Baby Bangs! Just in case I have a bald baby girl, because that would be too terrible to imagine. I was a bald baby myself, and would have LOVED to have worn a synthetic toupee for my early months of life. I still feel the persecution of those difficult times.

Well, I’m in the final countdown now with the pregnancy. About 6 and half weeks left to go. Pregnancy has been really weird. I work very hard to create realistic expectations, but boy, was I way off on this one. Realism was not enough to prepare me for the reality of my particular pregnancy.

I didn’t expect pregancy to be the defining factor of my existence. I expected it to be a somewhat inconvenient but interesting period of anticipation. You know, last hurrahs of the old independent life, getting ready for the new parent life. In fact, I lived more or less as an invalid for the first six months– first due to doctor restrictions on a high risk pregnancy, then due to severe and ongoing nausea. For so many days and weeks and months my daily agenda was 1. Be pregnant and 2. try to do one other thing. The nausea hasn’t totally abated, but now I can mow the lawn, eat a meal, or get up quickly from the couch without retching. FREEDOM! It looks like the freedom may be shortlived as more late pregancy symptoms crop up, but by golly I’m going to live like a functional adult while I can.

I didn’t expect my self-identity to be so affected. I was suprised by how much my sense of self turned out to be determined by my body. I thought of myself as a person with a certain energy level, capable of doing x kinds of things, with y appearance, and z tastes in food etc. Having all this go out the window virtually at once has been shocking. I remember many days feeling like, “who am I again?” For many months the only outward physical sign of pregnancy was a rapidly increasing bra size, coupled with a rapidly shrinking pants size due to weight loss. I had the hips I remembered from college but something all new going on up front. I didn’t get over feeling self-concious about it until my belly grew big enough to stick out further than my chest, at around 6 and a half months. For some reason that configuration seems more… acceptable?

I didn’t expect so many people to be so deeply interested in my pregancy. In the past, when friends have gotten pregnant, I have felt excited for them and interested in the changes in their lives, but not necessarily yearning for gory details or anything like that. I kind of thought that everyone was that way and thus have been careful not to burden most people with too much pregnancy info. After all, people procreate every day, and just because I think my baby is special, I didn’t expect anyone other than the grandmothers to think that too. But it has been a nice surprise to have some friends and family kindly insist, through questions, prayers, gifts, information, and other kinds of support that they really do care about the details.

I didn’t expect pregnancy to be so political. I probably should have,though. We all know that’s true for childrearing, but it actually starts much earlier. There are moral opinions on everything from how one gets pregnant (or doesn’t), to how you act while you are pregnant, to childbirth and delivery. While my friends and family don’t burden me with judgment or unasked for advice, I have stepped into a few landmines here and there with people I don’t know as well. I have offended a bit with the occasional parasite joke or irreverent attitude towards my own pregnancy. People who have found pregnancy to be a special, even sacred, experience don’t go for my jokes much. Why would I laugh at CREATING NEW LIFE? For me, though, thinking that building a new human bit by bit is pretty amazing coexists just fine with a few eye-rolls. It’s part of learning to appreciate the experience. As I’m sure, when the baby is born, I will obsessively and completely adore every centimeter of her, and also find time to poke fun at her monkey toes or the weird sounds she makes when she poops. Note to Baby: come out pretty soon so I can hear the gross sounds you make!

There are still a few more days in Poetry Month (April) to appreciate the latest and greatest from Unsplendid, the online poetry zine I edit with some friends. I wrote the preface this time, which is like a FREE blog post. http://unsplendid.com/

Copy and paste this into your own blog, if you want to participate. Then, bold the items that you’ve actually done.

1. Started your own blog

2. Slept under the stars

3. Played in a band

4. Visited Hawaii

5. Watched a meteor shower

6. Given more than you can afford to charity

7. Been to Disneyland

8. Climbed a mountain

9. Held a praying mantis

10. Sang a solo

11. Bungee jumped

12. Visited Paris

13. Watched a lightning storm at sea

14. Taught yourself an art from scratch

15. Adopted a child

16. Had food poisoning

17. Walked to the top of the Statue of Liberty

18. Grown your own vegetables

19. Seen the Mona Lisa in France

20. Slept on an overnight train

21. Had a pillow fight

22. Hitch hiked

23. Taken a sick day when you’re not ill

24. Built a snow fort

25. Held a lamb

26. Gone skinny dipping

27. Run a Marathon

28. Ridden in a gondola in Venice

29. Seen a total eclipse

30. Watched a sunrise or sunset

31. Hit a home run

32. Been on a cruise

33. Seen Niagara Falls in person

34. Visited the birthplace of your ancestors

35. Seen an Amish community

36. Taught yourself a new language

37. Had enough money to be truly satisfied

38. Seen the Leaning Tower of Pisa in person

39. Gone rock climbing

40. Seen Michelangelo’s David

41. Sung karaoke

42. Seen Old Faithful geyser erupt

43. Bought a stranger a meal at a restaurant

44. Visited Africa

45. Walked on a beach by moonlight

46. Been transported in an ambulance

47. Had your portrait painted (kind of? spent an afternoon as a model for an artist friend once)

48. Gone deep sea fishing

49. Seen the Sistine Chapel in person

50. Been to the top of the Eiffel Tower in Paris

51. Gone scuba diving or snorkeling

52. Kissed in the rain

53. Played in the mud

54. Gone to a drive-in theater

55. Been in a movie

56. Visited the Great Wall of China

57. Started a business sort of? freelancing.

58. Taken a martial arts class

59. Visited Russia

60. Served at a soup kitchen

61. Sold Girl Scout Cookies

62. Gone whale watching

63. Got flowers for no reason

64. Donated blood, platelets or plasma

65. Gone sky diving

66. Visited a Nazi Concentration Camp

67. Bounced a check

68. Flown in a helicopter

69. Saved a favorite childhood toy

70. Visited the Lincoln Memorial

71. Eaten Caviar

72. Pieced a quilt

73. Stood in Times Square

74. Toured the Everglades

75. Been fired from a job

76. Seen the Changing of the Guards in London

77. Broken a bone

78. Been on a speeding motorcycle

79. Seen the Grand Canyon in person

80. Published a book

81. Visited the Vatican

82. Bought a brand new car

83. Walked in Jerusalem

84. Had your picture in the newspaper

85. Read the entire Bible

86. Visited the White House

87. Killed and prepared an animal for eating

88. Had chickenpox

89. Saved someone’s life

90. Sat on a jury

91. Met someone famous

92. Joined a book club

93. Lost a loved one

94. Had a baby

95. Seen the Alamo in person

96. Swam in the Great Salt Lake

97. Been involved in a law suit

98. Owned a cell phone

99. Been stung by a bee

I teach at two different community colleges. The first is a school that specializes in preparing people for careers– nurses, HVAC techs, machinists, etc. Most of the students are older than a typical college student, and many are already working and have families. The second is a school that specializes in general education so that people can transfer to a university. Those students tend to be predominantly just-out-of-high-school. Many still live with their parents and go to school full time.

I like both institutions (and their students), but I only fear for my fenders at the second one. It has a much larger student body and as a whole, the younguns are terrible drivers. In addition to the constant near misses I witness in the parking lot and the intersections closest to the school, a surprising number of my students end up missing class due to car accidents or court appearances related to traffic violations. Some of them are probably lying, but still. I’d estimate the traffic accident/violation rate in my classes at around 10%. I feel like doing a unit in the critical thinking portion of the class on Consequences of Gunning the Engine at Every Opportunity.

Well, I’m sitting here listening to the new U2 (competent as expected but on the boring side so far. I like “I’ll go Crazy” pretty well.) and wondering what happened to my blog header. To fix or change it I have to find a new one, download it to my PC, FTP it to my server, and then import it. I don’t feel like doing that. So, we will be header-free for awhile.

Also thinking about pregnancy, as I am about to hit the halfway mark. I was never one of those women who desired pregnancy per se; I was happily not pregnant for most of my adult life (despite wanting kids), and even now I view it more as a means to an end than as a must-have experience. Intellectually, I understand the point of view of women who cherish the almost miraculous ability to help a child to grow inside their bodies. It is pretty cool that we can do that. Emotionally, though, I don’t feel it. If I could tag-team with Dr. G on the project I probably would. The highlights of pregnancy so far have all been ultrasounds, when I can see little Toots (our nickname for her) move around. What with her high-risk start to life, followed by my emergency appendectomy surgery, and then the usual gender and anatomy checks, I’ve gotten more than the usual share of glimpses into the womb and those make me feel more connected to her than any number of pains and discomforts. Every significant change in my body requires a week or two of getting used to, including experiencing the first flutters of Toots moving around. I’m now at the point where I like them because I get a sense of what she is up to, but originally they were disconcerting. They were so clearly unconnected to any intentions or movements of my own body. Invaders! was my initial, illogical feeling on the matter, despite the fact that I had done everything in my power to get and keep little Toots in there. Having to continually adjust is probably good practice, given that she will continue to constantly change things after she is in the free air.

The advent of the flutters, combined with my pants finally just not zipping, combined with continued barfing, got me speculating on other less invasive ways of reproducing. What if we could just lay eggs? But then we’d have to sit on them for who knows how long, which would be far more incapacitating (though at least that way both parents can share the burden). Dr. G pointed out that we could just buy an incubator. I imagined all the factions that would form around pro- and anti- incubator stances. The antis would form groups and publish screeds against artificial incubation and list reams of facts for why it is better to sit on them yourself. The rich women who were feeling guilty about not wanting to sit on their own eggs would hire 3rd world women to sit on them so the eggs would still get the personal touch. And just think of the battles over hatching! What if your hired egg sitter was the one present when they first hatched, rather than the mother? Or if they started to hatch while you were at work? The incubators would have to come with little hatch alarm systems.

Popular plotline:

Lovely teenage girl moves to small town. While ordinary teenage boys vie for her attention, she only has eyes for a gorgeous, brooding loner, who is set on avoiding her. Finally the brooding loner confesses his attraction but declares that romance is impossible, as they are too different. Relationship progresses anyway. Lovely teenage girl discovers that her boyfriend is -GASP!- a vampire! But a good, REFORMED vampire, who does not eat people. However, he sometimes confuses his desire to kiss her with his desire to suck her dry, a problem he overcomes with tremendous self-control and a good supply of animal blood.

Does this describe:

a) Stephanie Meyer’s novel Twilight, 2005
b) Buffy the Vampire Slayer, Season 1, 1997
c) both

I don’t normally follow vampire-type stuff so I don’t know if this is just a common theme in the lit, or if there’s some borrowing going on. Granted the two girl characters are completely different, as are the romantic relationships. The Twilight relationship, though billed as a wonderful chaste romance, actually strikes me as fairly creepy and obsessive.

This plot similarity came to my attention a couple weeks ago. I was reading some review of something or other that, once again, referenced Buffy the Vampire Slayer, a TV show from 12 years ago. They are still mentioning this show? I thought to myself. Maybe I should check it out. It seemed like it might be my kind of thing, given the superheroes, the battles between good and evil, the scripture references, and so on. Turns out hulu.com has seasons 1 and 2 available and I’ve been working my way through. It looks like later seasons might get a little too soap opera for my taste, but the early episodes are quite enjoyable. Most of them take some ordinary aspect of poor teenage decision-making and ramp it up into cosmic doom narrowly averted, a format which I find funny. In one, this girl meets her soulmate in an online chatroom. Her friends all caution her that this guy may not be a sensitive 18-year-old from the next town over; what does she REALLY know about him? She brushes off their warnings. When they meet, it turns out that he is an ancient mind-control demon embodied in a 12-foot robot, out to take over the world. OH NO! EVIL ROBOT! Buffy saves her at the last second. There are also the love triangles, parental and authority figure issues, and friendship quandaries that are de rigeur for teen-focused television (hence the vampire romance between Buffy and Angel). I’m partway through season 2, where the menace level and the complexity of evil both seem to ramp up a bit from snakes, robots, and praying mantises. Still works, though.

The other thing I really like about the show is Buffy herself. She is surprisingly non-angst-ridden for a) a superhero and b) a teenage girl. Sure, she occasionally rebels against the save-the-world duties thrust upon her by fate, but overall she thinks it is pretty cool that she can single-handedly beat up and kill any evil creature that looms up in front of her. She is self-confident, loyal to her friends, nice to everyone else, and an advocate of mercy and compassion wherever possible. She is also VERY cute. Lest we find her too perfect, she does occasionally get moody, sarcastic, and distant. She frustrates her mother to no end. Usually she is out rescuing all of her friends and family from imminent destruction, but once in awhile they get to rescue her. Good times.

Phoenix is hard-hit by the recession. One of the best barometers of how things are going economically has been the prayer request email that gets sent out as needed from the church office. Our church is pretty solidly middle class– lots of teachers, nurses, mechanics, construction workers, police officers, handymen, and small business owners. People call in with their requests and depending on the urgency, they get broadcast to the church body in batches. What is happening in the church is what is happening in the city.

Last year this time, or a little earlier, many of the requests were for people trying to sell houses– they were losing money, potential buyers couldn’t get loans, things were sitting for months. Next it was the health problems. Some of it was run-of-the mill requests for illnesses and accidents, but several were related to problems with insurance and covering medical costs. Next it was small business owners whose capital and access to small business loans had dried up.

I haven’t seen a lot of church emails about layoffs and paycuts yet, but many of the people I know, here and in California, are facing imminent change. As employees of the public higher ed systems, both Dr. G. and I have our work emails flooded with budget-related memos, dire warnings, and drastic measures, some of which affect us.

In the past 8 months or so, I have only bought clothing from going-out of business sales. Those directional sign-holders now line the streets to advertise close-outs and liquidations in most parts of town. A few months ago, I counted six of them in a quarter-mile section of a major shopping area.

The constant building of gated communities and subdivisions, which was a main source of Phoenix wealth that fed off the constant growth, seems to have mostly stopped. Zillow alerts me monthly to the number of foreclosures in my immediate neighborhood. A friend’s daughter just bought a 2-yr-old foreclosed upon house for $90 k; it would have gone for over $200k in the past. I know a handful of people who have gone through foreclosure or had to destroy their credit and short-sell their houses.

The dominoes are still falling. And yet, among my friends and family, I do not find the grimness of mood that I might have expected. Some things are hard; but many other parts of life are good and full of hope. Things may, and probably will, get worse; but there is a feeling in the air of surely being able to face them when they come. My church is especially family-like, with an ethos of all pitching in when one has need, so maybe some of it is unique to that group. But I also think the optimism is particularly American, and a quality I have sorely missed when I spend lengths of time in other countries. Even though our optimism becomes annoyingly blithe and simplistic far too often, it is still, overall, good.

This month’s division of personal energy while awake, by task:

Work-related activities: 30%
Holding very, very still: 20%
Maintaining positive attitude: 30%
Church/volunteer activities: 10%
Investing in friends and family: 5%
Doing household chores: 2%
Miscellaneous: 3%