Wherein I whine like a big whiny thing.

Today has been a rough day.

Warning: TMI may follow.

Don't get me wrong--every day I'm pregnant has been miraculous and shiny and angels regularly fly out of my butt to sprinkle me with starshine and licorice. Yay, pregnant. We wanted to be here so bad, we cried so often about not being here, so we are really happy dammit to be here dammit yes happy!

But in the meantime, between angel-rectal interaction, I hurt. Walking, standing up, sitting down, going up stairs, putting on underwear, rolling over in bed, did I mention walking? and whenever I move, I feel like a wee tiny knife the size of a meat cleaver is stabbing me in my clitoral region. Which is just as fun as it sounds.

It comes and it goes, and some days are better than others. I talked to my doctor about it and Dr. Cutey McSporty referred me to physical therapy. I've started doing that twice a week in the therapy pool which dear heavens why did no one tell me the beautiful majesty of getting in a pool???? For that half-hour, I am pregnant without pain. The downside is the slloooow climb out of the pool, and that one step where The Belly must emerge and reacquaint itself with that pesky gravity shit. But in the meantime, I don't feel like a beached whale that will never walk again, so it's rejeuvenating.

I've also found this real angel (not one of my butt angels) who specializes in pre-natal massage, and for that french-lavendar-scented hour, my mind can wander along white sandy beaches to the tunes of Enya. The loose-limbed feeling even lasts for a couple days.

But then, inevitably, it comes back. The other teachers at school--for some odd torturous reason--get great glee in pointing out that I waddle, and in fact, they've been pointing it out since Christmas which is beyond awesome. And yes, I do waddle. That is because most days, from my boobs downward, I am a tightly wound solid muscle of pain.

It comes and it goes, this knife-to-the-hoo-ha fun. Today, though--today's been a bad day.

Things I don't get or: Modern Education

So, our boys team reached state. Which, of course, necessitated a whole school assembly with much cheering and hooting and light show and band shenanigans. Oh, and! You could get excused from school today to go watch the team play! At 10:30 a.m.! Because clearly, they are students first and athletes second! And how better to show these athletes that! First, by scheduling the game at 10:30 on a Wednesday morning, then by excusing half the student body!

JV team--well, yeah, gotta go. Band? Gotta go! Support them boys! Dance team? Gotta go! Cheerleaders, of course! And then--boosters! Gotta go!

Call me old-fashioned, but I really really think that if you are failing any classes at all, you should absolutely not be excused from school to go watch. I told my AP class that they are welcome to figure out their own priorities--that's what growing up is all about--but I wasn't going to slow class down any at all just because they wanted to go watch basketball and homework was still due Thursday, period, full stop, end of story. Because that's how college works, too. But I feel the same way about my sophomores too.

I don't get these parents who are all, sure, go! to Seattle! With 100 other unchaperoned teenagers! GREAT IDEA!

Yep, I'm gonna be one of those parents.

Watching the Oscars

Look, it's just like that movie we watched.

What movie?

You know, the one with the girl from Poltergeist.

The girl from Poltergeist?

No, wait. The girl from the alien movie.

Sigorney Weaver?

No, the little girl.

ET? Drew Barrymore?

Yeah! Where she takes the old man to the Oscars!

Where she...? WHAT? No. We've never seen a movie like that.

Oh, oh, I'll wait. I'll wait until you remember it and then tell me I'm right.

I swear, hon, we've never seen a movie like that.

You know, you know, the one where she goes on vacation?

...you mean The Vacation?

Ah ha! You see? Now come on, say it...

What, that you're right?

Ah ha! You see?

Well, except that Drew Barrymore's not in it, and there's no Oscars, but yes, you're right, there IS a blond girl who walks with an old man... but other than that...

Drew Barrymore's not in it?

No.

Then who is?

Kate Winslet and Cameron Diaz.

Not Drew Barrymore?

No.

And they don't go to the Oscar's?

Not really, no.

Um, oh.

But other than that, hon, you were totally right.

Ah ha!

Flickr update

Gutter bird
Originally uploaded by karijean

Updated pics on Flickr, yo.

A few are marked private, for friends and family only, so if you are one of those two groups and I haven't marked you as friend or family, drop me a note and I'll fix that.

In this Flickr update--I got a brand spankin' new camera for my birthday and it is sweet. So I'm just taking pictures of, y'know, stuff. And the lunar eclipse.

Be warned--there's also belly pics on there. I'm not posting them here, because for years, belly pics just made me kind of want to cry a little bit, no matter how happy I was for someone. So I guess I didn't want to, y'know, surprise anyone with that. But I also don't want this to go undocumented. And there've been requests. So. Yeah.

I'm feeling strangely vulnerable...

And you mean...

Him: So... how'd your doc's appointment go, babe?

Me: Oh, it was good. It was good.

Set your date yet?

Next time, next appointment.

How about your blood tests?

Oh! Yeah, so you remember how tired I've been? And I started taking the iron supplements? Even with the supplements and my prenatals, I had an iron level of 34.2. Apparently, 34 is the borderline of anemic. So, you know, no wonder I was so tired!

So maybe that would explain your attitude!

And I... what?

Um... nothing?

My attitude? What...?

I'll just be down here doing the laundry!

Baby Crazy

Juno: loved it, loved it, loved it.

But not, I think, why everyone else loved it. Yes, Ellen Page? Total cutie, and I would have totall wanted to be her friend in high school but would have been way to shy to think that I could be amusing enough to hang with her. And I love JK Simmons and Allison Janney.

But what grabbed me was Jennifer Garner and Justin Bateman as the would-be adoptive parents.

Shocker, I know. I hope you were sitting down on that one.

There was a review that I had read that talked about them and the words from the review that stuck with me--I can't even remember the context now, but they had called them "immature". But I never got that feeling. And I can't tell you how relieved I am about that.

The childless couple--the baby-crazy would-be mama--is really easy to parody, to have a pre-made image in your head about what they are going to be like. For instance, Tina Fey's new movie, Baby Mama. Which might make me throw up a little in my mouth. But my friends and family have done it, too. One asked me last summer, "So, are you, like, totally baby crazy, now?" And I've never thought of myself that way. And yet, I still answered yes. Not because I'm baby crazy--I wasn't buying baby clothes in preparation (and, oddly enough, I'm still not) or yplanning baby things or even trying on imaginary baby names--but just because I wanted one, constantly. Like a constant soundtrack in a movie, that desire was just always there. But I couldn't explain that at the time, in the noisy bar we were in, how that is, but it isn't, baby crazy.

The Jennifer Garner character reminded me of that. Of that really delicate balance you try to maintain, that game face that's almost always on, that doesn't deny your desire but also can't really let the full impact of it show. But how it sneaks out, at times. And how that's mistaken for blindness/baby crazy/immaturity. I was well impressed with the movie, how the sort of complexity of her desire wasn't simplified to snark or slapstick or pathos.

I've been thinking about it a lot because recently I've been sort of backhandedly(really, not so backhandedly) called "crazy" for the path we took to expand our family and I can't shake it. I can't shake how much it hurt to have months of agonizing about decisions, each new decision a new path of "Should we do this?" soul searching between me and Andrew, reduced to "crazy". I guess I'd not be surprised by that comment from a stranger who hadn't ever talked to me, but that's not the case here. I feel like a movie had more empathy for how unfriendly conception can be, and how personal the process is, than a friend.

In the end, I guess, it's a mindframe no one understand unless they are open to it. Blessed are they who try.

It's like a far-away jail for clothes that are bad--they just need to learn their lesson before they are bailed out

Hello, is this Kari?

Yes, this is she...

Hi, this is the dry cleaners down the street. We have some of your clothes.

You do? Thinking furiously about when the hell was the last time I tool anything in to be dry cleaned???

Yes. Pause. From August 2006.

There's the answer to that question, then... I can just come get it then?

That would be good.

My husband will be right there.

From the back of the house He most certainly will not!

Thanks. We'll have them waiting. They're already paid for, if that helps.

Thanks for calling.

Turns out, it was two things of Andrew's. But I guess I still can't blame this on pregnancy brain.
----------
Sent from my Verizon Wireless LGVX9900 device.

How I know he loves me

What's more, how I know he knows me. Behold, a surprise valentine's day gift.

After, I might point out, we had agreed not to spend any money on Valentine's day. One day, I'll actually remember that whenever Andrew makes me promise that, he's totally lying.

This, from a counselor.

Are you having twins, is that why you're so huge?

How lazy am I?

Onion 1
Originally uploaded by karijean

So, that cooking thing? Hasn't gone so well this week. Last weekend was full, wall to wall. Then Monday I had to work late, Tuesday I was in training until 4 and then went to class; Wednesday I had a geek squad meet (they won, natch!) that WE hosted so I didn't leave school until almost 7, so by Thursday I was almost paralyzed with pain. Walking--don't make me laugh, I might spit up. Standing made me feel like I was going to split apart in a viscerally painful way.

So, yeah, we've had to cancel the hippie box until further notice. I can buy our fresh veggies as needed.

lazy post

Dude. My favorite ad. I stop to watch it whenever I'm fast-forwarding on my DVR.



And then, part two.



Love them. Love them both.

Teachering Indignation

Thursday: Last day for students to get help before finals. Thirty two students decide they need help THAT DAY. Twenty eight of them for the first time all semester. One of them stays to ask one question about something from chapter 2 (covered in October), and when I don't sit down with her one on one for a private tutoring session, gets up and leaves. Ten minutes later I get a call from her mom.

"Haley* said she tried to get help but couldn't get help."

"There are over two dozen other students in here right now, so I couldn't sit down with her, but she was welcome to stay."

"Well then, what should she do?"

Options running through my head: (a) invent a time machine and go back to Wake The Fuck Up Day (b) suck it up and actually do the homework that had been assigned back in the day, or, even, y'know, yesterday (c) find someone else to ask.

I went with option c. "Maybe she could ask her math teacher from last year? Or she could come back."

But seriously, dude.

Because not an hour later there was an all-user email from one of the counselors. "Math teachers--are any of you doing study sessions for finals? Because I've had a lot of students crying in my office."

First of all: did that REALLY need to be sent to all the teachers and staff at school? I guess those social studies teachers really needed to know that us math teachers were SLACKING. Second of all: um, YEAH. Because you know when I read that email? AT SIX-THIRTY, when I STILL hadn't left school because I'd been helping students until after four.

(Okay, many people from not-education maybe be saying, four? POOR BABY. Except that I'd been there, helping teenagers since before seven, with only twenty minutes where I was talking to adults during lunch. I was done. BEYOND done.)

And might I add? ONE of those students with a sudden need to talk exponents? Was the counselor's own daughter.

---
*Not her real name. Not to say that it couldn't be her name, but it wasn't. No, I swear! It wasn't!

holiday madnesses

holiday madnesses
Originally uploaded by karijean

See all those stockings? Pretty impressive. Especially considering that two of them are over thirty years old, and three of them are under a year old.

There was also a surprise: inside my stocking, a wee little red-and-white baby bootie, adorned with our baby's name on it. Get it? Because he's still inside me? So his stocking is inside mine?

My mom, dad and sister had been giggling to themselves for three days about that before I was told to look in my stocking.

Also note the menorah on the mantel (which totally sounds like a cheesy holiday album: Menorah on the Mantle: Seasonal Songs for Your Mixed Family). Gail held eight-week-old Ellie up to it and said, "Look, sweetie! that's for the Jew in you!"

Click on the picture for more.

short story

Getting ready to go out:

Him: "Hey, why don't you wear that giant shirt your mom gave you for Christmas?"

Me: "Giant?"

Him: "You know, I heard that coming out of my mouth and thought, who's editing this stuff?"

Me: "Giant?"

Him: "Very attractive and long maternity shirt."

Me: "GIANT?"

Things they never tell you about teachering and pregnancy

• Teenagers, assuming they like you, will at some point get comfortable enough that they will ask you very personal questions. Not the ones you are mildly prepared to be "surprised" by, but ones that you will have no prepared answer for. "Do you have kids?" "Why not?" "Do you want them?" "When will you have them?" And countless variations that there's just no preparing for. And no amount of saying, "That's a very personal question, and none of your business" will suffice, because that's only one period's worth of teenagers. You have five periods a day, and then there's a whole new semester's worth coming in January.
  
• Once you get pregnant, teenagers get very upset if you don't tell them personally. If, say, you tell one class and you don't tell another. (How do you "announce" your pregnancy to a room full of 30 hormonally challenged young adults, anyway?) I'm just saying.
  
• Teenagers also think you will instantly be giving birth. When you tell them that you won't be gone until say, April (and late April at that!) they are shocked and surprised. Apparently they expected you to be on maternity leave in the next four weeks.
  
• You know how pregnant women get swollen ankles? Try teachering. Oh dear heaven.
  
• It's really hard to convince yourself to sit more and still be a teacher.
  
• Perhaps not surprising, but still not something that had occurred to me: the prospect of naming is very important to students. They will offer suggestions almost daily, usually suggestions that are very very very close to their own name. And the weirdness of the suggestion of naming your child after a student will completely escape them.
  
• If you start to experience SPD, teaching will suuuuck. Every, every day.
  
• After all of that, you will be surprised every day with how much these teenagers care. Not really surprising, maybe, given how concerned they are with other, more earthy aspects of reproduction, but at the same time, there will be moments of absolute charm. Some of these kids will delight in your progress. Some, girls especially, will privately and timidly ask if they can touch your belly. They will take paramount interest in if you are having a boy or a girl. Some, that you don't have in class at all, and haven't for two years, will hear from someone who heard from someone that you are pregnant and will come by just to say how happy they are for you.
  
  And then they'll ask you to name the baby after them.
  

With much stamping of feet, and rending of garments

I'm not ready.

I'm not reeeeaddy.

Don't send me back there!

This past week has been a week of decadence. I have watched more football than I thought possible (go blue!). Apparently, getting a big fat ol hdtv television (thank you, Oregon, for your very bizarre kicker check law...) makes you watch more sports than you ever have in the rest of your life put together. There's only a few HDTV channels on our cable but the sports! Dear heaven, the sports! It's like being able to see every single blade of grass! Sometimes, I like just watching the little ESPN ticker tape that goes along the bottom because the clarity gives me chills.

Of course, as a result, I know all about the Dolphins coach getting the axe and how surprised the Ravens coach was to get fired, I'm know the results of pretty much every single college bowl game, and I'm following the basketball schedules of several different cities across the country. I'm not proud, I'm just addicted.

I guess.

Another way to look at it: I've been battling a severe case of fatigue. For a while. I was tired in the first trimester, but rumor has it, that's normal. Everyone told me that, hey after the first trimester, it all gets much easier! And it hasn't. It just hasn't. I feel like I've been walking around in a fog for the past six months--not sleeping well, but never actually awake. Or if I am awake, it's not for long, and then I'm back to monosyllables and looking for an activity that involves a lot of couch sitting. Holding conversations becomes a heavy task.

So I had my 5month appointment last week (a couple weeks late) and talked to my doctor about it, and I've taken some tests and have some new supplements and hopefully that will help.

In the meantime, my lovely lovely lovely winter break is just a few hours from being over, and I'm getting the shakes because I'm really not ready.

You can't make me go! You can't maaaaaake me!

Goodbye and Hello

Dear 2007,

I've been writing this letter in my head to you for a while now, but it gets all jumbled about halfway through, so pardon me if this gets a little confusing.

2007, it's time for us to part ways. I've been thinking about a way to salvage our relationship and you know what? It's not worth it. Yeah, you've had your moments, but let's be honest here, some last-minute good deeds from you really can't make up for the craptastic way you've treated me and mine.

Put it this way: it's not me, it's you.

In so many ways, 2007, you really deserve to be taken into a dark alley and have the crap kicked out of you.

Yeah, you've delivered some good news--happy healthy babies (Maisie, Zoe, Elspeth, Teo, Lewis, Adam, Ellie)--but note those were to other people. You promised me a whole lot right up front, 2007, and then totally reneged in the worst way possible. Don't try to say this is made up for now, because it's not and it won't be. 2008 is totally gonna get credit for this--knock wood--so don't even try it.

You, 2007, are responsible for so much crap that it's a wonder you even dare show your calendar pages. And what you've done to my friends? No. The damage is irreperable.

So don't let the door hit you on the ass on the way out.

Sincerely, oh, so very sincerely,
me.


Dear 2008,

The bar was set pretty low for you. Just be better than 2007, and you'll be, like, the best year ever.

Bring some cancer-free days for my friend, some anxiety-free days for my grandmother, some care-free days for my mother, and you're off to a great start. And there might be one or two special deliveries this spring that you could bring to make me your biggest fan ever.

Pretty please? Because after this past year? Totally deserve it.

Thanks,
me.

The verdict is in.

So... what do you think? Boy or girl?

---

When I got pregnant--and stayed pregnant--I swore this time I'd pick a good doctor. Not a doctor, who, upon hearing you were bleeding, sticks a dildo cam in you and then, making eye contact with the ultrasound screen, says, "Well, it's empty all right." For example. No, I was going to pick a good doctor.

I did research. I knew I wanted to be at a place near my home. There's a big ginormous hospital that's twenty blocks from our home, and I knew I wanted to be there. So I searched and searched for any recomendations of any office that did work there. And I got a name and a rec for an office there, where people said, "Get Dr. X, but if you can't, their whole office is great." So I called the office, just on the off chance they were accepting new patients. And not only where they, but when I asked which doctor I'd be seeing, the receptionist said, "Dr. X!" I said, "Reeeeally?" and the receptionist said, "Yeah, she actually has an opening, so I thought I'd slot you in there. And since you're a teacher--" we'd been talking for quite a while at this point, we were buds, almost... "since you're a teacher, why don't I just schedule you out as far as I can so that we can grab those afternoon slots for you? You can always cancel them later."

So this doctor, Dr. X, with her sporty self, has been my dream doctor. Her office, my dream office. Dreamy dreamy dreamy.

---

I was in for my 3rd monthly appointment, just like a regular prego. I got to see what the non-expensive way to hear the baby was like--like a wee transistor radio! with a microphone! that's CRAZY! and see the inanity of the first few months appointments. You mean... I come in, pee in a cup, get weighed (actually, annoyingly enough: it's usually the other way around), get my blood pressure taken and then as a reward hear the heartbeat... and that's IT? No blood, no prescription, no internal ultrasound or dyes or tests or... I can leave my pants ON? (except, of course, while peeing)

Weird.

Anyway. So Dr. X is going over how the appointments work... "...and then you'll come in and we'll do a first ultrasound." "Actually, it'll be like my fifth." "Well, yeah, there's that, but it'll be the first one here." "That's where we find out if it's a boy or girl?!?!" "Um, usually we use it to look at, you know, is the heart working properly and there's two ARMS and two LEGS, is there a BRAIN AT ALL... nothing very IMPORTANT." "Yeah, yeah, yeah, AND THEN WE FIND OUT THE GENDER!"

Pause.

Completely, deadpan: "So, I take it you'll want to know then."

I heart her, very very much.

---

The ultrasound tech is a hyped up whippet thin woman who is in constant motion. She wields the roll-on-deodorant-like magic thingy with the assured hand of someone who's done this twenty times a day for ten years. Swooping left and right, up and down, curving and winding in to get the best view, she whips through a tour of our baking baby. "See that? Kidneys... and here... that's the stomach, full of fluid. And that grey line... right... there that's the diaphragm..." Andrew and I look at each other and grin. "if you say so!" I say. "I keep making this stuff up and no one's caught me yet," she grins.

We wander through our baby's anatomy. Spine, ghostly ribs, faint but rhythmic heart, like a fist clenching and unclenching faster than I could imagine. And then: the money shot.

"You sure you want to know?"

"Definitely."

So are your bets in? What do you think?

...

We spent the last ten minutes of the appointment just watching our baby, at rest and then in motion. Arching spine one minute, faintly swimming the next, striking an American Idol pose the next. The foot, she said, measures one and a half inches. Are you doing what I did? Have you lifted your hand to put your thumb and finger an inch and a half apart? Are you imagining a tiny little foot, with tiny little toes, stretching between your fingers?

---

He's gonna have big feet. :)

Thankful.

We settled down to watch a movie (a really really boring one, as it turned out), Andrew had started a fire in the fireplace, the Christmas lights were on the front porch, and the room smelled like fire smoke and cinnamon.

"We have a pretty good life," Andrew said, a little dreamily.

We pretty much do.

---

I was sitting at my computer when suddenly a sharp pain knifed through my right side. A few quick ripples, like aftershocks, then it was gone as if it had never been. Andrew's head whipped around at my gasp, at the ready to do whatever I needed--bandaids! call 911! catch me as I fainted!--but all I could do was tilt my head, my hand at my side.

I think--I think I just felt the baby!

He couldn't have come over faster than if I had actually fainted. Really? he wanted to know. Where? What did it feel like?

I put my hand up his sweatshirt, palm facing out, and then fluttered my fingertips against the fleecy inside of his shirt, three, four times. A little like that. He put his hands against my abdomen, a little below my ribcage. Is this normal? A little early, I told him. And now I may not feel anything for days. But I did. I felt it.

After a while, he went back to what he'd been working on before, I returned to my blogroll. And just then I gasped again, as that flutter punch came back.

His head whipped around again, worried, until he saw me smiling like a goof.

Stop gasping like that, it scares me!

You try being punched from the inside and see how you gasp.

He looked at me and smiled. Good point.

---

I haven't written for days because I'm not sure where I am. After so long having identy as Can't Get (or Rather, Stay) Pregnant, I haven't yet grown into Pregnant. Pregnant is still other people.

School is one long maddening hell right now. I don't know what it is this year--different kids, more tired, whatever--I'm just not enjoying it at all. We're twelve weeks into the year, 24 more weeks to go, and I feel like I will never be caught up. For type A little ol me, that's a big fat recipe for stress dreams (wherein it's been discovered that a clerical error means I don't have credit for high school geometry and must take it to retain my college degree and the teacher I'm taking it from refuses to teach me and all the kids say, "See? this is why we don't like YOU as a teacher either!") and heartburn.

And I'm in a weird stage. I can't go out and get a glass of wine (or even faux-wine) with friends or even really stay out late anymore (I'm wiped by 10:30), but also I'm not yet a mother and so still open to the "Just wait and see!" that well-meaning already-parenting friends and family like to pour. Just wait and see... how tiring the first three months are ... how hard it is to leave your child and go to work ... how much weight you gain. I know they mean well--or at least, most do.

Oddly enough, though, the "Just wait and see!" game is never about happy things.

I had one teacher come up to me, out of nowhere, and tell me, "Oh, don't worry hon, before I was done, I weighed 197 pounds!" I was refilling my water bottle in the staff workroom at the time. Note that I was NOT talking to anyone about pregnancy, weight, or pregnancy weight. Plus--"Oh, hon, I weighed more than 197 pounds before I got pregnant, so I'm pretty sure I'll be more." And then I left the room.

There's still a weird chasm between those who have kids and me, where with rare exception (*cough*Em*cough*Leah*cough*) communication feels really one-sided. And I'm worried about losing touch with the friends who don't have kids. And plus, I just feel really uninteresting right now. My world is eating, sleeping, and grading. Who enjoys that?

---

Despite my bitching--because what else is a blog for?--we are really happy. This past week, we made a tour of daycare centers in Portland. Yes, I'm not even five months pregnant, and we were touring daycare centers. Note that of the three we went to, only one could guarantee us a spot for next fall. Staying home, at this time, isn't really a great choice for our family unit and as much as I know it'll suck and I'll cry and feel like a horrible person and probably reexamine how much I really want to teach, we want to be prepared with daycare. And we've got one place for sure, and will likely get into the much better place as well. Just a few checks (the first of many, I know, but after the major bucks we've spent to get this far, really, we laugh! we laugh at these puny checks!) and we've guaranteed our spots on the waiting lists.

Andrew is over the moon about everything, and likes nothing more than to chart the daily progress of my belly, my bellybutton, my breasts. At Thanksgiving, at our annual Go Around of What Are You Thankful For (that almost everybody, mostly guys, moan and groan about, but I think everyone secretly really likes), we all got to be thankful. Andrew summed it up nicely. "I'm thankful for all my friends and family. I'm thankful for maternity pants. And larger bras."

I'm thankful too. I'm thankful for the smell of fire smoke and cinnamon, and for maternity pants and larger bras. I'm thankful for friends who get the weird netherworld I'm in at the moment and meet halfway. I'm thankful that Christmas break is three weeks away. I'm thankful for the first communication from our little mystery package. I'm beyond thankful that I get to struggle to find my place in this identity at all.

Pictures

We Are Family 2
Originally uploaded by karijean

Yes, I finally did it. My pictures from September and October are on Flickr. Click for some Teo Goodness, family madness, and Andrew cuteness.