Valentine's Day

Jeremy bought me this shirt for Valentine's Day:


It goes really well with the fetus he gave me for Christmas.

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Answers

Okay, so here are the answers to all of those questions people have been asking me, all in once convenient place. If I missed any, feel free to post your questions in the comments.

• I'm 11 and a half weeks along. The due date is August 25. Donations of cute, maternity sundresses are gladly welcomed.


• We don't know the gender, and don't plan on finding out until he or she comes out. We're hoping it's a pony.


• Yes, we have names picked out. No, we won't tell you what they are. For now, we are calling him/her "Auggie."


• Yes, I have been taking a prenatal vitamin with folic acid. Except every time I look at the bottle my brain anagrams it into a "parental vitamin," and it makes me giggle.


• Yes, I have a copy of "What to Expect When You're Expecting," and I absolutely hate it. It makes me feel horrible and terrified and Jeremy has banned me from reading it anymore. I also have a copy of "The New Pregnancy Week-By-Week," and we love reading it together every Sunday night, and I get all teared up at Auggie's milestones. My baby already has fingers!


• We are using a certified nurse midwife for the prenatal care and delivery. My midwife is awesome, as are all of the other midwives I've met at the practice. I don't know which one will actually be at my delivery, but she will stay with me throughout the entire labor and delivery, and will help me to cope with pain without drugs if I so choose. I believe that birth is a natural process, and only when there is a problem should it become a medical process.


• Although I would love to have a home birth, Pennsylvania law and our current living arrangements do not make it a viable option. The hospital we will be delivering at supposedly has very nice Labor/Delivery/Recovery suites, which (for my medical professional friends) are immediately adjacent to the surgical unit. My hospital also has a Level II NICU and is not far from the only Level III ICU Nursery in the county. So you're not allowed to be paranoid; I'll be in good hands.


• No, I don't want to hear your opinions on my birth choices. We've spent a lot of time thinking over, talking about, and making these decisions, and if I want your advice, I will ask.


• No, I haven't had an ultrasound yet. I will get my first one at 20 weeks, unless there is a problem before then.


• I'm not really showing yet, although I have already grown out of all but two pairs of pants. I feel a little silly buying maternity clothes this early, and am hoping to wait at least a couple more weeks until the third trimester. Just this week my belly popped out above my pelvic bone, so I'm anticipating that I might make some more significant (and cute?) growth over the next few weeks.


• I am feeling rather nauseous, and utterly exhausted, thank you for asking. I do pretty well with the nausea as long as I eat something every 3 or 4 hours. Still trying to work out how to deal with the tiredness, aside from taking a nap every day and lying down in the car on my meal breaks at work. People keep telling me that I will be less tired in the second trimester, although I don't know if that will do anything to help the back pain, which is sometimes so bad by the end of a shift that I am almost in tears. Advice on dealing with back pain without drugs when your job keeps you on your feet is hereby welcomed.


• I find myself craving red meat and milk. I expect it's the protein (and iron and calcium). I also eat a lot of peanut butter sandwiches made with white toast. I know I should eat wheat, but white tastes so much better to me right now, so I allow it. My aversions include anything too sweet (like cake) and anything too salty (like bacon). I stopped liking coffee the day I conceived (or within a few days, anyhow), but so far, I still like the smell. Except for French Roast. For some reason, that particular coffee smells horrible to me. Fortunately, we hardly ever brew it.

Well, that about wraps it up for now. I promise I will eventually get back to blogging about other things, but bear with me for a while, as I have been keeping this in for two months. Thanks for all of the congratulations and well-wishes. It is so nice feeling connected to you all through this site!

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Fourteen Ways to Tell the World You're Pregnant

1. Plan a trip to Canada to surprise your mom and siblings for your sister-in-law's baby shower. Be forced to cancel your trip because of a huge winter storm. Tell your mom over the phone instead. Cry happily.


2. Call your sister, who is also canceling her trip to Canada because of the winter storm. Tell her that you had an ulterior motive for wanting to go to the baby shower this weekend: because she and Trish both had family gatherings to make their pregnancy announcements, and you wanted one, too. Cry some more happy tears.


3. Make a baby shower card for your sister-in-law and email it to your mom to print out and give to her at the shower. Write, "A Special Present for Our New Niece" on the front, and, "You won't be the youngest cousin" on the inside. Cry when you see the picture of Trish crying when she got the card.


4. Take your in-laws out to dinner because you've been craving steak. Take the waitress aside on your way to the bathroom and request a special dessert to be delivered to your table when you're done eating. Watch your in-laws' confused expressions gradually turn to excitement as they watch you top your bowl of ice cream with pickles. Hug and cry and cry and hug. Taste the pickles and ice cream and wonder where on earth that stereotype comes from. Take the pickles back off and eat the ice cream plain.


5. Place a praise request in the offering plate at church thanking God for another new baby that will be coming to the church this year. Make sure to sit at the front so that your little slip of paper gets buried under other things and overlooked when the pastor reads the prayer/praise requests. After the service is over, dig the slip out and give it to the pastor in person, hug/cry, then run around the church telling everyone else in person, which ultimately, may have been more fun than making a big announcement to everyone anyhow.


6. Have your husband call his brother and tell him the story about you ordering pickles and ice cream. Then, after he doesn't get it, because of some sort of generation/gender gap and the failure of the pickles and ice cream myth to be quite as ubiquitous as you thought, explain it to him. Receive a big hug the next time you see him.


7. Plan on telling all of your husband's extended family in two weeks at the Valentine's party. See the look on your mother-in-law's face on Sunday afternoon, after keeping the secret to herself for a day and a half, and decide to make the rounds telling everyone that afternoon instead.


8. Call your husband's sister and ask her whether she thinks her nine-month-old would like a cousin to play with.


9. Come right out and say, "We're pregnant!" Get some hugs.


10. Ask your cousins how they're doing on their babysitting classes, and whether they will be ready to be babysitters by August. Get some hugs.


11. Change your status on Facebook to "pregnant".


12. Post a pregnancy count-down ticker on your forum profile page. Casually point it out to other forum users.


13. Blog about it.


14. All of the above.

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The Further Geekification of Jule Ann

So, in case it wasn't geeky enough that I have started to play a fantasy roleplaying game (Burning Wheel) once a week. And discuss it between sessions. And read the forums....

This weekend, I had to cancel a trip to Canada because of a nasty winter storm. So, to make the most of a weekend off, I drove down to Virginia on Saturday with some friends to play various independent storytelling games (and eat awesome food) with other geeks of the world. And I had way too much fun. And I would do it again in a heartbeat. And I think my nerdish soul is now officially beyond salvation....

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LOST!

So, color Jule Ann very happy this week, with the return of LOST! I know there's only going to be eight episodes (boo, writer's strike!), but still, it started back up with such a bang, I feel like it's going to be eight, quality episodes.

Some observations (probably chock-full of spoilers):

1. I was a little worried after the end of season 3 that switching to flash forwards instead of flashbacks would close things off too much and make the remaining seasons just feel like resolution and tying up loose ends. And yet, somehow, they managed to create MORE mystery with an uncertain future.

2. Charlie!

3. "The Oceanic Six" apparently includes Hurley, Jack, and an unfreckled Kate. Any guesses on the other three? I'm thinking Sawyer for at least one, but I'm drawing a blank for the other two.

4. If Hurley and Jack went separate ways, how did they both get rescued? The only thing I can think of is that this isn't actually the rescue that gets them off the island.

5. Any guesses on who the people on the freighter are? I'm leaning towards an evil corporate entity, out to exploit the island's power or something. We've already got our evil communists, so we're due for some evil capitalists.

6. Did you ever notice that Richard hasn't aged a day in 30 years? Jeremy thinks he came from the pirate ship (the one with the dynamite). I wonder if he has four toes...

7. The first hour was a pretty good recap episode, even for someone who watched all of the first three seasons. I noticed that they didn't bother mentioning the Nicki and Paolo episode, though. Was that really just a random interlude, or will it come back and have some significance later?

8. I just checked, and this week's episode is already up On Demand. Which means I will be able to watch next week's episode even though I have to work the closing shift at work. Woot!

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A Rare Link Post

I don't do this very often, but my sister just sent me a link of a piece she heard on NPR, and I just had to share it. It's a Shakespearean reporting of the Super Bowl. You can read the text, but it's better if you listen to the audio. Even fake Shakespeare was meant to be performed, not read.

(Don't bother clicking on this link unless you're a nerd, like me.)

In Fair Glendale, the Bard's Super Bowl Play

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Birthday Week

So, I turned thirty this week. And I didn't really think I would care, but, man, there is something about not being "in my 20's" anymore that just feels so life redefining. Not necessarily in a bad way, I don't think. But I've definitely been introspective this week.

That didn't stop me from having fun, though. It started last Sunday with a big, family, combo birthday party for me and Jer (whose birthday was in December). We managed to convince Jeremy's extended family that, since it was a birthday party for us, they should all travel outside of their normal five-mile-radius stomping ground to have the party at our house. It was fun to have everyone down here, and it was a great motivator to get the house thoroughly cleaned. I wore myself almost completely out, but it certainly felt good to get it all done.

Wednesday was my actual birthday, as well as our regular Wednesday night gaming group. Erin made hot roast beef sandwiches (one of my all-time favorites), and Rachel made an amazingly rich chocolate-raspberry cake. Rachel also gave my character a lovely surprise birthday gift in the form of her first kiss with the non-player character she has fallen in love with. I know it's only imaginary, but it left me on cloud nine.

So, to finish off a nice, long birthday week, I decided to throw together a last-minute birthday party with my non-family and non-gamer friends for Sunday night. I shot off a quick email to a bunch of friends, and invited a few more people that I didn't have email addresses for in church on Sunday morning. The lovely thing with last-minute parties is that there isn't nearly as much pressure for everything to be perfect, and I'm not nearly as disappointed if no one ends up coming. The house was still relatively clean from last weekend, so getting ready consisted mostly of taking a nap. And thawing out frozen pizza dough. At least a dozen people ended up coming, which was really awesome considering the short notice. We had lots of fun, even if we did only end up playing a couple of games (I won at Settlers, while those with less patience for tiles firmly established that they were, indeed, smarter than the DVD-game version of a fifth grader). And everyone left fairly early, which might have disappointed a younger me, but the old lady who had to get up for work at 4:00 the next morning appreciated it.

Unfortunately, between the three parties, there were at least three cakes, and at least half of each remains. I might just need to throw another party, and call it the "Please Eat My Cake Before I Eat it All and Get Fat; My Aging Metabolism Can't Handle All This Sugar" party. You'd come to that, right?

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Two fun things in one weekend!

So, the trade-off for having Monday and Tuesday off was that I had to work the other five days last week. So of course, a friend of mine had a party on Saturday night that I wasn't able to make it to, and I was gearing myself up for having to miss out on all the fun again for another weekend. But then some friends from church decided to go out for Vietnamese food on Friday evening, and I had to look at my schedule seventeen times to convince myself that I really was free to go along with them. I love Vietnamese food. It was practically a staple for me when I lived in Canada, and I've been missing it since we moved. It was really yummy, too, even if they didn't have that drink with the coconut milk and beans and grass jelly that I love so much. (I asked the waitress about it, she said that used to carry it, but there just wasn't enough demand in that particular region of suburbia. So sad.) So, good food, and lots of good conversation with people that all-too-often I only get to greet for 45 seconds during "extend the right-hand of fellowship" time at church.

I really love my church. It may not be big, but it really feels like a family to us. It did from the very first day we were there. This Sunday, after church, we found ourselves talking for a really long time with two other couples (who are both fairly new to the church and, in an incredible twist of providence, are both expecting babies only two days apart in April), then we were joined by the pastor and his family and we all went out to lunch at Appleby's. There's something really nice about fellowship with Christian families/families-to-be. And I suppose I should say something witty or introspective in closing right about now, but what can I say, my blogging is rusty.

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Return of the Delinquent Blogger

I keep telling myself, this is it. This is the time I go back to blogging for good. And then another month passes.

I don't have a great excuse. Chalk it up to writer's block, I guess. Or chalk it up to the fact that somehow, although we moved nine months ago, I have yet to settle into any kind of routine in the new place.

I'm an adventurous sort of person. I'm all about last-minute road trips and spontaneous parties. I've always loved taking breaks from the routine. But I guess I never really realized before how much I need a routine in order for those breaks to have value.

No New Year's Resolutions for me this year. But a general goal for 2008: Find a rhythm for my life. Find a way to work and blog and eat balanced meals and see local friends regularly and email distant friends regularly and visit family as often as possible because my little nephew and future niece will be big before I know it.

I'm blogging today because I had an unexpected two days off. We visited my family in Canada this weekend, and I had booked off a five-day weekend, but Jeremy wasn't able to get any extra days off, so I'm finishing off the last two days of my long weekend at home. Yesterday was spent in a predominantly vegetative state - I turned my brain off and watched TV and read blogs and accomplished absolutely nothing productive. I needed that so badly. The last time I had any solid days off without scheduled activities I was so sick that I just slept and felt awful and didn't get to enjoy them at all.

It's funny, because it's not as if I have been without ideas for my blog. I would say that I compose a post in my head at least three times a week, and never get around to writing it. I had one about the dreariness of November rain and James Taylor and why snow, while cold, at least makes the world bright. I had one about my new favorite non-menu drink at Starbucks - pink lemonade. I had a whole bunch about idiot drivers. I had one about a wedding, one about Thanksgiving, and a couple about Christmas. But I don't suppose any of them will ever get written now. The window is past.

I'm not going to promise that my dry spell is over, that I'm suddenly going to start posting three times a week again. But I miss blogging, and I want to come back, and it's not going to happen unless I make some effort. This is step one of that effort. And, if nothing else, it's a reminder to me of how much more I enjoy blogging than watching crap on television.

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This one's for my mom

I know, I know, I'm a lousy blogger. One of these days, I'll get back into the swing of it. I hope. Until then, at my mother's request, here is a picture of me with my buzz cut in which I don't look like a poor Bosnian refugee child. At least I don't think I do.



Jeremy took it with my shiny new camera that I just got this week. My new camera is awesome. It is also way smarter than I am. I hope I can figure it out eventually.

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