Birthdays and Car Trouble

Things I consider accomplishments right now:
- I pee less than 3 times during the night.
- I eat a meal without ending up with something dribbled on my stomach.
- I don't fall asleep until 9pm.
- I can bend over to pick something up.
- I actually do my hair and/or makeup (though this one has always been something I struggled with).

That's all that I can think of right now.  I'm sure as these last 8 weeks tick down I'll come up with more to add to the list, but for now (seeing as I just woke up) it's good enough.

This past week was our birthdays (mine was the 25th and Tucker's was the 30th).  They were alright I guess... or well, mine was pretty good.  We had some pizza and wings for dinner, and both my parents and Jenna got "presents" for me.  My parents got me one of those edible arrangements, which was absolutely delicious.  And Jenna decided that I needed more food and ordered me some fancy cupcakes from a little shop near campus.  And here, I'll even post pictures (look at me feeling slightly motivated).

Tucker's birthday was...... not quite normal.  The day before his birthday was packed full.  We both had to be at campus at 8am; me for work, Tucker to get ready for his committee meeting later that day.  Tucker mentioned that he was starting to feel a little sick when we got to school.  There wasn't much of anything that we could do for him then though, because I had to work until noon and he would be busy until 5.  On top of working for both of us that day, we had our first 'childbirth' class that night from 6-8.  So super packed full day.

When I got off at noon, I went and did a little bit of shopping for the lab because the next day (Tucker's birthday) they would be having paninis for lab lunch.  It was about 1:30 when I was finally heading home.  When I turned on the car, the heat gauge thingy automatically went all the way up to the top like the car was over heating.  It kind of confused me, so I turned of the car and let it sit for a second, then turned it back on and it was normal.  So I drove home.  I didn't want to tell Tucker about this yet because I knew it would stress him out and he wouldn't be able to focus on his committee meeting (which is a fairly big deal).  So I stayed home for a few hours, then on my way to pick him up, the temperature gauge shot up to the top again.  Luckily I was only about a minute from the school, so I turned the heater on full blast, rolled down the windows and drove the rest of the way to school.

I guess I should mention that about a month ago, we had the same problem with the car 'over heating' and had it in to be looked at.  They told us that the problem was a cracked cap on the radiator (or at least I think that's what it was) and it only cost us $20 to fix.  When Tucker came out and got in the car, I finally told him what the car was doing (and he was really appreciative that I hadn't told him before because he would have been worrying all through his meeting; I know him so well), so we decided rather than have the car towed like we did last time this happened, we would just drive it to the shop we had gone to before because it wasn't that far away from campus.  We dropped the car off, and then were trying to get ahold of the rental car agency so that we would have a way to get home and then back down to the shop to get the car the next day when it was fixed, but no one was answering.  So on a whim, we decided to try riding the bus home.  Tucker used to ride the bus all the time when we lived at our old place, but he hadn't yet tried it at our new apartment.  Yay for adventures!  However, he called one of his friends while we were on the first bus back up to campus and asked him for a ride home.  Needless to say, we didn't make it to our first childbirth class.

Tucker's birthday dawned and he was feeling more sick than the previous day, and it was rainy outside, and he was going to have to ride the bus to school if he wanted to go, so he decided to just take the day off and stay home (yay!).  I made him breakfast in bed and we kind of just took the rest of the day easy.  Around mid-day the car place called and told us the news.  Basically they were needing to replace some stuff to do with the cooling system and also a couple things dealing with the oil were leaking and needed to be replaced (obviously I don't remember exactly what the stuff was, I don't pay much attention to car stuff).  It was going to be a grand total of about $550 to fix everything.  Um... ouch.  But we told them to go ahead and fix everything, they said the car would be ready by the end of the day.

Now normally, it wouldn't be a super big deal to get to this place in a short amount of time... but we didn't have access to a car and Tucker didn't want to impose on his friend again for a ride.  So we decided that when the time came for us to pick up the car, we would just take a taxi (wahoo!  never ridden in a taxi before).  This was more stressful than I initially thought it would be because they didn't call us to tell us the car was done till about 50 mins before the place was supposed to close.  We called the cab place to ask for a taxi and were told that it would be about 15 minutes till they could get someone to us.  This was still ok; plenty of time to get to the shop.  Wrong.

The cab didn't get to our apartment until 20 minutes before the shop was supposed to close.  It was going to take us about 20 minutes to get there.  And that's if the traffic stays good (we have to take the freeway).  Luckily, we arrived a few minutes before they closed.  I got the special job of paying the taxi guy, which we didn't think was going to be a big deal cause their website said that they took credit cards.  When I asked the guy if this was true, he shook his head no.  Awesome.  Normally we would have been screwed, but I just happened to have about $40 in cash on me, which, really, is amazing that I did, cause neither of us ever carry cash.  I was that day, however, because I had been planning on going to get our registration renewed that week and needed cash to do that.  So, we were able to pay the taxi guy.

We paid for the car stuff and then decided to go to a chinese buffet place for Tucker's birthday dinner.  Normally this would be ok with me, but I was starting to get a headache, and for some reason I was feeling kind of nauseous, but I didn't want to ruin one good thing that Tucker would have on his birthday, so I didn't say anything and we went.  I ended up eating a cup of soup, 2 mini-sugar-covered biscuits, and a couple slices of fruit.  But Tucker enjoyed it, and that was all that mattered that day.  I feel really bad that his day wasn't all that great, but we get to play D&D this week and I also got him a D&D book for his birthday, so hopefully this will make up for the crappy day at least a little bit.

So long as we don't have any more problems with our car overheating, I think we'll be happy.  It's just kind of annoying.

Have a doctor's appointment this coming Monday (32 weeks along!!!) so I'll try and get an update posted here sometime next week.