LuLu's Land of the Fey

All the news that bores the pants off anyone who cares.

Wednesday, December 31, 2003

The Pee Olympics

The thing about being pregnant is that I pee now nearly every time I stand up. Literally. One could almost make a drinking game out of how many times I pee in an hour. It's one of those things I'm sure I'm going to look back on after this whole shooting match is over and laugh at quite a bit. Right now, I'm too busy peeing to laugh. The only other activities I regularly participate in are marathon eating and all day sleep-a-thons. When I'm doing one activity, my mind is wandering to the other two, wondering when I will get to do them again. Really, I can see myself laughing about this someday. Seriously.

Being pregnant is pretty ok, so far. No real nausea to speak of, which makes it fun when I'm visiting my brother and his family. His wife had the audacity to get pregnant the week after I did, and so I think it's only fair that once again, she's puking her guts up (this is her third child) while the only time I get even a whiff of nausea is when I get hungry. Kind of ironic, I think.

So far, there have been few signs of actual pregnancy and so I have felt almost as if I were simply crazy and Robert has been merely humoring me in my delusions of baby. I've gained weight, but that could just be from all the binge eating I do on a regular basis now. I've been a moody bitch, but some (who would be very smart to disagree with me right about now) would just say that I'm often moody and bitchy. I've been taking things very personally--bad traffic, interrupted television programs, unanswered phones (obviously, people know how bitchy and moody I am of late and have decided to stop answering their phones so they don't have to talk to me), etc.--but I have crazy people on both sides of my family, so I could just be playing into the hands of fate with this one. The only real sign of pregnancy to this point has been an absence of my monthly visitor, and frankly, who is going to be keeping track of that crazy bitch showing up or not?

And so today marked something special in this rollercoaster ride of hormones. I went in for my montly visit with my doctor and got to have actual proof that there is, indeed, an alien living in my stomach. She used a Dopplar reader and I got to hear the baby's heartbeat for the first time. Man, it sounded like that kid was running laps in there--she said the heart rate was about 170, which while alarming to me, she said was perfectly normal for a 3 month old fetus. So yay for me and yay for the baby.

Interesting side note on my vanity at this point:

During my last visit to the doctor (as with nearly every visit I have ever made to a doctor), I had to pee in a cup. Now, at this point in my gestating career, I consider myself somewhat of a pro. I visited Robert's office before going to the doctor and had to pee while I was there. He seemed concerned that I wouldn't have anything left for the lab technicians to dip sticks into. I gave him one of my patented "Silly man, you just don't understand..." looks and said nothing.

I get into the bathroom at the doc's office, pee into the cup to the point that I have to pull it away before I get done. I go to put the cup into the little cabinet in the wall that has a door on the other side so the lab techs don't have to see who is peeing for them and I notice there is another cup in there from the previous occupant. It's barely got half an inch of pee in it. I roll my eyes in disgust and mutter about amateurs being allowed into a pregnant woman's bathroom.

Flash forward to today. Lather, rinse, repeat. Get into the bathroom, more than adequately fill the cup and go to put it into the cabinet. Again, see a cup from a previous occupant and think to myself that someone really needs to put a fire under the lab techs or they need to turn off their games of solitaire and get busy. This cup is just as pathetic as the previous cup. Just as I start to sneer the word "Amateur!" under my breath, the unthinkable happens.

See, the thing is, I wasn't expecting the door to be spring loaded. I opened it with one hand, pulled my hand away to put my very carefully preserved specemin on the shelf when it slams back at me and hits my hand. The hand holding the very, very, very full cup of urine. Said cup then tumbles to the ground, spilling its contents on the wall, on the (very nice, very antique) cabinet next to the toilet, and on the floor. I haven't made a puddle of piss like this on the floor since I was a very young child and (surprise!) it still feels pretty crappy.

I cleaned it up as best as I could, and apologized profusely to the nurse. Oy. I promised her that if she would just give me 15 minutes, I could have another specemin cup for her. And true to my word, when I got done with the regular business of my office visit, I went back into the bathroom and filled another cup. Alas, this time, I only filled it about an inch deep. I hung my head in shame and could not help but think I had been robbed of some great honor.

It was decided later, however, that if they ever do have a Pee Olympics, I will most likely get the gold medal.

.: posted by amy 12:10 AM

Wednesday, October 01, 2003

Bitching and moaning

I have been told on more than one occasion lately that people don't check my blog regularly because I'm so infrequent in my posting.

Irregular.

Longwinded when I do post.

It has been implied (although never actually said) that I merely blog as a "hobby," as opposed to the "serious" blogs of others.

Whatever.

I've thought about this for quite some time now, and now that I'm over being bugged by it, I have finally come to some conclusions about why I blog the way I blog. I in no way imply that my way of blogging is better or worse than anyone else's way; I am simply rationalizing my behavior, which all good therapists will tell you is a "no-no" and so of course I'm more than eager to do so.

First, though, allow me to give you a peek into my high school diary, a document in which I wrote fairly regularly (and which I unearthed the other day--more to come on this topic later at a later date):

January 14, 1992
"I hate Dawn! What a bitch! I can't belive she said what she said--doesn't she know how deeply she has hurt my feelings? BITCH!!!!!!!!!!!!!"

January 16, 1992
"I talked to Dawn yesterday and we have decided to be friends again. She was rilly, rilly [sic] sorry about what she said and promised that she never meant to hurt my feelings. What a great friend! I can't believe that I thought she was trying to steal my boyfriend away from me--she'd never do that 'cuz we're B/F/4/E!"

.....And so on......

Which brings me to my point: when I write every day, my prose tends to get really, really, rilly fucking boring. I mean, I bore myself. And if I'm bored with me, I can only imagine how bored you are. And besides, at this rate, since I'm on the discipline committee this year, I can just imagine how it would end up:

Monday, Sep. 29, 2003
"We had to deal with Rhonda* for tardies again. God, this kid is such a bitch! I rilly, rilly hate her, and it's even worse that she's in my class, as well as having to discipline her. This sux!"

Tuesday, Sep. 30, 2003
"Rhonda approached me in the hall today and said she was sorry. I think she really means it this time. She's such a good kid, underneath it all."

You get the picture. Kind of along the lines of Samuel Pepys, this guy who was alive in the 1660s. He kept these very meticulous journals of his day-to-day life that are very useful to historians because they show what the upper-middle class was like during the Enlightenment. He was at the coronation of King Charles II, helped to try to stifle (unsuccessfully) the great fire of 1666, and many other things. However, he wrote down everything he did every day and, quite frankly, reading his journal is pretty dry. You have to really search for the interesting things because they are buried so far down in the day-to-day muck.

Thing is, I would rather be doing the things that make me happy than writing about them. I'm not so good at the daily documentation of my life; I specialize more in pointing out humorous observations and ironies. I was a journalism major when I first entered college, and I love to write. However, I changed majors; one of the reasons was that I got tired of having to crank out inane musings on a regular basis, regardless of whether I actually cared about what I was writing or not. If I'm going to write, I have to have a feel for my topic; I can't just be filling space in the ether.

So, in the interest of getting everyone up to speed on what's going on in the cobweb filled mind of Amy, I figured I'd do a short list of things that have happened to me, things I've thought about a great deal and things I'm concerned with. A nod to Samuel Pepys, if you will. Henceforth, I will be writing when I damn well please, or when the thought occurs to me. Check back daily, weekly, monthly or never. Whatever.

Let's get this party started.

1) I teach for a living (as has been previously mentioned). The first day of school this year was pretty hard for us because one of our Seniors was killed in a car accident going home from vollyball practice. I hate this kind of waste. The girl who died was one of the students who actually worked in her classes, was involved in nearly everything at school. As Ray Bradbury says, she left her thumbprint on that school and is still missed by her friends.

An interesting side note to this girl's story is that the graffiti in the bathroom is now 90% memorials from her friends and 10% trash talking, as opposed to last year when every stall was covered with "Tiffany is a slut!", "You are a cunt!", "I hate this town!" etc. Part of me says that they are still vandalizing the stalls after the janitors repainted them this summer, but the other part of me says to just shut up about it and let them have their sense of peace.

2) My art club is thinking of having a haunted house for Halloween. I'm not sure if I feel like doing this or not. In a community as small as the one in which I teach, I have to wonder how many people are going to drag their lazy asses up to the school to get scared. I really hate putting out the effort to do something and having the community as a whole be apathetic about it. We'll see.

3) Books I'm reading: Odd Girl Out, by Rachel Simmons. Really very interesting; about girl bullying and how girls are trained by society to not just duke it out when they get mad like boys, which leads to some pretty passive-agressive behavior. (And yes, I'm pretty aware that this post is pretty passive-agressive, and so I have noted and appreciated the irony.) A must read if you are around teenage girls and can't figure out what the hell their problems are.

The Canterbury Tales by Geoffry Chaucer. Classic. Sometimes I get a bug up my butt to read something that I either had to read in high school or that I taught when I was living in hell on earth and teaching English. This would be one of those cases. Besides, Chaucer was pretty kinky--had a pretty funny way of looking at some things.

Organizing From the Inside Out by Julie Morgenstern. I'm obsessed with getting the house into order. This book is awesome at helping you figure out how to organize just about anything, be it your bathroom, your sewing room or your purse. She teaches you to organize based on how you actually think, not how you should think. I totally covet a label maker now, though. Sigh.

4) Still not pregnant, but not for want of trying. This month we offically opened up the Let's Get Pregnant Olympics. I have to say, after years and years of having sex and trying desperatly not to get pregnant, this is the weirdest fucking feeling I've ever had. Kind of reminds me of Highlights for Children: it's Fun With a Purpose! We won't know for a few more weeks whether we have been fruitful or not this month, but either way, it's good practice. :)

5) I'm pretty psyched because in November I'm going to a Texas Art Educators Association conference in Dallas where I'll get to meet other art teachers and go to a bunch of cool workshops. Best of all (and really the main reason I'm going) is that I'll get to see the Guerilla Girls, this group of women artists who dress in gorilla costumes and go around talking about how sexist and racist most museums and galleries are, and often times, the whole art community as well. I have wanted to see them forever, and I can't wait to meet them. I'm going to be such a dork, getting the autographs of a couple of women in gorilla masks--kind of like when I got Goofy to sign something for me at Disneyworld.

6) Apprently, my grandmother is going crazy. Got a panicked call from my mom yesterday, saying that she and dad were heading down to see my grandmother and try to figure out what to do. Called mom back today to see how it went and found out grandma is living with my parents. I'm sure that's got to be some kind of fun.

That's all I can think of right now, and more importantly, it's 1:35 in the a.m. Got to get to sleep. Heading to Houston tomorrow with Robert, Will and Liz to see Radiohead and then going on to Trashfest in New Braunsfels. It's going to be a fun, if a bit exhausting, weekend.

Yay!

*Names, of course, have been changed in the interest of keeping my job.

.: posted by amy 1:35 AM

Saturday, September 20, 2003

Irony Fairies Never Rest

"We don't want an arm and a leg, just all your tows!"

That's the slogan of the tow truck company that carried off my Taurus tonight after I had a wreck coming home from work.

It all started a few days ago when Robert and I decided that since he had the longer drive to and from work, he should be driving the Tiburon, as it gets better gas milage. Therefore, I got to drive the Taurus, a nice, safe, dependable car. I hadn't given too much thought to the car change, aside from the occasional question from my students about it. "How come you don't be driving your tight ride no more, Miss Brown?" I'm not too much of a car person; as long as the vehicle gets me from point A to point B, I'm a happy camper.

I worked late tonight, supervising my Art Club's face painting booth at the football game. Similar to my disinterest in cars, I'm not overly enamored of football, but the kids like to work at the games, and quite frankly, we make pretty good money from all the children wanting paw prints, footballs and boyfriend's jersey numbers painted on their cheeks. We worked through the first three minutes of the fourth quarter, at which time I decided noone else was going to come and give us money anymore. Since we do this pretty regularly, I have my kids trained in the cleanup pretty well, so they had the whole booth packed and ready for me to leave in about ten minutes. And since I wanted to beat the cars coming out at the end of the game, I decided to hit the road. Literally.

But first I had to stop and get gas. I had been munchy all day, and was in my carb craving mode. Bad Amy. Bad, bad Amy. I decided to get some chips to eat on the way home, thinking that I could finish them well before reaching home and hide the bag somewhere to cover the evidence.

I'm driving down Highway 80, going at a modest 60 mph, a full 5 miles under the speed limit, thinking about how great I am and how great the chips are. I pass a car that gives me the "Hey, there's a cop ahead" light blinking thing. I think for a second how rarely I see cops on Hwy. 80, and then dismiss the thought. Then I come over the hill and I see a cop with his lights flashing. Thinking he has pulled over some sucker, I slow a bit out of courtesy and continue at my almost at speed limit speed.

Then I notice that there's a flashlight waving. Clue number one.

Then I notice there's a big thing in the middle of the road. Clue number two.

Then I notice the big thing in the middle of the road isn't moving. Oh fuck. Clue number three.

I hit the brakes, which promptly locked up and slid (anti-lock brakes, my ass) at about 45 mph(by my guess), or so, into a big ass dead tree in the middle of the road. Apparently, the cop who was on the side of the road hit it before me. Looking at his car, you could barely tell. Looking at mine, however, you could see through the new window into the radiator, or as I like to call it now, the boat anchor. I can only imagine what would have happened if I had driven my plastic Tiburon into it; I'd probably be in the hospital right now.

Reflecting on this, I'm a bit surprised at my sense of calm during this whole thing. The air bag didn't deploy, I didn't yank the wheel to one side or another, and the damage to my car (so far as we can tell) is pretty minimal. Emotionally, I was a bit shaken, but physically, I was just fine. The thing that pissed me off most (aside from having to pay a $500 deductible) was that every rubber-necker in East Texas (and apparently, there are quite a few) saw me eating the chips that I was not supposed to be eating.

So the moral of the story is this: if you're going to cheat on your diet and eat something that has the nutritional value of Drano, be prepared because everyone and his cow is going to see you do it.

.: posted by amy 12:49 AM

Saturday, August 16, 2003

Oh, the insanity

School starts Monday. I spent the better part of this week vainly attempting to get my shit together so that when the lovely little buggers come into my room next week, they'll have something to do. Alas, the blasted virus grabbed hold of my school's (as well as a good portion of the rest of the world, from what I hear) computers so we couldn't log on at all. So basiclly, I spent the week sifting through the stuff I left on my desk and the surrounding area back in May when I said, "I'll be coming in to work on this during the summer."

Right.

I haven't even unlocked my closet yet. I'm afraid to. I remember that there is a lot of crap in there. A lot. The woman who had my job before me was a very nice older lady who was on the cusp of retirement. She was only at the school for a few years--three or four at the most. While I appreciate that she cleaned up a lot of the mess that the woman before her left (apparently it was pretty nasty, from what the kids say), she had some peculiar habits. Her most alarming one, and the one that I'm still dealing with to this day, was hoarding. Unfortunately, she hoarded stuff that is of no use to anyone with an iota of sanity left. She saved these little (7x2.5x2.5 inces, approximately) boxes that were big enough to hold a few pencils and nothing else. She saved these little plastic cases that opened up and did Goddess knows what. And somehow, she had about twenty copies of about ten different posters, all the same size, all laminated. It's as if she wanted to wallpaper the room with these ten images but never got around to it.

The year before I got to the school was her last year before retiring. She didn't order any supplies that an art teacher might need--paint, brushes, paper, silly stuff like that--because she knew that in a year she was leaving and she didn't want to leave any unwanted supplies for the next teacher (me).

Erm, thanks. I have to wonder what she did for her own class' materials?

So I get to the school, I have little to no paints, and the paint I do have is that stank tempra stuff that makes me ill when I smell it. My brushes are in a state since apparently the students have never been shown how to care for them. My paper closet is a joke--almost empty, except for that funky manilla paper that rubs off when you erase it. I've got a little glue, but not enough for a whole year. Very little clay, but that's ok since my kiln is dead and even if it wasn't, I don't have any ventilation system for it.

But I have lots and lots of little boxes in my closet. Yay.

So the long and short of it is this: I spent the year getting supplies as I needed them from Art Club funds. Finally got around to ordering a mess-load of supplies like paint, paper, wire, etc. at the end of the year when I knew what I was going to want to use next (this) year. Claimed I was going to get my closet cleaned out this summer, once and for all.

And then I didn't do it. In my defense, I did move this summer, so it's not like I sat around the whole time doing nothing. Perhaps I will get a student or two to stay after school with me a few days next week and get some extra credit for helping me throw away crap.

Oy.

Oh, and I finally got my webpage updated. I have projects from the whole school year on here, but the most recent stuff is in the Art History section (the Renaissance project), the Activities section (field trips and goofing off), the Beret Club, and the Awards Ceremony. Go and look. Or don't. Whatever. I did my part.

Now I'm off to enjoy the last two days of my summer vacation.

.: posted by amy 12:08 AM

Wednesday, August 13, 2003

Enlightenment

I now know why they call it the trots.

.: posted by amy 10:20 PM

Saturday, August 09, 2003

Poor Charlie

A few months ago, Robert and I decided that we wanted to try fishing. As luck would have it, the state holds a 'no license day' (or whatever they call it) in June; it was the next weekend, so we went out on a boat with Robert's dad to try our luck. Nolan has an interesing knack for making a sport where you sit around and try to convince (admittedly not the smartest) animals to eat your food and, thusly, become your food, fun. Needless to say, we both had a good time that day--I caught the first and biggest fish of the day, a crappie. Yay!

So the next weekend, Robert and I, who are never at a loss for enthusiam to spend money, went out, got our own gear, licenses (which would last only through the end of August), and started trying to fish on our own.

Now, when I say that I caught the first fish back in June, that's kind of a technicality. I held the rod and reel while reeling the fish in. I sat with it and watched for it to do the bobbing thing that I was told to watch. But that's it. Nolan likes to make sure things run smoothly on his boat, so he has a tendency to bait the hook for you (males and females), and he often likes to cast for you. And he keeps the fish you catch. But that's cool--when you're on his boat, and he's teaching you to fish, you don't mind making that kind of "payment."

Robert and I tried to fish on our own out at Tyler State Park, but that was a bust. The piers from which we were fishing were void of anything except those pesky perch that are too small to take home but who love to eat up your bait. (In retrospect, if I were a fish and I saw that my friends kept disappearing every time they went near the spooky wooden thing in my home lake, I might avoid it as well, which makes me rethink my whole opinion on fish intelligence.)

We have tried a few other times, also with little to no luck. We recently moved close to Caddo Lake State Park, so we've been out there several times. In between the dry runs we have made hither and yon, we have gone back out with Nolan on his boat and always caught at least a few, which reminded us of why we had started doing this in the first place, and why we had so much fun with it.

We had not been fishing for about a month because, as I said, we just moved. Pretty much the entirity of the last three weeks has been us unpacking boxes, taking trash to the dump, replacing appliances, and bitching about unpacking boxes, taking trash to the dump and replacing appliances. Not very much fun, admittedly, but necessary work.

We decided today that enough was enough; it was time to go to the lake and let the fish mock us.

After he researched the best way to fish for catfish, Robert rigged up our rods, packed some drinks and we headed out. We got to Caddo around 5:30ish, which to us seemed a good time--past the really, really hot time, but not quite night yet. We staked out our section of the bank along the river, and we cast in.

Apparently, 5:30ish is a good time to lots of other people. Imagine that. We saw the boaters who drive through the no-wake zone at full speed, flying their rebel flags and pulling skiers. We saw the rednecks who insisted that everyone must want to hear Jerry Jeff Walker. There was the girl who walked over to Robert's area (clearly designated by his chair) while he was over at the table rebaiting his hook and began casting. There was the family of ten who walked by us, asked how the fishing was going, and set up camp within ten feet of us, screaming lot of brats and all.

And there was Charlie.

I had been sitting, watching my rod, waiting for something, anything, to happen for perhaps thirty minutes. Was getting a bit bored, but figured I'd try to appreciate the outing for the Zen appeal the lake has. It truly is a beautiful area--looks very primordial with moss hanging from trees and big cyprus knees sticking up out of the water. I'd be completly unsurprised to see a dinosaur come around the bend at this place, although I'd probably be more likely to see an Aligator.

Anyway, I'm Zenning out, enjoying the beauty, when the tip of my fishing rod starts to dip wildly. I grab it up, silently cursing myself for removing my flipflops, and start to reel in. I've felt this rush of excitement before, but in the past, it has always been extinguished pretty quickly by seeing the pathetic little perch that usually grabs my line. I was ready to be disappointed.

But then I saw Charlie. At least, that's what his name would have been if I wasn't going to take him home and eat him. You can't very well name the fish you have just killed if you are going to filet him up and drop him in boiling oil, even if you know he doesn't know the difference. "Charlie" is a twelve inch (just barely met the state minimum!) channel catfish. Robert, ever great husband that he is, ooohed and ahhhhed over him for me, and removed the fish from the hook for me. We dropped him in the cooler, whereupon he creeped us out for the next two hours by flopping around, fast at first and slower and slower as time went by. (Actually, in retrospect, it reminds me of listening to microwave popcorn in reverse.) In the end, that was the only fish caught today--even the pesky little perch weren't biting. I personally think it was the evil heathen childen who scared them off.

Anyway, here's a picture of me and "Charlie," before Robert fileted him for me. And here he is after.

I've got to stop naming my food.

.: posted by amy 10:19 PM

The First Rule.....

Hee hee hee.

.: posted by amy 3:55 PM

Friday, August 01, 2003

My Father's Daughter

So I'm at SuperTarget yesterday in Shreveport with my friend Tonia and her baby girl, Sarah. We had been over to visit the hospital at which Tonia and the baby had spent three months last year when Sarah was born three months early. The nurses oooohed and aaaahhed over her, quite justifiably, as she was born weighing not quite two pounds.

Incidentally, if you ever have the experience of visiting a mother and her extremely premature baby at the hospital, you should be prepared for all kinds of horrific tubes and needles inserted into all kinds of places on the baby. In addition, the baby will probably be tiny, and perhaps a bit hairy on her arms and legs, not to mention a bit wrinkly. In all, seeing Sarah was one of the scariest things I have ever seen; I can only imagine how terrifying it must have been for Tonia and her husband, Joe.

But I digress. We had been to the hospital to show the doctors and nurses how much Sarah had grown and how beautiful she is. Afterwards, we went to this restaurant, The Blind Tiger, down on the Red River and had an awesome lunch of Creole Pecan Catfish and garlic mashed potatoes. The food was heavenly, but, alas, was not quite on my low-carb diet. Those of you who low-carb know that to get "off diet" isn't a sin, per se, but you will definitly feel the results of your binging.

So we're walking around in Target after eating, trying to find some contact paper for my new house, as Walmart just didn't have any that appealed to me. We've been there, at this point, for at least thirty minutes, probaby closer to an hour. I am starting to feel the bloat that accompanies any self-respecting carb binge, and I'm getting a little bit gassy, as is my curse. I feel the need to fart coming on, but I don't want to let rip around Tonia and her baby--I try to keep at least a semblance of couth around most of my friends--so I head over to the next aisle and say I'm going to look at the stuff "over there." Tonia says that's cool with her and that she and the baby will be looking at dish towels on the next aisle. [For all I know, Tonia could have been doing the same thing I was doing, only she was subjecting her poor daughter to it as well.]

Anyway, I head over to the unoccupied aisle and proceed to quietly let rip with a really nasty, greasy, oily fart. In my family, the men are usually the ones who are able to clear rooms, but I sometimes like to pride myself on the fact that this time, the gene went to a woman.

So I void myself of all gasses and start heading out of the aisle, all the while looking around innocently and demurely. While I'm heading off the aisle, a woman and her little girl begin to head onto it. The little girl, who couldn't have been more than two years old, was adorable in pink, ribbons, lace, all that girly stuff that people gush over and compare to sugar and spice, and was being pushed in a stroller by her mom who looked about as stylish as someone in Shreveport can possibly muster. I considered warning them about the impending danger, but decided at the last second not to.

As I rounded the corner, the mother got a look of confusion and disgust on her face. The little girl started to cry.

I've never been more proud of myself in my whole life.

.: posted by amy 11:26 PM

Monday, July 28, 2003

Of Vitamins and Birthing Rooms

Random thoughts for the month:

RE: Pregnancy
I'm still planning on letting my husband impregnate me this year. Went to see Dr. Martin (how cool is that? My OB/GYN's name is Doc Martin!) a month ago about pre-pregnancy concerns. She gave lots of advice (apprently it's best to have sperm in the fighting arena before ovulation occurs--it can live up to 72 hours in there. Neat!) and lots of prenatal vitamin samples. The first that I tried, wildberry flavored NataChew, were pretty cool because they were chewable. They reminded me of Flinstones vitamins, which I really liked as a kid. However, it kind of worried me because as a kid, I thought that these little Flinstones were more like candy than the medicine that they are. I never ODed on them or anything, but I would definitly take two or three if mom wasn't watching. Not that, as an adult, I would try to take two or three prenatal vitamins--the extra iron would make me sick--but I figured it would probably be best if it just wasn't an option. (Another area of concern: in this day and age, a company that doesn't have a webpage for its product is just...odd.

Which led to sample #2: Duet by StuartNatal. These had a mild laxative effect, as apprently pregnant women are in need of stool softeners (their words, not mine). Yay! Something else to look forward to in this creation journey! The outer coating on these babies (no pun intended) is bright yellow, about two steps above the color of Mountain Dew, which normally wouldn't cause me any concern. Alas, the dye used to coat them is pretty easily digestable; my pee was a brilliant saffron color the week that I tried this brand out. So I've got the trots, and my pee is technicolored? Maybe Duet isn't for me.

Sample #3 was PreCare Prenatal by Ther-RX. Dye free! Yay! No more yellow pee! Alas, it also had a stool softener (couldn't they come up with a better term for laxative?), so it was nixed as well. I'm batting 0 for 3 here--I don't know much about baseball, but I do know that those kinds of odds aren't favorable.

Sample #4 was Prenate GT by First Horizon Pharmaceuticals. Ok, I'm a dork, but I like these for several reasons. First, they don't make my pee yellow, nor do they give me the trots, both very important features at this point in the game. Secondly, they don't taste like much of anything because they are gel-coated. Thirdly, when I was a kid, I had a kick-ass bike--a DiamondBack GT. Now, at the time, I was a punk-ass cake-eater, so I didn't know that DiamondBack and GT were two different bicycle companies. I'm still not sure how I got the idea that they were one company--I probably saw the two brands next to each other in one of my brother's bicycle magazines and just made an assumption. Sigh. I didn't find out until much, much later in life that this bicycle type never existed. So even though I'm an adult now, and I know that the two companies are not the same and that there is, in fact, no such thing as a DiamondBack GT bicycle, in my mind, that's what the bike was. And these vitamins remind me of that kick-ass shiny chrome bike and that makes me happy.

So I'm getting the Prenate GT. Huzzah.

Incidentally, I was almost scared out of having a kid at the beginning of the summer. My cousin Eva, whom I have always considered more a sister than anything else, since I didn't have a sister and we were always close, had her second son, Logan Alexander Pochatko on June 16. He's beautiful. Tiny (at least the last time I saw him, a few weeks ago, he was still pretty small). Perfect. All around great infant.

I get this call from Pete, Eva's husband, around noonish that day.

"Hi Amy. This is Pete." Anxious.

"Hey Pete, what's up?" Curious--Pete never calls. It's usually Eva who is calling.

"The baby's on his way." Hee hee hee!

"Holy shit! He's not due for another month!" Yowza!

"I know. He's decided to come early." Glee, excitement, nervousness. All the typical 'I'm about to be a Dad' emotions.

"Ok, I'm on my way--let me brush my teeth and put some clothes on and I'm out the door." [Editorial note: I am a teacher, and in the summer time, I have been known to sit in pajamas (as I am doing right this second) with unbrushed teeth and sloppy hair, eating slices of cheese wrapped around hotdogs all day long. I figure I am more than responsible during the school year--I can have my summer months to brush my teeth when I think about it and put on clothes when I have to see someone or leave the house if I want to.]

"Excellent--I'll see you in a little bit."

"See you around 3 o'clock-ish!" Eva lives several hours away and so I had to pack a quick overnight bag, run by Robert's office, let him know where I was going and get money, and haul ass.

And haul ass I did. I got there around 3:30ish, almost 4ish. She's in labor, doing the breathing, groaning, all the things you see a woman doing on TV when she's about to have a kid. Only this is for real, and she looks miserable, not all glowy and 'Hey, this is actually kind of fun! Watch me grunt a little and bitch about how hard childbirth is!' like you usually see on TV. Pete's in the room. Eva's in the room. And now I'm in the room.

"Where's your mom, Eva?"

"She's in the air right now." Diana works for the airlines as a flight attendant.

Oh.

"Where's your dad?"

"He's in Africa. He won't be back for another week or so." Donnie works overseas right now, several weeks on, several weeks off.

Oh.

"Where's your parents, Pete?"

A whole lot of cussing that, in the interest of brevity, I'm editing out right now. Let's suffice it to say Pete's not happy with his family of late.

Oh, and did I mention that the doctor comes in every 15-30 minutes and sticks his fingers up into Eva, so that he can measure how far along she is?

Yep, this is definitly going to be an education for me.

About an hour or so of "regular" laboring along, Eva starts getting her contractions a lot closer together and consequently, starts screaming a lot more regularly. The doctor comes in, starts prepping. The nurse comes in and starts her prep as well. The doctor tells Eva that she's got to keep her legs pulled back to her chest while she pushes using her rectum muscles. I'm watching this from the corner of the room going, "Holy shit--this is going to happen before I can even get down to the waiting room."

And Pete turns to me and says, "Ok, Amy, you're going to hold one leg back and I'm going to hold the other one back. You have to make sure it stays as far back as possible, and don't let her kick you."

Um, ok.

So I step up to the bed, pull back on her leg when instructed to, and watch this kid squeeze out of her, kind of like watching a living, breathing playdough fun factory. My God, kids come out covered in some nasty shit! Never again will I tear up at a birth on TV--there's no way those clean, pretty babies are just out of the womb.

All along, I'm thinking, "I'll have to do this in a year. Boy, is that going to suck!"

But the fact of the matter is, having seen a real live birth, having practically been a part of it myself, it doesn't scare me as much as it used to. It's going to hurt. A lot. No getting around that. Even if I went for a C-section, it wouldn't be all shits and giggles because that's a major, invasive surgery and, frankly, I'm not all that interested in that option unless it becomes a necessity.

Later, Pete apologized to me profusely for "making" me be a part of it. I told him that, first of all, I was honored that I was allowed to be there and be part of the welcoming party for the new baby. Secondly, I told him, I could have opted out at any point, but I love Eva and him too much to have deserted them when they needed my help. Finally, having seen that it isn't the end of the world, that, yeah it kind of sucks, but it's not a forever kind of pain, I feel a little bit more prepared to do it myself and so, if anything, I should be thanking them for letting me see how not-so-scary it is.

Hands down, it was the freakiest shit I have ever seen. It amazes me that OB/GYNs see this stuff every day. I am in awe when I see Eva and the baby now. Hell, I'm in awe when I see most women with their babies now. I look at them and realize that they went through that same experience and I'm a little bit blown away. At the risk of getting all "Hallmark moment" here, it truly is a miracle to see.

So that's it for now. Less scared about the birth. We finally sold the house and moved to the new house in Marshall. I love the new place--it's big, it's plush, it's everything I could hope for to bring a baby home to next year. I'm up to my ears in boxes, but I still stop to think occasionally that this is where my family is going to start; this is where my baby will grow up. It makes me smile, and for now, that's all I need.

.: posted by amy 1:27 PM

Monday, June 02, 2003

Robert suggested I keep a blog of our having a kid, so I guess that's what I'm doing here. Not that I'm pregnant yet--we'll save that kind of excitement for later.

Right now, it's all about preparing. Reading up on the subject. (Will would be so proud of me--he reads about 10 books on any new endeavor he begins, and I can only imagine that, were he pregnant, he'd be reading What to Expect When You're Expecting and The Girlfriend's Guide to Pregnancy, et al.)

But I digress. My point is, I'm studying. Preparing. Psyching myself up. Etc.

I can't imagine what my life is going to be like a year from now. I mean, I can imagine the obvious. Big, sweaty, bulbous. Feeling like a Weeble-Wobble. But the changes that are going to come, changes that I can't even imagine, much less try to figure out how to assimilate into my life--those changes scare the shit out of me.

The pain thing scares me pretty badly, as well. I'd be lying if I said differently. I shat a turd the other day, after a night of heavy drinking and eating bread and sugary stuff (I don't eat carbs, so that's kind of important information) and it hurt so much, I was afraid I was going to pass out on the toilet. I mean, I was at the point of vomiting, it hurt so much. (And no, it wasn't hangover--I've had this kind of pukey-feeling excrement before with nary a drop of alcohol.) If one dump makes me feel that much pain, what's it going to be like to have a larger thing passing through one of my orifices? Yikes, indeed.

So I'm trying to do it the right way, though. Mostly. I refuse to give up caffeine completely. All the books I've read so far say that a little caffeine isn't bad for the baby, so I don't see why I can't start my day off with a cup of coffee like usual. I just need to find something else to drink for the rest of the day instead of the Diet Dr. Peppers I am so fond of. Maybe I can go back to Diet Root Beer. I'm already taking vitamins that have folic acid, among other things, but I'm sure when I visit my OB/GYN, she'll want me to take some other, special prenatal vitamins. Which is fine--she's the expert--I'm just the chick who's willing to let her husband knock her up so she can have a kid. Ask me about art or literature, I'm something of an authority. I can talk about those things and know what I'm doing, usually.

Childbirth? Don't know squat. Which is pretty funny, since I'm 27 this year and I have high school students I teach who know more about it than I do. I'm definitly one of the older moms I'll know. In East Texas, being 27 and married for 9 years without a kid is tantamount to announcing to the world that you are barren and unable to produce any fruits of your relationship. Tell people that you chose not to have kids all those years, and you might as well admit to eating babies. At the very least, you will be given dirty looks at family gatherings and people will feel it is their duty to tell you what a shitty person you are for not giving your parents grandchildren. Point out that your parents are grandparents several times over through your siblings (which is true for both my husband and myself) and they just roll their eyes, as if they have realized how stupid you are and wish that they could make you grasp the gravity of the situation.

Robert and I are going to have perhaps the most anticpated baby of all time. The Phantom Menace of babies. Our families have been asking for this gift--grandchildren! nieces and nephews! more nuts for the family tree!!--since the second day of our married life. In my defense, I was 18 years old and quite frankly, the idea of spitting out a living, breathing, screaming being scared the bejesus out of me. Also in my defense, it still does. The pain is the least of it. That's a short time, compared to the rest of the production. I mean, I teach teenagers, for crissakes. I know what these little buggers turn into. Even those with the best parents and the best raising have moments of shit-headedness. I always half-joke that any time I feel like I want kids, I just go in to work and the feeling completey evaporates.

But the other day, I was at a family get-together (not officially a reunion, but a big gathering, nonetheless) in which I got to visit with my Aunt Cathy's 4 kids, and their 9 respective kids, as well as my brother and his 2 kids. Eleven kids ranging from 1 month to 13 years old. To say that the weekend was loud would be a gross understatement. There were little boys running through the house, screaming like wild indians. There were prima donna little girls, all swishing around and acting like the prom queens I always made fun of.

And there was my new nephew, a little over a month old and totally amazing. I couldn't put him down. I changed diapers. I fed him. I rocked him to sleep. I sang to him. I told everyone I was getting my baby fix so that I wouldn't feel the need to have one any time soon. The old "I'm borrowing your kid until he screams his head off so I won't want one" trick. And they bought it--why wouldn't they? I've been giving them the "I'll get around to having kids one day" speech for too long for them to get their hopes up. They have given up on me and Robert ever feeling like we want to have kids. They are all hoping we accidentally get pregnant because they are convinced that that is the only way they will ever get any kids out of us.

The turning point, I think, for me at least, was one point during the weekend when Robert was holding the baby. Don't remember how it came about--the kid was probably just shoved into his arms at some point for a photo op or something. Dunno. Anyway, I looked across the room and saw my husband holding an infant. And suddenly, it just came very clearly to me. This is it. This is the time I was waiting for. This is that magic moment I've been telling myself would happen someday in which I was suddenly convinced that I really need to have kids and moreover, I really want to have kids, but that I kind of figured I was lying to myself about.

I said very quietly to him, "I want one of these," and left the room.

And that was it. We didn't talk about it on the way home because my dad was with us and neither of us wanted to make a life altering decision in front of an audience. We stayed up late that night, well past midnight (which, for us, is quite late) and hashed out all the reasons not to have a kid. Then we listed all the reasons we wanted to have a kid. The pro list was quite a bit shorter than the con list. Didn't matter, though. We were resolute and quite solidly decided.

Flash forward to today. We have been looking at information on the internet. Robert has been crunching numbers, as that seems to be what men enjoy about the whole pregnancy process most. I have been reading books. We have discussed names for boys and girls. We have decided that we need to wait until late August/early September to start trying, since I teach and I really don't want to have the baby right before the school year is out, especially as I'm beginning a new AP Studio Art program this year and it's pretty crucial that it go as smoothly as possible. I have a prenatal counseling appointment with my OB/GYN at the end of this month. So I guess the ball is in motion. We can still chicken out before fall arrives and decide not to do it. But right now, I don't want to.

I had a dream a few months ago. I guess it was a dream. I think it was a sign.

I'm a pretty notoriously bad gardener. I kill plants. Dead. I walk through nurseries at WalMart and other stores and plants that I'm looking at kind of wilt, slumping over until I walk past them, fearing that I will choose them to take home with me to die. It's pretty embarrassing, but it seems to be true.

I had this dream, though, that I was being told to try gardening again. And don't just do the wimpy stuff like transplanting established plants into a flower bed. I was supposed to grow some seeds. I was given the impression that if I could somehow make something grow in the ground, then that would be my sign that it was time for me to start having kids. That I was responsible enough for kids, as it were. That maybe I wouldn't forget to feed them or change their diapers or something.

Anyway, I told my husband about the dream, and I told my best friend, and then I forgot about it. Done. Fini. Over. But then we started trying to sell the house. (I live an hour away from my work and driving sucks.) And one of the things I decided would be good to do was try to plant some plants out in a defunct flower bed I made several years ago. Nothing big. A rosebush. Some marigolds. A jasmine vine over in the yard. No big deal.

My husband reminds me of the dream and asks me if I'm trying to send him a signal. "Nope. Just want to put some pretty flowers in the flower bed so that people who come by to see the house will see something pretty and maybe it will help convince them that they need to buy the house." True enough.

But then I saw some seeds I wanted. Now, in my defense, I have wanted moonflowers and four o'clocks and other vining things for quite some time. I couldn't find any at the nurseries, though. So I bought the seeds, much to the chagrin of my husband ("Are you sure you're not telling me something?"). Soaked them in water, like you are supposed to do. Put them in dirt, like you are supposed to do. Nurtured them, like you are supposed to do. They got amazingly out of control on the workbench in my garage with the heat lamp focused on them and me watering them.

Frankly, it scared me. I've never had any luck with seeds. So I let them die. I stopped watering them. I would leave the lamp off for days at a time. And most of them died. The four o'clocks started wilting and withering. But the moonflowers didn't. Curious, I brought them out of the garage, into the sunshine on my back deck and set them out. As luck would have it (for them), it rained off and on for the next few days. So they got sunlight, water, and air. And they are thriving. They are almost a foot tall now, with no help from me. They have shiny, bright leaves on them, and each stalk has several groupings of leaves instead of one measly leaf on each stalk (as I've had before).

I haven't killed them. I remember to water them a few times a week. I turn them around periodically so that they can grow in the other direction and make their stalks strong on all sides. In the other flower bed, the marigolds are, while not thriving, still hanging in. The rose bush, after me thinking it was dead all this time, has put out new growth and has some shiny green new leaves growing its middle. Even the jasmine seems to be doing pretty ok. I haven't killed them.

I didn't think about the dream until the other day when I was telling my best friend about me and my husband suddenly deciding that it was time to have kids. He said, "Well, I guess the Goddess was trying tell you something, after all." To which I replied, "Um, what?" And he reminded me of the dream.

I don't have prophetic dreams. I don't see the future. Never have. I believe some people do, but I've never been one of those people. But this once, I'm wondering if maybe I didn't see a glimpse of my path?

Anyway, I think that's enough rambling for now. I plan to add to this blog a lot when I finally do get pregnant. I'll probably do a little bit between now and then, but mostly, I'm going to just do what I've been doing. Read. Study. Prepare. Psych myself out. Etc.

I'll figure it out.

.: posted by amy 10:57 PM

Saturday, March 15, 2003

So I saw this sign today that made me laugh, just a little. I was driving through Tyler, or as I like to call it, the 7th Ring of Hell, with my little sister. We passed this car wash. Not the fancy type where you pay your money and someone goes off in your car, taking it though the tunnel, and then wiping it down, vacuuming it, etc. This was just the tunnel part, and you did any wiping down and vacuuming yourself. Very self serve.
So anyway, we pass this place, and I happen to notice the marquee advertising the name of the place, etc. In big block letters after the name (which escapes me at the moment), the sign read,

WED--LADIES DAY
I'm not quite sure what to make of this. Do women get half price drinks while we wash our cars? Are we more at risk for being hit on by some Tony Manero type (ask your moms, girls--they can tell you who I'm talking about)? It just seems to take the whole ''Hey baby, what's your sign?'' thing to a whole new level. Am I still a Libra in this instance, or am I a Hyundai now? Is my new astrological sign, much more zippy than my former sign, compatible with my husband's more earnest and dependable Ford? Just some food for thought, but I'm wondering about how I'm going to avoid the seemingly obvious next development: Car Wash Flies.
''Sorry guys, but I've already got my O-ring.''

.: posted by amy 11:03 PM

Thursday, March 13, 2003

I'm home now, and can fully devote myself to this writing.

Oh, the pressure. Everyone seems so witty. I mean, Robert's blog is all philosophical and still used the word "shit." Will's tells about homeless guys raking leaves and leaving grocery carts and stealing rakes (not to mention that puking story). What do I have to say of import? Hell, who even uses the word import anymore when importance is so less confusing and non-archaic? (Why would anything I have to say deal with stuff coming into a country?)

Oy vey.

I don't even have any witty stories to tell from my classroom today. I'm drawing a complete blank. Sigh. Maybe later I'll remember something cool and post it then.

.: posted by amy 6:33 PM

So everyone I know is blogging. Guess I'll give it a try, as well. Once upon a time, I wanted to be a writer, so this can't be that hard, can it? (insert irony fairies here)
Will enter more later, when not at work.