Odds and Ends

What a difference two weeks makes.

We've been in the new place a week now. Still getting things arranged and unpacked, but already we're SO. MUCH. HAPPIER. And not just because we are finished with the crazy landlord.

The house itself is amazing, if a little dated. I like to think of that as "old fashioned charm." Well, 70's era old fashioned charm, as opposed to little house on the prairie charm. It really is perfect for us - we have more room than before, and the house is chock full of hidden little storage areas and built-ins (some of which we had to conference with a group of people just to figure out what exactly it was, like the old school can opener in the pantry). My kitchen actually has enough shelving for my humoungous collection of cooking paraphenalia - a definite first of anywhere we've lived! There is a little trash chute next to the stove top that goes to a garbage can in the garage - absolutely brilliant! I actually have a pantry in this house, which is a huge plus. The baby's room is a good size - we can fit the furniture we've already bought in it. And our bathroom is so big, I feel like we have a whole wing to ourselves. The only negative comment I can make on the place in that the oven and stovetop are 60's era tiny. I own pans that are too wide to fit the oven. So no giant hams or roasted turkeys for me for the moment.

(Room for more random cooking supplies!!)

My handy cookbook shelf in the kitchen, for easy recipe access. And, no, this is not all of my cookbooks. :)

(And check out the awesome 70's bar. Love, love, love the wall paper back here. I look at it and feel the urge to put on some bell bottoms and polyester.)


It's hard to believe that everything managed to come together in the span of a week. I'm not gonna lie - it was a rough, rough week. Between the rental market being very tight right now, our ridiculous time table, realtors and landlords not returning calls, and then at the end of the week, my poor husband came down with the stomach flu - I was ready to pull my hair out. Or plot numerous ways to painfully torture the ex-landlord. To top it all off, Friday morning before the big move, my Dexcom broke. Normally not a big deal - you call the help line and they overnight you a new receiver. That is, as long as your current receiver is still under warranty.... and guess what? Mine wasn't. Which means I'd have to go through the long drawn out insurance approval process for getting a new dex, which could take weeks... or months. Have I mentioned how ABSOLUTELY DEPENDENT I am on the Dexcom? The idea of not having it at work, where I tend to run on the lower side anyway, petrified me. Plus, I would have no good blood sugar information on moving day - a day of lifting, pulling, running around, eating quick and easy and probably not easily countable things.... Yikes. Talk about crappy timing.

Anyway, I want to give a big shout out to the slew of people who showed up to help us out. Even more so because I felt a little useless, being unable to lift any of the boxes and such. It definitely made me feel like we are finally starting to have a little bit of a community here. Moving a town over, out of the cornfields and closer to where everyone else already is, has already added to that feeling immensely.

Back to the move though - it was one of the craziest things I have ever seen. The guys were moving furniture out as another friend and I were frantically dumping things willy nilly into suitcases - no order to it whatsoever. (I'm still paying for that in the unpacking phase. Where the heck are my plastic ware lids? And it took me a day and a half to find the suitcase with all my underwear, hidden in a closet.) Also, moving that quickly allows no time for thought about how you want to arrange and organize the new place... So when the poor guys come lugging in heavy furniture and ask, "Where do you want this?", I generally stood there looking dumb and saying things like, "Ummm... well... maybe.... gee, how much does that weigh?" So thanks for putting up with me, boys. I also had some fabulous girlfriends (pregnant and on no-lifting duty like me) who stayed at the new place and not only unpacked, but organized my kitchen and dining room shelves!!!!!! I am not the queen of organization - I would have ended up just throwing things in the shelves to get them out of sight. My friend, however, is a whiz at this apparently - I now have a very thoughtfully laid out kitchen that makes so much sense - I can actually get to everything I need without digging through drawers cursing. (Yes, I'm thinking of you, old spice drawer. DID I MENTION THE WORLD'S MOST GIGANTIC LAZY SUSAN THAT'S BIG ENOUGH FOR ALL MY SPICES? That's really saying something, if you are familiar with my spice collection. I got a lot of flack for that in the move... it took three bins to move them all.)

I am so amazed and so thankful to everyone and with how everything turned out. I simply can't say it enough. Once again taken care of and provided for. It honestly blows my mind.

So now I can move on to other things! Like baby news. Again, another area where I feel like things are just way too good to be possible or true, and I want to shout about how incredibly blessed I feel. I feel awesome. I never had the awful nausea and sickness my friends have been plagued with. The worst pregnancy symptom I can complain about is some seriously dry eyes (which, if I hadn't read about it on a pregnancy website, I'd have chocked up to allergies anyway). Things are going well from a diabetes standpoint. I made the drive to Ann Arbor for my biweekly appointment - an important appointment because the OB was going to evaluate whether or not I needed to start driving down weekly for check ups. And I suppose here is where I finally get an award for my type A personality - because I am so... well, anal, about sending in my blood sugars weekly and downloading the dexcom, he decided that not only do I not have to come in weekly.... we can stretch out my appointments to 4 weeks! Ah, less time in the car! Less money on gas! Sometimes it pays to be neurotic. (The flip side of that coin is when I start to notice a blood sugar pattern, I send in the numbers wanting the issues to be addressed right away, and no one calls me for three days. ACK! Drives me a tad bit insane.) Oh, and the other awesome D-related news? My last A1C - 5.9!!! I'm ecstatic. And let me give a quick kudos to my doctors for just a minute too - they are very much of the "eat healthy but don't drive yourself insane" mindset. Never once have they made even a single comment about the contents of my food diaries, even when I was prepared with explanations (pizza on moving weekend? Pastries? Ice cream?). This has had an amazing affect on my overall psyche... No judgements. Things happen. Blood sugars (and basals, coreection factors, and I:C ratios) change weekly. The most important peice is counting the carb correctly and covering with insulin accordingly. I've calmed down about the food issue a lot and am instead focusing on healthy nutrition for baby. One more stressor removed! We can eat out with friends and enjoy ourselves without freaking out about the consequences.

Some days are beautiful, like this one...

Other days I feel like I'm mountain climbing.



I'm starting to feel what I think are tiny little kicks... Which is strange when you don't know what you're really looking for... Is that gas? My stomach rumbing? A random muscle twitch? They don't come very often, but I find myself stopping...waiting...watching for them.

Next week is the big ultrasound. We've decided to find out what we're having... Mostly because I want to decorate a cute nursery and I find the gender neutral patterns... well, boring. But the more I think about it the more I like the idea. Picking out a name. Bonding with my child over that new identity. Part of me hopes that that might make this a little more *real* to me. I still have moments where I think, "Am I totally making this up??" I need the outside confirmation - and I still don't really look pregnant, so that confirmation can be hard to come by. (I find that a little odd, too. If I'm just barely shy of the halfway mark, shouldn't I start really showing???)

(Yes, that's a bump. Really.)

I'm stoked about getting another photo of the little one, too. One where he/she looks less like a gummy bear and more like... well, a baby! :)

Stress

I have every intention of writing a post dealing with the ins and outs of pregnancy and diabetes. I also have every intention of eventually posting another recipe on this so-called "foodie" website.

I've been momentarily sidetracked.

A call from our landlord at 4 pm Friday evening kinda flipped our world around for a little while.

Long story short - the house we have lived in for the past year has been "sold", and he wants us out. In 13 days. No questions asked. If we're not, he'll begin eviction proceedings.

I'm not going to focus on all the minutae in this whole ridiculous scenario, the legalities, yada, yada, yada. We've spent too much time and emotion this weekend on those things all ready.

Fact: if it is AT ALL possible for us to find a place that is move-in ready and be out of our place in that miniscule amount of time, I want to just do it. I'm tired of dealing with this guy and the crazy, unrealistic world he lives in. I want to be done with him.

Is this demand even possible?

We've spent all weekend fretting, worrying, laying multiple contigency plans, calling realtors, driving aimlessly around the little communites around us looking for rental signs, tossing and turning, dealing with the anxiety of an unrealistic time table, and fishing through craig's list for something appropriate for our family and safe enough that we'd want to bring a baby home there. (Not as easy as it sounds, when you live close to a prison and in a town that is ranked one of the top 10 most dangerous in the US).

I've lost track of who I've called, who I've emailed, what we've looked at where. Even while we understand that we aren't in a position to be picky, our few leads have turned to dead ends mostly due to the time table - "WHAT? You want to move in NEXT weekend????!!! This won't be ready till April 1st...."

The other thing I'm sick of hearing - "Why don't you just buy? You both have good jobs." If we had wanted to buy, if we were in a position to buy, we would have done it all ready. As it is, buying something in two weeks really isn't an option. So shut it.

I know everyone always says, "Stress is bad for the baby!" Stress has a way of reflecting itself in my blood sugar. After all day of driving around town and making phone calls saturday, a quick fingerstick turned up a shocking 280. Totally out of nowhere, and of course I had left the dexcom out of range so I never heard an alarm. See the feed-back loop set up here? Stress = high, which stresses me more as I imagine it hurting my child. Add in the likelihood of stress lowering your immunity and posibly making me sick, and sickness = higher blood sugar... and it's really a recipe for disaster. Oh yeah, and all that cortisol floating around my blood stream makes me crave sugar, chocolate, fried food, and grease. Again, not great for the ole numbers game.

So this morning, my husband and I piled back in the car to randomly drive some more in hopes of finding "the one". Both of us moody, sleep-deprived, emotionally charged, and anxious. After a less than productive day, as I found myself slipping further down an emotional hole, my husband turned to me and said, "Okay. Let's do a little attitude readjustment. We're in a shitty situation, yes. But we are so much luckier than so many other people who have found themselves in a similar place. We can afford to move. We can afford to put our stuff in storage for awhile, if we need to stay with friends for a while if we need more time to find a place. We can be a little pickier about the place we're looking for, even with the time crunch - we aren't forced into taking the first thing just because it's the only thing. We're going to be ok."

And that led me to remember the numerous other times we have found ourselves looking for a home. We have moved a lot - in the last few years we've been through this at least three times (although maybe not this drastically). And each time, I have had the same response - I get so upset, so anxious, so convinced that nothing appropriate is out there, I make myself sick over it. And every time, at seemingly the last moment, something seems to fall out of the sky that is exactly what we need. We are taken care of. We are provided for.

Why is my memory so short? Three times. Three prayers answered in sometimes crazy ways. Why do I still doubt?

It's time to have a little faith. Even if things don't end up as I planned, we will be better off at the end of all this. We will be better off for going through this together. And in the midst of this choas, I am still so blessed - with a husband who can point my attention to the things that really matter, who loves and defends his growing family. We are blessed with jobs that allows us the resources to find safe and appropriate housing, no matter how long that process takes. We are blessed with amazing family and friends who have offered us their own homes to crash in and their manpower to help us move (possibly twice!!). And we are blessed with a little life, who depends on his mommy to talk a breathe, calm down, and take care of herself during this whirlwind. I guess that's probably good practice for later. :)