Lists July 31, 2007

My top 3 favorite things about being pregnant:
1.  Never having to suck in your belly.  Ever.  Not even in a swimsuit.
2.  Fabulous sex (so far, anyway)
3.  Great excuse to never take the stairs, to walk slowly, and to breathe heavily after minimal exertion

My 3 least favorite things about being pregnant:
1.  The constant, unending sobriety
2.  People who talk in baby talk to ME.  I am a 35-year-old with a Masters degree.  I can understand complex ideas.  Talk to me like an adult!  You shouldn’t even talk to my baby in that simpering cooing.  Ugh!
3.  Having to buy new clothes that I know I’ll only need for 3 months, tops.

My new favorite ad July 26, 2007

My kingdom for a dress! July 26, 2007

I have 3 weddings to go to in the next few months — the first of which is this weekend.  I thought “what a lark!  I’ll go to some cute maternity store and treat myself to a nice dress to wear.”  Ha!  If, perhaps, I wanted to look like the Sta-Puft Marshmallow Man (if said Marshmallow Man wore a paisley pattern), then that might be a good plan.  Maternity clothes — and especially the dresses, it seems, have these voluminous folds of material that accommodate, certainly, a growing belly, but do not account for any parts that may not be growing, so you end up looking like a circus tent.

“Well,” I thought, “maybe that’s even better!  I’ll look in the regular department store for a dress — there are so many now that made me look pregnant before I was knocked up, so maybe I can find one now that I really am preggers.”  And I think that most of them would be really cute.  If I could get them on.  I try to put them on by stepping into them.  The waist gets stuck trying to go over my belly.  I try to put them on over my head.  The waist gets stuck at my boobs.  And then, as one co-worker put it “you feel like you need the jaws of life to get you out of the dress.” Plus you can’t see because it’s covering your face, with your arms trapped and flailing up in the air like a drowning swimmer and you’re sure that the woman in the dressing room next door is wondering what’s going on from all the grunting and gasping.  She’s probably checking for 2 sets of feet under the door.

I finally found an “emergency buy” that sort of fits, although it makes me look like a cross between a baby beluga and Pam Anderson.  There is a lot of jiggling.  Now, don’t get me wrong, I am certainly one to accentuate the positive, and my weight loss plan has usually been to distract everyone by showing cleavage so that they don’t notice a big ass.  However, I do have decency standards, and this barely squeaks by them, especially when the 3 weddings are such that one is at a country club, one is my boss’ wedding, and one is someone I know from church.  If it were Vegas, I’d say bring it on.

So, I’m hoping to start a new trend of attending weddings in a caftan, a la Mrs. Roper, or perhaps in sweats.  Or maybe both, in the chillier months.   I think it will really catch on.

My Freudian slip is showing July 25, 2007

In emailing JoeKim a grocery list for dinner, I meant to write “ground beef” and instead wrote “ground beer.”

Sigh.

Just Gestation July 18, 2007

I know you will be very disappointed, but it looks like we’re putting off the home renovation yet again.  Sigh.  Since the two options were a)bring home a newborn to a home with no kitchen and b)live with Joe’s parents with a newborn for 4 months during demolition and the lion’s share of the rehab, I decided that maybe waiting until I go back to work in March will be a better option.  We’ll still live with his parents, but it will be after we’ve had some time together with the baby, and I know a (little) more about what I’m doing and have my own routine established, so I won’t feel so defensive about “helpful” mother-in-law suggestions.  And just thinking about being trapped in a house in Burr Ridge all of the winter sounds kind of awful.  Staying home means that I’ll be in my own comfort zone, and can walk to things like a park, a coffee shop, a bookstore, etc and get out of the house.  Out there, it’s load up the car with the carseat and the diaper bag and the stroller (oh, and the baby) and drive to the Starbucks or something.  Ugh.  It just sounds like a lot of trouble.  I’m sure that just “taking a walk” will be no mean feat, either, but involving a car seems excessive somehow.

So, sadly, the “renovation” portion of the blog seems to have fallen by the wayside, although I’m sure that there will be some sort of update (e.g. “Joe has decided that we need a refrigerator that has a plasma TV in the door after visiting Abt drunk with his friends.”).  From now on, it’s just you, me, and my uterus.

Totally relaxing July 9, 2007

So, over the weekend I was visiting friends, and emailed Joe to say I was a little stressed out about  the home renovations and the timing.  The whole not having a kitchen with running water, and workmen traipsing al over the house, when we have a newborn.  It seems a little overwhelming.

Joe’s response was “Yeah, me too.  Maybe we can live with my parents in the ‘burbs for a few months.”

Totally not stressful at all.

Foiled again July 5, 2007

I sent the letters to our neighbors, just like I needed to do for the permit for the renovation. Or so I thought. However, apparently, even though the actual code says that I just need to send the letter USPS and I sent it registered mail (at $10 a pop, thank you very much), I really need to send it registered mail, return receipt requested. That is the unspoken necessity that was, well, never spoken.

So, now I had to send the letters again, at another $10 each, and we now have to wait to get the little green signature card back in the mail. Which means I have to check online every few days, and see if the letter is sitting at the post office to be picked up, and make sure the neighbors got their notice about it. For something that is just supposed to be a “good faith effort” on our part, this is taking a lot more than faith. And the really ridiculous thing is that we live about 4 feet apart from these people. I could reach out the dining room window and hand it to them to sign, but we have to go through all the bureaucracy. Welcome to doing business with the City of Chicago, I suppose. I’ll just be glad I don’t have to get a liquor license or something.

Hopefully, by the time this kid is in college, it will have its own room.

Mulligan II July 2, 2007

Quick update — Joe just got home from the BBQ and tells me that after I left, the boys came out to sit in the teepee with squealing 3-year-olds, and the moms all went inside to have some beers away from the kids.  I had  good cry, and was comforted by Joe.  I feel much better after my good cry.  We’re hoping to take a “babymoon” and get away sometime this summer, if we can.  We’ll see if that happens.

OK.  I am much more stable.  I am going to blame pregnancy hormones.

Mulligan July 2, 2007

Um, can I change my mind?  About this whole baby thing?

I seem to have gone suddenly from the being in love with the world phase of pregnancy to the bitter, petty and angry phase.  I am already tired of making sacrifices for this kid, and he/she isn’t even here yet.  And I’m most tired of making them when Joe doesn’t have to.  The last 2 weekends in a row, he’s come home drunk at 5 am and 3 am, respectively (or “dis-respectively,” as the case may be), and then proceeds to sit on the couch and watch bad TV all weekend.  All weekend!  Not one productive burst.  I took a 4-day weekend, and have watched one hour of TV total, because I have been working on house projects.

Today, we went to a BBQ, and I had a flash forward.  All the dads went somewhere, who knows where, and I stayed out with the moms and the kids.  And I suddenly realized that this is the rest of my life.  Joe in the basement smoking weed or doing god knows what with the dads, and I’m out in  teepee with squealing girls talking about The Little Mermaid.  This baby thing was all his idea!  I didn’t sign up for this!  I can’t be that un-selfish and not be mad about it!

I just see the rest of my life as being defined by someone else, and lived for someone else, while Joe’s remains relatively the same.  Easy for him to say he wants kids.  I was really fine with cats.  I’m sure the payoff is huge, and that once this baby gets here, I won’t care at all, because it will be such an amazing thing.  That’s what everyone says, and I have no reason to doubt it.  But right now, I’d kind of like to visit Iceland and Australia, and retire a little early.   That sounds pretty nice.

I know I’m just being selfish — that’s kind of the point.  I am selfish, and don’t know if I can happily be otherwise.   I think it’s just a mid-life, or mid-pregnancy, crisis.  I want to be footloose and fancy free to do whatever I want.  But guess what — even when I was footloose and fancy free, I still didn’t go to Iceland, or join the Peace Corps, or anything else.  I did exactly the same things I’m doing now.  I just have to get used to the idea of not being able to do those things for a while.  Someday, we can pack the kid off to summer camp and take a nice vacation to Iceland.  Right?  Anyone want to sign up now to babysit??