invasion

what do you do if a doctor you have known and trusted for years tells you he's "going to do a quick cervical check" on you and then starts stripping your membranes without thought, warning, discussion, or consent and against your explicity stated desires? if you are me, you throw the biggest fit you have ever pitched in a public place and become so angry you can't stop shaking and crying and screaming. i am still so angry about this, i can't think or talk about it without my face turning red and my eyes tearing up. he didn't get far, due to me realizing somthing was up, asking questions, and writhing away from him across the exam table the second i knew what he was doing. and he surely will not be doing anything like this to me again since i plan never to see him again--ever. this is just too much of a trust violation for me to overcome. now i am doing everything i can to avoid going into labor until he's safely off call at 5pm on thursday--we'll see how that goes. i am sitting or lying down all the time, not lifting anything at all, being as still and calm as i can be, considering how horribly angry i still am.

i know that to some women, stripping of membranes is not a big deal, but to me, it is. and i have made that known. to have it done without my knowledge or consent or even any warning that it was coming is a violation akin to rape. not to mention how painful it was. the ONLY good thing i can say is that the doctor admitted fault, admitted that my anger was totally justified and did not try to minimize my reaction in any way. he admitted that he still had a lot to learn.

i had a whole discussion with him afterward, through my weeping, in which i made it very very clear that i want NO invasive procedures, NO drugs, NO anything done to me or the baby without discussion, strong medical need, AND consent. i thought i had already made that clear, but apparently not. it sucks that we live in a society where you have to defend yourself, your body, and your unborn baby against the people who are supposed to be taking care of you.

you know, the thing is--i am not against medicine, and i am not against intervention. thank god that intervention is available when it's needed. what i AM against is intervention when it's unnecessary. and it seems to me that the doctors are so afraid of being attacked for not doing enough that they end up doing TOO MUCH instead. for me, if i am ok, and the baby is ok, then get your goddamned ungloved unsanitized fingers the fuck away from my cervix.

the worst part is that now i am filled with dread about going into labor too soon when the doctors i don't trust are on call. and here at the end, when i have been feeling so good and loving my belly, i should be excited and filled with anticipation. instead, i am angry, frustrated, depressed, and i feel like i have lost control of my experience before labor has even begun. i am worried and filled with anxiety. i am cramping and bleeding, when i was totally great right up until he started messing with me. it sucks and it's not fair, and it makes me want to become an advocate of medical rights.

anyway--enough ranting about it. what will be will be. i am going to go lay quietly on my side, neglect all the things i would be doing were i not afraid of going into labor before 5pm on thursday, and just try to be calm. i need to let go of all this anger, but i am not sure how to do it.

39 weeks

i feel like a ripe peach. i look down at my body, and i feel like i must resemble one of those african fertility goddess statues i have seen carved from soapstone and tiger wood and the like. it's so odd. amazing and cool, but still odd. i am not tired of being pregnant. i am not dying to get the baby out. i feel pretty good, even though he's lower down now, and things are moving. as of last monday, i was 85% effaced and dilated 1 cm. i'm having some contractions here and there, but nothing regular yet. this baby could come today, or he could come in a week. it's unclear. the only clear thing is that my belly is a big ol' thing now:

wait, there's one other clear thing these days: i am damned tired of going to the doctor's office. i have been going twice a week for a few weeks now, and i am kind of done with that part. DONE. i am sick of the two idiot nurses and wish i could somehow guarantee that i could get the Good Nurse every time i go in there. i am tired of the one doctor i don't like who over-reacts and talks too much about invasive and unnecessary procedures and uses words like fetal demise in my presense. in fact, i told them flat out i do not want to see her anymore. she stresses me out. i wish i could talk the baby into coming when one of my two favorites is on call, but i am well aware that the little beastie will come when he's ready, not when i'm ready. that said--this weekend would be awesome--one of the favored two doctors is on call all weekend, plus bonus--meredith will be here. nearly ideal.

anyway. the baby is doing great. i am doing great. in sppite of my high blood pressure, which continues to creep up, there's no sign that it's negatively impacting either me or the baby. good. keep that up, body. the two doctors i love are on board with us just letting things unfold as they will. the other two like to talk about inducing me and stripping my membranes and all kinds of things there's no reason to do. don't get me wrong--if this baby goes into distress of any kind, or if i start demonstrating any signs of problems, then by all means, interfere! get the baby out if we need to. but as long as all these tests i keep having every 5 minutes say everything is fine, then you know--shut the hell up, medical people, and let me just do this. and quit running negative scenarios for me, too. i can read, and i am reasonably intelligent, and i know the scenarios. i can run them just fine for myself, thanks.

yeah--i think i am getting a little grumpy over here. it's been a long week. people i need keep flaking out on me. i am so happy it's the weekend. i want some Down Time, and some time away from people constantly asking me, "when's your due date? do you know if you are having a boy or a girl? what will you name him? are you miserable yet? are you just ready to get that baby out?" somewhere areound 32 weeks, i should have just had some shirts made up with the answers to these questions on them. (yep. definitely grumpy.)

in other news, it's going to be something like a month before i get my car back. boo.

in still other news, it's friday, and i think i am going to go home early.

jeez...

i don't know what could be better than wrecking your brand new three-week-old car two weeks before your due date, do you? i mean really... is there a better way to spend a glorious and blindingly sunny spring afternoon than dealing with police reports and broken cars? i can't think of a SINGLE ONE. *sigh*

the good news is--no one was hurt unless you count the cars themselves. the baby's as kicky as ever, so he's fine, too. mostly, i feel like an asshole as it was definitely my fault. but i am trying not to beat myself up about it and just file it under the "shit happens" category. the cars will get fixed and i will deal with the subsequent rise in my car insurance and all that. just not a good time for me to be adding any more pain in the ass factors to my life.

by the way--the irony here is that i was in the location of the accident because i needed to stop by the car dealership to show them a little missing pin from one of the car door seals. i had been there at the new car joint literally 15 minutes before i calmly drove the car into someone else's new car. life is often just totally ridiculous.

sweet face

this is from the march 25th ultrasound. the tech was nice enough to turn on the 3D imaging for us so we could see the baby's little face. he looks just like a real baby!

full term

today is the end of week 37, which means that if i go into labor now, they won't stop it from happening. from now until may 10th, it's all a waiting game. that said, this baby is up in my lungs and hasn't dropped a bit, so i am nowhere near delivery yet. and he better not come in the next couple of weeks until i can get my temp trained to take over! (hear that, baby? don't be born till the 26th!) people keep asking me--are you miserable yet? that's how they ask. not--how are you feeling--but--are you miserable? and the truth is...no! i feel better now than i have in ages. no coughing. no sickness. the baby is high and active, and i am loving watching my belly pitch and roll every time i sit still for 5 minutes. he's so active that i have become something of a rock star at the doctor's office. all the doctors and nurses ooo and ahhh over my nonstress charts, and how much he moves, and how well his movements match up with his increases in heart rate. as of next week, i will have one ultrasound and two nonstress tests (NSTs) a week till he comes. this is utter overkill, but it's the doctor's office protecting themselves agains malpractice.

this week's appointment was anything but non-stressful. when i have an NST and a regular drive-by exam scheduled, the entire visit should take about 30 minutes. this week it took over two hours. i waited 40 minutes to have the NST, and then the nurse left me alone for the 20-minute test--for 45 minutes. after 30 minutes, the baby flipped over and the fetal monitor lost his heartbeat, so i rang the little bell she gave me to call her in in case something was wrong. no response. rang it again. no response. 5 times. then the alarms ont he fetal monitor went off because it thought the baby was dead since it's gone with no heartbeat for so long. loud beeping went on for 10 minutes. finally, i just gave up. i unstrapped myself from all the stuff, lumbered up out of the recliner, wiped the goo off my belly, turned off all the monitors, and went in search of the nurse. she was up front checking in new patients. further, she failed to keep an exam room open for me, so my doctor ended up doing my drive-by in the testing room, which was both weird and awkward. lord, but i was ANGRY! i have to say that if they want me in there twice a week--they are going to have to be more efficient. i am all for my doctor, but i am not loving his negligent nurse. anyway--both of next week's appointments are with different doctors who have different nurses, so we'll see...

all tales of medical woe aside, i can tell my body is getting ready. it's pretty amazing. aside from all the physical stuff you expect at the end of a pregnancy, i think something in my head is working on getting ready, too. i have been having dreams about birth. not stressful dreams, but more like rememberances from past lives or something. last night i dreamed i gave birth alone in the woods. i was leaning up against an enormous tree with these huge gnarled roots--half leaning and half squatting in between the roots. and the baby was a girl and she fell a few inches when she was born into this pile of leaves i had made for her. i picked her up and used my hands to clean the gook out of her mouth and pat her on the back so she could get started breating on her own, and then i lifted her up onto my chest and leaned back against the tree with her on me. it was messy and earthy and felt unbelievably real. i woke up and my first thought was--oh, that was that other birth. bizarre, and oddly, kind of cool, too.

hats, hats, hats

i have the attention span of a gnat lately. hats are perfect for this. i've made many, and have many more in my mental queue. here are the hats of the year, so far...

this is the third umbrella hat i have made. the pattern is from leigh radford's one skein book, and i just love it too much to stop making it. the yarn is malabrigo in the colorway called molly. somebody needs to have a little girl soon so i can give this hat to them. i had no reason at all for making this other than the fact that i fell in love with the color of the yarn. does that happen to everyone?

this is the foliage hat from knitty.com. also malabrigo, in the colorway polar morn. this one's for me! i am trying to learn to keep a few knitted items for my own self, and i really needed a winter hat. i am fast coming to the conclusion that malabrigo is the best hat yarn of all time. it's so soft, and the colors are fabulous. plus--two hats from one skein--can't beat that!

this is some yarn i got at earth guild, a store up in asheville, a few weeks ago. it's a blend of wool and soy silk, but i can't remember for the life of me what it's called. i will have to find the label and come back to update this. i can't even find it on ravelry, so you know it's something weird. the woman at earth guild was telling me she got it to try ti herself, and i decided to do the same. it's not the best to work with--it fuzzes up in your hands pretty badly, and i think it's going to be pill-y as all hell. but it's soft and pretty and will look good on some baby's head. it's just a little beanie hat loosely based on the gauging and decreasing in the ann norling fruit hat.

and last but not least--one foliage hat is not enough when you can have two. this yarn is the hippie's, but he got too busy with work and more work to make this hat--he asked me to make it for him. and since a) it's malabrigo, and b) i loved this pattern, i jumped on it and knitted this up in like two days. i did a better bind off on th is one than i did on my own, which is good because mine would be too tight on anyone other than me. i love this color of yarn, although i have no idea what it's called. the only downside is that the pattern is far less clar with the variegated yarn than with the semisolid above. still--i am pretty pleased, and so was the hippie. maybe some day, we will get it into the proper recipient's hands...

that's all you get for now, as i am off to meet my friend emily for dinner. there's other knitting in the works, but alas, you must wait for it. life is just too rushed lately for words--literally.

he always forgets his napkin

out with the old... (and other newsworthy tidbits)

yep--that's right. i bought a new car. my car sales guy was awesome. i just went to look at it, but then--he gave me everything i wanted. i was forced to ask myself, "self? what are you waiting for?" the answer was that i was waiting for the car fairy to give me $20k so i didn't have to start paying for a car. and since THAT wasn't going to happen, i sucked it up and bought the thing. the good news is that my once-rather-damaged credit is now such that i was able to do it all by myself like an actual grownup. whoo hoo! and the new car is so far--AWESOME! it's a 2008 mazda 5, something like a cross between a car and a minivan. it's going to be great for wrangling the squeaker, and it's going to be awesome for road trips. in fact, i took it on one the day after i got it from the dealership. so much more comfortable than my sentra was, it's not even funny. my sentra served me well for 11 years, but it was just time for me to move on. always odly bittersweet for me--letting go of something that's been in my life that long...

anyway.

so yeah--i took the new car and went home to see my mama, whose quality of medical care has been pure total ass. my mother and father don't ask all that many questions of the doctors, so basically, we have no idea what the heck is wrong. she had a BP spike, was given meds that caused the BP to plummet, they thought she was having a heart attack, so they moved her to a heart clinic where there were tests and drugs that found nothing at all wrong with her. in the process, they gave her a blood clot, fucked up her arm, and sent her home with no charts, no record of what had been done, no scheduled follow-up, and a nasty case of foot and mouth disease. yay. the good news is that she feels better (after a week and a half!)--the bad news is that no one knows wtf happened to her. her follow-up's not till april fucking 9th. this is one of those times when i wish desperately that i lived closer to home so i could help her with this mess. or at the very least, keep her company. i went home for the weekend, but could not stay longer. and for the first time in my life, my mother said to me--i wish you didn't have to go back. this is a woman who asks for nothing from anyone. it made me so sad to leave her, and lord, but i wish i could go back for longer. but you know--pregnant--near the end--kind of need to stay around here. and oh, so much to do before the baby comes.

and oh yeah--he's coming all right. i am less than a month from my due date now, and oddly in denial about it. i hae to keep telling myself that i only have a few more weeks to work/clean/get ready. all those things i don't have from my baby registries, i need to get NOW. i am having weekly appointments with my doctors now, which is actually ok by me. because i have chronic hypertension, i get to have all kinds of extra tests here at the end, which is actually kind of great. they ahve added to my normal regimen (which is go in, pee in a cup, get weighed to find i have gained nothing or gained or lost the pound i keep gaining and losing, make them take my BP manually rather than with the evil machine, knit for 45 minutes, see a doctor for 5 minutes while they measure my belly, check the heartbeat, and ask me if everything's ok, then go to whole foods for a reward muffin and a bottle of water) a nonstress test. this, my friends, is the most awesome thing ever. they put a fetal monitor and a contraction monitor on me, lay be back in a big cushy leather recliner, turn up the volume on the baby's heartbeat, dim the lights, and leave me alone for 20 minutes with nothing to do but hit a little game show button when the baby moves. it's like going to a spa. the baby's heart rate rises and falls and he flails around and i listen and click my button and chill. i'd like to have one of these tests every day. the baby? he's great--super active. tuesday, he measured at 6 pounds and 12 ounces, more than i weighed when i was born.

time is just flying, y'all. i have more to say and no time to say it. there are hats. and pictures of hats. and baby sweaters. stuff about the cats. ultrasound pictures that need to be scanned in. i'll get to it at some point, hopefully... for now, i shall leave you with one final thing. check out the size of this belly!

news

1) feeling better. had an actual full night's sleep last night (not drug induced!) for the first time in like 2 weeks. still not 100%, but down to 1-2 coughing fits a day. pulled abdominal muscles healing at last. baby very kicky and mobile. good.

2) mother, on the other hand, not as good. she's in the hospital in charlotte and has some unexplained blood pressure spiking, and possible artery damage. she's in good hands it seems, but has had some pain and is exhausted. who knows when she will go home, probably tomorrow. but the scary thing is that it looks like they are not going to be able to figure out the underlying cause of her issues, which means--who knows when it could happen again. YUCK! prayers and good thoughts for my mama, please.

3) bought a new car. gonna get it tomorrow (if all goes well--they are shipping one in that's the color and trim level i want). more on this later. it's awesome though. i suspect i am going to pick it up and drive it straight to my mama, whether i am supposed to be traveling right now or not.

apologies for the sparseness of posts and the blah-ness of things. i've been knitting, but not a ton. i've been working, but that's boring as hell. i've been coughing, but you already know that. things will be better soon, i swear.

one of those days

so last thursday i left work and came home to escape my hacking coworker. by saturday i was sick. i'm still sick. most of this week, i've been sleeping something like 3 hours a night due to the massive coughing fits i keep having. the doctors keep telling me that this is not hurting the baby in spite of my pulled abdominal muscles and the fact that i have been coughing loudly and deeply enough to, on occasion, send the cats into hiding. bleh. yesterday my doctor called in a prescription for me for some codeine based cough suppressant so i could at least get some sleep. this worked remarkably well. it's ironic to me that when you are knocked up, you get reverted back to remedies that can only be called old school. they actually gave me a narcotic, people. and i took it--exactly as directed. and like clockwork, i woke up coughing 15 minutes before it was time for another dose all night long. i slept between doses like a dead thing. and today, my head is 85% more clear than it's been in a week. but holy shit, the migraine! the migraine i have had all day long was almost not worth the ability to breathe. and the hormones make me feel more sorry for myself than i generally do, so yes, there's been some weeping, too. YUCK! i am sick to death of being sick, people. i feel like i have traded a monthy period for a monthly headcold--one that gets a little worse every month. i am just DONE with this part of being pregnant, this whole no immune system thing. i know it's normal and all, but that doesn't change the fact that it sucks. a lot. anyway. i'm not so much looking for sympathy here as i am just venting. it's been a shitty week, and so far, a shitty weekend. that said, i think i am actually on the mend at last. we'll see--y'all be thinking some good thoughts in this direction!

dear sick coworker,

GO HOME! quit hacking up your lung in my healthy (for now) vicinity. i'm serious. get your shit out of the office before you give all of us the plague. have mercy on my weak pregnant immune system. thanks!

love,
jackie

finally, a finished object!

at long last, i have finished knitting a baby blanket for my own baby. after countless fluffy basket weave blankets (which i still love, by the way), i decided to knit something different for myself. this is a simple eyelet blanket from a pattern written by the owner of my LYS. the pattern has two versions, for worsted or chunky yarn, but the designer knitted it at a gauge that was just way too loose for me. i sort of combined the two, and knitted the worsted pattern with chunky yarn on needles that were kind of in the middle. this is 7 (i think) skeins of encore chunky on US size 10.5 lantern moon destiny needles. (love these needles, by the way, mainly for the way the cable swivels at the join. i bought them just to try them, but they are truly awesome, and now, i am afraid i may be hooked.) i am really happy with how this came out. i haven't washed it yet, but that's the next step. of course, it took about 30 seconds for fergus to claim it for himself.

contrast

1. i am with my sister. i am holding an ill-fitting oxygen mask just off her face to keep it from cutting her skin and watching her contraction progress on the machine as the fetal monitor plays for us the sound of her baby's ever-lowering heart rate. the contraction passes, and the heart rate stabilizes. nurses whisper in the corner. when my sister holds her breath, so do i. she won't let go of my hand--she is too alone and utterly afraid. they are getting ready to wheel her into the delivery room, which is separate from the labor room--a bad design. she won't let go, and her doctor throws a gown on me and i am dragged along. i watch her and touch her and talk to her as she labors, as she sqeezes the handles on the birthing table so tightly that the IV needle creeps out of her hand. the staff is worried. the get out a vacuum extractor and literally pull the baby out of my sister's body. the baby girl is bright blue--so blue she seems made of plastic and not flesh. they take her limp body away to the corner, under hot, bright lights, and she is surrounded by people. my sister and i are alone. my sister is almost unconscious but is weeping, tears sliding down her face as she begs me to tell her the baby is ok. long silent minutes pass, and i wonder what i will say to my sister if her baby dies. finally, a little weak cry fills the room and i am crying too--i can see the baby kicking and screaming out her anger at all the strangers touching her. she is ok. i can breathe, and my sister can breathe, because so can she.

2. i am with my friend, pushing back on her hand as she leans hard into me, trying with all her might NOT to push her baby out of her body. it's not quite time. she is focussed on breathing, looking past me into her husband's eyes for the strength he can give her. her face is a miracle. her sister has her other hand and both of us are doing whatever we can to help her. she is loved and supported literally from all sides. she is so focussed that her mind is not with us anymore--afterwards she will say that she hypnotized herself. the baby starts to appear--she has a perfect curl on the top of her head. the nurse runs for the doctor, who comes in just in time as the serious business of birth gets underway. the pushing is tremendous and powerful--more strength than i knew she had in her. the baby slides out in a great gush, and she is perfect. she cries for just a moment, and then is calm as they measure her. her father cries. the nurse does, too. it is a moment of wonder. my friend says that it was fun--she has endorphins going through her that would bring a million dollars if you could bottle them. the baby girl is serious and beautiful and sleeps on her mother as we leave the new little family alone to bask in each other.

a note on the kitties

many people have complimented samson's gorgeousness after the earlier post about him bring me presents when he was worried about my coughing. thanks, y'all--i think my kitties are pretty beautiful myself. their mother was a pure-bred show cat, a birman, and their father was God Knows What (aka, Something Grey). whatever he was, it worked out pretty well. the boys are littermates, and both were rescued from a scary man who was about to throw the whole litter (of seven!) into a river. it's a long story, but suffice it to say that someone i know was just in the right place at the right time to stop this madness and bring those little 5-week-old kittens home with her. i took two of them, and have never regretted it--they are beautiful and sweet tempered and soft, but they are just bad enough to be amusing. perfect pets (except when they break stuff or try to walk on my belly while i am sleeping or snag my yarn or steal my knitting needles or cough up hairballs on my couch). i try not to talk about them TOO much lest i become a crazy cat lady, but i sure do love them. glad y'all like them as much as i do. :)

too much to say

the past couple of weeks have been a whirlwind. we've traveled, had house guests, re-organized two rooms of our house, moved furniture and put new stuff together, cleaned and cleaned. is this nesting? the doula teaching our birth classes says it's not really nesting until the last couple of weeks, but it sure FEELS like nesting. over the course of this week, i will be writing some catch up posts, but right now, i just have some things on my mind i want to get down before they slip away. you guys understand...

friday was something of a mental milestone to me--30 weeks. 10 weeks to go. the baby is suddenly bigger and heavier and a stronger presense in my mind (and my lower back). maybe it's the birthing and baby care classes we have started, but i am thinking more and more about the birth that's coming--trying to prepare. maybe it's just because he's growing so quickly right now that i can see a time when he will no longer fit in his snug little hobbit hole. he's going to have to get out, and i am trying to figure out how that's all going to work. i was always like this: birth plan? i don't need no stinkin' birth plan! but after learning more about it, i think maybe i do. not something set in stone, but some list of what i hope for. i hope to have him naturally. i hope i don't need an epidural. i hope i can do it without drugs. i hope it goes well and that he gets from the inside to the outside without much intervention. i hope when he is born, they will lay him on my chest instead of taking him away. i hope i can breastfeed. i have learned that all these things are actually possible--if all goes well. but i have seen birth--i have seen it from two different sides, and i know many mnay stories of many other births as well. i know--i KNOW--that some flexibility is required. i know i can't get wedded to these ideas of what i hope for. i know they are just that--hopes--and that everything can change on the turn of a dime. and in the end, i just want a healthy baby and a healthy me. no amount of preparation is going to make it not scary. thank god for the hippie. thank god for his support and his love through this.

the sweet junipers have had their baby, and he is beautiful. and jim's writing about it is so poignant and beautiful that i can't read it without crying. i went today and i read the whole story of juniper's birth, their beautiful little daughter, and it was just amazing. her birth was natural and not easy, but it was also awesome and overwhelming. i am so grateful to them both for writing it out in such detail and leaving so little out. it's comforting to me on a level i can't explain. it's worth reading and as educational as any book i have seen. i hope i am able to record our story in this kind of detail. i feel like i am mentally retreating a little bit--maybe gearing up in some way. i am trying not to do that. it's hard for me right now to think or write about much else. i am keeping a paper journal now for the first time in years. i am keeping it as much for the baby as for myself, something i wish my mother had done.

i hope i am a good mother. i hope we are good parents. i hope we are a good family. the fear is almost overwhelming. so is the anticipation. i can't wait to meet him.

showin' me the love

every weekend the hippie sweeps and vacuums the floor. in order to do this, he picks up all the cat toys and puts them on the bottom shelf of our living room bookshelves. the cats know where they are, and retrieve them at will. we know from this what toys are the favorites and who likes what the best. the three most loved (or maybe hated?) slowly make their way from the living room to our bedroom. like good outdoor cats--they bring us their kills. this past week, samson has been freaked out by me being so sick--he comes and checks in on me all the time. am i ok? is that coughing thing still happening? where's the hairball? can he help? i guess putting his favorite catnip filled squirrel/ferret/chipmunk thing on the bed for me was the best he could do. i am still giggling about it. just look at how ferocious he is. are you not trembling in fear?

notes on the belly

i am a little in love with the belly. i admit it. i catch glimpses of myself in the mirror, and i see this body that's not altogether my own, and it's oddly thrilling. it's not somehting i ever expected, and certainly not something i expected from the hippie either. but it's true--he's a little in love with the belly, too. we've hit the land shark phase. the baby is moving around in there all the time, and i can see it as well as feel it. little jabs and hops and flutters that are just amazing to watch. it's bizarre, of course, and i feel a little like a character in alien, but it's awesome, too. my little guy is in there, rolling and kicking and turning, and letting me know he's ok. the hippie hugs me, and he hugs the belly. he asked me what he was going to do when the belly was gone. he lays his hand on me and he says, come on baby--kick your daddy. and the baby does.

on many levels, pregnancy sucks--i am so tired, and my back aches, and i have the immune system of a newborn kitten, so i keep getting sick and staying sick. but on another level, it doesn't suck at all. there is a joy in it, this growing of a life in my body. it's amazing and humbling, and i think some part of me will be sad and miss it when it's over and the baby is on the outside. it's still hard for me to believe it's happening at all, this surprise baby that's come to us when i am 38 years old and had pretty well given up on the whole thing. i am terrified of it on so many levels. but i am happy, too. finally, at this later stage in the pregnancy, i am starting to be less worried and more happy.

news from the couch

ok, so all in all, i have been pretty lucky in this pregnancy. i am healthy as a horse, and the baby is big and active as hell. i have had some hurling, but not so much as to make me insane. and i have been tired, but not disfunctional--i even manage to get to the grocery store and make dinner still. i'd love more sleep, but that's really always been the case. yesterday, i had the evil glucose tolerance test where i had to go in and drink a (warm) 10-oz bottle of what tasted like hawaiian punch with about 4 extra cups of sugar dissolved in it on an empty stomach. when this made me feel kind of off, i can't say i was surprised. but it seems that i have contracted a THING. a THING of the stomach variety that has required me to spend the day working from my couch and eating nothing but plain carbs, salt, and gincger ale. all i can say is, it better go away soon.

in other baby news, the doctors claim everything with him is awesome, and that he will be big. they tell me i need to register at the hospital soon, which freaks me out. we start childbirth classes in less than two weeks. we're entering the home stretch over here, and it's just still bizarre as hell to me. i have lost back the one pound i gained, so that's interesting. considering that my uterus weighs about 6 pounds, the placenta another 6 or so, the baby about 2 and a half or 3, the amniotic fluid a couple of pounds, and the fact that i have about 150% of my normal blood, that all means that my actual body is probably the lightest it's been in like 10 years. that just ain't right.

my friend emily reminds me to get as much done now as i can, as i will have a permanent houseguest coming in april. i love her description of having a new baby in the house:

Well, in truth it's initially like having a really inconsiderate college roommate--up all night, loud partying, never cleans up after himself...fortunately the cuteness factor and the "I made this person myself" factor ameliorate the bad roommate effects...

i've always said the cuteness is what saves them. thank god for that.

stuff on the sticks

so my camera battery charger is still MIA, so i tried taking some pictures of my kniting with my phone. and of course, they pretty much suck. however, in the interest of documentation and the need to talk about yarn, i am showing them to you anyway. bear with me.

i cast on for the foliage hat on sunday while snowed in (by which i mean, not snowed in at all, but rather holed up as though snowed in--you do what you have to here in NC to make winter happen for yourself), and i am through the crown and one and a half repeats of the leaf lace pattern. i am still a little stumbly with lace--just a lot to keep track of--but i made it through the last 8 rounds without having to back up and fix something, so maybe some practice is actually helping. the yarn is malabrigo, in a lovely silvery grey that's almost the exact color of fergus's belly and nearly as soft. love malabrigo. of course, i've lost the label, so god only knows what color this actually is. the hippie's making this hat, too, in green. it says something about us that i get gauge with this yarn on size 7's and he gets it on 9's.

also in the works is a baby bolero for kieran. this pattern is really cute, and it's the only newborn size thing i am knitting--i am 99% sure that we're going to have a 10+ pound baby, in which case, he will be lucky to wear this home from the hospital. i am using the yarn called for, which is blue sky alpacas organic cotton. the color is called willow, i think, but again--the lable is somewhere, so i can't tell you for sure. i can tell you that this yarn is wonderful to knit, and that i love how the ply of green witht he natural ply becomes all tweedy looking when it's knitted up. i am changing the pattern a little bit--i did the shou;der seams with a 3-needle bind-off rather than a seam, and i intend to pick up stitches and knit them from the top down rather than knit them as separate pieces as they are written. everyone i know who has made this has had issues with fitting the sleeves into the arm holes, so this seems a better solution. thanks to knitting betty for the suggestion to do them top down.

i knitted a third umbrella hat because i just wanted the pink yarn. (of course, the color looks all off here due to the lack of proper photography, but i am trying not to whine about that anymore.) i am sure i am not alone in doing that sort of thing. the umbrella hat from leigh radford's one skein book is just a great little satisfying knit. i love the little lace motif at the bottom--it's enough to keep it interesting. and then the stockinette portion of the hat is small enough that it just goes by in a flash. i took no in-progress shots of this project because it was over too soon! i have no idea who will be the recipient of this little hat. it's made to fit a 9-12 month head, so we'll see whose baby turns out to be the right size at the right time. :)

i also took some pictures of the green eyelet baby blanket i am making for kieran, but they came out too atrocious to post. ew. you're just going to have to wait to see that one till i can get the camera battery up and running again. the sam's sending me her extra charger--thank god! soon, i will be back in the game.

i am meeting my new S&B group tonight (if you live in cary or apex, come meet us! we're meeting at 7pm at the starbucks at 55 and high house.), so hopefully i will get the rest of the way through my foliage hat. it's cold! i need that thing!

when email's down at work...

...as it was this morning--well, that's a perfect time to go internet shopping and become that greatest of all things, an american consumer. today i ordered these two lovely items, both of which i wish would arrive right now. the first is a maternity t-shirt from an etsy shop--the seller's name is discobelly, and i have high hopes for her shop. this t-shirt is so cute, and sadly the same cannot be said for much of what's available out there for pregnant women. a lot of it's just frumpy and lacks all style. and you know, when you are starting to feel big and cumbersome and like maybe you are about to give birth to a whale rather than to a tiny (yeah, right!) baby, then the last thing you want to do is feel frumpy, too. so amyway--thank you, people like discobelly! i love this shirt!

the second item is the small bedford desk from pottery barn, after which i have been lusting for many moons. i have an enormous antique teacher's desk, which i love--it used to live in what is now the nursery. but since the baby's crap is going to take up a whole room, my poor desk was excommunicated and banished to the garage where it is destined to become a stained glass worktable. the problem? now i have no desk to use as an actual desk. and everything's just too damned big for my available space, EVEN at ikea. (i KNOW, right?) so anyway, this stylish little petite number (only 23 inches deep) is going to become my new little office-y niche in my studio. it should arrive in a couple of weeks, which is lucky, because--let me tell y'all--i am NESTING. i want everything organized, and i mean NOW!

in other news, i am still knitting up a storm (probably something to do with that nesting thing again), and i still can't show you squat because I can't find my camera battery. i started a foliage hat for myself this weekend, and i am still working on many other half-finished items. i also spent the weekend holed up at the house doing things like making 15-bean soup and corn bread and big country breakfasts, ironing massive amounts of bed and table linens, and trying not to notice that the baby being all in the front is starting apparently starting to crack my back in two. yep. nesting. all i want to be is home.

at random

why is it that i feel i need to have pictures in my posts? maybe because i like looking at other people's pictures so much. anyway--i don't have any, because i have not suddenly located my camera battery, probably because i have had no time to look. maybe i should start taking phone pictures again. this has been one of those weeks where i have been unaccountably busy. i have had something going on pretty much every night all week, and then i wonder why i have no time to get things done at home. duh. tonight i have a date with my friend emily, which is awesome. tomorrow i will prepare for the weekend arrival of my friend michelle. someday i will finish packing up the christmas ornaments--but don't ask me when. on tuesday this week, i knitted with strangers--we're trying to get a stich and bitch group going that's closer to where some of us live, and so far, so good. two people last week, four this week--if we keep that up, we'll have a good group going in no time. this also means i am making knitting headway even if nothing else is coming along for me right now. man, this is a rambly boring post. maybe i should throw up a random picture, just so you guys have something to do.

there--that's fergus at the vet earlier this week. (my phone does take ok pictures at least.) he's about as happy as he looks in that picture, but he's also perfectly healthy other than some residual anxiety over the loss of scout. what do you do for a cat who's trying to groom out all his fur? anyway, i'm going to shut up and try to finish my work so i can leave a tad early.

photography issues

i have all this stuff i want to show you, internet, but alas, i have lost my camera battery charger.

for example, jenn and i took an all day beading class on saturday (because i definitely need more hobbies). i walked away with 4 new pieces of jewelry i can't show you, one of which i really like and would LOVE to show. i made a lovely silver glass pearl bracelet with blue silk knots (wearing it right now), some chandelier type earrings with lots of crystals, a pair of copper and charcoal pearl earrings, and a stone necklace with black seed beads and some other glass beads as well. we learned knotting, crimping, and wire wrapping, and i am now all fired up to make more stuff. however, you can't see any of this because my battery is dead dead dead.

other things you can't see:
the pink malabrigo umbrella hat i made
the baby blanket i finished for my friend jennifer's new baby
the red felted bag that's ready to felt
the baby bolero that has a body and no sleeves
the eyelet baby blanket i am halfway though for my own baby
my pretty new yarn in my pretty new silk yarn bag

*sigh*

i need to find that thing...

all about the baby

i feel more pregnant than usual today. i am not sure what it is, but i just feel more cumbersome and large all of a sudden. maybe it's the fact that i am finally in the black as far as the pregnancy weight gain has gone--i am a whole two pounds heavier now than the day i took that first (of five) pregnancy test. maybe it's these jeans i'm wearing pressing just a little TOO tightly on my lower abdomen--ie, on the baby. maybe it's the the baby is really roll-y today. maybe it's that i can't quite seem to take a deep enough breath. but anyway--yeah--i'm definitely knocked up over here, folks.

i have reached the point where i am not throwing up (very much), and i actually ate some oatmeal for breakfast today with no problems. i feel mostly ok, although i am very tired. i am having really vivid dreams, and i wake up every time i roll over from one side to the other. i can't sleep on my back or my stomach anymore, which is also affecting things. i fell asleep at the kitchen table the other night reading a wikipedia page (reading about the baby's name) on my laptop--i didn't even know that was physically possible. i have had a couple of pretty severe headaches, but less than i have when i am NOT pregnant, so that's ok, too. i think maybe i am in the calm before the storm.

the baby moves all the time now--he's like my little constant friend in there. of course, the minute the hippie touches my belly, the baby becomes as still and quiet as a little church mouse. i think he likes the vibrations from his father's voice, a trend i hope continues until he is at least twenty. the hippie was fianlly able to feel him for the first time last night, which is pretty exciting.

actually, many things are starting to get exciting. many people have given us stuff for the baby already. we have enough baby clothes that i washed a whole load of them--i could not stop laughing as i was hanging them to dry--so tiny! and we spent a lot of time over the holidays working on the house, which means that the nursery is painted and has furniture in it. the nursery is a lovely pale, pale blue--almost white. it's cool and soothing, and it's the color i would have painted the room, baby or no baby. the hippie's worried about stereotyping putting a baby boy in a baby blue room, but hey--i figure, we like the color. it has nothing to do with the baby's gender for me. after all, my bedroom is blue, too! jenn and harry have given us a crib and a dresser with a changing table top, which is HUGE and has saved us a ton of money. plus that crib has held many babies who are now womderful children, so we are excited abotu its good karma as much as anything. i have been shopping around buying odds and ends, like a glider from craigslist ($60), the rug i wanted from pottery barn kids on ebay ($139including shipping!), a bumper pad ($30) and a little valance ($5) from a clearance sale at pbk, and a teddy bear ($14) at restoration hardware while i was christmas shopping (i just couldn't resist it!) i will probably end up spending more on artwork than on anything else that will go in the baby's room--that to me is the fun part. i feel like one of those people on the HG or the TLC channel decorating on a a teeny budget or somehting--it's like a game to me at this point. anyway--things are moving along. things are going really quickly. i feel like this baby is going to be here before i have time to blink twice. i hope he waits till his due date on april 25th. whew!

cupcake factory

what starts out as a neat and orderly pile of ingredients and equipment as you see pictured above quickly turns into a pile of flour and sugar and a fine coating of sticky over your entire kitchen when you start turning it into 72 cupcakes. this is what i did on saturday--i made cupcakes. all day long. and let me tell you, i can't think of many better ways to spend a day! i heart cupcakes. i love making them, and i love eating them--i consider them one of the Perfect Foods, along with bacon, biscuits, sauteed mushrooms, and really good ice cold gin martinis. (there are others, of course, but i am trying not to digress...y'all know how i am once i get going.)

for christmas, i received two cupcake cookbooks, cupcakes, by susanna tee, and cupcakes year round, by sara neumeier. the first is quite pretty and is great for inspiration and decorating ideas, but it isn't very practical for mass production of cupcakes. all of it's recipes make different amounts of cupcakes--one will be 12, one 16, the next 26, and so on. the other one, however, is awesome--every recipe i made on saturday came from this book, and all of them were fabulous. highly recommend this book! evey cupcake recipe is for 24 cupcakes, and every icing recipe is enough icing to generously ice all 24 (and then some).

i spent some time thinking about what flavors to make and how i wanted to decorate the cupcakes. i settled on 3 batches. 1) red velvet, because there's just something about red velvet that people like--it feels festive. 2) chocolate mocha because well--mmmm...chocolate. 3) carrot cake because i thought i should do something that had no chocolate in it for people who either don't like it or might be allergic or something. besides, carrot cake rocks. i made a big double batch of cream cheese icing, and then flavored it differently for each kind of cake. the red velvet got plain cream cheese icing, the carrot got cream cheese with lemon zest grated into it, and the mocha got crushed candycanes mixed in for a subtle peppermint flavor. (that was an idea from the cookbook, although they used buttercream as the base rather than cream cheese icing--they called them reindeer snacks. cute.)

i decided to individualize each flavor of cupcake by decorating them differently. i made white chocolate snowflakes for the red velvet cupcakes. this is easier than it sounds--you just start with good quality white chocolate ( i used ghiradelli), melt it over a double broiler, put it into a pastry bag, and then draw out the snowflakes. i put a piece of aluminum foil on a cookie sheet and drew them there. then i decorated them while they were still soft with silver dragees and put the whole sheet into the freezer. when they are frozen, just peel them off the foil as you need them. takes a little time, but it's worth it. the bit if white chocolate on top really adds a nice richness to the red velvet, too. for the carrot cake, i sprinkled the tops very lightly with cinnamon and added a sugared lemon twist to each one. the fragrance was awesome, and i think it added a bit of sophistication to these humble little carrot cakes. for the mocha ones, i just sprinkled them with a bit of red sanding sugar and added a few more pieces of crushed peppermint to the tops. simple and festive. i have to say, i was really happy with the results, and i am sad that all the cupcakes are gone. click on the picture below if you want bigger pictures and more detail.

on the 11th day of christmas...

i am finally getting around to posting something about the holidays. (and look at the time! it's ALMOST the 12th day of christmas already!) and really--that right there sums it up. i think i have been behind pretty much since thanksgiving. i am still behind. i have a handful of packages still waiting to go in the mail. my studio looks like a bunch of elves got drunk in there for new year's and left wrapping paper shreds and bits of ribbon and tape on every horizontal (and maybe a few non-vertical--who's keeping track at this point?) surface. in fact, a few of my gifts still aren't here yet. that's a long story involving someone else's holiday issues that i won't go into--suffice it to say, i feel her pain. but all of that whining aside--it's been a good holiday. i have been remarkably low-stress for all the lateness. i think i have just decided to chalk it up to being too tired to care and just make my one new year's resolution to do better with this stuff next year. wish me luck with that. we travelled little, ate much, saw many people we love and care about, watched all of season six of 24, knitted some, rested, worked on the house, took only a few pictures and generally chilled for the holiday. for new year's eve, we went to a party at the home of some dance class friends with our friend meredith, which was great fun--i even managed to stay up till 2:30am! (a minor miracle, considering that i have been going to bed at like 10pm...) i think i have opted not to make any real resolutions for this year, lest i start thinking too much about all the impending change and overwhelm myself. if i have any resolution at all, it's to try to take things as they come, one thing at a time, and just try to enjoy life more.

i had enough time off over the holidays that i actually got to do some knitting, which was nice. i finished a little pink baby hat and a couple of baby blankets that have been languishing on my needles, and i worked on one i am making for myself (pictures to come of that one). i also started a baby bolero for my own baby, made a crazy scarf for myself, and made fergus help with the whole mess. fergus, he's my knitting familiar. the bolero is from leigh radford's one skein book, and i am using the recommended yarn, blue sky alpacas organic cotton. the color name is willow (i think)--it's 2-ply with one ply each of ivory and pale earthy green--both are natural colors. this yarn is so soft and is LOVELY to work with. plus as an added bonus, leigh radford and i apparently knit at exactly the same gauge. swatches? we don't need no stinkin' swatches... the green scarf is a simple garter stitch thing on big needles from trendsetter. the yarn is dune, and god knows what color that is--it's a crazy green with bits of purple, black, and metallics thrown in. i bought it because it matched my green toenails, which i admit is a little insane. and while i love the resulting scarf, i did NOT love working with this yarn! it's 2-ply, with one ply of mohair and one ply of metallic stuff. the problem is that one ply stretches and the other doesn't, so that mohair ends up having a big lag in it--it separated from the other yarn and just kept tangling up and catching on everything. in the end, i had about 3 yarns of mohair left and none of the other ply. very, very annoying. the scarf's cool though. :)

in other knitting news, i took a little trip down to bella filati in southern pines with meredith and the hippie, where we all bought some yarn. the hippie bought enough to make himself an awesome dark green tweed sweater. i bought some yarn to make a little sweater for the beastie for next winter, and meredith introduced herself to the wonder that is malabrigo. i predict she will be an addict within the month. as are we all...

and now, all blog posting aside, my butt's got to go get into the bed. i am so tired, and i have been sleeping like boiled ass this past week. and tomorrow, i need all my strength to make 72 cupcakes for my company's holiday party. i'll definitely be taking pictures of that! i got two cupcake cookbooks for christmas, so those will be in play for sure. i really can't wait! y'all know how i feel about cupcakes!

i leave you with one last thing--the hippie insisted we take a belly shot in front of the christmas tree, and i admit, i am glad we did. this one's going into kieran's baby book:

death by email

crate and barrel has just sent me the eleventy-hundredth email i have received from them this holiday season. the first line is, in HUGE red letters, wwith many explanation marks:

ONLY 72 HOURS LEFT!!!

are they actually TRYING to kill me?

successful shopping + cute and well-dressed children expedite the ebb of hostility

last night after work i went to the mall with a list, a plan, and a route planned out. i made a tremendous amount of headway with minimal pain. amazing. i was really prepared for a walk through the seventh level of hell, but it was instead, surprisingly pleasant. the mall was full of beautifully dressed little children having their pictures taken with santa, and all that cuteness didn't hurt. no one was mean or rude to me the whole time i was there, even after i had so many packages that, between them and my giant belly, i was having trouble navigating the aisles in the stores. i even had some extra niceness from a handful of clerks in a couple of my favorite stores. amazing. so let's just say--i am in a WAY better mood today. i think my hostility is abating a little bit...

somewhere in the drive home from my last stop, i hit a wall of tiredness so significant that i think i could have just pulled over and spent the night on the side of the road less than a mile from my house. it's kind of amazing. when my body is done these days, it's just DONE. no arguing. i had grand plans to get a bunch of packing done last night so i could ship stuff today, but alas--this did not happen. so people far away from me? your shit is going to be late. the end. i have done my best, but i am sorry to say, i have failed you. tomorrow i will make a massive post office run, and we will see what makes it and what doesn't. my hopes, they are not high. oddly enough, i am not that stressed out about this for once in my life. i have done what i can, and now--wahtever... these people know that i love them and that my life is insane, and they will understand when things are not on time. i will run the rest of my errands this weekend, i will fill my house with people i love and fabulous little girls who i will turn loose with cookies and icing and sprinkles, and i will wrap things and knit things for the entire two days before christmas. and after tomorrow, i am off work for over a week. i can't wait.

my one last lingering annoyance is that the etsy order that i placed almost a month ago is still not here. i have tried to contact the seller, but have received no response, which is a bit of a disappointment. there's nothing i can do about it but hope the stuff eventually shows up, but it sure does suck. maybe those can be next year's presents.

jackie goes postal

today my friend tina and i went to carolina cafe where we often meet for lunch--it gets super crowded, so we go early, snag a table and get in line. one table had 4 laptops on it, so we assumed ppl are sitting there, right? but in the WHOLE time we were there, no one sat down there. and then a guy from the next table over, got up, picked up a cell phone from that empty table, and sat back down. it turned out that 4 business guys were having a meeting over lunch at the next table, and they left their laptops at the table beside them, a booth at a prime location in the restaurant. there were at least 5 groups of ppl are standing around with nowhere to sit, holding their food. people kept checking to see if that booth was occupied. these guys finished their food, then move back over into the table with the laptops just as we were leaving, and i lost my shit. i told them they should win some kind of rudeness award, and that i thought sometimes something just needed to be said to people who acted like that. they were hostile of course, and one of them even tried to deny that they had been occupying the table next to them. at that point, i ALMOST started talking smack about their mamas, but then i decided that would just put me on their level. i don't usually lose it at people like that, but this time i just could not help it. it was all i could do not to yell, "happy motherfucking holidays, assholes!" as i walked out the door. but i showed some restraint. go me.

don't even listen to me--i'm too whiney to be tolerated

today i am not a people person. i am irritable and stressed and just want to go home. i am annoyed that i ordered all this stuff for christmas ages ago, and none of it is here. this makes my presents to others late, which i hate, but what can i do? i have no backup plan for what to do if my presents fail to arrive. nor do i have a backup budget laying around. *sigh* i am sick of work, sick of having no time, sick of being tired, and sick of hearling myself whine about it all. i have road rage, and i want someone to bring me a really good cup of tea right now. i guess this is just "one of those days". i am certainly ready for it to be over. blah.

gettin' there...

christmastime's a comin', people. who's ready? certainly not yours truly, although i am running to catch up as fast as i can! slowly, slowly, i am getting it done. i finally mailed all the christmas cards today. i have at least SOME presents, although i have wrapped not a single one. and i am so sad--i placed a big etsy order in november, and i have yet to see that stuff. there was something in there i was hoping to give this weekend, but alas--that will not happen. and i have SO MUCH shipping to do! whew! let's just say, i am really glad i decided not to knit presents this year--there's no way i would have had time to do it. strangely enough, i am not as stressed as i usually would be at being this behind. i am feeling almost human again for the first time in weeks, and we have plans to go to our favorite big holiday party this weekend. PLUS, there's an ikea run on the table for sunday afternoon--an added bonus. i can't say enough how much i love the ikea. it's filled with awesomeness. affordable aweseomness! but i digress... there's a tree in the house, and boy, it's a BEAST of a tree. the hippie put the lights on (because he loves me), and they have been on there for almost a week. the ornaments (my job) remain wrapped and packed. the tree skirt? still in storage. but there's a tree, by god. apparently the poor hippie is stuck in work hell, so it seems we may be trapped in NC until in the morning. maybe i'll just go on home and put some ornaments on that there tree, and maybe wrap a present or two, and i don't know--pack for the weekend. y'all have a good one, too. :)

half way home

check out the belly! last friday was the 20 week mark for my pregnancy--half way home. it's still almost impossible for me to believe, even though, as you see, i have the belly to show for it. i am starting to accumulate baby stuff, which continues to freak out both the hippie and me. and yet--it's so freakin' cute, it's hard not to be a little excited about it now. it's a strange thing--i am still too nervous to be all excited. i guess everyone reacts differently. i have spent the past couple of years trying to accept NOT having any children, and here i am, about to have one. it's a tremendous mind shift. of course, i firmly believe that my baby will be the strongest and best and smartest baby ever born. of course i look forward to that smell of his little fuzzy head and to holding him asleep on my chest like a bean. but it's also so scary. i never knew what a mix of emotions i would be feeling if this ever happened to me! it's so overwhelming sometimes. the hippie is handling it all better than i am, but i think some of that is just because he's less emotional than me. it's fun, it's distracting as hell, it's nerve-wracking,a nd yes, it's exciting, too. especially now that i can feel him moving all the time. he's active, and it's not as weird as i thought it would be. in a way, it's such a comfort, him moving around. it's reassuring me that he's ok and that he's here with me. one of my best friends was telling me that it felt in some ways like a loss when her son was born, not to have him fluttering inside anymore--kind of lonely. i can totally see that. but i digress... the news of being half way is--the plague is nearly gone but for a cough i can't quite shake, and the nausea is mostly abated with a few early morning exceptions here and there. i am mostly ok, if still a bit tired. so far, so good. i have another doctor's appointment this week, in which i will certainly get to hear his heartbeat again. i look forward to that every time. :)

giant red cat brush

we've got a new sofa--it came in the day before thanksgiving, and it's beautiful, and i love it, and it looks fabulous with our new rug. but there's a wee little problem. the fabric is brushed canvas--we picked a canvas because we thought it would hold up better to the cat claws that live with us--and it's doing that beautifully. however, the word "brushed" apparently has some unforseen consequences. brushed canvas has a bit of a knap to it. which means that when the kitties come and lay upon the new divan (read: always), the fabric is brushing their fur and clinging to it like freakin' fly paper. i've been vacuuming the thing twice a week. looks fantastic for about--oh--three minutes or so, until the cats are all--"hey, thanks for cleaning up the new couch for us--that was really getting nasty there. you, with the thumbs, come over here and pet us. and maybe a treat?" little bastards are getting fur all over my new couch. i guess nothing's perfect. that said--the new sofa has passed the sick test--i've been on it pretty much all week and my verdict is Damned Comfy.

getting back to human

i am finally starting to feel better, although now i have these amazing 20-minute coughing runs that just seem never to end about 5 times a day. i sound like a frog, and i'm sniffly, and this is such a vast improvement over how i was feeling a few days ago that i feel like dancing. the bad news is that all this time on the couch has resulted in little knitting--you would think i would have done more, but alas, i was not up to it. my focus has been for shit, and i have been trying to use what brain power i've got to keep up with work. that said, i could get used to working from the couch. i get way more done from home than i do at work--i wonder why that is... less distraction maybe. also, maybe as sense of guilt for being comfy on the couch instead of sitting in the flourescent world of corporate america? anyway, i'm rambling.

in other and better and more interesting news, i felt The Parasite moving for the first time night before last, and again last night. looks like he's on his way to being nocturnal like his father. i can't wait for the land shark phase when the hippie will be able to feel it too. :)

this just in: being sick blows

and here's the thing--it's even worse when you are pregnant. i'm sick. the hippie has given me the plague he had last week, and it's dig in for the long haul, it appears. i had all these plans for the weekend--fun things like getting a christmas tree and re-organizing all of the books--and yet, no. i spent the weekend not breathing, napping, drinking tea, and apparently overdosing on sudafed. don't owrry--sudafed is on my very short list of crap i can take if i am all congested. however, who know that a dose was one tiny little insignificant pill. further, let me point out that at least two are required for the medication to have any effect. iam thinking maybe one pill is enough for a 100-pound girl, but not for yours truly. that shit just doesn't work. but anyway. now i am taking--oh--nothing. i am sitting on the couch, wishing for enough energy to knit or something, and dyikng to be able to breathe. BLAH. i am whiney and annoyed and useless. lucky for me, my immune system is down a bit from being pregnant, so it should take me longer to get over this nasty cold. maybe tomorrow i will get past the point of being able to feel my heartbeat in my sinuses at least. y'all, this sucks. and it's making me miss scout even worse--she always sat with me when i was sick. blah blah blah. i am going to shut up as i am disgusting myself with the whining.

snakes and snails and puppy dog tails...

if that's what little boys are made of, then no wonder i am still throwing up every day...

we had a level 2 ultrasound yesterday where we confirmed that all the parts are present and accounted for, everything is working like it's supposed to, and that we are indeed having a boy. kieran, not rosemary. it's a mental adjustment to let go of the idea of either gender at this point, so you know--it's a combination of excitement and disappointment. i am excited by the thought of a healthy and sturdy little hippie toddling around after his father trying to fix things with a leatherman micra and learning to sail and writing computer programs from age three. but i am also sad to lose the prospect of ribbons and dresses and knitting little lace sweaters for a girl, too. life is filled with bittersweet things like this i guess. don't get me wrong--i AM happy about the boy in spite of my desire for a girl. and mostly i am happy that he's healthy and active and robust. he's about 5 days larger than his gestational age would indicate, which is right on target for us. the hippie was over 10 pounds at birth. my brother was 11 pounds and 10 ounces. this doesn't bode so well for my comfort level, but it does mean that we don't really have any worries in the failure to thrive department either.

i'd show you some pictures from the ultrasound, but honestly they were mostly crap. we only have a few in spite of the hundreds they took--no one gave us a fabulous DVD this time--and none of them are really very clear. sad. i can tell you though--it's awesome to see him and spend so much time watching him move about. he was sucking his thumb, which was really cute. he has all his fingers and toes, we saw all the chambers of his heart, his brain, his abdominal organs, the bones in his legs and arms, his skull--all of it. it's mind-blowing.

he.

have to get used to saying he instead of it.

and now the house is officially full of testosterone. two boy cats, a hippie, and soon, a little boy baby. i told the hippie--i am getting a fluffy girl dog and tying it's fur FULL of pink ribbons.

back home, on my own...

oh yeah--i blew it. that whole posting every day in november--well--we got on the road on friday, and i just utterly forgot. and then it was already screwed up, so i admit, i just didn;t worry about it over the weekend while i was at my parents' house. oh well--nothing lost i guess, although i admit i am a little disappointed in myself. stupid type a personality...

anyway--check out these cute as hell babies! these are kimmie's twins, matthew and katherine. they have an older sister, caroline, who is also very cute, but who, unfortunately, i didn't take a single picture of. heck, i barely took any pictures at all on this trip--i was mostly holding babies, or feeding babies, or riding, or feeding babies, or something. i gotta say, kimmie got lucky here--these babies are good natured, adorable, smiley, and they smell good. in short--they are nearly ideal. it is my experience that matthew (my new boyfriend--sorry, hippie!) is more demanding and would mostly rather be eating than just about anything else. katherine seems more reserved and mild-mannered. clearly she thinks her older brother is bourgeois. caroline is toddling around, and appears mostly indifferent to her tiny twin siblings. she's in that phase where she's learning to talk, talking a mile a minute, and you can understand about 2/3 of what she says. she can very clearly say "backyardigans," however, and thank god for it--her love of that show probably saved our asses on the drive down. (btw, the backyardigans have my vote for cool kids' show, even though their website kind of sucks. i am not a fan of dora, who yells everything and tells lies. a riddle is NOT just a silly question, dora! but i digress...)

so that's where i was on friday--kimmie and i (with major help from the man of the house) loaded up the luggage and babies in the minivan and headed south from detroit to our hometown in western nc. the drive went FAR better than we expected. by the time we got to dayton, we had a feeding and dvd schedule all worked out. i was even able to feed both babies at once due to my extraordinarily long arms. the only down side to me is that i feel i have now had enough road food to last about 3 years. i am currently in detox mode. but i digress... so--we got into the hometown at something like 4am, at which time i fell into my parents' guest bed and slept like a dead thing till at least 9 when the parasite demanded i go eat something. kimmie, unfortunately was not as lucky. when she arrived at her parents' house, caroline decided she was up for the day. at 4am. after a 13-hour drive. i know that i will have some moments like this at some point in my future. tell me how parents resist the black market purchase of tranq guns, people. whew. she seems to have recovered. and now i am back home until next wednesday when we split town for t-day. too much travel, man.

anyway--i am on my own till friday while the hippie is off at a conference in reno. the house still seems weird to me without scout, and even weirder with no hippie. and i admit, kind of missing those babies. kimmie, if you are reading this, go kiss the peach fuzz for me.

slow day at the office

today was fairly uneventful. i spent the bulk of it holding one or more babies and trying to do the job I came to do. tomorrow afternoon we will leave michigan and drive down to rutherfordton--should be quite an adventure. y'all cross your fingers for us that things go well. for now, i think i will retire early to rest up for the coming trip. us knocked up girls need our rest...

highlight of the day: it snowed this morning--so pretty to watch out the window with a baby sleeping on my lap.

michigan, baby

ah, blogging from my phone... how well i remember this from last year. today i flew up to detroit to see my friend kimmie and meet her nearly 4-month old twins. it's so awesome to see her not so little family on their home turf. the babies are adorable and caroline, the toddler, was very funny today showing off for me. i will be spending a couple of days here with these guys, and then we will pack up all the babies and our stuff and head down to nc to our hometown. cross your inger that we all survive the 11-hour drive in tact! meanwhile, prepare for more phone blogging from me...it's all i got for ya right now. :)

new baby in a new hat

i still haven't found time to clean up the SAFF pictures, but i did squeeze in this one little beauty from last weekend. this is madeline, my brother doug and his girlfriend chrissy's new baby. isn't she the cutest? and check out her fabulous new raspberry hat. see? i really have been knitting some--just not as much as i would like. which is why madeline's baby blanket, and the sweaters for kimmie's babies are still all half done. i will be meeting kimmie's babies tomorrow, and well--i am empty handed. this is very un-Southern of me. but i digress... so this is the third fruit hat i have knitted from ann norling's lovely pattern, and i still love it. it's fast and cute, and yet, still practical. this one was done with my beloved julia on some size 6 needles. i bet i make some more--there are more babies around, after all. :)

the road to hell...

i really do always have good intentions. but you know--life and work and all--they get in the way, and the next thing you know, i am back in that handbasket and feeling the flames get closer and closer again... today is no exception. i have lists--lots of them. i have prioritized and re-prioritized everything i need to do. and i feel like i am in one of those dreams where i am running and running, but getting nowhere. god, listen to me bitch. this has just been one of those days, y'all. here it is not even 9 o'clock, and i am beat--i feel like i have been through the ringer. i have all these pictures i want to get off my camera and onto flickr, but that ain't happening tonight. i have a lot to say about SAFF and ravelry and the cool knitting people who keep crossing my path. i want to tell you all about meeting my brother's new little baby and finding out that his oldest daughter is also pregnant. i want to talk about being knocked up. but man--today is not the day. i gotta get all scarlett o'hara on you people--i will tell you some of this stuff tomorrow. and then maybe some more the next day. right now, though--i am thinking maybe i will make and drink a cup of tea to fortify myself to handle one last load of laundry, and then i am crawling into the bed with a book. unless i skip the tea and laundry and go stright to bed. i'm just--done. wow. two days in a row of writing about being too tired to write--i am doing great over here, aren't i? lol--it's just been a long couple of weeks is all. i promise, it'll get better...

note: i DID manage to update the baby blog if y'all are interested... i can't decide whether to keep my ramblings about pregnancy over there or integrate back into one blog now that the word is out. any opinions?

too tired to write anything coherent

i'd like to have a real day off. today i tried to be somewhat productive, as i had pretty much let everything go for the past week. yesterday i thought i might be productive, but the truth is--i was just too washed out--tired and sad and useless. it wasn't a bad day, but productive it was not. today, however, i washed a ton of dishes, dragged my butt to the grocery store to re-stock, made a fabulous beef and lamb stew for dinner, and spent about 3 hours, maybe more, ironing the massive pile of linens i have been procrastinating dealing with for about a month. yes, i iron my linens. i may be the last person on the planet who is not a paide servant who does this. people make fun of me, but man--i love me a crisp, ironed, lavender-scented sheet on my bed. and especially pillow cases. you know, this is when i would normally say, "but i digress...: but in this case, i am not even sure what my point is. i am tired. the hippie and thk are a bit tipsy and being amusing in the kitchen. lord i love laid back sundays. i just need a repeat one tomorrow where i could maybe stop working around the house and just knit. i remember liking knitting...

i'm tired. i think i should maybe shut up.

scout

when i moved back to north carolina to go back to school, i moved into the cheapest house i could find to rent that was close enough to walk to campus. next door to me, renting from the same slumlord, was a woman, kathy, and her 8 cats. kathy had a soft heart and took in any kitty in need that crossed her path. a big orange tabby named roger, a balck and white tom named biscuit, a little matching black and white girl named molly, a few others who were too skittish to get to know, and a half grown tabby female named scout. all these kitties were loved and well-cared for, and most of them had clipped ears--kathy took them to the aspca to have them spayed and neutered because she could not afford the vet bills, and the aspca clips the ears of feral cats brought to them, presumably so that they don't duplicate the surgeries.

when i met scout, she had recently been hurt--trapped under a car and burned on her back--and was a bit wary of strangers. she was also the most vocal meower i had ever seen. after a bit of time, she learned that i was a cat person, and she started meeting me at my car when i would pull in, meowing for a scratch or two. in the other half of my duplex, a botany grad student sheri and her dog billie moved in. billie and scout were fast friends and took to sleeping ina pile on out front porch. even jojo, my former cat who hated everyone, took a liking to scout--they communed through the windows onto the porch. scout was just--part of life. not everyone treated her well--the frat boys down the street did SOMETHING to scout that made her panic when she was picked up--i don't know what, and i don't WANT to know. but she never ever wanted to be picked up--she fought tooth and nail if you tried. literally.

years passed. kathy met a man and got married. she moved away and took all eight cats with her. a couple of months later, there was a familiar meowing from the porch--scout had come back. she was starving and bedraggled and in a sad state. i went out and fed her, petted her, and supplied her with water. she stayed. she got better and fatter and happy again. i had jojo in the house, and scout outside. then jojo had a heart attack--she was sitting on my lap purring one minute and gone the next. i was shocked and devastated and unprepared, but in retrospect, that was about the best pet death one could ever hope for. by this time i had graduated from school and was thinking about moving out of the ghetto--the time seemed right. i made plans to move to an apartment complex in a newly developing area. but what was i going to do with scout? i didn't really feel ready to take on another pet, but i could not just leave her to starve either. i called every no-kill pet shelter and rescue i could fine, and no one would take her because her ear was clipped. it still shocks me that something the aspca had done to the cat rendered her un-adoptable to every rescue place on the map. so--i did what i had to--i kept the cat.

in one day, i changed scout's life forever. i lured her into the house and closed the door behind her. the same afternoon, i took her to the vet for shots and a check-up. she was healthy as a horse they said. scout and i moved away from maiden lane at last. she howled like a banshee the whole way to the new place and hid under the bed for a week. but she adjusted. she came out and interacted with me and slept on the bed at night, but it was clear that she was lonely. she had never been alone in her whole life. so--i decided to get scout a kitten. when a man i work with brought in a litter of 8 kittens his girlfriend had rescued from a madman, i immediately told him i wanted one. instead, as happens with people like me who are ultra-susceptible to the cute, i came away with two, samson and fergus. the difference in scout was night and day. fergus was, and still is, scout's cat. he was her shadow, her annoyer, and her constant companion. and scout--scout became one of the best cats i have ever known. affectionate, loving, happy, vocal, content. she loved other animals and children, and she was patient and tolerant of everyone. she was a slut for pleasure and adored anyone who would sit on the couch and absentmindedly stroke her silky fur. she liked to be between the hippie and me best of all--this is where she spent every moment possible for the past 4 and a half years. she was a cat who just made good company.

over the past three weeks, we noticed that she was losing some weight, but she didn't seem sick at all. cats are really good at masking symptopms, as it turns out. this is the first time in her life that scout has ever been sick, and i guess the last as well. it was just too much to fight. when they told me what was wrong, all i wanted to do was bring her home, and i am so glad i did. her last night was spent sleeping with me, and her last day was spent napping on her favorite blanket, purring the time away on the couch. when we took her in, she was calm and not afraid. and at the vet's office, i let her out of the carrier, and she snuggled down between me and the hippie and purred and licked my hand. when the doctor came in, he was surprised to find her purring. it was simple and fast and painless, for which i will forever be grateful. i know we did the right thing. and although it is AWFUL to lose her, i am glad she could die with dignity and without suffering.

the past two weeks have been terrible. the last few days, some of the worst i have ever experienced in my life. but i weigh this sadness against the years of happiness and all the joy that scout brought into my life, and i have to say--it is all worth it. she was the best cat ever. and oh, how i loved her. i will never forget the feel of her thick soft fur or the sound her loud-ass meowing or her warm comforting presence by my side. i will miss her every day.

i am grateful for the support of everyone over the past week. it's amazing what an impact a pet can have on you and how hard it is to lose one. they really do become members of your family. people get this, it seems--they come out of the woodwork to offer prayers and condolences. the original vet who saw scout yesterday called to see how she was and how i was and what had happened. two of my amazingly good friends figured out where scout had been hospitalized and called to make donations to help cover her massive bill--that was a shock when i went to pay the bill yesterday. unexpected and generous, unnecessary, but utterly appreciated. i have good friends, what can i say. i love you guys.

ok--i am going to stop now--i guess this is something like a wake for the kitty, it's a damned shame i can't drink a bunch of beer in scout's honor--i totally would if i weren't knocked up.

a youth in asia

today is scout's last with us. i brought her home from the hospital last night and took the day off from work to spend it with her. and i am so glad i did. she's purring and napping by my side right now. she hides her symptoms so well that you would almost not know she is sick. but he is. she has a large mast cell tumor in her abdomen, and there is nothing to be done for it--we COULD choose to put her though a major abdominal reconstruction, which she may or may not survive, and then treat her with chemotherapy afterwards. but to me, this is not an option--it would mean buying her some poor quality time for purely selfish reasons. i just cannot do that to her. right now, she is weak, but not in pain. she is not suffering, but is fading quickly. so this afternoon, we will take her back into the hospital, and end her life in a loving and humane way. and i have to say, this is the worst and hardest thing i have ever had to do in my whole life. i know with complete certainty that it's the right thing to do, and i hate every second of it. i have been lucky as a pet owner--this is the first time in 38 years i have had to make this kind of decision. this week has been pretty much god awful. it's just life, and i know that, but man--it sure feels heavy right now. i would really appreciate any good thoughts y'all could send my way today.

announcements

1) it's november. i will be posting daily again. we'll see if i can pull it off.

2) i'm knocked up. i'vee been quietly blogging about it on the side over here. i'll link that blog in in the side bar when i get a minute.

3) my cat, scout is very very sick and probably dying. i am depressed as shit and am in hermit mode as a result. blah.

4) i have pictures and all kinds of news and shit. a lot's been happening, as evidenced by my conspicuous absense from this here internet. it's coming people. be patient with me.

did i say blah already? if not, then--blah.