So much to say...

It's been almost exactly 6 months since I last posted...several reasons of course, but mostly because I've been putting my writing efforts into other endeavors.

School keeps me plenty busy... busier than I would like really. I am constantly questioning and re-questioning if this is the thing that I really want to be spending my time doing, and so far the answer keeps coming back YES. Mostly just my battered little ego screaming for a little relief, so I'm learning to let it heal a little before I set out on another lesson in humility. This is how I've come to think of the process of getting a PhD. It doesn't help that it is such a long and arduous process that so few people actually have experienced. The constant questions about how much longer and aren't you done yet can really start to grate on my nerves and my resolve after a while.

I've come full circle though, and started running again to relieve my stress. It is really frustrating to be so slow, and I'm not particularly known for giving myself ANY slack. To keep me on track and to give me a goal to work toward in the shorter term, I'm running a 1/2 marathon at the end of August. (One of my good friends compared getting your PhD to running a marathon, but I'm not ready to go for the full one yet!!!) Suffice it to say that I've been hanging out at my new favorite spot: the Gym, as much as I can! Training is a word that is coming back into my active vocabulary, along with a few others: lifting, speed work, flexibility, sports bra, and many more. Getting back into a shape other than round is nice though, and I'm really hoping I can sustain this throughout the year along with the crazy amounts of work that come with poor graduate student territory. I'll be teaching again in the fall at BW, working 10 hours a week for a professor at Case, and new this year I'll be working up to 20 hours a week for the Schubert Center. Somewhere in there I have to find time to also work on my 2nd exam which could be interesting. I'm planning to turn in my 1st exam paper before school starts---that's what I'm working semi-diligently on for the next 2 months. I'll also be working on my capstone paper for my MPH, and then presenting on that at the end of next semester too. Then I'll finally be done with my MPH and ONLY working on my PhD (and all those jobby things I just wrote about).

How do I do it? Well, pretty much, I won't get to have ANY fun next semester, but spring semester should be good times. Oh yes, and did I mention that I am going to start applying for funding to go to the field in December. Fun fun fun stuff. Good preparation for being an assistant professor someday--at least I hope it will be.

To keep my sanity I have two other writing projects going just for fun. One is a novel I've been batting around in my head for a long time now and the other is a screenplay that is a new idea that I've been toying with as I daydream of Gerard Butler giving me a foot massage and telling me funny stories with his rolling Scottish Rrrrrs. Hmmmm....nice thought...
So much to say
so much to say
so much to say
so much to say
Other than writing, trying to organize my life a little more, and working out, Post Secret's Sunday secrets are little rays of sunshine in my week and the absolute absurd debauchery that is posted on Texts From Last Night always makes me laugh (and often finds me checking Urban Dictionary to understand what the heck they're talking about).

Ambitious? Yes, but I don't want to sit down when I'm 80 and regret the things I could have done but I was too scared to try. Carpe Diem!

$320--You've got to be kidding!

I take very little consolation in the fact that I am far from the only one who has been angered by the $320 "fee" required to carry an infant in your lap on international flights. $320 is a whole lot of money to me and I'm pretty much getting NOTHING in return from the airline! WTF! I am not amused! BTW: there is NO fee for holding infants in laps on flights within the US. Sooo, needless to say, I'm REALLY looking forward to figuring out just how to get my $320 worth on my 8 hour flight from Detroit to Amsterdam. Any suggestions?

Yes we can...

One month later, as I'm beginning to come out of my shocked state:

So happy in an America that I can be proud of.
So proud of an America that can move on & progress.
So excited that my daughter will only read the history
Of an America full of hatred, self importance, and excess.
Yes we can? Yes we can!
Crying tears of elation and almost disbelief,
November 4th, 2008 returned my ideals to me.
Waiting for the changes charging headlong down the aisle,
For America the beautiful to become all I want it to be.
Yes we can? Yes we can!

Ending with a little funny:

See more Jack Black videos at Funny or Die

Fabulous Video!

Check it out:

Soo my life right now...

Life as we knew it is never going to be the same. Andy said to me this evening: I just feel like I've been going and going since I got up this morning at 9:30am. I responded: Now you know how I feel every night when I flop into bed. Between the 3 days a week that I'm teaching a class at a college 40 minutes away, the classes I'm taking, the paper I'm trying to write for the AAA conference, the study design for my pilot study in January, an IRB proposal for the same study in January, and the 1 million things to take care of at home including the needs of both my adorable daughter and my handsome husband, I'm f**king exhausted by the end of it all. Maybe being a manic mommy isn't the best idea for staying sane every, but I'm not sure I'd have it any other way! At least we have an amazing babysitter that lives just across the street now. I LOVE Marnie BTW!! She is soo great. I swear that she probably takes better care of Annika than we do!
Crazy ideas that are now being implemented in my house:
1. Trying to pump & freeze 40 bottles by the time I leave for the AAA conference.
2. Keeping the house tidy and clean. (Much harder than it sounds w/ a 4 month old!)
3. Attempting to keep a bit of a social life too! (HA HA HA! This is the one that 's losing right now.)
I am going to attempt to start up a new exercise regimen too. A lady I worked with at CDPH just opened up a Pilates studio near here, and I'm hoping she can help make me hot again. We'll see how that goes. Tomorrow we're going to a cook-out at a friend of Andy's who he met playing soccer. These will be some of our first friends that we didn't meet at school or work! Very exciting! We realized a while ago that since our roommates moved out, we have no couple friends and the hopes of finding another couple like us are pretty dire. Seriously, we just have too much criteria to fill. This couple that we're hanging out with tomorrow are pretty close though. She is a German speaking PhD holding professor at CSU. They lived in Berlin for a year. He plays soccer and is into techno geeky stuff. Hmmm...if only the had a kid!! See what I mean? She and I have only met via e-mail, but I'm really hopeful that we'll hit it off so that we can form a weekly Stammtisch to practice our German skills. I would LOVE for Annika to get more exposure before we just jump into Berlin in January.
Well, back to work for me. Yes, that's how boring I am now--working on a Saturday night!

Annika's birth story

Around 1am very early Tuesday May 6^th I started having contractions that woke me up about every half an hour. I knew they were pretty bad, but kept sleeping in between the contractions because I knew that I would need my strength for what was coming. I started to write down the timing of the contractions, and they started to get closer together. Around 4am they were getting so strong and close together that I couldn’t sleep between them. I knew I had an appointment at the midwife that morning. I thought that if I could just hold out until 8am to get my progress checked, then I would be fine. I sat on my exercise ball at the end of our bed and put my head down on the bed between contractions. I kept letting Andy sleep through most of it, only squeezing his hand a few times during the contractions when I thought I needed to. By 7:30am, my contractions were really regular, strong, and about 10 minutes apart. Andy stopped and got me a bagel on the way and I only could eat about half of it. We made it to the midwife’s office to be checked, and I was 5-6cm dilated. She called the midwife who was on call, and we were in luck. That was when we found out that my favorite midwife would be the one to attend the delivery!! I was elated!!!

We walked for a while around the hospital and slowly made our way over to Labor & Delivery where we were met by Jen—the midwife. She had called ahead and reserved the room with the birthing tub in it! As soon as possible, I got in it! My friend Amy, our birth support person and a future doula, came with great music for us and loads of relaxation stuffs too. With gentle samba music playing in the background and Amy rubbing my hands with lotion, I was rather calm. Yes, the contractions were getting worse & closer together, but the bath was so warm and nice that it really helped me stay relaxed. I was also relaxed because Jen was able to stay in the room almost the entire time with us. She kept talking to me and really helped me to remember how exciting it all was instead of getting all wrapped up in the pain. After about 2 hours, I got out of the tub so that she could check my progress again. I was already 9cm dilated, and my water still hadn’t broken. Jen talked to me about breaking my water to speed up the process, and even though I had been against it before this all got under way, I agreed that it was a good idea. She actually had trouble breaking the bag of waters; it took her three tries with that huge crochet hook looking thingy. It was then that we realized that the bed in the room was not a “birthing bed”. There were no stirrups, no handlebars, no birthing bar, and the bottom didn’t drop down. Jen had to sit at the end of the bed to deliver the baby. Not really the biggest thing on my mind at the time, but it had to be sucky for Jen.

Finally it was time to push, and I was tired. I was also in loads of pain and not so sure that I was up for all that pushing that I still had to do. If you know me, however, you know how stubborn I am and that I was not going to budge on my plan to stay drug-free! I tried every position that I had read about to see which one was going to work for me. I stayed on the bed at first and tried to be on all fours, then modified that by sitting up to hold the back of the bed. That wasn’t so great, so I got up out of bed to try standing, then partial and full squatting while gripping a chair. I got back in bed and was on my back again, even though that’s exactly how I didn’t want to be. I crossed my wrists, leaned forward, and pulled on Dr. Fisher who had joined us in the room just before I started pushing. ((Side note: Dr. Fisher was actually really great and I would totally recommend her to anyone who didn’t want to use the midwives!)) I actually pulled the doctor so hard that she ended up bent over the bed. I pushed a few more times in that position, but holding Andy’s hands instead of the doctor’s. Finally, I turned onto my side and that was the one that worked for me! Throughout all the position changing I kept pushing with everything I had. I thought I was being really vocal, but apparently Amy thought I was being scientology silent. I do remember someone telling me to focus my energy down below instead of letting it go out of my mouth with my screams. I also remember thinking that I was pushing the baby out of my perineum instead of my vagina! I was super annoyed with the nurse because every time I stopped pushing, she had to stick the fetal monitor (aka: machine that goes ping) onto my gut to check the baby’s heart rate. I really wanted to yell at her to get the heck out of there!!

“Open” was my mantra at the very end of it all, and I was happy to feel the burning of stretching skin because I knew it was almost over then. They asked me if I wanted a mirror to look at the head when it was crowning, but I didn’t want to see my business in such a stretched out bloody mess state. I did put my hand down there to feel all the hair on her head though. A few more pushes and she was out and I was absolutely amazed and overwhelmed and feeling a million things all at once. The midwife announced, “It’s a girl”, and at 2:17pm we were officially parents of a 7 lb 19 inch baby that we named Annika Susan. Annika’s cord was actually wrapped around her neck once and in a knot near her belly, though she never showed any signs of distress. She scored 9s on both of her APGARs, which is great according to what the doctors say. As Jen was delivering my placenta, I was bleeding more than usual, so she talked to me about getting a shot of Pitocin to slow/stop it. I got the shot, and then after they weighed and measured Annika they brought her back and I fed her right away which also helped. I did not enjoy the abdominal massage that they gave me afterwards to help my uterus start the shrinking process, especially since breastfeeding Annika had already kicked in the cramps to help it shrink.

We stayed in the hospital until Thursday at noon, and had a really great experience overall. Annika stayed in the room with us except for a couple trips to the nursery to get some tests and baths. She was doing really well latching on to nurse there too. Several of our friends came to visit us there and brought Annika some beautiful flowers and adorable stuffed toys too. The best part of the hospital: the room service type food menu! How often do you hear about how great the hospital food was? There was quite the extensive menu to order from and the food was actually REALLY great! Mucho props to the food service at Hillcrest! It was pretty great that Andy could eat with me all the time by ordering a guest meal which only cost $5. I appreciated that too! My only complaint from the stay: the horrific chair that Andy was forced to sleep in for the two nights we were there. It was busted; it wouldn’t lie all the way down, and they didn’t have another to replace it. Apparently they kept breaking, getting sent out for repair, and never returning. Needless to say, Andy was über-happy to return to our comfortably flat mattress at home.

Since being home we’ve had a constant parade of visiting family members, and only now are we actually getting to spend some time learning how to be a new family of three. I love being home with Annika, but I can’t imagine doing this all the time without the hope of going to school in the fall. Breastfeeding was so much harder than I ever expected it to be. We actually ended up going to a breastfeeding doctor and a doctor of osteopathy to get it all worked out in the end. Annika and I have a great rhythm now, and we still give her a bottle of pumped breast milk once in a while. It is really nice to have that option sometimes, so that I can actually get some work done if I have a babysitter. Most of my time is spent hanging out with my adorable new daughter though! I can’t believe how much she’s grown already, even though everyone seems to think she’s so small. She’s been gaining weight very well and I can tell that her skin is starting to fill out with a little bit of fat. She’d already grown over an inch at one month! I’ll try to keep writing about my new life, but probably won’t get around to it until next month at the earliest as I’m trying to catch up on my papers from last semester. Once those are done, then I should have a little more time to write about what’s going on in our fabulous new life!

Still waiting...

At the suggestion of the fabulous Ms. Erin, here's the scoop as to what's going on right now.

WARNING: I probably am going to be a more than a little frank, so don't read on if you're worried about hearing about disgusting end of pregnancy details.

Things they never tell you about the end of pregnancy that someone really should warn you about:
1. Disgusting goo: Yes, it will look like someone with a horrific cold has blown their nose on your toilet paper for weeks--or at least that's been my experience.

2. General Malaise: At some point near the end you will become absolutely sick of being pregnant and want to get the kid out asap and there will be absolutely nothing you can do about it.

3. "Dropping" is good AND bad. I can finally breathe again and my heartburn has let up considerably but walking has become quite challenging with a head down in my pelvis!

4. Fatty McFatterson: I have NEVER felt soo fucking fat in my life! I can't wait to be able to roll over in bed without my "round ligaments" feeling like they are going to rip in half! I can't wait to not have someone's head resting on my cervix--the waddling that this forces you to do does NOT make you feel any better about the gargantuan size of your body! I'm still waiting for my bursts of energy because all I really want to do is lay in bed until this kid comes out! I know that I'm really NOT that fat and that I'm only pregnant and blah blah blah, but this doesn't keep me from feeling like Gilbert Grape's mom. No, I'm not going to set the house on fire or anything crazy, don't worry!

4. End in sight? The waiting and not knowing really grates on you after a while! Not being able to make ANY plans whatsoever because you just never know when labor is going to kick into high gear really SUCKS!

That's a pretty good lead in to the story of what's been going on with me for the last two weeks. Soo, three weeks ago we went to our weekly appointment to see the midwife. (By we, I mean Me & Andy. He goes to all my appointments with me and is super cute about it actually. Besides, I feel fat enough without referring to myself in the plural!) Anyway, we went to the midwife and I made the mistake of having her check me to see how things were going with my cervix. It was a Thursday, and when she check me I was 1.5-2cm dilated. No big deal really, but I thought it would just be good to know. My next appointment was for the next Tuesday because of scheduling conflicts etc. She checked me again. I was at 3cm dilation and when she pulled out her glove there was my oh-so-fun bloody show! She then asked me when my next appointment was, and I told her in a week. She said, "Well, I don't think you're gonna make it. Do you have your bag for the hospital packed?" I went to school that day elated thinking that labor was absolutely imminent! I even passed my mucous plug later that day furthering the illusion that this kid really was coming soon! Waay wrong! I sure did make my next appointment a week later. I saw a different midwife who also checked my "progress". I was at 4cm! Hallelujah, I was still making progress slowly but surely. She then said, "Well, it could be today or it could be in two weeks. There really isn't any way of knowing. We'll just have to be patient." WHAT?!?! Obviously this lady doesn't know me at all. That was one week ago tomorrow, and I'm going back to the midwife tomorrow. My technical due date is May 8th, so really I'm doing great timing wise and all. Intellectually I keep telling myself that it's a good thing that the baby hasn't come yet. There really are still some things that need to get taken care of before the kid comes, but the problem is that I'm really finding it impossible to motivate myself to do them. I don't want to clean the house again!

This brings me to my school papers. I'm sure you can imagine what an impossible task writing a research paper becomes when you are told that you could go into birth any minute. Maybe? Well, my professors certainly could and thank GOD! I've gotten extensions on all my papers until whenever I can finish them. I would love to say that I'm working on them diligently, but that would be an outright lie! I've honestly been trying to chill out and sleep as much as possible. I know that's not what a good grad student would do, but I can't help it. I know that it isn't going to be any easier to write papers with a newborn in the house, but I can't even think about the horrific quality of my writing at this point. I'm so worried that every little pain is a contraction and whether or not I should be counting them yet. I haven't been counting or timing them at all though, mostly because they've been absolutely sporadic. They've felt more like shooting pains than anything else yet. Yes, I have gotten some of the ones that begin at your spine and crawl all the way around your belly, but those have honestly been rare. SEE---I can't even write about writing for very long before I digress back to baby!!!

5. EVERYONE wants to see the baby already!! Yes, I know this is an obvious one, and PLEASE do count me in the category of people who want to see the baby already too. My friend Charlotte put it so well when she asked me, "Are you sick of everyone staring at you like you're the reason that Christmas hasn't come yet?" YES!! That's exactly it! All our friends and family are well meaning I know--checking in with us to see if labor has begun yet or if we just happened to have forgotten to tell them that the kid oops slipped out over the weekend. Well, it didn't yet. Andy's mom actually was convinced that I was going to have the kid on the 1st and called the 2nd just to ask if I did. Seriously Nana--we'll let YOU know!!! My mom now calls me every day that she goes down to the winery to let me know that she's going to be out of cell phone range so I'll have to call her on the winery phone. Again, MA, give me some credit. YES, I know that your car is packed and ready to go. WE'LL FIND YOU when it's time!! My mom also likes to suggest good days to have babies--as if I have any control over it AT ALL!! Her latest suggestion: Today! Yes I agree mama! It would be kinda cute for us to have the baby on Cinco de Mayo since we met at ChiChi's and all, but give me a break. There is only so much I can control.

Sooo, now that I've gotten all that off my chest...
Let me mention again that as soon as the kid is born we will be making a billion phone calls as well as sending out e-mails to everyone that we know. They actually have WiFi at the hospital, so Andy has promised to post pictures of the baby as soon as he can either on my MySpace/Facebook accounts or a Flicker/Snapfish account that he's still contemplating opening. Our hospital also has a Web Nursery where you should be able to check out our little one a day or two after it arrives.

Keep your fingers crossed for us. We're hoping to finish our apartment hunt this week so that we know where we're going to be living in July. Yeah...Andy kinda put it off a little and somehow I've become the point person on this too. Booo, bad form Melch! We did look at a really great place yesterday that is amazingly close to campus and a Rapid Station so Andy could take it to work instead of the car in the winter. We'll see though...still contemplating of course. We're looking in Little Italy right now and I'm actually really excited to move to a new smaller place. Well, the actual moving part doesn't sound that fun, but I'm excited about not having as much space to clean!

Happy Cinco everyone! Drink a Margarita for me PLEASE!!!