Life with one sweet little bun in the oven

I don't have long.  I need to go eat . . . again.  I just felt I'd neglected our blog for far too long now.  Life has been bearable.  We're surviving.  Having mommy out of commission with morning sickness is an interesting three-month challenge.  We've been relying heavily on friends and family.  And The Chief, of course.  He's been doing everything.  I do not exaggerate.  I can't handle the smell of poopy diapers and bottoms, so when he's around he has sole responsibility for changing and wiping.  I have a need-hate relationship with food right now.  I need it, but I hate it.  I don't like smells.  I don't like my kitchen.  The Chief has been busy working during the day and being Mr. Mom at night.  Pretty much, people, I spend my days lying down and reading . . . . and eating when I absolutely have too, of course (which is every two hours, unfortunately).  I've devoured more books in the last couple of months than in the last year combined.  Thank heaven for cartoons and children's movies!

The sad thing is that this pregnancy has probably been easier so far than the other two.  I just really, really hate being nauseated (which, in my life, brings to mind images of swooning, falling, screaming, cuts, bruises, blood, choking, etc.) and my coping mechanism is to pretend that real life doesn't exist.  I escape into the blessed world of fiction and emerge only when someone is positively dying.  (Is that possible?  Can you die positively?).

Anyway, life has been as scatter-brained as this post.  We've had our ceilings scraped and retextured.  We've had all the corners of our walls bull-nosed.  The day after we get back from AZ, the electrician will be coming to install recessed lighting in the kitchen and do a number of other things.  After that our man, Gerald, will be back again to retexture the kitchen ceiling and bull-nose the sky lights.  After that the painter will come to paint the ceilings.  And after that, we'll paint our walls.  And then I'll [positively] die of exhaustion.  Everything already done took place between our vacation to Utah for Thanksgiving and this Christmas break in Arizona.

Besides the usual aversion to smells and select foods, this pregnancy has brought a few new and random enigmas.  I've discovered this strange affinity for opposites.  Meaning, I normally don't like meat, but now I have to eat something substantially protein-y with every meal and snack.  Normally, I LOVE chocolate and sweets, but I can't really stomach sugar right now.  It leaves a bad aftertaste in my mouth.  Besides food, though, other things are oddly opposed in my life.  Normally I love to take pictures of everything.  Literally.  I didn't need an excuse to whip out the camera.  But in the last few months I haven't taken my "big" camera out of its home once.  I rely more and more on our little point-and-shoot to half-heartedly snap a few obligatory holiday pictures here and there.  Also lacking is my desire to blog.  I can't seem to compose my thoughts well enough to want to sit down and write about them all.  And . . . computer time means time away from my books and my bed.  :D

I'll finally be going to the doctor sometime in January to confirm that I truly am pregnant (ha!) and to peg down a due date.  For some reason "sometime in June" doesn't really cut it for some people.  Don't get me wrong, I'm not one of them.  I'd just as soon not know my due date so that towards the end I don't start wondering if this baby will EVER arrive.  :D

So here we are in Arizona, enjoying the chill desert air (not really . . . it's SO DRY here!).  My mother-in-law has her house decorated as cute as she does every year, with lighted Christmas trees everywhere and one real one that will be hauled in on Christmas Eve for the kids to decorate and for Santa and his elves to put gifts under.  The Chief and I, of course, procrastinated our shopping until the last possible day we could still get timely shipping from Amazon.  Hopefully the gifts will arrive, as promised, before Christmas.  I'm praying for all UPS drivers to be accident free this season.  The Chief has been working like mad this holiday.  He hasn't got a break.  Not one bit.  I feel for him because besides playing Mr. Mom during the day here, he's staying up 'til 4:30 every morning to work on one specific case that they couldn't get an extension for.  All I have to say to that judge that denied their extension is BAH HUMBUG, YOU SCROOGE!  I'll just have to pray that this doesn't become a Christmas tradition as last year The Chief had to work like mad right before the holiday, too.  Grrr.  He's an amazing asset to his firm, I just wish they knew what his dedication was costing his family.  BUT, he has a job.  And for that we are infinitely grateful this Christmas season.  I'm just a big whiner, a habit which is irritatingly exacerbated by my present "condition."  :D

Anyway, I wasn't kidding when I said I needed to eat.  Gotta go.  Some day soon I'll break out of this miserable stage of pregnancy, I hope, and come back to the world of the living.  Until then, here's your morsel.

Oh, and MERRY CHRISTMAS!