Twitter is down, so I guess I have to blog for real, ha ha.

My husband, a.k.a. Captain Ketosis, keeps finding interesting things to do with low-carb ingredients. Tonight's invention by necessity was a mock Brandy Alexander, with melted low-carb ice cream. (The ice cream was melting, I don't know, I don't ask questions.) And if someone out there wants to point out what the actual carb count of cognac, do me a favor and DON'T tell me. It won't make me any happier or more sober.

Oyez, oyez, oyez: Take note of lawyers in Washington DC collectively doing something decent.

I'll let someone else remark on the ABA President's statement that "President Musharraf sought to justify his actions by citing the threat of terrorism. But shutting down a nation’s lawful institutions of justice will hurt, not help, the fight against terrorism."

Ahem, FISA, cough, cough. Patriot Act, herm, ahem, cough.

The bike is BAAAAACK!!! The cops called two weeks ago and said they'd found my bike in a church parking lot about five klicks from our house. I tried very hard to sound very cool, but inside was squealing with glee like a five-year-old at Disneyland.
When I got to the police impound lot, I was horrified to see how many remains of stolen bikes there were there. The island is not that freaking big, how many people have bikes? And how many thieving scumbags are on the loose?
So the cops had to keep my baby overnight to do their low-rent CSI routine. The culprits took the seat (whiskey tango foxtrot?) as well as my helmet, cargo box, and rain gear. Oh, and they siphoned out all the gas.
Next steps: Wait another two weeks for repair shops on Island Time. Shop delivers restored bike. Discover keys in bike sitting in driveway. Call up shop and ask them whether they realize that the bike had come their way because it had been stolen out of my driveway.
I have a new cargo box, helmet, and two kryptonite locks. Watch out, world.

Contents of my glass recycling bag, all carefully sorted and washed: one dozen baby food jars, a wine bottle, and a bottle of Jose Cuervo margarita mix.

Hey, the baby food jars outnumber everything else, so no Britney jokes.

OMG Cool New WebToy! The only drawback is that most of the people I owe beers to are probably not Twittering. The fact that I live on an island hundreds of miles away from them also makes redemption difficult.

But dude, on-line karma tracking. This is so much cooler than Blackberrying. And in terms of usefulness to the human race, an order of magnitude more worthwhile.

Ready Or Not: This morning, I hugged my girl and said "Happy Birthday Gigi! You're three years old today!"

She smiled and asked, "Whyyyy?"

Oh yeah. She's three all right.

What am I supposed to do now, with no baseball to watch?

Oh yeah. Blog. Read books. Visit friends on-line. Talk to spouse about contents of lunch bags and diapers. I have a cat somewhere around here too.

And gloat gloat gloat gloat GLOATY GLOATY GLOAT about the Red Sox. Whoo hoo!

Since I spent yesterday in town I didn't get to post: "Happy Thanksgiving, eh!"

I was joking with my co-worker from Vancouver that it should just be called Copycat Day.

For those who have not been tracking my Twittering, I repeat: Some jerk stole my motorbike. Bike, helmet, rain gear and cargo box all gone gone gone. I am furious.

I can hear my mother whooping with joy across four time zones. Don't rub it in.

Insurance says they'll probably take about three weeks to cough up.

Here's what I love about the travelers' support biz: the constant exposure to the extraordinary capacity of your fellow human beings to astound and delight with STOOOOOPID questions. Today's feature: "I need more pages in my [nationality] passport. Do I actually have to send them the passport for the Embassy to put extra pages in it?"

Um, yeah. Seriously, in post-9/11, encoded-with-your-freakin'-DNA, GPS-linked passport controls, they'll just send you a little insert you can staple in at home.

Actually, Scotty will just beam the new pages in while you sleep.

If that doesn't work, just nick some copier paper out of the machine at work, and use some rubber cement to glue that to the outside cover. Just don't inhale too many of the fumes.

I have said before that I tend to refrain from politics on the blog. This is in part due to my desire to maintain anonymity. But every now and then I come across something worth commenting on, as most of my regular readers are in the USA. So here goes:

I am one of the lucky ones. I have a white-collar job with a big employer in a reasonably modern industry. I had at least ten years under my belt when I got pregnant the first time, and I decided that I wanted a year off. It was unpaid, but I needed the sabbatical more than I needed the paycheck, at least for twelve months. I got to nurse my daughter for about a year. Closing in on three years old, she is happy and healthy and a blessing on two feet.

When I got pregnant the second time around, I knew I wouldn't be able to take off another year. I also knew that I wanted to breastfeed the second baby for as long as possible. I have enough seniority that I have my own office with a door I can close; I also have that rarest of all commodities: a supportive, family-friendly boss. I don't know how I could have coped with having two kids under the age of three if I had been told I had to pump in the bathroom (would you want to feed your kids in the WC, even if it was reasonably clean?), or if they'd said, "Hey, you want to keep nursing after your twelve weeks of unpaid leave, just stay home."

So I went back to work, closed my door twice a day when possible, and kept the Mommy Juice flowing. My son is now ten months old, happy and healthy and a blessing on four scooting little appendages. He still nurses twice a day when we can manage it, though if he keeps testing his teeth on me I might have to reconsider.

But Thank The Maker, I had the choice and I have the choice. Millions of other women are not as fortunate. This is for them. Read more about it here. Don't think of it as politics. Think of it as investing in the future.

You know deep in your soul that you are getting old when you get excited about the fact that you can buy your anti-nausea Drug of Choice over the counter in your adoptive homeland.

Okay, seriously. Ten years ago, when I lived Down Under, I found that you could get Tylenol with Codeine over the counter - you had to ask for it, but you didn't need a scrip. I bought a pack for my big brother, who had TMJ and accompanying epic headaches. In my first and only brush with flouting Customs regs, I slapped a form on the box Declaring that I was sending "non-prescription cold relief" across international boundaries. Got away with it, too. (Statute of limitations, anyone?)

The fact that I even have a favorite anti-nausea medication is enough to, well, make me sick. Fortunately, I can now self-medicate this condition at whim.

It's official! The Boy has a new nickname: Chipper. As in, "you've kept us up howling like a lunatic for the last two hours, you refuse to accept any kind of soothing for your teething pain, and you just passed out for five minutes and woke up chattering and smiling.
"So why are you so $*&!ing Chipper?"

My little girl was sitting across the table, picking at the buttered noodles that I had chopped up for her dinner. "Tummyache food" I called it. She wanted yogurt, she wanted chocolate, she wanted all kinds of stuff that I wasn't going to give her after the day's events. Between her and her baby brother, in the last twelve hours, I had been puked on, punched, kicked, pulled on, headbutted, clung to, drunk from, kept awake, garroted, smacked, and cried on. I was and am physically, mentally, and emotionally exhausted. So I wasn't in the mood for debate on meal choices.

Gigi: "Mommy?"

Me : "Yes, sweetheart?"

Gigi: "I'm your best friend."

Gut bombs all weekend. The Boy came home with something Friday, and he and I spent lots of time sick on Saturday. I will spare you details; let it suffice to say that my gastrointestinal tract conducted some really vigorous seasonal cleaning.
Sunday we appeared to be in the clear.
This morning, at somewhere around four o'clock, my daughter came down the hall, climbed into bed with me, and puked. She is soooo ready for college.
So far my husband has avoided the worst of it. He had a bit of a tummyache and felt a little woozy, but a nap and a few doses of Pepto-Bismol seem to have him sorted out.
I don't know what my husband's stomach is made of, but I suspect that if you sold it to North Korea, an international politico-military crisis would ensue.

Happy New Year! Party like it's 5799.

Cognitive Dissonance: Twice in two nights now I have heard Jim Lehrer use the expression "the straight skinny." It borders on the surreal. I would just as soon expect my father to drink malt liquor from from the bottle, or my grandmother to describe something as "the shiznit".
If he does it a third time, I'm calling the station.

Just realized something: I have been blogging, either solo or part of a team, for over five years now. Two thoughts: I am getting old fast; and hee hee hee hee I ain't been caught yet. Militant anonymity has its advantages.

The day before my mother left, my son figured out how to climb the stairs. This tells me two things. First, the boy knows his audience. Second, we are sooooo screwed.

Finally finished Jonathan Strange and Mr. Norrell. It involved putting both kids to bed by 8:15 and staying up past midnight, but I made it through the last 200 pages, over a month after first cracking the book open. It was worth it.
I have an entire bookcase of unread goodies waiting for me. Nevertheless my family continue to give me books - and in some cases, big dense ones - because they know of my propensity to have two or three going at any given time, and they know that I will in fact read them. Now the only question that remains is what comes into the rotation, in between the rest of the Mayflower history and the Looming Tower (too depressing to read this week). I'm thinking something paperback, fiction, and frivolous.

The Boy's second tooth has come in. Ow.
He spent the day at home today, having come down with a fever and the pukes last night. He's now back to normal, thank the Maker.
Tomorrow is Mom's last full day on the Island, barring freakish weather or a nervous breakdown (note that I won't say whose...) Whimper whimper whimper.

My mom is visiting, which means that furniture keeps getting moved around the house. If there is such a thing as a living poltergeist, she is it.
"Halley" has a cough and a fever. "Gigi" is back at school this week, after ten days off (the motivator for Mom's visit). My dear husband is watching the Red Sox and debating politics on a sports blog, and I am wondering what happened to the acres of free time I was supposed to have while Mom was here.
She goes home on Saturday. I'm already scheming to get her back.

This is the photo for my Blogger profile, from my time in Baltic Europe.

In over ten years of working with the traveling public, I have learned a few things. For example, there are two types of people who lose their passports: Americans, and everyone else.

Okay, not really. But there are two types: the kind who wait at least 24 hours before reporting their passports lost or stolen - which usually adds up to six hours before they want to go to the airport; and the kind who call up FRANTIC the minute they realize they can't find The Precious - which usually means they will be in a frenzy until their replacements can be secured. Then they will recover the old ones.

Halley Update: He is nine months old today. He crawls and can pull himself up to a standing position. This is one of his favorite pastimes. His hair is the color of Gold from the Crayola "Big Box" of 64 colors, and his eyes are like mahogany. He babbles with great enthusiasm. He has one tooth that has properly broken the surface of his lower gums, like Sgt. Snorkel.
He weighs 17 pounds and is 27 and a quarter inches long (fifth percentile and about 25th, respectively). He eats all sorts of pureed stuff and has little to no interest in Cheerios. He also likes watching Dora and Diego with his big sister - heaven help me.
Oh, and he is just about the cutest thing imaginable. I have several corroborating sources. Trust me.

Ooops, I read it again. I picked up HP7 again. I've also been plugging away at Jonathan Strange and Mr. Norrell, which I started a month ago. Then two nights ago I watched The Prestige, which has insinuated itself into my dreams, mingling with Potter. I woke up the other morning thinking I had just watched the most horribly lame HP movie ever.
And my husband, bless his heart, is reading The Mists of Avalon (one of my favorite books of all time).
So all of this is to say that I am English-magicked-out at the moment.
As an antidote, I periodically pick up the Mayflower history that my brother sent me for my birthday. It's a paperback, conveniently sized for reading while nursing a wriggly baby. All the other books mentioned above are in hardcover and none is under 600 pages.
I'm also working my butt off at the office - it's high season for tourism, and the Island is abuzz with all sorts of traffic. And all my Islander colleagues ask the same question, "Why call it 'Tourist Season' if we're not allowed to shoot them?"

Still recovering from HP7, which I devoured within the first 24 hours of purchase. I pretty much read from 8 p.m. to 4 a.m. straight. I am in awe of those who have the discipline to put it down between chapters.
I don't think I'm letting out any spoilers when I say that I found the outcome satisfactory. But dang, Ms. Rowling, that is one wicked gangsta body count.

Not Ready For Prime Time. My husband had a stunned-bunny look on his face the other day. "You should know," he said in a very calmly modulated voice, "that our daughter has told me that she has to be married soon."

Bear in mind that Daddy would sooner give Matsuzaka away to the Yankees for free than admit that someday his daughter might go on a date. The notion of her getting married is simply too awful to imagine.

Then our little girl came up to me and announced, "Mommy, I have to be married soon." At first I thought I'd woken up on the wrong side of the 15th Century. Then I asked her who she planned to marry. She had to think about that for a minute, then she said, "Swiper."

So my two-year-old plans to marry an animated kleptomaniac fox. I can handle that.

Oh, by the way, "Halley" has started scoot-crawling. He can sit up unassisted too. And he giggles like the goat in the AFLAC commercials.

Waiting, waiting, waiting... Once it became clear that I would not see HP&tDH for several days, I picked up my paperback of Book One for a fix. It helps, but it also reminds me that I'm jonesing for a children's book. So to bide my time, and remind me that I'm a grownup, I've picked up the copy of Jonathan Strange and Mr. Norrell my sister-in-law gave me. I am blessed with abundantly cool sisters-in-law.

Deep down I know I did the right thing, establishing domestic tranquility and all that on Friday evening. But I really really really wanted to go downtown, get that ruddy book, and Twitter or phone my peeps back home with "Chapter One..., neener neener." I would have stayed up all night reading and been a wreck the next day.

Now you know that you're getting old when staying up all night and being a useless pile of junk the next day involves reading a book rather than ingesting recreational chemicals.

ARRRRGGGGGGH!!!!!
The four most miserable words in the English language are "SOLD OUT - Pre-Orders Only".

Okay, seriously. I am a reasonable person. I know that there are hundreds of millions of people on this earth in more dire conditions than this. And I complain about closet mildew and the water running out and insects the size of Shetland ponies, but I tell myself that these are blessings compared to the life I could be living.

Then this happens.

I could have had one of these books several hours before the rest of my family. The Island's closest-thing-to-a-metropolis had a street fair launch party, kicking off at midnight London time (i.e. while it's still daylight here Friday night). I wanted to go. But nooooooooooooooooo, I decided I was going to act my age.

I stayed at home, put the kids to bed, cleaned the kitchen, did a load of laundry, took the box fan apart to scrub and soak the mildew off of it, and got a good night's sleep. The next morning, I dropped off a donation at the hospital board's charity shop (is this not good karma, I ask you?!?!?) and went to my morning appointment.

And when I got downtown at 11 a.m. Saturday morning, every book that wasn't spoken for was sold. Gone. Nada. Zilch. Niente. Bupkes.

Who runs the bookstores on this lump of rock anyway?

I even saw people on the street walking around with their copies, and only refrained from jumping them because they had the kids with them.

So I suppose I can only blame myself for not having the presence of mind to pre-order the thing, for expecting that there would be copies aplenty of the most anticipated book of the year, and not adapting my mindset sufficiently to Island Mode.

And I should get a grip on myself, because it is just a book - and one written for people one-third my age - and I will get a copy eventually.

But I am compelled to maintain my media blackout for at least another week. And the last two e-mails that my mom sent me had "Harry Potter" in the title, so I don't dare click on them. (Sorry Mom, better call me if it's important.)

And I repeat, anyone who spoils this book for me meets a nasty fate: I will lock you in the water tank under my house. You will either drown, die of thirst, or be devoured by something with six legs and no conscience. All are warned.

Echoing my Big Brother here: I am jumping on the Hogwarts Express tomorrow, come hell or high water or horcruxes. I am entering a media blackout for the next 72 hours. Anyone who even dreams about putting a spoiler in my path had better wake up and apologize. Then they'd best run for cover before I open a can of Sectumsempra on their sorry behinds.

I fully realize that I should know better. I am closer to 40 than to 30. But deep down, (again, borrowing my bro's words) I am just two thirteen-year-olds and a twelve-year-old.

Even the mediocrity of Movie Five can not kill the buzz of giddy anticipation. See you all at the Burrow.

Happy Birthday to Me! I took the afternoon off work yesterday to take in a matinee of the new Harry Potter movie, because I am not really almost 40, I'm two thirteen-year-olds and a twelve-year-old.
This is the theatre where we went to see "The Departed" last fall, and the film broke about ten minutes before the end. So this place is just full of bad karma, but when there are four theatres on the entire island you can't be picky.
So of course it makes perfect sense that my skiving buzz got killed when we went to pick up Gigi from school, and her teacher said, "We've been trying to call you since 3:00; she has a fever, we've sent four other kids home today with temperatures."
None of this surprises me, of course, because the last time I swore I was taking a "mental health" day off, both kids got sick. I suppose this time the only reason Halley got off lucky was that I spent the first half of the day at work.

How did I spend July 4th? Eating red meat and watching a Spielberg flick about robots beating the crap out of each other. Sounds appropriate enough...

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.