What day is it? I’ve lost all concept of time. Got home from hospital around lunchtime on Monday. So far, these are the things I know about my Lila:

* She is a Snuggle-Bot, hard-wired for cuddling.
* Aside from her own name and Snuggle-Bot, she responds to Squirrel and Honey Bear.
* Lila lives for lullabies, preferably sung in the lower-registers.
* My girl is not a howlet. She is quiet and extraordinarily patient, like her daddy. Will make for excellent museum and library etiquette.
* She is athletic. Already lifting her head like a crazed turtle and frogging her way along the length of the changing table.
* She poops and pees in vast quantities. Which is an excellent thing for me to see, as it is easy to worry that a little bot is getting enough milk (I’m new to this crazy world of lactation).
* She sleeps. Lots.

Giles is adjusting nicely to his brotherly new role. No spraying, no acting out. Once he saw that she was another little animal, things seemed to click for him. The door to the bedroom (where her bassinet lives) is now closed to him, but I make sure that he gets to be around her in a highly supervised capacity at least once a day.

***

Shaun. I couldn’t ask for a better teammate. Here he is, on deadline, writing an article for CBR with Snuggle-Bot in the wee-hours of the night.

My mom and Rick (Papa Grande & Grandma-ma Jaggers) drove out from Michigan on Monday to get their first Lila cuddles. I am too hormonal to write about how much I love and appreciate them without lactating and crying simultaneously, so I’ll just say this: I feel so incredibly lucky and loved.

Lila took a massive, bubbling shit right when this portrait was threatening to look stale.

Grandma-ma.

Lila loved hanging with the grandparents. Yesterday morning she was more alert than ever, taking them in and enjoying some good family bonding time. Behold these open, open eyes!

The excitement of meeting her grandparents made Lila good and tired for the remainder of the day and last night. Aside from waking her to feed every 2.5 hours and diaper changes, Snuggle-Bot was set to sleep-mode all the way from 3pm–present.

In other news: I’ve tried to read this week’s New Yorker feature about Cameron Todd Willingham twice now and can not seem to get past the first four paragraphs without involuntarily crying and lactating everywhere. So horrible. I can’t even stand it.

Well, on that cheerful note, I’m off to the feeding frenzy.
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What is the cuddliest thing in your life at the moment?

Saturday, August 29, 2009. 3:32am. Lila.

I need to start wearing a sandwich board sign. The front says: I’M DUE SEPTEMBER 1. The back says: STOP ASKING.

Who asks me when I’m due? Everybody. The Wallgreens casher. A stranger on subway. Every colleague that passes me in the halls/elevator. Museum visitors. Random dude I am waiting at crosswalk with. A crack head.

I’m really not being self-centered here. This is actually happening. I know this is happening because I will be thinking about something totally random (such as narwhals, the unicorns of the sea) and a stranger will burst out with questions about my ripe uterus. It is a jarring experience, akin to being woken from a gentle nap by a  person in a creepy clown mask.

Sometimes, the follow-up questions and comments are more exhausting than the initial opener.

“What are you doing up and moving around?”
“What are you still doing at work?”
“You aren’t 9 months pregnant. You’re way too small.”
“Oh look! You dropped!”

While I think it is really interesting that humans seem hard-wired to rally around new life, I find it disturbing that this communal support of the future generations is so short lived.  Once a baby is actually born, the community just seems to loose interest. American communities don’t demand policies that would adequately support maternity leaves, breastfeeding, or fund public schools. We give financial incentives to companies that ravage the earth that our kids inherit. We fund wars that kill the youths of other countries and use the economically disadvantaged kids from our own countries to fight them. In practice, people don’t even give a shit enough about future generations to trade in their paper Starbucks cups for a travel mug. So while the attention to the fetus is sweet, it is cosmetic. It is people responding to my physical shape. While I feel bad for knocking well-meaning people for their lack-of-substance, constructing cheerful response after cheerful response to such redundant chatter is exhausting. I guess I’m just looking forward to talking about other things with people. Narwals, for instance. I’ve been dying to talk about them with someone all day, but every time I walk into a room, I’m bombarded with baby questions. Even when I try to tell people about these crazy whales with horns on their heads, people just look at me with this creepy face that says, “Oh look. The pregnant lady is interested in the outside world. How adorable!”

Even my closest friends take a while to get over it. One pal calls me Baby Factory, which used to be funny, but I’m just bored of being pregnant. I want this kid out. I think she will want to know all about the narwals. Maybe we’ll even go to crazy remote fjords in Greenland to look at them together.

Note: I’m writing this on my lunch break, so apologies in advance for a choppy/distracted feel.

I’ve been hesitant to write about an issue that’s cropped up these last few weeks, primarily because I wanted it to be fixed before hauling it out into public. However, the more persistent the issue becomes, the less interested I am in writing a blog essay ending with a clean little dénouement, and the more interested I am in suggestions from my readers that might lead to an actual, real-life solution.

The problem is my cat.

Shaun and I have had Giles for nearly 8 years. When we first met him at the shelter, he was horrible, rancid, and hissing in his cage at everyone. But something about the near-human personality in his voice drew me closer to him. He made Shaun and I laugh.

 “What about him?” I asked the attendant.
“You want to look at him?”

 We did. And I’m glad we did. From the moment he was out of his cage and given a few loving cuddles, Giles Alejandro Scimitar turned from screaming tomcat to a bonafide lover boy. He’s had his share of gross health issues (abscessed teeth make a cat smell like anchovies), but I take pride in our ability to be good pet owners. We’ve nursed him into a healthy, happy ten year old who pays us back in good humor and near-constant affection.

Giles has moved a grand total of 5 times, including a 1-year stint staying with my best girlfriend while Shaun and I lived in Scotland. With us, he’s lived in a downtown studio apartment, a freezing cold Wicker Park pad, a spacious Ravenswood one-bedroom, a roach infested NYC building on 186^th, and our current comfy 2-bedroom on Chicago’s north side. He has adapted brilliantly to each new place, happy to sit on the window sill and soak it all in.

We’ve also had a million and one changes in furnishings. We married young and started with zero. Over time, we built up our home with abandoned items left in alleyways. Eventually, we replaced our alley goodies with a combo of new and second hand furnishings. Giles is used to change. He keeps pace nicely.

All of this is to say: Giles has never sprayed, peed, shit, or ruined anything we’ve ever owned. He’s never felt threatened by new environments or items. He’s never destroyed anything out of malice. Until now.

We got all our baby items through Craigslist and garage sales, so the acquisition and change-over of the room from office to nursery was a gradual one. For months, our cat didn’t seem phased in the slightest by the new stuff. We’d bring the crib in and he’d just sniff it a bit and walk away.

We read something somewhere that said we should start making the nursery “off limits” early on to get pets used to not having access to it. We started keeping the door shut for a few months, but Giles seemed confused by the closed space and suddenly overwhelmed when the door would open while we were working in there. We figured that it probably didn’t make sense to him that the area was off limits and decided that it would all make sense to him once the baby arrived. So we started keeping the door open again. This approach was going well for about a month, until a few weeks ago, when I was organizing the baby’s garage sale clothes.

I noticed something strange on a pile of baby shoes that had been languishing on the floor. Dark, sticky, weird liquid was all over two little pairs of sneakers. I smelled it. Piss from hell.

I threw the shoes away. Giles glared at me. I glared at him. We didn’t cuddle that day.

A week passes with no incident until I go in the baby room to sweep while doing my chore rounds. And what is under the crib? A puddle. A pissy cat puddle. Shaun is commissioned to scrub the entire floor on hands and knees, searching for further pee-evidence. No new findings surface. We start saving for a vet appointment.

Giles and I are not getting along. He seems surlier than usual. He howls at my stomach when I rub stretch mark prevention cream on it in the evenings. I tell him he is a crabby animal and throw him off the bed. I dream that he runs away and I wake up feeling relieved.

A weekend passes. A garage sale car seat enters the home. Giles pisses in the base of it. I scrub it and scrub it and scrub it to get it smelling like normal again. I want to start closing the door to the nursery again, but fear that it will make the issue worse.  

Shaun does extensive internet research. He finds that cats spray because they feel like someone new is coming into the home and they want to imbue their cat scent in with their owners scent in case the newcomer thinks they don’t belong there. This makes me mildly sympathetic towards the cat, but I am still seething deep down. Shaun has always had more patience than me. I try to channel it.

Channeling is going well until damn cat pisses underneath the crib again yesterday morning, right before my very eyes. In fact, that bastardly cat met me at the bedroom door upon my waking and accepted cuddles from me before walking sassily into the nursery and pissing on the floor. Vet budgeting was nowhere near completed, but a same-day appointment was made that very morning. The credit card can take the $337 brunt for now. I needed answers. Especially since I now felt myself wanting to decapitate the animal I’ve always loved and considered a family member.  

On Monday, we have to drop off a urine sample at the vet’s to see if Giles’ issue is medical. This needs to be ruled out before it is determined to be a behavioral issue. While the vet is not a behaviorist, she recommended that we keep Giles’ litter box extra clean. This is a chore that Shaun has inherited from me, since pregnant people aren’t supposed to go around cat shit (there’s a bacteria lurking in there that can be deadly to unlucky fetuses). I’m not sure if Giles just hates the way Shaun cleans it or what, but I do suspect that I was more vigilant and thorough than he is (I’m being generous here). The vet also gave us a spray that prevents some cats from going near an area. However, the spray could possibly have the opposite effect, so we are really hesitant to try it.

When we got home, we did a bit more research and decided to try the following training steps:

1.)    Shaun needs to keep that litter clean in the way I clean it. Daily scooping. Weekly litter overhaul, which includes tossing all the litter and washing out the actual box with water and mild soap. A bit of baking soda and a thorough vacuuming of entire cat area.

2.)    Keep the nursery door open when we are home, but closed when we are out and at night. Hopefully, this will help Giles understand that the nursery is a “limited access area.” When we open the door to it and he rushes over, curious (as he does), we will take time to cuddle him in the nursery. We hope this cuddling will make him understand that he doesn’t need to feel threatened by the baby or her stuff.

3.)    We need to invest in a crib net.

4.)    We’ve already started keeping Giles out of the bedroom at night, since the baby will be in a bedside bassinet for her first month or so. However, to make sure he still knows he’s loved, we’ll take time out to snuggle him a little when the door opens in the morning.

5.)    We played Giles some audio of a baby crying. His ears went back, flat against his furry little head. He was not pleased. We will try to play him this audio while reassuring him with petting and soothing words for a few minutes every couple of days until baby comes. This is supposed to get cats used to the sound, which is apparently a total freak fest to them.  

 That’s all we’ve got for now. This is a deal breaker for Giles if he doesn’t straighten up—if I perceive a threat to the baby, obviously the baby stays and the cat gets the boot. But I’d like it if we could all be one happy family. I am willing to work for this, within reason. (Reason being: I can not see myself having the physical or mental ability to clean up both human and cat piss simultaneously.)

 The vet provided us information for a recommended a pet behaviorist to look into once the test results are in. This is something worth investigating, but I don’t think we can afford to go that route. Money is always tight for us, but particularly now.

If you have any suggestions or have dealt with something similar, please leave them in the comments. Thank you!

EDIT:
I should mention that Giles is nutered. I use the word “spray” but the pee is puddle pee. The vet suspects the sticky darker fluid in the shoes and car seat base were—get this—anal gland spray. Ewwwww! This is what nutered cats can spray when they are really pissed off or scared. The rest of the pissy stuff was just plain old puddle piss. And it only happens in the nursery. And he still usually uses his litter box most days.

Productive weekend. Made fajitas. Bought a breast pump. Picked up farm share. Made cabbage soup and chocolate zucchini cupcakes with farm share goodies. Collaged thank-you cards for some very nice people.  Aquired instructions for recently scored $15 garage sale car seat. Yoga class. Laundry mat. Dishes dishes dishes.

Recently, I joined an art collective called League of Extraordinary Letters. Basically, it is a nationwide collective that sends eachother little bits of art in the mail. (We are on a mission to revive snail mail and to give people a reason to do something creative just for fun.)

Now, I like to sketch and take photos, but I’m not an artist in the talented/motivated/dedicated sense of the word. However, I can write some funny stuff, including notes from a fictional family I call The Beefeaters. Today, I mailed League members a belated Beefeaters Christmas letter from 2007. (Because getting a holiday card in August is funny enough, let alone it coming from 2007.)

The actual Beefeaters letter involves some really bad clip art and newsletter formatting that won’t display properly on Xanga. But the actual copy is pretty funny (I think). I’ve included it below for your reading enjoyment.

Well 2007 sure was a doozy. Good health, good fortune, and good animal husbandry made us Beefeaters, a prime example of God’s great work. At my position of Midwest shipping and receiving manager for Omaha Steaks, I got a raise. They pay me in steaks as of now, but next year they promise money. This year I got a swanky new shirt. Teensey says it’s “Bitchin’”. Also a new Tim Horton’s opened up down the street. I love their Blueberry Muffins. Yum!

As you all may know, we experienced some sadness this year. We had to put my wife and our children’s mother, Brenda Beefeater, down in late October. She was getting old and having trouble moving around, so we thought it best to do the humane thing. But we would like to welcome the newest addition to our humble family, Brenda 2, a purebred beagle. It is a period of adjustment for us all, but soon I believe the children will respect and possibly love their new mother.

Lil’ Jericho’s football team went all the way to State this year. He scored the winning touchdown in the qualifying match against Goodrich. He’s also still dating Cindy Lou. It’s been 2 years and they’re still going strong. May God continue to give her the strength to contain herself until the vows are spoken.

Teensey’s doing better than anticipated. Lost 80 pounds this year and we couldn’t be more proud. Went to Uncle Tom’s cabin this Summer. It was a hoot! Chaperoned Lil’ Jericho’s school trip to Cedar Point, that Demon Drop is what Grandpa Horace calls a “Stool Loosener.”

Speaking of which, got a proctology appointment next week. It’s my first. Wish me luck! Well, whatever anyone else says, 2007 was a great year. May God bless and caress each and every one of us.

Yours in faith,

The Beefeaters

Shaun and I spent our entire day rotting away in a childbirth class called Great Expectations!.

As most people know, Dickens wrote a book with the very same name, sans exclamation mark. The themes of the Dickens book speak to the fact that most attempts at self improvement are fruitless; social standing and money will always trump a good heart and a healthy conscience. (Also: that rich girls are pretty, but can be total bitches.) The childbirth class, Great Expectations!, did not cover any of these ideas, although I think it would be really funny if the class was named ironically, as in:

Roughly six more weeks to go of this pregnancy business before Fetus becomes Baby on September 1. Winter seems like a thousand years ago.

In the early days of this pregnancy, my world was chronically gray and tempuratures hovered around thirty below. I waited for the bus with tears freezing in the corners of my eyes. I wore two coats and wished I owed a burka. At work, I felt hung-over. At home, I was in bed by 8. While we wanted to have a kid, and I was in the process of getting healthy enough to do so, the timing of this fetus’ conception was not what you’d call “planned.” We wanted to wait until Shaun secured full-time employement again, until our debts were paid down, until this world-wide recession is over. Seeing a pink plus sign emerge on pee-stick after pee-stick made me feel wildly out-of-control. We barely had money enough to cover our own asses; how could we afford a plus sign? Deeper still, I felt really stupid. It’s not like I don’t know how to prevent pregnancy; Shaun and I have been together for eleven years.

Emotional isolation finally drove us out of the pregnancy closet around the twelth week. I don’t know what I was expecting to happen when we broke the news to people (to be reprimanded? shunned?), but I was *shocked* at the outpouring of unbridled enthusiasm from our friends, family, and colleagues. I had been so worried and feeling so dog-tired and gross that my brain hadn’t acutally had time to realize that the Plus Sign was a happy thing. A thing that people wanted to help us with, to nurture, to rally around. All the gloom that I’d carried around for three months suddenly disapated. I was fine. Better than fine. I was great. Wonderful. Amazed and amazing.

Weeks ticked by and Plus Sign became Grain became Mantis became Fetal Friend. Most days, my body feels healthy, strong, and full of energy. I work out at least three times a week. I’m enjoying my friends and my career. I sometimes feel as if my partner and I are dating again, scrawny teenagers introducing ourselves to eachother and liking emensely what we see.

Little by little, same as before, Shaun and I will continue to piece together a sustainable future together. Only this time, that future dosn’t hold a hypothetical offspring. It holds a daughter.

The further I get into this eigth month, the more I notice that there are days when I just have to let Fetal Friend take me where she needs me to go. Gory details:
       
1.) The weight of my belly makes my hips decay in the night; most mornings, my hips feel ancient and rotted. Thank god my morning commute requires a 15 minute walk to the subway; once I move around a bit, everything feels alright.
       
2.) Somedays (like yesterday and today), my pelvic area aches and reduces my usual fast stride a slow waddle. I’ve been told this is “growing pains,” but it feels like I pulled my groin playing soccar.

3.) Some nights, Fetal wants me in bed before the sun goes down.

Most days, however, things are good and I feel great. Besides, it’s not the pregnancy that’s been keeping me too busy to blog, it’s life…
   
In late June, early July, my mom and I stayed with my grandparents in Colorado. Grandma cooked every evening, grandpa did all the driving, the fruit bowl was always full with loads of delicious apricots and cherries. Most days, the grandparents took mom and I on pretty little mountain rambles. Afternoons were spent reading novels. Evenings were spent conversing over delicious dinners. I love my grandparents.

The grandparents, me, and a 31-week-old Fetal Friend in Estes Park.

12,000 feet above sea level.

A grassy knoll.

This is what a day dream looks like.

House cats love mountains.

Why do elks always stop to take pictures of groups of humans?

Four generations of ladies. (One lives in my guts.)

We also spent two evenings with my aunt, uncle, and cousins in Longmont, where we were fed gormet meals on a beautiful back porch. Everyone seems so comfortable and at ease with eachother at my aunt and uncle’s house. My cousins don’t publicly display any signs of teenage snotiness; they are sweet, conversational, and seem genuinly happy to be part of the family. My aunt and uncle have done such a fine job at life.

From left: Grandma, Aunt Susan, Grandpa, Kaitlin, Zander, Uncle Keith, Me.

There was also afternoons spent looking at art at BMOCA and MCA Denver. Both museums were a trip, but most days I was just content to be breathing sparkly fresh air and having the tallest thing around have nothing to do with anything people made.

Shaun is absent from these snaps because he stayed behind in Chicago to start an internship. If you’re wondering what a highly educated proffessional a month shy his 30th birthday is doing interning, it’s called “When Life Gives You Global Economic Melt Down, Make Lemonaide!”

Shaun is still freelacing up a storm (he’s actually interviewing Zachary Quinto for an article today, and of this I have mixed feelings about. It’s weird when your husband chats up your Holywood crush, you know? Especially when it makes you realize that they look vaugely similar…), but securig full-time, stable employment has been elusive this year (welcome to America circa 2009!). Anyhow, Shaun figured that he’s more likely to meet professional contacts interning than freelancing from the kitchen table. The man has a fine attitude, that’s for sure. I can only aspire to be as calm and collected as he in the face of a shit storm.

Other than that, not much is new. I’ve been reading lots lately. Work is busy and good as I prep the department for my maternity leave.

Tomorrow, Shaun and I are attending a horribly named baby class called Great Expectations!, where we get a tour of the hospital, learn birthing techniques, and get a briefing on what to do with the little squid once we bring her home. Typically, people go to these classes throughout their pregnancy, but somehow we got busy so we’re doing the condensed version tomorrow from 8.30am-4.30pm. Yikes.

Next week, Shaun is on assignment at the San Dieago Comicon (yay money!) and I will be hosting my step dad (not to be confused with my mom’s husband, which we can now start referring to as Grandpa Rick) and his girlfriend. The weekend following, we’re off to Mighigan to celebrate a 50th wedding anniversary. When we get back, my colleagues at work are throwing me a baby shower, which is so so sweet, but sort of crazy and I just have to go with it because, you know, it’s my boss and stuff. The week following it’s our Infant CPR class so that we know what to do if she stops breathing, and then before you know it: BABY COMES OUT OF VAGINA.

Tonight we scored free tickets to see an improv musical staring Stephnie Weir and Nicole Parker (MadTV), Rachel Dratch and Seth Meyers (SNL) and Jack McBrayer (30 Rock). The show is at 10.30pm and I worry that I’ll be a sleepy, waddling preggo (me groin!). We’re meeting up with friends at a haunted pub before hand, too, so falling asleep would be extra anti-social.  We’ll see how it goes. If Fetal needs me to stay home and go to bed, I will. But I’m really trying to enjoy my last bit of not-arranging-and-budgeting-for-a-sitter time before it’s too late.
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What are you up to these days?

Looking at my paystub from last Friday, I noticed that I had one vacation day remaining for this fiscal year that I’d loose if I didn’t take advantage of this week. So, with little expectation, I took yesterday off work.

Chicago has dished me up more than a few Perfect Days in our time together. Unlike most cities, Chicago wants you to love her and isn’t afraid to woo. She knows she isn’t always pretty (November–March); she knows she’s smack-dab in the middle of nowhere (Illinois); and she knows that she isn’t always well behaved (political corruption, Cubs fans), but Chicago wants to make it up to you. And yesterday she had charm in spades.

The morning started out rain-streaked and stinking like a damp gym sock. I putzed around the house doing chores and listening to NPR. But by the time I had to leave to catch the bus to my noon hair appointment, the sun had come out and the day was transforming into a warm, happy thing.

After my hair trim, the day was truly beautiful and I found myself totally adverse to going back home. I had the whole day to myself—why not just go for a romp? I took the blue line downtown, transferred to pink, and soon found myself at the National Museum of Mexican Fine Art.

This was my first time at NMMA, but it won’t be my last. The gallery I spent the most time in focused on the history of Mexico, from ancient Mesoamerican civilizations to conquestadors to liberation to present day. The exhibition presented art works as direct outcomes of this history, which is not typically how art-history is discussed within museum walls.

Typically, art museums present work in a purely art historical context (how an artist impacted on subsequent movements, what movements this artist was born from), but rarely are the happenings of that artists life and time given much weight in an exhibition (you have to buy the catalogue for that).

It’s almost as if, unless an artist is overtly political, the assumption is that artists function outside the realm of their society. And while it’s true that artists sometimes live on the fringes, they are in no way elitist. They are everyday people, likely with first-hand experience with economic hardship by the very nature of their profession. Plus, artists spend much of their time observing the world around them, digesting it, and regurgitating it to show people something about their world that they might otherwise have missed. To exclude an artist’s society from discussions of their work is to exclude much of the point. Either that, or it assumes a lot of the museum visitor. It assumes that we are all highly educated people with knowledge of every nation’s history. Or it assumes that the visitor has $50 to drop on an exhibition catalogue.

The curatorial vision at the NMMA made no such assumptions. Their exhibition was fresh, accessible, and something every museum should take note of. I enjoyed the collections so much more once I had a thorough understanding of Mexican history; the works took on a new life. Art history was not held aloft and separate from the people who made it, the people for whom it was made for. Plus, the NMMA is free. What could be better?

After the NMMA, Fetal Friend was making her demands for food. Around 3pm, I stopped off at a place called Mi Cafetal and let a hoard of Mexican grandmothers pet my pregnant belly for luck. I don’t think I’d usually allow strangers to pet me, but these ladies wanted to feed me a free mango smoothie (“for el niña!”), so I let it fly. I devoured a delicious chicken torta on the cafe’s front patio, listening to the banda music piping from the next-door bodega and reading my library book. A weird dude sauntered over to my table at one point, sat down, and started to chat me up. Slightly annoyed, slightly flattered, I put my book down on the table, revealing my unmistakable middle. I’ve got to say: it was more than a little fun to watch him physically recoil and magically disappear.

With a full belly and a quieter fetus, I left the cafe to wonder the streets of Pilsen, a predominantly working class Mexican neighborhood on Chicago’s Southwest side. There are loads of great murals all over Pilsen—it was a pleasure just to stumble across them one by one.

Still not in the mood to return home, but wanting a change of scenery, I decided to get on the subway and head north. I found myself exiting at State and Lake to see if there might be a freebie concert on at Millennium Park. The department of cultural affairs puts on loads of free concerts in Millennium Park’s Pritzer Pavilion every summer, so I thought this was a likely prospect. I love laying out on the pavilion lawn; it is one of the most relaxing yet rejuvenating things a person can do in this fair city.

As luck would have it, Thursdays at 6.30pm, the Music Without Borders series is on at the park. I sent a text to Shaun and to our friends Melissa and Liam and an hour later, they all came down to meet me with picnic blankets and snacks for some incredible Pakistani music by singer Faiz Ali Faiz.

Once the concert was over, we were all thoroughly hungry for dinner. We made our way to the northside to Devon Avenue’s Little India to eat a late-night dinner at Hema’s Kitchen. The food was amazing and the company was even better.

Melissa and I went to school together (she’s was just a grade younger than me) and we were friends on the school bus. Apparently, we both went to Columbia to study film, although neither of us knew it until Facebook. These days, Melissa is a professional video editor married to a nice man who designs bottles for a living. Best of all, they are both hilarious and un-shy. We didn’t have to go through any of the “getting-to-know-you” bull crap when we first started hanging out this spring. We just started in with the jokes and the good conversation right off the bat.

We got home late (11:30 or so) and sleep was just getting to it’s deepest stages when the world was rocked by a massive thunder storm. After rushing about to close the windows, I stretched out and listened to the thunder crashing, the lightening electrifying the night. Fetal friend stirred as the rain pattered down and I felt so happy and so lucky to have such a good, very good life. I let the day carry me off and where it lead me is home.
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When is the last time you let a day take you on a whim? What did you do?

All I want to do today is lay in a shady hammock and read. Iced lemonade is somehow involved, although I always struggle when trying to have refreshments in a hammock—spillage is inevitable. Perhaps someone could rig me a separate little lemonade hammock, with a flat-bottomed plank, to dangle at just the perfect distance from me. While I’m in the hammock, a nice person might also fetch me a plate of Trader Joe’s Lemon Ice Cookies. I’d also like to have Prospect Magazine, Bust Magazine, and Gravity’s Rainbow near me, although I bet I’ll be drifting in and out of naptime for much of this scenario.

As you can tell, I’m feeling really motivated today. Back to work…
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If you could do anything today, what would you do?

I don’t know if it’s an attitude adjustment on my part or if impending motherhood has made the world warm up to me a little more, but life has been pretty freaking good lately. In particular, family life.

Lets be frank here: I love my family fiercely, but they’ve been known to cause me more stress than a timed math test. (If you know my relationship with algebra, that’s saying a lot.)

My mom and step dad’s relatively recent split and subsequent pairings with new loves required all the expected amounts of adjustment (as well as some new and surprising ones). Then there’s the inconceivably fucked up world of my dad’s family and the exhausting task of tending to Shaun’s mom’s perpetual state of worry. Sad but true: family get-togethers of the past have left me with a deep need for a dark silent room and a cold washcloth to drape over my eyes. But things are changing.  I dare say: they’ve changed.

After his visit in early spring, my step-dad has been calling weekly to check in on his grandbaby. While we’ve always talked regularly, we’ve never chatted weekly. It’s almost like the prospect of new life has allowed him to let go of something and give himself over to something softer. (In my company, anyhow.)

My mom and Rick came to visit last month and honestly, I had a blast. While my mom and I have always been close, the aforementioned period of adjustment added some annoying element of tension to our family interactions for a while. This seems to have dissipated entirely. We are at ease with one another, the four of us (mom & Rick; Shaun & me) working under a new calm. During their visit, we went on long walks, visited the farmers market, ate yummy dinners at home, rode bikes, hung out in the park, went to the zoo. It was really one of the most relaxing weekends I’ve had all spring.

Yesterday, Shaun’s mom and step-dad came into town. I feel awful having dished about my trepidation yesterday, as they’ve demonstrated nothing but pure sweetheart behavior. Their train came into the city at about 12:30 yesterday afternoon. Shaun and I fed them sandwiches, quinoa salad, and beer before taking them downtown to relax on a blanket at the free Blues Festival happening this weekend in Grant Park. Shaun’s step-dad is really into Blues; the rest of us aren’t adverse, but had more fun just chatting and eating almond M&Ms in the shade.

After a time, we wondered over to Millenium Park to show them The Bean. Once evening fell, we headed back to our neighborhood to pick up our first CSA box at the Friday Evening Farmers Market at Uncommon Ground. A great bluegrass band was playing the market and we hung out to listen to them for a time before walking home. We walked in the door just in time for the Red Wings game, which we turned on and let the parents veg out in front of while Shaun and I cooked up dinner with the fresh veggies from our CSA box.

For dinner, Shaun and I dished up cilantro pork chops, a warm veggie mix of kale/fingerling potatoes/heirloom radishes, and crusty grain bread. We ate at the table with the Red Wings loosing in the background and munched lime popsicles for dessert.

This morning, Shaun’s taken his family to the Chicago History Museum to check out the Abraham Lincoln  exhibition. I’m chilling out at home, not wanting to miss my noon pre-natal yoga class. We’ll all meet up for lunch and garage sale scouting this afternoon. The rain is supposed to let up by then, so lets hope that happens.

What we’ve not done is allow an unspoken tension to accumulate around us. This weekend is unfolding with the same ease as when my mom visited. It’s amazing!

Perhaps pregnancy has humbled me enough to be thankful for assistance when offered, and that helps ease tension. Perhaps the common goal of wanting the best for Little Skittle has made everyone forgive each other for the silly, minor familial infractions that normally cause irritation with prolonged exposure. Perhaps we’re all just letting go, letting change be, letting the chips fall where they may and allowing ourselves to be pleased with the results.
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Have you experienced a recent pleasant surprise?