Random Musings...
Tuesday, January 31, 2006
·Ping Pong·
- I'm in Orlando yet again. Andrew's flight from Baltimore gets in late tonight and we'll have to drive back to Gainesville right away for him to catch a morning flight tomorrow to Boston. I thought this would be the last time having to be in Orlando until my brother's birthday (in a whopping two weeks), but my friend Lane is having major surgery this Friday, and I'm thinking I should come and visit her in the hospital. So I've just been bouncing back and forth ever since the holidays with this two hour drive.
And if I've been a ping pong ball back and forth, Andrew's been a pinball. Since getting off the boat early for the New Year's cruise to start his string of interviews, he's flown from Mexico to Alabama to Florida, driven to North Carolina, flown to Rhode Island and back to North Carolina to drive back to Florida. Then he flew to Philadelphia and back, to Ohio and back, now he's flown to Maryland and he'll be back in Florida less than 12 hours before he has to fly up to Boston. But then...THAT'S IT! Yay! This has been a crazy, crazy month. I have felt so disjointed and disorganized. I can't wait to just spend time at home doing normal things.
Yesterday I took advantage and went with my mom to finish up the baby registry (at Babies R Us). The invitations to my shower went out already. My mom went crazy inviting every friend and relative she could think of. More than 50 invitations went out!! Some of the people I've never even met. Geez! It'll be interesting.
Posted at 9:38 AM
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Sunday, January 29, 2006
·Anna's Nursery·
- We picked out what her room will look like...
The main color is not quite as purpley as it looks in the picture. It is more true pink. We think it's adorable, anyway. We are adding a bit of a twist to it, though. Rather that it all being flowers, we are creating more of a garden theme and all the little extra bells and whistles will be little garden animals. Frogs, ladybugs, butterflies, caterpillars, snails, etc. It's very, very cute with all that going on. I don't want it to be a serious room or overly frilly. I think we created the perfect balance between girly, but still fun and cute.
Posted at 12:06 PM
Comments... Post a CommentVery Cute!!
Did you guys register anywhere??? I think you said before that you hadn't, but I wanted to make sure.
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Thursday, January 26, 2006
·Failure·
- I'll preface this all by saying that I have a lot to be happy about right now. I have a little miracle inside me who is going to change my life forever. I can't wait to meet her. However, things in general have not been very happy for me lately.
I have been unbelievably stressed out. It was back in July or August that I finally made the decision to start my own business and leave my dead-end job. I had been thinking and researching it all for about a year. After I put in all the expensive, up-front costs of starting up, I gave my notice to my work that I would be leaving. Three days later, I found out I was pregnant. The timing was certainly interesting.
Well, although it was nice to be home when I was feel so horrible with the morning sickness and so on of those early months, it also made it so very difficult for me to really get things moving with the business. Besides the Christmas rush, business has really been struggling. I just feel like I made a horrible mistake. I left my boring, but well-paying job with amazing benefits for this. I haven't had a chance to pay myself a single dime yet from the business, so our bank account is dwindling with our current expenses. With a baby on the horizon, I don't see how we can last much longer now.
Of course, we're going to be moving this summer, but we won't know where until the end of February. I'm very obviously pregnant now, but no one would want to hire me anyway if they knew I would be leaving in June. I just feel like there's no way out right now. I called some temp agencies here in town to find out if there are any part-time jobs for the next 8-10 weeks or so, but they have nothing available so far. I say part-time, because I don't know if I should completly throw in the towel on the business yet. I know it takes a while to get things off the ground, and it would work out so well if I could make even a small amount of profit because I could stay home with the baby.
I just don't know what I should do. Last night Andrew got really stressed out about money and we had a long, difficult dicussion. And it's true things are pretty bad all of a sudden. We're probably getting rid of cable (both for the TV and the internet), and we are going to have to admit these problems to our friends since we go out several times a week. Beyond that, I'm not sure what else we can do to save money. We're not big shoppers and have no real luxuries to speak of that are expensive to maintain.
So this June we'll be moving to a new place with a six week old baby and we're probably going to have to ask for help just to cover the moving costs. Several of the places we could end up are in big cities where rent is close to twice as much as we pay for our mortgage right now. Fortunately, our house has doubled in value, so we'll probably get a good chunk of change when we sell it, but we had planned for that to be the down payment on a great home in a nice neighborhood to raise our family in after next year is over. This money from the house will be what saves us next year, but it means that our biggest investment will probably be half gone by this time next year.
I just can't stop from getting that horrible, tight feeling in my chest when I think of how different things would have been for my family had I not made this decision. I feel like such a failure right now, and I hate that it didn't have to be this way. I can't stop crying, and I have a hard time looking Andrew in the face lately. He doesn't blame me, but I can't help but feel this horrible burden. I just don't see how to get out of this. I wish I could see the light at the end of the tunnel.
Posted at 12:41 PM
Comments... Hang in there. I just went part time at work to go full time at school. So the income is less and I am nervous how we are going to make it!
It will get better! You guys will be fine!
Why are you moving?
If you really want to try and get a job for the next period of time:
You can do what I did. Why tell them that you're leaving in June now?
Yeah, I know it's kind of rude, but if you make it seem like it "came up all of the sudden" and it's a "great opportunity for my husband, so we have to go" around say, the end of May....it wont't look so bad. My job was actually happy for me when I brought all of that up, lol.
You can't blame yourself for any of this. I know you'll find a way to make things work. Yes, it may mean renting an apartment instead of owning a home for a couple of years, but there are worse things. You two are very smart and determined and you have a loving family that's just going to get better and better. You'll make it through this, I promise!!
And hey, if worse comes to worse, you and Andrew & baby can come and move in with Wes and I (if Andrew takes the Miami job!)
Post a CommentFlutter--we're moving because my husband is getting his PhD and the final requirement for him to get a degree is to to a one-year internship. We can end up anywhere between here in Florida to Rhode Island!
Ashley--I would keep the move hidden except that I'm very obviously having a baby in between. I'd hate to have to return to work a week afer giving birth or something like that. If I took the normal FMLA leave (which I'm not sure I'd even qualify for when I'm so new), I'd be moving away before the leave is even over. I'd feel like a con artist. I basically only have about 10 weeks of work I can do between now and the time we move. I just can't do it.
And we have to rent next year anyway. What I meant was that we envisioned hanging on to the profit from the house to make an awesome down payment whenever we know where we're going to live. That money will be half gone if we need to use it in between, which means that we won't be able to afford the good house we were hoping to be able to give our children. It means that we'll be able to get by, of course. I just feel horribly guilty that this decision has led to all this fall out already and I may not be able to raise my children the way I could have had I stayed the course.
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Wednesday, January 25, 2006
·The First Pictures of Our Daughter!·
- Yesterday we had the 3D sonogram done. It was just amazing! We got to see what our little daughter is up to in there. We can already tell that she looks exactly like her daddy too! Incredible!!
Posted at 10:14 AM
Comments... Post a CommentFlutter--We are not 100% on a name yet. We are really leaning toward Anna Cristina, though. We'll see when we finally decide.
Spikey--My parents paid for it since they wanted to see her. I don't think I would have gone for it myself, but now that I did it, it was definitely worth it. I think my parents got one of the more "deluxe" packages (45 minutes, 60 photos, DVD, VHS) for about $200.
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Friday, January 20, 2006
·Another long weekend in Orlando·
- Since Andrew left again for five days, I decided to come to Orlando for another long weekend. I'm trying to see if I can squeeze in some legitimate work while I'm here too! Hopefully I can manage to do that.
Posted at 9:48 AM
Comments... Post a CommentGood for you sweetie!! I'm sure you'll feel much better with your family around.
I'll be spending my no-Wes time at the library and of course, watching football on Sunday. I'll just have to call him to cry tears of joy or heartbreak after the game.
Have a great weekend!!!
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Tuesday, January 17, 2006
·Finally, an Update·
- OK, so since it's been so long since my last update, I've been postponing the update because I didn't feel like writing it all. I'll just get the boring "did this and then did this" stuff out of the way so I can get back into the swing of blogging.
We left for NC (seems ages ago now!) the Wednesday before Christmas and spent about a week there. It's always nice visiting the in-laws. Yes, I actually like them!
My first day there, I fit in some business and met with my old alma mater to see if they'd be interested in my stuff. Turns out they are! I've been following up with them lately. Let's see how it works out. I'd love to get them on board since they order by the hundreds. It would certainly be a good thing to have a steady, reliable sales source like that established. It was nice being an alum to get my foot in the door!
The rest of the time was pretty laid back as it normally is. Get up whenever, hang out, take a nice long walk along the lake, maybe play some bacci, and eat. Christmas was fun and was pretty much a day-long affair of opening presents as it usually is no matter which family I'm with. I like it that way.
We left Thursday morning to head back down to Orlando for a small Christmas, Part II. I got my iPod which I have since loaded with nearly 1000 songs already. Got my Dyson!! Woo! Can't wait to clean the house enough to actually use it. We got up the next morning to fly to Houston to meet up with the family. My cousin Jennifer lives out in Sugar Land, so we stayed nearby there. I went to visit her at her place and hang out with my beloved little Robert. I can't believe how absolutely wonderful that kid is. He was so excited to have me over on his turf, and after Jennifer gave me a tour of her house, he gave me a little tour of his own that mostly entailed showing off every bit of Wiggles merchandise he owns. Never in the week that followed could he learn to say "Rosalie" though, so my official name was a very cheerful, "HI!" every time he saw me. Even if he just turned his head away for a minute and looked back. He'd gasp and go, "HI!" In his defense, I learned to spell my name before I ever knew how to pronounce it myself. For the first three years of my life, I named myself "Esi." Jennifer got it a little closer with "La-Lee"
So the next morning, New Year's Eve, we headed down to Galveston where the cruise was going to be departing. We knew something was up when we got there and people were still getting off the ship at our boarding time. We ended up standing in line for nearly five hours!! I thought riots were going to break out among the unruly cruisers. People started shouting and shoving. It was just awful. Turns out one of the engines busted on the ship on the way in so it was several hours late. We would, in turn, be several hours late in leaving. In the meantime, though, rather than having staggered boarding times, the entire 2000+ passenger load was there in line at once. Just awful.
Fortunately, we made it on just in time for dinner (which was awesome) and we were able to forget about our woes in time to ring in the New Year. We had every intention of going to one of the official parties but we ended up having a fine time at the casino. My cousin Julie is a whiz at slot machines (who knew you could be good or bad at those??) and probably won close to $1000 throughout the course of the cruise. After Andrew lost $45 in a little over five minutes at Blackjack, we just hung out at the bar with Julie, Jennifer, her husband Michael, my cousin Jackie and her husband Andy. I took a picture of everyone taking a shot at the stroke of midnight.
The next day was a day at sea, so we were able to sleep in nicely! The rest of the time the whole family just hung out in my grandmother's suite. Now, when I say my whole family, I should post a picture of exactly what I'm talking about...
That's my grandmother up front, obviously. So that's her with all of her four children, ten grandchildren, and one great-grandson. We all used to get together for a trip once a year when my grandfather was still alive and before us older cousins graduated college and started getting married to have more and more complicated schedules. This was the first one we've been able to pull off, so it was really special to all be together again. We had a great time just all hanging out together. We broke off in groups to go to several on-board activities, but my grandmother's room was the central meeting and hangout place. It was great.
Due to our late departure from Galveston and our slower speed due to less engine capacity, our first destination, Costa Maya, Mexico, had to be cancelled. Instead, we went to Playa del Carmen, Mexico. Even though it was the day of the Gator game, we decided to take a shore excursion to some old Mayan ruins at Tulum (wearing our full Gators outfits, of course!). It was gorgeous!
I'm glad we went, and we got back to the ship to hear all about how we beat Iowa (Jennifer and Michal's team) on top of it all! Robert was wearing his Hawkeye t-shirt and showed off his little trick of throwing his arms up like he was calling a touchdown and cheered, "Cockeye!"
In keeping with the tardiness of the ship, we would be arriving in Belize the next day as scheduled, but only for half a day. About half of the group went scuba diving, but the rest of us stayed on board since there wasn't really anything to do worthwhile in town. The longer tour excursions got cancelled, but we were fine just hanging out. The next day was Grand Cayman. There were a whopping six other cruise ships docked at the same time as us, so all the tourist trap shops were so freaking crowded it was ridiculous. Andrew and I took a cab out to the beach.
I had a lovely time (wearing my big maternity bathing suit for the first time!), but Andrew was really stressed out. He was having to leave the next day for his first in a long string of interviews. Due to all the complications in the ships re-scheduling, we were really nervous if he would be able to make his flight out in time. We had spent every day of the cruise so far stopping by the purser's office seeing what they could do for us until we had to reschedule the whole thing. Rather than leaving from Cozumel where we would be docking the next day, we ended up having to get him a new, later ticket out of Cancun, which is on the mainland. This meant he had to get on a ferry back to the mainland and get a cab to take him the 45 minute drive up to Cancun. I was laying on the white sand there enjoying the sound of the waves and swaying palms when I looked over and realized he was not relaxed at all! The stress of making these new plans work in a foreign country where he didn't speak the language in addition to the scariness of starting the interview process was too much, I guess. Laying around doing nothing on the beach either relaxes you or gives you the time to stop and think about everything you have ahead of you, I guess!
So, unfortunately, the next day at Cozumel, Andrew had to take off. I started crying as I dropped him off at the ferry. I would see him again two days later, but it was the start of a long interview process that won't end until the first week of February. I've seen him for a total of three nights since then so far. It's been pretty rough! He'll be back tonight for two more nights before he leaves again until next week. I hate him being gone so much.
But anyway, I had been to Cozumel before, and I love it there. It was sad to see so much destruction from the recent hurricane there, but all the locals were excited to be getting tourists again. I love the shops there. I ended up buying two bracelets to ease my tears of sending my husband off early. It was weird to go back on the cruise without him. As we were boarding the ship again, though, a new drama began. Right when I was swiping my card to get back on board, the crew got a radio call saying one of the passengers on the scuba excursion was injured and unable to return aboard. About half the family had gone scuba diving again today, so like the paranoid person that I am, I kept listening in. Sure enough, they said my uncle's name!! For the next half hour or so, we were trying to figure out what was going on, but there was no way to find any new information out. Finally, we got a call saying that he had aparently overdone the scuba thing and got what appeared to be the beginning of the Bends (too much nitrogen in your blood). Well, my uncle ended up staying in a hospital in Mexico for the next three days. My aunt stayed behind with him, so Andrew wasn't the only one missing the rest of the cruise! It was quite dramatic to get their entire room all packed up and figure out how to get them their stuff and what was going on, etc. Interesting!
What remained of the cruise was just a day at sea, which the family members who were left spent relaxing. We went to several trivia games (and won!), I played with Robert and his Wiggles, and my cousin Julie entered a karaoke contest and did a great job with Tiffany's "I Think We're Alone Now." It was nice, even if it was lonely at night in a big empty bed.
The next morning we pulled back into Galveston and flew back to Orlando. Andrew arrived from Alabama later that night. After that, well, I've just been here. Andrew had to leave again that Monday and didn't get back until this past Sunday. I was working here by myself for the first half of the week and then went to Orlando for the last half. Andrew came back for one night, but then left again yesterday afternoon until later today since this one was just down in Miami.
So, I've been working, really. Catching up on everything I didn't get done during all of this time I was away. Pregnancy-wise, I've been feeling fine, except just before leaving for NC, I started developing some backaches. Well, it started getting progressively worse. It's so bad at this point that my doctor told me I should go to physical therapy at my appointment with her last week. The pain is up in my mid-back, which is higher than typical pregnancy backaches. I must have some sort of spinal curvature that is just now becoming a problem with these added 15 lbs I've put on in the past several months. So, I'll be going to that this coming Monday. Joy. If I'm this bad at five and a half months, I can't imagine I'd ever be able to get through the nine months!
The baby is doing well, though. I've recently discovered that she can hear pretty much anything. She starts dancing to music, so I've started playing some for her now. She'll start kicking around within a few seconds. It's so neat to feel. Andrew and I are also about 90% sure that we will be naming her Anna. It's funny, it was never a name I had considered before pregnancy, but it just seems to work for both of us now. Maybe she just feels like an Anna! I don't know. Anna Christina. It's a pretty name, I think.
Ok, so that's it. I'm all caught up. I'll get back to normal posting now!
Posted at 10:42 AM
Comments... Post a CommentI wanna see pictures of you in your maternity bathing suit! Um....that's not weird, is it? :)
Posted by: 4:06 PM
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Monday, January 16, 2006
·I'm Alive!·
- I'm here, I'm back! I've been a slacker getting back to the blog. I had a great time over the holidays, but it's been busy since I've been back. I promise I'll put up a real update tomorrow morning. In the meantime, here's a lovely family portrait we had done on the cruise that includes the "six" of us...
Posted at 5:39 PM
Comments... Post a CommentOkay I just have to say look at your boobs!!! Those suckers really are getting ready for a kid to chomp down on them! LOL
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