Twenty-Three Years Ago Today
Twenty-three years ago today, I was checking into the maternity ward at the base hospital at the United States Air Force Academy, after having been in mild labor since around 4:00 AM. My Darling Man and I had spent the day walking around our apartment complex, and around the edge of the golf course next door. I picked up a golf ball that had landed outside the fence, and carried it in my pocket most of the day. I think I still have it, but I don't know where it might be in my boxes of memories. I had a scheduled pre-natal appointment right before lunchtime and they told me that I wasn't far enough along to check in yet, but they wanted us to stay close--and keep walking. So we walked the paths of the Air Force Academy, wandered around and through the gorgeous chapel, and finally went home for supper and to grab my hospital bag, before heading back to the hospital around 6:30 pm.
Even with having filled in most of the paperwork already, I only got into my room around 7:00 pm, just in time to watch "Jeopardy!" While I enjoy trying to get the question for all the answers, I've never been very good at it... until that night. I got every single one right, and had I been playing for real, would have gotten the final Jeopardy question too.
Labor went on, and I was getting uncomfortable but the Darling Man was a brick through it all. :) That first time I ended up asking for a bit of pain relief during transition, and they gave me a shot of Nubain to "take the edge off", which is about all it did besides make me a bit fuzzy headed. My Darling Daughter came into the world about 10:30 pm Mountain Time, which means that it was already the 14th in the Eastern Time Zone where we currently live. So if we'd had only a little tweak of geography, she would have been born on March 14th instead of 13th.
I took off work early to go have a late lunch with her and two of her friends at the B.D.'s Mongolian Barbecue place near where I work, and after a yummy lunch and catching up on the news, I treated the three of them to cheesecake from the Cheesecake Factory before I had to head home.
I had a quick stop at my local yarn store to exchange some defective knitting needles that I'd bought there (FYI, five years ago Knit Picks knitting needles were really great, but now, I've had problems with almost every one of the new ones I've purchased, like the tips wouldn't screw onto the cables, or the very tips of the needles were chipped off, or the cables had rough spots to snag the yarn. Caveat emptor!) Then I came home, knitted a little bit, got caught up in reading the Silmarillion page in tvtropes.org (wow! what a time sink), and then headed over to a friend's house for singing practice for church. I sang ok, but I'm still coughing, and I'm really worried that I'll lose my voice before our quartet sings on Thursday night. Now I'm back home, having spent a good 20 minutes out in my front yard, star gazing (I saw Venus and Jupiter, of course, with Jupiter almost directly next to Venus as they appear to pass each other in the sky; and I also saw Mars, Orion, Canus Major and Sirius the dog star, Cassandra, Perseus, Andromeda, Polaris, Ursa Major, Leo and a few stars of Cancer and Gemini) before I came inside.
I'm ready to call the kids together for Scripture study and then maybe an early night. I've decided to give B2MeM a miss tonight as I'm so tired. Tomorrow looks to be a really busy day too. I hope the weather is just as lovely as today's was. :)