Don't People Like to WIN??

It might come as no surprise that I've been playing increasingly more Catan games as I linger in maternity leave. What does surprise me is the huge number of people who are big, fat whiney babies. Today, I decided to play 2 games really quickly after my workout, just to unwind.

We did a team workout at Crossfit, and I was already feeling badly that my team couldn't possibly win, since I wasn't able to run or really do many of the exercises. I was like the anchor dragging behind the ship! So I wanted to play Catan, where I could perhaps win. Because I love winning! I love to win at the dentist, I love to finish first at folding the laundry, I like to savor my ice cream cone longer than my companions...no matter what it is, I'm competing. To win. But not everyone wins the same way I do, and this baffles me.

In my first game of Catan, for instance, there was this one girl who was kind of a douche, but at least she was cut throat and wanted to win. It was all over in under 10 minutes. Bam! Victory. No cheating, no whining, no prisoners. I took note of her strategy and saved the knowledge for next time.

In my second game, there were two whiney babies. First, this one baby refused to trade with anyone. So I moved the robber, stole from him, and built a city. This is part of the game. How one wins. He got all pissed and left the game, never to return. Luckily, someone else jumped in so we didn't have to abandon our online geekfest. This girl was a baby, too! As soon as it became obvious I was going to win (which happened surprisingly quickly, I was proud to say), she put forth a motion to abort the game. As in, she would rather get rid of it and strike it from the record than have someone else (me!) win. Why even play?

Can you imagine? Why don't all people think like I do, that everything is a competition to win and that losing is like a (sometimes annoying) lesson for how to be better next time? I mean, what if each time I lost at something I just huffed off or tried to strike it from existence? What if every time Corey beat me at the toothpaste game (we have two tubes going at once right now. It's intense) I just went out and bought more toothpaste? Or what if I just quit Crossfit because the other pregnant girl beat me at Fight Gone Bad? Or what if I let my back yard return to wilderness because my cucumber wouldn't germinate?

Where would I find joy in my life??? What would be the point? I try to have empathy for a lot of things. Not jerk-faces who sit in the special needs seats on the bus, but most spheres of life. Only I can't understand the motives of cheaters and whiners, so I find myself unable to appreciate them as valid human beings. I mean, what if one day they actually win at something. Does it feel like a fulfilling and satisfying achievement, since they whine and cheat and moan the rest of the time? How can it!

When I win at something, I like to know I earned it, really and truly took ownership of that victory. Like next week, when Corey sighs loudly and recycles the toothpaste tube and I hear the little rustle of cardboard carton as he gets out a new one, I will feel deeply satisfied in my cunning rationing of toothpaste. Had I been a whiney baby or a cheater and just squeezed the toothpaste down the drain in order to win, it would entirely defeat the purpose.

FOOD!

I haven't talked much about my garden this year. Partly, the novelty has worn off. I mean, who can get as ecstatic about growing a squash when that same person can grow a PERSON? But partly, the garden has been really sucky and I get very angry about failures. Even miniature failures.

I tried to grow carrots again this year. Not even a germination. Tried green onions (or scallions, if you will). Also no germination. Same with the corn. I spent all this tedious time and effort starting tomatoes and peppers from seed inside this winter and had a little tray of cucumbers and zucchinis starting from seed inside as well. These all initially sprouted and grew to like 3 inches tall, but then died.

My peas, which were the light of my life last summer, climbing all the way up the trellis out front, are pretty pathetic this year. I generally get about 5 peas a week. This from at least 16 shoots (vines?) of peas!

So that's a lot of food failure.

Right now, I do have some successes. My herbs are doing well. I am not sure why, but my rosemary and thyme plants did not come back this year. I think perhaps because the winter was so harsh. But I bought some little seedlings of both and they are giving me some fragrant additions to dinner. The basil seeds I brought back from Italy have finally taken root and, supplemented with the basil plants I bought at the store, are giving me a lot of delicious, delicious basil (I also have the basil plant our neighbors left on our porch).

I gave up on the pepper seedlings and just bought some at the store, which I have growing in pots on the porch to great success. I also bought tomato seedlings and stuck those in the ground next to my garlic, which looks outstanding.

After several months of stubborn refusal, I finally got the vined plants to listen to me. I have one cucumber vine that's making little babies already and a second about to start. The zucchini bush is dreadfully behind schedule, but seems to be on overdrive catching up and taking over the world like it did last year.

So this has taught me a few lessons. I'm not going to start anything inside this year at all. What's the freaking point? I will only buy seeds for cucumbers, beans, and zucchinis, which I'll start outside along with garlic. Those are things I am good at growing and like to eat, so why tinker with perfection?

Otherwise, I'm buying everything at Brinckles nursery next year. Tomato seedlings. Pepper plants. Little basils and little mints and even little cilantros. Yes. Herbs are supposed to be easy and cheaper to start from seed. But that doesn't work for me and Brinckles just has such good stuff! As long as I get there in early May and get their stuff in the ground, maybe even in April, I have full confidence I'll still be eating from my back yard and with much less frustration.

Insulation! At Last!

The insulation dudes came this morning. We hired them to pump 8 inches of insulation into the attic and then drill ten million holes in the brick exterior and pump our walls full of recycled, cellulose insulation. We will get an Obama tax refund AND save millions of dollars on our heating and cooling costs. Theoretically.

I find the process enormously interesting. To do the attic, they ran a big hose from their van up through the nursery window and into the closet and just pumped the attic full of the good stuff. Like with a vacuum in reverse. Then they started on the walls.

Poor Corey spent the whole weekend cleaning the inside and outside of all the windows, so clear that birds now fly into our dining room window regularly, and now all the windows are streaked with brick dust and chunks of insulation. One insulation man drills holes and the other follows behind him on another ladder with the backwards vacuum blowing in the cellulose. They are very much like clockwork, except they keep quarreling with one another.

The younger dude feels like he should be allowed to man the drill, only he keeps tapping into our air ducts when get gets a turn. The older one doesn't want to listen to country music cranked up louder than the sound of the brick drill. During this entire procedure, every contractor who lives on my block (and there are many--Morningside is a hearty, contractor-filled neighborhood) stops to chat.

"Hey! Do yinz work with THIS GUY? Nah? What about THIS GUY?" "Yinz guys know it's gonna rain today?" "Whadda yinz think about the Buccos trading Morgan?" (Ok, that last one was me trying to make conversation...)

I had to stop watching a few hours ago because the insulation was starting to come into my office through a hole the previous owners had drilled in the baseboards. The dusty wind was making me cough and it seemed better for me in my delicate state to go hide in the basement. On my way down, I did catch a glimpse of their lunch. The older one had a perfectly sensible sandwich and baggy of pretzels, likely packed by a spouse. The younger one? He ate a large sized bag of Herr's potato chips and drank a soda. It reminded me of my days at the pill factory, when a swift glimpse around the lunchroom revealed a man's marital status.

At last I have something to observe and be interested in while I wait for my child to emerge. Next week? The hairy-eared Italian concrete man will come build me a driveway! The stimulation never ends.

Inspiration

Today, I feel inspired. I spent a good part of the morning staring at Dara Torres in this, her milk ad:
How awesome is she? And she's a mom! I love this ad because it shows that women have muscles and are also beautiful and work really hard and consume calories. She was probably airbrushed a lot, but I've watched her swim on tv. Moms kick ass! Look at that stomach, which once contained a human being. I love her.

Not since I received a photocopy of Brandy Chastain in 1999, when I first started playing rugby, have I loved a photo so much. I'll never forget the day Marcel handed the pictures out to us at the end of practice, the first time I ever finished a conditioning workout and discovered that my body could do things just as challenging as my brain could do. I've had it hanging on my wall ever since. I slid it right into the plastic frame that once held my creative writing national golden key award--previously my most treasured piece of paper. I feel like I get more from staring at Brandy.
You know, she's birthed babies, too. The most famous set of abdominals and biceps in the world (or at least in the world of women's athletics) have once contracted and squeezed out a baby. I keep telling my stomach that I can be like these women and have this powerful, athletic feat connect me to them.

Usually, my to-do list is rather intricate and involved and lengthy, with deadlines and various clients and appointments all over the place. Here is what it looks like now:

I feel like it's the most important and difficult thing I ever wrote on my wipe board. From what I've observed lately, women remember and can detail their birth stories the way avid sports fans can rattle off the statistics and weather conditions and scenarios of THE BIG GAME decades afterward. I wonder, if I were to ask them right now, whether Dara or Brandy would have more to say about labor/delivery or their shining moments in the athletic spotlight.

Things I Freaked Out About This Weekend

1. Corey thinks it's weird that I want to have family photos taken after our baby is born. He finds this odd. What is wrong with him? I discovered that his own family only had images taken of his oldest sibling. I told Corey they probably thought he was gross and were trying to pretend he didn't exist, but that we love our baby and will be documenting his existence. I don't understand his hesitation. I'm the one who is 35# heavier than normal, who will have baggy excess skin dangling to my knees and milk-engorged bosoms. If anyone in this family should feel weird about portraits, I call dibs.

2. Nothing is open on Sundays. We tried to eat at Quiet Storm, Abay, Kelly's, the Crepe place on South Penn...everything was either closed or didn't open for another hour. We went to Pizza Sola, which is delicious, but now I have heart burn and I'm still thinking longingly of the vegetarian Pho I could have had at Tram's, which we drove past in hopes of the good chili at Quiet Storm. Damn you, PA, and your weird laws. First you deprive me of easy access to good wheat beer and now you make it hard for me to eat out.

3. The cashier at Target kept putting only one thing in each bag when I was checking out. For instance, I bought a floor mat, a lamp, a shade, and a pitcher. She put the mat in one bag, the pitcher in another, and was moving to put the lamp in a third. It was 89 degrees, humid, and I'm 39 weeks pregnant, so I grabbed the merchandise out of her hands, ripped everything out of the bags, and put the lamp in the pitcher in the shade in the tube of the floor mat and stuck the whole cannister in one bag. I think I left her standing there with my receipt in my haste to get away from her. Bag waster! It's awful enough none of the loot fit in the sack I had brought with me. I felt like I needed to give up toilet tissue to cancel out the carbon footprint of that trip.

4. Everyone who was pregnant at Crossfit has had her baby except me. I know I'm not quite due yet, but neither was K and she got to have her baby early. I'm working really hard on being patient, but I would sure love it if this baby chose RIGHTNOW to exit my womb.