Off-Piste

Hasta luego amigos!

2009-12-20T21:19:00.000-08:00

We're off to Mexico tomorrow and I'll be on vacation from blogging as well as from everything else. If you miss me while I'm away, just picture me here.

Ice ice baby

2009-12-17T21:07:00.000-08:00

At childbirth prep class last night we learned some pain coping techniques and then practiced them.

Our teacher used ice as a simulation of the contractions. We would each hold a handful of ice in our bare hands for a full minute, then we'd get to put it down until the next "contraction" started. I didn't find it that painful but apparently some people in the class found it extremely uncomfortable, which I guess is kind of the point.

We also spent most of the three hours of class sitting on the floor, which for some folks* was more than enough practice in coping with pain and discomfort.

During each icy contraction we practiced the different techniques we were learning. One of them involved mooing like a cow. I actually found it quite effective as getting my mind off the pain and even kind of fun. I also liked the one where Eric held one of my feet and just gently squeezed it.

Am I preparing for childbirth or for getting a pedicure at a petting zoo? I think possibly both.

*Eric

Secret Santa

2009-12-16T09:20:00.000-08:00

Either our cleaning people have switched to old-fashioned feather dusters, or my Secret Santa this year is a pigeon.
(My skylight was closed when I left last night and when I came in this morning.)

Lost and found

2009-12-15T13:45:00.001-08:00

I went to the bathroom during a meeting today at my client's offices and was perplexed to discover a pair of panties left in one of the stalls. The panties were bikini style, black with white dots along the seams. They were laying on the seat as though casually misplaced by their owner, like an umbrella or a scarf might be forgotten when they aren't acutely needed.

How do you accidentally forget your panties in the bathroom?

When I went back an hour later they were gone. It remains unclear whether they were reclaimed by their original owner or sent to the landfill by the cleaning staff. Or perhaps they were adopted by a particularly forgiving and opportunistic woman.

How to tell your downstairs neighbors that you are expecting a child

2009-12-14T13:32:00.000-08:00

Just 5 easy steps:

1. Happen to take the same bus as downstairs neighbor in the morning, but don't acknowledge each other or say hello.*

2. Also happen to take the same bus as a friend who lives across the street who is also pregnant.

3. Sit next to pregnant friend and within earshot of unacknowledged neighbor.

4. Discuss pregnancy with pregnant friend.

5. Observe shocked and horrified look on neighbor's face when she realizes she will be getting a new, very small and probably very noisy neighbor this coming spring.

*Eric took the bus with me this morning and he is the one who has met her before and recognized her. I didn't know she was our neighbor.

200 thoughts for the bus

2009-12-11T12:33:00.001-08:00

I realized late last night that I was going to have to take the bus early this morning and neither Eric nor I had any single bills or more than a few stray pennies in our wallets.

I took a moment to wander aimlessly around the apartment in search of inspiration or some pile of small bills I had put down and forgotten about.

I didn't find any small bills. What I did find was a jar of pennies.

So I counted out 200 pennies, put them in a plastic baggie and put them in my coat pocket for the morning.

Epilogue:
The bus driver gave me a quizzical look as I hauled the sack of pennies out of my pocket.

"I'll just be a sec. You can go ahead - I'm balanced." The last thing I wanted was a busload of glaring non-morning people blaming me for making them late to work, or wherever they were all going.

The bus driver looked at me, may or may not have sensed the potential rage of the other passengers, and decided that driving on would be a good idea. Everyone went back to their reading, napping, or vacant staring, as desired.

It took me two stops to get all of the pennies funneled into the machine. The full fare "beep" was a great, great sound to hear.

Let it snow

2009-12-10T22:31:00.001-08:00

On Monday, I was in a meeting with my team and our clients at their office buidling on Market Street downtown.

We were about two hours into a four hour meeting when one of my team members stopped mid-sentence and got up out of her chair and walked to the window.

"It's snowing!" she exclaimed.

And it was. Right here in San Francisco. Little white flakes falling from the sky as though that were a completely normal thing in a city where the temperature is, I think it is appropriate to use the word, never below freezing.

As we all stood there in the window looking out we saw that the people in the building opposite us were all doing the same thing - window after window had amazed faces in it. The ones who could open their windows were sticking their heads out of them like dogs in a moving car.

It lasted about 90 seconds, then turned to sleet, and then regular rain.

Later that afternoon, there was some very small hail, too.

Family traditions

2009-12-09T13:48:00.000-08:00

Eric and I got a Christmas tree on Saturday and trimmed it on Sunday. It is just a wee bit larger than the tree we got last year (we're moving slowly) and it was really fun taking out the lights, the bead garlands and the ornaments and decorating the tree this year. You may notice the make-your-own-ornaments from last year which include Eric's bloodshot eyeball and my clown-drag queen snowperson. Make-your-own ornaments for this year are still to come. Watch out!

(We did not intentionally take this photo to hide my increasingly large belly, or to emphasize my foot; it just worked out that way.)

We also made cookies. Just like last year. They're very modern, and delicious.

These traditions make me feel like we are a real family. I love coming home to the tree and the lights and the cookies each night. It feels great to celebrate even these little things.

So they might be good on pizza

2009-12-08T14:42:00.000-08:00

Savory-vegetable-flavored jelly beans came up at work today. What would be good? Cauliflower? Yam?

A colleague who had just been on the Jelly Belly factory tour chimed in to say that they have the Harry Potter inspired flavors of dirt, boogers, barf and more. She sampled them all (ew) and said they were disturbingly true to their names (double ew).

Then she shared this interesting fact: the barf one wasn't very hard to come up with - they just tweaked their pepperoni flavor and were able to totally nail it.

Triple ew.

Push

2009-12-06T20:45:00.000-08:00

We started our natural childbirth class last Wednesday. It is a 36 hour class. This is a lot of time but giving birth feels to me like something I would rather risk being over-prepared for than under-prepared.

The first 3-hour class session laid the groundwork for working together. The other 4 couples in the class are a lot like us: white, 30-something* professionals who are having their first babies.

Other than introductions and a lot of administrative stuff, the theme of the class was "unlearning" what we have learned about childbirth from the media throughout our lives. We watched a video which showed maybe a hundred birth scenes from tv shows and movies from the past 30+ years.

This video included labor and birth scenes from the Coneheads movie, Junior (where Arnold Schwarzenegger, our illustrious governor, gives birth), and a Star Trek birth where, because the baby has already sprouted its horns in utero they opt for the "fetal transport" and the baby is beamed effortlessly and painlessly onto a table next to the mother.

They say that the technology supporting childbirth has come along way but I still haven't found any hospitals in the area offering a "fetal transport."

*Eric gets credit for still being 29. At least for another 17 days.

Come for the birth, stay for the food

2009-12-03T08:48:00.000-08:00

Eric and I did the California Pacific Medical Center birthing facilities tour the other night to check out one of our three options for a hospital delivery in San Francisco.

If I were to write a brief synopsis of what was covered on the hour long tour, it would be something like this:

There are three doors you can come in; once in the building go check in with OB reception
Here are the elevators.
Here is the second floor where all the births happen. And what you can really look forward to is your farewell meal. It really is delicious.
Here's one of the labor and delivery rooms. Only 7 of them have jacuzzi tubs but they all have showers and a cot for your husband.
Here's a postpartum recovery room. This is where you spend a day or two recovering and this is where they serve you your special meal before you leave. They offer a really nice steak which is really quite tasty.
You can have a lactation consultant stop by to help you start breastfeeding.
Oh look - there's one of the food carts now. It is so great - you get a menu to order from while you are here. The food is very good.
We started a Halloween party for NICU graduates in 1967 and this year over 500 people came to it.
I'm not supposed to give you recommendations for pediatricians but I will. Talk to me after the tour.
This one woman who was on the tour last week had her baby here seven years ago and she's going to have her second one here in a few months. She came on the tour and she asked me "Do they still have they great steak dinner before you go home?" Some things have changed in seven years but not that. I guess that was what she was most looking forward to about coming back.
I hope you all enjoyed the tour. Good luck with your upcoming births and enjoy the food!

Behind The Blog

2009-12-02T15:54:00.000-08:00

Me: I'm really struggling with my blog lately.

Eric: Why don't you try to write a funny blog post?

Me: Shut up.

Delivery

2009-12-01T20:36:00.000-08:00

This morning I had a 10am meeting at my client's offices downtown. This was an excellent opportunity to pick up the deposit check from our Clementina Show landlords which we had missed over the holiday since the post office is open during the convenient hours of 9:30am-4pm, Monday through Friday.

Boy was I surprised when, after handing over the "sorry you missed our delivery" slip to the guy behind the counter he returned with a large box.

How odd that they would have put our deposit check in a large box, I thought to myself.

He handed me the box and it wasn't heavy enough to suggest that they had returned our deposit in gold bouillon, leaving me out of ideas for what it might be.

I opened it up with great curiosity and discovered: baby gifts. A yellow bib with a duck on it and a matching bottle cover, a sleep sack blanket thing and a little plastic bottle. And our deposit check, too.

A lovely, lovely surprise. Which I then had to bring with me to my client meeting. I think they particularly liked how the bib looked on me.

Eric, meet everyone

2009-11-30T19:45:00.000-08:00

We spent Thanksgiving in Chicago, splitting the time equally between my mother, my father, and sleep.

Thanksgiving day we spent the first portion of the day at my father's place where Eric got to meet the more than 20 friends and neighbors who came over to celebrate. The highlights of this celebration were wasabi deviled eggs and working on a devilish jigsaw puzzle.

Mid-afternoon we headed up to spend the rest of Thanksgiving overeating with my mother's family. Here again, my husband Eric* was introduced to the extended clan for the first time. My grandfather toasted to us the newlyweds and Eric got to play the Wii with my brother and young cousins in the "no girls allowed" basement man cave. I spent most of the evening babysitting the pumpkin pies. They needed a lot of looking after.

Saturday night my mother hosted a party of long-time friends and Eric got to meet yet another 20 or so of the people who have been part of my life since I was born. I think they all found him to be an extremely sensitive man, due largely to the fact that the cat allergies triggered by my father's cat were still raging, causing the occasional tear to slide down his cheek.

*Yep, still sounds weird.

Harvest bounty

2009-11-25T14:17:00.000-08:00

After longer than I think it usually takes to grow cherry tomatoes, this week we harvested a generous handful of red and yellow cherry tomatoes from the Aerogarden. Thanks Aerogarden! They were delicious.

On handwashing: the sequel

2009-11-23T13:48:00.000-08:00

I'd like to report that as soon as I got my H1N1 vaccine, I backed away from the slippery precipice of manic germophobia and can happily report no ill effects, at least so far.

And today, further vindication. The BBC reported results from new scientific studies that prove what I have long asserted as undisputable fact: dirty children are healthier children.*

I do admit to being somewhat more conscious than I used to be: for example, after spending an hour checking out and sitting in at least 25 different sample chairs in Macy's on Saturday, I did hesitate as went to reach for a handful of almonds in my purse. H1N1 vaccine notwithstanding, it just didn't seem smart to thrust my potentially germy hand into the bag of almonds and then put them in my mouth.

So instead, I held the bag up over my face and attempted to gracefully pour just a few almonds into my mouth. Eric quickly distanced himself from this public spectacle. But we were both facing dangerously low blood sugar and so a few minutes later he took the bag, found a private corner and poured some almonds into his mouth as well.

Later, when we got to dinner, we both thoroughly washed our hands before sitting down to eat.

*Extra bonus of reading this article is seeing the word "mollycoddled" used.

Perfect cure for a long week

2009-11-22T17:15:00.000-08:00

Mid-afternoon on Friday Eric and I discovered that it was a great idea for us to go to the Sharks game that night in San Jose.*

So we did. Eric had driven to work because he had to chaperone a new piece of equipment for his lab and it worked out perfectly for me to ride Caltrain down to Palo Alto so we could drive the rest of the way together from there.

It has been long enough since I have been to a hockey game (almost two years?) that going to this one was unbelieveably exciting to me. It was a total thrill just to be there - and we got to see a great game. One highlight was when Dany Heatly scored three goals, which is a hat trick. As soon as the goal light for the third goal lit up a shower of hats began to cascade down onto the ice. This stopped play for a few minutes while men with shovels attempted to clear the hats from the ice. It was glorious.

This is them picking up all the hats. So many hats! What do they do with them? I don't know. Maybe they give them to needy children?

I texted my brother Andrew that we were in the Shark tank and he left me a voicemail the next day saying he had checked out the game and "was glad to see it looked like we'd gotten a couple of good fights." Apparently, this is a site he checks daily to stay up to date on this sort of critical info. I can't believe I didn't know about this incredible resource.

Overall, I think the thing I was most surprised by is how solid the Sharks fans were. I had this idea that they were some kind of suburbanized half-assed overly-family-friendly "soft" hockey fans - nothing like the Chicago hockey fans I was raised with.

How wrong I was! Well, mostly. The crowd represented with a huge showing of teal jerseys, and every Sharks power play elicited a sea of arms waving in chomping motions. Good show San Jose! That said, I didn't hear any no foul language and there were no fights in the stands, so they still have a ways to go to get to Chicago standards.

I can't wait to go again! They play the Blackhawks in January and it is on the calendar.

*By some cruel stroke of fate, the Bay Area's hockey and soccer teams both play in San Jose rather than a place that it easy for people like us to go see them on a regular basis, like San Francisco.

Is it the weekend yet?

2009-11-20T14:59:00.000-08:00

I have had many, many meetings this week. A couple of days I have literally had meetings or phone calls from first thing in the morning until late in the afternoon back to back with no breaks. This forced me to do things like bribe colleagues to bring me food and water in the conference room and leave my phone muted while I hurriedly dashed to the bathroom to pee.*

If I had an assistant who was in charge of my calendar, that person would have been fired for what they did to my schedule this week.

Sadly, I have only myself to blame. I'm not firing myself but I am instituting new rules starting next week.

*Turns out I can do it in under two minutes - and that even includes washing my hands!

We were just riffing

2009-11-19T09:26:00.000-08:00

Last night was one of our highly anticipated symphony nights and the SF Symphony was performing the Brandenburg concertos. They were wonderful (though admittedly not as transcendent as the Mahler pieces we saw last time). I played some of this music on the violin in a previous life which made it especially neat to hear it performed.

One fun aspect of these pieces is that there is a spot for some harpsichord improvisation. Yes, really. Surely this is not an opportunity that many harpsichordists get very often. The fact that Eric hates harpsichord music just made it that much more fun.

Walking to the car after the show, Eric and I debriefed the concert, and in particular the harpsichord solos.

"He totally wailed on that harpsichord," Eric observed.

"Yeah," I agreed, "he tore that harpsichord into three pieces."

"Was he bad?" asked the tall dark-haired woman walking in front of us, turning around to look at us.

"We have no idea," I clarified. "I'm sure he was great," I added because I felt bad that she thought we had been critiquing him when really we were just entertaining ourselves with funny language.

It's in my head

2009-11-18T13:50:00.000-08:00

I heard this Soul Asylum song in Bed, Bath and Beyond on Sunday when Eric and I purchased our robes.* It has been in my head ever since, and I am concerned about the potential detrimental effects on both my well-being and that of my unborn child.

I suppose I was particularly vulnerable to it having at one point owned the CD and known all the words to the song. In case you missed that stage in your development, here are the lyrics.

Runaway Train
Call you up in the middle of the night
Like a firefly without a light
You were there like a slow torch burning**
I was a key that could use a little turning***

So tired that I couldn't even sleep
So many secrets I couldn't keep
Promised myself I wouldn't weep
One more promise I couldn't keep

It seems no one can help me now
I'm in too deep
There's no way out
This time I have really led myself astray

CHORUS
Runaway train never going back
Wrong way on a one way track
Seems like I should be getting somewhere
Somehow I'm neither here no there

Can you help me remember how to smile
Make it somehow all seem worthwhile
How on earth did I get so jaded
Life's mystery seems so faded****

I can go where no one else can go
I know what no one else knows*****
Here I am just drownin' in the rain
With a ticket for a runaway train

Everything is cut and dry
Day and night, earth and sky
Somehow I just don't believe it

CHORUS

Bought a ticket for a runaway train
Like a madman laughin' at the rain******
Little out of touch, little insane
Just easier than dealing with the pain

Runaway train never comin' back
Runaway train tearin' up the track
Runaway train burnin' in my veins
Runaway but it always seems the same*******

*They're glorious and mine has made me late for work every day this week. Somehow having it on makes me care less about being a productive member of society. It is entirely consistent with what I expected but it is nonetheless very powerful.
**In my head, I was singing "blow torch burning"; slightly different connotation.
***What does that mean?
****Oh, to be in high school again.
*****What does this mean?
******This I understand.
*******This is actually a major insight.

One way to meet the neighbors

2009-11-17T13:42:00.000-08:00

Last night my attempt to broil up some omega-3 rich Dover sole for dinner caused an inadvertent test of the smoke alarms in our new apartment. Not just the one in the kitchen - all 5 in our apartment.*

So we did what people quickly going both insane and deaf naturally do: run around the house flinging open doors and windows while trying to keep our ears covered and get the alarms to stop shrieking at us.

We looked up from the melee at one point to see that we had company: there was a stranger standing in our kitchen, having come through the back door.

"Everything alright?" he asked casually.

"No fire, just a dirty broiler," I explained.

"Ah, yeah. I just wanted to make sure we weren't burning down."

"I'm Ellie," I said, after a pause.

"Oh, I'm Brian, I live upstairs with my roommate Nate."

Eric came and introduced himself and they made neighborly chit chat about the girls who live on the first floor and how long Brian and Nate have lived here. At this point the fish, snap peas and garlic bread, all of which I had timed perfectly to be ready at the same exact moment, were all ready.

No one likes their Dover sole cold, least of all me, so I plated it up, we bid farewell to Brian and promised to avoid making such a racket again soon.

We didn't mention that we are expecting a boy shrieking machine at the end of March. Mental note: keep the back door locked.

*Yes, 5 smoke alarms. It's big, but it's not that big. Here's to extreme caution.

Paper or obese feminized boy children?

2009-11-16T17:40:00.001-08:00

Troubling information abounds on the impact that plastics in our environment are having on the human body. Fair warning - this is a bad news blog.

An extremely troubling article in Newsweek recently showed how plastic chemicals may be related to obesity.

Then just today, an article on the BBC website relayed some additional surprising information. First, there's a Journal of Andrology.* Second, boys who play with Barbies are more likely to play with Barbies due to the feminizing impact of phthalates (found in many, many, many things we are all exposed to every single day, in particular vinyl flooring and plastic shower curtains).

The really really bad news is that these plasticizers are totally ubiquitous. Not only are they in plastic (obviously) but the chemicals in this family are often used as fabric treatments on furniture and clothing and as protective film on glass and metal containers. Europe, being extremely European, banned phthalates in toys but not in other everyday items so they are still fairly ubiquitous there as well unless maybe you live and work in a toy store.

I'm trying not to be totally defeated by this information but it falls into my least favorite category of threats which is at the uncomfortable intersection of "real and relevant to me" and "very little I can meaningfully do about it."

Now I am going to sing a quiet happy song la la la la la la la.

*Really? Is there a Journal of Left-handedness?

Bridge: burned

2009-11-13T10:56:00.001-08:00

I broke up with my therapist yesterday. It was one of the more difficult conversations I have had to have with someone in a while, not counting my attempts to update our address through the automated voice response systems at Comcast, Chase Bank and PG&E.

I had tried to break up with her last week and it didn't stick, so I found myself back there again this week to make it abundantly clear that this would be my last session.

She wanted to really understand my decision and what was driving it. This led to an exchange that was sort of like watching a hockey team warm up the goalie: shot after shot after shot, and me in the crease doing my best to deflect.

I made it clear that I didn't think I was "done" with therapy - I just didn't want to do anymore of it with her right now. Nonetheless, she saw ample reason to question the wisdom of my decision. And her inside knowledge of, you know, all my vulnerable spots, insecurities and weaknesses made her assault especially potent.

"In my experience pregnancy can bring up a lot of issues around your own relationship with your mother..."

"Do you really think it wise to discontinue our work together during this incredibly tumultuous and challenging time in your life?"

"Aren't you interested in exploring {insert major life issue} further?"

And my favorite: "You know, as I see it you're really just getting started."

At the end of the 50 minutes I left and will not go back. On my way out the door, her parting words were "My door's always open! Call any time!"

Unlikely.

Halfway to somewhere

2009-11-12T21:45:00.000-08:00

As of Monday this week, Belvedere is officially half-baked. 20 weeks ago he began, and 20 weeks from now, give or take, he will be, well, fully cooked.*

As far as we know, he is developing well. The ultrasound pictures revealed all the right things in the right places and we are choosing to forget the creepy 3D ultrasound pictures that make him look like a very small old man.

I haven't gotten too much advice on my pregnancy so far but I have gotten a few tips from our friend Nelson, often on the potentially serious consequences of poor diet during pregnancy:

"If you eat too much high fructose corn syrup then will it turn out to be a Republican?"

"The only risk of drinking a glass of wine while you're pregnant is that the baby will turn out to be kind of French."

*It's a boy! I may not have mentioned that yet. Yay! Name suggestions are welcome.

The space heaters in the closet should have been a clue

2009-11-10T22:16:00.000-08:00

We're getting settling into our new place and into a new cold hard reality: it's cold.*

I guess we shouldn't be surprised: it is much bigger, has higher ceilings, and was built in 1906.

It is, nonetheless, a brutal new world

We are adapting but it isn't pretty. I've taken to wearing several bulky layers and, when available, a hood. Eric wears a hat indoors all the time now. I think it might actually be colder in the apartment than it is outside.

But I fear the worst is yet to come. We may have to become "robe and slipper" people.

You know - slovenly, smelling of stale coffee and bad breath, and always scratching something.**

At least it isn't haunted. That we know of. Yet.

*When I told my brother "We love our new apartment, there's just one thing we're having a hard time with" his response was "It's haunted?"
**No offense to any robe and slipper people out there.