The bio is still a bit incomplete because they wanted to confirm what I meant by living with my “Evil German”, but I’m still tickled that they liked the story of Torsten’s and my heroic finish last year!

So when I say that I read somewhere that around the 4-5 month mark, most parents start to feel as if they’ve emerged from a cave and begin to start to see glimpses of the life they led before the baby, I mean that I read it somewhere. Like maybe Parents magazine. Or the back of a can of formula. Or a diaper advertisement. I have no idea.

That said, it is true. All of a sudden, life is returning to something which, if not normal, is at the very least human. I’ve been writing on my book all week for the first time since Torsten’s birth (and my spectacularly impossible post-C-section last-minute NaNoWriMo win), and I’ve decided to enroll in a CELTA certification course next month which will presumably eat all of my non-sleeping time for the month of May so that at some point after the summer I can either teach ESL/EFL part-time here in the area or can privately tutor foreign students. (Note that I can only do the course right now because Christian is a) officially on paternity leave, and b) a really nice husband…)

Oh, and this week I got to plan a few days of research in London while we’re in Europe in August. Muahahaha.

In other words, for the first time in months, in addition to being Mama, I get to be Krista too.

Not that I don’t love being Mama – I love being Mama – but it’s sort of exciting to be able to be doing other stuff too. A Mama who is also Krista is a better Mama for Torsten to have – I’m sure of it.

And let me repeat this: my husband is awesome.

That’s all for now. Hope everyone is well, and I hope to be back with more soon…

So there are these curtains – roman shades, really – I’m supposed to have been working on forever. We have this house, you see, with very oddly-sized windows, and since the outer walls are just masonry – outside brick exposed to the inside directly, in fact – mounting regular curtains into what are effectively cut-outs for the windows seemed to be a real pain-in-the-butt idea when we first moved in. In retrospect, I was on crack, but what can you do? Anyway, I have in fact finished many of them (our living and dining rooms, for example, and all done finally – they were mostly done a year ago, but I didn’t finish the raising-and-lowering mechanisms until a few weeks ago), but the ones for our bedroom have been on hold for some time, and with as cold as that room gets, it’s about time to get them done, hopefully before Small Monster gets here. They’re nice and insulated and keep out light well, and I know that’s going to be important, since he’ll be in our room for some time. We do not want a Small-Monstercicle.

Now you may be asking why it is that all of the curtains in the front rooms are done before our bedroom, when one might think bedroom curtains were *ahem* a bit more important, but let’s just say I had a guest last Christmas that was demanding in no uncertain terms that they be up before s/he arrived because s/he was staying in the living room. And since I have always had some fear of this person’s wrath and irritation (and I was trying to be as good a host as I could be under the circumstances), they got done.

And now here it is, a year later, and I haven’t bothered with the shades in our own room, and we like, need them. Yesterday.

Thing is, I just don’t want to do it. And pregnant me wants to do it sooooo much less. I don’t really want to do anything, to be honest, except that sitting still hurts. So does moving. Late pregnancy is fun, folks!

I mean, regular curtains are easy (or easier) – line a sheet and hem it – but I am hardly a seamstress, and I have real trouble cutting out large rectangles of cloth evenly. Seriously. I suck at it. I’m not even sure how it’s really supposed to be done. The sewing part I don’t mind as much, but the cloth cutting?

I suck.

And since I have to lay out these rolls of lining on the ground and get down on my hands and knees to measure and cut – great position for baby, rotten position for heavy mama whose wrists hurt – I have totally been putting it off forever.

A great friend of mine mentioned yesterday that maybe the novel was my pre-labor nesting, but this strong internal command that I get these curtains done in the next couple of days sounds more like it to me. With my luck, my water will break all over the place while I’m cutting out material tonight, but I don’t think I’d complain except that the curtains just wouldn’t get done.

Bah. So anyway, there will be little blogging tonight, and no noveling beyond the 1k I pushed out earlier just for the Hell of it. I’m gonna get these MoFos done, darnit.

Ok, so it’s 4:30 am on Sunday, but I’m still up and just about to go to bed on an enforced-bedtime-so-that-I-don’t-sleep-too-late-Monday deadline. Yeah, yeah, 4:30 am is too late by anyone’s measure, but it was 6:30 or something yesterday, and so I figured if I can turn it back to 2:30 by tomorrow, I’ll be doing well.

Small Monster, for those of you keeping track, is still in there. He’s increasingly cramped, which makes my belly dancing especially interesting (note: I do not belly dance. My belly dances. Like does the wave all by itself. Big difference), and there are times when I really feel like he may just claw his way out through my belly button. I am so big and round right now that I might not even complain.

Kid, I am so ready for you to come out. It’s like, I knew before there was a baby in there, you know, the size and kind of baby they show in pictures in A Child is Born, but your size and the power of your muscles make it clear that there’s a full-grown baby in there. As in the kind we have here on the outside. So it’s time for you to come out.

But so far, kid seems to be staying in, and happy about it (I’m a little afraid he’s going to start ordering Domino’s for delivery to his little house. That delivery man is so not coming to the door, I’m telling you, child). None of the things they tell you might work is bringing it on so far (pineapple, spicy food, squats, walking, the full moon, etc), but I figure it just means he isn’t quite ready, so I’ll keep on walking and squatting and eating peppers like a fool. Oh, don’t get me wrong, there’s some early labor stuff going on – I’m crampy and all, and my back aches like Hell sometimes, so I figure (pray) my cervix is probably progressing some more, but as far as I can tell, he still hasn’t dropped all the way into my pelvis – he seems to much prefer sticking his fist in there, or at least that’s what it feels like. It’s creepy. And that’s as far as it goes. I’m just hoping they don’t get to the point where they decide they have to induce on my due date.

So, as a special message to my son: Come on down, Small Monster! You’re the next contestant on The Price is Right! (N.B.: Price = $300, which is about $293 more than my parents paid for me – $260 more, really, adjusted for inflation – but then, I was born in special circumstances )

Anyhow. Mostly it’s just waiting now. I got another 6k out on the novel, which puts me within easy striking range of the big 50k, but like the last time I won, the novel isn’t nearly done (my last one hit about 90k by the time I finished it, and I figure I’m about halfway through the storyline on this one). There’s no way in Hell I plan on trying to finish this one before the kid comes, but it gives me something to do other than to check websites going, “Is this a sign of labor? how about this? does this mean I’ll deliver this week? come on, kid, come out!” Not that I don’t have more to do than that, but it’s a favorite pastime of enormously pregnant women.

Other than that, I cooked a big turkey breast today (Grothoff tradition – don’t buy turkey until the day after Thanksgiving. We’re weirdos like that ) and did a wee bit of coding. Not much accomplished, but then, I didn’t have to I’m totally not going to stress and tire myself out in the next couple of weeks – I have labor to look forward to and all, and I figure that’ll be enough work for me.

And did I mention hormones? (Small Monster, you’d better come out soon, or your mother is going to lose it…)

Anyway…

So I’ll be updating this post all evening with hot… NaNoWriMo… action, with the Internet forbidden to me otherwise, starting… now.

6:27 pm

Starting point for today – 30958 words (pathetic!).Tea? Check.
Updated novel draft? Check.
Internet ready to be banned for at least the next hour? Check.
Cookies? Damn, I knew I’d forgotten something. Oh well, no time to bake them now. I’ll find something.
Off to the races. Post to be updated as the evening wears on.

7:34 pm

32241 words. It goes slowly, but it’s going. I hate it when I do flashbacks to backstory though – I go on forever (just like in real life, now that I think of it…)

8:07 pm

Bad me. Answered e-mail for 30 minutes. Now need snack. And then back to the grind.

9:47 pm

34809 words. And I’m a slacker, totally managing not to respect my Internet ban. It’s Olbermann time, so I’ll be back later to hack on it some more.

10:12 pm

Boo. No Olbermann tonight. I’m sorry, but who can watch so much To Catch a Predator that they can actually watch a To Catch a Predator marathon? Distinctly creepy. Keith would have been much better. 2 pieces of cinnamon toast later (as close as I could get to cookies) and I’m back to the grind.

11:47 pm

36526 words. Still going slowly, as I’m trying to slog my way to a certain point in the story and advance some side-plots at the same time and I keep having to talk about things I don’t know about so I have to look up information on the Internet. Bah! But still, words are being written. And my main characters are even more miserable than before. Muahahahaha.
Now, off for a walk with the husband and a movie. Walk might, perhaps, lead to cookies. Muahahaha. And then maybe I’ll write more tonight, and maybe not. We shall see.

2:48 am

Post-walk, post-movie, and, um, post-cookies. Writing a little more before bed

3:48 am

38111 words! I’m getting a little tired of the story for the evening, but I’ll push on a little farther before I crash. I slept really late, so I’m not all that tired yet…

5:49 am

Bunches of writing and a few conversations with Christian later, and I am now at:

40196 / 50,000 (80.4%)

Good night Internets! (Er, good morning, but I’m going to bed, knowing that I, impossibly, am officially caught up as of now!!!)

But today, after clearing off my desk so that I feel inclined to use it as a workspace, I am now, at 4 pm, sitting down to write. And write. And write. That, with tea and dinner breaks, is all I’m going to do today. I’m at about 31k words right now (I’ll update it when I get C’s laptop on the network so that I can commit my changes from the last time I was out writing (7 billion years ago) and work on my desktop), and I have a secretly impossible goal for the end of my day (which may, given how late I slept, be 4 am, but, eh, we’ll see ).

Wish my poor little characters luck – they’re stuck in a bind right now which I have to make even worse to justify it getting better later, and I have no idea how that’s going to happen

To my fellow NaNoers, good luck writing this weekend! I will catch up!!!

Two German essays down, one to go (which is mostly thought out and ready to go, but I did outline it in English for some unknown reason, which if you read my last post, causes some time problems). Not that I wrote all day, mind you – no, after finishing the first essay and taking a short walk to Bed, Bath and Beyond (because we needed some Small Monster and Big Monster stuff, and I have this feeling that even if I don’t give birth anytime before SM’s due date, I’m not going to be up for more such trips – I get SO tired and hot!), I came home and passed out in bed for several more hours. As in passed… out. Collapsed. Went down for the count.

I can no longer survive without these naps. It’s like kindergarten, only I don’t complain about going to sleep.

I’m thinking I might write that last essay in English just to get it over with – I failed to notice until my beloved husband mentioned it that although the exam is due Thursday, Thursday is like, um, Thanksgiving, and the professor wants a hardcopy in the main office of a building that will be locked because it’ll be, um, Thanksgiving. I don’t think the professor noticed it either, because that’s a really silly day to say you want a hardcopy of the exam in your office or your mailbox, since, you know, they lock buildings on Thanksgiving.

So I need to finish it tonight, and frankly, I want to get on to catching up with my novel and, um, Small Monster related stuff (who, by the way, I think says “hi” to you all with that foot that is currently sticking out just under my ribs. The Internets say hi to you too, little one…). And I have so much e-mail and comment and friend-related stuff to catch up on it’s not even funny So having a chance to go there before the little guy comes would be nice. Ugggh!

(N.B.: The desire to get my exam over with has nothing to do with how much I liked the class – it rocked. And got my head back into German-mode for the arrival of unser kleines Monsterlein, so it was an excellent class to be taking and all, but seriously, I am totally ready to just be Mama for a bit, and it makes finishing an exam seem just that much less important…)

Anyway, off to write this third essay and get it over with. Then I can sleeeeep. Or torment my novel characters. Or both!

Well, I may not have gotten much farther on my novel (ok, any farther) , but I’ll play catchup later this week. Meanwhile, I’ve been working on my German final which needs to be in by Thursday. I aim to finish it tonight (for obvious reasons which may or may not become more obvious soon), but there are three essays, and since I opted to do the two last ones in German (I had the option of writing them in English), it’s taking longer than expected. Part of the problem, of course, is that sometimes my thoughts are harder to organize in German than in English because I think about the subject from the start in German. While it might seem easier upfront to just outline it in English and then write it in German, the only time I’ve really done that in any of the languages I write in was in writing a very long joint letter, and that took much longer than it might have taken just to write it in the second language in the first place. I can’t even really easily take notes in English during German class unless the discussion switches to English because it’s just not the mindset I’m in at the time.

There comes a point when speaking a language when translation is far more work than just thinking in the language you intend to write in/speak. But that doesn’t necessarily make it easy. However much my German may have advanced in the very few years I’ve been studying it (and I discovered the other day that I can finally now complete a thought in Dutch or German without the other language interfering!!! Progress!), it still doesn’t come all that easily when I’m trying to do something requiring analysis, and I worry that I’m more verbose than I need to be simply because I can’t always find the most concise way to say something. (Let’s not get into my verbosity in English, ok? )

I could of course always ask my husband, but I prefer to ask him after I’ve finished working through a thought, and then usually only for an abstraction or part of the idea to check my intuition. Actually, in this class, I don’t think I’ve asked him about German at all. But this is an exam, so I’m not discussing that stuff with him, even if I’m not going to be graded on my German (although I guess I am, indirectly – if I’m incomprehensible, obviously my German isn’t sufficient).

Anyhow. So I have a third of the German exam done, which may not sound like much, but since I had to watch a long movie (Deutschland, bleiche Mutter) to answer the question, and since I was so exhausted yesterday, I only got part of the essay written before I crashed.

Ok, so that’s progress point 1.

Progress point 2 is, um, something I won’t get into detail about. If you’re squeamish, let’s just say there are more signs of progress toward Small Monster coming, although they’re small and they could mean it’s going to be a while still. If you’re not squeamish (and don’t say I didn’t warn you if you look – I very specifically selected a link which didn’t have any identifying info in the URL for what happened), let’s just say that this has started to happen, gradually, but it was very obviously that this morning. Doesn’t mean much more than yesterday’s signs, but given the occasional cramping etc., we’re making progress. It may be progress toward three weeks from now (19 days until our due date!), but it’s progress nonetheless.

So progress on my exam will lead toward progress on relaxation and my novel and/or curtains and/or study organization, depending on what I feel up to. And progress on Small Monster is always welcome, no matter how it occurs.

4606 words tomorrow and I’ll be right on target! And in good news, my characters are starting to do awful things to make their lives appropriately miserable – that may sound bad, but it makes for a good story (or at least a very cheesy one with some action! )

As an aside, congrats to Lizzy, who in her awesomeness is also moving to caught-up land with me here. Woo hoo!

25400 / 50,000 (50.8%)