love my friends, love my church

We've been finding ourselves in need of some greeters at Grace Fellowship lately. Most churches I've attended in the past would have just included a two-sentence call out for volunteers during their spoken announcement time, maybe with some pious pleading and encouragement to sign up. And everyone would sort of shift uncomfortably in their seats if they weren't already serving at the church in some capacity, avoiding any eye contact.

But I think I've made it clear that I don't go to any ordinary church. My family ROCKS. No boring announcement time or guilt-tripping where I go!

And just to prove that, here are two videos. I think I'm especially proud that both feature very close friends of mine.

then and now

A year ago, I was running 18-20 miles a week and actually enjoying it. I was getting pretty strong, too, and it took a lot to wind me.

Today, I found myself having to walk up four flights of stairs because the elevator in the parking garage at work was broken. By the time I got to the top, I thought I was going to die. My lungs were screaming bloody murder at me. One of my coworkers said "Have a good day" and I could barely utter the same to them without breathing mid-sentence.

Oh, my friends, it was simply pathetic, the difference just one year makes.

Things will be changing. Oh yes. They will be changing.

monday may I... oh, screw it.

Yeah. You can see that went out the window pretty quickly. It died not because there weren't enough grammar issues out there, or mispronunciation issues (ESpresso, people! Not EXpresso! Aaaagh!) but mostly because I am an amateur at writing about it, and I would now much rather just redirect you to people who devote some real time and energy to it, like Grammar Girl. Real grammar gurus would probably find at least a handful of mistakes I missed or didn't care about in just the few sentences I wrote above, anyway.

I like the idea of a weekly Thing, though. And now that I'm actually starting to show a little, maybe we can make Mondays all about the belly. Monday May I Rub Your Belly? Monday May I Have Sympathy Weight Gain? Monday May I Kick You In the Ribs When You're Trying to Sleep? Or maybe just Belly Mondays.

To kick off Belly Mondays, here's a couple of belly shots for you at 21 weeks. If you tell me I look pale or tired (which I really do, I know, but still...) I will beat you with said belly and let my son get in a few jabs or two (he's a regular Chuck Norris these days). Here they are:

random updates

I don't know how else to fit these in.

--I updated our Babies R' Us registry (to the left! to the left!) so that the link I am providing takes you straight to our actual registry list, rather than a generic kind of page where you have to type in names and stuff. Apparently, Babies R' Us cannot distinguish between "Vermeulen" (correct) and "Vermuelen" (incorrect), and it also doesn't seem to want to search by Jason's name, even if you get the spelling perfect. Ah, BRU, when will you advance yourself? So, let's just skip the hassle and get to the goods...
Edited to add: since we are a ministry couple, Jason is concerned that we don't make it sound like we are expecting people to buy us stuff for the baby. I can see his point, and I suppose my tongue-in-cheekness was not coming through as well as I'd hoped - I am not expecting anyone to buy me anything, but it certainly didn't read that way. So the links have been altered and the "buy me stuff" undertone toned down, so to speak. But if you still really, really want to get me stuff and will be absolutely crushed if you don't, by all means. But I love you all just the same regardless, mmkay?

--I have learned today that no matter what food item you order at Disney, you can probably get a cheaper, tastier, and larger portion of the same food somewhere else.

--Um. Lately, the only person who wants to comment on my blog postings is my mother. I highly respect her opinion, and she is a terrific writer and blogger to boot, but come on, people - she's my mother. Call me insecure, but that's sort of like being the kid with the braces and headgear and Coke-bottle glasses and decade-old clothes and a raging case of acne... and having your mother being the only one to tell you you're absolutely beautiful. Not that it's not true when it comes from her, but wouldn't you also like to hear it from your friends? Shout it out, people. Leave me some love.

--We put in a contract on the house. We're in that ten-day period where either party can back out and the inspection takes place. I love the house, I love the street, I love the overall neighborhood, and I also love that the number of the house is 508, and we'll be moving in (probably) in 5/08. It's a huge step to take, but we are ready and excited to take it.

--We *might* have chosen a name. I'm not telling you what it is, because we might change our minds, and also it is really, really hard to return monogrammed anything. But at least we have something in mind, instead of just blank stares and drool on our chins whenever anyone asks us, "So, have you decided on a name?" We just want to make sure that this name befits the blessing about to be born in a few months.

--Speaking of the little miracle, Jason got to feel him kick for the first time tonight. It was really awesome.

--I am really, really glad The Office is back on. "That is a two HUNDRED dollar plasma TV you just broke, Jan!"

Okay - I think some of you are probably a bit miffed that I'm not going to tell you the name, even if you bribe me with cheesy foods and Starbucks caramel Frappuccinos. Will a few pictures suffice for now? These are from our ultrasound last week:


Yep. Jason wanted to be absolutely sure. The ultrasound tech's response: "You can buy this kid clothes and throw away the tags, Dad. We're sure."





Top half is a profile pic, bottom half is a thumbsucker... can you see it?





This is actually the very first glimpse we ever had of our son, exactly at 9 weeks...





...and look how far he's come in just over two and a half months!

behold, the middle-aging

I did laundry today. Normally, that's not a blog-worthy statement, except that while I was doing the laundry, I realized that the load I was folding might be one of the last I get out of our community machines. You see, this home-buying thing keeps progressing, and just yesterday, we agreed to a price both buyer and seller are happy with, plus the seller is paying our closing costs. So, unless something horrid happens during the inspection, this is all happening, and happening pretty soon.

One of the things I am most excited about in homeownership?

No more coin-operated laundry.

I get a level of excitement bordering on indecent when I think about doing laundry in my own home, where I don't need to make sure I have a large supply of quarters, or worry that some skeezy neighbor will be in the laundry room, stain sticking the skid marks on his tighty whities.

It turns out that a washer/dryer pair comes with the house, though I admit that the laundry room was the one room I didn't really look at closely, so I don't know the condition of said washer and dryer.

So, I give you evidence that I have firmly and fully entered into my thirties, because my biggest material lust right now? Not a Lexus. Not a brand-new wardrobe. Not a diamond necklace. Not even the new Mac AirBook or iPhone.

It's this:



This looks like total heaven to me. If Lowe's had a baby registry, this pair would be right at the top of the list. I mean, let's face it: it'd probably be the only thing on the list, actually. You can put a changing pad on the top of the dryer, right?

I've been away. sorry.

I want to be one of those awesome bloggers who writes a post every day, or at least every week day, or even has the courtesy to say, "hey, I might not be writing for a bit." I am not. My 9th grade English teacher labeled me "consistently inconsistent" once, and I'm afraid I've just felt compelled to live up to that sticky label.

But I'm here now, and I only have a few minutes before I have to don my scrubs and head back into the world of the (sometimes) walking wounded, so I apologize for the small size of my post...

Basically, within a space of about two weeks, Jason and I went from wishing we could buy a house but feeling like it wouldn't happen, and also wanting to sell his two-seater, un-air-conditioned truck so he could get one that accommodates a car seat and doesn't cook you in the hot Florida summers (that last, oh, 10 months of the year) to BOOM! there's a house we can afford! we love it! did I mention it's in our price range!, and some guy bought Jason's truck. A guy who also lives in Florida, no less, but who owns some sort of business up north and doesn't care that the truck isn't air-conditioned. On top of it all, I'm sorta pregnant, something else we've been hoping for for quite a long time (but hasn't been a recent development in the past two weeks... but still)... and I got a raise at work a few days ago, enough to make the whole mortgage thing seem like a little more of a possible reality.

Whew.

I've been saying that a lot lately.

We might be buying a house very, very soon. Jason is probably out buying a vehicle as I type this. The baby is kicking. A lot.

WHEW.

And it all feels like God telling me, you know that little ride called life that you're on? Well, sometimes it really is a roller coaster. And if you stop and shout, "WAIT!" just as you see that it's on the precipice of this huge drop down into who-knows-where, and try and figure out exactly where it's going and what turns it will make and where you will end up, well... you miss the point of it all and the ultimate thrill of a roller coaster, which is to hang on for the ride of your life and just go with it and scream your head off with glee. He knows how much I love roller coasters, too.

So if you see me throw my arms back with a huge, goofy grin on my face and shouting "wheee!", well, don't blame the hormones. Just pat me on the head and tell me to enjoy the ride.

More updates to come as I receive them...

getting ready to jump, I think

We've been looking at houses lately. Houses to BUY.

(I think I need to say that last sentence several more times to have it really sink in.)

We've been looking for several reasons: it's a great market for buyers, we have a new family member* on the way and no room for him, we're tired of paying rent instead of investing into a house, and my mom is starting nursing school in about a month, and we'd like to give her someplace to live while she does the starving student thing. We started looking around a few months ago, excited about such a great market, and promptly ran into several dead ends. Houses so run down that it wasn't worth the cheap price, houses so small that we might as well stay where we were, questionable neighborhoods, neighborhoods so far out that the commute time and gas expense alone made it out of the question. And when did living around here get so expensive? It was all very depressing, and we walked away for about a month, just to mull our options and recover our senses.

We started up again a few weeks ago, a little less starry-eyed but perhaps more determined than ever. One house in particular stuck out: nicely updated, in our price range, in an older-but-nice neighborhood surrounded by several very wealthy neighborhoods. It was small, but felt big, and mentally, we were calculating how to move things here and there to make the space seem bigger. We seemed positive. We looked at some other houses, including one that was at least twice as big as anything we'd seen but whose shag carpeting, cat urine smell, and 70's design left me... well... even though Jason was positively giddy about the size. Size ain't everything.

And then, our awesome realtor took us to see some houses in a neighborhood that I was sure fell out of our price range. It was lovely: all the space we needed, nice enough to live in happily now but just outdated enough cosmetically to give Jason something to sink his home-improvement claws into, great storage space. And totally within our price range. The owner is a nice little old lady anxious to move back home up north to be with her family.

It's not a done deal, but we're moving ahead with it. And it feels like such a huge leap of faith, and I'm a little afraid of getting my hopes up too high in case it doesn't work out for whatever reason (termite damage! crappy electrical! the seller changes her mind! a cult meets there every Wednesday! kids like to fling poo at the front door!). We're crunching the numbers anyway to see if we can do this, talking with our mortgage broker dude, getting ready to have an inspection done.

Whew.

I'll keep you posted.

*In the meantime, here are a few more names we threw out for Jumping Bean:
WILBUR
JONAS
OBADIAH
any combination of a first name with "Bob" as the second name: Joe Bob, Billy Bob, etc.
JASON - great name, but already taken to avoid any confusion for our kid

names we threw out, vol. 1

I get the name question a lot these days, now that we know Jumping Bean is a boy. I think I've mentioned before that since both Jason and I were pretty convinced JB was a girl, hearing that JB was, in fact, a BOY left us speechless. In a good way - God has a lovely way of surprising and delighting us - but also in a "uh-what-do-we-name-him" way, too. We've not picked an name, but we have definitely decided which names we don't want to name our baby. So I thought I'd share some of the non-contenders in a little series. Here's #1:

JACOB

Initially, I loved the name Jacob. I know several very cool people, adult and child, who are named Jacob. But it's important to Jason and I to have a name that not only sounds nice but means something important to us, preferably with a great story behind it. The meaning of the name Jacob? "Supplanter". Uh. Okay. What's a supplanter?

Turns out that "supplanter" means "one who wrongfully or illegally seizes and holds the place of another". Also, "one who uses deceit and treachery to supersede another". In the Bible, Jacob "supplants" his brother Esau's twice, stealing his blessing and birthright, on direction from his mother Rebekah, who advises him to deceive and steal through trickery (fooling blind Isaac by smelling and dressing as Esau).

Huh. That didn't hold too well with us, particularly as this baby is long-awaited and has not "stolen" anyone else's place (Nor did his mother tell him to lie. Nuh-UH!). Now, God did bless Jacob greatly in spite of his misdeeds, but it's a long mouthful of an explanation whenever someone asks me or my son what his name means. And so, Jacob was out of the running.

No offense to any of the cool people we know named Jacob. They do not steal, and their moms are cool.

senora crankypants offers amends for her foo

I had no idea just how hormonal pregnancy would make me. In fact, I probably give all other pregnant women a bad name because of my behavior. I do get extra weepy at things, which is just kind of cute and amusing, I suppose. I do crave food, although not necessarily weird combinations - I've stuck with the classics, like my mom's Creamed Chipped Beef over toast. No, no, those things are all fine. It's the Crankypants hormone that got jacked up to a 10 when I decided to get knocked up. Witness the carnage:

My name has been and can be a target for song references, references that the singer finds so extremely funny and I find merely... annoying. I'll admit, I'm not as unlucky as some, but I can hardly recall any time in my life when I wasn't sung to about a red-headed orphan who hits the foster parent jackpot. Just when I thought I was safe, when the lil' orphan songs were dying out, I have a couple of people who I know who found a new song for me. I hate to even bring it up the new song, because it might inspire a new round of singing and irritation, but let's just say that the pop star who first penned the song is not a rough criminal (with a sparkly glove) but a smooth one. And if you know the song, you know where my name comes in. Repeatedly. So yes, a couple of coworkers latched on to this, and they sing it to me (individually) every time I see them. Repeatedly. It was a little funny at first, but then I got visibly tired of it, and everyone else around us - who also had to hear it repeatedly - started saying that it wasn't funny anymore, including one doctor who said, "Dude - that's kind of old, okay?". I asked when they would stop doing this, because it was annoying. No luck. One of them even told other people, "Oh, she hates it when we do that" with this huge goofy grin (????). I was driving to work Tuesday night, and the thought of another night at work listening to that one line of song, over and over, while the singer snickered in delight at my uncomfortable squirming, and I started to fume. And fume. And fume some more. I probably had smoke coming out of my ears when I got to work. Sure enough, not 10 minutes into my shift, there it comes. Right as I was getting report and realizing I had another crazy night of even crazier patients ahead of me. I stopped my coworker, on the verge of tears and red-faced, and told her to please, STOP already, before I get seriously mad. Because it wasn't funny anymore, I was tired of it and so was everyone else, and would she PLEASE go sing songs to other people about their names and not mine, because I just couldn't take it any more. She looked at me in total surprise, said that she had NO idea I was that bothered by it (????), and walked away. Oh dear. Civil coolness and a complete lack of interaction for the rest of the night. I was grateful to not have to hear that stupid song any more, but I don't really like pissing off coworkers, either, particularly not ones who can bench-press me ten times over. I had good intentions to calmly ask for no more singing... and somehow, my Nice Filter went right out the door. Ugh.

I wish I could say that was an isolated incident, but I'm pretty sure I could easily round up several other people who got the Preggo Foo out of nowhere from me. People who have NOT tried to make me uncomfortable, but who were just minding their own business (or worse, trying to be nice to me, like my husband was last night) and I went all Foo-ish on them for no reason. Why are you telling me how to drive? (Uh, so we don't crash, Anne.) Why are you interrupting me in my important work? (You're on Facebook. Again. Here's the home-cooked dinner you wanted.) Why are you BREATHING???? (My body makes me. Plus, I don't enjoy asphyxiation much.)

As a peace offering to everyone - because you all have witnessed it, surely - I give my mom's lovely Creamed Chipped Beef recipe. It's not a family original or particularly gourmet, but it's the kind of creamy, carby, stomach-filling stuff that shuts a crazy lady like me up when the Foo starts. Other people say it tastes good, too. We used to eat this a lot for breakfast when I was younger. It's pretty basic in composition, so there's endless options for variety and tinkering for those of you gourmands who like to add spices and new ingredients and stuff, so have fun. Here you go:

Creamed Chipped Beef
Serves 4-6 (depends on how hungry you are)

1 stick butter
1/2 cup all-purpose flour
4 cups milk (anything but skim works great)
2 egg yolks (optional)
2 - 2 oz pkgs sliced beef, chopped into small squares (I use Buddig - deli aisle, next to the hot dogs)
salt
pepper

Melt the butter in a pot over medium heat, then add in the flour, stirring constantly to make a roux. After about 2-3 minutes of stirring and bubbling, the roux will darken a little bit and take on a nuttier aroma - all the raw flour taste is now cooked out. Stirring constantly, add in your milk. Keep on medium heat, stirring frequently (be sure to get the sides/bottom), for another 3-5 minutes. Mixture will thicken. When at desired consistency (gravy-ish), take off the heat. If you want the protein and added richness, whisk in the two egg yolks - stir quickly so the egg doesn't "cook". Add in your chopped beef. Don't worry if the beef goes in clumpy - just keep stirring and it breaks up nicely. Salt and pepper to taste. This tastes really good served over sourdough toast, but it's also quite yummy on its own. For just me and Jason to eat this, I halve the recipe - works well.

Note: Buddig makes good sliced beef. They also make turkey, ham, honey ham, chicken, and corned beef. I have never tried this recipe with anything other than the sliced beef, but I imagine that any of those would be pretty good.

what's up doc

Just a snippet of one of my favorite movies, ever. Rent it sometime, and you'll see why Barbra Streisand was a great comedienne, why I love Madeline Kahn, and why you should never get into a car chase in San Francisco, particularly while standing up in the back of a black convertible.