House Arrest

15 Weeks

I'm 15 weeks pregnant today which means that I'm roughly 40% through a "standard" twins pregnancy (assuming I deliver at 38 weeks). My energy is starting to come back although I still find that I still need quite a bit of recovery / down time on weekends. In fact, I spent most of this Saturday snug in my bed, sleeping.

Last week was my first week back at work since the holidays. I was happy that it was a three-day week since I'd been living on a completely different schedule where I could nap when I was tired and eat whenever I wanted. Now I have to plan to bring food and water to my meetings so that I don't pass out from hunger and to replace the naps with a lunch hour of doing absolutely nothing. I also need to start leaving work earlier, by 6 latest. I tend to stay at the office until 7 most nights and that definitely didn't help the level of exhaustion I felt last week.

Since I've told everyone, though, I don't think I will feel weird about leaving early. In fact, everyone is encouraging me to get the fuck out of dodge as soon as I can each evening. So starting this week, I'll be cutting out earlier so that I can home and rest more. Of course, that doesn't take into account this evening. I completely forgot that I signed up for a spinning workshop (6:30 - 8:30) months ago so I probably won't be getting home until 9.

In knitting news, I finished one of the two sleeves on the Elven Cardigan (pictures later -- I have to shower now!) and have joined the second ball on Argosy. Also, the yarn from Elann should be arriving either today or tomorrow (YEY!) so I can get started on my baby knitting in earnest. I'll revamp my projects sidebar to more accurately reflect what I'm actually working on and what's on hold in the near future.

Keep growing sea monkeys! Mommy's looking forward to checking up on you next week...

Progress

We had our first Knit Club of the New Year last night. Kelly, Courtney, Michele and I met up at our usual Cosi for a few hours of ball winding, eating, kvetching, mutual admiration of projects, holiday photo-sharing, pattern swapping and more.

I worked on Argosy:

and made further progress on this:

Can you guess what it is? Maybe this will give you a better clue:

Still no idea?

Look on the sidebar... It's the first of many baby sweaters to come, a cardigan based on Anny's "A Cardigan for Merry" which uses the cables from Kate Gilbert's "A Cardigan for Arwen". After knitting a decent sized swatch and doing a ton of calculations to size it for a 6 month old, I cast on and knit about 1/2 of the back on Tuesday evening.

I plan on making two cardigans, of course, but I haven't decided on the second one's color yet. I had the grey already in stash, and want to see how much yarn the first one uses since I might have enough available for two. Ideally I'd like to make the second one in a different, lighter grey -- grey being the color of the elven cloaks that Galadriel wove for the Fellowship -- but we'll see what happens.

Have I mentioned that I am uber-tired lately? The sea monkeys and work have been kicking my ass!

Grow, little sea monkeys, grow!

Argosy and Nausea

Argosy is fun. Really.

The photo above shows progress as of last night. I've already worked two more pattern repeats since then. The color changes are really keeping my interest so I'm planning to keep working on this until it's finished. I'm not looking forward to blocking it though. My back's been hurting a bit so I'll have to figure out an alternative to blocking on the floor for this piece.

In pregnancy news, my nausea has flared up something fierce. Um, hello? I'm at the end of my first trimester! It's supposed to start going away now. I really hope that I won't be one of those women who's pukey all through their pregnancy. That would totally suck.

All Sorts of Updates

Ultrasound
There's tons to be said about the NT screening ultrasound but I'm short on time this morning. Everything went well, I heard one of the twins' heartbeats and saw the little buggers flailing about in their little sacs. It was a bit surreal, truth be told.

When I showed the ultrasound pictures to my co-worker, she was like "Wow. This really makes it real." I replied, "It's been real for some time now..."

Work Conflict
I had a problem yesterday with a particularly prickly employee. She got in my face, spat out her piece and then turned heel and left before I could even address the issue. I'd told her that I didn't want to talk at that particular moment about five times but she followed me out of a meeting to my desk, spieling her diatribe and forcing her way into my personal space. Nevermind that I was putting on my coat the entire time and kept saying that I had to leave for an important appointment. 

For once I decided not to be walked all over like that, to not be a fucking doormat. Like they say, "You can take the girl out of the South Bronx, but you can't take the South Bronx out of the girl." I went over to her desk and just laid into her about how she has no respect for anybody but herself. Unfortunately what came out was so emotional and so angry that I sputtered half of it and wound up turning heel on her and just leaving.

Of course she sent a lovely e-mail to me and my boss about my "so-called professionalism" and the emotional outburst -- excuse me, but she has LOUD arguments at least once a week that I've had to go in and break up -- and how she expect better behavior from a Vice President. I countered with a rational and calm reply, stating what I couldn't articulate previously with a not so subtle "I'm not taking your shit anymore..." at the end. I also pointed out that I don't throw my title around, and that I expect the same level of professionalism from everyone regardless of their title or age (again a not so subtle dig at her because she's constantly tossing around her "40+ years of experience"...)

So she followed up with her usual email about how my boss is an idiot (she hates him), how my team is incompetent, how she has over 40 years of experience, is perfect and makes no mistakes and -- the best one of the lot -- how she asked to be relieved of her managerial duty so she could focus on improving her area. Asked to be relieved? Wow. Is that what she tells herself so that she can sleep at night?

Where does she get off? Actually, don't tell me. I don't want to know the subway stop to delusional 'cause she clearly lives there.

I didn't bother to reply. If she asks I will simply tell her that I said what I needed to say and that I've already heard her piece... many, many, many times over. My boss was going to reply since he was incensed but my other boss and I talked him out of it. After all, it would only lead to an email war.

At any rate, there's a reason my boss hired me to be his right hand, which I'm sure she clearly doesn't see. If she thought she was getting me in trouble with her e-mail, well she best think again. People fucking applauded me for standing up to her.

Everyone's been telling me to let it go, that she's psycho and delusional, and that I'm in the right. But I'm having a real hard time letting go of this, mainly because I've swallowed too much of her shit for a year out of professionalism. But a year's worth of barely hidden insults and digs has simply been too much. I'm not going to let those go by unchallenged anymore. I can't.

I'm somewhat dreading today, but I'm just going to be me. I'll be my usual nice and courteous self and I'll talk to her when I need to. I'm not going to avoid her like I have in the past because I didn't want to get into another of her crazy circular arguments (her favorite tactic for wearing down her opponents). At the same time I'm not going to take her shit if I do need to interact with her.

Let's put it this way. There are about 40 plus people in my department who have my back.

Knitting
All my projects are being worked on, albeit slowly and somewhat piecemeal. Balsam is my main knit right now because it's perfect for the subway. However it has this one particular row that I keep messing up at the very end of the 18 row pattern repeat. I've been missing my mistake until I'm two rows past and have consequently had to rip back at least twice now. I've just made the same mistake but it's such a soothing simple knit that I don't really mind taking the time to fix things.

And lookie what I got in the mail yesterday:

And what I started last night:

It's Argosy, from the Winter 2006 Knitty. I started it last night in an attempt to move my mind away from the drama and stress. I've finished section 1 and am two rows into section 2. It's a pretty interesting knit so I have a feeling that this one will hold my attention for more than a few weeks before I get shiny nickled by something else.

By the way, did I mention that I hate knitting scarves? :)