The Pilver

It’s my due date.  I’m not in labor, though it would be wonderful if I were and it was just painless.  I’ve determined that I am officially a pregnancy knowledge failure.  Don’t comfort me and my stupidity, I’m not too upset.  I have a large stack of books which told me all the symptoms to look for when my due date was coming near.  I had em all, some repeatedly.   An ‘average’ pregnancy is supposed to last 40 weeks.  At 35 weeks and two days I started having strong and regular contractions, although they were not painful.  These were identical to the contractions I began having with Max two days before he was born.  So, I freaked.  I tried to sit as still as possible until I was 37 weeks along so as to avoid having a tiny baby who might need to be hooked up to oxygen.  Low and behold, I have been having these fake, but strong, contractions for over four weeks now.  Once in awhile I time them, cause the books told me to. Nothing ever happens.

I’m sure I sound discouraged and miserable, but the very opposite is true.  Yes, I want to get the ball rolling and meet my daughter, but I am not suffering.  Last night I slept nine uninterrupted hours.  I am still able to move just fine.  I haven’t swollen up with fluid, as many pregnant women do.  I feel very lucky.

But now, it’s my due date.  The car is packed with a bag for Lucy, one for myself and Mr. Pilver, and Max has a bag full of toys he is bringing.  Max has requested to be at the big event and we’re going to let him come and test it out.  If he wants to leave, however, I am A-OK with that.  The delivery rooms at our hospital have televisions, so if he gets bored at least I can listen to iCarly in the background.

I have a doctor’s appointment tomorrow.  I was told if I was still pregnant at that point, they will schedule an induction instead of a follow-up appointment.  I’m torn about this.  I really do want to have her, but inductions seem to last forever and often end with c-sections.  If I am going to have a c-section I’d rather just have it now and not go through twenty-four hours of labor before having a doctor arrive at that decision.  Also, as painful as labor is (and it is, I’ve done it naturally) I would rather suffer the pain than have an epidural.  The concept of a needle being placed into my back while being hooked up to an IV is the closest thing to hell on earth I can imagine.  First off, I hate drugs.  I can’t do narcotics, they do not appeal to me.  I’m a claustrophobic control freak of not only my body but also my mind and being stoned and strapped to a bed sounds like a recipe for a full blown panic attack.  I don’t want to think about it anymore, even in my mind it makes my skin crawl.

It’s Thanksgiving in a couple weeks.  I have a shirt for Lucy that says something about it being her first Thanksgiving.  She’ll be here by then.  She’s gonna love the parade.

I will probably post pictures and talk about her until you are bored to death.  Though I am not sure I am going to announce her length and weight.  I think that’s a bizarre tradition.  Unless she’s over ten pounds or under six, she’ll be considered ‘normal’ and I’ll let you guess from the pictures how much she weighs.  Also, and this may sound REALLY cynical (and probably is), I cannot stand sitting around and having ten minute long conversations with other mothers about how tall, how heavy, and what percentile our kids are.  I remember with Max, who was a fat fat FAT baby having women judge me for his size as though I shoved Big Macs into his two week old mouth.

This will probably be my last post before giving birth.  I just don’t have much to write about as I have turned into a football watching eating-all-the-time sloth.  I have been asked by many people if I am going to ‘blog labor’.  Lord, I don’t know the answer to that question.  I may try it out, until in becomes too intense.  I may video the entire event and slap it online right away, but somehow I think that is unlikely.  I do know that I just want to have a little girl to hold.

I guess “Bunny Belly” as Matt called it is not the image peple want to see when clicking on this site.  I get that.  I was determined to find a dozen or so creepy pregnancy photos and post them to be funny, but I am not feeling particularly funny today. Lucy has the hiccups…again.  She has them two or three times a day.  I’m told they don’t bother her, but I would be annoyed to death.  Wanna watch?

Beyond watching Lucy hiccup, I am trying to embrace hiking.  Every day I demand Mr Pilver and The Max take me for a hike.  We usually go out for thirty to sixty minutes.  Yesterday, I was feeling especially brave and I decided to hike to the top of the mountain behind our house.  It’s not super big.  On a good day when I am not round, I can run to the top and back down in twenty minutes.  We took about an hour to complete the trek yesterday.  I was feeling pretty out of shape the entire time, I am sure I looked out of shape as I paused every two minutes to rest.  But hey, I climbed a mountain at thirty-eight weeks pregnant.

Yeah, I’m living the life here at home.  Baking cookies or muffins every day, trying to create some sort of nesting experience (I really stink at loving to clean), and trying to remind myself that someday these contractions are going to pick up speed and I will have to go into labor.  Speaking of labor, the amazing Amy did just that this weekend, CONGRATS!

Mr Pilver and I are debating whether to take some shots like these.

I have come to the point where I am annoying myself.  I have come to that fantastic part of pregnancy known as ‘pre-labor’ which can last from a few hours to a few weeks.  Essentially, my body is gearing up to move a baby from the inside of me to the outside.  Judging from my previous experience in labor aka The Max’s day of birth things will move very very quickly once the ‘pre’ is over with.  I’m OK with this.

I’m not quite thirty-seven weeks along, which is the magical number for when doctors decide it is acceptable to move a baby from the inside of your stomach to the outside.  However, every time I stand up and participate in every day activities such as laundry, dishes, working at the restaurant, I begin to have strong contractions.  These contractions are not real contractions, only Braxton Hicks.  They stop when I lie down, stiff as a board, and do nuthin’.  I have been lying down since last Friday.  I think I may have back-tracked my pregnancy at this point and now she’s not coming until Christmas.

I know most ladies are insanely anxious during the last few weeks of pregnancy, excited to meet their new little bundle.  I am too. My only fear at this point is being in pre-labor for weeks.  It can happen, I have been googling the subject enough the past few days to have read a million stories on the subject.

Other things I have been doing:  watching morning shows such as Today, Good Morning America, and Live with Regis and Kelly.  I have refreshed all my favorite websites as well as facebook every five minutes and nothing exciting is happening there.  My sweet little girl is no longer fetus-like, but instead she is moving about like a real full grown baby in my tummy.  Staring at this is more entertaining than the internet or television.  She often gets her elbow stuck as she stretches out and watching her dislodge it is a nice change of pace from her usual kicks and bends.

Tomorrow I get to go to the doctor.  It will likely be a five minute appointment where I am weighed and the heartbeat is listened to and the size of my stomach is measured.  It’s the same old thing I have been doing for months, yet it is the only thing I have had to look forward to all week and I cannot wait to go.  I’m also hoping that the doc will tell me to get off my lazy butt and allow things to happen.

I am going to have a little baby really really soon.  Even if it’s another four weeks before she comes, that’s only four weeks.  That’s soon.  This entire blog post has been boring, and for this I apologize.  I am the hormonal lady who can only speak about one thing.  Oh, these hormones make me cry too.  It doesn’t have to be a something sad or overwhelming that sets off the tears either.  I wept over a pan of moderately tasty brownies this morning.  I also have hugged The Max 7,564 times this past week.

I just realized I could probably sit and write about all this nothing forever, so I am stopping without a closing paragraph.  I’m just stopping.  Next time I write, if I am still preggo, I may just touch on the stabbing sensations of dilation.  Toodles!

It’s fall.  The date says so.  The weather says so.  The smell of my neighbors wood burning stove says so.  We suffered through an abnormally hot September, but last week the glorious season of autumn began.  I’d like to say that as the days are growing colder I am finished with the garden and settling in for a snug winter, but I’m not.  Every day something has to be harvested and prepared and stored or I will end up losing a lot of food when the frost comes my way.  Combine the race to harvest with my being eight months pregnant and still working and I am far too pooped (lazy) to write a blog at the end of the day, hence the lack of Pilver.

Here I am going to show you a picture of some of the things I have stored, canned, etc. thus far.  It really is pretty amazing to think that all of these things, except a few which I picked out of the forest, came from my yard.  It’ll be even more amazing if I can harvest the whole garden before winter.

I am going to do my best at naming all this stuff.  From the left: Tomatoes, Pickled Green Beans, Chick Peas, White Beans, Tomato Sauce, Bing Cherry Jam, Huckleberry Jam, Peach Preserves, Pickled Cucumbers, Service Berry Jam, Rhubarb Apple Pie Filling, Apricot Jam, Cherry/Peach Syrup, Apricots, Elderberry Jam, Dried Apricots, Canned Pumpkin, Bottom Row: Garlic, Eggs, Blue Potatoes, (we also have red, russet, yellow, and white) Shallots, Thai Chili Peppers, Sunflower Seeds, Bell Pepper, White Onions (we also have red and Yellow), Cayenne Peppers, Salad Cucumber, Corn on the Cob…whew!

There’s more stuff, not in the picture.  I got too lazy to grab it all.  This season was a learning process.  Though I have tons of food stored, I also lost plenty.  Only about twenty percent of the corn matured properly.  Most of the melons never got larger than a baseball.  The summer squash and zucchini produced faster than I could deal with and most ended up as chicken feed.  And, I am not sure the peanuts grew at all.

Overall, I give myself a 7 for gardening this year.  Next year I expect to improve to a solid 7 1/2 🙂

Fall continues to fight its way into central Washington this week.  Right now it’s losing the battle as we are set to bear another few days in the nineties.  My garden wants to be done for the season and I want to be done with it.  Currently I am  in the midst of harvesting nearly all the vegetables.   My freezer is darn near overflowing and I’m running out of jars for canning.  (Consider the fact I started with nearly three hundred jars this year.)

In a few weeks the weather will change, I will be done with work for my maternity leave, and great foods will be stored everywhere.  I believe I am going to gain all my ‘baby fat’ after my dear daughter arrives, as then I may have a chance to sit still.

This weekend I went out into the garden and took a few shots of the pumpkin patch.  As I was snooping under the giant green leaves I decided next year I want more pumpkins.  This year I will end up with twenty five to fifty pumpkins, ranging from grapefruit sized pie pumpkins to beach ball equivalent carving pumpkins.  In past years I’ve always bought five or six from the store each year.  So as you can see, I really don’t need more pumpkins, I just want them solely for bragging rights.

Taking pictures of pumpkin patches is an unrewarding task when the good stuff is hiding under the leaves.

The pumpkins are not all crayon orange, as you can see.

Here are my favorite.  The ones with the pretty shape that will bake into pies, breads, cookies and if I can ever figure out how to infuse vodka with pumpkin…well, then that too!

And then we have cherry tomatoes.  Somehow I ended up planting around twenty five cherry tomato plants when I believed they were romas.  Whoops.

The pepper plants are finally growing tons of hot little peppers, which I am stringing all around the kitchen.

Here we have the lawn pumpkin.  Somehow a seed was dropped on my lawn and the plant took off great, although it began much later in the season than the rest of the pumpkins.  I decided to let it go and so far  I have one respectable pumpkin floating off of it.  Not sure if it will mature before a deep freeze comes our way, but kudos to the lawn pumpkin for surviving!

If the answer is no, you should probably click away from this page now.  Because I am GOING to butcher a chicken, just for you.  Actually, I don’t show the killing, just the chopping.  If you are familiar with how one butchers chickens, you will know that my skill is not that of a world class butcher.  Feel free to give me pointers, but please don’t yell at me for doing it wrong, I am well aware of my amateur skills.

Mr. Pilver took the smellier job.  He killed the birds and skinned them out in the hot sun yesterday.  I used my pregnancy card to stay indoors away from the heat and the bees.  And then he got stung, I felt terrible.  I have, in the past, done every part of the butchering EXCEPT the actually killing.  I cannot slit throats, it’s not in me.  People sometimes inquire if it’s really gross or difficult.  No, it’s not.  The only thing that is truly unpleasant is that the bodies are still hot when you work with them.  Not at all like the refrigerated meat you buy at the grocer. Alright, blah, blah, blah, I am growing tired of my own writing.  Let’s make some meat for the freezer!

A month ago I received an email from a brewery in Twisp, Washington.  The Twisp River Pub was going to be hosting the legendary comedian Gallagher and being as I am on the email list for the brewery, I had first dibs at tickets.  Hot dog!  I wanted to go and I wanted to smash a watermelon.  I called Mr. Pilver and asked if he wanted to go, fully expecting him to not have much of a clue who the man behind the Sledge-o-Matic was.  It was a delightful slap in the face to find out that not only did my ’til death do us part know who Gallagher was, he’d apparently already seen him live.  He told me I must also buy a ticket for my father-in-law, as he was a big fan as well.

So, three tickets were purchased and we only had time between us and the night of messy food-fight fun. I began to wonder, “Why in the world is Gallagher coming to Twisp?!  Sure, his heyday and popularity was behind him, but a show with only 120 tickets at a pub in a town far from anything with a population of a mere 919 people seemed bizarre.   Ah well, more of a chance for me to splatter watermelon into a crowd.

The night came and I was bouncing with anticipation (and Lucy is bouncing in my tummy, so I basically bounce all day long).  We arrived early so we could eat a meal before the show started.  Not long after we sat the man himself wandered through the seating area with his crazy unkempt hair and clutching a pack of camel cigarettes not appearing at all famous or legendary.  My father in law greeted Gallagher and shook his hand, mentioning he has seen him in another town a few hours away a few years back.  Gallagher’s response, “I slept in my car in that town last night!”  I then hopped up and asked for a picture with him and he gladly obliged.

Awesome.

Gallagher then went to greet others and smoke more camels before the show started.  We finished our meals and then whipped out the trash bags we’d brought from home to protect us from flying food.

As soon as Gallagher took the stage he noticed all the people scrambling to surround their bodies with plastic as we had.  He had this message for the crown.

Yup.

The show lasted around ninety minutes, of course, ending with flying food.  He then invited people to come and smash watermelons and I used my fragile pregnant appearance to allow me to avoid the shoving and headed straight for the stage.  AND THEN I SMASHED A WATERMELON NEXT TO GALLAGHER!!!

Dreams come true.  My sandal clad feet were sticky and sweet with watermelon pulp and my hair had a bit of pumpkin and Spaghettios from the pies which Gallagher had smashed earlier.  I headed for the ladies room to wash my hands and while inside I ran into a woman who was irate and the fact that she had pumpkin in her hair and cream corn on her sweater.  She could not believe that she paid money to become filthy.  I didn’t know how to respond to someone who was upset for becoming dirty at a Gallagher show, so I said nothing, dried my hands on a paper towel and left her to complain to the next bathroom visitor.

So, I met Gallagher.  I smashed a melon with him.  Life is good.

LOOKIT!!!!!  I went out to the garden and grabbed some tomatoes, onions, zucchini, basil, garlic, and oregano.

I put the tomatoes over heat forever and pureed them.

I then added everything else, as well as a little salt, pepper, and hamburger.

I got sauce!!!!

That’s what I’ve been doing, most every day.  I’ll buy our meat at the grocery store, or we have some meat we’ve raised and hunted in the freezer.  Then I run to the garden and see what’s ripened that day and we call it dinner.  It’s a good time, I have to admit.  However, I can only play Martha Stewart so many days in a row.  With the temperatures rising to nearly 100 every day, I cannot spend too much time outdoors.  Our three beautiful beater cars all lack air conditioning and driving anywhere is out of the question unless the sun is not up and glaring.  So, I’ve been inside.  I’m going insane.  I have played 834 games of solitaire,  baked every kind of cookie I can think of, and am in the process of re-watching the entire Mary Tyler Moore series.

The end is near friends.  Six more sluggish days of August and the beauty of September comes to rescue us all.  We can make it, hold on.