Random

I had a nasty, long dream this morning. The thing with crazy dreams in pregnancy, is that you are supposedly not having more of them, you just remember more of them since you are up a few times in the night to pee. In this one I was at some kind of party with a ton of people at some huge Medieval-style mansion/manor. I know that I was trying to get out and couldn't, and was concerned about my safety, but I couldn't find my way out of the house or find my way to my car. Then things started getting weirder - the house was attacking the people within it. And then even more partygoers showed up, annoying/drunken/crazy ones. Try as I might I couldn't get out of the house, find Brian, find my car (and couldn't understand why anyone else was cool with the situation). I was like, the only smart person there thinking WTF is going on people?! Scary! The past strange dreams have been more about my physical state and not feeling so sexy as of late. This one, who knows? Fear of the unknown? Loss of control? I don't put much stock into analyzing dreams, it's just interesting how long and vivid these guys have been.

My new favorite thing is drinking hot water with lemon slices, sometimes with honey and sometimes not. The hot helps soothe my dry throat, the lemon is a natural diuretic (swollen feet), and honey is, honey! I bought a bag of small organic lemons last night that are a perfect size to slice in 4 and bring one with me to work each day in my lunch bag w/ icepack.

Dance class and Glee tonight!

We have 30 plastic orange bins in our garage that we need to start packing things in for our house deleading work. There is this odd balance of having to live in our house until 10/16, and not having the ability to wait to pack until the last minute (we have lots of plans to balance the work with - October is always busy). I'm hoping we can get a good dent in things this weekend (Friday night and Saturday). Our plans for our accomodations during the work have actually changed: we'll be staying in my parent's vacant 2nd floor apartment in Nashua rather than my sister's house. It will make bringing our animals easier (won't need to corral into one room or worry about them mingling with my sister's animals) and it will put us 20 minutes closer to work. It will be however, a completely empty apartment - their deadbeat tennant is finally out and though it will be clean and freshly painted, no furniture (or stove yet, even). Mom and Dad have a double cot we can sleep on and I'm guessing we'll bring our comfy folding camping chairs. We'll also have a key to their apartment downstairs for more comfortable sitting (and for eating). It still won't be fun driving from Nashua every day, but it will be easier than Amherst, and will be a fun bit of an adventure. It's free and safe for our animals and we like my family. I will be happy when it is all done and we can unpack and make our house all Halloweenie!

I found myself a belly-friendly and comfy halloween costume for myself too. Yay, or something. :)

Books

I've finished going through a couple of self-help books over the last few days. I had read of these online and there were some good nuggets of knowledge there. Both books were easy to read some parts of and skim others, to get the general ideas the authors were trying to share. Both had ideas I've read in other places, but they were still nice and inspiring reads.

I had found http://www.amazon.com/One-Bite-Time-Projects-ebook/dp/B005MZGZ84/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1317748316&sr=8-1 on a blog recently and could identify with the list-making, organizing mentality of it. There were some good ideas in here and some I've already done. She provides 52 things that if you are able to master them, will simplify your life and make your time easier. Though her methods aren't what I would always do (like using a cash envelope system for some budgeting), there are good key concepts there. She mentiones that most are ideas from her blog, they are just better organized in this compact model.

I had caught this http://www.amazon.com/Selfish-Reasons-Have-More-ebook/dp/B004OA64Q6/ref=sr_1_sc_1?s=digital-text&ie=UTF8&qid=1317748527&sr=1-1-spell on another blog. Though I don't want to have more kids, the whole 'parents, you are stressing yourselves out' tagline seemed to be something worth investigating at this juncture. The author describes in detail various twin and adoption studies to illustrate that no matter what parents do or don't do, how their kids end up in the end is mainly driven by nature and not nurture (mind you, he acknowledges that extremes in either the nature or nurture area have profound effects). His argument is that parents create so much work for themselves in caring for their children that may not be necessary. Creating a pleasant/righ environment for them is important as far as how they feel in the current day (and what their memories of their childhoood may be), but it won't turn them into a rocket scientist, prevent them from getting arrested, or have an impact on the income they make as adults. This book was extremely repetetive, but it had some fun quotes related to parenting in it, and was very easy to skim.

All in all I am loving having an e-reader and am finding it easier to find time to use it, compared to paper books (though I still like having an actual book with me). Tracking what I've read via folders on the Kindle is a neat way to jog my memory on what I've been pondering and learning about.

I have a few pregnancy or birth related books that I've been sitting on that I'll switch to next. I don't want to be reading all babies all the time, but I think these particular ones will make my life easier come January. I don't want to keep putting off and putting off the reading, because the fall will be quite busy.