Things other then the baby.

Ryan was going to post about hanging with Karl Rove, but he's waiting for the photo evidence to materialize. Which may or may not happen in the foreseeable future, so no breath holding or anything. Never fear, we've had other adventures to catch you up on.

A couple of weeks ago while Ryan was shooting training videos for the Navy in Rhode Island, the hot water heater sprung a leek. Not a gushing women and children first kind of leak but a slow trickle that annoyingly soaks the rug. The second Ryan got home I raced him off to find us a new heater. (Ok, I let him get one night's sleep, but we left early in the next morning with mushy socks.) I should mention the leak was through the lower thermostat electronics. Electricity and water... Isn't there a warning on my blow dryer about that?

The rest of the story is pretty uneventful. Ryan and his dad got the new tank installed without any trouble. The new unit is an electric tank water heater. We debated going tankless, better for the environment and all, but the price difference was too steep for us. One day (after the winning lotto ticket is magically deposited in our mailbox) we'll talk about getting a tankless heater along with a gas line for it.

The following weekend we went camping in the Shenandoah National Park. We wore poor Kismet out on a three mile hike; I think our little girl might be getting too old for our adventures. The upshot is that she's really well behaved when she's exhausted. We also discovered the hard way that the air mattress had a hole in it. (Note to self: Ryan will drive off and leave you behind if you whine like a two year old for long enough, despite the fact its a well known cure for a backache.)


The weekend after, we drove to Pennsylvania for my buddy Meggie's surprise birthday party. Her super sweet husband got a bunch of her friends and family together and booked Francis Dunnery to play in their living room in honor of her 30th. Francis sang, waxed philosophical about relationships and life and love, and hung out for a bit. We ate and caught up with old friends, it was a great time.

We also spent one Saturday (much to Ryan's dismay) cleaning out the garage. Once a year we have to take everything out and reorganize. I keep telling Ryan that if we put stuff back where it belongs this wouldn't need to happen, and he thinks that the garage was just as organized as it was when we last cleared it out. To be fair to Ryan, we did throw away a whole truckload of crap this round. Part of the larger purge to make room for the critter and its accouterments. (Babies need so much CRAP!)

We also got the chicken pen all cleaned out and Ryan added a truckload of fresh dirt. The chicken house has been modified and I'm happy to say that after a little convincing all the girls are sleeping in doors again!

There are more projects on the Suburban Farm task list as well. Ryan's going to build me a laundry room. Well, he's going to build a wall (with a door!) to close off the laundry area from the rest of the garage and some cabinets for extra storage. I am ridiculously excited about this. We're also going to install The Path next to our house that leads from the driveway to the back door where we walk. It's the way we get in and out of our house and it's constantly waterlogged and muddy. Lots of fun when you're dressed for work and in heels. The Path involves gravel, french drains, sand, slate, and probably shovels. It's pretty elaborate, but we're hoping to get it done before the kid shows up. We're also hoping to get the bathrooms finished. The second bathroom just needs tile installed, but the master bathroom is going to get fresh paint along with tile and a cabinet to store towels and toiletries in.

After that it's mostly maintenance projects. There are some trees in the back woods that need to come down, the hoses will need to be drained and put away, the gardens winterized. We need to get wood for the stove, yes we're avoiding the heat again this winter. We have to go through our seed box and decide what we'll want to grow next spring. I'll post again soon with more updates. We're scheduled for the ultrasound next week. If things go according to plan, we'll know more about the baby's plumbing. I think we're having a boy, Ryan thinks it's a girl, here's to hoping one of us is right.

- Gretchen

Bicycle Bicycle banana fanna fo Ficycle

Discussions around the Suburban Farm lately keep dancing around the topic of names. Ryan is perfectly content to wait 7 weeks when we'll find out if we're having a setter or a pointer. I'm not so comfortable waiting. By the time we find out what the kid has for plumbing, we'll have less then four months to choose the critter's destiny.

If you think I'm being overly dramatic lets look at an example: It's Friday night and there are two guys at a party, Sheldon and Duke. We all know what Sheldon's doing, the physics major is hanging out in the corner after being dragged to the party by his slightly more outgoing friend on the off chance that one girl will talk to either of them. And Duke? He's on his third round of beer pong and bragging about his exploits with that chick he met at Hooters (it's a family establishment) while his buddies cheer him on.

See! Names do make a difference. Still don't agree with me? Here is a quick excerpt from Freakonomics on Slate. This post, A Roshanda by any other name, discusses how names that are inherently black impact the lives of the children who carry them. I don't think its a big stretch to extrapolate that if a name that is obviously "black" can effect the outcome of a child's life, then a name that is obviously "poor" or "hippie" or "snooty" or "strange" could have the same effect.

I know that not everything is about the kid's name. Jeffrey seems like a perfectly nice name until you put Dahmer after it. I know who a person is, is part nature and part nurture. Some of it I can control and some of it I can't. (See Mom! I was listening.) Nevertheless, I think finding a name that both Ryan and I can live with is a huge challenge. Most of the conversations have been going like this, "What do you think of X?" "It's great if you're a hippopotamus with a skin condition."

One problem is that our naming philosophies don't sync. I apparently like long "pretentious" names and Ryan likes short syllables and dislikes nicknames. Boy's names seem to be harder then girl's names, partly because I dated a few (ok a lot) of guys before I met Ryan. Our kid will never be a Jeremy (dated two of them), David (the guy before Ryan), or Palo (stop giggling). (Hey Señor McJudgey Pants - you have to sort through a few frogs (and snakes, and rats, and dogs) before you find Prince Charming.)

So far the only name that neither of us hated was Bicycle. It works for both a girl and a boy! No, we're not having a Gwyneth Paltrow and Chris Martin moment. We would never consider actually naming our child after a two wheeled human powered vehicle, but it does reinforce my desire to start searching for names now. There are an awful lot of hell no's to go through before we'll find a few maybe's to consider and four months doesn't seem like enough time to discover those gems.

I'm sure we'll find one eventually, there aren't many nameless adults running around. And who knows, maybe Sheldon will hire a personal assistant to clean his Academy Awards and Duke will discover what Dark Matter is really made of.