the pieces of my life

• I am starving. I mean ravenous. Contemplating going out and getting a burrito. Which would be fine if I hadn’t just half an hour ago polished off a rather large tuna fish sandwich, a bag of chips, and five cookies. I’m supposed to be eating less now that my Brown Brown is pushing my stomach into a tiny ball, not more.
  
• You can now call me the crumb magnet. Of coures, I’ve always been a crumb magnet, but before the crumbs fell delicately into my lap where I could discreetly brush them off before they were seen. Now the crumbs fall to my belly and stick. Which, come to think of it, isn’t that bad because I see a good-sized hunk of cookie on there right now that’s mine for the eatin’.
  
• At 6 a.m., I went for a swim at the Y. Swimming is rapidly becoming my favorite exercise because it just feels so gosh-darn good to float about. For a blissful half hour, I’m weightless. However, I dread that moment when I get out of the pool, when every ounce of my 1XX-pound body bears down on me as if somehow gravity has been turned up a few notches.
  
• The pregnancy hormones do have some positive side effects. Our house is being painted (the exterior) and I haven’t been pleased with the work ethic and quality control of some of the workers. Normally, I tend to get a little shy about these things, and I let Adam deal with the unpleasantries. But with Adam gone and my hormones raging, I had no issues telling the job foreman exactly what I thought of his work. And when I didn’t like the response I got from him, I called the main company. Don’t mess wit’ me now!
  
• In my preparation for transitioning to freelance writer/editor (does everyone know that I will not be returning to an office after the baby is born? Well, I’m not), I’ve started taking on what could actually be seen as excessive amounts of freelance work now, so that I have my contacts in place when I’m ready to go full steam. But it means not a lot of time for anything else (which is good–less time for worrying and panicking as well. Did you know I’ll be having a baby in just 8 1/2 weeks? YIKES!). I have this long list of projects that I want to get done before Brown Brown, and I haven’t made much of a dent. But I’m psyched to know that, yes, I will actually be able to have an income when I quit my job. Hell, at the rate I’m taking work on, I may end up making more.
  
• One of the things I’d like to do is add baby links to this page. I’ve been reading a lot of great blogs lately from other mothers-to-be, especially those of Christine, Roni, Anathea, and Alisa. It’s really reassuring to know that others are having the same feelings I am, although perhaps a tad less psychotically. Okay, more than a tad.
  
• There’s nothing like the validation of a sonogram. I knew Brown Brown was jamming his head into my side (visibly so on many days). But this ultrasound made it clear that he was just parked there, with his head by my rib cage and his arm waving around in front of his face (he’s been really active lately). The doctor said he should be turning himself at any time–the sooner the better, because it can’t be any more uncomfortable than this. Sitting down is painful because he ends up smushed into my ribs. Standing is bad because it makes me have to pee every five minutes. The doctor also assured me that the baby is very well padded, so despite Adam’s dire predictions that the baby will be born bruised from my trying to move him down, the baby should be just fine.
  
• Speaking of moving the baby, I have this bad habit of rubbing the baby’s head without even thinking about it. I mean, wouldn’t you rub a giant lump protruding from the side of your belly? But it’s kind of embarrassing when I realize that I’m petting my baby–aka my belly–in public.
  
• I just had to correct in the above sentence “move it down” to “move him down.” It’s hard to believe that this thing in me will be a real live human being someday. A real live human being who will someday grow up, go to college, meet a woman, move across the country, and never come to visit. How can my son leave me? Why doesn’t he call more often? Excuse me, I need a tissue.
  
• Have I mentioned lately that I’m big? I mean ginormous. Hello world, this is my belly!
  
• How about tired? Have I mentioned how tired I am? I mean extremely. Hello world, this is me falling asleep at my desk.
  
• Things I ponder these days: animal valances with a matching rug from Pottery Barn Kids? Or homemade cheapie curtains and bare carpet? Cord-blood banking: Lifesaving necessity? Major scam? A bowl of strawberries? Or three more mint chocolate cookies. (And in case there was any doubt: the former, the latter, the latter.)
  

As I called Adam in Vienna (he finally got a world cell phone from work) to give him the sad score of the Red Sox-Yankee game (1-2), a horrifying, evil thought occurred to me. This must be a sign of the apocalypse. We’re talking evil of biblical proportion. Old Testament, real wrath-of-God type stuff. Fires and brimstone coming down from the sky, rivers and seas boiling, forty years of darkness! Earthquakes, volcanoes, the dead rising from the graves! Human sacrifice, dogs and cats living together, mass hysteria!

What is it that has signaled the end of all that is good, you ask? Well, I realized I can now name more Red Sox players than I can Miami Dolphins. There’s no saving us now.

My pregnancy hormones have been more or less in check except when it comes to Adam and his reading. He’s great about reading to the baby (our favorites are the two Sandra Boynton books we have: But Not the Hippopotamus and Barnyard Dance!, although I personally love reading him Let’s Nosh [a present from Kara] so he’s indoctrinated young about his culture. The culture of eating, that is), but I feel like he’s been less than stellar on reading about the baby. We’ll be taking a weekend intensive childcare/birth class that I don’t think is going to be able to cover all the bases, so I’d like him to be gaining a little knowledge on what to do when the labor pain goes to eleven, how to deal with a psychotic post-partum mom, and how to shut up a screaming newborn (you can tell I’m going into this with rose-colored glasses on). Well, he’s on yet another business trip and this time he brought along the Sears’ The Attachment Parenting Book: A Commonsense Guide to Understanding and Nurturing Your Baby. I’m pleased. Very pleased. But also becoming slightly frightened. He e-mailed me the following while waiting for a connection at Heathrow: “I read a bunch of attachment parenting- pretty interesting- a little vague, but seems to make a lot of sense to me. I’m gonna strap the baby to me and read him cases and numbers. he’ll be doing regressions by the time he’s 2.” Sigh. Brown Brown doesn’t stand a chance of turning out to be a normal, non-geeky kid, does he?

Ok, so now I officially owe Debbie H. an apology. We took a duck tour. Yes, I the anti-duck not only took the duck tour, but it was premeditated duck tour trip (it had to be–those things sell out way in advance!). Pam, Tim, Adam, and I headed to the Museum of Science for a 10:30 drive/boat trip around the city. Ensign X was our captain aboard the tour, and the excursion was more informative than cheesy (although Pam and Tim thought Boston was a wee bit egotistical in its constant boasting of being the “first” and the “best” in everything). It’s really fun to play tourist in your own town. I learned a few new things about the city, and I would tell you what, but I’ve forgotten them already (blame the baby brain!). A great introduction to the city, I’d recommend it to folks coming to Boston for the first time (although I think going on it once was enough for me).

We were lame. Our ambitions for the 4th of July were grand. Our day kicked off with an auspicious start, as we had our house guests Pam and Tim from Seattle staying with us. We began with waffles (the good kind from Mark Bittman‘s recipe that has to let the batter sit overnight to rise) and then began our mini-patriotic tour of the Boston ‘burbs. We spent most of our time in Concord, where we explored Author’s Ridge in Sleepy Hollow Cemetery (which I don’t think is related to the Washington Irving story–I think that one is in New York). We pondered how it is that all these famous authors (Nathaniel Hawthorne, Louisa May Alcott, Ralph Waldo Emerson, Henry David Thoreau) all lived in the same area and all had their family plots right next to each other. The cemetery was beautiful and the day was gorgeous (a tad on the warm side, but that seemed to please our Seattle guests tremendously). Another delightful thing about Concord? Excellent, air-conditioned public restrooms.

We took the long route to Allston where we parked at HBS and said hi to some folks having a barbecue. Then we went off to Cambridge for Mexican food at the Border Cafe, ice cream at Toscanini’s, exploration in Harvard Yard, and a bit o’ shopping at the Harvard Coop (that’s pronounced “coop,” for you foreigners. Never mind that it is a co-op. Call it a coop). We thought we’d retreat home for a quick recuperation and then head back to the Esplanade for fireworks. But then we started to think about it. The Esplanade. For fireworks. Hundreds of thousands of people (later reported to be 700,000) crammed on that little stretch of land by the water. Um, no thanks. So the next on our list was to watch from Arlington, where on a hill in a park they set up a screen and audio so you can see/hear the Pops. Except, why sit on the grass and watch the fireworks appear like tiny dots in the distance when you can see them up close and personal on your own 32-inch television? I told you we were lame. But it was great fun and, really, what’s more all-American that watching TV with your butt parked on the couch and a beer (or an O’Doul’s as the case may be) in hand.

Even though Pregnancy Weekly tells me, “This is day number 211 and you’re 30 weeks pregnant! You have 69 days or 10 weeks left, and are 75% of the way there. Baby’s age since conception is 197 days or 28 weeks,” it still feels like a ways off. I mean September. That’s like, what, ages away. But today, in the mail, I got this packet from Beth Israel that made everything seem just a bit closer to home: “Dear Mom-to-be: This letter should serve to confirm that your physician or nurse-midwife has registered you to deliver here on or near your expected due date.” In this package is a form we need to fill out with our pediatrician’s name (GAG! Have yet to find pediatrician! Have yet to think about finding pediatrician! Can’t even spell pediatrician without spellcheck! Must find pediatrician NOW!) and with information that will be needed for Brown Brown’s birth certificate. Hello? Birth certificate? It just feels too, well, soon!

Of course, you’d think I’d be anxious to have him outta me, as Brown Brown isn’t making me feel any more comfortable these days. He’s apparently gotten too big for his britches–or my womb, as the case may be–and he is just sticking out wherever he feels like with no concern to my comfort, no siree, Bob. My belly is lopsided as he apparently is trying to push his way out through my belly button (I guess the exits either aren’t clearly marked in there or he’s just not a very bright baby). It’s not a happy feeling. In fact, it could be described as downright painful. Adam’s convinced that Brown Brown is going to be born with bruises and marks all over him from my trying to push him back into a more comfortable position (although, in all fairness, sometimes I’m just feeling around to see if I can identify body parts. I can’t. In my right side at this moment is either his head, his butt, his back, or really, for all I know, some limb. I can just tell there’s something there!).

So, we’re looking at ten weeks (from yesterday). That’s actually not so long when you think about it. It’s even shorter when you think that if he can figure out a means of egress in seven weeks (from yesterday), then this sucker is a full-term, honest-to-goodness actual baby. Of course, with my luck, he’ll wait a full twelve weeks, just to keep torturing me. After all, his father was a slow learner (and if you don’t know the story of how Adam and I got together, then you’ll just have to take my word that Adam may be Hah-vahd smart, but he’s rather slow in other areas), and I have a bad hunch it’s going to be like father, like son.

At the supermarket today, I restocked my supply of O’Doul’s, which according to my OB, is as wild as I can get with my drink choices (although, interestingly, if you go to the O’Doul’s site and enter in a birthdate that makes you younger than 21, you get a message that reads, “Sorry, even with 0.5% alcohol you still must be 21 to enter O’Doul’s.com.” Yet, it’s sold in grocery stores that don’t have liquor licenses [which is any liquor store in the dry town of Arlington–I was in Watertown] and I’m pretty sure you can buy it as a minor. What’s up with that?). The clerk was a chatty, pleasant kid, and he asked me, “Is this an alcoholic product?” Excitedly, I said, “No, why? If it was, would you have to card me?” He looked at me and said, “Oh, no. It’s just if it’s alcoholic, I’m not allowed to ring it up. By Massachusetts State Law, you have to be over eighteen to ring up alcohol.” Hopes dashed. I had thought maybe he mistook me for a white-trash teen mom-to-be boozing it up. Sigh.

Has anyone else noticed that there seems to be a steady stream of well-known people dying lately? It seems to have begun with Gregory Peck and David Brinkley and continues daily. Leon Uris. Strom Thurmond. Katharine Hepburn. Today it’s Buddy Hackett and–probably not noted much outside the New England area–Robert McCloskey (of Make Way for Ducklings fame; that book, by the way, was declared the official children’s book of the State of Massachusetts last year. How many of our tax dollars went into making that happen, I wonder?). I find it intriguing how the New York Times (registration required to see the site) allots coverage as if they are trying to measure a person’s worth in terms of column inches. Hepburn and Peck both got front page treatment with pics (I’m referring to the online edition), although Peck only had a link to his obit, whereas Hepburn had a link to her obit, stories about her, and reviews of her film. Leon Uris got below the fold coverage. Buddy Hackett isn’t apparently worthy of front page coverage–not even a text link under Arts. McCloskey gets a front page text link and blurb at the Boston Globe.

But what is even more morbidly compelling is that the New York Times has listed in its obituaries section a “greatest hits” of death. Along the right-hand column are selections from the obit archives, people who have died in the month of July. I wonder how they determine who is truly famous enough to make it there. Does that signify some sort of life-after-death success that ranks beyond just the everyday front-page coverage? I mean how famous do you have to be to make the “best of”? Selections from July include: Harriet Beecher Stowe, Adlai Stevenson, James Steward, and Ernest Hemingway. Maybe that should be a life goal: “I hope to become famous enough that someday I’ll make the ‘most famous deaths’ column in the New York Times online version.” Hey, everyone needs a goal, don’t they?

Adam wakes up anywhere between a half hour and two hours before me, depending on how exhausted I am. This morning he was up and downstairs when a crash came from the upstairs bathroom. I leaped up to look, and it was just a mirror that fell to the floor (the mirror didn’t crack). Later, Adam came up and I mentioned the mirror falling. “I wondered what that noise was,” he said. I was surprised he had heard it: “Why didn’t you come up to investigate?” He replied in complete seriousness: “I peered upstairs and saw you walking into the bathroom, so I assumed the noise was just you lumbering out of bed.” Nice….

What’s the only thing cooler than hearing great news about a friend? Hearing about it before anyone else! Yeah! So congratulations to you-know-who-you-are about that thing that not everyone may know about yet.