jaysaint Getting it all down on paper…

I wish someone were here to take a picture for stuffonmycat.com. I’m sitting cross-legged on the couch. Sam is taking up my lap and then some. On top of him is a yellow striped throw pillow and on top of the pillow is my laptop. I’m typing this with my arms pulled way up like chicken wings. But now that Fat Sam is only about 20 days from moving to his satellite location I really can’t refuse him anything. I do wish someone would bring me a glass of water, though.

I have babies on the brain this weekend, and not even my own potential babies. Dear friends had their little girl on Friday, which completes the girlie trifecta for my Atlanta friends. Now we have an Eirinn, a Lucy and a likely Harper (still TBD for sure.) I feel that Harper (if Harper it is) and Roan Atticus should have a special bond.

On a totally different note, my web editor Lily is carrying twins and was admitted to the hospital on Thursday because she was having contractions at about 24 weeks. They put her on many drugs to stop labor, but I haven’t heard how it’s going in a few days. I’ve been trying to call this afternoon but the hospital phone lines are screwed up. I admit to being a little bit apprehensive about what I might hear.

And now I will use the medical theme to make yet another transition. I went to an acupuncturist for the first time in my life on Saturday. My attitude can be best described as acupuncture is the thing in my life that I understand the least but still believe in. My doctor is absolutely lovely and I left feeling sure that I would never feed myself into the maw of western medicine again without taking eastern along too. Some elements I expected to love and did. There was a lot of conversation before any needles came out, and he took a completely holistic approach. He wanted to know how I sleep and eat and carry stress and much more. But what was unexpected and totally disarming was how affectionate and paternal he was with me. I’ve never fully registered that my doctors would only touch me when absolutely necessary and then only in the most clinical way possible. When Dr. Pai wanted to reassure me about something, he would put his hand over mine for a moment. And there was a moment when I was describing a particularly weird habit of mine. He made big eyes and I said, “Dr. Pai, I’m crazy!” and he put his hand on top of my head with a big smile and said, “I’m crazy too. It’s okay.” Love love love. And the needles were fine, hardly stung a bit — and that was mostly from apprehension. Once I adjusted they didn’t hurt a bit.

UPDATE: I just got an email (with photos — hooray!) from the new mom. Harper Noelle it is! She looks like her dad, which is fitting as she was born on his birthday. I guess he can kiss any special b-day treatment goodbye. Which, I am sure, he will be happy to do.

I was going to talk about mustard now, but I really can’t top the baby news. I’ll move on to that later.

I am TIRED y’all.

But that’s okay, because life goes more or less back to normal tomorrow. And one of my resolutions (which I’m not terribly formal about) is to do better with getting enough sleep on a reasonable schedule. I’ve come home too many nights between 7 and 8, already almost asleep on my feet. I know sometimes work is going to twist my tail hard enough that I will leave staggering, but in general I know I can do better. I have actually been known to sleep all night on top of the bed in my work clothes, stockings and bra included. So know we all know that I can do better.

We started the day off the lucky way, with black-eyed peas and collard greens courtesy of our friends’ James and Charles’ open house. We also started the day with sangria, frittata, creme brulee French toast, vegetarian chili and brown rice, shrimp cocktail, spice cake and pound cake. I also had a glass of water.

And if all that food wasn’t enough (it wasn’t), tomorrow we can go to Zabar’s because my awesome dad gave us a gorgeous $300 gift certificate for Christmas. People, do you know how many pounds of Spanish olives and marinated stem-on artichokes I can buy with that? I’m going to eat until I fall down.

Originally we’d hoped that we’d get a baby in 2007, now that seems wholely unrealistic. Now I’m trying to approach it as a way to mindfully enjoy our last unencumbered year. We’re creeping closer to having our prep covered. All our non-immigration paperwork is back except for one document still at the Chinese Embassy in DC. We need three more “family and friends” photos and a few sets of passport photos to include, but we should be able to wrap that up this week. My hope is to be sending our dossier off to our agency in about a week. Then all we’ll have left to do (at least for about a year) is send good juju to immigration to try to get them to move our paperwork along.

And now I will move myself along to wash up for bedtime, which will be rigorously enforced.