This thing is such a hassle to mug around with. Weird spacing? Menus all jacked up? Messing with the paragraph formats? Can’t open Word attachments? WTH???? I just want my old MS Word back!

We’ve been busy since November. I’m nearly seven months pregnant at this point, due May 20, but scheduled for a c-section on May 13. I’m excited but a little apprehensive about what it’ll be like with two. If I can just get my dear daughter to stop taking off when we’re away from home, maybe then I’ll feel a little better. The kid loves to run. We stopped watching “The Incredibles,” because I think Dash is a bad influence.

My ob/gyn had his licensed suspended for something involving internet prescriptions back in 2005, so I’ve been looking for a new doctor. Looks like I’ll be delivering this baby at the smallest hospital in the area, Carthage Area Hospital. The fact that it’s a c-section at the smallest hospital makes me nervous, but it’s not much of a choice. There are only a few doctors in the Watertown, NY area. My doctor, who I love and think is a terrific doctor (he won’t be able to practice again until 9 days after this little one is scheduled to arrive), his partner, who actually delivered Lila (he won’t take any of my doctor’s patients who are due in May – he’s just too swamped), a female ob/gyn whom I know from a writers group we’re in together (I don’t want our relationship to become awkward for any reason – I’m pretty tough on doctors), and the ob/gyn who misdiagnosed me as having a bicornuate uterus and told me I needed to go on anti-depressants not approved for use during pregnancy. No thanks. So, I’m going to a smaller hospital. It has a great reputation and they do a lot of scheduled c-sections, probably because of Fort Drum, an army base right outside Watertown. A lot of soldier’s wives give birth with scheduled c-sections so the army can have their husbands home for the births.  So it should be okay. My DH will likely be able to be home with our DD in the evenings. I really want her to be at home as much as possible so her schedule isn’t completely derailed.

I’ve joined the North Country Artists Guild here in Watertown. It’s been around since 1942, but the group has really dwindled over the years and they were down to four board members and about $1000 in debt. The members were giving up on it when the St. Lawrence Council for the Arts swooped in and saved it by holding a public forum where they got an almost all-new board, a bunch of new members (including me) and a lot of public interest. Since then, the group has been meeting every two weeks to get things on track for this summer. I’m part of the website committee. I asked a guy I used to work with to consider doing the site for us. He said he would and he’s doing it for FREE! Now we’re trying to come up with a concept for the overall marketing “feel” of the organization, including a brand new logo.

It’s exciting to be getting in at this level. And with this group – more than any other group in which I’ve been involved – there’s a feeling of something happening. We think of something that needs to happen and the wheels start turning. As opposed to sitting around talking about it for months at a time, then it all comes to nothing. For instance, one of the biggest objectives of the NCAG was to find somewhere to have an office and host classes, art shows, etc. They were looking to rent a place, but have no money. At the last meeting, a couple of guys showed up and said we could use a building owned by the Trinity Episcopal Church for next to nothing. The place is over 100 years old and the church was planning to maybe raze it – but it would be almost as much to knock it down ($400,000) as it would cost to upgrade and add a few amenities and have smaller organziations pay rent to use the huge rooms in the place.

As for work, I found out I could be doing a lot more freelance work for one of my clients at the same time my DD’s daycare provider up and got a “real” job! I’ve been doing the full-time mommy thing more now and squeezing in freelance work whenever I can. My mother-in-law helps out a lot. She takes her three mornings a week when she’s around. But I don’t want to have to depend on her if I can help it. I just feel I’m taking advantage and DD gets away with a lot over there that she wouldn’t be getting away with anywhere else. I had to be the bad guy and put the kibosh on Scooby Doo when she stopped wanting to go to bed at night. So, work has been suffering, to say the least. I’ve made two big mistakes on the newsletter I work on – one of the mistakes made a couple of people (not clients, but readers of the newsletter) angry. I’ve been working as much as I can on ads and articles, but have to do it all during nap time – from 1-3:30 and then about an hour and a half to two hours before I go to bed. It makes me very cranky to have to work constantly on something. AND, I’ve had to stop going to the gym. I’m gaining more with this pregnancy than I thought I would b/c I simply can’t find an hour to run to the gym. That’s frustrating.

After running that half marathon a year ago in May, I’ve been slacking off big time. Last winter, I would just take DD with me to the gym and put her in their free child watch, but this year I’m really avoiding that. It’s probably because of all of DD’s health issues right before Christmas where she had like four illnesses right in a row, right before we flew to Oklahoma for the holidays. Let’s see, croup, high fevers and rash that turned out to be roseola, and double ear infections over the course of two weeks.  That was a miserable experience. I thank my lucky stars every day DD isn’t a sickly kid. I just would not have the energy to focus on anything but getting her well.

As for my health and fitness, grr… I’m so frustrated that I am out of shape again. Tried walking on the treadmill we have out in our garage and quickly (after two days) developed a condition called SPD, symphisis pubis dysfunction, where my pelvic bones are separating and grinding together ostensibly b/c I have too much Relaxin in my body from the pregnancy. The doctor told me to avoid exercise like running and walking, obviously, cross-country skiing – anything where I have to have my legs apart. I was taking this cool adult ballet class with some friends and had to quit. SPD is not plie-friendly! The only thing I can do is work out on an arc trainer at my gym. It feels awesome and I think it has actually helped with the SPD. Now I only have trouble when I lie down, pick DD up to put her in the car (something about that twisting/bending over motion is really painful), or cross my legs. But the only time I can go to the gym is after Lila and Dustin are in bed – that’s usually about 8:30-9:00 pm! After that, I have trouble getting to sleep. So, yes I’m getting fat again. Boo.

I’ve scheduled a housekeeper to come and help me at the end of March with a spring cleaning. I’m really excited because I’m thinking that’ll be around the time or a little before my nesting instinct kicks in. I was a crazy person last time. I scrubbed every room in the house and was obsessed with getting even the tiles on our ceiling as clean as I could. I took a q-tip, dipped it in alcohol and scrubbed between the keys of the computer keyboard. It was a sucky, desperate, out-of-control feeling and it made me crazy. Maybe now that I’ll have some help, I can get it all done and over with in half a day or so – or at the very least, get it started. No telling what I’ll do when those hormones actually kick in!

It helps that we’ll be moving into a new house a few weeks after the baby comes. Our “cottage” is supposed to be ready by June. Everything will be new and clean and shiny, if crowded. The whole family will be there with various friends coming and going. It’s going to be hard for me to deal with that – I’m such a private, need-my-space kind of person - but we’re taking the opportunity to have our house completely remodeled during the summer so I’m just going to have to live with it! Hopefully this baby is a good sleeper and dogs barking, people shouting and coming in and out won’t be an issue…  I’m not going to worry about it now!

Okay, so I had to borrow from some previous work, but it was all relevant to the story. Anyway, I wrote 50,000 pages of my first novel. It’s not finished yet. It needs a stellar ending – one I have in mind and just have to find the time to write now – but I claim victory! Hurrah! My first novel is well on its way to being completed!

I can’t believe it’s November. For the past several days I’ve been trying to keep up with my goal to finish a 50,000 word novel by December 1. It’s been going okay, but this weekend I REALLY slacked off and had to “borrow” from what I already had in my novel to keep up my goals. I’m up to almost 19,000 words and hope to be well past 20,000 by the end of tonight.

The Nano write-ins I’ve been holding haven’t been very well attended though we have 30 people signed up in our area. It’s encouraging to know there’s that many people writing in the area - and they’re just the ones interested in novelling. Maybe there’s lots more who like to write short stories, non-fiction and poetry! I put in a plug for the Black River Valley Writers Club which I joined almost a year ago. Maybe a few of those 30 people will be intersted enough to come to a couple of meetings. The people in the club are older and many of them don’t even write much. They bring in things they like to read aloud. Not sure why they bother coming if they’re not going to write something. Anyway, there’s at least three in the group who have forward momentum and I’m hoping one or two more will make it an exciting group to go to every month.

We’re finishing up picking things out for our cottage re-build. The Stokes fam got together last night to pick out paint colors for the entire place. It went pretty well, although I got in trouble (from Dustin) because I don’t want to budge on the whole carpeting a cottage idea. A few people want to put carpeting in the living room and I would rather find a solid-surface option like laminate or wood. The problem is because the cottage isn’t heated year-round, we have to find something that can stand extreme cold temperatures without buckling. We’re still looking into what to do. I was up at 2:30 a.m. looking for websites on the subject of flooring in unheated or refrigerated spaces. There’s not much information out there!

Other than that, I’ve had a busy week with the chamber newsletter. I got a call a week ago yesterday saying they needed it done early (by yesterday). However, I didn’t get any of the stuff for it until Sunday afternoon leaving me about 24 hours to do it. Yeah right. Especially since they haven’t paid me yet! I’m plugging away as time sees fit, but have a tendency to do things like not eat or drink when I get wrapped up and in a hurry. Got to remember to take care of myself!

Oh, and by the way, we found out in the middle of September that we’re expecting baby #2. We started telling people at the beginning of November after a great early ultrasound where we could see the little peanut jumping all around the screen! Heartbeat was 171 bpm which is right where it should be. I’m trying to control my appetite so I don’t gain 60 lbs like I did with Lila, but I’ve been ravenous and it’s been hard finding time to run these past few weeks. I signed up for a Turkey Day Run (5K) as motivation, but it has only helped me feel guilty I haven’t been to the gym since Saturday!

It’s not sticking yet, but boy – this seems early. I sure hate to think this might go on until April or so!

I am currently trying to plan the Watertown NaNoWriMo kick-off event and, holy cow, is it stressful. I can’t seem to find a place that will host us without either charging us a fee, or trying to shove us into a tiny little room in the back of the building. One of the librarians at the Flower Memorial Library suggested we move the event to December. Hahahahaha (that’s hysterical laughter, by the way)….

So, now I’m on to Panera Bread to see if they can offer us any specials or at least reserve us an area. I will not be paying money out of my own pocket and the Black River Valley Writers Club suggested a buget of $40 for food. It’s super-generous of them, but I don’t think many people will show up if we end up having it in a church basement with lukewarm coffee and stale danish. Too much like AA. Panera Bread would offer more attraction (I think) to more people, even if they have to pay for their own (delicious) coffee.

November is National Novel Writing Month for those of you who are into that kind of thing. I am!

This year, I’m Watertown’s Municipal Liaison, which means I get to plan a big kick-off event party and possibly weekly meet-ups to try and get people to stay motivated to keep writing. Mostly I am doing it because I never, ever do things halfway. What’s the point in that? Last year, I would have benefitted greatly from a weekly meeting where I would have felt guilty showing up with nothing new. Well, this year, I am holding myself accountable. I’m not saying I’ll definitely finish (finally), but maybe I will. I mean – YES – I will!

Who knew that I would learn to enjoy fall? Since Oklahoma winters are – in general – pretty moderate, I didn’t understand the meaning of the season fall until I lived up here in northern New York.  The first several years, I dreaded September when frost would sneak in and suddenly I had to put away the t-shirts and pull out the dreaded itchy wool sweaters.

This will be my ninth fall in northern New York. I can’t believe that. My ninth fall up here. I’m actually looking forward to candy corns, pumpkin carving and Halloween movies so much that I don’t even dread the winter. I guess that means I’m officially getting used to living here!

The air is clear, the sky is blue, the leaves are changing and I’ve switched from wool to fleece. I’m all set.

I’m trying to “upgrade” my little home office. It’s pretty crowded in here. I need to do some major filing, but my filing cabinets are stuffed so full of who knows what, it’s all just floating around here. I don’t even have a place to write on paper.

I ordered a little wire shelf on Walmart.com and will get that set up today for the approximately 200 journals i keep on my desk (one for each client, one that’s a gardening journal, one that’s a journal-journal for my writing ideas, etc). I hate being unorganized, especially when it comes to work stuff.

Found a beautiful little wooden filing cabinet at Lyng’s Office Supply today in Watertown. They have some gorgeous office furniture that is a little dinged up and sells for about 75% or more off the original list price. According to the sign attached to the file cabinet, it was originally $550, but since it was locked and no one knows where the key is, they’re selling it for $99. If I can figure out how to get the thing open, it’ll make a beautiful addition, though it doesn’t really match my decor. I guess you could call my taste eclectic.

Weird. I just got a phone call where a guy offered me a sales position. Yesterday I posted my resume on this website 1000islandshelpwanted.com to get entered to win a Mac Airbook. I thought, why not? I didn’t think it would actually work! That said, I love what I’m doing right now and you can’t beat the freedom. This morning I took an hour “off” and went to the library and the farmer’s market downtown. Love it!