Sonogram numver two was successfully completed today with no more than the discomfort of having to drive 7 miles to the Radiology office while having the full bladder that was required for the scan.

Full bladder? Pregnany for 2nd time?

That is just straight up _mean_ and ornery IMO. Who thought that part up? Had to be a dude. Jus’ sayin’…

So lil Jonesie is quite the dancer. Baby was a boogie-in away on the sono screen. What a hoot! The heart rate was 160… and wee one was wigglin round to beat the band. A nice strong heart beat was visible.

How cool is it to see that? I didn’t get to do that with Brenna, so this is novel and new small bit fun!The next scheduled sono is around 18 weeks, when we get to find out the baby’s gender. Woot! (I am leaning towards thinking that a girl is cooking down in there, but I am not _certain_ yet the way I was with Brenna. But I am starting to feel that vibe.

I am as sick and miserable at around 9 weeks as I was with Brenna. I might be even more so, actually, because I know what to expect, and that is almost worse. Yes, if this means a healthy pregnancy, good—but hell… I am over feeling like this and I don’t think its at all wrong to want this part over with. I am trying to not be a whiner but its wearing on me and depressing me to feel like this. I can’t fathom another 30 weeks of this. Heaven help me now.

WHINE

Ok enough of that, sorry, I had to get it out.

Its 3 a.m., I have a maternity portrait sitting, outdoors, at 10 a.m., and the weather is looking “iffy”. Well distinctly wet and funky, in fact. Dang it. The gal is close to the end of her pregnancy and I don’t want to fight the weather and lose the battle. If we get rained out tomorrow, and since the rest of the week looks blech too, in regards to the weather. So I will see if she would like to do studio images instead. Personally, I would like outdoors, but studio is better than being rained out. Grump.

GRUMP

Ok~ Sorry again, but that felt good .

Er.. moving on. (munches on saltine, takes a sip of Propel and wonders why the Benadryl doesn’t feel like it kicked in yet)

Oh MORE fun news, one of my closest friends, a fellow photographer in Indiana, had her site hacked a few weeks ago. We _think_ it was an attack stemming from a keystroke logger, but where it came from? How the blasted thing actually works? Not certain. Looking on tech boards and webmaster forums, the true implementation of the virus is still eluding us. And she is having one hell of a time getting it off her site–which keeps crashing back again, infected. She is depressed, mad, stressed, upset and almost a loss to fix it. Her site host hasn’t been much help, they keep blaming the template maker. The template maker reloaded her template once, only to have it crash down infected less than 24 hours later. Probably more like 12. Holy hell… what evil there is in the world.

Annnnd I was gifted with the same freaking virus on my site today.

Site is down. Damn. I had my host pull the site until they could reload it. Which my gf said it looks like they have done. Lord I hope this fixes it and well. I spent an hour trying to see what had happened, an hour on the phone with my site host, an hour plus scanning my computer to make sure its clean of viruses and keystroke loggers, and another hour changing passwords once I knew the site was clean.

Can you say ONE HUGE PAIN IN THE ARSE? This is some mess out of China. People that are smart enough to write this kind of code are smart enough to make money legitimately.

May their chopsticks never fail to give them splinters on their tongues.

Update 1: My site host cleared the virus this morning by reloading a good copy of my site. Thank you Lord! Now I just have to get Google to remove the “malicious code” warning from my site. Really nice for my business.

Update 2: Maternity is rescheduled due to the rain. Hopefully tomorrow, if not, then next week it is supposed to b sunny early in the week.

I am going to just go somewhere and cry and be pitiful for a while….

We are having a wild late spring/early summer. We have had a fair amount of rain and milder temperatures, and for the most part, lower humidity. THAT part has been a huge blessing. With the cost of electricity having pretty much doubled in the last 18 months, cooling the house down in the hottest part of the year costs a blue fortune. The whole BG& E ordeal…raises prices X2 + when they were ALREADY MAKING A PROFIT…and it being allowed?! is totally unacceptable. Electricity is _not_ a luxury in our society…its a necessity. Yes we all need to be more “green” and conservative, and I would _love_ nothing more than to be able to implement solar and wind power at our home, but one has to have the initial outlay to do that first. Pricing that out it comes to around $20k or so. :::wince ouch pale::: Not happening anytime in the immediately foreseeable future, much to my dismay.

The blessing of the waiting-til-just-recently-to-get-hot is that we just are now installing the a/c units into the house. This house has 10 ceiling fans (yes, its a big-ole-farmhouse) and they are wonderful to help keep the air moving and keep things cooler. We have window units that we use conservatively and I have nice thick curtains up to aid in keeping the inside cool when the sun is shining strongly. We have a couple of windows and doors that need to be replaced, eventually, along with additional insulation and some thermal wrap under the house. All in good time. Meanwhile, we are doing our best to keep it comfortable in the house with minimal electrical use.

Today a whopper of a squall blew through that knocked the electricity out for a couple of hours. Thankfully the house was cool enough from the weather being lower-humidity and cooler at night that it didn’t get uncomfortable in the house. But WOW did it rain hard. Its been doing that regulary for a month or more now—sudden squall blowing through, massive amount of water falling, then it cools down slightly and is beautiful out. I wonder if the weather patterns are shifting, as I seem to recall this type of weather in the summer quite often when I was elemetary and middle school aged. A couple of weeks ago we were at an historic mill and nature center up county (Eden Mill Nature Center). It had rained the day before, as the water in this image of Deer Creek shows. Can you say “mud much”? We were walking on the Creek Trail and were about a mile and half away from where the van was park. Suddenly the wind picked up and freshened and I smelled rain, looked North and saw that cloud formation that is above the tree line. Of course I had to get a picture of it!
We made it back to the van just as the rain started…and it was one heck of a gully washer. I am _so_ glad we made it back to the van in time, as I had my portrait camera with me, and the bag I had with me would not have kept her dry! Eep! My Precious!
The creek was muddy, the wind was blowing and the air was humid. Our walk back was definitely swifter than our leisurely stroll through the greening trees and croaking frogs, and I am sure we scared a beaver and snake and fox into skittering off. The walk was more enjoyable without the threat of the storm, but there is definitely beauty to be found in the midst of the storm if you take a minute to observe around you, instead of letting the storm overtake you.