happy new year

This is just a quick post, because I'm on my way to what promises to be a pleasantly mellow New Years party, but when I saw What Now at the MLA blogger meet-up (Thanks for organizing, Dr. Crazy!) she said it wasn't very clear whether or not I was still pregnant, since I've discussed it primarily in terms of numbers that don't make much sense to people not in the ttc whirl. Oops. Sorry about that.

Yes, as far as I know, I am still pregnant. Since I can't feel anything (other than a little nauseated, incredibly tired and hungry all the time, and like my breasts have been replaced by enormous, pulsing, hot sandbags that hurt from their deepest core.) I have to trust the doctor and ultra-sound technicians on this. I'm about nine weeks along. I've had three ultra-sounds, all of which showed a strong, steady heartbeat and an embryo increasing in size just the way it should.( Actually, now that I'm past eight weeks I get to call it a fetus. Hooray! Recently, though, I keep wanting to call it Simon and Schuster. My friend says that's because carrying it makes me incorporated.)

I graduated from the fertility clinic (which I loved. Any readers in the Chicago area who want to know about it, please drop me a line. They were amazing.) and the day after Christmas GF and I met my dyke ob/gyn. She's delivered two of my favorite colleagues' babies and is straight forward and down to earth, which is exactly what I hoped for. While she didn't do an ultra-sound she did an, uh, more hands on examination and said that I did indeed feel pregnant. (I think her words were, after I anxiously asked, "Oh, yeah, you're pregnant.") My next ultra-sound is in a week, when I'll be about eleven weeks along. Twelve weeks marks the end of the first trimester, when the chance of miscarrying goes down to 5%, but the doctor said if everything looks good next week I can feel pretty confident about this. In the mean time, gf and I are trying to be positive and trying to enjoy the experience of being pregnant, because right now, as far as we know, we are.

So that's my update. I have all sorts of end-of-year things I want to blog about, but I don't know when I'll blog next because I had some GREAT talks with acquiring editors at MLA and they made me want to do a few more revisions on my book proposal (seems less literary is a stronger sell. if that's true, my book is way more done than I had anticipated) and then I need to write the syllabus for that class I'm teaching, starting on, oh, let's see. . .

THURSDAY!!!!!

7 things

I got tagged for the 7 things meme by adjunct whore. Now you might remember that only two or three entries ago I did a similar 6 things meme, which I mostly pawned off on my cat Manfred. Here goes, briefly though, because I really want to watch Amazing Race and see those awful blonde women who u-turned the already-losing team last week get their car rammed by a bus.

THE RULES:
1. Link to the person that tagged you and post the rules on your blog.
2. Share 7 random and/or weird things about yourself.
3. Tag 7 random people at the end of your post and include links to their blogs.
4. Let each person know that they have been tagged by leaving a comment on their blog.

1. I recently discovered, thanks to Dr. Crazy's work pulling together a blogger meet-up at MLA, that adjunct whore is a long lost friend of mine. Yay! Thanks, Crazy.

2. I hate watching movies. Hate it. It's like pulling teeth. I'd rather watch a tv show, where I can commit to the characters for a good, long time.

3. I loved Julie Andrews in Mary Poppins (and Hawaii) so much as a child, in part because of her beautiful up-swept hair-do, that I refused to watch The Sound of Music because I found her short hair unfeminine and offensive. I knew that character was no good. (yes, when I finally watched it, I liked it plenty.)

4. My sisters and I have matching names. They all begin with the same three letters and are seven letters long. We do not have middle names. When I was a kid, I thought parents who didn't match their children's names were either irresponsible, or didn't love their children very much.

5. I almost failed out of my first two years of college, even though 2/3rds of my classes were ballet classes, which I got A's in. I wasn't partying either. In fact,

6. I first drank alcohol at 26, but made up for lost time by quickly figuring out that bourbon was the only drink you ever really need.

7. I got the chicken pox at 23. The first spots appeared only hours after I took the GRE, which I like to think is why I did so poorly on the math section.

This meme is racing through the blogsphere, so there's really no one left to tag, although I'm sure we'd all love another post by Sfrajett, so I tag her. BTW, her last post, in which she offers her take on all the big changes in our lives is really, really gorgeous. Check it out. I know I'm biased, but isn't she a beautiful writer? And do you recognize the design on her pumpkin from this long-ago post of mine?