2nd Trimester Playlist

I’m taking the long way home again. I need a few more minutes — enough to get through The Cars’ Just What I Needed and, inexplicably, Laid by James. “You’re driving me crazy … when are you coming home?” 

We’re running out of time. Just a couple of months left and we have so many chapters left to cover.

I’m seven months pregnant and I’m not craving pickles or ice cream (although both sound delicious). Instead, I’m craving music.

Like the songs we played on repeat in middle school: Green Day’s Welcome to Paradise, The Offspring’s Come Out and Play. 

The songs I listened to in high school while driving alone on small town, star-filled nights with a CD-to-cassette adapter stuck in my ancient car radio. REM’s Crush With Eyeliner. The Breeders’ Cannonball. Veruca Salt’s Seether. 

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In Praise of Panties and Smoothies

It pays to be in with Virgos.

A high-functioning Virgo mom friend and her wife emailed me their list of pregnancy/baby tips. It overwhelmed me at first glance (it’s 3,000+ words subdivided into seven categories) and I fled.

My first trimester felt like a Halloween maze, with scary specters jumping into my path as I struggled to get to the end. I did get to the end, of course (I even have the beginnings of my own tips list, it’s down below), but the change was as difficult as it was gradual.

Seventeen Weeks. Should I worry?

I’m seventeen weeks pregnant. Our baby is either the size of a white onion or a crème brûlée, depending on if I look at the Nurture or OviaPregnancy App.

Now I believe that morning sickness is Mother Nature’s way of distracting you from the shock of creating a new human. You’re so pre-occupied with feeling like shit that you don’t have time to ask yourself “Oh God, what have I done?!?!”.

Cuts Heal Slow

My mother’s best friend lives in Orange County, and sometimes we all meet up there. The trip I’m thinking of happened when I was maybe 20. I’d driven there from college, my parents had just arrived, and my mother and honorary aunt were puttering around putting things into the fridge, exchanging books they’d borrowed, catching each other up on this and that — the kind of things that old long-distance friends do when reunited.

Then my Aunt asked my mother, “are you afraid of dying?” Her question sounded remarkably offhanded, considering the nature of it. “Oh,” said my mother. “Just something I’ve been thinking about,” said my aunt.

The Penny Standard

Back home in LA, I find a penny on the sidewalk every week. One week, I found $30 on the street on Thursday and another $20 on Sunday. But usually, it’s just pennies.

My wife loves coins. Why? Who knows. But I live to make her smile, so when I find change on the street when we’re together I hand it over. What I find when I’m alone, I save in a jar.

I’ve been in San Francisco for work since Sunday and it struck me as remarkable that there were like no loose coins on the sidewalks. My eyes were peeled as I walked to work and then back to my hotel,on Monday, but no dice.

Down By the Bay, Where the Watermelons Grow

There is so much I don’t like about trying to get pregnant. Like the acronyms… TTC (trying to conceive), BFM (big fat negative), DPO (days past ovulation). I don’t like how easy it is to fall down a fertility rabbit hole online. I searched “IUI tips” on Pinterest and suddenly my feed is full of syrupy sweet IVF prayers and affirmations. I label each one “no longer relevant” as quickly as I could. I googled “implantation bleeding” and struck message boards that spooked me with their born-again-ism.

I don’t like how ignored I feel by conception narratives. I read a book about fertility nutrition by a Brooklyn-progressive “farmer’s daughter” and the whole vibe was so willfully straight and white it seemed to be trying to offend. Like the author only valued mirror images of her slim, pale self. So much evangelizing about raw milk. A proclamation about how your pregnancy will bring out a primordial protectiveness in your man.

And I don’t like having my life tie-dyed with uncertainty. The indecision that rose within me after round one was foreign and excruciating. I woke up the next morning certain I’m made a terrible mistake. I imagined this child hammering a stake between me and my wife. We’d break up. I’d be left a single parent, but worse: without mi amor para siempre. I cried to my wife and she smoothed my hair. That would not happen.

A Bad Day for Snakes

“Do Not Fucking Touch Me” is one of Dave Holmes’ tips for celebrating this St. Patrick’s Day. It reminds me of a favorite picture of me and my dad. We’re both leaning back against a table in the same exact way. I’m half his size and pinching him because he’s not wearing any green and it’s St. Patrick’s Day, which means it’s also his birthday. Growing up, St. Patrick’s day meant two things: telling your friends you were wearing green underwear, and my daddy-o’s birthday.

But now I’m an adult and I have no idea what St. Patrick’s Day means to me. I’m from California and Irish-American identity isn’t as big a deal out here as it seems to be in places like Chicago or Boston. I’ve probably celebrated Dia de los Muertos more than I’ve “celebrated” St. Patrick’s Day.

I’m not usually a humorless lesbian, but I’m kind of no fun on March 17th, because the cultural stereotypes bum me out (even when they’re also pretty funny) and I always find myself reading articles about the famine or how hated Irish immigrants were in America or how history repeats itself. Plus I suspect anyone super proud of their Irish heritage of being a white supremacist and unnecessary uses of food coloring make me irrationally furious. Green beer? Red Velvet? Bite me.