In the great Three-Oh-my-I'm-Getting-Big-Enough-to-Burst, drama erupts in the Old Country (Buffet) before the big party pumps up. Belly creatures stretch over their cabbagey laptops and pack on pounds. A wave of gratitude and bonhomie at a surprisingly cool party. And a first visit to the birthing center where it all will go down in history with several screams and a fair bit of never-you-mind!
Drama in the Old Country
I've rhapsodized about my love for Old Country Buffet before, so I shan't wax elegiac for too long here. Merely say that it's a lunch tradition to come here midweek with my mom. And it's a magical place where (1) more people know your name than you'd expect (and/or have made up nicknames for you), and (2) you can eat twenty tons of pretty fine self-made salad without hassle. Since Wednesday at 11ish is not a hugely populated time, you do get to know the regulars and the regular staff. And that can lead to a homey 1980s sitcom kind of warm, happy glow.
...Or juicy oh-my shakeup gossip. We were greeted by our frequent table attendant yesterday. That is odd because typically he does not work the front register. Turns out that "Erik" (a relatively new and gratingly fawning young hire who'd been brought in to replace our very pregnant prior regular teller) had stormed off earlier that morning. I guess he did so after having cussed out the interim management once on Monday and previously on Friday. I get the sense that his self regulatory skills are as yet underdeveloped.
I won't really miss Erik. He seemed to have confused "working the entrance to a buffet" with "selling any comers a brand new used car" and/or "getting them into the tent to see the bearded lady." Many of the staff members are surreally exuberant and vibrant personalities, but it's genuine with them. Erik just seemed uncomfortably strained. And he was pretty slow at the till. Apparently, he wasn't really made for this job anyways.
But that's not the story, really. That was the segue into the story about why there are interim managers inviting the vengeful wrath o'Erik. Apparently two managers suspiciously ended their employment a week ago. Suspiciously because (1) they didn't announce anything about it until a couple of days beforehand, (2) the one claiming he had found "a better opportunity" was slippery and non-committal about details, (3) the two departing managers were very tense around each other on their last day, and did not hug goodbye or speak to each other.
Cue the conspiracy theories! I guess a bunch of other stuff is going down in the OCB world. Higher ups are getting axed. Some branches have been closed. Thirtysomethings that look like they're just back from a frat party are forcing employees to watch agonizing videos about the new "vision" for the company. And - just this week - ketchup has been removed from the guest tables.
All I can say is that I am familiar with new management coming in and imposing clever new visions on companies. It's not usually good news. And I'm going to miss this place if - heaven forbid - they close it down. Hopefully the Canadians will surge back this summer and make it a highly profitable location, so there is no question of mucking it up.
I'm bummed about the second manager. She started as a table attendant when we first started whoopin' it old country-style. There's a bond in that somewhere, having a sustained waitstaff-customer experience. I don't know what on earth went down. She'd only recently been promoted to management, so I can't imagine she had done anything deserving of the sacrificial altar. The going theory is that the longer term manager dragged her down with him somehow. I hope she lands on her feet somewhere.
At any rate, scandal and juiciness aside, yesterday was my second Mommy's night in. And a nice one at that. I managed to bring the temperature in the house down to that of a moderately cozy igloo, doused my head in water, and basked in the fan with little on beyond a tank top, light shorts and slippers (feet still get cold).
And this morning, I slept an extra 45 minutes, washed the sink, made my breakfast, and again got to work a minute or two early. Craziness.
Today all party-hectic breaks loose. Well begins quietly and gradually crescendos anyways. My sister is getting in this morning. Since she's more or less the reason we held this party in the first place (excuse to have her fly out after I was unable to visit this year due to thrashing belly creature), this screams PARTY to me. Of course the rest of the various globe will be folding in on us throughout the next few days. Various airports will be frequented by various family members. And many hugs shall be exchanged. Ice packs will be found. Somewhere. I could not find any at Freddy's or Rite Aid yesterday. I'm sure I was just looking in the wrong places.
Anyways, may your drama stay on stage, and may your salad bars be fresh and uncontaminated! Happy almost-Friday!
The Big Three-Ooooh My I'm Getting Large!
The gestational giddiness has reached thirty weeks today, and I don't know if it's this new maternity shirt*of if baby-kung-fu just had a growth spurt, but I am suddenly a heckuvalot huger to my eyes.
* Yes, yes I now own an actual maternity shirt. I went to an actual maternity store. I wandered aimlessly in a dither through the various products. I panicked several times, as is my wont in stores, and finally found the sales rack. I then found a cotton shirt in my size that was cotton and long sleeved (my main criteria). It was on sale for $10, so I purchased it without bothering to try it on. My sister has decided she will rescue me from myself and go shopping on my behalf. Apparently they have a model bump that you can attach to yourself in order to advance purchase maternity clothes. She knows this because - unlike me - she went to a maternity shop in her first trimester and went on a mad and merry shopping spree. Because she enjoys these horrors. Because... I don't know. I blame childhood trauma, but if I can benefit from this, then I refuse to complain vociferously.
That growing little belly burster? Well, she's apparently gone from face-hugger to one of several items of produce. This week, shall we compare her to a summer's...
1. Cabbage - I do love cabbage, eating it red or green, cool or steamed, fermented or fresh... nummy nummy cabbage. I have been known to just start noshing on a head of cabbage. Hopefully that will not occur with ma petit chou.
2. Honeydew Melon - Not big on melonphagy (although recently, I've discovered I far prefer them frozen) mind you, but honeydew is a sweet sort of name at any rate.
3. A Stalk of Celery - Mmmmm baby needs to be slathered in peanut butter at an early age. Hopefully that will forestall any nasty nut allergies from developing. Or moisturize her skin. Or just make a mess. Probably the latter, but babies like messes.
4. As long as a laptop computer - well that's as subjective as these produce metaphors these days.
But in other words, she's somewhere around 3 pounds and a bit over 15 inches probably. Her head is probably 3.5 inches in diameter and her little footsies are probably about 2.5 inches! Baby socks!!! Gush!!!
We're still in major fat packing mode (and purportedly will be until shortly before birth). And that extra weight she's packing can most certainly be felt in every kung fu chop and belly-dancing undulation that can now make an idle hand fly off my tummy when she gets striking. I could stare at my belly for mesmerized hours, but when she really gets going while I'm walking, it's a wee bit surreal. Reminds me of moving a water bottle with liquid in it - there's this strange surge of momentum that can actually throw my balance off a wee bit. I do love those little hiccups, which thoroughly tickle.
Taking after her mummy and daddy, she should have roughly 20/400 vision. Which sounds like me before my LASIK. Baby glasses! How cute is that?
As her skin is dewrinkled by fat, her brain is adding wrinkles by the day. Apparently in the last weeks of pregnancy her brain will produce billions of brain cells (got to have an extra store to destroy when college hits, after all). And she can now produce red blood cells on her own.
And of course, what would be pregnancy without mama's lovely symptoms? I'm told and can confirm that I am tired, clumsy (a lovely lumbering oafette), and heavy. Heavy more in the sense of extra gravity my swollen limbs feels at the moment. Big baby crushing into my rib cage definitely brings on the breathlessness and the heartburn. And speaking of burning, I'm now at double my prior blood volume (and feeling that heat, of course). And for some variety in my burning, my skin is madly itching. Oh and I'm oddly excited and trepidatious to report that I am definitely now experiencing Braxton Hicks contractions on a more noticeable basis than before.
My sites all confirm that I'd better pack my hospital bag (chargers, extra chargers - and slippers... I'm sure there's five million more things, but always good to remember these). Basically, we'd best cross our fingers that I've got another 10 weeks, but... let's not place bets. Fingers and legs, though. They remain crossed. I'm fascinated to hear how things are going at my next appointment (a week from today). I get to bump up to every other weekly visits at that point, and the exams get a bit more involved and intimate as we gauge how close the big OOOOO-OOOO-PUSH is getting.
In the meantime, it's PARTY TIME. Which is good, because for me it's like the last rite before I get to hunker down into my maternity readiness. Well, yeah, I still will have the hospital tour to do and the intensive childbirth prep class, but those are part of that hunkering down methinks. Time to start cramming for the final test and/or cramming all of the baby stuff we've acquired into a final product-nursery or that darned hospital bag.
My sis got in yesterday, and we had a very lovely time catching up at various parks (too hot), homes (freezing if you aren't me), and restaurants (too hot again). Today, we're hopefully catching a walk and lunch before a movie (not the labor inducing kind, but a nice quiet artsy film about Klimt paintings and legal actions and repatriation and whatnot).
And then tomorrow, we'll flock to a park and I'll find some nice shade with a bucket of ice from which to hold court while the temperature raises beyond summer sizzle.
All shall be glorious and red-faced. To go with the red socks...
Rockin' Rachel, Maternity Mojo and the Personal Shopper
So... I own maternity clothes now. It's fascinating. All of women's fashion is dedicated to hiding the midrift with ruffles, ridges, and sometimes serious rigging. But maternity clothes are the zany zebras of the sartorial world. They enhance and embrace the belly bump. I look twenty times more pregnant in them, but a 200% more damnably GLOWING. AAAAAAAHHHH. Embrace my aura.
Yeah, as you can imagine I did not actually man up and just go shopping at a maternity store. That would have taken years of therapy to reach, and still likely have ended up with some rampaging and fleeing and other sorts of nightly news type events. Oh no, my sister and my mother went in my stead. They deliberately dropped me back at my house after a day out, checked the size of my single maternity shirt, and skirted themselves off to the mall. I received several thousand photos of various options from the store itself (enough to nearly trigger a panicky choice fatigue, but fortunately, I was home and able to hide my head in pillows and the beautiful gust of the fan). And some time later, with little effort from me, they arrived with a heaping bag full of clothing. I did, of course, have to model my booty. Which reincorporated some of the many terrors of shopping, naturally. But at least, again, I was at home.
Man, does Rachel need to move here pronto and become my personal shopper.
I'm very excited to own an actual bathing suit, since the summer heat it amping up and our proximity to the lake suggests many days of respite could be found in the nice chill of a wet dip and retreat to the shade.
I'm also happy to report that the movies can, in fact, preserve their icy reputation. We went to see The Woman in Gold yesterday. Still some rocks and rattles during flashbacks to the NAZI occupation and things of that sort, but none were particularly premature-labor-inducing. And it was oh so pleasantly climate controlled at the Pickford Cinemas. I guess this summer shall be the summer of the art film! While wearing a maternity bathing suit.
Or one of the millions of other things I was presented with. Wow. I have a whole wardrobe. My baby kiddo has an endless wardrobe that will just be expanding soon. Andrew is falling behind here, although with all his bike costumes, I still suspect he outpaces me.
In a brief while, it's off to the park for the DINKs Last Stand. I am amazed at just how many of the invitees were unfamiliar with the term DINK (dual-income-no-kids), since it's a common coinage and population type in this town. But I think it's been mostly explained and those who are coming are definitely coming. We will have way too much food, as always. I will probably overheat several times, since the temperature will be pushing 80 all day. But I'll also be overheating with love and excitement. This is, after all, the last stand!
After that, pre-parenting shall consume us. Or me. Not that it hasn't already. I'm pretty much fixated on the ripples and ruffles of my belly as it is. And now that I've got cute maternity clothes... well, the world belongs to the belly creature and she's got some maniacal plans for it.
DINKS LAST STAND
The DINKs have stood and they were defeated, buried in a barrage of goodwill, tasty foods and leftovers. And it was a glorious, glorious thing.
I remember many prior occasions in which I have been thoroughly struck by the almost ridiculous fortune I have in the wealth of community and family support surrounding me This was a potent reaffirmation that: (1) wow, there are a lot of people in the world whom I love and who make my life a little rosier, (2) my family is the shiznat gagnam-style whuup whuup bombtastic summit of familial fantasticness.
Not only did my mom, mom's boy-toy, and sister go to incredible lengths to make this party happen without a hitch or a "hey pregnant lady help us out," but they did it exactly as I would have wanted it. They didn't impose some external stamp of "what a proper shower should be." They merely enabled my own half-formed ideals of such a party. The best facilitation possible without any prescriptivism or hassle. So often, it seems like gifts and good acts are undertaken in such a way as to present a burden to the giftee. Whether that be an implicit judgment about what the giftee should want, an expectation of a certain reaction or participation in the activity, or merely the onus of that sort of brusque and non-negotiable "help me help you" delegation in the path towards the final boon. My family has repeatedly avoided this, making life easier and more fun without any sense of reciprocal obligation or additional stress.
My Dad and aunts joined in the fun as well, contributing - once more - to a perfectly (W)right kind of party. With just the (W)right roster of guests, the nicely cooled (if not frigid as all the other guests imagined) party-room, to the banquets of taco salad and Adella-fied deli salads/desserts.
The set up was underway by the time I arrived, the guests actually started trickling in around noon, including my cousin and her kids and my maternal aunt and uncle. My Dad came laden with additional goodies and exquisite florals. With him came my paternal aunts from LA (crazy women). Andrew arrived with his mom. Andrew's dad arrived with delicious pie. My favorite work colleague with her delightful daughter. Long lost dance treasures. Long lost colleagues. Current colleagues. Second-mothers from my earliest days. Lifelong family friends who certainly constitute second family. My thoroughly expecting (39 weeks) bestie of all besties.
I haven't happily hugged so many people since the heyday of my blues addiction.
And did I mention that the same awesome family cleaned up afterwards? We wrapped up with a warm happy glow, a fridge and freezer bursting with leftovers, and a nursery exploding with gifts. Gifts we probably won't have time to open for an agonizing while. Andrew's mom had been planning to take the bus to Canada to visit with friends, but upon discovering she'd forgotten his passport, they decided it might be safer for him to take her up to Vancouver. Hopefully all will go easily, but it's still a drive and there will be brunch stops in the best case scenario (much more involved dramas in the less ideal scenario). Fingers crossed nobody needs bail for grand border jumping schemes gone awry.
In the meantime, I'm going to bond with the feminine (or that ultrasound tech has to retire) side of my family a bit more. Me, the baby, and Rachel are getting massages before she heads back. And I'm invited to breakfast with my mom. I'm withholding affirmation, since I believe the restaurant will be less blissfully climate controlled than the Pickford Theater or that very generous party room. And it is already in the 70's at 9 a.m. Not super promising for my happy head!
I'm a wee bit blasted from a pretty full day yesterday (came home lateish with my head reeling and my ears on fire), so keeping it cool today however I can imagine doing so.
Air conditioning and gratitude seem likely.
There's No Place Like Hot and Humid Home But the real home is more warm-glowey and full of love
Andrew was off gallivanting in foreign lands yesterday (exciting dramatic passport related covert ops with his mama went well), so I resisted the temptation to tear into the reams of festive paper and pretty ribbons in his absence... mostly. But I may have looked at a couple of the cards for a moment or two of pregerrific mistiness. And I may have located a gift dedicated solely to me! Oh the uber-aunties. They are such enablers, but pretty perfectly timed gift for a weekend centered around the true home: my friends and family. Gagging yet? Too bad, because I have a thrashing creature in my belly, double the blood, and more crazy hormones than a Major League Baseball doping scandal going through my veins! SNIFF SNIFF, KUMBAYA, GROUP HUGS, and wait no don't touch me I'm boiling up, BABY!!
But, man, I really love my family. We all bicker, snark and tease like a decidedly non-WASP ethnic family not otherwise specified (just realizing this after a conversation with my husband, who is occasionally - read often - baffled by my ongoing tendency to equate sere sarcasm with affection). We can be brutally honest with each other. And we have our share of feelings-talkiness. But I really appreciate that openness and the comfort we have with being open with each other while still having fun together. And they always come through in whimsical and stunningly thoughtful ways. Sometimes with a hug, and sometimes with a perfectly unexpected and eternally apropos little memento of a gift.
But yes, I stopped myself at one gift. We might have been able to open a few when Andrew returned (unscathed and smelling only faintly of maple heists of yore), but by then, I could not leave the cozy confines of our air conditioned bedroom without breaking into a minor inferno. Actually, I couldn't even stay in the air conditioned room without at least one ear lighting on fire.
Ok, my ears don't actually flame, but I do mean it when I say that they turn bright red and begin radiating heat. My father doubted me, until my sister averred that she had seen it herself. But I digress even further from the digression. It was unseasonably warm again (new theme). To a nearly record degree. By some reports, Bellingham got into the mid-eighties. Which might not sound awful to those of you who (1) are not currently carting an extra humanoid in your stomach, (2) have not even before then been fairly heat sensitive and prone to heat headaches, which are now hundreds of times greater in magnitude.
The house got up to 77 degrees downstairs, and the a/c upstairs could not keep up, edging the room into lower 70s by the end of the day. In a very small radius. Our a/c is situated in such a way as to intensively cool a tiny area of arm and the bed. Last night, for instance, I had a gelid blue right forearm, while the rest of me boiled. I eventually had to go downstairs and sleep under a more generally diffused fan. But that only worked at 3 a.m. when the rest of the house had actually cooled down a bit.
So, yes, I resisted yesterday and may have to continue resisting today, as we are going on a "hospital tour" at St. Joe's birthing center. I'm told to dress cooly (by a veteran of the tour, who mentioned all the ladies were beet red and dripping sweat by the end) and to not take all the worst case scenario stuff to heart. I'll do my best, but I still don't have an ice vest.
Anyways, I'm happy to be in a very well air conditioned office at the moment. I suspect that our air conditioning will fall behind once the heat really gets going, but when it's 60 outside, the a/c works pretty darn well, believe it or not! No, I promise, I'm not actually setting the a/c to sub-sixties as much as our floor of the towers is an oven once the temperatures hit above 50. The a/c is keeping my office at a nice 67...
Gotta channel up my cool while I can.
Stay cool, hep cats, and have a marvelous Monday!
Ichor A-Go-go-gone and the Semi-Conditioned Cauldron
Well, with all my complaints about the heat and that increase of blood volume upping sensitivity to said sensation, it only stands to reason that I'd eventually turn to blood letting to ease my torrid torpor. Or maybe I just started my morning out at the Medical Arts Building (very little macrame, I'm always disappointed to report) with some arm pricks because they like to keep a watch on that wild thyroid o'mine during these gestational follies.
Or maybe, I just had so much fun in the same general complex last night, that I had to come back somehow! And the Childbirth Center won't admit you until you're at least 4 centimeters dilated, darn. I guess they don't want me spending the next ten weeks hanging out in one of their highly in-demand labor rooms. Ah well.
Yes, yesterday was an exciting foray into our future. Andrew and I took a tour of the St. Joseph's Childbirth Center. My pregnant lady radar (which is roughly as fine tuned and tweaked as my baby and little kid radar at the moment) was going ballistic, surrounded by all these bellies. Very exciting moment. More exciting was the discovery that they do, in fact, air condition the childbirth center to a comfortable level (for me, so likely frigid for the support people) and that they even throw in making it a fragrance free zone. They care about me, here. I can just tell this is the beginning of a beautiful (bloody and screaming) friendship. No screaming last night, actually. I was told to expect screaming.
We did see the birthing rooms and the cesarean room (while off use) and a few other "worse and worse case scenario contingency" rooms. And some of the ladies there were looking mighty nervous by the end of the rote recitation of various codes we might hear or experience. No doubt all will go well, but if not, I'll know every possible code screamed at the intense medical professionals around me. Code purple is an emergent C-Section. Code APGAR is like a code blue, but for babies. Code Amber is if babies go missing (which probably won't happen, but only let people with teal badges touch your child). Code rainbow is if the cast of Glee shows up to sing at my baby's bedside during a surgical procedure and one of them has forgotten to scrub in, rendering the room insterile... Think that's right.
Anyways, not nearly as terrifying as I was warned, and a surreal insertion of reality. I mean, I realize that I am pregnant. That is very real for me. I have a relationship with a little creature in my belly. She is an absolute entity for me. And I understand that someday she'll be a baby and then a toddler etc. etc. But that journey from Point A to Point B felt a bit abstract until I was in the actual room where it all would go down. Huh. Well, labor will be... laborious... agonizing... scary... intermittently boring... maddening... but that big oxytocin surge at the end will obscure most of my memories of anything but squishy little newborn creature.
The hubba-hubba himself (my main support coach of course) is getting some practice with the hormonal variations but he'll be rising from "pregnant lady crying over cute babies, overripe bananas, and insufficient air conditioning" to... well, Defcon Plaid! Hopefully the oxytocin baby-bond bliss will rub off on him too... or maybe he'll need some other kind of "oxy" to survive. Hopefully we'll both survive, but I have a good sense that we probably will.
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