If you are going to put your back out and be temporarily disabled I strongly recommend doing so in a resting position, like curled in to a ball or in a sitting position if you have any say in the matter. That way while you are suffering and all gimped out you can at least sort of be comfortable.

Putting your back out and only being able to stand is a huge bummer, especially when pregnant! I don’t recommend it at all.

Those scenes on TV where people hear a pop and their back goes out are a lie. Nothing popped or pulled or hurt at the time of injury. I have no idea how or when my back went out, all I know is last night after some pregnancy related anxiety talk with Nathan it hurt to bend my right leg or to bend over, curl up, etc.

Normally being all bendy and flexible is cool but when you get pregnant and all your ligaments begin to relax it can become a slight pain in the butt, literally. Being extra bendy in addition to everything naturally relaxing and loosening just means displacement.

Looks like it is time to visit my chiropractor again for a hip/ tail bone adjustment… Question is can I make it through until Saturday in my standing positions? Man, I really hope some stretching and movement helps me to loosen up or even snap back in to place today.

Wiping toddler butt and doing all those mommy tasks sure wont be easy without the ability to bend over. I’ve already cleaned two poop logs off the floor and some pee mess, not feeling any better yet. I bet Everly will keep working on me though. LOL.

Today has already been a doozie and the day has just started. Yesterday we came home from running errands to find our AC not cooling the house. I noticed a 1/4 inch hole in our outside kitty’s tail while feeding him and this morning I woke with food poisoning so I don’t have much brain power or energy to post much.

Over the weekend I compiled all my various Google searches on things. Kind of shows a fun perspective on what we’ve been up to. I mean the search engines compile this to learn about us so it must be interesting right?

It’s best to prune big leaf hydrangeas after the blooms have faded, pruning before will only diminish the current season’s blooms. My hydrangeas are taking over the world right now.

Japanese beetles don’t like catnip, chives and garlic. Planting these companion plants with roses and other susceptible plants can help keep the beetles away. Also, a bucket of soapy water and some dead Japanese beetles is said to repel them. I guess the smell the decaying carcasses of the fellow buddies and this keeps them away. LOL.

The Bot Fly lives in a host’s skin and is removed like this. We suspect this is what is going on with our kitty’s tail as the wound is clean, pink, puss free and seemingly uninfected. Gonna give it a day or so of regular cleaning with peroxide to watch signs of healing.

Changing the message tone on a Blackberry 8820 is done via the profiles menu. Got the ring tone changed fine but needed to consult the internets for advice about how to change the message tone. Also, Google sync is a great app for putting those Google Calendar items on your Blackberry. Yay!

So there you have it, a look in to what was happening this weekend and some useless knowledge. What was the last thing or two you searched the internets for and what did you learn?

I’ve come across something that is a very good idea for the world of social media and the internet that I’ve not been able to find done elsewhere. I am kind of excited about it and have purchased several related domain names. Hint: it is calendar related.

I am searching high and low for web based, multi-user calendar scripts. I’d love to find one that works with wordpress (or is stand alone), one with sidebar functionality, I want calendar data stored via database like wordpress blog data is. The site will just be a calendar with user submitted data (possibly moderated) that serves as a resource for visitors.

The wheels are a turning and I can’t wait to unveil my creation and begin working to grow it. This could be very good stuff. Exciting!

Wheels are a turning for Miss Everly too. She got herself in to the kitchen chasing after me yesterday. It’s the first time she’s left the living room without one of us transporting her. It took her a while to wiggle-worm there but she was dead set on doing it.

When she succeeded I scooped her up and kissed her and was promptly horrified by the lint, dirt and loads of crap covering the front of her white onesie all thanks to the apparent condition of the floors, that I was sure were mostly clean.

I vacuum the darn carpet every day, now it looks like sweeping and moping the kitchen is another daily thing I’ll need to find the energy and time to squeeze in. Obviously she managed to pick up all that mess on her clothes after, oh-say one minute of crawling on the kitchen floor.

Speaking of dirty floors, remember the shower curtain lined cat room? You can go read about it in: The score- Cats: 1986358 – People: 1 (possibly) if you missed it.

Well I didn’t win. They shredded the shower curtain and pissed everywhere still. I just finished dealing with that madness. Mopped up the river of cat piss and ripped the shower curtain out of there while my bath was filling. After the bath I cleaned the covered cat box, did away with the uncovered one and got the cat room re-situated…

Don’t worry, it’s not all bad housekeeping and disgust around here though. We do have pretty spring bulbs in the garden that offset the nastiness.

The universe does not want us to have family photos taken! Once again we woke up early and got ourselves ready for photo day. Once we were good to go we woke Everly and got her all dolled up too. By 9:30am we were on our way downtown for our appointment.

It’s a cool (we are talking like 45 degrees), drizzly day so we were all bundled up and ready to get to the studio for the picture taking fun. Our car didn’t even break down on the way there this time…

Then we walk though the doors of Routt Photography and are greeted by… “Oh, didn’t you get our message?”

Immediately my mood changes and the lady at Routt Photography proceeds to go on about how George has been trying to reach us all morning but that he lost our cell number… How could we have gotten your message if you lost our number?

“…  he’s coming down with something and decided to cancel the appointment” and blah, blah, blah… My blood pressure sky rockets and I have to bite my tongue and let N do all the talking so I don’t flip out.

Then she says “I am sorry you had to go through all the trouble but we didn’t want to get your baby sick”. Well yeah we don’t want a sick photographer working with us either. The being sick part is not the issue it’s the lack of communication that is unacceptable.

Turns out they called N’s work to try having his coworkers get a message to us… Whatever! The point is we DIDN’T get any message and we DID go through lots of trouble to get ready and to get there for our appointment.

Plus, I emailed them like 4 weeks ago about our appointment so they could have emailed me at the very least to cancel… and nobody from N’s work passed on a message about the photographer’s call, nor should they be expected to. They aren’t his answering service and they do have their jobs to focus on.

Had we known the night before or at the very least this morning about the cancellation we would have been understanding, life happens. After all we did have to cancel our appointment with them two weeks ago, we did call and inform them though. But to have us come all the way to the studio all done up and ready to go just to be turned away is totally ridiculous, very rude and is not a good way to run a business.

So, our take 2 of family photos was a huge FAIL. Guess it is off to JCPenneys or something… We can’t wait much longer to have these photos done. It’s already been a month in a half of trying to have them done and failing :-/

Oh, Everly totally picked right up on my anger too! She got incredibly fussy and screamed the whole way home. She wasn’t happy about the photographers actions either!

Well, the plan for this morning was simple… (note the emphasized use of the word plan.)

The alarm was set for 7am because we had a photo session booked with a local photographer. N got a ride home from his coworker so E and I could rest and have an early bedtime in preparation.

2am-ish: E wakes up for one of her usual two early morning feeds. I lay on my side and nurse her until she dozes off again, then I move her back to the swing to continue sleeping.

5am-ish: E wakes again for her second feed of the early morning. This is the feed she probably shouldn’t need anymore but nothing we do seems to encourage her to sleep through this feeding time. Again I lay on my side and nurse her back to sleep.

This time when I go to move her back to the swing she wakes up and is unfortunately alert. I buckle her in and get her all set for more sleep. I return to bed, pull the covers up and she begins cooing and squealing. It’s her “I am ready to be awake now” sounds… two hours before we are supposed to be awake for the day.

I try to ignore the sounds and let her fall back asleep… Eventually her squeals turn to screams and then to full on crying. I get back up to give her some teething drops as she is now crying and fishing around in her mouth angrily. Once teething drops are administered she calms down a bit and I fall back asleep.

6am-ish: Blood curdling screams from E wake us up. N decides to try giving her some infant Tylenol to make her more comfortable, he also changes her diaper and then puts her back in the swing to sleep… She’s not happy about this.

We both lay listening to her cries turn to squeals and yelling. Her mouth must be feeling better but she’s still awake! We lay hoping she’ll doze back off now that the pain is better…

At about 7am N decides he’s gonna get up and take her down stairs so she can play and be awake. I get to sleep and am very thankful. Never getting more that 2-3 hours sleep at a time really does wear you down over time.

8 am: N wakes me up, E is down for a nap and it is time to start getting ready for the family photo shoot. I start straightening my hair and putting my makeup on. E wakes up while I am in the middle of getting ready so I go grab her and we hang out in the bathroom while N and I continue to get ourselves ready.

9:15 am: We walk out the door on our way to the photo shoot with outfits in hand. We are excited and ready to do this…

We are talking and listening to music as we drive, then all the sudden the radio dies… This past week the check engine lights have been coming on and turning off randomly. Yesterday on the way home the radio died on me too so I am joking about the messed up wiring in the car with N as we pull in to the left hand turn lane on the expressway…

Then the car just dies while we are waiting to turn left. N said he stalled the car but it wont start back up again! N gets out and pops the hood. Often times the battery cable jiggles loose and the car loses power. So he plays with the cables and we try the key…

The car wont start and we are stuck in a turn lane with traffic backing up behind us with our baby in the car, oh and our hazard lights don’t work thanks to the wiring issue I was joking about earlier. Someone could drive right in to the back of us if they aren’t paying attention!

N decides to push the car while I navigate and we successfully make it across oncoming traffic and off the road safely. Needless to say we missed our photo shoot session.

So, we had a tow truck come take our car to the shop and we worked on alternate transportation. The nice tow truck man wouldn’t leave until we found transportation. He was worried about us all dressed up with baby in tow hanging out in a vacant dirt lot so he waiting with us…

N unhooked the car seat and I wrestled the stroller out of the car. Once Everly was in the stroller with the diaper bag and we had the car seat out of the car N made calls to try finding us a rental car while the tow truck driver got our car all hooked up to his truck.

I was pretty bummed that we missed our photo shoot time. It took us a good 3 months to get the session booked and getting all three of us coordinated, dressed and ready for it wasn’t easy. Everly looked damn cute too.

So I thought I would snap a few of my own photos of her in place of the photo shoot session, at least for the time being.

N was on hold with rental car companies forever. We wanted a company that would come pick you up since the three of us and all our baby gear simply would not fit in the passenger seat of the tow truck. Having N go with the tow truck guy while leaving us behind was also not really a possibility. He called Enterprise (whose motto is “we’ll pick you up”) and was left on hold for over 15 minutes.

While N was holding he got another call, from our mortgage broker. This week we had our mortgage application submitted again for the house we are living in. Just today in the midst of the car issues we found out we are approved for a mortgage. That is the happy news for the day! Yay.

So after hearing the happy news and still being on hold with the rental car company N decided to call his work to see if someone could come rescue us. One of N’s nice coworkers came to pick us up and drop us off at home, she was a life saver!

Once we got home Everly had a massive fit related to mouth pain. After a half an our we got her medicated, fed and down for a nap. We both passed out too. Me on the couch and N on the living room floor. Man, today has been a doozie and it is still early.

So, we got a rental car now, our broken car is in the shop again, N is off to work and E and I are spending our day off in bed. We still need to have the family photos done and I am guessing the repair bill this week is going to wipe out our savings we put aside to get N’s car fixed and out here from Arizona. Tomorrow we’ll start tackling the mortgage process, that is if we aren’t killed by the stress and drama today…

:-/

N doesn’t have the best luck with bathroom ceramics. Back in the day (like before I was even blogging) we were living in this crappy 1 bedroom apartment.

We had only been dating for a few months and the apartment was mine. He lived with this creepo guy in his own apartment, the thing was N never actually stayed at his apartment. He didn’t like his creepy roommate and made an effort to never be home when the roommate was, you know so he wouldn’t have to be friends with the guy.

Anyway, N stayed at my place all the time. He was also working the graveyard shift for a well known NBC affiliate in Phoenix, back before he was on camera.

One night I was asleep, N had stayed over and was just waking up to begin getting ready for his overnight shift. Remember how I said the apartment was crappy? Well the toilet had been running nonstop and N was annoyed by this.

So he is in the bathroom with Andrew, our first cat, he loves shower and bath time. N decides that he will try his hand at fixing the running toilet issue, at like 1am.

I wake from my sleep to an aweful crashing sound and N remarks “awe f*c%”. I laid there for a moment to assess the situation but after hearing N’s remarks to himself I knew I should investigate.

I find him oozing blood in the bathroom and cursing the cat. Now I am not the best with bloody messes. Lots of blood has been known to make me pass out.

Once my brother was tromping though a junk pile, barefoot and ended up stepping on nails… four of them… two in each foot! I was babysitting at the time and he was on medication that made his blood thin.

He waddled inside to report his injuries and I was so frazzled I just stuck him in a tub full of water, to make the blood stop oozing. I then called an ambulance. I know not the brightest idea but common I was like 14.

Anyway, I am not good with tons of blood and N was loosing lots of it. I threw him a towel and told him to wrap his cut so the blood would stop spurting. I composed myself while he stopped the bleeding.

Apparently he took the toilet tank lid off and balanced it on his leg (so it was horizontal to the floor) while he was fiddling with the leaky toilet tank. The cat tried to jump on to the tank lid that was teeter tottering on N’s leg, it fell, broke and sliced N’s ankle on the way down.

It was a very deep cut, we are talking nerves and bone exposed. He was trying to say it was fine and that stitches weren’t needed. I argued with him based on the amount of blood lost and eventually had to inspect the damages.

I insisted he go to the hospital after spotting bone and nerve exposed. They stitched him up and he was very late to work. Later when the insurance claim came in the mail it indicated his “neck scalp” was repaired.?.?

Just this morning N was showering and getting ready for work when I hear another huge crash and shattering from the bathroom. I poke my head in to make sure he’s not dead on the floor or something. This time his foot is oozing blood, his neck scalp was spared by a few inches.

Turns out the ceramic towel bar just broke apart. He was yanking the towel off it too forcefully because the darn thing just broke apart and sliced him on the way down.

He’s not good with bathroom ceramics, at least his neck scalp didn’t need to be stitched back together this time though!

I know this is just one of the many dilemmas I’ll have to face as a parent. This one is significant because it’s the first one, you know a milestone. So humor me okay?

Babies vomit. Mine in particular loves to be at the breast 24/7 which inevitably leads to overeating, which in turn results in an overly full stomach and projectile vomiting. Awesome!

She’s shot vomit everywhere exactly 3 times. Once from her swing on to the floor. Once while cuddling me in bed, it went right down my shirt, arm and all over my side of the bed. Then this morning we were both back asleep after a long early morning feeding when she began to quietly fuss…

Half asleep I was verbally consoling her but had my back to her. She’ll calm down after hearing “you’re okay” or “shhhh, it’s okay”. So, I am consoling her and an explosion of vomit hits my back, my hair and once again soaks my side of them bed.

I shot up, wiped her face, arm and the bed. Made sure she wasn’t choking on vomit. Then I stood there looking like “someone killed my puppy” as N put it while I pondered my next move.

Did I want to lay some receiving blankets down over the wet vomit spot, wipe myself off and lay back down to sleep for a few more hours or was it shower time?

There was warm sour milk dripping from my mop of crazy hair, down my back and also from my left arm. Keep in mind she did this same thing to me the day before and I’ve becoming increasingly sensitive to the sent of sour milk on myself now.

After several seconds of deliberation I choose to shower off and wash the sour milk from my hair. If it hadn’t soaked my hair I so would have opted for sleeping some more but having baby vomit in my hair was just too much for me to ignore, this time.

So, I headed off to the shower at like 5am and thought to myself… “Pretty soon sour milk in the hair will be something I am used to living with, I am just not there YET!”

I am going to be honest, this home hunt thing has really made me a downer lately. I know how boring and blah the posts have been and I am trying to not go on and on about the same crap, it is just hard to swiftly change perspective when nothing is actually looking up or improving.

We looked a two other home possibilities today and both were basically a waste of time. One was decorated like and also smelled about as good as a nasty no-tell-motel room. You know the cheap indoor/ outdoor carpets in the most disgusting color and the wafting cigarette smoke/ someone died in this place smell?

Yep, that was the first place we looked at. We literally walked through the living room, in one bedroom and we’re ready to get out of there as fast as possible!

The next house was much more expensive and looked much newer and more promising based on the listing photos. Too bad it wreaked of cat piss/ spray at the entryway. The living room was bright and open but the kitchen was tiny with limited cabinets and bad decor. The bedrooms were closet sized and had all sorts of nasty stains on the carpet. Basically it was super tiny and had cosmetic issues. Not worth the $1175 they were asking per month.

So we headed back home feeling defeated. We are scheduled to look at a patio home tomorrow that we suspect we’ll be able to settle on. It’s not as big as we would like but we already know we like the floor plan as we’ve toured other homes on the street with the same floor plan. It is $100 less rent per month than we are paying now and the owner is offering a lease/ purchase option on it. We’ll see if it works out for us tomorrow…

Once we got home from our home touring I began working on a family member/ business owners site. If you look at the photos on his site you’ll see some very nice looking living areas (he remodels homes). Looking at those beautifully finished remodeling projects just makes me hate this house more and more!

Also, we just can’t believe how insanely different homes are here compared to those homes in Arizona that we are used to. Things are just so small and old here and most people don’t take care of their homes so they are also pretty much trashed. In Arizona you can find lots of new construction that is both affordable and also a good investment. Here nothing seems to be worth the asking price within our price range and houses are supposed to be cheaper here!

Oh, we enjoyed watching American Idol that we recorded last night. My old choir buddy Scott MacIntyre was on and he had a pretty good performance, yay! We’ll watch tonight’s recorded episode when N gets off work to see if Scott makes it on to the top 12, I hope he does!

N got the power back on in the bathroom, dining room and kitchen today. He had to completely unwire an outlet just to cut power to the garbage disposal. Cutting power to the disposal was the only way to turn the darn thing off. The disposal is so old it’s wired directly to an outlet as opposed to being plugged in to one and it has no reset switch.

So we’ve undone and taped off all the exposed wires from that outlet and have left the outlet plug disconnected. We have power in all three rooms now (just not in that one outlet). Yay for having power again. Now I can use the dishwasher, washer, dryer and bathroom lights!

Well that is pretty much all we have to report here. I am off to make the blog rounds now. I still have like 40 unread items in my reader and I have a feeling my commenters aren’t showing love because I’ve been such a slacker. Hopefully I can get caught up on blog reading today.

You know we always have crazy eventful times with animals around here right? I mean all of our pets come to us by some sort of fate. They dart in our front door or are starving in a hole by the sidewalk when we walk by. We are suckers, we just can’t walk by and leave them be dealt with by someone else. We feel all guilty and bad…

Anyway, I’ve been tweeting about the supposed critters living in our attic lately. You see we’ve been hearing all sorts of ruckus and we suspect some birds have found a way in there. While the noise is noticeable we’re not worried about animals being able to get in to the attic.

As long as it is a “crappy home” issue we aren’t worried about dealing with it. As far as we are concerned it is the landlords responsibility to fix holes in the attic to keep the wildlife out and if they don’t care about possible damage we don’t care either. It’s not our house! (We’re still waiting for word back about the pre approval too).

Unfortunately, on Saturday morning when N awoke to make the coffee he found our cats curiously sitting on the kitchen counter staring at the kitchen wall. He thought nothing of it and shooed the cats off the counter since counters and table tops are off limits to them.

While he is waiting for the coffee to brew he hears this scrambling and scraping coming from inside the wall, the cats hear it also and jump back up on the counter to see what the noise is all about. Apparently whatever was scurrying around in the attic of Friday has now found it’s way down in to the kitchen wall and was stuck there.

Luckily N is a handyman type of guy who will dive right in and figure it all out if need be… But before I got up I guess N and the cats sat there listening for the critter for a while before dismissing it and going about their daily business. Once I was awake and alerted to the situation I was very sad for the little thing stuck in the wall.

I don’t know about you but listening to a critter scramble and eventually starve to death over the course of several days is NOT my idea of a good time regardless of whether or not the critter is a pet. When N realized how big of a deal the trapped thing was for me he set out to do some investigations and problem solving.

Here is what he found scoping out the attic:

Here is how the rest of the critter situation played out:

And last but not least, here is the happy ending:

Tomorrow is our big ultrasound appointment and we are excited about it. We are dying to know if Tater Tot is a boy or girl and we know you are itching to know too…

Also, we called a local lender today and are waiting to hear if we are pre approved for a mortgage. We are either buying a home in the next few months or we’ll be hunting for a 2 year rental, either way we are preparing to get out of our current lease. Here is why:

Mold is natural everywhere that is why an outdoor control test is done. See all the black mold with a spot of white and a spot of yellow on the control test?

When you look at the two basement tests you can see much less black colored mold (that is naturally occurring in our area as shown by the test) and more yellow and white looking mold growth that is not present as much outdoors as proved by the control test. It looks to be a sign that we have some additional stuff growing and polluting the air within our home that isn’t abundantly present outdoors.

Seems to me like an obvious sign that the air quality within the home is worse than the air quality outside the home, what do you think?

Oh and it’s been raining for less than 24 hours and our basement is filling with water again. Took some more photos to document it all for our landlords.

Now we are having majorly high winds and rain. The power is flickering and turning on and off. I better get off the computer now. Keep your fingers crossed for us and subscribe to this blog so you’ll be the first to know when we share our Tater Tot news!