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Currently // January

These 'Currently' posts are one of my favorites to do but somehow I haven't done one since October...oh holidays/life/ridiculous New England winter blizzard chaos. Good thing there is so much fun stuff to catch up on...so here we go!

Reading
I just finished one of Damien Echol's books, Life After Death, and it was so, so good. If you aren't familiar with him, Echols is 1/3 of the West Memphis Three, a group of young men convicted of murdering three young boys in West Memphis Arkansas then sentenced to life (and death row for Echols) with absolutely no evidence outside of the WM3 being into metal and wearing black. I started following the case in high school after hearing Jello Biafra speak about them and eventually wrote my undergrad thesis on them, which included an interview that I managed to do with Eddie Spaghetti from the Supersuckers (another huge supporter of theirs). When I was pregnant with Madeleine they were finally set free through a screwy method using an Alford plea in which they could claim their innocence but have no rebuttal against the system that robbed them of 18 years of their lives. There are a great deal of movies (Paradise Lost and the new West of Memphis) as well as some great books, but this was the first of Echols' books that I had read and it was really good. It focuses more on his life in prison and his coping mechanisms more than the specifics of the case and it just made me really glad I decided to keep my career away from the system and in the part that actually helps people because my God our prison system is just so fucking terrible. I know this, and I have been in there and seen it with my own eyes, so for anyone that has not this book is a great eye opener to where your tax dollars are being wasted.
I have moved onto my first H.P. Lovecraft book now....keeping it light with my winter reading I guess!

Eating
Like a hibernating pregnant lady still, but now with more awesome smoothies for breakfast because I got a ninja for Christmas and it is the most awesome thing ever. I reintroduced flax and chia into them and have been alternating between this smoothie and some variation of frozen strawberries and banana with greek yogurt and nutella or peanut butter. I am also trying to remember to have lemon water first thing in the morning (and I do manage to have it all day at work), which I think has kept my skin from totally freaking out in this terrible cold weather. Also, really appreciating that Pinkberry just rolled out a ton of new flavors for my third trimester; I know it had to have been just for me, right?

Thinking About
Tiny babies! Especially this one in my belly that is getting huge and wriggly and will be here in just two months. I have started thinking about packing a bag for the hospital and getting all the tiny clothes up from the basement to wash and put away. I am so glad that we are doing this a second time around and I know that I don't need to get the crib out yet (yay, cosleeping!) or worry about buying all the things. We can just relax and wait for her to get here and then figure out the craziness of two kids once she gets here :) Tomorrow we are taking Madeleine to a sibling class at the hospital so she can see the maternity ward and look at the new babies in the nursery, which we are all pretty excited about. I can only imagine that this pregnancy feels like forever to her (I feel ya, girl) so we try and keep her excited with things like this as well as bringing her to all my prenatal appointments. She has seriously become a pro with that heartbeat listening machine and I think she feels that this is her baby just as much as it is Mama and Da's, which is the absolute truth. We are so excited to meet you little lady, now please get your foot out of my rib cage!

Listening 
No long runs and too many good books has kept my podcast listening to zero, but I have had a few solo trips in the car lately where I have found myself blasting either the Black Flag or Murder City Devils stations on Pandora and been pretty stoked on it. In anticipation of being able to run more than a few miles I have thought about picking up the Audible app, but that is still far enough in the future that I will just keep rocking out to the same stuff I have been listening to for the past two decades on the treadmill.

Watching
I recently finished the entire series of The Sopranos and am now working through Orange is the New Black and Shameless. When you only spend about an hour watching tv each day it tends to stretch things out, but I figure that I have lots of late nights to really binge watch after April.

Loving
The awesome relationship that I have with my husband and how damn good we are at problem solving together. I have had some difficult things going on lately in addition the regular stresses of life and pregnancy and he has been juggling a well-earned promotion (with a promoted work load) as well as two hard classes in school, and we have that whole toddler raising situation and, well, things have just been a little overwhelming, to put it mildly. Instead of taking it out on each other we have been able to identify that we are stressed and made some good plans about how to manage it, how to get out of certain situations and how to make sure that we keep ourselves grounded and focused on the things that really matter. Life sure isn't perfect, but having such a rad partner makes even the hard times so much more manageable and always forces me to remember how far we have come in our lives, which coincidentally started 7 years ago tonight! Crazy to think that the super handsome (and might I add super polite) boy in the bar has become the best thing to ever happen to this life of mine.

Glad I finally got a chance to sit down and write; I think I am even going to prepare some posts for the week since I feel like there is so much going on that I don't want to forget to share; and speaking of sharing, here are some wintry pictures from the past few weeks!

Ps. Happy Superbowl Sunday! GO PATS!

First blizzard in our new house!
What happens when you run out of things to do during a blizzard.

Finger painting, a neat freak parent's nightmare.
She could paint all day (well, at least a couple hours worth of it).
Two of the four minutes she cared about being outside. 
And the other two, It took more time to get her dressed...
Target and hot cocoa before the storm!
Seriously, so much hot cocoa. 

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