Root for the Home Team

I grew up in Oregon during the glory days of the Portland Trail Blazers, which was the early 90s for those of you not following the NBA 20+ years ago. It was the era of Clyde Drexler, Jerome Kersey, Terry Porter, Kevin Duckworth, Cliff Robinson...and yes, I was such a hard-core fan that I just listed those players from memory! (It probably helped that my family regularly used our Dairy Queen Blazers' collector glasses, also.)

I remember in elementary school, we were putting on some type of choir concert and convinced our teacher that we should change the words to a song about eagles flying to instead be about "Drexler in the sky, racing to the hoop!" During the playoffs, my sister and I made posters to hang in the back windows of our station wagon heralding the excellence of the Blazers and the lameness of all their opponents with such colorful puns as "the Jazz are singing the blues," and "the Bulls are seeing red!"

But over the years, my attention to basketball waned as other pursuits became more important, and before I knew it, I didn't really recognize any players on the team any more. Then I moved to Seattle, home of the Supersonics (at least at that time). How could I keep cheering for the Blazers in the home town of their rivals? So, I opted out of following basketball. A subsequent move to DC planted me firmly in Wizards territory, but as a grad student in International Relations, I didn't have much time or brain power to devote to such domestic interests as professional sports.

Now, here we are in Memphis, home of the Grizzlies. This town is crazy about their team! And really, it's easy to be a fan, because they are great players. The Grizzlies are facing the Blazers in the first round of the playoffs, and I must confess that I'm cheering for my new home team. It feels a bit weird after growing up as a Blazers fan, but things change and people move on. Go Grizz!

Scars

Thanks to everyone for your good wishes and encouragement - the healing process is well underway over here, and I'm doing much better than I was just 3 weeks ago! Now that the immediate crisis has passed, I'm trying to figure out how to cope with the aftermath and adjust to a new sense of normal.

In pregnancy, I feel like "normal" is a shifting target, though. At first, it's normal to be queasy and subsist on saltine crackers. Later on, it's normal to waddle and need to use the bathroom every 5 minutes. Every day is a bit of an adventure into the unknown, I suppose.

Now I'm adding "healing from surgery" to the mix. I've got plenty of small scars already - don't we all? Most of them make for great stories, like the time a rabbit almost bit off the tip of my finger, or when I tripped in the kitchen and fell chin-first onto a cheese grater. These little blemishes aren't very noticeable; most of the time I don't even think about them. An abdominal incision is more difficult to ignore. I don't want to get into all the gory details (because I'll gross myself out), but let's just say I currently have to choose my clothes carefully to avoid pain, and my future days of wearing a bikini might be over. (Perhaps I'll emulate the Duggars and start wearing modest swim dresses.)

Why does this bother me? I probably wear a swimming suit 5 days out of the year when we go on vacation. I don't really even like to swim. I'm overly concerned about skin cancer and try to stay covered up at the beach/pool when I can. So wearing a tankini or one-piece suite is really not going to impact my lifestyle much at all. But I just don't like that I have this huge scar. It's not how I imagined my life turning out. I wanted to be one of those moms who pops out her babies and then starts doing mommy aerobics and has her old body back in no time. Was that a realistic expectation? Given that I rarely exercised even before getting pregnant, probably not...

Looking on the bright side, I'm grateful that the babies are doing well and developing just as they should be so far. I'm no longer in pain. We have health insurance so this unexpected medical issue isn't going to break the bank.

Vanity of vanity, all is vanity.

Hmm, this post really has nothing to do with life in the South particularly. Maybe next time!

Not the Easter I Was Expecting

Disclaimer: this post is purposely vague in places because I don't really feel like sharing all my personal information on the internet. If you know me IRL and want to ask more about what's going on, feel free!

In case you didn't know, dear reader, Salmonista is with child. Two little hatchlings, to be exact, and they're expected to make their debut this summer. DF and I are quite excited about this new adventure in life!

I'm about halfway through the pregnancy now. Late last week, I started feeling sick, and not in a normal pregnant kind of way. I went to the doctor and, long story short, wound up in the hospital on Good Friday having abdominal surgery to deal with the issue. Whoa, that kind of came out of nowhere! I did my best to be brave, but to be honest, I was scared. Who wants to have a doctor operating in such close proximity to your little babies?? And to make matters more complicated, the surgery turned out to not be entirely successful. The doctors discovered that the issue will need to wait until after pregnancy to be fully resolved. So now I'm left to recover from an operation while my mid-section keeps expanding over the coming months. Ooooh boy, this should be fun.

I had to stay in the hospital until Sunday afternoon. DF was a dear and slept on the couch in my room for the weekend so I didn't have to be alone, even though he got woken up all night by various beeping machines and medical personnel. He is already being a great dad!

I've been a bit overwhelmed by the love and support we've encountered here through this ordeal. I never had any major medical issues out in Seattle so I didn't get a chance to test my network, but we'd lived there for quite awhile and I'm pretty sure our friends would have rallied to the occasion :)  What I didn't know was that we also have a lot of people here in Memphis who care about us. From the friends who dropped everything to help us out with transportation needs, to the steady stream of visitors through my hospital room, to the overflowing containers of delicious food currently stocking our refrigerator, to the calls/texts/emails from so many people, I really do feel the Southern love. And that's not even counting the check-ins (and flowers) from relatives in other parts of the country!

This whole medical issue thing isn't really over yet, but I'm definitely on the mend, thanks to modern pharmaceuticals. I would like to get back to being a "normal" pregnant person soon but that ship may have sailed. I'm hyper-aware of every ache and pain as a potential harbinger of another health crisis. Hope these little guys will appreciate the pain and suffering their mom is going through for them, but I hear kids never really grasp it. And so begins motherhood... :)

 Cheerful frogs and flowers to brighten my mood

And on Easter afternoon, up from the hospital bed I arose!