I’m alone for the next four days. Kids are at their dads’. Ty is in Hawaii enjoying a tropical storm. I’ve got tons of writing to do. I need to unplug my modem and get writing. Sometimes its hard to get that motivation going but once I’m writing, I’m happy. It’s just that first leap…

I saw Twilight last night with a couple girlfriends and the theater was mostly young girls. The girls screamed throughout the movie. I felt like I was watching footage from an Elvis concert with all the screaming, swooning fans. I just kept giggling at the screaming. I felt so old. And giggly.

A few days ago I pulled out my old orange juice juicer and have been making fresh squeezed orange juice every morning since for my son Ty and me (Jake’s not real big on oranges anymore due to a flu on Christmas two years ago). This morning I grabbed two valencia oranges and squeezed a big glass of juice for me and I was immediately filled with memories and emotions.  Happy. Good. Happy.

As a little girl growing up in Visalia, our orange trees were a big part of our life. We had three orange trees at our house, two navel and one valencia. Navels are good for peeling and eating.  Valencias are the juice oranges, thinner skinned and juicier. The navels would be ripe in winter, and the juice oranges in summer so there were always orange blossoms and bees and we’d try to catch bees in plastic bags and release them again without being stung.

Growing up we climbed the orange trees and picked the fruit off the tree without damaging the new small green oranges growing. I don’t think I appreciated the wonder of having so many fruit trees at our house (peach and apricot, sour cherry and pomegrante) until I grew up and didn’t have them anymore. There’s nothing like fruit just picked from a tree, and oranges have become extra special now that I live in the Pacific Northwest which is apple country but not good for citrus.

I don’t know if its the bright color, the translucent fruit, the sweet tart citrus flavor, but fresh squeezed orange juice seems like one of the most perfect things on earth. Just squeezing the juice this morning made me feel warm, safe, loved. It was such a little thing to do, and yet for a couple minutes I felt fat with happiness.

If only little things could always bring us so much joy.

If only we could remember that joy.

Or steak.  Or meat of any kind.  I mean, I can sometimes, maybe, take a bite, but Jane–the girl who loves chicken and steak–is totally grossed out by both. 

I’m still queasy much of the day, with morning being the best and then it goes from bad to worse at noon, with early evening through bedtime a moan of misery.   But I can still eat toast, I’m back to enjoying my cold cereal, and I have a huge thing right now for cottage cheese.  Like a quart a day.  I eat a small dish of cottage cheese every couple hours and then crave cheese sandwiches and cheese enchiladas and man, on man, am I packing on the weight.

I have a friend who is pregnant and due just before me and she’s gained two pounds.  Two.  I’ve gained fourteen.  Fourteen.  Guess who looks pretty chunky right now? And I have how many months to go? 

It’s no use telling me to cut back.  I’m barely functioning, there’s not much to cut back to, and if I don’t eat constantly I’m even sicker, so it is what it is and this is how I do pregnancy. 

You will, by the way, notice fewer photos of me from now on.  And anything added will be artfully cropped, and possibly photo-shopped.  Yes, I am that vain.  No, I will not change. 

I never had a problem with weight until I lived in South Africa as a foreign exchange student for a year during my last year of high school.  I went to a boarding school in Natal and was terribly homesick as well as inundated with shepard’s pie and cottage pie and heaps of buttered toast and twice a day tea served with tarts and biscuits.  And more toast.   I don’t think I saw a vegetable in months, short of the peas buried in the casseroles, and within months I had packed on thirty pounds, poundage that put stretch marks from my knees to the top of my hips.

I ate because I was lonely.

I ate because food was an activity.

I ate because some of it tasted pretty damn good.

Being pregnant reminds me of that year in South Africa where I ate compulsively and soon developed a lasting insecurity over my weight as my weight became a problem I couldn’t control.  I’m eating again, eating lots of foods I don’t normally eat but I have to remind myself to go easy on myself.  I remind myself that I’ve lost the baby weight before, I’ll lose it again.  I remind myself I’m making a baby.  Remind myself that it’s been a tough pregnancy but a healthy baby is the goal.

Remind myself to reach for an apple instead of another slice of buttered toast.

And remind myself to keep my sense of humor.  It’s been ten years since I was last pregnant.  I can’t imagine I’ll ever be pregnant again.  This is it.  The big last one.  So savor it, enjoy it.  Relax.

And I think I can.  As long as I don’t have to look at chicken.