Luke...I am your, Pelvis???

Exhibit A

So, what happens when you take Mr. Jones to the childbirth prep class? If we look at Exhibit A we will see - He apparently thinks that the model baby, when positioned in the pelvis correctly, looks like Darth Vader. (Obviously a little more Space Balls-y with the size of that pelvis hat!). But yes, he can find fun in anything apparently. Which is great of course. Sitting in a classroom from 9am to 5pm to learn how to push a person out of your vagina can take it's toll on anyone.

I am glad we took the class, but it was a little ridiculous. They covered all bases, every type of delivery, drug, process etc whether you were choosing that route or not. I think they should have sub-classes to select from the childbirth prep class roster. This would save time and money for those of us who are expecting, and already have an idea of how they want things to go. I have listed a few of the sub-classes below:

1) Childbirth prep 1A : Natural Drug Free Childbirth

Class description: For those who feel like being over achievers or "heroes" by boasting they have delivered their baby naturally and drug free. Class will include all of the excruciating videos your feeble mind can handle. Bring bucket for vomiting, tissues for crying, and possibly medication for migraines. Group exercises will include forming a circle and repeatedly kicking eachother in the pelvis and punching each other in the face to get some pain management practices in before it is too late. There will also be a post-birth meet up opportunity to brag in general about how you almost died from pain. Several times.

2) Childbirth prep 2A : Epidural Please! Childbirth

Class description: For mothers who understand that it is no longer the year 1835, and that there are pain management options readily available for the taking. Class may include a video of a woman attempting drug free childbirth, screaming and crying for 10+ hours, and inevitably requesting the epidural resulting in the ability to relax and deliver her baby. Bring pillows and snacks. This class will only last 3 hours. You are welcome.

This type of class roster would have been much more effective for me, considering I have absolutely no intentions of delivering this baby, or any baby, without an epidural. Ever.

---this post in no way is saying that Mr. Jones and I think that delivering the baby is a joke, if it isn't obvious at this stage in my blog - comedy is a mechanism I use to stomp out fear. Getting Adeline here is slightly terrifying.---

side note: they will be inducing me a few weeks early because of the gestational diabetes, in which an epidural is strongly recommended anyways-so there. If you are an expecting mother right now and are offended because you want to do this the hard way, then I apologize. I think.

Morning scene

It was Friday morning, and I was standing in the kitchen sort of blankly staring. I opened the fridge, and the blank stare washed over my face, and again as I opened the pantry. I finally turned my back to Brett and tears welled up in my eyes.

I wasn't really crying, it was more of a -I am frustrated, confused, and just plain sad kind of tearing up - Brett understood, and just gave me a hug.

Was I mad because someone ate my cheerios? No, I was mad because just a day earlier I got a call from my doctor's office. Apparently I have developed Gestational Diabetes. And try as I may, I couldn't get the blood test results to show in my favor this week. They went on to say that they were referring me to the hospital to meet with a specialist to get my diet "under control".

Under control? In case anyone hasn't noticed from a previous post - There is one thing that can be said about our household. WE DON'T EAT JUNK. There is no way that my husband would have lost 70+ lbs with little debbies and pints of ice cream hanging all willy nilly around the house. He wanted to lose weight, I wanted to grow a healthy baby. So we were doing that. Successfully.

I guess the frustration lies here: with the 1,000,000,000 pregnant people I am acquainted with I can understand how some may develop G.D. (love the acronym by the way) They don't care what they eat. They use pregnancy as an excuse to eat whatever the hell they want. Trays of baked goodies, ice creams galore, restaurants and take out every other meal. Weight gain that is staggering. But is G.D. the case with any of them? Nope, they get to pig out worry free. And in all honesty I won't lie to myself, I have gained - at 30 weeks in this pregnancy I am up, up 17 lbs.

In passing conversation with people over the weekend I have noticed something though. I even mention that I have G.D. and they look at me like I am already the worst mother in the world. I can' t really put my finger on how that makes me feel, aside from terrible. And when I think about the diet plan that awaits me with this weeks trip to the hospital, I cringe. Diet plan? I am sure there are a few snacks that I need to swap out or who knows what, but I just don't get it.

I guess I will just do even better than I already was and show this G.D. who the bitch in charge is. Right?

a sample...blech!

Yea so I won't get totally graphic - but I always have the silliest time with the whole "we need you to leave a sample please" while at the doctor's office for all this baby stuff. There is always the cup selection, the marker selection (sometimes there are colors to choose from!), what all do I want to write on the cup, what all do they want me to write on the cup, what if I do this all wrong, etc.

Do I sign my name all pretty on the cup? It generally looks like I am autographing a piece of freakin' artwork. Then there is that damn two way metal door shelf thing you put the pee cup in. I always feel like it is a game, and that if I don't have the cup autographed, filled and ready in time then I will open that tiny metal door to see someone waiting on the other side! Uh creepy...

I always wonder what some of the funniest (or most embarrassing) pee cup stories are out there. Do you have one? hmmmmmm?

Email Forwarding

I am sure that there are many of you out there on the interwebs that know of someone who is afraid of the "magic machine" aka the computer. They haven't, and don't plan to, catch up with the times. Ever.

For me? Well, I have several of those in my life, but my poor dad is the basis for this blog post. He is not like a lot of other magic machine phobes out there - he is totally cool with buying stuff online with his credit card, and entering in somewhat personal information when necessary...He just makes me do it.

I would say that 10 of my hours a week are spent "using that thing" to look stuff up - old cars - tools - car parts - his account balance - the weather report (10 day weather reports are his favorite). I have set up emails and accounts for him and just use passwords I am familiar with because I am the only one who checks them.

To lessen my burden I bought my parents a desktop a year and a half ago for their anniversary. Normally wouldn't have splurged to get them a machine that was nicer than the one I had - hell we didn't even have a home pc at the time, but I thought it was well worth them trying to hack running their own "online errands" as I like to call them now. The family elected my 18yr old niece to school them on the interwebs in her free time. I assume a lot of the lessons fell to the wayside and the only thing either of my parents retained from those lessons was this: www.Facebook.com -> log in -> semi navigate ->?the end?

*insert a mental image of me hitting my head against the wall here*

Now that my dad is becoming more active in communicating with his old war buddies my job has gotten increasingly more difficult. The influx of howdy do emails is astounding. When I set his email account up way back when I had it forwarded to my personal email account. Because? In the beginning he may have gotten an email a month, nothing that warranted a daily log in on my part. I would print it off and he could read it and toss it in the trash or whatever. He gets tons now, and I religiously print the long winded things unless they are old dirty man joke fwds...those typically get trashed. creepers.

Dad has seen me log into his gmail account, he knows what the format looks like. He knows (I think) that my gmail account looks shockingly similar.

For some ungodly reason dad does not understand how email forwarding works. He constantly comes into my office and looks over my shoulder and asks "Do I have any emails?" I usually reply "Nope not today dad" and yet he still stares at the screen, and I can only assume he wants to watch me log out of my email and immediately into his to show him that no he does not have a new email. Alas - thanks to gmail and email forwarding those are timely and unnecessary steps so I don't do them. I just go about my work. Then as he continues to stand there he usually will start to read all of my available subject lines (maybe he doesn't hear me? trust me? who knows).

Sometimes I can hear him read off my subject lines. And now that I am 6 months pregnant boy does he get a mouth full sometimes! As he reads off my whattoexpect.com weekly emails

"Breastfeeding vs. Bottlefeeding... Oh..." - yea dad, you wanna read that? I could use your advice! hahahahah Silly dad.

Some other good subject lines I know he has read: You and Your Hormones . Swelling and Edema. Hemorrhoid Relief (personal fave) lol.

He really should just trust me shouldn't he?

Proud of my Baby's Daddy

Ya ya so the title suggests I am on the ghetto side. But really I am super freakin' impressed and proud of Mr. Jones. He always said that he would quit being foolish with his weight and health when we got pregnant. He wanted to be the healthiest dad possible for a few reasons, but mainly to set a good example for our kiddo, and to have the energy to keep up with the little dear.

We found out in May that we did in fact have a bun in the oven, and boom the race was on. I didn't know how serious he was, or what his goal weight would be. But he was damn determined to lose what he could.

He went from 285 to 216. UhMAZing. Those size 44 waist pants? Try a 34 now. He feels great, he looks great, and couldn't be happier.

I was going to make something short and sweet about this to post on my facebook page. Like a "my husband rocks because..." type post. I got to reading around the junked up mess that is my news feed and saw that something like that would not do him justice. I think that the people who constantly post how awesome their husbands/ boyfriends/ etc are... is slightly comical. Do you need the constant affirmation that your man is awesome because he put the toilet seat lid down? He brought you a cookie/ fed you dinner/ did your dishes/ gave up his man card and went shopping with you? I guess I should be happy -er for how "blessed" everyone is (I see that word about 10,000 times a day on the news feed , oh and this one "I love my life" over and over and over. Don't get me wrong, I am pretty happy with my circle of peeps, but good god I don't have to inform 500+ people all damn day about how much better my life is than theirs. Maybe a facebook hiatus is in my near future. Or a spree to hide people. Hmmm...

Got side tracked sorry - aside from all that I am blessed this and that bullshit. All I have to say is this - Dude, my man lost like a whole person in weight just so he could be the best daddy he could be to help me and the little one out (and she isn't even here yet). And yours brought you a pumpkin to carve? ha. ha. ha. If Brett has already put in this much effort I can't imagine what an awesome dad he is going to be.

Trying to be Diplomatic - But it hurts!!!

As you can tell from an earlier post. I am now the director of PGI. So far so good I believe. We are all still enjoying ourselves, and getting a few investigations down for the books. I want my main objective as director to be to motivate and facilitate a lot of the ideas we have all been pushing for for years. We are a close knit crew, and we all want the same things so it is a breeze working with everyone.

But- there is something else I get to do. I am the contact for the southeast that fans from all over the country who watch Ghost Lab can find via the Everyday Paranormal website. Which is fine and cool. I appreciate the support for their show - and it is neat that they want to reach out to me.

BUT. Of course there is a but right? I can't for the life of me figure out why 99.9% of the emails that come in arrive in my inbox in such sad shape. Sad shape? Yes, sad shape.

Maybe it is just because I am used to emailing people for work related things, but even with new acquaintances I always ALWAYS proofread my emails before clicking the send button. It is polite and courteous to send a nicely constructed note to someone - especially if you have never met them before.

Alas, some of the emails that come into my inbox are so jumbled up and incoherent that I don't even know what they are asking of me half the time. The spelling and grammatical errors could make Agadore Spartacus cringe (who is my 8 lb Maltese if anyone didn't know). And if they are accompanied by an attachment, I know without a doubt that when my server finally finishes downloading the 2,000,000,000 KB size image that I could use for a roadside billboard that it will almost always be of dust orbs. Almost always. I then get to explain (as scientifically as possible) that they have snapped a shot of dust, water droplets, or some other airborne particle. And then I get to explain that it might not be a dead woman in a white dress after all.

But then what? Then I am the bitch that told them their ghost photo wasn't real. And that part sucks, but I guess it is in the job description. I hate to be that bad guy and I really don't want to complain - if anything emails like these motivate me to educate others about our field. Unfortunately it looks like we might have our hands full.

Fun facts for Adeline

The other day Mr. Jones and I were riding around in his old Ford truck listening to Alan Jackson's Home which reminded me of our first place. We had turned one of dad's barn/garages into our first home. Call that weird, call that white trash (don't worry my MIL did too), but it was awesome - and we made it work. Now we have a REAL house for the baby. But I think she will get a kick out of the fact that her mommy and daddy's first house was a barn.

So I was trying to think of a list of other weird, wacky, and funny things she might like to know at some point.

-Maybe when she get's older and asks how we met, or how the first dates went I can tell her that after I met daddy - and attempted for 2 months to be asked out on a date I was about to give up because it was becoming obvious that he was in fact...gay. He dressed nicely, he talked oddly, he worked in a tanning salon. And that is all I have to say about that!

-We moved into "the barn" together after dating for only 2 months. Because daddy got kicked out and mommy didn't want to see him go back to Canada.

-We got engaged the night that we went to see Horton Hears a Who - and then went to Ihop for whocakes and other Seuss inspired goodies. Thus the reason her first room is Dr. Seuss themed.

-We thought grandpa Jones was going to have a heart attack in the restaurant when we told him we were having a baby. We got to tell great grandma that we were having her first great grandbaby on her 90th birthday.

-For the first few months of pregnancy, we (along with most of the family) swore that we were having a boy. Boy were we wrong.

Of course there are tons of other tid bits she will learn about us but for now that list will do.