secondhand gods

randoms

Watching: the weather; thunderstorms in the forecast for the next several days. Our weekly summer grill-out to celebrate the weekend -- usually on Friday nights, GB & I sprawl out on our back patio between the square foot gardens and the Fuckington's riotous perennial bed, cooking burgers on a tiny charcoal grill, watching birds on the birdbath and in the birdhouses, listening to neighborhood sounds -- was unexpectedly cut short last night by a fast-moving swathe of storms. The entire state was under a tornado watch and during my commute home from work, the announcer kept breaking in on NPR to advise of a new tornado in some unheard-of, distant county. We got our burgers, but there were no s'mores last night as I'd been hoping. Instead, we got some rain and some high winds and I had to settle for a raw uncooked Hershey bar. Also watching:  Our peony bushes, which are finally blossoming.

Not Watching: Television. Our experiment to cut back our amount of television consumption is about two weeks old and we're both amazed at the difference it's made to our evenings and weekends. We eat dinner together at the table, sometimes talking, sometimes reading companionably. Except to watch the Red Wings win the Stanley Cup, the TV has not been turned on at all in the evenings, which has brought us a grounded sense of calm and leisure. We feel we can set our own rhythm and pace without being hectored by commercial breaks or laugh tracks in the background. I still like the Weather Channel, so that's on occasionally, and overall it will be interesting to see if I am able to keep the TV off when GB is traveling for a few days in a row (I usually turn it on for companionship when he's away, and that's when I can get sucked into the most disappointing programming.) I think we've made a substantive and positive change to our habits well before Miss Snoop arrives.

Reading: With all that extra time, I've been reading a lot. A big fan of Frank Herbert's indescribably fascinating "Dune" series, I reluctantly picked up the more recent offerings written by his son and another writer. I didn't expect to like them, but they've been more fulfilling than I thought they would be. For one, they don't try to pick the story up where it left off -- the books are prequels to the original series. In some cases, you're reading about familiar characters at an earlier stage of their lives, in others, you're reading about events that were a historical basis for the original books. The writing is not nearly as complex, intriguing, and satisfying as Frank Herbert's. But then again, the plots are faster-moving, less thorny and multi-layered, and thus a lot more accessible. The characters are quick to engage with. Overall, the series passes the test for me and I can deem the books acceptable.

I have it in my sidebar, but I couldn't finish Steve Berry's "Venetian Betrayal." I just couldn't get into it. He didn't spend any time on character development, so I was plunged in with these characters that I neither knew nor particularly wanted to know, with no desire to go back to the beginning of his series and read more books to get to know them. His writing is quick and choppy, with two or three page long chapters, which is good when you're sleepy and thinking, "I'll just read one more" but it left me disoriented. Now, his historical sequences about Alexander the Great were fascinating, but I read several books about Alexander the Great when we were in Australia so already thought he was an extremely absorbing topic, and if I want to read more about him then I'll just check out a biography from the library or reread Mary Renault's books.

I am just finishing up "Confederates in the Attic" by Tony Horwitz which has been fabulous. I can highly recommend it. I checked it out while waiting for his latest book, "A Voyage Long and Strange", and it has been wonderful. It's a blend of history, journalism, and humor as he goes roaming around the South in search of the Civil War. He eventually gets sucked in to "hardcore" Civil War reenactments with people who are so obsessed that they even extreme-diet to achieve the sunken look of old Civil War soldier photographs. The descriptions of his adventures with these groups -- and one guy in particular, whose grumpy visage adorns the cover -- are historically enlightening and hilarious to boot.

Knitting: I'm getting extremely sick of knitting little hats and booties. I'm starting on a pair of socks next, to get back into some good old "adult knitting." My evening free time has helped me surge ahead on finishing the baby yoda jacket, though, and I think it's going to be really cute, although it is a lot of seaming and I am just not a seamstress; I'm hoping everything doesn't end up crooked and mismatched. The neck stitches are still on scrap yarn stitch holders, waiting to be finished off once the seaming is done. I'm pleasantly surprised to find that it doesn't look as boyish as I'd feared, even in the rough natural cotton yarn; as GB said objectively, "It just looks earthy." And as he rightly pointed out, she has a lot of pink and fluff and frills in her wardrobe, so she could definitely use some earthy pieces to balance it out.

for everyone who remembers that old cartoon with the dancing frog

more cat pictures

29 weeks

 

• crib assembled, crib bedding temporarily installed just to see what it will look like
• glider rocker ordered, sale price received
• 30 baby hangers used; realization sets in afresh that my unborn daughter has more clothes than her father and me put together
• rug acquired from Pottery Barn outlet (40% off the outlet price, it was a steal), laid, and vacuumed
• cat, who is not allowed in the nursery, sneaks in and has to be shooed off of freshly laundered nursery bedding; cat begins eyeing the crib with unseemly interest and is forcibly removed from nursery
• cat flips me the bird and calls me a rude name as she saunters out
• antique dresser purchased from Ebay, requires picking up today, Mother-to-be extremely excited as it means she will be able to finish laundering the 2 remaining laundry baskets of Snoop wardrobe in the basement and have a place to stow them; maternal grandmother extremely concerned that aforementioned dresser might be riddled with lead paint and Snoop will grow a third eye
• blinds installed in nursery; valance ironed and hung

In non-baby news, you can accomplish an inordinate amount when you wake up at 6 AM on a Saturday:

• household chores completed
• pedicure obtained at local nail salon whilst reading an engrossing science fiction novel
• GB-designed birdhouse produced and installed in lilac trees (pictures to follow)
• the new Indiana Jones film seen with best friends P&A (to mixed reviews, mostly disappointed, except for P, who thought it was just fine.) I echo Blackbird's comments -- Karen Allen looks like a train wreck in this film, and it is terribly unfortunate because she is a lovely woman. They could have given her a more flattering hairstyle that didn't make her look like a haggard raving madwoman, and a decent wardrobe.
• Dinner out at a local brewery with aforementioned best friends, presided over by creepy Boris-like waiter who informed us dourly that they were out of three of their home-produced beers as well as coleslaw. We fear for long-term viability of said brewery. 
• Red Wings cheered on to a nail-biting victory over the Penguins

my mosaic

My creation, originally uploaded by sixtenpine.

As seen on Pea Soup...

To play:

a.) Type your answer to each of the questions below into Flickr Search.
b.) Using only the first page, pick an image.
c.) Copy and paste each of the URLs for the images into the fd's Mosaic Maker.

The Questions:

1.) What is your first name?
2.) What is your favorite food?
3.) Where did you go to high school?
4.) What is your favorite color?
5.) Who is your celebrity crush?
6.) Favorite drink?
7.) Dream vacation?
8.) Favorite dessert?
9.) What do you want to be when you grow up?
10.) What do you love most in life?
11.) One word to describe you.
12.) Your Flickr name.

into the third trimester

Throughout my pregnancy, I have been very entertained by the pregnancy week-by-week websites that compare the size of the fetus to various fruits and vegetables. At first I thought it was just a handy reference, but later on, I realized, they're really working at this.

When you first start out, the natural first comparison is a blueberry. "This week, your baby is the size of a blueberry!" I think that was around 7 weeks.

I could understand that -- it seemed a sensible comparison.

Then, they got a little more flamboyant. By week 10, Snoop was the size of a kumquat. Neither GB nor I knew quite what a kumquat really looks like, or how big it is.

Then we passed through the traditional fruits -- your baby is the size of a lemon, lime, apple, etc.

At 17 weeks, she was a turnip.

22 weeks was very specific -- a spaghetti squash. Not just any kind of squash, but a spaghetti squash. I don't know if I buy this because a spaghetti squash is pretty big -- bigger, it would seem, than the next major comparison, below.

At 25 weeks, Snoop was the size of "an average rutabaga." Again, GB & I were stumped. And then, after some research, horrified. I certainly hope she turns out cuter than an "average rutabaga." Hopefully she'll be more like an "exceptional rutabaga."

The following week, she was an English hothouse cucumber, and this week, I am pleased to report that she is a Chinese cabbage.

Isn't she the cutest thing?

...I am not making any of this up.

                                                                  **

In other news, GB & I are attempting to reduce our television intake. We typically only watch about an hour or so a night but even that seems excessive; so we have decided that from now on, rather than making dinner and plunking down in front of a rerun of "Three and a Half Men" (which really is a pretty funny show) to eat, we are going to keep the television off and eat dinner together sitting at the table. We've always wanted to adhere to sit-down dinnertime when we had kids, so now is a good time to get into the habit. We will also cut back on weekend television viewing (a problem for me as I can frequently pass through a room, turn on the TV on a Sunday afternoon, and become sucked into a marathon of "Rock of Love" or some such nonsense, or worse, a Lifetime Made for TV Movie.)

Of course, accommodations will be made for special viewing, such as tonight's Stanley Cup playoff game in which we are fervently hoping the Red Wings continue their blistering performance and ultimately bring the cup back home to Michigan!

Go Wings!!

in which we go from 0 to 60 faster than you can hit "publish"

The Weather Channel has advised me that it is 86 degrees in suburban Detroit. I am watching GB do yardwork from my vantage point in the cool of our back den, wondering where he got his energy and whether I will ever be able to get my wedding ring off my swollen finger ever again.

We just got home from a weekend opening our cottage, and have the following observations:

• Our neighbors up there, whom we thankfully saw only once last summer (please God let us have the same luck this year,) seem to think that our backyard is part of their backyard, and have no issues letting their dog and children roam free to drink out of our hose or pillage our grill and lawn furniture while they sit in a slack-jawed stupor and watch, occasionally interrupting each other to say, "I just TOTALLY HAD A CRAVING FOR FRENCH TOAST." (Uh, yeah, I'm pretty sure that means what you think it means, although we didn't actually see them smoking anything other than Kools.) They even had the unmitigated gall to throw the dog's Frisbee into our backyard for its exercise. (Only when they thought we weren't looking.) I'm thinking a privacy fence might be in order, otherwise GB is going to have to hire a good attorney to keep me from being punished for my soon-to-be violent crimes. At least they are quiet at night, which is about the only decent thing I can say for the mouth-breathers.
• We have a quiet little old lady on the other side of us, and then a tribe of unwashed cretins on the other side of her whose primary amusement over the holiday weekend was riding ATV's around their yard in a circle, digging a deep trough of dust and burning stuff on what used to be their front lawn. This would lead me to believe that all of the pundits who are saying that high gas prices are causing people to change their habits are the smoking the same thing our neighbors are. They certainly have no idea what constitutes entertainment in backwater northern Michigan. These people do not know how to spell "carpool."
• This opinion is reinforced by the mix of vehicles on the road over the holiday weekend. As a conservative estimate, we saw twice as many full-size pickups and SUV's as we did passenger cars. And about three-quarters of the big vehicles were hauling trailers carrying other kinds of gas-guzzling vehicles -- motorcycles, ATV's, jet skis, etc -- and driving between 80 and 90 mph, stomping on the accelerators, tailgating, and weaving in and out of lanes. Most of these vehicles were carrying 1-2 people max. Have I ever said I feel sorry for the state of Michigan? I think gas is going to have to reach European levels before the brainiacs in my state start making better or different choices.
• For the record, we drove the more fuel-efficient of our vehicles five miles under the speed limit and got 30 miles per gallon.
  

Other than that, we really did have a nice time -- reading, watching movies, sleeping in the sun, and drifting in the canoe. WHICH REQUIRES NO GAS.

white night

I think that's what LM Montgomery's heroine Emily used to call them, anyway.

One of my work friends told me that in the last trimester your body begins to ready you for sleepless nights. She said that with her two kids, the number of times she got up in the night to go to the bathroom was pretty indicative of how often she got up with them when they were infants. I'm only up about 2-3 times a night, but a more regular pattern is developing. I fall asleep quickly around 10, sleep well until 3 or 4, get up to use the facilities, and then can't fall back to sleep. My mind becomes occupied with work or gardening or knitting or, like this morning, nursery furniture. Rockers, dressers.

Maggie came up and stared at me for awhile and it wasn't long before the other goofy stripey one figured out that I was awake as well, and came bumbling up to see why I was playing possum. I finally got out of bed to make some tea, and GB got up to go to early morning hockey. The moon was bright as a new penny and absolutely luminous, turning the cloud-rimmed sky around it a delicate, wispy shade of blue-gold. Maggie sat next to me looking at the moon, too, and I thought that in a few months, the two of us would be at the window with Miss Snoop, showing her a wakeful early morning sky for the first time.

in the garden

 

In my mind, the house is full of the scent of lilacs. I say "in my mind" because I'm sure this is just the power of the purple suggestion that is just outside our window rather than reality. In reality, I'm sure our house smells like the quesadillas we had for lunch. But I still only smell the lilacs.

Blood test taken yesterday -- arm bruised but otherwise went smoothly. Got a lot of knitting done in the waiting room, observed the preponderance of freaks who show up on Fridays for blood tests. The other girl there for the 3-hour test flagged about an hour and a half in, turned pale as milk, and had to be taken to a mysterious back room to lie down. I didn't see her again. I knitted on, undeterred.

Crib purchased today. GB put it together in a flash, bless his engineer heart. It is nice but ENORMOUS. I think I could probably sleep in that sucker, in a pinch.

Thai food has just arrived and we have "Juno" and "There Will Be Blood" to watch tonight -- so I bid you Happy Weekend and adieu.

good news & bad news

The good news?

The nursery closet is now empty; I have seven bags of clothes to take to the Salvos; I have baby hangers & closet dividers and wicker baskets en route from Baby Supe R Store.

The bad news?

There's nothing else in the nursery.

The good news?

I get to eat a full-size candy bar every day for the next three days under orders from my doctor!

The bad news?

This is because I flunked my last glucose test and have to go back in for the three-hour version, and the candy bars are part of the 'special diet' to prepare for that.

Oh well. It's still a candy bar a day, right?

task for the week

I am a little panicked that we are coming into the third trimester home stretch and I feel completely unprepared for Miss Snoop. The nursery is painted and the trimwork done, except for replacing the old pink closet door with a nice new one, but we have not acquired any baby-specific furniture as of yet. And the closet is still jam-packed with miscellaneous gar-bahj that needs to be sorted, stored, or simply given or thrown away.

In the meantime, our living room and guest room have become receptacles for the steady flow of baby-related items coming into the house. And this is no doubt causing my panic to swell. It's amazing to be on the receiving end of such an outpouring of generosity, but right now there's nowhere to put it. I am a (fairly) organized person and right now we are completely not organized where the Little Miss is concerned.

We went to visit new Nephew 'Beans' this weekend. The little chap is thriving and despite a fervent reluctance to be anywhere except sleeping on my sister-in-law S.'s chest, he seems very happy and everyone is adjusting well. There was cake AND pie. There was much rejoicing. In addition, S. gave us the following:

A veritable treasure trove of beautiful baby girl clothes. Two laundry baskets stuffed full to teetering, and a garbage bag bursting at the seams. Her family on the East Coast brought about seven suitcases of baby clothes from S.'s sisters the last time they came to visit -- some boy, some girl. S. promised me all the girl clothes if she had a boy, and well, let's just say I hit the jackpot. Her family has wonderful taste in children's clothes and a staggering amount of it is brand new with tags still on.

Look at these little dresses!

The problem is that as of yet, I have nowhere to put it, so it sits in a grand glorious heap in our living room, right in front of the grandfather clock, patiently waiting our little girl's debut.

So my task for the week, while GB is away on yet another business trip, will be to start making headway on that nursery closet, get it cleared out, and get some hangers, dividers, and some baskets or bins for storage. Then I can start to sift through Miss Snoop's luxurious new wardrobe and get it properly categorized, hung up, or folded!