Lord, Have Mercy!

First, I must share that often after I catch myself saying "Lord, have mercy!" or "Good Lord, have mercy!" I begin singing the Kyrie from Schubert's German Mass. I first heard the German Mass while working at/attending Luther Memorial Church in Madison, Wis. They use it in their services at the end of October and beginning of November every year because Reformation Day, All Saints, and Christ the King Sundays, which are all a big deal to the Lutherans, are back to back in the late fall. Luther Memorial hires extra musicians and has all of their choirs participate. The German Mass is beautiful and very singable. I've sung both the Sanctus and the Agnus Dei to Lucy as lullabies. I find that singing a beautiful song that says "Lord, have mercy" tends to dissipate the mood that caused me to say it in the first place. It also gives me some perspective and reconnects me with what is important. Some days you need that.

Today was one of those days. The events of today really started on Saturday morning when I smelled something like a blown out candle when I got out of the car at the grocery store. I thought it was the car next to me and went about my shopping. When I got out of the car at home, I smelled it again. My car was the stinky one. I had noticed the day before that we were overdue for an oil change, so I got Lucy ready and took her to Wal-Mart for two hours while our oil was being changed. I told the ladies at the desk about the smell and asked them when I picked up the keys if the mechanics had noted anything. The mechanics hadn't left any notes (as the ocassionally do), so I hoped that the oil change fixed the smell. It didn't. It was still there on Sunday. I asked advice at church and was told to see a mechanic right away. I showed up at AutoSmart when they opened on Monday morning because even though it can be difficult to get an appointment, they are very good about looking at your car really quickly to give you an idea of whether it is safe to drive until you can have repairs done. Since we had an OB appointment in Louisville on Tuesday, I wanted to make sure the car was safe for that trip. Two guys at AutoSmart looked at the car and found absolutely nothing wrong with it. So I left and stopped at Kroger on the way home because they mark down their perishable items first thing in the morning, and I can get half price milk, bread, yogurt, and produce sometimes. When I got back to my car, I decided to check my tires because it had occurred to me that the smell had started to remind me a little of hot asphalt. Sure enough, I could see steel threads poking through the front driver's side tire, and there seemed to be deep cracks in some of the treads. So on my way home I stopped at Firestone to have someone look at my tires. The guy very quickly said, "You need new front tires." I asked him if they would be safe enough to drive to Louisville." He said, "I wouldn't drive to Louisville on those tires." Well, if he wouldn't I probably shouldn't either. I needed to get home to Lucy so that Matt could get to school, so I left the tire guy my phone number so that he could let me know if they had the tires in stock and when I could get an appointment. It turned out the tires weren't in stock and couldn't get there until Tuesday afternoon, which is when our appointment was. Matt had already cancelled his Tuesday classes so that we could go to the appointment, so rescheduling wasn't a good option. I called Enterprise to find out about renting a car. The cost was reasonable for a one-day rental, so I made plans to drop my car at Firestone on Tuesday morning, have Enterprise pick me up there, and then take the rental home so that Matt could put Lucy's car seat in it. It was going to complicate my day, but it was a reasonable plan.

So  I got up earlier than usual this morning to put the plan into motion. Everything was fine with the drop-off. In fact, the tire guy was waiting for me in the parking lot and said he could smell my car before I even got into the lot. It was getting worse, so it was a good thing we were having it fixed. After I gave him my keys, I decided to walk a couple of blocks down Main Street to Harden's Coffee for a Chai Latte while I waited for Enterprise. I called Enterprise during the walk to let them know where I'd be. That's when they told me that they didn't actually have a car to give me yet. They were waiting for two to be returned. It might be an hour or more before they would have one. I decided to go ahead and get the Chai and then try to walk home. I knew that the walk was a little long, but Main Street to campus is a reasonable walk. And campus to home is a reasonable walk. And Matt's office in Carter Hall would be a good place to stop for a rest. So that's what I did. l talked to some friends/Matt's colleagues for a little while until I felt ready to walk home. On the walk home, I called Enterprise again. At approximately 11:00 they told me they still didn't have a car. We needed to leave at 12:30, and Matt still needed to put in the car seat, which doesn't tend to be as easy as it seems it should be. Around 11:30 Enterprise called to say they had just gotten a car and were cleaning it up. By noon I had the car home and Matt was installing the seat. I was exhausted already, and we still had an hour and a half drive and an ultrasound ahead of us.

Part of the reason that renting the car seemed like a good idea is that we are interested in getting a new car. We would like something slightly bigger so that we can fit two car seats and me in the back seat. Our Honda Civic is 11 years old and still in pretty good shape. The fan that blows air from the heater and air conditioning is unreliable, so we have some climate control issues, but we haven't had any major problems with it not caused by armadillo smashings. The rental car was supposed to be a little bigger than our normal car so that we could try it out and see whether we needed slightly bigger than our current car, perhaps a Honda Accord, or even bigger, perhaps a hatchback. We were also going to take this opportunity to turn Lucy's car seat front facing. Enterprise gave us a Ford Focus. We now know that we do not want to purchase a Ford Focus. It seems to have less space than our Honda Civic, and my seatbelt was incredibly difficult to fasten,which is extra frustrating when you feel extra confined. In addition to the irritation of being more squished than normal and significantly more squished than I had expected to be, Lucy was very upset about the new car. She loves her "blue beep." She cried until I was able to distract her with food. So after a more complicated morning attempting to get a car, the car itself was disapppinting.

After we had gotten on the road and eaten the lunch I had packed, I was feeling better. Then Matt asked if I had brought the directions to the doctor's office. Nope. I was so focused on transportation that I had not thought about directions. I thought that I had the clinic's number in my phone, but I didn't. So I went through my phone's call log until I found likely numbers and called them until I found the right one and asked for directions. Fortuneately, the directions worked for us and we arrived on time. Whew!

That brings us to our 2:30 appointment. We had another ultrasound to check Emmie's growth. They took a lot of shots of her heart. She was much more cooperative this time. They didn't say anything more about the calcium deposit in her heart, so it seems like it's no longer a concern. It hasn't caused any problems. They measured her. They estimate that she's 1 lb., 13 oz. I asked the ultrasound tech for a percentile, and she said 32. Below average, but that seemed reasonable. The doctor then came in to talk about concerns about growth restriction. Good Lord, have mercy! Not again! Neil was growth restricted. It's not what killed him, but it caused us a lot of stress. The doctor then started explaining growth restriction to us. Nothing we didn't already know. Her concern was not the 32nd percentile overall but the abdomen measuring in the 9th percentile. I had noticed earlier that they seemed to be using the due date from my last period rather than the one from date of conception that was confirmed by a growth ultrasound at 7-8 weeks. If my due date is June 1 instead of May 25, then they are expecting Emmie to be one week older and bigger than she is. I asked what difference that would make to their percentiles. The doctor had someone call my OB to confirm the change of due date, and it was confirmed. So they refigured, and Emmie is actually in the 44th percentile with an abdomen that is small but within reasonable parameters. So she's not growth restricted after all. The doctor did talk to me about what causes growth restriction. High blood pressure, diabetes, and smoking are not problems I have, so the only cause would be a less-than-adequate placenta. That would mean that my resting is even more important. Emmie gets more blood and more nourishment when I'm sitting than when I'm active. I don't feel terribly active. I try to rest a lot and even feel kind of guilty that Lucy isn't getting as much from me as I'd like. So I'll keep resting just in case my placenta is lazy. I certainly hadn't rested enough so far that day. Emmie was fairly active during the ultrasound, but she was tame compared to her sister. Lucy wanted to look out the window and count cars, and she wanted to draw, and she wanted to explore. Fortunately, the ultrasound tech thought she was really cute and didn't mind her wandering around a little. She didn't even mind cleaning up when Lucy sneezed a mouthful of water ALL OVER the room while she was sitting on Matt's shoulders. She mostly hit one of the monitors that families watch, so at least it wasn't the most expensive equipment. And it was so unexpected and amazingly explosive that everyone in the room laughed. Good Lord! That girls is something else.

Since we leave Campbellsville so infrequently and shopping options are limited in Campbellsville, we tend to stock up on a few things when we get out. We went to Trader Joe's. Trader Joe's is always so tempting. Everything looks good, and almost everything tastes good, too. There are a couple of things there that I use a lot of. My special drink is sparking water rather than sodas, and they have 1 liter bottles of raspberry lime sparkling water for $0.79. I also get high quality parmesan cheese wedges, the kind with the rind. I actually have a couple of recipes that call for parmesan rind, so I buy the pieces with lots of rind. Really good parmesan can be used sparingly, so as long as I store it properly, it lasts a long time. I also use a lot of their chicken stock concentrate. It is my secret ingredient to soups. There are soups that I have made with regular chicken broth and thought were OK and then made again later with the concentrate and raved about. It makes all the difference. The cost is comparable to buying cans or cartons of stock, but the concentrate comes in little packets that save a lot of space. And I find that I need less concentrate in my water than the packets suggest to get good flavor. Instead of using 5 packets in 5 cups of water, I'll use only 3-4 packets in 5 cups of water. The taste is still fantastic, and it makes the concentrate even more cost effective than cans and cartons. We also really like the cherry cider. If I'm going to drink a caloric beverage, it is likely to be a juice (or an Icee), and cherry cider is fantastic. I did splurge this time and get a couple of boxes of cookies for myself. They are good enough that I can be satisfied with only 1-2 at a time, and I hide them from Lucy so that they last longer. I don't tend to buy desserts for myself, so Trader Joe's cookies are my special treat. I got hazelnut sandwich cookies (two cookies made from ground hazelnuts with nutella in between), Kona coffee shortbread, and lemon thins. I've never had the lemon thins, but I do love a light, crisp lemon cookie. I also got a package of frozen spinach because theirs isn't tough like regular store-bought frozen spinach and a tray of frozen spanikopita (Greek spinach and feta pastries), which are a nice light supper with a salad. One of the Trader Joe's employees was really impressed with Lucy and gave her about 15 stickers as she left. Trader Joe's is one of my happy places, and I think Lucy likes it, too, because of the stickers and food samples. They always have one food and one drink to sample. The drink today was tart cherry juice. I tried a little and said, "That IS tart," and gave the rest to Lucy to try. She took a sip and said, "That tart." Every sip afterwards was declared "tart." I'm not sure if she knows what it means, but it was cute.

The other store I wanted to go to was Target. My primary purpose was buying diapers, but I also found a couple of long sleeve maternity shirts on clearance. I'm hoping to make it to the end of the month in my non-maternity clothes, but I've started getting out some of the maternity shirts because they cover my belly even when I raise my arms. My regular shirts are getting a little short. There are a couple of deals sites that I follow online. One of them is southernsavers.com. One of my favorite things about it is that it puts together a lot of diaper and baby product deals. The site will tell you about a sale and then tell you what coupons to use with it, even giving you links to printable coupons. It's very handy. Target has a deal this week that they will give you a $25 gift card if you spend $100 on diapers and some other baby stuff. So even if you don't use any coupons, you're getting the diapers at 25% off. I printed out coupons to save $3 per package on boxes of Pampers before I left home. The deal on the website came out to $15.75 each for big boxes of diapers that normally sell for $25 at Wal-Mart and Target. That's worth a trip to Target. When I got there, I found they had diapers on clearance, and they would count towards the deal. So I ended up getting even more diapers than planned at a better price per diaper. Another thing I like about southernsavers.com is that the lady who runs it once posted an article about what a good price per diaper is for each size of diaper and also gave recommendations for how many you need if you want to stock up. I got almost 300 size 2 diapers for $.1556 per diaper (within the $0.14-.16 good price range). I also got some size 1 and size 4 diapers. According to my inventory and the southernsavers.com recommendation, we already have about enough size 1 diapers already. We need a few more size 2 and quite a few more size 3 to get through the first year. We'll probably need a few more newborn size, too. This means that we are remarkably prepared for Emmie's arrival. I used the $25 gift card to buy the maternity shirts and a couple of other things. I had enough left over to get an Icee for me and Lucy and enough left from the Icee to get another one in the future.

Before leaving town we ate at J. Gumbo's. Wheel of Fortune was on the TV, and Lucy got excited when she saw it. We watch it at home most nights. She likes it because it's a show about letters. A show where people stand around and say letters that she recognizes is very interesting to her. While she ate supper, her eyes were glued to the TV. I told Matt that when I see her excitement at watching Wheel of Fortune I feel like we're raising our two year old to be an 80 year old. He was fine with that. We made one more stop at Half Price Books, where Lucy and I read a Pete the Cat book we'd never read before. She enjoyed it, so I'm going to add it to her wish list. We left Louisville at around 8:30, and Lucy was asleep within minutes, an hour or two early for her. She slept until we got back into Campbellsville and fell back asleep pretty quickly after we got home. She may be up early tomorrow. I'm sure I will be. I have to return a rental car and pick up our car with its new tires. I hope it doesn't stink anymore.

It was a very full day. It was complicated and tiring at times, but overall it was pretty good. We have more pictures of Emmie, who is healthy and growing. I have Trader Joe's cookies and several more months of diapers for Emmie. I just hope that tomorrow is more restful for all of our sakes.