It's been a lovely cruise

Well it's over. I'm a graduate, my birthday is over for another year, and we're almost down another month in 2009 (is it me, or did May fly by?).

One of my favorite Buffett songs is a not-very-well-known song off the Changes in Latitudes, Changes in Attitudes album called "lovely cruise". I actually almost put the lyrics in as my senior quote in my yearbook when I was in high school (and I probably should have, since I don't understand the gibberish that I did put in).

These moments were left with
May you always remember
These moments are shared by few

Honey, its been a lovely cruise

Anytime something is ending in my life, I usually think of his song. Especially the "may you always remember, these moments are shared by few" part. I like thinking that only a handful of people share the memories that I have, whether it be of high school, college, a vacation, a fantastic summer, or yes, even grad school.

Not only has grad school ended (cue the Alleluia chorus from Handel's Messiah), but the childless portion of my life will soon end too. Even when my children (child?) grow up and live their own lives, I still will never be childless again. I got 27 full years of it, and now it's over. That's a little overpowering for me. I can't put the baby in a hyperbaric chamber and come back in a few weeks. In a smidge under a month (hopefully!) my life will be wildly different, and it will never go back. I'm sure I'll love my new life, but I have to say I'm pretty fond of the life I have now and I'm sad to see it go.

Different sort of Friday

Yes, it's Friday, but no confessions this week. Today is a special Friday because it is my Birthday Graduation Day!!! I officially graduated from UMB today, I am done with school forever and ever, Amen. I am also another year older.

I started my grad school journey in September of 2005, and it was a really long dark road. Now it's over, I have my MBA, and no one can take it away from me! When I started I was 24, single, and living at my parents house. Now I'm... well, NOT 24, married, paying a mortgage, and about to become a mother. I can safely say I did not let school get in the way of living my life, though it did add a whole lot of stress to it. I think we all know I did not enjoy the ride. But now it's completely and absolutely over. Praise Jesus.

It's my birthday today too! Last year Andrew and I went out to Boston for dinner and drinks. This year I think we will come home after my graduation dinner, eat leftover cupcakes that my friends gave me yesterday, and I'll fall asleep early. Hopefully next year there will be fresh margs included in the birthday celebration!

It took me 36 weeks...

but I am so milking this pregnancy right now. The annual cleaning out of the garage is happening right now, and I am not helping. While I do feel somewhat guilty about this (no one likes to do it after all) I am more than happy to actually listen to my mother (for once) when she tells me I shouldn't be doing things. You're right Mom, I really shouldn't be cleaning out the garage. Plus I'm somewhat unhappy that Andrew bought a 6 pack of Shipyard Summer Ale and I can't have one. So I don't feel as badly as I probably should that he is out there helping my parents, and I am not.

It's been kind of a quiet Memorial Day Weekend this year. It's early - as early as Memorial Day can be - and it's really not summer yet. The weather down the cape has been pretty crappy. We didn't get the 90 degree weather that Boston got, and it's very hard to get into the summer spirit when it's 60 degrees and chilly.

I can't do a lot - I can't ride my bike, I can't go to the driving range (never mind pretend to shoot the front 9 at Falmouth CC), I can't even walk the route I usually walk without wanting to fall over dead. A very different Memorial Day than we usually have, but it's been a very different 8 months than I usually have :)

This weekend I had one family member tell me I look huge and I must be having a gigantic baby, and one family member tell me that I haven't gained any weight at all and I look terrific. Guess which family member I like more!

Flame Free Friday Confessions

What could I possibly have this week? I had an incredibly short 3 day work week and I'm enjoying a long weekend down the cape. Sadly, that means I am missing the 90 degree weather, but it's still a much more enjoyable way to spend the holiday weekend than to be lazing about at home. Unfortunately, my midwife told me not to go out on the boat, so unless we do a river cruise, it will be a boat free weekend. Sad, but what are you going to do? Anyway, my annual Memorial Day Weekend posts will be up sometime this weekend, but for now here are my confessions.

* I am scared shitless for this baby to get here. I am very much looking forward to not being pregnant anymore, but I'm at a bit of a loss as to what to do with an infant.

* The midwife told me she was very pleased with my weight gain thus far. How did I take the news? By immediately buying a bagel with cream cheese and going out to dinner at the BBC last night. And getting nachos. And a sandwich with fries. And dipping my fries into Andrew's bleu cheese dressing. And eating every.single.bite. yummy.

* I absolutely refuse to do laundry at my parents cape house. When we are there, Andrew has to do all the laundry. I don't even like to help a smidge bit. This is because the washer and dryer are down cellar and it is the creepiest cellar I have even been it. I actually do feel badly that he has to do all the laundry when we are Capeing, but you should see how creepy this cellar is.

You know you're from Boston when...

You are in Fanueil Hall at lunch time on a gorgeous sunny day and you
look around and can't find a thing to do. Everything is so "been
there done that" touristy!

Sent from my iPhone

Riddle me this

We've all heard it a million times: stay at home moms don't get a day off. But I ask you, in what way do working moms get the day off?

The premise behind the "SAHMs don't get a day off " belief is that raising a child is a 7 day a week, 24 hour a day job. And as their job is to stay home and raise the child, there is no time off from said job.

Fine, fine.... but mothers who work outside the home also come home after their paying job, and they are also raising a child. So when is their day off? If you follow the logic that raising a child is a job, then don't mothers who work outside the home therefore have 2 jobs without a day off?

Hingham now her banner flies....

You will appreciate this 10 times more if you went to my high school. If you didn't go to my high school, you will still appreciate it, because Muppets are always funny. Watch it till the end!

Flame Free Friday Confessions

Wow - I actually posted this week. Its amazing, the things you can get done with school getting in the way. Another Friday has come! What do you need to confess?

* I'm so disappointed in the preview for Harry Potter and the Half Blood Prince. At this point, I'm not sure it's going to be worth the immense hassle it would be go to see a movie a month after the baby is born. That might have to a rental. I've never been a big fan of the HP movies, but this one looks like its terribleness has topped off the previous 5.

* I still don't have my thank yous out from my shower. Oops. Soon, I promise. I have about 15 written already!

* I've already mentally checked out of work and I still have about 21 work days till my due date. And my current plan is to work as long as I can, even past my due date, so I could possibly have another 24 or 25 work days left.

finales and SPOILERS!

A lot of my shows have ended over the past few weeks. Here are my thoughts on a few of them. This post probably won't make sense if you don't watch any of the shows!

Big Bang Theory
Seriously? With the whole "Penny might like Leonard" theme going on? Lame. The show is funnier with Leonard lusting after Penny. There is ZERO sexual tension between Penny and Leonard. So the whole "I don't want you to go" thing with Leonard just didn't work. And I don't quite understand how Wolowitz, Koothrappali, and Leonard can just take 3 months off from their own respective jobs to be on Sheldon's crew in the North Pole. But other than that, it was a typically funny episode. Watching 4 complete nerds bumble around for 30 minutes is always a good time.

Heroes
Per usual, I have no idea what is going on with this show. Nathan is dead and Sylar is Nathan? And Angela is okay with this? What is going to hapen next season when Sylar figures out that he is really Nathan? They are saying that next season is going to be completely different, so we will see what happens then. I can barely follow this show from week to week, so we'll see what happens.

The Biggest Loser
Helen won? Are you kidding me? First of all, she sacrificed her daughter so she could succeed. What a terrible mother. And the crying.... my god, she cried every week. I really wanted Mike to win. He seemed like a good kid and he did really well. Tara.... well, she was good at losing weight, but like Jillian said, she's manic. I think winning might have pushed her over the edge. She's slightly obsessive. And Jerry winning the at home challenge completely blew me away. He came out of nowhere! Good for him, though he now has flabby arms. Time to pick up the free weights buddy. Though I shouldn't talk, I'm a huge round pregnant ball of flab.

LOST
I am so not the person who should be talking abut LOST. But our resident LOST blogger apears to be on hiatus so I'll give it my best shot. The season finale completely blew me out of the water. First of all - I totally didn't recognize The Black Rock. I was wondering what century we were in and kept trying to figure out why a pirate ship was coming to the island. I seriously didn't put two and two together until I was reading other people's thoughts on the episode. I loved seeing Bernard and Rose again. I really missed them this season. I also didn't pick up on the Locke/guy from the beginning of the episode thing either. I know everyone else picked up on that as soon as Jacob said that thing about finding a loop hole, but it escaped me. I really enjoyed seeing Jacob and seeing him go visit the Oceanic people over the years. I'm sure there's a ton more I missed, but I have a really long time before next season to figure it all out! I wonder how next season will open and if the bomb really did do what it was supposed to do.

Still to come to an end are Ugly Betty, Grey's (tonight!), and Numb3rs. Private Practice already ended, but I only saw half the episodes, so no comments from me.

Doesn't seem real

I just can't believe it's over. For 4 years I've been going through hell with this program. I've spent two nights a week since fall of 2005 heading over to UMB and sitting through some mind numbingly dull class. I've shed tears over it, been at an unhealthy level of stress and desperation, almost dropped about about 10 times, spent countless hours doing work and retained absolutely nothing after the semester ended, and in general been a slave to that school.

And now it's over.


I really don't know how to feel. I have some unadulterated glee that it's all over. Disbelief that I will never be a student again. I'm fearful that I actually messed something up and I don't have the right credits to graduate. I have a lot of emotions going through me right now. I think overall it hasn't sunk in yet.

I don't have to go back to school. Ever.

It's beginning to look a lot like....

Christmas??

It's beginning to look like something in here.... more like a Babies R Us exploded in here. And we're still missing some basic necessities! (like a bassinet.... and a crib mattress...) But everywhere you look in here, there's something baby related. Gone is my uncluttered house... probably until my youngest child moves out for good (although I never want to be pregnant again, so I'm working on Andrew agreeing that we'll be one and done. But somehow I don't see that happening!)

This is my one indulgence for baby related gear. Most of what we got is gender neutral in case we ever have a boy. But I love this swing, and Andrew really liked it too. So we paid more money than we should have and got a really pink swing. It also has netting that comes around it, kind of like a canopy. That's over the top girly though, and we don't have it on... for now. Winnie is enjoying his stay in the swing, I hope his feelings aren't hurt when he has to move.

Winnie and Eeyore swinging around on the mobile. Tigger and Piglet are up there with them. The wonderful thing about Tigger is that he is the only one :)

The Bucket o' Toys! Half of the toys in here, the baby can't even play with for awhile due to eyes and noses that clearly will result in certain death. There's a bunny and a Mr. Snuffleupagus in there that are safe... the rest will probably be put in the closet at some point in the near future

And the pile of crap. The pile on the left needs to go up to the attic. The pile on the right is the car seat and extra base that need to be installed by the police, or Fire Department, whoever does it in Canton. That's Andrew's job though. And if he doesn't do it, he can figure out how to get the baby home from the hospital.

Bouncy seat! That's my new favorite baby hardware apparatus. It's so light. Nothing else is light, but I could pick that up with one hand. I lurve it :)

Cause end Effect

I took out the twitter updates from the side of my blog - it will no longer ask for your log in every time you come to the blog. I had to make my twitter followers private because I was getting spammed - if you want to follow my on Twitter, I'll still accept you, I just had to be able to weed out the spammers

I wish certain people in my life would learn the definition of "affect" and "effect". I'll admit, this one constantly gives me trouble, and quite often I have to look it up on dictionary.com to make sure I am using the correct word. But that is what dictionary.com is for - to look something up quickly when you are say..... writing a paper!! I will be done with these people for the rest of my life as of Monday night, so I'm just going to keep changing it back to "effect" from "affect" and hope they don't notice before we turn in the final draft. (It's cause and EFFECT people, cause and EFFECT!)

Flame Free Friday Confessions

Another Friday, another week that I realized I have not been a very good blogger. But the semester ends on Monday. This week has been spent mostly with work and school stuff, so not much to confess. But here we go:

* I think you look like a jackass when you wear Gladiator sandals. They are ugly. They make you look bizarre. So do yourself a favor and don't buy them.

* I had ice cream for dinner tonight. Because I could. Because I am a grownup.

* Women who can't be away from their children for any length of time freak me out.

What about you>

8 more days

I am 8 days away from being done with school. I have an exam to get through, a paper to write, and a presentation to do over the next 8 days/2 classes. I'm pretty excited, but also really stressed out.

My baby shower was this weekend. Everyone was really generous and we have a roomful of stuff to put away. Since babies need so much stuff we still have a good deal that we have buy. So basically, just as soon as my school stress ends, baby stress comes in with full force.

I know that when the baby comes, I am going to be sleep deprived, stressed out, hormonal, and a host of other things. But my god, it will be good to have my time only devoted to taking care of the kid. And when she's asleep, my time is my own. My time hasn't been my own since August of 2005.

And maybe, just maybe, I'll have somethimg else to blog about other than school. 8 more days.

Flame Free Friday Confessions

and here we are, back to another Friday. I know I should have more posts, but I'm really busy right now. It will end soon though, and then I will have nothing better to do than to update this blog. I bet you can't wait!

So here are today's confessions

* I have an overwhelming urge to smack people who judge me for using daycare. Guess what, the mortgage doesn't pay itself. And yes, I still take home money from my paycheck after paying daycare. So just shut the eff up.

* I told myself I would get on the Bruins bandwagon in the spring. Well, it's spring and the second round of playoffs has begun, and I still just don't care.

* Heidi and Spencer make me laugh because I don't think they get that the rest of the world is laughing AT them and not with them.