Gimmesanity

We’re getting down to the wire in this whole human-incubation project, and we’ve yet to come up with a name. With Monkey, her name came pretty quickly. There was this ‘ah-ha!’ moment, and I just knew that that was going to be her name, no doubt about it.

Not so with this one.

A and I have some conflicting ideas on this topic. Mainly, he’s incapable of just nodding his head and agreeing with my every whim. What is wrong with this man?

Truth be told, there really hasn’t been any one name that’s just jumped out at us and said, “YES! Pick me!!” We have some serious contenders, but nothing has actually been agreed on. Well, except for us agreeing that maybe we’re not so good with name picking.

Add to that the pressure from family. They all love the same name. Just one, and it’s too common for my liking. I don’t want her have to go by a nickname so that she can be distinguished from her bestest friends, Sofie, Sof, Fia, and Fifi. Know what I mean?

What’s a girl to do? I’d say have a magnum glass of red, but that won’t work for me right now. Then, there’s the whole hormone thing. Like, is this flood of chemicals interfering with my reasoning? Because, I’m the same woman who has a baby eating her brain, remember? Can my judgment really be trusted? Maybe, if I wasn’t in this deranged state of playing host to a wee, hiccuping parasite, I’d be more inclined to agree that, yes, Prudence Hildegarde is, in fact, a perfectly beautiful and classic name. Or, maybe not.

This past weekend was my birthday - the big 30. Eep! In celebration, Monkey and I took a road trip down to Maryland to hang out with some friends and to meet up with some new ones.

Silly me decided that going to MDS&W on a Saturday would be a good idea. So, we headed out there and met up with Shannon and her little girls. We hung out at the mayhem that was the Ravelry meet-up long enough to get our buttons and ravatar stickers, and headed out to look at some sheep.

That was about it. No yarn was bought. There was massive consumption of root beer, though.

Shannon and I parted ways so that we could head out to packet pick-up for Sunday’s race. Sunday morning, at the butt-crack of dawn before the sun was even thinking about coming up, Angie and I headed out to go torture ourselves. Long ago, I had planned on running a marathon for my 30th. However, with a baby in tow, that was a bit impossible. So, I decided on the next best thing: drag my friends out of bed at an ungodly hour and guilt them into running with me, too.

I have the best friends.

The 30-Something Mommas

I ran s-l-o-w. Like, 10.5 minutes miles. But, I was super paranoid about depriving the baby of oxygen and all that, so I tried to keep running at ‘conversation pace.’ FYI, it’s hard to tell if you can still hold a conversation when you’re running by yourself. I’m sure I looked more than a little crazy 1) running the last leg of a marathon with my baby bump, and 2) mumbling to myself.

Monkey even made it out with LittleFace to do the kid’s fun run, which she found to be anything but fun. Ah, well. Maybe the running will rub off on her someday. She did get her first bib, race shirt, and medal, though.

After the race, because running 5 miles with a 7-month bump is apparently not enough movement for this crazy woman, I headed back to MDS&W sans chit-lins so I could walk hobble around and spend my birthday moneys. It turned out to be a great way to stretch out my legs and replenish all the grease and salt I had lost during my run via copious amounts of lamb sausage and french fries. Oh, and strawberry lemonade, for all that sugar that I sweated out (sweated? swat? swoted?)

The haul:

Noro Sock Yarn, because I’m easily influenced by others.

Buttery cotton for the Bean

Enough Melody to make this.

Sheldridge Farm in an appropriate shade of PINK for the Monkey

Lorna’s Laces in Black Purl

I’m back to writing papers and trying to not drive myself crazy. Two more weeks of classes left, then we begin packing for our big move at the end of the month. Please have a big, cold vodka drink for me.

Dear fetus residing in my uterus,

This is a quick note to ask a small favor…please, pleeeeaaaase stop eating my brains. See, finals are coming up on me real quick and I’ve been trying my hardest to not have the shit hit the fan again like I do each and every damn semester. So, I’ve been sitting here diligently each night trying to get work done. Only, it’s not really doing me much good because, more often than not, I sit and stare at the computer and, next thing I know, three hours have passed and it’s way past my bedtime and I’m wondering why the hell there isn’t anything to show for all my laptop-screen-staring shenanigans.

So, seriously, cut it out and let mommy write her term papers in an orderly, non-nervous-breakdown-inducing manner. If you do, I promise to buy you a pony.

Love,
Mommy.

Spring is here, and it’s been in the 70’s the past few days. The high for today is 76. You know what that means, right?

I’ve been working on a wool sweater!

This is my DROPS jacket, in pieces. I decided to do the sleeves top-down and seamless, which meant that I had to do some homework to figure out how to do it without messing it up. Thanks to Barbara Walker and this article, I now haz sleevecap.

I’m not super crazy about the way the pick-up edge looks, though. I may just rip it out and start over, which sucks because this seriously took me a whole day. Ah, well. Anyone know of a good resource on how to pick up wonky edges? Or, better yet, anyone want to come over and do it for me?

I’ve also been working on a little sweater for the bean:

Yes, I know both of my current projects are purple, thanks.

and spending free afternoons in the park working on my thesis. Reading about child soldiers and all sorts of war-time atrocities seems a little less horrific when you’re doing it in the warm sun.

Today was one of those days that powers that be like to throw your way to see if you crack…or maybe it’s someone’s sadistic way of keeping themselves entertained on an otherwise slow day. Either way, someone out there was laughing pretty damn hard at me for the better part of today.

Thank you all for your bon voyages and all, but my trip to Tampa ended up being put on hold. See, while I sometimes give off this air like I know what the hell I’m doing, more often than not I’m actually just barely flying by the seat of my ill-fitting maternity pants. Take this morning, for example. After rushing around to finish some last-minute packing that I was entirely too exhausted to finish last night, A drops us off at JFK Int’l Airport with about an hour and change to spare to catch our flight.

On the outside, I’m all, “No worries! We’ll make it!” However, inside there was this little voice that kept shrieking and pulling its hair out and thinking, “Holy crap, we have to check in and make it through security and get ourselves something to eat and keep Monkey entertained and make sure she gets one last trip to the potty before boarding because I’m not too sure that you, Monkey, and this baby bump are all going to fit in that little airplane bathroom!!” (yes, it’s still called a potty when I think about it in my head.)

So, yeah, we get in line and wait…and wait…and wait some more. Only, the damn line isn’t moving because ALL the check-in folks had to deal with some crazy lady who didn’t understand the rules about flying with a puppy (”But, I take him on the subway in this case all the time.” “Ma’am, this isn’t the subway, this is the airport.” I love NY.) I get out of line and see that way over yonder is the self check-in kiosks. Very cool. I push Monkey in her stroller with one hand, and grab our luggage in the other, and head over there. Only, there’s also the whole thing with the stupid carseat that needs to go with us to Florida, too, so I head back, leaving Monkey and the bag by the kiosk, and hustle to get the carseat…and, did I mention that I’m 6 months pregnant and running on almost no breakfast? I get to the kiosk, convinced that “AHA! I worked the system! You don’t make me stand in no stupid line!!” I put in my ID and wait….and wait…and wait some more, only to get rejected. The computer brain thing can’t find my reservation. WTF? I ask a helper-outer person who points to a series of black phones that are even farther away and tells me that I’ll need to talk to a representative. Then, he leaves.

So, back to the whole two-trip thing to get my luggage, Monkey, and carseat over to the phones. This whole time, no less than 5 people watched me do this, and not one asshole offered to help. Wait, that’s not true. Because, as I turned around to go get the carseat, a lady calls to me: “Miss, is this your carseat?”

“Yes, it is.”

“Oh, OK. I was just making sure you didn’t forget it.”

Then she, too, walked away.

Fuck you, airport people.

OK, so on the phone. Me being as polite as possible, wondering why they can’t find my reservation, realizing that I now have about 30 minutes to check in and make it through security and screw the last potty break we’ll figure something out…”Ma’am?”

“Yes.”

“It says here that you’re supposed to be flying out of LaGuardia.”

Shit.

I blame pregnancy brain. I stood there and almost broke. I felt the tears well up as I asked for another flight, for anything leaving out of JFK, for something. But, there was nothing. Everything was booked, no flights out of either airport. The next available flight is for tomorrow afternoon, and it’ll cost me an extra couple of hundred dollars.

At this point I call A. I was flustered, and hungry, and shaking, and I needed a hug. Not to mention I was trying my hardest to keep my shit together because Monkey was with me and it just doesn’t seem fair to let her be the one who keeps her shit together, you know? Because that little girl just sat there and ate her plantain chips out of a bag like a good little Monkey and kept offering me and the baby chips with her big brown eyes and dimply smile.

Long story short, Monkey and I sat outside waiting for A. We get in the car, and I pass out right away because I was stressed and hungry and those two things don’t go too well with me right now…or, ever, really. You’d think that would be the end of my being crapped on, but, no. A accidentally took the Belt Parkway the wrong way, then we finally get to a restaurant for lunch and our server takes FOREVER, so I got to sit and watch everyone else around me devour yummy Italian food while my belly growled, then I get to my mom’s all crampy and having mild contractions from all the stress and I had to fight on the phone to get my flight canceled, then I passed out for an hour and half while Monkey laid next to me and watched Sesame Street (that was good), then, on the way home, we forgot my keys at A’s place, so he went back while Monkey and I waited in the lobby of my building….

And, through it all, Monkey was just excited to be getting on a plane and go to “Floriga.” As we sat on the steps this evening, waiting for A to arrive with the keys so we could get in, I thought, “This day can’t possibly suck anymore than it already has.” It was right about then that Monkey took off her pink Croc and began to put pennies between her fat toes to see how many she could hold at one time. I looked at her, being so incredibly ridiculous, and laughed. We both laughed as we competed to see who could hold more coins between their monkey toes. A walked in as we were dancing to “La Cucaracha,” clapping and shimmying like as if hanging out in the building lobby at 9 PM was the best damn place to be.

I realized today that if this is what sucky days are like, then I’m really not doing all that bad, am I?