rear view

Wednesday, dec. 24, 2008   |   0 comments

You know those pregnant ladies who, when approached from their rear, show no indication that they are with child? That is already not me. Today, when I go to touch my ass, something I do a lot this being the Christmas season, my hand arrives at its padded destination a full second earlier than it once did, back in the golden days of two months ago. And my pants don’t fit so hot, and all my tights feel like they’re trying to kill me. Also I’m still throwing up with unhappy regularity. And still no booze! Despite last night’s long, delightful dinner with my galfriends over at Beretta, a restaurant specially known for its delicious, frothy mixed drinks, grr!

Okay, off to El Paso to meet Marco’s entire family now for the first time ever! Light a candle for me.

the risks of riskiness

Tuesday, dec. 16, 2008   |   0 comments

According to the internet, me and my dusty, wizened, 38-year-old eggs are approximately 689,295,271,239 times more likely to produce an autistic down syndrome baby with pattern baldness and a tail, as opposed to the dewy, fancy-free eggs of certain 33-or-younger someones.

Unfortunately there seems to be no data about the risks of reading depressing online statistics, though I’d wager they’re worse than smoking, boozing, and groping raw poultry combined.

Living in Pregatory Update — Stats for Week 9
Number of barf scares: 37
Number of legitimate barfing spells: 2
Number of times I’ve eyed someone’s glass of red wine longingly: 3
Number of secret naps under my desk at work: 3
Number of sleepless nights spent freaking out about the future: 3.5

getting in to character

Monday, dec. 8, 2008   |   0 comments

So by my calculations, I should be around 7 weeks deep, which is over a month shy of Legitimately Knocked Up. And yet! I’ve already managed to pack in all kinds of clichéd (if perhaps psychosomatic) pregnant-lady behavior, including:

• Feeling like barfing
• Barfing
• No longer feeling like barfing
• Worrying that no longer feeling like barfing is a sign that something terrible has happened (i.e., Dead Baby)
• Smelling smells that only dogs and other animals with keen sniffers can or want to smell
• Bursting into tears when the Compton Clovers managed to raise enough money to get to nationals in Bring It On
• Gigantic nipples

In other news: The Bellyachers have recorded their own sweet Christmas classic, Becky’s pulled together a Leslie-inspired Advent Calendar, and Cockeyed Rob has assembled a Think Tank (of genius soothsayers plus me) to predict what’s going to happen with the price of gas falls below zero!

crashing into adulthood

Tuesday, dec. 2, 2008   |   0 comments

So after feeling like I was going to get my period (sore rack, tender nethers) for about three solid weeks, it finally dawned on me that maybe something else was going on here. So on Thursday, Thanksgiving, I peed on some sticks, and lo!

Marco and I are hugely terrified and a small glimmering little bit of excited too. But for two people who only just recently evolved from balancing dinner on our knees in front of the television to to buying an actual dining table, this feels like a pretty big leap.

We haven’t told any parents yet, since I don’t want to get them all charged up until we make it past the traditional 3 month point — what with me being 38 and this being my first time, it seems this is all probably still pretty touch and go, statistically speaking?

But in the meantime, we’re both sort of walking around in a daze, wondering if this really happening or not, and if we’re really ready or not. For instance the very first day we knew we were pregnant, it turns out I did at least five different terrible and wrong things that the internet has since told me are going to melt the baby, including:

• Fondling uncooked poultry (in the form of a 20-pound turkey, thanks thanksgiving!)
• Emptying the litterbox
• Luxuriating in a a hot bath
• Advil-ing it up
• Coffee, coffee, coffee!

Not to mention the booze I sipped earlier in the month, back when I was young and fancy free.

I’m not so sure I’m going to be so good at this? Eek?

I’ll tell you one thing, though, the television embargo is OFF. If I’m not allowed to sip wine or beer or White Russians, then the television is going to be my only mind-numbing respite. Thanks, Top Chef, Samantha Who? and How I Met Your Mother (all of which I binged upon last night) for soothing this new adult’s churning, worrying brains!

television plan

Thursday, nov. 20, 2008   |   0 comments

When we went to New York a few weeks ago, we scored ourselves a housesit at a friend’s apartment in Greenwich Village, a cozy little place on the top floor of a lovely building with a strapping young elevator, yay! It wasn’t until we got there that we realized it was one of those puzzling apartments you sometimes find in San Francisco and New York, and some parts of Oregon, apartments that for some reason do not have a television? Question mark, exclamation point?

Luckily since we were New York, we were so busy with the eating of doughnuts and street nuts and dumplings and porkchops that we hardly ever had a down moment to miss said television. But every once in awhile, I’d find myself sighing wistfully over the lack of a warm, glowing box to come home to. And by the end of the trip, the wistfulness had deepened into a longing not unlike the itch amputees feel for a phantom limb.

When we got back to California, the first thing I did was race up and French lick our television, clocking five solid hours of DVRed catch-up viewing our first night back. And then the election thing happened and we all of course had our faces smashed to the television for about five days straight, watching the map turn from red to blue, watching fellow Americans frantically wave their little flags, watching the Oprah mist.

Look what my can do can did!

The next day, in an attempt to keep the Obama high flying, I programmed the DVR to record every single West Wing that ever was. Which I think was about when I truly lost my mind. Marco started working nights sometime around then, and without a witness on hand to trigger my shame reflex, I started watching four, five…eight WW episodes a night. And maybe even one or two in the morning before work. Just you know to relax?

I think that was when I slapped bottom. Watching television at night, everybody does that. But tuning in before noon, that’s when you know you’re no longer in the captain’s seat.

Which is why, last night after staggering to bed at twenty-something AM after a another marathon binge, I finally decided I was done. For 30 days, at least. One month, that’s a respectable length of time for a cleanse, right? Something to be proud of?

So that means from today until December 20, I will not be watching any television. Wow, I wonder what ever will I do with myself? Besides become horrendously self-righteous, I mean?