except the kitchen sink

I wish I always had something clever to blog about... but tonight is Friday and Friday night seems to be one of those times when I blog about nothing and everything.

Today has been a good day.  It was one of those days when I pretended that there was not in fact an intimidating pile of laundry encroaching upon our general living space and left the house to go do more interesting things.  Like buy 40 bucks worth of random household stuff at Target, eat lunch at Chick-fil-a with my two favorite guys in the world, and send the hubby on his merry way with the grocery list while I came home and played computer games while the kiddo took his nap.

While I'm still not entirely sure what "the life of Riley" is... I'm pretty sure I live it most days.

When hubby got home with my groceries, I fixed up a big ole pot of white chili, which we enjoyed with Mam-ma and Poppy.  And, aside from the kiddo getting injured to the point of tears not once but TWO times, it was a very enjoyable evening.  The second time he smashed his little finger in the laundry room door and he cried and cried and kept holding it up for me to kiss it like he just couldn't understand why that didn't make it feel better.

Motherhood is such a fickle and bittersweet thing.  I've never known anything else in the world that can make you feel simultaneously like the lowest and most inept person ever born and Superwoman.

Except maybe doughnuts.

I'm planning for us to stay home the entire day tomorrow because I've been putting off doing stuff to get ready for this baby's arrival for way too long.  On top of the usual laundry I've been avoiding, I still have at least half a box full of baby clothes to launder plus some new things I've bought which are still in bags here in my room.  Besides that, the changing table has just become kind of a catch-all for all things baby and the crib has some not-washed linens in it, too, I think.

As long as we're talking about baby stuff... I ordered a hot pink nursing bra today.  Why hot pink? Apparently it has been a very popular color and they've sold down to a very few sizes (including mind, amazingly) and I was able to get it for HALF the original price.  Not bad considering I figured out that I'm going to spend about $150 total on nursing underthings before the baby even gets here.  Who knows what I'll end up needing.  When I told the hubby about this, he said, "Well, I guess you make your choices... $150 worth of nursing bras or that iPod I was gonna get you."

Such a sensitive soul.

I don't think I want that iPod so much anymore anyway, Mister.  I think I'm going to opt for jewelry as my new baby/pain-and-suffering gift.

P.S. The nursing accoutrements I've found are a little pricey (Bravado Designs, if you're curious), but they seem fabulous and I'll be sure to report back with a rant or rave on them... even though I'm pretty sure the only person who ever reads this is my husband.  And we all know where he stands on the subject.

So, it's springtime in my little corner of the universe.  Or at least this is when springtime usually happens.  The grass was getting green, buttercups were had bloomed, this past Tuesday it was  like 80 DEGREES outside... and then on Thursday it started snowing a little after lunch time...

and it snowed...

and snowed...

and snowed some more...

and we ended up with about 3 inches of snow on the ground.

So they called off county schools THE NIGHT BEFORE well before bedtime even though the forecast clearly stated it was going to be well above freezing the next day and when I got up this morning (ish... we slept sorda late), the roads were not only clear but already practically dry.  And a big portion of the snow was gone.

No way should anybody be surprised by any of this, but every year we all go through the same rigamarole of moaning and groaning about how it's neverrrrr going to be warm outside and we're all going to die slow and torturous deaths of hypothermia and/or cabin fever... but then we get up one morning and it's 94 degrees outside and so humid that you have to evolve (or maybe devolve) into something with gills to even go to the mailbox.  And then of course we start complaining about how hot it is and how we're all gonna die of sun poisoning and heat stroke before fall rolls around.

Never satisfied.

Anyway... what springtime means to me, in a nutshell, is this huge church function I get the honor of participating in each year.  I don't know if it was ever officially named, but it somehow down through the years got the name "Ministers' School." It's not like a seminary and it's not like where men come to learn how to preach... it's more like this:

A bunch of preachers from all over the place show up at the church of which I'm a member all dressed in their preacher attire, some of them with their hair slicked back, to just be together and to listen to a few of their peers preach.  They also sing pretty loud and pray really loud and stand around in the hallway and slosh coffee all over the floor.  At lunchtime they sound like a herd of cattle coming down the hallway and most of them want more than their fair share of chicken.

We run a pretty tight ship on paperwork and registration and all that fun stuff and that's where I come in.  I run the registration database.  Sound important, huh? Not so much.  Here's what I do: I sit in a little room, update the computer when it needs it, eat a lot of pie, and answer other office-related questions when they're fielded in my direction.  My answer to most of those questions is either: "Um, let me ask my husband," or "Um, let me ask my dad," both of whom are more knowledgeable than me on all that computer-y stuff.  Hubby runs the sound board/video stuff and my dad built the registration database a while back.  I just inherited the job because I decided working in the kitchen wasn't for me.  It's way scary in there.

The best part of all of this is, all told, it lasts an entire week and I get to see a bunch of out-of-state friends who I never get to see otherwise.  At the end of the week on Friday, people come to our house to hang out one last time before heading home.  Last year we had a full on church service in our office... complete with about 15 people, 2 desks, and a piano.  Why is it always the smallest room in the house where people want to congregate?

Anyway, the last week of March is my favorite time of year.  Way better than Christmas.

Added bonus for this year: once that week is over, I'll only have about a month to go before the baby arrives.  Awesome.

Alrighty... well, I'm sure this has served to be an amazing amount of boring-ness to anyone fortunate enough to actually read it... and since it is now 20 'til 1, I better rolls over here and do some put-me-to-sleep reading if I'm planning on doing any tonight.