New Year – New Blog – A Recap

Hello and Happy New Year! I hope that this blog finds you well and that you had a fantastic holiday season! Wow, it’s 2020! For the next few months I will wonder whether to refer to it as “twenty twenty” or “two thousand twenty”! Which is correct?!?

One thing that was mentioned at work before the new year, and something I have seen posed on some local and national news feeds that is worth mentioning is that you should probably avoid abbreviating the new year on documents this year. When you abbreviate 1/3/20, keep in mind that someone can easily add 02, 17, or 10 to the end of it to make it 2002, 2017, or 2010. There’s my public service announcement for the year!

Sam and I were quite busy over the past 5 days! We have been in the process of taking our dining room and turning it into a nursery for the baby. We basically made a wall and a half wall, which created her nursery, a hallway, and added a wall in the kitchen. The dining room originally looked like this:

The wall was erected just to the right of the light switch and ran right to the edge of the counter top you see in the lower right of the above picture. There was no wall in front of this part of the counter, so we built one to finish the room.

December 31, 2019

On New Year’s Eve, my father-in-law came over to help me put up some of the final pieces of trim, and to put shiplap up in the kitchen. The original thought was that we would put up the shiplap and then paint it. However, when we saw it up, we liked the look of the wood as it was, so we will probably just stain it. We feel that it gives the kitchen a “cabin” feel. As a bonus, I was allowed to use table saws and a nail gun!

By the time we finished, Sam and I ran out and grabbed some burgers and watched TV on the couch. Since we have been together, we have never been able to spend New Year’s Eve together, because she worked. Until this year, I’d call her at 11:55 pm, and tell her I loved her when the new year rang in. This year, it was just her and I on the couch, and we finally got to kiss at midnight. I felt like I was in high school again! I know it is something so simple, but it meant a lot to have her with me this year.

This year I bounced from channel to channel. In year’s past, I always watched Dick Clark ring in the new year. As sad as it was to see him on the show after his stroke, it was still Dick Clark. New Year’s Eve and Dick Clark went hand in hand! Ryan Seacrest is everywhere, and while he may be a decent host, I always feel like they find annoying co-hosts to put with him. I don’t know who the gal was who co-hosted this year, but every time they cut to her, I felt like it I was dumber for having listened to her. I tried to watch Steve Harvey, who was also in Time Square, but everything seems forced with him. I found him even more annoying. Carson Daily was ok, but he was almost too relaxed. I bounced round and eventually stopped back on Seacrest for the ball drop. We kissed, and were probably in bed by 12:30am.

January 1, 2020

New Year’s Day, we met one of my oldest and dearest friends for lunch. Margaret and I have been friends since junior high. We are both Italian. My folks loved her, and her folks loved me. I think they probably both thought that we would date or something, but that never happened. We both went to a few dances together, but that was about as close to “dating” as it got. We were just really good friends and that made us both happy. We were officers in band together, we dressed up as twins for Twin Day, she and I both took a senior picture together, and spent many hours on the phone. She was/is one of my best friends!

When she had her daughter, Marissa, was born, she asked me to be her Godfather. I was honored to do it. When I got married the first time, sadly, I saw less and less of Margaret and my Goddaughter. Whenever I was supposed to get together with them, I was always informed that we couldn’t go or we had something to do with my exes family. After the divorce, Margaret was one of the first to reach out to me. She completely understood what was going on. I lost many years of our friendship, and I lost so many moments with my Goddaughter. After all of that, Margaret (and many other friends) had every right to just stop talking to me, but our friendship meant so much, that we have picked up where we left off.

When I attended my Goddaughter’s 21st birthday party, I pulled her aside and apologized for missing so many important things in her life. How do you explain that to someone? She didn’t bat an eye, told me she loved me and we all enjoyed a great evening! I remember driving home from her party crying my eyes out. It wasn’t fair to her that I missed so many things. It makes me angry to know that I missed so much, but I am also happy that I can try to make up for lost time with her!

We were going to see what Margaret and her husband, Walt, were doing on New Year’s Eve and found out she was working that night. So they met us at one of the nearby bars for lunch on New Year’s Day. It was a bit loud as the Michigan game was on. We enjoyed some amazing burgers, and enjoyed good conversation. There is always a lot of laughter when we get together, story telling with wild hand gestures (it is the Italian in us!) and usually some profanity! It was truly a wonderful afternoon. We hope to be able to do it more often!

During lunch, Margaret said something that struck a chord. It was something that made me sad, and happy at the same time. She said, “I have seen you more and talked to you more in the past two years, that the entire time you were married.” This made me sad, because of what I touched on early – a great friendship almost destroyed and the relationship between me and my Goddaughter all because of the stupidity of someone else. It made me happy to know that our friendship remains and will grow even stronger in the years ahead.

A few more things …

We spent the remainder of the week finishing up the nursery. My mother-in-law came over and helped paint. We had put a coat on the nursery and the hallway, but we needed another coat. We then had to touch up some spots and paint the door. We finished all of that today. Her room will have a book case, a glider, and, of course, her crib. My sister-in-law is bringing the crib this weekend.

Before I could build those things, there were a few other things we had on the agenda today. At 3pm, I picked the boys up for the weekend. I feel like it’s been forever since we saw them, especially when I got to see so little of them this month. For Christmas I had gotten them each a book from Barnes and Nobel – both of which were wrong. So we stopped at Barnes and Nobel to exchange them. Dante’ had also received a gift card from my aunt to B&N, so he got to look for a few things. In the end, they both got their books and were happy.

Hoping to see her

When we found out the gender of our baby, we went to a 3D ultrasound place. We were given a coupon to come back for a discounted rate to have another one done at 30 weeks. We came back and found that the baby was Frank breech and couldn’t really get any good pictures. So they rescheduled one for today. We left Barnes and Nobel and met Sam at the ultrasound place. The good news is that the baby had flipped out of the breech position. The bad news was that she was sleeping and not in a good place for us to see her. They gave Sam juice in hopes that the sugar would wake her up. She drank the juice and we even took a walk around outside. When we came back, we still couldn’t get a good picture of her face. They were, however, able to record her heartbeat for us.

I thought Sam was going to throw up during it. The lady was really trying to get the baby to wake up. She kept rubbing Sam’s belly and poking and massaging her, but the baby would not move. We did get a semi-good profile shot. We also got to see that she has a lot of hair. We got a neat shot of her hand kind of making a fist, but NO good face picture. I admit, I was disappointed. I wanted to be able to take the 3D picture of her face and compare it with her birth picture like so many parents do, but I guess we just need to wait and see her beautiful face when she arrives.

They did say that her head was moving down, a sign that the baby is getting ready to arrive. We saw on the internet that cats will tend to be more cuddly with a pregnant woman as the baby is nearing birth. Our one dumb cat has been VERY close to Sam lately, so maybe its happening sooner than we think….

We ordered a pizza for the boys and we all came home. I built the glider and book case and placed them in her room. It is all coming together, and it is getting more and more real as each day goes by.

The paint is dry, but we want to wait a bit before putting up the wall decoration, which looks like this:

Cute, huh? I love it!!!

Well, it is late and I need to be up to be on the radio tomorrow. I will wrap things up for now. Tomorrow will be another busy day! After the radio station, we have to go grocery shopping, make a few stops, build the crib and hopefully get a second to relax before heading back to work.

Oh, and somewhere over the next 24 hours, we need to find our book from our birthing class….because our “go bag” still looks like this:

Happy New Year!