A soft place to land.

We bought a glider rocker. And not just any glider rocker. THE Dutalier glider rocker that I have been lusting after since the baby store opened in December 2005. It was one of those things I would never put on our baby registry, because it's much more a gift for me than for the baby. And they're flippin' expensive.

I knew my time at the baby store would pay off, and it did last Thursday when I worked my weekly 6pm-10pm shift. I was taking something to the back room and walked by the furniture clearance area. There was MY chair. My brown chenille, wide-seat, Dutalier grande glider rocker with multi-position recline. They accidentally built an extra one, and it had a few marks on the seat... So it had been marked down. A LOT. I immediately loaded it onto a cart and put it in the back room with my name on it. When I got home, Dave was also kind enough to remind me that we had a $25 off gliders AND ottomans coupon that expired on 4/30/07. I remembered then, receiving the coupon and laughing, "knowing" that we would not be using that coupon because there was "no way" we would be planning for a baby by then. Well, joke's on.... I don't know. But we saved an additional $50, along with my 10% discount AND the ridiculous clearance price on the item. Even the manager was like, "Wow, what a great deal... You saved 50%!" Yes, I am the queen of bargain shoppers.







That's why I've titled this post "A soft place to land." Last week was a rough week. Now I get to go home and sit on my cushy glider and put my feet on the ottoman (with convenient nursing stool included) and pet my belly. The world seems brighter when put into comfortable gliding motion.

Mommy Raccoon has not found her way into the trap on our roof, no matter how loud I yell at her to go to her trap at night when she starts scratching around and her babies start crying. Maybe if I stopped talking to her she would feel more safe to go out and snack on some bait in the trap....

We had a delicious weekend with sunshine pouring into our house and chicken on the grill and fresh vegetables and the sounds of kids playing outside. I made strawberry shortcake, my absolute favorite food in the entire world. I worked on Sunday, but Dave reported that my favorite next-door neighbors did indeed bust out the sprinklers on Sunday afternoon. My college friends Laura and Thai came over for lunch on Saturday. Both of them work in health care (Thai is a medical resident and Laura is in health care administration), so talking about hospitals and the American health care system was very interesting, and relevant while we are talking about choosing a pediatrician and our upcoming labor/delivery experience.


Oh, and for those of you who know how much I love my cat, Runa, you will enjoy this story. I didn't shut the back door on Friday when I went to pick Dave up from work. When we got home, we found Runa puffed up to about twice her normal gargantuan size, in full tri-pod mode, starting at our neighbors' orange cat while he was chillin' on our back deck. Runa is in the dictionary next to the words "scaredy cat" so we were enthralled by her vigour. The orange cat is quite the neighborhood pal, and I've been know to pet him from time to time during his adventures onto our steps and back porch... Runa is clearly not the chair of the local kitty chapter of the welcome wagon. Dave ended up breaking up the stare-down, and we laughed when only after the orange kitty left did Runa hiss. Oh how we love Runa, a.k.a. "goo" or "baduna."





My nausea is very rare now, and my clothes still fit very well, so I look about as "unpregnant" as a pregnant woman can look. My cheeks are rather rosy and Hallmark commercials make me cry (hard) and I drink a ton of water and still crave milk and pickles, but that's about it.