Great Big Good Time
I've been really happy lately. I still miss spending a little extra time with Christopher but I'll deal with it and he knows how I feel and makes an effort when we're together.
We're catching up and doing pretty well. I bought my first piece of antique furniture a few weeks before Christmas and it looks wonderful. It's a reproduction of a Hoosier kitchen hutch so it isn't as antique as the real thing but it was in my price range and it accomplishes what I wanted. We have two drawers in the whole kitchen so I bought a hutch for it's upper cabinet space and four more drawers! You don't understand: I love to cook. I bake a lot and I needed a place to put my stuff and the drawer under the stove just doesn't cut it. (Pictures later.)
I got to work in the woodshop last week for the first time. Michael loves to teach and he's a great teacher so I feel really good about being able to help Chris out when he starts building things. It's so damn cold this winter that the concrete floor has kept both of them out of the shop a lot of the time but they have a plan for the first marketable product to come out of the shop: heart-shaped knick-knack boxes. Some will be jewelry and some will be just boxes but they're going to inlay some of them and cut reliefs into others. This is all curvy and detailed work that will help them build guitars, too. I'll let you know when we get some up on the web for sale. I told Michael about etsy.com and he's all for it but I warned him that once we put it up there, they were committed to how ever many they sold! We put in a new door on the bathroom last week (Michael and I) and I got to use the table saw, the circular saw and I hand-chiseled the routing for the hinges! Michael was impressed and it made me feel useful! I hope I can be of some help when Chris gets around to making woodworking a full-time thing. I'm such a supportive wife. :)
I'm anxious about getting the house the way I want it. I see it in my head the way I want it to look when it's finished and I get antsy. There are a few major things that need to be done but we'll have to wait until we have the mortgage to do those. Moving right before winter doesn't help because a lot of the stuff I need to do involves me sanding and painting outside. Rent-to-own is a great deal for us but it's a curse too. We get all the advantages of owning a home without the advantage of actually being able to change things yet. That's ok, though. I'm making a plan for things now and I'll work it out when we're able to change whatever we want. I'm not going to wait to plant things, though. This coming spring, this yard gets an overhaul! I'm going to be using ground cover, wildlife-friendly, annual evergreen plants. No, seriously. I've done all my research and I can populate an entire yard in this small, subcategory of plants. Most of them are NC native, too, so I don't have to worry about the climate affecting the plants adversely. My mom also gave me the two Leeland cyprus tress that were decorations at my wedding and I'll be planting them in our yard here. My fondest wish is to create an environment where we can point out memories from different times in our lives.
The friend that I met with yesterday has asked me to be her doula! She is already doing her own research, which I encouraged wholeheartedly. Her husband wants to be super involved, too, which makes me happy. He wants to do everything he can to make sure she and the baby are healthy and he's a great cook so I feel confident she'll get all the proper nutrition. She really wants a water birth but I had to tell her there's no resource for it in Greenville and they wanted a birth center, too, but alas not one for miles. The closest is in Cary and I don't encourage driving for a long period of time while in labor! But they both feel ready and excited and get a little relief knowing I'll be there. Gosh, I wish I could do this full-time. Maybe it's time for me to look into night classes to get working on that Midwifery degree... I don't want to rock the boat until we're sure of where we're going but being able to have my own practice would make me feel so certain of our future. My skill set keeps growing and growing!
It makes me think about having babies of my own and I have reservations on two accounts. First, I like our lifestyle now. We are free to travel, which we do, and go to shows and put our money into our fledgling marriage wishes without worry about anyone else. At times, I'm also terrified of the prospect of changing our relationship. We work really well together and that's encouraging when I think about how well we could work together as parents. Chris leans more towards having only one kid and I'm fine with whatever he wants because it's his kid, too. I don't want to push him into anything he isn't ready for but I won't wait forever, either, so finding the "right time" makes me nervous. The second reason I'm nervous involves the pregnancy. My mom and grandmothers all had normal, healthy pregnancies and I hope it applies to me too but I have arthritis now and it doesn't seem like it's going to go away even though I hold out hope. But I found out last month that just having arthritis makes me a high risk pregnancy. Inflammatory arthritis more so than osteoarthritis because it means my immune system is somehow compromised. The inflammatory factors in my blood were off the charts before I started medication and my doctor told me that that response could cause high blood pressure and excess swelling should I become pregnant. Now, I'm on the pill because I want to be as of right now but if I go off the pill, I have to go off the meds, too. And that makes me nervous, too. I was in agony before I started any medication. I can get away with just ibuprofen but I can't take that after 6 months of pregnancy and my meds now are Class C drugs which are on the fence for safety during pregnancy. It's not on the horizon but I think it about more now since it's on the table for the future. Guess I'll work it out when I get there.
All thoughts and no rants this time, Dear Reader,
Yours in Love,
Anna
We're catching up and doing pretty well. I bought my first piece of antique furniture a few weeks before Christmas and it looks wonderful. It's a reproduction of a Hoosier kitchen hutch so it isn't as antique as the real thing but it was in my price range and it accomplishes what I wanted. We have two drawers in the whole kitchen so I bought a hutch for it's upper cabinet space and four more drawers! You don't understand: I love to cook. I bake a lot and I needed a place to put my stuff and the drawer under the stove just doesn't cut it. (Pictures later.)
I got to work in the woodshop last week for the first time. Michael loves to teach and he's a great teacher so I feel really good about being able to help Chris out when he starts building things. It's so damn cold this winter that the concrete floor has kept both of them out of the shop a lot of the time but they have a plan for the first marketable product to come out of the shop: heart-shaped knick-knack boxes. Some will be jewelry and some will be just boxes but they're going to inlay some of them and cut reliefs into others. This is all curvy and detailed work that will help them build guitars, too. I'll let you know when we get some up on the web for sale. I told Michael about etsy.com and he's all for it but I warned him that once we put it up there, they were committed to how ever many they sold! We put in a new door on the bathroom last week (Michael and I) and I got to use the table saw, the circular saw and I hand-chiseled the routing for the hinges! Michael was impressed and it made me feel useful! I hope I can be of some help when Chris gets around to making woodworking a full-time thing. I'm such a supportive wife. :)
I'm anxious about getting the house the way I want it. I see it in my head the way I want it to look when it's finished and I get antsy. There are a few major things that need to be done but we'll have to wait until we have the mortgage to do those. Moving right before winter doesn't help because a lot of the stuff I need to do involves me sanding and painting outside. Rent-to-own is a great deal for us but it's a curse too. We get all the advantages of owning a home without the advantage of actually being able to change things yet. That's ok, though. I'm making a plan for things now and I'll work it out when we're able to change whatever we want. I'm not going to wait to plant things, though. This coming spring, this yard gets an overhaul! I'm going to be using ground cover, wildlife-friendly, annual evergreen plants. No, seriously. I've done all my research and I can populate an entire yard in this small, subcategory of plants. Most of them are NC native, too, so I don't have to worry about the climate affecting the plants adversely. My mom also gave me the two Leeland cyprus tress that were decorations at my wedding and I'll be planting them in our yard here. My fondest wish is to create an environment where we can point out memories from different times in our lives.
The friend that I met with yesterday has asked me to be her doula! She is already doing her own research, which I encouraged wholeheartedly. Her husband wants to be super involved, too, which makes me happy. He wants to do everything he can to make sure she and the baby are healthy and he's a great cook so I feel confident she'll get all the proper nutrition. She really wants a water birth but I had to tell her there's no resource for it in Greenville and they wanted a birth center, too, but alas not one for miles. The closest is in Cary and I don't encourage driving for a long period of time while in labor! But they both feel ready and excited and get a little relief knowing I'll be there. Gosh, I wish I could do this full-time. Maybe it's time for me to look into night classes to get working on that Midwifery degree... I don't want to rock the boat until we're sure of where we're going but being able to have my own practice would make me feel so certain of our future. My skill set keeps growing and growing!
It makes me think about having babies of my own and I have reservations on two accounts. First, I like our lifestyle now. We are free to travel, which we do, and go to shows and put our money into our fledgling marriage wishes without worry about anyone else. At times, I'm also terrified of the prospect of changing our relationship. We work really well together and that's encouraging when I think about how well we could work together as parents. Chris leans more towards having only one kid and I'm fine with whatever he wants because it's his kid, too. I don't want to push him into anything he isn't ready for but I won't wait forever, either, so finding the "right time" makes me nervous. The second reason I'm nervous involves the pregnancy. My mom and grandmothers all had normal, healthy pregnancies and I hope it applies to me too but I have arthritis now and it doesn't seem like it's going to go away even though I hold out hope. But I found out last month that just having arthritis makes me a high risk pregnancy. Inflammatory arthritis more so than osteoarthritis because it means my immune system is somehow compromised. The inflammatory factors in my blood were off the charts before I started medication and my doctor told me that that response could cause high blood pressure and excess swelling should I become pregnant. Now, I'm on the pill because I want to be as of right now but if I go off the pill, I have to go off the meds, too. And that makes me nervous, too. I was in agony before I started any medication. I can get away with just ibuprofen but I can't take that after 6 months of pregnancy and my meds now are Class C drugs which are on the fence for safety during pregnancy. It's not on the horizon but I think it about more now since it's on the table for the future. Guess I'll work it out when I get there.
All thoughts and no rants this time, Dear Reader,
Yours in Love,
Anna