Monthly Archive for July, 2011

Something I’m Loving

Published on July 29, 2011 in Crafty. 1 Comment Tags: .

Just in case there has been too much overload on life changing events going on over here for everyone, I decided to take a moment to let you know just how much I love this fabric:

The line is called Marine and it is manufactured by Birch Fabrics. It is organic cotton, which I don’t feel is an important selling feature. At just a little over $16.50 a yard, it is hard to justify buying any copious amounts of the fabric, but I also don’t think that you would need very much to make a bold statement on a child’s quilt.

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A Scary D-word

Published on July 28, 2011 in I'm healthy. 1 Comment Tags: , .

With this pregnancy, came a disease that has rained on many of my relatives’ parades. My doctors had been keeping an eye on it for years and it wasn’t threatening to explode… But then baby happened and here it is: I have diabetes. Like the “give myself injections every day” kind of diabetes.


I am not going to lie- I was really afraid at first. All I could think about was the terrible things that could happen to the baby. And we all know how scary the Internet can be when you google medical conditions. I was going to have go make some pretty serious changes to my lifestyle.

First was getting used to stabbing myself with needles. In addition to the four daily injections, I had to check my blood sugar an hour after every meal. Needles! Sure, I’ve stabbed myself a zillion times on accident while embroidering and sewing, but this is different. Medication was going in! Blood was coming out to be measured! Turns out – injections were only scary before I started giving them to myself. It rarely hurts. I generally inject close to the same site in my stomach every time. It gets a little discolored, but nothing too major. And the finger pricks for the meter were a piece of cake once I figured out that my ring finger consistently bled and hurt much less than the other fingers. Remembering to do all of these things took some finagling though. I ended up using an app called Glucose Buddy. I could keep track of meals, injections, readings, and I could even set alarms so that I could remember to do the injections and readings.

The second hurdle – and one that no technology could solve – was the change in my diet. I really thought I was doing okay. Not eating sweets, more whole grains than not, avoiding sweetened drinks. But once you have to avoid all sugar all together, with the exception of two small servings of whole fruit a day, you begin to see the painful flaws of the American diet. This is still a struggle for me. Because not only do I have to be incredibly selective of my food, but I have to eat six times a day. Not four, sometimes five times a day. SIX times a day. And every one of those meals has to have a specific balance of carbohydrates and protein. Top that off with the no lunchmeat situation, and you have one very disgruntled and never hungry Mimi. Some days are easier than others, but I’ve lost weight while pregnant (this is OKAY! according to the myriad of doctors who have examined my situation) and I am feeling so much more healthy than I had before. So good, that I might try and keep up this lifestyle one the baby’s born!

I’ve got a lot to stay on this topic, but I don’t want to overwhelm either myself or you with it. Let’s save some for another day.

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Indeed I am.

Published on July 27, 2011 in Daily Rambling. 3 Comments Tags: , .

Yes. I am indeed pregnant. I’ve been pregnant since March – and for those of you who don’t want to guess at the math, the estimated due date in December 1st. Here is a sonogram taken in April:

Many moons have passed since this sonogram… In fact, I’ve had several others since then. Unfortunately I do not have them photographed. But what I do have is a photo of me at about 5 months pregnant. I took this in the bathroom at work. I admit it, if I were to wait until the perfect photo opportunity, you would never see any photos of me.

We found out last week that there is a little boy tucked safe and sound in my womb. And just as a side note, I love being pregnant. It hasn’t been easy, but more on that later.

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New Digs

Published on July 26, 2011 in Daily Rambling. 2 Comments

It took me about 10 minutes to find my previous post about the last time I moved. I said that the next move would be into our forever house. Well…

That turned out to not be true.

After almost a year of commuting 5 hours a day, 4 days a week, I was empty. Hollow. Nothing soulful left in this set of bones. I woke up at 4:15, I ate breakfast in the car at 5:15, I caught the train at 6:48, I walked from the train to the office (15 minutes), I worked 8.5 hours, I got back on the 4:30 train, I got home at 6:45, I ate dinner and went to bed. Every day. At first I was holding it together. My daily blog posts kept on coming. But then something happened….

We decided to start a family – and BOOM! I was pregnant.

So Eric decided that we should move closer to my job and he can commute for a while. I was against it at first. And then every time we filled a box and there was still more stuff to pack, I HATED the idea of moving. I was coming up with every excuse in the book about why we should stay put.

Then we started looking for places in Sacramento. And it became even more hellish. We had two specific neighborhoods in mind and both were not experiencing very high turnover. And one of them was mostly out of our rental price range.

But as fate has it, we were driving down a street that a friend lives on and I saw an empty house with the front door open and two men working inside. We had just spend an entire afternoon looking at rental after rental that couldn’t fit our needs. I told Eric that I was just going to ask if it was rental. IT WAS! The owner showed us around. the rent was in our ballpark! The backyard was lush and green! There was a front porch! And a back porch! Hardwood floors! We loved the neighborhood and we were only two doors away from friends. It was perfect.

So long story short (too late), we got the place and moved in on May 30. Sure there were some fun fiascos associated with it, and maybe that is a post to come later on. But right now I am relishing the fact that my pug and I can kick it on the back porch on cool evenings.

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