Family of Five and Three Quarters

Family of Five and Three Quarters
Originally uploaded by Stolidoli.

Here is a shot of all of us from our recent trip to the Outer Banks in North Carolina. If you click on the photo, you will be led to my Flickr photo stream and also the OBX set with more photos of everyone from our trip. Feel free to blast me for my Flickr incompetence if I'm wrong about that last part.

Anyway, if this works well, I'll use Flickr to post pictures of the Alleged Home Addition as well...which is, of course, no longer Alleged, but rather, the Almost Completed Home Addition.

Lucky

Blogger just ate my big long post, which was about being exasparated in the first place. Everything has been going on all at once lately, and things have just been insane.

So instead of retyping everything right now that I just lost, here's a snapshot of what life has been like lately. It should help illuminate things a bit.

Yesterday, Vincent and I were going to have a nice, quiet lunch together because things have been exceedingly stressful and the kids are in camp from 9am - 1 pm three days a week (We're writing it off as a construction cost...I challenge you to find a cheaper alternative to get my kids out of the construction fray every damn morning before the pool opens!).

Anyway, I was late, and seemingly driving behind the world's slowest people. I called Vincent to vent, adding that the person driving the red dump truck in front of me was probably drunk.

"Look at him! He's swerving all over the damn road!" I had barely uttered these words when the guy proceeded to drive full speed into a tree.

So there I was, due to give birth in eleven days, staring at a bloody two-hundred pound man in a now flaming car, wondering if I could conceivably pull him to safety.

Thank God a landscaper appeared from nowehere and pulled him out while I was still stammering to 911 about how I wasn't exactly sure which was the nearest cross-street. Although, in retrospect, a pregnant woman pulling a man from a flaming car might have made an interesting news story...like I need my 15 minutes of fame to be on a day where I wasn't able to shower or even put on underwear before the contractors arived at my house. Or in maternity clothes at all, for that matter. Where was the flaming car when I was wearing my skinny jeans???

Needless to say, I didn't get that quiet lunch with my husband. Instead, I spent my alone-time watching the flames engulf first the car, and then the tree it had struck, before giving a statement that will likely get me a witness subpeona while I'm still recovering from my C-Section.

But, like the addition and the baby and everything else, I'm quite lucky, albiet stressed. Lucky I wasn't that guy. Lucky I wasn't driving on the other side of the road, or picnicing under that tree with my kids.

Lucky to be having another beautiful baby girl, and a new kitchen, and a whirlpool bathtub and a built-in window seat, but damn if it isn't inconvenient at the moment to be pregnant and under construction.

Enough!

We just returned from an almost two-week getaway to the Outer Banks (OBX for those in the know) and Williamsburg, VA, thinking that we escaped from the worst of (Alleged) Home Addition 2006. Wrong! We returned to an inch of dust on everything we own, including the five-and a half foot jacuzzi bathtub sitting in the middle of my living room floor. A new coffee table! Lucky us! It goes well with the end tables - boxes of toilets and plumbing fixtures. At least the kids have something else to sit on besides my bed, which is, of course, in my living room...which isn't terrible, being that my "kitchen" (a fridge, a microwave and some paper plates) is now in my dining room, and my old kitchen is no more.

And just to add to my dismay, the contractors knocked out our internet connection.

So, we have moved out until further notice. I'll post when I move back in. Baby #4, btw, is scheduled for 10:30 am on August 4th. My granite countertop people are coming out to template on July 24th. What will be finished first? Perhaps we can start a poll or something.
I'd post pictures, but Vincent dropped the camera in OBX and it is broken. Can you say Nikon D80?

I so totally need a drink.