More newsy updates from the frigid Hilltop

I know you’ll all be excited to learn that I accomplished a major goal of my pregnancy last night: parking in the Expectant Mothers parking spot at the bourgeoise Metropolitan Market in North Tacoma. The spot is marked with a stork carrying a baby, and a sign above it says “Expectant Mothers ONLY.” I have been meaning to do this for some time, but I don’t shop at Met Market very often. I may have cheated a little, because Joe was with me and he was driving (Lucky is in the shop having a dent fixed), but it still saved me from walking across a cold parking lot.

And cold it is! There has been snow on the ground for several days, and it’s not expected to get above freezing for a few more. In fact, it’s snowing again right now. This is all very unusual for our area. When the snow originally fell on Saturday, we were driving home from the depths of Gig Harbor around 11:30 pm, and were subjected to the techniques of inexperienced snow-driving Northwesterners. Namely, this technique involves driving no faster than 15 mph and therefore getting stuck on hills. This, despite the fact that half the population drives 4-wheel-drive Subaru Outbacks (an additional 40% drive Subaru Foresters). I actually had to pass someone on a two-lane road. Everyone behind me followed my lead.

Unrelatedly, our washing machine broke on Monday night, just when we are about to double or triple our laundry needs with child clothes and diapers. Those of you who have been to our house, however, know that we have two sets of washer/dryers, due to our inane stubbornness. The spare pair has never been hooked up at this house, but it is about to be put into service. Unfortunately, it’s a stack washer/dryer, so the capacity is quite a bit smaller than the one that broke, which is an industrial Speed Queen - the kind they use at laundromats (there must be a joke in that brand name somewhere - anyone?). Both of us said good riddance to the Speed Queen, although it was the dryer that really pissed us off by shrinking most of our clothes. Now we just need to figure out how to get the washer out of here and hopefully get a few pennies for the dryer on Craigslist.

You may be able to tell by the length of this post that I am now officially on maternity leave. I signed off yesterday, and it felt good! Today I have been filling the baby’s dresser with her abundant clothes, and pondering the fact that she gets a solid wood crib and dresser, while our new dressers are Ikea veneer specials. We put the first one together a few weekends ago, and it was easily the most complicated construction task I have ever taken on. Just the giant bag of mysterious Swedish hardware was enough to scare me off (not to mention the 32-page wordless instruction manual, which looked like a sad coloring book from Soviet-era Poland). But we soldiered on, thinking of the hours we’d saved a child laborer in the Philippines from having to put our dresser together. We would have been fired from that sweatshop.

I didn’t plan it this way, but my non-working schedule for the next week involves a fair dose of new-age pampering: today, yoga; tomorrow, prenatal massage (thanks mom and dad!); Friday, haircut; Sunday, yoga; Monday, acupuncture; Tuesday, midwife visit. I am slightly less motivated to go to yoga at this late stage, because all the friends I made in class have already had their babies; they’ve been replaced by chipper first-trimester moms-to-be.

I guess I’ll go try to use a dirt shovel to clear off the porch stairs now.