Here's an incomplete list of things I miss about being a non-pregnant person:

 

Prosciutto, turkey sandwiches, going to fancy restaurants and ordering goat cheese with wild abandon, booze, sex (pelvic rest is a major bitch), spending less than 60% of my time in the bathroom, not worrying about regulating the amount of fiber in my diet, rare meat, sleeping on my back and/or stomach, Coumadin, the lack of twice-weekly doctors' appointments, joints that don't feel like they're on fire, the ability to walk more than a block at a time, going to Vegas on a whim, not being terrified of everything, visiting European countries where they don't always pasteurize, having my brain back in working order.

Wow, I can't believe it's been so long since I've posted here.  Needless to say, lots and lots of things have been going on--2007 was a mighty big year, for Dave and me both.

 

In terms of writing stuff, I had quite an up and down season.  Two journals requested rewrites of some of my work, and then both publications ultimately turned the pieces down.  (I'm not going to name names here, but one journal that was interested in a short story of mine really needs to change their editorial policy.  First, they sent me raw editor notes, which included comments that were rude, uninformative, and sometimes wrong--they called the past progressive tense "passive voice" and would jot down little quips like "I don't buy it."  Then, after I'd set aside quite a few hours of work time so I could "fix" all of their weird little quibbles with things, they sat on my draft for a month and subsequently told me I hadn't done exactly what they wanted, but they were now too far into the layout process to wait for more corrections.  As an editor who worked in medical publishing for 3 years and did some academic editing as well, I was pretty pissed off.  There's nothing worse than to be edited by people that don't know what they're doing.)  But the good news is that I also won 2nd place in the Whiskey Island Magazine poetry contest (that came with actual money--woo hoo!) AND I got a chapbook manuscript accepted at Finishing Line Press.   My very first nearly-full-lenght publication.  Yay!

 

Right now, my chapbook, She, can be preordered at www.finishinglinepress.com (it's listed under the "New Releases and Forthcoming" link).  There's free shipping if you order between now and Feb. 29th.  And the book features some awesome cover art by Rosemont design student (and one of my former creative nonfiction workshoppers!) Liz Tetzlaff, and a great author photo by Rosemont design student Katie Reing.  So check it out!!  You'll be supporting a great small press, and you can witness my very first solo writing endeavor, after a loooong time of waiting and keeping my fingers crossed:

 

 

The OTHER big news in my life is...I'm pregnant!  Yes, Dave and I discovered this about the middle of September, and it was a big, whomping surprise for both of us.  The whole process has been something of a roller coaster ride, because since I have lupus and APS, a blood disorder that makes my blood clot too much, I've been considered a high-risk pregnant person and thus have been going to doctors' appointments about once every other week.  We're now regulars at Maternal-Fetal Medicine (the nice way of saying "high-risk unit") at HUP, we've had numerous fetal ultrasounds and echocardiograms already (this will probably wind up being the most scanned baby in the Philadelphia area), and since I found out I was pregnant I've been taking shots of blood thinners in the stomach twice a day.  Right now, I'm almost at 23 weeks, and I will say that, despite the fatigue, brain fuzz, joint pain, crazed hunger pangs, and constant trips to the bathroom on my end of things, the baby seems to be doing fine.  We did an amnio that came out normal, and his ultrasounds and echos have been reasonably good, too.  And I did say "his" on purpose--we found out the baby is a boy!  A Y chromosome, little boy bump and everything.  So now Dave and I have to learn how to be parents.  Yikes!!!

 

Anyway, those are the big mega-updates of my life here in Bryn Mawr.  There will definitely be more to come, so stay tuned!