Shivery August

Well, it's been awhile since I posted. I seem to alternate between online blogging and pen and paper diaries every few years, and in Houston where I was constantly on the run and away from a computer pretty little notebooks were so easy. Plus there is no pressure to be coherent, or likeable, or grammatically correct. Which is very bad for the aspiring writer.

I no longer live in Houston. My husband's job has relocated to us to St. John's, Newfoundland in Canada. I've been here for about a month, and am having an unusually difficult time adapting. Granted there are other factors playing into this.

I found out I was pregnant days before leaving Houston and embarking on a two week trip to Honduras to "learn Spanish." I actually was doing a pretty good job learning Spanish in Honduras. I was staying in Copan Maya Ruins and was starting to think in Spanish and dream a little in Spanish. The problem was that I felt incredibly sick and tired. And returning to the U.S. for a week was such a relief to me that I find anything Spanish-related (beans, the actual sound of the language) makes me feel kind of nauseous. I am aware that this is purely psychological and I just need to get over it. But needless to day I have not practiced in over a month and I feel like everything I learned is just slipping away.

Why go to Honduras when you are pregnant and feel miserably sick? Because I had this passionate belief that I want my kids to be bilingual instead of a monolingual idiot like me. I was not going to deny them the integral part of their hispanic heritage as I had been denied. I was going to become fluent and raise them to be fluent. And I was going to master the language in the nine months before this baby arrived.

The impetus has disappeared.

Coming to St. John's I was pretty damned excited that I wouldn't have to find a job and spend all day hating my life. There would finally be time to write! To learn to do things I always wanted to do! To train my dog! To MASTER THE SPANISH LANGUAGE! To keep my apartment in a state I'm not embarrassed to live in!

This is the embarrassing routine I've fallen into:

Hear Danny get up at 6. Tell myself I should get up and make him breakfast. Fall back asleep.

Wake up at 9. Eat something so I don't vomit after taking the dog out. Take the dog out. Sometimes vomit anyway.

Play on the internet until 11 at which time I realize I'm still in my pajamas and Danny will be home for lunch. Don't want Danny to know that I wasted the entire morning reading blogs like The Lawrence Jule/Julia project and Copy Cat Chic, so I jump in the shower.

Talk to Danny during lunch. Ignore his hints that I actually do something productive like the laundry.

Fall asleep on the couch with Kirby.

Wake up around 3 and realize if I don't eat something carb-heavy I will start to throw up again.

Scarf down a bagel with cheese.

Call my mom or listen to podcasts while playing on the internet.

Put one of the prenatal exercise DVDs in the DVD player.

Not do the exercise DVD.

Attempt to make dinner.

Take the dog out to play.

Come back inside with incredibly high blood pressure because the dog keeps bolting into the street and I'm not sure what I'll do if he gets hit by a car and I'm stranded with no way to get him to an animal hospital. (I have no car.)

Say hi to Danny. Avoid answering his question, what did you do today out of sheer shame.

I really want to blame this apathy, fatigue and laziness on this fetus. But I don't think that is necessarily fair.

I just need to get off my butt and do the things I say I'm going to do and stop moping around in this cold, gray place.