Tagged

Hey folks, I've been tagged. What an honor (dubious though it may be)! My first meme!

Seven Random Things (about me)

1. I have no sense of smell. It's a dominant genetic trait on my father's side (he had no sense of smell and neither did his mom). To answer the inevitable follow-up question: Yes, I can taste things just fine thankyouverymuch. Of course, I wouldn't really know any different since I have nothing to compare it to, but my general assessment of food seems to be on par with those with working olfactory glands around me.

2. My undergraduate degree is in linguistics. At one point I thought I wanted to work on speech recognition software for a company like IBM. Thank god I dodged *that* bullet!

3. I have owned a horse since I was 11 with only a 5 year break during my undergrad and the couple of following years. I have been riding since I was 4, though.

4. I grew up with a complete Javanese gamelan in my house. My parents lived in Jakarta for 3 years in the 70's and had free shipping of all their furniture home courtesy of the bank my dad worked for. I can play just about every instrument at a passable level but I am particularly good on the bonong. Having this in our house also meant that all sorts of weird people would come over all the time and ask if we lived in a temple, how do we commune with the spirits of the instruments, etc etc etc. I grew up in an area with a disproportionately large hippie population.

5. I really really hate bananas.

6. I learned to knit when I was about 7 on our summer backpacking trips. Mom thought it would be a good way to keep me occupied. I didn't really take to knitting, however, until I was a teenager and had a phone with a headset in my room but found I needed something to keep my hands busy.

7. I see a therapist once a week. Mostly to deal with anxiety.

So that's all! I won't tag anyone else (because y'all already did it or don't have blogs or are busy having babies or something).

Next time: knitting content. I swear!

What Makes Me a Mother

Two days ago, I got an email from a male relative telling me titled "Almost Your Day". In it, he explained that next year I would be officially "entitled" to celebrate Mother's Day, but that he hoped I had a wonderful day anyway.

Although I certainly appreciated his sentiment (he's definitely one of my favorite male relatives), I took a little umbrage at his suggestion that I'm not yet a mother. While it's true that my son has not yet been born, and that everything will change when he is, he is still with me and in my thoughts every single moment of every single day. My life revolves around his development: providing him food to grow, getting enough sleep so that I can haul him around all day, feeling his kicks and squirms, planning where he will sleep and how, deciding where and how we would like him to be born, securing the house so that he will be safe, getting a job so that we can pay for him to have the best care...

Every single thing I have done since I discovered that he existed in the first place has focused on him. I go to yoga every week not so that I can maintain my figure (ha!) but so that I can be strong enough to birth him well. I take nasty vitamins that give me terrible heartburn so that he can have the proper nutrition to develop a strong body. I budget my money so that we can be prepared for anything that may come our way once he has been born.

And the worry, oh the worry. I find myself thinking about what the world will be like 10, 20, 50 years from now; what I am bringing a life into. I fear for everything he will have to go through in life and worry about if I will be able to provide a strong enough example for him to follow. Will I be able to give him the tools in life to succeed? The What Ifs flood my mind day and night in a new kind of anxiety that is entirely pervasive to my every waking and dreaming moment.

Already, I find myself having to suppress my Mama Bear temper which flares at the very hint, real or imagined, that someone would ever do something to hurt my baby. I am more protective over him, and by extension myself, than I have ever been in my life. I just didn't care like I do now until I discovered that me was not just me anymore; it was me and him.

So if all those things don't make me a mother, I don't know what would.


Me at 23 weeks. I am going to be huge...


Little Dude's very own Baby Bunny Jacket. From Vogue Baby Knits Too in Cascase 220 superwash in the 1 year size. I've made 5 of these and I finally get to make one for my own baby bunny...

p.s. Jon totally celebrated Mother's Day with me this morning by cooking some KICK ASS gluten-free pancakes and then starting a truly touching Mother's Day tradition. I am blessed to have such a wonderful husband.

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This post was inspired by Kristen over at Motherhood Uncensored and was brought to you by the Blog Blast at the Parent Bloggers Network and Light Iris as well as the letter E and the number 8.

How to break up with your professor

Remember how I said that I was SO OVER school? I still am. Today I had to resort to breaking up with this group I have been involved with for 7 months via email. The group members all respected my decision to end my involvement with the project (I am graduating in 4 weeks and pregnant, after all), but our professor didn't quite seem to grasp the concept when I told him after we'd done our presentation that I would like a grade now. As in NOW. Today. So I wrote this follow up email to underscore how completely done I am:

Hi [omitted],

I just wanted to follow up on the brief conversation we had about grading and my continued participation with the group. For me, today was not a "dress rehearsal for [Central American country]". This was the final time I will be presenting the plan and the culmination of my involvement with the project.

Right now, four weeks away from graduation, my priorities need to shift to the next phase in my life and career. For me, this project needs to end. The group will be absolutely fine preparing the presentation for a [Central American nationality] audience without me, and in fact that is what they are expecting to do. We have talked about what will change and, frankly, from here on out, I feel it is their show, not mine.

I appreciate the opportunity to work in this group; it's a great cause and I'm sure [my university] will have a strong continued involvement with [the organization]. The group has done an extremely good job in the face of many hurdles and I'm very proud of our final product. And, of course, thank you for your many hours of advising!

Best regards,
-[Gry]

I'm not sure I could have made it much clearer than that. Breaking up is hard to do, but DAMN, this needed to be done. I have been tired of this 3-credit class, that I have devoted *thousands* of hours to, since January. Since before that, really. Now that I am interviewing for a full-time position and my little dude has made a (rowdy) home in my belly, I need to say goodbye for good. Hopefully my extremely direct email will get that point across.

And because this week has been so incredibly full of school work that I still have not had time to photograph my knitting, I am going to have to leave you with solely a garden photo:


this is an arisaema, one of twenty different kinds planted in my garden. But this one is my favorite.