Oh the places you'll go!

Do you remember that book?  I sort of do - my memory is a bit fuzzy but I thought of the title in reflection of the twists and turns my life has taken in the past month or so.

It goes without saying that the pregnancy is twisting and turning my body all kinds of crazy.  I'm hyper-concious of my eating habits now that the queasiness has subsided.  And for anyone keeping score, I'm casting my vote for 'queasiness sucks more than vomiting.'  At least when you actually puke you feel better afterwards.  I don't like to vomit and I have only done so a few times in my life but I remember that I always felt better after.  The queasiness?  The I-may-or-may-not-puke-any-second feeling?  It sucks -- out loud.  The solution that I've found is to eat every. single. second.  That in itself is kind of annoying because no sooner have I finished eating than I feel l could eat again.  I swear, if I could I would strap a feed bag to my face.  Hot, right?  It's all good though - I have my fruit and nut mix at my desk and I'm steady chompin and the queasiness has subsided.  At least there's that.

But can we talk about the boobage?  Holy my goodness, the soreness could go away anytime and I would not be upset.  I wear a bra 24/7 but geez they are sore.  I bent down to get something out of my bag and my boobs pressed against my thighs and holy canoli!  How long is this supposed to last?  However, they have gone up a cup size, which is interesting - I'm actually hoping that lasts a while.  When I used to model, they would say I had the 'best in the business'.  All natu-ral baby!

But you know, I accept the changes happily because it means something is happening and something is still in there.  One of Drew's really good friends at work just got married for the first time at 42 and his wife is 34.  They wanted to start trying right away and Drew told me a couple days ago that he found out his boys don't swim.  Drew said that he told him they have a less than 5% chance of conceiving naturally.  It makes you humble and grateful and scared all at once.  It makes me that way anyway - getting pregnant as well as delivering a full-term healthy baby is such a miracle.

Okay, geez before I get all weepy -- go out and buy a lottery tickey y'all because me and my dad are talking again!!  I would refer you to all my 'family' posts to get caught up on the drama because it's too much to recap here but after 13 months of near-total incommunication? non-communication? dis-communication?  we didn't talk for a long time! -- he reached out to me!  My mom has always kept him posted with general tidbits of what's going on with me, always saying if he wants to know more he can ask me himself.  Of course, that will never happen because there is no one more stubborn or hard-headed than my father.  Except maybe me.  We rekindled things by fighting (what, you don't do that?) which then lapsed back into radio silence and finally he called to simply see how I was doing.  Actually, it was the night Kesha came over.  I was beyond shocked to hear his voice but it told me that he was concerned for me because it was immediately after I told my mom that Drew and I had postponed the wedding.  For all his nonsense my dad does care, he just doesn't know how to show it.  And that's not an excuse because I don't believe in little boys pulling little girls' pigtails in order to show her you like her.  Anyway, he called me once today, twice yesterday and once the day before that and we didn't fight once.  I'm just saying, you might want to buy a lottery ticket because there's something in the air.

Of course, he doesn't know I'm pregnant so I don't know how all that's going to play out.  Yeah for real, get a lottery ticket because the world might end on October 16th.  I go home to KC that day and we're having dinner as a family that night.

And oh yeah, Drew and I are getting married on October 10th.  Turns out his health insurance kicks my health insurance's ass so it makes better financial sense for me to be on his for the whole pregnancy.  But we have to be married.  After lo-hots of soul searching and pro-ing and con-ing, and realizing that we no longer get to make decisions for just us, that we have to make decisions for our family now, I have decided to go ahead with this.  It really is the grown-up thing to do and while it's all very Depression-era-esque, it's what's best for us.  I can totally see myself telling my daughter (if it's a boy, he probably won't care because he'll be too busy crashing things or getting dirty) that mommy and daddy didn't have enough money for a big wedding and with *you* already on the way we had to do things a little differently.  We're going to a spa/bed and breakfast because neither of us could stomach going full Depression-era-esque and get married at the courthouse.  In case this turns out to be it, in case we can't do a big party next year like we'd like, I'd rather remember a sweet bed and breakfast than an old musty courthouse.

We'll arrive Saturday morning, get massages (which I have to see if I can even do), get married in their garden that night, have dinner, stay the night in one of the cottages on the grounds, and leave the next morning.  It's the smallest package (I think) but I'm sure it'll still be lovely.  It would be so cool if I could find a vintage suit like Carrie in Sex and the City.  We'll see.

It's funny where you end up.  I thought I would be married by 24, 26 at the latest.  I'd have my first child at 27, the second at 29, and if there was a third, at 31 - and I'd be done.  Ha.

I always knew I'd have the big white wedding with tons of guests at a swanky hotel and afterwards jet off to an exotic honeymoon and come back to a shared apartment as we began house-hunting or building. HA.

I'd have a fulfilling job doing something important where I made a difference and of course made loads of cash.  ahahahahahahaha!!!

But you know what?  It's okay.  Maybe the pregnancy hormones are turning my brain to soup, maybe I'm *gasp!* growing up, maybe there's something to the whole older and wiser thing, but it's all okay.  I still want the big wedding, I'd love to have the kick-ass job, and maybe God will bless me with three kids, but right here, right now it's enough. 

Drew and I are doing better than we have in months, we're drugging the dog ;-), I look at my baby's heartbeat no fewer than fifty times a day, I have a job, I have food to put in my feed bag, my car is running, and it's all right. 

Okay, so I'm not a country music fan by any stretch of the imagination but it has seeped into my skull courtesy of Drew and there is one song that totally resonates with me.  I tried to embed the video here but youtube won't let me because they suck.  Anyway, it's Darius Rucker's 'It's Alright'.  It just resonates me and everytime we're in the car and Drew's got his country station on I'm always like 'I don't want to hear any of these songs they're all dumb.  I want to hear the Shoes Song!'  I'm five in real life.

Looking back and trying to look forward, it amazes me to realize that just about nothing has turned out the way I thought it would -- sometimes fifty million times worse, but sometimes ten billion times better.  I smile at the places I've been and I'm excited at the places I'll go.

And that's all right.