Brrrrr

Well, at least it's cold today. After yesterdays rant, the universe must have heard my lamenting and sent me some frigid arctic air. That makes me happy in a twisted way. If I can't throw snow at the Duck, at least I can force him to wear gloves. Small victories.

I have nothing else really blog worthy to report. Yesterday we went to Fortunoff to try and scam them out of some lenox soup bowls. That was a miserable failure. I also managed to see 10 patients yesterday and not write a single chart note. Also going to be a miserable failure when I attempt to remember who has what today. And this morning when I attempted to get dressed, I realized my black dress pants, which up until the wedding were almost obscenely too big, now barely zip.

Yippie. I have already gained my allotment for the first trimester and I have 4 weeks to go. That's gonna rock, I'm sure.

We did get a treadmill from a friend and the Duck is going about trying to cancel our still-shiny-from-lack-of-use gym membership. Maybe I will be able to waddle my fat furry ass upstairs to use the treadmill in my house. Although I've had it for 2 days and I haven't made it up there yet...

Is it too early to start buying maternity muumuus?

Snow, or the lack thereof

I wish it would snow. I mean, really, this is New York. It's December 19th. There should be snow. But there's not one flake. Not even the hope of a flake. and why? because people feel the need to drive absurd SUVs and buy disposable toilet brushes.

Not clear on how disposable toilet brushes ruin christmas? Well, they're made of plastic. Making plastic toilet brushes uses petroleum by products I'm sure. and expends a whole lot of energy. which i'm sure doesn't help the whole global warming problem. But god forbid you should use an old germy toilet brush to clean your sparkling toilet with. I mean, what if your children decide to drink from it. And I'm sure you're pouring bleach on the damn thing... not that bleach will kill the germies on the toilet brush while it's poisoning the water supply...

But what the hell do you care? You have an SUV to drive around in a pour antibacterial hand sanitizer on your children when you pick them up from their myriad of resume building activities.

The funny thing is that everyone here claims that they drive these monstrosities because of the weather... What weather? We don't have any anymore. Because of your stupid ass cars and rampant consumerism and lack of concern for anything that does not directly impact you in your lifetime.

but I've got news for you. It's December 19th and it's not snowing. It's not going to snow. That seems to be impacting your lifetime.

When I was a kid, I remember legendary snows. Snows so high we couldn't see the dog outside except for little puffs of snown and an occaisional black tail sticking up. Snows so bad we couldn't leave the house. On more than one occasion, we had no electricity or running water for almost a week. I'm sure it stressed my parents out, but we had food, we had heat from a wood stove and we had plenty of candles and lamp oil. And we didn't have to go to school. For a week. And I'm not talking 5 years ago here. The last big storm we had when I was living at home, I was still in highschool. Maybe it was 12 years ago. But it hasn't snowed at all yet.

And did I mention it's 60 degrees? Actually when I came in to work today it was 63 on the car wash sign. 63 degrees Fahrenheit on December friggin' 19th. I am wearing a T shirt. It's ridiculous and it's sort of ruining my Christmas.

I know you think I am just a bitchy pregnant woman, but it's seriously hard to get in the holiday spirit when you can't even wear a hat. Or throw a snowball. It totally blows.

And the Hits Keep on Comin'

well boys and girls, I am a very poor blogger. I know this, I read other people's blogs. really wonderful essays on what makes life tick. my entries are small and infrequent and not very earth shattering. I know I'm not much of a writer. But I have something new to write about. Hopefully something that is moderately more interesting than ranting about my wedding. And go get yourself some cocoa because this is doozy of a post.

I am pregnant.

Yup, really really actually pregnant. I figure it happened right after we got back from Greece. So that makes it 7 weeks tomorrow. I know that this may seem a little absurd. I mean, I haven't even been married for two full months. But I went to the doctor last wednesday and they did an ultrasound and I had a definitive gestational sack with an embryo that appeared to have a heart flutter.

My profession being what it is, I know I advise friends and patients all the time to keep their early pregnancies to their immediate family. This is supposedly to save you from having to explain the very frequent early miscarriages. A good friend of mine recently went through a very similar situation, only last month. She went for her first ultrasound and they had difficulty detecting a FHR or a fetal pole. She hadn't told anyone and so the miscarriage was her own business.

But it was really hard. It was hard for her to go through that alone without her family or friends knowing and being able to be compassionate. Not that there's anything anyone could have done. Except maybe it would have been nice to be able to cry to someone. Because it sucks.

So I decided to tell quite a few people. Starting with my mom. Who I think is excited about it, but is being strangely quiet about the whole thing. Sort of the same way she was when I told her I was buying a house and again when we told her we were getting married. It's like she doesn't want to let on what she really thinks... It's sort of annoying. Especially when it's your mom and she was the kind of mom who was up in all your business for, oh, your entire life.

I think she's excited though as she's decided to tell everyone she knows. Which includes hideously annoying dude who lives with her. We can't discuss him. We'll just call him the Rat. He is small, presumptuous, slovenly, unhelpful, barely employed and very very loud. So, yeah, Rat is fitting. We don't know why on earth she would want him around, but I guess she finds him amusing... this is the same woman who laughs out loud at the previews for Talledega Nights: the Legend of Ricky Bobby. So, yeah, not so discerning in that respect.*

In addition to the Rat, she's telling her bridge club tonight (which in her defense is also my bridge club and I haven't been there since the big W and now I'm too tired and must go home and go to bed after work everyday) and she wants to tell the people on her job.

So I guess that means she's excited. I told a few of my girlfriends last night. We were out to dinner. It's a monthly thing we've done since college; whoever can make it out, we try to meet up to chit chat. In the past it was as many as 15, but now it's usually 4 or 5 of us. I was a little nervous to spill the beans being that I'm the first one and apparently (as I learned last night) everyone else has been trying.

Now I feel a little like a jerk. I mean, I didn't even try. I just stopped trying NOT to. One of the girls is taking daily temps, another is taking fertility meds and the third, well, you read about her last month... I just feel like i should have worked a little harder for it.

According to the Duck, this is Karma. This is my reward for being a good person and doing the right thing about his family. Instead of following my instinct of slowly torturing them and then burning their house down with them inside, I was the bigger better person. And they shit all over me. Repeatedly.

Take the example of the wedding rings... What? I didn't tell the story of the wedding rings?? this is going to be a long post. Maybe I should do this in bullets for ease of reading and understanding:

• The Duck's father is a jewler in the NY diamond district. We will refer to him as the Chimp
  
• He made my engagement ring. it is a custom design
• He is a very difficult person to deal with. He is ignorant and opinionated
• He is also easily swayed by people he deems to be experts (who, coincidentally, never are)
• We went to him to make the wedding bands
• We thought we were going to have to pay him for them (another long story. Short version: they are cheap)
• The three of us compromised on a design
• I was never in love with the design, but it matched the Duck's and it didn't rock the boat
• The Chimp tells us about this "new" metal that's better, stronger, faster than platinum and half the price
• We agree, he's the expert and we are paying for them so we'd like to keep cost low.
• Chimp informs us this is our wedding gift, don't expect anything else.

Fast forward ----->>>> Wedding comes, goes, we get rings, they are fine, we wear them to Greece

• Second week in Greece, the Duck notices that his ring appears to be pitted and dinged, rather severely. It looks like he's worn it through a war for 10 years.
• Mine has a huge gouge out of the side.
• We've been on vacation... sort of low on the "ring damaging" activities
• Upon return, the Duck goes to see his father to show him the damage
• The Chimp is astounded. He then reads the material spec sheets on this "new" material
• Turns out it's weaker than white gold.
• Chimp marches back over to the caster who he had make the rings and demands restitution
• Caster says "wow, that sucks. I'll cut you a deal on the platinum to make new rings"
• Chimp calls the Duck and tells him he can make new rings, but we have to give ours back
• He wants to sell them back to the caster to re-coup the money he already laid out. for our gift. which was defective. (arrrgggghhhhh)
• Platypus has mental breakdown and tells Duck he can have her wedding band back when he cuts it from her cold, dead finger
• Platypus then realizes that she is being played here. She then decides she will get the wedding band she wanted originally, since they have to be re-done.
• Duck talks to Chimp. They redesign bands. Duck gives Chimp a solid 18K ring the Chimp had made him for a highschool graduation gift.
• Chimp accepts this as payment for new rings (aaaaaaaaaarrrrrrrrrrrgggggggggggghhhhh)
• Duck and Platypus wait. Patiently. For word that the actual rings are ready. But we still don't know if he's going to try and charge us. For our gift.
  

Ok, so we are up to speed. Now the Duck and I have recieved a written invitation to Chanukah lunch at his parents. And why are we being summoned in such a way? Well, because the Duck's prodigal sister will be in town for the holiday. She will be making the arduous journey from wherever it is that she actually lives (she tends to be a wee bit of a fibber) with her husband, who is a Marine and we were pretty sure was deployed overseas (because his mother, The Evil Flying Monkey, told us he was). So it turns out he's actually stateside and they can manage the trip for Chanukah to recieve gifts a plenty, but they couldn't bear to make the trip up 2 months ago for her only brother's wedding.

I'm pretty sure we recieved this lovely written invitation so that we would know who we were supposed to be bringing gifts for. I am also pretty sure I won't be going. And finally, I am damn sure that I am not sharing my big belly-related news with them until necessary. I want to wait until a Christening and send them a lovely invite. The Duck thinks college graduation should do nicely.



*which is not to say I don't find that shit funny as all hell.