My Pregnancy As Told By Prince's Face

You wanna’ know the real reason I haven’t been blogging? Aside from hemorrhoids and varicose veins.

Exactly. I mean, that’s it. That face. Lately that is how I feel about everything. Nutella on toast, clean sheets, successfully finding videos of that gay-for-pay kid on the latest Real World.

Bitch, please. The new Calypso collection at Target?

Totally. Then there’s the fact that our lease is up next month but we don’t want to sign another year lease because we are looking to buy a house again but our landlord won’t let us go month-to-month because I have no idea why. FYI? I have a c-section scheduled for June 2. We have to be out by end of June.

Plus one of these brought to you by the good people at The Hormones Responsible for the Nesting Instinct-ute.

Yesterday was the first ultra sunny happy summer day so we went to the beach just like the family behind us and on either side of us sitting too close, families everywhere with coolers and sand, sandy kids that were not at all cool. Then the family right in front of us pitched a tent, an actual real live tent with sticks and everything and I was all,

And Bryan was all,

And Zoey was all,

I mean, why go to the beach if you’re just going to sit inside of a nylon tent all day eating potato chips?

Of course about 20 minutes later I was hot, too hot, the 8 inches of dank skin hidden now beneath my humongous boobs all sweaty and sandy and I told Bryan I was going to buy a beach tent online as soon as we got home. And I did.

What?

I would die 4 U (but I would nevah evah B anyone’s surrogate, just so we're clear),

The Artist Formerly Known as Petunia Face

Light the Corners of My Mind

Remember when I used to blog? Like everyday, and I had something to say? And even when I didn't I pretended and you believed and read, commented, my inbox full of emails that weren't about sales and deals, viagra, Nigerian money scams or free sandwiches?

Me, too. I miss those days, you. Us.

Somebody once said that the way to become somebody's god is to disappear. And while that notion has stuck with me for its sheer dude that's so poetically beautiful it has to be true-ness, I'm afraid it's not. Because I am a master disappear-er, never saying goodbye at parties but choosing instead to slip out the door, driving away. And here, these last few weeks or months, I have slipped away and into dimensional life wearing 2-D glasses. Quietly, no kiss-kiss. Just this. Not that I want to be anybody’s god anyway, somebody somewhere always calling your name in vain and otherwise, like in bed, in the moment--how uncomfortable would that be? I just want to be me again.

Remember when I used to think thoughts other than I can’t breathe, my nose is so stuffed up, 31 weeks and ohmygodmyvaginabonehurts?

I don’t know what this photo has to do with anything here but it reminds me of something, you know?

Me, too.

Truer Words Were Never Sung. Sang. Suck It.

Way better than that ear-worm "Friday" song, this is my new anthem for, well--Friday or any day of the week really.

Outstanding questions: I tried to do a little recon on this little ditty to answer my own resounding WTF, but only came up with this info on The Kelly Family. So what gives? Is the lead singer here a boy or a girl? And is there something wrong with him/her, or only something so so right?

Happy Friday.

xo,

S

A Beach on the Other Side of Mykonos (My Special Place)

I am on a beach on an island in a world with a strange woman whose nipples are white. We’re talking white white, the kind of white that made me think, at first, that maybe she had slathered them with zinc oxide or that they had been badly burned and then peeled, whiter than real. That white. Of course this is not the point of my special place, but it is worth noting: the rest of her skin was tan and she lay down with all the nonchalance of a not-American at a topless beach, bending, skin folding, as if she were not her body, white nipples and all. Close by Bryan and I sat on our towels eating figs, playing gin rummy and staring. To this day we still talk about those nipples. Remember? How white they were? That white.

But that is not where I go when I get my blood pressure taken. No, I close my eyes and go somewhere maybe 5 minutes later. Take a deep breath in and walk to the water, Bryan and the girl and the playing cards behind me. Exhale and dive into the gentle waves, bright turquoise like the sound of a plane high in the sky. I smile, my eyes open and I can see everything; it’s hard but entirely possible to laugh underwater. Did you know? At night now I cannot breathe. My nose stuffed, the baby sits somewhere full inside my torso and my throat is warm with the pasta I ate days ago. I cannot breathe and so my chest tightens, grasps, 140/90 and rising. When I blow my nose my nipples leak, the way they are supposed to but still I feel somehow broken.

Which reminds me—of Avent bottles and watery eyes—that one time in grad school I wrote a paper about Philoctetes, the Greek warrior who is bitten on the foot by a snake during the Trojan War. Although he is an expert bowman, the wound festers, suppurates, emitting a smell so horrible that he is left alone on the island of Lemnos to die. The story is ok, I suppose, if you like Greek tales, but what I remember is that my professor wrote in red pen large on my paper: SUPPURATES IS NOT A WORD and I felt defeated. But it is. Was then and still is. Suppurates: to fester, draw, to ooze. Once again back on an island in Greece where I close my eyes and dive in as if I, too, am not my body oozing from nipples not white but there. Just go to my special place, go to my special place, two more months and then some I hold my breath that I cannot breathe and smile.

Hello.

I wrote an ode to my ankle bone. That’s where I’ve been. And then I decorated the page with drawings of tears and eyes, tears coming out of eyes and lots of Egyptian Ankhs. Here is a snippet, just for you:

No, no! Go not to Lethe, ankle bone delicate and proud

Like a bobbi pin for fine hair, *sigh*

Wolf’s bane, droop-headed edema shroud

Bidding adieu, Truth in Beauty, Beauty that must die.

And then I decorated my room with posters of my boobs lined in heavy black eyeliner.

Which means, of course, that in reality I went to Anthropologie and fell in love with this dress.

Knowing that it would be for after the baby. Like a few weeks after, right? I took it to the dressing room just to see how the shoulders would fit, ignored the confusion of the girl as I handed her a size 6 and squeezed past her into the doorway. If you need anything, my name is um, Arden. Um—mkay? And then she shut the door and I could not get the dress on. Like even half of it. My large breast that has become one mottled brown areola like some well-intentioned Doctors Without Borders, only it’s Nipples Without Borders—it would not even fit through the head opening with the side zip opened. So I sat there on the little reclaimed wooden stool in the dressing room with one boob caught in the vise grip neckhole of a seaworthy box-twill horizons dress said to represent pale sand, verdant ground and cool water, and felt very, very sorry for myself, Robert Smith and all.

When I said that I am not a very good pregnant person I did not mean that I am not very good at being a person who is pregnant. Apparently I am very good at that. My body knows just what to do, pops and blows, poofs, poots, bam and pow! Pregnant. I guess what I mean is that I’m not very good at being pregnant and a person. I think how back in the day pregnant women were not really seen out in public. How before Lucille Ball there had been no pregnant women on television. And I think maybe I should have been pregnant back then. Just shuttled away to a room somewhere with soothing wallpaper, left with water and chocolate and a stack of magazines to gestate. Percolate. Emerge months later with faint circles beneath my eyes that only made me look more tragically romantic, my ankle bones once again sharp.

So that’s where I’ve been. And while I cannot promise I won’t disappear again—the wallpaper! It is so pretty!—I can say that I will be back. Someone once told me to never cut your hair while you are pregnant, and I’m guessing the same goes for your blog. I won’t make any rash decisions while this hormonal and not-me, and although I may write secret bad poetry about the lost love of delicate bones and comb my hair forward, I will not cut my hair, myself, or my blog. 28 weeks and counting…

Where Have You Gone, Joe DiMaggio? (Plus Ponch and One Blasphemous Rumour)

Coo, coo, ca-choo, my friends, though no nation turns it’s lonely eyes to me. This is where I’ve been: taking a glucose tolerance test (which I think I failed), talking to my doc about birthing options, i.e. cut me open and git it out, and reading on Babycenter that Little Lorem Ipsum is now the size of an English hothouse cucumber which would make total sense to me if I were baking a Shephard’s Pie but seeing as how I’m not I have no idea how big my baby might be. Is an English hothouse cucumber bigger than a bread box?

With Zoey I crafted a Birth Plan, typed it up and printed out multiple copies to hand out at the hospital. Included in my Birth Plan: preferred ambiance, push positions, people allowed in the room, pain relief options and props. Yes—props. I had a ball, you know? One of those yoga balls I planned on bouncing on? And Tootsie Pops in case I got dry mouth. I think I thought birth would like going to the circus. But when we left for the hospital at 4am I forgot to bring the ball and when Bryan handed me a Tootsie Pop I threw it down which was around the same time the doctor announced the need for an emergency c-section. You ever heard the one about how to make God laugh? Tell him your plan. Last year when we went to Mexico I unzipped the side pocket of my luggage and found four copies of that 2006 birth plan which never even made it out of the bag.

In 1978 I was 6 and didn’t quite understand why I felt not exactly funny ha ha or funny strange but more of a funny oh watching Erik Estrada in that tight highway patrol uniform. And then came the episode in which Ponch and Jon deliver a baby at the disco and it clicked—this was the mysterious doing it, so I decided then and there that I would do it with Erick Estrada on a disco floor lit with colored lights while everyone politely turned their backs and clapped their hands.

Granted I was a little confused with the logistics of it all, but I still am, so? I think this is my new birth plan. And please tell me you saw this episode because I searched for days trying to find the clip to no avail. All I could find is this riveting number of Ponch grooving it up not moments before he delivers the baby. Totally worth watching if for nothing else than the look of longing on Jon’s face 1:22 seconds in, plus the guy in the back with the white pants is packing it at 2:07. There is a brief moment when you see the pregnant lady dancing at the 0:30sec mark. Do you remember? How she goes into labor and everyone forms one of those solid gold circles around her with their backs turned? How they still kinda’ swing side to side clapping? At 6 I was not quite sure what went on inside of that circle, but at 38 I’m thinking this is my new birth plan. (I might as well make God laugh with something that is actually almost funny.)

And that, my friends, is what you’ve been waiting for. I probably should’ve opened up with Depeche Mode.

xo,

S

Kitten Bouquet for the Littlest Bee!

Also? Today I'm over at The Lil Bee wishing her and the newest bundle the randomest of congratulations. Stop by and give her a Happy New Mama Smooch--her newest Blake is freaking adorable.

xo,

S

Technicolor Sunrise on Saturday Morning

Red sky at night, sailor's delight; red sky in morning, sailor's take warning.Must have been a low pressure system this weekend because Bryan went sailing all day, came home, said he would play with Zoey to give me a break and then fell fast asleep on the living room floor.

This is what happens when you fall fast asleep on the floor after promising your wife (who just so happens to work at a cosmetics company) some time to herself.

Foxy tummy, if a little hirsute.

Happy Monday.

xo,

S

(dolorem = pain, grief, misery, suffering; ipsum = itself)

Sometimes I imagine you sitting at your computer there, right leg crossed over your left like mine. Hi. How are you doing? Fine, you say, okay, good, because you’re polite like that, and then you ask me back and I tell you that lately? (Because I am not polite like that.) Lately? I’ve had the pain of a dull knife inserted under my ribs on the right side, and you crinkle your eyes in concern. Oh no, I say too fast, don’t worry. Apparently it’s just my muscle separating from my rib to make room for my shifting organs because of Lorem Ipsum, which is what I call the baby even though I think we have a name. Maybe you shift in your chair not knowing quite what to say. Lorem ipsum dolor sit amet, consectetur adipisicing elit, sed do eiusmod tempor incididunt ut labore et dolore magna aliqua. I let the sentence sit there as a placeholder for something that has not yet happened, and you smile, I smile, and we watch this video because it’s Friday.

Hearts and Kittens! XOXO

Honestly what I like most about Valentine's Day is that it marks the official start of Cadbury Cream Egg season. Although watching Zoey sign 32 class Valentine's cards with a backwards Z is kinda' rad, too.

Kittens and Hearts on a Monday, no less.
Love,
S

To Spite My Face

Nose watch 2011 has begun. That is: I’m sick. And last time I was sick and pregnant my nose never quite unstuffed; I became addicted to Afrin,* snorting it covertly in bathrooms both public and private, watching as my nose grew red with spider veins and spread slowly across my face. So last night I did what any self-respecting and highly hormonal woman would do and fashioned MacGyver style nose calipers out of a rusty wrench and a ruler to measure the width of my nose: 3.4cm. I made Bryan take a photo of me doing this but later realized that it’s honest enough I’m telling you of such a thing and really, I don’t need to lose all sense of privacy or pride. Which is also why I’m not going to tell you what is happening to my nether-region, i.e. that it’s made up of the same type of tissue as the nasal passage.

Yeah.

Instead! Let’s look at pictures of models falling. Because I think I’m getting a varicose vein in my right calf and the straps on my bra are now thicker than, well—my nose. So let’s look at pictures of models falling because I said so.

*Yes, I now know not to use Afrin while pregnant. Or ever, really. That stuff is nose crack for anybody whose heart races with the gripping claustrophobia of a stuffed up nose, i.e. me.

**I wish I had taken a base measurement when I first found out I was pg, but will have to make do with this one at 23 weeks. 3.4cm. I swear I can feel it growing.

Candy & Iron

Six years ago today was also super sunny, the air thin, the first cherry blossoms on branches. We took a cab down to city hall where beneath the 5^th largest Beaux-Arts dome in the world a judge told us that nothing he said would marry us, that it was what we said to each other that truly sealed the deal.

Then there was the other night as I leaned forward to eat my dinner you reached your hand out to talk to the baby and there was an awkward moment, wasn’t there? As you rubbed my ginormous boob thinking it was my tummy. Six years later and I want to keep on talking to you, laughing with you, saying the right things and doing the wrong things, the other way around and then some until the day you rub my breast thinking that you are patting me on the knee.

Happy anniversary love.

February 1

I have this memory of February. I am 12 and at a friend’s house. She has a pool and we are in one-piece bathing suits standing with our toes over the edge of the deep end. Remember this, I told myself, remember this forever because this is when Spring starts, and we laughed, screamed, jumped in.

I thought of that this morning on the bus to work and I wanted to hug my 12 year old self, I love her so. (12 and long straight up and down, my body growing into a vertical axis these days.) It was foggy this morning, and on the bridge you could barely make out the blinking yellow lights of a bridge patrol car stopped mid-span. As the bus drove slowly past it I noticed that all of our heads turned heavy and knew that we were all thinking the same thing though no one said a word simply because the morning bus is supposed to be silent. And then the heads turned back to their laps and their phones, necks wrapped in wool, the market watch section of the paper lengthwise in the proper commuter fold.

I love February, I tell people, because February is when Spring starts, and people laugh at me. Are you kidding? They say, but I’m not and I know. I wanted to tell those people on the bus this morning that it’s true, it’s possible—sometimes you can jump into a pool in February. I remember. Do you?
Apropos of not much but a 7th grade memory of those impossibly scratchy Mexican hoodies that I loved so much back then, I want this ridiculously overpriced Tory Burch hoodie to wear with cutoffs and flip flops. This is when it starts.

Happy Spring,
S

The Green Flash

There exists an optical phenomenon known as The Green Flash. Ever seen it? Pas moi, but I’ve been told it occurs right before sunrise or sunset, a momentary refraction of light that moves slower in the lower, denser air than in the thinner air above, enhanced by mirage and probably myth. Tssssss. (I’ve also heard the flash is accompanied by a hiss as the sun hits the water, but honestly I think I got this info from The Blue Lagoon and do not always trust the science of Christopher Atkins.)

What is not so widely known is that there exists another, lesser known Green Flash, a moment of pregnant phenomenon when I raise my head from the nausea and actually look cute. Oh, it’s brief, this moment, a flash of glow before I sink into the bloat of latter pregnancy, my eyes suddenly smaller, my breathing almost an embarrassment. I so wanted to catch this elusive Green Flash but I must have blinked, because the other day I looked down and noticed the tell-tale swell of an ankle. Quick! I turned to Bryan—take a picture of me! But it was too late, so I leave you with this: the sight of a pregnant lady sinking into her 21^st week (if you really concentrate you can hear the hiss).

More than halfway there, people.

xo,
S

No Harm in Asking

I can't decide if I hate this guy or if maybe I'm a little bit in love with him.

It's kind of unbelievable, really, but it's on the internet so I just know it's true. What do you think? Is it real or fake? Funny, fortuitous or flat-out disgusting? And if you are of the funny/fortuitous club and have the finances, I would like just $100,000. I mean, I'll take a cool $mil if that's what you want, but really I just need $100,000. So you should probably give me $200,000 seeing as how I'd have to pay 50% in taxes. Baby needs a new pair of shoes. And a house. Donate button's pretty rusty there in the right-hand column. Give to charity. Or don't. Go buy $200,000 worth of Cool Ranch Doritos, whatever, it's your money. I'm just saying I'll take it if you want to give it. (I just happen to suck at asking.)

Happy Monday,

S

Shoes I Used to Wear (A Post On the Literal Shoes I Used to Wear)

I used to wear shoes so high I could see a light layer of dust on top of the fridge.
I took these red shoes backpacking through Europe, crammed them in the bottom of my bag one winter in Paris. I wore them on New Year's Eve as Bryan and I tried to find a bar, a club, a restaurant we could afford, finally settling for gyros on the street corner with me in these red, red shoes. At a few minutes to midnight we were on the metro, so we got off at the next stop not knowing where we were and ran up the stairs to the street just in time for the countdown. Trois, deux, une...we kissed on a street corner in Paris amid a crowd of French people making out, my life momentarily a Robert Doisneau poster taped to a dorm room wall, and to this day that night in those red shoes stands as one of my most romantic.
I eyed these gold glitter shoes for months at a transvestite store on Haight Street until they were the last pair and went on sale seeing as how most men's feet are larger than mine. When I wasn't wearing them I kept them on my desk as inspiration for something.
I bought these for my birthday one year--can't remember which though I'm fairly certain it started with a 2. (I have always loved a well-placed rainbow.) The night I wore these a man told me I walked like a cocktail waitress, and though I'm not sure how he meant it, I hold that still as one of the best compliments I've ever received.

These shoes are vintage, from the 20's, the fabric inside the sole worn metallic threads. Of all my shoes I loved these the most, wore them to bars and parties, sometimes during the day. With jeans? That was the joke back then, everything held up to have its cute-quotient questioned. Yes? With jeans? Because everything looked cute with jeans. When I wore them I imagined all the fun the shoes had had in the past 80+ years, what sort of evenings, the stories they might tell, and I was just so happy to be a part of it.

Then there are these: another vintage pair of hand-beaded shoes, the wooden heels carved with palm fronds and fruit, a score at a flea market one Sunday morning. One of the heels on these is stained dark brown, and so I always thought it was blood, because, well, why not? A woman dancing in a nightclub in Cuba for so long that her heels bled, yes? You just know her name was Lucia.

And then there are these. Ugly flat mom shoes I bought while still on maternity leave. I don't know what I was thinking other than I guess this is my life: hairy toes and sensible shoes for pushing a stroller, my fingers smelling of peanut butter. I had to bribe Zoey to try these on which I think is a pretty good barometer for moxie. Would a 4 year old want to wear it? If the answer is a quick no, then no. Just no. On these I blame hormones and me trying to find my new normal when life was anything but.
These days I wear ballet flats, boots with no heel, Havianas when it's warm. I don't know when it was that I lost the ability to wear heels, but I am certain I no longer walk like a cocktail waitress, the dust on the top of the fridge now thick, though who cares if I can't even see it?

A Deep Blue Period

Know how much I’m craving spring? This much—here is an actual train of thought I had the other morning as I walked to work: the city is too gray. Gray buildings, gray sky, gray sidewalks and streets. If I were Mayor Queen Master of Something I would pass an ordinance that each building be painted a different color. Pink and green, turquoise, orange…then the city would look more like the Caribbean and people would surely smile more. Right? Note to self: pick up some fresh fruit on the way home today.

Then I saw this amazing art installation and immediately felt quenched. Like if a soul could be quenched, mine was. Check out artist (and diver) Jason deCaires Taylor. He creates these immense ingots and anchors them to the seabed. He chooses material conducive to marine life, so that new coral reefs adhere and grow like children. The result is hauntingly beautiful.

Did you know? Over the past few decades we’ve lost over 40% of our natural coral reefs. Scientists predict a current demise of 80% by 2050. I’ll shut up now and just post some of the delicious photos.

It'salmostspring, it'salmostspring, it'salmostspring...sounds vaguely like inspiring.

xo,

S