Through The Looking Glass

My boy (or girl) has a bony behind. This is, I know, to be expected; nonetheless, I can’t help remarking upon it as it has been poking out of my belly for a few weeks now and as a result I often find myself rubbing my baby’s butt. (Uccellina gave it a feel last night and should be able to confirm.)

Yes, folks, 32 weeks pregnant and all I can come up with to discuss is my child’s ass. I assure you, it is a far more engaging topic than the game we play daily, “grab mommy’s bladder and twist until she cries – or at least pees.” Just wait till the baby is born. Oh, the posts I’ll write then…

Gratuitous belly picture:

As it was taken after a screening of The Notorious Bettie Page, I feel fat and hate my clothes. (The movie is not out for another couple of weeks. My review will be published next week.)

Some things I’ve been reading:

• Diablo Cody falls off the stripper poll. Gracefully.

• My husband is grumpy and wants to know your weekend plans. Obey him.
• You can demand Wil Wheaton, though I think “demand” seems a bit rude.
• Scroll down to “Spam of the Day” at the bottom. Trust me.

That’s it for now � can’t have anyone thinking I am more than vaguely literate!

xxoo

As part of our work�in�progress house rejuvination, I now have this gorgeous workspace:

The little pink bag contains knitting notions.

This is my temporary wedding ring:

Personally, I believe it looks like an alien head. Garnet antennae!

And these are some of the diapers my mother has sewn for us:

Will thinks they look like robots, which I guess works well with my ring…

Dear Universe,

Was yesterday April Fool’s Day? Did I get confused? I thought it wasn’t till Saturday (when I will be getting the biggest April Fool at LAX in the form of my sister), but yesterday had all the tell-tale signs.

Three separate offers came in. You can imagine, Universe dear, that three offers in one day is unheard of for a lowly freelancer who hasn’t much hope of going far. I worried about buying new clothing, and got an email from M containing a proposal. Mere hours after I was fretting over the cost of the wireless router I want, I got the opportunity to review a movie I’m dying to see anyway for a publication with good readership in an area I’d never reach otherwise. And my contract will be renewed for the editing job I’ve been working at.

You might say I’m too busy. It’s wonderful. I feel a sense of accomplishment, my husband is proud…

So, Universe, what’s a girl to think? Did I rack up so much good karma that it couldn’t all wait until the next life? Is the other shoe going to drop momentarily?

Please. ‘Splain.

Love,
me

I’ve been up since about four. I wake up every night to pee, and have varying degrees of success falling back to sleep � but I generally am successful, as long as the sun is not yet peering in the window. Last night (can I say “last” when it is still technically going on?) I woke up sometime between midnight and one, and again at four. It’s the second one that gets you. After laying in bed, tossing and turning, for about an hour, I decided to get up before I woke up Will. And now here I am, reading blogs because I am really not together enough just yet to answer my emails.

In other news, last night the State of California bailed my ass out. We only filed our taxes a week ago, but our return appeared in the bank yesterday right around the time I miscalculated our groceries and would have put us into overdraft by 99 cents (incurring a $25 fee and making me cry). Yay! Now we can have fabulous non-essentials like haircuts and something semi-precious for me to wear while my wedding rings are too small. Oh, and also doctor visits and food. (It seems unfair that we are struggling even with my income added to the kitty. I should register a complaint.)

It seems to be light out now. How charming. I had a friend named Andrew many years ago who always got up early in the morning, no matter how late he’d been up. He didn’t want to sleep through anything, only he said it much nicer than that. I always thought it was lovely, but now I’m not so convinced. I guess this is practice for the baby. So that’s all right, if a bit frustrating because why can’t I get some sleep now while I still can?

In still other news, I found out yesterday that two of our favorite people on the planet married each other last month. I feel that I ought to knit them something…any suggestions?

What’s the population of the place you think of yourself as being from vs. the place you live now?

(You can find population information here)

Hometown:
New York, New York: 1,487,536
Woodstock, New York: 4,827

Currently:
Los Angeles, California: 3,485,398

All are as of 1990, which skews the results slightly as it makes the former accurate and the latter less so.

Last night I dreamed that we had the baby. It was so cute and sweet and wonderful! I woke up sad because I still have to wait.

Then I took a shower and these pictures:

They’re both blurry, and I know you can’t really see anything in the second one but it cracks me up. And when I laugh, you laugh. I forgot to take pictures at 31 weeks, so this is 31 and a half. The dress I’m wearing isn’t maternity at all � I wore that all last summer, in fact. When I was packing up my clothing I tried it on for a gas and was shocked to find that it fit and was even cute. Not pictured: my hairy legs.

This is what happened a couple of weeks ago:

Yes. My fingers got fat. I am very sad.

And these are some pictures of the spider that was living behind my old computer and scared the living daylights out of us both when we tried to move it to clean:

Will was very brave and caught it, and I was very brave and took it outside where I shook it off the envelope we’d caught it on. Will is convinced it will come back to have its revenge on us. That is a penny in the second picture. It was dark brown with no markings. Er, the spider, not the penny. That was the usual color with the usual markings.

Yesterday we watched Undeclared on DVD until I had a near-nervous breakdown for some reason or other. Something about the college setting really upset me. Let us not speak of it.

Today we tackled our ongoing project of packing up everything we own that isn’t needed to feed, clothe, or entertain us. Due to my seething hatred of this apartment and our inability to move until we know where Will is going to be working next, we’ve decided to turn the loft into cold storage (only not, you know, cold). The process is turning out to be very interesting. It is amazing how little I, the bossy perfectionist, care about how much of anything is done when I am pregnant and overexerting myself.

Downstairs, while far from emptied of unnecessary things, is already looking fabulous. I mean, OK – messy. Messy! But so much better and less cluttered already. Now we need to get boxes. So many boxes. Have I mentioned before that we have at least one thousand books? We have. Oy. Vey.

I don’t remember ever being this tired physically. I have a very low capacity for this sort of thing these days, and while Will did most of the heavy lifting and carrying, I pitched in enough that at one point I became convinced that if I moved one more inch I’d go into premature labor and that would be the end of that (”that” being pretty much everything that is good in the world). I felt much better after I sat down for a bit.

When it was over (for the day), I ordered Thai food while Will filled up the footbath. Then he beat Lego Star Wars, which may be the greatest video game of all time. Now we are just trying to stay awake until at least, say, 9:00.

And listening to Tom Waits.

The end.

Because it turns out that without them it is pretty much impossible to knit and read at the same time.

Knitting: shrug (I was three inches from finishing it when I frogged it yesterday because I decided I wanted it bigger).

Reading: Anne of the Island courtesy of Simon.

In my quest to have more music on iTunes than my husband does (since it is my computer and all), I have been ripping CDs this morning. Among them, Rancid’s …And Out Come The Wolves, which I purchased in 1996 or maybe even 95. I brought it with me when I went to college in 1997 (if you are weird and tracking my life, I deferred for two years before giving up and attending for considerably less than that). It was on the shelf over the built-in “desk” in my dorm room second trimester when I got a boyfriend. So was Bush’s 16 Stone, which I carefully kept hidden until he married me. But nevermind that.

We’d been “seeing” each other (that is such a funny euphemism) for a few weeks, or maybe a whole month, when he looked through the CDs, selected Rancid, and said, “Can I borrow this?” I found the question startling. First of all, we never spent time in my room (freshman girls’ dorm), always his (upperclass coed and further off-campus), so it just made sense to bring the good music. Second, what’s mine is his. Why would he ask to borrow?

I don’t think I was one of those girls, the ones who plan their wedding on the first date and become creepy and stalkery. I don’t think I was. I’d never exhibited that sort of behavior before, to be certain; in fact, I’d been rather withdrawn from my prior boyfriend, Eric, who wanted to be much closer than I was comfortable with (I actually refused to have sex with him during the two months or so that we “dated” because he told me he loved me and I didn’t love him*). It’s just that I knew this was it. It never occurred to me to behave as though it were anything else.

And that is my whole story. Boring!

*When Eric said, “I love you,” I replied, “I know.” I don’t know if I am really mean or what, but I still find it dreadfully amusing.

We may be able to keep South Dakota. At least parts of it. Cecilia Fire Thunder, the President of the Oglala Sioux Tribe on the Pine Ridge Reservation, noticed what an asshole the Governor is, and promptly announced her intentions to open a Planned Parenthood on reservation land, where the state has no jurisdiction.

Thanks to Alex for the (second) link.