Gray February
Monday, February 12, 2007
Monday morning was back in the house for Collette. Seeing as Rose had Spanish in the morning, followed by three hours of slapping together sandwiches at Subway, and then a haircut, and Collette had a doctor’s appointment at 4:30 in the city… Collette opted to stay home that gray day and unpack what she could.
Collette was adjusting herself to living in a house again, albeit a smaller house than any other place in which she had lived. But it was good to be out of the apartment after two and a half years.
Meanwhile, there was still no Internet connection at the little house on Hill Place, so instead of catching up on various things and projects requiring Internet access, Collette finished cleaning up most of the living room between several cups of tea. For every cup of tea that she downed, Collette rewarded herself with a small Reeses peanut butter cup. OLeif liked to tempt her with chocolate; his last attempt included a jumbo back of mini chocolate peanut butter cups while they had been at Target to purchase the shower curtain. It did Collette no good to hide them from herself. She always managed to dig into the bag without even thinking. Monday, however, she was much better about the whole situation, and had only three. OLeif had ten.
The dishes were still unable to be washed due to the situation in the basement, which would hopefully be remedied on Wednesday.
Come one or so in the afternoon, OLeif hurried by to grab a sack lunch of bratwursts, mandarin oranges, and Reeses peanut butter cups. As he left, Collette noticed that it had begun to rain outside – a cold, steady, gray rain. Far up outside the study window, two big black crows sat high in the branches of the neighbor’s tree.
Collette’s doctor’s appointment found her tipping the scales at 132, and 31 centimeters, “right on the money” as the doctor said. And although her iron count had been significantly low when her blood had been drawn last, Dr. Brazil just kind of grinned and told her that everything looked just great, especially for it being her first baby. And before she left, the receptionist had scheduled nothing less than eight more appointments between then and April 23rd, a week after her due date. Collette did not like the idea of returning to the hospital so many times, but that was the way of things.
Afterwards, OLeif and Collette headed out in the rain to drop by World Market (looking at blinds for the windows) and then on to Carrabba’s where they were presented with more Italian food than they could handle: a basket of good white bread with olive oil and herbs, fried mozzarella and sauce, sausage and lentil soup, and pasta and shrimp and lasagna. By the time they had finished what they could, there was still enough left over for two meals to bring back with them.
The evening ended with OLeif heading back into work for about three hours to check computer systems for the release of a new application the following morning.