One Day At A Time

Firstly, the internet being down for the better part of a week really sucks. Fortunately, the torture is over and I get to spend the next few days catching up on my feeds while trying to ignore the feeling of my pelvic bones shifting around when I move.

It's honestly amusing the number of times now that my husband has looked at me and very seriously informed me, "No taxidermied animals!"

As a response, it's a great illustration of comically missing the point when I say I totally want to be like the Bloggess. I've told him before that he doesn't have to worry about taxidermied animals from me. I'm not referring to the items involved in the crazy antics, just the antics themselves.

Because of this, though, it turns the Bloggess into the perfect decoy. Every time he tells me "no taxidermied animals", he's forgetting about things he might actually need to worry about. Like, "no teaching our son how to dissect insects". Or, "no, you can't have all the kittens at the SPCA, no matter how cute they are".

Actually, I'm having a lot of trouble coming up with things for him to worry about right now. That's probably got something to do with the pregnancy brain though, which truly kicked in with a vengeance about the time baby dropped. My memory might be pretty bad, but usually I can remember if I flushed the toilet ten seconds ago, or that I've already grabbed some meat out of the freezer for tea. And then proceeded to wander out to get meat out of the freezer another five times since already. In the last hour and a half.

Lastly, something my mum showed me ages back that I went looking for in order to show my husband. NSFW (swearing).

My mum is not typically the fan-girly sort, but she's the one who first introduced me to the Bloggess. And today I got to tell her that the Bloggess is following me on twitter. Jenny Lawson thinks my inane chatter is worthy of notice, and the awesomeness of that might well make me explode. My mother actually typed "OMG". With the capitals. I don't think I've ever seen her type omg before ever. It kind of makes me wish I'd been there to tell her in person because she might well have said it too and that would've been something to hear.

If mum were the sort to have a twitter, I bet I would've made her horribly envious too.

Today is a great testament to the power pregnant-woman-pheromones hold over cats.

Our cat Ginger does not like other cats. Not one bit. She's gone totally ballistic over the proximity of a small kitten before, and continued to growl at the spot he'd been rolling in even after we removed him. I have considered it a great accomplishment that she has mostly been able to coexist with Harmony since we moved here. If she spots Harmony, she'll grumble and growl and generally act like an old man shaking his cane and telling the kids to get off his lawn, but there's no active fighting or anything. Even that time when, to our horror, Harmony (not too much older than a kitten and still holding many of the attitudes) decided a fun game would be to stalk Ginger's tale.

Most places in the house, Ginger just gets told to shush and stop grumbling. I do allow her a safe haven though; my room. For one thing, her food and water are in here, so I don't want Harmony stealing them anyway. More importantly, though, it's a little much to ask her to deal with something she's not really happy about without giving her some place to retreat to. So while Harmony occasionally comes in or passes through, if Ginger starts growling, Harmony gets told to move it along.

So between the fact that she knows she's generally not allowed in here and her own tendency to be energetic and a bit skittish, it's miracle enough for Harmony to jump on my bed and curl up next to me at all. The biggest miracle of all, though, is that not a single peep was heard about this out of Ginger.

Of course, cats are contrary things, and in the time taken waiting for the new post page to load (throttled 'net is a wonderful thing, let me tell ya) and typing all this, sadly, this blissful state has ended. Ginger apparently woke up enough to notice Harmony was there and growl at her, with a hiss or two thrown in.

That said, even that was pretty short-lived, and she's already mostly decided she can't really be bothered grumbling. Or even sulking. Aside from the occasional punctuation of a grumble from that end of the bed, she appears to have curled up to go back to sleep now.

So, I think I'll take the opportunity to enjoy my fill of double cat love, as they've never been willing to coexist so closely before. I'll take all I can get while it lasts... even if it's just because they're both so obsessed with me being pregnant that neither is willing to leave me to get away from the other.

I could hear a veritable wall of rain overnight last night. It was truly impressive.

Here's hoping it's just a one-off.

This isn't much of a post, because there's not an awful lot to post about right now, but at least things are looking hopeful.

More baby stuff has been gotten together, and a camera should be on its way to me soon, so when the time comes I will be able to regale you with pictures! Also, I might finally be able to update my facebook profile page which is over five years old at this point.

It seems likely that my husband has found some good-paying work. Even if he doesn't get this particular job, he's in good standing now with a pretty reliable temping agency, so the job search has at least gotten that much easier.

My next appointment with the midwife is tomorrow. I'm finding it remarkably easy to go into without any expectations; I'm honestly clueless as to what I should even hope for, never mind expecting anything. You can probably expect an update on that in the next couple days. I still haven't heard back from child services and I'm not sure how much longer that will be, but it's looking reasonably hopeful that nothing will come of all this.

It's nice that things are looking up. Usually I'd need to be putting in more effort in order to not just sit here waiting for the other shoe to drop, but it's much easier not to be pessimistic when the week has already been somewhat poor. If I never have to deal with so much of one of the worse aspects of society at one time again, I still would've had too much for a lifetime.

Here's to things going better, going forward. For everyone.

Sensory Processing Disorder.

Autism interests me. I have, in fact, long taken a small bit of amusement out of an aspie whose monomania... is Asperger's. This just strikes me as chuckle-worthy.

So, I've read a number of resources regarding autism in my time. Usually, when something is also its own condition, it tends to get listed as such. ADD/ADHD is a common co-diagnosis for autism, and if I recall correctly it's actually one of the criteria to have at least one of the various dys- disorders (dyslexia, dyscalculia, dyspraxia - the last, also known as clumsy child syndrome, is by far and away the most common, and the one I personally fall prey to).

For some reason though, I can't recall having seen sensory processing disorder mentioned even once. It doesn't take more than a glance at Paris' description of the condition to see it's clearly part and parcel of autism - issues with specific textures, or notes/sounds, being sensitive to even a light touch or small smell, etc. Or, alternatively, noticeably less sensitive. I'm pretty sure the various and varying hyper- and hyposensitivities of autists are also among the diagnostic criteria.

There's not really a lot else to say here... it was just a mildly startling thing to run across and find it had its own name too, and I find it a little strange that this is the first I've heard of it.

So, for the past few months or so, the North Island of our fair New Zealand has been in varying levels of drought. I'm not sure entirely how bad or how long; I know Napier was on water restriction, but until recently I lived in Palmerston North. Not only has it not been as bad all the way down the bottom of the North Island there, but Palmie itself is on a floodplain. Possibly even the only one in NZ. At any rate, the Manawatu breaks its banks fairly regularly there and as a rule the city is pretty chronic for rain, so the rest of the country could be in a drought and we'd experience maybe moderately dry.

When I moved to Tauranga it was certainly dry and hot enough to notice, though, and up this far the ground was noticeably dry. Then, maybe a week ago, it started raining. Like, raining. It has pissed down at least once a day every day. I was already starting to get a little concerned that we might see flooding.

But this was not the last to be heard from the weather, oh no. Tonight, we have even heavier rain, accompanied by thunderstorms. Not just here, either. So far I've heard of similarly severe rain in Palmerston North, Wellington and Christchurch. One of my Wellington relatives has been asking on facebook if anyone there happens to be building an ark, a call which I think I'll second.

Of course, for some strange reason, it's sunny in Ashhurst, approximately 15km out of Palmie.

What the hell, weather?