Last month paranoia

Ok, so I'm pretty much just waddling around a lot and obsessing about the ridiculous now that I'm 9 months pregnant.

The latest way that I've convinced myself that I'm going to hurt my unborn son in the final moments comes from sending out thank you notes. How can thank you notes hurt my unborn child you may ask? He can't get a paper cut, he's protected by manner layers of tissue and blubber. Will he get carpel tunnel from writing so many? His writing skills aren't quit developed yet, so I'm doing all of that.

Nope, I'm pretty sure something bad will happen because I have consumed a large amount of paste while licking the backs of the envelopes. You would think that baby shower thank you notes would have a disclaimer to let you know that pregnant women shouldn't use them! What if my kid comes out with three arms now or an IQ of 5 because his mother became a paste eater!!!

Maybe he'll just be really into arts and crafts? With three arms he'd be really efficient at them.

Snakes at a baby shower

Good news, had an awesome baby shower, bad news my dad was bitten by a copperhead. There are three poisonous snakes in North Carolina (copperhead, water moccasin, and rattle snake) and my dad stepped on one (it was dark, he's not a snake praiser) in his backyard. I grew up in this house, my parents have lived here for 18+ years, we've had small green garden snakes, a range in sizes of black snakes, but we've never seen a copperhead anywhere NEAR here(or anywhere in general, except for like NatGeo or animal planet or what not) .Until recently, snakes didn't bother me, I used to chase garden snakes with a stick (classy right?), but uh now a little creeped out. We have a rubber snake that we used to hide around the house to scare each other, not so funny anymore.

So let's recap, this week we've had: earthquakes, hurricanes, rebel forces (okay so that was in Libya, but still a pretty big deal), poisonous snake bites, and a baby shower (I'm not a horrible person, at least not in this case, my dad was really upset we were going to cancel it). 

I've always considered North Carolina a realtively safe state. We don't have a whole lot of terrorist priority targets, we don't normally have earthquakes (we have several fault lines, but they're mostly dorment (I took geography in college (rocks for jocks!)), the outer banks get hurricanes but usually they're just wind and rain by the time they get this far inland, we get tornadoes sometimes but they rarely cause deaths. It's just a calm, relaxed, happy little state.

 I swear I'm not giving birth to Damien. I've been to church a couple of times during my pregnancy and neither me nor my son have burst into flames or caused crosses to turn up side down. We're good.

So for future reference here's a quick fact list about copperhead bites and treatments:

Snake bites happen at odd times, like while my mom and I were making food for the shower and my dad was putting stuff up outside and getting pumped with venom. Not while he's hiking, dirt bike riding, clearing brush, excetra excetra.

Sometimes the first responder will look like your boyfriend and confuse you for a second.

Before the ambulance leaves 10 firefighters will go snake hunting, on purpose, by choice, in the dark with axes and flashlights (not only will they rush into burning buildings, they will kill poisneous sankes, can firefighters get any more hardcore?)

The EMS workers and firefighters will stop by  the ER room when they can to see how the victim is doing. (I need to make them some cookies)

Don't keep the snake in the room with you (it was dead and in a bag), the nurses will all come in and out and squeal at it while the victim is writhering in pain (but the nurses will also be SUPER nice, compassionate, and efficent).

Anti-venom for copperheads is a myth. Unless you're very old or a young child, they will wait at least 24 hours to give it to you, if at all. The medical community is losing faith in it as a healer, it won't help pain, it is just supposed to stop the spread of venom.

The anti-venom cost $5000 a dose, and a full series is at least 4 doses (total cost $20,000).

All other visitors/patients/staff/whatnot will have snake stories and tell us what we did wrong/right and give us LOTS of advice that would have been helpful 48 hours ago not so much now.  

The strongest pain medication available will not stop the pain, but it may make it harder for you to breath.

It's a minimum three day stay in the hospital.

Suggesting we a have a Dunder Mifflin Scranton Meredith Palmer Memorial Celebrity copperhead bite Awareness Pro-Am Fun Run For The Cure, will only be funny on day 5.

Hi, I'm Random, and I have an addiction

I am addicted to food network. I'm so addicted I'll even watch "five ingredient fix"( this is a dumb show, it's always got like 5-6 dishes and none of the ingredients are reused in any of them, so it's really more like 30 ingredient fix) to get a hit.

It's to a point now that I can recognize a show and it's food lineup with in seconds after intro music (which I also can name the show from without even looking).

I'm watching food network  right now and one of the hosts was laughing about being embarrassed because a "recipe" only had two ingredients and it wasn't really a recipe. Sandra Lee would have had a nervous breakdown trying to put that many things together!!

O yes, I know all the host and their little back stories. How pathetic am I?

But I know a TON of recipes. 

Hurricanes, Earthquakes, and rebel forces

Well dang, it's been a busy day in man made and natural disasters. My biggest worry when I woke up was remembering to make it to the post office. A lot of North Carolina (where I live) felt the earthquake, but I'm in the mountains and pretty well insulated so I didn't feel anything.

I've been crazing texting since I saw the earthquake on the news (was originally watching the rebels going in to Gadhafi's stronghold). The vast majority of my family is in central North Carolina (aka the Piedmont/Triad) and not all of them felt it. The people in business buildings seemed more likely to feel it. Crazy huh?

All the people on the news' answer to "what were you thinking" seems to be "I was so relieved it was an earthquake and not a terrorist attack".

**some dumb CNN ditz just asked if it was possibly cause by terrorist- yes, and her name is mother nature.

***also, a lot of very military looking helicopters just  flew over, reinforcing my crazy conspiracy nut theory that there are government bunkers in these here hills. I'm going to go put my aluminum foil helmet on. 

Pineapples

Has anyone else ever noticed how menacing a pineapple looks? I mean look "beyond" the obvious spikes and all and how (at least for me and my mom) it makes the inside of your mouth feel like it was just in a knife fight, but I mean seriously look

                                                     

                                                                      Pineapple

Doesn't it kind of look like a frustrated war monger created it? It looks like a very large grenade. Even the top is just to reiterate was it's supposed to do, it looks like a spiky explosion coming out of the top. 

I'm only focusing on how uncomfortable pineapples are because I got another "Fruit update"  on how big the baby is and they said she (although mines a he) weighs about half a pineapple. Can you think of a more uncomfortable fruit to have in your uterus?  All I can keep thinking about is, what half? the half with the spiky, stabby top or the bottom part that can explode and turn my insides out. I do not like this metaphor. 

I'm a make my own job

Screw it, won't give me a job? Huh punk, I'll make my own! I'm gonna go all hippie and desperate housewives and make things and sale them online. Have you ever noticed that hippies and rich bored housewives generally have the same occupations (neither rich nor a wife, but limited in mobility).

My baby shower is next Sunday and I've been doing A LOT of crafting. I love doing this kind of stuff, party planning and things that involve scrap book paper, glue sticks, and imagination. Why spend $50 on invites when I can make exactly what I want for $20?

So what I'm thinking about selling are the favors I've made. My nursery (or my son's nursery) is being done in a forest theme, heavy on the owls, and I wanted a favor that went along with the theme. Original thought: we'll give everyone saplings to plant! That way my son's first breath would be a little easier, a little cleaner! Of course with almost 40 positive RSVPS, and at $2.50 a pop, that's a little out of my price range. Then I moved on to tree seeds, which are apparently not sold commercially, then fall perennial flowers (I'm due October 10th). When I asked the workers at Lowe's Home Improvement, they said that I could come back in the spring for them.  Final decision: Bird seed! We'll share the love on the day he's born and feed the woodland creatures (The longer I live in the mountains the more hippie-ish I become, I've always maintained it was a contagious disease)!!

To get the seed to my guest, I went to a craft store and bought small brown paper bags (that kind of look like little evelopes when sealed), filled them with bird seed, and made really cool looking "thank you" tags for them. I'm really impressed with my 28 cent favors! So I have 50 creative favors for everyone plus a few spare for $14! I figure I can sale them for $20 for 25? That's standard mark-up. Think that's to much?

OMG

In need a job, I'm very employable, I can make it to final rounds of interviews, face to face. The problem seems to be when people stop looking at my face and start looking at my belly. I am losing my mind with nothing to do all day but cook and clean (I don't really clean that much, the apartment isn't that big and boyfriend will just go over it again due to his OCD). As soon as someone finds out I'm pregnant I'm out of the running, you can see the glaze come over their brains as they continue going through the act of interviewing me.

Technically, right now, I'm protected by the "American's with disabilities act" (which is a GREAT selling point right? "you have to hire me! being pregnant means I'm disabled!"), but a potential employer can give me any number of thinly veiled reasons as to why I'm not getting hired. The most common being "We went with someone who would be a better fit" I know what that would normally mean, but when my body is morphed to hold two people, like a half inverted Siamese twin, getting rejected from a job AND getting called fat, is NOT a good combo. In a town of constant, cheap, renewable,unattached labor, why hire someone who'll need a month off (during the busiest month of the year, great timing right?) and will come to work tired and sore ( no matter how well they'll actually work)?


The end.