We leave for a month in Europe – all over northern Europe – in a little over a week. Torsten will get to see Opa and Oma again (and boy, do I think he will enjoy them now, since he’s big and full of energy and likes to move – not to mention social and curious, just like he’s been from early on), and to meet more family in Sweden and Germany. Mama will get a week alone to see things and do novel research. Papa will get to attend a conference and give some talks and see his family and his hometown. So there’s lots to look forward to (ok, I realize here that it looks like Christian will be doing a lot of work, but he always is…), and a crapload to do to get ready.

In addition to putting holds on mail and the milk delivery and blah blah blah, I must, in the next week, even with a baby, somehow complete the following:

• Finish Torsten’s christening gown. A master seamstress I am not, but I am determined to finish this. We’re having him baptized in the little town Christian’s aunt (Torsten’s soon-to-be godmother) and grandmother live in so that his family can participate (this is the only reason we’re not doing it at our church here – I admit I’m a little sad at this, since my friends at church have been so supportive since from the pregnancy onward and they are all so amazingly fond of Torsten), so he needs something to wear other than an Elmo T-shirt More on this later if I don’t completely foul it up.
• Do hordes of laundry. No, really. It’s amazing how much laundry accumulates when all you want to do is stare at a blank wall for an hour or two at the end of the day because you are just sapped. (Note to various deities in control of the weather, especially the one my son takes after: this freaking heat is not helping. A good week of thunderstorms (not interfering with our flight) would be appreciated.) I can’t seem to keep up.
• Clean up the house. This is an ongoing battle anyway, but really, who wants to come home to complete chaos? (My study excluded – I’ve almost given up on that, which is annoying, because I like my study)
• Finish typing up our itinerary. Now, before you think I’m so anal-retentive and organized (hahahahaha! anyone who knows me in real life has just laughed so hard at that idea that I promise you that there is currently mass pants-changing going on worldwide) that I schedule every second of my vacations/travel, understand that our trip is insanely scheduled and was cobbled together manually. I haven’t used a travel agent since the mid-90′s, and with the advent of the Internet, it’s quite possible to spend hours and hours figuring out exactly what you want and getting it if one site or the other isn’t giving you what you want. So in avoiding centralized sites (e.g. getting train tickets directly from Deutsche Bahn or some other national rail service when Rail Europe isn’t giving you any options or isn’t giving you a good price, going directly to hostel websites when the HI site doesn’t do family rooms or isn’t giving you information or whatever, comparing ferry services from Finland to Sweden and manually telling the U.S. travel agents that exclusively sell their tickets in the U.S. to bite you for taking a week-and-a-half to respond to a faxed request, etc.), basically, I have to take all of these arrangements and put them together into some portable and comprehensible form so that we know where the Hell we are/are going/are fleeing/etc… I’ve been working on this for days in my off-time, which is pretty scary. Then again, I’m on the move basically for the whole trip. I’ve never taken so many trains so far in such a short period of time as I will this trip. Should be interesting.
• Getting Torsten’s stuff prepared for the trip. This falls into a whole separate category from packing, because seriously… 14 hours on planes with an 8-month-old? You’d better have your shit in order.
• Packing. We’re going to try to go with one suitcase, because we really don’t want to be dragging two suitcases along with a baby, various carryons, a stroller, a diaper bag, etc, over land from Finland to Germany while switching trains, entering and exiting youth hostels, getting on ships, etc. We’ll see how that works.
• Getting Torsten video onto DVD and getting pictures onto DVD/prints made for the less technical relatives. I’ve been meaning to do this for months, and I just never get time.
• More various administrative crap for the trip that I’m sure I’ve forgotten.
• Start my new drinking habit immediately

I know there’s got to be more – I can feel it in my bones – but that’s quite enough, I think, to drive me nuts.

And now I have wasted an entire naptime whinging about what I need to get done. Go me!

I am the awesomest procrastinatrix evar.

Now, we generally don’t stay home all day, but the worst part of the day in this house is actually early evening, because the back of our house faces due west, and the afternoon/early evening sun heats up those bricks like nobody’s business, making the actual inside walls hot (there’s no insulation in this house – the outside walls ARE the inside walls, which is one of the many reasons we’d never buy this ancient but cute house…) and driving the temperature in the bedroom we currently share with Torsten up into the upper 80′s/low 90′s until well into the evening on days when the outside temperature hasn’t even gone above 85 or so.

Sucktacular is what it is. Hot babies don’t like to go to sleep, so Mama and baby hop under the shower at what I always hope is a time close enough to bedtime, but always turns out to be too early. Last night I almost got it right, in that he slept through until about 1 am before wanting a bottle and coming into bed with Mama because frankly, I didn’t have the energy to get him back to sleep in his crib, but he’s still going to bed long past his normal bedtime and taking a lot longer to get to sleep – and then there’s the whole tummy-rolling thing on top of it (which bugs him, not me, but if Torsten’s not sleeping because he’s upset, then neither am I…).

I think tonight I’m going to set up a place for him to sleep in my study in the basement and we’ll see if that helps him sleep until I go to bed upstairs. And when the big evil German gets back, we’ll put the air conditioner in down there so that T and I have a refuge during the afternoons – there are only so many air conditioned places we can take field trips to during the day, and even doing that means going outside into the heat and waiting for busses, so it’s not ideal. I did find a baby activity class that is 1) nearby, 2) on the closest bus route to our house, and 3) has late-afternoon open gym time for us to go enjoy the air conditioning with other kids, so we’re going to start doing that this week, but I find the heat even more draining now then when I was pregnant, and I think the little guy would agree with me.

So anyway… not much sleep going on around here, and my sanity is on vacation for the week, so don’t expect much except drivel and blather from this front.

This house just gets too damned hot in the summer. *sigh*

Everyone’s body has a different way of telling them they’ve overdone it. So far, my pregnant body has done this by making me 1) want to pass out from exhaustion, and 2) making me hurt all over.

The problem is that now, spending 30 minutes getting dinner ready seems to be too much, and I’ve spent most of last night and today just aching everywhere, from my neck to my fingertips to my toes. Sleep made it slightly better, but not much, and I’m going to go make myself do some yoga to see if that helps.

If not, it looks like I’m going to be completely useless for the next 3 months. Hoorah.

(And it’s still not getting cool enough at night to make sleep nice! Average lows are supposed to be in the upper 40′s this time of year, and they’re still generally in the 60s. And it’s humid. In Denver! *sigh*)

Actually, I don’t recall there being any proverbs about cucumbers, but I’m really not the person to ask.

However… Today was the first hot day I’ve spent in my newly air-conditioned study; while I think both Christian and I were slightly dubious about how well this little unit might cool the room, it works magnificently. It just takes a little while to cool off. Every time I run upstairs to the bathroom, I realize how miserable the rest of the house is, and I’d just like to state again for the record how awesome my husband is for deciding to cool the pregnant woman for the rest of the summer.

Otherwise, not so much to report. I’ve had a few good kicks today, so presumably Small Monster is in there somewhere, and I’m now off for dinner. We spent most of the afternoon listening to Bach while I surfed the web, and then singing along to James Taylor while I made other trouble (well, ok, so Small Monster wasn’t doing much singing AFAIK). This is one of the benefits of living in a house – I’m not terrified of angering the neighbors with my voice, and I can sing all I want.

If the planets align right, I think I’ll work on finishing up my study after dinner. I have a lot of things to get done in the next few weeks (or they’ll never get done, I’m sure…), and this study needs to be put out of my misery!

We got hours and hours of rain yesterday, complete with a shockingly loud (and close) thunderstorm which scared the crap out of both me and the baby. It was awesome. (Not that I think scaring the crap out of my kid is awesome, but the rain and the storm? Perfect…)

We’re supposed to get more tonight, but you can almost never trust the Denver forecast, so I won’t hold my breath. On the upside, though… it’s much, much cooler.

Pregnant women of Denver rejoice!

I get to be human again for like… whole 24-hour periods. Call it a fall preview (which may not have rain, but at least gets cool!)… I’d heard that we were supposed to get back up into the 90s next week – the Weather Channel doesn’t agree, but I’m afraid they’re often wrong in even predicting the next hour of weather around here, so… I’ll prepare for the heat.

At least I can hide in my newly air-conditioned study

In other good news, I can feel the baby more often, and I was pleased to feel him react to the noise of the thunder yesterday, even if I felt bad that he was startled. (Then again, we had lightning hit so close to the open back door yesterday that I actually freaked and ran out of the room – my husband thinks this is hilarious…)

The only real bad news is that my digestive system is giving me no end of problems. I often feel sick for no apparent reason, and the randomness of the onset of symptoms is really annoying me. There’s not much I can do but just sit it out, but I don’t have to like it. I’ll see the doctor in a little over a week anyway, so I’ll mention it then, but it’s pretty yucky.

Not much else to report – belly shot tomorrow (so I can hand the camera over to my husband, who needs it for the week)! No one is allowed to laugh at my hugeness.

So we are officially halfway to the due date! Of course, since this is our kid, and we are difficult people, there’s no way in Hell he’ll show on that exact date, but nevertheless, this kid’s about half done

You’d think I’d have some momentous post to celebrate, but nah, I just finished reading Harry Potter (it was magically there on the doorstep when we got home last night, so what did you expect?) and thus up to now haven’t been doing anything else of moment except exploiting my husband’s office for its cool, cool air.

Incidentally, Harry turns out not to be an air conditioner, I discovered. A great shock to all, I know. I hope that’s not too much of a spoiler for anyone.

But hey, Small Monster is halfway to coming out and wreaking havoc on Haus Grothoff, and every week that goes by puts him closer to being a baby that can survive outside my belly, so it’s all good

So it’s another hot Saturday here in scenic Colorado, and the Professor and I are hiding out in his air-conditioned office. It makes all the difference in the world, I must admit – I actually feel like an actual person when I’m not all swollen and hot, and my mood improves vastly.

There is, of course, the problem of the portion of my moods that seem to be solely under the control of hormones. I haven’t been too bad, really, but the past couple of days I’ve just had times where I felt like crying and I knew it was only because of the hormones. Fortunately, I at least realize what’s going on, and so I can do more about it, but I hate having that feeling – it’s the same feeling I’d get as a kid at sleepovers, waking up the next morning in a strange place and feeling homesick. Not that I’m feeling homesick It just feels the same.

Mood swings aside, though, last night we spent the evening with Dennis and Petra, two very good friends of ours from grad school (and Petra’s mom, who was very enjoyable to chat with!), which was really nice. I really do miss my friends (it seems like I’ve been hearing this from lots of people whose blogs I read lately), and it was really good to catch up. Unfortunately, I was exhausted by the end of the evening, and worse, ended up waiting two hours for a cab from the light rail station to get home, since the buses had stopped running (word to the wise – if you want to get a cab in Denver on a Friday or Saturday night, catch it from downtown, or you will be waiting forever at some dark station with drunk creepy weirdos); that didn’t stop the rest of the evening from being nice, though, and it was a good time.

The only other bit of news, I guess, is that thanks for a suggestion from the wonderful Sarah, it appears that we can now get the Small Monster to wiggle around a bit by drinking a nice, ice-cold drink. Which is fine by me, because cold is good. I happened to be downing some very cold milk as I read her suggestion, and lo and behold, not long thereafter, the little guy decided he was interested in rolling around a bit Thanks for the tip!

Ok, that title is probably a lie, but it is in fact true that I’ve always said that I’d rather freeze to death than burn.

It has, as I keep saying, been hot here. I haven’t been able to get a thing done, and it’s been driving me to desperation. I’ve found some small relief by spending the whole day in the bedroom with the portable swamp cooler on, but at least up until today, it’s been nearly unlivable in the house. I haven’t even been remotely human, and I’m pretty sure my husband has advertised me on eBay somewhere by now (no buyers, obviously). But even he, however unflappable he usually is, has been drained by it, and for me, the resultant pregnant-woman ankle swelling has made me look like a small elephant from the knee down.

But today? Today there is rain. Rain, and air conditioning in my husband’s office. The only thing that would be better would be snow. My ankles look human again. Granted, I still want to take a nap, but this is more one of those delicious “wow, I’m comfortable, a nap would be loooovely” feelings, rather than “I am going to pass out now so that I don’t use any more energy than I have to” things.

It’s supposed to get back up close to 100° this weekend, or so people on the bus were saying, but I’ll take today and run with it, thankyouverymuch.

I cannot wait until September… funny thing is this, though. The second trimester is often described as the “honeymoon trimester”, where you get your energy back and feel good. My second trimester began just as it started to get hot, and will end just as it starts to cool down, so I get to be exhausted during the second trimester as well. I only ever get to enjoy it when it rains

The world hates me, I swear!

But hey, it’s rainy and cool now, and it’s only five weeks until the average high is below 85°. Which sounds much better than the eight weeks until it’s below 80°. I’m such a wuss…

Well, I was looking for something else on Amazon this evening, and my preference page remembered that I’d recently looked for an air conditioner, and it wanted to give me some alternatives to the air conditioner I’d viewed, you know, in case I really wanted to buy one after all and just hadn’t considered my options.

Here’s what Amazon showed me people bought after viewing the air conditioner I’d looked at:

Apparently, according to some mysterious-and-almost-certainly-patented Amazon algorithm, if you’re feeling too warm and decide you don’t want the Amcor Compact Series A air conditioner, the latest Harry Potter book is a good alternative to keep your room cool during this hot summer – perhaps this is some sort of strange spoiler??? (Snape freezes over! Harry chokes on Butterbeer Slurpee! Voldemort is really nothing but a very tangy popsicle!)

Or maybe 10% of people really do think Harry Potter is a plausible alternative to an air conditioner. Who knows… It would explain something about how our Glorious Leader got “elected” twice, that’s for sure