I got a peep at the baby yesterday! I wasn't supposed to, but I did, and my GOD - what a thrill. My midwife was trying to hear the heartbeat and couldn't find it (I guess I have an inverted something or other that makes it hard to find at this stage) and I started to panic and was thinking "oh crap...I was right....there really isn't anybody in there." So she brought the ultrasound machine in and gooed my belly and right off...there he was! (I say "he" but I really don't know...just the feeling I got looking at him.) He was sqirming around and looking like a baby!! So crazy....

So we could see his heart pumping away. She turned off the ultrasound machine and was trying to hear the heart again and still couldn't find it, so she turned the machine back on to look, and he had COMPLETELY flipped around. What a little peanut. And my god....seeing a little profile, little arms. Then there, it was - a perfect little thump, thump, thump. And hearing his heart made mine jump into my throat.

So that was some awesome magic in an otherwise bad week. We will finish cleaning the old place today, so can finish unpacking in the new apartment and settling in for real. Phew. The relief is tangible.

Well, we're in our new place, but not out of our old place....stuck between two worlds. I really like the new place, but it's so hard to relax when our old apartment is just full of....stuff. Ugh. I have moved 21 times since I left home at 17 (21 times in 13 years??). You'd think I'd be used to it by now. For someone who SO BADLY wants to settle down, it seems crazy to see that number written down. In every single one of my homes, I have had every intention of staying for a while. I make each place homey and pretty (people always say things like "You've only lived here for 3 months? It feels like it's been your home for years!") and then something happens...and I leave. How depressing it seems now!

Poor Ashley and Lottie. The moods, the weeping, the exhaustion....Ashley told me last night I kept waking up and yelling at Lottie. The poor little dear! I don't remember a thing, but I'm sure she does. Oh...it gives me a stomach ache just thinking of it!

Yancy (a great neighborhood lady) brought some maternity clothes by that aren't half bad! I'm not ready for real maternity clothes yet, but I'm already showing, and busting out of all my cute skirts and t-shirts! It's too soon! I'm going to get HUGE! These clothes seem like they'll work in the meantime - they just have a lot of extra elastic.

What else? Martha Wainwright's cover of The Tower of Song is just really, really good. It's one the soundtrack to the Leonard Cohen movie that came out a few months ago (also really good.) Nick Cave's covers are awesome, too. Funny story: Ashley and I went to that movie at Cinema 21 here in Portland and we sat in the balcony. That theater is SO DARK and you really experience the movie. I got so wrapped up in the Leonard Cohen movie that I was LOSING it - crying, biting my nails, gasping (I was also getting really mad at the woman next to Ashley who kept putting her drink in front of him) to the extent that Ashley finally turned to me and said "woman, what is WRONG with you?" and I said "I don't know, I think I'm pregnant." And I was! All of about one day pregnant, but there you have it!

Everything always happens at once. We have our new apartment beginning Tuesday, and it seems laughable that we will ever be ready to move, let alone in three days. Ha! I'm so used to being an organized and motivated person - another life now - that I can't quite figure out how I've found myself sitting in the middle of half empty boxes poorly packed.

The doctors say that there's nothing else that can be done for Ashley's father. I don't know why this has come as such a shock - we've had 7 months of steady decline to prepare us - but that's just what it is....a complete and utter shock. I hope he's here when the baby comes - he loves babies. It's all so sad I can barely believe it.

In the middle of all this, we have to keep reminding ourselves that there's a little bundle of joy on the way. I never would have imagined that my first trimester (something that I've dreamed about my whole life) would be so...sad. It's hard to explain, and there are certainly moments when I can peer into the not too distant future and get a total thrill over what's to come. But right now? It all seems impossibly far off.

Another list!

Here are 50 of my favorite books of all time:

1. Bleak House - Charles Dickens (this is, bar none, my very favorite book.)
2. Waterland - Graham Swift
3. A High Wind in Jamaica - Richard Hughes
4. Rabbit, Run - John Updike
5. Rabbit at Rest - John Updike
6. Wait Until Spring, Bandini - John Fante
7. Different Seasons - Stephen King
8. Jernigan - David Gates
9. Revolutionary Road - Richard Yates
10. The French Lieutenant's Woman - John Fowles
11. The Sheltering Sky - Paul Bowles
12. His Way - Kitty Kelley
13. Northern Borders - Howard Frank Mosher
14. Disappearances - Howard Frank Mosher
15. The Complete Sherlock Holmes - Arthur Conan Doyle
16. David Copperfield - Charles Dickens
17. Angle of Repose - Wallace Stegner
18. Prep - Curtis Sittenfeld
19. Bag of Bones - Stephen King
20. The Child in Time - Ian McEwan
21. Feast of Love - Charles Baxter
22. They Came Like Swallows - William Maxwell
23. A Confederacy of Dunces - John Kennedy Toole
24. The Secret Diary of Adrian Mole - Sue Townsend
25. Ask the Dust - John Fante
26. I Capture the Castle - Dodi Smith
27. A Tree Grows in Brooklyn - Betty Smith
28. Perfume - Patrick Suskind
29. Carrington: A Life - Gretchen Gerzina
30. Sophie's Choice - William Styron
31. The Secret History - Donna Tartt
32. The Bone People - Keri Hulme
33. My Side of the Mountain - Jean Craighead
34. The Plague - Albert Camus
35. Gift From the Sea - Anne Morrow Lindbergh
36. Judevine - David Budbill
37. The Wind-up Bird Chronicle - Haruki Murakami
38. The Bonfire of the Vanities - Tom Wolfe
39. A Widow for One Year - John Irving
40. While I Was Gone - Sue Miller
41. A Day No Pigs Would Die - Robert Newton Peck
42. The Phantom Tollbooth - Norton Jester
43. Midwives - Chris Bohjalian
44. The Falls - Joyce Carol Oates
45. Pride and Prejudice - Jane Austen
46. Middlemarch - George Elliot
47. Atonement - Ian McEwan
48. Timequake - Kurt Vonnegut
49. Time Will Darken It - William Maxwell
50. Hard Times - Charles Dickens

So, there you have it. I love to read and I love suggestions, so if you've read anything great lately let me know.

We found an apartment! An apartment that will take Lottie! It's kind of small, and the building is sort of ugly, but it has hardwood floors, nice light, and adorable original little kitchen that'll be just perfect for us. Our current place is just huge and carpeted (the worst!) and hard to clean and too close to Mabel's. Ashley and I are both collectors to the very core, so if we have space, we fill it. We have agreed to put the bulk of our stuff in storage for a year, and see how it feels to live without our trinkets, records, typewriters and books for a bit. I want a clean, effecient place when the baby comes. This may be a tad unrealistic for the two of us, but I'm putting my best foot forward!

The thought of having to pack and move all of our stuff is daunting. These days it's a chore for me to lift my head off the pillow each morning and get dressed. Oh, the tiredness! I can't explain it! My friends who have been through pregnancy before tell me it'll go away in the next few weeks. Please, please let it be so. I'm not even myself anymore.

I always think that if something good happens, my anxiety will lessen. It seems, in fact, that there's an amount of worry that I live with that doesn't change, regardless of the circumstances. How can that be? I thought for sure if I got the two new people trained (I have done) and found a new place, I could sleep through the night. If anything, it just seems worse. Lately I wake to any small sound - anything at all, and have a hard time going back to sleep for (sometimes) hours. I told Ashley this morning that it makes me worry that when the baby comes, I'll never sleep (I know new parents don't sleep anyway..) but that I'll remain vigilant over the baby all night long. It's so something I can imagine myself doing. I suppose it's not worth worrying (HA!) about now.

I wish that I could just relax a little sometimes. Ashley jokes that I need the TV on, a sudoku in one hand, Lottie at the other hand, and knitting on my lap before I seem to calm down. It's true, I suppose, that I need that amount of distraction to fool myself into chilling out. Mindful? Not so much. But that's something I'll work on in the next 6 months....wish me luck.

Oh! Hi Friends!

Honestly, I've wanted to write here many times, about one thing in particular, but I haven't been allowed to yet. Can you guess? You smarty pants! Ashley and I are going to have a little baby.

I'm nearing the end of my first trimester, and we saw a nice strong heartbeat a few weeks ago, so it feels safe to tell people. We are thrilled beyond belief, as many of you know. We have tried since the day we got married to get pregnant, and were becoming seriously frustrated (and a little worried) about how long it was taking. As soon as I stopped taking Advil and scheduled an appointment to talk to my ob/gyn about infertility, the magic happened.

The day we fond out will remain one of my favorite memories. I was soooo used to taking tests that came up negative...month after month after month. I had one left in a package and just went for it and waited for the inevitable let down of only one pink line. But, there it was! That second line, fainter than the other, but THERE! Ashley was still at work, so I had to wait an agonizing 4 hours for him to get home. Boy, were we out of our minds with glee for the next few days.

Then came the sheer terror and anxiety. I thought I could feel the pregnancy ending every 20 minutes. I couldn't convince myself that I, of all people, could really have a baby of my own. It was unbelievable to me. It still is some days, but I've relaxed a little and have started (almost) to get used to the idea.

A lot is going on right now. We have to move at the end of the month and haven't found a place yet. We're making the awkward (but exciting!) move from summer to fall at the shop. I've hired two new people who need to be trained. I'm on day 10 of 18 days working in a row. And I'm so tired, friends, I can barely type the words. I find myself awake most early (early!) mornings trying to quell the fears that have been so persistant my whole life, and feel all the more vivid now. I want to be a calm, nurturing parent - not caught up in my own underpants all the time. I gotta work on that, I tell ya.