and this? is what they call a holding pattern

so last week i went in for my 37 week appointment and was VERY excited to learn that i was already dilated to 3cm and 75% effaced. it has been MISERABLY hot here the last few weeks (today? FREAKING 100 degrees! wtf??) so i was excited by this development because as anyone who has been pregnant knows, the last month is THE WORST as far as being uncomfortable, etc. when i went in today, i was hoping for some more dilation, but figuring i wouldn't get quite that lucky since it's apparently VERY unusual to be 3 weeks prior to due date and be 3cm already. i, unfortunately was right. no further dilation OR effacement.

DAMN!

i wasn't super surprised, but i was a little bummed out. i have been EXTREMELY uncomfortable with all this heat. i'm good at 75 degrees when i'm not knocked up. i can deal with 80 as long as there is a breeze. it's been WAY hotter than that the last 2-3 weeks and it's forecast for mid 80's into the end of next week. THIS SUCKS! all that being said, i am VERY ready for little dude to make his appearance, although i'm TERRIFIED about what to do AFTER he's here. LOL i know, i know. i'll be fine once i get the hang of things. i know this. but i'm still starting to freak out a little.

so my next appointment is on monday. something had BETTER have changed (in the correct direction!) by then! LOL

in other news, we had a bit of a scare yesterday in that when we tried to go to babies 'r us in order to get the rest of the things we really NEEDED for the baby, the car wouldn't start. at all. nothing. no lights, no "door ajar" binging. nothing. thank God we have AAA. turns out it was nothing more than a bad cell in our battery, so we just needed a new one. but still. i think vrock had a minor stroke thinking that we'd have to pay exorbitant amounts of money to get the car fixed. (we bought it used, and it's still under the original warranty, but it's only 3 years old.) the battery price was more than i wanted to pay, but it's done and we're back in business.

all of that rigamarole with the battery totally shot yesterday though. so today after the doc appointment, we went to babies 'r us. we didn't get EVERYTHING that was left on the registry, but we did get the things that i think we needed the most. we still have a good chunk of the money my brother & his fiancee' (the godparents) sent for the bambino, so we just moved that money into the baby's bank account until we need to buy something else for him.

since it's been so damn hot, we decided to go to one of the local casinos so vrock could people watch and i could gamble, a little. money is very tight for us these days and while i probably should have just left it in the bank, i wanted to play just a bit. so i went with $80 and hoped for the best. i'd been to that casino in june when my bestest friend in the world was here for my baby shower. i can't remember if i won, but i think i either broke even or won a little bit. (on a side note, vrock & i went to our other local casino last week to see the gallagher comedy show. we played for about 2.5 hours and came home with $50 more than we left with, which promptly went in the baby's bank account. LOL)

anyways, so today i was doing ok, and then all of a sudden i was down to my last 10 cents. (i used to play nickel slots. now? pennies all the way!) i would have had to cash out had this last spin not been a winner of some kind because that machine's minimum bet was more than a total of 10 cents. so i spun. and hit the bonus. right on! this particular game is called "great wall" and i found it last month when i was there. the bonus consists of free spins where you can accrue points & "picks". after the free spins are up, it takes you to the "picks" page where you choose from various ying-yang's and get either points or free spins. so this first bonus i won $121. WOO HOO! not bad for literally being down to your last 10 cents! i decided that i'd play until i was at 100 and that way i'd still be coming out 20 bucks ahead of where i'd started. i spun a few times and nothing. so i cashed out. i was going to leave, but decided "what the hell"? so i put my money back in and spun and hit another bonus. this time? i won 50 something in the bonus. i played for a bit and tried to get my total up to $160 which would have doubled my initial funds for the day. i didn't get there, and decided to cash out at $150.

all in all? not bad for less than 2 hours work. i won $70, so even after i subtract the $40 that i gave vrock, i still walked out $30 up. not bad, not bad at all.

tomorrow will be a stay at home day to do laundry and to see what all we have for the little dude that we'll need right away. and hopefully the walking around today helped jiggle things so that he's thinking more about coming OUT OUT OUT already! LOL

oh, and i'll be spending a fair amount of my day with my feet elevated. i'm tired of vrock teasing me about my "elephant feet". they are SO swollen it's not even funny.