I swore at a pie yesterday. Man, I must be stressed out. I decided at 9 pm that I'd make Ben a rhubarb pie. I wanted to make one earlier in the day, but I never have time. Anyway, I never make the crust. My mom and grandma always said crusts were hard to make, and always bought the frozen Pillsbury kind, so I buy frozen usually. I'm a bit crustophobic, I guess. They don't have Pillsbury at our market so I buy the Marie Callendar's kind which is good, but tricky. I have to thaw it, remove it from the tin and then re-roll it for the top crust. The crust was in the freezer since Thanksgiving, so it was being more difficult than usual and kept sticking to my rolling pin and to the cutting board no matter how much flour I laid down. It took forever for me to remember that you could use wax paper and roll it between two layers so it doesn't stick. d'oh. It was late. What can I say. Anyway, when I figured it out and got the bastard rolled out I yelled "Take that mother fucker!" I never whip out the mf word, and I used it just this once on a pie crust. Boy, I must have been tired.

It's probabably a boy!

So, I had another ultrasound today because the baby was measuring small for gestational age. I was a tad bit worried, but I didn't have any other symptoms of things like pre-eclampsia (nasty preggers condition) ect. Turns out that the baby is growing fine. :) and is probably a boy. It sure the hell looked like a boy to me. The ultrasound guy said he was 80-20% sure, but he didn't really want to tell us, I think. The other guy seemed more sure it was a boy. Of course, you can never be sure since pregnancy hormones can swell the baby's labia and make it look like testicles, and the boy baby could have undecended testicles or something. That would be one swollen labia though. I'm sure it's a boy.

Well, we made it through E3 alive. Tristan was a little pissed when Ben came home, but warmed up quickly. Before long they were best buddies again and going to the beach and park and getting Tim Horton Doughnuts. Tristan had a blast playing in the tide pools with Ben.

It was a long weekend because of Victoria day so we got started on some of our projects. The bathroom is now painted a lighter green. It isn't sage. It's more cool than sage. Cool as in more blue and less warm than sage. It's kind of a beachy color which works good for this house. I'm trying to play up the ocean view/beach appeal. I liked the old dark olive color, but this color works better for that space. You don't need the light on during the day to use the bathroom and the white toilet isn't so contrasted against the dark floor and dark walls. Before it just glowed in there like a beacon in the dark and it was kind of disturbing. I still find it incredibly weird that I'm moving away from dark colors. They are still my favorite, but man do bright colors save on electricity.

We also painted the deck a bit. It's starting to come together. It will be so nice to put our table back outside and start eating out there again for summer. The best time ever was playing cards on the deck with my family when they visited last time. I wish Ben liked to play cards more. I just roped him into playing Scrabble, so maybe I can get him to play Rummy with me or something. It's so fun playing cards out there and I'm really getting sick of spending every night in front of the tv or computer. If anyone has any board game suggestions let me know. Laura, I'm guessing you do since you and Tim play a lot of board games from what I remember. Ben still wants to get Cults Across America after talking to Tim.

In other news, Tristan hates my singing. I don't think I sing *that* bad. How is he suppose to learn his songs? Every kid knows ABC, Twinkle Twinkle Little Star, ect. I put on a CD yesterday with the ABCs and other songs and he said, "NO! Robot Song! I don't like ABC!" All he wants to listen to is the They Might Be Giants cd that his old friend the Caidster gave him, which is super awesome for me, but man, he does need to learn those other songs. Nobody in pre-school is going to know what the Robot song is. heh.

On another random note, we went to a protest yesterday. They are closing down 3rd grade in Point Roberts Elementary and busing those kids over to Blaine daily. That's an hour in a half drive daily twice through two international borders. Insane for an eight year old. They are also cutting a teacher, so we'll only have one teacher for all three early education grades (K-2). These are the grades where kids need the most one-on-one teaching. They have to learn how to do the basics in reading, writing and arithmetic, and socialization all with one teacher. It's like frickin' Little House on the Prarie. So, we joined our neighbors in the protest at the school board. Good points were brought up like how it's a safety issue to only have two people on the premises to watch all those kids. If one gets sick then there is only one person in the whole school. What if someone had an emergency?

I was the instigator parent. All the parents were too polite for protestors. They just held up signs and balloons. I'm guessing they were Canadian. ;P hehe. Too nice. The kids had the right idea about chanting "Save Our School!" since the school board members pulled the blinds on us. I was the only parent that went by the kids to chant. What an instigator. So, Tristan had his first protest.

This is day one of Ben's trip to LA for E3. It was okay, I guess. Tomorrow will be harder, since today just feels like he's pulling another late night. I think that helped with Tristan too. I wonder what he will think when he doesn't see his dad in the morning. Hmmm. Maybe I'll just keep saying that daddy is at work. E3 is kind of work right? Bah, video game conferences can't be all work and no play. hehe. I wonder if LA is as much of a hole as I think it is. I'm a bit Caliphobic.

Tristan and I dropped Ben off at 8 today and drove back through insane Vancouver traffic. Man, those people need help with their highway system. A highway does not have bus stops on it. You don't converge 6 lanes into 2 drastically and expect the traffic not to bottleneck. Run the highway around the damn city. A highway shouldn't have a stop light every other corner. grr. American highways are so much better. Yay Einsenhower.

We got back at 10 which was just in time for Tristan's play group on the Point. Brenda must have forgot, so it was just me and Alexandra. I got to hold Griffin! He's her 1 month-old. I didn't forget how to hold a baby. I was worried that I'd forget things, but I held him when he was crying and over-tired and he fell asleep in my arms. Tristan was unphased that I was holding a baby which is good too.

I found out that Alexandra and her husband are Packer fans. How weird is that. They aren't even from Wisconsin. Sad that she knew more about the Packers than I did. I don't do football. heh. I thought I had a good excuse for Ben when he was talking to another packer fan and didn't know Favre's number. I told him that if he screws up to say that he hasn't been paying attention to the Packers since he moved to Washington. Now we pay attention to the patriots. Ben laughed at me for thinking that the Washington team was the patriots. I guess that doesn't really make sense. Washington state isn't quite known for colonists, famous American forefathers, and people like Revere, so I don't know where I got that Washington's team was the patriots. duh. I still have no idea which state has the patriots. I guess we are the seahawks or some shit.

Other than that today was kind of boring. I painted the deck some more when Tristan was napping. It will look so nice when it is done. After Tristan's nap, we watered the plants and tackled weeding under some bushes, all the damn yucca, and in a few of the side gardens. Holy crap is my yard full of weeds. I have two Hefty bags full of weeds. I think I'll shove them behind the shed and just let them rot. I dug out a bunch of those nasty lettuce-y looking weeds from my lawn too. Those things have the biggest damn roots.

My pear tree has three wee pears on it. One of them looks like it has a big spot on it so I'll have to look up what to do about that. I also think my apple tree has some sort of parasite too. The leaves are curled and white in parts. Maybe it's just a bug. hmmm. There are a few little apples starting on one of the trees that the arborist trimmed. The other one he did is still dormant. Mine are growing leaves, but I didn't see any signs of apples. I think maybe I did them too late because the back tree flowered a week after I hacked the hell out of the trees in front. Oh well. Next year they should blossom nicely and get some fruit. I wonder why that one apple tree never gets fruit though. Either does one of the pear trees. weird.

Bah. My journal is so boring lately. I'm too big to do anything exciting besides mess with the house. heh. Oh well, enough excitement will be coming this summer. I can wait a few months and just post boring stuff about paint and plants.

I can't really post political/current event stuff anymore. Reading the paper is becoming increasingly difficult, since Tristan wants to read it with me. It's kind of fun, but he has a better time looking at the car want-ads, and BestBuy flyers, while I want to catch up on international, and national news.

I really want to find out about the Canadian elections, but of course the U.S. papers have nothing about them at all. Maybe I'll have to get a Vancouver Sun. The Canadian elections effect us a lot on the Point, since we pretty much deal with Canada on a daily basis. I feel like a dumb American going to Tsawassen and seeing all the election signs and not knowing what the heck is going on. I do know that there was a big car accident in Seattle the other day though. Oh, and it rained there. I NEED CANADIAN NEWS, not news from a city 3 hours away.

I'm sitting here waiting for the money man. No. I'm serious. We have a guy that comes to our house and exchanges our Canadian money for American. Sometimes Ben meets him in the grocery store parking lot early in the morning. Our neighbor leaves him a Canadian check in her mailbox, which he takes from the side of the road and replaces with an American check. Sounds shady right? hah. It's totally legit. He's a commodities trader on the move. That's the point for you.

Anyway, I hope he comes soon because I need to go to Home Depot to get some paint before Tristan's nap. I want to finish the bathroom. It was a pretty olive green, but it was looking kind of dingy and dark in there. I painted it a lighter green which strangely enough is the exact color of my grandma's house. Maybe I'm missing her. It's kind of weird. I always liked dark colors. We painted our D&D/game/guest room dark red and part of our living room walls dark green in the old house. This house doesn't have the vaulted ceilings and if I didn't paint, you pretty much need the light on during the day. The kitchen is so much brighter now that we painted the cupboards, that I never put the light on during the day anymore. The bathroom is already looking like it will have the same effect. Yeah, lower electrical bills.
Next is Tristan's room which will go from dark navy blue to a creamy light yellow for the IKEA bug theme.

There are over a hundred baby spiders that just hatched on our dining room window. It's outside thank god, so it's pretty neat to watch. Wee baby spiders. Tristan is super excited about them and we watched them for a good portion of the day. Thank goodness we are such environmentalists that we never clean the windows to spoil such a natural habitat for spiders and other nasties. heh. yeah... that's the story. It's not that we are just lazy. Fine... we're lazy.

My plants came in the mail like a mail order bride. Mailing nature is just weird. I got two different species of blueberry bushes that I promptly planted along with the lily of the valley, periwinkle and a few strawberry seedlings. I ran out of garden space, so I had a lot of digging to do to find a home for the 6 hibiscus plants and the rest of the strawberry and lavendar. It's all in the ground now, although I'm not sure some of the strawberries and the periwinkle will survive. I planted the periwinkle wrong and only had a chance to correct one bunch of it. The leftover strawberries looked a little wilted since it took awhile for me to dig up a new garden for them. Oh well. Twenty five periwinkle plants are too much for that little garden, although I do hope the strawberries survive. Mmmm Ozark strawberries. I have some cantalope melon vine seeds, and some tomato seeds if anyone wants them. I just don't have the garden space for any more plants and I really hate cantalope.

I'm nesting like crazy. The back yard is really bothering me because everything is getting overgrown, and the grass is all tufted and lumpy. Big frickin' deal right? It is to the hormonal one who wants everything all perfect for the baby to come. All I see is work when I look outside. I also want to purge a lot of crap we have in this house. I'm going to get rid of all the video tapes that we didn't buy or never watch. They take up too much room and we NEVER watch them. I'm also getting rid of all Ben's software boxes. He's not too happy with that. I think it's a geek thing to have to keep the boxes. They take up so much room and they don't have the software in them anyway. All the software is in the software folder. They are just empty boxes. I'm also going to work on getting rid of a lot of old clothes and books, so I'll probably have a rummage sale. Hmmm. More work. Is that smart, or am I in a nesting fog. I could use the money from this junk to get cute baby stuff. Yeah. That's the ticket.

Yesterday was pretty busy. I got up and immediately started cleaning since Branden was coming over. He got here a little late, and the kids played nicely for about a half an hour before they got on each others nerves. I took them to South Beach and that calmed them down. They had a blast playing in the tide pools and trying to catch minnows. They found a bunch of hermit crabs and I found a dead starfish lying on the beach. I took it home like last time. Hopefully, Bob won't eat this one after it's been sitting out in the sun for days, and hopefully it won't stink as bad as the other one did. Man, dead starfish are stinky. Cute, but stinky.

The boys were all wet and full of sand, so I had Branden get into Ben's shirt and dried his clothes and threw Tristan in the tub. Then quickly fed them, before Buffy arrived. I was really rushing around like a chicken with my head cut off, when I noticed that Tristan was being too quiet. Being too quiet is usually a sign of trouble, but I found him in the bathroom trying to go potty. YAY!!! He's been immitating Branden like crazy, so I must have this kid over more. Tristan has been really hating the potty chair lately so this is major. He tried a couple of times, but it's obvious that he doesn't get it, and the few times he went months ago were just a fluke. We'll keep trying though. He told me that he wanted privacy and I caught him trying to fill the potty with toilet paper and some water that he put in a coffee cup. hehe. I don't know if he thinks pee is water and that's what is happening, or if he was trying to pull one over on me.

After I got him off the pot, we drove to Bellingham to buy Ben a laptop. Our laptop is ancient and Ben really needs one for a demo and for E3. I can't believe that we put this off so much. Ben is used to be a stickler about computer technology being updated, but the laptop always got put off. Tristan was obsessed with Best Buy and all the buttons. He really wanted a calculator. That's his newest obsession. He loves calculators. I guess Ben was the same way as a kid.

Next, I took Tristan to the Bellingham mall and he played with all the kids in the play area. He was being pretty good and was super sweet and gentle to the babies in there which made me feel better about giving birth soon. One little girl was coughing, so he rubbed her back for her. cute. We ate at Old Crunchy Buffet since I figured that it would be good to get Tristan some veggies rather than stopping at McDonald's again. He actually loved it and it only costs $.60 for him to eat there. The crowd was rather old and they all gave him lot's of attention. Actually, the crowd was a weird mixture of goth/punks and the elderly. The grazers came in later just as we were about to leave.

Finally, I drove to Diegos to get Ben tacos. I think I've written before about how Canadians don't do tacos. They nuke the lettuce and put weird things like mashed potatoes/turkey/gravy/cranberrry sauce together (steamroller's burritos for Thanksgiving). ;P Ben and I always have to make an actual run to the United States border to get good tacos. Diegos are the best. I didn't get back to the other United State (Point Roberts) until 7:30. Ben didn't get home until after midnight, but I got up with him and sat and talked in the hot tub a bit. I just put my feet in of course, since pregnant ladies aren't allowed in hot tubs. It was kind of nice, but I wish he didn't have to work such long hours. At least his producer is working long hours too. Makes me feel better to know that the boss is working so many hours that even he didn't feel safe about driving home. Still, nobody should be working such insane hours. Ben helped him out there since he lives nearby in White Rock.

Wow, I really do have a pointless blog. haha. sorry.

I'm so glad I started this play group on the point. Alexandra cancelled today because her mother is coming tomorrow and she has to clean. Yay! Human mothers who admit they have to rush to clean to impress someone. Anyway, I met with Brenda and her kids at the park across the border. It's weird. You get in the car, drive to the border check point, tell the guy that you have nothing to declare and then drive another block to the park. Point Roberts at it's best. hehe.

At the park, we saw JonJon from the playgroup that I hate on Fridays. His mom is actually one of the nice moms, but I really hadn't had a chance to talk to her much because she was talking to Bitchy McBitcherson last time. I said 'Hi' and we got to talking and it turns out that she lives on the Point too. Her name is Rosie and she's super nice. Brenda got along good with her too, so she might join our playgroup. She even knows Alexandra. Rosie also mentioned that the Lexy's father, who is also in our playgroup on Fridays, is also from the Point. His wife is expecting in July too.

Brenda might be moving soon. Kind of sucks because she's super cool and Cara and Tristan are finally getting along. He picked her a flower today. :) Other than that, things are still a bit stressful for me. I added some by worrying too much about a friend, and potentially pissing her off.

I'm super stressed about things including the baby. I have so much to do to prepare, and this crunch has been hell. Then it's 3 days at E3 for Ben with a toddler wondering where daddy went. E3 is great, so I'm not upset about that, but it's going to be exhausting for me here. I'm just worried about all the projects that need to be done. The nursery isn't ready. We haven't gone to Lamaze. The ceiling isn't repaired, so I'm worried that it will be a huge mess I'll have to deal with when the baby comes, or when I'm too big to be able to bend over. I'm 31 weeks already. This date is coming up fast.

I'm also nervous because my ob/gyn visit didn't go as well as normal. The baby is measuring small for gestational age. I'm measuring at 28.5 instead of 31. It's probably nothing. It sounds like this just happens sometimes, but I'm hormonal and stressed about other things, so this just magnifies all my baby worries. I have another ultrasound to see what's up. The baby is kicking, so it's probably nothing. Alexandra (Tygren's mom) said that both her babies were small for gestational age and Tygren is a kid genius.

I hope the ultrasound shows that everything is okay and we get to see the sex of the baby this time. That would help a lot to know if we need to get girl stuff or can kick back with all the stuff we still have from Tristan. It'll also help zero in on a name. The baby is kicking now. Makes me feel a little better to feel him/her in there. Grow little one.

Max Fisher

I put up a sign at the market a couple of weeks ago to try to start a playgroup. It was incredibly bold of me and out of character. I'm not one to start clubs and stuff. I'm no Max Fischer (kid from Rushmore). I was very nervous putting it up, and even more nervous when two moms called. It was the best thing I could have done though.

We met today at one of the lady's house. She has an uber genius kid named Tygren who says things like "We have company." She used to run a day care so she had tons of toys and a nice play area for the kids. Tristan got along with both Tygren and Cara (cutie). Cara and Tristan had a bit of a standing squirmish over a riding toy. They kept yelling at each other. Tristan called her a bad guy and Cara yelled at him to be nice. It was pretty humorous. I was told by manuals to let them duke it out as long as they weren't hurting themselves, but that still is tough. You don't want to look like the asshole who lets their kid get away with murder. At one point Cara was yelling NEMO!! and Tristan would yell back ROBOT!!! I don't know what that was about. By the end of the day Cara and Tristan didn't want to stop playing together so it was a success.

Both women have husbands who are or were software developers, so we clicked pretty well. We could talk about things other than kids, and it was like we were friends for awhile. These moms are so much better than the moms in my other play group. Those moms are a bunch of pod people, and I'm not looking forward to spending time with them tomorrow. :( I'll do it for Tristan though.

I took a nice long nap with Tristan this afternoon since I did so much this morning. I cleaned like mad, grocery shopped, and hauled in tons of groceries, did playgroup, hunted for worms, and cooked a healthy lunch. My belly and back were sore, so I knew I needed a rest. It was pretty nice. Tristan and I watched a spider eat a bug outside the window before we fell asleep. My explanation was weak - "Spiders eat bugs like we eat sandwiches."

In other news, I tried to buy healthier groceries today like nuts, dates, dried fruit, fresh veggies, Kashi, ect. Buying healthy groceries on the Point costs about 30 bucks more than usual. Kashi will put me in the poor house. Next time, I'll go to Canada. Their stuff is healthier in general. I couldn't even find whole grain bread at the market. There was whole wheat, and multi-grain so I just got the multi-grain. In general, we eat okay. I buy healthier snacks. We eat whole grain oat meal, the healthier bread, and always have a crapload of fresh fruit in the house. I shouldn't be so hard on myself if we eat crappy cereal sometimes, and if frozen pizza, canned veggies, and macaroni are a weekly occurance. Tristan won't eat veggies that aren't from a can. I'll keep trying though.