It seems it’s been a while since I’ve last written. I’d say shame on me, but it’s not all that bad. I haven’t forgotten about you, though I’m perhaps getting a little too comfortable nesting in our warm home awaiting the arrival of our newest little one.

For those of you keeping track at home, I’m roughly 86,000 40- some-odd weeks pregnant and trying not to be antsy. She’ll come along when she’s ready, and in the meantime, we have an extra ultrasound to look forward to this coming Monday. Fingers crossed for 4-D so we can see what the little Sattin-ita looks like. Then again, if she comes before Monday, I guess we’ll know what she looks like then. Either way, we win.

Here’s what else we’ve been up to…

Teaching Dash how to vacuum. Turns out he’s a natural with lots of enthusiasm for the task. It’s tough to say no when your 22-month old asks if he can vacuum the rug. Especially in robot pajamas. And yes, that is our Christmas tree in the background. More on that later.

Getting slammed with an ice storm! It’s funny when you don’t watch the news for a few days. You tend to get surprised by quite slippery conditions when you’re out running errands. Then you wake up to the sight of blueish green explosions in your neighborhood; transformers exploding maybe? It only resulted in a brief period of time without power (while we were asleep, even), though others are still awaiting the return of theirs.

Going to look at a new house, which I promptly fell in love with. Just look at this detail!

Adding some new items to the shop, including this apron, some Pyrex, a Thermos, etc. Good stuff if you’re into it.

And a wee bit of decorating for Christmas, emphasis on the wee. I have boxes that haven’t been opened and won’t be. I (being the one in our family who’s celebrated Christmas all her life) haven’t the energy to fully decorate this year, though I do still want to. Neil has embraced Christmas (note: we do both Hanukkah and Christmas around these parts) but not quite to the extent that he wants to decorate the house. He likes to see it in the house, but he hasn’t realized he can and should be a part of it yet. We’re working on that.
So consequently, it’s Christmas-lite this year. Stockings are hung by the staircase with care. A very pathetic and small potted pine tree holds up some strings of lights and roughly six ornaments- all its branches can support. I won’t pretend this tree is fulfilling my Christmas tree desires but it is what it is. Christmas is about family in my eyes, and family is just what we’ll have gathered around this, our version of a Charlie Brown tree, come Christmas morning.

Well, enough about me. What have you all been up to? How are you decorating for the holidays? Going all out or scaling back? I’ll be back tomorrow (baby permitting) with a little something about holiday gift giving during this season, which has turned out to be difficult for so many.

There’s nothing quite like Skyping with your husband while you’re both in the same house. I’m downstairs eating lunch, he’s up in the studio working away.

A Skype call comes in. We giggle at each other for a few minutes because it’s all kind of ridiculous. (I can’t get used the whole audio and video thing combined. Do you look in the other person’s eyes or do you look vaguely in the direction of your camera?)

I got over it and lovingly tell Neil that he looks good today.

He thanks me and then asks, “Do you have food on your face?”

And that was the last time they ever Skyped.

For anyone who’s been reading this blog for more than, say, five minutes, it will come as no surprise to you that I woke up with baby on the brain. This has accidently turned into a baby blog, hasn’t it? It’s mostly temporary, so anyone who wants to hear more vintage, more funny, more anything other than baby needs to just sit tight. I swear, it’s almost over.

But until then…

This is sometimes what we find in the morning upon going in to get Dash from his room. Everything pulled out of the drawers (and look how he’s going back for more!), and some of his clothes pulled off caveman-style.

Last night I dreamed about having this baby (or actually NOT yet having the baby, which is so in keeping with my day to day life. isn’t dreaming supposed to be different from everyday life? that’s what i thought too.), I dreamed about friend’s babies, and about friends who don’t even have babies yet having babies (yes, robyn. I’m talking about you). Good god, it’s a baby fest and won’t it be great when I can return to regular old weird dreams involving the Incredible Hulk and high school biology class?

But until then…

Have you heard? Amanda had her lovely new baby (with a great great name!). And our dear friends Alex and Dan welcomed their triplets on Sunday (11/23- is that not the perfect date for three?). Neil and I have been glued to their blog, waiting for the next installment. Luckily, Dan seems to have a lot of free time and, as a new father, a whole lot to say. This morning, with toothbrush in hand, I tuned in to see what was new and found this lovely entry. I don’t think I’ve ever cried while brushing my teeth before. It’s a beautiful and intimate peek of their journey into parenthood and is well worth the read.

Enjoy! I’ll be back later with more non-baby related news.

p.s. “baby baby baby” is a song by Anna King, one of James Brown’s backup singers. It was the song we first danced to at our wedding, and though we didn’t realize it was some kind of fertility song, it sure did turn out that way. Sorry, couldn’t find the song online to share with you. Anyone have it?

How is it that it’s Monday again? And not only that, but it’s Monday at 2pm and I feel like I’m just getting started with the day. Must kickstart day. Must add sugar.

Could be that I’m exhausted from the weekend full of travel and guests. That seems likely. We have a good friend staying with us from LA for several days while he and Neil work on filming Neil’s dog training DVDs. They’ve been working hard each day while Dash and I stay home (we’re a one car family) and try to keep ourselves amused and everyone fed.

The only break in this routine was on Saturday when we headed up to Augusta for Neil’s show at the Lithgow Library. This was a fun one (wait, they pretty much all are) since it was at his hometown library. The Kennebec Journal wrote a great article promoting the event (which is nowhere to be found online. why? i don’t get it.) which brought out all kinds of people from his past. Even the woman who worked at the library when he was a kid. The same woman to whom his mother forced him to apologize when he stole a book from the library back when he was in junior high.

I wish I had a picture of the two of them talking after the show. He reminded her of what happened and even fessed up that he completely lied about how the book came to be in his possession. I can’t imagine that she didn’t see right through the fantastic story of how a bully made him take the book and rip out the library card pocket, but she said she didn’t remember it at all. Anyway, confession made and Neil’s soul just got a nice coat of polish on it.

Lunch in Hallowell for the three of us after at Slates. Such a great restaurant and a pretty little town. Just the kind of town we’d like to live in…. I mean, look at this vacant storefront just begging for a HappyDashery sign in the window.

A girl can dream, can’t she?

And speaking of dreaming, do you all know about Wishpot? This is the answer to your online wish list/registry dreams. Add the Wishpot button to your address bar and just click it when you see something online that you like. That adds the item to your master list (wish, gift giving, baby registry, etc.).
No more list on that site, registry on this site, confusion. Just make your Wishpot list public and everyone will know what you want for Christmas this year. Couldn’t be easier!

I’ll have a widget for it on this site as soon as my widget master returns home. Then you can see what’s on MY list.

Later taters.

[Edited to add: Ok, so Neil just turned to me and said: “Um, you just told the world that I stole a book from the library. And lied about it.”
And what I think he meant by that is that I need to come clean. I too, stole books (plural!) from the library when I was a kid. And I too, was sent back in to the library by my mom to confess my deeds to the librarian. The only difference being that I fully intended to return my books… I just hadn’t gotten around to it by the time my mom found them. Bad planning on my part.
I should also add, in the interest of full disclosure, that my mom is a librarian. Tee hee. ]

Neil and Dash went out to the post office tonight while I made dinner (chicken and veggie quesadillas with a side of spicy black beans, yum). It’s the only time during the day when I can have a few minutes to myself and crank the volume on our stylin’ kitchen boom box.

Tonight it was Queen’s Greatest Hits (on cassette). Man do I love me some Freddy Mercury. And you can’t help but sing along to this one, no matter how high your voice goes.
“What do you mean, Flash Gordon approaching?”

So there I am, all rock n’ roll and quesadilla fixins when it struck me just how long it’s been since I’ve been out to hear music, go dancing, or just be. out.

It’s not like we haven’t gone to occasional movie or dinner since Dash (DASH! A-aaaaa!) was born, but it suddenly occurred to me that there were years when I was single and child-free and went out all the time and took every single moment of it for granted. And I had no idea I was doing it.

Sound familiar? I think it’s probably pretty common. And it’s also a total tangent that I didn’t mean to go off on. What I wanted to say was,

When I was in my third trimester with Dash (DASH! A-aaaaa!), I reached a point where, though I was huge and tired and just wanted to sleep, I really needed to be out doing something active and fun. Cut to one Friday night when I told Neil he was taking me out dancing for 80s night at a local bar. We danced for hours (with me sitting with my feet up for any song I didn’t find worth wasting my lagging energy for) and had so much fun.

Two weeks before Dash (DASH! A-aaaaa! ok, i’m done, sorry) was born, I danced well into the night at Jessica’s birthday party- which was dj’d by the same person who does the 80’s night, coincidentally. The same guy who will play Come on Eileen every time you ask. And I did.
That night, I danced to some amused looks, nervous smiles, and some downright, “holy crap, is she going to birth that thing right here?” looks. Every time I got up to dance, a circle formed around me and I strangely didn’t mind. I was in some kind of dancing like I’ll never get to dance again frenzy.

(If you’re still reading this, thank you. I’m obviously in a blabbering place tonight.)

So anyway, it’s the third trimester again and I am feeling the need to get out and hear some really good music and/or go dancing. Any suggestions? What I really would love is to see a Queen tribute band…

Until then, I’ll be content with the outings we go on these days, the three of us.

Location scouting for Neil's dog training DVDs

And content with the small daily pleasures, like crazy bed hair:

I have no idea why this photo comes out sideways.

And very content with this:

Which apparently has a little girl inside that looks something like this stock illustrated baby, though I look nothing like this stock illustrated mom. What’s with the long and lean thing? You’re 31 weeks pregnant:

Ok, I’m off to bed. Just because there was a great show about Nixon on at 3am last night/morning doesn’t make up for the fact that I was up when I should have been resting. Good night!