June 2008 Archives
It seems I can't be bothered to post here nowadays, but I'm still posting on Flickr, photos with commentary.
Really, I blame my lack of posting on being busy all the time lately. I need to take up meditation or something because even when I do have a few minutes of calm, my brain is in no shape to form coherent paragraphs or decide on an interesting topic to say something about.
At least I'm not posting because my life is full and interesting, rather than because I really have nothing to say.
Random things going on:
- We finally replaced the last appliance that was original to the house: the oven. Well, I guess the term is "range", though that never sounds right to me. And now all the bisque has been banished, and I will finally, FINALLY be able to bake decent cookies again. Theoretically, anyway. I haven't tried it yet. It just got installed today.
- We've had nothing but rain and storms lately. I should be well into biking season, and I've only been out on my bike three times this year so far. Bah, humbug.
- Several people I know have been going through some scary health crises in their families. I've been going through a lot of helpless feelings lately, wishing there was anything at all I could do to help and knowing that there's nothing.
- I've been working on a secret project lately and I'm almost ready to finally tell y'all about it. But first, I apparently must tease you by letting you know I have a secret and then not telling you what it is. That's actually the main reason I've been quiet here lately.
That is all. I'm off to enjoy yet another rainy weekend. But my sister will be visiting from Boston and she has a pretty sunny disposition, so I guess that'll help. Cheers.
As I alluded to in my last entry, I've been working on a project for several weeks now and it's been consuming a lot of my time and energy (both physical and mental energy). But it wasn't quite at a point where I felt like I could talk about it yet. So my entries have been sparse lately, as you've noticed. It was sort of hard to figure out what to say here when there were HUGE things going on that weren't ready for public consumption. I guess it was sort of like an elephant in the room, keeping me from saying much of anything.
But I think it's time to unveil it at last....
Continue reading "Code name: Project Muppet" »
My 30th birthday is just around the corner (on Sunday). I always thought I'd make a big deal out of my 30th, that I'd have a big celebration with lots of people and feel somehow different. However, this birthday is farther from my mind than any other birthday I can think of.
Rather than doing anything terribly exciting, I'll be going to a graduation party, then to my parents' house for dinner with the family. Not too different from any other Sunday in the summer. I will probably still be comatose from going to Rock the Garden the night before. Andrew Bird doesn't come on till 8:30, which is about a half-hour before I can no longer keep my eyes open anymore.
I'm not sure turning 30 makes me feel any older at all. Being pregnant makes me feel unfathomably older, and I still sort of feel like it's impossible that I could actually be at an age when one has a baby. I always thought I'd have to have everything figured out before taking that step and then sometime in the recent past I realized I will never have everything figured out and, by the way, nobody else will either. It's sort of freeing to realize that some amount of cluelessness is just part of the human condition.
The weirdest thing that happened on my birthday yesterday:
We were driving home around sunset and coming around the corner towards our house. There was a woman standing next to a bike talking on a cell phone and an old man sitting on the street, bleeding from the face, the nose, and from the back of the head, one shoe lying next to him and his tiny dog lapping up a pool of blood. She'd been out for a bike ride and came across him lying in the street; at first she thought he was dead.
We stopped the car and donated a box of Kleenex to help staunch the blood and we stayed around until the ambulance arrived, since the man was determined to get up and walk home despite the blood spurting from his nose and flowing from various other places. And despite the fact that he lives alone, so there wouldn't be anyone there to give him some first aid. He kept saying, "we're okay, we're okay." And he smelled strongly of wine, according to Brad (I didn't get close enough to notice).
I hope he's okay.
Other than that, it was a lovely birthday.
Now that I'm pregnant and everyone in my life knows about it, I've noticed I get asked "how are you feeling?" more than any other question (at least once people know the due date). So my unofficial study of the situation tells me that people really want to know how pregnant women feel. I suppose part of that must be because most people realize pregnancy is fairly gruesome way to spend 40 weeks of your life (not to mention the postpartum stuff) and are strangely and morbidly fascinated by it.
If everyone hadn't already been asking how I'm feeling, I would spare you the gory details. But since so many people seem to want to know, I'm going to assume that you The Internet won't mind hearing about it. At least as long as I don't go on and on about it to excess.
I'm feeling pretty decent. There are the standard pregnancy symptoms everyone hears about. Yes, my stomach is bothering me (thankfully, not too badly). Yes, I am completely and utterly exhausted. The interesting symptoms, though, are the ones you don't hear about that often. Excessive salivation. Constantly. A fountain, a geyser of saliva. My mouth is like Old Faithful. The juices are flowing 100% of the time, but get really excessive when I think about any number of tangy foods: grapefruit, pickles, sour cream. Sour cream is my one big craving right now (*gulp* ... just typing the words "sour cream" kicks my already overzealous salivary glands into super overdrive). I could eat quesadillas with sour cream every day. I actually couldn't sleep last night because, even though I wasn't hungry, I couldn't stop thinking about sour cream and every time, my mouth would instantly fill with saliva.
Of all the many ways my body has changed so far, this has been the oddest and is starting to become one of the most annoying. Also, I'd really like my taste for sugar and coffee back, please. ASAP.
Last week we had our monthly checkup and got to hear the baby's heartbeat for the first time (much louder than I ever expected it to be; that was a surprise). The good: I'm healthy, baby seems to be doing fine, I don't have any STDs (they test for everything in that blood test). The not-as-good: I lost 2.5 pounds since the last checkup and apparently the scale is supposed to go in the opposite direction. Will have to work on that.
I'm at 11 weeks now, which means that in a couple more weeks I'll be officially done with the first trimester. Everyone says the second trimester is when you start to feel better, and I'm almost afraid to hope that they're right. And things haven't even been that bad for me compared to a lot of pregnant woman, but I'm still so tired of the low-grade nausea day after day, the hypersensitive nose (I caught a whiff of KFC a block away the other day and almost threw up), and of course the exhaustion.
This weekend was particularly miserable. I did manage to accomplish the amazing feats of one load of laundry, grocery shopping, and cleaning the refrigerator. And I watched two discs of Buffy, the Vampire Slayer. And moaned quite a bit.
But see, the good news is that today I feel sort of... normal. I woke up this morning and my mind was fairly lucid. I actually began to think about the week ahead of me instead of burrowing my face into the pillow. My stomach only hurts a little, and only since lunchtime. Maybe I'm just having a good day but maaaaybe I really am headed for second trimesterland.
I know a lot of women say they love being pregnant, but I'm just not there yet. I hope I do get there. In theory, it's an amazing and special experience. In practice, so far it feels sort of like abuse.
