the pieces of my life

The paternal parental unit and the sororal sibling unit descended upon Boston last Thursday. The Tweedly Twirp mostly kept me company while Peter tailed Adam around HBS like the eager beaver he is. I mean that almost literally—Peter only wears his M.I.T. class ring (only I promise, the number on his ring is nowhere near 2004) when he goes to Hah-vahd, so he won’t accidentally be thought of as one of them. And yet, he returns each semester and harangues Adam until he sends him his needed cases, because he can’t get enough of the HBS experience. If anyone wonders where my extreme ambivalence about HBS originates, look no further than my father.

So while Peter was learning about Timberland and banking in Germany and accompanying Adam on manly tasks such as a trip to Home Depot, Tweeds and I hit the mall for maternity clothes. This is only after my Old Navy shipment arrived and she burst out laughing at me when I tried on my new bathing suit. “But,” she stuttered as she gasped for air, “it’s so big! You’re so big.” Gee, thanks. And I’m guessing in the next 19 weeks, I’m not going to be getting any smaller (and for the record, I’m actually not very big, but when you’re a size zero munchkin Tweedle Twirp, everyone looks big to you). But amusement aside, she was a helpful assistant as I tried to get in and out of these mammoth pieces of cloth that never seemed quite as large when they were on my body. Of course, after our trip to maternity land, we required stops at Pottery Barn Kids and GapBaby, where the Tweeds helped me pick out two outfits for Brown Brown (I’ve decided not to follow the old Jewish superstition about not buying anything before the baby is born. I think it’s going to be a lot more fun shopping now than it is when I have a screaming Brown Brown in my arms). The only frightening moment came when a woman was trying to buy a baseball cap for her son, who must have been about four or five. “Okay, Conner, you have to try this on.” Conner was having nothing of it and skirted out of Mom’s reach. “Conner, you must try this on if we’re going to buy this for you,” she said as she tried to force the cap on his head. Conner, however, was quicker than his mother and scooched (yes, that’s a word because I say it is) down to the floor. His mother wrestled him to the ground (that’s both of them on the floor of the Gap, wriggling around and she tries to smush this red cap down on his blond head), trying to force the stupid cap upon his head for a few minutes before standing up and saying, “Fine, you can’t have the hat then.” She turned, glanced at my stomach, and then said, “See what you have to look forward to?” I said, “But there are good times, too, right?” She smirked and walked off. Reassuring.

The rest of the weekend was uneventful. I ditched the gang after a breakfast at S & S deli to take my yoga class. I love this yoga class, although it’s so 1970s you kind of want to laugh at it. Lots of cushions on the floor. Blue carpet. Wood paneled walls. Chimes and new age music. But it’s a great stretch and very relaxing and I enjoy being in a room with other preggos. After, I had grandiose plans for how we’d spend the afternoon, but the rain was fierce and everything was outside, so we ended up hanging in and I think all of us fell asleep. We, of course, ended the evening at Legal Seafood, because no trip to Boston is complete for Peter until he has his lobster.

The two left yesterday, but it was no biggie as I’ll see the Tweeds on Wednesday in New Orleans, and both parental units in a month back home (that’s Miami Beach, for those of you who just started playing). Adam went off to a barbecue, and I headed to Shannon’s for a good old fashioned lingerie/sex toy party (think Tupperware party, only with more mentions of the word “penis” and “g spot”). No need to go into detail because, honestly, it was just some good clean American fun. It definitely made for a laugh-filled afternoon. I’m just now trying to figure out how I can get the Partner’s Club to have one of these. If any of you are reading this, I’ll even volunteer to set it up. I mean, what good CWIT isn’t proficient in the bedroom (or whatever room you prefer). Get back to me, ladies, on that one.

Apparently my cousin Daniella has been keeping a blog for a little while now and just neglected to mention it to me (for those who know her, this is the cousin Daniella from New Orleans). Good thing I check my referral logs every now and them. Anyway, go read her blog.

I’m only 59% snob! At least according to PBS’s snob quiz. It tells me I’m “a long way off joining the ranks of the blini-nibbling, bubbly-sipping, double-barreled brigade but then [I’m] no champion of the proletariat either.” It ends by telling me “the middle class beckons.” Sigh. Give me a chance (and a big fat income)! I could learn to be a snob!

Just a quick shout-out to prove once again that there are more to us CWITs than just manicures and nannies. Our very own Carly (who I should point out is already a chemical engineer) not only got into the nation’s top-ranked education program, but they wanted her badly enough that they’ve offered her a very nice scholarship to woo her. I wonder what kind of scholarship her HBS husband got? Yeah, that’s right. You go, Carly!

Since I’m going to be giving my life over to that of a CMIT (as coined by Adam’s sectionmates, a Corporate-Mom-in-Training), I figured it was time I sucked it up and learned how to be an HBS wife in style. And that, apparently, includes scrapbooking. Everyone talks about it, many of my friends have succumbed, and I get more e-mails about scrapbooking events than any other from the Partner’s Club. So, I figured, why not try it. After all, I should probably get past photos in order before Brown Brown comes and my stack of photos grows even taller. I mean, I’m no longer a newlywed, and yet I’ve a stack of wedding crap waiting to be put somewhere.

So I attended a gathering among friends (which means I can openly mock them). All I can say is “Wow.” This is a real live actual cult. With pep talks and support groups and everything. I have to say, sitting around a table with a bunch of girlfriends (wishing I could join them in having a glass of wine), it’s easy to be seduced by the soothing colors and fancy tools. Oooh, a punch! Aaah, fancy scissors! Eee, pretty patterns! I spent half an hour just trying to decide which way to make my squares go.

Final verdict? Well, it seems they were offering up grape Kool-Aid, and I really prefer the fruit punch kind, so I didn’t partake. I don’t think scrapbooking is going to be a passion of mine, and I did go into it with an open mind. However, I definitely enjoyed the company of the women and will certainly return to future events with my own albums to organize, albeit probably a lot more plainly and more straightforward (with photo corners straight on the pages) than their artistically done masterpieces (some of their stuff is incredible, but it just doesn’t feel like old slap-n-dash me). It was great fun to be able to chat and enjoy myself without having to meet with everyone in smoky bars or over expensive dinners. I’ll just have to find another way to get my CWIT credentials.

Now, if you were given told by your husband that you could celebrate your first wedding anniversary any way you wanted, I know you would have picked waking up at 4 a.m. to watch a re-enactment of the Battle on the Green, the battle that started the Revolutionary War, in Lexington. So you understand how excited I was that our anniversary happened to fall on Patriot’s Day, which is a gosh-darn real holiday in the state of Massachusetts. A classmate of Adam’s happens to live in Lexington, so he and a gaggle of MBAers staked out a spot early. We left the house a little late (waiting for a friend) at about 4:45. The morning was slightly chilly, but quite nice. We found the gang easily and we stood around. And stood around. And stood around. Finally, at 5:30 a.m., the bells started to toll (don’t ask for whom the bell tolled! Well, okay, it tolled as an alarm for the Minutemen). Then, 15 minutes later–well, I don’t suppose I have to tell you, because you would have all heard it. After all, the shot was heard ’round the world. First two guys made off with a trunk of John Hancock’s papers to keep them safe. Then, the scairdy cat simply ran away (that must be the most junior position in the re-enactment: scared guy who runs away). Then, the Redcoats. Those guys marched up and lined up and stood in a pretty row with their lovely bayonets and muskets. My big question is why didn’t the Minutemen just shoot them while they were standing there? The Redcoats aimed, they fired, and within minutes the battle was over. Dead and wounded Minutemen littered the ground as their bonnet-covered wives (otherwise known as CWITs–Colonial Wives in Training) ran by their sides. And then it was over. The Redcoats marched off to Concord and we marched off to a friend’s for breakfast (well, fruit for us, as it’s Passover, but pancakes for everyone else). Two highlights: Overhearing someone calling for directions to where we were and just hearing, “You can see the Redcoats? Follow the Redcoats” and the war protester watching the battle re-enactment. Something about that one…. I am a little disappointed to learn that some of the militiamen wore “wicking sock liners.” Doesn’t seem very 1775, does it?

You can be sure the next to-do item on our list was a nap. And a lovely one it was indeed.

I figured one of the benefits of pregnancy was I’d no longer have lost weekend days because of hangovers. And it’s true. Now, instead of lying on the couch on a beautiful Sunday afternoon moaning that my head is pounding because of two too many glasses of red wine, I can lie on the couch on a beautiful afternoon moaning that my head is pounding because of the raging hormones and the sleep I missed because of an aching back and three late night trips to the bathroom. It’s a whole new world.

I am duty bound to inform you that exactly two weeks from this moment I will be in a tizzy trying to decide if I want to see Savoy Ducet on the Fais Do-Do stage, C.J. Chenier & the Louisiana Red Hot Band on the Congo Square Stage, the New Zion Trio Plus One in the Gospel Tent, or if I’m feeling mainstream, Los Lobos. Sigh. What’s a girl with a belly full of beignets and a Brown Brown to do? And no, you can’t come with me in you’re not a KAG (and if you don’t know what that is, you can’t come, but no, it’s not a sorority).

If we had lived 2,000 years ago, we would have had to put lamb’s blood on our door so that during the tenth plague, little Brown Brown wouldn’t have been smote. (Seems to me that that word should be “smoted,” but Mr. Merriam and Mr. Webster tell me that “smote” is the past tense. But I like “smoted” better.) We went to a really terrific seder last night at friends of my family. Since one of the couple is an HBS professor, he and Adam went off to talk about boring things together, but I had a great time talking with their daughters who are my and my sister’s ages. Of course, as I get tired so easily, I started to fade at about 10:05. I said to Adam, “I know we’ve got to get you home so you can read cases,” and he said, “Oh no, I don’t have any cases to read for tomorrow.” You can tell that we’ve mastered the art of the secret spousal language. It was actually a lot of fun hanging out longer and chatting, but I was absolutely exhausted when we left at 11:20 . But the food was delish and it was wonderful spending the evening with a bunch of smart non-CWITs. And I was very excited when their daughter told me I definitely look “fat.” Yeah! I have finally “popped” and the last remaining non-maternity pair of pants I own went in 48-hours from “decent fit” to “couldn’t even get close to buttoning even if I held my breath the entire day.”

What is up with a weather day that is “High: 87 Low: 32.” A friggin 55 degree difference for a single day. On another note, why doesn’t weather.com adjust its site so when the actual temperature goes above their high, it automatically readjusts the day’s high. Yesterday our high was 80 degrees, but the temperature was 84. Yes, this irritates me. But not as much as the fact that it’s going to be a high of 37 degrees tomorrow. That irritates me even more…. I went to see my all-time favorite band, The Iguanas, at Johnny D’s last night. It’s been a long time since Adam and I had been on an actual date together. Of course, by 11 p.m., we were both falling asleep. But we made it until the bitter end. Which means there’s danger of me passing out in my matzoh ball soup during the Passover seder tonight. It also makes me fear for my ability to pull the late nights at Jazz Fest…. Either Brown Brown (formerly known as Baby Brown Medros) either really likes the Iguanas or I had gas bubbles. I can’t tell if he’s actually moving around in there or not…. The next person who tells me I don’t look pregnant will be kicked in the kneecap. Seriously. Don’t even try me on this one. That is, if I don’t fall asleep before the kick can be executed….