Cheap Date Ideas

Since we are on tight budget these days, I've been looking for fun stimulating things to do that are free, or damn near.

This weekend, we hit up an M.C. Escher exhibit at The Crocker Art Museum who offers free admission every Sunday between 10-1. Then, we walked around the riverfront while Nick took pictures of anything that caught his eye.

Last night, we had a popcorn and movie date at the local drive-in who offers Cheap Tuesdays for $4.00 a person. We brought along some homemade kettle corn and used this coupon from Starbucks so we could complete our date with some delicious iced coffee drinks! Then, we sat quietly and munched our way through Talladega Nights: The Ballad of Ricky Bobby.

If you have any cheap date ideas, please email me or post them here so I can add them to my repertoire.

Since we were kids

My most recent memory of the library is the one on Science Hill, at UCSC. Filled with O-Chem nerds, and many of my friends, it was always silent there, with many semi-comfortable squishy orange chairs that could provide a nice napping space, especially if you pushed two together. My production classes were conducted across the street in the Communications Building, and since I generally had those classes for twelve hours a couple days a week, I could be found on a break trying to get in a quick catnap. If awake, I was always studying for a major test, but even when I tried to do assigned reading I'd end up face-down in a book within 35 minutes.

That is my last real recollection of a library, although I know I spent many hours perusing books and looking for things to read at the libraries in elementary and middle school.

Yesterday I became a card carrying library member at because at the Sacramento County Library because it occurred to me over barbequed chicken and corn that I know even less about raising a child than I did about carrying one to term. On the upside, in my complete and total ignorance I do not have a clear picture of what I should expect which should help when I am dealing with the reality of the situation.

Yes, for those of you wondering, I have been around children. I helped my ex-boyfriend raise his son for the first two years. My roomate and I got Colby to take his first steps, and I was there for all the diaper changes, diaper rash, and wonderous moments in between.

Yet none of the kids I've been around belonged to me, and for better or worse my level of investment just wasn't the same. Since I don't really know what to do in this situation, I'm driven to do what I do well - study. (Considering the amount of student loans I have, you better believe I know how to do that well)

Aside from being FREE, the library offer a plethora of books on topics ranging from breastfeeding to the never-ending debate over cloth and disposable diapers. You can request a book via the Internet to be delivered to your branch where they will notify you via email that it has arrived. Did I mention yet that all of this is 100% free? There are dvds, cds, and books on dvd/tape available to check out. Plus, with a library card I can check out as many as fifty books at one time! And all for free. I've already got four books at home and I've requested two more. I can hardly wait to go back and spend some time researching how to have a kid and raise it in the least traumatizing way possible.

Sleeping like crap over here ....

And I truly don't understand those people who don't like coffee. Even if I'm drinking decaf right now, it makes me feel better about my lack of recent sleep.

Coffee is good. Period.

In case anyone wanted to see the dog who was swapped for goats

Thanks for giving my pretty dog away, Pappy.

It's a little bit like being Goldilocks and the Princess and the pea

Since my earliest memories of balmy summer nights and crickets chirping, I have been sleeping on my back. I went from Pharaoh (arms crossed over chest and feet together) to Starfish (visualize a Starfish, now imagine the spiny bits are arms and legs -- good, you've got it).

After about the 4th month or so, pregnant women cannot sleep on their backs. I do not say this lightly, as in "You're pregnant and you CAN'T have a beer," or in the "You're pregnant and sleeping on your back is the WORST thing you can do to your baby!" I say can't because eventually, rolling onto your back, even by accident, makes your legs go completely numb. I don't actually believe it's dangerous because the human body has an amazing capacity to look out for itself, but it's a highly uncomfortable and strange feeling. So you move - eventually you just have to.

I'm still not responding to the change in sleeping positions very well. I'm on my hips with as many pillow as N will allow before he permanently kicks me out of the bedroom, and only get quality sleep every other night. At this point I can only lay on my back for mere seconds before my legs start to feel disconnected and tingly.

Another problem is our mattress situation. First, we tried N's mattress. "Too soft and soggy!" I cried. Last night he decided to switch from the soggy mattress to my very firm, very supportive mattress. "Too hard," I whined this morning.

Although overall my feels better and straighter today, I really need a mattress that is just right. Soon we will try soggy mattress on very firm box spring to see if that addresses this issue.

Enormous Tata's

My once perky and athletic looking breasts are now so large they no longer fit into any of my bras. And I've upgraded my modest 34B's -- twice.

So I'm wearing a bathing suit top for some comfortable support until I break down and go buy some maternity bras. Ugh. I hope that someone, somewhere, has something a little bit sexy or I might go out of my head. Although fun to smoosh around and play with, I'm a little bit glad they aren't this full and heavy all the time.

Oh yeah, and wait until I start producing milk - fun times ahead for all.

Boogers can be so distracting

If any of you saw a girl in her car yesterday with her finger stuck way up her nose, it was me. I wasn't digging for pleasure either; my finger actually got stuck on this giant crusty allergy booger that was fused to the inside of my nose like week old Rubber Cement. Instead of using normal methods, i.e. scrap and pull motion, I had to position my finger so that it was slightly above the booger and could then push it out, gently and slowly.

Just as I'm prying this massive object from my nose, a gardening truck drives by, looks at me, and JUDGES ME for partaking in necessary action. In my haste to be rid of the driver's scathing look, I forcefully extracted my finger from my nose and inadvertently removed my "problem".

Or did I? I couldn't really tell because my nose didn't feel clear, yet I was able to breathe.

Wondering whether I had jammed it further up my nose, or repositioned it somehow was actually far more distracting than the booger itself. A block later I noticed my booger dried out and pathetic-looking, on my pants. Nonchalantly I flicked it away and resumed normal driving.

The moral of this story is if you get caught picking, don't react to the judgmental eyes of others. They too have removed foreign objects from blocked airways and should not be so hasty in criticizing.

A bullet is cheaper

In a forum I belong to, my husband made a statment about how when he was growing up in the country hills, his family didn't place a lot of emphasis on their pets. In fact, I think he suggested that a free dog is not a dog that should have much money spent on it because then you lose on your initial investment of zero.

I'm sure he didn't mean it this way, because he's a good man and he likes animals, but suggesting that a bullet is cheaper than taking a pet you love to the vet just strikes me as cruel, not to mention irresponsible. Of course in my head there lives a universe of rules and regulations concerning everything, rules that I'm sure I'll violate as soon as Thing One is born.

Anyway, the big difference between my husband and I is that in my family pets were included as members of the family, in the same way that old friends become part of the family. Aside from the bond I personally felt for these animals, we took them in and decided to raise them. In that way I feel we took an oath to try and provide for them as well as we could, helping them through sickness, surgery, or infection, just as we would a family member, not until we decided our ROI wasn't good enough so, heck, let Sparky die and then buy me some wacky tobacky and front teeth.

Since converting him to my way of thinking is not an option, I am going to have to end up spending ridiculous amounts of money on our future dog just to make sure the mister sees a good return on investment.

Anyone know of any dogs that cost upwards of $4,000? ;)

Nothing made it real as much as this did ...

Thanks to Craigslist and gift cards to Babies-R-Us, that stuff only cost us $100. Now though, I worry about all the ways in which I might accidentally kill my daughter and all the things I need to protect her from.

Ich bin eine Hausfrau!

My belly is getting big -- not uncomfortably big just yet, but large enough that it is definitely hindering my ability to do normal things, like touching my toes or bending sideways.

I am discovering and exploring my new home and area, and despite the fact that it's flat, filled with chain stores, and every house is made out of ticky-tacky, I realy like it here.

Some of my favorite things are: the quiet, the space, and the awesome plumbing. In my old apartment it was never quiet; with the all-night car alarms or people partying and yelling, DEA helicopters, and the screaming child in the complex, how could it be? Here we fall asleep listening to crickets chirp, something I haven't been able to do since I left Arizona.

Next, the toilet doesn't run and the shower actually drains. It's wonderful!

The more I talk about it the more it seems like I lived in a real danky hole the past year and a half -- I don't suppose it was that awful, but definitely not this.

This week has been spent doing domestic activities, like unpacking, making dinner, and cleaning the kitchen repeatedly. Oddly, I'm enjoying it. This is not what I thought my life would be like at 31, but I must admit it's really nice to sit back and have the time to do all the little things I normally put off until the weekend or later.

I am going back to work tomorrow to help out with some computer stuff, and while I'm not looking forward to the commute (even by train), I am looking forward to the money I'll make and the opportunity to see some co-workers again.

Tonight we are looking at a crib to see if we like it well enough to buy. I hope so. It would be fantastic to have something purchased for this kid.

A naked secret

I really can't make business type phone calls naked. I have to hide my bits which is kind of weird.

Too much of a good thing

I am not very good at relaxing, taking it "easy", or just plumb sitting around doing nothing. The only exception I can think of is when I'm exhausted from my overly busy life and have to take a time-out for a day or so to do nothing, which is more recoup than relaxation.

I'm sure you can imagine what happened then, when I was told by numerous people to not lift a thing while we were moving this past weekend. I did what I thought was listening, where instead of using all of my abundant energy (and strength!) to carry heavy things and strain muscles, I toned it down. Severely. I think the heaviest thing I lifted was easily less than fifteen pounds. A lot of that is because with this distended balloon stomach you find that your abdominal muscles don't quite function in the supportive way they once did. They are stretching and awkward and can't actually be used for heavy lifting.

So, I took it easy -- for me, which wasn't easy enough at six months pregnant. I started feeling weird achey pains in my nether-regions with some spasmatic action that felt a lot like a muscle twitching. Nothing too serious, just enough discomfort to make me step back and think I should be doing less work. Talked to my sister on the phone and she said I needed to lay down and rest because I was putting so much stress on my body I was having contractions.

I went to sleep on Saturday night certain that my inability to follow directions was going to kill my child. I've never felt such terror in my entire life. I didn't tell Nick most of this because I didn't want both of us to be out of our heads with worry, something he later pointed out was both stupid and rude. The rest of my weekend was spent watching Nick work.


I called my OB on Monday and they wanted me to come in from Sacramento to San Francisco same day. Nick offered to come with me so I wouldn't have to go alone and of course, everything is fine, but because I couldn't listen to "don't lift anything" now I am home, sitting around, "taking it easy" on doctor's orders. Ugh. I think I might die of doing small household tasks, like scheduling doctors appointments and finding dentists and whatnot.

Ah well, no rest for the weary unless it's doctor mandated.

My first day in the new apartment

Well, we haven't officially moved in, but I'm here today unpacking some of the lighter boxes and getting to know the place. One thing about moving that always stresses me out (besides people just throwing all the boxes in any room they want) is when I let other people handle my favorite of favorite items. So this time, I brought the ones I could and lovingly transported them to their new home.

Among those items are: Viny George, hand-painted wine glasses from my sister, and a clock from Venice.

Many plants are replaceable, like the kind you buy from Home Depot for $30, but Viny George was given to me by Steve, as a three-leaf starter plant, seven years ago. More importantly, George and I have endured several moves, relationships, graduations, and near-death experiences like when my mom acted as a caretaker and left him OUTSIDE in the winter and he froze. It took him nearly two years to fully recover from that plantsitting-gone-wrong event. Four years and many apologies later, George still won't look my mother in the eye and doesn't much like it when she comes over.

As such, I'm very sentimental about him, and on occasion it will cause me pain to cut him, even when he needs it. Once, Nick called him ugly (before the latest trimming) and Viny George was offended for a month -- even though that's not what Nick really meant to say. So when I'm moving, and someone steps on his precious arms and leaves, I remember it for years like it was my arm that got stepped on. Or, when someone else winds his vines around their arm to prevent further steappage from occuring but only succeeds in ruining several leaves in the process. These images are burned in my brain forever and as such it's probably best if I'm George's official handler, especially when moving.

Viny George is in the sink beneath his kitchen window for now. He's safe, and wet, and very happy to be in Sacramento. I think he sort of feels like he came home.

I also brought some of the breakables from Venice because I know, in my heart of hearts, that even if someone was breaking their back to help me move, and then broke my clock, I'd see red and want to do mean things to them, which really isn't fair when you aren't paying your labor.

So we're safe and pretty relaxed and mostly packed. I am so excited to live here.