All I'm Saying there's a joke in here somewhere

I know, I know. Sorry. I will be surprised if I even have an audience left after waiting nearly a week between posts without any explanation. Matt's eldest sister and her husband + two kids came to visit, and it seems rude to go blog while they're here visiting. They headed home today, and life will now return to it's normal schedule. I think.

As far as updates go, it has been busy for us since we returned from the Canada trip, mainly due to the relatives in town. I'm pretty sure we did every single interesting activity available in the city of Boise, and several that weren't that interesting. I floated the Boise River in an inner tube for the first time in almost ten years. I capsized said inner tube, scaring Matt to death and resulting in a lecture where I need to be more careful with Roscoe. This was nearly a week after I flagrantly ignored the signs at Eagle Island State Park and went ahead and rode the water slide three different times with my nephew on his birthday. Roscoe continues to make me nauseous and I look like I have eaten a honeydew melon whole, so I am certain that my reckless activities have caused no harm. And I haven't smoked crack or had a drink of whiskey, so I'm ahead of a lot of other pregnant women.

I am now wearing maternity underwear, and only have about two pairs of pants and a skirt left from the non-pregnant days that still fit around the waist. I'm sure the underwear will get better in the days to come as I grow larger. Right now it just gives me one hell of a wedgie.

So that's the interesting stuff. I go back to the doctor for a monthly check-up this Wednesday. I will turn 14 weeks Tuesday, which officially marks the end of the risky first trimester. I am treating myself to a massage and facial next Saturday to celebrate.

A few weeks back, it was announced that the Dalai Lama would be in Sun Valley on September 11 to give a "healing session." Fifteen thousand tickets would be handed out freely, effective last Saturday.

I had to laugh, because our local paper reported that the whole thing went just swimmingly and that people made new friends in line, yadda yadda. Well, that's not how it was in the line my friend was in.

She'd gone to one of three designated ticket locations. I believe she was something like number 64 in line. When the time rolled around for the store to open and tickets to be handed out, a man unlocked the front door of the store and yelled out, "We only have sixteen tickets left. Those of you who are more than four or five people back in line can just go home!" People had driven hours to stand in line. They realized ticket numbers were finite. But this store was supposed to have five thousand tickets.

Pandemonium broke out. People started yelling and shoving, and one person yelled, "So where are we supposed to get tickets?" The man at the store yelled back, "Try E-bay!"

So all we can think of is that someone diverted these tickets and will be trying to scalp them. Free tickets. To the Dalai Lama. When I told my boss the story, he said, "They're definitely being reincarnated as cockroaches." I've checked Craigslist to see if any have shown up yet, and there was nothing. Haven't tried E-bay yet. It is just beyond me that someone could have done something like that.

But hey, karma is a wheel. I bet they won't come crying to me when they wake up in their new cockroach bodies.

While in B.C., we were camped out at a slummy campground in the middle of town. That's not our usual style, but it was made a lot more fun by the fact that most of our neighbors were fellow Idahoans and co-workers of Matt.

Most people had really nice tents, whether they were regular dome tents or if they were the big wall tents that you see on Alaska hunting shows. Most people. Then there was this other tent that a few of the Idaho guys had brought up. It was an unbelievable eyesore, borrowed from one of the officers who wasn't able to attend the convention. Well, it was really dirty and ugly, so someone (I won't say who, but let's just say she's an evil genius, wink wink) came up with the idea to do a little urban renewal with the aid of sidewalk chalk. And whether the plot was as nefarious as the victims made out, the evil genius had no shortage of people recruited to her cause. Behold!

Continue reading "Wacky Canada Hi-jinks"

Since a couple of you have asked how the birthday party last night went, I s'pose I can relive it enough to update you.

As far as my family occasions go, it wasn't the worst by a long stretch. No one had a fit about anything. My brother was just pretty morose, and told me in an aside that he wasn't coming to any more of my dad's parties because the man couldn't (or wouldn't) make it to his own grandson's. For his part, I think my father was oblivious to the fact that he had well and truly stepped in it. And my little nephew was so excited about his party and I don't think he realized that his grandpa wasn't going to be there. Heck, he may not realize it on the day of the party. But the rest of us will be noticing.

Is it bad to want to kick your father in the nuts on the occasion of his 70th birthday? Never mind, I know the answer.

We got a call from his fiancee' last night saying that she was going to have cake and ice cream for him tonight. Okay, fine. Not that I didn't have any plans already or anything, just water aerobics. But I know that if any of us kids were to miss his birthday gathering, he'd give us the guilt trip from hell. So it's just easier to go along.

Well, I was e-mailing with my sister-in-law today, and my nephew's 5th birthday party is coming up this Sunday. She said that my dad says he isn't going to come because his fiancee' can't handle the heat. Say it with me, children: THEN DON'T BRING HER.

The thing is, he is constantly choosing the fiancee' and her family over my own. And why is that? Because my family is independent, rather than needy. We like to have him around, but we aren't in constant need of rescue and emotional validation. I just think it's pretty piss-poor that the rest of us are expected to come to his stuff regardless of other business, and yet he can beg off of a very special occasion for his grandson simply because the weather isn't suitable.

Which is why I'm going to be totally passive-aggressive at the party tonight.

The first day of the convention started with the parade of game wardens. I gave Matt a lot of crap for this one, as though the people of this tourist town really gave a rat's about a bunch of out-of-towners taking a walk in uniform and blocking up the city streets.

I was much-heartened when I heard the sound of bagpipes in the distance.

Now maybe I don't quite grasp the whole nature of the Scottish ancestral costume, but I really was wishing they'd take those silly socks off. Yeah, a chill wind probably blows up your skirt in the Highlands, but it was 80 degrees when we were out. Really, lose the socks. I won't mind a bit.

Continue reading "As Promised"

Since we booked our trip in January, Matt went ahead and scheduled us for a couple of convention-recommended junkets. On our second full day in Canada, we went on a railroad trip. We have said for a long time that we'd really like to go on a tour train someday, and figured this would be a good opportunity.

Wrong.

For anyone out there Google-searching, the Kettle Valley Railroad is so not worth the money. It was a twelve-mile round trip, and one of the highlighted areas in the tour guide they gave us was actually an industrial park. Yes, the marketing geniuses in Brochure Development thought that all the passengers must be thrilled with a scenic industrial park.

The next day saw us on a wine tasting tour. Okay, the non-pregnant members of the O'Connell family tasted wine. Those of us in a family way, i.e., ME, got to smell the wine and wish we could taste it. I have to admit, it did smell really good. One of the first things I am going to do after the birth of our first child is have me a nice, big glass of Okanogan Valley wine. Here we are at one of the wineries:

Those of you who know me well know that food is a major part of my reason to live. Not only did the nausea subside dramatically while we were there, but I was able to keep Roscoe well-fed with lots of fruit and organic veggies. The area we were in is absolutely carpeted with wineries, herb farms, orchards and gardens. Additionally, there are lots of salmon that come up the rivers, and I fed myself handsomely with enough of that to choke an orca.

Tomorrow's entry: pictures of Mounties and men in kilts!

We're back safe and sound from the game warden conference in British Columbia. We got in this afternoon, and I wish I was still on vacation. I need to figure out a working situation where I can be on vacation all the time and still get paid for it.

So there we were, arriving at the convention. I'd heard that people in the U.K. had a nickname for detectives, but I didn't realize it also applied in Canada:

Continue reading "Our Trip: The First Few Days"

You might wonder why I'm on the internet right now. Then again, if you'd spent the fascinating day conventioneering that I had, you might wonder why I hadn't found a gas oven to stick my head into.

This was the first day of the actual game warden confab, so there was a big parade of all the different North American states and provinces with their various representatives. I asked Matt if there were going to be clowns going around behind them with shovels, and he didn't take that all too well. After we spouses got to root on our menfolk in the parade, we went in for the opening ceremonies. Tedium reigned. Being the philistine American that I am, I can't quite get my brain around why the Canadians make such a big whoop-de-doo about the Queen. Seems like all she really does is visit now and then, eat the food, and then go home. I've got lots of relatives like that, and they come more often than the Queen does to Canada. And I'm not feeling real worshipful about that.

After the ceremonies and the yadda yadda were completed, we got to go to the Spouses Luncheon, which was the social equivalent of having a railroad spike driven through my ear. There was an Elvis impersonator, there was crappy food, and there was the world's most annoying emcee--a former Home Economics teacher that didn't seem to have what I refer to as an "Inside Voice." Everything was perfect for the hearing-impaired. Heck, Roscoe doesn't even have an auditory system yet, and I'm pretty sure he/she heard that.

So I am sitting in the "hospitality room" tonight, blogging away. I've taken some good pictures that I'll post when I get home. If you love Mounties and/or men in kilts as much as I do, you've got a treat coming.

Talk to you again, eh?

(Goddamn fucking computer...Matt fiddled with it and set it to work offline, so I got to MovableType and wrote an entry, then couldn't publish and it was lost. Arrrgh!)

Starting over: Matt and I are heading out on vacation to British Columbia tomorrow and will be gone for a week. I didn't arrange for a guest-poster, so you'll have to settle for all the entertaining stories aboot Canadians that I'll be coming home with. No doot.

We're heading to the North American Wildlife Enforcement Officer's annual convention, which should be a real whee of a time for me. Maybe I'll get to meet Dudley Do-Right. But it gets me out of town and into some new scenery, and I can't complain about that.

Send good thoughts that the morning sickness is going to go away, oh, perhaps tomorrow. We'll be staying in a tent most of the time, and there's just no good place to ralph in one of those.

Ladies and gentlemen, I am proud to present...

Continue reading "The Moment You've All Been Waiting For!"

Please take a moment and click on the link below and sign the petition to help end poverty. It'll be your good deed for the day.

You know how lots of people use Cinco de Mayo, the day of Mexican independence, as a big excuse to go out and party? Do they do the same thing in Mexico on the Fourth of July? I'm just wondering.

I went out with Matt on a game warden patrol yesterday into the Trinity Mountains, which I think are the prettiest place in southern Idaho, not counting the Sawtooth range. He ended up writing a guy a ticket for fishing without a license, and the guy was a complete yutz. He sat and argued about it for a solid half-hour, and while Matt was an icon of patience and good public servitude, I was ready to pimp-slap the guy. Arguing does NOT get you good results when you're patently guilty.

Why do people like to have campfires in the middle of the day when it is 95 degrees outside? (Which it wasn't yesterday, but still, I want to know.)

Finally, Tuesday is our first ultrasound. I will definitely scan in Roscoe's first picture to share with you all.