Life On The Other Side

I’ve been neglecting this blog because I started one exclusively about the whole pregnancy and birth. But I will try to post at least once or twice a week from now on. After all, this is my “secret” blog for me to rant and rave on though it seems like I rarely do.

Spring is here and with a vengence. It’s been darn hot some days (and humid) while others have been cool. I’m lucky that I have my personal built-in heater (baby) so that when the temperature changes back to cold, it isn’t making me take out my coat again. Let me tell you that being hot and pregnant does not make a woman happy. I am so looking forward to feeling “normal” again.

So it’s been one year since I moved to the South. Yep, the day came and went (I think it was April 27) that would have been exactly one year since we pulled into Charlotte and unpacked car and kitty. Not sure what I was thinking about that day except probably something along the lines of “thank goodness we don’t have to drive another 8 hours tomorrow.” Living here has had its high and low points. As with anyplace I’ve moved to before, I’ve experienced some type of “homesickness” and it was no different here. Yes, I miss my friends and being able to see my family more often, but in retrospect, my life has also changed so much. Would I change what I did one year ago? Heck no! I am happy and content with the decision I made. I’ve adapted and made the best of it. I love the direction my life has taken and where it has taken me. I never thought I’d be here today and then again I am.

There is a lot to look forward to in the next year and the years to come. None of it would have probably been possible without moving here. Well I really shouldn’t say that because it would have been possible. I’m just glad I’m here with my husband, our cat and our baby on the way.

I haven’t written an entry lately about my observations on living in the South. I don’t suppose this is really an observation but more of a change in lifestyle.

I must confess that I now watch NASCAR. I know the sport itself has become wildly popular in the last few years but I’ve never been a person to even consider watching it. Of course I’ve heard of certain drivers before like Jeff Gordon, Dale Earnhardt Jr. and the Busch brothers, Kyle and Kurt. And in the years that I lived in Las Vegas, the Las Vegas Motor Speedway was built. Being completely honest here, I always equated the sport with rednecks and I don’t mean it in a positive way.

In the last few weekends, I have found myself in front of the television with my husband watching the current NASCAR Busch Series. In addition to watching the races, I have become familiar with other drivers, their major sponsors and their standings as well as the mechanics of the race itself. I don’t cheer on a particular driver yet and don’t know if I even will. Frankly, watching a bunch of men race around a track can be exciting just because of the dynamics of their pole position at any given time during the race and the potential for wrecks. In fact, even my husband is surprised at how much knowledge I’ve acquired just by watching a few races.

But don’t expect me to be one of those women groupies who follow a driver like they are a movie star or paste stickers on my car with the number of my favorite driver. I may be assimilating to the South but I do have my boundaries.

Spring is here somewhere and I thought it was time for a change. I saw this template and decided to try it out for awhile. It doesn’t really reflect my lifestyle or where I live but I rather like the richness of the colors.

Yes, spring is almost here if not here already. Although we’ve had a long winter with no real winter in my opinion where we live, I’m not ready for spring or summer and the heat it will bring. I guess the good thing is we’ll have this baby long before the most uncomfortable part of summer will arrive.

My hubby and I like to “talk” for our cat. I know it sounds pretty weird but we can be pretty weird sometimes. Our cat was actually my cat that I’ve had for the last 8 or so years. She’s a medium haired tortie (tortoise colored) that was found wandering around and I took in. While she can be pretty curmudgeon at times, she is really sweet and loving. Not knowing what to name her, I asked some people that I had worked with at the time for some suggestions and one of them suggested “Mocha.” After several days, I officially called her “Mocha.”

While she’s not the most friendliest cat in the world, she is loving and sweet in her own way. When the hubby and I first met, I was skeptical at how Mocha would react toward him. I’m not sure if it’s intuition but I suspect that she knew if she didn’t like him, it would have to be a choice between him or her. I’m glad I didn’t have to make the decision either way but I also think she was intuitive to know he was and is a great guy. She’s grown to love him even more than she loves me at times I think. But I think it’s because she’s a girl and it seems that girl cats always like men better while boy cats seem to like women better.

So, yeah, we talk for Mocha. A typical conversation might go like this:

Me (talking to Mocha): Are you excited about the baby?
Hubby (talking for Mocha): What’s a baby?
Me: A baby is a little person.
Mocha: I’m a little person. I thought I was the baby?
Me: You are our baby but now you’ll have to be the big sister.
Mocha: I don’t want to be the big sister. I’m the baby.

I know it might sound a bit weird but Mocha is part of our family; she’s our little girl. Like most pet-loving people, our pets are our family. I sometimes wonder what she would actually say if she could articulate her meows into human words. I’m sure she thinks we’re crazy and insane at times but, still, it wouldn’t be our family without her.

I usually don’t answer the phone unless it’s someone I know calling. Today we got one of those annoying “PRV CALL” on our caller ID. The first time it rang, I didn’t answer it but thought that perhaps it might be someone who has a blocked phone number. After all it wasn’t a toll-free number so it might be someone we knew. A few minutes later, the phone rang again from the same “PRV CALL” so I picked it up. Though slightly incoherent, the person asked for someone who wasn’t either myself or my husband. I told them they had the wrong number and thought that would be that. But again a couple of minutes later the phone rang again asking for the same person and, now being slightly annoyed, I told them they had the wrong number. The person, who sounded like an older kid, asked if this was an apartment building so I told them yes it was and again he asked if I knew who this person was and if he could have their phone number. Okay, now being more annoyed, I repeated I didn’t know this person and that I didn’t have the phone numbers of anyone who lived in the apartments. With that, they gave up and I finally hung up on them. If I tell you that you have the wrong number what makes you think I have the phone number of anyone living here and what makes you think if I did have the phone number I would give it out? Does no one teach phone etiquette anymore?

My brother often forwards me little jokes, videos, stories, games, or whatever seems to interest him on the web. That is the extent of how we communicate. We don’t have that touchy-feely kind of relationship that some siblings have but that’s okay because our relationship is what it is. It is neither bad nor is it “Norman Rockwell” wonderful. He’s the kind of brother you’d want to have if you are destined to have a brother but not destined to be close in nature. When our dad passed away almost 5 years ago, my brother was there to comfort my mom and I, and even wrote one of his finer pieces, my dad’s eulogy, filled with warmth and laughter, just like how our dad wanted to be remembered. When I got married this year, my brother walked me down the aisle and gave me away. And when I miscarried in August, he called to tell me he loved me and that everything would be okay. He was right; everything is okay because here I am three and a half months pregnant.

While he may not send me emails recounting his day, the emails I do get still spark a bit of warmth in my heart when I see them despite being filled with nothing but trivial things from the Internet. Sometimes I look at the stuff he sends me, sometimes I don’t. In today’s email there was a link to something from the Jay Leno Show that made me laugh that I almost cried. So from my brother to me and now to you, here’s something to add some laughter into your life: photo booth fun. Make sure you watch until the end!

The hubby had the day off today so we finished up some Christmas shopping. Despite the cold weather yesterday, today was a bit warmer though the early morning commuters still had a two hour delay going into work. Seems like more cold weather is on the way and we may get some flurries or more either Saturday night or on Sunday. I’m hoping to have some serious snow time if only for a few hours. Growing up on an island in the middle of the Pacific Ocean didn’t give me much opportunity to see or play with snow. Despite what people might think, it does snow in Hawaii on Mauna Kea. I have gone up there a few times as a child and not had very fun experiences mostly because of the altitude and the hard snow.

Other times I’ve experienced snow was when I was very young on a trip to California where some relatives took us to Big Bear, I think. I have pictures of myself in the snow and the only tangible memory I have is when I saw a snowman for the very first time and I cried. Yes, it scared me but you have to remember that I hadn’t seen anything like that before and I was probably 3-4 years old at the time. It also snowed a few times in Las Vegas, mostly flurries, though one year it snowed enough on a Sunday morning for it to stick around until noon.

While I’m sure after hearing stories from people who have lived through snowy weather that I wouldn’t want to live anywhere like that, I’d still like to have a little snow. But when you grow up reading books or watching movies or television about what a “perfect” American Christmas is, then you realize where I’m coming from. Yes, I’ve seen all those Norman Rockwell Christmas pictures and maybe I’d like to experience that perfect American Christmas too. So let it snow, let it snow, let it snow.

We are on the border when it comes to having a white Christmas. If the conditions are right, according to the hubby, it may snow a day or two here. Today was the first day that we had anything that might come close to having that white Christmas except it’s not quite cold enough. It’s been raining steadily shortly after midnight and much of that turned into ice in the early morning hours. There is ice hanging from the fence, stairs, trees and cars outside. It’s unbelievably chilly and I haven’t gone outside much except to see the ice hanging. I’m a bit afraid to get in my car and drive especially in my pregnancy state. I’m not afraid of the rain so much as I am of the “black ice” on the roads. Apparently it’s patches of ice that are not readily visible to the driver because it takes on the appearance of the asphalt. I’ve never driven in those conditions though I have when it was lightly snowing. It seems to me that ice is much more dangerous than the light dusting of snow.

Speaking of my pregnancy state, I can feel myself or rather my abdomen getting bigger every day. I am to the point that even my “loose” jeans are feeling a bit tight. I’ve bought a couple of maternity pants but haven’t worn any yet. At some point, I think, I will wake up and no longer want to use my regular clothes because they are uncomfortable and I don’t want to not have anything else to wear. The pregnancy clothes aren’t too bad but I rather not invest a lot of money into something I won’t be wearing for a long time. It’s hard to imagine that next year at this time we’ll be celebrating the holidays with our son or daughter. I think the holidays take on a whole new meaning when you have children. I certainly can’t wait to see the excitement in my child’s eyes on Christmas morning.

I ran over to the post office today to mail out two boxes with Christmas presents, one for my brother in Hawaii and the other to my friend and her husband in Nevada. I don’t go to the post office that is assigned to where we live (the one you have to go to to pick up packages when they leave a pink slip in your box) because it’s usually a mess. It’s a large post office and services a rather large suburb. Instead, I drive over to a small post office in the little town adjacent to where we live. It’s more of a “small town” kind of post office where the workers actually recognize you and the people are much friendlier. I was able to mail my packages without waiting too long in line but when I got back in my car, I looked at my receipt and realized the postal worker helping me had inputed the wrong zip code. I’m not sure how many times that actually happens but I didn’t want anything to prolong my package to my brother. I ran back in and he realized he inverted two number making the package head to Washington state instead of the Hawaiian islands; disaster promptly averted.

The other thing I learned today and maybe I’m just not keeping up with the news is that the postage prices will once again go up in January. As of January 8th, it’ll cost another .02 cents to mail a letter. While I’m not faulting the US postal service for raising their prices, I hope they raise their standard of service. I’ve had a few gripes with the postal service over the years including missing mail, returned mail, and lost mail. But I suppose when you have to compete with the age of emails and the competitive cost of using services like UPS or FedEx, you need every little penny you can get. Make no mistake, it is still cheap to mail a letter and I rather receive a letter or card rather than an email.

We’ve been “fostering” a stray cat that comes around our patio mainly by feeding it. The cat is comfortable enough to sit patiently at our patio door looking inside when she wants food. Unfortunately she’s still too scared to even venture close to me. When I go outside to put food in her bowl, she runs outside of the railing waiting. As soon as I go back inside the apartment, she trots over to eat the food. Since we can’t really get close to her, there’s not much we can do outside of feeding her. A few days ago, my husband suggested putting a towel on one of the patio chairs in case she wanted to sleep somewhere semi-warm. Tonight was the first evening she curled up on the chair and basically “stayed” with us. While it would be nice for her to become tame enough for us to keep her, we already have a cat of our own who is content to keep the place to herself. She’s seems accepting enough of the visiting cat and tolerates her on our patio but would probably be very unhappy to have a roommate.

Right now I am more worried that our own lovable but somewhat curmudgeon cat will not get along with the baby. Our cat is really lovable and loves to be around us but she can get testy and sometimes like to swat though not very hard. We also learned recently (though she hasn’t done it in awhile) that when the hubby likes to tickle me and I’m squealing or howlering, she’ll gently go up to his arm and give it a soft nip. She’s also done this to me too. I think she likes to warn us that we’re bothering her but I’m not sure. It’s the first time I’ve ever seen her do this behavior in the eight or nine years I’ve had her. Of course the hubby doesn’t want her to do that to the baby so I don’t know how we are going to prepare our “furbaby” for our new baby.