Out of the loop

Last night Eric and I together tackled another pregnancy milestone: removing my belly button ring.

Had I simply taken it out a few months ago when my belly wasn't quite so, well, full, I'm sure this wouldn't have been a big production.

Waiting until you're not actually sure it is still possible to take it out guarantees that it will not be a non-event.

I can be stubborn, and a little proud. I know there's no medal for getting to the end of pregnancy without having to take your belly button ring out but somehow I got attached to the idea that it would be neat to do that.

So as the skin stretched and contorted around the belly button ring I assured myself and everyone else, even as they asked with increasing concern in their voices, that it was fine. All was well.

In the last few days, however, all was becoming less well. The skin around the piercing was really starting to look unhappy, and it was getting a little tender to the touch. The last thing I am interested in is some sort of hideous infection right there so last night I decided it was time to take it out. And suddenly, I wanted it out immediately. It couldn't come out fast enough.

The complicating factor was this: I have had it for 13 years now and I have never once taken it out. I had no idea how the ring actually opened up to come out.

I had this notion that the little ball in the ring was threaded on a little connector piece of the ring and if we spun it, it would open up.

That didn't work.

Eric fiddled with it a bit and managed to the get the little ball to come out, leaving a small (very small) gap in the ring. We had found the exit but the door was far, far too small to make our escape.

That was when Eric went to get the pliers.

Gently, very gently, Eric pried the ring open to create a space that was big enough to slide the ring out, and out it came. I then sprayed it with at least half a liter of bactine and asked it nicely to please not get infected.

Be there or be square

On Saturday night, we did something that I have not done since junior high and Eric has not done since elementary school: we went square dancing.

While it was in many ways quite similar to the square dancing we did as children (most of the people there had no idea what they were doing, no alcohol was served, some of the people there definitely had cooties), I'm happy to report that it was different in the most important way: it was really, really fun.

It started at 8pm and we arrived pretty much on time, which is to say we got there way too early. For the first half an hour it was just us, some older folks eating sandwiches, and a handful of people sitting around looking uncomfortable. One guy wheeled a jogging stroller around the dance floor. Time seemed to slow.

But it finally did get going around 8:30pm. The music was energizing and the caller did a great job getting everyone up and dancing. It was a good crowd and a very family friendly event: there were children and even tweens participating, along with a number of older folks, too. This being San Francisco there was also a healthy share of hipsters and of course plenty of people "like us." (You know what that means, right?) Looking around the room it was clear that everyone was having a fabulous time. Huge grins all around, lots of rosy cheeks and laughing. I sort of felt like we had gone back in time and were in a barn somewhere celebrating the beginning of planting season.

Being 35 weeks pregnant didn't stop me from bouncing around the floor, dosido-ing, swinging my partner, etc until about two hours in when my right knee began to protest. It probably didn't help that I had gone on a five mile hike earlier in the day. Reluctantly, we sat out a few dances and then called it a night.

Tradition

We don't really celebrate Valentine's Day. Eh, it's just not something to get all fussed about. But we do have one important tradition around mid-February*: Love-Inspired Rice Krispie treats. You may remember last year when I made them they were a little, um, hamburger-y. It was Eric's turn this year. Here's how he did:

Yum and yum!

*We thought we had made them for Valentine's Day last year, and so did the same thing this year. What a fun surprise to look back at last year's post and discover that we actually made them for our anniversary. Now that we have a new anniversary in October, I think we can make this tradition about V-Day instead.

Winner

Eric won the Baby Name Brackets. Ethan, the winning name, was one of his original eight entrants. Here's how you know he's the winner:

Before we launched Round 1 we set up the stakes for the competition and determined that the overall winner would get a t-shirt that said "I'm the Winner." It's a bit of a dubious prize, given that I can picture quite a few t-shirts that say that yet which I would not feel like a winner wearing.

It turns out that just "Winner" is the closest we could get without some complicated design-your-own silliness.

Eric seems to be excited to flaunt his prize. Enjoy, Eric. Enjoy.

The Honkers

We've taken a lot of road trips lately which means we have been doing a lot of driving. I think it must be because of this huge amount of time spent in the car that more interesting things have been happening to us on the road.

One time, for a variety of reasons, it was necessary for Eric to make it off the highway via an exit that happened to be several lanes away when he noticed it. As he alternately speeded up and slowed down to navigate over to the exit, he leaned on the horn to let people know that an apparently deranged driver was coming through whether they liked it or not.

Once safely off the exit ramp, Eric leaned back in his seat, took a breath and mused, "I think that's the first time I have used the horn offensively*."

It wasn't the last.

On our way home from Tahoe a few weeks ago we encountered a Prius driving in the dark without its lights on. This is a very dangerous situation, of course, because you can't see it and it is very easy to change lanes into it or otherwise unintentionally cause a fiery deadly crash (and this not even considering the recall-related dangers).

Eric, concerned about this shadowy lurker speeding down the highway near us, tried to alert him to what was going on. Behind him, he flashed his lights repeatedly. Nothing. He pulled up next to him and honked and gestured wildly, causing the Prius to speed up and drive away from us as fast as it could - with its lights still off.

Eric pursued, pulled in front of him and handed Andrew (riding in the back seat) the flashlight from the glove compartment to shine back at the Prius driver. "Do you know Morse code?" asked Eric in complete seriousness. Still no lights.

So Eric did the only remaining sensible thing to do: he sped away as fast as he could to make sure that he would see the inevitable fiery crash in the rear view mirror rather than ahead of us on the road.


*As opposed to "defensively," not "in an offending way" though perhaps one could consider it both.

I'm the Wiz

Last night Eric and I went to a breastfeeding class. Eric was on the phone with his mother earlier in the day and when he told her this she found the idea of taking a class for this sort of thing perplexing, but from everything we've heard breastfeeding is a learned skill for the mother, so we continued in the spirit of over-preparation and headed over to class.

The class was 3 1/2 hours long and featured a lot of talking, a slideshow*, a video and hands-on practice with dolls.

The video was definitely a highlight. It was made by the Royal College of Midwives in the UK and featured a bunch of nursing moms sitting around talking with a midwife about their experiences breastfeeding. They were all extremely British (awful teeth, many fewer chins than women, bulging eyeballs) and one woman in particular looked as though rather than brushing her hair for the video she had let a baby tiger maul her head.

One lengthy section of video showed the midwife coaching a new mom to get her newborn latched on and suckling.

"OK, you've got him all lined up, elicit the gape, now wiz!" She instructed the woman. "Wiz" seemed to mean "quickly get that baby onto your boob now!" based on when and how she was using it.

But the woman was having a hard time getting it all to come together. So they repeated the process again and again on the video, and each time at the critical moment...
"Wiz!" urged the midwife.
"Wiz!" she pressed, still upbeat.
"Come on - wiz!" endlessly encouraging.

I warned Eric that if he tries to tell me to "wiz" while we're getting Belvedere going on the breastfeeding, I'll probably just pee.


*The teacher is an old-school midwife and still uses old-school slides. Like with a projector. She worked with Sergey Brin and his wife when they had their baby last year and said he gave her no end of grief for using slides in this day and age. Apparently, even he couldn't shame her into modernizing.

Water water everywhere

Yesterday when I got home from work, I found amongst our mail a sheet of paper that said "Water services to this address will be discontinued unless a customer assumes responsibility for this account."

How odd, I thought.

So I called our landlord who informed me that, had I read our lease, I would have noticed that we are one of the approximately seven apartments in San Francisco where the tenant, not the landlord, is responsible for the water bill.

"Well, that explains why they're about to shut our water off," I reflected out loud to the landlord.

I called this morning to take responsibility for the account so that we continue to have water in our home. It seemed like the right thing to do.

Haters

It was raining (again) last night, so I took the bus home from work instead of walking.

(I had planned to do the same thing last week one evening but the 10 bus kept vanishing off the map. I walked the bus route all the way home and never got passed by a single bus in over an hour. This is a bus that is scheduled to be every 20 minutes but lately it has been horrible.)

Last night, however, to my great surprise, the bus turned up more or less when expected, which was especially delightful since I was standing on a shelterless corner in the pouring rain.

The bus ride home was uneventful until not far from my house when the bus was unable to pull over at a stop because a couple of guys had double parked to unload something. The bus driver honked at them and opened the door.

"You can't park there," he informed them. He was a large man, African American, with a jolly, playful demeanor.

"Screw you!" One of them sniped in response. "We're just unloading."

"You can't even unload here," he clarified for them.

"F*#@ you. You can't give us a ticket anyway so get outta here."

"Oh ho ho! That's perfect." The driver gleefully stood up and opened the little gate next to his seat. "Yes I can!"

He stepped down off the bus and wrote the guy a $250 ticket.

When he stepped back on the bus, everyone cheered. He grinned and sat down, closing the gate behind him. Before closing the door he waved to the Unloaders.

"The city thanks you!"

White out

It has been amazing to see the snowfall in DC these past few days. I remember a few dumps of snow while I lived there but nothing like this. I used to live at 18th and Swann St - both streets are pictured here in their current snowy condition. Unbelievable!

In other news, it was sunny and warm here in San Francisco yesterday. We took a nice walk by the ocean to enjoy the beautiful day.

Hawks vs Sharks

A long long time ago, last Thursday evening, Eric, my brother Andrew, and our friends Ted, Nonoko and Luke all went down to The Tank in San Jose to watch the Chicago Blackhawks take on the San Jose Sharks. They are expected to face each other for some level of playoff or championship something later this season so it was expected to be a big game. We were pumped. Andrew, loyal Chicago fan that he is, wore his jersey and savored the abuse that came with doing so.

Andrew and the handful of other Chicago fans in attendance were the only ones standing and clapping when the Hawks scored three goals in the first six minutes of the game. It looked like it might be a total rout, similar to the 7-0 (or maybe 7-1?) thrashing the Hawks gave the Sharks in another of their recent match-ups.

There was one particularly notable Chicago fan sitting in the row in front of us. He was reminiscent of one of those savant-like characters you see in movies and on the bus in San Francisco: too many layers of clothing, ipod in at all times and a little twitchy in the face. Mild mental illness? Who can say. In this case, our guy was kind of like a wind-up doll, yelling one of three phrases (and nothing else) every few minutes during the entire game: "Push it!", "Come on boys!" and "Chi-town muscle!".

By the end of the game, I'm pretty sure I heard the people sitting around him starting to yell "Push it!" and "Come on boys", but directed at the Sharks, of course. I guess it was kind of catchy.

The Sharks eventually managed to score and in fact tied it at three by the end of the game, sending us into overtime. (Andrew, having seen this coming, was well-prepared having bought an OT beer just in case.)

Not long into the five minute sudden death overtime, the Hawks' Brouwer managed to sneak one in and the Hawks took the game. This meant that Eric had to mail my father a check for $20, which he did with remarkable dignity.

Google Games

Sunday evening, Eric, Andrew and I were sitting around our living room just hanging out with our laptops, sharing music and funny videos, writing emails, etc, when Eric discovered a fun game.

Google very cleverly tries to anticipate the search you are about to type in by auto-completing your text with the most frequently searched phrases that start with whatever you have started typing. For example, if you type in "why" you will get the top ten most common searches that start with "why." Here, take a look:
It provides a unique insight into what is on the minds of Americans. (Particularly #6 - "Why can't I own a Canadian." It's a good question, isn't it?)

Here's what the Great and Powerful Google can tell you about "how":
I think my favorite part about this set of questions is that "how to solve a rubix cube" is right up there with "how to get pregnant".

Asking "when" makes me wonder if some people out there actually think that Google is an oracle or deity rather than a search engine.
Of course, the more you type, the narrower the set of possible questions that other people are also wondering about. For example:
Apparently Google is also the place people go to ask questions they wouldn't feel comfortable asking an actual person.

From the other perspective, here's what the people are wondering about:
And just for fun - one last peek into the curious American mind.

And the winner is...

The votes from the Baby Name Brackets are in and the winning name is... Ethan. But it was close – 54% to 46% in the final round.

However, as you know this result is non-binding and the name of the boy child is still yet to be determined (once he is born).

Thank you so much to all who participated. We had a lot of fun and we sure learned a lot too. Here's a summary of how it all played out: (the blue shading is % of votes within each match-up)Here are some of the notable write-in votes that we will also be taking into consideration.
Gunther
Lars
Kermit (not the frog)
Miller
Beavis
Rafferty
Wilberforce
Hercule
Galacto
Saturday Night
Two Dollar
Applejack
Zul
Willie
McLovin

Showered

My dear friend Sarah hosted a baby shower for me yesterday here in San Francisco and it was wonderful. She laid out one of the more impressive tea selections I have seen outside of places called "emporiums" and there was delicious food, including mini-cupcakes. Smokey (her cat) was a particular fan of the cupcakes and eventually got locked in the bedroom when he was discovered sitting on a chair next to the table happily licking the frosting off of a chocolate cupcake. I don't blame him - they were awesome.

One determinant of the tone of a baby shower is how many of the women there have already had their own babies. In this case, out of a dozen or so people at the shower three of us were pregnant for the first and there were two current moms. Everyone else was baby-free. I thought this worked out very well because we had two people who could gently correct me when I held up a burp cloth and called it a bib but the gifts were all on the cuter end of functional.

(In contrast, I once went to a baby shower where the mom-to-be and me were the only non-mothers and the gifts were decidedly tilted towards the horrifying side of functional ("this cream is great for when your nipples are sore and bleeding and you want to tear them off your body").)

The other big thing to look out for with baby showers is what games the hostess has arranged for the group to play. It can get pretty ugly (think: mini-candy bars melted into diapers and force-feeding mom-to-be pureed beef and carrots). In this case, we were very fortunate that Sarah chose a fun game where everyone got a list of characteristics the baby will have (height, hair, smile, sense of direction, breath, musical ability, desire to take risks, temper, sense of right and wrong, etc) and the goal was to guess whether I would want the baby to inherit mine or Eric's. Some were very clear (hair - mine, height - Eric's) and some were a little trickier (sense of direction - this child is doomed either way. Same with desire to take risks, though I think I am just slightly more conservative than Eric is). All told, it pretty much looks like I am hoping for a mini-Eric. But I guess that kind of makes sense.

The whole afternoon was a blast. Look how much fun I am having (and yes, I do intend to use that bamboo hooded towel myself, thank you very much).

Thanks so much for a great shower Sarah!