cindy's world

Yesterday after work, Mr. W and I went to Seal Beach to visit Rebecca at the coffee house. We got there a few hours early, so we thought we’d try out a Vietnamese restaurant we’d seen on Main Street called Basil Leaf. What was attractive was a sign on the front door that says, “NO MSG!” Mr. W gets occasional cravings for pho, but I always resist because I don’t want to ingest toxic amounts of MSG and feel gross and bloated afterwards, so he rarely gets his pho cravings satisfied. This place was a great find and is DELICIOUS! I also had an entire young coconut to myself. Chilled. They just hacked the outside green stuff off, gave it a lobotomy and me a straw and spoon. I’m always surprised how great and lightly fruity coconut water tastes to me, cuz coconut flavored liquors, foods, chocolates, etc. is horrible to me. I also don’t like that scratchy scrapey shaved coconut texture. Young fresh coconut, however, I’m able to clean out. I ate everything edible in there. Mr. W turned to me at one point and said, “You’d better lay off that coconut.” I froze with a mouthful of the tender white stuff, thoughts of saturated fats scaring me for a moment, spoon still poised in stab-dig position.
“Why?”
“There’s something about young coconuts… it’ll give you the runs.”
“Oh,” I said with relief, “I don’t care.” I went back to digging and eating my coconut.
He instantly took out his iPad and said he’d look the information up. Turns out, fresh young coconuts are very nutritious and are quite low in saturated fat and calories. I remembered learning that surgeons back in Captain Cook’s exploration days would directly IV-inject coconut water into the vein for dehydrated sick sailors. And, I’m happy to say, I did not get the runs. I plan on eating more chilled young coconut whenever I come across them. I’m happy they don’t taste anything like coconut flavoring.

On the walk to the coffee house, we passed by a jewelry store that does custom jewelry. I’d been wanting to get my engagement ring adjusted for some time. The center stone sits so high that I bang it into everything. It’s only held by just 4 prongs, so if one prong breaks, the diamond is gone. It’s gotten so that I take it off the moment I get home, and don’t wear it if I think I’ll be using my hands for anything (dishes, gymming, kayaking, rafting, holding onto ride handles at Disneyland, reaching into my purse…), and I check it frequently to make sure the stone’s still in place. =P It’s become very impractical. So we went into the store and spoke to the owner, who’s also the jewelry maker and designer. I examined a lot of his work and liked his taste. We also chatted with him a long time about the jewelry business and his philosophies about random stuff. We liked him and his no-nonsense approach to his field and commissioned him to reset the center stone in a 6-prong Tiffany setting, lowered 2 millimeters. He also asked if we could leave the wedding band with him so he could make sure if the dimensions change on the engagement ring, there wouldn’t be a match-up problem with the band. So walking out of there later, I felt very naked without my rings on. Until we pick up the rings next week, I’m gonna wear my other rings that I hadn’t worn in years. Today I have on a white pearl and peacock pearl yellow gold ring, accented by 2 diamonds, that I’d bought in a state of delirium and delusion of richness in college. It’s kinda fun, changing up the jewelry wardrobe, which is something I rarely get into.

At the coffee house, it was an intimate small crowd. I enjoyed that. Rebecca turned and smiled at me out of the blue at one point and asked, “Are you two ‘trying’ right now?” I explained there’s no “trying” with us, and that when we were ready, we’d just go to the doctor and get everything done. She said “it” feels very close around me, and that if she hadn’t known I couldn’t be pregnant right now, she’d think I were. I do feel very close to this soul, and I’ve felt it for awhile now. Just yesterday, before leaving to see Rebecca, I was typing up a case cite of Riley vs. Pappadopoulos [(1994) 23 Cal.App.4th 1616, 1624, if anyone cares to know] and suddenly, BAM, “Riley!” It felt like a piece of a jigsaw puzzle just glided seamlessly into place, completing a portion of a picture. No wonder my friends’ kids’ names of Kyden and Tyler always seemed to sort of resonate with me. I saw a “y” and a long “i” sound long ago. Plus, it’s one of the rare names that sounds good with Mr. W’s odd-sounding last name. So unless and until an even more perfect-feeling name comes up, hello, Riley! And Riley (well, his spirit anyhow) says hello to all of you!

A friend shared this WebMD article about weight gains during pregnancy affecting the child’s health afterwards. This link (between mother’s pregnancy and child’s future health) is pretty predictable. What surprised me, is the guideline on weight gain found in the study.

So according to this article, a pregnant woman should not gain ANY weight in the first 14 weeks (3.5 months, for those of us like me who don’t think in terms of weeks). AND, after 14 weeks, the weight gain should only be 1.1 lbs per week (for a total max weight gain of 24.2 lbs through 9 months of pregnancy). The consequences of blowing this limit is that by age 9, the child may show signs of “having high body fat, low levels of good HDL cholesterol, a big waistline, high blood pressure, and other risk factors for heart disease.” Apparently the more weight the mom gains between weeks 14 and 36 (3.5 months to 9 months) of pregnancy, the higher the baby’s risk for all these things. BUT…if you gain weight AFTER week 36, no effect is shown on the child. You hear that, mothers-to-be? If you’re gonna put on weight, do so AFTER 9 months, when the baby’s already out of you. =P

The study also points out that women who start off pregnancy being overweight are more likely to have overweight or obese children. So THIS is something I could check right now. I checked my body mass index (BMI) (22.3), waist-to-height ratio (0.42), and weight range. Everything falls within “normal” and “healthy,” altho I’d like to be on the lower end of these calculations, just to be safe and give myself wiggle room. (Wanna check your stats? Use WebMD’s calculator, which is what I used, here.)

I guess I ought to write an email to my mom thanking her for increasing her pre-pregnancy weight of 87 lbs to only 110 by 9 months, cuz I DO have low blood pressure, high HDL, and a healthy heart. Pregnancy is starting to look more challenging.

I’m getting a LOT of feedback, opinions, attempts at persuasion, warnings, all attempting to discourage me from my decision to not use an epidural during childbirth. This advice comes from friends who are mothers and a couple are even nurses with delivery room experience, so I believe them and I know they absolutely know what they’re talking about, and the warnings are given in love and concern for me. However, my refusal to consider an epidural is also made in love and concern — for my unborn, as yet nonexistent-on-this-plane kid. Studies show that the IQs of children born without the use of an epidural are higher than those of kids whose mothers used the drug, and the natural newborns are more responsive during the Moro Reflex Test given upon birth, whereas epidural babies act kinda doped up. I don’t know for a fact that these studies are 100% conclusive or that there is a guaranteed correlation or causation relationship, but if there’s a chance I can give my child an edge in life by just suffering through some pain at childbirth, I can not imagine not doing it. My experienced friends tell me that they greatly appreciated their epidurals and didn’t know how people could go through childbirth without it. I had responded that there are mothers through time who worked on the fields or farms until their water broke, they went aside to push out their kid, and they returned to whatever they were doing as soon as the kid was bathed and fed. But that’s not the life I’m subject to, they reason with me, I don’t have to go through that because I’m in a position where modern medicine and painkillers are available to me. I don’t fault their logic, but I’m all the more determined to do this the way I’d intended. I realize I’m the ignorant one here, but if that ignorance and lack of experience is gonna carry me through, I’m gonna hold on to that ignorance until my own experience forces the light of knowledge on me. But here’s what I know…I know I will be fine. I know it will be pain beyond my wildest imagination, but it will be over soon, and I will know for the rest of my life that I did everything within my control to give this child what I could from the moment of birth, no matter the pain to me. What’s some screaming at childbirth compared to the rest of his/her life?

Besides, I could hold this over the kid’s head when (s)he acts up.

I’m still up because I’ve been playing heartfelt lullabies to my unborn child for the past 2 hours. Ann had wanted to visit Rebecca with me since my first (and only prior) experience with her. I didn’t get consistent notices of when she was coming back to do another workshop at the coffee shop, so it had been a full year before I learned an exact date that I could attend (I was getting notices of her appearance days after it was already over, or I’d hear about my coworkers having attended earlier that week). Tonight (well, technically last nite now), Ann and I made it to her intimate group setting. She hit Ann’s life and her relationships dead-on with little to no cues from Ann, but that’s Ann’s business. Toward the end of the evening, it turned out that Ann, another coworker Frances, and I all had a question about my potential future pregnancy. It was Frances who raised her hand and said, “I wanna know if my coworker Cindy [pointing at me] is going to have children.” Rebecca smiled at me and closed her eyes to receive information. Her expression changed and I felt an immediate reaction in my own face and ears. I guess crestfallen is how I would best describe that moment, seeing her smile fade and a serious look cross her face. She opened her eyes and asked me solemnly, “Do you want to have children?” I was thrown.
“Well…yeah, but…” I thought about the timing and how we don’t want to get pregnant until November, and about my past of indecisiveness on the issue.
“Because I see one or two there ready, just waiting…” I don’t remember her exact wording, but as she went on I soon realized the confusion came from her SEEING that the souls of my “one or two” kids were present and unobstructed, so the only reason they didn’t yet exist is because there is something, perhaps a lack of desire, blocking them from incarnating. She also said there appeared to be some difficulty with conception.
Relieved, I explained that my husband had a vasectomy so there is no getting pregnant easily. She also seemed relieved as understanding eased her brow. She closed her eyes and looked to receive more information. I thought of how a lack of desire for these kids’ existence has certainly been the primary reason they weren’t yet on this plane; it’s what Mr. W had decided when he went for his vasectomy all those years ago. It’s the reason I wasn’t careless enough to get knocked up before Mr. W. Rebecca opened her eyes again, warned me that she’s just going to say it straight out. I got scared again. She continued, “I only see one side working.” What did that mean? She went on and described something about ducts connecting and not taking. “If he gets a reversal, only one side is going to function. I see the other side not ‘taking.’ You’d have to do more procedures, go the whole way, do other things — And he’s got a low sperm count.” She went on to describe what would happen and how slim the chances of conception are if Mr. W went in for a reversal operation.
I was relieved again. “Oh, we already looked into that, and we’re not going to do a reversal. We’re doing the whole extraction from both of us, inject in a petri dish and implantation.” She was nodding, looking again relieved herself that she was not delivering me bad news that would devastate me. She talked along with me, finishing my sentences, describing that all fertility procedures would have to be used. We know he has a low sperm count, that’s what vasectomy does, especially after a decade-plus of it. The urologist who examined Mr. W last month said as much, cuz I was hoping that we could just artifically inseminate (turkey baster) with the extracted sperm and he said they’d have to collect every day for a month to get enough sperm for that. The extraction and direct injection fertilization (ICSI) would resolve the low sperm count problem.
And then she said that I would have a boy. I couldn’t help it, I turned toward Ann and had a strong disappointing “Darn it!” reaction. I just always thought about my little girl. Maybe it was projection of myself as a little girl. But since I was in college, I’d decided (or saw) that I would have 2 kids, a boy and then a couple of years later, a girl. I guess since Mr. W and I figured we’d only have one, I’d “chosen” it to be the girl. My little Isabella. Rebecca laughed at my reaction and said, for the second or third time that night, that although her general accuracy is about 85%, she’s only about 50% accurate in reading the genders of unborn children. She said the baby just seemed to her to have a masculine energy, so maybe that’s a strong girl or a boy, she’s not guaranteeing anything. But since she said that, we started referring to this future child as “he.” I kept thinking how happy Mr. W would be to have another boy, and how disappointed Stepdaughter (and I) would be.
I took the plunge and asked about how difficult the labor and pregnancy would be. The group around me (all of whom happened to be women this evening) jumped in animatedly and joked about how of course it would be painful, but so worth it, motherhood is so rewarding, get a C-section, get drugs, get epidurals, etc. Rebecca’s eyes snapped open and she told me immediately, do NOT do a C-section unless it was absolutely a critical necessity. I said I was totally with her, I wouldn’t get unnecessary surgery. (Heh, I guess that means cosmetic surgery is out.) I wasn’t even one for drugs and I want to do this as naturally as possible. She nodded her approval and said I can get whatever pregnacy and labor counseling or training that I was comfortable with, naming a few terms I was totally unfamiliar with. The only terms I recognized were “lamaze” and “accupuncture.” I told her I’m determined to have the happiest pregnancy ever and that I wanted to abstain from epidurals during labor. She said that actually will be the case if I will it to be. She doesn’t see any issues with my pregnancy, she in fact sees the fertility procedures “taking” on the first try, and aside from a little nausea in the beginning which she assures me is common and normal, she doesn’t see any other problems. As for labor, she laughed a little and said she can SEE me in labor (in her head) and it’s not bad. I said, “Oh, so I’m not passed out or screaming or anything?”
“No, well, there’s a LITTLE screaming, but you’re fine. You can do this without the epidural. It’s bad at the transition, about 15 minutes, but leading up to it and afterwards you’re fine.” I can handle 15 minutes of “bad.” AND…I called it. See it here. I just read it earlier today. “This will be a normal healthy pregnancy, as your child will be. Healthy and normal.” I was SO happy to hear this. “And he’s smart.” She looked into some picture only she could tap into, and chuckled in amusement. “He’s REALLY smart.”
“Smart-ASS? I can totally see that.”
She laughed again and said, “You will definitely have your hands full. He’s one of those kids — like, he’s quiet and doesn’t say anything and then when he finally speaks it’s something like, ‘Can you take me to the bus cuz there’s something I need..’ ” I didn’t understand at first and then I realized she was talking about his first words. My godson’s first words also weren’t “mama” or “dada,” they came out in an argument with his mother, something about her telling him to pick up his toys or something, wherein she said to him, “Did you hear what I said?” and he responded indignantly, “Did YOU hear what I said?!” Before that, all baby babble. Rebecca looked into the ethers again, and let out another chuckle. “I can see [Mr. W] going, ‘I don’t know what to do with this kid!'” Awesome.
And then she said that it looks like we’ll have this kid, and then it’ll be 2-3 years before we decide whether to have a second kid. Interesting. I wonder if this is my girl. I know Mr. W does not want to have a fourth kid, at least not at this point. But then, a couple of years ago he didn’t want to have a third kid, and now we’re spending money to make sure we do.

When I got home, I was wired and Ann and I texted for a bit, neither of us able to sleep, excited about the stuff Rebecca told us about each of our lives. (Ann got some goooood news about hers.) And then I was inspired to hit the piano. I’m glad I have that release, because by this time I was so shockingly in love with my boy that the only way I was able to express it was by playing my heart on the piano, swaying under the enormity of the force of the energy pouring out of me. Mr. W was asleep when I came home and did not want to discuss my evening, and I was grateful for the digital piano and its plug-in headphones so that I could play as long and loud as I wanted and not have it heard anywhere but in my own head. Somehow, I felt that the music was being communicated to or from my future child(ren), somewhere up and out there. I felt very close to them tonight, like I could talk to them, reach out with my heart and touch their own.

I think that now, the excitement has worn down enough that I can finally hit the hay for a few hours before going to work tomorrow. I had started thinking about potential boy names a couple of weeks ago, caught myself, and wondered why I was bothering cuz wasn’t I going to have a girl? I guess I’m glad Rebecca’s only 50% accurate on baby gender because that’ll at least still be a surprise, then.

Oh, P.S…2012? Not the end of the physical world. The planets will all line up, which is a very unusual occurrence that hasn’t happened for thousands of years. This changes magnetic influences, so things are gonna feel or be a little weird, but it’s not apocalypse. To me, it sounds more like a “reset,” when the counters all reach 00000, to use a tracking dial metaphor. That makes sense that the Mayan calendar would end there, because everything has reached a full cycle. We don’t flip through our calendars and freak out that it ends in December; we know the year has cycled out and we get a new calendar for the next year. So it sounds like I’m getting what I was hoping for. I sort of called this one, too.

THE COMPUTER PROJECT. The desktop computer at home (where we have all our trip photos) is having major issues. The month-old two terrabyte hard drive began loading sluggishly, and audible clicks could be heard as it spun, looking for data. The concensus is that the hard drive is on the verge of crashing. Mr. W backed up the data and we went to a computer store to look into returning the old one and/or buying a new one. Since he didn’t have the receipt, he bought a new hard drive and for the first time, purchased the extended warranty. While there, he discussed the symptoms with a store techie, and learned that his particular motherboard causes problems on high density hard drives (hence clicking), so the only way to cure this is to buy a new updated motherboard ($$), which means he’ll have to update his processor chip to support the new motherboard ($$), and that means his memory should be updated, too ($$). And of course he has to replace the crashing hard drive ($). Meanwhile, he’s installed the new hard drive and is in the process of transferring data from the old to the new, to buy a little time. For me, it means I have to wait a bit until I can finish my French Polynesia vacation posts since I have one more island port, Moorea, to cover and the day we came home from the island of Tahiti.

THE INSANITY PROJECT. The makers of the P90X workout, Beachbody, listened to people complain about not having the pull-up bar or dumbbell equipment to do the intense-but-effective sessions, so they came up with Insanity. Every bit as psychotic and vomit-inducing as P90X, Insanity uses only one’s own body weight and gravity for resistance. Sounds great, but I think Insanity may be even more hardcore than P90X because it’s designed for a 60-day cycle, instead of the 90 of P90X. That both scares and excites me. I have the kit at home and am about to begin. I’m also counting on this to get me prepared for the Marine Corps Obstacle Course Challenge in September.

THE BABY PROJECT. I haven’t talked about this in specifics, yet, so here it is, for the benefit of my obsessive record-keeping and because when I searched for information, I found very little of it, so this may benefit others in our shoes. Some years ago B.C. (Before Cindy), Mr. W lost his mind (or perhaps he was being mind-controlled like a zombie) and had a vasectomy. I didn’t take our relationship very seriously initially because marriage and kids were not part of the equation for him. It wasn’t that I was set on getting married and popping out children, but I wanted the option, as I had explained to many friends that first year Mr. W and I were “hanging out.” On our 1-year anniversary, Mr. W started talking about wanting to give me “a real commitment.” I told him that was unnecessary as I didn’t believe he was any less committed as my boyfriend as he would be as my husband. The man was committed from day 1, more so than I was, except for some computer games but that’s a whole other addiction. Year 2, he started talking about possible children together. My parents were, of course, pushing for some sort of outcome to this relationship because they didn’t want me to die alone (I know, Asian fatalist gene). Mr. W’s thoughts were about artificial insemination by a family member, and one of his brothers seemed amenable to it. That way, he figured, the genetics would still be the same, or similar enough. I was not thrilled about having the conversation later in life when I would have to tell my kid, “Dad is really Uncle W, and Uncle X is really Dad, and Cousin Y is really half-sister Y, but I’m still mom…” It’s hard enough to have to re-assess and re-identify one’s own parent(s) (I think it’ll happen involuntarily), but an entire extended family, too? This kid would go nuts for awhile. Mr. W seemed to understand this and appeared open to an anonymous donor. Around this time I happened to have dinner with two doctor friends, Lily (radiologist) and Arnold (cardiologist). I blubbered about this obstacle, and both just stared back at me across the booth at Claim Jumper. They didn’t see the big deal.
“But he had a vasectomy!” I repeated.
“So?” Arnold said lightly. This is when I found out that he had taught fertility prior to going into cardiology. Apparently (apparent to him, not to me), modern medicine and technology have found a way to just go into the scrotum with a tiny syringe, before the area where the vasectomy had disconnected the vas deferens, and extract some swimmers. What happens after that was unclear to me, but I was hoping they could just use whatever they extract and put it in fluid like a donor sample, and “turkey baster” me (I think that was how Arnold characterized it). He did warn me that a smaller percentage of men, especially if they’ve had the procedure done awhile back, develop antibodies to their own sperm as a way for the body to get rid of free-roaming critters that have nowhere to go. Arnold’s lack of being impressed by our predicament gave me (and Mr. W) hope, Mr. W proposed at the end of Year 2, I accepted, and we were married on our 3rd year anniversary.
I dragged my feet on the baby thing, enjoying my lifestyle too much. Mr. W enjoyed our vacations as well, but time was more pressing for him because of the age difference. He told me a few times that I better figure out whether I want a baby because he’s not getting any younger. So somehow, we figured that we’d take our last two kid-unfriendly vacations this year (the hedonistic Polynesian vacation was #1; high-adventure Australia late fall would be #2) and then have a baby. We would be married a little over 2 years then.
I’m going to get into detail about the fertility process, so if you’re interested, click “more,” below.
(more…)

I haven’t had much computer access this week since my work CPU completely blew over the weekend, but now I have a new computer at work (sweet!) and McAfee is working again (apparently some programming glitch in its automatic updates blitzed a bunch of corporate computers yesterday and today, which includes half the courthouse’s CPUs), so this will be a catchup post of sorts. Oh, and hurray, my mouse now goes left! (The previous mouse had decided that “left” was no longer a direction it needed to go, and when I complained, I was immediately made fun of for even having a trackball mouse.)

This is my current favorite photo of our newest member of the family, baby Elle.

On the baby front, an ultrasound has determined that I’m reproductively healthy with “plenty of eggs,” so that gives me some peace of mind. I’d always wondered whether I was infertile or something since I’d never had a pregnancy accident. Turns out, I’m just not careless. So we’re thinking we’ll hit up a crazy adventure vacation in Australia/New Zealand and dive the Great Barrier Reef in late October, then settle down and make a baby after. Unfortunately, this brings my birthing age to 35, but it’s better than being pregnant IN Australia. =P

I had a great furlough day yesterday hanging with my old buddy Joe and having a seaside brunch in Laguna Beach. He’s one of few people who would walk with me just to walk, so we chatted while we put in a solid 2 hours walking around the shops in Laguna after eating. Secretly, I had wanted to walk off my mimosa before getting back in my car, but turned out he had secretly thought the same thing of me but was too polite to imply I’m a lush. We caught up and shared stories, good laughs, some good scoffs.

I went home and made a Mediterranean pie for dinner that made Mr. W’s eyes roll into his skull upon eating it. I love that my husband isn’t a picky eater and always loves everything I put together.

Mr. W and I had just spent a whirlwind weekend in Vegas. My father-in-law had hip replacement surgery last Wednesday, so Mr. W and I drove to see him on Saturday morning. My stepkidlet rearranged her work shifts so that she could come with us. My father-in-law is a trooper; he did everything he was supposed to, got up and walked around a couple of days post-surgery, and was discharged earlier than anticipated. Everyone was comfortable enough with his recovery that when Mr. W’s Gamer Bro scored 5 free tickets to see a singing act at the Las Vegas Hilton, the three of us went with Gamer Bro and his wife.

I’m now on Week 5 of the cold-turned-sinus-infection. Most of the symptoms are gone now, but I still get coughing fits (probably due to post-nasal drip). Tuesday, I hacked so hard at the gym that I threw up into my workout towel. Good thing I hadn’t eaten all day so it wasn’t a painful sort of vomiting. =P The antibiotics are all finished, so I should probably be replenishing my probiotics now. It also means I can drink, so I had a little something in the past few days; nigori sake with sushi on Monday, margarita on Taco Tuesday at Sharkees in Huntington Beach (we met up with a couple of Mr. W’s friends there since we had to go pick up our Tahiti travel docs in HB), and of course my mimosa with brunch on Wednesday in Laguna Beach. (Yeah, life’s good.) This morning I was stupid enough to go chew on some peanut taffy when visiting in another courtroom. The syrupy sweetness rolled down my already raw throat and I started coughing, gagging, convulsing. One bailiff offered to Heimlich me. I finally had some water and spit out the mouthful of candy. Okay, thanks up there; I’ll take the hint. I have no business eating candy when bikini days are just over a week away.

I was chatting with a friend the other day via text. She’s in a bad-timing rut, where it seems like everything that could go wrong are all hitting at the same time. I told her to grit her teeth and bear thru the storm, and gave her a happiness challenge. I suggested that she write a list of small easy things that make her happy, such as a hot mug of Starbucks coffee on a rainy lunchtime (it’s been raining off and on for a few weeks now, with lots of sunlight in-between; things are lovely and green!), and to do one of those items each day. She agreed, and I offered to join her in this challenge. Things I’ve thought of so far that make me happy are
* a cocktail with someone whose company I enjoy
* driving and exploring a new local area
* trying out a new restaurant
* spa-day!
* sushi
* listening to 90s R&B and hip-hop while dancing along in my car
* spooning Dodo
I remember when I was having a really bad time some years ago, and my cousin Jennifer advised me to not think about the other person or give him any consideration, and instead go do something that purely makes me happy. Sounded good, but I came up with nothing. I decided then to take better notice of things that made me happy — things that don’t involve a significant other, or even another person, necessarily. Everyone should have a simple hedonistic pleasure once in a while, just as a fluffer to life. …Or something less tasteless.

My Floridian nurse-sister Jordan posted a photo of us in Vegas and said that it was her favorite photo of us. I reciprocated by posting a photo of us on a Dr. Seuss kiddie ride in Florida, saying it was one of my favorites of us. On this ride, you sit in a big fish that spins in a circle and you can control your fish’s up-and-down movement to either avoid or go into streams of water that are randomly squirted from the mouths of other fish on the perimeter of the ride. So here’s the ensuing conversation.

Jordan: let’s do that again!
Cindy: we really need to! we didn’t explore NEARLY enough of the parks to my little heart’s content!!
Cindy: ooh, we’d need to do that soon, tho. =P
Jordan: well… at least up until your 7th month of pregnancy 🙂 just no roller coasters or things like that. But I think we can get squirted on from a fish… while sitting in a fish.
Cindy: I thought flying was the problem.
Jordan: yeah when you’re about to deliver… I’ll be the one traveling west at that point missy
Cindy: I thought you’re the one with all the good doctors and stuff! Don’t let them give me an epidural.
Jordan: I’m going to block any attempts at epidurals for you my friend… i want you to experience the JOY of labor! Just so you can say later on.. oh, in about 15 years “I went through 10 hours of HARD labor.. with NO epidural and NOTHING for pain for YOU!!… YOU!! DO. YOU. HEAR. ME?!!!” somethin’ like that.
Cindy: “You know why you’re so smart, you and your smart-ass back-talk? Because I REFUSED to take an epidural thru all FOURTEEN minutes of labor, so that YOU wouldn’t be doped up when you arrived, so that YOUR IQ wouldn’t suffer!! DO.YOU.HEAR.ME???”
Jordan: “Yeah! take THAT!” we could keep going you know…
Jordan: wait. 14 minutes? BAH HA HA HA HA HA
Cindy: YOU NEVER KNOW, OKAY?!
Jordan: Ok. *I* never know.. after having 100 kids and watching 10,000 more born. But hey. What do I know. I will spray fairy dust on you in labor? 🙂
Cindy: people thought there’s no such thing as an unstressed bride, but I proved them wrong on that, too!
Jordan: You absolutely can. I will bring crayons with me so that you can print out your delusions and color them yourself. haha.. actually… you’re going to have a fantastic and almost-pain-free labor… I just know it!

The funniest part of this conversation is…I’m not pregnant!

Today is kind of a big day. In the grand scheme of things, it will be just one step toward the myriad paths and jaunts I will soon have open before me. I would like to share my journey publicly, I think it would have some value especially since I didn’t find many personalized road maps and travel stories when I was looking, but I’m unsure of how to share it. For now, I’ll just be happy to be meeting the wizard in a little over an hour. At last, I’ll be among people who possess the magic to decipher all the mysteries thus far written in code. Wish me luck.

Because, like I had mentioned in the previous post, it seems like every time I turn around, another pregnancy announcement is made, I started wondering who would be next. I thought of one couple who got married a little before we did, who as of yet has not made such an announcement. I made the comment that they’ll probably be next. I was then accused of “racing” people.
“Racing…them?” I asked, confused.
Apparently, some people think the only reason why baby thoughts exist in my head is because I’m trying to keep up with the Jones’ Pregnancies. I found this offensive because

1) it implies I compete with what everyone else is doing and I’m just gonna jump on the bandwagon. That is not me; I resist trends if anything, and a huge decision like this is not determined by other people’s lives. When one of my childhood friends were getting married (she was the first in the “group”), my then-boyfriend had said that when I’m standing up there by her during the wedding, I’m gonna be really envious and want to get married myself. I looked at him dubiously and said that I don’t FEEL like I need to be married anytime soon. He said, “Trust me, you will; all women are like that. They watch one of their friends get married and they’re gonna start bugging their boyfriends about it.” Well, he was wrong. On her wedding day, I was happy for her, but I knew it was not for me — at least not then. It stirred no desire in me because it wasn’t my time, and I obviously wasn’t with the right person. It would’ve been crazy to marry the person I happened to be with simply because someone else got married at that time. As for competing with pregnancies, I’d never seen my friends’ pregnancies as pressure for myself; I’ve always seen it as, “Ooh, cool! I’m happy for them! Now that I’m gonna have people in-the-know, I get to find out all sorts of stuff about pregnancy and labor, things my mom wouldn’t tell me because she doesn’t want to scare me away from giving her grandbabies.” I did use them for my personal research, too, and they (especially Christi and my cousin Diana) were very helpful in relaying how bad morning sickness REALLY is, how irresistable cravings REALLY are, how hard it REALLY is to get back in shape, etc.

2) it disregards all the careful thought and consideration I’d put into this baby thing. If I came to this stage of my life thoughtlessly, simply because I’m following suit, I wouldn’t have had gone through so much debating, weighing, projecting immediate and future consequences, imagining, etc. Evidence of this is all over my blog, most explicitly in this post from January of 2009, when I suddenly realized I’m close to my pregnancy-cut-off age. A part of me wishes I were 29, so that I wouldn’t have to think about this stuff. (Mr. W had also said on several occasions after we got married that I’d better figure this baby thing out soon because he’s not getting any younger.)

3) people who would say that about me really don’t know me at all. Not just that, but they also think I’m a mindless trendfollowing drone, and they didn’t take to heart anything I’d ever said on the topic about my thoughts and desires before. That hurts.

I have a secret hope about 2012. I don’t believe it’s going to be the end of the world; I think it’s supposed to be end of the World As We Know It. That’s a good thing, because the World As We Know It is shooting down the crapper with alarming velocity. I don’t have to get into examples, because they’re everywhere; politics, economics, sociology, accountability, responsibility, health…did you guys know that in this generation of American children, chances of getting childhood Type II diabetes is 1 in 3? That’s ridiculous for such a preventable disease. And look what we’re doing to our planet.

Simultaneously, it seems like everyone’s having babies around me. Is it responsible to bring a child into a world like this? What if the world ends in 2 years and I have to worry about a toddler on top of stressing over the safety of my parents, my immediate family, and my cat? I’ve actually had apocalyptic nightmares in which I was okay until I realized I have no idea where Dodo is, whether he got out okay or had drowned, and I would break into panicked hysteria. I imagine it’d be worse worrying about a child. So it’s a good thing the world is not ending in 2 years. It’s merely going to shake off its cancers and carry on with renewed vigor. Right? That would explain the presence of all these children. It seems like 80% of my friends are either pregnant or have recently had a baby. These aren’t just newlyweds from all the weddings I’d attended in the past couple of years, some of these are people who have been married for up to a decade or more and suddenly find themselves pregnant. A few aren’t even married. What’s with this mad rush to incarnate right now? Do all these souls want to see 2012 from this side of the fence? If that’s the case, then we’re in for something really special.

If the spiritual world wants so badly to be on this side right now, I reasoned with myself, then even with obvious fertility impediments, I should just miraculously find myself pregnant, right? Of course that didn’t happen. I may not have the urgency of a spiritual being in fetal form pushing on me to bring it into physical existence, but I do feel a different kind of influence. It is that influence, every bit as urgent intangibly as it may be to my friends physically, that propelled me to action today. It had been floating for awhile, taking more form in conversations in the past weeks, and had nearly solidified in serious discussions over the past few days. We’ll see what this all means soon.