Mother Nature is a Mischievous Turkey

Oh God it is going to snow again here tonight. Up to eight inches overnight and then 10-20 inches all day tomorrow. Someone please send help. I.can't.take.this.anymore. I got ingredients for chili and luckily I have plenty of work to do to keep me busy tomorrow. Did you all know that I'm defending my dissertation on Wednesday? Heh. I've barely noticed I've been so out of it, which is, I'm sure, the perfect attitude for a verbal examination that could negate six years of extremely hard work.

In other news, I am still experiencing periods of nausea. The all-day nausea is gone, thank goodness, though I still have periods of up to five hours per day where I feel nauseated.

Luckily I spent some really nice quality time with all of my nieces this weekend. On Saturday I actually babysat my niece Ella for two hours all by myself!!!

This is a big deal, since she's barely one year old and still in diapers. I don't have much experience changing diapers, and I can't say that it's not just as disgusting as everyone says.

I also got to see my niece Riley play in a soccer game on Saturday. That basically consisted of me watching a handful of little girls stumble into one another. It was just as fun as it sounds:-)

After the soccer game, in an effort to spend quality time with my mom, I agree to go with her to Kohl's. Let me just reiterate that I hatehatehate shopping. I did find some entertainment, however, in this new line of jeans from Lee.

And, to clarify, these are not maternity jeans. 

Since I did absolutely no work all weekend, today I hate to buckle down and "do it to it." So, per usual, I motivated myself with a tasty lunch:

Oh and this:

Weird, right? This little vegetarian ate turkey meatloaf for lunch today. Not to worry, PETA-people; I don't imagine that this will become a regular thing, but it does feel less ED-like and more healthy to occasionally, especially while pregnant, eat some chicken or turkey. You won't be seeing any hamburgers or bacon on NCK regardless, though. Those little pigs and cows just seem too friendly for me to nosh on them. (Yes, chickens and turkeys are being punished because they seem less human-like.)

A couple of hours later, while working with David at a coffee shop in town, I also had this little treat:

That's a vegan, gluten-free apple cinnamon bread. See? It's still me, Nikki! I sometimes feel silly ordering gluten-free stuff though. It's kind of like ordering pad thai at a Thai restaurant; you feel a little bit cliché to be ordering it, but sometimes it's just the best thing on the menu, right?

*Are you gluten-free? Do you eat anything gluten-free? What do you _really_ think about people who are gluten-free?

Double Whammy Decadent Friday

Happy Friday...errrr, almost Saturday! The day just got away from me, peeps--like this banana slug "running" from a coyote?

I forgot to show this to you guys after our trip to San Francisco. I had never seen a banana slug before, have you? Not the prettiest of creatures, but I'm kinda worried that they prolly get stepped on quite a bit.

Anyway...today was pretty uneventful. Bootcamp, lunch:

Followed by work in a coffee shop:

This is the croissant that I used to motivate me to work at all. (Since I can't get croissants if I stay at home and watch old episodes of Lost.) It looks bigger than it was in person. Else how could I possibly fit this in just two hours later when I went to see The Place Beyond the Pines?

Sigh. I didn't eat many of these red vines, but...really? Some days you just don't make the "perfect" nutrition choices, and today was one of those days for me. On a side note, I have such good memories about Red Vines. My Dad loves them, and I remember eating them as a teenager. They were such a nostalgic treat--so much better than Twizzlers, which has the wrong texture and the wrong flavor. Oh well. Luckily Red Vines are fat free. Heh. Since, you know, sugar doesn't have any fat and Red Vines are made _solely_ out of sugar. 

And that is all, friends. I hope that you all have a lovely weekend filled more with sugar than with slugs.

*What have you eaten recently that really made you shrug your shoulders and ask "What was I thinking?" It doesn't have to be a "bad" or indulgent treat; god knows there have to be some people out there who don't suffer from disordered eating:-)

Veg-Tastic!

I crammed in a boatload of nutrient-filled veggies yesterday, people. I'm pretty impressed with myself, mainly because ever since returning from San Francisco and experiencing a mediocre apple fritter, I've been tempted to do a mini-donut tour and find a better fritter here in Boulder. Instead of seeking out lumps of fatty dough, however, I ate a lot of green and red and orange stuff. And I'm not talking about the Kool-Aid my grandma used to make either. (BTW, did you grandmother do stuff like put pats of butter on her mashed potatoes? I don't mean in the potatoes--everyone's grandma did/does that--but on top of the potatoes as well, like once they're on the plate and ready to eat?) (Guess that's why she liked wearing voluminous moo-moo like shirt/dresses too.)

Um, anyway. Vegetables. Yesterday's lunch was at Whole Foods, again. Right now I'm still having a hard time eating some foods, so I'm _still_ indulging in my Whole Foods lunch habit. Post-baby we are not going to be able to afford that luxury, so I guess I'm soaking it up while it lasts?

Salad:

Who knows why I've been wanting this lately, as I usually find salads unsatisfying. This one had some channa masala and butternut squash on the side, as well as kalamata olives, artichoke hearts, and garbanzo beans. I inhaled it.

After lunch I lounged around for a long time watching Teen Mom 2. Now that I'm knocked up I can't even imagine how terrifying it must be to be a teen mom.

Speaking of mom stuff, I went to Target in the afternoon and bought two baby outfits! I'm trying to get more happy happy happy about baby, and this kind of did it:

After my shopping outing, I met David at our friend Adam's house for dinner. He made us a North African stew with some tahini-lemon chard.

It was tasty--even more so because Adam knows how to use spices correctly and he also cooks quite healthful foods.

Rounded out by a few bites from David's bowl of strawberry greek frozen yogurt:

All in all, a very good day of healthy eats, right? Too bad I'll probably use it as an excuse to eat leftover Easter candy when I see my family this weekend:-)

*Do you have any leftover Easter candy (that you could send me)? Holiday candy is just better than the same candy eaten the day after a holiday, right? I know the special wrappers don't change the candy, but still...it's just better!

Cheese = Donuts

Good news, friends! I got my iPhone camera fixed! Well, sorta. I had a "Genius" (those Apple peeps feel really good about themselves, don't they?) appointment yesterday to have it looked at, and after five minutes the "genius" just came back and just gave me a new phone. Lucky for me it's still under warranty, else that would've cost ~$230. Now I can spend that money on a donut world tour.

The "genius" said the problem was some defect with the camera, and I didn't ruin his theory by telling him that it was prolly my fingers that dented the camera screen when I was taking my case on and off repeatedly last week. David got some new prototypes for Popsockets last week, and we just had to test them out again and again and again.

So, bonus for you, you now get to see what I had for dinner last night.

My doctor says I should keep eating lots of beans, so that's what I did: bean salad with a whole wheat english muffin topped with some mozzarella I had leftover from Whole Foods. And olive oil and salt. It was pretty tasty, though if someone told me I'd be eating bean salads about ten years ago I would've hit them in the face with a frozen Lean Cuisine dinner.

Something else that's relatively new? I'm eating more cheese! It was only a few months ago that I made the groundbreaking discovery that parmesan cheese makes most things taste better, and now that I'm baking a little McNugget in my uterus I've decided to listen to all the pregnancy books and start eating more low-fat dairy products. This shift seems healthy in my mind, largely because it means that I'm declassifying cheese as this terrifyingly unhealthy thing that I really can't eat. So, job well done and another donut earned, at least in my book. (Yah, in my book eating cheese means you deserve fried dough.)

In other news, it snowed. Again.

Haruki and I are tired of hibernating. Please send us spring weather.

*What about you--cheese-wise? Do you eat cheese regularly? When you do, do you think about all that yummy calcium?

Teenage Girls

So. This post is going to be kind of about me having baby, but not exactly me being knocked up.

As the title of this post might suggest, lately I've been thinking about having girl babies and then what happens to them when they enter adolescence. The reason I'm thinking about this is that, yes, it is apparently quite likely that the pod in my belly is a girl pod. I had a special ultrasound last week to detect for birth defects and other chromosomal irregularities, and while there I asked the technician to guess boy or girl. It's actually pretty interesting, really, the way they detect girl or boy. Apparently, in the early stages of development, the kid's "bizness" looks very similar, as both sexes have a "genital tubercle" that is either pointed horizontally or vertically. If the "tubercle" is pointed horizontally, chances are good that it will develop into labia. If it's pointed up, or vertically, chances are good that it will develop into a scrotum. Sorry for the anatomical vividness of those last two sentences:-)

Anyway, our pod is pointed horizontally, so while gender prediction at this early stage is only 65-80% accurate, there is a good chance that we will be buying lots of freaking glittery crap in the near future.

So, that brings me to my next point, which is OMGOMGOMG, how the f$%# am I going to raise a girl, and no. 2, OMGOMGOMG, she is sooooo going to hate my guts for like three years when she goes through puberty.

Sigh. Even though it's a bit taboo to say anything but "We don't care if it's a boy or girl as long as it's healthy," I was really hoping that I'd have a boy. I reallyyyyyyy want to dress up a plump little toddler in corduroys, sweater vests, and geeky shoes so that he's adorable but also looks kind of like an old man. (Reason #1 why I should've been screened before being allowed to procreate.)

Mostly, however, the reason that I wanted a boy is that I'm afraid of how difficult it is to raise girls. With boys it seems like you just have to worry about whether or not they've broken any bones, though I'm afraid that having girls means that--especially during puberty--you're dealing with a lot more emotion and potential drama.

I had a really good childhood, but I remember going through puberty and just generally feeling irritable and moody no.matter.what. I didn't like where we vacationed, I didn't like what we did on vacation, and I certainly didn't like who my family was. (This wasn't always true, and now thankfully I can see that all of these feelings were just a result of hormones.)

More specifically, however, I remember feeling embarrassed about my mom. She just wasn't as cool as some other moms. (At least in my hormone-colored glasses.) She didn't take me to the right stores to get clothes and dresses for school dances. She didn't let us have the cool snacks that all my friends got to eat...yadayadayada. Of course now I realize that I was just, duh, going through puberty, but man--feeling like I'm going to be on the other side of that in the near future is freaking me out.

So what's your puberty story/relationship with your mom? Did you go through a similar phase when you were an adolescent? Do you wish for girl babies anyway? (If you wish for babies at all.)

*Disclaimer (so as to avoid hate messages): I really do love my mom and my family _a lot_, and I'm very thankful for them and who they are. Also, I am also going to love whatever comes out of my uterus very, very much; it's just that as with puberty, pregnancy causes a shit-ton of fears and feelings that are due to a huge rise in hormones. In other words, if you're thinking about sending a mean message about how ungrateful and undeserving I am, please send a coupon for free ice cream instead.

San Francisco Easter

Hi friends, and happy April! Ohmygod is anyone else so so so incredibly relieved to have the brunt of winter be over? Excessive morning sickness + cold and clouds and snow = a recipe for depression. It is, of course, supposed to snow here tonight and tomorrow morning, but I'm assuming that the meteorologists got it wrong on that one. And who knows, maybe it will just rain instead of snowing?!!

In other news, we've returned from San Francisco safe and sound, albeit a little tired because we had a delayed flight and a layover on our way home last night. Lucky for us the layover was actually in Aspen, Colorado. I've been to Aspen as well as many many other Colorado mountain towns, but I can now say that flying into a mountain town is something quite different, and many many times more breathtaking.

Sadly, I can't show you that because the camera on my iPhone broke on Friday morning. All I have to show of our vacation is a few blurry landscapes and some close-ups of food, since my camera seemed to take OK up close pics.

I first realized that my camera was malfunctioning after walking for about half an hour to visit Bob's Donuts and Pastries Shop. I had done some research prior to making this decision and settled on Bob's because it was supposed to have a spot in the list of San Francisco's top three donuts. Why donuts? Who knows. Well, actually, we all know that this is pregnancy-induced. I never never never eat donuts and thus prior to this trip I just decided that I was going to go off the reservation and hit up a donut shack.

As you can (kind of) see from the photo, there was a line going out the door. Seemed like a good sign, so I went in and ordered their "world famous" apple fritter. Geez. Couldn't they name it something a bit more discreet? Like, so ex-anorexics wouldn't feel so conspicuous about consuming fried dough?

Doughy close-up:

To top off the breakfast indulgence, I even drank real cow's milk, just like I used to do when I ate donuts as a kid:

Despite the hype, I'd have to give this donut a rating of average. I'm not a donut connoisseur, but...meh. The donut could've used more apple and more cinnamon, and just generally it wasn't anything special. On the bright side, however, I ended up walking around downtown San Francisco for two hours after breakfast, so at least it didn't sit with me and make me regret my donut indulgence all morning long.

In other San Francisco food news, I did have a really good Thai curry while lunching with my friend Julia on Friday:

As well as a really tasty Mediterranean feast on Friday night:

These two delights reminded me that not living in a city often means bad things for those who like to eat so-called "ethnic foods."

My final food pic is of the dinner we had on Saturday night at a vegetarian restaurant called Source. I got a veggie pizza which had all the ingredients of a great pizza--really delicious, quality handmade mozzarella, slightly salty and chewy crust, and spicy tomato sauce. Unfortunately, the crust in the center of the pizza wasn't crispy, so it became something of a mess to eat.

So sad.

Other highlights included:

1) Relaxing in the hotel after walking around literally all day on Friday:

2) Seeing (sort of) the original Ghiradelli chocolate factory:

And 3) Being near the water again:

*What was the food highlight of your weekend?

Sugar Sunday, aka Easter Plans

Hey-o, friends! Thank goodness it's Wednesday, right? Um, because that means it's almost Thursday, which is almost Friday. And this Sunday is, of course, Easter! What are you all doing on Easter? I'm kind of disappointed that I'll be out of town on Easter, since I'll be missing a chance to see my nieces run around looking for eggs while f-ed up on sugar. Don't worry, though, I asked my mom to save me some Reese's Easter somethings.

In other news, we are leaving for San Francisco tomorrow. I might have time to blog while we're there, but as yet that is unclear. David has meetings all day Friday so my day is looking pretty wide open. I think I'll meet a friend for lunch and then go to Alcatraz. I know it's cheesy, but I really do like visiting places with a history. I guess it depends on the place and the history, though, since I wouldn't really be interested in visiting some New Mexican town with a long tradition of blanket weaving.

I am a smidge concerned about my energy levels and traveling. I'm currently in my thirteenth week of being knocked up, which makes me just a few short days away from the second trimester. That means I'm about five days away from (hopefully) not feeling nauseated every second and also not feeling completely exhausted all.the.time. What I'm saying is that traveling--walking around a lot, staying up later, etc.--might be a lot for me right now. I mean, it's 7:43 p.m. and I really am ready to go to bed. I guess I better partake of beaucoup de sourdough bread and Ghiradelli chocolate if I mean to stay up until a regular hour.

And with that, and no photos--sooorry--I really am off to get into bed. Please wish me safe travels, and for my part I hope you all have really yummy and family-filled Easters. When you next hear from me it might be April already!!!

*Does someone still make you an Easter basket? Also, I've been meaning to ask, but how much do you all want me to talk about pregnancy stuff? Pregnancy is something I've always found interesting (despite not being sure about wanting to do it myself), but I understand if you really couldn't care less. Please do let me know in a quick comment; I'd hate to talk about my nausea and other symptoms if you guys aren't, like, totally interested...haha.