I know, I know. I'm hopeless at blogging. Ironically I have been doing some posting, just not that much here. But don't be sad- you're always be my first.

Christmas was good aside from a miserable cold that hit Christmas Eve and would not let go. Wonderful to see the family and just hang out and relax. My brother and his wife have big plans to be pregnant again by next December (and keep telling everyone about it!) so that may be the last time we're all together for awhile.

Went to NYC for New Years. Had a great time with with my friends and got to see a lot while we were there. Times Square was... cold. I actually think I got frostbite because my feet have not properly recovered.

Jenny is SO grown up! She's standing now and oh so chatty and sweet (now that she's cut a few teeth). She'll be 9 months next week: crazy.

We discovered about a week and a half ago that the beloved family dog, Maggie, has a tumor. It's pressing against her lungs and heart and she has only a short time left. Her breathing is getting tougher and she has a hard time eating, though she's still in good spirits.

Maggie is a wonderful dog. She's undoubtedly one of the best behaved dogs I've ever seen and so sweet! She has a great temperament but she was also trained by my father, who did a great job working with her. She's his dog more than the rest of us and this has hit him hard. It's been very difficult to watch it all but I know Maggie's had a good life. I'll miss her; we all will.

So that's the "highlights" for now. I'll try not to let it go so long next time, or at least post my other stuff up here as well. Hope everyone is doing well, had a great holiday. Happy (quite belated) 2009!

10 Things I Learned on Vacation

1. Wisconsin is huge.
2. Contrary to popular belief, one can go two whole weeks without a phone, email, web browsing, TV, etc. It's true.
   
3. Cheezees (aka: Cheesy Poofs, Cheetos, etc.) are the perfect vacation food (unless you're 4 and get queasy while riding up a twisty mountain road...)
4. I do not sleep well in the car.
5. The water in Canada is cold, but it really does feel good when you get in. Honest!
6. Chicago has traffic jams. At 2:30. AM. On Sunday morning.
7. Apparently I can spend 17 days with my family and not want to kill them.
   
8. Mosquito's suck. A LOT.
9. Strawberry muffins are fabulous (at least those from the bakery in Nestor Fall, Ontario- there's only one-- you can't miss it really).
10. Dog hair sticks to everything.

Had a great time. Also glad to be back, or at least glad to NOT be in a car.

A Baby Story

Ok, quick reminder: I was asked, and agreed, to be the "coach" for my cousin when she had her baby. Her circumstances are her own but the long and short of it is she decided to have a baby by herself, so I was to be the person at her bedside, helping her through labor and delivery.

The actual call was fairly simple, far less traumatic than some of the "test" calls which involved me panicking and swerving into traffic. She ended up being induced so I knew to pack up and head down to the local Baby Shop (aka. Rex) first thing in the morning. We checked in, along with her lovely mother , at 8:30am or so and then settled in.

The pitocin (induces labor) drip was started around 10am and then we sat there for about six hours. She progressed well, but slowly and her doctor actually pressured her for a good while to go ahead and have a C-section and "get it over with" (I could do a whole blog on this SOB doctor who never heard of a birth plan and just wanted to do the C-section and be done, grrrr). We opted to continue and sure enough a short while later things really got moving.

From about 6pm until 10pm she went through terrible back labor and we tried everything to get her through it but after a while she decided to have an epidural. Unfortunately it took some time for that to arrive so there was a good 5 hours of really tough, yell-y, unpleasant labor. On the plus side the epidural was very popular; apparently she'll be giving them for Christmas this year.

So we're up to about 11:30pm. After that mom tried to sleep and the nurses kept up a steady steam of pitocin and oxygen (the nurses were great, BTW. Not like the doctor at all). The trouble is that the contractions and pitocin affected the baby's heartbeat; the oxygen helped normalize it. But after a few large dips in the baby's heartbeat the doctors and nurse and mom, grandma and I all decided that it would be for the best to do a C-section. She was wheeled down to the OR about 3am and the little baby was born at 3:31am on May 21st (I know, she's a month old already!).

I went with her to be cleaned up. She was a couple days late and already had already inhaled merconium, and quite a lot of it at that. The nurses had to suction out her nose and mouth. But she was beautiful and healthy and sweet and precious and all those things. And she still is! I should know, I baby-sat last night. And no, she's not sleeping through the night. She's still cute though.

So there you have it. The story of how my quasi-niece was born. I have a fair number of pictures below of the day (and night) of deliver. Enjoy!

As for the "will-I-ever-have-children-now" question... I think it's still yes. But I won't deny this made me think about what I haven in-store. Interestingly I think my sleep-over with cute baby last night did more to put a damper on my having kids then labor and delivery did. I still want to have them- for sure. I just don't think I'm ready. Which is good because I am still single which should slow me down.

Also, I'm about to go on vacation so for once I have an excuse for never posting. I'm off to Canada for two-weeks, which I was going to write about but don't have time to now. Hopefully I'll have happy stories when I get back, although the trip involves about 60 hours of driving all together so that's not really a happy thought. Happy summer, all!

Mom and I before the tough times started.













New baby!













Baby faux-hawk.













Mom and baby.

Really Bag Blogger

I think 4 or 5 people have told me that I accidentally entitled my last post "Bag Blogger", which was exciting since I had no idea that many people were reading! Hi people! I am a really bad blogger.

In my defense, things have been very busy and I have been thinking about blogging. I actually have 3 or 4 things in mind to write about, starting with the story of baby. But I want to give that story it's full weight so I'll save it for next time. And by "next time" I don't mean 3 months from now.

I don't really have any great updates; work is still busy, I'm still stressed. On the plus side I'm 21 days away from my vacation: 2-weeks in a beautiful Bob Ross-wilderness of Canada. I've also been working on my nice back yard with help from my cute little brother, who probably wouldn't like to be called "cute" or "little". More soon.

Frank said "somethings gotta give"...

I think it's been fairly well documented that I'm busy. It may also have come up that I can't say "no" to things - I get overbooked. Part of the 'year of Jen' was to work on this problem, but I'm not doing very well.

Work is - busy. People keep leaving and we can't hire replacements fast enough (plus hiring takes time we don't have, which is an irritating catch-22). It's a busy time of year anyway and add to that a few poorly-timed projects (transition to PHP5 servers- still love ya, Jason) and I'm in the middle of a stress test.

Of course what do I do? I have a vacation planned! I leave Friday at 4:00pm for NYC. Unfortunately, the last person to leave was my only web back-up, which means my boss will be stuck calling inexperienced part-timers or application programmers in my absence- neither of whom want to do my job. I expect I may need to take care of a few things while I'm away.

So, treading water as fast as I can I've just managed to stay mostly ahead of the work needs. I have not done as well with other things, such as my master's class. I was unable to finish my assignment that was due tonight. I don't know if that means I need to drop the class or audit it or what. I just couldn't get it all done. I'm going to see if I can catch up at all over spring break, and if not... well, if it's work or school I have to take care of work. I hate to get two months into a class and bail though. Sigh.

I am going to do my damnedest to let all this go on Friday at 4pm. Check back and I'll let you know how successful I am and how cold NYC was!

The Island at the Center of the World

Once upon a time I bought a book in my favorite little bookstore in Manhattan (The Strand, a few blocks away from Union Square). The book was about the history of the earliest settling of Manhattan, by the Dutch. I agreed to let my brother read it first and therefore have only just finished it, nine and a half months later...
The early part of the book was a little slow. It detailed the very early history of the settlement (including the eventual city of Albany and several NYC boroughs) so it took awhile for me to get into the book. But as the city filled in and more of the names became recognizable the book became much more rewarding.

The Dutch were very open people and a century before English settlers were fighting for fundamental freedoms, the Dutch were giving many of them- most importantly, freedom of religion and a welcoming attitude to foreigners. This early legacy helped to create an attitude that lead millions of immigrants through Ellis Island, but also helped to form our earliest declarations of freedom.


I know I'm going on a bit- I apologize. The point is, there was a section in one of the last chapters that mentioned 9/11 and did a great job of driving home the point that the heart of this small town lay within a mile or two from where the towers fell. New York, or the New Netherlands as they were known then, was able to build a settlement free from religious persecution (almost) and open to all types of people. More than 300 years later that land was attacked by people who still didn't get, or couldn't accept the fundamental principles that formed New York. They weren't attacked for their ideals in 1661 (the English took over for the trade routes) but they were in 2001.

I'm going to NY in a few weeks and I'm hoping to go to Ellis Island and perhaps the NY City History Museum (yes, there is one). I'll give you a review if it's any good. Going to see 'Wicked' too- can't wait!

The Sighs of the Season

Ah... I can breathe again.

I finally finished my paper for class, completed my presentation at the conference (hungover, no less) and have made it past a number of other work and personal humps. While no means free of stress (I'm hosting a Christmas party in 10 days) I at least feel like I've made it past the worst of it.

My conference was... interesting. I'm assured that I managed to avoid embarrassing myself too much. Still it was the kind of event with situations that leave you raw and emotional. No doubt combined with the "joyous" Christmas season, I find myself exhausted and a little nauseous and that's not the hangover (at least not anymore). People trying to "pair me off" - which has never been in the slightest bit successful - while I try not to think about what I really want and can never have. This was my deadline of sorts. I'm going to make myself "get out there" more in the coming weeks and months. Wish me luck and you really should tune in because this is usually when it gets very funny and very, very sad.

I'm literally posting this on a computer in class (my last class of the semester- hell YEAH!) so I think I'd better be done now.

PS- my hotel in Asheville, the B Renaissance Hotel, was incredible. Great service, nice rooms and decent food.

Ramblin' Woman

So my roommate has a theory that if you're going to turn 30, and with that of course freak out and be miserable, you might as well have something to look forward to. Her suggestion was a trip so we compiled top ten lists of places we want to go and looked for overlaps. We haven't ultimately decided yet where we'll go but we've narrowed it down to somewhere in Europe potentially any two or more of the following:

• Spain
• France
• Italy
• Ireland
• Scotland
• Czech Republic
• Greece
• Germany

I think we're doing this in a pretty smart way. We have about a year and a half to plan and save. We're both pretty motivated to get this to work with our school/work schedules. I know some French and she knows some Spanish; I'd like to learn some Italian and she wants to learn German so we're working through the language issues.

Now I admit I anticipate some traveling issues- the whole 24-7 together syndrome. But I think we're both aware of those problems and I do live with her so at least I'm familiar with the things most likely to annoy me. Naive? Probably. We'll see...

PS- I don't want to hear it, Cassie! I'm only your second-favorite cousin, huh?