Pregnancy Redux, Part 1: Water
Here we go again.
There is a condition of pregnancy called hyperemesis gravidarum, where women sometimes cannot move their eyes without vomiting, they are so dizzy and sick. It’s terrible and dispiriting, even to hear about. I don’t have this, THANK GOD, and strength and cleaning ladies and milkshakes and hugs and pots of gold to those poor souls who do have it, because, what the hell.
I am allowed to move my eyes pretty much all I want, but I do have severe “morning sickness,” —commonly recognized as a laughable misnomer for those of us who barf and or retch just sort of always, sometimes with no warning, for longer than the appointedly normal time — and lots of other crazy symptoms that sometimes feel debilitating.
Perhaps this has happened to you, and you know what I am talking about. Or perhaps this hasn’t happened to you, and let me tell you: you have no (*&*7ng idea.
Perhaps this will happen to you, and you will find this series through trolling the internet one day, desperately seeking answers to life’s great questions, like, will I ever stop drooling on myself? (More on drooling later.)
Last time around I found water —which, let me remind you, is an elemental substance comprising the bulk of our bodies and is necessary to sustain, not to mention generate, life—to be undrinkable. Why? My nose, sensitive to the extreme under normal circumstances, detected hints of metal and poison in the water, and even in the glass itself. And the reason pregnant women get sick during the first trimester, you see, is to protect them and the baby from potentially harmful substances at a time when immunity is low. At one restaurant, I sent back three glasses that smelled too strongly of Windex. Finally I gave up and ordered something that came in a can, and drank through a straw.
But this April, I had a bad sinus infection. At the time it seemed like a crisis, but either the infection or the big dose of antibiotics I was on have (temporarily, I hope) dented my sense of smell enough that I’m far less bothered by odors this time around.
Water does smell a bit like detergent, but it’s nothing I could not drink because of the smell.
That is, if it weren’t so damn slippery feeling, which is what is making me avoid it this time around. It may have to do with the drooling I foreshadowed, which I’ll get into tomorrow.
Meanwhile, I require the hot hard bite of extra cold Coca Cola bubbles in order to survive.
I’ve Buried the Lead: You May Skip to Paragraph Four.
1. Wow. I have taken an uncharacteristically long and unplanned break from posting.
2. Big things have been happening. And they’re good ones, mostly!
3. The first is that I’ve been away on vacation, staying on a lake and staying on an organic farm, with nearly no connectivity. In case you’re wondering, this is the right thing to do, and I should do it more. We all should. No wonder organic animals are so pleased and doe-eyed and happy, even right on the eve of slaughter: they have no web connectivity.
4. The second is that I’ve been working hard on a project, one which has been taking nearly everything I’ve got, it seems, and that project is, DRUMROLL, that I am making a baby in my stomach!
Anatomists, hold your tongues. Uterus. Wherever. Sigh.
So! The multi-faceted excellent news is that I’m about 14 weeks along in a new pregnancy, and that it seems to be going well, at least in there, and that, my goodness, another baby will come to live here! It’s crazy and exciting to imagine. Who will it be? Henryish? Completely different? A boy? A girl?
Another facet, one of less shining brilliance, is that pregnancy wallops me in many ways.
Now that I am going public with the news, I’ll be posting later today or tomorrow about how pregnancy robs me of energy, dignity, and the ability to keep my esophageal flaps closed, but wanted to share the good news first.
This week’s vocabulary word: lanugo.
Hooray!
Clean This Car UP
We bought a car in 2008. It was already six years old, but it was an object of beauty. It had perfect pearlescent paint, a shiny woody interior, and a powerful V6 engine in case we needed to get away fast after robbing a bank. We bought it not because we needed these things, but because it seemed like a good car, and like we could pay cash for it, and not worry about it too much.
The man who sold it to us was a Jehovah’s Witness from Brewster, New York. He, like the car, was impeccable. He presented with gleaming leather bespoke-seeming shoes, a sharply-tailored suit, and a gentlemanly demeanor. He politely attempted to conceal his horror at the car going to live on the streets of Brooklyn. His parting suggestion was a gentle one: that we stave off the car’s inevitable fate by adding one of those extra rubber bumpers that hang out of the trunk.
We acquired the car in between the time that I was pregnant and the time that I knew I was pregnant, which was about a 48 hour period of time. I like to think of the car as coming to be with us at the same time as the baby.
At first, in the baby’s absence, we treated the car like a baby. We treated it like we treated the cat. Back then, everyone and everything got treated really well.
My husband, who is arguably rather like the car and the Jehovah’s Witness, and who for Father’s Day asked if I could get him a backpack-style vacuum cleaner he could wear around because he thought it would be fun, suggested that we should establish some ground rules about caring for the car.
The obvious rule was, “No eating in the car.”
Sigh. No eating in the car seemed like an imposition, but it was something I could manage.
Well, it was something I could manage until about 3 weeks into the pregnancy, at which point if I were not eating cheddar bunnies AT ALL TIMES, I would either throw up or yell at you or, more likely, do both.
And so we established a blanket layer of magical yellow dust.
Next came tums wrappers, and Mentos wrappers.
And sesame seeds, because we used the car a lot to drive to Connecticut on weekends, and what is better than a bagel on a long car trip? We prefer everything bagels, and so the driver’s seat chair we had a bit of everything. Onion! Salt! Poppy seeds! Everyone is invited to this party in the car’s interior.
It was completely manageable, though. The detritus was on the surface, and didn’t accumulate fast. It certainly was not like the cars of other people. There was no trash lingering for long. The seats just needed a sweep with a flattened hand, or a quick vacuum.
And then the baby came. At first the baby was on a liquid diet, but then he turned into one of those fat and archetypical Cheerios-eating babies. Cheerios are little things, and the little things do add up. There are Cheerios everywhere. It’s like a Cheerios farm in there. A Cheerios infestation. It’s like 2 boxes got scattered. The car seat has gotten a bit gritty. It is very gritty.
Time marches on. Now the baby can perambulate, and he can pit his own cherries and olives—which we DON’T let him do in the car, for what it’s worth—and he can smear his muddy shoes onto the interior. The interior has proved very resilient. It’s made out of that very short stiff fur: poor man’s velvet. Someone, be it the Japanese or the Jehovah’s witness or both, must have Scotch-Guarded the hell out of it. Mud wipes right off; my own skin should be so resilient.
But the food crumbs in the car remains hard to manage, and another thing Henry has added to his roster of capabilities is speaking. We get full sentences, corrections, commands, and opinions; I can tell that we have some fun days ahead. Riding home from camp the other day, he looked around at his surroundings. And I think he shook his head and wrinkled his brow as he said it:
“Clean this car UP.”
Sick and Sad
Driving back to our home in Brooklyn late Tuesday night, down on a busy four lane road, I slowed to get past a thick patch of what I first thought were emergency vehicles parked smack in the middle of traffic.
It seemed that there must have been an accident, and then realized that they weren’t just pulled over but actually parked: lots of them. You know, like when the NYC police do one of those crazy swarm events to prove that in an emergency, they can all back into parking spaces really fast.
And then, I had to swerve to avoid hitting a man with side curls and yarmulke who ran in front of my car to make me slow down, and then tried to shove a flier in my window.
“You’re in my way,” I bellowed at him. I refused to take his flier. He yelled back at me. I didn’t hear what he said. He ran to another car.
I get mad when someone forces me to take action not to hurt them, and that’s just what this guy did. He and lots of other people were darting through traffic as it forcibly slowed to pass the cars parked in the middle of the road.
It was the Hasidim, mobilized. As we drove by, my husband explained to me what he thought it was about: an eight or nine year old boy had gone missing from the neighborhood adjacent to ours the day before, and an entire community in panic was mobbing traffic to get the word out.
I felt cowed, because no matter how badly someone is behaving in the middle of Ocean Parkway traffic, a missing child is one of the worst things to consider . . . desperate times, etc.
The next morning, I found myself sobbing at the news of Leiby Kletzy’s death. The missing boy was no longer missing: he had a name, a face, and the worst imaginable story. Neither my husband nor I could sleep on Wednesday night. We definitely were not alone in our distress.
As a mother and an aunt, what happened to the boy is not even a thing that I can think about. I keep it vague in my brain. With that in mind, one of the things that bothers me most, I think, is that the accused (who is also the confessed) said he killed the boy out of fear of the reaction that was brewing in the community. The police commissioner quelled notions that the reward and mobilization of the community should be at all to blame, but it bothers me that the people who threw themselves into the effort ever had to hear that statement at all, and might have wondered if the outcome would have been different had their actions been different. It was a tremendous show of community.
Brooklyn and our part especially is about as melty as can be but I wish that we really did live in a melting pot where all of our communities were integrated and cared for one another’s member’s like that.
It’s been a slow week for blogging and this appalling story, which has been on everyone’s mind, is one of the reasons why.
Let’s meet again soon.
The Hired Guns Interview and Teaching / Consulting News
I was recently interviewed by Bill Brazell on The Hired Guns website, and the interview was posted yesterday. We talked about the evolution of Church Avenue Chomp and how it started being about the food scene in Brooklyn and has been expanded to take on many more topics, such as grief and coping with my sister’s illness and death. BUT: you don’t need me to tell you about it, because you can LISTEN right here!
Furthermore, the Hired Guns site itself is really great for interviews, news about the “digital creative class,” and matching talent to opportunities. They also offer classes and consulting. Check it out!
Speaking of classes and consulting, my other news is that I recently started teaching a blogging class through the Gotham Writer’s Workshop. Soon, I’ll start teaching a food writing class.
Teaching is a lot of fun. Teaching and editorial (blog and otherwise) consulting are two of the things I am going to be stepping up this fall — so contact me if you are interesting!
Hmm, that was a typo, but a rather useful one. Contact me if you are both interesting and interested in taking a class or in help with a writing project.
Church Avenue Chomp 