Grouse: a sort of bird, I believe
My mother keeps telling me I should enjoy being pregnant, that it only comes along a few times in each lifetime.
Um, like puberty, which I enjoyed so much because it was the only chance I'd ever get to feel that way? Or menopause, which I also hear is a once-in-a-lifetime stellar experience? Hmmm.
Don't get me wrong. I'm thrilled to be pregnant, glad that it happened easily for us and is going well so far. I know exactly how lucky we are in this, and I'm profoundly grateful.
That doesn't mean that it's enjoyable, any more than dentist's visits are fun just because I'm lucky enough to have an employer who provides me with dental insurance. Here's a secret; I'm impatient and product-oriented and if I could do this some other way, that didn't involve backaches and an enormous belly and months of feeling awful and the pain of labor/delivery? I would so be there.
I think part of the problem is that my default setting is stuck on "whine." I complain. A lot. Ask me straight up, anytime, and I'll tell you I'm one of the luckier people on earth and that my life is good. But you might not know it to listen to me. And, you know, that's okay, I think, as long as I remember to remember the core truths. I didn't post on Thanksgiving, because my house was full of wonderful people whom I love and who love me, but I have so much to be thankful for, and I know it.
In any case, as we ease out of the second trimester and into the third, all seems well, if uncomfortable - I finally gained that weight my doctor was telling me I needed, and between that and the increased fetal kicking, *oof*. And even work is turning around, though at the cost of extending some deadlines well into the month of December and even January. I may even get holiday cards out this year, or my taxes done in January, or some other such unprecedented-but-amazing thing.
Apropos of none of this:
hypocrisy noun. ME.
[Old French ypocrisie (mod. hypo-), irreg. from ecclesiastical Latin hypocrisis from Greek hupokrisi acting of a theatrical part, from hupokrinesthai answer, play a part, pretend, formed as HYPO- + krinein decide, determine, judge. The etymological spelling with h- became current (as in French) in 16.]
The practice of falsely presenting an appearance of virtue or falsely professing a belief to which one's own character or conduct does not conform; dissimulation, pretence; an instance of this.
So, not related to Hippocrates, then. That's good. God, I ♥ my Shorter OED.
The other morning around 4, as I drove to a meeting, I was listening to NPR talking about environmental depradation in Canada and oil sand mining and the rising cost of a barrel of oil. They'd just gotten done reporting a piece on torture in Chinese prisons (and how the US had still not agreed to similar inspections of its own detainment facilities) and I got to the apex of a bridge and saw the bay laid out around me, all refineries and factories and highways and miles of glittering, shining humanity and I thought, "This is a civilization at the height of its decadence. Look at all these people using all these resources."
And then I realized that I was commuting to a meeting three hours away, a single driver in a gas-fueled vehicle that holds five, one of two such vehicles in our two-person family. And I was drinking a Starbucks product. And I rolled my eyes at myself and started thinking about hypocrisy instead.
Um, like puberty, which I enjoyed so much because it was the only chance I'd ever get to feel that way? Or menopause, which I also hear is a once-in-a-lifetime stellar experience? Hmmm.
Don't get me wrong. I'm thrilled to be pregnant, glad that it happened easily for us and is going well so far. I know exactly how lucky we are in this, and I'm profoundly grateful.
That doesn't mean that it's enjoyable, any more than dentist's visits are fun just because I'm lucky enough to have an employer who provides me with dental insurance. Here's a secret; I'm impatient and product-oriented and if I could do this some other way, that didn't involve backaches and an enormous belly and months of feeling awful and the pain of labor/delivery? I would so be there.
I think part of the problem is that my default setting is stuck on "whine." I complain. A lot. Ask me straight up, anytime, and I'll tell you I'm one of the luckier people on earth and that my life is good. But you might not know it to listen to me. And, you know, that's okay, I think, as long as I remember to remember the core truths. I didn't post on Thanksgiving, because my house was full of wonderful people whom I love and who love me, but I have so much to be thankful for, and I know it.
In any case, as we ease out of the second trimester and into the third, all seems well, if uncomfortable - I finally gained that weight my doctor was telling me I needed, and between that and the increased fetal kicking, *oof*. And even work is turning around, though at the cost of extending some deadlines well into the month of December and even January. I may even get holiday cards out this year, or my taxes done in January, or some other such unprecedented-but-amazing thing.
Apropos of none of this:
hypocrisy noun. ME.
[Old French ypocrisie (mod. hypo-), irreg. from ecclesiastical Latin hypocrisis from Greek hupokrisi acting of a theatrical part, from hupokrinesthai answer, play a part, pretend, formed as HYPO- + krinein decide, determine, judge. The etymological spelling with h- became current (as in French) in 16.]
The practice of falsely presenting an appearance of virtue or falsely professing a belief to which one's own character or conduct does not conform; dissimulation, pretence; an instance of this.
So, not related to Hippocrates, then. That's good. God, I ♥ my Shorter OED.
The other morning around 4, as I drove to a meeting, I was listening to NPR talking about environmental depradation in Canada and oil sand mining and the rising cost of a barrel of oil. They'd just gotten done reporting a piece on torture in Chinese prisons (and how the US had still not agreed to similar inspections of its own detainment facilities) and I got to the apex of a bridge and saw the bay laid out around me, all refineries and factories and highways and miles of glittering, shining humanity and I thought, "This is a civilization at the height of its decadence. Look at all these people using all these resources."
And then I realized that I was commuting to a meeting three hours away, a single driver in a gas-fueled vehicle that holds five, one of two such vehicles in our two-person family. And I was drinking a Starbucks product. And I rolled my eyes at myself and started thinking about hypocrisy instead.
posted by The Stute Fish at 19:49
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