My due date was Friday. This is shit. This is NOT the German efficiency (and I'm 25% German, so that should count for something.)
I'm huge. I can't sleep. I can't sit comfortably, stand comfortably, walk comfortably, or lie down comfortably. And I'm fed up with swapping one discomfort for another just for variety's sake.
Also, I'm exhausted. I can't sleep. I have to pee every 45 minutes (until about 4 am by which time I'm sufficiently dehydrated that I can go about 2 hours between weeing. If only my uterus was as keen as my fucking kidneys.) And my RLS* has become unbearable. I lie in bed at night jerking like a mule that's undergone army experimentation, thus guaranteeing that the Pirate isn't getting any meaningful sleep, either. (And he hasn't whinged about it once, bless his tighty whities.)
We went to see Brendon Burns in Oxford on Thursday night, hoping to laugh the kid loose. Nearly worked, too. Had a couple contractions before the show began, and after 90 minutes of solid belly laughter I carried on contracting strongly, if erradically, until about 2 am. Then it all fizzled out and died and I've had nothing since. Bah.
Tomorrow is my nephew's birthday. He'll be 1. Keep your fingers crossed that something kicks off tonight so the cousins can share a birthday. That would be cool.
*Don't laugh. It's real, and it SUCKS.
Showing posts with label brooding. Show all posts
Showing posts with label brooding. Show all posts
Monday, February 07, 2011
Thursday, January 20, 2011
Watch this space...
I'm back.
But that's not the big news. THIS is the big news:
And this photo is a couple months old already. I'm T minus 2 weeks, and boy am I ready to pop. My mom and doc don't think I'll make it to 40 weeks, which is good, because I'm SO FREAKIN' SICK OF BEING PREGNANT!!!! (I know I know, after I wanted to be pregnant soooooo badly. So I'm a hypocrite. Shoot me.)
In other developments, Pirate and I no longer reside in sunny Cornwall. Now we're living in bloody Swindon. Thank fuck it's only temporary. We'll be out of here in July.
So why the sudden return to blogging? You can thank First Nations for that. I saw that she was back on line again and it inspired me. That, and Pirate has been bugging me to get back in the blogging saddle for a while. He's scared I'll get hit with post-partum depression (a legit fear, with my family history and my own history of depression) and knows how supportive all my imaginary friends have been in the past, and figures one more safety net can't be a bad thing. Plus all kinds of zany crap keeps happening to us, and he's constantly saying shit like "this would make an awesome blog post." And he's right.
So watch this space...
But that's not the big news. THIS is the big news:
And this photo is a couple months old already. I'm T minus 2 weeks, and boy am I ready to pop. My mom and doc don't think I'll make it to 40 weeks, which is good, because I'm SO FREAKIN' SICK OF BEING PREGNANT!!!! (I know I know, after I wanted to be pregnant soooooo badly. So I'm a hypocrite. Shoot me.)
In other developments, Pirate and I no longer reside in sunny Cornwall. Now we're living in bloody Swindon. Thank fuck it's only temporary. We'll be out of here in July.
So why the sudden return to blogging? You can thank First Nations for that. I saw that she was back on line again and it inspired me. That, and Pirate has been bugging me to get back in the blogging saddle for a while. He's scared I'll get hit with post-partum depression (a legit fear, with my family history and my own history of depression) and knows how supportive all my imaginary friends have been in the past, and figures one more safety net can't be a bad thing. Plus all kinds of zany crap keeps happening to us, and he's constantly saying shit like "this would make an awesome blog post." And he's right.
So watch this space...
Tuesday, September 16, 2008
Short Human
One of my teammates just announced she's pregnant, so I had this printed up for her at the T-shirt place up the road.
Well what the hell else do you get a knocked-up rower??? (Someone better get me one of these when I start spawning, that's all I'm saying.)
Well what the hell else do you get a knocked-up rower??? (Someone better get me one of these when I start spawning, that's all I'm saying.)
Tuesday, November 20, 2007
Baby winge
I read an article last week in the BBC. I genuinely don't remember what it was about, but one line stuck out in my mind, and has been turning over and over in my brain ever since:
"Many women blame the lack of adequate child care."
What exactly are they blaming on the on the lack of childcare? I don't remember, but it was probably something to do with either why so few women are in full-time employment, or possibly falling birth rates. It doesn't really matter, though. What is amazing about this statement is how blaze' it is. I bet few, if any, other readers of the article even batted an eye when they read it. Of course it's to do with inadequate child care. Duh.
And yet, this is an extraordinary assertion. I find it incredible that anyone, in any situation, should feel entitled to child care of any form. It really is an amazing assumption, completely new in the past couple of decades (which is but a pimple on the butt of the sum total of human history), that we feel entitled to give birth, spend a couple months with baby, and then go back to our careers, leaving someone else to look after the spog until he or she is 18 and old enough to leave home.
Ok, maybe not completely new. Extremely wealthy women throughout history were obligated to produce heirs to inherit their husband's property, but refused to engage in anything so bovine as actually feeding their own children, and after the first loud wail the bairns were handed off to be raised by wet nurses and governesses. But that is by far the exception, and even then it was never viewed as a government's responsibility. It was still a personal choice (either raise them yourself or spend your own money to hire other people). No one used other people's money to hire other people to raise their own children. Such an idea would have been preposterous. And yet, that's exactly what we do today.
Japan, Italy, and pretty much all of the developed world are facing major birth rate crises. The problem is that couples have been breeding far below the necessary 2.1 kids per couple to sustain the population, and the result is that in a few more years there won't be enough workers paying in to the social benefits scheme to support all the old people retiring and living off it. In both these countries women cite The Lack of Adequate Child Care as a primary reason for having one or no kids. Interestingly, when presented with a choice of raising kids or having a career, most people seem to be choosing the career. Fine. At least it's a choice. They are saying "I can't do both, so I choose one over the other." I can respect that.**
What I can't respect is the sense of entitlement, that the government has some sort of obligation to raise my children so I don't have to sacrifice anything to have them. And that kind of attitude is all too common. It's deeply reminiscint of people who want pets but don't want to do any of the dirty work, like walking the dog and scooping the cat litter. Can you imagine someone writing an article for the BBC, or giving a story on the news, saying "I'm completely entitled to have a dog, but I don't have time to take it out twice a day to walk and poop because I work full time. Clearly the government needs to institute more comprehensive dog-ownership programs to assist working dog-owners with their dog-walking and poop-scooping tasks. These programs need to be made especially accessible to poorer dog owners, who often have the most dogs but the fewest resources to look after them." Man, would I love to see that.
Don't misunderstand me. I'm not saying that a woman's place is in the home making babies. I am saying that you shouldn't even be contemplating having kids (and that's "you" meaning all of you, male and female alike) unless you're prepared give something up to have them (that is the nature of parenting) and are prepared to raise them your bloody self.
What do you think? There are a few moms and dads who hang out here. Do you think you are entitled to child care and after-school programs so you can continue to work? If so, why?
**Interestingly, no one has suggested a mass adoption campaign to move unwanted or orphaned babies from overpopulated countries like India and China to developed countries. If Italy is willing to pay its women cash to make babies, why shouldn't they just spend the cash to import and raise babies that would otherwise languish in a 3rd-world orphanage? It would help balance things out a lot. Everybody wins! I'm serious about this.
"Many women blame the lack of adequate child care."
What exactly are they blaming on the on the lack of childcare? I don't remember, but it was probably something to do with either why so few women are in full-time employment, or possibly falling birth rates. It doesn't really matter, though. What is amazing about this statement is how blaze' it is. I bet few, if any, other readers of the article even batted an eye when they read it. Of course it's to do with inadequate child care. Duh.
And yet, this is an extraordinary assertion. I find it incredible that anyone, in any situation, should feel entitled to child care of any form. It really is an amazing assumption, completely new in the past couple of decades (which is but a pimple on the butt of the sum total of human history), that we feel entitled to give birth, spend a couple months with baby, and then go back to our careers, leaving someone else to look after the spog until he or she is 18 and old enough to leave home.
Ok, maybe not completely new. Extremely wealthy women throughout history were obligated to produce heirs to inherit their husband's property, but refused to engage in anything so bovine as actually feeding their own children, and after the first loud wail the bairns were handed off to be raised by wet nurses and governesses. But that is by far the exception, and even then it was never viewed as a government's responsibility. It was still a personal choice (either raise them yourself or spend your own money to hire other people). No one used other people's money to hire other people to raise their own children. Such an idea would have been preposterous. And yet, that's exactly what we do today.
Japan, Italy, and pretty much all of the developed world are facing major birth rate crises. The problem is that couples have been breeding far below the necessary 2.1 kids per couple to sustain the population, and the result is that in a few more years there won't be enough workers paying in to the social benefits scheme to support all the old people retiring and living off it. In both these countries women cite The Lack of Adequate Child Care as a primary reason for having one or no kids. Interestingly, when presented with a choice of raising kids or having a career, most people seem to be choosing the career. Fine. At least it's a choice. They are saying "I can't do both, so I choose one over the other." I can respect that.**
What I can't respect is the sense of entitlement, that the government has some sort of obligation to raise my children so I don't have to sacrifice anything to have them. And that kind of attitude is all too common. It's deeply reminiscint of people who want pets but don't want to do any of the dirty work, like walking the dog and scooping the cat litter. Can you imagine someone writing an article for the BBC, or giving a story on the news, saying "I'm completely entitled to have a dog, but I don't have time to take it out twice a day to walk and poop because I work full time. Clearly the government needs to institute more comprehensive dog-ownership programs to assist working dog-owners with their dog-walking and poop-scooping tasks. These programs need to be made especially accessible to poorer dog owners, who often have the most dogs but the fewest resources to look after them." Man, would I love to see that.
Don't misunderstand me. I'm not saying that a woman's place is in the home making babies. I am saying that you shouldn't even be contemplating having kids (and that's "you" meaning all of you, male and female alike) unless you're prepared give something up to have them (that is the nature of parenting) and are prepared to raise them your bloody self.
What do you think? There are a few moms and dads who hang out here. Do you think you are entitled to child care and after-school programs so you can continue to work? If so, why?
**Interestingly, no one has suggested a mass adoption campaign to move unwanted or orphaned babies from overpopulated countries like India and China to developed countries. If Italy is willing to pay its women cash to make babies, why shouldn't they just spend the cash to import and raise babies that would otherwise languish in a 3rd-world orphanage? It would help balance things out a lot. Everybody wins! I'm serious about this.
Tuesday, November 06, 2007
Why I shouldn't be allowed to live alone
I locked my self out today. In a fluey fog I left the flat without my keys, and the door locked behind me. As soon as I heard it 'click' i knew what i'd done. You know that feeling, when you realize something in the very instant that it's too late to do anything about it? Like when a deer jumps into the headlights of your car 6 inches from your hood (bonnet) when you're driving 50 mph and you have just enough time to think "well crap, i'm going to hit a deer," before you plough into bambi. Yeah, one of those moments.
Me and doors that lock automatically don't get along. I really shouldn't have them. Sadly, lots of student housing is equipped with this type of door, and since I've been a student for the last 10 years, I've had a lot of these doors. And locked myself out a LOT.
Would you like to hear about my very best lock-out story of all time? It's a good one.
I was an undergrad at Connecticut College, doing my double major in English and Botany. ('cause i'm that cool, sistah. *snaps fingahs*) I was living in Blackstone House, the substance-free dorm, where no alcohol, tobacco, or drugs were allowed, even if you were legal. (Sorry, what was I just saying about cool? never mind.) I lived on the second floor (first floor to you Brits) next door to one of my best friends, Billy-Jean. (Who just had her first baby, by the way. I WANT A BABY! WAH!)
Outside our windows was this goofy little balcony thing. It wasn't accessible by any door, and in fact we weren't supposed to go out on it at all. It was just an architectural feature of the building (which was made of New England granite and built in 1914, one of the three original buildings of the college and the oldest dorm). The down-side of this balcony was that people were constantly accidently throwing their frisbees onto it, and either I or Billy-Jean would have to retrieve them by climbing out our windows. The upside was that A) it was a great place to keep ice-cream in the winter, since Blackstone didn't have a kitchen or a freezer, and B) when I locked myself out I could go to BJ's room, climb out her window, cross the balcony, and climb into my own. This was useful since, according to college rules, if you locked yourself out Campus Safety would let you in for free once, but after that they charged you $10 a pop. Generally Sampus Cafety was pretty sympathetic to 'Stoners (the ironic, self-styled residents of Blackstone) since we never caused any trouble with partying and damaging property, but even so I didn't like to push my luck.
So one day, in my usual dipshittedness, I locked my self out. I hung my head, mumbled "for fuck's sake" and went next door to BJ's room. No answer. I tried the next room down, which was BJ's boyfriend's (now husband's) room. BJ wasn't in Tooth's room, but had some suggestions where she might be. Being a shy kind of girl, the list wasn't very long, and I tracked her down without overmuch difficulty.
I apologized profusely and asked her if she could come open her room so I could climb out her window. You wouldn't think this was a huge favor, except that she had a fish tank set up in front of the window I needed to use, and there were several plants hanging from the curtain rod above with tendrils hanging all over the place, along with numerous other obstructions in the form of furniture and clothes crammed in everywhere. She sighed but came along willingly. In total it took about 15 minutes to move everything out of the was so I could get out the window, which eventually I did.
I squeezed myself out, padded gingerly across the balcony (which was actually the roof of the living room down stairs, but we were never certain how much weight that roof would hold), threw open my window, climbed inside, crawled across the (strategically located) bed, walked to my door, opened it -- with the intention of going next door to thank BJ one more time-- stepped into the hall, and...
you guess it. Closed and locked the door behind me.
When I realized what I'd done I fell to pieces right then and there in the hallway, laughing hysterically. BJ heard the rucus, saw me in a state of impenitrable giggle-fits, immediately deduced what I'd done (I'm fairly predictable), and joined me in the chorus. I don't know how long we sat there, laughing until we cried at my sublime stupidity, but eventually we went back into BJ's room and repeated the whole procedure.
I've never lived this incident down. To this day, whenever i do something really, really dumb (which is often), BJ still reminds me of this story. And I still giggle.
Me and doors that lock automatically don't get along. I really shouldn't have them. Sadly, lots of student housing is equipped with this type of door, and since I've been a student for the last 10 years, I've had a lot of these doors. And locked myself out a LOT.
Would you like to hear about my very best lock-out story of all time? It's a good one.
I was an undergrad at Connecticut College, doing my double major in English and Botany. ('cause i'm that cool, sistah. *snaps fingahs*) I was living in Blackstone House, the substance-free dorm, where no alcohol, tobacco, or drugs were allowed, even if you were legal. (Sorry, what was I just saying about cool? never mind.) I lived on the second floor (first floor to you Brits) next door to one of my best friends, Billy-Jean. (Who just had her first baby, by the way. I WANT A BABY! WAH!)
Outside our windows was this goofy little balcony thing. It wasn't accessible by any door, and in fact we weren't supposed to go out on it at all. It was just an architectural feature of the building (which was made of New England granite and built in 1914, one of the three original buildings of the college and the oldest dorm). The down-side of this balcony was that people were constantly accidently throwing their frisbees onto it, and either I or Billy-Jean would have to retrieve them by climbing out our windows. The upside was that A) it was a great place to keep ice-cream in the winter, since Blackstone didn't have a kitchen or a freezer, and B) when I locked myself out I could go to BJ's room, climb out her window, cross the balcony, and climb into my own. This was useful since, according to college rules, if you locked yourself out Campus Safety would let you in for free once, but after that they charged you $10 a pop. Generally Sampus Cafety was pretty sympathetic to 'Stoners (the ironic, self-styled residents of Blackstone) since we never caused any trouble with partying and damaging property, but even so I didn't like to push my luck.
So one day, in my usual dipshittedness, I locked my self out. I hung my head, mumbled "for fuck's sake" and went next door to BJ's room. No answer. I tried the next room down, which was BJ's boyfriend's (now husband's) room. BJ wasn't in Tooth's room, but had some suggestions where she might be. Being a shy kind of girl, the list wasn't very long, and I tracked her down without overmuch difficulty.
I apologized profusely and asked her if she could come open her room so I could climb out her window. You wouldn't think this was a huge favor, except that she had a fish tank set up in front of the window I needed to use, and there were several plants hanging from the curtain rod above with tendrils hanging all over the place, along with numerous other obstructions in the form of furniture and clothes crammed in everywhere. She sighed but came along willingly. In total it took about 15 minutes to move everything out of the was so I could get out the window, which eventually I did.
I squeezed myself out, padded gingerly across the balcony (which was actually the roof of the living room down stairs, but we were never certain how much weight that roof would hold), threw open my window, climbed inside, crawled across the (strategically located) bed, walked to my door, opened it -- with the intention of going next door to thank BJ one more time-- stepped into the hall, and...
you guess it. Closed and locked the door behind me.
When I realized what I'd done I fell to pieces right then and there in the hallway, laughing hysterically. BJ heard the rucus, saw me in a state of impenitrable giggle-fits, immediately deduced what I'd done (I'm fairly predictable), and joined me in the chorus. I don't know how long we sat there, laughing until we cried at my sublime stupidity, but eventually we went back into BJ's room and repeated the whole procedure.
I've never lived this incident down. To this day, whenever i do something really, really dumb (which is often), BJ still reminds me of this story. And I still giggle.
Friday, August 27, 2004
From the mouths of babes
“I want you to be my mommy.”
Wow. I’ve been a regular babysitter for more than half my life. I’ve sat from one end of this galaxy to the other. I’ve heard a lot of strange stuff fly from the mouths of babes, but I’ve never heard anything to bowl me over and pin me to the floor like that statement did, made this evening by the 4 ½ year-old girl I’ve been taking care of this summer. That one might even slide into second place in the Greatest-Compliments-of-my-Life contest, right behind the one my dad gave me when I graduated college, which can never possibly be topped.
It hasn’t been an easy summer. The kids’ dad walked out on them in the spring, a week before I moved into the house to become the new nanny. Naturally, they’re having a rough time coping, and I’ve been uncertain as to how to offer them the best possible support for a worse than crappy situation about which I can’t do diddly-squat. We’ve had our ups and downs, our bad days and our worse days, but overall it’s been a good summer. Until tonight. Now it’s a great summer.
I’ve always know I’d want kids at some point in the future. I like the little buggers. That’s why I agreed to work as a nanny for 3 months. But this one clinched it. I want kids. I want these kids. I want any kids. I want them now! Somebody get me some sperm!
If anyone knows and eligible young men between the ages of puberty and pensioner who are honest, easy-going, creative, tall, and would like to shag me (I’m not that ugly, honest), post me a reply. I will begin conducting interviews shortly. Thank you.
Wow. I’ve been a regular babysitter for more than half my life. I’ve sat from one end of this galaxy to the other. I’ve heard a lot of strange stuff fly from the mouths of babes, but I’ve never heard anything to bowl me over and pin me to the floor like that statement did, made this evening by the 4 ½ year-old girl I’ve been taking care of this summer. That one might even slide into second place in the Greatest-Compliments-of-my-Life contest, right behind the one my dad gave me when I graduated college, which can never possibly be topped.
It hasn’t been an easy summer. The kids’ dad walked out on them in the spring, a week before I moved into the house to become the new nanny. Naturally, they’re having a rough time coping, and I’ve been uncertain as to how to offer them the best possible support for a worse than crappy situation about which I can’t do diddly-squat. We’ve had our ups and downs, our bad days and our worse days, but overall it’s been a good summer. Until tonight. Now it’s a great summer.
I’ve always know I’d want kids at some point in the future. I like the little buggers. That’s why I agreed to work as a nanny for 3 months. But this one clinched it. I want kids. I want these kids. I want any kids. I want them now! Somebody get me some sperm!
If anyone knows and eligible young men between the ages of puberty and pensioner who are honest, easy-going, creative, tall, and would like to shag me (I’m not that ugly, honest), post me a reply. I will begin conducting interviews shortly. Thank you.
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