Wrapping up

I left work for the last time today, and much as I loved my job and enjoyed my time there and appreciated all the dear people with whom I worked, I have the most glorious end-of-term feeling! Not that I anticipate any long stretch of sleeping in of mornings or anything like that, but it's a very buoyant and free sensation.

I have only the best things to say about the place I've worked for the past almost-year. And I've so enjoyed the friendships I've made while there. This past week has been a perfect capstone to a satisfying career. Yesterday Amy in HR asked me what I wanted for my going-away party. There's not so much turnover that this is a real issue, but it just happened that one lady left just last Friday, and we had cake for her party. Then of course we had pie and ice cream for Monica's and my party on Monday (fortunately I shared a birthday with someone who was up for a creative alternative to store-bought cake and cardboard icing), and after agreeing that everyone was probably caked-out by now, we decided to have a going-away brunch instead. So we had bagels and orange juice in the kitchen this morning, and it was all so pleasant and cheery. Also I found out that they've started an office pool on when Baby comes, how much Baby weighs, and whether Baby is a boy or a girl! The funniest part is that all the guys in the back warehouse have all gotten on board most excitedly with this pool, happy to have something to bet money on even if they don't really have much of an idea. It's so cute - they're guessing like 15 lbs. and random days that are probably notgoing to come true, but it's all in good fun...plus Jennifer told me they want to give me half of the money in the end! Isn't that sweet? And gambling is actually against the rules in the employee handbook, and dear Mr. W, the owner, apparently put up one of the biggest stakes of all. Yes, I'm sad to leave, but I can't think of a better reason to do so.

Storks and storms

Overheard on last night’s walk:

Me: So do you think it would be a worthwhile investment to spend, say, $5 on a plastic stork for our yard in the hopes of eliciting free cookies and maybe other food from the neighbours?
Michael (horrified): What a mercenary idea! Where do you come up with these things?
Me: Okay, okay, I was just kidding! We don’t have to do it.
Michael: It’s pretty scary the way your mind works sometimes. I mean, you would think they would have to send people away to training camps to indoctrinate them to think like that.

So last night we were watching a show when this background tune came on. The only line I caught was, ‘“Come in,” she said; “I’ll give you shelter from the storm.”’ It was very catchy, and I liked it so much that I looked up the lyrics online afterwards, only to discover that it was a Bob Marley song! Now, I don’t know anything about Bob Marley except that I am supposed to hate his music; I’ve heard so many bad things about his voice and style that I’m totally prejudiced against him, and here the only song of his that I’ve actually heard I find that I like very much indeed! This is a pretty kettle of fish.

‘Twas the eighteenth of April in 2005…

Listen, my children, and you shall hear
How Paul Revere drank all the beer.

Thus began one of our poems from the inimitable Poem Game, a Penney family tradition wherein all the participants write the first line of a famous poem, then pass the paper one person to the left, rhyme the line and write a new one, and pass it on. There are several variations, including the four-line doggerel, the eight-line poem, or simply passing the paper around until it ends up back with the person who starts it. Terribly fun, even in circles of people who protest themselves not literary. (Actually, when it involves those without the writing bug, the results can be even sillier than ever.) My personal favourite and a Penney family classic:

The windshield factor was fifteen below;
On that frigid terrain only real men could go.
Did they venture for fortune, for love, or for fame?
Or did they attempt to rescue a dame?
Yes, the rains came down and the winds did blow
And all they could cry was, ‘Oh, oh, oh!’
They wondered why they’d ever left
(Their jaws were square and their chins were cleft.)
They faced the challenge with derring-do;
Their motor-bikes in a circle they drew
Not giving the villains a single clue
As to what they were doing; I leave it to you.

So anyway, it’s now been 230 years since the midnight ride of Paul Revere, although according to Paul Harvey, it was really Israel Bissel who deserves the credit for spreading the alarm. We were trying to remember at breakfast if the alarm was the night of the 18th and therefore it the morning of the 19th when the battle of Concord happened. And we just finished reading Johnny Tremain, so we should know! Alas, we’re still stranded halfway through The Great Impersonation; need to get cracking if we’re to finish that before Baby arrives.

It was such a nice weekend, though not nearly so restful as it should have been. I had the girls I’ve been mentoring over for a slumber party on Friday night, and after a lesson, pizza and Pepsi, a movie, and a rousing game of spoons, I was falling asleep by 11:00. The girls, not being old and boring yet, stayed up until who knows when, and still got up early the next morning for bacon and eggs. Saturday was lovely; Michael mowed the lawn and assembled the stroller while I organised the nursery a tiny bit more and ran hundreds of loads of laundry. We took a chicken out of the freezer and determined to go to church the next morning with the explicit intention of inviting someone over for dinner (the fun thing about hospitality is that Michael really enjoys it too, and half the time it’s his idea – ‘We don’t have anything planned for Sunday, do we? We should really have someone over’). Benjamin and Amanda came over, and we showed them The Court Jester, which they had never seen before. Plot we’ve got – quite a lot.

And now we’re trying to keep the schedule gloriously unfree because we know not what the morrow may bring!

Living and Dyeing

On New Year’s Eve 2003 we had several friends over to celebrate. We were all newly married, and we drank sparkling cider and enjoyed a sit-down dinner in our formal dining room, which to this day remains bereft of furniture, since we’re still saving up for a nice dining room set. All this information is incidental to the point of this post, and merely sets the stage for the astounding events to follow. The party left us with tablecloths and napkins to launder, most of which were fresh from the wedding registry (sad to admit that this was the first time I’d used this tablecloth since we were married in August? Well, at any rate, it was the first time it needed washing). It was a blue-and-white checkered print, and since it was sort of fuzzy and soft, much like our master bath towels, I blithely tossed them all in the laundry together. Our towels, previously a lovely warm vanilla colour, ended up a rather dingy blue-grey, while the tablecloth and napkins escaped apparently unscathed. Michael expressed some surprise at this apparent lapse of common sense – washing un-like colours, especially on a first washing (Me: ‘But I washed it on the cold cycle! I thought nothing bad could happen in cold water!’) – but was generally forbearing and understanding of the situation, and hasn’t complained at all in the past year-plus about our master bath towels not looking quite so sprightly as they ought.

So this last weekend I thought I had spotted a brilliant solution. I picked up a few really cute maternity tops at the local upscale Goodwill (all Motherhood or Mimi brand names, except for like $5 each instead of $45) and brought them proudly home to wash. One was a rather bright red top, and I was seized with the notion of tossing it in with the unfortunate towels, to compensate for the blue hue with a good red shift. Of course I didn’t really expect it to work, because of course colours don’t bleed in cold water, only hot, but I thought it couldn’t hurt to try.

Well. Michael pulled the towels out of the washer, clean and fresh and complete with random pink spots on them. It reminds me a bit of The Cat in the Hat Comes Back, with an inexorable pink stain that just gets progressively worse and worse. It actually doesn’t look bad, and I’m trying to look on the bright side: it’s sort of like one step away from having monogrammed towels! Now Michael and I can have our own personalised towels without having our initials sewn on to them. But I have now officially given up on the towels and will try no further attempts at rectifying the situation.

By the way

Now that I'm about to quit my job, here is where I work:

http://www.colonial-lighting.com/home.htm

Pictures and Conversation, Part 2

We have been getting dreadfully erratic about our Sunday Pregnant Picture of late. This time around it was well into the week before we got to take it. (We forgot on Sunday and then it was many days before I felt pretty enough to document my condition.) So in addition to our standard pose, I also wanted a couple of free-standing, carefully scripted candid shots, to give the appearance of breezy elegance and casual, carefree ease and happiness.

The first picture I relaxed completely, to allow the full effects of the expansion to be visible. ‘This will be the “Wow, I can’t believe how pregnant I looked then!” picture,’ I explained to Michael, who was patiently working the camera. ‘It will be a curiosity piece, because I’m never going to be this big again, except under similar circumstances.’

Next I wanted one a bit more controlled, for the exact opposite effect, to prove how non-pregnant it is possible to look at 8+ months along. ‘Now I’m going to suck it up a bit, so I can look back and think, “And that’s how I looked at 8+ months pregnant!”’ And held the pose (with some difficulty. It reminded me a bit of those corset-tying scenes in old Victorian novels. ‘Don’t breathe, Mabel! Don’t breathe!’)

Michael peered through the viewfinder. ‘Okay,’ he called. ‘Go ahead and suck it up!’ Distressed yelps resulted from me and evil cackles from Michael. Funny, funny man.

(This is all very silly and I readily admit it. I don’t know why it’s so important to me to prove by pictures how un-pregnant I look when I’m perfectly happy being pregnant, feel great, and wouldn’t wish a thing otherwise. Sigh.)

Further thoughts on Holland

And yet, for all that, there are some things that the Dutch (possibly Europeans in general) do better (or, shall we say, we could take a page from them):

-European hospitality. You can’t enter someone’s house without being offered coffee or tea. You always linger around the table after dinner sipping drinks, laughing, and talking. Sure, I know we drink coffee here, and when you go over to someone’s house for dinner you usually get offered water or juice or coke or something, but for the most part people don’t keep their tea sets and coffee creamers always at the ready here. It’s a social ritual over there. And it’s GOOD stuff!

-European diet. The bread you buy in the bakery is generally far better quality than your typical sandwich bread here. Even the cheapest run-of-the-mill sandwich bread there is hearty and nutritious. Breakfast often consists of yogurt, bread and cheese, bread and meat, jam, and of course the classic chocolate sprinkle sandwiches! Overall, the foods seem far less processed, possibly one reason why Europeans manage to look so thin compared to their American counterparts (either that or the fact that everyone smokes like crazy over there).

-European roundabouts! I fell in love with these in England and still adore the notion of not having to come to a dead stop when it’s perfectly obvious that no one’s coming from all directions. Plus if you’re scrambling to decipher a map (NOT lost, just momentarily confused of bearings) it’s so convenient to be able to circle without having to make a snap decision and end up heading off to the wrong corner of the country.

I must say, the Euro was a big disappointment. We took a trip into Germany one day since the border was so nearby. Wandering around the fairy-talish city of Bremen, I was delighted to see a coin glittering at me from the ground, and went through the great effort of bending over and picking it up (no mean feat at my current girth), delighted with the prospect of adding a German coin to my collection, only to realize that, of course, it was just a common 1-cent Euro piece, like I had tons of already. Blah.

Pictures and Conversation, Part 1

‘And what,’ thought Alice, ‘is the use of a book without any pictures or conversation?’

Overhead at the dinner table:

Michael: This is really good. What is it?
Me: ‘Hearty Chicken and Rice Soup.’
Michael: Hmm, that’s funny. It looks and tastes like it has barley in it.
Me: Well, actually it does. That was just the soup’s name in the cookbook.
Michael: What a funny cookbook! I wonder why it would call for barley in a rice dish!
Me: Ummm…actually, it did call for rice, but I thought barley would be better.
Michael: Ah. And did you actually use chicken for the chicken part, or maybe some leftover quail that you had lying around?

Later:

Me: What would you like, a cinnamon roll or a slice of peach cobbler?
Michael: I’ll take a cinnamon roll.
Me: What! You’d rather have a cinnamon roll than a slice of juicy peach cobbler fresh from the oven, all crunchy and crisp, with ice cream melting over it??
Michael: Oh, boy! I’ll take peach cobbler then. Silly me!

Overheard on the nightly walk:

Me (breathing deeply): Ah, the fresh scent of spring!
Michael (sniffing): Actually, it smells a lot like a dryer vent.
Me: Well, maybe it’s Spring Fresh fabric softener.

America for me!

There's a poem somewhere beginning, 'Oh, the old world...' and goes on to describe the wonders and delights of Greece and Rome and all that, but winds up each verse with '...America for me!' After two weeks of touring on the continent, I am delighted with all that I saw and ate but immensely glad to be back on home soil once more and incredibly proud to be an American!

Fortunately daylight savings time works right into the whole jetlag thing, so we're so zombied-out with the time change anyway that we won't even feel the injustice of waking up an hour earlier tomorrow. Baby already makes me feel hungry all the time, so the meal weirdness isn't as much of an issue as it usually is with travel.

Well, what can I say about Holland? Wonderful food, fabulous chocolate sprinkles (I ate a chocolate sprinkle sandwich for breakfast every day), incredibly warm and friendly people, and really uncharacteristically good weather for us the two weeks we were there. It was really too fabulous of a trip - and so much better than expected, considering my apprehensions about timeframe, pregnant travel, expense of the euro, etc. - to complain about anything, so let's just briefly catalogue the ways in which I come away with an improved opinion of America (the following are sweeping generalisations):

-American plumbing. In America you usually have warm water in the powder rooms. The sinks are usually big enough to fit both hands under the faucet at once. The towels are usually big and folded over a rack rather than hung from a rivet on a hook on the wall. The toilet paper is usually white (not brown, except in some environmentally nutty stores where they sell recycled toilet paper) and actually soft.

-American cuisine. In America, if you order water in a restaurant, it is usually a good way of indulging your cheapness and acknowledging that you don't want to pay for a drink. It is not common to order water, explicitly specify that it be tap water and not bottled, and be brought bottled water (and charged a hefty price in Euros for it). It is furthermore not common in America, should such a situation befall you, to be told by the waiter, after you are caught sneaking off to the WC with the bottle to covertly fill it up because you are dying of thirst, that you are not allowed to help yourself to water from the WC.

-American customer service. In America, there are signs everywhere. There are people in the airports to direct you if you are confused. Now, in all fairness, not everyone in America can speak a foreign language for the assistance of any hapless tourist who happens by. But at least we try. And we generally have good, prompt, and attentive service in public places. This may be because, without a minimum wage of 8-10 euros/hour, many people in the service-oriented industry are working for tips and actually have a vested interest in keeping the customers happy.

Hmm, that should do it for the basic observations. In general, Holland is still a country of windmills and canals (most without railings and many with narrow, cobbled streets directly adjoining along which it is a harrowing nightmare to parallel park) and tulips (although it wasn't tulip season yet when we went). Because most of the country is polder (reclaimed from the sea), meaning it was dyked (sp?) in and pumped dry across the centuries, its architecture isn't nearly as old as that in England. No castles, and the charming stone churches don't go back much beyond the 1600s. But there are thatched cottages and farms aplenty.

It was never meant to be a sight-seeing vacation; it was always about the people and the family that my Oma (Dutch word for grandmother) wanted us to visit. That was our expectation, and everything else that happened was a bonus. That being said, it was a bonus - full of serendipity and happiness.

But I'm glad to be back!

(Observation: Baby is a very helpful traveling companion. Owing to Baby's presence, we got to skip the long line at check-in and got a whole extra meal on the flight back.)

Knock me over with an F

Found out today that Susan, one of my co-workers, is expecting. She’s the last person I would have pegged for that sort of thing, and we’re all still sort of in a state of shock. She seems happy, and her husband, Greg, who spilled the beans (talking about ‘the baby’ on the two-way radio this morning so that half the showroom could hear) is definitely thrilled. But I’m still agape.

Also I just learned that Holland, like much of Europe, has mainly pay toilets in all the public restrooms. Not a happy prospect for a pregnant woman who’s supposed to be drinking a lot of water.

We leave in two days. It hardly seems real. Right now we’re in our desperately-eating-up-all-the-leftovers-in-the-house stage. And – I thought I timed it just right, but it looks like we’re going to run out of milk tonight. Which means that I have to buy another whole gallon of milk, and then we’re going to have to drink it like crazy so it won’t go bad while we’re gone.

Highway robbery

So a few weeks ago it dawned on me that I’m six weeks out from an international trip and my passport is still in my maiden name. Now you would think that after a year and a half of marriage I would have thought about this at least once. And if I’d even thought about it, I could have bought the plane tickets in my maiden name, and all would have been well (the ticket simply has to match the name on the passport). But no. I did not think of it in time. So I called the Department of State to find out what my options were, and there is apparently no fee for an amended passport, and it only takes 6-8 weeks. Big whew! I even told the representative my dates of travel, since it would be cutting it close, and she assured me that the 6-8 week figure is an estimate, and that if I wrote down my dates of travel I should receive the passport back by then. So far so good.

Last week I still hadn’t heard anything, so, getting a little nervous, I called the Department of State to check on the status. ‘Oh,’ the customer service representative said brightly, ‘that’s scheduled to be mailed back to you on the 18th of March.’

‘I am leaving on the 19th of March,’ I explained. ‘I need it sooner than that. I even called several weeks ago to verify that it wouldn’t take the whole eight weeks to get the passport back. They said to write down the dates of travel on my request and it shouldn’t be a problem.’

‘Well, our website clearly states that you need to allow up to eight weeks for your passport to be returned to you. So it’s been scheduled for processing and return on the 18th of March. I would be happy to take your credit card over the phone if you want to apply for the expedited service.’

Several things instantly occurred to me:

- I called several weeks ago to verify that I was in plenty of time NOT to have to pay for expedited service.
- March 18th is actually not precisely the right number of business days to allow. Did my writing my date of travel on my request give you the weapon you needed to decide when to schedule my passport return?
- I can understand being busy and all that, but what is so hard about putting a stamp in the back of a passport to amend it? How much of a backlog can you have to make it take that long AND how disorganised can you be to allow that margin of time, if you’re so well organised that you can track it in the system and if I pay you the fee right now, you can immediately locate it, process it, and return it to me, no questions asked?
- Where in the private sector would your respect for your clients be so low that you as good as tell them, ‘Someone in charge set an absolute outer limit on our slovenliness and low standards of customer service, and by gum, we’re going to take every excuse to use that to our advantage!’ ???
- This is highway robbery.

But instead of saying any of it I gave them my credit card number over the phone and politely requested the expedited service. What else could I do? They held all the cards. They had the monopoly. Within three days I received my passport back, duly stamped and updated. Isn’t our federal government a marvel of efficiency and service?

Serendipity

Yesterday was a Very Long Day which ended on the happiest note possible. I walked through the door late at night, having gone straight from work to help serve Wednesday night dinner at our church, feeling very tired and extremely pregnant, groaning to Michael how we needed to go to bed early and all that. Five minutes later I leapt up from the computer, having just read Amy's wonderful post (http://kevin-amy.blogspot.com/) about free ice cream from Baskin Robbins on Yahoo's birthday. 'Michael! Do we have a Yahoo account? Well, let's get one!' Never mind that it was late and we were full from our Wednesday night dinner. Michael is extremely rational and practical, but he is also the dearest man in the world and very kind about humouring me, so we printed off our coupons, grabbed our coats, and dashed out to the nearest Baskin Robbins to collect our free scoops of ice cream.

It's snowing!

I stepped out of my Dr.'s office this morning to discover small white flakes flurrying around me. Of course it's not sticking, but it's cold and wintry-looking, the skies are grey, and it's very exciting for the first day of March!

Speaking of doctor visits, Baby is developing into quite the acrobat here. No more mere flutters or even kicks. Last week I was sitting at my desk holding a piece of paper in one hand and comparing it against the master copy on the screen, when I noticed that the paper kept moving. Were my hands trembling? No. I was resting my forearm on my abdomen, and my entire hand was actually shaking with every kick. Baby's gotten into this new 'rebound' thing, when I'll feel a strong kick on one side, and then almost instantaneously a strong thump on the other side. Baby is literally bouncing off the walls.

Last night we watched The Dish, a very good movie based on a true story involving the landing on the moon. It's set in Australia, so it's fun to watch just for the accents. The characters are likeable (except for one annoying brat), and there is absolutely nothing objectionable except some bad language. Very wholesome, amusing, and interesting. I called Michael this morning on my way in and said, 'Carrier pigeons!' and we both burst out laughing.

I think we have something happening every single evening before we leave for Holland. Two and a half weeks and counting!

Overheard last week

Michael (coming home): Hi!
Me: Welcome home!
(Attempt to hug)
Michael: You know, it feels like someone has come between us…I just don’t feel as close to you as I once did…

Hailstones and coals of fire

Life has gotten so busy that I am keeping a calendar for the first time in my life. No longer can I depend on keeping it all in my head, and so I write things down, and good thing, too. It leaves a distinct paper trail of exactly how busy we are.

Last weekend my dad and three brothers drove down to help install a central vacuum system in our house. What ease and convenience! Daddy has always installed one wherever we lived, so I’ve grown up with one. Being without and dealing with clunky upright models for the past two years has been quite the rude awakening. Some people, when I tell them about it, have never even heard of such a concept, and others tell me horror stories of people who tried vacuuming out the still-smouldering ashes from their fireplace and burned the house down. I think the worst I ever did was to stick the nozzle in the toilet (when I was very young) and watch the water get sucked away.

Last night we had a terrific hailstorm. It was loud and almost frightening, and I was greatly relieved not to lose electricity at all. Michael made a bowl of truly excellent guacamole, which we devoured entirely, and we watched Fried Green Tomatoes. I was disappointed that I was too tired to think it through thoroughly, because it begged further reflection. It reminded me strongly of Gone with the Wind, with the parallel story line of an unlikely friendship between two women of very different personalities, one extremely strong and rebellious and the other meek and good-spirited. There was the same sense of desolation and poverty, of sadness for an era gone by and a frustration at the sense of social injustice. Then there’s the question of why two wrong don’t make a right, and whether it’s right to threaten a man who’s beating his wife. Was it right for her to leave him? Why was there no legal protection for her? Why was the jury so prejudiced against her, insisting that no good Christian woman would leave her husband? Why was the law so corrupt as to prevent innocent bystanders from prosecuting ruthless vandals who attacked their private property? If I had lived in that era, what could I have done to fight against the wrongs of the system?

Happy Birthday Oregon!

Which, of course, is the real significant thing about February 14th.

Three years ago yesterday we were in the throes of the 2002 Winter Olympics. I went to a girls’ party, where we watched a cute musical, ate lots of food, painted our nails, and each parted with a yellow rose (for friendship). The next morning there was a flurry of She Said Yes emails and gem studies, and Amy recounted how at dinner SHE was reminiscing about last year, when SHE went out with the girls, watched chick flicks, and painted her nails, whereas here she was, one year later, getting engaged.

Two years ago yesterday I was in Oregon for a wedding and spent the whole evening online exchanging emails with Michael, who observed, ‘Midnight on a Friday night all alone in my apartment reading Emma and writing emails and not feeling a bit depressed about Valentine’s Day? Must be in love.’ There were a dozen roses waiting for me when I got back to Virginia, which was quite the comeuppance for someone who had expressed her sentiments on fresh flowers rather explicitly in years past:

Don’t send me no flowers;
The effect will fall flat.
Flowers will die in a couple of hours.
What lame allegory is that?

One year ago yesterday we went out to dinner with several of our couple friends and had a lovely evening.

Yesterday two dozen NON-red roses were delivered to me at work. It brightened my day and cheered my olfactory senses. We cooked an elegant dinner and drank sparkling cider.

Life just gets better and better, I decided.

A question of great doctrinal import

(…as pronounced by Jane to Mr. Collins in the A&E version of P&P.)

I’ve just begun meeting with a small group of girls on a weekly basis. It’s a mentoring/discipleship program sponsored by our church, and we’re doing a Bible study called Undercover Princess, written by one of the youth interns at the church. I’m very excited to be doing something like this; it’s my first such involvement since AWANA, and I really missed the challenge and the discipline.

Last night was our second meeting, and I think our group is really going to click. There are four girls, all fourteen, and we had such an interesting conversation. The lesson was on getting to know you: WHY is it so important to build a relationship with God? Because we only trust that which we know. And then the lesson took us on a whirlwind tour of the Old Testament sacrifice system, in order to set the stage for WHY the sacrifice of Christ on the cross was such a necessity and what a burden it was that He freed us from.

When the girls came, I told them we were going to start off with a game, and forthwith played a few rounds of Tri-Bond to set the stage. Then, without further explanation, I directed their attention to three items I’d set out on the table: a tube of concealer, a tin of tic-tacs, and a picture of an Old Testament sacrifice. I was so delighted at the end of the evening when one of the girls suddenly got it!

Anyway, at one point the topic of Christ’s location after His death came up, and we wondered where He was during that three-day interval. Somehow all of us had had the impression that He spent those days in Hell, which was what made it all so awful: the separation from God the Father, the reason why He so wished to have the cup pass from Him, etc. We pulled out our Bibles to find a verse to support this theory, and couldn’t exactly nail it down, but all of us had the distinct impression of being taught that Christ spent the time between His death and resurrection in Hell. Then followed the logical question: how could He promise the thief on the cross that that very day he would be with Him in Paradise? If He wasn’t going to be there for three more days Himself? Hmmm. Very puzzling.

Black Magic

At long last we have our 'new' car. We picked it up last week, after nearly a week of Michael dropping me off at work each morning and me hitching a ride home each night because the rental car had to be returned the previous Friday. (Long rabbit trail potential here: did you ever stop to consider how much better off we are than our parents? In so many ways, we are standing on their shoulders. I was all of fifteen years old, I think, before we got a second vehicle in my family, and here Michael and I take our independent forms of transport SO for granted! And cell phones, and computers, not to mention size of starter houses...anyway, a good thought for a spare five minutes.)

The good news is that it is black, sleek, about the same size as Black Rider, gets good gas mileage, and has a CD player. The bad news is that I had to spend an extra $20 at the tag office to buy a WHOLE NEW TAG, even though I had the old license plate and completely unexpired registration in my hand ready to transfer over, because the car dealer had typed up the title with both our names on it, Michael's coming first, whereas on the old registration, my name had come first, since it was my car first and we added Michael's name to it after we got married. So, in other words, I had to pay for a whole new license plate and registration, instead of a mere title transfer, because of a minor bureaucratic hang-up. Whatever. After I'd fought traffic on my lunch hour and waited over fifteen minutes in line, trying to look as pathetically pregnant as possible in the feeble hope that some good soul would volunteer to give me his place in line ('You look pregnant, Ma'am. Here, take my place and step right up to the counter.' Yeah, right!), and discovered what my options were, I decided to fork over the extra $20 instead of trying to track down the dealer, get him to print out a whole new title, sign all the forms and paperwork all over again, and come back another day. It will only take me another fifteen years or so of picking up pennies in parking lots to make it up.

Anyway the new license plate was your standard-issue plate, because pretty plates and vanity plates cost far more than they do in Virginia, and at first I was mildly puzzled by the unassuming AGC. Suddenly on Saturday it hit me. We were out shopping, and had driven separately to drop off Michael's truck for tire rotation, and as I walked up to my car it dawned on me: Agincourt! This was so marvelous that I just about called Michael on my cell phone to tell him about it, but I decided against it since, after all, it was a proper name. Then Michael himself came up with the brilliant, elegant, devastatingly simple tour de force: Magic. Aha! Of course! How could it have escaped us? What better word can you make with the letters AGC?

It does put us in a bit of a dilemma, though. The obvious conclusion, judging from the colour and all, is Black Magic. I'm not really sure I want to name my car that, though. How else does one propose to top Black Rider, though? I've already decided emphatically against Black Rider II or anything of that sort.

I sit in solemn silence simmering stew on the stove while my husband works late. And it's only Monday already!

Introducing Baby

…who for the present remains invisible but clearly noticeable.

October 2004
This is the last time I wore my silk party dress in quite some time, the one I traditionally wear each year to a wedding and for my birthday. It was long after this picture was taken that I began to realise that I wouldn’t be wearing this dress for THIS birthday, at any rate.

October 2004
Our first in the ‘cute couple pregnancy’ series, which we decided to start taking once a week to document progress. We’ve missed, well, a few weeks here and there. Sara ably observes the halo above Michael’s head, aptly illustrating his cherubic nature in posting the pictures for me as well as his general all-round….thing-ness (as Bertie would say).

November 2004
At this point there was really nothing to see on the front front yet (ha, ha!), but there was a whole series of pictures I cut from the roster circa this month because I looked so second-trimester from the pose.

November 2004
The week after Thanksgiving.

January 2005
Second week in January. This wasn’t part of our scheduled Sunday series, but after a birthday party when everyone remarked how not-pregnant I looked, I had to get a picture of the I-will-never-look-this-good-five-months-pregnant-again me. Michael is very forbearing. Does he think I am vain because I beg him to whip out the camera every time someone tells me I look nice? Nooo, he whips out the camera and tells me I look nice.

January 2005
Third week in January. And after this point, Baby went on a big growth spurt. I am officially into maternity clothes now.

Overheard late one night

Michael: I love you. Good night.
Me: I love you too. Good night.
Michael: I love you more, ’cuz I’m bigger!
Me: I love you more, ’cuz there are two of me.
Michael: No, there aren’t.
Me (sleepily): Oh. Well, anyway, we both love you.