We are going to roundhouse-kick 2010 in the face.

Take it away, Griff!

Andy just told me that my current attire reminded him of Pee Wee Herman in this scene of Pee Wee’s Big Adventure:

And so for your enjoyment and my self-depreciation, here’s the worst photo of me ever. The most depressing thing about this photo is the fact I actually do see an element of Pee-Wee-Herman-in-a-Sweaterdress in myself.

Like every other sucker with an internet connection and a mild compulsion to maintain a self-centered blog, here’s 2009 in review:

In 2009 I wanted to learn to play a competent game of Chess. I’ve probably played Andy in at least sixty games of chess and won two. Chess-related goal: Check.

In 2009 I vowed to take cooler showers. The only thing that curbed my need to look like a lobster post-shower was getting pregnant. Foetuses don’t do well when their incubators are over-heated. Had I not been pregnant during 2009, I would have failed miserably at this but as it is, I did alright. I spent at least a third of 2009 taking tepid showers. Boo hiss.

In 2009, I wanted to save money and get into graduate school. Had I just writted the goal out in exactly the same way I just recited it then (and not as two separate ones), I would have realised how stupid it was to think I could keep money in the bank and still attend graduate school. We have no money, but we both made the cut to grad school. Semi-check.

In 2009, I wanted to learn enough French to ‘get by’. Unless ‘get by’ means ‘repeat what Andy just said, only with a poor accent, and make fun of the French Harry Potter‘ I have failed here too.

There were a collection of goals I made (to improve the quality of scripture study, to learn more about x,y,z, to get Ye Olde Violin out for reasons other than teaching tone-deaf kids) that I started achieving, but they started feeling like lifetime pursuits rather than categorical goals.

2009 was good. Andy and I made a zillion pizzas and had sleepovers almost every weekend. We went camping and hung out on the porch. We played some music in the back room. I had a job with Nu Skin that I never came home stressed about, Andy did well in uni and in his research lab. We bought a new tent and I almost completed Super Mario Galaxy. I tried to make my cat wear a leash because I was scared for Moses’ life, after we found a dead cat in the front garden. We got new tyres for our bikes. I failed at ‘getting healthy’. We walked to 7-11 for hot chocolates in the Winter and Slurpees in the Summer. I made homemade pasta and some new friends. I watched The Dark Knight at least four times. Andy recorded an EP. We bust into the Marriott for some swim-sessions. I read some books. I did an OK job of teaching RS at church and Andy completed dental school applications. I sewed a couple skirts and dresses. I ruined a couple yards of decent material with my sewing efforts. We chased a manatee for a mile down a Floridian beach. We moved to England. We ate courgette soup and tuna-pasta at a host’s home in France without barfing. We found out I was pregnant. I survived three months of living entirely alone in London without losing my marbles or getting stabbed. I threw up in numerous public places. I think that’s a good place to leave my review of 2009.

2010 is the year of the Tiger. Rargh.

Because I was born in late January, I was born in a year of the Ox – I missed out on the year of the Tiger by a matter of days. I think the Chinese zodiac is screwed though because unlike typical Oxes, I hate working in the garden and love shortcuts. I’m more Tiger-like: stubborn, forthright, and want to become a matador. On the upside, I’m a Wood Ox, which gives me bonus points of strength and flexibility. Basically, I’m represented on the Chinese zodiac by a sturdy chunk of bamboo that pulls handcarts across plains.

Andy’s a Wood Rat. As such, Andy’s got that bamboo thing going on, but he’s also meant to be witty, imaginative and intelligent with career prospects in law, music, politics, research, and the Grand Prix. Or at least NASCAR.

Baby is probably going to be born a Metal Tiger. I don’t know how I feel about delivering one of those. Apparently the baby will be rigid, persistent and controlling. Well, there’s something to look forward to.

We finished it! Including World 9. Aw yeah.

There was a velvet-rope maze housing a mile-long queue outside of the Ugg store in London. Guarded by black-suited store security. Ugg.

Insert joke about my mental health, yeah yeah, but really: I need help.
I’m meant to turn in a 50+ page dissertation for my master’s degree next year. I also plan on delivering a baby, moving back to the US and buying a house in Philadelphia in the same time period. I’m drawing blanks on what to cover in my dissertation.
If you can fill in the following sentence, you will win a prize:
“Naomi, you should write your dissertation on ____________”

That’s not a mad-lib opportunity, by the way.

In case you didn’t know: I’m pregnant. And getting bigger. I practically have my own gravitational pull now.

I’ve had trilogies on the brain recently (just finished Lord of the Rings and about to start Star Wars) and it occurred to me that pregnancy is something of a trilogy. At least, it’s relatively epic, and it comes in three parts.

Trimester I: A New Experience, was heeeeinous. Carrie, a co-maternomorph friend, rightly noted that the first trimester equals a definitive circle of hell that Dante obviously forgot to describe. “Divine Comedy” indeed.

Trimester II (Heartburn Strikes Back) is going better than Trimester I but it’s still a bit rocky. I’ve had colds and infections back-to-back, and of course there’s that throat spasm I keep whining about. “Throat Spasm” just reeks of hypochondriacism to me, but I swear it’s more than psychosomatics. It feels like I swallowed a golf ball. A golf ball that makes you retch and sucks the Carpe Diem out of everything. It’s like a dementor in my throat.
I can’t believe I just typed that.

Moving on swiftly.

Even superficially speaking I’m taking the short end of the pregnancy stick: I’m molting, have frightening skin, and frankly, have never looked so unattractive. Well-intentioned adults that parroted “it’ll get better soon!” in Week 14 are starting to lose faith in their own advice, since I’m now approaching 23 weeks and am still nauseous and ugly. Looks like I’m going to be one of those ill-fated people who can say “I was sick the whole nine months”. I’m prime source material for a camp-fire horror story, and I haven’t even delivered yet. Saying that, I’m not really sure what kind of camp would find a pregnancy story that enthralling. Maybe there are Maternity Camps. Because women who are morphing into beached whales with heartburn want nothing more than to sleep on wet grass and eat ash-ridden hot dogs.

The working title of Trimester II is Heartburn Strikes Back because I had bad heartburn for a month or so in Trimester I, then it disappeared, and now it’s back. And it wants my lunch. I don’t know if it’s related to the heartburn, but I also feel like someone slapped a gastric band over my stomach. I used to be able to consume a breakfast consisting of a bacon sandwich, bowl of cereal and a banana without so much as blinking. Nowadays, I just eat the cereal. With that in mind, you’d think I’d have a remarkably svelte figure by now, what, with the inability to eat my body-weight in breakfast, but quite the opposite is true. I now resemble Violet Beauregarde. AFTER she turns into a blueberry. I think it might have something to do with me eating more frequently instead of eating tons. And being pregnant. There’s always that to blame. What I was saying though, was that I feel like I’m wearing a gastric band. I feel sick if I eat too much, and I get heartburn if I just look at a curry any spicier than a dhansak.

But still. Musn’t grumble. Well, I do have one more pregnancy grumble: I feel kind of uncomfortable when people rag on about The Baby as if it’s already here; healthy and happy. The sprocket is only half-way done incubating/growing, and my worries regarding it’s development get rubbed the wrong way when people act as if it’s a given that the baby will arrive perfect. I’m thoroughly excited about the baby and of course I hope it arrives healthy, it’s just that my worries about it’s development mean it’s impossible to feel cocky about it. So far, scans have only been a source of relief, but still. I worry a bit. I’m not like a total butt about it – I know people mean well when they talk about my future with a baby in it so I’m down with indulging the odd conversation with a stranger, I just prefer to keep the non-physical side of the pregnancy between Andy and I. I mean, it’s probably just because it’s a new experience that I feel so strange about talking like this baby is a sure thing, but I’m definitely guarded about being openly crazy excited or even interested in telling people I’m pregnant, because I guess it means that in the event something did go wrong, I’d have fewer people to recount our personal tragedy to. I’m not usually this morbid.

Like I said, scans offer some source of relief, or they have so far. The last scan (at 20 weeks) was especially exciting as Andy got to come with me. The technician zoomed in on the baby’s heart, and watching it’s ventricles and valves at work completely fascinated me. I couldn’t believe I could see them in such detail. I was equally enamoured with the normal looking spine and ribcage I saw. It wasn’t looking like we’d be able to determine the sex (the baby kept it’s legs crossed and refused to move) but eventually, with some spastic movements on my part, the baby shifted and the technician said it was definitely a boy.

I don’t know that we really cared either way which sex the baby was. I thought having a boy would be neat because I always kind of fancied having an older brother who would show me all the cheats on Super Mario 2 and Andy would love having a little toe-rag to play with, but then I saw photos of Cole and Suzies baby girl, Elliot, and had a sudden warm, fuzzy desire for a girl. In the end, the baby’s sex just wasn’t important to me. Boy or girl, the ropes of parenthood will prove equally unfamiliar.

When the ultrasound technician confirmed it was a boy, we experienced brief disappointment it wasn’t a girl, but I think we would have felt the same fleeting disappointment over it not being a boy if it hadbeen a girl. We’re just mainly pleased it’s healthy, and we’re more used to the idea of expecting a boy now. We probably going to name him Captain America. It’s either that, or Google Chrome. We’re new-age like that.

I’ve been feeling the baby move since week fifteen. I imagine that seasoned maternomorphs are rolling their eyes at that since first-time maternomorphs are apparently less able to detecy foetal movement until they hit at least seventeen weeks. Hogwash! I was lying still one night and I felt a blip in my abdomen. I felt more and more blips as I moved into weeks sixteen and seventeen and since I could feel the blips at the same time I saw the baby move during a scan, I was confident of what I was feeling. The movements seem to have gotten more violent of late. It’s half amazing, half freak-me-out to feel the baby move. I like it, because I know he’s growing and it reminds me he’s there, but then when I feel movement in different parts of my tummy I remember there’s a mini-human in there and then I start expecting Sigourney Weaver to show up and blast me with some anti-alien rays.

You can feel the movements from the outside of my tummy now. Well, not you personally, but hypothetically you could, if I were the kind of person who was down with random people touching me. Which I’m not. That’s a multi-sentence way of saying that Andy’s been able to feel some of the baby’s stronger movements.

So. That’s about it on the maternomorph front. I’m looking increasingly rotund, I’m tired a lot of the time, unglowwy, ungainly, and I’m weirdly clumsy right now. People who don’t realise I’m in Trimester II keep telling me that the second trimester is ‘the best’ and it’s ‘like a holiday, compared to Trimesters I and III’. Eugh. If my second trimester is any sort of a holiday, it’s more package-weekend-to-Ibiza-on-a-plane-full-of-plastered-Chavs than Riviera-cruise. Still. I’m feeling better about being pregnant now that Andy’s here with me, and I’m allowing myself to feel more and more excited as each week passes.

Andy and I watched the three Lord of the Rings films recently. I love those films. I love the books too but I can only tolerate so many hundred pages of hobbit genealogy and slow-motion Ent conversation before I consider turning the trilogy into a project of the papier-mâché variety. I’m a bit slow on the e-uptake with this but I recently read these LOTR status updates and fancied sharing.

I got a leopard-print snuggie and an Andy for Christmas. I am in need of nothing more.

Andy got an email from his mum last night about Moses. Mosey is staying with Andy’s parents right now because we couldn’t afford to fly him here. Apparently he’s been mooning around Pennsylvania ever since Andy left. He came out of seclusion to watch a game of Scrabble, but apparently he’s wallowing in abandonment right now. Hearing that made me feel really bad. I miss Moses a lot.

I realised after posting this post that I always seem to be missing something – Andy, Moses, my mind. I’m usually pretty fulfilled, but I feel kind of crazy with half my belongings and my pet in PA, junk in a flat in London, stuff in Preston, and I only just got Andy back.