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Our farm veggies have been piling up on us since we’ve been away so much lately. Today I had to get serious and cook A LOT so as to use them before they spoiled and in anticipation of our next pick up in two days. Thus far we’ve been really good at preserving whole veggies through canning and freezing. Today was a cooking and freezing day. I made curry squash soup, cream of broccoli soup and a broccoli and potato casserole. In all I used five broccoli bunches and still have one left over! Everything is now portioned out in meal sized containers freezing away in our freezer. I feel so accomplished and more exhausted!
A. and I worked very hard over the last three years to get out of debt and onto some kind of saving track. The getting out of debt proved to be the easy part. The saving, not so much because as soon as we paid off our debt we started ttc, and shelling out thousands upon thousands for sperm and other ttc related expenses. When I became pregnant I joked our down payment for a house was growing in my uterus. We are on a serious savings plan now that we don’t need to buy sperm, and in anticipation of becoming a one income home come February when A. has to quit her job to complete her practicum hours in order to graduate with her masters degree in the spring.
My dad is a financial planner. He’s helped us over the years mostly around getting our retirement savings set up. Now he’s guiding us in the ways of things you have to do when you have kids: wills, power of attorney, health care proxy, guardianship, etc. Most recently he offered to do a financial plan for us that is all encompassing and will help to set realistic goals taking into account all the factors at play. He’s pretty excited about working through all the intricacies of doing such a plan for a legally married same sex couple.
In order to start this he needed us to get our FICO score and credit reports. We obtain our credit reports annually from the big three, but we’ve never needed our FICO before. This morning we both logged in and obtained our scores – which were exactly the same, and in the best possible range! I wasn’t really concerned and knew we’d get at least a “good” rating, but it was quite gratifying to know that all our hard work has paid off (ha ha) and we are “very good” which makes us eligible for the lowest possible interest rates.
Oh the things that excite you as you start to get older!
I don’t password protect very often but this is not a post I necessarily want to share with the internet at large. It’s the same password I always use. Email me if you need it (elm610@gmail.com). I am particularly interested in hearing from parents of boys…
Today’s prenatal visit in review:
Moon’s heart was beating away this morning.
I’ve gained nine pounds so far- finally I am starting to gain (I never really thought this would make me excited).
I found out I can have a water birth! I knew there was a tub to labor in, but I was unclear if I could stay there through the birth should I want to. The midwife today confirmed that I can. This makes me so very happy. I’ve wanted a water birth pretty much since I knew they existed, but when we signed on with the midwifery practice we use (three years ago) the hospital they deliver at did not have tubs. However, it was more important to me to have a midwife I really loved than a water birth. So I guess there’s the silver lining of our long journey- now a water birth is an option.
We’ve been given the assignment over the next two months of picking a pediatrician.
We also got the name of the birth certificate clerk at our hospital so we can start the process to get A.’s name on the bc from birth.
And, I think I’ve accepted the fact that despite the fact that I loath the flu shot, I will be getting it this year.
Glucose test is next month.
We’re off to hear Moon’s heart beat this morning! I love these visits to the midwife. I am also curious how much weight I’ve gained in the last month. But mostly, I can’t wait to hear the heart beat again.
Today there was a small victory after last week’s ruling. Now the Board of Medical Examiners are going to appeal…
Most days I am equally excited about the birth of Moon because for the most part it also means an end to the job I have come to dislike. Yes I will go back to work for four to six weeks once my maternity leave is over, but it will be in May/June and I will just be there to close out the academic year. So I won’t be dealing with all the things that make me most crazy.
I’ve given a lot to this school and my job in the last three years and I knew when I made the decision to stay on for a fourth year that it was a “me” year. I was not pregnant at the time, but I planned to stay so we could continue to aggressively ttc and I knew if we stayed on track I’d be eligible for IVF coverage in January. I stayed in a last ditch attempt to get pregnant. Not long after making that decision, I became pregnant and then I felt I had to stay for the sake of consistency and benefits and all that stuff.
As I ‘ve begun to settle into the routine of this year (I speak in academic years…) I’ve remembered the things that make this job so hard: the long hours, the weekends worked, too many demands on my time by too many people, one crisis bumping another, being a supervisor, working really hard and feeling like I’ll still never get it all done…and so I begin to feel down about the job and this also moves me into a semi checked out place where I sometimes confuse late January with our due date and instead think of it as my stop work date.
And then, from time to time, when I step out of my office – even though this means I fall even further behind in my administrative tasks – and sit down to connect with students (yes! students, those creatures I spent my graduate years preparing to work with, and who usually inspire me) I gain a wave on energy, a sense of how to make meaning in my job. And then sometimes when I am walking across campus (or through the grocery store) and I see one of my students, and they wave and smile and I do the same, I get the same warm feeling.
Being that this is my fourth year in my position, there are some students that started their education here the same year I came to work here, and we’ve moved along this path together. While there are so many things I fault this school for and so many things that frustrate me about my job, it’s these students that I will have been with for all four years when we move on in the spring, as well as the others that were here before me or came after I started who’ve inspired me, that I will miss when I move on.
I’ve made peace with the fact that I need a break from higher education and given myself permission to step off the track even though I labored through graduate school to get here…some day I may find myself back in academia, but for now I need a break. A real long break.
A. and I returned home yesterday after our relaxing get away. It was so nice to get away together and have time to ourselves. We spent a good deal of time both on our way out of town and on our journey home taking back roads to enjoy the foliage and the mountains. The leaves have hardly begun to turn at home, so the vibrant colors up north were a nice surprise, though they are still a couple weeks from peak. We stopped at an outlet on the way to our destination and gave ourselves permission to splurge on some baby items. So fun!
We were both excited to arrive at the Inn and were tired from our day of shopping and traveling. Not long after checking in I went down stairs to get a glass of water, when to my shock and surprise, I saw one of my supervisees checking in with her partner! I was paralyzed with the thought of my two worlds colliding and also a bit sad that my work world had permeated our get away weekend. They were only there for that one night, which was great for us because I felt much more at ease when they’d left and the feelings of my work world following me left with them.
A. and I achieved our goal of extreme relaxing (we really could teach courses in relaxing) – we spent hours at a cafe knitting and reading, then returned to the inn to knit/read in front of the fire before we went out to dinner. All in all we had a wonderful weekend, relaxed a lot, enjoyed scenic drives, watched the sun set, and spent lots of time talking about the impending arrival on Moon. Moon, by the way has been kicking up a storm! Yesterday after we got home we were lying down and it started. A. was feeling my belly and at one point she lifted her hand and could see a kick as the baby kicked so hard my belly moved up!
I was jolted back to work this morning with my first commitment at 7:30! It was a far cry from the relaxing long weekend we’d had, but all good things must come to an end! However, I was a bit annoyed when my supervisor called me after receiving an email from me to inform me she did not think I was coming back to work till tomorrow! Oh how I wish I’d known that, we sooooo would have stayed away one more night!
p.s. there are a few pictures from our trip on Flickr.
I have a very hard time staying motivated at work on Friday afternoons. I am almost always so spent from the week that I can’t force myself to be productive. Today I wavered between wanting to give into the urge to mess around for the last few hours and realizing my upcoming week is so busy that I’d damn well better just get to work. In the end I was responsible and put my nose to the grind stone (a first for a Friday afternoon).
I sorted through all the unfinished projects left on my desk from this week and quickly made a plan. I saved the biggest project for last. For the last three years I have coordinated a rather large departmental wide task. This is a project that happens on a small scale during fall semester and again on a much larger scale during the spring semester. It was decided back in August that I would work with one other coworker on the fall project so as to train her how to do it and she would take over all coordination for the spring project since I’ll be on maternity leave, and really I was very tired of this project and ready to pass it off in exchange for a different project had I not been going on maternity.
We’ve begun working together and divvying up tasks. It’s become very clear that my ‘organization’ over the last three years only made sense to me. It’s such a hectic project that my files end up all messy and by the time it’s completed I am so sick of it that I file everything away until the next semester because I couldn’t stand to think about it for one more minute let alone organize it! So I spent a good part of the afternoon organizing my files, writing notes and instructions on how and when to do things, updating forms, and then it hit me…I’d begun to prepare to turn my work over to other people in anticipation of my maternity leave. I’m not just passing this project off, I am documenting in order to ensure a smooth transition while I am on leave. And it felt so weird. It does feel early to already be making these preparations (not that I have a choice we’re on a schedule for this semester), but I only have four more months of work. Wow. FOUR months. That makes my heart smile.
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