In Which Things Become Complicated...

I really enjoyed being pregnant with the Bear. Sure, I had the morning sickness ikkies, but they mostly involved feeling tired and a bit nauseous; I rarely actually threw up and I wasn't sleeping on the bathroom floor or carrying baggies with me everywhere. By week 14 or so that had passed, and by week 16 I could feel the little guy start to move. In the last couple of weeks it got harder to sleep comfortably and sometimes I had to get up in the night to pee... But for the most part, I loved being pregnant. I loved feeling a little one inside me moving around. I loved talking to him and singing to him. I loved how easy it was to care for him while he was in-utero (no crying, no diapers!) I loved knowing that pretty soon he'd be out to play.
So, this morning when I saw that a friend of mine had joined the facebook group "We love/loved being pregnant" I clicked the button to join up too. Of course when one does this, the message goes up to all your friends "Jenni has joined the group 'We love/loved being pregnant' [and also another group which has no bearing on this story]."
Apparently this was interpreted by many as an announcement that I was pregnant. It was not intended to be an announcement, but people took it as such. (Argh, dumb ol facebook!)

Here is the real complication, you see, because just yesterday I found out something:

☺

For all the assuming about the announcement that I wasn't trying to make...y'all were actually right. So while I was here at home, oblivious to my little faux-pas, Hubby was at work on a break (for his planning period) and one of our mutual facebook friends saw him online and utilized the chat feature to ask him straight out if we were expecting. Hubby, caught off-guard, didn't reply with a vague "why do you ask?" but surmised that I must have said something, and so confirmed the fact. Then he called me and told me that I'd better call our folks NOW so that they heard it from us and not via the grapevine.
Oops.
So much for waiting a couple of weeks before telling everyone. Last time we waited until 10ish weeks (at Hubby's request) but my own inclination has always been to tell right away, so in spite of it being inadvertent, I guess this time we did it my way.


So, yes, a new Wild Thing is anticipated to arrive in November. My long-term readers know that this is something very planned and long-awaited (although November's birthstone is not one I'd have picked for my mother's ring...but neither are June or January, so oh well!). I'm thrilled at the news in spite of being caught slightly off-guard--I rather thought we'd missed the timing on this one with Hubby being out of town earlier this month combined with my anything-but-usual cycle schedule due to last month's craziness. We are discussing an appropriate animal nickname/totem for this one, so we can start calling him/her something. Hubby suggested Orca (I think because our Alaskan wildlife calendar had a Bear, then a Wolf, and march is an Orca), but I vetoed any blubber-heavy creatures. I'm leaning toward Lynx or Hawk...maybe Tiger or Eagle. I'm open to suggestions of course (it has to be high on the food chain, a creature with characteristics worth emulating, and yes, it should be beautiful ☺).

You Might Live in Pelican if...

this is for all my readers who keep asking to hear more about life in Pelican...

I confess to swiping some of this list from my SouthEast Alaska facebook group, but some are my own addition too...I left a couple that don't specifically apply to me cuz they're so funny, but most of these are either about me or one of my friends here.

You Might Live in Pelican (or SouthEast Alaska) if:

- People hear that you live in Alaska and ask about the polar bears/tundra/constant darkness, and you have to explain that you live in the 'other' part of Alaska...the part with rainforest, grizzly bears, salmon, fishing, cruises, whales, and bald eagles...

- You live in the tiny town of Pelican on the very large island of Chichagof, but your family still refers to "Pelican Island" and thinks it's little

- You know what muskeg is

- Anything short of a torrential downpour and raining sideways is "good weather"

- You cannot stay inside when the sun is out, no matter how briefly

- By the time you get your coat and boots on the sun is gone again, but you stay outside for a few minutes anyway

- You have worn X-tra Tuffs to school or work or on a date

- You own more than one pair of X-tra Tuffs --->

- You think name brands are Grundens, Helle Hansen, X-tra Tuff, and Carhartt

- Your Christmas list includes such items as boat parts, raingear, long underwear, or rifle ammunition

- You know everybody in your town, and I mean EVERYBODY

- You also know their dogs by name (and which dogs will be nice to your dog/toddler)

- You know that boat dogs--male or female--squat to pee, even on land. Raising a leg on a boat = falling over

- The kids in town wear lifevests (aka 'float coats') everywhere, all the time

- You take up knitting because the weekly knitting circle is the only social event in town (unless you like to hang out in smoke-filled bars with drunk fishermen)

- You drag a plastic sled to the post office/store to bring home your mail/packages/groceries.

- You keep a tidetable in the house because your son likes to walk to/from school over the tideflats, and he doesn't always pay attention to whether the tide is in or out before he starts walking

- You have to go into Juneau to go shopping (and it's expensive, so you only go a couple of times a year, or else get everything shipped on the seaplane/ferry)

- Ferry day is worth canceling school (so everyone can go help unload their family's groceries)

- You can't remember the last time you locked your front door, even when you were out of town for a week

- You have thought about inventing a bumper sticker that reads "this car does not brake for cannery workers" (variations include same phrase in other languages or substituting "tourists" for "cannery workers")

- You would put the bumper sticker on your 4-wheeler or golf cart...because you don't actually have a car

- Riding in someone elses golf cart feels really fast (because you're used to walking)

- Two 4-wheelers/golf carts within sight of each other constitutes a traffic jam

- You have been married 35 years and have 5 kids but have never had a drivers license...because there are no cars in town so who needs one

- After living in Pelican for a few months you visit Juneau and borrow your cousin's car, and while tooling down the highway at what seems like a good clip you notice everyone passing you, and so you look at the speedometer to verify that you are going 45mph, and realize that you're doing 32.

- Fishing is not a hobby but a job

- You know what dogs, reds, humpys, coho, pinks, silvers, sockeye, chinook, chum, and kings are and can tell them all apart by sight OR taste

- Everyone you know has a picture like this --->

- When you can tell the difference between wild and farmed salmon in a restaurant, even if the waiters can't

- You have a bumper sticker that looks like this:

Friends DON'T let friends
EAT FARMED FISH

(and you display it in your window)

- You know who will (and won't) ship a fish box fast enough that the fish is still good when it arrives

- It's not uncommon to come home and find a 'big king salmon' in the sink that your neighbors dropped off because they didn't have room in their freezer.... so you eat it for dinner

- You tell people down south you are a commercial fisherman and they ask if it's like Deadliest Catch

- You are more proud to be an Alaskan than an American and you don't really get offended when people mistake you for being Canadian

- You know that "SouthEast" means SEA (southeast alaska) and that it's actually north and west of "The NorthWest"

- You know that Seattle is down south, which is totally unrelated to The South (where people eat gumbo and say "y'all"). People from down south just don't understand . . .

- You have spent 30+ hours on a ferry on one trip, and you can recognize every one of them from 3 miles away

- You have taken a float plane or a commercial fishing vessel for a school trip

- You've been stuck in Sitka, Gustavus, Hoonah, Angoon, or Juneau because of a wimpy pilot who circled over your hometown until you were too dizzy to know what's going on and then landed you somewhere else
- The lady at the seaplane office leaves her home number on the answering machine for the days when it's foggy/windy/stormy and she won't be getting down to the office

- You have been on a seaplane flight where all 6 people in the cabin applauded the pilot for landing you safely on the water after a pee-your-pants scary ride involving "flying by braille" in the fog or falling 1000 feet in 2 seconds (yay wind!)

- You're not the least bit baffled by city names like Ketchikan, Chichagof, Baranof, and Klukwan, and you know that Gustavus is pronounced "Gus-TAVE-us"

- Puddle jumping is part of your cross country or track teams' regular practices

- You only go to school on Wednesdays during your sports' season because you're traveling the rest of the time

- You look forward to school trips as mini-vacations off the island and shopping opportunities

- You have gone to high school basketball or wrestling regionals even if you weren't competing in anything, simply because otherwise you would have been the only person left in your town.

- Papa Murphy's Take n Bake pizza IS delivery (and it comes on a seaplane, and the entire town orders on the same day to share the freight cost)

- You have taken a skiff to get to school (a skiff is what non-alaskans would refer to as "a motorboat" or something with no cabin and that's too small for commercial fishing)

- You travel down south to visit family and grandma points out a songbird to your toddler...and he looks and looks but doesn't seem to see it, and then you realize that the only birds anyone has ever pointed out to him before were great blue herons and bald eagles

Jane and Me

So, I have a confession. Brace yourself ladies, but I have never read a book by Jane Austen. Ever.
I have seen several of the movies (which I realize doesn't count) and I hated every single one.

Since all my friends raved about Austen though, I dutifully pulled Pride & Prejudice off the shelf and dug in. I think I got partway into the second chapter before I had to give it up.
Please understand that it's not about the language or style (I read Shakespeare for pleasure and didn't have a problem getting through Dickens). No, it seems to be Miss Jane's stories themselves that disagree with me.



But then a few weeks ago I saw a movie. You can probably guess which movie it was:and (are you ready for this?) I loved it. I didn't really expect to love it, since I have never loved anything Jane, but I'd heard that it was really popular, and (since our tiny library mostly caters to the fishermen--ie, horror and violence) when I saw it on the shelf I snatched it up. And it was fabulous. I figure I should get my hands on the book since books are always better than the movies made from them, right?
So, due to the movie, I have decided to give Jane another chance. No matter how annoyed I was with any past experience, or how annoyed I may become in the middle of this one... I'm going to read the entire book. (And if I one day suddenly stop blogging, you may assume that I died from the experience.)
Based on JABC, I think have decided which book I want to read, however, I'd be very interested to hear your recommendations and favorites (and why you recommend or love them, of course!) If you're one of the few with whom I've already discussed this, and you already know my choice, no telling, ok?



I can still hate the regency dresses though. They make everybody look fat. Who thought of that style anyway? And the hair?! ewwww!

Frugal Friday Linky Love

This week I'm linking out to some other blogs (I found them in the "Frugal Living" section of mormon mommy blogs...some of the blogs there are focused on coupon clipping and you know, i don't buy half the stuff that they're clipping coupons for...but these few blogs had some stuff that I felt was more applicable to a hippie like me. ☺)

The ladies at Food Storage Made Easy have post about how to make your own self-rotating can shelves out of an old box. It's pretty spiffy.

Adventures in Self Reliance explains how to make very cool (very effective) firestarters with an old egg carton, some dryer lint, and a little melted wax. They're practically free, and very effective.

Frugalityville shares a list of cooking substitutes--no half & half or self rising flour? fear not, there are alternatives!

Preparedness Matters has a great post full of practical suggestions about practicing thrift and frugality in your every day life.

Long + Grey = Beautiful

Surely I can't be the only one who finds this beautiful: long, thick, healthy, grey hair.

When did we become afraid of aging? Traditionally a woman's lifetime was divided into three (or four) parts: (child), maiden, mother, and wisewoman (aka crone). Each age had it's own purpose: an age for learning, an age for growing, and age for bearing children, and an age for teaching. Each age is beautiful in it's own way. Just as menarche indicates the transition from childhood to maidenhood, so grey hairs indicate the maturity and wisdom of a wisewoman.

(this is the hair I want!)

In ancient times cutting off ones hair was a sign of mourning. Now it seems that millions of women cut their hair as it turns grey. Are they mourning the passage into the next phase of life? There is nothing to mourn! It is true that our current society is quite negative about age (and denies it with everything from botox to viagra), but I am a believer in "be[ing] the change you wish to see in the world, " [Ghandi]. Here in rural Alaska there are strong influances from the native cultures, and one thing they really have right is respect for elders. I love that. I am glad that my son is seeing that respect beyond our own family, and hope that he will teach it to his children as well.
But we fear aging, and so we fear gray. My mother in law has been dying her hair since before Hubby was born. I doubt that even she knows what color her real hair truly is anymore. My husband started greying at his temples in his mid-20s. After we were married he got much greyer (apparently being married to me is stressful!) ☺ and now he has the "salt and pepper" look with silver temples. His mother is greatly bothered by the grey: all her older children dye their hair, so 'baby' Hubby is the only one who's grey. We were at a family gathering a couple of years ago when she told him that he really should start dying his hair, and surely his wife would appreciate it if he did. I smiled at her and said "actually I rather like the grey." ♥ She has not brought it up since.
My own mother dyed her hair for a few months but decided it was not worth the expense. Her light red hair is now streaked with white, but I think it is as beautiful as it has ever been. It's a new kind of beautiful, but it is beautiful nonetheless.


Oh, you may say, that's all well and good to go au natural when you're 50 or 60 or 80, but what if you're going grey in your 30s or 20s? I'd invite you to visit some of the links below before making up your mind. I just always remember that at some point one has to stop dying, right? And then, rather than a gradual changing hair-by-hair, there is a vicious stripe growing out from the roots. Honestly that stripe is one of the biggest reasons I don't ever plan to dye away my greys.

• Consider the BlogHer article That Touch of Gray (it kinda suits you anyway)
• Or how about the Going Gray Blog, where they proudly declare that "gray hair is the new black"
• Check out the Everyday Goddess and her quest for natural hair (with the greys): she quit dying one day and it took her about a year and a half to grow it out long enough that she could cut off the dyed part (and still have a nice feminine haircut). She now describes her hair as "various shades of beautiful." I ♥ that! At least visit this post (the unabbreviated version of "BS" is used a couple of times...just fyi). She's young, unmarried, and living in LA. If she can do it, so can you!

I'm 27 and I've found a few greys. (For the newbies here, I wear my hair long--I'm currently on a quest to find my own terminal length and right now it's about hip-length). I currently use henna in my hair because of it's various nutritive benefits, but I don't think of it as a hair colorant (that's just a side-effect), and I don't intend to use it to cover grey. I use it in small doses so that it brightens my hair but doesn't fully 'cover' it. My hope is that with a few years of use my hair will be stronger and I won't need the henna anymore. I plan to go happily into old age with my own color on the long hair I love, twisted up into some graceful bun. Motherhood is now, but Wisewomanhood is next, and both are beautiful.

Movie Review Resources

The rating on a movie can only give the vaguest idea of what is really in it or whether it's appropriate to show to your family. One movie might be completely clean yet earn a PG-13 because it deals with a terminal illness. Another movie with the same rating could be peppered with vulgar language, sexual references, and violence.
Different parents are comfortable with different things, and some families have tools such as the TVGuardian (which utilizes the closed caption feed to silence and remove profanity and blasphemy), so I think it's more helpful to be able to find out precisely what is in each movie. Even with the new extended rating boxes (which indicate that the rating is for 'langauge and innuendo' or 'thematic elements') it's still difficult to really know what is in the film. For this reason, I like to utilize movie content reviewing sites.

I used to use ScreenIt, but their site is now harder to get through because they have two levels of reviews--the simple ones are free, but you have to register (and pay) to get the more elaborate ones. As you navigate through the site there are frequent ads for the paid version (which is ad-free) and it's somewhat annoying. If you don't mind the ads though, they have very detailed (blow-by-blow) information about the movie content.

My sister recommends Kids-In-Mind, which I have only tried once, but it was like ScreenIt in that it has extremely detailed information about each category (sex/nudity, violence/gore, profanity, and substance use). For example, it would say "a man and a woman kiss, and he asks her to come up to his apartment. Nothing is shown, but afterwards we see them laying next to each other in a bed." Under the profanity it is very specific. eg: "3 scatalogical terms, 2 sexual references, 1 anatomical term, 5 mild obsenities, name calling, and 5 religious exclamations." The only downside is that they seem to stick to the bigger movies, so if you're looking for something that was released straight to DVD, or that's on the older side, you may not be able to find it here.

I also like CommonSenseMedia because it has a wide variety of movies and doesn't require registration. It has brief and simple reviews, but viewers can also contribute reviews and I find the multiple perspectives helpful. Each rater (both the official site rater and also each viewer rater) gives a rating for what age they feel the movie is appropriate for: it's much more specific than just "PG" vs "PG-13" because you can rate it for any age 2-18. (If you want to leave reviews, you will have to register, but registration is free.)


So that's what works for me. Works For Me Wednesday has now moved to We are THAT Family, so now you can run on over there to see what works for other people!

The Powuh

When a 2 year old has an 8 year old brother, he gets a head start on learning about stuff like super powers and bazookas.
[oh, by way of clarification, Bear is on a bit of a potty strike this week--he keeps asking for diapers, so I'm going with it. I am excited that he's been so self-motivated, but I'm not going to push him if he needs a little break.]
This morning I was sewing and Bear was playing near me when I got a whiff of you know what. So I got everything out and laid him down to change his diaper.
"You pooped," I announced (I'm trying to help him maintain awareness at least).
"I poop!" he gleefully responded, "powuh poop!"
"Did you say power poop?"
[enthusiastically] "Uh-huh, powuh poop!!"
"Oh, that's very strange."
[singing] "A, B, C, D, powuh poop H, K, K, K, LMN, O, P..."

I swear, I don't know where he comes up with this stuff. He learned the alphabet from his musical teddy bear, but the power poop...I have no idea!

"My Nose!"

This weekend we had some glorious sunny weather, with quite mild temperatures (high 30s or low 40s I'd estimate). We've had a lot of snow this year, and while some areas get plowed, others do not, and there is a good sized field right across from our apartment that does not get plowed at all. I'm not sure what our total snowfall has been this year, but I think it's been around 10 feet since Christmas. Of course there's always some melting and compacting every time things warm up, so in areas that never get touched the snow is not that deep. In the case of our field, it's around 3-4 feet deep (depending on the area).
I figured sunny day + deep snow + two little boys (and a mommy) who are subject to depression and who are missing their daddy while he's gone for 11 days = let's go playoutside!!!
So we got out the snowpants and wool socks and boots and hats and mittens and coats and went out to play. While the snow was 3+ feet deep, it was sufficiently compacted that we only sank into it a few inches. That was enough to slow myself or Wolf a little, but it was nearly knee-high for Bear, so it slowed him considerably.
I taught Wolf how to play fox and geese (which is not nearly such an exciting game with only two people--since Bear was too small to get it) but the dog kept running through the middle of the game and we decided she was a really dumb goose.
Wolf spent most of his time climbing the piles of snow at the edges of the field (where the plows pile it up) and then 'skydiving' off them onto the field.
Bear mostly wandered around picking up chunks of snow and sucking on them. [tangent--Do all kids do this? I don't remember eating snow myself, but both of my boys love it. I have long since given up on trying to get them to stop eating the snow, and instead have focused on getting them to select their treats off of relatively clean snowbanks rather than the ground. ] Anyway, Bear wandered around eating snow, and periodically falling down and then calling "hewp mommy, hewp!!"
One time when I was helping him up he started to wail "my nose, my nose!" I thought perhaps he had gotten his face in the snow, and began trying to comfort him, but he immediately made it clear that his concern was not directed at his face, but rather at his hands. He had dropped his chunks of snow, or (in his words) his snows. Being only two, he drops the first S, and so was very very concerned about his "'no's."
I got him new snows and he was happily on his way.
Ahh the fun of linguistic acquisition!!

In Which I Reveal My Age

Thank you all for participating in my little poll. ☺ The results were as follows:

42 people cast their votes concerning my age.

• 1 said I am 23-25
• 14 said I am 25-28
• 18 said I am 28-30
• 5 said I am 30-32
• 3 said I am 32-34
• 1 said I am 35+

And the truth is...

[drumroll]

I am 27 23.

I was born in 1981, so according to the average calendar, I will turn 28 a few months from now--so the majority of you either knew this or guessed pretty darn close.
I had wondered whether my having an 8 year old would push people to guess older...Wolf was born just before I turned 19. On the other hand I also figured that many of you remembered that he's Hubby's biological son and that I adopted him after we married.

I am fairly sure that the person who voted for me being 23 was my husband, who has maintained that I was 19 since he met me (for the record, I thought I was 21 when we met, but apparently I was confused). This last year I finally put my foot down and insisted that I did not really want to be more than five years younger than my calendar age, and I definitely was NOT willing to be more than ten years younger than my spouse; so he'd better let me get a little older. He's obligingly agreed to let me age to 23 now.
How considerate of him.
(According to the average calendar, we are precisely 4 1/2 years apart...but don't tell him that, he likes his little fantasy world!)

My entire life people have guessed that I was older than I am; I suspect this has to do with my being an oldest child and "an adult since age three" in the words of my father. I was not the least bit surprised nor am I at all bothered that the majority of people guessed that I was slightly older than my actual age...

With that said, whoever guessed that I was 35+ should probably prepare to meet my Hubby in the backyard at high noon. I think there might be a throwdown.

Note

A massive load of snow has slid off my roof and knocked my satellite dish all off kilter (ie, my internet is gone). Last time this happened I was able to take a wrench and point it back up, but this time it's been knocked off more than one axis apparently, because I can neither reach it nor adjust it, so I have to wait for someone who can.
SO, there are a few scheduled posts already in the queue...but if I don't visit you, comment on your blogs, or publish your comments particularly regularly, well, that's why.
Hopefully I'll be up and running soon...but if I'm not, blame it on winters in Alaska, and a badly sloped roofline.