OMG, *hilarious*. Thanks to my girl Erika in Chicago for the link to this:

Posted by msLaura at 02:29 PM | Permalink | Comments (5)

Wedding Portrait, originally uploaded by mslaura.

My good friend (and photographer) Brad Noble took the photos at our wedding on St. Martin in 2003.

They were casual snapshots for the most part, but this one he really did a pro job on, polished it up and made it perfect. I recently found the CD in my desk drawer and figured I should upload it. It really is a lovely photo, and captures the moment.

Posted by msLaura at 12:58 PM | Permalink | Comments (1)

I'm on a nostalgic roll, so just posted a bunch of photos on my photostream from the early days of courtship. Click the photo to go there, then you can check out the slideshow once you get there (link at top right), that's the best way to look at the photos.

This shot is of the Baker & Hamilton building in San Francisco, which I had never before seen in my 13 years of living there. Dan and I started dating and we were driving on 280N through the city, going downtown. All of a sudden this HUGE sign appeared over the city skyline (the front of the building is shown here, but on the back is a truly colossal sign poking up several stories high). BAKER & HAMILTON, for everyone to see. And that was it, we figured it was meant to be.

Posted by msLaura at 04:19 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

I just passed the 24 week/6 month mark, and Julian is ramping up fast. Lots of moving around now, every once in a while he gives me a kickbox style jab, but nothing painful or uncomfortable....it's mostly just surprising that a little 1 pound baby can muster up that much force! He gets especially active about 30 minutes after I eat. I don't know if it's much noisier in there with all the digestion going on, or if he's eating what I just ate...but he gets all fired up. Cute.

I totally remember being disgusted by the idea of a little parasite inside your uterus kicking you from the inside out, but now that it's happening to me and it's my own fantastic baby, of course I don't mind at all. It's fascinating to watch my belly moving as he grooves around.

Whew, this is so far happening just as I suspected...I feel the same way about kids that I do about dogs. Other people's dogs are sometimes cute and fun, but mostly they're annoying, or smelly, or slobbery, or barky, or too big. *My* dog, on the other hand, is the light of my life. He can shed on my pillow, lick me right on the mouth...it's all good. Bugs is exceptionally clean-smelling though, very well-behaved, and not slobbery at all. He *did* have dog breath last night (which is extremely rare) when he woke up from a nap on the couch, but I brushed his teeth and he was back to normal. I'm glad that my dog and husband are both similar: handsome, impeccably groomed, sleek, and they always smell good.

So anyways, I always thought that I hated kids and wouldn't be a good mother, but I think it's just that I don't like *other* people's kids all that much. Like dogs, most of them are either bratty or slobbery or bug in some way. And I can't do anything about it. You know, I can't just take over and start disciplining the dog or kid properly, or feeding them a balanced diet, or brushing their teeth, or take away their violent loud toys. It's like people in general...I'm picky about who I like to hang around with. I'm not a total people person. If I can't be around smart, interesting, funny people, then I'd rather just read a book by myself or something. If my own dog or husband or kid does something bad though, I can do something about it, so I tolerate it much better.

I haven't weighed myself lately, but I suspect I'm close to 170. That means that I've put on almost 30 pounds with this baby so far. I was trying to stick to 25-30 overall, and it doesn't look like that's going to happen. But I'm not too worried about it. I don't feel *fat* or swollen. I think a lot of it is boobs, honestly! I had none before, and now I have D-cups. It's belly, of course, and baby. But my legs and arms look pretty much the same, maybe a little bigger. I was getting a pretty cellulitic ass, but now that I'm swimming and exercising more, that seems to be looking better as well. So whatever...I'm just trying to keep my diet balanced and healthy, stick to only one dessert a day, and not worry too much.

I am definitely starting to feel the extra weight though. I sat on Dan's back the other day to give him a rub and he was like, "Whoa!", but he enjoyed having me rub around and dig my buttbones into his lower back.

I tried to pull myself out of the pool on Saturday at the edge (insted of using the ladder) and it was like doing a pushup wearing a backpack full of rocks! Normally never a problem, but this time I wasn't sure I would be able to make it! And then I could barely get my leg up over the edge...I felt like I had given myself a hernia afterwards! I'll be using a ladder from now on.

Then we went for a hike up at Kennedy Open Space. You basically climb uphill gradually for several miles until you get to the top ridgeline of the Los Gatos Mountains. You can look out all the way to Santa Cruz from there. I was completely huffing and puffing and sweating my ass off for the first hour or so, even though I was going at a snail's pace. I couldn't really talk to Dan because if I stopped constantly huffing and puffing while climbing, even just to bark out a monosyllabic response, I felt like I wasn't getting nearly enough oxygen. Then it started getting easier. I was able to go faster and not be quite as breathless. Normally it takes me a while to get into my stride anyways...I warm up really slowly but then I can go forever. I must be all slow-twitch endurance muscles.

Anyways, we went farther than I have ever been before. Dan wanted to go all the way to the very top, but when we were almost there I saw a really steep switchback ahead and I called a halt. I was done climbing after a few hours of doing it without a break. Ready for some DOWNhill action. On the way down I practiced my "belly-sucked-in, tailbone-tucked-under" technique so I worked my abs and didn't have an overarch in my spine.

When I got home I was *trashed*. My feet were killing me (another side effect of the extra weight), and my lower back felt like a truck had run over it. I was glad to get the exercise, and it was a beautiful hike, but I was really surprised at how much it took out of me. Geez, I guess I am pregnant after all.

I came home and made some spaghetti with the leftover pizza ingredients from Dan's birthday party, which entailed another 45 minutes of standing up in the kitchen. By the end of that I was ready to collapse. Standing up for long periods of time is not on my list of favorite things to do at any point, but these days it's really HARD. I feel like I'm on some other planet where the force of gravity is twice as strong.

I have this paranoid fear that Julian is not going to turn around and be head-down in time...then I'll end up with a breech baby and have to go in for a C-section. Awful. I have no idea what position he's in right now, or how we will manage to find out what position he's in without doing an ultrasound, but obviously there IS some kind of way to tell. Maybe you can just poke around and feel where his arms and legs are after another month or so. I don't feel anything but soft-hard belly. It all feels the same in there to me. I can feel when he kicks (punches?), but I don't feel any parts or anything.

I saw in some magazine that a good method for turning a breech baby is to lie on your back and lift your pelvis in the air, basically it's "bridge pose" in yoga. So I tried that out the other day and was surprised to find out how freakin' *hard* it is now that I have all this extra belly to lift in the air. I used to do 30 of those lifts at a time without even thinking about it, now I could barely even lift my ass in the air once without struggle. It's that supergravity thing again. I don't know, Julian has probably turned himself around by now, or will turn himself around, I'm just paranoid about it. If I do have to go in for a C-section, who the hell would I see? My own doctor has pretty much ditched me over the home birth thing. So then it would be a complete stranger I guess.

Ugh, can't even think about it. Turn baby, turn. I keep telling him..."head down, Julian, butt to the front".

April told me that she and Ed barely ever had sex when she was pregnant. Ed was totally not interested. I told her that Dan is not interested either. But Ed is apparently *still* not interested. That doesn't bode well. I guess it's a weird thing to have your significant other grow this big belly and enormous breasts and develop a completely different body.

It's not like I look in the mirror and see a sexy body either. It's an interesting body, and even a cute body with all the rounded features, but definitely not a sexy body. When I turn sideways I'm always like "holy CRAP, look at that belly!" So I don't know why I feel hurt that Dan doesn't think about sex when he looks at me.

Actually I don't know what he thinks. I don't know if he's afraid he'll hurt me, or if he's just completely turned off, or what. I should just ask him.

I know that he thinks I am especially beautiful now, and it's true, my skin looks great, my hair looks decent, and I have a pretty glow about me. Everybody comments on it. But I don't think a madonna-esque glowing beauty translates into sexy, necessarily. Which is fine, and I don't know why I'm even worried about it.

Posted by msLaura at 12:54 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

Oh God, I think I just had my first pregnancy nightmare. It was terrifying.

I dreamed first that I asked Dan why he never seems to want to sleep with me anymore. I have brought this up in real life a few times now. He always reassures me that he loves me absolutely, deeply and completely, I am the most amazing woman, he can't live without me, I'm beautiful, etc. At that point he takes me in his arms, we make love, and then it doesn't happen again for another 2-3 weeks. I don't know what to think or do. I mean, I'm not questioning if he *loves* me or not, I question if he is *attracted* to me. That's what I ask, and then he answers that he loves me. It's not really addressing my question now, is it?

In my dream, his answer was that I am too much into S&M (because I spank him lightly from time to time), that I swear too much (it turns him off when I say fuck), and there was a third that I forgot. Devastated and furious by these ridiculous answers, I started yelling at him and crying, and that dream faded out.

The next dream involved a plot to do something slightly illegal in nature, I'm not sure what. Maybe growing pot? I was discussing the details with the people that were in on the scheme with me over lunch.

Later on, a tall woman showed up at my doorstep with a duffle bag. She told me that I shouldn't have discussed the plan with these people, or mentioned it at all.
"But they are the ones helping me to do it! How can we not talk about it?"
"It doesn't matter," she said. "I'm here to eliminate you. Since I feel bad for you, we can have lunch first, and you can choose how you would like me to kill you (shot through the head or shot through the heart), but we have to finish up here soon."

We ended up in some little diner downstairs, me panicked and thinking of all the reasons why I absolutely wasn't ready to die, trying to think of ways to escape, and also trying to call Dan on my cell phone to say goodbye and let him know what happened to me. I kept trying and trying to use my cell phone, but every time I would almost get through to Dan, it would malfunction. The web browser would suddenly come up when I was trying to make a call, etc.

The hit woman was losing patience and told me that she didn't have time for all this, she had a job to do. "Please, I just want to say goodbye and let him know that I'm not coming home! Please..." I begged her, and started to cry hysterically, in complete anguish. At that point I woke up, and goddess help me, I was SO relieved to find out that I was in my bed with Dan and the dog and not about to be shot in the head execution-style. But the two dreams had freaked me out so much that I took the dog and went and sobbed in the other room for a while.

I'm een more bummed that this dream ruined a perfectly fine episode of comfortable sleep. Lately, I sleep like SHIT. I mean, I can pass out at 10:00pm just fine on some nights, but then I'm up at 2-6am. Or else I pass out on the couch at 9:00pm, and then when I take my happy ass to bed I can't sleep at all. I'm exhausted. I don't even have a bump yet, and already I can't manage to get comfortable. Either I feel like my circulation is being cut off, weird aches and pains make me toss and turn, and my damn breasts keep getting in the way and feel like they're being squished between my arms when I'm on my side.

Women with large breasts, how do you *deal* with these things! They're all fine and dandy in a low-cleavage dresss, but the rest of the time they bug the hell out of me! Always getting squashed, or caught under my armpit or something like that. If I lay on my stomach in yoga I feel like they'll explode. I have to wear a bra all the time now. I want my A-cups back! or B...I would be happy with B. Like I said, they do come in handy in a low-cut dress....

Ah, pregnancy.... My life would be super-stressful enough lately under normal circumstances, but with my job, my brother, etc....I am all weepy anyways, and short-tempered, and it just makes things a lot harder.

It seems from my dream that the lack of sex is really bothering me...I don't think it's any of the above silly reasons that he mentioned in the dream, I think it simply has to do with both of us being stressed out, hating our jobs, worried about our economic future, and slightly depressed about it all. We're coping, but there are some side effects. I think I typically seek comfort in sex when stressed, but Dan needs to feel happy and relaxed in order to feel aroused. We really need a vacation, but we need to save money too and might feel even more stressed out knowing that we spent on a vacation. Catch-22. I'm thinking about camping.

I got an ultrasound on Friday and saw the baby for the first time, at eight weeks. So cute, just like a little gingerbread baby! I saw it from above as it laid on its back, and it had a round circle head and four little arm and leg nubs, exactly in the shape of a gingerbread man, with a little tiny hummingbird heart beating like crazy in the center.

My doctor said that it looked like a perfectly healthy baby, and must be sleeping, since it was just sort of laying flat and relaxed. She said that they are growing so fast at this stage that they don't move around very much, it kind of wipes them out. The baby looked for all the world like it was floating on its back in a pool...my little gingerbread baby, just chillin'!

Nice to know that someone is relaxed around here! ;-) So that was really, really cool. And it made it seem much more real to see the baby. It's been kind of an abstract concept up until now.

I asked myself yesterday if seeing the baby at eight weeks makes me feel any different about abortion, and my answer is a resounding NO. I personally want this baby, so it's a whole different story now, it's the miracle of life!

But I also remember how I felt in the past, and honestly, the woman's attitude is entirely what makes the difference. A wanted baby is a wonder, and an unwanted baby is a tragic burden. It's all so relative. An amazing medicine can also be a poison, it all depends on the dose. And I still strongly feel that, until a baby is born, it should be considered part of a woman's body. So none of my views have changed.

Time for work. I am glad that I have this job still, at least for now. But I still hate it. More paradoxes.

Posted by msLaura at 09:14 AM | Permalink | Comments (0)