October 5th - Week in Review

Holy Crap, has it really been since Sunday that I last posted??? I'm a slacker. Guilty.

I'm only taking the time to do it now because I have my laptop on my lap, my feet are up on the couch, and I am NOT getting up again till bedtime. Or till I have to hit the bathroom again. Let's face it, we know which will come first.

We're plugging right along here in D'Errico land. Bob's sitting at the bar making the monthly menu. I blogged about this, remember? We plan out all the meals we have to make by the month, and this way we can shop in bulk and save money. It's also nice to know while you're driving home that A) you know what's for dinner and B) you have all the stuff you need to make it already.
Sunday we have a standing dinner thingy at Bob's parents'. Monday is Pasta night, usually with sauce which Bobby makes in a double batch and freezes the leftovers - Bobby's sauce is always better the 2nd or 3rd time around, believe me. Tuesday is Mexican night (that would be my influence there!) - nachos, tacos, chicken fajitas, enchiladas, etc. Wednesday is crock pot night, because we don't have anything on Tuesdays as of right now, so we have time to set it up the night before and because Wednesdays we both have club and right now we have childbirth class - more about that later - so we have to get in the door, eat, clean up, do all the housey stuff that needs done, make lunches, take care of the dog, and get out the door in basically an hour. Thursday is chicken or pork, alternating. Friday is beef or the Diner. I know, it's crazy. But I like the routine, and it makes planning and executing the whole dinner thing on a tight schedule much easier.

We had an interesting week.

Monday: ran around like crazy, went to Sam's for a few staples. Had a Dr.'s appointment at 3:15 which ended up taking 2 1/2 hours. I was told Friday I had to start going for non-stress tests and amniotic fluid inspections weekly from now on. (NST's: they strap two monitors, a contraction monitor and a baby heart monitor, around your waist and they track how much the baby's heart rate changes in response to movement or contractions. AFI's: a brief ultrasound that measures the distance between the baby and the uterine wall in four places, this telling the doc how much fluid's in there.) Needless to say all this sudden monitoring freaked me out. My blood sugar's also been a bit out of whack lately. They TOLD me it would start to rise as the pregnancy hormones got stronger and stronger towards the end, I just wasn't prepared; sort of felt like I was failing at this whole GD GD thing. ANYWAY...

We waited a million years to see the doctor, and I had some blood test which I assume came back fine since I haven't heard from them since. The doctor heard I was scheduled for the NST and AFI on that coming Thursday, and said, "hell, stay for them today!" Ok, she didn't say 'hell'. It took a while, but baby's fine. The tests were pretty darn cool, actually. Except that another couple came into the NST room and the nurse left the door WIDE open to the waiting room, saying "nothing to see in here but a bunch of bellies!" and EXCUSE ME but not all of us are thrilled about their belly appearance right now...Eeek! Just cause you're pregnant doesn't mean you suddenly get a cute basketball bump, people. Modesty!

Then we had bells, which went fine. I'm actually sort of dropping out of bells after this month, though! We lost two people this last season, and we're having trouble replacing them, plus finding a 2/3 month replacement for me is hard enough. So Bob's going to cut us down to a 2-octave choir for a while (anybody who knows handbells knows how wussy this sounds, but it's necessary, temporarily) and I'll be a kind of permanent sub. We will, after all, have to worry about babysitting or bringing a baby along to rehearsal, if I have to be there all the time. This way I'm call-in-able, but not there every week. I'll miss it though. I'll feel so weird, not going along with Bobby...

Tuesday evening we actually got to stay home, miraculously enough. Hmmm, what did we do Tuesday...no idea. Oh! I inventoried the baby's clothes and found that we have forty million tiny onesies. I also found that despite the fact that two labels both say "newborn/0-3 months", they would only fit two vastly different-sized babies. Seriously, the one would fit twice inside the other. I don't get it. I called my in-laws to ask about this phenomenon, and they were shocked that I was calling during "Gilmore Girls" ACK! We forgot! We only missed the first 2o minutes of it (sorry, obsessed now). A very good episode. We may some day forgive the writers for last season, somehow.

Wednesday: Day of Hell. My Wednesday schedule sucks ass, basically. I have one morning class and 3 back to back, no pee-break-at-all classes. The last class was absolutely horribly behaved. I have no words for this class. Yes I do: Prison. Hey, just thinking out loud here. On the track they're on now, a good number of them should end up in (white collar) prison. And then it was time for the first Chorus rehearsal.

67 kids. 67 freakin' kids signed up for Chorus. I take this as an enormous compliment, a sign that my program is getting nicely built up, and an indication that I'm doing my job well. I also have no idea how to deal with that many kids in my room. 67 kids, after school, crazy-assed, and me. I devised as much of an organizational plan as possible. I made sure the folders were stuffed, the rules letter was in their folders, and the uniform shirt orders were stapled to printed envelopes ready to take home. That was all I could do. And it didn't go too badly. But 67 kids? Holy freakin' mother of everything. Last year I believe I had 45. And at least I can be straight with them about discipline. "Look, you're bad, you're out. I could lose 20 of you and have a perfectly good-sized group. I put up with nothing this year. Nadda."

After a miraculously good Chorus rehearsal (except for my stupid ass CD player pooping out on me) I went to pick up Bobby from Yearbook club at school, then we sped home so we could do our Wednesday night stuff and get our butts to childbirth class.
And we were greeted at the door by the worst smell - doggy poop. Yep, our poor Maxy got sick (out both ends...ewwww) in his crate and had a horrible day trying not to sit in his own mess. My poor baby! He was still obviously feeling sick when we got home. Bob (thank God) did the clean-up while I made dinner, made lunches, cleaned up, etc. and even after Max was all clean, he wanted nothing to do with his food. So we had that to deal with. It was so worrying to put Max back in his crate. But we'd gotten him to eat several pieces of plain white bread (no dinner of his own yet) and all he wanted to do was lay down and sleep, so we let him, and went to class.

It was labor night! Got some very good info, too. We even saw "the video", and nobody fainted! I'll say this, though. I'm actually glad I'm the one who has to DO this baby delivery thing, not the one who has to SEE it. Love the class, still, though. Bobby's so cute, he takes notes and asks questions - ok, he gets me to ask questions - and I think it's really making the whole experience a little more real for him. And it's reassuring. And it's solidified my desire for a nice, healthy epidural.

Thursday: Hey, that's today, isn't it? Well, when we got home we found Max had had another, smaller, accident. But he seemed much happier and was quite hungry, so we think the worst is over. He still seems tired, but that's not a really bad thing. You get some quiet time then. We're watching him closely, though. My poor doggy! And you can't exactly take off or stay home form work because your dog is sick. At least not without getting teased. I hope he's really better now.

We had Back-2-School night. Bob and I decided that they call it that not because it's like going back to the days of their schooling for the parents, but because the teachers have to go home, rush around, be extremely tired, and go right BACK TO SCHOOL, whether they want to or not. It all went well. There were tons of parents there, a yummy bake sale, and many jokes were made during the opening meeting run by the principals about there being something in the water at our school... 4 pregnant women in one tiny building. And I'm sure there will be at least one more this year. 3 newly-married girls in their 30's. And last year our art teacher had twins. (And her sub who I'm friendly with told me tonight that she and her hubby are now trying - always happy to hear somebody else is joining the club.) Well, you hire a bunch of younger women in their twenties and early thirties, you get a lot of preggy chicks. I installed our home 5-disk CD changer in my classroom, because my old school-issue JVC now stops in the middle of songs and restarts the CD or turn off... and ate a granny smith apple dipped in caramel and peanuts (shut up, it was the best looking thing on the table. Had to be better than the plate of pumpkin bread that almost came home with me). Those were my accomplishments, other than talking to lots of (dyed) blonde mommies telling me their pregnancy/labor/birth horror stories. And trust me, it's a lot grosser when you KNOW the baby she's talking about quite well.

Bobby also returned the changing table Nick got us and got us (wrong wood color, I'm pregnant and I'm anal, sue me), and picked up a gift card in exchange for it. See, Target carries exactly one freakin' changing table, unless you buy online. So that's what we did. Should ship in "1 to 2 weeks", whatever that means. And then we can finally set this room up right. We're still not 100% sure where everything's going to go, and we can't put away much of anything without at least having the furniture set up. Nesting, baby. It's a beautiful thing.

So now we're up to date. *sigh* and I've only been typing for half an hour. :-) '

Tomorrow we have *gasp* another day of school. And I have exactly 21 days left. And no, my sub has not been hired. BUT I got a memo about coming to see long-term sub candidates' sample lessons. Gotta find out what that's about. I'm still obsessing about not having a sub, and what's going to happen to my program, and dear God who's going to run Chorus and teach the 5th graders the D. A. R. E. music for their graduation and run that show, and what about the recorder concert in March, and...yeah, I know, deep breaths, deep breaths.

Sometimes I desperately want to get everything done before the pre-labor hormones kick in and all I care about is baby stuff. And sometimes I wish they'd kick in already so I could just push all of this crapola away and truly accept it as somebody else's problem. Eek! What about Enrichment???

Ok, settling down now. Time for bed. See, I know it's time to get up because my feet don't hurt anymore. :-) That's a good thing. *night*