Monthly Archives: November 2007

Oh my

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Well, uhm… so I’ve been looking at my stomach for a bit and going “There is no way I am only as far along as I think. No freakin way.” Yesterday I *finally* had an examination by a midwife (long story) and, well… I’m right. Looks like I am 17-ish weeks which means that if I actually judge from that last period more like about 18 weeks. I think I am probably going to get an ultrasound just so that I can have a more firm due date–still not finding out gender though. This means I shoot from being almost done with the third month to being more like start of the fifth month. This means I didn’t get a positive home pregnancy test until 11 weeks in. This means I had tattoo work done while pregnant. This means I drank enough to get drunk a couple of times while pregnant. This means I uhm celebrated my birthday while pregnant. Ah shit. No use crying over spilled milkshake.

Midwife said that I am heavy enough to start with that it isn’t a big deal that I still haven’t gained weight and I think this is a reasonable belief as well. She’s happy that I started on prenatal vitamins so early–which may be part of why I’m not having cravings. She thinks that I do need to stay on fish oil because flax seed isn’t as pregnancy friendly. 🙁

And this means that I was bitching about not getting pregnant quickly enough while I was pregnant. *blush* This means I got pregnant in June after going off birth control mid-cycle in May. That’s pretty funny considering how upset I was.

psa–the future

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How do I say this. How do I believe this. But yet… Noah and I have decided to leave the bay area. We have been talking extensively for the past almost two years about how we would manage to afford the things we want while staying here and the options have never been pretty. Mostly what we figured out was all the ways we would have to compromise the things we want in order to afford the basics of life here. Of course it would be easy to stay here if I kept working, but that would be giving up on the most important things that we want for our children and that is to not put them in daycare and to allow them to homeschool. This is a difficult position to be in.

After a great deal of talking about our options we decided that having a certain standard of living is non-negotiable for us and the only way to have that is if we drastically cut some of our primary expenses. The only way we can make this happen is if we leave California. We have considered a wide variety of locations as possible destinations and have decided that Pittsburgh is the best option for us. Noah has friends there, job leads, and the cost of housing is simply unbeatable for places we would consider living.

We have been doing research on the area, but of course we realize that there is only so much we can do from our comfy California couch. If you have input on things we should know about different areas of town or specific helpful information about cross country moves (I have never done this sort of thing before) please feel free to tell us.

What I (and probably Noah too) don’t want to hear are complaints or criticisms about our choice, whining about how we can leave, dire predictions of failure, or other snotty opinion sharing of an unhelpful nature.

We don’t plan to leave until after the baby is born. Apparently home birth isn’t exactly legal (or illegal–it’s confusing) in Pennsylvania so it’s going to be a bit odd to deal with that once I’m already set on my option. I also have the convention in February to consider and I’m not going to flake on my obligations. (I swear Jon–I won’t abandon you too.) We will miss people, of course. But I believe that those who are our friends will handle the distance. Those who fade away probably would have anyway.

(Yes, I know this is public.)

Some parents rock.

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Dear Ms. Gibbs,

Thank you for your explanation re: the rap song and your intentions behind presenting it in class. It does amaze me that it is hard to convince students that tragedy is still relevant today. I feel that they are overwhelmed with tragedy and tend to block out its reality. (Just listen to or watch the news daily.) Maybe it is a self-protection mechanism?

Congratulations on your upcoming delivery. I hope that all goes well, now and for the next 20 years!

D D

This is when I love parents. 🙂

Dreaming about the future

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Noah and I have been having conversations that are simultaneously terrifying and very exciting. Contemplating how different my life will be in a year no matter what means that thinking about adding on a huge additional change is… nervous making.

What in my life is going to actually last through the baby transition? How many of my “friends” are people I barely speak to now but they will disappear completely when I am kid-enabled? How many of the gatherings I attend will I be able to attend in a year? In three years? I noticed recently that even though an event I went to would be nominally ok with my kidlets attending, I wouldn’t want my kids there past about two because my kids don’t need to hear graphic conversations about anyone’s sex life. It really isn’t that I all of a sudden disapprove of people talking about their sex lives–more that I am thinking about context and who needs to hear that conversation. I wouldn’t be ok with demanding that my peeps all of a sudden sensor everything they want to say when my children walk into the room, but that means I have to self select out. What will be left?

Any and all poly/kink gatherings are going to be absolutely completely and totally inappropriate. Which also includes parties thrown by people I know through those communities and that seriously cuts back on the number of people I know in general. I’m not really involved in Dickens or Faire and I can’t picture that involvement ever becoming serious. I can’t go alone (no ditching Noah with the kids), I think dragging the kids along would be a nightmare by myself for the first five years or so and he doesn’t want to go so that’s not an option. Noah has uhm strong feelings about the dance community so I will never again be heavily involved in that. I’m not going to bother to go through why I won’t be heavily involved in the Burner community. What am I left with? A few individual people. Oh wait, and some of those individual people are not real into kids so they won’t want to spend time with me anyway. Right. Ok, let’s narrow down the few individual pro-kid friends I have. Busy, busier, and OMG busy. I am not procreating in a pro-kid peer group so this is going to be interesting. Some of the pro-kid people I know are thinking about moving away. That’s going to narrow the focus even more.

I know people who hand off the children so they can go have social lives. I have no intention of being one of them. Well, I’m sure I will hire a babysitter once in a while–but I intend for this to be pretty rare.

It’s just all so much to think about.