russell I was blessed to be able to go in and buy some modern-day maternity clothes, mostly from Target. So Liz Lange, bless her heart, has these maternity clothes and they're supposed to be all stylish but mom-friendly. I will now review her work.

This isn't going to be a positive review. Liz apparently thinks modern and stylish pregnant moms don't care about a) comfort, b)wedgies, or c)their gut hanging out. I have had problems with all these things while wearing Liz's "maternity" clothes. One big thing is the stretchy panel up front. I avoided this altogether on my first maternities, with Eric. I thought, ewww! stretchy panel! So Liz Lange must think that also, because most of her maternities have a big fat stretchy waist-band that's designed to sit at your actual waist. That's pretty ok when you're not very pregnant. But once you hit actual pregnancy size and shape, it's STUPID!! My main problem with this waistband option is that it's super-uncomfortable having stuff right there all over your already uncomfortable fatty old belly. Then you have a contraction and boop! the whole thing slides right down to your crotch. This is Lame. So I give these pants a thumbs up for style and early-pregnancy comfort, but a thumbs down for late-pregnancy everything. They're great for going home from the hospital, though, when you're still all fatty but not pregnant.

Then the other style of pants Liz does is the "below the belly" waistband. I have one pair of these, that was on sale for like $5.41 or so. They are great, in that they don't give you a wedgie all day nearly as bad as stretchy-panel maternity jeans. BUT the downside is that if you don't want your gut hanging right out from under your shirt, these are not the pants for you. Mostly they just slip right down to the crotch pretty much all the time. So, not that comfy out in public or modest. So bless their heart, these pants were a good attempt to keep that big stretchy waistband off your uncomfortable "belly" but don't turn out to solve the problems.

And shirts. Traditional maternity shirts are big and wide and long and comfy. But they do make you look big and wide and huge and enormous. So modern-day maternity clothes involve little shirts. Little stretchy shirts. Oooh, so cute, look at her little pregnant belly. I despise the word belly and all attempts to make your baby gut something cute. It's really not attractive, people. It's just something you have to do and Look Like for a few months in order to score the real bonanza. So, like the pants, little stretchy maternity shirts are cute and flattering early in pregnancy, when regular clothes are too tight but regular maternity shirts are WAY too big. And then you get to the "actually big and pregnant" stage and they become RIDICULOUS. First, if you do have pants or jeans with a stretchy panel, whop! Here it is right out in everybody's face, because little stretchy modern maternity shirts aren't long enough to cover that fun stretchy ugly panel. It's not good looking and I for one, want it covered. Second, even if there were something cute about a pregnant baby-gut, and it were great to wear a little tight stretchy shirt over it, the shirt should at least COVER the baby-gut. Sweet old Liz Lange wants her modern-day maternity shirts to be short. For lack of a better word. She feels it's more stylish and flattering, which may be true when you're not that pregnant. But when you're big and fatty, like me right now, longer is INFINITELY more flattering. I tried on a modern shirt the other day and it was so ludicrously short and stupid-looking that I took it off instantaneously. I didn't even want Russell to see it on me. Really dumb. Plus I am super uncomfortable all the time, if my shirt is sticking a) on my butt or b) on my tummy. I feel like Big Edna in the movie "UHF" adjusting my shirt down constantly all day. These shorty little shirts are murder for a person like me, adjusting and pulling constantly, all day, all day.

Finally, I have something to say about stretchy panels. Nothing will ever be as comfortable as my first un-stylish maternity pants that I don't have anymore. I now have and wear pants with the stretchy panel. They might-well work for some ladies. Me, myself? I am in a state of constant Wedgie-ness. In my attempt to be cute and stylish, and wear modern-day clothes, I have succumbed to vanity at the expense of comfort. Is having a wedgie all the time comfortable? No. But then almost nothing about being pregnant is comfortable. That sounds like whining and it might be. Proto-whining, maybe. So either I can have a wedgie literally all the time, except right after a wedgie-pick and before moving a muscle, or else I can wear the waistband-down-to-the-crotch Liz Lange pants and have my gut hanging out all the time. I feel justified in a little tiny dash of whining. I do get into my jammies as early in the evenings as I can. They are regular clothes, but nice and stretchy and comfy. They make me look really tubby and I don't care. I rave about their comfort. Two thumbs up for comfort, if only for 9 or 10 hours all in the night.