I *think* I can, I *think* I can, I *think* I can…
July 23, 2008 | FUN!
SB and I are participating in our first charity bike ride this weekend, the ALS DoubleDay. We will ride 85 miles through the Skagit Valley with a bunch of fun friends, and camp the middle night in a soccer field. It should be a blast!
We’re really looking forward to it. I’m hoping my pregnant ass can hack it. I think I’ll be ok. (Worrywarts among you, never fear. I shant push myself.) Please anticipate much whining about butt pain next week, but hopefully good stories and pictures, too.
Some good friends of ours are in charge of this whole thing, and originally we were just in it for the fun, but of course, we needed to raise some money. I’ve never asked friends and family for money for anything like this before, and I was really nervous. But I bit the bullet and sent out a fundraising letter, and you guys! I did it! I’m SO proud. It feels really good! And I can’t tell you how incredibly touched I am by all the people who donated. (THANK YOU blog readers: Jesse, Mari, Heather W!) This whole process has made me feel so happy about the niceness and generosity of people in general. Since I’ve learned it never hurts to ask, if by chance your life has been touched by ALS*, please consider chipping in as well. It’s a great cause! Here is a link to our team page.
*Amyotrophic lateral sclerosis (ALS), commonly known as Lou Gehrig’s disease, is a fatal neuromuscular disease that can strike anyone without warning. Every 90 minutes someone in this country will be diagnosed with ALS and every 90 minutes someone will lose their battle against this devastating disease.
Posted by Jenny @
9:13 am |
What the hell, Target?
Okay, maybe this proves I’m ready to become a mommyblogger, because this will be my first ever post about Target. But DUDE. Have you ever been to a fancy Target? I had no idea such a thing existed. Last night after work, I went to the Target in Redmond (where Microsoft and it’s Money lives). It was SO DIFFERENT from the one in Tacoma. The first thing I saw was the Starbucks, much different from the greasy snackbar ours has. Next, I grabbed a basket, and even THOSE were fancy! They weren’t the standard square, red, plastic kind we have, these were bean shaped and had a fancy, padded handle! As I ventured further in, I felt like I was in some alternate universe. Everything was familiar but SO MUCH BETTER. You know how our purse section consists of two crappy aisles with mostly old lady bags? This Target had a whole Purse Area and they were CUTE. Like, proper bags, that did not look Target-y at all. And the clothes section was at least twice the size of ours and had way cuter stuff. WHAT THE HELL?
I feel like Target is unfairly judging Tacoma. Why can’t WE have a fancy Target? It’s not like ours is small, it’s your standard Anytown, USA giant complex thing.
Anyway, if you happen to be a connoisseur of fine Targets like I am, I recommend checking out a big city’s or rich suburb’s Target ASAP. It’ll blow your mind.
Posted by Jenny @
10:52 am |
This is what blogs are for.
I just had to go to a meeting in another building on campus on the 5th floor. When I got into the elevator, alone, I was immediately assaulted by a horrible stench. I looked all around for the steaming pile of poo I thought MUST be somewhere inside, but I found none. I held my breath, pressed the 5, and prayed it wouldn’t stop anywhere, but OF COURSE, it did.
Two dudes got on at floor 3 and had visible reactions to the smell, and there was just little ole me in there to blame it on.
INTERNET: It wasn’t me.
Posted by Jenny @
3:34 pm |
Yay for weddings!
Let’s move on, shall we? I don’t like seeing so much bitching at the top of my page. Let me show you some fun pictures from my cousin’s wedding over the weekend, instead.
Firstly, here is a picture of the gift I got for them, which I was quite proud of. I went to Target and dutifully printed out their registry, but I didn’t want to buy anything on it. So, I decided that I have good taste and am capable of purchasing off the registry. I know everyone thinks this and they’re usually wrong, but look! I did good.
So cute! I loved the pineapple colander and the random kitchen things they probably don’t have and the useful, quality kitchen towels. Well done, no?
The wedding took place here, an old time-y theater in Puyallup, where incidentally, my Dad had his first job as an usher, back when dinosaurs roamed the earth.
Here we have me and the marrying cousin, my sister and another cousin. Marrying cousin is TALL. He’s sitting and we’re standing.
And look! His bride is tall, too! I love that he didn’t choose some teeny tiny girl who would look just fine with someone 5′9″.
And how cute is this picture of my Dad and my uncle?
Here is my family! I think this is an impressive self portrait, don’t you?
Anyway, it was a fun night. Of all the cousins on that side, this is only our second wedding, so it was special to have everyone together and all dressed up. There was a slideshow with a bunch of pictures of us all as little kids, so that was a nice surprise. All that family togetherness made me think that my kids won’t have lots of aunts and uncles, and as it looks now, maybe not even any cousins. That’s so sad! I know that they will have stand-ins in the forms of my friends and their kids, but I wish English had some sort of word for your chosen family.
Posted by Jenny @
11:50 am |
Hate you, Brangelina. Hate.
Mother Fricking Fracking Brangelina stole my #1 girl name. I AM SO PISSED.
I can show you a baby name list from the mid 90’s with Vivian (without all those stoopid extra letters, BTW) on the top. I am finally with child and THEY RUINED IT!
SO. MAD.
**Edited, with futher whining:
The thing is, I grew up Jenny, and as God as my witness, my child will not suffer the same fate of always having to use their last initial, or having to have a nickname or worse, being referred to as “Big Jenny” or whatever. So. I agree that if I named my kid Vivian, only the most US Weekly obsessed of my friends and famliy would make a Brangelina connection. It’s not like it’s Suri. But it might make for a few other Vivians in her classes, because now it’s OUT THERE. I don’t plan to name my kid Moonbeam or anything like that, but before yesterday, Vivian was an officially uncommon name, and now it may not be.
sulk. pout. sigh.
Posted by Jenny @
9:22 am |
Lookie what I did!
We’ve beautified all corners of our yard, but for some reason, nearly three years into home ownership, I’ve never touched the very front scraggily bed. There were these three ugly bushes there that were bossing me around. I just couldn’t see what to do with that bed. Plant around them? Pull out the middle one? The two on the sides? Gah. I would eventually get annoyed and move on to something else, leaving it for another day.
Well yesterday was Work at Home Wednesday and I was suddenly inspired to Get Busy with my extra time. SB ripped out all three stoopid bushes for me, and I planted all new lovliness. Look!
Please ignore the brown lawn and the fried hanging baskets and just enjoy the new pretty purple grasses, that big fat rosemary, and my favorites on the ends, the asparagus ferns. They remind me of clown hair. Yay!
Posted by Jenny @
10:25 am |
Okay, something nice.
I got a little bit of pregnancy validation a couple of days ago. All along, I’ve been thinking, maybe I’m so miserable because I’m just more in tune with my body than some other people. I realize that sounds like a ridiculous thing to say, and something that can never be proven. But I kept hearing about all these people who never got sick or even weirder, didn’t even know they were pregnant for ages. I know TWO actual women who didn’t know they were pregnant until 11 and 12 weeks. ARE YOU FREAKING KIDDING ME? I have been very AWARE the whole time. Even when I wasn’t feeling sick I was feeling different. I’ll spare you the details, but things felt different. And the smells My God, the smells. I can smell the bourbon in SB’s glass from across the room, and I can smell my boss’s grapefruit scented hand lotion and Bubblicious from down the hall and around the corner.
Anyway, you’re supposed to be able to feel the baby move anywhere from 16 to 22 weeks. And guess what! I started feeling it, bang on the dot of 16 weeks. At first it was just a weird sort of lower intestinal fluttering, that I could see how you could ignore, but then the next day, there were a couple of distict taps. Not the big kick I was somehow expecting, just a tiny little gas bubble-like tap. Neat, eh?
And just to prove I don’t plan on making my blog the All Knocked Up All the Time channel, please enjoy the following funny picture, of a gift from my Hong Kong Friends, home for the summer:
It’s actually for mosquito bites which rules because my flesh is apparently particularly tasty.
Posted by Jenny @
1:19 pm |
Jenny’s General Tips for Early Pregnancy
1. Try not to whine too much about not getting pregnant. Save your whining for when you DO get pregnant and you’re sick with flu-like symptoms for MONTHS. No one wants to hear you complain about the sweating and nausea when YOU WANTED IT SO BADLY.
2. Once you start noticing “changes” in your body, never try something on to see if it fits. Just assume it doesn’t, pack it away, and go merrily about your day. Trust me, you don’t need to discover that your “fat jeans” won’t make it past mid thigh.
3. Those cutesy, pregnant cravings are nothing like, “Hmm, I just ate dinner, but now I really want pickles dipped in icecream! Tee Hee!” It’s more like, “I haven’t kept more than a handful of food down in 3 days and the ONLY THING IN THE WORLD that I will consume right now is tater tots and chocolate milk.”
4. Never assume that you’re done puking just because a week’s gone by, and get lax about keeping barf bags in your car. Otherwise, you’ll end up hurling on I-90 in a plastic strawberry container with holes in the bottom, and have to go to work with puke all over your shirt and the front of your slacks.
5. Think of all the things YOU were going to do when YOU were finally pregnant, have a nice laugh, and cut yourself some slack. (ex: Only eat the finest of nutritional happiness! see: tater tots and chocolate milk. Keep up pre-pregnancy work out schedule! see: puking for months)
Posted by Jenny @
12:02 pm |
Huzzah!
We are pregnant! Sixteen weeks already, and the Wee One is the size of an avocado. I have no good excuse for waiting so long to blog about this. Well, first of all, we didn’t tell anyone for the the first 12 weeks, for which we deserve bright shiny medals of honor. That shit was hard. (”How are you? What’s new?” “Oh fine, fine. Nothing, really, just working a lot.”) Then, after puking for 2 months straight, I started feeling better and it didn’t seem real anymore, and I felt like talking about it was counting chickens or something, you know? I’m a weirdo.
So, I didn’t post about it, and the few IRL people who knew and read my blog kept asking me when I was going to. I just didn’t know what I was going to say! I wanted it to be joyful, but this whole experience is SO FUCKING WEIRD. I don’t want to be a whiner, but DUDE, some fucked up shit’s been going down that I must talk about, even though I’ll probably be interpretted as whining by someone. Oh well. You’ll indulge me a little, won’t you?
Anyway, all in all, this is fabulous news. The details include: yes, we were trying, due late December, no we won’t find out the sex, and if all goes well we will birth here.
Not sure if this will work, but here is its heartbeat, which my sweet dorky husband recorded with his iPhone:
The Wee One
Posted by Jenny @
9:52 am |
Last Week’s Love Tacoma Cruise
Last Thursday, I was fortunate to be one of the 80 Love Tacoma members who RSVP’d quickly enough to get on their free cruise around the Sound. It was a LOVELY night, and our beautiful city looked smashing.
The fair Murray Morgan
Pretty Boat
Our Beautiful Bridges
Everyone taking pictures with their phones of the Bridges
Salmon Beach
Boat with Mountain
Ye Olde Castle
Oh, Elks. *sigh* What will become of your beautiful old bones?
Ahhh…Tacoma. How she sparkles! The weather is supposed to be spectacular this weekend, may you all get out and enjoy her!
Posted by Jenny @
11:14 am |
