Brett somehow found this link, and I thought it was not only funny, but I also really liked the illustrations.

Given our experiences this summer, it seems appropriate to post, even if it is just ultimately an ad for some matchmaking site.

So here it is: http://www.biggerbetterbeards.org/

Hope it gives you a laugh!

So annoying!

Oh, yeah — I guess one thing I was going to do was post a recap of the weekend.

Elanor’s first road trip went moderately well. She definitely got tired of the carseat at times, necessitating Brett to contort his arm behind the seat and pop a finger in her mouth (I don’t know how he does it, especially when her seat is right behind his; I guess his arms are a cross between those of Inspector Gadget and Gumby).

Traffic was terrible on the way down to Portland last Thursday, so after having been sitting for over two hours and only being just to the north part of Tacoma (a trip that usually takes about 40 minutes), we decided to stop and find some food for us and feed and change Elanor.

We pulled into a Taco Time and Brett stayed in the car with her while I ran in to go pee and get our food. We had decided to have what Brett’s family always called a car picnic (a fancy way of saying that we would just eat in the car) so we wouldn’t have to bring Elanor inside.

I came back out with our food, and as luck would have it, Elanor was really hungry right that second. (She seems to have some kind of radar about being really hungry just as Mama is getting ready to eat.) So, I started feeding her right away, while also trying to eat my dinner. (Have you ever tried to nurse a baby while eating a fast food burrito? Yeah, it’s definitely not easy. But thankfully, I did it without dropping beans & cheese on myself or the baby, so all things considered, I would say it was a success.)

I wanted to change her diaper before we got on the road, so I got in the back and set everything up with the changing pad on the seat, a task which required that I move everything that had been packed on the back seat into the way back. (We were not thinking clearly when we packed the car. Then again, when have we ever needed to change a baby on the back seat before?)

Finally, I had everything ready and Brett handed her back to me. I set her on the pad and got her diaper off. As I moved to put the diaper in the garbage bag, I realized that she was peeing, all over the seat.

I shreiked, then started cracking up. Brett was laughing, too, and then he said, “Happy Valentine’s Day, Leen. Sorry it’s not more exciting and that you have to spend it in the back seat of the car with a peeing baby in a Taco Time parking lot in Tacoma.”

And that was when I realized that next to the Valentine’s Day five years ago when Brett proposed, this Valentine’s Day, spent in a Taco Time parking lot in Tacoma, trying to eat my burrito while feeding a baby, followed by watching my baby pee on the back seat — well, this Valentine’s Day was probably the best one yet.

More trip recap to come…including Elanor’s first meeting with her Great-Grandma Dori and her first big party.

What is it, you ask?

I shaved my legs at nine months pregnant, and lived to tell the tale.

I’ve been contemplating shaving my legs again for about a week (they’ve been getting pretty fuzzy), but I haven’t been able to find the courage to do it. However, during my shower yesterday, I decided it was time. It’s vain, I know, but I don’t want to go into labor and have really hairy legs. I’m weird like that. So I bit the bullet and got out the razor and shaving cream, and went to town. (I also don’t want to have nasty toes, which is why I am going for a pedicure in an hour and a half.)

There are many problems involved with shaving one’s legs at nine months pregnant. The most obvious is that you have the equivalent of a watermelon on your front, so the standard prop-leg-on-side-of-tub, bend-over-and-shave manoeuvre doesn’t really work anymore, since your belly will hit your leg before you’ve bent forward more than a few inches, leaving your arms flailing several inches above your leg.

That means you have to shift your belly to the side of your leg and then reach around it to get to your leg — a problem in the best of circumstances, but add in a slippery shower, a sharp object, and, my own personal problem of short arms…well, it suddenly gets a lot more challenging.

On top of the belly being in the way (solution: perform contortions you didn’t know were possible) and the shower likely being slippery (solution: pray a lot), you also have to factor in the problem of loose and/or sore joints — hips, knees, ankles, etc. Your body doesn’t want to stay where you put it…your knees keep threatening to give out and your hips are sending shooting pain up your back and down your leg the entire time you are trying to balance and shave.

Yes, it’s a challenging task…but, I am proud to say, I completed it without cutting myself once — and before the hot water ran out! Hooray! And now for a few days at least, I will have legs I won’t mind baring during labor — if labor ever actually happens, which, at this point, I am beginning to doubt. I just hope it happens soon, before all my work is for naught and I have to shave again…

We proceeded to have a two-minute-long conversation about my appointment, my lack of progress with regard to my cervix, my grumpiness, my intense desire to go home and lie down instead of going back to work, etc. — basically normal mom-daughter 38-weeks-pregnant stuff.

Our conversation was interrupted when I suddenly found myself on hold, listening to an annoying on-hold commercial about how “[Mom's Company] can meet all your construction needs…”

Confused, I waited a minute, then hung up and called my mom back.

[Scene: Brett and Kathleen are stopped at a light somewhere in the U-District.]

Brett: Don’t look too closely at the guy in the car back there [gesturing to the car behind us and to the right]. That dude’s intense.

Kathleen: [looking] Brett, it’s just a guy in a tux smoking a cigarette with his window down. [Traffic starts to move and the guy passes us on the right.] And he’s driving a lavender Camry. He can’t be that intense.

Brett: [mumbles] Pussy.

Kathleen: Dude, he’s a pussy? I wouldn’t talk; you’re the one driving the big red minivan.

“Heh. You look really funny right now,” followed by uncontrolled laughter.

Next on the list of reactions not to have when your pregnant wife looks hurt and asks you why:

“Well your belly is huge and your pants are all pulled up over it [laughter] and you just look hilarious and adorable,” followed by uncontrolled laughter.

And finally, on the list of reactions not to have when your pregnant wife loses her ever-diminishing patience and grabs her shirt, hikes it over her belly (revealing the entire giant lump in the process), and says heatedly, “Well, it’s either up HERE [pulls pants further up over belly] or down HERE [pulls pants down under belly]. I don’t exactly have a MIDDLE right now!”:

Uncontrolled laughter.

Weddings and potulcks are generally pretty bad, although I can usually find something to fill me up. Chicken or Beef? Um, no thanks. I’ll just eat this roll here, and maybe that salad over there. And also two servings of dessert.

So I manage at weddings and potlucks. I don’t usually get what I want, but I don’t usually leave hungry, either. Office parties are generally the worst, though.

For instance, while we lived in Maine, there was one staff lunch where (literally) the only thing there I could eat was potato chips. Everyone knew I was a vegetarian — and yet no one thought to tell me, “Hey, you might wanna bring a salad.” I sat down with a plate full of plain chips, sour cream and onion chips, and barbeque chips — and the worst part was that the only person who noticed the contents of my plate was my friend and co-worker Susan. We had a good laugh about it in the car on the way back to our office, but at the time, I was pissed off and embarrased and hungry.

Or, there was the time earlier this year when we ordered Mexican food for lunch. I had ordered a special bean burrito — the only veggie entree we’d gotten, because most of our employees scream if you offer them anything other than a big slab of meat with a side of meat sauce. I got stuck at my desk for a few minutes at the beginning of the lunch, and by the time I got upstairs, someone had eaten my entire lunch.

Again, I ate chips for lunch, only that time they were the slightly-more-appealing corn variety.

And then there was today. We had lunch for me at work, in honor of my birthday, which is Sunday. I had requested Indian food, which I think weirded a lot of people out. It was too exotic for most of my co-workers; at least, that was the impression they gave.

Anyway, I have been looking forward to my favorite, favorite dish — Aloo Mutter — all. week. long. Seriously, every day I have wanted Aloo Mutter and every day I have told myself, “Just wait until Friday. Then you’ll get Aloo Mutter and naan and all kinds of other Indian goodies.”

You can see where this is going, can’t you?

The ONE EFFING DISH the restaurant didn’t put in with our order? Not one of the two orders of chicken tikka, or the chicken briyani, or the lamb curry…oh, no. It was my fucking Aloo Mutter. I really, seriously had to fight back the tears when we realized it wasn’t in there. I managed to hold it together only because my co-worker Andrew felt so bad that my lunch got skipped. Again. On the day of my birthday lunch.

So I ate what I guess must be the Indian version of chips for lunch: about one whole piece of naan. And a little rice. And half a samosa.

It was a sad, sad day.

At least one of my co-workers had gone and gotten chocolate fudge cake and also strawberry cheesecake for dessert. He seriously saved the day.

I guess next time we have a staff lunch I am either going to a.) insist on going with whoever picks up the food and checking that my order is there, and correct or b.) bring something. Because I just can’t seem to win when it comes to eating in group settings.

The sun was shining, we were full of Pho, and we were both feeling happy and goofy.

And then, I felt something hit my left shoulder area — like where my coat’s lapel is, kind of. The tree above us was dropping little blooms, so I figured that was what it was. But no, oh, no. Of course it wasn’t some leafy blossom.

It was freaking bird crap.

Brett started laughing so hard that I couldn’t help myself from laughing, too, even though I was freaking out a bit.

Thankfully, there is a little tea shop next to the bus stop, so I went in there and begged some napkins off of the guy at the counter, who couldn’t hold his laughter in, either. I made some comment about how at least now I have an excuse to get my wool coat dry cleaned.

One of the tea shop patrons piped up from the back of the store.

“You know, it [getting hit with bird crap] is good luck in Japan.”

Well, if that’s their idea of good luck, I’d hate to see their idea of bad luck.

Brett always loves to be a smart-aleck, and when I ask him where something is, he’ll respond, “If it was up your ass you’d know.” Well, from the looks of this photo, it seems as though he would have been right had I asked him the location of the scissors.

Notice the dog, Dylan, in the lower right-hand corner? I’m sure he’s thinking, “Dude, these humans are sooo weird. What are they doing with that tape?”

Here we are, almost done ghetto-ify-ing our suitcase. Good times.

(Epilogue: The tape held perfectly, all the way home.)