For a few days now and a few more days to come 🙁 the temperatures in our region have been over 90°.  For a pregnant woman of my girth, it is proving disasterous.  I am so lathargic – I don’t feel like doing ANYTHING, including eating!  The house is a mess, and the kids have been cooped up because I’ve been cooped up in the a/c.  It’s not the best a/c though because we have window units, not central air, so it’s still hot!  Luckily, the kids are going on vacation with their Grandma and will get plenty of stimulation next week.  After that, I have to hope and pray for an arctic streak until I deliver the baby in mid-July or we won’t make it.  Since I’m sitting here doing nothing, just as I want, I decided to post this poem as a distraction to myself in lieu of the heat.  It’s a poem by Shel Silverstein, and I had to memorize it in 5th grade.  While I no longer have it memorized, certain lines keep running through my head as I sit here and boil.  Enjoy and stay cool!

It’s Hot!
By Shel Silverstein

It’s hot!
I can’t get cool,
I’ve drunk a quart of lemonade,
I think I’ll take my shoes off
And sit around in the shade.

It’s hot!
My back is sticky,
The sweat rolls down my chin.
I think I’ll take my clothes off
And sit around in my skin.

It’s hot!
I’ve tried with ‘lectric fans,
And pools and ice cream cones.
I think I’ll take my skin off
And sit around in my bones.

It’s still hot!

I had my ultrasound yesterday, and something occured that has left me in shock; that’s why it took me a day to blog about it…

My doctor is a female who has 3 sons.  Actually, 2 of her sons are the exact same age as 2 of my daughters, because our dr. was 9 months pregnant when she delivered my 4-year-old, and she was on maternity leave when her replacement doctor delivered my 19-month-old.  But anyway, during my ultrasound yesterday, she was talking about how her other dr. friend came to visit over the weekend, and he has 4 daughters.  He was wistfully throwing around a football with her sons and she was talking about how into sports girls are in this area, trying to console her friend because he didn’t have boys.  She was telling this story because we have 3 daughters and one on the way, and my husband is starting to feel like the character Tevye from Fiddler on the Roof who is famous for having 5 daughters.  So anyway, the dr. gets to the point in the story where she’s talking about lots of girls in our area being active in sports.  All of a sudden, she kind of pauses, then she goes, “wait a minute…  what’s this?”  Seems the ultrasound had picked up a certain little “bleep” on the radar that hadn’t appeared on the February ultrasound…  Seems our little Lyndsey or Evangeline is going to be Christopher Vincent instead!!!

It’s especially funny because my dr. has a reputation in the area for being wrong about these kinds of things.  I’ve heard stories of at least 5  of her patients’ babies whose gender was predicted wrong; inlcuding one from the delivery room nurse I had when I delivered my second daughter.  I am glad this “misdiagnosis” happened now rather than at birth, otherwise our firstborn son would be going home in pink – after 3 girls, pink and purple onsies are all I have!  And in the past 24 hours since I found out, I’ve been looking around the house, noting how easily and unnoticeably we’ve emersed ourselves in pinks and purples over the years.  We have pink blankies, bedsheets, clothes, stuffed animals, doll’s clothes, furniture, carpet, curtains, pillows…  the list goes on and on and on.

We are ecstatic; we’ve never had a little boy in our house, so it should be interesting to say the least.  And my greatest wish of course is for a healthy baby anyway, gender is not a concern.  But now that we know he’s a boy, I do feel kind of lost.  I’ve never had a boy baby before, and I had gotten into a sort-of comfort zone with my girls…  I even had a nice system worked out with their clothes.  The clothes that my 19-month-old was growing out of weren’t even getting packed away in the basement – I was just keeping them around for the new baby to use!  My girls are close enough in age where I was just putting all their clothes in one closet, and they would make the transition to the next size seamlessly – I thought I had it all figured out!  The good news about the clothes is that my sister has gratiously offered us the use of her boys’ clothes.  She has a baby who will be 2½ months older than baby Christopher, so if we can keep the transportation line open between her home in Illinois and mine in Ohio, we shouldn’t have to put our baby boy into any pinks or purples.

And that reminds me…  I got my husband to promise me (somehow, we have both forgotten how!) somewhere between the last 2 baby girls that if we were to ever have a baby boy, I would get to name him Christopher after my husband.  Now that it’s a reality, he is getting cold feet about the name, but I am not letting him out of this one!  People have suggested using Christopher as a middle name, but Vincent was decided upon way back in 1999 when my husband’s father fell ill and passed away – I was pregnant with our first child when he was diagnosed with ALS (Lou Gehrig’s Disease), and we agreed that when we had a boy, he’d have the name Vincent…  little did we know it would be 9 years later!

So anyway, I just wanted to share our happy news with everybody…  Doctors can be wrong, and it seems our family is the latest victim of our doctor’s reputable gender inconsistencies.  And here is the poll we took way back when in February (before our first “gender revealing” ultrasound – or so we thought!) of some of our family and friends’ predictions.  It was just for fun, no prizes or anything, but the people who thought they were right really were not (including our whole family except Taylor – good job, T!), and vice versa!

 Gender Prediction – Feb. 2008

GUESSES:
Mommy – g
Daddy – g
Taylor – b
Sammie – g
Mary Beth – b
Great Grandma and Great Pa – b
Shirley – g
Keith and Trudy – g
Linda – b
Jamy – b
John – b
Elizabeth – b
Jenny – g
Tracy – g
Gerry – g
Tim and Kim – g
Austin – b
Sharon – b
Lilly – b
Vickie – g
Kristen – g
Sue – b
Megan – b
Carol – b
Grandma B – g
Cathy – b

12 guesses for girl – 14 guesses for boy

FEB 11, 2008 – ULTRASOUND / DR. says IT’S A GIRL!!!
JUNE 3, 2008 – ULTRASOUND / DR. says IT’S A BOY!!!

Does everyone remember this boy band from the 80’s?  I remember them well because being a young preteen girl at the height of their popularity meant that their marketing was pointed directly my way.  I went to 3 of their concerts, had my bedroom wallpapered in New Kids posters, and had everything from tapes (for younger readers – that’s what we played music on in those days), buttons, t-shirts, books, magazines, and stickers to trading cards, shoelaces, and even a Joey McIntire doll.  Yes, it was ridiculous and more than a little embarrassing.  But girls will be girls, and the group had a clean-cut, boy band image, so my parents willingly obliged my fanfare.

You may have heard that the band has reunited.  Yes, I’m serious, and yes, I’m talking about now, in 2008, when the members of the group are over the age of 30 and some are pushing 40.  Why now, you ask?  Probably because pop culture has a way of recycling itself.  They often resurrect fads decades later when people who were kids at the time of the fad can now enjoy them again as adults (now that they have their own money to spend) and share them with their own kids.  They did this with a number of fads from the ’80’s – My Little Pony, Cabbage Patch Kids, Strawberry Shortcake, Transformers, Star Wars, Indiana Jones, and now, The New Kids on the Block.  What perplexes me most of all about this whole thing, is that they didn’t change the group at all.  They are out there, singing the same songs they sang as teens and early twenty somethings, about dating girls and “Hangin’ Tough”.  They are attempting to perform the same dance moves they made popular decades ago, and results are not pretty.  I was one of the biggest fans of the group way back when, and now I say they’re terrible.  I don’t like the music anymore (it was of a genre they used to call bubblegum pop – and it’s definitely the type of music you grow out of), they sound terrible singing it, the lyrics are ridiculous, if not downright creepy, coming from near-middle-aged men, and the dance moves are horrible.  They are actually going to tour this (circus) act come fall.

So why now?  Why do we need an updated version of New Kids on the Block?  Actually that’s not even right.  There’s nothing updated about this group except their ages.  Everything else is EXACTLY the same!  An updated version would be better musically and probably make a whole lot more sense.  There’s what I talked about earlier – the fad revival tactic.  I guess that’s why they did it.  But I find it amazing that they found enough people who thought this was such a good idea that they made it happen – inlcuding the 5 original members of the group.  Some have gone on to mildly successful movie or solo music careers.  Some have raised families.  But how someone got all 5 to agree to resurrect the New Kids on the Block circa 1991 is astounding.

If you don’t believe me about how terrible they are or if you just like to watch train wrecks in action, check this out.  Help me figure out who looks more ridiculous – the group or the fans.  This video is part one of three, but you’ll only want to see the first part, if that, trust me:

This seems a little strange to me, but the other day my husband suggested that I should put everything into my blog.  Every to-do list, shopping list, etc.  Anything I’m putting into my computer should be in my blog, he says.  I’m a person who makes a lot of lists.  I’ve even been known to make a list of the lists I need to make!  It might sound dorky or anal, but it makes me feel better and more organized – I’m a busy person with a terrible memory, so any way I can feel a little closer to keeping my head above water when daily life becomes overwhelming is worth trying for me.  And often I do so with lists.  So, upon the advice of my husband, a person whose knowledge of everything seems to know no limits (and no, I’m not being sarcastic!), here goes – hope it doesn’t bore you too much, but here is my To-do List for when Grandma has my kids for just under a week – an event I am anticipating so anxiously that it seems to have SLOWED the passage of time…  We were going to take a trip to New York, but we declined it because of gas prices and in favor of getting things done around the house, sigh.  Besides, I don’t know how a woman who is 35 weeks pregnant would fare walking around such a big city!  Such a shame, though, it’s the LAST time we will be kidless for a long period of time because Grandma can’t fit 4 kids into her car to take them all at the same time 🙁

To Do While Kids Are Gone

RELAX!
clean game closet
organize kids room – clean out their toys, add toddler bed, create play room
hook up hose
clean out laundry basket o’ junk
clean out playpen
wash baby’s clothes – (now that we just found out we’re having a boy intead of a girl, I have no boys’ clothes to wash!)
pack away Disney’s clothes (now that we won’t be needing them for the new baby!)
fix pipe in upstairs bathroom – and the light that got broken and flooded because of the pipe!

These pregnancy nightmares I’m having are out of hand.  Not only is my sleep interrupted, but the dreams are getting just plain weird!  Before this pregnancy, I would rarely have dreams that I would even remember when I woke up, let alone have dreams so vivid that I’m unable to sleep after waking from them.  It’s funny how a nightmare can make one wake with such an unsettled feeling…  I’ve had a few now where I wake up scared – too scared to even get up to go to the bathroom.  And I can’t explain why.  Some of the nightmares are just plain scary, like the ones involving guns and violence.  But some of the crazy ones that have me waking scared actually make me laugh later in the light of day.  Last night’s was a real whopper – seems Bob Newhart wanted to steal my husband’s organs.  He had a surgical setup all ready to go with dishes out for the organs and everything.  We packed up our family and fled our house just in time, thank goodness, but the vision of Bob Newhart peering out the front door and trying to not let us leave was a creepy image that I couldn’t shake for about 15 minutes until I did finally get back to sleep.  I have no idea what caused this craziness to rush through my head at 4 in the morning.  It’s not like I’ve seen Bob Newhart anywhere lately; and I especially haven’t come across a scary Bob Newhart – until last night in my dream, anyway.  The good news is, scared as I was at 4am this morning, I’m now laughing about this, and I hold nothing against Bob Newhart!

Typing in CAPS is considered yelling, as far as computers and text messages go.  And I’m yelling MOTORCYCLES because that’s what you have to do in order to be able to hear yourself talk or even think while one is nearby.  With the horrible reality of gas prices these days (holding “steady” at $3.99 in my area currently), it seems that people are turning in their minivans and SUVs for more fuel efficient vehicles, especially motorcycles.

This is unfortunate for me because I can’t stand the things.  Normally I’m all for people doing their own thing; if someone wants to ride a motorcycle, why should it bother me?  Because simply put, it DOES affect me.  I can’t stand when I’m walking down the street, talking to my husband or my girls, only to have one of us drowned out by the awful noise of a motorcycle.  Some moron on a motorcycle revving his engine even startled one of my kids so badly that she cried!  It affects us even when we’re in our own car, and the noise of a motorcycle drowns out our conversations, the kids’ movie, or even wakes the kids up.  Sure, you can roll up the window, but oftentimes it’s too late, unless you want to drive around with the window closed.  And why should I have to do that?  It’s MY car; I shouldn’t have to be so negatively affected by other people’s actions in my own car!  And the fact is, these effects come from just one motorcycle.  The situation can be especially compounded when there are a whole pack of motorcycles, and they do often travel in packs, which means even louder interference.  I don’t understand why it is that cars can be ticketed for having loud mufflers, yet motorcycles can drive down the road, revving their noisy engines and being as deafening as they please.

The main reason why I hate motorcycles doesn’t even have anything to do with the fact that their racket makes their owner seem very discourteous and not aware of others at all…  I also have a major beef with the safety issue motorcycles present.  It would be one thing for a rider to drive down the road on a motorcycle, not wearing a helmet – as they often do – if it only affected him…  But unfortunately, that is not the case.  If any type of car accident were to happen involving a motorcycle, no matter who was at fault, any driver involved would have to live with the guilt for the rest of their lives that someone got hurt.  And if a motorcycle is involved in an accident, it is relatively easy for the cyclist to get injured – it’s a proven fact, plus I’ve witnessed 2 such crashes – neither were pretty, and one ended with the motorcycle’s helmeted occupant being airlifted by helicopter to the trauma center.  His helmet was smashed almost flat, and If he hadn’t been wearing it, my kids and I and whoever else happened upon that scene would have witnessed a fatality, no doubt.

So now that I’ve sounded off, I feel better.  It’s not like I think motorcycles should be banned or anything like that…  though if my kids or I get interrupted by the clamor of a motorcycle and I’m having a bad day I might feel differently.  And in this age of $4/gallon gas with no end in sight to the price increase, I can’t say I blame people for wanting to lower their transportation bill.  I just wish it didn’t affect other people so extremely!  So if you’re a motorcyclist, please be considerate, don’t rev your engine unessessarily, it makes kids cry!  Please always have safety as your #1 priority, and ALWAYS wear a helmet – not just for you, but for the rest of us!  Helmets and other safety gear a motorcyclist might wear look much cooler to me than the idiots who wear do-rags or shorts while riding…  What’s a do-rag gonna to do for you anyway in case of an accident, soak up the blood from your head wound?

Anyone who was involved in the WCCT’s most recent production of Idol Night at the Karaoke Place will probably remember a cell phone ringing and someone answering it loudly on opening night.

Yes, it was my mom.  And now there is even an article written about it!

https://www.crescent-news.com/news/article/3703471

Ugh, mom.  Why you mom!!

What NOT to do after getting pulled over:

Cops: Niles Man Backs Over Squad Car After Getting Ticketed

Illinois: Police puzzled over driver who drove up and over a squad car.

A man who had been pulled over and ticketed by police ran backward up and onto a Buffalo Grove squad car Friday morning, apparently in his haste to drive off.

Henry Raskin, 70, of Niles had been pulled over by a Buffalo Grove officer on the 400 block of Dundee Road around 11:30 a.m. Friday for driving 58 mph in a 35 mph zone, Sgt. Scott Kristiansen said.

The officer wrote the ticket and returned to the car, and Raskin got ready to drive away. Except he went flying backward.

“(He) apparently was going to pull away at a high rate of speed, but the only problem was that he was in reverse,” Kristiansen said.

He said Raskin was not happy about getting a ticket. He said police are reviewing the squad car videotape to see what Raskin might also be charged with.

Raskin was taken to Northwest Community Hospital in Arlington Heights as a precaution.

Kristiansen said police don’t believe Raskin has any medical conditions that could have led to the crash. Raskin’s age also didn’t seem to play a factor, he said.

The officer, a 20-year veteran of the Buffalo Grove department, was not injured, but his car will be out of service for a while.

“He ended up with the left rear wheel of the car coming through his windshield, about 6 inches from his face,” Kristiansen said. “Luckily, he was not injured.”

The squad car suffered significant damage to the front end, including the windshield and the hood.

Kristiansen said the police investigation so far shows the officer initiated the traffic stop properly. He said officers are trained to treat every stop as if it isn’t a routine procedure so that they are aware when unexpected circumstances like this one take place.

“The officer stopped the car properly and positioned himself properly,” he said.

From the dailyherald.com

Before last night, I had never seen an Indiana Jones movie.  So when the opportunity presented itself to view Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull on its opening day rather inexpensively via email coupons from Fandango.com, I couldn’t resist the temptation to see what all the fuss was about.
I walked away entertained, but still a little bewildered about why the character is SO popular.  The people I saw the movie with (both have seen all of the movies in the series) said this was not the best of the Indiana Jones movies.  Not that it was a bad movie, but I would have chopped off about an hour of it.  A few of the chase scenes ran a little long, and there was a little too much hokeyness in my opinion.  Before I went, I was hearing critics talk about the Indiana Jones movies and how they are a throwback to the adventure movies of the 1930’s and 40’s.  I thought this might be a good explanation for some of the cheesy action; for example, characters swinging through the air and falling exactly where they need to in order to avoid certain death or to land the perfect punch, etc.  I can deal with hokey action sequences.  What was a little hard to swallow however, was the origin of the movie’s namesake, the crystal skull.  Since I’m at risk of spilling some major spoilers here – and don’t read any further if you’re worried about learning anything about the movie you don’t want to –  it will suffice to say that I did not appreciate the supernatural element they gave the fourth Indiana Jones movie.

The acting wasn’t anything Oscar worthy, but that is to be expected in this type of movie.  I didn’t see Shia LeBeouf as the kid from Disturbia, so he must have some diversity in his acting.  Cate Blanchett was really good as the villianess, and I found it funny when I read that when people heard she was in the movie, they just assumed she was Harrison Ford‘s love interest.  People were so critical that an older man’s love interest was going to be a much younger woman, then they had to eat their words when it was leaked that she was playing the part of the evil enemy.  Indiana Jones’ actual love interest in the movie was a character played by Karen Allen that had been in some of the previous movies, which I liked.  What I didn’t like is that there were 2 characters in the movie who were supposed to be former friends of Indiana Jones, however, my Indy experts tell me that neither of them were in the previous movies.

I was entertained throughout the entire movie, and there were funny jokes and interesting characters.  Also a few plot twists anyone with half a brain could see coming from a mile away.  During most of the action sequences, I couldn’t help but feel like I was watching a video game.  I was really appreciating the components of the quest to obtain the crystal skull, at least until the supernatural element came into play.  Parts of the movie also made me envision a Universal Studios ride – it would probably be really cool, maybe a splashdown ending…  I didn’t fall asleep during this movie, but as you just read, my mind did wander a bit, probably because of the lengthy action sequences.    Overall, I’d say the movie was exactly what I was expecting, perhaps even a wee bit better.  And hearing from 2 experienced Indiana Jones viewers that this was not the best movie makes me willing to give the others a try – providing they are not over 2 hours each, of course – that’s just too long to sit through an action movie in my opinion!

When I was talking about the best reality show ever, The Mole, the other day, it made me think of my second favorite: American Inventor.  It was a show where people brought their inventions in front of a panel of judges, and the “good” ones advanced until a winner was chosen.  This show was fun to watch because some of the inventions were horrible ideas, and when the inventor pitched them, it was hilarious to see their inventions and the judges’ reactions to them.  It was also heartbreaking at times because there were people who put up everything they had to pursue the development of their invention – and some were so bad, they never had a chance.  Take Bulletball, for instance.  It was a game invented one night while the inventor and his wife sipped wine and batted a cat’s toy ball back and forth across a table.  So the inventor proceeded to invest everything he had, even living in his car, to develop the “high caliber” tabletop game of bulletball.  One of the judges asks, “So if you invested everything, what do you have?”  His reply?  “I have Bulletball.”  Oh my.  His segment on the show was very memorable (and sad – you had to feel sorry for someone who was so determned, yet his idea was SO bad, all 4 judges said no and broke his heart) that we were talking about it the other day and decided to look it up on youtube.  So, I will share his clip with you.  I admire his determination, but even I wouldn’t get Bulletball if I spotted it at the thrift store…  see below.

I wonder if American Inventor is going to return?  It was a good show, but the problem with it was that the inventions that end up winning aren’t realistic.  Both of the winning inventions were born out of tragedy, one was a special protective car seat thought up by a guy who lost his daughter in a car accident.  The other was a Christmas tree that extinguished itself if it caught on fire.  Both good ideas, but not really practical when you take cost and other factors into consideration.  But anyway, I’d like to see the show again, even if they keep choosing winners based on emotional reasons.

While we were looking up American Inventor on youtube, we came across this wacky video from Japan.  They call these “inventions”, and they are contraptions that make a series – random objects falling, hitting other objects, etc. in order to cause the next reaction until there’s a whole chain of them.  Think of the game Mousetrap (found that one a few weeks ago, by the way, but it’s missing the big ball!) or dominoes without the dominoes.  Check it out below.  You’ll notice that after each series of reactions, there’s a cute little Japanese song that plays – it’s actually quite catchy.  There are a bunch of these on the video, it’s over 9 minutes long in case you’re wondering while you watch if it’ll ever end.  I wonder if these “inventions” are shorts that aired on Japanese tv, maybe before or after some weekly show or something?  Who knows, but it’s fun to see the different things they came up with: