The Paper Debate

I'm trying to make some effort to be a little greener around the house. I do some small things like buying CFLs for open fixtures. I placed a big bowl of dish towels on the counter to reach for before the paper towels. This really works by the way. We've cut down immensely on the number of paper towels we use in the house. I bought some Mrs. Meyers last time I needed cleaning supplies. (I know it's better to just make my own but I like the fancy stuff that comes in the pretty packaging. And I'm lazy.)

I know that my efforts aren't noble and I'm certainly not saving the planet single handedly, but even the little gestures count, right? Right. Which is why this product completely blows my mind: Kleenex Hand Towels.

Is Kleenex really advocating that we use paper towel dispensers in our homes? I find that so... against the grain, even for a company that only makes disposable products. It wreaks of an attempt to grab attention and a slipping market away from the green alternatives that are popping up everywhere. Couldn't they have come up with something a little more clever and useful than a paper towel dispenser?

And on the opposite side of the green spectrum, here's an article about using cloth towels to wipe your butt: Family Cloth: Non-Paper Toilet Paper

Dressing Myself - A Daily Challenge

Finding clothes to wear is becoming an everyday challenge. My pants do not button so I'm rockin a belly band. My skirts all make my growing ass look a little too bodacious. Most of my dresses require that I have a waistline. My regular tees are now belly tees (and not the sexy kind of belly tees either).

Sigh.

I've only bought a few new things so far. A couple cheapo tops and then a nice Anthro dress and some Gap boyfriend jeans that are a size too big. The dress is awesome because it has an extra little V of fabric in the front that expands and the jeans are awesome because they're jeans and they button. I had them on last weekend with a pair of fancy heels, a ruffled tank and a long pearl necklace and the only thing I could think about while looking at my outfit was the Sex and the City movie. Then I went and changed. But my point is that both the dress and the jeans will still be nice to have once I'm done gestating this kid, therefore I didn't worry about spending money on them.






But that brings me to my major beef with maternity stores. They're way overpriced and a lot of the stuff they sell is... not in good taste. (Someone please fucking shoot me.) A Pea in the Pod has nice stuff, but if I wasn't going to pay $279 for a pair or jeans before, I'm sure as hell not going to now. So I thought to myself, where do the broke chicks on 16 and Pregnant shop for maternity clothes? Ahh, Forever 21! They have good stuff there! I checked it out online and where better to buy tunics and big butt skirts I'll never want to look at again after October? I can get an entire 2nd trimester wardrobe from that store for like $99!

I'm going out of order here, but you know what else is really funny about 16 and Pregnant other than the entire concept of that show? The fact that these girls claim to their baby daddies that they couldn't work for nine months because they were pregnant. Really? Are you serious? You couldn't stand behind a McDonald's counter for the last nine months because OMG you were pregnant and couldn't remain vertical for three hours after school? Whatever. If there's anything positive to say about teen pregnancy it's that those girls' bodies are prime for carrying babies. I doubt a lot of them really have issues with being able to work typical teenage jobs. Plus none of them get that fat and then they're all hot again six weeks postpartum.

Judgment over.

AHHHHHHHH!!!

I had a bit of a nesting freak out this past weekend.

I think I turned the corner into the second trimester. My morning sickness is gone. (Hooray for not wanting to die every day!) I'm not nearly as tired as I was at the beginning. And what I think can be described as "nesting" is in full force. But maybe after you see these pictures of my secret bedrooms you'll just think that I finally snapped and couldn't stand living in a hoarder house anymore.

There are two rooms in our house that are off limits to anyone besides me and my husband... for very good reason. Behold, my office and the spare bedroom:

AHHHHHHH!









This is the reality of our home. Even Ringo is disappointed with us!

The office needed to be cleaned out for the baby's room, and the spare needed to be cleaned out for my new studio/workspace. We're having new bedroom furniture delivered on May 8th (for us not the baby - we're selfish like that) so the goal is to have all the rooms cleaned out and in order by that time. Then, we'll have a space to start stocking up the baby's stuff and I'll have my little studio in order for Spring and Summer baby sessions.

So, whether you call it nesting or just cleaning, I went to work. I cannot stand junk and nicknacks and stacks of papers. They drive me insane. I had to purge, purge, purge our house. We have three full trash cans and an enormous pile of Goodwill stuff in the garage. I'm not completely done yet, maybe about 80% of the way there. Those rooms look so much better than they do in the photos above though.

The best part of all though, is that I feel so much lighter. It's amazing how physical crap can weigh you down like that! I dream of having a well organized and spacious home. I want to make the most of the space we have available and I wasn't doing that by allowing a decade's worth of garbage to fill up our spare living space. I don't want to be ashamed to let people see my office! I don't want to be ashamed to let a guest open my coat closet! I want serenity and a light, airy home. Until we have the baby at least.

To Bed or Not to Bed

Is $798 too much to pay for a silver pleather headboard? Or perhaps a better question would be, is any amount of money too much for a silver pleather headboard? Because I think it's priceless.



I'm beginning to have a bit of an issue with the fact that I'm going to buy a $400 crib for my baby yet Matt and I, two grown adults, have never invested in a bed for ourselves. Sure, we have a mattress set but it's currently sitting on a $30 metal bed frame. And even that is an upgrade from my mattress-on-the-floor single living situation.

Mattress on the floor = A safer distance to fall when you're drunk

But is a nice bed really something we need? Or is it like the Kindle, 40 inch TV and patio loungers? Completely unnecessary but brings me expensively acquired joy. It just feels like something we should have. Parents sleep on real beds. They don't sleep on dorm furniture. Unless they're actually in college. In which case, good luck with that.

Lust List

While I decide what I want to eat for lunch (Pepperjax is in the lead), here are some links to things that I'm lusting over today.

An Italian Grilled Cheese Sandwich from Tasty Kitchen. I think this might be my dinner. I'm all about sandwiches right now. I eat at least one a day, sometimes three. Give me a break, they're small. I like to eat cold chicken and turkey on dinner rolls. It reminds me of Thanksgiving leftovers.

Apartment Therapy - Fitting a Home Office in Your Small Space. I'm especially loving the first one with the desk in the closet. Matt and I are facing the task of cleaning out a lot of crap in our house to make room for another person. I love cute, easily DIY ideas like tucking an office into a closet. I could definitely reduce my entire office to a couple shelves, a filing cabinet and my Mac - leaving lots of play room for this child that I will eventually give birth to.

Also in that same vein, I'm looking into bedroom closet storage units like this sleek one from Lowe's.



And I'm IN LOVE with these two Victor dressers from Hayneedle. But at $1000+ they'll probably stay in the "lust" not "own" department of my life. Especially since, OH RIGHT, I'm having a baby and babies are expensive. Right, right. I keep forgetting that. I can't spend that $1000 on a dresser because I need that money to buy lots of diapers for my kid to poop in.

Hello, Meat!

Pregnant Christine and Non-meat Eating Christine could not exist together in one body. I caved into meat (specifically bacon) around week six into the baby growing process.

What started out as a 4 week experiment turned into a 128 day lifestyle challenge. And it was going great.

Until the "morning" sickness hit.

During week four I was feeling great, tempting fate, and believing that superior baby-carrying genes from my mother (a woman who should teach classes on being a Midwestern super mom) made me impervious to morning sickness. In fact, I didn't totally believe in morning sickness. I started to think it was some crazy rumor that women perpetuated for access to unlimited spousal sympathy and ungodly amounts of ice cream. But oh, how I was mistaken.

Before getting knocked up my meal favorites were always beans, green things and eggs. Matt was out of town so I went to the grocery store and stocked up on all my favorites. YUMMY! About two days after buying it all, my hormones lurched into overdrive and even opening the fridge made me gag. LITERALLY. The smell of leafy greens is, at this point in my life, the worst smell in the world. I had bags of lettuce, celery, spinach, spinach dip and spinach wraps. Opening the fridge released it all into the kitchen and made me want to barf. And lets not talk about the beans and eggs. My throat closes up at the thought of it all.

It all went into the trash, untouched. There was no time to feel guilty over throwing out all that fresh, perfectly fine food. It. Needed. To. Go.

In the meantime, I couldn't stop thinking about fried chicken. None of this was looking good for the non-meaty challenge. For a week all I ate was some combination of cheese and carbs.

Mac and cheese
Cheese bread
Cheese quesadilla
Cheese pizza

Meat needed to come back. I neeeeeeeeeded it. I completely understand that it is possible for ladies to have wonderful, healthy pregnancies on vegetarian diets. But I'm not one of those ladies. I needed bacon, chicken and hotdogs. And now that I'm eating it again I feel like I'm having an easier time balancing my meals. Not having those gag-inducing items at the center of my plate makes it easier to stomach them. I still have a major issue with leafy green things but I'm finding other vegetables that I can stand.

I still think that animal production is bad the the environment and bad for our health. I still think the way meat is processed is alarming and disgusting. I feel bad about eating it, but I'm eating it. You can judge accordingly.

Big News

It has been FOREVER since I wrote on here for one very specific reason. The one and only complete thought that I have been capable of mustering for the past month is: Holy hell, I'm pregnant. But I wasn't sure if I wanted to blog about it. I am becoming less and less a fan of blogging. I love other people's blogs, I'm just tired of my own. Plus, after almost two years of doing this I'm not famous yet, so really, what's the point of continuing?

I decided though that I might as well write about it. If nothing else, it gives me an outlet where people can voluntarily read about the ongoing state of my uterus. I have an issue with posting constant ute updates on Facebook. No one cares. No one. I'm a pregnant woman and I don't even care about other random preggos' fetus updates. If I'm not a prime audience for that, then who is? I like the idea of putting it all in one place where people can see it, or not. Their choice.

Moving on...

So far I think my pregnancy is pretty typical. I've had a couple doctor's appointments so far and it all looks normal. The fetus was a grey blob last time I saw it, roughly the shape of a kidney bean. It had a flickering little heartbeat. Weird. I don't like calling it a baby yet. Because it's not. It's a kidney bean with a heartbeat, not a baby. We've nicknamed it Huckleberry Hound or sometimes just Hound for short. Much like the way we refer to the dog. (I already feel bad for the ways we are going to mentally damage this child.) We tell Ringo, "There's a new hound on the way, better get used to it." But I don't think he fully grasps the baby concept yet. What did I really expect from a creature who eats his own poop for snacks?

So far this process is at once extremely exciting and extremely terrifying. The pregnancy was a little, shall we say... unexpected. Turns out when you're drunk and you tell your husband, "I'm 99.9% sure I'm not going to get pregnant on this particular day, so go ahead and hit it without a condom," it is very unlikely that he will argue with you. And P.S. you can be very wrong about those odds.