crystal vulva

so the new roman catholic cathedral in my city just got dedicated yesterday. no, that's not me in the red ao dai or the nun frock. during the taking of this photo and the dedication of the cathedral , i was 100 feet away walking along the lake on my way to the cathedral to bourgeois green living--Whole Foods.

i think its interesting in this era of populist evangelical born-again undo-the-constitutional-separation-between-church-and-state, that the roman catholic church chooses to name their newest Cathedral "Christ the Light" rather than the usual array of saints and the ever popular Mary of the Sacred Bleeding Heart and its various iterations. (and let's not even get into how they got the $190 million to build after it shelled out hundreds of millions to pay the victims of priest child molestation). i guess they're not immune to the X-n zeitgeist and wanted to assert their own affiliation to christianity... but then the cathedral looks like a vulva.

see, i called it years ago that the cathedral design was vulvular. i say it on a near daily basis when we pass by on the way to and from home. and here's the proof to my puddin'.

ah you say, but it looks like a fish. not just any fish but the tilapia that christ himself ate and that has become the symbol of christianity. indeed, this article about the cathedral explains the design concept thusly:

More than 1,000 sheets of glass will cloak a skeleton of Douglas fir, forming a luminous 12-story dome inspired by the fish shape known as the vesica piscis, an ancient symbol of Christianity. (LA Times 9.2.2007)

ah, i say, and there it is--a Vulva. an exalted yoni in glass & wood. and there ain't no contradiction in that. for those of you who aren't familiar with the symbology of the sacred feminine in the pre-christian mother goddess multi-millineal timespan, the diamond or marquise shape is an ancient symbol of you guessed it, the Vulva--the true origins of human Life. when christianity sought to convert the masses of goddess-lovin' pagans, it co-opted many of the holy days & symbols along the way. and in time, the symbol of the Mother Goddess' yoni became the fish symbol of Christ, and the Mother Goddess herself became Mary, mother of god.

there you have it oaklanders, a lakeside, monumental, sacred crystal vulva nestled amongst the steel & concrete phalluses of downtown commerce.

and can i tell you, that's the biggest yoni i have ever seen! true story!

p.s. while i'm on the topic of female genitalia, may i just say for those of you fond of binary analogies, the female equivalent of the penis (which is a sexual and urinary organ) is not the vagina (internal muscular canal, no urine passeth this way). that is just anatomically incomparable. but, you protest, we like to be reductive and teach our children to say "a boy has a penis and a girl has a [singular noun]". nope you are wrong. if you are speaking of external genitalia the anatomically correct term is vulva. if you are speaking to reproductive ability, that would be uterus or ovaries as the case may be.

p.p.s. and while i'm talking about catholics, (the now Monseigneur) Father Dennis is a racist! While the presiding priest at Holy Spirit, he hated the vietnamese parishoners and called me and my friend Ha "you barbarians!" when he caught us trying to sneak into the hall with the secret method passed down kid-to-kid to use the phone (no vandalism, honest).

yarnage

alot has happened twixt then and now. too much to recount in the respite i have while bébé is snuggled on my bosom in a sling dreaming of bú (sometimes i can hear her little lips smacking away, other times i have to towel off the drool from my clavicle).

i am planning to blog about her birth by and by. elevator version is: all natural drug-free homebirth; 24 hours in labor; just over an hour of pushing; her hand was right alongside her face (gave me a 2nd degree tear which i chose not to get stitched. healed up nicely. thank the goddess! your yoni is never the same tho); she opened her eyes and started mewling as soon as her mouth emerged, even before her body was even born! she was lifting her head from the get-go, no small feat for a creature whose head practically weighed more than her body. the girl is feisty, headstrong and determined. hmm, wonder who she gets that from? yes, there are birth photos & video, and no, i don't plan on posting them to the blog. my yoni would rather be un-notorious. as i said to the boys hurling beads at me while hollering "show us your tits" in new orleans during mardi gras while T scavenged for lagniappes, "my mama raised me better than that!"

for now, i have found my cosmic yarnage twin--except i am infinitely less skilled at yarn craftage. if you don't have a yarn stash in the eaves, nooks and crannies of your house and if you don't have a profile on ravelry.com, you will not get this. seriously. stop reading.

the morning i went into labor, i bought an "amish" washing machine (bought from that company but hey, it wasn't just a punchline, the online amish store does indeed exist, and has a cool wringer, and who would have guessed that i have an affinity for the pennsylvania deutsch? it's the apocalyptic survivalist-cum-granddaughter of my grandparents in me. what can i say, this may make me white, but i love kitchen gadgets nd household sundries even/especially non-electric ones. i just got a foley food mill earlier this week. now, what can i mill?), 8 skeins of ooh so pretty felting wool (in twins) and two hanks of organic cotton yarn. on sale natch. now my yarn treasure box is overfilling. since it was online, i wasn't able to employ the basic techniques of a Yarn Collector however, i did admire the ooh so pretty felting yarn for months & months, would make rationalizations, put it in my online shopping basket, would be rational, delete it, and would come up with more rationalizations, replace it, and so on and so forth, before succumbing to imminent-labor-onset-major-project hormones and decisively purchased them for forthcoming, small but IMPORTANT projects beyond my skill level which i will diligently and heuristically plunge into. sometime. in the future. when i magically have more free time. projects to be added to my lifetime to-do list which i keep misplacing. now what did i buy them for? it's the post-birth hormones and sleep deprivation that make me forget.

my beloved T-sten doesn't understand why i keep buying more yarn (in singles and duos) or rather how the yarn mysteriously multiplies (duh, it's with the dust bunnies. everyone knows how fecund they are) but we've made a tacit agreement about each other's creative hobbies that he won't ask about the yarnage and i won't ask about the photog accoutrements.

let's chalk it up to another stupid power, my hoarding of nifty household gadgets & yarn. if only i could put this on my resume.

fifteen

i was a trifle disconcerted last month by the idea, but discussing with our midwife Selena my moon cycle journal, LMP, spin, factoring in my bà ngoại's stroke, the womb blessing, my emotional/spiritual state at the probable times of ovulation & conception, and the location of my fundus (top of the uterus), i'm not as far along as previously thought. it had thrown me for a loop earlier because i had gotten so invested in the progressive week-by-week pregnancy/baby descriptions. i surprised myself how much of the pregnancy i was still externalizing to some western "authoritative" scientific text in spite of eschewing at least some of the unnecessary interventions of technology. shows you how much we internalize the western production of knowledge and the cartesian body-mind binary. i do have a cerebral tendency. earlier this year, i saw my sister's acupuncturist-chiropractor Dr. Dawn and she diagnosed my pulse and told me that i live in my head too much. she also surmised that i was the youngest child, and independent/headstrong/slightly rebellious. that wasn't from my pulse though, that was from the tattoos.

so now we collectively estimate that i'm 15 weeks along, making our due date March 1st. (this means Liz, that i wasn't pregnant yet when we saw you at Yan's 100 days.) Selena suggested i consider continuing hypnotherapy with Nancy (herself a former midwife) since emotional state profoundly influences birth and Anabelle's anniversary may jumpstart or stall labor. but between my out-of-pocket costs--prenatal bellydancing, tai chi class, going to chiro, childbirth preparation class, baby CPR certification, acupuncture co-pays, maternity clothes (!) and compensating the midwife (who is worth so much more than we can afford)--we can't afford it.

though my Uterus has obligingly cooperated by moving to the center of my abdomen, off of my herniated disk/sciatic nerve, she still is tilted way back. Selena palpated and faintly heard/felt bé's heartbeat with a fetascope. i couldn't hear it for my own pulse and T. thought he might have heard/felt it too. so Selena lent us the fetascope to try at home til we hear it since i don't want to use the doppler (a smaller portable ultrasound device).

we met Sarah, our midwife's assistant and our childbirth prep instructor, and her 6 month old daughter Samaya and her husband Daoud (sp?), who is Cham Vietnamese. as it turns out, his sister works for a sister-organization of mine. small small world. have i mentioned how loving our midwife is? our birth team is coming together and it's comforting to feel the relationship is grounded in community.

last night, we hung out with T's family (ba mẹ mợ 2 má 4--just got here from VN again--anh chị họ) and i was happy to confirm that chị Trinh, his cousin Hoàng's spouse, is very close to me in pregnancy. yay! somemama to share with! she's 17 weeks along and her due date is mid-February. we traded some pregnancy stories. they recently moved from Union City to down the block from Trung's parents. in addition to having more family in walking distance, it helps to normalize pregnancy with his parents. there haven't been many babies in this generation just yet, just T's mini-me who is 10 now. so it was a happy time. and i got to hear lots of T. & siblings' babyhood stories and discovered the origins of his affiinity for thịt kho chuối chín|pork stew with ripe bananas. and má 4 kept squeezing my forearm in the way vinamese female elders do she was so happy. we introduced the idea that we have a doctor (sorta) and a bà đỡ đễ or bà mụ|midwife (also means the Goddess believed to give shape to and protect babies. cool!). we haven't decided yet how much to reveal, though i'd like to avoid more anxiety on their part, i'm disinclined to lie. at least, so far my má who will be there for the homebirth has been accepting of all our decisions especially b/c i take care to ground them in our cultural-historical context and her own experience with natural birth (bro & sis) and medicated birth (me)--though she did scoff a little about going diaperless at least in the US context. it seems that his parents would be receptive and their thinking isn't all that far off from our own, but doctors have a social significance and it may be hard for them to accept that we aren't going that route... we'll see.

apparently the acceptable mốt|môde for Vinamese pregnancies is the muumuu or the empire-waisted muumuu that btw is hella not flattering and makes you look far larger (which is what chị Trinh was wearing, so she looked way bigger than me for all that she is only 2 weeks ahead). and it makes sense that in the tropics you would want to wear something very loose fitting since you are generating your own thermal nuclear source of heat. but we're not in the tropics and the weather has turned cool at night. and, i don't own any muumuus except for the A-line housedress my mama just gave me. [ i recently tried it on for the first time. it's a muumuu. sigh.] so everyone except mợ 2 & má 4 commented on my fitted tshirt & pants. (fitted clothes have the optical illusion of making you seem smaller than the empire waisted loose waist ones.) so i had to show each one of them the elastic waistband to convince them that it was maternity and comfortable. and still they felt i should really be wearing a muumuu. later chị Trinh asked me where i got my pants. so at least the other bà bầu doesn't think muumuus are de rigeur.

i know. this blog has become less sardonic, ironic, pop culture-tinged commentary and more pregnancy journal. at least i'm still sardonic & ironic about the whole thing.

preggie snacks

though i don't snack so much as have a small meal (hence second breakfast and second lunch, i do on occasion snack. patics when there is no fridge/kitchen/restaurant in sight). ergo, the best pregnancy snacks ever:

• seaweed--contains iron, folic acid and loads of minerals similar in composition to the human body and it flushes out lead & mercury! i love the toasted korean kind with sesame oil & salt. my favorite brand "Well-being" is sprinkled with black sesame. and y'know, the darker the berry, the more nutritious the juice. the toasting kills some nutrients, but it's still tasty.
  
• bananas with almond butter and maybe some honey drizzled over--some protein, carbs & fiber to get me through the night. that elvis knew a thing about it. and this month he is sposedly 30 years dead.
  
• broiled bananas--it's like fried bananas without the fried, add some coconut sorbet and mmm! who needs to make a run to the Thai restaurant. or some grated dark chocolate spinkled over. yumyum!
  
• macadamia nuts--protein & iron to tide you over in between the second breakfast and the first lunch. i'm over walnuts right now. i first trimestered them into untastiness. no macadamia i will never tire of. i used to pick macadamia from the bush on the side of the house on Piikoi crack'em open with rocks and eat 'em raw. i so missed the flavor that my mom once pulled over and asked a random neighbor if she could pick their macadamias for me. yup, i love being the baby of the family.
  
• mangoes--preferably green with nước mấm đường|fish sauce & sugar OR muối ớt|salt & fresh chile. if they're ripe, then eaten godzilla-style: with skin on, slice mangoes parallel to seed. leave skin on and cut the flesh into cubes without breaking the skin (like an avocado). the victorious sibling gets to eat the best part, the seed. take the cubed slice in the skin and flip it inside out and eat them like godzilla eating all the buildings in downtown Tokyo. reminds me of my childhood on Piikoi Street picking all the green mangoes to my parents perpetual dismay since they preferred it ripe.
• almond butter & raspberry preserves on rudy's organic multi-grain spelt bread--i'm on this wheat & dairy-free diet for my allergies (it's been great! no allergies this spring). and this brand and kind of spelt bread is the only thing that doesnt taste like sawdust or uber-healthy brick bread. peanuts actually being ground legumes absorb soil toxins like a sponge, so almonds are better for you in addition to being good for you. this is my there's nothing in the fridge i want to eat and yet i'm hungry option. i haven't gotten tired of it yet thankfully.
  
• coconut juice--what's there to say? it's like a sports drink only au naturel choc full of calcium & iron and minerals. keep an eye on this as the next new natural health trend.
  
• tamarind--this was our favorite movie snack. forget popcorn. crack open the thin shell, peel the fibers and it's mouthwateringly tart and only slightly sweet. only chile could make this better. this is why i love mexican candy.
  
• dandelion tea/infusion--this pretty weed has loads of calcium folic acid & iron (more than spinach!) and it helps to flush your liver (dee pehl eez in dee rirver). infusion is more concentrated than tea. it's easy to do and its a damn sight cheaper to buy in bulk than to buy pre-bagged tea.
  
• raspberry leaf tea/infusion--tones your uterus and iron galore! hmm, shall we say pussy galore?
  

the land of maternity

i've gained approx 5 lbs and 2 inches on my bust, waist & hips. va-va-va-voom. i need to eat every 2-3 hours and i still have to pee a whole lot. oh and i'm mental toast by 9.30pm. i still fight it like i am 7 trying to finish a book under the covers with a flashlight waaayyy after bedtime, but i'm mentally useless. let's not even bring up what's going on downtown.

though i look relatively un-pregnant in the mornings (in my own estimation since everyone else seems to think they can tell. maybe its me knitting baby booties that's the dead giveaway? or is it just my "glow"?), by day's end through the effluvia of digestion, anatomical positionality of my intestines, and the gassiness that accompanies pregnancy (no one tells you about the gassiness!), i look like a very pregnant lima bean and waddle a wee bit. in other words, everything is still functioning like it did B.P.|Before Pregnant. i spose i could suck it in, but i'm pregnant and my ego has allowed me to let go of that particular vanity. but don't think i haven't noticed all the random strangers staring at my belly. or at least it seems that way.

i've been able to get away with the rubberband trick of wearing my jeans unbuttoned and partially unzipped with only a rubberband to hold it up, with a maternity band or a long tank as cover. but it's getting to that unsightly, uncomfortable point. we're talking muffin top and pressure on the bladder/womb. plus it's summer. i spose i could just wear sweatpants to work, but it's summer. i did get some great hand-me-downs from Lily, but they're mostly fall-winter clothes and it's y'know, summer.

so this saturday T&i ventured maternity clothes shopping. harder than it sounds. apparently all the maternity stores are in Marin or Walnut Creek well over 25 minutes away (may not sound like much to non-Bay Area folks, but that's a different county, the post-meltdown MacArthur Maze & the San Rafael toll bridge *or* the Caldecott tunnel in traffic so add on an additional 30 minutes!). y'know, the burbs where apparently people actually procreate. so we ended up in the small way way back section surrounded by newborn clothes at a local ghetto Old Navy which has dirt cheap sweatshop maternity clothes that are relatively stylish on this side of the millenia (meaning it's not above the belly farmer pants). because why would i pay more than $20 for something i'm only going to wear for a few months?

okay, so maternity clothes suck. you can either look like you are trying to hide your belly like a modern version of some victorian shame (or in my adolescent reality, the highschool cheerleader in denial. i knew a lot of those. my high school if we had not already established, was 'tween the barrio & the base and a third the girls were knocked up by senior year.) or you can look like you are trying to show off your belly like you're any number of knocked-up blond celebrity.

and at this stage (i'm between 13 to 15 weeks depending), you're a little screwed. you're not showing enough to wear the huge belly accomodating maternity clothes and you're not fitting into non-pregnant clothes. factor into account, seasonal needs, undergarments, and you get the complicated idea. oh, and somemommy please explain to me what a maternity bra is and what is the modern miraculous feat of adjustable engineering that will enable me to wear this for the next 5 months without chafing? (no one tells you about the chafing!)

and what's with all the ruching? maternity clothes are ruched up the yin-yang. i didn't like ruching B.P. (does nothing for my curves but make me look stocky), so why the heo, would i like it now?

so i got some khaki cargo capris that are only somewhat odd fitting (Old Navy is anything but consistent) with an underside-of-the-belly, wide elastic waistband (great for those multiple pee breaks. great invention that elastic.). but i spose i'll "grow" into it and long tanks still provide great coverage as per usual. and also some narrow elastic, below-the-belly "double waistband" brown pants that fit great on my hiney, are not bootleg (does anyone do straight leg any more?) and are only a little snug on my thighs (my perpetual dilemna since i got thick peasant legs but i'm used to that by now).

it's great to take your babydaddy maternity shopping btw. when i asked his opinion, T peered at my thighs close up and very helpfully said "weo, hopefully your thighs won't get any bigger."

no, i didn't not kick him, though he was well within range and deserved it. he got an amused, incredulous look and when he realized what he said, he tried to smother me with kisses and hugs and "beautiful-mother-of-my-child" platitudes. he's a regular babydaddy comedy routine. so i promised/threatened to broadcast his faux pas to all my girlfriends and let the ladies have at him. boys, shake your heads in disbelief and vow never to say such things when your babymomma is having a my-clothes-don't-fit-me-and-maternity-clothes-make-me-look-ginormous moment.

i just need to figure out how to milk this for all its worth.

so, this is my exciting life as a petry dish for procreation. ooh, time for second breakfast.

Stupid Power redux

okay, i still cant remember my pre-G7 SanD revelation (alas that has gone the way of the Hottentot Venus. obscured in the annals of HIStory, but her disembodied vulva floats in a prurient jar of formaldehyde on a forgotten shelf in an musty Museum of Man only to be found by Stephan J. Gould and revived in an essay about race, gender & western eugenics.) but i came up with another one.

i think my stupid power would have to be the ability to write long convoluted emails using obscure literary, historical and pop culture references.

ms. kyung jin (or Lady K--her airwave ego) adds "and to turn the obscure references into a long diatribe fully equipped with a plethora of tangents that eventually relate to the initial obscure reference."

i think we can all agree that it's a) useless though entertaining, at least to me, and b) could, potentially, under the right circumstances, at the last minute, under great duress, defeat Evil and Save The Day.

one day i will post some of them so you can fully comprehend my deep thoughts around topics ranging from porkism to klingonaase.

speaking of stupid powers, T got me the first five episodes of season 1 of Stan Lee's reality show Who wants to be a Superhero? because laughing at other people's follies makes me feel better about myself.

musings on 42

my sister Uyên just called me out on my lack of "substantive" posts of late. substantive being relative since we all know how i like to ramble on, usually in mid-thought, about esoteric things that pop into my head (like klingon love letters. i can't believe you lost them, Trung! batlh bIHeghjaj! bortaS bIr jablu'DI' reH QaQqu' nay'.) low brain to mouth filter. blame it on the drugs my mom took during labor.

my bloglite excuse is -- weo, how to delicately say -- i am with child|có bàu. yes, T. & i have borg'ed ourselves the old-fashioned way and we are now nguyễn³ (can chú Bình claim credit for taking us to Bải Bàu in Qui Nhơn in april? or the hokey new age-y womb-blessing on my birthday?) as of tomorrow i will be 13 weeks along and almost officially out of my first trimester. par-tay! because it is damn fatiguing to generate a human being!

Uyên made the request for belly shots. for you undomesticated non-breeding folks, that is not cheap tequila drunk from the pierced navel of some young thing who probably doesn't have good hygiene; belly shots would be a progressive montage of the alien being gestating in my womb until it emerges gnashing and clawing from my abdomen to dominate the world. just kidding. yes, yes, children are blessings and a woman's ability to give Life, to Birth, is Sacred. without this, our survival as a species would end. blahblah. how alienated are we from women's reproductive capacity that the major pop culture reference for pregnancy is parasitic and destructive? the misogyny of society. makes you understand why the cesarean rate in the U.S. is almost 28% and voluntary cesareans (that is major abdominal surgery) is on the rise. fear of vaginas.

theoretical physicist stephen j. hawking comments, "I think computer viruses should count as life. I think it says something about human nature that the only form of life we have created so far is purely destructive. We've created life in our own image." he is a genius, an expansive intellectual contemplating the Ultimate Question of Life, The Universe, and Everything (the Deep Thought answer to which is 42, leaving us to ponder, what is the Ultimate Question?), and yet that is an incredibly stupid thing to say. as my bà ngoại|maternal grandmother often rebukes my aunties & uncles with her folk wisdom aphorism "mày nghĩ mày khôn quá hả mày chui ra đít tao!|you think you're so smart, you crawled out of my pussy!" put you in your place, punk! (now you understand where i learned how to curse.) women have been creating Life in our own image from the beginning of human time. it doesn't take a PhD or an MD to accomplish that.

so for the belly shots, weo, i'm not cutely pregnant yet (when if ever does that happen pray tell?). i'm slightly bloated, a beer belly of sorts late in the day. my clothes fit wierdly and why are all the clothes in my existing wardrobe so form fitting & cropped? i do glow though, for the record. absolutely luminous. T. has been documenting the process on the monthly (and sometimes weekly) basis. i might be persuaded to post the belly pix, but that requires bribery. food bribery (see the FAQs below).

for the curious, now that we are pregnant, you no longer have to refrain from asking me about my reproductive status or sex life. now commences the pregnancy phase and the ensuing, mostly welcome questions. for your curious pleasure:

MY PREGNANCY FAQS

• are you showing yet?

i am not showing. unless you count my distended intestines that get more compacted as the day wears on. so don't bother touching my belly because you're really just feeling up the detritus and effluvia of my digestion. my Uterus happens to be electric-slide tipped back and to the far left. if you see me rubbing my belly, i am not at this point touchingly bonding with my unborn child, i am really just encouraging some gas to pass. when i lay down and palpate my abdomen (i'm curious too), i can just barely feel her edge (my Uterus is a She btw) tucked deep into my left pelvis. my Uterus and i are in conversation right now trying to reach consensus agreement. i would like her to be upfront and center so that i can avoid having anal internal exams during my prenatals. you read that right. midwife has got to do bi-manual internal exams and palpate to assess baby's growth someway.

• have you seen your doctor yet?

meet my midwife Selena. she's a grandmother, been a doula for many years, owns a birth center, and practices 2nd degree reiki (i'm not really sure what that means either).

we're old-fashioned DIY-ers and we're choosing the safest birth choice possible. we're planning a normal, safe homebirth. babies everywhere else in the world have been born this way since time immemorial. don't see why we should pay an ob-gyn $10K for less than 15 minutes of care and loads of medical interventions. i've seen all the doctor TV shows, i know doctors think of childbirth as a mortally dangerous disease best performed strapped down on her back in a drug-resistant-staph-ridden hospital amongst the ill, the suffering and the dying. not subjecting myself or our child to that. shudder. i'm not that crazy.

• have you seen your baby yet?

ultrasounds have never been monitored for long term risks from exposure. they are a known unknown non-empirical technology. ultrasound machines are not monitored by any safety board, there is no standardized calibration, and technicians receive no training in the technology or its use which is why fools like Tom Cruise can buy one online to use on his cloned spawn. what is known is that there is known cellular mutation with exposure and babies get very agitated in the womb when exposed to ultrasound. there is no safe amount of exposure to ultrasound and one should limit exposure unless medically necessary. that said, we are having one ultrasound later this month. mainly to rule out twins which run in my paternal family. midwives say it skips a generation though.

on a humanistic level, this thinker dude (blanking on the name) commented that the two images that have profoundly changed humanity's paradigm of thinking is the picture of the earth from outer space and the ultrasound image of the unborn. prior to those two images, we could never imagine mother earth as something separate from ourselves, nor could we imagine the baby separate from the mother. when those images were published we furthered our alienation from self, motherhood, nature, etc. which puts us square in this current situation of rampant ecological destruction and fear of vaginas/vulvas-cum-compartmentalized maternity/pediatric healthcare. anyways, ultrasound pictures of babies just look like freaky aliens to me. they don't really generate warm fuzzy "awwww"s from me. its not like i want to bond with an alien. i mean i've watched plenny sci-fi movies. got no love for extra-terrestrials.

• are you having morning sickness?

nope. blessed be! both our moms had easy pregnancies and no vomiting. i have not worshipped the porcelain god this trimester. so i glow. really. it's the increased circulation and extra hormones.

no constipation either. except when our sewer line bust last week and all i had was a bucket for my midnight/early am pregnancy pees.

• are you having any cravings?

i am having a liking for certain things under certain circumstances, but nothing i would call a craving (though ms. Lily says otherwise). but i'm not upset or disappointed if i don't get it, nor am i demanding T. obtain it at odd hours. in general, cravings are your body's way of asking for missing nutrients. so the typical preggers craving for ice cream & pickles is really your body asking for more protein & calcium, and the sour/vinegar to help facilitate the absorption of the calcium. our brains just interpret that in simplistic ways accessible in our modern fast food nation reality. as a rule, T & i eat very healthy and balanced, whole foods, no junk food, not too much processed/fast foods because of my sensitivity to chemicals and allergens. so i'm not having much in the way of cravings. though i will say, i am not desiring sweets, in fact they kinda repulse me. too much sugar, nutritionally empty calories makes me want to hurl. and my lactose intolerance has gotten worse. since i cut wheat and dairy out for a mucus-free diet a few months ago, my allergies have improved immensely. this last weekend, subjected to work retreat and poor lunch menu planning, i had to eat alot of crappy phonebook fast food--pizza & cantonese. bleck. allergies came back in spades both skin rashes and sneezing at nothing. just goes to show food is medicinal. you eat crap, you feel like crap.

we've been getting our nutrients from food so i've been able to stay off the prenatal supplements that generally make one vomit. fyi seaweed is a miracle food in terms of both iron and folic acid and similar minerals content as your own blood. we all came from the ocean at some point.

our biggest challenge is that i've noticed uncooked/unprepared/greasy foods sorta gross me out too as does repetition. by extension, the whole "raw foods" food trend is just blah to me (sorry, Chanda but that was not doing it for me. left me so hungry-tired that i slept 12 hours that night.) which means that i don't want to eat anything in our refrigerator. we're having to do multiple runs to the grocery store in week so it's a good thing we live within blocks of three grocery stores!

so if i crave anything, it's variety. also, i still can't eat anything i didn't like BP (Before Pregnant) like raw onions or dairy but in addition, chicken breast and salmon repel me. and unfortunately i seem to have reached a limit on lao sausage. i'm hoping that just means not for three meals in a row...

simple and mouthwateringly good high end restaurant food really really appeals to me like egg sandwich but a gourmet egg sandwich that is the best i've ever had!!! i'm still waiting for food to taste extra delicious. so the food channel is very dangerous. i just want tasty, nutritious food, my parents' homecooking, meal variety and i don't want to cook. poor T. (many thanx to Lily for rescuing him for 2 nights in a row). so that's why i'm going to SanD at the end of the month, i want bánh giò|banana leaf wrapped glutinous rice flour stuffed with pork & woodear fungus, cua rang muối|crispy salt & pepper crab, canh chua|tamarind fish soup, at least two varieties of xôi|sticky rice--savory & sweet, any kind of gỏi, canh|brothy vegetable soups, chạo tôm|shrimp paste on sugar cane, etc. sigh, heaven. who says you can never go home again?

• is it a boy or a girl?
  

we're not going to find out. there are so few moments of genuine delight & surprise in life. this is going to be one of them. this also means that we don't want a bunch of pink & blue crap. we like colors--primary colors, bright colors, the whole rainbow of colors, black even. pastels are... okay and in moderation. and then there is the ultrasound issue. and yes, Uyên, it's T's decision too. mr. boy scout likes to be impulsive sometimes too. in a planned and defined manner. we have a workplan and a budget.

• do you want a boy or a girl?

we would love either. personally i loved (and hated) having an older brother who looked out for me and would write gruesome death threats to kids who bullied me. he would also torment me, really TORMENT me, endlessly though with personalized insult songs, so it's a tough choice. i also loved having an older sister (mostly). so yeah, really, i loved being the youngest. and you can't really determine that for your first child. so, we leave it up to the goddesses & ancestors to decide. and yeah sposedly T's sperm. like he has any control over that. our midwife who is also a second-degree reiki practitioner says that its a spirit familiar to us and she also told us what gender energy she was getting from the baby's gold-orange aura and my mom with her maternal psychic intuition has a prediction, but we're not telling. flip a coin.

• what are you going to name her/him?

that's for us to know and you to mis-pronounce. just kidding. we haven't decided. it'll be a vinamese name. no surprise there. so if you would like to contribute to our kids' future therapy fund, please send us a check.

• how many kids do you want?

ideally, four. so they can pair up and no one gets left out. however T. says for every pet we have, that's one less child. we already have two cats and i really want two mini donkeys (because any animal deprived of contact with its own species is going to be mal-adjusted, neurotic and co-dependent) so... its still under negotiation. i say, put the donkeys to work. get them to keep our quarter acre yard trim and rent them out to the neighbors for their lawn & kiddie parties. they don't have to be useless pets, they can be revenue generating!

that's Ms. Reverend to you

i am now a Reverend ordained this day by the Universal Life Church in order to fulfill my pledge to officiate my friend's wedding. let the marriage festivities commence!

of the many titles and epithets i've accumulated over my lifetime, i think i might take this one a little more solemn to its due. though how does one acquire the Goddess title?

mind your own womb!

[ed. i'm having mild guilt pangs about my nice friends who care about me and who probably read this insufferable blog to be nice to me, so let's just say this is all imaginary.]

[ed.#2 okayokay, the more girlfriends i talk to processing my feelings, the more remorseful i feel. so, i won't do like my junior high self and destroy my previous journal entries, so you will just have to categorize this one under "ooh, that is so all about her. obviously she gots some challenging emotions around this topic." but then isn't that the point of a blog?]

PUBLIC SERVICE ANNOUNCEMENT

dear dear friends and acquaintances,

though i recognize that heterosexual union comes with a set of cultural assumptions, societal expectations, legal privileges, tax breaks, and baggage; and though i fully understood that vinamese matrimony comes with three explicitly defined goals*: 1) suy gia-securing familial alliance 2) tổ tiên-propitiating the ancestors and 3) nòi giống-propagating our people; though i knew those things from the outset of this connubial partnership, i am only recently made conscious that regardless of culture or society, the common obsessive genome is that of procreation. and as such, as newlyweds, my lifepartner and i are subject to a heightened level of interest in our breeding proclivities and sexual activities, and ergo, reproductive pressure. as if ye olde biological clock and expiration dates weren't enough.

imagine the scene--there we are engaged in random chitchat, polite, water-cooler variety conversation about work- or life-related exigencies and vagaries--nothing deep, nothing intensely personal, emotional or soul-baring--when abruptly, desultory, all tò mò incongruous intimate inundation:

"when are you having a baby?" or even worse, "are you pregnant yet?"

wince. shall i give you post-coital updates? what is it you *need* to know?

as referenced in a previous blog o'mine, vinamese family planning involves one's goddesses, one's ancestors, one's kin, and the government. and at this time, i would add one's health care providers. if you are one of those beings, i guess this means you know and are comfortable with the fact that i am not a virgin--lạy mẹ maria!--durrr, hmmm... that still does not incline me to discuss sexual matters with you.

if you are *not* affiliated with any of the aforementioned beings, please allow me to say, we appreciate the well-meaning sentiment/intention behind that suggestive sparkle in your eye, your quizzically cocked eyebrows, and your prurient interest and curiosity about our fertility and reproductive status. please be assured that when my womb/egg has selected insemination from among millions of my spouse's spermatozoa, and viably implants a fetus and placenta after the 8th week, you will be the eighth to know--after our gods, our ancestors, ourselves, our parents, our siblings, our kin whom number in the hundreds and our midwife --and that you will receive our glad tidings of conception in person or via phone, email or gossip as the case may be. we hope that knowing your place on the pecking order and manner of information dissemination alleviates your concern, anxiety and non-sequitur questions on our behalf.

until then, please--and we say this with patient affection albeit with a strained smile--please mind your own womb!

thank you in advance for refraining from compulsively banal interlocution and heterosexual attentiveness in/about my womb which reinforces a biologically reductive definition of femininity/matrimony and a societal obsession with managing the productiveness of women's wombs. in the spirit of mutual propriety, i promise not to ask you about: still being single or unmarried, your stagnating career, finishing your degree, the moribund gasps of your life dreams, your financial debt, your retirement plan, the state of your relationship with your parents, your weight gain, your impotence, your credit score, your spiritual disillusionment, or otherwise insensitive personal questions that may trigger feelings of pain, pressure, vulnerability, inadequacy, insecurity and/or failure.

it took eight years of commitment, 1.75 years of planning and only six months of wedded bliss to get to this point. we don't do anything in a hurry.

peace,
the newlyweds

this has been a public service announcement of the MYOB! civic benefit campaign.


*anthropological note: the primacy of romantic love as a singular cultural goal for wedlock being a bourgeois, individualistic, ideological invention of the Nation-State resulting in a 50% divorce rate and below 1 reproduction rate in the West.