I am feeling quite sorry for myself. I'm home from a couple of days in Vegas. I don't drink or gamble or feel up boobies, much as I'd like to do that last one. But there was some shopping (in which I learned that I am, in some sad ways, already showing, just not enough for actual maternity clothing) and a lot of furniture. We don't have much furniture in our apartment: two desks for the Jesus computers and a Love Sac that has pretty much become the biggest cat bed ever.
Pregnancy hormones + new furniture + TV channels = Mr & Mrs Aran happy in hotel room for many long hours.
We watched a lot of bad TV. Why do you all love the Desperate Housewives? We don't get it. Jerry Springer made us scream in horror, literally, then collapse in giggles, then cry for what he has become.
We do love the Trading Spouses.
Woke up extremely sick this morning, though, which has put me in a sad mood. Add to this that I've checked out from work, even though I have a good five months left at least. I'm dragging myself in to work again. I've done it with every goddamn job I've had except writing, and I have no one to blame but myself for my failure at that.
And I'm so tired. It is like being hung over every day.
Not a good blog day. Sorry about that.
I'm bothered by titles. I have never been very good at them. I'm going to stop trying.
The girls of the office are discussing gyms. Not real gyms, but pilates and yoga gyms. Really expensive places where no techno plays and there are rooms to get your nails done.
I'm all for pilates and yoga and I'm even all for workouts consisting solely of these. I've tried both, and they are not for the weak. Plus, yoga really makes you need to fart. There's no pretty way to say that. You're in a room with mostly thin, mostly rich women and some gay guys and all you want in the world is release.
Pilates and yoga changes the body and works against body weight, which is fantastic. But the girls in the office can ruin anything, I swear to god.
There is one type of yoga class where they turn the heat way up. I've heard good (makes you sweat) and bad (causes you to stretch further than you should) things about this type of class, but the girls' big problem with it was that you get stinky.
Ladies, if you are reading this, listen closely: You are washable. One of the great joys in life is a shower well earned.
Once, and only once, I mentioned something about my kickboxing class to these girls. I think the subject was the way my feet turned the shower floor black afterward. It's kickboxing; shoes are optional and often not a good idea. You're running and rolling and falling down on a mat that's been host to dozens of running, rolling, falling bodies all day, and every one of them has been madly sweating. They try their damndest to keep the room cool, but once the class starts, you're just trying to keep the sweat from blinding you. We're talking wiping your forehead with the soaked, wrapped back of your hand every other minute. We're talking snot and, on occasion, blood.
In that class, you learn something about humanity. It's all there: skin and snot and blood and fart. Sometimes in grappling, I hear the farts are contagious. Pretty soon it's dueling farts.
---
I'm pretty bad about typical Southern California personal hygiene. For instance: I don't own an exfoliator and, when I'm sick as I have been, makeup is optional. I try to remain soft, healthy and disease-free. My nails are very short and unpainted most of the time.
That comes from massage school. Can't massage correctly with nails, and now I find them bothersome, even though I don't do it anymore.
It was a $10,000 education that you might think was a waste of time and money. Actually I do think it was a waste of time and money, but I did learn something valuable during those nine months. The self does not stop at the skin.
I had many clients, especially in Beverly Hills, with fantastic skin and great hair and the greatest mess of knotted muscle you can imagine. I'm talking rhomboids that I could mistake for ribs. Pain they'd lived with and ignored for years until it became unbearable, or until they couldn't sleep, or they became really injured.
They came into my room, laid on my table and expected an hour of nice music, silence and massage, and they expected to leave cured. They got the music and massage.
First I asked if they had any pain, or if there was a place they wanted me to concentrate on. They told me about back pain, shoulder pain, headaches. They told me about stress. Then their golf swings, their new Porsches, divorces, clients...
"What position are you in most of the day?" I'd ask. They usually asked what I meant. I never did find a good way to ask that question.
"Do you sit? Do you watch a computer screen? Do you use a mouse? Do you move? Do you exercise at all?"
Most of them had to think about it. They honestly didn't know what their posture was like, or whether they looked down or up or straight ahead at the screen. They couldn't remember if they sat with both feet on the floor. It reminds me of Weight Watchers. The new people honestly can't tell you what they eat. When they start writing down everything they put in their mouths, they're shocked.
The best thing massage school taught me was to be aware. It's invaluable.
I told one of the girls at the office once about massage. She had lower back pain, and I recognized it as problems in her gluteal area. She looked at me like I'd just admitted to enjoying double anal.
"You... you touched people's BUTTS?"
This is a girl who has the home phone number of her MAC lady. Her makeup bag could hold my groceries. Her desk smells like the inside of a Bath & Body Works. But she will eat McDonald's every day. She will pour the most toxic shit down her gullet and never consider what her insides must look like.
When trying to lose five pounds, she forced herself to eat yogurt, which she hates. Why? Because she'd seen me eating it, and I lost weight.
---
So, at night, I wash and shave. Halfway through my 3-step Clinique cleansing process, I'm bored. I get into bed with Mr. Aran smelling like Dove soap and conditioner, and he tells me I'm beautiful. I'm pretty sure the girls would think me pretty classless, but it works for me.
I just ain't into it.
I don't mean to sound like a broken record here, but it still doesn't feel like The Best Time Of My Life. I have not yet reeled from the absolute miracle of it all.
A woman at work and I have been exchanging emails about the pregnancy. She's just gaga over the whole thing, demanding all kinds of details and just cooing over the whole idea of motherhood. Two things about this are strange to me: 1) She never expressed any interest in me before, and 2) Her darling nine-month old is in daycare because she works.
I understand that some mothers need to work, that there are emergency situations like the loss of a mate that would cause a woman to have to work to support her family. But the obesity epidemic in America cannot be explained wholly away with thyroid problems, and these excuses don't apply to most working mothers.
This woman also confided that the baby had brought her and her husband together, after a long separation, and they've never been happier. As glad as I am that this has worked out for her, I have to roll my eyes a little. I expect she was one of those girls who wanted her wedding day to be the Best Day Of Her Life, but gave no thought to marriage. And I expect she is a stupid, stupid bitch for having unprotected sex with a man who may or may not be around to father a child.
I may not have the mommy gene. I may not be all bubbly happy about the MIRACLE OF BIRTH and whatnot. But I plan on actually raising this kid. Someone has to work, but I hope to God my kid never has to step foot in a daycare center.
I didn't know I could be offended. I have listened to all matter of sexual perversion from guy friends. You get linked some sorry ass stuff in irc. But here, at work, from the relatively innocent cubicle girls, I received an email that made me want to march straight to the HR office.
I present this email to you in its entirety. Warning: This is safe for work.
--
Pampered 15 PIECES OF ADVICE TO BE PASSED ON TO YOUR MOM, YOUR DAUGHTERS OR
GRANDDAUGHTERS, NIECES, AUNTS, GIRLFRIENDS, ETC.
1. Don't imagine you can change a man -- unless he's in diapers.
2. What do you do if your boyfriend walks out? You shut the door.
3. If they put a man on the moon -- they should be able to put them all up
there.
4. Never let your man's mind wander -- it's too little to be out alone.
5. Go for the younger man. You might as well, they never mature anyway.
6. Men are all the same -- they just have different faces, so that you can
tell them apart.
7. Definition of a bachelor: a man who has missed the opportunity to make
some woman miserable.
8. Women don't make fools of men -- most of them are the do-it-yourself
types.
9. Best way to get a man to do something is to suggest he is too old for
it.
10. Love is blind, but marriage is a real eye-opener.
11. If you want a committed man, look in a mental hospital.
12. The children of Israel wandered around the desert for 40 years. Even in
Biblical times, men wouldn't ask for directions.
13. If he asks what sort of books you're interested in, tell him checkbooks
14. Remember a sense of humor does not mean that you tell him jokes, it
means that you laugh at his.
15. Sadly, all men are created equal.
Send this to 10 Bright Women to make their day
--
I would wish horrible things on the women who laugh at this, but their lives will be miserable anyway.
So the kid is in there, squirming around and shit. The doctor is guessing girl because the heartbeat is so fast - 161 bpm today, 180 bpm a few weeks ago. The kid has actual fingers and toes that you can see, plus a face and a round belly. It moves around like, "Wtf are you poking me?" Stretches, a bit. Picks its nose. I laughed when they took the picture so it came out blurry.
You just have to laugh.
The doctor said we were the weirdest experience of her day. Several reasons. I lost a shoe size. All my shoes are coming off, and I bought a pair a size smaller than usual last weekend. Also, Mr. Aran knew where the thyroid was, because he'd been drawing zombies all night and this sort of information must be crucial. Lastly, he kept playing with this combat flashlight thing. It blinds your opponent and has these sharp edges for, I don't know, ripping out people's thyroids. He found it fun to blind people from across the room, watch them blink and try to figure out where it came from. I spent most of the appointment with a little dot right in the center of my vision.
Balance sucks
It occurs to me that in my quest to be a non-annoying pregnant woman, I have gone off the other end into a different kind of annoying: the adoring puppy kind of annoying.
Could be that, if you decide to spend the rest of your life with one person, you're going to have to come to grips with the fact that people like dating more than marriage for a reason. There's chasing involved, a little less security, some danger and mystery, and that all goes away when you know everything about your partner's bowel movements.
Yesterday I was telling the boy that I couldn't wait to take care of him fully, to keep his home clean and cook his meals. Maybe it's the hormones, the nesting instinct or something, but I really was excited at that prospect. He reacted with mumbles and some guttural noise. If someone had said that to me, I would say, "Hell yes, sign me the fuck up!" But he was, shall we say, less than enthused.
That, coupled with his desperate need to get away from me tonight, has led me to laugh at myself a bit. I keep thinking that in order to keep a guy you need to behave like an amalgam of Jenna Jameson and June Cleaver. I bet my boy likes a bit more personality than that. He fell for my writing and my general assholishness, after all, and now I'm considering learning how to make omelettes out of fear.
Omelettes of dread.
I have no idea how I'm going to do this kid thing without him, is the problem. So I'm stuck trying to figure out what sort of Samus I need to be to make certain he doesn't feel the need to leave. And tonight, he does.
He's going out with some guys and girls who draw and brag and rib one another. Some of his former students come to these gatherings, and lots of them are girls who hit on him. Mr. Aran has a daddy aura to him, a bad-boy face and he enjoys fighting with dangerous weapons, so I can't fucking blame them. He gets hit on more than a blonde girl at a Mexican construction site, by girls and boys alike.
And ooh, I am so not invited.
It's been hanging there at the ends of his sentences, the missing, "Would you like to join us?" I did, once. I worked on my book on my laptop and didn't bother anyone, but then again, he didn't get hit on.
So I spent the morning feeling the slightest bit insane with jealousy, stirring my simmering little cauldron of rage. Leave me all you want when I'm not cooking up a baby. I'll be fine. But if I'm left alone without him now, I'm really fucking screwed.
I've allowed myself to depend on him too much. A few months ago, my problem was opposite: I wouldn't allow him to do anything for me. Now I'm this needy, vomiting, soon-to-be-humongous mass of... ugh... woman. I don't like who I've become, and neither does he.
Balance, again, needs to happen. It's been too goddamn long since I spent a night out without him. I used to go to poetry readings. I was kind of a poetry groupie. I followed the poets around and they got to feel really egotistical. But I got tired of it. Poets can be some really fucked up people, emotionally. They have psychiatric drug cocktails miles long, and they'll write about them. Only about 2% have anything interesting to say, and some of them - I shudder to remember - sing.
So I need a night life. Everyone needs to be hit on sometimes, even loyal husbands and pregnant women.
I truly hope he has a hell of a time tonight. I hope he comes home with a mile-high ego. I hope I get some work done on my book. But I might just attention whore on a message board or something. It'll suffice.
Astounding
On Mr. Aran's computer, behind me, there is a closeup of a painting he's in the middle of... painting. My writing is bad because it's been one hell of a busy day, and junior is pissed.
Anyhow, there's this painting of a British schoolboy, part of a project he's working on with a friend. The fact that these things come out of someone's brain and fingers never astounded me, but it astounds me that I know that someone, that in fact he's in my bed now. He astounds me every day. I cannot imagine entering marriage with someone who did not amaze me every day.
Speaking of Dr. Laura.
If you don't listen to the program, you probably didn't know I was speaking of Dr. Laura. I do. I would call it a guilty pleasure, since she is admittedly a raving, shortsighted bitch, but I agree with her a good eighty percent of the time. I am afraid of what that says about me.
Her writing is pretty elementary. I saw one of her books at Border's the other night. I passed it by, went to Fiction, and picked up a Chuck Palahniuk book. I own this book, a first edition signed copy, and someone has taken it. I always have this glimmer of hope that this book will come back to me somehow, as it is irreplaceable, so I have never bought a second copy. But I have picked it up in bookstores a few times, just to hold, and read the first few pages again.
I picked up this book at Border's the other night, and then went back to the Dr. Laura. I looked left and right. When I felt assured I was not being watched, I picked up the Dr. Laura and slipped it under the Chuck Palahniuk. If anyone was watching me on security camera, they would have thought I was stealing. Imagine the horror: being apprehended for stealing a Dr. Laura book. The humiliation would have felt how the half-human alien baby felt in Alien Resurrection, when it got sucked through the little hole in the spaceship, one agonizing inch at a time.
Holding my treasures under one arm, careful not to show the title of the offending book but showing off the dead bird on the cover of the Chuck P., I stood in line at the cafe. Before me in line was a trailer trash family:
Mom: Dyed black hair pulled into pigtails; fifty extra pounds; ill-fitting jeans; deep, irritated voice; tattoo on lower back, like a sperm bullseye.
Dad: Sandy blonde hair; four inches shorter than Mom; twenty pounds underweight; dip in lip; high, equally irritated voice.
Grandma: Frazzled, dull brown hair; voice that has seen two packs of Pall Mall Reds a day for forty years.
The boy had a shaved head and the hint of a scar on one cheek. He looked, by all rights, like he should be wearing a little wife-beater and ripped shorts in a dusty Idaho town, helping with the farm chores. Instead, he paced beside his mother, who ordered several drinks, yelling across the store to Dad for his preference. Mom ordered him a drink. The boy watched it being made with a horrified look on his face. He couldn't have been more upset if his mother had ordered him a crushed snails and worms smoothie. The whipped cream was his breaking point: he all but retched at the sight. His mother insisted that he would love it for several minutes, during which he adamantly insisted that he would hate it. "Yull love ih," swore his mother. He won, eventually, and a long conversation ensued with the cafe server over whether anything interesting could be done with the flavored syrups instead.
The boy and I locked eyes for a moment. I smiled, then he smiled. His entire face radiated Smile. It was too much smile. It made me shy, so I looked away, and then he did, too. It looked like he really wanted to smile at somebody.
I should have been annoyed at these people. All I wanted was a cinnamon roll and a bottle of water. But the boy, and then the book I eventually ended up reading while I ate, made it worthwhile.
It was a book written by monks from New Skeet about raising puppies. You can see the cover here:
http://www.amazon.com/gp/reader/0316578398/ref=sib_dp_pt/103-5203038-6881459#reader-page
This cover is just beautiful.
Apparently, these monks raise German Shephards to support themselves. I read the intro quotes, and there was one I wish I had written down. It was about how, when you realize you are a part of the spiritual world, it is important to remember that you are also a part of the physical world. This is a big step from how I grew up. I became a bit worried about the environment when I was about twelve, and when I brought it up to my grandpa, he told me God had made plenty of stuff on Earth for us to use, and he would take us all Home before it got used up. Which didn't explain all the things that were already extinct and whatnot, but it was nice, comfy reasoning and I didn't question it.
So I liked the idea of these monks raising the dogs to feel part of the physical world, to commune with other beings, to see them as intelligent and worthy of love, an idea I came to only in adulthood.
It reminded me of my preparation classes for Catholocism. My teacher, a stout, no-nonsense, sweet nun, told us one day, "We want you to live a happy life." This caught me off-guard, because my childhood church taught me that life was about suffering, that the true reward came after death. All of the Catholic principles, unsullied by politics and bullshit, is really a roadmap to living a happy life. Ritual, faith, family, support, love.
Before I met my husband, I had been truly free. I had done what and whom I pleased. I cheated and lied and did what I had to do to have what I wanted. I had this beautiful Sex and the City sort of existence, but I was miserable.
The Catholics, and even mean bitch Dr. Laura, have one thing right: happiness, and love, comes from loving and doing for others. That's why family is such a big deal in the Catholic church. That's why leaving a good husband to pursue one's personal destiny is a good way to get screamed at on the Dr. Laura show. They taught me that serving Jesus meant serving my husband and community. Now, it seems ludicrous to me, my family writing checks to a church, showing up four times a week, being self-righteous and horrible to their family, and thinking they're serving Christ.
All of this, and I really meant to write about the mall and my new boots and the strange kid we gave a ride to. I guess it'll have to wait.
Big Blue Comforter
There is something about a big, blue comforter. We bought it last night at Target, way on sale. It's far too big, very warm, very blue. I can't stop thinking about bed now.
I might have pregnancy hair already. I heard it has something to do with the prenatal vitamins. I can do no wrong with the hair lately. It refuses to look bad.
God, there is just something universally human about a big, warm, wonderful blue comforter in cold weather. I remember watching snow fall out my window in Colorado, tucked under my warm covers, listening to the heater hum, making stories with my Happy Meal Bernstein Bears.
