REALLLLY old pictures...

I stumbled across some old pictures that I never wrote about. I was surprised that I'd never written about them...until I remembered that I took these pictures back during the phase of my life when I was sick most of the time and not interested in blogging.

Back in late August/early September, Brad had an idea that won him Best Husband points to last him the rest of the year: he found an Ingrid Michaelson concert in nearby New Hampshire in October. I love Ingrid (even though I don't generally get super excited about concerts), and the tickets were Boswell Budget-approved. 

We had a great time! We rented a car and drove the less-than-2-hour trip to Portsmouth, NH, which is, quite possibly, the cutest little New England town in existence. I would totally move there. We ate dinner at a British pub (out of the ordinary, I know) and meandered over to the quaintest little theater. We had great seats, and I thoroughly enjoyed it! Brad liked it, too, but he's not quite the enthusiast I am (don't get me wrong: he likes Ingrid...I just like her more). 

We spent the night and got up the next morning to drive the 5 miles into Kittery, Maine to go to the outlet mall. We did really well at Motherhood Maternity (at the sale/"as is" rack), which was nice, as I was beginning to show/not fit in my clothes at that point. I've really tried very diligently not to spend money on maternity clothes, so paying almost nothing for necessities is my idea of a good time.

I didn't remember to get pictures of the concert (I was too excited), but here are a few shots that I snapped:

This is the car we rented. It was fun to ride around in a zippy little thing.

I realized that I should have been snapping pictures of all of the state line markers...but I was a little behind on it. This is the New Hampshire sign on the way back from Maine. I didn't get one for Maine. drat.

Shot of Portsmouth from the interstate.

Some of the fall foliage. I have to say, I didn't see any of the jaw-dropping colors that we hear about. Maybe it was too warm for too long?

Driving back into Boston.

This golden tree (just a couple miles from our apartment) was a little more impressive.

So was this orange-y/pink tree.

Hopefully, we'll get to trek off for a few more New England-ish adventures before our time in Boston is finished. Here's hoping that can remember to take pictures in the future...

A few answers.

So, are you feeling better?
This is a very kind question that I get a lot. I feel sort of snarky when I try to answer it, though. The truth is, I don't have the same intensity of nausea that I had throughout all of first trimester and most of second trimester (that's right...I never experienced that I-feel-awesome-and-have-tons-of-energy phase that lots of women experience during second trimester), but I still deal with persistent nausea every day. I've been on my nausea medication every day of being pregnant. I'm very ready for that to be over. So, I can't really answer the inquiries with a, "I feel great." Because I don't.

Currently, I'm dealing with the nausea (although it is significantly less than it used to be) and headaches. The past few weeks have introduced a lot of joint pain and charlie horses (even though I've upped my potassium and drink over a gallon of water on any given day). I'm also back to being extremely exhausted/sleepy all the time. Sort of like first trimester. It's a bit ridiculous how tired I am. Although, sleeping at night is not happening all that often.

What's your due date?
March 10. Although, the second ultrasound we had indicated that she looked more like a March 15 due date. I'm really hoping for a little bit earlier than that so that she ends up coming while Brad is on Spring Break. How great would that be??

Have you been craving anything?
I haven't been craving things in the sense that I get in "must have NOW" mode; it's more like I've had preferences for some things. For example, until my acid reflux kicked in, I was wanting orange juice every morning. I didn't have to have it, but I wanted some. I think the closest I got to a real craving was on our trek back to New England. We stopped at a Chick-Fil-A in Maryland, and I really wanted an Ice Dream cone after we ate. 

Are you going to read Harry Potter to her?
Not for a while. We'll probably read Narnia together when she's young (as it's written for a younger audience), but I would prefer she wait to read Harry until she's at least the same age as Harry when he begins his saga (i.e. 11). Even then, I'd really like to read it together/discuss it. There's so much depth there, and I would really like to take advantage of those teaching moments. Maybe it'll be a rite of passage or something. :) We'll see. 

How did you pick her name?
We just liked Claire. Her middle name is a family name. 

Do you have everything for her?
We're working on it. We've gotten quite a bit from showers, and we have gift cards that we're planning to put to use for remaining necessities, like the rest of her diapers, her crib, her car seat, etc. We got about $130 worth of items (including a barely-used Baby Bjorn!) for $30, thanks to Craigslist. That was a fun blessing. Craigslist in a city this big and transient is like a gold mine. People just don't have the ability to hang on to things (i.e. don't have garages/attics/basements in which to store things), so they sell them frequently. 

Anyway, those are just a few of the questions that we've gotten many times over. Are there any others floating around that I didn't cover? You already know the answer to "is her nursery ready?" :). 

Have a happy Monday.

The But You HAVE Heard Of Me Challenge

I realize that 2012 is officially over, and January 2013 is pretty close to being over. However, I have every intention of finishing the clothing challenge. I just got a little off-course with Christmas traveling, so I'm finishing up now. I'm behind by two outfits, so this is one of the two remaining. 

My title might have given a little tip-off on this week's character. He's Disney, but he's not a cartoon.

Captain Jack Sparrow! I went a little lighter on my eye liner than he does, and my hair is a little more...um...clean? Something along those lines. 

Character: Captain Jack Sparrow from The Pirates of the Caribbean

Outfit:
*Black top is a maternity top from Target.
*White over-thing is from Papaya from 2010 (pre-baby).
*Scarf was a gift from a friend/former Spanish profesora, Senora Romine!
*Jeans are also maternity from Target (I have exactly three pairs of maternity pants that aren't yoga pants. They get worn a LOT. I'll be really happy to retire them eventually.).
*I'm even wearing black boots...you just can't see them. They're Clark's from about 4 years ago.

Disneybound inspiration board:

I really liked this outfit; I had gotten into a pretty deep maternity clothing rut, so just pulling out the white thing and the scarf changed my perspective drastically. Who knew?

One character left! I'm so sad that our little challenge is ending. I'll write up my reflections on it soon!

Images from here and here.

Do you speak Boston?

When I lived in Ukraine, I got to the point with many of the classes that I frequently taught where I would refer to the English I speak as "American" and the English that most Ukrainian schools study as "British." I understood that neither of those designations are actual, official languages, but there are so many differences between the two dialects that it was helpful to differentiate. I got pretty good at understanding a lot of their "British," by the way. I had to...otherwise, I was extremely confused with things they would choose to say.

Surprisingly, Boston presents some similar challenges, linguistically. A lot of the folks that we're friends with or go to church/attend classes with aren't native to Massachusetts, so the accents aren't quite so different. Fun fact: in our home group from church, which is made up of about 15ish people, only two are native to Massachusetts. However, when we're out and about, we run into all kinds of hard-to-interpret language hurdles. As a cultural observation experience, I've begun recording phonetic transcriptions (of sorts) of the pronunciations that we hear around here. Here are some of my interpretations (I'll include translations for you further down):

1. labstuh
2. pack
3. havuhd
4. jazz
5. shack
6. alington
7. yad
8. heuh
9. are-eh-gann
10. khakis
11. laud
12. shoe-uh
13. smat

Reading these back to myself, I can totally see the connections. When I hear them, though, I have to pause and think before these words register. Here's the translation:

1. lobster
2. park
3. Harvard
4. jars
5. shark
6. Arlington
7. yard
8. here
9. Oregon
10. car keys
11. Lord
12. sure
13. smart

Having grown up in the South where there are stereotypes of Boston accents, I was a little misinformed about what an actual Boston accent sounds like. For example, a phrase that people like to quote is "Park the car in Harvard yard." Only, in the South, people tend to pronounce is like "Pahk the cah in Hahvahd yard" as if it's a classy British accent. 

Y'all. That's not what it sounds like. Read this out loud:
Pack the cat(<---don't say the "T") in Havuhd yad.

Does that sound classy or British to you? My Downton Abbey friends say no.

My favorite one is khakis. Khakis, or, you know, car keys. Think about that one for a minute. The Arlington one is interesting to me because it's a stop on the train, meaning that the conductors will say the name as you pull in. The thing is, though, when they say it, it doesn't sound like Arlington. I wrote it as "Alington" in the first list; make sure you read that with an "Al" that sounds like the first part of "Alabama." Then read it in a garbly, over-the-train speakers voice. 

Yeah. You better look out the train window and make sure that you read what the sign says or you might miss your stop.

Anyway, Brad and I love to capture words or phrases we hear (heuh) so that we don't forget what an interesting place this is. We've made a little game of noting random words or sounds that as just "so Boston." We think we're rather wicked smat.

Laundry.

Y'all like to know random minutia about my life, right?

In the interest of promoting the minutia, I present my thoughts on laundry. Laundry in Boston, specifically.

Think back with me (those of you who followed my chronicles of life in Ukraine) to my days of the tiny European washing machine (that I was REALLY grateful to have, by the way) and line-drying on the enclosed balcony (that I was also grateful for). I had moments like this that really challenged my homemaking skills, but for the most part, things just worked out. I mean, I had to wait an hour and 20 minutes for a handful of items to wash, but that was just not a big deal.

Boston laundry is a different beast, but it comes with it's own unique set of challenges. Firstly, let me say that we are very blessed to have laundry facilities (one washer and two dryers) in our building. When we were here in May, we looked at an apartment less than a block away that did not have in-building facilities, and the residents had to haul their laundry to a laundromat down the street. Our washer is $2.00 and the dryers are $1.75. It's kind of a bummer to watch our money slowly disappear into the washing machine, and it's definitely a pain to make sure we always have quarters on hand. We gained a new appreciation for our washing costs recently, though, when we learned that a friend of ours who lives across town not only has to haul her laundry across the street...she has to pay $4.00 a load just to wash. Yeah. That's a pain.

Now, although our laundry facilities are in the building, that doesn't mean that the whole laundry situation comes without frustrations attached. The biggest one (to me) is that the laundry is in the basement (which is the same level as us, so at least I don't have to do stairs). The thing about the basement is that it's dark and dank and scarier than the Forbidden Forest or Shelob's Lair or something. It's soooooo creepy in there! And, the light switches are not even a little bit close to our door. Santa may or may not have brought me a headlamp for Christmas, and I may or may not put it to use to get to the lightswitch... Do not judge until you have ventured into the blackness, y'all. I HATE going in there alone. It's the perfect setting for a mystery to take place in. And, yes, that's all I can think about when I'm in there. Shiver...

We have found some ways to save on our laundry expenses, though. Living on a graduate student's budget has prompted our financial creativity. It's sort of like a game for us, because we're cool and like financial-figuring games.

1. We stopped paying for the dryers. This isn't the most convenient options, but it saves us several dollars a week...which adds up over the long run. My mom got us this handy laundry-hanging contraption when we moved here, and we put it to good use. We hang things on the hanging contraption, in the shower, and even on doorknobs from time-to-time. It totally works for us, and so far, we don't really mind it. With our dry gas heat, our clothes dry very quickly, too. We are open to reconsidering once little Miss Boswell is on the scene. We're flexible like that.

2. We make use of the multitudes of towels and wash cloths that we got when we got married. We have quite the stash, and we use 'em up so that we just do a load of towels once every few weeks. That way, they're not taking up lots of valuable room in the washer each week. 

3. We carefully evaluate just how dirty our clothing got during the course of the day. I realize that this isn't everyone's cup of tea, and you may now be judging us and our hygiene. I can live with that; we never smell bad or look rumpled (well, at least not from our re-wearing practices), and we like keeping our quarters as long as we can.

4. We don't turn our noses up at hand-me-downs. When our friend, Karl, left Boston, he let us have all kinds of goodies from his apartment, which included a LOT of laundry detergent. It's not the kind we typically buy, but we didn't even bat an eyelash. We were happy to help him clean out his apartment! (incidentally, we also scored a box fan, loads of lightbulbs, and all manner of kitchen goodies. We really miss that Karl and his generosity...)

That's a little run-down of laundry in our building. It's been on my mind today, as I've made several trips into the dark unknown today, using my headlamp to search the dark crannies for monsters and creepers. Not sure what I'd do if I found one...hurl my worn-many-times-over clothing at them and hope that it freaks them out? I'll work on a solution. 

Happy weekend!

The Nursery

Before writing about the actual point of this post, I thought I'd share the first comment I've gotten so far in this pregnancy that had me scoffing a bit in frustration. Saw a gal from church at a gathering last night, and she greeted me with, "That baby's getting big." Then she just walked away.

Scoff of indignation. 

I wanted to tell her that, actually, I managed not to gain a. single. ounce. over the holidays. Four weeks in the South, for goodness' sake, and didn't gain an ounce. I also wanted to let her know she was being that typical person that pregnant women mock for being insensitive (you know...kind of like me right at this moment. She should maybe read this for some tips.). I didn't say anything, though. Partly because she walked away and partly because I couldn't think fast enough. And, partly because I didn't want to be rude. Golly. On second thought, a sassy comeback in Boston isn't really considered rude like it would be in the South. I have to keep reminding myself that this is a much more assertive culture; I should let things roll off more easily. But, my emotions are all over the place, so that's not so easy to remember all the time. 

Anyway.

We've gotten quite a lot of questions about Claire's nursery. Things like "what colors/theme are you using?" and "have you finished it yet?" We always feel a little bit awkward answering that line of questioning, because the truth is that she doesn't exactly get a nursery.

That sounds bad, doesn't it?

What that means is that our apartment (while spacious and awesome for Boston) doesn't lend itself to having an actual nursery like most set-ups in non-city dwellings. We have a room that will serve as part office/study area, guest room, extra storage, and baby area. We're getting creative and crafty in making that space as functional as we can, but we can't really turn it entirely into a nursery.

The good news is that she won't care or remember it.

We're going to be getting her a mini-crib (because a full-size crib won't actually fit in "her" room) that is on wheels, so that it can be moved from room to room as needed. Brad likes to say that the whole apartment will be her nursery. So cute, he is. We have been decluttering, shifting, and rearranging things (like out-of-season clothing, Christmas decorations, boxes of miscellany) in order to begin organizing her stuff into what we hope will be a functional setup for everyone. We are planning to put up some "art" and to make the room baby-like, to the best of our ability. However, don't plan on seeing lots of adorable pictures of her "nursery." We wish we could do more Pinterest-y cute things, but on top of the space and multi-purposeness of the room, it's the room in our apartment that used to be a recording studio. This means that we're working with a lot of fixtures and elements that we can't really change, move, or alter. Perhaps we could do more to cover things up or camouflage, but because the area is so...compact?...we want to be careful not to clutter it up too much either.

Do have I have you sufficiently confused? Sorry about that. I'm actually going to go back there and sort through some boxes while you attempt to figure out the babble I just wrote. :)

We've got wheels!

When Brad and I moved to Boston last summer, we had made the (rather difficult) decision not to bring either of our vehicles. We live in Boston proper (i.e. not even a little bit in suburbia) and have excellent accessibility to public transportation. We did some preliminary calculations and decided it might be more economical to use public transportation and Zip Car, as needed. 

Truly, it did work quite well for us last semester. We could get anywhere we needed to. The Boston transportation system (called the "T," which is short for MBTA: Massachusetts Bay Transit Authority) is laid out rather well and isn't too hard to navigate. However, here were a few of the obstacles we encountered:

1. The costs do add up faster than we'd hoped. Because we live close enough to Boston College for Brad to walk or take the FREE BC shuttle, we don't use the T often enough to justify buying a monthly or semester-long pass. If we lived in a place that required him to take the train to school, we'd be much more cost-effective in T usage (um, definitely don't read that sentence as me complaining about the fact that his school transportation is F.R.E.E.).

2. Since we don't have a monthly pass, our option is to load up our Charlie Card (read: metro/train/bus card) with money for the fees. Trains are $2.00/ride and buses are $1.50 (free transfers within a 2-hour period). Just to go to church and back home each week set us back $8.00. Not a ton of money, but it definitely adds up. 

3. Going to the grocery store becomes complicated. Our closest grocery store (not counting drug stores/convenience stores) is about a mile away. It's a nice little walk...on the way there. We walked it often. Coming back, however, (you know, when you're laden with groceries) is uphill. My 32-week self was starting to struggle with that part. Also, winter isn't the most fun time to be trekking. The distance and up-hill-ness also limited how much we could purchase at one time (kind of like when I lived in Ukraine...only my store was much closer). Not a huge deal, but a "simple" grocery trip could easily eat up more than an hour. Oh, and taking the train isn't terribly efficient. It didn't bring us close enough to our apartment to do us much good: the uphill part is after you get off the train. So, another $4-$8 dollars down the drain...with a hill left to scale.

4. I began having recurring terrors about going into labor and having to take the train or a taxi ("Woman gives birth in back of Cab"...no, thank you) to the hospital. Maybe that's not terribly rational, but it was a really terrifying prospect to me.

So, we (Brad) began tallying up the costs of bringing one of our cars up. I should mention that both our vehicles are paid off, so that's not a cost we needed to factor in. What we were spending/would be spending in T fees and what we would spend to bring a car were not so different that it outweighed the convenience factor of having a car. Plus...we're going to have a baby soon. Pretty sure having a car will make that easier, too.

So, after Christmas, we drove my car (affectionately referred to as Hondy by my family) back to New England. We got her registered with the state (she had to get Mass tags...sad...I saved her Alabama one, though. She's a southern car.) and got our on-street parking permit. 

Which brings me to the new set of cultural adjustments we've been making. Parking. Sheesh. What a pain. We don't have a parking space (much less a parking lot!) that comes with our apartment. We are at the mercy of find-the-nearest-on-street-spot available. Sometimes, that means we can park right in front of our building, and sometimes that means we park two blocks away in front of some other building (kind of like we are right now). It's also all parallel parking, and LOTS of people take great liberties with how adept you're going to be at inching out of the 1/2 inch of space they've left you. Ask me if I plan on driving anytime soon.

Answer: I don't. I don't need that kind of blood pressure right now.

Despite that, we've been grateful for Hondy already, for church and the grocery store. And Brad's trip to the bank (which can easily take close to an hour on foot/by T). We still love the pedestrian lifestyle and have walked to a few places (one that was 2 miles away AND uphill) since being back. We don't plan on giving up walking entirely, by any means (Brad still walks to school), but we are SO grateful for the options having a car provides. 

So, to all our visitors who came when we were carless: I'm sorry. Why don't you all plan to come back for a do-over? We'll still take the T in for the downtown historical stuff (parking down there = nightmare), but church and whatnot will be so much easier. Please? Give us another chance.

long time, no post

It's been a loooong time since I last posted. I have a fairly good reason: we were gone from home for almost a month (yes, that's the perk of the graduate student's schedule). And, yes, there is internet in Alabama, Tennessee, and Georgia. I just chose to spend time with our family and friends rather than on the internet. 

However, after a long trip back to Massachusetts (we brought one of our cars back!), which included a nasty stomach virus for Brad (PRAISE the Lord that I didn't catch it!), we are back in our little Hobbit-hole apartment and are getting reacquainted with our life here. Actually, I'm taking down the Christmas decorations today while Brad is out and about getting our car registered so that we can park it without getting ticketed. 

In an effort to make up for lost blogging time, I'm going to do my best to be very diligent in catching up on things like:

*the last two challenge outfits of 2012 (sniffle) and my thoughts on the experience
*loot that Claire raked in
*what we're up to in preparing for her arrival
*catch up posts from the fall that never got published (eh...this may or may not happen...we'll see...it's been this long already)
*an updated tour of the apartment

I'm sure I'll think of some other stories along the way. I hope you all (you know, all two of you that still read this...Mom...Dad...), have a wonderful weekend.