It's not all bad

It seems like ever since I announced that I was pregnant, all my blog entries have been focused on complaining. While it certainly has been no walk in the park, it’s not all bad, and I realize that there are plenty of people out there in situations much worse off than mine.

The past weekend, Rob was gone for a cycling training camp, and to keep me from being too lonely, my parents (Rick and Nan) came for a brief visit on Saturday. My mom even went with me to this month’s neighborhood coffee, and she got to meet all the ladies of Vermont Avenue. I think she was duly impressed with them. My being pregnant is kind of a big deal on this block—most of the women are in their 60’s or older, so it’s been a long time since any of the neighbors were pregnant, and everybody is excited for me. I love hearing all the ladies tell their stories of their own pregnancies, their children, their grandchildren. Many of these women have had amazing careers as well—in a time when being a working mother was comparatively rare across the country. It’s really pretty inspiring for me to spend a morning with the ladies on my block.

In addition to getting to show off my mother at the party, I also found myself brave enough to try a little decaf coffee—for the first time since Christmas. Coffee has been one of those things that the sight of, smell of, even the thought of, makes me feel like I’m going to wretch. The coffee I had on Saturday didn’t taste quite like it did to me in my pre-pregnancy days (most things haven’t tasted quite right since Fig has been present), but it was still really comforting to try it again.

My mom and dad brought me a bouquet of irises, my favorite flowers. The next morning—when I awoke to snow on the ground—it was nice to see the flowers while snow swirled outside.

Another positive thing to note is that by now (19 weeks), I am pretty sure I have felt Fig moving around. Other women have described it as feeling like butterflies or popcorn popping or even gas, but to me, it feels more like a muscle twinge. Kind of like the pinging you might feel in your legs after a long walk/run/bike ride (or is it just me that gets that?) I’d actually felt this abdominal pinging for a while and thought that it was really was just a type of muscle twinge—resulting from organs shifting around or expanding. And maybe it partially is. But I’ve realized that there are some distinctive thumps and taps, and I have decided to conclude that this is Fig. Once after I had gotten home from a walk and was resting on the couch, I felt a thump, thump, thump, and I actually laughed out loud—just picturing Fig taking his or her little arm and smacking the wall of my uterus as if to say, “Hey mom, why did you stop walking all of a sudden?”

I’m not sure if one semi-happy post can counteract all the nausea-induced gloom and doom posts I’ve been writing, but at least it’s a start. Hopefully there are more to come. Thanks for reading.

Still Waiting

I finished a draft of chapter 8 this week—something I’d hoped to accomplish a month ago, but the nausea got in the way. I’m pretty close to having a draft of my whole dissertation stitched together. It’s going to require a lot of cleaning up, but soon I will have something to send to my committee. Chances are they will hate it, and I will practically have to start over, but for the time being it feels like progress.

In the meantime, I am still waiting to get off the boat. This is week 15. I am well into the second trimester and have not experienced any relief. Back at Christmas when I started throwing up, I told myself that all I had to do was hold on until Valentine’s Day, and by then I would feel better. It’s two weeks past Valentine’s Day now, and I am still waiting. I guess the Zofran takes the edge off enough that I am not actually puking anymore, but I am still so nauseated that at times I feel like I am losing my mind. It requires enormous efforts to even get myself to a one-hour meeting at school or to go to the grocery store for whatever it is that I think I might be able to eat. It’s getting kind of hard to keep my spirits up.

I went back to yoga this week even though I felt terrible. The stretching and exercises are really nice, but the best part is at the end, when we do this relaxation technique. The instructor helped us all get ourselves propped up on pillows, and then she gave us each an herbal sachet to put over our eyes. It was very calming. There was no unzipping of the uterus this time, but the instructor did have us put our hands on our stomachs “to warm our babies.” I was like, “Are you kidding lady? It is 50 degrees in this room and my hands are like blocks of ice. If I put my hands on my stomach, Fig will shudder I tell you, shudder." But I guess Fig made it just fine.

After class Rob met me downtown and we ate dinner at Crane Alley. It is still amazing to me how I can eat through such mind-numbing nausea, particularly if someone else prepares the food. I had a portabella mushroom sandwich and French fries. It was the best thing I had ever tasted. I probably haven’t eaten French fries in over 15 years, but at the moment I have absolutely no control over my body. I completely foresee a 50 pound weight gain by the end of this pregnancy.

After the portabella mushroom sandwich and French fries incident, that was all I wanted to eat the next day. I finally went to the store and got some portabella mushroom caps, feta cheese*, and Kaiser rolls to try to recreate at least the sandwich part of the meal. The result was completely underwhelming and in fact, made me feel so sick that I had to curl into a ball and cry for a little while. I should have just had some Ritz crackers.

Today I went to a neighborhood coffee with the women of Vermont Avenue. Every month the ladies on my street get together for “fellowship,” which is something I really like about living here. Back in January, I forcibly drug myself to the meeting in between bouts of vomiting, and I remember distinctly promising myself that by February’s coffee, I would feel fine. Not so. I still felt as bad as I did in January, I just weigh about 10 pounds more and am no longer puking. Today I finally told them all about the upcoming Blessed Event, and the entire roomful of women squealed and clapped. I should point out that I am by far the youngest in attendance at these events: some of the women have children my age, but many of them have grandchildren my age or even older. Mrs. F, who is one of my favorite people ever, told me that she would never have said anything, but when I walked in she thought I looked pregnant and just had this feeling. I do look pregnant actually, but I think it has less to do with Fig (who is tiny) and more to do with the copious amounts Ritz crackers, avocados, and French fries I have eaten lately. Mrs. F also offered to babysit whenever I needed her, which is an offer I was definitely hoping she would make. I suspect we will be taking her up on it before long.

Well it’s been almost a whole hour since I’ve eaten anything, so I guess it is time to put something into my gargantuan stomach to try to keep this nausea at a semi-manageable level. Thanks for reading!

According to the internet, Fig was supposed to be the size of a lemon last week and an apple this week. I have both fruits and the apple was actually smaller, so we're just going to say lemon for now. Also please note that I am not actually as skinny as I look in the picture. It must be the lighting or angle, because I am fast approaching the most I have ever weighed in my entire life. A side view would show that I'm about twice the size that I was before.

* A note to the Baby Police: The feta cheese was pasteurized and posed no risks of listeria to myself or my unborn baby. You can turn off your sirens, put your handcuffs away, and go terrorize some other pregnant woman with ridiculous things to worry about.

What $21.90 of local organic produce looks like

This morning I rode my bike over to the farmer’s market armed with a long list of fruits and vegetables to buy. As I was paying for my first set of purchases, another customer (an older lady) saw my arms full of kale, swiss chard, broccoli, zucchini, summer squash, and eggplant. “Are you a vegetarian?” she said in a somewhat admiring tone.

The farmer’s market in October is one of the best places on earth to be. Its practically bursting with beautiful green, red, orange, yellow, and purple things. I also bought some spaghetti squash, a butternut squash, a few pears and some bright red liberty apples. Its all so lovely that it makes me forget about how much I miss July. Sure, you can get watermelon and some early tomatoes then, but October is what its all about.



It was a rough night last night, so I was definitely happy to be out and about this morning. I didn’t feel so great before I went to bed, and then sometime in the middle of the night I woke up with a throbbing pain behind my left eye. Even though its been a long time since I’ve had a real migraine headache, that’s where it always hits. And as always, it was accompanied by several hours of nausea before I finally succumbed to a couple more hours of vortexing. It takes a lot for me to actually puke. There was more than one occasion in Nicaragua when we went back to the mainland over the weekend and I’d feel seasick until Wednesday, when I would finally puke. Luckily for Rob, he is blessed with the ability to sleep through just about anything, so my various nocturnal vortexes have gone largely unnoticed by him.

At any rate, I’ve felt pretty ishy today but I’m trying to recover enough so that I can do my last 20-mile training run for the Indianapolis Marathon tomorrow. This is my peak week of training, and I intend to get in a total of 50 miles. I am ridiculously overtrained right now, but I just need to hang in for one more day and then all I have to do is coast to the marathon.

Alright. Have got to rest now and soak up some October sun.

MGMT

When I lived in France some 8 or 9 years ago, I listened to this radio station called OuiFm 102.3. It was great. And luckily for me, they stream their broadcast live online, so I’ve been able to continue listening to it ever since. Its especially soothing while I’m analyzing data. In the long hours I’ve spent running tedious statistical tests, OuiFm has introduced me to artists such as Amy Winehouse and MGMT. In fact, the radio station tends to be quite repetitive, so on any given day of data analysis, I was liable to hear Amy Winehouse’s "Back to Black" and MGMT’s "Time to Pretend" about 5 times apiece. It really grew on me. I decided that if my great American novel (that I have not actually started yet) ever gets made into a movie, "Time to Pretend" would be on the soundtrack. I was later dismayed, when Rob and I saw the movie 21, to hear this song in the background during at least one scene. Maybe it had become too mainstream already.

At any rate, I’m going to shift gears here for a minute. This morning we had a neighborhood brunch (the ladies in my neighborhood get together once a month for coffee and chatting—its really quite nice). I am usually by far the youngest in attendance. There is one other couple across the street who are both grad students, but most of the people who live nearby are the age of my parents or grandparents. Whenever I show up at one of the neighborhood events, everyone is very excited and amicable to have somebody new and young around. (My next door neighbor tells me that you have to live here at least 10 years before everybody stops calling you “the new neighbors”).

So, vegan coffee cake in hand, I walked over to the brunch with my next door neighbor. The hostess for this month’s gathering was a lady named Mrs. G who is in her 80’s (or maybe even 90’s?). When we walked in, Mrs. G was delighted that I had brought the coffee cake. As I helped her set up in the kitchen, she apologetically explained that she was running behind schedule this morning because she and her husband had unexpectedly gone out of town the day before. She said that her grandson had called to tell her that his rock band was performing somewhere in Wisconsin, and he had asked if she and grandpa could come. They’d gone, of course, and they didn’t get home until 2 o’clock in the morning!

The brunch proceeded, and my vegan coffee cake was a huge success. I was relieved that it turned out so well, but my motivation for bringing it was more than just being neighborly: I always travel with something vegan so that I am sure I can eat. While we were all sipping our coffee, someone asked Mrs. G what was the name of her grandson’s band. “MGMT,” she replied.

MGMT!?

My jaw must have hit the floor. I think I literally squealed, began jumping up and down, and said something to the effect of, “OH MY GOD, YOUR GRANDSON IS IN MGMT?!?!”

No one else had even heard of them, which wasn’t too surprising considering that I was the youngest person in the room by probably 30 years. Judging from my fanatic screeching, everybody else wanted to know who this MGMT was. They asked me what kind of music they played. I didn’t know how to politely say that the subject matter of the one MGMT song I know involves promiscuity (described with a rough term), cocaine, and dying young. Mrs. G led us over to her computer, where she went to the MGMT webpage and pulled up a video of one of their songs. “That’s my grandson,” she said, pointing to the cute one with the curly hair. She also showed me some pictures of him when he was a baby.

When I was getting ready to leave, she told me that her grandson had gotten them VIP seating at the concert. She said that the guy sitting next to them had seemed puzzled by their presence and finally asked, “What are you two doing here?” “My grandson is in the orchestra,” she had explained.

She thanked me again for the coffee cake and said that she would be sure to tell her grandson that I was a fan. Of course, now I'm an even bigger fan now that I know one of the guys in the band has such lovely grandparents!

Thanks for reading.

Running with sweet corn

Cousin Don* brought a load of sweet corn from his farm to running club tonight. He usually does this at least once in the summer; I can’t speak for everyone else, but I always look forward to this. In addition to being a nice guy and a fast runner, Cousin Don grows some good sweet corn.

I picked up two ears of corn: one for Rob and one for me. Of course, Rob and I had both run over there, so that meant we would be running back home with our ears of corn. I thought, this is Urbana. No one’s even going to give it a second glance. We started home, and I carried an ear of corn in each hand. People did actually give us second glances. I realized I probably looked like a corn thief. Like I had gone into somebody’s field, stolen two ears of corn, and was now fleeing the scene of the crime. On our way back home we caught up with two women from the club who had left just a bit before us. Each of them was carrying two ears of corn as well. We must have looked like a very strange procession, running along with our ears of corn. Only in Urbana.

Sometimes, getting fresh, local produce is all about being in the right place at the right time. All things considered, I’m glad that Cousin Don didn't bring watermelon.

Thanks to Cousin Don for sharing his delicious sweet corn!

*No relation.

In search of local produce

I recently decided that I wasn’t enough of a hippy (85% hippy according to John G), so I joined the local food Co-Op. The Co-Op is in progress of moving to a bigger store, which is good news because their current location is in a church basement and that kind of freaks me out. Unfortunately, I’ve been a little disappointed with the Co-Op thus far. I had been very excited about the prospect of having access to local organic produce, etc, but after my first shopping spree, I spent a ton of money and didn’t even come back with enough stuff to make dinner. There were a few vegetables from a farm about 25 miles away, but still a lot of the produce was from California (such as the obscenely expensive potatoes I bought). Strawberry Fields (a local health food store) pretty much has the same stuff for less money, though it is still all obscenely expensive. On the plus side, the Co-Op does carry Burt’s Bees products for less than I’ve seen them anywhere else. I think that in principle, the Co-Op is a great thing and I hope that once it moves out of the church basement, it will be a lot better. I’ve been told that they will carry 3 times as much produce in their new location, so that’s good news. Considering that I’ve got 9 cucumbers in my fridge right now and another 60 or 70 still growing on the vine out in my garden, I’m wondering if I could become their cucumber supplier.

Cucumbers from the garden

At any rate, I was unrelenting in my quest against the corporation and continued my search for local produce to supplement the cucumbers in my garden. Luckily, I didn’t have to go too far. Just about a half a mile away over in Orchard Downs there is a group of Chinese gardeners who sit out at picnic tables selling their produce all day long. When I discovered this, I was overjoyed for a couple of reasons. First, the local Farmer’s Market is held only on Saturday mornings, and what with Rob’s triathlon and bike racing schedule, we are almost never in town for it. And secondly, I really, really wanted to support these people. Their gardens are right along Race Street—where I run just about every day. Over the months, I’ve seen them preparing the ground, planting the seeds, tending the seedlings, and trying to hold back the flooding that surely destroyed some of their crops. During our rainy, rainy June, so many of those garden plots were completely submerged by the rains, and I’d felt so bad that after so much hard work they might lose everything. But once the rains subsided, many of the green rows were still there, and now they’ve got vegetables to sell.

So I hopped on Iris 2 and rode over to Orchard Downs. When the farmers saw me approaching, everybody got up from the picnic tables and surrounded me, thrusting lovely vegetables towards my nose and excitedly saying things in Chinese. I was a little overwhelmed. As it turned out, nobody spoke any English, except for one woman who smiled kindly and said, “Little English,” then pointed to a lovely bunch of green onions and said, “One dollar.” I ended up buying some of the onions (which are the best green onions I’ve ever tasted), and I will definitely return the next time I need anything green. The piles of green things they had displayed on the picnic tables was about twice the size of the selection at the Co-Op, and this produce is really local.

Green onions

I came home to make dinner and listened to a “Learn Chinese” podcast so that when I go back to visit my new friends, I will at least be able to say “Hello” and “Thank you.” If anyone who lives around here is reading, I highly recommend this truly local market!

Meanwhile, my own garden continues to expand its borders. So far the only things I’ve been able to eat from it are cucumbers, kale, basil, and cilantro. But in another couple of weeks I will be inundated with more tomatoes than I’ve ever seen in my life. I’ve been eating cucumbers like other people might eat potato chips, and I’ve had to get creative to find uses for the kale. While searching for kale recipes, I ended up getting confused and combining this one and this one. What resulted is actually pretty good:

Kale and Adzuki Bean Farfalle
3-4 cloves garlic
6-8 cups chopped fresh kale
1 tsp cumin
1 tsp coriander
about 2 cups (cooked) Adzuki beans
1 box of tri-color farfalle pasta
Feta cheese
Tamari sauce or salt (optional)

Saute the garlic in olive oil. Add the kale, you may need to add a little water. You will soon see what was once a giant and nearly unmanageable quantity of raw kale disappear into nothingness. Add the cumin and coriander, stir to coat. Add adzuki beans.* You might add a little salt or tamari sauce (for more of an Asian kick), but I usually don't.

Meanwhile, boil water and cook the pasta according to instructions. Drain. Serve the kale mixture over the pasta and top with feta cheese.

This is usually enough for 2 nights worth of dinner for a hungry cyclist/triathlete and a hungry marathon runner.

* You can either use canned beans or make them yourself. For dry adzuki beans, you can put them in water to soak when you leave for work in the morning and then cook them for 40 min to 1 hour when you get home. You can also use the quick soak method: you boil them for 2 minutes, then let them sit for an hour, then boil them again for 40 min to an hour and they are good to go.

That’s all for now. I’ve got to get back to the Tour de France and my increasingly unwieldy chapter on the howler monkey diet. Thanks for reading!