Writing and Symptoms.

I am SO excited. I just got invited to join an online writing critique group and I am psyched. I am inspired to write, but I have no idea if what I'm writing is any good and I am too scared to show it to my husband or mom or whoever. People that love me uncondtionally? No way. Total strangers on the internet? Why not?

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I had an OB appt this morning and they agreed to schedule my induction for the date I want (yay!) and despite my (possibly psychosomatic) worry that I am showing mild signs of preeclampsia, this midwife wasn't concerned in the slightest. I go back in 2 weeks, but that should be my last every 2 weeks appointment and then I should begin my once a week appointments.

My current symptoms/pregnancy status is thus:

• Lots more swelling. I had to officially take my rings off on Sunday and I had to abandon any shoes but my Birkenstocks as of Saturday. (they look FABulous with my church dresses, I gotta tell you!)
  
• A relapse in "morning sickness" that much like my early pregnancy comes at random, with no apparent triggers and is mostly just gagging and nausea, with occasional extremes into very small amounts of actual vomiting.
  
• Random dizzy spells that seemingly have nothing to do with standing/rising too fast. They come out of no where.
  
• Aches in my joints, especially after standing/walking too much/long or lying on one side for too long at night. I also cannot cross my legs comfortably for any length of time at all it seems and my natural position for sitting is much more spread out than I ever remember it being.
  
• Lower back pain, punctuated by a sore tail bone (though I mostly blame this on the nearly 90 minutes of sitting on the uncomfortable bleachers at my husband's softball game last week. This week a brought a slightly more comfortable chair).
  
• Weird pressure-like feelings in my abdomen that are indefinable as to whether they are bowel-related, baby moving, or can occasionally make me wonder if I'm suddenly overcome with hormonal urges.
  
• Random headaches.
• A somewhat constantly shifting belly. I can watch him move around in there about half of the day. It's sort of alien-esque sometimes. (Even my dad commented to me that my tummy looked lopsided the other day. Yup. That's your grandson.)

7 Quick Takes: It's the end of the week!

1. I am still recovering from my experience of working for 3 days this week. I know that it's July and I'm 8 months pregnant, but I'm mildly amused at myself, since I used to do this full-time, often 50 hours a week or more. And we were way busier then (though I also had help back then, too!). I am getting old!

2. My house is being attacked by flying insects. The construction at the back of house seems to have somehow allowed them access to the inside of the house, and I have spent way too much time slapping at house flies. Ugh. We're getting them under control with bug spray, etc. but it's been somewhat ridiculous.

3. Did I mention that we signed up for Netflix recently and are LOVING the streaming-through-the Wii option? Seriously, it has been a life-saver in the Fuss department (they have a great selection of kid-friendly movies and TV shows) and Daddy Fuss and I are enjoying some of the older movies and TV shows available (remember The Commish? Love that Tony Scally!) I think we'd continue it just for the streaming option, but we also get several disks in the mail per month, which is great, too! (since not everything is available streaming through the Wii).

4. I'm going to have to hurry up and choose the exterior colors for my house, since we need to paint the outside of our addition (something I hadn't considered) and I am having SUCH a time making that choice. Cannot believe how difficult it is to pick a nice-looking combination that both Daddy Fuss and I like. Plus, I am not in the outside-of-the-house mindset right now. I am focused on the inside and I am just not ready for this!

5. I really, really, really want a new battery for my laptop. I have all these fanciful thoughts of being able to, you know, MOVE my computer off my desk. Or take it to Panera some evening for a quiet hour or two of writing by myself without little kid TV shows entering my thoughts from the background.

6. My exhaustion this week has delayed my writing, though I have written a little bit and it's all completely new stuff. I have even named a character after one of my internet friends and it's interesting how this originally minor character is coming alive. I hadn't even planned this character into existence, but there she is, in my story. I'm amused.

7. I am so glad to have White Collar back. Neil Caffrey, I have missed you!

For more quick takes, click here.

Writin'

I've written a ton of stories in my life. I've written reports and short stories for fun and school. When I was younger (read: jr high) I had this whole series in the works called "The Fabulous 14" about FOURTEEN best friends. I was really into characters and character development. Before I had a few pages of the story written, I had put hours upon hours into character development and backstory for each of them. Needless to say, I eventually got bored and nothing came of it. I've since realized that that is way too many main characters. But I really like characters. I've always spent a lot of time figuring out my characters before I focus on the plot.

This time, however, I haven't really put a lot of effort into the background of my characters. And I'm missing a bunch of details. And I need to figure out some of those details before I get too much further. I need to know what my main heroine does for a living. I've not even remotely begun to describe her physical features, her family, etc. Mostly because I don't know yet. Somehow, I can see them, but not put it into words or something.

It's a very weird way for me to write. And maybe that's a good thing, since I never can seem to actually finish the things I write (or, in the case of very short stories, the plot is so incredibly boring that no one - including myself - would want to read it.)

I don't know if I should go back now and fill in some of the background or if I should just move forward with the story, hope the facts come to me, and fill in some details on my first round of edits or what. I guess I'll take it as it comes, though I kind of wish I knew a few more details about my main characters, at least.

So much to do!

Oh my goodness, I have a tooth ache. A BAD tooth ache. The kind where it radiates down into the other jaw as well and feels like half of teeth hurt in general. And of course, being pregnant, nobody wants to do anything for me - and I have 2 months left of pregnancy! And then at least a week (or more) until I can get enough milk stored up to take a few hours away from my newborn to get my teeth fixed... suddenly, those 2 months seem like a VERY long time instead of the panic I've been feeling about it being so short and having so much to do! I'm having trouble sleeping when I lay on the side with the sore tooth, it's giving me a headache and I feel kind of like I'm falling apart. I'm going a little crazy.

I've re-typed a little over 5000 words (with edits) and now I'm to the point where I think the original writing moved way too fast and got way too... much. So I need to move it in a different direction and that is, of course, slower going. Unfortunately, my husband and I are having guests over this evening for dinner and I have to spend more time cleaning the house today and getting ready for our company. I had let the house get a little more out of hand than I should have - so it's taking me more time than it should.

In addition, we finally found the Pull-ups that we were searching for (the Cool Alert version) and I tried starting Fuss in them yesterday. It doesn't seem to be working the way I had hoped, but she does seem to be more interested in letting me change her... so at there is something happening there! I'm trying not to get frustrated with her lack of progress in the potty training department. I'm not really in a hurry at this point, since I know she'll likely regress from that when the baby comes since it's so close now, but I feel like she COULD do it, or at least do better at it now, but she chooses not to.

We picked out the paint color for Fuss's new big girl room, and I'm very excited. We're discussing the options on the details - I want to paint some really large (larger than life) flowers on at least one section of her room to kind of give it a garden feel. And the main color scheme is green w/ pink, but her quilt has several colors in it, so I might need to add more than just pink colors for the flowers.

There is so much to do here at Casa Fuss. And I have 8 weeks from today until my (tentatively) scheduled induction date!

Writing, writing, writing

My usual random Wednesday is to be interrupted by my new obsession with writing again. I woke (early. very early.) on Tuesday with thoughts on the next section of a story I had written years ago and not touched since before Fuss was born and I'm getting back into it. I've been wanting to work on my writing for awhile now (Maggie inspired me back in November... what can I say? I'm a procrastinator...) and this is one of the first things that has gotten me truly excited, with a chunk of ideas. Unfortunately, while I have a hard copy of the original pages, I don't have the file any longer (I have no idea which computer it would be on, either - and we have all our old hard drives stored up at my dad's building right now, so it's not even as "simple" as plugging them in one by one and figuring out where it is.) so I have to retype 17 single-spaced pages, plus the new material. And I'm finding that I'm editing as I type, so it's slow-going. But it's fun. I'm excited. I can't wait to see how it unfolds.

I haven't decided how much I'm going to discuss here - Maggie didn't talk about any of hers, and that drove me nuts, as a faithful reader, but I can kind of see her point. We shall see. But I'm hoping to have a lot more of this developed before the baby arrives.

7 Quick Takes

1. I have to renew my driver's license this year (before the end of the summer and my birthday) and I just received a notice that I would have to do so in PERSON and supply a ton of documentation to prove I am who I say I am, instead of taking my current driver's license and just updating it, as they have done in the past. I am not looking forward to this, especially 7+ months pregnant and with a toddler in tow. (I'm hoping my SILs or a friend or something can watch her when I go, but I am afraid it may be more complicated than it needs to be, since I have a shouldn't-be-but-is complicated naming issue that has me with 2 different legal names, one letter apart.) I will be attempting to do this as soon as possible, so that if the complications arise, I have time before my license expires to get it sorted out.

2. The last time this issue came up, I had just gotten married and I was trying to get my married name put on my driver's license. I actually had a woman tell me that my marriage wasn't valid because my name was "misspelled" on my marriage license and that my husband would have to get his marriage annulled and we would need to get remarried. (That was not the case, thank goodness, but I was incredibly upset by it all at the time. It ended up being resolved fairly easily, but there was some emotional trauma at the time.

3. My recliner gets picked up this afternoon! I am psyched! I was able to get the recliner I wanted on sale (the first time it's been even remotely discounted since we started looking at it a several months ago and I am so happy about that!)

4. I am trying to put more thought into my decorating choices these days. I have the opportunity to rearrange and put a little bit of effort and money into my living room, our new bedroom, and Fuss's new big-girl room over the next few months. When we bought the house, I tried to do it all at once and I think I settled a for what I could do and afford at the time, instead of doing it bit by bit with a better idea of what I wanted as the end result. The new furniture (the couch and the recliner) are going a long way to fill in my current situation of mish-mashed furniture (I call the look hand-me-down-garage-sale-chic)

5. I began writing a story this week. I have a very short amount of words written up, based on a thought/dream I had earlier in the week. The problem is, I have no character names as of yet, and I have no ending in mind at all. And it's a little depressing. So I may scrap it and start something else. I think it could be really good, though, if I can pull it together, so I'm going to save what I've got and hopefully come back to it some day, if I don't come up with characters/an ending for it soon.

6. I've been battling headaches this week. Again. Ugh.

7. Fuss threw a fit yesterday when she was supposed to be napping and ended up with no nap at all. I put her to bed early and we skipped Mother/Daughter movie night and she went to bed at a reasonable time instead of later than usual which we do on a Thursday night so that Daddy Fuss can see her before bed on his Bible Study nights.

For more quick takes, click here.