So here's the thing...

A friend of mine says that all the time, and it's one of my favorite things about her. I find it's a good way to begin a post.

The thing is, lately I've been feeling stressed. And feeling stressed during my pregnancy makes me even more stressed, because then I worry about what the stress is doing to my baby. A borderline high glucose test, my husband's new job and variable schedule, trying to get the baby's room ready, trying to figure out what to register for, trying to keep the house clean... all these things press upon me. And I know it's all normal, just part of it, the anxiety, the unsettled feeling. So far this pregnancy has been a great teacher! I am learning just how much I crave order and a sense of control. I'm learning how rigid I can be, stuck in my cozy routine just like the typical bullish Taurus that I am.

I want to be able to do everything and do it well. I want to have a clean, orderly home, a sweet, pretty, organized room for the baby, time for relaxing, time for my husband, time for my friends, time for my family, time to walk, time to shop well and eat right, time to sleep. I feel like I should make a keepsake scrapbook of my pregnancy, and the fact that I haven't begun makes me feel bad. Then there are all the baby books I've got lined up on my bookshelf - one about newborns, one about breastfeeding, one about labor, a few about everything. They reproach me when I look at them, since I've yet to finish any or begin some at all.

I gotta turn those books in. I need to give myself a break. This baby doesn't care if he has a scrapbook, or if his mom has an organized closet. He just needs me to love him, feed him, keep him safe and dry. I can do that. I can't wait to do that. I can't wait to meet him, nurture him, watch him develop into a person. He's already changing me, making me better, shaking up my routines and my world view. I can't do everything. How did I ever think that I could? Or that I should have to?

Secrets and Pet Peeves

Secret: I don't like the K-town Mexican food institution that is Senor Taco. I'll go there willingly for a birthday party or a get-together, but I just don't share the love for that place that everyone else in my age bracket seems to feel.

Pet Peeve: When people say "Li-berry" instead of "Library."

Secret: I feel ignorant and uninformed when the talk turns to unions, collective bargaining, and balancing state budgets. I hear people say all the time that unions are part of the reason nothing is made in America anymore. I tend to favor the corporate greed argument, but I know it has to be more complicated than that.

Pet Peeve: When people get their library card out of their wallet and throw it on the desk.

Secret: I sometime worry that my friends think I'm an annoying, uncool, boring doofus.

Pet Peeve: When I say "Hello" or "How are you?" to someone and they don't respond. Am I speaking Farsi?

Secret: I count and cheer on every single day that this baby is in my body when I get up in the morning. 22 weeks and 3 days, 22 weeks and 4 days... way to go Peanut! I pray that he is healthy, I am healthy, and we both make it happily through all 40 or so weeks, through the delivery, and beyond.

I am too blessed to concentrate on more pet peeves. :)

Boy Books

We're having a boy! At least that's what the ultrasound tech told us, and I have to trust her experience, because I wasn't at all sure what I was looking at! :) It's terribly surprising and exciting - it's a whole new world. I know all about girl stuff (I was a very girly girl), but as an only child, I know NOTHING about boy stuff! And it occurred to me this afternoon, as I was shelving juvenile fiction, that I'll have to start reading some BOY BOOKS. A lifetime of reading Nancy Drew, Little Women, Anastasia Krupnick, and Sweet Valley High has ill prepared me for getting a little boy excited about reading! At least there's always Harry Potter. Thankfully, I have some time before Little Man is ready for the J-Shelves. We'll do some board books first, and they're pretty gender neutral.

Puh-lease.

Is this really neccessary?!?

In addition, I would like to abolish all Jane Austen "updates" - the latest one I saw on our shelves is Bespelling Jane Austen. It's four romantic novellas based on Austen's works - with a paranormal twist. The poor woman. Can we just LEAVE HER ALONE? Her works are timeless masterpieces in and of themselves!

Book Review - Espresso Tales

One of the weirdest of my pregnancy experiences thus far has been a phase in the first trimester where I couldn't read. Books held no attraction for me for about three or four weeks. This is highly unusual for me. I had no attention span, and this combined with overwhelming fatigue left me crashing in front of the television every night after work. I didn't even care what I was watching, truthfully. If I did deign to read something, it was a pregnancy book. Blessedly, somewhere along week 9 or 10 I was able to enjoy my usual steady diet of fiction and I felt like myself again.

I am trying to make the most of my pre-baby time in many ways: spending time with friends, going out to eat, reading voraciously. My life is about to change in ways I can't even imagine, and I am sure that reading will be challenging if not impossible once Peanut arrives.

I just finished a positively delightful novel, Espresso Tales, the second of the Scotland Street series by Alexander McCall Smith. He's a Scottish author best known for his No. 1 Ladies' Detective Agency mysteries, which I have not read. This is not a mystery, but a story about people and families living on and around Scotland Street in Edinburgh. You have Bruce, the ridiculous narcissist, trying to open a wine shop knowing next to nothing about business or wine, and there's Pat, his roommate, who works in an art gallery and gets an invitation to attend a nudist picnic with a young man she's interested in. There's poor Bertie, a 6-year old genius pushed by his overbearing mother to play saxophone, learn Italian, and take yoga, when really all he wants to do is watch trains and go fishing. There's Cyril, the dog who longs to bite ankles but doesn't want his master to yell at him, and Domenica, the wise older anthropologist in a bit of a rut. These characters yearn, make mistakes, overthink, pontificate, blunder through life, like the rest of us; they feel real and the reader roots for them - even the unsympathetic ones have their charms.

Why do I love reading these novels? They're light without being vapid, funny without trying too hard, subtly moving without manipulating emotions. Entertaining and intelligent, wise and witty. I am excited that there are three more novels in the series.

Another Me

I started cleaning out the office, which will hereby be known as the baby room. It looks like a bomb went off in there now, but I have a vision of soothing, semi-organized loveliness to come. I found two boxes of letters, cards, and mementos from college. Last night I sat on the couch and started going through one, only making it half-way before I felt soaked in too much nostalgia.

Letters are fantastic. No one writes them anymore. But this is not that blog entry, the one where I lament the death of paper and pen. This is the one where I ponder who the hell that person was that received all those letters. Certainly she was lucky, to be loved by so many interesting people, eager to share their summers and Christmas breaks and semesters abroad with her.

As my stack of things to toss out grew, so did my discomfort level. A potent mix of feelings swirled within - embarrassment, yearning, gratitude, sadness. I realized just how different I am now, how much I am not that 20-year-old anymore. Old regrets rose to the surface with the hindsight of the past 14 years. I should have studied in London, I should have applied myself more to my schoolwork, I should have spent a summer at an internship away. Simultaneously I took heart in the knowledge that these great people loved me, confided in me, missed me. I was surely doing something right in my life at that time to be surrounded by a circle of true friendship and camaraderie.


My husband always tells me I'm too hard on myself, and I know he's right. I had a wonderful college experience, full of interesting classes, amazing relationships, silliness, crushes, road trips, stupid arguments, parties, dancing... all the things that make going away from home for four years worthwhile and edifying. Hubby says, "You're just a late bloomer," and he's right again. Self-confidence and a willingness to try new things came relatively later in life to me, and sometimes that's just how it goes. Better late than never, I say. Still, reading all those letters dredged up old self-doubt.

With a box and a half to go through, part of me wants to just chuck it all! Sometimes it's better to let your old life rest, let your former self stay mostly forgotten.

Craving oranges, enjoying everything.

I'm back. I've missed this cute little blog o' mine. Not enough to actually write something, apparently, but I'm here now.

Things are happening in my life, and I finally feel at liberty to start talking about them. I'm expecting a child in early July. Sixteen weeks into this crazy process I feel like maybe, just maybe, I can talk about it and write about it at will, and everything will be okay. Guess I've inherited my mother's superstitious nature after all - or maybe I'm just a worry-wart. But I also know that things will be what they will, no matter what I tell the world. And that is my father's Persian fatalism coming out in me.

One of the absolute best things so far about being pregnant is that for the first time in my life, I don't give a damn about reading the omnipresent articles in women's magazines about losing weight. I don't care a lick about the segments on the morning shows about diet and exercise. I am eating intuitively for the first time that I can recall. I actually like it when the scale inches up a pound. I am caring for and nurturing a future human being inside of me - I am growing a person! It's so profoundly amazing. I know it happens all the time, all over the world, and has for millions of years. But this is MY experience, my body, my future child. It is intensely consuming, fascinating, absorbing. It's all I can do to direct my attention elsewhere.

I hope that after the baby arrives I can cling to this feeling of caring for my body, treating myself kindly, forgiving what society says are its "flaws." I want to set a good example for my child, so that they might know what it means to value health over a number on the scale or a pants size. That they might eat some pizza or a doughnut without self-flagellation. They they can arm themselves against messages from corporations and media outlets trying to sell them self-hate.