ChezWhat?

What it feels like: Normal in the AM and like I have a watermelon inside of me in the PM. Maternity clothes are not much fitting, particularly the pants in the belly area. Maternity clothes are not meant to be dried if you are hoping they will continue to fit, BTW. If you dry them they will shrink up to regular clothes size, rendering them utterly useless. When the baby moves it’s like having some quiet company. I stop what I am doing many times to see what she is up to, and because it is like an eclipse–it’s not something that happens every day in your life. In the evening I cannot bend over or sit in many positions because it is the time when the baby feels the largest and heaviest. I feel no guilt taking a nap late afternoon. I am tempted to slow down, and not do the things that I see need to be done, but there is something inside of me that won’t allow that.

What I look like: I am grateful that I look so obviously pregnant that people aren’t afraid to ask about it. I sometimes want to ask other moms who look pregnant about it, but fear that if they aren’t pregnant, I will look like an insolent butthead. I have maybe 4 shirts that cover my stomach, and 2 pairs of pants that I can wear all day, and 1 linen dress that I will probably continue to live in for awhile. I am lucky to have no stretch marks to speak of, and my weight gain, unlike my last pregnancy, is right in the range they say it should be. My last pregnancy I ate like an olympic swimmer and worked out as long as I could as hard as I could until about my 30-somethingth week. This time I eat like normal and am active, but have taken one of my longest hiatus from gym. I look forward to returning and having my body back.

Random things:

I don’t know what to say about due dates because when you have a c-section scheduled, they usually do the procedure before the due date. So while my due date is October 6, more than likely this child will have a September birthday. My family seems a little less involved with this child than number one, I anticipate that they will receive a phone call one day and be surprised that they have a grandchild.

“Why didn’t you tell us?”

“Uh, it wasn’t exactly a secret,”

I took some time to figure out what stuff I need and I thought I would have everything covered because this is the second child. But, we sold the rather shoddy stuff we had for A (thankfully) and I was very generous in giving away things when I was done using them. I realized that at some point I will have to repurchase all the accessories to the breast pump because a friend I had given it to returned it to me without having ever cleaned it up after using it last, and it was (not kidding) encrusted in black mold. I don’t think I had every seen anything so disgusting. The replacement kit costs a little. So I have a few things I need to figure out. For example, I have zero newborn clothes. The smallest things I do have are very used looking. The relative lack of excitement about baby number two, my not working next year and my having given away alot of stuff from A, I just keep repeating that everything will be fine. Am just hoping that she will get the new stuff she needs, and reassuring myself, that yes, she will, somehow.

I am at once glad for the time left (because we aren’t ready), and just wishing her to be here.

Because it isn’t over, the potential for problems to arise are always out there on the horizon, regardless of the statistically low likelihood. Once she is born, the hoping that everything will be okay will be confirmed, we can move on to the next step–the “Will she sleep for any length of time?” part.

A couple posts ago I featured some album covers. I wanted more, MORE I tell you! So I found these. They are endless, these weird album covers. If you deign to entertain yourself while on the internet, just google weird album covers. Surely you won’t be disappointed. Here are some I found.

Speechless.

Who says the 60’s/70’s were wierd?

Don’t we all have one of these in our families somewhere?

What is it with Germans and their weird glasses? Not to mention the Marty Feldman eyes. Is this a German mom? Yikes.

Glam rock has got to be every parent’s nightmare, that their kid would join one of these bands. To whom are these people supposed to be attractive?

Anyone who ever reads this blog might have noticed that I got very text heavy for awhile, no pics to speak of.  My blog template would not allow me no way no how to get pics in the way I wanted them to look.  It was frustrating.  So here is the new template, and J is even teaching me how to make the headers, because he has all the mad Photoshop chops.  So now I am excited to say, this picture was taken from our driveway tonight, a very hot August night and I made my first header with his pic and him telling me how.  Thankyou J!

Pics forthcoming y’all!

Props to Mrs. T for giving me something to do at this 3:45 in the morning when I cannot sleep because I am ripely pregnant and sleep is not available for the rotundosity of my belly. Aching hips accompany any sleeping position.

So I was tagged for a crummy job meme. I have worked some doozies. I started working when I was 15. When I was 15, I got my first job at a cookie shop in a discount mall. I easily burned 40 percent of all the cookies I baked, and I could not for the life of me figure out the cash register, and my coworker was positively exasperated with me for being waaaaay off every night on my till. It didn’t last long because I had to have my mom drive me to the job and back and she didn’t really even give me permission to get a job. Guess I had a bit of a ferocious independent streak, though not always well thought out.

After that I worked in one of my fondest memory jobs, the library, where I shelved books. All my friends studied there, it was very cool. But after a year I got bored and quit.

On to the weird jobs. The wierdest job I remember was being the person who dispatched people who delivered telephone books, “The Talking Yellow Pages”. Remember for a time it seemed like phone books reproduced wherever they were hidden and people were constantly coming up with all these phone books? I told the guys where to deliver at, it was a summer job. The memorable part was my boss. He had to have been about 6′8″, southern accent, about 350 lbs and always described places based on how close the were to food. He sweat profusely as he walked around the office, even though it wasn’t so hot because this was Seattle, and he had Marty Feldman eyes. Despite every reason to run screaming away from this guy, he was actually decent enough.

Another job I had was at this very hoity toity salon in Bellevue Washington at a very snobby sort of mall there in Bellevue. All the people were unbelievably plasticky, very superficial. One girl was very proud of herself for dumping Paul Mitchell’s son (he didn’t treat her nice) and another girl, at 25 tried to convince me that eye wrinkle cream was very important because “You have to start young!”. No matter how insane the salon was (I was making appointments for 90 different “artists”) we always had to asnwer the phone in the same even keel “Thankyou for calling Gene Juarez of Bellevue, my name is ___ how may I help you?” Nice and sloooooooooooooooow. Remember girls who enjoyed sounding sexy on the phone when they were 13 years old? This was a job skill here. This, gloriously, was the only job I was ever canned from. I was convinced I only ever got the job because I had naturally curly red hair at a time when Molly Ringwald was *hot*. I was always too much of an earth muffin to fit into an environment like this, but I needed the job desperately to make rent and a car payment. I was 19.

The other job that will win the award for the worst dress code, was at the gift shop of the Seattle Airport Hilton. It was a job that did many jobs at once. I cashiered for the restaurant, gift shop and took room service orders. I had to wear tan nylons, a polyester wrap around skirt and a shirt that had this little tie thingy in the front. My boss called me “poopsie”. People who work in hotels are tough. I remember the front desk clerks–one did not want to get in their way, they were ruthless. The cooks were likely to molest you in the alley after work and the morning waitresses, well they were just their own special tribe. Hardworking middle aged moms and grandmas who were getting a little too old to take their lives on a different path. Direct, no-nonsense and no time for being nice much, unless you were tipping. Both of these last two jobs, I mean who wouldn’t be depressed with these work scenarios daily? It was jobs like this that cemented in my head that I had to go to college.

Then in college, I worked the coffee industry. It felt like a step up. I moved to Portland, Oregon and at coffee people I took the bus 2 hours each way from Vancouver Washington to Lloyd Center. I became a “bean expert”. The Coffee People crowd was a step down from another major retailer of coffee, we were the red-headed stepsister with the piercings, dyed hair and tattoos. At one point they stuck me in a back room with a couple guys and my job was to count out tills, making sure they had $125. These guys were cro-magnon men in Birkenstocks. They made lewd jokes that I could have gotten them canned for if I hadn’t been on survival mode myself. I was ok leaving that job too.

Before I was hired at the pinnacle of all coffee retail, I worked for a short time in a small one man office which sold packaging and packaging equipment. I had just started college. The guy collected Jaguars and wanted to get himself a personalized license plate reading “Jag Stag” but decided against it when he considered how that would fare with the ladies. He wanted me to become a packaging salesperson too. I ran screaming away. The hardest part about this job was trying to keep myself busy. He had me full time but there was really only about 1/2 time worth of work. I was bored, and he got annoyed when I did homework. So for a bit there, I could have been a packaging salesperson. The dynamic with this guy in the office was weird, he alternately made fun of me and hit on me. Another job that compelled one to get through college, and stayed there just to make the rent. I was 21.

And the last stop was that large coffee retailer, where I stayed through thick and thin for about 5 years while I slogged through college. I worked with at least 1/3 of all the lesbians in Portland, got hit on by a few 45 year-old men, met at least 2 boyfriends there, got really good tips and worked in a fun, hip part of town.

The down sides were there aplenty, the coworker that sold weed over the counter, the lesbian boss who would make out with her gf in the backroom and ask us to leave so she could do this, the snarky managers that rotated through at mach speed, each needing to establish their bossness over you.

Overall, all I remember are the funny stories. The coworker who played Italian Opera cranked full blast to make people leave for the night. A hairy, squat coworker named Steve who after seeing the Greek God Aki sweep and mop without his shirt on decided he would do the same. We all howled STEVE PUT YOUR SHIRT BACK ON!!! Giving the nice people from the country a hot chocolate when they asked for a “grande expresso”. We didn’t mean to be mean, just were aiming to please. How many times I was burned by boiling hot coffee that I no longer screamed, only trembled a little.

Smelling like a cuppa joe every day after work, and of course that strange place I inhabited when I worked opening shift. The night owl who went to bed early at 1 AM after studying, arriving at 5 AM to open by 5:30, sleep deprived and held up by caffeine until 11 AM when all sanity seemed to leave and food and sleep deprived, I was a coffee automaton who couldn’t be asked to do much more than say “Room for cream?” or “Want whip on that nonfat mocha?” Milk, beans, espresso, pastries, coffee–just don’t ask me to think. Once talking to my brother in that twilight state he told me he couldn’t talk to me in my current state, I was giggling too much.

Luckily, they mostly allowed me to leave at around 9 AM to go to class, before I was utterly useless. Those were the days when food tasted the best, because I could barely afford it. I rode my bike through the city before the sun came up and flirted with any handsome young fellow to whom I served espresso. I was surprised when I left for Peace Corps, there were a couple fellows who seemed to be sad they hadn’t gathered the nerve to ask me out.

When I came back from Peace Corps, I still identified people around town by their drinks. “Oh there’s double tall nonfat latte crossing to go to Powell’s”, or seeing the grande extra dry nonfat cappuccino buying shoes. She seemed to take pleasure in how ridiculous her drink was –hard to make, expensive and mostly air. There were plenty of these ladies.

There is something about counter jobs, where the automaton stands behind the counter serving the general public. After five years there, one reaches a zen state where the goal is just to make it to the end of the shift with as little perturbance as possible. It’s like doing time.

I have gone on this long and I still haven’t even mentioned the fish house I worked at in grad school. I worked with a bunch of alcoholic waitstaff and a boss who told me that waiting tables was too hard for me, I was relegated to hostessing. I was 30, trilingual, pursuing a Master’s Degree and the manager insisted that the alcoholics who were current waitstaff were more capable than I. Ninety percent of them came in hung over to work almost daily. I was supposed to wear a khaki miniskirt. I managed to find one in November in this small town, but I washed it, it shrunk –it was demeaningly short. I opted to get in trouble for wearing my long, elegant black Nordstroms skirt instead. The depth of my indifference was profound. They fed me and paid rent, it was all that mattered, that and it would soon be over.

Recently J and I were tossing around what I might do to earn a little money while I was staying at home with kids. I look at the jobs that are on par with these jobs I held at certain points in my life and I don’t consider the option of going back, ever.

“You could throw newspapers,”

“I am not throwing newspapers,”

“What, are you too good for it? It pays well.”

“I have had enough unskilled labor jobs. I pay money every month still to pay off what I learned in college. I have years of teaching experience behind me, I may not be perfect, but I am not going back there, tossing newspapers.”

“A bit elitist,”

“Haven’t I earned the right to say no to a job I don’t want after all the schooling I have been through? I have worked every crummy job I was ever offered to get to a place where I don’t have to do them anymore. If I had to go back to working fish restaurants and being told waitressing was too hard for me, I can’t imagine the mental numbing I would have to put myself through. Suffice it to say, you would have a very grouchy wife.”

That was the end of the conversation.

One might ask themselves “Why does this person bother to post when it appears that for all intents and purposes, no one ever reads what she writes?”

It’s sort of like the if a tree falls in the woods question.

But sometimes, I find these posts that I still really love.

Like this one:

Why J won’t hook up my record player

I think it depends on how I answer the questions, whether this is how I really am, or this is how I would prefer to be…

This probably reflects more of the people I am attracted to than how I am really.

You Are a Colon

You are very orderly and fact driven. You aren’t concerned much with theories or dreams… only what’s true or untrue. You are brilliant and incredibly learned. Anything you know is well researched. You like to make lists and sort through things step by step. You aren’t subject to whim or emotions. Your friends see you as a constant source of knowledge and advice. (But they are a little sick of you being right all of the time!) You excel in: Leadership positions You get along best with: The Semi-Colon

I realized this post was really poorly written late at night and while the thoughts might have been worth saving, it was painful for me to read.

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I have ranted that I can’t afford organic milk or produce on a teachers salary. I smile at a colleague who felt very good about having organic produce stuff delivered to her door. Her parents must have paid for her college.

I am somewhere between penny pincher maniac and organic farming advocate. Still I really do love food and cooking. It could be my grandma, the constant farmer and social activist, it could be nesting.

I just love food.

I might now and then be able to buy organic. However, when the stuff labeled organic is flown in from New Zealand, what is the net benefit to the environment to buy such products? What is the purpose?  It sometimes tastes better, but honestly, if it is organic from the grocery store, I usually can’t tell much difference in taste, only in how much I spent.  Can you?

I admit to being influenced, I am reading Barbara Kingsolver’s Animal, Vegetable, Miracle.

Her information is not new. Everything we eat has corn in it.

The fresh, sparkly, uniform looking produce has had the taste hybridized right out of it. I look at my tasteless polypropylene veggies from Fred’s with even more longing.

How happy I am to have food.

How much happier I would be if my food tasted like something, rather than having been altered to resist diseases, withstand shipping, have uniform appearance and have no blemish.

The book is stoking my fires to pursue my farmers markets here in my new town more vigorously, as well as be a little more daring and persistent in gardening edibles.

edit: The next day…

So today I went to the farmer’s market. I took 20 dollars from the cash machine. Here are my organic/local-advocate penny pincher conclusions:

1. I stopped at a roadside produce market on the way to McMinnville Oregon, where the farmer’s market was. There they were selling the (tasteless) seedless watermelons that I have learned to avoid.

They had apples from New Zealand, because apples are not in season here.

They had peaches. They had 2 kinds; some from Cali and some locally grown, the locally grown ones you could find if you asked for them. The local peaches were hard and the California peaches were soft. I bought the local ones and they were extremely crunchy, which probably ships well, but is just all wrong for a peach. They were sort of sweet, were rather green inside and were, well crunchy. Husband rejected them, A slowly munched them down.  They softened in a few days.

They had Hermiston, Oregon cantaloupe, which I bought, even though they looked like they might be on the way out. Was pleasantly surprised at home at how incredibly sweet and flavorful it was, for only 62 cents a pound.  Eureka!

2. At the farmers market, many of the booths were absolutely mobbed with people. I bought garlic, basil, green beans, cukes, sweet corn. I considered the blackberries and raspberries, but they were 2 or 3 bucks for about 40 berries, and I was running out of money and had no immediate idea what to do with them.

3. There was a guy there selling his own farm grown chickens. 4 dollars a pound, about 15 dollars per chicken.

I can buy factory farmed (Fosters) chickens for about 6 dollars each.   If I spent over twice as much on a chicken we would probably only be able to eat meat 2 to 3 times a week.

This, and the price on my garlic reminded me of why I haven’t previously made a commitment to only buy organic produce previously: it is expensive.

I am aware that the cheap 3 bulbs for a buck garlic I have been buying is probably from China, I have heard that this is the case.

I am aware that with the non-organic stuff I buy, especially if I buy out of season, it starts to rot the minute I get it home. Case in point, a bag of onions I bought in June (not onion season here in Oregon), over half the bag I had to compost because it grew mushy with black spots within 2 weeks. Grrrr. How this upsets the penny pincher in me. Normally a bag of onions never goes bad here.

So the high cost of buying all this organic produce means one thing: I have to get serious about gardening. The other option is to eat meatless meals as much as 5 or 6 times per week. I would be fine with that, but J would rebel.

In the background of my thoughts and heart there are two feelings:  one of excitement about the challenge to somehow get better fresh foodstuffs –knowing I am going to have to learn more about gardening, soil, heirloom seeds etc.

The other feeling is wishing I could just go to the store and feel good about what I was buying there and not go broke doing it, or end up with this produce that is a far cry from what anyone grows in their garden, under the guise of being better (because it makes more money), even though it often tastes like almost nothing.

So I have gone way beyond just buying organic stuff.  I am launching into a whole new area… wonder how long this will last?  (wink wink nudge nudge)

So the child is getting big enough now that she isn’t moving around as much.  It is bizarre though, to feel the child moving, see my belly moving with a person in there.  I do wish to meet her.

With the second child, it seems that this child isn’t nearly as real to anyone.

I have a new nurse practicioner/midwife as of about a month ago and I have no idea when I am supposed to see her, how often.  I passed my test, I don’t have gestational diabetes.

I am eating whatever I want, though honestly, I am not overly hungry, though sweets have a new appeal.  I have been considering making pull apart sticky buns, a treat that never held much interest before because of how much I really didn’t need it.

She is at about 4 pounds, according to online estimates.

Sleep is the only truly troublesome time of the day, as it comes in fits and starts.  Muscles doing the wrong thing, insatiable thirst, limbs going numb, wondering if I am sleeping wrong and alternately deciding that I am not going to worry, not to mention the frequent nocturnal trips to the restroom.  Not to mention my size.  Not working makes all this bearable.

It is surreal to imagine the size of this tiny little person in my arms.  A new person in my life.  I wonder if she will sleep like her sister.  I wonder if she will be all healthy.  I imagine all the things that were new last time will be familiar this time, I will know more what to do.

I realized as J and I were on a date tonight that this anticipation was not something I would ever feel again, since this will be our last kid.  I realized also and wanted to note it, write it somewhere and make it known:  these are happy days.

I can’t be the only one who is at once disgusted, perplexed and angry at the series of decisions that have resulted in these headlines. Is this, too, W’s legacy?

edit:  I can’t leave this as is, who I fault for the debacle with gas prices is every federal administration for the past 50 to 100 years that has made the decisions, small and large that have made us utterly dependent on fossil fuel for transportation and heating our homes.  I am angry about the lack of foresight, and unhappy about those who are really suffering at the hands of these decisions.  I want to hear more about alternative energy, in fact, I want that to be one of the main issues this campaign, because it effects every american, not just the minority/special interests.

I stole this from Right on the Left Coast.

I found this on my hard drive this morning. It’s always good for a chuckle–the best humor often has plenty of truth to it.

PRESS RELEASE: DISCOVERY OF A NEW ELEMENT

The heaviest element known to science was recently discovered by investigators at a major US research university. The element, tentatively named administratium, has no protons or electrons and thus has an atomic number of 0. However, it does have one neutron, 125 assistant neutrons, 75 vice neutrons and 111 assistant vice neutrons, which gives it an atomic mass of 312.

These 312 particles are held together by a force that involves the continuous exchange of meson-like particles called morons. It is also surrounded by vast quantities of lepton-like particles called peons.

Since it has no electrons, administratium is inert. However, it can be detected chemically as it impedes every reaction it comes in contact with. According to the discoverers, a minute amount of administratium causes one reaction to take over four days to complete what would normally have occurred in less than a second.

Administratium has a normal half-life of approximately three years at which time it does not decay, but instead undergoes a reorganization in which a portion of the assistant neutrons, vice neutrons and assistant vice neutrons exchange places. In fact, an administratium sample’s mass actually INCREASES over time, since with each reorganization some of the morons inevitably become neutrons, forming new isotopes. This characteristic of moron promotion leads some scientists to speculate that perhaps administratium is spontaneously formed whenever morons reach a certain quantity in concentration. This hypothetical quantity is referred to as “critical morass”.