now fortified with impotent fury!risperdal

I am sitting here in my uniform of jeans, rolled audaciously at the cuffs cause apparently maternity jeans are made for effin giraffes, and a white oxford, my now way overlong hair wound up with a claw clamp (bow down to the mighty GB, oh woman, thank you), no makeup, reading glasses. So what? I am wearing, if I do say so myself, sexy underwear. A black microfiber bra and black lace skivvies, high cut in the thigh and low cut under my burgeoning alien-totin belly. And goddamn, I feel good.

This is hilarious. I don’t wear sexay underwear normally. I mean, I bow to the allmighty shrine of Wacoal bras, and a few of those are in audacious colors of lace and bits and frill, but by and large? Sensible. Supportive. In lovely oooh fun to touch fabrics, but not exactly reeking of mrowr-rowr-rowr oooh baby-ness. I had to cave a few weeks ago and get some maternity underwear, starting to transition into wearing it, and the lad was kind enough to buy it for me. “Are you sure these are the ones you want?” he asked earnestly. Well yeah. Plain, functional, that’s my lingere style.

Except no, no it’s not. Not anymore. I’m feeling like a fucking beached pygmy whale. I’m feeling lumpy. I am not, despite my husband’s heretofore unheard of interest in ‘nookie at Jimmy’s’ (and this is saying something. The man’s a Scorpio. Down boy.) feelin like a love goddess. And the cotton, magically expanding (I swear to god, they say cotton, but they must be some magic fabric because you can grab two sides of the skivvies and pull and pull and pull and they don’t stop expanding. This must be the fabric that ‘Cloaks of infinite holding +2′ are made of, yet in this case, it’s ‘Skivvies of infinite ass containment +3′) underwear we bought is…depressing. It’s like Nungear, except presumably nuns don’t need maternity underwear. It is, in a word, damn unpretty. I mean, it’s so hideous, and depressing, and just blah, that it actually leeches sexiness out of you. Put this on and be frumpalicious. Doesn’t matter how fabulous the outerwear is, the innerwear is so dowdy you might as well be wearing beige lace up shoes and drip dry polyester.

Yesterday I realized that part of the reason I was feeling so very blue was I was feeling like, well, an incubator, on top of all the end of year ennui, rather than a Wo-Myn! I began idly browsing for decent skivvies, and mentioned this in Chat to the whores, and someone piped up that he just didn’t see sexy and maternity going together. Which had 2 effects on me: #1, spiral of hormonal angst and #2, steely angry resolve. The lad, unaware of what prompted my sudden quest for delish maternity undies, was more supportive of this than perhaps anything else I’ve ever done in my life. He got home last night, pulled up to the house, and announced, ‘Get in the car, we’re going shopping’. The man who normally blanches at how much bras cost was all over the holy shit expensive maternity underthings.

And that would be how I am sitting here, feeling like a lumpy James Bond sex kitten, rather than a lumpy nun. I may look the same, in my jeans and oxford, but watch out! There’s a feral love monkey waiting to bust out! Um, maybe after I have a nap.

So I was going to do perky mcstupid snarkyass entry about after days of bitching that I was getting the shit beaten out of me internally, snarklet freaked me out by pretty much napping all day today, leading me to spend a fun evening lying on the bed trying to nonchalantly knead my gut like a vat of challah doh whilst Johnny Depp prattled on to James Lipton on the tv, and get snarklet to, say, hiccough or give me the finger.

He’s kicking now, and boy howdy do I feel guilty. Not for waking the sprog up- which, er, I kinda do- but for every ‘what the fuck was I thinking? No I don’t want to be a mom’ type thought I’ve had, especially in the past 3 weeks.

One of my best friends, a woman whom, I am convinced, would make the bestest mom ever (and her husband, the bestest dad), and who has the craziest life around, has been informed she cannot have children. And she is smart enough and knowledgeable enough- as am I- that now that I know the whole story, there are no platitudes to offer, no ’surely someone can do something’, because no one can. There is nothing ‘wrong’ with her, she is not ‘ill’. And while I can say with a great deal of heat, “this fucking SUCKS!”, which she assures me beats the pants off of most of what people have managed to say to her, there’s nothing I can do, not at the moment, and anything I could do would involve drugs and such and I need to talk to my doc about it, and I’m not sure I’m comfortable with it anyway. The four of us were a team, the lad and her and her husband and I, when we all lived in the same city, with carte blanche in each other’s liquor cabinets and the easy shorthand of language that comes from years of friendship; she and I were on the same ‘mommy track’, planned timing wise, and here I am knocked up the first time Mr. Happy approached me sans rubber pessary, and there she is, most decidedly not.

So blar. A big big fat blar. I shake my fist at the heavens and be pointlessly angry at her God on her and her husband’s behalf, because she is so benumbed and so sad and so undeserving of this, and I am so ill-spoken and graceless, that all I have to offer her is my futile anger and my strings of pearl-like obscenities. And that’s not nearly enough, but I don’t know what else to do.

…A lonely Jew, at Christmas. South Park, how I love thee. Yeah, this is a sucktacular time of year to be a Jew, especially if you’re a Jew who ascribes to the ‘you know…Chanukah? Really not that important, theologically speaking. Rosh Hashanah, Yom Kippur, Passover… now them’s important holidays’ view of the world.

I don’t hate Christmas. I hate the attendant crap that goes with Christmas- the family dramas, the overbuilt expectations, the frenzied need some people have for everything to Be! Just! Perfect! (perfect being some horrifying, hackneyed 1950s childhood christmas extravaganza they never had, in many cases), the materialistic hoohah (granted, I dig presents. But the whole dizzying retail freakshow? Not my bag.) Plus there’s the whole expectation that you’re, well, Christian. I don’t pull my punches. After time #20 in a day where someone’s said Merry Christmas a good 2 weeks before the day where we celebrate the blessed birth of Christ except of course he wasn’t born on Dec. 25 this is a cultural-historical handy dandy day to have it on, near Solstice, when people are at their darkest hour and need something to haul them out of their dear GOD it’s dark and depressing I think I’m going to drink myself silly and then go freeze to death in the snow (modern equivalent? North Dakota.), I do, in fact, snap and seethe, “I’m Jewish!” At least in Chicago, people would generally apologize and offer a happy new year or holidays.

Here, I’ve been informed, repeatedly, that it’s still Christmas. Of course it is, but dumbass, It has no meaning for me, nor should it. And this horrifies people. But, they wail, it’s the season of giving, the season of peace and joy and goodwill! Yes, it’s the season of a built up commercial enterprise whose premise is the birth of a savior I fundamentally do not believe in. Hello? Key difference between Jews and Christians, I mean, other than the whole ‘no tasty pig for you!’ thing. We don’t eat the cracker cause we don’t believe in the cracker, and these days, in this place, I’m finding out just how horrifying a concept that is to this swath of middle America.

Don’t even get me started on church tonight with the neighbors. In short, the moral of the story is methodist megachurches? Not for the wench. Not by a long shot. They’re doing a series on other faiths in January, and a peverse corner of my brain cannot wait to see how they pull this off respectfully, given I was informed no fewer than 8 times tonight that faith in Christ is the only path to salvation and happiness. (Sidebar? The overarching theme for the series on other faiths is, “How can different religions all claim to be right?”) The rest of me? Doesn’t ever want to spend another minute in a church with a congregation of 7,000, where the kiddies perform a rock and roll medley of hymns replete with hand motions and hip gyrations that would make even N’SYNC blush.

Praise Jesus, indeed. Happy holidays, y’all, whatever you celebrate. Me? I’m gearing up for the airing of the grievances for Festivus.

So, in case you haven’t been playing along at home, the Lad and I are two different religions. Two, uh, really different religions. We’re not talking issues of ‘is it really the body of Christ or merely symbolic?’, we’re talking, ‘Messiah? What Messiah? Dude, I’m still waiting. This J.C. guy? Um, no.’ vs. ‘The cracker IS the flesh. No really, despite its starchy taste.’ And we are each the type of person to cheerfully support what the other believes: he didn’t want to move me to a place devoid of Jewish community, I felt bad that the parishes near our new house are all so tainted by the unfathomable scandal in the Catholic Church.

Our largest fight ever was over religion; specifically, over baptism, and over what it meant when we went through pre-marital prep with our priest. Unsurprisingly, religion has become quite the issue again in our house, as we anticipate the snarklet nouveau est arrive. While we’ve come to a reasonable approach for when the kid’s born, there’s the whole issue of how to raise and how to educate. My snappy statement has always been ‘faith is more important than religion’, which, you know, is easier said than done. Today the Lad and I drove 30 min so he could go to services at the Jesuit University in the city, and I put my feet up and read at the Barnes and Noble nearby (we’re going to services with friends at the Methodist church on Tuesday, and I can stand only so much churchin up in one 3 week span of time, given the Wedding o the Century). We were agreed that if the Jesuits, true to form, were intelligent no nonsense hardasses who didn’t suck, that perhaps the Lad would take the kid there for services, and once a month I’d join them and we’d brunch afterwards.

This is a great plan, except, uh, I need to come up with a way to ‘teach’ my child Judaism. Teach him in the absence of actually going to Temple, as my Temple options here are not enticing, and by not enticing I mean ‘you will not get me to set foot in there, no no no’. We run the extremes of Prada-clad Showy Conservative with Astronomical Join Fees vs. Extreme Orthodox to the point where I would be the only married woman not in a wig. And nada inbetween. I need to do some serious digging as I’m sure there’s an option somewhere around here, but the fact is, the closest flavor choice i embrace is Reconstructionism, and even then, I have some serious issues with it (Uh. Zion. No.), and this would be how I found myself sitting in the Barnes and Noble on Country Club Plaza searching for Judaism for Kids books.

How I wish I could have had a mimosa with brunch. Goddamn. Er, as it were.

So i had a snarktastic entry written. I know I’m way behind- I was out of town, then I was a lazyass, yadda yadda, but right now, I don’t feel like posting the snarktastic entry and I don’t feel like being sparkling and witty.

I just spent a joyous 4 and a half hours in the swankyswoo maternity ward at my local hospital, cause I blew a series of contractions from 5-8 am. I’m at the point in pregnancy where yes, I should be having braxton-hicks contractions, which are so mild as to be easily missed, last 20-30 seconds apiece, taper off after 1-2 hours, and are irregular.

Mine were 4 minutes long. Apiece. Every 10-12 minutes. I felt like i had done 8 gerbillion situps with no discernible effect on my waistline. Of course, as soon as we got to the hospital, they stopped- the magic car ride effect or something- becoming standard B-H lasting 30 seconds apiece. On the bad side, the contractions had been bad and hard enough to confuse my body and begin to think the show was a-comin in a few weeks, and so now I’m on limited activity, for god knows how long, and who knows what this will do to our january vacation plans, and so much for flying about the country consulting in Jan and Feb, no way jose. Less. Than. No. Fun.

So yeah, that’s my world today. Terrified out of my freakin skull, lying on the couch. The lad has of course leapt to the ‘we’re cancelling our vacation you’re going to wind up on full bed rest at some point fuck fuck fuck!’ freakout point immediately, and is now starting to calm down. We won a radio contest and had a shindig to go to tonight, and so we’re bailing. We are having cookies and nog and friends tomorrow night, and so people have been lovely and are bringing cookies so i don’t need to stand and bake. I am being a slug this weekend. I am not helping the Lad shovel compost. I am being a very good little patient; lest the lad kick my ass into next week. Course if he did that, christmas would be here that much sooner.

Heh.

I’m tired. I’m cranky. I’m in a piss-ass mood. I’ve got a friggen alien in my stomach who chooses to rhumba obnoxiously in a sickening floppy way- reminiscient of when one had tequila shot number 9 and one’s innards suddenly rotate sending a signal to one’s brain to gettothebathroomrighthefucknow- whenever I’m playing classical music or there’s an orc onscreen. This bodes ill for Wednesday night’s cultural adventure, which will be, in essence, 3 hours of orcs to music (Orcs! On! Ice!). I’ve hit the hormone wall, the one where I can tolerate no noise or bright lights or whiny voice and so am sitting here going I don’t want a child what the hell was i thinking.

My Christmas cards aren’t done. I’m 2/3 of the way there on 3WA, and about half done on business, and piss all on the Lad’s family. Presents shipped to people? No. And I get on a plane tomorrow afternoon for a one day trip to Chicago, staying at Hotel Mom as per usual, annd whine whine whine bitch bitch bitch i don’t wanna go. I have turned into a sluglike homebody happy to ensconce in my bed and read for hours at a clip. I am devoid of motivation. I can’t even be bothered to finish wrapping the presents- something I used to be able to knock off in a grand festival of tape and ribbon and wrapping foo.

I’m blaming it all on the snarklet. Which means, in essence, I’m blaming it all on the Lad. Please god let me get past this pissiness once the trip is over, as I’m bumming myself out here.

And thus had a really boring day.

We unearthed the kitchen desk. We cleaned the kitchen, and polished the silver Christmas bells mom gives us every year (for a raised conservative jewish, now screeching atheist, she really embraces the whole building winter holiday traditions for us thing), and hauled out Hanukah Harry (one of those big foofy victorian style santa dolls with velvets and fake fur, except he’s in icy blue and silver and white, so he’s not really santaish and is instead rather subversive, and surprise! gift from mom about 5 years ago), and put away the last of the stuff from Thanksgiving, and aired out the house, and cleaned my closet, and finished swagging ribbon and trimming the front hall and hanging the silver bells from the bannister and gosh isn’t it all festive? As a soundtrack, the local alternative station has been playing rather a lot of ‘Jump Around’ by house of pain, and the Johnny Cash cover of NIN’s Hurt, of all things, so we’ve been yelling along to that, and probably causing the snarklet severe emotional scarring.

And oh yes, slapped on flak jackets and went to the mall. No wonder I need a nap. Now I need to wrap a buttload of presents, and finish a chunk of christmas cards, and bake cookies for the LoTR fest tomorrow afternoon, and waaaaah. It all just makes me feel tired.

Yeah, wasn’t this a lame entry? Ah well. Coolness tomorrow, one hopes.

So yeah, ripped off of just about everybody, an entry format that frees me from having to think.

1. When do you put up the Christmas tree?
After Thanksgiving. Once all the dishes are done and sufficient leftovers are consumed that we no longer think it’s turkeyday.

2. Real or Fake?
Fake. Allergies. Plus the whole travel, water, dead thing in my living room.

3. Lights? What color?
White, this year. I just don’t like all the multicolored ones. I was magnanimous and bought the lad a string of bubble lights as a nod to his youth.

4. Garland?
No. It makes me think of muppet intestines, and to me, that just doesn’t say festive, it says death of innocence.

5. Theme or No theme?
No theme. We have a raft of ‘nature’ themed ornaments and a buttload of cool funky glass ornaments, and a lot of food themed ornaments, and some of the ones the Lad made as a kid. It’s a schizophrenic tree.

6. What kind of topper?
A blue and silver art glass star. Nice and Jewish.

7. What’s your favorite ornament?
I have a couple, all glass (surprise!). A beautiful pewtery grey ball ornament with sparkly autumn leaves, a small smiling Janus face (which we got at the same time as the Lad’s glass pirate ship ornament, also a fave), and… Oddjob the squirrel. Oddjob is a bigass grey glass squirrel, with a sparkly white tummy, and his sharp-clawed little paws folded over his chest, and a deep brown glass acorn hanging off the top loop- and he has this very evil schemeing expression and so help me, is the rodent equivalent of Oddjob from the James Bond movies. Yes, folks, that’s the spirit of Christmas right there.

8. What does your tree skirt look like?
A chipper red green and silver plaid. Mom got it for us. In fact, my Jewish mom has gotten us all of my fave ornaments plus the tree skirt.

9. Where do you put your tree?
Corner of the family room- sorry, great room- to the south side of the enormo room eatin hearth of doom.

10. Who decorates the tree?
This year, the lad and I. In years past, in a perhaps astonishingly stupid move, we’d have friends over, get them likkered up on the most alcoholic eggnog ever, and THEN bust out the fragile heirloom ornaments.

11. What’s “under” the tree?
Presents, so far, the ones from my mom, I haven’t put mine to the LAd under there yet.

12. Do you put candy canes on your tree?
Nope. Nothing says ‘insects, dine here!’ like a buttload of sugar just hangin around.

About The Foods

1. What’s your favorite Christmas cookie?
Um. It pains me to say this, cause the very concept of them was so disgusting to me until the Lad finally brought some back from NY and shoved them down my throat. Rainbow cookies (aka, italian flag cookies). I can make them, but jaysus they’re a pain in the ass. So of course I’m making a batch next week.

2. Do you bake cookies and give them away?
Yeah. Usually without overly planning the giving them away conveyances and instead just baking up a shitstorm and then figuring out how to distrubute them.

3. Any “special” foods or candy that you only have at Christmas time?
Rainbow cookies. Snowball cookies. Standing rib roast and yorkshire puds.

4. What do you eat on Christmas EVE?
Depends where we are. Since this year it’s just us in our own home, god knows. Nibblies? Ham? We might get together with the family down the street.

5. What do you eat on Christmas day?
Some baked goodie in the morning, and then a bigass slab of beef in the afternoon. Nothing says birth of the lord and Savior like clogged arteries.

6. Do you like Eggnog? Spiked or Not Spiked?
Homer, do you like eggnog?
Do I!
I liked eggnog before I made the acquaintance of R’s family recipe (which, i suppose, in a festive annual rite, I must attempt to dig up, not find, curse and swear, and email R). Now I worship it. Adore it. Count the days till I can make a batch. Yes, I am hording my liquor allotment for next week so i may have half a glass. It’s that good.

7. Do you like candy canes?
Not really. i know, I’m a freak.

About The Decorations

1. Where do you hang your stockings?
By the chimney with care. Or in our case, swearing and cursing thanks to elaborate scrolled woodwork on the lip of the mantle.

2. Do you put lights on your house?
No. That would require 1. owning some 2. caving to massive pressure.

3. Got any outside lawn decorations?
We’ve got one of those wacky kinda Eamesish spiral cone white light trees. It makes me giggle. And white snowflakes in the front windows.

4. Do you put up a nativity?
Yes. The Playmobil one, along with the Three Wise Men Expansion Set. I’m not joking. Friends and I also like to slowly, over the course of the holiday season, add onto it, fleshing out the nativity with other fabulous Playmobil figs like the Blue Axeman, the Vampire, the Devil, and The Executioner.

5. Do you hang mistletoe under the door?
Nope.

6. Got a wreath on your front door?
Yeah and, surprise, it was my Chanukah present from mom.

7. How long does it take you to decorate?
The tree? 2 hours. Everything else? Catch as catch can.
About The Movies/Shows

1. Favorite Children’s Xmas TV show/cartoon?
Never watched em.

2. Wonderful Life / Miracle on 34th Street / A Christmas Carol…Which is the best?
A Muppet Christmas Carol.

3. Favorite Christmas movie?.
We, uh, ritually watch south park every Christmas.

4. Have you ever seen the Nutcracker Suite Ballet live?
Yes. In rural florida. Pain! Pain!

5. Ever been to the Radio City Music Hall Christmas show?
No. Love of god, no.

6. Ever gone to the movies on Christmas Day?
Yeah.

7. Did you know it’s the biggest day of the box-office?
Yes, which is why I don’t go any more.

Other Christmas Things….

1. Favorite Christmas book or story?
Um, don’t have one.

2. Do you stuff your stockings with any types of food?
There’s hell to pay if the elves don’t pony up some chocolate in my stocking.

3. Do you go to church on Christmas or Christmas Eve?
Hahahahahaha! Eeeeeheeheeee. No.

4. Have you ever gone Caroling?
That would involve actually knowing the songs.

5. Favorite Christmas Carol?
The Barenaked Ladies/Sarah M God Rest Ye Merry Gentlemen version, or Willie Nile’s We Wish You a Merry Christmas

6. Do you believe in Santa?
At the age of 3, in the middle of the largest grocery store/other stuff like hardware and what have you in town, I asked my mom if Santa would be visiting us this year. She patiently explained that we’re Jewish. I asked but doesn’t Santa visit boys and girls who’ve been good? Yes, said mom absently, just trying to get the shopping done. And haven;t i been good? I demanded. Yes, said mom. But he won’t stop at our place cause we’re Jewish? Mom affirmed that’s correct.
I screamedat the top of my three year old lungs, “You mean Santa’s a Bigot!!!” I was allowed to hang a stocking until I was 10. Oh yeah, I believe all right.

7. Do you leave Santa cookies?
Cookies and a glass of wine.

8. What about Rudolph…leave him anything?
Um, no.

9. What was your best Christmas gift?
Eeee. Good question. the airport card for Chanukah this year is pretty sweet, as was the wusthof trident grand prix 10n inch chef’s knife several years back. The grey pearl necklace, pretty damn fabulous too.

10. What was the worst/most odd gift?
The bizarre, pink and lace in an oval embroidery hoop potpurri wallhanging from a then boyfriend’s mom.

11. Do you go to a “work” Christmas party?
I no longer have one (yay!), but tonight is the Lad’s. Woohoo.

12. Do you like/hate going to the “work” Christmas Party?
Not thrilled. It’s sort of jesus gettin rammed down my throat, plus I hate academia.

13. Do you send Christmas cards (handmade or bought)?
I’m so far behind it’s not funny. But yes, and I do both.

14. Do you make a “list”?
Yes, both naughty and nice.

15. Do you check it twice?
I’m always right, no need to double check.

16. Have you been “naughty” or “nice”?
I’ve been a screeching hormonal harpy, but I’m hoping I’ve calmed a bit.

17. Who’s on your list this year?
For gifts, the immediate fam, secret santas, and select friends.

18. When do you start shopping?
Early November I start getting ideas.

19. Do you shop on Black Friday?
Fuck no.

20. Are you ready for Christmas?
Fuck. No. Y’all are getting your cards and presents sometime around memorial day, yo.

How far will I stoop to keep up withHolidalies? By doing a pointless, short, devoid of structure entry just to make sure I blather on the web today. Pitiful, no?

Apparently, to casual observers (read: neighbors) I don’t look pregnant. Or at least, not pregnant enough. To my mother, however, I am Obviously With Child, my colleagues busted up laughing at a meeting yesterday. To my eyes, I am astonished by the change, and mildly worried at the thought of what’s to come. I have lost weight yet again, and after some verbal sparring my doctor has agreed that since the lacking-a-parachute type of freefall has abated and it’s a slow and gentle decline, it’s okay. Snarklet is fine, it would appear, he’s just a lifeblood sucking force in my midriff.

I also took this opportunity to file my ‘birth plan’. Everything I’d read indicated we’re supposed to hammer out our ‘birth plan’ during the second trimester, and so I raised this issue with my doc, who looked like a deer in the headlights as she suddenly thought she had a granola earth mother on her hands despite every indication to the contrary. She rushed to assure me there was no requirement I file a birthplan, that if I do want to file one that I be careful to not micromanage to the point where I’ll have a core meltdown if something should not happen precisely the way I want it. I assured her my plan was simple. She gulped.

“I want drugs, I want drugs, I want drugs, healthy baby and mom, let’s avoid an episiotomy, did I mention I want drugs?”

I now have a big red note in my file- to go with the red badge of shame/red card of misbehaving bacteria announcing to the world that I have a multidrug resistant kidney infection issue- that says, simply, “WANTS DRUGS”

Um, so yeah, Hollidalies. Must update. Must update in the middle of slagging off on the couch- I mean, writing up documentation for clients- and thinking about all the packing I need to do before the wedding of the century, all while being gripped with sciata which makes me unable to move from the right hip on down about 80% of the time.

Why I just cannot wait to get on a plane tomorrow. Please someone, tranq gun me. I’m frazzled and harried and feel like crap and my christmas cards aren’t done and the husband is not getting the clue sentences like ‘We will see how I feel, if I’m feeling okay we’ll meet people for dirnks early’ contain and instead cheerfully telling all our friends why sure we’ll meet you an hour early for drinks Wench would be thrilled to perch on a painful ass barstool and grimmace while we all get sloshed!

Grrrr. On the plus side, everyone except my mom’s and grandmom’s Christmas gifts are mostly taken care of. Well, um, them and the dog. The jews are hard to shop for.