Dominion Power: Northern Va. Outage Map

Seriously, did someone draw this fucking thing in MS Paint?

Using the spray paint can?

You know I’m right.

Random E-Mails From My Husband

From: Rodkey, Scott
To: Me, obviously
Re: Reminder …

Today is Thorsday:

I mean, I’m not complaining.
But this puts the “what” in “wtf.”
(In a good way, sweetie.) 

Entertain Me (June 2012)

I am a little bored.
These are the things that have been helping me keep that at bay.

Book: Gone Girl by Gillian Flynn

I used to love Gillian Flynn’s writing at Entertainment Weekly. Somehow, the fact that she’s now writing novels had escaped me, until this one came out and EW fell all over itself giving it positive reviews. While the coverage felt a bit nepotistic, the premise — wife disappears, husband is the obvious suspect because it’s always the husband, told from their alternating viewpoints — intrigued me, and it was worth the download and the week or so I spent reading it. I’m not normally a fan of thrillers, and the ending left me a bit cold, but very few things make me as happy as a good, totally-sucked-in read, and this did the trick.

TV Show: Suits on USA

I’m a sucker for USA shows, and while White Collar remains my favorite, it’s not back till July and Suits has amused me in the meantime. (If you haven’t watched, it’s about hotshot, always-right lawyer Harvey Specter [Gabriel Macht, who would be a great Joker] and only-pretending-to-be-a-lawyer Mike Ross [Patrick J. Adams, whose character bores the crapola out of me].) I was a little “meh” on the first season, and then the last three episodes put the whole premise of the series in doubt — suddenly, it looked like the only reason Harvey had always been right in his early career was due to his mentor suppressing evidence. The finale made it seem like the second season would be about Harvey going back and retrying his cases, but guess what? Two episodes in, and that story arc hasn’t even come up, as though the producers and writers decided in between seasons to forget all that. I’m still watching, thanks mostly to the fact that Gabriel Macht can be really, really funny, and delivers at least very funny line per episode.

Movie: 21 Jump Street

All the reviews and word of mouth claimed this movie was funny. Very funny. I didn’t believe it. At least, I didn’t until we rented it and I laughed so hard it made me hurt. I’m not a huge fan of Channing Tatum, but he was perfect in this. Watch it.

Sports: The Washington Nationals

This is the strangest thing: I’ve started watching baseball. There’s nothing on TV, and I’m supposed to be resting as much as possible, and what’s better to have droning on in the background than baseball? The thing is, I’ve started to care. The Nats have dropped six of their past seven games! They are truly on a skid. Want to hear something even stranger? On Sunday, I rearranged our schedule — we can’t swing by the mall, it’s 12:30 and the Nats game starts at 1:30! — so I could watch the game. Seriously, I don’t even know who I am anymore.

I Really, Really Hope This Is a Sign

A sign that, when the time comes, these two girls are going to be close friends.

Indiana Mousekowitz and the burgeoning baby bump

One kneads, the other pushes back.

One kicks, the other stretches back.

Something tells me one of you is in for a very big surprise.

5 Outfits I Wish I Was Wearing This Summer

There are not a lot of ways to dress a bump.

Gap is nice, but unless it’s a sale, pricey! I walked into Motherhood Maternity Peapod or whatever it’s called, saw a shirt that said “I LOVE MY BUMP!”, burst out laughing, and walked out.

I have taken to buying the most boring maternity basics — namely, black leggings and long, simple gray or white tanks — and layering a super-discounted top, size medium and soon, size large, on top. Blazers, cardigans, vests, scarves, necklaces, bracelets. (Earrings aren’t an option, because my once-pierced ears grew shut during the first trimester, and I’m too lazy, and too much of a sissy, to get them redone. Yes, I realize that I soon will experience pain above and beyond ear piercing.) This strategy is working, for now, and I think will work a little while longer.

However, it is BORING.

If I could wear whatever I wanted, these would have been my summer 2012 wardrobe staples.

Shorts.

If there’s one thing I love, it’s color, second only to patterns. Neon and brights are everywhere right now in shorts and jeans, and it’s KILLING me that I can’t participate. Orange! So many shades of orange; I have nothing but envy. These shorts are the perfect, perfect mix of a pop of color and a pattern; put them with a denim workshirt, and I love everything about this. I would have worn this outfit the entirety of Memorial Day weekend, and every casual Saturday outing thereafter, cursing whenever I’d get in the car and sit on the hot, prickly leather seats.

Pencil Skirts

Pencil skirts feel like an old friend I haven’t seen in a long time, who also keeps blowing me off whenever we schedule an after-work get-together for cocktails. There’s a lovely black cotton one hanging unworn in my closet, and an even lovelier linen one with a brown and neon leopard print next to it. If they were an option this summer, I think I would have treated myself to this one, a deep rich burgundy. And with that light peach blouse? I swear don’t normally steal looks right out of the J. Crew catalog (OK fine I do), but this one is so pretty and so worth it.

One-Shouldered Cocktail Dress

It pains me that I don’t own a Shoshanna dress, because they are all so finely detailed and cut so flatteringly. It pains me even more that this one is deeply discounted right now, and only available in my size. The color here is perfect, the length is just right, the detail at the shoulder means I’d have to skip hair-drying and go with an updo. All that, AND pockets! I’d pair this with my trusty black-and-white envelope clutch, and demand to be taken out for drinks somewhere outside and/or swanky, either Eventide or The Source, where I would predictably have one glass of white too many, spill, ruin, and be sad.

Half & Half Maxi

Fact: If you are pregnant and you try to put your bump into a non-pregnancy maxi dress, you look ridiculous. I have scientific proof of this failure from last summer hanging in my closet. It’s hard to tell from this photo, but this dress from Anthropologie is half a lovely orange (do you see a color pattern here?) and half cream. For a month, it was on a model in the window of a store I walk by every single morning on my way to work, and every single morning I pined for it the way the model in this photo probably pines for bigger boobs. I never went in and tried it on, because I knew any love affair we had would be overpriced and fleeting, and I never would have been exactly sure where to wear this or what shoe to pair with it. (Side note: The sandals they’ve styled this dress with are atrocious.)

The Shoe I’m Old Enough to Know Better Than to Buy

There’s nothing better than a wedge in the summer. I’ve sworn off most heels but I wedge I can still get behind, particularly in the summer. I have a complete love/hate relationship with this pair, which as a viewer of romantic comedies I know means we will end up together for a brief, torrid, lustful affair before I leave them for something more stable and sensible. I love and I hate the cork; I am historically a big cork hater but in this case, pair it with the ridiculous hiking boot treads, and two wrongs make a right. The black and brown simplify everything, fooling me into thinking I can wear them with so many things, and of course I’ll come to realize that NO I CAN’T and they’ll go back in the box, back to the back of the closet, to be forgotten while I slap around in flip flops. I’m a firm believer that you have to make this mistake at least once a year, but maybe not shopping, and rotating between the same three inexpensive outfits, isn’t all bad, after all, especially not for my wallet.

More of this to come, in the fall.

My Assistant Refuses to Get My Coffee

My assistant has been helping me more than usual lately.

Researching names.
Making lists, and lists, and more lists.
Researching swings and mats and carriers.
Writing notes, reading books, making more lists.
Researching complications, and slapping laptops shut.
Heaving sighs, sipping tea, waiting for ‘House Hunters’ to start.

All the books say, “spend time with your pets!”
In a few months, I hope she’ll remember these, entire afternoons.
Friday nights, Saturday nights, Sunday nights.
Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday, Thursday, Friday.
Attention, attention, and more attention.

Of course, not all of the attention has been exactly the kind of attention
she probably wanted.

Six Months of Eating Strangely

I was warned about morning sickness.

From week four till about week eight, I ate blissfully, even cockily. I got this, I thought.

From week nine to week 13, as long as I had something in my stomach, I wouldn’t feel nauseous, I wouldn’t dry heave, I wouldn’t throw up. Hunger and nausea became intertwined in my body in some nonsensical way. (There was a moment, at work, before it was widely known that I was expecting, when I straight-armed a partner in my single-minded focus on a. a trashcan or b. a toilet.) During these weeks, I relied on the basics.

Oh, Cinnamon Toast Crunch. I ate my way through boxes and boxes of you.
And Trader Joe’s Ginger Cat Cookies.
And Saltines.
You were so good to me!
Thank you for your help!!

I kept a bag of each everywhere — my purse, my laptop bag, my car. These were the staples of my diet for more than a month. Later on, the nausea passed, but the growing baby would crowd my stomach, and I became my own worst enemy. Overjoyed that I was suddenly hungry, I would eat too much — and feel ill. (The worst of this happened at The Avengers, during which I mindlessly nibbled too much popcorn, and then sat in miserable, weeping silence for the last 30 minutes and in the car ride on the way home. Lesson, learned.)

Now in the second trimester, eating is again for nourishment, not a defensive tactic. Of course, I still have cravings for foods I haven’t eaten in a long, long time.

Like Cookies and Cream Pop Tarts.
And McDonald’s hot fudge sundaes.
And a Frosty from Wendy’s.
Holy crap, you evil foods are delicious!
I will remove you from my thighs eventually!!

I don’t hesitate to indulge these, now and then, sometimes more now than then.

Luckily, cravings for the foods that I truly used to love are starting to return, as well. These are the foods I could eat and eat and eat and never feel guilty about feeding to me, or this baby. Offensive, healthy eating, the kind I’m a little more used to, minus the grazing nights of cheese and glorious, glorious red wine.

What I’m craving now is more like a who’s who of what’s in season at the farmer’s market.

Like fresh strawberries.
And yogurt. (Fine, usually chocolate.)
And endive, and watermelon, and corn on the cob.
Welcome back!
I missed you!!

What’s next?

I suppose we’ll see what baby girl wants.

 

These Are the Dogs in My Neighborhood (for Now)

We like dogs, the friendly kind moreso than the snarling, growling kind, particularly some of the dogs who live very nearby. They feel like familiar friends, just like the local kids, from the two-year-old two doors down who once followed me home, to the pre-teen who I found sobbing and hiding underneath a chair in the hallway one Saturday night.

Our dog neighbors run the spectrum, from the pricey purebreds to rescues. She’s pretty new, but we’ve started to run into a Shar-Pei, who always looks like she’s late for an important meeting. All business.

The first time we saw her, Scott squealed,
“Where are your ears?!”
The dog’s owner rolled his eyes.

And somewhere my brain, my synapses switched tracks so that my memory transformed this exchange to, “Where are your eyebrows?” and I have often chuckled at the memory because dogs? DOGS DON’T HAVE EYEBROWS BECAUSE ALL DOGS HAVE EYEBROWS. I brought this up recently and Scott pointed out my memory’s trick and that no, by the way, he isn’t an idiot. But still, whenever I think about dog eyebrows, I chuckle.

There’s also a standard black mutt, probably part German shepherd and part lab? Long hair, all black, as close as you can come to a wolf. One morning recently, Black Dog came around a corner in front of her owner, and I didn’t see the leash and I thought to myself:

Oh. This is how it ends for me.
But luckily split-seconds pass quickly, and the owner appeared and off he and Black Dog went, though Black Dog did look back at me and lick her lips, and I know she was thinking Yes, you do look delicious.

My favorite dog is Ginger. I don’t actually know anymore if her name is really Ginger, or if my brain just decided that she looks like a Ginger so she must be a Ginger (and I think I’ve already demonstrated that lately, my memory is a little unreliable, though I’m not quite Leonard Shelby, yet). She’s all greyhound, long spindly legs and pointy nose.

We also call her The Supermodel.
She’s leggy.
She’s thin.
She prances.
All that’s missing is a designer bag and a famous boyfriend.

The best part about The Supermodel a.k.a. Ginger is I can wind her up. From down the hall, or across the parking lot, a quick side-to-side shake of my head, and Ginger’s head cocks and her muscles coil. From that far away, she’s alert enough to know that I WANT TO PLAY. Sadly, I don’t think her owners would be cool with me wrestling her to the ground, as much as I want to.

The hard thing about living vertically is that the dogs come and go without warning. There was a pug before, and a Pomeranian, and one day both were just gone. When that happens, I’ll be a bit sad, because I’m emotionally attached to The Supermodel.

Now I Can Tell You: When Kumquats Were a Hot Topic

Every week when I notch another week on the seemingly size XXXXXXXL pregnancy belt (seriously, this thing is neverending and I’m barely halfway), I get the BabyCenter newsletter, which for a certain period of time, became the highlight of the week. On this particular week, which is now many weeks ago, it said the following.

Your Pregnancy: 10 Weeks
Though he’s barely the size of a kumquat — a little over an inch or so long, crown to bottom — and weighs less than a quarter of an ounce, your baby has now completed the most critical portion of his development… — From Baby Center

A few minutes later, I noticed this thread on Facebook:

Frankly, I didn’t know either.

It was really hard not to comment: ONE OF THOSE IS INSIDE ME.

Which, in retrospect, would have been really confusing to people, and really awesome.

Oh, but I Beg to Differ!