So I really did start the new project I said I was going to start...amazing how that actually sometimes happens, huh? Anyway, just a short post here to offer a link to the novel, for those who enjoy fantasy/sci-fi books, like The Hunger Games or Divergent. I mention those two specifically because this one's in first person too, so I feel a tiny bit of kinship going on there.
Like this blog, the oldest posts are at the bottom, newest at the top, so if you jump in somewhere in the middle, just scroll down or click back to the oldest post (or the last one you read) and start from there. Frankly, I'm not that computer handy and I have no idea how to make these blogs work any other way.
With no further adieu, Finding the Soul Shore!
Tuesday, February 25, 2014
The...Joy...of Impending Motherhood
Pregnancy is amazing. I'll start with that. I can't wait to feel this kid move in the next few weeks, or to see a picture on an ultrasound screen next Friday. I can't believe it's actually happening again, and that I haven't lost it (the baby, not my mind) like I did the last one. We've been through that more than once in this house, and we definitely never want to do it again.
That being said, pregnancy comes with a whole hell of a lot of side effects that I think all us ladies (and concerned partners who are preparing for the coming war) read about, but don't really expect to hit us as hard as they do, or at all. Ugh. I have a headache; my back hurts; my nose won't stop bleeding...and it won't stop running either; I threw up constantly for the first three months and now I'm doing it again courtesy of the antibiotics I'm taking for a nasty dental infection (which required that I have a tooth pried out of my jaw last week....ow). Frankly, I'm not sure how much good my antibiotics are doing me from the toilet anyway, but I haven't stopped taking them. I'm such a trooper, aren't I? I'll take the next damn round too when my dentist tells me, probably tomorrow, that the infection hasn't cleared up yet (go figure...).
On top of all that, my concentration is shot. I'm either too sick and over/under-medicated (too many antibiotics and too few pain pills...there hardly seemed any point in taking them for the headache or the pulled tooth since everything's coming up anyway) to think clearly, or my head is all taken up with thoughts of babies, pictures of cute babies and all the things around me that might affect my baby. I'm at work and take a call for a traffic accident on the street I take to work, and I think, "Oh my God, that could have been us! I drove down that road just seven hours ago..."
Oh yeah, and I'm an us now. I really am. When people talk to me, they say, "So how are you two doing?" And they aren't talking about me and my wife, or me and my bad hair, or anything else but me and my uterine stowaway. I'm officially the temple of a 5 ounce god who apparently sends out subconscious commands to strangers to rub my belly even though I'm only showing a little bit and also demands enormous amounts of food and water as a daily sacrifice (and then rejects 90% of that). This week it's watermelon. I know, I know...it's February and I'm supposed to buy local and all that. Well what the hell am I supposed to do? The god demands watermelon! So the god will HAVE watermelon imported from some place super close to the equator, where they harvest sweet, juicy red watermelon in February, damn it! Mmm...watermelon.
(Pause for a watermelon break.)
Okay, I think I'm okay now. Wait...
(Pause for a vomit break.)
Okay, now I'm good. Wait...
(Pause to go pee. Twice.)
Yeah. So. Pregnancy is awesome. I really do mean that. I watched my wife go through all this stuff before (except for the vomiting part, the lucky duck...she never does that whether she's pregnant or not. I hate her...), when she was pregnant with Starren, so it's really interesting being the one on the other end of it. Some days are so light, dreamy and calm, I can't even tell I'm pregnant (except that my boobs are a size bigger already, they always hurt like the bloody devil and if someone or something accidentally brushes against them, I have the irrational urge to claw their eyes out, and since that someone is usually me, that doesn't bode well for my vision over the next few months...). Other days I'm bent over the toilet all day and eating everything in sight whenever I actually get the strength or the chance to stand, and that makes it pretty obvious...both to me and I imagine to everyone around me as well, especially those unlucky enough to be in the bathroom with me at work when the nausea hits hard enough to make me puke (there's a fine line between the usual all day nausea and Oh-my-God-Toilet-Now nausea).
The cool part, though?
People do things for me, like the dishes and cooking and cleaning up my side of the bed when I just dump shit down there because I'm too tired to carry it to the sink or the trash. They rub my back or my shoulders and give me sympathetic smiles. I get naps at work, and no one says a thing. I'm like, "Yeah...I just...I gotta go lie down for a bit" and my boss just waves me off, and they let me do this like three times a day if I need to. Also, no more ugly work uniforms since they apparently don't make them in maternity sizes. I'm gonna enjoy THAT for the next five months, and I'll cry when I have to put it on again (probably true since I'll have all those post-baby birthing hormones to deal with when I go back to work...).
The sucky part?
I've barely worked on my novel at all since Thanksgiving, and I haven't written a blog post since the end of December. It's just...so...hard... *cries* (Oh yeah...then there's that. I haven't cried so much in my life as I have in the last few months. Really. And for no reason whatsoever. I once cried because I sent my brother out to get me food, and the people at the restaurant forgot to include my iced tea...cried for about half an hour, until my food was stone cold. True story.) This post has no focus and no theme whatsoever, unless you count pregnancy brain as a theme, because I just plain can't think of one, and if I could, I'd probably get distracted halfway through by a picture of a baby on my Facebook feed from one of my breastfeeding support groups (and I don't even have a baby to breastfeed yet...Oy. What the hell has happened to me???).
The other cool part?
These dreams are sometimes terrifying, but other times they absolutely kick ass. I got an entire awesome novel idea from one the other night, and I actually started working on it today (don't judge me...it's almost impossible to edit my completed novel at work, which is where I do most of my writing, except on the weekends when I can access my laptop, so I might as well split my admittedly lacking attention between the two projects). I want to do this one differently though. I'm going to start a blog for it and post each part of it as it's written (I'll ignore the fact that it's obviously a rough draft), starting tonight...as soon as my pregnant brain can actually remember how to make a blog. Seriously, it took me ten minutes to remember my log in information for THIS blog. Yikes. I've seen a lot of other authors thoroughly enjoy this method of creation, and I don't see any reason not to try a different tactic from the more traditional route I'm taking with my first novel (except for plagiarism, as Phoenix pointed out to me, but I really haven't seen people having problems with that particular issue in blogging novels....I guess because it would be too obvious, maybe, since blogs are auto-dated? ...Or because no one thinks your work is actually worth stealing...or because finding someone to publish your shit is almost impossible anyway, so why make the effort???) I don't know, but even the slim possibility leaves me feeling scared and vulnerable (tear/sniffle break, and belly rub break...I'm allowed. It's MY belly!).
Still, I'm gonna do it anyway, and it's gonna be awesome.
(Pee break again. And SNACKS!)
What were we talking about?
Oh YEAH, ultrasound next Friday, on March 7! Get to make sure the little parasite is healthy, and check the gender if the little mite's willing to be a well-behaved exhibitionist and flash the goods for us.
Oooh, cute baby picture on Facebook!
Bye, now!
That being said, pregnancy comes with a whole hell of a lot of side effects that I think all us ladies (and concerned partners who are preparing for the coming war) read about, but don't really expect to hit us as hard as they do, or at all. Ugh. I have a headache; my back hurts; my nose won't stop bleeding...and it won't stop running either; I threw up constantly for the first three months and now I'm doing it again courtesy of the antibiotics I'm taking for a nasty dental infection (which required that I have a tooth pried out of my jaw last week....ow). Frankly, I'm not sure how much good my antibiotics are doing me from the toilet anyway, but I haven't stopped taking them. I'm such a trooper, aren't I? I'll take the next damn round too when my dentist tells me, probably tomorrow, that the infection hasn't cleared up yet (go figure...).
On top of all that, my concentration is shot. I'm either too sick and over/under-medicated (too many antibiotics and too few pain pills...there hardly seemed any point in taking them for the headache or the pulled tooth since everything's coming up anyway) to think clearly, or my head is all taken up with thoughts of babies, pictures of cute babies and all the things around me that might affect my baby. I'm at work and take a call for a traffic accident on the street I take to work, and I think, "Oh my God, that could have been us! I drove down that road just seven hours ago..."
Oh yeah, and I'm an us now. I really am. When people talk to me, they say, "So how are you two doing?" And they aren't talking about me and my wife, or me and my bad hair, or anything else but me and my uterine stowaway. I'm officially the temple of a 5 ounce god who apparently sends out subconscious commands to strangers to rub my belly even though I'm only showing a little bit and also demands enormous amounts of food and water as a daily sacrifice (and then rejects 90% of that). This week it's watermelon. I know, I know...it's February and I'm supposed to buy local and all that. Well what the hell am I supposed to do? The god demands watermelon! So the god will HAVE watermelon imported from some place super close to the equator, where they harvest sweet, juicy red watermelon in February, damn it! Mmm...watermelon.
(Pause for a watermelon break.)
Okay, I think I'm okay now. Wait...
(Pause for a vomit break.)
Okay, now I'm good. Wait...
(Pause to go pee. Twice.)
Yeah. So. Pregnancy is awesome. I really do mean that. I watched my wife go through all this stuff before (except for the vomiting part, the lucky duck...she never does that whether she's pregnant or not. I hate her...), when she was pregnant with Starren, so it's really interesting being the one on the other end of it. Some days are so light, dreamy and calm, I can't even tell I'm pregnant (except that my boobs are a size bigger already, they always hurt like the bloody devil and if someone or something accidentally brushes against them, I have the irrational urge to claw their eyes out, and since that someone is usually me, that doesn't bode well for my vision over the next few months...). Other days I'm bent over the toilet all day and eating everything in sight whenever I actually get the strength or the chance to stand, and that makes it pretty obvious...both to me and I imagine to everyone around me as well, especially those unlucky enough to be in the bathroom with me at work when the nausea hits hard enough to make me puke (there's a fine line between the usual all day nausea and Oh-my-God-Toilet-Now nausea).
The cool part, though?
People do things for me, like the dishes and cooking and cleaning up my side of the bed when I just dump shit down there because I'm too tired to carry it to the sink or the trash. They rub my back or my shoulders and give me sympathetic smiles. I get naps at work, and no one says a thing. I'm like, "Yeah...I just...I gotta go lie down for a bit" and my boss just waves me off, and they let me do this like three times a day if I need to. Also, no more ugly work uniforms since they apparently don't make them in maternity sizes. I'm gonna enjoy THAT for the next five months, and I'll cry when I have to put it on again (probably true since I'll have all those post-baby birthing hormones to deal with when I go back to work...).
The sucky part?
I've barely worked on my novel at all since Thanksgiving, and I haven't written a blog post since the end of December. It's just...so...hard... *cries* (Oh yeah...then there's that. I haven't cried so much in my life as I have in the last few months. Really. And for no reason whatsoever. I once cried because I sent my brother out to get me food, and the people at the restaurant forgot to include my iced tea...cried for about half an hour, until my food was stone cold. True story.) This post has no focus and no theme whatsoever, unless you count pregnancy brain as a theme, because I just plain can't think of one, and if I could, I'd probably get distracted halfway through by a picture of a baby on my Facebook feed from one of my breastfeeding support groups (and I don't even have a baby to breastfeed yet...Oy. What the hell has happened to me???).
The other cool part?
These dreams are sometimes terrifying, but other times they absolutely kick ass. I got an entire awesome novel idea from one the other night, and I actually started working on it today (don't judge me...it's almost impossible to edit my completed novel at work, which is where I do most of my writing, except on the weekends when I can access my laptop, so I might as well split my admittedly lacking attention between the two projects). I want to do this one differently though. I'm going to start a blog for it and post each part of it as it's written (I'll ignore the fact that it's obviously a rough draft), starting tonight...as soon as my pregnant brain can actually remember how to make a blog. Seriously, it took me ten minutes to remember my log in information for THIS blog. Yikes. I've seen a lot of other authors thoroughly enjoy this method of creation, and I don't see any reason not to try a different tactic from the more traditional route I'm taking with my first novel (except for plagiarism, as Phoenix pointed out to me, but I really haven't seen people having problems with that particular issue in blogging novels....I guess because it would be too obvious, maybe, since blogs are auto-dated? ...Or because no one thinks your work is actually worth stealing...or because finding someone to publish your shit is almost impossible anyway, so why make the effort???) I don't know, but even the slim possibility leaves me feeling scared and vulnerable (tear/sniffle break, and belly rub break...I'm allowed. It's MY belly!).
Still, I'm gonna do it anyway, and it's gonna be awesome.
(Pee break again. And SNACKS!)
What were we talking about?
Oh YEAH, ultrasound next Friday, on March 7! Get to make sure the little parasite is healthy, and check the gender if the little mite's willing to be a well-behaved exhibitionist and flash the goods for us.
Oooh, cute baby picture on Facebook!
Bye, now!
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