Mierda Del Toro…Its A Fine Art

Or more like I wish Wednesday never happened. You can stop reading now if you don’t want to read something extremely depressing. You have my permission to skip the rest of this and find happier things to fill your day. I would completely understand, because I would not want to read what I am going to write about today. I don’t even want to write what you may still choose to read…because that would be accepting the fact that Wednesday did happen. I am just wondering if someone could pinch me and wake me up from the nightmare I am in right now.

Wednesday, June 4th, 2008, our son, James Michael died during pre-term labor. He was named after my father and Mikey. I was 23 weeks pregnant…just a week shy of 6 months. How did this happen? That, I actually do know and can take preventative measures for my next pregnancy, which probably won’t happen for some time. No one saw this coming, including myself…I had just had an appointment less than 2 weeks earlier to find the sex of the baby and everything was progressing as expected.

If you want to continue reading from here, you can. If not, don’t…it is not a pretty story, not for the faint of heart or the squeamish or those who would be all TMI about it.

Read the rest of this entry »

This is the post that you have all been waiting for and I have been totally procrastinating on. Although, I can’t say that it is entirely my fault it has taken this long. As I’ve mentioned…it is overcast a lot here and we have lots of rainy days where pictures just won’t be their best. So, I had to wait for a sunny weekend to take pictures…then I couldn’t find my camera (which is entirely my fault). Anyhow, enough procrastinating, lets get on with it, shall we?

This is the front of the house, as you can tell we have a lot of greenery.

This is the back of the house, looking into our living room and bedrooms.

Our backyard is so big that I had to take pictures of it in sections.


This is the back left half. In the corner is a Rosemary bush…and that tree blooms pink certain times of the year…when it does it is quite a gorgeous sight!

This is the back right half, not much going on, except a bush that lines the fence.

Then we have Scout’s dog run on the left side of the house. Since I have taken this picture, she has taken to getting her jaws all over the dry wall in the dog house and has made a fine mess in there. She has been teething horrendously…even managed to chew off a piece of the fence.

This is the right side of the house, we have a trumpet plant…or so I’ve been told…I know very little about plants.

That’s about it for the outer house pictures…inner house pictures may come after I straighten up a little in here…I am still unsure of how I feel about putting pictures of the inside of my house in the public domain. I mean pictures taken inside the house of people is ok with me, but like a virtual tour…I’m not quite comfortable with as of yet.

I also happened to take some pictures of Scout while I was out there snapping away.

She is just too cute for words and is a generally good dog…she really can’t help most of the puppy crap that comes with puppies.

Now for updates on me. I am feeling good, the pregnancy is going well. I am able to feel the baby move now, which is really interesting. The baby started rolling today when I was talking to a co-worker, which kind of took me by surprise. Last night, he/she was playing on my bladder as I was trying to sleep, which left me with more trips to the bathroom. Then I found out that if I slept on the other side, it moved the baby enough that I didn’t have a problem. I am not showing too much right now, I just look a little fatter than normal. My co-worker had no idea I am pregnant…I am just about 4.5-5 months. I’m sure that will change in the next couple of weeks.

My boss knows I am pregnant now, he is happy for me and doesn’t have a problem with it. I do plan on returning to work full time after I am done with Maternity leave. I also plan to work up to my due date or the week of my due date…that is if everything continues to go well and my doctor is in agreement that it is possible.

Last weekend I went to a Creative Memories Scrapbooking Retreat and I got a lot done, I finished one scrapbook, started and finished a Scrapbook for our Honeymoon…and started a scrapbook of our Wedding. So, it was a pretty productive weekend. I bet you didn’t know I was that into scrapbooking…well SURPRISE! I also plan to do a small scrapbook of my pregnancy for the baby, complete with ultrasounds and belly pictures.

I’ve also been keeping up on my knitting. I’m knitting a jacket for my cousin, Susan, for her 7th birthday. If you want to know more about my knitting habit, I’ve got a blog for it…but I haven’t posted my most recent project. Which was alfredsmom’s baby’s items…if you read her blog, you know I made a baby blanket, a bunny and an elephant, and if you didn’t know, you do now. On the other blog, I will go into more detail about the projects and let you know where I got the patterns for everything. I try to keep the knitting stuff over there and leave this blog more personal…and less about my “old lady” crafting.

Well, that is about it for now. I suppose my next post should include a belly picture.

I also wanted to add, that since I haven’t been posting to any regular schedule and I really don’t know when I will be posting to a regular schedule…you can always subscribe to my mailing list at the bottom of the page. This will send you an email every time I have a new post up and then I may not get lost in your RSS feeds with my random posting.

So, my 4th month’s doctor appointment was yesterday. I had to sandwich it in between my work schedule, which was a first. Usually, I take the rest of the day off, but it has been a crazy week at work.

At this appointment, I got to hear the baby’s heartbeat, which was a lot of fun to hear. My phone interfered with the doctor’s fetal heartbeat instrument, which surprised the doctor. I had to explain to him that the frequency of the phone signal interferes with anything with a speaker on it. He wanted to know why that was, because he doesn’t understand that stuff…so I gave him a simplified explanation. I think I just confused him more to be quite honest! But anyhow, back to the baby. It was a total trip to hear the heartbeat! Makes the whole experience a little more real…which may not make sense to some of you…but up until now, pregnancy has felt like a really bad period, without the flow of course. It hardly occurs to you that there is a person growing inside of you, because you have always associated the feelings of cramping, hurt boobs, and general womanly malaise with PMS. So every time you see an ultrasound in early pregnancy it seems more real…and that is why hearing the heartbeat also seems more real.

Anyhow, anywhere from a week to a few weeks from now, I should be able to feel the baby moving. I’m looking forward to that!

So, the doctor said that I gained 4 lbs, which was about right according to him…was so glad to hear that I wasn’t prescribed walking 30 min a day again. But, I think I gained less weight, because I’ve been less hungry…which is probably because I’ve been less tired. I found out that I can take Claritin!!! YAY! I’ve been having very bad allergies with this Nor Cal Springtime blooming in effect. The flowers are beautiful, but my nose doesn’t want to work! I do use this Nasal Rinse stuff though and it usually works, but lately it hasn’t worked totally. I can also take Tylenol for the headaches I get, but usually my headaches don’t go away with Tylenol…so, I probably won’t take it unless desperate or unless I am sick and running a fever.

I also got a blood test to screen for birth defects. Not worried about it at all since everything has been going well. I’ll hear back within a week if it comes out positive, otherwise I’ll hear nothing until my next appointment. If it comes out positive, I have to go through more tests and about 1 out of 10 positives are some kind of birth defect, so its a relatively low population and the doc has only seen 5 positive tests in all 20+ years of his practice. So, no real reason to put much effort into worrying about it. I think of things so statistically and logically, it can be quite sickening.

Other than that, nothing much is new. I took pictures of the house and of Scout, I just need to load them up and post them! So, keep your eyes peeled for that!