What up, my homies?

Belated Christmas greetings

Merry Christmas from me and mine. :)

{30 weeks}

{26.5 weeks}

More photographic proof {22 weeks}

I suppose it's still possible, at this point, to think that maybe I've just been making too many visits to Dozen Cupcakes. But the truth is becoming more obvious every day.

Becoming reality

For several months, I've wondered how long it would take for the reality of this new person to truly set in. Considering that I've been sporting quite the beer belly for two or three months now, you'd think I would have absorbed this truth by now. But this surreal feeling has lasted for a surprising amount of time -- until recently.

It was thrilling, of course, to hear the baby's heartbeat -- a sound that's now becoming familiar enough to me that I take comfort in its tiny, rapid rhythm.

But somehow, that wasn't enough to make it completely real to me. It wasn't enough because I couldn't share it on an everyday basis with anyone else; I could only heartbeat once a month at my appointments with the help of the midwife and a little doppler machine.

All that changed a few weeks ago. Tiny flutters that felt like goldfish doing light acrobatics gave way to palpable nudges and kicks that said in the only way the baby could, "Hi Mom, here I am."

Soon after, I had my ultrasound, providing visual proof that this little alien does, in fact, have a busy exercise regimen.

But best of all -- completely shattering any residual surreal feelings I might have had -- was sharing those little kicks with Mr. Incredible. It was only a shadow of how we'll feel when we can hold this baby in our arms, but it was amazing to share with the person who's going to join me in loving and guiding it toward adulthood.

And it makes me really, really grateful that I'm not doing this alone.

Making room for food

I don’t know if I can shop at the grocery store anymore. It’s been a several-year-long process, so this supermarket aversion hasn’t come as a complete shock. But with my current lifestyle, it doesn’t make things very easy, either.

But then, ease is probably what created the supermarkets and the food industry that stocks them and our culture’s perceived need for this time-saving, cost-saving middleman. Ease needs to be shifted down a few rungs on my food priority list.

Mr. Incredible, who has a five-ingredients-or-fewer rule when it comes to bread, joins me in this quest to find and buy food that nourishes and delights—but that doesn’t completely break the bank. Which is more and more of a problem considering the way food prices are rising these days.

Nevertheless, we’re determined in our household to make time to shop for, prepare, and savor healthy, tasty food. And as much as possible, we’ll find room in our budget for good food, too.

People at work are always asking me how I manage to bring in healthy leftovers each day, when they eat out for lunch three to four days a week. My answer? Sometimes, cooking is all I get done in an evening. Meaning I don’t necessarily have their social life or keep up with the TV lineup like they do.

Take tonight, for instance: there’s red lentil and cauliflower coconut curry to prepare (the cauliflower and cabbage must be used ASAP!) and then I’ll have to get a head start on the cottage pie I’m preparing for dinner at a friend’s house tomorrow (there’s no way I’d be able to get it done tomorrow between work and the time we have to leave). Just like in college, when I would gear myself up for a late night of paper-writing, I prepare myself mentally to devote the larger portion of my evening to food. And surprising as it may seem, I rarely regret these cooking marathons. (I just have to remember to drink a lot of water and sit down while I chop these days, otherwise my pregnant back and feet will regret it tomorrow.)

So what’s the problem with the supermarket and why can’t I just buy healthy, yummy stuff there? They do carry produce, after all.

Most of the products at the store are highly processed, something that I’m becoming more and more aware of as I read more labels, and I’m just not sure if this frankenfood is good for me. Even foods that seem fairly straightforward and pure are messed with; that is, they have additives and conditioners and dyes and preservatives (not to mention residual pesticides and antibiotics)—all kinds of things that would be absent if I prepared these foods myself at home.

Even the produce is making me wary. Grocery store tomatoes are the perfect example of produce that’s made for easy transportation and long shelf life, apparently without much thought to taste (or nutrition, actually).

There are a lot of people to blame for my supermarket frustrations: there’s me, of course—the compulsive label reader and lover of really good-tasting, fresh food. And there’s the delicious legacy of our families’ home gardens and family meals. But then there’s also Barbara Kingsolver, whose book, Animal, Vegetable, Miracle has made me a believer in eating close to home, for reasons that range from nutrition to family life to economics. And this summer, Michael Pollan has caused me a great deal of irritation as I browse the supermarket shelves and see so-called health claims calling to me from foods that may not even be food, let alone healthy. His book In Defense of Food has been a daily source of discussion in our household for its critical view of what most of us has accepted as nutrition.

But this awakening has caused me more than just frustration. It’s also caused me to see my food as more than fuel. I’ve been pushed to reevaluate my priorities and decide just how much organic local potatoes and free-range eggs mean to me and the health of my family. As it turns out, they mean quite a lot; I just have to decide what to cut out of my life now in order to make room for them. And I’ve been reminded that food is more than just its nutrients. Really good food—really well prepared—constitutes a social event, an act of gratitude toward God and his creation, and a labor of love.

And when you think of it that way, suddenly the supermarket doesn’t seem so super.

-----

By the way, if you're still looking for something to read this summer, I highly recommend both of the books below.

The unexpected (but very welcome) guest

Hospitality has always been important to me. And as I’ve gotten older and a little more secure in who I am, I’ve come to enjoy unexpected guests almost more than the planned variety. As I said to my dad, after he stowed away in my in-laws’ car for the journey to Pittsburgh to surprise me with his presence, “I’m glad you didn’t tell me you were coming, because then I would have worried too much about where you would sleep and the condition of the house. This way, I can’t do anything about it; I just get to enjoy having you here.”

That was pretty much how it felt that Monday morning in April when I shakily handed the pregnancy test to Mr. Incredible. It was as if an unexpected guest—a fairly long-term one, too— was already at the door, knocking. And although there was a healthy measure of fear and surprise at this discovery, we were also relieved of the stress of planning the right time and getting everything in order to start “trying.” Because, after all, our guest had already moved in. All we could do—all we had to do—was to welcome our new tenant and enjoy the time we have to spend together.

So here we are in the middle of week 16, just about 24 more weeks to go. I will admit, this guest has made him or herself right at home in ways that are a little difficult to deal with. The special dietary restrictions and the significant increase in the amount of food we need to purchase have taken some getting used to. And the hormone-drenched environment he or she needs to thrive have left me feeling sick and tired for longer than I’d like.

But despite these inconveniences, I can’t wait to get to know this little one better—to finally see the face and hands and kicking legs of the thing that’s growing inside me. With a due date of December 19, it’s made the Christmas countdown (and, for Mr. Incredible, the countdown to the end of the fall semester) a little more to look forward to.

The early pregnancy stuff is behind us now. We’ve told our friends, family, and coworkers; I’ve packed up my regular clothes in favor of empire waists (and no waists at all); and the shock and nausea are beginning to subside. We’re settling into this stage with a surprising amount of contentment and joy, and we hope you’ll join us in our anticipation.

Coming soon: photo documentation of how we told our parents the good news.

When I bite into a York Peppermint Pattie

I get the sensation.

It's a well-known fact that peppermint patties are my candy of choice. And why wouldn't they be? Refreshing mint -- which actually is a necessity after some meals -- enrobed in chocolate. In recent years, York Peppermint Patties have also been shown (on their packaging, at least) to be "a lowfat food" and "dark chocolate covered," which certainly gives them a couple more points in my book.

After a lifetime of loving peppermint patties, the candy now has for me associations of memory and emotions that even further endear me to it.

When I was a kid, Hershey Foods (which unfortunately does own York) ran these amazingly cheesy, yet evocative, commercials along the theme of "When I bite into a York Peppermint Pattie, I get the sensation," featuring normal, everyday people who get the sensation of skiing in the Alps just from a piece of minty chocolate (even though they're actually just standing on their coffee table, pretending to feel the rush of an Alpine avalanche).

My grandma apparently shares my love of peppermint patties -- or at least, the commercials -- and I will never forget her impersonation of that commercial. Yes, she did jump up on the coffee table, and yes, we worried about her mental and physical health. But oh, did we ever laugh.

For my bridal shower, my best friend made sure to have both peppermint patties and Starburst -- my two favorites -- in abundance. And when my husband wants to give me a little encouragement, he brings one home for me to enjoy. In some ways, it's not so much about the candy itself as it is about your loved ones knowing and caring about the little things that make you happy.

I've been a little disappointed over the years, as I've noticed the sugar content rising . . . frankly, we don't need it, and it only contributes to tooth decay and weird aftertastes.

But overall, the peppermint pattie has moved into the 21st century unchanged. It still arrives in that retro foil wrapper with the simple design that takes you back to the 40s.

I'm not sure I believe that peppermint patties are truly a "lowfat food" or that they really contain two percent of my recommended daily intake of iron . . . but they do give me the sensation, I'll give 'em that.

Country roads / take me home

You’d think, living in the middle of one of the most backwoods cities in the country, that I’d have just about enough of the country here in Pittsburgh. Also, considering that our fair city is one of the most tree-lined in the nation, I really do have a lot to be grateful for when it comes to shade and freshly made oxygen balancing out the oppression of the urban jungle.

But somehow, it just ain’t enough for this country girl. On our way home to Dillsburg last weekend to visit with friends and family, Lewis the mutt and Mr. Incredible just about got drunk on fresh spring air flowing through the car as we passed into Central Pennsylvania (it smelled good to me, too, but I was the designated driver and had to control myself).

We love our neighbors, the diversity of the people around us, the many events and opportunities the city offers (especially for foodies like us) . . . but this is what we miss:

The willow tree in our old backyard. It was probably destined to die sometime soon anyway, but the way it swayed in the breeze, thrashed in thunderstorms and provided a 15-foot diameter of dappled shade—I will never stop missing that.

Driving down the road in the dark. The city never sleeps, so they say, for which I’m grateful, when I’m a pedestrian after dark. But on the other hand, it never really gets dark. There’s something seductive about driving down a main country road in the dark: it makes you want to run away with the person you love and follow whatever crazy dreams you’ve always had, but never acted on.

Having a yard where our dog can run around and poop. That’s probably enough explanation for that topic.

Seasons in the country. We have spring in the city, yes, and it is stunning in its own way, as flowering trees and shrubs lend extra grace to century-old architecture that you’d never find in the country. But spring in the country means that when the trees begin to leaf out, you see masses—even mountains—of bright green tips against dark bark. And when trees bloom, there are clouds of white and pink blossoms filling the sky. You can’t miss it, and you can’t help being overcome by the drama of country seasons.

That’s probably only the short list of what we miss. We also miss our friends and our family . . . although in some cases, moving away has only shown us how strong our relationships are.

We’ll move back to the country someday to start our commune (any takers? I’m serious), and when we do I’m sure we’ll miss the comforts of city life, like only filling up our gas tank once a month, only needing one car, not having a yard to mow and living on the same block as our friends from church. We’ll miss Trader Joe’s and the other three grocery stores within a mile and a half of our house. And the convenience of the farmer’s market.

But overall, when we move away from the city, I’m pretty sure that those country roads are going to take us home to the place where we belong.

(Not West Virginia, though. I hope.)

There are some things that money can't buy.

Vanana yogurt (that we bought by accident when we wanted plain) = $2.99

Strawberry granola bars = $1.99

The cashier at Trader Joe’s thinking you’re a cute couple because you and your husband delight in smelling the bag of potatoes while in the checkout line = Priceless.

Risotto, a simile, and some news

My life is like a saucepan of risotto:
I stir and add broth, scrape the bottom of the pan,
Stir again, add more broth, scrape, scrape, sccrrAAAape
For what seems like an eternity.
(Forty minutes, in fact, of continuous stirring.)

And in the end I get a steaming, glutinous mass
Of short, stubby rice
With tender, golden onions
And bright green zucchini punctuating the creamy globs—
In short, a culinary masterpiece, the ultimate comfort food.

And nobody but me can understand why I would go to the bother of stirring, stirring, scraping
A saucepan of globby rice.

In other news, I have a new job, which I started today and I like very much. I am a writer (yes, I'm getting paid for it again!) for Brady Communications, a design firm in downtown Pittsburgh.

Disclaimer (Mr Wonderful insists I put this here): I did not take this picture. Someone has clearly aerated this bowl of risotto, and although it looks prettier than mine, I am confident mine was far more satisfying.

Truffle time

Thanks to a very thoughtful co-worker of mine who has relatives (and miles of bike trails) that lure him to Asheville, N.C. on a regular basis, Mr. Wonderful and I now have "truffle time" every school night. When I found out about my co-worker's Asheville connections, I immediately told him he had to check out The Chocolate Fetish, as we think theirs is the best chocolate we've ever had.

So when he came back from Thanksgiving in North Carolina, he brought us a sampler of some of their best truffles. We love them so much that we're savoring them--we eat one a day, cut in half so we can share it, for each day of classes that Mr. Wonderful has left in the fall semester. It's a great way to celebrate and count down the days!

This is a shot of us, giddy with the rich, dark, spice of "Ancient Pleasures," one of the most exotic truffle selections -- it's dusted with cayenne.

Houseguests, etc.

I already know I'm going to get in trouble for not having taken photos . . . I'm sorry! I just keep forgetting to pick up the camera!

We had the pleasure of entertaining some dear friends last night and this morning -- Mr. & Mrs. Smith -- and it was the first time we'd had guests since moving into our new bedroom. (It's so much nicer to have guests when it doesn't involve uprooting yourself from your super-messy bedroom to sleep on the futon, and washing the same set of sheets three times during the weekend. Not that it's not worth it when you have to do things that way; it's just not fun.)

Anyway, it was lovely to sit around the dinner table, enjoying Mexican-ish comfort food with an old friend and her husband, and then to hit the local bagel place for breakfast this morning before a little tour of CMU's campus and the surrounding neighborhoods.

And tonight . . . we were planning on going out on a date -- a super-rare occurrence -- but a couple from church just called and asked us to go with them to a Lebanese restaurant on the South Side. Do you think we could pass that up? I think not.

Weekends like this one make all the other days in between worth living.

The bedroom project -- before

This footage was taken a few weeks ago--October 14, to be exact--and boy, have we come a long way with this project! It's now painted, carpeted, and some of the trim is up, plus we have super-awesome organizer in our amply sized closet. So, since we were getting close to completion, and because the guest bedroom was getting increasingly small and cluttered, we made the move last night! All the bed linens were washed in preparation, and we spent our first night in a new, clean, huge bedroom!

I'll post the "after" photos soon--maybe even some video footage--but I want to wait until I can get some good morning shots of the room. Situated on the second floor of the front of the house, it gets some lovely morning light, especially in the colder months. But for now, enjoy my cinematography.

stress

n. — the condition that results when person-environment transactions lead the individual to perceive a discrepancy, whether real or not, between the demands of a situation and the resources of the person's biological, psychological or social systems."
—The Great Wiki

We talk a lot about stress in this culture. And because of us, other cultures are catching on, too—last year, my boss and I heard a story on NPR about the rise of see-tress—a phonetic approximation of the English word—in Vietnam, where business is good and stress is becoming a symbol of affluence, ambition, and success. [Last year, as a result of hearing this story on the radio, we ran an article in Seek magazine (PDF; see page 7) addressing the stress, and other North American cultural products, that are exported to the rest of the world with little thought to their effect on our global neighbors.]

Lately I've been thinking about stress from this perspective, but also from the perspective of someone who's been feeling quite stressed out lately, and I think this link between stress and consumerism is stronger than most of us would ever expect.

Think about it: if stress is the result of a discrepancy between expectations and reality, or the demands and the resources to meet those demands, then the potential for stress will increase anytime expectations and demands increase, because there is always some limit to our resources.

Now you'd think—and I believe many of us North Americans do think—that, at some point, we would have enough time, money, energy, whatever, to meet the demands that we and others have placed on us; that we could reach a point where stress levels stop rising and reach a sort of equilibrium. But that's exactly the flawed thinking that gets us in trouble in the first place; it's based on consumerist thought that isn't really aware of itself. The trouble with humanity is that, the more we have, the more we want. We can make a conscious effort to exercise self-control, to say "enough is enough," to be content with what we have. But unless we do that, the demands and expectations will continue to rise. And with them come stress.

There's nothing wrong with expectations or ambitions. Heck, the whole reason we uprooted our entire lives three months ago and moved here to Pittsburgh—that was all about expectations and ambitions. Expectations for an education that would allow my husband to better use his gifts and talents. Ambitions for him to make more money so that I don't have to—especially while we're raising a family, which we hope to do soon. Expectations that someday, we can have more time to pour into our community, our church, our family, and our friends. There's nothing wrong with us working toward these goals. But we need to understand that, in the meantime, we are going to experience stress as a result.

The key, however, is to halt the escalation of consumerism. We need to know where to draw the line. Because if we don't draw that line (and keep retracing it as each day passes), when we arrive there, we'll soon find there's more that we aspire to; further discrepancies between what is and what we think should be.

This is all fairly obvious . . . but what I think we really don't get—what we just don't realize most of the time—is that we all must make a decision to be content. Contentment doesn't come to us; we come to it. And—although this is unthinkable to most of us—for the most part, our neighbors around the world who have a lot less than we do are much better at drawing that line and choosing contentment than we are. How can they be content with next to nothing, we wonder?

In large part, our society is populated by the descendants of hardworking, hungry, and sometimes even deprived, abused, or persecuted people. Now don't get me wrong; I'm glad all our ancestors had the ability and the drive to "make a better life" for their families . . . I just think sometimes we take that whole "making a better life" thing a little too far. Because often "a better life" is defined by possessions, higher education, and even higher expectations—not by deeper relationships with God, family, and friends, or by being a person of character. And you have to admit, by and large, we North Americans are quite poor in spirit, whereas our neighbors across the ocean tend to be a bit better at focusing on what's really important in life.

Maybe it's because they're not stressed out by the daily grind of reaching for more.

For the most part, our neighbors in Africa and Southeast Asia and South America don't get to choose where they "draw the line" with regard to what they're striving for. I suppose you could say they're lucky they don't have to make that decision. But in a way, they still do—we all do. We all have to determine what's enough and be content if we ever want to have less stress.

And I sure as heck have had enough of that for one lifetime. How about you?

Update

We have heat!

There are days.

Days when the sloppy wetness of the sidewalk beneath my flip-floppy shoes doesn’t bother me. There are days when the mundane softness of a corduroy shirt is a constant marvel. Days when the random ripples of the murky river refresh me. There are days when I don’t care that I dripped coffee all over my raincoat on the bus when I was trying to juggle my laptop bag, my overgrown umbrella, a defective travel mug, and the book I was reading. There are days when my well-worn ebay shoes are the only ones I ever want to own. And there are days when a brisk walk in the rain with a neurotic puppy, a trip to buy a used chest freezer on craigslist, and a late dinner of tortellini with broccoli sounds just lovely.

There are days when I wonder why I ever let any of the little things get under my skin. Because after all, these things are little, and I care about so much more than just soggy feet, a stained raincoat, or a dinner that’s later than my stomach would prefer. There are days when only the big things matter, and anything else is either a small pleasure, or else it’s immaterial.

Yesterday was one of those days. And it was good.

Realization

Have you ever learned something about yourself that you really never wanted to know?

I think I’m the process of doing that now. I say “in the process” because I’m constantly waffling between accepting this new self-knowledge as truth . . . and discounting it as over-spiritualized crap. It would seem like an easy and obvious decision—you cannot ever fully deny the truth, after all—but the truth can certainly be ignored, veneered over; hidden for quite some time.

Either way, there is pain (on one hand, the pain of facing your darkest thoughts and feelings; on the other hand, the pain of dishonesty and stagnation). The latter, I believe, is a form of pain that is actually quite simple to medicate for long periods of time. And I suppose that’s what I’ve been doing for many years now: medicating. Mind you—following the pain metaphor—it’s not like I’d ever been given an accurate diagnosis before; I’d only ever seen and treated the symptoms.

But now that I have an inkling of what is really going on with me—why I seem to have so much trouble with stress and managing it—I think it might be better to face the pain and get it over with, rather than ignoring it for the rest of my life.

I don’t think I’m quite ready to face all of this yet, to talk about every detail. But I know I need to say this: I have never really thought about myself as a selfish, greedy person. But I have come to realize in the past few weeks that I care more about my vision, my goals, and my ideas of precisely how my life should unfold—I care more about these things than I had ever realized, and like a spoiled child, I am unwilling to accept anything that’s outside of my own plans and visions.

And when my life experience and dreams don’t match up closely enough . . . that’s when I feel stressed. Well, that’s the definition of stress, isn’t it? The trouble is, I suppose, that I haven’t really learned the art of reconciling these two things—a skill that all spoiled children need to learn.

There are probably several ways to do this. Stoics like Mr. Wonderful may choose to have no expectations at all (at least that’s what he claims sometimes), while seriously nerdy overachiever types just try harder to “do it all” (yes, that would be more my personality). But if you think about it, neither of these approaches is really that effective. It’s neither feasible nor healthy to empty yourself of all dreams and aspirations, and try as I might, I can never live up to my own expectations. I may be smart and talented, but it doesn’t matter how hard I try; sometimes I just won’t succeed in the way I want to.

Over the past few months, despite the fact that I threw myself, body and soul, into the task of finding a job that would pay well and make the best use of my skills, I failed. It didn't matter if I stayed up another hour to search for more jobs, or if I revised my resume for the eighteenth time; I just couldn't do it. And now, take the house: I can't really work any harder to suddenly make this house beautiful and perfect and 100 percent guest-ready; these things just don't depend on me like I think they do.

So if I can’t just try harder, or do much in the way of lowering my expectations, what is the solution? It might just be that I need to accept someone else’s expectations and vision for my life, instead of my own. Someone who has a broader perspective. Someone who “works for the good of those who love him.”

September hope

There is something about these early autumn days that just invites dreams and wandering thoughts that have very few practical elements. Autumn is the season of renewed hope -- of gathering up all the pieces of your life and actually believing that something good could come of them.

It's not spring, by any means -- there is nothing poking up through the soil for the first time, and the pace of life is not quite so frantic or harsh as the rapid growth of spring. In early fall, the time for growth has come and gone, and some things haven't quite turned out like you thought they would. If spring is hopelessly, naively optimistic, then autumn is the season of mature hope, when you've seen hard times and know they will come again but you have renewed energy to press on in spite of the past. Failure and a general sense of doom may be looming in the distance, but autumn is the time for squinting at it from afar and saying to yourself, "I think I just might be able to beat this" -- whatever it is, it seems there's always something like that in my life come September.

This September, of course, there are a number of things -- among them, just surviving in this new environment. And so, on this sunny, cool afternoon that's driven me to sip steaming coffee and pull on a waffle-knit henley . . . I am staring down the loneliness, the financial discomfort, the frustration with the state of our house, the fear that I might keep worrying and hating myself for the rest of my life, the thought that this whole Pittsburgh experiment might just fail miserably . . . I am staring it all down from afar with that against-the-odds optimism, and thanking God for His renewing strength this September.

A random thought about music
I was listening to the radio today, and was again annoyed by the trend that music artists are taking to calling themselves by singularly band-like names. If you heard a song by Feist or Iron & Wine for the first time, would it be instantly obvious that these are individuals, rather than bands? And if you heard a song by Rilo Kiley, would you guess that Rilo Kiley is a band? Of course not! So why do they do it? I have a theory: they are setting us all up to be mocked and ridiculed by their nerdiest, most dedicated fans who laugh and say to each other, "ha ha, she doesn't even know that Rilo Kiley isn't a person; Rilo Kiley is a band!" Music artists like this are drawing boundary lines between "true" fans and casual listeners who aren't absolutely obsessed with them yet.

Now, I know what you're saying: "But Dulci, you like Sting." And for those of you who didn't know I like Sting, please don't feel like this has to come between us. I know most people don't like Sting, and that's O.K. -- I won't try to push old Police albums on you or anything. Anyway, I realize Sting is somewhat of an ambiguous title for an individual music artist. But there's a bit of a difference here; most people have no idea that Sting's real name is Gordon Matthew Thomas Sumner (I can see why he changed it -- Gord Sumner doesn't quite have the 80s rock appeal that Sting does). Whereas people like Leslie Feist have a sort of dual public identity; they have no qualms about telling people their real, full names, but on their albums, they go by their enigmatic stage name. See? There is a difference.

If you asked me to suggest an underlying social change that is contributing to this shift in the way that musicians refer to themselves, I could probably come up with some kind of B.S. about how today's artists are much more willing to openly admit that they lead a double life; that the person on stage and the person on the street are not the same by any means. But I'm afraid I'd have to do a great deal more research in order to really confirm that hypothesis, and like I said, it's B.S. anyway.