Grammys - Shrammys
My husband put it very well. What a disappointement. How can I be happy for John Mayer if Ashanti is holding the same statuette? Things are not what they used to be. Anybody can get a Grammy. In fact I think I should try to enter my dog.. his vocal acrobatics can certainly top Nelly's lame verse. If he can rap about shoes, my dog's songs about cheese and peanut butter are right on target!
Good half time scores for me
So every week I get this email from www.babycenter.com telling me what week I'm in, how I may be feeling and what developmental stages my baby is going through. This week I got:
"Hello, Dinka!
Your baby is twice as big as he was last month, but he still weighs only about 7 ounces. (Meanwhile, you've probably gained as many as 14 pounds, most of which is from amniotic fluid, placenta, and water retention.) Though things may seem calm on the surface, your little one is kicking....blablabla"
Get this. I gained only 11 lbs so far!!! Me! Me, who usually does not waste any permitted pounds. I have them all. Up to the very limit... and beyond. And now this. I gained LESS than they think the average woman would. I am so happy with myself. Oh I know that can still change, I can still end up gaining 50lbs total, but hey, I will enjoy this incredible achievement while it lasts. I will not mention that it's not really my merit at all because had I had a healthy appetite for the last 3-4 months I would have made use of that special time in a woman's life where she is actually supposed to eat and not just pretend she's eating while she counts calories and has pictures of chocolate cake for dessert.
Anyway, I told Lincoln, as every clearthinking and rational woman would immediately do, that means that aaaaaaaactually I LOST some weight since I'm sure this baby used up all the energy it needed, so if it only had me add 11lbs of the 14lbs I'm supposed to have, it must've taken 3lbs from somewhere else.... and, you guessed it, it must've been from "stored energy" (read: fat) lingering around somewhere in my body. I wouldn't know where of course, because, uhm, I know no such thing as "stored energy" when it comes to my own body. :)
Just to let you know though - so I don't get any upset comments - I'm not really concerned with my weight gain. I just want this baby to be happy when it comes out. I'll take care of the aftermath. Now if it was only July...
Posted at 07:58 PM on February 22, 2003 | Comments (2)It's a ?????
Oh well. I was afraid this was going to happen. Lil' Souzek is a little small for exact predictions. The ultrasound specialist said: "I'd say it's a girl, but keep your receipts!" - meaning, she is not sure and we should come back for another peek... in 4 weeks!!!! 4 weeks???? What does she think we are? Patient?
Well for now we'll call her a "she" because that's the most information with have. If it turns out to be a boy, we'll just apologize, switch to "he" and move on.
Anyway, this ultrasound was more than exciting.. seeing those little feet kicking, the whole body squirming... it's a baby!!! Well you'd think I knew that. Just wait till you have a baby in yourself, how real does that sound? We left happy... excited, confused. Lincoln says it was just a movie. I agree. Or that woman just slipped that baby in there a few seconds before she turned on the machine.
How is this possible? Where did it come from? I don't know... but I'll take it! :) I can't believe we have to wait until July. How cruel.
What a day. It's 4 p.m. but I feel like I've just lived through 10 years worth of excitement. No wonder parents always seem so tired.
Hey baby...you're cute. Come on, grow, quick!
Posted at 04:20 PM on February 20, 2003 | Comments (3)From the news
This is an exaggeration but ah, so true!
Posted at 10:30 AM on February 19, 2003 | Comments (4)An official statement
Not from the White House but from me. In the last few years I have been reprimanded several times for lacking affection for my current homeland. I don't think that criticism was justified but I can understand it. To excuse myself you have to understand that I lack profound feelings of patriotism for any country I have lived in, even the country of my birth. So far I have also come to the conclusion that I am incapable of such feelings due to several things that happened in my life. Call me patriotically challenged. I really am. It's true, I will never understand. I don't know what it means to love a country beyond logic.
I do still think that I have gained other advantages that make up for this handicap, even if people might disagree. But as you all know, we can't make everybody happy and if I truly am blind about my condition, I will have to make due not living my life to the fullest (sorry Oprah).
Anyway, to prove that I do like to live in the USA and that I have come to appreciate this country, I decided to present you with this list of things that I think are American and great. If you the reader happen not to live here and don't understand some of the listed you are free to ask. Please also keep in mind that this list is not numbered, so just because something is first or last on the list it doesn't mean those are the most and least favorite things.
Free refills
Cheap gas
Two oceans
Ben and Jerry's ice cream
Lincoln
Free returns
Waiters who actually work for their money
"Buy one get one free"-s
Steak
Lincoln
The fact that almost every performer I like lives here.
Air conditioning
Barnes and Noble
Free salad or soup with you meal
Lincoln
Coupons
Apple pie with vanilla ice cream
Quilting
English (the language I mean)
"Friends"
Diversity
Hamburgers (I'm NOT talking McDonalds)
Carribbean a few miles south
Thanksgiving (one more holiday to eat yourself to death)
Bed and Breakfasts
Lincoln
Brownies
Lincoln
and Lincoln.
Alright. I am biased. Towards my husband and food. :) If you think the list is missing something, let me know.
I also have a little American growing inside me but I'm not sure how purebred (s)he is. Rather European tinted. But then again who knows, most Americans became so by choice rather than birth, we'll see who wins in the end.
Next week we will discuss the wrongness of being European in the US. ;)
Posted at 04:20 PM on February 18, 2003 | Comments (8)If you are interested...
... what the Pope has said on the war so far:
Posted at 01:14 PM on February 15, 2003When did I grow up?
Recently I had to go to court. It's not what you think. It would've been my first attempt at legal interpreting, had the two individuals who needed me shown up. They didn't, but I still got to go to court. It was my very first time - not very exciting but interesting.
I assume the court building in Valparaiso is one of the oldest in town because it's built of stone and looks impressive - sort of European. Please don't laugh at me, I suck at architecture and architectural history.
Anyway before the hearing I was waiting outside in this rather stern building and caught myself in the "serious waiting mode" - that I remember noticing in my mom whenever she took me to something, well, serious.
She used to get this concentrated, serious and a little anxious expression on her face, looking straight ahead - and I knew, this is the time kids like me were supposed to shut up, stop dangling their feet and hitting the legs of the chair or the wall behind it, stop fussing and searching through her bag. Oh how I hated those errands. I didn't understand why adults were torturing themselves with being so serious and quiet all the time. Why do they spend so many hours of the day doing this? They can't possibly enjoy it. But at the same time I liked being there with my mom, because that's what my world was. What she said - that was it. No need to waste your time thinking or making decisions.
She must've also had some sort of rather collected way of sitting, her bag and gloves by her side - all very orderly, because that's how I was sitting there. Unconsciously I had recorded all these details and here I was thinking: something reminds me of my mom... why, it's me! I'm reminding me of her!
It was strange, I guess since one grows up gradually it's hard to actually feel the transformation from child to adult, but that's what I felt. I felt like my mom and instinctively I wanted to think "Oh, but I'm not really like her. She is a grown-up." Uhm. So am I. I realized: I am a grown up now. I am 27 and now there's no one sitting next to me, I'm awaiting orders from. It's just me. Nobody to speak for me. I'm the "adults". I looked around trying to see if any of the people standing around might have noticed what I was thinking. I was hoping they wouldn't notice my utter insecurity at being responsible for myself and realize I was just 6 and all I wanted to do was bang my feet against the wall while I let them dangle from the high bench I was sitting on.
I managed the 15-minute-appearance in court just fine. Everyone treated me like an adult - so I concluded my act was working. Afterwards I hurried across the street and had a hot chocolate. Luckily some things don't have to change.
A new little Curlin
For all of you who know her... or don't know her. This is my cousin Marija with her recently adopted daughter Tea. Isn't she cute? She was born on 14th October 2002.
The picture was taken through a hospital window by the way.
Congratulations on your long awaited baby!!!
Posted at 03:17 PM on February 10, 2003Look at me at 17 weeks!
I am really pregnant!
And it's not just a full bladder by the way... :)
I don't have a problem. I could stop if I wanted to.
Many of you will know that I have a special fondness for crafty crafts, in particular anything related to fabrics and yarn. It's true. It makes me happy.
Recently I had to go to a fabric store again - after a long time, and it was... ah, so inviting. The fabrics are just there on the shelves, but they are calling me... their colors are jumping at me, filling my head with all these possibilities... what I could do with them. And before these ideas can actually form in my brain, they turn into a big ball of excitement and start pumping endorphins all over my body (well, I don't really know if they do that but it sounds more scientific that way) and I'm suddenly so happy. I run to the pattern books and the high continues - oh, all the things I could do, all day long. All the fabrics I could use, the colors that would go together, I would touch them and then when I'm done I could put them on, or hang them on the wall - whatever they turned into. I love the fabric store... and the yarn store. They are so nice to me. They can never really disappoint me. It's like food. Ok, not really, food is better, but fabric stores are a close second.
Am I strange? I guess. Do I care if you think I'm strange? No. I know some will know what I'm talking about. The rest of you who don't... I'm sorry for you.
Ok, not really. ;)
If he wasn't so darn cute...
Go go go check out the great photo album my wonderful husband put together about Digby!
Posted at 09:54 AM on February 05, 2003 | Comments (2)Too happy too early
So I threw up again yesterday. Twice. On an empty stomach. I will spare you the details but it is nothing you want to do for fun. I know the culprit too: Zatarian's Spanish Rice Mix. It's not Spanish, it's Mexican, but I guess around here it's all the same. It has illegal amounts of cumin and chili plus that nasty starchy smell when you boil it. Brrrr .. disgusting.
And I thought I was over all this... especially since my fridge doesn't smell anymore. No, I didn't clean it. Only my supernatural smelling capabilities have regressed to normal human levels. I'm glad about that, don't get me wrong, but it does leave me with this creeping suspicion, that my fridge really DOES smell bad but I can never know because I'm human and my nose doesn't detect it. It's a scary thought. Not scary enough to make me clean my fridge though... hehe.
I bought a few cute maternity clothes over the weekend and now I have the possiblity to "look" cute although I still don't feel it. Well, it's progress.
I've also spent a lot of my mental energy on an online discussion about whether extra-marital sex should be made illegal. Yeah, don't laugh. There seem to be people out there who think entertaining this proposal is a good use of their time. Stupid me tried to show the absurdity of it but soon gave up. I should've known that whoever comes up with such an idea will also be completely unwilling to see the issue from a different perspective.
I have a really low tolerance for religious zealotism and the mixing of religion and government. It strikes me as extremely unchristian. Not everyone though.. and I can tell you, after years and years of my life having always been put in the corner of the "crazy orthodox Catholic" it's beyond weird to suddenly be suspected as a wishy-washy liberal who thinks Jesus was a pansy and there is no sin and we should all just get along. Boy do I like labeling.
As you can see I was wasting my time but see there are very few activities that my pregnant body will allow me to do and none of them involve physical work, at least not for a longer period of time. I'm still after all mainly an incubator, providing my body to a little Souzek who has overloaded me with silly hormones and gobbles up every single thing I eat before I have the chance to use it on...quilting for example.
Oh the sacrifices! That kid better kiss the ground under my feet once it's out! :)