Confidential to Mr. E: If your overly complicated Martha Stewart pain in the ass birthday cake is not finished by the time you get home...

it's because of this blog post you harrassed me to write.

In other news, I'm thinking I might have to bite the bullet and buy some maternity overalls. Even though I'll be honest with you, I'm really not an overalls type of girl. First of all, they remind me of something one or all of the cast members of 90210 would wear. Can't you just see David Silver walking down the halls of Beverly High with only one of his shoulder straps fastened? Also, I may still be suffereing residual childhood overall trauma, because as a little kid I could never get them unfastened when I had to go to the bathroom and even when I did get someone to unfasten them for me, one strap invariably ended up dipped in the toilet. And then Mr. E came along and he has such an aversion to women sporting overalls that he begged me never to wear them, and I didn't even own any overalls at the time so I was more than happy to oblige.

Overalls are actually only one of two things Mr. E begged me never to wear, the other one is that weird combo piece of clothing where it's a skirt in the front and shorts in the back. I am not as deeply disburbed by this fashion oddity as he is, but I do find it sort of weird and also, doesn't it seem like it might be bulky? And besides, what's really the point? Are you that worried that someone might see your underwear? I mean, maybe I'm weird, but I just don't care that much if someone sees my skivvies. Perhaps it's because I wore a catholic school girl uniform skirt for 13 years and we wore them so short (rolled up at least two times after you left the house) that after awhile you just didn't care who saw what. It was kind of liberating now that I think about.

But back to the overalls. Mr. E and his opinions on female fashion trends not withstanding, none of my damn pants will stay up anymore. The myth of maternity jeans has been proven here, I'll say that. They just don't really work that well in practise. Either they are so tight that the elastic waistband hurts me and gives me this weird squeezed chub stomach look which by the way is super flattering, as you might imagine, or they are semi comfy and they fall down when I walk. So I think it's either cave in and buy some maternity overalls, or maybe we could all start a fashion movement to bring back suspenders. Knowing my luck, they'll be sweeping the nation NEXT winter. So yeah. Suspenders, anyone? Anyone?

Test

Bland and Blanderer

Yesterday morning I woke up with heart burn so severe that it made me throw up three times. Three separate times. I really really really hate throwing up, so at this point I'm pretty desperate to do whatever I have to do to make this a one time thing.

The main thing you can do to prevent pregnancy related heart burn is to change your diet. And I totally tried to sleep on four pillows last night so my head would be elevated and all that and it's just not happening. What this means is that the short list of things I can actually eat that don't make me feel sick OR throw up just got even shorter. No tea, no spicy food, no caffeine, no tomatoes, no chocolate, no carbonated anything, no acidic juice, no pineapple, no greasy food, nothing fried. I already couldn't eat much dairy without dire results, eggs make me sick, and I need to have protein at every meal. It's really looking like turkey on plain bagels for the next two months, and it sucks.

I suppose if nothing else it will keep me from gaining too much weight in the final stretch, but it feels like a particularly harsh insult that this comes at a time when I could finally eat a few more things, and at Christmas time. I have elaborate meals planned for Christmas and New Year's and Mr. E's birthday and none of them have "bland" as their central theme. Of course I've already done all the grocery shopping for these meals, and even though I know it's probably a bad idea, I won't lie, I might just have to find out the hard way that homemade chex party mix and acid reflux don't mix. I can't help it - I have never made Chex Party Mix from scratch and I am inordinately excited to do it, and I have three giant boxes of Chex in my cupboard, so screw it, I'm making it. In other news, I am a loser, and I love salt.

In case you were wondering:

Christmas Morning breakfast: cinnamon rolls and virgin mimosas
Alternate Princess Nebraska Non Barf Version: plain oatmeal,Maalox

Christmas Dinner: gingered prawns, grilled italian beef served sliced over rocket, rosemary garlic olive oil pototoes, and brownies, menu stolen directly from Nigella Feasts
Alternate Princess Nebraska Non Barf Version: plain oatmeal,Maalox

Mr E's Birthday breakfast: Potatoes, sausage, eggs, toast
Alternate Princess Nebraska Non Barf Version: plain oatmeal,Maalox

Mr. E's birthday dinner: Newsom's Country Ham (this is his christmas present from my mom, and I am not lying when I say he has not shut up about his country ham for months now. He REALLY likes ham. To be fair, this is some GOOD ham.), biscuits, cucumber salad, cheesy potatoes, ambrosia salad, and apple tart for birthday cake.
Alternate Princess Nebraska Non Barf Version: plain oatmeal,Maalox

New Year's Eve Dinner: roasted chicken, mashed potatoes, sauteed whole peas, and strawberries, pound cake, and whipped cream for dessert. Completely non seasonal, completely don't care.
Alternate Princess Nebraska Non Barf Version: plain oatmeal,Maalox

And now I'm off to feast on some oatmeal and maalox, and find a recipe for White Pizza.

Finally a day off

Not much is going on right now. I'm really relieved because we are DONE with our holiday hoo ha. We've had visitors or been visiting somewhere since November 4th, my brother left on Thursday and then we had two holiday parties to go to, and now we are done. The shopping is done, almost, although Mr. E is out buying my present right now, but all of our other shopping is done. So this weekend I am really looking forward to sitting around and doing nothing. Actually I'm looking forward to doing that for the next two weeks.

Pasta Queen asked how I made the peppermint strand...it's pretty easy. I just bought some of those starlight mints, and then threaded a larger sized needle with red embroidery floss, and then sewed through the twisted section of the plastic wrapper on the mint, on each end of the mint. So the embroidery floss goes through one side of the wrapper, over the back of the mint, and through the other side of the wrapper. Then just string the next one, and so on. I was worried the weight of the mints might cause the thread to tear the wrappers, but it's been fine. I did try to go through the thickest twisted part but it hurt my fingers too much after awhile so I just tried to get as close as I could to the twist in the wrapper. Does that make sense, at all?

What I've Been Doing Instead of Blogging

I Didn't Go There and Neither Did Anyone I Know But I Like the Sweatshirt

I just noticed that the University of Minnesota sweatshirt that I've had for ages and that is a key piece of my hot maternity wardrobe doesn't actually say "University of Minnesota" on it.

Instead it reads, in huge letters across the front:

UNIVERSITY
MINNESOTA

What happened to the OF? It reminds me of when the 90210 kids when to California University.

I feel quite traumatized. The missing OF is driving me crazy!

Seriously, I don't think I can wear this stupid sweatshirt anymore.

Luckily I have another one, that just says "MICHIGAN". I can live with that.

Pictures of You

I rarely take pictures when I go on trips. This drives people crazy, for some reason, but it makes perfect sense to me. I spent two weeks in France and didn't take one picture, but I can still remember the view of the Alps from my bedroom window and the tiny strawberries that grew on the side of the road and the neighbors laundry hanging outside and the husband and wife standing behind their mile long cheese counter at the farmer's market. I couldn't remember these things any more clearly if I had ten thousand pictures of them. And when I think back on my trip to France I really don't want to remember trying to take the perfect picture of the cheese man, I want to remember the cheese man.

So generally when I travel I don't even take a camera, but that doesn't mean pictures aren't valuable to me. My father is an amazing photographer and in some sense I remember my childhood through pictures he took of it. There is an amazing shot he took of my sister in the instant after a jack in the box had popped open that conveys the absolute essense of who she is...it is a moment of pure glee, pure joy, thrilling, captured on film forever.

When I was a little girl I loved to drag my baby album down off the shelf, mine was the dark brown one, and pore over it. I always thought my parents chose the dark brown album for me because of my eyes and it made me feel special. And it was filled with all kinds of cool stuff...the gown my father wore at the hospital the day I was born, stuffed into a letter sized envelope. A label from the cigars my parents handed out to their friends. The plastic id bands my mother and I wore in the hospital. Pages and pages of the graph my dad kept of my mom's contractions. Cards from family wishing us well. And of course, there were pictures, my mom, huge, standing on a rock by the lake, or making french bread. Then I arrive, and there are first the ones they take in the hospital, a tiny yawning me framed in an oval and wrapped in pink. There's my grandmother, who I was named for, washing me in the sink, my dad, with a hidden me in a Snugli, me in a long white christening gown, and later with the pink satin blanket that was given to me by my father's bosses at EF Hutton and that to this day remains my most prized possession, what I would save from a burning building. There are hand written captions - things like "Cool it!" under a picture of me in an ice chest, wailing.

This is all from memory. I don't have any of these pictures, and I know there are more that I've forgotten, but my dad would never let any of our baby albums out of his possession and now that we don't speak mine is lost to me. And it hurts. Mr. E's mom is making a story board of both of us when we were babies for our shower and I did manage to find a few pictures of myself as a little kid for her to use but for some reason it really bothers me that my first hospital picture won't be up there and I am missing all the pictures of my mom when she was pregnant with me, and I wish I had that crazy graph.

It feels like part of my childhood is missing. And it's bothering me more than usual, not only because now I am having a baby of my own, but because having my life slapped up on a piece of posterboard next to Mr. E's is a giant reminder of how our lives are different, of how mine went wrong. He comes from a huge loving family and needless to say none of them are estranged and when you look at his parents you can tell that after 35 years of marriage they love each other even more now than they did for the first 35 years of their lives. Mr. E's entire childhood is preserved in his parents basement, crammed into boxes, his mom has his first hat and his first blanket and his first and second and third letters he wrote to his grandmother and pictures upon pictures upon more pictures. When she called and asked me to have my mom send her my baby pictures and I had to say to her "hmmm, my mom doesn't have any baby pictures of me to send you" it just hit me and that moment really hurt.

My dad called me and left me a message on my birthday and I never called him back because I didn't want to talk to him, and I didn't know what I would say to him after five silent years. How do you start that conversation? But part of me wants to call him now to say "Hey, I don't really want to talk to you, but here is my new address, could you please send me my baby book? Hope everything is great!" I don't know. I don't think I know the right words.

I guess the best thing I can do now, the only thing I can do now, is to ensure that this never happens to my son. We're about to take a really long journey together, him and I, and this time, I promise, I'm going to take a shitload of pictures. And I'll buy him an album that matches his eyes and I'll fill it with pictures and captions and graphs and then I'll make sure he never has to wonder, some day a long time from now, if his baby pictures were thrown out in a move.

P.S.

The baby shower game you can't play if you don't want to be touched involves everyone guessing how large your stomach is and then cutting a piece of string to that length. Then they wrap it around you and whoever is closest wins.

Isn't that the most horrifying thing you've ever heard?

We won't be playing that game, don't you fear.

No gadgets? WTF?

Seriously, the new James Bond movie was tres tres bad. Well, not even bad. Bad would imply...I don't know, that something worth caring about occured. Instead, it was just very very very VERY boring. I haven't been that bored in a long time and that includes the ten minutes I spent watching some crazy lady sell Dooney & Bourke purses on QVC this weekend.

Also, hi, if there aren't any gadgets, it's just not a James Bond movie, pure and simple. Thank god the movie theater has Necco wafers, anything involving Necco wafers can't be considered a total waste of time.

You all are so right

First of all, a great miracle happened here, and the random stranger canceled and did not come to stay with us. (As an aside, when I was a little girl, my dad always read us a story about King John, who was not a good man, but who one christmas said over and over again "Please, Father Christmas, if you love me at all, bring a big red india rubber ball." Father Christmas did bring it to him, by the way. Last night when Mr. E was getting the voice mail I found myself saying over and over to myself "Please Lord, if you love me at all, let this loser not come stay with us." And he didn't, and it was awesome.) Kind of scary how happy it made me.

Secondly, reading over the comments I did have a bit of revelation.

You guys are right.

Even though I knew, intellectually, in my head, that I am pregnant, and not fat, I still felt fat. It is hard for me because at times being pregnant feels so much like what it felt like to get fat in the first place that it is difficult to remember that it's not the same thing. And it's really not. This time the point is not how good I look or how round I am. The point is to have a healthy baby and I have a healthy pregnancy and I am a lucky lucky woman. I am able to have a child. Some people never get that.

I cannot imagine the heartbreak of losing a child, and in the face of that, it seems really selfish and stupid to complain about being fat. But even more so than that, it's not correct. Being pregnant is not being fat. It's being pregnant. Two totally separate things.

So I apologize. I apologize for bitching about being fat. I'm going to start being grateful for being pregnant and having a healthy pregnancy. I'm going to start remembering that I am getting bigger FOR A REASON. Thanks for the wake up call.

The Turkey TV Dinner

Today is not my day.

Today is one of those days when I walk into what was my awesomely clean kitchen and I see disgusting dirt and food schmutz crusted on the counter from where my dog got up to steal pizza last night and as I wipe it off I think "I hate that shitty little dog." Even though I don't really hate the dog, it is just one of those days where I am so irrationally angry that little stuff like having to wipe crusty dog ick off the counter really fucking pisses me off.

Part of my problem is that once again I am not feeling good, I think it honestly comes in cycles or something. My (totally not based on any kind of science or knowledge) theory is that the baby grows in spurts and when it does it makes me really sick for a few days. Also that entire bowl of Breyer's real strawberry ice cream did not help anything, but it was oh so good for about ten minutes there.

Besides the fact that today I have to let two strangers into my house (the plumber who is going to fix the leaking toilet which is also a treat and then a random stranger that Mr. E's dad invited to stay with us which I can't even get into without seriously freaking out, so just know that I think it's completely obnoxious beyond belief and I find the situation horrifying and also I just feel that I need to say right here that should the man choose to ever do this again while babies/toddlers/infants/children of mine are living in my house we will have to have words and those words will be "No, No, No, No, No, No, No, No, No, No, NO and HELL NO) which I hate more than anything, really. Ok, besides all that Thanksgiving is coming up and of course it just can't be something that goes easily or smoothly. Not only does it feel like yet another holiday in which I get to be fat in front of my sister in laws, we have to have hotel reservations which are canceled for us even though no one asks us about it and then are made somewhere else less convenient and more expensive and we have to have weeks worth of drama over whether or not to get pedicures together and over who is arriving when and staying for how long and "assignment" spreadsheets are emailed out and it just can't be a calm, normal thing. To just go to someone's house for Thanksgiving. Mr. E's family is throwing me a shower and while I am very grateful for that I just found out that multitudes of people I have never even met have been invited and are coming and I have to say I find that odd. I was really looking forward to seeing some of our friends and aunts and uncles and cousins but I am not really looking forward to awkward idle chit chat with people I don't even know who for some reason are coming to my shower. My mother in law told me that we couldn't play any shower games because I won't let people touch my stomach. I think I was supposed to say "Ok, people can touch my stomach" but instead I just said "Ok, we won't play games" because um, hi, what about having a baby in there means you can touch me all of sudden? Not cool.

It is just one of those days, as I said. Arranging for the plumber to get here was like planinng an international peace convention, since Mr. E left the phone off the hook and so it would ring but would then hang up when I picked it up. I had to call him on my cell phone with terrible reception that is practically useless and then have him email the landlord and then have her call my cell phone and leave me the plumber's number and then I had email Mr. E the plumber's number and then have him call the plumber and then have Mr. E email me back and tell me when the plumber will show up. So by the time I was informed that tonight is the night we win the "have a total stranger who won't tell you exactly when he is showing up" lottery I was in no mood.

The point of all of this story is that usually around June I look forward to the holidays. I think about the red cups at Starbucks (I know, I am a loser) and Christmas trees and family and stuffing and presents and sugar cookies and sparkles and yeah! Thanksgiving seems like a wonderful idea that cannot come soon enough. But as soon as I throw my rotten pumpkin in the trash I start getting crabby and I just get crabbier from there.

So every year I tell myself the story of the turkey tv dinner and I try to feel less bitchy and more grateful. Moments happen for a reason and every year I need to remember that, and for me the story of the turkey tv dinner has become my touchstone - my reminder that someone else always has it worse off than I do. And that no matter what this is a time of year to feel thankful for what I have, even when it cancels my hotel reservations without asking.

Years ago, when we were still living in Ann Arbor, maybe even before Mr. E and I got married, we were in the grocery store the day before Thanksgiving and I was in full Thanksgiving crab mode because I had already spent way too much time with my family and they were annoying the shit out me, as families tend to do. I have the most unrealistic romanticized versions of the holidays and I always decide that it's a good time to hand sew quilts and make candy garlands and bake fourteen kinds of cookies and make my own wrapping paper and brine a turkey and grow my own christmas tree, and it's my own damn fault but the holidays are just a really tough time for me. I get it from my father and his romanticized version of things. He used to sit in the front of the Christmas tree with his glasses off staring at the lights that he had spent every night for a week wrapping around each individual branch of the tree and sometimes he would cry. Does this all make more sense now? Because of how I was raised and probably also Hollywood and maybe you can also blame Laura Ingalls Wilder, I want every moment of the holidays to be glorious snow filled movie street scenes with hot chocolate and lightly falling snowflakes and silver bells and handmade sugar cookies covered with hand dyed organic dusting sugar, and when it ends up being muddy rain and no time to get hot chocolate and stale store bought cookies and a broken car stereo, I take it personally. Consequently my stress level skyrockets before Thanksgiving and that's when family is NOT involved, and then when you throw them into the mix I just lose all sense of decency, really I do.

But there we were in the grocery store and I saw a guy, a bit older than I was at the time, maybe mid thirties, on the day before Thanksgiving, in the freezer aisle, putting a frozen Swanson turkey and stuffing tv dinner in his otherwise empty cart. And I realized in that moment that this man was going to eat his frozen turkey tv dinner by himself on Thanksgiving day, and that his family was gone or far away and he was all alone, and no matter how crabby I was and no matter how annoying my family was, they were mine. I would not be eating a turkey tv dinner alone on Thanksgiving day. I would be surrounded by love and noise and joy and all the irritation in the world was worth that, it was worth it because these people love me and I love them and even when I do not want to be with them, when they sent me into absolute spasms of irritation, I need to be grateful that I have them. Because of them I am not alone. Because of them, I am loved. Because of them I will always have a home, a place that when I have to go there they have to take me in. And because of them I will get on a plane and travel halfway across the country 26 weeks pregnant and I will hold a paper plate of dry left over turkey on my lap and I will smile at strangers and I will remember the turkey tv dinner and maybe, just maybe, I will let this family of mine touch my stomach, once or twice.

Fat Bashing

So Kirstie Alley gained a bunch of weight and then lost a bunch of weight and then put on a bikini and then went on national tv wearing it and apparently this annoyed A LOT of people. Well, I don't know if it annoyed them, so much as everyone then thought it was ok to say rude shit about her and about how she wasn't bikini ready, whatever the hell that means, and about how big her thighs were and how she shouldn't have gone on tv with those thighs wearing a bikini and how she cheated by wearing nylons and blah blah blah.

First of all let me just say I don't really care about Kirstie Alley one way or the other. I don't have an opinion on her personality. I enjoyed her on Cheers just as I enjoyed every person on Cheers so I guess I give her the Cheers Free Pass even though she is a Scientologist which freaks me out, but overall I don't wake up in the morning and think "Hmmm, do I or do I not like Kirstie Alley today?" But regardless of how I feel about her, don't blog that you think she has monster sized thighs and then when you get called on it say "oh, no no no no no, NO, I'm not fat bashing, I have big thighs too!" Uh, guess what? The size of your own thighs has nothing to do with it. Insulting someone because you think they have big thighs IS fat bashing. Period.

So the fat bashing was the first thing. The second thing was the bikini thing. Because really? Aside from those of us who are either fourteen or supremely genetically gifted, dude, none of us is "bikini ready", whatever the hell that even means. Luckily, that doesn't mean we don't get to wear bikinis. We get to wear whatever the hell we want, whenever we want, no matter what size we are, no matter what other people think. That's just how it works. And whether or not you have big thighs, and no matter what other people think, if you feel hot in a bikini, well, damn. You might just have found the secret of life, so don't cover it up with a damn sarong, flaunt it on Oprah and more power to you.

And so all this blather got me thinking. Obviously my weight loss issues and efforts have been derailed by the demon spawn I am currently gestating but last year when I was a size 4 and the smallest I have been for a long time and running 30 miles a week, I was also having a crisis of self confidence. Much of the time I felt not good enough and I felt very self conscious and I had way too many fat days. I've put that all on the back burner because now that I'm pregnant I need to just not care how I look, since if I think too much about it I will be freaked out at how fat I feel and it's not something I can do something about so I just choose not to think about it. But all this bikini talk. Well.

Well, it's just that I have worn a bikini many many many times in my life, and very few (ie none) of those times did I have a Sports Illustrated swimsuit body but I didn't give a shit. I love wearing a bikini and lying on the beach and I thought I looked hot and I felt confident and I rocked it. And it was only later on that I would see pictures of myself or I would become obsessed with how I once looked or I would wonder what other people thought of my stomach and then I would start to feel foolish and think back on when I wore a bikini to the beach when I was larger and I would think "Holy crap, I can't believe I wore that, I really shouldn't have been wearing that" or sometimes I would tear the pictures up into tiny pieces and I would feel shame. Shame that I let my fat thighs out in public, in a bikini no less, shame that I had no better judgement than to cover my fat self up. I do have lack of self esteem, but for some reason it works in reverse. With rare exceptions I've never had a problem putting the bikini on but I find it impossible not to castigate myself for it afterwards.

And so I am going to try to give that bad habit up. I have come to the conclusion that if you feel good in something when you put it on, that moment is really hard to come by and it needs to be all that matters. If you put on a bikini and go on Oprah and you feel good about you, fuck everyone else. When I put on a bikini and lie on the beach I feel like I look good and I feel happy and that's a powerful thing, not everyone has that. Taking it away from myself afterwards by telling myself I didn't deserve to have that self confidence in the first place is unfair to me, and it's really soul killing, in a way. I am lucky I can have that Oprah bikini moment even if it is only in my own mind and I need to tell the crictic in my own head who tunes in afterwards with the doubt and insults to quit with the fat bashing and shut the hell up.

Whine

I've never been what you would call a big drinker. I'm not like, morally opposed to it or anything, it's just not really my thing. And actually it's kind of odd that I'm not more into it because both my parents drink a lot. When I was growing up my dad drank in the car while he was driving and I never even realized until a few years ago that it's not normal to drink beer in the car while driving your kids around, because he was always drinking. My mom can also put it away, although she and my step dad are the classy type of drinkers where they seem to know a lot of about wine and they have happy hour every single night starting at 5 oclock. The happy hour drinks vary by season, but not by a lot. (Martinis in the winter, gin and tonics in the summer). Then they drink wine with dinner and then sometimes they have drinks after dinner. Now that they live in France they have chucked off even these so called rules and the wine pretty much just flows like water, all day long. I personally dig the happy hour concept because it reminds me of my grandmother and the east coast and silver dishes with salted nuts and all that lad di dah, plus there are snacks involved, but I only bust out happy hour on special occasions or say, on camping trips. Otherwise we just have dinner and sometimes Mr. E drinks some beer. So although you could say I am predisposed to the sauce, it just...isn't really for me.

For one thing I just don't really like the taste. I did do the usual college drinking and to this day I can't even look at a bottle of peach schnapps but overall I am not committed enough to anything to be a drinking every night type of person, and besides I have this weird beverage drinking OCD thing where no matter what beverage it is I am physically incapable of finishing it, ever. To be honest with you I don't do it intentionally but when I stop to think about it, the last two inches or so left in a cup do sort of gross me out. It's always too warm and by the time I think "Oh, I should finish that" I've moved on. It's why I used to wet my pants all the time when I was a kid. Too busy to bother.

There are a few things I really enjoy drinking but even those seem kind of pointless. For example I found out after Mr. E lugged home two bottles of it that I love Dominican Rum. Just on ice. Damn, that's good. But once it was gone, I mean, I can't just walk into Safeway and get some Dominican Rum, and I don't like regular rum. Then I discovered my most favorite of favorites, Bailey's Irish Cream, and right after consuming about nine hundred mini bottles of it over ice (although never getting even a slightly noticeable buzz) I discovered that I was basiscally drinking straight fat and that as best I can tell 1/5 of a cup of the stuff has aproximately one bajillion calories. And when I started Weight Watchers just like everyone else I could indeed tell you how many points were in a very teeny glass of wine but after awhile it was like, what was the point? I just don't like wine enough and then when I got down to 20 points a day and couldn't even eat my flex points, anything that didn't make me less hungry wasn't on the menu. It's the same reason I ate nuts instead of baked lays. Baked lays don't fill you up, wine doesn't fill you up. Nuts fill you up, so that was where my points went.

All the same whenever I would go out or go to parties, which was not all that often, I drank, because to be honest I am a socially awkward person and I just needed it to be able to make idle chit chat with random strangers and not die of ten thousand tiny awkward social moments. Most often I would end up getting sort of bombed because I would refuse to eat anything at these parties due to the fact that I knew I was ingesting too many booze calories as it was and so I would just drink my dinner and that's why last year I fell off our porch at a party we had and ended up killing a bush. Good times, good times. I'm not saying weight watchers turned me into an alcoholic so much as it highlighted the fact that while I don't drink every night and I don't even really like beer or wine and the only booze I like I can't have, sometimes there was social awkwardness and what can I say, I needed some drinks.

Now that I am pregnant I have not had any alcohol for 24 weeks. A LOT, I mean A LOT of people have told me that so and so who they once knew's best friend's doctor told them that it's ok to have some wine or some beer or whatever when you are pregnant. That is all fine and good and I am happy for those people, but I am not in the habit of taking third party medical advice from friends of friends doctors and my doctor who is a safety gal such as myself told me not to drink and so I do not. And honestly in the first four months of vile pukeness known as pregnancy the site of a wine bottle was enough to make me gag and run for the hills, so it wasn't much of an issue.

But now here the holidays are almost upon us and we have started to attend actual social events with actual people that we are trying to meet in this new town and it's a whole new level of social awkwardness and I cannot have my three wine glass buffer to smooth things out and it SUCCKKKKKKS. Big time. Last week we went to a wine bar to try to socialize with new people and the obnoxious woman who was sitting next to me who I was trying to be nice to in spite of my opressive and total soberness actually explained to me as if I was twelve years old what a flight of wine is and I knew when I had to sit on my hands to avoid stabbing her with my fork that I had never ever appreciated the way that even one glass of wine takes the edge off. Imagine what a whole flight could do.

Even when it's hanging out with old friends it sucks because everyone else is re living their college days over a costco sized bottle of jack daniels and making total asses of themselves in a terrifically boozed up way and having fun and being drunk, and I am sitting in the corner, sober and quiet and boring and lame. Pretty soon we are headed to Detroit for the holidays and I will only say about that that when I remarked to my sister in law recently that being the only sober one in a group of drunks bites the big time, her answer was "Huh? Does it?". Uh huh.

Perhaps it this would be a good time to reflect on the fact that I self medicate my awkwardness and shyness and various social disorders with booze and that maybe that isn't a good thing, but to that I say, no thank you. To that I say, hey, you have your medicine, and I have mine, and how many more weeks do I have to be pregnant?

The light at the end of the tunnel is that I have read, in an actual book, that drinking is not strictly verbotten while breast feeding. And I am looking forward to experimenting with my tolerance once I push the kid out, because I have the feeling that it may be the only time in my life that 1/5 of a cup of Bailey's gets me straight up drunk. I'm really hoping there are mini bottles at the delivery.

Ramble

Hey, how are things?

I am ok, even though my non medicated cold is kicking my ass. Tonight is Ugly Betty night and we are having burritos for dinner, which, yeah! Everyone loves burritos. Right now I am eating a most delicious everything bagel that was flown in special just for me from Brooklyn, New York, home of the most delicious bagels on earth. My awesome husband not only made me lime jello without being asked but he also stopped off at the best store ever, Target, and got me a humidifier in the shape of a frog AND some of the Tord Boontje christmas stuff which I know it is not Christmas decoration time but I heard the stuff was flying off the shelves and I had to have it. Mr. E did not approve of the frog humidifier but I told him it was an early birthday present for Thor (what I call Le Fetus) and he submitted. I wish they made one in the shape of a robot, but it is still pretty cool that the steam or whatever it is comes out of the frog's eyeballs.

Here is a ridiculous question. I know you are not supposed to microwave stuff in plastic containers because of plastic contamination or what have you. But what about if you put your soup in a (ceramic) bowl and microwave it with a plastic lid over the top? To keep the soup from going all over the microwave? Is that ok? I certainly hope so. I'm going to live on the edge and go for it.

Thor is kicking a lot lately, and wiggling around. At first it was cool. Now it kind of freaks me out. It's like he is constantly reminding me "Hey, I'm coming out in four months, I hope you're ready! I'm going to completely change your entire life, but for now I will just kick you in the side! See you soon!" and I start to hyperventilate slightly at the thought of a real live baby around these parts, in a matter of mere months. Yikes.

There is hope for us all!

I have a terrible cold. I feel disgusting. I can't take anything for it and I just read something that said it will probably last longer than a regular cold because my body has to go into overdrive to protect the baby or some such hoo ha. My throat hurts so badly that it keeps waking me up.

And yet, I feel the oddest sense of happiness and relief, as if a weight of two years and one month has been lifted from my shoulders.

It's just that, in this crazy world, we needed our Brit Brit back. And if she can lose the weight and spend $10,000 on an entire wardrobe without buying ONE velour sweatsuit and also she is finally finally finally thank god divorcing the disgusting oily cretan formerly known as her man K Fed? Things are looking up!

The baby comes out in March. Then lets say eight weeks for recovery, just to be on the safe side, that takes us to May. Then I have six months to train for a half marathon in October. My goal is to lose the baby weight AND run the half marathon in under two hours, which means I'll have to shave eight minutes off two previous times. I think I can do it. I KNOW I can do it. I can't wait to start really running again. (And no, I'm not one of those women who is running a marathon the day before I push the kid out. I'm just...not that kind of pregnant. The baby is fine and all, but feeling like you're about to ralph or pass out for most of the day isn't really conducive to wads of running, is all.)

Now I just have to find a race. I was all excited to run one in Denali National Park and then Mr. E started making noises about what a terrible idea that was and being chased by bears. I figure it's just great motivation not to be last. Run faster, the bears will get you!

It seems like right now lots of people are planning to run marathons but I have to say, I just don't think that's for me. For one thing, I am not one of those people who needs to do it to prove to myself I could. I have no doubt I could run a marathon, I just don't want to. It's too much time commitment and honestly? I don't think it's great for weight loss. You have to eat too much and devote too much time to it and it just seems like a pain in the ass. The half marathon though? Is an awesome distance. I love it. Just enough so you can feel like you kicked ass and took names, but not so much that your toenails fall off.

I have to say that my whole life I always said that one of the greatest reasons I could think of to have kids was because I wanted to watch someone totally new to the world read "The Catcher in the Rye" for the first time. I wanted to tell someone who had never heard it before the "Why did the chicken cross the road?" joke. And now I have a third selfish reason for wanting to have kids. I can't wait until that day I see a bunch of my kids holding a "Go Mommy" sign and waiting for me at a finish line*. Cannot Wait.

*Although now that I think about what will probably happen is that we'll become a running family and I'll have a bunch of kids who are also runners and who can kick my ass at the age of ten. I guess Mr. E can wait for all of us at the finish line!

Caller ID

This has been happening for a while now:

I call my sister's cell phone, it rings, and then comes the sound of someone picking up, and then I say "Hello" a few times, and even after I say hello, there's no response, and so eventually I hang up. I thought something was wrong with her phone, so when my mom got home from Europe I told her about it, just because it was weird and I thought maybe my sister needed a new phone. Uh, no. Turns out my darling sister has been answering her phone, and then not saying anything until she hears who it is, and then when it's someone she doesn't want to talk to (like me) she hangs up.

For some reason this has beyond pissed me off.

Seriously, WHAT THE FUCK?!

I know she has a disability. And I am sure sometimes she doesn't want to talk to me. But to answer your phone and then hang up after determining it's someone you don't want to talk to is just beyond rudeness. It smacks of not giving a shit. And whether it's her fault or not I can't help feeling that this is what happens when you live a life with no consequences.

I feel like it's such a "screw you" to her family. I really want her to not get away with it. I am sure she'll get in trouble for it, but other than having her phone taken away, what can you really do?

Somehow it's the worst of all worlds. She wants to be independent. Her family wants that for her too. But she ISN'T independent. She doesn't pay her own bills, she doesn't support herself, she doesn't make herself go to meetings, she doesn't show up for job interviews. She just acts however she wants, no matter how bratty or rude, and then thinks that makes her independent. She just says "I don't have to ________ if I don't want to " and she thinks she is making her own decisions.

Sometimes, I don't want to talk to my family when they call me, and I don't answer the phone. But I pay the phone bill. I have a job, and I take care of myself, so I get to make that decision for myself. She doesn't see the disconnect there. Maybe someone needs to explain it to her. But I don't know that she would get it.

My sister has made me realize, over and over again, that sometimes what being independent means is making yourself do the shit that you don't want to do. How do you teach that to someone? I don't know, but we're not doing a very good job of getting that across to her right now, and it shows.

I don't want to force my sister to talk to me, and I don't want to kiss her ass during our phone conversations so she likes me enough to WANT to talk to me. I don't want to emotionally manipulate her into a false relationship with me. (Others have tried this with much success. For some reason my sister responds really really well to emotional manipulation and bullshit weedlings.) What I really want is for her to care that being rude to people in her family hurts their feelings, and to not do it anymore. Which I am starting to realize pretty much makes this my own problem, no?

We're right back to my lesson I have to learn over and over again, ever since I saw it on the Travel Channel. Yes, the Travel Channel, where the old Creole woman explained voodoo and then said: "After all, you can only ever really change yourself."

Because of Gravity

Today Mr E and I were having an email "discussion" about how EVERYBODY knows you have to weigh yourself in the morning before you do anything else because walking around and showering and eating and all that during the day makes you heavier. Even if you don't eat you weigh more as the day goes on and I told him it was because of gravity, which really I know is stupid but how else do you explain it? Mr E is a scientist and all that which is part of what I find so saucy about him, the other part is his overall general super hotness, but I'm glad that I already knew that I married a super dork because his email response to tell me I was full of shit about the gravity thing included this awesome one liner: "Gravity is like rust. It never sleeps."

The Worst Idea Ever

Mr. E and I are right in the middle of the vile and tedious process of stripping, sanding, and refinishing a crib we bought on Craigslist for $100. We wouldn't be doing this except that the crib of my dreams comes in a shade I refer to as "espresso" but actually is just dark brown and also doesn't exist. Well, let's be totally honest here, it does exist, but while I wanted a dark brown crib I wasn't about to pay $900 for the only one on earth from Pottery Barn Kids and so we bought a crib that comes in the same ugly cherry finish as all the other non Pottery Barn Kids cribs and we've been working on turning it dark brown for ages now.

This type of asking for trouble and making work where none is really needed (the crib really was perfectly good when it was cherry colored, after all) really is something I do ALL THE TIME, it's just part of my nature and I can't help it, and I am just lucky that Mr. E puts up with it as much as he does. However Sunday afternoon I think he finally maybe got a little sick of sweating over a hot power sander and he looked over at me and said "I think this might be our worst idea ever."

This is a powerful statement because as I said I tend to always choose the most difficult way of doing anything ever. For example I couldn't just register for regular old overpriced crib bedding (which is totally unnessary anyway), I had to choose the discontinued overpriced crib bedding and build my nursery theme around and it spend months searching for and overpaying for it on Ebay. So yeah, I think it's fair to say I've cooked up A LOT of crazy projects since Mr E. and first dirtily salsa danced together one magic night in 1997 and not all of them have been, uh, the most fun. Some of them have maybe even gotten away from me, maybe turned out to be a bit more work than I figured on? But although the crib sanding suuuuuuucks it's also, IMHO, kind of fun. We get to hang out together and use power tools and I read some fascinating articles on Fine Woodworking dot com which was actually kind of cool in a nerdy way, and everyone loves a project, so I decided no. Crib refinishing? Not worst idea ever.

But then I had a lot of time to think about it during the hours of tedious crib sanding and ever since then I've been trying to think of what our worst idea actually was. We once painted our bedroom this horrible bright orange faux finish and it was really really ugly, but we had so much fun doing that I don't think it qualifies, and Mr. pointed out we learned a lot about color choices during that experience. Uh huh. Arranging my own wedding flowers was Le Most Incredible Giant Pain in the Le Ass so I thought maybe that, but they turned out so lovely and amazing I cannot complain. When I think of my wedding day I can still smell the dahlias, and what more could you ask for than that? I suggested that maybe having a baby could turn out to be our Worst Idea Ever but Mr. E felt that anything where you get to do it first doesn't count and I can't say I disagree with him on that.

I know there were times I sat on the kitchen counter and stared at my feet as tears ran down my face and I realized for the hundreth time that I was actually LIVING IN NEBRASKA and Mr. E had a Ph D but couldn't find a job and hell, sometimes during those days life seemed like a pretty terrible idea, but in the end when I look back I also remember laughing and sunshine and my running path and I remember how we got stronger and mostly I remember how we were together through it all and I am glad for those times.

I was forced to conclude that we've been through some shit and not all of it has been fun or a barrel of laughs, but we haven't yet had a really truly worst idea ever, and that, to me, says it all. I am lucky and blessed to have this person for a partner who always always always makes even the most terrible of terrible ideas worth it in the end.

Although I will let you know how I feel when I have finished hand padding a french polish finish onto forty milion crib slats. I guess you could say the jury's still out on that one.

I Can't Stop

I worry that the baby will be cold.

I worry that no one will give us anything for the baby and we won't be able to afford to buy it the things it needs.

I worry that I am gaining too much weight.

I worry that I watch too much tv.

I worry that Mr. E isn't happy and he secretly resents me for making him move here away from his family and that he hates his job and he hates me for not having one and for making us poor.

I worry that I'm eating all the wrong things.

I worry that Netflix is a waste of money because we never watch our movies.

I worry that the baby kicks too much. And I worry that it doesn't kick enough.

I worry that I won't be a good mom.

I worry that we don't have any blankets for the baby.

I worry that our dog wil never calm the fuck down and I won't be able to deal with having her around a baby.

I worry that the baby will be huge.
I worry that the baby will be tiny.

I worry that my doctor hates me.

I worry that Mr. E likes our dog a little bit more than he likes me.

I worry that being pregnant has made me cranky and everyone is talking about it behind my back.

I worry that there are obvious answers to all my problems that I am too lazy or stupid or scared to figure out.

I worry that I have forgotten to write someone a thank you note.

I worry that it's rude to ask people to come to a shower and give us stuff.

I worry that airline tickets will never go down in price.

I worry that I am not doing enough around the house.

I worry that I am addicted to the internet.

I worry that I am losing my old life.

I worry that being pregnant makes me look fat.

I worry that I am not trying hard enough to eat the right things because I do not eat organic and I do not eat hormone free meat and I am not eating a macrobiotic raw diet with no hormones or dyes.

I worry because I forget to take my vitamins and I never wash my fruit.

I worry because I have nothing to say. Shouldn't there be more going on in my life? Shouldn't I be able to spin fun stories out of nothing?

I worry that I'm not any fun.

I worry that I waited too late to have children.

I worry that I am turning ugly.

I worry that Mr. E is mad at me for getting a pedicure on Friday.

I worry that the crib will never be done. I worry that the nursery will never done. I worry because I know Mr. E doesn't want to hear about it anymore and he wants me to stop worrying.

I worry that the baby will come early.

I worry that we are too far from our families.

I worry that I am not planning enough for the future.

I worry that nothing will ever fix the inside of my head and even if we have seven hundred blankets and the nursery is done and the baby comes out perfect on the perfect day and Mr. E is happy and life is perfect I will still find something to worry about.

Healing

Ever since I found out I was having a baby I've been looking at announcements. You know, those little cards you send out that tell everyone the baby's name and how much it weighs and all that fascinating stuff no one but you cares about? I've been thinking about it a lot, partly because I love to make this kind of stuff and so I was on the look out for a simple classic design that I could steal and copy (Martha came to the rescue yet again) and partly because I can't decide whether or not to send an announcement to my father.

I haven't spoken to my father in a really long time. It's not something I talk about a lot here but I think it's safe to say that we are estranged. Sometimes he sends me random birthday cards or I hear things about him through the grapevine but I have not seen him or heard his voice since he called to tell me that my grandmother died about five years ago. Unless someone else has told him, he doesn't know that someday soon he will be a grandfather for the first time.

It is hard for me to go back and remember every detail of how my dad and I ended up where we are today, because that isn't really how it worked for me. It wasn't one particular wrong. It was more of a gradual reawakening process. It wasn't the day I found out that he had sent my sister away and wouldn't tell anyone where she was, it wasn't like that was the day that I stopped speaking to him. It wasn't hearing his lawyers refer to me as my sisters "biological sibling" or to my mom as my sisters "biological mother" and it wasn't the day he drove me to the airport and told me right before he dropped me off at the curb that I couldn't have a relationship with him if I ever talked about him with my mother. It wasn't when he told my mentally retarded sister she must refuse to see her own brother and sister and mother after we finally found out where she was, and it wasn't the day that I discovered that he told whatever lies he had to and had my sister sterilized after obtaining consent from her that he knew damn well she wasn't qualified to give. It wasn't any of those moments. Although it's safe to say they didn't help.

For me the moments when I really decided it was just better to not have my father in my life are the small moments, and a lot of these are moments I have come to view all the more clearly because of Mr. E, as my childhood is viewed up against the sheer magic of his normal childhood. I might be standing in the kitchen and I might say out loud "you know, I had to cook dinner for my whole family every night starting at the age of ten after my dad sat us down and told us that childhood was a scam perpretated by the liberal media and we weren't going to get away with it anymore" and in the retelling of that to someone who never experienced anything like it I can tell how bad it really is. Or I remember how I would feel sick to my stomach every time I had to call him from college and how I had to work to steer the conversation away from thousands of dangerous topics to avoid being yelled at. Or how I cringed whenever a black person came on tv because I knew it would set my father off, or how I hid my copy of Catcher in the Rye at my mom's house and only read it when I was there. Or I remember the letter I wrote him pouring out my very soul with all its hurts when I was still trying to mend all these broken fences after we had found my sister and how he never wrote back, and instead had my stepmother reply to me and how in that same letter she told me I owed her money for my plane ticket home from the Christmas before. I remember the time I had to ask my father to take me the emergency room for a urinary tract infection and as we were leaving and I was almost done dying of shame at having to talk about girl stuff with my father he starting complaining about how because of the $50 it cost to take me to the emergency room he couldn't get new shoes for work. I remember the disgust in his voice and the look on his face as he would turn to me and say "You are just like your mother", and believe me when I say that it was not a compliment coming from him.

I went to Catholic school for 12 years and you learn a shit ton about forgiveness in catholic school. It's safe to say that when it comes to a textbook definition of forgiveness, well, I know what it is. Forgiveness means letting go. It means trusting yourself enough to know that you can take it if someone wrongs you again. Although it doesn't have to mean letting the person who wronged you back into your life, even though you pardon them for their sins against you. And in a week when the families of girls shot at gunpoint attended the funeral of the man who shot them, I think we could all stand to give forgiveness another look. So it is hard for me to say, in the face of such grace, that there is a part of me that can't let go, that believes that sins against the innocent may sometimes in fact be unforgivable sins, and that to sterilize a mentally retarded child coerced with lies has always been, for me, what I thought was unforgivable.

But my father had his reasons for doing what he did. I think lying to my sister and sterilizing her was shameful and wrong but I understand why, in his mixed up head, he did it. So actually when I am being brutally honest with myself I think the real thing I cannot forgive is not my sister's sterilization but the fact that once upon a time my father loved me very very much, and then one day somehow did not anymore. The juxtaposition between those two things is like a stone in my heart. Sometimes I see my life, literally, in split screen, and I see a small version of myself, innocent, sunlit, laughing with my dad as I try to twirl my chunky sister around the living room, and then in that same instant I hear my stepmother's voice on my answering machine, filling the cold room, saying "Annie does not live here anymore and we will not tell you where she is" and try as I might I just can't reconcile those two moments, and for me the fact that my father could live those bright moments of my childhood along side me and then later do the things he did to me - that is perhaps what I cannot even grasp, cannot even wrap my head around. I have no explanation. I don't know what happened to his heart. And if I can't even understand it, I don't know if I can forgive it.

So instead the person I am working on forgiving right now is me. Because it took me a long long time to acknowledge that I am happier because my father is not in my life. It has been hard to admit that the exhale I feel all the time because he is gone is one of relief. I wish my father was not the person that he is, but I am not sad that the person that he is is not in my life. And that does not make me a bad person. It just makes me someone who finally said "enough". And so I will say it right here for the record. My dad is not a good person, not a sane person, not a stable person, and my life is easier and better because the person he is is not in it - and that is ok.

It's important to know that I would never allow my father to harm a child of mine in any way. I would never leave him alone with my kids, I wouldn't ever allow him to say something I don't agree with in front of them. If there is a ever a reconciliation it will be all on my own terms, because while I was never very good at protecting myself from him, I would protect my children from him with every fiber of my being. I would never allow them to be exposed to the same bullshit that went on when I was kid. So the issue is not whether or not to let my father into my child's life. I honestly doubt he even has the capacity to put himself there, regardless of whether the invitation were extended, which it will not be. The issue is also not whether or not he deserves to be a grandfather, or whether or not he deserves to know the name and birthdate and length and weight of his grandson. Let me be perfectly clear when I say that no, he does not. He does not deserve any of that. Not in any way.

But still, I would like him to know. Despite all else, all that has happened. I would like him to know that he has a grandson. New life is a profound thing. Maybe, deep down, this picture of a child, his grandson, sent through all the boundaries of remove and distance and silence, and all that has gone before, maybe this glimpse of what love can really do will serve as a reminder of new life, of forgiveness in the face of unforgivable sins. Who knows? Perhaps a few simple words (name, date, weight, length) may hold enough power to heal just a tiny corner of my father's empty heart.

Update

- We haven't gotten any test results back yet, but we did have an ultrasound.

- So now we know we are having a boy.

-And I turned 30 and Mr. E forgot to tell me Happy Birthday until I reminded him. He also forgot to ask me what I wanted for my birthday dinner. One should always ask a princess what she wants for her birthday dinner, no matter how old she is.

-But he did buy me the new (ish) Dixie Chicks CD and made me a very very very delicious Boston Cream Pie.

-However this did not prevent me from having an emotional breakdown later on the evening of my birthday and sobbing violently into Mr. E's shirt after finally admitting that I was kind of having some issues with the baby not being a girl.

-I was pretty sure, ahead of time, that I was FINE with it being a boy, because it totally didn't matter, because it was totally a girl. Uh huh.

-I have been assured by my awesome friend M that this is totally normal, and that she hoped that a mistake had been made until the moment her son came out, and then she was happy as a clam that he was who he was, and I know I will be too. But I still miss that little girl I see far off in the distance, just a little bit.

-Now that we know it's a boy the naming assvice is coming out of the woodwork. In the past week someone told Mr. E that we should give the baby a good name like Hunter, instead of the crappy ones we had in mind, and someone else told him that whatever we do, we shouldn't name the baby Hunter. For this reason we're keeping any potential names secret, as people don't seem to understand that the name of MY CHILD is none of their goddamn business, especially when I haven't asked for their opinion.

-Mr. E and I went to a local church yard sale where I gleefully stuffed baby clothes into a large paper grocery bag as fast as I could sort through them. Cost per grocery bag? One Dollar. I felt only sort of sad that I was stuffing only boy clothes in the paper bag, although Mr. E claims my definition of what baby boys wear is a tad loose. Also, I totally did not sneak a little pink sun hat in the bag when Mr. E wasn't looking. In other news, people? Don't donate underwear to church yard sales. It's really gross.

-Thank you to the commenter who told me that there is a "regular" brand of nitrite free lunch meat out there. There is indeed, it's called Hormel Natural Choice, and I can actually eat it! Woo hoo!

-Mr. E will be gone for five days sciencing it up in Yosemite. I would be jealous, except I could have gone, and then I thought about being cold and sleeping on the ground for five days and I thought, eh, I think I'll stay here.

-This means my dog will go into defend and attack mode and wake me up nine hundred times a night for the next five nights in a row to scare the shit out of me by barking insanely at every leaf that rustles or every cat that walks by outside.

-I tried the new maple macchiato at Starbucks and I wasn't too impressed. It had a distinct fake maple syrup vibe. I absolutely hate fake maple syrup, so I remain loyal to the best starbucks beverage of all time, the one pump pumpkin spice latte. (one pump because otherwise it is too sugary for me. One pump is just enough.)

-Mr E. clogged the kitchen sink shortly before he left. We spent all morning snaking it and it only sort of drains. Awesome.

Happy Saturday Everyone!

In Which I am Easily Distracted by Shiny Blue Power Tools

Mr. E and I spent a better part of yesterday afternoon looking for the random orbit sander that Fine Woodworking told me I had to have (in a very helpful instructional video I watched online) as part of the Great Crib Refinishing Project From Hell. It was easy for us to tell that none of the places we looked had the right sander - the only one that would suffice - mind you, because I knew I was looking for a Makita Random Orbit Sander 1295DV and all the Makita sanders are bright turquoise blue and none of them were the 1295 DV Random Orbit Sander. One of them was $100 dollars and I am sure it was very lovely, but our friend at finewoodworking.com was very clear about what sander we should get and I never argue with a fine woodworker wearing a plaid shirt and suspenders. Clearly he knows what he is talking about.

Frustrated and annoyed Mr. E and I agree we would just order the stupid thing on the internet and wait the annoying two weeks for it and pay the annoying overpriced shipping charges. I just went to go ahead and order it when I noticed that in fact the sander I am supposed to get has absolutely nothing whatsoever to do with Makita. No turquoise. It's a BOSCH 1295DV Five Inch Random Orbital Sander, in a lovely shade of gray. I could have been looking at it over and over again yesterday in every store we went to, I'll never know. I even had the correct brand and name written on a piece of notebook paper that I was carrying IN MY HAND and that I never even looked at. Nowhere on that piece of paper did it say Makita. Where I even came up with the brand Makita is beyond me.

Just another example of why no one should even listen to me anymore. I've lost my mind and I absolutely couldn't tell you when I will get it back. Well, I could probably tell you, but chances are, I'd be wrong.

Cloning is Not the Answer

You might not know this but I have a reputation for pickiness when it comes to certain things. For example I mostly hate all movies, although at times I will randomly enjoy somewhat terribleish movies such as ATL, which, apropos of nothing, I had no idea that movie was was all about roller skating! Very unusual. Anyway, I've pretty much hated every new tv show that has come out this fall and it has also been quite a long time since I've picked up a new book and actually liked it, although that Les Miserables is quite a piece of work. Depressing, which I love, and that Victor Hugo writes the most enjoyable run on sentences, and we all know I'm a fan of those.

But mostly I've been pretty much hating everything else. And this is not my fault, in my opinion. Yeah, I have high standards, so sue me. Most of what is shoveled at us today is total dreck and we're just supposed to smile and be happy that Bloat Hanks is in another goddamned movie about NOTHING? No thanks. But the marginal qualities of all this "entertainment" really isn't my number one complaint here. I can deal with crappy, yes I can (see ATL reference earlier).

What I can't deal with is that somehow, every fucking thing I've read or watched in the last year with the slightest bit of mystery or twist to it? Every fucking time it turns out that the answer is that THEY'RE ALL CLONES!

Repeat after me: No more clones !!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

Maybe this plot twist was interesting in 1982 when Logan's Run took over the Burbank Mall, but it's so so so so so over at this point. I wouldn't be surprised to find out next week that Ugly Betty is a clone and this weekend I started a new book I had picked up and was really excited to read and when Mr. E asked me how it was I told him that I had this weird feeling that all the cliffhangers and hedging going on in the book was leading to one thing and if it was more fucking cloning I was going to be really fucking pissed off. Uh, yeah, shockingly, everyone in the book is a clone! God!

People. The cloning is over. Or, hey. You know what? Make the movie about clones, sure, whatever. It's stupid and all that, but I'd like to see your average super hot Owen Wilson clone have an affair with a robot or get bit in the face by a snake on a plane as much as the next guy. But let's be very clear about this: You are no longer allowed to use cloning as the magic answer at the end of the two or more hours of vague and mysterious hoo ha you call a movie.

NO MORE CLONING!

The days of cuddling have come to an end

When our puppy Annabelle was still very small, right after we first got her, she slept next to our bed in her very own puppy sized dog bed. We didn't have to do much to keep her out of our bed because she wasn't even tall enough to climb up into it, but it wasn't very long before our weak moral values kicked in and could you resist this face? I thought not.

So we caved and we let her sleep with us and this is when the cuddling began. It turns out that champion dog cuddling is a forte of Mr. E's and he and Annabelle spent many hours spooning innapropriately together and cuddling and giving each other doggy kisses.



Often times during these lovely cuddling sessions of theirs I woke up with puppy legs and claws poking me in the back and after it became apparent that our dog was at least half goat I couldn't help but notice that her long skinny legs were taking up more and more room in the bed formerly known as mine and I wasn't really enjoying being shoved over to the edge of a the bed by half a goat and her best friend, my husband.

So eventually we really got tough on little lady belle and she had to start out the night in her cage, but sometimes Mr. E would let her out in the morning and then you know, there would be more cuddling. As long as I wasn't getting awoken with a morning full of crusty bearded dog kisses I didn't really care, and lately since Mr. E has a job and I don't he wakes up at some ungodly hour and lets the dog out to do her doggy business and then he lets her back into our room and then she's allowed to climb in bed with me where we snooze away the morning hours together. She likes to try to sleep on me but remember, I'm a hard ass, and I certainly don't allow anything like that to go on.

This morning cuddling arrangement was working out fine except for the fact that she didn't understand that her bed hours were really restricted to the hours between 5 am and 10 am and that also our bed wasn't a trampoline and that I also don't really love changing sheets every two hours even though she does love covering them with her muddy puppy paw prints. But you know, I thought maybe this was just the price one paid for the puppy cuddling. I know she loved it because she did her patented puppy sighs of contentment whenever she really settled down to snooze and I know I loved it because every time I'd find myself with puppy breath blowing hot in my ear I would think to myself "You know, happiness really is a warm puppy."

But then last night I heard Mr. E doing his patented bad dog yelling (which often makes me laugh, I won't lie, and I think it might have the same affect on Annabelle) and when I asked from the other room if the dog badness involved anything of mine, it was with a sinking heart that I ran into the room and saw that Belle had been chewing a blue ink pen in our bed and there was now blue ink all over the sheets, the pillows, the quilt my dead grandmother made by hand and the velvet patchwork quilt someone gave us for our wedding.

And that was the moment Annabelle's days of cuddling came to an end.

Of course she will still get to do her share of spooning and happy sighing with us on the couch, I'm not made of stone here, people. And let's be honest, the baby was pretty much going to ruin her life and kick her out of our bed in about six months anyway, so she might as well find out now that life is hard and cuddles don't come easy.

I'm pretty sure I won't miss dirty dog feet poking me in the back every morning but I am certain I will miss the happiness that only a warm puppy can bring.

The Bug

When we first went to the doctor after we found out about The Bug (or Baby E to be, but we call it The Bug) they asked us all these questions about our family health history and we answered no to all of them, for about seventy trillion diseases, most of which I had never even heard of. For some reason I had forgotten to write down on my forms or even to bring up that my sister has Down Syndrome until well into the interview and then when I remembered and casually mentioned it the whole tone of the thing changed and we all of a sudden found ourselves signed up for ALL THE TESTS, including the very scary very often wrong test that tells you nothing more than that maybe you need to have more tests but which again, is very often wrong. We went home to freak out a little about that test and to ask Dr. Google if a sibling with Down Sydrome means you have an increased risk of having a child with Down Syndrome. (the answer is unclear, but probably no, you don't have an increased risk, since 99% of the time it isn't handed down genetically, it's a chromosomal problem). It never even occurred to me think about any of the other tests we took, I was too busy emotionally preparing myself for the big scary often wrong test to be wrong and scary and tell me that maybe The Bug had Down Syndrome.

So my doctor called me at home yesterday and the first thing she said was "We got your tests results back." And when your ob calls and tells you IN PERSON that she got your test results back, the first thing your brain thinks is "Oh fuck." Let me just assure you that it is never good news when the actual doctor calls with actual test results.

The point of all of this is that my Cystic Fibrosis test came back positive. This means that I am a carrier of one mutated gene that if combined with another mutated gene (from the father) causes CF. I don't have cystic fibrosis because it's only one gene, not two, and unless you get two mutated genes, you won't have CF.

So Mr. E has to take a blood test. If he doesn't have the mutated gene, then our child has no chance of having CF. If he does, then there is a 25% chance that our child would have CF. Supposedly the chances that we both have this gene are 1 in 841. I have been assured that these are Vegas odds, somehow they sound terrible to me, but I am trying to remain optimistic, even though I am also sort of freaking out. The extra fun part of all of this is that of course the CF test is the one that takes two weeks for results to come back. So I am imagining that the next two weeks will be super fun. So far it's been a laugh riot.

I told someone yesterday, "I'm not even a parent yet and this already sucks." I am trying not to worry - everyone says not to worry. The chances are very low. But I really don't know how not to worry. I do know that this won't be the first time I've needed Mr. E to get us out of the crap I've gotten us into and that if there's anyone I can count on to rise to the occasion it's him. And that even if the test comes back positive we will deal with it together and we will do whatever it is that we have to do and I know Mr. E will be there for me no matter what. I do know that for sure. There's no one else I'd rather have by my side going through this with me. No one else.

I feel like a selfish and ungrateful person for saying this but the thing that keeps running through my mind is that I just don't want to be dealing with this. It sounds stupid to say but until someone takes your normal no scare pregnancy away from you, you don't appreciate it. Now I just want normal back. I know many parents out there are dealing with worse and that this is a tiny scare compared to real life every day for some people, but I still can't help that what runs through my head every time I think about this is "But I don't want to be dealing with this. I DON'T WANT THIS TO BE HOW IT IS. I don't want this."

Even though so far I am the one with the sucky gene and so this feels like all my fault, it is important to note that I recently bought my first fasten in the front racer back bra and I can only put it on if I lay it on the bed and back into it, such is the confoundation (is that a word?) that my brain encounters every time I try to put it on any other way. So I am sure that in addition to my sucky genes I have also passed along some super smart smarty pants genes to this kid.

BTW, the other scary often wrong test came back negative, so there's nothing to worry about there.

Blackberry Spice Cake With a Side of Bitter

Um, let's see. Today I'm up at the crack of dawn because I am in the middle of making a blackberry spice cake with cream cheese frosting for Mr. E's company picnic. Yesterday I talked to my mom and she let me know that I could go ahead and make cupcakes from a box for this picnic at which the culinary highlight will be ballpark franks but then when Mr. E's career goes down in a spiralling ball of flames and we find ourselves destitute and out on the street and science and the very fabric of our universe as we know it is never the same again after he is unable to gift the entire world with his superior lake mud knowledge, well, then I can be secure in the knowledge that it's all my fault for not bringing a homemade dessert to the stupid fucking company picnic.

God, what is it with mothers? They can just get to you like no one else on earth. I swear my mom's voice is like a dog whistle to me - I can hear things in that woman's voice that no one else on earth can and I know I'm not imagining it. She doesn't even have to speak - all it takes is the tiniest throat clear from her and I know she hates my hair, my shoes, my makeup, AND she thinks I've gained weight.

I was talking to a friend of mine yesterday about she always felt really self conscious growing up about money, how her mom made her feel so bad that they couldn't afford the things she wanted, and how it made her feel poor as a kid, and you know Mr. E never had a lot of money growing up either since he had aproximately nine hundred and eighty seven siblings, but he never really felt it, and he thought it was because his parents never made him feel shitty about it. They told him all the time he couldn't have $100 sneakers but they never made him feel guilty about the fact that he was asking for them or that they couldn't afford them. They never made him feel like an asshole for asking. My parents never bought me anything I wanted either, everyone else had an Esprit bag and I had my old backpack from the year before and it killed me to be so hideously uncool, but it wasn't because they didn't have the money, it was because they thought it was stupid to buy something new if I already had a perfectly good backpack. And the thing is, they never made me feel bad about asking for stuff either, but it had nothing to do with money. It was because they felt completely and totally justified in saying no. My mom thought I didn't need that bag and my mom was never wrong. Never is, never has been, never will be, at least in her own mind.

I don't think my mother has ever had a moment of self doubt in her entire life. I don't think she ever feels bad about how she treats people or wonders if she should lay off a little. I really don't. It's just odd to me that a $15 Esprit bag could have made me so happy and so much less stressed out about school and yet it never even occured to my mom that maybe she was wrong, maybe she should buy me something I didn't need, just because. Maybe she shouldn't call her pregnant daughter from across the world and tell her that what she's doing isn't good enough when a lot of times she's just getting by, doing the best she can, and sometimes that comes from a box. And unfortunately I don't know that there's a conversation in the world, at least not one that I'm capable of having, that would ever make my mom think twice about some of this stuff that she does or says to me. She is who she is and she never wonders if that's ok.

I was talking to Mr. E about this last night and what I would really love to say to my mom is this. I would love to tell her that I am the type of person who has to work every single minute of every single day to let go. I've been trying to be more chill my entire fucking life. I have the people around me in my life because they are the people who tell me to relax, that it doesn't matter, that I don't need to research cakes from around the world and grind my own organic wheat and raise my own chickens, that I am still a good person if I don't push harder, run faster, do more and more and more. There's no one in the world harder on me than I am on myself and the last thing in the world I need is another voice telling me that I'm not good enough. The one I hear every day in my own head is loud enough.

One Girl In All the World

I read somewhere the other day that to have a successful marriage the most important ingredient is that you each have outside interests. And I know Mr. E is REALLY interested in a lot of things that I find not so fascinating. His outside interests run to super exciting things like license plates, the elevation of wherever the fuck we are at the time, the weather, birds, forest fires, the tuneless death spiral warblings of indie rock's latest darling, exhilirating stuff like that. It's sort of obvious that we see the world through different eyes because he's constantly telling me to look at the view and I am constantly amazed that he's been so busy looking at some mountains that are always there and never change that he failed to even notice the little flowers growing along the edge of the sidewalk or the color of someone's mail box or that weird girls hair in the parking lot.

Anyway, I know that once upon a time I had some outside interests but I can't remember what happened to them. I do know that most of them were on a channel that just got canceled and changed to CW and they involved either Buffy or Ben Covington, and also is it my fault that even though I am totally the one who liked Project Runway first Mr. E has completely glommed onto it? That should definitely count as MY outside interest especially because he often makes fun of it and does not take it seriously AT ALL.

My point is that I really, I do have lots of things I'm good at and that I'm interested in, like reading and cooking and shopping and I like running and growing stuff and making stuff and organizing, I love organizing, and also throwing stuff out. I'm crazy about the NBA. I can clean a mean bathroom and I love fancy hotels. I have lots of things I like, really I do. However most of these things aren't things you really cultivate when you're lying on your back wishing you could be struck dead if only it would cure the terrible nausea, the terrible terrible nausea that never ends. Now that I am starting to feel better I've taken a look around at the current state of affairs, and I would like to say I am not happy with things. I can't train for a run right now, the doctor really doesn't recommend that. I waited for two years for Charmed Thirds (the sequel to two of my favorite books) and when I got it on the day it came out it sucked hard. My basketball team is a group of parolees who play like shit. Food repulses me in general, movies like that dreck of Zach Braff's are being shoved down our throats and I wouldn't go to that if they were giving away the popcorn and have I mentioned I can't train for another half marathon right now, and by the way, what we really really need in this world is a good crime fighting perhaps super powered teen heroine to really perk up all of our lives and I am sorry I tried but Veronica Freaking Mars just ain't cutting it.

Perhaps Ugly Betty will save us all.

I would like to be the cute type of pregnant please, thank you.

Being pregnant after being on a diet for two years and losing 60 pounds is really hard. Incredibly hard. The getting fatter part that comes with being pregnant feels wrong, even though I know it's how it's supposed to go. I am eating as healthy as I can and I really haven't gained that much weight, but I am still getting bigger and there's a part of me that hates it, no matter how good the reason. Logically, I know I'm pregnant, and not fat, but it still feels like the past twenty four months are spooling past me in reverse, as I look down and see my stomach get rounder, as I have to shop for bigger bras. It feels so much like what getting fat felt like that it's hard to take sometimes.

I find myself making these ridiculous bargains, like "it will be ok if I don't get fat all over" or "as long as I'm that cute kind of pregnant with skinny arms and a saucy little bump like that lady I saw in Target, I won't mind it too much." But I can tell you I'm only 5'1" and I've seen pictures of my mom when she was pregnant with me and chances are even though I'm really a very healthy eater and I exercise there's only so much room on this little body and I'm probably gonna be pregnant pretty much all over, it's just probably how it's going to happen. I picture my stomach taking over and sort of being in charge of everything for about three months at the end there. The rationalizing and deal making is so stupid I don't even know why I do it, but I guess it just helps me to deal with the loss of control. Pregnancy is the ultimate loss of control, not just over your body, over everything. And I really really hate losing control.

The one thing that does make me feel better and that makes me feel actually sort of proud of myself is that I did lose sixty pounds before I got pregnant. Although at first I was mad at myself that I wasn't at my goal weight when I got pregnant. Because I am an idiot and a perfectionist I felt like a failure because I was 125 pounds and not 120 pounds, probably because I'd been fighting for those five pounds for over six months and I couldn't let them go. But I've been forced to let go of perfect in a big fat fast way, and so when I walked into the doctor's office for that first visit something just came over me. It occured to me, in the parking lot, actually, that maybe, no, maybe my abs weren't washboards, maybe I could have lost another five pounds, maybe I wasn't quite at perfect, maybe I could have done more lunges or whatever the hell. But I could have been walking in there having given up one of the absolutely hundreds times I wanted to over the past two years, I could have been walking into that doctor's office, pregnant, overweight, unhealthy, unhappy with my body and my life. And I wasn't.

I think maybe that moment in the parking lot was the moment that being healthy became more important to me than being perfect, and although it took me a really long time to get to that moment, I feel like I earned it. And ss I get more and more pregnant I am trying to remember that I should feel not fat, but proud. I did a damn good job, even if it wasn't perfect.

The most important meal of the day is kicking my ass

I need breakfast ideas. If I don't eat just the right thing for breakfast, it makes me sick all day, and it's starting to really suck. I just want to sit down with a cup of tea and a stack of buttered toast, but if I don't eat protein with every meal, I get sick almost immediately afterwards. I also can't eat dairy, eggs, beans, or most lunchmeat, like ham or turkey, especially the smoked stuff, because all the sodium nitrite in it WRECKS my insides. I can only eat fish twice a week, because of the mercury content. I can't just drink my breakfast, like in smoothie form, because I'll get sick almost immediately afterwards, and soy milk by itself (like on cereal) just plain grosses me out. I'm left with peanut butter, pretty much, and I'm getting really sick of it. For awhile there I had resorted to ham and cheese lean pockets every morning but I feel like I really can't eat anymore of those. I miss my old stand bys of yogurt and oatmeal so much.
I'm thinking that I might try baking some muffins with protein powder added, but I can't find a definitive answer on whether baking destroys the protein in protein powder. I figure it can't hurt to give it a try. Or I can put the protein powder in some orange juice and have that with toast. Along with some more motherfucking peanut butter.

Damn you Liz Lange, damn you!

This morning, I witnessed fashion crimes committed in the name of maternity clothes that would make a grown man cry. It appears that in the world of maternity clothes, "wrap dress" actually means "large unflattering brown bag you wouldn't be caught dead otherwise in except you are too pregnant to be picky, you big pregnant loser." The one bright spot is that, despite the fashion atrocities being passed off as maternity "clothes", it appears no one's yet crazy enough to believe that pregnant women would wear skinny leg jeans. I'm hoping nine months is just long enough for me to sidestep that fashion land mine all together.

Also on the plus side, I just ate a very delicious salad. (Romaine, carrot shreds, craisins, mandarin oranges, parmesan, turkey, cucumbers, toasted walnuts, and balsamic vinegar.)

It's So Hard

When my mom is out of the country and in a very inconvenient time zone, as she frequently is, I'm the back up for my sister's daily check in phone call. She's supposed to call every night at six (nine o'clock at night her time) and we make small talk but mostly the call is for me to remind her to turn off the tv and get her ass into bed. She lives on her own within a community that provides structure and limited supervision, but she has to get her own ass in bed and that's the daily struggle. She would much rather watch tv or hang out with her boyfriend until 4 o'clock in the morning and then she doesn't get up on time the next day and the whole situation gets fubared, as my brother would say. Although I don't know if the phone call makes any difference, a lot of times I think I am getting the Grade A snow job from her and she gets right off the phone and turns the tv back on, but it is still good to check in every day.

Of course a phone call every day with your sister with whom you don't have a lot in common means you rapidly run out of of things to talk about, and so a lot of it is kind of just me grasping for conversational topics. She always asks me about the baby and tells me to play it music and I always ask her what she had for dinner. Yesterday she went to the cafeteria at her school and had chicken stuffed with wild rice, and squash. Not too bad.

I ask because I am interested and I love to hear about food and it's often the only thing I can think of to talk about, but she loves food too, a little too much, and has been struggling with her weight her entire life, which means "what did you have for dinner" is also a loaded question. I try not to be the mom in her life, she has one of those, I try to be her cool older sister, but I also know she's no fool and she tells me she had a DIET root beer on purpose.

Later ni the same conversation I asked her how often she ate on campus, just making conversation, and she said that she eats breakfast there every day, always sausage and egg on a croissant. And I couldn't help myself, I couldn't help myself, even as I heard my mother's special lecture voice coming out of my own mouth I said "hmmm, that's not very good for you, maybe you could eat that once a week and then on other days have fruit or oatmeal" and she protested over me all at once, loud and as fast as she could..."No, no, don't worry, no, I have them HOLD THE CHEESE."

The thing is, I know it makes no difference to tell my sister that a sausage and egg croissant every morning isn't good for you. She doesn't care. It tastes good. I'm sure she has other healthy options available to her and she certainly has her own kitchen and healthy food in it and she doesn't care. She loves sausage and she doesn't hear that it's bad for her because she doesn't want to, and the real problem is also that on some basic level she isn't capable of making herself do things that are good for her, but are not fun, like NOT eating sausage.

It's so frustrating. I do think there are ways to get through to her, but of course they aren't lecturing her over the phone, they are hard work labor intensive start at the bottom sort of things, things I am not there to do. For example lessons about food given while teaching her how to cook something seem to make an impression. If you teach her how to cook a grilled chicken breast on the Foreman Grill, she can incorporate that into her life, and she knows that it's good for her and that she is supposed to eat things like that. But I am not there do things like that with her, I am across the country, and even though I have made her cookbooks and bought her a chefs hat and a monogrammed apron and a crock pot I am not there to have healthy cooking lessons and while I am sure they do have cooking classes on campus I am also sure that they are not healthy.

Man, it's just so hard to let go of telling, arguing, lecturing, all this useless talking that she isn't listening to, that she doesn't want to hear, that isn't making any difference, but I think of her and that sausage croissant EVERY FUCKING MORNING and it just kills me.

A Day For Hope

I did not lose anyone I knew on September 11th. I had friends who had to walk home from work and one of those friends couldn't go back to her apartment for months. Some of those friends I couldn't get ahold of for a few days and those days were scary, and my mom was supposed to be flying that morning and I couldn't remember to where and the moments before I found out that she was fine and her plane had never left the ground were some of the scariest moments of my life. But I was halfway across the country from New York City and Washington DC, removed, watching it all happen on tv with the rest of the world. So I wasn't there and I didn't know anyone who died and I was insulated and still it rocked my world to the very core. I can remember telling my mom that the only thing I could think of to do that night was to make tuna fish casserole, the most comfortingest of all the comfort foods, and I remember wishing I could make it for everyone, the whole world. I wanted to blanket all of us in noodles and sauce and hope for that to be enough to fix us all.

Exactly one year later, on September 11th, 2002, Mr. E asked me to marry him. I remember saying yes, and then staring at the ring, and then hours later saying, "I can't believe you asked me to marry you on September 11th." And Mr E. said something like "I know, but we will always remember this day, no matter what. And now maybe it can also be about something good."

So for me this day is a terrible day, like it is for everyone, but it is also a day about hope, and belief. It is a testament to the fact that it is possible to make something beautiful out of something terrible. That day four years ago I took a leap into the unknown and now they tell me in another six months we'll have a real live baby on our hands.

I honestly don't know if who I am today would have been possible for me without September 11th. I don't know if I would have been able to say "yes, I am nervous, but let's get married" or "yes, being a mom scares me like the fire of a thousand hells but let's have a baby anyway". I think that maybe I was only able to do these things that scared me so greatly because five years ago as the sheer horror of September 11th unfolded before us all what I learned was that life is short, and it can end, just like that, with no warning or reason. No matter how important you seem to yourself, to everyone who loves you, your life isn't guarranteed. And when I decided to have a baby I know part of me was back on that day thinking that if anything happened to me I would want to leave something on this earth, if anything ever happened to Mr. E, I would need a part of him left here with me or I could not go on. When I said yes four years ago, this life that we have now spooled out from that moment, and part of me knew it was the right thing to do because life must go on and we have no choice but to live it as best we know how, to create hope out of horror, to laugh out loud and get engaged and have babies, and even through our fear, to say yes.