Whine

I can't even call this an update from Tot's doc appointment, since it's mostly going to be me whining about how terribly I've been mistreated.

We went to our regular appointment yesterday and all was well with Tot. We will now be visiting Dr. T every 2 weeks. Unfortunately, my glucose test was not well, it was 15 points high. This morning I found myself back at the Colonnades for the 3 hour glucose test. Don't let the name mislead you, it took 5 hours.

Let me just stop here and point out something important. For me, the worst part about going to the doc is having to pee in a cup. I'm not one of those people who can pee on demand. Every time I have to go to the clinic I prepare by sucking down as much liquid as possible an hour before my appointment so that I walk in the door doing the potty dance.

Imagine my joy when I walked into the lab at 7 this morning and the first thing they told me was that I needed to pee in a cup, and would be doing so every time they drew blood today. Um, nobody mentioned that. I hadn't had any food or drink since dinner last night, 12 hours before! If I had known I would have made an effort to skip my 4am potty stop, but I nobody had said a word about the cup yesterday. Nothing.

So they drew blood the first time and pointed me to the restroom. I told them it wasn't going to happen and I didn't lie. I told them a glass of water would be useful, but I couldn't have anything until after I drank down another bottle of the nasty glucose drink, which I couldn't have until I produced a sample. I finally won the standoff an hour later when they gave me the glucose drink and gave up on liquid gold from round one.

After I sucked down the nasty orange flavored drink (yesterday's lemon/lime wasn't quite so blech) they sent me back to the waiting room for an hour, then called me back for another blood draw and handed me another cup. I was really starting to hate these people. I would like to point out that knocking on the restroom door repeatedly and asking, "Are you ok?" or "Can you go this time?" isn't really helpful. You got your sample lady, but you would have gotten it faster without the pressure!

This is the point where the ladies in the lab get kudos. They did not send me back to the waiting room, but rather put me in an exam room in the back with a recliner, blankie, and gave me water. Bless them. They really weren't evil. Oh no wait, an hour later they came back and handed me another cup, then shoved another needle in my arm. And again an hour after that... My arms look like I've been shooting heroin. One arm got hit twice, the other one three times. They hurt.

The irony is that during that last hour I downed 3 cups of water to make sure there was no delay when they handed me the cup. They only had one restroom at the place where they drew blood and I had caused a line to form every time I went in there. I wasn't wasting any time on this last one. So I finally took care of business in a timely fashion and left. Then I got stuck in traffic on the way home and realized that I seriously had to pee...

If I don't pass this test, I have to go back for the freaking 5 hour glucose test, which will probably take more like 10 hours. I would rather jump in front of a fast moving train. I don't think I can take that many sticks in one day. The nice lady who drew my blood the last time told me to drink water, lots and lots of water, and I shouldn't have a problem. You betcha, lady. I will be drinking water like a fish.

Opinions - I Need Some

I had this all worked out in my head perfectly, until I actually went to put it together...

While looking for inspiration on what to do with Tot's room I contemplated (and then purchased) this shower curtain. I loved all the color and had the brilliant idea that I could cut out some of the squares and make fabric wall hangings. This weekend I got my custom frames made and cut out the squares. I decided to do doubles instead of 4 singles so I would have an easier time actually hanging them on the wall in a grouping. That's when I realized I had made a minor miscalculation. I'll get to that in a minute. Now I have several options and need some options. Keep in mind none of these are "finished," I just draped or tacked up the fabric to the frames to get an idea of how they'd look. Here's group option #1:

This was not my original plan, but when I went to put my original planned grouping together I realized that the flower squares aren't, well, square. One side is half an inch longer than the other. If I had realized this before I had my frames made I could have just had them made a little smaller and it would have probably compensated for it, but I didn't. So, this leaves a stripe of color at the top and bottom of the second frame for option #2:


Because I had to cut into so many other squares to leave enough fabric on the sides to mount them, I only have two more squares left that are useable, and they match up to one of the "correct" size panels exactly. I don't remember which one at the moment, but theoretically I could make two identical panels using those.

Since working on this project today I discovered two more potential options. Thanks to a failed attempt at some shelving I have some materials that would work to make two singles, sorta like this option #3:
I could use the other set of matching flowers to make the two tall panels identical and use two of the four other flower squares to make singles (would have to be one from each of the remaining panels, to leave room for mounting). Hanging the groupings would be something of a pain, since the framing boards in my house aren't even close to square, but I could figure something out.

The final option is that I could mount the shorter panel on a shorter frame, but the size difference would be kinda obvious. I don't know how I would use this to make it work, but it would look something like option #4:

Alright people who are more artistic than I, what are my best choices here?

And yes, that's my partially assembled crib in the background. I ordered the necessary replacement part today to finish putting it together. Hopefully by next week I can get that done and breathe a big sign of relief.

Friday

It's Friday. I had a few scattered thoughts I wanted to share from the past 24 hours:

Last night I had one of my classic crazy dreams, only in this one I went to lunch with Greg only to realize I had my OB appointment that afternoon and forgot to bring my glucose drink, thus causing panic. Yes, this is what I dream about these days.

My psycho pup woke me up from a coma at 1am. And again at 4. And whined continuously at our bedroom door until I nearly killed him at 6:30. So how do I punish him for being so obnoxious? I'm packing him up and taking him with us to my parents' house this weekend so he isn't left alone outside in the storms tomorrow. No, I'm not a sucker.

I still haven't resolved the broken part issue with our crib. I emailed the company on Monday and never heard back. I called the number on the assembly instruction sheet yesterday and it's no longer in service. I looked on their website and there is no phone listed, only the email address, mailing address, and fax. Today I decided to just order it using their online form under "miscellaneous parts" which then asks you specify in the comment section. Figure that will be harder to ignore. Then I accidentally used my medical flex plan card number as payment instead of my debit card. Because I'm an idiot and shouldn't be allowed near anything that involves money. I'm about one step away from buying a tube of super glue and just fixing the stupid part myself.

I've changed my mind 19 times about what other furniture I want in the nursery. I think my husband is about to beat me. This is why I don't actually buy the expensive stuff until the last minute. I know better.

Giddy

I have a thing for buckets. No, not the generic five gallon type, storage buckets. Baskets, bins, boxes bags... any kind of bucket that holds stuff. So imagine how thrilled I was to score all of this at Big Lots over the weekend:


I knew back to school time in a college town would provide me with some nifty finds! I've been searching other Big Lots in the area to see if they have the canvas bin sets in other colors. I'd love to have some in the orange or greens like the baskets. And the stripe in the canvas is same lime green, by the way. That's hard to see. And for the finale, notice the cd player on top, which Greg made me buy because I'd been wanting one for the nursery and I became downright giddy when I found this one in the matching green.

Now I just have to figure out what I'm going to put in them. I'm thinking one of the bins would be good for baby socks. And hats. Because babies come with hats. If you don't believe me, you didn't watch enough West Wing.

I'm also contemplating if the white shelves are paintable. Yes, also from Big Lots. They're the basic press board shelves. I don't know if it'll work or not. Anybody ever tried to paint cheap shelves? May be too much color, perhaps I should contemplate some flowery decals or something for the sides...

Piles of Stuff

The aftermath of a week of feeling like slug slime is piles of stuff. Piles of dirty dishes, piles of dirty laundry, piles of fast food bags, piles of posts in my Bloglines...

You know I'm feeling blech when I cancel two lunch plans in one week. Sorry guys.

I've been feeling mostly human again since Saturday, so Sunday I started attacking the laundry and dishes and such. I hung out with BFF Addyson all day yesterday, but managed to finish up some baby registry chores at Dogwood. Today I need to get some cleaning done that I'd intended to work on last week. And go to Walmart before the rain starts again. And put together a bookshelf. And eat something, since I go back to the doc next week and right now I'm on track to get in trouble again. Meanwhile, we managed to almost get our crib put together on Sunday. We were installing the last rail when we broke off a rather important piece of plastic that holds up the drop-side rail. I'm waiting on the company to get back to me on whether or not they can send me a replacement part. If we ever get that, I can post pics of how the nursery is coming along. Meanwhile, remind me to post later about why I ADORE shopping at Big Lots.

In other family news, I got word Saturday night that my mom won her first bracket racing round in my old Taurus. In truth, she won by default because her "broke out" (which means he ran a faster time than he'd predicted he would, bracket racing is a little more complex than heads-up). Greg thinks her opponent was intimidated by her feistiness. I think he was scared of her fine ride. Either way, she was quite proud, and I'm proud of her too. Seriously, my mom drives a race car...