Tomorrow we are heading to San Antonio, finally! After 6 months in this shithole state, I'm finally getting to go to the ONE place I was interested in going to! On our second-to-last weekend here! (Excuse me while I roll my eyes at the sheer ridiculousness of that little fact.) I'm stoked beyond all reason! But at the same time, I know that as soon as we get home, we'll be thrust into a thousand different things all at once and that's a little spooky. Oh, here it comes - my favorite word these days: OVERWHELMING.

Tuesday will be a full day with lots to do and probably high-stress. And from there it'll be one visit from movers after another till the weekend when we're left with an empty house and some cleaning products.

I've been arranging details and booking various things all week. We've got carpet cleaners coming the day before we lock this place up, a rental car in Los Angeles, hotels, and pretty much everything in between that can be thought of. Left to do is to finish going through our belongings and purging the things we're 1) not taking and 2) won't want in 3 years. The goal here it to have as few pounds as possible in belongings. Losing the refrigerator helps, but we've still got way more crap than is necessary. And all that crap amounts to a lot of weight.

Amaris has learned lately to make animal sounds. She ribbits, neighs, baas, arfs, meows, tweets, clucks, quacks, and squeaks. She also refers to everything more than once - the first time normally (ie: "Look! A fork!") and the second time as a baby (ie: "Look! A baby fork!") She also recognizes the ultrasound photo of her younger sibling, as well as his/her heartbeat on the doppler at my prenatal visits.

Speaking of the baby, I've been incredibly shocked at just how much it is moving in there so early. I mean, rather than getting the weird gassy-poppy-bubbly feelings that Amaris' pregnancy brought signifying her ealiest movements, we seem to have skipped that completely and gone straight to jabs and pokes and prods. I am "kicked" several times each day. I thought I was nuts - I mean, I'm only 16 weeks along here. But at the Schlitterbahn last weekend, at one point Mark put his hand on my belly and then looked at me with wide eyes and said, "Was that the baby??" I don't know that I've ever seen his cute little halfway slanty eyes open quite so big.

We scheduled my ultrasound for September 8 so that I wouldn't have to struggle with traveling to Okinawa right around the time that most women have their "big" ultrasound. That relieves a little bit of stress, but at the same time creates the new stress over whether or not the baby at 18 weeks gestation will be compliant and reveal his/her gender to us. Either way. We'll have a 3D scan done in Southern California while we are there, so that'll hopefully be a little more reassuring as far as boy vs. girl.

Anyways that's the news. It is what it is. I'm beat.

The past couple of weeks, I've been earning extra cash via Craigslist and eBay. Some of my friends think I've become an addict, but really I am just wigging out and trying REALLY hard to unload some of the unnecessary junk before we move. Which, by the way, happens in just a couple of weeks. (Yes, I am fully expecting to crap myself.) Actually, a week from today, the movers will be here, in my house, packing up all of my crap. Hold me! They'll load the "household goods" by Friday and we'll be bunking at the base lodge for our last week in San Angelo. Which is fitting, since that's how we spent our first week in this dump of a city.

So far, I've sold a crapton of Amaris' baby clothes (one auction left to go, I hope), Ami's old crib, dresser, high chair, travel system, and bassinet. I've also managed to unload the Gamecube and all of it's accessories. And hopefully have legitimate buyers lined up for Ami's old bouncer, jumper, portable high chair, kick-n-play piano, Baby Einstein DVDs, a few other miscellaneous baby items, some of the furniture - namely the freestanding kitchen counter and the two closet organizers, and the old TV (which we're selling complete with stand and DVD player). We'll see, though. I don't want to just expect that these people will pull through just because they sent me emails and said they'd come. Although it would be cool. It'd also be really cool if we could find someone to buy the rest of the crap we need to unload. Like Amaris' baby bedding, the fish tank, the photo printer... To name a few. I saw a box outside of The UPS Store today (while I was dropping off eBay goods) labeled book donations. I have a whole box of books I need to get rid of, so I think next time we head out there (hopefully soon, just waiting on payment from my last two auction winners) I'll drop my books in.

We took Boo to the vet this morning and let them re-microchip her (we needed an internationally compatible chip) and vaccinate her against Rabies.

Other than that, things are slow. The Schlitterbahn was not nearly what the Travel Channel hyped it up to be and we were all disappointed. It was a nice atmosphere, but the number of rides suitable to a 2-year old and an expectant mother was slim, and our options were pathetic. Even the rides that appeared to be completely tame were classified as "red diamond" rides which basically scared me out of even attempting. Even if I were ballsy enough to try, the lines were all an hour long or more. That made it a really boring afternoon. It also rained that day, which made for a weird experience. At $40 per ticket, I don't think I'd bother going back. Unless I was already stuck in Texas for some odd reason, and was unpregnant, and the trip was going to be just Mark and me, and we could spend the whole day there. Then I might go. Otherwise... No. A big part of me wishes that we'd gone to The Great Wolf Lodge instead.

But oh well. Next weekend we'll be in San Antonio. We passed through there on our way home from San Marcos (that was where we stayed last weekend for our Schlitterbahn adventure, since it was nearby and also home to the outlet mall... Which was where we spent a good deal of Sunday. But we didn't spend much money. Kudos to us.) and they had Krispy Kreme doughnuts. Heck yeah!

Anyways, I am kind of scatterbrained these days. So I am probably all over the place. But in my defense, my LIFE is kind of all over the place right now. Hopefully it'll all get sorted out soon. Really soon.

After 6 months, we're finally heading out to the Schlitterbahn today. We'll be staying in San Marcos tonight so that we can do the outlet mall before we come home tomorrow. Finally some of my Texas to-do's are getting to-done!

One course down... One to go! Look at my little Analyst!

My plans are always changing. Always evolving. Most of the time, I don't even see it coming. It just sort of happens while I'm not paying attention and then I have to rush around to gather up all the fragments and try to start over. This entire thing has my stomach in knots and my anxieties on overdrive. Everything from the overnight driving to California to the situation with my little Boo to the fact that I'll reach my 20-week mark just a week after we land in Okinawa.

I feel overwhelmed. And confused. I know it'll all work out, ultimately. And I know things will be fine, just fine. But for now I'm in this really lost place where I feel like I'm forever taking one step forward and two steps back.

The landlady agreed to buy our refrigerator. She's not going to do a walk-out with us, so we'll just mail her the house keys when we've got the place cleaned and call it a day.

I've been posting baby gear, furniture and electronics on craigslist all day long. So far the only listings getting any bites are the ones for Amaris' crib and dresser and the fish tank. I'm hoping somebody shows some interest in the remaining stuff soon... We'll see.

It rained all day today. And it wasn't scorching hot, either. I sincerely hope there are more days like this ahead.

We got our hotels booked, except for the one night we'll spend in Seattle. Need to get on that one soon.

I've sorted all of Amaris' old clothes and am going to list them on ebay tomorrow. I'd have done it today but the whole process was a lot more work than I'd anticipated and my head is still hurting from all of it. Tomorrow will be chock full of more of the same. Sorting things, selling things, and hopefully figuring a whole lot out.

Tonight, I'm exhausted.

1. Texas Pride BBQ
2. Puffy tacos
3. Riverwalk/cruise
4. Sea World
5. San Marcos outlets
6. Tower of the Americas
7. Alamo
8. Hyatt on the river
   

Now, how we'll manage to cram ALL of that into four days is beyond me. But damnit we will just have to FIND a way. Next weekend Mark wants to do the Schlitterbahn, so maybe we can stay overnight in or around New Braunfels and hit up #5 on Sunday... We'll have to see how it all pans out.