A Clean Bill of Health

This is a little brag, but I got some awesome news this past week. I went to visit my new rheumatologist this past Wednesday, a nice man I met at the Lupus Walk. I have been on the search for a good rheumatologist fr a long time. They tend to be an odd bunch, and having been through four of them already, I have been really eager to find a good fit. My very first rheumatologist was a misogynist who found me and my lupus to be a major annoyance in his life of self-importance. My next one forgot to call me with some disturbing lab results around the time of my miscarriage, so I just never really wanted to go back. My third one was awesome, but it took me a full hour to get there, then I usually had to wait about two more hours once I got there. The next one was just the on-call rheumatologist when I was in the hospital before Claire was born. Within the first five minutes of meeting him, he managed to call me fat (I was eight months pregnant) and tell me that he hated pregnant women. Classy.

So, imagine my delight when I attend an Alliance for Lupus Research event and I hear this mild mannered man speaking about the importance of funding for more research. I spoke to him after the event, got his card and made an appointment. When I got there, I didn't have to wait, and he had...wait for it...actually read my chart! He reviewed my lab work from my last visit and said that although I still have the antibody for lupus in my blood and always will, that all of my other lab work came back perfect and showed no signs of disease activity. This is a vast change from one month ago and from the entire past year. My kidney function is back to 100 percent, as is my liver. Both had gotten a little off during pregnancy and the postpartum time period, but they're perfect now! I am wholeheartedly encouraged and thrilled. I will continue to be monitored closely and will stay on two medications to keep everything at bay, but again, a major improvement. I know it could all change in a heartbeat, but for now, I am going to enjoy this healthy time and relish having my body back. I have begun to exercise again and trust my body again -- a wonderful feeling!

Her Father's Daughter

I find that there are many bittersweet moments in the life of a parent and a child. The moment you first see his or her sweet face, heading home from the hospital for the first time...there are too many of these moments to count. Just last week, I totally lost it as Claire devoured her very first bowl of squash. All of these moments make me so proud that Claire is growing and thriving, but they also make me sad because they're all happening so fast. Every time she does something new, I get that familiar ache in my chest.

Lately, what really gets me is watching Claire and her father, my husband, together. This is more sweet than bittersweet, but it still evokes major emotion on my end. He loves her so much, and I suspect she thinks he's pretty swell, too. I find this especially sweet because Jim is one of three boys and a long line of male cousins. In fact, Claire is the first female born into his family in more than a century. While I was always confident that he'd be a wonderful, hands on dad with a son or a daughter, I never expected him to be so good with our little girl. He's totally uninhibited in his adoration of her. It makes me love him even more than I already do, which if you can't tell from previous posts, is a whole lot.

Watching my husband with our daughter has made me reflect on my relationship with my dad. And here we go, I am getting that familiar ache in my chest and lump in my throat, even as I type this. A self-proclaimed daddy's girl for most of my childhood, I spent many of my Saturdays growing up sitting shotgun in my dad's red caddy (not a cool cadillac, but a grumpy old man cadillac). We would run errands, go mini-golfing and play whack-a-mole at the local arcade for hours. We'd go to the local magazine store where he'd pick up a Sporting News and I'd beg for candy. I eventually graduated to tween magazines, then teen magazines. We'd play catch in the backyard or race go-carts at the local track. It was fun, and I loved it.

As I got older, Saturdays with dad at the batting cages gave way to Saturdays at the mall with friends. Greenville Braves games with dad turned into movies with boyfriends. Our relationship changed. I still loved him, but I had other interests. As it turns out, so did he. Namely, he was interested in women who weren't my mom. I'll leave it at that.

I ended up being the one to find out about my dad's extracurricular activities. I had just turned 18, and I was heading off to college in a matter of months. A culmination of things led my mom to find out that my dad was being repeatedly unfaithful. He moved out. I was torn because although I loved my dad, he had done some really awful and embarrassing things to our family. I would never be able to erase those images in my mind -- images that no girl should have of her father. Worst of all, he left. He left his wife and his kids. Flat out, no looking back, he left. In a sick twist of fate, around the same time that my dad left, I was diagnosed with lupus, a sister disease to rheumatoid arthritis, the disease my dad had been living with for more than 20 years. The diseases likely have a common genome, making them easily passed from generation to generation.

We tried to maintain some kind of relationship, but he was under the spell of a new woman who had no interest in us, so he gradually and painfully slipped out of my life my sophomore year in college. Thank goodness for student loans, or I would have been up a creek without and education. Many painful years full of mistrust of everyone around me followed. What's left of my family -- my mom, my sister and my brother, plus our spouses and children -- has struggled in many ways to pick up and move on. We've tried to establish relationships beyond my dad. We're better than we were, but not there yet. We have all found that emotional wounds are slow to heal and quick to scar.

I guess all I am trying to figure out here is at what point certain families go wrong. My dad was a pretty good father to me. He wasn't always there, and he certainly was not a good father to my siblings, but he was pretty good to me. How do you go from proximity to distance? How do you cross that long bridge from spending every Saturday together to estrangement? I haven't spoken to my dad in five years. He knows I am married, but he wasn't at my wedding. He's never met my husband. My brother walked me down the aisle. I suspect he knows I have a baby by now, but he doesn't know her name and has certainly never held her like a grandfather should. He's just this person I used to know, who is part of my history, but likely not a part of my future. His image is stagnant in my mind, never changing, never improving.

As time goes by, I can go days, sometimes even a whole week without thinking about him, but that sense of loss is always there. When I look in the mirror, I see remnants of him from the color of my eyes, to the shape of my nose, to the fineness of my hair. When my hands and knees hurt from the pain of lupus, I wonder if he's hurting, too, and if pain is all we might have in common now. Then, I swear to never be like him, to love my family for as long as I live and to keep my promises, even when it's hard.

As I watch my husband with our child, I can only hope that he will always love her like he does now, that he will be there for all of the important moments of her life and that he will look back on his life with her knowing it was time well spent. There are so many sweet moments ahead for all of us, and I look forward to the branches of our family tree growing and blooming. Most of all, I look forward to Claire being a daddy's girl, because for her, it's something of which she can be proud.

Cheeeeeeeese!

This is a totally random topic, but I thought about this while I was tailgating. We were at a family tailgate before the Georgia/Auburn. I was feeling a little like death warmed over after a late night out on the town in Athens. Knowing I was about to lose it if I didn't eat something soon, Jim handed me a tiny little piece of melba toast with some pimento cheese on it. I immediately turned up my nose at it. Hrmmppph.

Now, most people scowl at pimento cheese because they think it's gross. Not me. I love the stuff. If you gave me a straw, I would suck up all of the pimento cheese in sight. I pride myself on being a pimento cheese connoisseur. I try it at every restaurant that serves it. I have even had pimento cheese hummus! One of my best friends once said that all my wedding caterer would need to provide to make me happy is a plate of cheese cubes and a bowl of pimento cheese. I never saw a problem with that idea, but my husband steered me in a more conventional direction.

My love for the part sandwich spread/part appetizer began before I can even remember. My Granny has been making pimento cheese forever, and it's quite possibly the perfect food. It's cheesy, creamy, sometimes spicy...it's just perfect. My husband would argue that bacon is in fact the perfect food, but that's for his blog. Anyway, I grew up eating a pimento sandwich almost every day for lunch. My friends would never trade lunches with me because they thought pimento cheese was foul. Again, not me. I always looked forward to unfurling my brown paper bag, unzipping my ziplock bag and finding that dad had again packed me pimento cheese. It was never just regular old store-bought pimento cheese. It was Granny's. Through the years, we tried almost every brand of pimento cheese, but nothing ever compared. There was always too much pimento or too little cheese. The cheese was too finely shredded or not shredded enough. It just wasn't Granny's.

In college, I could never find pimento cheese that met my high standards, so on the rare weekends that I went home, my grandmother would pack me a cooler full of her pimento cheese to take back with me. Again, no one ever wanted it. Fine...more for me! A few years later, I found my first post-college job at the Henry Neighbor. I was too broke to go out to lunch, as was everyone else who worked there. Again, whenever I went home, Granny would load me up with pimento cheese, and it would last me for weeks. The first time I ever took some to work to share, I fully expected everyone to decline. Alas, like a beacon of light in a dark world of pimento cheese haters, my editor said, "Sure, I'll have some." Like me, she loved it. I continued to bring her sandwiches whenever I had the chance. We formed a very strong and lasting friendship over pimento cheese sandwiches and sometimes, when we had enough money, Chick-fil-A. But, for what it's worth, I'd have one of Granny's pimento cheese sandwiches over even the finest dining any day.

So back to this tailgate...holy crap, this pimento cheese was AWESOME. It had peppers, olives, cream cheese and all kinds of happy foods. I told one of the women at the tailgate that I thought it might even be better than my Granny's. She looked at me and said, "Don't ever tell her that." And I never will.

For me, pimento cheese is a whole lot more than a spread. It's a way of being reminded how much my Granny loves me because she's not always good at showing it. It's a reminder than we don't always have to move so fast and buy everything pre-made in perfect little containers. It's a reminder that no matter how far away you move, there are pieces of home everywhere, even on top of a slice of melba toast.

Wii Love

I am one lucky woman. I married a man who doesn't really like to play video games. So, imagine my surprise when he started begging about this time last year for a Nintendo Wii for Christmas. I laughed off his request. We needed a video game system like we needed holes in both of our heads. With a baby on the way, we had a million more important things on which to spend our money. While I delighted in picking out strollers, car seats, itty bitty clothes and a crib bumper, Jim, being the sport he is, let me have a field day. But every once in awhile, he'd tell me about a friend who had a Wii or how he'd seen one somewhere. After perusing Pottery Barn Kids for baby bedding one day out at the mall, we even stopped into a video game store so that he could play the demo. I could see in his eyes that he really wanted this thing. As most women do when their husband asks for a video game system, I rolled my eyes and groaned.

Months passed, our baby was born and Jim's birthday rolled around. The thing was that his birthday fell 11 days after Claire's birth, so tracking down the notoriously undersupplied Wii was not in the cards. Plus, I knew having the Wii and a new baby could prove disastrous for a new dad. So, for his 30th birthday, I bought Jim two new pairs of khakis and two new shirts. Man, I suck. Adulthood came crashing down on his shoulders thanks to Brooks Brothers and a really poorly timed "responsible" gift from me. As October approached and I emerged from my baby haze, I began to realize that I wanted to get Jim and awesome present. I thought for days about what I could get him to show him how much I adore him, and then it hit me. He needed a Wii.

So, I suppose he didn't need it, but he wanted it so bad. He got so excited when we'd talk about it, and I saw no other choice. Every store in America is sold out of these bad boys, so I resorted to my trusty Craig's List and found a brand new system for a very small mark-up. I contacted the seller, withdrew some cash and we had a deal. I sent my brother-in-law to pick the Wii up. There was no way in hell I was going with my baby to meet some gaming freak downtown to pick this thing up. So, I gave my brother-in-law the cash, he picked it up and he dropped it off at our house in the POURING rain. I suspect that he wanted the Wii as badly as Jim did. I swore that I would hold off on giving Jim the Wii until Christmas, but something told me that I needed to give it to him now. He was working particularly late, and it'd been a crappy week. Also, he is the world's most proficient snooper, and I fold pretty easily when questioned about gifts that are supposed to be surprised. So, I took a picture of Claire sitting on top of the Wii and e-mailed it to Jim at work. I sat back and waited no longer than 30 seconds for my phone to ring. I picked it up to my husband shrieking in excitement.

We went out of town separately that weekend, so he didn't have time to set it up. He got back home before I did, so he called me as soon as he got it set up. It lived up to all of his expectations. As soon as I got home, we engaged in a few bouts of tennis, bowling, boxing and golf. Jim was right -- the Wii is awesome. The graphics are sharp, the music resists being grating and you even get to create your own Mii -- your own little animated self. What's more awesome about it is that I got a rare glimpse at my husband having uninteruppted, unstressful and unplanned fun. Jim hasn't had anything that's truly his in a long time. When we got married, it was all about me -- the dress, the flowers, the hair, etc. When I was pregnant, it was all about me and our little growing baby. When we finally had Claire, it was all about her. The Wii was something he'd really wanted, and he finally got it...and what do you think he did?

He shared it with me.

The Seven Best (and Worst) Things You Can Say to a Girl

Having grown up in an environment that focused on appearance, beauty and body size as a measurement of self-worth, one of my biggest fears as a mother is that I will somehow pass this onto my children. I like my nice clothes and highlighted hair as much as the next person, but the older I get, the more I value my mind and heart over my physique. Looks seems less important as health and happiness take precedence. I am an avid magazine reader, and as writers and editors waste increasingly more paper and ink on the missteps of Britney and Paris, I start to wonder why I waste my time and money on the vapid drivel. Every once in awhile, though, I run across an article I find valuable and worthy of sharing. I struggle with filtering myself a lot of the time on how I feel about myself and my changing body since having Claire almost six months ago. I look in the mirror, and I think, "well, it ain't what it used to be," but neither am I. I'm a mother, and there are more important things for me to think about than the size on the label inside my jeans. When Claire and any subsequent children see themselves in a mirror, I want them to see more than the size of their nose or the shape of their ass. I want them to be proud of what they can't see in a mirror.

From the November issue of Glamour

Never say…


“I feel fat.”
After a second helping of stuffing, sure you do. But beware! If she sees you hating your body, she may learn to loathe hers, says Courtney E. Martin, author of Perfect Girls, Starving Daughters.

“You’re young. You’ll get over it.”

Yes, she’ll survive being blown off by her so-called friend. But that doesn’t make it sting less right now. Ask how you can help.

“Men suck.”

Bashing just feeds an us-versus-them mentality, says psychologist Rita Haley, Ph.D.


“Sure you want to eat that?”

Eating a honking slab of pie is much less damaging to her than the feeling that everything she puts in her mouth is fodder for scrutiny.

“Paris is such a slut.”

Whatever you think of Ms. Hilton, trashing women teaches girls to be mean, says psychologist Sharon Lamb. Bring up Nancy Pelosi instead. Research suggests that talking with girls about female politicians can help them aspire to leadership roles.


“Guys won’t like you if you…”

It’s never good to change to “get” a guy. Tell her the right one will like every crazy, quirky thing about her.

“These are the best years of your life.”

High school?! As if.

Always say…


“Do anything fun today?”

Life isn’t all about achievements; this could help her find her passion.


“That was a brave thing to do.”

When girls stand up for someone or something they believe in, we should stand up and cheer. After all, that’s the mark of a leader.


“Let’s go for a run.”

Simply getting her going can boost her mood and self-image. Exercise also gives her confidence in her body’s strength.

“You can be anything; you don’t have to be everything.”

“You go, girl” is always a great message, but she also needs to know that when and if she wants to, she can slow down.

“Just know I’m here. No pressure. No judgment.”

It’s helpful if she knows she can turn to someone, even if she doesn’t end up doing so, says Haley.



“YUM!!!!”
Teach her to enjoy her food, not battle it.

“Well-behaved women seldom make history.”
Historian Laurel Thatcher Ulrich’s so-true words tell her that if she wants to break the rules sometimes, you have her back.

Happy Halloween!

Looking Back

So, I know what you're all thinking. This blog started out with such promise, and here it is left unupdated and unloved for more than two weeks! I know everyone says this, but we have been busy! I just finished up a huge project for work, Jim just survived the flu (after having a flu shot) and I have been dealing with a little lupus flare. I am now happy to say that everyone in our house is healthy, knock on wood! We have had a great weekend, too. We went to a fun little sandwich shop in our 'hood Friday night, and then on Saturday morning, we walked in the Alliance for Lupus Research's Walk to raise money and awareness for lupus research. This is the third year in a row I have taken part, and it gets better every year. This year, the Walk raised more than $76,000!

This year was a little sentimental to me because the day before last year's Walk, I found out I was pregnant with the baby who is now snoring in her crib in the next room. I remember being terrified, especially since we had lost a baby just three months earlier. I also remember feeling like I had the best secret ever. As I walked the three mile course, it was fun to know that my baby was already walking with me, even if she was the size of a popcorn kernel in my belly. There was a little person growing inside of me who was desperately wanted and already loved. From the start, I had a good feeling about the pregnancy, but I had also had no clue what was about to happen over the next nine months. It was lovely to be so optimistic.

At Walk time last year, I was working full-time at a hectic, frenzied pace. I was not really happy in my job, but I was working at a place that I believed in, so I overlooked the things I didn't like so that I could still get that warm and fuzzy feeling every morning when I went to work. I never really saw my husband, except for when we both collapsed into bed every night. We were so consumed with grieving over our loss that we never really woke up everyday. It was sad and hard and mostly awful. It was an early loss, but it still sucked, and it didn't help that people kept saying, "Oh, but at least it happened early." I understood what they meant, but I didn't feel that way. I have often said that when you lose a baby so early in a pregnancy (I was 9-ish weeks), that it's hard to know what you're grieving for. I think I hit the nail on the head, for me at least, when I said that I was mourning the loss of potential. We lost what could have been, and it was sad.

What I mean by that is that the moment I found out I was pregnant in the bathroom of a San Francisco hotel, what was growing inside me held so much hope. My husband and I immediately saw a life in those two pink lines. In the few short weeks between the positive pregnancy test and the damning ultrasound that showed a heart that had ceased to beat, we had imagined a whole life with our child. We had talked about names and nursery decor, Saturday mornings spent mending scraped knees after soccer games, Halloween costumes made by Grandma and Christmas morning spent around a tree that we had all decorated together. We imagined blonde hair and blue eyes, summers spent sunburnt and lazy August Sundays rocking on the dock. We had heard his or her laughter ring through our home and we had watched our beloved dog Murphy pull her down the street. We had mentally seen this baby go to his or her first day of school, then to college and then walk down the aisle. Yes, as crazy as it might seem, in those few short weeks, we had imagined a whole life. So when we cried, it wasn't for the bundle of cells that had multiplied, per se. It was for the things that would never happen, the baby we would never know, the person who would never become. It was because we loved someone we could never touch or hold. It was because surprise or not, we wanted this baby and all of the things he or she would become. We really wanted it all.

The doctors took a lot of blood in the weeks that followed our miscarriage and ran what they call a thrombophilia panel. They found that I had a clotting disorder which affected the way I clotted blood (clotted too much) and metabolized folic acid (not well enough). Both of these things could make carrying a baby challenging. Add the clotting disorder to my already existing lupus and we had a rodeo on our hands.

So, on Sept. 29, I found out I was again pregnant. Let's just look beyond the embarrassing reality that I found out I was pregnant in a Target bathroom. I was so sure I was pregnant, but had to know immediately. More on my lack of patience later. I took my lunch hour to go to Target and buy a pregnancy test. I didn't have time to go home and take it, so I went into the bathroom at Target and proceeded take the test. Needless to say, I passed the test (or failed, depending on your desires when you take the test) and saw a faint second pink line. The Saturdays, the Halloweens, the Christmases, the August Sundays. God willing, we'd have the chance at them all.

I would like to tell you that I am one of those women who got a positive pregnancy test and then voila! nine months (really, 10 months) later, I had a perfect baby. I did have a perfect baby nine months later (not 10, nine), but it wasn't a voila! experience. Every day of my pregnancy, in spite of having good feelings about it, I was scared. In fact, I was terrified. Every time I had a doctor's appointment, I would be sick to my stomach the morning of. And I mean, sick. Bleccchhhh. At seven weeks, I had my first appointment with my perinatalogist and saw Claire's heartbeat (see ultrasound picture). I never knew such a tiny flicker would end up being one of the most precious sites I'd ever seen. I had an ultrasound, some times two, nearly every week until she was born to make sure everything was progressing normally. Because of some first trimester issues, I ended up leaving my job. Stress on top of fear made me an awful employee, and since both of my bosses admittedly hated kids, their sympathy was not by any measure overwhelming. My state of mind plus their lack of understanding proved explosive -- and even landed me in the emergency room with bleeding at 14 weeks. For the first time since I was 15, I was unemployed. So what did I do? I got another job in spite of everyone's pleading that I just take it easy.

As the days passed, I got bigger, and my blood pressure got higher and higher. After an overnight hospital stay, I was put on bed rest with 14 weeks left in my pregnancy. I can hardly sit still ever, so bed rest was my own personal nightmare. Again, I had to quit my job. Admittedly, I was a non-compliant patient, and at 34 weeks, I was admitted to the hospital. My lupus was misbehaving, and I was in some nasty pain. This time, I was told, I wasn't going to be leaving without a baby. My nose was swollen all the way across my face, and a very hateful nurse told me I had hobbit feet. The prednisone they gave me for my joint pain made my blood sugar high, so they put me on a diabetic diet. Ever seen a hungry pregnant lady? My wonderful husband spent two weeks sneaking in food for me. Further proof I had married the right man.

The day I turned 36 weeks pregnant, they performed an amniocentesis to check for Claire's lung maturity. Eight long hours later, the results were in. Baby had (and still has) a strong pair of pipes! They induced me the next morning, and finally, I got my voila!

So, yesterday, just a few weeks more than a full year after finding out I was pregnant with Claire, we walked three miles together. We walked because we could, because we had already done it together once. I have never been prouder.

How Did I End Up With a Baby This Cute?

Just posting these because I think she's cute. I can't believe she's almost five months old!

I Just Miss Her

This is me and my sweet sister in San Francisco on vacation last year.

In January, my sister and her husband moved to Ghana. He is an anthropological film maker who is working there, and she is a school teacher and counselor to children there. I was 18 weeks pregnant when she left, so the shit had not officially hit the fan yet in my pregnancy. In the weeks that followed, there was bleeding, then a car accident, then pre-eclampsia and then I had a nasty lupus flare -- more on that later. I was hospitalized twice, the last time for two weeks until they induced me at 36 weeks. During this time, even though my sister was a zillion miles away, we managed to communicate by any means possible. We would e-mail, text message and every once in awhile she would call me. I always loved saying hello and hearing a delay in a response because I knew it was her calling from a world away. There were times when I would have a doctor's appointment, good or bad, and the only person I really wanted to talk to was her. She delighted in me telling her about my pregnancy and loved hearing whether we'd heard the heartbeat or how much the baby weighed now when they measured her on ultrasound. When I told her I was scared or that I didn't think I would make it through the stress of this pregnancy, she would simply, say "Kerry, I can't imagine what you're going through." She never tried to one up me or say, "Well, my friend who was pregnant this one time, blah, blah, blah." She just listened.

With the help of modern technology, she knew within minutes of Claire's birth, and I was even able to send her a picture via text message. I felt like she was with me. Until now, I have never really known what it felt like to really, truly miss someone. I never knew it could physically hurt to miss a person. Well, it does. As much as I know it's a good thing for her to be with her husband in Ghana, and as much as I know the school children she is teaching need her more than I do, I am just selfish enough to really wish she'd show up on my doorstep tomorrow morning. Tomorrow afternoon would be fine, too. I just miss her.

Life Affirmation in the Baby Gap

Have you ever had one of those defining moments when you least expect it that just really illustrates to you that you have indeed chosen the right life? I had one of those moments this past Sunday.

I am generally happy with my life. I am married to a man who I am more in love with than I ever thought possible, and Claire has just made my life. I have a great career that allows me to keep my foot in the workforce while staying at home with my child. I have awesome friends, and wonderful siblings. I know all of these things, but sometimes as the days and weeks pass, I kind of let my mind wander to what my life might have been like had I made different decisions. Those thoughts are never in regret of the choices I did make...more just out of curiosity.

So, on Sunday, I just really needed some time to myself, so Jim agreed to hang out with Claire while I did my thing. As it turns out, doing my thing was going to pick out some Fall clothes for Claire, so I sped out to Lenox Square to find some duds. My first stop was Gymboree where I was unimpressed, so I moved on to Baby Gap. I was sifting through some baby yoga pants (ummm...do babies do yoga, and if so, do they really need separate pants for it?) when I heard a really familiar Southern voice. I turned to place the voice and then I saw him. I hadn't seen him in five and a half years since we'd gone to lunch after his much belated graduation from the University of Georgia. I hadn't seen him since we'd realized that yes, this time it was really over. No, there wasn't someone else, but there was me...and that's who I was trying to hold on to. It was my college ex-boyfriend who I will call Heath Denkins. And his mother. And his very pregnant wife. And I was alone. Without my husband. And without my baby. In my fat jeans.

I said hello to him and he looked at me as if he could kill me for even thinking to shop in the same store as him. His mother hugged my neck, and as she shouted my name, Heath's wife (Lauren?) screeched around the rack of onesies to see who this female voice belonged to. I saw her swollen belly and congratulated her -- them -- and told them that I had a daughter at home. Claire. Heath's response was, "you have a baby?" like he was destroyed that I had gotten there first. I wanted to tell him that it had been hard, and I had been sick and that I deserved to get there, not necessarily first, but just because it hadn't been easy. But, I didn't. I just overcompensated for the awkwardness by chattering incessantly. I told them I had just gone back to work and that I loved it, but that it was hard to manage everything. It's really not all that hard, but people want to hear that it's hard so that's what's I tell them. I asked his wife (Laura?) if she was planning on going back to work, and she told me that she didn't work and hadn't since they got married a few years ago. Oh. My mind immediately shifted seven years back to my studying in Heath's craphole apartment when he told me I didn't have to study to do well in school because I'd never have to work if I just stuck with him. I'd just have babies and keep the home. I broke up with him a week later.

So then instead of taking that opportunity to leave the Baby Gap like we all know I should have, I asked if they were going to deliver at Northside. For you non-Atlantans, Northside is a fantastic hospital to deliver, especially for high risk pregnancies. It has great providers, boasts wonderful outcomes and offers a well-established special care nursery -- all things that had to exist in order for me to deliver there. His wife explained that no, they lived in Jefferson, Georgia, and they'd be delivering there. They lived in the country. They asked where we live. The city, I said.

I realized that Claire didn't need any yoga pants, so I wished them luck, wished Mrs. Denkins a happy birthday since I'd just remembered it was her birthday and got out of there as soon as I could. I didn't go to any other stores. I just left the mall. I wanted to leave the man that I almost never left to get home to the man I almost never met. I couldn't drive fast enough. On my way home, I of course called all of my girlfriends who'd been there through my Heath era and made it to my Jim era. They all laughed and agreed that I was totally validated in breaking into a cold sweat and sprouting hives. We also agreed that maybe I should shower and dry my hair before visiting the mall. Whoops.

I stopped by the grocery store on the way home and picked up a carrot cake so that Jim and I could celebrate our right decisions. It was delicious -- our life and the cake.

And yes, I know I was younger, tanner, thinner and blonder in the picture to the right. Everyone is younger, tanner, thinner and blonder on their wedding day.