DC Zia

Gone fishing

2009-11-30T16:14:00.002-05:00

I've been suprised to hear that people still look at this page from time to time, even though it has been three months since I posted anything here. There is still a Flickr link and you can still read my inane Twitterness if you like. I guess I'll leave all of that up.

But mostly, I've moved. I'm trying out a new place in the interwebs, to see if it fits a little better now. It's a lot of the same, but it's trying to be something different. You may not like it. Then again, you might. But it's for me, not you. (Remember: it's my blog and I will curse if I want to. You can click that little X in the upper corner if you don't like it.) I wish I had more time to devote to it, to make it prettier, more Google-able, more linkable, more readable, more....more...more....I need more time, less work, more time, more lottery winnings, more time, shoulda married rich..... You get the idea.

Thanks for reading. (Collects virtual fishing rod, tackle box, six pack, and walks on down a road less traveled in a yellow wood, looking for that perfect fishing spot.)

How do I begin and end?

2009-09-04T13:46:00.004-04:00

I’m in a strange limbo zone as I cast off the shorts, t-shirts and Keens of my season of stay-at-home motherhood, and dust off the heels and blouses and jackets and jewelry of my old work self and new working mother self. I don’t have a lot of work yet (my bosses are being nice and easing me back in), but this makes me feel useless in two places – killing time at work, waiting to go home, and wishing I could spend this empty-ish time with Helene, feeling guilty that I’m not with her. I wish also that she could be here, crawling on the floor as I work. She’d love crawling down the long carpeted halls, and there are dozens of people who’d be happy to hold and play with her.

I tried to savor every moment with her last week, lounging in dappled park shade and taking silly, lovely photos of her. Lots of walks with her in the Ergo, her heart beating next to my heart, my arms lightly curled around her, lulling her to sleep, her head resting softly on my chest. I tried not to think about “lasts” and “nevers.” I tried not to think about not getting to do this next week. Tears ran from my eyes at the most unexpected times.

Our new nanny, Yvonne, babysat half the day on last Thursday and Friday, to get to know Helene and our house. I felt awkward, superfluous, sad. I tried to run errands, check things off my list, tried to quell the sick frantic feeling in my gut with busyness. I tried not to simply snatch Helene back from Yvonne when it was time for her to leave.

And of course, she wouldn’t eat. A new tooth coming in, and Helene is doing what she did for the first teeth – refuse solid food for days on end. Her timing is….something. This refusal came on the heels of a whirl-weekend visiting family and friends in New Jersey, where Helene inhaled all the food and more that we spooned in her mouth, at diners and rest stops and relatives’ houses. I almost thought she was weaning, as she slurped down yogurt, and then refused to nurse for hours, biting me decisively, bruising and hard.

One short day later, and she pushed away the spoon with a queenly impatience and disdain, her hand flung high in the air. For days. She wanted to nurse. And nurse. Oh baby, your timing is killing me.

Yvonne has convinced her to drink a few ounces from a bottle. And finally, yesterday, she ate more than a taste of some yogurt, and carrots, and pears. She cries when I leave, in a way that she does not otherwise cry, loud and alarming, sobbing, red-faced and alligator tears. She cries when I come home, hearing my footsteps on the cast-iron stoop, howling as she crawls frantically to my feet so I can pick her up. I know they have been playing happily just moments before. I hold her and hold her, I try to run upstairs and nurse her as soon as I can, and she drinks for longer than she has in awhile, not distracted for once.

I am learning to be a milk cow. Pumping twice a day at work, grateful that it is not more often, ferrying my precious cargo of cold milk home each day. So Yvonne can pour it into bottles, offer it to Helene, watch her refuse most of it, and throw it out at the end of the day. But I have to preserve my precious milk supply, I must, for as long as Helene wants it.

My husband happens to work in the same building. We have had lunch together a couple of times this week. It is so strange, for it to be just us. I feel terribly guilty, because we should not be together without Helene. It feels incomplete without her, as though we are acquaintances, and she is the mutual good friend who bonds us together, enlivens the conversation, makes us laugh.

There is some guilty relief. That I am not solely responsible for a baby all day, that I get to dress up again, and wear jewelry, and try to use my now Swiss-cheeselike brain again to give sage advice. But I miss it too, miss caring for her every need. I strangely even miss the distinct smell of a soiled diaper, because there is something satisfying in making her clean and fresh and cared for each time.

I sat outside today with colleagues, friends, enjoying the cooling weather of late summer, the sun, the crystal-blue sky of September. And tried not to feel like I was wasting my time, because I wanted to be with Helene in the park, outside, instead.

She hasn’t wanted to go to sleep this week, flailing and howling every time we set her down in her crib. She calms when we hold her, appearing to sleep, starting the cycle again each time we set her down. I think she just wants to be with us, and I want to keep holding her, while I know I need to set her down in her own bed, so I can eat and sleep.

I have started this new phase, this new time. I still have a foot in both places, not quite here nor there, feeling hazy at work, rushed at home, teary, guilty, torn, and shocked at how quickly Helene’s bedtime comes each night. How do we fit it all in, how do we make it work? How do we begin this new story, and make it worth the telling?

Zia's Fables in Two Tales, or Lessons Learned

2009-08-03T14:30:00.005-04:00

On "Trying To Do The Right Thing:"

Yesterday, we finally, finally cleared the last bits of leftover stuff from the basement, remnants of the moving out the renovation, the moving in, the thinning out. Seth loaded them all up in the Jeep so I could take them to Goodwill. A few boxes of books, a box or two of clothes and odd housewares, a lamp, two maple barstools.

It was drizzling when I got to Goodwill. The folks there helped me sort out the boxes into their proper places, and pointed me around the corner where I could take the furniture. I pulled up, and a guy with a not-happy expression looked up at me. "Hi. I have a few pieces of furniture? I have these two barstools..." I pulled them out of the car. Now, the barstools were maple with woven rattan seats, and were in near- perfect condition: not a mar, not a scratch, not broken, not damaged in any way. They had, however, been stored in various spots around the house during the renovation, and there was some dust on them. Seth had wiped some of it off when we loaded them in the car, but yes, they were still a little dusty. The man eyeballed them with a look of disgust and delicately touched the dust on one barstool seat with a finger. I said "It's just some dust. They've been in storage." He said, his voice increasing in volume with each word, "We can't take things like this. I can't believe people bring things like this to us in this kind of condition. It's disrespectful to the people who are going to get it. I don't know if we can take these, I mean, you're lucky we have this truck here (gesturing to a moving van) so maybe I can take them and throw them out. Maybe this one time I can take them, but you can't bring things in this kind of condition. It's disrespectful." I stood there with my mouth open, and finally managed to stammer, "I'm sorry...I didn't know...it's just some dust...I didn't know...." I almost started rooting around in my car for a rag, to take the 30 seconds to wipe off the dust that it would have taken to put the chairs in pristine condition. "And we can't take that lamp," he added. I got in my car, and almost hit a post trying to drive out of the Goodwill lot, because my hands were shaking. I took a wrong exit going home, because my stomach was knotted up and I felt like crying. What had I done wrong? Had I really been disrespectful? I thought of the beat-up furniture I'd gotten in thrift shops and from the newspaper in college and law school, and the elbow grease and paint it had taken to put some of it in usable condition. I'd used some of that furniture for years, before I could afford better. I thought of the dust on the upper floors of some of the "antique" shops on Magazine Street in New Orleans, where you were welcome to hunt through the maze of mismatched bedframes and battered dressers for a prize. I couldn't believe I had just been chastised, belittled, dressed down, for giving something away that was in very good condition.

I have concluded that my mistake was in trying to do something charitable, to give away something in good, usable condition, to just give it away for no money. Next time, I'm braving the nutballs on Craig's List, and having them come to me and give me cold cash for my perfectly good stuff. No good deed goes unpunished.

On "Very Stupid Stupidity and Restoring Faith In Humanity"

This morning, I drove to a local running path along the Potomac for a change of scene. Helene fell asleep on the drive. Trying to be quiet, I got the jogger and all my gear out of the car. I then gently lifted the carseat out and snapped it into place on the jogging stroller. I hit the "lock" button on my car key remote to lock the doors, and started my run, moving smoothly out of the parking lot to keep the baby lulled to sleep.

It was refreshing to run somewhere different, and I passed other jogging stroller moms, regular stroller moms, women running with dogs, cyclists, and whole families out for a walk or a bike ride. It wasn't too hot yet, though the humidity was starting to creep in from the water. I reached my turnaround point, and ran back towards the car. Perhaps half a mile from the parking lot, a fit, middle aged woman with a long blond ponytail and an American bulldog on a leash passed me. I remembered her from the way out, and remembered how the jingle of her dog's tags was as good as a bicycle bell for letting you know someone was passing. She passed me again, and I thought enviously that she was probably a woman who could somehow afford to stay home all the time, since she was out running with her dog at 10:30 am on a Monday.

I got to the parking lot, and realized the car next to me was running, so I approached cautiously, so the driver would see me. To my surprise, he called out to me when I got to the car, "Hey, ma'am, I think you left your door open!" And indeed, the rear driver's side door was wide open. Me: "Oh my gosh, I did. I completely forgot. I'm sorry - let me close it and get it out of your way. I was just thinking about too many things." He said, "I was worried about whoever was in this car, because the door was just open, and I didn't know what happened." Then the woman who'd been running with the dog pulled up in her car, and said "He's been waiting for you to come back, to make sure you were OK." I was almost speechless. "Thank you." I said to the woman. Then the man in the car spoke again. "I could see that you had a baby, because of the carseat. I was worried. I was asking people who came along if they knew whose car it was, if they'd seen someone with a baby. Then that lady back there came along, and she said she'd passed someone with a baby about half a mile back. So I decided to wait for you. She said maybe you just forgot to close your car door." I thanked the man again, profusely, explaining that yes, I had just forgotten to close the door. "Thank you so much. That was so nice of you to wait. I was just thinking about too many things. Thanks."

The man finally pulled out, waving at me. I couldn't believe I'd been so stupid, so preoccupied as to leave the car door open. I even locked the car with the remote with the door standing open. Oh well - if someone really wanted my diaper bag (containing diapers, nursing cover, pink onesie, Desitin and hand sanitizer), a canvas shopping bag, a yoga mat, some jumper cables, or a bungie cord, they were all set. But amazingly, no one had taken anything from the car. I had been gone for forty minutes. I don't know how long that man sat there, waiting, watching. I don't know where else he had to be today. I just know I am grateful and surprised and amazed and delighted at how people can do the right thing when you least expect it.

Evolution

2009-07-15T10:51:00.000-04:00

When I started this blog, I planned to be witty and profound, writing on everything from food to politics. There are some embarrassing early attempts in the archives, which I won't link to. You can dig if you want. I realized that there was a glut of political bloggers who did it a thousand times better than me; same for the food; same for the pop culture. I floundered around for topics. I read lots of blogs. I became hooked first on Amalah. Like heroin hooked. She led me to Miss Zoot and Her Bad Mother and Dooce and Sweet Juniper and so many others that were writing eloquent, hilarious, tear-jerking, dark, sweet, outrageous, and amazing things about just being themselves as parents. The term mommyblogger (or daddyblogger, as the case may be) seems to me a derogatory, minimizing term to these wonderful writers, yet they embrace it, own it, write it, inspire it. These were the blogs I went back to, over and over, for smiles, tears, humbling inspiration.

You're always supposed to write what you know. So my blog evolved into tales of neighborhood snow shovel thievery, life on the Hill, the documentation of our endless house renovation, my ballooning belly, and the baby. Oh, this baby. My universe both shrunk and grew to consist of six pounds, six ounces of pure, astonishing tiny life and boundless love. I have struggled to find the words to say it all, but have found again what I know, what I love, what to write about. I am trying to embrace this, to make it as good as the other writers I admire have made it.

***

I always said I wasn't a baby person. I never wanted to hold them. They might spit up or something - ewww. When I waited tables in a restaurant in high school, the other girls were always oohing and aahing over the "baby tables" when allegedly cute babies came in. I just rolled my eyes, and hoped for a good tip for the inevitable mess. I always liked older children better. They talked, you knew what they wanted, you could run around with them, and roughhouse, and play games and read, and discuss things. Ages three and up were much more my speed. I used to joke with my friend Janine that I wanted to hatch a fully-formed five-year old. Who needs babies?

Then I had Helene. Suddenly, I got it. I understood the awesome fragility and power coexisting in a tiny newborn. I was attracted like a magnet to other little babies that I saw in the store and on the street. I wrote crazy, hormone-fueled sappy entries like this. And this. I mourn for all of the so-quickly passing baby stages at the same time that I revere each new and wonderful thing she does each day.

Now that Helene is nearly eight (8!) months old, it's surprisingly hard to recall exactly her newborn-ness. We visited and held the week-old baby of friends over the weekend, and we were amazed at all we had forgotten. You have to support their head! They barely open their eyes! Was Helene really this tiny? Yet what we remember is being just as fascinated with her then (Look! Her eyes are open....oh, maybe not...wait, I think she pooped.) as we are now (She's rolling! She's scooting! She's almost crawling! She wants to jump! I think she said "Dada!"). She is perpetually wondrous to us.

***
I hadn't bought shoes since Helene was born. I went almost EIGHT MONTHS without buying shoes. Nearly THREE QUARTERS of a year. Anyone who has seen my closet and my Zappo's account knows there was some kind of catastrophic tremor set off in the universe somewhere by such an unprecedented occurrence. I did buy several pairs right before she was born, in an insane frenzy of Trying To Feel Pretty When I Really Feel Like A Bloated Hippo, mistakenly believing (a) that the shoes would still fit on my "oh, they're not that swollen" nine-month pregnant feet; and (b) that in my temporary career as a stay-at-home mom I would be wearing those sleek kitten-heel, pointy toe, glove-soft brown leather boots all the time (they were worn exactly once, to the exactly one baby-free fancy dinner we've been to since Helene's birth). My "mom" shoes thus far have consisted of: clogs, running shoes. Uhhh, yeah. Oh! And black leather ballet flats when I'm really fancy! I dug out the Keens and flip flops to update for the summer. And then I went ALL OUT a couple of weeks ago and bought some flat leather sandals, because for some reason, I found it hard to schlep the baby and all assorted baby gear over uneven brick sidewalks in all the summer sandals of my previous life that all have no heel shorter than 2 inches. How did I wear all those heels? How did I walk in them all the time? What the hell was I doing?

There is a thin layer of dust on many pairs of fabulous shoes in my closet.

***

I was sure that I would be one of those moms who was ready to go back to work, antsy at home, ready to jump back into the sheer, heady power of being a mid-level beareaucrat (kidding on that last one here). The truth is that I don't miss work at all. I wish I didn't have to go back. I love the freedom from sitting in an office in front of a computer all day. I love walking all over our neighborhood with Helene. I love getting to know all of the other mamas and babies. Yes, it would be nice to have some adult time, where I do get to wear the aforementioned heels, and dress up, and go to places that don't have high chairs and changing tables. Yes, I do get bored sometimes by reading the same books over and over, or by trying to entertain a fussy baby for just one half-hour more until Papa gets home! Papa, where the eff ARE YOU??? I love this life, where I am usually the first person Helene sees when she wakes, giving me a gentian-eyed bright smile; where I go for a run at the Arboretum while the baby naps in the jogger, and my glutes get some extra work pushing the stroller up all those hills, and I stretch in the shade of a garden, while Helene plays on the grass; where I put her in the Ergo and get coffee around the corner, and the shopkeepers smile and coo at my baby who smiles and coos back; where I have made wonderful new friends, and we get together and watch our babies try to pull each others' hair and gnaw on each others' toes; where I stroll on Monday evenings to get our farm share, and come home to wash and cook vegetables, while the baby bounces in her jumper, and bounces more and flails her arms and says "ooh!" when Seth comes home. I have gotten used to this life, and I don't want to surrender it. My reprieves will run out, though, and I will have to go to work, still feeling that Helene isn't old enough or big enough to be without me.

I will have to get over it. I will have to get used to having her for so many fewer hours a day, get used to missing her. I will have to treasure the time more (if that is possible) and continue to rationalize that I am doing what is best for her by working.

***

I've been less attentive to my blog these days. Sidetracked by trying to find a nanny share, losing a nanny share, being relieved, getting a reprieve, making the most of my ever-shortening career as a stay at home mom, distracted by bright blue summer skies, practically civilized not-that-hot summer weather so far, playdates in the park, and cooking all of the luscious summer farm produce that finds its way to our kitchen, it hasn't seemed all that appealing to sit down and write. And what to write? How to be fresh, new? What is there to say about babies and motherhood and life that hasn't already been said before in a better, funnier, more articulate way? How to get my stupid registered domain name to actually work because I am an internet idiot and Blogger's instructions didn't work? How to get a new banner designed, and how much would it cost? Maybe some widgets? I have begun to feel myself chafing at the restrictions of Blogger, of this DC Zia alias, of this place in the interwebs, of my own strictures of what I should write about, of my concerns of causing offense to certain readers. I am wondering if it is time to move on from this particular interweb cave, to another virtual room of my own.

I don't know yet. I don't have that answer yet, as I also don't know when Helene will really start to like solid food, when I will go back to work, how we are going to find a nanny, when I will be ready for a babysitter and a dinner out, alone, with my husband. I have only mostly figured out how to muddle along in the present; the future is an ever-changing point in the distance.

So we evolve, as we must.

Reprieve

2009-06-19T20:15:00.008-04:00

Sometimes, good news comes in wolf's clothing. Or something like that. Sometime after this totally deranged post (you're a real fan if you managed to read it, and sorry about that), we hooked up with another daycare-waitlisted family to embark on a phenomenon known as a "nanny share." In sum: 2 families + 1 nanny = less cost.

I responded to a post from our badass Cap Hill parents listserve, a post from a mom who had a six month old girl to do a nanny share. I responded with interest. As soon as she wrote me back with their address, I knew who it was. "We know these people!" I laughed to Seth. I once described them as the "alternate universe us" at the Axiom (the beige apartment). It was Christian, the building manager, his wife Jennifer, and their daughter Ellie, born a week after Helene.

Jennifer and I engaged in a tornado of nanny interviews, online research about how to legally compensate nannies (no Dan Snyder syndrome for us), how to get an employer Federal taxpayer ID number, workers comp insurance, the cost of a double stroller, etc. etc. etc. Jennifer had a new job that starts July 1, so the pressure was on. They would host it at their apartment, fabulous for us, since it's a five minute walk from our office. The babies are the same age - they'll be like sisters! I could nurse the bottle-recalcitrant baby at lunch every day! We'd be apart from her for less time! It costs a bit more than daycare, but fewer viruses!

We interviewed. We met women from Brazil, Togo, Trinidad. One had been granted political asylum. One had taken time off because her mother had died. One spoke limited English but promised to speak French to our babies. They all conscientiously washed their hands and were gentle and sweet with our babies. I wanted to know the political asylum story, but couldn't just ask yet. We were delighted with two of them, satisfied with all. One's references did not return our calls. We made a job offer to another. It was turned down - she wanted to take care of only one child. We floundered. We worked on setting up more interviews. I got a deal on a Phil & Ted's second-hand double stroller, and hauled it home. We tried again for references.

My stomach began to hurt. Seth tried for several hours one day to give Helene a bottle, while I tried to relax in the hot tub at the gym. I bought new bottles, new bottle nipples, a sippy cup. I tried to get Helene to open her mouth for rice cereal, bananas, pears. I made plans to adjust my work hours, to give up my cherished Regular Day Off every other Friday, so I would spend less time away from my baby, my girl. I wondered if I could nurse her every day at lunch for the next four or five or more months. My stomach still hurt. I laid awake, wondering why I had jumped into this nanny share, when I didn't really have to go back to work until September. I wondered how I could get out of it, my mind exploring dead ends like a mouse in a maze.

Then Jennifer called. They'd gotten a place at a daycare next door to her office. I could hear that she was nervous over the phone, nervous about telling me. All I felt was relief, giddy, happy, relief. Of course they needed to take it! They had to do what was best for them! No, you don't need to pay anything for the stroller - we might use it, or I can easily resell it. Please stay in touch!

I e-mailed my office. Could I go back to the "return in September" plan? My nanny share just fell through. I don't know how long it will take me to find another. (Meanwhile, there are at least two posts for nanny shares on the Cap Hill listserve that very day.)

I took a long walk with Helene in the Ergo and hugged her close to me, kissing the top of her head. More time, more time, more time. Thank you, thank you, thank you.

This rug fringe is the best thing ever! Have you tried it?

Of shop vacs and improvisation

2009-06-04T15:34:00.001-04:00

Hello, blog. (Blows virtual dust off of virtual interweb space.) I know, I've been neglecting you. Yes, I've been busy. And actually, I've been having quite a lot of fun, now that I seem to have the hang of this mom-thing, and I have lots of awesome new mom friends in my neighborhood to hang out with. Yes, I've been neglecting you for coffee klatches on H Street and addictive chicken cutlet Philly-style Italian sandwiches at Taylor Deli and playdates in the park in the lovely spring weather in DC which only lasts like, a minute, so you have to get out and enjoy it. It's true. And am I here to write about all the fun we've been having? Of course not, because why would I do that? It's boring. Suffering really has much more pith and drama to it, don't you think?

So. The baby has her first illness. Just a mild cold, nothing too bad. But she's all snuffly and snorty and stuffy and has a pitiful little cough, and she just cries sometimes because she just doesn't feel good, and isn't quite her usual happy smiling, wiggling self, with the slightly glazed eyes to match.

This morning, I decided to kill two rubber duckies with one stone by taking a long shower, and putting the stuffy baby in the bathroom with me to have her snuffliness soothed by the hot steam. I wedged the bouncy seat through the narrow door, strapped Helene in, gave her some toys, and hopped into the shower. It was strangely quiet within a minute. I peeked out, and there she was, sleeping away, still holding a toy. Awww. I finished my shower in a leisurely fashion. When I got out, I realized the baby was (a) still sleeping soundly; and (b) totally blocking the door. Do I try to get her out of the seat and into her bed? If not, how do I get out? I dripped and stared and thought for a moment. Then I shrugged, picked up seat with baby in it, moved her away from the door, and left her in the bathroom to keep napping in the warm steam. Her head was elevated, which helps the snot, the steam was soothing her nose and throat, and it was certainly cozy-warm in there. I did sneak back in to put the baby monitor in there. And she slept for a good 45 minutes, and woke up happy. Huh. I'm a genius.

***

When I realized the baby was actually sick yesterday, I tried to coddle her, holding, nursing and carrying her a lot, and torturing her with the snot sucker only when really necessary. She took more naps than usual, and was relatively happy playing between them, so I decided to cook an awesome dinner with our CSA veggies and some tuna steaks. I made mango salsa, set the rice cooker, tossed squash, asparagus, and spring onions with olive oil, salt & pepper to prepare them for the grill, and marinated the tuna in maple syrup and soy sauce. This would be a great dinner. I chilled a bottle of Virginia rose, and resisted the urge to open it now.

And then it started to rain. And rain. And RAIN. And rain harder. And harder. And HARDER. I have never seen rain like this in Washington, DC. If I still lived in Florida, I would have evacuated already for the hurricane. Trees whipping. Rain going sideways. News saying something about possible golf-ball sized hail. I kept looking nervously at our new skylight, and examining the floor for water, hoping our roofer had done a good job. Then I remembered the basement. It used to occasionally get water under the door when we forgot to clear out the storm drain. It didn't matter when it was just old cement floor down there. But now there are closets and books and fancy electronics. Better go take a look. I carried Helene down and propped her on her play mat.

The water under the door started as a trickle, and I stuffed some towels against the door. Which worked for about ten seconds. The water kept coming in. More towels. More water. Oh crap, the Danish teak table that we're going to refinish. And the boxes of books. And Seth's poker table top. What's in the closets, since water is going under those doors? Suddenly, I was barefoot and ankle-deep in cold rainwater and soggy towels, frantically rescuing things from the oncoming flood. Which was headed towards the Very Expensive Electronics. Oh yeah, and the baby on the floor. Who is starting to cry because she is miserable and stuffy and tired and sick.

"This is why we got ceramic tile and carpet tiles!" I said reassuringly as I sloshed around, moving boxes and pulling up sodden floor tiles. The baby was not reassured. Then the phone rang. Seth. He was late getting home. Yes, I was glad he wasn't drowned, but could he please COME HOME RIGHT NOW BECAUSE THE BASEMENT IS FLOODING? Thanks. Must go, floodwaters still in force. I continued to carry heavy, wet carpet tiles to the utility sink. Helene continued to wail. At least the rain seemed to be letting up. Maybe. I could see water still pushing against the glass basement door. Opening the door - not an option. Carrying baby out in downpour to examine drain? Not an option. Leaving rolling-over baby in house with encroaching floodwaters while I go outside - also not an option. Where is Seth and why is he so DAMN LATE?

Seth arrived, and went outside to see to the drain. It was indeed clogged. With seeds from some tree that are weirdly, cosmically, exactly, precisely the size of the holes in the drain. I hope they were from the stupid tree in our backyard. Which we are having removed soon because it was stupidly planted incorrectly by the stupid previous owner, and it's root-bound, strangling itself, and dying anyhow. Seth unclogged everything, and I saw the water drain away. Now there was more water inside than out. Seth was dispatched to Home Depot for a shop vac. I hauled the last of the carpet tiles, rescued what needed rescuing. The water had stopped just short of the giant new TV. Oh yeah, and the baby. Who was still whimpering. So I hauled her upstairs, sat on the sofa, and decided catch up on my Tivo'ed "Deadliest Catch" episodes while I waited for Seth and the shop vac. Because footage of crazy Arctic storms at sea and immense walls of water dwarfing fishing vessels seemed appropriate.

Sink full of sodden FLOR tiles.

And then water started to drip quite loudly and steadily through the doorframe of the back sliding glass door. In the newly renovated sun porch. I looked over at it, looked down at the tired baby in my arms, and wished for a large slug of scotch. I turned up the TV volume and tried to ignore the dripping.

Sick baby. Flooded basement. Leaking roof. Trifecta!

Seth came home with an alarmingly large shop vac. I put the baby to bed, and went downstairs to slosh through the basement once more. Seth had the vac almost together. I helped him finish it, and left him happily sucking up water off the floor (He's always wanted a shop vac, it turns out. He is sure that he and Helene can make more messes that will merit the vac. And we can suck all the debris out of the storm drain with it. Which is much more fun than you, know, sweeping.). And I went upstairs to make my planned awesome dinner, damn it.

We will hug it and pat it and call it R2D2.

One delicious dinner, one bottle of wine, and one slug of scotch later, the basement was almost dry, the roofer would be called in the morning to fix the very old roof that we stupidly left over the very new addition, I'd caught up on "Deadliest Catch," and stayed up too late, and the baby amazingly slept soundly. We're still drying out here today - the basement, the sun room, the roof and the baby - but I think we'll make it as long as we don't lose the snot sucker, can pay the roofer and figure out how to get those carpet tiles to dry faster. All the domestic f-ing bliss you can stand.

Yeah. I had these great plans to take photos of the finished, decorated, furnished, fabulous new basement for the final "after" shot of the renovation. But instead, you get this.

It was supposed to be like this

2009-05-18T10:24:00.000-04:00

Children. Plans. Hah, says the universe. It was supposed to be like this: Helene would have slipped out of my body into a warm tub, the waiting hands of her father, and would have then been placed on my belly, umbilical cord still pulsing between us. We'd be into our dream daycare, just a few blocks from our house, and our baby would happily lie in her father's arms and drink expressed milk from a bottle. I would have had a miraculous Mirena IUD placed in my uterus, without complication, to be removed easily with a tug upon the occasion I decide to reproduce again. But none of that is what happened. This is what happened: I had a surprise breech baby, a murky nightmare of a Cesarean section. We have no childcare; only a vague promise of "fall looks good, " and a muddled running of numbers, researching of nannies. Helene has refused with all her might and screaming to drink from a bottle, after doing it happily for a couple of months. The Mirena, in a one-in-a-gazillion occurrence, slipped up sideways into my uterus, and now lies there awkward and useless on the right side, to be removed only by laprascopic surgery. These things were not supposed to happen.

Here's Helene's room.
The one that we were supposed to bring her home to, just about six months ago. Well, you know how that went. Recall what it looked like in the "during construction" phase. You know that we were still in the rented beige apartment when Helene was born, that we brought her home there, because our house was still a dust-covered deathtrap construction zone until the end of January. I guess it doesn't really matter, since the baby has slept in our room (wherever it was) since she was born. But I missed it, that lovely frantic hormone-infused nesting, nestling, getting everything clean and pretty and placed and ready for the beautiful known surprise. Better late than never. Except for this stupid mobile, which I got as a shower gift.

Which says it's good for ages '"0 to 5 months." Well, fuck. Because my baby is just about six months old so I'd better just take down this insanely mesmerizing mobile that I JUST PUT UP. Oh no. We're using that damn mobile, even if it means it stays up there until the baby can stand, pull it down upon her small head, and yell "I hate you! I have a dent in my head now and I will never have a prom date! You have ruined my life!" at her stupid mother who put the thing up in the first place. So yeah, the baby has a real room now that actually looks like a baby lives in it. I think she's taken a total of three naps in there now, looking all stranded and small in the giant island of her lovely dark wood crib. She hasn't slept at night in there yet. Because I can't let her yet. I am still too attached to placing a hand on her little body in the co-sleeper next to me to quiet her when she cries out in her sleep, or to just feel the soft, solid rise and fall of her breath in the velvet dark, or to slide her into bed next to me for a precious hour or two of snoozing in the early morning, so I can watch her stir and stretch, and see her big grey-blue eyes open wide to the morning, wide smile to follow.

And then there's this. The Precious Planet Jumperoo.

Because Helene loooves standing, loves being bounced up and down, cannot get enough, and Mama's arms are tired from being a human jumperoo every day (though it is helping my triceps). So I decided we needed to buy this most elaborate and complicated plastic piece of baby paraphernalia (definitely the biggest, gaudiest, plastickiest baby thing we've bought to date) so the baby could jump! And bounce! And spin! And entertain herself for maybe dozens of minutes at a time. The Jumperoo was dutifully purchased at a big suburban baby store, wedged in the trunk, hauled home, and assembled (despite the usual horrifyingly bad instructions). The baby was placed in the seat that looks like a giant monkey is eating her, and voila! Let the fun begin. Just one problem with this whole plan. Our darling, precious petite flower of a baby? Her feet? Do not touch the floor. So she just kind of....dangles there....in the monkey head. Sigh.

I should stop getting so attached to plans.

Mothers' Day? What? Me? Oh yeah, right.

2009-05-11T15:46:00.007-04:00

Yes, I really did not realize for a time that Mothers' Day applied to me this year. Seth: "So, Sunday is Mothers' Day." Me:"Oh yeah. We should definitely call my mom and do a video chat with her, and don't forget to call your mom." Seth: "Uh, I meant what do you want to do?" Me: "Oh....me....huh." Seth gently points out (as if speaking to someone who is mentally impaired) that I am the mama and that the proof is the babbling, flailing baby over there on her play mat. It was a weird feeling to be included in Mothers' Day until I realized that it's like getting another birthday. Presents! Dinner! Pampering! Adult beverages! I will be sure to milk this a lot more next year.

Mothers' Day breakfast. Mmm, bacon.

Despite my advanced age, I still feel too young and stupid to have a baby. Yet, here we are. I think one of the surprises of Mothers' Day for me was the bond that I suddenly realized I feel with all the other mothers. Friends sent profound and beautiful messages to me on e-mail and Facebook. We went for a stroll through the azalea gardens at the National Arboretum, and so many people were so friendly to us, their faces alight with smiles as they congratulated me on my first ever Mothers' Day.

Yesterday, one of my friends wrote: "To have a child is to agree to have your heart live outside your body." Yes. Thank you, my little heart, for the fact that I get to be your mother.

Sappy, but true. No matter how tired or jet-lagged I am, seeing this face first thing in the morning makes me helplessly smile. Her father is so doomed when she's older and asks him to buy her stuff.

This post brought to you by jet lag and insomnia

2009-05-07T03:43:00.008-04:00

3:43 AM. We got back from Australia yesterday (uh, Tuesday, May 5, to be exact) and got home around midnight. We all managed to sleep last night and stay awake all yesterday. We all crashed around 8:00 last night, and I slept for awhile, but sleep, it is not happening any more just now. For awhile, Seth, Helene and I were all awake at the same time. The other two seem to have gone back to sleep for the moment, so I guess two people sleeping is an improvement over three people not sleeping.

And with no sleeping and lying wide-eyed in the dark often comes contemplation. Which often leads to more insomnia. How is it that my little baby will be six months old in less than two weeks?

When I'm on vacation, I feel like I've stepped out of time, and that it stops or slows. Then, I come home, and step back into the pace of regular time, and sometimes, it's kind of shocking. It happened to me on our honeymoon in Hawaii almost four(!) years ago. My dad died suddenly two weeks before our wedding. After the memorial service, we all had no choice but to go on, and plunge headlong into the whirl of the wedding. Our wedding was amazing and wonderful and perfect - my dad wouldn't have wanted us to be sad or to change things because of him, and we didn't. Then Seth and I had two weeks in Hawaii that are always secreted away in a special box of my memory as utterly relaxing and beautiful, removed a world away. I cried for my dad in Hawaii, when I saw things he would love to see, or when I wanted to ask him a question and realized I could not, not ever. But I was buffered by the timelessness of a perfect vacation, by the staggering beauty of Hawaii, by the joy and sweetness of a new marriage to the person that is my partner, my balance, my life. When we got home it was a different story. My dad was dead, and my life had to at least pretend to resume as normal. All the grief that had been buffered in Hawaii came rushing back in with the normality of my every day life. There were memories of my dad everywhere. I think I managed to go to work every day, but I cried every day too, for weeks - behind a locked office door, silently in a bathroom stall, on the treadmill at the gym. I hysterically sobbed with disappointment when we got the proofs of our wedding photos back. In reality, the photos were stunning, but all I saw were the photos we forgot to take, the photos that were missing. It wasn't the photos, of course. It was my dad that was missing, my dad that was supposed to have been there. It took me several weeks before I could really look at our wedding photos and see that they were actually breathtaking and artful.

This time, returning from the stop-time of a full month in Australia, I gasp that my little baby Helene is almost six months old. She ticked off a ton of developmental milestones in Australia, and she's so fun and funny and engaging right now. Now that we are home, I can see how she's grown - how that one footie sleeper that just fit her when we left wouldn't go on last night; how much more of the co-sleeper she fills up with the length of her body; how deft her little hands are when she grasps toys; how quick her eyes are to see something new in the room. And then I panic, because it's going too fast. If we were sticking to the original game plan, I would be going back to work in a couple of weeks, and Helene would be going to full time daycare. But despite being on the waiting lists for over a year, Helene does not yet have a place at a daycare. One of the five says that September looks good; the others have pretty much said, uh, nope, never, no chance in hell. It's a reprieve in a strange disguise. When we found this out Seth said that we could probably afford for me to stay home until September. When I told my office that I did not have daycare yet, but that I might in September, and that I was exploring all options, they said they could do without me until September, but no longer.

I think I just need to grab this gift and run. I have an overdeveloped sense of obligation, though, and I feel like I should be going back to work, like I owe them, like it's been incredible hardship for them to do without me. I get antsy, and feel like I should be going back in two weeks because I told them I would. But the truth is, they're just fine without me. And they seem, incredibly, to be fine with letting me be gone longer. I hope that's true. Because I don't want to go back. Not yet. I will have to go back - this house renovation and the kid's college tuition aren't going to pay for themselves, unless Seth's plan to sign Helene over to a former Romanian gymnastics coach and get her in the Olympics and on a Wheaties box works out. Yeah, I have to plan to go back to work. What's killing me is the thought of being away from Helene for so many hours every day. I haven't been away from her for more than a couple of hours since she was born. I've seen her change before my eyes, witnessed all the new things she can do. I have her every expression and the softness of her skin etched on my heart. How can I just give that over to someone else, to let someone else see the newest thing she does, let someone else just tell me about it? It hurts too much. How does everyone do it, all the mothers who have to go back to work when their babies are even smaller? I know they do it because they have to; we all do what we have to.

So, around and around in my head, I've been whirling my options around. Part time work would be ideal, but my office won't allow it. They're always afraid that if one person does it, everyone will do it. Should we hire a nanny, and I could work from home a couple of times a week, so I would get to be with Helene during the day? I thought I wanted group daycare, to have Helene around other kids, to learn to socialize. Now I think maybe I want her at home, with one person who cares for her, with playgroups and classes arranged. Could we just get a nanny a couple of days a week now? Probably not- that's money going out that isn't coming in. I have to be working for us to have a nanny, and if I work, it has to be full time. Could I find another job? Part time? Maybe. Maybe not. Damn, why did I not just marry rich?

I thought at six months that Helene would be less dependent on me. I imagined she would be eating solid food, breastfeeding less, needing me less. So far, not the case. She loves to watch us eat, but isn't interested yet in eating her own food. She's still breastfeeding exclusively. She can't sit up without a lot of assistance. She won't go to bed at night without me lulling her into sleep. She cries if someone else tries. She won't drink from a bottle. She did willingly, until two and a half months. Then she began to refuse, and it became an awful screaming, crying ordeal for Seth, who would try for a couple of hours in the evening while I hid upstairs. He even tried when I was out of the house. My mother in law tried when we were out to dinner. No dice. It just makes her screaming mad to offer her a bottle now. So we just gave up. She didn't have to drink from a bottle, not anytime soon, and it wasn't worth the heartache for us. It's another hurdle/cause of stress for daycare - many places aren't too tolerant of babies who won't drink from a bottle. I don't know what I'm going to do about that. We might try going straight to a cup, or we might try one of these uber-suggestive boob-like bottles that seem to work for some folks. Again, another reason I need to just grab this reprieve of time and run. In September, she will be almost 10 months old. She will certainly be eating solid food, and I hope she can drink from a cup.

And I will have a few more precious months, days, hours with my baby. I don't know yet if I'm going to have another one. This might be my only chance. To be the first one she sees whenever she wakes up, to be the one who rocks her to sleep, to be the one who sees first what she does next, to play with her, make her laugh and to just watch her beautiful eyes and wide smile. I am still struck breathless by how much I love her.

I'm happy

2009-04-11T07:03:00.004-04:00

Yes, I did get to pet a kangaroo. This is a gray kangaroo, which is actually brown. The red kangaroos look mostly gray, so don't try to figure that one out either. Kangaroo fur is much softer than you'd think. It reminds me of petting a horse with its thick winter coat.

We saw the kangaroos at this place, the Healesville Animal Sanctuary. We also saw parrots, echidnas, wallabies, baby Tasmanian devils, koalas, platypus and wombats. Then we went wine tasting. And yes, we saw all of those animals BEFORE drinking wine, and no, we are not making any of them up.

The land down under

2009-03-31T09:35:00.006-04:00

This is my nephew, Zach. He lives in Melbourne, Australia. He hangs out with wallabies. We think Zach is very cool, and he knows where the wallabies live, and will introduce us, so we are going to visit Zach in Australia. We are leaving tomorrow and will be there for a month. What? It's a long way - we might as well stay for awhile. I'm on maternity leave - this seems like a good use of my time.

Are we insane for traveling with a 4 1/2 month old baby to Australia? Probably. There has been a lot of hassle about car seats, and bassinets in the bulkhead seats and pre-approval of car seats, and what have you, but we think we have it all sorted. Seth's parents are meeting us in Los Angeles for the super-long part of the trip to Melbourne. I think it's 16-ish hours or something. I try not to think about it. I do think about the favorable 4:1 adult to baby ratio for the flight. Seth had it worked out as 4 hours per adult.

I've made packing lists, hauled out the suitcases, done most of the laundry, and thought extensively about what to pack. Actual packing has not yet occurred. But I did get a pedicure.

We will be petting wallabies and kangaroos, and seeing koalas, emus, duckbilled platypuses, fairy penguins, beaches, and vineyards. We will not be eating Vegemite. I've tasted it and its English cousin Marmite, and that was quite enough of that culinary adventure.

We think Zach is excited to see Helene, though he may be a bit disappointed that she does not do too much stuff yet, by his 3-year old standards. You know, like say words or play trains with him. When he first met her in December, he definitely expected that his baby cousin would be a little more exciting, and not just a tiny sleeping lump that everyone was inexplicably entranced by. I'm sure she will happily hold and gum a Thomas The Tank Engine, but that might not fit in with Zach's plans.

So, there might not be a whole lot of posts on here for the next month. I'll try to stick up some random photos of us with kangaroos and on the beautiful Melbourne beaches just to make you jealous, but I'll probably be too busy petting wallabies and tasting wine and enjoying grandparent babysitting services to exert myself too much. (Could I be traveling to AU just to get free babysitting? It's possible.)

I wonder what Helene will learn or do over the next month. She does something new every day, it seems. She's almost rolling over. She talks expressively to the ceiling fan. She is discovering her feet, and on a recent warm day, she rubbed her little feet and toes together to test out the feeling of barefootness. She is a little sponge, gazing with wide-open blue-grey eyes at everything in sight, drinking it in, as I carry her down our street. It's my favorite thing about her right now - watching her see and be amazed by the world for the first time.

Her look clearly says "Holy cow! I can hold my head up!" She's Australia-ready.

Gratuitous baby toes picture. No pedicure needed - cuteness is more than enough.

Going crackers (or, Grandma's attic part II)

2009-03-30T10:56:00.000-04:00

A few weeks ago, while trying to recover from the Horrible Stomach Flu of Death, I sent Seth out to get one the time-honored stomach illness restoratives: the saltine cracker.

These crackers have soothed me since childhood through colds, food poisoning, intestinal illness of all kinds, hangovers and pregnancy. I've always been able to count on these crackers for their salty, inoffensive blandness, and their gentle, flaky texture, guaranteed to rest easy even in the most tumultuous of recovering tummies. I was ready for their comforting sameness, which hasn't changed since my childhood. Right? Nope, wrong. A few crackers in, I realized they tasted different. Sort of....sweet. Seth confirmed that he tasted the same thing. A glance at the ingredient list, and there it was: high fructose corn syrup. Now, seriously, why do you need sweetener in a bland saltine cracker of all things? I mean, aren't these things basically water, flour and salt? How much simpler can you get as far as a food product?

Not that simple, apparently. Having read Michael Pollan's "The Omnivore's Dilemma" a few months ago, we're on board with the idea of trying not to consume too much processed stuff and stuff containing corn derivatives, so as not to become giant walking corn chips, which is what most Americans are, if you are truly what you eat. As Pollan explains, the growing of corn is heavily subsidized. Thus, there is overproduction of corn, thus something has to be done with all the corn, thus corn and corn products are in nearly everything. Check your food labels, you'll be shocked. There is evidence on both sides as to whether corn sweeteners are metabolized differently than other sweeteners, and whether they contribute to the epidemic of obesity in this country. But really, how can it be good to have high fructose corn syrup in something that just doesn't need it, like a stupid cracker? Why are our tastebuds being bombarded with sugary sweetness in a fundamentally savory item?

After looking at the ingredient list on the 2009 box of saltines, I told Seth about the vintage metal Premium cracker box we always had in the house since I was a kid. My mom always bought crackers and stored them in this box, because it kept them fresher. The box has to be older than me - I remember it from my earliest days. I remember sitting at the kitchen table, eating my cheese and crackers or tomato soup and crackers, and reading the side of the metal cracker box. Very plainly, in English and Spanish, it listed the ingredients. My recollection was that the crackers contained a very short list of ingredients: flour, leavening, shortening, salt. I was headed to my mom's house soon. I would have to investigate.

As you know from my previous post, the cracker box had to still be in my mom's house. Of course it was:

And there was the short ingredient list, just as I remembered it, so concise:

To me, this list looks like food, people, not chemical engineering. I know that these days the FDA regulations require a little more detail, like what kind of shortening or leavening, but still. It would hardly make the ingredient list longer.

Is this progress? Maybe I'm just swayed by the nostalgia of the metal cracker box: durable, reusable, simple, with its short and understandable list of ingredients. But really, has the lowly, simple saltine cracker now been improved by its longer, polysyllabic ingredient list? Why did it need to be changed? And most importantly, what the hell are we eating?

Scrambled (or, Grandma's attic, part I)

2009-03-19T16:32:00.003-04:00

First, I'll tie up a few loose ends. We had a great visit with my mom (aka Grandma Wanda), her big hairy Lab-Chow mix Tuffy did not eat the baby (this was Seth's personal fear), and we made it home just fine. The experience of flying with a 3.5 month old actually did quite a lot to restore my faith in people. Not one person was rude to us. There was not one disgruntled sigh or eyeroll as I walked on the plane with a tiny baby. People were just amazingly kind and considerate. When I squeezed into the window seat next to two men obviously traveling to DC for business, I said, "I swear the baby has been great on all our other flights!" One of them replied,"I don't mind babies. They're just babies. What I do mind is adults who act like babies!" Well said, seatmate.

Now, on to the main feature. I grew up in a house where things were Saved. They were not thrown out. Ever. These things were squirreled away, stacked up in closets, and Saved, because you might need them someday. These things included string, rubber bands, plastic margarine containers, piles of Army-surplus sleeping bags and ammo boxes, canvas tarps, broken watches, and my old t-shirts from highschool. When my parents moved from New Mexico to Idaho almost nine years ago, my mom made a valiant effort to thin out The Stuff, but she came up against a brick wall known as my Super Saver Pack Rat father, and most of The Stuff made its way to Idaho.

Sometimes I'm glad that it did, because gems like this are unearthed from my mother's kitchen cabinets. Behold, THE EGG SCRAMBLER!

Oooohh yes! This is 1970s Only! Available! On! TV! Call! Now! at its very finest. You delicately spear your unscrambled, raw egg on the magical vibrating needle, and it (GET THIS) SCRAMBLES THE EGG IN THE SHELL. Then you just crack the egg into your hot frying pan, and voila! SCRAMBLED EGGS. Because actually cracking the egg into a bowl and using a fork or a whisk or even an egg beater would be far, far too tedious, time consuming, difficult and messy for today's woman. Here's the Egg Scrambler alone in its vaguely Seattle Space Needle glory:

Now, I must confess. It is my fault that the Egg Scrambler entered our household. I was probably five or six years old, the prime age to fall prey to TV offers. I saw this device during afternoon cartoons, and I was mesmerized. Further, I was utterly, irreversibly convinced that my mother absolutely, positively needed this device. And Mother's Day was coming up. I do not know what appalling amount of begging, pleading, wheedling and convincing my poor father was barraged with, but it was enough to get him to order the Egg Scrambler. Which was proudly presented to my mother at breakfast on Mother's Day. And yes, of course we promptly used it to make scrambled eggs. Which were doubtless pronounced THE BEST SCRAMBLED EGGS EVER. And my proud little child self knew the TV commercial had been right.

Aaaand then, the Egg Scrambler went back into its box where it sat for twenty-some-odd years until it was unearthed and moved to Idaho and put away in a cabinet. Where it was unearthed again by my mother at my insistence because I could not believe she still had this thing. Now she can never get rid of it. I think its incredible kitsch value in 2009 has just elevated it to family heirloom status. I think this says it all about my generation : yes, the family heirlooms inherited before were gold watches, maple sideboards, vintage jewelry. My children? They will get THE EGG SCRAMBLER. And their lives will be better for it, see? The Egg Scrambler promises.

(And, incidentally, "Great for camping!" WTF??)

Updatery

2009-03-13T11:10:00.001-04:00

(1) Feeling MUCH better since the day of this post. Immediately after that, I signed up for a baby yoga class, made plans with some other moms to take our babies out to a movie, bought a jogging stroller, and vowed to go to my neighborhood "Eaters and Sleepers" playgroup/coffee klatsch every week. Yes, I realize this is a long list of things. Overcompensate? Me?

(2) And since this post, the baby and I quite successfully flew cross-country to visit Grandma. Helene was quite fabulous. She fell asleep about 30 minutes before we boarded our first flight, from Newark to Salt Lake City, slept for a couple of hours, was awake for maybe an hour, and slept for the rest of that flight. She also slept for most of the second flight from Salt Lake to Boise. We had kind fellow travelers, who got bins for us at security, held things for us, and generally admired the baby (it does help when your baby gives a wide, gummy smile to pretty much anyone who makes eye contact). We had a kind flight attendant on our first flight who was happy to hold Helene, and who knew which airplane bathroom had a changing table in it. The pressure changes on takeoff and landing didn't faze the baby at all. I plopped her in our sling to carry her through the airports and to sleep. I tried to travel light, taking only a (crammed full) diaper bag on the plane. But I still had a change of clothes for both me and the baby in case of Diaper Blowout Emergencies. Which didn't happen, thankfully.

Now we just have to get back home today. I'm trying not to be superstitious about ye olde Friday the 13th and all, and am keeping crossed fingers that our previous good travel karma holds out. Because, wow, is four and a half hours a looooong time when you are on a full plane holding a completely cooperative/happy/sleeping baby. I don't even want to let thought enter my head about what it would be like if the baby was NOT cooperative/sleeping/happy. It's hard for you to sleep, hard for you to read. I tried to doze and watched the in-flight movie with no sound because I was too cheap to buy the $2 headphones on the plane. I might buy them this time. One of my friends won't travel with her young daughters because she had such a horrific experience with her oldest at five months (screaming baby, complete diaper explosion all over baby, stripping down, cleaning & changing baby in aisle of plane)- she says the memories still make her twitch. Yikes. So, fingers crossed, folks! Keep watching CNN to make sure you don't see us.

Flying the fearful skies

2009-03-07T17:29:00.002-05:00

Some god of some kind help me, but I'm getting on two planes tomorrow with a 3-month old to go visit Grandma Wanda in Idaho. Alone. With the infant. And the fucking airlines. And fucking TSA. And all the other fucking people. Who all might be mean to us. I am utterly terrified. I've been having anxiety dreams and even anxiety daydreams about this for a week. So, should you be flying from Newark to Salt Lake City tomorrow, you might want to (a) reconsider your plans; or (b) just be sure you really do like babies before you get on that plane. I am simply hoping for dry pants and no newsworthy incidents. So keep scanning CNN. You'll know if something happened.

Dude, where's my village?

2009-03-01T20:16:00.004-05:00

Those last few nagging pregnancy pounds? Want to lose them? Simple. Just contract yourself a case of the Horrible Stomach Flu of Death, and voila! Pounds=gone. Holy crap, I never want to have an illness like that and take care of a 3-month old nursing infant again.

I woke up Wednesday feeling kind of hungover - headache, dry mouth, mild queasiness - which was odd, since I sip about one and a half drinks over an evening on a really wild night these days. This morphed into something horrific from the end of the digestive tract that afternoon, and gave way to full-on college-style lying on the tile floor moaning over the toilet by late afternoon. I gamely laid on the floor of the baby's room with her as long as I could, shaking toys, and playing silly songs on iTunes. Then I gave up, cried uncle, updated my Facebook status to "mostly dead", and called Seth and begged him to come home while I lay in bed shivering with fever and making sure Helene was in a safe place when I had to bolt to the bathroom.

Did I mention I NEVER want to do that again? Seth took the baby at all times except when she was sleeping or nursing. He'd lay her beside me to nurse - I couldn't really even pick her up. Seth did this Wednesday afternoon, Wednesday night, and all day Thursday. I almost sobbed because I wished my baby would drink from a bottle (she did for awhile, and now refuses), tried to keep down water, hoped this wouldn't make my milk dry up, and scrubbed my hands raw trying to keep the plague away from Seth and Helene and our poor houseguest Seamus who last saw a glimpse of me sometime Tuesday night and could only hear the running down the hall and the hurling (so sorry - will try to be better, biohazard free hostess next time).

I was so glad Seth was there and so afraid he would get sick too, or that I would get sicker. I was really afraid of passing out or needing IV fluids for a little while because I was so dehydrated. Then what would we do? We have no babysitters yet. Our friends all work. Closest family is in New Jersey. I guess we would have called Seth's aunt and uncle to come down here, or trolled the Capitol Hill moms listserve in desperation for any available babysitter. And if a three-month old gets a virus like this, it's hospital time. Nature, though, she knows what she's doing. As Seth pointed out, even before I knew I was sick, Helene was getting the antibodies my body was producing through my milk. Nature is smart, and shit, you know?

On Friday, Seth had to go back to work, so I had to deal. The fever had broken, the various projectile bodily fluids had ceased, liquids were staying down, but I was still the consistency of a limp, wet rag. I can't say that Helene got optimal stimulation on Friday. I'm afraid I plopped her on her play mat, collapsed on the sofa in front of a Style TV "Clean House" marathon, and made sure she was alive once in awhile. In my exhaustion, I daydreamed about the days when I lived in an English basement apartment just a few blocks from here, single, independent. No plants, no pets, no significant others. If I got sick, I just had to call into work and go to bed and sleep as long as necessary. To just be able to lie in bed sick and have no other obligations seems like pure luxury now. Then I daydreamed feverishly about daycare, about nannies, about babysitters, about my mom helping me, about Seth's mom helping me, about anyone's mom helping me. I wondered why we didn't live closer to family. Oh yeah, because we don't want to live in Idaho or New Jersey. I know I was very tired, and maybe it was the illness talking, but I suddenly felt very alone and like I didn't want to be a full-time stay at home mom anymore. I wanted to just sleep. Read an entire book. Wear heels and dressy clothes without having to consider the logistics of nursing. Shop for frivolous things. Go out for long dinners with bottomless glasses of wine which I could drink with abandon because I wasn't nursing.

Then Seth got some e-mails on Friday about our status on the many Federal daycare wait lists. Some are pipe dreams, some look promising for the fall, none look good for May, which is when I had planned to return to work. Seth mentioned that he'd run the numbers, and we probably could afford for me to not work until September. I don't know how I feel about that. Or how my office would feel. I know I can't do it that long without some help. Maybe a sitter or nanny a couple of times a week. Something. Anything. The idea of being home with Helene more is a gift, a burden, wonderful, fearful.

I told Seth that staying home with Helene on Friday while I was still sick was about the hardest thing I've done. Maybe it wasn't, but it was pretty hard. Part of it is caring so much about her, and knowing I have implicitly promised to tend to her every need, especially when she is still so tiny. It was extra-hard knowing that there wasn't really anyone to help me, other than Seth. I guess I could find someone, if I called enough and begged enough. We need a network. We need to find babysitters, because we don't have family close by. I need to get out, have Helene be a little less dependent on just me for me to survive. I know this is old refrain on the mommyblog circuit, but it doesn't feel old when it happens to you, and you are the one torn between wanting to lovingly do everything on earth for your child, and needing to hand her over to someone else to do it too.

Come Saturday, I was feeling quite a bit better, if still Bambi-wobbly on my weakened legs. I could not wait to get out of the house. I hadn't left since last Tuesday night. We went out to breakfast, to our favorite neighborhood greasy spoon, and the outside air and the sight of other people were just as tasty as my biscuits and gravy. Though I watched the twenty-something Hill staffers stumble in, bleary-eyed from their night-before, and I let myself envy their freedom for a few moments.

I've got to get out more. I've got to find that network. I've got to use my gym's babysitters, now that Helene is old enough. I've definitely hit it, that point where the shiny new baby novelty is a little bit dulled, and I just need to see some other humans and fill some hours, because as amazing and wonderful and lovely and happy as Helene is, I just can't sit around the house with her all day or I am going to chew my own foot off. I know it gets easier, right? Everyone says the baby stages go so fast, so enjoy them, and I am trying, and I do, but there has to be some better balance. Just tell me it gets easier, and that this too shall pass, and all those other cliches. Please.

You say it's your birthday

2009-02-25T11:45:00.000-05:00

And so it was, on Sunday. Thirty six. Yow. Leaning more towards a decade that I'm not even going to say out loud or type because if I don't acknowledge it, it won't exist. Let's just remain firmly in the present.

There were a lot of bigbigbig changes in the Thirty-Fifth Year Of My Life. You know, baby, major house renovation, BABY. I'm hoping that the Thirty-Sixth Year will be more of an even keel. We certainly aren't moving. Ever. With the money we spent on this renovation, we are staying here until they peel our cold, dead bodies off of the very expensive granite. Or until the real estate market recovers sufficiently for us to recoup the funds and do something insane like move into another house and start all over again.

It's amazing to be home, but I'm still feeling sort of scattered. I'm thinking that one day soon I will feel like I have my shit totally together again, but then I talk to a more experienced, wiser parent than I, and I realize that no, this is probably not going to happen. Showers will continue to be optional on any given day. I will continue to be grateful for good hair products that make those long minutes I used to spend on my hair unnecessary. I will pay for things at a store and forget them on the counter, and have people run after me to give them to me, because I was so caught up in making sure that I had the baby, the diaper bag, the stroller, my wallet, my credit card, my keys, that I completely forgot that I actually bought something and that I should now take it with me, per the usual custom in our society. The line between the clean and dirty baskets of laundry will continue to be blurry and shifting as I continue to forget which is which.

And I will continue to worry. Worry, with a capital W. I was unprepared for the volume and intensity and constancy of the worry. Is my baby too small? Is she eating enough? Is she hungry? Why is she hiccuping? What is that little red spot on her cheek? Is she cold? Why is she crying? What does she want? Am I doing this right? How much therapy is she going to need? She spat up - does she have a stomach disorder? SHE'S BREATHING, RIGHT? RIGHT?? And then this spawns other worry. How much overage did we pay for the renovation? Was it worth it? What's wrong with our roof now? What can we afford? Am I really going to be able to stand to go back to work in three more months?

I try not to get mired in the worry, and to just chill and enjoy. Which is hard when your time is divided between keeping the little larva entertained and alive, and frantically flying around by the seat of your pants while she's asleep to try to get things done that need to be done, and to try to do something for myself. Like drink some water or go to the bathroom or read the New York Times headlines. I used to get shit done, y'all, and it's hard to let go.

So. Once again. Let's try to stay in the present, be in the moment, and enjoy what's here now. Like the fancy new kitchen. Which really is well worth enjoying. Here's the "before" and "during" for comparison. Enjoy the pretty kitchen photos, cuz that's all I got, unless you want to sing the songs from "Philadelphia Chickens" with me and Helene.

Looking towards the front of the house.

Looking towards the back of the house.

Brave new world

2009-02-12T12:44:00.000-05:00

I've been all over the place about what to write. Probably because all of my stuff is all over the place, and I have clothes and hygiene products on three floors due to the re-moving into our house a week and half ago. I do not deal with clutter well. In college and law school I would clean my entire dorm room or apartment and do all of the laundry and grocery shopping (Ramen? Check. Diet Coke? Check. Takeout menus? Check. Chocolate covered espresso beans? Check.) before final exams because otherwise I could not study because the mess would stress me out and I would have to clean it, thereby not studying, thereby stressing even more. Controlling? Type A? Me? Hence, because my stuff is scattered, I am scattered. I'm also only half-assed or maybe even quarter-assed effective at doing anything about it because most of my day is spent tending to this precious little monkey.
But we're getting there. Everything almost has a place in the kitchen. Except the damn can opener, because we can't find any of them. We are sure we had at least two when we left the house, and now we have none. Every other kitchen gadget known to man, yes, but a can opener? No. U cannot has can opener. I refuse to buy a new one because THEY HAVE TO BE HERE SOMEWHERE. Somewhere.

We're learning to live in our house all over again, because it's kind of the same, but also really different. We have more space in some places; less space in others; and a new little resident and all of her belongings to find room for. Since our basement is now actually nice and not creepy, we can't just chuck everything down there haphazardly anymore. This means Organizing. Lots. Necessitating a trip to the Container Store and two (2) shopping carts(!) full of boxes, bins, and baskets. We're getting there. Rather than complain about less space in certain places -- like in our accidental new bathroom vanity, because the old vanity which had all kinds of nifty storage space was mistakenly thrown out -- I am trying to be Zen and use it as a reason to have less stuff. We are mercilessly sorting, tossing and donating. We're like our own "Clean House" show, except that we actually want to get rid of the stuff and aren't deranged clingy pack rats like the people on those shows. We have a few weak spots: me = model and toy horse collection from childhood; Seth = allll the history books from allll his history classes in college. But Progress is being made.

I oversaw the removal of the beige rental furniture from the rental apartment last week, and it was a surprisingly emotional couple of hours. We brought Helene "home" to that apartment, we did so many of her first things there - baths, smiles - and we spent many hours playing, cuddling, napping and nursing in that apartment on that rented furniture. I got weepy at saying goodbye to the place where Helene spent her first sleepy newborn days with us, where we graduated from being a couple and really became a family.

It was a simpler life there, a bubble of babyness, in that small apartment. Very few of our clothes and personal items were there (well, with the exception of the piles of baby things)- just what we really needed every day - and the few rooms of the place revolved around Helene at their center. It got more complicated when we moved home to our creaky, drafty, beloved old house, packed squirrel-like with our hoards of boxes and books and cherished tchochkes, all the accumulated furniture and belongings of our lives until now.

Though it feels undeniably good to be home, worlds are colliding a la George Costanza as I work to mingle my pre-baby life with my post-baby life. Some observations: (1) "Lady Chatterly's Lover" now shares my bedside bookshelf next to Dr. Sears' "The Baby Book." (2) I had to resist the urge to use the baby bottle brush to wash a residue of cognac out from our brandy snifters (but it would have been just the right size to fit through the narrow mouth of the glasses!). (3) I now lay on the living room rug for Tummy Time with Helene with a Reidel glass of vidal blanc in my hand.

So we're still working on finding new places for everything, and our place in the new everything, figuring out how to live with Helene in our half-new house, fitting all the puzzle pieces together again in a new picture. The weather has been warm, so Helene and I strolled to the dry cleaners, where they'd missed us and they oohed and aahed and tickled the baby so much I was kind of afraid they would steal her. Then we walked to one of our neighborhood coffeehouses for an absurdly caloric milkshake because, hey, I'm nursing and I need calcium. Helene snoozed in the Ergo on the way home as I walked slowly to watch the afternoon light on the detailed woodwork on the rowhouses in the blocks near our house. I turned the last corner, and brought Helene in the door of our old-new home, our own new world.

No place like home

2009-02-04T11:28:00.005-05:00

And we didn't even need ruby slippers to get back here. Though they might have helped with all the moving of boxes. Oh my god, the boxes. Somehow, we always pick the worst weather days to move. We moved into this house 4.5 years ago during the tail end of a hurricane in a torrential downpour. This time it was freezing rain and ice. Seth did 98% of the moving himself, with a U-Haul van, sloshing shin-deep in freezing water and sliding on the ice in the alley behind our house. I'm just not much help, since as the milk cow, I have to attend to the baby. (We tipped our movers really well for the hurricane rain four years ago; Seth is still thinking up his sufficient compensation for this move. I'm afraid to ask, because I fear costume rental could be involved.) By the time all the stuff was in the house, Seth was just done. D.U.N. Stick a fork in him. Or at least a couple of draft beers.

And I know I have said it before, but my god, tiny little babies come with a lot of stuff. I think 75% of what we moved from the apartment back to the house belonged to Helene. Look, here it is. And that's not even all of it. There were a few more boxes downstairs.
Halp! Drowning in boxes of baby accessories! Seriously, THIS ALL BELONGS TO THE BABY.

Tucked in to our very own bed on our first night back with our very own wireless internet. Yeah, we might not know where our dishes or clothes are but we have the Interwebs (and apparently seven chins), thanks very much.

The long renovation goodbye

2009-01-26T10:57:00.007-05:00

It's really, truly, for real almost done. After so many conversations with our contractor that were the renovation equivalent of "are we there yet??" we seem to almost be there. A few strong words and almost-temper tantrums were required. We appeared at the house on Saturday with a cadre of (amazing, wonderful!) friends who'd volunteered to help us move the mountains of boxes back to their assigned places in basement and kitchen and to move some furniture around. We kicked the guy out who was working on the backsplash in the kitchen, dusted out cabinets, and started putting things away. I think our contractor knew we were serious then. Our friends schlepped boxes down the stairs and teetered on stepladders to wipe construction dust from shelves while Seth and I discussed punch list items with the contractor, and I intermittently nursed the baby, who supervised the whole production. But this is it. We are moving in this week, come shelf readjustments and leaky faucets. (We have some of both - the mudroom hooks and shelves were made for someone who is 6'6", not 5'3", and our kitchen faucet was somehow leaking quite copiously all over our very goddamn expensive kitchen cabinets yesterday. Great. Just great. Seth did some freaking out and ranting. I just smiled. Teflon. I am Teflon. Nonstick, but toxic when pushed to my limits.)

Upstairs bathroom. A serious improvement over the previous version.

Mmm, shiny!

Mmm, granite!

Holy crap, look at all that garbage. Our yard used to look, uh, kind of different.

Change the location of that toilet paper holder or I'm setting the baby loose.

"President Barack Obama" has a nice ring to it

2009-01-20T17:06:00.001-05:00

Happy Inauguration Day, y'all.

Generation O

2009-01-19T17:10:00.004-05:00

I saw an Obama baby onesie the other day with those words on it. I like it. I like that my daughter was born into an era where a white woman and a black man were presidential candidates, and where a black man with an accomplished wife and two daughters won. I am still in giddy awe and amazement at this new era of our country. Regardless of what happens during the next four (or eight? dare I think it?) years, this is momentous. I dare to be optimistic about it. This is our new world.

Today's post is brought to you by The Number Six

2009-01-12T17:15:00.002-05:00

Six is the magic number. Suddenly, at six weeks post-Cesarean, I feel like I could go to the gym. My incision doesn't pull uncomfortably deep inside anymore when I walk. I can walk close to my pre-pregnancy impatient-brisk pace. I can stand fully upright when I walk. My abs feel stronger. I think I might try a gentle spin class this week.

Nursing also rather suddenly got a lot easier at six weeks. The Books said it would, but I didn't believe Them, since They lied about lots of other things. I still wouldn't call it "feeling good" and but it's tolerable to neutral, and no longer at all painful. Take note, ladies: it could indeed take a full six weeks for this milk cow gig to be a heck of a lot easier. It was a progression - getting gradually easier day by day after the first two weeks, but....Yeah. Keep that lactation consultant and your nursing/have nursed mom friends on speed dial.

At six weeks, the baby also started sleeping most nights in stretches of up to six hours at night. Amazing. And lucky! Six full hours, plus another couple of hours after an early morning feeding make me feel practically like a regular human. (Of course, the first time it happens everyone wakes up in a panic, because they are impossibly well rested! Something is terribly terribly wrong with the baby!)

I could say that I am six pounds from pre-pregnancy weight, but I don't know if that's strictly true. I will say that in a surprising development, a second pair of pre-pregnancy jeans went on, zipped and buttoned today. A new pair of jeans for the baby to poop on! I also need to reintroduce myself to The Belt. I haven't worn one for almost a year, and I'm recalling that that particular accessory prevents unsightly need to hitch up pants and the more unsightly sliding down of pants to produce plumber butt or Monica thong.

We have at least six ridiculous nicknames for Helene. In utero, she was "Little Fish." We've now moved on to such endearing terms as "Little Barracuda," "Little Piranha" (enthusiastic eater, is this baby), "Little Pterodactyl" and "Baby Bird" (based on the funny reptilian squawks and pecking motions she makes when hungry or frustrated), and "Beast" (as in, "I hear The Beast stirring). We do call her "Sweetheart" and "Sweet Baby" occasionally too, but hey, we don't want her to think we adore her unconditionally or anything - keep her guessing.

When she finally sleeps during the day, I rush around, vacillating unproductively between six thousand possible things I could be doing. Shower? Laundry? Dry hair? E-mail? Read a book? Download photos? Take the 600th photo of cute baby sleeping? Install new Photoshop software to make cute baby photos even cuter? Call and speak to another adult? Eat? I tend to start one thing, and then abandon it halfway through, as some unwashed dishes catch my eye, or I have to rock the bassinet for a few minutes or re-install a pacifier, and I end the day with a lot of half-done things, and occasionally completed things and a lot of undone things. Somehow, e-mail and Facebook always get checked. Sometimes at the expense of say, personal hygiene or actual clothing. Priorities, y'all.

Sometimes I try to go somewhere with Helene like a regular human, and end up taking an hour to leave the house due to multiple poop episodes and diaper/clothing changes for all involved, and because I can't find the one warm hat I have in this apartment (all others are somewhere in the house, covered with a thick coat of drywall dust) (but I can find all 278 of the baby's warm hats - too bad they don't fit me), and I can't figure out how the stupid stroller frame thingy folds. And then I get out, and feel horribly self-conscious and kind of lonely among the crowds of well-dressed Hill staffers walking to and from lunch on Pennsylvania Avenue, because I don't see one other baby stroller in sight. I decide not to go into Firehook for lunch because there is a huge step at the door, and I'm intimidated by trying to get the stroller over it. I also avoid Cosi because of the cramped quarters. Burrito Brothers is uncrowded, and with no giant steps at the door, so I get lunch there, and victorious in my hunting/gathering, take the long way home through Bartholdi Park. When I get home, the baby wakes, and I nurse her, and then sit on the floor with her, scarfing my (hard-earned) burrito as I play with her. She seems entertained and perplexed by the act of eating.

And I am grateful that I am able to take six months of leave from work. Much of it unpaid, but we tried to plan for it financially, even amid the house renovation wallet suck. I can't even fathom going back to work now, or even in a few more weeks. I'm already slightly anxious about going back in late May, as planned. Because I still don't have an identity as a mother here. I'm still floundering in this transitional time. I was pregnant for what felt like an eternity, and suddenly, oh hey! Not pregnant anymore, and fully, overly occupied with the overwhelming delights and frustrations of baby-rearing. I sure don't miss actually working, though I do kind of miss dressing up and looking nice every day. I can work on that - it will help when I am back living with the full contents of my closet. I don't have a lot of "mom friends" here yet - my closest friends with children live far away. Figuring out where to breastfeed and change diapers outside of my own home can put me to the edge of panic, because mah babee has needs, damn you inadequate cramped grungy public bathrooms and disapproving boob bigots! (Not that I have actually encountered any breastfeeding negativity yet, but I imagine and fear it.) In other words, I feel kind of like my old self, but I'm not my old self, and I don't know what my new self is or what the "new normal" is. This new life requires a bit more planning, yet a bit more flying by the seat of the pants. And it's even all going to change again when we (hopefully soon) get to move back into our real home. There will be a lot more stairs, for one thing. But a better kitchen, and a lot more rooms to bounce the baby through when she's fussy.

It's just a lot of change. And there will be forever more, as Helene seems to change and grow before our eyes each minute. I'd better take a deep breath and hold on.

The theme of this post was actually just an excuse for six gratuitous photos of Helene.

Milestones and resolutions

2009-01-05T17:22:00.001-05:00

MILESTONES

1. We survived our first extended car trip with the baby. It was a medium-distance jaunt to New Jersey for Seth's family's annual Hannukah fest.

2. During this road trip, I survived my first public restroom diaper change, at a rest stop on I-95. Honest to god, my knees were shaking, as I awkwardly schlepped Helene in her car seat through the throngs of Northeasterners carrying hot coffee, and doing some paranoid eagle-eyeing of anyone coughing or sneezing within 30 feet of my child.

3. I also managed the Superfund cleanup of the first official diaper blowout. This was, unfortunately, also at the above-referenced I-95 rest stop. I still have not figured out exactly what type of physics of force or trajectory or high-pressure compressed gas results in the baby having poop all the way up her back, dear god.

4. I have been peed on for the first time. After Helene was weighed without her diaper at the pediatrician's office, I didn't put her diaper back on before picking her up. Total rookie mistake.

5. I can wear most of my regular clothes again. The official tally is that I'm 10 pounds away from pre-pregnancy weight. There is an awful lot of....squishiness yet to be resolved in my midsection. I try not to think about it too much. I just focus on the proud moment when a favorite pair of pre-pregnancy jeans actually zipped and buttoned. This is however, the only pair of real pants or jeans that currently fit. They have therefore been worn a lot, and have been, uh, exposed to a lot; see, e.g. Nos. 3 and 4, above. I really need to get some more pants.

6. We took Helene to both New Year's Eve and New Year's Day parties. She was awesome - mostly sleeping in our arms and being thronged by many admirers for the duration of both events. Go baby!

RESOLUTIONS

I'm usually opposed to New Year's resolutions. I just don't do them. Most of the time when people make them, they fall by the wayside in mere days or weeks, and they're just empty promises, rather than real changes. On the other hand, anyone who knows me knows that I will doggedly stick by a word or a promise or a goal, sometimes doing so to the point of ridiculousness, or at least major inconvenience to myself.

Seth talks to Helene about her 2009, and tells her what her resolutions will be: that she will hold her head up, that she will crawl, that she will walk.

My resolution - one that I instantly, automatically, instinctively made when I held my tiny newborn baby in my arms in the first days of her life - is to take care of Helene. When I watch her sleep, she is so peaceful and so tiny and vulnerable, and I fiercely, desperately want to protect her from all dangers. My heart already breaks, as I imagine days and years to come. I already dread the first time she gets sick, and I won't be able to take the illness or pain away. I hope she has her father's eyesight, so she doesn't have to be a nearsighted little girl with glasses, as I was. I hope she does not inherit her father's asthma and allergies. I know that we overcame these hurdles, and that we are fine, healthy, productive members of society, but it just kills me to think that she might feel that pain or anxiety or discomfort. I want her to be lucky and bold and confident and blithe and strong.

A few days after Helene was born, Seth held her, gazing at her face, and said, "When she gets older, for the rest of her life, I'm going to look at her and see this tiny little baby, aren't I?"

Yes. Oh yes. In an instant, we became parents. I look at my tiny sleeping baby and resolve to do the best that I can.

Yule tidings to all!

2008-12-25T17:58:00.000-05:00

It looks like Santa left us a baby under the tree.

She's pretty cute. We think we'll keep her. (Though - who has the elf blood around here? Seriously, look at the pointy ear. They were even pointier when she was born. Should we change her middle name to Arwen?)

We slept in, and have been sitting around in our jammies. We made a delicious breakfast, complete with Hawaiian macadamia nut coffee and delicious mimosas. I have been waiting nine goddamn months to enjoy a mimosa again, and ohhh, the bubbly, citrusy loveliness (made with all organic orange juice and Gruet sparkling wine from New Mexico. Yes, sparkling wine from New Mexico. Highly recommended.)

This Christmas isn't precisely the way I imagined it. OK, it's not at all what I imagined. I thought we would be back in our new and improved house, and I'd be making mimosas in my glorious new kitchen, and we'd sit in the sunlight streaming into our new breakfast room, and we'd have a crackling fire in the fireplace, a chicken roasting in the shiny new stainless steel convection oven. But instead, we are in a rented apartment with rented beige furniture. And in the sleepless timelessness of baby daze, I forgot to get Christmas and Hannukah presents for my husband until the very last minute, so we aren't opening gifts today, and I'm feel like a horrible, thoughtless wife. Time just....got away from me.

But I did manage to get a tree, because mah baby was not going to have her first Christmas without a tree. Even if she can't even really see it. It's definitely her tree, too. Can you spot the H'es for Helene?
Here's one. Yes, she will be this spoiled forever. It's our new lifelong mission.

Merry Yule and a happy Christmas to all.

Self-indulgent whining and gratuitous cute baby photos

2008-12-17T18:46:00.000-05:00

Self-indulgent whining:

I have to realize that there are some days I will not get out of the house. Yesterday, it was due to the baby's imminent need to eat, and the fact that my husband had the car keys with him at work. There we were, all car-seated up and ready to go on a super-exciting outing to Whole Foods, when I realized....no car keys. We put down the grocery list, took off our eleventeen layers of clothing, fed Helene, and watched a movie instead.

I hate the blurry-soft, serene woman in this breastfeeding how-to video. I sincerely hope that she has sore nipples.

I am absolutely committed to breastfeeding, but damn, it's tough. I knew it could be/would be hard; I knew that lots of women I know had a very difficult time with it at first. I haven't really even had that hard of a time, based on stories that I have heard. But I don't think anyone really tells you how painful/challenging/frustrating/overwhelming it can be, even when you ARE doing everything right. The first few days were fine, and bearable, but even though Helene was getting more than adequate nutrition, and was sucking like a champion little Hoover, we weren't getting a premium latch, and my nipples were a little, well, chewed (you'd be awfully surprised at how pointy little newborn gums are). I definitely did the right thing by going to a lactation consultant when Helene was five days old. She helped us with the latch-on, and did confirm that it would probably still feel kind of uncomfortable or painful some of the time, but that it should feel better at other times, and should get better. It has gradually gotten better, due to another check-in with the consultant, and a precious little container of miraculous all-purpose nipple cream. But I'm still not on board with the La Leche folks and others who blithely proclaim "breastfeeding should feel good!" Horseshit. I've downgraded it from "excruciating" to "uncomfortable/unpleasant" after a couple of weeks, and I think I'm about at "uncomfortable/not awful/sometimes neutral" right now. And we're doing things well. The baby has stellar diaper output (which is the only good way to measure input) and was gaining right on schedule at her last pediatric appointment. But my nipples are still awfully sensitive; the baby is sometimes fussy at feedings due to a fast letdown from one boob (she wants a drinking fountain and gets a fire hose, basically) and pops on and off, not latching on properly, which leads back to the sensitive, chapped nipple thing. She also wants to comfort suck sometimes, and is indignant that my boobs have the audacity to release milk, for god's sake, which leads to screeching, rejection of many pacifiers, and the sucking of my little finger for what seems like a long time, especially when all of this happens at 3:00 am, while I try to let my poor husband sleep in peace, because someone in this house has to actually get up and go to work. I may have to try the Soothie-on-boob effing genius solution that Amalah came up with, after having similar issues.

So, for all of you about to have babies. Breastfeeding: it can feel painful and icky decidedly not good even when you ARE doing things right, and may be tremendously frustrating and it will make you cry. Get thee to a lactation consultant ASAP and find some other breastfeeding women to whine to who will completely understand your pain and frustration.

Enough of that. Have some lovely cute squishy delicious baby photos instead.

Helene's birth story, Part II

2008-12-15T15:20:00.000-05:00

[To read Part I of Helene's birth story, click here.]

There were a couple of bumps in the road, however. Unusually, there was another woman in labor at the same time. This rarely happens. It's not a problem because there are two birthing rooms, but the "family room" where relatives and friends can wait was kind of crowded. There was also a hot water issue. As in, it wasn't hot. It was barely lukewarm. Oh my hell, I had to get in that damn tub. Suzanne and the midwives marshaled the staff, and got them to start filling buckets from another sink where the water was hotter. Suzanne asked if I minded if one of the staff members came in and out with buckets of water. I didn't care who came in and out, especially if they had HOT WATER. They'd all seen birth before. Inhibitions at this point? None. While the tub filled, I got on the sofa on my knees, and bent over the sofa arm. Seth stayed right by me, and did an awesome job helping me to keep breathing deeply through each increasingly strong contraction. Seth made sure that I set up the camera for him, and wanted to be sure the flash was on if it was dark out when the baby arrived. Suzanne said, ”Oh no. You’ll probably see your baby long before it’s dark.” So hard to believe! It was hard to look beyond the immediacy of all this physical effort and remember that there would be a baby, a little tiny wiggling breathing baby. Finally, the tub was full. I could not peel off my clothes fast enough. I dropped them on the floor, and staggered to the tub.

I couldn't get comfortable at first. It didn't feel great to be on my back, so I tried flipping over to hands and knees. I didn't think I could sustain that, so I went back to lying down, and trying to move my hips back and forth.

I also had to have IV antibiotics, as I had tested Group B Strep positive a few weeks before. One of the midwives, Ebony, came in to do my heplock and IV. For whatever reason, she had a hard time finding a vein. After stabbing me a couple of times with no success, Ebony fired herself and got Lisa Uncles, another midwife to try. Seth said later that he would have been pretty upset at all the needle sticks I got to get that heplock in, but in the throes of labor? It really didn't matter. The IV was finally in, and the antibiotics started.

The water was pretty warm, but not that hot. More staff members had been recruited by now, and they were rounding up whatever receptacles they could find to ferry hot water to the tub. Pots, pans, buckets, recycling bins - they were all in use. There was a regular parade in and out of the bathroom as women came in to refresh the hot water. Someone thought of the brilliant idea of heating water on the stove in the family room, so staff members were soon carrying steaming pots of water in with potholders and pouring it in the tub, like I was a giant pot of soup, simmering away. Contractions were more intense, closer together, and despite the hot water, I would shiver and shake from time to time. I suppose this was "transition," but I was never conscious of it being different; it was just more intense. I felt sort of burpy at times, but thankfully I never felt nauseous. Seth or Suzanne would hold my water bottle to my lips periodically to get me to drink. Midwife Lisa Ross stayed vigilant, sitting on the closed toilet lid.

We’d been hearing occasional noises from the woman laboring in the other birthing room. At some point in here there were three midwives in the bathroom with me, as well as Seth and Suzanne. Suddenly, we heard what sounded like a blood-curdling, long drawn out scream. Seth said, “Was that screaming?” Midwives Ebony and Lisa Uncles glared hard at him and said, “Oh no. That had to be the wind. It’s very windy outside. Definitely the wind.” Seth started to say something like “I don’t think so” but was silenced by the looks from the midwives. [Ebony and Lisa, thanks. I knew that it was the woman in labor in the next room screaming, but I appreciated your efforts.] I wasn’t going to scream – I’m just not a screamer. It also seemed like a dramatic waste of energy.

I started feeling intense pressure with each contraction that felt like it was in my rectal region. The contractions were so intense now; it was all I could do to keep breathing and gasping and rocking my hips through each one. I kept gasping “The pressure!” and sometimes “It hurts!” Seth was right there, holding my hand, and telling me I was doing great, and offering me sips of water. Lisa asked if I was into a water birth. I said it sounded good to me. It was hard to imagine getting out of the tub at this point. Suzanne and Lisa asked if I felt like I wanted to push. “I’m not sure. I just feel so much pressure.” They advised me to try with the next set of contractions. I think they could see me hesitating or holding back, so they broached the whole poop subject. Yes, I did want to know what they did when, um, other things came out during pushing. Well, they have a little fine mesh net on a long wire handle; the kind you would use to scoop goldfish out of an aquarium. And the offending matter, like dead goldfish get scooped out and then flushed. Brilliant. That question was answered; I was at ease. I could try to push.

With each contraction that came now, I tried to push. I was blowing too much breath out, breath that could be focused downward to push the baby out, so Suzanne helped me to breathe and focus the energy of my pushing with each contraction. My water finally broke with a pop and a gush after a couple of pushes. It was relief, but not as much as I had hoped. I don’t know how long I pushed. I know that after several contractions, I started wondering when I would feel the head moving down, feel the burning of my flesh stretching, feel the baby turning to emerge. I felt like I was pushing well, but felt impatient that not enough was happening. “Tell me I can do this,” I said to Seth and Suzanne. Sometime in here, Seth said I looked like I did at Mile 20+ of the New York Marathon – he knew I was strong and I was going to finish. Midwife Lisa said that she wanted to do an internal exam to be sure I was fully dilated and that there was no lip of cervix in the way that would interfere with pushing. I’d been hesitant to have unnecessary internal exams, but decided this was probably the time to be sure. Lisa came to the tub to check me. First, she listened for the baby’s heart rate with a Doppler. She found the heartbeat higher in my belly than she’d expected; the baby should be further down. But the heartbeat was regular and strong. After some long, uncomfortable seconds, Lisa announced that I seemed to be the full ten centimeters dilated, and that there was no cervical lip. But… but… “I’m not feeling the back of the baby’s head. I’m not sure what I’m feeling and I want a second opinion.” I thought that maybe the baby was flipped over “sunny side up” or that she was brow or face first, and thought, that’s OK, I’m sure I can still push her out. I can get out of the tub, I can squat to open my hips, I can do it.

Midwife Lisa Uncles came in, and asked me to get out of the tub and onto the bed so it would be easier for her to do the internal exam. Everyone helped me up out of the tub and got me over to the bed. It was excruciating to lie down on the bed, after being able to float a little in the warm water. Lisa U. asked me not to push while she did the exam; I had to puff and blow out my breath. Not pushing was incredibly difficult; I was fighting against the powerful ripple of the contractions, against everything that my body wanted to do. It was agony while Lisa U. poked and probed. Seth was next to me on the bed. The other midwives were gathered in the room. Lisa U.’s brow furrowed. After what seemed like long minutes, she announced, “That’s a butt. This baby is breech.” There was a shocked silence in the room; I saw the shock and disbelief on the face of all the midwives and Suzanne. “What?” I gasped. “How is that possible? She was head down for weeks.” I waited for someone to tell me differently, to tell me it was OK, to tell me it wasn’t really true. Seth’s head collapsed onto my shoulder. In a soft voice, Lisa U. said “We can’t deliver breech babies here.” I started to sob, because I knew that already. I knew what a breech baby meant. There was one option, and only one: a transfer to the hospital for a Cesarean section. It was one of my worst fears, my worst labor nightmares. It was everything that I had chosen midwives and a birth center to avoid. The midwives hustled into action, and hurried out of the room. “We need a plan,” said Lisa Ross.

I wanted to collapse and give up. I wanted it to be over. I wanted the contractions to stop. Someone told me not to push. It was horrible, fighting against the downward tide of those strong contractions. Since I knew what was inevitable, I wanted the epidural or the anaesthesia, now, now, now, so I wouldn’t feel anything, so they could just get the baby out.

Suddenly the midwives were back. Lisa U. was giving me a shot “to stop the contractions.” “Terbutaline?” I whispered. She nodded. I felt it work almost immediately, the contractions slowing, slackening. It was a relief. Ebony was at my side, talking to me calmly. “We’ve called an ambulance to take you to the hospital. It should be here in fifteen minutes.” Midwife Lisa Ross would ride in the ambulance with me – only one person was allowed, and she wanted to be there in case the baby did come out during the ambulance ride. Seth and Suzanne would drive separately. Someone gave me my shirt; I didn’t know how I would possibly put on pants. Suddenly, the ambulance was there. There was a whirl of people around me, paramedics with a stretcher, Ebony wrapping my naked lower half in a sheet and a blanket, snapping at the paramedics that it was freezing outside. Lisa Ross was in coat and winter hat, at my side, my file tucked under her arm. They rolled me down the hall, through the big double doors that I remembered hearing about during my introductory session at the birth center. “If we need to transfer you, the ambulance backs up to those double doors, and we can get you in and to the hospital quickly.” I remember thinking I was glad they were there, but I was sure it was only a very remote possibility that I would use that particular feature of the birth center. Then I was in the shining, bright stainless steel interior of the ambulance, Lisa at my side, calm, her hand gently touching my leg. I don’t remember if they put the siren on. I just remember wanting to cry, having to fight the contractions, wanting to be numb, flashes of cold blue November sky and DC rowhouses at the ambulance window, the heat in the ambulance on too high, stifling. I went through all that for nothing, I thought as I quietly sobbed and huffed through another agonizing contraction.

Finally, finally, we were at Washington Hospital Center, and they rolled me through a maze of halls and doors and desks. We paused at one desk, and there were papers and a conversation, and a doctor appeared. “Good, it’s Dr. X. We like her,” whispered Lisa. For a second, I thought maybe, maybe they’d still let me try to push the baby out. But I knew better; no one delivers breech babies. And they rolled me into the bright cold white and steel of a large operating room. There seemed to be at least five people working on me. They got me onto a hard, narrow table. I had to sit, which was agonizing. Lisa got into scrubs, and stood right next to me, her hand on my leg or arm, calm and comforting, telling me quietly what would happen. They put IVs into both arms, I chugged a shot of strong antacid to counteract side effects of the anesthesia. I kept telling them when a contraction was coming, because I thought they needed to know, because they couldn’t expect me to keep still, couldn’t expect to stick needles in me while it was going on. I just wanted the epidural, whatever, as soon as possible, to stop the labor pain, to get this over with, to get the baby out, because she was ready to be born. Someone asked when I last had food or drink. There was some ridiculous discussion about how they didn’t have labels, so they couldn’t give me anesthesia yet. I writhed on the table, feeling amniotic fluid running everywhere, wondering if it would spoil the sterile environment. They wanted to draw blood for type and cross, and Lisa said impatiently that she had my blood type in the file. After more idiotic, ceaseless discussion of labels, someone could finally numb me up. A pinch in my back, and I felt the anesthesia working. I thought it was an epidural, but found out later it was a spinal block. Lisa told me that they would put up a drape, and that Seth was outside getting suited up in scrubs. They would only let him in right when the procedure began, because too many husbands had passed out just from seeing the prep. Lisa looked at me and commented that, hey, I didn’t get any stretch marks on my belly, just a few on my sides. She smiled. “At least that’s one good thing.”

They laid me on my back, and I could feel myself getting tingly and numb from the chest down. They gave me all kinds of consent forms to sign. It’s quite hard to write when you’re flat on your back and doped up with anesthesia. I’d like to see them prove in court that those signatures were legible or mine. Then I had to hold my arms out straight to my sides, palms up. The drape was put over me, right at my breastbone. A voice asked me whether I could feel various pokes and tickles. I could not. I was told I would feel pressure and tugging. Suddenly, Seth was there, by my head. I was impressed that he had remembered to bring the camera. They had already started. I didn’t even know. Pressure, tugging, athletic wrestling, it seemed so rough. Suddenly, I guess she was out, and Seth raised the camera, clicked the shutter. “The flash,” I whispered, because there had to be photos, because I could not see. Lisa heard me. “She wants you to turn on the flash.” Seth did. “Can I take a picture?” he asked the doctors. “Sure.” He took a couple of shots. I saw them days later – our little baby, bloody and wet, twine of umbilical cord still attached. I can’t even see my own body in the photos. I’m glad we have them, so I know what she looked like, because I missed it. Someone said, “5:26 pm.” Then, I could hear the insistent cries of a baby, somewhere across the room. They went on and on, so loud. I knew it was our baby, but it was so disembodied and far away. I didn’t feel anything. My body was numb. Everything was numb. Seth said, “Where’s my baby?” and left my head to go over to see her. She kept crying and crying. I wanted to see her so badly, wanted to touch her, wanted to hold her and stop her cries. But I was immobile on an operating table, hands pinned by IVs and the drape, still peeled wide open, doctors and nurses still working on me, examining my uterus, looking at the fibroids in there.

I was glad Seth was with the baby. He said that he gave her his finger and she grabbed it tight, and seemed to relax when he talked to her. I think someone announced her length and weight. I could hear the shutter click as Seth took photos. I saw later how her legs were folded straight up to her ears from being stuck in the frank breech position, a little yogini. Seth told me the nurses had a hard time swaddling her, because her legs kept popping back up to her ears. Then, Seth brought her to me, wrapped in a blanket. She seemed impossibly clean and tiny. I could only look at her, upside down. Lisa Ross took a couple of photos. In them, I am smiling. I know I didn’t get to see her long enough, right then.

The doctors were still working on me. Remembering something from our Bradley class, Seth asked whether they were using a double-layer stitch to sew me up. “What, are you a doctor?” someone scoffed. Seth told me later that he was thinking, no, asshole, this is just my wife’s body. Some minutes later, one of the doctors looked at me and said ”You can have a VBAC.” I knew that was good, but it was hard to process. I think they took the baby away at this point, and Seth went with her. Seth told me later that he counted her fingers and toes. They finished me up and moved me to a tiny recovery room somewhere. Lisa and Suzanne were there, and somehow, so were all of our bags and belongings from the birth center.

Then, finally, finally, they brought her to me. Helene. I could hold her, nurse her for the first time. She latched on with total determination, right from the beginning. She had fringes of hair, soft and golden, or was it a little red, like her namesake, Seth’s grandmother Helen? She was only six pounds, six ounces, petite and perfect. How could her fingernails be so tiny? Her head was round, skin smooth, unmarred, because there was no trip through the birth canal. They let me hold her and nurse her for an hour, Seth told me, before they took her to the nursery again for more tests. It felt like a mere few minutes, not long enough.

***

It’s hard to know where to end this, because there was no satisfying conclusion to Helene’s birth. I didn’t get to triumphantly push her out. Seth didn’t get to catch her. She wasn’t placed immediately on my chest, for me to hold her while she was still connected to me by the umbilical cord. I don’t know whether she had any vernix on her skin. We didn’t get to see or feel the umbilical cord pulse. Seth didn’t get to cut it. I only know what she looked like right after birth from the few photos that Seth thankfully took. Seth said later that he felt like he went from an active, important participant in his baby’s birth to a guest star, costumed and hustled onto the stage at the last minute just for the big reveal.

I am comforted by the fact that she was ready to be born. It was time for her to come into the world. She decided that. I am proud that I went all the way through labor – I did everything but push her out. I could have pushed her out, had she just been turned the right way. We would have had our baby in our arms earlier that afternoon, would have gone home with her that night. She didn’t have any drugs throughout labor, her heart rate was strong and steady the entire time, there are benefits to the baby going through labor, she didn’t have any of the possible negative effects of a Cesarean. I know all of that, but I am still haunted. Because I don’t know exactly when she turned from her head-down position (sometime between our 38-week exam and 39 weeks, 5 days), or why she turned. Shouldn’t I have felt it? Shouldn’t someone have known? Could I have done something? I know that the rational answer to all of those questions is “no,” and that this was an unusual, practically freak occurrence. I am now a statistic. But none of that stops my irrational, emotional heart from wanting a different outcome, a do-over of Helene’s birth.

The days in the hospital are a blur of pain, discomfort, tears, anxiety, fitful sleep, streams of doctors, nurses, interruptions. The debilitating pain that I felt the day after the birth was so far beyond anything I experienced in labor. I couldn’t even sit up in bed unassisted to nurse my new baby. I can’t understand anyone choosing this invasive procedure without a clear medical reason. The best, shining thing in those awful days was Helene. Our reason for existing in those days was to keep her alive, warm, changed, fed, comforted, loved. She hardly spent time in the hospital bassinet, because I couldn’t stand for her to be away from me. I would fall into a deeper sleep feeling her tiny breaths against me. She comforted me with her compact warmth and the very fact of her existence as she slept in on my body, just inches of flesh and blood away from where her life had begun.

The albatross has flown

2008-12-11T17:39:00.006-05:00

That, my friends, is the infamous albatross gas meter, now located as planned on the OUTSIDE of our house. I have no idea what it took to wrestle this thing out here, and I don't care. I just know it's done. Victory. It gives me faint, renewed hope about this house project being completed in 2008.

And there are actual cabinets in our kitchen. It is starting to look like an actual kitchen again instead of a gutted wreck.

I am also currently obsessing about the location of the hand towel rack in the basement bathroom. As if I didn't have enough things to lose sleep over (newborn, hello?) I can't stop thinking about this damn hand towel rack. It's currently located between the sink and the shower. I think it's too low, and I think it's sort of in the way of the shower, and I think I need to have it moved, and I think that will confirm yet again to the contractor that I am indeed completely obsessive compulsive. I also e-mailed him earlier in this process about other things that were keeping me awake at night, such as an 18-inch wine refrigerator shown on a diagram when we had ordered a 15-inch one; such as scanned photos and several links to specific tiles for kitchen backsplashes; such as oh my god I can't sleep because someone inadvertently said we had "mocha" cabinets when the damn color had better actually be "cappucino" because I based everything in my life on the "cappucino" color and I am hormonal and pregnant and if there are any changes I'm going to throw a fit like you have never seen before.
Yeah. I've noticed that the contractor doesn't e-mail me like he used to anymore.

Helene's birth story, Part I

2008-12-08T17:04:00.001-05:00

[Because this has ended up being long-winded, I'm breaking it up into two parts. I also need to, uh, finish writing the second part. ]

Tuesday, November 18, 2008. I worked from home all day, trying to wrap up some last-minute things. I optimistically told my supervisor that I would be in on Thursday (my last official day of work). to drop off some files, and that she'd see me then, "unless of course, the baby decides to do something else." I had a backache on and off all day, and wondered whether that meant what I thought it might mean.

Seth's parent's had arrived in town the day before. They came over to the apartment on Tuesday night for dinner. Seth and his mom embarked on putting together the changing table and the co-sleeper. I was feeling quite insistent about having those DONE at this point, because the nagging backache was still present, and I thought I was beginning to have some actual contractions. I had told Seth about the backache earlier, but we decided not to tell his parents, because we didn't want them getting too excited over something that might not be it. Seth and his mom were busy for a couple of hours putting everything together. I puttered around and unpacked various baby-related accessories from their boxes and put them in our bedroom and on the shelves under the changing table. I was having occasional, irregular stronger contractions, ones that I really had to breathe through. When I was in another room alone, I experimented with breathing and changes of position to see what might make me feel better. I was dying to tell Seth, but again, I was afraid of being The Girl Who Cried Labor if this wasn't it and the contractions petered out in a couple of hours.

Seth's parents finally left around 11:00, and I could finally tell Seth what I was feeling. He was excited, and said we should call our doula, Heather. I was more hesitant, not wanting to assume this was it. I called Heather at 11:30, and told her I'd had a backache all day, and that I was having what I thought were some irregular contractions. She advised me to do what I was thinking about doing anyhow - take a couple of Tylenol for the pain and try to get some sleep. [Several days later, when recapping all of this with Heather, I said I'd really had to breathe through the contractions at this point, and that I was occasionally getting on my hands and knees. She exclaimed,"You didn't tell me that! I wouldn't have told you to take Tylenol and go to bed!" I reminded her that I had a tendency to understate things, and that I didn't want to be wrong about it being actual labor. Heather just shook her head.] I did take Tylenol, and try to sleep, because I knew I would need all the rest I could get if this were the real thing. It was hard not knowing if it was for real, and how long it would take.

I didn't get much sleep. Contractions were coming perhaps every 10-20 minutes, and again, it did take a lot of concentration to breathe through them. I was also arching and curving my back in bed, like "cat - cow" in yoga, which seemed to help. I tried to just relax, rest and snooze between them, but I'm not sure how successful that was.

Wednesday, November 19. At around 5 or 5:30 I simply could not lie in bed any longer. It was too uncomfortable. I decided to get in the tub to see if that would make it easier. I ran a hot bath, and lay in the tub for a good hour, rocking my hips back and forth gently in the water with each contraction. Either I woke Seth up or he woke up around 6:30 - I don't remember. The contractions were definitely stronger and more regular. He wanted to call Heather and our midwives, but I wanted some actual data on the contractions before calling them, so we'd have something useful to tell them. Groggy with sleep, Seth got the laptop, and sat on the floor of the bathroom using the Contraction Master website to time the contractions. They were coming anywhere from 10 to five minutes apart, and were all lasting about a minute. We timed for close to an hour, and then I got out of the tub and made our phone calls.

I could hear something in Heather's voice as soon as I called her. "I'm so sorry, but one of my other clients also went into labor. She's 11 days overdue, and she's further along. I can't believe this - it never happens! I'm going to call my backup, Suzanne, and have her call you. She'll come to you if you want, and I'll come to you as soon as I can." It was in our contract with Heather that if, for some reason, she could not be present, she would have a suitable doula backup. As soon as I got off the phone, Seth asked with some anxiety "Is she going to help us?" having heard my end of the conversation. "She's calling her backup, who will call us." There was nothing to be done, and it wasn't worth getting upset about. We would just have to go with it and trust this person. I then called the midwives at the birth center. Helen, the midwife on call, called me back. She said it sounded like I was in active labor, but that it was a bit too early to come to the birth center. I could come in if I wanted to, just to be checked, but the odds were that they would send me home. I didn't want to have to get in the car and submit to the uncomfortable internal exam just for some information that might not be terribly useful, so I declined. I'd labor at home (well, our temporary home) until it was really time to go in.

The contractions were getting more intense. I was kneeling on the floor, and bending over a chair to cope with them. Suzanne, our doula backup called me at around 8:30. A second before she called, I'd had one contraction that was suddenly longer and more intense than all the previous ones. Before that, I had been thinking that I could cope for a while longer without doula support, but after that contraction, holy crap, I definitely wanted Suzanne to come as soon as possible. We had scheduled our cleaning service to come that morning, and before that contraction, I had thought (far too optimistically), oh, we can just go for a walk around the neighborhood while they clean for an hour. But no way, not after that one intense surge. We called to cancel the cleaning service. They understood.

Sometime in here I knew I should try to eat something so I had energy for what could be many long hours of labor. I couldn't think about chewing, so Seth made fruit & yogurt smoothies in the blender. I figured that if I felt nauseous, a smoothie also wouldn't be so bad if it came back up (nice logic, eh?).

Suzanne arrived around 10:00 am, and put us right at ease. She told us she'd been a doula for about five years, that she had done a lot of births at the birth center, and that she taught classes there as well as teaching a Bradley class in our neighborhood. She was just so calm and competent, and we were so glad she was there, because we were amateurs at this labor thing and didn't know what the hell we were doing. I was still on my knees, resting my head on the sofa, and with my next contraction, Suzanne did some kind of fabulous deep lower back rub that felt soooo good. Contractions were crazy, because I was just totally consumed by them for the minute or so that they lasted, and they took all my concentration to breathe and rock through them. Then, in between, I felt completely normal, and could sit down on the sofa or floor and carry on a real conversation. Suzanne helped me slow my breathing through each contraction, and try to stay on top of it. She also got out her rice beanbags, which she heated in the oven and placed on my lower back to ease the pain of each contraction - also really great. I was really feeling the contractions in my lower back, and worried that the baby had flipped "sunny side up." Suzanne said that was just the way a lot of people felt contractions. It was so comforting to have someone there who had been through labor with women lots of times before and who knew what would make me feel better. Seth tried rubbing my back also, and he got pretty good at it, but honestly, not as good as Suzanne. The contractions were coming pretty steadily. Both Suzanne and Seth were right there, rubbing me and helping me to breathe and telling me I was doing great.

Around noon, Suzanne suggested that we try to eat something. Seth and Suzanne had lunch, and I managed half a banana. I kept trying to sip water and stay hydrated. I felt strong. We tried using an exercise ball to see if I could sit on that and labor, but there was no way - I just could not sit on it, and felt too much pressure in my lower parts. Back to hands and knees. Around 12:30, Suzanne threw out some options. We could try to go for a walk to keep labor moving, or we could try going to the birth center to see if I was far enough along to get in the labor tub there. I wasn't sure I could walk around, so we decided to call the birth center to let them know we wanted to come in. Seth spoke to the midwife on call, and she cautioned us that I needed to be at least four centimeters dilated for them to allow me to stay at the birth center. Suzanne was confident that I was at least that far - I was in good active labor, and she would bet that I was five centimeters.

Now, we just had to get there. The thoughts of (1) walking, and (2) riding in a car were near to unimaginable. Seth had loaded most of our bags and birth accessories in the car earlier, so we were pretty well ready to go. Somehow, I got my coat and shoes on, Suzanne stuffed some just-heated rice beanbags into my pants to soothe my aching lower back, and we walked out of the apartment. Suzanne advised me to sort of sway as I walked, in a staggering, drunken conga sort of motion, to ease the contractions, and to sway my hips when I stood. It did help, and I managed to walk to the elevator, hoping I didn't have to walk this way in front of too many people.

There are only about 20 or 30 residents in this new apartment building that we are staying in. We never, ever run into anyone in the elevator. Except for THIS DAY, of all days. Incredibly, the elevator stopped at a lower floor and a woman got on. It took her about five seconds to look us up and down, and exclaim "Oh! She's in labor!" I grinned (grimaced? snarled?) and said "Uh huh!" Since I was breathing heavily and shifting rapidly from foot to foot and visibly very pregnant, it was either that or I really had to pee. The woman looked kind of flustered at that point, and accidentally got off on a different floor than she meant to. She then almost halted the elevator to get back on and go to her intended floor, but wisely thought better of it, and stepped off to let us continue our journey to the parking garage.

I had no idea how I was going to ride in the car. Sitting was not possible - I just felt too much pressure in my nether regions. Seth and Suzanne had figured it out though, and Seth set up the car for me. He moved the front passenger seat all the way forward and put a towel on the floorboard of the back seat so I could kneel on it, facing backwards, and bend over the bench of the back seat. I crawled in and started to sway my hips side-to-side for all I was worth, because I knew it was the only way I was going to make it through the car ride. The birth center is only a fifteen minute drive from the apartment, but it was an eternal-feeling fifteen minutes. Damned if they were going to send me home again; I knew I could not take this car ride again.

I staggered/swayed/conga-ed into the birth center and into an exam room where midwife Lisa Ross was ready to check me. I couldn't sit or lie on the table, so she let me kind of perch on the edge while she did an internal exam. "Seven centimeters." Yes! I felt like I had just nailed a fast split time in a race, or scored a goal in an Ultimate game. I think I actually did a fist pump. I was kicking ass at this labor thing! They were going to let me stay and get the hell into the birth tub!

[For Part II of Helene's birth story, click here.]

Le chapeau

2008-12-06T14:09:00.005-05:00

[Note: I don't speak French at all, except for the phrase "menage a trois" which also happens to be the name of quite a delicious white wine, so if my article or gender or something is wrong in the blog title (does French have genders?) you'll please excuse it.]

So, Grandma Fran dusted off her crochet skills to make Helene a hat. This was actually quite necessary, since all the hats we have for the baby end up sliding down over her entire little pin head and rattling around her neck. She has probably inherited her mother's small noggin (I buy kid-sized baseball caps, y'all). Not only did Fran crochet a hat, she used YouTube to do it. She found a video showing how to make a baby hat, and away she went. I think my mother in law is now the first person I know to use YouTube for a useful, productive purpose. Who knew it could be done?

The making of the hat.
The trying on of the hat.
The final fitting of the hat. Helene is so thrilled, she could just....sleep.

Oh right, our HOUSE

2008-12-03T19:26:00.008-05:00

Huh. Yeah. We did have this other Really Big Thing going on in our lives. It was eclipsed by the lovely daze of New Babyness which comes with Massive Sleep Deprivation Haze mixed with Total Emotional Overload and Inability to Get Dressed (Even In Yoga Pants) By Noon or to Get Anything Else Done.

So, we have remembered that we haven't always been cocooned in this modern beige high-rise apartment, and that we do in fact own a quite nice 1895 Capitol Hill rowhouse that is being renovated within an inch of its life. After calling Seth about shower heads and paint colors on the day Helene was born, our contractors considerately left us alone for about a week when Seth tersely explained, "Can't talk now. Had BABY." But now they actually want decisions on stuff so they can, you know, FINISH OUR DAMN HOUSE.

We went by the house today with some paint chips so we could choose paint colors for the powder room and sun room. (We actually spontaneously LEFT THE APARTMENT today for AN ENTIRE HOUR. BY OURSELVES. While Grandma Fran watched the baby sleep. We are living on the edge here, let me tell you.) If I weren't still in a slight stupor from days of not-quite-enough-sleep, and didn't have a still slightly sore C-section incision, I would have been goddamn jumping up and down and howling with sheer ECSTASY over the fact that OUR KITCHEN CABINETS HAVE BEEN DELIVERED. I did what I could with excitement, and tried to stay well out of the workers' way so they could WORK (faster, please??). We were told by our contractor that once the cabinets were delivered, it would be three weeks to completion. It had better fucking be, or I am no longer responsible for what cranky postpartum hormonal female velociraptor-esque rage that could be unleashed.

But Progress. There is Progress. Light at the end of the tunnel. Hope, and all that crap.

Kitchen - all drywalled and just waiting for our pretty, pretty kitchen cabinets.
Random sort of angle showing the basement bathroom. Still needs a sink. I hope I actually like the paint color. I almost don't care anymore.

OMFG, the basement looks almost DONE. Like an actual, like, room, in an actual, like house, that people, like live in and stuff. Except for the albatross, I mean gas meter in the left hand corner. This thing is supposed to be moved to the exterior of the house. This little project was started in, oh, June. Somehow, our contractor's people broke the old, crusty shutoff valve which is a little bit of a problem when you're working with flammable noxious fumes. Our contractor was not amused when I suggested painting it shiny fire-engine red and keeping it as a decorative element. At least I know he wants to get rid of it about as much as I do.
And the back of our house has returned, all new and improved. With a nice deck and non-deathtrap stairs too.
We are soooo, close people. We keep telling Helene what a great house we're working on for her. Just think of all the new and improved rooms she'll be sleepily oblivious to.

The baby, in sum, Day 9

2008-11-28T18:45:00.006-05:00

1. Baby Helene is the cutest thing ever.

2. She is also doing fabulously, according to our pediatrician visit earlier this week. The hospital staff about scared us to death at checkout over borderline jaundice and almost 10% of body weight lost and you must wake the baby every two hours to feed her or certain doom will follow, and had me frantically squeezing breastmilk into the baby while we got teary and worried about just keeping her alive and well. Our pediatrician, however, was delighted to see that Helene was within 3 oz. of her birth weight only 5 days after birth, saw no signs of jaundice, assured me that I must have plenty of milk for her to be doing so well, and generally gave us a gold star for everything.

3. She is a rather petite little flower, as evidenced by the fact that most of the "newborn" sized things we have are just billowing on her. After our pediatrician visit, we decided to act like normal people and go to the Starbucks on the corner (coffee, dark, delicious coffee, that no longer gives me heartburn!). Seth was carrying the baby in a sling, and when I lifted her out with her legs dangling, her wee pants and her diaper just slid right off. So, there we were in Starbucks, with a half-naked baby just dangling over one of the tables, giggling hysterically and hoping that she didn't, ahem, excrete anything before we could get our act together and put some clothing back on her.

4. Helene is a good baby. So far, she only fusses or cries when something is needed, like a diaper change, or a feeding. She mostly sleeps. Sometimes she's wide awake for awhile, which kind of surprises us, because we are used to seeing her sleep peacefully when she isn't eating or being changed. My father in law keeps joking and asking, where is the real baby? This must be a robot starter baby who is just too easy, and the real baby will arrive soon.

5. Did I mention the cutest thing ever? And that I sometimes find myself with tears running down my face because I just love her so much, and the feeling just swallows me whole, like an ocean wave, and leaves me gasping with its hugeness?

Baby Helene

2008-11-24T21:00:00.005-05:00

She's finally here. Helene Marie Stewart Kaufman came into the world at 5:26 pm on November 19, 2008. At birth, she was 6 lbs. 6 oz. and 19 inches long.

I've finally felt recovered and settled enough to have a little time to write. Plus, Grandpa Allan is holding the baby.

Her birth wasn't what we had planned or expected; I'll post her full birth story later. But in short, what was planned as a natural birth in a birth center, and what started with a relatively fast unmedicated full labor, ended with a surprise breech baby who must have flipped from her head-down position shortly before or during labor, a transfer to a hospital, and a Caesarian section. It was far from our ideal, and we are still struggling with the emotional impact of the events.

We are focusing on our amazing, beloved little girl, which is easy, as our whole hearts belong utterly to her. She is delicate and compact, with slender little fingers, golden-fine fringes of hair, and rosy-smooth skin.

I literally can't hold her enough. Looking at her and realizing she will grow up brings me to tears. My heart hurts every time she cries. I am utterly floored by how much I love her.

39 weeks - and waiting....

2008-11-15T10:15:00.003-05:00

I had some really clever title for this post last night before I fell asleep, but it's gone. Poof. Into the amniotic ether. But yes, here I am. Still pregnant. Kind of tired of the incredulous looks and exclamations when I tell people my due date is 10, 9, 8, 7, 6 days away. I guess I should be happy that no one has said, Oh my god you're so BIG. I don't really feel that big (except when trying to get in/get out/roll over in bed - for some reason those things are AMAZINGLY DIFFICULT. And require a lot of grunting.). I was in the office for a couple of hours the other day (I'm working mostly from home now, primarily so I don't have to actually get dressed and can wear stretchy maternity yoga pants allllll the time) and I felt like such a spectacle, as everyone and their assistant asked when the due date was, when my last day of work was, if I was feeling OK. My goodness. A co-worker who sits in an adjoining officle (cubicle + door = officle) overheard me tell someone it was 9 days until my due date. She came literally running over after he left, and seemed quite alarmed about me being in the office when I could clearly have a baby at any second! Right here in this office, on the ugly carpet! She is in at least her late 40's, unmarried, no children. And she has watched waaaay too many movie/TV representations of labor. "Do you have a suitcase here at work?" No, because I'm not really working here at the office, and I live five minutes away. "Do you have a backup emergency plan if you go into labor here?" Uh, no, because again, I live five minutes away, my birth place is 10 minutes away, my husband works in the building, most women go into labor at night in the safety of darkness, and labor is generally long. Loooooong. (Unless of course you are my friend Janine whose babies slide out in 2 hours or less and walks around 8 cm dilated with no discernible contractions. But she's extra-speshul, and her genes are going to kick all of our genes' asses.) "Well, I'm right over here if you need anything." Yes, and I will definitely turn to you instead of say, my husband, or my doula, or a trained childbirth professional. Thanks. I know she means well, but come on.
The belly is definitely full up. Sometimes the baby stretches, and it's almost painful as my skin pulls taut, I think, there is just no more room in there. And ow, as a little heel or elbow thrusts out with surprising power. I haven't really felt like OMG get out this very second get out but I will be glad to reclaim whatever is left of my body. I just want to eat, y'all. Like a full dinner, with spicy food, and a whole entire beer and dessert, and no goddamn heartburn and burping. I have definitely had it with those very special touches of pregnancy.

Sometimes, as I lie in bed, I can feel my "old" body underneath, my hipbones, my abs. I know it's in there, and it will be ready again someday soon to take me on a run, carry the baby to Eastern Market, lift her up in the air to let her look around. It just has a little more work to do first.

We think we're ready. Seth keeps talking to the baby and telling her she can come out now. I reached sort of a peaceful, still place about it a couple of weeks ago, realizing I was ready to give myself over to labor whenever it happened. The baby clothes are all washed, our bags are packed for the birth center, the baby is head down, face down, in optimal position for labor (high five, baby!), we actually installed the car seat correctly (apparently we are baby seat installation geniuses). Massage, relaxation, Bradley method, yoga, Happiest Baby, breastfeeding - we've taken classes, read, practiced, breathed.

And of course, when we got this baby sling as a gift, we immediately put the dog into it to try it out, because who doesn't do that? After the trial run, we're glad the baby will be smaller. And less hairy.

Ur chaos - let us show u it

2008-11-05T21:37:00.000-05:00

I had a conversation the other day with one of my bosses in which he asked about how the baby's room was coming along. I said that we could not do much because our house was "under construction." With a skeptical look on his face he asked me what I meant by "under construction." His eyebrows went up further with every minute that I talked, describing the various phases/stages/incarnations of construction all going on simultaneously in our house. I think he got it after that. So, for your viewing pleasure - the total house chaos.

Dining room.

Living room, looking towards the front door.
Living room, looking towards the dining room/kitchen.
Kitchen, looking towards the back yard.
Second floor bathroom.
Guest room/baby's room. Note superabundance of pink baby clothing and baby accessories in foreground.
Master bedroom. We thought they were going to have to knock a hole in the wall, but they think they aren't, so that's a plus.
Hallway and study.
On the brighter side, the back of our house is no longer gone. We love it. It looks great. Really, at this point, anything that is done and looks like a house is great. Our standards are very, very low. I didn't even have the energy to cover the basement. It looks much the same as last time, and is full of drywall and carpentry equipment for the upstairs. One of our contractor's employees does keep asking about my due date, which is nice, but then he asked whether the baby could hold off for a couple of months. I'm taking that as a joke.

The belly gets dressed up

2008-11-03T21:12:00.003-05:00

Me, Seth and the 36-week belly got all gussied up and went to our friends' Mike & Lisa's wedding. (Yes, for those of you counting, I am now at 37+ weeks. Yes, these photos were taken over a week ago. But I've been a little busy over here, you know, gestating, trying to pawn off work projects on other people, picking out cabinet knobs for the kitchen, and napping. Mmm, napping. V. important. Wins out over updating the blog pretty much every time. Sorry.)

My friend Anna is also pregnant - 17 weeks along in our joint belly photo. I think I win.

Seth has had a glass of wine or two and rubbed my belly throughout the night at every chance (was it something about the alluring drape of the red polyester Motherhood Maternity cocktail dress??). And also offered up my belly for rubbing to other wedding guests. His entree to our friend Cat: "So, you wanna feel the baby's butt?" She declined.

Attack of the belly cast

2008-10-30T18:35:00.002-04:00

So, I've switched from my Upper NW Washington rich-white-yuppie-woman OB practice to a midwife practice at the DC Developing Families Center which has a decidedly more diverse clientele. The mission of the Center includes performing outreach to low-income and minority women, lowering DC's appalling infant mortality rate, and providing first-class, woman-centered midwife care to any woman of any income level who needs or wants it. I described the setting of the Center as "super-urban" to someone recently. It's housed in a converted Safeway, near a big strip mall, off of some busy streets with no trees in a part of Northeast DC that most people don't really have any reason to go to. I was a little apprehensive the first time I went there, even though it's a 5-minute drive from my Capitol Hill street. There's a security buzzer to get into the building. The waiting room is full of young women and men, small children and babies, pregnant women. Most are black. A few are not. I wondered if this place was for me.

After an appointment with a midwife, and speaking at an orientation session with a couple more midwives, and with some of the peer counselors who work at the Center, I realized what an amazing place it is. Midwives, on the whole, are passionate about and utterly devoted to their profession. They really feel called to it. I haven't met a midwife yet who was "eh" about her job, despite the odd hours, middling pay, and sometimes fanatical opposition and non-cooperation from OBs. And these midwives have their door open to anyone. No money, lots of money, insurance, no insurance, they treat anyone.

Which is how I found myself a few weeks later in a classroom with a couple of other thirty-something white and Asian pregnant women, a couple of black pregnant teenagers and their moms, a few tired-looking 20- or 30-something pregnant women with other children in tow, and a few visibly uncomfortable husbands and boyfriends. The Center does a lot of its prenatal checkups in group sessions: if you're due in November, you come in every other Wednesday from 2-4 pm. You sign in, and then head to a conference room with the other women, where there's an educational session of some kind. It could be peer counselors giving breastfeeding tips, or one of the midwives talking about all of the possible post-baby birth control options. I was skeptical about the group sessions, over-informed, over-Googled Type A that I am, but truly, I learned something at each one. It was also crazy to realize that I was a full eighteen years older than the gorgeous pregnant girl across the table from me with a similar due date, and if my life were different, I could be her mother. And then I traded premature contraction hospital visit stories with the 17-year old and her family. We're all just a bunch of pregnant chicks here, going through all the same things.

The midwives and other birth center staff want to make all of the women who come there feel positive about their pregnancies, no matter the circumstances. You're not maligned for being a pregnant teenager -- a peer counselor who was also a teenaged mom talks to you about her experiences, the midwives educate you on how to control your fertility in the future, the center offers pediatric care after your baby is born, and at each session they make sure there are snacks and water. I wonder if the young black women wonder what a white woman like me is doing there, and I want to tell them, it's because this is some of the best prenatal care in DC. These midwives are the best. You're so lucky to have them caring for you. I don't know if they know that.

Part of the pregnancy-positive celebration vibe includes the making of a belly cast at one of the group sessions. What's a belly cast? You can see some here. I'd seen them lining the halls of the birth center, white plaster and rainbows of paint drying, reminiscent of elementary school art projects. And frankly, they creeped me out a little. More than a little. I think it's because they look like plaster casts for broken bones, which always scared me as a child, because they meant someone was terribly hurt and broken and in pain. Disembodied mummy-casts of full breasts and bellies, marching down the shining tile floors of the birth center. I thought, oh, it's nice that some of the women want to do that. How fun for them. I definitely never thought, oh, I want one of those!

So, I was a bit surprised when I showed up recently for my Wednesday prenatal session, and found the conference room windows covered over with paper, and with large signs saying "NO MEN ALLOWED." In the room, all of the tables were rearranged and covered with butcher paper, as was the floor, and there were suspicious-looking tubs of water and strips of plaster. One of the teenagers, Cache, and her sister walked in after me, asking "Are we having group in here today?" "I guess." I answered. Then Cache said, "Oh, we're doing those belly cast things today." What? And I chose a seat in the furthest corner from the plaster and mildly panicked, eyeballing the art supplies like a spooked horse, because uh-uh, no f-ing way I am stripping down and anyone is plastering my belly. I AM SO NOT DOING THIS.

Fortunately, one of the midwives came into the room just then to call me for my checkup. It was short, and uneventful, other than the baby doing her usual attempt to escape from the Doppler check of her heartbeat. I walked back with the midwife towards the conference room, and she smiled, and said, "You're doing belly casts today! That's always such a special time." I nodded and smiled. And as soon as she was out of sight, I fled. Bolted. Ran. Out the door. Practically running to my car so no one would see me from the conference room. So I wouldn't set a bad pregnancy-negative example for the teenagers by ditching the belly cast class. I could not get out of there and away from that plaster fast enough.

What's it about, my visceral reaction to the belly casting? Aside from the general creepiness, I also wondered what in the world one does with the thing once it's done? I'm pretty open and relaxed and all, but I just don't see me hanging a mold of my giant pregnant boobs and belly on the wall. Perhaps if I were very talented and artistic, and could really paint it so that it was a stunning work of art, it could be hung. But really, I think mine would just end up in the trash.

I've also felt very "meh" about pregnant belly photos. Some of my friends have beautiful ones, and y'all know I am all about great artistic photos. I obsessively researched wedding photographers before choosing ours, who produced amazing, dreamlike photos of our day. Some of ours are even on her website. But I just can't muster the enthusiasm for the artistic pregnant belly photos for myself. Perhaps if my good friend Heather, who does this sort of thing professionally, lived nearby, and it were easy, I would do it. I even pondered Amalah's suggestion of the DIY pregnancy portrait, but well, I need a new tripod, and my clamp lights are somewhere in the construction zone, and, eh...too much effort. My friends all say they are so glad they have their photos. I keep probing myself to see if I think I'll have any regrets, and I don't think so. I've been documenting the belly growth pretty regularly in photos, so there's plenty of evidence of what it looked like and that I was indeed pregnant. (There are no photos of Seth's mom pregnant with him, which has led to lifelong taunts from his brother of "You were adopted. See, there are no photos of Mom pregnant with you." Seth still obsesses that this might be true, in particularly neurotic moments. I am not kidding.) Someone suggested recently that I make a flip book of the belly photos, which might be quite funny. That may be more my speed than something lovely and touching and artistic in sepia tones.

What does this mean about how I feel about my pregnancy? I don't know. I just don't love the whole experience, like some people say they do. It's not that bad. But not that great. The best part is feeling the baby move around in there, which is endlessly fascinating, as you wonder what in the hell possible pointy baby part was THAT. It's a means to an end. An end in which I get to wear real clothes again, reclaim my stomach and my bladder, and finally meet the mysterious little kicking nymph inside of me and hold her so gently in my arms.

We kind of wish we hadn't seen this

2008-10-20T21:20:00.006-04:00

There's just something about being eight months pregnant, displaced from your house, unsure when your house will be livable again, unopened baby accessories piling up in the temporary apartment because there is no place to put it away, you know....that makes it not exactly comforting to go visit your beloved under-renovation house and see that THE ENTIRE BACK WALL IS GONE.

We assume this situation will be remedied soon.

On the bright side, the new front window for our basement has finally been installed.

I think we'll just tally it all as "progress is being made." It makes us feel better than "holymotherfuckingshitwhatthehellhappenedtoourhouse???!!!"

My husband is a politics crack-whore

2008-10-09T11:50:00.006-04:00

It's been four years since the last presidential election, so I'd forgotten what it was like. I remember sleeping on the pull-out sofa in the living room to watch the election returns, and the deep, weeks-long malaise that Seth fell into after the country inexplicably re-elected Bush. But I really forgot. And it's true-my husband is a hardcore political junkie. I follow politics, but I have a finite capacity for the news, commentary, punditry, poll results, etc. Not Seth. He's whipped up into an MSNBC/Talking Points Memo/Daily Kos crack-mainlining frenzy. Sometimes, if he's not worked up enough, he turns on Fox News so he can really start foaming at the mouth. For the last few weeks, it's gone like this: I drag my tired pregnant ass off to bed at a reasonable hour. The dog tries to hang with Seth, but fails, and follows me to bed. A couple of hours later, I inevitably wake up because I have to pee, and I stumble out of the bedroom into the dual glow of the Mac and TV screens, into the drone of Keith Olbermann's voice, Seth still hunched over the computer, looking for more YouTube video of the last debate. Some hours after that, Seth finally drops into bed beside me.

He's even been home sick for the last couple of days. I've found him semi-comatose on the sofa, wrapped in a quilt and the voices of pundits. All of the pundits. Yesterday, he stayed home in the morning, and finally went to work around 1:00. When we got home after 6, he immediately turned on the TV and laptop so he could see what he'd missed in that precious five hours. "There might be POLL RESULTS!" I think he was twitching a little. I ask him "either/or" questions: Do you want a stir-fry or pasta for dinner? He answers "yes," eyes fixated on the computer screen, scrolling down the Kos website. Again.

Also yesterday, he said, "Why don't we make one last big donation to the Obama campaign?" We've been donating in smaller monthly increments. I asked him how much. He named a figure. I pointed out how many square feet of wood floor for our kitchen that would buy. We haggled it down to a number that would only be a nice kitchen faucet or 20-25 cabinet knobs and drawer pulls.

Part of him would be excited for the baby to be born on Election Day, but only if Obama wins. The other part of him realizes his head would explode if two such momentous events happened at the same time. God, Buddha, Allah, Krishna, or someone help us if there are election returns and labor going on at the same time. Someone is not making it out of that scenario intact or alive.

Last night, on my nightly 2-hours-into-sleep bathroom run, I asked Seth if he was coming to bed. I pointed out that he's been sick, and he needs to get some sleep. Not even looking up from the laptop, he whined like a petulant child, said he'd come to bed, and said, "But you know how I get in even-numbered years!"

Yes, I know. I'd forgotten, or maybe I was more forgiving in newly-engaged, ooh-sparkly ring!, haze of happiness four years ago than I am in the grunty, heavy, bladder-compressed-ness of late pregnancy. I hope I can tolerate another month of this, and it had BETTER have a good, ending, damn it, US voters, or there is going to be one surly, pregnant, white, uppity, East Coast, liberal elitist bitch gunning* for your ass.

*Not that I own any actual guns, being an afore-mentioned uppity white elitist type, despite the recent Supreme Court interference with DC's gun ban. But I'm quite sure I could do some solid damage to you with a breast pump.

Three Years/33 Weeks

2008-10-05T15:51:00.006-04:00

This past Wednesday was our third wedding anniversary. We did a low-key, nice-but-not-extravagant dinner out at a restaurant we've never been to before. I put on a maternity sweater that somehow makes me feel trim and chic; big, bright jewelry that distracts from my puffy ankles, and heels, because I will always be too vain to wear ugly/flat/comfortable shoes all the time. I looked longingly at the cozy, golden-lit bar in the front of the restaurant, and at the glittering flute of champagne that the bartender was pouring. I definitely feel at least 50% less fun these days, since I don't drink, my stomach is the size of a (flattened) walnut, and at least half of what I put into my stomach gives me heartburn, no matter what it is. Nonetheless, I managed to put away an appetizer of the lightest little puffs of delectable fried oysters, a rich Chesapeake seafood stew, and most of a piece of key lime cheesecake. When the waitress asked if she could take my dessert plate away, I leaned back in my seat, moaning, and replied, "Yes, please, before I hurt myself." Since I'm not drinking (more a factor of heartburn than paranoia), I make sure to order fancy bottled water, and harass Seth about what beverage he should order so I can taste it.

I spent some time thinking about the past three years, but perhaps more thinking about how different the next year is going to be. Three years seems like both a long time and a short time - I remember vividly our wedding, our honeymoon, and all the adventures - good and bad (mostly good, I have to say) - that have happened in between. What I think makes it seem long is the fact that I am PREGNANT, which means there will be a BABY in seven-ish weeks, which is still such a far-out concept for me to wrap my head around.

I look kind of mmm, puffy. And so thrilled to be here. I blame the photographer.
The whole experience is just so far from everywhere I have been and everything I have done until now. Last year at this time, I was deep into training for the New York City Marathon. On this day last year, I ran the Army 10-Miler, and then ran home to get in an extra 4 miles to hit my necessary weekly training mileage. Today, I tried to find a t-shirt that still covered my belly, went to the market with Seth, researched diaper bags, and got a pedicure because painting my own toenails is most definitely out of the question at this point. It's been an ambitious day - I feel pretty energetic. Unlike yesterday, when I just felt sapped of energy most of the day. It's not the total, soul-sucking fatigue of the first trimester, but I'm definitely draggy on some days. Sleep cannot be depended on. Last week, I felt like I was in a tussle of wills (already???!!!!) with the baby, who likes to curl herself along the right side of my uterus. I normally fall asleep on my left side, and will wake up a couple of hours later to flip over to my right because something has probably cramped or gone numb. Then I move whatever pillow is working for me that night, and do the cumbersome, slow-mo roll over to my right side, rearrange my limbs and belly on the pillows, and go back to sleep. Except that the baby was having NONE OF IT. Every time I would roll over to my right side, no matter how I propped my belly, the baby would kick and punch and wiggle until I just gave up and rolled back over to my left. I tried to sleep through it, but this would seriously go on for like ten minutes, and I just couldn't take it any more. Fine, fine! I'm rolling over! Are you happy? OK? And seemingly, she would be. This week, I'm allowed to sleep on my right side most nights, which has made for better sleep.

I also have some competition for my body pillow:

There is progress on our house. Of course, we wish it were faster. I really try not to think about it too much, because it would make me insane, and be a waste of energy, and I need all the energy I can get. I went over to the house yesterday for the first time in a few days to view the taking down of the back kitchen wall. This wall was originally an exterior wall, and our three-season porch was originally an open back porch. The porch will be our new kitchen eating area and mud room. I have to say, I love it. So much light comes in, and the sight line from the front to the rear of the house is great. It's going to be fantastic. (Here's the old kitchen, for comparison.)

We talk about all the photos we've taken of the house, to show the before and after. Seth has pointed out that the "new" Version 2.0 house will be the only one the baby ever knows. He can't wait to show her all the photos of the "old" house, to show her how we lived before she came along. I am sure that once the house is finished, and once she is here, it will feel like it has always been that way, and the photos may seem almost as distant to us as they will to her.

Fleeing the scene

2008-09-28T16:36:00.001-04:00

We have temporarily fled our under-construction house.

It all came about kind of quickly. Seth's parents were here about two weeks ago, to deliver the dog back to us for safekeeping while they are in England and Australia. They were also here to look at apartments. A second grandchild on a third continent has made for some geographic challenges for my in-laws. Their primary residence is currently in London, where they've lived for the last eight or so years. For awhile, Seth's brother, his wife, and Grandchild #1 also lived in London. Which was great for everyone - loads of free babysitting for my brother-in-law, and my parents-in-law could get their baby fix. A little over a year ago, my brother-in-law got a great job offer in Melbourne, Australia. Which he took. So, Grandchild #1 (and his parents) moved to Australia. My in-laws have been on several month-long visits in the last year, and there has been some lobbying from some members of the family to get us to move to Australia so that everyone could conveniently be on the same continent. We aren't going anywhere, especially not after the Great Renovation is done, so that part of my mother-in-law's fondest dream won't be fulfilled. Unless of course we win the lottery or someone offers us very lucrative sinecures in Melbourne.

So, now we've gone and made everything more complicated by having Grandchild #2 on a continent that is neither Europe nor Australia. Now, my in-laws are wondering if they want to move back to the U.S. permanently (they spend summers here), and if so, where? They're considering DC, in order to be as close to the shiny new grandchild as possible. They definitely want to be here for awhile when the baby is born (which we think is fantastic - these people definitely know a lot more about babies than we do and we know they'll make sure we can keep her alive), and kind of try out the area, so they've rented an apartment. Due to the ridiculous glut of high-rise condo and apartment buildings constructed in the blind optimism of the real estate boom, they were able to find a place that would give them a short-term lease. While they were here looking, they asked if we might want to stay in the place while our house was being worked on, and if so, they'd rent it right away. We deferred and said, no, we're fine. Really! We don't mind living in one room, eating dinner sitting on our bedroom rug (it's like a picnic!), having to turn off all the lights to run the microwave because otherwise it will overload the pathetic upstairs circuit, washing dishes in the tub, weaving around the boxes stacked to the ceiling....and what's a little construction dust on everything? It's an adventure! I think they were rightfully probably completely horrified at the way we were subsisting.

The tipping point was the dog. The sad, pathetic dog who just had cruciate ligament surgery, requires a whole regimen of pills and supplements to treat his Cushing's disease, stiff aging joints, and allergies, and has to be carried up and down all stairs for the next six weeks while his ligaments heal. Plus he comes with a lot of stuff. And it turned out there was just no more room for one more living creature and his stuff in our one-room living space.
After one day of my popping pregnant self lugging Rufus (who the groomer has described as a "portly little guy") up and down our narrow rowhouse stairs and cast-iron stoop three times a day, barricading him in our bedroom to keep him out of the way the construction workers, and tripping over his pointy little Nylabones on the floor of our bedroom because there is no other room to be in, I agreed with Seth that we should just accept the generous, wonderful offer and move out of our damn house. (Seth does suspect he was at the end of the list of parties his parents could not go on allowing to live in the construction zone. We think the list of concern went in this priority order: (1) unborn grandchild; (2) gestating mother; (3) pathetic dog; and (4) oh yeah. Seth.)

So we did. Now we're living in what I think of as the Alternate Seth & Roberta Universe. In this alternate plane, we're a fresh-faced young (looking) couple, new to the neighborhood, with a baby obviously on the way, and a cute little dog, and we're moving into this spiffy new ultra-modern high-rise apartment building in an up-and-coming neighborhood, because we got a good deal on it, and it's near our offices, and we love new, modern buildings with game rooms and roof decks and free WiFi, and chatting up all the front desk folks, and we're saving up for a house.....It's so weird. This place is so not us. But who cares, because we have a KITCHEN and LAUNDRY. ALL IN ONE PLACE. And CABLE. Did I mention CABLE? WITH HBO AND A DVR. Even if the common areas do have furniture that looks like this:

These chairs? So not comfortable, in case you were wondering. Do not recommend flopping down in one, especially with the loosening joints and extra 25 lbs. of 7+ months of pregnancy.

(Interestingly, one of the building managers and his young wife actually ARE the alternate universe us - they have a little dog, and her due date is a couple of weeks after mine. So far, they are the only other people we have seen who also actually live in this building. Something like 20 of 200 available units are rented. Our whole floor is vacant, except for us.)

Seth's parents also rented furniture and dishes and things for the apartment, so that they will be comfortable whenever we vacate it. I had no idea you could do such a thing, but I guess these things are needed for corporate apartments all the time. The furniture is comfortable, if awfully....beige.

And in the category of Just Because We Needed More Shit Going On, we discovered earlier this week that our external hard drive had been erased. You know, the hard drive that we bought to be the super-safe backup of all our laptop data? After a whole lot of visits to the Mac Genius Bar to get our laptop issues fixed, we discovered that our laptop would no longer recognize our external hard drive. We'd plug it in, and the Mac acted like it didn't even exist. Which, well, it didn't, since it was BLANK. We think it got fried in the same thunderstorm that killed our modem. Despite the fact that the hard drive was plugged into a very expensive surge protector. Apparently, just the surrounding electrical surging energy and whatnot can be enough to wipe the data. Fortunately, the worst thing we lost was all of our music, most of which we still have on CDs, and the rest of which is still on the Mac. It just means many hours of downloading CDs again. (Breastfeeding project, perhaps? Put baby on boob. Insert CD. Click. Wait for both downloads to finish. Repeat.) So, we bought the SUV-version of a hard drive and backed up what we still have on our Mac. And we will never be keeping this hard drive plugged in or near a lot of other electronic stuff. Ever. And making more DVD data backups, so we can be sure to save priceless, high-quality, flattering photos like these forever:
Some fat guy we saw at a Red Sox- Orioles game once.

30-week plus update

2008-09-15T23:14:00.001-04:00

The 17-year old Honda Civic didn't make it. Repairs over the next several months would have cost more than the Bluebook value, so the car is being donated. You can read the full obit/eulogy for this fine automobile here. I even got emotional when we left the car, and I have professed not to be attached to it or even like it all that much.

Seth's parents are kindly loaning us their Toyota station wagon for a few months (they're headed back to London for a bit, so they won't need it) until we have the time, money and wherewithal to buy another car. We wish we could get by with just one vehicle, but what with me planning to stay home for six months, and with anticipated daycare dropoff/pickup schedules, I just don't think we can do it. Despite the wonderful walkability of our neighborhood, it will be winter when the baby's born and I might stab someone in the eye with the nearest pacifier if I can't get in the car and get the heck out of the house with the baby some days. If we got into our dream daycare location at the Library of Congress, the pickup/dropoff thing would be MUCH easier, since it's walking distance from our house, and on the way to work. Don't even get me started on the lack of daycare facilities in the federal building that we work in, and the total disservice that is to the employees. Or the sparse options for daycare in our immediate neighborhood, despite the evident baby boom. Forget the chicken in every pot - there's a kid (or two) in every Bugaboo around Capitol Hill these days. But our car issues are immediately mostly solved. If I can get the A/C fixed in mine soon, that will also be helpful, since September in DC has decided to be muggy thus far, and I swear that my internal body temperature has risen five degrees today just to spite me and my lack of vehicle A/C. I'm just feeling distinctly.....swampy today. We are waaaay past "glowing" here, let me tell you, and into the "hot mess" category.

In other 30+ week news, after much (probably unnecessary) freaking out, I DO NOT have gestational diabetes. I did the initial glucose screening test a day after getting back from vacation, and an hour after wiping out on the sidewalk on my way to the doctor's office and scraping up knees and palms. Seth and I were walking to his car (R.I.P.) so that he could drive me to the appointment, and I stumbled slightly on some uneven sidewalk, and just....couldn't....quite...recover. Total wipeout. Cell phone and bottle of glucose solution that I was supposed to drink in two minutes went flying. Seth couldn't catch me, so he ran after the bottle of glucose solution as it rolled down the sidewalk, and retrieved my cell phone. He then heaved me to my feet, and tried to ascertain whether I was injured. I whimpered that I had to be OK, because I had to drink the stupid glucose solution right now and had to get in the car to get to my goddamn doctor's appointment. I got in the car, knee and palms bleeding, chugged the glucose, noted the time so I could tell the nurses when to draw my blood (precisely one hour after finishing the drink), and away we went to the doctor's office. Once at the office, I scrubbed up my wounds in the bathroom, noted the total lack of large band-aids to be had in an OB-GYN office, and got my blood drawn. My doctor was quite alarmed at my scrapes, and made sure I didn't fall on my belly, have broken wrists, or anything else. I couldn't explain to her that I just do this kind of thing on an annual-ish basis, and that being pregnant had little to do with it, except that my usual recovery reflexes were inhibited. We then went to get Two Amys pizza to nurse my wounds and my poor sugar-overloaded system.

Fast-forward a couple of days. The doctor's office calls to tell me I've failed the one-hour screening test, and have to come back in for the three-hour glucose tolerance test. What I didn't know then was that SO MANY things can make you "fail" the initial screening test - stress, having eaten something a couple of hours before, the time of day you take the test, etc., and that a very high percentage of women who "fail" the first test are totally fine on the second. So, I was completely hysterical for about three days, since they called me about this on a Friday, and I couldn't take the next test until Tuesday. I Googled everything in the universe, slept badly, cried, and waited for Tuesday. I also weighed myself about 20 times, because I'd felt sort of chastised at my doctor's office for my weight gain. Their scale showed that I had gained 27 pounds since becoming pregnant. The nurse mentioned that the scale was "off" and subtracted a couple of pounds. My OB raised her eyebrows, and I was told to watch my weight gain for the remaining weeks, because it would just be harder on the baby and harder on me if I gained too much weight. But when I weighed myself at home, I was 5-ish pounds less than what the doctor's scale had said. Rapid weight gain can also be a signal for gestational diabetes, so pile on some more hysteria about giant babies born with low blood sugar. Of course, the 3-hour test last Tuesday showed that all my blood sugar numbers were totally normal from all four fricking times they draw your blood during those tests. Vampires. And every time I've weighed myself in the last two weeks, I have still weighed less than I (allegedly) did at the OB's office that day.

But all of that is over. And I have finally done what I should have done (and wanted to do) months ago: I switched from my OB practice to a midwife practice. I have also therefore switched from planning to give birth in a hospital with a 40% c-section rate to now planning to give birth in a birth center with a 7% c-section rate. Those numbers sound quite a lot better to me on the slice me-dice me scale. All along, I really knew I wanted to be in a midwife practice, and that I wanted a non-medicalized birth, and every opportunity for a natural birth, if at all possible. The more I read, the more I confirmed this for myself. I'm not afraid of the pain or effort of labor. I am, on the other hand, very afraid of hospitals and unnecessary medical procedures. I have many, many reasons for this decision, and lots of stats, facts and stories to back it all up. If you're interested in this highly politicized and emotional hotbed of discussion about birth options, you can start here, here, and here for some source material.

Moving on to another birth story - our house! Our basement is really close to being finished. Our contractor thinks it will be done by October 1! Mmmm, waaaasher and dryyyyer. Laaaauuundry. Saaatellite TV......He's also aiming for a November 10 completion date for the kitchen, but we're not holding our breath on that one. If it's not completely done, we will survive. Hopefully without too many total hysterical breakdowns as it gets down to the wire on my due date. (Note to baby - this will be the one time in your life where I really insist that it will be just fine for you to show up late. Say a week? That would be greeeaaat.)

Seriously, can you believe this is the same room as this? In the photo above, there will again be a window in the bay - they just drywalled over the opening, and will put in the new window when it's ready.
This is looking towards the back of the house - the door to the back yard is on the left. The hallway on the right leads to our massive new closets, laundry area and full bathroom.
Do you like any of these paint colors? Me neither. Too light, too light, and too....peachy. But those were the only colors in the Benjamin Moore sample sizes that I thought might work. I sprung for a quart in another, darker shade today. Let's hope that's it.

However will we give this glamorous life up once our fancy kitchen is done? Yes, those are our dishes being done in the bathtub. It's so thrilling every night that we could just pass out from the excitement.

And it's not even 10:00 am on Monday

2008-09-08T09:42:00.006-04:00

Let me update you on the status of our household:

-We have no kitchen.
-We have no washer & dryer (well, we do, but they are disconnected and stored under our porch).
-Two rooms of our house are habitable- three if you count the bathroom.
-We have to turn off all lights and other electric devices upstairs when we run the microwave because otherwise it will trip the circuit breaker because the electrical circuits for the upstairs are stupid, old and wimpy.
-The air conditioning in my Jeep suddenly stopped working on a 96-degree day.
-Seth's 17-year old Honda Civic started this morning, moved 2 feet, and then died, not to be revived.
-The Honda is now parked/stuck on the side of the street slated for cleaning this morning, is a foot or two outside the white parking lines, is slightly blocking our neighbor's driveway, and despite the note on the windshield stating that the car won't start, will probably get approximately $2,347 in parking tickets from the incredibly efficient DC parking enforcement.
-The Honda's problem is not the battery, indicating a possible exorbitant repair expense.
-We have already decided that if further repairs to the Honda are over a certain dollar amount, we're not going to repair it again.
-My car is a stick, and Seth can't/won't drive it.
-I'm almost 30 weeks pregnant.
-Someone will have to drive my laboring ass to the birth center/hospital, preferably without jackrabbiting the clutch, stalling out the car, or getting into an accident.
-OMFG 30 WEEKS PREGNANT; HOUSE MOSTLY DESTRUCTED; UP TO EYEBALLS IN EXPENSES AND DRYWALL DUST FOR HOUSE RENOVATION; PLEASE SEND NEW/GENTLY USED AUTO TRANSMISSION SUBARU STATION WAGON TO WASHINGTON DC. AND VAT OF MACARONI AND CHEESE. THX.

Holy kitchen renovation, Batman

2008-09-07T10:32:00.000-04:00

So, this is what our dining room and kitchen looked like before we left for vacation:

And this is what we came home to:

Complete, total and utter destruction. Isn't it beautiful? I love seeing all the bones of the house, and layered remnants of 100+ years - old plaster, old windows, scars on the floor where the original walls were.

We also found a sort of time capsule behind the drywall - a 1975 calendar from a now-defunct seafood market. The 1975 date definitely explains the cheap vinyl flooring, mustard-yellow Formica countertops and the fireplace in the basement.

We're contemplating what we could leave in the house as our own time capsule. A letter? Photos of the house? A list of average gas prices?

Since a lot of people have been asking about the baby's room, I thought I'd share a photo of it:

What? You don't think she'll like it? What? Too yellow? You don't think the Igloo cooler will work as a bassinet? We thought it was handy, what with the wheels and pull-handle.

28 weeks - special Martha's Vineyard edition

2008-09-01T11:09:00.010-04:00

Beach abstract - Chappaquiddick
We've been at Seth's family's house on Martha's Vineyard since August 21, and it has been blissful. Whenever I arrive here, I feel myself easily sliding into the slowed pace of relaxation that is summer on this island. The weather has been spectacular almost every day, with crystalline blue skies, and breezes just cool enough to be comfortable. I've read at least six books, dividing my reading time between lounging on the hammock, the sofa, chaise lounge and beach. An old family friend who is a New York restaurateur was here for a few days, and treated us by cooking better-than-restaurant dinners made with the freshest local seafood and produce. I roused myself to make some truly fantastic seafood chowder with fresh local quahogs, based on the venerable Black Dog Tavern's recipe. We've wandered all the towns, gone to the agricultural fair, the farmer's market, the flea market and the craft fair, driven on winding roads we hadn't found before, and hiked on parts of the island both new and familiar to us. I can't let myself think about the fact that we are going home to DC tomorrow.

Vacation - all you ever wanted. Not a bad way to spend a lot of dreamy hours.
Shearing demonstration - an Angora goat.
Mohair wool - comes from Angora goats.
Prizewinning rabbit. He seems underwhelmed.
No fair is complete without racing pigs.
Belly on the beach - 28 weeks. Maybe I shouldn't have posted this right next to the chubby, pink little pigs.

My life in pictures

2008-08-22T17:26:00.003-04:00

Kitchen cabinet and countertop samples. Can you distinguish between the three shades of cream-ish painted cabinetry?

Babies. Childbirth. Guh.

The room in our house formerly known as "the study." Now known as "warehouse for all our crap from the basement and kitchen." This is even after we got rid of 2/3 of the junk in our basement.

Yes, those boxes do go all the way to the ceiling.

House renovations and childbirth. That's all I got.

Technical Difficulties

2008-08-18T10:50:00.004-04:00

I know, I know, there's nothing new on here. It's not really my fault. I swear.

Sometime after we got our beloved Mac PowerBook a couple of years ago, we started calling it "The Baby." As in: "Where's The Baby?" "Is The Baby charged up?" "Can I play with The Baby?" "Are we bringing The Baby on vacation?" You are probably relieved to know that we have mostly stopped doing that, since there is an actual, human, in-utero baby on her way. We do occasionally now call the PowerBook "The First Baby."

Sadly, our First Baby (the sleek, white plastic one with the embossed Apple on its forehead) is in the Apple Infirmary. Two trips to the Genius Bar, one replaced battery, and one replaced logic board did not solve the mysterious fan-running-loud-and-overtime, overheating, rapid battery-draining, and screen freezing that's been going on for a couple of weeks. So, our preshus laptop has been shipped off for more serious repairs. We're all worried, let me tell you. We do have a hard drive, with all our data backed up. Except that I wake up in the middle of the night with neurotic thoughts that something is wrong with the hard drive too! Which are not rational, of course, but probably just an excuse to worry about something other than the bigger things like, say uh, BABY and HOUSE RENOVATION.

So, we've been sans Mac for many long days now. We also had an internet service outage a couple of weeks ago, caused by a lightning-zapped dead modem. The modem is up and running. Just no Mac. Sigh. We've also suspended our DirectTV service during the renovations, so we are pretty disconnected with the civilized world. I get a little panicky when I think about all the new Deadliest Catch and Daily Show episodes I'm missing. At least the Olympics are on network TV right now, a media form which I'd quite forgotten about since being introduced to the wonders of satellite and Tivo. Between our new HDTV adaptor and antenna and our BlackBerries, we're managing to survive. So don't worry about us. Except that there are a lot of evenings ahead of huddling in our bedroom (the only habitable part of the house) with take-out burritos and new episodes of The Biggest Loser. So if you do happen to have the complete DVD set of Buffy The Vampire Slayer to loan out, I wouldn't turn it down.

All's well that ends well - 24 weeks

2008-08-03T22:14:00.009-04:00

All right, just this once, I'll let you have at the belly photos right away, and I won't make you pretend to read everything else just to get to the pictures.
I think you can see a difference from four weeks ago.

Excuse the tousled appearance. And the really flattering maternity workout shorts. We'd just come from a labor & delivery yoga class at our local yoga studio, so I was fresh from some relaxing and restorative poses.

I'm at that stage where people aren't quite sure if I'm pregnant or not. We were at a BBQ the other weekend, and the friends who were hosting it had just gotten married a couple of weeks before. So when we walked in, there were many rounds of back-and-forth "Congratulations!" among us. One of their other guests looked at me in a sort of puzzled way, and said "Oh, did you just get married too?" "Uh, no, I'm pregnant." The poor guy blushed. I've found that young, single men don't always know what to do when hanging out with slightly older pregnant women. I think we skeeve them out a little, like they're kind of afraid we might throw up, pee on them, talk about childbirth endlessly, or go into labor at any moment.

The good thing about this stage of pregnancy is that I'm not obviously pregnant enough to be the immediate target of a barrage of pregnancy horror stories or the invasive stranger belly-pat assault. The bad news is that people must be assuming I'm just fat.

We had a slight nerve-racking experience this week as well (everything is FINE now, just to reassure you all). I was supposed to be in Jacksonville, FL all week for work, but started feeling some unusual pains/cramps/contractions on Monday. After scaring the bejeezus out of myself by doing a little internet research, I made a late-night visit to a local hospital where they determined that the baby was 100% fine (nothing wakes them up faster than hooking you up to a fetal monitor. Lots of kicks and even hiccups!) and that I was having some small contractions, but that all else was fine. They made me drink lots of water (dehydration can bring these things on), and gave me two shots of terbutaline to ease/stop the contractions. When I was still feeling something a couple of hours later, I got myself on the first flight back to DC. Whatever was going on, I wanted to be at home with Seth, and near some of the best medical care around, not alone at some two-bit hospital in Florida.

I got off the plane in DC on Tuesday morning, Seth picked me up, and we proceeded straight to Georgetown Hospital, at the direction of my OB practice. They sent me up to Labor & Delivery (which scared the hell out of Seth, because he thought that meant the baby was coming right now. Sheesh, they should maybe just go back to calling it "Maternity Ward" or something.) Ironically, we arrived at the same moment that one of the doctors from my OB practice had just delivered her 3rd baby by scheduled C-section. Two other doctors from my practice had assisted.

They put me in a room, and did the same drill that as the Florida hospital had done. Baby monitor, and another monitor to see if I was indeed contracting. Baby was again 100% fine - wow, can hearing that thumpa-thumpa-thumpa be reassuring, particularly after no sleep and a dawn flight home. One resident, one intern, one nurse, two of my OBs, one maternal-fetal medicine specialist/head of G-town OB-GYN, one pelvic exam, and two ultrasounds later, it was determined that I was having some contractions, but that my cervix was closed, and I had no other symptoms, and was not in pre-term labor or anything else serious. The contractions were probably brought on by a uterine fibroid that is annoyed at being cut off from its blood supply, and is therefore irritating my uterus, as well as some dehydration. So, they gave me IV fluids and some medication (basically, prescription Motrin) to stop the contractions. After much thorough monitoring and examination, they discharged me at about 5:00 pm, with a prescription and orders to drink lots and lots of water.

I got home, went to sleep, woke up to eat takeout Thai food, and was back asleep by 8:30 pm. The rest of the week was happily uneventful, and I'm checking in with my OB tomorrow.

I've definitely been underestimating how much water I really need - I haven't really taken into account that my blood volume has increase by about 50% at this point. I'm usually really good about this kind of stuff - as a runner, you have to really make sure you're well-hydrated also, and I thought I had a good awareness of what I needed. But we'd had three really busy days before I left for Florida (all about kitchen renovation stuff - to be covered in excruciating detail in a future entry), and I definitely did not drink enough water on those days, or on my business trip. I've realized I just can't push myself quite as hard as I'm used to. That's really difficult for me - I do not like being fragile or limited or dependent or otherwise diverted from my usual damn-the-torpedoes-full-steam-ahead style in any way.

But it is different now. When I was discharged from the hospital in Florida, there was a tiny, tiny newborn in a bassinet by the nurses' station. They were watching him for a little while before he went back to the nursery or his mom. I'd been so calm and controlled until I saw that baby, and then, I couldn't look at him. My eyes teared, I gasped, breathless. I was so worried for my own baby, and whether I'd get to see her, whether all would be well, and she'd be born. I couldn't look at that baby, because he was future, possibility, and I didn't know for certain whether I'd get that future, that possibility. It just hadn't hit me before, that overwhelming, all-encompassing I would do anything for my baby feeling.

One good thing about Tuesday's ordeal - more ultrasound photos! Whee! One of the doctors saw Seth looking at them, and gave him the ones she wasn't going to use. Look! Little feet! Kicking me right now.

Home Renovation Tip #1

2008-07-24T21:47:00.003-04:00

Communication with your contractor is essential. Both you and the contractor need to work at fostering open, clear dialogue. If something is on your mind, voice that concern to your contractor. Encourage the contractor to do the same so that decisions are clear.

That said, I'm thinking the contractor and work crew don't want us to use the toilet and sink in the powder room. Do you think they were clear enough about that?

Framing, bathroom and closets, oh my!

2008-07-22T19:38:00.007-04:00

Look! Our new bathroom!

I swear that's what it is. I probably got you all excited, because you were expecting actual tile and fixtures and walls and stuff. Sorry. But progress is progress. You can see where the walls will be, and where the plumbing will go (hint: the white tubes sticking out of the floor = plumbing). We find this terrifically exciting. I admit it requires a little imagination. It's great to really be able to see where everything will be.

Lest the other parts of the basement feel neglected, here are some photos of all the framing going on elsewhere. In the left-hand corner, you might be able to see some shiny new copper pipe, and a fancy 3/4 turn valve handle. This is our main water line for the house, replacing an ancient, mineral-encrusted faucet and lead service line. We're very excited to have less-contaminated water that one may even be able to drink right from the tap, without reverse-osmosis filtering first.
Framing for the utility closet on the left. The white whale/albatross of a hot water heater will soon be gone forever, replaced by a sleek little wall-mounted on-demand tankless heater, so we can be all chic and European and not run out of hot water by the end of the second shower! (Note to all consumers: before buying major appliances such as hot water heaters, etc. do a Google search for any ongoing class action lawsuits affecting said major appliances. Turns out our hot water heater is a worthless piece of crap, yet Lowe's continued to sell it even as thousands of people were suing over its crappiness. We did get our spare parts which were our due award as part of the class. I'm sure they will look lovely on the scrap heap next to the hot water heater tank.)
A closet! A real live closet! Wow. Seldom-used camping equipment and old paint will reside here in resplendent organized storage someday.

And back to the bathroom for a moment, if I may. This shot was taken a few days later than the ones above, and if you look on the left, you will see a pale green panel. This covers the giant hole in the wall that is soon to become the bathroom window, filled in with opaque glass block to filter in the southern light that comes in on that side of the house. Imagination here, people, please.

Meanwhile, back in the yard. The plants are doing just fine on their own, and growing like mad without me to bother them. This year just does not seem like the year to care about the garden. I do sneak back behind the construction debris to cut herbs once in awhile, and I'm always shocked at how much they've grown. It's done nothing but be alternately wet and sunny this spring and summer, and hasn't been too hot, so the plants are flourishing. So are the weeds, so don't look too closely there. If you squint, it's all just a big blurry lush green loveliness. Next year we'll try for pretty and a bit more well-groomed.

Science Experiment of One - 20 Weeks

2008-07-11T09:07:00.000-04:00

[Note: to skip pregnancy blabber and get to the pictures, just scroll down. No one will know.]

I've reached the 20-week mark, which by the craziness of Pregnancy Math, means I'm halfway there (and could people quit reminding me that November is close? It's really not. That's late fall, practically Christmas, and we are in the throes of high summer. Lots and lots of time, people). And wow, how 'bout that second trimester? It almost makes you forget the misery of the first, because you feel, well, just normal. I knew I was back in the saddle when I ate Indian food a few weeks ago, and it tasted good, and I had no digestive after-effects. Blissful. Even without beer.

Part of feeling better means I can exercise practically like normal again. I'm doing spin and prenatal yoga classes once or twice a week, and trying to get some weight training and running/lumbering like a rhino in as well. I'd been told that my cardio would get better again in the 2nd trimester after it felt really laborious for awhile in the first, and dang, it's true! I've got to take advantage before the baby squishes my lungs into oblivion in a few more months. Folks seem really impressed that I still work out, but some of my friends have set pretty high standards - one friend from my relay team ran at least 30 minutes 3x per week just about up to her last week of pregnancy, but she's a ridiculous athletic Energizer bunny, and can't be considered a reasonable standard by any means. I've definitely had to dial down the intensity, and am fine with it most days. Except the ones where I am certain that pregnancy is nothing but a cellulite manufacturing process, all of which has settled on my legs.

I think everyone (including me) expects the belly to be bigger at this stage. My good friend Janine (mother of three) took one look at me and said, "Little belly. Big boobs," which is about right. I swear half the weight I gained earlier on was in my chest, dear god, which really didn't need to be any larger. I've definitely moved on to the Ugliest Bras Known to Mankind, but wow, are they comfortable. (Comfort -1, Dignity - 0. I hear this trend continues.) When I step on the scale at the doctor's office, alarmingly high numbers pop up, never seen before. Alarming to me, anyhow. Doctors, nurses, midwives, a zillion pregnancy books, the internets, all assure me that I am perfectly normal.

Toothpaste has, thankfully, lost its gag-inducing horror. I still have to occasionally obsessively, compulsively, rinse out every last trace of mintiness with gallons of water but most of the time it's just fine.

20 week ultrasound, more surreal black and white blurry images on a TV screen, hands waving ("tiny jazz hands" as blogger Amalah says), all measurements and organs reassuringly normal, normal, normal.

I was told I had a couple of uterine fibroids, heretofore unknown to anyone, which is good, because they've been utterly asymptomatic. Despite the doctor's nonchalance in relaying the factual fibroid information to me, and her total lack of further concern, comment or action, I still had to spend a few frantic hours Googling everything in sight. To find out, of course, that practically everyone has a fibroid or two, and it's only in quite rare instances that they cause any problems. Lots of fibroid problems are related to conception, and clearly, we had no issues there. It was really the first panicked, all-out anxious must-Google-everything moment I've had, so I think I'm doing pretty well.

I definitely feel the baby doing her acrobatics in there now. I started feeling it a few weeks ago. Some people have all these romantic descriptions of what it feels like: bubbles popping, butterfly wings, hands moving through water. My friend Bonnie said, "It feels like a muscle spasm." Yup. That's what it feels like to me. And you could definitely mistake it for gas. Nothing so delicately lovely as butterflies and bubbles. And the day after my doctor said I should be feeling the movements more distinctly soon, I felt the first ones from the outside, thump thump thump against my hand as I was lying in bed. I actually yanked my hand away and exclaimed "holy shit!" Then I yelled for Seth to come upstairs right now because he might feel the baby. He didn't feel anything that night (in part because he didn't fully understand my blabbering from downstairs and took his time ambling upstairs), but got to feel a surreal little gentle thump a few nights later. It's aliiiiive in there! I'd better enjoy these little flickering kicks because I understand the I'm-out-to-get-your-liver kicks are next. And of course, we now spend an inordinate amount of time poking my uterus to bother the baby and get her to perform again. Yeah, get used to it, kid. We are so going to bother you for the rest of your life.

Without further ado, the latest belly photos. Generally, I just feel fat and thick, and think I look like I just visited the Las Vegas buffet a few too many times. Still, people who don't know me are unlikely to guess that I'm pregnant. But, compare to the earlier photos. Something is definitely afoot in there.

Bacon-O-Rama! Or, the latest installation of Bacon Says I Love You

2008-07-07T15:53:00.009-04:00

I'm simply giddy with thoughts of my favorite cured pork product today. Not only is Salon doing Pork Week (read the first installation about my beloved bacon here, and perchance you should try the bacon bra (yes you read that right)) , but my friend Mike sent me the ultimate gift pack of BACON SALT:

Beautiful, isn't it? And kosher too!

He says, and I quote: "To ensure that your child (wow isn't that a scary concept; it is like saying Mike's wife) is brought up in a caring and loving environment, I thought it was wise to start the little bundle of joy off (in the womb no less) with the sweet loving taste of BACON!"

I just got teary-eyed over that sweet sentiment. There's definitely no fear of the baby not knowing what bacon tastes like. The two things that have tasted good to me throughout pregnancy thus far, no matter how queasy or heartburny or food averse: bacon and beer. Figures, eh? (To be clear here, I have only had long-savored occasional sips of whatever delicious, delicious beer my husband has been drinking, so nobody go calling Child Protective Services just yet. But damn, I don't think beer ever tasted so good as it does NOW THAT I CAN'T HAVE IT.)

Bacon, however, given its no-alcohol content, I have devoured with impunity.

So long, and thanks for all the fish, Part 2

2008-07-02T19:50:00.003-04:00

Or, the urban raccoons of Capitol Hill strike again.

The other morning, Seth let the dog out into the backyard, and the dog went berserk, running around, barking, sniffing, whining. The neighbor's dogs were doing the same thing. Then, our neighbor told Seth that we had a new resident on the block: a smallish raccoon that had taken up residence in a niche between our two rowhouses. It appeared to be a smaller, and different raccoon than the one that turned the neighbor's fishpond into an impromptu sushi bar a couple of months ago.

Our neighbor called the local humane society to see if they could come capture the raccoon, since none of us are that crazy about mammals burrowing into our houses, or giving fleas & ticks to our dogs and kids. The humane society's response was that they do not come out to capture apparently healthy wild animals. If we wanted it trapped, we could do it ourselves or hire a private trapper (I'm just imagining a Dog The Bounty Hunter for animals kind of guy showing up on the front steps).

So, our neighbor is trying Plan A, the "Have-A-Heart" humane trap:

Cozy and inviting, eh?
Comes with room service! Delicious, well-aged sardines!

So far, no luck. Perhaps a bowl of goldfish (and not the Pepperidge Farm crackers) would be more enticing?

Progress!

2008-06-29T18:11:00.003-04:00

The renovation of the basement is visibly progressing, which is exciting.

Seth and my friend Betsy examine the construction. Note the 2x4 framing - this was holding up our entire house for a couple of weeks until the new, super-slim and svelte steel support posts could be installed. The new slim steel posts replaced the very bulky brick ones that the house was originally constructed with. You can see the old ones here.
Last week, this cement truck showed up in front of the house. They brought the cement in through the front window in wheelbarrows.
And voila! A new cement floor. And, uh, some water. We, um, assume this water issue will be remedied.
The roughed-in plumbing for the shiny new full bathroom that will be going in the basement! Take note, future house guests - your own bathroom.
The new, level cement floor in the other end of the basement (facing the front, street side of the house). Note the shiny, streamlined new red support post. And look! Building materials! Framing starts this week.

As If We Didn't Have Enough Going On

2008-06-16T22:15:00.006-04:00

We're doing what everyone says you shouldn't do: get pregnant AND renovate your house all at the same time. It wasn't exactly the timing that we might have preferred; it's just the way it all worked out. All I wanted was for the unfinished basement of our house to be fully finished by the time we had a baby. Which then turned into: well, why don't we spruce up the kitchen too, while we're at it. Which went right to: heck, let's shoot the moon and totally reconfigure our kitchen by knocking out walls, opening up the kitchen to the dining room, moving the powder room, and making the 3-season porch part of the kitchen like we really want to do.

So, here we are, a couple of weeks into The Great Renovation. We've started with the basement, which really doesn't disrupt our lives too much. It made us finally clean all the junk out of the basement, which had become a semi-permanent waystation for Goodwill and the dump. The basement detritus broke nicely into the Rule of Thirds: one third we kept, one third went to Goodwill, and one third went to the dump. The third that we kept is currently stacked to the ceiling in our study, enabling us to still have semi-normal use of that space, with just a few double-jointed moves necessary to access the hard drive and printer.

Here are some "before" photos of the basement.

The fireplace is not staying. (1) It's ugly; (2) it is occupying the future home of the flat screen HDTV; and (3) it's not even safe to use, as it was installed on a plywood platform by some home improvement genius.

Yeah, I never realized how Blair Witch Project creepy the basement really is until I looked at these photos.

Ooh, look: Destruction! The first thing that had to be done was to jackhammer up all of the existing concrete and dig down about 4 inches. The concrete was very old, thin, and cracked, and the floor was uneven, so it was necessary to start over.

The workers found what we think was the old coal chute. It was a terra-cotta and brick channel under the cement floor (see the terra cotta bits above). It may date back to the original house construction when people had coal-fired "boilers" in the basements.

Science Experiment of One

2008-06-01T22:00:00.008-04:00

So, I've been a little distracted. Getting pregnant will do that for you. Yup, pregnant. I'm just as surprised as you, even though this was, of course, planned and right on schedule. You think my Type A self would allow for anything else?

Sorry if you actually know me and you're finding out on my blog that I'm knocked up. I tried to tell everyone, but there are a damn lot of you to tell, and you're all over the world, literally. I think we did cover the high points - mothers, fathers, siblings, best friends, bosses - and I'm really depending on the Power of Gossip to spread the word to all the far-flung branches of our network of friends, acquaintances and co-workers. If you're just hearing now, I maintain that it's not my fault. People have clearly been gossiping inadequately, slackers.

The technical data: I'm 16 weeks pregnant, due November 21. It's a girl. (We know the sex because we chose to do CVS testing.)

In the infinite wisdom of my 16 weeks of pregnancy so far, I have come to the conclusion that this gestation deal is one weird-ass science experiment.

It all starts with the getting pregnant in the first place. For most of the past 35 years, I've made all kinds of efforts to avoid getting pregnant at all costs. Then one day, bam! You've got to turn around and reverse all of that, pull all the goalies (so to speak), and try to get pregnant, and you don't even know if you can, and you're of "advanced maternal age" (what they call us old ladies of 35 and over), and by god, you want to get pregnant right now and get this show on the road.

As my wise (and also 6.5 months pregnant!) friend Maya said "We get pregnant the way we live." For those of us must-get-it-done-right-now-on-this-schedule-Type-A-girls, this means that we need Gadgets. Eff all of that hokey temperature taking and mucus charting to try to figure out when you ovulate. I'm a modern woman - I want science! And gadgets!

So I went with the Clear Blue Easy Fertility Monitor, otherwise known as the Cadillac of Ovulation Monitors. Pricey, but it sure seemed a lot more certain than the other methods. A few days of use teaches you that getting pregnant involves a lot of Peeing On Sticks.

I was also entertained by the packaging for the monitor. The results of using this device? Babies.

Look! Babies! IN THIS BOX.

A couple months after being slave to ovulation pee-sticks, I was sure that I wasn't pregnant. The bad thing was that I wasn't pregnant RIGHT NOW, because, well, when I decide to do something I want it to be done RIGHT NOW. The good thing was that I'd be able to go to my 10-year law school reunion in New Orleans and carouse and drink like a fish!

Then, after a weekend full of wine-soaked happy hours, margaritas, Brie, sushi and late nights, I had a Sunday afternoon where I just didn't feel right. I thought maybe I was just hung over. Then I took a 4-hour nap. Which I never do. And had some heartburn. Which I never have. And some mild crampiness in my abdomen. I thought, well, I never did actually take a pregnancy test this month and rule it out. I'll just take one now, and it will be negative. I went in the bathroom, did the obligatory pee-stick thing, and just about passed out when it was positive in about five seconds flat.

I went downstairs, carrying the stick. I told Seth, "Now, don't get too excited yet, but this stick says I am pregnant. There can be false positives, you know." Seth said, "Yeah, maybe you should re-test in the morning with another stick." Neither of us slept well that night. I woke up Monday, took another test, with a different brand. Again, CLEARLY POSITIVE in 5 seconds flat. Holy shit. So much for the Abita and Pimm's Cups in New Orleans. And so the Science Experiment of One began.

It's just crazy, because pregnancy is different for every person. There are long lists and litanies of symptoms and feelings and no one has any idea which they will have, or to what degree, or in what combinations. And it can be completely different for the same person with two pregnancies.

I've probably been about average. I was fortunately not puking every hour like some poor, unfortunate women; in fact there was no barfing involved for me. Just constant nausea for a few weeks, random heartburn, and paralyzing exhaustion. That is all pretty much done - I feel almost normal most days now. I do have random heartburn that does not seem tied to what I eat, but it's fairly manageable. I have the feeling that my digestive system won't be the same until after this little creature is out of my body, and the hormones wane. I haven't been able to stand spicy food, which is a total reversal for me. I'm usually the queen of spicy - the hotter the better, and bring it on. Now, a slight overdose of even black pepper will make me spit something out. Sigh. Depressing. Almost as depressing as the no-alcohol thing. I have sips of Seth's beverages occasionally, and the weird thing is that wine tastes awful. All wine - the $6 bottles and the $40 ones. Beer, on the other hand, still tastes delicious, so I savor my occasional sip. (Side note - I never, ever want to go to New Orleans again when I can't drink. Terrible.) Plus the Superpower Sense of Smell. I mean, I could smell from the front door when Seth hadn't thoroughly washed out the garlic press. And minty toothpaste is the devil's handiwork - of all things, that is what makes me dry heave. Unfortunately, almost all toothpaste ever made is minty in some way. I gagged just reading labels in the grocery store yesterday, looking in vain for another flavor. My dental hygienist took pity on me the other day at a cleaning, and was able to give me some nice grape-flavored tooth polish, normally reserved for the under-10 set.

I was in total denial that my body would begin to grow outward, my waist thicken. It didn't do a whole lot for awhile, and I've been able to get by with my regular clothes until now. Then, last week, pants suddenly stopped zipping. Whoa. Time to enter Giant Elastic Waistband Land. Maternity clothes are a heck of a lot better than they used to be, but the transition to them is still a little shocking, and I'm not quite big enough for a lot of them yet. I am starting to feel like my belly eclipses my feet, but most people can't tell that I'm pregnant. Only good friends can immediately see the belly pooch.

Now, without further ado, and since I know most of you just came here for the belly photos, here they are:

This is the belly (or relative lack thereof) at about eight weeks:

And here's the belly at about 15 weeks.
See? It's there!

It's beginning to be more real. We've seen the blurry black and white ultrasound images, and heard the heartbeat, but it's hard to connect them to something being in there. Crazy talk. I swear that this past week I could feel my uterus growing; I just suddenly felt more aware of it somehow. My belly gets bigger, seemingly by the day. In the next few weeks, I should be able to feel movement. Everyone can tell you what to expect, but you still don't know what's going to happen tomorrow and how it's actually going to feel. The science experiment goes on.

I think I did a good thing

2008-05-16T06:33:00.003-04:00

I work in a building near the Navy Yard. If you don't know where that is, I work in a building near the new Nationals stadium. It's a weird mix of new buildings, construction, open lots, jagged partial toothy rows of remaining rowhouses, one CVS, and very few places to eat lunch. It's an area "in transition," divided from Capitol Hill proper by 295 south and just a few barren blocks where the old public housing was razed a couple of years ago. Baseball fans from the 'burbs park their cars across the street from a mixed block of rowhouses: some are renovated and for sale; others have bare-dirt, junk-strewn yards. You wonder what's going to happen to these houses and the people who live in them.

Yesterday evening, I was hiking from my office back towards the Hill when a voice behind me said, "Excuse me, ma'am, do you have the time?" I looked back and saw a black man and a young woman walking behind me. They looked somehow threadbare, the man a little too thin, their clothes a little unkempt. I answered that it had been about 6:20 when I left my office a few minutes ago, and started to walk briskly again.

"I'm sorry to bother you again, but do you know how far it is to Second and D Street NW? How long will it take us to walk there?" I stopped. We were at the corner of 3rd and K SE. It's a hike from there to Second and D NW. I told the guy as much, and tried to give him directions. I noticed that the young woman was younger than I had thought, probably a teenager, and her breath wheezed terribly. She was wearing a red hooded sweat suit and carrying a brightly-colored backpack. She didn't look like she could walk all that way. The man said to her, "OK, you just got to hold onto my arm for awhile longer." And she took him arm, her stare remaining fixed and downcast, her breath rasping.

"We're just trying to get to the shelter there. Her school bus dropped her off over here, cause I work by the Navy Yard, and she can't go to her mama's and we don't have no place to go. She's handicapped, and she got a bus pass, but I don't know what bus to take, and we found out her pass only work for the bus, not the train. You know how much the bus fare is? I got 70 cents." He showed me the young woman's laminated bus pass, hung on a lanyard around his neck. It did have her photo on it, and indicated she was disabled.

I started to give them directions on how to get to the D6 bus, which would take them right to the shelter. I fumbled in my purse, and recalled that I truly had no money left in my wallet - only pennies. Damn, if this was a story or a setup, they were awfully good actors. The girl's breathing was kind of alarming. I was going to give this guy bus fare if I could. Then I remembered I had a bunch of old Metro farecards in my backpack. I'd gotten them at an old job, and never used them. I found the farecards, and handed the guy two of them. "Here. These won't work on the bus, but you can use them on the subway. It'll be a lot easier for you to get there on the subway."

The guy's face lit up, and he smiled. "Thank you, thank you! You get home safe now." They turned and walked off, the girl holding onto his arm. eyes downcast. I watched them for a bit, and as far as I could see, they were walking right towards the Navy Yard Metro station.

Did I do a good thing? The right thing? I don't know. They didn't ask me for money, and I won't ever know what the real story is (unless, of course, I see them again today and get the same line - ha! Am I jaded.). I guess they could try to sell the farecards if they wanted to, but I hope they'll just use them to get wherever they think they need to go.

So long, and thanks for all the fish

2008-05-12T17:17:00.003-04:00

We have raccoons on Capitol Hill. At least one, anyhow. A big, fat furry fella clambered his way into my neighbors' backyard and went fishing in their little Zen waterfall fishpond, making quick sushi out of their Last Surviving Goldfish.

I just have so many questions. Where did the raccoon come from (Rock Creek Park? Virginia)? How did he get to Capitol Hill (bus? taxi? hitchhiking?)? Why did he come to Capitol Hill (Adams Morgan was too loud?)? What is he eating (other than unlucky goldfish)? Where does he live (a studio at the Congressional Apartments? The lush lawns of the Capitol grounds?)? How does he get along with the alley rats?

I just wanted to go to the gym, not start a class war

2008-04-28T16:41:00.008-04:00

I got shiny new running shoes over the weekend, in the exact same size and model as my old, beat-up, beat-out, beaten down, stained pair. I pulled the new ones out of the box this morning, and pulled the factory insoles out of them so I could put my trusty special custom orthotic/Spenco insole combo in. The custom orthotics are essential to my running life to make sure I don't get any more stupid shin splints/plantar fasciitis/Achilles tendonitis due to my stupid flat overpronating feet. The Spenco insoles add cushion on top of my rigid leather orthotics to prevent the most hideous arch blisters known to mankind. It took me MONTHS to come up with this combination, and I give due credit to Phil Fenty at Fleet Feet in Adams Morgan for suggesting I put the Spenco insoles on TOP of the orthotics. I was almost in tears over my blistered feet when I walked in to Fleet Feet, and I was ready to give up running. I could have kissed Phil Fenty, but that seemed undignified, since he's the mayor's dad and all.

But because I am a dumb ass, I forgot to put my orthotics/insoles into my new damn shoes before I left the house. So I got all ready to hike through the pouring rain to the gym at lunch and realized....no insoles in my shoes. This. Is. A. Problem. But never fear! CVS is here! Right across the street, on the way to the gym! I'll just buy some cheap insoles that I can use to work out today. Great!

I'm innocently browsing the "Foot Care" section at CVS in peace, and deeply pondering the relative merits of some "Sport Link Extreme" insoles when I am tapped on the shoulder. A 40-ish(?) skinny black guy sticks a laminated card with writing on it in front of me. I read it. To paraphrase: "I am deaf and I have a wife, an ex-wife and a girlfriend and eleventeen children to support and due to The Man and the inequalities of society in general I cannot work to support them and so I must ask kind strangers like you to give me cash to feed and clothe my destitute family so please give me money." I look the guy right in the eye, and I say politely,"I'm very sorry, but no. I don't give money to individuals." He immediately gets very hostile and starts waving his hands in the air and yelling something about "You white women are all alike! [Incomprehensible ranting] white women....all alike!" He continues to wave his hands and stomp around and wave his laminated card angrily at me and yell all the way down the aisles of the CVS and all the way out the door.

I just stood there blinking for a minute or so, because, jeez, man, I'm just shopping for some goddamn insoles here. You don't even know me, or anything about me. Because I'm a white woman shopping in CVS I should be your personal Social Services? Learn to take "no" for an answer, man, because your future panhandling/sales career is not going to get far with that attitude. And no, I don't know anything about you either, other than what's written on that card (which I, in my jaded city realism, am going to take with a grain of salt) and that you are rude and hostile. I only give money to close friends and family as wedding or birthday or holiday presents. Why on earth would I just hand money to you, someone I don't even know? You want to hang around while I explain why I don't give individuals money? Or what charities I do give money to in DC that feed people and clothe them and give them job training? Want the names of any of those organizations? No? You just want to yell at me and scare me and stereotype me? OK, then. Fine. I'll stereotype you as another aggressive panhandler who just wants a handout, and doesn't want to do anything to change his situation, and hey, we've really made impressive social progress here! Great.

I chose my goddamn insoles, realized I would have to cut them to fit the shoes, and decided to go back to my office to cut them and get a sandwich because I was ravenous, and it was pouring rain anyhow. So much for the gym - thank you, please try again later. With less verbal assault this time, please.

Woolworths Merchandising Geniuses Evidently Didn't Take Many Literature Courses

2008-04-22T13:41:00.008-04:00

Thanks to the power women at Broadsheet for finding this one.

In England, the Woolworths department stores recently withdrew a line of bedroom furniture for little girls named (wait for it) LOLITA.

Yes, really.

The Woolworths staff were "baffled by the fuss." "A spokesman for the company told The [London] Times: 'What seems to have happened is the staff who run the website had never heard of Lolita, and to be honest no one else here had either. We had to look it up on Wikipedia. But we certainly know who she is now.'"

A mother who had been browsing the Woolworths website commented on a parenting website: “Am I being particularly sensitive, or does anyone else out there think it’s bad taste for Woolies to have a kiddy bed range named ‘Lolita’?.”

The London Times goes on to explain (in perfect, understated snark): "For the benefit of any other Woolworths staff, Lolita was the 12-year-old girl who became the object of her middle-aged stepfather’s sexual obsession in the literary classic of the same name. Thanks to the novel the name has come to represent sexual precociousness in young girls."

Call me an ivory tower dweller, elitist literati, whatever, but I'm pretty appalled that not one person at Woolworths got the "Lolita" reference. I'll chalk this one up as one more sign of the decline of modern civilization (along with the fact that "The Bachelor" is still airing new episodes).

Goin' back to NOLA

2008-04-17T20:30:00.007-04:00

It only took a week for me to be sufficiently recovered from a weekend in New Orleans to actually write about it. It was my ten-year (dear god, I am old) Tulane Law School class reunion, and the perfect reason to get back to NOLA. More importantly, I got to initiate Seth into all the pleasures and idiosyncrasies of this one-of-a-kind city.

We stayed at the most charming Chimes B&B in Uptown, just a few blocks from Napoleon Avenue where I lived during my debaucherous law school years. Thank you Jill for being such a relaxed, wonderful host and great conversationalist. We'd stay with you anytime.

We tried to do it all. Soft shell crab and oyster po'boys and boiled crawfish at Franky & Johnny's. Strolled the French Quarter and the Fest. Ate divine crawfish bread. Pimm's Cups and muffelatas at the Napoleon House. Beer and boudin at Cooter Brown's. Wandered in and out of the antique shops on Magazine Street. Dinner at Galatoire's with my law school class. Token Hurricanes and tourist watching at Pat O'Brien's. Jazz brunch at Commander's Palace, followed by a stroll around the heart of the Garden District to aid the digestion. Live music on Frenchmen Street in the Faubourg Marigny.

French Quarter Fest was going on the weekend of the reunion, and reaffirmed New Orleans' talent at throwing the best damn parties around. Great music, fantastic food, and spectacular weather made for an amazing weekend.

I wanted to drive through Mid-City to City Park and the Lakefront and the Industrial Canal to see the neighborhoods that washed away, to see what's coming back, but there just wasn't enough time. Uptown and the Quarter seem shockingly normal, but the locals say there are little things - the traffic (more in some directions, nonexistent in others), the places you just can't go to any more (jazz in the 9th Ward, crawfish at Bruning's and Jaeger's on the Lakefront, fried seafood at Sid-Mar's), and the fact that half the people you know still haven't come back, came back and left, or are still remediating their houses, even in the less-flooded neighborhoods. My friends in New Orleans saw their law firms and jobs literally wash away. Some folks moved on, some came back to New Orleans and worked tirelessly and creatively at finding new ways to make a living and practice law (suing the britches off of unscrupulous insurance companies has worked well for many). Everyone confirms what I'd gotten from the media - the government of New Orleans remains indecisive, waffling and in disarray, and the rebuilding efforts by the city are the mirror image of that. Anything good that's happening is coming from private organizations and benefactors: Brad Pitt, Harry Connick, Wynton Marsalis, Habitat For Humanity.

I highly recommend "1 Dead In Attic" by Chris Rose, a Times-Picayune reporter who was on the front lines of Hurricane Katrina and its aftermath. He's a NOLA resident who almost lost himself in the post-hurricane madness. I bought it at Maple Street Books, one of my favorite bookstores ever, trying to put more of my dollars into the small businesses at the heart of the New Orleans economy. I didn't make it to see all those neighborhoods, but that doesn't mean I have forgotten what happened to this fair, sultry, magnificent, fecund city, lately drowned, and just drying out.

The riverboat Natchez

French Quarter Fest-ers fill Jackson Square

Classic French Quarter balcony
This is the way to enjoy the Fest. The Ellis Marsalis Quartet was playing.
Shoe repair store sign on Magazine Street
Seth drinks his first Hurricane.
But beware - this is what happens to you if you drink too many Hurricanes. You end up being just one more stupid tourist who can't hold his liquor and passes out in his chair in the courtyard at Pat O'Brien's. It was only 11:30 for Pete's sake. Amateur.

'Round the neighborhood

2008-03-28T09:49:00.006-04:00

The magnificent wreck. Now that someone's bought the corner crackhouse, we wish someone could do something with this magnificent wreck. It's HUGE. And apparently owned by a not-impoverished Greek businessman who chooses to load the house up with old furniture and junk, and leave it a boarded-up eyesore. And a delightful place for vagrants to OD and die under the stairs (not kidding - the neighbors just love that). It just kills me, because this place could be spectacular. What a waste.

Neighboring houses to the magnificent wreck. The pastel colors make me think of Jordan almonds or Easter eggs.

RIP Murky Coffee. This was upsetting. Everyone's favorite Hill coffeehouse, Murky Coffee , was recently seized by the DC government due to some unremitted sales taxes. Over $200,000 in sales taxes, to be exact, which was jacked up to over $400,000 due to extra fines, etc. Since sales tax in DC is about 10%, that's the sales tax on about $2 million worth of coffee. This seems like more than an, um, oversight. The owner admits as much on www.murkycoffee.com and tells us, that sadly, Murky won't re-open.
Seth peers in vain through the window. He's so caffeine-deprived at this point that he considers licking the glass for any remaining espresso vapors.

Eastern Market construction. Not done yet, but there is progress. The murals by local artists on the plywood window covers are a nice touch.

Quite a change from the burned Market almost a year ago.

And just for fun....It's so wrong, but yet so right to call them "twitchers." Courtesy of Union Meat, Eastern Market, Washington, DC, USA, Western Hemisphere, Planet Earth.

I am such a sucker for an animal story

2008-03-26T13:54:00.002-04:00

This tendency runs in my family. When I made a visit home with a law school beau many years ago, my dad regaled my hapless boyfriend with his endless litany of Animal Stories. These stories starred not just our own Noah's Ark of pets, but other people's animals and livestock, and wild animals. I'd heard these stories for years, so I didn't pay too much attention, but I did notice when my otherwise night-owl boyfriend excused himself to go to bed at 9:00 pm. The next day, he said,"I'm sorry I just went to bed, but I couldn't listen to one more Animal Story."

A few years later, when my parents moved from New Mexico to Idaho (New Mexico had clearly become overrun with too many people and too few animals, so they set out for a less populous, more rural state), I learned on one visit that something inevitable had happened. We were driving to my aunt's house, via the back roads, when my mother said "Which left do I want to take?" and my father replied, "It's the one by the house with the three-legged dog." "Oh, of course, the three-legged dog" confirms my mother, with no hint of sarcasm, mockery, etc. Yes, my parents had begun to give directions by animals.

So, with such influences in my life, you can see why I might find this story irresistible:

Swan, Paddleboat Getting Back Together

Mar 26th, 2008 BERLIN -- Petra the swan has a new home and so does her beloved swan-shaped paddleboat.
In 2006, Petra, a black swan, became so attached to the boat — shaped like an outsized white swan — that she refused to leave its side at a lake near a zoo in the German city of Muenster.
Petra and her paddleboat were taken to the zoo.
Zoo officials finally parted bird and boat last week after Petra settled down with a real white swan and the boat was returned to the lake. But the romance was short-lived. The zoo says that, on Saturday, her new beau flew off and sought out the company of other black swans.
A zoo statement says that Petra "appears to feel lonely" and is swimming around in an agitated state. The solution? On Friday, she will be taken back to the nearby lake and her faithful paddleboat.

Why it pays to be a creature of habit

2008-03-13T20:30:00.004-04:00

Or, THAT could have been embarrassing for someone.

You know how at your gym, you get into a comfortable groove, where you find a corner of the locker room that you like, in a low-traffic area, with a locker that always seems to be available, and it's one of the full-length ones, and not one of the half-sized ones, so you can hang your coat and your suit up in it, instead of having to ball them up or fold them. And you gravitate back to this locker most days, because you just kinda like it.

So, when I got to the gym tonight, I went back to the same locker I used yesterday. I open it - empty. Oh, wait. What's that up on the top shelf, up above my head? It looks like...fabric.

My underwear. From yesterday. Right where I left them.

Office Snark

2008-03-12T15:34:00.006-04:00

It's been a snarky day in the office. But you cannot make this crazy shit up, people.

The Magical Disappearing Kitchen
9:30 a.m. - One of our administrative assistants (let's call her Shirley) apparently gets lost trying to find the kitchen. We have only been in this building for three and a half months. I can see how finding the kitchen might still be hard, especially when it is that long 25 feet from your cubicle. Shirley also has a habit of wandering around the office talking to herself at high volume, which is how my colleague ANW collected these gems:

E-mail from ANW:

“I need some coffee!!!”
“Oooh, where AM I?”
“WHERE’S the kitchen???!” (I could hear her voice coming from the end of my little hallway, right next to the door to the kitchen!)
She then walked by my office, coffee pot in hand, and declared “I just get so lost in this place!!”

Eve (another admin. assistant): "Shirley, I hear you."

Shirley: "Eve, I'm over here!"

Eve (walking towards Shirley and “finding” her somewhere near the mailboxes, which are about 15 feet from the kitchen): “Why are you taking the long way home?”
Shirley: “I just get so lost!!"

******

A Turkey. Really. A Real Turkey.

Next, I get an e-mail from a colleague in Boston about how the local "pet" wild turkey, "Mr. Gobbles" has traded his Volpe Center residence on Broadway in Cambridge (we believe he was attending MIT) for the quieter life of the suburbs after getting clipped by a car.

"For the past five years, Gobbles had taken up residence at the Volpe Transportation Center, mostly looking at his reflection in pick-up trucks parked in the center's parking lot, chasing squirrels, and pecking at whatever he felt like."

But that's not all. There is a VIDEO TRIBUTE to Mr. Gobbles, put together by one of the Volpe employees. It's....um....touching. Or something.

***

And back to the kitchen......

Do people in the kitchen not realize that if they sing while in the kitchen WE CAN HEAR IT?

Just being in the kitchen does not render you (a) invisible or (b) silent, even if it is a Magical Disappearing Kitchen.

And, in case you were wondering, the kitchen acoustics do not (c) make you a good singer.

(I just have a thing against singing in the office - I just don't think you should. At all. Ever. Inappropriate. I think I was scarred by a previous work experience where the person who sat in the next cube would sing gospel and hymns kinda loud and kinda a lot, plus some pretty fervent loud praying of the -I'm-going-to-swoon-in-the-church-aisle-and-fall-down-twitching-because-the-spirit-has-MOVED-me type. Which made me want to fall down twitching from sheer discomfort. And Believer cooties - ewww! Gack!)

Fantastic Headline

2008-03-11T17:14:00.004-04:00

"'Gilligan's' Mary Ann Caught With Dope"

Nice job, NY Times. Just the right mix of sleazy tabloid and pop culture reference to more innocent times. I just knew the Professor was making meth in coconut shells. That's why they could never manage to get off of the island - they were all too high and drinking too much of Mr. Howell's bathtub gin to turn their talents to something more useful like a raft. Poor Mary Ann just never kicked the drug habit, and has used it to comfort her all these years about never getting the Professor.

Update: A friend of mine just called to tell me he found one that said "Mary Ann and Mary Jane." Brilliant.

U 2 Kin Tek Gud Fotoz

2008-03-10T21:22:00.005-04:00

I took a photography class on Saturday. Just in case this law gig doesn't work out someday, or we don't win the lottery, I need a backup plan.

The class was at the Smithsonian's National Museum of the American Indian. We learned a ton of stuff about all the really really cool complicated head-spinning things digital SLRs can do, and then we were turned loose in different rooms to snap away. Thank goodness for two things: (1) a patient instructor; and (2) the miraculous "delete" button on the digital camera.

Here are some of the few acceptable results for your enjoyment/mockery. I know, I know, don't post your photos on the internet, right-click protection, blah blah blah, but seriously, I would be both flabbergasted and flattered if I ever did find that my fairly middling photos were stolen and put elsewhere. (I swear to all the copyright bitches that I will be good and use watermarks and protected sites and all if I ever do this in any serious commercial way.)

Girl with girl statue

Smokehole

Swords

I did warn you....

2008-03-07T11:19:00.003-05:00

(And the carnage continues....)

Score = Roberta - 1, Samoas - 0

2008-03-05T21:46:00.005-05:00

You're next, motherfuckers.

(Nom nom nom nom)

Danger in the workplace, Will Robinson!

2008-03-04T22:01:00.004-05:00

While waiting for my hot water to heat up in the microwave the other day, I happened to look at the bulletin board in our office kitchen. Posted on the bulletin board was our monthly occupational injury and illness report:

Upon closer examination, I saw this (take a look at the third entry below):

We've all been there, anonymous Federal employee. Only you were tortured and brilliant enough to collect worker's comp for it.

Thirty-what?!

2008-02-24T19:44:00.000-05:00

It's that birthday time of year again. While I loooove my birthday, and try my best to stretch it out into birth-weekend, birth-week, and birth-month, the digits this year are a little shocking.

Thirty. Five. When the eff did that happen?

I was clinging to the notion that at 34, I could still say I was in my "early 30's." Those days are over. Gah. No denying that 35 is right in the middle, which leads us to thoughts of "middle aged" and "middle aged spread" and how all those aging hippies on the show "thirtysomething" always seemed far older than I would ever be.

But enough on my agedness. My actual birthday was Friday, and I was planning to play hooky from work and take a photography class for part of the day so I can work on my mad photos skillz, learn how to use my fancy digital SLR mo bettah and take photos of something other than the dog. There's a company here in town that teaches all kinds of hands-on photo classes at all the great sites around DC. The one I was planning to take is called "The White House and Its Neighbors" and focused on architectural photography, both inside and out. However, it turned out I was the only one who signed up for the class, and it looked like this (see below) outside, so no class. Rescheduled for a couple of weeks from now.

Yeah, that whitish stuff out there? And the stuff that looks like water? All ice. All of it. A thin, Saran-Wrap like layer all over DC, and especially on the sidewalk in front of my house.

So, I was forced to take myself out for a sushi lunch (with sake! because, hey, no work! it's my birthday!) and go shopping in Georgetown. And then come home and lie on the sofa with the dog falling asleep on me and read and listen to jazz. Awful, I tell you.

A cozy dinner with Seth at Ceiba (saay-buh) rounded out the evening. I didn't tell them it was my birthday, but the barrel select aged silver tequila that I got to go with my Mexican chocolate cake was in a shockingly big glass. I think they wanted me to have fun.

Seth gave me a new Speedlight flash for my camera, because the built-in flashes are never as good as advertised. And I can bounce this one - ooh, aaah.

(My (soon-to-be renovated!) kitchen with flash bounced off the ceiling. Very bright and bouncy. Trust me. )

Seth also gave me a summer's worth of organic local vegetables and flowers. Seriously. We just bought a share in a community-supported agricultural program, and we get fresh, seasonal, mostly organic produce brought to us on Capitol Hill every Monday from May-October. I was bowled over. We've talked a lot about how to eat more locally, sustainably and organically, and now we're acting, not talking, boo-yah! (For more info, click here.)

On Saturday, we met with a contractor about long-discussed house renovations. Which is like crack for someone as Type A as me, because now I have an obsession to channel energy into, and I have to find every photo of every beautiful kitchen that I have loved in all the issues of This Old House that I've saved for the last three years and put them all into a color-coded three-ring binder! I know that for a few months we'll have dust, carpenters, more dust, electricians, no kitchen, no laundry, and annoyance, and oh yeah, tens of thousands of dollars gone from our bank accounts, but it will be worth it because it will be like a WHOLE NEW HOUSE. Finished basement! Flat screen TV! Another bathroom! Actual counter space! Bigger kitchen! Elimination of the narrowest, most annoying useless hallway with the most sticky-outy doorknobs in Washington, DC!

(Just remind me of my enthusiasm in a few months when there is drywall dust in my lukewarm takeout pad thai that I'm eating in my bedroom because there's no other room in the house that I can sit in. )

The Weekend O'Birthday had the grand finale this morning when eight of us DC'ers (and one Arlington, VA resident) made the trek to Wheaton, Maryland for some awesome dim sum at Good Fortune. My goal at dim sum is to eat as many different dumpling-y things as possible, and I definitely succeeded. I am also very proud of all my friends, because we unanimously passed up Chinese broccoli and string beans as a waste of time. More dumplings and sticky pork buns please! Vegetables are for wusses! And sesame balls. Mmmm. A good time was had by all.

Because I lazed around Friday and Saturday - my due as the Birthday Girl - I had to get in some running miles today. I figured dim sum would be adequate carb fuel for my usual 6-mile loop from home to the Lincoln Memorial and back. (It was, though I cannot say I would recommend the practice of eating 43 pounds of dumplings and buns before going for a run. More burping than is really pleasant is involved.)

Fueled by shumai, I engaged in one of my favorite running games - pass as many other runners as possible. I'm so competitive, even on a casual run. I can't help it - at least it keeps me motivated, but it's a little sad, really, because I'm not all that speedy over any distance. I am a decidedly Average runner. But whatever, I enjoy it in my own little sick, average way. And I especially enjoy trying to blow the doors off of guys who look younger than me. I bagged two of them today, young and lean.* Left 'em in the dust.

Take that, thirty-five!

*We'll assume for the sake of my fragile ego that they were not, in fact, suffering from some crippling disability or wasting disease and were nobly striding along at the best pace they could because they are training for Boston or something to raise thousands for charity and that's why I could speed by them.

Corner Crackhouse Update

2008-02-18T16:40:00.005-05:00

The crackhouse before (right after condemnation by the city).The crackhouse now.

I wrote about this structure down the street way back in May of last year. And, amazingly, someone bought the thing and actually started renovating it immediately. Work has been going on nearly every day since June. What a difference. You can barely tell it's the same building. Soon, we might not live on the ugliest block on Capitol Hill.

I Heart KITT The Car (Still!)

2008-02-17T23:10:00.008-05:00

The original KITT

I caught the last half of this NBC made-for-TV one-off revival of Knight Rider. I couldn't help it. I was suuuuucked in by KITT. I have worshiped KITT since the first appearance of Knight Rider when I was 8. David Hasselhoff - meh. It was all about the car for me. Though the catchline "...a shadowy flight into the dangerous world of a man who does not exist..." wasn't bad.

As we're watching, Seth observes, "This is bad."

"Yeah, but probably not as bad as if we were watching one of the original episodes from the '80's."

"Hmm, yeah, you're probably right."

One of the reasons this revival is better than the original is that KITT is a Mustang, and not some trashy Trans Am. Yow! I'm always a sucker for the Mustang.

And come to find out, Val Kilmer does the voice for 2008 KITT. Seth's comment was "Wow. How depressing." Yeah, what DOES that say about your career? (Maybe Val was just a big old Knight Rider fan and leaped at the chance to be KITT?)

Of course, there was a semi-gratuitous appearance by David Hasselhoff. It actually did something to further the story line, such as it was. He's the mostly unknown father of Mike Traceur, the new driver of the new KITT. The last lines exchanged between the two are these:

Traceur: "Will I ever see you again?"
Michael Knight: "I hope so."

(Riveting. I know.)

And then NBC launches into its promo: "Will you see him again? Yes, you will! On "America's Got Talent!"

Dear god. I thought Hasselhoff was this ginormous music star in Germany. Is he really this desperate? Do he and Val Kilmer have the same agent or something?

Just to wrap this up, when I looked the new Knight Rider up on IMDB, the director's name is Steve Shill. Heh heh. Shill. Heh heh.

(And if you haven't had your fill of Knight Rider nostalgia, you can look here.)

Because Bacon Says I Love You

2008-02-12T16:38:00.002-05:00

This all started out in a perfectly innocent e-mail exchange with my Tulane law school classmate Mike, who is responsible for that phrase. He gave us this pearl of wisdom at 8am on the last Sunday of April 1998 as he cooked us hangover breakfast (replete with bacon) and served us beer before we headed out for a day of Jazz Fest-ing in New Orleans.

Our 10-year law school reunion is coming up in April, and I've been busy booking plane tickets and B&Bs, and reading menus like poetry as I plan my New Orleans eating itinerary. This is serious business, especially since Seth is coming with me, and he has never been to New Orleans. I was once mocked by an old boyfriend for discussing what to order for dinner that night at Frankie & Johnny's while I was still standing in line waiting to order lunch at Mother's. You can see why that boyfriend didn't last. This kind of thing makes perfect sense to the people of southern Louisiana, who take their eating seriously.

Anyhow, Mike sent me a link to Cochon, a relative newbie in the distinguished New Orleans dining scene. I think I have to go there, because anything named after a pig cannot be bad.

Then I got this in my e-mail:

"Because you know what says love?"

My response:

"That's a beautiful thing. You've got me all teary-eyed. I might swoon. "

Mike:

"I have that effect on women; check out http://www.baconsalt.com/ "

And goddamn! It's BACON SALT.

Now I really might swoon. How have I lived this long without knowing this existed?

And it's VEGETARIAN and KOSHER. OMG! Oy vey! The guilty pleasure possibilities of this are practically endless. Kale and BACON SALT. Matzo and BACON SALT. Tofu and BACON SALT. Gefilte fish and BACON SALT. Ok, maybe that last one is too much to ask, even of BACON SALT.

This just proves what the devoted smoked, cured, pork devourers among us have known all along: Everything tastes better with bacon. Even if you're a vegetarian or a Jew.

Bacon: it will unite us all.

I Am Part of the Tribe

2008-02-09T22:30:00.001-05:00

We're driving home today, after running a few miles out on the C&O Canal Towpath, and discussing what we should eat when we get home.

Seth says: "We have bagels."

Me: "But we don't have any cream cheese."

Seth: "Sometimes you're so picky. There are many other things you can put on bagels besides cream cheese."

Me: "But I don't like any of those things. If there is no cream cheese, I am not eating a bagel."

Seth: "Sometimes you're too Jewish."

Monday Musings

2008-02-04T13:06:00.002-05:00

A compilation of random stuff that caught my attention today....

First, I would be remiss (and a most unsupportive spouse) if I did not mention the New York Giants' amazing victory over the New England Patriots last night. My dear sweet hubby had the foresight to take off of work today so he could bask or wallow in whatever the outcome of the game happened to be. I am sure he is basking away as I type, probably in his PJs on the sofa, tirelessly watching game highlights on ESPN over and over and over and over and over again. And at least five more times to be sure, while simultaneously checking all the stats again online, reading every Giants chat room and e-mail and article he can find, and pondering which Giants championship merchandise to purchase. Especially regarding the amazing sticky-fingers catch by David Tyree in the last minutes of the last quarter (a Montclair, New Jersey native, for some icing on the Big Blue cake). For some photos of the Super Bowl watching tension, check the Rufus blog here.

Second, what the heck is going on in the Maryland burbs today?

"Feb 4th, 2008 BALTIMORE -- Helicopters and marine units examined the surface of the Patapsco River Monday after authorities received a report that an adult threw a child off a bridge."
and

"Feb 4th, 2008 LARGO, Md. -- Three men were killed by a gunman after an argument broke out in a restaurant while the Super Bowl was being shown on television, police said. The shooting happened Sunday night at the Uno Chicago Grill restaurant, part of a dining, shopping and entertainment complex near FedEx Field in the Largo area, Prince George's County police said. Two of the men were shot in the restaurant's bar area and the third was shot outside in a parking lot. Police said they believe all three men were killed by a single shooter.
Investigators were trying to determine what prompted the argument, which witnesses said occurred after one team scored."

Yeah, I feel safer in the old "inner city" of Washington, DC, thanks. Random punk-ass vandalism to my automobile aside.

Third, back to bull riding. This answers one of my prior questions about medical bills.

"Pop Tarts and minor home surgery"
Tim "Wild Thang" Lepard has been in rodeos most of his life.
Most bull riders and fighters either retire young or die, so to stay with the show, the 45-year- old Memphis native began training monkeys to wear cowboy outfits and ride dogs in an
act he calls Team Ghost Riders.

How many times have you been hurt?
"I've had nine majors (injuries). ... This right here (on my cheek) was an injury. A bull hooked me in the face and I sewed that up myself. ... I had a bull that hooked me in the mouth. It tore that lip right off right there. The horn went up into my mouth. They done all this reconstructive. I had tubes put in my nose. The whole roof of my mouth is steel."

Did you say you sewed your own face?
"I sewed that cheek up with a clamp gun. ... There's a thing in rodeo, if you go to the doctor, that's your money. You know, we get paid to do our job, but if something happens to us and we have to go to the hospital, we don't get paid. It's kind of like (being) self-employed. If your truck breaks down, you lose. You've got to be on the road and that's it. I've got to be in the arena. For 28 years, except for one time, I've missed going into the arena."

Fourth, monkeys are irresistible. Thanks to MP for the "Cowmonkey News of the Day."
Monkey Rides Dog At Stock Show
A 21-year-old monkey is stealing the spotlight at the Fort Worth Stock Show and Rodeo. Whiplash entertains crowds of all ages by dressing up like a cowboy and riding on a border collie.
The 7-pound monkey has a large following, his Web site receiving about 1,000 hits a day.
When he's not performing, Whiplash enjoys playing with toys and watching cartoons.

And finally, if you think dressing up a monkey like a cowboy and having him ride a dog is crazy, you need to see Sugarbush the Squirrel. Yes, this is for real. And yes, the woman lives in Florida.

Cultural Diversity

2008-01-31T23:12:00.001-05:00

Let's pretend for a minute that it's not almost another weekend. So, here's what we did this past weekend.

On Saturday night, we went to a Pro Bull Riding competition at the Patriot Center at George Mason. I dug out my 1984 Rodeo de Santa Fe Rodeo Princess belt buckle to wear for the occasion. (Nope, not kidding. I was the Rodeo Princess in Santa Fe in 1984. The youngest Princess ever, thankyouverymuch. And yes, it's pretty much like Miss America but on horses and without bathing suits or evening gowns and with color-coordinated cowboy hats, Wrangler jeans, Justin roper boots and spurs.)

The pungent smell of bull manure in the Patriot Center brought me back to the annual July rodeo in Santa Fe. We usually went all of the four nights - I've been to a lot of rodeos in my life, but I think the total number is under 100. I haven't been to a rodeo event in years, and all I needed was a can of Sprite, a Frito pie, some cotton candy and a couple of drunk cowboys getting in a fight and tumbling down the bleachers in a wave of spilled Coors to make it all complete.

It didn't disappoint. Friends who had never seen bull riding were amazed at how hard it is to just stay on the bull for eight seconds. The good Colosseum Romans that we were, we cheered loudest for the bulls that didn't just trot right back in the pen after bucking their cowboys off, but charged snorting around the arena, chasing cowboys and looking for a nice kidney to gore.

I'm not sure I really get bull riding, or the allure of it. In the event program, there was an article about one of the top riders, and he talks about how he had to take five months off last year to recover from injuries from one ride, including all kinds of broken ribs and a lacerated liver. And of course he's back riding bulls. The injury report on one of the pro bull riding sites is enlightening. I mean, you're all beat up after the marathon, but a lacerated vital organ is something else entirely different to sacrifice for your sport. It's not like they make all that much money, relative to the risk level. The top all-time earner is just under $5 million. Just wondering how the cost of hospital bills figures into that.

On a completely different note, we got up on Sunday and went to the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum. I've wanted to go for awhile, but it's hard to get really, well, excited about the Holocaust Museum. It seems not suitably somber to be too excited. Middlebury College's alumni group had arranged for a special presentation at the museum, including a lecture with a Holocaust survivor.

While the Holocaust Museum's exhibits were horrifying, nauseating, gut-wrenching, they were also fascinating. The sheer amount of information that has been gathered about the Holocaust in the museum is impressive. We all have a generalized idea about what happened in Europe during Hitler's rise to power, World War II, and the Holocaust, but this museum really delves into the details. It details the differing experiences of Jews in Poland versus Jews in France. It talks about the persecution of the Roma (Gypsy) people during that time. And the names, faces, photographs, and individual accounts are, of course, the most riveting and haunting. So much detail has been amassed about the lives of Holocaust victims before, during and after that time. I was surprised to feel that I could have spent more time there; we didn't really get to see all of the permanent collection before it was time for the lecture to begin.

The speaker, Manya Friedman, is a survivor from Poland. She was 13 when she was sent to a work camp. She has only in recent years decided to speak about her experiences publicly, as it is difficult every time; she said the Holocaust is always with her. Her parents and siblings were all executed. She only had a cousin or two left. Towards the end of her lecture, she spoke of being at her son's wedding. When the family photos were taken, there were only three people in her son's photo: Manya, her son, and her daughter. Her husband (also a Holocaust survivor) had died years before. She described how bereft and alone she felt - her son had no grandparents, no aunts, no uncles, no cousins. And his bride's family had dozens of relatives crowding into the photo.

Tears ran out of my eyes when Manya told that story. My husband has a large family, and at our wedding, the family photos for his side were loud and boisterous, and the photographer had to keep rearranging to make sure everyone was in the photo. When it got to mine, we were only three: me, my mom, and my sister. My father died suddenly from a heart attack just two weeks before my wedding. I can understand how Manya felt, at least a little. My entire family was not systematically murdered; the sadness of that I can't fathom. We were overwhelmed by the end of the lecture.

I've been trying to come up with some brilliant link between these two experiences of our weekend. Survival of the fittest - one willing, one most unwilling? I don't know that there's a way to put these two things together without getting really attenuated, so I think I'll just stick with feeling pretty darn good about living somewhere that I can do both of these things in two successive days. A toast with Coors and Slivovitz for all the living and the dead.

Why I Love-Hate/Hate-Love DC part 2

2008-01-28T19:39:00.001-05:00

My friend John had to go get a replacement driver's license a couple of days ago, because his had gotten damaged. He went to the Half Street SW location, right by the DC inspection station. While he was there, apparently someone accidentally pulled the fire alarm at the DMV and they had to evacuate. They were on C48 and he had C52 as his number...

A classic DC DMV moment. But, despite the fire alarm evacuation crisis, getting a replacement license still took less than an hour, and the lady gave him sort of a loophole reduced fee for the replacement. We'd been taking bets on how long John's ordeal at the DMV would take because you never know.

I could go on for a long time with incredible stories about trials and tribulations about the Byzantine bureaucracy of the DC DMV (this could be a future post), but the most important lesson here, people, is NEVER EVER (ever!) go to the downtown C St. NW location unless you absolutely, positively have to. I don't know why, but the folks at the other locations, they're just nicer. Successful visits have been had at the Georgetown, Penn Ave. SE, and Half Street locations. Ball point pens have been loaned (!), smiles have been seen!