Yes, it has been a long time... But my last final is finished, school is out, Skippy sleeps, and here I am. I believe I passed all my classes. The psych class I was so worried about, I pulled a B- in (way better than the F- I was expecting) and I think I did quite well in the painting class. I'll post pictures of my projects later.

The exciting news is that I am going to start a business! I made a super-ly cool baby carrier that we lovelovelove, and other mommies love too. So I'm actually going to design from it a soft-structured baby carrier for market. Right now I'm in the prototype development and market research phase.

My design is based on a traditional Chinese Mei Tai. (Picture to follow) Here's some of the competition I've been checking out, all of whom are also similar to the Mei Tai: :-) Happily, mine is comfier than the first two, and we'll see about the 3rd when it gets here in a few days.

Yoga

Squat thrusts to get the farts out!

Just wanted to share...

...a few of the changes that motherhood brought.

I now think I'm a genius for composing songs with lyrics such as "Mama loves your poopy butt! Daddy loves your poopy butt!" And I very much enjoy dancing around the house while singing them. Fascinating variations include things such as "Mama loves your leaky buttski!" and so-forth. And indeed I do love (in a passionate and G-rated way) his poopy, leaking buttski. So does his daddy.

Bodily functions became hot topics. My boobs can really really leak if I'm not careful. And by leak I don't mean leak; I mean squirt in an unending stream.

It has become insanely difficult to accomplish anything other than dancing while singing poop-related songs and unintentionally squirting everything in sight with breast milk.

I think I'm going to the school doctor today. This having a baby business has gotten my wrists into an unbelievably painful state. Really very terribly painful.

Thumb Sucker

Sleeper

It might seem silly to have so many videos of a sleeping baby, but he's so bloody cute when he sleeps!

of Love, Slings and a Smile

We nailed the ring sling! And he held his head up the entire time he was in there!

Evolution

Its amazing the evolutions that one goes through after having a baby (or at least that I've been going through). They have been sudden and gentle, rather than the life-shattering boom that I was led to expect by all the comments of, "your life will never be the same," generally offered in a negative tone. First there was the this-is-very-nice-but-can't-possibly-be-real stage. That was mostly in the hospital and the first day home. Everything was very marvelous and dreamlike, but felt somehow... dreamlike. Then came the this-is-so-wonderful-if-it-ever-changes-I-will-die stage. That included plenty of tears when I happened to think of terrible things like Skippy growing older. It lasted maybe a bit less than a week. Eventually I realized that Skippy growing up will be a fun and beautiful thing. I can't wait to see him smile, hear him talk, look up at him when he is taller than me. (Actually I am happy to wait, but excited for them to come.) I went through a stage of amazement at how normal my new life felt to me, like a return to a state of normalcy that had never so fully existed before. I realized that I feel better now than I ever have before in my life, physically or emotionally. I've never liked my body more than I do now, or felt more sexy and beautiful. My relationship with my husband is deeper and more beautiful, somehow more sensual. If this was a normal reaction to new motherhood, I can't imagine people making all the disparaging remarks that were made to me in my pregnancy.

None of the things that I worried about during my pregnancy have come to pass. I worried about baby blues, postpartum depression, having a horrible hospital birth, interventions, isolation, hating my body, differences in my marriage, not liking to breastfeed. I've been so lucky. Everything in my life and everything around me is more beautiful than ever before. -Except the pets. I can't much stand them anymore.- Nothing has fallen apart, and things I didn't realize were broken have been put back together. Life is good. And life is fragile.

Skippy has a bit of a cold right now. He's sniffling and boogering and he had his first ever projectile-vomit onto the suede jacket of a good friend who had come over to meet him. Right now he's bundled up to my chest in his Moby Wrap, where he's been for much of his young life. I realized yesterday that he has become familiar to me. Before he was very dear, and completely beloved, and a part of me in every way, but still a shock. Now he's familiar. Its hard to describe.

Before he was born, I decided I wanted to plant Skippy's placenta with a special tree. Our culture doesn't really have any customs or rituals for dealing with placentas the way many others do. Some people plant theirs though, and that seemed right to me. Because we're gypsies I decided to put it in a pot. That way no one will ever cut down Skippy's tree. Even Brandon got into it, taking me out to the nursery (his own suggestion) to buy (with actual money!) a nice pot and a tree. I had imagined him as a sugar-plum before he was born, but it was well past tree planting season when we got to the nursery, and Brandon didn't want to wait until spring to order a specific tree so our options were limited. There were little olive trees, quinces, pineapple guavas, Meyer lemons, Eureka lemons, kumquats, and a banana. We came home with a Meyer lemon. Here it is, kiwi in the background, planted up with the placenta that nourished my beautiful son.

Booby-Shark

See my little booby-shark hanging out with me on the couch being cute.

No baby yet...

It's time to paint

And so the question is: What do I paint? So many ideas float around in my head, series I would like to paint. My father's sister painted a beautiful portrait of a coal miner, in grays and yellow, as her father was (a coal miner, not gray and yellow). I don't know if it actually a portrait of my grandfather or not, but I hve always thought of it as being so. I would like to paint a series of my family in that style. Series: The Coal Miner's Family. My Grandmother had been wanting me to paint her a yellow flower for a while. I always meant to do it, but never got around to it. Then she died, never getting her painting, and never seeing her latest great-grandchild. Series: Yellow Flowers for Emily. I'd love to do a series of dreamlike, colorful paintings for children.

I have a 3 foot x 4 foot canvas that I need to fill, and assignment parameters to follow. There is a huge list of contemporary painters, very few of which I have an affinity for. The assignment is to choose one and compose a painting in their style. Last year for the same assignment, I painted in the style of Wolf Kahn. The top painting is his, the one beneath is mine.

I had a lot of trouble with the assignment. It felt wrong, painting intentionally in another's style. I ended up liking my work, but the semester was hell. This time around I want to find a way to do it with integrity, right from the start. I may choose the same artist, or I may try something new.

It's just always so hard to actually start.

3 things

1) This beautiful orchid, which my mother gave to me 5 years ago as a tiny seedling, has blossomed. See:

2) I have a very large belly that still has a baby in it. See:


and 3) You have to go here and read this. I laughed so hard trying to read this out loud to Brandon that Skippy almost came out. But it is late at night, so you never know...

Land Lust

Summer comes along, fruit starts filling out the farmers market. My tomato plants in chilly Arcata produce a measly few but delicious cherry tomatoes. I realize that the plum trees by my parents house in warm Vancouver must be going mad with delicious, sweet, juicy Italian plums right now. There are strawberries and blackberries and blueberries and peaches and figs- I had a dream a dream about figs last night; I was declaring to someone how figs are the ultimate candy, only much more articulately than that. Chilly Arcata has a million fig trees, but in the 4 years that I've been here (3?) I've never seen one ripe fig on any of them.

The point of this is- I start to itch. I try to ignore it, but it gets worse and worse and then terrible. I try to appease it by planting things in pots. I by grapes and currants and kiwis to hold for the day that I can finally plant them. I start to go absolutely crazy to plant some fruit. I need a little piece of land to grow things on before this kills me.

I found a 5 acre parcel of pasture right down the road from where Bran's family lives, just east of Portland. Very affordable. The mortgage payments would be less than what we're paying for rent right now. So I started foaming at the mouth. But we aren't going anywhere for at least 2 years. Which makes me want to cry. And Brandon isn't really down with living in a tent while I build a house in a cow pasture.

There's cheap land about an hour east of us that would be perfect for growing things, but we're only going to be here another 2 years, and the trees wouldn't fruit for at least 3, so what would be the point, even if we could afford it on top of our rent?

I wish we just had the damn money. Bran says that wouldn't be any fun, that it's so much more fun to find creative ways to pay for it (so much fun to wait an indefinite period of time to start doing what I desperately need to do?) but I think it would be plenty of fun to be able to just start.

Someday.

Wine and Mead Random Bits

I have a slight problem. Everything from last year is ready to bottle. That's 5 gallons, 25 full wine bottles worth. I have 11 corks. I have no money to buy new corks with. I have plenty of bottles from the recycling center though.

White wine is not my favorite thing. I certainly like some of it, but reds have always been my preference. Most of what I've made up to this point is white, and tastes disappointingly like white wine.

I'm preparing for the blueberry wine to be amazing. I snuck a taste as I was sticking it into the secondary, and it was already a yummy red. I'm also preparing for the blackberry (which I hope to start this week) to be amazing.

I'm ticked off at last years meads. They're not exciting. (Except the one with jalapeños) I think I have a way to go before the meads really make me happy. Or maybe I'm just having a bad week. (which I definitely am)

I need a way to stabilize me wines. And wine-thiefs are amazing. Get one.

I think that's it.

Brandon laughs at me when I eat pickles.

Hawksbill and Hairy Cat's Ear Wine

When one makes dandelion wine, one should make sure she knows what a dandelion actually is. Otherwise she may end up picking what everyone refers to as dandelions, and later having to change the name of her brew to "Hawksbill and Hairy Cat's Ear Wine." It will still taste delicious, and won't give anyone tummy aches, but the name won't be nearly so romantic.

Using a Hydrometer

Here's how it works:
First I filled the tube with plain tap water. The hydrometer floats at the specific gravity of 1.000, or the potential alcohol (PA) of 0%.
Close up of the PA reading:
I mixed the H2O with some sugar and took another reading. It was 7% PA. See:

Then I used it to test my blueberry wine must. In the few days that it has been fermenting in the primary, the yeasties have digested enough of the sugar to take it from a PA of 13% to a PA of just under 10%. See:

That's all there is to it.

Hydrometers

Hydrometers are swell. I love mine dearly. It allows me to know how alcoholic my wines will be. It tells me how much sugar to use. It lets me know beyond a shadow of doubt that my brew is done fermenting and will not explode my bottles. Using my hydrometer provides for ample tasting. Tasting even enough even for two if your lover is a lover of brews. It's easy and quick to use, and it hardly costs a thing. I think mine was $6. I recently bought a wine-thief to make it quicker and easier, I'll let you know how that goes when I've tried it out.

When you buy one, make sure you get a triple scale model. That way you don't have to figure out what brix are, or remember what specific gravity relates to what. You simply look at the cheater's side, the potential alcohol side, and it tells you everything you need to know.

The main reason I use mine is that I like to increase all my recipes by a quarter or so. That way I have leftovers to top up with after racking, instead of water, and my wine doesn't get watery. I have to increase the sugar content and the fruit, and it really helps to know if I've used enough sugar. My calculations are almost always off by a few cups, so it all works out great.

Hell with acid and ph testing kits, hell with everything else, you should have one of these. There's no reason not to. (Did I mention the tasting?)

Answers

J9 (my wonderful beautiful friend) asked:

OK:

1. thanks for posting these recipes. I was about to bug you.
2. When you are mixing and stirring, before transferring and airlocking, is this covered? Uncovered? I am guessing not airlocked, at least. I have a bucket with a hole in the middle of the lid - would that work?
3. Leave it alone for how long? Does it clear? Do I rack?

And: what's with the women's names?

I answer:
1) Yay!

2) When I am mixing and stirring the must, or at least between mixing and stirring, I keep it covered with a towel. I secure the towel with a rubber band, string, or by placing the lid loosely over the towel. The must needs oxygen here, but you gotta keep the bugs and germs out. It's best not to use terry cloth for this, muslin would work well. (I'll post pictures when Bran comes back with my camera) The bucket with the hole will work, but you have to plug the hole with cotton or something else to let the gases pass through but not the fruit flies and cat-hair. I find it a lot simpler to use the towel; lids piss me off and hurt my hands, lids are hard to sterilize, towels are soft, towels are easy to clean.

2 1/2) Keep it under the towel and stir daily for your choice of: a few days, or 5-7 days, or until the foaming starts to die down a bit, or (best yet) the potential alcohol drops to 3-4%. That's when you'll want to transfer and airlock it. (Get a hydrometer and learn how to use it, it's easy and you won't be sorry!!) (Next post will be about that.)

3) Yes and no. It should go crystal clear, but only because society finds it prettier that way. If it doesn't clear, it'll still taste just as good. People might be afraid to drink it though. If it's a wine it should clear no problem during the racking phase, which should last from 3-6 months. With some high pectin fruit you want to add an enzyme which digests pectin (in the beginning of the fermentation) and aids in clearing. If it's a mead recipe it's more problematic. Honey has a protein that doesn't like to fall out. A lot of people boil their honey to break up that protein and help the wine clear, but even that isn't 100% effective, because something to do with the molecular structure of the protein isn't destroyed, but merely broken, and in rare instances it puts itself back together and clouds the mead. There are also ways to clear it with chemicals, gelatin, or egg whites (don't ask me about that one because I think that's disgusting and know nothing about it). It's never bothered me enough to research that stuff though. With the exception of the two blackberry meads, everything I've ever made has gone crystal clear, no problem or extra effort, by the 2nd racking.

And remember:
With the wild-ferment, everything is a gamble, and you should plan on some complete and total failures.

As far as the women's names go, it's just kinda hokey and totally for me. It's easier for me to associate a name with a brew then to think to myself, "The wild-fermented strawberry mead that I made last year and Brandon loved," or "the orange wine that smelled funny and I threw out but realize now that I shouldn't have." It's less effort, and it actually works really well. I figured that something made out of honey (made entirely by female bees) or sugar and yeast, would have to be feminine rather than masculine, so there you have it.

P.S. Amazing the things that float around in our brains, isn't it?

Mold

In the (little over) year that I have been brewing, I have never encountered mold. This includes at (I think) 4 successful wild ferments. This is pretty amazing, considering that the fruit was never sterilized, but only rinsed gently under cold water.

Alas, today I found little moldy bits floating atop Sylvia, my wild blueberry mead. She will go down the sink today. As far as the compare/contrast experiment goes, this is 1 point in favor of sterile musts and cultured wine yeasts. On the bright side of things, I now have one primary freed up for a new batch. I think I may try another strawberry mead, since I still am interested in comparing a wild vs. cultured experiment, and I have had consistent luck with strawberry wild-ferments.

For the next batch I'll try boiling the honey (something else I've never done) and sterilizing the fruit with the boiling liquid. I think I may get a prettier color set that way. I'll be getting the strawberries from my CSA share on Tuesday. If there are still strawberries the following week, I think I'll try to pull off a sparkling strawberry mead. I've scrapped the lavender mead idea for now, but am still planning a dandelion mead which I have high hopes for, set for next week. I'm hoping to wait for the lavender honey to come out at the market in a month or two and make plain mead out of that. (If it works, we can all have it at Skippy's first birthday party!)

Of course, all this is dependent on me being able afford the honey. So we'll see. Soon though it will be blackberry and huckleberry season, which means free picking and lots of inexpensive wines and jam!

(Christmas wish- Champagne corker, must tell parents)
(Also on the wish list- argon tank)

Towels, Yay!

There are a few things that towels are very good at. One is keeping bugs out, and the other is keeping light out. There are 2 phases of fermentation that wines and meads like to go through, the first needs lots of oxygen, and the second needs an absence of oxygen, thus the airlock. (The Joy of Home Winemaking seems to skip the first most of the time.) The yeast needs the exposure to air in order to reproduce quickly and get a strong ferment going. The faster the ferment, the more flavor get extracted from the fruit into the wine before going off, and tasting funky. That's one reason for using a yeast starter too. You gotta protect your brew from the light too. It keeps it pretty and affects the taste.

Next 2 Meads

Next on the agenda is a lavender mead and a dandelion mead. I'm still trying to decide who will sparkle and who will not.

Brew Pictures

"Yay!" for beautiful, happy yeast starters!
This is the difference between (left to right) blueberry mead with cultured wine yeast, wild fermenting blueberry mead, and wild strawberry. The strawberry is foaming like crazy, the wild blue is just beginning to (it's a day behind), and the cultured blue is going nuts.

These are my newly bottled (and beautifully labeled) dandelions, in my relatively clean kitchen:
And here is the brewer, and those from whence she came:


(don't worry, we all wash our hands before brewing)

Blueberries!

Blueberries! I spent my morning picking them, and the rest of the day turning them into (hopefully) delicious alcoholic beverages. 2 gallons of mead, 1 of wine, and a beautiful pint of brandied blues. It was a busy day, and now my feet and back hurt, but in a very nice way. Here's how it went:

I decided to make 2 gallons of mead as a compare and contrast exercise. My first ever brewing experience was a wild-fermented batch of strawberry mead. It was the simplest, easiest thing ever, and it was incredibly delicious. The thing about wild ferments though, is that sometimes they are incredibly delicious, and sometimes they aren't. My problem is that I don't know how consistently delicious my wild ferments will be. Most mead makers like things more controlled, a sterile must, actual wine yeast, that sort of thing. So I decided to do one one way, and one the other, just to see what happens. I've decided to name my meads, to help me keep track of them. Sylvia is the wild-ferment, and Cynthia is being sterilized right now in preparation for a very controlled ferment. Yesterday I started a wild-ferment strawberry, which I am calling Melissa

After starting the 2 meads, I bottled my dandelion wine. (Beautiful!) I racked the cranberry mead, the pumpkin-apple wine, the rose-hip wine, and stirred the lees for my 2 blackberry meads. Along the way I took teeny-tiny-pregnancy-sized sips. Here's how that went:

Dandelion: very good, really gets better with time
Cranberry mead: weak but yummy
Pumpkin-Apple: strong, but I can't tell that is from pumpkins and apples, still harsh
Rose-hip: the most beautiful color I've ever seen, delicious, gentle
Blackberry mead: tasty and blackberry-ish, gentle and a bit fizzy
Blackberry-jalapeño mead: oh-my-god-good

Then I started the blueberry wine. Magda I think.

Then I made the brandied blues.

Because I am not web-savvy, and know no better way to have a place just for my recipes, I have created a blog to house my brewing recipes. If you should go there to look at them, keep in mind that some of them are only being tested now, and as such, may not be any good. It is: Julia's Brews. All the recipes will be there, eventually with notes on how they come out.

just in case you missed it...

MY BABY IS A BOY!!! It is a fact! He has humongous testicles!!

(a revision)

Apparently I already mixed the pumpkin with apple wine, so pumpkin mead will have to wait for the pumpkins to ripen. And the U-pick raspberries turned out to be blueberries. All plans are being adjusted accordingly.

Oh, and MY BABY IS A BOY!!! It is a fact! He has humongous testicles!!

Brewing Mead

For a while now I've been wanting to brew a lot of mead, really get good at it. Now that all of my traveling is done for the next several months, I'm going to get serious about he brewing. First on my to-do list is rack the dandelion wine, making room for more brews. Later today I'll be picking up my CSA share, which will include a small basket of strawberries and raspberries. I'll be turning that into a gallon of wild-fermented t'ej (Ethiopian mead). Then I'll be topping up a partial batch of pumpkin wine with honey-water to make an experimental pumpkin mead. Next on the list will be a trip to a local u-pick for enough raspberries to make a gallon of wine and three gallons of a raspberry mead (and maybe jam and pie, depending). No set plans after that, but tons of possibilities. High on my list of priorities is a bottle of strawberry wine from a wonderful friend which I have to manage not to drink for a year or two.

Details and pictures to follow. Cheers!

Agenda

Three things, food wise. Lemon jelly, lemon kiwi marmalade, carrot cake.

Skippy kicked so hard that he gave me stretch marks yesterday.

Don't try this if you're pregnant.

A really good way to hurt your back (besides pregnancy in general) is to wait until you're 7+ months pregnant and then clean the holy you-know-what out of your saltwater fish tank. This involves moving heavy rocks and buckets of water around, bending at weird angles while scrubbing the rocks off outside, and then putting the tank back together. (At which point the tank will still look disappointingly like a fishy cesspool.)

The danger is that when moving large rocks around a glass aquarium, it is very possible to crack the bottom of the aquarium, resulting in a really nasty flood and a husbandly imperative to get rid of all the bloody fish tanks. (And possibly plants, bird and dog.) When a girls then finds what she thinks is the beginning of a leak in the bottom of the tank, there is no turning back, there is no putting it off for tomorrow, the tank must come apart. This is the fun part. Out come the rocks. Out come 20 gallons of saltwater (saved in buckets, not dumped down the drain). Out comes all the extremely heavy wet sand. Then the tank, which itself is surprisingly heavy, gets moved and checked carefully for leaks (none, false alarm) taken outside and scrubbed. Then comes the really fun part, or at least the part that really did my back in. Moving heavy wet rocks from the floor to the tank, and moving 20 gallons of water from the floor to the tank. I trashed the sand, it was a bad idea in the first place. Then mopping up the gallon or so of spilled water from the floor.

My tank looks amazing, except now there are no fishes in it. My back was fine until I sat down for dinner. Once you sit down you're done for, and I really couldn't get up again. So now instead of my pregnant-penguin-waddle, I do the 95-year-old-pregnant-woman-hobble. All to the delighted laughs of everyone in my household.

The point of this story is that I am going to stick to painting from now on. This is what I'm working on right now. Oops, boobs!

Death

My saltwater tank has crashed. After 2 years of stunning beauty, and half a year of pregnancy induced neglect and decline, it's all over. My last beautiful fish is dead this morning. Now it's all about starting over and probably at least 3 or 4 months before it's safe to put anything else in there. Here's the ugly damage.

Back from Scotland!

We are back from our family reunion trip to Scotland. We were there for two weeks, spending about a week in Edinburgh, and a week traveling around the highlands. I really loved it and could easily see myself living there, but the husband really didn't like that idea very much. He said he thought he might be able to live there for a month or two. That's alright though, it really isn't a good climate for growing tomatoes (of utmost importance in the place we choose to settle). seriously though, it was one of the most beautiful places I've ever seen.

Here are some pictures from the Highland Romp.






And then there were all the sheep.


To be continued...

Fat and Pregnant, or Fat and Fat

It was Oyster-Fest time in my sweet little town today. The plaza was crammed with booths from every imaginable restaurant in the area grilling and saucing and BBQing and otherwise preparing delicious oysters. The plaza was also crammed with people wanting to spend their entire month's income on eating the delicious little buggers. And then there was me, pregnant as can be, not wanting to expose my little to kicker to the nasty food poisoning that is sure to lurk where oysters have been sitting in the sun all day. It probably would have been fine, I was there at the early part of the festival, and the sun didn't come out until later. I figure he gets so much caffeine in his system that he really doesnt need any more stresses.

I went with my cute, skinny Asian roommate, see:
She looks cute in photos no matter what. And she is so bloody small. Being cute and Asian and small and always looking good in photos no matter what, she assumed that am like she is, so I finally relented and let her take a photo of me. Bad idea me. See:

It was a bad, bad, idea. Now I just feel fat. I felt beautiful. Now, fat. Ugly. Horrid. I want to say if I actually look like that, I will never leave the house again, except that just isn't realistic. I wan to stop eating, but that isn't bloody realistic either.

You see, I have a powerful hunger. I could eat my roommate, and still be hungry. Nothing I do satisfies my powerful hunger. My doctor told me on Tuesday in response to my question about not gaining weight so fast, "It's all a matter of portion control." Thanks. I'd like to see him control his portions when faced with the hungers of pregnancy. Yet somehow I am surrounded by beautiful, skinny pregnant women. So portion control it will have to be. (eating only one roommate at a sitting) And walking my cellulite-y butt every day. And never ever letting Joy take another picture of me again ever. At least until a year after the baby comes out.

And by the way: the only reason I posted that picture is because I am confident that J9 is the only person who will ever see it. And if she sees me looking fat and fat, she will still love me.

(I used to have collar bones! AAAack!) I love you J9!

I love bread!

It's really, truly, great stuff. And this last batch came out pretty well. Few things in life are better than fresh home baked bread with butter and honey. I now have two gigantic loaves of bread to eat. (One of them is actually almost gone, how did that happen? Oh yes, the butter and honey...) Bran's out of town, so it's up to the roommate and myself. A good quality in husbands and roomates is a healthy appreciation of one's cooking genius. I am a lucky girl. (but not as lucky as they are)

Aida and the Baking of Bread

If Brandon was amenable, and if Skippy were a girl, I think I might name her Aida. But the husband isn't amenable, and we both have a strong feeling that the little kicker is a boy. So the chances of having a Skippy-Aida are pretty slim.

Listening to this opera makes my heart do somersaults. It isn't the only one that does this, but it's far and away my favorite. I keep telling myself that I should listen to some of the other operas I have on my computer, but at least for now, it's looking like Skip's going to come out with Aida memorized.

As I listen I am finishing a 3-day bread project. It has white flour in it. Usually when I bake bread it's of the 100% whole wheat variety, because that's what I like and I'm not half bad at making it. This one has 10 cups of white and 2 of dark rye, so we'll see. It's experimental... It's very pretty, but it's just rising so far. I think this is the first bread I've baked since falling pregnant, and it makes me very happy, particularly with Maria Callas singing in the background. (Although if I was being honest, I would admit that it's the men singers who make my heart do flip-flops.)

Baby Update:

The last ultrasound showed that my placenta is low, so they are going to do another one in about a month, to see if I can still have the baby the old-fashioned way. What this means to me is not the possibility of a rather messy death, but another chance to see if it's a Daniel-Ulysses or an Un-Aida. YAY!

Yesterday I went to my first prenatal yoga class, and it had me feeling almost human for the rest of the day. I was actually able to move my cumbersome belly in ways that felt good. And seeing beautiful girls with bellies twice as big as mine made me feel like maybe I can get through this without turning into the biggest bellied pregnant woman in the history of anything. (People can be real asses about making pregnant women feel fat.) ("So is that baby due anytime now?" "There's no way you're making it to September with that belly!") (fuck-heads) The point of this is that my belly was put back into perspective, and while bigger than it was pre- 26 week old Skippy, it really isn't that big yet.

Beet Soup

My wonderful friend J9 mentioned that she'd like to try one new recipe a week, to keep the culinary creative juices flowing. That sounded like a plan to me, so I tried one last night. It was simple, it was easy, it was yummy. It was a pretty shade of red... and I got to use my new immersion blender for the first time.

Then I made super yummy brownies with lots of fresh farmer's market super ripe strawberries baked in.