bearing blog

Still nothing.

Amazing.

I spent eighteen hours Friday thinking I was in early labor.  Contractions seven to nine minutes apart, all day.  Then I went to bed.

Saturday afternoon it started up again, fairly heavily.  This time, three to four minutes apart.   Occasionally I'd "skip one."  That lasted about six hours.  Then I went to bed.

Nothing today except a couple of Braxton-Hicks-type contractions.  I feel almost normal.   At Mass I was able to stand and to kneel; for the past four weeks I've spent the whole time sitting.  I emptied the dishwasher and cleaned up the kitchen, twice.  I'm thirstier and more tired than usual, but otherwise it's business as usual.  And it feels so empty and boring!  I thought I'd have a baby in my arms by now.

This is so... anticlimactic.  I feel like I can't make any plans or drive anywhere, lest it start up again heavier than before and I'll be stranded.  Normally on Mondays I take the kids to music class, then to Melissa's to spend the day.  Do I dare?  I just don't know.  When I birthed Milo, I went from "oh, this'll probably be a few more hours before it ramps up" to TRANSITION! in the space of about fifteen minutes and in a puddle of amniotic fluid.  I'm kind of reluctant to go anywhere that'll make it difficult to get home quickly.

Rhetoric.

Here's a great site of primary sources for history teachers, composition instructors, and homeschoolers:  AmericanRhetoric.com.  The most important feature of the site is the Online Speech Bank:

THE ONLINE SPEECH BANKis an index to and growing database of 5000+ full text, audio and video (streaming) versions of public speeches, sermons, legal proceedings, lectures, debates, interviews, other recorded media events, and a declaration or two.

There's also a "Top 100 speeches" of the 20th century.   And some famous speeches from movies, which (considering how much visibility they get compared to, say, C-SPAN) probably should be counted as influential speeches these days.

I found the site via a link from Betsy Newmark to Bill Cosby's speech to the NAACP on the 50th anniversary of Brown vs. Board of Education. 

Well, that was interesting.

No, this isn't a birth story (yet).  Hang in there.

I had steady, moderately intense contractions all day yesterday, from when I got up in the morning until I went to bed last night.  And it sure felt like early labor.  Plus I made a pot of soup and cleaned the entire house (no scrubbing, just tidying and sweeping, except for a couple of toilets).  At lunchtime I made Mark come home, I was so sure we were starting to ramp up into active labor.  By late evening we were waffling about whether they were getting close enough together that we  should call the midwife again.

And then I got tired and said, "You know, my dream right now is that everything will just stop so I can get a good night's sleep, and then start up again when I wake up in the morning."

And I waddled up to bed and went to sleep.  As I dozed off I was still intermittently aware of painful contractions, but I was too tired to count them or anything.  I woke up around midnight and went downstairs for a sandwich and came back up and went back to sleep.   And then when I woke up again, it was morning.  And here I am, about six-thirty AM. 

I've had a couple of very light contractions since I woke up.  I don't know if they'll develop back into what I was doing yesterday, but still --- Wow.  Did I make that happen? 

I guess, now, I have to figure out what I'm going to do today if labor doesn't start up again.   I suppose it's back to my usual routine:  make the grocery list, set up some schoolwork (Oscar didn't do any yesterday and the kids watched the same movie over and over again --- I was in labor, after all!).  Well, that's no fun --- I was all set up for the normal rules to be suspended.

I would like to take a walk with my family in a nice park somewhere, but we're in the middle of a heat wave and it may hit triple digits today.  Maybe we could manage a short walk.

What were they drinking when they came up with this name?

We were driving around today, trying to get Milo to go to sleep, and we passed a billboard for a new local church --- one of those trendy, casual, urban, youth-oriented emergent and/or spinoff churches [Update:  It seems to be ELCA Lutheran] that seem to be popping up all over.  The billboard says:

jacob's well

the kind of church you're thirsty for

My thought, of course:  Everyone who drinks this will be thirsty again...  Goodness.

Contractions.

Now entering Day 10 of The Long String Of Having Some Contractions Every Day.

Yeah, every day, for a few hours.  It's not too bad, except that they tend to tire me out.  One thing that's probably good about this:  ten days ago, when I had a series of contractions in a row, I was thinking, Oh nooooooo, I am not ready for this yet.  By now I'm thinking, Please please please let this be the start of labor.  Let's go.

Third time through, and everything feels different.  When I was waiting for Milo to be born, I kept wandering around the duplex, thinking, I need to fix a rope or something to the doorjamb or the ceiling, so I have something to grab onto and hang from when I'm in labor.  I never got around to it, but interestingly enough, I did deliver Milo while "hanging" (albeit standing, supported by hanging from my arms over the shoulders of two other people).  Last night, downstairs in the kids' playroom, I noticed the "swinging rings" dangling from the ceiling joists.  I reached out and took hold of them; I leaned back; I bent my knees and sank down until my weight stretched into my arms, wrists, hands.  I paused for a moment, experimenting.

Ow.  Ow.  Ow.  My elbows were coming apart.  I let go.

I'm a planner by nature.  I like to have a calendar on the wall with big squares to write everything down.  Weekly meal planning?  I have a stack of preprinted blanks in the kitchen drawer.  I like to know every morning what I'm doing that day.  Um.  Can't really do that now.

"Charities need goods, not garbage."

From today's Strib:

Imagine your in-laws or your best friend leaving a box on your doorstep filled with an unwashed white T-shirt worn while picking raspberries, a cookie jar with a broken lid, Gladware plastic caked with egg yolk, and a toaster that sparks. You're told that after a little presoaking, elbow grease and tinkering, all will be in nearly new condition.

Welcome to the daily grind at any local charity.

On any given day at Goodwill/Easter Seals Minnesota, about 15 to 20 percent of items received are not suitable to be sold in their stores, said marketing director Brian Becker. While the vast majority of donations are salable and deeply appreciated, said Becker, Goodwill in Minnesota spends about $600,000 a year on trash removal, or about 3 percent of annual sales. It's money that charities would prefer to use on their good deeds, not the garbage.

This is a real problem.  I used to volunteer sorting donated baby clothes at a crisis pregnancy center in Minneapolis.   While most of the donated goods were in fine shape, I was often astonished at what some people thought the poor ought to be wearing.  Stained, torn clothing with missing buttons, sometimes dirty, sometimes reeking of cigarette smoke or urine.  And we didn't have space to "host" all the clothing we got, anyway, so most of that stuff was thrown away. 

Sunni Sister speaks.

Gripping rant of a post at Sunni Sister, about the double standard for Muslim men and women:

One genuinely nice brother said to me that it seems kind of… not petty, but unimportant to worry about women in his town praying in a substandard room or being kicked out of the masjid when Muslims are slowly starving and being murdered all over the world, “especially this week, with what’s going on.” And I mean, in the context of living or dying, in the context of babies and children being burned to death as they flee their homes, he’s right. I was holding my baby in my arms when I saw a photograph of a baby his same age, laying face down, burned beyond recognition, on a road in Lebanon. I’d rather have that baby alive and safe than go to the masjid. I know when they say the things they’re saying… I know they are saying that it’s only by chance that my child or myself are not the discount deaths they’re talking about. I know our lives as Muslims or as Arabs or Pakistanis or whatever, are not consdered to be as valuable as other lives. I know that this very core human right — the right to exist — is more important than how big a prayer space is. But…

But… if that’s the excuse, then it means that a woman’s place in the masjid will never be addressed. Because there is always going to be a war, and there will always be children being brutalized somewhere. There will always be something higher up on the agenda. I mean, it kind of strikes me as a cop out. “I’m sorry, sister. I can’t bring up your right to pray in the masjid in a clean space because what’s going on in (insert place here) is more important than that, wouldn’t you agree??” The only time it’s not a cop out is when the guy’s about to get on a plane to wherever to offer medical assistance or food or whatever help he can.

Read the whole thing.

h/t Shrine of the Holy Whapping.

Catholic comix.

Dust of the Time points to an online library of Catholic comic books:  Treasure Chest, all the issues from 1946 to 1963.  They're available as color images, page by page.  Some of them are really high-quality stuff.  Check it out.

Summer camp for atheists.

Rich Leonardi points to "Atheist and Agnostic Youth Camp."

This week, 31 atheist and agnostic youths from Ohio, Kentucky, New York and other states have gathered in Butler County for Camp Quest, one of a handful of summer camps nationwide where children are taught there is no God.

Wow, doesn't that sound fun?  I have to wonder, though, isn't it a bit troubling for the "agnostic" youths to have, you know, the there-is-no-God doctrine foisted on them like that?

Children and teens learn about the canons of rational thought, critical thinking and scientific inquiry.

Apparently this includes the "invisible unicorn" game, in which "campers must try to prove that imaginary unicorns --- as a metaphor for God --- don't exist." 

Great metaphor.  The board president explains, "A lot of times in these kids' lives they are asked to prove there is no evidence of God. We teach them the burden of proof lies with the person making the claim." 

Well, sure.  So, it depends on who's claiming what to whom.  Atheists don't get a get-out-of-burden-of-proof-free card just because they're atheists.

Obviously there's nothing inherently wrong with building a summer camp around philosophical beliefs.  I just wonder whether it might not be more productive to send kids to, oh, archery camp or something. 

One thing that bothers me about the article is its repeated reference to the camp as a "secular" camp, perhaps contrasting it to the other camps run by the YMCA (Young Men's Christian Association), which owns the campground.  Interesting.  I think of "secular" as being, well, religion-neutral, "not overtly religious," as m-w.com puts it.  Yet the statement "There is no God" is no less faith-based than its converse.  And really, most YMCA activities are secular.  We've been involved with the Y for years, for swimming lessons, gym memberships, and the like.   There is nothing overtly religious in the local Y.  (It's subversive!  They teach respect and responsibility!)  Maybe the writer thinks that because it's a Christian organization, nothing it does can be secular.

Pet peeve of the day.

So.  My husband attended an all-boys Catholic high school, lo these many years ago.   Since then, he's donated money every year.   After we got married, of course, it became more accurate to say that we donated money every year.  And I'm sure that's the case for most of the alumni donors listed in the annual report, this year's version of which just arrived in our mailbox today.

So why do they list all their alumni donors as simply, "Joe Smith, '62?" Why isn't it "Joe Smith, '62, and Jane Smith?"  Or "1962:  Joe and Jane Smith?"  Or even "Joe and Jane Smith, '62?"  (after all, it's an all-male school, we know that Jane Smith wasn't the one in Class of '62).

The donating parents of alumni and students are listed as married couples, albeit with my least-favorite form of address:  "Mr. and Mrs. Joe Smith."  Apparently, for a student's mom to get her OWN name in the lists of donors, she has to be widowed.

This has bugged my mother-in-law for years (Mark's dad went to the same school), and I guess it's my turn now...