Monthly Archive for February, 2007

Critical mass

With short hair, you already have more days when you wake up at critical mass: the time when a cut is suddenly a dire need whereas the day before it wasn’t. But being pregnant with short hair… you get the point, right?

So it’s awesome that I live with my stylist and can say things like “hey, before you grill me a lovely dinner, will you cut my hair?”

Unfortunately, I did have to skip knitting. It was skip the knit or wait until Monday. And… critical mass, people.

I think I’m gonna have to start this project over anyway, though. And the question is, do I look for circular needles that are the right size? Or continue the cheat way Sanne showed me only on regular needles?

I am trying to make a hat for the baby. I did not understand the concept of circular needles, so I bought the wrong size.

You can, however, knit on the circular needles like you were on regular ones… only it confuses me that I am not transferring from needle to needle and I think I’ve messed up.

On the plus side, I can purl now.

by
LBC
on 28Feb07
in Uncategorized
. 1 Comment

The 9th month

Remember back when you were in high school? How long you were a sophomore or a senior? All the things you did and what a pivotal time it was?

A typical pregnancy lasts about as long as a school year. So the eons I was a freshman is about the same amount of eons I have been pregnant.

He feels sort of different in there these days. Whether that’s because he’s packing on the pounds in prep to be born or because he has begun to “drop” I do not know.

My boss and I talked today about maternity leave. I qualify for FMLA so I get to take at least 12 weeks. I want to take as long as I can, but I also want to go back to work.

Kris and I have approached somebody about being a nanny, and I’ve been sort of chill about if that didn’t work out that we’d just find a daycare. But now one of our friends’ wee babes is hella sick after her first week in daycare. I don’t want that for my little man child.

Once upon a time, mom was gonna retire in 2000, the same year I was to finish college and the house in Southside was gonna be paid off. And then the house was refinanced, mom retired in 1996 on disability and I went summers and graduated JSU in 1999.

Oh, for that lost dream. My mom a healthy retiree who’d love to watch my son grow up. I’d complain about the 20 minute trek to Southside, but I wouldn’t know how good I had it.

by
LBC
on 28Feb07
in Uncategorized
. 1 Comment

Grossness

A couple weeks ago, Kris made a nonchalant comment about finding dried up sesame seeds on the bed we set up in the middle room. I immediately freaked out, not because I knew what it meant, but because I knew there was no reason for there to be sesame seeds in the house, much less in a location where we never eat.

So I made him show me one. “That,” I declared “is not a sesame seed.”

“Well, what is it?”

“I don’t know.”

I did the only sensible thing I knew: Googled “looks like a sesame seed.”

The probable prognosis? Tapeworm segments. Ewwwww.

I put a few of them in a Ziploc bag and stopped at the vet’s office on my way to work after the doc’s visit (which was like a vet visit for humans but let’s not go there) and showed them to the lady behind the counter.

“They’re kinda hard to see, but I found these where one of the cats has been sleeping…”

“Tapeworm,” she said definitively.

“Gross, but I figured.”

And though it’s probably just Frodo, you gotta treat ‘em both. Not too bad, though: you give them a pill to kill the adult worm and then 21 days later a pill to kill any eggs that were there.

How does your cat get a tapeworm? By ingesting fleas carrying the eggs. So even though the weather’s cold and the pets aren’t really bothered by fleas? Keep up that monthly flea treatment.

by
LBC
on 26Feb07
in blog
. 3 Comments

Urban living

Chatting with Zach and Kristie a few weeks ago, Z mentioned that it takes them about 20-30 minutes to get from their abode in Alabaster to… just about anywhere. The grocery store, etc.

When I started driving, it took me 5 minutes to get to Liz’s house, 10 minutes to Jaimie’s, 15 to the mall, 20 to church… I thought nothing of any of it.

But now, Liz is in my backyard, Jaimie is 2 minutes away, the church (and my work and Kris’ work) are 5 minutes… our parents are less than 2 blocks away… Cookie is far because I’d have to cross a bridge to get to her.

“That’s urban living,” Zach pointed out.

Urban. I still find that funny since Gadsden is so small. Technically, it is true. I grew up in a rural area because there were actual cows less than a mile from my home. And now I live in the city center, hence urban. Instead of cows and pastures, we have sidewalks and train tracks.

I love the closeness of my “urban living.” On my way to work yesterday, I passed my mother-in-law on Turrentine, pulled up behind Carla as she got on Walnut, visited The 215 on my lunch break, and walked to the Moxie when I arrived early for West & Dan’s birthday shindig at Mater’s.

But will I want to stay when Ben comes? When he’s a baby, sure. But when it’s time for him to go to school (or maybe get a sibling), is downtown where I want to settle and raise the fam?

I don’t know. I’m glad I don’t have to decide right now. I think about it. I should pray more about it. Listen.

Every day there is community downtown. Each time we walk around the block, there’s a familiar face. There’s Nicole visiting Stephen, there’s the Whortons driving home, there’s Nathan or Mark or Ashley or the Norrises or Glean or my grandmother or Jaimie’s red Jeep…

I don’t know what it means. I know I like it. I struggle with “what’s next?” Maybe because so much changed so quickly from the time I graduated college and moved out.

Maybe that’s just adulthood.

by
LBC
on 23Feb07
in blog
. 0 Comments

40 days

Ash Wednesday - Lent begins. Give something up this year? Meat? Caffeine? Expletives? Booze? (Haha, yes, I kid on the last one.)

After being particularly rageful yesterday evening, I’m gonna say no cursing for Lent. I hope I remember. Lent-ils, if I forget and use a swear word, do I do something to make up for it? It was kinda easy to remember not to eat meat, but dropping an f-bomb when something goes wrong is sort of second nature.

I suppose prayer would be the thing. Or maybe reading a Psalm. An “oops, I swore, better praise.”

Anybody else doin’ the Lent thang this year?

by
LBC
on 21Feb07
in blog
. 1 Comment

Already?

I was thinking my prenatal appointments would go weekly in March, so it was a surprise today when they scheduled my next one for Monday. When you start going weekly is when you start having to strip down at every visit. Awesome.

Between that and the baby shower, it suddenly feels like “whoa, we’re having a baby when? next month?!?”

I imagine the time will still creepy-crawl because I cannot breathe. Not for the usual third trimester reason of the uterus pressing on your lungs and/or diaphragm, but because the inside of my nose is swollen. Thank you, Jimmy, for introducing me to Breathe Right strips.

And I’m starting to swell all over. Since my doc visit two weeks ago, I weigh four more pounds and I bet it’s mostly fluid.

Hopefully after dinner at Mama Juanita’s I will still have the energy to post some pix from the shower. I downloaded them all but would need to size ‘em down before uploading to the web.

ETA: Flickr was down last night, but the pix from the shower are up now

by
LBC
on 19Feb07
in Uncategorized
. 0 Comments

The Name

Our baby shower at the church is tomorrow. Debbie, one of the hostesses extraordinaire, called me up one day to ask if we wanted to put the baby’s name on the invitation. Huh, I hadn’t thought about it. We’ve been telling anyone who asks what his name will be, but he doesn’t really get the name until he’s born, right?

So the invitations say Baby Catoe.

But so many people know his name that they are already referring to him as such on blogs, forums, MySpace pages, etc. However, if you happen to be one of those peeps we only know online or rarely see in person, our son’s name will be…

Bentley Alexander.

Sounds prestigious, huh? I joke that if you’re gonna name your kid after a car, make sure it’s a luxury one. We, of course, are not actually naming our kid after a car, but using my maiden name. Being an only child, it’s my only way of passing it on.

I decided with Shelia Morgan back in the Shaw man’s Printmaking room that if I had a son someday, I’d like to name him Bentley. This preference is something Kris knew since we were dating and he was cool with it.

As for a middle name, I thought “well, we could go with James and then he’d be named after my dad. But gah, I don’t want his initials to be BJ.”

And then Kris told me his maternal grandmother’s maiden name was Alexander. Awesome! A name from each side of the family.

We call him Ben. Prior to the little boy child in my womb, I had three connotations for the name Ben:

Ben, a.k.a. DJ Spike, from the Episcopal church who came to CORE

Ben Pasley of 100 Portraits, a righteously cool dude

The episode of Friends where Ross’ son is born and he and Phoebe are locked in a supply closet during the birth — Phoebe dons the janitor’s outfit and the nametag says “Ben,” which is what Ross and Carol name the baby. I know. It’s a sad, but true, state of being a pop culture girl.

Jaimie thinks Ben Kenobie.

Brad and Cindy call him Lex after the bad guy in Superman.

I asked Cookie if she’d call him Xander after the character on Buffy.

We wanted a name that felt as “us” as Sophia Monroe does for the wee Norris and one that had as much reason behind it as Bonnie Covenant, our niece.

Back when most folk thought we were having a girl, we were having a hell of a time with name possibilities. It makes sense now. It wasn’t time for that discussion.

The day of our ultrasound, I asked Kris since we knew the name, could we go ahead and start calling him that? And we did.

Ben, tomorrow we go to celebrate you being on the way. We look forward to meeting you soon.

Lilypie Expecting a baby Ticker

by
LBC
on 16Feb07
in Uncategorized
. 4 Comments

The Knitting Circle

The Knitting Circle by Ann Hood

Consider this the third in a series of books that I wouldn���t suggest reading while pregnant.

When I began attending the knitting class at TLC, I asked our Assistant City Editor if we���ve ever run a story on knitting. No. I suggested one, and she suggested I make it into one of the How-To packages that we are running once a month. ���How-to Learn to Knit��� ran in today���s paper.

While looking for a couple of knitting web sites to point readers to, I saw a novel called The Knitting Circle on the knitting.about.com blog.

The day that I drove to Ewe���ve Got Yarn to check it out, I stopped at the RBC public library to pick up Jaimie because she���d been to the store before. There in the New Releases section was The Knitting Circle. I applied for a library card so I could take the book with me.

(All those years I lived in Southside/Rainbow City, I never once visited the RBC library. Now that I live downtown, blocks away from the Gadsden Library, I haven���t been to that one since they closed it for renovations. It���s been re-open for what, a year now? I���m shameful. Jaimie is my enabler. She checks out books for me. Kris tells me I am terrible for this.)

The Knitting Circle is about grief more than it���s about yarn. We meet a circle of knitters and over the course of the book, we learn their tragic tales. And they are all tragic. Most deal with the loss of children.

It took me a long time to read the book because I knew every time I picked it up, I was going to read something sad. But it was well-written, albeit grandiose at times. Maybe grandiose isn���t the right term. When learning the back story of each knitter, is it grandiose that one tale involved France, one Italy, one Ireland, one the twin towers and one story that made national headlines (in the book, not Real Life)?

Ann Hood knew where she was coming from because she lost her daughter. She aptly described the grief process that her protagonist went through, but her being, well, not real, made it hard to sympathize at times. ���Mary! Get off your duff! You���re losing your husband, your friends, your sanity.��� (I don���t have a heart of stone. The book did make me cry.)

By the book���s end, there are hopeful turns for most of the characters, so at least after making it through all the sadness, you���re not left hanging with it.

P.S. I finished my scarf on Saturday.

by
LBC
on 15Feb07
in Uncategorized
. 1 Comment

Pregnancy portraits


You can click on the photo above and be magically transported to my Flickr account, where there are ten shots from last week���s photo shoot at The 215.

Kris and I have never been pregnant before, and we haven���t had our picture taken professionally since our wedding. We thought this was a prime time to get some pix. Marianne and Lexi work across the street from Kris, and it was Marianne���s gallery where my 2004 show ���=1000words��� was held. Seemed a good fit.

So last Wednesday, at 33 weeks pregnant, Kris and I went to The 215 where Marianne and Lexi photographed us in black and white. Today, we got to pick up the proofs and they are amazing. Ah-mazing.

We want to have one enlarged to go in the nursery and it will be a tough choice as to which one. I love a problem like that. ���Wow, these are all good, how do I choose?���

I asked Marianne if I could post some online, provided that I pimp out the studio. She said yes. So, in case you forgot:

Photos by Marianne Lewis
The 215
Gadsden, Alabama
(The pics are proof quality only, plus I scanned them, so keep in mind that the final product will be even better quality.)

by
LBC
on 13Feb07
in Uncategorized
. 5 Comments

Boys, boys, boys

Kristie had her ultrasound this morning and she too is carrying a bouncy baby boy. If they prove to be anything like their fathers, I imagine these two will get into trouble together.

It’s probably good that Kris and Zach met when both already had things like wives and jobs in their lives. I’m thinking that if they’d met back when they were single, their stories would involve more beer, vomit, hammers to faces and streaking than they already do.

Since the Abercrombies are our camping buddies, I look forward to a time when the six of us can go.

But I still want to rent a cabin this time.

by
LBC
on 12Feb07
in blog
. 5 Comments