The pain. It's in my arse.

I've been feeling a bit off lately. My right hip, specifically, has felt like something other than a hip. Like a hot poker, perhaps, or a porcupine. Something that you wouldn't want lodged in your body. Something uncomfortable. The important thing is hip, pain, ouch.

The hip has been a nuisance over the years and has at time morphed into the Hip of Many Horrors. It began some 8 years ago in the Throes of Love, or dating Marc. We were climbing and I was in a chimney some million feet up off of the ground. Not the type of chimney that might produce the smoke from a charming fire, but a chimney like this:

What this photo doesn't convey is that one can get stuck in these things, which my right shoe DID. This was most untimely, as I was trying to go UP and my shoe was happy to stay there and not finish our ascent. So after some choice, unprintable words and Marc pulling the rope up several times (checking my progress and wondering what was taking me so long as he was hungry and I had the snacks) and my screaming up at him, "FOR GODS SAKE STOP GIVING ME A WEDGIE! I AM STUCK!" I went with the old tactic of Yanking Really Hard and freed my foot and tore some muscles that I don't think cottoned to the tearing so much. Meaning the hip never really healed properly as when one is in the Throes of Love, one does not admit to one's boyfriend that one is in terrifying pain. One soliders on! And I did! I finished that climb and descended it and walked back to the car carrying climbing gear and every time Marc turned around and said, "Are you CRYING?" I would blink profusely and comment that I had dust in my eye. But really, I was trying very hard not to weep and continued to do so for what seemed like weeks after wards. My hip finally got wise to the fact that in my early 20's I didn't believe in such things as giving oneself time to Rest and Heal, so it patched itself up as best as it could. And so now once in a while my right hip just inexplicably stops working and I collapse in a heap for no real reason and can also tell you when it's going to rain. It's all very dramatic.

But lately it's been more than an occasional trip to the floor. While on down there, I don't just say, "Whoopsie!" and get up. There is some writhing and some clutching and gasping involved. It's been hurting in a way that I can only describe as pain that gives me the right to complain. A lot. And I try not to do that as an achy hip is optimal on the scale of Things One Could Endure. I'm not, for instance, going through chemotherapy, or having someone point a gun at my head. It's a joint! Silly joint! Stop hurting! But it won't.

This morning I kept evaluating my hip from the discomfort of my bed. Did it hurt? Was I imagining things? Is it really sore or just sore from my poking it? I got out of bed and immediately fell down, so I ascertained from carpet level that perhaps it was time to visit someone who would know more about these things than I did.

There was some poking and prodding at the doctors. And of course, I felt very superior when I told him that the pain stemmed from an old climbing injury - I am a badass! Look at my war wounds from doing a sport that not many attempt! Instead of being impressed, he intimated that perhaps I ought to take up an activity that I was better AT, one that didn't leave me maimed and falling on the floor at irregular intervals. Psh.

SO! It would appear that it is pregnancy related and that I have a raging case of sciatica!

Really?

That is not exciting at all. I was hoping for something with more umph than "Your son is sitting on a nerve and since you have old damage there, you're going to suffer discomfort for the next three months!"

The solution is ice and massage. Two things I can get on board with. Well, the ice more for when there is a margarita involved, but if it brings me some sweet, sweet relief, then I will walk around with a cold pack secured to my right buttock with pleasure.

So if you come over to our house and find yourself being served a warm drink, and should you go over to the fridge to solve this problem and find me swatting your hand away from the ice machine and screaming NO ICE FOR YOU! This is why.

It's either ice in my pants or a permanent hobble. Good fun.

Babies, The Having Of

I've decided that I will no longer address how long it's been since I've written as I believe these pauses in writing might happen with some frequency until the Offspring has made his appearance and we have some semblance of order back in our lives. So see you in, what, 18 years?

In truth, I've been going through what pregnancy books poetically describe as "nesting." This conjures up such bucolic and charming thoughts of wading through a field of some sort, collecting flowers and Other Pretty Things with which to fill ones house in the hopes that everything will be festive and lovely when the child arrives. In reality, it can be pretty hard core. For instance, I'm not sure any member of my family will willingly take a phone call from me for the rest of the year given the amount of work I've put them through the in the past two weeks. We have overhauled the entire house. It's not nesting so much as, "Let's Tear This Bish Down and Start From Effing Scratch."

It came as a shock to both Marc and me that you can't just leave a baby with a few mixing bowls of water and a salt lick and ask the neighbors to check in on it once or twice to be sure he hasn't peed on the bed or started growing pot in the sunbox. Not only is this chap going to require a lot of work on our part, but he also requires a lot of STUFF. Stuff that we didn't have. I was under the impression that we would just empty a bottom drawer and put him in there for a while like the pioneers did, but apparently that is frowned upon. So now, I have a crib in my house, along with some other furniture that I hadn't planned on acquiring. Marc, wisely, fled the country on a "business trip" that involved a week in London followed by a weekend in Paris. I'm still suspicious that it wasn't all just to get out of dodge so that I wouldn't hand him an Allen wrench, some pieces of plywood and say, "HERE! Twirl this! It's going to be the poo changing table!" Though had Paris been my alternative, I would have followed suit. Instead, my parents and siblings are all now in possession of achy joints and broken nails, wondering how it is that I got them to do all of this stuff in the space of ten days. German efficiency! (Always blame genetics.) I think they also feared that they might end up at the bottom of the river if they didn't obey the pregnant woman - such is the power of hormones.

But honestly, I couldn't be more grateful. I'm nearing the 6.5 month mark, and now that everything is complete, I can skate through the last trimester and just enjoy it...that is if you call losing sight of your toes enjoyable. But I'll be able to escape for weekends with my husband, focus on these last months of it just being the two of us, walk the dog, add little things to our sons room here and there and just be at peace knowing that all of the big things are DONE, and done well. I am so blessed in my family.

I'll post photos soon of what we did so that you can sit back and be impressed. For now, however, I have to go shower and throw myself across my bed at the young hour of 8pm. The fatigue is hard to describe, but if I attempted to walk down the street right now, I think I would just lie down in the gutter forever after a few steps. And considering we live across the street from the police station, I'm sure I'd get ticketed. And at my size, it would be considered a moving violation. Who needs that kind of humiliation?

Four week review

Holy crap! It's been a while. I didn't fall into a hole or move to Morocco or get distracted by my ever growing mid-section. It's just been a really, REALLY busy month. In fact, I just realized this week that it is June. JUNE, people. That means that we are half way through the year, I'm half way through my pregnancy and Lost will never be on TV again. EVER. So sad. Great finale, by the way. The island was real, the flash sideways were purgatory. If I have to explain that to ONE MORE PERSON, my head will turn inside out, I swear.

Anyhoo, a brief recap would look like this:

1) Marc discovered the existence of a money tree in our backyard as we bought two new cars and sold our old ones. We now both own proper parent-mobiles, neither of which is a mini-van, THANK THE GOOD LORD IN HEAVEN. My sweet and darling Blaze - the car I have driven since high school - has found a new home with a friend so I can go over and pat her hood once in a while when I'm feeling nostalgic. My new car - Harriet - has all sorts of nifty buttons and features, most of which I have not figured out, mainly due to ignorance and fear of accidentally launching a missile which I'm fairly certain this car could do. Also, the owners manual is about 400 pages thick and that would require a bottle of wine to get through - verboten in my delicate state. My old manual was one page and consisted of two bullet points:

• Insert key and turn to make car start. Use hand crank when this fails. Horse and buggy are out back if this doesn't work either.

• Everything else can be solved with duct tape and prayer.

And this seemed to work for the 18 years that I drove her. Though sometimes I was late to work, what with hitching up the horse and all.

2) I have been nesting like it's my job. There is nothing quite like the realization that come October activities like showering, sleep and a lazy morning perusing Elle Decor will be a thing of the past. The walls need to be painted, like, NOW. By me. Which is what I have been doing with every spare moment. My client who is an OB/GYN asked the other day with a horrified expression, "You're not going up and down a LADDER, are you?" when I explained the paint in my hair. Sensing that this was not a GOOD thing, I lied and said, "Of COURSE not!" But what kind of question was THAT? I mean, how is one supposed to get the corners and stuff if I DON'T go up a ladder? I can't send Kylie up there with a brush attached to her tail, after all. She has no sense of how to paint a straight line. I've tried.

• As a footnote I should add that I've gotten all cowboy about the painting and don't tape or tarp. People regard this with a lot of suspicion, like I'm committing some sort of foul play by not taking proper precautions. But you know how in grade school how they taught you to color IN THE LINES? I'm really good at that. So stop with the gasps, please.

3) I've been doing the kind of writing work that hopefully brings in actual profit. Which takes us so much brain power that at the end of it all I can only really drool onto my keyboard which really doesn't produce the kind of riveting content that you all expect from this site.

4) I've been staring with horror and fascination as my body goes from "svelte" to "sea manatee." Dude. There is a human being in there and no matter how much I acknowledge that fact, I don't think it will really become something more than an abstract idea until I meet our son in October. Marc is convinced that I'm just eating a lot and slipping the doctor a dvd of someone else's sonogram when we go on our visits. In the meantime, I can tell you that maternity pants rule. I'm retiring my Official Eating Trousers and keeping these on standby for every big meal.

This weekend, Marc and I celebrate six years of marriage. We dated for some four years prior to that, so we've put up with each other for roughly a decade. Yay, us! Marc is gifting me with his presence since he has taken my pregnancy as a mandate to go climbing every weekend until the baby arrives for fear that he will NEVER GET OUTSIDE AGAIN. Logical, since my first reaction after giving birth will be to scream "GAH!" at my flabby midsection after which I will chain Marc to the changing table. This is what you do, right? Never allow your mate to have any sort of life again? Or at least until the kid is 18?

Do you sense my sarcasm?

So my gift to him is an afternoon spent at an art exhibit we're both interested in followed by dinner in San Francisco. Which is really a gift to me as well, thus sparing him the need to buy me an anniversary present. See what I did there? I am a giver! Sunday, I'm sure Marc will flee to the forest and I will continue with the painting that never ends. How is it that our house has so many WALLS? My mom always said that life would be so much easier if we just lived in a tent that we could shake out every once in a while, this usually after a morning full of choring. I'm beginning to see her point.

Have a great weekend everyone!