For the Love of Technology

Tonight I would like to devote the blog to my friend Technology. It's kind of fitting, being that it is technology that brings you the blog, and after all, if you didn't have this blog to read, what would you be doing with your time? Don't answer that.

But I know what you're thinking..."You said you were a hobbit! You don't even know how to turn on your TV." Well, things change sometimes. Through methodical trial and error, I did learn how to turn on the TV. And I can even get the DVD player to work, as long as I have a little time, and no one is looking at me.

This afternoon, Rob and I got in the car to drop some gifts off at the post office. But we didn't know where the post office was. So I Googled it on my phone and came up with several options--Google immediately returned them in the order of their proximity to my house. On the way, I realized I needed to drop my keys off with our catsitter, but I didn't know her address. So I searched for her business (again on Google, but this blog is not about Google, so I'm done mentioning them now), found her phone number and called her for the address. We put the coordinates into our car GPS and went there from UPS (we ended up at UPS because the post office lines were long and, according to Rob, the post office smelled like "ass.")

The catsitter lives in a neighborhood we don't know very well, and we remembered that we needed to get cat food. So I searched for pet supplies in the neighborhood and found a store a few blocks away. After that, we were hungry, so I logged into Zagat.com to find the best pizza places in the city. The winner was Little Star Pizza, which ended up being close to our house. I called to place the order, we drove there, and left with our dinner.

This is notably different from the last time I lived in San Francisco, when one late night in a cab, my friend Krista called 411 and asked the operator to "find a pizza place near my house." The operator hung up and Krista ate Spaghettios.

Thank you, Technology. I'm sorry for all the things I said about you.

Brittany Murphy Dies

I just read that Brittany Murphy died yesterday. I don't enjoy hearing about 32-year-old people going into full cardiac arrest. I promise to post something positive tomorrow, but for now let me just admit that when the movie Clueless came out, I saw it three times in the theater. It changed the way I dressed and spoke, at least for a little while (yep, that's embarrassing), and as recently as Thanksgiving, I did quote the line about "Marky Mark's busy pants dropping schedule."

Anyway, I was sorry to read this news.

Therapy

So far throughout my pregnancy, I've been feeling really good. Not one day of morning sickness, for which I feel so insanely lucky that part of me is sure this baby is going to be a devil of a toddler just to make up for it. It's a foregone conclusion that she'll be a terrible teenager--karma I no doubt deserve.

I've stayed pretty active, walking and doing yoga, and I'm eating well, if you don't count the occasional Trader Joe's corn dog that somehow finds its way into the microwave. Food on a stick--hard to resist.

But I do have one complaint and that is a chronic pain in my back. Every day by the afternoon there is a sharp, uncomfortable ache that becomes unbearable by the evening and only feels better when I finally lie down with my new best friend--a 5 foot bed pillow.

I should really get a massage and I know this is obvious, but I somehow have not yet scheduled that. Instead, I just fling myself to the ground and moan in pain while performing normal functions like preparing dinner or checking email.

Tonight, when Rob came home from work, he rubbed my back while I took a break from cooking.

"How does it feel?" I asked.

"I don't know," he said.

"Like, does it feel tight and bumpy?" I was sure there were knots like rocks up and down my shoulder blades.

"It feels whiny," he said.

Visitors

My mom and my uncle Frank were in town this weekend, which was wonderful for many reasons, including getting to hear the story of how I was born with hair on my shoulders. "We're going to have a gorilla baby," Rob said. "She was more like a bear," my uncle said.

We went to a holiday party at a neighbor's house on Saturday night. My mother--the semi-retired kindergarten teacher--immediately found the playroom where all the kids were hanging out, and fell upon them and their toys. "This is Gideon," she told me when I peeked in. "And this is Max. We don't know this little girl's name, but I think she speaks French. Bonjour!" She handed me her wine, so that she could help Max figure out how to work the little electronic guitar he had presented her with. He lost interest in it soon after that and tried on the other kids' shoes instead.

Later, as we all sat on the couch in front of trays of shrimp and cocktail sausages, a three-year-old wandered up and started to bite little pieces of sausage and put them back in the tray. He then buried a shrimp in the cocktail sauce and proceeded to smear ketchup all over the crackers he was licking and placing back in their dish. He walked up to me with a little sausage in his hand and put it in my mouth. I was too surprised to protest, so I delicately removed it, thanked him, and wadded it up in a napkin. "I can't believe you let him do that," said my mother, who earlier that day had put a stevia leaf from Golden Gate Park into her own mouth. "Please don't eat the plants," I said at the time.

It seems that although there were plenty of adults present, and it was quite a nice party, I am preoccupied with thoughts of children these days, and it's their antics that stayed with me. "Our daughter will never be allowed to behave that way at a party," Rob said later of the sausage prince.

It was fun to have company in the house, and people to cook with. Frank and my mom made tilapia with peppers, onions and lime one evening, and we made squash soup and pizza for another meal. We went out for an Italian dinner in North Beach and a Vietnamese dinner at one of our favorite restaurants on the water, overlooking the Bay Bridge, so bright and accessible it looked like a Christmas decoration.

They brought gifts for the baby: a pair of overalls from Mom, a tie-dyed onesie from my Aunt Cathy, a set of 5--yes 5--colorful socks from Frank. And in thanks, the baby kicked for them. My mom sat next to me on the couch, her hand on my stomach before her cab arrived. "She's in there right now," she said. "Working on growing her shoulder hair."

What a Dick

I will be pretty disturbed if our daughter ever does anything like this. But since it's not my kid and not my mansion, I am instead pretty amused.

24 Weeks

Brooke took this picture on Saturday night. I can't decide which is bigger, my stomach or Rob's head.

Deepish Thursday

We are still adjusting to life in San Francisco: the neighborhood, the time zone, Rob's new job, my work from home, having a car and therefore being able to go to Trader Joe's whenever we want...standard things. I spend a lot of time inside during the day, which I guess is what anyone who works in an office does, whether that office is a train ride away or just down the hall from the bedroom. I often report to colleagues over the phone that the weather "looks" nice, but I wouldn't really know that from a first-hand perspective.

The baby kicks all the time now. Or maybe she's punching me, I'm not sure. It basically feels like a Taekwando class in there, and I imagine her taking aim and delivering a swift scissor kick as she rolls right to avoid contact with today's chosen nemesis, the umbilical cord. But look out--it's attached to her! So she just has to keep rolling around and kicking. We call her "Little Baby" because we are not feeling more creative than that. I spend my time working out what her actual name will be when she arrives, but that, too, might just be "Little Baby" based on my progress. I recall the skier Picabo Street whose name for something like the first 3 years of her life was "Little Girl." I might be making that up, though, because I see no reference to it on Wikipedia.

I'm taking prenatal yoga classes at a nearby studio, where we start each session by going around the room and sharing things about our pregnancy, so that I know I'm not the only one with insane leg cramps in the middle of the night, occasional crankiness, and a suddenly constant desire to curl into a ball and go to sleep (which I did two days ago on the exam table in my doctor's office, but that's only because they kept me waiting so long.)

I feel very lucky that we're here, that the baby is so far healthy, that all of the unpacked boxes are currently hidden in a room I don't go into very often, that Rob and I have found good Italian, Thai and Indian restaurants in the neighborhood. And that when the baby is born, she'll likely be able to protect me from any adversaries with some well-timed jabs.