Baby's first swim

I went swimming at lunch. I would have gone this morning before work, but an unnamed orange tabby started meowling at 1 in the morning and pretty much didn't stop until Eli got up at 5:30. I guess his period of silent bewilderment is over and he is back to his normal neurotic self. I preferred him befuddled and meek. Next time this happens we're locking him in the bathroom. I wake up enough times during the night to pee, flip over, run away from snoring, just because -- the caterwauling will be the straw that breaks this knocked-up camel's hump. I may have chided Eli in the past for threatening to sell him on eBay, but this morning I suggested selling him at Tony & Eric's garage sale. Put him in the 50 cent bin.

Anyway, I went swimming at lunch. Typically, at lunchtime I have to hover to get a crosstrainer or eliptical machine, so I thought the pool would be crowded. At the height of activity, there were 3 people (including me) in the 4-lane, 25 meter pool! There were more people in the sauna. The water was nice and cool -- I don't like swimming in warm water, it feels kind of icky and sort of defeats the refreshing aspect of a good swim -- and it was great not having to share a lane. I was only able to swim for 35 minutes, since I had to get back to work, but it was a nice start to getting back in the pool. After a hiatus, my lungs get a little confused the first few times I swim, but they were already better adjusted by the end of my work out. I hope to keep swimming through the last 14 weeks of my pregnancy. It felt so good and it was the first time in months my feet were less swollen after I worked out.

What a difference a day makes

Out of the old place and into the new. Thank God that's over.

The kitties were a bit freaked out at first, as expected. They were really pissy locked in the loo of the old place, perplexed to see the apartment empty, and then unhappily shoved into their carriers. Despina of the normally non-existent meow hollered as expected during the ride north, despite putting her carrier in my lap and petting her through the hole the entire time. When we brought them to the house and shut them up in a bedroom one might think this unjustly imprisoned tortoiseshell would bolt to freedom but, alas, Stockholm Syndrome had struck and she cowered inside the now friendly confines of her carrier. Theo ran out of his carrier, dove into the closet only to realize it offered little in terms of protection, and then returned to his bag, burying his face in his shammy like an ostrich. While the movers finished, I visited them a few times: Theo progressed from his carrier into my coat, sticking his entire face in the sleeve (if you can't see it, it must not be happening), and Spina made her way into Cherubino's kennel.

Once the movers were gone, Cheru ventured out and explored. By Thursday night, he had visited all three levels. Spina finally emerged and went downstairs a couple times. Theo cowered. By Friday night, all three were more comfortable and, by Saturday, we were able to move their food and litter down a level without traumatizing anyone.

All in all, a feline relocation success story. Stairs and cats are an amusing combination. I love watching Cheru run up and down them, his pooch wobbling from side to side. We're convinced that he'll shed a pound by the time the baby is born. Last night, after Eli went to sleep and I was about to take my first bath (Damn, those jets felt good on my feet!) , Theo ambushed Cheru by sneaking up the stairs and pouncing 'round the bend.

The new cat house

Tomorrow at 8 a.m. the burly men of Golan come to move our stuff 3 miles to the north. The most traumatizing part (other than making sure all the odds & ends find their way into boxes tonight -- although, if they don't, we have the old place until the end of the month to gather crap and clean) is the whole cat move. I feel sorry for the little buggers, getting locked in the bathroom for a few hours, shoved in a car, and transported to a new place where they are locked into another room for a few hours. Never to return to the place they called home for nearly 3 years.

Eli subscribes to the Tania feline school of thought. Tania is the goddess who cuts our hair. In the winter, she dunks her cats in the snow a couple times because she, "wants them to experience life." Eli thinks a move is valuable life experience. Their plaintive mewing and confused little faces just make me feel sad and helpless. I'll have to carry Despina in my arms during the drive so she doesn't throw up in her carrier, poor little thing.

Last time we moved we also had to introduce Theo to the Cohens, so there was that added stress. It was very sweet when, in the bathroom of the new place, Spi exited her carrier and went into Cheru's, and the two of them huddled together in his kennel. Hopefully, this time all three will snuggle together for comfort.

Apparently, the cat move is causing me some anxiety since last night I dreamt that I had to move the cats off a military base where I was stationed and couldn't find anyone to give them sedatives for the flight. It was a long, adventurous dream, I recall wandering down canals with Cheru heavy in my arms.

Getting the red out

The last trace of the viscious vermillion paint is now successfully contained behind two coats of transitional primer and another two layers of joyous Giotto blue. The fresco blue dried beautifully, really just like the blue in the Scrovegni Chapel. A little piece of Padua in my dining room. We are quite pleased.

We still have two cans of the fresco blue left, plus all of the sheer scarf pastel. Once we move, we are going to paint some of the bedrooms -- not just the curry colored one, but the green one as well. (Eli doesn't mind the green, but why have a room the color of split pea soup left on the counter too long when it can be the color of the Northern Italian sky?) We needed to finish the open spaces before we moved to avoid cats with punkish streaks of blue paint and extra texture in the walls.

But this AFM safecoat paint is fabulous! Sure, it cost twice as much as regular paint, but it was worth every penny. Our house still smells of the cheapass paint the developers from hell used months ago, but the paint from yesterday is completely odorless! And it contains the nasty chemicals behind its barrier of environmentally friendly love.

Baby loves the King

Last night baby went to its first Elvis Costello concert. Baby was very feisty. The concert wasn't terribly loud, but it was louder than the opera or anything I typically listen to, so I started to get a little paranoid half-way through the opening act. The baby can hear and react to noises by this point (which became apparent!), so does it follow that a baby can experience hearing damage before it's born? I doubted the decibel level was high enough to cause any lasting trauma, but I put my coat around my tummy to muffle the sound just in case, which is very silly, I know. Perhaps it cut down on the distortion, too, like my ear plugs, and provided baby with a more pleasant audio experience.

The concert was pretty good, but I was really too exhausted to enjoy it properly. I can't wait until this move is over and I can get some rest.

Unless baby decides to arrive two weeks early, baby will hear Elvis once more in utero at Ravinia on July 27.

Beware the Ides of April

Today Uncle Sam stabbed us in the back. I'd employ a more colorful metaphor involving the nether regions, but I'll keep it clean. Somehow if we owed and our tax dollars were going to fund education, infrastructure and national security that worked I wouldn't mind as much.

I am playing hooky and off to paint on this sunny day.

Absence makes the apartment cleaner

Yes, I do miss my husband, although he hasn't been gone that long yet. But there are upsides to not having the little homebody around. I got a decent night's sleep and didn't have to sojourn to the sofa to escape any snoring. When Theo howled in the night, I called him in and, after a good snuggle, he settled down calmly until the morning and there was no one to threaten selling the orange guy on eBay. Cherubino, however, missed his Daddy's morning ablutions dearly, as he came licking and batting at my face at 5:45 a.m., when he normally joins Eli in the loo for a shvitz and a manly tussle with the dental floss. (Spi doesn't seem to give a shit one way or another. It's nice having one proper cat.)

But the best thing about Eli's absence is that I could clean all the debris that's been unearthed by the packing process. You'd think a man who takes 2 different brands of allergy medicine a day would be all over the vacuuming but he keeps saying, "Let's just wait until we've moved and I'll clean everything then," and "I don't think you should be lugging the vacuum cleaner right now." As soon as I got home last night I sucked those dust rhinos into the vortex of the Eureka. Man, this is why I'd never want carpet -- you could never know just what horrors are lurking in the pile.

My napping kitties

My napping kitties
Originally uploaded by Milzzz.

Now that Eli has arrived safely in Amsterdam, here is something by which to remember the alpha cat of my sweet lazy little pride.

Reader in search of novel

I forgot my book this morning. Somehow it never completed its journey from the table by the door into my bag, although the water bottle, tax forms and yogurt with which it was keeping company did. I felt a bit helpless this morning on the el, not quite sure what to do with myself. Which is strange, since lately I have been napping instead of reading. My pace has slacked these past two weeks; perhaps I've lost the Will zum Lesen (with no apologies to Shopenhauer, since I make it a policy not to apologize to German philosophers). I think it's partially attributable to having had a good run of books, the Shteyngart and Andrea Levy's Small Island back-to-back, that I've been leary of reading another so soon after, like having Hersheys after Vosges. Shirley Hazzard's The Transit of Venus is good, certainly Belgian chocolate quality, but I have been too busy packing at night, dozing on the train and running errands or working out at lunch, to read much more than 100 pages this past week. And now that I could make a dent in it, I feel its absence quite painfully. At least it forced me to go to the gym at lunch.

You must have been a beautiful baby

Last time I was home I perused our family photo albums. My brother was a ridiculously cute baby. He looked particularly charming and amiable in this little shirt with a NASA logo on it. Astrobaby! Objectively, I was not the best looking of babies. My mother, of course, disagrees. But she'd have to. I resembled the Michelin Man, with enough spare tires to fit out a tractor-trailer and a gaping open mouth in most pictures. Slack open mouths are never attractive. If I didn't often hear the story of how my grandmother saw me in the incubator room looking around and exclaimed, "That's the most alert baby I've ever seen, she's taking everything in!" (this from a woman who had 5 children of her own), the evidence would have led me to believe I was a particularly unpromising infant.

Fortunately, by the time I hit 1 or so I got cuter. My untamed thatch of black hair had lengthened and lightened, my mouth closed into a little pout and my extraordinary amount of pudge tranformed into a reasonable amount of baby fat. I also probably stopped feeding every two hours. I had a voracious appetite. Legend has it that my brother wasn't too interested in eating right away and my mom was a bit worried, until my grandmother told her to relax and that he'd eat when he was ready. So, with child #2, my mom expected a similar disinterest. Boy was she surprised when the nurse handed me to her for the first feeding and I went right at it! We'll see if the threat of, "I hope you have a child just like you," holds true.

Happy Birthday, Aaron!!!

Today the bestest big brother turns 35. Happy birthday, ancient dude! For a birthday present, how about I officially forgive you for sticking my head into the bell of your French horn and that game where you'd turn off the lights and pelt me with pillows? Naw. I think I'll just get you a material present, instead. Many happy returns of the day!

Invasion of the Tarantellas

It's quarterly reporting time here, but someone else is in the file so I need to pass a little time before I can finish my work. It's a slow news day so here I am, blabbing away.

After Saturday night's excellent classical guitar concert, Eli and I were ravenous. It's a universal maxim that packing induces ice cream cravings. So we ended up, along with all the teenagers, at Zephyr. I remember the first time I went to Zephyr, back in 1990 or '91. I went with a couple of college friends who were Chicago natives for a midnight shake, a rare first year voyage out of Hyde Park (except the treks to the Fine Arts Theatre or Medusa, the latter of blessed memory). This was long before Ravenswood was the gentrified yuppie paradise -- or hell hole, depending on one's point of view -- that is today and I think I might have been the only non-Spanish speaker there. Zephyr still looks basically the same, with the cloud shaped mirrors, and if I squint a bit I can get really nostalgic.

While finishing our ice cream (and, yes, I finished my malt for what might be the first time ever, whipped cream and all) we overheard a conversation at one of the few tables occupied by people old enough to legally drink. A middle aged woman with a page boy haircut and a very loud voice was regaling her companions about having just seen Sin City. She proclaimed, "I just love that Quentin Tarantella! I've seen all of his movies." And continued to monologue about this Tarantella guy for long enough to prompt Eli to exclaim mid- fried mushroom, "We're leaving."

My question is, were her friends just so used to tuning her out that they didn't even hear her inanity?

Pack horse

I hate packing. I am a dust dragon, spouting detritus from my nostrils. It is amazing how much sneaky dust shares my living space, only to be released upon the universe at moving time. I swear I will vacuum and dust the bookshelves on a regular basis once we move. We swears it nasty dusty hobbit.

All the books, except for a few in reserve to read over the next two weeks, are packed. Ditto all meat kitchen stuff. We finished the dining room and made a significant dent in the dairy ware and will pack other dairy stuff we don't need (china, baking pans, etc.) tonight. Plus, I'll finish my files tonight or tomorrow before Eli leaves, so he can hoist them on the tower of boxes for me. Sometimes I forget I am pregnant and carry a box (not a heavy one!) and am reminded by the strange way said box rests against my tummy.

The best thing about this bout of packing is that the box fairies paid us a charming visit Saturday. Usually, I panic about running short of boxes, but Tony & Eric brought over gobs of them and now we have such a surplus I don't feel like I need to be conservative in my packing strategy. I love you guys!

Work and play

The sky is a bright blue and the work day is inching along. Blogger's been down most of today, so I haven't been able to pass my time here. Everytime I go to the NYT's website there's a new picture of the Pope's funeral and not much else.

Tonight Eli and I are heading down to Hyde Park to see Tom Stoppard's Travesties. Eli saw The Importance of Being Earnest for the first time ever (!) earlier this season and enjoyed it, so he will appreciate the Stoppard play all the more. Usually when we go to Court we're either caught in a downpour or it's frigid, so it will be a pleasant change to go and visit some of my favorite gargoyles while we wait for the 8:00 curtain.

Tomorrow night we go to see John Williams at the CSO. The classical guitarist, not the derivative composer! (How dare you think for even a second that we were going to a pops concert!) Other than that it's pack, pack, pack. And a jaunt out to Elmhurst first thing to pick up the environmentally friendly paint. We're getting Blue Fresco to cover the red ickiness under the chair rail and Sheer Scarf, another blue, for the curry colored bedroom upstairs (or the mastersuite, if the wall-knocking project succeeds). The palette, like all things, is an homage to Cherubino.

Nodding Off

I am so tired. Theo didn't even howl last night, although he did mew a bit around 3:00 a.m. and wriggle on me for some sweet loving, but I still didn't get a great night's sleep. People sympathetically tut and welcome me to pregnancy but I honestly have to say that I'm sleeping no worse than I did before I was pregnant. I've always had bouts of wakefulness and trouble falling asleep, even as a child. If anything, I am falling asleep more quickly now that I'm knocked up. I think part of my sleeping issue is that my biorhythms just aren't set to the 9 to 5 weekday. When I briefly wasn't working a few years ago, or when I was on summer vacation as a kid, I would go to sleep around 2:00 a.m. and wake up around 9:00 a.m. and feel fantastic. (In college I'd try not to have classes before 10, but then I was up late studying, rehearsing and, let's face it, drinking -- so that epoch isn't exactly suitable for comparison purposes.) I think it's definitely biological as my brother is similar, in as much as he prefers to skip the single digit hours of the morning. He does seem to need more sleep than I do, but most people do.

Eli is a morning person. Guess who'll be doing the 5 a.m. diaper change?

No stinky paint

I just ordered no-VOC paint, transitional primer and stain to repaint a few areas in our house and stain our deck. Oy, did that hurt! These environmentally sound products are truly considerably more expensive. But, since I am doing the repainting -- at least below the chair rail in the dining room, Eli will get up on ladders -- I think baby and my stomach, along with the planet, will thank me for my coughing up the dough. Ouch.

Homage

Last week I read The Russian Debutante's Handbook, as close to a modern-day Bellow picaresque as one can get. Unlike many first novels published by sub-thirty somethings, this one delivers. (If another person claims, "A Heartbreaking Work of Staggering Genius is, like, the best book I've ever read," I am going to resort to violence.) Even in the final pages, unlike White Teeth, an otherwise engrossing novel that falls apart. (Although I hope Shteyngart's second novel fulfills his promise more than Autograph Man.)

I wax paranthetical.

A thought of Augie March a lot while Vladimir Griskin bounced around New York and Europe -- both tossed about by gangster characters and their love/need of women. The opening of Bellow's great American novel, "I am an American, Chicago-born," congeals with the penultimate sentence of Shteyngart's book, "An American in America." The two writers are both inside and outside the American experience, Bellow as a Jew, Shteyngart as a Russian-Jewish immigrant.

Good-bye, maestro

Saul Bellow, the greatest American writer of the second half of the 20th century, died yesterday at the age of 89.

The NYT obituary was appropriately reverential and humorous, as the master was. He lived a good life, churning out novel after fantastic novel. The only tragedy is that so few kids my age still read his novels. In homage to my icon I am going to issue a blanket pronouncement that anyone who hasn't read The Adventures of Augie March has no right to call themselves a reader of American novels. (Fuck the Norman Mailer quote about it; Saul's belches were more eloquent and descriptive of humanity than any of Norm's novels.)

I especially like this from the NYT:

The center of his fictional universe was Chicago, where he grew up and spent most of his life, and which he made into the first city of American letters.

First city indeed -- take that New York City!

"The children of Chicago bakers, tailors, peddlers, insurance agents, pressers, cutters, grocers, the sons of families on relief, were reading buckram-bound books from the public library and were in a state of enthusiasm, having found themselves on the shore of a novelistic land to which they really belonged, discovering their birthright ... talking to one another about the mind, society, art, religion, epistemology and doing all this in Chicago, of all places."

Sadly, those days are long gone, now that only 1 out of 1,000 children of any class are less likely to be seen with a Sony PPS than a Russian novel. (And those odds are generous.) Other bits from the obituary I especially appreciated:

He spoke his own mind, without regard for political correctness or fashion, and was often involved, at least at a literary distance, in fierce debates with feminists, black writers, postmodernists.

While others were ready to proclaim the death of the novel, he continued to think of it as a vital form. "I never tire of reading the master novelists," he said. "Can anything as vivid as the characters in their books be dead?"

And on wining the Nobel Prize:

"The child in me is delighted," he said. "The adult in me is skeptical." He took the award, he said, "on an even keel," aware of "the secret humiliation" that "some of the very great writers of the century didn't get it."

You will be missed. Philip Roth, please hang in there for another decade!

Happy half-birthday to me

Yes, I know I can't get much mileage out of it being my half-birthday now that I've passed the age of 7, but I wouldn't mind half of a birthday cake right now. The almond cake with lemon curd from Bittersweet would hit the spot.

Blogger was down yesterday and today their whole photo hosting system is wonky. That's free for you.

We had a good weekend, except for a little mix-up with our house keys. On Saturday morning we went over to the house only to find out that the keys the seller gave us at closing were the wrong keys! I, Eli and Jeremy (who was in town for his brother-in-law's surprise birthday party and staying chez nous) tried every key in every lock, even though it was obvious at first glance that none of the keys were the appropriate ones for the types of locks. When our broker called the seller, the seller insisted it was our usage and the keys were just fine. Well, finally they came over and saw immediately they were the wrong keys. Duh. We had to move our appointment to fit blinds until tonight and lost a lot of time in the hassle. We are going to switch locks, since these guys didn't exactly have high quality key control.

Sunday I did a fun 2 hour choreography workshop. At this point, I know I couldn't shimmy for 2 hours in the Super Shimmy workshop next week, but I wanted to do one workshop in addition to classes. It was rigorous, but not exhausting -- I can shimmy for 10 minutes or during a choreography, but I don't think baby would enjoy non-stop twisting shimmies.

At the surprise party Saturday night, there was a "belly dancer." This woman was about as close to Classical Mid-east dance as I am to being 6 feet tall. She was sexy as hell, but her range was limited, terribly sloppy and quite limited in technique (no variety in shimmies or arms or bumps or...). But she had really nice knockers.

Weekend

My weekend is looking pretty full right now. Tomorrow, we have an appointment with the blinds guy, as opposed to the blind guy, at our new house. (New house, new house, new house! It doesn't seem quite real yet, and probably won't until we move.) While there, we will do various measuring and strategizing. Then I need to make a small dent in the packing before we go to a friend's 40th surprise birthday party. (I seriously doubt he knows what a blog is, so no worries about outing him here.) Sunday, I have a lesson and a 2-hour choreography workshop in the afternoon. If we accomplish enough packing, we get to go see Sin City Sunday night. If not, we will cry. And maybe I'll get around to making headway in Andrea Levy's Small Island.

Wiggle worm

I haven't felt the baby much yet, or at least not consistently, which my doctor attributes the placement of my placenta in front. I've felt a bit, mostly when there's something, say a 20 lbs. Himalese, on my stomach. I had heard that drinking cold water stimulates movement, but hadn't tried it since I like my water room temperature. Due to the gym's excessive heating system, I was drinking really cold water while working out at lunch. Guess what? I could feel the baby wriggling vigorously. Either that, or baby was getting down to Beck. Groovy baby.

My favorite Scientologist & musical concerns

Damn, the new Beck album is good! I brought it to work today, ostensibly to rip it, but I put it on instead of Launchcast and am rocking out at my desk. I'm definitely listening to it at the gym at lunch -- not only will it make the cross-trainer more palpable, but I am actually looking forward to going to the nasty over-heated downtown gym. (It's in the second basement and has always been too warm; now that I'm preggers, I loathe going there.) Now that's some great music!

This leads me to one of my bigger concerns about impending parenthood. So many parents seem to loose all musical taste as soon as junior is born. Now, I understand I will be too busy to go to clubs and too strapped for cash to buy 10 CDs a month, but does that mean that children's albums will become my new soundtrack? Do I have to listen to that crap?!

Really, do children respond more to hearing other children sing in stupid sing-song voices out-of tune, a la Barney, more than they do to genuine music? But yet so many parents abuse themselves, and their children's delicate ears, by playing that shite over and over. Why would my kid be more interested in an overwrought Disney love song than a Beatles love song? I know parenthood involves sacrifice, but there are some sacrifices I am just not willing to make.

There is some good children-focused music out there. There must be. But what's wrong with just good music? I'm not going to play speed metal for my babies but, if you want songs with words, what's wrong with Simon & Garfunkel or Johnny Cash? Or, frankly, opera? Eli probably lives in fear that I will turn his children into opera queens, but isn't that better than them growing up to think Britney Spears is acceptable? Wouldn't a child boogie down to Stevie or Sly as much as some dorky children's album?

My other parental musical pet peeve (ok, one of my others, I have a whole litany) is this Mozart for Babies crap. You know, a parent reads an article about how classical music is good for a child's development, so they buy one or two "Best of the Classics" CDs and play them over and over. Honey, that's not going to develop your children's brains, it's going to give them a complex straight out of A Clockwork Orange every time they hear Eine Kleine Nachtmusik. I enjoyed classical music as a child because my parents listened to a lot of it. Recordings, the wide variety on the radio (this was the 1970s, before the classical radio station genocide), my dad playing it, and going to children's concerts at the library. Just as children who see their parents reading are more likely to become readers, children whose parents listen to music are more likely to love it. It's all about demystification.

Oh, and I played an instrument. Everyone in my school had an opportunity to pick an instrument and play it (I was fortunate and supplemented by private lessons). This was a public school. From what I understand, this is no longer common in elementary schools, either public or the kind for which you pay $15,000/year. Even if music wasn't reinforced constantly at home, I would still have been exposed to quite a lot more than most kids these days. Music is crucial to brain development, but it has to be stimulating. A couple lame CDs won't cut it.