random alert! random alert!

We have company coming tomorrow, and not only does the house need serious, serious help before three o'clock tomorrow, I have not even finalized a menu, much less make a grocery list of all the things we need to buy when we go grocery shopping tomorrow while we're supposed to be cleaning the house. Meanwhile, because I was getting too used to being able to do things like laundry, I woke up this morning to a rib that is significantly worse than yesterday. I am so tired of planning my life in relation to how my rib is feeling. I should do some picking up before I go to bed, but.. I don't think I will. I had a long-ass day, both mentally and physically. There was a randomly large amount of standing at the end of the day, and my back just wore out at the end and left me exhausted. M will clean everything and do the shopping AND put up the curtains we bought for the baby's room tomorrow, anyway. I just am not sure he'll have time, so here's hoping I'll be feeling much better tomorrow.

Seriously, meatballs and mashed potatoes and .... ? I would like a third thing.. something with a different flavor. I verified with the second Swede today that she is not of the lingonberry type, so luckily, I didn't need to run around tonight looking for expensive jam that probably can't be found in this food-deprived town. M doesn't care much for the meatball/fruit combination himself, either. He's suggesting a green salad but I'm not feeling the love. I guess I could do homemade mac n cheese. I cannot bring myself to serve mac n cheese without the cheese (which is essentially what M's family served it with) though. Yuck.

lizardek said in a comment that she didn't really understand why we think we can't use a name if someone else had taken it. I was thinking about that while drying my hair this morning, and I realized something that I found interesting. I am overthinking this a little because--do you have any idea how often infertiles get their names stolen? Lots of people have stories about the name they had been planning on using being taken during the long, hard wait before they became pregnant... generally by family members or friends who were usually aware of their plan to use the name. I think I am just a touch more sensitive to the possibility of people being upset by it than most as a result, and possibly how that would feel to someone. It's not like it's happened to us personally or anything. I hadn't been thinking about it consciously by any means, though.. just worrying about someone being upset. Having said all that psychobabble stuff, I'll also add that there have been practical implications in two of the cases, both of which were related to the conversation I was having with Liz. My cousin Elizabeth (a toddler) is a very close family member, so it would just seem weird, family-wise to use the last female baby name as a middle name for my baby. (Elizabeth is not a first name choice, just something that we noted that would sound good with M's suggested name.) The other one was Kajsa--I said that we would name a pet that next time we have one because we can't use it for a baby, as M's stepcousin is named that. It wouldn't be an impossibility by any means, but it would probably strike his family as odd that we would "name the baby after" her--aren't there plenty of names that you wouldn't use because someone you know is named that? Practically speaking, the name, with spelling, is weird enough that I would hesitate a little anyway, due to living in the US instead of Sweden. As for me being worried about M's choice because of a friend's name--well, that was an attempt to reassure myself that it was okay to not worry about it. Thanks, guys! You all are great at that. I am offically Not Worried. But family is still different.