Wow, what a week. It has been equal parts wonderful, equal parts hectic, and equal parts strange all mixed thoroughly and poured into a bundt pan that never releases a perfectly baked cake no matter how much you grease it. Yes, Matt’s birthday cake was destroyed when it finally finished baking last night at 11pm. And no, I am not at all bitter towards THAT PAN.

I never posted on his actual birthday because I was busy doing things with him that are not at all birthday-like whereby increasing the intense contractions of my guilt complex by T to the fifty-fourth. But I’m moving on, because I’m chalking it all up to being twenty-eight weeks pregnant and unable to shave my legs without an entire team of assistants.

This weekend he’s going to be at a motorcycle safety training course which means that he can then get his motorcycle license and buy a bike – his birthday gift. I’m guessing opening that Target bag with SIX HANES UNDERSHIRTS! on his birthday was almost as cool as buying a new cruiser. That’s what I told myself when I purchased them for him.

So for Matt’s thirtieth birthday, here are thirty things you didn’t know about my husband. I’ll try not to embarrass him too much, but isn’t that kinda the point of turning thirty?

1. He seems to have a strong opinion about illegal immigration according to a phone call I overheard last night, although I couldn’t really tell you what his opinion IS.
2. It bothers him to do any work (such as reading) close to his eyes without taking off his glasses first.
3. He then stores his glasses perched on his neck and just under his chin.
4. Or he loses them on the coffee table under magazines and the newspaper.
5. Losing his glasses doesn’t seem to bother him, but the new high-end scratch-resistant lenses really DO bother him because they smudge so easily. He wishes he hadn’t sprung for the expensive lenses.
6. While he enjoyed the television show “Flashforward” when it first came out, he told me last night in bed that “we’ll never watch that show ‘Flashforward’ again because it’s scary and I don’t want you to have nightmares.” Awfully kind of him, if you ask me.
7. He has nearly the complete discography of Miles Davis but rarely listens to it. When we sit down to read in the evenings, he inevitably puts on Bill Evans.
8. I always ask him to make the mac and cheese because he actually makes it according to the instructions on the box. I always leave out the butter. No wonder his is much better than mine.
9. Watching “Wipeout” stresses him out because the contestants let their butts hang down when climbing sideways on the rock wall. This is, apparently, not the best way to rock climb. Something about center of gravity.
10. Most Ben Stiller movies stress him out because absurd things keep happening to Ben Stiller over and over again and he just can’t catch a break. This is Matt’s worst nightmare.
11. The only juice he really likes is orange juice.
12. His favorite beer is Corona with a fresh lime slice. But he also loves a Harpoon UFO.
13. His favorite wine is Spanish Quarter Cab Sauvignon.
14. He probably hasn’t done a load of laundry since we got married. Likewise, I haven’t taken out the trash once.
15. He is extremely easy to feed. Nearly every day I make his lunch and pack it in his lunch bag for him. He takes it out of the fridge the next morning and has no idea what is in there until he eats it at lunch time. He has yet to complain about this system.
16. He gets really recalcitrant when his hair gets too long and hangs in his face. It’s been like that for about a week now.
17. He would collapse into a pile of anxiety if I ever purchased him a different anti-perspirant.
18. He wears a size 13 shoe, but a bit smaller in rock climbing shoes.
19. His favorite color is orange.
20. He prefers water-based frozen treats to milk-based frozen treats.
21. As soon as Berlin hears his key in the front door each evening, her tail starts wagging. He is her favorite person.
22. He wants to live in Colorado someday.
23. He prefers the NKJV translation of the Bible.
24. He plays a five-string bass because he loves “having that low D.”
25. He thinks John Mayer is a good guitarist and will be very embarrassed that I’m writing that here.
26. He has been known to sacrifice huge things for me.
27. He loves better than anyone I’ve ever met.
28. He will make the world’s greatest father – this coming from the girl who currently HAS the world’s greatest father.
29. He’s extremely ticklish and does NOT find it amusing when people try to tickle him.
30. He’s six feet, three inches of absolutely delicious yummitude, and I’m excited to bury my face into his chest for the next thirty years of his life… and more.

This basically wraps up the birthday celebrations for the week, although we still have lots of crumbled lemon poppyseed cake in Tupperware in the kitchen… and that giftcard to go out to dinner. Just think, next year we’ll need a babysitter for that dinner date.

I love you, and happy birthday, babe.

I just got an awesome gift from Angie the other day, a book on how to make your own baby food. I dove right in and read, I think, half of it this past Sunday. Told a friend I was going to try to cloth diaper and make my own baby food, and she shot me down saying that I was trying to be a super-mom and had to lower my expectations of what was actually achievable when you are home all day with a baby. Um, how you say… disagree?

I’m excited to try my hand at making baby food because 1) I love to cook, 2) I love to save money, and 3) I think I have no excuse not to. I have fourty hours a week that I’m not in an office, so my full-time job will be taking care of Penelope and managing our budget. And by saving money on things like diapers (by cloth diapering) and home-pureed carrot grossness (by making it myself), I’m going to be able to buy plane tickets to visit my family, thankyouverymuch. Also, really? Do you recommend I spend that time watching General Hospital instead? Because is it just me or has Jax not aged a day in the past ten years? THAT’S believable!

So I picked up the book to find out just how complicated this whole making-your-own-baby-food thing really is. About halfway through Super Baby Food the author mentions that an ice cube is the perfect size for one portion of smashed up frozen veggies or fruit, and you just might want to pick up some more ice cube trays.

And here’s where I need to confess a sin. Nearly every apartment we have lived in has had a few ice cube trays in the freezer when we arrived. And when we moved out I took them – every single one. I am swimming in ice cube trays. In fact I’ve never actually purchased one. Only when we moved to Nashville did I finally have a fridge with an icemaker. But even after Matt installed said icemaker, I stashed my ice cube trays in the pantry cabinet, because guys, YOU NEVER KNOW WHEN YOU’RE GOING TO NEED MORE ICE.

Just watch. Penny won’t want anything to do with food that doesn’t come in a Gerber screw-top jar. Something about karma?

If you were to come over to our house today and peek in our bathroom there are three things you would notice right away.

From Daily Daguerreotype

1. It’s about time for the bathroom’s weekly cleaning, but I’m sorry… I’m too busy compulsively working on my 3 year old quilt to realize, care, or do anything about it.
2. There is still no door. Matt found five layers of paint on the door that he was painstakingly trying to strip using The Worst Chemicals Ever before we decided to spring for a heat gun to peel off the old paint. As strange as it may seem, the bathroom door is low on his priority list because he’s a notorious Project Finisher and wanted to complete the laundry room first to fill his deep internal void. At least this is what he claims. I have a feeling he is putting off the bathroom door until LOST is over to prevent me from inviting people over for weekly LOST parties. He claims I “chitchat” too much during the tv show when we watch it with other people. WHATEVER.
3. And then this one… a grody tennis ball sitting on the pedestal sink. Shall I zoom in for you?

From Daily Daguerreotype

Yes, a drooly, filthy once-bright-pink tennis ball. Anyone who has spent five minutes with Berlin has figured out that she is OBSESSED with fetch. It could be considered clinical… or just the “golden retriever” in her. So every time I’m in Target and they have tennis balls in the $1 section, I pick up a bag. Or two. Or two hundred.

Well they seem to get lost in the backyard frequently, so we’re always pulling out new balls for her to play with. But then out of the blue she’ll find an old ball, and it’s always at the most inopportune of times. Like this morning when she was up and ready to go outside at 6 am. Matt walked her over to the back door and opened her doggy door which she quickly bounded through. Five minutes later I got out of bed for my 911th trip to the bathroom, and who should come in to join me but Berlin with her dirty, stanky backyard find. Knowing full well that when I headed back to bed she would lay down next to me on her own bed and tear the ball to shreds leaving felt and rubber pieces all over the bedroom floor, I quickly confiscated the ball and placed it out of her reach… on the sink.

She was devastated and went back to her bed to pout. Until she found another ball out of reach under my dresser which kept her occupied for about an hour.

So is a nasty tennis ball sitting on our bathroom sink unusual? Not at all. Just stroll through our downstairs and you will find them everywhere. On top of bookshelves, the fireplace mantle, hidden in drawers. Inevitably when I go into labor and need to be packing up my hospital bag, instead I will be frantically running around the house collecting old tennis balls and sanitizing the surface they were sitting on because MY MOTHER WILL DIE AND KICK ME OUT OF THE FAMILY WHEN SHE SEES THESE!

I had one thing and one thing only that I needed to accomplish today. At 8am I needed to go to the midwife’s office for my regular checkup and get my swine flu vaccine on the way out. It was the failiest fail ever.

Last visit to the midwife’s office was wonderful and exciting. We found out we were having a girl and got to watch Penny squirming on the ultrasound machine for a solid half hour. Matt was with me, and held my hand as I laid down and received my regular seasonal flu vaccine. At that visit I had planned on getting both vaccines, but after barely making it through the seasonal flu shot, I opted to get my H1N1 on my next visit which was scheduled well in advance so Matt could come with me.

Well, he wound up not being able to come today. February being a short month and Tennessee being snow-day happy, he had to squeeze in a couple extra hours today with a client, so I went alone. I’ve known for about a week and a half that I would be going alone and psyched myself up for it. As in, not sleeping a wink last night and walking into the office this morning shaking.

When I arrived Brandy took my blood pressure, and her eyes opened so wide I thought maybe SHE was going to pass out and suddenly I’d have to really pull myself together and give her mouth to mouth or something. She asked me to take the standard pee test to find out if I had preeclampsia. I told her I thought maybe my blood pressure was high because I was so nervous, but she wanted to opt on the safe side.

So I waited in the room for what felt like decades before the midwife and her midwife-in-training came in to see me. Before I could even say hello I blurted out, “Do I have preeclampsia?” Midwife Melissa smiled and assured me that I was fine, no preeclampsia, and that they’d try taking my blood pressure later in the appointment.

And that’s when I burst into tears and told her that I was so nervous about coming in and getting a shot by myself, that my husband couldn’t make it (and he’s the one who really wants me to get the swine flu vaccine anyways!), and that my car was in the shop so I’m driving this brand new loaner car from the dealer, and what if I passed out and crashed the loaner car on the way home?!

“You really don’t need to get the shot today. Why don’t you wait until your husband can come with you?”

“Really?”

“Yes. I’d like you to get the vaccine, but you’ll be fine if you put it off another four weeks. We have to do a blood draw at your next visit anyways, so we can get it all done at once. And you get another ultrasound at that visit, which will be fun! You’ll get to see your little girl again!”

This is where I kissed her on the mouth. We finished up all the routine stuff, and she re-took my blood pressure which wound up being perfectly fine, in fact a little on the low side of normal.

I really wanted to be brave enough to get that shot all by myself today. I’ve had my blood drawn before by myself, but the thing that freaks me out about the flu vaccine is that you can feel it in your arm long after you’ve had it done, unlike a blood draw. And for some reason, my physiological response to feeling that sting hours later is to get queasy all over again. But I wanted to overcome it. I wanted to make Matt proud of me, especially because he knows that despite what everyone says, I still don’t believe it’s necessary to have the silly vaccine, but I am willing to do it because it matters so much to him. I wanted to kick this fear in the crotch once and for all.

I have gone to so many midwife visits over the past few months, have been poked and prodded with needle after needle and haven’t passed out once. I have gotten so much better. But then days like today come along, and I feel like I’m back to square one with no improvements made.

I mean, what would you do if you were told you needed to go sky diving once a month to usher in world peace. You’d be scared spitless at the door of that plane, and the only thing stopping you from vomiting would be the sexy G.I. Joe character whose back you’d be strapped to for the free-fall. So you get a little less scared each month cause G.I. Joe makes you feel a wee mite safer. But then one day you have to jump alone. And you start crying and say to yourself, “WHY DO I NEED TO JUMP OUT OF A PLANE TO STOP ETHNIC CLEANSING?!” So the plane takes you safely back to the airport, and you drive home hating yourself because c’mon, what’s so scary about jumping out of a plane?! ALONE?! People do that all the time, right? A BABY COULD DO IT!

That’s basically what it feels like. And now, because of my big needle fail the whole world is going to die of swine flu.

I think it’s too early to say that my nesting instinct has kicked in, because I think that isn’t supposed to happen until my third trimester. But over the past week I’ve had more and more interest in pulling lost and forlorn items out of boxes that were packed over six months ago. There’s been a lot of “Oh yeah! THIS!” along with the realization that my house doesn’t feel quite as spacious as it did before I had all this stuff out and everywhere.

Last week I was motivated to install the tile backsplash in the kitchen and after five hours of painstaking labor, I stupidly insisted that Matt stay up until 12:30 am helping me grout the thing. We’re both happy with how it looks, but I fear my husband is starting to think of me as one more of his cases.

Inevitably I’m running into the same old stupid problems that you always run into when you’re working with what you’ve got. When we first moved into the house I loved the color on the walls of the living room and dining room, but there were a few patches where the paint needed to be touched up. Luckily we had an original paint bucket in the basement that the previous owners left, but it had no lid with a color code, and was empty with dried gray paint on the interior. I had high hopes that my favorite paint guy at Home Depot could match it for me, but after painting my touchups with the new paint I’ve discovered what I have is a shade darker. So yes, this means we need to completely repaint the living room and dining room. The optimist in me keeps saying to Matt, “Yeah, but I wanted to repaint the trim anyways.” And again, he jots down notes about my behavior in his little black notebook.

Last night I decided I was going to hang some shelves on the wall while watching the Superbowl. Matt was in front of the computer doing some last-minute work.

“Look at me! I’m even measuring where to hang them so they’re perfectly centered!”

“Good job, hun.”

“But I’m not going to screw them into studs.”

“You should definitely screw them into studs.”

“Well, I’m not going to. I won’t put anything heavy on them.”

“But they’re pretty heavy as they are.”

“Yeah, well… <sound of drill>… too late.”

So the floor is open for bets. How much longer before Matt decides to murder me? And/or institutionalize me?

This morning I awoke to the beautiful realization that the bathroom renovations were complete, and that for the first time in almost a week I would be able to shower in my own bathroom instead of at the gym. So I grabbed my towel and danced into the bathroom to hop in a steaming hot shower.

Now I say that the renovations are complete, and they are. Except for one small thing. With the installation of a new threshold in the doorway, the bathroom door has been taken off its hinges so an inch can be cut off of the bottom allowing it to fit snugly back in place. Currently the bathroom door is leaned up against a wall in the living room. But that was of no concern to me. The cat and dog have both seen me naked, and into the shower I went.

Just as I was starting to lather up, I heard a hissing and swatting. And then, out of nowhere, Berlin had hopped in the tub with me. I was, frankly, stunned. After thinking about it for some time, I have no reasonable explanation except to say that I believe the cat chased the dog into the shower. Yes, I do.

Berlin is quite familiar with the shower, so her hopping in of her own accord is really not that crazy. Someone told us when we got her that the easiest way to bathe a big dog is to just take it right into the shower with you. And as strange as it may seem, it really is the easiest way. So about every 5 weeks or so, Matt, who is in charge of bathing the dog, takes her into the bathroom and about fifteen minutes later they both come out sparkling clean. (If you could only hear their conversations in there, and the singing, you would think much differently about my husband than you currently do.)

So after my shock wore off this morning, I realized it might be a blessing in disguise. After all, Berlin hasn’t been bathed in over 7 weeks, and is certainly overdue for a shower. But I had neither the dog shampoo nor her towels in the bathroom with me. So I told her to sit, and sit she did at the other end of the tub while I figured out a plan.

I might as well clean myself up, I thought. So I looked at her and she looked at me while I washed my hair and shaved my legs. All the while she was getting soaking wet, and all I had in that doorless bathroom was MY CLEAN TOWEL.

If I had even so much as thought of walking out of the bathroom to get her towel, she would have followed me dripping through the house. So I did what any decent person would do – I dried her off with one side of my towel, and I dried myself off with the other. And I daydreamed about a day in the near future when I really COULD have that new bathroom spa experience that I had been longing for. A shower in a clean bathroom, with a clean towel all to myself, AND A DOOR CLOSING OUT ALL OTHER CREATURES.

And then I saw it – my hair elastic on the floor. Berlin must have been between it and the cat; never a good place to be.