The baby has this silly habit of pushing up right under my right breast. It’s this feeling of pressure that I get, and sometimes I can feel a little bump. It happens when I’m driving a lot as well. I wonder if it’s pushing with its fists, or head, or what. I can kind of tell how the baby is oriented now too, based on the movements. It’s kind of curled up off to my right side.

We got our crib set up, and I can’t wait to get our cute crib bedding that we ordered. Our housemate Sara has been steadily painting the baby’s room, and she’s got quite this cool fantasy scene going so far.

Slowly but surely time is moving along, and soon we’ll have a new little one with us. It feels so far away!

Oh, and the itching! No one ever told me pregnant bellies itch so much!

Despite being tired, and having a day like today every once in a while where I feel like crap things have been doing well. Some days I feel the weight in my belly a lot, and others I feel pretty mobile. Corey and I are getting really anxious for our little one to finally be here so we can hold her(him?).

I know, really bad posture. I don’t normally stand like that. It’s actually a lot less stress on my stomach to push my hips forward and pull my belly in to support myself with my abdomen.

We left out the front face pictures ’cause they just look like an alien. He/She is healthy and we were right on target for my due date (June 15).

I voted today, and thankfully it was wicked quick. The polling place I go to is within a block from me, so it’s pretty close walking distance. I’m not going to say who I voted for, but I will say a little bit about an event I saw yesterday.

Bill Clinton came to Bagel Works (where I work) yesterday to campaign for Hillary Clinton. Originally he was going to speak in the store, but he ended up doing it outside for a crowd of people surrounding him. This is one of the weirdest things about Keene, the amount of political activity we see. I don’t think that any of the major Democratic candidates **haven’t** been to Keene at least once this election season, and we’re not even a big city. We’re just the biggest city within a large stretch of land, so we’re very central and there are many politically active people in this area.

I didn’t hear him speak for very long as I caught the tail end of it when I was done with work. However, we did convince the Bill Clinton “guy” who seemed in charge of things to let us get a photo with him when he was done. One of the photographers there is a regular at the store and we know him pretty well (he’s photographed Bill Clinton before, and other famous people, we’ve even had his photos up in the store. They’re quite nice) took the photo for us. I have good faith he’ll bring us at least one print (although I’m hoping for several so we can each take one).

It was kind of a bizarre day, but I was right next to Bill Clinton with my boss on the other side, his arms around each of our shoulders. I got to meet a U.S. President!

I must say though, I am damn lucky to have been able to see Barack Obama, and Hilary Clinton speak in person, and I have had opportunities to hear other candidates. Keene’s a great city to be in I must say.

It happened so fast, but this Thursday we were able to drive home in our very own new(ish) car. It’s a 2004 Honda Civic, and it’s the *perfect* color green. We said our preference was for an automatic, but that’s mainly due to Corey. I’m really glad we have a standard because I prefer driving them, and it will be good for Corey to learn to be proficient. Our monthly loan payment isn’t too bad, and we’ll only have to tighten up our expenses a little bit. No more regular monthly spending money, but it’s totally worth it for the car!

The thing I was the most excited about was going food shopping. I can’t tell you how much of a pain in the ass it is to have to get your food for dinner every day or two. If you knew you’d probably understand why we ate out a lot. We love to eat out, but we also love to cook. We’ll even be able to get to the Brattleboro Coop every few weeks, which is about a 1/2 hour drive away. They have great bulk items that we can’t find locally. Yay for food shopping!

Another thing that I didn’t realize the significance of until recently is that we get to drive ourselves to my mom’s for Christmas. She doesn’t have to come here, and drive us there!

I just can’t resist taking photos of Herbert when he’s in bloom. Unfortunately there are only three this time, but he tends to bloom twice in a year. Hopefully the next time he’ll be covered in blossoms like he has been before.

Just over a year ago I took some clippings of Jade plants from the flower shop where I was working. The stems of some of the plants we were selling were getting top heavy, so I took a whole bunch of them home with me. I transplanted them all, gave away a bunch for Christmas, and kept two for myself. It took just about six months for these things to really take to the soil. They didn’t grow in that time, and were very loose in the soil. For the past six months they’ve been growing slowly, and doing really well. I keep them right in a window to get as much sun as possible, and water them about once a month. So easy to take care of, and such beautiful plants! Look at the bits of red on their leaves…

A while ago I had a couple of leaves fall off, and I didn’t bother bringing them up to the trash. I left them on the window sill and forgot all about them. Today when I went to water the plants, I noticed the two stems I’d left each had a cluster of tiny leaves growing, and a few feeler roots. They’d been out of soil, no water, right in the sun for probably months. Plants are so cool! I set each leaf in one of the plants and watered them hoping they take root.