Melissesages

Victory! At last I got to post my own online review on Amazon (never mind that I was accidentally logged in as Tyler at the time). I reviewed a rubber dog bone by West Paws that Max the Amazing actually CAN’T destroy, despite his years of experience in “durable” dog toy annihilation. And there were only five other reviews (not a lot, for Amazon), so I even feel like my voice counts. Hooray!

Happy New Year’s to all those reading this blog. I am personally a big believer in New Years Resolutions. I know they’re hokey and everyone picks the same thing every year, but I can’t help it; I love the idea of getting a once-a-year do-over. On New Year’s Day, it doesn’t matter if you didn’t lose weight, or learn the guitar, or take up figure skating the year before. No matter how the past year went, on New Year’s you get a fresh start on whatever your goals are.

Of course, there are guidelines to follow if you want to actually be successful with your resolution. It should be something achievable, of course - not world peace or becoming a famous Hollywood actress or getting a job with NASA, for example. Those are all excellent goals, but not so much with the realism. Resolutions should be specific, too: don’t say “lose weight,” say “Lose 20 pounds.” Now, I do often chose a weight (or just general health-related) resolution, like going to the gym three times a week, or not eating meat anymore, or taking up Pilates. But this year I’m going with a new goal: make new friends.

Why, you ask? Well, it has recently come to my attention that I don’t have much of a support system here in Madison anymore. In the past year, two of my closest friends moved away, one got a boyfriend, two (!) stopped returning my calls and emails, and…that was pretty much it for friends that were mine alone. Oh, I have Tyler, of course, and we have a few couple-friends inherited from him, but in terms of women I could call up to go baby clothes shopping or have a Sex and the City Marathon? I’m pretty much tapped.

It’s pretty depressing, if only because one of my favorite things about moving to Madison was that it CAME with built-in friends. At least four of my closest female friends from high school already lived here, so I never really had to try much when it came down to friend-building. I developed my own community with my old friends, some of their friends, a coffee shop I liked, and so on, and I was pretty much good for years.

But, things change, especially in your mid-20’s. Now as circumstances are different and people are moving away, it’s like I woke up one morning and realized I had no one to call here. One minute, I was standing in a crowded room, and the next, everyone had drifted off and I was alone…only not alone, because that’s the other thing: I’m having a baby. A very real, very stress-inducing infant that will require much of my energy and drive Tyler and I to our knees with exhaustion.

And who do I call when I need a break? Who will come over for drinks after Mattie goes to bed and let me whine about my day? Excellent question.

So, this year, my resolution is to make more friends Seems easy enough, right? The thing is, though, in Madison it’s easy to find drinking buddies, and much harder to find people you can depend on. And I have high standards for my friends. In fact, if I were to put an ad in the Classifieds, I think it would look like this:

Friend Wanted
Pref. female, mid-20’s to mid-30’s, loyal, funny, dependable, and trustworthy. Motherhood a plus. Must love movies, be tolerant and open-minded, not giggle too much, and enjoy both a deep cynicism and an amusement at the stranger things in life. Excessive whiners and those afraid of breastfeeding need not apply. Extra points if you like walking around downtown and belong to the same gym as me.

There, now that I have that sorted out, it would be great if someone could just Mary Poppins- me a person who fits all this, so I can start being friends right away. After all, it takes so LONG to cultivate a good friend, and I’m running out of time - the kid could come any minute, and I can’t really think of many people who might come visit me in the hospital. Which means I’ll be stuck in the room staring at Tyler again. I like Tyler okay and everything - kind of having his child - but come on.

Whenever I buy something lately, I’m addicted to the online user reviews.

I’ve kept an eye an user reviews for ages, particularly when buying furniture or books. But after building registeries for both my wedding and the new baby, I’m getting to a point where I can’t make a decision without finding out what everyone else thinks first.

Is this the new peer pressure? Has the sheer volume of decisions needed completely melted my brain? Or is it just my long-running obsession with efficiency, in the form of making the most of your money? Who knows. But I have spent hours comparing different models of strollers, diaper bags, and Pack and Plays online, agonizing over the suggestions of KayleesMom from Seattle. If I had just gone ahead and bought a stroller, would I have noticed these small imperfections and been on alert? Maybe, maybe not. But now I’m completely hooked. I need you, KayleesMom. Without you and your online cronies, I am lost.

At any rate, because I am occasionally concerned about the mental stability of online users, and because it seemed fair to put my money where my mouth was (sidebar: if anyone can explain to me where that expression comes from, I’ll give you a cookie. Or a shout-out in my next blog), I decided to pay it forward and post some online reviews of my own. I wanted to post positive reviews, since it seems like online reviews generally cover anything crappy. So I sat down and made a list of the items that I particularly enjoy and find helpful lately, including:

Super Paper Mario for Wii
my beloved Snoogle
The Harry Dresden novels by Jim Butcher

And a couple of other books and movies. But when I went to Amazon (really, the go-to place to write a review), I was pretty disappointed to find that I wasn’t needed. For all these items, everything that could possibly be said already has been. The Snoogle alone, for example, has 342 online reviews. With that many opinions, there just isn’t any more material to cover (pun intended). Every possible aspect of this pregnancy-inspired full-body pillow has been addressed, and anything I tried to add would simply be in order to pacify my ego. After all, if you really need to read all 342 reviews before you buy something, you have much more serious problems than me.

I gotta admit, I was a little crestfallen to discover that my own opinion, my chance to participate in the democratic process of product endorsements, was so unnecessary it wasn’t worth bothering with. As it turns out, nobody cares what I think about Paper Mario. How sad is that?

I guess I’ll get over it in time.

In other news, I had a doctors’ appointment this morning and an ultrasound this afternoon (and baby class tonight, it’s like Baby Day), and while everything looks great, everything is also starting to look…big. At not quite 34 weeks, Mattie is measuring in at 6 lbs, 3 oz. If you consider that

a) this late in the game, babies gain the most weight per week,
b) 40 weeks is considered full term,
and c) 80% of first-time mothers have their babies late,

I’m in serious trouble here. I have to check with the doctor to be sure, but it’s looking like Mattie can be born healthy and safely anytime now (provided her lungs are developed enough). So while all this time we’ve been hoping and praying that she wouldn’t be born early, now I desperately don’t want her to get too close to her due date. I am not excited about potentially giving birth to a 12-lb baby. That is not cool. We are not okay with that.

Yes, I WAS able to go up to Chippewa for Christmas last week. Tyler and I left on Tuesday and returned Christmas Day, so it was a short trip, but very nice. I must admit, I didn’t have as much fun as I have in previous years, due to being unable to move around much and participate in things (ie the all-cousin Nerf battle that immediately followed presents on Christmas Eve), but it was just wonderful to be able to be there, enjoying the family traditions. I felt really lucky to be able to go.

And Santa also happened to be very good to me this year. I got some excellent expensive bath and body stuff, a book and a movie I wanted, a CrockPot (so I can learn to make roast), some much-needed money (unemployment is pricey) and a portable hard drive, to store all my writing stuff on. The hard drive was the thing I asked for and wanted most; it gives me a sense of safety. Now all my writing, my pictures, and my music are backed up and locked away in a fireproof lockbox (which I got last year for Christmas, incidentally). If the house burned down or my computer fried itself, I’d still have all the most precious stuff off my computer. That makes me happy.

So, it’s been a busy week of family and holidays, which is fantastic, but I’m pretty wiped out by everything. In pregnancy news, I’m doing well, but I’ve also been introduced pretty hard to a fun new symptom: heartburn. Now, I’ve had heartburn before, being an American, and a couple of times throughout the pregnancy, but not like this. This is everyday, all the time. It really sucks, because I have to be super careful about what I eat (chocolate gives you heartburn, by the way. Who knew?), but at the same time, I’m also a little bit happy about it. After everything that went down at Thanksgiving, and being on modified bed rest since then, it actually feels kind of good (not literally) to have a nice, normal symptom that everyone else gets, too.

I’m not going out for New Year’s Eve this year. I’m not huge into the New Year’s Eve scene in Madison, period (Like the Halloween scene, it becomes almost more trouble and fuss than it’s worth), but obviously I can’t drink this year, which kind of puts a kink in the idea anyway. Ordinarily, I’d look into getting a babysitting job (as New Years’ is the most lucrative babysitting night of the year), but I’m not physically supposed to do that kind of thing, either. So this year, thanks to a suggestion from my genius husband, I’ll be staying in for a movie marathon.

As you may remember if you read this blog regularly, a couple of months ago Tyler and I tried to get into this super exclusive film festival in Austin, Texas, to no avail. So Tyler’s idea for New Year’s, if we’re staying alcohol-free, is to create our own little festival around a theme. Of course, this sparked my imagination, and I’ve been tossing a few ideas around. The rules are pretty simple: Take four movies, organized around a theme. Chose films that we a) haven’t seen recently, b) haven’t seen a million times (for example, no “Jurassic Park,” because there’s not much fun in watching movies that I have memorized), and c) aren’t too “heavy.” Nobody wants to watch a marathon of “Schindler’s List,” “Sophie’s Choice,” and “Life is Beautiful,” even if they meet all of the above criteria. So far, I’ve been coming up with themes based on either a single person (ie a director or actor) or really specific genre. Read on:

Idea One: James Cameron Night
The whole plan came about while we were watching Aliens the other night, so it seems fitting to create our festival around that great, absent direction, James Cameron. We’d start with “The Terminator,” because it’s been awhile and because that movie put James Cameron on the map. Then go to “The Abyss,” which really demonstrated Cameron’s affinity for the newest film technologies. Then “True Lies,” which was his foray into comedy/satire and one of Arnold’s best films. Finally, we’d end, NOT with “Titanic,” because that movie’s kind of a downer (get it?), but with the pilot for “Dark Angel,” which Cameron wrote and which works as a little stand-alone movie by itself. Cool, right?

Idea Two: Creature Features of the 90’s
Ah, the 90’s. The home of independent cinema, the Golden Age of Mel Gibson, and plenty of awesome (or awesomely bad) great creature features. This is a great genre, but hard to narrow down, because there are so many great would-be entries. After much deliberation from a list of 11 possible candidates (which included “Lake Placid,” “Deep Blue Sea,” and “The Mummy,” all of which were ruled out because of guideline b), Tyler and I settled on “Alien Resurrection,” “Congo,” “Species,” and “Godzilla.” It would be a crappy, hilarious lineup.

Idea Three: The Comedies of Val Kilmer
Tyler and I both love Kilmer, and wish he didn’t insist on being in so many crappy movies. But while Val is famous for a few different roles, we feel that his comedy skills are usually overlooked by everyone. And don’t get me wrong, the man can do comedy. This lineup would include “Kiss Kiss Bang Bang,” one of the most underappreciated and excellent movies of the last five years, “Top Secret!” (of course), and “Willow.” The last slot would naturally go to “Real Genius,” his comedy opus, but “Genius” is ruled out due to guideline A. So we’d fill that spot with Batman Forever - granted, Kilmer plays the straight man in it, but the movie really is a comedy all around him, and hey, the straight man is a hard gig.

And that’s just a few of my marathon ideas. As you can see, there’s a plethora of options out there for a four-movie marathon; it’s just picking the one we want most for New Year’s. Sadly, Tyler and I will likely be alone in this endeavor: most of our friends will be out that night, and those who won’t don’t really have the stamina for four movies back-to-back. (We are, Tyler noted sadly, about the only people we know in Madison who’d be willing to pull that off. Sissies). So I’m going to be working on this decision. In the meantime, if you’ve got a great idea for a marathon, sound off below.

I’ve been sleeping on the couch.

Not because Tyler and I have been fighting, or because I fall asleep there watching television. I’ve been intentionally sleeping on the couch on and off for the last few weeks because it’s just flat-out more comfortable for me. And it means I have to pee less.

See, being pregnant means there’s lots of new pressure on your bladder. Everyone knows that. But if you are a stomach sleeper, like me, and you find artistic ways to prop your pillows so that you can continue sleeping in a near-stomach-like position, well, you’re adding even more pressure to your bladder, in the form of gravity. (Stupid gravity). I’ve tried cutting down on beverages, not drinking anything after 8, and so on, but no matter what I do the amount of times I get up to go to the bathroom just keeps increasing. I think I’m currently averaging about 4 times a night, if I’m sleeping in the bed.

Crazy, right? And of course, bad sleep increases the chance of bad dreams. Last week I had my first serious nightmare about Mattie’s birth. It was simple enough: I was at my parent’s house in Chippewa (though, weirdly, not the house they live in now but the one we lived in until I was 11), and I went to the bathroom, and accidentally went into labor. The baby was born on the bathroom floor, and it was…not a baby. It was all deformed and unrecognizable as a human, sort of like the Sigourney Weaver early prototypes in Alien Resurrection.

Now, I’m not exactly well-learned on the Meaning of Dreams, but this one was pretty obvious. My subconscious is freaked out about the increased risk of me going into premature labor and, I’m guessing, worried that something will happen and I won’t make it to the hospital in time. These are perfectly valid, of course, but I find it interesting that I’m dreaming about fears I don’t really worry about while awake. I mean, I know that Mattie shouldn’t be born yet, that it’s much safer for her to have more time to develop, but it’s pretty hard to sustain anxiety about it 24 hours a day. And besides, every day I get a little closer to safety: I’m almost up to 32 weeks, which is only two weeks away from the Safe Zone. Even if Mattie was born now, there’s a pretty good chance that she’d be perfectly fine in the long run. But still, bad dreams.

So, in an effort to avoid the whole having to pee/bad dreams thing, I’ve been sleeping on the couch a lot. I can get comfortable pretty easily there, whereas it’s a big effort to get comfortable in the bed. But my sleep isn’t perfect even on the couch, and as I sleep badly, I tend to sleep in a little later in the morning. Then that night I have trouble getting to bed early, due to getting too much sleep during the day (this is compounded by frequent naps - I’m sorry, but when you have nothing to do all day it’s pretty darn easy to nod off), and stay up a little later. When I finally do fall asleep it’s not good sleep, so I sleep in a little later still. By now, this vicious cycle means it’s not uncommon for me to be up until 2 or 3 in the morning, and wake up at 1:00 in the afternoon, which I did today. I feel really guilty about this, for some reason - I was not raised to be this lazy during the day - but at the same time, I don’t really know what else to do. I could stay up all night some night to try to switch back to being NOT nocturnal, but I have a feeling I would end up back where I am now, little by little. It’s so weird, though: I feel like I’m in college again. (Not that I EVER slept in like this in college, Mom and Dad. I was too busy learning.)

I don’t mean to be whining about all this - after all, things would be a lot worse if I had to be somewhere early every morning - but it is really weird for me. This is the first time in about three years that I haven’t been on a schedule. Take a moment and imagine YOUR life with no schedule. It’s fun at first, a vacation, but then life just becomes sort of aimless. Or in my case, aimless with a lot of trouble moving around (I get stuck in the deep couch all the time now; it’d be hilarious if it wasn’t so tiring).

But with nothing to do, at least it’s easy for me to be still and feel al those little kicks from inside. It’s Mattie, telling me that everything’s okay in her world.