There's nothing like being at work and knowing you're only there for half a day.

Less, in my case - I'll be leaving at 10:30 so that Matt and I can get to our ultrasound appointment on time. (But this time, I will know I don't have to have a full bladder. Thank goodness.)

We'll get to see the baby again! Yay! And hopefully get a confirmation on the gender. And some better pictures. I won't be shy about asking this time.

After the ultrasound, we're probably meeting K.T. and Kevin for lunch, and then we may try to go over to our bank's main branch, which is down in Hampton, and see if we can talk to someone about refinancing our mortgage. I tried to call a couple of days ago, to find out if we needed an appointment, but they never called back. I'll try again this morning.

And as long as I'm making phone calls, I need to call my company's benefit center back. They were supposed to send me my maternity leave packet of information at the beginning of this month, and I haven't received it yet. I called them yesterday and left a message, and they didn't call me back, either.

But mostly, I'm revelling in the thought that I won't spend my whole day bored out of my mind. I've got a meeting at 9 in which I am one of the presenters, and I put quite a bit of effort into that presentation, so hopefully that will go well. And then I'm leaving at 10:30. Whoo!

Tonight we've got our tour of the hospital maternity ward. I need to remember to jot down questions I want to ask, so I don't forget them.

We went by my parents' on our way to the game last night and picked up a bunch of painting gear - rollers and brushes and edgers and drop cloths. Dad set out enough drop cloths for us to cover the entire upstairs, let alone the nursery, but we took them all. Matt figured that if we just took what we thought we'd need, then obviously we'd need one more, and he'd be kicking himself for not grabbing them all. At least this way, if there's some weird physics to drop cloths that we don't know about, we'll have done everything we could have.

(Note: Remember to put down cloths, since we'll have spares, along the path from the nursery to the bathroom so we don't get paint on the carpet when they take stuff to rinse it out.)

Kevin is going to come up on Saturday to help Matt move the furniture and do the actual painting, while K.T. and I are finishing up our editing. Since the editing will probably go faster, I'll bring K.T. back to the house when we're done, and we can supervise. Or, more likely, sit around downstairs and talk and try to stay out of the guys' way and try not to cringe too much when we hear thumps and bumps, or panic at the sound of, "Oops."

If all goes well, we may even assemble the crib and move the furniture into place. And then we'll have a flat surface on which to place the assortment of baby toys we've already collected from various excited grandparents-to-be.

Picture frenzy!

(Step back. I've got pregnant-lady hormones, and I'm not afraid to use 'em.)

--Liz