I Am Svetlana, Hear Me Roar/Meow!

According to one of the informational post-it notes on the “curriculum board” at my daughter’s preschool, one of the lessons they’ve been teaching recently is “Halloween costumes and decorations aren’t scary.”

I get where they’re coming from—two-year-olds are scared of the vacuum cleaner and the “crumbs” in the bathtub, the last thing we need to add is ghosts and witches and people dressed up like Rick Perry to the house of frights. But at the same time, really? Isn’t Halloween supposed to be a little scary? Like, pretend scary that we’re actually in control of?

I myself find Halloween terrifying. All that pressure!

Domestic Bliss

Not my cat. But it looks like me, yes?

I know you all must be absolutely RIVETED by the storyline of the cat puke. Will she or won't she be able to get that mess out of that chair?!? Stay tuned!

So I give you this:

Feeling Bratty

The good news is that I almost certainly didn’t contract listeriosis or some other horrible, food-borne, fetus-hating bacteria yesterday. The bad news is that I did come down with some sort of gastrointestinal virus on top of my still-extant pregnancy nausea and barfing.

When I called my OB for confirmation that my symptoms were likely viral (i.e. not from eating deadly turkey sandwiches) the triage nurse assured me that something nasty is “going around.” And as the mother of a preschool-going toddler and an emergency-room-working husband, I have ample opportunity for exposure.

I won’t go into detail, but...

Parenthood Has Eaten My Brain

In my continuous Googling of warm, sunny places (an activity that usually doesn't become unavoidable until January but after our unseasonably grey summer has become necessary now even though, for the record, I prefer cool, somewhat overcast weather, even I have my limit of how low my vitamin D can dip before I go insane), I learned that Elmo lives at an all-inclusive Jamaican resort!

Way to Glow

Thank you, lovely women, for sharing your bad hair days with me last week. You cheered me right up, and I intend to reread your comments every time I start to feel a little awkward and frumpy and middle-school—that is to say, every day for the foreseeable future.

Because I was giving a public reading that night, I had a vested interest in being not terrible to look at AND not having the self-confidence of a hamster. I nervously took myself shopping—not for maternity clothes, which were sure to make me feel frumpy but for regular clothes, which is still a dicey proposition for someone (this someone) with a fifteen week belly. I searched for the perfect drapey top, to no avail. The perfect stretchy skirt? No dice. The perfect uterus-obscuring dress? No.

Fifteen Weeks

This is what 3/8ths of a baby looks like, friends. Well, 3/8ths of a baby plus a whole lot of cereal. (Though it looks sunny there beyond that tree, don't be fooled. That's just some sort of weird Seattle trick of the light. It's actually quite chilly and pouring rain. I can't stop Googling the Bahamas...)

On Saturday I managed to go three whole hours without eating (or barfing from not eating (one of the many beautiful paradoxes of pregnancy), which was really convenient as it allowed me to get a bunch of errands done without having to stop and feed the fetus all the freaking time, and I thought maybe I was out of the woods with the whole nausea/barfing thing, given that I am IN MY SECOND TRIMESTER and all—but no. Not quite. It was just a blip. A heavenly day of feeling okay. I look forward to more of them soon. Right, pregnancy gods? Soon?

14 weeks

13 weeks

12 weeks

11 weeks

EXACTLY What I Expected This Pregnancy to Be Like

I know pregnancy is supposed to be a time of supreme glowing joy, one's entire self feeling radiant from the miracle of life growing within, but I have to ask: did anyone else out there who's ever been pregnant sometimes just feel gross? Aside from the nausea and barfing and constipation and acne and sore uterus-stabilizing muscles, I mean. Did you ever have a day where your clothes fit wrong and your hair looked wrong and your your face felt wrong? Even if you've never been pregnant and have ever felt this way (i.e., if you're a woman), I want—need, even—to hear about it. Please. Click and tell below.

Happy Pregnancy Smell #1

I took a walk around my neighborhood this crisp, fine autumn morning, and the air smelled inexplicably like doughnuts. Fried, sugary morsels of deliciousness. I wanted to eat the air.

In other scent-related news, my friend nosy girl is giving away a novel by her fancy National Book Award finalist friend Jesmyn Ward and a pot of body pudding (whatever that is) here. Mmmm... pudding.

My Other Day Job

Not my silhouette...

My postings are going to be a bit spare this week, as I'm preparing for this reading on Thursday night. If you live in or near Seattle, please come and say hello. (Hugo House on Capitol Hill, 7pm.) The event is free and the venue has a bar and a creative drink menu.

My essay involves bitching about strollers and invokes the word "vulva" at least once—my self-imposed required minimum for public performances.

What a Card

I've officially rejoined the world of the Important and the Technologically Savvy.

My practically free business/mommy/calling cards arrived in the mail.

Check out that QR-code! It even works! (And I know what it's called!)

Now I can, like, go to fancy dinners and get my meals paid for and charge the taxi home to "the account," right? Hello? Boss? Employer? Yoo-hoo!

Fourteen Weeks

I was in the shower today and looked down and realized I couldn't see much of my feet (already!) and thought I'm not going to get much bigger than THIS, right? Hah hah hahahahhahaahahwaaaaaaaaaaaa!

Not Quite What I Expected When I Bought a New Fridge

Maybe not the tastiest advertisement?

So, a month or so ago, we got a new refrigerator. Our old, ugly, inefficient, eighties-"almond"-colored one (with wood veneer handles!) had a crappy, non-sealing seal that kept it from closing properly, and after too many nights being left open partway and too many green onions left languishing by my thrifty husband, the thing stank so bad that opening it literally made me puke.

Due

Who invented the concept of due dates? Who’s ever born on their due date? Almost no one, that’s who. (Our friend Mr. Internet tells me 90–95% of women don't deliver on their due date. Am I still bitter than my first baby came out 10 days late? Hell, yes.) A friend of mine went into labor on her due date and was completely convinced it was false labor because she, like me, knew that no one delivers on their due date. Due dates are notoriously fuzzy anyway since menstrual cycles shift and ovaries sometimes have a mind of their own, particularly as you get older. God knows if you’ve had a baby in the semi-recent past, your cycle is hardly regular. For the months leading up to this pregnancy, my cycle was 22 days, then 29, then 27, 26, 22, 31, 24, and 30 (not that I was keeping track or anything). And though I got my period on July 16, I spotted on the 13th—so, really? We’re going to put that information together and say with any kind of certainty whatsoever that my baby is due to be born on April 21st, 2012?

Here’s my idea: how about delivery windows?

Thirteen Weeks!

I just had my second ultrasound and aside from the less-than glam moment of the sonographer not being able to find my ovaries because of “matter in my bowels” (so glad my husband was there for that), the experience was a treat, and I’m bursting with good news:

The best news first: the sonographer pronounced me to be 13 weeks pregnant instead of 12!

Me at thirteen weeks:

Twelve Weeks

Apparently, this is the point when normal people tell their friends and families (and blog readers?) that they are pregnant, rather than, like, five minutes after conception. Seems kinda hard to hide. I mean, aside from the barfing, there's that belly. I mean, man, Wilson's been eating a LOT of cereal—and it all seems to be hanging out in her uterus.

11 weeks

Achy, Breaky Head

Just in case anyone reading this blog somehow wasn't paying any attention at all and got the impression that I like—or even gracefully tolerate—being pregnant, I will say this: BEING PREGNANT SUCKS.

Sure, I’m not as desperately nauseous this time as last—in part because I no longer question the approach of eating constantly (who cares that most women don’t gain much weight during their first trimester—it will come off eventually…maybe), and I have a well-honed sense of exactly when to pop an anti-barfing drug so that I seldom barf anymore. (Only a pregnant person—or a bulimic one, I suppose—would consider barfing 3-4 times a week not that often.) The problem I’m having today (BEING PREGNANT SUCKS) is the migraine sucking away at the inside of my sinuses and my well-being.

Apples

When Dr. Husband told me last night that Steve Jobs had died, I found myself surprisingly sad. For his part, he said he didn’t feel sad so much as a sense of loss—like if Thomas Edison died. (He’s still around, right?) Loss, sadness—it’s kind of the same thing, isn’t it? After sleeping on it I realized that I was feeling a sense of loss/sadness not so much over Steve Jobs, who I didn’t know at all and could not have picked out of a police lineup, but over the loss to—and possibly of—Apple. I mean, think about it. Imagine that yesterday Apple died—all of Apple. The ugly, unwieldy-in-retrospect Apple II your parents bought in the eighties, the cute Mac that got you through a zillion high school and college papers, your sleak, sexy i-Mac that you quickly replaced with your first MacBook laptop, your lovely MacBook Pro, your beautiful iPod, your beautiful tiny newer iPod, your shockingly compelling iPhone—all of it GONE. Poof. Vanished. Snatched from your hands while you weren’t paying attention.

Calling All Cards!

As I was dropping off my daughter at preschool, one of the other moms—one who remembers everyone else’s name and is always stylishly dressed—even 48 hours after nearly dying following a, um, challenging C-section—asked me if I wanted to join her for coffee soon. Eager for new local mom friends (especially one who might also loathe maternity clothes), I figured I’d wait a bit before revealing myself to be one of those annoying (especially in Seattle) pregnant women who can’t go anywhere near a coffee shop.

“Here,” she said, handing me a small rectangular piece of cardstock with her name and contact information on it.

How ingenious, I thought.

If the fried chicken doesn't get you

Don't mind me. I'm just sitting here trying to get some work done (namely writing an essay for this reading I'm giving on October 20 (how did it get to be October already?/thank God it's October already, which is that much closer to my mid/late April due date) while simultaneously Googling "how likely am I to miscarry if I eat a few slices of deli meat"?

Eleven weeks down, 29 (or so) to go (Ack!)

Here I am in one of my new soft, cozy dresses (a.k.a. "What I will be wearing every Monday, Wednesday, Friday, and Saturday or Sunday for the next 29–31 weeks"). Aren't the horizontal stripes genius? Upon closer inspection, I guess that's probably not just cereal in there. I forgive you, dry-cleaning lady.

Tacky khakis

Okay, I know I’m not remotely original in saying what I’m about to, but: I hate maternity clothes.

I know, I know, everyone hates maternity clothes. The cheapo flammable material, the “panels” (really: tubes) of panty-hose-like nylon covering your belly, the ubiquitous empire waist—which only looks good on young girls and women with extremely subtle cleavage. What is there to like? And who wants to spend actual money on temporary clothing—especially temporary clothing that definitely makes you look fat?

I saved all my horrid maternity clothing from the last time around in a giant Rubbermaid bin in the attic, not at all sure until pretty recently that I’d ever have use for any of it again. For the majority of time since my daughter’s birth, I was about as interested in having another baby as I was in trying out for that reality TV show where people whack each other into pools of water with giant Nerf bats.

For the love of blog

Because I am no technological whiz, I just discovered that there's a website (there's probably more than one! Probably zillions!) that keeps track of the blogs you read all in one place. You can see at a glance which blogs have new posts rather than clicking on every single one individually to see whether their author is more or less lazy than you! Genius. They even make it look all nice and professional. Amazing. Follow my blog with Bloglovin, if you're feeling sassy. (I hear there's a corresponding app, too. What will they think of next? I mean, really, what?)

Addendum: Just realized I can accomplish much of this right on this blog under "Other Peoples' Stuff". Wonders never ceasing around here.