Exo-nesting?

I am SO nesting. Yes. 20 days or so before I deliver, I start nesting. Go figure.

Here's the bizarre part though; I'm nesting outside the house.

I finished the taxes and, the instant I found out how much we were getting back, I became obsessed with the fence.

Yeah. The fence. Around the farm.

So I started collecting estimates at the stock sale and (after some negotiating and wrangling) I got a really good price and went for it. The blokes came out Wednesday, finished up yesterday and it looks GOOD:

This is a sample from the front of the property. Before (above) and after:

So, I've got two more weeks until my son will be here, my house is in it's general, alarming, call-the-CDC state of disarray, my hospital bag's about half-packed, the pack-n-play is still in it's carrying case, but, by gum, the goats won't be getting out anytime soon! w00t!

(This is the new goat pen fence. Behind is our 'barn'; a teensy little shed that was built by the city folks who lived here before us. Adding onto that is my next project.)

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Weird baby item of the day. These things - to me - are so creepy that they're cool (I'd use them in a NICU just to see the looks on people's faces), but I still think that the idea is bogus. I mean, any item will retain your scent for the baby and the fact that they look like hands is lost on a newborn. Now if they were made out of some synthetic cyber-skin and heated ... and maybe anamatronic ...

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And moving abruptly to English and its various misuses, abuses, and evolutionary jumps:

The conundrum of the 'word' email and how it was spelt was brought up on one of my forums. Good question. My vote is "e-mail" although I (obviously) use "email". What do you think? Several people (including an English teacher on this board) offered "E-Mail" or "E-mail" neither of which I agree with. The phrase was "electronic mail" and so should not be capitalized unless it begins a sentence.

Someone linked this article discussing the subject. What do you think, grammarphiles?

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Seen on one of my mommy forums (on a school paper written by her husband):

"I went through it and edited it for him, he had a hard time with language class, and I was appauled that he hadn't put anything in it about me besides the fact that I found the coarse that he's taking now in college, or about the child that him and I are about to have.
I don't feel I'm overreacting.. we've been together almost have of a decade."

Putting aside the facts that she is, indeed, overreacting to her husband not including her in some English assignment for school; that hubby needs to be editing his own paper (that's kinda the point of taking a writing class); is anyone else alarmed that a person who displays this shocking a lack of language skillz is editing this paper for someone else's college class?

In which pubic hair is mentioned

I just realized that when I go to read my fave bloggers I'm always irritated when they haven't posted.

Me.

She Who Only Rarely Posts.

Yeah, I suck. I also love my bloggers. My list that I read daily is much shorter than it used to be: basically, my posse and about that same number again. Isn't it odd that one can randomly reach out over the 'net and find a handful of women who's lives you find so interesting? Whose words you find so moving (or amusing)? From whom you gain insight and strength just by hearing about their lives?

Weird, eh?

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Well I've been totally useless the past few days. I'm working furiously on the stores since these are the final days of online holiday shopping, so I spend way too much time gawping at the computer screen and talking to myself.

I did go to the sale Saturday. It was bloody cold (so cold I didn't take any of the bubs) and I was afraid I was going to be the only person there. A small crowd showed up after a bit. (I drove into the bustling metropolis of Saluda, South Carolina where I had my order gotten wrong by Burger King employees and was forced to choke down a dry sausage bisquit for breakfast and said crowd accumulated while I was gone.)

I was unique in being the only female there until about noon or so. This gave me the advantage of getting to bid, unchallenged, on some cool stuff (baby stuff, mostly). I did the thing I should have been doing all along: I brought my Coleman camp chair - one of those canvas folding jobbies - and it seriously saved my hips and my knees. I sat there like a duchess and bid with impunity, lol.

I do have to share with you this bloke who comes to the sale. Man, oh man! He's tall, quiet, broad shouldered and narrow hipped, has the nicest backside I've seen since Evil Genius Husband's (and EGH's is niiiiice). He's middle aged - about 50 or 55 - has a neat, steel grey mustache ... YOW! I so wish I could sneak a picture. This guy would make you drool.

Anyway, I was studying him Saturday (ok, ok, yeah, his buttocks were right at eye level to me since I was sitting. Shut up!) and I noticed that his jeans were not faded at all. They were bright blue like they were brand new and they had been carefully ironed (with a crease!) His shirt was also starched. And he always looks like this. Like an advert for a farmer. I wonder if his wife does all that or if he's just one of those fastidious men?

Of course it could be worse. There was one disgruntled looking bloke in his faded-almost-to-white button fly overalls ... with the buttons undone. He grumped and grumbled past me several times (damned women at the stock sales, sitting about like duchesses ...), and yes, I DID shamelessly look for a flash of willy but all I saw was some greying pubic hair.

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OK, I just have to get working on some new designs. Oh, and go feed the chickens. We have new squabs (those are baby pigeons)! I will try to get some pics for you.

PS: Here is that promised farm blog post - late as usual.