The herd

Since we inherited my grandfather's cat last summer we now have FOUR very, very long haired white furry beasts. The amount of cat hair around here is insane.

Insane I tell you.

And for some reason grandpa's cat is a horrible shedder.

No matter how much I brush her there is cat hair always coming off of her.
So today I sheared* half the herd.

Yes, that is cat hair from only HALF the herd.

It's a three foot long pile.

Have mercy on me!

*I just sit there with the scissors and carefully cut off as much hair as I quickly can with a wriggling, complaining cat held in one hand. They look like they've met Edward Scissorhands for a few days because of how choppy it looks. I've yet to find a better way to do it since their hair is too much like cotton candy for clippers.

Did you know that most groomers will not groom cats without anesthesia? No thanks.

Time marches on

It's really summertime now. How can that be?

90+ degrees already.
And Jack graduated from preschool yesterday!

I had my doubts about him "performing" in their spring musical, but he did a great job. He was completely and utterly focused on the task and on getting all of his sign language* for Brown Bear right.

Of course, there is not a single decent photo of all of that. Dark auditorium + lots of moving little people = not a great photo op. Rest assured, it was wonderful!
When it came time to put his mortarboard and tassle into his "special box" he was quite reluctant to see it go already. (I am a little afraid it will be lost or ruined or otherwise.) So after graduation we both poked around in the box a little and walked down memory lane together.

Onward and upward to kindergarten we go!
My parents went with us to the graduation and my Dad brought us a huge box of cherries from his tree. Yummmmmy. I already have pitted a ton of them and made a Cherry Delight. (Which is calling me to it. Again.)
And then this morning Jack and I went to the farm and picked some beautiful strawberries.

(Which was such hard work I required a long nap this afternoon. Ha.)

Now we just have to wait until this weekend when the pool opens.

Bliss.

*Jack has been attending a Goddard School this year where part of the curriculum is sign language. They also learn yoga and Spanish. Not surprisingly those three things are his favorite part of the "learning" part of preschool. Our public school district decided this week NOT to offer a half day kindy program, so I am trying to get him into a private school for kindy. Hope that works out, as I have NO back up plan.

**Before you ask, I just do not want those photos taken to Walgreens and copied. We are related to people who do as they please with MY photos of my child and in my current state it makes me mad to even think about it. I hope someone at Walgreens will refuse to do it.

Impromptu backyard camping

Yesterday while David was BBQ'ing for dinner Jack decided that we were going to have a backyard camp out right then.
He ran around the house gathering up all of his supplies - tents and sleeping bags...
he set up a "fire" and put our chairs around it...
and he gathered all the supplies to make s'mores. (Which we ended up making on the grill.)
He had to have marshmallow roasting. (Like our spur of the moment fire pit? HAHA!)
The marshmallows were thoroughly enjoyed. (Even if I did only have tiny ones and a BBQ skewer to stick them on.)
And then star charts were consulted...
as we watched the moon on our garage sale find telescope, found just that morning.

Then he and Daddy slept in the tent, all night! (Much to my surprise. And yes, I slept in the a/c in my bed. I am a wimp.)

I wonder what adventures he will come up with next?

Too distracted for post titles

As you can imagine, I am a wreck over here. The nerves, the anxiety, the waiting, the sleeplessness - it's all starting to really get to me. I feel no need to puke, which worries me. And an ultrasound on June 1st seems like so many miles away right now...please let the time pass more quickly than this!

Anyway. I didn't mean to go silent here, but I just cannot function right now. Here are a few things I have been meaning to blog about.
I bought this chandelier at the Habitat for Humanity restore. I have been checking there for chandeliers with zero success until my birthday weekend. As luck would have it, this might be one of my favorite chandeliers!
I painted it white, of course, and now it resides in the master bathroom.

To update the tally:
Current chandelier count = 14
Bare lightbulbs remaining = 4
Chandeliers awaiting paint on the kitchen counter = 1

I also bought myself this white stool for that bathroom on my birthday. I really needed a place to set a shampoo bottle while I am in the clawfoot tub.
Way back this winter I was trying to decide what to do with this bookshelf.
I painted it (and added glass pulls to the doors) and then did a furniture switch-a-roo and moved it into the sewing room.

I have been working every day at cleaning up the resulting mess in there from moving around all the furniture again. It's still cluttery, but at least I can walk in there again.
I did go ahead and paint the inside pink, and I am glad I did. (The outside is just a creamier, and now cleaner, white.)

Love it.

Last, but not least, Jack picked a quilt winner and he choose Heidi of Spiritual Knitter ! Congratulations Heidi.

The annual burfday give away

I can't just let my birthday pass without some of the usual fanfare we usually have around here now, can I?

There is always the birthday eye candy-
I love me some Bret Michaels. I really do. But it is darn hard to find a photo of him that is not terrifying. Clearly I don't love him for his looks. I actually think he is pretty darn smart and funny too.

Since Bret is insufficient eye candy, how about some real eye candy?
Hmmmmmmmm, James Marsden. He would make a fine burfday present.
Sadly James was not at my door on my burfday.

I did get something I asked for (well, the only thing I asked for)-
the start of a cottage garden in front of our house.
Complete with foxgloves...
and some beautiful, feathery astilbe.

Plus roses, forget me nots, azaleas, jacob's ladder, lilacs, hydrangeas, columbine, and delphiniums. All that's missing for now is the lily of the valley. It's rather exciting to be making our own gardens. We never really bothered with that at the rental house.

And now, a present for *you*!
This is an old redwork baby quilt that has been kicking around my sewing room for many years. Since I am rearranging some furniture in there right now, I thought I would pass it along to one of you. (The quilt collection is just too big!)

It is WELL loved. There are some paint splatters on it, that big hole at the bottom and some of the embroidery is actually worn thin. (You can click to enlarge.)
But look at that hippo!

It's suitable for cutting, or loving, or whatever you want to do with it.

You just need to leave a comment, no hoops to leap through, saying you want it. I will have Jack pick a name on Friday.

P.S. Thank you very much for all the kind words. I have a metric ton of anxiety, but I am hanging in there.

Keeping score

On Mother's Day I saw:
2 pink lines

I am currently:
5 weeks into my 5th pregnancy

In the last year there have been:
At least 30 sticks peed on (6 in the last month alone)
4 pregnancies
1 surgery
Approximately 24 blood draws
Weekly trips to the health lab
Thousands of dollars of medical bills
Thousands of tears
2 small glimpses of hope
2 cycles of clomid
1 go around with prometrium
1 Beta that was bad from the start
1 Beta that looked promising but went no where
4 ultrasounds
90 baby aspirin
270 vitamins swallowed since March
1 rise in progesterone from a pre-fertility drug number of 2 to a post fertility drug number of 19
At least 25 phone calls from my OB

Today I had:
A very promising beta. Progesterone at 35 (!!! 35!!! last time it was 8.7), HcG tripled in 48 hours
1 glimmer of hope
1 little cry of happy tears

Still to come:
1,000s more vitamins
250 more baby aspirin
Ultrasound in 2 weeks (please, please, please let there be a little beating heart)

And now you know why I am so damn distracted right now.

*PLEASE no congrats yet. We all know this can still go bad. Just think shiny happy thoughts for me and the poppy seed, ok?

I am going out on a big limb putting this out there so soon, but I need to remember if this goes poorly that there are moments in this where I do cry with joy. Where I do believe I will have more children. Where I do believe this.is.going.to.work.

A small delay on Mother's Day

I haven't posted about Mother's Day yet because this year I was really feeling the weight of 3 miscarriages and a year long battle with infertility. On Mother's Day last year Dave and I really did think we would be the parents of two fabulous little people by now.

And yet, it was hard for to not think of so many women who have no fabulous little people at all. I just couldn't bring myself to say anything at all, knowing how hard this journey is for so many people.

So Mother's Day was very, very low key around here this year. We ate at our favorite Indian restaurant, went to the flea and puttered around our house.

Those of you on Facebook with me know that two weeks ago I was REALLY battling the hall bath trying to repaint it.
I gave up and gave myself the gift of a hired painter to do the job for me. It's now blue (Martha Stewart Artesian Well, Home Depot).
And it is *so* much better than the light white/grayish/purple color that was in there before.

All that's left to do in there is switch out the cabinet knobs for glass and find a light fixture to replace the bare lightbulb!
A few weeks ago I discovered this little drawing on our bedside table after Jack had been in there watching a movie.

A quilt! He drew me a little quilt! I love it so very much.
Jack's school had an art auction awhile back and all the kids had made little clay pinch pots. Except Jack, who pretty much refuses to make art projects at school. I REALLY wanted one of those little pots made by him, so I bought him some clay and for Mother's Day we made pots.
What is completely awesome about his are the "garlands" around the edge. As he was making them he said to me, "See mom? These are like those things you always hang up everywhere on the holidays."

That's my boy. :-)

(I think we might try painting the pots today.)

The other reason for my silence is tomorrow's impending doom - my birthday.

My 35th birthday.

Really?

Usually I have a big blog party the week of my birthday, but I am so NOT feeling any love for 35. In fact I am feeling like it's a freaking mid life crisis. Ha.

Anyway, I will be back tomorrow with something. Who knows what.

A trip to the ped

Jack has a very small cough that turned into a very big cough over the weekend. So off we went to the ped at 8 30 this morning. The ped heard him wheezing in his chest and decided he needed not only a breathing treatment, but a chest x-ray. (For the record, Jack doesn't really have any allergy or asthma issues. He is the healthiest kid I have ever met. I am more than a bit baffled by this asthma talk, but it was a BAD allergy season here.)
Upon hearing he had to have an x-ray, his eyes got all wide and he said to me, "Mom. I have been swallowing my gum."

LOLOLOLOL I am sure he remembers the battery swallowing incident and he must have decided I was going to be able to see all the gum he had swallowed in his belly on the x-ray.

(And of course I had given him my best motherly lecture on never, ever, ever swallowing gum when I allowed him to start chewing gum around Christmas time. For the record, I came clean when I saw he was a bit scared about having swallowed gum and told him it was really no big deal.)

*He has taken to wearing his Dandy as a cape. When worn with his crown and his light saber he is "the king". And we must all obey. Ha. Kids. 5 is a great age.

What Cheer Iowa Flea Market - Part 3

The last of the loot from What Cheer.

I debated showing you *everything,* but I know that before I plan to make a trip somewhere I really want to know what people buy there, so here it all is. The only thing I didn't take a photo of yet are 2 burlap feed sacks (destined to be pillows, you will see them then) and a super sweet child's apron.
A chippy old mirror.
(Better detail photo, it's rainy today.)
The most important purchases were something that was on my wish list for this year - another medicine chest! I actually bought two. The one above the towel bar and the lowest one with the glass towel bar hanging from it. (It seems like a lot of medicine chests, but we have gone from 2 bathrooms with a LOT of storage to virtually no bathroom storage. This bathroom has a flat mirror and a pedestal sink and the hall bath has a very tiny vanity. Finally there is room for everything now!)
This Halloween mask was actually from the only antique store we found in Iowa. (Where are they all?)
Love these little pieces of vintage fabric from one of those dollar boxes.
This little feedsack dog was from a garage sale on the side of the road somewhere in Iowa.
These foil papers are actually florist paper for wrapping around pots. I see foil Easter eggs and Easter baskets in my future.
And a tablecloth and a toolbox. (There were very few tablecloths there.)

I like to imagine that toolbox stuffed with little flowers in glasses.

And then I remember the cats will eat them and barf all over the house.

It's a glamorous life I lead.

Happy Friday!

What Cheer Iowa Flea Market - Part 2

So, shall we move on to what I *did* buy?

Dave and I trudged around that mud for 3 1/2 hours and I think we still only saw about 75% of the flea market. After 3 1/2 hours I had to use a bathroom (other than a port-a-potty please! which meant a 30 minute car ride) and frankly I was getting "stuffed" out. It felt like we had already bought.so.much.stuff.

(Of course, now I cannot wait to go back. Ha.)

For the record, I did NOT set out to buy pottery. I have a ton of pottery! More than I know what to do with! But when the pots are $1 each? Sigh, they are coming home with me.





This looks like an ordinary kitchen canister...
Argggggggggggh! It still has an oatmeal label on it. Why doesn't my oatmeal come in a cheery container like this instead of something that is just trash? (THAT's where the green movement needs to take us.)
I swear that Shara made me buy this ruler. She did. (Really I cannot find the front door wreaths in the boxes that are unpacked in the basement and it made an easy front door decoration, even if one leg is broken.)
I had *just* looked for this set of canisters on Ebay last week. Dave seemed surprised by that. I think I am entering a gingham/plaid/checkered phase. Look out world.
I am telling you, most of the pottery was just too damn cheap. Yellow pots are somewhat hard to come by too.

Well then. That's only half of it. The other half comes tomorrow. :-)