California!

Next Tuesday Eric and I are leaving for California! We'll be there for 5 days, plenty of time to soak up some sun, relax, maybe get a tan at the beach, and go to my friend Sigrid's wedding (we went to St. Kate's together). It promises to be a very good time. It will be the first time Eric will see the ocean, and I am really excited for that. I've been to both the Atlantic and Pacific Oceans with my family, so I know how amazing they are, and I'm really excited to share that with him. It will also be nice to see some friends from college, I haven't really seen any of them in a really long time so it will be great to catch up and just enjoy spending some time with them. We're going to the rehearsal dinner too which will give us a chance to hopefully catch up more with Sigrid and her fiance Dan, since I'm sure they will be very busy at the wedding and we might not get to spend as much time with them there. We don't have too many actual plans besides the beach, the rehearsal dinner, spending the day in San Marino before the dinner going to a museum and botanical gardens, and then the wedding, which means we'll be able to just relax as much as we want to. We were going to try to get on The Price is Right, but unfortunately they aren't filming again until the very end of July, so that's out. That's ok though, I wasn't really excited about standing in line for multiple hours waiting to get a real ticket. Overall, I'm really excited about this trip and looking forward to some actual vacation time. This summer has been very busy for both me and Eric, and it will be nice to enjoy a little bit of summer vacation!

Ouch

Tuesday morning I woke up and got my first pregnancy leg cramp. The cramp went away but I have had muscle pain since then, so I called the clinic and guess what they told me? Go to the emergency room, it could end up being a blood clot. So Eric and I spent an hour at the hospital tonight getting it checked out. More like, 10 minutes walking through the hospital to the emergency room, where they promptly sent us to labor and delivery to see the nurses there, who then had me lay down and monitored the baby's heart for almost 1/2 an hour before the midwife came in to check my leg. Which of course took about 2 minutes before she told me it definitely wasn't a blood clot, I was fine, it's just some residual muscle pain that should go away, and here are some things to do to avoid leg cramps and to deal with them when they happen again, which they most likely will since I'm pregnant and that's what happens when you're pregnant. Which is what I originally thought, but since I've never been pregnant before and the pain lasted so long and all the stuff I found online said to call if pain persists, so that's what I did. At least we were only there for an hour, it could have been much worse. To top it all off, we had to pay for parking, and they wouldn't take a credit card so we had to write a check. I'm not kidding. A parking ramp that doesn't take credit cards. At the very least, we were able to see the hospital where I will most likely be giving birth, and we got some information from the birth center, so one positive thing came out of our trip to the hospital tonight!

Goodbye, Holy Rosary

Tomorrow is my last day of work at Holy Rosary. I will no longer be a volunteer coordinator. In fact, I will no long be employed. This is the first time in 6 years that I won't have any kind of job. It is going to be so weird. I've been looking for full-time work but haven't had much luck with it yet, unfortunately. I was hoping to have a job lined up by the time the semester finishes in 2 weeks but I don't even have any interviews. It's scary. Add that to my sadness about leaving Holy Rosary where I've been for almost 2 years and made some good connections with people, and it's going to be a bit of a transition. I have enough to keep me busy, that isn't the issue, it's more of an issue of finding a new rhythm and not having any form of employment which will all take some getting used to. So if anyone knows of any parish jobs or other theology-related jobs, any leads would be helpful...

As I said, I will have plenty to fill my time this summer as I look for a new, hopefully full-time, position. I have my comprehensive exam at the beginning of August, so my summer will be spent reading through my book list and studying, studying, studying. I'm trying not to get too nervous for it yet since I still need to finish this semester and then I have a million books to read, and it's 3 months off still so there isn't really much I can do about it. It's hard not to think about it though because it is the final step in getting my Master's degree. It also happens 3 weeks before the baby is due (the written portion anyway, the oral portion is going to happen only a week or so before the baby is due) so there is quite a bit going on in my life during that part of the summer. Actually, there is a quite a lot going on for the whole summer, with weddings and family reunions and traveling to California (for a wedding, actually) and moving and getting ready for the baby and studying. It is going to be quite an eventful summer I'm sure. I hope I have time to focus on me a little and getting ready to be mom. Life will never be the same once the baby is here, and I want to make sure I am as prepared as possible, whatever that means. At the very least Eric and I want to make sure we have some time to ourselves this summer to just be married before we are married and parents.

With all that's going on in my life right now and coming up over the summer, it might be good for me not to have a job. At the same time, it is going to be weird and a little scary, and I would really like to find a job that uses my degree sooner rather than later. It's strange to think that when I go to work tomorrow I have to turn in my keys and clean out my office. I hardly even have any work to do because I've taken care of as much as I can, and since I'm leaving there isn't much I can start to work on. It's going to be an interesting and probably a sad day at work tomorrow. I hope I am moving on to something great, because Holy Rosary has been good to me and the teachers I've worked with are wonderful people. Goodbye, Holy Rosary. Thank you for everything I've learned while working there and for all of the support I've received.

More Baby (and School) Updates

We found out the sex of the baby on Monday at our ultrasound appointment, and it looks like it's going to be a girl! The picture was pretty clear and the technician was very confident, so we are fairly certain we are having a baby girl. That is the big news of the week. Next week we have a regular appointment and we'll probably go over some of the ultrasound pictures then too. The baby is doing well, everything has been pretty good. I've been really hungry most days but it's starting to get under control a little bit. I have a baby belly now, and am almost ready to wear maternity clothes. Most of my pants don't fit or are starting to be very tight. I'm excited to wear maternity clothes but apprehensive also, because it means I'm really getting big which is weird for me.

Apart from baby stuff, school is the biggest thing right now. I've been going non-stop and even though I work super hard all week I feel like I am falling behind. Only 4 more weeks of classes and then my Master's program is done, well, the classes anyway. The big comprehensive exam is at the end of the summer, and I have some paper issues I need to take care of once I finish writing them for my classes this semester. That's about everything worth writing about. No new job news even though I have a few applications out there. Just waiting to hear back, which is a little frustrating but we'll see how everything goes!

Baby Updates

Two quick updates because that is all I have the energy for tonight. First, Eric felt the baby move for the first time on Monday. We were laying in bed and the baby was moving a little so I asked if he wanted to try, not thinking he would actually be able to since I'm 20 weeks along and I think most times other people can't feel the baby until later, but he put his hand on my belly and we waited and then the baby got really active, and he felt it a bunch of times. It was really exciting to be able to share that together. The baby was really active that night too and kept moving around so we both got to feel it a lot! It is a really good bonding experience for us and to help us feel like we're actually going to be parents, which sometimes still seems unreal.

The second update is that on Monday we have our ultrasound and will find out the sex of the baby, if they can get a good picture that is! I think it would be ironic if the baby was all curled up and they couldn't see that area. Then we would just have to wait! It doesn't matter as much to me, but Eric is really excited about finding out.

So that's the baby news for this week! Next week I will be posting about our ultrasound appointment. I am really excited to see it the baby, it will look way more real this time than the first time when it was pretty much a blob. Now it will look like a real baby (sortof, I think) and that will be amazing. I am loving being pregnant but I can't believe sometimes that I am only halfway through the pregnancy. I feel like I have been pregnant for a long time. I'm just starting to show though, and that is really exciting too. I've only had to stop wearing one pair of jeans though, but more pants are starting to feel tighter every day. Bring on the maternity clothes!

Triduum

Fun fact: Holy Thursday is also called Maundy Thursday, so if you hear people use that term that is what they are referring to.

Tomorrow is the start of the Triduum, the holiest weekend of the entire Church year. It is also, besides Christmas Day, my personal favorite religious holiday that Catholics celebrate. Everyone is so prepared for it, that's really what it is about. Holy Thursday we commemorate the washing of the disciple's feet and the Last Supper, the institution of the Eucharist. We leave with the anticipation of the passion, which we celebrate when we come back on Good Friday. Venerating the cross used to make me nervous as a child, but today I appreciate the chance to show, with the rest of the faithful, my reverence for the cross of Christ. Everyone leaves on Friday in a state of quiet recollection. It is almost a sorrowful silence, yet there is the knowledge that with the Easter Vigil and Easter Sunday comes the resurrection. The Easter celebration is always really joyful of course which makes it that much better. Plus, I always celebrate the Triduum with my family which I really enjoy. Although sometimes the little kids can get a little crazy. So I'm really looking forward to the next few days, plenty of time with my family during a really amazing holy week. We always dye eggs after Good Friday service too and there are usually a ton of people, so it should be a crazy but hopefully meaningful weekend.

Happy Triduum and Easter to everyone!

The (Almost) Never Ending Scratch-Off

This is the story of my 13 scratch-offs.

A couple of months ago Eric and I bought a $1 scratch-off at a gas station. That ticket won $1. We didn't cash it in for a few weeks, but when we did we got another ticket. That one also won $1. So the next time we had a chance we got another ticket. This one won $2. We figured it still wasn't a big enough win to be worth getting the cash, so we got 2 more $1 scratch-offs. One lost, the other won another $2. We got another two $1 tickets, one of which won $6, the other of which won $12. So now we had $18. We were a little curious to see how far it could go, so we took $15 in cash and got another three $1 tickets. Two lost, one won $3. We got another three tickets, all of which lost this time. So, with our $1 scratch-off, we won another $12 worth of scratch-offs and $15 in cash. This was all over a two-month period of time, just getting new tickets with the old ones whenever we remembered. I have never been this lucky with scratch-offs in my life, and I probably never will be again.