the miraculous wedge

I want to stand up and tell everybody I know how wonderful I have slept since The Hater found a wedge pillow for my growing bump.  He wins "Husband of the Year" award again - this time for solving the problem for difficulty sleeping while pregnant.

It was tricky because I didn't want a fancy, convoluted body pillow.  I already had a knee pillow that makes me happy, and I wasn't interested in changing it out.  I had tried three or four different kinds of pillows in the house to no avail...  but this wedge...  it's exactly what I needed, the right amount of support for a pulling tummy.

And I slept most of the weekend to further test it.  It passed.  

I don't believe in free advertising, but for the sake of the comfort of other pregnant mommies, here's the link to the wedge that made the difference for me.

so much for Harvard

This baby has obviously not been reading the same pregnancy information that we have been.  There are things that are supposed to happen in the second trimester, and baby must be confused.  

First, last weekend was awful.  I felt worse than each bad day during the first trimester plus about 7 dozen.  Found a wedge pillow, which really helped, and slept so much that it's more than broken-in now.  Still, those reindeer games were supposed to be over last week.

And this morning?  I yaked.  Yep, yak fest.  Where did that come from?  Give me a break.  The only silver lining to that story is that I kept down my Synthroid for the morning.  Go team.

Baby, we're going to stop with this Twinkle Twinkle Little Star business and swap over to the Mayo Clinic's pregnancy guide to catch you back up to the learning curve.  It's too early to start falling behind.

Yes, I know "this too shall pass".  Please don't patronize me.  I'm really not in the mood.

The Fat Lady is Singing

Dear Coach Fulmer:

It ain't over until the fat lady sings, and the fat lady is belting out right now on your football coaching career.  It's a tune we've not heard very often this year - Rocky Top.

UT football has been on a steady decline for the past seven years with you at the helm leading us down the mountain of excellence into the valley of mediocrity.  We can rationalize that it's the assistant coodinators, specific players, sloppy fumbles, ill-timed penalties, unfortunate injuries, "spoilled fans", off-field troubles, the weather ... but no matter what, all these things are situations that every football team must deal with.  We are not unique in experiencing these things.

The one constant in the recent decline in UT football quality over the last few years is you.  You are the one thing that has remained constant on the ever-changing team with endless excuses from year to year as to why we are not performing better.  Players change.  Assistant coaches change.  Injuries happen.  But you and your weak leadership style remain the same.

The college football game has changed.  It's not like it was back in the day anymore.  Your coaching has not adjusted.  It's very similar to how UCLA adjusted their offense in the second half to beat us two games ago -- and we adjusted nothing to succeed only in losing.  

Don't worry.  We're not forgetting your great service in the past.  The national championship was great, and recruiting that Manning kid was the crowing glory of your coaching career.  But those days have long past.  

It's time for things to change for the University of Tennessee football program.  Since you have been the one constant factor during the decline, we contend it is you who needs to leave the university and move on.  You're not learning from your mistakes, and you're damaging Tennessee's football credibility as well as your legacy with every mediocre season you coach.

We've pleaded in the past to "Fire Phil Fulmer" and see that's gotten us nowhere.  Instead of that plea, this year we ask for you to humbly consider retiring at the end of this season.  You're taking our football team down with you, and we don't like it.  Do the right thing and get off our field.  We'll even let you pretend like there's a reason to hold your head high.

I don't know who we will find in the interim, but we do hope that 10-15 years from now we'll be able to say that the great Peyton Manning returned home to the University of Tennessee to be the head football coach.  That would be your greatest legacy to us.  Please don't make it even harder on him by taking that legacy further into the hole.  If you retire now, there's a good chance we can get someone good to replace you.  The longer you stay, the harder it is going to be for the new guy to get us back up that mountain.

Please retire.  We look forward to hearing this announcement spring of 2009.  Please consider it our first wish on the baby's gift registry.

Sincerely,

genderist and The Hater

thunderwear

Tonight at supper The Hater announced that he wanted to look for some thunderwear this weekend.

(blink)

That's right.  He said "thunderwear".

I had visions of some kind of adult underoos that I'd not heard about yet.

Thunderwear.  He said it again.

Underwear?

No, he explained.  He wanted to see if the mall had any clothes with the new OKC NBA team's logo on it...  the OKC Thunder.  Thunderwear...

He came up with that one himself.

hunting wabbits

It's been another lazy, quiet weekend.  It's been wonderful.

The Hater is out of town again.  He'll be back either crazy late tonight or tomorrow afternoon, depending on how things go.  I hope things go well.  The one really great thing about him being out of town is that we'll make every effort for the next weekend to be quiet and uncomplicated, too.  

The church had a program yesterday to bless the pets.  I wanted to take Zoloft so bad I could hardly stand it.  We tried taking her out in the back yard one day last week, just to see how she did... needless to say, it didn't go well.  So we had a homemade blessing at home yesterday.  She must have sensed that she was really getting off easy because she was extra attentive and sweet.  The poor girl just can't help it that she suffers from crippling feline social anxiety disorder.

Sister mailed me some new scrubs that were too big for her.  They're still a little too big for me, but they're way more comfortable than the ones I had been wearing.  So I'm tickled about them.  And they're different colors from my current stash, which is exciting.  My Sister is the greatest in all the land.

I'm trying to stay awake long enough to eat lunch and finish laundry.  My big afternoon plans consist of reading for pleasure and taking a needed nap.

Why can't every day be the weekend?

you, too, can have a UTI

May I suggest one that's more fun than mine?

unique transylvanian iceberg

ultimate thunderous instruments

uno tittilicious industry

utterly tenacious ivy

unidentified tangential irony

umbilical twisted igloo

ubiqitarian tactful information

unclean tattered ivory

universal taboo ink

understood terrapin instincts

unctuous tardy ignoramus

uncertain tainted incense

unanimous treacherous infantry

unadorned turquoise icing

ukranian trained iguanas

uxorious timid imbecile

unequivocal traumatic incident

urban tropical island

ugly trapeze imp

uniform tango india

(Think of it like a Choose Your Own Adventure... without the hot air balloon.)

the 12-week bump hump

The Hater was gone for about 2 days, and I'm convinced that the baby grew at least twice its size in that time.  I have no tangible ultrasound to prove it, but my belly has certainly declared its pregnancy state.  We have the makings of the bump.

I have a friend who is also pregnant, about 6 weeks ahead of us.  This is her third pregnancy.  She had some maternity pants that didn't fit her - and did fit me.  Wow.  The comfort difference was astounding.  I couldn't believe it.

So while The Hater was still out of town I went back out Saturday night to look for maternity clothes on sale at Ross and Old Navy.  I came out with a pair of khakis and jeans from Ross, both at great sale prices.  Then I found two shirts (one short sleeved and one three-quarter sleeved) on clearance at Old Navy.  I was super excited with these finds because I had looked at maternity clothes at the mall on Friday, and the prices were outrageous.

I can still wear most of my scrubs, but they're getting tight in the middle.  Prior to now I really liked the drawstring pants, but now there's really no need for a drawstring.  I can hold them up just fine on my own.  Pregnancy:  for people who hate to wear belts.

This week we're working on the 12th week.  I figure we're 2 or 3 days into the 12th week.  So far so good.  No awful symptoms to report, other than fatigue, which I already knew too well.  

I do have one amusing symptom that drives The Hater nuts.  I have had some especially aromatic farts since before we knew that I was pregnant.  I'm talking eyes-watering-clear-the-room farts. These usually happen at night, which is good for me - bad for him.  It's quite possibly my favorite symptom of pregnancy because he can totally share it with me.  Over and over and over.

workin' for the weekend

I'm so glad it's Friday I can hardly stand it.

The Hater will be out of town, but that won't rain on my parade.  I've worked so much OT this week that I'm leaving shortly after lunch.  I think I'll go to the mall and do my walk there; you know, mix up the scenery.  Maybe I'll find some sweetheart deals.

And maternity support hose.  My legs have been aching this week.

I'll have to stop somewhere and get some of the shampoo that we like (and my conditioner).  We've been scraping the bottom of the bottle for about a week.

I'm a little over halfway through reading S. King's "Dreamcatcher".  If I feel especially froggy I may try to finish the last 400+ pages before The Hater gets back.  That is, if it doesn't delve too far into my very important schedule of sleeping as many hours as I can.

Meanwhile, last night I pulled out some genealogy info to look at names.  We have some real winners up our family tree.  If it's a boy, we're thinking "LaFayette Fuqua", except we want to pronounce it not like the famous guy, but the place in TN, where the "fay" part has the accent.  The girl names weren't nearly as fun to mix and match - we're going to have to dig much deeper to come up with something that will make all of the grandparents wince.

first real football post of the season

Has anyone else noticed that the SEC teams have rocked out this weekend?  

(Except the Gamecocks... who The Hater says we have to cheer for so long as they're not playing against us because they're in the SEC.  He says this doesn't always apply to Florida or Alabama.)

We're eager to watch the game tonight.  I wish it was a little earlier in the day; I'm hoping to stay awake through at least the first half.  I've just had a really hard time being awake after 8pm for the last couple of weeks.  

I've been telling The Hater that it's time for us to write another letter to Phil Fulmer.  We're tardy on our pre-season set of expectations.  He wants to wait until we have something to critique, which I guess is fair.  All I'm saying is that I still have an itch to address the whole "Vol fans are spoiled" comment he made, but I can wait.

Meanwhile, we've started singing Rocky Top to the baby at night.  They say that infants can recognize tunes they heard in utero for a year after their birth, so we want to make sure that baby knows it was a Vol before it was even born.

It wouldn't be the first football post if I didn't at least mention Peyton, who is excited to be my fantasy QB again this year.  We've talked about it, Peyton and I, and we both feel that this will be a great season.