tunic or not tunic

i used to have this idea about having a baby. no, that's wrong. i will start again. i used to have this idea about pregnancy. i've had this vegetarian cookbook for a hundred years, at least. the book is a compendium of recipes from a vegetarian commune in tennessee. and it was written in the 70s. and all the photos were taken in the 70s. anyway, the best recipe in the entire world for what has become my famous gluten roast can be found in that book. but be wary, because they have put out revised versions of the book and they changed some of the recipes (though none of the photos) and the recipe for scones, in particular, has changed. i realized this when i took out the wrong copy of the book (i own the original and the new version) one sunday to make scones for my mari of all tamaris. this was actually before we were married, but i had hoped we might marry soon, and i also believed that my scones would play an important role in hastening that verisimilar enterprise.

so i made the scones and i even put in chocolate chips, which are the greatest, instead of the raisins or candied ginger that can often go in there. and you know what? those scones were not very good. i had to go back and compare the two recipes and then eventually re-make them to prove that they really are good and that i am a great sconemaker (now don't get excited; i didn't make any claims about my pumpkin pie) and you know, i felt a marriage proposal might be riding on this as well, so the whole thing was nearly a disaster. as a result, these days i never stray from the original version of the book. but the neatest part of that book (besides the photo of louise bagging a 10-pound gluten) is a picture of a little kid eating a vegan molasses cookie at the heading of a section about raising a vegetarian child. i must tell you that now i am actually not going to raise a vegetarian child (you can address your concerns to me via the comments section) and guess what? i am also driving a german car and wearing geeky sandals, and not bringing home a puppy to live with my sister and me while my sister is on a business trip. so, things change. anyway, even though my child will probably eat a piece or two of hormone-free, organic chicken in its day, that doesn't mean that it also won't get to eat a delicious chunk of gluten roast too. or a vegan ginger snap. you can have it all. and yes, david, i will keep a slice of gluten roast for you.

oh, and also, this is the same book that gives a recipe for making--not just your own tofu--but your own soymilk. it involves straining your curds or whatever they call them through a piece of cheesecloth. of course, i didn't have cheesecloth that day in 1996 when i was making the soymilk, so i strained the soymilk through my beautiful pale pink 1940s rayon blouse, which seemed like a suitable alternative. my sister, who owns all kinds of baking and cooking supplies, (including cheesecloth) and is better than anyone at baking things, still reminds me about this. but i don't think she ever tasted that soymilk. it was actually pretty good. anyway, back to my story:

the other neatest part of that book is a photo of a very smiley hippie woman in a cottony dress that is really nothing more than a big baggy cottony piece of material with 2 straps at the top and she is pregnant and smiling. so that has always been in my mind when i imagined being pregnant. i thought that i would have 2-foot long hair and i would wear cottony dresses and eat natural food and strain soy curds through organic cotton. and smile.

i thought it would be fun. well, it's not that fun. i also cut off my nearly 2-foot-long hair in 1999, so that part is out the window. one thing i forgot to tell you is that i think i thought that pregnancy would be sort of 3/4 the smiling vegetarian woman in a homemade shift combined with 1/4 lucille ball when she was pregnant. i thought if i could only wear those shirts she had with skinny pants and ballet flats, everything would be fine.

and here's the funny part: about 10 years ago, i used to attend these sort of semi-annual parties where about 20 women would bring all the clothes they no longer wanted to wear, but still knew were pretty great. so everyone would show up with bags full of clothes and put them in a pile. some of these women were stylists in movies and videos and so some of the clothes were pretty fantastic. anyway, i won't bore you with the very complicated protocol that led up to the clothes being distributed somewhat fairly, but in the end, one would go home with some pretty neat stuff.

the only remaining wardrobe item i have from those long-ago days is a lime-ish green a-line top with a big pocket on the hip. on the pocket is a perfect appliqué of a black dog and a white dog with red collars with little gold accents and each dog has little rhinestones for eyes. this is the kind of shirt you would wear if you were painting at an easel in an old bob fosse movie. i mean, it's fantastic. it appears to be handstitched and i have received about a million compliments on it over the years.

it is really quite smocky. not like a radioactive smock type of smocky, but sort of artiste-y smocky. lucille ball smocky. so for about 10 years, i have always imagined wearing this shirt (which probably, now that i think of it was an actual maternity blouse) while i was pregnant.

all of that is to say that that is the last thing i want to wear now that i am pregnant. because now that i am pregnant, it's not a cute french-ish artist blouse. it's all inflated and tenty. so there goes that ideal. i am currently subsisting on four gigantic bags of maternity clothes from a kind friend who recently had her second child, whatever i can scare up from other friends and several horrifying trips to the local maternity shops. now, don't get me wrong, i have been given a pair of jeans that cost about 7 times the amount i have ever spent on a non-maternity pair of jeans in my life and they are well worth the money that she spent on them. but the problem is trying to put together an outfit.

as i mentioned, i have spent some time and a tidy sum at maternity stores and it's a peculiar process. you shuffle through a store and try to find something that you might conceivably wear at some time in your life. even at the high-end stores, most things either look like they should be hanging from a valance in my 86-year old ex-landlady's home, or like they made reproductions from the wardrobe on petticoat junction.

now, i know that all of this complaining and vanity doesn't seem very good and i know that i am not focusing on the new life that is growing inside of me. but ask any pregnant woman you know (unless she liked the wardrobe on petticoat junction, or had very small boobs pre-pregnancy) and you will find a similar story.

oh, i bought a maternity swimsuit on ebay too. and let me tell you that i'm really looking forward to unveiling that this weekend, now that spring is here.

the trouble with having an idea about pregnancy that is based on either an (a.) 1950 lucille ball model, or a (b.) 1970 vegetarian communal model is that, well, i don't think i have to explain this to you.

i am pretty excited about having this baby. and i have no expectation that the baby will be dressed in weird stiff antique clothes, so don't worry about that. and i'll even let my darling espoused of all espionage take it out for a little hamburger here and there. it just would be fun to look kind of cute while i was waiting around for the little prawn.

mahler's 5th; my first.

so, my 2.5 month vacation from the engine was not planned--it just happened that way. and if it weren't for my husband of all husbandry, the engine may have been down for the count. he told me he was checking every day to see if i had written anything new. well, the idea of his daily disappointment for 71 straight days just became too much for me and i realized i had to do something.

so here it is: the next installment.

i will also tell you that i have been in a crazy stupor brought on by a mad rush of hormones. remember back in december when i said, "i hope everyone gets pregnant"? remember that? well, it worked for me. can you believe it? so, when i haven't been busy eating salt & vinegar potato chips, hot & sour soup, plain yogurt or kale sautéed in almond butter, i have been sleeping. or taking care of the granule, who has now completely lost her sight. but that is another story.

here's another indicator: i did not buy one gallon of gas for the entire month of january. i didn't drive anywhere (but to work and back on my famously brief commute). it turns out that i was sleeping for a month straight. so there hasn't been much time for fun. and by fun, i mean tinyengine.

pregnancy also brought with it some kind of brain collapse. i have only been able to watch project runway, good eats (when he is not making a pork loin or something) and countdown with keith olbermann. and while i have a few actual novels on my nightstand, i unfortunately fall asleep clutching some ridiculous book with recipes for super milk and sketches of what cletus the fetus looks like each week. mon mari of all paris is reading something very heavy and political. it makes me feel pretty bad that my reading material is so, well, dumb. i thought i might read about the siege of budapest for a while and just put away all the pregnancy books. but it's IMPOSSIBLE. it is. ask anyone who is pregnant.

well, back to the point of our little chat here. i want to talk to you about gustav mahler.

now that i am able to stay up past 9:30 without passing out in a puddle of drool, i was able to accept a very gracious invitation from my friend nick. he invited me to a performance of mahler's 5th symphony. now, i have always been a big fan of classical music. i even know more about it than the average bird. but for some reason, i have never heard mahler's 5th.

i picture it like scenes from an old movie:

i am walking down the street and i see a little hat shop. i pop into the hat shop to look at hats. wait, that wouldn't happen. i don't try on hats in hat shops because i got lice 3 times and one of them was from trying on hats. well, those hats were wooly hats in a box in an army surplus store, but still, i don't try on hats anymore.

let's start over:

i am walking down the street and i see a little salt & vinegar potato chip shop. i pop into the salt & vinegar potato shop to see if they have any chips that won't dissolve my tongue. mahler's 5th walks by--at that very moment! i come out of the shop, and mahler's 5th has just turned the corner. we miss each other by that much!

another scene:

mahler's 5th and i are both enrolled in a seminar about the siege of budapest. i show up and then i realize that even though i would like to say that i am interested in the siege of budapest, i am not, and so i go home to eat my hot & sour soup in a cup. mahler's 5th stays and learns a lot. then mahler's 5th goes home and calls my spouse of all spicey and they talk about the siege of budapest. i am asleep and so i don't even hear the phone ring.

and the final scene:

mahler's 5th goes to my soccer game. he watches us lose miserably to a team that is really bad. but that is because we only have 8 people show up. the bad team has a full team with 3 subs. mahler's 5th goes home and we miss each other again, because i can't play soccer anymore because i am pregnant.

well, finally, thanks to nick, i made its acquaintance, at long last. and it was such a profound introduction that i spent 2 days researching the definitive recorded version. i found out that everyone thinks they know everything and that there isn't really a consensus. which is a little bit like life.

enough about all of that, let me tell you what i thought.

it sounded a little bit to me like the final minutes of every war movie ever made, or the final minutes of every war ever fought. or if you put fellini, jeff buckley and the end of the world into a food mill, or if you took an old ocean liner from the early 1900s and wrapped it up in white fondant and then wrapped that up in red fondant and then dropped it from a big building. that's kind of what it sounded like. it was astounding.

and that was just the first movement. i can't even get into the rest of it. and the adagietto with the strings and the harp! and that, they say, is mahler's greatest hit. but again, i had never heard it. apparently, it was performed at robert kennedy's funeral. i think people know all about this. i came late to the party, i guess. not the funeral. i wasn't calling the funeral a party. i mean the mahler party.

this was one of the most magnificent things i have ever heard.

and his use of percussion was so interesting that i could go see it again and just watch those guys in back do all of those things.

i came home and listened to some little snippets on itunes, but it was sort of like going to the grocery store to buy camembert and bread the day after you get back from france. it just isn't the same.

the conductor looked to me like he had really big feet, but nick didn't think so.

i was pretty excited and i was hoping that the prawn (as my sister calls the little baby in progress) was getting every note of the thing. i've been singing this dvorak piece in czech lately and so between that and this mahler, i am sure that this will be one delicious baby.

if you happen to have a favorite recording, do let me know. that would be great. otherwise, i think i might pick up either the abbado or the barbirolli.

boy, that was neat.