You know your mom loves you . . .

When she comes to visit and packs her trusty apron.

(And it looks nothing like one of these cute little numbers!)

This is it . . . my birthday report

So my actual birthday was a tad anti-climactic.  I got the H1N1 vaccination and voted in the Provo city elections (Note: I do think it’s awesome that every few years I get to vote on my birthday . . . in fact, it just so happens that I got to vote for the first time on my 18th birthday!).  By the time I was done with ALL THAT, it was 11:30am and I was ready to hunker down and rest for the remainder of the day.  Lame?  Maybe a little, but I’m a 30 year old trapped in the body of a 72 year old; no spring chicken here.

But when you add the week as a whole up, I fared well in the celebration department and I’ll go to my grave insisting that birthdays ought to be celebrated a week at a time if at all possible.  Here’s a recap:

Saturday: Blueberry pancake breakfast by Neal

Tuesday: Neal’s surprise present, a list of potential baby names he compiled by looking at name websites–this was awesome because if I haven’t mentioned it before, I am practically paralyzed by this whole naming thing

Decadent chocolate by Kjell–seriously, the smell alone is hedonic (click here for recipe)

Thursday: Lunch at Cafe Rio, and then:

Neal knew that this was it, the perfect birthday gift.  How did he know this?  Because I emailed him on September 25th, October 26th, and November 4th to tell him.  (Some people think this tendency makes me overbearing; I prefer to think of it as setting him up for success!)  It was actually a momentous day because it was the very first movie we’ve seen as a couple at a “real” movie theater.  You should have seen us wandering around like we were in a palace: rocking the chairs back and forth (because they moved!), adjusting the armrests (because we could!). I kept wanting to touch the wallpaper and tile because it seemed so fancy.

Someday perhaps I will write a full post dedicated to my complex relationship with Michael Jackson, but for now let me just say that his music is in some ways THE soundtrack of my life.  It’s just so pivotal, so ever-present.  Dangerous is still my go-to album when I need to kick it up a notch (read: get out of bed).

Friday: Baskin Robbins double scoop of chocolate fudge ice cream in a cup with a cone–the BR worker teased me mercilessly about how boring my choice was, but I live for that stuff

My mom arrives for a 4-day visit in which she is cooking (sooo much good food!) and cleaning for us–could there be a better gift???

Sunday: My parents give me two beautiful, vintage books: Anne of Avonlea and Pride and Prejudice

Monday: Chinese lunch with my mom, grandparents, and Neal, followed by a huge, luscious chocolate cake

Not too shabby, eh?!

30 years old . . . finally

I think we all know I wasn’t going to let this occasion pass without a shout-out to myself.  And this is a particularly exciting birthday because after nearly 5 years of saying I’m almost 30, now I am!

30 years ago I was a wide-eyed (maybe slightly scared—but you would be too if your big brother’s head was THAT big) baby:

Now I’m much the same (my brother’s head is still quite large ), but with more hair.

The issues

Neal has always been a little more apathetic about the issues than I am.  But lately he’s had a new-found interest in discussing the issues facing our society.  And I have this video to thank for it.  I urge you to consider these issues as well:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=u5tmnBeNv18

Think about it.

Nightmares

These are, unfortunately, a staple of my life since childhood (although all the spider, bug, flesh-eating ones have been peculiar to pregnancy).  Although there have been a lot of factors to my insomnia, nightmares have definitely been a big one.  Thankfully, therapy helped a lot.  I don’t get all into the Freudian interpretations (for obvious reasons), but I have found that much of the time, it is true what my therapist taught me: nightmares are a manifestation of anger/frustration/upset turned inward and left unexpressed.  If I use them to identify what is bothering me and communicate about it, that particular nightmare usually subsides.

But last night I learned that there is something even stronger than my analytical abilities to banish nightmares.

So I’m having this horrible dream.  I’m high-school aged again and someone is doing horrible things at my school.  I’m not going to say what–too disturbing–but trust me, they were horrible things.  So I and this group of students/teachers are rushing around the school trying to piece together clues and threats before more dire things happen.  But we’re too late . . . the baddies are unleashing chemical weapons into the air via both submarine (I agree this is where it starts to seem comical, I mean, where am I going to high school anyway? But trust me, it was still intense and scary!) and land.  The next thing I know I’m holding my breath and sprinting away as quickly as possible.  I mean, I’m hurdling over shrubbery and running like I’ve never run before.

I looked like this (except for my abs and body--those not so much)

Until . . .

I start to wake up.  Usually when I am drifting in and out of sleep, my nightmares continue for some time.  But as soon as my half-conscious self realized that I was running, it was like, “Stop that.  You hate running.”  And you know what, I did stop.  Immediately.  Scary nightmare over.  I woke myself up to think about how much I hate running.  Now that’s some extreme hatred, right there.

If only I could get myself to break into a run at the beginning of all my nightmares, I might be cured completely!

22 weeks

Rachel C. is exactly right, that’s how far along I was in these pictures.  But she’s also wrong that it was this week because I’m now 25 weeks along!  (And Nikki, I’m right there with you on being confused by the week-month counting of pregnancy.  No matter how many times people try to explain it, I am convinced that it is 1) counterintuitive and 2) based on the menstrual cycles of imaginary “ideal” women, and thus, invented by men).

At our 24-week check-up, my midwife told us that we’ve reached a milestone.  Now if this baby girl had to come out, she would have a good chance of survival.  But as Dr. Nelson, Rachie’s husband, told me while I was visiting, she is most definitely “not ready for game-time” (I find sports metaphors comforting, they seem to cut right through for me).  We’re doing our best to keep her cooking for a while longer and I’m increasingly feeling that we will be able to.  Don’t tell anyone, but I think things may just turn out alright in the end 

***

I was informed yesterday that Neal would read my blog more if I talked about him more.  He says everyone likes to hear themselves talked about.  I’m not sure if this is what he had in mind, but here goes with a little Neal story:

From the very beginning I have been super anxious to be “showing.”  I think a big part of that was seeking validation and recognition that I was, in fact, pregnant and that this time it was going to keep.  So I would ask Neal on a daily basis,

Do I look pregnant?

Do I look pregnant now?

Now?

It was wearying for him because the answer was always, no.  First, it was a simple no.  Then it was a not pregnant, maybe a little pudgy.  Then it was a no, just a fatty.  He took to calling me fatty pretty regularly (if this sounds callous, you should know that 1) I’m not sensitive about my appearance and 2) it’s something of an homage to Morrissey’s “You’re the One for Me, Fatty”–a beloved tune from my younger years).

So just the other day when Neal was tucking me in, he (perhaps inadvertently) said, “Who’s my fat cow?”  About 10 seconds went by before he quietly said, “I crossed a line, didn’t I?”

But I didn’t mind . . . think of how much mileage I can get out of reminding him that when I was pregnant with little [insert name here--seriously, if you can think of a good name, insert it, please!!!], he called me a fat cow!

How pregnant is Lindsay?

 

Care to guess?

(Because of the lag time in our photo technology, knowing how far along I am now,

won’t really help you figure out how far along I was in these pictures)

Things I’m grateful for

I am laying on my bed right now surrounded (SURROUNDED!) by dirty clothes, mostly pouring out of my half-heartedly unpacked suitcase.  I know I must get up and do laundry because I’m pretty much out of the clothes and garments that my skin can tolerate wearing.  I also know that I must get up and eat something because baby girl and I are starving.  But wow . . . I really can’t move right now.  My fibromyalgia has been quite manageable for the last few years but all of the sudden, the last few days, it’s like my joints are MAD!  Maybe they feel neglected because I’ve been spending so much time lotioning up my skin.

Luckily, my mind is very happily engaged thinking about some of the many blessings I’ve had over the last week or two.  And since I still owe my readership many happy posts as payback for wading through the past months’ weepy/frustrated/fearful posts, I thought I’d write a few down:

Friends you just gel with even when you haven’t been together in a couple years. My recent trips to Michigan and Austin (via Denver, Charlotte, NC, and Phoenix–yes, I really circled the country!) reminded me of just how grateful I am for my girls!

Rach, Todd, Audrey and Drew showered me with hugs and smiles, fed me superior home-cooked meals, and showed me the fall colors of Ann Arbor–but mostly they just let me chill on their couch for 4 days, chatting and watching I Love Lucy and baseball.  Good times.

Then on to Austin, where Ishkhanoohie, Will, Emma, Aryl, and Anoush similarly fed me dazzling food like Will’s special-recipe popcorn and fresh spinach-artichoke dip, let me beat them at Scattergories (oh wait, actually, I rock at that game!), and let me sleep in till all hours of the day (although “you were asleep for sooo long” was often heard from Ish’s 6 and 4-year-olds ).

Since I’m a little lame with the modern photo technology, this is the only picture proof I have so far, stolen from Rach’s blog:

I promise that's us . . . and a lot of pumpkins

My little baby laptop coming out of its temperamental stage. We got a super lightweight Dell for the express purpose of allowing me to use it while lounging comfortably in bed.  I used to spend many a day with it resting next to me like so:

(This isn't mine, thank you Google images and people who take pictures of everything)

And then one sad and frantic day almost a year ago, my little baby laptop got dropped on its side.  It damaged the start-button mechanism so that any movement at all spontaneously turned the computer off.  No more sideways usage.  But it’s back . . . and just in time for another period of long-term bedrest.  This may not seem like a big deal, but believe me, it is a BIG DEAL!!!

Stanley Fish and my adorable husband. Right now postmodern literary critic Stanley Fish and Neal are inseparably connected, as Neal prepared for his killer contemporary literary theory midterm. I read many of the articles so that we could discuss them together and I would not be out of the loop as he literally spent every waking hour for the last three days contemplating interpretive communities, writerly vs. readerly texts, and heteroglossia (I never got through Bakhtin, so I’m still hazy on the last one).

I was particularly enamoured with Fish not because I agree with all his ideas (though I do a lot of them) but because it is so refreshing to watch someone talk about scholarly topics in a decidedly accessible way.  Most theorists somehow think that big words equal big thoughts.  Plus he’s a good-looking older man, no?

My poor Neal is sleeping next to me right now even though it’s mid-afternoon, exhausted from so much study and essay-writing, made all the more disappointing because the midterm did not contain a Stanley Fish question after all.  But I confess that I relish those hours we spent nonetheless because it reminded me of how ours is a marriage of the minds as much as anything else and we complement each other well when working toward a goal.

My somersaulting baby girl. Is she actually somersaulting in there?  We’ll never know . . . but sometimes I get the distinct feeling that she’s doing repeated somersaults, like the way you can in a pool.  There is nothing that has brought me more comfort during this pregnancy than her near-constant movement.  I thought I started to feel her a little before 19 weeks, but I was too nervous about all the unpleasant possibilities before us to say anything until the 20-week ultrasound.  And while I’ve been told that some women don’t feel consistent movement for awhile, I feel incredibly blessed that not a day has gone by that I have not felt her kicking and twisting.  More than once I have not felt for a brief time and the worry has begun to set in; but in the moment that I start that silent prayer for peace and calm, she gives me a nudge or two.  I know these have been tender mercies from the Lord to push out fear and replace it with faith.

This morning I woke up way too early because of random body pain and there she was wiggling around in there, keeping me company until I felt ready to get out of bed.  This beautiful feeling washed over me that we’ve shared a lot already, we are already friends and we always will be.

I know I already posted this (in like every place known to man), but is it my fault she has the most beautiful profile of any baby ever?!

Goonies Never Say Die!

This one’s for all you Goonies fans out there!  There are Goonies fans out there, right?!  RIGHT?!

I by turns got chuckles/scoffs and high-fives/”Awesome!”s when I told people that a big part of my Oregon coast trip was to see the Goonies sights.  I say my, not because I wasn’t willing to share the Goonie love with Neal, but because poor young tyke that he is, his Goonie experience is lacking. (Incidentally, he was one of the chuckler/scoffers when I first mentioned it, but by the time we got to the Astoria, OR area he was an absolute sport, even POSING in one picture himself–this is actually one of the signs of the apocalypse, so you should all live a little more righteously now).

Before I went on my search to figure out where the Goonies locations were, I had no idea that it was so common to take pictures of yourself at selected Goonies locations and post them side-by-side with screenshots on the internet (I am still one of those people who are wide-eyed about all the internet offers; have you guys heard of YouTube?  Unreal ).  Here are just two of those websites if you want to see some real pros in action:

http://www.thegoonies.org/Locations.htm

http://www.igophoto.net/squidkidd/index.jsp?album=astoria-thegooniesfilminglocations

I didn’t do quite the thorough job of hitting every site or carrying the requisite doubloon, but I had a blast nonetheless.  I got my first glimpse of Haystack Rock

and was giddy as a school girl (until a bunch of school girls came to the same lookout spot and I realized how annoying school-girl giddiness can be).  So we left straightaway . . . I mean, after attempting to get a shot with my finger strategically placed on top of the rock (don’t judge me):

I love how it looks like I'm wearing a one-eyed-willy eyepatch--totally unintentional, just one of those amazing coincidences

Of course, we had to get closer to Haystack Rock for a walk on beautiful Cannon Beach.

It was a stunning time of day with the fog rolling in, very Goonie-esque, and I could see little Mikey in my mind’s eye lining up the doubloon with this rock.

Yes, I'm still in love

(I may have also imitated his action, but I’m not saying.)

Next, we headed into the heart of Astoria to take a look at some of the city scenes:

 

Mikey's and Brand's dad's museum

The iconic jail from which the Fratellis escape (holds a special place in my heart )

Data's house

Here’s where I tried to get Neal to reenact Data’s sister’s temper tantrum when Brand steals her bike.  Although I couldn’t get any stomping or yelling, I think the hands-on-the-hips and slightly cocked foot says a lot.  Well done, Neal, poser-in-training.

And for the pièce de résistance:

The Goondocks . . . where their Goonie adventure began and ours ended.  (At least until next summer when I’m tempted to go back for the 25th anniversary celebration!)

What I did on my summer vacation–Oregon coast edition

These pictures don’t need much explanation.  To put it simply, Neal and I both fell in love with the Oregon coast.  Neal especially . . . he is set on ending up there someday.  Wheeler, Oregon, here we come!

Dean Creek Elk Preserve . . . if you have ridiculous eyesight, you can see a herd of elk; if not, enjoy the greenery.

Oregon Dunes National Park . . . Neal has a thing for the desolation of sand.  He could have stayed here for days.

Cannon Beach and the famed Haystack Rock (if you don’t know why it’s famous, wait a post or two and I’ll tell you why it’s famous to me and other fans of a certain cult classic 80s flick).

An overlook somewhere just south of Cannon Beach . . . and HEAVEN.