Best Headline This Year.

I'm going to be up half the night giggling over the concept of "too ignorant to be Canadian."

Really, it's going to take Dick Cheney getting his nipple bitten off by a beaver to top that one.

Our fearful trip is done, and I have fallen on the deck, cold and dead. As soon as I've recovered, you get the recap.

You know it's time for a vacation when...
Three nights in a row, you catch yourself just shy of locking your home computer with Ctrl-Alt-Del.

Vacation, gotta get away...
People ask, "where do you go for vacation if you live on The Island?"
Well, so far, I haven't. We've been here just shy of a year, during which we've moved in, lived through two hurricanes, had a baby, taken a painfully short maternity leave, and waged asymmetrical warfare against the resident insect life. My husband left The Island for all of 48 hours for a funeral two months ago.
So now we're taking a trip. I won't call it a vacation. We're flying to New England, where we will go to the woods to live deliberately with my in-laws -- including my husband's Euro-grandparents, with whom I do not share a common language. They seem to like me well enough; but last time we visited them, I broke one of Oma's plates; and when they visited us in the Baltics, Oma broke her clavicle. If we get through a visit together on neutral territory with nothing fractured, I will consider it a big win.
Anyway, at the end of this week, Gigi plays flower girl at Uncle Mikey's wedding. Then we'll make a trek down the coast. I used to love road trips, before they involved minivans and a matching set of preschoolers. This is undiscovered country: here be dragons. Or freakish purple dinosaurs. If only one of us drives, the other one can drink, right?
We'll stop at various midAtlantic points, until we reach the next wedding, my cousin's.
I remember this cousin as a baby. I held him up to my grandmother's apartment door and taught him how the locks worked. The kid could probably wipe the walls with me at chess by age five. He's now approaching the quarter-century mark and will probably be lending Bill Gates money before he's forty. (At the very least, he could kick his @$$ at bridge.) I say this out of admiration, not jealousy. I can not begrudge him his good fortune in avoiding our common ancestry's disastrous math genes.
But I digress. I'm going to be doing that a lot over the next ten days.
And I probably won't have regular access to the internet. See that whole "live deliberately" bit above.
So by the time we get back to The Island, I will probably need a vacation desperately. And I'll be back to square one, where people say to me, "Oh sure, you need a vacation - Duh! You live on The Island!!!"
Oh fate, how you mock me.

Potty Training Vignettes:
My husband looks bewildered. He says, "I've just been handed a piece of poo wrapped in tissue."

I'm too busy laughing to ask whether there was a card.

So it turns out that "Bastin pheromones" should really be rendered "Bahstahn" pheromones. My correspondent was referring to the fact that I married into Red Sox Nation, where people "pahk theah cahs". He seems to believe that I am unduly influenced by an atmosphere redolent with RSN vapors. No, dearie, it's not pheromones; that's the smell of Nine Games Up.

The <&*^%$> dryer is electric.

So how have I found an hour just now for blogging? In fact, I am hiding from my children, who are howling in stereo. At six-months-and-change, The Boy is both teething and reluctant to fall asleep without being nursed into dreamy oblivion. Gigi, at this moment, appears to be having a Night Terror. Google it yourself, I'm too tired to hyperlink. Wikipedia has a good article too.
Our little angels have set aside any latent sibling rivalry in favor of solid tag-team relay work: The Boy is home from the hospital, sleeping without sound effects, and back in school, so it's Gigi's turn to have a fever. I blame the fever for precipitating this current episode. I went in to check on her about 30 minutes ago, and she not-quite-woke-up and started pitching a fit. Think about reel one of the Exorcist, minus puke.
So while the kids wear themselves down, I have to stay away - but close enough that I can tell whether they are in any real danger. So I can't avoid the screaming, and I can't quite tune it out.
Anyone with kindly suggestions about coping with this situation without locking anyone in a closet, imbibing Night Train by the case, or violating a Commandment, drop me a line at purplescareblog@gmail.com. I'm going to go fold some laundry, see if sticking my head in the dryer gives any comfort.

To Twitter, Not; Two Twits
Arguably, an opening line like that is reason enough for me to seriously reconsider a course of action.
Since I put that little badge in the upper right hand corner of Purple Scare, I've had people asking me Why Oh Why Would you do such a thing???

To which I have generally responded, because I can link it to Purple Scare and update more frequently and quickly.

One of my more loyal readers (perhaps the only one who is not a relative by blood or marriage) replied to me thusly:

Allow me to be the voice of reason, or at least a
stocky robot with flairing arms crying "Danger!
Danger Will Robinson!"

Blog. Do not Twitter, do not pass go, do not collect
$200. In your blog posts, you can riff on life,
politics, philosophy. You can vent, cheer, ponder,
mourn. And it affords you the opportunity to do it
all with style and humor. Your insights and
personality are what we crave, not the banal details
of your physical life.

Twitter is a slippery slope to such posts as:

... is peeing. Slight cloudy, primrose yellow
(PANTONE 13-0755 TC)

...is writing on Twitter right now

...is thinking about her next Twitter post


I'll chalk up this momentary lapse in good judgement
to an overabundance of Bastin pheromones in your
household, and we'll never speak of it again.

And what I wrote back was this:

"[...]find me an extra hour a day to compose worthwhile banter and insight, I'll personally hand you your Nobel Prize.

"If I start Twittering about bodily functions more intimate than food cravings, then by all means, feel free to put a bullet in my head.

"Now if you'll excuse me, I have to go Google 'Bastin pheromones'."

I have met my alter ego, and it's a cartoon character. At least I'm somewhat better looking.

Mixed News about The Boy The good news is that they are pretty sure it's viral, not bacterial. The bad news is that they don't want to send him home yet. One more night in the hospital, whimper. I miss my baby.
Last night I stayed up way too late, playing with the new feature you see in the upper right hand corner of my page: Twitter! Between the lack of sleep and facing another day with my baby in the hospital, I was pretty useless at the office today. I am resolved to get to bed at a decent hour tonight. Which is looking less and less likely, the more time I bugger around on Blogger, I suppose.
Yeah, the whole "thinking clearly" thing just isn't working for me. The only thing keeping me out of bed right now is the certain knowledge that I will have an even harder time getting out of bed tomorrow if I have to face a ginormous pile of dishes first thing in the morning. Ugh.
My husband is enjoying a well-earned night out, his first in weeks. His primary social outlet - a floating poker tournament - has been shut down while Powers That Be try to figure out whether it violates local gaming laws. Fortunately, he has alternatives. All work at home and no play outside the home makes Dear Husband a tad stir crazy.

Little man turned six months last week. This boggles my mind.

I am way behind on the blogging. Here's how insane I am: boy got sick over the weekend. If you've seen Intolerable Cruelty, you no doubt remember the character "Wheezy Joe" - that's what the boy sounded like. Add in feverish, inconsolable, unable to sleep for more than two hours at a stretch, and you have a pretty good idea of what he was like.

The pediatrician put him in the hospital for IV antibiotics and nebulizer therapy. I am really very calm about this. Either that or I am too exhausted, after 48 nearly sleepless hours with a crying infant, to register anything other than relief.

I was packing up a little bag to go to the hospital so I could be with the boy overnight. My husband talked me out of it, assuring me that I would sleep much better at home. Still, I was this close to taking my laptop to the hospital so I could stay by my son's bedside and catch up on drafting posts. The hospital doesn't even have internet connectivity. But I could at least compose in Notepad!

No, readers, I stayed home and let the qualified professionals stay up all night worrying about him. When it comes to staying up all night worrying, I guess I just have to settle for being an ambitious amateur.

It's very late now, and I should be in bed. At least I know that when I go to work tomorrow, everyone will understand why I look like a panda bear with a meth jones.

What else have I been up to? Introducing Gigi to the Potty. I will spare you gory details. Let it suffice to say that her ability to tell us about her bodily functions is a mixed blessing.

Happy Mothers Day! Have you missed me?

Yeah, me too.

Let's see, where have I been and what have I been up to?

I was sitting shivah for Molly Ivins.

No, that's not it. Plausible, but inaccurate.

I've been on a quest for the perfect ginger beer.

Better, but still...

Okay, here's the truth: I've been working, coming home and cherishing my children, playing chew toy for my teething son, studying the pantheon of Dora the Explorer, sleeping when I can, and struggling to retain vestiges of an independent personality.

For a real treat, I occasionally have read fragments of books that don't involve rhyme schemes or cartoon critters. The trouble is that some of these non-kid books concern contemporary politics and current events, and every few pages I want to throw something heavy through a plate-glass window.

Seriously, if you finish a chapter of this one without having to suppress a primal scream, have someone hold a mirror under your nose. You might be dead.

To cheer myself up, I read Barack Obama's first memoir. He seems like a nice guy to have a beer with, and would probably be a decent U.S. President: compassionate, committed, self-made - kinda like some other guy the Democrats fielded a while back... But the guy freely admits to having smoked weed and having inhaled.

I'd go on more, but the baby is crying. Time for a feed.

So this is what it takes to get me back to the Blogger: an easy link, courtesy of my brother.

Again, I stand accused of blogslacking. Mea culpa, but it's been bumpy of late. In sum: Mom went home.

Okay, things are a little more complex than that. But there's a good start.

Impressionable: I was feeding Little Guy when his Big Sister Gigi came up and said, "I feed my baby too!" She climbed onto the couch beside me with her baby doll, took off her PJ top, and held the doll to her chest.

Now I understand why Sylvia Plath got up at 4:30 every day to work on her Ariel poems by candlelight.
Right now, it's 2:00 in the afternoon. My husband is used-book shopping at the local charity thrift store, my mom is reading a book, and both of my children are napping. I have a load of laundry spinning down and a Cornish pasty warming up in the toaster oven. This would be an optimal time to write a Work of Staggering Genius and Blinding Insight. However, what I really want to do is put my face in a pillow and leave it there for about a week. I'm drinking nearly a pot of coffee a day and I can still fall asleep in a blink.
I have little enough time for myself during the day. At night I'm wiped out. Getting up early - which used to come to me as naturally as photosynthesis - will likely become my sole source of "me time" of any use.
Just proving my point... It's now 7:30 the following morning, and I'm getting back to this post. The coffee is almost ready. The sun is above the ocean and behind some clouds.
I adore my family, but I also require periodic peace and solitude. I'm not out to write volumes of brilliance, I just want to reassure myself that I have a personality beyond "Mommy" and "Colleague". I couldn't do this every day of the week for the rest of my life, or at least not getting up at 4:30. Hey, much respect to the late Mrs. Hughes, but no thank you. The Ariel collection is extraordinary, but the net result left something to be desired.
My mother is awake. Time for me to get some coffee and help her unload the dishwasher. And I am going to need a nap if I'm going to make it through Oscar night.

Covet, covet, covet!

Go ahead, ask me how my first day back at work went.

Little Man threw me off my game early by waking up for a feed at 4 a.m. rather than his usual 5:30. I never really got back to sleep during the next two and a half hours.

Then I had to get two-year-old Gigi to school. She isn't used to Mommy frog-marching her out the door before 8 a.m. anymore, so this is going to take some readjustment. I left behind my son, snoozing and farting in his grandmother's arms.

I got to the office and had over one thousand e-mails in my in-box. This is NOT an exaggeration. Fat lot of good the Out-of-Office reply did me.

Before I could unpack my briefcase, Day Care called to ask me to come get Gigi, who had diarrhea again. I got her home, then had to turn right around to go back to the office. But Mommy going back to work doesn't really mean much to a sick Gigi, who picked up her favorite book and asked plaintively, "Mommy read Bedtime?"

It wasn't even 9:30.

Then I got back to work, and my colleague tells me it's time to go to the hospital to visit the guys who arrived on a Search and Rescue vessel at 5:00 this morning, having spent the previous 24 hours tossed around on what was left of a small boat in 50-knot winds with 45-foot waves, and having watched their companion go overboard, lost to the sea.

When we least want it and most need it, the Ineffable One has a way of smacking us upside the head with a little perspective.

Baby Update: At six weeks, he weighs ten pounds. At this rate, he'll be bigger than his sister before his first birthday!

It's Not My Fault, Hooray!!! My mother has been staying with us for nearly two months now, God love her. Yesterday, Gigi hit a new milestone, with Grandma's help.

Grandma was fixing Gigi's breakfast, you see, when she encountered a daddylonglegs in a corner of the kitchen, and reacted the way many of us do when we see an unexpected arachnid: "HOLY CRAP!"

And from across the room, Grandma heard "Howey kap!!!"

Yeah, we were extra pleased to unleash her on her daycare classmates that day.

File Under "Island Life/Sticker Shock": One head of cauliflower, US $ 9.56.

Milestone Alert: The Boy grabbed a toy today. Not too shabby for six weeks. He's currently lying down on one of those gym/playmats with zoo animals dangling overhead, and he keeps swatting at them, so, wait for it...

My son has spanked his first monkey.

Maybe I should have stayed off the Blogger a bit longer...

So Happy New Year everyone.

My first thought on seeing this headline was, "Anyone who loves me, send me a bag." Then I read the actual reviews and thought better of it. Too bad, it sounded so promising...

Notes from the Sick Ward: The day I had hoped would mark Gigi's return to nursery, she decided to puke on the kitchen floor. So much for that. Her infection ran its course in time for a cold to settle in, and that's been working its way through the house. Poor kid was stuck at home for two weeks all together, and couldn't understand why she wasn't being allowed to play outside (even as she was running a fever and blowing snot). By Christmas Eve, we were all climbing the walls.

Being at home with a sick toddler leads one to desparate measures. By Day Eight, I caved in to the Electric Babysitter, aka TiVo. And yes, I let the Little Red Freak into my household. Elmo and his buddies bought us a few minutes' peace between naptimes and dose-of-Advil-time, so the rest of us could guzzle hot tea and honk up the contents of our nasal passages. Ugh.

We all seem to be over the worst of it now, but it was a heck of a way to spend the week before Christmas. We all got pretty punchy by the time St Nick was due for his rounds. For examples:

Me: "Hey Mom, what do you want to watch: It's a Wonderful Life, or Reservoir Dogs?"

Or, try this:

Husband: "Hey, this burp cloth is really bad. It's too small and doesn't really absorb anything."

Me, and Mom, (simultaneously, from different rooms): "HEY! You burp the kid with the cloth that you have, not the the cloth you wish you had!"

Or:

Mom: "How about moving this chair over here? It'd really tie the room together."

Me: "Great! Now all I need is a Chinaman to pee on it."

So you can see why I stayed away from the Blogger for a while...

Am I a Grinch, or is this just totally wrong?

Since I'm too tired and brain-dead to be funny, here's a link to someone else you can laugh at in the meantime. Enjoy. (Thanks to my homegirl Amilah for the tip.)

Hello again from the land of the sleep-deprived. I have been cooped up in the house (mostly) with a sick toddler and a gassy infant, along with my equally stir-crazy husband and my mother. Plus I've been on antibiotics, so I can't even drown my sorrows in spiked egg nog.
Of course, my husband has been putting up with the kids, his ailing wife, and his mother-in-law for this period. Not that anyone is keeping score or anything, but I'm sure that your sympathy meters are registering just as strong for him.
Little Gigi did not have thrush, it turns out. It was something called herpangina and it was equally unpleasant but required less medication. She has her appetite back and it's no longer painful for her to eat. I am determined to get her back to school tomorrow even if it kills us both. The incubation period is over, her fever is gone, and the nursery has had plenty of time to disinfect the joint in her absence. If she isn't back in school tomorrow, so help me, I'm staying in bed all day.
Go ahead, call the Bad Mommy Cops on me; I doubt they'll even give me a warning.

Chappy Chanukah!

Sick Bay Update: I had my "two-week" checkup yesterday. The doc says I have a low-grade infection around my incision area, so I'm on antibiotics and an antifungal lotion for the next ten days. I will spare you gory details. You're welcome.
At the same time, 25-month-old Gigi has apparently developed thrush. This has been unofficially diagnosed by phone with my brother-in-law "Uncle George", the doctor. For two days we thought Gigi was just having wicked teething pain, until Grandma pointed out the white coating on her tongue. Ah, so that's what's making her howl like a lunatic. And Baby Halley has been very gassy of late, so I have screaming kids on each side of my lap for full stereophonic effect.
The good news is that I'm allowed to drive now. I had to promise my mom I wouldn't take advantage of this to run away from home. (How far can I run? We're on an island...) As a gesture of good faith, I bought her some egg nog yesterday and showed her where the rum is. (Updside of island life: plentiful supplies of good rum!)

Some numbers, for those who are interested: When Baby was born, two weeks ago, his stats were as follows: Apgar scores 9 and 10; weight 7 lbs 3 oz; length 18 1/2 inches; head circumference 14 3/4 inches. Not too shabby! When we left the hospital, he was down to 6 lbs 12 oz. Last week he was back to 7 lbs even.
Today was two-week checkup day, and the numbers are in: 7 lbs 13 oz (Yowza!), length 20 inches, head circumference 15 inches.
I am NOT returning phone calls from Barry Bonds.

For my Big Brother, a special interest piece.

"Right on track. Perfect." So declared the nurse at Baby's one-week checkup today. He has regained most of his birthweight. His eyes appear to have settled on a dark brown that matches mine. He sleeps, eats and poops prodigiously. Not much else to report.

I got my staples out today. That was something I'd been looking forward to for about six days. The nurse at my doctor's office wasn't as effusive as the pediatric nurse, but said my healing was progressing nicely. The painkillers continue to be necessary, but effective. And now, back to resting.

Paging Phillip Pullman...

Home at last, home at last! My baby boy is healthy and beautiful. He arrived Monday at 12:25 in the afternoon (that's a 10:50 operating room slot, on Island Time). He was about 18 1/2 inches long, 7 pounds, 3 ounces, with sandy brown hair and eyes like the sea after a storm.

Only when speaking of a baby can I say both that he is beautiful and that he looks like a cross between Kevin Spacey and Mr. Magoo.

The hospital experience - surgery and aftercare - was surprisingly positive. I definitely went in with a better attitude this time, and since there weren't any concerns about baby's size and weight, I wasn't being woken up every two hours to nurse. He slept a lot, and I slept a lot. I am definitely recuperating better this time than the first time around.

We came home on Thursday, and I've been trying to rest. But in truth, I really don't feel all that bad. Two years ago at this time, I felt like I'd been hit by a truck. This time, comparatively, the truck just brushed past me. I'm still taking painkillers (nothing narcotic, just your basic weapons-grade Tylenol and anti-inflammatories), I get tired easily, and I'm moving verrrrrry slowwwwly. It's taken me an hour to type this post. And now I need a nap.

Last post before the hospital. Tomorrow morning, we take Gigi to day care, then proceed to the place I didn't really want to go: the operating room. I'm bummed about having to have a repeat C-section, but as long as Baby comes out healthy that's all that matters. I tell myself that it's not important how the child is born; how the child is raised is what really counts. I only get to give birth to the child once, but I get 18 years to screw up his foundations, ha ha.

Anyway, I'm running out of time when I'm allowed to eat (nothing after midnight!) and it's past my bedtime. Thanks to you all for your love and support. I may not be able to post from the hospital (the Island has a lot of things, but 'net access away from home is not plentiful), so it will be a few days before I'm back on line. Peace.

It's Official: surgery scheduled for 10 a.m. Monday. So much for my Florida football theory. Of course, factor in that the Patriots play this evening... still time to slip in under the wire!

Still no major news, sorry. Gigi is taking a nap, her Daddy is dissecting the Florida-Florida State game over the phone with his dad, and Mom and I just took a tea break after clearing stuff out of the garage. We discovered several neglected boxes, whose contents were infested by mildew and molds that were no doubt on the verge of developing the wheel and representative democracy. Euw ick.

I'm glad that the FLA-FSU game is on, because once it's over I'm free to give birth. You see, I have a theory: Gigi was two weeks late, I am convinced, because she knew Daddy was a Red Sox fan and she had the good sense to wait until the ALCS and World Series were over before making her debut. Likewise, I speculated early on that "Halley" here would wait until FLA/FSU had their matchup. Daddy roots for Florida State; his Daddy is a Gator. (Paging Dr. Freud...) So even though Florida State is having a really bad season, Halley has similar sensibilities as his big sister, and will not deprive his Daddy of a chance to exchange trash talk with Grampy. (Did I mention that my father-in-law is also a Yankee fan?)

It's the third quarter, and Florida is up 14 points. I'm going to chug down some more evening primrose oil and lift some heavy things. Maybe a newborn will cheer up my husband after his beloved Seminoles get their butts handed to them.

Went to the hospital this morning for pre-admission stuff. Nothing else to report. Didn't sleep much last night - too much tossing and turning (internally, that is). Naptime now. Ooooooog.

Happy Thanksgiving! Not much to report from The Island. They don't observe the North American holiday here - which shouldn't come as a surprise, but for some reason not everyone gets that. Think about it for a minute: anywhere they still have pictures of a European monarch on the currency, they're unlikely to celebrate the survival of colonies founded by people who ran away from Europe.

My OB visit was uneventful. I lost the two pounds I had gained last week, and Baby's heart rate is in the 130s. My blood pressure is still on the low end of normal range. Tomorrow I report to the hospital for some advance bloodwork and a consultation with the anaesthesiologist. Nice to have that chat ahead of time: "Hi, so you're going to insert a needle and catheter into my spinal column? Okay! And please don't give me any Percocet, that stuff gives me nightmares; you'll still remember this on Monday, right?"

In the meantime, my mother is laundering or vacuuming anything that will hold still long enough. She rearranged the living room furniture today. This baby had better show up soon, before Mom rebuilds the garage and resurfaces the roof. Thank God hurricane season is almost over, otherwise she'd probably be putting plywood over the windows "just in case". I am NOT complaining; just observing.

Nope, still no labor. Back to the OB tomorrow.

Epiphany du jour: I was leaning over to heft a laundry basket onto my hip, when the wait-I'm-pregnant! reflex kicked in. "You're not supposed to lift anything heavy," I said to myself. Then I said, "Hey, self, what's the worst that can happen?" Hmmm...we are now safely past Due Date. If my water breaks or I go into labor because I picked up a heavy basket, what's the big deal? So I picked up the basket without incident.
When I shared this little insight with my husband over dinner, his eyes bugged out of his head. "You did what?" Again, I asked, what's the worst that can happen?
"You throw your back out and have to spend the rest of your pregnancy in bed?!?!?"
All five and half remaining days, maximum?
"You fall and break a hip?"
I'm pregnant, I do not have osteoporosis. And I would have landed on the carpet. Not a likely scenario.
Worst case: he would have had to put the rest of the laundry away. I have faith that he could have handled that.

Today's Update: Mom got her filling redone (and an up-close and personal look at Island Time in action). I'm still home. It's still raining. I am drinking raspberry leaf tea in the hopes of getting something moving before Monday.

Stopped by the office today to drop off some paperwork (doctor's certificate for medical leave - as if I could be faking it to get maternity leave?!?!) and The Boss asked for my help: he'd misplaced his password for some of the accounting software, and could he use mine?

Possible responses:

a) what, you don't have it on a sticky note on the back of your badge with your safe combination?
b) I'm pregnant, not brain-damaged.
c) Sure, what's professional liability insurance for anyway?
d) [go rent the Terminator if you can't think of the snappy answer that goes here...I'm trying to keep this PG-13.]

Yeah, I don't think so. He was hoping to avoid loss of face by not having to admit to the techies that he couldn't remember his user ID and password. As if they don't get a million identical requests per month. As if you could lose face with people who have little to no regard for users anyway. As if you couldn't just e-mail them with "I must have typed something in wrong, I'm locked out, can you please reset my password?" As if they give a flying flip.

Nope, not missing the office at all.

Made it through one more day. Tomorrow's plans, should the Ineffable One allow it, are to take Mom to the dentist for a replacement filling. We called the "Emergency on-call Dentist" service for visitors to the island on Friday, and got an appointment for Tuesday. Island Time strikes again.

Fortunately, Mom says she is not in any pain, she just has to cut her food real small (or eat lots of soft things, like ice cream and cinnamon rolls). Of course, Mom would not likely admit to being in pain unless she had a noticable compound fracture; she'd rather be rearranging my garage or moving bookcases. You know the gag about how many Jewish mothers it takes to screw in a lightbulb (None, dahling, I'll just sit here in the dark...)? Yeah, you get the idea.

Due Date Today. It started off raining and crummy. For the past two nights, I haven't fallen asleep until after 2 a.m. For all my complaining about feeling like I have a bowling ball resting on my bladder, I am more upset at the fates for my other-brother-Darryl and his wife, who are not having a baby in April after all, it turns out. My husband's best friend is in the hospital, several hundred miles away, with a blood clot in his lung.
And yet, we are grateful.
Probably the only thing that kept me from going completely ballistic navigating island traffic in the rain this morning was having read this, courtesy of a reference from other-brother-Darryl's website, before leaving the house.
The sun is out now. I'm going to attempt to remain upright for a while longer, and maybe read something that doesn't have cartoon illustrations or a rhyme scheme.
There is nothing quite like the gift of perspective.

Quick! Before I lose the "lunatic cravings" excuse, I totally have to make these...

Nope, still not in labor. Tomorrow is officially Due Date. Considering that Gigi was two weeks late and a compulsory C-section (showed no signs of any interest in coming out) I'm a bit skeptical about the Due Date notion. In order to avoid a repeat of the two weeks of melodrama we went through two years ago, we've got an OR booked for a week from tomorrow, just in case. So no more than a week left of pregnancy, one way or the other.

Not much else going on here. I had another "Duck Day" - spent mostly horizontal and semiconscious. The highlight was a walk with my mom down to the gas station so she could spend nearly eight bucks on a Sunday New York Times for the crosswords. Woo hoo, I left the house! For my next amazing feat, I may attempt some shopping tomorrow. Or maybe tackle my mending pile. Ah, the hedonism of maternity leave before the baby actually shows up.

Made it through one more day without going into labor. I have also made through the day without a nap, which is even more remarkable.
Instead of a nap, I went to a matinee of the new Bond movie with my husband. It didn't suck, but it has several moments of lameness which are unworthy of the Bond franchise. (I am a purist when it comes to Bond movies. Yes, that means Connery is the best one. Don't even attempt to argue with me.) Judi Dench is brilliant. I will give Daniel Craig some credit: he's better than George Lazenby and Timothy Dalton. And I enjoyed this more than, oh, say, License To Kill. And it was a movie in a theatre, and this time the projector didn't eat the film. So as cinematic experiences go, this was probably the high point of the last several months.
Now if they could somehow, for the next movie, pair up Judi Dench's "M" with either Connery or Brosnan... Yeah, dream on, Mugs.

Today, we visited the maternity ward. JUST VISITING!!! We took the tour and saw the kind of room I'll be in for labor, assuming that "Halley" decides to take the conventional path - rather than the Roman road - out.
The only thing I really wish now is that I'd read this article before we went. I want to know if I can get an IV of Valrhona hooked up.

Blame it on the switch to NewBlogger Beta. That's my plan. Apologies to anyone who was having trouble loading the blog. The transition appears to have been successful, though.

The timing of this switchover really stinks, though. If I hadn't been able to adapt to the new system, and couldn't post, I'd start getting frantic e-mails from folks on the mainland wondering about the baby.

Oh yeah, that happens anyway. Carry on.

Since I can't figure out a way to put this on my Amazon Wish List, it goes here. I promise to share.

OB visit went just fine. I will spare you gory details, let it suffice to say that everything is within normal ranges for this period of gestation. I've gained two pounds, my blood pressure is fine, and Halley's heart rate was in the 150's. Tomorrow, we tour the maternity ward. I go back to the doctor in another week, unless we see her sooner in the delivery room.
No more than 11 days left to be pregnant. "Due date" in four days.

Technical difficulties? My sister-in-law wrote to say that the blog had been down for two days. It's been looking okay to me, so I don't know what the problem may be. Blogger.com can be tetchy sometimes. When in doubt, hit "refresh" or its equivalent on your browser.

God Loves Me. How much does God love me? Here's my next birthday present.

Nope, still not in labor. Going to the OB tomorrow. Due date is still five days away.

Edible Duct Tape. I'm getting that patented right now.
I know that demographically, I'm supposed to be a stressed-out Guilty Mom for whatever reason society is inflicting on us this week. (See the link at the lower right to Judith Warner's "Perfect Madness", currently on my bedside table.) But I will not go gentle into that good night. I'm very particular about my guilt.
You see, I have never liked being typecast. In college, I would walk up to people wearing "Question Authority" pins and say, "Oh yeah, why should I?" So when society is telling me on every magazine cover that as a working mother I'm supposed to be stewing in guilt all the time, I tell society to go [Cheney] itself.
I can't avoid guilt altogether. I was raised by a preternatural worrier and an ex-Catholic in a suburb with a large Jewish population. It was like fluoride in the water, I'm sure. But I can control what I feel guilty about and to what degree. I think of myself as a guilt connoisseur.
Which leads me, logically, to edible duct tape. Work with me here:
Most, but not all, school days, I send my daughter to pre-pre-school with a lovingly packed lunch including a classic peanut butter and jelly sandwich. The bread is usually whole-wheat, never white; the peanut butter is my childhood brand; and for variety, I switch jelly flavors throughout the week.
"Oh my Goddess," I hear the Mommy Police Neighborhood Watch committee moan, "You mean it's not organic? And a steady diet of peanut butter?"
Yes, and I'll tell you why: because whenever I pack her a sandwich with lunchmeat and cheese, Gigi will take it apart, eat the filling, and leave most of the bread. And when bread costs anywhere between 3 and 7 bucks for a one-pound loaf - if you want anything with any nutritional value - I will be damned if I'm gonna let her take it to school every day and NOT eat it. So my choice is to give something that sticks together, or find a way to keep the filling in her sandwiches. To the guilt-floggers, I say either hook me up with a venture capitalist and some food scientists, or get out of my face.

Grandma arrived safely, and all is right with the world. Today was my "I Mean It This Time, I'm Really Out Of Here" Last Day. Had to go in and do one last check with the Alpha Geek and transfer some accounting stuff blah blah blah but I am now officially stick-a-fork-in-me DONE.
Mom and I celebrated over ginger beer at the brew pub at the bottom of the hill in our neighborhood. Then we came home, Mom cleaned a few things and I read the first chapter of the new Bob Woodward book before zonking out. When I got up, Daddy and Grandma had already gone to get Gigi from school. I'd feel guilty about zonking out while everyone else is being busy if I weren't due in less than a week.
I might feel a twinge of guilt for being on leave for three months in an island paradise. But not likely. On the one hand, the company spent a lot of money to get me here and to pay my rent and utlities, so if I'm not actually working, do I look like some sort of freeloader? On the other hand, it's only three months -- one fifth of what I took with Gigi -- and half of that is unpaid. Island Paradise is an expensive place. And it's not as though I'm going to be sitting on my butt eating bonbons and reading novels at the beach. I'm going to be tending to an infant 24-7, recovering from birth, and wrangling a toddler. Is it an office? No. But is it "work"? Oh yes.
And in 12 more weeks, I'm probably going to be just as tired and back at the office full time. Oh, I can hardly wait... What does it say about me, that I haven't even given birth and I'm already dreading going back to work?

Feeling Better Now. When I posted earlier, I was a wee bit tired and cranky, so I kept it short. But now, upon reflection, I've had a very good day today, despite having gone into the office.

Yes, I know, most people who go on leave actually stay away from work. I've been slipping back in after hours, walking through a difficult systems upgrade with our new Alpha Geek, who is having an extra challenge with our proprietary software. Fortunately, it only took us an hour to work out the glitches today. While he was taking care of that, I went through a few more stray in-box items. Going in on the weekends really stinks, but I'll tell you, I've gotten more done in the off-hours than I had in the entire previous week. It's amazing how much more productive I am without the constant parade of people past my desk.

Yesterday I had what's known in my family as a "Duck Day". The phenomenon gets its name from a vacation my father and stepmom took in Duck, North Carolina a while back. Both Dad and Stepmom are very hard-working professionals who frequently work hours that would probably kill me. But they both love what they do so one can hardly fault them. Anyway, they got to Duck that afternoon, set down their bags and said to themselves, a nap before dinner would be a nice thing. They woke up 18 hours later.

So I had a Duck Day yesterday. Today, I got up before both husband and toddler, had a luxurious warm shower (lather, rinse, and repeat, whoo hoo), nuked a frozen croissant, and sat on my balcony overlooking the ocean, drinking coffee and reading a book before everyone else got up. It doesn't matter that it was a cloudy day; the view was still very pleasant. And that set me up for a nice productive day getting ready for my mom's visit. Don't worry Mom, I still left you plenty to do. But now your bedroom looks like someplace to sleep, not a warehouse; and the rest of the house doesn't look like a dumpster/laundry hamper.

My sister-in-law keeps telling me that I should be relaxing and revelling in these last few pre-baby days. (And she is wise in the ways of the force: she also has two kids, about two years apart.) Yeah, yeah, I know - but I don't relax well when I'm up to my ribcage in laundry baskets.

And on that note, I'm off to bed. A bed with fresh linens. And one that I don't have to get out of at the crack of dawn tomorrow. Good night, all.

No, I'm not in labor, and I'm not at the hospital. We're now at the stage where, if I don't post to the blog at least every 24 hours, I start getting phone calls.
Nope, still here at home, just very tired. Mom arrives tomorrow. Deep sigh of relief. Once she's here, "Halley" can show anytime. I have a maximum of two weeks left to be pregnant.

OB Update: Visited the obstetrician again today. I've gained two pounds, fundal height is 38 cm, baby's heart rate is 150. The strep swab tests came back negative (that's good, trust me, you don't want to know more.) We're going back in another week, unless Elvis decides to leave the building sooner.
My "last day of work" was pretty uneventful - probably because I've been really tired and sat at my desk staring at the computer like a deer in the headlights.
I'll be perkier next post.

Dropping! Even I noticed it today. My co-workers have been saying for several days now, "You've dropped." But this morning, while I was brushing my teeth, I thought, "Hmmmm...something looks different..." When I got to the office, people kept it up: "WOW! You sure have dropped!" "Are you sure you're not going into labor?" "Good grief, you must be ready to pop!" At first it was cute. Now it's getting on my nerves. I think that the next time someone says something to me, I'll clutch my belly, lean on his or her desk, and moan something about water breaking.
Not that it'll shut anyone up, but I will get a certain visceral satisfaction out of it.
What else did I do today? I went to a rugby match. Having lived Down Under for two years, I absorbed a certain amount of appreciation for the game (and far be it from me to turn down corporate tickets in a tent with free food). Don't ask me to tell you the rules; for that, I'll tell you to ask my sister-in-law, who actually played the game at university. (When people ask me why someone as apparently sensible and bright as she is married my brother, I remind them that she played rugby, and they think, "Ah, head injury, poor dear.")(Just kidding, bro!!!)
But the real advantage of going to a rugby match when you're eight and a half months pregnant is knowing that no one in the crowd will look askance at the Guinness in your hand. Yankees would give you the Stinkeye, or try to have you arrested. Islanders will ask if you want a refill.

Two Weeks To Go. Three days left in the office. Six days till my mom gets here. No more than 21 days left of being pregnant. I'm still trying to grasp the concept that I'm going to have *two* children. There are days when one is enough of a handful. My two-year-old is capable of simple conversation, and that alone blows my mind. How did she get so big so fast? I don't want to lose sight of everything that she accomplishes in the next twelve months because I'm so absorbed in every burp and coo that comes out of the New Kid on the Block.
I'm just going to hook up a pull string in my back and give it a yank every time she starts fussing about all the attention The Baby is getting, so I don't get hoarse repeating, "When YOU were this little, we did all this for you, too..."

For my "Feel Better About Your Parenting Skills" File: This one and this one.
The former I can almost understand on some days.
The latter I will never understand in a million years. Scissors? Try them on yourself next time, Mister. In the meantime, I hope you get a special corner of the prison shower with a lot of slippery bar soap and rusty towel bars.

Maternity Leave Countdown: Six days left in the office. Only one of them is a Monday. Thank the Maker!
In other matters of perspective, it occurs to me that I have no more than 26 days left of being pregnant. You see, Player to Be Named Later is "due" (ha ha ha ha ha) November 20th, but if Elvis doesn't leave the building by the 27th, we're going in after him. I'm not repeating the scenario with Gigi where we waited two very anxious weeks in constant fear of losing her. (That, and I don't want to burn up my limited maternity leave without having an actual infant to take care of...) I'm not eager to have a repeat C-section, but I'd rather do that than wait around.
Besides, I suspect that we won't have to wait very long to see P2BNL. Some of my co-workers, seeing the size of me, didn't think I'd make it past Halloween. The new IT guy - who started this week, Praise Buddha - said he'd noticed that I'd "dropped" between the time he came in for his first interview and today. I think the new office pool is betting whether I make it all the way to next Thursday. Hey, as long as Baby waits until after Grandma arrives, I'm cool.

As Promised, The "Grandparents Special" Post on Gigi's pediatric visit: she is just fine and hunky-dory. Height: 32 1/2 inches; weight: 25 pounds; all vaccinations are up to date. We got her a flu shot, which she really did not appreciate one bit. (Truth be told, she cried like Nancy Kerrigan through most of the visit.) Doc says she's hitting all the right developmental targets, and unless she gets sick, he shouldn't need to check up on her again until her next birthday.
Wow. I'm totally used to this every 3-6 months business. The idea of not having to take her to the doctor is pretty heady. You mean I'm not going to get hauled off by the Bad Mommy Police if I don't take her in for a weight check and another random jab every 12 weeks? Wow. I guess she really isn't a baby anymore.
Of course, by the end of this month, we'll have another wee one who will have to come in for those visits. I don't want to think about the next cycle of immunizations. It's bad enough having to contemplate the notion of circumcision; who wants to think about making her child a pin cushion? Eeeek.

Island Life Rants, Subsection: Cost of Living. Halloween candy: ten bucks a bag. That's not like, Dove or Godiva or anything. That's your basic Hershey stuff, in seasonal wrapping. Ten bucks.
The dumb thing is that I had figured this place to be Guy Fawkes territory. "A penny for the guy" I can handle. But after 70 bucks to fill my gas tank so I can go spend 50 bucks a bag on groceries, now you're extorting candy from me at that price?
These kids had better dress up like a drag revue at Mardi Gras. Make it worth my while to open the door for you, little thieves.

I only have one Monday left this year when I will have to go to work. I think that's pretty sweet. I have eight full workdays remaining for this calendar year. And believe me, they're going to be very full.
The thing is, I keep forgetting that I wasn't working during this point in my pregnancy with Gigi. I was on leave, at "home" in North America, though far from relaxed. We were buying and moving into a house. International moves are tiring and stressful enough; try it sometime when you're eight months pregnant. Ugh. So even though I could lie down in the middle of the day, I didn't feel particularly well-rested.
Now, I'm working 40 hours a week, ferrying a two-year-old to pre-preschool, trying to keep my house from looking like downtown Basra, and still attempting to unpack the occasional box. Oh, and gestating full-time 24-7. It's a wonder I'm upright most of the day. It's a wonder I'm upright at this moment.
Fortunately, I have a husband who cooks and who doesn't especially care if there is toddler paraphernalia embedded in the carpet of every room in the house. I also have a daughter who can be persuaded to make a game of picking up books and toys - though she's not fooled for long. She also likes to play with the broom. Let's hope that behavior continues after she makes the transition to Big Sister.

She is two years old today. I'm still amazed sometimes that she can breathe on her own, but here she is, walking and talking and feeding herself and throwing tantrums and asking to sit on the potty. Her eyes are still blue (mostly - depending on what she's wearing) and she is still a carbon copy of her daddy.
Here's where the Grandparents' Special Edition kicks in, feel free to skip this part if you have a low tolerance for "guess what my kid did today" posts...
Milestones: Yesterday, she spoke the first complex sentence either of us had ever heard from her, "Gigi wanna go outside and see the cows." (There's a nature trail that she and Daddy go to not far from our house; you can see cows from there.) Today, she buttoned Elmo's jammies in her "Good Night Elmo!" activity-story book. She can tell us that her hands are dirty and she wants to wash them. She can sing the ABC song, sometimes missing a few here and there, and she's picking up the concept of numbers. Her favorite songs are "Twinkle Twinkle Little Star", "The Wheels on the Bus" and "B-I-N-G-O". She occasionally puts herself into Time Out when she realizes that she's done something Mommy and Daddy object to. She scolds the cat for no particular reason. She loves having books read to her and pretending to read them. She knows that on the last page of Goodnight Moon, we say, "Good night noises everywhere." And she still loves to play the "going away" game, where she walks out of sight and waits for us to say, "Where'd that little girl go? Gosh, I miss her!" before running back into our arms for hugs and kisses.
Yeah, I think we'll keep her.

The latest from the doctor's office: I had an OB checkup on Thursday. My blood pressure is fine. My weight appears to be unchanged, but Baby continues to grow and kick so there's no issue with the scale numbers. Baby's heart rate was in between 145-155, and the kickage is considerable. I got a strep swab (if you have to ask, you don't want to know) and will be back at the doctor's office again in two weeks to get the results and have yet another checkup. We appear to be on track for an approximate due date of November 20.
I have dusted off the pregnancy books from two years ago -- I have hardly cracked them open this time. It's not so much that I feel like a seasoned veteran, it's just that I figure anything that makes me feel like crap or otherwise weird is to be blamed on the pregnancy and there's little that can be done about it. I know by now what requires an urgent call to the doctor, and everything else I just have to put up with.
But I'm dusting off the books now to remind myself of what labor is all about, since I didn't really go through it the first time. I had a late-evening function at work last Saturday, and when I went to bed that night I had my first experience with full-fledged Braxton-Hicks contractions. Those wouldn't have been so bad if it hadn't been 1:00 in the morning. Ugh. Fortunately, they've stayed away since then. And now I know how they feel, so I hope that I'll be able to tell the difference if/when the real thing starts happening.

Surprise!!! My co-workers threw me a baby shower today. My boss came to sit and chat in my office with the door closed (yikes, I thought, it must be pretty serious) to distract me while they set up. I honestly had no idea. Nice loot, too: lots of nice goodies in blue with sports themes.
The funny thing is that they didn't realize till the last minute that my office is the one with the security camera monitors in it, so in theory I could have caught them in the act. Good thing my boss is still new enough that he commands my undivided attention when he closes the door.
The other gag came when one of my colleagues brought in her four-month old grandson to visit at the end of the day. I said I'd hold him for a few minutes while she went to get her desk straightened up and collect her bag. So there I am, snuggling this cute little puddin' on my lap, when some of the ladies from upstairs came by. Bear in mind that the grandson and I are of obviously different ethnicities... The double-takes were priceless. "Yeah," I said, "while you were upstairs, I've been a little busy, but hey, I've got all these cute outfits now, why wait?" Heeeee!
While I'm camped out this weekend by the washing machine catching up on ten days' worth of laundry, I'll be writing thank-you notes...and giggling my butt off.

"Kvetch and Ye Shall Receive" seems to be the order of the day. The AC in our bedroom is back to life, and at work our servers have gotten the Lazarus treatment as well. My husband swears that we can get the washer to work, we just have to nudge it along - it won't automatically move into the spin cycle. I wasn't planning to spend my weekend camped out by the washing machine, but if that's what it takes, that's what it takes.
On some level, I sympathize with my landlord's plight. We too are landlords, but there's a bit of ocean between us and our tenants, so a management company deals with the tenants most of the time. Our landlord lives downstairs, so he really can't hide from us when the next machine decides to give up the ghost. And everything on the island is expensive, I can't imagine how much it would cost to replace a washing machine here. Heck, if a bag of groceries is 50 bucks, picture the price tag on some durable goods. Eeeek.

Just a quick check-in with Baby: It is now One Month till "due date". My co-workers keep asking me, "When are you due?" and when I tell them, they furrow their brows and mumble something about how I'll be lucky to make it to Halloween. I look like I'm smuggling a beer keg. Earlier this week I kept waking up in the middle of the night with howling leg cramps. When I talked to my doctor yesterday (and yes, Mom, I asked about flu shots) she said she'd gone through the same thing. Usually there isn't much one can do about it but extra calcium can't hurt and it might help. "Extra calcium" is something my brain interprets as a code for "all the ice cream you can snarf down". But since I started chugging extra glasses of milk - and yes, indulging in the occasional scoop or two - I haven't had a night waking. I love going to a female OB.

It's been a stellar week at work, too. One of our security guys quit, and the server my division relies on to support all of its applications Went To Be With Elvis during the Alpha Geek Interregnum. So we have the old systems guy, who agreed to be hired back as a consultant until his replacement starts, coming in at an outrageous hourly rate - which i$ of cour$e the rea$on he left - to tell us that, yep, we need parts from the mainland in order to rebuild it better, stronger, faster. HQ FedExed us repair discs, which turned out to be the wrong ones. (Somebody please tell me why the IT guys back home even have "Migrating from NT4 to Windows 2000" discs in stock?!?!?)
So my division has been out of commission for three days now. I'm not a vindicitive sort, really, honestly, but somebody on the Help Desk had better get fired for a screwup of this magnitude.
New Alpha Geek starts in ten days. In the immortal words of Leonard Cohen, Alleluia.

C-I-L-L my lan'lord.** Our house, which my employer found and rented for us, is turning into the bane of my existence. Okay, we have a great view, many of the fixtures are new, and the location is very nice: 10 minutes' drive to the hospital, for when I go into labor, and only five minutes away from the mental health center, which is going to have to make room for me unless things improve radically. As if the ants weren't bad enough, we have discovered termites. Termites mean one thing: tent fumigation. Tent fumigation means moving out of the house for several days. And the exterminator says they can't schedule it until January.
So in three months, we get to move into a hotel or guest house, for an as-yet-unspecified period, with a two-year-old and a newborn. My Husband the International Telecommuter gets to either set up a new base of operations without his VOIP phone line, or take a few days' vacation under duress. Oh, and I'll still be on leave during that time, so he'll be cooped up with an infant and a stir-crazy mommy. If we're lucky, we can find someone to take the cat during that time.
But it's not just the insect world, oh no. Inanimate objects are also somehow synchronizing their efforts to antagonize us. First, the air conditioner in our bedroom broke down. I know, you're all looking at your calendars and seeing the word "October" up there. Yeah, me too. I'm more used to having snow up to my knees by this time of year, but here the temps are still in the muggy 80s. And when you're eight months pregnant, getting comfortable to fall asleep is hard enough without sweating through your sheets.
Then it was the water filter in the fridge. Then it was the oven. And now, our washing machine has broken down. So we can either schlep to the laundromat, wait for the laundry to crawl out of the hamper and into the bathtub on its own, or we can wash our clothes in a machine that won't spin all the soap and rinsewater out. Ugh.
The repairman who looked at the washer said it would be "a few days" to order the parts. Yeah. Our landlord said something similar about the AC...several weeks ago. We still have the box fan propping the window open.
Island Time: even Einstein and Stephen Hawking would go nuts trying to figure it out.


**Anyone who doesn't get the reference, Google "Eddie Murphy and Saturday Night Live". You know, back when it was actually funny, edgy, and worth staying up for.

I spoke too soon. Today, somebody at nursery took another chomp at my little girl's arm.
I really don't want to be labelled at school as Pain In The A$$ Over-Reacting Mom, but what is with these kids?
The teacher said, "Oh, she was very brave about it." Great. I'm sending her to you because you advertise as a day-care facility, not a friggin' Stoics Academy.
I'd rant a little bit more about where my thinking is on daycare for our Player to Be Named Later, but I didn't sleep very well last night, so I'm at high risk for logorrhea. Best to keep it short right now.

Good news from the Nursery, too. The biting trend among Gigi's peers looks to have run its course. I had a chat this afternoon with the school director, who said there have been no incidents for several weeks. Teacher also had high praise for Gigi's social skills, good nature, and all-around ray-of-sunshine-ness. She seems to be developmentally on target for someone who is about to turn two, so yay, we're happy. I'm always a little skittish about the subject of milestones, not because I'm a fanatic to ensure that Gigi is top of the class, but because she was born two weeks late and was very much on the wee side. But she's always progressed along her curves, according to the pediatrician, so as long as she keeps growing and learning, I'm not going to go into Manic Mommy Superachiever Overdrive.
Okay, enough with the Grandparents' Update, back to our regular blogging, already in progress.

Good news from the OB. My appointment Thursday went very well. I gained a pound in two weeks and my blood pressure is fine. But of course the real news is Baby, who is already as big as his big sister was when she was born. Player to Be Named Later is in the 72nd percentile for this gestational age, based on the sonogram readings from last week. Heartbeat was 155 beats per minute (Yo Dre, kick in the bass!) And kicking? Oh boy, I think this kid is going to come out and head straight to a Riverdance audition.
I'm going through another round of bloodwork to check my thyroid levels (since I've had issues with that gland since college, ugh) but otherwise, it's business as usual, back in two weeks.

I rarely engage in political commentary, but with the U.S. elections just around the corner and every wingnut aflutter, I must ask...
The Republicans have had control of the Executive and the legislature, and exerted tremendous influence over the judiciary for close to five years now. During this time, the U.S. has experienced the worst attack on its soil over 50 years; fewer people earn a living wage and/or have health insurance; both North Korea and Iran are gearing up to join the Nuke Club; a record surplus dissolved into record debt; over half a million Iraqis are dead in a badly destabilized neighborhood; and the guy behind the bombings of two Embassies, one naval vessel, a significant financial center and the national military headquarters is still at large.
These guys have had the reins for five years.
When are they going to stop blaming their problems on Bill Clinton?

I'm just saying, the view from the outside: Gigi's nursery school is not a model of government. Pick up your toys and play nice, set an example for the other kids.

Island Life, subsection: Road Rants. It took less than a month of owning this car for me to put some nice dents and scratches on it. (Parking garage, thankfully, not another car!) It's not that I'm unaccustomed to driving on this side of the road, it's just that I'm not used to roads and corners that are so freaking narrow. Seriously, I've been up and down streets that could barely fit my car on them, and I'm told they're two-way streets. Lance Armstrong couldn't get through there, and you're telling me there could be someone coming at me around the corner? Sheesh.
Oh, and I got my first parking ticket yesterday, while dropping Gigi off at nursery. Argh. There's 50 bucks I can't spend on groceries or bug spray.

The Vampire Chronicles, update: Gigi hasn't been bitten at school so far this month. Grandparents, you may relax. For now.
btw, when it comes to teeth of her own, Gigi has about four left to sprout. They're causing her considerable grumpiness, but at least she can say, "teeth ouchy" now, instead of leaving us to guess what's wrong.

Five years ago, I was in Hawaii. You see, Friday was Our Anniversary. Five years later, we have one adorable kid, another on the way, a house in suburbia with a monster mortgage, and after two freezing winters in Baltic Europe we get to spend the next three years living on an island which has never seen temperatures recorded below 44 degrees. So life is pretty good.
But you see, celebrating our nuptials seems to be fraught with hazards for us. Five years ago, I was in Hawaii - three days after the wedding. Why three days? Because the airlines wouldn't board us the morning after. The tickets were in my married name, and I hadn't brought the marriage certificate with us because hey, that's an important piece of paper, wouldn't want to lose that - so we gave it to our best man for safekeeping. It was less than a month after a particularly horrific episode that made the airlines very skittish about boarding *anyone*, so of course the bleary-eyed couple with new jewelry, tickets to Hawaii in the names of Mr and Mrs, and just shy of having rice falling out of our hair? We were clearly not bona fide honeymooners, we must have been up to no good, we must have wanted to hijack the plane to Cuba or something.
Today's adventure in Attempting to Celebrate Our Wedded Bliss was on a more modest scale. We both took the day off from work to catch a matinee movie while Gigi was at day care. We haven't been to the movies in three months, at least. No Clerks 2, no Wicker Man, no Snakes on a Plane, none of that for us, nosiree. But this weekend, The Departed came to our island. And it was our anniversary. So we had lunch at a little cafe in town, went to the even littler theatre, and settled into our seats for a few hours of escapism. The reviews had been good, I'm okay with giving my money to Martin Scorcese, and let's see how well Matt Damon's Southie accent has held up since Good Will Hunting.
Our story starts out well enough. Despite the size of the theatre and screen leaving you with the expectation that you're going to hear "Ladies and gentlemen,this is your captain speaking, today's cruising altitude should be..." it was a decent place. And the lady at the concession stand gave me free candy when she saw the size of my belly. And Jack Nicholson's character is as loathsome as he oughta be, and Leo D reminds us all that he really can act (forget the sinky boat thing, go see Baz Luhrmann's Romeo and Juliet. You're welcome.) And wow, it's a cool story and Martin Scorcese really is a brilliant director, and we're just at the denouement when blurWHIRRblurrrrr Hey, what's wrong with the picture? BLURRRRRwhirrrBlurwhirrrWhapWhapWhapWhap
I kid you not. Ten minutes shy of the end of the best movie I've seen so far this year, and the projector eats it. And they can't fix it in time for us to catch the end before picking up Gigi.
This being an island of under 100,000 full-time residents, we don't get too many movies in the theatre with a shelf life of over one week. Which means The Departed will likely live up to its name as of Thursday. So Hubby and I have three days left to either persuade the manager to hold this movie over so we can use our consolation freebie coupons without missing two workdays, or we wait several months until video.
One advantage Baltic Europe had over this place: instantaneous bootleg DVDs.
Happy Anniversary to us.

First, my apologies to all non-grandparent readers: It's time for another gratuitous installment of Cute Things Gigi Does. Believe it or not, this kid is going to be two years old in another couple of weeks. For the most part, she is still the sweet, good-natured, turbo-cute little darling we all know her to be (or, as I put it, "the kind of kid who tricks you into having more.") But the twos are sneaking in there. In between minor outbursts, though, she sings Twinkle Twinkle Little Star, the alphabet song, and crawls on Daddy's lap to demand his reenactment of the Wheels on the Bus Going Round and Round. When we drive past my workplace to take her to school, she recognizes the building and shouts, "Mommy Office!!!" She can say "please" and "thank you" with minimal prompting, and shouts, "Go [Mommy's baseball team]!" any time she sees someone on TV wearing a number and breaking a sweat.
I could go on and on, but I don't know how many of you keep insulin shots handy.

Doctor Updates: New ultrasound exam last week shows that we are 95% certainly expecting a bouncing baby boy. Daddy says don't go crazy with the blue shopping, we'll only know for certain on B-day. (This is life with a Red Sox fan, people.) The exam also estimated Baby's weight at 5 lbs 7 oz - just one ounce shy of what Gigi was when she was born (two weeks late...it's in the archives...) Based on the calendar, I'm supposed to be at 33 weeks, but based on the measurements done during the ultrasound, the tech calculated 35 weeks. Huh?
You see, I'm counting on this kid to be reasonably close to the November 20 due date. I'm stopping work as of the 10th; my mom arrives on the 13th; kiddo can show up anytime after that, I figure. Well, the sonogram tech said, "November 9." NOT FUNNY. Of course, if Big Sis was two weeks late...
Ah, forget it. We all know that the concept of due date is severely fungible. As long as my water doesn't break at the office, I'll be cool.
I see the doc again this Thursday. We'll probably talk about my weight, and I will complain about the sciatica that has developed in the past week. There's nothing like shooting pains in your hip when you're already moving like Jabba the Hutt. Ugh!

More biting at school. My girl has now been bitten three times, and not always by the same offender. I'm trying very hard to be reasonable about this. So far, no broken skin, but the latest one left a mark for over 24 hours.
Trying very, very hard...

In today's edition of Really Great News: Gigi is going to have another cousin! My other brother Darrell and his wife, parents of The Nephew on My Side of the Family, announced to us yesterday that they are gearing up for their second. Part of me wants to cry Copycats, and the rest of me is saying the more the merrier, bring 'em on.
Okay, there is a very minor insignificant downside to this: one more birthday to keep track of. I admittedly stink at tracking birthdays. It's on my list of Things To Do When I Have Control of My Life: make one of those perpetual birthday calendars so I don't neglect friends and family on major events. I actually did make one at one point, but then lost it in the move to Europe four years ago. I keep hoping it will turn up so I don't have to start over from scratch, but...
Yeah, I know: LAME.
But I'm going to be an auntie again! Whoo hoo!!!

Network issues. I actually composed that last post sometime last week, but for some reason Precious didn't feel like talking to the rest of the house. It's all better now, and we even have more computers set up (YAY STUFF!!!) so I'm never at a loss for blogging access and space. Time, oh boy, that's another story.

Status Report: My blood test results were quite satisfactory. The Glucose Tolerance was normal, so I don't have to go through the 12" extended dance mix version, hallelujah. My thyroid, a perpetual issue, is within normal ranges.
Okay, so I'm anemic. That didn't really come as a shock to me, considering that I've been walking around like death microwaved for several weeks now. So the doctor recommended some nice cheap iron supplements that seem to be bringing me back to life. But let's face it, I'm two months away from Due Date, I'm working full-time outside the home, wrangling a nearly-two-year-old, and unpacking from an international move. I'm entitled to be just a bit groggy.
But at least my boss is a good family person who doesn't think that 12 hour days are the norm. Longtime PS readers will recall that my last contract involved a supervisor who had no life outside of work and did not comprehend those who did. (Many of those posts were removed from the archive on advice of counsel, who still wants me to shut this thing down. Sorry, Dad, ain't gonna happen.) Anyway, as I was saying, this boss doesn't expect people to prove their worth by the amount of time spent at their desks. Praise Buddha, I think I might actually get along with this team.

Some people are seeing good news in this headline. I see it as one more way that women get screwed by getting on the Mommy Track: nine months - or longer, if you're nursing - of compulsory teetotalling.
Mind you, I got this link from a friend who I spent a week in France with during Month Five of Waiting for Gigi. And if you think I spent all that time in Paris, having three-hour, thousand-dollar lunches for four without wine, you're nuts. And Gigi is just fine, thank you very much. The only reason I'm drinking less during this pregnancy is that hubby is on a very successful low-carb diet, and ice cream is more socially acceptable for me than wine or margaritas.

Oh, the humanity! The first major casualty of unpacking has occured. The moving company guy said, "I picked it up and the pot just slid right out." Um, maybe you should have picked up the carafe separately from the coffeemaker, guy. Thanks to my own klutziness at home several months ago, when I whacked the little coffeemaker's carafe into the fridge, I now have a grand total of two drip coffeemakers with no pots.
Well, at least the frothing pitcher for the cappucino maker is stainless steel. Whimper.

Working Mom Conundrum du Jour: What do you do when another kid bites your kid at daycare?
Lucky us, the little creep didn't break skin, but Gigi had to spend some time with ice on her hand, and when I came to pick her up there were still tooth marks visible. The ladies at daycare handled it pretty well, I think: they told me up front what had happened, how they treated Gigi, and what consequences the offender faced for the rest of the day. I felt somewhat reassured. But am I being too calm about this?
After all, at the place Gigi went when we were still on the mainland, they had a "three strikes and you're out" policy for biters. Here, they tell me, they spoke to the parents about it, and Mommy and Daddy Dracula say that yes, he has a problem at home too and they're working on it. Very well, but can he play on the other side of the room from Gigi until you get some results?
Okay, I know: toddlers can play rough. Some of them bite. Even Gigi has attempted to take a chomp out of me and Daddy on occasion when the teething is getting to her. It's a phase, kids go through it and get on with life.
So am I being a cool, reasonable person; or, am I risking a ticket from the Bad Mommy Police because I didn't rise up righteous and take out a restraining order on Gigi's classmate?
In the immortal words of N.W.A.: [very very bad word] Tha Police. I'm sticking with cool and reasonable. Until Gigi shows up with another set of Baby Marv Albert's impressions.

STUUUUUFFFFFF!!!!
Oh frabjous day, callou, callay, I chortle in my joy.
Our stuff has been delivered (which is, in part, why I have been off-line for a week). That's the good news. The bad news is that NOW we look like we got hit by a hurricane. Boxes, boxes, everywhere. The movers unpacked a lot, which is nice, but we seem to be running out of places to put things. Or I seem to run out of energy after unloading two boxes. I occasionally stop to catch my breath, and ask myself, "How the heck did I pull this off last time I moved house in my third trimester?" The answer comes back, a resounding "MOM." Oh yeah. And since today is her birthday, this post is a shout-out to her.
My husband, who shares a birthday with my mom (proof positive that astrology is a heap of crap!), suggested that we stop unpacking so that Mom would have something to do when she comes to visit. It wouldn't be a bad idea, except that Mom isn't coming here until November. The only thing worse than living without your stuff is living up to your keister in boxes of your stuff. No way.

So that stuff of ours that was supposed to arrive last Sunday? The good news is that it arrived. The bad news is that it hasn't been delivered yet. The trucking company is booked up till Wednesday, assuming that their operations aren't hampered by some seriously yucky weather heading our way in the next few days. So we may be facing a threat of cabin fever, unless we can score a deck of cards in the next 24 hours.
Again: I know, I have a limited right to complain, considering that I live on a very nice island in a very safe house (albeit inundated with ants). But I am facing the prospect of a weekend indoors with a teething toddler, brown- and blackouts, and mucho canned goods. Oh, and a rabid football fan who may not be able to watch his games on opening weekend.
I wonder if it's too late to evacuate.

First not-quite-crisis at work: Our lone IT guy gave his two weeks' notice. When he's gone, I'm alpha geek. Oh crap. Let's hope that a replacement rides in on a white horse FAST.

If Samuel L. Jackson lived here, his neighbors would know him instantly, because they'd constantly hear, "Enough is ENOUGH! I have had it with these [very bad word] ANTS in this [very bad word] house!!!"
As it is, even Stevie Wonder wouldn't mistake me for Sam Jackson, but a similar outburst regarding the local wildlife is constantly on the tip of my tongue. The only thing that holds me back is the presence of a toddler who is an increasingly precocious mimic.
The tree frogs aren't so bad; they're really only out after sundown. They are heard more than seen, which means that sleeping with the windows open isn't really an option.
But the ants, oh the [very bad word] ants.
Islanders will tell you that it's actually not a hygiene issue: they come in whether your home is immaculate or slovenly. No, oddly enough, it's all about water: when it's too dry, they come inside looking for it; when it's too wet, they come in to get away from it. Today, in the middle of a three-day weekend, we're having nice steady showers all day. So the half of my paycheck that isn't going to day care is going towards bug spray.
It's not that they're big nasty destructive beasts. It's just that they are omnipresent. And persistent. I'm going to go all Mad-Eye Moody and start bellowing about "Constant Vigilance!!!" storming around the house with a can of bug spray and towels, shooing my daughter away from spots I've just treated and looking for the next vulnerability.
I realize that people in big sweaty cities with roaches the size of circus ponies are not going to feel sorry for me. And in the grand scheme of things, I am a ridiculously fortunate person. But even the most hardcore Buddhist monk would, after a week in this place, start roaming the house with a can of Raid swearing that if it's got more than four legs and ain't paying rent, it's [very bad word] toast.

In theory, our stuff arrives today. That is, the boat that is supposedly carrying our household effects from the mainland is supposed to arrive today. (In keeping with the Ineffable One's well-documented sense of humor, once again we get a shipment in the middle of a holiday weekend...) So on Tuesday we'll find out whether our stuff is truly here, and if so, when will it actually be delivered to our home.
The last time I went through this (i.e., having to deal with unpacking a household of stuff while in my last trimester) two years ago, I was fortunate in two things: one, I was on leave, so I wasn't expected to function at the office after a marathon session of Finding Places For Stuff; two, I wasn't wrangling a toddler at the same time.
So if you check back here in another week and I haven't updated, please don't assume I've fallen off the planet; chances are I'll just be in another one of my periodic comas.

A few notes on Island Life, for those of you who may be wondering what else I do with my time besides going to the office, teaching my daughter not to eat puzzle pieces, and whining about when the rest of our stuff is going to get here...
Everything here is ridiculously expensive. The company gives us a cost-of-living adjustment to my paycheck, but let's put this in perspective: pretty much everything has to be imported. Hence, a bag of potato chips: over six bucks (U.S.) You would think seafood wouldn't be too much - not the lobsters from New England, but the local stuff, right? Wrong. Think about it: you want to run a fishing boat, you need fuel. Double your overhead costs right there.
My scariest encounter yet was at the grocery store, where I did a double-take at a prominently advertised "SPECIAL!" At first glance, I thought the sign said 2/$5.99. Hmmm, pretty good price, eh? I looked closer, and there was a carton of ice cream, some foofy European brand, two liters, for...$25.99.
Are you people kidding me? 26 bucks for a carton of ice cream?!?!?
I mean, speaking as a pregnant woman who, if she has a boy, would be well suited to name her kid Ben or Jerry, even I have limits on what I'm willing to spend on ice cream.
At that price, I wouldn't know whether to eat it or put it in my friggin' gas tank.

Two bits of goodness today: first, the dreaded Glucose Tolerance Test is over, and wasn't nearly so bad as my previous run-in; second, we got our car!!!!!!
My first GTT, back in the Baltics, was a miserable, several-hour ordeal which involved me puking up a bunch of the stuff I'd been attempting to choke down. Seriously, when I gagged on the liquid form, they just gave me the bag of powder to eat. It felt like half a kilo. I looked like Al Pacino's stunt double from Scarface.
This time around, they gave me what looked like a small pop bottle, said I had five minutes to drink it, and they'd draw my blood in an hour. So I glugged down this stuff, which had the look and feel of slightly flat complimentary airline orange soda, and waited. I know, sounds kind of harmless, but imagine chugging a 12-oz bottle of Jolt cola on an empty stomach, and then not being allowed to eat or drink anything else but water for the next 60 minutes.
So I was a bit nauseated, and bored, and slightly light-headed, but on the whole I prefer the Island version of this test.
The car! The car! We got our car today. It's a Mazda 3 hatchback and it's a shade of blue that doesn't quite match what we expected. But it runs, it has carseat latches (which many models sold here don't have, oddly enough), the A/C works, and it's ours. Yippee! No more driving the company car (and being paranoid about denting or scratching or failing to fully account for every meter driven). This weekend, we'll probably take it to the beach.

Today was my first visit to my new island OB/GYN. Baby's heartbeat is steady in the 140s, my weight is fine, and overall things look pretty good at 27 weeks. Deep sigh of relief.
The bad news is that next week I have to have a Glucose Tolerance Test. Longtime PS readers will recall (and the rest of you can look in up in the 2004 archives) that my first experience with one of these things, back in the Baltics, was less than pleasant. It was several hours long, involved attempting to ingest what felt like a kilo of pure glucose powder, and felt much like a sleep deprivation experiment conducted by refugees from Buffy the Vampire Slayer.
My new OB, bless her heart, took it very well when I groaned about the prospect of another GTT. She also described the regimen I would face here: drink 50 g of glucose solution, then have a quick blood test after one hour. That's it. The contrast is tremendous: like the difference between visiting your pre-Renaissance barber and seeing Marcus Welby, MD. So I'm still not thrilled about having this test, but at least I'm dreading it a lot less.

It Came To Me...My One, My Only...My Preciousssss. Stuff has arrived! Not all of it, but some of it. We are officially no longer living out of suitcases. And I have my new toy back in my hands, at last at last at last. I've been using my husband's work computer sporadically; however, that means I need to find a time when he's not using it (and with fantasy baseball in full swing and fantasy football just around the corner, good luck with that). What also happens is that he'll walk away from it but I won't notice or get to it in time before it locks up. But this is no longer a problem because this little baby is mine mine mine mine mine.
Of course, I still have to find time. Tonight is my husband's bridge night. Far from begrudging him this Boys Night Out, I am happy that he has a chance to get out twice a week and socialize (to the extent that semi-pro bridge players have social skills...) since he's working from home five days a week. All work and no play -- and Red Sox losing to the Yankees 12-4 this afternoon -- makes Jack a dull and grumpy boy.
So after dropping him off at the club, getting the child bathed, snacked, toothbrushed, read to and put to bed, doing the dinner dishes, sweeping up the dead roach in the sunroom, picking up toys, putting away laundry, scooping the catbox, doing two crossword puzzles, and booting up the laptop, I find myself getting to Blogger somewhere after 10:30. My goal these days is to be under the covers by then. Rats.
Well, if I'm using the laptop in bed, I can technically meet my goal... Besides, tomorrow I can sleep in a little - assuming Gigi decides to sleep through the night, which she's had trouble with lately. There are a few teeth still fighting their way out, and when she's teething, she gets clingy. Seriously, her new pet name is Mommy's Little Barnacle.
She has one week left of "day camp," then a week at home before the term starts at her new day care/nursery after Labor Day. She's gotten back into the swing of day care all right: she's getting accustomed to the idea that Mommy takes her someplace where she gets to play with different toys all day; then Mommy comes to get her and we go home to Daddy, who is Still Working; so Mommy makes a little snack and we play together until Daddy makes dinner. Either that or we come home to Daddy, who is Still Working, and Mommy passes out on the couch while Gigi turns the living room upside down and brings Daddy toys to share. The latter is a little more common as we approach Month Seven of this pregnancy.
But hey, it's a routine, right? And little ones thrive on routine, right?
Yeah, it's past my bedtime. More updates on Getting To Know Our New Island Home, on our next episode of Purple Scare. Good night, y'all.