Tuesday, November 18, 2008

Hunger

This post isn't about how I eat ice cream even when it isn't night. The baby makes do it, but this one isn't about the baby.

Instead, it's about other hungers. Maybe a hunger for connection with another being, or a hunger for being able to effectively help another being, however small. Lately I am too aware of the difference between situations that can be helped or things that cannot.

This is mostly because of my sister is under siege of ALS. It's a disease that, with a medicine costing $1000 / month can sometimes be slowed by a tenth -- but it cannot be banished in any sense. Whereas people whose ticket comes up saying "cancer" can sometimes cobble together a cocktail of hope and technology and diet and luck and come out kicking and even smiling -- if exhausted, in pain, and possibly missing some important body parts -- on the other side. I in no way mean to discount the horrors of cancer -- it's just that ALS is always described as a death sentence. When a person is diagnosed, the neurologist often doesn't give more information than the patient asks for -- because the trajectory is too grim. The introduction of ALS into my life underscores the difference between things that can be helped or things that cannot.

This leads us, if indirectly, into the cat problem.

There is the larger cat problem, which is rampant in our part of Brooklyn. I like to joke that we live on the inskirts of a cat compound, because if you have nothing better to do -- like my cat, Georgekitty -- then you can sit at the window and watch the action all day long. Fat orange stripey Toms looking for females in heat, a couple of new calicos -- one now dead and lying on a lawn -- and the matriarch Bad Seed Kitty, who has a torn ear but keeps watch on the tribes and subtribes all sharing her bloodline. But these brief character sketches don't begin to explain the panoply in the neighborhood, which is (not quickly enough) trying to organize and implement TNR efforts.

Then there is the smaller cat problem, who is me.

To my great horror, I've recently become a gattara -- which is a more interesting, ie, in Italian, way of saying a cat lady.

As my husband likes to point out, we're now on the 3rd I've taken in since I got married -- a year ago.

The first weighed less than a pound and had no eyes. I took it in in the brief time between wedding and honeymoon. Could you resist a howling, mud-covered runt crashing into a fence in the rain in your front yard? I should hope not. Rainy had to be medically boarded while we were in Turkey. I say she -- but it was too tiny for them to actually tell. While we were away, someone who worked at the vet fell in love and when we returned, he adopted her.

The second was just a few months ago. He was laying in our front yard pretending to have a broken leg. (I must have a reputation in the neighborhood, because shortly after we placed that one in a good home, I saw a squirrel running along Newkirk Avenue holding its wrist in an awkward position. I could SWEAR that it was faking a broken wrist to get my attention.)

Most recently started to feed a very small, insistently friendly black and white cat. I'd walk by the giant white creepy house on the corner, which has been for sale for what seems like years. And the little cat would rush out to greet me and cavort around my ankles. Not like the ferals which populate, and populate, and populate, the neighborhood. But this one would walk alongside of me, standing on hind legs, pawing at me with soft white front feet. Like some sort of fabulous circus animal, which I found charming, but also desperate for my attention, which I also respond to.

It seemed reluctant to stray from the while house but one day it followed me 6 whole houses to my own. And galloped up onto the porch. Guiltily, I brought out a dish of food. When it finished, I tried to wash off its face and chest.

I was afraid to have too much to do with this one -- who wants to jeopardize a marriage to a good man because of a dirty little cat? But there it was on the porch, all the time, and the nice thing about it was that it seemed to want attention as much as it wanted food. (Georgekitty, are you reading this???) The neighbors upstairs -- who think I have a problem with cat stealing -- actually urged me to take this one in. They also fell for the fact that it was pathetic and charming in equal measure -- a la Oliver -- but my nickname for her was Scrappy Doo. She's a really striking looking animal -- huge, round, sea green eyes in a face with a black mask and beard. The lightest possible pink nose, with a somewhat dramatic scratch drawn through it from life in the wild.

I did the routine: asked neighbors if it were theirs; called the shelter to see whether it was full, swung it by to see whether there was a chip implanted; got it checked for the basic bad diseases, established it was starving. Oh, and got it unflea-ed. I brought it home and left it in the bathroom in a carrier while it stewed in the de-flea potion. Then I left for the gym.

When I arrived home after the gym to get them for dinner, husband astutely observed:

"There is not only 1 houseguest: there are 2." (He'd had a friend from Berlin arrive that afternoon.)

I'd be leaving the next morning for Connecticut to visit / care for family without him. "I just want to be clear," he said, in his patient, mellifluous radio voice, "that you will be leaving in the morning, and that I will be looking after this rogue cat."

He is not a cat person, per se.

But when I arrived home on Sunday night, he was already thinking up names. Since we're in the process of naming the baby, there are lots of cast-off good names floating about. Champ, CookiePuss, and Oreo are some things we probably will not name the baby but might name the cat.

A sad cat is a fixable entity. Get rid of fleas, worms, mites; get it shots; give it love; fatten it up; find it suitable person and place. Fixing problems feels great and a cat is a manageable problem.

People are always harder than animals. You expect more, you see the nasty parts of yourself reflected in a difficult person. If they can't care for themselves, or won't care for themselves, or give you lip about caring for themselves. The payoff for fixing a human problem is of course bigger.

In my own defense, I also believe in feeding hungry people, but I often have a hard time doing it. Once, when a woman told me she was hungry, I offered her the container of yogurt I was bringing to work to have for breakfast. She scorned me. "I want a nice hot breakfast. Like from McDonald's?" So do I, lady.

Another time I'd bought a banana, a bagel, and a coffee for a man in Fort Greene who asked me for change every morning. Ragged, skinny, darkness in his eyes, he looked like he needed some nourishment but refused the food when I offered it.

So recently when someone asked me for some money on my way out of a banking kiosk, I tried to avoid him. I'd been scolded and followed on the street a few nights before for dismissing him with the word "sorry" when someone asked me for money, and hadn't yet revised my strategy. (He claimed it would be better to say -- "No, I am not going to give you money," than just "sorry." Thoughts on this, anyone? I generally like to keep encounters with strangers brief.) Anyhow I sort of dodged this guy at the bank, when he asked me for money for soup. I was ducking away, when he said, sort of deflated, "or how about a banana?" And this man's true wish for food struck me. We were next to a fruit stand so I took him over and we had a bonanza, starting with a bunch of bananas. "Can I get a container of strawberries, too? What a great day! How about these plums!" I bought him whatever he asked for at the fruit stand and it cost me all of $6 but I got so much more out of it. At the end of the transaction I suggested to him that he get some protein, and I pointed out a container of nuts.

"But I ain't got no teeth, darling!" he said with a big, seemingly genuine smile, flashed to prove his point. He's smarter than I am, because the next time I walked by that bank I looked for him to feed him -- and my own desires.

Saturday, November 15, 2008

omg what do we need

for when the baby is just born?

1. name
2. marriage license since husband and i don't have the same last name, yet he would like to lay claim
3. coming home outfit
4. diapers of some sort
5. place for it to sleep
6. food in case the biological method backfires?
7. food delivery mechanism (bottle?)
8. carseat that has been installed into the car by the police or something

This week I'm a little more than 6 months pregnant and I started having these sudden moments where my belly gets really, really hard. These are apparently pre-labor contractions called Braxton Hicks. I have heard about them, of course. Like many things in life, they sound fine and interesting when other people talk about them, but when my tummy is suddenly hard as a rock (quick! bounce a dime off of it!!) they take me by surprise and I feel sort of uncomfortable. It's not pain, it's just a measure of weirdness.

I also read that we're basically at "viability," where the baby would likely survive if born.

The contractions combined with the possibility of actual life is coming together to make me scared that the baby is scheming to get out.

And here on the outside, we don't even have a little suit for it.

We're supposed to have about 3 more months. Well, like 12 more weeks. But multiple people have told me stories about babies born at 7 months. My cousin Susan was born then. And someone else's baby was just born then. It's not impossible, in other words. The time drawing nigh is leading to a mental shift where I'm thinking -- YOU NEED TO GET RID OF AS MANY SHOES AS POSSIBLE NEED TO GET RID OF CLOTHES THAT DON'T FIT MUST PAINT ASSEMBLE CRADLE ETC . . . . .

Normally that voice is not a voice in my head but rather Matthew's actual voice, gently prodding me to be civilized.

Anxiety leading to organizing is called NESTING. It's because I feel a primordial urge to be ready for the baby. WHICH I AM NOT. I have isolated and given away a lot of shoes and clothes (well, put them into the truck of the car, and that is at least away from the living room and my closet, for now) but I do have some basic questions. Anyone who can help answer them, please answer away.

Do I need one of those stretchy gowns with the hand muffs that you see in photos from the hospital, just in case the baby's fingernails have been growing at a similar pace to my own? Which is that every day, I grow a new set of claws.

Or will the hospital dress it in a tiny gown during the time it spends there?

Do we need to bring the world's smallest nail clippers?

Do I need to get it a really small hat?

We're going to drive home in the car. We'll be using a little-used infant car seat from friends (thanks C & M!!) Does it need to already have one of those sleeping bags to snuggle into?

Will the sun get into its eyes and irritate it? Or will it have mettle, like my husband's stock, and its eyes will be fine?

Is the cradle mattress really going to be soft enough? It's like, 1/2 an inch thick. And do I need a "bumper" so the baby doesn't crash into the walls of the cradle?

Cloth or disposable diapers?

What is the correct decision on circumcision? Sometimes, I am sad that my ears are pierced. It doesn't gross me out when other people do it, but for me -- it's not for me. It seems like a fake thing to have done to my head.* So having my possible son's genitalia altered makes me also want to be sure that it's the right thing to do. "DOES IT REPRESENT A COVENANT WITH GOD?" a friend who is not circumcised recently asked. Um, no. "THEN DON'T DO IT." We're not Jewish, so culturally it doesn't matter. I know that there are pros and cons to both. The most immediate pro would be not having someone take my baby away and cut him. But it's obviously more important to look at the big picture, and there are public health issues which would be the main ones we would consider. I actually think that this is husband's decision.

Ladies (and gents), advice appreciated.

Oh--and Matthew dreamt that it would come out with its own perfect name. Barring that actually happening, we are scouring around for fabulous things to name it. We have some ideas, but it seems like such a --- flag to the world. Such a moment of self-definition. I mean. I drive a silverish toyata camry which errs on the side of characterless. Yesterday we walked by a very low slung red and white sports car that was really fun to look at. Sort of ridiculous, but . . . why not? Names are the same, sort of. Fun to have a fast low-slung red one . . . but for every day?

*not that I don't do other fake things to my head without thinking twice

Thursday, November 13, 2008

Monday, November 10, 2008

what people say when you're pregnant

Lots of people have lots of things to say when you are pregnant. So far, I think I've been really lucky. No one has scolded me for drinking coffee (it's decaf anyhow) and on the rare occasion where I've ordered a glass of wine, it's usually after grilling the waiter on the order of something like this:

"The squid comes with aioli. Does that mean housemade mayo, and if so, does that mean it has raw eggs in it?"

"So I'm pregnant and this is ridiculous but any ham I eat has to be really really cooked. I know that ham is already cooked of course -- but there's this rule. Can you get them to heat up the ham 'til it's extra hot? Like, recooked?"

And then when they are walking off with my carefully considered order, I might say "Oh and can I have a glass of the Sauvignon Blanc?" and as they raise their eyebrows -- really picky about her ham but in a hurry for the wine -- they generally smile. I think all of the waiters I've ordered wine from (probably 4, tops, in 27 weeks of being pregnant) have actually been men and perhaps that helps. I suspect that women, after having been subjected to rules and scrutiny themselves, are more likely to believe that other women should undergo the same restrictions they did. Not unlike hazing.

But really people have been very nice and maybe laughed but not seemed judgmental. (Btw, I've had about 4 glasses of wine total, spread of 8 meals, in 27 weeks of pregnancy, and even my mother, who doesn't drink at all, thinks that is fine.) And at one very nice restaurant I told them I wanted the most succulent and delicious glass of white wine ever and the waiter went way out of his way to figure out the absolute best glass since I could only have one. Which I so appreciated!

At the opposite end of the spectrum, last night in a gas station I bought a bag of trail mix and the attendant, seeing my belly, fell all over himself in an attempt to be extremely helpful, and wanted to know whether he could open the bag for me, or anything. Not that I'm the most coordinated gal under the best of circumstances, but . . . .

When trying to flag down a cab one day when I wasn't SO visibly popped, someone did a precarious u-turn to pick me up. "You're so beautiful and I couldn't leave you standing there." I've been feeling so bloaty and unattractive that I actually thanked him for telling me that. "I'm pregnant and I don't feel attractive, so thanks!" He deflated my ego slightly by saying "Of course I know you are pregnant lady! Is why I turned around to pick you up!" I thought he was judging me according to the normal person rubric rather than the pregnant person one. Still, appreciated any sort of compliment at all.

Which was in contract to yesterday when my mother said "Meredith's getting chubby!" When snapped at, she claims she meant that it was limited to my stomach. Which anyone who's been pregnant knows that it is not, ahem, limited to your stomach, but rather nothing fits from your bra to your wedding ring to your SOCKS, ladies and gentleman. If my face wore clothes, those would not fit, and all of these facts were the root of my defensiveness. Anyhow. I love my mother dearly, and she meant well, I am sure.

The first mention anyone ever made of my changing body was my 3 year old niece, who, one day while laying around with my sister (her mom) and I, said "You have a tummy!" Another time several weeks later when I was in my pjs and t-shirt wasn't covering my stomach, she looked at it and said, "Uh, can you put your tummy down?," meaning, could I cover it. No, I cannot. Now she's aware that there's a baby in there and says "your tummy is big. i mean REALLY big. can i see it?" Like people who are three, though, she's guileless and everything she does delights me.

But my favorite comment comes from my sister's mother-in-law, who I have been seeing every two weeks. She's 80 and German and has a very small build and sort of prances through life having coffee and cake every day at 4 and singing the children songs in German and making sure that everything is very, very clean, and she is delighted that I am going to have a baby. And every time she sees me, her comment is always the same. "Aren't you blooming so nice?"

And I think that's basically the perfect thing to say.

Wednesday, November 05, 2008

Election!! And Stories About Butterscotch.

Yesterday was a fantastic day. Because schools were transformed into voting stations, kids stayed home, and since kids stayed home, many parents took the day off, and Brooklyn seemed like a huge party all day. Walking by people on the street, they'd ask "did you vote?" and a real sense of hope and community was in the air.

Yesterday evening I watched the election with friends -- slightly reluctant because though they are the best of friends, we've watched some pretty painful elections together, most specifically 8 years ago. And I don't care for sports but I sort of imagine that when we wonder whether we're about to jinx history by being in the room together again while returns are announced, if it isnt sort of like that. (None of us can ever remember where we watched in '04, which suggests that perhaps we all just blocked it out in some sort of group PTSD event.)

Our hostess Meg made a giant shapeless meatloaf in the shape of a turtle. (No offense to the turtle community in calling their shape shapeless -- though I guess freeform would be a better descriptor.) Her meatloaf is sort of the classic -- it has 3 kinds of meat. Beef . . . veal? And the other one may be pork. I am almost sure it is not turtle. It's very special -- richer and undoubtedly harder to shop for than the lowfat turkey meatloaf (pilfered from another blog) that is a weeknight staple in our house. (Mostly, during the week, we eat ground up birds in various permutations -- picadillo tacos, tomatillo chile, and this meatloaf. Well, now we do, since being pregnant makes fish seem as gross or grosser than it seemed during childhood.)

My contribution to the election party was cookies for which I wished, but failed, to find an interesting name, possibly with some sort of political ring to it. Their most interesting characteristic is that they are made from chips -- both butterscotch and potato. Or perhaps it's that they're so very easy that they take less than an hour total for prep and cooking and cooling and you can make them while you talk on the phone.

They come out delicious, even though butterscotch chips are sort of waxy and unpleasant if eaten straight from the bag, which I did try doing. They seem to have the same filler as non-good chocolate. Paraffin? Shoepolish? Butterscotch is better if you make it yourself -- out of butter, and scotch, and brown sugar, but I had a near death experience re: butterscotch last year.

Because when you make pudding . . . you basically turn a solid -- sugar, into a liquid. Sugar melts and boils at about 215 F and can get very much hotter. Not that 212 isn't hot enough, but water gets there and isn't going to get hotter and then when heat is removed, will quickly begin to cool down. However, I brought some brown sugar to the boil and then put it into a bowl to do whatever the next step was -- perhaps whisk something into it, I admit it's all a blur, because at one point, after it had stopped bubbling and was in another bowl looking rather delicious -- I stuck my finger into it.

I regret that action.

Because of all of the cooking accidents -- slicing a finger, letting a whole cake slide onto a lawn, touching the element while removing something from a broiler and turning a patch of skin into something like toasted cheese -- sticking my finger into a bowl of melted sugar was the most painful.

Pain is one of those things that is not possible to conjure when it is not happening -- thank goodness. But I know at least intellectually that it was incredible. I finished up the pudding and my husband came home and we sat down to eat. It was sort of late, as it always is when we eat. I was inconsolable regarding my burning finger. We tried to have dinner but I couldn't stop moaning. My husband is a wonderful person but sort of a strong one and by his own admission, doesn't really "get it" when others are in pain. But I was whinging a lot, as the British people say, and he finally decided to get up and call our neighbor upstairs, Eileen. Eileen is a nurse.

One of the first things we learned about Eileen, who is our landlady, is that she goes to bed extremely early. This is because she leaves for work when it is 4 o'clock in the morning. So we don't call Eileen late.

Without thinking of the time, he called her cell phone and it rang through to voicemail. And he left a message that went like this:

"Hi, it's Matthew, I'm actually calling because Meredith has burned her finger pretty badly . . . " he glanced at the clock and trailed off when he saw it was after 9pm. Then he quickly finished the message by saying, ". . . Oh. It's too late." And he hung up.

Which, since it sounded like I had perished while he was leaving the message, gave Eileen quite a shock the next day when she listened.

Theatrics aside, the pudding was amazing. I can't find the recipe at the moment but will include if I do.

Tuesday, November 04, 2008

On Voting

I pulled the lever.

I teared up at being able to vote for a person of color.

I ate a donut.

vote quote

Soterios Johnson, morning host of WNYC, had a great quote this morning, something along the lines of this, about what a historic day it is. I like that no one was left out:

"First Black president, oldest president, first woman, first Biden!"

Matthew, who is currently a reporter for the above linked station, will be covering polling problems tonight. Which is sad because reporters always have to work on holidays (like election day, which is enough of a holiday that we get to have parties and have alternate side parking canceled.)

But then again he's working a 2-10 shift today, which means he's around this morning and at least we can vote and work in a coffee shop together!

Are you voting? What was it like?

Oh, and one more thing: Matthew points out that if John McCain's grandmother had been very sick and required a visit a week before the election, I would have assumed that he'd scheduled it to draw positive and poignant attention to himself. (I was very exercised regarding canceling everything for hurricanes and financial crisis, etc., which seemed very opportunistic timewise.) I wonder whether I would have assumed that McCain had scheduled his own grandmother's death?

Saturday, November 01, 2008

Halloween Execution

That title sounds grim and does not refer to slaughter or any other sort of death. It just refers to what I actually did for my costume. Execution, as opposed to ideation.


To refresh, the idea was to dress my pregnant belly up like a Barack O'Lantern.




This is a great one, of course, well executed with an actual pumpkin by a person with time, drive, and skill. It has the soft glow of white light casting through the orange.

For my costume, I just colored in one of the Yes We Carve stencils, realized I didn't have any safety pins, then took a nap. Matthew came home and helped me attach it to my shirt.


We ate dinner with Andrea and Drew, 2 friends we haven't seen in far too long, at Chavella's which is in Prospect Heights. (Highlights -- a yummy chorizo and potato taco with crema fresca and a pickled jalapeno -- and a flan accented with lots of orange peel.)

Too late in my project -- which mostly involved coloring, which I remembered that I don't particularly enjoy -- did I realize that the friends we were meeting for dinner are actually professional artists, and that clipping a poorly colored piece of paper to my shirt might just confuse them, but it was too late!