What I'm doing instead of packing

Have you seen that show "Who Do You Think You Are?" on NBC? I am RIVETED. I love it. It's a sort of random assortment of celebrities, and each week one of them researches their family history. Whether I like the celebrity or not, the show itself is fascinating. I'm a geek. Whatever.

First the celebrity starts with their own family and gets a few names. Usually no farther back than a great-grandparent. Then they head off to whatever location they know for those names. They have the help of genealogists and historians. That's what I think makes the show so interesting. They incorporate historical reference (geek. I already said that.). It's one thing to look down a line of names, but it's so much more interesting when there's an expert who can explain what those things meant at the time. For example, Emmit Smith got a name of an ancestor, but the historian was able to tell him that her last name indicated that although she was a slave, she was the daughter of the slave trader.

One thing that's amazed me watching the show, is how few generations most people have been able to go back on their own. I come from a long line of genealogy nuts. So I've already got a lot of that information, and I'm really thankful for that. I already know that I could be a legit Daughter of the American Revolution twice over. I know I'm a descendant of Lucy Stone, the first woman in the United States to keep her surname after marriage and the woman credited with getting Susan B. Anthony involved in the women's movement. We have a diary of an ancestor from the civil war. I've got a binder of family tree information with people as far back as at least the 1600s (I can't verify because it's packed - good for me!).

The other thing that makes it fun to watch, is the celebrity gets to visit the places involved. Lisa Kudrow traveled to Belarus to see the place where her great-grandmother was killed by Nazis. I've always been kind of a history nerd, and you can see how much of an impact it has on them to visit the locations. It becomes less of a story and more real. There's something to walking the literal paths your ancestors walked.

It's definitely made me want to escape my real life of needing to work and pack, and dive into some sort of family history journey. I wonder if I'll still find it as interesting when I'm not supposed to be doing other things.

To everything, there is a season

Only right now, it feels like "In this season, is everything." I have muddled through the rougher parts of Trimester 1, and I'm no longer carrying plastic bags in my purse. A week from today we're closing on a house, and moving in the next day. My laptop died about a month ago, and I've been working on getting that fixed and getting my ultra-important bookkeeping file fixed. And you know what I've noticed about the nature of freelancing? I will not hear from 4 or 5 customers for a couple of months, and then they will all contact me in the same week. How does that even happen? In kid news, Natalie had another bladder infection and Ella is under allergy attack.

Also? I think I missed quite a few things that are going on. I'm sure there's more than that. Hence, I have been rather absent from Ye Olde Blog.

But I think some fun things have happened, too. Please enjoy (or just read) them in bullet form:
• I heard a heartbeat! It only lasted for 3 seconds, but it was there. Hooray!
• We're closing on our house next week! That means we're moving into our house. Hooray!
• The girls are moving on to the next level of swimming lessons. Which makes for a much more calm mommy in the pool area. Hooray!
• My ultra-important computer file has been recovered! Hooray!
• I had a yummy chocolate shake from the fancy McDonald's! This is a phenomenon I don't totally get. We have a regular McD's a couple miles from us. Fine. But then a couple miles farther is a fancy McD's. It's all marble-y and they carry several flavors of gelato. If I get a shake there, it comes in the frappuccino cup complete with whip and drizzled chocolate. Hooray! (Although the most important note here, is that neither McD's has the McRib. BOO.)
• It was in the 60s for almost a week! It was a truly delightful, springy week. Sunshine and warm weather. The neighborhood was crawling with people. We had to open our windows everyday because it was getting too hot in the house. Hooray! (I will not think about how it might snow tonight)
• I finally picked up our Wisconsin plates! Hooray! (Oddly, I noticed a tiny bottle of vodka that had been run over in the DMV parking lot. Is it a good idea to have a bump before taking your test?)

I should probably be absent from Ye Olde Blog next week as well, unless I manage to get an obscene amount of packing done this week. I'm also feeling challenged to take a week off of Facebook. But I doubt I'll feel that way come Monday. The bond is too strong...

A history of couches

I was checking out a post of Kelly's over at Love Well about her first couch, and realized after starting the world's longest comment that I may as well make it a blog post.

Our first couch
When we first got married, one of my husband's coworkers offered us a couch they had at their cabin. Free! We followed them up about an hour north to the cabin, and discovered the world's oldest couch. Literally a good 40 or 50 years old. We'd shown so much excitement over getting the couch. I don't think either of us wanted it once we saw it, but they'd gone so out of their way to help us out and we were grateful. So we loaded up the world's heaviest couch in their truck, and it nearly killed us to get it into our second floor apartment. It was the heaviest piece of furniture I'd ever seen, and scratchy. It wasn't particularly comfortable, but it was a couch. Beggars can't be choosers and all that. I covered it with some kind of makeshift slipcover, and it was ours for about a year. Then it was unceremoniously dumped on the curb when we moved out, nearly killing a few people again to get it out of the building.

The second couch
Our second couch came from a newspaper ad that I swiped at work before it ran. It was a rather beaten up couch/loveseat set, but it was really comfortable. It was covered in marker stains, but we didn't really care. When we brought it into our new apartment, we knocked out a light fixture. It was clear the couch wasn't going to make it through, so my dad hopped up on the end of the couch and just yanked that light right out of the ceiling.

When it was time to move that couch out to make room for a new hand-me-down living room set, we couldn't bear to try and get it through the door again. So my brother-in-law and his dad came over, and rigged up some kind of rope & pulley action. We took it out over the balcony. Of our third floor apartment. Probably giving a few of our elderly neighbors quite a scare.

Third couch
That's when we got a living room set from Captain America's godparents. They were moving to another state, so we drove a couple hours to the Twin Cities to liberate the furniture. We scored a couch, coffee table, two wing back chairs and lamps. They'd seen better days, but now we had a grown up living room SET! Matching furniture! And after many years of marriage and three couches, I think we'd spent a total of $75 on furniture. Win!

Today
Now we have a real couch. A couple of years ago we went to Slumberland and paid real money for one. Soon we will move into our new house (hey! I should pack!), and we will have a living room AND family room. So we'll be on the lookout again. For a kind coworker. A family member or friend with extra. Newspaper ads. Craigslist. Who knows.

Excuses, excuses.

Oh, Bloggy Friends. I've been such a slacker. But I promise I have a good reason. I haven't been posting because the only thing I wanted to post about wasn't yet postable.

themommylogues is about to get mommier. I'm due September 25. Ages from now.

So we're just kind of seeing how many major life changes we can fit into a year. New town, new state, new job, new schools, new church, new house, new baby. I'm keeping the husband, though.

For the next 7 months, you can expect me to bore you to death with details of cravings, virtual narcolepsy, and my too-big-already stomach.

Speaking of cravings - holy cats! I just have to hear a food mentioned in passing and I want some. I was just listening to a Dave Matthews Band song with the line "you ain't never had my cornbread" and I was all "Hey, CORNBREAD!" Also, just like with the other two pregnancies, I'm dying for some baked potatoes. Preferably from Red Lobster (hello, salt-crusted-goodness, I'll take two please). I'd told myself I was going to be better about eating habits this time, but once you're making your way toward the other side of morning sickness it's just such a thrill to want food again. The cravings move faster than they can be satisfied. A few minutes ago I was all for a chocolate shake (and some cornbread) and now I'm thinking about a good turkey sandwich from my sister's Thanksgiving turkey. With mustard. Oooh! Shiny!

Anyway. That is all.