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Monday, June 28, 2004 Drafting Public Opinion This just makes me so mad. It's one thing for a person to have a beef witht he Bush administration for its decision. It's quite another to MAKE UP issues and try to paint the current administration as the bad guy. Case in point: On Friday, a coworker sent an email to the entire department regarding an editorial on an online infotainment site named This Draft Doesn't come from a Keg. The article spoke of the horrors of the draft and how the Bush administration has a secret plan to reinstate the draft during his second term. In order to do so, legislation would have to be passed, and the writer specifically named the bills before Congress to do so: S. 89 and HR 163, which are both being reviewed currently. The key problem with this accusation is that both bills were sponsored by Democrats, not by Republicans or any one allied with the Bush White House. The Senate bill was drafted by Senator Ernest Hollings and the House bill by Representative Charles Rangel, a long outspoken critic of the Bush administration. Rangel introduced the bill to speak about the gap between the enlistemeent of minorities and Caucasians. This is the second time in as many months I have seen this accusation made. It's a great con - Democrats sponsor a Bill, then wait a few months until the initial news reports die down and then subtly accuse the Republicans as being the architects of the very same legislation! It's a scare tactic, pure and simple, and it's decptive and misleading. Of course, the website that sent this out does not have a comment section for editorials, not does it has a contact us page to vent. I wrote an email back to everyone at work telling them of this key omitted fact. Personally I'd rather avoid sending politics to coworkers that might not want to read it, but I felt in this case it was warranted. ------------------------------------------------
Friday, June 25, 2004 Nickel and Diming Small Businesses Got a couple of gripes today. The fiurst is that Florida just wants to squeeze every last dime I earn. Now, the legislature has decided to tax home computer networks. That's right. Because I connect two computers together at home, I need to pay a special tax. Furthermore, if I have a fax machine, that's taxable too. What gets me is this line in the article linked above: In May, the Florida Senate unanimously passed a bill that would have prevented collection of the tax until 2006, during which time the law could be carefully reviewed. The bill was then sent to the House, but wasn't voted on before the summer break, clearing the way for officials to begin collecting the tax. Forgive me for not understanding the legislative process, but perhaps you should have read the bill BEFORE you signed it into law??!? On a diffrent note, my Honda refuses to just go away where cars go when they die. I assume it's somewhere close to the Elephant Graveyeard. In February my 1989 Honda finally gave up the ghost when its transmission died. I essentially abandoned the car in a grocery store parkking lot, and stripped out everything I wanted to keep. About two weeks later, I called Cars for Cancer, a non-profit that takes junked cars and sells them for donations to their cause. A few weeks later I told them where the car was and what it looked like. Then I never heard from them again, despite contacting them several times. They never came to get my car. Now, finally, the grocery store decided to tow my car away, and sell it at public auction. All well and good, except that if it does not sell, the towing company will issue a lien against me for the cost of towing the car and storing it at their facility for several days, a cost I know which will several hundred dollars. If I don't pay, I will not be able to renew my liscense plates when it is time to do so? I'm pretty ticked, though I think I'm legally protected, as I signed the car over to the Cancer Society in February. I'll have to make sure when I get home, but it's just irritating. ------------------------------------------------
Friday, June 18, 2004 Timecard of the Future Just switched over to the new computerized timecard system today...and naturally I screwed up using it in about four hours :) Now I am mysteriously working from 12 am to 5 am, before coming in from 8 to 5. ------------------------------------------------
Thursday, June 17, 2004 Dining Out Went to a few new restaurants today. For lunch, we went to a mom-and-pop pizza place in North Gainesville with a little playground area and play area inside for kids. Had a carrot, ricotta, spinach, and artichoke pizza - very delicious. Later that evening, we decided to have dinner with our friend Selina and her son Xander. I was relegated the cavemen to go forth and bring back food. My firt forage went poorly - I went to the new Greek restaurant, expecting to buy a few gyros and some baklava. Unfortunately, it turned out to be an upscale Greek eatery, with no dish under 12.50 or so, so I nixed that and went back to Selina's. I was then sent forth to bring back Cuban, but the Cuban restaurant turned out to be closed...for the summer(!) Resolving to not go back without sustenance, I made my way to a local Ecuadorian restaurant, to find it too has closed, permanently. Desperately searcing for the Indian restaurant, I ended up at Moraghot, a new Thair restaurant, where I bought meals which, ironically, were about the same price as the meals from the Greek restaurant. But it was SOOO good. ------------------------------------------------
Friday, June 11, 2004 Citroen Technobabble An electronically controlled manual gearbox, the SensoDrive features electronically managed clutch and gear-shift functions. As a result, the car has no clutch pedal and the gear lever — which remains present — has no mechanical link with the gearbox. Uhmmm....isn't that an automatic transmission? ------------------------------------------------
Thursday, June 03, 2004 Octopi are Intelligent Creatures Listen to this.: The Stazione Zoologica in Naples, Italy, also includes a public aquarium. (One of the features was an electric ray in a petting tank. You couldn't get away with that in the U.S.) We had a large octopus in one of the display tanks who disappeared one night. The catwalks we used to feed the display animals were simply a set of boards laid over the tops of the tanks. When we went searching, we found sucker marks drying on the boards and followed them. The octopus had gone past the dogfish tank (dogfish love to eat octopus), past the moray eel tank (morays also find octopus tasty), past the sea anemone tank (pretty but inedible) and dropped into the crab display where he reposed on a pile of empty crab shells radiating pleasure and satisfaction. Many people don't realize that an octopus can clearly show its emotion. It is relatively easy to tell when an octopus is happy, sick, scared, curious or even horny by the texture and color of its skin, which it can control almost instantaneously. After a few similar incidents, we moved this guy to a large tank in the common area of the research facility where he became a pet. ------------------------------------------------
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Tuesday, June 22, 2004 Finally made my first antepartum appointment It is for July 6th at 9:30 am. I was told to expect it to be a few hours long. I am pretty nervous thinking about it, and wondering if I'm going to get the reassurance I need to have a hospital birth or am I going to leave there frantically trying to find a homebirth midwife that'll support me in a VBAC? I'm guessing that since it is so long, I should see if Parker can stay with a friend. Jeff'll be coming (he came to all but 1 of my appointments for Parker), too. I do know that I'll be with the midwife first, and then I'll also see her backup OB that she works with. I still haven't decided what LMP/due date I'll give them. I recently heard about this group that they don't see post-dates as anything before 42 weeks (unlike my last OB ), but that if you have a previous large baby, they don't "let" you go past 40 weeks. Soooo ... we'll have to see. Gosh ... two weeks to fret about this!! ------------------------------------------------
Wednesday, June 16, 2004 Really Blessed with Friendship I have been trying to figure out how I can convince my husband to go ahead with homebirth, because we live about 20 to 30 minutes (depending on traffic) away from the hospital, and I completely understand his fear of "what if" and not being able to get to the hospital in time. Today, at our little playgroup meet-up, one of my close mom-friends offered for us to come to her house and have a homebirth there!! She lives within 5 minutes of the hospital. AND an acquaintance of mine, and good friend of hers, has had a previous homebirth and has offered to come for support, if that is what we choose to do! I am really excited with this prospect, as I was thinking I would have to just accept that we'd have to consider a hospital birth (because of how uncomfortable my DH is with the "what if" factor). AND this friend would be able to help entertain my son with her own son, during the whole thing! I'm just feeling so blessed with the friends I have, who are so willing to support my decisions! ------------------------------------------------
Monday, June 14, 2004 Paying It Forward Just signed the papers to refinance our home!! I'm pretty excited, as we are now free of the FHA restrictions, no longer owing PMI, and have cut 10 years off of the life of our loan (went from a 30 to 15 year, after 5 years in)!! The only scary thing is that we are now responsible for our home owner's insurance and property taxes ... our bank doesn't do escrow like the last lender. Still, it really does feel like progress. Now to see how much money we get in the difference, and the refunds of our escrow AND HUD/FHA downpayment. ------------------------------------------------
Thursday, June 10, 2004 Refinancing Well, we've decided to take the leap and get refinanced ... we started this before we found out we were pregnant, and part of me thought we should just let it be once we found out, but we are going ahead with it. Our house was estimated to be revalued at about $20K more than we paid for it 5 years ago (COOL!!), so we are getting a new loan, with closing fees rolled in and an additional $5K or so for improvements (we're replacing the carpeting in our main living area with bamboo floors), and it will still be $16K less than the house is worth!! The most exciting part is that instead of the 30-year loan we had, it'll be a 15-year loan!! We could have the house paid off before Parker goes to college (if we were to stay here, which I hope we don't). It looks like it'll cost us between $150 and $200 more per month, though, which is why I'm worried. ------------------------------------------------
Monday, June 07, 2004 Little Helper Parker was such a sweetheart today, and helped me wash dishes. He did a great job of rinsing the glasses and silverware and putting it out to dry. I just had a super great day with him, and wanted to share. ------------------------------------------------
Sunday, June 06, 2004 Staying Out of the Hospital? A post to a homebirth after caesarian group: I am about 6 weeks pregnant with my second baby. My first section was for several bad reasons, and I was coerced into scheduling. So, I never went into labor, and truly feel like I've missed something very sacred and special. If I were to trust the medical profession, it isn't that big of a deal and my healthy baby is the only goal I should worry about, and I should, for this second child, go ahead and choose his/her birthdate. Well, it just is wrong to me, and I desperately want to avoid the entire hospital situation. Right now, though, I have only been able to find one midwife who can/will do VBACs in town, and she works with an OB and in a hospital. I am not at all ready, nor is DH, to even consider a UBAC, so I'm not quite sure what to do. I have a few leads I need to follow up with this coming week, at least. Labels: caesarian, Kristin, parenting; pregnancy, stress, VBAC ------------------------------------------------
Saturday, June 05, 2004 Virus Spreads...In 24 Hours...48 Earlier today, I thought I had already lost my battle with M/S. Then, Jeff started getting sick as well. It seems we have both caught Parker's stomach grossness. So, hopefully ours will only last 24 hours like his did, and THEN maybe back to just nausea? Please? Because let me tell you, I cannot take 2 or 3 more months of this .... ------------------------------------------------
Finally he's holding his food down Yes!!! Yesterday was just plain awful ... nothing like having a starving child that you have to continue to deny food to. Now for it to finish getting out the other side. ------------------------------------------------
Friday, June 04, 2004 Virus Oh my goodness, of ALL the times for Parker to catch some awful stomach virus, right now isn't it. He's been puking since last night, with some patches of being able to keep things down. We thought he was fine this morning, and I even sent Jeff off to work (Parker woke us up at 5 am with the "worst diaper I have ever seen" according to Jeff, as I KNEW I wouldn't be able to change it just from the smell), and within 30 minutes, and just after I finished eating my breakfast, Parker threw up his. I tried to throw away the bulk of it in the toilet, and started dry heaving .... NOT a good thing. One thing leads to another .... yuck! I will say that I was wearing sea bands, and I think it helped some, because I was only a little sick. I think I'm gonna call Jeff back home when he makes it to work. ------------------------------------------------
Thursday, June 03, 2004 I Need Morning Sickness Cures I had the WORST MS with Parker, starting IIRC around 6 weeks and lasting until about 5 months, and lasted all day long. I'm already starting to have some nauseousness, so I'm eating frequent tiny meals, trying to make sure I have a protein with each thing (even if it is just an egg white). I really, really, really need as much advice as possible on treating and dealing with morning sickness, because I was pretty much a blob for the first half of my first pregnancy, and I just can't do that with a business to run and Parker to tend to. I have the ginger ale and saltines. I'm making sure my tummy isn't empty long (We just bought 4 bags of salad yesterday, that I have a feeling I'll be flying through this week). I'm holding off on the prenatals until afternoon. ------------------------------------------------
Wednesday, June 02, 2004 Thanks so much for your well wishes I'm slowly accepting the idea. What is especially sad is that today at my playgroup, I told my mom friends, but only after another mom told us that she tested on Sunday, it was positive, and then she started bleeding that night. She left a little early from playgroup to get a blood test. It was very sad. ------------------------------------------------
Tuesday, June 01, 2004 Here Comes Number 2 So, I decided to mention my thoughts/concerns/questions to Jeff, who couldn't remember when my last period was either, so when we got home from dinner with friends, I tested. Today is Jeff's birthday. Here's the present I got him.  I'm shocked and a little ... I don't know. Jeff's worried about money and has a giddy smile. I'm not thrilled yet, but I'm sure it'll come. I'm just so full of worry and wanting to have a different experience in pregnancy and childbirth than last time. I'm planning to call around to midwives soon, I'm guessing, and I will need to get an ultrasound to get an estimate of due date, since I have no clue of my last period. Jeff and I talked about the possibility and we both admitted that we probably wouldn't be thrilled about the timing, but would be happy to have another child. We always wanted more, and just put it off and off for a variety of reasons. ------------------------------------------------
Hmmm Have you ever had menstrual cramps and not had your period show up soon after? I'm starting to wonder if this means something more significant, or if she's just delaying a few days .... ------------------------------------------------
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