Happy things

Even though I've had a cold for roughly three weeks (everyone from Kevin to my coworkers is telling me to stop with my coughing already), I'm feeling ok, and I've had a great last few days.
On Saturday I went up to Salt Lake City with the YW in our ward, and we watched the YW general meeting in the conference center. It was lovely, and I love that the church is making such a great emphasis on virtue. Who else does? Um... just about no one.
But the reason that I'm bringing this up is that when I was getting ready to go, I decided to wear my black skirt and bright pink shirt. I needed to bring a couple things (money, keys, a snack), and so I needed to pack a purse. I couldn't use the bag I usually take to work b/c I spilled cottage cheese all over it. Most of my other bags are in a similar state. So I went to digging through my old purses. In my tiny green bag I decided to use, I found an old Joann's returned merchandise card, and today I called to find out it has thirteen bucks on it! I'm heading there straight after work!
In other good news, Kevin had this mock trial last night at the courthouse in Salt Lake City. He and a partner were the prosecutors, and he'd been practicing his closing statement several times in the shower and in the car. Hee hee. But anyway... He'd been working really hard on it, as he should have been, since it's his final for a class. At the trial last night, his side did a stellar job. When the decision went to the jury, I decided I'd go get a drink while they deliberated. But they were already at a decision by the time I stood up. Yup, there was a unanimous decision to convict the guy! Yay! Go Kevin! You put those imaginary bad guys (who have imaginary mafia ties, btw) behind bars!
Ok, so the jury didn't hardly deliberate at all because they were tired and a bit lazy. There WERE some areas that could have been discussed as reasonable doubts. I even had a few doubts. But they believed Kevin's closing statement, which was (if I do say so) pretty awesome, and they just threw the guy in jail.
That's why it helps to have a good lawyer, I guess.

Hugely exciting weeks

Well, I haven't written much these last few weeks. This is because I've had SUCH AN EXCITING TIME!! I get up in the morning and go to work. At work I grade kids' packets and give them pointers on their essays. Then I go home and sleep. Sometimes I'll wake up for dinner and then watch TV episodes online, but then I go to sleep again. Sometimes I feel terrible in the morning and have no voice and nothing but scratchiness and phlegm in my throat, so I don't go to work and the sleeping and TV-watching continues all throughout the day. It is all SO EXCITING!
Seriously, I thought this cold would last 2-3 days. This is turning into 2-3 weeks. I'm feeling much better this week, but it's still lingering. And I still feel crappy and worn out after a whole day of sitting at my desk at work. I seriously don't understand how that could wear me out. But neither do I understand how someone can kick me in the stomach from the inside. But it seems to happen.
I'm going to pretend my life is exciting.
Last week I got to dig out some of my summer clothes (I have the cutest summer maternity clothes!) and wear them without a jacket to work. This week I got to dig out my down coat and wear IT to work. Spring is so unpredictable!
I planted peas, carrots, beets, lettuce, and onions in my garden. I'm hoping to be able to pick and use some of them before I move in June. If that's the case, they'd better hurry up and produce/sprout. I had been pretty dutiful about watering them every day-- or at least every other day. Some days that would be all I'd do the whole day: waddle outside in my sweats with the watering can, then waddle back inside and collapse on the couch. And then it's been rainy or snowy often enough that on the days I don't water, I don't have to worry about the plantlings shriveling up. I worry, but I always find that my worries are unfounded. It might be (have been) warm, but it is not hot yet.
I'm starting up classes again. I'd been really hurting for motivation in my education classes, and I took a break starting in December. That was also when I was feeling really really crappy and sick, so it was a good time for a break. Now I'm realizing that if I don't get started again, I may have a child before I finish with my classes, and I have a feeling that would take its toll on my motivation. Also, for many of my classes I have to do classroom observations or things like that, and it's hard to do those in the summer when many classes are... out for the summer. So I'm finishing my two final classes before student teaching. Then I'll take a break until January. Yay!
So if all goes as planned, next summer I'll have a child AND a Master's degree. That makes me smarter than my dad! :D It'll be great!

Second Place: the first loser

Well, one thing I'm learning this week (and last week) is that my immune system has higher priorities than keeping MY body healthy. I drink orange juice like it is dew from heaven, I take naps, I take days off from work to sleep, and still this blasted cold will not go away!
At first (like the first 2 days) it was a light cold with a faintly sore throat and a stuffy nose. I can handle that. I drank my OJ, kept my cool, and it SHOULDN'T have gotten any worse. I'm taking my little vitamins, I do nothing but sit at my desk at work. Ugh!!!
It's been over a week, and I'm still in the depths of this infernal cold. The weather has been PERFECT since last Friday, and I had big plans for working in the yard, cleaning up the place so the violets and daffodils have a stage to grace. However, this whole week I've spent one single hour in the yard-- and the next day I had to stay home and sleep it off.
Anyway, enough whining.
About my cold.
So at work the other day, as I often do, I got this essay that contained... well... many factual errors. When I brought this up, I told my dear student that she was allowed to use her book for more information. "Well, it didn't talk about this in the book." Okay... well, it was open sources for the essay. She could search the internet for information if she needed it. "Yes, but everything on the internet is just made up anyway. People can post whatever they want and change the articles on wikipedia, so you can't trust anything you read on the internet."
Grrr....
While it is true that if you go to "yahoo answers," you will only get the random opinions from the people whose hobby it is to answer questions on "yahoo answers." Those are not reputable sources. You can also search and find an essay written on the EXACT topic you were looking for!!! It was also written by a high school student who didn't know what they were doing either!!!
Or you can use wikipedia, double-check their sources through their footnotes, and then cite your sources. Or you could go to a reputable site, one whose author is a substantial person, university, or otherwise scholarly organization. And chances are, if you find similar information in several of these places, it is because it is true.
Or you can just highlight the entire article and slap your name on it. But don't get me started on that one!

I've repented

My uncultured swine period is behind me as I set out on this new era of my life now that I've actually read Little Women all the way through. It is long!
Here are my thoughts on the book:
In the movie, it seems like the main character is Jo, and then Laurie and Amy tie for second place. But in the book, it seems that the focus is much more divided between all the March girls. At least for the first half of the book, Jo is not any more a main character than any of the other March women. So that was different.
I still think Jo and Laurie would have been happy together. Maybe Laurie is too much of a society guy and Jo a little too clueless/apathetic about style, but I think they had the kind of friendship that is important in a marriage. But then again, it does also work to have Laurie and the grown-up Amy get together. Amy's not quite as whiny as when she was a small girl (ahem, like other girls I know), and I guess it works. But I'm still not that excited about Jo marrying the professor-- who is old! I never realized in the movie, but he is actually about twice her age! I'm glad they both have the same goals in life and can share the dream of running a school together. But I can't imagine them having as much fun together as Jo and Laurie would have.
So I guess it does make a little more sense now that I've read the book. If I were doing one of those mega book projects like I was supposed to do in Mrs. Moss's AP English class senior year (I may have failed that semester... but who's keeping score?), I would have kept a section of my little notebook for all the deep thoughts by Marmee. She has a sweet, angelic presence throughout the whole book, and I imagine that someday my children will gather round my skirts to hear such wisdom from my lips.
Ha ha ha ha ha ha!!!
No, but really, I enjoyed reading her wisdom.

Pictures to make up for my lack of words

Lately I've been trying to finish up some projects and also get around to doing some projects I've been meaning to start.

Above are my beautiful yellow kitchen curtains. I have another matching set on the window above the sink, but for several reasons, I won't be including a picture of that set. They are, however, exactly the same. Except that they are currently in my back room waiting to be ironed now that Howie has done me the favor of lifting them off the wall and onto the pile of dirty dishes below. But that's another story.
My grandma has light yellow curtains in her kitchen, and I love how they look in the morning, making even the faintest rays of light become a homey, welcoming glow. So I made these yellow curtains a while back. I got the fabric from Walmart on its dollar table, and that should have been my first sign. They were yellow, but not for long. They quickly faded to a pathetic shade of off-white, and they've been blandly hanging in my kitchen for some time.
Well, this week, I bought some dye and colored them SUNFLOWER yellow. It's a bit bright, but I have no doubt they will fade.


And for Terri, this is a picture of the blue and green quilt I finished just in time to learn I was having a baby girl. And by "finished" I mean "mostly finished," as the binding still has some work to do. But it is finished to my photo standard, which means it can go on the blog.
I got a Better Homes and Gardens magazine that has like 100 "easy" quilt patterns. I mixed and matched to come up with a quilt top that would match the awesome backing I'd bought (see below). This quilt allowed me to try several patterns, and now I have an idea of some that I might try in the future, as well as some that I'm not terribly impressed with. I really like the large square in the middle, the one with a turquoise square with turquoise arrows pointing to it. That's called "Mother's Favorite." It may be my new favorite. The square below and to the left of that one, with the yellowish background and four little flower doo-dads is another favorite. It's called "Goose Tracks." I wasn't terribly impressed with it at the beginning, as it was one of the hardest squares to piece, but once I finished it and quilted it, I really came to like the little goose track design it makes. I also really like the Bachelor's Buttons, which are the tiny flower squares you probably can't see, but there are two of them. They're only 3" by 3", and I thought they were a waste of time (I could have just put a square or two triangles), but they also tured out to be some of my favorites.


And this is the backing, Van Gogh's Starry Starry Night with the cow jumping over the moon. It's just classy and irreverent enough to make me giggle.
And that's why I was saying it's a super busy quilt. I'll learn to restrain myself when choosing fabrics in the future. Maybe I'll only have two or three busy patterns-- instead of six!


And this is a 6-month outfit for our baby girl. I made it yesterday. Kevin was a bit hesitant that I'd be making a shirt and pants for our baby girl, but it's a bit more frilly than he'd imagined (see! little bows on the pant legs!). Now, I know red and black are not your traditional baby colors, but I'm hoping.... something. I guess I'm just not really caring. I wear black, and Kevin looks good in red. I'm hoping our baby will look sweet in this outfit.
After I made it, Kevin mentioned something about her throwing up all over it, and it finally dawned on me why people make baby clothes in such light pastel colors: you wash them enough that everything becomes pastel anyway. Oh well....

So that's what I've been up to lately. I'm getting kind of big to be using my sewing machine on the coffee table. It makes my back hurt, and I can't reach it as well as I used to could. Perhaps I'll move my sewing table to the front room pretty soon. We'll see....

A week and a half?

Hmm... I've gotten in the habit of just clicking onto my blog to check if anyone has updated their blogs. And for a week and a half, I haven't written ANYTHING.
This is because I'm pretty boring.
I have a cold. It's not super bad, but it completely wears me out. I sleep about 10 hours during the night, and once I hit about noon, I'm so tired again I want to lay my head down on my desk and sleep. Unfortunately, the afternoon is when it starts getting busy at work. All these kids come up to me and want me to grade their essays and grade their work, and my brain is almost shut off. I can still grade for technical mistakes and clarity, but once I start grading for content and logic, it's beyond me. I started telling this girl that the content of her essay should reflect the content of her introduction (which is true), and then as I started expounding on that, I realized that her paper did in fact reflect the introduction. Oh well. I still didn't give her a better grade. I am a horrible, mean teacher. Whatever, it wasn't a great paper.
And in other news, I am finally reading Little Women. It's a cute little book, and I'm enjoying it a lot. I'm hoping that I'll like it better than the movie, which left me upset about the ending. But everyone I talked to that read the book said that the ending makes much more sense in the book than the movie. I hope so. I mean, there's gotta be a good reason she chose the dowdy old professor over Christian Bale. In the movie, it's the dumbest choice in the world!
And that is yet another reason why books needn't always be made into movies.

Ultrasound

I always thought the ultrasound machine made noises, like some weird sucking kind of "wa wa wa" sound. But apparently it is truly ultrasonic. Either that or they just stick the wand thingie on your belly and then play a recorded tape of a past ultrasound picture.
Yesterday I got an ultrasound, and it looked... pretty much the same as any other ultrasound picture I've ever seen. It was a bunch of black and lighter areas, and the doctor would point out stuff and I still wouldn't be able to see it. Actually, we got a good look at her arm, plus a good cross section of the important bits. Her arm was up over her head, which made me laugh, because that's usually how I sleep, all sprawled out and flailing. Her head is small in proportion with her abdomen, which is weird seeing as how Kevin and I both have freakishly large heads. But hey, I say she can wait until she is born to grow her freakishly large head, and that would be FINE with me.
I'm trying to get in the habit of saying "she" now, since we got to see that our baby is a GIRL!! I had been getting good at saying "the baby" or "it" or "the baby" again, but now I have to get out of that habit. It's really fun to know we're having a baby girl.
Both Kevin and I wanted a girl, but we would have been happy with either. Kevin's mom was especially hoping for a girl, as she had all boys and has so far gotten two grandsons. It's about time there's a girl in the Fisher family! I have no idea what this little girl would look like. I know what girls in my family look like, but since Kevin has no sisters, it's hard to imagine what a Fisher girl might look like.
Baby girls are so cute! And there's so much cute stuff you can make or buy for a girl! I have patterns for dresses and a cute shirt that I've been wanting to make but haven't had the opportunity since most of my friends lately have been having boys. And I just finished (well, all but the binding) a blue and green quilt. I could give it away, but I kind of still want it, as it's pretty ugly to the untrained eye. The front is a sampler of all sorts of patterns I have in a book: churn dash, mother's favorite, Virginia reel, fox and geese, and all sorts of traditional patterns. I used about 6 different colors of blues and greens, each of which has a different design. So the front is super busy. The back is this freakin' awesome print of a cow jumping over the moon, except that the moon is from Van Gogh's Starry Starry Night. I love it! We will keep it, as there is no rule against girls having blue and green blankets. But maybe we won't wrap her in it in public until she has hair long enough for pigtails.
Or we could just get her ears pierced the moment she pops out-- cut down on any confusion. ;)
So we're having a girl, and we couldn't be happier about that!!

Tiny

I love visiting teaching! I rarely get to sit around and chat with girls/ladies/women my own age, and it's so fun when we DO actually hang out. I work at a high school, and then at church I work with the Young Women. There are two other leaders around my age, but the rest of them are either the girls or the girls' moms. Sometimes I feel like the only people I hang out with is teenagers, but then at social events, I realize that I don't actually hang out with them. They hang out with each other and I hang out with the other people, most of whom are not really my age.
But today I went visiting teaching. My partner is in law school, as is her husband, and the first girl we visited also has a husband finishing law school. Then the next girl we visited is a friend of mine who we've had over to dinner before, and I forget how much fun she is to hang out with and talk to.
So on my way home, I was walking in the spring-like weather and marveling about how much I love visiting teaching.
You'd think I'd do it more than once every (insert rather large number) months, then, wouldn't you?
Ah yes... I'm hoping that if I write it down, I'll remember too.
Every month is a new month, and I try to get around to setting up a time. It rarely happens, but I just need to remember how much I love to hang out with these ladies!
And then I need to pick up the stupid phone. That's the hard part.
Anyway... today I wore my most pregnanty shirt: the blue one that I found in clearance and bought because it makes me look pregnant. That's the point: It makes me look pregnant.
Then everywhere I went-- at visiting teaching, everyone was like, "Oh, you're so tiny for being 20 weeks!" And then later at ward choir the ladies were like, "Oh, you're really tiny for being so far along!"
Tiny!
Um, I know I'm going to get bigger, and I know I'm not huge now, but I want people to say, "Oh, look how cute and pregnant you are!" Or something like that.
Ok, so I'm going to post a picture or two, and you know what you should say. :)
Here is me at 3 months (January 22).

And here is me at 4 months (February 22).

And you'll just have to use your imagination, but I'm actually 2 weeks bigger than even the last picture.
Ok, ok, ok. So I know I'm not huge, but look how cute and pregnant I am!