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'?

Coming of age

I think I'm officially an adult now. Doesn't that magical transitional moment happen the first time you are faced with a rigormoris-stricken squirrel* in your backyard and you realize you're the one who has to figure out what to do with it? That's what I am assuming.

According to my friends at the local NPR station, the greater Seattle area is currently experiencing its 24th straight day without rainfall. We even had a heat advisory for a couple of days. I know I'm jinxing it by mentioning it at all but the weather has just been so wonderful I've kind of been beside myself.

I'm obsessed with our garden. Every day I give Mr. A. reports on its progress. "The Yellow Pear tomato plant has blossoms!" "The fourth basil plant has three new leaves!" To his credit he always pretends to be extremely interested in these news items. So great is my obsession that this morning I had some extra time before work and I actually pulled up a chair and sat down in front of our raised bed as though it were a theatrical production, instead of plants growing at a rate that cannot be detected by the human eye. (I guess I'm skipping regular adulthood and going staight for retirement.)

The other great love in my life right now is our woodpecker family. As you may recall, a Northern Flicker couple has built a home in the tree right next to our back deck, and their babies are big enough now that I can see their funny little gray heads poking up whenever they get fed. Both parents feed them, and from what I can tell it's a job that takes up most of their time. Sometimes if I'm rudely hanging out too close to their nest, the two woodpeckers will sit together on the big Douglas fir in the backyard and say, "Excuse me? Excuse me? Could you move?" until I get hint and let them get back to business.


*I am enough of a sicko that I took pictures of it, which I will post here once I get them uploaded. I've also taken pictures of the woodpeckers and the garden, but let's face it, dead squirrel photography is pure journalistic gold.

Very daring!

This morning the local NPR guy was all, "It is A GLORIOUS DAY IN THE PUGET SOUND. Beautiful! Amazing! Get outside and enjoy it, everybody! Currently we have 45 degrees with a 15 mph wind out of the northeast."

Listen, Derek Wong, I feel you. I too am happy that it's no longer raining, not least because I'm going to a baseball game after work and for me, the whole point of baseball is being outside in the sunshine.* However, I don't know if 45 degrees is actually an optimal temperature for late May. I know that happiness is all about adjusting one's expectations and whatnot, but still. Let's at least hold out for sweater weather, okay?

Despite the chilly morning, I bravely biked to work.** When I bike to work I generally just throw an outfit in my backpack without checking to see how it will actually look when I put it on. Then at work I shower and put on the outfit and hope for the best. I think today might not have been the best.

Here's how I know: When one of my co-workers arrived today she gave me the once-over and said, "That's quite an outfit you've got there. Very daring!"

I guess cowboy boots with a lime green skirt are too much.


*I know, it's kind of expensive for what is basically a trip to the park. But then, there's also the beer.
**May is bike to work month, in case you don't know. Today is the first day this month that I have in fact biked to work. It's been cold. What am I, some kind of superhero?