Mini golf and earthquakes and new jobs, oh my!

On Friday, we were asked to go along to the monthly youth group outing. This month's activity was mini golf and arcade games at this place about 45 minutes south of us.

There were about thirty teens there, and I was very grateful that when Kimily co-ordinated rides for people, she made sure that someone picked up Brian and I. Why? Because otherwise the chances for getting lost go up exponentially.

"Go easy on the junior highers!" someone teased me before we started golfing. As if! They completely and utterly toasted my butt. I don't know what my final total score was, but I had several holes that I scored higher than 9 on. Thankfully, the kids didn't harass me too much.

Orientation for my new job started yesterday. The weird thing about pregnancy is that I can't tell if I've just got butterflies in my stomach, or if Shirley is being exceptionally active. As Shirley's main form of entertainment at this point seems to be kicking my kidneys, I was glad she decided to sleep through the majority of orientation. (If your butterflies know judo, it's probably the baby.)

I'm accepting bets for the final number of times I will need to purchase new pants before Shirley arrives in March. I'll keep a running tally on the blog, and the winner will get... something. (Probably sock yarn dyed in colors of their choice.)

I felt all domestic this evening, and made a Dutch apple pie from scratch. And just as I was putting it in the oven, we had a 5.6 earthquake. At first I was fine, because it felt just like when the Air Force jets would break the sound barrier over our house when I was a kid.

When I realized "Oh crap, that's an earthquake!" I got considerably more nervous, especially in light of the 2004 tsunami and the fact that you can see the ocean from our bedroom. But I'm guessing if the house didn't shake enough to knock over my potted plants, I probably don't have to worry about tsunamis too much.

Family ad nauseum

You can't fit three adults in the cab of a Ford Ranger. Well, I suppose you could, but only if they were all midgets and on exceptionally good terms with each other. But when these are the three adults in question,

driving cross country together seems a remarkably bad idea. Toss in the fact that it's a standard transmission and as the shortest person in the vehicle I'd get to sit in the middle, and it wouldn't be pretty. Faced with the prospect of spending several days squashed between two Mackey men and getting elbowed in the stomach every time someone needed to shift, I quickly developed a plan B.

While Pop and Brian drove the Ranger from Overland Park to San Francisco, I'd take advantage of the chance to visit my family for a few days, and then visit with Brian's family for a few more.

Like other Plan Bs, however, this had a few side effects. One of them was that, due to a layover in Denver, I had four plane flights in five days. I don't mind flying, but that seems a bit excessive.

Because my new job will be day shift (thank you God!) I've been trying to make myself less of a nocturnal creature. I was hoping that doing things in daylight and sleeping at night would also make the "evening sickness" much less of an issue, and it worked--kind of. Except for one spectacular episode where Shirley made it blatantly obvious that she was not in the mood for Subway, I didn't have any "moments."

I did, however, get to spend five days of pretty much constant nausea in strange houses. It got so bad that when I did my usual 0300 meanderings and realized that I WASN'T NAUSEOUS, I generally made a piggy of myself. (No matter how good the book is that you're reading and snacking by, you do NOT want to eat an entire box of Aplets & Cotlets in one sitting. Don't do it. Just eat the serving size the box recommends and call it good.)

I'll post pics and stories from the trip in a few days. Right now, it's 0445 and as I'm not currently nauseous, I'm going to go eat something. In moderation, of course.

pictures

I finally managed to get off my lazy bum and post. So, let's pick up where I left off last with pictures.

For Labor Day weekend, we went to the Tall Grass Prairie again, and I got to meet Silfert, whom I've known through the blogosphere and knitting forums and e-correspondence for the last few years, but had never met in person. I cannot tell you how much it amazes me that the internet allows one to correspond with total strangers regularly. (The fact that Audrey is an incredibly nice person and even knitted juggling balls for the baby out of organic cotton (!) just adds to my wonder.)


On the same road trip, I got to see the Wichita Corvette Fanciers out for a drive. I'll probably never own one, but I love Corvettes!

And apparently it was just a good weekend all around for those who like shiny cars, as I also got to see this:

At the last OB visit, we learned that Genghis is actually a girl, so we're naming her Shirley. She's doing well, and it looks as though we can expect her about March 10th, 2008. Given my family's tendency towards preterm labor, I'm guessing she'll show up the last week of February. But a February 29th baby would be great too!

As we move to San Francisco in three days, the living room currently looks like this:


Only more so.

Sick, but less whiny

Two and a half weeks later, I still have the @#$%ing cold! Thankfully, the doc gave me antibiotics and they work reasonably well. I've stopped running a fever, coughing up green stuff, and feeling like an asthma attack was going to happen at any minute. But I'm still coughing. While it's been about a week since I had a coughing fit so bad that I started puking (The first night I was back to work after I started the antibiotics, I accidentally vomited all over the staff bathroom. I appologized profusely to April the night housekeeper when I asked her if she'd mop up.) the regular coughing fits are annoying.

I had an immunocompromised patient earlier this week. (Medicalspeak for "we don't know why, but your immune system has decided to take off on an extended holiday, so don't be surprised if you get deathly ill from some common problem that doesn't trouble most people.") She asked me why everyone else was wearing gloves before they cared for her, but I was wearing a mask as well. "Does this mean my family should be wearing masks too?"

"I have a cold," I told her. "I've had it for nearly three weeks now, so it seems to like me. But I don't imagine you want it." She agreed that this was a reasonable precaution.

We got to hear Genghis' heartbeat at the doctor's office visit. Apparently, in spite of all the worry I've had over losing eight pounds due to morning sickness while not being able to take in much calories, he's doing all right. Since the morning sickness has eased a bit (when I'm not coughing) I've started gaining the weight back. I'm only about two pounds heavier than my usual non-pregnant weight, but the baby bump is growing steadily.

I've been knitting EJ a pair of socks for his birthday next month. (As usual, I'm too lazy to go find the camera.) I'd forgotten just how hard it is to knit a full size pair of men's socks in Army desert tan. Cursed short attention span!

On Sunday, we went to a different church to watch Nancy, one of the gals I work with, dedicate her baby to the Lord. She adopted Lydia from Guatemala earlier this year, and she is a beautiful little girl! (The usual toddler preference for pink coupled with her dark hair means that the resemblance to Dora the Explorer (her favorite character) is striking.) It's been wonderful to see Nancy's joy at motherhood these last few months. When I do get around to downloading pics, I need to post the ones I took of the service.

Sick and whiny

Since I'll probably spend the vast majority of this post whining, I might as well start off with the good news we've recently received.

Brian got "the call" from New Start, so we're officially moving to San Francisco! I'm still apprehensive about the move and job hunt, but so excited that Brian found a church.

We got woke up the other day by a 30 second message on our answering machine from my brother EJ saying he got to Iraq safely and was okay. He'd signed off before I was able to get conscious enough to grab the phone, but praise God he's okay!

I received a lovely package from my Fiber Frenzy swap secret pal. She sent me a whole big ball (I think it's about six ounces!) of aqua superwash merino roving, and chocolate! (Alas, chocolate is apparently on Genghis' list of "foods that induce morning sickness." But as it keeps indefinitely, I'm going to save it for later. Perhaps the nausea will abate in a couple off months.) I'm too lazy to go find the camera and snap pictures right now, but the roving is lovely.

I've been spinning it up lace weight and plying it with lace weight silk that I dyed myself. The silk is in a nice complimentary teal color--I dyed it several weeks before I got the package, though. It's always nice when things work out so well like that!

The morning sickness has tapered off somewhat. The amount of Zofran I require to keep food down has steadily decreased over the last several weeks. (I mostly need to use it on nights I'm working. Who would have thought that being around puking people makes me vomit?) Unfortunately, I always seem to realize too late that it wears off after about ten hours. The sympathy I've received from my co-workers is nice, but I hate having to interrupt the end-of-shift patient hand off even more than the puking itself. I still haven't gained any weight over my non-pregnant weight, but the baby bump (Until we know it's gender, we're referring to the baby as "Genghis.") keeps on growing. (I lost about eight pounds from morning sickness, but I've gained them all back.)

But right now I've got a cold, and it makes my mood rather lousy. I was so happy to get through the winter without one after catching one every month we were in Nome. But I guess it's that time of the year again...

The stuffy nose doesn't really trouble me after having had one constantly for the entire pregnancy. The coughing fits, however, feel disturbingly like the first few volleys of "the old Dash 'N' Heave" of morning sickness. It hasn't turned into that yet, but I really hate puking.

I think I'll see if the Yarn Pixies (who seem to visit more freely when I take medication of some sort--perhaps there's a lesson here) were correct when they suggested that I could crochet socks if I tried hard enough.

Emtala Mackey?

It's been a bit since I posted anything more personal than vacation photos on this blog. As the Internet has unlimited potential for both good and creepy people to use it, I usually error on the side of paranoia when it comes to how much personal information to post on it. But now that I'm officially past the "magic" twelve week mark, I feel free to announce my good news with the Blog-o-Sphere (all six people who care enough to read my blog as (ir)regularly as I post on it).

I'm pregnant! The new fiber enthusiast is expected to arrive in early March. (Because I miscarried early with the last pregnancy, I wanted to wait until the first trimester and the greatest danger of miscarriage was over before I posted about it. Neurotic, but true.)

We received very good news from the New Start church in San Francisco over the weekend. Their church board voted unanimously (How amazing is that? I mean, how often can you get twelve people to agree on pizza toppings, let alone pastoral candidates?) to present Brian's name to the congregation for a "would you like us to ask this person to be our next pastor?" vote. So that's an important hurdle overcome in the church-finding/pastor-finding process. We really loved the people and the church, would be delighted to come there if they called Brian. So now we wait...

However, this does mean that if they vote yes (and he says yes) we will be moving with me five or six months pregnant. Our health insurance right now is through my work, and it's really hard to find a job in any field when you're heavily pregnant, but especially in nursing. With the national nursing shortage, I do have the added advantage of the fact that hospitals and clinics are incredibly desperate for qualified nurses, but mid-to-late pregnancy generally precludes the level of heavy lifting that nursing requires.

As I lay awake worrying in my insomniac moments, I am repeatedly reminded that God has been with us this far and He will not abandon us now.

I have also been encouraged by (cynical) advice from the other nurses at work. "Well, if you can't get health insurance by the time you're in labor, you can always name the baby 'Emtala.' "
(EMTALA is the Federal statute which stipulates that if you show up at an emergency room in active labor (or having other medical emergencies occur) you must be diagnosed by a physician and treated regardless of your ability to pay. Sadly, it's the closest thing the US has to "right to health care" concept.)

Even if I do have to invoke EMTALA to deliver the kid, I don't think we're going to commemorate the experience in quite that way.

San Francisco!

Brian and I went to San Francisco last weekend (the 11th, 12th, and 13th) to visit a church he was interviewing at. Brian is trained as a pastor in the Church of the Nazarene and he's been looking for a church to pastor for the last several months. Due to my evil work schedule (made evil not by the number of days I work, but by the recently rescinded rule that required me to work three out of every four Sundays) I haven't been able to go with him for any previous church visits.

The church is New Start Ministries, which is in the Richmond District of San Francisco. At the moment, they're sharing a building with Sunset Chinese Church of the Nazarene (in a jaw-droppingly obvious "Great White Tourist" moment, I tried to take a picture of their church sign just because it was in English and Chinese, and this blew my puny redneck mind, but it didn't turn out. Instead, here is the view from the corner of the church lot.)

The gentleman on the left is Dr. John Calhoun, the District Superintendent. (As I explained to the teens sitting next to me when they asked "who's the dude giving Communion?", he's a very high mucky-muck in the Nazarene hierarcy.) You can find a better picture of him and a brief biography here.

The gentleman on the right is Jack Jung, who not only made us feel very welcomed at the church, but also was kind enough to drive us around San Francisco for a few hours so we could take the usual tourist pictures. Here's a typical one, shot at a high speed from the inside of his car.

Brian shot this one:

And here's what Alcatraz looks like as you speed by it on the freeway overpass by Golden Gate Bridge:



A congregation of turtles at the Palace of Fine Arts:

I love mangos and all things mango, so you can imagine my delight when they served this at the after church potluck--mango ice cream!

The church arranged for us to stay at the Hilton, which is far and away the nicest hotel I have ever seen or stayed in. Here is a (bad) picture of their grand lobby:

And a final picture of Laura (Jack's wife) and John, one of the kids from the church. Aren't they adorable?