Baby school

We started our baby classes this evening. I suspect that we have done a little too much reading and have desires for natural childbirth that put us a little too far outside the mainstream for this class. It was really amazing to learn from reading that doctors, who take the Hippocratic oath, engage in all kinds of practices that, based on the evidence, are not helpful and are sometimes harmful. It is just as amazing to hear a childbirth educator feeding all kinds of incongruous information to people like it is so much tripe. I really felt at a couple of different points that I wanted to jump up and protest. For example:
1. The educator said, "Your doctor might cut your perineum. This is called an episiotomy. Some doctors do them all the time and some do them if they feel you might tear." If the episiotomy were really necessary, why is it that whether or not you have one is completely dependent upon your doctor's preferences for giving them? Everything I read suggests that they are not helpful (except possibly in the case of forceps extraction), and can even increase the chances of deep tissue tears. Granted, I've been reading some "earthy" books on childbirth. However, even mainstream information about childbirth acknowledges that there are no proven benefits and definite short and long-term risks to the procedure.
2. The number one fear that the expectant mothers in the class reported was the fear of pain. The number two fear was that the mother would be too small/baby be too big for vaginal delivery. After acknowledging this fear, the educator took out a model of the pelvic muscles to show folks the area through which the baby would pass. The problem was that the model was not even close to life-sized. When the educator pulled it out and showed the 2 or 3-inch space through which the head and shoulders had to pass, some people gasped, having their fears of being too small confirmed by the model. Several minutes later, the educator pulled out a tiny model of a fetus to show the different positions (breech, etc.) I asked, "That fetus is to scale with the pelvis right? Our babies will be bigger but our pelvises are bigger too, right?"
3. Despite the fact that at least one member of the group has gestational diabetes and several others had high risk pregnancies, good questions were rewarded with candy and the refreshment offered was chocolate chip cookies.
On the walk home, we talked about whether or not we should go back next week. I think we should for 2 reasons.
First, I think that this class will help prepare us for the difficulties we will encounter having our wishes respected at the hospital. It really is too bad that we feel like we will have to exercise constant vigilance - like we need security at the door to insure that no episiotomy scissors or amnio-hooks (used to artificially break water) enter the room. The inability to relax completely will likely increase my discomfort during labor, but at least we shouldn't be taken by surprise with some undesired and unnecessary medical intervention.
Second, I almost feel like someone should dissent. That way maybe one or two people in the room will get the sense that they are not getting the whole story and do a little research on their own. If anyone asks, I will recommend that anyone who wants to avoid unnecessary medical intervention start by reading "The Thinking Woman's Guide" - making sure to get the latest edition.

The first of the niephews*

My first nephew has arrived.
It really is amazing and exciting to think about the next generation of the family coming into existence. That is one thing I really love about families. If you treat them right they just grow larger and larger.


*Niephews is the term we have coined for nieces and nephews.

Book: Yellow Dog by Martin Amis

I didn't care for this novel in the least. I was unacquainted with Amis' rather voluminous work before sitting down with Yellow Dog. Apparently Amis is both a well-known and much-admired novelist. My only response to that is, "Yikes!"

Yellow Dog is about a man who suffers head trauma, a repressed homosexual kingpin, the King of England and his teenage daughter, a writer for one of England's biggest porno-mags, and a host of other minor characters, each less worthwhile than the last (with a few exceptions). There is not one compelling or empathetic character in the lot. The world Amis creates is raunchy, which is fine, but also meaningless and barbaric. So, I suppose we are intended to laugh at the absurd connections and misfortunes he concocts, but if he is trying to pull a "Kurt Vonnegut," that is, make you laugh because otherwise you would have to cry, he misses the mark by at least a mile. In other words, the plot is awful. He even has to resort to a random vehicular manslaughter to bring the novel to a close and you KNOW that is my number one pet peeve.

Now a word about style. Amis seems to believe he is the Quentin Tarantino of the genre. The novel is primarily dialogue with very spartan descriptions (and those primarily of women as sex objects). Perhaps Amis believes he is exploring the potential of the written word by creating minor characters whose first names are pronouns (the drug dealer And and the mistress He), by having a character, K8 (Kate), who speaks chatroom both online and in real life, and by incorporating background noises (a tape recorder being clicked on and off while memoirs are being recorded so we can know what is on and off the record) into monologues. In reality, he is just stroking his own ego and, possibly, impressing a few sycophants who go in for vapid parlor tricks.

Don't read it!

Batman Begins...

was FABULOUS! Christopher Nolan is a god!
Go see it!

I don't regret not seeing "Crash." I'll see it eventually, and Batman truly deserves the big screen and surround sound.

Restaurant Review: Sanford

The more time I spend I thinking about my dinner about Sanford last night, the more ambivalent I become about the restaurant. Sanford was far and away the best meal that we’ve had in Milwaukee if you are counting ambience, food quality, quality of service, and relative value. I think my ambivalence arises because Sanford is this strange hybrid of fine dining and regular upscale – especially reflected in their prices, menu items and organization, and portions. Perhaps the chef has learned that s/he needs to modify the fine dining experience to stay afloat in Milwaukee, I don’t know. But I do know that Sanford’s attempt to be many things can be detrimental in more ways than one. Ultimately, Sanford is either about the worst (but cheapest) fine dining establishment that I’ve ever visited, or a very respectable and somewhat expensive upscale restaurant.

The atmosphere was quite nice. Off the beaten path in a largely residential area, Sanford has one main dining room with about 18 – 20 tables. I do not know if they have a private dining room as well. It is pleasantly and simply decorated – no giant urns, huge flower arrangements, or zebra skins tacked up on the wall. Our server was quite good and, as I would expect at any fine restaurant, he was well aware of our dietary restrictions, the restaurant having collected this information when we made our reservations. However, despite the fact that they knew I was coming, they still seemed a bit unprepared to serve me. There were menu items that were, he suggested, quite good when prepared without meat. However, there was no vegetarian entrée, although I could request something or let the chef create a surprise meal for me. I was all about the surprise meal. The chef has the culinary expertise, after all. When I go out for a pricey meal at a fine dining establishment, I don’t want to decide what to eat, I want the expert to decide.

That brings me to the next issue: the menu. The only way to have an entire meal which is designed by the chef is to either get the 7-course prix-fixee ($75 with an additional $30 for wine accompaniment) or the get the 4-course seasonal menu ($40, I think). Neither had a vegetarian option and you could only get 7-courses if the entire table did. If you don’t take advantage of one of those options you need to pick and choose from the menu. This is a huge problem, especially if you are a vegetarian because your entrée is going to be a surprise. How do you know what starter, soup and salad, and dessert to choose? On top of that, as the vegetarian options were somewhat limited, it was difficult to put together a meal in which the courses worked well. For example, there were 2 possible starters for me: a grilled pear, caramelized onion, Roquefort, and walnut tart; and a sauté of morels, chanterelles and fiddleheads. Well, I might want the tart but my 2nd course options were limited to curried lentil soup, grilled beet salad with feta, pine nuts, and a grilled pear and walnut salad. I had just made a big pot of curried lentil soup for lunch so that was out. The grilled pear and walnut salad would be redundant if I got the tart but the beet salad would not match the tart at all (moving from Roquefort to feta and walnuts to pine nuts). However, the sauté came with the seasonal menu, which Jason was getting so we would be eating the same first course which seemed like a waste. I ended up getting the tart and the beet salad and switching first courses with Jason. This, however, proved a mistake for three reasons. The tart was only average so Jason begrudged the trade. The beet salad was tasty but nothing special (we could easily have thrown together something like that at home without giving it too much thought), and my entrée ended up including the sauté of morels, etc. with grilled endive, and mushroom risotto.

My entrée was tasty, but, again, nothing special. In fact, I was a little annoyed by the risotto. At almost every moderately good restaurant in Milwaukee the vegetarian item on the menu is either some kind of ravioli or a mushroom risotto. I guess I expect that one of the best restaurants in city would come up with something that wasn’t just better than all those other places but actually DIFFERENT. Jason was not fond of his lentil soup but loved his entrée, salmon. Our desserts were great – apricot tart with apricot ice cream for Jason and bittersweet chocolate tart (the chocolate & hazelnut crust was perfect) with vanilla ice cream for me.

So, I guess it is surprising that after all of this complaining I’d still recommend Sanford. Well, I would and I will tell you why. First, we were shocked by how relatively inexpensive Sanford was (my entrée was 18.50, salad 8.50. etc). Granted, we paid for $100 of our $119 (not including tip) meal with gift certificates, but I think that I would feel the same way even if we paid for the whole thing. Except for Jason’s entrée and dessert, the food didn’t blow us away, but it is the best meal we’ve had in Milwaukee (not counting a big bowl of tortilla soup and jicama salad at Cempazuchi). Ultimately it is only a little more expensive but substantially better than a lot of well-respected mid-priced Milwaukee restaurants (e.g. The Social, Barossa) and we’ve stopped going to those places because we usually leave feeling like we paid too much for food that is only OK. Second, the portions were shockingly large. We expected the portion sizes to resemble those we were accustomed to from fine dining establishments in Chicago – where you leave a 7 or a 9-course meal feeling like you ate just enough (or maybe on the border of just enough and a little bit too much). At Sanford, we were both comfortably satiated after the second course! I couldn’t even come close to finishing my entrée (of course, there is always room dessert). So, if we went again, we could probably decrease our bill by at least a third by skipping and sharing courses. At that price, we would only have to eat at home every other time we would be likely to go out to a mid-range restaurant in order to cover the increased cost of a meal at Sanford.

I recommend Sanford if you want to have a respectable but largely standard meal, blow some money, and feel hoity-toity, but you don’t want to make the drive to Chicago and spend at least twice as much to really do it right.

Dinner and a movie

Jason and I are going on a "date" tonight. We're going to one of Milwaukee's fanciest restaurants, Sanford. We thought that we might take in a movie after dinner but, as I explained previously, our tastes diverge. Help us decide, will ya?

Update, 9 p.m.: Dinner was pretty good - maybe I'll write a restaurant review tomorrow. However, we decided to rent a movie and watch it at home - to spread out the fun (and expenses) a little. But keep those votes coming because we'll be heading off to the movies soon enough!

Deluxe apartment in the sky

So, I was scrolling through my blog and I noticed a comment on my post about "The Lovely Bones." It is a non-anonymous post from someone outside of my department.* Only my second ever!

Katie Baker, you made my day! Thanks!

*Not that I don't appreciate you sconnies, but it is nice to get the occasional visit from someone else.

Too hot to blog

The weather report claims the humidity will break this evening. I am waiting.

Our study is the warmest room in the house so I have not felt inclined to spend extra time at the computer blogging.

This past weekend felt like the first weekend of summer. I started it off by kicking off my summer research project on Milwaukee's ethnic festivals. This weekend was pride fest - not technically an ethnicity but definitely a good starter festival for thinking about how identity is articulated within a particular cultural framework.

We spent Sunday afternoon and Monday in Door County - the part of Wisconsin my Chicago friends who summer there tell me is most like Maine (yeah, maybe the same way Tombstone Pizza is like Ian's).

On the way up to Penninsula State Park where we camped, we stopped in lovely Manitowoc, which is not in Door County, but on the way. Several WWII subs were built in the town and they now have a retired vessel there at the Wisconsin Maritime Museum.


Jason expected that I would feel right at home in Manitowoc but not so much. The waterfront, and I use the term loosely because most of the town ignores the waterfront, was completely dead. In fact the whole trip got me wondering about coastal Wisconsin. What does Wisconsin have in the way of working waterfront? What about the Great Lakes fisheries? Where are the fish markets? How is most of the fishing in the Great Lakes done? Large vessels, hook and line? Where is the fishing done? How much use do the lakes get aside from recreational boating? I want to know.

Movie review: Noi

As my partner is at a conference this weekend, I availed myself of the DVD selection at my local library to pick up a couple of movies. When I am out of town Jason rents movies that I am unwilling to watch. Generally these movies are complete crap and, thus, not a part of the library collection. Some recent examples include that movie about the 30- and 40-something men who went back to college to join a fraternity, maybe it was called "Old School," and the one about spring break or something in Europe ("Eurotrip," perhaps?). When Jason is out of town I watch foreign films. He is rarely willing to rent them, not because they're awful like the movies he wants to watch, but because he finds it too much work to read the subtitles.

Last night I watched, Noi, an Icelandic movie about some brainiac kid living in a tiny village out on the tundra. Although it received many awards, I didn't find the movie very compelling so it is a good thing that Jason wasn't home to complain about how I made him watch it. Noi, the hero, wasn't a very sympathetic character. The plot started out well but it ended up having one of those story lines which concludes with people being killed off in order for it to all work out. I have absolutely no patience for writers who can't come up with a more interesting way to conclude their tales than a plane crash, fire, cancer, or, in this case, avalanche, that eliminates the antagonists and gives the hero the push he needs to pull himself together.

I don't recommend Noi, unless you're feeling particularly trapped and isolated and you'd like to feel better about your miserable life by making a favorable comparison.

In which an epidural is contemplated

I said in the past that I didn't really want to be cognitively engaged in the whole labor and delivery thing - thinking it is best that I just let my body take over and do what it is deigned to do.

Well, when I was out in Maine I stayed with a cousin who has cable. I found myself watching the Discovery Health Channel on a Tuesday night, which is baby night. I was completely transfixed, unable to turn away from the television. Tears poured down my cheeks as woman after woman delivered pointed-headed babies. I watched as doctors inserted the several-inch needles into women's spines to administer epidurals. I chewed my fingernails nervously through commercials that were prefaced with statements like, "In Alice's birthing room, a routine labor becomes an expectant mother's nightmare. When "Birth Day" returns." In one episode, the narrator tells us the story of one woman who arrived at the hospital so late in labor it was too late to receive the epidural and, thus, "had to experience the full agony of childbirth."

And that's when I decided I needed to get cracking on locating a doula and I started reading every book on natural childbirth that I could get my hands on.

My mother always told me that they exaggerated the pain of childbirth on television. She went through it 5 1/2 times (last pregnancy was twins - only one stage 1 of labor but 2 bouts of pushing and two placenta). She never had any complications and she generally did not even use narcotics to deal with the pain. She is no longer around for me to ask her so I asked my dad how it went. Of course, they went through it so many times that they really had a routine. As my dad recalls, he would wake up one morning and mom would be downstairs having her cup of coffee. She would tell him that he needed to call in to work because she was going to have the baby. They both would get dressed, make breakfast for current children, and call Cherry Gorham, the neighbor who came to stay with us while Mom and Dad were at the hospital. A little later, my mom would peruse the boat schedule and decide what ferry they would take to the mainland (where the hospital is located). They would ride the ferry in, walk to the car, and drive up to the hospital. She and my dad would usually head straight to the delivery room, where, an hour or two later, a new member of the family would enter the world.

So, anyway, I don't really want to have pain medication or other optional medical interventions for at least these reasons:
1. I want to be like my mom.
2. Not having experienced either, I think I would prefer labor to having a needle inserted into my spine. Birth is a natural process while drugs being dripped into the area around your spinal column is not.
2. I probably sound like a fruitcake here, but there is something compelling about the idea of experiencing something so universal (for females from many species) as giving birth. I know, I know, most horses don't deliver their foals in the birthing center of their local hospital attended by doctors and nurses and husbands and doulas, but still, work with me - I want to feel my body going through the process and, just so long as my OB doesn't intervene, the process will be very similar to the one horses do go through. It's kind of like eating. Some people might opt for a pill that could effortlessly fulfill their nutritional needs or, once they discovered one meal that they could repeat ad infinitum they might refuse to try anything else in case it disagreed with them. I would opt for the food - new food, foods that I might find I don't even care for, foods that might give me gas - every time.

I get frustrated when folks (mostly my husband's family) dismiss me as some "smart-alecky college kid who has to do everything differently" when, in fact, I feel like I am doing what my mother and her mother (etc. etc.) did - giving birth to my children with minimum medical intervention. My mother was no hippie or health nut but she also refused to jump on every medical trend that came down the pike.

That's where I am at.

Rib-tickler

When one if growing a human one is bound to experience of variety of new and interesting sensations. Fetal hiccups were interesting the first time. Instead of the usual fluid motions and stretchings that come along with fetal movement, my entire abdomen began jumping - just once - at somewhat regular intervals (every 20 seconds or so). Today, however, I felt something that trumps the hiccups - foot in the ribs. It wasn't just a temporary pressure on my lower right ribs, it was as if the kid wedged his/her toes up between the bottom couple of ribs intending to stay a while - just like when I put my feet up on the back of the chair in front of me when I go to the movies. I ended up jumping up and down and stretching my arms toward the ceiling in order to shake the kid loose.

Book: The Lovely Bones by Alice Sebold

Can't you tell that I am completely stressed out and that my sleep schedule is a mess? How else would I be coming up with so many non-work related book reviews?

This is an interesting novel - the narrative begins with the violent death of a teenage girl, Susie, at the hands of a serial killer and is narrated by the young girl herself - who comments from "her heaven" on the aftermath of her death on earth. The Lovely Bones is first and foremost a book about families coping with loss. It is unique, however, in that the family is joined in their grief by the lost one herself.

This is a great novel and a fairly quick read.

Book: The Lobster Coast by Colin Woodward

The Lobster Coast covers the European History of (mostly) coastal Maine from earliest exploration until the present. After a fairly light and entertaining introduction, Woodward embarks upon the task of laying out the history of Maine's coast. I got the impression early on that he would spend most of his time focusing on the fishing industry - with a nod to the historical roots of Mainer's suspicion of people "from away." However, Woodward ends up all over the place by the end of the book, for example, talking about recent pushes for "smart development" to combat suburbanization and sprawl and mentioning many of the elites who summered in Maine in the past, while neglecting to discuss the strategic importance of the Maine coast during WWII and what the U.S. army did to change the character of the Maine coast during those years.

I don't recommend this book - except to Mainers who read everything they can about the Pine Tree State.

The Van-ola + I-94 + Darkness

We hit a "bump" in I-94 on our way back from Madison. It took about 10 seconds before we became VERY aware that it wasn't a bump but a skunk. We arrived home a bit later to find that our nice clean and fancy looking van-ola smells like fresh skunk. When your dog mixes with skunk, you can give him a bath in canned tomato. What do you do when your entire car has been skunked?

We left it out of the garage to air out and returned from walking the dogs to find that our entire block stinks!

Wisconsin + Beer + 2:30 a.m.

Why is it, I wonder, that here in Milwaukee, and, if I correctly recall, particular areas of Madison, people announce bar time and their inebriated state by randomly shouting, "Whoooooooooh!" as they make their way home at the end of the evening?

I puzzled over this for some time last night when the dulcent "Whooooooohs!" of a couple of folks walking past my house roused me, but I was unable to come up with any explanation. It's as if being drunk isn't enough fun, one has to make sure that everyone knows they are drunk and loving it. Or perhaps, with the end of the night approaching, folks are trying to reassure themselves that the evening is worth the pending cost - lying in bed with one foot on the floor to keep the room from tipping over.

At any rate, goody-two-shoes that I may be, I have been around many a drunken revelry without the Whoooooohs so I find them curious and wonder about their function.

Book Recommendation: Middlesex by Jeffrey Eugenides

I know I am probably the last person on the planet to read Middlesex, but let me share my opinion all the same. I thought this was a good book, if a little uneven from time to time. It is the story of Callie/Cal Stephanides, who grows up as a the daughter of a successful businessman in Detroit's Greek-American community only to learn at age 14 that she is actually a phenotypical male who suffers from 5-alpha-reductase deficiency, i.e. has ambiguous genitalia.
As this is a novel, there is no indication anywhere that Eugenides read about Garfinkel's Agnes or is acquainted with the lives of the Reimer twins, however, Cal's story certainly does echo reading I've done elsewhere both in terms of typical responses to ambiguous genitalia and in terms of the effort required to learn how to "do gender." In fact, Dr. Luce is so similar to Colapinto's Dr. Money that I wonder if Eugenides should make his fiction resemble a real character a little less.
At any rate, what I liked most about Middlesex is the fact that Cal's biography, which hinges squarely on his hermaphroditism, is rooted in history and depends just as much upon world politics as it does upon his parents' genes. Cal's claim is not just, "This is who I am, this is how I was made." It's, "I am what history has yielded. I have only scratched the surface of the myriad of actions that created a world which led to the production of me." I think this is an important, if subtle, change in the typical narrative AND I like it.
As for imbalance - Eugenides' style keeps Cal/Callie in the forefront at all times and I think this may do him a disservice because it undermines his efforts to develop his other characters. Many primary characters go undeveloped the entire novel and, when he tries to elaborate upon others, he either awkwardly departs from Cal's narration or Cal apologies to the reader for laying out the thoughts and experiences of others but then goes on to do so all the same.
On the whole, however, a good read.

summer madness

Madison is quite beautiful in the late spring - when the hordes of students have departed and the stench of scooter exhaust is replaced by the beautiful smell of rosa rugosas and lilacs. The trees provide a green canopy that filters the sunlight.

Ahhh... what a beautiful day!

ersatz

I have so much work to do but I need to procrastinate a little bit and tell you about meeting my dad's new wife and what was noteworthy about seeing the two of them together.

My sister was in town with me. Friday night we went out to buy decorations for the baby shower. After that we went to dinner. We returned to the island on a late ferry and were surprised to see my dad and his new wife snuggled up on the couch watching TV. We expected to beat them home because Dad said that Mary wasn't leaving Connecticut until about 6. We thought that, with the weekend traffic to Maine from "points south," Mary would be lucky to catch the last ferry at 11:30. At any rate, she and dad were watching "Phantom of the Opera." They paused it and jumped right up and Mary hugged us both - except in my case she gave me a one armed hug and used the other hand to grab my belly. So, it started off feeling even more awkward than it would have if Mary had been a little more reserved, but such is life.

I watched the two of them, Mary and my dad, all weekend. In the end I still don't know what I think about Mary. My dad is clearly happy with her which is great to see. However, she is one of those people with a smile that is a little too bright, a voice a little too squeaky and cheerful, and a simpery- sweet demeanor that makes her seem a little unbelievable. You know what I mean? I know that she was likely nervous and trying really hard but, in my mind, she came across as one of those people who is just as likely to sport that tremendous smile when they are breaking your heart as when they are making your day. The issue is, then, is she mostly nice when no one is looking?

Anyway, I feel fine about her despite this reservation about genuineness. In the end the thing that ended up bothering me was my dad's behavior.

Although Mary and my mom are very different in many ways (Mary dresses stylishly, wears make-up, does her hair and nails, and doesn't read to name a few things), they share some characteristics such as having a lot of energy and motivation. My dad clearly counts on Mary to come in and get him organized, washed, and fed.

You must understand, my dad hasn't done a load of laundry since 1969. Once my mother died, he began bringing all his laundry to the cleaners. As far as I know, my dad has never mowed the lawn unprompted, his house is an absolute shambles both in terms of cleanliness and maintenance because he refuses to clean and he won't "maintain" without someone to direct him. My dad has probably shelled out thousands of dollars in late charges since my mom died because he just tosses all the mail into a big pile and goes through it every four or five weeks paying bills in no particular order. This is just a sample of the extent to which my dad doesn't do for himself.

So, I guess I was disappointed when I saw my dad sitting in front of the TV while Mary sorted his bills, waged war on the ant infestation in the kitchen, loaded a shopping cart with all dad's dirty laundry that she would take with her to Connecticut to wash, dry, iron and bring back on her next visit, prompted him to estimate how much paint would be required to repaint the outside trim and to change the oil in the lawnmower, and made a to-do list of the chores she expected him to see to before her next visit.

This seemed all the more disturbing to me when Mary told me that she doesn't clean her own house (she had a house cleaner that comes in every 2 weeks), Dad refused to let her even see his house before she said, "I do," and that the accumulated dust and filth in my dad's house has so aggravated her allergies that her doctor has prescribed new allergy medication, including an inhaler, for her. She excuses all of this by referencing a sob-story Dad apparently concocted about how the mess in the house is not his, but his kids' and about how he got stuck with an old broken-down house that only gets worse because it is ill-treated by his kids. Of course, in the rendition I heard, it was most specifically my older brother and sister-in-law that have so abused my father's house. I was a little shocked to hear from Mary negative things, some exaggerated and others patently false, my dad said about my siblings. I responded, "Believe me, most of this mess is his." She said, "No, he wouldn't leave a mess like this." To which I replied, "Watch out for him, Mary. He is a great guy but he's sneaky. Make sure that you make him pull his own weight."

And ever since I have wondered if my dad is more phony than Mary's smile.

Goodbye, Island Home!

It was a difficult trip to the island this last time. I spent a couple of days helping Dad and Mary clean out the house and I found all kinds of interesting things including my mother's wedding dress, which I had never laid eyes on before, and my baby book. I took some things that I wanted, like the wedding dress and the Children's Literary Classics that I loved reading when I was young, some things that my mother told me to look out for before she died including a box of her own childhood letters and photos and my grandmother's Hummel figurines, and some things that I just wanted to save from the dump, mainly photos and all of my dad's short stories. My father is an excellent writer.
That van-ola of ours came in handy pretty quick. There was no way that I was going to get all my shower gifts and all the stuff from the house back to Milwaukee. Jason and the dogs drove out for a few days vacation and then we all trekked home in the vanola.
My last morning on the island was strange one. I fully expect that my dad will sell the house before I return to Maine, probably next summer. So, even though it will still be my island, it will be different. I spent the last morning visiting some of my old haunts, like the cemetery at the bottom of the hill where I spent many hours napping amid the gravestones (oldest c.1690), telling ghost stories with friends, and engaging in various other teenage pursuits.

brackett cemetery

Jason and I took the dogs down to the beach at the bottom of the hill too. I lived on this beach in the summer. My mother set three rules. The first rule restricted swimming for 20 minutes after eating (this rules was s big pain because, as we were watchless, we needed to ask someone on the beach what time it was when we ate and then we needed to keep asking folks what time it was until 20 minutes was up). The second was that you could go swimming once the air temperature hit 70 degrees. The water rarely exceeded 65 and was more likely to be colder than that. So, the other rule was that we had to come out of the water to warm up for a bit when the tips of our fingers and/or our lips began to turn blue. By age 7 or 8 my brothers and I visited the beach on our own. We were adept swimmers - I began swimming so early that I don't even remember learning how.

sandy beach, facing whitehead passage and the open Atlantic.

It is important to me that my children get to know the island. I don't expect them to be islanders too, but I want them to have memories of the tides and this beach, to nurse barnacle cuts, to find jellyfish on the shore and learn, over time, that it is just as much fun to return them to the water as it is to skewer them with driftwood. I want my kids to appreciate 20 minutes of quiet or visiting with neighbors on the ferry. I want them to know island kids by name and feel, even after not seeing them for 15 years, that they are more than just acquaintances.

Anyway, I've returned to the Midwest.

How pregnant do you have to be?

In the last couple of days here in Maine, I've received 2 (TWO) spontaneous acknowledgements of my preggo state. So, apparently, I have finally reached the point at which those who know me but do not know that I am with child are certain that their recognition of my substantial belly will not be a misplaced reference to weight gain that is not associated with child-bearing.
In case you were wondering, if you're a big girl like me you apparently need to be this big to be seen as pregnant beyond a reasonable doubt.

about this pregnant

Incidentally, I have also experienced my first unsolicited belly touching. My 94-year-old Great-Aunt Edna copped a feel at the baby shower and my dad's new wife can't seem to keep her hands off me.

In Maine

I'm out in the field right now. A great deal is going on but I don't particularly feel like blogging about it all. Let me just say a few things:
1. My whining about a baby shower with my family was unwarranted. They threw a joint shower for my sister-in-law and myself. Basically, they had me running around to prepare my own shower. It was a lot of fun.
2. I met Mary. I don't really have much to say about that.
3. I found my mother's wedding dress when I was cleaning out my dad's house.
4. I found a couple of really great resources to help with my dissertation. I also have a couple of exciting meetings set up.

Van-ina to Van-ola

We need a new car. We’ve been putting it off for a while. The thing is, our current car, the van-ina, is too small for a baby and 2 dogs even if it wasn’t on its last legs. Seriously, I am impressed every time I turn the key in the ignition and my little van-ina shudders to life.

my little van-ina

So, what kind of car to buy? I am a big advocate of the station wagon – roomy enough for the lot of us and you can keep the dogs in the back away from the kid. However, Jason correctly points out that a station wagon is great until we need to go anywhere overnight – there will be insufficient space for all of us and all of the gear we need to take with us. It has to be a mini-van, he claims.

I agree and then I find myself completely repulsed by the idea of owning a mini-van. It’s not that I have a deep loathing for mini-vans. I have had many friends and family members who drive them. It’s just that when I imagine MYSELF as a mini-van owner that I freak out. I don’t want it sitting in my driveway. I don’t want to drive home to Maine every summer in a mini-van with Wisconsin plates. I don’t want to have to parallel park it but I refuse to start frequenting places with parking lots.

First I tried to offer reasonable arguments against the mini-van: gas mileage – hybrid not coming out until 2007; safety; difficulty parking – especially on our frequent trips to Chicago; and the fact that we are only going to run out of space on overnight trips and we could just get one of those roof containers for a station wagon. Jason has done a pretty good job shooting down my reasonable arguments. Next, I resorted to temper tantrums, sulking, and many other attempts at emotional blackmail and cajoling. “I can’t drive one of those!” I exclaimed in tears, “If I am going to start driving a mini-van to the dog-park and the grocery store [the only places we drive on a regular basis] I might as well drop out of my Ph.D. program and we can move to the suburbs, where I can start stockpiling lunchables, get involved in AYSO, and read Nora Roberts novels.” My partner remained strangely unmoved by my ranting and raving.

Finally, I thought I had the answer. “If I can find an international student who is graduating and leaving the country and selling their station wagon for a good price, we could buy the wagon and have it for the next year. Perhaps we could get by with a wagon until Toyota introduces the hybrid mini-van. Since we will get it for a steal, it won’t be such a big deal.” Jason agreed that buying a car from someone moving out of the U.S. tends to be the way to go (we’ve done it before).

So, this Sunday at church there was a notice on the bulletin board announcing the sale of a mini-van on account of the owners moving to Vancouver. We went to look at it. It is horrible but it is a deal. Today the mechanic gave it a clean bill of health. Shoot me. Shoot me now.

van-ola