So... mouse traps work

Think us inhumane if you want, but we are down one mouse in our apartment with no indication of others. The senior pastor sponsored some mouse traps for us and they worked quite nicely. I did not care for the couple noises I heard following the snap, but luckily my dear one came home and took care of it so I didn't have to look at the dead little mouse.

The insomnia returned a couple days ago, of course this occurred right after telling my mom that I was sleeping better and that I was getting plenty of rest. I dread the nights now because not only am I not sleeping, but I often feel like I'm about to throw up and that is when I notice cramping/false labor. And then I get all excited/scared and then I don't sleep even more. Then I eat. Vicious cycle.

This internship came with a Christmas tree and some decorations so we put that up on Monday. It is very small, but that's okay. It's still festive and provides tree glow, which is nice considering we are down to about 6 hours of daylight. That feels optimistic though, the sun is never very high in the sky and it's always in the south so it doesn't ever really feel like real daytime.

Alright. We are officially at 39 weeks. Baby is due next Thursday. In case we don't (read: hopefully we won't) make it to week 40, I decided to take pictures this week. The one has a little shadow to it so the belly looks even bigger but oh well. At this point it just doesn't matter. This week you get front and side view. There is a smile on my face, but you can probably tell that I'm really not happy. I'm not sad either, I'm just done. (Sweater brought  to you by Kristin T. Thanks friend!)

I mentioned last time that I was hoping to discuss Bob Smith's Minnesota Christmas Trees. Well, I wasn't able to get over there to get a picture, but this is the name of the closest Christmas tree vendor. I don't know if he imports them, just thinks Minnesota trees give a Christmassy vibe, or it's called this because its close to Minnesota Drive (one of the main roads here). Whatever it is, it is fun.

Late night TV taught me that Alomune is great for increasing your immune system because it comes from the Minnesota Larch tree, and everyone knows in Minnesota you need to have a strong immune system. Yep, that's what I learned. I didn't even know there was a Minnesota Larch tree. I feel I don't know anything anymore.

In other Minnesota news, UAA (University of Alaska Anchorage) is playing St. Cloud State in hockey in their next game. Do you see how it's tricky to get through a day without hearing about Minnesota? 

The other day NDSU was up here for a basketball tournament and the girls did not do well. It was fun watching the highlights though, because NDSU and UAA have the same school colors so it was very pretty. I'm not a huge basketball fan.

I forgot to drop some nature knowledge on ya'll last time (yes, that sentence just happened). Do you ever wonder why polar bears look so much whiter in the arctic than they do at the zoo? This is partially due to the fact that their fur is not white, it is transparent and pigment-free and scatters and reflects visible light. They look whitest when they are clean and in the sunlight in the snow.

Dan and I are going out for dinner tonight- one last time before little guy gets here. We have a coupon for Siam Cuisine, so it should be pretty inexpensive too. Then just a couple errands and we are really ready for dude to arrive. For real. Get out, get out, get out.

Anchorage nuances

I hope you all enjoyed your Thanksgiving. I watched the whole parade and the whole dog show for the first time ever so clearly that was a win. We went over to a friend's place for dinner and enjoyed a good meal with some good people.

I wanted a hoagie the other day so we located one at a pizza place. It was called a hoagie on the menu and baked on a homemade pizza dough bun, so we thought that we would give it a chance. Ummm, it was good, but in any other world this item would be called Stromboli and it was in no way a hoagie. Anchorage does this though. Or rather, they just do what they want. There is a Mexican restaurant called Gallo's, and anywhere else this would be pronounce 'gayo,' except maybe by the old white people in a community who simply don't know any better. I thought that would be the case here, but even in the commercials on the radio it is pronounced Gallo's. And it's not like there is no Mexican population up here; people know how it should be pronounced, but no one does it right, and everyone just talks about it. Maybe it's a marketing strategy of some kind.

Some of you saw that I posted on facebook that we have mice. This is simply an awesome thing to learn 9 days before having a child. On the upside, our landlady might get a cat! Yes! It was brought up at my appointment yesterday and my doctor said that the mice problem is partially because there is so little snow cover so far this year so they have no where to burrow or something like that. She found some in her garage as well. We also found a granola bar stuck between the wall and the kitchen cabinet so I don't think that helped the situation at all. We keep waiting for snow to come and it just doesn't. It has been sunny forever, which is kind of good considering the days aren't very long. It is so dry though. My face skin is falling off in heaps.

Baby is still doing well. Some contractions have happened, but nothing noteworthy. I'm not particularly fond of how much I weigh, but luckily I'm pregnant so that makes it a bit better. I even got a flu shot for the little guy, which is something I don't do, but my doctor recommended it and I figured what the heck. I have never gotten a shot from a smaller needle. I seriously didn't feel a thing, it was so weird.

In these last days of my pregnancy I have been reflecting over the last 9 months. They have been the longest nine months of my life. Besides being sick and dizzy the whole time there really have been no bad things in my pregnancy. I have no weird leg veins or pains, no stretch marks, my feet didn't stretch out, my fingers aren't puffy, and I haven't had to kick Dan out of the bed in order to have room to sleep. In fact, all that pillow support they recommend made my back hurt so that was done a long time ago. I realize that I'm not in the clear yet, but even so, I've been pretty lucky... I guess.

Next time I hope to speak about Bob Smith's Minnesota Christmas Trees. Very exciting.

Hiccups or arrhythmia?

Team Nelson had a surprisingly busy weekend.

First of all, car seats suck. Well, they wouldn't if we had a normal sized vehicle, but we don't, so they do. They say the safest place is in the center of the back seat. Not that we have an option because it won't fit behind either of the front seats. It is wedged in to the middle space where our arms hit it when we're in the car. Not only that, but even though the car seat comes with a multiple level thing so you can adjust it so the baby is reclined enough, it doesn't have the right level for our apparently super slanted back seat so we had to put a towel under it. This doesn't sound like a big deal, but figuring all this out in the back seat of a tiny car when its 20 degrees wasn't great fun.

The baptism of his first grandchild and the sudden deployment of his son once again took the senior pastor to Minnesota to spend some time with his family. This left Dan in charge of things this weekend. On Friday we attended a rehearsal dinner for the couple he married on Saturday. Saturday he was at church from noon-ish to nine to monitor things and do his first wedding. Sunday he did all the church business (two services, confirmation and adult bible study). My friend was very sleepy come Sunday afternoon. He is also preaching next Sunday but the church has a contingency plan in case an early baby comes. I feel it won’t be an issue though.

Saturday morning, I hung out with some friends and then we went to a craft fair downtown of locally made things from art to jam. This was especially convenient because I was able to do most of our Christmas shopping. I know it’s early, but I doubt that it will be high on our list of things we want to do in the middle of December with a newborn. The only problem is that I want to eat some of the stuff we got. I should probably wrap it up so I’m a little less tempted.

This should be a nice week for Dan- Monday was his day off and then with Thanksgiving he gets Thursday and Friday off too. I cannot believe that Thanksgiving is already this Thursday. It seems so early! We've been invited to a friend’s place, actually a couple places, so we are happy that we get to celebrate the holiday with a larger group of people, instead of just us alone in a basement. Wow, I make it sound so awful. If we were spending it alone it really wouldn't be that bad. Our apartment is plenty nice and we know how to cook.

On Sundays I always try to get up for church. I am probably successful 50% of the time based on sleep patterns and blood pressure. What I find annoying is the last two times I have gone to church I have been greeted by bugs in my morning time. Last Sunday was a centipede and two weeks before that was one of those fast spiders I have mentioned before. I’m sure some of you are thinking that it’s just that you are awake when the bugs are out and you’re noticing them. Well, let me tell you dear reader, regardless of church I am almost always awake at this time, so your hypothesis does not stand. My theory, which has not yet been proven wrong, is that God is saying, “Hey Dorisa, good effort getting up this morning! Here is a bug to really test your dedication to starting the day!” Dan disagrees with me but has offered no alternative idea. He, however, does dispose of the bug after a five hour period of cup purgatory.

At the doctor yesterday when listening to the baby's heartbeat we also got to hear his ferocious hiccups that I'm fairly sure he inherited from me. The doctor was concerned for a second that he developed an arrhythmia but no worries, he's good to go. He remains in correct position and thrashes about like he's stuck in a cage with wasps. His movements almost made me puke the other day. I was not amused.

Your education today is thus: During a solar eclipse, the temperature can suddenly drop by up to 35 degrees. It's good to learn things.

It's tricky to rock a rhyme

That song has been stuck in my head since watching the news this morning. It won't leave.

We have a car seat! And a bundleme! We are almost good to go on the baby front. The car seat has jungle animals on it. It is very exciting. Today we are doing car seat installation. That will be fun...

Dan and I have learned that weather forecasting up here is particularly bad. We had no freezing rain, and only an inch of snow. What is troubling though is that the roads are already terrible and we have a lot of winter left. I was watching Early Today the other day and they actually covered some weather in Alaska! It was very funny, they kept saying how cold it was going to be up here. I think the highs for the day were 30 here in Anchorage and 2 in Fairbanks. When the local news came on, all the weather people talked about was how nice and beautiful of a day we were going to have. I agree with the local news. It was a beautiful day. We had some interesting fog that made us think the city was burning down, but it was a nice day. Today we had some freezing fog that made the trees look absolutely beautiful. Because of the lack of sun it stuck around for much of the day too, so that was nice.

I think that it would be easier to not miss Minnesota if it weren't mentioned every day. I may have talked about this before, and if so I apologize. There is a commercial on right now talking about UAA playing the best teams in hockey and they mention Minnesota. All the standings and stuff for hockey are in the news every night too, because they have no professional sports up here, and they always have Minnesota up there. The Mayo clinic is, of course, always doing something that makes national news- probably about five times since we got up here. Also, people up here fly a lot. I mean A LOT. Many of them have made trips back to Minnesota, including our landlady, friends, and the senior pastor here. Not just once, but multiple times. National weather forecasts have also been midwest heavy lately. Apparently ya'll have had some weather. We could use some weather. Apparently we are supposed to have a foot of snow by now and we have only had 4.5"- and only an inch on the ground currently. I would be okay if the snow waits until after the baby comes, but that probably won't happen.

I try not to talk about politics, mostly because you either agree with me or me voicing my opinion on a blog wont have any effect on what you think so why waste everyone's time? Something really funny happened during the election though that I think you should know about, if you don't already. First of all, I don't understand how someone who thinks that evolution and the big bang theory are lies straight from the pit of hell is allowed to be on the US House of Representative's Science, Space and Technology Committee. I know he's not the only idiot in there, but let's move on. I am a little angry, however, that he ran unopposed in the election, but super thrilled for Charles Darwin, who received 4,000 votes as a write-in candidate. Go Darwin!

And of course, a bit of knowledge to help you in your day. The back of lions' ears are dark so that when they are hunting in a team, they can see each other. Also, Saturn's rings contain 26 million times the amount of water on earth. Neat, huh?

I will teach you things about wildlife

Besides the spiders that scamper across our floors occasionally, the picture below contains the most frightening thing about our apartment. It is the hook on the back of our bathroom door. I find it just a bit creepy. And it's not like the bathroom has a frog theme or anything, there is simply this weird frog hook.

I had some great spicy Thai food yesterday with a friend. Goodness it was delicious. It might have food coma-ed me a bit, but these days it's real hard to tell.

We have a couple of friends who offered to buy us a car seat. Holy generous batman. We decided not to go with the whole travel system thing because of how bulky those strollers are and the fact that we just wont need it much and then we'll have to get it back to Minnesota and everything. Then we were thinking about getting a convertible car seat so we wouldn't need to buy another, but Cory pointed out that his didn't fit in his explorer and our back seat is minuscule, so it probably wouldn't work in there either. Honestly, they should just make one car seat in different colors. It's hard for pregnant people to make decisions. Really hard.

We got a bit of snow early this morning and we're supposed to have some freezing rain coming this weekend so that should be fun to do car seat searching in. Especially considering that they don't use salt here and the drivers are crazy. Seriously. I consider myself an assertive enough driver, but it is like I am the slowest Sunday Driver in the world. And then we are surrounded by giant trucks when we're on the road so it's extra terrifying.

I've learned some things from the TV this week. First of all, I have learned that I really like the show Big Cat Diary on Animal Planet. It's great. It follows cheetahs, leopards and lions and their families and it's wonderful. Baby big kitties are especially cute. The knowledge I have for you is thus; Giraffes have the same number of vertebrae in their neck as humans do and because giraffes are most vulnerable when they are sleeping, they only enjoy about five minutes of deep sleep every twenty-four hours or so. Also, they look super awkward when they run, especially from behind. Now you can rest easy knowing you learned something new today!

Moose are so big! They are the elephant of Alaska!

I have voted in three presidential elections in my life, but haven't been able to go to a polling place for any of them. Minnesota does have a very easy absentee voting system, and I suppose it's nice not to have to wait, but I wish they would send a sticker. I would like a sticker.

The big story again today is a fantastic moose encounter around four yesterday afternoon. I can not believe how big they are. The calf below is easily larger than any buck I've seen, and when they walked away, you could hear them trotting down the hill, even though we were in a basement. They are not so much a creature light of foot. It was so magical though, Dan just looked up and saw a window full of moose. Due to where the windows are, I couldn't get  them both entirely in one picture, but it was still a good viewing opportunity.

The gigantic eight month baby bump is below. I know, I know, some people are this pregnant at six months, but that doesn't make my experience any less uncomfortable. Besides my aching ribs, I pulled a muscle in my upper stomach (assuming there are any still there) while rolling over in bed. It's just that a person's body is used to moving certain ways and when that liberty is taken away, the likelihood of injury increases by apparently about a billion. My balance and leg flexibility are still good (yay for dance) but, for example, when putting on pants, one needs to lift a leg, and that leg is certainly not used to bumping into belly. It is sad every time. Dan has no balance. Or flexibility. It makes me feel a bit better about just having the belly issue.

I told Dan he should have written "1 month left" but he likes to keep people guessing.

After a fairly invasive exam yesterday, my doctor informed me that there is no reason to believe that the baby is coming this week, which is good I suppose. At the beginning of my pregnancy, as most of you know, I was so very sick. Because of this, at my first appointment, my blood pressure was like 140/100 or some crazy high number like that. It has been trending downward ever since, which is good because high blood pressure is extremely dangerous during pregnancy. It is now very low. Yesterday it was 98/70. I take this as proof that this baby is very slowly, yet very surely, killing me in a very stealthy manner.

Ahh, music from high school

I'm sitting here enjoying some old music. It is nice. Music is magical. If you don't think so, you are either wrong or have not had enough music in your life.

Alright, down to business. I hope you all enjoyed your Halloween festivities. Out of the 3 most frightening holidays our country celebrates, I think it is my favorite. Sorry about the blog slacking. I have chosen to take the sleep when it comes to me, and sometimes that interferes with my afternoon access to the church's internet.

After Dan's run last week, he came home with a smile that said "something has not gone well." From this, I inferred that he either fell (which he does more than he should) or he was ridiculously cold. It was the latter. Dan proceeded to get a pretty bad cold, and actually listened to me when I told him to take a decongestant instead of using a nose pot. He is better now and after a mostly restful weekend, he was healed and back to super hyper on Monday. Monday is his day off so I was the recipient of all his craziness. Fun.

Because of his cold though, and my current state of blah we did miss the Halloween party we wanted to go to. He was just to worn out and head miserable and I wasn't feeling the best and a little nervous about going to a party that would probably have a lot of people and limited places to sit. That would lead to a tip and no one wants a tipping pregnant lady. Because I skipped the party though, I finally had energy to get up and go to church. That didn't really go well though either. I know people don't care if I don't stand, but I feel stupid being a supposedly healthy young-ish adult and not standing. But again, it was better than tipping over, so I thought the people would prefer the sitting. And yea, no one even mentioned it. Someone did mention that they didn't recognize me from the back because from that angle I don't look pregnant at all. That was a welcome comment. My brother used to joke that when I turned to the side I could not be seen. That is certainly no longer the case.

We finished our baby class. I was hoping for more confidence from the class, but now I'm just aware of all the stuff I won't remember instead of being entirely clueless. I don't know which is worse. Our teacher really was quite delightful. She also runs the Cuddlers group for new moms and their teeny tiny babies so I might go there to be overwhelmed with all the other new moms and to get out of the house a bit more. We got all registered at the hospital so they are ready for us. I am at 35 weeks today, and I am also ready. Apparently you are considered full term at 37 weeks so once that point comes I'll be fine with a timely exit. My phone app says my baby is over 18 inches long and about 5.25 pounds, or as much as a honeydew melon. Sounds like the size of a baby to me.

We have a slight spider problem in our apartment. It isn't atrocious, but I don't like spiders. They are pretty girthy little guys and extremely fast. One upside was that they weren't climbers, we only saw them on the floor, and I guess the fastest ones are still grounded, but there was one that made it onto the counter in the bathroom. Don't fret, I had a cup. He was not happy about being cupped, or maybe that I accidentally ripped out one of his legs during the cupping, but I have no sympathy for spiders. If they wanted to live, they would stay away from me.

I may have mentioned before that we have some annoying dogs next door who seem to hate everything about the people who inhabit our house. The pack includes a German Shepherd, a possible Lab/Retriever mix, and a Rottweiler who bark all the time, don't have enough room to run, and don't get played with enough. There is a spot in the fence that got destroyed during the storm and we don't know if that's how they got out the other day or it was something else, but on Tuesday they got out. You'd think it'd be time for them to go on an adventure, but no, they seriously just circled our house for like three hours. Luckily, Margaret upstairs is back from her trip and took care of it. It was her first full day back in town though and she hates those dogs, so I doubt that was the welcome home present she wanted.

I am absolutely fed up with living in places with radiators. They are the worst. I have lived in such dwellings for six years and I feel I have put in my time. In Fargo, our radiators sounded like an angry man pounding on pipes into a microphone. At seminary they were less loud, but sprayed water everywhere. Now, it seems that we have multiple drumlines in our ceiling and walls. Most annoying is that these noises occur between 6 pm and 9 am. I know I have mentioned I like the noises that buildings make, and I do, but this is out of control.

Dan and I were unsure if we would get trick-or-treaters at our door last night so we went out. It was a good night and I actually felt good for the whole thing. We went to Target (which was packed), went to Kincaid to look (unsuccessfully) for moose, had delicious Thai food, got some cake, a new headlamp for Dan, and then got Dan a movie and beer. It was a success. We have noticed as of late that the words we say to each other are a bit odd. Most recently I told Dan, "Nice hair... you look like Satan" and at a different time he said to me,"You're cute like the fish on Mario." Oh well, at least we found each other.