One week

Auletta turned one week old yesterday. At her first pediatric appointment she weighed 8 lb. 4 oz., six ounces more than when she was born. So this breastfeeding thing is obviously going well. So well, in fact, that I spent yesterday afternoon doing not much else, and decided it was okay to give her a pacifier. I wasn't in a hurry to do it, but I have read it won't lead to nipple confusion once breastfeeding is established, and I don't know how it could be more established. Besides, the hospital apparently gave her a pacifier when she was in the nursery at night. Which I would not necessarily have approved, but at least they use Soothies, which is what I was going to get anyway.



(Thanks to Helene and Michael for the sleeper and my sister for the conveniently coordinating hat. Baby hats are, in fact, flat when you first get them.)

Update: I added a couple of pictures to the story of Auletta's birth and hospital stay, in case you don't want to read the whole thing but want to see pictures.

About her name

Auletta is my mom's last name. Justin has three siblings whose last names are family surnames, so we decided to continue that tradition. Ruth is Justin's Gomma, who is still hanging in there. She got to see pictures of her great-granddaughter this weekend, thanks to the miracle of email and digital cameras.

The birth certificate lady had to check on us three days in a row before we totally made up our minds. We've been calling her Auletta since we found out she was a she, but as her due date approached we started wondering if we really wanted to be spelling her name for everyone (and making her have to spell it) in aeternam. We thought of switching her first and middle names. But we realized several things: 1. We were already calling her Auletta. 2. Word had spread to my mom's family that her name was Auletta. 3. It makes a lot more sense, if we're already calling her this unusual name, to give her a normal middle name she can use if she hates her weird first name than to give her a normal first name and call her by her weird middle name.

And anyway, Ruth might become popular again, but there is no chance our daughter will have three classmates with the same name. Someday I'm going to write a post ranting about some of the names that are trendy these days.

Auletta: The early days

This is the whole birth story, plus first days at the hospital. It is very long.

I went to the hospital Tuesday morning to get the gel to ripen my cervix. The doctor told me that it was possible but unlikely this by itself would be enough to initiate contractions; otherwise I'd go in the next day, probably early, for the induction. While I was hooked up to the fetal monitor I had mild contractions, but nothing that looked like actual labor. I was dilated a centimeter, if that, and less effaced than I had been told I was on Friday (effacement is so subjective that I'm not really sure why they bother, but whatever).

On the way home I picked up Justin, who was tired and figured we might as well spend this last baby-less afternoon together. I started having contractions I could actually identify as contractions as the afternoon went on. By the evening they were regular and getting stronger. I started timing them more carefully around 9:00 and called the doctor twice; the second time he said we could head for the hospital. At that point they were at most three minutes apart and still not very painful, but I didn't want to wait that much longer because they were so close together.

We got to the hospital around 11:30 and went up to triage, where they have rooms for women in early labor. By that time the contractions were definitely painful, but manageable. A resident did an internal, the most freaking painful internal I'd ever had (no doubt because it was during a contraction, ouch). I was dilated two centimeters. The doctor who was doing deliveries that night came and told me to walk around the floor for two hours and then they'd check my progress and admit me to L&D if I had made enough progress. I wasn't sure I would make it two hours with the pain I was already having, but being on my feet instead of lying on my side attached to the fetal monitor was more comfortable, at least in the beginning. But after 45 minutes I asked Justin to see if I could get any sort of pain medication at all or have another internal. The nurses said I could have an internal, but if I hadn't dilated enough I might just be disappointed and still in pain. Fortunately, I had dilated to 3 or 4 centimeters and could be admitted to L&D, and the doctor asked if I was interested in an epidural. By that time any idea I had of even attempting natural childbirth had gone out the window, so the epidural was arranged.

We walked over to L&D. After this everything went haywire and I don't really remember exactly what happened. In some order, the following took place: I was attached to an IV. I was asked the same questions several times about whether I was allergic to any medications, etc. so I could get the epidural. The doctor broke my water. The number of people in the room increased exponentially. The fetal monitor made threatening beeping noises at wildly varying rates, which was the baby's heartbeat, and the doctor said, at what seemed like really soon after I had gotten into L&D, that they might have to do a c-section. I got an oxygen mask, which paradoxically made me feel less able to breathe, but nobody let me take it off.

I was in awful pain the whole time. Now I don't know if I am just a huge wimp or I didn't practice my breathing exercises or if this was an unusually horrible labor, but it was extremely unfun. The contractions were really intense, which I'm sure is normal, and there was often no time for me to relax between each one. Basically, I think it was like being in the transitional stage of labor (when you dilate from 7 to 10 cm, and which is supposed to be hideous but short) when I was just barely in active labor. As far as I know I never made it past 4 cm.

After some period of fetal distress and various medical personnel acting, in a controlled way, very worried, they decided to do the c-section. I remember the doctor telling me if I had another baby I could either have a VBAC or an elective cesarean, which it seemed weird for him to tell me at that point since either way I had to get this present baby out as quickly as possible, but the whole thing was weird so I didn't really notice it at the time. I signed the consent form at a rare moment between contractions and was wheeled rapidly to the operating room.

Justin, who had been incredibly wonderful and supportive the whole time, was left in L&D to await further instructions. At that point they didn't know if they could stabilize the baby enough to do a spinal block, in which case Justin could be in the OR with me, or if they had to knock me out as quickly as possible with general anesthesia, which would mean he couldn't be with me. I had heard them discussing the possibility of general anesthesia, which kind of scared me (as scary as this all was) because as I understand it, even with emergency cesareans general anesthesia is pretty rare.

Fortunately they were able to get the baby stabilized enough to do the spinal block. It probably helped that I was less frantic by this point, since I knew the baby would be coming out imminently. It took several more contractions for me to be asked the same questions about my nonexistent allergies to medications and to get the spinal block itself, which once it kicked in was the most beautiful physical sensation I have ever experienced in my life. The doctors and nurses set up a curtain between my chest and my abdomen, Justin came in wearing scrubs, and we had a nice conversation with the anesthesiologist about how Justin and I met and where we were from while the medical team delivered our daughter, who came into the world at 1:56 AM on Wednesday. We didn't even know she was out at first because they took her next door to get cleaned up and get her APGARs and all that, but they told us they had delivered her and after a couple of minutes we could hear her cry. And then they brought her out so Justin could hold her, and she stared at us and she was perfect and everything was good and worthwhile.

After they sewed me up (this took a while; Justin heard the doctor say something like "Who has her bladder?" which was a little disconcerting, but I did get it back), they took us to a recovery room. This was probably the weirdest part of the evening. I was extremely cold and shivering uncontrollably. My temperature got down to 94.2. I didn't know it was possible to be that cold and be, like, not dead, but apparently it is. So they put a warmed blanket over me, which was nice but kind of lame under the circumstances, and then put this weird sort of inflatable blanket hooked up to an air hose with hot air coming into it, which was less lame but still didn't heat me up as quickly as I would have liked, which was immediately, or at least soon. We were in the recovery room for probably an hour and a half; the baby had to be warmed up too, although Justin got to hold her a lot. The spinal block, which was a darned good spinal block, took several hours to wear off, so I was still flat on my back at this point. There was a nurse in and out of the room, but otherwise we were alone, which seemed kind of bizarre. Eventually they got the baby to a safe temperature and me up to 96-ish, which for being two degrees below normal body temperature was pretty great under the circumstances, so they brought us up to our room on the maternity floor. I got to hold the baby, kind of, in the crook of my arm. We got there around 4:00 AM. The baby had to go to the nursery to be weighed and measured. We sort of slept for a couple of hours.



* * *

So you remember how the baby's head never fully engaged? This probably had something to do with how she ended up coming out. My doctor thought at first her head was smooshing her umbilical cord, which would definitely have explained her distress, which turned out not to be the case. But her chin was tipped down toward her chest, instead of upward, which is how babies are supposed to be facing when they're born, and it was bent at kind of a weird angle. We also overheard the doctor saying something about my narrow pelvis during the surgery. Not that you could ever tell from the outside, but it seems perhaps I am not built to deliver babies, at least this big-headed one. I'm not sure it was a case of true cephalo-pelvic disproportion (which I believe is rare, for obvious evolutionary reasons), but I'm sure that didn't make things any easier. I'm hoping to get a better idea of what happened at my first postpartum appointment. I think the doctor kind of explained it afterwards, but I was not in much of a condition to remember if he did.

* * *

We had four days in the hospital to recover. We probably could have been discharged on Saturday, but we took advantage of the extra day's worth of food (which was room service and generally pretty good), baby help, and rest, sort of. The first day I only got out of bed twice, with the help of nurses, and was still hooked up to an IV and catheter. We got started breastfeeding. I had been worried that since I wasn't able to hold Auletta or even try nursing her for the first twelve hours or so of her life that it might make things more complicated, but we managed fine, it just took a little longer to get started. The baby was sleepy and mucusy her first day, so she wasn't really hungry, but I pumped a little bit to keep up my supply and kept encouraging her to feed. And whatever I might think about Yale-New Haven as far as the scheduling of my induction, they have wonderful breastfeeding support, so I got lots of help from all the nurses and lactation consultants. I especially adored one of our night nurses, Caren, who was a sweetheart and helped out with our first successful couple of feedings the first full night we were there. Once we got rolling things just went incredibly smoothly. I had very few expectations about my childbirth experience, which is good because none of them would have been met anyway, but I really wanted to breastfeed and had myself mentally prepared to stick it out through days or weeks of pain and frustration if it turned out to be difficult, but it wasn't. So I'm really happy about that.

Justin's mom spent all day at the hospital on Friday. (She'd tried to get there on Thursday, but it didn't work out. Another U.S. Air-is-evil story.) This is when I discovered for myself one of the advantages of breastfeeding, which is that every couple of hours people have to give you your baby back. His mom and dad both came on Saturday and spent the day fighting over the baby, which was very cute. She's their first grandchild, and the first girl in their branch of the Schwab clan since Justin's sister was born twenty years ago, so they're really happy to have her.



I think I'm recovering pretty quickly from the surgery. Actually I felt better in the hospital, but they kept loading me with Percoset and I didn't have to do as much there as I am doing at home (although my sister's visiting so I have lots of help). After the first day I was moving around slowly but without much pain.

We came home Sunday morning, which is when my sister's flight got in, so I'll have help until Friday, and then Justin has the next week off. We are probably doing Auletta's first road trip--a short one, for us--this weekend; more about that later.

Baby With Flat Hat is here!

Auletta Ruth Schwab was born on October 10, 2007 at 1:56 AM. She weighed 7 lb. 13.5 oz. and measured 19 3/4 inches. Her big brainy head was 14 inches. She is perfect and we adore her. I'll post more details later this week.

How induction is a lot like spontaneous labor

They don't tell you when you're supposed to be induced until right before it happens, apparently. The hospital is still having trouble fitting me in for my cervical gelling tomorrow, so they're supposed to call in the morning and let me know if 1. someone has canceled (i.e. delivered) or 2. the on-call doctor can take me. I'm set for the induction itself on Wednesday, but I won't find out until tomorrow evening when I'm supposed to go in for that. So it's all a big fun surprise!

Meanwhile, I'm entertaining myself by going to the baby chat boards on thenest.com. This isn't really making me feel better, though, because I've read so many posts from women who are 37/38 weeks pregnant and disappointed that they're not dilated yet, and it's not charitable but I want to kick them.

The good news is, I think the baby's been putting more pressure on my bladder, which is manifesting itself in frequent but not always timely trips to the bathroom, so maybe she's dropped a bit.

Baby With Flat Hat update, part the gazillionth

Today I spent several hours at the university health center (and environs, since I needed to eat at some point) attending three inconveniently spaced appointments. Scheduling anything related to this baby seems to be like herding cats; more on that soon. Anyway, first of all I had the nonstress test, in which I was hooked up to a fetal monitor and asked to press a button every time she moved to see if her heartrate went up when she moved, which it's supposed to do. It facilitates this procedure if the baby moves. My daughter is not a morning person. The nurse gave me some grape juice, though, at which point she perked up and said "I love JUICE!" and had all kinds of heartrate-boosting movement, some of which I even felt. So that is good.

I ate lunch, then went back for a short ultrasound to check my amniotic fluid level, which is fine. And she's still a girl, or if she's not they decided not to disabuse me of that notion before I find out in person.

Then I went upstairs very early for my 41 week appointment, was surprised to be admitted to the exam room early, and then less surprised when I ended up sitting there for half an hour in a stuffy room on the edge of the exam table with a glorified paper towel over the lower half of my body and my back hurting like crazy from the exam table's failure to be a comfy chair like the ones in the waiting room I'd rather have been sitting in. Maybe I should bring this up in the telephone surveys I keep getting from Yale Health Services about appointments I can't remember because they were short and three weeks ago and I've had other appointments since then.

So, finally a doctor emerged and gave me an internal. I am 80% effaced. Progress! But still no dilation, and the baby's head is still not fully engaged. Well, I wouldn't want to stick my head in someone else's pelvis, either. At this point, if they want to induce me by 42 weeks (remember, ignore the ticker if you're a doctor and all women have 28-day cycles; I was due almost a week ago), they have to schedule me soon. I have mixed feelings about inductions, like 1. I was born four weeks late and I turned out fine, so what's the rush? and besides, I've heard the contractions are worse on pitocin, and they often end in c-sections especially if the baby's not really ready, which she's not, and sometimes they just fail, in like a big icanhascheezburger conehead-cat that can't eat its food FAIL. type of way, and they can take forever (my sister's induction = 36 hours of labor, etc.), and, etc., but 2. gee, it would be nice to have a baby, for a couple of personal reasons besides the obvious impatience with being pregnant and wanting one, some of them not so significant in the big scheme of things (my sister's here from the 14th to the 19th and it'd be nice if I were home with the baby by then), some really important to us (like Justin's Gomma meeting her first great-grandchild before she passes away, which is looking inevitable and soon).

So. At first they were trying to schedule me for another AFI/NST on Monday and an induction toward the middle/end of the week. But apparently the hospital is having trouble scheduling me for anytime except maybe Tuesday/Wednesday. How hospitals have trouble scheduling inductions when presumably they have to accommodate anyone who, like, goes into labor on her own is beyond me, but apparently it truly is that complicated. So now the plan is for me not to have anything on Monday, to go in Tuesday at some yet-to-be-determined time to get gel to thin my cervix, sleep at home that night, and then come back in on Wednesday to get the show on the road. We hope. (Justin has a light class schedule on Wednesday, which is a small perk to this plan.)

If that confused you, imagine how I explained it to Justin, who has a project due on Tuesday and wants to know when the baby is coming. Despite all this attempted scheduling (FAIL.), she is a baby, so I don't know. Maybe before Tuesday. But definitely (probably) within a week.

My ticker amuses me

The Baby With Flat Hat Status Report says

I'm getting lots of sleep, waiting to get out.

Judging by the all-night party in my uterus, she has no trouble passing the time. This might have had to do with my brilliant idea of baking brownies last night, now that I have found my measuring cups. Chocolate, I now remember, has caffeine, which keeps me awake, and apparently like everything else it gives me gas six ways to Sunday so that I had to sit up and burp all night to keep from floating away on a giant internal bubble. Also I seem to have taken up snoring at those times I do sleep. Lovely.

I'm scheduled for a nonstress test on Friday if I don't have the baby before then. My weekly appointments have been so routine, and my progress so negligible, that at my 39 week appointment eight days ago my OB decided to cancel my 40 week appointment and just schedule me for the NST if I didn't have the baby before that. Thereafter I had this odd notion that because I had the appointment for the NST, it would somehow prevent me from going into labor, which who knows, maybe it has. I'm so convinced she's not coming on her own anytime soon that I would be in shock if she did, although that's technically what's supposed to happen.

Rumors of her birth are greatly exaggerated

Justin got a phone call last night congratulating him on being a father. This was a rather weird and awkward call because 1. it was 2:00 A.M., 2. the guy who called is a second-degree friend, so Justin didn't recognize him right away, and 3. I haven't actually had the baby yet. The best explanation I can think of is that Justin mentioned September 29 as the due date somewhere along the line and it was assumed, either by the second- or first-degree friend, that she was born yesterday, because babies always come on their due dates. Of course anyone who's given birth knows that babies rarely come on their due dates--in fact, I had thought anyone who has been born would know this, especially anyone who has been born late and has a Jewish mother. But maybe not.

I am a Cool History/Lit Geek!

I am only a nerd in one way, but boy am I nerdy as far as that goes.





(In the interest of full disclosure, I'm counting immediate access to things as if they were not still packed in boxes. We own atlases of both the Greek and Roman ancient world! Actually, I just realized that since they're Justin's, all this means is I'm married to a nerd. But I'm married, which makes me less of an awkward nerd. I was surprised how un-awkward-nerdish I am.)

Thanks to the divine Madame Meow.

Oh, and I'm still pregnant.

The end is near. Maybe.

I am officially due this Saturday, September 29. I am unofficially due on October 3, this date based on my actually being present at the creation, which the doctors and the charts by which they calculate estimated due dates were not, so I think I am right. Either way, Baby With Flat Hat is going to come whenever she pleases, which I am guessing to be later rather than sooner, because she certainly never seems to tire of using my ribs as a footrest. Also as of last Tuesday I am not dilated or any of those other things you never wanted to know about my cervix. Also I think I can pretty honestly say I haven't had a contraction, Braxton-Hicks or otherwise, except maybe for a couple of times when I've tried to move heavy-ish stuff around the carriage house (don't tell Justin; or actually he knows, and I haven't lately).

I can see now why the last month of pregnancy invariably sucks. I can't really complain because I've had a good run so far. Complain about: the feet, which I think are throwing my back out so it's hard to sit upright for any length of time (makes going out to eat unpleasant); the pelvic pressure (to put it politely) which makes it excruciating to roll over in bed, which I have to do about twenty zillion times a night because of the aforementioned backache; and, um, actually the rest isn't that bad. I had awful heartburn for a while but then I discovered Tums around the same time that I think she moved her head down into my pelvis, which seems not to have made her want to move her feet but at least has taken pressure off my stomach.

I am guaranteed a baby by October 13 because I have been told I will not be allowed to go more than two weeks past my due date (the official one). Not that I want to be induced, but at that point I'll probably be ready for anything.

And if the apple doesn't fall far from the tree, this might be necessary. See, for example, her parents' track record:

Justin:
Due August 18 (I think). Born September 5.
Juliet:
Due May 8. Born June 6. (Seriously.)

Today I wrestled with various rather important baby items I ought to have dealt with before, but I am so convinced this girl will be late that I've been lazy about a lot of things. The co-sleeper is now attached to the bed, and the carseat base to the car, although I am not sure how Justin and the baby can comfortably occupy the passenger side of the Corolla at the same time so I might have to start letting him drive more.

My dad is swinging through town tonight for dinner. I hope I can sit still that long. I had sort of hoped that I would have the baby this past weekend so he could meet his granddaughter, but then I would probably not be up for dinner.

Happy/sad

Yes, I'm in Connecticut now, and I'm still pregnant. More about that sooner or later.

Yesterday I was happy for two reasons:

1. My cousin Sarah is engaged. I've only met her fiance once, in March when Justin and I were in Seattle and we were all at my grandmother's 85th birthday party. But the two of them seemed almost giddily happy together, and I'm glad they are planning to be happy together for the rest of their lives. And I love weddings, especially weddings I can attend because I won't be eight months pregnant.

2. My dad is passing through town on business in a week and a half, so I get to see him and have dinner. Assuming I am not in labor or anything.

Today I am still happy, but sad too. Scott Becker (the author of Aufhebung on my blogroll) passed away this morning. He was the assistant pastor at Bethany Community Church, my church in Seattle when I lived there. He left to get a PhD in Christian ethics and was working on his dissertation when he was diagnosed with liver cancer last fall. I haven't really kept in touch with him since I moved away from Seattle, but he was an awesome person and a gifted writer, and as much as I regret his passing, there are so many people who will miss him even more. Richard Dahlstrom, the senior pastor at Bethany, wrote a more fitting tribute to him here.

For this cause shall a man leave his father and mother, and cleave to his wife...

In between our subletted apartment in Ithaca and the carriage house in New Haven, we're staying with Justin's family. There's wireless here, which is why I'm blogging again.

At dinner tonight, Justin's mom was trying to convince Weatherly that she needs to schedule her own doctor's appointments because she's legally an adult now. Justin pointed out that she might be of legal age, but they still claim her as a dependent, and added, "When I became an adult was when I had my wife do my taxes."

Reunion

I had guards like watchdogs, etc.

This is going to be a blog entry about basically nothing.

I didn't go to my 10-year high school reunion, back in 2003, for several reasons:

1. I didn't really have any good friends in my graduating class to begin with. All the people I keep in touch with, or really liked in the first place, were a year or two ahead of or behind me. I found out before the reunion that one guy I genuinely did like had died of leukemia, so one less reason to go, bummer.

2. It was in October. In Seattle. I was living in Virginia and was in grad school. So thanks for that really helpful scheduling.

3. Actually, I did have a reading break that weekend and part of the next week, but I wanted to use that time to visit the guy I was going to marry.

4. It was like $75 plus a cash bar. Dude. And not drinking around these people was pretty much not an option.

But I was curious about what these reunion thingies were like. We were in town for Justin's this summer, he actually had friends in his graduating class*, and it was a lot less expensive. So I encouraged him to go. This is how we dressed (another belly picture, this time at like 32 weeks, if you can see the belly under Justin's hand under my hand gripping his, as in "Act like you like the baby, dang it!"):



We lasted less than an hour.

*He has lots of friends from his graduating class. Unfortunately, none of them came, except Jason, with whom we went and spent a very awkward half hour or so drinking gin and tonics (well, I watched them drink gin and tonics) and looking around the room at the small percentage of Justin's class that showed up, who were apparently (not like I'd know) the last people he would have picked to see again. So after hors d'ouevres (I have no idea to spell that, and frankly if France can't come up with a reasonable language, I don't really care if I'm butchering it), which for some reason involved meatballs but no forks, we bailed and went out to dinner on our own. I kind of wanted to stick it out for the prime rib (I have been instructed to eat more red meat due to mild pregnancy-related anemia), but neither Justin nor Jason wanted to stay, and it wasn't my extremely awkward high school reunion, so we left and had dinner downtown instead.

See you all on Facebook, I guess. It's too weird in person. You know?

Belly

This was taken June 17, when I was about 25 weeks along. This will give you a good idea of what I look like if you haven't seen me in a while. I don't think I've gotten substantially bigger since then. What's weird, actually, is how no strangers have commented on my pregnant belly (maybe I'm still in the "is she pregnant or just fat?" stage, although I sure look pregnant to myself), and certainly no one has made the dreaded "Wow, you must be about to pop any day now!" remark.

The Latin lover

Who ever thought the Roman Catholic Church would catch so much flak for allowing something?

I'm still here

Of course the next question is, where is "here"?

We moved ourselves, the cats, and way too much stuff that didn't quite make it to New Haven up to Ithaca on May 18, in a caravan consisting of a Jeep packed with book boxes, two cranky cats, and me, and a brand-new Corolla (my mom car! twice the gas mileage of the Jeep! yay!) packed with Justin and more stuff. We're subletting an apartment in downtown Ithaca, the only part of town that isn't hilly. Our intent was, in part, to get me out of the sweltering South during the increasingly gravid part of my pregnancy. Of course now it's like 95 degrees here...

In early June I went to Seattle to see my grandmother, whose health declined rather precipitously but then improved right before I went. She'd been on anti-seizure meds and not really eating, but by the time I'd gotten there she was off the meds and eating ice cream if nothing else. My dad, aunt, uncle, and sister are on rotation to visit during meals and cheer her on while her caregiver feeds here pureed Brussels sprouts and other things I wouldn't eat either. Anyway, I was glad to see her again at least one more time, and I spent my 32nd birthday with my family. Justin planned to come but then got violently ill in the twelve hours before we were supposed to board our flight. Which was delayed. Like, overnight, assuming we wanted to spend the night in Syracuse rather than NYC. And there was a mishap on the way back involving toilets that stopped working (just what a pregnant woman wants!) and a diversion to scenic Buffalo, but I got back okay.

For the first week of July, in what seems to be now an annual observance of our anniversary (#3 this year; thanks for the card, Deanna!) and Independence Day, we went to Justin's grandparents' lake house. Justin's family threw a baby shower for us, which was fun, and we got about a zillion clothes since everyone is so excited to be able to buy for a girl for once. I've been to women's showers and co-ed showers; this is the first intergenerational shower I've ever attended, which was a little chaotic, but one gets used to that and I wouldn't have it any other way.

Now we're back in town. We can only access the Internet from Justin's parents' house, which is why I haven't been blogging regularly.

The baby has been moving like crazy considering how unathletic her parents are, and everything with the pregnancy is proceeding well. I am starting to feel the discomforts of getting larger, but so far they're tolerable, and definitely worth it.

Guess what our baby has two of?

No, not those, silly. X chromosomes. We're having a girl. Who knew it could happen?



I think we woke her up too early.

Memo to college students

If you're going to plagiarize half your term paper from Wikipedia, the other half should be well-written enough that it isn't obvious the only way you could compose a complete, grammatically correct sentence is to copy it from someone else. We professors and teaching assistants may be too lazy to google every suspiciously elegant phrase, but we're not that stupid.

This is what we're doing. I think.

It has been quiet here on Girl With Flat Hat, but not in real life.

Here is what has happened in the past two weeks. Justin did in fact receive official news of his acceptance to That University in Like Connecticut Or Something, the one that is not featured in Legally Blonde because hyperambitious future corporate lawyers go to That Other School while nerdy future federal court clerks and law profs go to this particular school that Justin got into, and had hoped but not quite believed he could get into. So he went there to assure them that if they made the offer, he would accept, and to check out the place where we'll probably be living, a carriage house on the property of a professor who used to work with his dad. We are welcome there but the cats are not, so I am working on alternative arrangements for probably the first year we're there. If you or anyone you know would like to borrow two cats...

But we can't move in till mid-August. Meanwhile we need to clear out the condo as soon as possible so we can sell it. (Turns out Justin was right and we shouldn't have bought it in the first place, but it was a character-building experience, or something like that.) So, for reasons that do make sense but are hard to explain, we are subletting an apartment in Ithaca for the summer (cats allowed). It's downtown, so I can walk around at seven months pregnant and not have to tackle the hills. The only difficulty with this--well, of course there are difficulties no matter what we do--is switching doctors (and possibly insurance) twice over the course of the summer. But I just managed to squeeze in my 20-week ultrasound here in Charlottesville the day our sublease in Ithaca begins, with dire warnings that if I need a follow-up ultrasound (which I assume would only be necessary if the baby is coy and won't show its naughty bits) I'm on my own.

Two weeks ago, we both thought we were staying here. The Law School Down the Street did eventually offer Justin some funding, which, taking into account the cost of living in Manhattan and the upcoming Baby With Flat Hat, made the idea of staying here very appealing, but this is an opportunity Justin can't turn down. Nevertheless, it is kind of scary. I still have a lot of work to do before the end of the semester, and very little time to do it, which is why I haven't blogged much.

Holy Week

It has been very busy and sort of odd. In one day we went from thinking we would stay in Virginia for a few more years and looking for a place with more space to raise Baby With Flat Hat (and possibly his or her sibling(s)) to being almost certain we'll move next year. But not to New York. One state over, or up, depending how you look at it. Justin has unofficially received the best possible news he can receive on the law school front, but it means that we will, in fact, be moving this summer and having a baby in a new place, and spending a lot of money (ours or someone else's) on tuition. In a few years Justin should be able to do pretty much whatever he wants, including (hopefully) moving into a house in central Virginia or somewhere similar with space to raise Children With Flat Hats. For now, we will probably have to sacrifice a few things, including mild winters.

...Or that's what I thought, until I woke up this morning. This is going to be the coldest Easter Vigil procession EVER.

1000 days

That is how long Justin and I have been married. No, I haven't been counting, I found that out from my profile on a newlywed chat site I hang out on. (Are we even newlyweds anymore? I don't know. It's been three years in July.)

This is also what I'm going to count as the beginning of my second trimester. Maybe this means I will start being hungry today! Well, one can always hope.

I hate food

I don't have morning sickness, for which I thank God, my mother and grandmother, and/or whoever else is responsible.

However, the effect raging pregnant hormones have on me is that I don't want to eat. At all. At any other time in my life, some kind of (moderate) appetite suppressant would have been most welcome. But now I'm supposed to be gaining weight, and instead I've lost something like eight pounds in the first trimester. This would be rational if I did in fact have morning sickness, but I don't, and a little person is growing inside me, so it's just weird, and a little freaky.

Granted, this may also be the result of stress, a frantic midweek schedule, and a husband who has been out of town a lot and therefore not inspiring me to cook for him. But I need to reverse this trend by the end of my first trimester, which is next week.

So today I went to Kroger without a list to restrain my impulses and bought everything that looked like I could persuade myself to eat or drink it: produce (strawberries always look kind of edible), meat, lemonade and limeade, Newman-Os...okay, the baby probably does not need Newman-Os, but I don't even like chocolate as much as I used to (weird!), so I won't eat a whole pack in two days, as I've been known to do. Also they have a little bit of protein and fiber. Protein and fiber are good! The baby likes one and my digestive tract likes the other, especially when I'm taking prenatal vitamins with probably more iron than I really need this early in my pregnancy.

I had three full meals today, including a nice pasta with shrimp and peas, and I even ate dessert, so I am feeling pretty good. Baby With Flat Hat should be dancing around my uterus on a bit of a sugar high.

Proof

At the lake house, the kids bring up "proof" from the bottom of the lake to prove they made it all the way down.



I was reminded of this when I remembered that I have better (and cuter) proof than a positive ept that I'm pregnant. It was attained by diving into my nether regions with an ultrasound wand, which sounds uncomfortable but isn't that bad when it comes right after a pap smear.



This ultrasound is about three weeks old. I've had another since then, but I didn't get a copy that time. The only reason I needed a second ultrasound was that my doctor couldn't find the heartbeat on the Doppler. It turned out Baby With Flat Hat is so wiggly that she was chasing him/her all over my uterus without nailing down a heartbeat. Baby With Flat Hat actually looked more like a baby on the second ultrasound and less like a smudge. However, I like how my smudge is looking straight at the ultrasound thingy and clenching its fists in smudge-rage.

Announcement

Or should I say annunciation? Wait, that's not till next week. I don't want to wait that long.

Now that I've told all my blog readers that I've seen in person since I found out, I can tell everyone else: I'm pregnant! Here is proof:



My mom wanted me to send it to her. Not a picture, the actual test. Justin pointed out that it is illegal to send human waste through the mail.

Now we know why I felt like this (more than a week before I tested).

Baby With Flat Hat is due October 3, according to my calculations. (My doctor says September 29, but I was present at the conception, so I'm going by what I know.) So I am twelve weeks along today, which seemed like a good time to go public, in the blogospheric sense.

This means, in case you were wondering, that this will absolutely become a mommy blog. Sorry if you're not into that. It's hard for me to think about much else, which is one reason I haven't been blogging much. Now I can talk about babies all the time!

Dear UPS

You know, once in a while, it would be really nice if I could order something online like a pair of pants or an iPod shuffle or an engagement ring and have it delivered in the amount of time I paid for it to be delivered without you losing the package or failing to read the apartment number that is right there on the packing label or pretending you attempted to deliver the package when I know you didn't even bother trying because I was home all day. I mean, since you job is to deliver packages and keep track of them until they get delivered, it would be super cool if you did that. Otherwise I have no idea why you should exist. I'm really not into guys in brown shorts.

New blog

My friend Ben, who I've wanted for a long time to have a blog, now has a blog, Arrow Through the Sun. It's about science and theology, mostly. You should read it.

Great moments in pedagogy

Today in the class I'm TAing we discussed an essay by Stanley Hauerwas. As always, my sections went better than I expected considering I'm always preparing for them the day I teach them. Two moments stand out:

1. When I asked them what was significant about Constantine, in two of my sections students started talking about how he decided what books would be in the Bible. The first time I had no idea where they were getting this; the second one of them mentioned The Da Vinci Code, and I burst out, "Oh, don't read The Da Vinci Code!", which the class found amusing. I never know how much of the general Christian freakout about TDVC is hype and how much of it is legit, but apparently it does influence what my very intelligent students think about the history of Christianity. But it gave me an opportunity to riff on New Testament criticism for a couple of minutes, and that's something I really know about even though it's not relevant to the class. So that was fun.
   
2. One of my students referred to Hauerwas as a "shock rocker," which I thought was great. Stanley Hauerwas, the shock rocker of theologians.

Grandma's birthday

Justin and I are in Seattle this week. We didn't plan it this way (for now my vacation time is limited to spring break), but our visit coincided with my grandmother's 85th birthday. So everyone on my dad's side of the family, with the exception of one of my cousins and his wife, who live in California, celebrated with a birthday dinner.



My grandmother is an awesome woman. I want to be like her. Her memory is fading now, but for most of my life she's been on top of everything, anticipating her children's and grandchildren's needs before we even think of them. She's educated and made sure we all were too, and continued educating herself as an adult; she has always been an avid reader and taught herself Spanish when she was in her fifties. She is a quiet person, but strong and kind.

This has been a really good visit, with very little family stress, and a lot of time with friends, some of whom I haven't seen in a long time. The week has flown by.

New template

Well, I redesigned the template yet again, because the old one was fussy with the new Blogger. I think it still works okay with pictures.

Home alone

(This is my first post using New Blogger, which I've resisted because so many people complained about Blogger Beta, but at this point apparently I don't have much choice and if I have a problem with it, so do millions of other people, I guess.)

Justin is in NYC to hang out with friends and visit this law school that is courting him (I'm trying to be secretive about which one it is, but if you know how brilliant my smarty-art husband is and how many really good law schools there are in New York City, it does narrow it down). They have an admitted students program this week that spouses and partners are welcome to attend, but it's conveniently scheduled on my two busiest work days, so I can't go. I'll probably visit later this spring, though, if it looks like we're headed there. So the dean of this law school called last week and I answered the phone:

Dean: Is this Justin?
Juliet: Um, no...?

Granted, I have a low voice and I was sick, but I'm rarely mistaken for a guy. Once I realized he was a law school dean and not just a confused telemarketer, I immediately got over being offended.

I put Justin on a train yesterday morning--nearly three hours after it was scheduled to leave, because Amtrak is like that--and I won't see him again until Saturday probably, when I'll pick him up in DC, and then we'll probably head straight from there to Richmond the next day to fly to Seattle. I guess Richmond's as good a place to fly out of as any, although it occurred to me after I'd booked the tickets that I had been thinking of flying out of Raleigh instead so we could see all the Chapel Hill people and park our car there for free, but I forgot when I was actually making the reservations. Oh well.

I am obliged to clean while Justin is gone, as I keep promising to do. I don't wanna. Also it's raining/snowing/sleeting/wintry mixing and I'm trying to determine if I can use this as an excuse not to go to a tutor training thingy tonight. Probably not. I got to church fine this morning, although there were only three of us in the choir and I was the only alto. Aside from screeching one note of the gospel acclamation ("praise to you, Lord JEEEE!!-eeesus Christ"), I did all right. But I don't know why there were so few of us singing. Maybe everyone else is giving up choir for Lent.

Checking in

I know, I haven't posted in a long time. Bad, bad Girl With Flat Hat.

This semester I undertook three part-time jobs: teaching an introductory course on religion at a community college about 45 miles away; TAing sections for a course on Islam here in town; and continuing to tutor student athletes, although with somewhat reduced hours from last semester once I realized I was insane. All this is packed into three days a week. I'm realizing now I overburdened myself, but there's not much to be done now as there's nothing I can back out of gracefully that would really make my life any easier.

Meanwhile, Justin has applied to law schools and has heard back from several of them. One has made him an offer that will be difficult to turn down unless another school makes a comparable one, which will mean moving again this summer, to a place with a much higher cost of living. I am a little irked that the law school down the street whose name I won't mention but of whose commonwealth Justin is now a legal resident has done less to recruit him than law schools than are higher ranked. But maybe they're being coy. Anyway, I have no idea how that will all turn out, and I don't have much leisure to worry about it till the end of the semester, which is about when we have to make a decision anyway.

Also, we spent the past two weekends out of town. Last weekend we were in Ithaca to watch the Super Bowl with Justin's family, and the weekend before that we were in New York to see Blue Öyster Cult.

So, that's why I haven't been blogging. I'm looking forward to spring break the first week of March, when we're going to Seattle. (We are going to try to see everyone this time, really!)

Marriage

I like being married. It's cool. It's hard sometimes, but it is infinitely less depressing than the asisine game-playing of single dating life that other people seem to find exhilarating but which sickened me well before I met Justin at the age of 27.

The New York Times had a chirpy article which you probably can't read for free anymore about how 51% of women over the age of 15 (yeah, that's a bit young to count) are now unmarried, including interviews with chirpy swinging single New York females who are happy to be free of the shackles of matrimony. Which is fine, if they're happy that way.

But the Columbia Journalism Review Daily took exception:

...America is not a monolith. As much as we would like to persist in thinking that we are a classless and race-blind society, the Times, of all papers -- having run groundbreaking series on both race and class -- should realize that a phenomenon that might bode well for middle-class white women might be absolutely disastrous for poor black women.

Apparently, though, we are the only ones to see it like this. Because apart from a tossed-off paragraph that reminds us that, buried within these statistics, seventy percent of African-American women are single, there is nothing to indicate how the epidemic of single parentage in the black community contributes to this statistic. We imagine -- though aren't told -- that many of these women are raising children alone and being dragged deeper into poverty because of their unmarried status.

How un-chirpy. But true. (And not just for black women, of course, but for women of all races who don't have a swanky loft in the East Village.)

It seems like there are only two ways to talk about marriage: 1. as the bedrock of traditional mores that every adult who is not a priest or hideously unattractive should partake of, heterosexually, or 2. a somewhat antiquated institution of at best neutral moral value that is fine if it makes you happy but doesn't bear any relationship to the good of society at large. Are those the only alternatives? Isn't it possible to encourage marriage as generally beneficial to individuals, their children, and society at large without imposing gender inequality or heteronormativity?

And does the fact that 51% of women are now single have anything to do with men? Should they be glad we don't expect as much from them, or should they be concerned that society's expectations of them are lower? Should we even care what they think?

I don't mean to suggest that marriage is necessary for people to have happy relationships or healthy families (I know plenty of exceptions), but it seems like, no matter what the trend is, women get the raw end of the deal and often don't even realize it. That there are a number of educated, upper-middle-class, happily unmarried women does nothing for the many single women who barely get by and have no one else to provide for themselves and their families. Who do you think is suffering more from this trend toward singleness, men or women? Surely it's not men as much as women and their children?

(That was the first thing I've gotten worked up about in a while. I've been taking a break from blogs, mostly.)

Bourbon Street

I took this picture the night before the Sugar Bowl, so there were lots of LSU and Notre Dame fans about.

meh

This week has made me kind of cranky. No individual thing has made me feel that way, and if I had been in a better mood generally I would probably consider it a pretty good week all in all, but something about my attitude is just sour.

But Justin is sweet, even when I'm not, and this picture of him makes me smile.

When cousins attack

At our Swedish breakfast, Justin's cousin Catherine was living up to the first three letters of her name and scratching Whitney, who was being very patient.

Steamboat

In New Orleans, Justin and I took a ride down the Mississippi on the steamboat Natchez. Just like the old days! Except for the audio guide and the lack of exploding boilers.

Pudding

Every family has its holiday food traditions. My mom's family always has lasagna for Thanksgiving and Christmas, along with the usual turkey and everything. (You think we're weird, but really you're jealous! Wouldn't you like to have lasagna?) Justin's family, being about as much Scandinavian as I am Italian, has God Jul pudding for breakfast when they celebrate Christmas. (I know there are umlauts in there, but I'm too lazy to put them in.)



There are two things you must know about God Jul pudding:

1. Somewhere in it is an almond whose discoverer will, according to tradition, be the next to get married or have a baby. This might be why Justin's family is so large.

2. God Jul pudding is really gross, and also it must be eaten with fruit soup (pictured to the left of the pudding), which if anything is even more gross. And you actually have to eat it, not just poke through all the rice and raisins and tapioca or whatever the hell's in it so you can find the almond.

Last year Justin's brother had a girlfriend he really liked and must have eaten half the pudding, a feat of remarkable fortitude. Nevertheless, his sister has found the almond the last two years running. She's holding the rest of us up.

(Yes, I did kind of want the almond. But only two small helpings' worth.)

Swamp

We returned on Sunday from our road trip through the Deep South (2.0), but I had to take a few days to recover, get things in order after our absence, and prepare for my first class at the community college where I'm teaching.

This is my favorite picture from our road trip and probably one of my favorite pictures ever. It's of a bald cypress/water tupelo swamp (I don't know which of those these trees are) on the Natchez Trace near Jackson, Mississippi. The weather didn't favor us as much as it has on past trips, but the cloudy skies were good for getting a picture without too many shadows or reflections.

Spam box haiku III

Too good to pass up!

ready made crayfish
tired looking vegetables
piles of dried Floyd

Live from somewhere else

I haven't been blogging the past week and a half because we've been away from home, first in Chapel Hill for Christmas with Justin's family, and now on the road in the Deep South, again, because that's how we roll.

Take note, everyone: When New Year's Eve is a Sunday, and you're planning on spending the night in Tuscaloosa, Alabama, you must buy your champagne before entering the state. Wait, it's technically illegal to bring in alcohol from another state, so really you're pretty much screwed . Oh, and if you're looking for a college town without a Barnes & Noble or Borders or any bookstore aside from Books-a-Million, go to Tuscaloosa. No wine and no books make Juliet and Justin very cranky.

Fortunately, we're making up for our dry New Year's in New Orleans. You can drink alcohol on the street as long as it's not in a glass container. And there are bookstores. And good coffee. And beignets. I didn't even know about beignets until last night, but now I'm not sure I want to live without them. Come spend your tourist dollars in New Orleans. The French Quarter is ready for you.

More birds at the birdfeeder

I'll post them a little smaller this time, because I realized the larger-than-life pictures in my first birdfeeder post had a Hitchcock vibe. (Don't look now, but THE CHICKADEES ARE COMING TO GET YOU!!! BIRDS! BIIIIIIIIIIIRRRRRRRRRRDDS!!!)

The titmouse isn't coming to get you, but he's thinking about it.



The nuthatch is too hungry to go after you.

Phil's birthday

You might wonder why I go to DC so often. It seems to have become the gravitational center of Justin's group of friends. Several of his good friends live there, and another is trying to get a job there. We might end up there eventually, although the street system and I are going to have to work out a few issues first.

So Saturday night we celebrated Phil's birthday in Dupont at Buffalo Billiards. It was a surprise. And it's a testament to the generally oblivious nature of guys that we did not ruin the surprise, despite the fact that we are not a group of people very good at keeping secrets. And by "we," I mean Justin.

Phil was surprised to see Zeke, who was supposed to be in Florida.



And Danny, who was supposed to be...wait, he lives in DC.



And he was surprised to see Justin, and his ever-rampant beard.



Jen, Phil's betrothed, planned the whole thing.

Christmas cards

One of the small pleasures of this time of year is replacing last year's Christmas card photos on the refrigerator with new ones as they come in. (We will contribute to all your refrigerators one day, I promise. As soon as we start having kids.)

I just want to tell everyone who's sent a card - and you know who you are - this year's pictures are really beautiful. Everyone looks better at thirty than they did at twenty. The expectant moms are cute pregnant ladies. The next generation is looking less like toddlers and more like kids. And everyone looks truly joyful. You guys are awesome.

What's up with this?

Again, I apologize to my Seattle friends for having much better weather than you. But really, how can I even think about baking Christmas cookies under such circumstances?



[ducks as friends from Seattle throw food that spoiled because the power was out too long]

I really like living in Virginia in the winter. It might snow. It might be seventy degrees. What it will not do is rain for weeks on end.

Around Capitol Hill

We were in DC this weekend for our friend Phil's birthday party. I just brought my little point-and-shoot camera this time, but I got some nice pictures. It's been unseasonably warm and sunny here. Sorry, Seattle friends.

Birdfeeder

When I was in elementary school, I was really interested in birds. I knew every species of bird that could conceivably appear in a suburban Northwestern backyard and did a science project on birds. Now I'm in a new place with different birds and decided it was time to get into birdwatching again.

(Aren't birdfeeders interesting? What an odd intervention in the cycle of nature, that we would feed birds for no other purpose than to look at them.)

The first bird I saw on the patio taking advantage of ambient scattered birdseed was a song sparrow. The first bird I saw actually using the feeder was a downy woodpecker.

The first birds I photographed were these house finches:



There are only two perches, so another finch was waiting to get a piece of the action.



And naturally, someone else showed up.



The squirrel tried all sorts of angles to get at the feeder but couldn't find one that worked. I felt sorry for it, so I put out some cornbread. Not that this cornbread turned out very well, so maybe I'm not doing it any favors.

The cats love the birdfeeder. I'm not sure they understand that if they stand right by the window drooling, it intimidates the birds. The squirrel doesn't care, though.

Blogroll additions

I've been slowly adding to my blogroll, in no systematic fashion, but I wanted to mention two blogs in particular. I recently discovered that the senior and associate pastors who were at my old home church, Bethany Community Church, back when I lived in Seattle, both have blogs. They are not your ordinary evangelical pastors. Richard Dahlstrom at Rain City Pastor recently wrote about evangelicals who are breaking out of their one-party identity. Scott Becker has moved on from Bethany to work on a PhD in Christian ethics and is blogging about his struggle with cancer. His most recent post is on health care as a moral issue. I'm reminded of how blessed I was to know these two extraordinary people during my last few years in Seattle, and I'm glad I'm able to keep learning from them from all the way across the country.

The AAR: Religion and the 2006 elections

I'm finally reviewing my notes from a session at the AAR on The Role of Scripture in the 2006 Elections. (Actually, it was an SBL session, if I recall correctly, and it was more on religion in general in the 2006 elections, but you get the idea.) The panel, consisting of Anna Greenberg, Terry Eastland, John Podesta, Missy Daniel, and Shaun Casey, said a lot of substantive things, and I'll just mention what I found most interesting and memorable.

• The panelists agreed, as most people have agreed, that the 2006 elections didn't indicate a fundamental shift to the left on the part of the electorate, but rather a combination of disenchantment with the Republicans and the Democrats' success at targeting candidates to specific races without the expectation that they'll meet all the usual criteria of the party platform.



• A number of Democratic candidates, such as Heath Shuler and Ted Strickland, were able to convey their religious convictions in an authentic and persuasive way and were clearly comfortable speaking religious language, in contrast to most Democratic candidates in recent years. (There's Obama, too.)



• Shaun Casey (whom I liked a lot) made a few good points: that evangelical youth culture is more pliable and less focused on wedge issues than their parents; the hope for swinging the electorate is in the middle (yay!) (rather than invigorating the base, I guess); Republicans overreached on immigration and lost ground to Democrats (true, especially given that Catholics are the swing vote and we tend to be pro-immigration and other social justice-y things); and the concept of framing according to George Lakoff (whom he refused to name) has a "highly frustrating and demeaning" view of religion, but fortunately that moment seems to be past.



• John Podesta noted than when Kerry was asked in the 2004 debates about how his religion would inform his public service, he gave exactly the same sort of answer that Kennedy did, i.e. he tried to play down the influence of his Catholicism on his political action. Except that, oops, it's not 1960 anymore. That is, now nobody's worried a Catholic candidate will be too Catholic, but not Catholic enough. (Although it remains to be seen whether the same holds true for a Mormon candidate.)



• Terry Eastland noted there aren't any obvious evangelical candidates on the right. He named Frist (who's decided since then not to run) and Brownback (who evidently is) as outlying possibilities. John Podesta was the first and I think only person to mention Giuliani (whom Justin likes), but seemed convinced that he's too out of step with the religious right to get the nomination and might cause a third-party break. (Which, if it's a centrist party, is fine with me. But I think McCain's more likely than Giuliani to run as a third-party candidate if he doesn't get the nomination and a very conservative Republican does.)

I went to another panel on religion and politics called "Progressive Politics and Religion: Has the Left 'Gotten It'?" (an allusion to panelist Jim Wallis' book God's Politics: Why the Right Gets it Wrong and the Left Doesn't Get It, which I'm just beginning to read), but I don't feel like talking about it at the moment because 1. what the heck am I doing anyway? it's past midnight, 2. my notes are much more fragmentary, and 3. I was alternately very intrigued and very frustrated, probably because, you know, I'm not really a progressive. But I'm on their email list now, so I'll see where that gets me.

Why I celebrate Christmas on December 25

Yes, I know Mithras' birthday is December 25. Yes, I know about the winter solstice. Yes, I know about the Saturnalia. I got the memo. Thanks. In fact, I minored in Obscure Greco-Roman Religious Cults for my MA, so I knew about it all even before you sent the memo.

But:

It's Advent. The nights are getting longer, the days shorter and colder. I had to take in my rosemary last night because it was so cold. I forget every year how early the evening comes, how easy it is to wander out to do a few errands and come back in the dark.

This leads to a sense of urgency and anticipation: How much longer do we have to wait until the days lengthen again?

And then, on the darkest night of the year, a star brightens the sky; a child is born, the most joyous of human miracles in any circumstances, and all the more because that child is God made flesh, who will suffer when he reaches adulthood but for now, for one glorious moment, is suspended in that moment of beauty and wonder at tiny hands, tiny feet, born to a girl who did nothing special but to assent to the angel who burst in on her ordinary life and announced how, in nine months, her world and the entire world would change.

Somehow it just doesn't seem the same to celebrate all that in April.

Baking

I finally posted a recipe at De Re Coquinaria, the long-neglected recipe blog I started last year in anticipation of having a real kitchen again and then forgot about when I finally did have a kitchen (Deanna's been more faithful). Last Christmas I got several cookie recipes from Justin's Aunt Ann, all passed down from her grandmother, Grama Graves, but it seemed kind of silly to post Christmas cookie recipes right after Christmas, so I saved them until this year. Not that it has to be Christmas to bake cookies. But there is something really nice about putting some Christmas music on the stereo and baking cookies, especially if one's husband, who barely tolerates Christmas music, goes to Washington DC and leaves one stranded without a car and nothing to do except clean the kitchen and bake things in it.

When I was in college, I made my first batch of chocolate chip cookies from scratch, which turned out so not as horrible as I expected that I kept on baking them. (My apologies to anyone who was afflicted with the infamous Yellow Chocolate Chip Cookies.) My mom never really baked things, so I'm not sure where I got that from. Justin's family bakes, though. His dad makes these marvelous crescent rolls (also a Grama Graves recipe), and the first Christmas I was in Chapel Hill, I helped Gomma and Gompa, Justin's paternal grandparents, make stollen. (That's why we never baked growing up; I'm not the teeniest bit Scandinavian.) They also gave us my beloved stand mixer, without which I do not know how I survived all these cookie-baking years. I didn't even have a hand mixer until a few years ago. I don't know what I was thinking.

Anyway, this is why I want to have kids: so they can grow up and have kids, and we can all gather together in the especially fabulous kitchen I'm going to have by then and bake things and eat them. That is the true meaning of Christmas. Well, actually, it's not, but I'm sure if Grama Graves had been a wise man, she would have brought the baby Jesus chocolate krinkle puffs, and there would have been plenty left over for the shepherds, too.

The history of the world in a four-day weekend

One thing I love about Justin is how he can explain the Vietnam War or Middle Eastern politics to eleven-year-olds. And we were both impressed with how much they already knew.

Tired

We are back from DC and Ithaca. We left before the AAR was over, which might have been precipitous as I'm sure there were many people I could have seen in DC but didn't, but it was nice to spend the time with Justin's family and friends. We got back at 10 PM last night and I'm still not fully recovered, so I'll post more about our trip when I'm feeling more energetic.

To DC, and beyond!

We're headed to DC tomorrow for the annual AAR (American Academy of Religion) conference, and thence (I said "thence"!) to Ithaca for Thanksgiving. I can't think of anything exciting to say about all that, but I'll probably have pictures and/or stories to share from the road.

More true to life than the Meez

Juliet and Justin as South Park characters!




Do your own here.

Hat tip to, like, pretty much everyone at DC Blogs. I don't remember where I first saw it.

The election, a week later

Well, almost a week later. It's a week later in Europe! Of course, they didn't have our election.

1. Justin feels I should reiterate that driving in DC does not actually endanger our marriage. Of course he's right. An eternity of driving in DC would not diminish our love. But we do have really delightful exchanges like this:
   
   Justin: Turn there! Turn there! Why didn't you turn there?
   Juliet: I didn't have time!
   Justin: Yes, you did!
   Juliet: [exasperated] Do you want to drive?
   Justin: I've been offering to drive for the last ten minutes.
   Juliet: Oh, right.
   
   Thanks a lot, Pierre L'Enfant, you homewrecker.



2. My confusion about how large the majority is in the House is, I believe, due to two different numbers floating around: the number of seats Democrats gained from Republicans, and the majority they have as a result. Obviously the majority isn't as large as the total number of seats they gained. I mean, obvious if you've done math since graduating from high school, which I have studiously avoided, due in part to my traumatic history with calculators.



3. The 2008 presidential race has shaped up over the past few weeks as follows: Mark Warner dropped out, which is a bummer because the apparent shift to center-left would favor him. Russ Feingold dropped out, which means not-Hillary on the left is...Al Gore? John Edwards? (I don't get the appeal of Edwards. Justin described him as a Ken doll. I've never understood the appeal of Ken dolls either. Or Kennedys. Kennedys all look weird to me, like a cross between a leprechaun and a pug.) McCain and Giuliani are officially exploring the possibility of running for president, whereas before the election they were only thinking about exploring the possibility of running for president. That's one less layer of calculated noncommitment, see? And there's Barack Obama too. I don't know what to make of him except that he's the Democrats' best orator since Clinton, and we could all use someone who's easy on the ears right about now.



4. Ann Althouse has had a lively thread about how moderates brought Democrats to power and Democrats had better recognize. I agree. I'm a moderate who voted for Jim Webb, which makes me one of about 9000 people (last I saw the numbers) who put him ahead of Allen. Therefore I am one of the relatively few voters responsible for the Democratic majority in the Senate. Democrats, go make me a sandwich.
   
   (I'm not sure what else I even want from the Democrats. But a sandwich sounds nice.)

More spam box haiku

lampshade placenta
revisions window appears
something to look at

lean and mean is in
hello, I want to know you!
tell me, good or no?

abhorrent active
metabolic abundant
dilapidation

* * *

The following treats from my spam box are not haiku (or, for Anne, haikudoodlum), but I found them amusing:

1. Subject line: California...fled. [Indeed.]

2. Sender: Victor Putz. [That's not very nice! You'll have to have known me since my college days to appreciate this.]

Housekeeping

1. I'm starting to add blogs to my blogroll by people I don't know in real life, partly because I like having the links handy, partly because the people I do know are indecisive about having blogs. If you want to be there, I'll add you if I like you enough. A long blogroll makes me look cool. It's all about compensating for not being one of the popular kids in high school.



2. I have this icon now in the DC Blogs live feed that's based on my current template, which is fine, except that I've never found a template I like, so who knows how long I'll keep this one. My dream masthead (while I'm fixated on this mountain thing) is to have the Cascades fading into the Blue Ridge, since, you know, they look totally alike. Of course if we move again, I'll have to get a new masthead.



3. I changed my blog description, which, at two lines, was bumping into the red line on some browsers (and by the way, the red line doesn't appear on every computer, which is kind of weird), but I'm not happy with that, either. "And no one heard at all, not even the chair" is from "I Am I Said," by Neil Diamond, which Dave Barry called one of the worst songs ever. And it is. But it's about the emotional trauma of feeling torn between one coast to the other, and I understand that, although come to think of it, I don't really want to live on the west coast again, so maybe I don't. Anyway, what's a snappy one-liner that'll sum up my blog and look nice transposed over some mountains, some snowy, some not so snowy?



4. I probably shouldn't add a permanent link to my Meez because it's so myspacey and twee, but I put so much time into getting her just right that I really have to show her to you. I love how 1. I get to bring a cat into my virtual library and 2. the cat's all like GET ME AWAY FROM THIS CRAZY WOMAN WHO'S RUBBING HER FACE ON ME!
   
   
   
   

(Dude, if I do lists, they appear in a different font. Another reason I don't like this template. Bleaghle.)

November 11

Justin's great-great-great grandfather's grave in Clear Lake, Minnesota.

For the first of our ancestors on these shores who served our country, for our grandfathers who served during WWII and the Korean War, for those who have served in decades since and are serving now; for those who have given up years of their lives in the cause of freedom, for our country, for the citizens of our country, and for all the people of the world, we observe this day.

Clouds

Foliage

Working

I sort of bumbled into this job for next semester as an adjunct instructor at a community college about an hour from here. They had my CV on file from last June, emailed me to ask if I'd be interested in teaching, and then told me I was hired as soon as I said I was. The pay is exiguous; it pays for gas and probably little more than minimum wage once you calculate how many hours I'll spend lecturing, grading, and doing prep, but it's good experience. I'm a little intimidated because it's an introductory religion course from a comparative perspective, and although you'd think, gee, I have a masters in comparative religion, I really prefer the historical/theological/scriptural perspective from which I've studied religion since I started my doctoral studies.

This, however, combined with my tutoring (which hour for hour is much more profitable) should provide our little human-feline household enough income to pay for most of our basic expenses. That's nice.

I went up there today to fill out paperwork. It's a nice drive, especially today when it was 75 degrees and sunny, although I'll be doing it in the dark for much of the semester.

Still in DC

We went over to Phil's place in Dupont for a couple hours. And it's not like we can get out of this maze anyway.

Word on the street is that Rumsfeld's resigning. I hope he's replaced with someone more effective at getting Iraq in shape. This could be the best thing to come from the election.

I realized that for once, the results in the state I live in probably turned out pretty much the way I voted, except for ballot measure #1, which is kind of a big exception.

If you need something to make you happy, look at Cute Overload. Here at Girl With Flat Hat, we like all the fluffy animals.

The morning after

Well, the best possible result would be for Justin to win the election pool, but I don't think he will. He didn't predict the House would go so far for the Democrats.

Oh, but what does this mean for the country, and for Moderate With Flat hat?

1. Overall, a divided government is probably a good thing. More gridlock means less spending, I hope.

2. I'd have preferred the Senate flip rather than the House (it might yet--Montana and Virginia are still too close to call) because the House might initiate impeachment proceedings and I think that would be bad for the country and for Democrats, but a lot of the new Congresspeople are moderates, so that might not happen anyway.

3. Justin's saying Democrats have a thirteen-seat majority in the house (it might be as high as eighteen), which is not a lot. (11:55: I'm apparently really off on that. It's more like 24 seats, or more. I'm really tired.)

4. Lieberman's victory makes me very happy. Mostly because I believe in rule by the people (=Democrats) and not rule by Democrats (Democratcrats) who thought he was obligated to drop out of the race because of a small majority in the primary by a teeny percentage of Connecticut voters and therefore deprive the majority of people who, as it turned out, did prefer having the right to check his name on the ballot.

5. A very severe anti-gay-marriage constitutional amendment passed in Virginia. By a lot.

We're heading out soon.

Latest election results

Santorum concedes.
Lieberman retains his seat. (We are moderates; hear us roar!)
Cardin is probably winning in Maryland.
Chafee makes nobody happy.
Allen seems to be winning Virginia, but it's really close.

Our long-awaited Chinese food is finally here.

11:26: Justin calls the House for the Democrats. Senate looks to be staying slight majority Republican. We are eating cake.

11:57: With 99.1% of precincts reporting, Allen leads Webb by less than 2,000 votes. 25,567 voted for the Independent Green candidate; 2,263 wrote in votes. Hmmm.

12:08: Justin emphasizes that a lot of the Democrats who are winning House seats are moderates. Jove's mom (former speechwriter for Kucinich) calls and Justin tells her, "Tag! You're it!"

12:28: Webb's leading on the Virginia website with 99.26% of precincts reporting. This will probably go to a recount.

12:55: Everyone who's not spending the night is headed home. Still too soon to know for sure which way the Senate will go. Now the buzz is whether anyone will challenge Pelosi for Speaker. I've been hopped up on coffee for the last sixteen hours, but I'm fading. Whoa, FOX is predicting Democrats will pick up 30 to 35 seats in the House. Washington and Montana Senate seats go to Democrats. Other Senate seats, including Virginia, too close to call. News will be waiting for me when I wake up tomorrow.

Live Virginia results

Here. Reload often.

Allen leads Webb with a little over half the precincts in. All the ballot measures (one anti-gay marriage, two that were convoluted but sounded okay) are passing. Goode (rhymes with dude) leads Weed (heh, weed!) by a lot.

We're waiting on Chinese food. Busy night for food delivery here in DC.

We interrupt our election night coverage...

...for this important update on Girl With Flat Hat's hair.

Justin took this picture right after my haircut. It's the best of my hair itself, but I wasn't entirely satisfied with it because of the double-chin action going on.



So I took some pictures of myself. I kind of like this one.

Live from DC

Justin and I are here, east of the Capitol, for our Election Night Extravaganza!

It took us four hours to drive here from Charlottesville, pick up Jove from work, and get to his apartment. DC traffic is heinous. And when you're coming in on 395, and you're looking for the D St. exit, it would be nice if there were an actual sign for the D St. exit. As far as we could tell, there are several signs saying it's coming up, but no signs for the ramp itself. It's happened to us twice that we've ended up on like New York Avenue or K St. or something. Washington, take some of the mad government money swirling around here and buy some signs so Justin and I don't have marriage-endangering arguments every time we drive here. (Actually, it wasn't so bad this time, but why take any extra risks?) Thank you.

Before we ditched town, we participated in the electoral process.



I took that like ten minutes ago. Digital cameras and high-speed Internet are awesome.

The things that really matter

My best friend Heidi brought her son Benjamin into the world yesterday evening. All ten pounds and two ounces of him. Without drugs. What did you do yesterday?

Have a happy election!

We'll be spending tomorrow night with our cable-equipped friends in DC. Justin's sent in his picks for competitive Congressional seats. His friends have a pool going, but a number refuse to participate because they're convinced Justin will win, with all the time he spends mapping the political landscape. I'm planning on baking the same almost-flourless chocolate cake that I made two years ago for election night when we were in Berkeley. Everyone went home sad, but hey, at least they had cake. Girl With Flat Hat officially endorses cake in 2006. As for your other election day choices, you're on your own.

Notes:

1. Pay attention to what kind of Democrats win. If it's moderates, and they're the ones who seem to have the best shot, that might not be quite the mandate the party base is expecting. (Speaking of mandates, did ~51% somehow become a mandate in the last two years? Why are so many Democrats calling Lieberman "selfish" for continuing his Senate campaign despite [barely] losing his party's nomination when so many Connecticut voters seem to want the chance to vote for him? If you want voters to have fewer choices, who's being selfish? Reason #1,862 I'm not registered with either of your stupid parties, you sycophantic partisans.)

2. I heard (but from Fox News, so who knows?) that Republicans have rapidly made up ground in the most recent polls. I want this to have to do with Kerry, just because I'm still feeling snarky about that, but it could be for other reasons: the Saddam verdict, last-minute campaigning, Karl Rove activating his Secret Victory Machine of Doom at the eleventh hour...

3. Justin, who knows more about the history of politics than anyone in Charlottesville except Larry Sabato, says he can't think of a two-term president whose party didn't lose Congressional seats in their sixth year. So I'd say if Democrats don't kick Republicans' skanky butts six ways to Sunday in this election, especially given Bush's abysmal popularity and mediocre performance, they had best rethink how they run campaigns before 2008.

Less politics and more flathattery after the election, I promise.

Local Democrats are doing better at GOTV

I don't know how it is in the rest of the state, but here in the greater Charlottesville-Albemarle metropolitan area, the Democrats have gone to the following efforts:

1. Put a card on our doorknob to tell us to vote (for Jim Webb and Al Weed)
2. Had our local delegate, David Toscano, call us in person (not a recording, a person!) to tell us to vote (for Jim Webb and Al Weed)
3. Put a table out on the Downtown Mall with free Democratic campaign materials, including the ever-popular-with-the-kids WEED bumper stickers! (Oh, they say Al Weed? Oh, okay. Never mind we just took six of them. Carry on.)

Meanwhile, not a peep from the Republicans, unless they were behind that recorded abortion "survey" I hung up on a couple weeks ago. I thought Karl Rove was going to hunt us down and drive us to the polls with cattle prods. Maybe they heard that Justin was threatening to write in Macaca for Senator and decided we weren't faithful enough.

Two more days! Boy, this is fun!

Quick survey for my evangelical friends

If you're around this weekend:

1. Had you ever heard of Ted Haggard before this week?
2. If a stranger asked you your religious affiliation, would you use the word "evangelical" to describe yourself?

Thanks in advance.

Don't argue with me, or I'll cover you with phlegm

This is the stub of a Girl With Flat Hat FAQ. Nobody ever asks me questions, but if you want to ask one, here are all the answers in one handy place. (And seriously, I have snot coming out of me in shades of green that don't ordinarily occur in nature. Don't mess with me. I can do anything right now except talk. I can definitely find you wherever you are and cough on you.)

Do you really wear a flat hat?
No. I just like that statue in my profile.

Is this a blog about politics?
No. But I post about politics sometimes. Probably too often.

What is this blog about, then?
It's partly a way for several friends of mine in Seattle who read it to keep up with my life, partly an outlet for "creative writing" in the sense that I used to do but rarely do anymore, partly for me to vent. It has no theme. Any attempt to discern a theme will drive you to insanity. Don't send me the bill from the psychiatric ward. I'll get phlegm on it anyway.

Are you a Republican or a Democrat?
Neither. I don't submit to your arbitrary categories!

Well, are you registered as a Republican or a Democrat?
Neither. Never have been. I asked for a Republican ballot in the 2000 primary so I could vote for McCain. Otherwise I've always voted as an independent.

Have you ever campaigned for a Republican or a Democrat?
I stuffed envelopes for a local candidate for state representative when I was in high school. He was a Democrat, but he later switched parties. Probably something to do with his being pro-life even as a Democrat.

Just freaking tell me what party you identify with before I come over there and kick you.
Okay. I'm Republican, sorta. I think a lot of Republicans currently in office are loathsome people, but I happen to agree with Republicans more often than I agree with Democrats, so there you go.

Do you have friends you disagree with politically?
Of course. You don't?

But if someone disagrees with you, doesn't that mean they're evil and stupid?
No, it means they have a different way of seeing the world and draw different conclusions from what they see. Or else they are evil and stupid. That's always a possibility. But all my friends are smart and nice.

If I use a word like DhimmicRAT or RethugliKKKan, does that make me clever?
No. What are you, like, in seventh grade?

Who should I vote for?
I don't know. They're all kinda lame.

I like your pictures. What camera do you use?
I use a Canon Digital Rebel XT and an assortment of lenses that I spend too much money on.

I don't like your pictures. Please stop posting them.
Is someone holding a gun to your head and making you look at them? No? Strange, that's what it sounded like.

There's something you haven't written about that's far more important than any of the silly things you post about. Will you post about it?
No. Get your own damn blog.

What if it's a post about saving all the starving malarial children in Zaire or something like that?
Well, maybe. But it's not called Zaire anymore.

You didn't answer my question. Where do you live so I can ask you in person and/or strew your yard with rotting vegetables?
I don't have a yard, so there! But you can email me at the address on the sidebar.

The last of fall

These tomatoes are not long for this world, as it's supposed to get down to freezing the next few nights. Time to try making fried green tomatoes.

On Kerry

I have a few thoughts I'll make as non-partisan as I can. (Which still isn't very non-partisan. I'm not gonna lie. I don't really like Kerry. I don't much like Bush either. Since I didn't live in a swing state in 2004, I didn't feel obligated to vote for either of them. God bless write-in slots.)

1. If Kerry hadn't said anything noteworthy, what would've dominated the news cycle instead? Probably George Allen's goons roughing up a Democrat here in Charlottesville. The Allen/Webb campaign has already drawn intense national interest for its competitiveness and drama (I mean drama in the lame junior-highish sense), and Kerry blew a great news story for Democrats by shifting the attention to himself, with only a week to go before the election, no less.

2. There are those Kerry defenders who think he doesn't need to apologize for what he said. (What's odd is that his defenders don't agree on whether he was "right" in the sense that he was talking about Bush getting us stuck in Iraq because he didn't study hard enough in school [notwithstanding Kerry's similarly lackluster Yale GPA--let's just settle this right now: you and I, dear reader, are smarter than BOTH these bozos], or right about what it sounded like he was saying about the troops in Iraq. If you can't agree on what he was talking about, isn't that in itself indicative of a problem?) In this case, when Kerry's reputation isn't on the line but his party's is, it doesn't matter whether he was right. Kerry needed to apologize as soon as he realized he'd caused a kerfuffle and get out of the news as soon as possible, for the sake of his party. No, he's not running for office, but he's still the public face of the Democratic party, as their most recent presidential nominee. I doubt nearly as many people know who the DNC chair is, or who the House minority leader is, as know Kerry was the last Democrat to run for president. I don't mean that he actually is representative of mainstream Democratic opinion, just that people are likely to perceive him that way. What he says matters, not just for Kerry, but for all Democrats, and they have a lot at stake this year. (I doubt that ultimately this incident will make much difference by itself, but it compounds the public image issues that Democrats as well as Republicans have. I can't think of an election year in which discussion of actual, you know, policy was more important, and in which less of it has taken place.)

3. Kerry's just a bad politician. He would be much more savvy if he'd had his belligerant response to the Swift-Boating and his meek response to the controversy surrounding his recent comments. I am operating on the assumption that he was foolish enough to say something unintentionally that would alienate a lot of people, but not so foolish as to intend to say what came out of his mouth. I don't think he can be not foolish, though. "Not foolish" entails not giving your political enemies their material in the first place, and then spending two days making the situation even worse. Kerry has decades of political experience and ran for the highest office in the country. He should know by now how the game works.

News flash!

Kerry apologizes for comments about troops in Iraq.

National Council of Teachers of English demands apology for split infinitive.

I'm not sure I want this campaign season to end. It's so entertaining! Not in the least inspiring, but entertaining.

Oh, and happy feast of All Saints. I'm headed to church in a few minutes to sing "For All the Saints" the one time a year we get to do it, in my raspy sick voice. At least, as an alto, I can claim it's sultry.

Quote of the day

Eddie Izzard: "I grew up in Europe, where the history comes from."

Reminds me: Must put more Eddie Izzard DVDs in Netflix queue!

(Thanks, Gmail!)