1. I salt my grilled cheese sandwiches. A habit I picked up from an ex-boyfriend. It sounds weird but is sooo good. Because the butter and cheese just aren’t enough…
2. My views on abortion changed drastically after getting pregnant. I am a true liberal at heart and would still NEVER vote pro-life, but I definitely have a different opinion on when life “begins.”
3. I would never wear shoes if I didn’t have to. I am barefoot most of the time, and prefer that to having anything on my feet. Being on maternity leave is great because I am always in my pajamas. I have a HUGE collection of shoes that I haven’t worn in months, and it is going to take some getting used to when I have to start wearing them again.
4. When I was in kindergarten I wanted to be an archaeologist when I grew up. I used to spend hours digging around looking for “fossils” because someone told me that rocks were really dinosour eggs. This older boy at our apartment complex playground used to make fun of me about it constantly and successfully squashed my dreams. I am pretty sure he a drug addict now.
5. I AM REALLY EXCITED TO GO BACK TO WORK! I always thought that being a stay-at-home-mom would be the most fun job ever…but I am getting bored in a big way. I love my baby a lot, but I am looking forward to the day that I can pay someone else to watch her for a few hours so I can go interact with grown-ups and use my brain.

How I spent my LAST babyless weekend:

SATURDAY:

8am: Wake up.

9am: Meet Jen for breakfast at Gravy. Eat a lot and gossip a lot. Things we are best at. Besides G-Chatting.

10:30am: Go by my Portland house to pick up some stuff I still have there (prompting a call from Aaron later, worried that someone broke in since I locked the deadbolt, something he never does. Yes, someone broke in and stole all the pink candles and pregnancy books, and then decided the house wasn’t secure enough.)

11am: Home Depot. Tracked down tiny pegs to hang shelves that we MUST hang in cabinets before Holland arrives. Decided Home Depot employees are incompetent and that place is hell on earth. Found pegs myself. Am exhausted from effort.

11:30am: Arrive back at home. Change back into default outfit of maternity leave (boxer shorts, tank top and my green robe. I am officially the weird pregnant cat lady of my neighborhood).

11:35: See what the cats are doing.

11:45am: Fall asleep.

5pm: Wake up. 

5:15pm: Call Emily, from whom I had four texts and four missed calls of the OMG ARE YOU HAVING THE BABY variety.

5:30: See what the cats are doing.

5:45: Emily arrives.

6pm: Joe comes home from Sauvie’s Island. Entertains us. Goes to bed.

6:30pm: Emily and I install my car seat base. We are successful. Or rather, she is. I watch. We decide I am a soccer mom.

7pm: Emily and I pack my hospital bag and pick out Holland’s going home and picture outfits. Squeal. Fold baby socks.

8pm to 10pm: Lay around the house, read. See what cats are doing.

10pm: Joe still isn’t awake, and thus, cannot cook us dinner. Mom and I eat warmed up leftover taco meat with cheese on top with chips.

11pm: Go to safeway for ice cream. Spend 10 minutes in the magazine aisle reading fitness magazines while holding a quart of double chocolate brownie ice cream, hot fudge and caramel topping. Decide even I can’t bring myself to purchase that combo, and leave the magazines behind.

SUNDAY:

Midnight: Joe wakes up, leaves to watch olympic basketball with his friends. Emma wakes up Mom and me. We entertain ourselves by looking at all my old pictures on my Flickr account, watching Fresh Prince reruns and spying on the cats.

3am: Finally start to fall asleep again. Joe comes home, wakes up me, Mom and all the animals.

4am: Mom makes us macaroni and cheese with kosher hot dogs. I tell Joe that I used his iTunes to download a Jonas Brothers song, to which he replies “MOM! Alexia used my password to buy a Jonas Brother’s song on my iTunes! Now someday when I try to buy a house my credit will be ruined!”

4:30am: See what the cats are doing.

4:45am: Go to bed.

8am: Wake up. Promptly go back to bed.

2pm: Wake up again. Take inventory of house. Everyone else is asleep. Even the cats.

2:30pm: Go to Burger King. Eat. Wonder how I could have forgotten how amazing Burger King is.

3pm: See what cats are doing.

3:30pm: Write blog.

4pm: My mom just woke up and said something about how we have stuff to do before Holland arrives. I am going back to bed. Right after I see what the cats are doing.

Four jobs I have had in my life:

1. Papa Murphy’s! I worked there in high school and for the first half of my freshman year of college. It was a blast. Our store was completely ran by teenagers. Word of advice to business owners: don’t put teenagers in charge of your business. One of the funny things about this job was that we were the corporate store, so they did all the filming of the training videos there. I am in some of the videos. One that I remember is that I show how to properly wash your hands while on the job. It involves singing Happy Birthday to yourself. A lot of other funny things happened at that job, but I should probably not broadcast my youthful indiscretions on the internet for all to see.
2. The Limited: Ah, retail jobs. This was one of several I have had in my life. I worked at the store at Lloyd Center my senior year of college. I spent most of my money on clothes. A LOT of drama went down at that store, and we ended up closing. I wasn’t very impressed by how that company treated its employees–a lot of people who had been working there for a long time got screwed. It didn’t really affect me though, and I quit right before graduation rather than stick around and deal with it. I still have some clothes from there. I also developed an addiction to food court food at that job.
3. Nordstrom: I worked at Nordstrom for a while after I graduated from college, in Handbags out at Clackamas. This job taught me how to spend more than I earn and the importance of accessorizing in threes. After taking my “Future Nordstrom Leaders” class I looked into my own future and decided I saw more than folding boxes and lying to women about how much they needed a $400 bag, and quit. Just like the Limited, this job was nothing but DRAMA.
4. I was so desperate to get out of Nordstrom I accepted a receptionist position at this small company in NW Portland (it will remain unnamed.) They were involved in stocks or bonds or something, but I could soon tell that something was REALLY sketchy about the way things were being ran. My job was mostly answering phones, running errands and putting together information kits for potential clients. Towards the end, creditors started calling A LOT about unpaid bills and our paychecks started bouncing. One day I showed up and was told we would no longer be getting paid. My co-workers and I spent the afternoon at Miu-Mius and 21st Bar and Grill instead of working. That was the end of my college/post-college streak of bad luck with weird jobs, as I started working as a Legal Assistant at LORSK soon after.

B) Four movies I would watch over and over again:

1. Beaches
2. Pretty Woman
3. Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind
4. When Harry Met Sally

C) Four places I have lived:

1. In Vancouver, WA for the first 18 years of my life, and sporadically here and there in years following (and starting again in August!)
2. In the house on N. Portsmouth with Quinn and Alana (and Coconut) from September 2004 to February 2005. Brief but very memorable.
3. Stadium Station Apartments next to PGE park from July 2005 to May 2006. Just me and Coconut. My attempt at living alone. Verdict: not for me.
4. The house on NE 14th & Ainsworth with Joe, Max and Aaron, and the animals (Emma, Basil and Mia and Coconut), from May 2006 to May 2007. A very, very fun year.

D) Shows that I watch:

1. Law and Order SVU
2. Anything on E!
3. Jon and Kate Plus 8
4. So You Think You Can Dance

E) People that e-mail me regularly:

1. My mom
2. Alana
3. Jen (email christmas!)
4. Nobody else regularly, although I get emails from Quinn and my grandma on a semi-regular basis.

F) Four places I have been:

1. Cancun
2. New York City
3. Las Vegas
4. Los Angeles

G) Four of my favorite foods:

1. Ice Cream x10,000
2. Ham the way my dad cooks it for me. Fried and delicious.
3. Deep fried spicy tuna roll at Yuki
4. My mom’s tuna fish casserole. I can’t replicate it, no matter how hard I try.

H) Four places I would rather be right now:

1. Not pregnant, at a bar downtown, drinking margaritas or dancing or doing anything that pregnant people can’t do.
2. Disneyland. Again, not pregnant.
3. At Good Samartian, post-birth of my baby.
4. Cancun.

I) Four things I am looking forward to next year:

1. Not being pregnant.
2. Living with my mom (no, really!)
3. Going to Cancun in the fall of 2009 with my mom and Holland.
4. Having the prettiest baby.

I LOVE LOVE LOVE this weather. I know it is crappy and rainy and I am sure everyone is so sad that the weather isn’t nice for the holiday weekend (wah), but you know what? If I can’t have fun, no one else should be able to either. It also makes sleeping all day easier when it is dark and rainy out. I love it!

And finally: I posted this a couple years ago on my myspace blog and thought I would repost it to see if anyone new wanted to do it. I think it is kind of interesting.

http://kevan.org/johari?name=alexialysandra

Coming soon: details of Alexia’s First Blood Draw (I survived!), plus: how much ice cream can one person eat? An experiment.

I had to leave work early today because I have felt sick all week and today it finally caught up with me. According to the internet, my uterus is the size of a soccer ball. I can feel said uterus under my rib cage and it makes me naseous.  Literally, it makes me naseous, not just the thought of it. I am a month away from my third trimester. Can’t wait!

In other news, I finally got a computer of my very own, which is pretty much the most exciting thing that has happend to me in, oh, about 6 months. I made chili this week and it turned out AMAZING. Oh, and the Office is on tonight. Wow, i lead an exciting life.

To close, I would like to introduce a new feature called “Rude Things Complete Strangers Have Said to Me This Week.”

“What does your husband do?” Oh, I am not married, but thanks old man I don’t know. Please pray for my illegitimate child!

“You are due in AUGUST?! But you are SO BIG! Are you having TWINS?” Thanks Safeway Checker Lady. I appreciate your concern. Please rot in hell.