Wouldn't It Be Funny?

Wouldn't it be funny if I started writing on my blog every day again?

I KNOW!

But I'm in the middle of finals, have a baby due in two and a half weeks, and am so large that it looks more like I'm carrying a Volkswagen around in my belly instead of a baby.

So don't hold your breath.

Minivan Music

When we get into the minivan, everyone has a request.

Veevs wants to listen to High School Musical (don't ask why we own this--long story).

If I turn on High School Musical, Spe will unfailingly say, "This is junk. Let's listen to some rock and roll!" And by rock and roll, he means The Doors. Particularly the song "Whiskey Bar". It is his dad's influence, I promise.

Veevs doesn't mind The Doors, either. She said to me the other day, after I confessed that no, I don't love The Doors, "I don't want to like The Doors, either, Mom, but their songs just get stuck in my head." Her current favorite is "Hello, I Love You".

But Jakers is my kid. When we get into the minivan, he says, "Mom, can we listen to some disco?" I think it's quite discerning for a two year old.

And then he sings along to "Shake, Shake, Shake (Shake Your Booty)", because if I've taught him one thing in this world, it's that if you've got it, you should shake it.

Celebrations! and Others . . .

I don't know if you've noticed, but pregnancy, as a state of being makes me turn decidedly inward. I just don't feel the need to connect with other human beings as I do when I am not lugging around another human being inside of me. I remember when we first moved here to Texas, I found out the week before we moved that I was pregnant. I remember sitting in church on Sundays thinking, No, don't sit by me. Keep walking. I don't really want a friend right now. The idea of making small talk and being chipper and upbeat is just too much work for me. As a sidenote, these negative vibes worked pretty much throughout my whole pregnancy. I didn't make a single friend until after I had given birth.

But today there are a number of things to celebrate:

1) I finished my most pressing item of homework with time to spare for a nap before I go and fetch the kids from school. Sure, sure, I could complete less pressing items of homework and get ahead of the game. But that would mean that I would have to completely change my personality.

2) I also remembered that I had hidden a package of Grasshopper Fudge cookies in my cupboard. They aren't all gone yet, but thanks for thinking that might be a possibility (it really is a possibility, you know).

3) Veevs is reading Little House in the Big Woods. This gives me all sorts of nostalgic joy that I can't even begin to express.

4) I am starting to nest. If you think this means that my house is clean, you would be wrong. What it means is that I pull out all the contents of random cupboards, half organize them, lose the energy that I had, and leave half of the contents on the floor/counter. You're welcome, Rhett. But I like nesting because it leaves me feeling like I've accomplished something.

HOWEVER, there are also a number of non-celebrations that we can just file under "Other" in an attempt to be positive and chipper (I'm not):

1) I am large with this pregnancy. REALLY LARGE. So large, in fact, that my hips go to sleep after fifteen minutes of resting. So I'm up constantly at night.

2) My house. Oy vey. My house. (And it's only partly because of the half-organized cupboards that have found themselves emptied on to the floor/counter.)

3) My sense of humor. Where has it gone? Seriously, I can't imagine why I ever thought I had one in the first place. This brings me back to why my postings have been so infrequent and so frequently unfunny--I just don't have it in me to be funny these days. I'm not even sure I can muster mildly amusing.

4) This baby is an iron-sucking monster. I have been more anemically challenged by this child than any other child, and quite frankly, some days I feel good if I only take two naps. Because three naps a day is not an unheard of phenomenon around here. My doctor called me to let me know I was iron-deficient after my last blood test. I was so relieved! I just thought that my inherent laziness was overcoming all my other good qualities.

So now, having done my duty by my blog, I'm off to nap/celebrate/other.

And now you know what I mean by unfunny blogging.

How We're Making It Through . . .

I'm not going to lie. I'm still a little bit disturbed by the fact that Rhett and I have been happily married for almost ten years and I just barely found out about our divergent evolution opinions. Obviously, we're talking about the wrong things over the dinner table.

So lately we've had a lot of conversations like this one:

Me: So when you see representations of early hominids in the museum, what do you think they are? Like some giant hoax against humanity perpetrated by evil scientists?

Rhett: (pursed lips, vague air of disapproval) You are going to hell.

But I've finally figured out how to keep this difference of opinion (or total disregard of scientific evidence, depending on how you look at it) from ruining our marriage.

Every so often, Rhett will try to explain to me about how the streaks of white cloud-looking material trailing behind jet planes is not, in actuality, a jet's exhaust, which is what I always claim that it is.

"Heids, it's actually . . . blah, blah blah." I wish I could tell you what it actually is, but I always tune out at this point, because hey, look at that plane's EXHAUST! We've had this conversation several times and I always tune Rhett out. Not because I don't believe him (I sort of don't) but mostly because I don't want to be bothered to learn something new about something that interests me so not at all.

For Rhett, this fascination with airplane exhaust systems (please, please imagine the eye rolling that he's going to do when he reads that phrase) is in his blood. He and his dad (and now my kids, too) are jet fanatics. His dad has been known to sit on the porch with a pair of binoculars to better identify the military aircraft flying overhead (how fortuitous that he lives so close to an air base!). Rhett takes our kids every year to the local airshow, and has embarrassingly been known to tell me the manufacturer and make of anything that moves in the sky. I went with Rhett one year to the air show and discovered hey! Rhett actually wanted to look at planes. And hey! he also wanted to stay for longer than an hour, so ever since then it's been one of those things that I let him enjoy in peace. I think it's good for him to have his own interests.

So, my point here, and I do have one surprisingly, is that if evolution is Rhett's equivalent of my airplane exhaust, more power to him. I won't even bother talking about it any more, because I know he'll just tune me out.

But just for the record--I still don't think I'm going to hell.

Something Serious

I have all these serious thoughts in my head today, but my brain won't quite let me release them to my blog in an unedited fashion (Did you know that I hardly ever edit my stuff for my blog? First drafts, that's what you're reading here. I know some bloggers work on certain posts for weeks or days at a time, and I admire them for that. I just don't have it in me.).

Some of these serious thoughts have to do with:

Religion and Faith

Divisive politics

The Intersection of Religion and Politics

Why Rhett Doesn't Believe in Evolution

If I'm Going to Hell for Believing in Evolution (Rhett says yes! I am going to hell for believing in evolution! He also says he'll stop by with his five replacement wives to say hi [That's a bad Mormon joke, of course]. I only found out two days ago that we disagree on this issue. Obviously we should have gone to pre-marital counseling. This issue could destroy our happy home!)

Parenting (This is only on my mind because all my children are away at school today. If they were here I wouldn't have the leisure of self-reflection.)

Selflessness

Gender Roles in Developing Countries

There's more roiling around up there, but no wonder I can't get any laundry done. In the big scheme of things, what's my laundry? Nothing. Absolutely nothing.

Now I sound like a nihilist. Add that to the list.

I'm trying to raise an independent, strong-minded, feisty girl over here (heavy on the feisty).

So on a feminist scale, how bad is it that she knows (and belts) all the words to "It's Raining Men"?

It's okay because the song objectifies men instead of women, right?

Right?

Tales from the AT Room

When I was in elementary school, I qualified for a program called "Academically Talented" (the old 80s equivalent to the current Gifted and Talented program, wherein they pretend that if your child plays the saxophone well they could hypothetically be included in this program, but which in reality still functions in the exact same way as the old Academically Talented program did: you have to take a test to see how "smart" you are to get in). Back in those days, those of us who were "smart" enough to be in the pull-out program called it "AT", because even then we were hipsters with our own special language.

My brothers called it Animal Training (which AT could also stand for, get it?). I don't want to say they were motivated by jealousy, but . . .

The most awesome thing about this is that I almost got kicked out of AT in the fifth grade, because I couldn't remember to do the big projects we were supposed to do (this refrain would follow me throughout all my schooling years), and apparently when they named the class Academically Talented? What they really meant was Academically Responsible. After a rather serious meeting with my mother, Mrs. Bealls decided I could stay. But only if I made up that special project on ancient Egyptian makeup that I had failed to complete satisfactorily. Because, dammit, how was I supposed to become a well-informed, responsible, intelligent human being if I didn't know the ingredients used in ancient Egyptian cosmetics? It's still a quandary I wrestle with, let me tell you.

Anyway. My point is this: in sixth grade, one of our super-awesome, this-will-keep-you-engaged-in-schoolwork-so-you-don't-become-bored-and-act-out-project was to create a comic book that showed a new superhero dealing with a current social problem in a fresh and innovative way.

My superhero?

Prostitution Pam. She took on illegal prostitution while wearing a teal green miniskirt and fishnet stockings. Her teased and ratted hair and heavy rouge was just her way of letting the girls know she "got them"--she herself had gotten out of that racket years ago and had now dedicated her life to changing the shadowy world of prostitution. Her novel solution to this pressing social problem? Well, she passed out condoms like they were candy, as well as informing the girls of the counties in Nevada to which they should move. You know, counties where prostitution was legal.

And despite the fact that like most of my other AT projects, this one was completed almost entirely on the school bus on the morning it was due, I think it turned out very well. I think the teacher might have had another opinion, however. I got a 'C'. Maybe for chlamydia?