Productive Weekend

Friday

After work on Friday, I could have used a drink. It was a long and very frustrating day. Of course, if I wasn’t pregnant, I wouldn’t be drinking to excess, just one drink with dinner as a treat and to help me unwind.  Since I am pregnant, I couldn’t even have that one drink. So I chose to do something slightly irresponsible, but much safer. I drank a glass of Dr. Pepper.  Large caffeine dose in the evening, coupled with high fructose corn syrup… yum! Then we stayed up late playing Lego Star Wars.

Saturday

I was very happy with our accomplishments on Saturday. In the morning, we gathered up a broken DVD player and block Styrofoam and took them to the electronics recycling that our recycling center holds once every 3 months or so. It was our first time, and I’m not sure what Aaron expected. As you drive up, someone directs you where to go and park. Then you open the car door and people take your electronics and Styrofoam right out of the car for you. The guy directing traffic directs you back out of the parking spot and you’re done! As we were driving out Aaron says, “That was cool. I wish we had more stuff to recycle.” He’s easily amused.

Then we stopped by the flea market being held by a local church youth group. Luckily we didn’t buy a lot. But Aaron came home with a puzzle and I came home with a candle holder, pendant, and cute “baby’s first steps” picture frame.

After grabbing brunch, we tackled some chores at home. Aaron cleaned out the car while I clean up the kitchen. Besides the usual empty and load the dishwasher, I disinfected the counters, and put some cabinets back in order. On New Year’s Eve I had discovered a leak from a bathroom pipe in one corner of the kitchen. Luckily it was a leak that our co-op had to fix, but in case the fix was messy, I had removed the contents of several cabinets. The leak now appears to be fixed, so I was happy to finally put my pots and pans and pantry items back into the kitchen cabinets.

Since it wasn’t quite time to go to the farmer’s market yet, I decided to have Aaron help me make laundry detergent. It was a great day to be outside for a little bit, although I would have preferred less wind for mixing white powders. I wore a mask even though Aaron did the mixing. We made a batch and a half, which should last us for a good, long time, despite the upcoming increase in dirty laundry (baby clothes and cloth diapers).

At 3:00 we stopped by the farmers market and picked up some bacon. Sadly, they were out of eggs already.

Aaron was ready to call it a day at that point, but I still wanted to get a few other things done. With the car cleaned out, and the mild temperatures, I figured it was a good time to get the car washed. And since BJ’s warehouse club is on the way home from the carwash, we could stop and get eggs and a few other items we needed in bulk. I’m not sure how I convinced Aaron, but he went along with it. Unfortunately, a lot of other people thought it was a good time to get a car wash. The line was out to the street. But since we had driven so far, we waited. It is, after all, a good carwash. They even clean the inside of the windows, wipe down the dash, and take out and spray down the floor mats. I’ve even gotten compliments on my clean car from the guys at Valvoline.

As usual, we purchased way more than we intended at BJ’s. But we managed to get eggs, tissues, toilet paper, paper towels, and the most important item: furniture movers. The furniture movers are for our coffee table. About two weekends ago we picked up foam puzzle floor mats to put down on our living room floor. We stole the idea from some neighbor friends who have a baby. Our floor tends to be ice cold in the winter because it is tile and there is a big crawl space under the house. Wearing socks doesn’t help, and we’ve never bothered with a carpet because we move the coffee table back and forth constantly. So when I saw the floor mats at our friends’ house, I knew that was the answer. It would provide insulation from the cold, be a good surface for Samantha to crawl on, and our coffee table should be able to move across it. Well, I was almost right. The coffee table ended up not moving very well, plus it left divots in the foam at the corners. But oh! Our feet have stayed so much warmer! The new solution was to get those little furniture mover coasters to put at the corners of the coffee table so that the weight was more widely distributed, and allow the table to move more freely.  Yep, they worked!

Whew, what a day! We took it easy the rest of the evening.

Sunday

On Sunday I woke up with a throbbing hip at 6AM. I had slept the entire night on my left side, and for some reason my hip decided to rebel. After a quick bathroom break, I flipped to my left side, hoping to get a few more hours of sleep. Unfortunately my hip continued to throb. I got up around 8AM, just because I was so uncomfortable.  It was still sore when I went to bed that night. 

So I started the day sore and tired, and I wasn’t in the mood to do much. When Aaron got up, he made us bacon and eggs for breakfast. I helped by making the toast. As I was standing in front of the toaster, I looked outside to see a minivan parked in the street with USPS decals. The driver was scanning an envelope. Seeing as it was Sunday, I wondered whether this special delivery was for us or for our neighbor. I couldn’t see the postman as he approached, but to my delight, I heard our screen door open. Between buttering sets of toast, I opened the envelope to find an adorable Penn State dress and hat for Samantha. That cheered me up quite a bit. But I still wasn’t very motivated.

After breakfast, Aaron suggested he was going to install the baby seat base in the car. After all, cleaning out the car and getting a car wash was all in preparation for the seat installation. I really wanted to play video games instead, but I decided Aaron was right. I chose to do fun chores though. I asked Aaron, “Well, if you’re going to install the car seat, can I plant seeds?” “Sure.” So we got to work. I planted 2 kinds of onions, stevia, chives, chamomile, asparagus, and Thai red roselle. I just hope I have time to plant them in the garden this year. On one hand, I’ll be home on maternity leave during garden planting season. On the other hand, I’ll be trying to figure out how to take care of a baby!

Aaron installed the car seat base with little trouble, and he’s almost convinced me that he did it right. Not that I don’t trust him, especially since he read both the car seat manual and the car manual. But I’ve heard that almost no one installs them correctly. So I would feel better if we had it properly inspected. Too bad I can’t find a single inspection site anywhere in the county. Not one.

Throughout the day on Sunday, I also managed to get caught up on laundry. I’ll be behind on laundry again come next weekend after the baby shower. But for now, I’m caught up and it feels good.

Car seat installation, planting seeds, and laundry… those were our big accomplishments for the day. I think it was plenty given that I was unmotivated and in pain.     

Since I don’t have any pictures from this weekend, I’ll share the picture on the Thai Red Roselle seed packet (picture grabbed from www.rareseeds.com, where I purchased the seeds).