Timeline of a slow-motion disaster:

Friday afternoon: idiot neighbor lady "gets dizzy" while driving and plows into the back of our parked car, knocking the tailpipe askew and doing a number on the bumper. Maintenance man comes to knock on our door, because he heard it happen and came to investigate (bonus: he told Michael that it looked to him like she was planning to hit and run until she saw him witnessing her). Idiot neighbor lady and Michael exchange insurance info, Michael makes requisite calls. Geico, her insurance company, requires that the damage be inspected to make sure that it's "new," because there's no customer service like treating the victim with suspicion, so Michael makes an appointment to bring the car to an approved body shop, which cannot take it until Tuesday. 

Tuesday morning: Michael takes the car to the approved body shop required by idiot neighbor lady's insurance, then goes to nearby rental car place to get the pre-arranged rental car, as we are going out of town over the weekend and cannot do it in our second car, which is a tiny Honda Civic. Rental company tries to give us a Dodge Journey, which is NOT the same class as our Honda Pilot, and which we know from previous rental experience is the least comfortable car we've ever had the displeasure of riding in. Michael stands his ground and they agree to give us a Tahoe. 

OH BUT WAIT.

The Tahoe is sent for cleanup, but in the meantime the rental agent comes back and tells Michael that idiot neighbor lady's insurance policy was brand new, and in fact had become active the very morning that she plowed into our poor, unassuming, did-I-mention-parked car. Therefore, Geico has to perform an investigation and thus he cannot take his rental and leave. Because somehow, the age of the contract between idiot neighbor lady and her insurance company is our problem. 

Moral of the story: Geico is the worst. I'm not crazy about idiot neighbor lady either.

{I know, I know, repeatedly calling her "idiot neighbor lady" is not charitable. She claims to have been dizzy during the incident. But I lost a lot of sympathy when our hero maintenance man told us that she appeared to be fleeing.}

"Answer Me This" Linkup, Week 6.

Kendra at Catholic All Year is hosting a weekly linkup. She provides the questions, you provide the answers, and then you link up with everyone back on her page. It's a great way to get to know a little about your fellow bloggy travelers, as well as a chance to consider some things about yourself that you hadn't before. Join us! 

But! Kendra is in France with her family, the lucky ducky, and so this week's AMT is being hosted by Haley over at Carrots for Michaelmas.

Kendra's Haley's answers, next week's questions and the linkup can be found here.

1. What's the scariest thing that's ever been in your yard?

Well, we live in an apartment and don't have a yard, and in fact I've never had a yard in my adult life (sad), so I'm going to go back to my childhood: when I was twelve or so, we were hanging out in the back yard and all of a sudden my sister started screaming that I had a daddy long-legs on my face. I slapped myself across the face hard enough that that sucker landed four yards down. 

Goll-Y that story still makes me shudder. 

2. Beards. Thumbs up or thumbs down?

Generally pretty thumbs down -- my imaginary prince has a military high-and-tight haircut and is clean-shaven -- but my real-life prince, my husband, does have a goatee most of the time. It works on him aesthetically so I deal with the fact that it's scratchy and occasionally poke-y when he kisses me. It's just an issue of length, I think.

3. If stuff breaks, can you fix it?

I'm pretty good with my hands. I build furniture like a champ, and I used to help build sets when I was in plays in high school, so I am proficient with power tools, etc. But I'm not very good at things involving electricity. I'm an engineer, but not that kind.

4. What was your first car?

I drove my dad's hand-me-down Lincoln Town Car for about two years, during my senior year of college and my first year living in Virginia. My friends all called it the Land Yacht or The Good Ship Colleen. It served me pretty well even though it only got like twelve miles to the gallon. (It was a little hard on my wallet.) It eventually died -- actually it tried to murder me when the tie rod broke and I lost my steering (thank God in Heaven that I was parking when it snapped and not on the Capital Beltway, which I had been about half an hour before!) -- and I had to buy my first car.

5. How often do you eat out?

Too often. Entirely too often. If I put a number on it, I'm just going to feel bad. In my defense, I'm pregnant and very, very ill. Cooking is just not possible right now.

6. Why is your hair like that?

Oh. Oh jeez. I know you asked this question without being able to see me, Kendra (via Haley), but I feel like you must have been able to see the disaster on my head. My feelings are, irrationally, just a teeny bit hurt. 

Okay so I'm too far out from a hair coloring so I'm pretty shot through with gray -- because I am the daughter of and sister to hair dressers, I will not be letting my hair go gray (not intentionally, anyway; neglect is another story). Added to that is the fact that I've decided to give up the pipe dream of ever having nice bangs, so I'm trying to grow them out and they are at THE most awkward length. Basically it's just a graying mop. It. Is. Scary. 

The worst part is that I look good in bangs, just not my bangs. I have very fine hair, but a ton of it -- basically, a new hairdresser always looks at me askance when I say "I have a ton of hair," because it really does not look or feel like it, but then as soon as they start to blow-dry me, they're like, "Holy moly sister, you have A LOT OF HAIR." So it's the worst of all worlds: it never looks full because it's so fine but it doesn't style well because it's so heavy. And bangs... They just don't sweep to the side because of the weight, and a full bang looks great on me except that my bangs grow at a rate of about an inch an hour, so unless I want to a) hack at them myself, which, NO or b) go broke paying for bang trims, I'm just giving up and going bangs-less. 

End essay about my hair. But it's a sore spot right now.

In which I decide to stop making excuses about my lack of bloggery.

The more I think about this, the more I think there's no good reason for keeping it off the blog. I'm currently blogging fairly incognito-ly, which is to say that I don't think anyone I know "in real life" is reading.

I'm 7.2 weeks pregnant (or so... I don't yet have a due date), and thank the good Lord for his blessings. I only had to undergo two rounds of Clomid to conceive this time, and that is a wonderful, miraculous thing. I am overjoyed, truly.

However.

Oh, however.

For the second time in two pregnancies, I am dealing with the scourge that is hyperemesis gravidarum (HG).

You guys. It is the WORST. If you gave me the choice between a) delivering a full-term baby every six weeks for nine months and b) HG, I would unhesitatingly, unblinkingly choose to a) give birth all of those times.

I can only imagine what morning sickness is like. I have only ever had morning-noon-and-night, unrelenting misery, not mere morning sickness. It was in some ways easier with my first pregnancy: my responsibilities were fewer (read: I didn't have a toddler), and thus if need be I could sacrifice whole weekends to just sitting around trying to curb the nausea and vomiting; plus, I had some naïve  hope that it would only last for the first trimester. On the other hand, this time my husband knows what to expect and that is immensely helpful.

He has been a rock star. I mean that with the utmost sincerity. He rearranged his work schedule so he can handle both the morning daycare drop off and the evening pickup, he's been doing all of the baby's baths and most of the meals (picking them up from restaurants, that is, because I could cook but only if they want me to actually vomit in their meals).

I don't know how to even describe the magnitude of the disruption to our lives. But when Mama literally can't do anything without retching, life changes. A lot.

The best part of my day is the time between dinner and Keira's bedtime because I sit on the couch while she runs around being funny and distracting me from the horror show happening in my stomach.

Please say some prayers for me that this time the HG doesn't last every moment of my pregnancy, as it did with Keira. St. Gerard has been getting an earful from me already, but I would appreciate a few more intercessors!

In which I make some excuses.

It's been relative radio silence around here for the last week or two. I'm working on a couple of things but they're not ready yet, and I'm feeling a bit clogged in terms of other discussion topics.

So just a note to say that I'm not giving up and I'm not giving in (did I just slip into song lyrics there?), and we'll be back to our regularly-scheduled all-over-the-place-ness of this blog soon enough.

Stay tuned!

"Answer Me This" Linkup, Week 5

Happy Mother's Day, all y'all! 

Extra, extra special prayers and love for those struggling with infertility and miscarriage. 

And it may be Mother's Day, but around here we owe mad props to Daddy. As I mentioned yesterday, I have pinkeye. Because I'm trying to avoid re-infecting the little, I've been self-quarantined. Michael took Keira down to his parents' in the morning yesterday to spend some time with her Bella and Poppy while he helped them out with some household-y stuff, and then he took her to Costco for some supplies we needed (our washing machine smells AWFUL and I'm trying a bleach-and-then-vinegar home remedy from the interwebs to chase away the funk and I'm thinking it might take more than one round, hence the Costco-sized bottles being an absolute necessity as we were almost out of both bleach and vinegar), and then watched her el solo for the remainder of the afternoon. I'll tell you what, listening to your big strong husband playing "Ring Around the Rosie" with an eighteen-month-old (my favorite part is the thud as he hits the ground! Sorry downstairs neighbors!) would make even the coldest heart melt. 

Super. Hero.

UPDATED TO ADD: He also got her up this morning and took her to early Mass so I could sleep in (I sing with the choir at a later Mass, which happens to fall during nap time). He hates taking her to Mass alone because she can be extremely disruptive and he gets so embarrassed. I had a little scary moment when I pulled up her camera to check on her -- it's not unheard of for her to sleep this late but I was surprised -- and she wasn't there. But she's safe and sound and holy! Seriously, what a guy.

Anyway! Moving right along!

Kendra at Catholic All Year is hosting a weekly linkup. She provides the questions, you provide the answers, and then you link up with everyone back on her page. It's a great way to get to know a little about your fellow bloggy travelers, as well as a chance to consider some things about yourself that you hadn't before. Join us! 

Kendra's answers, next week's questions and the linkup can be found here.

1. What's for dinner?

Oh goodness me. I have no idea. That's bad, isn't it? But we're picnicking this afternoon for Mother's Day and I'm not sure we'll have dinner. Maybe just a huge, late lunch. 

2. What's the last thing you borrowed from someone?

This is actually really hard to answer. I tend to be more of a lender. I lend primarily books -- and only sometimes get them back, even though I invested in a personalized stamp with my name so that the lend-ee would not forget whose book they stole -- and my friend recently wore a bracelet of mine in her wedding. The same friend sometimes shops my closet for occasions because I have dresses in every color of the rainbow, for all seasons, in a fairly wide range of sizes. And yet I can never, ever find anything in the right season that fits. 

So... The last thing I can honestly remember borrowing was a fur stole from my mom's wonderful neighbor, Carmelina, to wear to a friend's wedding in January in the snow (somehow I have no photographs from this event). She got it at a secondhand shop for crazy cheap. That stuff just doesn't happen to me. But that was ... 2009? I am really not a borrower, probably because I don't have much family nearby.

3. What is your favorite prayer?

St. Michael, the Archangel, defend us in battle.
Be our protection against the wickedness and snares of the Devil.
May God rebuke him, we humbly pray,
And do thou, O Prince of the Heavenly Host,
By the Divine Power of God,
Cast into Hell Satan,
And all the evil spirits who wander throughout the world,
Seeking the ruin of souls. Amen.

Do you say it differently? A lot of people say it differently.

4. What is the oldest thing in your house?

Hmmmmmm. I don't have that many things that have been handed down, which means that most things are, at most, as old as my college degree. My husband's maternal grandmother gave me a miniature antique teacup and saucer (maybe it's a demitasse?), and my husband's paternal grandmother gave me a Japanese vase she brought back with her when her husband was stationed there in the early fifties. They're both safely packed away because we have a small apartment and a toddler, or I'd show you. 

I have some Irish silver jewelry from my maternal grandmother, who passed away while I was pregnant with Keira (and who gets a lot of the credit for Keira because as she was dying of painful pancreatic cancer, she was apparently offering up her pain especially for my struggle with infertility; that brings tears to my eyes every time I think about it!), but it's not especially old.

5. What's the best concert you ever attended?

It's a tie between finally seeing U2 in 2009 (on the Revolution tour) and seeing my favo(u)rite British rock band, Elbow, in 2011. We're seeing Elbow again tonight, first time they've been back in town since 2011, and I'm so excited!

6. Do you have a nickname?
My family calls me ColCol, my nieces and nephews and some friends' kids call me Auntie Col and some of my friends call me Cols. I always wanted a nickname I could write on tests but alas, it was not to be. Every piece of schoolwork I ever handed it said my full name on it. Actually, that's not true! In eighth or ninth grade social studies I came to be called Vanna (as in White; we played a lot of history games and I always would be the chick at the blackboard turning over answer squares), and I actually wrote Vanna on all of my schoolwork for that one class. 

I don't know why I even remember that. My other memory of that class is that the teacher (flagrantly erroneously) told us that diplomatic immunity meant that if a foreign diplomat assassinated the president, he wouldn't be prosecuted -- which I mostly remember because my dad reminds me constantly to this day as if it's my fault my teacher told me something wrong.

Gotta laugh...

... Or else I might cry.

I woke up this morning with my right eye semi-crusted-shut. My husband confirmed that it was looking a little droopy. It's been three weeks since Schmear had pinkeye (two weeks and four- to five-ish days since she was contagious) but it found me at last.

Luckily we have antibiotic drops left from her infection.

Hubs was all, "Are you sure you want to take something that wasn't prescribed to you?"

And I'm all, "Dude. It's not narcotics, it's eyedrops. Yes, I'm sure I don't want to go to the doctor again to get it confirmed that I have pinkeye, which I already know, when the drops are right here."

[Because I went to my GP two weeks ago to get a strep swab -- which epic sore throat turned out to just be killer allergy post-nasal drip wonderfulness -- and excepting my lady doctor I hadn't been to the doctor in YEARS.]

But I'm worried there isn't going to be enough drops. I'm tempted to cut corners and only dose the one eye to save on them, but I can foresee that backfiring. I think I probably caught it early enough that whatever is in the bottle will do the trick... Right?

Happy early Mother's Day to me! :)