193 Cents

On January 22nd of 2012, the U.S. Postal Service increased the required postage to send a letter from 44 cents to 45 cents.  While George and I were writing a few thank you cards, we noticed that we still had eleven 44-cent Simpson stamps.  We placed them on our cards with the intention of running by the post office and picking up eleven 1-cent stamps from a stamp machine.  We got to the post office at 3 pm on a Thursday.  There was a very long line and two extremely slow postal workers; one of the two stayed in the back room.
Luckily, we just had to use the stamp machine, and there were only two people ahead of us.  Those two people took much longer than we had anticipated, and by the time we got to the machine, we had talked ourselves into buying two additional books of forever stamps so we wouldn't have to deal with this again in the near future.  The machine itself incredibly slow, and made us process each book separately.  It was no wonder the two people ahead of us had taken so long.  After getting our books of stamps, we tried to purchase 1-cent stamps.  The machine would only let us purchase 17-cent stamps.  With great disgust, we left the machine and stood in line.
We tried to entertain ourselves.  I showed George how to use the RPN calculator on his phone.  I browsed the greeting cards.  Fifteen minutes passed with about a dozen customers ahead of us, and we hadn't moved an inch.  As we had been waiting at this place for half an hour by this point, I suggested, "We could pay an extra (16*11) $1.76 to not spend all day here."  George nodded and walked back over to the stamp machine line.  I followed him and we waited again.  When we tried to purchase eleven 17-cent stamps, the machine informed us, "Please choose a number of stamps between 6 and 6."  We had to buy twelve stamps in another two extremely slow transactions.  That meant it cost us an additional $1.93, about 45 minutes, and drive to the post office for eleven lousy cents of postage.  The big line still hadn't budged.

Grinch

George and I made this with our baby on Christmas day.

It's our first recording on The Volkert!

36/36: The Little Worst

121412.  What very pretty numbers.
Today, George turns 36 years old.  I turn 36 weeks pregnant.  For his birthday present, I wrote and illustrated a 36-page children's book called The Little Worst.  It goes like this.

36 Weeks

Smile away each rainy day.

Breech

George and I went into our 34 week appointment on November 29th to learn our baby was breech.  I hadn't the faintest idea there was anything to worry about, due to a total lack of discomfort.  Having a breech baby at 34 weeks is no big a deal (especially since they tend to turn by week 36), but nevertheless, I was mildly distressed.  Immediately, I texted my friend Lauren and asked for a copy of her hypnobirthing breech meditation.  I listened to it the next day.
November 30th was the evening George and I had a date to see the Austin Symphony Orchestra perform Stravinsky's The Rite of Spring.  The ASO and Ballet Austin are doing The Rite of Spring this year to celebrate the 100th anniversary of the composition; Indeed, it is wonderful, famous, and historically significant.  I've written a previous blog post mentioning it, and due to the timing, my youtube of Fantasia has gotten over 100,000 hits so far.  Among the mysterious melodies and jarring harmonies are terribly exciting rhythms.  The baby went nuts.
I don't know if it was the hypnobirthing (relax your uterine muscles) or the Stravinsky (dance of death sacrificing a virgin), but I have not felt the full-body baby movements like that since.  Today we went into our 36 week appointment.  Our baby is in a perfect position.

Drawing by Leonardo DaVinci, 1511

https://www.artfinder.com/work/studies-of-the-foetus-in-the-womb-and-the-external-genitalia-leo/