bits about me

I'm just going to hog the blog for a bit to talk about me... (how unusual)

Some of you will know that I am running as a candidate for The Greens in the seat of Maylands in the upcoming WA State Election. My friend Jussie - who is a freak, a fact to which all of you who know him will attest - has developed the following file, a Flash game which will help me get elected!


Here is a link to it. Now online! Play Game!


And here is the link to download it if you can't do it here: VoteJimbo.exe (it's a 630kb EXE file, you can download and run on your 'puter. Pretty sure it's virus free...)

(Disclaimer: the game is for fun and is not considered election material and has not been authorised as such)

My hand is tired

I think my wrist has carpal tunnel. My fingers are alternately warm and numb. I have just spent the morning writing replies to over twenty people who were so sweet as to send emails with congratulations this morning - thank god I had today off work so that I could devote the required three hours to the task! James has stolen my little thing that holds my wrist up and he won't give it up (even though I've been typing all morning and all he's doing is playing a game) so I have officially decided to hate him.

As has been said the family telling times were pretty cool. The paternal grandparents nearly wet themselves and my dad's family took a while to get it. Then my dad paid for lunch for 9 people at a pretty expensive cafe so that was impressive!

Next time we go for an u/s we've been told to take a video, so no doubt James will convert it to a quicktime file or something similar so you can all check it out. Georgia nearly wet herself at being asked to be 'godmother' but we need a new term - any heathen/secular suggestions? Someone on another website suggested 'mentor' but I thinks that sounds like she needs to be giving hourly lectures every six months. Please help us out!

Other than that, I have nothing really to say. I think I'll go for a nana nap.

Telling people part 2

We spent this weekend telling people. It was weird - we told most of our friends (those we could get in touch with, at least) on Friday, and that went pretty well. After a day of working on the house with my Dad, we took my parents out to dinner on Saturday night (to Madras New Woodlands on William Street - vegetation Indian, very nice). To say the very least, they were pretty excited; we gave them keyrings that said "Grandma" and "Grandpa", it took them a second to work it out. And then my Dad burst into tears for about 10 minutes! The owner of the restaurant came over and checked whether he was OK! Anyway, he was just very excited...

We told Cass' grandma just before we took my parents out to dinner, she was pretty damn excited as well. Although she was trying desperately to keep her emotions in check, but we saw straight though it.

Yesterday we went to lunch with Cass's Dad, her step-mum and her sisters and their boyfriends. They were pretty excited, especially Cass' sister Brooke who seemed pretty keen to start baby-sitting straight away, which was pretty cute.

Anyway, I can't tell you everything or else the lady with the baby won't have anything to say!

First OB Appt

Today we went to my first obstetrician's appointment. What made this more interesting than it otherwise should be is that we decided from the moment that the appointment was over, we would start telling people. Call me superstitious, but no need to start going on about it before you are really sure.

Nothing much really happened actually. He did an ultrasound and we both saw the little thing going psycho in there - Adam (the ob) said "There it is, it's pretty active...[pause]...gee, it's really active in there". The little parasite was punching the air with two hands aflailing; James smiled indulgently while all I could think of is how many sleepless nights that means in the future.

He took down all the details that I'd already sent him on another form (maybe in case I cheated and just copied the answers down from someone else?) and that was about it. We do the test to find out about Downs (and other chromosomal abnormalities) in a couple of weeks, so we'll keep you all updated with that one. There's no question anyway, if it's a high risk then that thing's outta there.

Then we went out to buy some little presents to make telling the families on the weekend a little easier. We bought two sets of 'Grandpa' and 'Grandma' keyrings, two little crappy rose things just because they were the only things we could find that specifically said 'Aunt' and a card that was to a great-grandmother for my grandma. Hopefully this leaves little room for confusion - when they open these they'll know what's going on. I know it may seem a little weird but I am just really embarassed and freaked out about saying the words "I'm pregnant" out loud.

Who knows now (in order) - Lisa Wardle, Greta, MVCers (people at Cass' work), Alison X, Colette K

Who will know by the next 48hrs - everyone ever in contact with us.....*sigh*

telling people

We just wrote out the list of people we need to tell. Talk about stressful. Anyway, that will start happening on Friday, after we've been to the obstetrician and he tells us everything's ok.

There's heaps of work being done on our house, that's making the house dirty and impacting our lives in a negative way. I'm glad it's all being done early in Cass' pregnancy, everything that needs to be done should be done by the time the baby arrives.

Also, we're calling the baby "Monkeyspawn" due to the fact that in some forums we populate Cass uses the name "Greasemonkey" (a reference to both Seinfeld and Neighbours) and I use "Monkey" (as in the Great Sage, Equal of Heaven). It's interesting how much more likely we are to use a common name on the interweb than we are in real life.

ok, it's true!

So although we don’t have the website up and running yet, I’m still going to write an entry. So I found out that I was pregnant just before Christmas and just a day or two into starting my first job as a vet – ok, so it’s not exactly the smartest, nor the most financially savvy information that I’ve found out. After the initial shock Jimbo and I thought about it and realised well, if we were going to have children then now would be as good a time as any. Well, not really. In fact this is probably the worst time to have them, especially since he’s just been working form home for the past year and I was studying, which would have made it perfect to have a newborn in 2004….but we’ll work it out. Won’t we?

The worst thing was finding out just before Christmas and having to make excuses all through the Christmas/NYE period about why I wasn’t drinking – “I drank heaps yesterday, I’m giving my body a break”; “I think I’ll drive later on, I don’t like to drink at all if I drive”. The problem was that at our Boxing Day party, apparently everyone was already asking if I was pregnant! Hell people, I had only found out a couple of days previous!

Then there was having to tell the bosses at work – hardly what you think a new employee is about to launch on you. But they were great and, in a mutually beneficial arrangement, have organised for me to go on to locum rates – more money for me to acquire in the period pre-baby, as well as releasing them from the obligations of paying sick days to a potentially morning-sickness-afflicted person! I also jumped at the chance of working every second weekend since I want to get as many hours (and therefore dollars) up before I have to waddle into the house full-time in the last couple of months.

It was difficult also not telling people. I told Lisa W and Greta – Lisa since she deserves it, after her many, many years of talking to me abut what kind of mother I’d be (!!) and Greta since I would need someone in Perth who I could talk to if the pregnancy didn’t go well. But the absolute worst was talking to Georgia just a week after I found out that I was pregnant and not being able to tell her!

So how has the pregnancy been going you ask? Well the bit James has loved is the immediate and dramatic increase in breast size! He’s pretty happy about that one; me, on the other hand, I‘m not so enamoured – it hurts to roll over in bed cos they stretch – ouch! I feel ‘thicker’, despite trying to eat well and still going to the gym daily. i can’t get the hang of when people are talking about how far along you are –some go strictly by dating from the first day of your last period (in which case I am 11wks tomorrow from the date of writing this), others go by the suspected date of conception (which is two weeks later than that, making me only 9wks tomorrow). So I don’t know if you’re supposed to wait until after 12wks from the LMP date or 12wks from conception date before you can tell people. I guess that’s one more question to put on the list for the obstetrician next week.