Did I mention that I miss being hip? Can you be 36-years-old, a new mother, and hip?
I just talked to Matt… well, first let me back up and give a bit of history. I’ve been feeling some very intense emotions these past couple of days since the nurse told me I was dilated and this baby was on her way to greet the world. I have mainly been feeling anger and resentment because all my free time will now belong to Lily and not to me. I told my sister that I felt like I should hold a wake for myself and mourn my passing as I will now just be an extension of my child. I’ve been very moody and cranky and, in general, not very good company to Matt. We’ve been very “off” with each other for the past couple of days… kind of snipey and moody with each other.
And of course I thought Matt must be feeling the same thing I was, so I asked him what was going on with him, expecting him to answer that he was feeling resentful about losing all his free time. He wasn’t feeling that at all. He said he was feeling inadequate as a provider.
I found this surprising at first and then interesting. We are both feeling intense emotions within our chosen roles in the family unit. I am the nurturer and caregiver, and all my energy and time must go towards this new little life now and not myself. Matt is the provider, and now he has a tiny baby that is completely dependent on him for a home, food, health insurance, money for pre-school and clothes, and all the other things the provider is responsible for.
That’s a lot of pressure for a man to be under. I don’t think it is easy to become a father. I’ve been so wrapped in all my own emotions and becoming a mother that I didn’t see what Matt was going through. This is a very emotionally intense time for both of us.
I was 1cm dilated and 50% effaced at my obstestrician’s appointment last Wednesday. When the nurse told me, I started crying. Matt and I are so scared now that it is real and not just “Oh, we’re having a baby.” She’s on her way out, and we are going to be completely responsible for this little life. It’s terrifying. The nurse was saying, “This is so exciting” while I was crying, saying, “I want my mom.”
The nurse said that my doctor will probably induce me Thursday or Friday of next week after she returns from her vacation. So I have one week… one week before everything in my life completely changes.
And I will change. I changed after I got married… my personality changed quite drastically. Certain attributes that had been latent surfaced and other attributes faded into the background. And it’s going to happen again; it’s already started happening. Angel version 5.0 is about to be born into the world along with her daughter.
I’m so scared. I’m so glad that I will have my husband, my mom, and my sister with me. I’m so glad that I’m not alone.
Okay, I realize that all this may be boring and it is more for my documentation anyway. So I have decided to try out the nifty lj-cut tag.
I read that using coffee as a rinse gives a nice shine to redheads and brunettes. I’m a redhead by the way. When I was younger, my hair was the color of a new copper penny. Now, in my 30s, it has faded to a dull red-brown. So I had already decided to dye my hair brown because I think brown hair is very pretty. When I read that you could also use coffee as a dye, I thought, what the hell, I was going to dye it brown anyway.
But as I was reading about the coffee dye, I learned of the redhead dye too. So I decided to try to dye the hair at the crown of my head red. And then finish off with a honey/olive oil mask to try to get the frizz down.
So my hair became quite awful because I wasn’t taking care of it. To be honest, I wasn’t doing anything with my appearance at all. I wore crappy, unflattering clothes and never cut my hair so it became covered in split ends and frizzy. I wore clean clothes and took showers every day… I mean, I wasn’t dirty, I just didn’t care what I wore or what I looked like.
(At this point, this LJ entry could segue into the topic of feelings of self-confidence and self-worth, and how those feelings directly tie into how one keeps up one’s appearance. But I’ll try to remain focused on the hair experiments.)
My cousin, Lindsey, came to visit with her mom a couple of weekends ago when Deb came to make the beautiful baby room for us. Deb is Lindsey’s mom. Now I realize that Lindsey is thirteen and kids always have beautiful, shiny hair, but I noticed how nice her hair looked. It was trimmed neatly so no split ends, and she had put highlights in her hair. It was very pretty.
And then there was my hair. Dull, frizzy, stringy at the ends.
So two days later, Matt cut about an inch or so off to get rid of the split ends and stringy bits. But it was still frizzy and dull (no shine). So I decided to dye it. When I dye my hair, it always looks shinier.
Then I paid the bills. Oops, no money left for hair dye. 🙂
So then I asked the Oracle for cheap solutions, and voila! Hair experiments have begun.
So this is an IM conversation I had with Matt yesterday:
Matthew: you have gone quiet
Angel: Oh, I was replying to a comment someone left in my LJ. That’s what I needed the anchor tag information for.
Matthew: what did they say
Matthew: which entry was it fo
Matthew: for
Angel: This entry
Session Close (Matthew): Tue Nov 30 09:20:22 2004
Session Start (atwoodings@hotmail.com:Matthew): Tue Nov 30 09:30:02 2004
Matthew: sorry, madness with phones … but you know what that’s like 😀 That’s some cool entries. Your voice is being heard
Matthew: … and it was a cool entry also
Angel: No, prezzey wasn’t a random surfer. She’s a friend of amawahibiki‘s.
Matthew: ah ok, but still its cool
Angel: We’ve added each other to our friends’ list. I read her LJ and she reads mine. We got a liking for each other because we are both geek girls. She met Daniel through the online Jewish community — she’s Jewish too.
Matthew: I think thats very cool. I think the Internet is great for making the world a smaller more accessible place
Angel: I definitely agree. I have a Hungarian and an Israeli as penpals. I don’t think that would have happened without the internet.
Matthew: the chances of that happening would be really low unless you requested to have a hungarian pen pal and a Israeli pen pal
Angel: Heh heh… I don’t think I would have chosen Hungarian and Israeli. I met these two people through mutual interest. They just happened to be Hungarian and Israeli.
Matthew: thats what I mean, before the internet flourished you would have had to specify the origin of the pen pal, now they find you 🙂
Angel: It is fun. But you and I use the internet totally differently. I’m much more social, and you use it much more as a tool…. hmmmm, a lot like how we played EQ differently.
Matthew: yep, a lot of kids today use the Internet much how you do, as a social gathering place and a central place of contact where you are correct, I use it as a tool
Angel: I wonder why we are so different like that. It was obvious in EQ too.
Matthew: I don’t know … but its interesting that the internet is used in so many different ways
Internet relationships remind me of Life — that old math “game” where stable cells were created or destroyed depending on where you added additional cells. LJ (the entire site) has obviously created a very large and stable cell. And smaller cells are created by mutual interest. They are not always stable though. I had a net friend from Singapore who I met through a mutual interest in aquariums, but we don’t talk much anymore. His life is very busy at the moment, and he has many net friends. So that cell has collapsed.
Twenty years ago, I would’ve had to specify the location of penpals, and I don’t think I would have chosen Hungary or Israel. I would have chosen England or Australia probably. It wouldn’t even have occured to me choose a non-English speaking country. So, entirely due to the internet and relationships forged through mutual interests, I’m learning about countries that I would have never learned about before.
I keep phoning Matt for html and CSS help. I’m going to have to learn html all over again… just like I had to learn IRC all over again after I hadn’t used it in five years. Technology keeps chugging forward, with or without me. 🙂
Oh, and I switched to Trillian. I was sick of stinkin’ Yahoo hijacking my computer. And my father-in-law switched to MSN from Yahoo for the same reason. I wonder how many users Yahoo lost after that last awful version. Trillian rocks, by the way. There are only two problems with it: it doesn’t support the MSN cam and it doesn’t support voice. But, even without those features, it still rocks.
My A. australe killifish committed suicide. I was warned that they would jump out of even the tiniest crack, and sure enough, they do. Matt made a lid for the Macquarium, but there was a space between the lid and the heater. They lived happily in there for a month, so I figured the space wasn’t big enough. But unfortunately, it was. It was a suicide pact– they both committed suicide on the same day. I went to feed them, and no fish were in the tank. So I started looking about, and I found two little dried-out jerky killies underneath the Macquarium. It was so sad. Matt had to throw them away when he got home because I couldn’t bare to do it.
I have a guppy that my little cousin named “Princess.” I think she (he? who knows) will be the new occupant of the Macquarium. Killifish, though beautiful, are more work than I care to invest at the moment.