i just couldn't resist

will's smiles are pretty persuasive, you know.

http://www.willymiles.blogspot.com/

enjoy!

the evolution of test day

yep. test days take on a whole new glory when you're the instructor and not the student.

now, you all know that i am a nerd, so i never really minded test days when i was in school. but now...now i absolutely LOVE them.

sure, there's the whole aftermath of test days: all the shell-shocked student expressions, all the grading, all the responding to emails claiming "i don't think we covered #4 in class"* or "i think my answer to #7 should be counted correct".**

but the day itself is blissful. no standing on your feet all day. no repeating yourself six times because various students weren't listening. no answering questions to which they should already know the answers. no having to assume your students understand a point despite their bewildered faces because they refuse to answer a simple yes or no question ("do you understand?").

and no lesson planning. which is how i am able to write this blog post at all.***

now comes the disappointing part: after having dwelled too long on my feelings toward test day and the circumstances that have facilitated this post...i find i don't really have anything else to say.

so here's a list of things that have happened since my last post:

-i earned my blue belt in karate, so i'm no longer considered a beginner. kiaiiiii!
-will is rolling over somewhat consistently from his tummy to his back.
-will is chowing down on the rice cereal. he's a hungry little boy!
-darren and i have flip-flopped our work / Will-watching hours on Tuesdays and Thursdays so i can go to a women's morning Bible study on tuesdays and a mommy playdate on thursdays. may sound silly, but i am pumped!
-i can fit back into almost all of my pre-maternity clothes, which means i might actually have enough clothes to teach in this semester!
-and, finally, i can finally do plenty of push-ups and sit-ups again! well, to be honest, i could never do push-ups before i started taking karate, so now i actually get excited about them (sad, i know). but i used to be able to do sit-ups all day long (okay, not literally), and i was really frustrated that i couldn't even do one after having Will. again, i know it sounds silly, but just the fact that i CAN do them makes me actually makes me WANT to do them. so hopefully that will help me get back into the rest of my clothes....

and, now, i must go give a test. weeeee!



*response: "attendance and note-taking do matter"
**response: "why, because your three weeks of experience with Spanish Literature is more credible than my MA in the subject?", followed by "attendance and note-taking do matter"
***now don't you love test day, too?

what's going on

time for the bi-monthly not-too-terribly-interesting-but-at-least-somewhat-informative blog post!

as you probably know, fall semester started last week, which meant back-to-work-for-real for darren and me. or just me, really, since darren has been working steadily on his dissertation all summer. he's a trooper, that one.

so here's what the crazy schedule looks like so far:

MWF: (that's uga-speak for monday/wednesday/friday)

i teach from 8am until about 1:30pm, so Darren (a.k.a., SuperDad) is in charge of dropping off Will (a.k.a., Mr. Snuggles) at the sitter's (a.k.a., Awesome "Grandma Debbie's") before he teaches from 10am to 12:30pm. i do a little planning after classes, then pick up the little guy around 4:30. we have one glorious hour of playtime and snuggling before i hand him off to daddy and go to karate. by the time i get home, he's usually bathed, fed and sleeping soundly, so it's a quick dinner for darren and me, then bedtime for mommy.

TR: (tuesday/thursday, because abbreviations are a little tough for uga-ers?)

i try to use the 8am-11am window to do some planning while darren watches Will. then, the hand-off, and daddy goes to work while i make up for hardly seeing Will MWF.

the benefits of this schedule:

-we both still get a good amount of quality time with Will, even though we're both working full-time.

-i get a little time to myself, even if it is teaching and planning. it's a reminder that i didn't lose my identity at all by becoming a mom--i just added on to it. and, strangely enough, i have realized again how much i really enjoy teaching.

-Will gets time outside the house and with other people--not just Grandma Debbie, but also a couple other babies from church that Debbie occasionally watches.

-whether it's a direct consequence or not, Will has started napping better! sometimes he'll sleep for a total of 3 hours or more at Debbie's, and at least 2 hours total at home. (hence this blog post!)

the drawbacks so far are few:

-i really miss seeing Will the days i teach and have karate. on the upside, though, i feel like i appreciate my time with him even more, and i feel more patient when he's having a rough day.

-well, 8am classes are never fun, even though it's the most convenient time for us. i am really exhausted at the end of every teaching day. but being able to rest a little on TR makes it bearable.

-apparently our little genius has already learned some math: an earlier bedtime + a few naps = the right to get up at least once during the night. whereas he used to sleep 10 hours straight easily, now he wakes up after about 5 hours. or like last night, after 5 hours, then 3 more hours, then 2 more hours....(that's still very unusual, though). again, we can't complain--plenty of babies don't even sleep 5 hours straight at his age.

overall, things are going smoothly, and we're still counting our blessings everyday. we both have jobs that we love (most of the time) and that manage to pay the bills, we have wonderful family and friends to help us learn the ropes of parenthood, and we have the sweetest, cutest, snuggliest little boy ever.

and just to prove that last point:

allow me to elaborate

"Sometimes there's no coffee in the coffee. I plow through it and it is definitely a coffee area, but there's no coffee in it. I always think they'll (sic) be a little at the bottom of the cup, but there never is. If it's missing at all, it's all missing. The fact is, coffee isn't just a substance--it's an event, and it's manifestation depends on countless subtle conditions, most of which are not speakable."

~Joe Wenderoth, Letters to Wendy's

all i have to say is:

"sometimes there's no coffee in the coffee."

~joe wenderoth

The Case for Spreading Your Stuff Around*

and i don't mean spreading it around to other folks, like sharing the wealth or anything like that, though i'm sure that has it's benefits, too. but i seriously doubt they can stand up to remarkable benefits of leaving your stuff lying around in places it shouldn't be because a) you think it might come in handy there at some point or 2) you're just too lazy to put it back where it belongs.

now, since the birth of our little Will, i have taken to keeping certain things within arm's reach of where i normally feed the little guy (that is, where the little guy subsequently passes out without two seconds' warning and where i often find myself stuck until he wakes up again. i am happy to say that this doesn't happen as often now that we're training him to put himself to sleep in his crib whenever he gets droopy-eyed. but i digress).

such items include, but are not limited to: multiple burp cloths, a couple baby books, a rattle, a receiving blanket, a novel or two of my own, a giant travel mug of water, my cell phone and the tv and dvd remote controls. i think it's self-explanatory why these things come in handy when one is trapped on a sofa for up to 3 hours at a time.

but what, you ask, are the possible benefits of leaving random items out of arm's reach, in such distant places as your car, your office or even a friend's house, simply because you're too lazy to return them to their proper homes? glad you asked. let me tell you a little story about my morning.

phyllis** is staying with us this week so that i can get a headstart on my planning for the fall semester***. though she and ellie have brought down a cot in the past, she finds it just as comfortable to sleep on our sofa, which is where she was this morning as i was getting ready to go teach my 8am class. not wanting to wake her, i didn't bother to turn on the lights to put on my sandals, which were located conveniently by the front door beside darren's flip-flops.

you see where this is going, right?

as i stepped out of the truck on campus, i was shocked to find that i had put on mismatched sandals--one brown and sparkly, one black and old-navy-flip-floppy. i laughed at myself all the way to my department, where, having sufficiently 'spread my stuff around,' i found a complete pair of matched sandals in which to teach. granted, this pair was black, which didn't at all correspond to my brown tank top and brown leopard-spotted skirt, so i still felt compelled to explain myself, in spanish, to my students. they were quite entertained and most likely now think i am a complete airhead.****

just for the record, a list of other random stuff in my office:
a pink fluffy scarf, a bag of microwave popcorn, two sturdy water bottles, a roll of toilet paper, an empty canister that once held coffee, a picture of a bunny with a pancake on its head, a list of the caffeine content of various beverages, peanut butter, several pieces of silverware, a can of chicken noodle soup, a stack of paper plates, plastic cups and plastic forks, and a Christmas ornament of a smiling marshmallow knitting while sitting atop a chocolate square and a graham cracker (a.k.a., a s'more).

don't ask.

*what a great topic to make my big blog comeback, right?
**darren's mom, a.k.a. best mother-in-law ever
***i'm teaching introduction to spanish literature, which means i've got a lot of planning now and a lot of grading later
****also worth mentioning are the benefits of having a patient, understanding companion with a good sense of humor. my darling husband did take the time to bring me my other brown sparkly sandal, as well as the lunch i had absentmindedly left in the refrigerator....

Top 5 Ways Grad School Prepares You for Parenthood:

1) Multitasking.
Grad School forces even the most adamant one-thing-at-a-timer to learn the art of multitasking. For example, more often than not, any kind of food is eaten while reading, studying, walking to class, sitting in class, writing papers or grading papers.

For a new parent (stay-at-home moms, especially), any kind of food is eaten while feeding the baby, burping the baby, rocking the baby, entertaining the baby, or praying the baby will stay asleep for 5 more minutes.

2) Prioritizing.
The Grad Student must learn to prioritize tasks and complete them accordingly. While in many other professions this prioritization might depend on the relative importance of each task, in Grad School, it generally depends solely on the official deadline of said tasks. Consequently, tasks without official deadlines often go unaccomplished.

This is why, since Will was born, I have somehow managed to get all the necessary grading done for my Spanish classes, but I still have tons of Thank You notes to write for the many, many gifts we received celebrating his birth.

I blame this mostly on one simple point of confusion: Everyone knows that newlyweds get a full year to send Thank You notes for gifts, just as friends of newlyweds get a full year to send such gifts. But what is the official deadline for newly-parents???

As I said, tasks without official deadlines often go unaccomplished. (I am trying, though!)

3) Irregular Eating Habits.
See "Multitasking." This example assumes, of course, that you manage to eat at all.

4) Limited Time with Friends and Family.
This is related to the problem of official deadlines and prioritization. In terms of importance alone, most Grad students would easily rank friends and family far above the tedious work of Grad School. However, returning that phone call or getting together for that dinner doesn't carry an official deadline, so it often gets put off a little longer than it should. In a way, then, friends and family are being conditioned for the future parenthood of the Grad student as much as the Grad student himself (or herself).

Fortunately, though, your average friend or family member is much more likely to comprehend the demands placed on the parents of a newborn than those placed on a Grad student, unless they themselves have chosen at some point to endure the masochistic nightmare that is Grad School. It's much easier to imagine why a new parent with a screaming baby doesn't answer the phone than to imagine why the same person, staring silently at a blank computer screen, won't return your calls.

So with new parents, friends and family start to preface emails and voicemails with ever-so-kind concessions like, "I know you're really busy, so you don't have to call me back right away...." It's really quite touching.

5) Sleep.
Grad school not only adequately prepares you for the lack of sleep you'll experience as a new parent, it actually over-prepares you.

Grad school makes it possible at 5:30am, having gotten only 3 1/2 hours of sleep that night, to think, "It could be worse. I could be writing a 20-page paper in Spanish on the use of Lacanian linguistics as a basis for a Feminist reading of One Hundred Years of Solitude."

In other words, it's much easier to feed a baby on one-hour spurts of interrupted sleep than it is to write coherent strings of theoretical jargon in a foreign language.


Top 1 Way Grad School Doesn't Prepare You for Parenthood:

1) Coffee.
While doctors agree that a "moderate" amount of caffeine is harmless during the 40 weeks of pregnancy and the many months of nursing that may follow, this allowance is nowhere near the quantity necessary to support the caffeine addiction one likely will develop in Grad School. Therefore, it is recommended to put at least one full year between finishing Grad School and getting pregnant in order to sufficiently wean oneself from this oh-so-tasty drug.

Some days are easier than others...

and so far, today looks like the Second-Easy-Day-In-A-Row.

other new moms (still getting used to that title) will surely understand that this simply means that baby Will is either sleeping or calmly entertaining his awake self. for the moment, it is the former. yesterday, it was the former practically all day long.

don't get me wrong--i love when the little sweetie is awake, and i have no qualms about cuddling him just as much as he wants to be cuddled. i mean, who could resist such cuteness?



but, days like yesterday are quite needed to maintain some level of sanity. yesterday, i was able to:

-straighten the living room (burp cloths everywhere!)

-clean the kitchen (even the floor)

-take out the trash (not my favorite chore...)

-change the sheets on the bed (even to my OCD standards)

-eat a real lunch (all four food groups!)

-unload and reload the dishwasher (did that while making lunch)

-wash, dry, fold AND put away 2 loads of laundry (that never happened even before Will came along)

-vacuum the whole house (yep. with our loud-as-a-lawnmower vacuum. while Will was sleeping. because Will is awesome.)

so, now you're all thinking i'm a neat-freak (or just really weird) for being excited about doing these kinds of things all day. far from it--just ask darren. i can tolerate messiness much longer than he can.

but, honestly, it felt great to accomplish something during the day, to be able to make a list (above) of quantifiable tasks that i had completed. it's a different feeling than thinking "hmmmmm, what did i do today? oh, fed the baby, burped the baby, rocked the baby to sleep, changed the baby's diaper, fed the baby, burped the baby...."

now that i think about it, it's the same feeling i got from knitting random things while working on my thesis and while trying to survive last semester (teaching 5 classes, the play, karate, being pregnant). knitting gave me something concrete at which to look and say, "ha! i made this! i have tangible proof that i have been productive today!" so now, that tangible proof has become a clean apartment.

and on a final note, i realized in the process that i am very thankful for 2 things:


1-that our apartment is so small. sounds silly, but i never could've cleaned the whole thing in one day otherwise. and then the feeling of accomplishment would've been greatly compromised.


2-my dear husband, who noticed the clean apartment not 2 seconds after coming home last night and kept complimenting & thanking me for it. i hope Will grows up to be just like his daddy.

so far, he seems well on his way (see darren's latest post).

(by the way, sorry for long gap in posting. as i said, some days are easier than others, and it's been hard to find time to squeeze it in. and i decided to just jump right in to talking about the present day, rather than catch up on everything since my last post. if you want more on what's been going on, see darren's blog.)

thank God it's sunny out

or i might be having a bad day. but those of you who know me well know that i can't help but be in a blissful mood the first several weeks of spring. (and it didn't even get really cold this year...)

so why might i have been in a bad mood otherwise, you ask? well, it really comes down to three things: pants, receipts and food.

let's start with the pants.

while being pregnant, and especially now that i'm getting rather large, i have really tried to focus on the things i can do instead of things i can't. and because God is gracious, i can still do lots of things.

for instance, karate. i can still do self-defense techniques, jabs and punches, and katas, even though i can't much kick anymore or (sigh) do the crunches and push-ups during our warm-up.

what does this have to do with pants? i'm getting to that.

another thing i can still do, much to even my own surprise, is paint my toenails and shave my legs. be impressed. this is significant because it means i can also wear skirts, capris and sandals. again, those who know me well know how eagerly i await the first chance to don such clothing every spring.

which brings us to the pants. i had this great idea to roll up my maternity jeans today--you know, with big fat cuffs--thus turning them into cute little capris. only said maternity jeans decided not to fit so comfortably. fortunately, a friend in my department has so generously lent me several pairs of pants, including some brown gaucho maternity pants, so i wore them instead. but i did have to forego my rolled capri look, about which i had been really excited (insert only half-serious pouty face here).

well, to cure my pseudo-poutiness, i tried going out to the JCPenney at the mall to exchange a couple of shirts i got for Christmas which i thought i'd grow into, but still haven't. they're really cute polo shirts (one is lime green!), so i was pumped about getting them in a smaller size. just one problem--this JCPenney has no maternity section. okay, so i'll get store credit, then use it to buy the shirts online, right?

wrong. apparently, amid the big stack of JCPenney gift receipts i brought along, i had managed to misplace the one for these shirts. obviously, since the shirts had been bought a while back, they were on super-low clearance now, so returning them would only give me a few bucks to spend online. way to go losing that receipt, jenna. (insert sincere pouty face here).

which brings us to the food. the other part of my poutiness-recovery plan was to stop by our apartment on the way back from the mall to pick up the leftover pesto chicken pasta i had planned to eat for lunch today but had forgotten at home this morning.

but then a reminder sounded from my cell phone which read: "be at office early--1pm". apparently, i had made an appointment with a student for half an hour before my office hours usually begin, but i had forgotten about that, too. fortunately, my keen foresight had led my to put this appointment into my phone. unfortunately, this also meant no lunch.

so here i am, in my office, hungry, wearing ever-so-comfy-but-not-what-i-had-planned-to-wear gaucho pants, devising a plan to shrink these polo shirts by washing them in really hot water and drying them with high heat (they're 97% cotton, so it should work, right?), and wondering...

where the heck is that student?!?!?

hey, mr. kroger bagger,

why did you stop putting my milk in a bag? now, when i carry in my groceries, it takes a whole hand to carry just the milk, whereas i used to grab three or four bags with that one hand.

can anyone tell me if this is a trend throughout the whole kroger organization? do they do this at your local kroger? would it be rude to ask for my milk in a bag? i mean, i do recycle those bags, so it's no harm done to the environment...

moving on to other topics, is being rude and reckless a requirement to own a Toyota Sequoia? i can cite three different instances just this week to support this hypothesis. but i thought people who bought Toyotas were supposed to be smart and practical.

maybe it's because they're still trying to hold onto the american dream of driving a huge suv, but at the same time they're trying to save a little gas money? perhaps this internal conflict is what has driven so many Sequoia drivers to such completely asenine behavior on the road?

on a more positive note, all is well at the grem place. william has started playing a kicking game with us, i.e., when he pushes out his little foot, we push it back in, then he kicks...it's kinda like a foot fight, only we're just using our fingertips. very fun, indeed. also, we should have another picture of him this coming tuesday--this time in 3D!

hope all is well with you, whoever you are, as you read this mostly pointless and rambling post!

Metaphors

I'm a riddle in nine syllables,
An elephant, a ponderous house,
A melon strolling on two tendrils.
O red fruit, ivory, fine timbers!
This loaf's big with its yeasty rising.
Money's new-minted in this fat purse.
I'm a means, a stage, a cow in calf.
I've eaten a bag of green apples,
Boarded the train there's no getting off.

~Sylvia Plath

all quiet on the blogging front

yep, that's in reference to all of you people who are supposed to help me procrastinate by writing enthralling blog entries everyday...

i guess i'm guilty of the quietness, too....

nothing really to post, except that i have a hot date with my hot husband tonight :)

can't give any details about what we're doing because it's a surprise for him, too. all i can say is, what'd i say? for some of you (i.e., darren) that might be enough....

did you know...

that the Babies R Us maternity clothes section has no fitting rooms?

i thought about dedicating a whole post to that topic and all its absurdity...but i'm sure you can all imagine more or less what i have to say about it. i'm saving all my energy for the comment card i'm sending to Babies R Us headquarters. in case they actually read those things.

at any rate, i've thought about blogging several times lately, but the more i consider any potential blog topic, the less blog-worthy it seems. like the Babies R Us absence of fitting rooms, for example.

i did do a little reflecting over the last year and decided that, overall, it was one of the most fruitful years i've had in a while, though not necessarily the easiest. here's why.

in 2006...

-we had our first anniversary
-i wrote a 90 page thesis on Nuyorican poetry and mostly managed to enjoy the process
-i also managed to justify a 'research trip' to NYC for said thesis, with 2 of my favorite people ever
-i got a master's degree
-i rode the Goliath at six flags, probably the best roller coaster ever (while pregnant, unbeknownst to me)
-i started karate lessons
-i was in my first play ever (singing, no less!)
-i taught my first literature class, which was a relative success
-we conceived our first child!

not quite a top ten list, but i blame that on the decidedly UNfruitful summer teaching syllabification to third graders ("if you have one consonant between two vowels, first divide the syllable before the consonant and try a long vowel sound for the first vowel. Then, divide the syllable after the consonant and try a short vowel sound for the first syllable").

of course, we're looking forward to many more firsts in 2007, this time not quite so me-centered. first smile, first laugh, first tooth...we can't wait to see all these little miracles!

and now that i have done my new year's reflection post, maybe i will find more to write about soon. like how hysterically ridiculous Demetri Martin is. seriously, you gotta watch his new comedy show.

"We can't let the openness of the day paralyze us."

that was darren's response to my giddy excitement over having slept in until 8:30 this morning and knowing all i really have to do today is get 6 research papers graded. piece of cake.

needless to say, it's been a good day so far. it started with a yummy cup of french press coffee, caffeine and all. it was, perhaps, the yummiest coffee i've had in a long time. but since i've severely restrained my caffeine intake of late, it did leave me quite zippy, if you will. hence the aforementioned giddy excitement.

desperate for structure lest i should waste the entire day, i called my good friend karen-the-great, who gave me a firm talking-to. "I'll only meet you for lunch if you have two papers graded by 12:30," said she.

i graded three.

then, we shared a fabulous lunch at the stand of tacos. and today, unlike most days, the cashier actually agreed with me that, since the menu says chunky salsa comes free with the soft quesadilla, he should give me the chunky salsa free with my soft quesadilla. twas delicioso.

so now it's 2 pm. i have a meeting at 4, and three papers left to grade before going to bed tonight.

i think i'll write some Christmas cards.

an early wish

so, it's not snowing any time soon in athens, but becca inspired me to make my own snowflake. i think i will offer it to the snow gods as a plea for some real snow in georgia this year. and i'm putting it here for you all, because i am very proud of it, in a kind of silly, infantile way...

William Mason Grem

Like any true Mason or Grem, little Will's first instinct was to quietly prove (almost) everyone wrong.*

Even though lots of people were convinced this one was a little girl, we have pretty solid proof to the contrary. Which means someone else could be having a little girl soon...or maybe that will be our next one.

As for his name, William is after Darren's father, and Mason is after mine. We're still considering Miles in place of Mason, but my brother has made some serious threats regarding that one.

But then again, Scøupe hasn't seen my middle block and back leg roundhouse kick. I could take him. Piece of cake.

*i am, in fact, aware of this split infinitive, but i am using it purposefully for the sake of both the meaning and rhythm of the sentence.

an instructor's best friend

so last night, post-post, i finally gave up grading with 6 essays to go and went to bed at midnight. i managed not to completely fulfill my horoscope--the rage at the disastrous midterm essays* did not, in fact, turn murderous. because i don't know where my students live.**

i realize now, however, that i was not alone in my distress.*** to the contrary, i discovered that Feral Cat, with all her whiny meowing last night, which also irritated me, was actually uttering cries of sympathy and possibly even threats against my students to parallel my own anger.

i know this because, this morning, darren related to me the events of the evening after i went to bed. apparently, for a few moments, Feral was choking in that way that cats do when they have a hairball. gross, i know.

but then, the marvelous Feral Cat walked directly to the stack of essays i had abandoned beside the coffee table and vomited on them.****

all i have to say is, thanks Feral Cat. you read my mind.

and thanks, darren, for cleaning it up so i could carelessly enjoy the poetic justice of it all.

*disastrous because they confirmed my suspicion that 67% of my students have not, in fact, taken advantage of the comments i have so tediously written on their 6 response papers so far. comments which i basically repeated , verbatim, on said midterms (for the last time).

**to be fair, not ALL the essays were bad. in fact, nine students wrote papers that provided such great relief from the verbal wasteland of despair that i joyously gave them A's and even A+'s.

***of course, darren and karen have shared this burden all semester, but that goes without saying.

****fortunately (or not), i had left an unrelated piece of paper on top of the stack, so none of them were actually damaged. but, hey, it's the thought that counts, right?

my Onion horoscope

Seriously, here it is:

Gemini:

You will fly into a blind, towering, destructive, psychotic, and ultimately murderous rage this week over the excessive use of adjectives in today's popular writing.

I've been grading midterm papers all day.

eat it.

it all made sense today.

i've always wondered why the old adage chose cake as the thing that you can't have and eat.

more importantly, why would someone want to just have a cake? i mean, cake is for eating. simple as that. even a wedding cake isn't too pretty to gobble up.

then today, i glanced at the almost-gone carrot cake that i made last thursday for some company we had friday. there's probably enough left for three or four hefty slices. and this made me sad.

me, the same person who begged people to take some cake home with them friday night so we wouldn't have too much left over. me, who's only eaten one more slice since friday...and a couple random bites here and there.

now, it should be known (if you weren't here for the girly candle party friday night) that this is my step-mom's infamously decadent carrot cake, which has converted many a carrot-cake-hater into a carrot-cake-devourer. but still, why this sudden sadness when everyone had enjoyed a slice, and i had enjoyed two?

well, here's what i've decided. to have a cake means to know it will always be there whenever you want it. i have some cake right now, but there's not enough left to convince me that, should i have a craving for carrot cake three days from now, it will still be readily available.

so which should one choose, to have a cake or to eat it? the obvious choice is still to eat it--if you don't, it will go bad and you will neither have nor eat it (hopefully). but, knowing that you can't have it forever should impact the way you eat it: slowly, passionately, hedonistically relishing every bite.

of course, the same goes for everything a cake could stand for, that is, everything good in life. when things are going well, your bills are paid, your friends are true friends, work is bearable, the weather is nice, whatever it may be, eat it up. and don't feel one ounce of guilt about enjoying things that are meant to be enjoyed. just remember cake is always better when it's shared, and if it runs out, you've still got 2 things left:

great memories and the hope that someday, there will be more cake.

me and Big Brown

yep. he's back. warm, cuddly Big Brown and i have been spending lots of time together...drinking hot cider...reading (student papers)...cuddling up on the couch with the Feral Cat. this makes four years that we've spent autumn together, and it's better every year. especially since it's my favorite time of year. and don't worry, darren's not jealous--he's got The Boss and Maverick to keep him company.

in other news, we went to the doctor again and discovered that we have a magic scale at our house. seriously, i could sell it for big bucks. according to our scale, i haven't gained a pound in 14 1/2 weeks of pregnancy. according to the doctor, i have gained 6 pounds in 2 weeks. this is a relief for me, but imagine the ordinary, non-pregnant woman. who wouldn't want a scale that miraculously kept you from knowing you had gained weight?

now, if they're like me, they would still question why their clothes fit differently. but, many women obviously rely more on numbers than appearances, because they will flip out over gaining two pounds even when they look as fabulous as ever. so, surely they would believe my magic scale as well.

hmmmm. maybe i can make a little income on the side by marketing this thing. maybe even put little willmily through college....

in other news, i think i found an atrocity to rival the $3.75 small steamer at jittery joe's. $5.25 baked potato at the bulldog cafe.

yep.

$5.25.

for a potato.

with butter and sour cream.

it's appalling what people will charge when the majority of their clientel are not spending their own money.