On Food & Being Psychic

Nausea is kicking in again these last few days. What's funny, though, is that I'm finally starting to be interested in food. I was concerned there for a while that I would be repulsed by everything forever. And by "concerned" I mean devastated. My "cravings" were really just the only foods I could think about eating and not be disgusted.

 

It's kinda funny (and also incredibly tragic) how pregnancy can take a committed food lover and break her down into less than an eat-to-live survivalist.

 

I mean, baby needs more than potatoes, even though they are easily classified as their own food group in mama's eyes.

 

I've had to up my bedtime, or, really, give myself a bedtime at all, which is about as lame as it gets. No, no it's not. Having to up my bedtime again is as lame as it gets. I've been putting it off because of the lameness, but I can only be late to work so many times before I admit that the problem is not the traffic. It's that I need 3000 hours of sleep a day.

 

We recently finished watching Dexter (terrible ending) and started this video game about supernatural beings living normalish lives where you've gotta do some murder solving. I've always had crazy/vivid dreams anyway, but vivid dreams + serial killer shows/games + being pregnant = CRAZY REAL DREAMS about people being in your house at night and in your room and people being pregnant with octopuses and being surrogates for dolphins and even dreams about things that haven't happened yet. Then I get this déjà vu moment where I know I've seen this before even though I couldn't have, and I wonder if I'm crazy or psychic or what.

 

And it occurs to me that you have to be a bit crazy to be anything awesome, including pregnant and psychic.

HOLY CRAP THERE'S A BABY IN THERE

Baby Straily, due August 2014

I'm only 13 weeks in tomorrow, and this is already the best experience of my life.

No one tells you how amazing it is. They tell you to wait. They say it's hard. They tell you that you'll never sleep again and you'll worry constantly and that your entire life will change. You'll sacrifice all your energy and money and time on a child that will poop on you and ruin everything you own and probably tell you they hate you at some point. So why doesn't this stop anyone from having babies?

Because what they aren't telling you is HOLY CRAP THERE'S A BABY IN THERE and HOLY CRAP THAT'S MY BABY IN THERE and I JUST HEARD MY BABY'S HEARTBEAT OMG MY HEART JUST EXPLODED I LOVE YOU SO MUCH AAAAHAAAHHGHAHAH!

And this is why, despite income or living arrangements or I guess we should get a better car now, it's always a good time to have a baby. Maybe I'm human and maybe sometimes I'll forget the beautiful thing that's happening to me and focus on the financial burden or how tired I am already or how hard this will be. Hopefully, those moments are few and far between. (Or nonexistent.)

Because I'm having a baby with this guy I really love, and we love this baby so much already that I think we might explode.



I wish I could've taken a video of the ultrasound. I wish I could've recorded our little baby kicking and flipping around and getting the hiccups. I thought I would cry, but I mostly just laughed. I mean, what the heck?! My baby's in there!

It's totally just chillin' and sleeping and hiccupping and lounging and dancing. It has no idea how loved it is. (Or maybe it does. Maybe this is a Baby Genius situation and it - he? she? - is just taking mental notes of how crazy we are before it meets us.)

I feel like I've read every pregnancy blog and article on the whole internet, and I just had to stop. Eventually, you just read the same things over and over again, and you learn that everything you're experiencing is normal and also none of it is.

I don't even mind admitting how unseasoned I am at this parenting thing, this being my first baby and all. I don't need all the answers. (I'm not sure anyone ever gets them anyway.) I have breasts to feed it and arms to hold it and lips to kiss it, and that's all I really need.

 

 

 

 

(Someone please remind me of that often.)

Sixth Sense

Whoa. Kinda went MIA for a minute there. It's not that I haven't been doing anything, because I have. But I just wonder sometimes why I force myself to blog when I'm not feelin' it at that moment. I don't have to, you know. I learned that. But I do have an obligation to stick with something I started, right? If I'm gonna stop this thing, I have to make the decision to do so, not just fall off the planet inadvertently. Whatev.

I struggle with a quality-over-quantity issue. But I use this blog for more of a public journal than anything else, so what's the freakin' deal? I'm not going to write a masterpiece often enough to only post when I do.

I also don't want to be a Taylor Swift type where everyone is like, "She'll probably blog about this later," and roll their eyes and stuff.

I have this temporary office job now. I'm filling in for a girl (lady... woman... How old is too old to be called a girl?) who just had a baby. I like it and all, but it's taken me a little bit to not resent the job because I have to be there. I have to rip myself out of bed every morning before the sun even shines in my window and go to this place when I don't want to have to. Is that so wrong?

But complaining is SO 2013 and I'm not wanting to open that box every day, even though I crack the top a little bit. I'm thankful for a job when I need it. I'm thankful for a husband who wakes up before me for the sole purpose of turning on the heater in the bathroom and fixing my lunch and making breakfast for me and making sure I get up, even though he hears "but I'm so tired" and "it's so early" and "I can't go to bed at 8 every night just to not be tired right now" every morning from his whiny and half-asleep wife.

This summer, we've been married 4 years. I think it should feel insane, but it doesn't. It feels better than all the years before. I love him more than I ever knew I would, except this isn't the you're-cool-so-let's-be-together-forever honeymoon love. It's the kind where I look at him and I know him and he knows me, and I value the choice I made back then more now than I ever have, more than I could have when I walked down the aisle.

Weddings are great, but I've come to love anniversaries more. Attending other weddings is fun and beautiful and I think YOU ARE AWESOME FOR THIS! GO YOU GUYS! And then I want to flash ahead really fast to their first and fifth and tenth and twentieth anniversaries. Because you toast to the future, but then you learn first hand that the future is hard and everything has changed but nothing has changed. Life is still life and you are still you, except now you have this other person there all the time. And slowly, I've learned why I made that commitment, even though I didn't quite know why at the time.

Love, you know. Maybe it's a sixth sense.

2013

Last year, Justin and I celebrated the new year by going to Walmart and buying all our favorite snack food and setting it up on a table in the living room while we watched the NYE celebration on tv. We were by ourselves, and it was like a fun sleepover party where we watched Fergie and her hip dancing thing that we ended up imitating all year.

This year, we're doing the same thing. I'm looking forward to Fergie, and hopefully she won't disappoint. We have the best mashup of snacks and chips and salsa and stuff that will probably be way too much to eat in one night.

Right now, it's already 2014 on the east coast. We have less than an hour left in this year. This may be our last year to spend New Year's Eve at home alone, and we are making the most of it.

I hope 2014 is as promising for you as I feel it is for me. I hope it brings you magic and blessings and laughter and good even if it's sad or imperfect sometimes.

Happy 2014!

December

I love the holidays. At first, you'd think it's for the food. (It's totally for the food.) But really, when I think about it, I absolutely love the atmosphere. The energy. The ambiance. It's probably the only time of year when you can experience a windless Oklahoma night. If you're lucky, there will be snow on the ground, glistening in the mixture of moonlight and colorful Christmas lights.

There are few things I love more than sitting in my living room on a December night, under a blanket, basking in the glow of the Christmas tree. (Pinterest is probably part of this experience.) And, if I have my way, some sweet Christmas music would be softly playing in the background, and the Scentsy would be filling the room with Christmas Cottage.

This is the precious time of my life when Justin and I can spend hours together under glowing Christmas lights in the calm of midnight, interrupted only by our dog's snores. Playing loud and hilarious card games, drinking chocolate milk, and maybe indulging in the occasional midnight snack. Laughing at how much of a difference a year can make, how far we've come, and where we want to go in the future.

This time of year is significant for many reasons. I celebrate the birth of Jesus. I celebrate family. I celebrate the peace I find during this holiday in quiet moments, however long they last. But I also celebrate the beauty in an ending. The end of a year. The end of a season. We need it. We need this time to say goodbye. To celebrate a year of good and bad, of difficulty and of blessings.

The time I have now with everyone I love is invaluable. Throw in some holiday food and... Well, it's not heaven, but it just might be the next best thing.

23 Years

I've lived on this planet for 23 years and a day. More, if you count gestational time, but I won't. I've learned a ton of stuff, most of which amounts to the fact that I know basically nothing. Some of it, though, might actually be useful in the future. Might have been useful in the past, too, but here I am, mostly better for it.

When I was 5 years old, my sister, Peyton, was born. I remember, like it was yesterday, being fascinated with age, asking my parents all kinds of questions. "How old will Peyton be when I'm 6?" Still 0. "How old will I be when Peyton is 6?" 11 years old. I freaked out. ELEVEN?! I'll practically be an adult!

This cycle continued for years, until I turned 17. Then, I didn't care. I felt perfectly content as a 17-year-old, and when I turned 18, I welcomed it with open arms. It was time.

Now, 23 seems simultaneously perfect and premature. It's certainly not old, but aren't I supposed to have life figured out by now? Aren't I supposed to know what I want?

I know myself better. I'm more myself and still not quite myself yet.

I had a list of things I've learned lately that I was going to share. I decided not to use it. Seems silly, at this point, because one of the main things I've learned is that I still have so much left to learn.

But I made it this far. And I know where I'm going.

And that is enough.

Music Monday ON A WEDNESDAY! "Say Something"

I present to you the FIRST EVER Music Monday on Reghanland... ON A WEDNESDAY! Because why not? I make the rules.

This week's focus is "Say Something" by A Great Big World feat. Christina Aguilera. The song is beautiful, vulnerable, simple. The music video made me cry, but it seems everything does these days. I truly hope you feel the song and enjoy it.

Picking Up Chicks, Lesson 1: Get your own card

(Kora, the star of the show.)

Let's say you're at Tres Cantina on a Thursday night. You're there because someone you know - your cousin, perhaps - is playing there. It's a beautiful night in the late summer, so they've opened up the back patio, which is a perfect setting. You've got your best friend (who is also your cousin, extended, by marriage, who will share credit with you forever on making that marriage happen so you could be cousins) with you.

Let's also say that there are three guys hanging around near your table. They are going on and on about something, which turns out to be the "well water" they ordered. They find it extremely disgusting, and they offer you and your friend some. "Heck no," you say, rightly so, since, HELLO, that's gross. Plus, the guys in this hypothetical situation are harmless, but in other situations, you could totally get roofied that way. Duh.

One of them sees your iPhone. It's clearly a 3GS, so he asks when you're due for an upgrade. Let's be honest, it doesn't matter when you're available for an upgrade. He would've responded in the same way. He pulls out a Best Buy business card. Turns out, he's an employee there. He writes his name on the card, since it's actually someone else's card, and tells you to stop by and he can hook you up with an upgrade.

Do you go?

...Your answer should be no. No, you don't go. It's certainly not the worst pickup ever, but it was absolutely not successful, and homegirl (yours truly) next to you was trying not to die laughing right there, and you don't even live here, and he looked like he could easily have been 15 years older than you, and a bar & grill on a Thursday night in a city you don't live in is certainly not where you pick up guys who look 15 years older than you and give you someone else's business card so you can drive to see him at his work on the premise of getting an upgrade.

It's weird.

Cruise Post 2 of 2: Belize & Cozumel

Read part one to get caught up.

Belize City, Belize

Belize City was the second of the three ports of call we visited. The coral reef is protected, so our ship couldn't dock on the port. We had to anchor out and take a 15-minute tender boat ride to the port. The water where we were dropped of was very brown and had a lot of trash floating in it.

There are huge gates that separate the port shops from the city itself. From what I've heard, this is for the best. You can go into town, but nobody recommends it. The prices are dirt cheap (I hear) but it's extremely dangerous. Even being in the shops outside the gates, there were people with flyers crawling on the huge gate and laying on the ground, sticking their hands through, trying to lure you into town to take their $10 tour.

Don't know who that man is, by the way.

Drink stand.

It rained for a solid 5 minutes, and the rest of the time was perfectly warm and sunny. The prices were decent, but they weren't cheap enough to make me return for the shopping. They have a restaurant/bar called the Wet Lizard, which seems like a fun place, but we didn't eat there. We got back on the boat and headed to the ship much earlier than we planned, which ended up being for the best, because many people nearly got left behind! (We believe this was because of the people running the tender boats. The last boat ran at 4:15pm ship time so the ship could leave at 5 - which it did. However, when the ship stopped, we were on our balcony, watching 4 loads of people get dropped off from the boats. They had no idea. They were all taking pictures and waving at us, having a grand ol' time. Ignorance is bliss, I guess, until you watch your ship leave without you.

Catch a fish, drop a fish, catch a fish, drop a fish...

Cozumel, Mexico

Cozumel is a more popular port. That's nice for them, but not for us Americans. From the port where we docked, there all kinds of shops and a couple of restaurants to see. It's all very pretty, and just strolling around is nice. It's extremely commercialized, though, and the prices are astronomical. You can take a 10-minute taxi ride into town, but we have yet to do this in the two times we've been there.

Our prepaid excursion was for snorkeling and a beach party. However, because it was so cloudy and rainy, we had the option to get a refund instead. I will not deny that, at the time of the offer, I was very much in love with the idea of getting back on the ship and taking a hot shower & a long nap. But, since we had so many people in our party, we decided it was all or nothing - either we all went on the excursion or we all got back on the ship. The majority, myself included, voted we ignore the crappy weather and do the excursion as planned. I am SO glad we did, too, because snorkeling was amazing!

We boarded the catamaran, which holds 130 people and is usually full for this excursion, ended up having around 20. When we got to where we were snorkeling, we got our gear on and jumped in the water. Between the cloudy sky and the rain, you couldn't see below the water's surface. When I jumped in, I was not prepared for the beautiful sight. I jumped directly into a school of fish! I'm sure the water was not a clear as in the daytime, but you could see all kinds of coral and other fish in the distance. The salty water was disgusting, and eventually the waves made me seasick for the first time in my life, but I can't wait to see the photos we took. I'm excited to snorkel again someday.

The only sun we got all day.

We got back on the boat and went to the beach, where we played on the huge inflatables in the water and ate an $11 meal. (Yes, $11 per person: big burger with potato salad and pasta salad.)

Overall, the whole trip was amazing. Honestly, I could go on a cruise and never get off the ship and be perfectly satisfied, but now I know I can never pass up another opportunity to explore Roatan or go snorkeling. I can't wait until our next cruise.

*All photos in this post were taken with my Samsung ST76.

Cruise Post 1 of 2: Roatan

You guys.

Justin & I went on a cruise with some of his family (and a handful of others) late last month. I am here now to tell you all about it.

We sailed on the Carnival Magic for seven days and visited three ports:

1. Isla Roatan, Honduras
2. Belize City, Belize
3. Cozumel, Mexico

This is our second cruise. Our first was with on the now-retired Carnival Ecstasy (which is currently being transformed into the Carnival Sunshine) a few months after our wedding in 2010. We were completely by ourselves, and it was the first trip we had taken alone. We drove the near-8 hours to Galveston, stopping to sleep in Conroe the night before boarding. We were so excited and anxious, we drove around the Port of Galveston for 10 minutes searching for our parking lot (which ended up being right in front of the terminal). We were so relieved to just get on the ship! It was terrifying and awesome, and it wasn't until this cruise that we realized how special that time was. We look back and just want to pinch our own little cheeks for being so adorable. (And we're sure we'll continue this cycle for the rest of our lives.)

This cruise, we had 10 people in our party. Besides Justin and myself, we had 5 family members, 2 friends, and a neighbor. We drove two cars, and the car I was in ended up being the fun one. (Duh.) The trip down was extremely stressful, but we made it Conroe intact. We all ate at Wolfies for dinner that night, which is a really good seafood restaurant that sits right on the lake, but many of us were disappointed that they were out of crawfish for the season. AND the most upsetting part is that the servers were all wearing awesome Wolfies t-shirts and sweaters that wouldn't be available for customers for another 2 weeks! Lame.

View of Roatan from the ship in port.

We fell in love with Roatan. It was the first of three stops, and that set up the other two for complete failure, honestly. The people are amazing, the landscape is beautiful, and there's just a sense of community there. We met up with our tour guide, Kislin, who has been leading tours for 16 years. We were taken ziplining first, which is way more fun than I imagined. Afterward, we got to play with some monkeys and see their other animals, like toucans, sloths, and deer. (No deer hunting in Honduras, by the way, unless you want to go to jail. They told us the deer only have two babies in their lifetime, so they are very protected.)

Coconut trees and campaign posters.

View of the ship from the zipline cliff.

In Roatan, most everyone speaks both English and Spanish. The official language is Spanish, but the primary language is English. The teacher/student ratio is so unbalanced that they split classes up so some kids go to school in the morning, and the rest go in the afternoon. Most college classes are taught in the evenings.

An old wrecked ship by the other port in Roatan. (That's the Carnival Victory, not ours.)

Our tour guide took us to the pharmacy so we could get some medicine for one in our party with a sinus infection. They went in to buy the medicine, and the pharmacist asked if they had a prescription. When they said no, she immediately went in to tell the doctor. $20 and half an hour later, they had seen the doctor and gotten their prescription. (Talk about health care.)

The pharmacy.

We had lunch in a small restaurant right on the water. The view was awesome on all sides, and the food was great. The tacos were similar to American tamales, and comparing authentic Spanish food to a type of Americanized Mexican food made me laugh.

Walking up to where we'd eat lunch. (That's the owner of the restaurant.)

The view from my seat at lunch.

View of the restaurant from the pier. We're in the top part!

When we finished lunch, we continued our tour and ended up at a private beach called Parrot Bay. I had taken so many pictures all day, my battery died when we got there. Because of that, I wasn't able to capture the tiny hermit crabs Justin and I encountered as we walked around the water, or the dead squid we saw on the bank. This private beach was surrounded by nice townhouses (contact Century21) and also included a beautiful private pool.

After that, we headed back to the ship. Even though I was tired and sunburned, it was truly sad to leave. We intend on going back someday, and maybe if I'm lucky, we can have a vacation home there! I vote yes.

*All photos in this post were taken with my Samsung ST76.