Hello, It's Me Again

It’s still hot as hell here which makes being outside, in any capacity (except perhaps in a pool), extremely unpleasant. The air is so thick and heavy it feels like I’m breathing in pudding when I step outside. The heat and humidity, however, seem to not bother the mosquitoes at all. They are quite happy to suck my blood every chance they get. Daniel and I keep proclaiming we need to invest in a dozen or so bat boxes to put up in our backyard. Anybody know how to encourage bats to hang out around your house? How does one effectively advertise an all-you-can-eat mosquito buffet?

So, I’m still pregnant. Yup.

Over the past two weeks, the heartburn has really ramped up and become unbearable at night, or anytime I am horizontal. I’m chugging the Mylanta like a victim of desert dehydration. Between the multiple midnight Mylanta cocktails, the frequent peeing, and the uncomfortable tossing and turning stemming from my irrational fear of sleeping on my back, my nights are full of crappy-ass, barely what you could call, sleep. Hence, my weekday mornings have become downright brutal.

Right now I am longing for a job where I can just do mindless busy work all day and not have to think or interact with anyone. Is there such a job? As it stands, I am immersed in full-time construction administration for the hospital-at-the-beach I helped design. Under normal circumstances, I would still dislike construction administration – because, honestly, what kind of designer actually CARES how the fuck the building goes together? – but, I would be begrudgingly grateful for the experience. A lot of architecture firms hire people specifically to deal with CA and the designers never get to see how their drawings are translated. So, it’s great to have the opportunity, I just don’t want it right now when I’m tired and grumpy and functioning with a lower brain cell capacity.

I am totally being bitch-slapped for every mean thing I’ve ever thought about pregnant women!

On the bright side, I’m still throwing up occasionally, but NOT every time I brush my teeth! Hooray!

And hey, it’s not ALL bad. Sunday morning, while lying in bed getting some extra crappy-ass “sleep”, Gwennie performed her morning ritual of climbing on top of my body and kneading me to death. I understand this behavior is some sort of neurotic cat thing and I am usually very patient and tolerant of her kneading even when she leaves bruises on my hips, but Sunday morning I was Not. Having. It. Gwendolyn, however, has no understanding of the meaning “not having it”. Any effort to remove her was met with digging in her claws, holding on for dear life, and fussing at me very loudly. And that’s when I felt a distinct kick in the vicinity of my upper right stomach. Gwennie whined some more and there it was again. KICK! I looked down and could SEE my stomach being kicked from the inside.

Okay, I agree that’s totally gross and creepy and freaky, but it was also REALLY cool. Like, seriously cool.

I don’t know if the spawn was also annoyed at Gwennie’s kneading or if he was responding to her vocals, or if he was just spazzing out for no reason at all. Up until Sunday, his movements have felt very vague, kind of like flutterings or soft poppings to the point where I’m like, “okay was that the spawn or was that just gas from the Taco Bell I ate?”

So, yeah. Cool.

The nursery is also coming along. The walls have been repaired and sanded and primed, and yesterday Daniel finished putting on the first coat of color. It’s a dark gray that sometimes seems to have a very slight blue tinge to it in different light, and it is AWESOME. Seriously y’all. It looks so good with all the white trim in that room and the light hardwood floors.

Sometimes it is so very apparent that Daniel and I work with oppositely minded groups of people. When I told my co-workers that we intended to paint the nursery dark gray, they were all like, “Oh that’ll be cool. It’ll be such a vibrant contrast to the white trim and built-ins. It’ll really give the room some depth.” While my co-workers approved and applauded the color choice, Daniel’s co-workers openly expressed their dismay: “Oh nooooo! You can’t have a dark, dingy color like that for a little baby. They need soft, light colors!” Numbers geeks have no aesthetic vision.

On the non-pregnancy front: Last week I wrapped up a 6-week creative writing workshop. I’m still kind of sad that it’s over because it was so much fun. Fortunately my fellow creative writers in the group feel the same way and we have committed to continuing to meet regularly. The workshop was offered by a writer who lives in my neighborhood. She also teaches creative writing at a local college, does freelance work and has published a collection of short stories. In addition to her awesomeness, there were three other women in my group: one in her mid-twenties, one in her early thirties, and one in her early fifties. And they all live in my neighborhood and are liberal-minded, easy-going, educated, non-religious, and really fun. I’ve preemptively started thinking of them as my new friends. Yes I know, I’m a desperate little wad of pathetic-ness. But that fact does not diminish my eagerness to hang out with them again next week.

And on Friday, most members of my lackadaisical book club finally managed to pull it together and meet for a full 2.5 hours of happy and discussion. Ages ago we all read The Red Tent, which was a really good book. It reminded me of The Mists of Avalon, which is one of my most favorite books of all time, in that it took a very well known male centered mythology and spun it around to recreate it from the females’ unique point of view. It wasn’t as EPIC as The Mists of Avalon, but it brought in some of the same elements – that of a patriarchal religion essentially crushing an older matriarchal religion, and the power present within a strictly female culture. I read it in, like, two nights because I couldn’t put it down, so it was nice to hear everyone’s different take on it. And it was fun just to catch up with everybody and relax after another agonizingly long work week.

Our book for our next meeting (allegedly in a month) is called The Help. I had not heard of it. Anybody read it?

Also, I am STILL trying to get through the Harry Potter books before the first installment of the last book comes out on film in November. Me thinks this is probably not going to happen since I have been stuck in the 4th book FOR-EH-VER. The first three flew by for me, but there’s something about this 4th one that has me stuck. It is seeming to take a really long time to get to the meat of the story and I’m dragging my feet getting into it. I enjoyed this movie, but the book just seems to start out with all this extraneous and belabored detail that has me falling asleep every time I try to dive into it. I’m not giving up though.

Meanwhile, you can find me eating potatoes and pickles, NOT sleeping, and anticipating more kicks from the inside.

Peace out! (I can’t pull that off, can I? Didn’t think so.)