for shiz up the spout

Well, it's happened. I'm pregnant, knocked up, prego, with child, expecting. Would you like to hear how it happened? (No, not how IT happened, but how we found out?)

We started "trying" in November (by the way, people asking me how long we had been trying or if anyone knew we were trying makes for uncomfortable conversation in my opinion. No way around it, we're talking about having unprotected sex. So no, we didn't tell our parents or random people that we were trying). Due to my obsessive nature regarding success in the trying-to-conceive game, I researched and read books for months leading up to November. The most helpful was Taking Charge of Your Fertility. Up until I read that, I was sadly ignorant about my own body and what it takes to get pregnant.

I also joined a message board, full of other obsessed women trying to get pregnant. Let me tell you, a message board can be an informative, albeit scary place to visit. There are so many people out there struggling to get pregnant and it's taken them YEARS. It's easy to get discouraged and I was sure it would take us several months to get pregnant, which is why I convinced Nick to start trying earlier than we planned because no one gets pregnant in the first month. (Snicker)

So, November came to an end and then all you can do is wait. The problem with being well-informed is you know that it takes at least 14 days after you ovulate to detect pregnancy with a home pregnancy test. Fourteen days is a long time, y'all. Two full weeks. And all that's running through my head is, "What would be scarier? If the test was negative or positive?" Sure, you want it to be positive, but if it is, then that means, holy shit I'm going to be a mother! If it's not, then you have to go through all of this next month, and maybe the month after that. The waiting is enough to make you go mad.

I could only stand to wait ten out of the fourteen days before I decided to test. Which is dumb, because that early the chances of a positive test are like thirty percent. But I bought a pack of 10 cheapo pregnancy tests online (another trick I learned from the message board). Shelling out for those digital tests is totally against my tight wad nature.

Day ten out of fourteen = negative. Damn.
Day eleven out of fourteen = negative. This time I expected it, but still. Damn.
Day twelve out of fourteen = negative. Expecting my period any day now. Depressed.
Day thirteen out of fourteen = uh. Is that a faint, FAINT line? I'm talking so faint, you might be imagining it out of desperation? I abandoned all cute ways to reveal to Nick I might be pregnant and shoved the test in his face at 6am that morning. He concluded it was a "maybe". Later, he told me he couldn't see anything, but didn't want to disappoint me. That day I bought a digital pregnancy test and an early response test to use the next day.
Day fourteen of fourteen = a big, fat, positive test! It's hard to argue with the word PREGNANT showing up on the stick covered in your urine.

Nick had me wait until he got home from work that morning to test so I peed in a cup and got in the shower. We dipped the early response test first and it was a very clear plus sign. But Nick wanted confirmation from the digital. So we dipped that one too and waited forever. There's a little hourglass on the display screen that's there for about, oh, eight hours. It was infuriating. We couldn't sit there and watch it so we held hands and talked about Nick's day (night) at work. All of a sudden out of the corner of my eye, I see it change and lo and behold...PREGNANT.

Disbelief, tears, joy.

We took dozens of pictures of the thing, included the one above which we framed several copies of and gave to his family for the big reveal on Christmas Eve.

The waiting to tell people was the hardest part. I'm learning that pregnancy in general is a big waiting game and I suppose it's teaching me patience for when I have an infant, then toddler, then school aged, then adolescent - Lord help me.

For right now, I feel mostly fine, but just...different. My body sends me clues that something is changing. It's pretty amazing. I've been sick a few times. I realize I have to eat a little something every few hours or the full-on nausea hits hard. I know pack a lunch AND a dinner for my long days at work. So far, though everything has been manageable.

I think it's a boy.

Movies of 2009

Well, 2009 was a better year for movies than 2008, that's for sure. Nothing beats 2007, though. Be sure to scroll down to the bottom for the awards!

Movies of 2009

Bride Wars
Paul Blart: Mall Cop
Taken
He's Just Not That Into You
Fanboys
Coraline 3D
Confessions of a Shopaholic
Sunshine Cleaning
Duplicity
I Love You, Man
Observe and Report
State of Play
The Soloist
Star Trek
Terminator Salvation
Night at the Museum: Battle of the Smithsonian
Land of the Lost
Away We Go
Public Enemies
Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince
(500) Days of Summer
Funny People
Julie and Julia
The Time Traveler's Wife
Extract
Post Grad
9
The September Issue
The Informant!
Food, Inc.
Zombieland
Whip It
The Invention of Lying
Good Hair
Where the Wild Things Are
Precious
The Men Who Stare at Goats
New Moon
The Blind Side
Everybody's Fine
Avatar in 3D
Up in the Air
Sherlock Holmes
Invictus
It's Complicated

TOTAL: 45 Movies. Not as many as in years past, but Nick and I are more selective of what we see in the "off season". We mainly see films that are out from May to August and October to December. Not much doing in the other months.

Way Exceeded Expectations:
Away We Go (see photo at the top of post) I'm not sure why this movie affected me so much. Maybe it's because when I saw it, I was in full-on baby mode and the thought of being pregnant without my parents there was something too horrifying to imagine. But I loved the dialogue, the music, the characters' chemistry with each other. I loved it all.

Star Trek. Never had an interest in the show, or any of the previous movies, but I really enjoyed it. This movie was everything a summer blockbuster should be.

Food, Inc. I thought it would be self-righteous and pro-organic, but it was actually interesting and provoking. Convinced us to (mostly) give up Wal-Mart and start shopping locally and in season.

Avatar in 3D. Visually stunning, better acting that I expected, and I am developing a major crush on the main guy: Sam Worthington. Mmmm...


Thought It Would Be Good But Sucked It Up Bigtime:
Sunshine Cleaning. Boring. Depressing. Pointless.

The Time Traveler's Wife. Didn't live up to the hype. I should have known better.

Everybody's Fine. Misleading movie trailer and poster. Again: boring, depressing, and pointless.


Guilty Pleasures:
Confessions of a Shopaholic. Hugh Dancy. Shopping montages. I'm sold.
Land of the Lost. No matter how stupid those Will Ferrell movies look, I usually end up seeing them and laughing my ass off.

I'm realizing as I get older that I don't enjoy movies from my favorite books. I usually get a thrill when I hear they're making a favorite book into a movie, but I'm inevitably disappointed. Take Harry Potter for example: I saw the sixth movie with my dad at midnight, like we usually do. And right after it was over, I thought it was so great and made plans to see it again.

But when I had time to think about it, I realized I didn't really like it at all. They are adding whole sections to the movie that aren't even close to the book and I can't understand why. The house-burning scene really set me off. What was the point of that? And the Harry-Ginny love story is forced and awkward. Why didn't they leave well enough alone? I think I love the characters so much, that I'm happy to watch them do anything on screen, but I mourn for the movie that COULD have been.

Does that make me sound like a huge weirdo? Movies are the closest thing we have to watching the characters we love in real life, and it burns when they don't get it right. Same thing with Time Traveler's Wife. I felt such a connection with Claire and Henry in the book, but in the movie, I couldn't care less about them. Now I'm thinking I want to stay away from books turned into movies. Unfortunately, that's EVERY movie these days.

Are there no new ideas left? Maybe just in Pixar movies. By the way, we finally saw UP and I can say that the 5 minute montage of the main character's life is truly a cinematic wonder. The rest of the movie is so-so, but those first few minutes remind you of how powerful movies are. In other words, we were bawling. But what else is new in the Fossey house?

2010 Goals

Or dare I say resolutions?

Let me just tell you what WON'T be on the list:

-Lose weight/Be Healthy. This one's been done to death and no one (okay, me) sticks to it anyway.

Onto the real goals:

-Work on being confident in who I am RIGHT now. Not to say I couldn't be healthier, but I need to work on trying to love myself as I am.

-Take more photos. Like way more. I need to learn how to use our fancy camera.

-Update blog more often. I know y'all miss me and I have things to say, dammit!

-Read more to improve myself as a wife, person, future mother, and therapist. There's no need to only read the Harry Potter books over and over (although they're damn good)

-Be better about telling my family and friends how I feel about them. In the past few years I have shied away from "mushy" scenes with my family. Sure I tell them I love them, but I am terrible with the specifics. I actually worry about myself on this one.

-Keep up with my scrapbooking/card making. I have invested hundreds (maybe we're into the thousands by now) of dollars on supplies and "pretty stuff". I want to make an album of 2010 just for me and Nick.

-Take a trip with my beloved husband this summer. To somewhere other than Oklahoma or Texas. We need to get outta town.

-Cook more meals at home. My goal is to make 3 dishes a week and we'll eat leftovers the rest of the time.


That's all I've got for now. I read a LOT of blogs and it seems like everyone is anti-new year's resolution. Which I can understand; why set yourself up to fail? But the beginning of a new year always brings a renewed energy. It always makes me feel like this is the year to start new things, to fix what's broken and to let go of what's gone.

I'm excited for 2010.