December 2004 Archives

Ok only because Dri said I had to (at least she was nice enough to strike the "or die painfully" part), and against my Aquarian "you can't categorize me" grain, here's my goofy "3 Things Meme" (ooo I feel oh so LJ now). Feel free to keep the virus going...if you do make sure to post a comment here so I can come by and see yours. :)

THREE NAMES YOU GO BY:
Julia
Julie
Jul

THREE SCREEN NAMES YOU HAVE HAD:
Quixhobbit
jdvorin1 (boring I know)
MamaJulia

THREE THINGS YOU LIKE ABOUT YOURSELF:
openmindedness/sense of perspective
empathy for others
attention to detail

THREE THINGS YOU HATE ABOUT YOURSELF:
(hate's a pretty strong word, howbout things I wish I could change?)
I wish I were more able/interested in being physically active
I wish I could be less sarcastic and nasty when I'm angry
I wish my body was less broken than it is

THREE THINGS YOU WISH YOU HAD RIGHT NOW:
A nice long sabbatical with full pay
A full body massage
4 or 5 more hours in a day, enough time to nap, read, write, paint, and volunteer for a good cause

THREE PARTS OF YOUR HERITAGE:
Russian
German
Polish

THREE THINGS THAT SCARE YOU:
people who hate other people
the idea of anything bad happening to my loved ones
the idea of losing loved ones

THREE OF YOUR EVERYDAY ESSENTIALS:
sleep
hugs from people who love me
contact with others through phone, email, IM or facetime

THREE THINGS YOU ARE WEARING RIGHT NOW:
my usual complement of jewelry, including earrings, ear-cuff, rings, watch, toe ring, and the gorgeous 3 stone pendant that Joshie gave me for Xmas
my groovy glasses
maternity clothes

THREE OF YOUR FAVORITE SONGS/ARTISTS AT PRESENT:
Ani Difranco
Jack Johnson
whatever random eclectic shuffle mix my iPod is serving up

THREE NEW THINGS YOU WANT TO TRY IN THE NEXT 12 MONTHS:
maintaining some semblance of personal/artistic time with a new baby in the house
finishing a novel (a girl can dream, can't she?)
moving up to Level 2 classes in yoga

THREE THINGS YOU NEED IN A RELATIONSHIP:
attention
empathy
skin to skin contact (from my lifemate) or mutual level of trust/admiration (from friends)

TWO TRUTHS AND A LIE:
I want to be publically recognized for my art/writing some day
I would walk over hot coals or throw myself in front of a speeding train for my child's sake
I want everyone in the world to believe the same things I do, or suffer and die

THREE PHYSICAL THINGS ABOUT THE OPPOSITE SEX (or same) THAT APPEAL TO YOU:
face
hair
upper body (hands, arms, shoulders, chest)

THREE THINGS YOU JUST CAN'T DO:
complicated math/science thinking
run/jog or any other strenuous physical activity
touch my nose with my tongue

THREE OF YOUR FAVORITE HOBBIES:
reading
writing
painting

THREE THINGS YOU WANT TO DO REALLY BADLY RIGHT NOW:
nap
read a book for hours in peace and quiet on the couch with a blanket and the rain on the roof
lounge about by myself in a magically already cleaned house

THREE CAREERS YOU'RE CONSIDERING:
novelist
psychologist
teacher

THREE PLACES YOU WANT TO GO ON VACATION:
New Zealand
Italy
Rio de Janeiro

THREE KIDS NAMES
Elijah
Isaac
Elinore

THREE THINGS YOU WANT TO DO BEFORE YOU DIE:
finish writing a novel
go hang-gliding
enjoy grandchildren

THREE PEOPLE WHO HAVE TO TAKE THIS QUIZ (and post the results)... NOW!
Josh
Rebecca
Suzanne

So now I'm sitting here in my nice empty quiet office killing time until the enormous pickup order of delicious Thai food intended for a big family dinner tonight is ready for me to pick up and bring over to my parents' house. Yes, there is still one more round of family holiday craziness to go through. My brother and sister-in-law and their two kids (including Eli's favorite buddy, his older cousin Jonah) have just arrived from Nevada City so tonight is an "informal" get together for hangout and Thai food, and then tomorrow will be a full day of family fun, complete with a visit to the Exploratorium, present exchanges, and the traditional over-the-top crabfest (we're talking 10 crabs for 6 adults and 3 kids, and the kids barely even eat crab) holiday dinner. Whee!

Frankly though, as much as I'm looking forward to spending time with family, I am thoroughly ready to get all those presents out of my house and logistics off my brain and to be *done* with all this holiday stuff already. Bring on the new year, please. I'm ready for a little dose of "ordinary" routine before everything gets completely disrupted again with the new baby. (Ack! Only 10 weeks left until due-day! 10 weeks! That's...nothin'!)

Mmmm. Feeling kinda cozy and happy right now, despite a lingering tiredness (no, I didn't get enough sleep last night either...I swear I'll go to bed early tonight). It's raining outside (something I love when I don't have to go out in it), which is a nice break after a couple of weeks of admittedly gorgeous CA winter sunshine. Josh and Eli are out at Home Depot; I've just had a nice relaxing hot shower and now I'm sitting here in the relatively clean, quiet house eating leftover crackers and cambazola blue cheese (oh shut UP about those soft cheeses being verboten during pregnancy, I'm not listening) with nothing truly pressing to do. Feels good. Good God, I'm glad the holidays are (almost) over. I am truly quite ready for a new year and am looking forward to a new start, a new attitude towards this daily treadmill.

It's been a relaxing, yet relatively productive day--after seeing off the last few houseguests who slept over after last night's traditional get together of close friends, the three of us have mostly spent the day hanging out together, taking down all the holiday deco and doing some house organization stuff. Nesting, if you will. And why not? It's a perfect day for it, a perfect time of the year to start to finally begin shifting focus and turning inward. Back to basics, as it were. Home. Family. Self.

Time check: yes, it's approximately 4am on Christmas morning. And I'm sitting here in the darkened living room listening to the electronic equipment whirring in the absolute dead quietness that only comes at approximately 4am in the morning (Christmas or no). Am I awake because my eager, pink-cheeked child was so excited to see what Santa Claus brought that he couldn't remain in his bed for one more minute? Nope. True, he got up around 3am, but that was only because he had to pee, and after waking me up to turn on the bathroom light for him (we'd inadvertently left it off, oh horrors), he went right back to the blissful abandonment of sleep. He was already snoozing as I kissed his cheek and shut the bedroom door. Unfortunately, Mama couldn't achieve sleep again quite so easily. I tossed and turned for about 45 minutes, completely unable to get even close to stumbling, let alone falling asleep, and then gave up on the wishful thinking and came out here to the living room and the familiar comfort of the laptop.

Sigh. I really. Really. Hate. Insomnia. It's another one of those "adult onset" health issues that have been popping up more and more in my life (along with asthma, allergies, and migraines. Good God, what's next--high cholesterol? Don't answer that.) And it seems to be getting worse, i.e. more frequent these days--another one of the delightful side effects of the pregnancy hormone cocktail, I suppose. Ugh. This is ridiculous. Did I mention that, due to a delightful Christmas Eve with houseguests, I didn't even go to bed until around 12:30pm? So I've maybe had 2.5 hours of sleep so far tonight. If this crazy awakeness ever lets me go, I anticipate maybe getting in another 2 or 3 hours max before it *is* time to get up with my eager, pink-cheeked kid to see what Santa brought him. And I won't even be able to make this sleep deficit up later in the day with a nap, like I did yesterday, because we've got to head out to Gilroy for the family Christmas dinner by around noon, and I'll be on duty wrangling the kid and being cute, pregnant, mostly invisible wife while Josh does the family schmooze and catch-up. And when we get home we'll have friends here waiting for us to hang out for the traditional Christmas Decompression night, so no early bedtime either. Gah. I have a feeling tomorrow my "Christmas indulgence" is going to be coffee, lots and lots of coffee. (Well, more than my miserly one-cup limit, anyway.) Woo. Hold me back.

I suppose I could be a good little insomaniacal Christmas elf and go clean up the kitchen or finish knotting the last throw or start writing our holiday newsletter or process some digipix....hell, I could even use this nice quiet space as an opportunity to get some writing done (ahahahaha). But I'm not exactly feeling active or alert enough to actually be effective at anything--I just can't sleep. This sucks. Bah humbug. Oh yeah, and it turned out I am some sort of faintly feverishly sick too--I've been running a low temp since Wednesday eve, just enough to make me achy and slow, but not enough to let me actually, oh, I don't know, SLEEP. At least Tylenol seems to be mostly keeping it at bay, enough so that I could do the whole family Christmas Eve dinner thing last night.

Ok, rounding the corner of 4:45am, and still not sleepy, although my eyes are starting to burn from looking at the screen. Guess I'll go watch TV or something and hope that the idiot box really does have a soporific effect.

Alllllmost there. Stay on target. Stay. On. Target.

I am getting ever closer to being done with the holiday-related projects that have been consuming my mental capacity and sucking my energy like some kind of vampiric Frosty. Presents are finally all procured, wrapped, and placed in the general vicinity of the rapidly crisping tree (that's what happens when you get your tree a full month before Christmas). Arrangements are made for a wide variety of family get-togethers, starting tomorrow and continuing full-tilt through Monday. 2 out of 7 no-sew throws (this year's crafty present for all the kids on my list) are done--that was last night's project, instead of blogging. (The other 5 are scheduled for completion tomorrow, along with one more mixed CD I want to make for my Dad.) The house is mostly clean (or at least, clean enough for relatives to come over). Josh is pretty much on deck for tomorrow's Christmas Eve With The Archers event, all I need to do is wrangle and sous chef. The last big project is the holiday newsletter and cards, but I suspect that I'll get those out sometime around New Year's, as always. (We'll see what I have energy for between family gatherings.) It feels good to be almost done. There are many enjoyable things about this time of year, but I want my brain back now, thankyouverymuch. Time to take off the Virgo mask and release the inner Aquarius back into the light.

In other good news, I think the writing is ready to move forward again. I was actually able to spend some time over the last few days doing some much-needed rewrites/tweaks to particular chapters, to reflect some of the new information that I'd "discovered" before all this holiday madness descended. That helped me to get interested in the story again, and now I feel like I at least generally know where I need to start writing towards again. I'm still backfilling a bit (needing to write a connecting scene or two between 2 pieces I'd already written), but I feel like I'm at least moving forward again, like a car in first gear just easing out of a 4-way stop. My goal is definitely to have that backfill scene or two finished in some sort of form, no matter how rough, by the time our writers' group meets again on January 4th. Secondary goal (as long as I'm committing to things): to revise my chapter outline again so that I have a clear(er) plan for where I'm heading after this backfill is done, so that the forward momentum can continue. The story's got to *move*, people...it's been sitting around twiddling its thumbs and pitching cards at a hat for way too long, waiting for me to quit fooling around and come visit already. Or at least call.

Ok I must be tired, my metaphors are getting weirder and making less sense. I have the day off tomorrow, and the in-laws don't arrive until midafternoon, so I think I'll sleep now and scurry later. I have to admit I'm also sort of in denial again about this sore throat and growing achy head I seem to have picked up in the last few hours...maybe I'm not really getting sick, I just need some sleep. Yeah. That's it. Sleep. I might even get all wacky and go to a prenatal yoga class tomorrow if I'm feeling up to it (I did go to yoga on Tuesday, and man I'm still super sore from that...that's what you get if you don't go for a month. But I'm glad I started up again.)

So ho ho hum...time for bed.

I was hoping to get home earlier tonight so I could write a decent little blog entry before bedtime but I just sat in crazy bad completely stopped traffic for 45 minutes, at 9:30pm. It was super pea soupy foggy tonight (has been all day, strangely--this is not the kind of fog we usually get) and apparently there had been one of those compound, 15-20 car pileups on the freeway that had all lanes blocked while they dealt with it. At first I, like any other selfish traveler, was peeved that I couldn't move and get home to do what I wanted to do. But then I realized (yet again) that I was actually one of the lucky ones in this situation; any one of those cars in the wreck could have been mine, and my life would have certainly been a lot worse off. I was merely inconvenienced, but still came home healthy and whole to my nest and my loved ones. So tonight, I am officially grateful that the IAS/NADM syndrome that haunts me turned out to be merely a time inconvenience and not something much worse. Perspective, oh yes, perspective. Right.

Ok, trying to make the commitment to write *something* tonight. Blog seems a much better bet than novel, given that I only have about 20 more minutes while the kid finishes watching Dragon Tales and Daddy does bathtime before I'm back on duty. So, here's the weekend report.

Yesterday afternoon we had a great visit from my dear friend Galila and her husband Michael and their 2 kids Jenna (about 8 months older than Eli) and Aaron (5 months now and soooooooo plump and cute). The kids played great together and we adults had fun just hanging out (catching up, watching the kids, comparing our recent visits to Disneyland, etc). It was a really nice visit.

Last night we went to go see our friend Mark in a stage production of The Princess Bride at a tiny funky little theater space in the Mission in San Francisco. It was fun to be out at that kind of of indy, happenin' event--we haven't done something like that in way too long. The play was minimalist and hammy but clever and fun. I just wish I hadn't been so tired that night--I kept pinching myself to keep from falling asleep (not because the play wasn't good, just because I'd stayed up waaaaaaaaaayyyyy too late the night before watching the Return of The King Extended Edition DVD we just bought. Mmmmmm 4 hours and 10 minutes of my favorite movie ever! It was awesome.)

Today we all went out to the City again with Dri and Jim for the closing day of the Dicken's Christmas Faire, which is an indoor, Victorian version of the Renaissance Faire. A lot of the same people work at both faires, so just like going to the Ren Faire, a visit there is always a nostalgic kind of thing for us, where we run into all kinds of people we used to work and play with at the Ren Faire. I hadn't actually been to Dickens Faire since 1988, when I worked there as a part of Cuthbert's, doing parades and singing Christmas Carols in my hoopskirts and satin. Josh (and of course Eli) had never been. We had a good time there, despite the extreme crowd that had packed itself in there by the middle of the day. Maybe someday we'll work that faire again (not to mention Ren Faire), but not anytime soon while the kids are still young--weekends will be far too precious. I do miss the acting and the immersion into "living history"...but a girl can only have so many hobbies at a time. ;)

Tonight after the kid's in bed I think Josh and I are going to partake of another tradition of ours--watching "It's A Wonderful Life" and wrapping presents. We also have some friends supposedly dropping by to bring us eggnog and gingerbread cookies. I feel so....Christmas-y! (It's weird, being Jewish and all, but yet kind of exciting too, in that forbidden fruit kinda way.) I feel like we've now been doing certain "Christmas-y" things (admittedly, the non-religious, fully secular type) long enough by now that some of the traditions we've started are finally able to bring that special sort of satisfaction that traditions give, where the things we "always" do around this time remind us of the years past, and help to fully ground us in the season and the turning of the cycles.

In a related vein, I'm feeling like the wide variety of "getting ready for the holiday season" stuff I've been obsessing about (e.g. parties and presents) is finally just about done. I have one more shopping trip to make tomorrow night, and a bit more wrapping to do, and some easy crafty presents to finish, and a holiday newsletter to create and mail. But for some reason it feels like the hardest parts (i.e. the planning of everything) are coming to a close, and what's left doesn't seem all that overwhelming. And I'm glad for that, because I really would like my brain to chill out so I can get some sleep (I've been sleeping terribly--even when I have the opportunity to stay in bed and catch a few more snoozles, my overactive insomaniacal brain won't let me). As the overwhelm dies down, I'm actually enjoying some of the seasonal stuff--driving around the neighborhood looking at lights, listening to holiday music, giving gifts, anticipating good get-togethers with friends and family.

Speaking of which, time to go do bedtime and then get on with the evening.

Waugh. Updating is hard, because the brain is so full and distracted, and the body is so tired all the time now. I keep promising myself to at least note down little tidbits, but the resolve never seems to make it out of my brain during those optimistic, relatively wakeful early morning hours onto the computer screen later in the day, when I'm deep into distraction and fatigue and everything else seems preferable to blogging. When did I lose the compulsion to blog every day? I don't know. Probably the same time I lost my push to keep moving forward with the novel. I feel like an athlete who's seriously out of training--which reminds me, I haven't been to yoga class for about a month either. Connection? Why yes, thanks, I'll have several. Sigh.

Discipline. Routine. It's funny to me now, but these used to be vaguely icky concepts to me, back when I fancied myself a freewheeling, young-and-open, Aquarian, rebellious bohemian type (and yes, before I became a parent. Thanks for asking.). Despite having grown up immersed (and wildly successful, and therefore co-opted) in an academic system that stressed just exactly these values above all else, the concept of willfully, purposefully submitting to a regular discipline of anything seemed not only wrong, but in some way weak to me. As in, "only the weak, the small, the not-very-clever ones need routines to follow, and so must submit themselves to a discipline. Greatness does what it wants when it wants to, consequences be damned. You can't force the muse. You don't have to follow the rules that society sets out, just because everyone else does." And while this rebellious, anarchic sort of outlook is not altogether wrong (and was and continues to be very helpful to me at times), I have finally come to realize that I can't live there either. (I'm not saying others can't--more power to ya, let me know how it goes for you when you're 35.)

Now, I'm not saying that I find myself so enamored of discipline and routine that I want to join a cult (or the military) or take up some sort of monkish existence where these are the highest/only organizing principles of life. Neither unthinking order or extreme chaos are good places to live. As with so much else, I argue for living in the gray area between extremes, drawing lessons from both and applying them on the fly, wherever necessary and in whatever way works for each of us (with the important caveat of also always trying not to hurt others). What I *am* saying is that hey, athletes and artists and monks are on to something. Regularity, practice, discipline, training, routine--these things help the mind and the body to reach a higher level of proficiency.

And just to close the circle on this rambly entry that wound up going somewhere I really didn't expect when I started out complaining about not regularly posting, I think my point here is that I need to reprioritize (again), and get back in creative training. Distractions be damned--I don't care if it's the holidays or that my body is busily betraying me while making a new human being, it's time to go back to the regular writing (not to mention the yoga). I know I'll feel better as a result.

The 8th Annual Black Turkey Party (subtitled, this year, as "Arrr the Turkey Be As Black As An Eight Ball) has come and gone, in a most successful fashion (as far as I'm concerned). We worked our butts off getting ready for this event (planning, shopping, cleaning, cooking, schlepping, rearranging, hosting), but logistically and culinarily, I think we did great. We probably had about 40 people here (including probably 8 or so kids), which worked out fine, since we'd actually prepped for more--we'd rented extra tables and chairs and turned our garage into a banquet room. The house looked lovely, clean and festive (of course we *did* use the time honored "throw all extraneous items into the back room and close the door" strategy). The turkeys came out FABULOUS as always (the gravy was particularly scrumptious this time, in my opinion), and we had many other tasty, feast-worthy appetizers (including the triumphant return of cheesy toast!) side dishes and desserts brought by our delightful guests. We got to see a lot of people we don't see often enough, and everyone seemed to be enjoying each others' company. It was the kind of party we like best--good food, a fun blend of interesting people, mellow but festive atmosphere. Hooray!

The only slight downside to the whole affair is that I wayyyyy overdid it physically yesterday (standing, schlepping and bustling about too much, and staying up way too late) so today, though I'm in a decent mood, I am really sore and tired, and I fear I am coming down with a fever. (I'm in denial about this until at least tomorrow though.) It was worth it though. I love throwing good parties.

Ok, my friend Trey poses a valid and interesting question that is also near impossible to answer without sitting down together for a long relaxing evening of rambling conversation over a couple glasses of wine (or relaxant of your choice): "why exactly are you guys as busy as you are? Why can't you just relax?" (Ok, I'm paraphrasing.) Well, I'll take a stab at it, even though relaxing evenings of conversation aren't available to me right now.

I'll be the first to admit that I have a busy problem. ("Hi, I'm Julie, and I have a busy problem.") In other words, my activities and interests expand to fill all my available time. And in my own defense, I'm just a curious, extroverted person. Life, in all its weird and intricate permutations, interests me. I want to go new places, try/see/hear/touch/eat/experience new things. People interest me--I sometimes describe myself as a people collector. I love talking and spending time with a wide variety of people. So I have a lot of things I want to do and people I want to hang out with. These things recharge me, for the most part (though sometimes the sheer volume gets to me, and I wind up whining about it even though I did it to myself). Combine this with a pretty good genetically passed down ability to multitask and logistic, and well, you get someone who tries to cram something into every available moment.

And let's face it, I'm married to someone who is, if it's even possible, even more this way than I am. So the two of us together are like a crazy sparky feedback loop of busy, a lot of the time. And even though you'd think that having children would slow us down some (and it has, honest), it also produces a somewhat opposite desire to continue living a life outside of or at least not wholly defined by parenthood (blasphemy, I know). So we both *want* to do more than we can ever have time for, and sometimes we succeed (and sometimes we don't). Josh copes with this by not sleeping; I cope with it by venting here in my blog (and in conversation). This blogspace is not only my playground, it's my venting space, true to blogging's journal-ing roots. I definitely do deal with stress or problems by talking about them, and blogging is a lot like talking, only it's half talking to myself and half talking to the few people I know are reading this blog.

As I get older and wiser and both my body and my muse try to teach me (in an increasingly strident way) something about the importance of fallow time, I have learned to slow down when necessary. I just don't whine about those slow bits on my blog. Those slow days, where I *don't* do anything beyond what I have to, where I *do* go to bed on time, take my vitamins and give myself a frikkin' break, are bad blogging, frankly. Boring, in fact. So that's a long winded way of explaining why my blog sounds like a big whingefest sometimes. I may get overwhelmed from time to time (and rightfully so, since frankly even if I wasn't trying to "have a life", being a working parent is still damn tough), but I wouldn't have it any other way.

And now it's time to go off and do other busy busy things. :)

No, I'm not dead. I'm just very, very focused on what I call "life admin" right now, given the sheer amount of extra projects that this lovely holiday season brings with it (finding and wrapping presents, planning and throwing holiday parties, coordinating and attending family events). I find myself sliding into a kind of hyper-focused, ultra-multitasking space, where my brain revs up into uber-organizing supermama mode and the lists multiply around me until I am overwhelmed by a blizzard of bits of paper and I can't sleep and I can't slow down enough to have the necessary fallow time to be creative. I haven't written anything substantial in weeks. Even blogging seems like too much extra effort when there's been Something To Get Done every night this week. I feel myself teetering on the edge of compulsive--but I know that this is a potentially dangerous mode to stay in, and I'm trying not to, too much. I did have a great, relaxing, inspirational weekend in Carmel with Mom last weekend (boy, do I wish I had the time and headspace to do some painting now, I had a bunch of great ideas! More on that in a minute) but I seem to have hit the ground Monday not only running, but running a marathon, with no end in sight until at least next week. Part of that is because it's Hanukkah this week, which I've had to make all kinds of preparations for (from making sure we had all the candles, gelt, and of course presents for Eli, to putting together the yearly latke-fest at our house), and part of it is because our big Black Turkey holiday party is this weekend, and we're having more people over than we've ever had before (approximately 50 or so...necessitating the rental of chairs and tables for goodness' sake). The collision of these two events has been, well, a logistical challenge, to say the least. Next week will be all about holiday cards and prepping for Xmas, but at least I've got a fair amount of the present shopping done already and we're "only" hosting two casual events (Xmas eve dinner with Josh's family and the traditional Xmas day decompression hangout with friends) so it's nowhere near as big of a logistical planning challenge. Whew.

So a quick bit about Carmel, and then I'm off to the market to pick up our two HUMONGOUS turkeys for the party this weekend (they have to thaw for a couple days) and other supplies, then home to host our family latke-fest. Whee!

Carmel was fantastic. Not only is it the cutest damn little town, with adorable architecture and so many delicious nooks and crannies and courtyards and places to ramble that I could have poked around there for weeks, but it was wonderful to have a whole weekend with Mom, where we could talk talk talk (our favorite pastime), shop (our second favorite pastime) and eat (our third favorite pastime) to our heart's content. Not to mention the lots of cool art we saw in all the myriad of galleries that infest Carmel's downtown like bunches of "cool" kids hanging out in the halls at lunch. We saw some splendiferous artwork--my favorite was visiting the Linde gallery and having a long conversation with the cantankerous character of Linde herself. Though she was initially grumpy, she seemed to warm up and get interested in talking to me (and later, Mom, who wasn't there at first), and she even was kind enough to show us her studio and her tools, and some of her "back room" paintings. The paintings were amazing--very inspirational to me personally--but talking to the artist was a really incredible experience as well. She's had such a long and interesting life, and is such a character--I could have stayed there for hours talking to her but she kicked me out at a certain point. Heh.

We also ate some great food, from over-the-top lobster eggs benedict at Katy's Place to delicious scallops and goat cheese ravioli at Porta Bella, to my favorite, an outstanding grilled escolar dish with wild mushrooms, sundried tomatoes and Israeli cous cous at Flying Fish in Carmel Plaza. Yum!

The place we stayed was the Tradewinds Inn, and whoo boy was that an amazing, luxurious place to stay. The Asian-themed decor was inventive and fabulous, down to the littlest touches (like a little rock fountain that turned on whenever you turned the main room light on), and the beds were supremely super comfortable.

Since both of us were super stressed when we started, we also decided to go for some personal pampering. I got a wonderful prenatal massage, and then both of us went to a day spa for pedicures (and Mom got a manicure too). It was awesome. It was great that we had this little island of calm and pleasure in the midst of our hecticity. I am trying to hold on to those moments, and not get toooooo caught up in the space shuttle launch.

Speaking of which, I think NASA is calling me...time to go.

Just a quick update, cos I'm heading out the door for what will hopefully be a lovely, relaxing and creatively inspiring weekend with my mom in Carmel-by-the-Sea.

After more angst and fruitless driving around searching for our lost doggie, Tomo finally appeared at the back door around 11pm last night. She seemed tired (as well she should) but otherwise none the worse for wear. We have no idea where she was or what she was doing, but thank goodness she's home and safe. Whew and double whew. Sooooooo glad to not only have my doggie back, but to not have yet another crisis to deal with.

Onward to art-time!

(P.S.: for those vast multitudes of faithful readers who have been dying to comment on the blog and yet found yourselves unable to because of some weird security code issue, it's because Josh is implementing a new safeguard to block the annoying comment spam I've been deluged with lately. He promises that we'll sit down and fix that issue when I get back from Carmel. So hang in there.)

Been too low energy in the evenings to post lately. I've been sleeping poorly, waking up a couple times a night and getting up early with a sore back/shoulders, but not *that* poorly. Don't know if it's preggo tired, solo parenting tired (Josh has been out the last few nights in a row), or just general holiday season overwhelm tired, but yeah. Not much has happened between kid bedtime and me bedtime, except maybe a bit of light reading and a bath or two. I hope this is just a phase.

I'm only posting in here tonight because I'm worried and need to vent: Tomo (our enormous akita, for those of you who don't know) ran away today and she still isn't back. It's been hours and hours. The workers who are currently deconstructing our driveway (have I even mentioned this project yet? I don't think so...we're replacing our driveway. Cos we didn't have enough going on, I spose.) accidentally left the gate to the front yard open, and she skedaddled. That was at some point this afternoon. Josh (and even Dri, who came over after work) have been scouring the neighborhood on foot and in the car, but no sign of Tomo so far. The Humane Society said they hadn't seen her when I called right before they closed this evening (we'll have to look there again tomorrow and file an official "lost pet" report). We just don't know what else to do. She rarely gets out and about these days, so I'm worried that when she bolted (in fear? in excitement? who knows) she got far enough away that she wouldn't be able to figure out how to get back. And it's COLD outside tonight...there's been frost the last couple mornings. I mean, I know she can take care of herself, generally--she's a big strong fierce doggie, and I'm more afraid for the wildlife than for her, as far as that goes. But she doesn't know from cars, and we're right next to one of those rural highway type streets that's supposed to be a 45 mph speed limit but which everyone goes freeway speeds on. I'm also worried about what might happen if she meets other dogs--she's not a submissive dog herself, and there could be trouble. I know she's ok with people, but who knows if she'll let other people get close to her if she's out there running around freaked out by all the newness. I hope she does--she's got an ID tag on, so if someone could manage to grab her, they'd hopefully call us. Or bring her to the Humane Society, and they'd call us. I just hate the not knowing, and of course my brain keeps trying to jump to the worst conclusions and figure out what to do if she really doesn't come home ok.

Waugh. I'm rambling I know, just sticking together a big mishmosh of worries without any attempt at editing. But I'm just feeling so anxious and unhappy about this situation...and hopefully the worries are better out than in. :(

Please come home, doggie dear! Your pack is worried about you!