being the optimist that i am, i've always found it really easy to idealize earlier decades and, growing up, wish i lived in them: the hard work and loyalty of the 30's and 40's, the idyllic 50's, energy of the 60's. even the adventurism of the pioneers settling the west in the 1800s! (all wars aside, of course.) then i realized a few years ago that you don't get to pick a decade and stay there - my grandparents were married in the 40's, had my parents in the 50's, and then had to live also through the 60s, 70s, 80s, etc. right-o.
anyway, i'm very glad that i live now, in this time. why?
1. modern conveniences. washing machines, dishwashers, vacuum cleaners, cars with power steering, thanksgiving turkeys that come by the hundred, pre-cleaned and wrapped in plastic at my local grocery store, strawberries anytime of year i want them, leafblowers/mulchers, etc.
2. technology. laptop, ipod, tivo, cell phones, etc. sure, they probably help in productivity to a certain extent, but they also make life really fun. (oh, and scott doesn't have to do his financial reports at work with the use of a slide rule and a typewriter.)
3. feminism. yes, you heard me. i pretty adamantly consider myself not a feminist, but i really appreciate early feminists who worked hard so that i can do things like vote, go to college, and have a job if i want one ... in short, be considered a person on equal footing with guys. theologically, i consider myself a complementarian, which means that i believe god created men and women on an equal plane, but with different (complementary!) strengths and giftings, each with our own role to fill within life, marriage, etc. but i don't think that means i need to spend my life barefoot and pregnant, chained to the stove, or that scott should never have to help clean or cook. i'm grateful that i live in a time where i can have a career if i want one or can stay home with kids if i want to and each is a totally viable option.
4. ease of travel. i'm very grateful that i live in a time when scott and i can get married and decide we want to pick a new city to move to, literally 1000 miles away from any family, but that we can still see our families regularly. i'll be glad when my parents eventually move out here and live 1.5 hours away rather than 15, but in the meantime, it's really nice being independent but not cut off. (rather than the 1800s when you moved west and probably never saw your family again.) oh, factor into this #2's technology, so that i can do things like talk (long distance for free!) to friends and family who don't live here regularly via e-mail and phone, not, you know, pony express.
5. recreation. probably attributable to #s 1 and 2, we have plenty of free time to do fun things that we want to do, like hang out with friends, watch football, read books, and hike - i don't have to spend hours cranking my laundry through a wringer or hanging it out on a line and baking all my bread from scratch.
6. hygiene. everyone has running water, toothbrushes, aisles of shampoo, body wash/soap, and facial cleanser options, and even my gym has anti-bacterial hand gel in every room. showering and brushing your teeth daily is not only an option, it's a cultural norm (as is shaving, 1960's!).
i'm sure my list is much more extensive, but those are a few reasons that come to mind. thank you for having me, 2010.
odds and ends
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labels:
house,
personal finance,
pregnancy
so two days after my last post (don't know why i didn't write about this then!), we went in for our 20 week ultrasound ... and found out we're having a boy! you probably already know that as i think everyone who still reads this also follows my life in other contexts, but hey, has to be written. and is exciting! i kind of sort of was leaning toward wanting a girl, but if i had had to guess, i would have said that pinto is a boy ... it's fun to know for sure! his name is matson, which is scott's middle name and his grandma's maiden name - so yes, it's technically not a first name, but whatever, this is 2010 and you can name your kid banjo if you want, i think matson is a perfectly cute and acceptable name. we're still working on a middle name for him. on to odds and ends:
1. no, we haven't started any work on the nursery yet, but it's all decor related, so it won't be too bad. we painted that room yellow when we moved in so that it'd be ready to go whether we had a boy or a girl and can be used as a nursery again without repainting if we have other other gender next time, so that's staying. i was planning to get a white crib and changing table so that i don't have to worry about matching wood stain colors and can buy a changing table via craigslist, and my mom and i covered the glider in dark brown fabric (no i haven't finished the ottoman yet, mom!) so we're good to go on that front.
the room already has nice white wood shelves on either side of the window, so we just need to touch those up and put the actual shelves back on (just the brackets are left on the wall, from when we painted over two years ago - whoops). so other than that, it's just getting the furniture, finding a few cute boy accents (which i already have visualized), and we're good to go! oh, and cleaning things like spare sheets, broken sewing machines, and christmas wrapping paper out of there. i think i might start working on that over our long thanksgiving weekend.
2. as regards our mouse travails ... well, we're still in progress with that. we've been setting up traps and poison like crazy and were getting ready to declare victory over the mice when scott saw one scamper under the dishwasher last week. bummer. i googled mice and dishwashers and found this blog detailing mice coming in from a sewer pipe behind the dishwasher, eating plastic piping, water leaking, and ultimately having to replace the dishwasher ... aaah! i had this image in my mind every time we ran the dishwasher last week, but come saturday, we decided it was full on cleaning and war-against-the-mice day. we can't pull out our dishwasher because we had our wood flooring installed in front of it, but thankfully scott put his engineering degree to work and figured out how to remove the bottom faceplate from the thing so we could see what was going on ... and breathed a sigh of relief. no mouse droppings or nests, no chewed pipes, no mouse-holes gnawed into the cabinets back there.
we did find mouse holes on the cabinets behind the stove, so we threw some poison packs back there and jammed up the holes with steel wool (which they allegedly won't chew through). scott put steel wool under all of the floating walls in our laundry room downstairs, we sterilized our whole kitchen, and now we're just waiting to see if any mice continue to creep through. i think we've killed maybe 10 or so mice over the past two months, but i'm semi-optimistic that we're nearing the end. fingers crossed.
3. scott was finally able to feel matson move the other night! admittedly, i had had both soda and ice cream with dinner, so the kid was quite literally bouncing off the walls, but it was really fun getting to share that. i've been able to feel matson move for the past probably 4-5 weeks, and it's neat to feel him getting stronger and more active (or maybe just bigger so there isn't as much space to absorb his movements!) - at first i would maybe feel him move once a day at the most, but now it's pretty frequently throughout each day. also fun is when matson curls up on one side toward the front of my stomach - i'll poke my belly and one side is rock hard, the other is soft and normal.
4. i had a craving for corn dogs yesterday, but couldn't justify having corn dogs for dinner. (maybe this weekend. :)) in trying to talk myself out of it, i decided that rice sounded really really good ... so i went back to my midwestern roots and made my dad's classic chicken breast in cream of mushroom sauce over rice. and it was amazing.
5. a few months ago maura asked how much we paid for our trash service because she wanted to know that she got a good deal on her company (one of their neighbors had recommended it when they moved in). her company charges $45/quarter for trash + $5/quarter for recycling, whereas we pay $45/quarter for trash and $12/quarter for recycling. turns out, though, that her company doesn't charge any extra service fees, fuel surcharges, or taxes on top of that rate whereas mine does. in the end, we were paying $77/month (they just increased the rate this summer) while they were paying $50/month for the same thing from a locally owned company. switching's been on my to-do list for the past few weeks, and i finally got around to it this week. $108/year savings, here we come!
1. no, we haven't started any work on the nursery yet, but it's all decor related, so it won't be too bad. we painted that room yellow when we moved in so that it'd be ready to go whether we had a boy or a girl and can be used as a nursery again without repainting if we have other other gender next time, so that's staying. i was planning to get a white crib and changing table so that i don't have to worry about matching wood stain colors and can buy a changing table via craigslist, and my mom and i covered the glider in dark brown fabric (no i haven't finished the ottoman yet, mom!) so we're good to go on that front.
the room already has nice white wood shelves on either side of the window, so we just need to touch those up and put the actual shelves back on (just the brackets are left on the wall, from when we painted over two years ago - whoops). so other than that, it's just getting the furniture, finding a few cute boy accents (which i already have visualized), and we're good to go! oh, and cleaning things like spare sheets, broken sewing machines, and christmas wrapping paper out of there. i think i might start working on that over our long thanksgiving weekend.
2. as regards our mouse travails ... well, we're still in progress with that. we've been setting up traps and poison like crazy and were getting ready to declare victory over the mice when scott saw one scamper under the dishwasher last week. bummer. i googled mice and dishwashers and found this blog detailing mice coming in from a sewer pipe behind the dishwasher, eating plastic piping, water leaking, and ultimately having to replace the dishwasher ... aaah! i had this image in my mind every time we ran the dishwasher last week, but come saturday, we decided it was full on cleaning and war-against-the-mice day. we can't pull out our dishwasher because we had our wood flooring installed in front of it, but thankfully scott put his engineering degree to work and figured out how to remove the bottom faceplate from the thing so we could see what was going on ... and breathed a sigh of relief. no mouse droppings or nests, no chewed pipes, no mouse-holes gnawed into the cabinets back there.
we did find mouse holes on the cabinets behind the stove, so we threw some poison packs back there and jammed up the holes with steel wool (which they allegedly won't chew through). scott put steel wool under all of the floating walls in our laundry room downstairs, we sterilized our whole kitchen, and now we're just waiting to see if any mice continue to creep through. i think we've killed maybe 10 or so mice over the past two months, but i'm semi-optimistic that we're nearing the end. fingers crossed.
3. scott was finally able to feel matson move the other night! admittedly, i had had both soda and ice cream with dinner, so the kid was quite literally bouncing off the walls, but it was really fun getting to share that. i've been able to feel matson move for the past probably 4-5 weeks, and it's neat to feel him getting stronger and more active (or maybe just bigger so there isn't as much space to absorb his movements!) - at first i would maybe feel him move once a day at the most, but now it's pretty frequently throughout each day. also fun is when matson curls up on one side toward the front of my stomach - i'll poke my belly and one side is rock hard, the other is soft and normal.
4. i had a craving for corn dogs yesterday, but couldn't justify having corn dogs for dinner. (maybe this weekend. :)) in trying to talk myself out of it, i decided that rice sounded really really good ... so i went back to my midwestern roots and made my dad's classic chicken breast in cream of mushroom sauce over rice. and it was amazing.
5. a few months ago maura asked how much we paid for our trash service because she wanted to know that she got a good deal on her company (one of their neighbors had recommended it when they moved in). her company charges $45/quarter for trash + $5/quarter for recycling, whereas we pay $45/quarter for trash and $12/quarter for recycling. turns out, though, that her company doesn't charge any extra service fees, fuel surcharges, or taxes on top of that rate whereas mine does. in the end, we were paying $77/month (they just increased the rate this summer) while they were paying $50/month for the same thing from a locally owned company. switching's been on my to-do list for the past few weeks, and i finally got around to it this week. $108/year savings, here we come!
food
i cooked dinner tonight! a real dinner! considering my history of loving to cook, you may be asking why this is so exciting? because i've been an awful cook since i got pregnant. (awful in the sense of having the energy and making the effort to cook, not as in making awful food.) most of the stuff i've made has been things like pasta or chicken legs, and i've probably cooked fewer than 20 times in the last three and a half months. yikes. (we've filled in with a lot of cheesy crisp, eggs, and frozen chicken nuggets in there.)
once you get out of the habit of cooking, it's so easy to stay out of the habit. i don't think about cooking, so i don't think about menu planning or grocery shopping, so i don't grocery shop, and then even if i want to cook something real, i have to go to the grocery before i can make anything, which means that it's easier just to heat up some chicken nuggets for dinner. if i take the time to think about what i'll want to cook and what nights we'll need to cook, though, and make sure that i have cookable real food in the house, i get to cook and remember that i enjoy cooking!
not to mention, tonight's meal does double duty, which is awesome. i made spicy honey brushed chicken thighs (which is one of my fallback easy, quick, tasty healthy-ish foods), steamed broccoli, blueberry muffins, and fresh pineapple and strawberries. all quite yummy. and then for tomorrow night, we'd signed up to bring dinner to some friends with a new baby, so i'll chop up the leftover chicken thighs, layer with rice, black beans, avocado, and chopped tomato and lettuce, and voila - burrito bowls! speaking of, i need to go get my rice going.
once you get out of the habit of cooking, it's so easy to stay out of the habit. i don't think about cooking, so i don't think about menu planning or grocery shopping, so i don't grocery shop, and then even if i want to cook something real, i have to go to the grocery before i can make anything, which means that it's easier just to heat up some chicken nuggets for dinner. if i take the time to think about what i'll want to cook and what nights we'll need to cook, though, and make sure that i have cookable real food in the house, i get to cook and remember that i enjoy cooking!
not to mention, tonight's meal does double duty, which is awesome. i made spicy honey brushed chicken thighs (which is one of my fallback easy, quick, tasty healthy-ish foods), steamed broccoli, blueberry muffins, and fresh pineapple and strawberries. all quite yummy. and then for tomorrow night, we'd signed up to bring dinner to some friends with a new baby, so i'll chop up the leftover chicken thighs, layer with rice, black beans, avocado, and chopped tomato and lettuce, and voila - burrito bowls! speaking of, i need to go get my rice going.
big week
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as long as everything goes right, we'll know pinto's gender in a mere 3.5 days! (or, as scott says, we'll find out what flavor pinto is.) our appointment is first thing in the morning on friday, and then saturday we get to go start looking at baby things!
it's exciting in that i feel like it'll make everything more concrete - we get to see an ultrasound of a real baby rather than just a little gummy bear, we can decide on a real name for pinto, register, look at cutey boy or girl outfits, start working on the nursery, etc.
and at the same time, the "big appointment" is frightening in that it means that we're halfway to the end of this pregnancy! (halfway! crazy!) which means we have a lot of work ahead of us - starting (and finishing) work on the nursery, taking baby classes, prepping for labor and parenting, and coming to grips with the facts that we're going to be actual parents to a real child and our lives will be changing A LOT. which isn't a bad thing ... it's just big.
it's exciting in that i feel like it'll make everything more concrete - we get to see an ultrasound of a real baby rather than just a little gummy bear, we can decide on a real name for pinto, register, look at cutey boy or girl outfits, start working on the nursery, etc.
and at the same time, the "big appointment" is frightening in that it means that we're halfway to the end of this pregnancy! (halfway! crazy!) which means we have a lot of work ahead of us - starting (and finishing) work on the nursery, taking baby classes, prepping for labor and parenting, and coming to grips with the facts that we're going to be actual parents to a real child and our lives will be changing A LOT. which isn't a bad thing ... it's just big.
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