12 Randoms

25 is too many, tag or no tag.

 Imagine the issues I have answering all the questions on a new patient form at the doctor's office....

Since you aren't my doctor and since I'm the Grand Poobah of this here blog, I'll stick with 12 things.

1. I play a few different instruments and was raised with a particular affection for music, I currently play the fiddle in a bluegrass band. Is bluegrass my favorite music of all time? Nope. (bonus questions..sneaky) Do I want to lose that ability to play that instrument? Nope. Therefore, I play. Logic, friends.

2.  I have 4 names, I kept my maiden name when I got married and didn't bother to ditch my middle name to make more space.

3. I went through a phase when I was about 11 where all I ever did was sew cloth purses. It was my joy in life. Sewing and carrying around badly stitched handbags.

4. My sister and I pulled a boy (by force) past the open doorway of the girl's bathroom at a baseball park one summer afternoon simply because he said we couldn't do it. This is when my mother seriously began to consider the likelihood of having given birth to the spawn of Satan. I'm truly ashamed of this act.

Sorry, kid.

But you asked for it.

....but sorry. I guess.

5. I won The Optimist International's Oratorical Contest when I was 15, that's the same one Julia Roberts won as I'm sure everyone knows. Which makes us best friends, obviously.

6. My Mom and my Dad have always been two of my real best friends, no offense, Julia,

7. Once at a young age, my family went on a field trip to a friend's house. This friend was a chicken farmer and the purpose of the field trip was to learn about the process of farming chicken's for meat. Guess what that involves? Slaughtering chickens. That was an experience.

8. I'm incredibly allergic to kitties. This was something I denied for years because I had a kitty I loved very dearly...after he died I became suddenly and irrevocably aware of a highly unfortunate allergy to the cuddly little guys. I then became disenchanted. Not a cat person over here.

9. I have listened to the Great Expectations audio book no less than 4 times from start to finish. So that's 72,000 hours of my life dedicated to Dickens thus far.

10. I'm left handed

11. I sunk a boat two summers ago. It involved forgetting to plug catamaran pontoons and subsequent ship-carnage. We survived, the boat survived(ish). The beach police showed up and pointedly discussed the color of the tidal flag in a highly animated fashion, reminding us that if the coast guard had to be called to bail out our boat we would be burned and then shot without trial. Brad reconsidered the wisdom in marrying such a moron.

Can't let this go.........is it I sank a boat or sunk a boat? Past participle or just past tense, do I need a helping verb to make that sentence work? Class? Bueller?

Moving on.

12. I hate folding laundry. Passionately. Which is what I must go do at the moment.

Ta,

Rae

baby stories

According to the doctor, I'm 4 days away from my second trimester. 

It is at monumental times like these that we must pause, yes folks, pause and ask ourselves the ultimate 

questions in life. The questions we ignore. The questions that change us. The questions above all other 

questions, the questions that resonate deep in the soul of a being and rock the core of our human 

capacity and understanding. 

Questions like "So..yeah, how was that?"  

It was fine.

...I'm practicing becoming a great orator and you have to start somewhere.

Anyway, when I was young and naive and believed that my grandfather really did wrestle alligators at

Myrtle Beach in the summer months, I didn't put much stock in the whole idea of pregnancy being as

weird or different as women say it is.

 Full disclosure..I don't think I ever had even the most fleeting thought about pregnancy.

 I was nine, gosh, don't be weird. 

      But now that I'm not nine anymore, and a few more significant physiological changes have taken

place  those long-lost words have started creeping back into my cognitive field of vision.


Baby shower horror stories resurface in vivid detail.


It is a universal truth that any place you gather a group of women who have gone through the trauma

of child-bearing, you will have the reproductive equivalent of the worst wisdom-tooth extraction stories

you can imagine.

Everyone has a story, typically one per child...you do the math. Everyone comes out on the other end

with an experience that - due to dark traditions established by our long deceased matriarchs - must be

shared. in. detail.

These stories...these horrific, awful stories about months of hideous sickness, post-birth deflated

abdominal muscles, heartburn (and subsequent reassurances that your child will have a head full of hair

if you feel like your chest is an inferno), skin splotches, thinning hair, baggy eyes and vomit...always

vomit, are for your own good.

If they happen to scare the crap out of you in the process, you just need to ask yourself a question...

"Do I feel lucky?" Well, do ya, punk?

Because you might be. 

You just might be blessed.

You might not come out of your first trimester looking like a creature worthy of roaming the pages of a

Mary Shelley story.

I wasn't sick long enough to complain about it, blip on the radar really. I was tired but the bags under

my eyes were already present and accounted for so I can't complain there either. My first trimester

experience has been....easy, if not exactly what I would call "fun".


You know what has been fun? Sleep. I've enjoyed that.


So hey, I'm just here to tell you, you might be fortunate enough to have a less than horrific first

trimester. Maybe. And if you aren't, well then, consider yourself initiated! I will happily sit and listen to

your horror stories at the next baby shower since I've been blessed enough to not have any thus

far - thank the good Lord.

Really though, I am good at legitimate empathizing right now. I'll probably cry...I wish I was kidding.

I will cry with you, anytime.

My closing thoughts (that's part of a good oration, right?)

- Eating often helped me. Beating a dead horse there, but really it does.

- Eating clean helped me. Except when vegetables were nauseating. Then it didn't help.

- Exercise helped me. Nothing crazy, but staying active did a lot for my mentality.  

- I had to put myself away a few times. Go in my room and close my door and sit in my ever present

pile of laundry and then either cry or fall asleep. Sometimes both. Funny how the amount of tears in a

household increases before the baby ever makes his or her grand appearance... speaking of which...I'm

really looking forward to figuring out if I have a him or a her on the way...

Hims and hers required lots of different things.

Cool grammar.


Love,

Rae


p.s. This post in no way discredits the struggles or heartaches that go along with difficult pregnancies, 

there's a reason so many women have stories to tell and I believe that if we're being honest, they've 

earned the right to tell them any time they please when it comes down to it...That's all.