Hmpf.

Of the good:
The document that constitutes the first half of this project I'm managing is finally published and it looks gorgeous, on a cursory skim - almost 500 pages of neat, carefully formatted text, all ready to send out into the Big Wide World! Hooray! You can't even see the blood, sweat, and tears that stain every page...how do they keep their whites so white?

Of the not-so-good:
Neither my organization nor my director nor my predecessor nor myself nor anyone associated in any way with the entire back-end process of the document on our end is named in the document itself, nor in its acknowledgments. All of the people in the client's office who so much as breathed on it are in there, but not a single nod to us. That is really not fucking on, people.

Freudian typo

Sometimes, when typing up particularly polite or political emails for work, I go to sign them, "Best," as a parting courtesy word, and end up typing "Beset." I think my subconscious is trying to tell me something about my job.

That said, I have great hope for the direction of this project after the past week's meeting and discussions.

Squid update

33 weeks and ticking...

When I got back from Germany, I had a day of prep, a day of all-day grueling meetings in Sacramento, and then a prenatal appointment. Whoa, hectic! The prenatal appointment was pretty routine - They checked weight and urine composition and heartbeat (link goes to a .wav file of the squid's fetal heartbeat - they let me record it on my cell phone, so cool) and then I got measured, which is essentially the doctor with a tape measure checking to make sure the uterus is growing at about the right rate.

Well, I'm typing away on my cell, sending the .wav file to myself and grinning, and the doctor (I really like my doctor) says, "You're looking a little on the small side - I'd like to do an ultrasound just to check." My first thought was "YAY ultrasound!" because I really like actually getting to see the squid, and we haven't had one for two and a half months now. But then I was in the waiting room and they were trying to get me a same-day appointment, and I kind of woke up a bit and had a wee panic. So I said to the doctor, "We are just checking, right?" and he said yes.

I toddled over to the ultrasound facility and they squeezed me in - the admission code in the computer said "Pregnancy complications" but I figured they probably had that code for any ultrasound that wasn't on the regular first-or-second-trimester schedule. The poor harried ultrasound tech was kind enough to double-check sex for me (yup, definitely a boy) and take some prints of the squid's face once she finished her measurements - and then I was sent out to the waiting room to wait until the doctor could review the results. Well, I thought that was a bit odd - I mean, last time they just called me the next day and told me the measurements were perfect - but I waited for about 45 minutes and then the doctor called through.

It turns out that the ultrasound showed that I have low amniotic fluid indexes - basically, young Ray is swimming in a very shallow swimming pool. This could be due to a number of factors, some simple, some less so, so the doctor had me go up to labor and delivery for the afternoon and overnight, where they have pumped more fluid into me through the IV drip (between that and the water I'm still drinking, it's about 200 ounces in 14 hours so far) in hopes of raising the amniotic fluid levels back to normal. This was very scary at first - to go from "everything's fine, just checking because you're a little small" to "6-20 hours in hospital" is a real mental adjustment. Apparently I was pretty dehydrated - I feel like I drink water constantly, but maybe not enough. I think I'd rather have it be my fault and have the guilt and an easier fix than have it be something else that isn't my fault but which I also can't control or make better.

My mother came down and sat with me all last evening and this morning and took care of the dogs and helped keep my mind off it all, god bless her. And poor Himself called from Bangalore when he woke up and got my email - I think in some ways this whole thing is scarier for him than it is for me, because I have my support systems and knowledgeable people surrounding me and reassuring me, and I know what's going on all the time. Whereas for him, he just knows I'm in the hospital, and even though everything's probably fine, that's still scary to think about when you're in a different continent and time zone. What a time to have complications - the only two weeks we are separated out of the entire nine months!

Murphy, you and your law? Suck.*

Links related to low amnitoic fluid (disregard the "birth defect" notes in the "possible cause" section, as the doctor has fairly definitively assured me that that's not the case here):

• americanpregnancy.org
  
• babycentre.co.uk
  
• pregnancyweekly.com

There's a strong likelihood that I will need to be induced a few weeks early (2-4?) but the doctor says the squid looks fine other than being a bit small and seems to be doing well. (Part of the reason I wasn't worried at first is that he's so very active - bonking around in there at all hours of the day and night.) So we're pretty sure no harm's been done and everyone will come out just fine.

Back from the hospital, six hours (and at least 64 more ounces) later...
Well, I've had a third ultrasound and seen the doctor, and it seems to have been mostly brought on by the combination of international travel on Sunday and this huge meeting that ate my Tuesday. But I'm to rest, drink lots of fluids, do nothing strenuous (I have a license to sloth!) and they'll re-check my fluid levels on Tuesday, and we may know more then. Early induction still seems likely, but I'm hoping to hold out until March, at which point we'll be well within the normal range and the squid will be fully baked to my satisfaction. My belly is visibly bigger with all this new fluid in it, for sure...I feel stretched, kind of. I think if I didn't have this damn cold, I'd actually be feeling pretty good, but as it is, I'm going to take a nap and then drink another few quarts and then go to bed.

On the plus side of this whole ordeal, I've gotten to meet a lot of the hospital staff and get more used to the equipment, rooms, and procedures, and I sure as hell have gotten a big fat reminder to drink more water. I got a few more ultrasounds, which are always neat (I can see the squid's spine! and his ribs! all four chambers of his wee beating heart! and his looong umbilical cord!) and got to listen to his steady heartbeat for hours, which sounds often like a small angry dog, but can also resemble a galloping horse, a drum, or a train, depending on how he is swimming and what he is doing.

Amusingly enough, I almost fainted when they started the IV; that's a real first for me, as needles and blood have never bothered me much before. I got all woozy and flushed and broke out in a sweat and had to close my eyes and breathe deeply and everything! The nurse called me a "delicate flower". All of you who know me may now fall over laughing.

* Though God knows this pregnancy has been far, far, far from a case of "whatever can go wrong will go wrong," so I should not complain.

Revelations

You know what goes together like shoo-wop shoo-waddy-waddy yadda yadda?

Knitting and Kegel exercises. Seriously, you have to count for both. And mostly sit still for both. And you can vary your Kegel holds by your pattern - do a row of hold-for-the row, a row of hold-only-on-purl, a row of short holds for an alternating rib, you name it. I'm shite at finishing knitting projects these days, and even more shite at remembering my Kegels, even though they're extra-important now, as my due date approaches. So this? Is the perfect solution.

< /overshare>

Perhaps you had to be there, but...

Last night Himself and I had dinner with a friend of ours who is also over from the States on business. Somewhere between the appetizer and the main course, said friend leaned back in his chair and asked, out of the blue, "So, if you had a time machine, what time period would you go to, and what would you take with you?" Himself, because he's a bit odd, decided he'd like to go argue philosophy with Hobbes, whereas I muttered something about history being a sucky place to be female, but maybe I'd like to meet some suffragettes...

Of course, nobody asks a question like that if they haven't thought of their own answer, so we turned the tables. "And you?" we asked. "What would you do?"

"Well," said our friend, "I think I'd like to go back to the Middle Ages..."

"And start a boyband!" Himself crowed, interrupting.

Our friend looked poleaxed - that clearly had not been what he'd been about to say - but I almost died laughing. And if you know Himself, try to imagine him spontaneously, even gleefully, saying any sentence with the word "boyband" in it, and you'll get a bit of the reason why.

Time machine! Middle ages! Boyband! This is never not going to be funny to me, I am sure.

Noodling

I am having the most leisurely vacation ever. Which is sort of odd, considering that I'm also getting a lot of work done. There's something about being home - the telephone ringing, emails coming in, grocery shopping, unloading the dishwasher or cycling the laundry, letting the dogs out, planning to do any of those or a thousand other things any minute now - that makes it hard to feel totally relaxed. Whereas here, wow. I screwed up my recovery from jet lag with a mid-day nap, but I still have had time for work, and a wee sightseeing stroll, and breakfast, and a few hours in an internet cafe, and some reading. I don't have the energy for some of the hikes or the garden climbs in the area, but just noodling about is really pretty okay; I'm not a German history or culture buff, so i won't wither away if I miss an essential monument or twenty.

I had an adventure today trying to find a tailor with absolutely no German at my command, and once I found one, explaining what I wanted and finding out how much it cost and when it would be done. It's been...more than a decade since I travelled anywhere where I couldn't at least stumble about in the lingua franca (if we can call English one of the linguae francae of India, as much as it's got any) and the exciting combination of a five-word vocabulary (hello, please, thank you, yes, no), cognate guesswork, and pantomime (plus diagrams, and a quick note from the concierge that said, "I would like these pants taken up" in German) got me to the shoe repair shop, where they sent me to the tailor, who had me try the pants on and pinned them, and told me they would be ready Monday. I feel a disproportionate sense of excitement and accomplishment about it all, as I am usually more likely to just decide not to do something than to make a fool of myself trying. I keep trying to tell myself that I am an educated person and I know many things, and that German is just not among them. But that's not very comforting when one is in Germany and less articulate than the average two-year-old, if better-behaved.

On my way to the tailor, I ambled out to the old bridge, where there is a statue of a monkey holding a mirror, and some mice. Rumor has it that touching the mirror means you will return to Heidelberg, touching the monkey's fingers is good for wealth, and that touching the mice is good luck for fertility. I took my gloves off and dutifully touched the monkey (trying not to think about Dieter from Saturday Night Live and failing) on his nose (forgetting which bit was essential), the mirror (why not?), and then I touched the mice, not just because we want two kids, but because I know so many people from my online conception/pregnancy/parenting board and elsewhere who are having trouble conceiving and carrying to term. I thought of them all and petted the wee brass mice and hoped it might help. It can't hurt, anyway; I might go back again in a few days (the statue's not far) and think about a few more people I forgot in the first round. And maybe hit those monkey fingers, because wealth is nice, too.

Yesterday I took a steep hike up to the ruined castle and puttered about there for 45 minutes or so around sunset. Very pretty, very ruined. Of course, my favorite parts were the frescoes that had the funny expressions. See, when we travel, Himself always comes back with beautiful human interest portraits and stunning architectural shots and suchlike, photos that really capture the flavor of a place. Whereas I end up with rolls full of brass mice and silly lion sculptures. Half my India photos were goats in tuktuks and donkeys eating rubbish. I am a photographic Philistine.

Travelin'

Greetings from the land where the compound word is King!

Seriously, who strings together as many letters as Germans? It's fun to say the words, even if you don't speak the language, just to marvel at the length of it all, but eventually you run out of breath. We're in Heidelberg, which is gorgeous and sort of classically What Germany Looks Like In My Head, and we've done half a day of just getting oriented and trying to adjust to the time zone and recover from the plane flight. I didn't finish all my shit before I left, so I'm hanging out in our hotel (which looks oddly like a Teutonic Hawa Mahal, and has a nice view of the castle on the hill) surrounded by documents, typing up a report. Yay, vacation! Well, I knew I'd be working, so. I'd just hoped not to bring my deadlines with me quite like I did.

The plane flight itself was unpleasant. To all y'all pregnant folks out there, I'd recommend doing your travel between weeks 19 and 27, because week 31 is a little late. I swear it's not just that I'm pregnant, though. Airplane seats are getting palpably smaller. I had a little attack of claustrophobia when Himself and I switched seats briefly so he could have the aisle. I was trying to work on my laptop but things kept touching me, everywhere - the seat in front brushed my knees, the tray table hit my stomach, the small children behind me kicked my seat, the armrests and elbows of the other passengers hemmed in my arms, and I started getting panicky and flailing a little in my head and had to give up on working and go sit in the back of the plane on the floor for about an hour. Until I saw a little girl in the next aisle use an airsick bag with dubious accuracy, and decided that maybe I could just sleep in my seat, if I stayed very still. Himself, however, graciously ceded the aisle to me once again, saving the day and my sanity.

Air travel seems designed to play on all my neuroses; they rummaged through my purse at the security checkpoint, too. Augh! I'm not a horribly private person, but please to not touch my computer or my purse, peoples. *twitch* I'm so totally playing the pregnant card for all it's worth on the way back, to see if I can force the upgrade. I have amassed some serious belly, at this point, and I'm not afraid to use it.

I have also now seen the hands-down worst movie known to Man. This beats out Highlander, and I never thought I'd say that. Little Manhattan is a sappy romantic comedy set in, natch, upper-class New York. With eleven-year-old protagonists. I watched it with the sound off, and tried not to pay attention at all, and it still hurt my brain. Lots of shots of angsty small white boy and cute peppy big-eyed girl. Gratuitous karate. Weird fantasy sequences seemingly cut out of romcom assignments for an undergraduate scriptwriting course, in which the viewer is bludgeoned about the head with a heavy lovestruck-11-year-old-boy POV, including a technicolor running-across-the-grass-to-embrace scene. Also, did you know that in New York it is always pleasantly sunny and clean, and grade-school-age yuppie children are allowed to walk around in Central Park without any supervision? Because it's true. Anyway, ow. Why was I awake for that, and not for most of Wallace and Gromit: Curse of the Were-Rabbit? I have terrible sleep timing.

In any case, we made it. And I have found bottled water and bananas and a warm hat, so all is right with the world. I'm not really sure why I came - there was a lot of "why not" involved, I think, and it will be a long while before non-domestic travel is this simple again - but I'm glad I'm here, and I'm looking forward to planning out some day trips, working on a few things that are not (for a change) on deadline, and enjoying some leisurely wanders about the town. I'll be available by email (checking in about once a day) if you need me.

Work angst, redux.

My job made me cry again today. I'm so tired of scrambling to jump through hoops on shifting timelines and having useless time-consuming deliverables added in on no notice. I'm so tired of feeling like I'm trying to do my job despite my clients, instead of for them.

The best part about this, of course, is that my dream job has opened up. The one that I targeted my grad school studies toward, the one that hasn't been open to my knowledge since I got my Master's, the one I am just-qualified-enough to do well, but which would stretch and improve me in a million important ways, the one that is in the specialty area I want to work in. It's only ten minutes away, in a work environment I have thoroughly checked out and would love to be part of. And I'm too pregnant to apply.

Also, my freelance job emailed me to tell me there's an important meeting for the new project on Monday. Thanks for the, um, five days of notice? I mean, I'll be on a plane to Germany, but it was nice that you thought of me. And, oh, by the way, that's great that you got the contract months ago. I really appreciate your letting me know (except for how you totally didn't until I got this email about the meeting), since I'm written in as the evaluator. Thanks. And what's that? Would I like to be part of a third grant with you? Gosh, I'd love to, but I have to wash my hair.

Sometimes I feel bad about my disillusioned, cynical attitude toward my work. And then days like today happen, and I remember that it's really not just me. I hope I can move on after this to something that reminds me of why I love this field, why it's important and dynamic and interesting. Because it is. I want so badly to love my work, but I feel like I keep getting the rug yanked out from under me.

Heartfelt

Dear God,

Please watch over adolescents. Save them from themselves.

It's clear nobody else has a chance. So much love and fear and frustration and hope goes into watching them struggle, but there is so little that can actually be done against their (often painfully misguided) certainty and determination. Everyone who is outside that sphere can only watch in impotence, hampered by the inability to act, to fix, to impart any sort of useful information or knowledge. And they're miserable too, angry or distant or misunderstood or blaming or feeling out of control or all of it at once. Isn't there a better way to make children into adults than this?

I'm not saying some don't make it through on a relatively even keel. Some do, though I think they're probably few and far between; I know my mother was saying to me just the other day that she never thought I would have a typical adolescence, since I was such an odd kid, but I went textbook right around age thirteen. My Grammy always said, "Bury them when they're twelve and dig them up when they're twenty," and I thought for years she meant because they're so annoying, but now I think maybe it's just to keep them out of harm's way. I want to wrap all teenagers in bubble wrap to cushion them from the world.

There are too many angry violent lost young boys and angry defiant lost young girls. The injury and casualty rates for adolescence are appalling. So, God, keep them out of cars with drunk drivers, make them use condoms, and let them survive their poor choices when they make them and move on to make better ones. Recent brain studies show that decision-making faculties are not fully developed until the early twenties; I'm not sure mine kicked in until my mid-twenties, not fully. There's a sense of the future, of the long run, that is so crucial to deciding what to do in the now, and I'm not sure that that comes to us, really, until later in life.

I mean, I give credit to divine intervention/sheer dumb luck/happy random chance that I survived adolescence, myself.

---

I've been sitting on this post for several days, refining and poking at it, trying to make it say what I've been thinking. Some of you may know the situation with my brother, and how scared and frustrated and helpless my family is feeling in the face of his anger and unhappiness. Some of you may know my friend J, who lost her son Patrick several years ago to depression-related suicide in his senior year of high school. And some of you may know another online friend of mine, whose son committed suicide on the 27th of December, 2005, after struggles of various kinds. There is and was no lack of love or caring or attempts to help these sweet boys, but conversely, it sometimes seems there is and was no way to get through to them with messages of support, or love, or possibility, or hope. My prayers are with all teenagers and their families, because there but for the grace of God are/were we all. And God, we could use a little more grace down here.

From my friend's son's obituary:

[Her son] died Tuesday, December 27, 2005, in Seattle.

In lieu of flowers, his family requests that donations be made for a memorial well to be drilled at Kisa School in Nansana, Uganda. Donations may be sent to the nonprofit foundation L’una-cef, PO Box 595, Bothell, WA 98041-0595. For more information, go to http://www.lwa-kisa.org/.

Although he was only 18, [her son] had a great concern for social justice and for other people. He would enjoy the knowledge that loved ones celebrated his life with something that significantly improved the lives of others.

About the Need for a Well

Kisa School, Nansana, stands on two acres of land and has grown to include 500 students ages 3 to 14, mostly orphans, 20 teachers, 10 assistants as well as 6 other adults who help on a daily basis.

From day one water has been problematic. Initially two men hauled water in pails by bicycle to the school. As the school grew, a water pipe was installed to bring water from a distance. However, no water flowed for 9 months. When water does flow, a nearby chieftain claims payment. At the moment, water is being hauled over one mile from a nearby river. Water is also collected from the roof drains during the rainy season.

To ensure a consistent, secure water supply for the children, Kisa need to drill a well within the school compound. It is estimated that drilling equipment and pump will cost a minimum of $10,000. The villagers will supply labor.