32 weeks and tomato sauce

First up: here's a photo of me at 32 weeks.
I'm starting to feel kind of awkward - like having trouble getting out of bed or off the floor type awkward. Other than that I feel pretty good - women online are complaining about how much they hate being pregnant at this point but I only felt so strongly about weeks 3ish-20.

Next, the garden.

Looking kinda weedy, huh? My mom says this is just the way tomatoes get toward the end. The leaves are all dying and falling off but it's making piles of beautiful tasty fruit:

We've made lots of tomato toast and caprese salad. Since my mom is here this week though she decided to try out some pasta sauce. First she peeled the tomatoes (my least favorite step from the canning process!):

Then seasoned, cooked, and pureed:

Then we ate! And it was so good... I was just amazed to have this huge vat of food that mostly came from my backyard. There's still lots of tomatoes though so we're going to make another batch and probably freeze (since I can't quite stand to think about canning...)

Awesomest picture of all year

I did not take this picture, but it is so incredibly cool. Last Friday, as a team building exercise, I went with my work group and we built and launched water rockets. A couple of the guys decided there needed to be a three nozzle rocket. Here's the boss man immediately after launch of the beast. (Be sure to click for a really big version.)

I've got so much more to write about, but it'll have to wait while I do a bunch more stuff that needs writing about. Note though, that two more of my pregnancy buddies have delivered!

News update

Random bits of news as they pop into my head:

This weekend I made both tzatziki and greek salad using only vegetables from my garden. This is one of the meals I specifically had in mind when I planted in the first place so I'm glad it worked out!! I also had in mind tomato toast (which I have made), pesto (check), caprese salad with homemade mozzarella (net yet, but maybe soon - the mozzarella is the hold up), and tomato sauce for canning and eating (not yet - there haven't really been so many tomatoes yet that I'm tired of eating them straight). Next year I want to skip the lettuce, plant plain ol' red, orange or yellow peppers (I don't know if I mentioned that my bell peppers are actually black? on purpose?! it's really strange, but they taste just like green), and try some melons and squash.

I was thinking recently about how good it is that I planted a garden this year. That way, whenever I sense that people are tired of hearing about baby stuff I can switch to talking about garden stuff. That seems like a less loaded subject for some reason and most people can think of some way to relate to a gardening project. More than babies anyway. Chris and I have developed a theory about people who say they have cat allergies. (This is coming back around, I swear.) Some people are truly and legitimately allergic to cats. These people, when they walk in our house, begin sneezing almost immediately and their eyes go bright red and you know you better get them outta here. Some people say they're allergic to cats and then seem to have no reaction. They just stay away from the cats but never sneeze or get red eyes or in any way indicate they're allergic. Sometimes these people stay with us for days and never seem to have a reaction and they just ignore and avoid the cats. These people (we believe), when they say "I'm allergic to cats" really mean "I don't like cats" but don't want to come out and say it. There are similar people who, when I start talking about babies (or pregnancy) get this look in their eyes like they desperately want to escape. These are people who would definitely say "I'm allergic to babies" if they thought they could get away with it. Anyway, I have the garden so I can talk with people who are allergic to babies.

Speak of the devil (if you're allergic to babies, better just skip the rest of this entry): We picked a name for the baby - she's going to be Geneva. No middle name yet. Geneva is a family name on my side and is nice because it's unusual, but if she doesn't like unusual she can go by Genny (Jenny? Gen?). Personally I like the nickname Nevie (nee-vee) but Chris doesn't. We've also heard Gia, Eva, Evie, and Eve as potential nicknames.

Last week I registered Geneva for daycare (!). Those of you who don't live in the area or don't have kids might think it's premature to register for daycare when I don't even have a kid. However, I took the first available spot at this, my first choice daycare. The opening is in late May.

Also in the area of getting ready for the baby we bought a stroller/car seat. Oh, and I went to a car dealership to see about getting a new car and met what must be the worst salesman on the planet. I didn't really know what I was looking for and thought he'd point out cars and tell me about their features. Instead he points at a car: "That's a Honda Civic. Do you like that one?" Seriously, that was his sales pitch. When I asked him about features it had, he had no idea. Couldn't answer a single question. Not price, not mpg, not trunk size, not stability control, nothing. Oh, and he asked where my husband was.

While on vacation in early August my brother-in-law asked if our landlords would be amenable to us painting the room that is to be the nursery. I said I didn't know, I hadn't asked, but why would I want to paint? His response: well, what if you feel like nesting?? My mom, sister, me, and Chris all just burst into laughter. We couldn't imagine anything less likely. Then this past weekend I started thinking of nursery themes. I swear it just burst un-bidden into my head! I blame this picture:

I saw this on a blog I read and noticed that it was linked to a government poster gallery where you can download fairly high res images of historical posters. Then I realized that there were quite a few bright colored victory garden posters and if I wanted I could get them printed out and framed and use them as nursery decorations! And then I could hang the vegetable quilt my sister gave me up as well! And then I could have a garden theme nursery! And buy wittle pictures of green peas and wittle carrots! And wittle bunnies in the garden! And.... as you can see it was downhill from there. On second though maybe victory garden isn't exactly a kid's theme. But I could still print those out and hang them in the guest room. With the garden quilt. And the walls that are already green.

Ok, that's all the news I can think of. Hope you all had good weekends.