Chow chow chow!

It’s a Purina Dog Chow kind of day in Denver. This is primarily because there is a Purina dog chow factory along the highway north of the city, so that when the wind blows the wrong way the distinctive smell of dog food (mmmm!) fills the air of the entire city. But it also seems like days when the smell is the worst are winter days where the skies are low and cloudy, and the city looks like a dirty, industrial wasteland no matter what part of town you’re in. Then it just seems fitting that there should be a gross smell that permeates everything. Yes, today’s that kind of day.

On a similar note, I am tired of wearing black all the time, but that’s all I have in my pregnancy wardrobe these days. I hope I can drop enough of this weight by summer to be able to wear some of my old clothes that were sewn by small children using colored fabric again. One problem I foresee: will I ever wear shorts again? This pregnancy has given me a terribly unsightly case of spider veins on my legs; the kind I used to see on women and think, “Oh…my…god. Could you not get that taken care of? They have procedures for that, you know.” And yes, in fact, they do, but the procedures are not cheap and you have to have to have several of them to really get rid of the purple nasties. That would be fine if that were the only procedure I needed as a result of carrying two Tasmanian Devils inside my body for 9 months each, but frankly, I need enough surgery to turn me into the Bionic Woman after all this. Ideally, I could use:

1. Spider vein zapping.
2. A boob job.
3. Liposuction
4. A tummy tuck.
5. A teensy-tiny face lift (Mama’s TIRED).

However, I don’t want more scars and I don’t want to have to re-up on the boob job every 10 years (or look like that woman who has face lifts to look like a man-cat), so I think I might be stuck with whatever I can get out of sporadic, half-hearted diet and exercise over the next 5 years. I hope I can evolve into one of those women who loves herself no matter how she is, reveling in her battle scars because she is a “Mother,” and not the petty, typical American woman I am who is completely obsessive about no longer having the 120-pound figure she had in college – which was 20 years ago and which she has never had since (except a couple of times when she was depressed and the year’s meals consisted of cigarettes and increasingly good bottles of chardonnay). Ah, body image – what a fucking waste of time.

Meanwhile, here is my exciting calendar of upcoming events:

1. February 23: Birth of second son

2. February 27 – May 10: post-partum depression/acclimation to larger family and re-acquaintance with soap opera families from hollowed-out spot on couch

3. March 4: 40th birthday of yours truly; holy SHIT. Previous plans for Maui trip scuppered for hopeful outing to Sushi Den for raw fish and a martini (if I can walk)

4. Eternity stretching before me

5. June 2010: Sister in law’s wedding on east coast, flight with 2 kids (example of change in type of trips; BEFORE = Paris, AFTER = Family, USA)

6. February 2012: Hopeful return to semblance of normalcy; celebratory trip with husband

A packed schedule!