You know, I had forgotten I had a blog...

Yeah, that's about the size of it.  I find being pregnant to be incredibly distracting, there are days I'm surprised I don't forget more.  We're doing the finals thing just now as well, and I'm learning about what it's like to be a single parent, as Mark is at school from early morning until late at night.  It REALLY sucks.  Oddly enough though, I seem to be getting more done than usual... I'm calling it "early nesting," as the key manifestation has been an overwhelming urge to vacuum.  Of course, we do also have a nifty new vacuum... and you know, you have to pick up before you can vacuum.  Elspeth probably thinks I've gone nuts.

For those who have asked, we don't know if it's a boy or girl yet... we were supposed to get the ultrasound this last Monday, but the ultrasound guy got sick or something, so we've been rescheduled to THIS Monday.  Hopefully the little guy cooperates, she hasn't cooperated for anything else this pregnancy.  The midwife looking for her heartbeat takes for freaking forever, we think my placenta is on the front so the baby is hiding behind it, but we shall see.  So, expect emails regarding the gender of our new one in the next couple of days, either way.

SURPRISE!

We're having another baby! We're due August 28, and are very excited. And nautious. Well, actually I'm the only nautious one, but I'm not nearly as bad as I was at this point with Elspeth. Big relief, that. Elspeth is still breastfeeding, so I'm HUNGRY, ALL THE TIME, but it's not such a big sacrifice to eat more. I like food, and while I'm getting sick of having to find more every two hours or so, I have an excuse to eat more of my favorite nourishing comfort foods. Like baked potatoes. Mmm, potatoes...

In less exciting news, the cherry shrimp I ordered arrived today, and seem to be doing well. They are swimming a lot, which worries me (usually they only swim when they're stressed out, or looking for some action), but it's probably just because they're in a new tank. More than half are hiding, too, so enough should survive to start a nice breeding colony.

My tetras are spawning!

... That's pretty much all the news right there. They decided to do their thing in the middle of a water change, so I'm afraid I might have accidentally sucked up the eggs, but hey, if they do it once they'll do it again, so I might have baby tetras in the nearish future. Woo!

New tank!

It's all set up except the filter (which I'm getting for Christmas), and it looks very nice. It's even on a stand that Mark made for me. ^_^ That being said, never buy wood at Lowes unless you know what you want already... because I didn't have a clue what I was doing, and the dude talked me into MUCH heavier wood than I needed. The folks at Home Depot are much more helpful. Anyway, here's a picture:

I'm going to put shrimp and snails in it. I just got the Java moss today, the stuff is harder to tie in there than I thought it would be, I need to rearrange it so that one can see the nice canyon between the two big back rocks that I made. Still, it almost looks like I planned how it would look, rather than just throwing plants and rocks in there.

Anyway, on to the news that people care about, I'm sure. Thanksgiving went well... we went to Mark's sister's place and had vegan thanksgiving, which was wonderful and delicious and we had lots of fun, but it gave Elspeth terrible gas. Then on Friday I decided I wanted turkey dang it so we had thanksgiving again. I know, I'm crazy. Then on Saturday I got really sick! It couldn't have been any of the food, because Elspeth and Mark ate all the same things and are completely healthy, so I must have picked up a bug somewhere.

Speaking of bugs, Elspeth is all over her rash! Just pink spots! What rash you say? Well let me tell you... we thought it was the chicken pox, but it was only in her mouth and on her one arm, so off we went to the urgent care clinic. The nurse there was certain it was chicken pox, so why don't you just take her home so she doesn't infect anybody. I still wanted to see the doctor, even though she made me feel silly for it. Good thing I did! Three doctors later, we were fairly certain it wasn't chicken pox (but it might be), and had looked at the blister goo under a microscope, thus determining that it wasn't fungal. Everybody had a different theory. And you know what it was? Cold sores. Yup, cold sores, herpes virus, just all over her poor little arm, and by the time the test results got back, on one of her legs too. Like I said, it's completely better now though, just where the rash was the worst, the skin is kind of pinkish, and slightly raised. Poor boo. She's just glad not to have to wear mittens all the time though, I'm sure, and THANK HEAVEN IT WASN'T THE CHICKEN POX!

Another fish!

So, the glolite tetras have been chasing each other around violently and biting each other's fins. Not good behaviour. I talked to Jay at the LFS down the street, he says that he's never seen tetras do that before... but agreed that adding another one wouldn't hurt, and could help. So we have four tetras now, the new one of which is notably bigger than its companions. We're calling it Dartanian, and it's actually doing a pretty good job keeping the original three in line... while they're quite as active as before, they aren't quite as VIOLENT. I win.

Now if only I could get that shrimp tank... if nothing else, Christmas is coming up... >^.~<

My poor shrimp!

At least one of them is dead (I found a corpse when I cleaned the filter), and I can't find the other two anywhere. I want an all shrimp tank! They were stressed out because the fish picked on them, and I'm sure that that's what did them in. Unless the fish killed them outright. Poor little shrimpies!

In news that people other than me care about, Elspeth had her birthday on Monday, and we had birthday pie. She was very cute, and smooshed it all over the place. Going further back, her party was on Saturday. It was supposed to start at three, but Elspeth fell asleep at freaking TWO FIFTY FIVE, but anyway nobody but my family and the Eastwoods got there on time... so the party REALLY started at about four when Elspeth woke up and the cousins finally got there. It was fun though, I made pinapple upside down cake, but we forgot to get out the ice cream, so now we have LOTS of ice cream.

Elspeth also grew another tooth... on the bottom! So she has three bottom teeth now, and no top teeth. All kinds of snaggle-toothed. But very cute. She's also toddling around really well now, especially when she's around all other kids who are walkers... but if there are any crawlers around, she crawls! She likes to be big, but she likes to be fast too, I guess.

Work is hard...

...but being your own boss is nice. I just got done with a HUGE game translation project. It was rough. I had some very late nights. But I made SEVEN HUNDRED DOLLARS in the last two weeks. Go me! Tokyopop has also emailed me, they have a position and want me to do an evaluation. Don't know if I can (or even want to, just now) take on a project, but hey, it's nice to be wanted and we'll see what they offer me.

We've also got our aquarium all the way stocked, and it's pretty nice. Very soothing. And I want another one. I bought some shrimp to go in this tank on a whim, and I'm absolutely addicted to the little critters. I'm trying to talk Mark into letting me set up a shrimp tank, and I'm going to try to breed zebra shrimp... it shouldn't be too hard, and they don't need a heater, so the set up should be pretty inexpensive. Just a tank, a cheap filter, rocks and shrimp.

That being said, I'm irked because I can only find two of the three shrimp we have currently. If I find a corpse before Saturday though, I can bring it in to the LFS and they'll give me a new shrimp, so if I can't find that last one by tomorrow I'm going to turn over the rocks and look in the filter. I don't think it's in there, but hey, might as well look.