It’s just that I feel mostly we’re in sort of limbo right now, waiting for the new arrival and preparing to move house a few weeks later. It is just now hitting me how crazy it is to have planned to do that. Not that we really had a choice.

Life recently has been a blur of scheduling/doing work that needs to be done on the new house, working with the landlord on showing this house (as she wants to be done with the landlord business), going to OB appointments, chasing after a busy almost-3-year-old (whose birthday will fall right in the middle of all the chaos), and sort of living in denial.

I am also roughly the size of a small rhino but lack that animal’s grace, agility and speed. I sort of lumber through the day like a half-hibernating geriatric grizzly bear. Quick to anger, but slow on the uptake.

The heat doesn’t help. At this point, all I want to do is sit in bed with a giant glass of ice water. But, for obvious reasons, this isn’t an option.

I hope to have more interesting updates soon…

Just learned to perfectly poach chicken breasts using my rice cooker’s ‘slow cook’ function. You are looking at a whole new H-A Housewife.

I started with totally frozen boneless chicken breasts. Half an hour (and several edited webpages) later, I had moist, cooked, enchilada-ready chicken. (I love multi-tasking. Count getting the Kiddo down for a nap, and it’s like I’m two people! Sort of.)

I got the idea from a cookbook on slow cookers that recommends poaching them in a traditional crockpot for six to eight hours. (Also, you’re supposed to cook seven pounds of chicken at once. Hello!? I’m not feeding the Duggars!) As I knew the Sanyo‘s ‘slow cook’ option is more like a slow cooker on steroids, I reduced the amount of chicken and guessed on the time. Score.

Steps involved: Put frozen chicken in cooker; add broth; close cooker; set timer; press button. Possibilities are endless.

Chicken sandwich, chicken gumbo, chicken burger …

“Erma hit the wall, went right up it, and slammed it shut.”

That phrase describes just about every attempt I’ve ever made at serious physical fitness and, unfortunately, also the last several weeks of maintaining this blog.

Like exercise, it turns out that the longer you live life unblogged the harder it is to return. But, for me, writing about my life to strangers on the Internet is something I am strangely compelled to return to again and again. (I wish I could say the same for running.)

There are two main ‘off-line’ reasons for the hiatus:

One, we are expecting a new addition to the family. For personal reasons, I wasn’t ready to talk about it or write about my pregnancy yet, and it felt strange to edit this information about of what I was thinking and doing about the rest of my life. So far, though, things have been going well—am due in late July or early August—and ready to come out of the closet online and in “real life.”

The second reason, one that I’ll blog more about later, is that my first post of 2010 was supposed to be one about New Year’s resolutions. I know! I know! Really! I actually planned them out months in advance, with research and links, etc.

These soon ran into conflict with some economic realities related to being a one-income, three-(soon-to-be four) person household. It turns out The Spouse (earner of the aforementioned sole, and certainly substantial-but-not-infinite, income) had some issue with the economic impact of a number of said resolutions and we have entered into a budget negotiation process, the results of which will also serve as likely blog fodder.

So, here’s wishing everyone a belated happy entrance to 2010. I should have no shortage of stuff to write about if anyone’s still here to listen.