You might be in the third trimester if…

it occurs to you that you had better cut your toenails tonight, because you might not be able to reach your toes in a day or two.

your super-stretchy, size-too-large, elastic waist pants are too tight.

you get heartburn after eating an apple.  Also, cheese.  Also, a toast crumb.

you sit in meetings trying to look professional while your stomach moves side-to-side of its own volition.

you say things to your husband like, “Sure.  We can have sex.  You’ve got five minutes before I fall asleep.  And I’m not moving.  Go.”

you are hungry.  No, now full.  No, now hungry.  No, full.  Hungry again.  Nope, those two bites were enough.  Full.  Hold on… yep, hungry.

you start promising blog entries but let them trail off into nothing because meh.  Who has the energy?

Two

The Buddha turned two yesterday.  I spent all day cranking out work in order to go home early and spend time with her, so I didn’t write anything on the day itself.  But if had written something, I would have written about how much I’ve enjoyed this past year.  I would have written about how much fun it’s been to discover the Buddha’s true personality and how it’s taught me to be a better, more patient and trusting person.  I definitely would have mentioned that I’m so happy that she’s turning out to enjoy doing things like cooking and hiking with me, just like I’d hoped she would.  And without fail there would have been a bit o’ something about how shy doesn’t mean cowardly, and reserved doesn’t mean boring, and public bashfulness means home funniness.  The Buddha has a quiet, sure manner of winding her way into everyone’s heart eventually, and I would have told you all about it.

But, you see, I couldn’t.

Because we had

to eat

cake.

So, what did you talk about on Sunday?

“Hey, baby, look what I found?”
“Wha?”
“A frog.”
“Oooooh!”
“Do you want to hold him?  Here, give me your hand.”
“Wow.”
“Yeah.  You’re holding a frog, baby.  Oops.  He jumped.”
“Where go?”
“He’s hiding now.”
“‘iding?”
“Yep.  He’s hiding.  Let’s keep walking.”
“Frog!”
“I know, huh?  How neat?”
“Hand!”
“Yes, I saw…”
“‘ump!”
“Yes, he did…”
“‘iding!”
“I know.  Sometimes frogs are a little…”
“Frog! Hand! ‘ump! ‘iding!”
“Good story, baby.  Okay, let’s keep walking!”
“Frog! Hand! ‘ump! ‘iding!”
“Yes, I know.  Let’s keep heading home and you can tell Dad what happened.”
“Frog! Hand! ‘ump! ‘iding!”
“Keep walking, please.”
“Frog! Hand! ‘ump! ‘iding!”
“We’re walking, and we’re walking, and we’re walking…”
“Frog! Hand! ‘ump! ‘iding!”
“Walk, please.  Okay, thank you.”

(One minute later)
“Frog! Hand! ‘ump! ‘iding!”
“Good remembering, babe.  Don’t forget to tell Dad your story when we get home.”
“Frog! Hand! ‘ump! ‘iding!”
“Keep walking.  Thank you.”

(Two minutes later)
“Frog! Hand! ‘ump! ‘iding!”
“Yep.”
“Frog! Hand! ‘ump! ‘iding!”
“I know.”
“Frog! Hand! ‘ump! ‘iding!”
*silence*
“Momma!”
“Yes, babe?”
“Frog! Hand! ‘ump! ‘iding!”
“Yep.”

(Ten minutes later)
“Okay, babe.  We’re home.  Go talk to Dad.”
“Daddy!”
“Yes, babe?”
“Frog! Hand! ‘ump! ‘iding!”
“Um, what?”
“She’s telling you a story.”
“Frog! Hand! ‘ump! ‘iding!”
“You had a frog in your hand?”
“‘ump!”
“And it jumped?”
“Yeah! ‘iding!”
“Ummm…”
“And now it’s hiding.”
“Oh!  Right!  Hiding!”
“‘iding!”

(Ten minutes later)
“She probably needs a diaper change.”
“I’ll do it.  You just took her for a walk.”
*from upstairs*
“Daddy! Frog! Hand! ‘ump! ‘iding!”
“Yes, I heard.”

(Many hours later)
“Okay, baby.  Good night, sleep tight.”
“Frog! Hand! ‘ump! ‘iding!”
*in chorus* “WE KNOW!”

(Fifteen minutes later)
“Oh, man, I’m so tired.”
“Hey, babe.  Did you know that the Buddha had a frog?  In her hand?”
“Seriously, you need to shut up right now.”

Like, Oh. My. God.

I haven’t been writing about the Buddha’s sleeping troubles because is there anything more boring to blog about than non-sleeping children?  Maybe sickness.   That’s pretty dull.  And definitely dreams.  I hate when people blog about dreams.  But non-sleeping children is up there, am I right?  But, man of mercy, I have to write about it now because I suspect that this child is actually trying to kill us in an effort to hasten her inheritance of used power tools, a 14-year old car, and massive credit card debt.  And who wouldn’t, really?

I knew this day would come, namely because the Buddha was always a good sleeper.  She was so big that she was sleeping 4-5 hours at a stretch from the very beginning.  My doctor told me to wake her up to eat every few hours and I was all, “Yeah, right.  Bite me.”  She slept through the night at six weeks.  For the majority of her young life, with the exception of periods of sickness or teething, we’ve been able to put her down at 7:30 and then not hear a thing until 6 or 7.  Don’t worry, I wasn’t cocky.  I knew we would pay for it some day.  And that day, it has arrived.

Actually, it arrived a few months ago.  Five months?  Six months?  Who knows.  It’s not like I knew that first night of waking up was the beginning of the end of my life.  I didn’t mark it on a calender.  All I know is that I no longer remember what it is like to get a good night’s sleep.  No memory.  Gone, along with my reason, patience, and will to live.

For the first few months, I tried to get up with her myself.  It usually wasn’t a big deal.  I’d just cover her back up, tell her to go back to sleep, and presto.  Done for a few hours.  When possible, I try to let the Alias Father sleep, which sounds like a total Good Wife thing, I know.  But really, it’s because if I go to work tired the worst that’s going to happen is a paper cut or accidentally passing out in front of a room full of people.  If he goes to work tired there’s the possibility of falling off a roof or lopping off a hand in a tragic table saw accident.  And I like his hands.  Both of them.  And his intact skull.  I’m fond of that, too.

But about a month ago, I started to hit the Pregnancy Wall and realized this was becoming unrealistic.  I compared our daily to-do lists:

HIS
1) Build stuff.
2) Make dinner.

MINE
1) Shuffle papers.
2) Manage the successful continued existence of one woman, one man, one child, one dog, one cat, and two stupid fish that won’t die.
3) Grow human being.

I think it’s clear who’s wining these days and it isn’t his skull.  So now we take turns getting up in the night.  Except, of course, I am married to one of those people who can sleep through anything and so, instead of me peacefully slumbering on my nights off, I still have to wake up enough to punch him in the shoulder and tell him to get up and get the Buddha.  Which he does, in a haze of mumbles and grunts and lurching and only after managing to trip over the one dog bone/sock/piece of lint that happens to be on our bedroom floor, resulting in even MORE mumbling and grunting and lurching with some added profanity.  And then when he gets back into bed he elbows me in the head.

It’s still not restful, is what I’m saying.

Which brings us to last night.  Last night, which was my night to get up of course it was, she decided that it wasn’t enough to wake up five times before 1 a.m., oh no, what we all really needed was for her to scream loudly and unreasonably for a half-hour straight.*  And the entire experience, which really looks pretty benign here, I must say, after all that build up, threw me into an absolute pit of middle-of-the-night despair.  I don’t know if I’ve mentioned it here, but, you see, I’m pregnant and due with another screaming child in, hold on, let me count, 12 weeks exactly.  And what am I supposed to do then, internet?  What then?  Listen to them scream in stereo while kicking my husband awake with my foot?

I keep having these mid-day fantasies where all I want do is lay my head down in someone’s lap and let them stroke my hair while I fall into a blissful, endless sleep.  Ahhhh…

Hey!  What are you doing right now? You look like an excellent hair-stroker.  Get over here and let me lay in your lap!  No!  Wait!  Get back here!  Come back!  Come baaaack!

See?  This is why I will never be a true part of the internet community.  You people just aren’t supportive enough.

*And, no, she is not sick, nor teething, nor injured, nor cold.  She is ornery.  I swear, I don’t know where she gets it from.

I’d apologize, except I’m really not sorry

One of the things I find most amusing about the blogosphere is when a blogger will apologize for a random entry because they don’t have the time or topic for a fully thought-out post.  I love random entries.  Give me a bulleted list anyday.  Sometimes, that’s the only thing to do when you’ve got a bunch of completely unrelated things floating around in your head.  Like today, for example.  Hypothetically speaking.  Or not.

• Yes, I am very disappointed with the results of last week’s election.  No, the entire Maine universe has not imploded in a haze of seaweed and Gore-Tex.  I think we will be okay.
• I am not okay with the response of the rest of the pro-gay-marriage nation, who acted like we showed up on their front porch and kicked their puppy.  Twitter was an ugly place to be the day after that vote.  People, I just did an extensive research project (um, I counted up the states on the Wikipedia map) and it looks like 28 states have constitutional bans on same sex marriage.  7 more have a statute banning the same.  You are welcome to boycott Maine if you’d like, but you really should boycott everyone in order to truly make your point.  Have fun only visiting and using goods from Massachusetts, Connecticut, Iowa, Vermont, and New Hampshire.  Meanwhile, I’ll continue in my assumption that there are good people with differing opinions in every state and that attaining civil rights is work in progress.  All you see is failure.  I see that conservative, curmudgeonly Maine managed to match the voting percentage from chakra-clearing, wheat-grass-swilling California, and I think that’s pretty good.
• Wow, that was kind of a long and ranty bullet.  How about a pallet cleanser?  It is 60 degrees today and I went to work without a coat.  In Maine, in November.  If you live in a warm climate and think 60 sounds cold…shut up.  Two nights ago it was 20 degrees.
• That wasn’t very palate cleansing?  Okay, how’s this: the Buddha loves helping in the kitchen so much that every time she hears something that might resemble cooking noises, she comes running in clapping her hands and yelling, “Helps!  Helps!” and it’s the cutest thing I’ve ever seen in my life.
• I am so large now that I can only see the very tips of my big toes when I look down.  I forget how fond I am of my feet until I can’t see them anymore.
• I also have started sleeping with a pillow tucked under me to support the belly.  This is annoying because it takes up room in the bed, which is already at a premium considering I sleep with a man who is eleventy hundred feet tall and has 87 elbows.  I am so well rested!  You wouldn’t even believe it!  I’m also lying!
• I am exceeding frustrated with my haggard appearance and have decided that the way to fix it is with a dramatic change to my hair.  Except that I can’t even imagine what that change would be, as I have no sense of style at all.  I’m considering walking into the salon that has given me my best haircuts and saying, “Oh, I dunno, surprise me.”  Good idea or bad?
• Unrelated to the previous three bullets (or maybe not), I am finding it so much harder to stay away from booze this pregnancy.  I think it’s because, due to nearly a year of budget-related-lack-of-fun prior to the pregnancy (you can only convince yourself that a night in with popcorn and Netflix is AWESOME for a finite number of months), I was already feeling deprived.  Now I walk by the liquor aisle in the grocery store and am bitter (BITTER) that I cannot just have a dirty vodka martini my god that would taste so good right now.  Yes, I know that in Europe pregnant women have a periodic glass of wine or beer and all is fine, and I truly believe it is, but I also feel that the effects of alcohol on a baby are so detrimental and avoiding those effects is so easy that, well, I need to just suck it up.  Go have a nice glass of dark beer for me, would you?  I’ll go eat three slices of pie for you in exchange.
• I have got the travel itch mighty bad, which is a shame considering I have nowhere to go, no money to get there, and would still be fat and bitter once I arrived.  If I had a time machine, I would go back to my 26 year old self, back when I was single and free with a smidge of disposable income, for just one day and I would live the hell out of it.  Then I would come right back to my marvelous family and job and crushing responsibilities, I swear, but what I wouldn’t give for that one day.
• This weekend I called a single friend who I haven’t seen in a month or so and asked if she wanted to get together.  She was busy with what I think was a legit excuse, but I felt like she was blowing me off because I’m all mother-y and boring and I cried for like an hour afterward about how I have no friends.  Could I be any more cliche?  Yeah, I know.
• I had an extensive conversation with someone about how I don’t like pain medication.  That’s why I did natural childbirth and why I weaned myself of the post-C-section meds as soon as I could.  I also will try for hours to get rid of a headache via caffeine, fresh air, water, and food before taking something.  I don’t take cold or flu meds either, because I’d rather feel the discomfort than be disconnected from what’s going on with my body.  She thought that made me weird.  Does that make me weird?
• I planted some bulbs last weekend in a fit of optimism.  I expect them to die, which I think means my optimism has turned on me.
• My husband is getting hotter as he ages while I am getting significantly less hot.  I am disturbed by this development.
• Project Runway sucks hard this season, no?  But The Amazing Race has been awesome, so I think that makes up for it.  I’m ambivalent about Top Chef because I am simultaneously repulsed by the preteen drama and intrigued by the Voltaggio robots.  Like, seriously, could those guys be any more tightly wound?  What, you don’t watch any of these shows?  Well, I don’t give a crap about Mad Men or Gossip Girl or vampires so we’re even.

I… think that’s it.  I think my brain has been dumped.  If I come up with anything else, I’ll update.  If you’d like a full post on any of the above, write it yourself.  I kid, I KID.  Ask and I shall expand.

As you were.

Coming out for those who have come out

I write anonymously for a few reasons.  I started out that way because I didn’t know what I was doing and this seemed safer.  Then I got better at the writing part, but had trouble owning my words.  Now I’m improving on that, but I have concerns about how my writing might come back to haunt me, even though I work hard to never say anything regrettable.  While I am the opposite of big and important, I do have a job where I serve as a public face and I am stupidly Google-able.  So now I mostly continue behind my little veil out of a desire for the public appearance of respectability.

If you’ve been around a while, you may remember that the Alias Father didn’t even know that I had this blog for the first few months.  I eventually let him in on it, about the time that it started to feel like a Thing between us.  Now I’ve got another Thing, and I’ve pondered a while (too long, in some respects) about whether to address the Thing or not.  But I finally decided to lift the veil a bit, mostly because I don’t like Things.  But also because, dammit, sometimes a girl’s just gotta let it out.

Here’s the Thing:

I’m from Maine.

When I say that, I don’t just mean, oh here’s this nice place where I live and I generally like it.  I mean, I’m from Maine.  FROM.

What does it mean to be from Maine versus just being, you know, from Maine?  It, um, means stuff like this:

I am the daughter of a hunter, the granddaughter of a lobsterman, and the great-granddaughter of a sea captain’s widow who spent 60 years waiting for her husband to come home (hand to heart on that one).

I know what a lobsterboat smells like and why you should never, ever wear shoes you like on one.

I only eat lobster once or twice a year because, meh, but I’ll eat crab anytime I can get it.

I consider winter broken once I can smell the seaweed at low tide again.

I can spend a full week housebound by snow and ice and not even twitch.

I know what happens when 30-degree-below-zero air hits your nostrils and, frankly, I find it invigorating.

I can make whoopie pies, oatmeal bread, and a damn fine fish chowder.  Furthermore, I believe that no fish chowder will ever be proper again until Nabisco resumes making pilot crackers.  (Currently I make biscuits, but it is not the same.)

I have eaten moose.

I have had both Allen’s-and-milk and Moxie on more than one occasion, though I am not a fan of either.

I experience annually what watching the sun set at 3:30 in the afternoon does to your soul and, thus, I do not judge the people who do regularly drink Allen’s-and-milk and Moxie.

I know the proper usage of both “wicked” and “cunnin’” and use them periodically, though generally not together.

I have strong opinions on the matter of wool versus fleece versus down for winter wear and I will share them with you.

I own a couple token pieces of outerwear from L.L. Bean, but no actual clothing (hint: only people from Massachusetts wear full L.L. Bean ensembles).

I live in a house with exposed housewrap, a pile of trash and firewood in the yard, and a truck parked out front and my dog is hardly ever on a leash.

People.  I am from Maine.

I don’t know where else to be from, really.  I have lived other places, and may again, but the truth is that this place, this weird, cold, smelly place with food designed to kill you by age 50, is the only place I’ve found where I feel at home.  My ancestors go back here as far as there are records.  I have salt water in my veins, granite in my bones, and pine needles in my hair…and that last one isn’t always just poetic.  I consider myself to be of true Maine stock: resilient, circumspect, warm-hearted, and good humored.

And I’m very worried about my state.

Today, as you may know, Mainers will be voting on whether to repeal the gay marriage law that was signed by the governor this spring.  I liked his statement about it at the time.  I thought it upheld what I believe to be some of the finest qualities of Maine: our desire to be fair to all, our emphasis on keeping religious and governmental responsibilities separate (people, there’s a reason we left the Puritans behind in Massachusetts, okay?), and our heritage of respectful disagreement.  This is a place where people still get together at the annual town meeting to argue viciously and profanely with each other for several hours before sitting down to eat a potluck meal, pass the butter please, because we understand that different opinions do not necessarily make enemies.

The run-up to today has been ugly.  Hideously, shamefully ugly.  I’ve heard a lot of hateful and untrue things said on both sides, egged on in large part by non-Maine money.  Because this argument isn’t just about what rights the little state of Maine will or won’t allow to a minority, of course.  This is just the latest battleground in a national fight, and I suspect that’s how most people invested in the issue see it.  But when you take big fights and put them on tiny stages, those of us who perform on those stages feel a smidge overwhelmed.  To draw out the theater analogy further, stop groaning, it’s rather like we thought we were performing our play in the Congregational church basement, but when the curtain went up, all of a sudden we discovered we were in Lincoln Center.  And the audience was throwing rotten tomatoes.

I don’t know what this post is about, really.  It’s about my love for this place.  It’s about how disappointed I’ll be if my fellow Moxie-drinking actors let me down.  It’s about how saddened I am that my little state has become an ugly place because big interest groups see us as their pawns.  It’s about how, no matter which side wins tonight, the gloating and the tears will be the gloating and tears of my neighbors and how I don’t want to see that.  It’s about how concerned I am that the measured, compassionate, moderate words of our governor (who is also from Maine, which I respect though I do often disagree with him) have been long forgotten in our race to yell the loudest.

It’s about how I’m worried that no matter which way the vote goes, this place that I love will not be the same.

I think that’s what it’s about.

Or maybe it’s about how I need to go home and bake some whoopie pies and eat them all.

It’s very likely that this is what it’s about.

Oh, and in case you were wondering, I voted No on 1.