now fortified with impotent fury!risperdal

The radio here sucks ass. No really. The regular stations play entirely too much country (read: any) and the alternative stations, as I have bitched at length, play Creed. I find myself listening to a lot more NPR than I ever listened to in Chicago, and the Classic Rock station. Now, the CR station has an annoying tendancy to play a metric buttload of Ozzy and Black Sabbath, which is not my cup of tea, but they play rather a lot of Zeppelin and Floyd and such, so it’s good. And, they let me have a daily stroll down memory lane.

They play 80s hair metal. A ton of it. And they seem to have an especial penchant for songs that R and I would quite literally yell along to as we escaped campus for an afternoon of expensive windowshopping and chichi grocery store hopping in Great Barrington or Stockbridge. I don’t know why 98.9 The Rock LIKES Ugly Kid Joe’s ‘(I hate)Everything About You’ quite so much, but I’m pretty much guaranteed that at least once per day, I’ll pull up to a stoplight and scare the bejesus out of some sweet SAHM in a minivan as I shriek along ‘Oh and yeah…I don’t like a thing about your sister’ (98.9 likes to follow up that song with Puddle of Mudd’s ‘She Fuckin Hates Me’, and gosh, you just have to scream along with that song too). Plus, Skid Row. Sebastian Bach. Oh yeah. Perfect yell along music. If I’m especially lucky that day, I’ll hit a trifecta where they’ll follow that up with a Faster Pussycat song, and I am reminded of the VH1 ‘where are they now 80s hair metal’ show where they talked to Faster Pussycat, and the band related a concert incident that R and a friend of hers will involved in, and then I start snorting with laughter all over again and nearly drive off of the road.

It frightens me, to a small extent, how very much of my memory of college-which I did not start until 1990, mind you- is linked to bad hair metal. R and I had a swift trade in skankariffif CDs going, and slapped at least one loud bass wailing guitar inane lyrics ditty on every mix tape we made for one another (despite our newer embracing of female singer songwriters. There’s a combo for you: Lisa Loeb and Guns-N-Roses. We made a lot of mix tapes for each other. Several of which centered on the theme of stupid ass relationships). I cannot hear ‘Welcome to the Jungle’ without thinking of my horrifying GRE experience, where having had my brain turned to putty in the morning by the generals, I staggered back to my room, lay down on the floor, and played that song on repeat for over an hour, sobbing. I then hauled myself together, walked back to the testing room to sit the subject exam in Biology in the afternoon, walked back to my room, walked into my roomie’s bedroom and announced dramatically to him and R, “I can kiss Harvard goodbye, I just flunked.”

It’s nice, in a small way, to be so easily transported back 10 years or so; better still to go back to a time and place where R and I were so immediate and present to one another. We have not lived within easy reach of each other in 8 years, and there’s something comforting in a friendship that survives distance and time so well, and so easily brought to mind by trash on the radio. Unsurprisingly, I have not heard our favorite Living Colour song on the radio here in scenic Kansas.

Everybody wants you when you’re bi…Looking at the girls and eyeing all the guys

So, I’ve hit that lovely whiny-ass phase of ‘I’ll be pregnant forever and not look pregnant just fat nothing fits right anymore I’ve got both second trimester and still first trimester symptoms waaaaaah blah blah blah whinycakes’. I’m just a freakin joy to be around. Plus the weather is approximately as chipper as a mortuary, and my joints ache with the nasty cold dampness of a 15 degrees below normal fall. Thursday ought to be interesting. “Hello darling moppet, what are you supposed to be?” “A fairy princess. In a giant parka.” Lather rinse repeat.

I need to stop watching A Baby Story. Big time. I mean, it’s bad enough that I’ve got all of the get-you-pilloried-on-Oprah feelings going (I’m concerned about how having a squaling infant will change the dynamic of my marriage; we are essentially very self-absorbed, jealous of our time together, erudite freaks, and I worry how having a nonverbal moppet capable of communicating strictly via bodily fluids will affect that. Add into that my convictions that motherhood is hard, there is no carved in stone law that says you must like your child [difference between like and love, folks] every moment of every day, that motherhood- while very important- is NOT all I was put on this earth to do, that I do not need to embrace with joy every precious second of mothering, and, well, you an see how the mainstream middle American messages about What Being a Mom is just doesn’t sit right). But I seem to tune into every A Baby Story which involves some combination of the following:

40 hours plus of labor
An infant the approximate size of a county fair winning watermelon
Natural childbirth

Is it any wonder I’m wondering why on earth we wanted to do this? (Special shout out to a friend). Brave? Are you mad? This little act means I’m certifiable! I have given over my body to an alien and the next several decades of my life to a creature who will demand to watch Barney yet again, then not understand why I refuse to spend good money on stretch crop tops with glitter lettering that say ‘Daddy’s Little Girl’ or enormous droopy ass cargo pants, then drive my insurance rates up, then go to keggers in college to the tune of $40 grand in tuition room and board a year. I am not brave. I am very clearly stupid beyond all possible mortal comprehension. Fancy degrees not withstanding, I am clearly a moron with no sense of self preservation, completely at the mercy of my evolutionary drive to reproduce. Perhaps there’s a freakin nest around here I can drop the egg in and let some other bird raise it. And you know, I’m NOT sitting here hysterical about ‘how can I bring a child into this world’ re: shootings and terorrism and our outstanding (snort) foreign policy and Vin Disel as a celebrity, I’m sitting here hysterical about having to dumb down my life, as it were. Yes, I’m an arrogant bitch. I read Dante and Eco and Maimonides for fun. Tell me, how will I be able to cope with having to read Fox in Socks for the 8,000 time without losing it. Anyone? Anyone?

But, oh yeah, new life. Light shining in the darkness. A small personality to mold into the sort of jaundiced, smart, snarky person we like to hang out with. Oh yeah, all that good stuff. I just need to calm down. And find jeans that fit. Perhaps I’ll be happier when I’m wearing jeans that fit.

Fall hath arrived, with a thud. Cold, drizzly, the leaves all turning within the space of a week, the gas fireplace revved up (next up, getting our wood burning fireplace good to go). I just got back from a business trip, and King of the Hill People arrived for a weekend visit about an hour and a half after I got home from the airport. Ironically, I could have caught a ride with him instead of flying, and gotten home at approximately the same time (thanks to security regulations plus the insane slow ass shuttle driver from the airport), because I was in Chicago on business.

It was good that the weather was so awful in Chicago; good that a blanket of grey sludgy clouds had descended upon the city. I could not see the ground until a mere 2 minutes before we touched down, a quick view of scenic LaGrange and its acres of warehouses and businesses. I am grateful that south Lake Shore Drive is such a godawful mess, making me think of GTA III in my shitty little rental car, and that 57th street, curving in front of the old apartment, is a war zone. If it had been a crystalline blue fall day, with the sharp tang of burning leaves and a crisp little breeze playing on my face, had the faces at my old place of employment been completely cheery and happy instead of weighted with the depression of the most recent round of layoffs, had I been able to see downtown clearly, I would have cried. Cried like I couldn’t when we left, as I got stuck driving and went all stoic, and held back the sobs that threatened to erupt as we approached downtown for ‘the last time’ on north Lake Shore, and veered off onto 55. As it was, the city was properly ugly and depressive, and the traffic horrid enough, that I could at least say with some small snippet of conviction, “I don’t miss this.”

But that’s a lie. I do miss it. I miss every inch of it. I miss the adrenaline coursing through my body every waking minute, as life in that city is a push- a push to make it through the traffic, to find a parking spot, to avoid hitting the self-absorbed U of C students walking in the street and being deep and meaningful, walking to the bodega and avoiding the panhandlers. I miss the mean and nasty DJs on the alternative radio stations screaming at callers- “CREED? You want CREED? Go listen to B96 you IDIOT. Creed is NOT ALTERNATIVE. Here, listen to some TOOL.” I miss the sense of ownership, of confidence. It is my city, I can navigate it, I can give directions I can find parking I can rattle off the best hotels, restaurants, bars oh you need sari fabric here are your options.

And while I can be sappy and in one small part of myself say, “Home is where my love is, and he’s no longer in Chicago”, here’s a newsflash- that only goes so far (Quick, get me on Oprah so I can be pilloried as a selfish failure). It doesn’t make the anti-Semitism here go away; it doesn’t make me fit into this particular niche of Suburbia any better. It doesn’t stop the shuttle bus driver from refusing to hand over my luggage until I take a postcard from his church, it doesn’t stop the 45 year old women with their pedicures and diamond tennis bracelets from hissing and gossiping about the 24 year old woman with the nose and eyebrow piercing at the grocery store. It doesn’t make this place less whitebread, less vanilla, less homogenous. I love my friends here, and though I’ve been a hermit due to snarklet induced illness (and feel horribly guilty about that), I can cling to them as a bit of sanity only so much, a half-dozen human islands of sick, jaundiced humor and sarcasm against the oppressive middle american complacency of Johnson County.

But I am home now. Home with a cold, home from the last business trip until November 20. I stayed at Mom’s while in Chicago, which in some ways probably intensified the horrid homesickness but in others was good, as it would have been too hard to stay in a hotel in my hometown, especially given the Killer Cold I got. And despite the overlong shuttle trip back from the airport, the reality is, Chicago is not that far from Kansas City. A phone call, a 1 hour plane flight, an IM window to Scott to have Snarky Lunches together at our desks, despite the 500 miles between us. Giles gave me cheese, and mom bought me clothes that fit, and King of the Hill People brought beer and cashasha and Stewarts Coffee, and I can surround myself with these comforting bits of home, as I lay my hand on my belly and feel a little 4 inch critter roll and flutter inside of me.

So, I used to have my Oby appts on Mondays, but that seemed like tempting the fates just a wee tad too much to me, so I switched to Tuesdays. Clearly, this angered the gods greatly, cause today’s appointment? Sucked. Hugely. This is a baby centric entry, and you’ll see why.

My appointment wasn’t until 10:40, plenty of time, if I motivated my ass, to get errands done beforehand. Unfortunately, brain fog and CNN crept in, and at 9:45 I was yanking on my pants while chanting obscenities and pouring ganache into a tray to make truffles in thanks to Tim the wine guy and where the hell are my keys Ooof thud can’t forget insurance card off to buy Holiday cards for all of my business contacts. Too bad Hallmark owns this damn town- Hallmark is not evil in and of itself, but you combine a Hunt Brothers like ownership of an industry plus Christian fervor, and you get incidents like the one today, wherein I asked the wholesome young lady where the not so overtly Christian- really, anything that just says ‘Peace’ or ‘Happy Holidays’?- cards were, and she said with palpable disdain, “You mean the Jew cards?” She kicked at a bottom rack. “We keep the Jew cards here, so they’re not in people’s way.” After patiently explaining to her manager the many, many ways in which the yound lady’s attitude was patently offensive, I headed off to Barnes and Noble, where the multiply pierced young man was happy to take my cash and offered, in response to my charmingly gothy cards, “Rock on. I gotta send these to my Wiccan friends.”

Off I went to the Oby- trala! Early! Trala! To hear the baby’s heartbeat with a doppler for the first time! Trala! To discover that I have lost 20 pounds in 4 weeks and they’re now very very worried about me! Ooops. Guys, I assure you, wasn’t my intent. Really. Blame the snarklet! Yet, my jeans get tight if I’ve been sitting for a while, and certainly tight after eating. I made this argument, it cut no mustard. Oh well, time to listen to the bebe.

I said, time to listen to the bebe! Doppler #1 didn’t work, so the doc traipsed off to get another. I’d like to aside that the gel they slather on you? Fucking cold. And I’d also like to aside that my Oby’s argument about having to drop fencing while pregnant is a load of bullshit, as she was pretty violently ramming the probe into my tummy looking for the bebe. And Doppler #2? No go. The doc got that patented, “I am not going to look worried” look. The doc blithely said we’d just do an ultrasound if Doppler #3 didn’t work.

20 minutes of kneading my stomach like I was a vat of bread dough later, no dice. Off we went down the hall, where I heard, in a disembodied mental state, my doctor explain in low measured tones to an ultrasound tech- that edge that doctors use when they are talking to a colleague in front of a patient that means, ‘there’s potentially something very wrong but I don’t want to panic them’- that she couldn’t find a heartbeat and suddenly I was vaulted ahead of 5 other women in for ultrasounds, and suddenly the door was shut, and suddenly I was trying very very very hard not to cry.

And suddenly my baby was on the screen. Moving.

And then it rolled and looked at me. And suddenly I realized. I have a fucking goddamn alien inside of me, but it has a heart rate of 167 bpm, so it’s a healthychestburster. I’ve been trained to read ultrasounds, and we’d already had one, but nothing prepared me for a little humany thing to be in me, and certainly nothing prepared me for that X-files cheap effect like moment when it rolled towards my belly button, and a gaping maw of a mouth and ‘eyeless’ eyesockets pressed forward, like Flukeman’s Dream Date, and it waved a little hand. Hi Mom! Pardon me while I look like I’m hissing at you and dripping venom!

Let no one say I am bereft of the dewey glow and warm fuzzy feelings of pregnancy.

Home again home again, jiggity jig, and after 6 days of slothdom, finally doing something other than posting entries I wrote in the hotel room and airport last weekend and Monday. Despite Pottery Barn selling plasstic snow (4 cups for $8) and green died faux fur bedspreads (!!!), I am currently In Love, in a Major Way, with my new home town. Nay, my new home state. I know. Call the men toting the funny white jacket.

To recap, Friday was our fifth anniversary. The last umpity ump times we’ve gone to 40 we’ve missed Tim our Wine Guy by about 15 min, so I told him we’d freakin be there, he asked if it was an occasion, I told him. We show up, he’s there along with one of the wine reps and one of the beer reps, we have a lovely chat, the chef comes out to greet and schmooze, upon hearing we don’t actually work for Tim and have lived here a whopping 15 weeks yet are regulars, declares our collective bar tab to be on the house. Awwwww. Ryan the Manager hisses, “I understand you have permission for one glass of wine tonight?” I affirm and tell him to make it a good one. No matter, we get to our table, after much shoving and prodding and giggling, and find that our ‘friends at Metcalf Liquor’ sent over a bottle that’s not on the list at 40- at Ryan’s request. A gorgeous, gorgeous 1999 Honig Cab Sauv. My god was it beautiful, and holy cow am I making them a big old batch of truffles in thanks and gratitude.

Saturday we cavorted off early to go apple picking at an organic orchard specializing in heirloom apples. The weather was crisp. The drive was an hour and 15 min through perfectly turned trees and rolling countryside. The town of Balwdin was freakishly busy and crammed with traffic, thanks to the Big Deal that weekend- a Maple Leaf Festival (in Kansas?!) and… the Homecoming Parade! We made it to the orchard and were greeted by Frank the muddy dog and Sally the crunchy granola chick, and entreated to eat all the apples we wanted as we picked, and picked 30 pounds of Arkansas Blacks and Macouns and Fameuses and Staybrights and others I cannot remember in my decaf haze at the moment, and so now I am up to my elbows in apples and setting down pies in the freezer. How domestic is that?

And now I am sitting in my polarfleece robe, cradling my mug of coffee and listening to the sounds of the high school marching band drift over the park and the houses, and if only the Lad hadn’t gone into work and we could cuddle in the very comfy bed some more, this would be a perfect morning.

Except it’s Monday, so of course the phone has already rung 3 times and I have an errand list a mile long. So much for reverie.

It’s time for a particular, strange ritual in my world. It’s time for my annual turkey obsession. Perhaps it’s from being the offspring of a guy who was, for a time, in the business of selling turkeys. It’s certainly not the result of some warm early childhood fuzzies around Thanksgiving- until such time as we moved up to where the majority of the clan is, it was a mom-dad-me-a very anxious smell overloaded dog affair at the family table come late November. And even then after we moved, it was usually not more than 12 people, and sometimes we went up to Wisconsin. Recently, though, the past several years have been an all out family bonanza, a huge affair at mom’s which, I am ashamed to admit, we ducked out of one year when the ‘cool’ side of the family elected not to attend, leaving us with the obsessive nitpicky please don’t kiss me ew ew ew! relatives. Granted, we ducked out with Mom’s approval, and told a jolly lie that we were going to Thanksgiving in Michigan where friends live; in fact, I managed to pull off one of my insane multicourse the hell? bonanzas in the apartment kitchen, and we had a great conglomeration of friends and orphans round our overstuffed table. The fact that I had instructed every single person to bring wine didn’t hurt, either. (In the interests of historical accuracy, I must point out this was not the first time a Thanksgiving fraud was perpetrated upon the extended clan. One year, when I was in high school, my mom didn’t feel like hosting her mother, and none of us felt like hauling to cheeseland, and so we told each side of the family we were going to the other side?s for turkey day, and they’re still none the wiser.)

But here it is, October 14, and I’m on a plane flying back from a conference, and the official kickoff of my turkey obsession hath taken place- in my backpack are copies of the november issues of 2 food mags. (Side note: damnit damnit damnit! 40 Sardines, City Tavern, and another deeeelightful place all got fabulous mentions in the one mag. Yay for success, boo hiss for self-important foodies having the gall to descend upon our favorite spot now that it’s been broadcast to the world that 40 is A Fabulous Place.) I usually buy these two under one of two circumstances: in an airport flying back from this thrice damned airport, or at a little independent shop in Madison Wisconsin if we’ve gone up there for our anniversary weekend (clearly, the days of the 3 hour drive up to bed and breakfasty badgery cheesy goodness are gone. Call the waaaaaaaaaaambulance). And every year I have the same reaction: The. Fuck? I understand wanting to hold to tradition and yet do something new, but this leads to misguided things like a turkey with ground up bacon and herbsslathered under the skin with butter rubbed on top of the skin to give it a ‘unique’ flavor. Yeah, and that unique flavor is the bland-ass hospital food you’ll be eating in the hospital shortly after you blow your coronary. Cranberry sauce with shallots. Shallots! Wee little oniony things in my cranberry sauce! Are you mad?

I also love the layered menus these mags seem to hatch. Sometimes the theme is ‘Blast your tastebuds to kingdom come’ (curry rubbed turkey and bleu cheese mashed potatoes, anyone?)- guys, it’s turkey. Unless you brine the fucker or buy one pre-brined, let’s face it, it’s not the most richly flavored of animal proteins, but that strange neon yellow-green curry and tumeric glow is so not right at the thanksgiving table. There also seem to be the ‘meatervarian’ meals (hilariously, there?s a throwaway 2 pages of vegetarian fare in the back of one of the two mags this year), featuring turkey, a sausage stuffing, a ham and potato strata? Let’s just go whole hog (as it were) and make a bona fide mincemeat pie for dessert too, and start with a duck confit salad. I realize it’s tradition at Thanksgiving to treat potatoes and sweet potatoes as two valid substitutes for green vegetables, but come on!

So, my magazines aren’t helping me decide the menu for this year, and I’m combing my cookbooks and searching for sensible tasty inspiration- I’m playing host to my mom, the inlaws and, presumably, Tumby. Perhaps Flambee ala Polyfill for dessert is in order.

It’s Sunday night, 9:58 pm (8:58 according to me and the snarklet), and the past 60 hours feel more like 600 hours. It’s amazing how far I had managed to mentally remove myself from the pace of this particular game, and how quickly I can fall back into it. My feet, however, are bitching mightily about the heels- heels which were my everyday wear last year. Oh how quickly I can become happy in bunny slippers and clogs. There is, of course, the jaundiced snark-filled view of the weekend, and the deep and serious I am businesswoman hear me roar side of the weekend. Boring stuff first. Let’s face it, this will be a boring ‘here’s what’s going on’ entry rather than a rantacular one.

This conference is my first as a ‘free agent’- my 6 years establishing myself in this wacky little industry were spent at a museum which is rather the equivalent of the Yankees- the biggest, the baddest, the 900 pound gorrila. Or rather, it was- layoffs last November were followed by much more emotionally traumetizing ones over the past 2 weeks- 2 Vps cut, entire divisions reorganized, another 20 people gone. It was one of the buzzes of the conference. So it’s very odd to be part of the huge number of ‘alumni’ from this organization- a crew of very successful, very jaundiced and sarcastic and bitter people- still informing colleagues I’m no longer at Gorilla and immediately getting asked what’s going on here- no one’s thinking I was laid off, and word had gotten round that I was freelancing, it was more a matter of where am I now and why did I leave. I think I owe the lad a hug and a kiss for getting me out of there. But that would involve touching him, and with my luck and our mutual fertility, I’d somehow manage to get pregnant again- a second ovulation or storing sperm for say, a year, like some species.

People- a wider swath than I expected, and people I wasn’t sure would remember my name from year to year- are really excited I’m freelancing, really happy I’m now ‘poachable’, demanding my contact info and rolling projects past me. Meanwhile, the hush hush project I was working on with one group is now public knowledge, and the strategy the biz queen there and I hatched of me introing her to a select group of people and her walking those key folks through the pretty concept book worked perfectly- alongwith the layoffs at my old stompin grounds, the ’secret meetings’ project is also a big buzz at the conference. Very well received, looks like the market is primed for it. Woo, and may I add, hoo. Now if I can just get the other products I’m working on booked. And oh yeah, after lipping off starkly honestly in the one session I went to- a jolly fun thing called Exhibit Developers Roundtable, done every year at the bigger museum conference but new for this one, I had so many people come up to me and say, ‘My god, you’re so right. Can I give you my card and we’ll talk more??, which was just really cool- being respected as a knowledgeable voice is a very nice compliment. And, I have to say, my colleagues in the museum industry rock, cheerfully insisting I sit and plying me with chocolate and granola and water and being fiercely protective of me. Elisabeth, Brenda, Allison, Gabe, Mark, Michelle, god bless you all. And the folks from the themed entertainment industry? Dragging me off for meals and forcing me to eat? Seriously wonderful.

Oh, and then there’s the wacky sides of these conferences. I mean, there’s the whole travel exhaustion strange town waaaah ,my hotel room’s too cold blah blah blah whinycakes. I stumbled off the plane in Charlotte and promptly managed to miss Varanus, who had driven through flood and nastiness to pick me up and go to dinner with me. I must have been exhausted or temporarily blind, as missing a 6-9 man is a tough thing to pull off, yet somehow I managed to. Probably didn’t help that he’d put on a much needed 100 pounds since I saw him last, and so he no longer looked like The Crow’s wacktacular hick scandanavian cousin (yes, I know he reads this, and yet I must wonder: when he speaks any of the 12 languages he knows, is it with the so-thick-you-can-spread-it-with-a-knife southern drawl?). Off we went to the hotel. Up we went to my room (he insisted on carrying my bags, yet argues he doesn?t engage in chivalry. The hell?) off we wandered to the convention center so I could register and thence to a bistro for much needed food, where we got to snicker over the sweet blonde waitress’ total inability to speak a rational, non-stuttered sentence when she looked at him. Hee! Yes honey, he’s delicious. I hate the fact that his ‘brain wind-down’ is my 80% speed; he stuck with, in a way, the general field I chucked in favor of genetics (what was I thinking? I was thinking income, baybee. And a nobel prize. No no, no unattainable goals here. Though you know, if a peanut farmer with chicklets for teeth can win one…), and it just makes me a touch wistful.

As we were leaving, we passed a table full of museum people where I did a doubletake, and recognized a colleague who’s at an institution- I kid you not- 25 min from my house. Have I seen her the past 3 months? No. So we did the high pitched pig call ‘Hiiiiiiii!’ squeal, which is a clue that it’s someone I don’t want to schmoozee with at right that second (and bless varanus, he caught that, and so settled for looming large and cute behind me, confusing hell out of the others at her table- big guy with weird ass tattoos. What hell kind of museum does he work at?), and she half-introduced me around. The next day, when I ran into women from that institution, they attempted to blithely ask if he was my husband. “No”, and a catlike smile.

Charlotte is a much nicer city for a conference than say, Baltimore, which seems like it’s been steeped in Eau du WinoPiss, and the convention center is much more manageable in size. But this is a hilarious city. They, like everyone else, have ye olde beautification adopt a street program, and damned if they didn’t let the local titty bar sponsor a block of asphalt prettiness- what the hell else can ‘Ladies of Distinction, a Club’ be? If not, it’s the most unfortunately named wing of the junior league ever. Plus Charlotte’s southern, but the hospitality and travel industries seem to have a huge honkin chip on their shoulders about what brings a huge swath of people to Charlotte- NASCAR. Let me tell you- that’s a fun ‘when worlds collide’- a couple thousand do gooder nerdy science and children’s museum aging hippie /young wide eyed I’m gonna save the world! types versus thousands and thousands of NASCAR afficionados (who, if my flights are any indication, fall neatly into 2 camps- good ol boy drunken middle managers in for a weekend of fun with the boys and dressed in Slates and a polo, and slightly grubby, tattooed, wearin an awful lot of black with logos, impeccably mannered fans dressed for comfort). Fun times. To add to the general air of surreality, it was Homecoming Weekend, and so as the museum geeks drunkenly poured out of the Discovery Place science center, they were confronted by 16 year olds in tottery heels and with artfully crafted, heavily shellacked updos, and ‘oh my god your parents let you out of the house wearing that!’ kinds of dresses.

And yeah. Schmoozeoriffic. Tomorrow is a killer day, a 7:30 am very importante meeting followed by 4 more meetings followed by running to the airport and diving onto the plane. Time. For. Bed.

Well, I’m preparing for a business trip (You go to hell, ASTC conference always held over Columbus day weekend, you go to hell and you die!) and I really really don’t want to go. I’m being a downright whiny ass bitch about it. For no good reason. My flights (American! More legroom! Okay, it’s the little things.) get me there at a reasonable hour, I’m probably seeing a good friend for dinner Friday night, I have only one 7:30 am meeting (Monday, ugh), and I get to see all manner of clients I adore and old museum industry friends and gossip with them. And, bonus, since I’m not there representing the Museum, and instead repping a handful of clients and myself, I can pretty much skip every single seminar, talk, forum, etc, and schmooze and gab and walk the floor instead, save for one rocktacular session that I hope I can get into.Yet from my behavior you’d think I was being sent off for 3 days of sensitivity training at a crapass job. I don’t want to sleep in a strange beeeeeed. I don’t want to be perky for 3 days- at this point, I don’t know if I can be perky for 3 days. I don’t want to have to keep repairing my makeup because instead of the dewey glow of pregnancy I have the face of a dateless freak teenager working the fry basket at Wendy’s on the graveyard shift (thank you, hormone storm!).
Meanwhile, all manner of little sagas previously reported or alluded to in here have minor developments.

-The behind the fence neighbors have put in a new tree. Hah!

-My bulbs are all here. Except the temp is still spiking too high in the daytime for me to plant them. But it will drop to a high of 55 while I’m gone. FUCK! Guess I’m crossing my fingers and planting next week. I’m half debating calling and asking for a prescription of Macrobid now, because I’m sure Snarklet will sense impending physical labor and think it will be jolly fun to give mommy another kidney infection. Because that’s the sort of relationship I have with my child. I’ll get my revenge, though, by sending it off to school in something hopelessly geekish on class photo day and singing along with the radio when I’m hauling it and its friends somewhere. Oh yes. Revenge will be mine, in the form of cringe-inducing embarassment.

-The tendonitis keeps recurring. 6 hours a day in the brace now. Doesn’t that look professional? Right along with the constant nose blowing and sneezing. Don’t mind me. *hronk* Er, don’t shake my hand right now, either.

-I’m at the point where I can eat 3 meals a day again. They may not be big and they most certainly may not all be balanced, but I can! eat! food!

-Despite all my bitching, I have the best husband in the world. I have a husband who has hired a cleaning service so I wouldn’t have to smell nasty cleaning products, since I’ve got smell aversions out the wazoo. He has taken on almost all of the chores. He has patiently withstood my hormone roller coaster. He has decreed we are only going to the wedding and reception and spending the rest of the Wedding of the Century Weekend with our friends and my mom. He has purchased a wireless hub. A wireless hub! Oh frubjous joy! Soon I’ll be able to laze on the Comfy Couch of Soul Sucking Doom (can’t! get! up! ass! Too! comfy! I swear, it’s like the couch has a tractor beam on your heiney. ‘Captain! They’ve locked on to our butt!’) whilst hacking away on my laptop. Annoying pop-up ads in the comfort of my family room- sorry, ‘Great Room’.

But none of that changes the fact that I have to go to Charlotte and none of my khakis fit anymore. Waaaaaaah.

Yes leggies and genglefuns, to paraphrase a Muppets ep, it’s still all about baby. Well, not quite. I’ve been the Consulting Queen and the Suburban Hausfrau all rolled into one. Thrill as the Wench juggled 5 conference calls, 2 meetings, getting the dry cleaning, running to two different banks, and returning the overdue DVD to Blockbuster all in one 8 hour period of time! Gasp with amazement as she fields an 8 am call before finishing her coffee! Be amazed as she manages to not hurl on the business colleague trying to hire her during a lunch meeting, despite the sudden realization that a cheese sauce before 7 pm is a guaranteed path to crippling cry-for-your-mommy level nausea! Despite the wild pace of work plus housecrap, things have settled enough to where I can, say, notice my surroundings. I was running errands yesterday, and just had to look up. The sky here is so much bigger than Chicago, a vast expanse of crystaline blue, the high prairie winds making the clouds race sickeningly fast across the horizon. The air smells clean, the sunflowers nod in the breeze, and it’s quite a pleasant reverie, all in all, until, of course, some yappin on her cellphone not paying attention driving minivan-SUV-HumVee-Mars Rover 18 times too big for her fragile size negative pi body Johnson County Housewife comes barrelling out of the teller lanes at the bank way too fast, and nearly plows into your parked car, giving a chipper little wave as if to say “almost killed you, oops, my bad! Teehee!”

Boring, no?

Oh, but snarklet fills my life with joy and delight. In the moments when he she it is not busy making it an utter miserable my fucking lord I’m not doing this again no no no hell. I hear tell of this mysterious hormone/mind control agent which is released post delivery, when you cradle your slimy little infant in your arms for the first time, which makes you blot out the horrifying agony and indignity you just suffered so that you will, in fact, consider doing this again. I sure as hell cannot imagine a woman who’s just gone through 20 hours of pain and pressure and sweating and eating only ice chips and every cringe-inducing intrusion into her private space and personal life under the sun (“Hi. I’m some doctor you’ve never met before allied with your oby gyn’s practice. I’m going to shove my big man hand up your hoohah for no discernable reason”) and some perkymcblonde nurse exorting her in a corrupted diminutive of her name which she never ever goes by (“Come on Bitsy! Push!” “It’s Elizabeth, bitch!”) ever volunteering to do this again without the intervention of serious psychotropics. I think my body is already producing this magical chemical, as some revisionist history the likes of which not even my grandmother has dabbled in is creeping into my memory. Really, the nausea wasn’t that bad (only ten hours a day), and I haven’t really puked (much), and I didn’t have many specific food aversions (no, just all food before 2 pm was verbobten there for a while, that’s all). If I’m already in this much denial about how it’s gone so far, I can’t wait for the end.

But, a small pregnancy hysteria TMI ish haha. Tonight we went out for dinner and tonight, as seems to be par for the course these days, snarklet let me enjoy a meal and then said “Mom! You know I don’t like it when you eat food!” and off I raced to the elegant bathroom. Where I suddenly realized I was spotting, very barely. Much freakage and double checking ensued- was it so early in the process we could get to the hospital and stop this? Was I really miscarrying? Was this from being too strenuous with the planting earlier and this was just nothing? In the middle of my freakout I looked at the roll of toilet paper.

Recycled. With red flecks in the paper. Who the hell thought artful recycled ‘confetti’ toilet paper was a good idea? How many middle aged Johnson County loafer and Slates wearin men have visited the bathrooms of this bistro and freaked out, thinking their colon was shot to hell and checking themselves in for a oh so fun foaming pipesnake ass test, huh? Grouch!