Monthly Archives: October 2011

A Tropical, Swine Flu-Free Halloween

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The optimal Halloween location

So in late October a couple of years ago, we were living in Korea and spending our days hanging out with cute lil’ kiddies and attempting to teach them a little bit of English in the process. Around this time was the big swine flu scare. Enough kids were contracting the sometimes fatal disease that both we (teachers who could only get out of working if we were literally on our death beds) and parents were pretty alarmed at the probability that we could be affected.

A little background: when we worked in Korea, we worked at a school called a hagwan. A hagwan is an academy that offers lessons in any variety of subjects; in our case, these were English lessons. Our English hagwan, like many others, offered kindergarten to little bitties in the morning, and in the afternoon, elementary-aged kids who had been at the public school all morning would come and get their daily dose of English.

So it finally happened: a child from one of the local elementary schools many of our afternoon students also attended contracted the swine flu. Living in a pretty small community, the news traveled fast and the parents of our students temporarily pulled their kids out of our school in droves. Our school closed down for a long weekend.

Creepy and spooky? Not so much. Freakin' awesome? Check.

A LONG WEEKEND. If you’ve taught in Korea, you know that those are as rare as a delicious but also reasonably-priced piece of cheese or a taxi ride that doesn’t make you fear for your life. So we jumped on it. With our friend Emily*, we pretty much threw the proverbial dart at the map, it landed on the Philippines, and we were on a flight to Cebu the next day.

It was thrilling to fly the coup on a whim like that because we *technically* weren’t supposed to leave the country without notifying our boss who would have doubtlessly clucked her disapproval and banned us from going. That’s just Korea; it’s not an oppressive place, but some businesses still operate under a system where employers feel that they own their employees and can instigate parental control over them. Being American adults, we knew there was really nothing they could do (except maybe be mad at us for a few days and prepare an innocuous “write up”) if we got caught.

The Gaming Ship

We chose to stay at a little bayside resort on the island of Cebu for our getaway. The area surrounding the resort wasn’t exactly the kind of place we felt safe trampsing around in our free time, but that was fine by us. We made ourselves at home right away. One of the things we latched on to pretty quickly was the existence of an outdoor pool table. To this day I really hope there was no one else at the resort during the time we were there who wanted to play pool because we had the placed staked out pretty much the entire time. I think I remember Emily and B making up some new game that they were sure would catch on once they demonstrated it to all our friends back in Yongin. Vacation really gets those creative juices flowing!

The resort was beautiful, the food was amazing, and the drinks were, well, here’s some pictures of the drinks:

I KNOW, RIGHT?! A-ma-zing. And it was all really inexpensive. So next time you throw a dart on a map but you don’t have much to spend, pray that it lands somewhere in the Pacific Rim.

Each day consisted of:

1. Drinking aforepictured ridiculously tasty and beautiful beverages

2. Discussing what sadistic punishments our boss would come up with if she discovered that we left the country

3. Shooting pool

4. Walking out on the wharf and seeing what we could find

When the tide went out, we could walk out into the bay and discover all kinds of little creatures, like these:

Sea urchins

Starfish

Strange little crabs with only one beefy arm

One day, B walked out on the wharf and some kids who were out in the bay collecting sea creatures melodically yelled out to him.

“Yoohoo, American! You are very white for you! (Giggling) You want to give us money?!” (Uncontrollable laughter)

The security guy from the resort immediately darted out from the shadows and started yelling at them in Tagalog, as if this had happened before.

“Sorry, old man!,” they replied in stitches. “We don’t understand your English!”

The old man security guy was the only person not laughing at that point.

Unfortunately, all good things must come to an end and on October 31, 2009, we left our haven for the Cebu Airport to return to Korea. Actually, we were quite anxious to return because a tropical storm was headed our way and we wanted to return to a country where the only bodily threat we faced was the kindergartners’ projectile vomiting.

After a harrowing adventure at check-in**, we arrived at the gate and waited for our flight.

And waited. And waited. And waited.

At a Christmas-ready restaurant in the Philippines on Halloween

The departure time came and went without any notification from the airline, and we started to get a little nervous. Granted, it was Saturday and we didn’t need to be back at work until Monday, but at that moment we began to rue the fun that we had made at our boss’ expense. Hours eventually passed. We killed the time by going to a nearby restaurant in the gate and eating fried rice which only in the dead zone of a airport terminal somehow costed us $14.00.

The funnest way to spend Halloween? Stuck in an airport in the Philippines eating rice and wondering if any airline employee is ever going to notify you of what the heck is going on?

Probably not.

However, we did indeed eventually make it back to Seoul and celebrated Halloween with the cutest little vomit-lobbers that I can think of.

Happy Halloween!

*One day I am going to write a post on all the other Emilys I have not only been acquainted with throughout my life but who I have actually been very good friends with. It’s a high number, folks.

**Again, I am saving this story for another post I will write someday on the perils of air travel. Let’s just say that this misadventure involved us giving our passports to a random lady who claimed to work for the airline.

Pregnancy Headquarters

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Time to show a little appreciation for the place where it all goes down (or, err, comes up) during pregnancy:

The bathroom!

Courtesy imperfectparent.com

The lobby bathroom at the Field Museum in Chicago was recently rated the best public bathroom in the US. Now, you may shirk this off as a dubious honor, but when you think about it, the awesome bathrooms of the world DESERVE to be honored. Not only that, but the barely-functioning bathrooms of the world should have their day in the sun, too! I think it’s my duty as a pregnant women to point this out.

It was the bathroom that offered you a place to test your suspicion that something out of the ordinary was happening in the first place. You can’t pee on a stick in the bedroom, no matter how hardwooded your floor or how patient your cleaning lady.

Similarly, as the bathroom is the home of the handy toilet, it was where you ran during the first trimester several times a day to ralph. Hopefully, you made it in time, but even if you didn’t, I think we can all still agree that we’re lucky to live in a time when the bathroom is actually located inside the home. The idea of being pregnant 150 years ago is borderline horrifying for many reasons, but the idea of having to run to an outhouse to barf or – even worse – to have a designated indoor bucket reserved for this purpose would’ve added insult to injury to early pregnancy heaving.

Your bathroom never complains that you’re “using” it and taking it for granted. No, it loves the extra traffic it gets from your pregnant pee runs. It becomes headquarters, and because you’re spending so much extra time in it, you may feel the need to redecorate a little bit. Go ahead! You’re probably going to be able to do some serious toilet reading over the next nine months so you may as well do it in an environment that is conducive to deep thought. Show your bathroom some love and get some new bathmats that match the mood of War and Peace.

And let’s not forget about home delivery! If you want to have a water birth, the bathroom will be the setting of what could very well be the most important moment of your life! This room will become the stage on which your life changes. Dear Lord, thank you for that tub!

Thank you, modern plumbing and technology, for this blessed space. Let’s hear it for the bathroom, Pregnancy Headquarters!

Baby Mix

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In compiling my (as always) *thorough* inventory of the human race, I have been able to discern two categories of parent.

First is the parent whose identity seems to be completely encapsulated in their baby/child. EVERYTHING is geared towards their young. Weekend outings are limited to going exclusively to kids’ museums, Chuck E. Cheese’s, and baby birthday parties featuring clowns whose humor is likely lost on both adult and youth spectators. Mac and cheese, chicken fingers, and crustless peanut butter sandwiches are not only featured on the wee one’s plate but also on mom’s (what kind of wine would you pair with Goldfish crackers?). Facebook status updates that once chronicled one’s witty comments on the suckiness of their jobs or the awesomeness of their trip to Estonia now concern the baby’s barfing or getting together with other spawners to take the kids to the latest community-organized spend-a-thon Craft Fest.

Then there are parents who seem to retain some of their adulthood upon introducing a baby into the fold. This is the kind of parent I want to be because I can’t handle the prospect that Barney time slots could possibly become pertinent to mine and Bebe’s daily routines. In our home, there will be no separately prepared meals for the elders and the youth because monochromatic children’s food is downright depressing and insulting to all who feel the need to consume it.

Believe it or not, I really don’t have any aggression towards kids’ culture. When I worked at a fairly hoity-toity restaurant a few years back, I used to watch Caillou before I went in for my shift because I found that its slow pace relaxed me and made me realize that the whiners and snobs who I would be dealing with that evening were, like Caillou, probably miserable from their youth and deserving of the same patience that anyone would give freely to a cranky four-year-old.

The stimulus that I will provide Bebe will (hopefully) be fun, cool, and not insulting to my baby’s intelligence. In her recent post Shiny Happy People, Jessica from booshy got me thinking about what babies hear (both in utero and, err, out utero) and how what the parents dish out trumps almost all other stimuli that the baby will receive from now until the kid learns of the existence of Tiger Beat. So in providing the soundtrack for our baby’s life, I think we can do better than The Waffles, or Wuggles, or Wiggles, or whatever the name of that musical group is.

At the same time, even though “Jeremy” is technically about a child, I don’t think I’ll be piping that into the nursery just yet.

So what’s the happy medium?

I have a few suggestions:

Every time the baby hears this song, I will remind him that his ultra-cool mom and dad have even been to Iceland. It will doubtlessly be annoying for the baby but it will hopefully remind him that his parents were cool way back when.

“Mommy, what’s ‘November Rain’”? I can field that question.

Me neither.

The ultimate shiny, happy medium. It kind of makes me sad that, despite the fact that REM hasn’t been too awesome since I was in 7th grade, Bebe will be born into a world where they don’t really exist anymore.

Now, the burning question: what would you put on your baby’s playlist? What should the kiddies be hearing?

Sadness and Love

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What can I say?

I just love my husband so, so, so much. I love him all the more when things aren’t easy. And things aren’t easy for him right now.

On Friday night, after struggling with Crohn’s disease and several other conditions for years, Ben’s dad passed away in his sleep after having been hospitalized for the last couple months.

“Knowing that something is going to happen” doubtlessly makes a difference when mourning the passing of a loved one, but it probably doesn’t do much to assuage the feeling that a part of your life came to completion the moment that person left. Time is passing, you’re not who you used to be, and you need to re-calibrate your life – a new life without the person who played a decisive role in making it the way it was.

B was really similar to his dad in a lot of ways. They were both pensive and willing to sacrifice for their wives but still devoted to their private interests. B creatively expresses and edifies himself in a lot of ways. He plays chess, is an avid reader, and loves to make image macros, among other things. Whether he knows it or not, his maintenance of his independent interests contributes to him being such a wonderful husband. Some of these are obvious and practical; being able to come home and unwind with his hobbies clearly relaxes him and makes him pleasant.

But he also integrates what he does and his attitude for constant exploration and critical examination into his relationship with me. For a long, long time, I’ve had a lot of insecurities about what I’m capable of. I’d try doing something for a brief period of time, decide I wasn’t up to it, and then just walk away from it and think that was normal. By giving up a lot, I eventually tempered myself to believe that I just wasn’t capable of carrying through and this really frustrated me. In his typical fashion, B has never indulged me these insecurities and my willingness to constantly talk about them but never really do anything about them. Instead, he just rolls along, treating me with respect and with the expectation that I am better than I sometimes think I am. This is something he got from his dad; neither of them were much for talking about feelings but instead held their families to a standard they could very well meet and expected them to rise to it. For the first few years of our relationship, I resented this about B, but as our relationship ages and develops, I am extremely glad he treats me with loving respect and expectation. I can thank his father for setting that standard.

My husband’s not a gushy person in any regard whatsoever, so I don’t expect him to want to talk too directly about the loss of his father. Since being with him, I’ve learned that that’s just not how he copes with things. I’m not going to force him to go through motions that have become standard for some people but aren’t beneficial or therapeutic for everyone. Having lost my own father, I know that one of the surest ways to make a sad time absolutely miserable is to be surrounded by people who tell you that the way you’re reacting is outright wrong.

But if he wants a hundred kisses, I’ll give him a hundred kisses. If he wants a smile, I’ll give him a smile. If he wants to talk about nothing but the baby, that’s what we’ll talk about nothing but the baby. I just love B so much.

Wait, you mean pregnancy will eventually lead to delivery?

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It has recently occurred to me that my pregnancy is eventually going to reach the point where the baby is going to have to come out.

My nether-regions are going to automatically contract and stretch without me telling them to and a huge mountain of living flesh is going to be pushed through a hole that up to this point has primarily been used to transport not much more than a stream of urine out of my body. WTF. It’s miraculous or whatever, but it’s also bizarre. A new person is coming out of an old person. It’s wacko in its shear normalcy.

And it’s going to hurt. A lot. There is an actual term for when the baby’s head crowns, and it’s called “the ring of fire.” You have got to be kidding me. Really? We chose this point not to sugarcoat things? I’d prefer the feeling of my vagina being engulfed in flames to be a surprise, thank you very much.

And there’s no way of knowing how long it will last. Apparently I could start having contractions weeks in advance (although I may not feel them). My water could break 24 hours before the baby comes, or it could have to be broken for me. Yeah, didn’t know that. So what exactly will we be timing the contractions for? Just for fun?

And I am probably going to be really mean to my husband and yell at him even though he’s trying his hardest to be helpful. Yeah, yeah, I know, “He won’t take it personally” or “Well, he was the one who got you in this position in the first place.” Sorry, but I’ve really taken a liking to my spouse, so much that I decided to have a baby with him. He’s just that great. So I don’t like being mean to him :/

And after the baby comes, the fun’s not over. Oh no. Then it’s time to deliver the placenta. Not that it’s going to hurt all that much or at all, but it’s another chore. It’s like, “Did you enjoy your meal at Charlie Trotters? Yeah? Well, guess what, everyone else did too and now it’s time for you to wash all the dishes.”

One more chore. THEN you get to try to breastfeed the baby. In my thorough, spooked research comprised of accounts from shell-shocked new mothers, I have found few examples of this being a successful enterprise. The baby sometimes won’t latch on for quite some time. I am trying to be optimistic by assuming that the disheartening stories I’ve read about starting out breastfeeding are really only recorded because they are out of the ordinary or meant to assuage other frustrated moms. But I don’t know who Bebe really is, so I don’t know how quickly (s)he’ll take to being breastfed. If she’s anything like me, she’ll just want some flippin’ coffee, so I’m going to have to arrange a bottle of coffee to be ready just in case. That will be a good bonding moment, I think.

All this to say, with my pleasantly rounding belly, I am beginning to realize that Bebe’s not just a little fig anymore. (S)he’s a real person (!!!!) and she’s going to make an entrance. And I’ve gotta be there. It is for sure the most daunting activity I’ve ever known in advance that I’d be integrally involved in.

I’m going to have to have the baby.

So many thoughts, so many ways not to write about them

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Why is it that the more I have floating around in my brain and the more I feel compelled to put down, the harder it is for me to do it?

I’ve been quite preoccupied with that question lately because out of all the challenges I’m facing in my life right now, that’s the one that has kind of floated to the top. Perhaps it’s because it’s the one issue that I can address simply by facing the problem head-on by just writing, without regards as to whether or not what I’m saying is the “right” thing. But that’s just so hard sometimes.

If you’re still reading, I apologize that this post won’t be maybe as interesting (I know, I’m flattering myself) as usual simply because it’s kind of cathartic. It’s free therapy for the frustrated mind.

I have simply got so much going on right now. Maybe my day planner isn’t filled with appointments and maybe I don’t necessarily have a lot of commitments outside of personal goals and such. But the baby’s coming, I miss my life in Korea and Chicago, I want to be working, and our financial situation isn’t ideal (but whose is when a baby’s on the way?). I’m filled with thoughts about all these hurdles and I’m becoming overwhelmed trying to find a starting place in working them out productively.

I want more than anything to speak clearly, precisely, poignantly, and wittily, but I sometimes feel like the topics I want to cover and the frustrations that I have are way too formidable for me to develop the confidence to get started. I don’t have complete and utter control going in, so I end up psyching myself out and never beginning.

I want to be the kind of person who can own my challenges and confidently trust myself to deal with them. The most important thing I have that is spurring me to not give up is Bebe, my little treasure, whose development is going to be my primary responsibility once (s)he arrives. Right now, outside of taking care of myself physically, one of the best things I can be doing for Bebe is being patient with myself and continuing to love myself with more than just a fraction of the love I already have for her and her dad.

Nom Nom of the Week: Perfect Choco Chip Cookies

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Remember when I was harping on eating healthy and putting nutritious things in my body during my pregnancy? Well, those kinds of dishes aren’t as fun to blog about. Maybe on a slow week I’ll share with you a recipe for a kale salad or something.

If you are pregnant, you need no excuse to occasionally indulge in these morsels of joy or to endear yourself to all possible crib-assemblers/ baby shower attendees by baking up a batch. However, if you are not pregnant but would like to pack on some pounds as if you are, join me in making some freaking awesome chocolate chip cookies!

I have a preference for chewy, thick cookies rather than crispy ones. These definitely fall into the sumptuous, chewy category. I had tried out several recipes for cookies that were allegedly going to come out bakery-style, but each time they failed to deliver the goods. However, this recipe, which comes from The New Best Recipe (the best all-around cookbook that I know) was an epic win. Do yourself a favor and get this book if you don’t have it already. The book version of America’s Test Kitchen, it will seriously instruct you on how to make nearly every traditional and not-so-traditional recipe properly and perfectly. I’ve included a few of my own notes. So here they are:

THICK AND CHEWY CHOCOLATE CHIP COOKIES

INGREDIENTS:

2 cups plus 2 tbsp. (10 5/8 oz.) unbleached all-purpose flour (love, love King Arthur)

1/2 tsp. baking soda

1/2 tsp. salt

12 tbsp. (1 1/2 sticks) unsalted butter, melted and cooled until just warm

1 cup packed (7 oz.) light or dark brown sugar (This is what makes them awesome and chewy.)

1/2 cup (3 1/2 oz.) granulated sugar

1 large egg, plus 1 large egg yolk

2 teaspoons vanilla extract

1 to 1 1/2 cups semisweet chocolate chips

1. Adjust the oven racks to the upper- and lower-middle positions and heat the oven to 325 degrees F. Line two large baking sheets with parchment paper or spray them with nonstick cooking spray. (I use parchment. Since the oven won’t get extremely hot for this recipe, you will be able to reuse the paper for the next time you make cookies if you so choose.)

2. Whisk the flour, baking soda, and salt together in a bowl. Set aside.

3. Either by hand or with an electric mixer, mix the butter and sugars until thoroughly blended. (Remember, you’ve already melted the butter!) Beat in the egg, yolk, and vanilla until combined. Add the dry ingredients and beat at low speed just until combined. (I add the flour mixture in about 1/4 of a cup at a time.) Stir in the chips to taste.

4. Roll a scant 1/4 cup of the dough into a ball. Hold the dough ball with the fingertips of both hands and pull into two equal halves. Rotate the halves 90 degrees and, with jagged surfaces facing up, join the halves together at the base, again forming a single ball, being careful not to smooth the dough’s uneven surface. (I’ve found these instructions make the cookies look great but don’t have a huge effect on their texture or baking time. I usually opt for no bells and whistles and just roll 1/4 cup dough into a ball and place it on the sheet.) 

Place the formed dough balls on the prepared baking sheets, jagged surface up, spacing them 2 1/2 inches apart.

5. Bake until the cookies are light golden brown, the outer edges start to harden, and the centers are still soft and puffy, 15 to 18 minutes. Rotate the baking sheets front to back and top to bottom halfway through the baking time. Cool the cookies on the sheets. Remove the cooled cookies from the sheets with a wide metal spatula.

Thanks to Evelyn from Momsicle for the recipe for Lactation Bars! They look really yummy and I can’t wait to make them and tell you how they turn out.

Notes on the 15th Week

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Sorry for the nearly week-long hiatus. I’ve been having pregnancy headaches lately and they seem to be exacerbated when I sit in front of the compy for longer than, like, 10 minutes. I have several close friends who have lived with real-deal migraines since childhood, so I don’t dare compare my pee wee head ouchies to their bona fide spells of misery. I also won’t compare my whiny attitude to their admirable ability to suck up pain and plow through it like the awesome women that they are. It’s a relatively recent thing for me not to call in sick to work on account of anticipated sniffles.

My body is definitely pregnant. I guess I could’ve said the same thing a couple months ago when I was feeling like a bucket of brackish water mixed with flecks of vomit and clots of saliva and some other element that indicates moodiness, but back then I didn’t really have much to show for it. Now I do. Here’s why:

1. Maternity clothes have been purchased. Yesterday, since the Gap was having a pretty awesome Columbus Day sale, I logged on to their website and ordered a pair of jeans and a sweater. Anticipating the sale, I had planned on ordering some clothes on that day for awhile. Thank God Americans chose to honor the wondrously silly Columbus when they do because I am in need. I seem to have developed a bump overnight and all my jeans are now uncomfortably tight and my muffin top is not all that. I am going to be walking around the house with my pants unbuttoned and unzipped until they arrive. I mean, I do have a little propriety; I’m not going to walk around pants-less or anything.

2. I have Edward Scissorhands fingernails. I’ve been a nail-biter since my brother was born 27 years ago, but not even I can keep up with the kudzu-esque growth rate of my nails. First of all, they’re now hard as a rock and not remotely brittle. I have to clip them every week. Let me put this in perspective: prior to the pregnancy, I would maybe clip my nails every two or three months if I was being good and not biting them and they hadn’t already broken because of the fact that they were made out of heavy card stock. Now, if I don’t clip them once I week, a camera crew from Ripley’s Believe It or Not will inevitably show up at my house by the estimated due date.

My Havoc-Wreaking Back

3. The backaches have started. I can kind of deal with the headaches, but what I can’t deal with are backaches. I have had serious back pain issues since I was a teenager and they have intensified in the past few years. I would imagine this is because at some point, my back became the class clown of my anatomy and decided to impress my lungs, ankles, retinas, and the rest of me with its shenanigans. Its crowning achievement was making me weep in front of my boss in Korea because the pain was so intense. That was indeed a proud moment.

Me

When we were in Korea, I got acupuncture treatments several times and they seemed to kind of work, but they were also super inexpensive compared to the US. I’ve been anticipating their arrival since I became pregnant, but I really didn’t think they’d start so early. Boo. If anything, I can be, err, a pregnant elderly lady for Halloween since I’ve already got the belly and the stature. That should scare/confuse all who behold me.

4. I’m getting parental. And by “parental” I mean “annoyed with unsolicited ‘advice’ on things I should do to raise my baby.” Enough has been said about how pregnant women get sick of hearing what they “ought” to do in regards to delivering the baby, naming the baby, and raising the baby, so I’m not really going to add to it. I would just like to say that, last I checked, my husband and I are the parents of our baby, and we have enough on our plate right now trying to coordinate the arrival of a new human to the world that we don’t need to start second guessing ourselves. That is all :)