Bring on the snow

Today I woke up to whiteness. Mack and I went out for a romp.

I LOVE the snow. I HATE to drive in it. I knew in advance that it would be snowy today so I prepared my ride to work in advance. I CAN NOT drive in the snow. I can't. Panic attacks, tears and yelling is involved when I venture out on my own in the snow.

It all started when I was attending the local community college. Before the college I was a fearless driver......or my twin drove me about in the bad weather. One faithful day it was snowing and I had to get to my morning class. So I started out for school. I made it most of the way without incident UNTIL I got to some kind of parts store. This is where it took a turn for the worse. I slid off the road.

I didn't just slide off the road, I slid in slow motion. I thought I was never going to stop sliding. Then I looked up and what did I see? A pole. I was sliding right into a telephone pole! Right as I was about to plow (in slow motion) into the pole my car stopped. I was within an inch of that pole and crying. My life had come to a stand still. As I tried to regain my composure and was frantically calling my husband (then boyfriend) to come pick my butt up I looked up to see an old man in that parts store. Was he coming to check on me in my time of need? NO he was standing in the window laughing hysterically at me!!

To make matters worse Mark wouldn't come get me! He had already spun around in a complete circle and told me I could make it to the college where he was. I made it to that college alright and parked my car there until my reliable father and brother would come get pick it up for me.

And from that point on I can't drive in the snow.

Later that year I remember sitting in the college parking lot with snow flurries falling around me and me on the phone with my mother begging her to leave work and come get my butt! But no she wouldn't she just yelled at me to 'Get a grip on myself and be an adult!' The nerve! It pretty soon became known to my fellow classmates that if it was snowing, Hayley wasn't coming to class.

So today I enjoyed the snow from the passenger seat of my dad's truck. Tomorrow I may have to drive myself, tears and all.

First appointment success

Well we made it. We made it to that first appointment. I was immediately taken back to the ultrasound room where I was promptly settled onto the chair/table. Almost immediately our little blob showed up. I think I had my eyes closed. I just wanted to make sure there was something there and I wasn't dreaming this whole experience before I opened my eyes. I was trying not to really look at the monitor until I heard Mark say 'Is that the heartbeat?' It was confirmed that in fact it was and I immediately began searching for it. Pure relief flooded over me. It was official.....our blob has a heartbeat!

I didn't need to see anything else. I had all the confirmation that I needed. We are growing a living being. I (We) couldn't be happier. Granted our 'baby' does look more like a blob right now but we're confident that that blob will soon take shape.

So to summarize.....We have a heartbeat! And it's strong....176. Now we just have to make it to the end of January to meet the doctor and get to the second trimester.

Second favorite shopping day of the year

I absolutely LOVE the after Christmas sales. I love getting half price wrapping. I love getting half price gifts for next year. I love buying half price ornaments to put on packages. I love it all and I especially love going to Barnes and Noble and buying half price Christmas books for my future children. For the last few years I've made sure I stop by the bookstore to pick up a few good books for my stash. There's nothing like finding your favorite Christmas story at half the price. This year besides my favorite Christmas books I hit a major jackpot. Barnes and Noble had a big box of stuffed animals sitting out. I dug through them all and almost settled on the characters of Where the Wild Things Are but as I dug into the bottom of the box I notice a soft looking something. I pulled it out and it was a GIANT Classic Pooh bear. Now Pooh is not my favorite children's character but this Pooh was SUPER soft and pretty big. I knew Mark would LOVE it. I snatched up my half-price Pooh and headed to the register. So now beside all the wrapping and ornaments I bought sits the biggest, softest Pooh bear a kid could ever want. Our future child is sure to love it and in the mean time my little monster, I mean Mack, is eyeing him. I'm going to have to find Pooh a home on a high shelf before Mack claims him.

It's beginning to look alot like Christmas

One of the joys of being a pet owner is dressing my pet up for all major holidays. Usually when I do this Mack looks as if he is saying curse words to me. Tonight was no exception. This should be our Christmas card.

It's happened

I'm pregnant. This is something I've been waiting on now for the past 11 months. To say we are excited is an understatement.

We took the test the Sunday after Thanksgiving. I immediately went back to bed because I thought 'Oh there's no way it will be positive.' After about 10 minutes or so Mark went into the bathroom to check it (as per our routine) and calmly walked into the bedroom. Then he exclaimed. 'YOU NEED TO COME IN HERE AND LOOK AT THIS THERE IS SOMETHING THERE!' I was like yeah right that isn't funny.

So I walked into the bathroom, glanced at the test and then pulled it closer to my face. He was right there was SOMETHING there. Now if we hadn't been using these things EVERY month and definitely knew what a negative test was this test would have been pitched into the trash and considered negative. But Mark and I were pros at looking for nonexistent lines and THIS test had something there.

As luck would have it, it was the only test we had in the house that month to encourage me not to test. So as I went online with my internet friends to debate what counts as a line with them, Mark scrambled around the house looking for shoes to go buy more tests.

Mark finally gets back with more cheap dollar store tests and I immediately take another. We thought maybe I waited too long with the first one to get accurate results. So after I peed we waited to watch the test. And slowly the faintest line began to appear. OMG could this be a positive. We didn't want to get too excited yet.

So we carried about our day. Then that evening we went to church. After church we decided to stop by the Wal-Mart to get some fancy tests. It was time to bust out the digital. We got home and Mark was like TAKE IT NOW. So I headed into the bathroom and he began to make our dinner. I peed again and started washing my hands. By the time I finished my hand washing I glanced down and the word I had waited months to see was there. PREGNANT. OMG I'm pregnant. I calmly scurried into the kitchen and threw the test into Mark's face.

And now the journey is really going to begin.

Carbon monoxide PSA

In honor of my anniversary coming up and in honor of the colder weather, I would like to share with my readers a cautionary tale of two young newlyweds embarking on their FIRST week together.

Mark and I were married Nov. 25, by the first week of December we were experiencing carbon monoxide poisoning. I don't joke. I moved into our lovely duplex on Spring Garden the day after our wedding and pretty soon after (like in the first week) I experienced my first and only migraine EVAH!

Mark worked at the car plant during the night. It was a Friday night when this all started. I went to work writing obituaries that evening with the worst headache of my life. I don't know how I made it through. After work I stopped by my mother's house. I was sick and didn't want to be alone. Mark called around 10:30 p.m. not realizing how sick I was, he refused to pick me up and instead made me drive the two blocks home. (I still hold a grudge) Instead of driving myself those two long blocks, I had my loving twin brother take me and drop me off. The next day was our town's Christmas parade and Mark and I were planning on attending. On Mark's way home from work he even stopped and bought us both long underware in anticipation of the next morning.

After stopping off for long underware, Mark made it home around 4 a.m. At this time I was dry heaving in the bathroom. I was in SO much pain, my whole body ached. After staggering back to the bedroom I asked Mark 'Where were you in my time of need!' He replied that he was sitting on the bed gathering up the courage to come watch me throw up. Turns out my new husband has a weak stomach.

The next morning I tried to gather up the strength to go watch Christmas floats on Main Street. No such luck. I was so pitiful and in so much pain. I couldn't even sit or stand. Not only did my head hurt but my whole body ached. Mark insisted on taking me to the emergency clinic.

We went to the clinic, missed the parade and all I could tell the doctor was 'Make my head stop hurting NOW!!!' So I left the office with pain medication and medication for a throat infection. Turns out I also had a throat infection which I should have been hurting from but I was in so much full body pain my throat felt wonderful.

So for about a week I was on the antibiotic for my throat and took a few of the pain pills. I didn't take many because I have really low tolerence for medication and they made me loopy (as in I did the cha cha slide at a wedding and professed my love for The Pick of Destiny and Jack Black all while taking them)

During this week I noticed that Mark and I were sleeping for long periods of time and our little dog was throwing up EVERY day. Little did we know what was lurking in our house.

When I moved into Mark's duplex my dad installed a carbon monoxide detector. He just said he felt safer with us having one there. I fully believe my dad saved our life.

A few weeks or so after the body aches the carbon monoxide detector went off. Mark had just left for work. It was a Thursday night. I was in the house with Mack and all of a sudden the alarm started going off. I grabbed Mack and the phone and stood by the back door and called my dad. After talking to my dad we decided we needed to call the fire department to have it checked out.

The fire department came. Remember I had been airing out the apartment before they got there. The firemen closed our apartment back up for a few minutes and then went in to take readings. The readings showed there was definitely carbon monoxide in our apartment and it was coming out of the air vents. I forget the numbers they told me but they were definitely high. The firemen confirmed that my illness earlier in the month and our sleeping late and Mack's throwing up were all symptoms. Our gas was turned off and they told me I needed to find a place to sleep for the night. Mack and I packed our bags.

The firemen told us we were lucky that it wasn't that cold outside because our heater wasn't working as hard as it would be in the upcoming weeks. If it had been colder out and our heater was running more often then it was quite possible that something could have happened.

So as we all enter the winter months, remember to make sure you have a working detector and if yours goes off, DON'T IGNORE IT. You can't smell or see carbon monoxide. It's better to be safe. I share our experience and symptoms so you will be aware that it can happen, even in your first week or month of marriage!

Major Christmas find

I just made a major find of the Christmas shopping season. My friend was looking for these adorable little Zhu Zhu hamsters for her kids. Evidently they are the hot new toy for the season. They are sold out from walmart, target and toysrus.com AND they are going for 30ish bucks online. She told me about them at around 7 p.m. and at midnight I went to Walmart with Mark to stand in line for the new Call of Duty.

I saw in the Walmart ad before we left the house that Walmart was supposed to have them and cost only $8. So when we got there I immediately high tailed it to the toy department and began my search. After walking up each aisle a man approached me to see if he could help. I told him I was looking for hamsters and he said 'Oh they are right over here.' I followed him and discovered seven of the little critters hidden behind a dog in a bag. Jackpot!!! He said 'And they are ringing up for $8!' I, of course, already knew this already and began to load my arms with the furry creatures.

Then I skipped back to the long gamer line to announce proudly to Mark. .... 'Look at all these great hamsters I found, now give me your phone so I can call my mom!!!!'

Mark informed me on the way to the car that a wife should not approach her husband while he's standing in line to buy a war game, surrounded by 50 other males and try to explain her great toy find to him while holding boxes of hamsters. Evidently the wife she bring her own cell phone, buy her hamsters and wait in the car. Well not this wife! This wife wants to share her great find with all within ear shot, including the war-game lovin' guys all around.