Good day, (no) sunshine!

What a lovely weekend I've had. No, seriously. I know I was down on Friday, but a little downtime really helped pick the spirits back up. Saturday morning, I went to Heather (former co-owner of A Mano)'s garage sale, as she & husband, and impossibly cute baby are moving back to Portland. Sad to see her go, but I did get to buy some insanely inexpensive yarn from her (7 balls of Debbie Bliss Baby Cashmerino in light grey and 10 skeins of Brown Sheep Cotton Fleece in ivory) and an adorable sweatsuit for Figgy: black with a baby-size skeleton in white on the front. Since Figgy is due on Oct. 15, it's Figgy's first Halloween costume!

After the sale, Faith & I had a lovely breakfast at Cafe 50's, and then I came home. Rich & I have finally reached our breaking point with boxes (as in, we've lived in this place now for 2 1/2 months, and half of my clothes were still in boxes in our bedroom). So we went through (most of) the boxes and were able to move in the very stylish small dressers that we bought from Faiths sister, Shannon. And now our room looks like a real bedroom. Our living room is now overrun with a multitude of empty boxes, but we're going to take them all to the recycing center on Saturday.

We wound down with the organizing in time for Cinespia, which was showing the classic film-noir, Detour. This 1945 gem was obviously done on the cheap (shots are fliplopped so cars are driving on the left side of the road), but it was really interesting. And the crowd was relatively small and not annoying (ie, unlike last week's showing of The Birds), so it was very enjoyable.

Today, I decided not to take the usual Sunday walk to the Farmers market (Rich was nursing some nasty sinus issues that kept him from sleeping well, so he needed to sleep in), and instead, I headed out to the Melrose Trading Post at Faifax High. I love this flea market. It's the perfect mix of vintage and new, classics and crap. And it's large enough to be worthwhile, but small enough to see everything and still have the rest of your day to yourself. I lucked upon a stash of vintage knitting/craft magazines, inlcuding multiple copies of McCalls Needlework & Crafts, my favorite vintage mag ever. Last year, Ellen directed Faith & I to the motherload estate sale of vintage mags: the Fern Smith sale. While I didn't score anything near as big as the Fern Smith sale today, I did pick up 1 Vogue Knitting magazine (Spring/Summer 1963), 2 Spinnerin knitting pattern magazines (1961 & 1967), and 5 McN&C (1968-1972). Spinnerin magazines are known for their beautiful color photography and fully styled photo shoots (the 1967 mag seems to be shot in a ski lodge). And McN&C is just chock full of every craft you can think of: needlepoint, knitting, crochet, macrame, sewing, string art, latch-hook, embroidery, etc. My Fern Smith collection of McN&C wxtends from 1950-1968/69, with a couple of 70s mags thrown in, but now I'm good through to early 1973. There are some really fascinating items in here, the best being a needlepoint lunar landing, complete with a mini-Earth against an American flag instead of the night sky! I love this stuff.

When i got back, we headed out to our kickball end-of-season "pool" party at the Loews Beverly Hills. Despite the facts that a) it was cloudy and windy and even sprinkling (definitely not swimming weather), and b) I can't drink, it was still a lot of fun.

And on the baby front: it's week 19 and all's well! Annika had her baby (Congratulations, and welcome Samuel William Klein!). Allison has given me permission to out her, as it were, as a fellow October-mama-to-be! I have my next doctor's appointment on Wednesday to get my results of the AFP test (it's all going to be fine, and even if the tests come back positive, something like 80% of those babies are born with nothing wrong). And I get my ultrasound on May 31 to find out Figgy's gender (along with a bunch of medical stuff). With all the male babies around here (Annika's Samuel, Allison's baby-boy-to-be), my conviction that Figgy is male is starting to wane. I guess we'll know in a week and a half.

For now, I'll leave you with a Babycenter.com update for week 19: Your baby weighs about 8 1/2 ounces, and he measures 6 inches, head to bottom — about the length of a small zucchini. His arms and legs are in the right proportions to each other and the rest of his body now. His kidneys continue to make urine, and the hair on his scalp is sprouting. This is a crucial time for sensory development: Your baby's brain is designating specialized areas for smell, taste, hearing, vision, and touch. If your baby is a girl, she has an astonishing six million eggs in her ovaries. They'll dwindle to fewer than two million by the time she's born.