Amy Ruttan

So here I am, 30 weeks along. My DH takes terrible pictures, I’m always blinking by the time he figures things out.

Writing is going very well. I’m fact checking on one of my historicals before I have to sub because I have never written a historical set in the middle east. So I want to be doubley sure my hero and heroine aren’t going to run smack dab into a holy war or a crusade. LOL! That would be bad.

I need to write 70,000 words before *J* makes his arrival. This is the last book and a couple things I want to sub to my editor at Ellora’s Cave. Think I can do it before June 26th? Well, I’m going to have to.

It’s a beautiful weekend here. Warm, but not hot. I have all the windows open, a beautiful breeze wafting through. I’m wearing a light summer dress that looks like I have beach ball tucked up underneath. I kid you not. I’m going to have DH take a picture later and post next week. LOL.

My writing is  GOING again, so I’m happy. It’s just every afternoon around two p.m., I fall asleep can’t be helped. LOL. I plan on writing a lot this weekend. I have words to do before June, for when June hits I know it will be hard for me to get anything done.

Kimber Chin has an awesome contest on her blog here, for a chance to win Enchantress The Fey.

So what are your plans for this weekend?

The awesome Kimber Chin featured me on RTB or rather my book Enchantress The Fey and off “season” reading and whether you read Christmas or off season holidays in … well the off season. You can read the post here.

Trust me my promoting and online lurking has gone a little flat lately, only because I’m getting to the final “dash” as it were, 64 days and counting, and that’s only if I make it to c-section date. I don’t care as long as I make it to the first week of June, 36 weeks and then it’s safer. Not totally, but if I’m laboring prior to section then his lungs are getting a better work out. Yeah, so a lot of my regular online stuff is fizzling at the moment. Yet I can’t imagine being “offline” for four days when I recuperate in the hospital … the land where WiFi is prohibited.

On a good news, my editor gave me the edits for Book 3 Enchantress The Healer, this is Cedric’s story. He was a minor baddie in the first book, he’s damaged, he’s scarred and I did a lot of bad things to this character. When I handed the book in, in February it drained me. It sucked me dry. I had never written something so hard and dark. I was worried I wouldn’t be able to redeem him. My editor loved it, and there wasn’t that many edits. WOOT. I might be learning something after all. LOL!

Seriously.

Anya Delvay from Samhain was at my house a couple of weeks ago and just killed herself laughing at my crankies. And this rain doesn’t help … though R.J., I don’t want your 105 degree weather either.

Every part of me is swelling making me look like Mount St. Helen, ready to explode. I swear my inner body temperature must be boiling lava. I mean last couple of nights my family piled on the blankets, while they shivered beads of sweat coursed down through my body.

Now I’ve been given a green light to go out, but in moderation, I’ve been picking up stuff I need for the baby. Not a lot, but I need new bottles as my old ones aren’t BPA free. Guess that explains alot. LOL. I needed a new nursing bra, I needed some cotton stretchy light clothes to wear during my final month and recover in. I can only handle 30 minutes, and I’m wiped and sore. Today *J* has been rolling, kicking and my belly is stretching more. How much more can it stretch?? ARGHHH!

And then, the thing that ticked me off the most was reading this article from a Bridezilla extreme “My cousin won’t induce labor…”

You can read it here.

Seriously. She actually wants her cousin to do something not safe for the sake of her wedding. Especially since Sumo was born at 36 weeks and ended up in the NICU for a month because his lungs hadn’t produced enough surfacant. That’s why planned sections are now done no earlier than 39 weeks UNLESS there’s a valid medical reason that puts mother and baby at risk.

So I’m cranky, and my apologies. The real happy, chipper Amy is in there somewhere. She’s just been swallowed by water retention.

Yeah it’s raning hard here. It’s cold and nasty and ugh. Especially since this weekend was beautiful and we got our bedroom ready for baby.

I’m quite tired because of the rain and don’t have anything exciting to say. LOL. So I’ll leave you with this funny picture about how NOT to wash a baby.

Or how not to dry a baby:

Thanks everyone again for the birthday wishes. It was a great day, despite the needles. If you don’t follow Twitter or Facebook then I’m glad to say I had no Gestational Diabetes after some more testing. All in all a good day.

Right now I’m taking a Medical Transcription course, because when I’m typing something already dictated or written my mind relaxes and I plot out my own stories. It’s strange, I have a penchant for day dreaming. Plus it’s an EDJ I can do at home. I’ve noticed lately as I watch House or Grey’s Anatomy … heck even NCIS I find I can understand what they are talking about.

Tachycardia for instance means a rapid heartbeat. I always KNEW it related to a heart, but I had no idea what they meant when they said it. I knew it wasn’t good whatever it was.

I’ve done medical word building which … UGH was difficult, but now I am on Mastering the Medical Language, and how to differentiate between words that are the same, but are spelled different because they mean totally different things. It’s fascinating. Only because I knew this, like the There, Their, They’re kind of situation or Sea, See; but it was something I never really had to think about before.

And in the medical language there are TONS of them. Not to mention abbreviation words which SOUND like every day words.

Example: On Grey’s Anatomy, and we’re talking early days with Dr. Burke, Dr. Bailey wanted to watch Dr. Burke perform a “cabbage” procedure. Well, if you don’t know the word you think in your mind it’s spelled cabbage like … well cabbage. Like the vegetable in coleslaw. Nope, when a physician refers to the word “cabbage” in dictation he means this CABG. Which stands for “coronary artery bypass graft”.

So to master the medical language, heck even in your own writing, is to know how it fits in. Like accept and except. How many of us starting out switch those two around.

Accept means to receive willingly or to agree to.

Except means to take our or leave out; not including and other than.

One of the most interesting words I came across in my study was mucous. I thought there was only ONE! How wrong I was.

Mucous, spelled this way means, pertaining to or resembling mucus; adjectival form of mucus. EG: The mucous membranes are normal.

So when you refer to the actual stuff, mucus is spelled MUCUS. It refers to the free slime. EG: On sinus examination there was a great deal of mucus.

Cool. Or at least I think it’s quite fascinating.

Can it be a year since I turned … 30?

Yeah, cause today April 16th at around lunch time I’ll be 31.

And how am I celebrating? Being poked and prodded, stuck with needles and the like by my OB. Hehehe. I also totally forgot. Seriously I did. Until I realized today was the 15th and there were birthday congrats showing up on my Facebook page. Whoops. LOL.

I won’t be around tomorrow much, see above, but in reflection I think this past year has been a great one. I met a lot more of my writer friends, went to San Francisco, sold some more books, left my EDJ. All in all a good year. Oh and that is me about 26 years ago. Can you guess which one is me? I’m the tall one, alot of people guess the short one, but that’s my cousin. We’re close … like sisters. Her birthday was last week and she hit 30. So Happy Belated to you Mandy.

So my weekend was insanely filled with guests. It wore me out. WAY too much. Even though I didn’t do a lot of stuff, as in cooking and cleaning, it still wore me out. I’m still trying to catch up on sleep and getting back some of my energy.

I doubt that will happen though.

I’m also playing catch up getting around to blogs, mailing out an assortment of packages (again, that is something my DH has to do as I can’t really get around too well), plus all my writing, editing, and other stuff. To top it all off I think my computer is dying. Waaah.

It was making funny noises all weekend. Last night, the screen went off. Like it went white with blue lines and wouldn’t power off. We had to unplug it and pop the battery out to get it to power down. My DH spent all last night running diagnostics on it. Thank goodness I’m married to a computer nerd. It wasn’t a virus, and he backed up my computer, but he said with a grim face it could be the hard drive heading south.

*sigh*

Why is it when it rains it pours? Now is not the time to get a new computer. Or, I would rather not have too; especially in light of the fact we just bought a minivan because our Malibu was dying, a new baby is on it’s way and there’s a couple of things we still need to purchase for him. Computer now is not the time to replace you!! I need you!!!

I’ll try to get around to blogs today and see what everyone has been up to. It’s been so bad I haven’t even tweeted. That’s how hectic life is. Oy.

I’m pretty inundated with guests this weekend, so here’s wishing you and yours a happy one!

So today I went to get my GTT (Glucose Tolerance Test). I’ve done this with my previous two pregnancies. No problem.

How I mock the fates, or how they mock me.

I went in and thought easy peasy. Forty minutes in I fainted.

Well, I started to feel woozy, and things began to fade in and out. I was sweating uncontrolably, but I couldn’t get up. If I got up I knew I was going to fall, and being 5 foot 11 inches it was a long way to fall without hurting my baby. This stranger came up to me.

“Are you okay?” I think I said No. Her arm went around me and she said. “I would say put your head between your knees but that is impossible.” I think I laughed but next thing I knew two lab techs were rushing over. They helped me to my feet and started leading me to a room with a recliner. I closed my eyes for one moment.

When I woke up I was on my knees with my face plastered against one of the techs. I heard them talking.

“She’s in for Gestational Diabetes.”

“Well, I think this shows us she’s got it.”

I came to and the first thing I did was apologize. The ladies in the lab laughed and helped me to lay on the cool tile floor with an ice pack on my neck until I got some color back. They helped me into the recliner and kept me there for the duration of the test.

The techs were amazing. They were nice when I first entered, but they went above board when I fainted. The woman, my stranger in need who I never got to thank personally, was so concerned if the baby was okay. The lab ladies caught me, so there was no blunt trauma to my womb. It never touched the floor and little *J* was jiving from that crazy glucose drink.

I’m going to write a thank you letter to the lab, and I think I’ll put something in the local paper for that woman.

Now I wait to hear from my Doctor, but it looks like I have Gestational Diabetes. *sigh* I only hope it’s not bad and it can be controlled by diet instead of insulin injections. *double sigh*

What next? Is it June yet? LOL.