At work Friday my boss asked me if I'd planned to fly over the weekend, and at first I said no because I'd seen a forecast for too much wind an he was like, "really?" So I checked again and the forecast had changed a bunch. Since he's been so cool about letting me skip work to fly, I'd feel sort of bad telling him that on weekends I just like to sleep in. So I chased down an instructor and asked him about signing me off for a solo flight (they have to approve every flight).

So here's the deal: my flight school has a 15 knot wind limit on solo students. I woke up and winds were at 9 knots, forecast to stay that way until 11 am. I had a plane from 8:30-10:30. So the instructor wrote on my approval sheet that I had to monitor winds and turn back if they got past the limit. He wasn't scared, and I wasn't scared, the winds were STRAIGHT down the runway and I'm spitting distance from being a real pilot, but rules are rules.

It was SO FREAKING COLD. The airplane had frost on the wings which I'd never seen before, so I had him show me how to defrost it. You basically spray alcohol on the wings. Then I had to fuel the plane which takes time and is a pain. Then I had to run the engine a little longer to warm it up... it took two tries to start it up which was actually better than I thought. We have a rule that you have to pre-heat it below 20°F, and it was like 22 or something. I don't even know how to pre-heat. I've never asked to learn, because I do not like the idea of flying below 20°F. Anyway all this preflight and checks and stuff took nearly an hour, and by the time I taxied out winds were at 12 knots.

I took off, made my right turn, and departure comes on the radio and says "Winds 14 knots gusting to 21."

DAMN YOU SKY POWERS. I felt so totally cursed. I turned around.

One takeoff, one landing, 0.5 hours of flight time which in truth was probably mostly ground/taxi/runup time. I walked back inside and vented to everyone who could hear, at which point another pilot was like "So what plane did you have, that's all warmed up defrosted and full of fuel? I'm gonna change my reservation to that one!" At least I helped somebody. (We don't pay for fuel, we pay for flight hours which of course includes fuel costs but it's just what we use, not what we put into the airplane.)

At least I got to learn to defrost, and fuel up by myself which I've never done, and that 0.5 hours of solo time is a dent in the 1.7 hours I needed.

I came home and took a nap. Well & updated lj to talk about being pregnant to put myself in a better mood, thank you all for the nice comments :)

At night we had our star trek party! It was a BLAST, we had what I think was a perfect number of people show up, we did run out of seats but it wasn't awful. Friends brought lots of chips and dip, a projector, romulan ale, extra DVDs. We asked the apartment complex if we could borrow chairs from the lobby and they were down with that. Marc rearranged the whole apartment and we hung up an extra sheet of corrugated plastic that we had from guinea pig cage construction for the projector screen, and it worked GREAT. We watched Wrath of Khan, the new movie, then First Contact. I was busy working on food prep during Khan and kinda dozed off during First Contact but it was sweet geeky fun anyway. Dammit I love the new Star Trek movie. Oh and I wore my dress again, of course.

Someone gave us static for having a party on the night of the big 12 football championships or something, I have no idea when football is going on. I was just like "If you care about that stuff you're not nerdy cool enough for our awesome party."

So it was a good day, a long day. I talked to some pilot friends there who said they were looking forward to my "I'm a pilot" party which does sound like it'd be awesome, might have to do that next. It won't be nerdy at all, no.

I just made a bunch of older posts public, they all have to do with something crazy that's gone on the past few weeks: SPACEFETUS!

Yes friends I am pregnant. It all started one fateful weekend when I posted a closed-off entry about how late my period was to a few lj friends told me to take one of those drugstore test (okay if you want to be scientific, it obviously started before that but I can't pinpoint anything, so let's move on). Anyway, test I did. Then I spent the next two months being a neurotic crazy mess of a psycho, constantly worrying about what the hell was going on. Oh who am I kidding, I'm still neurotic and worried about what the hells going on. I worry about not being ready for parenthood. I worry about the health of whatever's growing inside me. I worry about the fact that I don't "feel" pregnant.

Usually, Marc balances this out... aka the husband who does not worry about anything. I could give birth to a chimpanzee in June and he'll just go with it.

So after all this fear why am I making this public? Well it's been a crazy week... Thursday I went to the doctor for the second time. I'd gone in last month, at my two-month mark, and they'd tried to hear a heartbeat but nothing. They didn't even confirm the pregnancy for me, just took my word for it, took some blood, sent me on my way with a pastel baggy of hospital information.

I was afraid this appointment would be equally unsettling. I went in and the PA said there wasn't much to do, she went over my labs with me and told me exciting facts they'd learned, like, "You don't have gonorrhea!" Then had me lay back and took out a handheld doppler and tried to have it make whatever sounds it could detect from the flat area under my naval. We heard my heartbeat again, slow and regular and distant. And then another one... faster, louder, strong and INCREDIBLY OBVIOUS. "There ya go, there's baby." It was 160 bpm or so, just crunching away in there.

I froze. I was trying to hold so still because every breath I took was loud on the doppler, I didn't know how to make my muscles relax, I was totally caught off guard and had no idea what to do. She had me get up and asked if I had anything else I wanted to talk about. I just shook my head. I left. I got in my car and drove down the street.

And it was funny because I actually had lots of things I'd thought to bring up... why am I so anxious all the time, why are my sleep patterns messed up, why did I almost puke in the parking lot at the office last night? But it was GONE, my mind was blank and clear and wordless. I couldn't say anything.

Driving down the road I also remembered that I was supposed to get my damn H1N1 vaccine! I've been so worried about it lately, and I was scheduled to get one and they forgot, how could I let that happen?! I drove back and sat back in the waiting room and they got the immunization ready.

Am I perfectly unworried and relaxed now, knowing that I made it through a whole trimester and have real evidence of pregnancy? Nah not really. But I feel different somehow, like no matter what happens I've had this tiny experience and it means something huge for me. Besides that I'm starting to really believe it's happening, and that my odds are good! Odds of having a good pregnancy, a healthy baby, and it's something I'm really looking forward to.

Marc has told at least half of the greater Wichita area because he SUCKS at keeping secrets, he keeps coming home on weekends from bars and muttering "um I might have told a few more people" but I've really kept the news to myself, I keep imagining having to tell people that things didn't work out right. For some reason now I don't care so much. I'm just happy. I might as well get the news out while I've got the nerve.

So to summarize:
- I'm three months pregnant, or if you've done this before, 13 weeks.
- I'm due June 11
- I've NEVER DONE THIS BEFORE IT'S SO FREAKY
- No sonogram pictures yet, I might get one in February or so
- I'm still flying! Oh yes, my doctor cleared me and said I can fly through APRIL so go me.
- If you want the whole stressful story as it unraveled, click the "pregnancy" tag

Wish me luck. Keep us in your thoughts. Whatever this is it's going to be an adventure, yes?

I was going to write this ILLUSTRATED guide to my long solo cross country, but it's meant putting any reports off and procrastinating which I shall not allow any more. So photos later, journal entry now. I've flown twice this week, and might fly again tomorrow!

Reasons it's good:
- I'm sooooo clooooose! Seriously ohmigod!

Reasons it's bad:
- It's sooooo efffffing coooold!

Monday morning I asked my boss if I could skip off work a bit, make up the time later, and fly to Emporia. I'm very lucky that my boss is 1) cool and 2) a pilot (overlap is common of course). It was a beautiful clear day with no clouds and very little wind. I had a flightplan all made out. I had woken up all nervous with this bad "not my day" feeling, but the gorgeous weather made me feel like I didn't care, I just wanted to be up.

Per part 141 rules, we only have to fly 100 miles. But most students at my school go 150 because we're required to have so many hours of solo time and hey, might as well go someplace fun. So off I went. I met my instructor, got his signatures and approvals, and set off on my way. Before I left he told me, "We haven't flown much in the cold. Before you take off make sure engine oil temp has moved a little. If it hasn't, run the engine a little higher than idle for a few more minutes before you go." It was a good thing he told me that because after I'd done my normal preflight, taxi and runup, the oil temp pointer had moved one pixel. Damn cold. I set things a tiny bit higher while doing the rest of the checks and setting transponder codes and everything and was saved.

Emporia was happy to see me! I made it there without any trouble, stopped in at the FBO and had the guys there sign my logbook. And get this: they gave me a certificate! It's so awesome, I mean it's a simple printout but it says "____ has completed a solo cross country flight to Emporia Airport" and they signed it.

I once explained to Marc what an FBO is... it's a building on the airport you stop in at, they'll do plane maintenance, sell fuel, sometimes have places to eat and do business and hang out. He was just like "Oh so a truck stop!" Kinda.

On the way back from Emporia I accidentally tracked the wrong VOR for several minutes and went too far south but realized eventually I'd dialed the wrong damn course in. Why'd I try to track a VOR anyway? Practice I guess, and so I can say I've screwed it up? Well when I realized it I dialed in my next stop to the GPS and just dummied it out to Newton. Landed. Stopped. Taxied around to the beginning of the runway and started off back to Wichita. It was so clear I could see the Wichita runways as soon as I had any elevation. I contacted approach and made a wonderful landing in.

I flew on Thursday with my instructor, we did ground reference maneuvers and practiced short field landings. My later landings on a flight are always so nice. My first one is still rough. Consistently. Like, I need to warm up or something, remind myself how to land. Monday's landing at Emporia was safe but I bounced some.

This close to being done I think about passengers a lot, because I could have them someday! My instructor points out little things... like abrupt power changes that aren't bad, they just might make a non-pilot nervous. And I want my landings to be smoother. Marc will no doubt be my first passenger and he's pretty gutsy.

How close am I? I have:
- One more solo flight, that needs to be another 2 hours or so. This might happen this weekend.
- One more practice with my instructor, maybe 2.
- A flight school final check-off
- Checkride!

Scary isn't it? I feel ready I just can't really believe it.

Last month I talked about billy dee being sick, and then I didn't post an update because nothing conclusive ever really came out of that. I think (but I'm not certain) that the cortisone changed him from sounding like death to just sounding really sick. But honestly it's hard to tell.

I'd posted for advice aon guinea lynx and people there said he's got a heart condition, and we should try him on ACE inhibitors. They said it's a common missed thing and they even have a big write-up that you can take in to a vet: http://www.guinealynx.info/heart.html

The problem is that I really bad trying to self-diagnose an animal online when he's already seen a medical professional. I could call our vet again, and hope he's got another option up his sleeve. I could try another vet... one that's on the guinea lynx site. But I'd want our old vet to send the x-rays over.

I guess I was hoping our vet and the internet would just magically agree without consulting one another, or our vet would do something amazing to make Billy healthier. Since Billy has scar tissue on his lungs, I'm not even convinced he has a heart issue. I just know he's not really better right now.

Also I'm a bad pig owner, because you're supposed to always be weighing your pigs to monitor their health and we haven't done that. Billy feels skinny. I see him eating all the time but when I pick him up I feel things... hips, shoulder bones, spine. When I pick up jabba I feel A LOT OF FAT, when I pick up pinky or the brain I feel a reasonable amount of rodent substance. So those three seem healthy and normal. I'm not sure how to fatten up a guinea pig, their diet consists of hay and veggies, it's not like you can switch them to big macs.

sighs.

oh, sorry I can't post about guinea pigs without a pigture. Here's Billy, pausing between two fluffy butts to ask, "What's wrong with me?"

If you ever happen to be playing games with my family, know that the following rule changes will probably apply:

Scrabble - Whoever can make the longest word gets to go first. Also, we use friendly challenges... we figure we're playing for education so if you suspect someone's word don't be afraid to make them look it up. There's also Theme Scrabble where you get double word points for anything that goes along with the theme. In this case, theme-related proper nouns are allowed.

3-13 - If someone accidentally discards a wild card, you should let them know about it and give them the opportunity to pick it back up, once. If they do it again it's all yours. Also aces can be high or low but not both at the same time.

Train dominoes (aka, Mexican Train, but we just call it "train" because we're not aware of a non-mexican version). If someone leaves an open double and you rescue the table by closing it up, you get to take another turn. You don't have to take another turn but if you've got the tile go for it.

Also for all games, it's okay to leave notes in the scoresheet. If it was late at night, or someone was sick, or somebody cheated, it goes down. And we keep scores in specific notebooks so they live FOREVER.

lately I've been feeling really weird and primal about the whole pregnancy thing.

I mean... I live in a pretty evolved, controlled world. My alarm clock wakes me up, I pour quaker oats into a bowl, mix it with water from the tap and microwave it. I put on store-bought clothes. I drive my car to the office and draw schematics for airplanes. I go to lunch and the waiter brings out what I order from the menu. You get the picture. It's all choices I make, based on the world that other humans have set up. It's all great ideas.

But pregnancy is totally biological and very much out of my control, it's just sort of happening. That in itself sort of weirds me out... it's going to be uncomfortable and life-changing and I have very little power over what's going on with my own body. I just know that some part of me really wants it to go well, and wants to be hopeful, and worries.

So the next question is this: how'd I get here? Why did I choose this? Why am I stepping outside of my manufactured world comfort zone? You could say that it started because Marc and I were happily married... but then why did I get married? Why did I fall in love with Marc in the first place? Why did I get crushes on men, and date for years, and love sex? I have a strange feeling that without knowing it, I was being set up for reproduction through some very primal instinct. It's a bad feeling. I hear songs on the radio now, just the typical "girl I see you dancing at the club and I want to do you" kinda songs, and I think of animal mating rituals. I'm afraid we're programmed.

There's this show Battlestar Galactica (the newer-ish one people not the crap one) where robots have gotten so good at making other robots they can make them act human, look human, and even think they're human. So people will live these normal lives then suddenly get beamed to the mothership and see all these copies of themselves and realize they're just another Model 8. And they're always really freaked out that this whole time, their every move was part of some robot mothership plan... they're not who they thought they were. It might sound totally ass nuts as hell but I feel like it's happening for me. Am I an electrical engineer, pilot, American, internet fan? Or strange conglomeration of cells doing their own thing, independent of me?

Weather and holidays are taking turns throwing wrenches in my flying progress, so all I can do is sit on the ground thinking about airplanes. At least this will be a cheap slow month, as opposed to my pre-solo weeks of pattern work where ability was what slowed me down, but I still flew a lot and spent lots of money and had no life. Now I can get back to having no life because I'm obsessed with the internet... good old fashion way.

Since I moved to Wichita I've wondered why we call ourselves "ICT". We use it a LOT. It's the code for our airport but I couldn't find it anywhere else. I'm not even sure if everyone knows it's our airport code. But everyone in Wichita knows we're ICT. Marc says that everyone in Atlanta always talked about "the ATL" but that makes sense because ATL looks like a nice short code for Atlanta. In Kansas City, I don't recall anyone ever talking about MCI.

Anyway I'm curious about what other cities use their airport code as a synonym. In Wichita you hear people drop it all the time, you hear radio stations talk about "rocking the ICT". I thought maybe we just have so many pilots and aircraft workers here (air capital and all that) we're a bit more obsessed with our airport than other cities.

I also took the time, finally, to try and figure out what the hell ICT means. Here's where I got:

1) A logical name for Wichita's airport would be WIC... first three letters of the name. Like ATL or STL.

2) The US government decided that it would not let airport names start with W. If you start with W, you're a radio station east of the Mississippi (like WKRP)

3) So we dropped the W, leaving us with IC. Then it's a "pick your favorite letter" game... ICH is somewhat unpleasant-sounding so ICT was the next best thing.

If I'm wrong, correct away. This has really puzzled me since I moved here and learning about the W thing made me finally realize that ICT probably doesn't stand for anything, it's just... ICT. wIChiTa.

I just hade a dream where I was at my prenatal appointment and the doctor was going over everything to do with having my baby... when to go to the hospital, how things were progressing, how it was going to happen any day. He said he definitely needed to see me weekly starting now. I commented on how fast this pregnancy has gone by, seems like just yesterday I was finding out about it, now really soon I'm going to have a baby.

Then walking down the hall I stopped, turned around, and was like, "Hold on... I'm 11 weeks pregnant! You don't need to see me in a week, I'm not due any day, what's wrong? And I never got my ultrasound!" He apologized and was just like oh you're right, sorry, okay. I wondered why it took me so long to point all this out.

In the dream, our conversations touched on the fact that I was having a boy. My mother also once dreamed I was having a boy. At my first prenatal, they give you this cute paper bag of literature and vitamins and they just happened to pick the blue one for me. All these signs weird me out because I do not want a boy! I could write a whole entry on this, but I REALLY want a girl. I'm surrounded by men in my life, even my guinea pigs are men, then there's my husband and all my coworkers and most of my friends... don't I deserve a daughter?

Also the fact that I complained about the ultrasound in my dream was funny. I've done a good job lately not being jealous of the women in pregnant and june2010babies who get early ultrasounds. It used to irk me, because I just happen to be at one of those doctors who doesn't do an early one for dating purposes. I'm waiting until at least February. Anyway lately I've noticed a trend... the ultrasounds are supposed to be for "peace of mind" but they don't do anything for anyone's peace, the women who get them are just as worried as I am. Only difference is that they've seen some cute little swimmy thing so they have an image in their head to worry about, and I don't. So I thought I was over the whole ultrasound thing... but since I dreamed about feeling all injusticey about it, I guess not.

I woke up and realized that my real next prenatal will be after Thanksgiving, not at 11 weeks, and no one could possibly confuse me with someone 9 months pregnant.

I think about this way too much for where I'm at.

In other news, I HATE telling people that I'm pregnant and I'm not sure when that's going to change. Marc loves it. He's told half of Wichita and most of our friends, usually when he's under the influence of alcohol. We're getting to that stage where we could tell people, close to the end of a trimester and all that, and we're at parties and stuff where it comes up. People ask why I'm drinking water and I change the subject, or say I'm flying in the morning. People talk about other pregnancies and I start asking way too many questions and suddenly they look at me like THEY KNOW. But I still worry something could go wrong. And I worry they'll think I'm crazy, talking about being pregnant when I clearly do not look pregnant. I guess I'll just let marc make all the announcements. I've managed to screw up all the ones I've made... I get so nervous. I feel better when people know, but that doesn't make me want to tell them. I just want them to think of me as normal.

The new Star Trek DVD came out this week. I got home from work and there it was... Marc doesn't need much convincing to hit a Best Buy on days like that. We ordered pizza and watched it and good news: it's STILL AN AWESOME MOVIE. Seriously, I know I saw it twice times in the theater but it's still just so fabulous, Leonard Nimoy is so adorable and new spock is so sexy and Harold from Harold & Kumar is such a hero.

In December, after everyone's Thanksgiving plans have settled but (hopefully) before the holiday party craziness starts up, we're having a Star Trek party. We'll have a couple movies including the new one, I already made a facebook invite telling my friends to come enjoy hamborgers & romulan ale. We'll have to get inventive on the ale... a search for a recipe came up with a mixed drink that's alcohol + everclear. You know it's a nice idea and I do like the authenticity but my intent is not to kill anyone. Yes it's supposed to be intense stuff but egads people.

I would like more ideas if any of you nerds have them. Ways to make the party extra-spacey, stupid theme foods, the works... we're going all out. People are even dressing up. Okay, I am. But I'm sure other people might consider it, if it's AWESOME. In exchange for your ideas, I shall now publish my instructions for:

Insignia Cookies
You will need: Sugar cookie dough, frosting, sprinkles (opt), a star-shaped cookie cutter.
Instructions:

1. Cut out star-shaped cookies.
   
2. Cut two non-adjacent arms off each one.
   
3. Roll the severed arms up to make more cookies.
   
4. When all possible cookies have been made, bake, cool, and frost.
   
5. Oh, and add sprinkles if you're into that and they're cool.

I have considered telling the guinea pigs to act like tribbles but that would involve rapid-breeding and they're all male, so it's just not gonna happen. They are fuzzy though. And probably hate klingons.

Finally, if you're a local friend of mine from Twitter and we've met in real life but you're not on my facebook for whatever reason, DM me for the invite.

marc and I have a calendar. it has ferrets doing weird things, like scuba-diving and visiting paris. IT'S REAL. Anyway my point is that even though we're both application developers, very wired people, and have five computers (that run all the time) between only two of us, we have a paper calendar that we write things on. Weekends out of town, big events we've got tickets for, birthdays... that sort of thing.

Growing up my family had a CALENDAR. It had no ferrets because it was all business. Mom had rules for it... you could only write in pencil, that was the big one. Also you had to write evening things in the bottom of the square, morning in the top, etc. It had to be month-at-a-glance and it had to be huge and take up the whole desk. When I was in high school I remember stuff would be on The Calendar in every square, it was intense.

For some reason we got to talking about this at work and it's amazing how many full-fledged technophiles still have a big old fashion "write on it" calendar in one spot. Maybe because electronic calendars are small and personal and tough to share? I know with Marc and I, it's just a lot faster to go write on the ferrets than it is to make a facebook event and invite just him to it, or find us Yet Another website to log into that does calendar stuff.

So much for the future, you know?

I accidentally started some mad drama in a members-only post at pregnant. My question: Is a one-bedroom loft with no doors going to be a stressful place to raise a newborn? Because some people think you'll deal much better if there's a room someplace that you can shut the baby in and let it cry... if you've checked everything, tried to soothe her, made sure there are no issues. Some babies are just fussy. According to my mother, I was really noisy. So sometimes when she was at her wits end she'd just leave me alone in a room and in ten minutes I'd be asleep. I seem to have suffered no long-term damage as a result of this.

But mentioning that I thought it was okay to let a baby cry really got everyone mad! I was basically told, in 60 comments (so far), that it's not only dated advice but CHILD ABUSE and I'd better not even think about it.

I'll admit, I have not read oodles of parenting books, so I'm open to advice. Then again... I found some bits on the mayo clinic website that said it's okay to leave a crying baby alone to give yourself a break. I really like the mayo clinic for pregnancy stuff, it doesn't scare the crap out of me like web md or tell me everything but LAYING ON MY LEFT SIDE EATING TOAST is going to harm my fetus.

I sometimes get the feeling that pregnant is a bit outside the norm so I'm posting this here, even though it's a small group. Some of you are parents, some of you are just experienced with kids. How wrong is my mom's advice?

Went to a baby shower today after a long streak of boycotting them. Honestly I felt a little guilty for going to this one, because on the ones I skipped I didn't even send a card. Any friends who asked me why I missed it, I was dead honest: "I hate baby showers".

BECAUSE I DO HATE BABY SHOWERS. Ladies, why must we play stupid disgusting games? Why must we start up a chorus of "Awwwweeee" after every present... a pack of spit rags is not at all cute. And really, why must it be a celebration of all things pastel and baby? What the hell is the baby doing right now? Nothing! Why can't it be a celebration of powerful womanhood... am I sounding way too crazy?

I went to this one because it fit into my party rule, which is: "I will go to your 'give me stuff' party as long as it's not the first party you've ever invited me to." You'd be surprised how many showers this policy gets me out of. Engineer wives seem to think that if you've seen them out at a group dinner twice before, you're a good friend who'd love nothing more than to walk the aisles of Babies R Us for them. They'll never get me back either... I learned this early, they have babies then fall off the face of the earth, so when my baby/wedding comes along I haven't seen them in years. So I've gotten great at saying "oh gotta wash my hair that afternoon".

Regardless, this shower was still horribly painful. I went upstairs at one point and read the paper for ten minutes so I wouldn't kill myself. Opening presents was soooo sloooow and I felt forced to smile at all the things she was struggling to make up about each gift: "Oh this will come in so handy when ____..."

I almost thought about revising my party rule. Forget the "if you've given me free beer I'll go to your baby shower", I think I have to expand it to some sort of "if you'd donated an organ for me I'll go to your baby shower" or something huge like that. Free beer = I'll send a card in the mail. I can't sit through hours of these things.

If/when my own time comes, I don't see myself getting a baby shower. Yes it'll suck to buy all the stuff we need without help but I've been such a bitch about these things, it evens out. The more I think about it, it's worth it. I didn't get a bridal shower and didn't feel like I really missed it.

Someone's got to end this cycle. I cannot be the only one who hates these things... I think I'm just the most obvious/outspoken about it. I felt bad today, it's rude to go to a party then be obviously about the fact that you're not having fun. I should have really stayed home.

I'm 10 weeks pregnant and here's how I feel:

1) Oddly weirded out that I have not had my period in two months. I notice it. I miss it. It's always happened, it was a cycle... sure, a pain in the vag cycle that meant having to put a towel down for sexy time but it was part of me. It was a renewal, a sort of "out with the old" that spelled out potential. I have never ever thought this deeply about my period.

2) Tired. My sleep schedule still isn't really normal. Even if I get 9 hours, I still get run down in the afternoons in the office, and have resorted to more than one "bathroom nap", I gotta admit it. I'm about to start parking my car in secluded places to pass out. I still frequently wake up at 3 am for no reason and take an hour, or two, or infinity, to get back to sleep... those days are really tough.

3) Confused about this natural childbirth thing. I could write a whole lj entry just on that debate... but I think I'll wait until I go public with this, so I can get all the opinions. I read in pregnant that some women even refuse blood transfusions... that was a question I was asked at my first prenatal, if I'd be willing to get one. I was like, "What a weird question, of course if I need a blood transfusion I should get one!" Is this controversial or something? I didn't think there was much choice involved in blood transfusions normally... you either need one or you don't!

4) Very aware of my abdominal region. Okay, you know how you can sometimes push your tummy out and make it look pregnant? Well this'll sound weird but I can't anymore. My lower stomach-region sticks out a little bit, like I'm sticking it out, all the time. But it's firm. Relaxing my muscles doesn't make it fatty and jiggly, flexing my muscles doesn't make it go out anymore, they don't do anything. I can't suck it in. It has nothing to do with eating, it's there when I wake up in the morning, and just stays stuck there in one position. Toward the end of the day I really feel it... stretchyness, soreness, weirdness.

5) Hungry. I keep increasing my breakfast intake and it keeps not helping. I've never taken well to being hungry... I get moody. But now when I'm hungry I feel REALLY moody, like, unable to hold up a conversation. I hit a real low point this week... I went to Arby's, got a chicken sandwich, ate it, and felt hungry. STILL. SO I WENT TO MCDONALDS. AND ATE A CHICKEN SANDWICH. I know I'm not supposed to be "eating for two", you're only supposed to need an extra 300 or so calories a day. I'm not gaining any weight, is that a sign it's okay? I felt really guilty. And not even all that full. I consider two lunches in a row to be a real low point. At least I had them hold the mayo on that mcchicken.

What else? Still haven't told any coworkers because it's too early, but the other day I was asking way too many questions about childbirth and they might be accidentally catching on. A guy's wife is pregnant, due in late December, and I'm deathly curious about all that. Yesterday he wanted to know why. I was like, "no reason just having conversation, you know!" he shook his head. I gotta watch it.

I spend 1/3 of my time worried that the kid has, like, no legs or something, or only half a brain because the arby's roast beef I cracked and ate two weeks ago wasn't quite hot enough to kill the listeria. 1/3 of the time feeling confident that it'll all be fine and we're going to have a great baby, then I'm excited. 1/3 of the time wondering whose idea this all was, did I want a baby? The early conversations are really blurry.

Anyway no going back, since I'm at 10 weeks from most things I've read I have a real-life fetus now. About the size of a shot glass, and no longer has a TAIL, and has lots of internal organs that are starting to do their thing. Which is why, when I go in to my doctor after thanksgiving, I should be able to hear a heartbeat. Fingers crossed, people.

I was walking by someone's desk at work and this cartoon was hung up:



I hate to say it but no matter how many times I see that it WILL make me laugh! There's absolutely nothing wrong with that joke, it's perfect. It will always be funny. It will never get old.

Which brings me on to other perfect jokes... my man claims that the best joke in the world is this one, which I told him, after I heard it from my uncle Jim:

Q: Why does a flamingo stand on one leg?
A: Because if he lifts it up he'd fall down

And my sister once told me this one, which we never get tired of retelling:

Q: What do gay horses eat?
A: Haaaay!

And finally there's my favorite 2009 joke:

Q: What did the earth say after the earthquake?
A: Sorry, my fault

And my favorite aviation joke!

Airspeed, altitude, or brains: you need at least two.

But NONE are as important and wonderful as the cartoon that says "find X" with the line saying "here it is". I just want everyone to know that.

When I first soloed back in September, I called Mom and she was so happy for me! Quickly followed by a sentiment to the effect of "You don't have to do it again, do you?" So in an effort to keep her blood pressure up I'm now flying off to places by myself... 50 miles away, 30 minutes, to little uncontrolled airports in unknown parts of America.

My flight school does have a check you have to go on before the cross country solo flights, which I took last week and it went so much better than my first checkout, the pre-solo one, remember? I've been feeling so good about flying lately. I feel like that song in Chicago, where Roxy is suddenly in a world full of YES. A lot of the stuff I was quizzed on is book-smart rules stuff, and since I just studied for my written I was good at it. I could rattle off a hundred obscure chart symbols.

And in the air, I finally get some credit/benefit from my years of avionics experience. I know how a VOR works and what the different autopilot modes do. I know all the weird random G1000 screens. Hell, in the airplane I got in yesterday, the time was set to local daylight savings even though daylight savings ended a week ago. People have just been flying it all week just going with it. I did the next pilot a good deed by setting us right.

Not to say I'm a total rockstar yet... on my checkout, I forgot the pre-landing "GUMPS" checklist twice which I feel really stupid about. It's such a beginner thing. You do it before starting any descent below pattern altitude, I've done it a million times, so... arg. It basically consists of making sure the fuel is coming from both fuel tanks, fuel mixture is fully rich, everybody has seat belts on, landing and taxi lights are on... THEN LAND. And when we get to the "U" in GUMPS which stands for "undercarriage" we say "gear fixed" just to show that we can think about a landing gear... someday I might be in an airplane where I really don't want to land gear up. Right now I'm in an airplane where it doesn't go up, but they want the thought in your head early.

Anyhow back to yesterday... the weather was incredible. Barely 8 knots of wind lined up almost perfectly with the runway, no clouds for 25,000 feet. In Kansas this has to be a sign of the apocalypse. But since "apocalypse" isn't a factor in determining VFR weather minimums, I was off. I flew 30 minutes out to Pratt, landed, taxied off the runway and sent my instructor a text message to say I'd made it. Then I came home.

On the way home I was supposed to open my flight plan... I did "flight following" on the way out there, which is where you talk to someone in Kansas City who watches out for you. If you file a flight plan they don't really watch out for you per se, but they will go out looking for you if you don't show up at your destination when you're supposed to.

Which happened to me. Little mixup there. I was running about 30 minutes behind schedule, and when I took off from Pratt and opened the flight plan I figured they'd notice I was behind and change the times for me. That's not how it works, I learned. When I got home and called them up to close the flight plan they said it was already closed because "search and rescue called Wichita tower to make sure you were back." I paused for a minute.

"Am I in trouble?"

No, he said just make sure I extend the flight plan (or be very clear about what time I was off my departure point, which I knew I was supposed to do, just didn't get it out). ughhh. Next time.

The other bad thing was right after takeoff, flight service told me to "contact flight watch" on a frequency, so I did. Told them who I was and that I was enroute to Wichita. They were like, "Okay, what did you want from us?" Oh hell I don't know... I barely know what flight watch is, I just thought I was supposed to contact them. I took a stab and said, "Traffic advisories?" They don't do that. Well crap. So now I have something to research this week.

But seriously, if the worst thing I do on a flight is make an ass of myself over some radios I call it a good flight. I made two safe landings, accurately calculated my fuel requirements, and always knew where I was. I got to watch the sun start to set behind me on the way home, the sky was big and pink and the angle of the light made all the little creeks shimmer. From up there, nothing was wrong with the world. I'll take it.

This week I got to see Wicked for the first time ever, a touring company came through Wichita and it ran here for several weekends. Marc and I splurged for tickets as sort of an anniversary present to ourselves, if I can remember. Anyway it was absolutely amazing. I left feeling like I was in some kind of enchanted musical world. The characters were so easy to relate to, the costumes were amazing, the songs were only-halfway familiar so I felt like I knew a few but also got swept away in new things.

Which leads me to want to make this list of Musicals I've Seen On Stage... not sure I can remember every single one, but I'm going to try. At least I know I can remember my favorites.

Musicals my high school put on - I did stage crew for several years of musicals. I auditioned once, didn't make the cut, and that year taught me that stage crew is where you really get the good seats. Plus if you're part of the chorus you get treated like a herded sheep. But I got to lurk around on catwalks and sit right ON the stage out of view, wearing all black and admiring others. Perfect. We did Damn Yankees, Guys and Dolls, and my all-time favorite Crazy for You. Nice work if you can get it, and you can get it if you try. Also I should mention Evita, which was put on by an area high school before Madonna made it cool. I'm not sure Evita makes a great high school musical but they get bravery points.

Musicals I saw at Theater in the Park - Shawnee Mission Park has this great outdoor stage that my family used to get season tickets to. We'd sit out on blankets and bring cokes and enjoy the weather. I saw Footloose, Once Upon a Mattress, Brigadoon, Annie Get Your Gun. And did I see 1776 there? Or Fiddler on the Roof?

Musicals I've see at Century II in Wichita - Well there was Miss Saigon, the most depressing show ever. But there was also my favorite musical experience, when I saw Rent with a livejournal friend who's lj name I can't remember, but her name was Sydney and she camped out for cheap front-row tickets for us. It was the best way to see Rent. Other faves: Les Misérables, The Producers.

Other scattered ones: My parents took the whole family to see Phantom of the Opera when it came through KC my junior year. It was completely unforgettable and amazing. They also took us to see CATS which totally mesmerized me, even if it is kinda weird.

I've seen some dinner theater productions too, which are never AMAZING but you can say you got to see the show (and enjoy a buffet). On that list: Joseph & the Amazing Technicolor Dreamcoat, Seven Brides for Seven Brothers, and Chicago.

Looking over the list I mostly think of musicals I love but haven't seen. Like, if I'm not sure if I've seen 1776 on stage, that right there is a problem, I need to see it again. And where's The King & I, is that really missing? I've also always wanted to see Pippin even though I know nothing about it. Just gotta pay attention, keep the dreams alive here. That's what being a fan is all about.

Poor little Billy Dee doesn't sound like a healthy piggy. Ever since we got him, he's been sort of a noisy breather. It's tough to explain. Since then he's just gotten progressively worse, very slowly, until in recent weeks we'd notice days where he just sounded sick. He grunts, wheezes, labors at breathing.

But he's so darn sweet! Never bites, loves to just chill out with us on the couch. I pet him when I go by the cage and he just chills out. He'll eat any healthy food we put in there... he's the one who gets the others to try tomatoes and fruits.

Guinea pigs are prone to upper respiratory infections, but those are usually fast-moving and come with other symptoms. Since Billy has a healthy appetite and we haven't had any other sick pigs, I wasn't sure what could be up. Either way we decided it was time to see the vet.

So I put him in the pet wagon, which he didn't like, drove him in the car, which he didn't like, and he got a full exam, which he REALLY didn't like. It's so tragic watching trained medical professionals try to deal with a teeny little squirmy pig. I had to do my best not to crack up laughing... the nurse tried to set him on this scale and hoped he'd stay in this little bowl, obviously he wouldn't. The doctor checked his ears and listened to his heart and lungs with a stethoscope which is hysterical.

They asked if I'd pay for an x-ray... about $80, on top of the $40 exam. They understand that a lot of people don't like paying huge vet bills for guinea pigs, after all you can get the buggers for free off craigslist, but when I consider all the bedding, food, and cage supplies we spring for on a regular basis I don't think a couple hundred bucks is a huge deal. There are people in guinea_pigs who buy surgery for their pets... Marc and I have discussed that sort of thing, after reading too many very expensive stories that don't end so well we've decided that we will have a limit. But an x-ray sounded like a good idea.

The x-ray was adorable too, of course. A guinea pig x-ray looks like this: the top 1/3 has a head, heart, lungs, brain, all this important stuff. The rest is pure belly. It just reinforced my belief that these are ridiculous animals.

Unfortunately the x-ray showed other bad things: a mass of denser tissue in his lungs that just shouldn't be there. The vet said it could be tumors, but more likely it was scar tissue from an old injury. If Billy had cancer he wouldn't be so happy and willing to eat tons of food. But scar tissue is common... since we have no idea what his history is (he came from a home who got him from a home who got him who knows where) he could easily have suffered an accident we don't know about. Maybe when he was little he was dropped, or stepped on, and some internal bleeding occurred, and it didn't seem to have an effect at the time but it's worn on him.

The vet recommended some cortisone drops, twice a day, to relax the tissue a bit and rule out allergies. We'll try it this week and if it helps we can keep him on a low dose. It should be fairly manageable.

But until we see how that turns out we're awfully worried about the little guy. He's so lovable and cuddly and we hate to see him wheezing all the time. So keep him in your thoughts. Sick pets are the pits.

Last night we had our big halloween party and it was a blast, there were tons of people who came and we went through lots of food and drink. Even broke out the Apples to Apples near the end. We've found that a game is perfect when the party is sort of starting to fizzle, but you can tell some folks aren't quite ready to leave yet, the last few will stay up and play games and chat and that's when it's really good.

I wondered a LOT this year about whether to have the party on Friday or Saturday night. We chose Friday. It was controversial, because there were conflicting parties on both nights. Last year we had the party on Halloween, and there were three other parties in the apartment complex, and everyone rotated around which was really cool! If you felt like munching and doing jello shots, you'd be at our place. If you felt like a dark gothic atmosphere with great decorations and DJs, you'd be down the hall. Huge kegger, upstairs. This year, by not doing it on halloween, we didn't get the rotation crowd and I sort of regret that.

But to explain my reasoning, I will analyze the groups of friends we were trying to accommodate:

Group	Why they're cool	Why they're not	Conflicts
Long-time coworkers	Couples and kids I've hung out with forever, including former roommate. They're loyal, supportive, and we know each other almost too well.	Too much baby-having in recent years has destroyed party potential. These people get tired at 10:30, or just flake out and don't come at all. Last year two couples punked out because they were afraid to be downtown on such a busy night. I'm serious.	Friday party
Girl's night coworkers	Couples and some singles who I've gotten to know recently through a girl's night out some of us have every month or so, really cool to hang out with, the couples mostly have older kids and like getting out.	Kind of an early crowd, but not bad	Saturday party
Tweeps	The tight-knit group of wichita Twitter addicts. I've been to several events and parties and everyone is really social and excited to meet new people. Definitely an upward trending, getting cooler group of potential friends who made my birthday party last May a blast.	Don't know that many of them all that well.	Saturday party
Marc's DJ friends	Music-loving hippies who appreciate a good time until the break of dawn.	Unpredictable attendance to anything. There are always a million other parties you're conflicting with trying to draw them in.	Continuous
Neighbors	They're around, and will always at least stop in to say hi.	Small crowd	Not really

So that was my conundrum this year... have the party Saturday and conflict with two others, or have it Friday and lose the rotation fun? Well we chose Friday, but shouldn't have! The tweeps did not turn out in the numbers I'd hoped for, my favorites certainly stopped by but others had conflicts or were just not close enough. The girl's night friends completely failed me, I have no idea where they were.

What did happen: Marc's DJ friends showed up late in full force and were awesome, so many random people I didn't know but it was a good time. In fact I saw a lot of those folks again tonight at the party down the hall! The numbers would have been greater if we'd had ours tonight. Plus we would have had our early crowd of loyal coworkers, who acted really disappointed that we had our party on a conflicting night. But I honestly couldn't tell if they had fun last year in all the chaos, so I'm not sure if they're being honest or not.

Throwing parties is a blast and I really think I get better every time at figuring out how to get things together. I'm not necessarily more organized when I have them, but this year I had plenty of food and drink and the place looked good. Marc is great at re-arranging the furniture for conversation, and as we keep branching out and making more groups of friends the parties just get better. But halloween is extra special. It's my New Years' Eve. I really don't want to screw it up... every other party I throw is just practice. So I feel justified in indulging in a little over-analysis.

I think my lesson is to not count on ANYONE, have the thing on the night we truly prefer and move on. We have enough friends that someone will show up. Just need the confidence to own it.

So my doctor's appointment this week gave no exciting answers. I will not be getting an ultrasound to see the little parasite until 20 weeks or so! I just have to assume it's growing along just fine. I guess I'm okay with that, no need for extra medical stuff I don't need. Plus I hate those people who do stuff like change profile pics to sonogram photos, no offense, it might look like something to you but to most of us it looks like clouds of nothing.

My mother says that uptight parents make for an uptight baby so I've been actively working on relaxing a lot more. I still think the kid is a little doomed. It's going to be the firstborn child of me, a firstborn child. And to make matters worse I'm ALSO the firstborn of a firstborn, and not just any firstborn, my mother is one of those textbook organized leaders of power. When people read up on birth order characteristics, she's always the first one they turn to, "You were the oldest weren't you?"

I did tell the nurse I was a little nervous about my first prenatal appointment, and she didn't seem to understand why. She asked questions, the PA asked questions, they did a quick exam and took a lot of blood. The blood lady said they'd call me if there was anything wrong. I replied, "Including if I'm not pregnant, right? You'll call me if I'm not pregnant?" She just looked confused and said this was a prenatal appointment. Well yeah, because I scheduled it, not because some automatic pregnancy lightbulb in the sky went off above me and I got sucked into a magic wormhole for the knocked up (not my exact words). She asked if I took a home test, I said yes it was positive, she exclaimed, "Then you're pregnant!"

It just seems so funny that they took my word for all this. Gave me a goody bag full of vitamins and magazines and pamphlets. Took the time to get family history and ask about my plans... natural childbirth? I said probably but I'm actually not sure. Would I be willing to get a blood transfusion? What? Sure I guess. Did I want prenatal testing to see what genetic problems the kid could have? I don't know! I feel like when I got engaged and everyone started asking what my wedding colors would be. I didn't know I was supposed to have this stockpile of answers ready so early, like it's pre-planned or so.

Anyway week 8 and I'm still not sick or suffering! Don't ask how I got lucky on this one, I never thought I'd be one of the fortunate. When I was in high school just getting my period would leave me crawling on the floor for two days unable to keep any food down, it was miserable until I went on the pill. I just figured pregnancy was another hormonal thing that'd really mess with me. So far, it hasn't. But they say I'm pregnant... at my exam she said I "felt" eight weeks along.

Speaking of feelings, two nights ago I had some annoying cramping. Like menstrual cramps, about medium intensity. I did some googling and found out that unless I was bleeding it was just my uterus stretching out. Next couple weeks or so it's supposed to be about grapefruit size. There should be room for that to happen without messing with my fall wardrobe, but it might feel weird. Okay.

October, and halloween in general, play a special role in my heart. First, I LOVE halloween! We're having a huge party night and the apartment is a wreck but it'll come together by 8, really.

The second reason October is wonderful is that it's when marc and I got together. There's a picture of us on the wall in our halloween costumes, taken the day he moved to Wichita to be with me. In fact I recently opened up all these journal entries for public viewing: http://spacefem.livejournal.com/2005/10/ A lot of them were closed off to only a few friends because frankly I felt like a crazy person, and several (but not all) people I knew in real life were questioning my sanity. There was just something going on between us. But now I feel good about opening them up because I was not insane, we really ended up working out together.

So the October 2005 entries document our friendship and road trip to KC. Then my quasi-rational trip out to Atlanta to see him. Then I'm wondering what the hell is wrong with me. And then he shows up with all his stuff. And even though it wasn't a 100% gold-paved relationship from then on, I remember having lots of moments when we were so happy we were sure something horrible was going to happen someplace, just to keep the universe balanced. We still feel that way, but nothing awful has happened to us. It's been wonderful.

Marc and I don't have a "song" per se but since the beginning when I think of what I have my head plays "get it while you can" by Janis Joplin. It's not a perfect relationship song, you would not want it overheard at your wedding (I certainly kept it off our list). And it's not a song I think Marc would even understand because he wasn't exactly raised on Janis like I was. But it's about how you can't worry about the future when what you have now is so wonderful. And four years ago in October, when I didn't know what was going on, just had to be with him this weekend, I'd hear that song... who knows how permanent anything is? You just have to love what you've got today. I'm constantly amazed that's been today for the last four years.