Stab Wound

For any of you still paying attention to this thing, I do apologize for not posting lately. It's been busy at work, and I've been rushing home to do all things invitation.

Things have still been going well, but the belly is flying out in all directions. I have the brown line, and peach fuzz is forming around it. I have inserted a few pics of my ever growingness.

I'm as confused about everything as usual, but I've been having the experts like Helen and Lee do the once over on my registries to ensure I have all the gear.

We've also taken the plunge into the baby's room. I am having a lot of issues deciding what to do, which is why my sister Tracey had to come down, assess in the way of decorating. Since I am really bad about formulating ideas, we needed her to make those ideas a reality. She said get this, do that, paint this, don't put that up, and we're at least on our way. Paint is arriving today, the 1,000 piece crib is laying all over our once guest room, and baby clothes, onesies, and receiving blankets have formed an AIDS-esque size quilt in the room.

In other news, a few of you may know I had a little incident yesterday. I came into work early to cut address labels. This requires a cutting mat, and a sharp Xacto knife. I was standing and cutting, and made a long, quick cut that caused the knife to slip off the end of the table. My large belly was in the way, and I noticed a slit in my new shirt! Then I felt a stinging. Yep, I had sliced open the belly! It was a really small cut, but clean, and really open (probably from my already pulled skin). I got scared because there was initially a lot of blood, and the thing was just so open. I frantically called Trent, and he jumped in the car and came over. I'm sure getting a call from your pregnant wife that she just cut open her stomach isn't the most pleasant to get.

I wasn't sure what to do because it wasn't awful, but it wasn't band-aid worthy either. So, we call the OB just to check about infection. She wants nothing to do with us, and said call your GP. We call them, and they say come over right away. We bust up there, and the doc says, yep you're gonna need that stitched up. So, we head down to Urgent Care. Of course, everyone knows I'm pregs, so they're swarming like bees to ensure I'm ok, which was nice. Once they found out I was fine, and it was self-inflicted, I had to wait with the rest of the shlubs.
Then I had to look at a screen and point yes/no as to whether Trent did this, or if I'm afraid of him. Yipes. Like, uh, yes, my husband tried to kill me and our baby with a half inch slit to the stomach.

After talking to the admitting nurse, who was a total freak, we waited around with all the other freaks in the waiting area. A few were yelling stuff out loud, some were in really bad shape, one lady with hospital scrubs on was crying. Then, one guy was shackled, with two fully armed cops with him. Trent said the guy gave him the stink eye...the evil eye, but who knows. He probably ended up there from a cut to the gulliver with a sharpened butter knife by another guy (with tattoos he got with pen ink while in the clink). This is typically how is goes.

Anyway, I was in. Everyone was intrigued by my story, and I'm the star of the ER. They're also all trying to figure out the best way to stitch up a pregnant belly. I heard the nurse telling the PA (Physician's Assistant) what happened, then I hear, "She's pregnant too?" The PA finally comes in, as if he didn't just judge me, and explores for a few more minutes for the best sewing scenario.

First things first, a tetanus shot, which still burns today. Then, he numbs me up, and washes practically my entire damn body with bactine. He was pouring it from what seemed like three feet up in the air onto my belly, and it's rolling down behind me, down my $275 Paige jeans, and all over my new, recently slit top. Honestly, I've never had one, but this is what I pictured as a golden shower. Not to mention these are low jeans, so half my ass, and my waist ass (the part of my butt that has moved up to show in my non-existent waist) is in his face. What a thrill for him. He threaded me up with three stitches, and I was repaired.

Now, all I need to do is keep it dry and covered. He suggested I wrap myself in plastic wrap before my shower. I chose instead to see how I could keep my from the water this morning. It worked before I washed my hair, then water rolled to the front from my neck. So, I may have to try his approach tomorrow, or start sponging. Sweet.

Inset are pictures of the wound from the top, and me pointing at the scene of the crime. Geez, my belly looks really huge in that one. Could it be the angle?
Enjoy.

Aren't Pregnant Women Supposed to Rest?

Well, what a week and a half. I don't know why I take time off (two days), because I am only swamped with work and catch-up when I return. We have a huge project going live at work, and it has slowly unraveled into a disaster through today, it's launch date. Since I feel like I haven't left my desk in about 1,000 hours, I am writing in the blog to relax me for 15 minutes while IMs and emails of stress, fatigue, and frustration come in for me to conquer. Thankfully, I have a great PM working with me on this with me, but when things aren't going well, we all wanna take a poop in the shower (for those of you who watch the Sopranos). I never take lunch, leave my desk, or do much else but multi-task during my work day, but this, combined with my decreased pain threshold have worn me out. I feel like I'm 85. My back aches, my ankles are stiff and swelling, my nose bleeds every day, and I have the beginning stages of carpal tunnel.

In addition to my full-time job, my other full-time job Fold Invites has offered me additional back breaking work. In typical fashion, my printers have all screwed me, and left me to do the bulk of work myself for address labels. After four hours of normalizing address data, I had to create a comma delimited file for the printer, which took another four or so hours. After all this, my jacko printer tells me they don't think they can print the label properly. It took her two weeks to let me know this. So, this Saturday I had to copy/paste 200 addresses into Illustrator, print them, and cut each one by hand. The bending over to leverage the blade for so many hours killed me. I walked, talked, and looked like Lotney 'Sloth' Fratelli from the Goonies until Sunday.

Sunday night, I allowed Trent to join in the fun and put the labels on the 200 envelopes. I went to the post office Monday to ask if they could meter the envelopes, so I wouldn't have to stamp them, and they simply told me no. Three stamps were required for both the outer and RSVP envelope! So, we had to stamp 400 envelopes with three stamps each last night. I was already delirious by the time I got the the first envelope (at around 10:00 after working on the godforsaken project from above)! I put the first 10 stamps on upside down. After the stamping, we had to stuff them all. I had the privilege of sealing them all this morning before starting work. Then, I had the intern take them to USPS where the woman tried to jive talk her way out of hand canceling them. She put a big sign on them "Hand Cancel" for the night crew. I can just see that staff of night crawlers carefully hand canceling them this evening with kid gloves.

Other than staying up all hours, flying every other weekend, working my gnarled fingers to a pulp, and suffering excruciating back pain, I think I'm doing pretty well. I'm really trying to take care of myself during pregnancy.

Speaking of which, and this will be my last rant for this post, I went to my prenatal yoga class last Thursday (where I hate everyone), and I have to tell you, it sucks taking yoga with every slob that signs up at the hospital. First of all, yoga is literally my only time to truly relax, breathe, and go inside myself. It may sound all yogied out, but it is true. Typically things like showing up 15-30 minutes late, barging into class and making a raucous, making loud comments about how hard postures are, and wearing nude pantyhose under jeans as your workout outfit are looked upon negatively in yoga studios. But when you take yoga at GBMC, anything goes.

I walked in last week to two girls talking about how miserable it is to have a girl, and how disappointed the one is that she's having one. I ignore them, but they go on to say how difficult girls are as babies, and what a drag it will be. I turned around, and looked the speaker right in her disgusting face, and gave her the worst crook eye I could give. Then I slammed my mat on the floor and sat quietly in my space like good students do. The class was hard, and the teacher warned us she would be pushing our bodies to a place that would prepare us for labor (going past your threshold). We had to do a sort of stationary jumping jack thing that got quicker over each minute (three mins total). It was tough, but not that tough. None of these girls even tried. They gave up, even after the teacher was like, whatever you do don't stop. All but me and one other stopped. They were hootin and hollerin about the burn, the pain, etc. and they're all about 16 weeks. Whatever. I hate them all. To add insult to injury, another girl complained for about ten minutes how late the class is offered. That she has to come home from work at 5:00 (on the dot no doubt), eat dinner, digest, then motivate herself to go back out to class at 7:15. (Many girls complain how full they are when they arrive at class too, because they've eaten dinner right before. I'm usually refluxing the 1 oz. package of almonds I eat on my way up there throughout the entire class).
She was going on and on how inconvenient it is, and how much it impedes her schedule. Meanwhile, I had to drive 90 miles an hour up 695 from work to make it there on time. I "try" to leave work early on Thursdays to just make it on time. It's truly the only class I have ever been able to take for this reason. I'm sorry to say I didn't feel so bad for the ingrates who's digestive schedules are interrupted by class.

Rant over. Seacrest out.