Well-Behaved Women Rarely Make History

Tribute to Swiss efficiency

2009-12-21T19:37:09Z

Today Calliope's biometric Swiss passport came in the post. She isn't even 2 weeks old yet!

Tue, Dec 8 -- Calliope born
Sat, Dec 12 -- we leave hospital & get her a passport photo
Mon, Dec 14 -- we visit Zürich passport office to fill out her paperwork
Wed, Dec 16 -- we make appt & get special biometric photo (she is youngest ever baby to get it heh)
Mon, Dec 21 -- biometric passport received in post

Wowo. The Swiss are quick.

Bleh

2009-12-20T21:35:30Z

Today I broke a window and found Mike's hat.

The end.

TaschenwÃ¤rmer ha ha ha

2009-12-19T13:33:25Z

So the other day I was getting peanut butter (I discovered somewhere to get proper peanut butter!) in the Reformhaus (health food store) and I saw, at the checkout, something so adorable and hilarious that I had to buy it.

A reusable chemical pocket warmer that looks like a mini hot water bottle.

The way it works is pretty simple: there is some little thing inside it that you snap back and forth, causing a chemical reaction such that the hot water bottle fills up with a hard, hot material which lasts about 40 minutes. Then, once you're done with it and want to get it into the original state, you simply boil the bottle in a pan of water for 8 minutes, cool it, and voila! Rinse and repeat.

Look how cute it is!

Here is a video of it in action

Clothes

2009-12-17T10:54:06Z

One thing that cracks me up about it here is that everyone says hello and goodbye when they get in and out of elevators. Or waiting rooms. And so forth. I'm used to standing in an elevator and politely ignoring everyone else who is in it while trying to avoid being squashed up against them. But here, people get in, and it's Grüezi mitenand! and they get out and it's Adé!. Bus drivers too. They'll be driving the bus along and suddenly get lonely or something and it will be Grüezi mitenand! over the bus speaker.

Last night I went through and examined my pre-pregnancy clothes. I know, stupid thing to do only one week after giving birth, but I really wanted to fold up all my maternity stuff and shove it where the sun never shines, and I needed something alternate to wear. Besides, my stomach almost looks like a normal stomach again. Not MY normal stomach, but a slightly pudgy normal stomach. Don't ask me how that happened.

Anyway, in trying on my old clothes I discovered several things. First, all the legs of all the pants fit fine so apparently my legs aren't any fatter. Hooray! However, none of the ass/hips fit even remotely, and it isn't just that I can't zip up the pants due to the bigger stomach... it's actually that the ass/hips just plain out don't fit. By a rather impressive margin. The thing is, I don't LOOK much fatter to myself. And I am a harsh critic. From eyeballing it, I would have expected them to be a bit tight, but not ridiculously so. So I am baffled. Did my bones change or something? All I can think of is that my bones are actually wider now than they were before. It doesn't make any sense.

Second, shirt-wise, even if my stomach were totally flat and back to normal (which I don't know if that will happen), my shirts ain't gonna fit anytime soon due to my new and improved bustline. Only, I don't consider it improved. I don't want these big honkers gosh darn it. I liked the other ones better!!

So, unless I want to continue wearing the same pair of H&M jeans I have been wearing EVERY DAY SINCE AUGUST, I'm going to have to buy more clothes. Gaaaaaaaah!! Who knew that pregnancy could be so freaking expensive fashion-wise? First maternity clothes and then afterwards all your other clothes have to be upped in size to accommodate new scary breasts and weird bone structure changes!

But... it's just clothes. Clothes are easily come by. Most women would be happy for an excuse to go shopping, right? ;-) I'm determined not to worry about it.

I think I will wait til the very end of our stay here before going shopping. Exactly 4 weeks to the day til we leave :-( I wish they had H&M in Australia...

Birthday pie

2009-12-15T10:24:22Z

So on Saturday, right after we got home from the hospital, I finished making the notorious pie.

I know. I'm crazy, right?

Anyway, the pie was awesome. I've been trying to make a good, flaky pie crust for literally the past 15 years, and haven't managed it til now. Was it because the last chilling step was 4 days in the freezer? I don't know. But it was freakin' fantastic.

So now I present... Calliope's Birthday Pie.

The recipe in question can be found here.

I used fresh, not canned pumpkin -- actually, it wasn't a typical orange American pumpkin, because they don't have those here, but it was something that smelled and looked a lot like one even though the rind was dark greenish in color. Moreover, I put the filling mix through the blender since I have no food processor -- but I think it would perhaps better be done by hand. The pie turned out almost too light. Pumpkin pie should have a little density to it.

Birth

2009-12-14T19:46:29Z

So I thought I'd document this whole birthing thing, before I forget it.

So I woke up early on Tuesday, after a very restless night, at about 5AM, because I was (as usual) so darn uncomfortable in bed. My stomach was contracting away as usual and it just hurt. I was so sick of being pregnant and totally discouraged. So I lay there for about an hour and prayed for patience. And I listened to the wind, which was blowing a gale outside, and had been all throughout the night. Then I got up and decided to make a pumpkin pie. That is, I'd decided the day before I would, and had cooked and pureed all the pumpkin, but didn't actually make the pie.

So I made the pie dough and it was a really annoying recipe. One of these recipes that calls for 30 minutes of chilling in the fridge after almost every step. Gah! During the chilling steps I was trying to finish some contract work. But it gradually dawned on me that my stomach was hurting a lot worse than usual, and even more frequently than usual. But I really wanted pie. I was determined to make pie.

So at 7:30am or so I put the dough in the fridge to chill again and decided to take a hot bath. I was really hurting. Woke up Zaubi after a while and told him I thought baby was on the way but we had to finish making pie. By 8:30 I had just rolled out the dough and put it in the tin but then I saw it had to chill AGAIN. At this point Zaubi told me he didn't think that we should finish making the pie. I grudgingly agreed and we put the pie dough into the freezer, but I still didn't want to go to the hospital. These things take lots of time, right? It had only been about 3-4 hours. That's nothing, according to all the books.

I should have known.

Over the next hour I remember walking around with no clothes on trying to get organised enough to put my hospital bag together and get dressed, but I hurt so much and so frequently that it was very difficult to concentrate and get it done. Taxi came at 9:30 or so. It should have been a short drive, only 7km or so, but we hit horrible traffic. Zaubi discovered later that a water main had broken on the street below ours and completely messed things up. The driver, a young unmarried guy, was distinctly unhappy to have me as a passenger and kept honking in a very aggressive manner so I tried to be very good. I stared out the window and refrained from making any noise or weird breathing but just squeezed my stress ball thingie. After the stormy night it had turned into an absolutely gorgeous day (a really rare thing in Zürich in December!) with cloudless blue sky and bright sunlight. I remembering thinking this is a great day to be born!

We finally got to the hospital a little after 10 and they took me into some little assessment room and strapped these annoying monitors to my stomach. I just wanted to walk around the room and pound the stress ball on the wall but she made me lie down so I could stay next to the monitoring machine and so she could put some elaborate needle apparatus in my arm in case I needed something or other later. I don't remember what. My ability to understand German was very quickly going downhill. Lying down made me feel distinctly nauseated. She kept telling me to breathe deeply, which annoyed me. Then she told me I was only 3-4 cm dilated (you have to get to 10) and I nearly cried. The pain was extremely awful and I was thinking there could be how many more hours of this?!?!

At some point she confiscated my underwear and gave me a hideous pair of giant white fishnet disposable ones. I remember staring at them in a kind of horror, but they were actually exceedingly comfortable. Then she jammed two of the most enormous pads in there I've ever seen. I was thinking What in the heck are THOSE??

She went away for a while so I jumped up off the bed to get away from the nausea. One of the monitors was strapped really tightly to my stomach and making painful dents in my skin. I wanted to rip it off. The other one, which was the fetal heartbeat monitor, kept sliding off down my hips so the baby's heartbeat would go to 0 in a most disturbing fashion. My tailbone was absolutely in agony. I thought it was going to explode and sent my bones flying in all directions. Then all of a sudden there was this soundless pop -- I yelled in surprise -- and my feet were soaked in hot water. Then I understood the giant pads. :-P And I was really glad that we hadn't called the taxi 20 minutes later than we did!

She led me down the hall to a proper labor/delivery room and Zaubi came after with our stuff. It was a very large, pleasant room with big windows and -- ooh la la -- a big bathtub. I was still hooked up to the blasted monitors but now they were attached to a wireless monitor instead of a big one. Poor Zaubi had the task of holding onto the wireless monitor and following me around as I lurched around the room, hunched over, pounding my stress balls together. I felt so sick from the pain but I couldn't see anywhere to throw up if necessary, except the bathtub, and I didn't want to do that. None of it made any sense to me. If I was so little dilated, why did my waters break already? And why were the pains so painful and so close together? The book said I was supposed to have at least 3 minutes of resting time in between.

After about 20 minutes of this someone asked if I wanted to get in the bathtub. Hooray! I thought. I'd taken a lot of hot baths in the past few weeks and they helped me relax a lot. So they filled up the bathtub and I got in, still with the stupid monitors eating holes into my flesh. What a disappointment? The bath was not actually HOT. It was only WARM. And they wouldn't let me put anymore hot water in it, and moreover, they had me go in this all fours position in it, I guess to take the weight of my stomach off, but it left my back sticking out and so I was cold. Gaaaah. They measured again and I was at 5cm. Bleh.

At this point my stomach started doing pushing motions of its own accord. I had absolutely not control over it whatsoever. They were like "Don't push!" and I was like "I'm not!!" But I couldn't halt it. It was like my uterus decided, all of a sudden, that it was dead sick of being pregnant and wanted to get the baby OUT as quickly as possible. I've never felt such an intense feeling, the feeling of my uterus making its own decisions like that. They said something about giving me some drug to make the uterus relax and stop being so crazy but I don't know if they ever did: I never saw them put anything in the arm tube thing, and it didn't say anything about it on the birth report. Perhaps there simply wasn't time.

A short time passed and then they did another examination, and then made me turn over. Ahhhh. Now my back got to be in the water. Much better. But they kept grabbing my knees and holding them apart. I didn't want my knees apart. I didn't get it, but whatever they were saying just went over my head. It turned out that I had gone from 5cm to 10cm --fully dilated -- in the space of about 10 minutes, and now it was the right time to push. Thank goodness! thought I when I finally understood it. All the books say that after the pain of the contractions, pushing is so much easier and less painful.

They were wrong.

At this point it's worth noting that they were saying everything in German, and Zaubi was translating. My brain was just not functioning well. So they would yell Atmen! And Zaubi would say Breathe! Breathe slower! Now push! now don't! I felt like I was insane, in some awful nightmare of pain and people grabbing my knees and telling me to breathe. Moreover, all the hospital staff were required to wear face masks because of swine flu so they all looked like aliens to me.

That pushing was, bar none, the worst thing I have ever felt. By a magnitude of I don't know what. I am not a stranger to pain, and I'm good at being a stoic. But the pain of having this baby was so fantastically horrible that it was like being in some kind of horror movie. During the pushing I thought I would die of it. I remember this quiet, clear little voice in my head saying people cannot get through pain like this. I don't know how many pushing attempts there were -- at some point they said Do you want to feel her head? and I shouted NO! very loudly and rudely. I was having trouble modulating my voice. I was yelling angrily with every push -- I was so mad that it was taking what seemed like forever and the book lied about the pushing being better -- but they told me to stop because it was wasted energy, and I had to put the energy into pushing. So after that I didn't yell any more, though I remembering kind of dry heaving a few times because the pain was so bad.

Then there was one really awful push, and I screamed. I am not a screamer. I never scream. But that pain was so horrible I couldn't help it. And there was this weird slithering feeling, and poof! my stomach completely deflated and they plopped this sodden baby onto my stomach. And she was purple. And didn't cry. I felt so freaked out.

I thought mothers are supposed to weep with joy and feel a massive rush of love when their baby pops out, but I didn't at all. I was thinking what in the heck is this slippery silent purple thing sitting on my stomach?!. And it was uncomfortable, because she was still attached to the cord, which was still inside me, and so it was annoyingly taut and pulling on my insides. Gaaaah again.

But she stopped being blue quite quickly, and they cut her cord -- or Zaubi did -- and then she cried or whimpered or something a little bit. But I still didn't understand what I was supposed to do with her. And then they started teasing me to push again, to get rid of the placenta. I was so tired, and disturbed that I didn't feel all excited and motherly, and I was illogically feeling guilty that I had yelled too much, or not done well enough, or some such. I just wanted to crawl under something and disappear.

I couldn't see my legs or anything under the water, and also illogically, I thought it was because the bathtub was made of pink material. But in fact it was because the water was dark with blood. For some reason I had been thinking that I hadn't lost any blood. Anyway, I climbed out of the tub and I think I took a shower. I have a weird vague memory of taking a shower hose and trying to get all this strange white waxy goo off my stomach and chest. Then I somehow ended up lying on a bed clutching the baby -- who had turned a more normal color -- while they stitched me up, and the stitching took forever, and was kind of annoying, but it wasn't a big deal.

I understand now why people get epidurals. But even if I had wanted one, there simply wasn't time. The baby was born at 11:58am, less than 2 hours after I arrived at the hospital.

The midwife who came by today for the home visit told me that people with short labors are not necessarily lucky although everyone thinks they are. They feel the same amount of pain as the longer ones, but in a much shorter period of time. Akin to being run over by a train, is what I think she said. I can definitely vouch for that!

Welcome, Calliope!

2009-12-13T21:46:50Z

Ok so I have show off my new cutie. 5 days old today. When not swaddled, look how she sleeps!

From Calliope Jane Bosse

And then... the hiccuping. She did this *constantly* before she was born. Funny to see it in person, as it were!

Parenthood

2009-12-13T16:55:16Z

I am sitting in my living room -- arrived home from the hospital yesterday. I am not wearing anything except a hideous pair of disposable, white net underwear that they gave me in the hospital.

Why?

Because I, and the clothes I was recently wearing, in addition to about half a dozen towels/pillowcases/cloth diapers, am covered with milk, spitup, pee and bright yellow liquidy baby poop. Moreover, I still can't button up my pants due to an interesting pot belly that I have to hold in place so it doesn't fall out when I walk around. I have developed enormous uncomfortable porn-star breasts, I am still leaking fresh gore in disturbing amounts, I can't sit down properly due to some very inconveniently placed stitches, and I can't pee without spasms of agony because I have road rash on my girlie parts. I'm hungry and tired and my hair needs washing and I'm pretty sure I stink. And there is a really grumpy person howling in my bedroom.

(But she's awfully cute)

Parenthood is fun! :-P

DARPA, weekend

2009-12-06T18:07:38Z

I'm very proud of my alma mater for winning the DARPA Red Balloon Challenge. Go MIT!!!

One thing I really miss a lot about Oz is the ability to rent movies easily and cheaply. There are lots of movie rental places there, they have a good selection, and they are reasonably priced -- especially if you go on Tight-Ass Tuesdays. Here in Zürich, they have a terrible selection and it costs freaking 6CHF per day!! I could really use a stack of mindless DVDs right now... but no chance of that.

Weekend is almost over and no baby. Bah. Today I was feeling quite energetic, which is a change (is this the alleged burst of energy right before labor?? Oh I hope so) and so we took a long walk and cleaned the kitchen. Zaubi keeps teasing me about "nesting" but that's a load of crap. I just like having a clean house. I always did. I'm one of those annoying people that goes around cleaning up all the time.

All the snow has melted away and it's only supposed to get warmer! Gaah! Where will my white Christmas be??

Uggggh, so SICK of being pregnant. Am so restless today, and Zaubi back to work tomorrow. Got to find something to distract myself. I am so BORED.

Due

2009-12-05T17:05:47Z

BABY IS DUE TODAY!

Unfortunately, today is almost over, and she has given no sign of showing up.

Then again, when I was back in Oz, the Australian doctor gave my due date as December 6th, not December 5th.

But in Oz, it *is* December 6th already.

Who is born on their due date anyway? ...oh wait, I was...

Went to the doc yesterday. The baby's head is as low as it gets: so low, in fact, that normal people don't have that happen til sometime *during* labor. I could have told them that. When I walk around, her head knocks against my pelvic girdle, or whatever you call it. Cervix fully thinned and dilated 1cm: so what are we waiting for??? (You wanted to know that)

Her heartbeat is good: they monitored it for 30 minutes. She is unphased even by my intense and frequent Braxton-Hicks contractions (which went off the scale of their measuring device thing bah). What a trooper baby. Did another ultrasound: we asked if they would verify the gender but she pressed her legs together! Coy.

They sent me to a chiropractor to fix a lock in my ilio-sacral something or other. I can actually stand up straight again now without mad pain. They also gave me a take-home enema thing that nearly killed me. You wanted to know that too. But I don't think it did anything. There's nothing wrong with the workings of my insides: just somebody's head happens to be fully in the way.

Made another appt for this coming Thursday, but neither the midwife nor the ultrasoundist believe I will need it... oh man I hope not...

Poisonous lasagna

2009-12-03T22:33:02Z

I made all yesterday's lasagnas today. And as I made them I cried, because I'm crazy nowadays and am crying all the time, mostly because I'm furious, and my tears fell into the lasagnas.

Wasn't there some scene in that movie Like Water for Chocolate where someone cries into the soup, and her tears poison everyone? I wonder if I have made Poisonous Lasagna.

Yesterday was my father's birthday. He turns 68 this year. I can't believe it. And I also can't believe, even as I think of it with a strange wrench in my heart, that I am living in Switzerland, or in Australia, or wherever, and he is still back there in the States, and I am just a few days away from giving birth to my first baby -- perhaps his first grandchild! -- and he doesn't even know, and maybe never will. Because I haven't seen him in 6 years and I will never see him again.

Nightmare

2009-12-02T20:31:22Z

Had a horrible nightmare this afternoon. I had intended to go to the shops and pick up some stuff to cook -- thought it might be good to have some stuff frozen so that I don't have to worry about finding stuff to eat after the baby gets here -- but I was so weirdly exhausted at 1pm that I could barely see straight, so I staggered to my bed and went to sleep. I was so tired I couldn't read, even. Couldn't focus my eyes.

Anyway, in this dream I was was standing in some hallway in front of a closet, and I was having a pain, and the pain was so bad that I was holding onto the closet door and methodically slamming my head into it, hard, over and over and over again, in order to distract myself away from the other pain. I was having this dream while I was kind of almost half-awake, because I could hear myself whimpering, as if it was very far away, but I couldn't come fully out of sleep, I was too bogged down by exhaustion.

Finally, though, the head slamming got to be too much and I did manage to lurch back into awakeness. And I realized the reason I was having the dream was because the pain really was there, in real life, a horrible, driving, sickening sharp ache in and within my ribs, where the baby was insistently thrusting with her foot. Horrible.

This pregnancy is absolutely destroying me. I feel like I'm going to go mad. I'm afraid of what I am going to do, if it goes on much longer.

Welcome to WordPress

2009-12-02T09:27:11Z

I'm kind of embarrassed to admit that I spent most of yesterday writing a WordPress plugin.

I only just installed WordPress for the first time a few days ago, and as ever, as soon as I installed it I wanted to understand how its APIs worked. So I looked into them a little bit yesterday and then launched myself into the writing of my first plugin, which is designed to make managing the display of front page posts more customizable.

I made it because I couldn't find a plugin that I liked to do something similar in the existing WordPress plugins repository -- there are a few, but all lacking in some way. Mine lets you select which category frontpage posts should be pulled from as well as giving you the option to select which (if any) HTML tags should be stripped from it, choosing how many posts should be displayed on the front page, and limit the length of each displayed post by numbers of paragraphs, words, or characters without breaking formatting.

Of course, I had a bit of frustration finding docs on the best way to do a lot of things so it's probably not coded in the most efficient way -- nevertheless, here it is, if anyone would like it!

Of course, yesterday I *should* have spent my time doing a couple of important tasks for work -- getting them out of the way before the baby comes along!

Snow

2009-12-01T07:14:32Z

It's been snowing for a whole day! Yesterday the snow was thick, wet, huge, sticky, beautiful flakes but by this morning they have become much smaller as the temperature has dropped. Still there hasn't been much accumulation due to the wetness... but it's the first snow of the year (in Zürich anyway) and it's beautiful.

The pic here was taken at 8AM... no flash. It's freakin' dark in the mornings here.

It's funny how quickly one gets used to things again. Living in Australia for 4 years, you'd think that snow would have by now become a huge novelty -- but it hasn't. As I walked along yesterday, wearing hat, wool coat, and gloves, thick snowflakes catching in my hair and landing wetly on my nose and cheeks, it just seemed totally normal. Like I hadn't taken 4 years off from it at all.

Klatsch

2009-11-29T21:46:45Z

Well, I got my vote in this morning with about 15 minutes to spare. Whew! I'm still an upstanding citizen. Voting here is easy. They send you all these little pieces of paper, and you fill out "Ja", or "Nein", and then you either mail it back, if you remember (which I never do, as established), or you frantically run to the Kreisburo/Bahnhof and stick the little pieces of paper in a box with your Kreis marked on it. No computers or other hassle. Quick n' easy.

I'm quite surprised to find out the results of one part of today's vote -- the ban on minaret contruction has actually been passed. I did not think there would be a majority vote by any means (and double majority at that!) but there was, and it has passed. Interesting.

Had horrid false labor experience today. Made it through the voting and through church service as well in fact, but really was feeling off -- we'd planned to take another walk today, it was a beautiful day -- so we made it home and I was just in agony of contractions. 4 minutes apart and so painful. It was horrible. But after a few hours they went away -- well not the contractions, which i always get anyway, but the pain -- and I was left feeling kind of frustrated and angry about the whole thing. Ugh, if that is a taste of real labor, well, I'm not in for much fun.

And now she isn't really moving, which freaks me out. Usually she is so active: but today she has been completely non-reactive and non moving except for a bout of hiccups at about 4.

Kudos to the women of past history. They all went through this, often, and without drugs, and knowing full well that there was a fair chance that they or the baby wouldn't make it out alive. Man. What bravery.

On a totally different note, what kind of a name is Hoobastank?!?! I like their song, The Reason, but when I found out the anme of the band, I just laughed.

Voting

2009-11-29T08:11:34Z

So I thought I was too late to vote, but there is one last opportunity to vote -- this morning between 6-10am at the main Zrich train station. Who the heck gets up on Sunday morning at 6am to vote?! Anyway, I must go rush off to cast my little paper ballot now!

Today is the day when we vote upon the controversial minaret ban initiative.

I was up most of last night because I felt like I was dying. Heartburn was so bad I thought I was going to throw up for most of the night, and then my stomach was making the horrible cramps and growling that generally comes after you've eaten something poisonous and are going to explode. I hadn't eaten anything poisonous (or indeed much of anything at all yesterday), and I didn't explode, but the cramps and growling were bad.

So I crept out of our bedroom and set up camp in the living room so I didn't bother Zaubi by having the lights on -- unfortunately our little furnished apartment only has *the* most uncomfortable sofa known to man: a right-angled, hard-cushioned hideous piece of hideousness that causes misery in every single body part when you sit upon it whether you are pregnant or not. And, the back and armrests both are at 90 degree angles. And, it is far too short to lie down on. Ugh.

'Nuff said. If I don't leave *right now* I will miss my voting chance! Gaaaah! I'm still having trouble standing upright this morning due to cramping, and I still feel vaguely like throwing up. I do not feel like lurching to the train station right now. Why didn't I vote earlier?!?!?

Morning

2009-11-28T07:11:47Z

Zrich is still pitch-black at 7AM. And still almost a month 'til the solstice!

Still... I love early morning. The quiet stillness of the air, moved only by little fresh breezes, the muted twittering of birds, the way the sky lightens over the dark silhouette of the hills, the last pale stars hanging in the deep blue. For the weather has finally got nice, after weeks of horribleness.

I guess it's a good thing I love early morning -- something tells me I'm going to be seeing a lot of them, very soon!

I forgot to vote like a good citizen. Last day for it was yesterday. (Why are there so many voting times? Didn't I just vote recently??) Now they shall never know my opinion on the minarets... will they fine me or something, I wonder?

It is one week exactly to when this baby is due. I can't really believe it. I also don't know how I'm going to get through another week, or more like two, or more! And then I wonder: am I simply doing this to myself? Am I being a hypochondriac or something? Am I making up imagined pains to make pregnancy even more miserable than it need be? Because it doesn't make sense to me, that it is this hard...

I'm a tough girl. I can put up with a fair bit of discomfort and just brush it off with minimal complaining. I always have. I'm strong, and healthy, and capable. And while I'm not a big girl, I'm certainly not a small girl either. So why is this pregnancy so tough? I went into it thinking it would be annoying and uncomfortable, but assuming I wouldn't have any issues, that the strength and healthiness I'm used to would pull through as ever. And it has, from many standpoints... I'm still, at 39 weeks, perfectly capable of walking faster than most non-pregnant people, carrying more, functioning on less sleep; I haven't been sick or *very* exhausted; there have been no issues with pre-eclampsia or bad glucose levels or baby being distressed or anything else (except the stupid excessive Braxton-Hicks contractions).

But I wasn't expecting this kind of pain, constantly. I wasn't expecting the sciatica which makes it impossible to be comfortable in *any* position at this point, and randomly deactivates my right leg whenever I need it most. I wasn't expecting to wake up every single night with stabs of agony in my stomach. And I wasn't expecting my entire skeletal system to feel like it is breaking. That is almost the worst. All of my central skeletal system - spine, ribs, hips - feel like they are being constantly wrenched apart, and it hurts like anything.

Woke up this morning at 4am with so bad pain in my abdomen I couldn't stand up straight. Went to pee, went back to bed. Couldn't lie on either side because my hips hurt so much: tried lying on my back but could barely breathe with the elephant sitting on me. What is this baby made of that she weighs so much? Gold? Fell asleep again but had the most horrible dreams of suffocating -- could hear myself gasping for air even in my sleep -- so woke up again at 6ish and just got up. My ribs ached so horribly, and I was having another horrible stabbing pain in my lungs whenever I inhaled, so I took a very hot shower for a long time which seemed to kind of ease it up. Though lately my showers have involved me kind of slumping in the bathtub (thank goodness for detachable shower heads!) because it hurts my back/tailbone too much to stand up straight.

Surely it can't be like this for everybody? IS it just all in my head??

Fondue Tram

2009-11-26T11:42:36Z

So a couple weeks ago, when V. was visiting (actually, she's still visiting, but is currently in London, and will return just for this Saturday before heading back to Oz), we bit the bullet and took a ride on the Zrich Fondue Tram.

It was fantastic!

The tram was adorably cute: small, all white, with a raised carved fondue pot on the front of it. Inside it was cheerily decorated with little cheese models hanging on the walls, and lights, and greenery. The fondue forks are all marked as owned by the Zrich Transit Authority. Heh.

There weren't 5 kinds of fondue as I had thought there would be (that's only if you rent the entire tram for yourself/your party) but what there was was delicious. And they came along and added things to it periodically (paprika, fresh crushed garlic). We finished up one pot lickety split and then they gave us another one! Only Zaubi managed to contribute much effort to the second pot: V. and I were absolutely stuffed.

Moreover, they also supplied an appetizer of cold meat -- very good -- and ridiculously tasty dessert (mousse or fruit) and excellent espresso.

See photos

I'd love to do it again...

Sierra On-Line

2009-11-26T09:11:32Z

Why did Sierra On-Line have to die, anyway?

But, there are still people out there who loved their games as much as I did -- well, more, actually.

Creators of sites such as sarien.net where you can play old Sierra games online!

Imagine that!!

The Incredible Machine

2009-11-26T08:45:56Z

Rewind 15, 16 years.

I'm 15 years old, going to high school in Boston. Every free moment of time I have -- recess, lunch, after school, and more than a few study halls I conveniently disappeared from -- has me creeping, up, up, up to the top of the school where the Science department is, walking stealthily down the quiet hallway, speeding past lit doorways... my destination, the Physics room. Bated breath, fingers crossed. Will it be empty? Or will there be a class going on, so I will have to turn around, heart heavy with disappointment? The room is dark: my soul leaps within me. I creep in, glancing nervously about. Cross the room to the back, sit down at one of the black-topped lab benches and turn on one of the computers that languish here, wincing against the beeps and squawks of startup, so loud in the empty room.

Why am I here, you ask?

I am here because I have been struck hard with an obsession... an obsession for the coolest physics game ever: The Incredible Machine, made by that greatest ever of game companies, now lost in the fogs of history, Sierra On-Line.

I don't know why it was loaded on those computers -- hardly used, as they were -- for just a few short months of that one year of my high school life. I don't remember how I discovered it, I don't remember when it went away: I remember only the crushing disappointment when I realized that my game was no more. (I think I'd won all the levels by that point anyway.)

Life went on, and I forgot the name of the game, and I moved onto Real Life and Bigger and Better Things... yet over the passing years, flashbacks of the game would come back to me and I would think of it, a little sadly, certain I would never find it again. I used to tell Zaubi about this great physics game I used to play, and he'd nod and smile, and then it would pass from my memory again. And thus passed half my lifetime.

But then yesterday, Zaubi came home from work, and told me his work mate C. had discovered a really cool old physics DOS game, and at that moment, I knew. I didn't say much of anything, but I could feel that funny tingle going through me -- that sudden undeniable prescience. And I went straight away and looked it up, and downloaded dosbox, and spent the rest of the evening playing The Incredible Machine.

Three cheers for C., who has inadvertently breathed life into a lost era. Three cheers for everyone out there who loves old games. And three cheers for Sierra On-Line, the greatest game company in the history of the world.

Molasses

2009-11-23T18:46:25Z

I've always loved molasses.

Since I was a tiny child, I used to drench my oatmeal with it; when it snowed molasses taffy was always reason for great excitement; homemade cookies that are very heavy on the molasses side have ever been my favorite; in recent years I even mix it with hot milk as a morning or bedtime drink. I have been known to eat it straight out of the jar, in fact.

Yes, I love molasses!

Of course, moving to Australia caused me some trouble as molasses is really not eaten there -- they only use it for cattle fodder/supplements. I spent some fruitless months looking around the supermarkets, asking, and getting the response "you want what? ...that's only for cows, isn't it...?" until finally discovering a health-food store which stocks small quantities of the stuff in a hard-to-see place (the same health food store that sells

Then I moved to Switzerland, and have had the same problem... except they don't even seem to use it for cattle fodder here! But again, I found a health food store (or "Reformhaus") that sells it, and since then I have reveled in molasses happiness.

One day a month or so ago, I read the nutritional content on my jar of molasses. Now granted, the stuff I have here is pretty high quality -- reine, schwarze Melasse, ausschliesslich aus Zuckerrohr gewonnen, nicht raffiniert. Auf kontrolliert-biologischem Anbau.

Nevertheless, I was startled and amazed to see what high percentages of important minerals this stuff packs. Just a couple teaspons of it gives you:
806mg Calcium (20%)
600mg Phosphorus (15%)
35mg Iron (50%)
283mg Magnesium (19%)
485mg Potassium (25%)

Dang! Of course, I'm sure it's not the same in the sweet & processed Grandma's variety (I'm sure you have to get blackstrap, but I don't care 'cause I like blackstrap) but still! 2 teaspoons!

I love it when foods I love are validated.

The last weeks

2009-11-16T16:25:32Z

So! There are less than 3 weeks to go until this baby is supposed to be born. (!!!) She is now full-term, which means she's fully mature and ready to come out at any time.

I feel ridiculous. This baby-basketball module I am wearing looks ridiculous! My stomach goes out in front literally at a right angle to the rest of my body, from top and bottom. It is totally bizarre.

Once upon a time I thought that being pregnant would be like being fat. Just kind of larger and heavier and out of breath. But it doesn't feel like that at all. Granted, I am 30 pounds heavier, but I still have perfectly good balance and feel light on my feet -- I can speed walk as normal, and scamper around, and even still run, in fact, WHEN the Braxton-Hicks contractions aren't taking over.

The problem is that the Braxton-Hicks contractions are going on about 75% of the time and when they are doing their thing I cannot run, or scamper, or walk or even stand up straight. Moreover, now I seem to have developed sciatica and can't even sit for moderate periods of time and I keep losing my right leg at random and inconvenient moments (like when trying to grocery shop).

Another thing is, I think if I were just fat, the fat would squish. The baby module does not squish even slightly. Especially given the constant contractions, this huge tensed up ball of water & baby sticking out my front has NO give. So when you bend over to tie your shoes, it's not like things shift around or you can squash the mass down or push it to the side or something. You have to bend the rest of you *over and around* this massive, completely solid ball which has zero squish factor. Gah! I can only tie my shoes now if a) I hold my breath and turn my feet kind of sideways over my knee or b) Zaubi does it for me.

Had an appt last week and the midwife told me what position the baby is in. There is this big round thing right in front just below my ribs and that is her ass. There are two feet that stick out my right side (it *really* looks weird when they move around) scooting about anywhere from hip level to all the way under my ribs. Yesterday she actually kicked up high so hard that I heard, yes, I heard my left ribs make a cracking sound! Yuk! And then there's a weird other thing that is constantly jabbing me in the back of the bellybutton. A fist? An elbow? I don't know. When she gets her hiccups now I can feel them vibrating against my tailbone, and if I push the ass part of her in different directions I can feel her head crushing my bladder, or make her feet stick out my side, and so forth. It's truly bizarre. Definitely having this baby inside me is the weirdest physical sensation I've ever experienced.

Man, this whole pregnancy thing has been such an eye-opener. I went into it thinking it would be bad, but not *that* bad. Now I'm at the other end: could I ever do it again, knowing now what it's like? I just don't know. And I haven't even given birth yet or gotten through the first crazy weeks! Man, oh man.

Come on, baby, let's get a move on...

Sledging

2009-11-12T23:14:20Z

How cool is this? Man, I would soooooooooo love to do that.

The season starts Dec 13. Baby should be born by then. I wonder how a newborn would take to sledging. They like being bounced, right?

:-D :-D

Eggnog

2009-11-07T20:51:54Z

So last week I made eggnog from a recipe I found off the internet. At least, I tried. Generally I cook pretty well (unless Zaubi is helping me, in which case everything seems to go wrong) but this was not one of my stellar moments. Ended up with a chunky brown mixture that looked of vomit and reeked of Jack Daniels.

Don't ask.

Anyway, for some reason I had, folded into my trusty little recipe book, a recipe for eggnog that I got free from an egg carton about 10 years ago. It's been sitting in there ever since, and I have never made it. I glanced it over the other day, and I'm a bit apprehensive about it honestly...

It claims to be from the wife of (the late) Senator John Cooper. And it's safe for Democrats as well as Republicans, it says. Here it is:

12 eggs, separated
1 cup extra fine sugar
1 quart heavy cream
1 quart light cream
3 cups bourbon whisky
2 cups white rum
2 cups brandy

At least 3 days before serving, beat yolks with sugar until thick & lemon colored. Beat heavy cream til thick. Add booze, stirring frequently. Beat egg whites until almost firm. Fold egg whites into the mixture of cream, sugar, egg yolk & booze. Pour into containers and refrigerate for up to a week. Shake well before serving, and top with grated nutmeg.

I'm kind of afraid to make that one. All cream & booze! I don't know what kind of Christmas parties the late Senator John Cooper had, but you can't have felt very good the next morning...

Mood swings?!

2009-11-05T20:03:06Z

I really do not like soprano saxophones. Why do they exist??

Next weekend when N. is here visiting, we are going to experience the great excitement of the Zürich Fondue Tram. A city tram that bumps about downtown Zürich for a couple hours while you eat all the fondue you can possibly put away.

There is actually a Fondue Ship as well, but I heard about the tram first so signed up for that. Ah well, something for another year.

One of Zaubi's workmates has a wife who had her baby due on the same due date as mine -- but she had her baby over this past weekend. I know I should be glad that my kid is still holding out, but my heart says NOT FAIR! That lucky woman!! Skipped out of a whole month!

That's totally the wrong attitude. But I can't help thinking it anyway.

These final-month mood swings are hitting me, I think. It didn't occur to me before that I might get mood swings -- I never believed in PMS mood swings and so forth, and I'm such a capricious grumpy person often anyways, I feel like blaming moodniness on hormones is a total cop-out -- but I think this is not quite normal. So maybe there *is* something to it after all.

I was reading a Laura Ingalls Wilder book today and I cried, I actually cried when her dog died. What the? I didn't cry over that dog the other 50 times I've read that book since age 6: come to think of it, i don't cry over books, or movies, or anything of the sort, full stop.

And then at dinner I found myself suddenly completely incensed and threw a fork across the room, and then burst into tears. Now, throwing things has definitely been part of my modus operandus in the past; however, generally not suddenly and randomly. I usually know a while in advance before I throw something. It doesn't just kind of come out of the blue. And I don't cry afterwards.

Ugh, this is horrible. When will I feel like myself again?

Why won't this stupid soprano sax go away?????