Huh?

Lately I've had the opportunity to become acquainted with folks who know something about sociology/social theory and who may even ask me about my dissertation. Maybe I don't know anything about sociology or maybe I've been holed up in my office too long, but somehow the questions always throw me off balance. I come off sounding like I have never set foot inside my own department and feel the need to give the person my card at the end of the conversation just to prove that I am not a fraud (even if, for all practical purposes, I really am).

For example:
Q: So, are you a functionalist or a structuralist?
Me: Ummm (stammer and glance around nervously as if searching for an escape route), I guess I'm neither. I'm interested in the interface between lived micro-interactions and macro-cultural ideas that enable and constrain our after-the-fact interpretations of those interactions.
Q: What theorists are you using for your dissertation?
Me: Well... (long pause as I glance around nervously as if searching for an escape route) I'm using Wuthnow for one section and maybe Bakhtin... and Bourdieu.
Q: If Durkheim is a functionalist and Marx is a conflict theorist, then what is Weber?
Me: Huh? Hell if I know but his ideas about rationalization and bureaucracy and the various relationships between rationality and action are interesting.

Harry Potter - my spoiler questions

1. Don't you think that J.K. Rowling could have used the additional 200 pages (making the book as long as Order of the Phoenix) to fill in the plot a little more and explain about Dumbledore's hand?
2. Doesn't it seem odd that the half-blood Prince was really not that important to the overall plot and, thus, is an odd person to have in the title? This isn't to say that more couldn't have been done with the Prince.
3. Did Dumbledore know what was going to happen on the rooftop? Is it really possible that he was wrong about Snape (while everyone else was correct) all that time? Seems kind of lame doesn't it? I mean, unless Dumbledore needs to be fallible and his hubris gets him.
4. Wasn't there just a little too much snogging and attention to teen love in particular?
5. What was the point of the whole Ginny thing if Harry needs to head out on his own after only a few weeks? How come Ron and Hermione get to come along and Ginny can't?
6. Is he really not going back to school next year? If not, it won't really be year 7 will it?

but I'm a cheerleader...

Was such a great movie! I haven't given it a thought in years, not until I read this article in the times today about a teenager sent off to be cured of his homosexuality through fundamentalist christian re-education.

What the f**k? I really don't understand it. I mean, I guess I can come up with some quasi-rational thought process which would lead parents to think that the best thing they can do for their gay child is to send him to "Camp What-some-folks-think-the-bible-wants-gender-relations-to-be," but this rational thought process hinges upon a set of fundamental assumptions like:

1. some folks' interpretation of the bible is correct
2. the bible should inform current gender relations and sexual practices
3. homosexuality is a psychological issue
4. homosexuality is abnormal and unnatural (read this for evidence that homosexuality occurs fairly routinely in the natural world)
5. homosexuality can be cured with a hearty dose of "Jesus" and "routine" inter and intra-gender interactions (note the quotes)

It is these fundamental assumptions that give me trouble and lead me to wonder if this kid's parents actually inhabit the same universe I do. It leads to one of those moments when you recognize the chasm separating yourself from others - when it becomes clear to you that what you take as at least provisionally true has been dismissed outright or remains unconsidered by others and vice versa.

Last year I was in Maine, in spinning class. The instructor was my favorite. I took spinning and pilates with her and I thought that she was just the cat's pajamas. Then, during class that one day, she was talking about some new fangled fitness/massage program coming out that recognized the intricacies of the body as a unified system. As we spun, she spoke at length about how amazing the body is. I couldn't have agreed with her more. Then she concluded, "And that's why the theory of evolution is all wrong. Nothing so beautiful and complex could be the result of chance. It was planned and built." Fortunately, my feet were in the toe-clips so I didn't fall over from the shock of learning that someone who knew so much would draw a conclusion that was the fundamental opposite of the one I might draw.

It is the same thing with pregnancy. The whole thing is really awe-inspiring - what bodies can do and how just a little dna and the right growing conditions result in a being. I suspect the birth itself will be equally astounding. However, when I think about it all, I feel more connected to the natural world - I mean there isn't anything particularly otherworldly about reproduction. It is animal through and through. That's not to say that I don't find it meaningful and even, perhaps, spiritual. I think about the continuity of life - that I am one in a long-line of creatures who will live on this planet and contribute to the continuity of life on it just like the penguins and the grasshoppers and the giraffes and the trees and the blue herons. That's why I am frequently thrown for a loop when an old woman stops me on the bus and says, with a big smile, "We got new life coming. Praise Jesus. Thank you Jesus." Or when friends, instead of wishing us well or whatever, say, "May your family be blessed" or refer to my big belly as the "little miracle."

Half-Blood Prince

I picked up my copy of Harry Potter & The Half-Blood Prince last night at midnight and read for a couple of hours before bed. This morning I ran errands and then read all afternoon. I finished the book at about 6. I am not sure what I think - my opinion at this point is colored by my annoyance (common when finishing one of the later books in the series), that the book seems to create more loose ends than it ties up, that Rowling has left a whole lot to cover in the next, supposedly last, book, and that, at this point I have no one with whom I can discuss the whole thing.

Ice Cream Update

This evening I enjoyed an ice cream from the Chocolate Factory - a scoop of cookies'n'cream and a scoop of chocolate peanut butter pretzel in a waffle cone. Ah... sweet nectar.

Bad taste in your mouth

S.E.P. turned me on to this little quiz and I thought I'd take it since I've been craving ice cream for days now. My favorite ice cream is Chocolate Shoppe in Madison - Fat Elvis and Snap-o-lantern (in season) are their best flavors. My general philosophy on ice cream is that it must include chocolate (except for rare exceptions like snap-o-lantern) and the more chunks the better.

I was dismayed to learn that I am Strawberry Ice Cream - probably the worst flavor next to Maple Walnut. All the indifference and even occasional aversion that folks feel - it's starting to make sense to me now.

You Are Strawberry Ice Cream

A bit shy and sensitive, you are sweet to the core. You often find yourself on the outside looking in. Insightful and pensive, you really understand how the world works. You are most compatible with chocolate chip ice cream.

What Flavor Ice Cream Are You?

Motherhood: advice solicited

I've got an interview coming up for a position that I'd really love to have. Although I don't know who the other candidates are, I suspect that I am a contender. However, what is going to happen when I waddle in to my interview more than 8 months pregnant?

The evidence I've encountered in my very circumscribed review* points to pregnancy (and motherhood status generally) as a bit of a double-whammy when it comes to employment, leading to downward biases of both task competence (except maybe in "nurturing" professions like nursing) and work commitment. Given that the position I hope to receive has flexible hours and is not a managerial position, I am not as bad off as I might be. However, it's pretty awful to realize that I will likely be working against an automatic bias. It is even more disconcerting to know that my partner has been able to use the same familial status, married with child on the way, as an asset in his professional life.

How should I deal with this issue in my interview? Although they cannot legally ask me about my familial status, it will be obvious. Should I raise the issue myself instead of waiting to see if they bring it up? What should I say? Should I state explicitly that I recognize that my pending motherhood status might affect their assessment of me? Then what?

*See Ridgeway and Correll for starters.

Malaise, possible causes, part I

I am without income for the first time since age 5 (nearly 6) when I began (somewhat illicitly) my very first paper route. At age 7 I added summer employment picking and arranging wildflowers for the tables at a seasonal island restaurant. At age 9 I began babysitting. Age 11, under-the-table dishwasher at year-round island restaurant. Age 13, part-time waitressing during the school year (Saturday 5:30 a.m. - 2:30 p.m.) and full-time over summer. Etc. Etc.

I know that it would be impractical for me to expect to make it to campus for a lectureship this fall (I'm due the first week of classes) and, furthermore, I have had it up to here with RAships that stress me out and take up all of my time while yielding, at best, a minor authorship of some random chapter in some edited volume that is completely unrelated to any of my own research interests. All the same, it doesn't feel right not to be bringing any money into the household for the first time since age 5.

On top of it, fiscally speaking, things are a little tight around here right now with summer incomes being what they are and the fact that in the last year we acquired and partially furnished a house and a nice pre-owned van-ola (the van-ola was already furnished), took a couple of nice trips, and are trying to collect all the necessary accoutrements for child-rearing. So, compound my general discomfort about not making money with the fact that we could use a little more and you've got my stressed out state. Let's not even talk about the fact that a tuition bill with my name on it is going to be arriving in the mail sometime in the next month or so...

Please, before you write some nasty comment about how I shouldn't complain because I am so much better off than most people, know that I am aware of that. I'm stressed out all the same.

Double Blah

Update: Still in a funk.

Blah.

It's not that there is nothing to post. It's just that I seem to be experiencing a bit of mid-summer malaise. Hopefully, hopefully, I will be able to get out from under it soon because there is an awful lot to accomplish in the next 7 weeks or so. Today, however, I think I am going to embrace the grayness outdoors and mimic it indoors by sitting around and feeling low.
Perhaps tomorrow........

Summerfest

We spent a few hours at Summerfest this afternoon. It is a great deal of fun, especially if it is not infernally hot. The first time I ever attended Summerfest it was about 90 degrees in the shade and everyone told me that I would be a Summerfest poser if I didn't drink copious amounts of beer and eat Saz's sampler of fried goodness including sour cream 'n' chive fries, cheese curds, and mozzarella sticks - absolutely the last thing I wanted to put in my body on a really hot day.

Anyway, the weather was perfect today and I determined that the only thing Summerfest is missing is a KARAOKE STAGE!

Victory!

The folks at JFW commented recently on family communication. I was a little puzzled when JFW drew the conclusion that appendages would be left behind if that was what it might take to get out of the 52-year marriage which produced the communication depicted. Was it the underlying relationship suggested by the "coffee ready to go" and "no supper" signs or was it the signs themselves that are the problem? I am wondering because the staff at JFW is clearly not familiar with our family "Victory Board" although the name of our center of operations was developed by a member of the JFW team.

another example of intrafamilial communication and organization

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.