Home Again, Home Again, Jiggity Jig

Moving back home is like slipping on your favorite pair of corduroys after unpacking them from summer storage on the first crisp day of autumn. (No, it would have to be something more tropical-feeling than that, because while it hasn’t been hot yet here in Texas, there’s nothing crisp about it.) It’s certainly comfortable, though. I hadn’t realized how alien my life was to me in Boston, when here it feels so natural. We shop at all the same grocery stores, hang out with all the same friends, run all the same errands we used to run, just as if we never left. The dogs are noticeably happier, and our cat is a brand new man, no longer hiding in the bathroom cabinet. He comes out and stirs up trouble just like the old days.

We’ve had rain for two weeks straight. In Boston, incessant rain was always a first-world-tragedy, bringing worries about delayed trains, slim footwear options, flimsy umbrella cursing. But here, rain gives me this odd feeling of relief and delight. I realized it is because here, rain means happy garden. However, I don’t really have a garden yet, so the feeling must be just an old, worn path in my ancient neural forest. The only one of those little thought reflexes I have left from Boston is when I see a quarter. I still want to snatch them up and secret them away greedily. But now, they’re just twenty-five cents, might as well be two dimes and a nickel. I’m no longer desperately hording them, counting them, meting them out with strategic care for laundry loads, vending machines, and bus fair. I could even buy a pack of fresh corn tortillas with them--ah heavenly delight to be back home again, home again.

False Start

Okay, our big fun didn’t really happen today after all. The radiologist informed us that she couldn’t perform whatever it was my Boston doctor requested, and no other Boston-insurance-approved providers in the area are willing to do it without a local physician’s nod. Now I have to get an Austin doctor and then we can get the right kind of test.

Damn.

[Image from: http://www.baltimoresun.com/sports/horseracing/]

Analyzing Data

Clues that my baby is a boy:
* my own personal vibes
* use of male, punk-rock fertility talisman instead of female
* timing of ovulation and intercourse
* a friend who “knows” these things
* three people’s opinion about the shape of my belly
* two ultrasound sessions at two different hospitals
* a former zookeeper’s professional interpretation of the ultrasound images

Clues that my baby is a girl:
* a fortune cookie opened while we asked it about Scott’s parenting abilities had the word “Daughter” printed on one side

Scott insists that it could go either way. I am certain that all *reliable* signs point to boy. I mean, who are you going to trust? A highly skilled ultrasound technician or a cookie?!

Today we find out at our 20-week ultrasound--I’m totally psyched!

[Image from: http://datalib.ed.ac.uk/]

Fresh Loaf

There is nothing like holding a newborn baby! This one, my darling niece, is only two hours old in this picture:

Happy Birthday Raphaella!

Highway

I love a good road trip. Even when it is a hellish 32-hour drive from Boston to Austin, in a luggage-crammed car with stinky-breath dogs panting in your face, it has its charms. It’s not so perverted as flying. Flying requires being strapped into an unnatural, desiccated can that displaces you abruptly, jarringly. Only the views of the miniaturizing ascent and descent that frame the alien cloudscape give clues that you are actually traveling from one place to another. Not so with a road trip.

Ours took us across ten states and more than a dozen Cracker Barrels. The road trip was an evolution of sorts. Over time, the accents got longer, the hair blonder. The roadside flowers went from exotic to familiar (though consistently breathtaking). Over four days, the terrain flattened, the trees grew scrubbier, and the sky got bigger. Road kill morphed from raccoon to possum to armadillo. When we were just an hour from home, we could see a huge, grey storm cloud smearing and flashing over faraway pastures. It made me cry to see a good old-fashioned Texas thunderstorm again.

[Image from: http://www.stormeffects.com/2006_chase_images.htm]

Laundress Gumshoe

I highly recommend a little marital aide that is significantly cheaper than counseling: getting your dirty clothes professionally laundered. (What did you think I was going to say?) In Boston, it hasn’t been much more expensive than the crazy prices in our basement--$4.75 to wash and dry a single load--ouch! The professional wash-and-fold is a bit of a splurge from hauling stuff down the street to the cheaper coin laundromat, but like I said, when only one spouse ends up doing this chore, the household suffers. Anyway, I have gotten way off track…

Scott and I love our local laundress. She is quite chatty and gives out Dum Dum lollipops. When we first started going there, she asked Scott what kind of dogs we had. He looked a little surprised and wondered if she recognized him at the dog park or something. Then, of course, she indicated that it was clear from our hairy pile of laundry that we either have dogs or a much bigger problem. Then, this last week (a year and a half of laundry later), when Scott came to pick up the laundry, she gave him a hearty congratulations. She of course had gotten the first batch of dirty laundry that included my new maternity clothes. What a funny thing to piece together information from clothes. (Paranoid Molly hopes her keen senses did not detect any of our figurative dirty laundry to boot--need to check all the pockets next time.) When I finally stopped by to get our last batch before the move, she had all sorts of advice about stretch marks and sleeping--very useful stuff. And she gave me a lollipop. I will miss her, even though I will soon have my very own washer and dryer!!!

[Image from: http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/Image:Get_lautrec_1889_the_laundress.jpg]

Parasite Makes Its Move

I finally felt the baby move today. It wasn’t what I was expecting. It actually felt like a very small animal moving inside of me. “Molly, but that is in fact what is going on,” you say. Well yes, but for a month I have been concentrating as hard as I can, trying in vain to feel the little dude. I’ll lie very still and think of nothing but my uterus, maybe even stop breathing for a moment, cursing my vigorous belly pulse for its distracting thump-thump, trying to feel all the “fluttering” and “quickening” and “champagne bubbles” and “just like gas” movements that everyone describes. I’ll think, wait, was that it?! Then I’ll fart or something and realize it was in fact “just like gas.” Alas, four weeks of effort with only flatulent near misses to show for it. But it is finally here!! So, I guess I wasn’t sensitive enough to feel that early butterfly stage. Or, terrible thought, maybe my baby is epileptic or spastic or ADD or violently angry or has some sort of problem that prevents it from doing the cute, subtle moments of early pregnancy. Okay, maybe I’m just a worry wart.

[Image from: http://muertoderisa.typepad.com/muerto_de_risa/quito_experiences/index.html]

Mind Your Own Freakin’ Bidness

Last week, I started to show in an obvious way, in such a way that even polite, nervous people would feel confident asking about my pregnancy without fear of finding out that I was just an unusually tubby-tummed lady or the sad victim of some sort of belly cancer. The first real evidence of this fact took place in the post office today. I was mailing myself a box of things that I knew would be confiscated in the airport. Here’s how the conversation went with the busybody postal worker:

“Hi, I’d like to mail this box.”
“Are you pregnant?”
“Yes, and I’m just beginning to show.”
“You shouldn’t be carrying that.”
“Yeah, I guess not.”
[Postal carrier weighs parcel.]
“See, it weighs 20 pounds. You definitely should NOT be carrying this.”
[Postal carrier gives me stern look to cause shame.]

It’s a good thing she had that scale right there for the purpose of PROVING that I was an incompetent mother-to-be!

[Image from: http://www.racingunion.org/Data/binary/solved-little-mailman-bayberry.jpg]

I Am a Fruit

There is nothing stranger than experiencing a drastic change in the entire purpose of your body. I am no longer an exercising machine. I am no longer a head-turning knockout. I am no longer a career superwoman. I am no longer a world-traveler extraordinaire.

No, I am a pod. I am a vessel. I am an incubatin’ nutrition dispensing system. I am a frightened brain that waits in fear of the hellish, sleep-depriving atrocities of newborn parenthood. I am a rickety frame that will barely support the weight of a growing organism. I am a bag of invisible hormone ducts that squirt and respond, squirt and respond. And, wherever I am, there are two of me.

Supposedly, I can return to all those more glamorous roles in a year or so. (And, then, and only then, we can hold a spirited debate as to whether or not I indeed held any of those titles, but…whatever! For now, please humor me!)

[Image from: http://www.botos.com/weekly/imgp5048ra_800.jpg]

Tummy

The other day, while showering, I was trying to wash my feet and found it to be much more difficult than usual. Once I discovered the culprit--my growing tummy is making it hard to bend over and reach or see anything below my knees--I had a gush of sweet thoughts about my little round orb, which at the time seemed to be one and the same as the baby it contained. In a moment of silliness, no doubt driven by my crazed pregnancy hormones, I gave my belly a loving hug and told it what a pain it was being. I think this is the first time I have ever snuggled myself so affectionately and also spoken to a body part. Don’t worry; I won’t be doing this in public or anything.