Week 13

It's been a weekend of catching up with friends I've seen less of in the last few months, with the morning sickness knocking me out. Yesterday, I had breakfast with one friend and then lunch with another, and today I had breakfast with one of my exes, a nice guy who I've developed a genuine friendship with in the years since we dated. We see each other about twice a year, catch up on who he's dating, what our various mutual friends and acquaintances are doing, inquire about each other's siblings, share some book recommendations, and go on our way. It's nice, and we keep things appropriately light. Friendships with exes rely on a healthy amount of distance, I think.

Now that I'm no longer sick all the time, I'm getting back to that happy, glowy pregnancy feeling that I had in the first few weeks before the nausea hit. I feel like a person again, as well as a pregnant lady. Sometimes whole hours or even half days go by where I actually don't think too much about the baby - I can actually concentrate a little on work and other things again. This will probably all disappear in a few weeks when "pregnancy brain" kicks in and I can't remember anything, but for now I'm enjoying the almost normalcy of this part of the process.

I'm starting to rest my hand protectively on my little bump of a visible baby. It's really only visible to me and Brett right now, at least if I dress well, but I know it's there and can't help but touch it. Suddenly, I'm convex instead of flat. I actually can't wait to be showing more than I am. A week or so ago, I kept putting a small pillow under my shirt and looking at it in the mirror. It's exciting to think about what has been, until now, this intensely private experience, being a little more visible and shareable.

Brett is amusing himself by researching all of the countries that offer citizenship if you have the baby while visiting that country. Every day he comes home with a new one. "You know, if you had the baby in Poland, we could get Polish citizenship!" he'll announce, sounding as pleased as punch. "If we offer to raise the baby speaking French, would France let us move there? They have a lower-than-desired birth rate, right?" And on and on. Needless to say, none of this is going to happen. We've already canceled on a planned trip to Italy in June because neither of us wants to fly that close to the due date. Chances of him getting me on a plane in the ninth month and dragging me off to give birth in, say, Morocco are really pretty slim.

That said, we are planning one last DINK (double income, no kids) vacation as our last fling before the kid arrives, planning it for safely in the second trimester. I think we're going to Spain - a couple weeks kicking around Madrid, Seville, Granada, and maybe even Morocco. We're hoping to be able to use miles to splurge on an upgrade to business class, to make the flight more comfortable for me. I'm really looking forward to seeing the sights and eating tapas, even if I won't be able to drink the big Spanish riojas that I love so much.

Trip to Davis

Well, I survived jury duty. Nothing ever happened. Enough said about that.

On a happier note, we spent the weekend in Davis, last weekend, visiting half of the Zalkan immediate family. Davis, CA is a nice place to hang out for a weekend - this time we got smart and stayed right in the middle of downtown Davis, smack in the middle of a cute little shopping area, instead of out on the highway near nothing. This had the advantage of being close by Brett's dad's place, making it easy for us to pick him up and drop him off, and also of allowing for pleasant distractions such as stepping out of your hotel to get coffee or bagels or shop for baby clothes.

All in all, we had a great visit. We're getting better at making these family visits low stress - after our delightful trip to Florida, everyone (us included) to have realized that family visits are made better by a lack of plans rather than enhanced by sightseeing and other general forms of busy-ness. So we did very little - hung out with his Dad, solved his computer problems as best we could, went to dinner, cooked a little. Marilyn and I snuck off for an Indian lunch and manicures on Saturday, but that was about as ambitious as plans got.

We didn't even take a camera.

And of course, I got to spend time with my two favorite doggies - Zero and Fifi, seen here in a pic from last year. (add pic)

Marilyn has picked up knitting and made me a fuzzy scarf and a beautiful baby blanket!! So cool.

Wardrobe malfunction

I have entered the wardrobe malfunction period of pregnancy.

I'm showing just enough to look entirely dumpy but not enough to look pregnant. I've finally reached the point where it's just about impossible to wear my pre-pregnancy jeans, but my maternity jeans don't quite fit.

I'm wearing them today, the maternity jeans - Old Navy boot-cut maternity jeans with a nice weave and a thick elastic band holding them up. Except that the elastic is a little too loose. It mostly stays up, but if I walk any length (like, say, down a hallway), they start to slide a little bit. Not off, mind you, but just enough to make me look like my 16-year-old nephew, with his baggy jeans with the crotch halway down to his knees.

Does this make me hip?

Ok, maybe not so pleasant

Sitting here doing nothing was okay for a while. But it's been six hours, and my brain is beginning to melt.

I think I might actually have been killed in a car accident on the way to jury duty and am now in purgatory. Perhaps I will sit here for the next thousand years, my only connection with the world the loudspeaker which crackles on every two or three hours to say, "We still haven't heard anything about whether we need jurors today. Sit tight!"

Pleasant enough

And nothing continues to happen at court.

We sat here from 8 until 11:30. No one got called for jury evaluation. Then they gave us a two hour lunch break, which people are just now straggling back from. And now, again, nothing is happening.

This is okay with me. For one, I've gotten nearly a full day's work done already, thanks to the WiFi. For another, it's way better than a dull trial. Had a conversation with an aggravated woman in the bathroom a few hours ago:

Woman: What could they be thinking? How could they not be more organized than this with all these people waiting?
Me: Well, yeah.
Woman: I mean, they should at least have trials ready for us.
Me: Well, to be honest, the last trial I was on was so mind-numbingly boring that I'd much rather sit here and read a book for a half a day then do that again.
Woman: (strange look)

But seriously - is this so bad?

Took a walking tour of downtown Kent over lunch, after I finished eating. I'll admit there's more here than I thought, but it's still very small town-ish. I saw three or four different thrift stores, three garden-home accessory stores, one religious bookstore, a movie theater, and about a dozen restaurants. I suppose I can amuse myself here for a couple days if needed.

My life for the next two days

Off to jury duty today, for the third time in the last five years. Random selection, my foot - I think they pick and repick the people who bother to show up each time they get summoned.

My day started off in the least promising of ways. I got up, not entirely displeased at the idea of spending the next two days in downtown Seattle. On my last jury duty, the trial was mind-numbingly dull but I had a fairly good time exploring during the long lunch hours, visiting the great restaurants and bookstores nearby, and enjoying the early hours and quick commute home. Couldn't be all that bad to do this again for a few days. However, I was just pulling into the parking garage downtown when I pulled out my jury duty form and realized that I was supposed to be in ... duduDUM... Kent.

Oh crap. Not only was I now terribly late, I had to go to Kent. I wasn't even sure where Kent was, to be perfectly honest. I had a vague sense that it was south, but I'd never actually gone there before.

Kent, for those of you not local to Seattle, is a small, run of the mill, strip-mall-heavy suburb south of the airport. No Elliot Bay Books sprawling for a whole city block just around the corner from the courthouse. No plethora of ethnic food available at every turn. No easy bus service to get to my post.

So I spent the next thirty minutes lost in south Seattle, following a bewildering array of signs claiming they were taking me to I-5, only to point me off through the warehouse district and, at one point, I swear, through a parking lot in an industrial area full of burly men who looked at me strangely, leading me to think that I was more likely to end up the victim of a crime being juried than on the jury myself.

Finally rediscovered the highway, called Brett and begged him to get me directions to the Kent Courthouse, and then drove 70+ mph the whole way there, because I was by now over 45 minutes late. I amused myself imagining what I would say to the officer if I got pulled over - "But I'm supposed to be in court!" - but for some reason my luck held and I managed to avoid the consequences of my speeding.

So now, here I am, in Kent. I got here just in time for the second half of the orientation movie which I've already seen twice. (Had I realized that, I wouldn't have hurried.) But I did manage to snag a back-row seat in the jury waiting room, near a plug, and there's WiFi, so I can connect and do work and use the internet, so all is not lost.

There are two trials today. Neither is ready for jurors yet. So here we sit. I'm writing specs. My neighbor is doing a crossword in pen. (I have a vested interest in her success, having supplied her the pen.) The lady on the other side of me refuses to talk to anyone, her nose buried in the latest Harry Potter. There are about fifteen people on laptop computers, ignoring the world, and the rest of the room looks like they wish they would have thought to bring one.

I think it's going to be a long day.

Three things I'm Surprised Are True

...and five things that have made me cry lately.

Surprised that:

1. You do get a super-enhanced sense of smell when you're pregnant.

2. You cannot, in fact, feel it when a two inch long person is breakdancing around inside you, no matter how much it looks like you should be able to feel it from the ultrasound.

3. It is, in fact, true that you cry easily. Not in a moody, uptight way (at least for me), but in a sappily sentimental way. I am, shall we say, easily moved. To tears.

Here's a short list of things I have burst into tears over IN THE LAST WEEK:

• The Visa commercial that shows the couple in various decades of their life - getting married, on their honeymoon, pregnant, putting their sick kid to bed, older - while playing 100 Years by Five for Fighting. I'm a sucker for this ad. No matter where I am - at home, at the gym, in some bar - I immediately get misty every time it comes on.
  
  
• An ASPCA commercial that plays on some local channel and shows sad pictures of formerly abused animals. I actually have to change the channel on this one, since it threatens to take me from misty-eyed to out-and-out upset.

• A McDonald's commercial. I can't explain this one.
  
  
• American Idol, last night, when I started thinking through the lyrics to a song that frequently shows up on auditions and thinking how the words completely and totally sum up my relationship with Brett, like ohmiGOD, totally.
  
  
• A picture of little tiny shoes in a catalog.
  

Perhaps I need to go on a media-free diet. :) The good news is that I cry for about ten seconds and then shake my head and come to my senses. And except for the commercials at the gym, I have yet to be observed in my weepiness.

The reason I haven't been blogging much since Christmas

Is because the one thing I really wanted to talk about was something I couldn't blog about for a few months! But the veil of secrecy has been lifted, and I'm now happy to announce that we're having a baby!

Random Q&A:

• When are you due? We're three months along, due around the end of August. Just about starting the second trimester, just starting to show.
  
• How's it going? So far it's been a spectacularly normal, by-the-book pregnancy. After a few, blissful symptom-free weeks I came down with wicked morning sickness on the exact week you're supposed to, and it started to clear up last week right on schedule. All the tests they've done so far are utterly normal. No problems.
  
• What's it like? There were times when the first trimester felt like having a hangover, all the time. But it's also mind-blowingly amazing. I'll blog more about this.
  
• Have you seen the baby? We've seen the little tyke twice now on ultrasounds, and he or she is doing great and very active. Ultrasounds are so cool.
  
• Will you find out the sex? Will you share that info? Yes, we will find out the sex, but not for about five more weeks. Yes, we'll share.
  
• Are you going for a natural birth? Are you kidding? Give me drugs. With all due respect to those who feel differently, I don't think the experience will be made any more special for me by being made more painful. I'm pro-epidural.
  
• Any names yet? Not really - we keep goofing around, picking silly names instead of real names. Ichiro Zalkan, anyone?
  
• Just one, right? Thank the lord, yes. Twins and triplets run in my family.

Whew, what a relief it is to have that not be a secret anymore. It's so hard to blog around something that big!

Feels like spring

We've somehow gone from almost 40 straight days of rain to an early but gorgeous spring. The last two weekends, I've been able to get out into the yard for the first time in months, to attend to all the tasks I'd been neglecting - cutting back the wisteria, pruning the roses, raking up the leftover leaves in the back, trimming back the ferns, etc.

The jonquils are in bloom:


...and the daffodils are almost a foot tall. Out front, the weeping cherry tree is filled with small pink buds.


A few weeks ago the primroses bloomed - we've only got a few:


Out back, the chives are up again -


And the hydrangeas are budding:


And one ambitious oxalis has thrown out a handful of pink flowers, just to test the weather:



And me, I'm plotting and scheming about the gardening I'm going to do this year, thumbing through the bazillion seed catalogs I've received, planning my efforts.

I love early Seattle spring.

Garden Show

Went to the Northwest Flower and Garden Show today for a few hours. Normally I take a day off and go during the week, but this year I've had a variety of things taking me away from work more than usual lately and couldn't really afford the extra vacation day, so I woke up early on a Saturday and braved the mobscene downtown. And actually it wasn't so bad - not a whole lot more crowded than the last time I went.

To be quite honest, this year I mostly went there to shop. If you love botanical-themed house goods and garden paraphernalia the way I do, the garden show is shopping heaven. I glanced at the demonstration gardens, but it was insanely crowded (as always) in there and hard to see much. Oddly enough, from what I could see every display used the same deep pink tulips - must be a trend this year! Last year's demonstration gardens seemed better to me, and there was nothing as good as last year's Tilth display - wow was that cool. So after a brief spin around there and a glance at the talk list for the day (nothing much I wanted to see), I just wandered the marketplaces, pacing myself and stopping for frequent snacks and rest breaks until I'd seen everything.

To give you a sense of scale, the garden show is so large that it took me almost five hours just to explore the markets, with snacks and lunch mixed in. Most enjoyable.

As always, the garden show just makes me feel so happy. The people there are kindred souls, most of them walking around with strange plants wrapped in newspaper and nestled in their purses or backpacks, and although it's busy and packed full, there's a nice relaxed vibe to such a gathering. It feels like nothing bad could ever happen to you there.

So, shopping results?

• Plantwise, all I bought was dahlia tubers, from the folks at Swan Island Dahlias - two beautiful dark purples for the front bed, and a few more reds and creams for the front porch. All in all, I think I got seven. They're now nestled in a cupboard in the dining room hutch, living out the next two months in a cool, dry place until it's time to plant.
  
  I'm most excited about the Thomas Edison purples - what a cool color! Also got the unfortunately named Desert Storm, a Honey Dew, a Matchmaker, a Neterbob, and one more Spartacus (which I already have growing).
  
• A fantastic metal wall hanging made from an old oil barrel - I bought one of these last year too, and went back this year hoping to find a larger one for over the fireplace. I'll post a picture soon.
  
• A few gardening books - one on pruning, one on ideas for windowboxes.
  
• A couple of basic tools - waterproof gloves and plant markers.
  
• Two gorgeous prints from Gianna Marino. You can see one of them here.

All in all, a good day. And being there inspired me to start thinking about what I'm going to grow this year, what we'll put in the front vs. the back of the house, etc. I think I'm going to transfer the tomatoes all to the front porch - they did so much better there than they did in the back of the house. It will look a little crazy, but I don't care. And the back will be so much less crowded.

And in other cat news

Max and Phoenix, who have been tentatively building a friendship with many false starts and setbacks over the last two and a half years, have for the first time curled up together, butts touching, on the bed for a nap. A catnip-induced, stoned-out-of-their-minds nap, but still. We were touched.




You can see the catnip detritus scattered on the bedspread in front of them.

Bored?

At a loss? Not sure what to do with yourself?

You can always sit in a basket to pass the time, says Phoenix.