Plant update

So I realized that I haven't posted about my plants in the past few days. They're getting so big!!! Especially the peas, which I really didn't think would take off the way they have been. I'm already needing to get a trellis for them so that they don't attach to the side of my balcony. The shortest one is about 4 inches tall. The lettuce is being a bit slow, and I'm not sure if it's just because lettuce grows slowly or because it's not going to make it. The cucumbers are happy just being little seedlings for the moment; I don't know how big they're going to get but the guy at the garden store said I may need a trellis for them as well. I'm looking forward to being able to harvest them!

Well, I Suppose It Had To Be Done

In pregnancy news, they lowered my dosage today, so I'm now only getting a quarter of a mL of medicine per hour instead of a third. They may be able to completely wean me off the medicine in about two weeks. I'm so looking forward to not being on this anymore, but I really have to try not to push myself too hard. I do have a tendency to do that, especially when I'm as busy as I've been lately, and I have to remember that I have to take care of myself first.

I'm getting sick of my sugar craving. I'm also craving other things, like fresh veggies, which is good, but about every other day I get an insatiable sugar craving. Seriously, I bought Kool-Aid at the store today. I don't drink Kool-Aid. But I'm supposed to be avoiding drinking only straight water (my nurse's orders, since it's kind of harsh on the stomach when you're sick...it's starting to drive me crazy), so I was getting drink mixes that I can water down a bit and still be getting fluids. And I saw the Kool-Aid, and thought that it looked delicious. So I picked it up. Strange. I just have to remember to keep my teeth brushed as much as I can because I don't want a ton of cavities once this is done.

Also, I bought the stretchy pants. Scott's pants were starting to get tight on me, so I needed the expando-pants. I bought 5 pairs, hopefully I won't need any more. I need to get some dresses and skirts though, for special occasions. Though, one of the pairs that I bought are kind of khaki slacks, so I may be able to get away with dressing them up.

Well, I think that's about it and my meeting's supposed to start soon. Take care everyone!

Baby Stuff :)

We had an appointment with obstetrician yesterday, she checked out the heartbeat and we were able to hear it and everything. Yay! I never realized how incredibly awesome just hearing that little heartbeat would be, but right now it's just the most fantastic thing in the world. I have to schedule an ultrasound for between 18 and 20 weeks, and then we'll most likely find out if it's a boy or girl. I also have to do some blood work for the genetic testing, I have a deadline for that, and I'm already getting nervous about that. I don't like having blood drawn, and I don't like having to wait for the results. The results take about a week to get in. But thus is the life of a mom. I'm also feeling much better. The medicines that I've been taking have been working very well, and I'm not getting sick hardly at all anymore. And I'm finding that the better I feel, the more I'm liking being pregnant. Go figure!

Jim Broadbent Rules!

I saw the trailer for "Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince" yesterday, and if I wasn't excited for the movie before I totally am now. When reading the book, I had trouble "casting" a certain character in my head. He had to be sort of on the pompous side, and not really a fop, and he was just a tough character to cast for me. I found out while watching the trailer that Jim Broadbent is going to be playing him. Now, I'm kicking myself for him not being the first person I thought of! He's so perfect for the role. He's able to show the remorse that he needs to show later in the story, but still be the big peacock that he needs to be early on. I've already been looking forward to this installment of the movies, and now even more so. Yay!

Thoughts on My Cat, Decaffeinated Tea, and Work

I have about an hour before my day explodes, so instead of being responsible and getting ready for the day, I'm blogging.

I have the most intensely attention-loving cat I've ever met. Seriously, I have never met a cat who loved to be paid attention to the way Cleo does. Nobody would ever know it, because besides a very select few outsiders, Scott and I are the only ones she will come out of hiding for. Some people don't even know we have a cat. She's a half-Siamese mix, too, so she's loud! There are nights when she'll yowl all night long because she's lonely. But when we had another cat to keep her company (RIP Antony), she didn't like him. So we're hesitant to get her a playmate, especially with the baby on the way, because she doesn't adapt to change very well. During the hubbub of the wedding, when we had a ton of people over and the house was crazy, she starting losing hair (faster than she normally does), losing weight, and getting sick almost every day. I don't think she wants a playmate anyway. She just wants the loves from her humans. I feel bad because I've been busy and working in our office/bedroom for the past two days, and she's not allowed in here, and so she's been out and kind of lonely. So she's started getting into stuff at night. The laundry, the trash, the guest room closet, etc. I think I just need to pay more attention to her.

Because of the pregnancy, I've cut back on my caffeine consumption (I haven't cut it out completely; I'd go crazy if I couldn't have a Coke every once in a while). That being said, tea is one of the few things that's soothing my tummy at the moment. So I'm drinking decaf. It's not that bad, I've been having it very hot and with some sugar, but I can't wait for it to get warm enough to make sun tea. I bought a jug and everything. I loved sun tea when I was a kid. It's delicious. So I'm looking forward to some nice big jugs of sun tea this summer. Hehe...jugs...

I've picked up video editing for some work that we're doing and it's a lot of fun! I'm really enjoying it. I have some exciting projects coming up in the next few weeks, and they promise to be very fun. This has the promise to be a thing that I can keep up with for quite a while, though I don't quite know how that's going to work once the baby's here. But I can make it work. Just work while the baby's sleeping :)

On the Horizon

So I've started learning video editing. I'm really enjoying it. It's a lot of fun; frustrating at some points, but that's mostly because I'm still learning how to use the software that we got. We bought a copy Pinnacle Studio version 12, and it's awesome! I'm editing HD content in real time without so much as a pause between functions. I'm still learning my way around most of the features, but so much of it just automatically does what you want it to do it's amazing. I very highly recommend this product for anyone going into editing (not that I have a whole lot to compare it to, but it's freakin' cool). There's just so many projects coming up that I'm sooo excited about!

On a completely different note, my plants are starting to sprout. I didn't think they'd sprout this early, but they're quick little suckers. The only problem is that when they sprout I have to move them to a sunny location and this morning the sun seemed to be something that we'd be seeing very little of for the next few days. It's come out a little this afternoon, but it was also very very windy, and I'm a little worried that the wind is going to kill the little seedlings. Oh well, if it does, I can always try again!

Crazy Rant

I'm going to preface this by saying that for about a year I worked in a grocery store. A very busy grocery store. I did many jobs: cart hauling, bagging groceries, cashiering, some bakery, cleanups, customer service, I even went to the night crew and did some stocking for awhile. It occurred to me then, as it does quite often now, that a lot of customers are dicks. If I describe the kind of customer you are in this rant, I can't really say I apologize because I don't. Bad customers piss me off. Just know that this is NOT a personal attack on you, it's just a rant because I was talking with Scott last night about grocery stores in general and now this stuff is on my mind.

I was very fortunate in my teen years to have an incredibly supportive mom who said that as long as I kept up my grades she would be happy to financially support me so that I wouldn't have to split my responsibilities between a job and school (within reason, I gave up a lot of "privileges" for the sake of being able to concentrate on school). However, when I was in my second year at a local community college I realized that maybe school wasn't the thing for me at the time and I should go a different route. So at the age of 20 I was faced with having to find my first job. It was difficult, but a friend told me they were hiring at the store he was working in, and I should put in my application and he'd put in a good word for me. Within a couple of weeks of doing that, I had the job. This buddy of mind did warn me that it wasn't exactly all it was cracked up to be, but I figured no job is, right?

First of all, the store I would be working at required joining their Union. Great. I was going to have to pay for the privilege of working. Whatever. Dues weren't that bad, so I figured I could take the hit to my paycheck (turns out I could, and it didn't hurt that bad...I wasn't getting rich anytime soon, but still). Second, pretty much every job at that level sucks. Every job. Mostly because you always have to deal with customers or their aftermath (unless you're nightcrew, which is a whole other nightmare). And with every job you run into a different kind of customer. So from an insider, these are the kinds of customers you run into in each area of work. I know nobody's perfect, and I'm probably guilty of some of theses at some point or another, but for the sake of the poor minimum-wage employees of the grocery store, please try not to be any of these customers:

• Cart hauling - If you're one of those assholes who props the cart up in the planters and figure "it's their job to get it", go to hell. Straight to hell, do not pass Go. Because the cart haulers do not only have to deal with getting that cart, but trying not to scratch up the cars in the parking lot for fear that some other asshole sees them bump their car and the complain to the manager. Or worse yet, if you park in another part of the parking lot and leave your cart in front of another store, screw you. Yeah, it takes up part of a shift, but a lot of times getting in trouble for leaving the parking lot isn't worth it. They put the little cart collectors everywhere, I have never seen a store with less than about 8 different cart collectors, pretty evenly spaced, and it's not that hard to walk the 10 extra feet to be polite to some poor sap who's only working here to pay for school, you lazy bastard
• Bagging groceries - If you have a specific way you want your groceries bagged, fine. Pay attention when the bagger asks if you want plastic or paper, or if you've brought in your own bags (I cannot stress this enough) PUT THEM ON THE CONVEYOR IN FRONT OF YOUR GROCERIES! Most baggers don't mind doing a special bagging order, such as paper-in-plastic, plastic-in-paper (strange, yes, but I did have someone ask for that once), and they really don't mind using your bags because then they don't get reprimanded for using too many bags (yes, that happens too...you'd think the companies making multiple billions of dollars a year wouldn't care about the plastic bags that cost .003 cents each, but they penny-pinch wherever the hell they can). What they do mind is getting halfway through your order and then getting yelled at because you weren't paying attention and you left your canvas bags in your cart.
  
• Cashiering - This job and the Customer Service desk have a tie for interacting with the most customers. They see all manner of asshole. I once had someone hand me a $5 bill to pay for milk, and when I gave him his change he told me he'd given me a $20. In front of the store's bookkeeper, who sided with me. He raised such a stink with my manager that they had to close my register (the only express lane open during the busiest part of the day) to audit it. To be fair, that was just one example and he really was trying to cheat me out of 15 bucks. But that kind of thing happens all the time. People come up and quibble about the price, and then bitch at the cashier when the person doing the price check takes longer than 5 minutes. Don't do that. Chances are they either can't find the product or got asked a question by a customer who didn't know they were doing something. Patience is a virtue, and if you're in that big a hurry just come back for it later and leave it at that. Also, if you're going to eat something in the store, open up something with a bar code. If you eat something measured by weight, someone has to then go get another one so that you can be charged. If you're really that hungry, and you don't want something like chips, just go to the service deli. They have premade food that's not all crap, and they give you a bar code with it. A lot of stores can even charge you for it there, so you can show the reciept at the cash register (or they'll put a sticker that says "PAID" on the bag). That's always appreciated too.
• Bakery - I didn't do a whole lot of bakery, but I had a friend in this department and she said that it's a pain. There's a ton of daily stuff to get done, and then on top of that you have to deal with customers. A lot of time it's kind of dark in their little corner, and if they're in the back or busy with something they don't always see you right away. Be patient. Don't yell at them for not being at your beck and call right away. They're doing the best that they can. And if you need something written on a cake, for God's sake get there during the normal bakery hours. They are a hell of a lot more comfortable writing on the cakes than the regular clerks. I flat out refused to write on cakes. If you're getting a cake and you don't want chicken scratch on it, get there before 6 PM. It's not that hard. Do it on a Saturday if you work. Have a friend do it. Or better yet, get the cake done somehwere that actually does cakes. But don't be bitchy because your precious snowflake's cake doesn't look absolutely perfect if you couldn't get the regular bakery person to do it.
  
• Cleanups - If you drop something, let someone know. If you see something's been dropped and there's nobody cleaning it up, let someone know. Nobody likes having to sidestep through spaghetti sauce, and everything's a lot easier to clean up right when it's dropped than an hour later after it's had the chance to spread out. If you see someone cleaning something up, don't expect that they're going to drop what they're doing just because you have a question. If it's a simple question, like "What aisle is cat food on?", that's one thing. But don't come up asking the exact location of the pickled pigs feet, premade hollandaise sauce, or vegan chocolate chips are and think they're going to go searching with you. (On a side note, if you're a clerk, know your store and products. I've asked for maraschino cherries and been told to go to the produce department, and I actually have asked for vegan chocolate chips (in a hippie store no less) and been led to the chips and dip aisle.)
• Customer Service - This is undoubtedly the worst job in any store. People only go here when there's a problem (or to cash in their $3 lottery scratchers). Companies have taken the phrase "The customer is always right" to an absurd extreme (if you're interested in examples of when the customer is not right, read http://notalwaysright.com/). Basically, people have come to the understanding that if they shout and someone long enough, that person will get their manager, who will then be shouted at until the customer gets their way or that person has to get their manager. People can't deal with the disappointment of being wrong anymore. Generally, store employees know their policies better than you do and aren't willing to lose their job to give you the satisfaction of being right. If you're wrong about something, you're wrong. Nobody's perfect. If the policy is that they can't return something, ok, you're out a few bucks. Lesson learned. Being wrong is only bad if you don't learn something from it.

So yeah. Don't be any of these customers. For the sake of the sanity of the minimum wage stockboy trying to get through high school.

Bold Steps

I have a confession to make. My name is Liz, and I'm a habitual crafter.

I love crafts. I love craft stores. Homemade things make me squeal. A friend recently told me that as a baby gift she would crochet a blanket for me, and I was absolutely delighted at that. I love my home being filled with things about which I can say "That was made by so-and-so, it was a wedding present", or "Yeah, I made that 'cause it looked cool". That being said, until last year, my crafting prowess was relatively limited. I learned to cross stitch from my mom as a kid, and I can kind of sew clothing, but other than that and kid's crafts I was pretty limited.

All that changed last year. I decided I wanted my wedding to be personal. I didn't want a bunch of material "stuff" that meant nothing to me. Part of this was fueled by wanting to be on the frugal side for the wedding (it's a party...yeah, the biggest party of my life, but still just a party), and part of that was fueled by just wanting to do things my own way. So I bought a book on floral arrangements. I found out that I really like it, and I'm relatively good at it. With the exception of about three arrangements, the bouquets, butonnieres, and corsages (which my brother and sister-in-law did because I had gotten too sick), I did all of the flowers myself. I did the invitations myself, from a package I found in the wedding aisle of my favorite craft store (of course, because I was doing them myself, when I was proofreading them I missed that I'd gotten the date wrong and had to notify everyone on my guest list, but that's a different story). I even took up beading, so that I could hand-make my bridesmaid's jewelry, and found out that I'm good at that too. Also, unrelated to the wedding, I got more serious about my crochet. I'd learned the basic stitches, but never really tried anything with any sort of pattern, but I started a baby afghan that was still classified as easy, but more than basics easy, and I really enjoyed it. It's a little frustrating when I mess it up and have to take out a row or two, but it's a lesson in patience. And finally, I picked up the most complicated cross stitch pattern I've ever tried. It's still very much a work in progress, but it's looking good so far. All of these things I plan on continuing to learn at and cultivate in myself in the coming year.

On a less craft-related note, I've also decided to start a patio garden. I've wanted to grow my own veggies for a long time; my grandpa used to grow his own tomatoes, carrots, and other stuff, my uncle grew his own tomatoes and peppers, and there's just nothing that can compare to freshly picked, home-grown veggies. I'm starting small, with some lettuce, peas, and cucumbers, but I'm totally excited about having my own crop in a few weeks.

Overall, I'm super-excited about what new domestic paths I'm about to embark on this year. Wish me luck!

Morning Blog!

So I thought I'd share some of the early details of my pregnancy with everyone, partly because it's almost comical and partly because it's something that all women who are or are thinking about becoming pregnant should be careful to pay attention to.

Along with early pregnancy comes...MORNING SICKNESS!!! Fun fun fun. Or, in some women's cases, All-Day-Long Sickness. Almost every woman gets morning sickness in some form or another, whether it's just mild nausea in the morning or something much more severe. I was one of the lucky ones who was sick all the damn time. It got to the point where I couldn't go in to work because I was throwing up every hour, regardless of whether or not I'd eaten. I thought that was going to be the worst of it. For a period of about three weeks, everything I ate just came right back up. Salad, potatoes, even popsicles. During this time, I was in communication with my doctor, and she tried three different medications (phenergan, zofran, and reglan), but none of them proved very effective. Finally I got to the point where I was so dehydrated that I had to go in to get hydration therapy. Basically, it is what it sounds like; they were trying to rehydrate me via an IV. I did this in the hospital for two days while I waited for my insurance to approve having it done at home. They also decided that the best thing for my nausea, since I still had a little over a month left in the first trimester, would be to put me on a continuous pump of reglan. That's helped a TON. With that, I only had to have the at-home IV for a couple of days, and now I'm back up to eating solid foods and being able to drive myself around.

My condition is called hyperemesis gravidarum, and it only effects about 2% of the pregant population, so chances are you won't get it. However, if you think you might have more severe morning sickness than the average woman, get help. You should be able to keep down a popsicle or ice chips or something, and you shouldn't be throwing up even if you haven't eaten anything. I don't recommend just swallowing a bunch of pills just because you don't want to deal with it. Just communicate with your doctor regularly, and if you think there's a problem don't hesitate to call her in between appointments. That's what she's there for.

Obligatory Intro Post

Every good blog needs an intro post, so here's mine:

I'm a happy, (mostly) healthy 20-something pretty much just living my life. Why is this interesting to anybody? Normally it wouldn't be. But funny (and not-so-funny) shit just keeps happening to me. And I figured I'd finally share it with the world. So sit back, relax, have a cup of coffee (or tea, if you're not into coffee...maybe some cocoa...with Khalua...or Baileys...damn, I've been pregnant too long).

Anyway, the first story for my blog will be following shortly. Welcome to my crazy world!