Wishful thinking

Someone remind me that I found this insightful enough to post here when you catch me putting my toddler in a doggy crate and threatening never to feed him again if he makes another mess.

What? Self-reflexivity is a parenting strength.

I just need to say this

Since I'm awake and bored, I decided I would peruse the Internet for Thanksgiving recipes I won't be making. Sometimes, just for kicks, I check out what The Pioneer Woman has been up to, or, in other words, how many pounds of butter she has crammed into otherwise innocent foodstuffs. As I gawked at this mornings obscenity, French Onion Soup Stuffed Mushrooms, I whispered to myself "Good LORD, woman!" and realized that I make this same exact utterance every time I allow my gaze to fall upon her newest incarnation of heart disease. She is a funny woman, and so shameless with her use of dairy. It just makes me want to call out for divine support.

Sometimes, as I revel in my recently recovered ability to eat spinach smoothies and salads dressed with vinaigrette, I find my mind wandering to the women I know, or know of, who have abandoned even the vaguest pretense of restraint in their use of ingredients I only buy once a quarter. People who throw a cup of cream into the recipe, you know, for good measure. People who say, with singularity of purpose, "I just always use butter, because the flavor is so much better!" as though I hadn't realized that butter is generally a tastier addition to a soup than lentils.

I like my virtuous foods, don't get me wrong, and I certainly eat foods that don't boast a disease-preventing nutrient profile, but from time to time, I just wonder how life must be on the other side, the land of no guilt. It's kind of how I felt as I watched, googly-eyed, from the sidelines as my friends in high school and college were getting to know boys in the biblical sense. I knew it wasn't for me, but there was something captivating happening and I knew that, too. Those boys were like a pound of cream cheese; I didn't know what to do with them, but I had to respect the women who did.

It's probably a good thing I still don't know what to do with a pound of cream cheese. I'll take my chances with lentils.

A morning treasure

As I crouched vomiting for the second time on this morning, the twenty first week and fourth day of my pregnancy, a haiku sprang to my mind. This is the only place I can share it, so here you go:

To be pregnant is
to vomit gut foam as you
pee on your own feet


In other things that resemble updates (there are no actual updates here, in case you hadn't noticed), if you were thinking you might ask Ryan or I what we plan to name our unborn, you won't get a straight answer. I'm giving you fair warning. When I was newly pregnant, Ryan announced that he doesn't think names matter much because regardless the name itself, within twenty four hours it just becomes the kid's name and everyone gets on with their lives. I tend to agree, and I also maintain that if my kid is going to get teased for his name, he would probably get teased about something meaner otherwise and would probably benefit more from boxing lessons than a new moniker. Still, on occasion we do halfheartedly attempt to have an adult discussion about this increasingly relevant topic, and it deteriorates so quickly it even makes our own heads swim.

Me: "Ryan, we are having a child and it is our responsibility to name him. We also need to get him insurance, but I'd rather talk about names."

Ryan: [stares blankly]

Me: "What about Oliver?"

Ryan: "Ok."

Me: "What about Ebenezer?"

Ryan: "EBEN EBEN!!!"

Me: "Iago? Carlos? Ichabod!!"

Ryan: "ASSMAN CLOBBERFINCH! SPORKEN JORSENHEIMER!"

Me: "Assman might be a good choice. It's at least likely to be a good description of any child with our combined genetics."

Assman it is, folks. Don't bother asking until Child Protective Services demands an name. There won't be one.

The roof is leaking.

I blame pregnancy.

My professional life

Perhaps it takes a person who does fifty hours per week of unpaid work as a clinical intern to fully appreciate this, but I thought I'd share, just in case it's as funny to the general populace as it is to me.

Even though I really am enjoying the work I've been doing, I'm excited to move on to a different kind of unpaid work taking care of people who need extra help when April rolls around.

The Wee Lee appears to be a boy :)

Pregnant bodies only do one thing right...

and that is make babies.

They wake up when they're still tired, throw up when their tummies are empty, and hurt when they're not injured. It's easy to see how such a process, normal though it may be, has been pathologized over the years.

Good morning! I've been up since two!

I will now share a story that Ryan advised me against posting, in the interest of my readers' delicate dispositions. Apparently, he has never met any of you. That said, this is your chance. Overshare ahead. Abort mission. Code Red. I'm going to talk about pee again.

I've had early-waking insomnia most nights this week (makes the thirteen hour workdays a real picnic), and normally I just enjoy a routine of thrashing and thinking murderous thoughts. The other night, as I punctuated my thrashing with drinks of water, email checking (more people should email me from 2:00-7:00 a.m.; they would get timely responses), and making pitiful noises of misery, I got notice that it was my favorite time, vomiting bile time! So I hiked it to the bathroom to give it my best.

As I don't anticipate my continence improving over the next months (or, who am I kidding, years), I have begun keeping a bowl beside the toilet so that when my heaves become strong enough to completely overwhelm my urinary sphincters I am prepared. I have found the sound of full-blown peeing on the floor is shocking enough to interrupt even the most violent vomit, so the bowl has been helpful. Vomiting half-way is worse than not vomiting at all.

Or something.

Still reading?

Back to the other night. So, long story short, I threw up like a champ and peed in my bowl, and finished feeling somewhat relieved but also horrified and a bit disgusted. Keeping a bowl beside the toilet, you must admit, is a pretty significant admission of defeat.

I brushed my teeth in hopes of still having a few to chew with at the end of the pregnancy, and decided that, as it had been four days since my last, I might feel better if I took a shower. I have been using a non-toxic tea tree soap lately; I love the tingle. As I warmed up, sudsed my ever more voluminous hair, and worked up a nice, cooling lather, I peeked my eyes open to discover I was sharing the shower with a spider about the size of a nickel. Maybe even a quarter.

Problem-solving in these types of situations is not naturally one of my strong suits. Compound my innate deficit with a pregnant brain and chronic insomnia and you have a person barely capable of walking straight; spider removal is a goal impossibly out of range.

So there I was, shampoo running into my eyes, tea tree tingle turning to injurious burn, without a brain in my head or a shred of dignity in my heart. I considered my options. Finish quickly and hope for the best? Emerge from the shower, dripping and frothy, to obtain...what? Toilet paper? Too flimsy for this task, especially once the toilet paper is soaked wet. As I pondered and burned, eyes transfixed on my enemy, it began to do some kind of spider dance that nearly put me over the top. How do you know which spiders will kill you? Which spiders will leap onto your naked self? Are spiders attracted to tea tree oil?

Finally, devastated by the morning's events and out of energy for my obviously incompetent attempts at thinking, I simply began shouting for rescue. In retrospect, a woman eighteen weeks pregnant should probably use discretion when shouting "Help!!" from the bathroom at five a.m. Her spouse may think there is an actual emergency, not merely a tiny enemy invader. A tiny enemy invader with no central nervous system.

"Help!!"

And there he was, in a flash. The poor man looked so confused. He took a shampoo bottle, executed our arachnid friend with a few quick taps, guided it down the drain, simply stated, "Well, I'm awake", and returned to the bedroom.

I don't love being a pregnant spouse, but having a pregnant spouse is no bowl of cherries. They pee on the floor, wake you up for no reason at all, and then they tell the whole Internet about it.