I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings...

Now that I am allowed the occassional taste of freedom, I find myself that much more...irritable, we'll say, when I am confined to my bed. Mind you, if the pseudo-medical professionals in my life (read: mother and husband) had their druthers, I would still be on round-the-clock supervised bedrest (envision armed guards and the like).

So far, I have ventured to Target (as described in a previous post), Starbucks (ahhhhhhh...) and the airport, to pick up Jennifer who came up for my shower (didn't even get out of the car for that one). I have also seen the downstairs of my home daily since last Thursday. In a few hours from now, Husband & I will be leaving the house to interview a potential pediatrician for the little man. Every day is an adventure!

A quick word about my shower--it was magnificent! I rebelled against all things bedrest and diabetes related and somehow managed to keep the baby in my uterus. Imagine that. I even indulged in a hunk of chocolate cake that should have sent me into the glucose stratosphere, but it did not---two hours later, I got a 113 reading; better than after your average tuna sandwich. Go figure. I guess the glucose-gods were smiling on me Sunday afternoon. In addition to the good fortune of tolerating tasty food, I did not turn into the socially-incompetent freak I feared I would, not having been around that many people in so long. I think I held my own.

I want to post a picture of myself looking all fat & happy at my shower, but for some reason, I can only get the picture to post at the top of the page and that's not what I want...so, you'll have to use your imagination. And in your imagination, please picture me as all belly & only 15 pounds above my original pre-pregnancy weight. We'll all be happier that way.

A few days ago, my pregnancy soul-mate, Amy (see Spreng Bling Bling), "tagged me" for a "meme." Being the blogger virgin I am, it took me awhile to figure out that means I have to share things about myself that are not immediately evident through reading my blog...in her blog, she did 6, so that's what I'm going to do, although I have no idea if that number is a requirement or not. (Damn it, I should be more blog-savvy!!!)

SIX THINGS YOU MIGHT NOT KNOW ABOUT ME...

1. I have a psychological twin. I met my friend Karen back in my junior year of college, during my semester in London. We went to the same school for undergrad, but lived in different dorms, had different majors, so we never met until we were 1000's of miles away from home. It became quickly apparent that although we don't look the same, sound the same or act the same, our psychological make-up was, almost eerily, identical. The exact same things made us happy, angry, miserable, hysterical. We can anticipate how the other will handle a certain situation, almost down to the word, because we would have the exact same reaction. We even went so far as to marry men who are practically the psychological twin of each other...it never ceases to amaze me.

2. I am an English teacher who sucks at Scrabble. I cannot win a game of scrabble. Against anyone. An illiterate monkey (is that redundant?) could kick my scrabble-impaired ass into next week with nothing but a smattering of X's and J's at his disposal. Of course, I rarely have the chance to compete against said monkey. Usually, I am whipped senseless at the hands of my own father, who isn't happy unless he beats me by at least 100 points.

Actually, that's not fair at all; he's been known to offer me advice and free turns. I still lose. He even traded his high point letters with me once, and instead of waiting for a good chance at a triple word score with the W & the X, I wrote "waxy" on regular old no-extra-point squares. I am a disgrace. I comfort myself with the idea that it's stategy and luck I lack, not a basic handle on the English language. I can explicate Shakespeare, damn it!! Certainly I must know some big words!!! *hanging head in shame*

3. I wanted to be a massage therapist. Or a yoga instructor. A few years ago, after teaching for two years at a high-stress, high-pressure private school where students and teachers alike were known to have nervous breakdowns and parents were known to buy their students' grades, I decided it was time for me to get out of "the biz". I was so tired and stressed out from teaching that I couldn't bear the thought of standing in front of a class for one more day. I developed a fascination with becoming a massage therapist, did all the research on schools in my area, even interviewed at one. I envisioned opening up a wellness center with massage therapy and yoga classes (I took yoga for years & was signed up for a pre-natal yoga class which was to start the day I ended up being sent to bed for good)

Then I got scared. Teaching, while it will never make me rich, paid well and provided great benefits and stability. I decided to keep teaching. But far, far away from that snooty, pretentious awful school. But you never know...perhaps I only need one post-natal yoga class to shift my perspective again. Here's hoping...

4. Going apple-picking in the fall is one of my favorite things ever. It's a little "Laura Ingalls Wilder" of me, I know. But there is something about driving out to the country on a crisp fall day, walking through the orchard with the bag-o-apples in my hand, dodging bumble bees and climbing into the trees to get the biggest apples that just makes me to-the-core (no pun intended) HAPPY. Poor husband has been subjected to this two years in a row (yes, I kept it a secret until I knew I had him hooked). He seems to enjoy it, too, but it might be an act, or he might just like seeing me childishly giddy for a few hours.

I do next to nothing with these apples--I don't create culinary delights of any kind. I honestly don't know what to do with an apple. Once, in college, I thought I was making an apple pie, but I ended up with something more akin to apple/cinnamon stew in a soggy graham cracker crust. Now, they sit on our dining room table in a lovely bowl & we eat them until they rot. It's not the apples I love---its the picking them!

5. I drove across country in '98. My pscyhological twin and I (the aforementioned Karen), hopped in my teal Toyota Corolla the Monday after the 4th of July and drove from Cape Cod, Mass., to San Francisco, CA and back again. It took us almost 7 weeks, and it was 7 of the best weeks of my life. We camped under the stars in the Bad Lands, YellowStone Nat'l Park, and Santa Fe. We lived it up in San Fran, Vegas and New Orleans. We slept in a rest area in South Dakota, and we had to stop 1/2 way through Kansas because we were too hung over to drive a mile further. We rode horses in Wyoming and saw a real live cowboy in New Mexico. We sat in our car for over an hour while a "traffic jam" of bison crossed the road and we pulled over to watch three little bear cubs eat berries on the side of the road. We drank wine in Napa & Sonoma. We drank one of everything in the French Quarter. I don' think we ever got lost.

6. I have no "poker face". I cannot hide an emotion. Husband has informed me of this on many occassions. I think I am doing an impeccable job of hiding my irritation or annoyance at someone or something, but apparently I have "ugh--I hate you/this" written all over my face. I have no idea how I am so disconnected from my facial expressions, but it is something I have been working on. I would hate for everyone to know when I am annoyed at every little thing---that's so intimate. I like to think that perhaps Husband just knows me so well he's the only one who can see it.

But since I've been made aware of it, I sometimes can catch myself in a frowny, furrowed-brow "are you kidding me????" expression and realize, alas, he is not speaking just for himself, but for the entire seeing world.


So that's it; my "meme". I would be tagging Becci next, but Amy got greedy and tagged her, too! :-) I don't know of any other bloggers who read my blog on a regular enough basis for a tag to do anything but gather dust and sound like tumble-weed blowing around out in cyber-space...