I really want to thank the folks at PearParadise.com for giving me, among other things, this chance to exercise creativity. That said, please don’t hold THEM responsible for the horrid singing in this thing, and yes, those ARE clams. Don’t pick on me!
I have sitting next to me a beautiful strand of freshwater pearls (as seen in the first frame of the video) from PearlParadise.com. These truly are heirloom quality, and will become just that in my family. The gold clasp only adds to the beauty. I hope you enjoy the video, folks, and be sure to check out the Pearl Paradise website… these prices are incredible.
It happened again, by the way. An obnoxious brat (that used to be a nice kid, till he said THIS) proclaimed that my daughter couldn’t be pregnant, she must be just fat. That is all the wisdom of a ten year old talking. In spite of this, my soon to deliver daughter went into depressed fits about her appearance. Problem is, not only is she NOT fat… she’s a stick. After she delivers she will STILL need to gain weight. While I have not found it possible to convince her of THAT (because apparently the obnoxious ten year old knows more than I do about such things) I do think I have managed to get her to leave the diet pills alone for a while. Here’s hoping, anyway.
Young couples about to be married turn into an alien species. That is the only explanation I can come up with. How else do you explain it when otherwise sane people start trying to buy cars and rent houses they don’t have a prayer of being able to afford any time in this century? I certainly raised my daughter to have more sense, so it must be the boy. His evil influence is taking over. Apparently, houses with sun decks and walk in tub facilities are a necessity. And fast cars that are NOT pink (don’t ask). I’m not sure I even want to be around when reality hits and they realize that what they can afford is a bicycle and a tent, on ground they don’t have to rent, hopefully. Ah, to be young again… you couldn’t pay me enough.
Have you ever noticed what strange presents people give for “extra” events? I mean the kind of thing that only happens once. We have two of that type of thing happening here… one daughter getting “baby” gifts and one getting graduation gifts. Sometimes it’s hard to remember who got what, other than the obvious things like baby booties. Consider, for example, a gift of a beautiful Patek Perpetual timepiece. What a great gift for the soon to be graduated, a wonderful thing to take to college with you…. right? Except she’s not the one who recieved it. I guess the idea must be… precision bottle warming?
It has finally hit my oldest that she has gained almost forty pounds since she became pregnant. There is no telling her that it’s normal, either. She is completely convinced that she has become fat. Given that this girl, under normal circumstances, is a complete STICK, I personally don’t think it will be anywhere near time to pull out the weight loss pills after she delivers, but she seems to enjoy being upset about the weight thing anyway. To put this in perspective, my two older daughters are both relatively slim, and both near five foot eight or so. My oldest, with the extra forty pounds, STILL weighs less than her non-pregnant sister. This is not a fact which has escaped attention, and there is much “HMPH” to be heard.
Today was an interesting round of phone tag. I spent most of it on the phone with my daughter’s doctor’s office. I got to do the arguing because my daughter says I “know how to handle things” better than she does. What she means is, I’m louder. In any case, it was finally worked out that, instead of driving an hour and a half so my daughter can see a doctor that insists on delivering babies at Hospital Hell, we will instead be driving forty five minutes to take her to a doctor that delivers at the hospital that almost killed my husband. But hey, at least they were NICE while they were almost killing him. You do kind of have to go over the bills they send with a magnifying glass to catch all the hidden charges, though. But ANYTHING is better than the hospital we took her to the other night. Really.
In spite of all the problems, planning for the coming newborn goes on. I think we almost have things covered. Bassinet, car seat, plenty of clothes, bottles, and we even have a couple bags of newborn diapers in a couple different brands, mainly because we have no clue what brand is going to fit most comfortably on the baby’s already spoiled little bottom. I do wish the stores would stop playing games with the baby merchandise, though. I mean, have you tried to buy a rattle lately? I mean, a simple baby rattle. The kind made like a round ball with a handle. If you find one, let me lknow where. Around HERE, all the toys that SHOULD be rattles are odd shapes, or have spinners on them, or other infant oddities. Yeesh.
Well, this has been an interesting 24 hours or so. Late last night, we wound up at the hospital with my pregnant daughter. It was a false alarm, and she is more or less fine. However, she is now refusing to give birth at the only hospital that her doctor works at. Lovely. But I can’t say that I blame her, either. Here’s the story:
There are two hospitals in Jonesboro, Arkansas. We went to the one that is NOT Regional (which is a really good hospital). We went to the other one, hereafter referred to as “Hospital Hell”, because, as I said, my daughter’s doctor works there. She was not there that night, however. Now, I had no prior experience with this hospital, but all the advertising and self promotion they do would have you believe they are the greatest. Right. We get in there and the first thing they do is start the questions. First the normal ones, family medical history, all that. Then the woman starts in with questions like “have you ever been physically abused?” “have you ever been emotionally abused?” “have you ever had financial trouble?” (did she really expect us to start handing out numbers for our checking and savings accounts?) and when we objected to the questioning, which was not only offensive and invasive but delivered in a deliberately offensive way. we were informed that if we didn’t answer, she wouldn’t be treated. Excuse me, but that should be ILLEGAL.
That’s just the tip of the iceberg, too. Before we left, there were issues about Doctor Idiot, who not only exposed my daughter’s entire lower half to the entire room with NO WARNING but also told her that her own doctor (a very nice woman who specializes in problem pregnancies) was apparently an idiot, because what she said went against what he said, and he apparently has a corner on the market of medical knowledge. He then informed her that if she went into labor before 40 weeks (37 weeks is considered full term) they would try to stop it, and if they couldn’t, they would send her elsewhere by ambulance (elsewhere being Memphis, Tennessee, an additional two hours away) because he just didn’t want to deal with it. Incidentally, he looked like he got out of medical school yesterday. I mention this because he actually stood there and told me I was all wrong about childbirth. I held my tongue, but I was THINKING… you ass, I have had four more children than you EVER will, and you are telling ME that what happened to me didn’t happen that way?
When my daughter had her ultrasound a couple weeks ago, we got quite a shock. For reasons too numerous to list here, we really thought the new baby was going to be a boy. But the tech doing the ultrasound was VERY sure… our new grandbaby is definitely a girl. I hope she will like wearing blue! Most of the baby stuff we have is gender neutral anyhow. But I am wondering what we are going to do with that cabinet we bought to show off football, basketball, and soccer trophies. But hey, maybe she’ll be an athelete anyway.
I have had an awful lot to say about the new coming grandbaby lately. I do a lot of complaining about my clueless daughter and her grinning fiance, and a lot MORE complaining about the price of baby items. But, really, I am mostly looking forward to it. It’s the things I can’t remember that get to me. Things like… what IS the best temperature for formula? How exactly DO you clean spit up off of leather office chairs? And what the heck do I do with all those darn diapers…?
