Apartment Drama

Now this has been an incredible week! My belly is not only getting bigger but FEELING bigger. Like now it gets in the way when I bend and things! Only halfway there, so much more growing to do!

But not only that, we’ve had some major apartment drama this week. It started Wednesday night when I couldn’t get to sleep. I’d been reading a book for a week or so and was right at the end so I had to stay up to finish it. It was almost 4 in the morning by the time I was done, and I was so tired I could barely lean over to turn off my lamp. That is of course until I laid down to sleep. Then my asthmatic type allergies kicked in. It starts like such a small feeling of tickling or wheezing that it almost tricks me in to thinking it’ll go away. But it doesn’t and this time it surely wouldn’t. I got up after progressing into a chocking cough for a second and Andy beseeched me to use my inhaler. Now usually after one inhaler puff, my chest opens and I can cough the bugger out. Not this time. It wouldn’t open. I just kept coughing. I stayed in the bathroom and tried to get it out but had to use the inhaler again. It is a two puff dose but I can usually get by with just one. I tried to go back to bed but just couldn’t get my nose to open and my wheezing to end. I got back up and decided to make some hot tea. Sometimes hot liquids clear me up. No such luck this time either. It helped while I drank it but as soon as it was gone, the cough returned. And now it felt more like an itch in my throat that wouldn’t stop and made it hard to breathe through my nose if I could clear a nostril and impossible to breathe through my mouth.

I used the inhaler again. I think I tried to lie in bed one more time before deciding this was just unfair to Andy. He’d had a hard enough time getting to sleep. His cat was trying to get his attention by talking to him and the cats outside were fighting and I was coughing. I thought it’d be best if I just stayed in the computer room.

Finally, I felt I was sleepy enough and could breathe through my nose enough, so I surrounded myself with pillows on our futon couch. I think I fell asleep for a half hour or so before I woke up sneezing. It’s a funny sensation to wake up to your body doing something. Got past the sneezing and I fell asleep one more time, this time for almost an hour. Then Andy woke up and realized I wasn’t in bed and got worried. He found me and woke me up asking me to return to the bed. He said he’d rather be woken by my coughs than have me sleep in the other room! What a sweetie!

So, almost 8 in the morning, I’d had an hour of sleep, was finally going to bed and feeling like maybe the sleep might continue. I hate sleeping all day long but I knew I’d need it after that night and settled in to get some deserved rest.

That is until 930 in the morning when the doorbell rang. Our doorbell rings in the evening a lot with vendors coming to the door to push their cakes or doughnuts or tamales, all homemade, but we’d never had a visitor this early. Any of our friends knew we’d be asleep even if we hadn’t been up most of the night. Andy got out of bed to look out the window and see if he could tell is it was worth getting dressed for.

Next thing I know he’s yelling, “Baby get up, get dressed, it’s the fire department, we need to get out side. Come on, baby get up.” I was trying to pull myself out of a deep sleep and comprehend what was going on. Had I left a burner on last night from my tea? Was our apartment on fire? Were they doing some early morning inspection?

I pulled on Andy’s robe, still had a Breathe Right strip across my nose and ran to the door where about 4-5 fully geared up firemen were pushing past me to get in and asking if we were alright. Andy led them up the stairs to look around. I still had no idea what was going on, and it was so bright outside to my sleepy eyes. As my focus cleared, I looked around; I could see a lot of fire trucks, maybe 3. There was a woman from the apartment office standing outside and all the neighbors home during that time of the day had come outside to see. And here I was a mess, less than two hours rest, Breathe Right strip, husband’s robe, squinting in the sun and quite confused.

I looked back in to our apartment and saw smoke filling the downstairs. The firemen were returning from their upstairs inspection and heading in to the kitchen. I followed them to be sure I had not made a huge mistake and caught our kitchen on fire. I hadn’t. Phwew. But there was smoke in there coming from somewhere. The firemen had a big gun looking machine and were checking heat or smoke or some kind of levels and opening the cabinets on our wall that butted up to our next door neighbor’s kitchen, a complete mirror image of ours. They were opening up windows and doors and brought a giant fan to the front door to blow the smoke through. The cats thankfully were smart enough to be freaked out and stayed up stairs. Raven tried to come see what was up once but rapidly realized that was a mistake and streaked back up to safety.

We finally found out that our neighbors had indeed caught fire to their kitchen. Fortunately none of them were hurt; they have a large family with a small baby and a pregnant woman. The smoke had made it over to our kitchen but the flames had been caught in time. Firemen took their axes into the apartment next door to bust through walls and make sure they got the flames fully extinguished. Glad that didn’t get through our wall either!

Once the smoke cleared – so to speak – and the firemen started to leave, we had to try and air out our smoky apartment. After a night of not breathing well, smoke inhalation was the last thing I needed! It smelled like it was coming out of the AC! And of course this was to be a record setting hot day. We ran the AC on fan and opened all the windows we could, turned all fans on high to air the place out. Fortunately our bedroom is well shaded by a tree and we could take a nap for a short while before the real heat of the day and the dramatic feelings from the morning really settled in.

Must have slept maybe 4 hours before I woke up so hot I couldn’t take it. I gave up on napping for the day and decided to have a day as tired of one as it may have been.

I am still a bit shaken by the whole experience. The fact that we have no control over what the people sharing a wall with us are doing is really becoming a scary thought to us. Suddenly we want to buy a house and not have to share any walls. Hopefully, someday soon.
We are extremely grateful to our wise decision to live so close to the fire department. Who knows how things would have gone had there not been a station right around the corner.

Ending to the story…
They got evicted. They had apparently jeopardized their appliances by covering something with foil. We both spoke very little of each other’s language so getting the story exactly straight was difficult. One lady asked us to read the notice she received from the office manager because it was in English. It was a Notice to Vacate. She said they couldn’t pay the $5000 the repairs would cost and she didn’t think they should have to, so they were asked to leave. I think they finished moving out yesterday.

We now have no neighbors on either side. Our other neighbors left a few weeks ago. They are still paying on their lease for two more months so no one will be moving in there. Now this other apartment will need a lot of repairs before anyone else can move in there. We will be without neighbors next to us for the last two months we live here! If we stay that long, that is. We are hoping to find a move in special with a first month free or discounted wherever we go, so we can pay July here and not actually have to stay through all of July. I have quite enjoyed our experiences living here but we are both quite ready for them to come to an end.

We want out of this city and somewhere closer to our families. There is no reason for us to stay in Addison or even north Dallas, and so we won’t. Now I need to call Medicaid next week and find out what will happen to our coverage if we move out of Dallas County. I’m a little nervous.

A fun point of this week has been Andy’s hair styles! He had decided instead of continuing to grow it he would go back to the old shaved head that he likes so much especially in summer. But of course as a boy it is much more fun to play with styles before hand. I tried to get him to pose for pictures but he doesn’t always cooperate. These are mostly in the bathroom right before he changed it again. There are some more fun pics to follow. *Remember you can click ont he pics to see the full size.*
Here's Andy's military man cut. We essentially just cut up the sides and tried to make it "high and tight." It was amatuerish at best but looks so cute. I've never seen his hair like this in the 7 years we've been together, and I've seen him through a lot of styles and colors! He considered keeping it this way for a while and actually seeing barber to get it professionalized. But of course he changed his mind!






Always Mr. Serious! He loves to make faces for cameras. Good thing too, his pics aren't as boring as mine!








Here's the style that followed. This one lasted a lot less time but he made it through a day or two. It's his mini-mohawk! The last time he shaved his head, he'd had longer hair and made a mohawk too. Maybe I'm just biased and think he's a cutie no matter what, but I think he looks good like this. He doesn't like going out in public with it much though!



Here I am in one of my warm up suits for non-preggos with a tank top my mom got me for preggos. I remember on that shopping trip, she took me to a secondhand store to pick some maternity clothes, and I had been so turned off by all the horizontal stripes. I guess my years of fashion training had programmed me. Well, she said some women like to accentuate their big pregnant bellies and now I agree! I love the way it looks all squeezed into my old cotton clothes and new tight maternity shirts!





Look how big the belly looks once I put on the matching jacket! It won't even come down all the way! Can you believe I'm only 21 weeks here?? I feel like I look 6 months! How big am I going to get? I already can't see my feet!







This is the one day Andy went out in public with his mini-mohawk. We went to a friends house to hang out and have BBQ. This is right before we left our place. This is also prefire!

Told you he likes to make faces!




21 weeks and counting. Last I checked a few days ago, I had 128 days to go, but I'm not quite keeping that much track. Once I get down to 60 days left I may start tracking it more like that.
Oh, we are just so excited to have a baby! We saw the Goin family yesterday for Pappy's birthday and Andy's cousin Christie has a 7 month old boy named Keith and just watching her play with him was making me itch for ours! Andy and I didn't hold him though we wanted to because he doesn't know us well, and it was hot and he'd been camping all weekend and just wanted to be with mommy. But he sure is cute!

And it wouldn't be our Goin blog if we didn't have some kitty pics right? So here's Tyler sleeping on the futon couch, my new favorite napping spot. He gets upset when I move him around and wont' stay long. He likes having the whole thing to himself, don't you know!




I think the flash woke him! Tyler says "Thanks for reading the blog and checking out the pics everybody! Feel free to comment or send emails to the author! Meow."






We took pics of Pappy's birthday party so the next update will include some more Goins besides just us! And we also see the OB on Tuesday to schedule our next sonogram. It may even be later this week! So perhaps the next update will also include the sex of this little baby I carry. Keep your positive thoughts and prayers coming that it is still healthy and progressing nicely. And maybe that it won't be shy and will let mommy and daddy see what it is!