Let’s Play Catch Up, Shall We

Looking at the date of my last post makes me feel ashamed. It’s been over two weeks since I’ve last blogged and one of the rules that I told myself when starting this blog was that I would post something at least twice a week. Twice a week should be an easy rule to keep considering that most days there is always at least one thing that happens that I can think about turning into a story. And even if my post for the day was only to be a couple of paragraphs long, that would suffice for me. But no, I decide to wait over two weeks before getting my butt in gear to post something. Every day I’ve been telling myself, “You need to blog.” And my only excuse lately – I’ve been lazy when it comes to writing. I’d like to blame it on being pregnant but I can’t because I have plenty of energy to work out and do other things around the house after work. And then there are the weekends where I can always find time for myself. So no good excuse for not blogging is going to grace this post other than the fact that I’ve just been lazy with my writing. I apologize for that and will now recap the events that have been going on with the Jenkins over the last couple of weeks to play catch up. I’m going to start with the most recent and work my way backwards; be prepared for a novel.

May 24 – Present: Nothing too exciting has happened so far this week other than the fact that I went to San Francisco for a couple of days. Unfortunately it was for work so I didn’t get to enjoy being in the city like I would had I gone there with Jody or a friend. My commute back to Sacramento started out really bad with it taking 50 minutes to go three miles just to get onto the Bay Bridge. If I lived there I would seriously go nuts. Being stuck that long in traffic to the point where you don’t move for awhile started making me feel claustrophobic. Thankfully the freeway opened up once I got to Vallejo so I made it home in three hours, which is what I thought it would be. On May 25 I met with the HR rep at work to discuss my maternity leave and let’s just say it sort of ruined the rest of my day. Though I get the four months off that I was expecting, not all of it is at full-pay from my employer which means I'll have to use up my sick leave and vacation. I’m not going to bore you with the specifics of the breakdown but I will say that I am very disappointed in the amount of days that my employer contributes to my full-pay. And I’m trying to remain positive so I’m not going to sit here and bash my employer in detail; just know that I was expecting a lot more after hearing from others about the “great benefits” when you work for the State.

May 17 – May 23: Started the week with a day off to celebrate our two year anniversary. We originally had planned on going for a hike to Mt. Diablo but the weather was cold and rainy so we chose to do other things that we enjoy; went to the gym, took a nap, saw Iron Man 2, and played Rummikub. Yes, we’re already the old married couple but we wouldn’t have it any other way. May 19 was a late birthday celebration from my co-workers who took me out to lunch at Jack’s. I absolutely love their salads. While it was a day of celebration, it was also a day of mourning as our beloved co-worker Sarah was leaving CTS for another job. I made her lemon cupcakes with “You’ll Be Missed” spelled out on the frosting to surprise her with – and to eat of course. May 21 was a day that started off with a ton of excitement. We had our 20-week ultrasound appointment that afternoon and we were planning on finally being able to know the sex of the baby. I invited my mom to come down and go with us since this is her first grandchild and I know she’s so excited. At 2:45pm we all arrived and went into the appointment. Over an hour later, all the excitement for finding out the baby’s sex was instead filled with disappointment as the technician wasn’t able to completely tell if it was a boy or a girl. As soon as I got into my car I started crying. I understood that the baby wasn’t cooperating for the technician but I also felt that for as long as the appointment was, waiting until the very end to look for the baby’s sex wasn’t smart. So I’ve made another appointment to have an ultrasound with Western Career College (free by the way!) on June 8. They’ll spend as much time with you as necessary in order to find out the sex because that’s all they’re allowed to tell you. Maybe this time I shouldn’t go into the appointment so excited though, just in case. Mom stayed the night and helped me out with our community garage sale on May 22. I was amazed at how much stuff I had to sell and even more surprised that I sold almost all of it. A lot of it I just wanted to get off my hands so I dropped prices if people asked. I figured any amount of money was better than none because what I didn’t sell we took over to Goodwill. It was nice to spend time with my mom doing something fun and it brought back memories of when I was growing up and we would have garage sales all the time.

May 10 – May 16: Nothing fun happened until May 13 when I got to meet up with my old co-workers Jenna and Brittany for dinner after work. It was so good to see them as it had been way too long. I miss working with those girls. They both recently were promoted and Brittany is even moving to the San Francisco office for a try at living somewhere different. I’m proud of her for taking such a huge step toward a change that most people would be terrified to make. I remember when I was single, I always thought about getting up and going somewhere I had never been before. And I almost did when I interviewed to be a flight attendant with Southwest but right before I got the call to go to training in Dallas, I decided that I needed to go back to school and finish my degree instead. We met at Ernesto’s for some delicious Mexican food and a chance to play catch up. I realized after leaving that night that I really miss hanging out with Jenna and Brittany. Would love to at least get back to our monthly happy hour get together – though with me being pregnant it wouldn’t be a true happy hour. Run with Nature 5K was on May 15. It was my first race now that I’m pregnant and I was really happy with how well I did. The course was different than last year and although the scenery was nicer this year, it was a lot of hills and running hills while pregnant is not easy. But I did it and finished 3.1 miles in 29:43 which is a 9:35 average per mile. For five months pregnant, I was really proud of myself. Got to go birthday shopping after the race and buy some much needed maternity clothes with the gift cards that I received. I must say that maternity clothes are so much more comfortable than regular clothes, and can be really cute too. Started off celebrating my 29th birthday on May 16 with a nice breakfast made by Chef Jody. Then we went for an ‘extreme’ mountain bike ride and I realized afterward that it’s getting harder to bend under tree branches that are in the bike path now that my belly is starting to get bigger. Guess we’ll have to pick different bike paths soon. Later that evening family came over for a BBQ dinner and yummy ice cream cake. It was a wonderful way to spend my birthday, and the last one sans baby. Though I’ve already promised myself that next year for my 30th I will be going big in Vegas with my girlfriends.

So I’m all caught up now. I promise – PROMISE – that unless I have a really, really good excuse I won’t go so long in between posts. In fact, I already know what I’ll be blogging about tomorrow; good night!