19 weeks.

knowing.

People can make a lot out of certain kinds of choices. N and I have several systems for judging you, er, categorizing you, based on the left to right order in which you program the preset buttons on your car radio (numeric order, or by most favorite?). Also, do you prefer your sandwich cut in squares or triangles?

There are any number of different versions of such questions by which people size each other up. You know: Boxers or Briefs? Liberal or Conservative? Longboard or short? Crunchy or Creamy?

And: Are you going to find out? Because deciding whether to find out the sex of your baby is apparently the choice which will mark you forever as either a need-to-knower or a wants-to-be-surprised.

So, internet. Because I am indeed the kind of person who puts my faith in ultrasounds, and so that you may judge me accordingly, I am letting you know that... my kid? Is a girl.

remedy.

In the end, what made it better (or at least, less homesick):
K played a silly, made-up song on the guitar. And let me cry. Then we ate ice cream and played Wii.

homesickness.

It is a gray day in Honolulu. Which is a nice change of pace when you live some place that is so perpetually humid and sunny.

But today, there is something about the weather that is making me feel quite homesick. A longing for Los Angeles. For home.

-----

There is this sensibility that is prevalent among certain sets that one place is just as good as another. That a byproduct of a more globalized world is a more mobile society. What does it matter where people go?

P was of this mind. We argued about it from time to time--why I was so stubbornly rooted within the radius of space bounded by Hawaii, San Francisco, and the California-Mexico Border. There actually is a formula, something like:

Willingness to Stay = fn(average temperture, number of places to comfortably be invited to eat Thanksgiving dinner, proximity to good Chinese food, z.)

But I could never articulate it in a way that was acceptably reasonable or rational to him. To him, it should have all been the same. He was a hermit crab. Picking up each shell in succession and discarding this one for the next. He would have been as happy in Tibet as in New Hampshire.

I think each in our own way, we felt a strange kind of pity for each other. Him for me, for being so fenced in. Me for him, for never feeling deeply, undeniably at home.

-----

It has officially been a year since I moved here to Honolulu. I have a life here now--a job, a fiance, a baby on the way. Plants and, of course, a couch. Plans, too. Plans to build things, and grow things, take classes, start things.

I'm not sure when it is that your homelights shift. When, or if, you ever trade one in for another. I love my life here. But it's not home. Not yet. People ask me about our plans, if I'll ever want to move back to LA. I find myself saying, "We're here. For now."

Looking out at the gray and the ocean out my window today, there is a longing for thick, cold, glassy waves and kelp smells. California ocean announces its presence--it is in the air, reaching. Aggressive, salty. Hawaiian ocean smells more constant, subtle. Less irrascible. Less fishy. Of course, it is all ocean.

And yet.

In the end, what there is to say on a gray, homesick day:
We're here.
For now.

monday morning.

favorite honolulu thing #11: Sunny morning with after-rain smells.

week 16

China.

One of the small joys in my day is receiving E's in-time, live text messages from China.

Today: "Just saw a guy walking down the street with five monkeys."

Not three. Not four. But five.

Conclusion? It either has to be monkey basketball or a chamber quintet.

angry sausage.

So what nobody told me about being pregnant is that the first half of it pretty much sucks. Ass.

Yes, yes, I realize that everyone is different and that it is always a unique experience. But let me just say that for me? It was a bleary, slow four months of barely making it out of bed and barfing. A lot.

The very best gift that I received for my 30th birthday was in fact a large bucket of philipino-brand saltine crackers, individually wrapped in packages of four.

There are these hormones which apparently take over your body and ooze out your pores. You can smell everything. And everything smells. Bad. Bad, bad. People are constantly asking you how you're doing and expecting you to express joy at your good news. When all you really want to do is punch them (for no good reason, really) and take a nap.

On top of which, I discovered that throughout these four months, you slowly get just fat enough to feel like a sausage in pretty much every piece of clothing you own. It is a stage of my life we have come to kindly refer to as Miwa's "angry sausage period."

K: How are you feeling?
Me: Suck it.

All the barfing and wanting to stab people around you with something sharp? This is really what they should have in those teen pregnancy safe sex ads. Kids, this? It could happen to you.

oh. my.

My mother seriously sent me an email today which started "OMG..."

I think it is one of the signs that the universe is folding in on itself. The world, as we know it? It. is. ending.