Things I say in other places

My friend Sarah started a new blog about things that make pregnant ladies cry

http://crycrybaby.wordpress.com/

I submitted to it, because I’m an expert at that now.

Pause and return

How has it been more than a month since I last posted?

I’ve thought of things to post but for no real reason have kept quiet.  Pregnancy has made me pretty scatterbrained so I’ll just blame that.

And yes, I am still pregnant.  I am, in fact, increasing every day as I near the end of my 2nd trimester.  I’ve started taking antenatal (that’s prenatal in American) yoga classes in the hopes that they’ll help keep my arthritis from getting too bad after I give birth.  We’ve checked out a stack of baby rearing books from the library in the hopes that we’ll be able to avoid messing this baby up too much before it has the chance to fight back.  A friend of mine told me the best thing I could do would be to trust my instincts, but my instincts once told me to move to Las Vegas so I’m not so sure about that.

My 22 week scan was last week and everything was as it should be.  We saw fingers and toes waving around, and it’s very strange to think that there is a being with fingers and toes floating around inside right this very second.  Probably with hair too.  I get kicked all the time, especially in the mornings though, my daily cu of coffee makes this kid go crazy.

Jeremy and I are off to America on Friday for what will be our last trip before kid is born.  We’ll only be back for about a week as I want to save up the majority of my annual leave to take right before I officially start my official maternity leave from work.

Everything is moving at a strange speed right now.  Sometimes super fast and sometimes super slow with no real in-between.  It’s a strange state to be in. 

I worry sometimes that I come off as sort of ambivalent about this whole experience, that maybe I’m too honest when people ask me how I’m feeling.  But I don’t want to pretend to be this glowing madonna figure when actually I’m very tired and have a lousy headache and sore joints.  I am excited about this, and I can not wait to meet this baby on the outside, but at the same time growing another human in my womb is weird and not particularly beatific. 

Also, in case you were wondering, it hasn’t changed my politics even a tiny bit.  I’m still as liberal and pro-choice as ever.  In fact, being pregnant has probably made me more so.  I would never want someone who wasn’t fully invested in this process to be forced to go through with it against her will.  It was a big decision to choose to do this, and I did choose, and I was able to choose because of the actions of women and men who came before me and fought for my right to have access to a variety of birth controls, information, and medical procedures as, when, and if they were needed.

Somebody actually asked me if this pregnancy was planned when I started making the official announcements, and I was like, ‘First off, when a woman makes it past 30 it’s rude to ask that question, and second, yes, if I avoided getting knocked up before now you can rest assured that I did it on purpose now.’ 

But just for the record, dear reader(s), don’t ask people that question, it’s rude.  Unless it’s your best friend and you know she’s only been dating that new character for a few weeks. Then it’s sisterly concern.  If she’s been married/involved  for 7+ years just go ahead and make the assumption that she planned this beeswax out ahead of time.

So yeah, being pregnant, it’s amazing and scary all at once, and probably all I’ll be talking about for at least the next 17 weeks.

Well, that and macaroni and cheese which is currently the best food in the world (sorry peirogis, you’ll have your time again soon though, I’ll never quit you).

Lots

There’s been so much going on lately.

We’ve done a bunch of work on the house (or had it done in some cases) and now have a newly painted and carpeted hallway, staircase and second bedroom.  To that end, the second bedroom is officially a nursery, and will no longer be used as a storage room.  This means we need to find someplace to put all the crap we’ve been storing in there.

Also, my belly is pushing all the hell out, it’s like I’m pregnant or something.  Which I obviously am.  I called TFL and asked for a Baby on Board badge today in the hopes that people will start offering me their seats on the bus.  Bus riding Londoners being so totally pleasant and polite all the time.

We’re planning a trip back to Michigan to see family in January before I’m too far along to fly.  It will probably be the last time we go back for awhile.

After Christmas we need to start buying nursery furniture, we’re waiting for the post holiday sales.

Everything’s about to change and even though there are plenty of books to read and gather information from and plenty of people to ask for advice it’s still hard sometimes to know what exactly we should be doing.

The changes will be good though, scary and sort of bonkers, but very, very good.

We went to see the Gerhard Richter exhibit at the Tate Modern yesterday and that was an afternoon well spent.  It was the first I’ve seen a lot of his paintings up close.  They lose something in books.  There’s a sadness to a lot of his older works, the blurred ones in particular, that you just don’t feel as powerfully in reproduction.

We also saw this Taryn Simon exhibit and it was pretty amazing.  It was as much, if not more, about storytelling as it was about the photography.

Everything feels slow and fast at the same time right now.  Like we’re just waiting for this kid to grow and be born but also like there is SO MUCH TO DO AND NOT NEARLY ENOUGH TIME TO DO IT IN.  But there is enough time, and it will all get done and it will be very good.

 

 

 

 

 

 

Things you may not have known about being pregnant (or more specifically things you may not have know about ME being pregnant)

1. You don’t get to do anything fun anymore
2. No booze, no delicious blue cheeses, reduced caffeine intake, etc
3. No cold medicine despite your lowered immune system
4. It makes you barf
5. Indigestion all the time
6. When you make off-color comments, you know, like how you ALWAYS have? People will look at you like, ‘OH MY GOD YOU’RE A MOTHER NOW YOU CAN’T SAY THINGS LIKE THAT ANYMORE!!!!’
7. People you have just met 10 minutes ago will touch your stomach, even though you are only 4 months pregnant and barely showing and that is not okay but you will be so stunned that someone who just met you thinks it’s okay to touch your stomach that you won’t say anything possibly setting a very dangerous precedent.
8. Being pregnant makes you want pierogi and pierogi are kind of tricky to find in south-east London.  I managed it though, there’s a tiny grocery store by the Dulwich Library that able to hook me up.  Unfortunately their definition of vegetarian isn’t as strict as Jeremy’s definition of vegetarian, so no pierogi for him.
9. Heartburn.
10. You’ll have dreams wherein Steve Perry from Journey is your homicidal ex-husband who not only wants to kill you but all the orphans you’re caring for, orphan who, by the way, are tiny spies who are able to pass through walls and dimensions.  One of whom lost a leg in a horrible portal malfunction.
11. Candy will make you feel sick.
12. It’s just weird okay?
13. There’s a baby inside you and it has legs and arms and fingernails anda nose and hands and feet (and all the other appropriate appendages) and IT’S INSIDE YOU flipping around and hanging out and playing solitaire and whatever else it is that fetuses do while they’re baking.  And that is weird, because mostly you feel the same, except for the barfing and the heartburn and the indigestion and the no blue cheese business.
14. But it’s pretty cool too, so long as I don’t think too much about it.

Oh, today.

Some days you wait for with dread.  You know they’re coming and you feel a fist closing in your chest.  Or I do anyhow.

If you’re lucky you don’t have many of them, but most people have one or two I’d think.  They probably get easier with time.  No, they absolutely do.  There are days that used to leave me a weepy mess that now pass unnoticed every year.

But today, today is a properly miserable day.  Never mind that it’s sunny and warm out.  Today marks a full year during which life has gone on in a world without my dad.  And, really, that’s a shame.  I’d like to give today back.  Get a do over on this day last year and the month leading up to it.

It’s just so completely lousy knowing that my kid won’t get know my dad.  My dad who has a proven track record of being a pretty great Grandpa.  It’s not fair, that’s life though right.  He’d have been the first to remind me of that, probably while pretending to play the world’s smallest violin.

 

I miss him too much today.

 

Top Secret No More

So you know how awhile ago I was all like, there is top-secret stuff in my life and I can’t talk about it?  Yes, no?  Well if you don’t remember, there was top-secret stuff in my life and I couldn’t talk about it.

But now I can, so I will.

If you are lucky enough to be my friend on facebook then you already know this, but here it is again anyhow.  I am knocked up.  Got myself in trouble.  Up the duff.  The rabbit died.  There is a bun in my oven.  Etc.

I’m about 13.5 weeks pregnant, specifically.  And this is both very awesome and very weird and kind of terrifying.  When we went in for the first scan last Friday the kid was being uncooperative and would only stand on his/her (we don’t know yet what exactly we’re getting) head which meant we mostly saw a pair of very tiny legs kicking around which was pretty amazing (understatement).

This also means that while we were in Venice I did not have any coffee or wine.  Please pause for a moment and appreciate the super-human restraint required for me to accomplish such a feat.  No coffee, in Italy, home to the beloved cappuccino and espresso and macchiato.  NO COFFEE!  And no wine, in Italy, home to chianti and montepulciano and like 5 kabillion other delicious wines.  I mean, seriously, I deserve some sort of medal of honor for this business.

Someday when this kid is 14 and trying my nerves with all that ‘But Mo-om . . .’ business about dying her/his hair blue or staying out till dawn I will remind her/him of the sacrifices I made in the Autumn of 2011 on her/his behalf and she/he will almost certainly not care at all.  But I will still bring it up.  Often.

I will also bring up all the sickness and nausea and etc of my first trimester, because these last few months have not been very much fun.  Apparently it gets better.  Fingers are crossed.

All sacrifice and puking aside though, I am really excited about this (and scared too).  It’s a new and very big adventure and I can’t wait to meet young Wiggles and yogi when he/se comes out to see the world in May.

Venice.

Tomorrow.

Thank Christ.

I don’t even care that it will be just as cold and grey as it is here.  It will be Venice and therefore it will be better.

Fact.

Venezia! AKA Plans and Memories

Jeremy and I are heading back to Venice the weekend of Oct 28th.

We’ll catch the end of this year’s Biennale and go see the current exhibit at Palazzo Fortuny and stay in a hotel on San Zaccaria.

Then I will com home and write a book, at least a first draft, in November. 

THEN we’ll go the ATP the first weekend of December in Minehead.

And in the middle of all this my grandmother is still unwell and staying in a nursing home as they try to build her health back up after her surgeries and any time I see a funeral on the TV it makes me cry.  The final episode of the first season on Treme nearly killed me last week when we watched it on DVD.

I keep thinking of driving down two lane highways and listening to The Watson Twins and wandering around my old neighbourhood in Detroit and sitting in hospital waiting rooms hoping for even the smallest thing to go right and sand cranes in plowed fields and old school houses and the colours in my parents’ old back yard changing as October marched on.

This started out happy and then turned sort of maudlin, huh?  I didn’t mean for that to happen. 

There are good things on the horizon though, more on those soon.  I need to move through this bout of sadness first I think.

 

 

Ack

I haven’t posted anything in ages, I know.  There is a lot going on right now that’s keeping me away.  Work on the house, work at work, and a couple of top secret items I can’t talk about just yet. 

And, yes, I know it’s lame to reference a top-secret item without actually giving up the info, but I just can’t yet, okay?

Thing I can talk about, though, include, the fact that a man named Dickie is currently working on fixing the render and repainting the front of my house, following which he will fix our hallway so it looks nice and also fix the walls in our much neglected second bedroom.

Jeremy is in Bangladesh right now for work.  But he gets back very soon.

My grandmother has been moved from the hospital to a nursing home, where she will probably stay for the next few months as she recovers from her recent surgeries.

And it’s October, a month I have been dreading, because October marks the anniversary of the month I spent in Michigan last year when my dad was in the hospital.  It feels impossible that this year has gone by so quickly and so slowly.  I’ve got plans in place to get through November (NaNoWriMo , lots of time off work, Gillian Welch concert) but have made no contingencies for this month, which was kind of stupid of me.  Hopefully the building works on my house and prep for NaNoWriMo will keep me distracted.

And on a more frivolous note, Oliver tried to eat my toes yesterday morning.  Apparently rather than sleeping I should have been unlocking his cat flap and letting him out into the world.  My cat can really be a jerk sometimes.

 

Pretty please

Can we just cancel the next couple weeks so I can sleep?

The weather here is cooling down and all I want to do is nap and or watch episodes of Project Runway on the internet.  Could somebody please find a way to make this happen?  With a cherry on top?