Nevermind.

God be praised. There is nothing wrong with me, and baby is all right too. Two mothers and one doctor agree that there is no way what I was doing could have harmed my baby, and one husband thinks I'm incredibly paranoid. I don't blame him. It seems like every week I have a new crisis that I need to worry about, and I really overdid it this time. I tell him that if he had all the changes going on in his body that I have going on in my body, he would be paranoid too, or at least more worried than he is when I freak out. I am glad to have his level head to keep me sane, but it would be nice if I could rest in his calm assurance without having to endure his exasperated amusement.

So work on the mural will go on, but not today. I need a couple days to recoup after yesterday. I think that I will wander over to the hardware store and pick up some more blue for background, and then maybe on Thursday I will fill that in. My nerves should be settled by then. After that I can start on leaves in that corner. I wonder if we still have the green that I painted our bedroom with.

Mural progress.

Well, I took a bit of a risk today, and I'm not sure if I'm going to regret it or not. See, the wall in my kitchen has been driving me crazy. It's all blocked out, and there has been no progress since then. I've had this nagging feeling that it isn't finished, which, as my mom pointed out, has probably been increasing my stress level. Now I know this project is not going to be finished quicklym, but progress is progress, so Friday, I went down to the hardware store and bought myself four quarts of paint: two shades of grey and two shades of gold.

This morning, I was determined to get started and just do a little painting. Now the word "little" is key because I know that painting can be hazardous for pregnant women. So I determined ahead of time that I was only going to paint for an hour. I chose paints with the smallest amount of fumes. I opened all the windows in the house, I turned on a fan, and I even wore a respirator.

So I got all my painting stuff out, mixed myself some colors, and started painting.

The first thing I discovered was that I was going to need to get some smaller brushes. Trees have a lot of small and intricate parts that a 1/4 inch brush is not going to handle. This is the main tree in the back corner. The branches will extend farther than they do at the moment, but that is exactly where a smaller brush would have come in handy.

The second thing I discovered is that dark is really dark. Check out my background trees for this corner. Really dark and kinda creepy. I want the trailing twigs. They're one of the reasons I love paper birches so much. At the moment, they look like claws, and this whole thing looks like a Halloween setting. Not quite what I had in mind. I'm going to try to brighten up the middle of their trunks, and of course, when they have shading and details, they'll look more realistic.About that time, I decided that I had painted enough. I was sick of the respirator, and I was feeling a little sick to my stomach. So I put away my paints and cleaned out my brushes on the middle tree. What do you think? If the branches were longer and the leaves were in place, it could be a pretty good birch tree. It doesn't look quite that good close up, but I've been painting with broad brushes, so I don't really expect any differently.

Next step will be to put some life into those background trees and decide how I want to handle the background colors. Either the blue needs to come down a lot farther (which will get blue smudges on my trees, or I need to find a plausible background green or gold that can look like leaves in autumn. I think I'm going to do as much as possible to this side before I start on the other side. Sort of a learn from my mistakes sort of a thing. Today I learned that backgrounds should come first, before sketching even. I also learned that I can put together a pretty good birch tree.

But how much painting should I be doing? Once a week? How much trouble am I causing myself for my piece of mind regarding this mural? The nurses said that a little bit of painting was fine, and that's exactly what I did, a little bit. But now I'm so nervous. I wish I could see what's going on inside of me. I'd like to keep painting. Mom is right. I feel much better when I'm on my way toward getting something done. I don't feel good thinking about possible risks to my child. Maybe I should just call my doctor. I think I'll do that.

Addendum to previous post.

This is about half of the apples we gathered.

This is my dad hiding in the foliage.

This is another balloon picture. The head belongs to my Aunt Jan.

Trying to be busy.

It's hard to stay busy when one doesn't know what one's day is going to be like. Today of all days, I am reluctant to go out. I should be receiving a phone call. I've been cleaning for three days. I have very little left to do, and I don't want to miss that phone call. "Just use your cell phone," some of you will say. Sometimes I don't hear my cell phone, and I don't want to miss this call.


So this afternoon, I'll probably run to town and buy some paint and finally get started painting my mural (don't worry--I will open all the windows in the house when I paint). I'm going to paint a couple of trees and then move the furniture in front of them and focus on the rest of the wall. But this morning, while I'm still hoping for my phone call, I'm going to post some pictures from last week. While I'm waiting for my pictures to upload, I'm vacuuming the bedrooms. I'd really like to move all the furniture and give everything a good solid cleaning, but I'm not allowed to attempt to move anything that heavy, even with a furniture dolly (sniff, sniff) The further along I get, the more my hands are tied, it seems.

Most of these are pictures of apple gleaning. This lean guy is my dad. I tried to get a picture of his face, but he very cleverly used the foliage to avoid my camera. Just looking at the spotty sunlight and the over-reaching branches can give you an idea of the atmosphere of gleaning. Think early morning. It is rather like stepping into a forest glade on an adventure. You never know what you might find. For instance, on my right is a little treasure that I wasn't expecting. I've never found a bird's nest while gleaning before, but this time I found two of them.




This lady to the left is my mom. She thought that we didn't need to bring home quite as many apples as we did, but we couldn't help ourselves. Apple gleaning is addictive. Every time we had convinced ourselves that we were done, we would see another branch that we had missed. It's very nearly a sin to leave good apples behind. So after we were done gleaning, she and I spend the next three days (nights actually) coreing, pealing, and slicing apples for sauce. 28 quarts and counting. Of course, one can never have too much applesauce, and homemade is so much better than storebought. We dried some apples too, and of course, they can always be eaten fresh.

Late September is also excellent ballooning weather, and every

year, the town of Prosser holds a hot air balloon festival. Now if you like waking up at five in the morning to stand outside and watch balloons take off into the rising sun, by all means, go to Prosser at five in the morning. I haven't been keen on early mornings for a while. I haven't been keen on late evenings either, but my family went to see this event, called Night Glow. Several balloons are set up in a stadium, and flicker on and off and move up and down in time to some well-known piece of music. I only got to see the pictures this year. Maybe next year I'll have my late night appetite back.

Maybe I'll bake a pie this morning, or call my mother-in-law (heads up, Judi) and ask her about mural paints again. She told me all about them once, but I lost the paper that I wrote her advice down on. I know I don't want oil or acrylic paints. That doesn't really leave much, does it. Hmmm. This could be harder than I thought. I might actually be busy this afternoon. :)

Got home safe.
House was empty, as expected, except with signs of Seth.
Sat down and had a good cry (3 whole tears. That's a lot for me.)
Going grocery shopping for basics. All out of milk.
Post pictures of holiday tomorrow.

bye.