Rough Weekend

The snow proved more picturesque than anything else. Friday was slush, but that night things turned snowy, giving us two inches or so by morning. I had to go into the office for a chunk of the day. (Japanese has a word that fits -- 過労 (karō), which means "work stress" and is the stem word for 過労死 (karōshi), which means "working to death.")

I got most of what I needed to done, but Evelin was left home alone with lots of time to worry about this cycle. She ended up using an ovulation predictor kit as a home pregnancy test, and it came up negative. I think, at best, an OPK would make an extremely imprecise HPT, and not too much faith should be placed in the results, but it definitely depressed Evelin.

I got home, cleaned the ice and snow from the sidewalks (I'd asked Evelin not to shovel the snow), and the we had a bit of a blowout over Christmas shopping (hers is 98% done, mine about 8%) and cards (100% vs. 2%). Based on my bickering-as-indicator-of-pregnancy theory, I took this as a positive sign.

Sunday was a lot better. We got cookies made to send our grandmothers (chocolate-peppermint swirls and date-pecan cookies, which adds to the anise biscotti and Basler leckerli Evelin already made and we may throw in some Lindt truffles). Evelin did most of the work, but I helped....

After running to the farmers' market for more eggs (I also picked up potatoes and onions for a gratin that worked out very well), I stopped in to Takoma Underground, where I found a neat little English-to-Italian dictionary of legal terms -- Dizionario Giuridico, volume secondo, Inglese-Italiano (Dott. A. Giuffrè, 1955). The really fun thing is that it has an ex libris bookplate from the Italian Embassy inside the front cover.

In the afternoon, I watched the pandas, who weren't up to too much. They've had a crazy past few days enjoying the snow, so by the time of my watch, they were both pretty much asleep.

Today is a bit tense. We had a 7:00 a.m. blood draw for the pregnancy test; results are due this afternoon and Evelin is having the clinic call me. (Sorry Anita, I won't blog the results until I talk to Evelin tonight ...)