Wednesday, September 30, 2009

The third trimester SUCKS

I may look like this:



but really I feel like this:




Okay there, I said it. I am suffering, big time. Here is my list of complaints:

my feet and ankles are swollen unrecognizably
I have itchy skin
I am so heavy it hurts to stand up, sit down or roll over
I can't cook or clean or prepapre anything for the babies arrival
socializing is almost too much of an effort for me at this point
I can feel myself OUTGROWING my MATERNITY CLOTHES!
I live with a constant deep and insatiable hunger
trouble breathing due to the transverse baby across the top of my chest
totally psychadelic dreams
totally bitchy attitude to the husband unit because let's face it...he did this to me
a feeling of being totally handicapped
I can't even think about bending over(or forward more than two inches)
and then some other not so pleasant pregnancy symptons that i will spare you from having to contemplate

But really truly the worst and biggest one of all of my complaints is this constant awareness that I want my babies. I am ready to hold them and love them and feed them and not sleep because they are on the outside of me. That is coupled with the keen awareness that they have to stay inside for longer and that I can't wish too hard to see them just yet. I have, at minimum, another 5 weeks to go. That will put me squarely at 37 weeks.

I always thought I would be the picture of grace and ease during pregnancy. Way more Grace Kelly than Elizabeth Taylor's Martha in Who's Afraid of Virginia Wolf. But honest to goodness, while there are definite sweet and beneficial times to being pregnant, it really really really can suck. People who say otherwise, I am convinced, ARE LYING. Or they had really easy pregnancies. I think the fact that I am already carrying the baby wieght (over seven pounds of baby between the two of them) of a 9 monther of a singleton pregnancy is greatly contributing to my complete and utter discomfort. I also realize that even with singleton pregnancies it can be really really challenging for the woman. I have women soemtimes tell me, oh well, you are suffering double than her or stuff like that and I don't agree with that attitude at all. In fact, it pisses me off for pregnant women everywhere! I think that each body is made differently and maybe mine is made to carry a twin pregnancy better than some women are made to carry a singleton pregnancy.

Okay, off the soap box now and done complaining, thanks I feel much better now! (not really) Going to make myself have contact with the outside world.

Wednesday, September 23, 2009

Writing to save my life...or at least my mind



With the crisp fall air swirling around my mostly housed-in head, I have been feeling the urge to write again. To reflect, speculate, bedazzle and proclaim.

~How I FEEL about Paris today~

I still dream of Paris. I still long for Paris. Especially NOW as the last time I was there was this time of year, a year ago. The last time I was there I bought my brown trench coat and wore patterned scarves. I ate beef tartare and drank a 13 euro bottle of Chateauneuf du Pape from the grocery store. I was certain that my life would be taking a different direction than it is now. I thought I was so set in my identity, my comfy, cosy, American, successful, working identity.

I was a red wine drinker, a connoisseur, a poet, single, short haired and fabulous. I had lovers but I wasn't willing to call it love. I was known for my alcohol drenched black forest cake and the various stamps in my passports.

This feels like so very long ago. For now...a year later, I am less than two months away from being a mother, of two children. I have had to give up fashion for comfort and red wine for pregnancy vitamins.

When I see fashionable women walking in clunky heels and flowing fall skirts around Casablanca there is a part of my heart that just jumps right out of my chest and into the middle of the on coming traffic. I long for that feeling so desperately. I long to feel sexy and have a neatly compressed waistline. I long to be stressed out from doing too much, lifting too much, stressed from working too much to bring home the bacon and the weekend dinner party and the friend drama and all of those aspects of normal people life that I have utterly withstood from for the past 8 months.

While this pregnancy and this time in my life is one of the most precious and wholesome transitions I have ever experienced, I am ready for what comes after. I am ready to show my husband that I am more than a 200 pound rolly-poley that can't flip my own self over.

Speaking of him...my god...what a blessing he is. In my eyes he is the only man on this entire earth that can manage to make me feel that I am still desirable while in this state.

Does he want Paris? He, like everyone I have ever loved, would move to Paris for me in a heartbeat. The difference between him and those before him is that he actually has changed continents for the love of a woman, he has lived in North America, the middle east, Asia and Africa. All of his own accord, all working and traveling and taking his cheesy smiling photos along the way. He has been in debilitating motorcycle crashes and had his entire kitchen staff conspire against him. He has opened restaurants and ended relationships and returned home to care for his mother. He has done so much. I am quite impressed with his life resume. I think he is my soul mate and I fear that he will be taken from me every second of every day. But I am so thankful that we have this time together and it is him who made me pregnant.

So yes...back to Paris, I have more faith in our ability to change our lives and venture out into the world together than I have ever had in any relationship.

All of that being said, I don't know if Paris is within my reach anymore. I don't know what kind of a job it would take, to get papers for a family, to rent an apartment for four instead of one. To make enough money to happily raise two children living in the city. I know people do this in Paris, lots of them do this everyday. I am not giving up completely, I am not saying it is impossible. I am just saying it seems a little out of reach. It was out of reach when it was just me but now it is me plus three.

to be contd...

Tuesday, September 22, 2009

A little bit healed



I am happy to report that now, over a full year later I am starting to feel a little bit healed from the traumatic events that pushed my life forward and into the exciting direction it is facing now. I hope that makes sense. I guess what I mean to say is that time heals all wounds and I was really really wounded on July 14th of 2008. It has taken me this long, not to feel better, but to feel not afraid or hurt when thinking of certain subjects or people.

I think that is progress, I think my heart is truly healing. I can listen to certain songs, talk about certain subjects, and again remember certain people without it, at the very least, rendering me very uncomfortable.

I have gotten here, to this healed place through massive amounts of love, affection, hope and grace. This is undeniable. I am now looking forward to continuing to trod this path of healthy loving trust in the good things in life.

(anyone think I'm just hormonal?)

Friday, September 11, 2009

Ramadan Update


So...Ramadan has been good...I guess.

I'll say this, I have enjoyed the food and the night life. Casablanca comes alive around 9:00pm every night. I also come alive and then STAY alive until about 5am every morning. People don't eat and drink anything until 7pm so the earliest you could possibly go to sleep would be 12am but really it is more like 1am or 2 am, because you know, who can work all day, then eat, then drink, then rest, then go back to sleep. No, that is not the way people roll over here during Ramadan. Instead you go out, meet friends, go shopping, have coffee, hang out, whatever. Then everyone is tired all day (which actually works perfectly for my very pregnant pace just now).

On Working during Ramadan:
Business meetings are relaxed, the shops and banks and businesses close down at 4pm latest and re-open afterwards, so I have started doing night classes and I love the night schedule.

On Street Fights during Ramadan:
There are daily fights around 5pm and I mean EVERYDAY. We go up to the roof to watch them and sometimes they even have machetes, no shit. I am all "isn't it like really bad if you machete someone to death while you are fasting?" and Youssef is all, "nah, well, I mean I guess it'll get you like 7 years in the clinker".

What else? OH yeah, everyone's breath stinks!!!!! Horribly!!!!!!!! And no one wears perfume or cologne during the day, only at night.

On Breaking the Fast during Ramadan:
I have gotten super awesome butt kicking bad ass at preparing the breakfast (called f'toor in Moroccan and Iftar in Arabic). In fact, since the first week Youssef can't time an iftar on his own to save his poor little starving self if his life depended on it.

On Me-Walking-in-the-Street during Ramadan:
One of the best Ramadan perks EVER is that I do not get harassed on the streets!!!!! Not by beggars or incredibly perverted men that got a thing for the belly bump. It kind of pisses me off though that the entire male population of Casablanca is so damned able to be respectful and decent and NOT ogle me as I go buy, but normally just choose to do so anyways, you know, when it's not Ramadan. It means that these schmucks are capable of controlling themselves and their utter daily harassment is a CHOICE they make every time they choose to harass, whisper at or follow a woman on the street. Which, okay, of COURSE it is. But I guess the fact that it not so deeply ingrained that the worst of the worst of the harassers are able to be respectful, because thinking sexual thoughts would break their fast, is just a little insulting.

So there you go. I have turned into a vampire, I get to break all the rules because I am pregnant and a foreigner and we get invited to eat out alot. Oh and I also added a fourth meal to my day, AT MIDNIGHT!

Thursday, September 03, 2009

My Life in Twos

So I feel like I have a lot of things in my life this year that have come in twos. I have two cities, speak in two languages, have two families, two sets of friends, two countries, two parakeets. We are looking for a new apartment which would be two apartments and finally I have around two months left to wait for my two little girls.

Names, for the film buffs this should be easy: