Better than Expected.

So, my kid was born on a Sunday afternoon, and the birth? It was totally not as bad as I thought it would be. (I think it probably says more about my expectations than it does about labor.) But will spare you the details, internet.

And post-baby yes, there is a lot of crying and pooping, and not a whole lot of sleeping--which on the whole is kind of tough, but less tough than say, my graduate comprehensive exams. And definitely less excruciating than most of junior high.

moo.

1. Give into craving for pie and pulled into neighborhood Zippy's, purchase entire chocolate cream pie for self.
2. With pie in hand, walk back to car to find person in next spot parked 7 inches from driver-side door.
3. Try passenger side door, discover cannot fit ass into car on this side, either.
4. Again, with pie in hand, crawl through back of hatchback and into driver seat.

= Sequence of events that will inevitably make you feel like a cow. (But totally worth it. Pie. Mmmm.)

big box love.

Yes, yes. Big box stores are bad for local small business and our island way of life. But if we have to put up with having Walmart on this rock, we might as well have a Target. Hooray!

And at least (as far as we know) now we can shop at a big box that hasn't been storing sacred iwi under its parking ramp. Sigh.

34 weeks

If it looks uncomfortable, it's because... it is.

Misnomer.

So we went to the first of our birthing/childcare preparation classes.

Because I am apparently the kind of person who will take classroom instruction on just about anything, I signed us up for every class offered in the Kaiser Health Education catalogue. K has wisely said nothing about this crammed class schedule, though he could probably have reasonably asked me if I was "on crack or something." But this is why I married the man.

Anyway, after two hours of lecture and videos on labor and delivery, I decided that this class should be more accurately named "large plastic items that we can fit up your manko." Yeesh.

this one.

Now, THIS is what I want in a baby shower cake.

Best. Thing. Ever.

"THIS shade of yellow? It is, the best thing ever! Ever! In life!" exclaims N.

"I thought you said organic coconut milk shampoo was the best thing ever in life," he quips back.

When N gets excited about something (which in my experience is about once a week, if not more often) it almost always described in terms of: "the best thing ever."

Because we are not at all about the understating of things.

My favorite thing about this superlative, is that N uses it so inclusively--any number of a dozen or more things can, and are, the "best thing ever" at any given moment in time. It isn't about picking a "best" among many, but about the sheer joy and excitement in whatever shiny object happens to be directly front of you.

So, new series: Best. Thing. Ever. Which is basically whatever I happen to be obsessed with at the moment.

This moment?

Best. Thing. Ever.

getting hitched.

We got married mostly the way we wanted--outdoors, with friends and family, minimal fuss, locally-made, and plenty of wine.

What we couldn't control, was the weather. It was a little like trying to get hitched in the middle of a hurricane. It was chaos, and I don't know that there was a guest who didn't leave the wedding soaked.

Common wisdom in Hawaii says that rain on your wedding day is a blessing. We took it as proof positive that you CAN, indeed, have too much of a good thing.

The food, however? Was grinds.

it's like i don't even recognize you.

This year, I had two unfortunate beer-in-bag incidents, one while trying to sneak a grolsch into a public fourth-of-july fireworks event, and one while toting around a mis-capped bottle of rootbeer from a staff meeting. One resulting in the death of my blackberry, the other in the demise of my trusty little fujitsu lifebook laptop.

And this is how, in the year I moved 3,000 miles, changed jobs, got married, and got knocked up, I also became... a Mac person.

The jury is still out on whether the conversion was a good thing or not. It is all, however, evidence that I like my change in large lumps.

funny faces.

Fred "inanimate" stickers--waterproof peel and stick eyes and mouths for your stuff. Received them as birthday gift a couple of months ago, and just now beginning to make friends of surrounding inanimate objects. You could probably do similar damage with a sharpie, but there is something about stickers that is just. good. fun.

all is right.

Alberto and Dick indicted. Stevens no longer in Senate. Woke up to CNN news ticker and felt a little more right with the world.

21 weeks.

on travel.

Coming to the end of a week on the continent. My last, for a while. More tired than I'd like to admit. This week has been yet another opportunity to marvel at the new limitations of my pregnant body. Sleep--for which I have always had a particular talent--is becoming more difficult. My back aches more. Am still waiting for the alleged "glow."

Travel fairly productive, both workwise and as therapy. Place and perspective often go together.

Other things to report: Wine country is not as much fun when thou canst not sip. Have affirmed that room service, is indeed, in the list of the 10 best things ever. Wet hair in cold, continent weather? In the list of ten worst.

Woke up in San Francisco and so many shoes, waiting to be bought.

20 weeks.

we win.

Yes, Hawaii votes last. And yes, despite our illegal annexation to the continent, more than half of Americans think that Hawaii is a foreign county*. Yes, the election gets called practically before our polls close. AND despite the fact that we have just as many electoral votes as say, Vermont, no, there aren't many who bother to waste time or money wondering much about what Hawaii voters are thinking.

But let it be known that, in Hawaii? Last night? We voted for Obama by the highest margin of any state. He's our guy. That means that while YOU might love Obama, WE love him more. So there, continent.

*Statistic based on the fact that it, um, feels true, rather than actual fact.

equivalency

One thing that they do not have in Honolulu: corn dog stands. You know, where they sell you a batter-fried hot dog impaled on a stick? And fresh lemonade?

What you can get, however, is affectionately known as "the waffle dog." It is exactly, exactly, exactly what it sounds like.

19 weeks.

knowing.

People can make a lot out of certain kinds of choices. N and I have several systems for judging you, er, categorizing you, based on the left to right order in which you program the preset buttons on your car radio (numeric order, or by most favorite?). Also, do you prefer your sandwich cut in squares or triangles?

There are any number of different versions of such questions by which people size each other up. You know: Boxers or Briefs? Liberal or Conservative? Longboard or short? Crunchy or Creamy?

And: Are you going to find out? Because deciding whether to find out the sex of your baby is apparently the choice which will mark you forever as either a need-to-knower or a wants-to-be-surprised.

So, internet. Because I am indeed the kind of person who puts my faith in ultrasounds, and so that you may judge me accordingly, I am letting you know that... my kid? Is a girl.

remedy.

In the end, what made it better (or at least, less homesick):
K played a silly, made-up song on the guitar. And let me cry. Then we ate ice cream and played Wii.

homesickness.

It is a gray day in Honolulu. Which is a nice change of pace when you live some place that is so perpetually humid and sunny.

But today, there is something about the weather that is making me feel quite homesick. A longing for Los Angeles. For home.

-----

There is this sensibility that is prevalent among certain sets that one place is just as good as another. That a byproduct of a more globalized world is a more mobile society. What does it matter where people go?

P was of this mind. We argued about it from time to time--why I was so stubbornly rooted within the radius of space bounded by Hawaii, San Francisco, and the California-Mexico Border. There actually is a formula, something like:

Willingness to Stay = fn(average temperture, number of places to comfortably be invited to eat Thanksgiving dinner, proximity to good Chinese food, z.)

But I could never articulate it in a way that was acceptably reasonable or rational to him. To him, it should have all been the same. He was a hermit crab. Picking up each shell in succession and discarding this one for the next. He would have been as happy in Tibet as in New Hampshire.

I think each in our own way, we felt a strange kind of pity for each other. Him for me, for being so fenced in. Me for him, for never feeling deeply, undeniably at home.

-----

It has officially been a year since I moved here to Honolulu. I have a life here now--a job, a fiance, a baby on the way. Plants and, of course, a couch. Plans, too. Plans to build things, and grow things, take classes, start things.

I'm not sure when it is that your homelights shift. When, or if, you ever trade one in for another. I love my life here. But it's not home. Not yet. People ask me about our plans, if I'll ever want to move back to LA. I find myself saying, "We're here. For now."

Looking out at the gray and the ocean out my window today, there is a longing for thick, cold, glassy waves and kelp smells. California ocean announces its presence--it is in the air, reaching. Aggressive, salty. Hawaiian ocean smells more constant, subtle. Less irrascible. Less fishy. Of course, it is all ocean.

And yet.

In the end, what there is to say on a gray, homesick day:
We're here.
For now.

monday morning.

favorite honolulu thing #11: Sunny morning with after-rain smells.

week 16

China.

One of the small joys in my day is receiving E's in-time, live text messages from China.

Today: "Just saw a guy walking down the street with five monkeys."

Not three. Not four. But five.

Conclusion? It either has to be monkey basketball or a chamber quintet.

angry sausage.

So what nobody told me about being pregnant is that the first half of it pretty much sucks. Ass.

Yes, yes, I realize that everyone is different and that it is always a unique experience. But let me just say that for me? It was a bleary, slow four months of barely making it out of bed and barfing. A lot.

The very best gift that I received for my 30th birthday was in fact a large bucket of philipino-brand saltine crackers, individually wrapped in packages of four.

There are these hormones which apparently take over your body and ooze out your pores. You can smell everything. And everything smells. Bad. Bad, bad. People are constantly asking you how you're doing and expecting you to express joy at your good news. When all you really want to do is punch them (for no good reason, really) and take a nap.

On top of which, I discovered that throughout these four months, you slowly get just fat enough to feel like a sausage in pretty much every piece of clothing you own. It is a stage of my life we have come to kindly refer to as Miwa's "angry sausage period."

K: How are you feeling?
Me: Suck it.

All the barfing and wanting to stab people around you with something sharp? This is really what they should have in those teen pregnancy safe sex ads. Kids, this? It could happen to you.

oh. my.

My mother seriously sent me an email today which started "OMG..."

I think it is one of the signs that the universe is folding in on itself. The world, as we know it? It. is. ending.