The county came and cut the grass next door this morning. It's a good thing, too. It was seriously out of control. I suppose it's not a unique story in Northern Virginia -- overpay for a house (and they did) on an adjustable rate or interest only loan (just guessing) and be overextended and either file bankruptcy or face foreclosure. Looking at the recent sales in our neighborhood, there are a lot of banks taking ownership. Good times.

We got a call from the hospital today that their last audit showed that they had made an error (DUH), and we don't owe them anything. Glad we got that settled.

It only took a few months, and lots and lots of phone calls.

We owe the hospital for Bridget's birth because they charged me for a semi-private room on the 27th of May. How is that even possible considering that she wasn't born until 6:08am on the 28th?!? Why am I still even discussing this -- she's 15 months old! ARG.

We've been through this already. I thought we had gotten everything squared away. Brendan wrote letters and letters to the insurance company and had everything squared away with the NICU doctors (I thought).

Yesterday we got YET ANOTHER BILL FROM THE HOSPITAL. I have no idea what they think they are charging us for. They will be hearing from me.

More photos of Bridget's first few days are up in the gallery.

Now I must sleep.

Tomorrow is the big day. If she doesn't come on her own tonight (and at this point, I'm not counting on it) then we go to the hospital bright and early (6:30 am early) for an induction. So by the end of the day tomorrow she'll be here. I'm happy and scared all at the same time. Wish us luck!

There was a survey at the end of class last night. I felt bad about my ratings. Mostly 2's and 3's on a 1 - 5 scale with 1 being bad and 5 being good. I even dreamt about feeling bad last night.

They were simple questions really: was it what I expected (mostly), would I recommend it (nope), was the teacher organized (absolutely not), teaching method effective (not all the time) and so on. I felt bad because I'm not always the most organized person but then I thought to myself, I wasn't teaching the class so what the hell does that matter? I'm positive Brendan was more brutal than I was.

The awkward thing was that she picked them up before class was really over and so even though they were anonymous, she peaked at them when she picked them up. Plus there were only eight of us in class to begin with. I know I'll probably never run into this woman again, but part of me feels horrible that I told her she didn't do such a good job.

Only 20 days until the official due date, and only eight days left that I'll actually be in the office (being able to work from home is a wonderful thing). I'm feeling slightly more confident about the whole being a parent thing these days. At least we have a just about complete nursery (pictures later) now. We're just missing a chair which isn't the most crucial item.

We had a tour of the hospital yesterday. They've got some crazy security measures in place. Not only are we all given id bands, but the baby will get a sensor on her umbilical cord and if an unauthorized person (including me) takes her too close to an elevator or the stairs all sorts of alarms will go off, the elevators will stop working and security will swoop in. It all sounded very impressive and it wasn't something I had thought about at all.

Tonight is our last childbirth prep class. Thank God. Our teacher is not my favorite person. Brendan likes her even less. She never ever shuts up. And she tells the same stories over and over. We got a syllabus at the start of the class but we haven't followed it at all, and she's always going over the scheduled time -- by half an hour usually. She's got some pretty strong opinions about medications and breast feeding and everything. She always says she's not judging people who decide otherwise, but she is. It's pretty obvious. At least we'll be done with it tonight. Maybe there will even be a survey.

So that's the terribly exciting update.

I barely made it to 9:30 on New Year's Eve. We spent the afternoon at the Carnegie museum*. The walking on top of a four hour drive, plus a fancy-ish dinner up the incline had me totally worn out. We had thought about going out for some of the First Night festivities, but it was raining so that was pretty much out. Brendan hung out with me in the room until I fell asleep, then rang in the New Year at the hotel bar. This does not bother me one little bit. New Year's is not high on my list of must-celebrate holidays. Honestly, I'd rather be asleep than in a smoky bar surrounded by intoxicated people (especially when I'm not one of them). Brendan makes friends where ever we go, so he didn't need me.

I rung in the new year with a visit to the medics at Heinz field. Yep, I almost totally ruined the whole game for my husband. Not thinking about it, I reached down to get something from under my seat, and as I was there, I thought: oh shit, I should have used my other arm. Then bam, my shoulder was no longer in the socket. You have to understand, we had 2nd row seats on the 30 yard line right behind the Steelers' bench. It was likely the Bus's last home game and Brendan had been looking forward to it since the summer. He handled it well, though. We almost got my shoulder back in ourselves, but it wasn't quite there. Fortunately, the doctor at the stadium was able to reduce it easily and we only missed the introductions. Bren wouldn't have let me, but I was going to try and insist that he stay for the game if I had needed to go to the hospital. The arm is staying in the sling for a while. No more forgetting. There's nothing that can be done until after I have the baby anyway.

The football game itself was a whole lot of fun. I've never been to an NFL game before, so being that close to the action might have spoiled me a little. I have no desire to be up in the nosebleed sections. The fact that the Steelers kicked butt, and they had a nice little tribute to Jerome at the end helped out a lot, too.




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*Their famous dinosaurs are in Hoboken, NJ being cleaned!

So yesterday I'm just turning off the outside light like a regular person and oops, out goes my shoulder again. Unlike the last time, this time was not quick or relatively painless. No, this time we were waiting for four hours. It was not fun. Then the doctor put it back Lethal Weapon style. Nice. So yeah, this time I'm calling the orthopedist.