Edgar and I went to see Inception this weekend.
Well done, movie, well done.
It's time
Wow, there I go again, totally not updating my blog regularly as I should be. Not cool, Amanda, not cool.
Life over the past month has just been relatively relaxing and I've been trying not to test the system or muddy the waters or whatever...I like this peace and I would like for it to stay that way for as long as possible before my world explodes into things like labor and a pooping baby and the mangling of nipples in October. NIPPLES. I said it.
The clouds sort of feel like they've been lifted since I no longer have the threat of "My dad is dying from cancer" hanging over my head. It's been replaced with other worries about him, but those worries regarding his recovery seem much smaller now that, you know, he doesn't have a huge fucking tumor growing on his liver anymore. He has been readmitted to the hospital due to some fluid build-up and a persistent lack of appetite that's resulted in him losing a whole lot of weight and a whole lot of muscle mass, but his surgeon has him on a plan for physical rehabilitation (in-patient if his insurance company approves it, at home if not). Recovery from a surgery like the one he had takes months, many months, and now it's just a waiting game to see when he'll turn that corner. But I (and I'm pretty sure he feels the same way) would much rather wait for that corner instead of the drop off the edge of a cliff that we were waiting and fearing before.
Add to that the fact that the June Fucking Gloom is FINALLY gone and life doesn't seem so dark and disturbing.
Plus, Edgar and I made our baby registries this weekend at Target and Babies R Us, and who doesn't love a good registry? There's something about the power of that scanner gun and finding all of the stuff that you need and going "Oooooooooooh, look at this!" and "Awwwwwww, oh my god we have to get him this!" that just makes you melt inside. That melting feeling is good when you need to take the edge off the fact that you just spent over $350 in one shot on baby clothes (but you saved over $120 with the sale that was going on, so that makes it ok, right? Right? RIGHT?). I'm going to look at it this way....the child needs clothes. It's money that had to be spent. And this way we can register for the other essential stuff that we need and don't have to tell people, "Ok, now I need 6 month clothes, buy 6 months clothes. NO! No more 3 month clothes, I don't need 3 month clothes!"
Now the only trick is just getting people to buy off of the registries. I REALLY hate when you make a registry and people don't buy off of it or give you a gift card. The point of the registry is to say "This is what I need/want." It's not to say "Please don't buy me these things and instead buy me what you think I need/want, even though I know better. And also, please definitely don't include a gift receipt so that I have to look like an ungrateful asshole when I ask for it or else suffer in silence because I'm too embarrassed to do so." When we got married, Edgar and I took the time to make two different gift registries. Most people stuck to them; they either bought off the registry or sent us gift cards or money. But some random aunt of Edgar's went out and bought us this ludicrous centerpiece flower/candle combo thing WHICH WE WILL NEVER USE and didn't even give us a receipt to go along with it. I appreciate the gesture of giving a gift, and I don't mean to sound selfish, but COME ON. Come freakin' on. These registries are made for a reason. My mother-in-law doesn't understand my persistence on this point; when I was talking to her the other day regarding my baby shower, I made the point to tell her when she sends out the invitations to include the little inserts that say where I'm registered, and that if her friends ask her for suggestions on what to buy that she tells them to buy off of the registry. And she's all "Well, but....well, if they want to buy something else they should!" and I'm all "No. No. RE-GIS-TRY. Registry. We made them for a point, we are giving a clear guide of what we need. People do not need to waste their money buying something that we don't need or want, because they won't even have the courtesy to give us a receipt. REGISTRY."
I still don't think she gets it. And maybe it makes me sound selfish. But if I'm going to a wedding or going to a baby shower, I would NEVER buy something that the bride/groom or mommy-to-be/daddy-to-be didn't register for. I would buy them a gift off the registry, or get them a gift card to one of the stores that they registered at, or just give them a check or cash. I would NEVER be like "Well, I think I know better than you what you want and/or need so I'm going to ignore the very nice and helpful list that you spent the time creating and get you something totally off-base."
I think it's partially a generational thing as well, because I think that's how most of the people in my age group feel. No offense to anyone in the world intended, but I think that it's mainly the older generation that just doesn't get it or refuses to get it. IF YOU THINK YOU'RE YOUNG ENOUGH TO HAVE A FACEBOOK ACCOUNT, YOU'RE YOUNG ENOUGH TO FIGURE OUT HOW TO BUY OFF A REGISTRY.
Whew, that rant came out of nowhere.
Moving on. Moving riiiiiight along. Back to what I was talking about before. Oh yes, relaxation.
Right now is the calm before the storm at my job.....the summer months are slow leading up to when August 1st hits and all hell breaks loose, so I'm really trying to enjoy the pace that I'm at right now before everything goes crazy again. Couple that with the fact that I'm officially in my third trimester (HOLY GOD, I'M HAVING A BABY) and that my body is about to turn on me and I'm treasuring these moments while I still have them.
I'm perpetually tired all the time, so I'm taking that as a sign that nature is preparing me for the fact that after October I will not be getting a good night's sleep for, oh, say, EIGHTEEN YEARS. My belly has also officially protruded enough that it is becoming difficult for me to move in some of the ways I used to. And I miss my old center of gravity. I don't think I have a new one yet, so I'm just kind of wobbling and wavering out here. Plus, the only way I'm comfortable when I sleep is on my back. I've talked about it before--I WANT TO SLEEP ON MY BACK. But I'm not allowed to sleep on my back and so I sleep on my side, or, more accurately, I fail to sleep on my side, and it's all a huge mess.
A few weeks ago somebody asked me how my pregnancy has been up to this point, and I was like "You know, I'll dare say pleasant." The universe has struck me down, because the last couple of weeks have brought on the unpleasantness, at least relatively to what I was experiencing before. It's nothing catastrophic....I'm not the co-worker of Edgar's that has been experiencing morning sickness so severe that she can't even smell food without throwing up, I'm not the family friend who is only three months along yet is already leaking from her breasts. Compared to them, I'm totally ok. I'm just getting uncomfortable. And I'm slightly anemic now, which means that I've had to start taking additional iron supplements. And for those of you that have ever taken iron supplements before....I miss pooping like a normal person. Really. It's totally uncool.
So here I am, two trimesters under my belt, one more to go, baby clothes debt piling up around my ankles, starting to freak out just a teensy bit about what I've gotten myself into. In a good way. I would make tomorrow October 11th if I could. Because even though I think it's absolutely ridiculous that the universe is going to let me take a baby home and raise it I TOTALLY CAN'T WAIT.
Envy
How much do I love Dior's Cruise 2011 collection? Oh, If only I had money. *sigh*
And a size 2 frame. *big sigh*
On the other side
I' m back from Indiana. My dad came out of surgery like a champ and is doing excellent by all accounts. I'm not going to go into huge details of the minutiae of his recovery (my sister has a bare-bones chronicle here), except to say that he kicked serious amounts of cancer-ass and I couldn't be prouder of him. It was a highly emotional and physically exhausting week, and I haven't even mentioned the part about where my plane landed in the middle of a FREAKIN' TORNADO. Back home again in Indiana, indeed.
Cancer
It's time to talk about the cancer. This is going to be difficult to write because the fact of the matter is that it makes me so angry every time I think about it that I have to take a step back in order to calm down.
My dad has been feeling sick ever since around Thanksgiving last year. It started with digestive problems. He started to become unable to eat very much without getting severe stomach pains or having to subsequently spend an hour in the bathroom afterwords. This continued for several months without getting better; trips to the doctor did nothing to shed light on the problem. He started losing weight. Lots of weight, very fast, because he could hardly eat anything.
In January, doctors discovered bleeding in his abdomen. The bleeding was caused by what looked like lesions in the lining of his stomach. They pegged that as the problem and put him on medications that were essentially supposed to coat his stomach to help repair the lining.
It did not help. He continued to have problems and continued to lose weight.
In early April, while having extensive blood work done, a doctor noticed that he had an extremely low red count, white count, platelet count....his blood wasn't good. She told him that he had leukemia.
My dad had to make a very harrowing phone call to me to tell me, a phone call that he was scared to make in the first place because we hadn't spoken in months. I had gotten very angry at my dad in February when shortly after I told him that I was pregnant, and emphatically stated that he and my mom were not to tell anyone until I was out of my first trimester, he posted the news of my pregnancy on his Facebook page. I'm 25 and I had to be mad about something that another person had posted on his Facebook page. Junior high much? I was angry. I think I had every right to be angry. But when your father is choking back tears and telling you that he has cancer, things like that go out the window. Things like that are forgiven. If you can't do that you pretty much suck at life and I don't think I would want to be friends with you.
This diagnosis was given early in that week in April. His biopsy was scheduled for that Friday, and he was told that he was going to be starting chemotherapy on Monday. Sounds like they're all pretty sure about that leukemia, right? WRONG. His biopsy results came back negative. No leukemia.
WHAT KIND OF WHACKO NUT JOB BALL LICKER DOCTOR TELLS SOMEONE THAT THEY HAVE CANCER WHEN THEY DO NOT ALREADY HAVE DEFINITIVE PROOF THAT PERSON HAS CANCER?
So now it's not leukemia, but he's still really fucking sick. That's when the doctor notices that, oh, gee, his vitamin B12 level is dangerously low and he has almost no iron in his blood. Let's start you on this round of aggressive daily injections of B12 and iron and see how your blood work looks in a month. That could be the cause of the extreme fatigue and you should start to feel better after your levels go up in a couple of weeks.
Except he didn't feel better. He felt the same. Then worse. And then the blood tests came back and all of his blood count numbers were even lower than before. And the whole time I'm thinking "Shouldn't the fact that someone has such low iron in his blood, which means he's anemic, be pretty evident to anyone who went to med school that looks at his test results? Has it really taken them 6 whole months to come to the conclusion that, oh, look, you need more iron and then this agony can end?" Of course not. Because it can never be that simple.
Someone finally had the brilliant idea to scan his abdomen after his spleen became so enlarged that when he lays down he can see it poking out of his side. That's when they found it. A tumor on his liver about the size of the palm of your hand.
They had to do another scan, called a PET scan, after locating the tumor to make sure it didn't spread to, or had spread from, another location in his body. Primary liver cancer is very rare in someone like my father; it is seen mostly in people that are either HIV positive or who have had hepatitis or cirrhosis. Usually in people like him the cancer has spread from somewhere else. In what seems like the only amount of good news that has come out of any of this, if you could ever consider anything cancer related to be good news if it's not the headline CURE FOR CANCER DISCOVERED, the cancer in his liver was the only cancer found.
Surgery is the only treatment option for liver cancer. His oncologist told him that chemotherapy and radiation treatments had been shown to have very little effect in dealing with this kind of tumor. He was told by the oncologist that he would have a meeting with the surgeon the following Friday, at which time they would schedule a surgery to remove the tumor and the entire left lobe of his liver.
EXCEPT FOR THE FACT THAT THE SURGEON DOES NOT HAVE OFFICE HOURS ON FRIDAYS, BECAUSE GUESS WHAT? SHE'S IN SURGERY. She only meets patients for consults and scheduling two days a week, not Fridays, and nobody bothered to tell my dad that until a day before what he thought would be his appointment. So then he had to wait until later the next week when she would be able to see him. For anyone keeping track, that would make it two weeks between "You have a tumor growing inside of you" to "Hi, I'm your surgeon"+handshake.
So there he is, two weeks later, meeting with the surgeon, and she tells him she doesn't think surgery would be in his best interest at that time. His spleen is huge and swollen, and apparently the spleen and liver kind of work together in there, and the pressure in his spleen is so high that he could stroke out during surgery. Plus his liver physiology of veins and arteries is "not normal", making any surgical procedure on it more difficult. She recommended a 6-8 week course of chemo and radiation to shrink the tumor prior to operating on it, which would also give time for them to address the swelling in his spleen.
But wait, didn't I just say that the oncologist said that chemo and radiation would not work for him? Yes, that is correct. But, according to the surgeon, she specializes in the liver and has seen this type of cancer a lot, and she knows that it can be effective. The oncologist deals with all types of cancers, so liver isn't her specialty and she just has to go with what she's read.
The surgeon told him she would need a few days to consult with her colleagues to see if they would do the same thing and would get back to him. Meanwhile, go get your chemo and radiation scheduled. So now we move to the next week, the next week being last week, where my dad is schedule to start chemo the following Monday (this past Monday, the 7th) and is waiting to hear about when he'll go in to have little radioactive seeds implanted in his tumor. At which point the surgeon emails him and tells him, hey, you know what, I looked at your films again and I don't think it's in your best interest to wait anymore. Let's do the surgery.
For anyone still keeping track, it's been a month and a half between when he was told that he had a tumor on his liver and now. A month and a half where ABSOLUTELY FUCKING NOTHING has been done about it. NOTHING has happened to treat him, only to yank him around, to lift his hopes and drop them down. To be faced with "Yes, we're going to cut this cancer out of you and it will be gone" to "Nope, now you have to wait 6-8 weeks" to "Ok, now we're going to operate, even though I thought it was too risky to do in the first place." AND THAT FUCKING TUMOR IS STILL IN HIS BODY. Growing. Possibly spreading.
He's tried to keep a brave front through all of this, boasting that he'll be alive to see my child graduate from high school, but a man can only take so much. Two weeks ago he had to begin taking anti-anxiety medication, anti-depressants, and a sleep aid. BECAUSE HE HAS A FUCKING TUMOR GROWING IN HIS BODY AND THESE MEDICAL 'PROFESSIONALS' CAN'T GET THEIR SHIT TOGETHER.
I want to punch every doctor that has seen him in the face. And the balls, if they have balls. And to tell them THAT THEY'RE ALL A BUNCH OF FUCKING DOUCHEBAGS AND ARE A DISGRACE TO THEIR COLLEAGUES. And I mean it. Seriously. So it's November, it's December, it's January, and you have a patient with severe abdominal pain and you can't figure it out. Why, in the name of all that is good and holy, would you not order a scan of the patient's abdomen? If this had been done then, seven months ago, they could have seen the tumor then. And taken it out. SEVEN MONTHS AGO. When it was smaller. When his spleen wasn't so swollen that he's at a risk for stroking out on the table. Why, in the name of all that is good and holy, would you tell a man and his family that he has leukemia when you don't know for a fact that he has leukemia? WHY, in the name of all that is good and holy, WOULD YOU TELL A MAN THAT HE HAS A TUMOR ON HIS LIVER AND THEN NOT DO ONE FUCKING THING ABOUT IT FOR SIX WEEKS BESIDES SHOVING HIM OFF ON THE NEXT PERSON, OR THE LAST PERSON, OR HOW ABOUT THIS PERSON?
And it's not like he has some shit health insurance. He's got good insurance. These should be good goddamn doctors.
He finally met again with the surgeon today for pre-op appointment. His surgery has been scheduled for next Thursday, June 17th. It's scheduled to last for 5 hours. And it doesn't look good. While no surgery where someone is being put under general anesthesia and being cut open can ever be considered low-risk, his is considered ever more dangerous due to his enlarged spleen and the fact that the tumor is located merely a millimeter away from a major vein. There's a high probability for bleeding. The surgeon thinks that she can get the tumor out though, and since this is his only treatment option there's really no other choice, unless you consider dying a painful and wasting death from liver cancer to be another option. There's a high probability for bleeding, but there will be a transplant surgeon involved as well in case the necessity comes up that he needs repair done to his veins due to trauma during the surgery.
The fact is, this surgery is dangerous. And a whole hell of a lot could go wrong.
And I'm scared.
I'm flying to Indiana this weekend to spend a few days with my dad and my family prior to the surgery. Assuming all goes well I'll be coming back home the following Saturday, a couple of days after the surgery. I have to do this without my husband by my side; it's pretty much impossible for him to take time off of work right now. In the last month his counterpart in the office quit, doubling his workload, and another person got fired, leaving the new guy that was coming in to replace the guy that quit to now be allocated to do the job of the one that was fired, meaning the whole operation falls apart without Edgar. It also will mark our longest separation, since, oh, when we started dating, and it's going to be hard to do this without him holding my hand.
No puking here
I'm not going to spend a lot of time regaling everyone with a week-by-week snapshot of my pregnancy, mainly because the pregnancy itself has been pretty uneventful. Aside from discomfort when I try to sleep, I'd almost venture as far to say that it's been downright pleasant.
I know I'm lucky. I know I'm lucky that I did not have to deal with gut-wrenching morning sickness or swelling to the size of a small county. My mom told me that she did not have morning sickness with any of her three pregnancies, so I guess it's just something that I inherited from her. There were three days in a row around the sixth week where I would get nauseous around midday, but since then I haven't had a problem. My only first trimester problems were typical; my already large boobs seemingly doubled in size and became so sore that I had to smack Edgar in the head any time he so much as looked at them. And I spent several weeks having to pee every 10 minutes.
As far as the crazy pregnant lady cravings go, I haven't really had any. I've only found that foods whose smells I found offensive before being pregnant are even more so now that I am pregnant. And things that smelled good prior to being pregnant now smell even better. I don't ever find myself craving anything in particular, however I've found that I'm much more prone to the powers of suggestion. I smelled reheated pizza the other day at work (you know that smell, that steamy fresh crust smell) and couldn't stop thinking about it until I got home and told Edgar "Forget what we were having for dinner, we're having pizza now."
I'm grateful that I have not had a problem with craving foods that are unhealthy for me because my weight gain is something that I do have to keep my eye on. To date (22 weeks) I've only gained 5 pounds. I was overweight when this pregnancy started, so my weight gain target is much lower than any "normal" weight woman would expect. Considering that the baby has most of its growing left to do, I think I'm at a pretty good point.
My only real beef with pregnancy to this point (besides that whole no-alcohol thing) is sleeping. I'm at the point now where I can't sleep on my stomach or my back, and so I'm stuck sleeping on my sides. But I'm a back sleeper. And I wake up a lot finding myself on my back and having to switch over to my side. Or I find myself lying on my side still awake after being in bed two hours because I CANNOT GET COMFORTABLE. I've already built a fort of pillows in the center of the bed in an attempt to keep me from rolling onto my back in the middle of the night. And it makes me feel bad because I somehow still manage to do it and Edgar is over on his side of the bed clinging to the edge trying desperately not to fall off because his space has been reduced to this little sliver of mattress not being taken up by his pregnant wife and her pillow fort. And one day my kid is going to come home with a C on his math test and I'm going to have to be all I'M SORRY, it's because I accidentally slept on my back when I was pregnant with you. Bad Mommy.
And so it begins
The same day I found out that I was pregnant, I called my doctor as soon as the office opened to schedule an appointment. Rookie move, I now know. I scheduled my appointment for the Friday of the following week, meaning that based on the date of my last period I would only be about six weeks along at the time that I went. I know now that it's really unnecessary to go that early...you're basically just wasting your co-payment money. Then again, it is good if it's the beginning of the year and you have a deductible to meet because DEAR LORD are those lab tests expensive. So you can work on getting that out of the way while you're still in that euphoric state where you aren't thinking about how expensive cribs and travel systems and diapers are.
My first appointment was a nightmare. Actually, let me change that. The first few weeks of this pregnancy were a nightmare. While I didn't feel any different physically, mentally I was a mess. I had made this deal with myself when Edgar and I first started trying to get pregnant that I was going to slow down and breathe. I wasn't going to let things get to me. I was going to be calm. I wasn't going to overreact and freak out and dwell on things that I had no control over. I really truly believe that high strung people have high strung babies. This may not be true for everyone, but I've definitely seen it in myself. I know a couple that are very chill, very go-with-the-flow, and guess what? Their son, who was born last year, is the same way. He doesn't cry that much, and when he does it's not that loud, and other than that he's just happy. Content. Loves his life. Then on the other hand I have a cousin who is so high strung you could pluck her and she would snap, and she's got four kids who were absolute TERRORS as children. I think that kids feed off of the cues that we give them, and I didn't want to give my baby those cues. I wanted him/her to be as healthy and as happy as possible. I'm no biologist, but I know that when you are stressed your body creates stress hormones, and since whatever is in my body is going to my baby as well, I didn't want to create that environment for him.
But I couldn't help it. I was scared. As soon as the shock and excitement of seeing that iffy pink line wore off I started filling up with all of these irrational first-time mother fears. My immediate pressing fear was that I was going to miscarry. Since I had been trying to get pregnant, I found out very early on about my pregnancy. Earlier than most women find out, earlier than the ones who aren't trying to get pregnant get over the denial to actually take a test--earlier than that point when your body or nature or whatever is may make that decision that the pregnancy isn't going to stick. Every time I went to the bathroom I steeled myself against it. Every time I felt a slight cramp I expected the worst. I became highly protective of my belly, afraid that if I even slightly bumped into a counter that I could hurt it.
Then came the appointment. I don't think, even if you aren't full of irrational fears, that the first appointment of a pregnancy can ever be very enjoyable. Because what they fail to show you on TV whenever some perky actress is pregnant is that they do not take the first ultrasound to date your pregnancy by a trans-abdominal ultrasound. Nope. Because new babies are teeny-tiny little things and are way to small to be picked up through the layers of your abdomen. Your first ultrasound is done trans-vaginally. Which means that you're naked from the waist down with an ultrasound wand stuck up your vajayjay that the doctor is turning every which way to get a good view of what's going on in your uterus. And you know how on TV the doctor always says "Ok, this might be a little bit cold" when they squeeze the ultrasound goop onto the perky actress's taut stomach? It's a hell of a lot colder when it's up inside your hoohah. So let's recap. Naked from the waist down. Ultrasound wand. Cold goop in the hoohah. UNPLEASANT.
The news from the ultrasound was terrifying as well for someone with the jitters. My doctor "would not commit" to saying that I was pregnant. She could see something on the ultrasound; something that showed that a pregnancy had started. She could see a sac. But she couldn't see anything in it. Rationally, it was just that it could have been way to early in the pregnancy to see anything. In my mind, I immediately jumped to the worst conclusion. She scheduled me for a follow-up appointment a week later.
When I got home I told Edgar what the doctor said. He of course, and thank God, told me that we had nothing to worry about, that it was just too early. He was a champ during that week, talking me up whenever he could tell that I was brooding over what had happened at the last appointment and what would happen at the next one. I know that my own attitude must have been scaring him (he's self proclaimed as knowing "absolutely nothing" about babies) but he knew I needed support and he was there for me and can I just say that I am so lucky to be going through this with him?
Edgar took the afternoon off of work to come to my appointment the next week and to hold my hand through the whole thing. I can't describe the wave of relief that swept over me as soon as the doctor turned the monitor towards us. The difference that one week made was unbelievable. Where there had been nothing the week before, there was this little itty bitty blob with a pulsating heartbeat in the center. That was our baby.
She dated the pregnancy at 6 weeks 5 days and gave a due date of October 11th. We're kind of hoping for one day early. How cool would it be to have a birthday of 10/10/10?
The Thin Pink Line
Edgar and I found out on the morning of Wednesday, February 3rd that we were going to have a baby. And for a couple that had vigorously been trying get pregnant for the last three months, it was somewhat unexpected. I didn't think I was pregnant; a few days before I had peed on a stick on what would have been the first day of my period and it had come back negative.
At least, I thought it had come back negative. And then Edgar, after examining far more closely than I would something that had recently been doused in urine, said "Wait, is this a line? It kind of looks like a line." I grabbed the test from him and after inspecting it under a brighter light saw the faintest of all faint pink lines, a veritable mirage of a pink line that didn't even extend the entire width of the indicator window as one would expect. I immediately dismissed it as a malfunctioning test.
Because, you see, really, there is no such thing as a little bit pregnant, and this test WAS SHRUGGING ITS SHOULDERS AT ME. Am I pregnant? Eh, could be. Try again later.
THIS IS NOT WHAT PREGNANCY TESTS ARE SUPPOSED TO DO. They are designed specifically to test for a pregnancy hormone in your pee. Either you have it, and the test is positive, or you don't, and the test is negative, or you do, but in such a small amount that it cannot be sensed by the test, in which case the test is supposed to read negative. This test was saying 'maybe'. IT IS NOT SUPPOSED TO TELL YOU MAYBE. THERE IS NOT A 'MAYBE' READING IN THE INSTRUCTIONS. There is a regular pink line that matches the control pink line, and then there is no pink line. There is not an iffy pink line.
But after not starting my period that day, or the day after, I found my always-regular self getting all excited and confused and scared and crazy and could not wait one more day when the alarm went off for Edgar to get ready for work on February 3rd. I rubbed the crust out of my fuzzy eyes and opened up the last pregnancy test that we had and crossed my fingers. Then waited. Three whole minutes. Because I follow the directions, unlike some pregnancy test that's too totally fucking lazy to do its job. And then......
Is that a pink line? It kind of looks like a pink line.
AGAIN.
Once again, we were faced with the control pink line and a maybe-pink line. This maybe-pink line was definitely darker and thicker than the maybe-pink line before, but it wasn't what we were expecting. We called it a win anyways.
And then Edgar had to go to work and I had to go to work, and I was all WHY DID YOU HAVE TO DO THIS IN THE MORNING BEFORE WORK, REYNAGA? Because walking around the office going "Holy crap, I'm pregnant" in my head and smiling like an idiot and running to the bathroom every 15 minutes to make sure that I really didn't start my period was not a good look for me. All I wanted was to be at home with Edgar celebrating our victory and naming our baby and dreaming about that baby smell--you know, that smell, when they're all warm and snuggly and you're holding them while you give them a bottle and they're making that cute little gurgling noise and you're patting their butts and watching them jerk their arms around like they're conducting an imaginary symphony and OH MY GOD I'M HAVING A BABY.
Bombshells
It's been almost one entire month since I've written a post on this blog. Life has been kind of overwhelming over the last few months and after severely trailing off in my posting habits and fretting to myself about it I decided to give it up for a little bit just to get my head back together guilt-free. So now I'm going to try to pick up where I left off.
Reasons why my head was not together:
1. My father was diagnosed with cancer.
2. I'm pregnant with my first child.
My friend Jessica just read #2 and slammed her forehead into her monitor in disbelief.
The pregnancy is not new news to me anymore. We've known since the beginning of February that I was pregnant. I'll be writing posts specifically dedicated to this pregnancy and catching up on what has happened so far, but this is the quick version. Our plans were to keep the pregnancy a quiet secret to all but close family until my first trimester was up. Just as that milestone was reached, the diagnosis came down about my father, who had been ill for quite some time. There will be more blog posts dedicated specifically to this battle and what he's gone through so far as well. In the mix of all of that, calling up friends to share the good news and writing blog posts about it in light of the bad news just didn't feel right. And all of a sudden here I am over five months into this pregnancy and the only people I've told are my parents (who I relied on to spread the news through the family) and my co-workers in light of the fact that my belly was about to pop and make the news very obvious on its own.
I have a lot of work to do.
Lolz
My brother-in-law is going to the taping of American Idol today. I wish I could say I was joking.
Needing to move
In "this is another reason I need to get the fuck out of California" news:
A man was shot in the back of the head on the street corner opposite my apartment building on Thursday night.
I heard the shot. I thought it was a car backfiring.
On being wrong
We rented Avatar this weekend. I actually kind of liked it. And saying "I actually kind of liked it" is my way of admitting, and the closest I will ever come to saying, I was totally wrong when I adamantly insisted for a very long time that it looked stupid and why would I want to see a movie full of fake looking blue people?
Being wrong sucks.
Censored
When I was in high school, the bane of my summertime existence was the day that the reading lists arrived. I took accelerated English (freshman and sophomore years) and Advanced Placement English (junior and senior years), so summer reading assignments were a sad, inevitable occurrence that I just had to suck up and bear. Kind of like periods.
Junior year was the year that our reading lists exploded, expanding from 2 or 3 books to around 7 or 8. I love to read, I've made that clear before, but there's something about homework over summer vacation that made every indignant bone in my body stand up and say "Hey! No fair! I want to sleep until noon and then watch a movie and then go over to my friend's house and smoke some pot and eat inordinate amounts of Taco Bell!" Healthy, I know.
The summer reading lists were also a big pain in the ass because you never knew which books you were going to study first once school started. What's the point of reading a book in July if you're not even going to get to it in class until after mid-terms when you're just going to have to read it again because you'll have forgotten everything by that point? What was that thing I was saying about no fair?
Now that I live in California, I keep tabs on what's going on in my hometown by checking out Indystar.com every morning, the website for the Indianapolis Star newspaper. When I looked at it this morning, a headline caught my attention: "District pulls book out of students hands." Ignoring the lack of punctuation (copy editors, where?) in the title I clicked in to the story because I was kind of intrigued: was it a specific student that forcibly had a book pulled out of its hands? Was the district being a big bully and knocking books out of nerdy kids' hands in the hallway like in movies and TV shows? Or were they being a big douche and telling students that they couldn't read a certain book? DING DING DING WE HAVE A WINNER.
My alma mater is censoring Song of Solomon by Toni Morrison from junior AP English class.
People, people, people. Song of Solomon was on our reading list when I took junior AP English, oh, let's see, nine years ago. I THINK I TURNED OUT OK. I don't smoke pot anymore. Apparently some parent got mad that the book has (oh no!) sex and (eek!) violence and (oh, Lawdy, save us!) profanity. Profanity?!?!?!?! WHATEVER SHALL WE DO NOW? Our sad little Puritanical hearts and minds just can't take it!
I'm sure the parent in question has no problem with his/her son or daughter having their own TV and computer with an internet connection in his/her bedroom. Or unlimited text messaging on their cell phone. Guess what, Mom and Dad? Your kid knows what sex is, is probably already doing it, and I dare you to check their text messages because you know what? YOUR KID IS SEXTING.
This is just totally unbelievable to me. What's even more incredible is that this book has been on the reading list for that class for over 12 years (my sister read it when she took that class two years before me), and only now some parent complains. It's nice to see this regression of open-mindedness after over a decade of that book being taught with no problems. Oh wait, it's not nice, it's hugely and thoroughly disappointing and disgusting. If I recall correctly, we read A Catcher in the Rye in the same class. WANT TO JUMP ON THE BANDWAGON AND BAN THAT ONE TOO?
What makes me even madder is that I owe so much to that AP English class. Because of that class, and others like it, I was able to complete my bachelor's degree in three years instead of four, saving me I don't even know how many thousands of dollars in student loans. I went into college as a sophomore because I had earned so much college credit from those classes. And I got a 5 on that particular AP test, as did a ton of my classmates, because the woman that taught that class, the woman that still teaches that class, was no-nonsense awesome and new how to teach students about literature. I know for a fact that she's not in that classroom sensationalizing sex and violence in a book; she's in there giving those students an education and showing how it illustrates a story of racism and struggle and heartbreak.
I think these parents should be more worried about when their kids get to senior AP English and get that one teacher who only thinks about sex all day every day and relates every single sentence ever written in every work of literature to sex. Why is the knight green in Sir Gawain and the Green Knight? BECAUSE IT SYMBOLIZES SEX. What was Chaucer talking about in this part of The Canterbury Tales? SEX. Why is the author of this short story talking about the moon? BECAUSE HE'S HORNY AND WANTS LOTS OF SEX.
Protect your kids from that, you pervert. Oh, and by the way, parents? Ever hear of a library? Your kid can still read that book whenever he or she wants.
Movie critic
Having nothing to do this Saturday, Edgar and I decided to head to Blockbuster and rent a few movies. We ended up with three. Two of them (Pirate Radio and Crazy Heart) were excellent. Phillip Seymour Hoffman rocks my world.
Needing to also fall prey to pop culture phenomenons, when they were out of Avatar we decided to give old New Moon a try. Not because we were expecting a great feat in cinematic marvels, but because we were looking for a laugh and it seemed like a good choice.
And oh boy, did we laugh.
And also kind of gagged a little at the Mormons-hate-gays allegory:
On being a werewolf--
Bella: "Well, why can't you just stop?"
Jacob: "It's not a lifestyle choice!" (read: "Like being gay is!")
Kind of odd since a bunch of guys that look like they spend way too much time in the gym and at the tanning bed spend a lot of the movie running around in tight wet denim shorts. Way to stick to your guns, there, Mormon writer lady! I also like the nice touch that they flew on VIRGIN America airlines. Hello hidden agendas!
Links
The Coolist - Abandoned Places: 10 Creepy, Beautiful Modern Ruins
I love finding features like this. There's just something about abandoned, desolate buildings that make me always want to know more.
As it flashes before my eyes
Edgar and I have sort of developed a routine of going to this awesome Mongolian barbecue restaurant in Manhattan Beach every other Saturday afternoon. This place puts most other restaurants in its genre to shame by the fact that it has a much wider selection of vegetables and meat and it's all-you-can-eat at lunch, when usually lunch is a one time trip at these kinds of places. So basically, you know, AWESOME. Edgar's brother and mother decided to join us this weekend, and that is where all hell breaks loose.
The Toyota Long Beach Grand Prix was happening this weekend, and we live in Long Beach about seven blocks away from part of the track, so put two and two together. No parking. However the street in front of our building has meter parking, but with only a two hour limit, so there are always spaces out front. We had his mother and brother pick us up out front with the plan being that his brother would drive us all to the restaurant; the idea was that neither Edgar or I would have to give up the parking spots that our cars were in and we wouldn't have to search for a space when we got back.
This is the part where Edgar fails to tell me that his brother, who is now 34, barely passed his driving test when he originally got his license.
And apparently failed to ever get better.
And the only time I've ever ridden in a car driven by his brother up to this point was on a trip back from Solvang a few years ago where I was drunk and asleep in the back seat before we ever left the parking lot.
The street in front of our building is one-way. The nearest freeway on-ramp is one block up and several blocks back in the other direction. Our building is also very close to an intersection, the intersection that you would ideally turn left at to head to that block up where the freeway entrance is. So Edgar tells his brother to wait until all of the cars finish going past and then to get all the way over to the left to turn left at the light. And his brother is all "Man, I have to get all the way over to the left?!??" and we're all "Yeah, it's not a big deal."
Except when it is a big deal and someone doesn't bother to check his mirrors to see if any cars are coming before blindly peeling out to cross three lanes of traffic and almost sideswiping three cars in the process. WAY TO GO, BRO. And all of us are like "Oh my god, what are you doing?!" and he's just "Oh, I didn't see them." Because that makes it all right, apparently? So then he takes off to go one more block to catch the left turn, and my god, when he made that left turn I thought I was going to die, because as he turned into the lane he did one of those things where the car is wiggling back and forth like he had no control of it. And I'm all "Uh, excuse me, what is so hard about driving in the middle of your lane?" Same thing at the next left turn. I close my eyes and start taking deep breaths.
Then we're on the freeway. Dear god, the freeway. He drives a Civic. We drive a Civic. I know what "normal" feels like in a Civic. This is not normal. These cars do not fight you to stay in the middle of the lane. You don't have to drive like you're an actor on a TV show and wiggle the steering wheel back and forth. If you do that in one of these cars, you're weaving back and forth across your lane. God, please help me.
And then I start thinking ahead, because I know that the 710/405 interchange is coming up. And I know that this interchange will surely kill me, because 1) it's one of those really circular interchanges where you have to slow way down in order for centrifugal force to not make you fly off the curve and 2) there's hardly any room to merge onto the 405 before you're all of a sudden going back on the 710 in the opposite direction.
And sure enough, we hit that interchange with the posted recommended speed of 25, which means normal people would take it at 35-40, but which my brother-in-law was taking at 60. Where he over-corrected so much that both of the wheels on the right side of the car went over the curb on the shoulder. Every person in the car besides my brother-in-law has grabbed their "Oh shit!" handles (you know, those handles above the door that you can use to help get in or out of the car?), I'm clenching Edgar's thigh, his mother is squealing, and I'm starting to think of all of the things that I wanted to do in life before I died that I'm never going to get to do and how I really don't want the song playing on the radio as I die to be "Sex on Fire" by the Kings of Leon.
All of a sudden we're on the 405, and of course on this Saturday, this part of the 405 has about double the amount of cars and traffic that it normally does for that hour. And his brother then proceeds to wiggle all about his lane for the next 10 miles, never seeming to notice the brake lights in front of him until the last second and at times inexplicably accelerating despite those brake lights.
And I know this whole post makes me sound like I'm one of those drivers, you know the ones, the ones that sit practically on top of their steering wheels and drive 2 miles an hour under the speed limit at all times and accelerate at such a slow pace and brake so far in advance that if you are driving behind them you think your head is going to explode. But I'm totally not. I'm not one of those people. I drive fast and I sometimes follow a lot closer than I should, but I'm a good enough driver to do that without endangering myself and those around me. BUT THIS GUY IS A FUCKING MANIAC. I don't understand how it's possible that he's never been in a car accident.
As we miraculously arrived at the restaurant in one piece, I stumbled out of the car, grabbed my husband's shirt, stared him down, and said "I don't care what excuse you have to use, you will not let him drive us home." Never again. Never ever ever again.
My brother-in-law almost killed me this weekend.
FU FB
Thank you, South Park. I know I'm a little slow in getting this post up, mainly because I'm thanking the show for an episode that it aired almost a week ago, but I have a Tivo, and so I watch things on my own schedule.
Last week's episode took a swing at Facebook, and it didn't disappoint. It hit the nail right on the head and was basically like they took the list of reasons that I have in my head as to why I do not/will not use Facebook and made a whole episode about it. I'll say it outright: I hate Facebook.
Facebook is stupid.
I'll readily admit that when I was in college, what feels like a million years ago, that I had a Facebook page for about six months. Then life got busy and I went a few months without logging into it, and when I finally did again, it had turned into Stalker-Central. There were all of a sudden these news feeds, and so-and-so is now friends with so-and-so which didn't really matter because you had no idea who this other so-and-so was, and people could send you presents and it was all just very confusing and overwhelming and time consuming and it was no longer a good thing. Plus I was sick of getting messages from mouth-breathers saying "You have really pretty eyes, will you go out with me?" No, I will not go out with you. So that was the end of Facebook for me. Deleted.
And then all of a sudden a couple of years ago, Facebook just blew up and now MY GRANDMOTHER HAS A FACEBOOK PAGE. My seventy-three year old grandmother. And my fifty-five year old father. And my sixty-one year old mother-in-law. WHAT IS WRONG WITH THE WORLD? And everyone is so obsessed with it and so concerned about who their friends are and how many friends they have and updating their statuses and playing some stupid farm game WHEN THEY AREN'T EVEN FARMERS and it's just reached this level of ridiculousness and prevalence that is just way too much for me.
I'm too lazy to pick up a phone and call most people that I know, but I don't fake it by being some one's cyber-friend. I'm perfectly okay with what that says about me: I'M TOO LAZY TO CARE ABOUT YOU. Clicking "Accept" to make someone your friend on Facebook does not make them any more your friend than just plain old screening your calls does. It requires no effort.
And newsflash: that person that you haven't spoken to since junior high? THEY DON'T CARE ABOUT THE PICTURES THAT YOU POSTED. THEY'RE NOT EVEN LOOKING.
