My Favorite Things

The air here is heavy with anticipation! I took Austin and Tasha to run a few errands yesterday and we ran into many people who wished them luck on the birth of Baby Cosette. Living in a small town means that shopkeepers and workers remember you and, of course, it didn't take long for the people that work at the grocery store where Austin works (!) to learn that he was going to soon be a father. I'm excited but it still doesn't seem real. And I'm anxious about how things will go tonight and getting the timing down right where we will be there when Cosette is born but won't be sitting too terribly long.

I don't think I mentioned yet that we have made the decision (me, Austin, Tasha and my mom) that my mom and I will wait until Tasha is at 3-4 centimeters or until early morning to go to the hospital, whichever goes first. I wanted to just knuckle through it but my back pain has been really, really bad over the past few days - which may or may not have something to do with me moving a recliner on Sunday - to the extent that I couldn't bend over well enough to wash my feet in the shower or dry them afterwards. Just killer muscle spasms that have me bent a little but won't let me bend very far, just sort of curved forward. If things go like I think they'll go, getting there first thing in the morning should give us plenty of time. Austin's dad and stepmom will come up tomorrow morning and Cody and Marquee will come up sometime during the day. Cosette (and Austin and Tasha) will have lots of love and support.

Since most of my posts in the near future are going to be baby related, I thought I'd do a fun (for me and I hope for you) favorite things post. Most of my favorite things are food but... yeah... that's just how my life works right now. It's mostly healthy food...

1. Starting with non-food items....my trusty old straightening iron broke a few weeks ago and I had to pick a new one. I hate having to make those kind of decisions because it's not like I can buy a new one every week. Whatever I get has to work. After reading a lot of reviews I chose the Infiniti Pro by Conair. I picked the two inch wide one and can I just say, without exaggeration, it has changed my LIFE! It has higher heat than I've had before - it goes to 455 degrees. It works so well that I can straighten my hair with one pass of the iron through my hair. My old process was to go through my hair a couple of times, wait a couple hours and go at it again and then I would have to still straighten again the next day. With this guy not only does it only take one pass through, it holds until I wash my hair again, regardless of the humidity. This is huge! Even when we had enough rain for there to be water in the basement with me keeping the window open my hair did NOT frizz! I typically only wash my hair once every 5 or 6 days. It took a long time to adjust the chemistry of my hair to not be greasy after a day or so but now it doesn't look greasy until close to a week. Being able to fix my hair only once or twice a week is heaven for me. Seriously, best flat iron ever.

2. Garnier sleek and shine is helping me keep my hair straight. I use a flat iron heat protectant spray which helps protect the hair and also helps keep it straight. I didn't mention this with the flat iron but the sad truth about my hair is that even though it's naturally thick and curly I have to straighten it to curl it in anything other than wild curls. Wild curls get frizzy after just a few hours and I just feel messy and unkempt. I also use a serum from Garnier - just a tiny little drop of it - to keep my hair looking and feeling healthy.

Now on to the fun stuff....

3. One of the side effects for me with chronic pain is chronic nausea and dizziness. The more pain I'm in, the sicker I feel. If you have anything arthritic you know that first thing in the morning is the most painful time. My morning, every morning, includes waking up stiff and in pain. It takes me a couple of hours to "loosen up" but, unfortunately, that loosening up process involves taking a moderate pain reliever (ultram/tramadol) first thing and this particular medication is hell on an empty stomach. For years I've been in the habit of eating a saltine or a graham cracker or some little small nibble to be able to take those meds. Then one day I decided to try the pill with a can of V8 juice and ... what do you know? It worked perfectly. No nausea! I drink my V8, take my pills and about an hour after waking I feel well enough to have breakfast. And breakfast lately has been.....

4. Special K with Red Berries! I cannot get enough of this cereal. I am not a huge fan of fresh strawberries because they're a bit too tart but I find the dried strawberries in the cereal are perfect! I'm sure there are healthier cereals out there but this is better than having poptarts or danish and it gives me a little much needed fiber.

5. I'm still enjoying having Luigi's Italian Ice, mango flavor for my after dinner treat every night but I've found another mango product that I really, really like... Del Monte diced mango in cans! I have a freezer and fridge on my level of the house but I still rely on a lot of shelf stable stuff. I like canned peaches fairly well but canned mango has that little extra something that really appeals to me. I will pop the lid and eat straight from the can! I know the syrup with canned fruits is not the healthiest thing but again, I think it's healthier than eating a Little Debbie or Butterfinger. Lots of vitamin A and a little bit of fiber. Win, win! And I could drink a gallon of that syrup!

6. One more food favorite thing... something we refer to as "golf chicken". Barber Foods has stuffed chicken breasts that are so easy to prepare that they would be our go-to meal on the days that Pop was off playing golf (he usually cooks). They come in several varieties and you can buy them raw or precooked. The raw ones have to be cooked in the oven but the precooked can be prepared in the microwave which means... I can have dinner cooked in four minutes - two and a half minutes for the chicken, one and a half minutes for rice! The other night I fixed these for me and mom for dinner when Pop was at church and added brussel sprouts for an extra veg boost. The stuffed broccoli and cheese are my favorite and if you serve them over rice you can mop up the extra sauce with the rice.

7. Now that I'm coiffed and fed I can tell you how I'm passing time every day. I do a little cross-stitch every day and then work on my genealogy stuff and while I'm doing that I like to watch tv. I've been watching a lot of tv over the past few years and periodically I like to bring in shows that are in syndication, especially ones that I never watched while they were first broadcast. Lately my favorite syndicated show is Gilmore Girls. HOW did I miss this when it was first out? Hello, witty single mom raising smart daughter? That's my life... I mean, if you replace the one daughter with three sons. It's cute and quirky and has some really fun running jokes and makes me want to hunt down fictional Sleepy Hollow when I'm in Connecticut in June! There are two episodes broadcast every day and I record them so I can watch them straight through and fast forward through the commercials. I've almost completely been able to see Alexis Bledel as the daughter instead of the crazy lady that Pete Campbell had an affair with on Mad Men. And don't get me started on Mad Men. I'm not loving the way they're wrapping up the series and am certain that Don Draper will end it by committing suicide.

8. Last but by no means least... back in the early days of owning a computer one of my favorite games to play was Minesweeper. If you've never played it, the goal is to mark the "mines" and open all the boxes that don't have "mines". Every box you reveal without a mine will tell you how many mines are surrounding it. So like if the number revealed is three and there are only three boxes touching that box, you know all of them contain mines. It is very logical and also addictive. In preparation for spending time waiting away from other entertainment, you know, in hospital waiting rooms and on planes and so forth over the next few months, I downloaded a version of the game on my Nook. It's not unusual to find me watching a show on my laptop with the tv on and muted with Fox News on, playing minesweeper on my Nook while texting on my phone. Yep, that's me... working up to four screens at a time... of course, I don't do that very long without falling asleep but... yeah. Minesweeper is fun.

Those are my current favorite things... what are yours? Anything you want to share?

My next update will be all about baby Cosette and I'll be a whole year older then. Thanks for reading and for all your love and support! Love and hugs!