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(no subject)

Extremely tired. Had an awful night's sleep, then a stupid day at work, then chores after work. M took a nap as soon as I got home, so I had no backup, either. -_- Thankfully, the baby stayed mostly occupied by her flash cards, and she finally said the word "light" correctly, hooray!

Once M woke up, he went out and picked up our grocery order. When he got home, I filed everything away, and the baby helped by finding the container of grapes and eating as many as she could before I stored them away. XP

Baby decided to have one of her nights, and didn't get to sleep until nearly 10. -_- I was already dead tired from a terrible night's sleep, so I'd been hoping to get her down on time and then crawl into bed, myself. Nope, she had other plans. She finally went to sleep, I took a shower, ate an ice cream sandwich and some chicken nuggets, and then collapsed into bed.

Had another terrible night's sleep, I think I've maybe just hit that part of my pregnancy where sleep is going to be difficult no matter what. Feeling very dead today.

Been keeping up with Dracula Daily, which emails you each chapter of the novel as it happens in real time. Van Helsing has just made his appearance, and good lord I'd forgotten how obnoxious he is on the page. XP

Nosy Lieutenant and Good Lieutenant have been switched back to their old positions, hooray! Of course, that doesn't stop NL from coming up to the watch office dozens of times during the day for no reason whatsoever. (She hates the position that she's actually assigned to, so she makes every excuse to not do her actual work and come up and play shift Lt instead.)

Car is acting up again. The oil light is flickering, not flashing but flickering, and the engine started making rattling sounds this morning. When I go home for lunch, I'm going to switch out and drive the Jeep so I don't tax the Toyota's engine before we can oil it back up. ~sigh~ I'd really like all these little problems to just chill for a minute.

(no subject)

Pretty good weekend, aside from being a little blue, likely from hormones. Nothing terribly exciting happened, it was mostly just chilling at home. The baby is getting better with her words and is using some of the tools we bought her. We got her a pack of flashcards with animals and colors on them, and as soon as I got home on Friday she wanted to play with them, which is promising. I got her to say "nose" and "dry" over the weekend, and hopefully those words will stick. We're working on her "L" sounds, too, since she seems to have a bit of trouble with the word "light."

M spent Saturday out with friends, catching a movie, Caught Stealing, which he recommends highly. He called it "the American Snatch", which is high praise from him.

After that he had to spend time collecting documents to submit for New Job's background check, which had him mildly stressed since some of the papers they needed were lost in the fire and we haven't gotten around to replacing them yet. Thank goodness for old scans saved in the cloud.

We'd been eating off a big pot of beef stew for the entire weekend, and by Sunday night we were both completely tired of it, so M went out and got us a couple of sandwiches, which was a nice change. After dinner, I had to attack the dish pile in the kitchen, which was completely out of control, and two hours later I had it...mostly done. By then it was 11pm, and I was completely done with the day, so the rest will just have to wait. At least the worst of it was taken care of.

M is taking vacation for the next two weeks, since Capital One doesn't appear to pay out leftover vacation time when you leave. Since it's use it or lose it, he's using it, and since he doesn't start New Job until the 28th, then he can put in his 2 Weeks once vacation is over and it will run right up to his new start day. I'm glad he'll get a break before starting New Job, he's been so stressed these past few months!

Sometime next week I need to go get my gestational diabetes test, where I drink sugar water and they test my glucose. I remember it going pretty quickly last time, so I may be able to squeeze it in over a lunch break.

(no subject)

Got official word - M got the job! HR called with the official offer, explained benefits, yadda, yadda, so yay! His first day will be September 28th because they want to get him in there in time to qualify for this year's bonus. Extra yay!

Next step for us is figuring out the logistics of his new job's workload, caring for Kate, when I should come home, etc. We've both agreed that I should attempt to keep working up until I give birth, but that entirely depends on how involved this new position is, how my health goes in the next few months, etc. There's a lot of stuff we just have to wait-and-see on. Whatever happens, our lives are going to look very different by next year, which is a good thing!

Another good, if smaller, bit of news, we are finally getting our mail again! The post office had stopped delivering to our complex because there had been so many mailbox break-ins, but I guess that's been resolved because we had mail yesterday! One of the letters was a bill (boo) but another was a book for Kate (yay!) so it all balanced out.

Felt well enough last night to make a big pot of beef stew, which will last us for the next few days. This weekend I'm going to try and catch up on chores, because the dish pile is out of control, and I'm tired of tripping over the laundry pile in the bedroom every single damned day. M has also requested pumpkin bread for this weekend, so I'll bake up a couple of loaves to celebrate the good news and the cooler weather.

(no subject)

'Twas a day of many things.

Busy morning at work - end of month reports, incident reports, misc. paperwork. Managed to get the most important stuff done before I had to leave, then scooted home just in time for Kate's speech therapy appointment.

Wasn't super impressed with the first appointment, but it is just the first appointment, so we'll see how it goes from here. I was expecting more concrete advice, like exercises we could do or something, but a lot of it was advice we'd already found online, or things we were already doing. I do have higher hopes for next time, since we're going to try some structured play and see if that is something that would help.

Since the appointment coincided with Kate's naptime, she was extremely tired by the time the therapist left. She went down right away, and I had a little bit of quiet time before it was time for me to leave for my OB checkup. Everything there went fine, another "yup, still pregnant!" checkup.

Came home and M was asleep on the couch and I could hear Kate fussing in the other room. She'd probably been awake for a while, because when I went in there she was half-naked and her dirty diaper was on the floor. -_- Cue another poo cleanup. I bathed the baby while M attacked the mattress and bedding. He had to go back to work, so I finished up cleaning her blankets and clothing.

After all that was taken care of, and M had finished up work, he went out and got us some burgers for dinner. I put the baby down for bed at her normal time, but she wasn't going to sleep easily. Checked on her and found her naked, and that she'd peed the bed. -_- Round #2 of cleaning, but at least this time the mattress cover took the brunt of it and I only had to clean it and her sheets.

We switched her to her actual crib instead of the pack-n-play, and she had a complete meltdown, so we took her back to the living room so she could calm down, and then she finally was chill enough to go to sleep. Finally had a very late dinner, a little bit of TV, then bed for the rest of us.

Slept terribly, very groggy and achy today. Very much looking forward to sleeping in this weekend.

(no subject)

Completely exhausted when I got home yesterday, so dinner was frozen taquitos. No chores were done. The baby had taken a 4-hour nap after being up so early, but she was completely loopy by the end of the evening, definitely overtired. She passed out as soon as I put her in bed, which was a welcomed relief.

Showered, got into bed myself, then had a terrible night where the cats interrupted my sleep every couple of hours - let me in, let me out, the water is low, play string with me! -_- Y'all. Chill.

Today is going to be a busy day, and I totally forgot how busy until I got to work. I have to do the end of month reports at work, then Kate has her first speech therapy session at noon that I need to be home for, then I have an OB checkup this afternoon. I decided as I walked into work that I would be taking a half day, because driving to and fro all day just to be at work for a couple of hours at a time is ludicrous.

(no subject)

A cold front moved in on Friday and the weather was glorious - overcast, a little foggy in the morning, didn't get out of the 70s until the very late afternoon. In August! I'd be thrilled if we've seen our last 100-degree day this year, but that may be a little optimistic.

Friday night M and I went over the finances, since we're a little bit behind our savings goal thanks to so many surprise expenses lately. We figured everything out until our next paycheck...and then M got a call from his brother, who had broken his tail bone and was on unpaid leave from work for the next two months, and could we spare anything to help him with his bills? So we sent him a few hundred dollars to tide him over with the caveat that this would not be a regular thing, and so it's rice and beans until the 5th, which is thankfully just a few days away now.

Saturday was my birthday outing with my sister. We caught Weapons at the Movie Tavern, which was a good movie and good food. Afterward we headed to Cheesecake factory and stuffed our faces with cake. Was very excited to have the pumpkin pecan cheesecake, which is basically a pecan pie bottom half topped with a pumpkin cheesecake upper half. Very yummy. Made a brief stop at the grocery store on the way home to pick up a few ingredients for dinner, and once I was home, M made a bit pot of spaghetti. A pretty good day overall.

Sunday was such a nothing burger that I can't really remember anything about it. Ho hum.

Monday was my actual birthday. I woke up feeling down for no reason, and sort of lingered in the Blahs for most of the day. Once M actually woke up, he went to the fancy grocery store to get us cake and ice cream, and we spent the rest of the day eating vast amounts of sugar.

Katie had gotten up super late on Monday morning, so she deferred her nap until the late afternoon. She crawled up on the couch and leaned up against me, covered herself in a pile of blankets and fell asleep on my side, which was very cute. Transferred her to her pack-n-play for a real nap, but she was up only an hour later, where I discovered her chewing on the edge of the crib and crying. Looks like those new canines are finally starting to bother her.

The rest of the evening she cuddled with me and whimpered. We gave her motrin and soft foods to eat, but even drinking water was giving her problems, poor thing. Was able to get her down for the night only slightly later than her usual time, and she passed right out.

But, she was up at 6:30 this morning, in much better spirits, so I made her breakfast and turned on Ms. Rachel so I could get some things done...aaaaaand I suddenly ended up having the worst nosebleed of my life. I woke up M to take over baby duty and I leaned over the sink for 20 minutes. Yuck.

M had barely had any sleep when I got him up, so I'm going to attempt to get home a little early for lunch today so I can relieve him, hopefully get the baby down for a nap, and then he can rest.

Got word from Friend at New Job that the approval letter for M's hiring was sent through to HR last Monday, so now we're just waiting for HR to pick up their feet and send the offer letter!

Code deploy happening shortly

Per the dw_news post regarding the MS/TN blocks, we are doing a small code push shortly in order to get the code live. As per usual, please let us know if you see anything wonky.

There is some code cleanup we've been doing that is going out with this push but I don't think there is any new/reworked functionality, so it should be pretty invisible if all goes well.

Mississippi site block, plus a small restriction on Tennessee new accounts

A reminder to everyone that starting tomorrow, we are being forced to block access to any IP address that geolocates to the state of Mississippi for legal reasons while we and Netchoice continue fighting the law in court. People whose IP addresses geolocate to Mississippi will only be able to access a page that explains the issue and lets them know that we'll be back to offer them service as soon as the legal risk to us is less existential.

The block page will include the apology but I'll repeat it here: we don't do geolocation ourselves, so we're limited to the geolocation ability of our network provider. Our anti-spam geolocation blocks have shown us that their geolocation database has a number of mistakes in it. If one of your friends who doesn't live in Mississippi gets the block message, there is nothing we can do on our end to adjust the block, because we don't control it. The only way to fix a mistaken block is to change your IP address to one that doesn't register as being in Mississippi, either by disconnecting your internet connection and reconnecting it (if you don't have a static IP address) or using a VPN.

In related news, the judge in our challenge to Tennessee's social media age verification, parental consent, and parental surveillance law (which we are also part of the fight against!) ruled last month that we had not met the threshold for a temporary injunction preventing the state from enforcing the law while the court case proceeds.

The Tennesee law is less onerous than the Mississippi law and the fines for violating it are slightly less ruinous (slightly), but it's still a risk to us. While the fight goes on, we've decided to prevent any new account signups from anyone under 18 in Tennessee to protect ourselves against risk. We do not need to block access from the whole state: this only applies to new account creation.

Because we don't do any geolocation on our users and our network provider's geolocation services only apply to blocking access to the site entirely, the way we're implementing this is a new mandatory question on the account creation form asking if you live in Tennessee. If you do, you'll be unable to register an account if you're under 18, not just the under 13 restriction mandated by COPPA. Like the restrictions on the state of Mississippi, we absolutely hate having to do this, we're sorry, and we hope we'll be able to undo it as soon as possible.

Finally, I'd like to thank every one of you who's commented with a message of support for this fight or who's bought paid time to help keep us running. The fact we're entirely user-supported and you all genuinely understand why this fight is so important for everyone is a huge part of why we can continue to do this work. I've also sent a lot of your comments to the lawyers who are fighting the actual battles in court, and they find your wholehearted support just as encouraging and motivating as I do. Thank you all once again for being the best users any social media site could ever hope for. You make me proud and even more determined to yell at state attorneys general on your behalf.

(no subject)

Fairly quiet evening at home. M and I both had leftover pizza, which served as dinner. I had intended to attack Dish Mountain to get it tamed, but my pelvis was killing me, and M was chatty, so we ended up just sitting on the couch together and talking for most of the evening. Much better than doing dishes. I felt physically awful, though, so the couch was really my only options.

When putting the baby to bed I discovered that her newfound love of putting things under her mattress (herself included) and her love of naked time, had combined horribly when I found a soiled diaper hiding under the mattress. -_- More poo cleanup ensued. At least this time I didn't have to wash all her blankets, and her mattresses are waterproof and easy to clean up. But yeesh, girl, that was not cool.

Set an early alarm so I could do dishes this morning, and got up at 6. And so did the baby, because of course she did. I made her breakfast and plonked her down in front of the TV with a medley of Ms. Rachel songs going to keep her occupied, then I attacked as many of the dishes as I could before it was time to get ready for work. Discovered that the kitchen sink's hot water knob is now broken, so had to wash the dishes with cold water. -_- Got about halfway through the dishes before I ran out of time.

Woke M up, threw on some clothes, and headed out. Hopefully the rest of the day is pretty quiet, and maybe I can sneak out of work a little early since it's a holiday weekend/my birthday weekend.

M made the executive decision last night that I am no longer cooking dinner for the rest of my pregnancy. He has seen me struggle too much lately with the body pains and exhaustion I'm fighting at the end of the day, so from now on no more cooking. I will absolutely not argue with that, it's definitely a huge burden lifted. Time to stock up on frozen meals!

Entry tags:

travel

Off to Middle Earth!

With the acknowledgement that I have often gone for two weeks or more without posting here, I'll just note that I won't be posting (or reading) for the next two weeks because tomorrow evening I'm heading off to New Zealand for my official "celebrating retirement" with my BFF. I will probably try to do some sort of trip report when I get back, but it might be little more than "had a fabulous time."

(no subject)

M was feeling much better yesterday now that the house was clean. We chatted a bit while I was home for lunch, I put the baby down for her nap, and we decided to take it easy for dinner and pick up some pizzas.

Dinner was a couple of take-and-bake pizzas from the grocery store, which were perfectly adequate. M had decided to get the baby up in the morning instead of letting her sleep until she wakes on her own, so when I put her down for the night she went right to sleep. Hooray! I watched a bit of TV once she was in bed, ate some ice cream, and finally took a shower.

Unfortunately, when I tried to sneak into the bedroom to grab my nightgown, the baby woke up. So we had a 30 minute interlude where she had a bottle of milk and snuggled her freshly laundered blankets, which were finally dry. M gave up the office for the rest of the night so we could put her down in her own crib, and while she protested at first, she settled in eventually. We all got to bed after midnight, blah.

Sister has purchased the tickets for our movie outing this weekend, hooray! I can't wait to have a day out, I've been feeling very cooped up!

Friend of M at New Company apologized yesterday that HR was taking so long. The way he worded things made it sound like M does, in fact, have the job, since he said they were "just waiting for Boss to sign off, and he's travelling this week." We're trying not to celebrate prematurely, but it does sound very positive.

Eide posted the itinerary for their late-Victorian Vampire-themed New Orleans weekend in January, and MAN am I bummed that I'm going to miss it. There's a dinner with Bram Stoker's grandson (!!!), dinners at all my favorite French Quarter restaurants, ghost walks, cemetery tours, museum visits. It sounds so, so fun.

(no subject)

Yesterday went completely off the rails. -_-

Got a call from M at around 10:30 that he needed me to come home immediately, so I took my lunch a tad early and headed to the house. When I got there, the baby was in the bath and M was rampaging through the house. Seems that the baby had taken off her poopy diaper before M had woken up, and just smeared it everywhere - her whole body, her crib, her blankets, everywhere.

He'd just finished bathing the baby, so I got her out of the tub and got her dried off and dressed. M was not handling things well, so I took all the bedding and threw it in the tub with some laundry soap and water and let it soak so I could scrub it. I gave the baby a lunch plate, and then spent a good amount of time scrubbing all her stuff. Drain tub, rinse, repeat.

Baby wanted to help, of course, so she started bringing her dirty clothes and throwing it into the tub. So those were scrubbed, too. I gave her a fresh sponge so she would stop trying to steal mine, and that kept her occupied enough that I could finish the task.

The baby had an absolute meltdown when she saw her blankets go back into the tub for the second soak. She loves them so much. It made getting her down for a nap nearly impossible, but she finally cried enough to exhaust herself to sleep. Poor girl was having such a weird day, she probably felt very thrown off.

Once she was asleep, I did the task that had originally been planned for my lunch break - pick up the grocery order. Got home, and the sound of the front door woke the baby back up, so once M and I had brought all the groceries in, I got her up, and she helped me put away all the food. Meaning mostly that I put stuff away and she snacked on pilfered strawberries.

No dinner, too much happening in the house. Baby fought her bedtime because still no blankets, so we had to make due with some throw blankets from the couch, which she wasn't a big fan of.

M got it in his head that the state of the floors was a Major Problem, so once the baby was finally asleep, we got out the mop and bucket and scrubbed every floor in the common areas of the house. He did the living room and kitchen while I did the hall, bathroom, and cat closet. By the time we were finished it was nearly 11 and we were both exhausted.

I have blisters on my right hand from all the scrubbing and wringing of blankets. I can't actually remember the last time I took a shower. I haven't had a break in months. I am very, very tired.

I really can't wait for my lunch outing with my sister this weekend. It will be so, so nice to get away from the house for an afternoon!