When we lived in Seattle, I did miss the spectacular thunderstorms of the Midwest. It rains in Seattle, of course, but there's almost never a true thunderstorm -- instead, it just kind of drizzles a bit every day for nine months, and that's how the Pacific Northwest gets its reputation for raininess. In actuality, Seattle doesn't get any more rainfall than, say, Cleveland (another former home of mine).
Tonight we're having one of those dazzling thunderstorms here in our prairie town. Honestly, I've never seen such lightning! I'm awake in the middle of the night, partly because of the storm,* and the lightning illuminates every room of the house with its quick white flashes. The land here is so flat, and the sky so dark (without the streetlights and tall buildings found in cities), that the lightning becomes really breathtaking. I walk through our still-bare rooms that continue to be filled with boxes, and our as-yet uncurtained windows light up -- at 4:30 AM! -- with impressive flashes. And the thunder, and the wind -- they're pretty awe-inspiring, too. The trees are shaking, somewhat terrifyingly. I found myself lying in bed, wide-eyed, certain that our house would be crushed by the fall of one of our mighty oaks or pines.
I gave up on sleep around 4 AM, having been lying in bed, wide-eyed, for a couple of hours (see * below). I was feeling kind of nauseated anyway, a phenomenon that has returned with a grand vengeance in my third trimester. Otherwise, the pregnancy is still going remarkably smoothly. I'm happy, healthy, and getting good and fat! Plus, I'm done with school, I love our new town, Ben has a job he likes, I just finished a great freelance illustration job, and we're homeowners. All is bright!
* and partly because I am haunted by the sound of the dog vomiting all over the carpet at 2 AM. Apparently I'll have to get better at predicting which inedible objects our 14-year-old dog will decide to eat next (for example, a sponge used to wash the insides of all of our kitchen cabinets).
Friday, August 13, 2010
Tuesday, August 03, 2010
Boxes, curry, tired
We are slowly unpacking. I'm working on a freelance illustration at the same time, which means the unpacking doesn't have my full attention, plus Ben and I are both still exhausted from the move. It's not like when we were in our 20s and felt up to moving every year or so; we have more stuff now, and we are certainly in less awesome physical condition than we were as 20-somethings, so moving is now a grueling enterprise.
But we're getting there, and someday soonish our lives will start to feel more normal again (just in time for our baby to be born, I'm sure!). Tonight I look forward to making a breathtaking curry for dinner... Ben and I have been preparing less elaborate dinners lately, as we try to survive this move. But today I unpacked a jar of curry powder and a favorite rice pot, so all systems are go and we will feast on curry instead of angel hair and jarred pasta sauce with pixie dust.
I know I said I'd blog about our lovely new town and home, but I'm too tired to do anything but what comes easily right now -- namely, complaining about how I can't find anything, and about how sure I am that The Boxes Shall Never Get Unpacked, and about how tired Ben and I are. But, I promise, sometime soon: plum trees and country roads. There are so many wonderful things to describe, and I'll do it soon.
Monday, August 02, 2010
The big move
Ben and I moved into our new house this weekend. The move was fairly harrowing, as big moves generally are, and we're both exhausted -- despite having the extremely generous truck-loanding and -unloading help of many friends (THANK YOU, Leah, Eric, Evan, Ben, Tom, and Finn). Many of our helpers even loaded our crap in their own cars and drove an hour into the Minnesota countryside to put the crap in our new house!
Being six months pregnant, I didn't do any of the heavy lifting. Awkwardly trying to be useful, I fetched bagels and coffee, walked our whiny dog to get her out of everyone's way, and attempted to express encouragement and gratitude while others carried all of my stuff, much of which was heavy, to a moving truck. Always uneasy in the role of expert, I avoided acting in any sort of supervisory or directorial capacity. Then, when everyone left, I stayed in the old place and cleaned the hell out of it, finishing up just before Ben returned to fetch me. I spent those spare 20 minutes or so passed out in exhaustion* on a camping mat covered with a not-too-dirty fitted sheet. Ah, moving day.
But, we're in our new house. Our sweet little house. I love it! Next time I'll tell you about our small town, the house, and our FRUIT TREES!
* exhaustion, and I didn't even load any boxes! But that's pregnancy for you.
Being six months pregnant, I didn't do any of the heavy lifting. Awkwardly trying to be useful, I fetched bagels and coffee, walked our whiny dog to get her out of everyone's way, and attempted to express encouragement and gratitude while others carried all of my stuff, much of which was heavy, to a moving truck. Always uneasy in the role of expert, I avoided acting in any sort of supervisory or directorial capacity. Then, when everyone left, I stayed in the old place and cleaned the hell out of it, finishing up just before Ben returned to fetch me. I spent those spare 20 minutes or so passed out in exhaustion* on a camping mat covered with a not-too-dirty fitted sheet. Ah, moving day.
But, we're in our new house. Our sweet little house. I love it! Next time I'll tell you about our small town, the house, and our FRUIT TREES!
* exhaustion, and I didn't even load any boxes! But that's pregnancy for you.
Wednesday, July 21, 2010
Showered
I've honestly never felt more showered with love than I did on Sunday, at the baby shower thrown by my mom in Cleveland. I got to catch up with family and friends, some of whom I hadn't seen since high school graduation 15+ years ago, and we all ate plenty of cake, falafel, and strawberries. And folks lavished all sorts of generous and delightful presents upon us! It was absolutely enchanting!
Friday, July 09, 2010
Untranslatable
"Proper names are poetry in the raw. Like all poetry they are untranslatable." --Auden
Although we've decided to keep the baby's name to ourselves until she joins us in the outside world, Ben and I are enjoying being able to refer to our girl by name. (She just kicked me as I typed that.)
As I've mentioned elsewhere in the archives, we'd probably still be at the drawing board had we learned that we were having a boy. Don't get me wrong, we would have been just as overjoyed to get that news, but we didn't have a name waiting in the wings, and Ben wasn't convinced about either of the only two boys' names I find acceptable -- so, in that regard, we got off a little easy.
The process of choosing a name is such a funny and onerous one. Early on, I provided my husbeau with a verbal outpouring of the many girls' names I'd been filing away since approximately the age of 20: Esme, Willa, and Winifred, for example. Nodding politely, Ben came back with names like -- wait for it --
Caitlin.
Stunned into silence, I felt quite sure that my normally pensive, sweet, and brilliant spouse was either pulling my chain or putting absolutely no thought into this... otherwise, how could he insult me by suggesting a name like Caitlin? Who was this man I married?! And how were we ever going to reconcile our two vastly different naming aesthetics? But, you know, in the face of the tribulation that was Caitlin, I concealed my "that is never going to happen" expression (as he kindly did when I proposed Minerva). And honest to god, before long we came across a genre of name -- and, indeed, a specific name! -- that somehow met with emphatic approval by both of us. It kind of happened out of the blue, taking both of us a little by surprise, and we basically shook on it right there and then. And so our girl has a name.
Although we've decided to keep the baby's name to ourselves until she joins us in the outside world, Ben and I are enjoying being able to refer to our girl by name. (She just kicked me as I typed that.)
As I've mentioned elsewhere in the archives, we'd probably still be at the drawing board had we learned that we were having a boy. Don't get me wrong, we would have been just as overjoyed to get that news, but we didn't have a name waiting in the wings, and Ben wasn't convinced about either of the only two boys' names I find acceptable -- so, in that regard, we got off a little easy.
The process of choosing a name is such a funny and onerous one. Early on, I provided my husbeau with a verbal outpouring of the many girls' names I'd been filing away since approximately the age of 20: Esme, Willa, and Winifred, for example. Nodding politely, Ben came back with names like -- wait for it --
Caitlin.
Stunned into silence, I felt quite sure that my normally pensive, sweet, and brilliant spouse was either pulling my chain or putting absolutely no thought into this... otherwise, how could he insult me by suggesting a name like Caitlin? Who was this man I married?! And how were we ever going to reconcile our two vastly different naming aesthetics? But, you know, in the face of the tribulation that was Caitlin, I concealed my "that is never going to happen" expression (as he kindly did when I proposed Minerva). And honest to god, before long we came across a genre of name -- and, indeed, a specific name! -- that somehow met with emphatic approval by both of us. It kind of happened out of the blue, taking both of us a little by surprise, and we basically shook on it right there and then. And so our girl has a name.
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