jaysaint Getting it all down on paper…

We hired a contractor to strip out the brain-melting lead paint in the nursery and the flaky door frames. He told us it would take four or five days. Being a cynic, I assumed ten days. We figured we could bear that, particularly as I was going to be out of town for four of those days. So we’ve sort of dragged everything around the apartment and have been trying to ignore the chaos and congestion in our 750 square foot apartment. Work started three weeks ago and is half done. I was not sufficiently cynical. Had I been, we would have put more work into truly re-arranging the apartment because I am just about DONE with tripping over paintings, paperwork and breast pumps.

In other news:

I won’t get into a big work rant here, but the gist of it is that I run several media blogs that — aggregate — account for hundreds of thousands of page views. And sometimes readers use the anonymity of the internet to act like such total tools that I feel I could really make time to give each one of them a swift kick.

Remember how I said my darling little fetus didn’t need antibiotic exposure? Now I am ready to offer sexual favors (or my husband’s, should that be the way folks swing) in gratitude to the developers of azithromycin. I’m not better yet, but I slept for six hours straight last night — first time in ten days.

My doctor wants to see me every two weeks now instead of once a month. I think… I might be having a baby soon.

I got my first bit of swank baby gear. After buying everything under the sun used (which I still love) I went for broke on the stroller. Now, the context is that my dad called and said, “My baby gift to you is a stroller. Get anything you want and charge it to me!” His only condition is that I get a double so that Camille’s spot is waiting for her. So I found the schmancy Phil and Ted Sports Buggy, which converts from single to double. FedEx is winging it to us as I type. We got the bright blue model. I wanted lime green, but they were out. I could have waited for a re-stock, but I found the buggy on sale and decided I couldn’t cost my dad another $100 just to get my preferred color. Nothing wrong with blue.

Our little air conditioner cannot keep up with this heat. Not okay. But I don’t want to buy a new one because the lead-paint man took most of our money. And as of this morning, the cold water in our bathroom has slowed to a trickle. It seems perhaps it is somehow blocked in a pipe in the wall. The super is coming to look tomorrow, but I am apprehensive about what this means for our checking account. We’ve also gotten the additional fun news that we may face (along with all the other residents) an assessment to the tune of around $10K to replace all the windows in the building. I haven’t the first clue where we’ll get that kind of money. Maybe Zoe can get a job.

I’m having a day (perhaps easily explained by some of the above) where I really just want to quit my job and leave NYC behind. But… what could I do and where could we go?

I was working on a theory for a while that my pregnancy caused other women to respond to me with unprecedented (for me) warmth. I’ve always had a small handful of important women friends, and sometimes just one best girlfriend who I felt close to. When I was younger I was one of those girls who always had more guy friends. I wasn’t the trampy girl they were trying to score with, and I wasn’t the outcast girl who had disdain for the “normal” girls, but somehow I always felt like I understood, and was understood by, my male friends more easily. And I’ve got some still who are essential to me.

Now I have this new dimension in my life, which is a larger group of women. Some of them I’m super close to, some of them I’m getting to know better all the time. And it’s so much easier for me than it ever was before. At first I chalked this all up to my theory that I started this post with. I was calling it Mommy Cred, in that I figured having a baby gave me this amazing experience in common with other women. And I’m sure there’s something to that. But I’m re-evaluating that, because I don’t think that’s really it. My first clue was that some of these women I’ve drawn closer to over the past year don’t have kids. So… that’s really the only clue I need to blow the mommy theory.

Here’s what it is: I think people who’ve known me for a while would agree that “guarded” is not a bad way to describe me (if you’re feeling kind). But for me it was getting pregnant, or maybe more accurately my decision to try to become a mom, that forced me to drop a lot of habitual defenses. I can’t be honest and still maintain that I believe I have any control over what’s about to happen to me. I think maybe that made me more accessible. I hope it didn’t make me more likeable, since it wasn’t my impression that people didn’t like me. Just that people didn’t necessarily feel immediately comfortable around me. And now they seem to be more so.

Backing up this theory is that I know both men and women who have always had the gift of being very emotionally present (to speak momentarily in a way that annoys me) and they’ve always had what I feel like I’m building now. It just happens that impending motherhood — or the desire for motherhood — has helped develop that in me.

It wasn’t something I anticipated, but I’m so pleased. Some days I want to yell, “Who wants kisses and presents?”

What kicked off this meditation is my coming home today to a package from . In it were four beautiful hand-made swaddling blankets, including one that has moved through several families already. I absolutely love them, and am so pleased by the idea that they have comforted other babies before they will comfort mine. A proper thank you note will, of course, be issued. But such a lovely thought deserves a public acknowledgment.

You would think that the fact that I haven’t left the apartment since work on Friday would mean that I’ve gotten some stuff done around here. Not true. I’ve been just sick enough to be content laying on the couch, staring at the ceiling fan. Maybe I should add autism to my list of symptoms. Yesterday I was able to add not-dangerous-but-still-unsettling Braxton Hicks contractions and an un-stanchable nosebleed. At midnight last night I was leaning far forward with an ice pack on the bridge of my nose when I coughed a bit and got blood all over the front of my shirt. (Sorry, gross). Then I shrieked, “I can’t win! I just can’t win!” and then had a huge coughing fit. That really made Damon laugh, which made me feel a little bit better.

Bush just commuted Scooter’s prison term. I can’t justify my shock.

Since I spent the entirety of my last post complaining, I won’t do the same this time. But I do have to point out that I have a nasty virus and have been laid up for three days now. Miserable.

The good news is that it struck Friday, rather than Thursday, which is the day we went to the Harry Potter sneak peek at Warner Bros. Getting into a screening is the best way to see a movie because you get the group viewing experience, but there are no teenagers invited. It’s a gang of interested, movie-fan adults. I won’t say much about the movie since I doubt folks who read this have had a chance to see it, other than to say I love Emma Thompson even when she gets only about three minutes of screen time.

Seeing the film has made me wonder if I can re-read the first six books before the seventh comes in the mail in a few weeks. It seems unlikely, but I am a super-fast reader. Right now I have that sick head thing where I don’t much enjoy reading, so maybe it will depend on how quickly I snap back.

Speaking of snapping back, I think I’ll go lie back down in an effort to speed that along.