Pickling

I've been gone - off the radar - for almost a week now. My apologies. I've been mired in the swamps of nausea and exhaustion. I've been living on small pieces of cheese and saltine crackers, watermelon and ginger ale. It's been hard to imagine getting back to normal, and I've been getting a little freaked out at it all. I also went to Portland to visit my family while my husband went to eastern Washington on a fishing trip. A lot has been going on.

I went to the doctor on Friday for a checkup/ultrasound and to hand over some more blood, and they told me that my due date is March 20th, which puts me at about 8 weeks along tomorrow. Soooo, another couple of weeks of this feeling crappy crap. I've had enough. It was heartening to see the baby's heartbeat on the ultrasound, though. I remember that my daughter's heartbeat was very fast, and my mom and all those women my mom's age told me that meant I was having a girl. But this heartbeat didn't look quite so fast, so I can't help but to think that maybe I'll have a boy. That and this yucky morning sickness, which I don't ever remember having with my daughter. I feel like I've been just sitting around this time, watching my daughter play, with minimal movement. I feel like she must be so disgusted with me after a while, saying "No-no!" and "Not for babies!" from my perch on the couch. I am disgusted with me, that's for sure. She is such a sweet little girl, though - so patient and coming over to me to say "Kiss!" and to pat me on the back every so often. What a peach.

This morning when I went to use the toilet and she went over to her little potty, I told her she was going to try and go potty like a big girl today. I took off her pants and her diaper, and sat her on her plastic pot, but she kept getting up and walking around. I think she understood that I was asking her to produce, but I'm not sure the message got across that she needed to aim her production at the potty. Finally she walked over to the corner and peed standing up and said, "Mama, potty!" She was very proud of herself, and I praised her, but then I took her hand and tried to lead her mid-pee to sit on her potty. She managed to get one drop in the pot, so I would say that she's officially christened it. I am very proud of her. I probably should do some reading on the topic of potty-training before I go whole-hog with her, but I would say that was a very successful introduction.

What else? Speaking of whole-hog, I attempted to make pickles this weekend at my parents' house. I went with my mom to Sauvie Island, to a farm stand, and bought a bunch of pickling cucumbers and jars and vinegar and spices, and got started on my project on Sunday. My sister took the baby to the children's museum, so I had a few hours to myself. Let me just say that, as with every home-made item, there is an awful lot of prep time compared to the actual time of completing the task called pickling. You have to wash and dry all the jars, screw-tops, and lids. Then you have to wash all of the cucumbers really well (and I had 20 lbs.!). Then you have to set up all of your ingredients and set out like four pots with boiling water and your vinegar solution. Then you have to sanitize each jar by dipping it into boiling water (oh - and don't forget the tricky task of getting the jars back out again without cooking your hands!). And THEN you can pack the pickles and spices and pour the solution over them and screw the tops on and put them back in the boiling water to get the lids to seal. Whew! A lot of work for about 18 jars of pickles. And I have this fear that none of them sealed right so they're all going to go bad. We'll see - I'll let you know. It did feel really good, though, to start a big project like this and see it through to its completion.

I also saw my best girlfriend from high school this weekend. She has moved back to Portland from doing her OB/Gyn residency at Duke, and now has a 3-year fellowship at OHSU. What a smarty-pants. She's getting married to her long-time boyfriend this month, and she's anxious to get going on starting a family herself. It was so nice to see her - she's one of those friends where I can go months or even a year or so without seeing her, and then I see her again and we just catch right back up. There's never any awkwardness, and she and I share the same principles of etiquette. That is to say, we are considerate of one another's needs and situations, and we don't say rude things to one another - amazing! We went out to dinner and dessert and the food tasted wonderful and I didn't feel sick once - Hallelujah! But she did say to me something that has been on my mind since I saw her. She said, "So, are you going to come back to Portland ever?" And I wasn't sure what to say. And it made me feel sad. You see, I'm still at that stage here in Seattle where I love living here, and I love the friends we have made and the life we've built for our family, but if the opportunity presented itself and the cards were right, I'd move back there in a heartbeat. You bet your boots. Because that's where I'm FROM. I LIVE in Seattle, but I'm FROM Portland, and my struggle thus far has been to create more of an identity for myself in Seattle. I suppose it will just take time, blah blah blah. It may also take getting a job outside of taking care of my daughter, eventually, or doing something where I am having an impact on a community greater than my household. I want to love Seattle in the same way I love Portland, but I'm not quite there yet. I love various people in Seattle, but the city itself is still fairly foreign to me and holds little interest right now, aside from child-friendly activities and the occasional need for a good restaurant for a date with my husband. In Portland I have a whole city that I love - every last pocket - as well as the people (including my own family and a couple of childhood friends) who I love there. Anyway, it's still a challenge.

We saw "Young Frankenstein" last night. It was very good, although quite long and my husband and I kept getting sleepy. We are such old people now! Megan Mulally was hilarious in it, as was the guy who played Young Frankenstein himself. As always, it was very fun to go out and share an evening of adult activities. As parents we need to keep reminding ourselves that this is key to self-preservation and the preservation of our romantic relationships. Amen.