And the winner is.....................

SARAH!!!!! I'll be sending you your candy soon. Email me at allredpe@gmail.com with your address and I'll get it out as soon as I remember it! Also, this is my 69th post, 

FREE THINGS!!!!!

For Easter, since I didn't do what I feel is a mandatory blog holiday post, I'm gonna do this.


Post a comment about what your favorite Easter candy is. I'll pick one person at random and mail them that candy (with in reason, I'm not importing a gourmet candy from Belgium for you). Make sure you leave your name. I'll announce the winner Tuesday night after 8pm Eastern Standard time. The contest ends Tuesday night at 8pm. If I announce you as the winner, send me an email with your mailing address and I'll get that candy out to you.

 My favorite? Peeps, not because I like them (they're disgusting) but because of all the controversy they can cause in families. They pit mother against mother-in, brother against brother, and send siblings to new levels of rivalry. They are the civil war of candies.


Post away!  

AZO is A OKAY

This is a post with way to much information for everyone!!! I possible have ANOTHER bladder infection. One of the few things I always thought would be nice about being "with child" would be that I didn't get my period for 9 months. I didn't know that my monthly punctuation would be replaced with this mess. It looks like I've been drinking Easter Egg dye.

A bladder infection makes you feel like you have to go the bathroom all the time. You don't, you just have an undeniable urge you can't control (much like the beginnings of many other things). Some people handle discomfort with restraint and grace, they handle it so well everyone but their closest peeps (it's (almost) Easter! PEEPS!!!!!) notice that something is a little off. As you all know, I'm not the suffer in silence type, people I've never met often think I'm on my death bed every time I stub my toe.

So today, in class, I was handling this minor annoyance in stoic silence, but I couldn't quite stop my self from rocking. Yes, I sat in class glassy-eyed staring at the teacher, arms crossed rocking. I think I made some people uncomfortable.  I wonder how many readers I've lost with this unnecessary and weird little post.

I don't like those "Hillshire Farm" commercials. It's the same one over and over again with different actors. Kind of like my post are all the same but with different(ish) titles. 

well dang,

I quit, who can top that? Thanks a lot Tina Fey 

"It's Natural" is a crock of crap

Some people shouldn't watch delivery videos. For those of us that are visual learners, you would think this would be the best way to prepare, but it's not. For all my whining about how horrible horror movies are and the toll they take on my psyche, one would think I would know better. But I don't.

Most of the advice given to a pregnant woman who's  worried she's doing something wrong (and this may just be so she(me) doesn't make 500 million mundane calls to the doctor's office everyday) is to trust your body. Well, my body won't let me bend and rotate so it can see itself being torn in half.

I don't think we're supposed to see what's happening between our legs during the big push, if we were we would have been built without a spine or with mirrors on our feet. There's to much gore and violence for our already weary, aching bodies. The nine month payoff is not the witnessing of all that horror, that's why you need someone else to watch your baby come out. Seriously doctors study for YEARS to be able to sleep after witnessing all of that.

If anyone else is expecting and reading this, sorry if I freaked you out, but that was the worst thing I've ever seen, I don't know why I think I can watch stuff like that.

And DON'T TELL ME it's beautiful and natural and we we're "made to handle it" because that's the dumbest argument I've ever heard. We can handle and recover from broken bones, collapsed lungs and all kinds of diseases. Oil spills (and you know oil alone)  are natural (maybe not when certain gas companies are negligent, but sometimes it bubbles up on it's own). Arsenic  is natural. Lions and tigers and bears (OH MY!) are built to rip us to shreds, but I don't go out and chase them.  Natural is a crock of crap.

sketchy gas station/laundry mat

You know how every town has that place you "just don't go to". Well, there are a lot of those in my town, but they're usually down a dirt road, up a mountain and over a creek, so it's really not an issue. Unless you go to the robbery express laundry mat and gas station.

 "Fill up and be held up, while your delicates are fluffing".

I almost NEVER go there, but they're the only place open after like 8 o'clock and when you need undies you need undies. And my boyfriend needed boxers. So I went with him to keep him safe. He doesn't know that's why I went but it is, I can judo-chop evil-doers with my new pregnancy arms!

 As soon as we got there, a white kidnapper van full of sketchy men is just sitting there, and they're all staring into the laundry mat, sketchily. I don't want to get out of the car, but Capitan Commando, marched right in, like he didn't even see them, sitting there, plotting. So I follow, boyfriend (NOT staying in the car by myself) covering his flank (I just watched "green zone" with Matt Damon "LIKE").

While he's looking for quarters and starting the laundry I find a check for $2000 lying on top of one the machines. My first thought? "What kind of drug dealer/pimp/smuggler pays for his goods with a check?" It ended up being a check from a construction company to a tool company. That was a legit transaction so I called the number on the check to let the company know, they had a loose $2000 check floating around in a laundry mat.  When I got on my phone, the sketchy kidnapper van guys, who had gotten out of the van, hurriedly got back in and screeched out of the parking lot, guns blazing (there were no guns, that I saw).

Then I start thinking, o crap, maybe it's a money laundering scam ( I AM in a laundry mat), and I've just stumbled into it, the guys in the van are waiting for their contact to come get the check. And I just screwed it up. They're gonna come after me and my unborn child!

Couple minutes pass with no activity, and then a beat up car pulls up slowly and turns off it's lights while leaving the engine running, maybe this was the contact kidnapper van guys were waiting on. I sit quietly and don't think about checks.  The men in the car (what am I, the only female left on the planet? Where are all the other women?) get out one at a time to get change for their five dollar bills (they were OBVIOUSLY casing us, but my big baby belly and he-man arms scared them away. Also, my boyfriend looks like he can snap most people by looking at them).

After I scared the beat up, chop-shop car guys away , it got quite. TOO quite, like the calm before the storm. If this had been a horror movie, the music would have changed and swelled and gotten all screechy. Captain Commando, choose this moment to leave me alone, in the house of horrors, so he could walk next door to the gas station and get change to dry his clothes. I begged him to leave them, offered to make him a makeshift clothes line in the apartment, but he went anyway. First rule of horror movies, as soon as up split up and look in the half open door, you die.

So what happened? I died. I didn't, I just sat there quietly, watching all exits, trying to look intimidating, while the non-electric doors kept OPENING AND CLOSING ON THEIR own.

All that time I thought I had to watch out for murders and robbers, when really I needed to be preparing for a possible exorcism. So, I start fastening crosses out of pens and pencils in my purse, looking for a priest and water for him to bless, and staying away from anything that could be used as a human sacrificial table. Then I wonder if the humming noises I thought were coming from the dryer sounded all that mechanical anymore. They started sounding more maniacal and menacing. Had a previous money laundering scheme gone sour here, and the deceased gangster was looking for a fresh load of revenge?

And this THIS, boyfriend, is why I don't watch horror movies with you. I watched "The Last Exorcism" with you two weeks ago and "The Bad Seed"  5 days ago and now I can't leave the house without seeing evil everywhere. I WILL NOT watch paranormal activity with you unless you want me to start standing over you in the middle of the night with a cross waiting for you to go all evil and dangerous on me. 

HAHAHAHAHA, this little boy and his father are trying to go somewhere. The little boy want's to ride in the car but the father want's to walk. A Loony Tunes reveres psychology moment ensues. 

Why don't you kick Tiny Tim while you're at it

When I discuss my pregnancy with mothers (anyone's mother not just mine) they usually tell me how much they LOVED being pregnant. That it was the best time of their lives, they had all this energy and were happy all the time. I don't know if there is some kind of hormone that's released right after delivery that brain washes women or if they really did have a dream pregnancy, but either way I hate them.

It's just mean that after I've just told someone I spend 80% of my day with head in a toilet and the other 20% trying to get back to a toilet, that they never got sick during their pregnancy. WHY? Why would you say that? WHAT ON EARTH, makes you think that's okay to tell me? Why don't you walk up to Tiny Tim, kick his crutch out from underneath him (for me the fact that everyone goes through it, it's normal) and start telling him how running is "the most awesome thing ever". Why not walk up to Helen Keller, flick her in the nose, then tell her (sign her) how "nothing compares to a rainbow and she doesn't know what she's missing, that you can't die happy without seeing a rainbow".  You could even find a one armed man and challenge him to a patty cake competition, tell him to do the hokey pokey "Put both arms in and shake them all about  (I mean, it is what it's all about)".

Conversely, please don't regal me with horror stories of bad deliveries, yours, your friend's, or one you read about in the paper. I'm scared enough as it is, I don't need nightmares of 15 pound babies trying to climb out  through my nose after 3 days of labor with no epidural. I need to save my strength to do the hokey pokey, be flicked in the nose, and have my crutches kicked out from underneath me. 

When I grow up (out)

There are several things I would like to do when I am obviously and heavily pregnant. They are

• Pretend it's a food baby  (I was so hungry)

• Act oblivious and then offended when people ask how far along I am

• Tell people I'm  52 weeks when asked (elephants won't have nuthin on me!)

• Lose my emotional cool on someone and then act like it didn't happen 

• Get stuck in an elevator and pretend to go into labor (I will have many many elevator rides)

Please note

Please note that I am for hire and will work for diapers.

Baby diapers, not adult diapers. I am potty trained. I may have left that off my resume, but it's important to make clear. Special skills- can pee pee in the potty.

Fruit Salad- yummy yummy

Not only is "fruit salad" a TERRIBLE HORRIBLE UNFORGIVABLE children's song (some of my younger cousins were IN LOVE with it, I can't eat it now) it's also what's been growing in my uterus.

I signed up to a website "BabyCenter" which gives you the progress your baby is making each week, like one week it grew hair and another week it grew a liver(I don't think it was in that order). It also gives you the approximate weight and length of your baby. However, and I find this odd, it gives you things to compare the size of your baby to, which is not the weird part, this is: it's always a fruit.

Like one week my baby was the size of a raisin, one week a blueberry or grape, this week it's a lime wedge. It even does it to my uterus. It went from being the size of a pear to the size of a grape fruit (at 11 weeks the baby was the size of a fig, next month it's an apple). If the baby would grow to the size of a yogurt container, I really could make a decent fruit salad.

It's not just this site that refers to baby's size by the "Kertzwig Fruit Scale" (the name I made up for it, I think "Kertzwig" sounds like a doctor's name that would spend time making a baby height fruit scale) it's every single baby book I've read and every single site I've visited, everyone is obsessed (I kept trying to type "obsessed" and it kept getting auto-corrected to "obese" I GET IT, computer)  with fruity babies. Why are vegetables being left out huh? Or Hostess cake snacks? What's your angle National Fruit Growers Association?

Is it less offensive than having a home office in your belly? "Your baby this week is the size of a paper clip/stapler/coffee mug with cutesy inscription".  Or how about art supplies? "Your baby this week is the size of a gum eraser/oil paint/bottle of turpentine". OH! How about house hold cleaning supplies? "Your baby this week is the size of a sponge/small liquid soap bottle/scrub brush".


Fruit salad (inspired by my little uterus usurper)
Feeds: up to 6 belly rubbers
Time: Should distract them long enough to make your escape or booby trap belly.

Mix together in Large bowl:

1/4 cup of raisins,
1/4 cup of blue berries 
1/2 cup sliced grapes (what ever color, ultra sounds are in black and white. So it doesn't matter)
2 sliced, skinned and cored pears, chopped
1 grape fruit peeled and segmented
1 handful of chopped and seeded figs
1 apple peeled cored and chopped
Sprinkle all ingredients with 1/2 a lime to reduce browning of fruits
Add yogurt to taste

Serve and run away.

Prenatal Fitness class- the second day

As much as my thighs are burning/shaking/wobbling after class, my abs and arms are usually feeling pretty good. I was really surprised by all my upper body strength considering I usually can barely lift a loaf of bread over my head or sit  up from laying down without a pulley-system, but then I figured it out: Mother Nature has been kicking my butt into shape, I've just been to exhausted to notice what was going on.

The constant morning sickness has whipped my abs into shape by doing what morning sickness does, tightening and releasing the ab muscles to get the end results, do this for 15-20 mins 5 times a day and in no time at all instant abs(this is not a post that is pro vomiting or bulimia, it's just something I've noticed)!

As for my arms. I'm constantly pushing myself up off the floor or out of bed. Pushing my boyfriend off of me or pushing away people's hands from my belly (seriously I don't rub random parts of your body, hands off mine!). Each of these works a different muscle group in the arm, so by the end of the day they've all been worked on and are starting to tone up nicely.

As to my thighs and legs, I haven't gotten to that part in my circuit training yet, but I figure that toward the end  of the pregnancy I'll be so big that just to support my blossoming bulges I'll need the thighs of an Iron Man. And instead of doing squats down a track in the gym I'll have to do them to pick up anything since it looks like most pregnant women can't lean in any direction without capsizing.

I think by the end of this I might become a swimsuit model (I know). 

Hiking in the "high" country

The area I live in is known as the "high country" because it's....wait for it......in the mountains (if you'd like to get to the point skip down about 5 paragraphs, if you like rambling and have nothing else to do, continue reading)

(Geography lesson: North Carolina is segmented into three parts going from west to east "The high country" mountain region, "The foothills" Piedmont region (where I'm  originally from, I traveled far), and "the coastal plains" or the beach/kind of.)

Sometimes I think the "high country" was named not because of it's geological constructs but because of the activities of about a 1/3 of it's population.

Exhibit A:

I went hiking with my boyfriend through a surprisingly flat 3 mile circuit around a lake in a shallow valley yesterday. It's an easy walk (I know I said Hike earlier but it was more of walk being there was no climbing or wrestling of foliage, but the alliteration sounded better with hike).

 We saw the usuals on the path (meaning we recoginze the type not the person) the over exhausted family that's trying to make memories but who's children are probably still to young to remember the experience anyways, but will break into a cold sweet the rest of their lives at the site of a water bottle and will never know why. The old couple that leaves you in the dust no matter how fast you think you're going. The out of place people that would rather be watching a rerun of "Golden Girls"  and realize this was a mistake half way through the trail (me). The serious enthusiast that's out there because he/she enjoys physical activity (my boyfriend), And once again. my arch nemesis, the hippies.

(I promise I'll get to the point sooner or later, if you're familiar with this page, you know it'll be later)

There are two types of hiking hippies you often come across, the " I went on a quick hike that lasted a month/don't eat your dollar trail mix eat my homemade homeopathic trail mix that cost $50 a pint /We should take care of our mother(earth)" type hippie, which will usually leave you alone unless you provoke them by using a plastic water bottle and then there's the "I came out here to "bong" with nature/I think dreads are natural and not out of place in a sterile environment/ let's all dance under the moon before replanting our souls" type hippies.

The second and more aggressive type hippie should be avoided at all cost when "hiking"  an easy trail. They will invite you to their communion circle, other you some "natural substance" and try to find out the story of your life force, this type of hippie has been known to be contagious, so BE VERY careful, some people are immune to this infection and others are highly susceptible(Science has yet to find a diagnostic technique to determine the chances any one person has of sub-coming. Much like the drugs they may offer you, you don't know if the first time will put a hole in your brain or if you'll see funny colors, so best to stay away from it).

We were attacked by the second type of hippies on Sunday but, thanks to our quick thinking and cat like reflexes, (spoiler alert!) we were able to escape. As were walking along a particularly open stretch of trail with  a beautiful bridge over a little brook, we saw them coming. They had already started across and we were to far along on the bridge to turn back.

We followed the rules at first, we filled our heads with thoughts of "McDonalds" and "Wal-Mart", natural hippie repellents.  We stuck or water bottles out in front of us like a cross and we avoided eye contact while talking about Hummers. These were mutant hippies, stronger than most of their brethren. They made contact anyways.

Hippie- "Are you guys breeding yet?!" he yelled it even though he was less than 2 yards away at this point.

Me and my boyfriend- deafening silence as we try to figure out why he thinks were dog breeders, he had a dog with him, was this a proposition?

Hippie- "Have you two started breeding yet? We're (here we notice a second less hostile hippie) deciding what poeple should breed and which shouldn't. Have you to bred yet? "

Me and my boyfriend- STUNED silence, what out come do we want here? "Not Awkward" is no longer an option. Is this a "Green Day" reference? Is he calling us stupid?

Hippie- (continuing like there is nothing unusual about this conversation, like that we're not responding ) "You guys should defiantly bred, you're both beautiful people"

So this guy was insanely high right? I'm almost four months preganent so it's kind of starting to look like I'm "breeding" and I am not a pretty person, I'm funny, I'm smart, and I cook a mean pot roast but "beatiful" I am not. My boyfriend is more than above average, and I think most people think I'm his homely sister, so I understand some one wanting him to "go forth and multiple", but really? WHO THE FREAK SAYS THAT? See this, right here, is why I don't like hippies.

Baby room, in an ideal world with ideal budget and still fidgety with it

but with better matching colors, BRIGHT BRIGHT everything, saturated with color and light. the white moldy chair. crib and changing table would be the color of that blue pillow, fabrics would be the yellow on the bird pillow.




You know what pandora has taught me? I don't care for lullabies, Next couple years are gonna be awesome. Unless my kid finds The Red hot chili peppers" and Nirvana soothing. I like Beethoven, so maybe that's a good compromise, my research indicates babies like that. 

Are You Ready to Ruuummmmmmmmmmmble?!?!?!

You better be, because if it snows ONE MORE TIME clouds I will be coming up there and we will be having a few "choice" words.

And by choice words I mean there will be a smack down the likes of which the public has NEVER seen. I see you guys sitting up there, all smug and out of reach, dressed in your chic winter grays. Feeling all safe and superior because I'd have to take a plane to reach you (I'm sure you've seen me before, up there, hanging out, I'm the one screaming bloody murder and giggling like a toddler. Remember I do sky dive, so the only thing between us and this approach to punching your crystals out is $300 and a pregnancy), but I believe you may have forgotten a less dramatic approach. A little thing I (and the rest of the English speaking world) like to call fog, yep that's right, you forgot about when you occasionally get knocked off your high horse by a front and have to spend some time on earth with the rest of us.

Keep in mind that when you have to lower yourself to our standards again, I will be waiting. Planning. Lurking in the shadows ready to TAKE YOU GUYS OUT, if it snows inappropriately one more time. April, is not the time for blizzards, snow showers, dustings, or even flurries.So cut it out. I realize that this is a transition month, so I understand that there will still be cold days, cold wind, heavy frost and really really cold rain BUT NOT snow, and/or freezing rain/drizzle.

That time has past, I know change is hard on you and you've enjoyed getting such a great work out this winter flexing your ice hard storm muscles. But it's time to move on with your annual cycle.  you have some summer favorites too don't forget. Now you get to make thunder storms!! They're so much more versatile than yucky old snow storms. Before you just got to make on thing in varying forms, you had cold and colder. NOW you get rain and lightening AND thunder. You can even take days off and have people admire your beautiful bellowing nimbuses and provide people with shade, they'll thank you and love you for it.

Video games (said with disgust and eye rolling)

Sometimes I have dreams about video games. I'm trapped in one and people are shooting at me, they don't really have anything against me, they're just bored and I'm wearing something that says "Kill me, it's fun and you can get points that are pointless (PUN!)!", so it's not like I can apologize while I'm running away or try to reason with them, they're just having some fun.

I AM NOT A GAMER. I want to make that clear before I continue, because some scary things are starting to happen, things I'm not proud of, but I need the therapy of blogging to help move past. (I don't think my bf is a gamer, but he does play a couple nights a week so I'm keeping a close eye on the developing situation, I'd hate to declare a no fly zone in certain rooms. )

Most of the time I leave when he's been playing for to long (about 10 mins or so, I'm a really strong person), but other times I'm engrossed in something else and don't want to lose my focus because I saw something shiny when I got up ( sometimes it's just WAY to cold to go outside) so I stay and he plays.

I definitely hear enough that I can quickly recognize what he's playing without being in the room and I now actually understand some of his game references and jokes. I'm not proud of this but it's happened and I'm trying to move on, I think I could have over looked my scary newfound game knowledge if one simple thing hadn't happened.

I made a joke. A video game joke. Not one about how dumb boys and/or their video games are and/or how boys with video games are not human any more, but I made an honest to gosh reference a "you had to play the game" to get it joke. I don't remember what it was exactly, I black out a little and start twitching (sometimes I droll a little, or so I've been told, I'm blacked out I don't know ) when I think about it to hard, but it happened and I deeply DEEPLY regret it. I fear I may never be the same again.

I don't really know where I'm going with this post, none of them really have a point or a conclusion so that's nothing new, but I'd like to start wrapping things up with neat little bows, maybe some sage and awe inspiring words, something sentimental or witty. I  also really like wrapping gifts, it's fun, and I like having a pretty box to display pre-gift pillage (see how I'm trying to distract from all my shame in the rest of this post?).

Well, I guess at least he's not one of those tools with the head phones that yell at people during the game and get SUPER into.Like so into it you want to ask them their address and find out their medical history in case they  have a flippin aneurysm or a heart  attack or maybe they have a blocked artery that is about to explode (I've fallen off the wagon again and have been surfing Web MD, I either have a hangnail or an embolism of the toe) so you want to be as helpful as possible when you call 911 for them.

He just came in to tell me about how he pushed a guy off a cliff in a game and that it was  super awesome, I heard him laugh from a separate room for like 5 minutes. I need to go to the situation room and review this latest intelligence.

UPDATE: Turns out he hasn't been playing most of the night he's just been messing with people to make them mad. I'm gonna go get out BigShotShooter03's emergency contact list, might be making some calls tonight