d-day minus 8: recontextualizing

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It might be even longer. I suspect that it will be longer.

Because of all the wonderful hormones that are peaking at this final moment, there is pretty much no way I am going to feel good until after the hormone-factory (known as the placenta) leaves my body to normalize itself. So, feeling good is several weeks away.

To add insult to injury, there is this nasty cold.

I don’t like being uncomfortable. But I also don’t really like complaining.

So here’s my plan: the goal of each day is to reach the end of it. Not to accomplish tasks or learn things or even to ‘have a nice day.’ The goal is to get through the time.

Time is weighing very heavy on my hands. As well as everything else in my body. But maybe this is sort of like an 8 day plane ride. Just have to get through the uncomfortableness in the most dignified way possible.

D-Day -10: more fun with cat and dog

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What with being pregnant, and the pregnancy-related discomfort (carpal tunnel is making my hands unable to hold a book while laying down–the only position I can maintain for long, and having a cold going on 10 days, I am finding what entertainment I can.

Here is my first movie. I should find a way of adding it to the “Animal Tongues” collection:

I sniffed the tuna hard to see if my sense of smell was beginning to return. It is not.
Chris gave me a pained look, and said it was just as well for the moment
 

 

Old Fashioned Women

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I admit, I do like the Victorian era. At least, I like the books that come from that period. Tha ladies with their fabulous dresses and parties and entrigues.

Mr Darcy is a nearly endlessly fascinating man. How many movies, exactly, have been made of Pride and Prejudice? and how many more will be made?

Of course, it would not be so fun to actually live in the Victorian era. The not being able to vote thing, and the obsession with propriety would wear thin in about five minutes.

But one thing about those Victorian ladies I do admire and would like to emulate in my current modern life is their ability to ‘correspond.’ Writing letters and responding to gift and invitations seemed to be a weekly, if not daily, activity for these women.

I guess I write emails at least that frequently. But letters? with STAMPS? Those are harder to achieve.

Christmas just happened, and that is the time of year when a lot of people make the effort to send a physical card and/or letter to their wide aquaintance. I think that’s a beautiful thing. It’s really wonderful to send and recieve these missives. Perhaps it is one of the old-fashioned traditions that make Christmas so special.

Getting all the envelopes and cards ready reminded me of the efforts made last year for my wedding invitations. Checking and double-checking to make sure I have all the pertinent addresses for everyone is tedious, but it is pleasant to think of all these people who have been a joy to my life.

Because of my restricted abilities right now, I am triple-checking the address list. I know I just sent out the Christmas letter, but I intend to send out a birth announcement with little Daley Daughter picture to everyone.

Since I can’t reorganize the garage (a task needing doing, but not something I can do right now), I can at least pre-adress the envelopes for the next mailing.

The combination of being so dis- abled and preparing correspondence makes me feel rather Victorian. Also, I’m drinking copious amounts of tea. Very very victorian.

Maybe I could go rent Pride and Prejudice.

Playing with Christmas toys

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So my brother Mark sent a toy to Chris for a Christmas present: a remote control helicopter. After opening the package, Chris opened it right away and was impressed that Mark had also included the batteries for the helicopter. It was put to use right away.

The presents from my family get opened on Christmas Eve, since that has been our tradition as long as I can remember. So the helicopter had star billing for that night.

As you can read in a previous post, I got a video recorder from Chris. Since I’ve been sick and Chris has been busy, we didn’t get to put these two delightful toys together until today.

General Chris said that the controls were difficult to manage, but he seemed to improve with practice.

Perhaps the next exercise will include the cat.

UPDATE: Lucy Dog recognizes herself in the video, and will bark at her recorded barkings. Maybe it will take a while for her to get used to being a movie star.

January 2009 has arrived! Happy New Year!

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I consider the greeting of the new year an obligation to practice living the exciting life I want to have. I -always- try to do -something-.

Not this year. I went to bed at eight. And woke up every hour thereafter. Except for midnight. Chris came and shook me awake to say “Happy Birthday!” and hand me a present.

I smiled and said “Happy New Year!” I wouldn’t open the present because it’s nice to have a pretty wrapped present to contemplate opening for a while.

Of course, I couldn’t fall back asleep after that. I woke up and went to sit in the living room. I had my book, and Chris was reading a reference book about ships. It was very quiet.

Not much later he asked me if I felt older. He squeezed my arm to see if I felt older to him. I said, “I’m mostly glad it’s January.”

“That’s right! By the end of this month, you will definitely not be pregnant anymore!”

“I know! I’m looking forward to it.”

So, I’m up and having a midnight snack of Chicken Ramen noodles, my mainstay against sore throaty colds. The salt cauterized the wound of my throat and the hot water is always nice. Maybe I’ll be able to sleep again after I finish it.

Looking forward to this new month, and to the new year. It will be great.

Home: A wretched rambing post from a woman’s confinement

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Well, I guess I know why they used to call it ‘confinement.’

I worked all the way through my  pregnancy–up until last week. Now I am at home waiting for the impending birth to strike me like a thief in the night. I was very uncomfortable at work, which I didn’t anticipate. I can see why I really do need to stay home.

But I don’t like being at home much either. The main advantage is that I get to lay down a lot.

There is a kind of list of all the things that hurt. Currently, I have a raging case of carpal tunnet. how ironic! Carpal tunnet sets in with a vengeance once I give up the desk job for laying around at home.  Turns out that some women get swollen ankles when they are pregnant, and some get swollen carpal tunnels that squeeze all feeling out of my right obscene finger particularly. And  which send big achey ouches up my forearms. While I’m sleeping. Which wakes me up. Practice for the sleep deprivation to come, everyone tells me.

I got some wrist braces, which stop the numbness and pain in my arms. That’s good. But it creates a still significant but slightly lesser pain at the base of my thumb. Well, it’s better than nothing.

I went to the library to get more books. Books are good to have at a time like this.  I thought i would take my own advice froma previous blogpost and get some more pulitzer prize winning books.

My town library SUCKS. I printed out the list of pulitzer winning books, and hobbled through the library looking for them. I swear, I only found about 3 of the dozen I looked for. If a library can’t even stock big prize-winning books..what are those librarians in charge of purchasing doing?

Books I have read recently:

  • Martian Chronicles by Bradbury
  • The Namesake by Jhumpa Lahiri
  • A House Made of Dawn by Momaday

That last one was a pulitzer winner, and it annoyed me a little. It was very ‘different.’ I guess that it wanted to tell the story with as little dialogue or  revealing teh motivation of the characters as possible. The very last section finally made it worthwhile, and i guess I’m glad I read it. But you know…’experimental’ was not what I wanted.

I want a book I can dive into and swim around in. a nice long page turner.

Stupid library has devoted the entire perimeter of fiction section to mystery, western, sci fi, and probably romance. Let me just say, that I can enjoy such things, but not the kind that would get placed in the section devoted to them.Gah! Libraries!! lowest common denominator is all fine unless you are a prime number.

I need some prime books to read. They are getting harder to come by, AND they are often depressing.  Eh.

So, I still have A Death in the Family by Agee and The Yiddish Policemen’s Union to get through. Oh, wait. I picked up one by Silko..I read some of his short stories, and they were pretty good. I’ll start on that one first.

But today, I am recovering from a cold. So, I have to adjust my plans down even further. In addition to all the usual pregnancy woes, I have weakness and a little bit of a runny nose.

We plan on going to the hospital and ‘pre-admitting’. The hospital admits taht they have a huge amount of paperwork that must be filled out before admitting a woman in labor. So, they thoughtfully allow pre-registering in advance of the actual onset of labor. I don’t know how long we’ll be there, but it will be good to have that done.

That might be all I can manage to accomplish today. I’l like to do some laundry and cleaning.  But..i am not who I usually am.

Perhaps I can preaddress the envelopes that we will use to send the birth announcements. It depends.

New media enhancements

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Okay, so Christmas is over and it’s kinda sad. It was the biggest thing on the horizon, you know, and now it’s done.

Just like that.

I got the present I really wanted: a flip mino

This means I have a whole new kind of media I can add to this blog. It also means I’m going to be embarrassingly amateurish for a good while. And you may have to opportunity to see a lot of my current video models: dog and cat.

Chris made sure the little recorder had some charge, so my first video was of other people unwrapping presents. -My- voice is distressingly loud, but I was still learning:

 

this will take a while to figure out…Merry Christmas to me!