Livingston, I Presume

Du jour

Connery and his little sister. Shame he doesn't like her.

Debut

There is far too much in my brain to write just now, so I'll rely on an old standard. I figure three pictures should be worth 3,000 words. Right?

Thanks for all your well wishes.






 

What a Trooper!

Greetings all loyal LIP readers. Chip here again. Emerson Rose Ritter was born today, 24 May 2008 at 5:33 pm. She weighed in at 8 lbs 6 oz and measured 20.5 inches. Mommy and baby are doing great. More information and pictures to come. Thank you for all your good thoughts and wishes!

Epidural Good

Chip here, just letting everyone know that we're in the hospital and that things are in motion. Also, that epidurals are really cool! We expect that today will be our daughter's birthday. More when we can.

I'm still standing

I know what the ticker says, but it's not true. The baby is stubbornly insisting on not following the edicts of the Internet. Let's hope she remembers this when she's 15 and on whatever Web 16.0 application is all the rage. You can't trust the Internets! Anyway, I'm feeling fine and hoping that Chip will get over the cold I gave him in time to be yelled at and have his hands crushed during the delivery. That's not too much to ask, right?

Still, I must confess to being a little on edge. Connery and I had several morning scuffles that escalated far beyond what they would have normally. (Culminating in his saying to me, "You're not a very good problem solver, Mommy! That's not a good way to solve the problem.") Always sad when your 4-year-old is more capable of reason than you are, but I guess I can blame the hormones. My doctor was on duty last night, and I was rather hoping that the baby might cooperate and come while she was at the hospital. Oh well. I didn't give birth with my doctor last time, either.

I'm not the only one on edge. I needed a nap first thing this morning thanks to a crappy night's sleep and so went back to bed as soon as I got home from dropping Connery off at school. By the time I got up an hour or so later, I had three panicked phone messages from my mom and more from Chip. They were alarmed when I didn't answer my phones, but in my defense I must say that it would have been hard for me to get any sleep if I had.

Things I have but do not want

1. A goddamn cold. Thirty-nine weeks pregnant and counting, and I get a head cold. I guess this is my payback for having had a pregnancy free of morning sickness and most of the other various complaints known to the expectant. Come to think of it, I should probably say hallelujah that it's just a cold.

2. A son (whom, let's be clear, I do want very much) with the Eye Infection That Just Keeps Glooping (which is the part I don't want). On Friday we awoke to a little extra sleep in Connery's eyes. Except that when we cleaned it off, it came back. And back. And more back. I called the pediatrician's office at 8:00:01 a.m. to make an appointment, got him in by 9:30, and had the magic drops by 10:00. School was, of course, right out. We sat around and cleaned his eyes and read and cleaned his eyes some more and waited for things to get better. They are better, but they are by no means perfect.

3. A broken water pipe. On Saturday, Chip went downstairs to break into our son's assorted stores of asthma medication to find some albuterol that I could use, since my inhaler--I think--went missing in the great car-deer-murder-suicide of 2007. When I heard loud and colorful swearing, I suspected that it wasn't because there were too many kinds of Ventolin to choose from. In fact, our first foray into the outdoor watering season had led to a crack in the hose pipe, which then seeped into our basement closet. Luckily, we discovered it before it got major. Unluckily, we had--only the weekend before--moved a bunch of more or less disposable boxes out of the closet to make way for a giant and heavy chest of drawers. That is now sitting in our living room while the carpet dries. That will teach us to neglect our hose maintenance. (Somewhere in that sentence is a dirty joke, but I'm not going to make it.)

4. An endless loop of the following songs in my head: The theme to "Party of Five", which I have never watched; The theme to "Star Wars: The Phantom Menace", which I regrettably have now watched three times; The Chipmunks' Christmas song, which my son is obsessed with. Throw in the theme to "Inspector Gadget" and I should be insane by dinner.

Nope, not yet

For those of you getting alarmed at the near single-digit-ness of the pregnancy counter to the right, rest assured that I haven't gone off to give birth or anything. I'd say that I'll post when I do, but it turns out that the hospital beams its sturdy wi-fi signal into exactly two places in the hospital, neither of which are near the patient rooms. Which makes sense not at all, but who am I to judge? I mean, it's not like I was planning to live-blog the event, but I had had plans to send out an email or two afterwards.

I'm still not too crabby (I think, but ask Chip to be sure) but I am pretty tired a lot of the time. It's such a cruel joke that in these last few weeks of peaceful nighttimes a pregnant woman is denied good sleep. By all that's right and good, we should be able (and encouraged) to sleep 10 hours a night for the last month of pregnancy, given that in just a little while sleep will elude us for weeks on end. It further proves that there is a God but that he's a white, male Republican with a bad sense of humor.

Artifacts

As part of our recently unveiled "Oh, shit, the baby's coming imminently and we're never going to have time to clean/organize for years and years" campaign, we've been going through boxes that have accumulated since we moved or, indeed, were never cleaned out in the first place. Chief among those are boxes containing nothing but unfiled paper--old bills, cards, and other detritus of the so-called paperless age. (I think sometimes that I am madder about the complete lack of fulfillment of the paperless age than I am about the no flying cars thing. Toss-up.)

Mostly, this has involved a lot of separating the stuff that can be thrown away from the stuff that must be kept and from the stuff that must not be thrown away but shredded. Really fun. Every so often, though, we come across something that we have been holding onto that makes the process momentarily enjoyable. We recently found a note from our cats (ghost-written by Dan and Audrey, we suspect) in that category.

We used to have two cats in Prague, and friends like Dan and Audrey used to help us take care of them when we would go out of town. This was one of the cats:

This was Bean. What can I say about Bean that this photo doesn't illustrate? He was, to put it simply, crazy. As it turned out, he had a real medical problem that caused him to be crazy, but that didn't really make him any less weird.

Our other cat was, and is, Sotek. She came back with us from Prague, and she has continued to be the world's most agreeable cat. She's shy but friendly and demands very little (except in the way of preventative dental care). We got her first in Prague and thought that all cats would be like her. We were so wrong.

We got Bean from an American and his Czech girlfriend who lived in rural Czech Republic. We took the train out to get him and met the American at the station. We learned that the two of them had adopted a stray and had been feeding her, only to discover one morning that she was not so much a fluffy kitty as a very pregnant momma cat. Along the way he disclosed to us that the two of them were vegans and so the cat and kittens had become vegan as well. Somehow, we surmised that the felines probably didn't have a choice on that score, what with their built-to-rip-flesh teeth and all. Still, we met the kittens, decided that Bean should come home with us, and home we went.

He was far friendlier than Sotek--who was not at all pleased to see him--and wanted to be with us pretty much 24 hours a day. Including in bed. Under the covers. And he would eat anything that wasn't nailed down. At the time, we thought he was probably malnourished from the whole vegan cat lifestyle.

It was impossible to cook with Bean in the kitchen. Turn your back for a second and he would have started to devour the onions you'd just chopped or--in the case of our cleaning lady--the bread roll you left out on the counter for your lunch. Leave the kitchen and you could be sure to smell burning whiskers or a flank afire because he liked to curl up next to the open flame on the gas stove. One time he ate most of the fake fur off a Russian guest's coat that was lying in our bedroom. That was hard to explain.

Did I mention that he drooled like a St. Bernard?

When we got home from one trip, the cats had left us a note to tell us about their time with Dan and Audrey. Here's Sotek's:

(Just in case it's not clear on your screen, here's the text:

Dear Mom & Dad,

Dan & Audrey were great. They came by, reminded me to eat, and gave me some good lovin'. Hope you had a good trip.

Love,

Sotek)

And here's Bean's:

Mom Dad---

I MADE BIG MESS, ATE LOTS, DROOLED, AND WALKED ON KITCHEN COUNTER ALL DAY

LOVE,
BEAN

Fantastic

Got the Monday morning blues? Go read this post  on Shakesville.

Here's a sampling from "More and More Americans Going to Hell Despite Faith-Based Programs":

Many believed that the emergence of "Faith-Based" programs, as instituted by U.S. President George W. Bush, would eventually slow entrances to Hell to a crawl. Instead, it's been a virtual stampede. Some experts have claimed, however, that such a result was easy to predict.

"Let's see, No Child Left Behind leaves behind children, the $6-billion Reading First program has left more children unable to read, abstinence-only programs have led to higher teen pregnancy rates, etc., etc.," said a despondent Jesus Christ from a bar in Sacramento, Calif. "I'm pretty sure if the Bush Administration started a 'Nipple Protection' program, the U.S. would be a nipple-less society inside of six months."

Brilliant.

Getting Austria

I have a soft spot for Austria. When I was 18, I spent an academic term there as part of the University of Montana's Vienna Experience program. It was mind-blowing. I had been to Europe the summer before as part of the Montana Youth Choir, and I knew I wanted to go back more than anything. When I got into Chamber Chorale (at that time UM's top choir and the only way you could go on the program), I was ecstatic.

I'm pretty sure I packed more into that three months of living abroad than I have at any time before or since. We sang in the Musikverein about four days after we landed. We did homestays and a great concert in Hungary. We went to Poland. I returned to Prague. And, of course, we lived in Vienna--about a ten-minute walk from the Schoenbrunn Castle--and studied German, music, and art. As introductions to the great capitals of the world go, it was a pretty sweet one.

Even with my time in Austria--an eyeblink, really, in the scheme of things, although I have been back numerous times since--I never felt that I got a great handle on the character of its people. Austrians--and especially Viennese, it seems--are very reserved. While I had more conversations than I can count with random Czechs over my time in Prague--on subways, in squares, at market stalls--I can remember only a handful of such encounters with Austrians.

All of which is a long-winded way of introducing a link to a really interesting New York Times op-ed this morning. "Dungeons and Austrians" explores the idea that perhaps there is something more than coincidence to the fact that two horrifying cases of abduction, rape, and imprisonment have come to light in this small Alpine nation. Or perhaps not. Either way, it's an interesting read.