Hey, long time no blog. I’ll put up a more substantive update later, but here’s the short version: we’re all happy and as healthy (or not) as usual, I’m 18 weeks along and baby is doing fine (CF results expected this week), and we’re FINALLY moving to the new house on Saturday!

I had to dust off the Add New Post page because I have a rant, though.

I’m procrastinating work today by shopping patio furniture. Am I the only one who checks weight limits on chairs?? And why do they all stop at 225 or 250 lbs?? Matt and I generally weigh around 250 lbs and my weight is only going to go up, either as part of pregnancy or because I can expect to have at least one child on my lap in future. (Margaret’s about 40 lbs now, so do that math on weight limits.)

The chairs are *probably* not going to break when we sit on them, but maybe they will, or maybe they’ll wear out faster. I’m not going to spend a chunk of money on something that I’ll constantly worry about because the manufacturer says it isn’t going to support my body in the first place… but that REALLY limits the selection. And if the “oversized” chairs with higher weight limits (and, generally, wider seats) exist, they cost more and only come in, like, one color/style option.

Camp chairs are the worst for this. The ones that are cheap and widely available tend to be too narrow for my hips and have a weight limit around 200-225 lbs. About a year and a half ago, Matt and I made a point of finding camp furniture that will actually fit us. We had luck at Cabela’s, because apparently some companies do understand that fat folks camp (and fish and hunt, though Matt and I don’t personally), and so they had some “Big Sportsman” or whatever chairs and camp cots and so on. No luck on cheap patio furniture, though, unless we want whitetail deer on it.

I’m used to the “pretty thing in the window is NOT FOR YOU” bullshit from clothes shopping (ask me about the chimera that is plus-sized maternity clothing!), but patio furniture that is MADE OF METAL? *That* ain’t gonna support my weight? Okay, sure. You don’t get my fat dollars, then.

First-off, re: my last post, I took about an hour to lie down by myself and just feel whatever I felt… mourning, sadness, anxiety, whatever. By the end of the hour, I was feeling about ready to rejoin the world (and had pressing work emails anyway) and I was laughing and being silly with Matt and Margaret by the end of the night. I was awake for awhile last night and vented a bit on Twitter, in which I figured out that I have some Feelings about Margaret’s birth and I’m scared of this child’s birth. (The possible cystic fibrosis diagnosis is a worry, but it’s not the only worry I have this pregnancy, in other words.) I did some searching and came to Labor progress with Spinning Babies, which mentioned the “5-cm slump” in labor. That’s about where mine stalled, and if I’d known about it and had better support through it, I might have had an unmedicated birth after all. I’m gonna keep poking at this and thinking about it to figure out exactly what I can do differently.

Second: PEE IN THE POTTY! Margaret’s been refusing diapers, so we’re just kind of letting her go naked (she generally refuses clothes even if it’s snowing outside and I’m in layers). She asks for a diaper if she can tell she needs to pee, but sometimes she can’t tell until it’s too late. She also used to cry so hard if that happened, since she hates feeling wet anywhere on her skin, but lately it’s been just a little frustrated cry and then watching curiously what we do. I decided to just start taking her to the potty after an accident. Just now she had one, and she didn’t cry or refuse the potty (like she’s done earlier), and said “I did it!” when there were a couple drops of pee in the potty, and then we cleaned up and washed hands and everything. I hadn’t planned to even try to potty-train her this early, but if she doesn’t want to wear diapers and will learn how to use the potty instead, then hell, no more diapers for Margaret!

And finally, to the point of this post: Via Twitter today I found the site Slow Your Home. It fits in with this general reducing crap/making reusable things/homesteading simple life thing we’re aiming at. Three weeks away from a move, I’m not going to get drastically into it (though moving is a great time to declutter, either in the sense of “I don’t want this enough to move it, so it’s going to Goodwill/in the trash/etc.” before the move or the sense of “Why did I bother packing, moving, and unpacking this? It’s going to Goodwill/in the trash/etc.” after the move). But it’s lots to think about as we get settled into the new house.

Matt and I talked about it a little over dinner, and I came up with a five-year plan that he also agrees with: Let’s be unpacked.

That’s it. That’s the whole plan. (We’ve got one small child and will soon have two, so I didn’t want to aim too high.) Within five years of moving in, I just want to have every single box unpacked, anything that’s stored put neatly away in organized bins (and I bought a bunch of those for the move anyway), everything to have its place, and no more temporary anything. No more ugly mismatched curtains because we’re never in a place long enough to buy curtains that fit the windows. No more shoving things in cabinets and drawers “just until…”. No more making do.

We’re off to a good start already, I think. Every room on the main level has new, solid flooring and a fresh coat of paint on the walls. Both bedrooms actually have matchy decor, and both bedrooms will have art in them. (Art! No more bare walls or tacked-up posters!) Margaret’s bedroom The kids’ room has curtains and a decorative valance, Margaret’s toddler bed has a comforter and at least one set of nice sheets, and there’s a dresser and toy bins and diaper bins and everything. Our bed has a real headboard, a custom matching nightstand, coordinating lamp, a new duvet, and at least one set of matching sheets. Matt and I both have real dressers with mirrors. I just bought curtains that should coordinate with everything, and we will have real, matching curtains hanging in the bedroom for the first time in our lives together.

All this stuff sounds a little vain and the opposite of living simply, but for me, it’s healing. I hate looking around our house now (our living room, especially) and seeing all this mismatched, good-enough-for-now, patchy crap. The bare white walls that we talked about painting but never did. The cheap particleboard desk I’m sitting at to type this, which is about a year old and broken already — compare that to the rolltop desk I’ll have in my new office (a hand-me-down, but better quality) and the table that will be Matt’s new desk (used to be a dining table and needs another coat of paint, but it’s solid). That’s the difference I’m talking about. I’m not going out and buying all new everything. Those dressers are hand-me-downs and a Craigslist buy, for example, but they’re solid pieces of furniture that will last for decades more. Some of the curtains are hand-me-downs or reused, but put up because they already matched. I’m making rag rugs for the floors out of T-shirts that we don’t wear but couldn’t bear to donate. The difference is that I’m consciously choosing things that fit just right for the room they’re in, not just some cheap placeholder.

And I want the whole house to be like that in five years. No drawers that we just don’t open. No junk accumulating in corners or on flat surfaces. Nothing that we’re just dealing with because it needs fixing. No bare rooms that we’ll get around to decorating eventually. I want everything to have a place and to be functional and beautiful in its place.

So I’m gonna start by folding some laundry before bath and bedtime.

I should be working, but I need a minute.

Let me sketch out the background as briefly as I can: When I was pregnant with Margaret, Matt and I found out that we were both cystic fibrosis carriers and that there was a chance Margaret would have the disease. We went through a whole bunch of testing (my blood, his blood, amniocentesis) and finally found out around 22-24 weeks that Margaret was a carrier, but she wouldn’t be affected by CF. In the agonizing month or more between testing and results returned, Matt and I decided that we could not care for a child with CF (remember, Matt has multiple sclerosis and is now showing symptoms consistent with fibromyalgia, so we’d have to balance a child’s illness of unknown severity with a family member’s current disability). We decided that we would terminate a pregnancy if the fetus tested positive for CF.  After Margaret’s results came back, we swore we’d get CVS testing with baby #2 in order to make that decision earlier (at 10-12 weeks). We also decided that there probably wouldn’t be a baby #3, in part because of this risk.

So now here we are, and I’m pregnant with baby #2. We’re carrying this weight of worry about CF results, and we haven’t told anybody about the pregnancy besides healthcare providers, immediate family, and the anonymous internet — basically, nobody that we wouldn’t want to un-tell if we chose to terminate the pregnancy. I’ve insisted to every healthcare provider I’ve seen so far that I know about our CF status and I want CVS testing.

At my last appointment, my OB referred me to the specialist who does CVS (and who did the amnio for Margaret), and the scheduling nurse sat down with me to make the appointment. Wires got crossed about whether or not I’m approved for Medicaid: since my office job ended, I’m on individual health insurance now, which does not cover maternity care whatsoever. I was on Medicaid through my first pregnancy because I had neither job nor insurance at the beginning, and we prepared a literal binder of paperwork to complete the application. I was putting off doing this again and hadn’t actually applied yet. I told the OB’s office I was going to apply, and they marked it in their system as “Medicaid pending,” which apparently is the same status as applied but hasn’t been approved yet, and the specialist won’t even make an appointment for you if you haven’t been actually approved or are willing to pay cash ($1,100 or so). In this confusion, I got an appointment anyway for CVS testing (which, I note here, must be done between 10 weeks and 12w6d) but the billing department made their policy clear, and they wouldn’t see me without a Medicaid guarantee letter or a check. So I delay the appointment as late as I can (11w2d), rush through and apply for Medicaid, and promise to call back the business day before the appointment to see if everything’s been entered in their system. That’s today.

I just got off the phone, and I’m in their system as “Medicaid pending,” meaning applied but not approved yet, and I don’t have a guarantee letter from Medicaid (which would mean not approved yet but totally gonna be, don’t worry). This is not good enough for their billing department. I don’t have $1,100+ cash to be seen. The doctor only does CVS on Mondays and there’s nothing available next Monday, and I’ll be 13w2d the week following, which is too late to do the test. I talked with Matt about our options and we decided to cancel the appointment.

Now I’m terrified. Matt and I both have a gut feeling that this baby will be okay and will not have CF; he’s mentioned before that he’d prefer to focus on the 75% chance that baby will be fine instead of the 25% chance that baby will be sick. And I’ve been buying summery maternity clothes and making plans like this particular pregnancy will be full-term. I did a quick Tarot reading this morning that told me the baby would not have CF and that we’d find out before baby is born–we can probably still do amnio for that (Medicaid should approve me by then). But Matt and I agreed that we couldn’t bear to terminate past 20 weeks, which is when we’d get the amnio results back. (And it probably wouldn’t be legal anyway. Michigan, where we live, has anti-choicers pushing through a law to prevent abortion past 19 weeks.)

So I guess the gist here is that we’ll be sitting with this worry for the next month or two. I don’t know if we’ll tell more people about the pregnancy or not; I’m leaning toward not, just in case. Everything will probably be okay–I just have no idea what what life will be like if it isn’t.

[I'll break the "never apologize for the time since last post" rule here to point out that, if I can go a few months and only write posts here and there, it shows that I only need to vent or process or think aloud here and there. Which is excellent. Well, Twitter helps, too.]

Pregnancy news: Sticky bean is sticky! I’m 10 weeks now, and at my last OB appointment, I got to see the heartbeat. I didn’t expect a transvaginal ultrasound in order to do that, but it was a little less painful and awkward than a Pap smear, at least. (File under “experiencing a wanted pregnancy makes me more pro-choice.” I was willing to go through the ultrasound and my OB was both skilled and gentle. Absent those factors, it could absolutely have been traumatic.) Baby is measuring small but is otherwise healthy so far. My only other complaints so far have been general queasiness and fatigue. I sleep lots but I generally just go to bed when Margaret does and wake up rested. Matt and I are tossing around names.

Margaret news: Speaking of my baby girl… she turned 2 at the beginning of the month. She wants to help do everything and gets most cranky if we don’t stop to let her help — push buttons to start the laundry, turn light switches on or off, climb up on chairs by herself, count scoops of coffee, stir anything that needs stirring. Her newest word is “squirrel” (sounds like “guh-guh”) and she watches for the squirrels who live in the hollows of trees in our backyard. She’s also been on a chocolate milk kick, and we normally get chocolate milk if we go out for dinner or spend time in the car (it’s about an hour between houses so we do spend some time in the car). Yesterday I thought she’d been having too much chocolate milk, and when Matt and I got coffee, I got her some juice instead. FYI: Juice is bullshit if you’re expecting chocolate milk. Margaret pushed her juice away and asked for chocolate milk all day and this morning, too.

House news: We might possibly maybe have a moving date! Hopefully! The floors at the house are almost done. Slate tiles have been installed in the kitchen and bathroom; wood floors are down on the rest of the main floor and they’ll just need to be sanded and sealed. The main floor bathroom now has a laundry hookup and the toilet is going in sometime this week. I think the plumbing is almost done and the county will have to come in and test the water before the house will finally have running water. Just about every room has been painted or will be this week (except the office). The door from the kitchen to the garage now has both a wheelchair-usable ramp, leading both to a back door and to the garage floor, and sturdier steps with railings. There’s a few things left on the to-do list, and the weather is awful for moving anyway, but we’re aiming for a mid-March moving date. (I am making a tiny stink because I am absolutely not moving in during Mercury retrograde, and Mercury turns direct again on March 17.)

Which reminds me that I need to get back to work for the day, and Matt and I need to get our taxes done. We’ve had a couple of letters from the IRS saying “you owe this much” and “whoops you have an extra refund waiting” and “whoops you actually owe more than that” and I don’t even know whether we’ll get a refund or need to pay in this year. I’m just hoping that it’s all a wash, that whatever refunds we have will cover what we owe without us needing to write a check, and we’ll be all settled up before I file as self-employed next year and taxes get really interesting.

Happy New Year and welcome to January! Let me review the past couple of weeks since my last post.

Holidays! We had pretty good holidays, if a tad boring (outside of family drama, which seems unavoidable around the holidays). No huge presents or major trips or catastrophes. That’s pretty much what I wanted, though. Margaret’s big gift was a Chica doll, which she alternately loves and doesn’t care about (she loooooooooves Chica on TV though). The best thing Matt and I got was a batch of Oreo truffles and the recipe from my mom. We’ve made them a couple of times since then and YUM. Oh yum.

Work! I’ve actually been busy since leaving the office, and today is the first day I got up in the morning and didn’t have a (paying) project to work on. I sent off an edited book on Friday, in fact. And I’ve got some research to do for my MIL’s company but that doesn’t have a specific deadline. I’ve got another couple of projects forthcoming but nothing on my desk today. Marketing time!

House! We are not moved in yet! I had hoped to be in there by today, but Michael’s been sick and our other main contractor had knee replacement surgery and isn’t back to work yet, so it’s been slow. I think tile might be going in the kitchen this week maybe? And the main floor bathroom has been torn up but not rebuilt yet. Wood floors in the rest of the main floor are mostly done, paint needs doing (but I’m now saying, you know what? That is not so critical anymore; we can do it in the spring and summer), and the basement has turned into a long-term project that won’t be done by the time we move in. Matt says that if we weren’t planning to live there for 10+ years, the house would be a money pit. (It is arguably a money pit anyway, but we can amortize the cost of things like the new well and floors over so many years and sleep better at night.)

Margaret! She is growing so big. She’ll be 2 years old next month and has somehow grown into a kid. Her word right now is “No,” and not only is it the reply to most any question you ask her (unless you ask if she wants something you know she really really likes, and then the reply is a beaming “Ahhhhhh!”), but she’ll just go around sing-songing “No, no, no, no… no, no, no, no….” Her other favorite game is “I see you!” which is a variant of peek-a-boo (there’s more running). She draws, she dances and stretches and runs, she imitates Mama’s writing, she participates in pretty much anything we do. She has tantrums but so far, we’ve always been able to figure out the cause (knock wood — 2 years has been long enough for me to figure out that “everybody else is doing it wrong/just doesn’t know what I know” isn’t a winning parenting strategy).

Crochet! I’ve been teaching myself crochet out of a book. (My mom taught me when I was about 12, but I haven’t done it since.) I started making a rag rug for the new house out of old T-shirts, but the pattern I followed said it would be easier with a big crochet hook, so I went and got a couple sizes. Then I pulled out the craft bin an old friend had given me, and there was a bunch of yarn and another hook and a “Learn Crochet” book, so I started with that and it caught on. I’ve just been making washcloths to practice but I have big plans for many many projects. The rag rug might even get finished, too.

And more… which I can hopefully share soon. That’s the latest from here.

Goodbye/hello the first: My day job has ended! Second shift did no work at all on Friday, and we drank and chatted and so on and so forth. Yesterday was my first day as a full-time freelancer and it was glorious. (We headed up north to check mail at the new house, since I had changed our address before we  knew about the plumbing problems. And it ended up being a business trip anyway, so win.) Then today I had an appointment to sort out health insurance, which will be cheaper than I expected and starts January 1, so no lapse in coverage. Win.

I’ve also been going to bed at pretty much the same time as Margaret so I’m slowly catching up on sleep. The biggest adjustment is that I no longer have to make the absolute most of those early morning and late evening hours, because I can just work during business hours and do whatever I damn well please with my evenings. I have bits of work scheduled for tomorrow and Thursday, so now I’m looking at Friday as the first day with nothing whatsoever on my schedule. That’s a pretty damn good first week.

Goodbye/hello the second: The news on the intertubes is that Instagram says it now has the right to sell your photos and there is no way to opt out. This language was added to the latest version of the TOS, which takes effect January 16. Users must delete their accounts (or at least their photos) before that date. However, Instagram tweeted this about an hour ago:

We’ve heard you that the updates to our Privacy Policy & Terms of Service are raising a lot of questions. We’ll have more to share very soon

— Instagram (@instagram) December 18, 2012

So hopefully Facebook (the new owners of Instagram and from whence these changes flow) will walk back this language and everything will be happy. In case they don’t, however, I’ve seen a whole bunch of Instagram pics consisting of Notes or Reminders screenshots telling how to get your photos from Instagram (hint: instaport.me, which is running slowly and returning error messages right now, for some STRANGE and INEXPLICABLE reason) and other places to find folks. I’ve dusted off my Flickr account, so enjoy some pics of the cats and an apartment we lived in four years ago, until I can upload my other pics. Obviously, I’m also here at the blog and on Twitter.

And that’s the news from here. I am trapped underneath a (FINALLY) napping toddler, and I’m pretty sure there are small peanut butter handprints all over the back of my shirt, but at least I have my laptop. Later I’m going to do this trendy new thing the kids call “cooking” and then I’m going to look at these bound stacks of printed paper that are all over my house.

So many things! All the things!

* I’ve set my schedule for next week, which is my last week of work before freelancing full-time. There are still five days of work left (not counting today), but one is a four-hour day and the other is a six-hour day that includes a party and not a whole lot of work, according to my boss. So that’ll be nice. Exciting and scary and sad and a whole bunch of things all at once.

* The kitchen at the new house is looking great. We moved some pantry cabinets around — I hadn’t planned on touching them, but the guys moved them to get the wood flooring laid underneath — and when we were there yesterday we were like, “You know, I think I like this better.” It was starting to feel wonderfully like home.

* The good news is that the new well is hooked up and the house is getting all new plumbing! The bad news is that it’s because water was spraying everywhere, and when Michael opened up the walls, there were cracked pipes everywhere he looked. The house had been winterized before, but apparently the pipes had frozen and burst at least once before that happened. (Like a neighbor had mentioned was possible.) On the bright side, I guess we won’t have to worry about a well or any plumbing issues for years to come.

* So moving day is getting put off till January, most likely. I have a date with the Yule boxes this weekend and the tree and stockings at least are going up.

* I tried to use up some of this summer’s blueberry and peach jam and made a cobbler/crumble/thing. Either I didn’t bake it long enough or it won’t set up firmly enough, because they both came out runny. Delicious (especially with vanilla ice cream) but runny.

* The bad news is that I may or may not be able to sleep for a week between Christmas and New Year’s as planned. The good news is that I won’t have to move while effectively working two jobs, which should do wonders for my stress level. I may be able to just go to bed early and sleep when Margaret sleeps and be refreshed that way.

Still have not put the tree up. Deadlines have taken precedence. And I have I mentioned I’m working 10-hour days at the day job?

My freelance work is coming along nicely. Did the new-project-dance yesterday and the schedule is timed almost exactly for whenever I’m done at said day job.

I was just thinking that moving could get hairy, and then Matt just said he and MIL don’t think we’ll be moving on the 15th-17th as planned. We’ll probably end up having Yule at this house, which will hit my “wah, haven’t had three Yules in the same house” complaint (which I stopped saying after I realized that 3 Yules =/= 3 years. We’ll have lived here 2 years + 1 month if we move before the New Year, and we lived the longest in one place for 2 years + 9-10 months. Three years would still be the record).

We have a showing scheduled tomorrow at 1pm. Matt has a dentist appointment in the morning, his vision is still messed up (it’s corneal edema and is slowly going away with eye drops), the house is a wreck, I have another deadline, and Margaret is getting cranky about a lack of Mama time.

And I’ve been dealing with some personal, emotional *STUFF* that I’m not really ready to talk about concretely but has been occupying a lot of my spare brain cycles (and quite a bit of the not-so-spare ones). I’m feeling particularly raw and sad.

Counting the days: There are five work days left, not counting today, and they’re not even consecutive. Even if we don’t move on that weekend, after those five work days are done, I’ll have a whole day’s worth of time to manage and it sounds absolutely glorious. I’m running so ragged.

But I think I can do it for another five days.

Am writing a post so early because Margaret is in bed. She wouldn’t nap at naptime, so I took her to run some errands (Goodwill dropoff, Lowe’s run for paint, grocery store run), and she was so so so sleepy… but she didn’t actually fall asleep until the five-minute trip home. She woke up again by the time we got inside the house. Then around 6:30 she just couldn’t make it any longer. She climbed up on the bed and wanted to nurse, but she’d been nursing on and off for an hour before that, so I told her no nursies until bedtime. She flailed around (but didn’t cry), pulled at my shirt, flopped on the bed, and just acted like she couldn’t decide whether to let herself fall back asleep. So I put a night diaper and a nightgown on her and laid down with her, as we do, and she did finally fall asleep. (Practicing saying “night-night” and pulling up the covers, like I was just telling Matt.) So by the time I’m done with this post, I think, we’ll see if this was just a nap or if she’s out for the night.

The paint I picked up was for the bedroom, and I chose “Del Coronado Dusty Rose.” It’s dusty enough to go with the brown and burgundy and wood colors we’ve got going on in the bedroom (and Matt is not threatened by having a pink bedroom). I think I’m going to do all four walls that color, and I’ll use the sample of dark brown to paint a ribbon design on the wall above the bed. Then I’m going to hang a dozen roses there to dry. (I’ve kept a dozen dried roses hanging in the bedroom for years. It’s a thing I do.) That all looks pretty awesome in my mind’s eye, but we’ll see about the execution. Four walls of dark brown paint looked awesome in my mind’s eye, too, but Matt thinks it’d be too dark and will not be persuaded otherwise.

I also went through the tile section (intending to look at samples of slate tiles, because the kitchen floor has been ripped up and there’s going to be slate in at least part of it, or so I hear), but I got distracted by the small square ceramic tiles. I have this thing about coasters, and we only had four for a long time. I bought another set just after we got the house, but I don’t think we could ever have too many coasters. Especially nice ones and not the gross-looking cork ones. So I saw a small gray square of slate tile, and got that for Matt to have his own coaster, and then on the shelf near those were cobalt blue tiles (which I love) with some orange and blue daisy accent tiles (three of my favorite things!). I got four of the cobalt ones and two of the accent ones, and when I got home, I stuck four eensy pads on each one. Instant coasters! Yes, I am proud of myself.

We took a SUV-load of stuff to the house yesterday, and most of it got stored in the garage, since work is still going on. The basement bathroom has been completely ripped out, except for the tub, and Michael’s waiting until the water is turned on before he works on it more, since we know there was a plumbing leak in the house somewhere and we suspect it was in that bathroom. The new well has been drilled, but it just needs to be connected to the house, I think? (I’m hazy on the details of how that works.) Marilyn painted the living room and the floor is in progress there. She also got a good deal on a dishwasher, which is also in the garage waiting to be put in.

Tentative moving day is in two weeks. I know my day job will be done by then, but I’m getting skeptical that the house will be ready. I’ve also been sad about seeing everybody’s trees on Twitter and Instagram. I wasn’t going to  put it up here, because moving day is the week of Yule so I thought there was no point, but maybe if I am this sad about it I should just put ours up. It’s a 4-foot pre-lit tree and I don’t put any ornaments on it, just a red bead garland and a topper, so it won’t take long to put up or to take down and move.

And now it’s been about two hours since Margaret fell asleep, so I think she’s out for the night. That means I’ve got some work to get done (much as I’ve been putting it off and have enjoyed a relatively lazy weekend).