On a lighter note... weekend review.

Mike and I went to see the car show downtown this weekend, to celebrate the birthday of a friend who does not like to celebrate birthdays - hence, a low key event completely unrelated to cakes or waiters who sing to you in front of the other patrons.

As we were driving down, we ran into a colossal traffic jam, headed toward the Qwest Center where the car show was taking place. We had to take a circuitous detour and as we finally approached, we saw that all the official parking lots were filled. So Mike dropped me off as close as he could get me (a few blocks) and went to find a spot to park.

I trudged along with a big herd through the bitter cold - it was in the low 20s and windy - and followed the crowd into the lobby of the box office. It was packed with people, freezing cold, and sold out. Scalpers were outside hawking tickets. Our friends were nowhere in sight and when I texted them, they replied that they were still parking. Unbelievable! All this for a car show? What, were they debuting the first working Delorean time machine? I was confused, cranky, and freezing my buns off.

At last Mike arrived from Parking Siberia and informed me that I was in the arena part of the Qwest Center. You know, where they were having some big college basketball game. Ohhhhhhhh.

So we trudged back over to the convention center, found our friends, and looked at some cars. I'm not all that into cars, but I can appreciate a little pretend shopping. Mike and I were ogling the Honda Fit hybrid, while our friends were comparing and contrasting Lexus and Mercedes. Different strokes and all that.

Afterwards we parted ways, and Mike and I went grocery shopping and returned home. I made some veggie maki rolls - cucumber, avocado, and carrot. I think my sushi rice is decent and I am an okay maki roller. The weak spot always seems to be the nori, which is chewy and on the ends it's even crispy and hard. It's probably just not the greatest nori in the world, but at $4 a package for the cheap stuff, that's about all the splurging I can justify for DIY sushi.

Post-dinner, we watched Hustle and Flow. It was a little hard for me to put the celebrity gossip about Terrence Howard out of my mind at first (I've heard he's kind of a... not a nice guy) but he did give a good performance and I enjoyed the movie. I was worried that it was going to glamorize pimping, but that was far from the case. It was a pretty heartbreaking portrait of what life is like for men & woman who try to make a living on prostitution and petty drug deals.

Today has been a day of cleaning, cleaning, cleaning. We dusted, we laundered, we scrubbed, we mopped. We (Mike) unclogged the gross shower drain and installed a strainer thingy. I also attempted to start our taxes and realized, after several hours, that I have to wave the white flag this year. Life has gotten too complicated for Turbo Tax, and I think we're going to hire a pro to figure that jazz out for us this year.

Road to Recovery

It's an education I wish I didn't have to have, but I have learned a lot from miscarriage. I've learned that while becoming pregnant can seem instantaneous, becoming unpregnant takes a few weeks for the body to achieve. I've learned that the answer to the question "why?" is confusing and frought with more and more questions. I've learned that some people do not understand that we are grieving a death.

We are grieving a death. I understand that until you go through it, you probably can't imagine it - I know I couldn't, before it happened to me - but consider this a public service announcement. Whatever your intellectual thoughts on pregnancy and human life may be, I can assure you that the emotional experience for me and for Mike is not that I had a health-related mishap or a medical emergency, but that someone has died. 

Every day gets easier, though. Sometimes a thought, a song, or the sight of a baby can send you reeling backwards with surprising force, but then you forge on again. I can't imagine how we would be coping if we didn't have each other and a strong marriage to fall back on... if we didn't have the solid and reliable power to make each other laugh, still, even on the worst days.

It's funny how, when you're pregnant, everything becomes in reference to pregnancy. Every food you eat, every move you make, every thought you think points back to I'm pregnant. When you lose a pregnancy, everything then points to I miscarried. One of the many, many random thoughts I've had in the last week and a half was, "What a time to cancel cable!" I thought there could be no worse time to lack the immediate & compelling escape of television. But for the one millionth time in life, I was wrong. The silence of the television has been unexpectedly pleasant. Instead we've spent our mornings and evenings listening (and even dancing) to music, talking, or just sitting quietly together. It's peaceful, and perhaps just what the doctor ordered.

We lost the baby.

Over the weekend, I miscarried naturally. It happened very quickly, beginning Saturday morning and over by midday Monday. On Monday afternoon I saw my doctor to confirm. At 8 weeks, I heard a healthy heartbeat. At 9 weeks and 3 days, I lost the pregnancy.

It's hard to know how to blog about this. It seems like I could write a whole book, or nothing at all, but anything in between is insufficient.

Mike and I are coping okay. We appreciate the kind words we've received from friends and family, and even the words that don't come out quite right... we know that people often do not know what to say but wish us well.

I am doing fine physically. There really is no answer for why this happened. I am just trying to stay healthy, and we will try again when we can. 

First Gifts

We have received our first baby gifts!

The first batch was from my dear friend Jenn. She was one of the people I blabbed to a little early... we were talking babies and I spilled the beans. Jenn is a wonderfully generous and thoughtful person and she sent me a box of awesome parenting books. She's an editor at a small publishing company and we found her name in the acknowledgments of some of these books - how cool!

The second package came from my mom, a first time grandma. It bugged me out to hold up that little shirt (it says "peace") and picture having a baby that small... then bugged me out even more when I read the tag and saw it's for a six month old! I can't imagine having such a teeny baby, even though I have held my fair share of newborns before. 

The socks are adorable, in a set of six different colors and all printed with a sneaker pattern. The book is a fun little fill-in-the-blank keepsake book with a goofy, silly style that is perfect for Mike and me. The illustrations are really cute 60's style cartoons... we're going to enjoy writing in that together.

So we went "fantasy shopping" at Nebraska Furniture Mart today and just picked all the things we would buy if money were no object... not just baby gear, but we still need furniture for most of the other rooms in the house as well. It's somewhat hard to find pieces we like, since we don't share the Midwest's love affair with shades of brown, but there were a few cute things to add to our fake shopping cart, like a cute lime green loveseat and a retro red leather sofabed (not for the same room!). We managed to find a few simple cribs that were acceptable, though most of them were huge hulking behemoths. I don't understand why cribs now look like giant sailing vessels that need their own zip codes - ? Babies are still really small these days, right?

The Third Human

Happy New Year friends & family!

In 2009, we resolve to... add another Human to the family! And we are on our way, as I'm 9 weeks pregnant today. We waited until Christmas to begin telling everyone, but we've known since the day after Thanksgiving. It was hard to keep quiet - we are not good at keeping secrets, and actually we blabbed to a couple of people early and swore them to secrecy til Christmas.

On Christmas Eve I had my first doctor's appointment. I did not think it would be too exciting so I told Mike to skip it and go to work as usual. The doctor gave me a mild fright when she examined me - she said that we probably would not be able to hear the hearbeat until I was 10 weeks along, and I was only 8 at the time... but the moment she touched my belly she ran out of the room saying "I'm going to get the Doppler!" I lay there thinking, holy crap what if I'm like 12 weeks along and didn't know it?? But when she came back she said that because I'm so slender we might hear it... and sure enough, she found the beat - strong and fast, at 144. I wish Mike had been there for that - it was so cool - but he will hear it next time. 

To answer the most commonly asked questions: Yes, we were trying. Yes, we will find out the sex as soon as we can (it will be at the end of March). No, we don't really have a preference but we are both guessing girl. We do have some ideas for names but nothing we want to publicize just yet. I feel really well, I have had no morning sickness, have been a little tired some days, but not every day, and other than that don't have any unpleasant symptoms. I do want to eat everything in sight sometimes, and at other times all food tastes like wood. But overall I'm great. The doctor did clear me to work through my pregnancy and said that I should wear a mask for safety, but that paints these days are pretty harmless. And my estimated due date so far is August 6th. 

We're really excited and it has been so much fun telling everyone. We've gotten the best reactions from people we know who already have kids - they all tell us it's the best thing in the world and we're going to love being parents. I figure if the battle-worn still get excited about kids, it must be a pretty good experience, haha. We will be updating frequently so check back to hear more as my belly grows....

Christmas 2008.

Christmas was pleasant and mellow this year. I was at the tail end of the Black Death Plague, trying not to cough all over everyone, and I sounded like Joan Rivers with a touch of laryngitis, but other than that things were swell.

We had our potluck-style dinner with the family and I brought along a homemade buckwheat noodle casserole from my favorite cookbook, The Flexitarian Table. Although some said they enjoyed it, I was pretty unhappy with the casserole. The noodles had all clumped together when I was making them, and in the cooked casserole they were very lumpy and dense. Buckwheat flour is VERY STICKY and hard to work with: lesson learned. If I ever made this again, I would probably cut the buckwheat in half and use more regular flour instead. Why I choose never-before-tried recipes for important family dinners, I will never know... not the best idea. But I'm crazy. Luckily Mike's family is very gracious and would never tell me my food sucked!

On Friday night we went to some friends' house and watched Burn After Reading, the Coen brothers movie out on DVD. Coen brothers films are kind of hit or miss with me, but there was something about this one I really, really liked. I even liked George Clooney, whom I normally can't abide. The characters were a bit over the top but so well played, it was hard not to love them. And Brad Pitt always plays the slightly crazy bimbo ever so well. There was an attention to detail in this movie that just tickled me. I think our friends were bored by it, though.

On Saturday night we attended a party to welcome back a friend who has been working abroad and is home for a short vacation. The attendees were a mix of friends and business colleagues for both Mike and I so it was fun to schmooze and celebrate the season, and wonderful to see my friend, who's been away for several months.

Today, sadly, it's back to work. I've had plenty of vacation, but I always feel I could take one more day.

We did the unthinkable.

We canceled our cable TV service.

And our landline, so if you need to reach us, call our cell phones. We just couldn't stand paying Cox almost $180 a month every month anymore. I had a bit of a wakeup call recently when Mike's mom was asking us what TV shows we liked to watch, and we had a hard time naming any. We watch TV every day, but we can hardly name a show that we really love? What a waste!

We always thought that if the budget started to get too tight we would cut cable, but "not yet." Now, even though we're doing fine, the time is here. We canceled our phone & cable service - keeping the high speed internet because we haven't completely lost our minds - and signed up for a $17/mo Netflix account. We can still watch the really good shows on Netflix or at Hulu anyway. All told, if you add in the Netflix, we're going to save $120 a month! That's $120 extra to put in savings, to travel, to dine out... any of which will be a lot more worthwhile than the hour of television per day that we were spending it on before.