our trip home: a radio play in 2 vignettes

INT. NORTHERN MIDWESTERN HOUSE - AFTERNOON

DISTANT VOICE, SUGAR'S MOM

So I just am going to get this soup on the stove and then I'll be ready to show you what presents need to be wrapped and maybe you could go to the store and buy milk in the meantime get skim this time and mom can fill out these present labels it should be in her handwriting do you know where those scissors went I can never find anything I wish you wouldn't move stuff we might leave presents here accidentally and I'll never know which ones---

SFX: Extremely loud BEEP BEEP BEEP BEEP from a fire alarm.

DISTANT MOM VOICE

AAIIEEEEEE!

DISTANT DAD VOICE

Just testing . . .

INT. ARKANSAS HOUSE - AFTERNOON

SFX: SUGAR's sewing machine WHIRS. Baby's mom's FOOTSTEPS enter the room and walk to the closet. Closet door SQUEAKS.

BABY'S MOM

So you may have heard that Baby was conceived on a camping trip just outside of Yorktown, Virginia.

SFX: RUMMAGING SOUNDS.

SFX: FOOTSTEPS leaving the room again.

Elephant Snow Day

This must be how Hannibal's regiment felt.



Thank you to the Hot Mamas for the pachyderms! They are so much cuter than they look here -- the ears! the quilted, plaid ears! -- but I was afraid I'd never get this up if I didn't do it now.

And thank you to An Offering (can I call you Anoff?) for organizing this very fun swap.

Normal

Greetings from the snowy midwest, where we are visiting Sugar's family. The snow is not too deep and very pretty, but I am nonetheless grateful that my mother's giant grey marshmallow of a down coat still closes around me. It's touch-and-go after a meal, I tell you what. Luckily, we'll be out of the cold weather and down to my parents soon, so it only has to hold on for a few more days. Related gripe: why doesn't anyone make a maternity coat that is actually warm?

Perhaps because pregnant women are supposed to be warm all the time, but let me tell you, this one ain't. Obviously everything is going as it should in terms of the important aspects of gestation, but I do find it funny how many of the "typical" symptoms have not visited me. I am cold all the time. My skin has never been drier -- shea butter on the face every morning or the skin just peels away. And that business about your hair not falling out and then all coming loose after birth? I have very thick hair to begin with, but if it finds a way to fall out more than it is already, I will certainly be bald by the time The Bean sees me. (And yes, I will trade all that happily for the mildness of my morning sickness.)

I will also take it in happy trade for the nurse's call yesterday saying my glucose test results were normal, which saves me a fight with the doctors, since I had made my mind up firmly to refuse the three-hour test. It was just over 24 hours before I was recovered from the one-hour, by the way, with an additional 24 to get rid of the migraine it brought on. And meanwhile, I've been poking around the journal literature and have become increasingly convinced that nearly all of the GD paranoia is based on g-d horse shit. I won't bore you to death, but just for starters: in a study of outcomes for gestational diabetes patients and babies, wouldn't you suppose it a good idea to exclude women who had poorly-controlled diabetes BEFORE pregnancy? Of course not: that would exclude almost all of the scary outcomes, and then how will you get published?

Sugar is champing at the bit to do laundry, so I'd better get out of these very soft but somewhat whiffy pajamas. (Yes, Melody, they are pajamas. Garnet Hill German cotton flannel. Get yourself some; I promise you will not be sorry. This is my fifth set.) I will leave you with a picture of my rapidly expanding mid-section, circa 28 weeks, and a promise that I will be back to report on anything exciting that happens on Christmas day at Sugar's paternal grandmother's house, where we're not at all sure anyone has been told about the pregnancy. Last time I was there, one of Sugar's cousins refused to do anything but gape at me while I was talking to her (about such controversial topics as "your daughter is very cute"). This should be even more fun without alcohol.



P.S. Yes, I'm beyond pissed about the legal goings on of my home state. Guess it's off the list of "states I will allow us to live in prior to being absolutely certain we're done having/adopting children." Nice feeling to have about a place my family has lived for 250 years.

A Wish For Today

I'd like to find the fellow who invented the glucose tolerance screening procedure.

And then I would like to puke on him. And kick him for a bit.

Related: Should I really still feel like donkey shit, ten and a half hours after the test? Does this mean that my body is not, in fact, any good at processing glucose, that I will fail the test and be told to do the three-hour one? Because...no. Have no risk factors and no family history of diabetes. Am getting lots of scans of The Bean* anyway, because of the PAPP-A thing, so there will be plenty of chances to keep an eye on its growth and well-being.

Dammit, I was perfectly healthy** this morning, and then I went to the doctor and they made me sick as hell.

My apologies to any who are hurt by today's "pregnancy sucks" tone. Pregnancy -- at least this one -- does not suck. I am happy to be pregnant and enjoying it very much, I assure you. I do not enjoy being made to feel nauseated, faint, weak, disoriented, achy, and generally awful***, but pregnancy didn't do those things to me (at least not all at once).


*Including today! Everything fine! Pictures when one of us is well enough to scan them. Sugar remembers all kinds of cute things that are a bit of a blur to me, so maybe we should make her post about it, eh?

**If you don't count the heartburn and the rib thing, but let's not.

***And POSSIBLY a TINY bit emotionally overwrought.

Still More Of Me To Love

Greetings from your favorite dugong! Not only is my physique tending towards the marine mammal look (though I look considerably less svelte than a real dugong, I'm afraid), but my attempts to forestall rib pain by keeping my arms close to my chest may soon result in their becoming flippers.

Still feeling like I'm being stabbed and rather peeved at Dr. Russian for not really listening to me about it. She says it's a bruise (though how I am supposed to have hit the bottom of my ribs with anything, given the significant convexities surrounding that area, I've no idea) and to go easy on the meds. I say it's a torn muscle or pissed off cartilage and it hurts like heck. Since the treatment is the same for both theories -- wait, wish, and pray it gets better before the Bean can kick that high up -- I suppose it doesn't matter. I mostly have stayed off the percocet, but some nights (like last night, for instance), that's just not possible.

Ah, well. Dr. Russian is, after all, Russian. Disregard for non-lethal injury is as inevitable a part of her character as the praise she heaped upon me for eating meat. I will gladly accept her boredom with my ribs, given that she is similarly unbothered by my having already gained as much weight as the practice "wants" me to put on over the course of the entire pregnancy.

I'd be lying if I said the weight gain didn't bother me at all, but I'm doing my best not to worry about it. I don't think there's much I can do about it -- I'm hungry most of the time, and we eat pretty reasonable kinds of food. I guess I'm just one of those women who gains a lot in pregnancy. My weight has mostly been stable in adulthood, so I hope that losing it won't be too terrible.

At any rate, one member of the household seems pretty happy with the situation. (He's usually more of a boob-man, but those are getting pretty sizeable, too -- and don't think he doesn't cop a feel.)





Now that's my kind of Perfect Moment Monday.

Midwinter

You know it's the dark time of year when you find yourself eating breakfast by candlelight.



Those are kitchn's ricotta pancakes, by the way, and quite tasty they were, too.

Hope you are keeping the fires alight -- and dry, fellow New Yorkers.

Items From Our Catalogue

Item: This post is coming to you from my dismal office, as I wait an hour for the next bus to ferry me to the train station, the first step of my 2+ hour commute. It will be even longer tonight, because I missed the early bus. I had (somewhat irresponsibly) let class out early so I could catch it, and then I spaced out and missed it anyway. Is this "pregnancy brain" (gag) or ordinary incompetence?

Item: I have become too lazy/dull/generally pathetic to participate in my own meme. Will this be in the DSM-5?

Item: You should check out (and submit to, in all senses of the word) starhillgirl's very fun new tumblr blog, Lunch. Make your lunch famous on the internet! I'm going to pull a fast one and call my Thanksgiving Sandwich entry my Come And Eat post for this time.

Item: I made half as much sweet potato pudding this year, since Sugar had requested a savory sweet potato dish. I should have made more pudding -- it was gone in a day, and I only got one sandwich out of it. The savory option is currently dying a quiet death in the back of the fridge.

Item: All that frantic eating seems to have led to another growth spurt. Internets, I am certifiably enormous. I am back to running into things every five minutes. I am in denial about the fact that turning sidewise to slip by objects or people has become comic in the extreme. (Imagine it -- I, not un-wide, approach a narrow passage. I pause, turn 90 degrees, thus rendering myself twice as wide, and proceed to shove my way through.) I would say picture to follow, but I think we can all agree that said picture is more likely to actually happen if I don't make any promises.

Item: While spending a very nice weekend with friends outside of Boston -- and the fact that I can call the weekend very nice, despite how much of it was spent dealing with a teething toddler, a sudden lack of heat and hot water, and an obstreperous landlord ought to give you some idea how wonderful these friends are -- I discovered that I could cleverly heft my (considerable) self out of their comfortable but very low armchair by pushing down on its arms and hovering my butt in the air such that my legs swung perfectly underneath me. I was very proud of being strong (and short) enough to manage the feat and performed it more than necessary.

Item: Pride ever goeth before costcochondritis, as it turns out.

Item: This is plenty bad, but how much worse it would be without Dr. Russian, who was on call last night when I left a tearful message with the answering service, after a day of increasing agony. "Take the percocet!" quoth she. Good doctor, that.