has it really been 3.5 months since i last wrote? it seems so much longer than that!

aaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaand we're back. at least for a bit.

what have i been doing you ask?

surprisingly, not much.

here's whats been happening since we went on vacation in may:

• after getting back from hawaii, we made plans to go to texas to see vrock's family. then we actually went. to texas. in july. yes, i am an idiot.
• vrock was forced to "retire" from his job due to lack of work.
• i continue to look for a job, any kind of job, and it continues to be an excercise in futility.
• my bff came to visit the weekend before my birthday and took me to see her husband in concert! (ok, ok. so he's only her husband in her head. DON'T tell her that! LOL)
• i sort of started my own business last week. not much has come of it yet, but i'm hopeful that it will at least bring a little money in the door.
• jdogg turned ONE! (how in the hell did that happen? i told that boy he wasn't allowed to grow up!)
• vrock & i have seriously considered moving to texas, provided that he can obtain a job with the company he had to "retire" from.
• we continue to prepare to go to san francisco at the end of the month for my brother's wedding. those preparations included buying a tux for jdogg. OMG! so! freaking! cute!

and while all of that has been exciting/caused anxiety/thrilling/sad, i find that time is zooming by and i never seem to have time to do ANYTHING without major planning sessions. and even then, if it's not something ESSENTIAL? it doesn't make the cut.

for someone who doesn't work outside the home, is living with family (and therefore not really responsible for "household chores"), and is still drawing unemployment, i have NO IDEA where all of my time goes!

my dearest blog, i really haven't abandoned you....

i've just been extremely busy with this................

hopefully you can forgive me. we're on vacation at the moment, but i promise to attempt more updating once we return to our crazy life!

i swear i haven't fallen off the face of the earth....at least not yet

i believe i owe you a post about the trip.



the trip was fantastic. it was the first time in TWENTY (count them!) years that my entire immediate family (all 4 of us. LOL) were in hawaii at the same time. both my brother & i have managed to go see our grandparents while our parents have been there over the last 20 years, but this was the first time we'd all managed to be there together. and it was awesome.

between vrock totally loving my grandparents (they love him too!), asking my grandpa for his blessing to name the baby after him (of course, he's THRILLED!), and talking about my brother & his fiancee's wedding next year, PLUS celebrating my grandparents 60th wedding anniversary AND mother's day, it was just an AWESOME trip.

it was a little too warm for me, what with the humidity and the whole "i'm growing a person so my internal thermometer is all out of whack", but vrock loved the weather, even the humidity! we didn't "do" a lot while we were there, until my brother got there. most of our days were fairly lazy, with the most strenous things we did being walking downtown throughout the shops and eventually going to the beach. (my bro & his fiancee' ended up coming in later than planned because her grandmother died a week or so before the trip. that was a major bummer, but i'm really glad that they decided to come anyways. i think it was therapeutic for her.)

the highlights of the trip were these gems:

• vrock, my bro, dad, & grandpa having daily "cocktail hours" starting around 3:30pm complete with each one smoking a cigar. (vrock & my brother do not normally smoke AT ALL and dad only smokes pipes/cigars every once in awhile.) grandpa was definitely in his element as he held court with the boys.
• everyone hanging out in the pool room at my grandparents playing pool and just enjoying the family time.
• my brother & his iFlip getting some of the best sound bites EVER from grandpa!
• and of course, seeing grandpa's reaction when we asked for his blessing to name the baby after him. it was priceless and something i'll never forget.

vrock is ALREADY talking about next years trip. he wants to make sure that they get to see the baby in person. i love my husband!

all you get is a few photos from the trip because blogger is pissing me off!

25 weeks & vacation errands

so it was pointed out to me that i haven't posted in almost 3 weeks. (thanks stace! LOL) and with the trip looming up, i figured i'd best post BEFORE we left for hawaii on friday, otherwise it'd likely be ANOTHER week & a half before i was able to post. so, here i am.

i've been unemployed for not quite 2 weeks, and i don't think i've EVER been this busy! it's crazy. here's a sampling of what's been going on the last 2 weeks, broken down by day:

• mon (1st day unemployed) - trip to costco & target, which took almost all day
• tues - trip to the outlets with my mom, and to pick up some baby clothes & a bassinet from freecycle.org people
• wed - errands for the trip & a chiropractor appointment for vrock
• thurs - trip to the nearest joann's with mom to find some cute maternity patterns for later in the pregnancy, along with other trip related errands.
• fri - blissfully NOTHING was planned out and i did some spring cleaning stuff
• sat - one of the local communities has a yearly garage sale weekend, & i went with my folks. scored some good baby stuff (clothes, brand new pacifiers, size 1 diapers) and a few other things and only spent $16!
• sun - pre natal massage & out to dinner with vrock for our 1 year anniversary
• mon - doctor appointment (everything looks great! no issues other than the norm of heartburn & aching hips), lunch with mom, more shopping for the trip & a mani-pedi.
• tues - trip to storage to pick up & drop off stuff, over to a friends' house to drop off some baby girl clothes i'd picked up for her from one of the freecycle people
• today - took my folks to the airport this morning. the rest of the day? probably studying, laundry, clearing out the tivo. stuff that needs to be done, but that i can do from home.

so you see, it's not that i haven't WANTED to write. it's that by the end of each day i've been EXHAUSTED!

now i'm off to warm up vrock's lunch before he leaves for work (more on that later!) and then i can maybe take a nap later this afternoon!

and then there were 6

it's a very freeing feeling to know when your job is going to end. you can plan for things. you have the chance to make sure that all of your "loose ends" are cleared up. as much as being laid off sucks (cobra, unemployment, etc.) it's a good thing to KNOW it's coming. (unlike my friend who walked into her office one day in dec & was escorted out of the building a mere 90 minutes later.)

that being said, in a sick way i'm LOOKING FORWARD to not working. granted, i'll still have my school work to do and all that, and as long as i continue to pass all of my lessons on the first try, i'll be done mid june. that will hopefully translate into a gig working from home transcribing, which means that when this little boy makes his debut sometime in august, i'll have a paying gig. (not sure how the whole "i'm having a baby" thing will translate to the job, but the benefits to the employer are not that many "sick" days since i'm already home.) from what i've been told, around the middle of this part of the class (18 chapters & lessons) i'll be getting a call from the school to set up phone interviews, etc. if all goes the way it should, that should be happening around the end of the month. with the way the grading is timed out (once i turn in something, they have 4 business days to get the graded lesson back to me) i'll only have to worry about 1 chapter while we're on vacation, which is a good thing.

vrock's mom & sister are moving into a different house next month & they want him to come out and help them move. if he's still not working, that's not a huge deal, as they'll pay for his plane ticket. since i won't be working either, we've been debating the idea of me going with him, since after the baby is born i won't want to go ANYWHERE, much less to texas. so we'll see what happens. i can take all my school stuff with me, it'll just depend on how much i'm getting from unemployment & how much/if he's still getting unemployment. not to mention, our childbirth class starts on 5/5 (we'll be in hawaii) and runs every tues night. i don't want to miss any more than the one we have to miss since we'll be gone. so there's that to consider too.

a lot going on in the next couple of weeks but it's all good. and i feel calm. which is always a good thing.

countdown

so today's the 5th.

that means the following:

in 18 days i have my ultrasound and hopefully find out if we're being blessed with a little boy or a little girl.

in 43 days i'll be working my last day at my current job. (unless something happens between now & then. there IS a small possibility that i'll leave BEFORE 43 days, but i'll keep that to myself for the time being.)

in 57 days we leave for hawaii for the family reunion/my grandparents 60th wedding anniversary.

somewhere between all these milestones, i need to finish my online transcription course (almost done with the first half and averaging 92% for the class so far!), interview for transcription jobs (that will start 14 chapters from now, once i'm halfway through the 2nd part of the class), go shopping for hawaii appropriate clothes (i think i have maybe 3 pairs of shorts that MIGHT fit by then since i'll be 25 weeks by then, if not, consignment stores here i come!) and various other things.

oh yeah, i also have to come up with a guest list for the baby shower my friend is planning for me. granted, i'm almost done with that, but still. it's one more thing to do. on top of all the reading i'm trying to cram in before the baby's born (plus that allows me to get rid of a lot of books too!) i almost wish i had the money for a kindle, so i could take like 5 books with me to hawaii and be able to read easily! hint hint stace! LOL

the fair & the concert

so i'll apologize now for the plethora of photos in this post. sorry!

ok, now that that's over......let's continue with our story.

after the the debacle that was the beginning of vrock's birthday, we definitely needed a low key day at the fair.

the salem fair is just like the local fair we have here in seattle. it did have some "oregon touches" to it, but for the most part, it has what you'll find at any fair on the planet: animals, rides, games, exhibits and FOOD. (and let's face it. unless you have a child in 4h or ffa OR there's a band you're just dying to see, you go to the fair primarily for the food.) i've lived in the seattle area for 22 of my 37 years and therefore am VERY familiar with the layout of my local fairgrounds. it's not like it changes much from year to year. the salem fair? no IDEA where anything is. so once we got there, we picked up the little book they were handing out at the gate so we could look at the map. neither one of us was super hungry yet, so we looked up the most important thing to us at the moment: where was POISON playing that night?

once we had determined where the venue was, we started taking in the sights. now, i've been to a lot of fairs but i'd never been to one that boasted the "world's largest pig" (or something along those lines). so we paid the 50 cents per person to climb the stairs of the trailer to see this "big pig". i'll let you be the judge of if this is, in fact, the world's largest pig:

it's definitely A LOT of bacon standing there!! this was taken with absolutely no zoom on my camera and while i couldn't get very far away from him due to the size of the trailer, i couldn't get ALL of him in the frame. crazy!

then of course, i had to take the picture that my husband wanted. feel free to avert your eyes.

after the pig, we went looking for something to eat. vrock has been going ON & ON about the food at the texas state fair and all that so i was happily surprised that he found what he wanted to eat at the salem fair. of course he went for food on a stick. (at least i THINK it was on a stick. i didn't really look closely.) he was overjoyed to find out that they had fire roasted corn on the cob and wasted NO time at all in getting himself an ear. i wasn't hungry yet so we wandered around some more.

it was his birthday and he wanted to go on some rides, so we did. we went on an octopus type ride, a flying type of ride and the ever so scary haunted house ride. other than a little boy sitting behind us, we were the only ones on the ride. so i pulled out my camera and took some photos. they turned out pretty well, if i do say so myself.

after the rides i was finally hungry. so we wandered around the "food court" area and looked at our choices. i'm not sure why we did that since everyone knows that the absolute FIRST thing you must eat at the fair is a corn dog! which of course, is why there was a HUGE line at the ONLY corn dog cart in the place. (who plans these things??) so while we're waiting in line, we notice the signage the have sitting outside this cart. and we promptly did what anyone would have done. we took a picture of it. then? we took pictures WITH it. (i've looked at these photos again and again and i'm sorry. this sign is just SO WRONG in so many different ways! i suppose that's what makes it hysterically funny to me.)

after we were done eating we went to look at the animals. we still had a lot of time to kill before the concert so i figured that would eat up some time. we were on our way to look at the horses when we walked through this little section that had "things indigenous to oregon" in it. among those things? a waterfall with a stuffed bear. of course, we had to take a photo. (what? you expected less? i think this is my favorite photo of vrock from that day, although the ones from the concert run a close second.)

then it was on to the stables. we wandered around looking at all sorts of farm life, ending up with the horses. where, of course, my husband just started reaching into the stables and petting the horses.

finally it was concert time.

we went in right when the doors opened at 7 since i wanted to look and see if they had tshirts and stuff for sale. (they did.) once we got our shirts & shot glass, we went to find our seats. we'd been walking around for 6 -7 hours and i was glad to sit down for a stretch. we were enjoying the people watching (we had pretty good seats) and listening to the music they had playing to pump the crowd up. (i know that they do this at all concerts, but i found it WAY amusing that they had guns'n'roses and bon jovi playing before the poison concert.) finally it was time for the show to start. let me say, having never seen poison before, that i was impressed with the show they put on. i was not, however, impressed with the length of said show. it was a $40 ticket (and we weren't even on the floor) and they played for 90 minutes. hell. i got a longer show from weird al earlier in the week at my local fair. other than that, the show was great. it mostly consisted of their big hits, which was to be expected. we did take some pictures, but it was so dark in there that none of them really came out of the stage. maybe if we'd been on the floor they would have, but oh well. the photos of us came out just fine. even if i do look sorta zombie like:

so there you have it. the story of our trip in 3 parts. the trip home was delayed (stupid fire on the train tracks!) and we were both exhausted. but overall we had a great time. and? my husband TOTALLY owes me an awesome birthday next year. hopefully i won't get in a fight.

weekend rehash continued....

so let me pick up where i left off.

i'd given vrock his kick ass birthday gift and all was right with the world. we had cake. he couldn't stop looking at the tickets. it was all good.

we decided to go downstairs to the bar and see if we couldn't find some food along with a few refreshing beverages. we get down there and notice that they have a wii set up in the bar. score! we have a wii and love it, so we were excited about the prospect of maybe getting to play. it took a bit to get our drinks and after looking over the menu, we weren't really interested in the food.

by this time, 3 women had descended upon the wii, but they had no idea how to maneuver the main menu to get it to do what they wanted. we talked to them a bit and showed them how to set up the bowling & vrock ended up playing with them. they seemed really cool and told us that they were working a kettlecorn tent at the fair. i watched for a little bit, but i was exhausted and i headed up to bed about halfway through the first game. i figured that vrock would play 1 game, maybe 2 and then come upstairs himself. i got up to the room, got ready for bed and crashed. it was maybe 1am.

3 hours later, my cell rings. it's vrock, asking what our room number is because he can't remember. i tell him and hear the door open a few moments later. (he remembered the floor #, just not the room #) immediately, even though i'm half asleep, i know there's something big time wrong. he's overly emotional. WAY pissed off but also on the verge of tears. i'm wide awake now, asking him what is going on.

before i tell the story, i need to note that vrock is NOT a violent man. AT ALL. he's (as he likes to say) "fun sized", meaning that he's roughly 5 51/2 and 140 pounds. that being said, here's the story i heard:

after playing wii for a bit, the women decided they wanted to go across the street to their hotel. (i know what you're thinking. why did he go?) while i agree that this was a fundamentally stupid thing to do, i also know that there was absolutely NO WAY that anything untoward was going to happen. that's just NOT who vrock is. anyway, they apparently told him that they knew the bartender or whatever across the street and that they could probably get a bottle from the bar. (remember, i had been asleep and jolted out of sleep at 4am to hear this story. for reasons you'll understand once you read this, we haven't really gone back and rehashed the story, so forgive me if this retelling is a little choppy.) so they went. somewhere along the line a big black man had joined them. (according to vrock, he had been in the bar at our hotel, but i never saw him.) no big deal. across the street they go. get their bottle and somehow gain access to the pool across the street.

they go in the pool and vrock keeps his distance from them, close enough to have conversation, but spending most of his time in the hot tub. he's apparently been having a conversation with the youngest of the women and she says something to the effect of how one of the other women gets her "closer to God." now, the next words that come out of my husband's mouth would have been better off left unsaid. however, i don't know that that would have made ANY difference in what transpired next.

vrock says "what? is she your cult leader or something?" granted, a VERY stupid thing to say at any time. let alone when you don't know these people at all and alcohol is involved. bygones. the woman in question starts freaking the fuck out and getting in vrock's face. he argues back with her (something about politics & religion) and decides it's time to go. meanwhile, the other guy has been hanging around watching all of this. i'm not sure if he went in the pool or not, but by the time vrock is out, dude is having words with vrock.

out of nowhere (remember, as this is told to me. i have no first hand knowledge of what went down, but i also have absolutely NO reason to doubt vrock) dude punches vrock in the back of the head. he then PICKS vrock up and THROWS him to the ground. (dude must have outweighed vrock by 100 pounds, or more.) luckily, a plastic chair broke vrock's fall so he wasn't thrown completely to the ground. that small miracle kept vrock from getting seriously injured. it also enabled him to get up and start throwing punches. (something that dude did not figure on.) apparently he knocked dude to the ground and then just snapped. (he's always gotten picked on and "pushed around" because of his size and because people erroneously think that he can't defend himself. he always holds himself in check because he's not a violent person. but he knows how to defend himself and he will if he's pushed to it.) he told me details i won't share here, but suffice it to say that he didn't let dude get back up. and then, he did what i would have done initially. he ran.

by the time he's done with his story, i'm speechless. i have no experience in what to say or even what he wants me to say. i'm afraid. for him, for us. i don't know how badly he may have hurt that dude. granted, it was self defense, but still. i'm in shock. it was ugly. it was BAD. and i'm freaked out.

mostly because we're going to possibly run into these women at the fair the next day (we didn't) and if we did, i had no idea WHAT would happen. it was not a great moment, as you can imagine. even in this retelling, i'm freaking out a bit. as it turns out, nothing else came of it other than a very large and ugly purple bruise on vrock's side. we did see the women at the fair the next day, but they didn't see us, so there was no confrontation. thank God. i honestly don't know what i would have done if it had come to that.

happy fucking birthday, huh?

anyways, there's the "drama" portion of our show. stay tuned. next i'll tell you about how awesome the fair & concert were.

exhausted & confused

ok, maybe not confused. but definitely still exhausted! what a long weekend! it was great for the most part. there were some drama filled moments, but other than that it was great!

we left seattle on friday afternoon on the train down to salem, oregon. vrock had never been on a train before and it's always been on his "list". so we could have just ridden the train all weekend and that would have been present enough for him.

we got in a little later than anticipated and after waiting 30 minutes for the shuttle to pick us up, ended up calling a cab to take us to the hotel. (we got a receipt and the hotel reimbursed us for the cab ride.) we went up to the room and after settling in a bit, i gave vrock his birthday gift.

now, i need to give you a little back story in order for you to understand WHY this particular gift meant so much to him. vrock is a born & raised texas boy. he's a die hard texas fan (stars/rangers/cowboys/longhorns/etc.) but he also grew up watching the notre dame fighting irish football team. he's been to see just about ALL of his teams of choice (not including some of his favorite hockey teams) but he has never had the chance to see notre dame in person. when i found out that my beloved washington huskies were hosting the irish this year, the first thing i did was go online to find out if there were tickets available. (we went to a uw-usc game last year and had a blast, so i was hoping i'd be able to score tickets to this game.) predictably, the university web site only had scattered singles. so i went to my friend, stubhub.com and looked there. they had tickets! in roughly the same area we sat last year, which was AWESOME. so i bought them.

then, i proceeded to tell my wonderful husband that "hey! notre dame is coming to play the huskies this year! but, they're sold out. so i guess we get to watch it on tv." (i know, i know. i'm a sneaky little shit, aren't i?) i knew he'd be excited and maybe even freak out a bit. i was right. :) he was, overwhelmed seems like the right word. shocked, maybe? all i know is that he started tearing up, which made me tear up. and i believe the first words out of his mouth (after "holy shit! these are irish tickets!) were "how am i going to top this??"

he was so shocked, he didn't even see the cake i had had delivered to our room prior to check in!

there is more to this story, but i need to get some work done so i'll write more later. i haven't even gotten to the "drama" portion of our weekend.

hey! it's friday! (finally!!)

so this afternoon vrock & i are taking our long anticipated trip down to salem for the weekend.

i can't wait!

here's what i'm looking forward to:

giving vrock his birthday present & seeing the look on his face

seeing his face when we get to the room & he sees the surprise there

seeing poison in concert tomorrow night

getting away for a few days with my hubby & best friend

hope everyone has a great weekend!