200 square feet and it stinks

so im writing this from the hotel we have been camping at for the past week and a half waiting on our elusive shipment of household goods to arrive so we can begin the joyous task of unpacking our lives one brown box at a time...discovering along the way jut how many windows we have that are new sizes and walls that dont quite fit our lifes possessions. adding to the joy of today is that our sweet peach has been throwing up for the past 12 hours continuosly. i am now in a room piled high with hotel linens and the faint smell of bile in the air.

i plan on utilizing the grocery service that our hotel offers today since patrick has the car in d.c. doing work at the base and am hoping the eager staff is eager to fetch me some pedialite and saltines to begin testing the tepid waters of gks tummy.

and im ready for our stuff to arrive. and im ready to be living in a real house with familiar linens and familiar smells. im ready for my mom to get here and have all the answers and encouragement to get me through a day like this. but im thankful. im thankful for lori, the kind woman from housekeeping who just delivered fresh towels and removed the smelly pile from the corner (somehow without even a look of disgust...remarkable, i assure you...it stanks). im thankful for the note that patrick left this morning wishing me the best day possible in light of a sick little one. im convinced there is no place he would rather be than in this room with us, smells and all. i feel lucky to be here, in d.c., reunited with close friends and expecting a son in just over 6 weeks. and today will pass. gk will feel better, the puke smell will wash out of one of my few remaining cute shirts that still fit, we will have our stuff delivered eventually and our house will be a home...stocked with pedialite and crackers at the ready for another round in motherhood bliss.

su-per

for any of you who may not know of my absolute loooove of flying, read this entry from when i experienced a pudding like faith as i flew the friendly skies. for the rest of you who are well aware of my ongoing unnatural, irrational, and completely silly (but very real) fear of flying, you can just picture my joy at last nights news. sweet charlie gibson (i really do love that guy) informed me that the pilots of usairways have taken out a full one page ad in the new york times blowing the whistle on what they claim to be instructions from corporate that could endanger passengers. namely, the issue of flying with the least amount of fuel as possible in order to save money. FABULOUS. i will be extra calm tomorrow as i board my nonstop flight across country on usairways to d.c....i will also be wishing for a cocktail and anti anxiety meds every time i hear the slightest noise. isnt paying for my second checked bag supposed to offset the cost of the fuel? or was it the paying for my glass of water and tiny pack of stale pretzels? or maybe it was the already unbelievably high price i paid for a one way ticket?? i seem to have lost track of all the ways theyve so creatively come up with to screw me out of a few more dollars, but surely one of them can cover the cost of enough fuel to keep the pilots happy and passengers safe. ugh.

just a thought

so theres this story, a headline really, that if youve seen any news in the last month you have no doubt heard about. it focuses on a young group of teens from a massachusetts town who supposedly made a pact to intentionally get pregnant and raise their babies together. (they seriously should have called me first, i would have explained just how different my belly looks post baby as well as the finer perks of throwing up while 7 months preggo). but they didnt call me and i didnt have the chance to take these girls under my 'you dont want to be knocked up' wing and explain to them with truth in love why there could possibly be a few easier ways to keep in touch with high school friends (if you even remember them post graduation) and bond with the girls. can you say facebook and a spa day? alas, these young mothers now have young babies and for all the speculation and criticism (can you believe the news coverage has everything from hollywood making it look too easy/glamorous to jamie lynn spears having a baby at 17 sharing the blame) i see a potential silver lining in the now infamous story.

i went to a high school with well over 2,000 students. of those 2200 kids, there were 2 girls who had babies, one doing a brave job of raising her little boy while trying to complete her diploma and the other who generously offered up her little one to a young couple unable to have children of their own. the second girl, after making an extremely difficult and brave decision to give her own baby a different life than she could offer, was rewarded for her courage in the way that only high school girls are capable of by calling her a slut and a whore behind her back. rather than honored, she was shamed. rather than being supported, she was ostracized and rather than being respected she was humiliated by her peers. what i know now is that there were lots of pregnancies in that high school, there were just not many births. the stigma of having a child as a teen was far greater than the stigma of having an abortion.

i am a supporter of all life. of the life of the unborn and the life of a woman who is forced to make an unimaginably difficult and painful decision to not have a child. i recognize that for every life taken, there is a life forever changed. there are scars and wounds that never heal within these women who when faced with a choice were in a place where terminating a pregnancy seemed like the best option.

and while im concerned that teen pregnancy is still prevalent (although it is at its lowest rate in a decade) and that there was clearly a lapse in maturity and judgment by these young women, i am simultaneously encouraged that the stigma for having a child amid less than ideal circumstances seems to be making progress. i am not saying we, as a society, should celebrate a group of young teens choosing to get pregnant. what i am saying is that there is at least room for the possibility of a gradual shift in our view of these young girls and subsequent pregnancies. perhaps the tide is changing and we are beginning to alter how we judge the choices of young women facing difficult decisions. and i believe, if only in the smallest and most hopeful spaces of my spirit, theres a chance we are placing a greater value on life than we have in the past. and for that i am encouraged.

and shes honest

while trying to position a keyboard on my lap to play, georgia, after several attempts at finding the perfect spot said, 'um, mommy, im taking this to papa's lap because your tummys kind of in the way.'

thanks. i hadnt noticed.