random alert! random alert!

[same_sky]

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.

Comments

[sweet-pickles.livejournal.com]

No one "owns" a baby name. I have at least three cousins name George.

[sunflower-pixie.livejournal.com]

asparagus?

[same-sky.livejournal.com]

I was thinking asparagus.. my mom suggested it last night, too, which is surprising because I'm not sure that she's ever even HAD asparagus. M nixed that idea because it would be "wrong". Silly Swedes. He didn't have an opinion until I came up with something that sounded good.. hehe. Oddly, he's letting me make a broccoli casserole of the velveeta variety, so apparently, the more unswedish it is, the more okay it is to serve with my traditional Swedish meatball dinner. I will never understand men.

[blookum.livejournal.com]

Guys within the same family have the same names all the time, why not girls, too?

Dad's side: 3 Roberts
Mom's side: 3 Wendells

My brother is the overlap - none of the 5 go by the same name.

I always wanted to have the middle name Elizabeth. So many nickname possibilities... Liz. Liza. Lizzie. Eliza. Beth. Lizard Breath.

[lizardek.livejournal.com]

Hey! hahaha

[same-sky.livejournal.com]

I guess what I know that maybe I haven't made clear is that I have always been against naming a child the same name as a living family member, because it makes things complicated, and referring to someone as their full name when talking to close family members is just odd. And if one of them dies and hearing their name constantly hurts? It's bloody inconvenient. So, my "family is different" comment was more about that than I bothered saying.

Names are fun. :) Did I tell you that M has been teasing me that we should name her Amanda Lynn? Go ahead and say it out loud a few times if you don't "hear" it in text. I have had to put a veto out on that one. ;)

[blookum.livejournal.com]

That is AWESOME! Never noticed that one... I think 75% of Amanda L Somethings are "Amanda Lynn"s.

My dad wanted to name my brother Robert Macon. Seem innocuous? Our last name was Hay.

Mom said he wouldn't let her name me Sunshine Hay, he couldn't be Macon Hay.

[courtesy.livejournal.com]

My middle name's Elizabeth :)

Someone once suggested to me that I name a pet a name I want for a kid so that someone else doesn't take it because they've met a dog called :)

[lizardek.livejournal.com]

hahaha! that has a dangerous side, too. One of my good friends, while pregnant, answered the inevitable questions of what she was planning to name it with, "Shelby"...whereupon I, with horror, exclaimed, "...but that's a DOG'S NAME." I don't think she's still forgiven me. :P

[same-sky.livejournal.com]

SHIT, that's what Bertha stands for! Shelby!

Okay, I'm lying, but wouldn't it be funny if you did it TWICE with the same name?

[lizardek.livejournal.com]

LOL! yeah, that WOULD be funny...NOT. :D

[same-sky.livejournal.com]

That's an interesting idea. Then again, you run the risk of ruining the name for yourself when a baby comes along and you suddenly would have a dog AND a baby named Mildred. ;)

[e11en.livejournal.com]

NO!!! My brother named his cat Astrid, which has been my reserved girl name since I was 12 and I was livid with him. Granted, it was my girl name for my second girl, which I haven't had, but I had visions of having to wait until their cat died to be able to use. It's such a disagreeable cat too. I'm still annoyed with him about it but I have given him a little leeway since, well, he's a guy and he never paid any attention when we girls were chatting away about our future children's names.

[queensheba.livejournal.com]

Some kind of green vegetable, for sure. If not salad, then broccoli? Broccoli casserole? Green beans?

[blookum.livejournal.com]

My cousin ran a day care - they gave a kitten to her daughter's best friend. Later, she & the best friend's father got married - they had a daughter and a cat named Sarah!

[e11en.livejournal.com]

I my (large) family, my sister is Anne Elizabeth and seven years later my aunt had a baby and named her Elizabeth Anne. We all thought it was fun and even funnier is that, as adults, my cousin Elizabeth moved out to San Francisco and she and my sister Annie (who lives there too) hung out together all the time.

We could not use the name Magnus because G's cousin (named Ingrid) has a son named Magnus and a daughter named Maria. Maria's husband is also named Magnus. His family is very small and to have three Magnus's when there are only about 12 family members, well, it's too much. Also, they doubled up on other names too. His mother is the oldest of four and the two boys were named Sven and Börje. Ingrid is married to Sven (does it get more Swedish?) and G's aunt married a Börje.

No one could have talked me out of Ingrid though. It meant too much to me. And, despite my comment above, I would have used Astrid too, despite my brother's wretched cat. ;-)