Ducky has been with us for one week, one day, one hour, and ten minutes. Right now, Daddy is walking him and The Dog. In just a short week, I had forgotten quiet. My ears are scanning the empty apartment, looking for something to listen to.

The only thing I can hear is the unfamiliar West Wind. Today the wind is bigger than the City of Angels. I’m lost, and a little frightened by it. I feel caught in a parachute, tossed about, even behind the safety of my window. This wind is a completely different beast than the East Winds that have comforted me throughout my life.

The East Winds blew around me, and over me, like a warm towel left out in sunlight. A sweet respite after a cold swim. The West Winds blow through me, and unsettle me. I feel unbalanced because I usually find comfort in wind.

I fed him every hour this morning before dawn, we dozed on the couch as the sun rose, and then we snuggled up with Daddy for a couple of hours. I pulled the baby close as the wind blew and told him not to be afraid, told myself not be afraid. We’re safe now, the three of us; our family snuggled up in bed.

It occurred to me that the West Winds will be as familiar to him as they are foreign to me. It makes me sad, not to share the East Winds with our son, save for a few visits to Grandpa’s house. Our life is here now. His life begins here, in this big city, with these cold winds and rare moments of quiet.

Last night, I kidnapped a girlfriend and ran off to USC to hear Frank Warren talk about Post Secret.

That Guy I married was going to go to the first night of a new bible study in town, but ended up having to work late into the night.

It was nice to get out and do something for “Me” last night. Being married is great, but we spend a lot of time doing stuff that “We” like, or stuff that “We” have to get done. Going to a Post Secret lecture is the kind of thing that I would have run off and done by myself while I was single in college.

The audience was half USC students, and half public. Mostly female. Warren commented that many of the postcards sent to him are secrets about body image and suicidal thoughts. Part of me wonders if that has to do with the largely female demographic.

Walking back to the parking lot, I got to listen to the USC students taking to their friends about the lecture. One (graduate?) student was telling her friend that she was now much more aware and concerned about her students “who sit in the back of the class and never say anything.” Like those are the only students who have secrets.

In the USC parking garage, there are two vending machines. One filled with Odwalla bars and the other filled with Rock Star energy drinks. USC is definately not like the public university that I attended.

This was the first day in two months where I had appointments and plans all day long.

Well, since doc said I gotta, I got up and dressed and went to the park for a Fit Mammas prenatal and postnatal exercise class. I put on my workout clothes and running shoes to go shake a leg. The Dog asked for a prescription for Prozac when I left without her. “You’re putting on sneakers and going for a walk without me!?”

I got to the park, and found a group of men and women setting up yoga mats. No strollers, no pregnant women. Fit Mammas was a flop. Soooooooooo I did a lap around the parking lot and drove home. The Dog forgave me when I walked back in the door and grabbed her leash.

After a quick walk, I picked up That Guy I Married and we went to my prenatal appointment. We took the elevator up to the fourth floor and met with the midwife. We were discussing sleep discomfort and nausea remedies when the whole building began to rattle and sway. We laughed it off, and kept talking, when the midwife remembered that “Hey, maybe there’s some evacuation procedure we should be following.”

Now normally, I’m not such a wimp. But it’s getting uncomfortable to sleep and I wake up with sore joints every morning. Four flights of stairs, sore hips, FUN.

The earthquake was a LONG one. Morning sickness+building shaking=Party In Mah Belly. Raise the roof, or something.

I had an appointment to meet with a doula who teaches childbirth classes. She sent me an email from her PDA saying that another client had gone into labor, so we rolled the appointment over to tomorrow.

The best laid plans…

I ended up going home and making a pot of chicken soup.

OK, Time to stop telling myself I’ve got nothing to write about, just because it isn’t all sunshine and rainbows.

Time to take a risk and say what’s really going on (novel concept on my own blog, imagine that).

It’s been a long, hard, emotional week. Between uncontrollable circumstances, facing demons, Stupid Pregnancy Symptoms, and nightmares, I spent most of last week just praying for a break.

That Guy has been working inhumanly long shifts at work. I’ve been facing inhumanly long periods of time with just The Dog to talk to. The Dog has spent the last week pouting because I’m too nauseous to walk her. Then I turned around and started taking pot shots at That Guy’s use of time, because it’s just easier than pouting and sobbing (wailing like a needy little hmm-hmm).

I finally got my rear end into therapy last week. The truth is, “I’m fine.”
If you ask me “How are ya’?” I’m fine. Really. See: perfect happy life, everything I ever wanted, exactly on track with life goals, nothing to complain about here, move along.
If you ask me “How are you?” Why do I always start tearing up?

The truth is either that these pregnancy hormones are kicking my rump, or maybe the truth is; I’m not fine.

::wail:: I’m loooooooooooonely!
::wail:: How will I ever meet anyone in this gosh-darn-enormous city?
::wail:: I’m worthless unemployed.
::wail:: (Hi, I’m twelve years old) She didn’t return my phone call, I thought she was my friend.
::wail:: The churches here are weird! I hate to admit my Christian walk is falling apart without a church home.
::wail:: How will I ever be strong enough to protect this baby from the stuff I wasn’t protected from?
::wail:: How in the world will I ever raise this kid without making my baggage into their baggage?
::wail:: I’m too uncomfortable to sleep through the night.

The psych resident listened to me not cry (dammit, I’m not gonna cry) for 40 minutes, and then went to consult with the attending psychiatrist. TWENTY MINUTES LATER, they came back and told me several things.

“All the stuff you are worried about is completely normal for the 7th month of pregnancy.”
“You do have some family circumstances that would be hard for anyone to deal with.”
“Sleep is very important for you. That’s going to be an issue when the baby comes home. You may want to consider hiring a nanny or a wetnurse to handle the night shift. You need to know that your baby is not okay if you are not okay. If that means you have to use a breastpump or formula to have someone else help feed the baby at night, then that is what’s best for you and your baby, It doesn’t matter what everyone else thinks is best.”
“We spent most of our time brainstorming ways for you to meet new people. Sign up for mommy classes (gag)!. Try pregnancy yoga (gag)! Take childbirth classes just to meet other people!”

OK, fine. I’m obviously not completely fine. All of this crap is supposedly normal. But, I better do as they say, because my way isn’t holding much water right now (::sniff, sniff, stiff upper lip::).

So I registered for a breast pump, and a pack of 2oz jars of formula. Steph did warn me to have formula *in the apartment,* so I wouldn’t have to make a frantic trip to the store in the middle of a desperate night. It is nice to have a Ph.D tell me that I have license to tell the La Leche Vulchers to step off. I want to breastfeed and cloth diaper, but I don’t want to be strapped in a long-sleeve white coat for trying.

I went back to the Pumpstation, and picked up more flyers on seminars and exercise classes. Lord help me, I signed up and paid money for a group class on staying sane after having a baby. I found a twice-a-week walking group that starts tomorrow (I think it starts tomorrow, the flyer isn’t very well-made), but I can’t figure out if the class is for prenatal or postnatal walkers. I’m such a socially awkward Boob that I really don’t need to show up at a class full of newborns in strollers.

I’m guessing it’s not ok to bring The Dog to a new-mom group, right? We have a stroller that accommodates up to 50 lbs, but the dog is pushing 65 lbs.

My stomach has always been a bottomless pit. I can eat anything. Except Jello, and whipped cream from a can. Lately, my stomach has become a very skinny bottomless pit. I’m always hungry, but I’m full after 1/3 of a meal. Then I’m starving again in 1-3 hours.

Tonight, we had dinner and then went to see Hancock (funny! Go see it). As soon as we walked out of the theater, I was STARVING again, so we went for frozen yogurt. We found a frozen yogurt store that only serves ONE kind of yogurt. ONE. Talk about plain vanilla. I’m not sure how they stay in business without so much as vanilla, chocolate, and chocolate/vanilla swirl.

Outside, near the beach at night, It’s cool enough to wear long sleeves, but not too cold for yogurt. I’d gotten dressed up for date night in a long sleeve blouse, I even wore lipstick, if you can believe that. I considered wiping the lipstick off when I realized That Guy had chosen his shiny company-issued drone uniform Mouse Jockey jacket track jacket, the one with the real classy slogan on the back.

While we’re in line to order yogurt, there are three women sitting in a booth behind us. One of them reads the slogan on the back of That Guy’s Star Fleet uniform track jacket. She seemed a little obnoxious, so I ignored her and waited to see if That Guy would respond. The third time she reads the slogan out loud, That Guy turns around to invite her to drunk dial him giver her his business card. I turned sideways to tell the hussy to step off discretely puff out my large pregnant belly see if maybe she would take a hint smile politely at my husband’s new business contact. She proceeded to ask all kinds of drunk fascinating questions. That Guy was so distracted, that he almost didn’t notice we were charged $13 for two small yogurts.

I ribbed him about wearing the billboard business casual attire on date night, and waddled out the door.

Friday Night, a man on uncrowded street corner a few blocks south of Santa Monica Blvd. has a boombox and is dancing In Front Of The Mirror style. Was he looking for an audience, or did he just feel like expressing himself? I didn’t see a tip jar. Maybe he was practicing his routine and working up the nerve to perform on the Third Street Promenade?

Sunday Morning on Santa Monica Blvd: a man on a beach cruiser, riding down the street, shirtless, with his tongue hanging out of his mouth just like The Dog.

There was a networking mixer shin-dig at That Guy’s office. Several hundred people from all over L.A. show up, after work, to mingle and impress. Everyone had a preprinted name badge with titles like “Programmer,” “Marketing Intern,” and “Software Engineer” on their 6:00 duds. Except for two guys who look and smell like The Day After A Frat Party. Maybe they showered and shaved sometime this week. These two were your typical college campus staples. Their name badges said that they were CEO of Somesuch.

While I was walking The Dog down Santa Monica Blvd., I walked past a small house with a clean, new, not-weathered Christmas wreath hanging from a gate, on the last day of June(?). Christmas in July, anyone?

Dear Baby,
The little fluttering kicking thing. It was cute for the first two weeks, and now it just plain hurts. Please chill out.
Love, Mama.

Dear Feet,
Please stop swelling. K? Thanks.
Love, The other body parts that need to get out of here once in a while.

Dear Dog,
It’s too darn hot to walk you. Please acquiesce. Or go talk to Number 1, and ask him to walk you.
Love, The hand that feeds you.

Dear Los Angeles,
It’s too hot. Stop it. Also, Google says that there are no smoothie shops in town, please fix that. Buying fruit and using a blender is too much work.
Love, The Suburbanite.

Dear Self,
Suck it up and stop whining. Turn off Tivo and do something with your weekend.
Love, Me.

DH works at a shiny new internet startup that loves to tout how there’s a scene in L.A. too, really, there is. See? We’re young and hip! He got an invite to a preview night for the uWink restaurant at Hollywood and Highland.

It’s date night, and we still haven’t figured out where to get a decent meal in L.A., so we jumped at the chance to try something new and geeky.

The restaurant doesn’t open for a few more days, and the preview night was intended to generate some hype, as well as work the bugs out of the system. I’m going to skip over the part where we had a 4:00 reservation, and we stood in line and looked in the window until 5:30. At 5:00 the staff were still up on ladders plugging in flat screens, and the waitresses were still drying wine glasses over the touch-sensitive computer on the bar. Never mind that the bartenders were playing with the visual effects on the bar instead of serving drinks at 5:00.

I’m going to skip over the part where I was starving by 6:30 when the food came, so I gracelessly scarfed down a buffalo wing. Never mind that pregnant women shouldn’t put scarfing and buffalo wing in the same sentence. I’m not going to say that uWink needs to have chewable Tums available on the menu. This sort of thing is inherent on a trial run. I’ll give them that. Just make sure you order the buffalo wings with the sauce on the side. I’m just saying.

The overall concept is pretty cute. You get a wrist band at the door, and you get seated with your party around a table with touch screens in the middle. An adorable pixie of a waitress explained that she was our Entertainment Guide(?) for the evening, and how to order food so that everything came out in the order we wanted, and we could eat at the same time as the members of our party.
Commence the screen tapping. There are soft drinks, bar drinks, appetizers, specials, build-your-own-burgers, desserts, as well as trivia games, virtual tours, group games, and screen drawing games. Our round of Roy Rogers and Shirley Temples came from the kitchen in a flash, the restaurant handled this
very well.

The ordering gets a little quarky if you want something that is not on the menu, for example, a glass of ice, or an additional side of pesto mayo. The guy next to me used the screen to order a glass of ice, and a refill, he was brought a glass of ice with a side of water. I called up a build-your-own burger (medium well, with red onions, on sourdough). I looked at the sauces available, but forgot to ask for pesto mayo. Later, I asked a waiter (or maybe he was a busboy?) to bring me a side of pesto mayo. He looked at me like I was from Mars, and brought me a side of Miracle Whip. This is the kind of thing where it’d be much easier to just ask a server, if you can catch one.

The drink menu. Let’s just say uWink makes me wish I wasn’t pregnant! Dude, those drinks looked good. Also, if you’re a cheap drunk like me, and you don’t know what to order because you don’t know whats IN every drink served in a bar… this is the place to be. The drink menu is subdivided, and you drill down the screens based on type. I hate beer, wine, vodka, and gin, so I skipped the martinis etc., and went straight for the dessert drinks. I got to read the ingredients of each one, and futz around, and noone rolled their eyes waiting for me to pick a (dream) drink. Ian was a little annoyed, he tried to order a shot of Wild Turkey, and tried to order it without the glass of Pepsi, but it came in the Pepsi anyway.

There was a table of guys with laptops, cables, and redbull huddled in one corner. At one point in the evening, the servers crashed and all the screens went blank (remember, this is a preview night). There was an audible “Awwww” across the restaurant. All of the (Mac) software reloaded quickly, and we were back in business soon. Shortly after dinner and the reboot, the waiters brought us appetizers, and then just told us to take them when we looked confused. Ten minutes later, we were brought duplicate main courses… the server(software) didn’t lose our orders, but it did reset them. I’m sure they’ll fix that before they open.

We sat with two other couples (they were only taking groups of four and six from behind us in line). One of the guys commented that this system would make for very easy inventory control inside the restaurant. Another girl in our party left without paying for her cosmo (food was free, drinks were half price for the preview). There weren’t waiters manning the tables, so I don’t think anyone at the restaurant noticed. I’m sure they’ll notice when they open.

The games were fun, and it would be easy to come to this restaurant to entertain people from several different age groups in one party. I’m sure we’ll be back with friends when the hype settles down. Especially for drinks. 20 more weeks ’til I can just pump and dump!

Excuse me while I pull out the “I’m Pregnant” card and dance around on a street corner like a raving lunatic.

I’ve made three trips to hell Ikea this month.

Every time I go to Ikea, there’s no way to make it less than a two hour trip. There’s no way to walk in, walk to what I want, and walk to the cash register. In addition to the mouse-looking-for-cheese store layout, Ikea has a customer service ratio problem. Without fail, every time I go, I get ignored by 5 associates who won’t make eye contact with me, and then there is ONE associate who will act as if I have a right to shop in the store.

Today, I had to drive (my pregnant self) back to Ikea for an exchange, then I had to carry a sixty pound box from a parking structure, across a street, up a ramp, through the “summer items tent,” and into a door (my pregnant self).

At the door of Ikea in L.A., I was greeted by Ikea’s token Swedish guy named Nils. Nils was a doll. He told me where to put my box down, ran and got a cart (for my pregnant self), and walked me to the hallway which would lead to the returns.

Unfortunately, I couldn’t pack Nils with me in the shopping cart for the rest of my trip around Ikea. And, Ikea has their 5/1 unhelpful-to-helpful ratio to maintain.

I waited 15 minutes to make the return, while staring at a sign that says “we pride ourselves on doing 9 minute returns” or somesuch. At the returns counter, the returns guy mumbles inaudibly at me and then takes the cart that Nils gave me, so I went on a pilgrimage to find another cart. It would be too logical to place shopping carts at the entrance, I have to walk (my pregant self) through half of the store to get a cart in the middle(?) of the store, near the soft goods. I also have to walk by 2 associates who refuse to stop walking and make eye contact, to find a third who will tell me that (duh!) I have to take the elevator to the other floor to get a cart.

Onward, to replace a bookshelf that we thought could hang on the wall, but only came with the hardware to bolt it against the wall while on the floor. Half-way through the-mouse-looking-for-cheese-maze Ikea, I find the shelving units. I look up, and there is the exact shelving system that I just returned (my pregant self), and it is hanging on the wall.

Somebody shoot me now.

I turn around to get help, and spot the guy who sold me the set I just returned. This is my second encounter with the office furniture guy this week, and now he tells me, “Oh, you need a $10 mounting rack to go with it.” So I get the part number and walk through the cheese maze to get to the “self serve” pick-up items.

In self-serve, I find the box and the mounting rack that I need, but I can’t lift the sucker UP into my cart. I followed FOUR Ikea associates around, and ALL of them, saw (my pregnant self) me, avoided eye contact, and started walking faster in the direction that they were going. So I decided to stalk someone that was helping an associate with a fairly large order. I can wait my turn.

I can wait my turn, when I haven’t just lugged a sixty pound box to returns (my pregnant self). I can wait my turn when I haven’t just spent two hours on my (pregnant) feet, looking for the cheese in this maze. So the guy I’m stalking, he is working on a very big order, but he can’t bother to look at me and say “I’ll be with you in just a minute.” He completely ignored me for FIFTEEN MINUTES. By this time I was alternating between following him around and sitting (my pregnant self) on the concrete floor.

He finally looks up at me, “Did you have a question?” No, I need you to lift a box (for my pregnant self).

So I finally get my box. The cashier avoided eye contact, and mumbled even more inaudibly than the returns guy.

The bistro lady, had stopped making yogurt for the night (at 6:30? they’re open til 9!). Big.Pregnant.Indignant.SNIFF! But I survived all the way to the exit of hell Ikea!!!!!!

On to go fetch my car and bring it to the loading dock. I parked my cart at the loading dock and took my recipt from the attendant. Wow, he acknowledged that I came near him! Wow! He made eye contact! WOW! He spoke audibly (with a spanish accent, and a very severe speech impediment)! I wanted to kiss him. The one employee in the whole store with a legitimate speech barrier, and HE’S ONE OF THE ONLY TWO making an effort to communicate with customers. What gets me is that the loading dock guy is probably getting paid half of what everyone else in Ikea is getting paid.

This trip: two out of ten employees made me not want to gouge out their eyes. At least Ikea’s customer service ratio is consistent.

This is the first of what I’m sure will be many editions of “Weird People in Los Angeles.” This episode sponsored by: The Dog.

Man peeing in dog park.
Braless woman in dog park.
Woman comes to dog park wearing WHITE PANTS, and then actually gets MAD that other dogs are sniffing her.
Man at Starbucks: actually barks at my dog, tells her “Bad dog! Bad dog! Bad dog!” then sees me (pregnant, in pj pants and a paint-stained hoodie), he starts singing “Hey, hey, mama, said the way you move…”
Homeless guy; in shorts and tennis shoes, looking very very happy that he scored a new bottle of booze at 8:30 a.m. on a Sunday.
Homeless guy; sleeping under the “please clean up your pet’s waste” sign, right on the spot where my dog is trained to poop every morning.
Woman wearing lots of makeup, 4-inch heels, short shorts, and a fur coat. Riding a bicycle.