The following are a list of annoying things people ask me or say to me close to 10 times a day. Many of them are very, very polite and resonable questions. In fact - perhaps many of YOU have asked me these very things. Please do not feel bad if so. Because I am hormonal and crazy I am going to vent and tell you today that I find them all very annoying...(nothing personal)
Can you wear that outfit AFTER you are pregnant?
STOP asking me this. Would you like me to ask you if you plan to fit into your clothes 4 months from now or will you be too fat and gross to? It's possible I will go back to my smaller size. It's possible I will wear pregnant clothes the rest of my life. Feel free to check back in with me at a later date.
Why can't you eat _____ (fill in the blank) - stinky cheese, tuna, etc.
I'm asking you honestly. Do you REALLY care? Like you want a full page fact sheet about what is in each and every frickin' thing I can't eat? Really? Who has time for this???
Are you still working currently?
No. I decided since I am 6 months pregnant that I'd take the next 3 months off before my due date. For fun. YES I AM WORKING! In fact I am a stress case trying to manage 70 projects and oh yeah...creating a human while I'm at it. Sigh.
Do you plan to use cloth diapers?
Hi. Last I checked it's the year 2007 and I still shave my armpits and don't wear Patchouli oil. I'm all for saving the enviornment but in my case it will not be one diaper at a time.
Wow! You don't even look pregnant. I just thought you were...you know...a bigger kind of person
No comment.
(At party of hipsters) Wow...you are like...the only pregnant person here
Really. I hadn't noticed. Thanks for pointing it out to make me feel 'right at home'. Nor did I notice the fact EVERYONE IS HAPPY AND DRINKING AND LAUGHING and I am sipping a seltzer in the corner stone cold sober wearing my one 'party shirt'. Sigh. I am also sitting down.
Wow. It must suck not to drink.
Well yes considering I have to make small talk with you.
Do you have names picked out?
No. We've decided on a symbol instead.
Tonight after a work conference - despite being tired, starving and wearing high heel open toe shoes in the pouring rain - I decided to walk through Times Square. It's just like the alien movies when the spaceship comes down and the beams of light shine onto the victim's face - what can I say - I was drawn to the light.
I spent 7 years of my career working in the heart of Times Square in the MTV building where TRL was shot and where teens would line up and hold up cardboard boxes with scrawled handwriting declaring their love for their favorite stars who might take a peek out the window and see them down below. Today walking by the same building not to mention the streets leading up to it - it truly felt like I was in Japan. Totally foreign to me. Flashing lights and sensory overload at its best. I was no better than the people wearing I Love New York T-shirts or dressed all in plastic afraid they might melt in the rain. If there is one thing I'm proud of though it's that I've never been afraid I might melt in the rain. Although boy...you should really see my hair.
Tonight I heard one of my idols speak - John Waters. I've followed his career forever and possibly hold his essay "101 Things I Hate" as the main reason I came to believe there were creative minds and people and situations to explore bigger than the small town world I grew up in. The man is a genius. He stood in the front of the room and was...well..John Waters. Himself. He talked about everything from porn to movies to his parents to Divine to Baltimore to.... I left with a smile on my face that carried with me through the crowds, through the rain, through the puddles that made my feet wet, and drops pelting against my belly - all the way to Virgil's BBQ take out and home to the F train. In so many words JW reminded me of what it's like to be so alive in the rain while the world goes on in a buzz about you. How great it is and how important it is no matter what the location or situation to be so very you.
Things that are annoying:
-When people have long hair and then lean into you on the subway or in line at the Post Office and their long curly hair crawls onto your skin and sits there and lightly tickles it. Ew. Please get your long hair off me.
-Patchouli - the smell of it - ok sure. I used to hang out with hippies, drive in a red van and comically enough used to do hair wraps in Washington Sqaure Park - but even then I couldn't stand the smell. Take for example today on the subway when I sat next to a woman who clearly had not dabbed on patchouli but in fact had been dipped in a giant vat of it much like a tiny square piece of bread might into some bubbling fondu.
-The Mac Store in SoHo - because it is run by men and not chicks. Not to be sexist but it's a bunch of nerd men (a breed I love don't get me wrong) wandering around in circles or standing awkwardly and at bizarre distances from one another or the customers not unlike a 7th grade boy afraid to approach a young girl at a dance. Just because you are totally into computers doesn't mean you make a great computer salesman.
-That as of late because I am pregnant I forget words or switch words around - I'm talking for very VERY simple words or phrases. Because I am a Writer I find this extra frustrating. Like today when I didn't remember the word for bib and just made giant ape like motions in frustration to my husband saying, "YOU KNOW - THE ROUND SQUARE THING AROUND NECKS" or yesterday when I smelled a rose growing in a garden and said all swoony, "Wow. It's smells so familiar..." (fragrant) Who am I?
So...I'm pregnant. Christ. Just what the world needs. Another Mommy blog.
I'll try to contain myself although I do find this entire process interesting. How people act towards you. How the body changes. I'll do my best to skip any gross details. Most of all I'll do my best to remain cool. If I every was.
Being pregnant in New York City is a wild thing. Smells are everywhere. In New York when you go into a subway station - especially because the warm summer months are finally here - you are bound to smell urine, see a pile of barf next to a garbage can spilling over with swarming bugs on an old Big Mac, sit next to someone on the subway eating a gyro with onions and smell the foul bad breath of a business man each time he turns his New York Times page to move on to another section. There is no finding a smell free section of a subway car in New York there just isn't. In short - there is no escape from misery.
A solution? Sick seats. I purpose sick seats for New York subways for regular hungover people or plain old morning sick pregnant chicks that ride the train. A seat designated to someone who frankly just feels like shit from either partying too hard the night before or has been recently knocked up. OR for UBER pregs ladies that hardly any dudes get up for. Like the handicap seats on the bus for example. No questions ask. Just sit in that seat if you feel like shit. Dont' abuse it.
When you are early pregnant no one knows this because you are not showing. This is tricky. On the subway people watch you dry heave into a tissue and/or sometimes run off the train pushing people to dry heave in a garbage can at the nearest station. They think you are crazy.
In meetings - you wear sea sickness bands that fisherman wear on the deep sea to relieve you of nausea. They look not unlike sweatbands one might wear to a gym but skinner. A female boss (mother of two) asks you, "WHY ARE YOU WEARING SEA SICKNESS BANDS THAT SOME WOMEN WEAR WHEN THEY ARE PREGNANT TO STOP THEM FROM FEELING NAUSEA???" to a crowded conference room of co-workers. You give a deep sigh. Blood boiling. As if this isn't hard enough, "They are for circulation." People think you are strange.
Several friends ask you out for drinks during the week and on weekends. You reject them with perfectly normal excuses until you run out of any and say things like, "I need to clip my toenails tonight. Have fun without me!" Friends get mad and whisper behind your back to other friends wondering "what happened? We used to be such good friends?" Cut to your plans for a Friday night - hurling up an entire fruit smoothie all over your bathroom as they sip summer drinks at your favorite bar contemplating the demise of your friendship.
Then...you announce you are pregnant. This brings a wave of 'know it alls' that pour out of the woodwork. "Oh - I totally knew it!!! Cause last week...you said your allergies were bothering you and I was like...I bet I know what that means!!!!" People touch your belly because they think they should even though your budding child is the size of small bean and what they are feeling are the ten pounds you meant to shed before getting knocked up. Some people - grown men - think it's cute to call you 'Mom'. 'Hey MOM!'. This is not cute. Do not call me Mom unless I made you.
All and all there are lovely parts to this I am not sharing because remember? I'm trying to remain cool and honest. Lovely things like a heartbeat inside you that is too early to feel but blinks on the screen and you can see it. Turning to your husband and him to you as in, "woah...we are making that".
How I was as a kid:
I wanted a van - so badly - I wanted my parents to buy a van and my life would be complete
I wanted to be a therapist - really
When it rained I would take my rain gear and the red umbrella with a few holes in it from the front hall and skip in puddles singing 'Singing In The Rain'
I hated pot pie - especially the tiny cubes of cooked carrots in it - blech
I would collect old records from yard sales. I would play them over and over again on my orange and brown Fisher price record player
I had several favorite items I cherished - my 'Merlin' - electronic game, a small beige and black GE handheld transister radio, my records (my favorite record was Sesame Street Disco specfically the song sang by Cookie Monster - 'Me Lost Me Cookie At The Disco' as well as John Denver)
I collected Smurfs
My favorite TV shows were Super Friends, Mighty Mouse, Richie Rich, PBS After School specials
I would stay up very, very late at night just to finish my books and when I did I would sign the end page with my signature and give it one to five stars depending on it's quality
I had a sticker book collection and my favorite sticker was a big scratch and sniff taco sticker that I got in a Boston mall but my Dad said I wasn't allowed to scratch it in the car because it smelled bad
Hello,
I made something yummy the other night - a combo of some recipes and just winging it.
I thought I'd share:
FISH (for 2)
2 fillets of Tilapia fish (flaky white fish) - rinsed and salt and peppered on both sides
1 clove of garlic peeled and pressed
1 hearty handful of cilantro finely chopped
1 1/2 chipotle peppers (from the can) & few spoonfuls of sauce from can
1 lime (if you can find a handful of those very, very tiny limes from a Mexican grocery store I also added these too)
3/4 cup white wine
1/4 cup of olive oil
20 small cherry tomatoes (sliced in half - the smaller the sweeter and better)
2 fresh ears of sweet corn (sliced from cob)
1 small red onion
First make marinade in a large mixing bowl. Marinade includes: garlic, cilantro, chipotle peppers and few spoonfuls of sauce from can (taste as you go along because it gets hot fast), fresh juice from one large lime, cherry tomatoes sliced in half, sweet corn sliced from the cob and one onion finely chopped.
Next prepare a medium size sheet of tinfoil in glass roasting pan. Lay a quarter of the marinade on the tinfoil in a line. Spread evenly and lay washed, salt & peppered Tilapia fish on the marinade. Fold over the foil and seal on two sides by folding over tightly to gently hug the fish. You are almost making a 'box' with tinfoil so sauce does not pour out of the sides of tinfoil. Now add another quarter of the marinade on top of the fish. Add 1/2 of your oilive oil and 1/2 of your white wine. Make sure fish is well covered with liquid from olive oil, white wine and marinade. If you have them - throw in handful of tiny limes cut in half - first squeezed over fish for extra flavor. Seal up the remaining sides of bag and be sure it is tight around fish. Repeat process and use remaining ingredients for second fillet of fish.
475 degrees for 10 minutes or more. When a fork can pull apart the flesh of the fish easily and the fish is white in color and not pink - it is done.
Serve on top of rice or with flour tortillas and homemade guacamole.
YUM
Ok. This is going to be rude. So if you have a kid, think I'm talking about you in particular or don't have thick
skin or a sense of humor stop reading this:
When you are a parent...why do you do the following:
-put your kids that can barely squeak out a 'mama' on the phone with me - your friend with no kids - who is calling you long distance from work and has about 7 minutes to spare - 6 of which I was hoping to spend catching up with you but instead spend it listening to your kid heavy breath while you say in the background, "say hello...say hello...say hello"
-even attempt or go to great lengths to make plans with your non-kid having friends despite the fact you can only meet at 4:45pm for a drink - the time in which I am more often than not - grabbing lunch - or worse - try and make a weekend plan such as before breakfast (I am sleeping), right after a nap (I am still sleeping), before bath time (I am having a Bloody Mary) or after a feeding (I am having brunch) OR the last 15 minutes before your kid goes down for the night and is cranky and tired (Two words - Happy Hour)
-send me Christmas cards written in first person - from your kid - that can not spell its own name
-invite me to attend on a busy week night after a long day - any kid event involving a Halloween costume judging contest, school play, little league baseball game, science fair, etc.
-invite me over for drinks and hors d'oeuvres which really translates to me sitting alone in the living room drinking white wine and watching your unsupervised kid pick up each and every cracker from the cheese platter, take one bite and put it back - while you scream from the kitchen where you have been for the past hour crouched over and picking up Annie's Mac-N-Cheese bits from the floor
-tell poop stories - what it looked like, smelled like, how you had to deal with it, how big it was, how surprised you are, proud you are, etc. I would go on but I am dry heaving.
I am merely poking fun at all this. The parents we do know and love are not guilty of many things on this list. But still. I'm sure if we have a kid I would be just the same.
Of all the holidays I have one odd one in particular that I truly love and appreciate the best. Easter.
That's right - Easter.
It's an odd one I know. Especially odd for someone like me who did not grow up in a house that followed any particular religion. While some families celebrate the resurrection of Christ, our family each Easter literally celebrated the resurrection of our spirits, our true selves and mostly our creativity which had been frozen in an unspoken hold over a long, cold, hard winter.
Not to say we didn't do some traditional Easter type things. Traditionally we colored Easter eggs each year. However in non-traditional fashion we colored Easter eggs on our backyard picnic table and dyed our eggs in products that came from the ground - coffee, beet juice, saffron, etc. Sometimes as kids we got kites to fly which was fun. Mostly it was a day we spent together outside running around - my parents in the garden tackling the weeds and making room for the many plants and flowers that were soon ready to poke their heads out again.
When I was very little my Grandmother would bake her famous 'Bunny Cake' on Easter. It's one of my favorite old photos that I always post around this time each year. When I was older I had her write out the directions which seemed time consuming and annoying. I can't imagine having the patience. But it was her version of creativity around this time and the end result was amazing. The Bunny Cake consisted of two bunnies made out of white cake with paper ears covered in shredded white coconut, sitting on a dyed green shredded coconut grass bed with jelly beans spread around. It still makes me smile.
Anyway, I can feel my spirits rising after a long, cold winter. I just can. I feel like writing again. Like taking out my camera - the big one not the point and shoot. Soon we will be jumping on our bikes again and riding to the ball fields in Red Hook to fill our guts with food from the Mexican taco stands. Spring is finally here. And more impressive perhaps - I can finally feel it.
At the recommendation of a Chinese nutritionist I have been off dairy and processed sugar for 9 weeks now.
Yes. Even I think that is pretty amazing.
Most people freak out entirely when they hear this. I try my best not to bring it up in social settings because it leads to a lot of annoying discussion and private, probing questions like "Why are you DOING THAT to yourself?", etc. Well...if you really want to know...I get these urinary track infections that...yup. See. I thought you didn't wanted to know.
Giving up dairy for me has been easy I have to say. Dairy never settled well with me despite being a whore for stinky cheeses. But cheese I have to say is what I miss most. I have switched to Almond Milk and not Soy because it's sweeter tasting and a lot of Soy Milks have evaporated sugar in them which I can't have. When it came to the switchover I think it helped that I grew up in a mostly non-dairy household. My sister was born with severe allergies to practically everything under the sun - peanuts, milk, my mother's breast milk, wheat, fruits, etc. You name it and the kid couldn't have it. My mother is my hero in the sense of how she overcame what she had to in those days without the help of the internet not to mention giant alternative food resources such as grocery stores like Whole Foods and Fairway.
When my sister was onto solid foods we switched over to soy butter. We shipped non-dairy bread in from the state of Washington. We drove two towns over to a health food store and stocked up on rice crackers and Vietnamese noodles. Needless to say our house wasn't first pick to come home to after school for pimple faced teens looking to fill up on junk food.
Sugar - giving up sugar - has been kind of nuts but again not that bad. You are talking to someone that LOVES candy and sugar and desserts and chocolate my god the chocolate. Everyone I talk to says "oh I could never give up sugar. No way." Well guess what? You could. And you'd probably be a little better off for it.
I can have fruit sweetened things - honey, date sugar, Agave nectar, fruit juices, granola bars, jams, etc. Fruit sugar is fine but no cane sugar or white or brown sugar or splenda or any other crap. At least my dentist will love me.
Knock on wood the results have been positive so far but we'll see. I cheated once but at least I went out in stye. We enjoyed our wedding gift certifcate on a tasting menu at Blue Hill at Stone Barns. A meal to remember even if my stomach paid the price.
Since I was a small child I have had a reoccuring dream about a tidal wave. A tsunami. Part of me thinks it is all because the story associated with my middle name. Duncan. A name I inherited from my father's friend - a young man - a writer that drowned in the ocean when they were kids.
Sometimes my dream starts off like a good dream. I am swimming with my father. We are on rafts. We bob over the swelling waves. Nothing bad happens to us and yet there is still a horrible gut-wrentching sense of impending doom. Other times in my dreams I am overcome completely and totally by tragedy. There is greif and water. Everything and everyone that I know and love at that moment has been destroyed. Forever.
I find this strange. I grew up by the water. Just blocks away. Water never scared me that I recall. I learned to swim at a young age and the water was a source of many positive memories and experiences for me. Diving for clams. Sailing. Swimming off the end of a dock. Fishing. The only times the sea scared me was when my family would head to Montauk for the day - a short ride from our house. While I liked the beaches of the ocean the waves were not like the Sound or Bay waves I grew up on. They pounded the surf and frightened me. And the undertow - forget about it. I hated to watch my father swim out further and further from my sight.
Eliot and I were recently in Tulum, Mexico. A stunning place of natural beauty and yet at night (embarrassing to admit) I was consumed with fear at how close the hut we were staying in on the beach was in proximity to the ocean. While 'normal' people saw this as natural beauty and paradise, at night I slipped into a 'what if' overly active imagination and couldn't sleep for 3 nights straight. Here is an entry from my journal:
"I lay in bed tonight in Tulum. Our cabin is steps from the load roar of the ocean. We raised our voices to hear one another say goodnight. That is how close we are.
While others are sleeping I am under our mosquito net in bed with a book light and some short stories to keep me company. The deafening sound of ocean waves crashing seems only inches from our door. Despite my adult mind making fun of my childish reactions I can't make them disappear.
Today we had a lovely day and sitting by the waves couldn't be more relaxing. The sound of them was soothing and after a few drinks sounded even like a lullaby. When it came to an afternoon swim - Eliot had to coax me to walk in further and further into the ocean. I resisted. I mostly waded out and dipped myself in quickly and underwater like an old lady. Is this what it's come to?
We had a great dinner and enjoyed a beautiful sunset with our toes in the sand and drinks in our hand. A swing in the hammock and soon lights began to go out and the world got very quiet. The waves got louder. They sounded angry. Pounding and pounding against the shore. It is four in the morning. I have to pee. The bathroom is outside. I'll hold it. I am exhausted. Like a child - a feeling that if I shut my eyes - even for a moment - the ocean could swallow us whole."
