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November 29th, 2009 21:46
tags: pregnancy, red tape
Current Mood:  tired Well, I got my vote in this morning with about 15 minutes to spare. Whew! I’m still an upstanding citizen. Voting here is easy. They send you all these little pieces of paper, and you fill out “Ja”, or “Nein”, and then you either mail it back, if you remember (which I never do, as established), or you frantically run to the Kreisburo/Bahnhof and stick the little pieces of paper in a box with your Kreis marked on it. No computers or other hassle. Quick n’ easy.
I’m quite surprised to find out the results of one part of today’s vote — the ban on minaret contruction has actually been passed. I did not think there would be a majority vote by any means (and double majority at that!) but there was, and it has passed. Interesting.
Had horrid false labor experience today. Made it through the voting and through church service as well in fact, but really was feeling off — we’d planned to take another walk today, it was a beautiful day — so we made it home and I was just in agony of contractions. 4 minutes apart and so painful. It was horrible. But after a few hours they went away — well not the contractions, which i always get anyway, but the pain — and I was left feeling kind of frustrated and angry about the whole thing. Ugh, if that is a taste of real labor, well, I’m not in for much fun.
And now she isn’t really moving, which freaks me out. Usually she is so active: but today she has been completely non-reactive and non moving except for a bout of hiccups at about 4.
Kudos to the women of past history. They all went through this, often, and without drugs, and knowing full well that there was a fair chance that they or the baby wouldn’t make it out alive. Man. What bravery.
On a totally different note, what kind of a name is Hoobastank?!?! I like their song, The Reason, but when I found out the anme of the band, I just laughed.
November 29th, 2009 8:11
tags: red tape, switzerland
Current Mood: busy So I thought I was too late to vote, but there is one last opportunity to vote — this morning between 6-10am at the main Zürich train station. Who the heck gets up on Sunday morning at 6am to vote?! Anyway, I must go rush off to cast my little paper ballot now!
Today is the day when we vote upon the controversial minaret ban initiative.
I was up most of last night because I felt like I was dying. Heartburn was so bad I thought I was going to throw up for most of the night, and then my stomach was making the horrible cramps and growling that generally comes after you’ve eaten something poisonous and are going to explode. I hadn’t eaten anything poisonous (or indeed much of anything at all yesterday), and I didn’t explode, but the cramps and growling were bad.
So I crept out of our bedroom and set up camp in the living room so I didn’t bother Zaubi by having the lights on — unfortunately our little furnished apartment only has *the* most uncomfortable sofa known to man: a right-angled, hard-cushioned hideous piece of hideousness that causes misery in every single body part when you sit upon it whether you are pregnant or not. And, the back and armrests both are at 90 degree angles. And, it is far too short to lie down on. Ugh.
‘Nuff said. If I don’t leave *right now* I will miss my voting chance! Gaaaah! I’m still having trouble standing upright this morning due to cramping, and I still feel vaguely like throwing up. I do not feel like lurching to the train station right now. Why didn’t I vote earlier?!?!?
November 28th, 2009 7:11
tags: pregnancy, switzerland
Current Mood: awake Zürich is still pitch-black at 7AM. And still almost a month ’til the solstice!
Still… I love early morning. The quiet stillness of the air, moved only by little fresh breezes, the muted twittering of birds, the way the sky lightens over the dark silhouette of the hills, the last pale stars hanging in the deep blue. For the weather has finally got nice, after weeks of horribleness.
I guess it’s a good thing I love early morning — something tells me I’m going to be seeing a lot of them, very soon!
I forgot to vote like a good citizen. Last day for it was yesterday. (Why are there so many voting times? Didn’t I just vote recently??) Now they shall never know my opinion on the minarets… will they fine me or something, I wonder?
It is one week exactly to when this baby is due. I can’t really believe it. I also don’t know how I’m going to get through another week, or more like two, or more! And then I wonder: am I simply doing this to myself? Am I being a hypochondriac or something? Am I making up imagined pains to make pregnancy even more miserable than it need be? Because it doesn’t make sense to me, that it is this hard…
I’m a tough girl. I can put up with a fair bit of discomfort and just brush it off with minimal complaining. I always have. I’m strong, and healthy, and capable. And while I’m not a big girl, I’m certainly not a small girl either. So why is this pregnancy so tough? I went into it thinking it would be annoying and uncomfortable, but assuming I wouldn’t have any issues, that the strength and healthiness I’m used to would pull through as ever. And it has, from many standpoints… I’m still, at 39 weeks, perfectly capable of walking faster than most non-pregnant people, carrying more, functioning on less sleep; I haven’t been sick or *very* exhausted; there have been no issues with pre-eclampsia or bad glucose levels or baby being distressed or anything else (except the stupid excessive Braxton-Hicks contractions).
But I wasn’t expecting this kind of pain, constantly. I wasn’t expecting the sciatica which makes it impossible to be comfortable in *any* position at this point, and randomly deactivates my right leg whenever I need it most. I wasn’t expecting to wake up every single night with stabs of agony in my stomach. And I wasn’t expecting my entire skeletal system to feel like it is breaking. That is almost the worst. All of my central skeletal system – spine, ribs, hips – feel like they are being constantly wrenched apart, and it hurts like anything.
Woke up this morning at 4am with so bad pain in my abdomen I couldn’t stand up straight. Went to pee, went back to bed. Couldn’t lie on either side because my hips hurt so much: tried lying on my back but could barely breathe with the elephant sitting on me. What is this baby made of that she weighs so much? Gold? Fell asleep again but had the most horrible dreams of suffocating — could hear myself gasping for air even in my sleep — so woke up again at 6ish and just got up. My ribs ached so horribly, and I was having another horrible stabbing pain in my lungs whenever I inhaled, so I took a very hot shower for a long time which seemed to kind of ease it up. Though lately my showers have involved me kind of slumping in the bathtub (thank goodness for detachable shower heads!) because it hurts my back/tailbone too much to stand up straight.
Surely it can’t be like this for everybody? IS it just all in my head??
November 26th, 2009 11:42
tags: food, zurich
Current Mood:  cheerful So a couple weeks ago, when V. was visiting (actually, she’s still visiting, but is currently in London, and will return just for this Saturday before heading back to Oz), we bit the bullet and took a ride on the Zürich Fondue Tram.
It was fantastic!
The tram was adorably cute: small, all white, with a raised carved fondue pot on the front of it. Inside it was cheerily decorated with little cheese models hanging on the walls, and lights, and greenery. The fondue forks are all marked as owned by the Zürich Transit Authority. Heh.
There weren’t 5 kinds of fondue as I had thought there would be (that’s only if you rent the entire tram for yourself/your party) but what there was was delicious. And they came along and added things to it periodically (paprika, fresh crushed garlic). We finished up one pot lickety split and then they gave us another one! Only Zaubi managed to contribute much effort to the second pot: V. and I were absolutely stuffed.
Moreover, they also supplied an appetizer of cold meat — very good — and ridiculously tasty dessert (mousse or fruit) and excellent espresso.
See photos
I’d love to do it again…
November 26th, 2009 10:11
tags: games
Why did Sierra On-Line have to die, anyway?
But, there are still people out there who loved their games as much as I did — well, more, actually.
Creators of sites such as sarien.net where you can play old Sierra games online!
Imagine that!!
November 26th, 2009 9:45
tags: games, old times
Rewind 15, 16 years.
I’m 15 years old, going to high school in Boston. Every free moment of time I have — recess, lunch, after school, and more than a few study halls I conveniently disappeared from — has me creeping, up, up, up to the top of the school where the Science department is, walking stealthily down the quiet hallway, speeding past lit doorways… my destination, the Physics room. Bated breath, fingers crossed. Will it be empty? Or will there be a class going on, so I will have to turn around, heart heavy with disappointment? The room is dark: my soul leaps within me. I creep in, glancing nervously about. Cross the room to the back, sit down at one of the black-topped lab benches and turn on one of the computers that languish here, wincing against the beeps and squawks of startup, so loud in the empty room.
Why am I here, you ask?
I am here because I have been struck hard with an obsession… an obsession for the coolest physics game ever: The Incredible Machine, made by that greatest ever of game companies, now lost in the fogs of history, Sierra On-Line.
I don’t know why it was loaded on those computers — hardly used, as they were — for just a few short months of that one year of my high school life. I don’t remember how I discovered it, I don’t remember when it went away: I remember only the crushing disappointment when I realized that my game was no more. (I think I’d won all the levels by that point anyway.)
Life went on, and I forgot the name of the game, and I moved onto Real Life and Bigger and Better Things… yet over the passing years, flashbacks of the game would come back to me and I would think of it, a little sadly, certain I would never find it again. I used to tell Zaubi about this great physics game I used to play, and he’d nod and smile, and then it would pass from my memory again. And thus passed half my lifetime.
But then yesterday, Zaubi came home from work, and told me his work mate C. had discovered a really cool old physics DOS game, and at that moment, I knew. I didn’t say much of anything, but I could feel that funny tingle going through me — that sudden undeniable prescience. And I went straight away and looked it up, and downloaded dosbox, and spent the rest of the evening playing The Incredible Machine.
Three cheers for C., who has inadvertently breathed life into a lost era. Three cheers for everyone out there who loves old games. And three cheers for Sierra On-Line, the greatest game company in the history of the world.
November 23rd, 2009 19:46
tags: food
I’ve always loved molasses.
Since I was a tiny child, I used to drench my oatmeal with it; when it snowed molasses taffy was always reason for great excitement; homemade cookies that are very heavy on the molasses side have ever been my favorite; in recent years I even mix it with hot milk as a morning or bedtime drink. I have been known to eat it straight out of the jar, in fact.
Yes, I love molasses!
Of course, moving to Australia caused me some trouble as molasses is really not eaten there — they only use it for cattle fodder/supplements. I spent some fruitless months looking around the supermarkets, asking, and getting the response “you want what? …that’s only for cows, isn’t it…?” until finally discovering a health-food store which stocks small quantities of the stuff in a hard-to-see place (the same health food store that sells
Then I moved to Switzerland, and have had the same problem… except they don’t even seem to use it for cattle fodder here! But again, I found a health food store (or “Reformhaus”) that sells it, and since then I have reveled in molasses happiness.
One day a month or so ago, I read the nutritional content on my jar of molasses. Now granted, the stuff I have here is pretty high quality — reine, schwarze Melasse, ausschliesslich aus Zuckerrohr gewonnen, nicht raffiniert. Auf kontrolliert-biologischem Anbau.
Nevertheless, I was startled and amazed to see what high percentages of important minerals this stuff packs. Just a couple teaspons of it gives you:
806mg Calcium (20%)
600mg Phosphorus (15%)
35mg Iron (50%)
283mg Magnesium (19%)
485mg Potassium (25%)
Dang! Of course, I’m sure it’s not the same in the sweet & processed Grandma’s variety (I’m sure you have to get blackstrap, but I don’t care ’cause I like blackstrap) but still! 2 teaspoons!
I love it when foods I love are validated.
November 19th, 2009 18:12
November 16th, 2009 17:25
tags: pregnancy
So! There are less than 3 weeks to go until this baby is supposed to be born. (!!!) She is now full-term, which means she’s fully mature and ready to come out at any time.
I feel ridiculous. This baby-basketball module I am wearing looks ridiculous! My stomach goes out in front literally at a right angle to the rest of my body, from top and bottom. It is totally bizarre.
Once upon a time I thought that being pregnant would be like being fat. Just kind of larger and heavier and out of breath. But it doesn’t feel like that at all. Granted, I am 30 pounds heavier, but I still have perfectly good balance and feel light on my feet — I can speed walk as normal, and scamper around, and even still run, in fact, WHEN the Braxton-Hicks contractions aren’t taking over.
The problem is that the Braxton-Hicks contractions are going on about 75% of the time and when they are doing their thing I cannot run, or scamper, or walk or even stand up straight. Moreover, now I seem to have developed sciatica and can’t even sit for moderate periods of time and I keep losing my right leg at random and inconvenient moments (like when trying to grocery shop).
Another thing is, I think if I were just fat, the fat would squish. The baby module does not squish even slightly. Especially given the constant contractions, this huge tensed up ball of water & baby sticking out my front has NO give. So when you bend over to tie your shoes, it’s not like things shift around or you can squash the mass down or push it to the side or something. You have to bend the rest of you *over and around* this massive, completely solid ball which has zero squish factor. Gah! I can only tie my shoes now if a) I hold my breath and turn my feet kind of sideways over my knee or b) Zaubi does it for me.
Had an appt last week and the midwife told me what position the baby is in. There is this big round thing right in front just below my ribs and that is her ass. There are two feet that stick out my right side (it *really* looks weird when they move around) scooting about anywhere from hip level to all the way under my ribs. Yesterday she actually kicked up high so hard that I heard, yes, I heard my left ribs make a cracking sound! Yuk! And then there’s a weird other thing that is constantly jabbing me in the back of the bellybutton. A fist? An elbow? I don’t know. When she gets her hiccups now I can feel them vibrating against my tailbone, and if I push the ass part of her in different directions I can feel her head crushing my bladder, or make her feet stick out my side, and so forth. It’s truly bizarre. Definitely having this baby inside me is the weirdest physical sensation I’ve ever experienced.
Man, this whole pregnancy thing has been such an eye-opener. I went into it thinking it would be bad, but not *that* bad. Now I’m at the other end: could I ever do it again, knowing now what it’s like? I just don’t know. And I haven’t even given birth yet or gotten through the first crazy weeks! Man, oh man.
Come on, baby, let’s get a move on…
November 13th, 2009 0:14
tags: adventure, switzerland
How cool is this? Man, I would soooooooooo love to do that.
The season starts Dec 13. Baby should be born by then. I wonder how a newborn would take to sledging. They like being bounced, right?
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