Bits and Pieces

We toured the new birthing rooms at the hospital last night.  They are nice.  Not only are they enormous, but the ceilings are high making them feel less claustrophobic and hospital-ish.  Half of the room is the patient's area with a chair, shelves, etc, and half is full of the doctor's stuff.  I remember cramming into the hospital rooms after Mom had babies and feeling like we were tripping over everything and constantly getting in the way of something Important.  We had 12-14 people in the birthing/post-delivery rooms last night and there was loads of space.  It helped to be able to visualize where everything will happen.  That makes me less nervous.

(I also had the slightly freaky realization that Somebody is going to be calling me Mom.  Weird.) 

Yesterday was Ash Wednesday and we felt it at Emily's.  I was beginning to wonder why people were coming to eat at a soda fountain/ice cream shop when they were giving up things like...oh, you know...sugar. And meat.  That made life for this little waitress rather challenging at times.  The best Lent discussion happened in the afternoon.  You see, we have between 4-8 "coffee ladies" come in at 3pm and stay for an hour.  One of the ladies is a thirty-something non-smooth thinker (i.e. she functions on a ten to twelve-year-old level) named Brenda.  Brenda is super-sweet and is always asking about what we're doing and always gets an extra-large coke.  The other coffee ladies are generally very kind to Brenda, but one (EmmaLou) is, unfortunately, particularly snooty towards her.  Yesterday Brenda was chatting with us about her difficulty in deciding what she was giving up for Lent.  Her sister was giving up talking on the phone, but that just wouldn't work for Brenda ("What if someone called me?  Or there was an emergency?").  Then Brenda had an epiphany:
      "Maybe I could give up talking to EmmaLou."

I'm waiting for an shipping estimate from IKEA.  We have been wanting to organize our living room/dining room, and this was unbelievably perfect.  Now there will be a spot for the computer and its various appendages, and plenty of room for the mountain range of books that is constantly collecting on our coffee table.  I did not know IKEA's online ordering process, which afforded some confusion, but all is well.  Time for it all to start heading our direction.

We have been married for seventh months today.  Does time fly, or what?