A Brief Appearance

Taking a moment to post, as I am overwhelmed by a ten page paper (currently eight pages of word vomit understandable only to myself) that is due tomorrow, and am having a hard time forcing myself back to it after dinner.

I am uncomfortable.

As I type this, Baby C's feet (I think) are up in my ribs. Even though he has dropped. I am carrying much lower than I was before--my belly is basically in my lap when I sit down--and I definitely feel him chilling in my pelvis when I walk. But he can still reach up when he has a mind. I'm guessing he's a long baby. At least he's no longer pinching any nerves.

Now, if I were sitting forward with my feet on the floor and my legs at the proper angle, he wouldn't be in my ribs. But as it is, I am sitting with my feet propped on the couch next to me, in the hopes that they will look less like elephant feet--or at least feel less sore from the swelling. (Nothing I can do for my hands, unfortunately--I have lots of typing that needs to get done.) I am so grateful that this wasn't a summer pregnancy, because I can only imagine the swelling would have been awful.

I meant to do a lot of walking with the warmer weather, but walking is painful.

Honestly, I am just tired of being pregnant. I keep thinking, I'm ready whenever you are, baby. But that's not entirely true. Because I have this paper to write. I have a manuscript to revise. I have stories to grade. All in the next 3 1/2 weeks.

So if I'm not around here much these days ... that would be why.

Something New

Remember how one of my crafty resolutions for 2012 was learning to crochet?

Let me introduce you to my first crochet swatch! (I was too lazy to weave in the ends.)

Now that I've learned the single, half-double, double, treble, and double-treble (sheesh) crochet stitches, I'm ready to move on to increasing, decreasing, working in the round, and so on. I'm using the excellent Crochet School videos over at Crafty Minx's blog.

It took me until double crochet to find "groove", so to speak. As I moved along, I kept finding myself holding the yarn between my ring and middle fingers, which meant having to move my entire hand to wrap it around the hook--very awkward and tiring. But I seem to have found a more practical way to hold it that still feels natural to me.

My allegiance is still to knitting, but it feels good to learn something new, doesn't it?

Well, look at that!

Sometimes Googling your own name tells you things about yourself you didn't even know.*

Like the fact that I was, apparently, nominated for a Pushcart Prize! Something I totally missed.

See?

I didn't win, of course--but getting nominated is still pretty dang awesome.

*Someone asked about my name change, and I told them I was officially the only Rosemary Callenberg on the internet. I had to fact check.

On the writing front ...

Today I met with one of the members of my manuscript committee. (I have another meeting with the chair of my committee on Thursday.) It was immensely helpful. She helped me see certain patterns that I tend to fall into with my stories, some of which I had almost-sort-of realized by myself before; but there's something about an outside voice pointing things out that can make things so much clearer.

We talked lightheartedly about the possibility of Baby coming early and complicating things, and she said something about my being able to wrap this thesis up in two weeks. I don't think that's possible, especially considering the essays I need to grade and the ten page paper I have to draft (both by next week), but ... perhaps I could conceivably have this thing ready for binding and committee signatures by the end of the month? It would be nice ...

Meanwhile, I got an email from an old professor asking if I would submit something to the literary journal I used to edit in undergrad. So soon I will have another publication under my belt. Pretty awesome!

Room for Baby

One of the big goals for us this month is getting the second bedroom baby-ready. I have to laugh when people ask me if the nursery's ready, because, well, there is so much I have to do before the baby comes (half of it not directly baby-related), and decorating is my lowest priority at this point. But soon we will get our crib, and then we can at least organize the room for his arrival.

Right now it looks like a disaster zone, and it's one of those "it'll-get-worse-before-it-gets-better" situations. The problem is that it's not just about that one room--organizing and relocating the things in there entails organizing and relocating the entire apartment.

For example, today we moved the bookshelf into the living room. This involved reorganizing the living room furniture, which meant moving chairs and things into other rooms. It also involved reorganizing all the shelves--though I won't complain about the latter, since organizing books is a peaceful sort of problem-solving that I don't mind. I'm not entirely happy about the new living room layout, but I might just need time to get used to it.

Just to give you an idea ... this is what the second bedroom looked like for most of the summer.

And then in November we had company, so it looked like this.

Not so bad, right?

But then there was Christmas, and baby furniture, and various other things ... and now it looks like this.

Yikes.

The stuff in the foreground is mostly craft supplies that were evicted from the bookshelf and need a new home.

It looks worse than it is in terms of the effort needed to clean it up ... at least that's what I'm telling myself. But in the meantime it looks pretty bad, doesn't it? We'll continue to chip away at it as we can.

Yarn Along: (all but) Finished Baby Blanket(s)

Today I give you not one, but two nearly finished baby blankets. Both need their ends woven in, and the blue Shale Baby Blanket needs blocking. The leaf--which is an adorable swaddling blanket pattern by Spud and Chloe--needs a button and an i-cord.

I think I'm ready to move on to a baby sweater. :)

This week is spring break, which means I've been cleaning, knitting, and reading a LOT for my Utopian and Dystopian Lit class. (One of my students complained about me giving him an additional twenty pages to read over break. I think my running total, so far, is between 400-500 pages.) Right now I'm on Pacific Edge by Kim Stanley Robinson, which is a novel about an "ecotopia" set in an alternate-reality California in the year 2065. It's a fairly quick read thus far, for which I am grateful. I just finished Ursula LeGuin's The Dispossessed which, now I think of it, I completed in a little less than three days--but it felt much longer, simply because of the weight of reading I have to get through this week. I would enjoy all these books much more if I didn't have to steam through them like this.

Not pictured: I am working on a Swallowtail for a friend, and still reading Sweater Quest (and still loving it). I want to blog about some of the awesome things I've discovered through this book; I highly recommend it!

Joining Ginny's yarn along crew.