I wasn't even trying to be cute. I was walking around the grocery store at lunch, scanning for things I could stand to eat, and something fruity and fat-free but not TOO fruity = gummi bears, and something salty and creamy and tangy = Purple Haze chevre. It didn't even occur to me how cliched I was being till I was making up the cheese plate.
So yeah. Gummi bears and goat cheese are the new pickles and ice cream.
Thursday, June 30, 2011
Friday, June 24, 2011
how is babby formed
Yep! Still pregnant.
I'm not really into it (yet, at least.) It is freaking me out, I'm bloated, I'm queasy - it's like I have a gastrointestinal parasite that also makes my boobs hurt. My mother will not stop calling and every time she does I feel sucked down into the femininity void where you are expected to use phrases like "bless your heart" and "precious little angel," which I can ordinarily only tolerate when they're used as veiled insults in the Southern fashion. Reading the Internet is no better. I am very glad I spent very little time TTC with my DH before I got a BFP so that I never need to see/use those twee acronyms ever, ever again.
Twee. That's the problem. Everything about pregnancy is so charmingly self-consciously childlike, feminine and adorable that it makes me want to find one of those Hallmarks that sell Precious Moments figurines and burn it to the ground. But I digress.
The main reason I am ambivalent and tense about this pregnancy is that I have had a few symptoms that could indicate I may not hang on to it for long. I am either on my way to miscarriage or one of those weird women you see on "I Didn't Know I Was Pregnant!" who have their periods in a normal-ish way and then, whoops! Baby! How the hell did that happen? The doctors (to whom I've run in wild panic twice so far - I can't go my whole first trimester like this!) seem to think I'm okay, pending my next ultrasound in two weeks. We shall see. In any case I am living in fear (because the prospect of miscarrying a wanted child, no matter how early, I am learning, is very disturbing) and trying really, really hard not to get my hopes up. Or get attached, at all. Which is why the precious baby huggy lumpkins shit that my mom wants to foist on me makes me want to barf. Then again, a lot of things make me want to barf right now, including car rides, my coworker's deodorant and basil pesto.
(This has not stopped me for thinking up names. In keeping with the Y-abuse that must apparently take place when you name a girl (Madysyn? Really?), I'm thinking Ysabel Syzygy Myrycle, Ys for short, and my husband insists on Link Batman Optimus Prime for a boy.)
But yeah, more people know than probably should, thanks to my husband's big mouth, and if I can't pull this off I'm going to have to deal with some of the most awkwardly expressed condolences ever.
You may be picking up that I'm terrible at grief. So terrible that I need to plan for it ahead of time even when things could very well be perfectly fine. Wow, this entry got depressing.
I'm not really into it (yet, at least.) It is freaking me out, I'm bloated, I'm queasy - it's like I have a gastrointestinal parasite that also makes my boobs hurt. My mother will not stop calling and every time she does I feel sucked down into the femininity void where you are expected to use phrases like "bless your heart" and "precious little angel," which I can ordinarily only tolerate when they're used as veiled insults in the Southern fashion. Reading the Internet is no better. I am very glad I spent very little time TTC with my DH before I got a BFP so that I never need to see/use those twee acronyms ever, ever again.
Twee. That's the problem. Everything about pregnancy is so charmingly self-consciously childlike, feminine and adorable that it makes me want to find one of those Hallmarks that sell Precious Moments figurines and burn it to the ground. But I digress.
The main reason I am ambivalent and tense about this pregnancy is that I have had a few symptoms that could indicate I may not hang on to it for long. I am either on my way to miscarriage or one of those weird women you see on "I Didn't Know I Was Pregnant!" who have their periods in a normal-ish way and then, whoops! Baby! How the hell did that happen? The doctors (to whom I've run in wild panic twice so far - I can't go my whole first trimester like this!) seem to think I'm okay, pending my next ultrasound in two weeks. We shall see. In any case I am living in fear (because the prospect of miscarrying a wanted child, no matter how early, I am learning, is very disturbing) and trying really, really hard not to get my hopes up. Or get attached, at all. Which is why the precious baby huggy lumpkins shit that my mom wants to foist on me makes me want to barf. Then again, a lot of things make me want to barf right now, including car rides, my coworker's deodorant and basil pesto.
(This has not stopped me for thinking up names. In keeping with the Y-abuse that must apparently take place when you name a girl (Madysyn? Really?), I'm thinking Ysabel Syzygy Myrycle, Ys for short, and my husband insists on Link Batman Optimus Prime for a boy.)
But yeah, more people know than probably should, thanks to my husband's big mouth, and if I can't pull this off I'm going to have to deal with some of the most awkwardly expressed condolences ever.
You may be picking up that I'm terrible at grief. So terrible that I need to plan for it ahead of time even when things could very well be perfectly fine. Wow, this entry got depressing.
Sunday, June 19, 2011
Monday, June 6, 2011
Bridesmaids Revisited
(because sometimes puns are hard to resist, overdone as they may be)
So I really got a kick out of Superbad, problematic though it and the rest of the Apatow oeuvre may be. And at the end there's this scene where the boys, still hung over and embarrassed from their One Crazy Night, go to the mall and run into their counterpart girls from the Big Party, who are likewise hung over and embarrassed. The thought I immediately had was: what did they do? I'm sure it was hilarious, but no one ever makes One Crazy Night movies about girls. PLEASE SOMEONE MAKE A MOVIE ABOUT WHAT THE GIRLS DID.
Well, apparently they are doing that sort of thing now! And people are going to see it! Which bodes well for movies about women doing hilarious things, and not rom-com funny (which usually just means the female lead is adorably klutzy) - legitimately funny. And Bridesmaids is legitimately hilarious. Like, inviting my girlfriends over for dinner and afterwards we're like "What do you wanna do?" "I don't know, what do YOU want to do?" and someone says "Let's watch Bridesmaids again" and this happens five times in a row. That funny. I'm very glad that the movie that is apparently making a stand for the woman-centric broad comedy is this good.
So why is it so good? It's actually not a huge movie - not a lot of locations or characters or outrageous events a la Hangover (which actually I haven't seen - yes, my cave is very comfortable, why do you ask?), no special effects, no overly elaborate gag setups, no huge stars, and the centerpiece is actually a bittersweet story about BFFs growing apart - but not only does that allow for subtle humor in addition to the broad stuff, but the ordinariness of the story makes it easy for the intended audience (say what you like, ads, this is a chick flick - a little more on that below) to identify.
Because every woman over 25 has likely been in that wedding party. The nature of wedding parties demands it. Especially if you didn't come from money but then went to college, and then there's the cross-class awkwardness between old friends and new friends that this movie captures perfectly. (Also the one-thin-bridesmaid and one-fat-bridesmaid constant - and, alas, the movie accurately portrays that most brides only listen to the thin bridesmaid when picking the dresses.)
Also captured perfectly: the escalating nature of wedding planning, that chiffon maelstrom that starts out so innocently and the next thing you know you are screaming "What do you MEAN the napkins are cornflower blue instead of baby blue?!?" at some poor slob of a vendor over the phone. The absurd prissiness of wedding dress salons, possibly the worst place in the world to have diarrhea and as much as I'm not fond of poop gags, that one was brilliant.
But really, the five best things about the movie are:
So I really got a kick out of Superbad, problematic though it and the rest of the Apatow oeuvre may be. And at the end there's this scene where the boys, still hung over and embarrassed from their One Crazy Night, go to the mall and run into their counterpart girls from the Big Party, who are likewise hung over and embarrassed. The thought I immediately had was: what did they do? I'm sure it was hilarious, but no one ever makes One Crazy Night movies about girls. PLEASE SOMEONE MAKE A MOVIE ABOUT WHAT THE GIRLS DID.
Well, apparently they are doing that sort of thing now! And people are going to see it! Which bodes well for movies about women doing hilarious things, and not rom-com funny (which usually just means the female lead is adorably klutzy) - legitimately funny. And Bridesmaids is legitimately hilarious. Like, inviting my girlfriends over for dinner and afterwards we're like "What do you wanna do?" "I don't know, what do YOU want to do?" and someone says "Let's watch Bridesmaids again" and this happens five times in a row. That funny. I'm very glad that the movie that is apparently making a stand for the woman-centric broad comedy is this good.
So why is it so good? It's actually not a huge movie - not a lot of locations or characters or outrageous events a la Hangover (which actually I haven't seen - yes, my cave is very comfortable, why do you ask?), no special effects, no overly elaborate gag setups, no huge stars, and the centerpiece is actually a bittersweet story about BFFs growing apart - but not only does that allow for subtle humor in addition to the broad stuff, but the ordinariness of the story makes it easy for the intended audience (say what you like, ads, this is a chick flick - a little more on that below) to identify.
Because every woman over 25 has likely been in that wedding party. The nature of wedding parties demands it. Especially if you didn't come from money but then went to college, and then there's the cross-class awkwardness between old friends and new friends that this movie captures perfectly. (Also the one-thin-bridesmaid and one-fat-bridesmaid constant - and, alas, the movie accurately portrays that most brides only listen to the thin bridesmaid when picking the dresses.)
Also captured perfectly: the escalating nature of wedding planning, that chiffon maelstrom that starts out so innocently and the next thing you know you are screaming "What do you MEAN the napkins are cornflower blue instead of baby blue?!?" at some poor slob of a vendor over the phone. The absurd prissiness of wedding dress salons, possibly the worst place in the world to have diarrhea and as much as I'm not fond of poop gags, that one was brilliant.
But really, the five best things about the movie are:
Thursday, June 2, 2011
The Women of Science Fiction Book Club: Mappa Mundi by Justina Robson
I'm doing the Women of Science Fiction Book Club over at Dreams and Speculation, and Mappa Mundi is the first book I've been able to finish and comment on due to my work schedule. (I am so disappointed I missed out on The Dispossessed! I get downright lyrical about the works of Ursula K. LeGuin.) Here is a mini-review:
Mappa Mundi is a thoughtful technothriller, heavy on the techno, biotech to be specific. Medical nanites are a thing, and they are able to change and induce growth in neurons, useful for the brain-damaged... meanwhile, a coalition of scientists funded by some mysterious dude is developing a "mappa mundi," a full map of the brain and, by extrapolation, the mind. Mix the two and you have either an awesome medical and metaphysical development or weaponized mind control, depending on who you're working for. It's a little confusing, not that Robson goes into huge amounts of technical details - the infodumps are very high-level, suitable for consumption by a reasonably sophisticated reader of thrillers.
Because this is totally a thriller. I didn't expect it - I thought the club was focusing on straight-up 100 percent sci-fi-genred stuff, and the "Legends" part at the beginning, vignettes of defining moments from the lives of some of the main characters, was very evocative and hinted at a book heavy on character development.
Mappa Mundi is a thoughtful technothriller, heavy on the techno, biotech to be specific. Medical nanites are a thing, and they are able to change and induce growth in neurons, useful for the brain-damaged... meanwhile, a coalition of scientists funded by some mysterious dude is developing a "mappa mundi," a full map of the brain and, by extrapolation, the mind. Mix the two and you have either an awesome medical and metaphysical development or weaponized mind control, depending on who you're working for. It's a little confusing, not that Robson goes into huge amounts of technical details - the infodumps are very high-level, suitable for consumption by a reasonably sophisticated reader of thrillers.
Because this is totally a thriller. I didn't expect it - I thought the club was focusing on straight-up 100 percent sci-fi-genred stuff, and the "Legends" part at the beginning, vignettes of defining moments from the lives of some of the main characters, was very evocative and hinted at a book heavy on character development.
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