Scupper the Wonder Pup never ceases

My two favorite Scupper photos of late:

Scupper the Yule Dog - or St. Lucia - or whatever you think he looks like:
And my personal favorite:
Steve's new napping partner. I was so totally ousted.
To be fair, it was me who originally invited him on the bed about a month ago - just on Sunday mornings, because he is so cute and would sit at the door to the bedroom and just whine enough that I felt bad. Now, on the weekends, if we try to go back to sleep in the morning without him, he has a little hissy fit. Usually, if we do invite him up, he'll sleep at the foot of the bed, and then we ALL can go back to sleep for an hour, as opposed to listening to him whine at the door and NONE of us going back to sleep. This particular afternoon, he pushed the door to the bedroom open himself (the sneak) and crawled up right in between us. and then slowly inched himself over enough that I had no room. Ah well. I wasn't really sleepy anyway. Steve has no recollection of any of this because he was fast asleep. Awwww.....

Some thoughts on holiday baking...

In an effort to warm up the house, I decided to make yet another batch or two of holiday tasties. This year, I have truly felt like a domestic goddess. Not only do I have the Kitchen Aid mixer as prime accoutrement on my path to domestic goddess-dom, but this year I feel that I have finally used it to some of its amazing potential. Three years after its birthday surprise, I am still amazed and awed by the act of hands-free mixing. It really is way too cool. This year in particular it has truly come in handy because I can play fetch or tug with Scupper AND cream my butter and sugar until smooth. And with our old/new stove, I can soften the butter in a bowl over the pilot light area on the stove top. Rock on.

The only downfall about baking now is the fact that I can't test the batter before I bake it. Argh. No raw eggs for Speedy. I didn't realize how much I actually did that until I was reaching into the biscotti batter last week and went, wait a sec. If I'm not even eating poached eggs for breakfast, do I assume unbaked dough is safe? Oh well. Until May. (Like I'll want to cook homemade cookies right after her birth. Yah right.)

On the other hand, I did make some tasty breads and treats this year - all from my Whole Grain baking cookbook. The UCSD theater department staff & the local dog walkers had their choice of:
Lemon Poppy Seed Bread (made with white whole wheat and oat flour)
Pumpking Cranberry Bread (made regular whole wheat flour)
and Toffee Almond Biscotti (also made with regular whole wheat flour).
And you know, they all turned out pretty good. I think they are much denser than breads/biscotti made with all-purpose white flour, but the whole wheat lends a nutty texture and taste that's rather good, especially with the biscotti of all things.

Tonight, in an attempt to warm up the house yet again (it's 50 and rainy here - so much for a sunny Pacific paradise) I just made Molasses Rye Snap dough (we'll see how they taste) and another rough of the Toffee Biscotti because I had requests for more. The house is now at 70 and smelling delicious and I'm finally warm.

Let me know if you want any recipes. I think i'm done for the season. I have one more loaf of French bread to make for our annual Christmas Eve bagna cauda (anchoives, butter, garlic sauce with raw veggies dipped in) but that's it.

In other news, Speedy is growing just fine. She is "totally normal" according to the midwife's reading of the mid-point ultrasound results. Totally normal? Is she really our kid? ;) I feel as big as a house, wondering how my stomach flesh is going to stretch anymore. I was in pre-natal yoga today with a woman who was at term (good for her - doing yoga until the end!) and I got a little scared seeing how large she was. I mean, does the belly really expand THAT MUCH? Holy cow. I ran home and lathered my stomach up with lots of body butter just in case. I checked in the shower this morning that if i stand straight, can I still see my toes? yes. but just barely. It's about time for another picture of said belly, so once I get Steve to take it, I'll post another one... At least my belly button is still in. For now...

And so it begins...

One of the most amazing things about this whole pregnancy thing is that I just can't get over how incredible the body is. I mean really - i was thinking about this last night at dinner. All however many miles of my intestines are just getting smooshed by the day, and I haven't keeled over yet. I may have had to add more fiber to my diet recently, but let's not talk about poo just yet. I'm sure there will be time when our lives revolve around poo 24-7. My uterus is now the size of a prize-winning extra large cantelope at the county fair and it used to be a dainty pear. And even better, the body starts to prepare you for waking up ever 2-3 hours. Yes, I'm writing this blog post at 3:30 in the morning because I woke up at 2am to the sounds of the dog barfing in his crate, had to pee, and couldn't fall back to sleep. Scupper and Steve are snoring peacefully and (I assume, so is Speedy), and here I am, making Christmas card lists in my head, wondering what the weather is like in Oregon in December should we decide to take our long-awaited road trip, and the question of the hours...

cloth or disposables.

I'm leaning towards the cloth my friends... I found a brand (that they now sell online at Target no less!) that grows with the child - that's right. No sizes, just keep readjusting the snaps. So when you think about it, $17/diaper over 2-3 years isn't a bad deal. Stock up to about 20 and you're good, right? the initial outlay seems a bit steep, but overtime, i think it's worth it. I'm going to have to do laundry every day anyway, right?

So weigh in on the poll - cloth or disposables. Wasting water or filling landfills.

Yep. Heavy thoughts at 3:30am. I could be working on my dissertation, but trying to discern satirical tendencies in a play right now might be more than my brain can handle. I've been translating French for three days in a last minute effort to prove that I can pass my second language exam about 6 months later than I was supposed to. Sadly, all I can really remember from my 4 years of high school French are drinking songs, Impressionist painters names, and how to make a yule log holiday cake. Mmm.... chocolate yule logs.

No pink please...

but purple, lavender, yellow, green, blue, and red are all ok!

Congrats to those of you who voted - Speedy is a....

GIRL!

True to her name, she was moving all over the place this morning - but the ultrasound lady manged to get these two relatively decent photos. Even if she does look like an alien, she's our alien. ;)


In other cool news, our dog learned to play hide and seek with a bone this weekend. It's the best new game ever. He waits in the living room while Steve runs around the house and then we tell him to go find it - and he does. Scupper thinks it's fun for hours.

Things to be thankful for... the selfish edition

....that we have four days off together because Steve didn't have to work.
.... that Scupper wanted to sleep in until 9:30am on Friday
....that Turkey Day dinner was only 15 minutes off my master schedule and everything tasted good.
.... that it was sunny and 70 here today and not 40 and sleeting.
.... that our families understood that traveling on Thanksgiving just sucks and didn't make us feel guilty for having to fly 1000s of miles.

I am sure that I don't have to get sappy and tell you why i'm REALLY thankful this year - ya'll will get that in my cheesy annual Xmas letter, I'm sure.

Here are some of my favorite pics from the weekend.

The table barely fit - and I didn't have enough cloth napkins that matched. Shame on me.
Steve carves the turkey while Scupper prays little bits will fall from the sky.

I clean up after all the drinkers. Manhattans happened to be the drink of choice as the evening wore on - I didn't partake, obviously, but those cherries drowned in bourbon sure sounded good.

We took a post- Turkey day hike on Friday to walk off the food - at the local urban park which actually has 50 miles of trails. This is the view from 2/3 up the 1,500ft mountain. Metro San Diego and the ocean beyond.
Our very handsome hiking partner - who practically pulled Steve's arm out of his socket while on the trail. Next time, we'll put on the "no-pull harness." ;)

Jobs and the Future

Small update - so amidst all this baby nonsense, i have to keep moving on with the goal that was originally at hand - finishing the degree. Oh yes. It has to get done. Right now, Speedy is winning, as I haven't written a lick of anything since about September. I've kept up with lesson plans, prepared my conference paper (which was delivered in Boston last weekend at the conference - an exhausting weekend of listening to people talk at me, but an enjoyable weekend catching up with old friends), and haven't done much else school work.

What I HAVE been working on is applying for jobs and fellowships. Eek. Of course, all the cover letters say, "I am scheduled to defend my dissertation in June 2009, and will have my PhD in hand by the time of the job appointment."

Oh i hope i'm not lying. So here's the plan - either get the diss done and get a decent job OR find out that there isn't a decent job and get an awesome dissertation fellowship to finish the dissertation next year while taking care of a 6 month old and applying for jobs next year.

Both seem daunting, but frankly, I'd rather the "finish the diss and get the hell out of here" option. But i guess I had better stop blogging and get back to writing if i want to pick door #1. Don't you think?

In other news, i did get a phone interview on thursday with a college I applied to - kinda cool. Felt good to be at least short-listed for something. I have no idea how the interview went - phone interviews are contrived and weird and not good for a person like me that reads people by body language.

Ah well. At least it was good practice and gave me some sort of hope that some college out there might want me.

Even a little.

Here's a favorite picture of mine from recently - my two favorite boys doing what they love to do - Scupper is passed out and Steve is building a bicycle wheel.

Oh - and here's me at the start of 4 months. What's weird is that i'm only 5 pounds heavier than when I wasn't pregnant. How weird it is to watch the body change.

Historic Election Reaction

So of course Steve and I were a bit excited to vote today... exercising your constitutional right never seemed so amazing - or a bit scary - because, of course, we're Democrats, so we have to think that MAYBE something bad is still going to happen tonight and can't be too excited. The aching pit of despair that i felt in my stomach while watching the 2004 returns is still a feeling i can viscerally recall.

However, I thought it was pretty cool that Speedy and I got to vote together today... I checked with him/her just to make sure s/he was an Obama baby and it seemed the case. Woohoo. Mamas for Obama, right?