In Between

On Friday, around 3 or so, I was very relieved to find that I was finished with my jury service. With that weight off of my shoulders, I began to feel a whole lot better. I didn’t realize how much that would burden me, and I really kind of messed everything up with it… but at the very least, it was finally over, and there shouldn’t be any particular repercussions from it. Somewhat lighter, I headed home, and listened to some more music, which I enjoyed. I also got to sing along, which was a plus. When I got home, I think we might have just had leftovers, honestly… but I can’t actually remember. Friday night was kind of a blur.

On Saturday morning, I was going to take Megan to breakfast at a restaurant that she had wanted to go to, but she didn’t really want to any more. We made breakfast sandwiches on bagels instead. We still needed to go out for some things, and Megan wanted to look at furniture, so we headed out, and Megan let me know that part of why she is so stressed out about a number of things comes from our not having discussed having children. She definitely wants to have them, and we have not been entirely on the same page about that, but haven’t really talked about it in a while. She felt that it had come up several times, but I can’t recall when it had. She is worried about getting older, and that causing problems, as well as how it might interact with other things, like finding a new job, whether her parents should try to buy a house near us if they sell their house in New Jersey, and what to talk about at check ups. I had known that she was not happy, and holding something back, but not specifically what it was. It was somewhat of a relief to finally know what it was… even if I’m still a bit concerned about some of the details. I have been thinking about it, but not often talking about it. I do really like kids. I’m also very concerned about how much having children changes your life. Still, I have been becoming less and less happy about pretty much every area of my life… work doesn’t thrill me, video games are fun, but not something that keep me occupied. I have been playing the guitar, but I am quite aware that it is unlikely to ever lead to anything else. I really don’t have anything in my life that having a kid would interfere with beyond limiting how much free time I have. Our plan of me becoming a stay at home dad seems unlikely, now… which is a bit disappointing, but I suppose it makes sense. A lot of my concerns now are logistical… about making the house clean and safe, figuring out if we can afford daycare, and the like. There is one thing I remembered after the fact that I haven’t brought up yet… but it is not something logical. I have this dread that something will happen to Megan while she is pregnant or in delivery, and that I will lose her, and possibly the baby, as well. I can’t really do anything about that, though… unless I take a hard line about never having children, which I don’t think would go well for me… even though that seems to be what Megan thought my stance was. I tried to comfort her while we were in the car, and to make my concerns known, but also to let her know that I am coming around on the idea, and that I need us to look into and talk about some things, but that if we do that, I think having children would be good.

Having talked about that for a while, we got out of the car. We had gone to get bubble tea, and headed inside to do that. I tried an almond bubble tea, and Megan got a Jasmine one, but we probably should have split one instead, because they were larger than expected. We drank them and walked around the mall while drinking them, talked, held hands, and tried to grow back together. When we had made a loop, Megan had a headache, so we sat on a bench, I rubbed her shoulders, and we sat and people watched for a while. Eventually, we went back out to the car, and the rain had let up just in time, so that was nice. I stopped to get some gas, and then we went to Michael’s to get some more yarn for this blanket Megan is making for Jim. Unfortunately, there has been a big sale on this kind of yarn for several weeks, and the colors she needed were out of stock. After that, we went next door to the pet store, because Megan wanted to look at cute things. We looked at the birds, lizards, hamsters, and kitties, as well as some beagles that were there for an adoption event. I thought all of the animals were pretty cute, but also felt kind of sad that they were not yet adopted, and then when we were looking at the kitties, only one had a name that wasn’t a string of numbers, and they were playing harmonica music, which made it seem even more like a jail. We did pick up some cat treats, since Gypsy had a hairball that morning, and she doesn’t like the hairball treats we already have, since they have a soft texture. We headed on after that, meaning to stop at the grocery store. We stopped at a Big Lots on the way home, to look at furniture, but Megan’s headache was getting worse, and she thought it was a migraine, so we stopped our time in Big Lots short, and skipped the grocery store and headed home. In addition to Megan’s headache, I was starting to feel some itchiness and soreness in my throat and sinuses, and since we had just seen something on the news about a flu epidemic (I guess we watched TV on Friday), I was a bit concerned. When we got home, Megan took a hot shower, and I had a shot of whiskey and a cup of I Love Lemon tea. She then laid down in bed, and I gave her some reiki, rubbed her back and forehead, and then tried to help her fall asleep. I also fell asleep for a while, but eventually got up and started trying to do some of the research I had mentioned.

Jim was watching retro TV shows, so I didn’t disturb that, but spent time on the internet looking up prenatal vitamins (and eventually purchasing some that looked good), looking up foods that you can’t eat while pregnant, investigating the cost of daycare, sorting through audiobooks about pregnancy and parenthood to listen to in the near future, and similar things, along with some regular internet stuff (email, Facebook, etc). Eventually, I had to use the bathroom, and since Megan woke up, I asked how she was feeling. She said her head still hurt, but somewhat less. I asked if she was hungry, and she was, so she asked me to make chicken noodle soup, since that was something we could make with stuff on hand. I had a plan to take her out to Five Guys (since she had mentioned really wanting that) and then going bowling (since she loves that, and we rarely go, because I’m not fond of it), but since she wasn’t, I made her soup and finished up my internet stuff. She had gotten up and gone into the living room by then. I brought her some food, and we sat there and watched random retro shows. Eventually, it was an odd old horror movie about meteorites that grow into huge crystals. It was silly, and I wasn’t really into it, so I did some more things on the internet, finally getting through the whole list of audiobooks and choosing one. We went to bed after that. It was fairly late, so I was glad to just fall asleep, finally.

We got up at a fairly reasonable t

ime on Sunday for when we went to sleep. I tried again to see if Megan wanted to go out to breakfast, but she wanted to go out to lunch instead, since she still wanted Five Guys. We got up, made a grocery shopping list (I still wanted lasagna, myself, which eventually evolved into making a Tour of Italy… and then a whole at-home Olive Garden experience, since I can make all of those things, anyway), and then asked Jim if he wanted to come. That evolved into him coming to get the rest of the materials for our landscaping project that he initiated and we modified. Since everything we needed was in one place, we went to Cheeburger Cheeburger instead of Five Guys, then went to another MIchael’s, where they still didn’t have the yarn we needed, then made a very coordinated trip to the Giant nearby, and finally went to Home Depot to get landscaping stuff. It all went fairly quickly, and we headed back home around 2. After putting away the food, we started working on the landscaping. I wasn’t really sure how it all worked, so I just did my best to be of help, gathering the tools that it seemed like we would need, then roughing out the job, putting the edging in line where it needed to go, and the mulch near where I thought it would probably go. When that was done, I sat for a moment, and then we realized that we needed one more piece of edging for the bed, so they asked me to go get one. I had to drive Megan’s dad’s truck to get it, and I’m not really used to driving pickup trucks, but I gave it a go, and it worked fine. When I got back, they had laid the rest of the edging, put down the fabric, planted most of the bushes, and started covering things with mulch. I helped with the mulching, and eventually we finished up and headed inside before it was dark. People got changed, I had a beer, and instead of a whole Tour of Italy, I made chili instead. While I was cooking, Megan got a call saying she had won some stuff from this resort in Virginia. Normally, when this happens, we grumble and decline, but since Megan had gotten it in her head to go on a trip next week, and was kind of upset that I couldn’t leave the country on such short notice to go on a cruise, I had suggested that we make a trip to Arkansas to this diamond crater place where you can dig for gemstones. Since we already had that in mind, we took the two free hotel nights from these people, despite the 90 minute timeshare talk… and the fact that the actual resort is not particularly interesting to us, being mostly about skiing and golf. Actually, that might be a benefit, since we should, in no way, be interested in buying a share there. Still, it’s two free nights with a pool, and perhaps we could use those savings to use the spa or go snow tubing. They also said we won some other prize, the cheapest of which was a $500 Visa gift card, so that should help, too. Anyhow, because of that, we are now definitely going on that trip. Hopefully, it will be fun. After that call, I finished cooking, and we watched the X Files on Netflix and reasearched things for that trip. I didn’t really come up with anything that I am particularly interested in, but Megan found some fun things, and I think it will be more about the journey than the destination. We watched a few more episodes and then went to bed relatively early.

I didn’t sleep well again. I think I will try to get to bed early this week, so I can take valerian root to try to establish a steady sleep schedule again, so my body doesn’t keep just waking up in the middle of the night for no good reason. I got up anyway and got ready, made some coffee, synced my iPod, got everything ready, and then realized that there was frost on our cars, so I let them heat up a little, but it still wasn’t very well cleared when I left. Still, I cranked the heat, and it was fine before I got out on the highway. I started listening to the audiobook about pregnancy I had gotten, rather than the fantasy novel, both because it was shorter, and because I thought I should try to keep my momentum on that. As it turns out the book is designed for women, which I guess is not terribly surprising, as women are probably usually more interested in the ins and outs of pregnancy, and I can get past that and just try to learn from the information. I suppose the name of the book might have given it away, as well. Anyhow, I got to work, listened to some podcasts, caught up on work stuff, put in leave for next week, and finally went for a run again. I didn’t run all last week because it was snowy and icy, and very cold. It just didn’t seem safe… particularly since when I had been running in the cold, and it was doing bad things to my knees. When we had lunch yesterday, it was tremendous and had lots of fried food. I mentioned how I would be glad to go for a run today, since I haven’t gone in a while, and fried food doesn’t make me feel great. Jim replied that I might not feel that way after the landscaping, but I think he and Megan both underestimate just how good of shape I am in, because even moving 48 55 pound bags of mulch didn’t really do that much to exhaust me. I was tired, sure, but felt fine when I went running today. I tried to work on increasing my pace today… running fairly fast, and stopping after prescribed amounts of time, but going back to a slower run, just to get used to running a bit faster, overall. I think it worked fairly well.

One thing that I have been having trouble with lately is a kind of hit or miss stomach turbulence. I find a lot of trouble eating anything at all in the morning, and today, after having run, I could not finish the lunch that I had brought, which was more modest than I have been bringing for a while. That said, I ate an awful lot for lunch yesterday, so I don’t know. It could be that some of the stuff I have experienced recently was stress-related, from jury duty last week, and other parts might have to do with having eaten too much at a previous meal or something. Of course, I had maybe five animal crackers and coffee for breakfast today, so that doesn’t explain why I couldn’t finish lunch today. I guess I’ll try to keep an eye on things to make sure it’s not something lasting.

I think the scratchiness in my throat was either dealt with by the tea, whiskey, chicken soup, and sleep, or it had to do with the bottle I had been drinking from being kind of dirty. As it turned out, that one was Megan’s (hers is purple, mine is blue… it’s less than ideal for me, being color blind), but since it didn’t go away from switching, I washed mine fairly well this morning, and the scratchiness isn’t there any more. I think I’ll try washing Megan’s tonight, since if it’s making me sick, it can’t be great for her, either.