Potpourri

A friend of mine is pregnant and her baby shower next weekend. I can’t make it to the shower. BUT I put together a lovely package and mailed it to the shower hostess. So, my friend will have a nice gift from me to open at her shower. Which basically mean that I get, like, partial shower credit. BAM.

Maybe you’re already aware of this as an option but I only recognized it as a thing when it happened at my bridal shower. I had a friend who was unsure if she could make it to the shower, so she sent a gift to the hostess. She ended up not being able to make it, but I opened her gift at the shower and it gave me an “aww, how thoughtful” feeling toward my friend. It’s the kind of thing that has the EFFECT of seeming “above and beyond” in terms of effort, when it in fact is way EASIER.

[I swear I WOULD go to my friend’s baby shower if I could, but it is too far away and I have a prior commitment. This is not a suggestion that in any way should imply that I am a person who avoids baby/bridal showers on a regular basis, disclaimer disclaimer disclaimer.]

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I seem to have reached the point in my pregnancy at which putting on work clothes is a difficult task. Usually my work uniform consists of a dress, leggings, and boots.

I had to start wearing compression socks to work because my legs were getting swollen and a little painful. Putting them on is a bit of a pain but I think I’ve got a system now. I sit on the bed sideways in my underclothes and put one foot on the bed at a time and wrassle the socks onto my feet. Then, I’m usually tired and a little sweaty, so I don’t want to put on leggings. So I put on a pair of pants.

“You should buy the size you were before getting pregnant” said the lady at Motherhood Maternity. Bullshit. These pants are XL and are starting to feel a little tight. These pants are the pants I will be wearing for the next two months at work.

I also bought some new shoes. They are slip-ons and very comfortable and very boring.

They’re even more boring than the ones from this link because the ones I bought don’t even have the hot pink insoles, just plain black. But WHATEVER, I’m wearing clothes at work, gold star for me.

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I’ve been going to a different gym than usual. The one closest by my house is like a big warehouse. One huge room with a high ceiling containing all the equipment (plus a couple of adjacent rooms for individual classes and whatnot). The locker rooms are spacious and usually fairly well kept. I’ve been going to a slightly farther away gym because this one has a pool and a hot tub. Sitting in the hot tub after working out is very nice and relaxing.

However, this new gym is unfortunately more gross than the old one. The locker rooms are teensy with weird small hallways between apparently added-on spaces. The whole thing is just more stinky, possibly because of the smaller more enclosed spaces. And the people there seem to be more prone to be gross in this gross place. There are clumps of hair in the shower drains. There’s always some woman using the (ONLY) hand dryer to dry her whole body or someone else exfoliating her feet or deeply Q-tipping her ears on one of the locker room benches. And more than once I’ve run into this lady in the hot tub who drinks this POTION that makes my stomach turn. It looks like maybe iced tea with, like, whole baby carrots and garlic cloves in it? I honestly have no idea what’s in it. There are little orange oblong bits and round white bits and some of them sink to the bottom of her water bottle and some of them float. She sits in the hot tub and takes big gulps of it and drinks/CHEWS it noisily and I just cannot even.

And the design is weird. To enter the gym, you walk up a flight of stairs. You sign in at the front desk. Then you walk DOWN a flight of stairs to go to the locker rooms. Then it’s back up the damn stairs again if you’d like to use any of the workout equipment.

Despite its grossness, I’ve been going to this gym really solely because of the hot tub. I try not to think about the (high) possibility that people are also gross IN the hot tub when they’re gross everywhere else.

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I passed my glucose tolerance test. I had heard a lot about it being HORRIBLE, but it wasn't so bad. I downed the syrupy beverage and really the only issue was some icky burps during the hour I had to wait before the blood test. So that test was fine.

But, unfortunately, I’m mildly anemic so my doctor said I should start an iron supplement. I’m going to start with changing my diet first, though, and see if that makes a difference. I have definitely not been eating iron rich foods.

There was the week when I could only eat Spaghetti-Os. Then there was the week when I could only eat Cheerios. Buttered noodles have also been a staple in my diet. Since I’m not feeling as sick anymore, I’ve definitely been able to eat more different types of things but iron-rich foods haven’t so much been on my radar. I basically eat unintentionally vegetarian during the week and then splash out a bit on the weekends.

Anyhow, I’ve been snacking on crackers with goat cheese and spinach leaves at work. And over the weekend Niall made tacos so I have leftover taco meat that I’ll be eating all week.

And I have a cast iron skillet that I’m going to cook in more, once I figure out how to “season” it properly so food doesn’t just stick to it.

And I also bought this Lucky Iron Fish. I’m planning to make the iron-citrus water and, y’know, drink it.

Cat update

Bowie’s behavior continues to mystify.

He hasn’t peed anywhere inappropriate recently (*knocks furiously on desk and own head*), but he seems to still be more… anxious? restless? annoying? Than usual.

 

Like, in the evenings at our old place he used to just hang out in the living room or wherever we were. He would lie down on the back of the couch or curl up in a chair and take a snooze. Now usually starting at about 8PM he just won’t settle down. He’ll stalk around the room and go over to the bookshelves and knock the contents to the floor. He’ll knock papers off the desk and shred them into tiny pieces. He’ll stand at the front door and meow. He’s 12 years old, so I sort of thought he would get LESS active and crazy over the years, but it doesn’t seem like it. And it seems like it coincides with all the big changes in his life, but I don’t know how to fix it.

About, oh, a year ago I want to say (?), the vet (old vet, not new vet) told me that Bowie was too heavy at 26lbs and needed to go on a diet or else he would get diabetes. The vet recommended Fancy Feast Tender Beef because it’s high in protein and doesn’t have fillers or grains. So now he gets one can of Fancy Feast Tender Beef in the morning and one in the evening, plus a tiny scoop of dry food when we put him in the garage at bedtime.

As a semi-related side note, have I told you about my former cat sitter who shamed me about Bowie’s food? He texted me while I was out of town to tell me that Bowie had eaten HIS ENTIRE BOWL OF FOOD from the previous day and maybe I should consider an automatic cat feeder. I was like 1. Call me when the cat DOESN’T eat his entire bowl of food. Then I’ll be worried. And 2. Are you trying to talk yourself out of a job?

Anyhow, I digress, but it was just an interested incident of someone worrying about my 26 pound cat being UNDERfed.

On his new diet, Bowie went from 26 pounds to 17 pounds. HE LOST NINE POUNDS. That’s like, a whole normal sized cat. His bones started to stick out more. And now he's all jittery and anxious. So maybe he DOES need to eat more now? About a month ago I decided that if it would make him HAPPIER, I would just give him more food. So I bought this automatic cat feeder to give him little snackies while I was at work. I had it for a week and a half before Bowie managed to break it so that the lids won’t close anymore. So then I started leaving him a little extra food in the morning before I left for work and he started puking on a daily basis. Because apparently he will just EAT ALL THE FOOD if you just leave it out.

I’ve started trying to give him more attention when I first get home from work and later in the evenings.

I’ve tried distracting him with the laser pointer when he starts throwing papers on the floor.

I’ve tried squirting him with water when he does his annoying habits.

I’ve tried opening the balcony door and letting him wander out there in the evenings.

I’ve tried sprinkling catnip on his scratch pad.

I’ve tried giving him an extra little snack in the evenings and a bigger one at bedtime.

Nothing has changed.

I think my next step will be one of those anti-anxiety cat collars or diffusers. Anyone have experience with that?