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!

Maybe being a mouth breather isn't so bad.

We were fully intending on going to see Date Night on Sunday night. Really. We were going to get up off of the couch and go forth into the world. But somewhere between dinner and the gastrointestinal gymnastics that are usually required for me to digest food, my throat started hurting. And it wasn't just a little tickle. It was as though I had had a side of acid with my salad and then made sure it was REALLY in there by scraping away at the flesh of my esophagus with a dull fork. It was a sudden onset - one moment I was trying to wrestle the remote away from Marc and then the next it hurt to swallow. Or breathe.

We decided to stay in.

"Allergies!" yelled Marc, who is a constant sufferer. His religion is the neti pot and some sort of nasal spray that he jams up his nose each morning and night. That ritual is followed by a hefty, "hhhhhhhhnnccccccCH!" into a tissue which usually results in the deposit of some matter which he then views and comments upon. "Wow! You should see this!"

I've never had allergies that were not food related. And then two years ago I started having a lingering sore throat whenever the pine trees out back were full of pollen. But even then it was more of an annoyance. The two times a year it happened, Marc would say, "NETI POT! YOU SHOULD USE THE NETI POT!" I always declined. My friends, do you know what this is? It masquerades as a charming, miniature tea kettle that you actually force up one nostril (after filling it with a saline solution) then allowing the salt water to flow into one side of the nose and out of the other washing out any lingering debris, pollen, spare change, what have you. Marc always seemed remarkably refreshed and buoyant after his sessions. They proceed like this:

Prologue: Enthusiasm! "Honey! I'm going to go and use the neti pot!"
Stage 1: Deployment!
Stage 2: Euphoria!
Stage 3: VICTORY!

Despite my love of a natural and home remedy, I remained unconvinced. It had problems written all over it, starting with drowning and ending with loss of sex appeal. Then my niece Heidi wrote this about it and I told Marc to stop wielding the stupid thing at me each time I had a sniffle as it wasn't going to happen.

Exh. A - Sudden Loss of Sex Appeal

I can still see that photo when I close my eyes.

But by last night, my congestion had taken a turn for the worse. Marc, unable to stand the thought of spending another night next to his sniveling wife dragged me into the guest bathroom and said, "Look. You're going to do this. I'll do a demonstration first. You are not going to drown. It's not hard. It won't hurt. It will give you tremendous relief." So he showed me. Of course, I knew what was involved, but he was talking to me the whole time while his nose drained, so I thought - ok, this can't be all that bad. And I was sick of breathing through my mouth. He went through his above steps, ended with a flourish and then prepared a pot for me.

My own experience went something like this:

Prologue: Trepidation! Suspicion! Horror!
Step 1: Excitement! Perhaps I'd be able to breathe again! Perhaps some voluminous amount of snot would pour forth and I'll be healed! Sort of like fishing a large clump of wax out of your ears - gross, but so satisfying.
Step 2: Quiet contemplation. Hm. The water just poured out one side, and then half way through, I switched nostrils. Marc watched in fascination despite my demands that he GET OUT GET OUT GET OUT.
Steph 3: THE BURNING! What they don't tell you is that if you tilt your head back just a small amount, the salt water goes cascading down your throat. Which, in my case, was completely RAW. After much sputtering and expulsion of water and snot and other random bits and some unprintable language, I put the damned pot down and blew what felt like a gallon of water from my nose.

I didn't feel much better. But I didn't feel worse. I was more shocked over the fact that I had survived the ordeal even though the outcome - the lack of joie de vivre or even a new pony - was disappointing at best. Instead, I just really wanted to lie down and kept worrying that my head would leak if I leaned over too quickly.

Today, things were worse. Not from the neti pot but just because my "allergies" had blossomed into a full blown cold. I always hate it when a formerly compliant body part suddenly goes rogue on me, and the fact that I use my nose with some frequency and suddenly couldn't made this whole thing pretty disconcerting. I look resplendent, let me tell you...like something that feeds on the flesh of the innocent. I spent the morning at work shouting instructions at my clients from across the room and willing the minutes to move quickly so that I could get home. Despite last nights lukewarm performance, I was holding out hope for the neti pot. Perhaps it was an experience that improved with practice?

I dashed upstairs, prepared the pot and stuck it up my nose and tilted. And waited. And waited. So profound was my congestion that only after a good 30 seconds did a small drip make it's way out of the opposite nostril and into the sink. This was not the progress I had been hoping for and so thought I would speed things along a little bit by taking in a short breath and then forcing it out of my nose quickly. Which did nothing to help my nose.

But my left eye. SWEET TAP-DANCING H MOSES.

I may have some sort of degree in Biology, but even I'm not sure exactly what happened. When I exhaled, the water that was supposed to come out of my nose instead shot out of my left tear duct and splattered all over the mirror which was a good two feet in front of me. I looked on in horror as the liquid gently dripped down towards the counter and wondered if that had actually just happened. A quick survey of my face showed it to be true, and I immediately put down the pot and called Marc at work to ask, "What does it mean if it shoots out of your EYE?"

There was silence on the other end...I think while Marc wondered if he had passed the stage where an annulment might be an option. "It came out of your EYE?" he said in a stage whisper. I relayed the story again in greater detail. He remained silent. He had no answers. I had waded into unknown territory.

I hung up the phone, neither comforted or feeling any modicum of relief. My eye still oozed and I couldn't breathe out of the center of my face. I rinsed the pot and set it back on Marc's prescribed towel and decided that perhaps my relationship with it, though brief, had been turbulent enough to warrant backing away from the device forever. Perhaps, my work here was done.

Perhaps, I'll rely on modern science instead. Perhaps I don't always need to seek out a home, natural remedy first. Perhaps a poultice and twirly dance won't cure the itching. Which is why I immediately went to CVS and purchased some Tylenol Cold & Sinus and have taken to my bed for the rest of the day.

There is still salt water leaking out of my left eye. This is the opposite of rad.

Say it with me: NO MORE BIRDS!

I'm afraid that anything I attempt to write today is going to be tainted with the fact that I AM SO TIRED. Really, I am. It's true that I didn't sleep particularly well last night. Marc has been gone for a week and finally returned home last night and so after 6 days, I had to reintroduce myself to his nightly activities which include stealing covers, pillows and invading my side of the bed. Understand that I missed him dreadfully and was terribly happy for him to arrive home, but he is as active in sleep as he is in life and it takes some getting used to when you've had all of that mattress acreage to yourself. Kylie sleeps up there with me when he is gone, but the most she does is press a paw into your forehead when she's ready to get up, and that's usually around 9am. Oh the bliss of a pet that follows your sleep patterns.

No, the real reason for my fatigue is that I spent a lions share of this last week and all of the weekend packing the kitchen up for our reno that starts tomorrow. Did you know that two people can have, like, 201 sets of dishes? And almost an equal amount of glassware? I'm not sure where it comes from as I swear we had only 8 wine glasses once upon a time - I think they procreated behind closed doors one night as I was packing and packing and PACKING and wondering if it would ever end and if my life might be much improved if I threw it all into the recycling bin and just walked away. Either that or we need to cut down on our booze consumption. WHAT? Somewhere Marc's heart just stopped.

So most of it is done. I have a wee bit more to finish up today along with making a temporary kitchen on top of our bookcase in the living room so that Marc can still have his morning coffee and toast. He'll most likely take the time between brewing and consumption to read some Camus or Stegner or Rand, what with the proximity to good literature and all. We like to keep our brains working, you know, despite our surroundings.

I'll take some photos of the process but for now I'm focused on the fact that THERE WILL BE NO MORE BIRDS by the end of the week. Sweet fancy Moses, I can't tell you how happy that makes me. The glee in my heart, it's immeasurable. For now, I'm off to pack up the remaining items. Or throw them out. I'll see how I feel after that shot of tequila that's calling my name.

What is our fire insurance policy, anyways? I should know that.

I was going to post pictures today, to give you some sense as to what has been going on over here at TLP HQ, but then Marc came down with a cold that is masquerading as The Plague which means that he is twisting and listless on the corner of the couch moaning all sorts of unintelligible, phlegmy things that translate into "I AM SUFFERING O WOE BRING ME SOME TEA AND A HOT POULTICE AND O THE MISERY!" So I've been alternating between ferrying various healing items to said corner to make him feel better and wondering if I'd really get caught for smothering him. HA! Kidding! Sort of!

Anyhoo, the tea making and airing out and chasing of used Kleenex all over the house has kept me from taking photos of what is going to heretofore be known as The Lifting of Jen Out of Her Home Decor Related Despair, 2010. Which might be a bit dramatic, but it is something I've been looking forward to since the day we moved in. In to this little house that possesses the most 1980's of kitchens, the ugliest of tile choices and lighting fixtures that have set me running, screaming into the night on more than a few occasions.

We are also swimming in a sea of brown. I know that sounds alarmingly fecal, but with the mismatched wood colors, the brownish counter top and tile of indeterminate color, the only word that comes to mind is poop! It's a petrified wood forest of horrors and later this month it is ALL COMING OUT. Well, we're starting with the kitchen. I'll post pictures this week so you can adequately understand what we're dealing with...and when you see them you'll scream, MY EYES! MY EYES! JUST SET IT ALL ON FIRE! But! There is hope!

So this weekend, we spent a lions share of Saturday picking out granite, light fixtures, a sink, a faucet. Activities that have the potential to make a husband and wife want to kill one another because you come to realize that you've married an aging frat boy who bases his preferences on whether or not the sconces adequately represent boobs. I'm thrilled to report that this was not the case with us and that we were in and out of all stores in a maximum of ten minutes, agreed on everything and managed NOT to slaughter the irritating children at the granite place. We even high fived over burgers at lunch at our timeliness! Our ability to acquiesce to the other one's wishes! That we didn't get pouty when the other person said no! Marriage at it's best people.

We returned home and Marc promptly fell ill. I think all of that compromise and good humor and the irritating kids really took it out of him. I brought him some tea yesterday and as I stroked his head, he sneezed in my face. I got excited for a moment thinking, "Perhaps I will fall ill and have to take to my bed with the vapors!" You see, I could use some time off before the Kitchen Overhaul. But alas, my new, super-powered immune system laughs in my face at my wishes to be bedridden just long enough to get through the stack of books on my nightstand. Instead, the next week will be full of culling and sorting and packing and rending of my garments as I wonder what sane person needs so much tupperware and three types of vegetable peelers.

But! Shiny new kitchen! And lack of brown! And odd wood assortments! Hooray!

Photos forthcoming.

"February is a suitable month for dying." - Anna Quindlen, One True Thing

So, I'm not super clear as to where February went. The calendar gods have always seen fit to throw in this ridiculous month which is fraught with problems...fewer days, and then MORE if it's a Leap Year which solves the problem of the Lunar Calendar vs. the Gregorian Calendar. Or that's what I gather from having read about it for .02 seconds on Wikipedia. Then my brain exploded.

February was exceedingly full. We went to Mexico, came back and had Valentine's Day, which Marc and I both completely forgot about and celebrated by having Cory over for dinner and watching Hurt Locker. And then the following week was spent executing the precarious dance that was arranging Marc's 40th birthday surprise party (which was nearly ruined by a wintery storm in which rain drops the size of dinner plates were falling out of the sky...I went outside and screamed STOP IT! STOP BEING SO STUPID AND ILL TIMED, WEATHER! [I said some other salty things too, if I'm being honest] And what do you know? It did! Stop, that is. Just for one day, but that was all I required.) (Otherwise, the party went off without a problem! I highly recommend marrying a gullible man if you can arrange it...it makes these kind of things SO much easier! Hi honey!), and then I've spent the past week recovering from said party and so here we are, on the cusp of March.

It was difficult to come home from Mexico. Because it looked like this:

And was filled with many of these:

Which made us oh so happy and content and lo! Full of much glee! See?

I highly, HIGHLY recommend this kind of escape during the cold months. Normally I would spend February in a mid-winter funk, wanting only to watch tv without my pants on, and then do productive things like whine about how cold I am. I'd don the same, pilly sweatshirt that I swear I've had since the day I was born and retreat to a quiet corner of the house, which happens to be our arctic bedroom and is full of annoying things like laundry that requires folding and random detritus that needs to be put away. But in February, it's easier to kick all of that to the side and hide under my duvet until something nicer, like Spring, comes along. So see, you were saved all of that by our timely trip to the tropics. You're welcome. We'll have to do this every year, even if we have to sell a couple of kidneys to make it happen.

To the one I love

We have finally returned from a week in Mexico. I would be lying if I didn't admit that I entered the airport last Friday in a cold sweat of worry and trepidation. We had not embarked on a vacation like this - one so purely decadent that catered solely to my love of lying on a flat surface with a cocktail in hand - since our honeymoon. While I have many advanced degrees in Being Quiet & Still for seemingly endless stretches of time, Marc is of the WHAT ARE WE DOING TODAY THAT WILL TAKE MY HEART RATE HIGHER THAN WHAT IS RECOMMENDED BY THE HEALTH PROFESSION AT LARGE school of thought. And yes, he speaks in all caps. To say our definition of what qualifies as a "vacation" differs at best. And because of this, because of the hyperactivity and the need to MOVE AROUND ALL OF THE TIME, we have schlepped thirty pound packs up very high peaks, woken at dawn to climb things that we were perhaps just meant to be observed from sea level and hanged out over precipices that made me finally demand a life insurance policy.

To quiet the noise in Marc's head requires a dose of activity that the normal person would perish just to listen to. The noise in my head, however, is easily shut off with a margarita and a view of the sea. Marc, perhaps seeing some sort of desperation beginning to cloud my vision came home one day and announced that we were going to Mexico. To lie very, very still. I wept with joy. And so for the past week, my head has been blissfully peaceful. I have spent hours gazing out at the deep blue ocean and my troubles seemed to wash out with the tide. It was the healing balm I needed.

And Marc? My nerves about him being able to enjoy a vacation like this and not drive us into some sort of argument that would include my yelling "O MY GOD CAN'T YOU JUST ENJOY THE TROPICS LIKE A NORMAL HUMAN BEING???" and him throwing himself off of the balcony? It would seem that having access to a gym, several Tecates at lunch, an afternoon nap and sufficient quiet time with his wife were enough to keep him from committing hara-kiri with a broken beer bottle. I was shocked! The man only naps when he is sick, or I am sick and he is faking the same symptoms. But the time together? I don't know that we have had anything like that in years.

Marriage is a funny thing. In the space of a day you can feel like bashing your spouses skull against a very sharp object and then make love to them that evening in a way that communicates that you will never, ever let them go, despite having wanted to induce threatening trauma to their heads earlier. Mexico, in its infinite beauty, in its slowness, its blue blue sea and rocky sand and beautiful stray dogs that I always had to stop and pet afforded me the peace of mind that allowed me to fall in love with my husband all over again. Not that I was out of it, mind you. I just had the space and time to appreciate all over again why we were HERE, here with one another, in the first place. And I reckon these re-births happen continually over the course of a life together, but this one is mine and is covered in sand and lime and beautiful sunsets and endless sleep and looking over at his smiling brown eyes and being flooded with that rush of knowledge that I did a good, an excellent thing, by saying yes to this version of my life so many years ago.

And so we come home and unpack and pet our dog who will ignore me for the first 24 hours because I dared leave her. And we will fall asleep in our own bed tonight and wake up tomorrow to schedules and bills and unanswered emails. And I'll go upstairs to fold the seemingly endless trail of laundry that follows me wherever I go and perhaps some sand will fall out of an undisturbed pocket or my collar will chafe against the sunburn I carry on my neck or Marc will look up at me, over his newspaper and I'll remember how deeply he slept every afternoon, waking with the imprints of the sheets creasing his face. And I'll be happy.

This life. It is more than enough.