It's amazing how the anticipation of parenthood can change your whole life. (Presumably this is nothing compared to the actual experience.) I was just thinking last night about where my little brother Cullam is going to go to school. "Maybe it will be Mizzou," I thought, "and maybe we'll still live here when that happens…that will fun." The thing is, if it hadn't have been for my pregnancy, that never would have even been a question. We probably would have moved by now, and we definitely wouldn't have done something like buy a house.

The spell checker tries to change Cullam's name to Coulomb. That's an interesting mix-up. I have to write all my entries in Word and spell check them, or I'll misspell something like 'misspell' (which I just misspelled, three times now) and my dad will make fun of me. Especially since it's usually a much easier word, like 'the' or something.

Speaking of anticipated parenthood, let me take a moment to rant about something. I won't spend too long on it though, since it is a popular topic. (At least it is in the stuff I read.) What's up with this baby-making stuff anyway? It seems to be a lot easier to make a baby on accident than to make one on purpose. I mean, it's not like I was missing birth control pills all the time or anything like that. And yet, we managed to get pregnant on the one month I did. Now we're trying, and it hasn't happened yet. Not that I necessarily expected it too. I mean this is only the third try, and five is average. Not being pregnant isn't the worst thing, though. It's the stress of getting there. When I read trying-to-conceive bulletin boards I realize that we're actually on the tamer end of the spectrum. (No offense to anyone.) If it's this stressful here, I can't even imagine being on the other end. I don't have a cow anytime I sneeze and ask everyone if it could be a symptom. We don't have so much sex during the pertinent time that we are totally uninterested in it at any other time. (Of course I don't see how this could happen in any relationship where one of the partners is male.) It's annoying, though. I can get through most of the two week long wait to find out if it worked or not without thinking about it too much. Towards the end, though, Christian starts getting excited if I feel a bit sick in the morning and then I get excited too and start spending too much on pregnancy tests. So that's where I am now. The few days before. I actually don't feel like it happened this month, though. That could, of course, simply be due to the fact that I promised myself that I was not going to freak out this time. Even if I reserve my freaking out for a few days rather than a few weeks, it is still too much for me to take. I am decidedly not freaky this month….mostly. I'd let you know if it turns out well, otherwise I'm not going to mention it after today. It just makes it worse.

Sometimes I almost wish I were in the olden days, where they didn't have cheap home pregnancy tests and all that. I'd rather not know for sure for a while. Oh I know it would still be stressful in its own special way, but I think I'd like it more. Of course that's probably just because after the miscarriage, my top choice is to sleep through the whole first trimester, and not being sure if it is the first trimester ranks a close second right now.

Enough about that. Let's talk about annoying little dogs now. (This is sure to be a most uninteresting entry for those of you not interested in small creatures that make messes.) Our oldest dog, Bramble, has all of a sudden reverted to puppyhood. By this I mean that she has all of a sudden decided that being housebroken isn't quite all it's cracked up to be and she would rather avail herself of, say, the couch or the bed or the futon or perhaps even the floor rather than the perfectly nice yard. We even have a dog door. She and the other dogs have been happily using this arrangement for the last month with no problems. Until now. I don't know if I'd mentioned it before, but Bramble is one stupid dog. I just didn't know she was that stupid. The advice to us was start over at the beginning with the housetraining. Maybe that's it. She just can't remember 5 minutes ago, let alone a year and a half ago, so we need a little refresher course. Yeah…that's it.

So that I can remember why we got her in the first place, here's a cute picture of Bramble the puppy.

Boy she was cute. I needed that. Here's another. This one is either put up in the same spirit as the one above, or is a warning to Bramble of how she will look if she does THAT again. You decide.

Incidentally this picture is one of a series of pictures we took of Bramble when we first got our digital camera. Christian was throwing her up in the air, and I was snapping the pictures at juuuust the right time. It was hilarious. (Whenever we showed the pictures to people, Christian tried to convince them that she was having the time of her life, but as you may suspect from the look on her face, this was merely a ploy to prevent them from calling PETA. I wouldn't say she hated it, but I wouldn't say she liked it either.) Ahh, technology. Just a few years ago we would have had to waste rolls of film getting those beauties. I made a background for my computer at work out of them. It's called FlyingBrambleWallpaper. It helps keep me in the right mood.