Art of Good Intention

Direct quote from last weekend’s dinner with my husband. Actually, this is the exact quote “I can’t keep up with you anymore.” Stated while pushing his mostly empty plate away as I reached towards it with my fork, since my plate was empty. I haven’t eaten this much since I trained for my last marathon. Not that this is any different. Except in this case, instead of trying to shave down times, calculating meals, and heading out for 20 milers, I’m literally growing another person. And clearly taking this eating for two thing seriously. This baby does not treat eating lightly. Weight gain during pregnancy should be fairly gradual. Almost nothing in the first trimester (easy, since most of what you eat is coming back up), about a half a pound a week in the second trimester, and then a pound a week in the last trimester, as the baby actually grows enough to run out of room and then be born. In the meantime, we do everything together. I remember one of my friends saying that occasionally what she wanted most during pregnancy was five minutes to herself. At the time I wasn’t sure what this was supposed to mean, but I’m beginning to understand. What I’ve learned thus far…. 1. The baby is currently developing a sleeping schedule. It is very much not on par with mine. We go to bed early, since we have to rise early. This works for several hours, before I awake to what Matt and I lovingly refer to as an “I’m Bored” moment. As in, “Hello? I’m bored. I’m lonely. Why is everything so quiet and still?” accompanied by kicking and rolling around (even though I can’t be sure- I’m still learning to figure out which movements are which). 2. I’m supposed to be getting roughly 8 servings of fruits and veggies a day, 4 calcium, blah blah blah. What does the baby want? Guacamole. Cupcakes. Ice Cream. Cheese and crackers. 3. Growth spurts happen suddenly and without warning. As in, I go to bed one size and wake up and the belly has again moved out slightly more. I’m concerned about how much more this will happen between March and July. 4. You can’t eat ANYTHING without WORRYING about it. I thought I had a pretty good diet going. I eat fruits and veggies with every meal, take my prenatal vitamins even though they are terrible, take calcium supplements even though those are worse than the vitamins and yet I find myself calling my OB at least once a week to confirm that in fact, a food I love I cannot have. This week’s food? Raw Honey. I ate some on toast and then my mom called to say she had heard pregnant women shouldn’t eat it. So I did what any red-blooded American does. I googled it, discovering that either nothing was wrong with it, or I had possibly caused my baby to go blind from some bacteria traveling from the honey. There were tons of posts on messageboards about it, and as the weekend went on, I found myself getting short of breath just thinking about what I had done. How could I have been so irresponsible? Why didn’t I just use the jam on the toast instead? It took everything I had (plus Matt rolling his eyes) not to page the on-call doctor. The important thing is I didn’t. I waited to call until Monday. They said honey was fine, it just needed to be pasteurized. I had no idea honey was pasteurized. Is this common knowledge? In case you’re wondering, there is pasteurized honey. With this amazing being growing inside me, I have also had my eyes opened to a new type of education. An education that involves trying to learn a lot in a small amount of time, learning to forgive myself for things I do wrong in the process, and agreeing with Matt, who told me recently, “If people couldn’t have healthy babies without doing absolutely nothing, the human race would never have survived.” On that note, where are the rest of the cupcakes?

I’m sure my friends are loving the title of this post. If you have ever participated in one of my surprisingly frequent moves in any way, you understand that I am thisclosethisclose to being on Hoarders. I am extremely sentimental about my stuff. I find it mostly interesting, entertaining, and I like my stuff. But I am aware that over the last few years it has gotten out of hand, and I think Matt definitely thinks it’s gotten out of hand, and I should stop. But I guess it didn’t really get bad until this summer when we began to prepare our house for moving. It was bad. Really bad. We started packing up all this stuff, and then it was suggested we move it to a storage unit. Which I happen to already have. So we drove the stuff up, opened up my unit and it was…horrific. For both of us to realize that the storage unit was already full of a good amount of my crap from when I had moved back from Wilmington, and stuff from when I had moved from Chapel Hill to Wilmington, and I am wondering if it’s possible there’s stuff in there from my move from NYC to Chapel Hill. But we packed up half our house, and moved it into storage and put our house on the market and sold it, and then moved into a tiny apartment, where we realized our stuff that had been left unpacked was STILL TOO MUCH STUFF. So we moved some of that stuff up to storage too. And still there are boxes are around that need to be DEALT WITH. Much easier said than done. But I think what brought it home for me this week was losing my thank you notes. I wrote thank you notes from Christmas, and I have misplaced them all. This comes from a total lack of organization. That comes from having so much stuff we are disorganized, overwhelmed and I am unable to find anything. In a 900 sq ft apartment there resides a pile of thank yous that need to be mailed. Then, my friend Sarah Kahn posted a blogpost from this site called raptitude.com. Link: http://www.raptitude.com/2011/01/i-dont-want-stuff-any-more-only-things/ He writes this beautiful, poetic diatribe about getting rid of stuff, about being able to really enjoy his things because he got rid of his stuff. Matt’s sister-in-law is also really good at getting rid of stuff. It is a talent I have yet to obtain. I always believe that part of it is genetic or something. There are people who are just born more minimally than others. Tell me about your favorite toys. If you only had ONE true favorite, and that was the only memento you kept from your childhood, you are good at this. I have a friend who came to college with her really beat up cabbage patch doll- I mean really beat up, I think her brothers had taken a hammer to the head or something, and that was it. She also lives in a tiny apartment (and will laugh when she reads this post) with a husband and a baby. When I say tiny I’m going to be generous and say 500 sq ft. Also, I used to follow Apartment Therapy religiously. Without taking much action. So anyway, being in this apartment, surrounded by boxes, I am now determined to be better at this. So, every day, I’m picking out things that i don’t really use or even really want, and I am putting them in a box, or in my chair at my desk. Box = giveaway, Chair = ebay. Maybe someone else can get some use out of them. How do you handle your stuff?

That’s not really what this blog post is about. I mean, it is about the New Year, but not about a New You. I just saw that in an ad for a fitness center and thought it would make a catchy title for this post. So every year at this time I try really hard to think about what I have done in the last year, and what I am going to do this year. Just like 90% of other Americans. Let’s start with last year: 1. Disney Marathon, Tarheel 10 miler, and GOTR Reindeer Romp. City of Oaks was supposed to be in there but I had pneumonia (Matt did it for both of us :-)) 2. Junior League volunteering 3. Volunteered as a coach for GOTR. 4. Librarianism 5. We put our house on the market. 6. We sold our house. 7. We actually freakin’ closed on our house (FHA loans are NOT FUN.) 8. I turned 30. I couldn’t find my resolutions from last year, so I have nothing to compare them to. Remind me to put them on the blog from now on, since I have no doubt that the internet is infinite space and time. Now, for the year 2013. There are some really exciting things in store. Wow, that didn’t sound exciting at all. Here are some resolutions for this year: 1. No marathons. I know how insane that sounds ,considering I haven’t missed a year in five years. But this year, no marathoning. 2. Plan a trip to a country I’ve never been to (probably to actually happen in 2014 but whatever, it takes a while for me to get a trip together) 3. Purchase a new house (we are in desperate need of this oen) 4. Really focus on writing (I feel like I say that every year) 5. Take my vitamins (I feel like I say that one every year too) 6. Spend more time with Matt. So, important announcements: I HAVE A NEW JOB. I am finally leaving my current school and starting a new job. It came out of the blue, and I wasn’t actively looking but was planning on starting to look in the spring. This came up and I went ahead and took it. My school was not so happy but tomorrow morning I will be starting a new chapter at a new school. What I want out of this is to really grow as a librarian. I think it’s really important to switch up what you’re doing and when you stop growing in a current position to fix it or move on. I made a tough choice but made the right choice for our family. That was a really grown up statement. I’m not sure how to take it right now.