Drowning in Lavendar

I am tired of being pregnant. I just hit 41 weeks. I want to see the kid and get my balance back.

So the baby's due date is tomorrow and he seems to be healthy but in no way inclined to exit yet. That's the positive news.

The negative news is that we had to put down our beloved cat carrot last friday. Amazingly enough it was not a seizure which took her out. She had a blood clot which took out her back half and gave her a 1 in 16 chance of lasting another 6-9 months in the absolute best of chances. more likely they would be unable to clear the clot and she'd have to say goodbye anyhow. So we made the hard but merciful choice. Ninjakitten was kind enough to allow us to bury her in their backyard as there was no place we could do it here in this apartment complex.
We gave her 3 years of mostly controlled seizures and as much love as we knew how to give. It's sad to say goodbye but now she's in a place where she will never again suffer the indignity of a seizure or of the daily pillings. We have no current plans to get another cat as we are well aware we will shortly have our hands full with a newborn.

So we had the 20 week part check on the sproglet. They saw a dongle not a port. So we're expecting a male child.

I know i don't post here as much as i lurk but i do have certain subsets of my friend population who are best reached here.

Me and my boyo have a viable pregnancy. We saw it move on the ultrasound. Still adjusting to the news but happy and hopeful.

The household wanted to watch movies today. I had no choice in either but they had some very amusing similarities. The two movies were... Moon and Pluto Nash....( my potentially spoilerish thoughts under the cut.Collapse )

I'm having fun with baking this weekend. I'm making a kings cake to take into work tomorrow and it was interesting because it used a brioche recipe and i used both my starter and a packet of yeast. It's cooling to the icing point now and i'm putting a sourcream based frosting on it. I even have nonpareils of the right colours. The trinket is a canadian penny because i didnt have a spare ring or ceramic baby. (i did thoroughly sanitize the coin in everclear)

I also found a pie recipe that those of my friends who are WW might want to look at http://www.livestrong.com/recipes/three-layer-pie/

anyhow. back to the grind.

Last night i had one of those strange f'd up dreams again. I dreamed that i was at work and we suddenly had double the amount of student workers in my department and we had been moved to someplace like the stacks management area. The new people were stacks management students who seemed to be surprised and confused as well. I was supposed to teach them how to scan articles but non of the scanners were there attached to the computers and i was freaking out and called the boss over. Then the new people started running around and i tried to get them to stop by shouting stop that. That got me yelled at by the boss for shouting but i couldnt have stopped them by running after the m because that would have been hypocritical so i just hid under a table in an aspie manner. Then the scense shifted and we were back in the current office but all the student computers were in use by all the other normal employees so i was at a loos of what to do. I decided to look out the windows and there was a pack of wild dogs outside. they came up to the window and made threataning poses and growls at me. When i tried to make everyone else aware of them it turned into a dogshow with well trained dogs and ribbons in their hair. This show got interupted by a squirel at which point i loose the trail of the dream.

Strange ne?

Next week is midterms. I have an oral exam and a written one for my japanese class that i am studying hard for this weekend. I also will be doing a lot of reading for my rel studies class. I have to write a paper for that by the end of the term and am still thinking on my topic. I have some ideas floating around in my head that i just need to sort through.

I got back lab results from the health center. my Vit-D level is half of the lowest it should be and my iron is just under safe. Which means pills... and such. on my mother's reccomendation i am using Floradix for the iron and a Vit-D supplement from TJ's. I also wrenched my back trying to avoid a collision in a hallway. the floors were slick from the rain and i ended up like a turtle, helpless on my back. I'm using a hot sock on it and will shortly be having my boyo rub salve on it. Here's hoping it doesnt become a major issue.

Lavendar shortbread

This recipe was altered from the one at ilovemilkandcookies.blogspot.com/2007/08/this-cookies-winner.html


This batch was made with a mix of spelt and wheat flour.

Lavendar Shortbread

¾ cup confectioner’s sugar
1 tbsp dried lavendar
10 tbsp unsalted butter, cut into cubes
1/2 tsp orange extract
1/2 tsp vanilla extract
(opt - pinch of orange zest)
1¾ cup plain all-purpose flour
3 large egg yolks
1/2 cup granulated sugar (at minimum... more may be needed)

Preheat the oven to 350 f
Line a baking sheet with parchment paper. (or foil works)
Whisk the confectioner’s sugar and lavendar together in a bowl.
Add the butter, and lavendar/sugar mixture to a bowl Mix until smooth and light in colour. Mix in the extracts. Add the flour and mix until well combined.
Add the egg yolks and mix just until the eggs are fully incorporated and a mass forms. (it's best to get your hands in there near the end)
Form the dough into a disk and chill in the refrigerator until firm (about 30 minutes).
Roll the dough out to about 1/2 inch thickness.
Cut the dough with a cookie cutter.
Toss each cut cookie in a bowl of granulated sugar to coat. (I used vanilla sugar)
Place the sugar-coated cookie on a lined pan.
Bake for 12-15 minutes, or until slightly golden around the edges.

watashi wa springfield no kinjou desu. gateway toiutokoru desu. Oregon daigakuen kara busu de 45 hon gurai desu. Sukoshi fuben desu. Springfield wa choto ooki machi arimasu. Jinkou wa 58 sen nin gurai desu.

6 times per week thing. still better than no posting like i had been before. I'm getting back some of my tics from when i was using the paxil before. I no longer feel on the knife edge of sanity but it's strange to see the knee jiggle come back after so long away. it's almost like a redirect, the energy that would have gone to over-stressing and depressing seems to need to shake itself away. ah well with the good comes the bad and leg jiggles are a small price to pay to not have the feeling that no one actually loves me and that they're just saying so for some nefarious reason.

today has been a tired day. Not tiring, or not more so than any other friday but i know i'm underslept. I woke (full stop awake) at 7am. My alarm is for 8 because i need to be to campus at 10 and i usually hit the alarm twice to get to wakefulness. on the upside it ment that i was able to call in some of the medical related stuff. some of it has to wait till mon because they weren't open at 8am nor will they be open on the weekend. I also have plans for the weekend.... i'ma gonna be a molecular chef.... well actually i'm just going to try my hand at making tofu.

The world is shrouded in the lacy gauze of a midmorning misty haze
The sun blearily turns her gaze to us like a mother prodding children to rise
I pass through smoke tumbling from a chimney like dry ice in a bowl
The chattering of my classmates like the crows in the trees
calls the day to order.

learning new sentence structures suck. I had a consistent error on the writing homework in terms of that for japanese. still i can learn and at least except for that one issue i was right on. I was silly after class and work today. I made fries and soy/coconut based tapioca.

Well except for the whole sleeping till 2 bit. (with the exception of waking up long enough to pill the cat in the morning) I made cookies and a nice dinner though. The cookies were/are lavendar shortbread. I used nifty little bunny head cookie cutters to make them so i get the glee of biting off a ear. The dinner was miso and wine marinated pork chops with normandy blend veggies covered in cheese sauce.

Yum.

Today has been strange. very strange.

I'm behind on the readings for my rel class at this point. not by much and certanly within my ability to catchup over lunch tomorrow. I just have a JPN quiz tomorrow and would rather spend the time on studying for it rather than trodding through a dense text on the body in first corinthians. Gah greek on top of japansese would be so fracked up. so not gonna read that tonight. i'll wait till i slurg out all the information i crammed in my head for tomorrow. migi hidari mae ushiro ue shite naka suto. right left front back up down in out. position and positioning are ..... wrong time for that song to be in my head.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jFMd54NSSCw

not too much to report for today. Woke up ill and realized i would not be able to has brain for classes so i went back to bed. Woke up fully at 1:30pm and had some food. I've spent about an hour studying japanese with loogy brains so i hope it sticks. Will be getting to sleep early tonight so i can be well enough to get to classes and work tomorrow.

and i hate random reasonless paranoia. Last night i was in the living room on my laptop and the roomies were either out and about or in bed. Robyn was in the room on his desktop keeping himself busy and so i was alone. It was intermittently windy and the gusts would shift the door enough to make it seem like someone was leaning on it or pushing it. So my brain started a thought tree on what 'living' things could be causing it.... and went to zombies. We're not talking the voodo zombies who are raised to do tasks, no we're talking the living dead style who would think i was a horribly tasty treat. So i locked the door and turned down 90% of the lights but i was still irrationally fearful. I say irrationally because the logical part of my brain was going "hey you what are ya worrying about. No one has ever proven the brain eating type exist"
So i ended up in the room with robyn and still freaking out that they could burs in through our window and that i can't see behind myself. It got bad enough that i ended up taking one of the alprazolam which i had on hand for extreme panic situations and dental anxiety. It helped me to sleep and i'm feeling much less jumpy now but still. oy. I am glad that i'm seeing a counselor for stress because i'm sure this is right up the line of what we need to be working on.

I had actually made a resolution to use this account more. Write one paragraph a day about what was up in classes and what silly things i might have noticed at work. However like many promises it fell to the wayside as i fell under the onslaught of a new term of classes. I do intend to try to do it from now on just because i feel like i need to. So here it goes.

JPN 102 is falling into place for me as i have gotten back to 80% recognition of hiragana. This is important because the way UO runs the classes by 102 you should be able to go without a romaji crutch. the Katakana is proving more difficult and the kanji is a pain like i expected it to be. I do only need a C- or better so as long as i keep swimming up the language-stream i aught to be okay. Spent several hours today making flashcards of adjectives so i can study up on them because we were taught 42 of them last week. Most of them were paired like omoshiroi (interesting) and tsumaranai (boring) and there were also the primary colours. akai aoi kiroi shiroi kuroi pinku midori. It is also helpful to my remembering of the hira (and some kata) that i am writing the adjectives in their non-romaji gana forms. anyhow back to the study mines.

However family gatherings are stressful. Opening presents this morning after mass ran so long we took a break halfway through for food. (people were getting snippy and my niece was being fussy) I took a long post present nap till almost dinnertime and was used as a bed by the cats seeking to escape the grabby clutches of em(niece). Spoke on the phone with my husband who was back in OR with the twitchycat. We still have yet to do dessert but i may hide till then because aspie stress is being amazing for this gathering. It doesnt help that my eldest sis is in mother mode and is reacting to all situations as if the people involved were five or under.... which hits some personal issues pertaining to my family.

The presents were happymaking though. They all showed thought and perception. My parental units gave me a stand mixer.... With a dough hook!

I just hope that i survive the weekend till the train trip back with my sanity intact.

I love seeing people... but i hate the overload. especially when i'm not the only one overloaded and the other overloaded person does things which make me more stressed.

Now don't get me wrong it was a wonderful female centric evening with much fun conversations and cake and tea and cookies. but i almost wish i had kicked out the men from the apartment. I actually had expected the hubby to be gone longer than he was because typically he has a game which runs him almost to kitty pilling time. And Roomie B is a wonderful person but he pushes himself back into socializations when he needs to be away and de-stressing. which leads to overload and stresses the entire household because said roomate's aspie sensory issues make the whistling my hubby does a stress point. My husband whistles without thinking, he tries to remember to not do so in certain locations but he actually avoids certain households now because of the upsetness he feels with himself over failing to not whistle and cause friends pain. This stresses him out even more and having to deal with that within the household is becoming a potential fracture point.

Riight. i went on way to long there.

tldr: fun evening but post gathering stress angst.

I bet i'm stealing all the harry and david pears.