Miniature pirates

I worked today and my floor was taken over by a children's pirate band and their fans--hundreds of miniature pirates. The smallest pirate could not have been more than 30 inches long. It was all pretty adorable, and a lot more entertaining than the regular business of being a librarian.

Happy Halloween little bebes. I hope you're doing something incredibly spooky.

I just came from the midwife. Everything is going along swimmingly with the baby, my blood pressure is good, blah blah blah. We are all agreed that I need to eat more protein. I'm also supposed to eat three servings of dairy every day, which is awesome. I've always feared that I eat way too much dairy, but now I have orders from a medical profssional to cram tons of yogurt and cheese down my piehole. Hooray!

After my appointment this morning I took myself out to a two egg breakfast with bacon and a couple of giant pancakes. Maybe not precisely what my midwife had in mind, but undeniably protein-rich. Also syrup-rich. I'm pretty sure I gained a pound just from that meal.

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Really, really bad day at work. I don't think the library loves me anymore.

The only thing separating me from that bright future

Can you believe we have to go to work every single DAY? What a load of crap. I used to think that if I won the lottery I'd be one of those lottery-winning a-holes who still goes to work--just part time, of course, because I'm so devoted to my craft--but now I realize that I was what is known as a LIAR. If I won the lottery I would sit on the couch all day and watch Felicity on DVD.* The only thing separating me from that bright future is the fact that I have never bought a lottery ticket in my life.

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I just broke up with Comcast, and it felt good. Stupid Comcast, trying to make me install yet another box just so that I can watch the tv I already pay for. I hate them. Now Mr. A and I are going to become the cool people who watch all of our tv on the intertubes. Suck it, Comcast.

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I need new music, and I'm taking suggestions. What are the kids listening to these days? Any ideas for good fall/winter musics? I need some horizon-expanding.



*Noel or Ben, people? That is the burning question coming at you from 1999. I'm 100% Noel all the way. I'm in season 2 now and Ben is starting to seem like somewhat less of a doucher than previously, but he's still not un-douchey enough to woo me away from Noel.

That girl's all right with me

You know what's awesome about Rick James' "Super Freak"? The girl's really not a super freak. I'm mean, she's waiting for him with incense, wine, and candles. Not exactly a freaky scene, unless you have very severe allergies.

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I think I've turned a corner in terms of worrying about the baby. Not to say I won't worry at all anymore--why give up something I'm good at, especially when I work in a swine flu soup?--but I think I'm past the dedicated worrying that I had been doing.

Have I told you how convinced I am that the baby is a girl? I'm dead certain. My mom says that my certainty is scientific proof it's a boy. I would be delighted to find out it's a boy--just as delighted as with a girl--but I would also be completely shocked. I'm getting nonstop girl vibes.

Anyway, we'll find out for sure next month. The whole finding out the sex thing is funny--I've talked to several women who said that they wouldn't have been able to get through labor without the surprise of finding out whether the baby is a boy or a girl. Maybe I'm crazy, but it seems likely that the baby will still be of interest to me, even if I already have that information. Don't get me wrong; I think it's cool when people wait to find out. But I HATE waiting. Just waiting five more months to have this baby seems like an impossible task sometimes.

Timjim's first mail

Mr. A emailed me yesterday morning to ask if we should subscribe to Parenting: The Early Years magazine, since it was being offered for free for some reason. We pondered whether it was worth while, since we'll probably end up on a million horrible mailing lists. This is probably also the first step towards turning into the kind of people nobody wants to be around because they start conversations with, "Just the other day, I was reading a fascinating article in Parenting . . ."

Anyway, we subscribed under the name Timjim Mr.A'sLastNameMyLastName. Timjim is so lucky to have thoughtful parents like us.

To be honest with you

So, I haven't gained any weight yet, and over the past few days it's started to worry me. Most women don't gain weight during the first trimester, but I'm a couple of weeks into the second trimester now, and I should have at least a couple of pounds to show for it. I called my midwife, and she said I probably am not getting enough protein. Sigh.

I feel like a failure for not getting the baby what it needs. I also feel at a little bit of a loss as to how to eat all the crap I'm supposed to eat. Yes, okay, I could cut back on the chocolate.* But still, every day I'm supposed to eat, like, 17 servings of fruit and 22 vegetables and a giant pile of grains and make sure I get a ton of calcium and iron and fiber and to be honest with you, I'm hungry, but I'm not THAT hungry.

Okay, I'm going to go find an unsuspecting animal to eat. Later, internets.



*But I NEED IT.

Eventually a spit cup wasn't enough

I lost my calendar for over a week and my life basically ground to a terrifying halt. Finally, yesterday, I found it. In my gym bag. So . . . yeah. I went back to the gym today.

I haven't been going mainly because I felt like I was a brave hero for just getting up every day with that cold/sinus thing. But also, the advice the books give you about exercising when you're pregnant is weird and slightly terrifying. They're all, "You must exercise right now. If you don't exercise your labor will last for 72 days and your baby will be a pathetic weakling and no one will ever love you again. Get off your FAT ASS." But the same books also have a lot of scary warnings: don't let your heart rate go up past a certain point, don't let your temperature rise, don't sweat (seriously?), don't do anything that might increase your chances of falling down--which for me includes just about everything.

So, as with much of the advice from the pregnancy books, I'm doing a combination of ignoring everything they say and synthesizing it into something I can handle. Basically, I still do my same exercise routine, but with a free pass not to push myself too hard. (Which, let's face it, isn't really a change since I'm not much of a self-pusher anyway.)

I've read--or at least skimmed--a lot of pregnancy books, and I'm here to tell you that they are mostly crazy. There are the cutsie ones,* which are vomitious and which we will not discuss here. Then there are the "serious" ones, which can be divided into the subcategories of hippie and doctor-y.

On the hippie side, there's some good stuff, but you also have ladies writing about how if you can't breastfeed, you are morally obligated to hire a wet nurse. A wet nurse? Really? Who am I, Juliet's mom? I'm probably more hippie woo-woo than most--I'm seeing midwives, for example, and I hope the nursing thing works out--but I am pretty sure that feeding your baby formula is unlikely to result in the end of Western civilization.

On the doctor-y side, you have books that treat pregnancy like a horrible disease that thankfully can be treated with surgery after 40 weeks. Basically, these books just contain encyclopedic lists of every single disgusting thing that can possibly happen to your body while you are knocked up. One of my favorite wacky symptoms? Excessive saliva. My friend/sister-in-law told me the story of a woman who had so much extra spit in her mouth all the time that eventually a spit cup wasn't enough, and she decided that she was just going to have to spit on her living room carpet. And she did.


*Most of these refer to the baby throughout as The Bump and have titles like "Messages from the Bump!" or "Bonding with Your Bump!"

Tim Jim

I woke up this morning with the conviction that I have finally more or less kicked this cold/sinus infection/snot disease, and I am SO HAPPY about it. Like, giddy. I still look like hell but I feel a thousand times better.

It has been pouring down rain the past couple of days and, although I may deny ever having said this if you bring it up later, I've really been enjoying it. The thing about Seattle, as perhaps I have mentioned, is that even though it's insanely wet all the time, it hardly ever RAINS. The air just kind of condenses on you as you walk through it, and it's clammy and gross. But lately we've been having real, honest-to-goodness storms, and thunderstorms are predicted for tonight. That's real weather! Exciting.

Yesterday, Mr. Awesome and I both stayed home because we had a steady stream of maintenance/contractor/appraiser/dead appliance-picker-upper type people coming through. In between appointments, we built a fire and watched some episodes of Mad Men (Season 2, should you care) and it was all very pleasant and restorative. That's one thing about bad weather--I feel guilty watching episode after episode of tv on dvd if it's nice out, but bad weather = full television pass. I believe tonight will be more of the same. Hopefully with fewer maintenance men.

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I talked to my mom today about what she wants the baby to call her. She surprised me by rejecting all the standards outright: Grandma, Granny, Grammy, and MeMaw are all verboten. She's considering "Kitty" (her name is Katherine), but said, "You know, sometimes children get things wrong, and well, I'd rather not be known as 'Titty.'" Point taken, MeMaw.

I thought I had a great suggestion--Big Mama--but she shot that one right down. "But what would your father be called?" "Uh, BIG PAPA." Duh.

She did have a good idea for a boy name, though. "You know your great grandfather's name was Timothy, and your grandfather's name was James," she said. "So you could name the baby Timothy James. And call him Tim Jim."

Awesome.

Goverment get out

Seriously, thanks so much everyone, for still giving even a tiny crap what I do, despite months of digital tumbleweeds. I am touched that anyone at all still subscribes to this blog.

I feel like it's sort of unfair to turn this into a pregnancy blog, since that's not what anyone signed up for. On the other hand, I've never done a very good job of sticking to the supposed theme of librarianism. I guess this will just continue to be a mixed bag of stuff that's probably not very interesting to anyone.

Do you have your Halloween costume picked out? I feel almost obligated to go as Rosemary, since I now have short red hair. We have also considered going as teabaggers/birthers. Mr. A. came up with this idea for sign, which I find hilarious: "Goverment get out of are schools and into my utarus."

Other costume thoughts? Ideas?

Blurg

Thank you so much, everyone, for the kind wishes and congratulations. I want to respond to everyone individually--and I will, very soon. Right now, though, it seems like the cold I got late last week has turned into a sinus infection, and my brain is barely working. So please excuse the delay.

Aliens attack

Ahem. Is this thing on?

So, guess what? I'm having a baby. True story--the action is supposed to take place in April.

I know there is nothing miraculous about getting knocked up; 17-year-olds do it every day without even trying. Still, I am a little bit amazed that Mr. A. and I could create a new person with just stuff we had lying around the house, as it were. (Does that sound smug? I hope not.)

I'm at 14 weeks now, which means the first trimester is over. I didn't get morning sickness, thank jebus. The evil thing about morning sickness is that you can't really call in sick for it. I strongly believe that anytime there is puking, the puker should get to immediately call DAY OVER. She should go home and hide under the covers and, if she can hold her head up, she should spend the rest of the day watching the BBC Pride and Prejudice on DVD.

She should not have to try to hide her puking from her coworkers and then bravely go back to typing at her computer or meeting with her boss or whatever. I hereby salute all the women who have done this. You are awesome, but I am glad I was not amongst you.

Symptom-wise, I have been pretty tired (to the point of narcolepsy, in the beginning), but that's gotten better lately. There is also the constant peeing, but you probably don't want to hear about that. And the gas. Wait, where are you going? Don't you want to hear about the magic of creation?

I had my first ultrasound on Monday, which was pretty rad: scientific proof that there is really somebody in there. I got two pictures, one where the baby appears to be boxing, and the other in which it's sucking its thumb. The ultrasound ended up lasting for well over an hour because the baby was bouncing all over the place, and refused to bounce into a certain position they wanted. Mr. A. said: Not even born, and already won't sit still for pictures.

The technician who did the ultrasound said, "That sure is one cute baby."

Am I crazy, or could it be that she was flattering me? For one thing, I think we all know in our hearts that every single ultrasound picture that has ever been taken looks pretty much exactly the same. I mean, sure, babies at 14 weeks do kind of look like cute babies--surprisingly so.

But they also kind of look like they might be planning an attack on Sigourney Weaver's spaceship. You know what I'm sayin'?