My mom and step-father are keeping a blog about building their own house in rural Texas. It's starting to get REALLY interesting. Check it out here.
Aidan's back thing finally stopped after a few nights. Because he seemed to itch at it sometimes, we treated it like a skin problem, sprinkling corn starch and lotion on it, but there was never anything visible. If we had been either at Steve's mom's house or upstate, I would have taken him to a chiropractor, but I don't know anyone around here and there are all kinds of chiropractors. Anyway, he hasn't complained about it for several nights now thank goodness.
My nausea got much worse for almost a week. It is doing that, in waves. Sometimes I think, this must be what it feels like for those women who say that they just felt a little nauseous sometimes. Sometimes, everything that I put into my mouth is revolting and I want to die. I go from managing my food intake so that I don't throw up to managing it so that when I do have to throw up, there's no food there.
It started to get better yesterday, and last night we all went out to eat. The only thing on the menu that looked bland enough for me was fish and chips. I am a vegetarian - the kind that doesn't eat fish. It's funny how everyone at the table was trying to talk me out of the fish and chips. I knew I wouldn't be able to eat any of the vegetarian choices. My brother-in-law said, "You're pregnant. Eat whatever you want." I ate fish and chips. I ate every last bite and I felt great afterwards. It was by far the biggest meal I've eaten in a long time. Blessings on the fish.
I've stopped going on outings with the family. I no longer go to the beach. I can't be independent enough, and there were just too many times that I came home gagging because my stomach had been too empty for too long. I am a couch potato now and I'm letting everybody else take care of Aidan. For a while I was feeling sad because I was missing out on the vacation, but now I feel lucky that I can be this way and not worry about Aidan. It's a huge luxury and I am appreciating it. Plus, I'm getting lots of alone time to write and make websites.
Does the first trimester end at 12 weeks? If so, I'm only two weeks away. I figured the due date is February 15th.
Aidan has finally started to "potty train". We got him going by letting him pee outside in the grass. That's really the only place that he wants to pee now and we had an awful incident at a restaurant where he snuck off of a porch and dropped trousers in the grass. It might have been cute if he had only peed. It was awful. He will use the toilet too, but only with some heavy coaxing. For some reason he just hates it, and it's not a fear of the flushing because sometimes he will flush it while he's sitting on it. He wants to wear his big boy underwear now more than he hates the toilet. There are lots of accidents, but it's something. If we are out and he says that he wants to go home, that means that he needs to use the bathroom. His cousin, who is six months younger than him, is at a similar stage of all this and has been a great influence. They admire each other's big kid underwear.
We're here in Montauk for one more week and it is so nice to be here. It will be hard to leave.
John Lee Supertaster should have been about a pregnant woman.
The herb farmers backed out of the duplex idea. They aren't ready financially, and we appreciate their clarity about that.
That could leave us looking for a rental again, but the thought of this is hard for us to swallow.
About a month before we left, I had a conversation with my yoga teacher after class about what it was like living in community. She lives at Pumkin Hollow, a Theosophical retreat center. It turns out that its not much of a community, there are only 3 or 4 households there full time. Two of those are single person households, none of them include kids. It's mostly a retreat center. Our conversation came around to the fact that they need a maintenace person. The maintenance person gets a HOUSE.
This might be a perfect situation for us, and I've been trying to get in touch with my yoga teacher about it since we moved in June, but I've had no luck. I finally got through to her yesterday. She was pretty negative about the whole thing. Apparently they had an agreement with someone a year ago to take the job, but there was a lack of clarity about the finances - it fell apart at the last minute and was painful for everyone involved. The Pumpkin Hollow people seemed to feel like it was partially because this man had a family to support, and the economics of the position would be better suited to a single person. When I stubbornly refused to be put off by this, she gave me the phone number of the man who would do the hiring
So I called him and he was very receptive! He initially thought that I was the one who wanted to be the maintenance person. So then I explained that it was my husband and that he has experience doing painting and roofing and carpentry. If he had any reservations about trying out a family again, they were overwhelmed by the need for a maintenance person.
The pay is very small, but includes some perks like food from the garden, a stipend for Steve's truck and health insurance for Steve. We're thinking that if we can negotiate his time commitment to them to be 20 hours/week, it would be just as good as a traditional situation. It would also give us the opportunity to sort of try out community living. We are going to meet with the guy on July 31st.
Aidan woke up from his nap yesterday complaining that his arm and then his back hurt. He often has a limb go to sleep on him, so I treated it as such, but it went on and on. Eventually it was just his back that he was complaining about. Steve told him the story of Peter and the Wolf because he thought he was faking it. I thought that this was sort of cruel because he had never faked anything like that before and his pain seemed so sincere to me.
But then I took him into a room to nurse him and he seemed to recover strangely quickly. An ice cream sandwich had a similar effect. I started to think that Steve was onto something, but then we got him dressed and went out to dinner. Aidan is usually fairly good with meals, but he refused to eat a single thing or even to sit in his chair. When we went to sleep last night the back pain started again and it went on ALL NIGHT LONG.
He didn't do anything to hurt his back, and he can't describe the pain. I became very impatient at one point and started telling him that there was nothing wrong with his back and that he couldn't nurse anymore because there was no more milk. Nursing had consisted of him latching on and then writhing about with my tender breast in his mouth. Steve compassionately took him into the living room and turned the TV on until 3am. I guess he came in and fell asleep then, but was awake and writhing again from 4-5:30 am. I was more sensitive this time, having gotten at least a little sleep.
Anyone have any insight into this? He seemed to wake up fine. If it's physical it's disturbing and if it's emotional it's disturbing.
Driving into Montauk late at night, in a thick fog, is a familiar part of the vacation ritual. This year, we are staying in the same house as last year and the year before that, so finding the house isn't too much of a problem, as long as we have the confidence to cross an intersection that we can't see the other side of. But on the way we recall trying to find unfamiliar houses in years past - the stress and danger of the fog and the dark.
Steve's family has been renting a house by the week out here for about twelve consecutive years. I have been coming out here with them for all six of the years that I have known Steve, making it one of the most regular things that I have ever done in my life. Montauk marks the years by girlfriends and boyfriends, the ages of the kids, births and deaths: the year Jim brought Monica, the year I was enormously pregnant with Aidan, the year (only just this last one) that Steve's father was ill and died.
Montauk is on the very tip of Long Island, thrust way out into the Atlantic Ocean. It is absolutely a vacation community, it is much too inaccessible for any more practical purpose. Many years ago there was a big military base here called Fort Hero, but it was abandoned years ago. Otherwise there are fisherman here, but I think that the economics of fishing makes them a relatively rare breed.
From where Steve's mom lives, about fifteen minutes from Queens, it is a two and a half hour drive to get here. One and a half hours of it is highway, but the highway ends when you hit the Hamptons. It takes another hour (under mild driving/traffic conditions) to get to Montauk along Route 27. The town along the way feature the most astonishing displays of wealth: a Sotheby's real estate office, an outdoor furniture store that seems to sell exclusively teak furniture, exclusive restaurants with cryptic names and parking lots overflowing with luxury vehicles. Amagansett is the last town before Napeague Stretch.
Napeague Stretch is basicly a big sandbar that holds Montauk to the rest of Long Island. There aren't any towns along the stretch, but a couple of odd roadside clam bars that are often overflowing in spite of the broad expanse of nothingness. There are also a couple of condominiums and houses built on the ocean side of the stretch, insanely extravagant for the fact that every few decades, a hurricane wipes out the entire thing.
Next comes Montauk, which is amazingly distinct from the Hamptons that come before it. Though there are wealthy people in Montauk, it doesn't touch the pretentiousness of the Hamptons and there are plenty of regular, middle class people who vacation here and even who live here year round.
The first year that I came out here I had trouble understanding the cult like devotion that Steve's family had toward their annual Montauk vacation. There's very little to do here, save go to the beach, which is beautiful, but often rocky with chilling waters. Steve's enormous family, sometimes 20 people at a time, share a two to three bedroom house with one bathroom. Steve's siblings who are single NEVER get a real bed, couples often share a single bed. Smart couples bring a tent, but the blazing morning sun drives them out of that arrangement at an early hour.
I realize now that I don't come here for the beach, but rather for the comraderie of Steve's family. Aidan gets to spend time with his cousins, who are wonderful. We cook huge meals together and late nights are dedicated to Scrabble. We talk. Casual baseball games are played. We sit around and do nothing, sometimes at the beach.
Montauk has natural charms also. It is sometimes five to ten degrees cooler here than it is at home, which is a tremendous blessing during the inevitable July heatwave. Right on the water at the beach is even cooler. The air everywhere smells of honeysuckle and blooming hedges. There are bunnies at dusk.