State of Michigan Seizes Boy after Father Gives Him Mike’s Hard Lemonade, Unaware it Contains Alcohol.

“What’s wrong?”

“I just…I can’t find any socks to wear.”

“None?”

“No. And when I can’t find my socks in the morning, it totally sets me up to have a bad day.”

“You have a hard life. Let’s face it. You have a really hard life.”

This weekend we had some friends in town to celebrate J’s birthday. There were a few nice cameras among the group, and while we were taking a walk down by the water, enjoying the late afternoon sunshine, my friend Matt suggested it might be fun to throw Mina up in the air and get a few good pictures of her.

Which turned out to be one of the best ideas ever.

Thanks to Tom and Sam for taking these amazing shots.

Last week we took a one-night trip down to D.C. to attend a dinner being held to honor my parents, this year’s recipients of Rosemont College’s Cresset Award.

Before we left to catch the train back on Thursday, my dad told me he had a present for me and pulled out a copy of Life & Style - the issue that featured celebrity “Pregnancy Diaries” on the cover.

I’m pretty sure he bought it for me because of the whole pregnancy thing, and not because of my obsessive love of celebrity gossip, but still, with encouragement, I figure the people closest to me just might start to realize that it doesn’t take fancy gifts to win this girl’s heart…

This weekend we brought both our dogs to the vet, as they were in need of vaccinations and a checkup.

I’ve never brought both dogs to the vet at the same time before on my own because I knew it would be ludicrous to do so. Mina, our small dog, generally hates the vet’s office, and all places where there are strange people and animals, especially strange people who hold her body down while prodding her with needles while saying things like, “She doesn’t like this, huh?” and laughing.

Our big pitbull mix, Cecilia, on the other hand, would gladly allow the vet to amputate her leg without anethesia, all the while thumping her tail happily against the floor if it means she is being touched and, therefore, loved.

They are opposite personalities in a major way and this makes them a good, and funny team, but also makes it hard to do things with them at the same time, like go for a walk, or sit in a busy waiting room.

So when I made the appointment, I informed J that he’d be coming along for the ride because there was no way I was taking those two on my own. He’s never been to the vet with our dogs before - my schedule in North Carolina was much more flexible so I always took them - and I assured him it would make for an interesting afternoon.

We had, as predicted, an eventful visit, which included the dogs whining nonstop once they realized there were cats in cages (they were up for adoption) right there, just feet away from where we were sitting, as well as their normal peformances once we got into the examination room: Mina stiffened her body completely, like a dense little rock, and Cecila, after greeting everyone with an enthusiastic full-body licking, laid down on the floor, her mouth open, her tongue hanging out, her legs spread.

The only surprise we got was when the doctor told us that the blood test results revealed that Cecilia has Lyme disease. It’s extremely prevalent up here, so it can be a major problem for dogs - and people, too, of course.

The good news is she hasn’t gotten sick. Lyme disease can lead to major complications in dogs, including renal failure and joint pain, but it looks like they caught it in time because it hasn’t affected her at all, and after taking medicine for 30 days she should recover just fine. So it’s not really a big deal.

When telling my mother about Cecilia’s diagnosis later on that day she interupted me, saying “Guess what? Lucy has it too.” Lucy, my parent’s Labradoodle, and Cecilia are pretty much in love so it seemed fitting that they should get the same disease at the same time. Lucy, thankfully, is symptom-free and now being medicated, too.

The thing is that it took my mother a little while to figure out what was going on with Lucy because my father took her to the vet. And when he got home, he said that she had “a touch of heartworm.”

Now, I don’t know much about veterinary medicine, but I’m pretty sure saying a dog has “a touch of heartworm” is like saying a person has “a touch of diabetes” or something. “A touch of Alzheimer’s.” You have it, or you don’t.

Also, “heartworm” and “Lyme disease,” at least to my ear, sound pretty different.

I have no doubt my father was most likely checking his Blackberry, or thinking hard about that nap he was going to take when he got home, when the vet told him the news. It’s ok, though. He loves the dogs in his own way, throwing them little salami and cheese sandwiches from the plate of snacks the humans are eating when we have guests over. But that’s love, all the same. It’s why the dogs sit at his feet, looking up at him adoringly. It’s why they come running as fast as they can when he calls.

When we let people know that we’d be moving to New Haven, we got some form of the sarcastic “Just in time for winter!” line from nearly everybody. “New Haven? Well, you’ll be there just in time for winter!”

This was sort of fun at first, and quickly got old. I got to the point where I’d let people know—right away—that I went to school in Boston. I could handle it.

So we got up here, just in time for winter, and I happily wore my down coat, hat and gloves, protecting myself against the bitter
cold and hoping for snow (I love snow).

And then, after what seemed like way, way too many weeks of the bitter cold, I started wondering when spring would come. I started voicing my feelings aloud. “Man, I’d love to ditch this coat! I’d love a warm day!” And as March grew to a close I actually started getting angry. Come on, I thought, in like a lion, out like a LAMB?

J and I talked about how while we’d both experienced the climate of the northeast before, but our years in North Carolina had obviously altered our perception of it. It gets warmer so much later here. And just when it does start to get warm, nature changes its course and throws a few more cold days right in your face. So you don’t get too comfortable.

Despite the fact that I’m still wearing a coat when I head to work in the morning, last week saw the first really warm days so far this spring. Days where I could take the coat off when walking to get lunch, letting the sun touch my shoulders.

As I was headed to Grand Central Friday afternoon, I took a good look around and noticed that people were in a really good mood, and not only because it was the end of the work week. They were talking on their cell phones, making plans with friends. They were gathered in bars, drinking cold beers. The windows were open, ensuring no one missed out on the springtime weather, and you got the feeling everyone had been there for a while, had maybe knocked off work at 3 or 4.

I couldn’t help joining in the giddy excitement of it all, if just for the moment. I mean, I’m not dumb—I’ve been burned before and learned my lesson—I knew perfectly well that the next morning would bring a damp chill, and I’d be all set to go for a morning walk in my shorts and t-shirt only to have to go inside and change into long pants and a sweatshirt. And yeah, that’s what happened. I do have faith that we’re getting there, though. Soon I’ll put the coat in the coat closet, and I won’t even look back.

It’s been a strange time.

I was unpacking some glasses the other day—a few of what seemed like the millions upon millions of pint glasses we’ve amassed over the years—and came across two glasses wrapped carefully in brown paper that I had to show J once I’d pulled them out and remembered where we’d gotten them. Printed on the sides was the name of a brewery in Cannon Beach, Oregon, where we’d spent an evening drinking beer with the locals on our road trip. After we’d each had a few and made friends with everyone at the bar, the staff kindly wrapped up a couple pint glasses and gave them to us to take home, so we’d remember the experience.

I thought I’d have some really insightful reflections after getting home from our cross country trip. That I’d be able to sit and write for hours about it, remembering each day in great detail. The plains of South Dakota. The enthusiastic young volunteer who helped us find some shore birds for J at the aquarium in Chicago. The fireside sofas and neverending supply of baked goods at our inn in Sante Fe, as well as the other travelers we met there and forged friendships with for a few, brief days. And of course, our night of revelry in Cannon Beach, then waking up the next morning to meander down to the water and take in Haystack Rock, one of the most impressive sights I’d seen during our travels, even after seeing so many incredibly impressive, unforgettable sights.

But I never sat down post-journey to analyze our adventure. We came home early because J’s dad was sick and in the hospital. We drove through endless Oklahoma in a rush, stopped briefly for rest in West Memphis, Tennessee, then woke up and continued on. One would drive while the other slept. I listened to the entire “The Diana Chronicles” by Tina Brown on CD over the course of one long night and early morning.

We got to Connecticut and moved into J’s old room in his family’s house – a little earlier than expected, although that’s what we’d always planned to do before we found a place of our own. We made frequent visits to the hospital, and slowly, J’s dad recovered. He’s now home and is doing great and that, of course, is wonderful news.

We drove around looking for a house to buy and J started work. I started writing letters to newspapers, telling them about my experience, and scanning the classifieds and web sites for communications jobs. I felt discouraged when I couldn’t find enough possibilities in New Haven and expanded my search to New York City. Everything seemed at once urgent, and easy. After all, we were living at home with family and being taken care of. But all our stuff was still in boxes in the garage. And we were well aware it couldn’t stay there forever.

There were a lot of things that were stressful for me during this time, things that I think register high for me personally on my own gauge of stressful things. Moving is always very stressful for me, so to be in a state of limbo, not knowing when we’d end up in a permanent location, was pretty hard. Finding meaningful work was obviously important, so searching the job openings endlessly without any hits made me feel discouraged, like I wasn’t trying hard enough. And J and I were living in rather cramped quarters, and I mean that almost more figuratively than literally. We were (and still are) sharing a car and we were also sharing a room where we’d put (dumped) a lot of our belongings. So even when we each had alone time, it was kind of hard to feel actually alone. You were kind of always at the mercy of the other person.

I don’t mean to make it sound like we were living the tough life or anything. Come on! J and I are as lucky as they come, and the thing is, we had a lot of fun, which I think was on account of the fact that our familes are always fun to be around, and always supportive, and also, when you get down to it, we can both complain to the high heavens when we feel like it, but we generally maintain a rather positive outlook on life.

Anyway, the point of this rambling discourse, which hopefully, maybe, you’ve stuck with up until now, is to say that I would have thought, with everything going on, that when I felt a little funny one morning in mid-January and decided I’d better take a pregnancy test, and sat in the bathroom waiting the required three minutes before peering over at the counter to glimpse that faint second line in the results window, that maybe in addition to feeling elated, I’d feel a little overwhelmed, because, you know, of all the things going on that meant our life was rather unsettled at the moment.

And babies, I’ve heard, don’t tend to make things more settled.

Instead though, I saw the decidedly positive result, then ran to the store to buy another test just to make sure (that one was positive too), and after a few shaky moments, I felt, for the first time in a while, calm. Then I felt like I was going to throw up. Then I felt calm again. And then very, very excited.

Since then we’ve moved into our house. We’ve slowly unpacked. I’ve found a job that I love and we’ve spent time with family and friends. It’s not like our life has become a model of serenity or anything—far from it—but we’re tripping over less boxes on our way out the door in the morning, and the other night, after it had been lying disassembled in the garage for over six months, we put together and slept in our bed.

Everything is coming along, including this very small someone I’m carrying around all day, who is getting bigger and making me bigger, little by little.

I mean, I don’t want to sound trite, but I can’t help it – it couldn’t really get any better than this. We are an amazingly happy couple, soon to become three.

We will get more and more settled, I know, as the weeks go on, as spring turns into summer.

But settled is no fun for too long.

The baby is due in late September. Just in time to turn it all upside down again.

I can’t wait.

It’s not much, but here are two pictures I proudly took of our new place. I’ll post more soon. Wouldn’t want to give it all away at once, would I?

The color we painted our bedroom is called “cumulus” (I almost wanted to pick this very similar color called “salty tear” simply because it was called “salty tear” but, hey, you can’t make every single decision by going with whatever is funniest):

The bookshelves in the living room:

I should mention that J did all of the above work - both the painting and the putting away of books. I, in the meantime, was organizing all our pots and pans and whatnot in the kitchen and, let’s face it, that just doesn’t make a good picture.

“Look! My business card collection.”

“Why did you have a business card collection? And don’t put that in the pile, we have no room for this stuff.”

“And my postcard collection.”

“Nice. Put put that back, we’re not bringing it. And let’s go. You can go through your closet another day.”

“My old James Madison phonebooks!”

“Oh my God. Please don’t bring those. Let’s go. PLEASE.”

Because the upstairs bathroom in our house features a very charming but slightly impractical old-fashioned clawfoot tub, J who is, let’s say, slightly taller than me, immediately ruled out ever trying to take a shower there. Luckily our finished basement also features a full bathroom, with a normal-person-sized shower, and he uses that.

I thought that the showering would be it. That he’d wake up and wander downstairs for a shower before coming back up, into the light, to finish getting ready.

Instead, he’s done his best to turn the downstairs bathroom into a fully-fledged Man Bathroom, with a geometrically-patterned shower curtain and blue bath mat and he totally loves it down there.

Meanwhile, I spent hours cleaning and sprucing up my bathroom, as I now refer to it, before doing anything else once we’d moved in. Because I really wanted it to be a nice place to hang out.

And now we talk about our bathrooms, and after living in a very tiny house in North Carolina, and sharing a very tiny bathroom, this is really new for us, and I don’t know how far it will go. This morning I discovered that J had taken the one bottle of saline solution we have from my bathroom and put it downstairs in his, and I found myself thinking, as I marched it back upstairs, “Who does he think he is? You can’t just steal from me like that. This is war.”