I keep sitting down and starting to write an entry, but get a little overwhelmed so I give up. Life has been a whirlwind recently, so rather than try to document it all, I’ve been avoiding the computer. I think I’ll just start with some bullets and hopefully get everything down. And come back later to add more bullets for the things I’ve forgotten.

I like bullets. They make me feel organized even when life seems a little out of control.

• We’re in the waiting game on the house selling thing. I think everything is pretty much taken care of and now we’re just waiting for the closing date. Hopefully we’ll close on time because we have the closing of our new house (which is dependent on the closing of our current house) set up for the same day, so they will both be delayed if anything goes wrong.
• Speaking of going wrong, the people we’re trying to buy the house from are being relocated, which means that a relocation company is handling the sale from here on out. Which means 3x as much paperwork and everything is taking 3x as long. Which means that we’re really pushing it to make the aforementioned closing date because they’re TAKING FOREVER.
• The good news is that we had the inspection done Saturday and even though there are several things we’re requesting they address (or pay to have us address) there was really nothing major wrong with the house.
• Half our computer supplies are packed away so I don’t have my card reader and therefore can’t download the pictures I took in New York (or any other pictures I’ve taken recently) so that’s kind of irritating me right now.
• The trip was fun and I loved hanging out with Stereoette and I got to eat some great food and do a ton of walking around the city and it was a much needed break from the stress of house. I tried not to rub it in that our mortgage payment for our new humongo house is going to be the same as what she’s paying for her efficiency apartment in NY. Ah, Texas real estate…
• Kaelin is really growing up. She’s now the traffic light enforcer. Wherever we go, she’s sure to point out “Uh-oh, it’s red! We have to stop now,” and “Green! The light is green! We can go now! Go green go!” through the entire car ride.
• Her repertoire of complete sentences and appropriate phrases seems (to me) to be remarkably advanced over the other kids her age. She’s still substituting “t’s” for all her “k’s” which is only a problem because her name starts with K. Well, that and it’s a little disconcerting when she starts talking about “kitties” in public.
• She’s very polite and uses “please” and “thank you” often. When we go to the public play areas in the mall and she gets mowed over by other children, she always says “Excuse me.”
• She’s still in love with her Grandmommy and Grandpa and would happily move in with them if we let her. I might let her when she hits the rebellious teenager stage.
• I think I’m going to have to give in and read Harry Potter. Even though I already know what happens in all the books. I’m not very good at commitment so long term projects rarely get finished, and reading is no exception. Maybe I’ll get the books on CD and listen to them in the car.
• I have a ridiculous amount of laundry that needs to be done. Ridiculous, I tell you.
• Moving Company is coming tomorrow morning to give estimates. Hopefully they’ll be able to see past the piles of laundry everywhere.
• Need to clean the house again top to bottom. We got out of the habit since we’ve stopped showing the house. But the appraiser is coming this week and we need to make a really good impression.
• Having so much laundry and cleaning to do makes me feel overwhelmed.
• I am totally annoyed that “maternity” is the “in” fashion right now. I was appalled when I went to Old Navy yesterday. I’m short-torsoed and store my fat around my middle – do you know how hard I have to work already to avoid looking 12 months pregnant? Every piece of clothing I saw was formless and rendered my body completely devoid of any feminine shape whatsoever. Grrr…
• I played 4 back-to-back softball games Friday night. Apparently we’re so behind in the season (due to rain) that they decided to have the entire playoff tournament in a single night.
• Consequently, every muscle in my body hurts. I could hardly get out of bed this morning. I’m getting too old for this.
• We came in second, in case you were wondering.
• The last game we played was a game we lost (hence the 2nd place), and we actually didn’t mind losing because we were so worn out that we didn’t want to play another game, which we would have to had we won.
• Actually, as beat as we were, we probably wouldn’t have minded playing another game too much if we felt like the teams were evenly matched. The other team had 4x as many players to rotate through and got to rest for an hour before the final game, so they were full of energy. And all of their guys were 6’4″ and built like athletes. We didn’t have the same advantage, so every minute was a fight just to stay in the game. That said, we did pretty well and might have won if they hadn’t hit that grand slam.
• I managed to close my knee in the car door today and it’s starting to bruise. It hurts.
• Thanks to the stress of buying/selling/moving/etc, I have 3 ulcers in my mouth. Yippee. Now I just need my face to break out so my whole head can be swollen and aching.
• My superstitious side is thinking I probably shouldn’t have said that.
• It’s after 11:30pm.
• My brain is starting to shut down.
• Good night.

Friday night we had another softball game, in which I became painfully aware that my legs needed another week to heal. Evidently being able to jog is NOT the same as being able to sprint to first base.

I ended up getting that extra week to heal though, on account of the game being called because one of my teammates broke her leg while sliding into third. Oddly enough, the leg that broke was NOT the leg she slid into the base with.

She was in an excruciating amount of pain until the ambulance showed up and started giving her morphine. Then she was concerned about her socks. She didn’t want the paramedics to cut off her socks because they were new. It’s funny what morphine can do to your state of mind.

She spent the night in the hospital and had surgery early the next morning. As it turns out, she broke the lower leg in several places, so they had to go in and put a plate around the bone, screwing it in to all the pieces to hold them together. She can’t put any weight on it for 6 weeks.

Did I mention she has a 3-year-old? The day before his 3rd birthday, and two days before Mothers Day, she’s laid up in the hospital. It’s very fortunate that her husband’s parents are living with them right now, because I don’t know how one would keep up with a 3-year-old in that state.

The worst part is that they don’t have insurance. I don’t know how much ambulances and surgery and hospital stays are without insurance, but I do know that the prescription blood thinner shots she’ll have to take are $700 by themselves. J and I are trying to help them out, but our contributions seem so meager in the grand scheme of the bills they will have to pay.

Oh, and (as a result of all the hospital tests) they also just found out that they are 6 weeks pregnant.

Again, no insurance.

I’m so totally NEVER sliding into a base. And I’m also rethinking our decision to go without insurance.

I’m mostly of the opinion that “if you don’t have anything to say, don’t say anything.”   So my blog gets a bit scarce when things aren’t particularly blog-worthy around here.

The past week has been uneventful except for a freak softball accident on Friday.   I had stretched but not warmed up, as softball isn’t usually a particularly exerting sport.   I was the second batter and when I hit the ball and took off for first base, both my quads immediately and simultaneously wigged out.

Not “wigged out” as in sore from being pulled.   “Wigged out” as in large steak knives stabbing me repeatedly from my hip to my knee every time I took a step.

I ended up hobbling to first base with everybody on the team going “RUN!!! (what is she doing???) RUUUUN!!!”

Evidently the other team wasn’t paying attention to me, as I made it safely.

I didn’t realize I was as injured as badly as I was, and for some reason it didn’t occur to me to get a replacement runner.   So when the next guy made a really solid hit, I took off for second.   About 10 feet into the journey, I realized that was BAD.

Very. Very. BAD.

But I’m stupid so I kept running for fear of interrupting the game.

Ok, running is an overstatement.   A paraplegic without a wheelchair could have made it around the bases faster than I was “running.”

When I made it to second, the ball was still somewhere way out in the field.   So I kept going to third – cursing from the pain, and immediately hoping nobody had heard that.   It was church softball, after all.

Somehow, in an event that defies the laws of physics…or at least softball, I made it all the way to third base without getting out.   J says it’s because the other team’s vision was based on movement, and I wasn’t moving fast enough for them to see me.

At third base I stopped and told the coach I needed a pinch runner because I just couldn’t do it anymore.   He gave me this look that said, “Ya think?”

At that point, the pain was so bad that my vision started going wonky, my hands were shaking, and I was getting that pre-blackout feeling, where the darkness starts coming in from the sides of your eyes.   I sat down in the other team’s dugout for a while before making it to the bleachers, where I sat and drank water until my head wasn’t spinning anymore.

Then I spent the rest of the game cheering our team from the dugout, and trying not to move.

But even without me, our team still won by a landslide (yay!).

Which tells you that I’m probably not contributing all that much to our success.   Which is ok, because I would have felt really bad if they had lost because of me.

“How’s the game going?”

“Pretty good.   I think they’re down by one but it’s not bad.”

“What inning are they in?”

“There aren’t innings in basketball.”

“…Segment?”

“They’re in the second quarter.”

“Hopefully they’ll get some more runs soon.”

“Sigh.”

GO MAVS!!!   Make it to the End Zone!

Last night we celebrated our anniversary by going to a fancy schmancy restaurant called Three Forks.   Very, very nice.   And some of the best lobster bisque I’ve ever had.   As J so eloquently put it, “It tastes like a lobster died on a pad of butter and went to heaven.”

After that, we played softball with our recreational chuch league, as we have a string of rained-out makeup games over the next several weekends.  

It was a very enlightening evening, so let me share with you a few of the pearls of wisdome I gained:

1. If you have a really rich steak & seafood meal…don’t play softball after dinner.   Particularly if you already have a sensitive stomach.   They had to rearrange the batting order because of a short time in which I was MIA in the restroom.
2. If you’re in the field and it’s really windy, keep your mouth closed.    As my brother so accurately put it, “I swallowed enough dirt to plant a small tree.”
3. Softball is way more fun if you win.   This was the first game all season that we actually won, and it was probably the most fun I’ve ever had participating in a sporting event (I’m not exactly athletically inclined).   I usually get placed in Right Field, but last night I got “promoted” to Left Center and later to Second Base when our second baseman got injured.   I didn’t screw anything up (mostly because nothing ever came to me) so it was a lot of fun.
4. Church softball is not for the faint of heart…or short of memory.   There are so many odd rules and regulations, like everybody starts the count at 1 ball, 1 strike.   And if you walk a guy, he goes 2 bases and the girl batting behind him can choose if she wants to bat or just walk to first base.   If you walk a girl, she only walks 1 base.   And don’t be thinking that just because it’s church that the 3rd baseman won’t TAKE YOU OUT.   Or you might end up leaving the game with a torn ACL.   THIS IS HARD CORE CHURCH BALL, BABY.   REGULAR SOFTBALL IS FOR WEENIES.

Overall, it was a great anniversary and a nice break from our little bundle of joy, who then kept me up all night with her bouts of wakefulness.   After we attended a wedding this morning, a nap was definitely in order.

I swear, the next kid we have had better be born with teeth.

Well, good news. I survived my first softball game! Actually, I even HIT every pitch that I swung at and got on base once. Would have made it around to Home, but there’s a 6-run-per-inning rule and mine would have been the 7th. Woo-hoo!

It was the windiest (is that a word? it looks funny) event I’ve ever been at and the wind was blowing straight at Home Plate, so when you were batting, you undoubtedly got a facefull of dust. From Right Field, it was like watching a dust storm rise up again and again. When I cleaned my ears this morning, the Q-tip was brown. Yuck.

We lost, but only by one run. And they put me in Right Field (where nothing ever happens) so I didn’t screw up any fielding. Yay! Actually, for all I was dreading, it was a lot of fun and I’m looking forward to the next game.

The vending machine in our office building is the loudest coin-processor I have ever heard. I might as well just get a megaphone and just go up and down the hallway proclaiming “ATTENTION EVERYBODY! I’M THE GIRL FROM SUITE 105 WITH NO SELF CONTROL.”

Actually, I’m justifying the chocolate I just purchased because I’m going to play softball tonight. It’s a co-ed league and the only way J could play (which I know he loves doing) is if I sign up too. So I thought, hey, it might be fun to give it a shot even though I have never possessed any kind of athletic ability whatsoever and will probably be asked to be the “dugout sitter” within the first inning.

I do have a strategy though. I’m going to bring Kaelin all decked out in her Baseball outfit, complete with Texas Rangers visor and HOPE that everyone is so busy ogling over her and saying how adorable she is, that they won’t notice my total and complete suckiness.

Wish me luck.

Well, Bud Selig is off the hook for the time being…at least until next year. He should be having his neck wrung today for completely ruining the Home Run Derby by attempting to turn it into the International Equality Derby and therefore completely destroying the whole POINT of the game – being to see the best of the best sluggers duke it out.

By all means, the fans should have been severly disappointed in last night’s Derby episode, and I don’t think anybody really had high hopes for it…

AND THEN ALONG CAME BOBBY ABREU.

First up to bat, he single-handedly broke all kinds of home run records, gave the crowd an amazing show, and consequently saved Bud Selig’s neck.

Even David Ortiz’ 17 homeruns in the first round, which broke the previous record of 16, was completely shadowed out by Abreu’s 24. A bit of baseball history was made, and it was a beautiful site on our new plasma TV.

Bud, you had better buy the guy a gormet dinner for that. Or send his family on vacation for two weeks.

Other festivity highlights included Johnny Damon singing with the band, Pudge’s kid getting totally pumped about his dad in the finals, and the kids falling all over each other in the field trying to catch the “outs”.

I’m watching my husband and brother take turns fighting mythical monsters in the sewers of Athens. And after seeing a woman fall off a rope seven times and fall with a bloody splat to the ground below, I’m wondering why a video game character who can defeat a Harry-Potter-esque serpent and run circles around minotaurs and medusas can’t break a 95-lb woman’s 25-ft fall. Athens’ only hope indeed.

But anyway.

I got a lesson in motherhood last night. J plays softball with the fellowship group team, so I went to game to – you know, be supportive and stuff. I ended up co-babysitting a 7-month old belonging to two parents in our group who were also on the softball team. I learned how to apply orajel to a teething infant’s gums (and what it feels like when that infant then grabs my finger and begins chewing on it). I also learned that it is a physical impossibility to watch a softball game while caring for a somewhat fussy baby. And that no amount of gum-numbing or walking or bouncing will satisfy an infant with a dirty diaper. A hint of what’s to come, I’m sure.

I also won my first group game last night at our small-group gettogether. It was one of those “how well do you know people” games in which you have to guess “if so-and-so were an animal, what would they be?” I should mention here that I probably know the least about other people in our group, because J and I are relatively new and some of these people have known each other for years. So it was all the more satisfying to win. Obviously, I have an uncanny ability to analyze people I barely know. Obviously.

Yeah, this is a pretty boring post. but it’s almost midnight and I’m tired, and frankly can’t remember what I sat down to write about in the first place. Call it pregnancy insanity. So have a little boring until I figure it out. Good night.

Today is the day that the parents find out they’re going to be grandparents. We mailed a package to Jens’ parents that had matching Mariners T-shirts in Mens, Womens, and Baby size. The package is scheduled to be delivered at 7:00 tonight so we’ll probably be getting a phone call sometime around then.
We have the same set-up for my parents (except they’re Rangers T-shirts) and hopefully will get to deliver the goods and the news tonight, but are unsure because by some irritating coincidence, this is the busiest week of my parents’ lives. Dad has been out of town all week on business and they both have activities and committments scheduled over the weekend. So we’re hoping they will be available for dinner tonight when he gets in, since it looks like he’s going to cancel one of his previous arrangements. But it’s tough to say “hey, we need you guys to set aside some time together so we can tell you something VERY IMPORTANT” without giving away the surprise. Especially since my mom asks me if I’m pregnant every time I eat a banana and a pickle within half an hour of each other.
So we’re stuck with “hey, are you guys available for dinner, just because, since we haven’t seen you all week?” Doesn’t exactly inspire “drop everything and go” action, but what can you do.
This has been a very news-filled week. In addition to finding out that our family is growing, two of my closest friends got engaged. One is having a family-only wedding in April, so I don’t have to worry about that, but my best friend wants to get married in August. Translate as “my best friend wants to get married when I’m round, fat and grumpy.” WHY???
And have you seen the available maternity brides maid dresses? UGH. I hope I don’t have to take a black sharpie to all her wedding pictures.