Potatoes in the Mist

So I went today to get an ultrasound and a blood test. It's kind of hard to type, b/c there's a cotton puff and band-aid on my left index finger! But I'll try. The dr told me, "From now on, a technician will give you your ultrasounds," and this was my first technician experience. It went pretty well. She poured hot jelly on my lower abdomen and I was afraid it would scald the baby, but nothing happened. She had a Russian accent. She said, "Good baby!" and then she said, "A stubborn baby. But they are all stubborn." (I guess she wanted it to move so she could get a better look.) She said it looked "very comfortable." It better be - I give it all the Toblerone and mac & cheese it wants! :D So she gave me some pics of the baby. It has grown considerably since my last ultrasound, when it was the size of a generous jelly bean. Now its head is half the length of its body! (This is normal, though.) Its heartbeat is loud, strong and regul...

All right, I'm just going to spit it out. My news = I'm pregnant. 12 weeks today. Made it through the first trimester, some scary genetic testing, and now I just have my Down test to get through. If that goes well (it's a two-part test that takes a few weeks), I think I can finally relax. My odds are low. The test was optional so I seriously considered not taking it, but every single person whose advice I sought said she would take it, so I'll do it. It's funny, I watched Rosemary's Baby last night (I've seen it before, but now I'm watching it with new eyes) and I couldn't help spotting all the infractions. She drank a shake with raw egg every day, drank some champagne when she got pregnant, and her husband smoked Pall Malls around her. I guess there are tradeoffs. My mother's pregnancies sound entirely more relaxed than mine -- she smoked*, drank* (in moderation) and she didn't know what listeria* was. In other words, she could eat as much f...

Hello! I hope you had a good Thanksgiving. It was kind of a crowded weekend, so I don't know where to start. We stayed at my mother's house and went to my brother's house on Thanksgiving. As we drove down my mother's street, she pointed out a house where there had been a fire, and the owner's dogs died in it (the owner was at work). This was the kind of thing she really should not have told me. It is still making me sad. The owner's cats did survive, however. The fire department tried to resuscitate the cats and 1 dog (the other had already passed away) with special tiny masks, and the cats lived. I am glad there are little masks for the animals, but it was one of the saddest things I'd heard in a long time. The owner is, understandably, hugely upset. In happier news, my niece turned 12 this weekend, and we celebrated the night after Thanksgiving. I still can't believe she's 12. When she was very young, she had her own special language: mobila = oatm...

So D and I tried a new restaurant tonight. To be precise, it was a new branch. We'd been to their other location. But this one was better. It was as campy as it gets. The menus were record covers (I got "Stayin' Alive", D got 70s-era Barry Manilow) and there were display cases in the wall with different themes: Hairspray (featuring Edna and Tracy Turnblad dolls), Menudo (featuring 5 dolls in sweaters, plus a photo of the actual members, wearing Speedos with hairless chests) and Michael Jackson (a Michael Jackson doll with life-size handcuffs dangling above. No little boys.) Anyway, the bathroom had a star on the door that said Justin Timberlake. I went in and it was hilarious. There was a display case that said JUSTIN and SEXY, with a shirtless picture of him and a shirtless boy-doll. One entire wall was a tile mosaic, with him in a white suit, foot on top of a disco ball (like his CD cover). Inside the bathroom, "What Comes Around" piped in (while other mus...

I discovered a new frozen yogurt place called Pinkberry. Actually, it's not that new. But I never tried it before. It's very yummy. I had the green tea flavor with fresh strawberries on top. The only sour note was the croup pair. This little girl kept coughing everywhere without covering her mouth. Serious coughing. Then she went to the toppings bar and coughed on that. There was a sneeze guard, but still. I expected the mother to say, "Cover your mouth, dear," or something along those lines, but then the mother started to cough up a lung. Without covering her mouth. Mystery solved. I noticed something strange about the ads I see in Hotmail. They used to ALWAYS feature girls in bikinis (they were ads for match.com, eHarmony, etc. They almost never showed men). Now they ALWAYS talk about weight loss. Maybe they figure it's holiday season, not bikini season?

D likes to eat whatever I'm eating. I got up to have a cracker and some lemonade, and he asked me to pour him some. If I was not into the lemonade, it would rot in the fridge, uneaten (unconsumed?). It's kind of cute, I guess :)

My oldest nephew (he was born when I was 17, he'll be turning 15 in November) is really into music, so I always ask my sister which CDs he'd like for his birthday and Christmas. I am always somewhat humbled by his selections, because I've never heard of them! This time, though, I was tickled by the huge contrast between the two. His taste seems to be an uneasy mix of emo and metal. The emo CD featured an open-faced, friendly-looking young man on the cover and pointed out: "This CD is packaged in recyclable materials, with a carbon footprint of zero!" The other CD's Album Description on Amazon simply said, "We wanted to make a metal CD you could crank in the car. Rock on!" or something like that. The cover looked a bit like Appetite for Destruction. So for some reason I got to thinking about my early music. I had those big headphones like you'd wear in a small plane. My sisters gave me Elton John and Madonna to listen to (it was 1984, I was 9) and...

So D and I went to his pool today. It is known as an "actors' pool", and I did see one kinda famous actor -- Chris Rock's advisor in Head of State. I dutifully went in the slow lane and the swimmers were not as strong as they are at the other gym. They were all comfortably slow and we coexisted peacefully together. I really like swimming lately. You can lie on your back, flutter your legs, do backstroke with your arms or just bring them together above your head and then down by your sides. It's completely relaxing and yet you are working your arms, legs and trunk. It's amazing.

From MSN: All you " Office " fans secretly hoping for a real-life Jim and Pam romance, just give it up already. The New York Daily News spied John Krasinski "canoodling" with on- and off-screen ex Rashida "Karen" Jones at a post-"SNL" party last week, the second time in six months they've been seen cozying up. The paper also caught the sometime squeezes looking thisclose at a May screening of " Shrek the Third ." Oh well...I kind of thought he and "Karen" were good together anyway.

So I recently joined a very cheap gym. I'm excited because (a) it's $6.25 a month, (b) it's really close to me and (c) my previous, $89.00-a-month gym could NOT do billing. For some reason they got it into their heads that I had 2 different memberships (at 2 different rates) and billed me accordingly. I had to explain that I'm 1 person and only needed 1 membership. Then they did it again. Then I told them I was leaving unless they fixed it. They fixed it, but I ended up leaving (a couple months later) anyway. Because the lure of $6.25 a month (with an Olympic-sized pool! 3 blocks away from me!) was too much to turn down. Well, I had a minor embarrassment there this morning. Some of the lanes were very crowded, so I picked the least crowded one (1 other person in it). Well, this dude was apparently Greg Louganis, because he was swimming so fast it was scary! I got tired watching. Then the lifeguard came over, smiled and said hi (I guess to soften the blow), and gently di...

I saw Dan in Real Life today. Other than the fact that everybody in the (surprisingly full) theater seemed to have the croup, I really enjoyed it. From the poster and commercials, I'd feared it would be terribly cliched. But it wasn't. It had that same clever, offbeat humor that seems to pervade all his movies ( The 40-Year-Old Virgin, Little Miss Sunshine). However, there were 2 little girls in the bathroom afterward who didn't like it as much as I did. Girl #1: I didn't really like it. Girl #2: I just cracked my knee. Girl #1: It was okay. It wasn't awful. Girl #2: It was pre-dic-ta-ble. I almost laughed because my predictions were totally off. I had the ending mapped out in my head but it didn't turn out that way. Afterward I swung by the supermarket to get some muffins. Their bakery is very tempting. I was torn between the "cranmuffins" and blueberry muffins. The cran ones were really calling out to me, but blueberry is, you know, safer. So I asked...

So I woke up at the crack of dawn this morning (this could have to do with falling asleep at 10 pm) and figured I'd see if there was anything on the tube. Weirdly enough, all the channels seem to be off the air. I wonder if this has to do with the writers' strike. Anybody else have this problem? I wonder if aspiring TV writers in L.A. can step forward and be scabs for the striking writers right now. I guess they probably don't want to, especially if they are part of the union. Update: D called RCN, and now the TV is working.

So I found out today that "The Bad Thing" is probably not going to happen. I have some new information that points to the Scare just being a mess-up. Massive relief. I will not have a definite answer for 2-3 weeks, but the people I spoke to said The Bad Thing is extremely unlikely and the Scare itself (implying that the Bad Thing was a possibility) was probably a screw-up. Again, the Bad Thing is probably not going to happen. Thing is, even after the emotional roller-coaster slows down, you still feel a little dizzy. So I probably won't be posting too much over the next 2-3 weeks. But I'll be reading yours. So blog away :) And everyone who commented and emailed, thank you. Your support means a lot to me.

So we went to dinner at a place that was a bit stuffy. At one point, I slipped outside for some fresh air. There was a pet store two doors down -- they don't sell pets, but rather food and paraphernalia, including a book called How to Massage Your Cat and a volume on dog astrology. I consulted it and found out what I always suspected -- that my childhood dog liked my mother better than me ;) She liked me, mind you, but my mom was her favorite. She was the leader of the pack. Two really cute French bulldogs came in and I greeted them with cries of, "Hi, gorgeous!" and "How did you get to be so cute?" The mother replied, "I ask her that every day!" and answered for the dog: "Because my parents are Twinkle and Buttertoes." It might not have been "toes," but it was butter-something.

So, I'm still kind of stressed out. I have some stuff going on that I can't talk about yet. I might be able to in a few weeks. It depends on how things go. I'm trying to think how to handle it. You see, things are kind of out of my control. I have to wait a few days for something, and then I have to wait 2-3 weeks. There is no way to speed it up. I think what I need is perspective. I remember in sophomore year of college, I and a bunch of my friends were single. We were convinced we'd never find "the one," etc. We listened to "So Lonely" by the Police and called it "angst." The thing is, everybody in that group found "the one." Every last person. And I look back at our angst, and I kind of shake my head. This issue is probably going to work out okay. No guarantees (knock on wood). And if it doesn't, life will go on. It won't be ideal, but the world won't stop turning, either. I'm trying to tell myself, "This, ...