Aimless

Last week, I sat for too many minutes staring at a Craigslist ad for a Personal Assistant for an unspecified company. I knew I could do the work with my eyes closed, yet the desire to apply for the job was not there.

I'm spending a lot of time in the past couple of weeks trying to get back to OK. OK with the increasing knowledge that my career as a quality assurance professional is essentially over. I can't compete with out of work developers with scripting skills. The jobs I am being offered are well above my abilities.

OK with the fact that my employment at major-chain-bookstore has come to an end as the location will be permanently closed at the end of the day Friday. I've been scraping pennies together to buy a bottle of something bubbly and take to the store Friday morning, so the staff for the final shift has something to share at the end. Working at the bookstore was my Plan B and it was ideal. More time to spend with Toddler Alien. More time to write. Some pocket money, so I do not feel like I am mooching off of J whenever I want to buy something for myself.

OK with asking J for money, whether it go towards buying milk for Toddler Alien or a pair of jeans for myself. This is a difficult one, as J vacillates between being easygoing and freaking out whenever we have a big expense.

Case in point: my last trip to the doctors, to get a prescription written to end a multi week sinus infection, ended up costing roughly $250.00. Ninety dollars went towards the office visit and the remaining $160.00 for the antibiotics and two inhalers the nurse practitioner prescribed to control the coughing from the infection. The reason it was so expensive can be found in J's plan – a high deductible H.S.A plan that does not cover prescriptions or anything other than a well visit to the doctor until the the deductible is reached.

Even though I attempted to explain to J that it would be expensive, he freaked out when I came home and showed him the bill, leaving me feeling useless and ashamed that I could not cover it. I need to take this medication from April to October in order to control my symptoms. I should also being taking an antihistamine with the inhaler, but I have cut that from the regime because of the expense.

So here I sit, knowing that I need to find a job, any job, that will give me halfway decent medical benefits so I can control the asthma and see a doctor to deal with ongoing, lingering aftereffects of the pregnancy. And I have zero motivation to do so.

Scenes from a Mall

I'm still regrouping.

As part of the regrouping process, I have taken part-time seasonal(1) work staffing a calendar kiosk run out of a large national bookstore chain. This affords me plenty of time to watch mall life unfold and write tiny notes about what I see and think on pieces of register tape, tiny sheets of notepaper and on the back of half-sheets of invitations to a store's open house. (2)

The kiosk which I am staffing is in a small mall located in suburban Pittsburgh. The stores a mix of independent and upscale chains such as Restoration Hardware, Williams Sonoma and Anthropologie.

Most weekdays, my pacing around the kiosk is punctuated by the click-swish sound of hands washing mahjong tiles at the nearby tables. Almost daily, groups of four women take over the tables, set out the racks and shuffle tiles. Some bring a thick, felt cloth to muffle the sound of tiles on formica. They bring over trays of lunch from the nearby Panera and spend the afternoon playing. On breaks they wander over to the kiosk to look at the calendars and offer up bits of information about their lives. One woman, a thin, wiry individual with orange-red hair confesses that she comes every week, she is widowed and playing gives her something to do.

The customers offer up all kinds of information to me. They talk about their children, grandchildren and favorite pets. Some stop on the way into the movie theatre and return after the show to give me a short review and pick up a calendar as a Christmas gift.

There are crazies as well. One man asked me why anyone would purchase a calendar of Michelle Obama, as she is a “jerk” and went on a rant about how “we” paid for her Harvard education. I politely demurred that we stocked calendars for all tastes. Dissatisfied with my answer, he sat down at a table, turned the chair so it would be directly in line of sight of the cash wrap and proceeded to glower at me for the 20 minutes it took the upstairs Chinese restaurant upstairs to bring his take-out order to him. Another co-worker warned me that there she has been sexually harassed by a man, who followed her around the kiosk while telling here what he would like to “do” to her. When I asked her why she did not call mall security, she confessed that she did not know if that was okay.

(1)I worked for the same organization for 1.5 years in the early 2000's while J was under and unemployed. I was hired as a seasonal employee and the manager was happy with my work and asked me if I would continue part-time. I worked there until J and I moved to Pittsburgh.

(2)The invitations are placed on open tables by the owner of the florist/tchotchke shop located directly in front of the kiosk. She is a cranky, cranky woman who spends a lot of time complaining about the state of her business and the fact that her customers are “crowded” by the portable display pods in front of the kiosk. Many of the tchotchkes she sells are of a genre hereby dubbed “christian, inspirational”, which would not be a problem except for the fact that a significant demographic of mall customers are older Jewish women who have (I suspect) little use for tin figures of santa claus and gold-glittery tin signs that proclaim “Jesus is King!” She bought several scripture-a-day calendars, stating that she gives them as Christmas gifts to her girlfriends every year.

Law of Unemployment Number One

Unemployed + uninsured + visit to the dentist = 1 cavity and a $400.00 bill.

The upside? The bill was the most painful part of the experience.

Marshall's Greentree Road, 3:00 PM

Wednesday afternoon is the time to wander the Marshall's on Greentree Road if you are interested in observing the cross section of humanity that is the wealthy housewives of Mt. Lebanon. It is also the place to be if you want to come within inches of colliding with a former Penguin turned color announcer known in the Pittsburgh area as the “Ol' Two-Niner”.

The housewives are a scary lot. Unfriendly, dressed to the nines, they stalk the store and stake a claim at the racks of designer clothes at cut-rate prices, hovering over the large, button down w/collar white shirts with scary intensity, sending out a “I'll cut you” vibe to any individual tactless enough to attempt to reach for that size 12 Calvin Klein suit jacket and matching size 14 skirt and ramming into me with their miniature sized shopping carts, pausing to say “excuse me” after bruising my poor hip. The “excuse me” is delivered unrepentantly, a two-word verbal dressing down meant to convey how nervy I am, to be standing in the aisle, blocking her way to the size 6's.

I feel very large next to these women as I rummage through the size 12 and 14 pants, wondering when I will have enough energy to push myself back into shape and reminding myself that even if I am able to achieve some sort of “shape” my hips may be unwilling to allow me into anything smaller than a twelve.

I watch a 14 year old girl try on a short, red strapless dress for an upcoming homecoming dance. Her father comments that she looks sexy. As I enter the dressing rooms to try on a stack of pants and a couple of suits, I tell her to lean over and shake, to make sure the strapless top stays put.

He talks about how he is raising her on his own. It is an excellent ploy, as he and his daughter receive more female attention then either know what to do with. One woman suggests Spanx to wear underneath the dress, to give it a cleaner line. Another gives him options and advice about shoes. As he talks on about her, how conscious she is of her body, her voice floats out from the dressing room where she is changing back into street clothes

“Dad, you know I can hear every word you are saying, don't you?”

The suits don't fit without major alterations to both pants and jacket. No money for alterations now, no suit. The pants look terrible, cheap and ill fitting. I sigh and return everything to the attendant.

I wander a little longer, seeking pajamas for Baby Alien. At 9.5 months old, he measures 34 inches long and towers over most of his mates in the baby room at daycare. I've already looked in several thrift shops, but have not yet gathered the patience necessary to dig through the poorly organized sections of baby wear, a puzzlement as the adult clothes are neatly organized by color and size.

I've been tired a great deal this week. I sleep a lot during the day, my body's way of recovering from the months of stress it has been carrying. Next week Baby Alien drops to part time daycare and I am making plans for the days he is home.

Heartache

Last Saturday was the Fourth of July. As is our custom, we drove out to Washington County to celebrate with close friends, a married couple (C & D) with a large home and lots of property. Plenty of grilled food, cold salads, chips, desserts and beers of both the home brewed (by J and C) and mass produced variety. J and the party's host set off fireworks after dark.

It was especially joyful this year. Baby Alien, at seven months, is a stubborn bundle of laughter so interested in the world around him that bedtime is considered a personal affront. He might miss something. The house was overrun with children, including a little girl several months older than Baby Alien. D, eighteen weeks pregnant with twins, was passing around the latest set of ultrasound images. A boy and a girl.

Monday afternoon, D miscarried. Both babies lost. There were no warning signs. D was in perfect health, the pregnancy was progressing well, all her tests were normal.

Just one of those things that happens sometimes.

When words fail, make food. Express love and concern via a dish that takes some time and a bit of effort. Effort to hunt down the correct chili varietals to season the dish. Spend some more time carefully removing seeds and veins from the dried peppers, washing hands thoroughly to avoid getting oil in the eyes. Hack apart 4.5 pounds of pork shoulder while the chilies reconstitute, simmering in a mixture of water, tomatoes, cumin, onion and garlic. Throw together, cook overnight. Skim the fat, add grits.

 Try not to think about how colossally unfair are the machinations of the universe. Try not to think about the last fifteen months, how miserable you were to be pregnant, while your friend would give anything to still be in that state. Hope that she doesn't hate you now. Think of clichés instead, because the words are easy.

Today J and I drove out to their home, Baby Alien in the backseat, a container of pozole on ice in the trunk. J stayed in the car with Baby Alien while I headed towards the front door. I handed them the food, gave them hugs. Told them how sorry I was. D cried. I cried. C asked us to wait a moment, he had something for J.

A case of the latest home brew. An apology for being so sad, but “we picked up the ashes today”.

Drive away. Hope that they know the food was a gesture from the heart and that exhortations that they call us if they need anything are more then just empty words.

Baby Alien sleeps now. He has a lingering cough that he can not shake, a remnant of his first illness (the croup). Intellectually I know that is nothing, as I caught the virus from Baby Alien and have not been able to shake the cough either. Still, tomorrow we will call his doctor.

Hurts Men Too

Saturday night BooBoo decided he was not going to sleep in his crib. Every time J put him down he woke up and began to yell. By attempt number three J was exhausted and frustrated and warned me that he was going to let BooBoo yell it out for a while, to see if he would put himself to sleep. I agreed to let him do it.

It did not work. I did not expect it would work. I've noticed over the past week that BooBoo is starting to understand that he is a separate little person, with a separate little will that does not have to mesh with his parents. I'm proud to see this. Seeing him turn his head and watch me walk away when I drop him off at daycare instead of gazing at the ceiling made me feel pretty good.

So what I see as a normal (albeit annoying) developmental milestone has left J reeling. And anxious.

“What is wrong with him” he asked, exasperated after wrapping the child up in a blanket and handing him to me to hold. While BooBoo stared at me, with eyes wide and full of immense concentration, I threw out a few suggestions – headache, ear infection, tummy trouble, just-plain-lonely.

“Should we take him to a doctor?”

Seventeen weeks into this journey and already I hate, hate, hate when J asks any variation of this question, beginning with the trigger phrase “should we”. What appears to be a perfectly innocuous inquiry from his point of view makes me want to beat down every single male and female who taught J, through words or stupid example, that he is incapable of trusting his instincts and intuition as a father. Not a parent. A father.

“I don't have an instinct for this” J says whenever BooBoo has cried a little too long because he is hungry, or needs a diaper changed or just-needs-to-cry-over-his-incompentent-staff-damnit.

My response – “Yes, you do. Spend more time with him.”

J dislikes that I do not step in or otherwise interfere when he cares for BooBoo. As long as he does not appear to be in danger or downright hysterical, I usually leave J to figure out what BooBoo needs with minimal interference from me. I suspect that he thinks, although he is smart enough to never admit it, that I'm abdicating responsibility.

Which I am. I'm abdicating sole responsibility of BooBoo to his biological father in order to avoid a dynamic in which I become the single decider and doer in all issues connected with the care and feeding of baby. I don't want that level of responsibility.

Still, there remains this idea that men like J are not competent enough to care for their own children. Members of J's own family are still express surprise at how comfortable I about J taking BooBoo to visit his grandparents, hang with the guys at Quaker Steak and Lube and watch J and his friends brew beer – without me along to supervise.

Snzzzz

I have not had much to write about lately, as my life as a bus-riding, full-time worker bee has temporarily ceased to focus on helping L to figure out how to live in the world. I spend several moments every day struggling to fill my brain up with something other than the three god-awful songs emitting from the Fisher Price 2-in-1 Playful Puppy Gym.

But L loves this hideous piece of plastic and it has become a key part of our daily routine, as the 20-30 precious minutes L spends enthralled is more than enough time for me to get a shower and breakfast. Enthralled in this case means that he waves his skinny arms, vigorously kicks his feet and emits an occasional shout when the music ceases playing.

Such is my desperation some days to get out of the house and into the world sans infant, that a trip to Costco turns into an event. Hours I can spend, wandering the warehouse, debating the merits in the purchase of a 24 pack of San Pellegrino Limonata and Aranciata (I passed up on the opportunity) and resisting the temptation to purchase $60.00 worth of iTunes gift cards for $55.00. Only to turn around and spend an embarrassing and slightly obscene sum of money of bulk goods ranging from a 5lb bag of unshelled pistachios to 64oz of dishwashing detergent.

Today's score? Two 40lb bags of kitty litter for the low price of less than $10.00 a bag. Such a little bulk saver I am becoming.

Such was my obliviousness to the bulk buying process that I failed to observe that items are not actually bagged. Instead they are placed into boxes recycled from the item's packaging.

One of these days, something interesting may happen to me again.

Notes From the First Six Weeks

1. My younger brother shocked the daylights out of both of us when he drove 4 plus hours from his home on the day of L's birth just to see him. And drove back home the same day.
2. Nothing tasted as sweet as that first shot of tequila after bringing L home.
3. All those experts who state that newborn babies sleep 18 out of 24 hours are full of crap.
4. The sleep deprivation is as bad as I thought it would be.
5. I'm never going to enjoy breastfeeding. And I'm OK with that.
6. You know you are doing something right as a couple when you manage to successfully tick off both sets of grandparents for essentially the same reason.
7. Babies can cause insanity in previously normal and low maintenance family members.
8. A trip to Costco feels like a night on the town.
9. My tolerance for alcohol has dropped to levels not seen since I was twenty-one years old. One glass of wine and I am loopy for several hours. I am officially a “cheap date” once again.
10. We managed to get through our first post-baby date night without calling home to check on L.
11. I am not cut out to be a stay-at-home mother.
12. The perception that one's child is cute is a biological construct created to prevent a parent from killing their child.
13. It is rather sad that I had to have a child in order to earn the respect and the right to be treated like an adult from some parties. It negates everything else that I have accomplished in my life.
14. Dr. Seuss footed pajamas and magna onesis = total win. Best gift we received, hands down.
15. Every time I think I can't be more overwhelmed with graditude for the kindness and support of once internet strangers, I am overwhelmed once again.

Pain

I'm in pain. Not just the ongoing emotional pain that I have endured for the past 28 weeks and is gradually increasing. Mainly because my physical discomfort is getting worse.

Many years ago I developed this weird little twitch in one of the muscles over the ribcage on my left side. It was not painful, just an annoyance that would routinely catch me off guard as I went about my day. As the twitch developed during the same time frame as my asthma, my doctor ordered an echo cardiogram along with several standard diagnostic tests for asthma, to rule out any issues with my heart.*

No heart issues. Just a twitch from the electrical impulses in the muscles going haywire. He offered to write a script for muscle relaxants and a painkiller, which I turned down because the twitching was neither often enough to warrant a muscle relaxant nor painful enough to warrant prescription drugs.

The twitch has evolved, must likely because of the expansion in the rib cage, into a constant, burning spasm that has driven my already depressed self into even more despair. Forgoing the bra is not an option (and didn't work). Wireless does not work. And sleeping in any other position other than on my back (which I'm not supposed to do) makes the pain worse, especially when I roll over and am awakened from a dead sleep by the searing burning sensation.

Other things that have not helped in recent weeks – the constant gloom and doom of my mother, who can not help herself from uttering at least once during every conversation that I might end up having a cesarean section. As if I exist on planet la-la land, where pregnancy complications never happen and every birth is done vaginally, without painkillers and produces powerful orgasms that instantaneously wipe out the memory of the pain of labor.

The edema is not encouraging either. I was prepared for foot and ankle swelling. I went out and purchased two pairs of shoes, a pair of Sanita clogs in blue faux snakeskin and a pair of Wolky Stage wedges in red patent leather, because I knew I would need room in my shoes for my feet. The shoes were embarrassingly and almost prohibitively expensive, a sum of money that I should be saving instead of dropping on shoes.

But the shoes work. They work so well that I don't notice when my feet are swelling until after I have removed the shoes and seen my toes nearly disappear into each other. The first time this happened was Friday night. My shrieks of horror provoked first concern, then annoyance in J, who offered the following solution to my problem: “don't look at them”.

There has been some hilarity. Men especially seem to like the clogs and I've collected quite a few compliments on their style in the week I have been wearing them. The highlight of this past week was the clerk at a local used media store, with whom I shared the following exchange:

Clerk: Nice shoes. Great color.
Me: Thanks. I'm not going to be able to see my feet in another month, so I decided to go with something a little bit obnoxious.
Clerk: (long pause) Won't be able to see your feet?
Me: I'm pregnant.
Clerk: (with relief) Oh. I thought you were going to have them amputated or something. Is that real snakeskin?

It is a better story in the telling then in print...

*This is probably an example of the type of testing overkill the right claims is driving up insurance costs. The doctor who ordered the tests was a personal friend of my both parents, had worked with both of them for years and was an excellent and instinctive diagnostician who knew in the office that I probably had asthma. Nonetheless he was not going to be on the hook to explain to my parents why he missed a potentially fatal heart defect.

The Opening Salvo in the Parenting Wars

I have thought for some time that with the amount of miscellaneous work necessary to prepare for the upcoming arrival of a child, first time parents-to-be would be too busy to start oneupmanship contests with other gestating couples.

I was most unfortunately incorrect in this perception. With fourteen weeks still to go, I have already had to extricate myself from a conversation that was less about the care and feeding of aliens and more about establishing some kind of moral authority over the question of which is superior – cloth or disposable diapers?

Or rather, I stated that we intended to use disposable diapers and was treated to a lecture by the non-childbearing member of the couple on how the decision was wrong, wrong, wrong. Evidential proofs were tossed (“Babies with cloth diapers don't get diaper rash! It is less expensive in the long term! Hire a diaper service if you don't have the time to wash them! My mom used them on me when I was a child!)

Silently I cursed the gods for ruining a perfectly good evening out, imbibing garlic parmesan wings, eyeing mixed drinks lustfully and feeling overall like a normal, non pregnant, female being for a couple of hours to the service to making him feel smug and pretentious over using cloth diapers (1). I tried, twice, to explain in very simple clear terms that we had neither the money to pay a diaper service nor the time to clean them ourselves (2). He continued lecturing.

So I changed the topic by asking him if his wife was planning breastfeeding, playing the odds that any couple that committed to using cloth diapers was probably also going to be breastfeeding instead of using formula. The gambit paid off, we found a topic of common agreement and the conversation turned to other things as agreeing about breastfeeding is not as interesting as probing for other proto- parenting decisions to criticize.

(1) I suspect if they find out that their budget can not stretch to paying a diaper service they will revert to disposables after a few weeks of trying to clean them.

(2) Massive digression that probably needs a separate entry. In our house this would translate to me cleaning them, as the laundry has evolved into my primary duty. Most of the time I am actually OK with this, as J handles all the outdoor yard work, including mowing our little patches of lawn, caring for the five rose bushes we have lining the driveway and up the steps to our house and tending to the flowerbeds. This actually consumes as much time weekly as doing the laundry, so it is a fair division of labor. And prevents me from killing the plants, as my power to keep living things alive does not extend to things green and leafy.

To be fair, I should say “did” the laundry as J has stepped up laundry duty in the past months as a natural consequence of me first being too overwhelmed with all-day morning sickness and fatigue to keep up with it, then becoming too unbalanced on my feet to properly navigate the narrow basement steps with a full basket in my hands.

However, as good as J is at remember to start the laundry, he is not very good at remembering to finish it, leading me to ask him at least twice every weekend and once during the week to bring the clean clothes upstairs for me to fold. As there is an unspoken expectation that I will be taking over laundry again once the alien has arrived, my desire to spend additional time soaking and cleaning nappies on top of the addition of onesies, pajamas, layettes, burp clothes, crib sheets, blankets, and towels to our regular weekly loads, is nil. In our conversations about disposable versus cloth I got the sense that J would prefer to use cloth, but since I will end up as the party responsible for cleaning the things, I elected to veto for the sake of my sanity.

The Wrath of the Crossing Guard

One of the less savory aspects of living and working in Pittsburgh is the adversarial relationship drivers have with any one other than another person in a four wheeled, gas powered, moving machine. Pedestrians and cyclists are considered fair game to be run down at any moment.

This has lead to more than a few incidents of drivers obscenely gesturing, yelling (“fat ass” remains a personal favorite) and nudging me as I legally cross the byways of Pittsburgh city streets.

The intersection of Forbes and Murray is an especially bad location to be a pedestrian at any time of the day. Because of the high volume of both vehicular and foot traffic and the close proximity of half the schools in Pittsburgh, the city has deemed it necessary to put in a four way stop to allow pedestrians a sporting chance at getting across the street without getting maimed.

Not that this discourages the most aggressive of Pittsburgh's drivers, fond as they are of running the red light to make an illegal right turn, thus accomplishing the task of mowing down walkers from two directions instead of one.

Enter the crossing guard, posted at the intersection in the mornings and mid-afternoons during the school year to add an extra visual element of safety to perilous street crossings. They can't stop a speeding SUV with a single bound or write tickets. But they can and will stop drivers breaking traffic laws and yell at them. Loudly. For extended periods of time.

As I mentioned above, the intersection of Forbes and Murray is not the safest in the city, in spite of the four way stop. Earlier this summer a truck missed hitting me by inches when it ran the red light on Murray to turn right onto Forbes while I was crossing Forbes. He never slowed down and never saw me. The only reason he did not hit me was that I saw him first. The only satisfaction I could get from the incident was knowing how much of a world of trouble he would have been in once he learned he hit a pregnant woman.

So it was a wonderful sight to witness the man in the black SUV get caught attempting the same maneuver on Thursday morning. Never did the sound of a whistle sound so sweet to my ears.

Not only did the crossing guard stop the driver, she approached his SUV and yelled at him. Sternly, loudly and unreasonably. She made such a scene that the driver began to back the SUV up to get away from her. And made his second mistake of the morning.

He did not look behind him before he started backing up. Because he did not look behind him, he did not see me crossing behind his SUV* and nearly hit me. Which provoked the crossing guard into yelling at him some more, accompanied chorus of citizens, including a city employee collecting change out of the meters. A mass of humanity descended upon this man in a SUV at 7:55 on a Thursday morning.

*Yes, I know, I should have walked in front of the SUV. Past experience has taught me that is safer to go behind the vehicle instead of in front of it, since drivers have been known to “nudge” pedestrians along with their vehicles.

They Don't Make Them Like They Used To...

In my current state of abstention, going out for dinner with friends, while fun, does not have quite the same adult sense of elan as it did when it was permissible (and non-guilt inducing) to order a glass of wine with my overcooked steak.

In an attempt to bring back a little bit of the sense that I am an adult and not just a giant, gestating, foul tempered vessel, I've taken several dining occasions as permission to order that goofy mainstay of childhood, the Shirley Temple.

The Shirley Temple of my childhood looked like a vodka and cranberry topped with a maraschino cherry, served in the double highball glass that the bartender used for my mother's Old Fashioned. The combination of grenadine and seltzer water made it cold, sweet and not very fizzy. There was only one place in my little town where I drank these concoctions as a child, the Flaming Hearth. I never had to actually order one – we were such frequent eaters at this establishment that the hostess would automatically bring one to the table, along with a Roy Rogers for my brother, my mother's Old Fashioned and my father's favorite beer. Then she would put in an order of my favorite dish, lasagna, and take my younger brother in her arms for a tour of the kitchen.

The modern Shirley Temple comes in a 16oz plastic soda glass packed with ice, Sprite/7Up, far too much grenadine and a herd of maraschino cherries. Some bartenders, in a moment of creativity, add a quarter of lime to the glass to counteract the sickly sweet combination of soda and grenadine. It still has the same color as a vodka and cranberry, but the sense of nostalgia is completely missing from the drink. I felt more like a grown-up drinking it when I was a kid.

It is like candy cigarettes. Candy cigarettes were everywhere when I was a kid. They were a common Halloween treat. Since I was always more of a chocolate girl, I usually “smoked” (but never inhaled) one or two, and traded the rest away for mini Hersey bars and Reese's peanut butter cups.

Then one day they were gone from the candy aisle, a victim of concerned organizations who believed that eating a candy cigarette would lead kids down the path of smoking. Thus goes the Shirley Temple of my childhood, the kiddie cocktail stripped of all its adult feel for fear of over-glamorizing drinking.

Because It Is Almost Friday and I Have Not Done This In A While

I present "Bookends"...

Priorities

J and I have begun the process of amassing the furniture we will need in the coming months, since my womb is going to be considered tight quarters in late December and having easily accessible and destroyable electronic equipment lying around the living room is a bad idea. To aid in that goal, I have been reading Craigslist ads seeking various used household items and attempting to pillage every second hand store in the area, hoping to score some decent, safe pieces of nursery and other home furnishings.

Looking for furniture on Craigslist makes me mean. As I scroll and click through the posted ads, I can not help but make fun of the spelling errors and mentally harangue sellers asking full price for used goods, based on the theory that the goods in question were barely used. One of the more fascinating threads is the number of people selling convertible cribs, using the ability to convert the crib to a bed as a selling point, then stating that they have only had the crib a year or two. If you don't intend to convert the crib to full use, why are you using that as a selling point?

It was in this frame of mind that J and set out to find a crib this past Saturday. Previous scouting visits to price new cribs had left us both with severe sticker shock, as some places would only sell the full suite (crib, dresser, changing table, etc) and others were charging as much money for a crib as we paid for our entire bedroom suite, sans mattress.

Because of the sticker shock, J and I have decided to set aside the repeated exhortations that we only purchase a new crib and that anything less means we want to kill our alien, reasoning that somewhere in the city there exists a respectable, decently priced, safe, used crib.

Not so far. Our first stop, which we mistakenly assumed was a warehouse of used children's furniture, turned out to be a thrift store raising money for children's charities, no crib was to be found. This did not stop a volunteer from spending an excessive amount of time trying to convince us to purchase one of two incredibly ugly, completely unnecessary changing tables. Polite attempts to shake this individual were meet with an increasingly hard sell, akin to an encounter we experienced with a used car salesman last summer.

A jaunt across the street to a second, charity-related, thrift store produced two cribs. The first was leftover from a daycare center, as it came with plexiglass panels and a mirrored back, better to observe an alien without causing a disturbance. J recognized it immediately, as it was the same type of crib used in the center the alien will be attending when I return to work. The second one appeared to be missing several pieces. J was perfectly comfortable with buying the plexiglass model and calling it day. I, on the other hand, reasoned that if the crib was in poor enough shape to be banished from a daycare center it probably had no place in our home.

Our third stop was at a used furniture warehouse down the street from home. Although there were no cribs available, the furniture was beautiful and J found an entertainment center to home all of the aforementioned electronic equipment in a manner that is not kid accessible. Four days later and he is still pondering purchasing the unit.

Our final stop on Saturday was at the Shadyside Arts festival, to look at the work of an artist and children's book illustrator named Kana Handel.

Kana Handel creates beautiful, fanciful paintings of teapots and mermaids, children and anthropomorphic animals such as cats and rabbits. She works with a mix of media including watercolor, ink washes and sumi on Washi. After seeing her work at the Three Rivers Arts festival in early June, I spent the rest of the summer mulling over her work. And I decided that one of her paintings was an ideal addition to the nursery walls.

I ended up purchasing two paintings. Terrible of me, I know. I hear the chorus singing about my skewed priorities. I hear them chanting about how I'm putting the alien at risk of very bad things happening, because I spent money on art instead of a new crib. I hear them scolding my response that my brother and myself slept in dresser drawers as infants (my parents were not expecting twins) and many babies sleep in vibrating bouncy chairs, moses baskets, in the parents bed and in co-sleepers – anywhere they will actually sleep.

I purchased the paintings anyway. When the alien is ready to return to the mothership in twenty something years, the paintings will go as well. If the alien decides that they are not alien-worthy, then I'll hang them in our bedroom instead.

J and continued the hunt while hanging out on Sunday morning. As I wandered through the furniture and appliance section of Craigslist I stumbled across an item on our ongoing wish list – a year old chest freezer of just the right small size for an obscenely low amount of money. As our visits to large box stores have increasingly included a stop in the large appliance section to ogle the chest freezers and compare prices, before moving on to the over-the-stove convection microwaves (to replace our current model, which is dying key-by-key) and flat screen televisions. (1)

Sensing an opportunity, I pointed the add out to J, wrote down the phone number and suggested he call to see if it was still available.

It was. The problem of how to get the freezer from the seller's house miles away to our home was quickly resolved with a phone call to J's parents, who happened to reside in the same town as the seller. Off J roared in his beloved Porsche (2) to borrow the caravan and pick up the freezer.

Hours later, two vehicles return. J's father in the caravan and J and his mother (who apparently spent most of the drive pressing down hard on the imaginary passenger brake and telling J not to waste that money he just saved, because his parents purchased the freezer for us as an early Christmas gift, on a speeding ticket) in the Porsche.

The freezer was not completely free. It came complete with a lecture about cleaning it thoroughly to get the cat smell off of it (which neither J nor myself could detect) and commentary on the small ding on the top (its used, dings are expected). J's father finished with a guilt trip about not coming to Sunday dinner, J's mother with the application of pressure to be allowed to hold the freshly newborn alien via a story of how wonderful it was to hold one of the other grandchildren at only an hour old.

I gently explained, for the umpteenth time, that I would only be in a hospital if something goes wrong in the next 17 weeks. If I remain healthy, I will be at the birthing center and no one would be informed of the birth until I was released and back home, as the last thing I want while trying to bring the alien in the world sans drugs was my in-laws anywhere near me.


(1) J and I have a philosophy about electronics and home features we dislike. We do nothing and hope that the object in question will eventually die. This philosophy would work well if it did not take us years to replace dead items, as we also have a rule that home purchases must have the agreement of both parties to be legitimate. Because of this, the hideous dining room light/ceiling fan which died the summer after we moved into our house is still attached to the ceiling, we have yet to order the other sconces to match the one we like in the living room and it was almost eight years into our marriage before we got around to purchasing a bedroom suite.

Regretfully, our current television refuses to die and has somehow managed to survive through several electrical storms unscathed. We thought the last storm, which occurred right over our house would finally put us out of our techno-lust misery, but no such luck. The set works perfectly, shows no indication of giving up anytime in the near future and will continue to work even after public mention just to spite me.

(2) In one of life's finer ironies, J purchased his much longed for two seater convertible (a 1998 Boxter in exquisite, almost-new condition) in late December. Less than four months later I was pregnant. Did you know that Porsche can install a special switch to disable the passenger side airbags and sells custom fitted infant and toddler car seats? As the first thing J offered to do after he stopped laughing over my pregnancy announcement was to offer to sell the car, one of the responses I'm considering giving when people ask what they can get for the baby is “Money towards the disable switch and infant/toddler seats for the Porsche”. Because J is that spectacularly awesome and deserves, at all possible, to keep his dream car. And for those who have commented on how nice it is for me to “let J keep his car” – how insulting can you get?

Bad Manners

If I had any sense at all, I would have realized that my encounter with the elderly lady on the corner of Forbes and Murray on Friday afternoon was a predictor of the sudden and wild change in weather from the temperate (albeit slightly rainy) summer that has made sleeping under a down comforter a comfortable necessity to the sudden and unexpected 80+ degree temperatures the city will swelter under for most of the upcoming week.

On Friday afternoon I sat on a seat in shelter, quietly waiting for a bus to take me back downtown. The stop was completely empty when I arrived, the passel of teenagers missing from the church steps, both the shelters devoid of humanity. I took a book (J. Martaan Troost's Lost on Planet China) out of my bag and commenced quietly reading.

The bus stop began to fill up with people. A woman sat down next to me. As we were sitting there, I quietly reading my book, she looking around, an older woman walked up to the shelter.

What transpired next was one of those moments in which I, humbly reading my book and minding my own business, suddenly become the target of an absolute stranger's ire because I lack the ability to read minds.

The woman beside me (WBM) offered the older woman (OW) her seat. OW refused offer of seat with expected comment about “age before beauty” and WBM needing the seat more than she does. OW then segued into an indirect harangue of indeterminate length (I really should time these things) about my rudeness in not offering her my seat first, before WBM.

I tried, very hard, to keep my mouth shut, my head down, my face expressionless, my eyes focused on the text of my book as OW expressed how “[her] children were raised better than that” and how disrespectful “the youth” of today were towards their superiors. But something inside me snapped at hearing OW snidely say “Here comes someone who really needs a seat. I wonder if she'll have one offered to her”.

I looked up from my book. I wished I had been calm enough to look OW straight in the eye, but I could not. I know it would have been more effective, but it took a lot of will to get the words out.

“Ma'am, I'm 20 weeks pregnant, I'm tired and I'm not moving”.

There was a momentarily pause as OW digested this information, suddenly aware that perhaps I was not the teenager she assumed me to be. Then she snapped back “Be quiet, I wasn't talking to you”, moved closer to WBM and lowered her voice to a mummer. I put my eyes back on my book. When the bus pulled up I waited as OW cut to the front of the line, boarded the bus and sat in one of the seats near the front.

Then I got up, hauled my tired, pregnant self onto the bus, walked to the back and sat down.

J's response when I told him this story: “What are you doing to attract these people?”

Options

J has been searching for a job for several months. Because of the gradually tightening economy, his success has been non-existent. Messages from recruiters have dropped to zero and his calls to them go either unanswered or offer no progress.

He received an email last week informing him that a product manager position has opened up at a company J left five years ago. The email came from an ex-coworker (and good friend) still employed at the company. He proposed J's name to management and received an enthusiastic response to the idea.

The job is ideal for J. Highly technical, with opportunities to interact with clients on a regular basis and attend major developer conferences, for a decent salary, working with individuals that J knows well and still maintains a good relationship with these many years later.

It is also highly stressful, with travel ranging from two to seven days every month and an average burn-out rate of a year. At a company that made J so miserable that I nearly moved out of our home near the end of his tenure there, rather than put up with one more day of his bad attitude. When he finally found new employment I threatened to leave him if ever went back *.

The interview went well, but he is only the first person interviewed and we think the company is balking at J's salary requirements.

J and I have both tried to live by the general rule of not stopping the other from doing something we really want to do, as long as it does not violate the boundaries of our very bourgeois marriage values. Ninety percent of the time it works out well. J is free to buy the Porsche, I am free to fly off to Paris for a week by myself.

But the thought of the amount of travel he will have to do every month, no matter how minimal, leaves me stressed, as it is becoming painfully clear, in spite of our best intentions, that if I continue working I will be overwhelmingly responsible, at least for the first year, for the care of our child. Feeding, watching over, getting to and from day care and doctors appointments. Even if he does not take this job, I feel an incredible amount of the burden falling on my shoulders. And I'm a little bit angry that the dictates of biology and culture make it this way.

So, I quit. Or am quitting. Maybe. Possibly. When I sit quietly and weigh the two options in my mind, being home makes more sense. J had put out feelers among his network of developer friends and one is interested in hiring me to test on a part time basis. I could work on the sketches for the children's story I wrote seven years ago. I could spend some time writing. And J insists that I keep my gym membership and figure out a budget for hiring a sitter, to get me out of the house alone a 2-3 days a week.

Then my common sense weighs in and tells me that I'm crazy to quit in this economy and need to tough it out. That we can get by on one income, but I need to be employed in case J becomes unemployed. That it is worth giving up 1/3 of my paycheck to childcare and my temporary sanity to ensure that we stay afloat in the long term.

This sucks.

*Obviously an empty threat.

Handmade Cutting Board Blues*

J and I manged to escape our house over the weekend and spend a day in State College, at the Central Pennsylvania Festival of the Arts. It has not been easy to escape, as of late. J has been working long hours and too many weekends, a situation that is causing both of us frustration and some anxiety, as attempts to plan some sort of last hurrah as a childless couple getaway-ish type weekend have been thwarted by his work responsibilities.

After an early lunch at the Deli, we spent a happy afternoon wandering the streets of State College and portions of Penn State University's campus, peering into booths filled with prints, painting, pottery, jewelry and woodwork.

Midway through our tour of the tents we stopped to admire the blockcut prints made by an artist named Thomas Bucci. As we were studying the prints, the thunder we had been hearing for the past twenty minutes became louder, the wind kicked up and it began to rain. Thomas invited us to shelter inside his tent during the storm, assuring us that it would be strong, but very brief.

As we stood inside his zipped up tent, he explained how he created the prints. He pulled out his Blackberry and showed us some of the sketches he created on his phone, done with a piece of software and a stylus.

I was amazed. I loved the mingling of art and technology. As the rain stopped, J and I purchased two prints to add to our collection, most likely to decorate the walls of the alien's room.

We saw the artisan who made the jewelry box J purchased at the Three Rivers Festival as a birthday gift for me two years ago. J was thrilled to find him, as we owed him money. When we originally purchased the box, we asked if he could change out one of the sections. Since it could not be done at the festival, we put a 50% down payment and he agreed to make the change and call us before sending the box so we could pay him the rest.

Except that he never called. He packed the box up and shipped to us, without asking for the rest of the money. By the time we received the box we had lost his business card and had no way of contacting him to pay up.

It took a while for J to convince him that we still owed him money and J was only able to pay him back half of what we actually owed. But it was something.

I also experienced something like homesickness while talking to a weaver from Greensboro, N.C, my home during graduate school. She was sunny and bouncy and fun and caught me up on some of my favorite places in the city. I walked away with a matching mohair hat, scarf and shaw, which I plan to use while cuddling the alien next winter. She walked away delighted at the thought that the shawl would be used to keep warm a new life.

* Title inspired by the antics of a customer at one booth who wanted to make sure that she was shipped a cutting board without any knots in it. She did not like any of the boards he had available because they were "knotty".

Irony Part II

Attending one of the most conservative Christian colleges in the country on funds earned by starring in gay porn.

Having walked the grounds of Grove City College and the town, it is a creepy, creepy place and I'm not surprised the he was suspended.

Irony

Is writing an entry expressing gratitude for something, only to have it come a mere week later and bite you in the ass.

Photo Class - Part II

Today was the second of the four class series I am taking at the Pittsburgh Glass Center. Today was all about practicing. Practicing how to sandblast the plates. Practicing how to transfer the image from the transparency to the resist. Practice transferring the resist to the glass plate. Practicing painting, with powders and beautiful, fast-drying paints. Practice sandblasting the resist off of the glass, leaving paint or a ghost image behind, to rub with paint or powder.

The sandblaster is an intimidating piece of equipment, a large box with a plexiglass window in which the user turns on the compressed air. places the glass plate into the unit, latches the door, flips two switches, places her hands into the attached rubber gloves, picks up a device that looks like a gun and presses down on a pedal to shoot air onto the plate.

Even though the unit is enclosed, dust goes everywhere. Which means wearing an itchy face to avoid inhaling the dust and lead-based paint particles. And because the unit is enclosed, the dust has etched into the window of the unit, leaving only a small section of clear window in which to work. This section is (naturally) in the most inconvenient location of the unit.

We are also required to wear masks while handling the paints and powders, as the majority of them are lead based. The lead makes the color rich, but adds an element of danger to the creation process. The masks can be removed if no one is working with powders and while washing out the resist.

Bad idea, I discovered shortly after leaving the center. Not only were my clothes saturated with dust and powder but I had also inhaled enough to make the rest of this afternoon rather uncomfortable. I suspect the mask will have to remain on through the entire class next week.