Tina’s ProcrastiNation Palace

There are a ton of books out there on pregnancy, on what to expect, what could happen, etc. If you’re a mom-to-be with an appetite for info, you’re in luck.

While I am definitely reading some, I am actually not going overboard for a few reasons. First, I figure these books are like travel guides — you can read all you want about a place before you get there, but once you’re there, you find out the country is nothing like what the book described. Like when Husband and I went to Costa Rica? Yeah, the map from Frommer’s represented a street scape that did not exist. (Awesome.) I really don’t think I have any idea what I’m in for. I hear what my pals say, but when it happens to you, it’s like…a science fiction movie.

Also, maybe if these preg books were fiction, I could get through them faster. I need to read fiction. It just helps me function as a human being. (Um, as well as self-help.)

And another also, I can’t read too much, because the information will just cancel each other out. I have a few books on nutrition. You know what I highlighted and still remember:

Some pregnant women crave nonfood items, like ice, clay, starch, wax, and coffee grounds. These items are not food, and you should not eat them when you’re pregnant. Eating these things can cause problems for you and your baby. Tell you provider if you crave nonfoods.

Is that not awesome? Now, I totally want to eat like paste and dirt, but now I want to try it.

You know, if I’m being honest, is that the reason behind these instincts is that pregnant women are an entire demographic, and it has always unnerved me to fit in with any demographic. If I can’t have and be a smorgasbord, I can’t deal. Just how I’m wired. We can all blame my mother. (Ha ha.)

My mom hugged me with a squeal and great excitement today. It’s the third one I’ve gotten of this nature (the first two: 1) when I got accepted to Yale; 2) when I signed her up for a mega-cheap triple-play deal from Time Warner).

What did I do earn this shout-out? In short, I turned on her computer. The long version is they had a power outtage and it made their computer wonky. I unplugged it, replugged it, and it turned. Viola! She’s treating me like I’m a genius, and then promptly told me it was time for me to go home because she now had to watch her Korean soap online.

Ahh, the love between mother and daughter, it’s heartwarming.

Dad went to a panel on religions at the U.N. this week (his friend’s wife is a religious studies scholar and one of the presenters). There was someone there to represent Catholicism, Islam, Christianity, Judaism, Buddhism. Mom said “There’s no one there for atheism. They should have someone for atheism.”

And to be honest, I felt a bit proud Mom had that thought (everything she knows about atheism is through me, of course). I raised her well.

The pics are of what atheists look like.

So Husband and I are having a baby, and what’s strange about the experience is…THE ENTIRE THING. Since this is a first for me, I am constantly shocked by the process. I’m shocked by the fact that we are all born from inside another human being. I’m shocked men can’t have babies. I’m shocked we don’t have pockets like kangaroos so we can look at the babies. (My mother laughed at that one and told me to stop thinking such strange thoughts. I mean, I know why I don’t have a pocket — b/c I would look every second and then the baking would never get done.)

Here are other thoughts in no particular order:

For the first time last week, I felt the baby move. The movement was subtle, but definitely there, and it reminded me of when I heard a mouse behind the fridge — something is alive in here — and I totally freaked out. Just when I think I can’t get bigger, I get bigger. When I get home, I just stare at the enormity of my middle. I mean, it looks like I ate an entire pan of lasagna by myself. Ever had an amnio done? The resident said “it doesn’t really hurt and some women don’t feel it at all.” Ha! Really? Because it seems to me you would feel something like a big needle stuck through your uterus. (Uh huh. Kind of like getting stabbed, I felt it. Weeee!) When you toss side to side in bed, there’s a momentary delay for the rest of your innards sloshing to catch up to your position.

This is TMI for this blog, but I’m also stating certain things here so that I stop saying them in conversation, because in real life, these kind of sentiments freak people out. I will preserve these thoughts here and stop sharing them out there. Consider it a public service.

how people who work in IT look like owls? Is it the glasses? Is it the sedentary lifestyle? Dunno. And of course, it’s not ALL of them, but if you stay too long in that department…you were warned.

Really, Manohla Dargis. Was the following comment necessary?

“The director Mira Nair, whose only qualification appears to be that she’s a woman who has made others films about and with women (“Mississippi Masala,” “Vanity Fair”), keeps a tidy screen — it’s all very neat and carefully scrubbed.”

First of all, I don’t know why you’d expect anything less than bland from Hilary Swank (excellent in “Boys Don’t Cry,” boring as sh*t in everything else) in a straightforward biopic (biopics are dull as hell. The only thing about the Amelia story that would hook me is a magical realistic investigation of her disappearance, something beyond the facts of the biography.)

But whatever, if the film is bad, fab, but why mention the qualifications of the director? Do you think McG had anything beyond a handful of music videos prior to making “Charlies Angels Kick Butt”? Did anyone ask what qualified Jonathan Demme (an older white director dude) to direct “Beloved” (story about slavery in the U.S., in particular, female slaves)? Hello?? HELLO?

In fact, Mira Nair has actually directed a bunch of movies, including “The Namesake,” and I’m not sure that she’s good or not, but she’s noteworthy b/c she’s one of a handful of female directors working in Hollywood — and she’s the only one I can think of right now who’s not white. I actually like that she’s involved with a project that isn’t a story related to Indian heritage. Gives me a little faith that others might believe that women and nonwhites can tell universal stories. (Duh.)

If you’re going to mention gender, how about mentioning the dearth of female directors in mainstream commercial film? (I think part of it has got to be b/c films are an extremely time-consuming and expensive habit, so lot of film people are folks who come from money who don’t have to be the ones to bear children in order to have a family, but that’s just my unscientific theory.)

Finally, I think it only bugged me b/c I’ve never read in a review of a film that a director’s “only qualification seems to be that he was a man.” It’s just blatantly offensive. Big ewww.

Click here for the review. There was nothing else that really struck me as interesting about this critique.

Don’t get excited. This is not a tantalizing story, just a completely random one.

We have six pillows – I sleep with four, Husband sleeps with one, and the extra spends the night on the couch. Every night, I settle nicely into my pillow fort, my body totally surrounded by pillow, and usually, don’t move for the rest of the night. Two nights ago, I woke up in the middle of the night and Husband still had not come to bed and I spotted his pillow and hugged it to my body, thinking in my groggy state, “Hmm, what’s this extra pillow doing here.”

He had to wake me up to get me to let it go.

I was so embarrassed of my pillow hog behavior that I woke up at 4 a.m., I couldn’t stop laughing. Tried to keep it quiet to not wake up Husband, but kept laughing pretty hard, so was not successful.

The photos of the knee pillows from Japan are just an added bonus for your day.

Who knew my life lesson of the day would come from Balkie of Perfect Strangers? Go Bronson Pinchot. You’re still touching people’s lives. Ha ha. You can read the rest of his entertaining commentary on his personal film resume on this link. (What he says about Tom Cruise is particularly amusing. Pretty douche bag-y stuff.) Below is the interview excerpt that yields the balls I would love to exhibit in my own life:

Courage Under Fire (1996)—“Bruno”
BP: That was a low point, because Denzel Washington was behind the incredibly cowardly bullshit of “This is my character, not me.” He was really abusive to me and everybody on that movie, and his official explanation was that his character didn’t like me, but it was a dreadful experience. I spent my salary on time with my shrink just for helping me get through it, and what that led to was the very next big movie that I did. I should have said to the producers, “You get that guy in line, or I’m out of here.” Life’s too short. But the next movie I did, the director was getting a lot of crap from his star, and he started to take it out on me one day, and just like a German shepherd—you know when a German shepherd stands up on its hind legs and puts its paws on your shoulders?

I put my hands on his shoulders and I very gently but firmly said, “I don’t do abuse, and if you say one more word of abuse to me, I’m on a plane, and you don’t have enough money to keep me here.” And that was the end of it, and I’ve never taken abuse again. And I wasn’t vile or anything, it just ripped out of me. Denzel Washington cured me forever of thinking that there is any amount of money or anything that could ever, ever make it okay to be abused. The script supervisor on that movie said it’s like watching somebody kick a puppy. He was so vile. And after that, I just would never endure it again.

Balkie doesn’t take cr*p.

You know what’s weird? When a song gets in your head, but it’s like a song you didn’t even knew you knew. Just so you know, I just finished singing “I just wanna rock and roll all night” by KISS at home. I had no idea I knew what KISS sounded like.

I rewrote the lyrics to be more autobiographical though, “I just wanna walk around all night, and study every day.” Husband was both, I think, amused and appalled. It’s like when I rewrote the spoken part of “Hot for Teacher” to be about band practice after school and having a new pencil case.

Writers write what they know. Writers write.

Ha ha. Actually, writers procrastinate and eat a LOT of ice cream.

Last week, the news went ape with this story of a little boy who snuck into a basket attached to a gigantic silver balloon in Colorado. You probably have heard already — the balloon spun in the air, high up, for about two hours, while authorities frantically tried to figure out how to rescue the kid. When the balloon landed two hours later, there was no boy.

Husband and I talked about it. If you’re six, of course, you’re going to climb into the basket and take off, and we talked about how he was probably scared and jumped, or how the basket must have broke under his weight, and how frightening that must have been. I didn’t want the kid to be missing or hurt or dead, but I still just loved seeing that giant hoagie of a balloon up there.

Now that the story has been revealed to be a hoax and the boy safe and sound, the image still gives me a great deal of pleasure. I have to say I loved seeing the giant balloon doing the whirling dervish in the blue sky — it was so beautiful and whimsical, and a wonderful, pleasant distraction from Office Life.