So much work on my desk. Busy busy day ahead of me. Oh yeah.

I saw two homeless people on my walk to work this morning. One was a man asleep on the bench at a bus stop and the other a woman, walking down the sidewalk barefoot. The woman walking barefoot struck a chord with me. Here I am with two pairs of shoes, one on my feet and the other in my bag, and who knows how many more pair at home shoved in my closet and strewn about the house, and this woman appears to have no shoes at all (nor a house to scatter shoes about). Its either that or she just likes to walk barefoot, though she did not walk as if her feet were all that comfortable.

It occurred to me that maybe I could give this woman my sneakers and just finish my walk in my dress shoes. After all, the shoes I was wearing were an extra pair of sneakers, an old pair given to me by my mom just the day before. This thought came to me too late though. The moment had passed. Shoeless woman was walking south and I was heading west, so by this point we were almost two blocks from each other. Maybe I will see her again and have another chance at it.

For a second I was tempted to feel guilty about not thinking of it sooner, but I let that temptation go. Random acts of kindness do not come natural to most people. In fact, I don’t believe they come natural to anyone really. I think it is something that must be learned. I am still learning.

The new job is going well! I am so excited to be back to work. My commute from the parking lot to the office is only 10 minutes, but its enough to get my heart rate going and I can already feel the muscles in my calves waking from their long slumber. Yup, I’m one of those women you see walking down Michigan Ave. wearing a skirt and sneakers and carrying multiple bags. I’m loving it so far.

By the way, the first day away from Luke went better than expected. It helped that I wasn’t the one having to drop him off at daycare (Mike said it was extremely difficult, especially after Luke flashed his big grin at him when he said goodbye). It also helps knowing he’s in very good hands and probably having more fun with Momma Jan and the kids than he would ever have sitting at home with me. Today they’re going to the zoo!

Oh well, since I am working I need to make this brief. Just wanted to stick my head out and let everyone know I’m still alive.

Well, folks, I got the job! I start July 9th, which means I have one more week of maternity leave to get ready. I need to get a parking pass, do a trial run with the babysitter, and figure out what clothes will fit me that are appropriate for work (I still have at least 20 pounds to lose before my old clothes will fit). I may have to pay a visit to Goodwill to find some blouses.

I’m really excited about this job. Yes, I think I’ll enjoy the work, but what I’m most excited about are the benefits and the long-term potential. It’s a well-established, growing company and I hope to be there a long time. It’s small enough that I’ll know most everybody, but it’s growing so there’s room to advance.

The only bummer about this is that we won’t be using the babysitter we had lined up. She lives near my old job and with this new one it wouldn’t make sense to drive down there every day. But she has agreed to let us use her as a backup. We do have someone lined up for daycare that lives near Mike’s work, but I would love to find someone in Lansing closer to our house. If you know anyone who does daycare/babysitting out of their home for a seriously reasonable price, let me know!!

I’ve been a little stressed lately. The kind of stress I’m not used to; it feels different. Its the stress of huge responsibilities. There is so much on my mind but in particular its money, jobs, and child care. I have so much to be thankful for and I know that God is taking care of us as he always has, but yet I still find a way to worry my way into a tizzy.

Thanks to our savings our bills are paid while I’m on unpaid maternity leave, I still have a job despite recent threats of doom and gloom, and we have some terrific friends who have offered to take care of Luke during the day. So everything is set, but somehow this fear creeps up on me that it could all fall through. When it was just me and Mike that fear was there but not so prominent and therefore easier to ignore. With just the two of us we knew how to adjust when hard times came. Now that Luke is in the picture the fear has grown bigger. I don’t know why, its not like we have lost our ability to adjust. I guess it just means adjusting now requires more creativity.

I got a call for a job interview last week. They found my resume on the internet. By either freak coincidence or divine intervention, I already had a babysitter lined up for the exact time they wanted me to come in (I’m hoping its the latter). It would be a great job with a great company. I love my current job and I hadn’t considered leaving, but the idea of working for a profitable, growing company with full benefits is very tempting. But who knows, they haven’t offered me the position yet. I should know by tomorrow.

I’m scheduled to go back to work July 5th. I’m looking forward to it but I know it will be hard. Hard to be away from Luke and hard to manage all the responsibilities in the allotted time. I’ll need to learn how to be more productive and efficient, how to remain calm under pressure, and how to live in each moment, staying focused and not thinking too much about where I need to be later or what needs to be done. Thankfully I’m not doing this alone. God is with me every step and he has sent me an amazing husband and wonderful family and friends for support.

I was 38 weeks on Saturday, so I now have less than two weeks to go until my due date, May 19. I am ready to not be pregnant anymore. Who knows if I’m ready to be a mother of a newborn. I don’t think you’re ever ready for such a huge task, you just learn as you go I guess. I look forward to the challenge. Bring it on.

I had intended to keep working right up until I have the baby but I changed my mind. My last full day will be Friday, and I’ll just come in for a few hours on Monday to help the new girl with payroll. I can handle being tired and slow and out of breath, but I’m having some pain since the baby has dropped so low and that is why I thought it best to finish out this week and rest until Luke comes. And who knows, maybe he’ll come before then. We’ll see!

Mike is coming along on the baby’s room. He re-drywalled the closet and refinished the wood floor. He’s putting the last coat on the wood floor tonight. Then starts the painting of the walls. He’ll be completing that task the same way he’s been doing everything else - small steps in the evenings after he gets home from a long day of work. He has been working so hard and I haven’t heard one word of complaint from him. I am so blessed to have such an amazing man for a husband.

I’ve been training my replacement here at work and I’m pretty confident she’ll do well while I’m gone. She’ll be here any minute actually, so I should get back to work.

I know I’ve taken quite a hiatus from blogging. I just didn’t know pregnancy would have such an effect on my blogging motivation. I used to itch to post but lately I just never seem to get around to it. It’s been unintentional and I hope to get back to it soon. We’ll see.

I think of things I want to blog about fairly often, but just never get around to it. There is a lot of busy-ness going on: in our house, at work, and in my head.

Mike and his buddies are still coming along on adding the room in the basement. Did I mention they were doing that? Mike is losing his “game room” to the baby, so he decided to build a room in the basement to replace it. I told him that big screen tv was not going in our living room so he either needed to put it in the basement or sell it. He’s been wanting to do something with that basement for a long time now, he just needed the motivation. So far they have put up the drywall and doors. The drywall still needs to be taped and mudded, but we have a friend coming on Monday to handle that. After that we paint and put down carpeting and voile’! Move the furniture down and we’ll be ready to start on Luke’s room. The plan there is to paint, refinish the wood floor, and install closet doors.

Until all that is done the rest of our house is in chaos. One reason is that it is tax season and I have little time or energy for decluttering. The other reason is that we are already accumulating baby stuff and of course have no place to put it yet. We have a crib, bassinette, loads of clothes, and many other miscellaneous items. Once the room is done and tax season is over the house will eventually return to a more organized state, so I try not to let it bother me, knowing that it won’t be like this forever.

Work has been fairly busy and keeps me challenged. Something I normally enjoy, but with so much else on my mind some days I feel like I’m losing it. I constantly fear I’m forgetting important things, and sometimes I am. But the guys here are very forgiving and generally blame it on the pregnancy. I still worry about how they’ll do without me while I’m on maternity leave, but I know worrying doesn’t help. They did fine while I was in the hospital, considering there was no preparation or warning. I had a lot of work waiting for me when I came back but I took it one day at a time and eventually got it taken care of.

Mike and I had a birthday last Saturday. He turned 30! I turned 29 and Saturday was also the day I turned 29 weeks pregnant, which I think is a tad interesting but not nearly as fun as turning 30. Some friends of ours had us over for dinner and a movie. We stuffed ourselves with chicken, rice and salad and after our stomachs settled we had brownies and ice cream. Yum. The boys played video games for a little while and then we all watched FlyBoys. It’s a true-story movie about the Lafayette Escadrille, a group of American soldiers who signed up to learn to fly some of the earliest fighter planes in World War I.  I thoroughly enjoyed the movie and would recommend it to anyone. Read the Plugged In Online review if you want to know more.

I know how exhausting it can be to read these long posts so I’ll end it here and hopefully add the more nonsensical thoughts from my head in future posts (cuz I know that’s the stuff you all really love, not to mention it’s a great stress relief for me).

Last Friday I was stressing and venting to my boss about our cash flow and some of the receivables I was trying to collect on. He interrupted me mid-sentence by grabbing my hand and started right in with a prayer that God would bless us with checks and that customers would pay and pay early even. I was taken aback, to be honest. I know my boss is a praying man, but he’s never really done anything like that before. Even though it was a tad awkward, it left me with a familiar sense of peace and I was able to get back to my work without that stress resting on my shoulders.

This afternoon I had to let my boss know that our little prayer request worked, because we received 9 checks in the mail today, and several of them were checks I didn’t expect to receive for at least another couple of weeks! So we are going to have to remember to say that prayer more often.

Why doesn’t it ever occur to me to petition God about work stuff? It’s strange really, because I pray to him about everything else in my life. I ask him for blessings in my personal life, why not in my professional life too? After all, my job directly affects my personal life. Wouldn’t I want to ask that the company I am working for be successful? I think I will more often now.

Rhapsody: R.E.M. - “Sitting Still”
Mood: Breathing

Perfect song for the moment. It’s after 5 and I finally get to sit still and take a moment to rest. What a hectic day. I complain, but secretly I love being needed by this crazy bunch at the office. It should slow down soon.

I started reading a book for “fun”, as opposed to all those philosophy books I like to read. It’s still a nonfiction though. I’m not big on fantasy and make-believe. It’s a fairly thorough book about R.E.M. I’ve been hooked on them for 15 years now and they still hold my “number one favorite” ranking. The stuff I’m learning in this book is only solidifying that ranking. It’s fascinating stuff for an R.E.M. fan like me. I bought the book six years ago in the U.K. via mail order. This was back when I was using my credit card for “necessary” purchases and I just had to have this book. It sat on a shelf most of those years. I guess I was just waiting to pay off that credit card. How terrible is that? “Hey everybody, this book is paid for!”

XM: Stone Temple Pilots - “Big Empty”
Mood: Stir crazy

It’s been all numbers at work today. As much as I love numbers, I need a break every now and then. I took a very short lunch break and now I’m regretting it. I’m getting all jittery and 5:00 can’t come soon enough. So I thought a long, rambling blog post would help (because coffee sure doesn’t).

I had my follow up visit with the doc regarding my surgery. He explained the photos (this is your liver, this is your uterus, this is your stomach, etc.) so I know myself even better now than I did before He said removing the polyps from my uterus will undoubtedly improve my chances of conception. He wasn’t able to look at my fallopian tubes so he would like to schedule an x-ray. I asked when he would want us to try the IUI, and he would like us to try as soon after the x-ray as possible. Although if he finds in the x-ray that my tubes are blocked, then we won’t be doing IUI because that would just be throwing our money down the… um… tubes. I’m just hoping that this next cycle finds us pg so we won’t even have to mess with all of that. Man, this is so much harder than they made it seem in sex ed.

Mike and I are really close to having all the money we need… for fixing the carport and the driveway. If anyone is willing to work for food, we plan on doing the work on two weekends in late September/early October. After that project is finished, the rest of the remodeling that remains will just be odd jobs here and there. We are going to make a list, estimate the cost, and set a goal to have it all done by fall of 2007. We have played around with the idea of moving, but decided we’ll wait a year and then talk more seriously about it. That gives us time to fix up the house and give this baby thing one last shot.

I received an acceptance letter from Ele’s Place for entrance into their facilitator training program, but two of the training dates conflict with Chrysalis (dang all this volunteer work) so I may have to wait until the spring to attend the training. I also put a call into the volunteer coordinator at Rainbows in Chicago to see if they have any programs here in Michigan that I could get involved with. If they have something nearby, I would rather work with them than at Ele’s Place. Rainbows offers grief counseling for kids who have experienced many different kinds of loss, whether it be from death, divorce, separation, incarceration, etc. Ele’s Place deals strictly with grief from death of a loved one. I’m reading a book written by the founder of Rainbows. It’s interesting to hear how she started because it’s everything I have said I want to do. She has done all the legwork, so why wouldn’t I take advantage of that and join their team if I could? They have an outstanding program that reaches worldwide, so it would be a waste of time for me to try to reinvent the wheel.

Okay, jitters are gone now. I’m ready to get back to my beloved spreadsheets!