Mistress of Disguise

Haven't had much of a chance to update since the birth, but here's a quick rundown of, well, as much as I can remember, anyway. XD

- Went to see the green house in Cleburne, and it was in terrible, terrible shape. The house was sunken by about 6 inches in the back. Breaker box that was 9,000 years old, whole house needed rewiring. Crumbling sheet rock, crumbling ceilings, no heat or AC, water damage, just a wreck. Since we've seen it, it's gone Under Contract, then came back on the market, then had a price drop down to $175k, then another down to $169k, so I'm guessing an inspection turned up even more damage than was just immediately visible. 

- I have a new baby! The C-section went very smoothly, and I was in the hospital for 3 days total before going home. Completely different experience from Kate's birth. WAY more post-op pain this time. Last time I didn't even use the pain pills after I went home. This time I was doubled over with the wind knocked out of me because of pain. 

- Our babysitter flaked out on us just 3 hours after Clementine was born, and M had to go home to stay with Kate while I was in the hospital, so I was on my own with her for 2 days before I got to go home. -_- M is extremely upset about it, and feels very hurt that his best friend let us down so hard. 

- Clementine was a big baby! 8lbs 10oz. Very glad to have had the C-section.

- Newborn checkup went well, but Kate caught something while we were at the doctor's office and the entire house ended up coming down with it, save for myself. Poor Clementine with her little cold just after being born, rough way to start out life.

- Since then things have been pretty routine. Clementine is entirely nocturnal, so very little sleep is happening. She's most active from midnight - 4AM, because of course she is.

- We are now actively house hunting. Found a house we all loved, was perfect in every way, but the schools in the area were TERRIBLE (like, only a 25% literacy rate terrible), and while we discussed our options for getting the kids into better schools, someone else bought it. -_- 

- We currently have an offer in on a house that we also all love! The seller accepted our initial offer, then the inspection turned up some potentially major problems. We did two more inspections - one for the foundation, one for the plumbing. Foundation is fine, but the plumbing is a complete catastrophe, like...cast iron pipes with large sections missing because they've rotted away. Estimate to replumb the house is $20k. The electrical also needs replacing because it's too old to handle current voltage requirements, as well as the water heater which is fairly new but somehow also dying, and the roof, which is ancient but should be covered at 100% by the seller's insurance. We've given our list of demands to the seller and are currently waiting for a reply.

- After a month at home, M has realized that yes, I absolutely need to stay home full-time in order for him to be able to do his job effectively. So, I am no longer with the sheriff's department as of this past Monday. Sort of sad to leave a place that I've been with for nearly a decade (would have been 9 years in April), but I'm also excited for this next chapter. 

So that's it, I think. It's been a very busy and exhausting month since Clem's birth, and I'm generally running on about 5 hours of sleep every day. I'll try and post a bit more regularly now that we've sort of got our new household routine down. 

Many developments in a single afternoon, yeesh.

Had my OB checkup, gave me the checklist for getting into the hospital, what to bring, who to call, etc. Have to buy a special body wash and use it the night before and morning of the surgery to cut down on possible infection. I'll probably be in the hospital for 3-4 days. M was like, "Well, that will be a nice break for recovery!" and I had to remind him that I'll be up every 3 hours to feed the baby, so it's not exactly a spa vacation, my dude.

The Cleburne House has dropped in price again, and is now sub-$200k! M agreed to go see it this weekend, so I emailed our realtor and am waiting to hear back. Of course, I was subjected to a classic M doom spiral about purchasing a house before his saving goal of March, but good lord, dude, we haven't even stepped foot in the house yet, maybe wait to catastrophize until we actually see the place first. He talked to a friend who pointed out that the breakfast nook can easily be converted into an office (it's actually set up as an office in the listing photos, too) by adding doors to the openings, which I have been saying the entire time, but you know, this time a dude said it. -_-

Kate has her first dental appointment on Saturday. Poor girl, I don't know how she'll do with it. She was excellent at her last doctor visit, but the doctor wasn't poking around in her mouth, so we'll see. She will get many cuddles and maybe some ice cream afterward.

Quiet enough night at home. Katie was in a good mood, and was very invested in trying to balance a ball on my head, so she spent most of the evening standing next to me on the couch, saying "ball!", putting it on my head, and then saying "hat!" Silly girl.

She went to bed easily, and I went out and picked us up some cheap McDonald's for dinner. I had really been looking forward to their mango smoothie that they have on the menu right now, but the machine was broken. Womp womp. They gave me an extra 10-piece nugget and an ice cream in recompense, and all was well. 

M told me he had run into a neighbor while he and Katie were on a walk, one I've spoken to before, and she is moving out because they are fighting rats. EEEK. Her unit is a few buildings away from ours, so we haven't seen any vermin, thankfully. She also told us that everyone on that side of the complex has moved out, and basically every unit facing the back lot is empty. Yikes.

Speaking of which, one of our last sets of neighbors in our particular building has moved out. We weren't sure they had since there is still a TON of stuff around their unit, but the other night when M came home, their front door was wide open and everything was dark, so he went up to do a welfare check and found the place abandoned. He said the heat had been cranked up to 95 (!!) and there was detritus all over the apartment, so we're thinking that maybe a vagrant got in there and rifled around. Yeesh.

So now it's just us and the older Asian couple and their son that live upstairs, and the rest of the building is empty. When we move out next year, they'll be the last. 

Quiet evening at home after work. Kate apparently had shunned her nap, so she was mildly feral when I got home. I gave her a bagel with cream cheese and some fruit, and put on the Christmas episodes of Ms. Rachel, and she began to slow down. She played some quiet games and colored in her shark book, had a bath, and was in bed by 7. Hooray!

Tried the other flavor of tri tip that we'd picked up, the "Santa Maria" flavor, which was pretty good, but we both agreed that the Burgundy Peppercorn one was better. We'll pick up a couple of each for tomorrow, as well as sausages for those who don't want beef. 

My decade+ old glasses finally broke thanks to tiny hands pulling on them all the time, so now I need to find new frames. -_- Thankfully, when I logged into my old Zenni account, they still had my prescription saved. I need to get it updated, but that's not going to happen before the end of the year. Now I just need to find frames I like, and hooray, there are Black Friday coupons for lenses, so I should be able to get totally new glasses for under $30.

Very much looking forward to the 4-day weekend. Sleep! I shall have some! Planning to put together the mac n' cheese tonight and get it to the point where it just needs to be stuck in the oven tomorrow to finish it off. M requested my roasted sweet potatoes, which are pretty fast and easy, and I'd like mashed potatoes, so that's our sides taken care of. Should all go together pretty quickly tomorrow. 

Weekend was full of things, man. Besides Kate's hospital visit, things were more or less fine, it was just very busy.

Friday was a potluck at work, which was great. All the food was very Southern - baked mac 'n cheese, bacon + onion green beans, jambalaya, chicken spaghetti, you name it. Very delicious and very filling. 

Hospital shenanigans ended the day. 

Woke up Saturday feeling awful. Probably all the stress from the day before, but I was in a very bad way. I tried to take it as easy as possible the entire day, but Kate's gonna Kate, and was as active as ever. Very run down by the end of the day, and things just...kept coming up to keep me from going to bed. I finally tried to crawl into bed at around 1:30, which woke up Kate, so I spent an hour or so trying to get her to go back to sleep before giving and up and telling M that we needed to transfer her to the crib. So, we did that, and I finally got to sleep around 3:30. 

Thankfully, I got to sleep in on Sunday, and I felt much better than I had the day before. Sunday was a pretty decent day. M went out and picked up some tri tips for us to have on Thanksgiving, Kate had a normal day with a normal nap time and everything, and we had a nice little storm roll in in the evening which made everything cozy. The only hiccup was getting dinner, because by the time M was home, everything was closed. Had to settle for McDonald's, which made for an awful night of heartburn, bleh.

Slept very little last night, so am very zombified today. OB checkup this afternoon, and am going to cut out of work early so I can rest a bit at home before the appointment. 16 days until baby.

Did not end up going home for lunch yesterday, as when I reached the top of the stairs and looked out onto the street, I saw a river where the road used to be. o.o Our 4AM thunderstorm had come back for another round, and the streets were completely flooded, complete with raging rapids wherever water met parked car. So, I called M and told him I was stranded, and went back to my office.

Charged through the insane amount of work that's piled up on my desk and had it all to admin by noon, then stopped in to the briefing room where they laid out a pizza spread for everyone. Had a couple of slices, then went back to my building where they'd brought in a taco truck. It was drizzly and cool, and it was nice to stand outside for a while, but the line was slow, and even though they were supposed to be there until 2-ish, they were out of food 30 minutes after opening up. They said "we have food for 10 more people!" and counted back. I was #7, so I was able to get my taco plate. Still, it took forever, I was damp and achy with no place to sit, and the tacos were not worth the backache. 

I was all ready to get into the massage chair during my afternoon break, but M called just before and asked me to come home early. He rattled off a list of minor crises he was having, so I just packed up and went home. When I got home, he was cleaning something up in the kitchen, and he said that Kate had taken the office chair, wheeled it over to the credenza, climbed up onto it to get onto the kitchen counter, then started eating cat treats, knocked the cat's food and water, and the cutting board, off the counter, and was basically just an agent of chaos all day. He'd been in a meeting and heard the crash, thought she'd hurt herself, and that's when he'd called, so he was in Dad Panic mode. 

Things got cleaned up, Kate and I played together for a very short while, and then I put her down for a nap because she was very obviously exhausted. She slept for a good three hours, then was up for dinner time. I attempted to clean some of the dirty dishes in the sink, which involved a good 30 minute scrub of the dutch oven, which had burned soup encrusted on the bottom. -_- Completely exhausted myself before I finished everything, so there's still a pile to clean, but at least it's been cut in half. 

Katie went to bed without much fuss, but I still heard her playing around an hour later. Checked on her, and yup, naked and singing songs. Got her dressed again and back down to sleep, and then she finally passed out.

M offered to make us omelet sandwiches for dinner, so he started working on that, and then suddenly, the knob on the stove fell into the back panel of the stove. This caused some sort of weird chain reaction where all the other knobs did the same thing? O.o  So, before we could eat, we had to disassemble the stove, rescue the knobs, screw them all back in, and then reassemble everything. Not what either of us wanted to be doing at 10:30 at night, but that's where we were.

Once that was finally over with, sandwiches were had. I melted into the couch and watched the last few episodes of Season 1 of Absentia. It was a show, can't say whether I recommend it or not. It wrapped up the storyline entirely, yet there are two more seasons? I do not feel compelled to watch them, so I think I'm done with it. 

Went to bed entirely too late, past midnight, had odd dreams about receiving a 50lb wheel of gruyere cheese and trying to think of ways to use it. Now all I want is a big vat of mac 'n cheese.

The mystery of why Kate has been sleeping so much has been solved, and it's because she's come down with something. She was warm and sneezy yesterday, slept until noon again, and then napped for three hours in the late afternoon, before going to bed at 9. She was awake for long enough for us to get some fluids and medicine into her and for her to nibble on some food, which she wasn't terribly interested in. Poor girl. She seems in decent spirits, still wants to play and laugh, but she isn't hopping to her bunny song like she usually does, or running around after the cats, so she's definitely low energy.

She was asleep when I got home after work, so I went right back out the door and headed to Sam's for our grocery pickup. We stocked up on frozen foods this time around so we have plenty of easy meal options during the next few weeks. We overbought a bit, and ended up having to eat one of the lasagnas and an apple frangipane tart that were taking up space. Darn. We also had to put the colossal pork shoulder, that's been living in the freezer and taking up an enormous amount of room, into the fridge to defrost, so we need to figure out something to do with 7 pounds of pork. 

M and I talked about Thanksgiving and if we wanted to do anything for it. He said he'd like to try doing a tri-tip at home. We both loved the pre-marinated ones that Costco used to carry, but they haven't had them in a while and we both have been craving them. I did a bit of poking around, and apparently a near-ish fancy grocery store does still carry the pre-marinated ones, so M is going to check them out and report back.

It was 90 degrees yesterday, and it's 84 at noon today. Hate this.

OB appointment tomorrow, should be just a quick checkup. Three weeks and counting.

Went home for lunch and to cover a meeting for M, and arrived to find that Kate was still asleep. She woke up just in time for him to have his meeting, so I changed and fed her, and we hung out a bit while she colored with her crayons. M emerged fairly quicky from his meeting, in a mild panic because his workload had been more than doubled in the course of that 30-minute meeting, and it was all expected to be done within the next 48 hours. 

I offered to stay home and watch Kate so he could focus on getting as much work done as possible, and he took me up on it. I made him and Kate a quick lunch of some frozen potstickers, and then Kate and I continued on with our day, coloring, doing flash cards, and reading books. 

Tried to get Kate down for a nap at around 2, but she never really went to sleep. She did lay quietly in her bed for about an hour, though, which gave me just enough time to eat a bagel and watch the last episode of Death by Lightning. From what little I know of the Garfield assassination, it seemed to follow historical events pretty closely. They skipped Guiteau's trial altogether, which makes sense since it wouldn't have provided anything new for the audience. Overall an excellent show, great production value, fabulous costumes. Do recommend. 

Around 3 o'clock I decided to make us all a snack, so I stuck some cinnamon rolls in the oven. Between the three of us we ended up polishing off all 8 rolls in about 5 minutes. 

At some point, I emerged from the kitchen to see Kate standing in the living room, completely naked and holding every single one of her bath toys. She said "Bath!" very excitedly, so I gave her a bath, because how can I argue with that?

Dinner was leftover roast with the addition of a pasta-roni box to pad out the sides. Kate ate the pasta and little else, she seems to be going through a meatless phase. By 7pm she was sitting in the crook of my arm and falling asleep, so I put her down for bed, which she fought mightily, but she did pass out as soon as her head hit the pillow. I watched some nonsense on TV while M continued to work until 10pm, then we cleaned up the house a bit together and went to bed. 

Speech therapy for Kate today. Lunch with my sister tomorrow. Going to try and get some chores done over the weekend, mainly cleaning up the bathroom and sweeping all the floors. At some point in the next couple of weeks, M and I need to dig out all of Kate's old baby stuff and make an inventory of what we do and don't need for Clementine. So far we're pretty sure we only need a handful of things, like a second car seat and some new bottles, and that everything else can be found packed away in our closets. 

Brake lights on the Honda are now totally out. M said he suspected there was a short in some wire because of the weirdness with the blinkers when we were testing them the other night. So, he took $50 from savings and we filled up the Jeep and now I don't have to drive the stupid Honda anymore! Hooray!

M went to bed almost as soon as I got home, so it was just me and Kate for the rest of the evening. I was feeling absolutely terrible, just light headed and uncomfortable, so I tried as best I could to just rest on the couch while Kate played on her own. Not super successful, but she went to bed early enough that I could relax a little before crawling into bed myself. 

Watched another episode of Death by Lightning. Ep. 3 starts with just...a lot of sex, so be forewarned if that's not your thing. By the end of the episode, the groundwork had been set for the assassination, so it looks like we have the assassination and Guiteau's trial and execution all stuffed into the last episode. Hoping to finish the series tonight.

Defrosted our last beef roast overnight, then this morning I seared it and put it in the crock pot to cook on low all day. Didn't have my usual seasoning packets, so this is a more traditional roast rather than a Mississippi roast. We had a handful of small yellow potatoes left and a couple of already chopped carrots that didn't make it into the last soup, so those were added to the pot to finish them off, along with a packet of onion soup mix and some beef broth. I may add some Worcestershire sauce to the broth when I go home for lunch, since a lot of online recipes include it.

OB checkup this afternoon, so a short work day. 

Went home Friday and took Kate on an afternoon walk, in which we had an unpleasant encounter with a neighbor. He kept getting into Kate's face and waving and going "SAY HI" really loudly, so, of course, she hid behind me and wanted nothing to do with that. He accused me of being racist because she wouldn't greet him and then he stormed off into the complex. Asshole.

Saturday was uneventful. Tibby had a vet checkup first thing in the morning, and since Saturdays are walk-ins only, we had to arrive when they opened, put our name on the wait list, and then sit in the car until we were called up. Took a total of 1 1/2 hours to get in and get seen, bleh. But he's been given new meds for his bladder infection, and he's been released from bathroom quarantine. The rest of the day was quiet. M went out in the afternoon to go shooting since it was projected to be the last temperate weekend for a while.

I had really hoped to sleep in on Sunday, but Kate had other plans and was up at 6:30. -_- I'd had a bad night, and was dozing off on the couch in the morning while she ran around and ate cheese. I tried to get her back down into bed at 8AM, because usually she just needs a bit of a snack and something to drink on her early mornings and she goes right back down. Once she was in her bed, I crawled back into mine and passed back out. She was up again an hour later, ugh. 

The rest of the day I felt completely terrible and I was in a cranky mood. She eventually went down for a nap at noon, and I finally had a chance to brush my teeth, take a shower, and eat something. She slept for 3 1/2 hours, which was a nice break and gave me a chance to catch up on my weekly shows and to watch a movie, Lies We Tell, which is based on a gothic novel and includes a young heiress under the care of a shady uncle, betrayal, a battle of wills between the heiress and the uncle, and, of course, murder. It was pretty good, and it has actually decent mid-Victorian clothes, so I'd recommend it. There is, however, a rape scene, but you can see it coming before it happens so it's easy enough to skip over.

Once Kate was in bed, I had more gothic mid-Victorian fun with Guillermo del Toro's new Frankenstein. Very, very pretty movie, as most of del Toro's movies are. There were some changes from the book, as is to be expected, but I don't feel like they detracted from the story. I was very impressed that they didn't shy away from 1850s men's hairstyles, save for on Frankenstein and the Creature. 

McDonald's for dinner, much ice cream was had. Kate went down for bed early, so my movie watching was done in my own bed for once, which was lovely. M was out seeing the new Predator film with friends, so I had the house to myself. Lovely!