What Life Looks Like Lately

Celebrating: Chinese New Year. At least, our whole city has been celebrating over the past long weekend! Everywhere you look, there are people dressed in red, having family gatherings, handing out oranges and ang pow. We had CNY dinners with friends on Friday and Saturday nights and have heard plenty of fireworks over the past few nights. It's hard to describe exactly how big CNY celebrations are here, but note this example--we visited one of the busiest malls on Sunday, the 3rd day of the new year, and I counted nearly 10 stores that were still closed on the 1 floor that I walked through. Angel went to market for groceries on the 3rd day of New Year and the guy who sells chicken wasn't there. So many stores and restaurants shut down because people travel to spend time with their families over this holiday!

Calculating: The probably of going into labor on any given day using this interesting probability curve. I'm finding it highly amusing to be able to report to Angel that I'm 98% positive that baby won't be born today.

Cleaning: We did a major spring cleaning of the apartment...and when I say "we," what I mean is that my awesome mom and two little sisters spent the whole first morning of the holiday weekend at my house, got up on ladders and did all the heavy work of taking off all the window screens to wash them and washing the windows and the metal grates on the doors while I did very safe jobs like taking stuff off the bookshelf and dusting all the shelves. Later, Angel cleaned the ceiling fans, so now I'm feeling like our place is looking awesome!

Wearing: Black lipstick--Angel's Valentine's Day gift for me. Definitely an unexpected gift, but it actually makes sense since he knows me so well. Not sure if imminent parenthood is increasing our level of grown-up-ness or not.

Reading: Just finished reading Bill Bryson's Notes from a Big Country, a series of columns on life in America which were written in the late 90s, so they are definitely starting to show their age as far as reference to "current events," but were highly, highly amusing, so much so that Angel thought it was weird how much I was giggling out loud to myself while sitting on the ottoman reading a book.

Wondering About: Why this sign would ever be designed as an advertisement for a local hotel with an unlimited beer bar. "Drink till you drop"? Why? Why would you literally attempt to encourage your patrons to drink until the point of passing out? Seems unethical...dangerous...just plain wrong. Aren't they at least supposed to say "Drink responsibly"?

Encouraging: My family and friends in their healthy lifestyle goals. Just about everybody I know made some serious health-related goals for this new year and are doing keto diets or other diets and working out together and signing up for races together. In my current, rather round, shape, I decided that my contribution is to be everybody's cheerleader and encourage them to keep on going when the going gets tough, and celebrate their accomplishments. I'm not sure that all of those who are changing their eating habits really appreciate having a cheerleader who eats anything that the baby lets me eat...but hey, I'm doing what I can. Also, while they're talking about percentages of body weight lost, I can calculate the percentage of body weight I've gained since June in order to make everybody feel much more impressed by their numbers! When they feel sad about all the cakes and candies and soda they can't have anymore, I excitedly tell them about how amazing ice water is and how it's basically the answer to all of life's dilemmas but I'm not sure they take my recommendations very seriously.

Exercising: Not much, but now that we're getting closer to due date, I'm feeling safer about being up and about more. Going along with the healthy lifestyle goals I just mentioned, a bunch of family and friends signed up to do a 5k on March 24th. I did not sign up for that, but for now I've gone out walking a couple times while the rest of the crew goes out to walk or jog or run, or have walked laps around the pool area while others actually swim inside the pool (I've never liked swimming in swimming pools, but I currently have a legit excuse that my rash guard doesn't fit)

What are you up to this week?