Week 23, day 7

Wow, another week down. Approximately 17 to go! I wonder if he’ll be early, late, or right on time. I sorta want to put those words in quotation marks, because whenever he is born will be right on time, and 40 weeks is an estimate, but whatever.

Raisin didn’t have her surgery because they discovered that a bladder infection had not cleared up with antibiotics. So we have to treat that more aggressively before a surgery.

I’s talking to a friend last night about the expense of this, which is quite extreme. We discussed how money is energy in form. I trade my employer time, expertise, and attention for money. Then I direct it at things that matter to me. If I am not focusing that flow of outgoing energy (money), it is dissipating rather than doing good for my world. Which is why this is the weekend of writing a cash flow plan, which will include a savings category for emergencies such as this.

OK, now I’m going to direct my time and attention at creating clean toilets.

Week 23, day 6

What to report today?

The Piglet is getting knee surgery today or tomorrow. We really like her surgeon, Dr. Aron. He has a very calm, knowledgable but not arrogant vibe.

Barry and I went to our financial peace university group last night and got more motivation, information, and cash flow planning forms. We enjoy that class and find it really energizing.

I am hungry all the time. Which is sort of fun. I want spaghetti, so maybe I’ll make a batch this weekend. I also crave something involving chocolate and, perhaps, coconut. The People’s Food Co-op sells these things called We Dare Ya bars that are made of some combination of chocolate chips, coconut, walnuts, and a graham cracker crust. They are terribly decadent and effing good. Maybe I could come up with a recipe. They also sell hand-made dark chocolate peanut butter cups that are made in, like, muffin tins. Huge. And yummy. Hmmmm . . . didn’t I need something from that store?

Almost gym time. I’m doing cardio and back today. I am not losing strength, which is great. Barry says I look more fit than before I got pregnant, but with a big tummy. I don’t know how true that is, but I do still have muscle definition in my legs and upper body. Of course, I’m carrying around more body weight, which is more work.

Oops, gotta go, my gym partner is here.

Week 23, day 5

What’s love? Last night I was thinking of this as I fell asleep.

Well, there’s sentimental love. It’s the sort that means “I love you if“. If you take out the garbage. Say the right thing. Buy me flowers. Look pretty. Make me feel good. I have no use for this kind of “love,” if you can call it that. I had a friend recently who professed love, but disappeared at the first sign of conflict. Bah. Weak and useless. No power there.

Then there’s the love that means: I commit to being in relationship with you even when it’s tough. I will see the good in you even when you are afraid or angry. I will hold you to the highest standard, because I know that you are worth it. I will tell you the truth, not just what you want to hear. I will be as authentic as I know how in my interactions with you. That’s the sort of love I feel for extended family and most of my friends.

And there is fierce love. For this love, I will face my own reflection with sword in hand, and cut out the parts of me that hold me back from being my best Self. Because these few have brought more to my life than I can ever return unless I do face and find my highest self. They have challenged me and guided me and made me a better person, and I owe them nothing short of my best efforts.

This love is not sentimental. I am aware that all beings are mortal. If and when it’s necessary, I will hold them in my arms while they die. In the meantime, I will walk through the fire of life to bring them water and laugh with them while they live.

I love my husband fiercely. I’m sure that I will feel that way about my son. I feel that way about one or two of my friends. And I feel that way about my dog.

I have not felt this way for all of the animals who have passed through my life. Some pets I have cared for, but not fiercely. Raisin is special, though. She has an intensity of spirit and love of life that has taught me to live more fully. And caring for her has softened me. I probably would not have wanted to become a mother without getting to know her. I’m not sure if I would have wanted to be a wife.

Some people like to tell me that my dog is not worthy of my love because she’s an animal, or that I won’t love her that way once I have a child. Clearly I will have less time and energy with an infant to care for. Most likely, the depth of feeling that I have for a being birthed from my own body will be different than anything else I have ever experienced.

But I can’t understand the belief that love is a finite resource, or those who denigrate the value of authentic emotion. It makes me so angry that I want to spit fire from my nose.

Week 23, day 4

Today I was a model for a prenatal massage class. I got a free 1 hour massage and gave feedback to the practitioner. Cool!

Work is very work-y right now. I’m so busy that I don’t have time to be angsty about it. This is a good place to be for now.

I feel fine, cepting my pubic bone, hips, and low back are sore.

Week 23, day 3

My calendar reminded me that today is my fifth anniversary of lifting weights. Actually, that’s not strictly true, as in College I bought a book called the Hard Bodies Express Workout for Women and followed the program for a few months, and I’ve dabbled with weights at other times. But five years ago today I started lifting in earnest and didn’t stop. I’m glad, because I can’t imagine how I’d be feeling right now if I weren’t fit!

In other thoughts – I sure do crave a malasada. What’s a malasada, you ask? It’s a Portuguese donut variant that they sell in bakeries in Hawaii. They are o-my-Gawd yummy if you’re lucky enough to get them hot from the frier and filled with just the right amount of strawberry jelly or chocolate creme.  Otherwise they aren’t any better than any donut and probably not worth the empty calories (I discovered this by eating many of them while on vacation). There’s this fast food place on the Big Island called Tex that serves plate lunch, burgers, and made-to-order malasadas. I want about four of them right now. Sigh.

Week 23, day 2

The Big Island of Hawaii has one main highway that takes you around the circumfrance of the island, staying near the coastline except in one spot in the Southeast where a volcano gets in the way. You can see a map here. The fastest you can ever go on this road is, I think 50mph, slowing down to 35mph where the road is especially curvy, and 25mph when going through cities. So it takes oh, maybe four or five hours to go totally around the island.

We stayed near the Punalu’u black sands beach, which you can sort of see on the map if you click on it to enlarge it. It’s just to the right of the Southern tip of the island. It was about an hour to Hilo, 90 minutes to Kailua Kona, and 10 miles from nowhere. Perfect.

If you look at the southernmost tip of the island, you’ll see that from the highway is an offshoot road marked “Ka Lee (South Point).” South Point is the southernmost point of the United States. The street marked is a 12 mile long country road which, if memory serves, becomes a dirt road after about six miles. At first there are a few farm houses along the road, then it becomes pasture with a few cows, and then it becomes a mixture of sand, volcanic rock, and remnants of old pastures.

At the end of this road is a steep cliff where locals toss out a fishing line. Off of this is a jeep trail that is navigable with 4WD and enough clearance. Four (or so) miles down a trail that skirts the coastline is a cliff overlooking a green sand beach and the most surreal turquoise water I’ve ever seen. I know because we walked down that trail. We didn’t trek down the path along the cliff and swim in the water, as it looked pretty treacherous for a pregnant chick, but I didn’t need to – seeing it was enough.

It wasn’t really what I’d call a hike because it was pretty flat. But we did need to carry a lot of water and some food, since I can’t risk getting either dehydrated or hungry during exercise. It was a beautiful day when we did this. Maybe 80 degrees, but the trade winds off the ocean kept away the humidity.

There is something sacred about this place (and much of the Big Island). I felt that I was walking on land that hadn’t been touched in a few hundred years. However, that was not the case. Not only did we see a dozen or so other hikers, but also several 4WD vehicles. Most of the vehicles we saw were Jeeps, and probably rented, as they were new and clean. Nobody keeps a Jeep clean for long.

On the way back, though, we saw a big lifted truck with a logo from a Hilo electric company on the sided. Inside were a couple of muscular young men with shaved heads and apparently more tattoos then bare skin. The driver slowed down to chat with Barry for a moment. “You have a good hike?” Yup, great. “You make it to the end?” Yup. Then he turned to me and pointed at my tummy. “You. You got water?” Yes, thanks, I appreciate that. He gave me a thumbs up, then he drove off.

Week 23, day 1

I’m so excited to wear another of my maternity dresses today! Whee!

Our poor dog is depressed. I hope we can get this surgery scheduled for next week and start her on her way to recovery. I wish I could explain all this to her.

Bear and I had our finances class meeting last night to set up a basic budget and small goals, and I feel good about it. We can do this. Part of what’s going on is that we’ve been keeping our money separate, then pooling for expenses, which worked fine for a time, but now we need to be more of a team.

Also, the only way either of us has budgeted in the past is to crack down on spending. That works for a month or two, but isn’t a good long term strategy. With this plan, we are allotting line items to various things (housing, utilities, food, entertainment, clothing, medical), etc. and keeping a log of our spending. We will adjust the budget each month when we pay bills.

For those expenses that are ongoing for the whole month (e.g. food, clothing, entertainment, gas), we are going to use monopoly money as a crib to make it more real. The course materials include a small folder with one envelope to hold money for each budget line item (plus a log on the outside of the envelope) and recommends cash because it’s harder to make yourself spend it than plastic. We like to use our cards because we get money back from Cabellas and REI, and we are responsible with them, so we’ll try the fake $ for a month and see how it goes. For our individual spending money, we’re going to each use cash.

We talked about what constitutes an individual versus shared expense, and came up with this: guns, ammunition, fishing supplies, and other such sporting goods are his problem; massages, beauty treatments, and cosmetics are mine; everything else within reason is shared. We’ll have to discuss some stuff as it comes up, I’m sure, but that works for me now.

I ‘ve realized during this that this marriage thing is sorta scary. Trusting another person so much with something as key to my survival as money freaks me out. Even though I know that Barry has my best interests and the best interests of the family at heart, it’s freaky.

Week 22, day 7

I bought my first maternity clothes today. I was actually at a resale shop looking at other stuff (specifically baby gates, as Raisy needs another knee surgery and will have to be confined to the downstairs). Many of my regular clothes still fit, and most of my pants have a low enough waistband that my growing tummy doesn’t matter, so I wasn’t really looking. But the shop had such good prices on cute clothes that I tried a few things on. I walked out with four dresses for $36 total. And I love them. Right now I’m wearing a short spring green sleeveless dress with little white embroidered flowers. I feel very cute and pregnant.

Plus I have a tan from Hawaii. Plus my skin hasn’t looked this good since I was, like, 19. I had heard about this side effect of pregnancy, but wasn’t prepared to look so glowy and soft. So, for a small sea mammal, I feel pretty. Nah, actually, my weight gain is progressing at a normal pace and I feel healthy and strong.

So, yeah, the dog needs another knee surgery. There probably wasn’t much we could do to stop this from happening at some point. If we’re lucky, insurance won’t consider it a pre-existing condition and will cover about 1/3 of it. We’ll put it on one of those dangerous one year interest-free loans that ding you to high hell if you don’t pay on time and pay it off with our home equity line when the year is up. In the meantime we’ll get our financial house in order and begin to take care of the home equity debt we’ve been carrying (which is not aggregiously large, but not a great idea to ignore either).

Not much else new. Bear just went surfing. It’s a gorgous evening. All is well.

Week 22, day 6

We were going to wait until the weekend to pick up the dog, because driving two hours each way the right after flying home sounded like about as much fun as a hernia, but we couldn’t stand missing her, so we drove up to get her yesterday.

Anyhow, she had knee surgery about a year and a half ago. Apparently she has now hurt her other knee. Goll dangit. We have an appointment tomorrow to find out for sure. If it’s what it was before, which seems likely, it will be both expensive and traumatic. We do now have insurance, but they may consider this a pre-existing condition and in any case don’t have great coverage for this surgery. But hell, we took responsibility for this dog’s health, so we’ll figure it out.

Ironically, we just started our 3-month financial well-being class. Despite the potential veterinary set-back, I feel good about getting a budget together and starting to build ourselves out of what can feel like a treacherous financial perch. We aren’t in a hole, but we are balancing on a rather small and teetering foundation.

In good news, I’m eating greek yogurt with berries and walnuts just now, and boy do I feel lucky to have such yummy, healthy food. This weekend I’ll cook up large batches of chili, turkey manicotti, and perhaps something else to freeze. It saves us a lot of money to have lunch and dinner foods ready to go. I’m also going to make a batch of hummous, but I can’t do that in bulk.

What else to say? The seasons always take me by surprise here. Just yesterday it was ‘leave all the windows open night and day and wear as clothing little as possible’ season. Now it’s ‘leave the windows open during the day, but shut them at night and wear sweats with fuzzy socks in the morning” season. Soon it will be ’shut all the windows and dust off the space heaters’ season.

Week 22, day 5

Am back! I don’t have daily updates to type in, because I was way too busy to write. By the time we got back to our hotel each night, I collapsed into bed like a lump and slept until we did it again the next day. It was great!

Hmmm . . . what to say? I’m well and truly showing now. I feel fine except that this fibroid tumor thing hurts sometimes when I move the wrong way. I’m not complaining, we’re all healthy and that’s what matters.

Hawaii was . . . an experience. The big island is rugged, in constant flux, rough around the edges, beautiful. We trekked around the volcano, saw the world being birthed. We snorkled in coral reefs so full of colorful fish I could have sworn I was in an aquarium. We visited sacred sites and wondered about the people who worshiped there.

Kaua’i is so beautiful it’s like cracking open a geode and wondering at the condensed beauty inside. Wow. We had only 3 days on that leg of the trip and are already talking about an eventual return. We did get to hike along the edge of the Waimia canyon, view the Nepali coast, swim in the warm ocean, and eat some darned good meals.

Anyhow, I’m back at work today. Pshew. More tomorrow.