Stuck!

Driving back from Illinois on Sunday afternoon, we noticed that I-90 was getting really, really foggy. We were already crabby because we stopped for lunch at the Machine Shed, and despite the huge amount of butter, bacon, and grease we consumed, we were unhappy with our super slow service. It took 20 minutes for the waitress to take our order, 15 more for drinks, 10 more for food, 20 for the check. Then, we wandered around the gift shop to let Harry pick out a toy because he was such a good boy through the wait. He got a green John Deere cell phone (or, as he called it, a "hewo," like hello), but then it took 5 minutes for the (rude) cashier to locate scissors so we could liberate the phone from its package-- you get the idea. Just hassle and bad service and heartburn. (Also, the wait staff there has to wear bib overalls and red plaid shirts and pig shaped name tags, so I guess they're entitled to a few bad days).

Harry had already slept for two hours, so we knew he was up for the duration of the trip, dropping his milk and demanding "Bup?" and flinging his cell phone to the floor amid shouts of "Hewo?" Ben and I finally reached that point in our car ride when we couldn't stand each other any longer, and we were just getting ready to bicker our way back home ("Can you stop popping your knuckles? That noise is disgusting." "Really? Have you heard yourself chew gum?") when we noticed the truck in front of us (brown and orange camouflage, reading "DORF" instead of "FORD") slamming on its breaks, and the SUV behind us loomed dangerously close to our rear bumper (and Harry in his dangerously forward facing car seat).

We both freaked a little, especially when we saw all the semis around us with their hazard lights on. Ben slowed to a careful stop, cursing the driver behind us (who later assured us he saw our baby in the back and was ready to ditch his car in the slushy median before he would hit us), and at 2:40 pm, perfectly still on I-90, less than a mile from our exit, wondering what the hell was going on.

This was going on.

I had a brief panic attack (and it is really not easy to put your head between your legs when you are 25 weeks pregnant and drowning in your own stomach acid) because the fog was so thick, I was sure someone was going to slam into the back of us at 65 miles an hour, completely unaware of the stopped cars in the mist. This actually happened to people about 2 miles behind us, and someone died-- exactly my fear. I really think truck drivers helped us out-- they stopped quickly, got in both lanes to slow traffic as we approached the accident, and left plenty of room between themselves and the car in front to make a pile up less likely. The trucks by us anyway. Since there were over a hundred pile ups and 2 deaths caused when two separate semis ran over 2 cars (A Chrysler Pacifica and a PT Cruiser-- not good day for Chrysler), I guess not all truck drivers were as vigilant as the ones who surrounded us.

No one in our immediate area was hurt, and none of our cars were damaged at all. We were the only really lucky group, though. Ben got out and talked to some of the people nearest us, and wild rumors flew up an down the cars-- like playing telephone. We called the highway patrol for updates as often as our failing phone batteries (neither of us charged them all weekend of course) allowed and tried to tell our neighbors that no one was going to force us to leave our cars on the highway and take city buses to a nearby hotel (there were city buses, but they were picking up people not injured enough for ambulances and those who couldn't drive their cars away from the scene).

A really bitchy local news lady (she's famous, damnit-- how dare we ask her a question!) told us that it was going to take 2 hours for the scene to be clear enough for us to drive away, and we were so annoyed by this. We took Harry out of his seat and let him roam the car, which he has never done before and did, happily, for the whole 2 hours. That's when we noticed it was dark; the car was starting to get really cold, and no one was moving yet. All we could see was a pink foggy glow of flashing rescue lights in the distance.

We knew the interstate was closed in both directions, but we didn't really know where the accident was. (A mile ahead of us. Thank god we had such bad service.)

Harry drank the last of his bup and fell asleep safely back in his chair at about 5:30. Because I am like the little girl in Signs and store bottles of water EVERYWHERE, we had tons of fluids, which meant I needed to pee. At 6:45 (we'd been stopped for 4 hours by this time), I almost cried because I thought I was going to pee the car, and I realized that I was going to have to do the unthinkable-- PEE OUTSIDE.

I borrowed Ben's flashlight, and opened my door. I had seen people walking up a little hill off the shoulder of the road and going in the direction of some small trees before the darkness swallowed them. Counting on the fog, the black, and my dark coat to make peeing outside as private as possible, I reluctantly crossed the shoulder into the slushy mud. Then I was hit by blinding lights as ten ambulances crept down the side of the road, on their way to survey the damage behind us. Awesome. Like freaking search lights.

I am so not the pee outside kind of person, as you might imagine.

I also ate some crackers from a trucker who offered to share his stash with a pregnant lady (but I gave most of them to Harry when he woke up at about 10:30 starving and desperate for bup -- yeah, right at the 8 hour mark).

We read some articles when we got home that assured readers the Red Cross gave out food, hot drinks, and blankets at the crash site, but no one around us saw anything like that. We just sort of shared what we had with each other-- bottled water for kids, cigarettes for smokers, some peppermints from an old guy in a Lincoln, the trucker's crackers) and we turned the car on every hour or so to warm it up. I was just getting ready to accept an offer of pumpkin pie from a woman two cars up (Which? Seems to be a common thing to travel with. Once several summers ago, Jon and I saw a woman at the Dallas airport pull a Saran wrapped piece of pie from her pocket), when Ben decided to track down a rescue worker and ask for some food for his baby and his pregnant wife. He actually got out of the car and jogged to an idling police car, when TRAFFIC STARTED TO MOVE! ben sprinted back to the car, and we crept through the grisly accident scene-- car pieces scattered along the shoulder, glass caked on the pavement, twisted cars, trucks and a minivan without a sliding door still stuck in the median.

We barely had time to gawk, though, because we were so excited to be going home at 11:40-- 9 hours after we stopped in the fog.

We were really lucky, since the only thing I have to write about is our hunger (easily fixed with a midnight meal, which really appealed to Harry, as did his bedtime routine-- routine, only so cool at 1:30 am), the yuckiness of peeing outside, and the kindness of stranded strangers (although, DORF, no need to waste your battery sharing Pantera with those around you, really).
The fog

Harry ate his shoes, a good snack in a pinch

He also passed the time by spitting water on himself

which he thought was hilarious

"Hewo? Hewo? "

Here we are looking annoyed when we thought we had 2 hours of car time! Ha!



I am actually NOT stuck on my dissertation right now, so maybe more posts later, but probably, just more chapter 4 for me!

Room Makeover Stage 1

As you may have gathered from all of my excessive holiday posts, Harry was good this year and we needed some place to store all the evidence. Voila! The toy room was born. All we did was move my boxes and boxes of files to the basement (and I file like a crazy person, by the way. A completely nonsensical and insane filing system. We may as well have thrown the files out because I will never be able to find anything in there-- unless I can somehow channel the brand of crazy I was feeling when I crammed those folders full of documents and shoved them in willy nilly plastic tubs only to have rhetoric journals rub shoulders with 1999's tax return and a receipt for Michael Stars t-shirts I bought 6 years ago when I was really into that-- and those things have shoulders?). Also, we got rid of things like floor samples and trash.

So now it looks like this only not so blurry

And this

Although most of the toys are not jumbled up like that sad corner-- they are in cute bins like these that Harry can drag into his room. Or just dump over in the closet. Whatev.

Which gives him room to eat his basketball hoop.

And play with his hamburger Helper hands on his new bed (actually, those are mine-- they're awesome for drying dishes-- Harry stole them from the laundry pile).


He has yet to sleep in this bed. He doesn't believe us when we tell him it's a bed. He laughs and says "No," in the same tone he uses when we tell him his boot is a mitten, a banana is a phone, or a tupperware container is a hat.

Also, we're going to paint the room-- we have to, see, because we spackled a bunch of holes in the wall and then realized that we didn't have anymore paint. We always do stupid crap like that. What color, you ask? Blue probably. Sigh. Nothing like painting a blue room blue. And bedding-- can't find any I like-- any suggestions?

We'll keep you posted on the redo-- we're taking a small break because we can all live with spackle dots and we need new art.

Resolved: Eat More

Not me-- god no. Although I am currently eating chocolate brownie fudge ice cream with a soup spoon and looking at my iPhoto archives and saying, "I was so thin before I got pregnant." I have heard that it's the second baby that really ruins your body, and I am starting to believe it. I work out 5-ish days a week and still I am getting fatter by the second. And not in the stomach, really. It's my hips and thighs. Wonder if the baby's in there...

Anyway, Harry's resolution is to eat more, as evidenced by these pictures:
Look at the way he's eying my bacon.



We were at breakfast on New Year's Day (at like 7:30, the earliest I have ever gone out to breakfast. Then we went to Super Target for groceries-- nobody there, either. So there are advantages to having a super lame NYE. And by super lame, I mean we watched the end of the first season of 24-- the first season-- that's like 5 season ago-- we are so behind-- also Nina was the mole? No way-- ate tons of desserts, cheese, and appetizers from Whole Foods, and went to bed at 1, which was so late for us. When Harry woke up demanding to play with his new kitchen at 6:20, we thought we were going to die, which is why we decided to suck it up and go get some food. And coffee).

Hey-- want to see a video of Harry eating? He ate all of my bacon, a fruit cup, an entire container of cream cheese, half a bagel, some of Ben's omelet, and a blueberry pancake. Maybe he's pregnant.

(click on the underlined Harry Eats Breakfast link, and you will be directed to Vimeo, and you can watch the video. Unless you have Vista, suckers. Also, why the hell didn't the video just embed? I clicked embed? Very confused.)

Harry Eats Breakfast from sarah on Vimeo.

This Post Has Many Titles

Even Though the Blogging World Has Clearly Moved on From Christmas, I Haven't

Proof That Dissertations Don't Write Themselves, as I am Currently Paying Harry's Babysitter for This Time Away From Home and Blogging, But my Draft Remains Stalled Mid-Chapter

My Expensive Afternoon: Hi, Honey, I also Stopped at Motherhood on the Way Here

Panera: Home of the Cinnamon Roll the Size of My Head. Yum.


I think that sums it up. So, I used all my words on titles. Here's one more barrage of Christmas, then I will officially accept that a new year has begun. I have already come up with a title for the year, too.

2008: Yet Another Year in Which I will Not Graduate. What Will I Do This Year Besides Bitch? Turn 30. 30. My. God.

It's kind of wordy.

Even though it was December 29th, Harry brought his Christmas spirit.

Yes. We all have Crazy Stripe sweaters from Gap. We stopped at Panera on the way to the burbs (yes. I know I have a problem, and I will deal with it after I have this baby, and I am trying to scrape roughly 30 pounds of mayonnaise off of each thigh), and one of the cashiers said "Oh, you're the one who has a matching sweater with your husband-- that's so cute!" I told Ben she said that when I got back to our table, and he shouted "Oh FUCK! I forgot we match," which I gotta say, was a tad bit more embarrassing than our matching, especially since we were sitting right next to this family who had the cutest little 6 year old. I know she was six because she told her dad, "I can get my own drink. I am six, and I can do anything," which totally reminded me of a certain someone I met in first grade, who assured me that I didn't have to worry because she knew EVERYTHING. (And no, Katie, I will not let that go. Ever.)

As you might imagine, Harry was a hug help assembling his shopping cart.

Harry got a sled, and he made his grandma and grandpa haul him all around the house. For 2 days. It was too cute to resist, though. He'd plunk himself down and say thank you before the ride commenced. No outdoor sledding yet because it's a high of 9 here (has been for days). Don't worry. It's supposed to be in the fifties this weekend, and our 35 inches of snow will melt in a flood of biblical proportions. Either way, outdoor sledding unlikely. On a related note, have you ever tried to sled down the stairs?

Harry is in love with this computer that his Aunt Jen and Uncle Maurice got him. He loves it in a Gary-like way.

See? All the practicing we did with our camera timer really paid off. There's another shot where everyone looks brighter, but you can see my dorky socks, so I couldn't use it. You'll have to take my word for it, I looked cute in an 80s sort of way with my Uggs on, but damn, those things are HOT (not like sexy).

Awwww. We kicked Harry and max out of the picture because Harry was crying.

These balls were a hit. Except with Maurice, who was clearly calculating how many hours a day he would have to spend cleaning them up and how many pieces of furniture they could wedge themselves under. Answers: As much time/furniture as you have, but they are really fun to fling at your spouse's head.

Harry in his grandpa's slippers ("hippas")

Harry sensed that the tree wuld come down soon and indulged in his favorite no no of the season one more time.

Even though they are still in the parallel play phase, Harry and Max did play near enough to each other to cast furtive and suspicious glances at one another.

Seriously, the love of computer. Next thing you know, he is going to go to stores and stare at shelves for hours, stop six times at the gas station before taking a 12-mile road trip, or begin every trip with a "choke burger." Oh yeah! Happy belated 60th birthday, Dad! Also, see my dorky socks?

That's the kind of behavior that gets you ejected from the picture, young man!

Look! We're pregnant! Again! At the same time! Again!

Okay, I know Harry just got so many toys that we had to convert our extra walk-in closet to his toy room (more about that soon), but I need to get him one of these (this one is strictly a grandma's house toy) because the microphone really works, and I want more than anything in the world to spend my spare time teaching him Volare and My Way.

The next morning, he woke up and went straight for the computer. Then he spent hours emailing us YouTube clips, pictures of westies in Halloween costumes, and Bob and Tom recordings.

Merry Christmas!

And now back to my chapter, which is fascinating. I am looking at clergy support for Planned Parenthood, and I continue to be surprised and delighted by the archival documents Jon found for me at Smith College. He also took 30 pages of really good notes that have been invaluable to this chapter. Hey, Jon, look forward to a major acknowledgment in a book that nobody will ever read! Heck, you'll probably get your own copy-- autographed, even. On one hand, the information is exactly what you would expect to find-- clergy support for Planned Parenthood hinged on the idea of sex within marriage and the notion that family planning helped make families better by ensuring that parents could raise their children "properly" with the "correct" spiritual and financial resources. Unpacking the words in quotation marks is where it gets interesting. On the other hand, the information is surprising because we don't usually think of Judeo-Christian morality and abortion in the same sentence, but Planned Parenthood has always linked the two and found plenty of clergy support for the idea. So, yeah. And I'm switching to decaf, so maybe McLovin will settle down in there!

Quarantined Christmas, Part II

It totally looks like Toys R Us vomited in our living room. Y'all will probably have an elevated lead level just from looking at these pictures. But, here's the rest of our quiet Christmas Day.
Look at all our trash! We would normally recycle all the paper and cardboard (which is paper, duh), but our recycle bin is crammed full, and the city won't collect anything not in the bin-- bottom line-- we need a bigger bin-- I am going to call about it today. I got new planner to put these important kinds of calls in. It's pink, which is scary and exciting for me, since I have carried the exact same red planner since 2004 (well, I get a new one every year, but you get the idea). So 2008 is pink-- lots of changes this year. And yeah-- it took a new planner for me to predict that, not the impending birth of our second son.


Just like Hop on Pop says: "DAY PLAY. We play all day." Unlike the corresponding page, we did not fight all night. Instead, we watched one of the movies from Ben's stocking and passed out in a pile of chocolate santas.


We definitely wore our jammies all day. A couple of times, Harry lifted his shirt and asked "Dessed?" But we assured him he didn't have to get dressed- which seemed to bother him. Maybe he is just naturally cleaner than we are.

Here's me and my big belly. Also our gifts piled on the kitchen table-- not because we didn't like them but because a certain someone with chocolate fingers kept touching them. He totally stole Ocean's 13 and my new Britney CD (Shut up. I love her) and squirreled them away in his tent, And since piling things on the table is our main method of impromptu Harry-proofing, what are we going to do when he can REACH the table?

So, Harry's tent. We got it partially because we thought he'd like it and partially because we thought it would look cute on Christmas morning holding all his hard-to-wraps. Harry lurves the tent, but all he wants to do is cram stuff in it, throw himself inside, nd scream for us to close the flaps ("COSE"). Then he sits inside for an awkwardly long time. He gets out by standing up and walking until the velcro pops open. Then he waits a few minutes and repeats the whole thing. Seriously, his constant requests for "Bup?" are being replaced by demands of "COSE."



Finally, around 7, we let Harry get "dessed" in pajamas. Here he is after bath, snicker snicker.

We're still sick, and I am calling the doctor today for me and Harry. Also, I now have a throbbing pain in my jaw, which I hope is somehow related to my cold and not a tooth issue because seriously? A toothache, too? Not cool.

Quarantined Christmas

On Christmas Eve, we planned on going to an interactive children's service at the crunchy granola hippy Unitarian church we like, but we stopped at Starbucks on the way and realized we were way too sick to be spreading our kind of love in public.

Instead, we came home and played with the timer on our camera.

We were so tired from the exertion that Harry had to read his own damn bedtime story. Upside down.


Then when Harry went to bed, we put out all the gifts, and we set up his cute little tent and filled it with all the crap we couldn't figure out how to wrap. Then I spent way too much time and effort trying to assemble a castle out of cardboard bricks. As you can see, the bricks almost bested me.


But I totally outsmarted them in the end-- silly bricks!

Harry didn't know what the heck to think when he woke up in the morning, even though we have been reading the Night Before Christmas every night since December 1st. We spent a bit of time right off the bat trying to explain to Harry that his hobby horse was not a mop or a guitar


He loved the Fannie May chocolate sucker he found his his stocking (and the one he found in mine, the little thief) and the mimmen he got to hang on the tree

I don't know what was going on here, but it looks intense, huh?

We made pull apart cinnamon rolls, and they spread to ridiculous heights in the oven-- here I am looking surprised and a little alarmed byt their mutant growth.

Oh. Good thing I put that castle together.

As you can tell by the heavenly beam of light, this ride-on dump truck was Harry's personal Christmas miracle. Beep, beep.

Also? The sit and spin in the perfect height for staring slack-jawed at the Disney Parade. Oh shit-- TV before 2, and it's DISNEY??



Annnnd, I have so many more pictures, BUT Blogger is the slowest ever, and I still feel completely crappy and have even less patience than usual, so I will post more later.

We were sad, of course, to spend the whole weekend alone, but it was also really sweet. This family will never just be the three of us again, you know?