Thar She Grows

I ordered a Bella Band last week (mostly as a model for future bands that I will sew myself so help me god because $26.00 for a synthetic Unit belt? really?) but it took forever to arrive (where "forever" = four business days of wearing the single pair of pants that fit) and so yesterday was spent under duress of the ol' rubberband MacGyver contraption + my longest cami, which is still about two inches too short to conceal the fact that I am going about my daily business with my fly half open.

Today I'm sporting the white Bella Band (which would be much improved if it (a) would stop creeping up my back and (b) didn't have multiple tags advertising to unsuspecting coworkers that I am wearing a maternity accessory), but I suppose it's better than the alternative, which at this point is the aforementioned rad overalls from 1991.

We're leaving for Southern California tonight and my luggage so far contains several roomy, flowy tops that do not camoflage but rather emphasize my girth (I don't expect to run into anyone I know, but then isn't that the perfect invitation for it to happen?), as well as the dress I wore to the wedding last month, which is skin tight and yet somehow still flattering to my expanding figure. Simon is getting sick of me complaining about my premature rotundity (again, it's not that I mind being "large with child" but that I'm self-conscious about being so large with a child that is as yet the size of a gummy bear), so back me up, will you, as I sheepishly reveal just exactly what we're dealing with.

Here's five weeks, both sucking in and relaxed:

And here's last night, eight and a halfish weeks, both at attention and, brace yourselves, at ease:

Granted, the after shots were both taken at night, following days spent coating all nearby edibles in a thick spackle of sour cream and salt, but still. STILL. That is at least a second trimester belly, am I right? And yet here we are at 8w4d--only 17 percent done, with a loooooong 83 percent left to go--and I'm scared for what this might mean. Maybe that brochure from the Scooter Store came not forty years early but just in time...

Two crappy photos to illustrate the INSANITY. The first is from December 2006 but was more or less accurate until about six weeks ago, and the second is from yesterday, before dinner *burp*. The picture on the right is overexposed in the sunlight, yes, but that just further emphasizes the fact that my stomach now has a dark side, not unlike the moon or, say, Jupiter.

Fool Me Twice

Forget about April Fools, I've got your May fool right here!

After spending Saturday at the Maker Faire with Emily and Dan (who were in town to wrap up some wedding business) and then killing time with the hipster hooligans in Dolores Park while we waited until it was late enough for Simon to pick up something in the Marina that had to do with my top-secret birthday event later that night, we pulled into our driveway at around 8 and, commenting on the number of cars that lined our street, I said, "Ooh, someone's having a party!"

Flash forward to three minutes later, when I open the front door and a room full of people jump up out of the dark and yell "SURPRISE" in my face. I am thrilled and embarrassed and, well, surprised. Completely. The "sneaky bastard" strikes again!

The house was full of people and food and drinks and gifts and a giant chocolate cake (on a new glass cake stand, which I have been coveting for months). Friends (I have friends!) had shown up early to cook and arrange the snacks and light the tiki torches and wrangle the cats into a bedroom, and everyone had come dressed to the "international" theme. Sara and Ron were Mexico and France. Sean was in a Panama hat. Emily (who did not have wedding-related business but had instead flown to California from Denver specifically for my party!) was in a shirt that said "Canada." Simon slapped a beret on my head and strapped himself into a kilt and we partied late into the night, drunk on champagne (or Martinelli's, or root beer) and good times.

Although I was surprised by the party itself, I continued to be surprised throughout the night as I walked around the house and realized that all of those people were there for me. Coworkers, former coworkers, old blog friends, new blog friends, friends of Simon's I've gotten to know over the last few years, and of course some of my very favorite people. (I'm looking at you, Teddy.) I'd never had a surprise party like this before (Simon threw me a smaller one at a restaurant in 2006) and although he knows I HATE surprises, he also knows I like parties--especially parties that I don't have to prepare for and completely stress out about for weeks beforehand. He, on the other hand, LOVES surprises and loves planning parties and loves coordinating complicated schemes behind my back, especially ones that result in my clapping my hands with glee, so it really was perfect for both of us.

For days he'd had presents tucked behind musical instruments, decorations hiding behind books on the library shelves, and food stashed in the Polish/Mormon fridge, and all the while I had no idea what was going on. When I said I was going downstairs for a Mexicoke that morning, he practically lept in front of me--"No, let me get it for you!" "But I am fully capable of walking down the stairs to get it myself." "No! Let me do it!"--and it's a good thing my laziness is stronger than my feminism or I'd have ruined the surprise. I was a little suspicious that he was being a tad overfamiliar with the "contractor" he was on the phone with all day, supposedly directing some off-hours work at his building (it was really our friend Patricia getting the food and house and guests ready), and I knew something was definitely up when I noticed that the window shutters by the front door--the ones that we usually kept closed but had left open that morning--were shut when we got home that day. But up until that moment I didn't have a clue what was going on, which is a surprise in itself because I am always suspicious of everything. But he tricked me and tricked me good, and this was one of my best birthdays ever. Even after everyone had gone home, I couldn't stop talking about the party--we were up until 3 a.m. in bed giggling about it--and I'll probably be talking about it for years to come.

Thank you to everyone who came and helped (or tried to come). Having you there was awesome.

And thank you to Simon, who will probably always insist that pizza a movie (or even two movies) isn't a proper celebration when one can have a party and chocolate cake instead.

No News, No New Regrets

I had a very nice, if somewhat lame-by-birthday-standards, birthday. I ate too much cake at work (there were two birthdays, hence two cakes, hence two pieces on my plate), so we didn't end up eating my special birthday dinner until 10 p.m., when I really should have been asleep because HELLO HORMONE-INDUCED BABY-BUILDING FATIGUE. My special birthday dinner, in case you're curious, was a pizza delivered from Domino's. Klassy! Simon is kind of anti-pizza and –food delivery*, so I knew if I ever wanted to enjoy the luxury of someone showing up at my door with a big box of melted cheese, I'd have to use the But It's My Special Day card, and what do you know, it worked. Also helpful was the dainty tiara Simon gifted me; it's hard to say no to someone wearing a tiara. (Yes, he gave me a tiara for Christmas two years ago, but that one is a traditional full-size crown and this new one is the type that fits perfectly against a high bun, Breakfast at Tiffany's-style. (It really suits Linus, but he DOES NOT WANT.))

As for my special birthday activity, we switched up our usual evening of watching a movie by watching TWO movies! We had Enchanted via Netflix and then we pulled out of our collection Indiana Jones and the Temple of Doom (also by my request) because we're gearing up for the new one, and also because Harrison Ford for my birthday? Yes, please! I fell asleep halfway through the second movie with my neck crooked like a sink pipe and that is how my birthday came and went: in like a lion, out like a light.

In baby news, although I'm feeling more exhausted more regularly, I'm feeling less pregnant overall because I finally caved and switched over to the jeans I bought at Goodwill in March hoping that one day I would be five months pregnant and fill them out. Here we are closing in on week eight and they're just right. I am such an overachiever! The pants were only four dollars(!!!) and they're Baby Phat brand, which is delightfully apropos, and oh, I can sit and breathe in them, which is awesome.

And in actual baby news, I called the doc today to get the details from Tuesday's ultrasound and they weren't really able to give me any new information. They say the tech didn't do a heartrate count ("too early" my ass), they say there wasn't a crown-to-rump measurement (uh...I watched her do it!), and they apparently don't have a picture of the wombat for me to kiss and cuddle (bastards!). They did, however, confirm (again) that baby had a heartbeat and measured well at 7w2d, and so no new news is good news, I suppews.

I was granted but one tidbit of fresh information: I have been stamped with an official due date of Sunday, December 14--birthdate of many colorfully-named luminaries including Spike Jones, Nostradamus, and Spider Stacy, a founding member of the Pogues, whose duties included singing and smashing a beer tray against his head. To earn street cred as a true musician, he eventually learned to play the tin whistle.

So, December 14. Get out your calendars! Mark your calendars! Kiss your calendars! Only 226 days to go.

*See how the hyphen in front of "food delivery" is larger than the one in front of "pizza"? That's because it's an en dash. En dashes are used to indicate a range (as between numbers) or to connect elements in an open compound (as above). The more you know...

Twenty-Nine Candles

Today is my birthday, and look what I got in the mail:

It was addressed to me, even, not to "Current Resident" or "The Special Person in Your Life with Mobility Issues," but me (albeit with my last name spelled wrong thanks to an error our homeowners' insurance company made last July, back when they sold my identity to every junk mailer in the nation AND NOW I KNOW WHO TO BLAME.)

Anyway, I know that when a woman says she's twenty-nine, that's usually code for "twenty-nine plus," but I really am twenty-nine, really!, and well, I'm insulted that I'm already getting geriatric direct mail, okay? Simon, as always, reminds me that if I hadn't turned twenty-nine today, that would mean I had died when I was twenty-eight, and he's right, but still, I can't help think that even as I live and breathe, it's all just another pace down the long road toward the inevitable: a Jazzy Rascal Scooter.

In a letter my grandma sent with my birthday card, she said it has been so hot in Salt Lake City lately that if she had a bikini, she'd strap it on and go lay on her back porch. It snowed there today, just like it did on the day I turned nine, when the temperature hit a record low of 30 degrees, but the point here is not that weather is fickle but that life is short and we should all enjoy our bikini days/years before it's too late. "Stay young as long as you can," she wrote, "because as soon as you turn eighty-one, you start to fall apart."

A person might take that as an invitation to celebrate her birthday by skydiving out of a hot air balloon into a gorge or something, but I think I'm just going to focus on relaxing rather than endangering myself in pursuit of a good cocktail story. Besides, I can't be sure but I think skydiving might be a pregnancy "don't."

Anyway, here is me at twenty-nine. Not much different from last year save that I've resorted to a haircut that covers my crow's feet. I'm not just getting older but smarter.