Ramble Ramble

I’m starving. Again.

Nevermind that I had a full dinner less than 2 hours ago. I’m ravenous.

Again.

I am always hungry these days. I can eat a full meal, and an hour later have a sandwich, and an hour later have another complete meal…and still be hungry. And I’m talking full on carbs, proteins, fats, veggies, everything falls to the enormity of my hunger.

There’s no escape really. I’m hungry when we get up in the morning, through the day, into the evening, late into the night…and yup, when I wake up to feed the kid in the middle of the night.

If I ate every time I was hungry these days, I would literally be eating more than half the day. I mean, I’m eating a hell of a lot anyway, but if I ate every single time I was hungry I wouldn’t have much time for anything else.

I know it’s because of the breastfeeding–the kid himself is ravenous much of the time, and I know my body has to keep up with that. It’s nice on the one hand because I feel like I have a responsibility to keep eating…you know, for the kids sake. But on the other hand, damn, I wish I wasn’t starving so much!

Things I desperately need to get around to doing someday:

1. Learn to manage my “down time” with the baby. This is the key to all other things on this list.
2. Mail out birth announcements. Before the kid graduates high school preferably.
3. Get my damn flu shot before I go back to work and have to share germs with the real world.
4. Get back on the commenting on blogs bus. I like to comment on blogs I swear, but since I mostly read at 3am on my iPhone now, commenting takes a level of…awakeness and coordination that I have yet to figure out. (Although, may I say, I’m so glad it’s NaBloPoMo so that I shall always have something to read at that 3 am feeding!)
5. Download, edit, and post some of the zillion pictures that are sitting on my camera. Go ahead and edit the other zillion that are on my hard drive.
6. Start working out.
7. Barring a miracle from the post-partum fairy, go shopping for some clothes to wear when I go back to work in a few weeks. Unless pajamas became business casual while I was on maternity leave?

As always, more lists can be found over at Anna’s at abdpbt!

P.S. Totally unrelated, but isn’t this the cutest little skeleton ever?

Today is the first day of my maternity leave, and I’m at a bit of a loss of what to do with myself until the babe gets here. I mean, all I really want to do is to sit in the chair with my feet up (thanks to what appears to be some form of a lovely little thing called psd, doing much more than that gets painful fast). But I sort of feel like this is my last week or so of having time to myself for a while so I should enjoy it or something.

Since I’ve already taken care of about 98% of the nursery/baby stuff, and we’ve stocked the freezer with quick and easy foods for the first few weeks, and I’ve gotten all the healthcare paperwork as done as I can without having the kid here, I’m down to just a few things baby related to do. The rest can be for me!

So here’s my list of ideas for things to do with myself until the kid gets here:

1. This one’s easy–my 30th birthday is on Wednesday, so we’ll probably go out to dinner that night. I’m also going to see about a massage, a manicure and a pedicure. A nice day of pampering as I enter my 30’s and motherhood sounds pretty damn good.
2. Go to a matinee movie during the week.  What should we see?
3. Spend some time at the pool. Since we don’t have air conditioning (we live too close to the beach), in the afternoon when it gets hot, I think this will be a great solution!
4. Catch up on some TV & movies that N.C. has no interest in.
5. Maybe a little jaunt to the bookstore to splurge for a new book or two to read at the pool.
6. Take naps. I’ve never been well rested during my pregnancy, and heaven knows when the little one gets here I won’t be getting much sleep, so I think naps when I’m drowsy this week are in order.
7. If I get ambitious, I may organize some old photos. Ok, maybe it’s more than “some”…I’ve probably got over 1000 photos that need to be put in albums. It’s a project I’ve been meaning to take care of for a good year or so, but just never get around to.

Yeah, I dunno, that list still seems to be a little light. Any suggestions or recommendations?

As always, more lists can be found over at abdpbt:

Hi there bloggy land, did you miss me?? I missed you all, although frankly we were so busy over the past week I could barely think about what to have for dinner, much less posting on a blog. Seriously, whose idea was it to have an art show, and move on the same weekend?

N.C.’s show on Thursday was pretty cool–lots of amazing art, plus got to add the following celebrity sightings to my list: Jason Biggs, Chelsea Handler, and yes, the one and only Mr. Belding (quite the nostalgia trip that one)!  If you want to check out some awesome TV themed artwork, you can see all the show pieces here.

Of course, the big news this weekend was the move. And of course, we were still packing things up on Friday night. Is it just me, or are those last few boxes when you’re packing up your life almost impossible to get finished? Anywho, after a late nights on Thursday (art) and Friday (packing), we were up bright and early on Saturday for the official move.

Now, being that I’m almost 5 months pregnant, I wasn’t allowed to do much lifting–mostly of the “here, carry these pillows” variety. So instead, I spent the day at the new place unpacking and waiting for the cable guy to show up. Oh, and trying to keep the cat from freaking out too much (yeah, not so successful at that one. I think he found every hiding spot in the house).

I definitely got the easy end of the bargain, but even still, at the end of the day my feet hurt so bad I felt like crying every time I had to stand up. And lets not forget also that we’ve moved to a place that has 2 stories, which means stairs. Which means that I went up and down those stairs about 900 times on Saturday. Yeah, hi there thighs. Ugh, I’m out of shape as it is, spending the day climbing stairs was perhaps the last thing my legs were expecting from me.

But all in all, the move went smoothly, we’re completely functionally unpacked (except N.C.’s studio), and even have some things up on the walls. We are going to need some furniture–we just cannot make do without a full sized bookcase anymore–and some other little things, as is usually the case when you move into a new place, but we’re loving the new space.

Once we get a little more settled, I’ll take some pictures of my favorite parts of the house and post them here. For now though, I feel as though a giant weight has been lifted off my shoulders–we’re in a place that has enough room for us to grow into, we love the neighborhood, we love the location, and most importantly, we love the place. It feels like home.

Today, I didn’t have to be anywhere for work. No conference, no trade show, nothing. It was glorious–I got to sleep in (ahhhh), I met a friend for lunch, and I had a leisurely afternoon all to myself. My original plan was to spend the afternoon shooting pictures around New York, but I gave that up pretty quickly due to cloudy skies and wind gusts up to 50 mph.

Being back in New York is such a strange, surreal experience for me. I lived here for 3 years, and because it’s such a compact city that requires walking everywhere, it’s more familiar to me than the San Diego area. In some ways, I’m not sure I’ll ever be as familiar with another city as this one–or parts of this one anyway.  

I’m in midtown, which is where I worked, so I’m by a lot of old lunch haunts. I’ve got a list of favorite restaurants to hit up before I leave. I made sure to go by some of my favorite spots today after lunch–buildings I love, parks I miss, favorite neighborhoods, etc. It’s a reminder of all the amazing things I miss about New York.

Yes, I do miss things about New York. I miss the access, the ability to find food at midnight, the energy, the mix of cultures, the variety of life here. I’m reminded of all these amazing things whenever I come back to the city, reminded of those things I loved about living here.

Of course, there are more things I DON’T miss about New York…or rather, things that are still strong enough for me to know I never want to live here again. But it is nice to remember and reminisce about the good and amazing things about this city, the things that I miss.