Cute Front

It finally got chilly here in Austin. I spent a whole day worrying about how I was going to keep my little babe warm in cold weather when a friend kindly pointed out that the stack of baby quilts that I have should do the trick. Uhm…is that what baby quilts are for? I’ve been making them for years, but for some reason it is very different to actually “use” one on your own baby. I’m so pleased with the results!

The Cutest Little Number

Oh my god, we made a taxpayer! This is the first piece of mail that we have received in Tillie’s name. Why is it so exciting to finally see her name in print? Poor little thing will some day have to pay taxes. She will have to protect herself from identity theft. She will need this number to open bank accounts, get jobs, apply for student loans, and convince customer service people she is who she says she is over the phone. But first, she has to develop a little signature. What will it look like? I can’t wait to find out!

Tillie Bean

She finally sprouted just two weeks ago today. I'm completely in love. Every feeling is so sappy that I'm not sure I can even blog about it (would get shut down by the coolness police). She has five modes:

1. Sleepy
2. Wakey
3. Hungry and Angry
4. Soiled and Angry
5. Eating

Here are my two favorites:

Emerging from Nap

I am officially a stay-at-home mom. Well…that is, if I wanted to call myself that I could. And well…except for the “mom” part. I still haven’t had the baby. However, I finished my last freelance job this morning, and now I am actually free…and lanced. It was a nightmare, as my previous vitriolic post indicated. I had to stay up all night once again to meet the deadline, went to bed at 11 am in the morning. I also had to enlist three poor souls to help me over the weekend. In the end, I made very few dollars per hour. When I complain in one month about how I miss the intellectual stimulation of being a professional writer, slingin’ les mots for la dough, please remind me of this day: a day in which many margaritas were needed yet none could be partaken in.

[Image from: http://www.frw.ca/rouge.php?ID=90]

No Editor Left Behind

After this horrible week (and perhaps next if I am very unlucky), I will NEVER:

1. work on a book for Glencoe Publishers
2. write, edit, or correlate standards to a Health book
3. sign up for a job that involves only correlating to state standards

I have repeatedly been burned by these three types of textbook jobs, and this week, they all three came together in one nightmarish quagmire that has trapped and tortured me. Accepting this job was a big mistake that has ruined my otherwise lovely week.

If you ever hear me thinking about taking this type of work again, please beat me to death humanely with a blunt Glencoe Health textbook (preferably one that has been correlated).

And while I'm complaining about work, let me go on record with the following statement: State education standards are the worst bullshit bottleneck on our education system. Indeed, Bush's "No Child Left Behind" nonsense should be labeled "No Child Left Un-meddled With," as quoted by one of my witty relations. The education standards are lies told by dirty, overpaid politicians who are trying to distract us from the real problems that school systems face.

[Image from: http://nhumanities.blogspot.com/2005/09/bad-movie-physics.html]

My One Talent Shines

I’ve had quite the busy week and put off studying for my first physical anthropology text until the last minute. Knowing I had two chances to take the test, I decided to go ahead and take the first version completely cold. By that, I mean that the only thing I knew about the test before taking it was that it covered chapters 1 and 2. I didn’t know the titles of those chapters. I didn’t even have a vague idea of what they were about. In fact, I’m not sure I could have told you what “physical anthropology” is.

I got an 87 on the test.

Boy did I feel like a badass. Now, of course, this is my only talent. I can pretty much pass any multiple choice pop-quiz on the first two chapters of any science class there is, even at the college level. No indeed, I am no scholar. I’ve just read, edited, or written every middle school book on science that has been published in the last 8 years. And given my profession as a textbook writer, I am “one” with the multiple choice question. Now, I don’t think I’ll be able to pull that off with chapter 3, whatever it is about…

[Image from: http://serc.carleton.edu/NAGTWorkshops/assess/exams.html]

7:30 AM Bedtime

I pulled an all-nighter to finish a work assignment. So painful. I think that it will be the last time I do that *for work* for a long time. I have been told that there will be plenty of that when the baby comes. Great. I ain’t pretty with no sleep.

[Image from: http://photon.sevensquareinches.com/?m=200608]

Audiophilia

I landed a little gig doing a couple of podcasts for a science journal—my first paid work as a freelance science journalist! (I need only do 300 more of these to break even with the cost of my masters degree.) The biggest thrill is that I used this new job as an excuse to buy some fancy audio equipment.

I have been slumming it with a phone coupler that lets my recording equipment tap into my phone line. Only, it worked really poorly and required an old-fashioned phone. Not just any phone—it had to be one with a coil-wired handset (no cordless phones) and the handset could not have the dialing mechanism in it (had to be a phone with the buttons or dial on the base). Also, I found that the audio quality was poor on all but this one rotary phone that we had a few years back—the last time I used this device. Anyway, long story short: Scott threw that phone away when we moved to Boston, thinking “Why the heck would we need some mustard-yellow dinosaur of a rotary phone?” I do not fault him, but trying to replace it has been hell. The worst part is that I have a lovely, pink, vintage rotary princess phone that I bought for our phone nook. But that one wouldn’t do because the coiled wire was hard-wired into the handset instead of jacked in. GEEZ—that means that the only phones that will work with this damn thing had to be made between 1965 and 1975 or something!

So after much lying awake at night worried that I was going to have to back out of my new job for lack of a 1971 Bell rotary phone (how would I explain that to my new client?), I bought the new fancy equipment. It is deliciously high tech! It allows me to patch into the phone line of any residential phone at the base wire. And, it supposedly lets me split the two tracks, but I haven’t figured out how to do that yet. There is nothing more thrilling than having new gear!

My dream is to convert one of my closets into a little one-woman recording studio. I’m now one piece of equipment closer to realizing it.

[Image from: http://www.pedalcarsandretro.com/Retro_Phones-p-1-c-66.html]

Belly Stats

For those of you requesting documentation of how giant I am, here is a pic that really shows the full story, hee, hee. Sadly, it does not do either of my lovely friends justice…BUT, this is science, people, not a beauty pageant!

Now that I’m in the ridiculous stage of pregnancy, I’m wishing that I had written down all of my growth info laboratory notebook style. For example, I’m just itching to make a graph of my changing girth and my changing weight. I guess I was just feeling a sense of dread back in the beginning, rather than a refreshing sense of exploratory curiosity. All that precious data lost! How selfish of my former self to deny my current self such nerdy delights. I suppose I could ask my doctor for at least the weight info…

Beh-Be Prepared

My big sister, who has a baby and a 4-year-old, took me to the baby store yesterday and helped me buy everything we need for the first two weeks of our baby’s life. This was a LOT of stuff. I feel completely relieved to have all the little diapers, washcloths, onsies, ointments, soaps, blankies, pads, tubs, bins, and pails that a newborn needs right away. We still have 6 weeks until she comes, but I just felt so out of control. I’m a person who likes to be in control, and here I am “planning” for a factor that is completely unpredictable. I don’t know when she’ll be born, I don’t know whether she’s going to be an easy or difficult baby, I don’t know when I’ll be able to work again, and I don’t know how the rhythm of my home-life is going to change. This is a control freak’s worst nightmare! At least now I know that I don’t have to stop by Target on the way home from the hospital. Now THAT sounded like a nightmare.

[Image from: http:// www.zaskmedical.com]

Unsure Ants

Huge victory for me, Scott, and Tillie—we have health insurance! Sadly, there is a brief gap in the coverage. For six days, starting today, we have no insurance. So, until next Wednesday, please do not ask us to participate in any dangerous or labor-inducing activities. We just can’t afford it!

[Image from: http://frostfirepulse.com/blog/cmarcelo]

I Live in the Future

A tech support guy in India took over my computer today to help me solve a problem I was having with MS Word. It’s pretty cool to be on the phone with someone while they are moving your cursor and talking to you about what is on your screen. I never tire of watching the body-snatching of my PC by remote IT personnel, but it was doubly thrilling for it be by someone on the other side of the world. This and car GPS make me think we are now living in the future.

[Image from: http://www.myplasticheart.com/]

Sewing Cryptology

I finally decided to combine the four sets of sewing notions that I have accumulated in the last 15 years—my own from various projects and the three sets inherited from my mother’s mother, my father’s mother, and my husband’s mother. It is pretty fun to see all the different colors of thread that we have used, the types of buttons we chose, and the different accessories and tools that pile up from all the different eras during which we four have sewed. It also makes me feel a little closer to these ladies, because I have gleaned just a little insight into their crafty pasts.

I came upon this one yellowed envelope with iron-on transfers for personalizing clothing. It had an aged look and an antique font that made me guess it was from one of my grandmothers’ collections. I opened up the letter sheet to see what she must have spelled. Because a “C” was missing, I figured maybe it was used to spell my father’s name, “Cliff.” But this theory didn’t quite work out with the other gaps. (I felt a little bit like Mendeleev piecing together his first periodic table.) After a little puzzling and detective work and I discovered it spelled out “Chuck” my uncle’s name. I don’t know why, but it just melted my heart to think of my grandma carefully cutting out and ironing these letters onto one of little Uncle Chuck’s team uniforms 40 years ago.

Feet Loaf

I’m not sure if it is the abundance of salty beach town food or just that time of my pregnancy, but my feet have finally started swelling. I’m not sure why I am surprised by this turn, as I was warned they would by all books, friends, and pregnancy-related media that I have read. Alas, I have two puffy loaves for feet. They look like little round buns with tiny, pink sausages for toes. None of my shoes fit. The only footwear I can squeeze on are a pair of cheap, red, Target-brand flip-flops. I now have the appearance of someone who has finally given up. My clothes have stains where my belly has caught dropped food, my rotund tummy peaks out ridiculously from under all of my now-too-small pregnancy tops, my pants are all near splitting threshold, and I’m wearing cheap flip-flops. There are six more weeks of this. That means 6 more centimeters of belly growth and 6 more pounds of weight gain. I just don’t understand quite how it will work physically. Ugh.

[Image from: http://www.ezfood.ca/dough.htm]

Beach Barnacle

Today I wanted to dig a giant hole in the beach sand—one that would be the exact right size to fit my belly. I imagined that this would be the only way that I could sleep on my stomach until the baby is born. Damn, I miss that feeling! Unfortunately, the wind picked up, the umbrella broke, and we all got tired of the sun before I could manage this lengthy engineering project. So sad! I really want to pretend for just a little while that I was not pregnant.

[Image from: http://iceblog.puddingbowl.org/archives/2006/01/]

No Squidding

I took a quick trip to Port Aransas this weekend to visit with a friend who is doing research there this summer for her dissertation on squid behavior. It turns out that not a lot of people do squid research—not because squid are boring (quite the opposite is true!), but because they are so darn hard to keep alive in captivity. Karin has spent many times more hours hunting for live specimens than actually getting to perform tests on these slippery little critters. Her tests, by the way, involve scaring the squid, which I find completely hilarious. They are like little nervous old ladies, pacing the tank, inking at the slightest provocation, and blinking their skin-chromatophore patterns pseudo-menacingly whenever someone approaches them. I want to give them tiny umbrellas to shake at the riffraff!

Last night, Karin and I went for a little midnight squid hunt to try and catch more test subjects. She has met many seasoned fishermen in her summer quest, and they have tutored her in the fine arts of trawling, hand netting, cast netting, and probably a dozen other forms of squid-napping. They’ve also pointed out all the best places for catching squid. We went to three of them last night and did some cast netting. At two of the locations, fishing was not allowed, which made the whole thing even more exciting. I just yearned to have the police drive up and arrest a biologist and a very pregnant lady for illegal angling! Alas, my rebel fantasies remain unlived—no one noticed us.

We caught nothing, but we did encounter a curious pod of dolphins. They were quite interested in us and surfaced a few times near where we stood. Dolphins make me nervous. (Why? That’s another blog entry…) Something about it being night-time, the illegality of our actions (oh thrill!), these slick and mysterious visitors, and learning a new skill that involves tethering yourself to a net—the combination made for quite an exhilarating adventure! I guess I’m easy these days.

[Image from: http://laughingsquid.com/laughing-squid-photo-by-brian-mccarty/]

Gendergarten

It’s really hard not to fantasize and/or worry about what my kid is going to be like. We’ve ruled out a few screenable diseases, but she could still be sickly, mentally retarded, deformed, schizophrenic, autistic, stupid, ugly, handicapped, or allergic to sunlight (it’s called polymorphic light eruption), and the list goes on… And then there are all the things that are not related to physical or genetic problems. She might want to get an ugly tattoo on her face, devil horn implants, or those super-stretched ear lobes with a matching lip disk, or she might want to become a scientologist. She might even, horror of horrors, become a republican! I consider myself open-minded, but what will I say when it really comes down to “Why can’t I, Mom?”

What other kind of new ideas she will bring to us? In what unfathomable new ways will I be challenged by her generation’s new trends or anti-establishment values? Thinking that she might be gay or punk-rock doesn’t concern me because she has so many wonderful role-models among my friends. However, the other day I was trying to sort out how to spell her name (Matilda or Mathilde), and a friend of mine said, “Well, you never know. She could end up transgendered and want you to call her Tom.” Um…is that Thom with an “H”?

That was when I realized that it’s just not worth thinking about her future just yet. Here I am considering myself as so ahead of the curve, all ready to accept and love my gay, overly-pierced child, and then I have to sit up all night collecting my thoughts on whether I would blink if she told me she wanted a penis for her 16th birthday. I’ll have to discuss it with Scott, but I think she might have to wait until she is 18.

[Image from: http://www.dikenga.com/films/firecracker/]

Welcome to the Dark Side

Scott’s 40th b-day BBQ bash was great fun. There were lots of friends (old and new), lots of Wii action, lots of yummy food, and my personal favorite--cake! I made two cakes: one chocolate-raspberry, decorated Hello-Kitty-style for my niece who turned 4 on the same day and one lemon flavored with a Darth Vader topper for my now-over-some-sort-of-hill husband. Sadly, I didn’t get any pics of the two of them blowing out the candles together. I think it is just darling that they will always share the same birthday.

Applying black icing

The cakes in all their glory

Wyley watching candle ignition

Birthday girl and momma

Liam, transfixed by Wii

Violet’s close up

Quilt-Bot

I just sent another one of these snuggly little robot quilts out to a brand new baby friend. I’m thinking of putting the pattern on sabbatical for a while. It is simple enough, but people are making babies so fast I can barely keep up. I will probably make at least one more for Tillie (my little squeaker), and then wait until she’s off to college to break it out again. That is, unless I cannot resist the power of the snuggly cute-bot…so strong!!!

Suh-Weet!

I’m at the post office buying sheets of stamps. Let’s see do I want another round of the triangle shaped Jamestown Commemoration series? A sheet of the new, quaint Pacific Lighthouse series? Or THE NEW STAR WARS STAMPS--heck yeah!!!! Yes, they are finally here! Yes, they are the most awesome stamps ever! Yes, I am a big nerd (squared by both my fandom for Star Wars and my enthusiasm for nice stamps)!

Oh New Star Wars Stamps, why do I love thee? Let’s see, you are very pretty, you cost very little money, and you have heroes and villains, which makes individual postage selection oh-so-easy. Icky bills get Vader and Queen Amidalah. Letters to your B.F.F get Luke, Leia, Artoo, and [sigh] the Han-Chewy double header.

May the force be with your snail mail!

[Image from: http://www.starwars.com/collecting/news/misc/news20070328.html]

TV of the 22nd Century?

I sense that we are nearing an asymptote in consumer technological design of actually owning a master appliance that will handle all things communication and entertainment. Don’t you ever wonder why you have to have separate DVRs, DVD players, CD players, gaming consoles, internet browsers, and phone jacks? They are all serviced by the same darn communications company--so why do we have to have a dozen different appliances to do the one thing I want to do: watch television and movies while looking things up on the internet. The iphone is close, but not quite there due to copy-protection limitations on television and probably some other bureaucratic hitches with Apple and AT&T. I mean, there is no reason why every gadget we own couldn’t have a wifi connection, right?

I just bought my husband a Wii for his birthday, and supposedly we will be able to connect it to the internet. I’m secretly excited that this could mean that I could watch all my free movie hours from Netflix on the big screen--without having to take my work computer, buy a fancy adapter cord, free up memory, and set it up to my television every time I wanted to watch some cheesy piece of crud that isn’t even worth the effort of renting. But, something tells me that it won’t be like having the real internet right where I want it. I think the Playstation 3 does have this capability, but it costs $500. (And then there’s the sad probability that the streaming that Netflix provides isn’t of high quality--rats!)

I suppose the problem with this master plan to have one robot do it all is that then no single feature would be perfect. It’s like owning one of those combo DVD-VHS players--the likelihood of both components being of high-quality is not as great as if you bought the best version of each in separate players. Only with my fantasy master appliance, you’d multiply those lame odds by a factor of 12. Also, what if one part goes bad? Hmm…my fantasy appliance is quickly turning into a nightmare box! I think I just need a second laptop for the living room, hee, hee. Some day…

[Image from: http://blog.wired.com/gadgets/2006/12/pope_technology.html]

When Onsies Approach Infinity

My unborn daughter has more outfits than any woman I know. She has, and I am NOT exaggerating, no fewer than 39 onsies. And these are all size 0-3 months, so she has only 3 months to wear them all before they no longer fit. Wow. I can’t imagine that I would need more than this, but what do I know about parenting? These are all hand-me-downs and gifts from excited aunties. I’m in a bit of shock, because this means that if just one aspect of her babyhood requires this much storage space, what will the other facets of her little life require? Yikes, I think we already need a bigger house!

[Image from: http://www.piratemerch.com/]

Funderwear

“Your panties are beautiful,” said my four-year-old niece today of my new maternity underwear. I was at her house trying on some of her mom’s old maternity clothes because I have exploded into a new ungodly size of large and can no longer fit into my “early” maternity duds. These undies were fairly standard cotton bikinis (size large, of course), magenta with yellow and pink polka dots. I guess to Wyley, this color scheme on underwear was the height of elegance. She showed me her Disney princess briefs - also magenta. I wish I could remember a time when I used the word “beautiful” to describe underwear of any kind. What would you have to do to underwear to make an adult say they were “beautiful”? Embroidery? Hand-tatted antique lace? Jewels? I couldn’t tell you.

[Image from: http://www.joeparadox.com/underoos/]

Belly Takeover

It’s been a while since I’ve written anything that doesn’t have to do with high school physics. I don’t know if this lapse in blogging is due to my pregnant brain, the move, or just the fact that every night I go to sleep and dream of physics problems: how to calculate the binding energy of my pillow, the electrical resistance of Scott’s snoring, or the momentum of my alarm clock button. And, of course, everything has 5 answer choices A-E.

Here are some pictures to show you out-of-towners how truly giant I have become. Apparently, the third trimester, which I have just started, is when you really get big. Uh…how is that going to work?

Sassy expectant mothers:

Two-and-a-half generations of women (My mom, me, my sister-in-law, and mother-in-law):

This one is not as obscene as it looks, because my ginormous tum is actually eclipsing the briefs that I am wearing--I swear!

Scott practicing for daddyhood:

Cosmo and a new cat buddy enjoying our back porch:

Pregnancy comes with many inexplicable emotions, such as ‘yelling a lot’:

The Cookie Tells No Lies

So, forget science, forget pre-conceptual voodoo, forget second sense, belly-eye-balling, and maternal instinct…and go eat a fortune cookie, because we’re having a baby girl.

I’m in complete shock, because I was just absolutely CERTAIN we were having a boy. I mean, medical science (though rife with disclaimers) insisted on it. Now, they are going the other way. Don’t get me wrong--I’m pretty psyched to know my baby’s gender, and I don’t really care what it is, but I must admit that I am having trouble wrapping my mind around the girl verdict. I keep trying to paste a new, stereotypical gender onto my previous deeply ingrained vision. This results in a mental image of a real baby boy wearing a pink vinyl mini-mouse-style dress. I know, I’m insane.

Anyway, for those of you who like to look at blurry night-vision-goggle images of the preformed, here are some ultrasound pics:

Is she hitching a ride? Telling us she’s “A-okay”? Or offending us in whatever culture considers the thumbs-up sign taboo? I see this and think, “Awesome! She has at least one opposable thumb and therefore can hold a pencil. Ergo, she’ll be a writer, artist, secretary, pencil salesman, or file clerk. I’m so proud!”

Now folks, this one is a little racy, so if you are easily offended, please avert your eyes. Yep, that is an arrow pointing at her girl parts. Now I finally have the picture that will embarrass her on her first date!

Parenthood, Sigh

Well, today I officially have felt my first painful sacrifice in the name of motherhood. A prominent science magazine in the UK just announced the application deadline for an internship, for which I was the runner-up candidate in January. Back then, when I was NOT pregnant, I could have spent 6 months adventuring in Cambridge, HAD I gotten the job, which I did not. I had accomplished one of those dream interviews for a job, one in which you really hit it off with the would-be manager and you’re joking around and the two of you are thinking how much fun it would be to work together. Anyway, I didn’t get the job, so obviously this imagined amazing rapport was a bit one-sided. However, he really encouraged me to apply for the next one. So here I am, exactly six months later, and the next one has been announced and I freakin’ CAN’T apply for it!!! So painful! (A little side note: a tiny certain someone was actually conceived the day I received the rejection letter--aargh!)

Desperate fantasies abound as I envisage flying my 8-months pregnant pod of a belly overseas to England, where I might squeeze in a month of intense science-editorial training before taking advantage of socialized medicine to give birth to a beautiful, bouncing British citizen and then spend five months breast feeding while completing my internship. And while I’m dreaming up this ridiculous plan, I might as well have Her Majesty the Queen happen upon me and my adorable child and offer to adopt us and shower us with expensive gifts and we never have to work again unless we want to.
The End.

[Image from: http://www.sherlockiana.net/antikvariatet/kataloger/sf-uk.htm]

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.

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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!

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