Off the Wagon

So I've been totally off the wagon with these blog entries. I admit it. I haven't been too busy or anything-- in fact, that's probably the problem. Do you really want to read about me puttering around the house, reading, writing, working, and cleaning? : )

I'm unreasonably excited about Thanksgiving. I've never been a huge Thanksgiving person~ it's been nearly two decades since I've eaten meat. But I do enjoy food, and gratitude is a good thing to practice. But I'm going to blame it on the estrogen this year.

It's a funny feeling to know we're going to have a little one around for next years' holidays. I think it means we're like, officially grown up or something. We'll probably even get a Christmas tree next year.

In the meantime, I've been thinking a lot about past Thanksgivings:

The one where we found out my uncle and his wife were expecting my fabulous little cousin, Juli.

The one where my brother and I danced to Fleetwood Mac in my grandparents' living room. I think this may have also been the one where we started calling my grandpa's wife "Yamma." And continued the yam word play, coming up with such delightful wordbites as "yampon."

The one the year after my brother died when we shared our meal with our two good friends whose husbands had also recently died.

The one after my grandparents moved to Sequim and I tape recorded the whole evening for a school project. That was the night my yamma busted out with the term "crotch crickets."


Well, those are some of the highlights. I've gotta go-- my honey's on the way home, and the tofu tacos don't be making themselves.

And me and Max, dancin' it up to Baby's got Back (and front).

Better late than never

Here's us on Halloween... as Angela from My So-Called Life... and TV's smoldering Magnum, P.I.

So the midwives warned us that pregnancy suppresses the immune system or something, so that I might find myself sick more often, or for longer, but this is getting old. I mean, there is only so much "America's Next Top Model" a lady can watch...

Scick

Still sick. Or as we say here, "scick." But just took a quick break from my scickbed (comprised currently of me, the kitty, and Grey's Anatomy DVDs) to make some carrot raisin bread. I am quite the little baker while knocked up...

Got myself another cold. Up for a quick bean burger then back to bed... thank God for DVDs.

Just trying to write at least something little everyday.

More soon.

Past Lives

I'm thinking a lot about how many lives we live in this one, sometimes. There's the process of going through all my letters and stuff from when I lived in Seattle 14 years ago. This morning a friend asked me and another friend to describe ourselves in high school. My initial response was "what year?" I was sort of a changling back then, trying on different costumes, music, and habits to see which ones fit. And there's the more recent past-- I had coffee last week with two of my volunteers from when I ran TIP. Or the other day I ran into the friend whose ex-wife set Scott and I up over 6 years ago. Even driving by our old house, just a mile or so away, where we still lived a year ago at this time, feels somewhat foreign.

As uncertain as I sometimes feel about what I'm doing with my life and what the future will look like, all I really have to do is look back to remember how unexpected and wild a ride it is. I am not the type who will have just a few careers-- I've already racked up more than a few. I used to fight this-- thinking there should be some one thing that I do with my time here. And there are throughlines-- writing is the biggest one. And though my interests change and all the cells of our bodies replace themselves every seven years, in some ways, in am still the same person I was with the bad perm or the short purple hair or the Guns N' Roses t-shirt.

And I could've no more imagined this life here in Maine-- almost as far away as you can get from Alaska without leaving the U.S. With a lovely old house and friends whose faces I never could've imagined and the funny, clean-cut boy who plays golf even in the rain and cold. And there is something so comforting about this to me. That we get new chances, that things change even when life feels so static. So when I stress about the future, I have to remember that I don't have all the facts. Not even close. My little vista is so very limited. There will surely be bad hair cuts and embarrasing outfits in my future, and people I love who I can't yet envision, and heartbreaks I don't want to.

So, could you remind me of this next time I'm freaking out about what to do next with my life?

The Occasional Housewife

My blog-buddy Mer-Mer wrote a post on enjoying being a homebody, and I sure can relate. Work has been soooo sloooowwww lately and I am trying to just enjoy it~ these last months before my life changes so drastically to a pace that I can't really imagine. Not that it has to be a fast pace-- but I know it will be different.

I do love being home, working from home, and even not working from home. Especially this time of year, when the dark falls so quickly (one of my biggest pet peeves is that daylight savings time is a misnomer. No daylight is really saved-- it's just all shifted around!) and it's just so darned cozy to curl up with a book and a blanket.

Occasionally, I even vacuum and cook meals for us. Last Friday was such a day~ I spent much of it cleaning and cooking. It was one of those days where I thought "I could be a housewife!" But I think it's the fact that it's not being asked or required of me that makes it pallatable on certain, random days. The rest of the time, we totally need a wife.

Unpacking

I've been slowly going through the several boxes of belongings I packed up from my parents house in Alaska a year and a half ago. That was a hard trip-- I was already dealing with some depression, and I grieved hard for the house that I grew up in, that my dad grew up in, that my grandma designed. It's a beautiful house with wood floors (and walls in some areas) a slate entry way and fireplace, wide windows looking out at the row of mountains across the Gastineau Channel. My grandma tucked neat little nooks everywhere-- a laundry chute, a dumbwaiter for wood, "magic doors" where you press the walls and they click open to reveal closets. I spent about four days throwing away mounds of crap from my younger years, and packing up the stuff that I couldn't let go of or decide on.

My parents sent the boxes back to me last winter when they put the house on the market, and I've finally started sorting through things, with the deadline of el bambino as a prompt to get me motivated.

I've found funny things, like Cinderella cds and cassette tapes with the Bangles recorded off the radio. And things that break my heart, like the letter to me from my Godmother on the day my brother was born. Today I was going through a box that had cards I'd saved, and I came across several from my dad. When I first moved away from home to Seattle (to become a grunge star) my dad sent me a card every week. I was always touched by this, but today, with this little guy on the way, it made me cry-- knowing how much my parents love me, how selflessly, and how we will undoubtedly love this little guy the same way. How in some way I think a parent's love for a child must be somewhat unrequited-- I love my parents fiercely, but I imagine there is something different about caring for someone when they're helpless and new, about knowing you are fracturing off a piece of yourself who you hope will make the world a little better, that a child can't understand, perhaps until they become a parent themselves.

On a somewhat lighter note, my prenatal yoga teacher brought in a book on names last week. It's not about the origins of names for babies, but rather something about the energetic vibration of the letters in the name. I didn't read the entire description for Max, but it did say "intelligent and stubborn." Sounds about right. And then, "as likely to be found on the dean's list as on the FBI's most wanted list"!

Anybody have a good back-up name for us?!?

Shake your BOO-ty

Halloween is among my favorite holidays—you get to play dress up, morbidity abounds, and there’s lots of candy involved. What more could a gal ask for?

I decided to get my hair cut that day—partially because I was feeling frumpy and wanted a change, and partially because we had a theme costume party to go to. The theme was “Classic TV”. I really wanted to go as the Golden Girls, but it just didn’t work out. So I decided to go as Angela from My So-Called Life, whom I look nothing like. So I proceeded to get my hair cut into a little bob—the haircut I inevitably always return to after going longer or shorter. I liked it fine when I was at the hair salon, and I didn’t allow myself to look down at the tumbles of patiently grown dark hair falling all around me. But when I got home and looked in the mirror, I instantly decided the haircut somehow made me look fat. And not like Angela at all.

I didn’t realize until later that my fat haircut neurosis coincided with my crash after my glucose screening test that morning—I’d had to down an bottle of orange liquid (how Halloweeny!) with a ton of sugar in about 10 minutes that morning. I don’t consume a lot of sugar, and it showed. I took a short nap and tossed some temporary red dye stuff into my hair and tried to cheer up, but as I donned the oversized flannel shirt for my outfit, I again suffered a fat attack. “The first time someone asks if I’m Rosanne Barr, we’re going home, ‘kay?” I made Scott promise.

Fortunately, Scott was going to the party as Magnum, P.I., and the wig and mustache ensemble I found for him was called the “Eurasian Traveler,” which basically meant Borat. It was impossible to gaze at his dark curly ‘fro and bushy mustache without cracking a smile.

The party turned out to be a blast, and we both shook it up on the dance floor amongst such classic TV icons as Mr. T, Punky Brewster, Ms. Piggy and gentle painter Bob Ross. Our buds even spun some Michael Jackson vinyl and there was a surreal few minutes on the dance floor when all the boys seemed to have disappeared while the girls bounced around to Cyndi Lauper’s Girls Just Wanna Have Fun, which somehow made me feel old and young at the same time.

And the next morning, guess what? My hair didn’t make me look so fat after all.

Crybaby

My friend Mer-Mer ever-so-gently prompted me to take this challenge of daily blog writing through the month of November. So here I am, it's my bedtime but thought I'd try to squeeze out a little something (that sounded naughty) before I hit the hay.

I am such a sap these days. Oprah and her gang talking about the election today totally made me cry. And a few weekends ago at the reception after Scott's cousin's wedding, I bawled through all the toasts and even the dances. Especially when the groom danced with his mom-- suddenly I could imagine little Maxers all grown up and getting married (to a guy or a gal-- doesn't much matter to me!).

It's nice in a way, being so connected to all the bittersweetness in the world in such a heightened way-- but it sure is hard on the mascara.

Okay, I wrote something. Night-night.

Electile Dysfunction

I know, I know, it's been forevah.

And there's been no real electile dysfunction yet. at least from my little smidge of the world. I was just feeling naughty.

I did wake up with electile anxiety, though. I have to say it's kind of a nice change from labor anxiety, or baby registry anxiety. I went to my gentle dance class though and gently danced, and that seemed to help. It also happens to be almost 60 degrees here-- let's here it for global warming!

Stood in line for about 40 minutes to vote. I had meant to do the whole early voting thing, but between procrastination and the sniggling suspicion that somehow my early vote wouldn't count as much as my on-time vote, here we are. Plus, there's something nice about standing in line with all the other folks, and I wouldn't have gotten a free Starbucks coffee (decaf, don't worry) if I'd voted early.

I have to say that I really had this strange, strong feeling that I should get two ballots-- one for me, and one for Max. Although he's not quite 18 yet. If he was, I suspect my sciatica-- not to mention labor-- would be much more-- intense.

Sadly, or rather-- embarrasingly, I recognized almost none of the names for our local council election stuff-- but I voted for the biggies and that feels more important right now. Did I mention I got a free Starbucks coffee? : )

Just got back from a walk to our little neighborhood library, during which I encountered our friend Rob who is kindly serving as a volunteer voter's protection attorney at our old polling place down the street. While stopping to chat, a few teenagers walked by, telling us to "vote Obama!" "We did!" Rob said. On this sunny, warm day with broken leaves scattered everywhere, I felt a strong surge of hope that things will be different-- for the better-- if this election turns out how I want it to.