In the Bleak Midwinter

Yesterday was a very short day in Dunedin. In fact, it was the shortest day: it was June 21st, which marks the winter solstice. According to an almanac I found online, the sun rose at 8:20am, very slowly turning the gray hills green, and only stuck around until 4:59pm before it was gone again.

But today is longer than yesterday. And tomorrow will be longer again. Et cetera.

The chronic lack of sunlight in these dark months is a big deal in Dunedin. Everyone seems to become a little bear-like here during winter. Ursine: lumbering home from work at night with a slow metabolism to eat stodgy food and go to sleeeeeep. Last night, we attended the Midwinter Carnival. A celebration of the longest night. And just about everyone who lives in Dunedin was downtown. There was a procession through the streets, with kids carrying paper lanterns they'd made in the last few weeks. There were huge bird-shaped lanterns: an albatross, owls, a goose. There were stilt walkers, medieval chanters, musicians, fireworks, and a merry-go-round. It all seemed a touch pagan. We've waited all day today to see if the Black Death or the grippe kicked in but, so far, we're fine.

Back to the almanac: today is 2-seconds longer than yesterday. I think I noticed the extra time. Tomorrow is another 6-seconds longer. And next Saturday will be 1-minute-44-seconds longer than last Saturday.

What will we do with all that extra sunlight? (ck)

Dunedin! City of Okay-ness

I saw this bumper sticker and just found it very amusing. Who came up with this? That's The Spirit of Dunedin: It's All Right Here!

It doesn't really say much about the city, does it? They've really decided to highlight its mediocrity. Here's an alternative I thought of:

Dunedin! Putting the Oh! in Okay. (ck)

A Beautiful Sound ...

At first all we could hear were irregular waves of crackling static. It's like listening to emptiness. A radio without a signal. Then the sound of Emeline's pulse, slow and steady, like something heard through deep water. And then nothing again. White noise. It sounded like the sou'westers that whipped around the eaves of the house a few weeks ago and bent the treetops and made the water in the harbor look like glass.

And then suddenly, through the murk: a rapid and rhythmic little whump whump whump whump whump.

A baby's heartbeat. A signal. What an unbelievable sound! Meaningless without context; beautiful with it. It's like a message from another world. I'm not sure if the video will work, but it's quiet so you'll have to crank up the volume to hear it. Our patient midwife, Maria, is doing the honors. We summoned her to our house last night because, as scientists, we demanded that she provide us with some empirical evidence. She indulged us.

Finally, we have data (N=1).

(ck)

Babymoon: Where should we go?

Babymoon, n. 1) a vacation taken by a couple expecting a baby in order to allow the couple to enjoy a final trip together before the many sleepless nights that usually accompany a newborn baby; it comes from the traditional term honeymoon.

There is no question about it: Chris and I are going on a babymoon. I don't care if it's just some money-grubbing-greedy-man's way of trying to sucker me out of my money (an American probably came up with the idea). A good idea is a good idea and I will give into commercialism in this instance. I know that many of you folks reading this blog (and there are soooo many) have children of your own and you wish you had thought of this.

So, since Chris and I agree that we should go on a honeymoon, there is one problem that we've encountered. Where should we go: Queensland, Australia or Samoa?


*Queensland, Australia. Located on the northeast coast of Australia. I know what you're thinking ... Australia is just a hot, dry desert. What does it have to offer babymooners?


*Samoa. I thought I'd give you a picture of exactly where Samoa is in relation to the world. Basically, in the middle of nowhere. Tropical island located in the middle of nowhere. Lots to offer the babymooner.

Oh, it's part of my struggle that I talked about recently. And I know you'll empathize. We're still trying to figure out where we'd be happiest. You can't go wrong with either location, really. Here ... maybe these photos of Palm Cove, Queensland, Australia and Samoa will help you help us make a decision.


*Palm Cove, Queensland, Australia. No desert here. In fact, Queensland is as tropical as many of its South Pacific island neighbors. This part of Australia is just mere miles away from Papua New Guinea! The Great Barrier Reef is located in this area, so there are plenty of opportunities to go snorkeling (me) / scuba diving (for Chris, but not me ... sad.)


*Samoa. White sand beaches. Clear blue waters. Isolation.

See? Now maybe you feel some of our pain. It'll be okay ... we'll be sure to send postcards. (ETK)

Ingenuity!

Necessity, as the saying goes, is the mother of invention. As this picture clearly demonstrates, motherhood is the mother of invention too. Over the past few weeks, Emeline has been on a journey. She's steadily graduated from not giving pregnancy a second thought, to only wearing certain pairs of pants, to fastening her jeans with a safety pin, trying to squeeze another inch from a waistband that she claims is shrinking.

Shrinking!

In her latest attempt to avoid the obvious (i.e. she's pregnant and needs to buy new stretchy clothes), Emeline is now fastening her jeans with an elastic band intended for hair. If these are her jeans, just imagine her hair! I'm kidding ... and I'm so proud of her ingenuity.

As she said in her last post, thousands upon millions, upon billions of women have made the journey that she's on right now. But how many of them have used this technique to combat their shrinking waistbands? Not many, I'm guessing. And it looks like quite an intricate knot too, doesn't it? It's a bit like a granny knot.

But different.

It's an expectant mother knot. (ck)

My Struggle

Okay, so I'm exaggerating. I'm not struggling. Millions of women have gone before me and have done the exact same thing that I do now.

But it doesn't mean that I still can't complain.

The instant I found out that I was pregnant, I bought pregnancy books, read tons of pregnancy blogs, saw a doctor and booked a midwife immediately. I vowed that I am going to do this up right and make sure that this baby will grow in a healthy environment inside of my belly. That means that I had to give up certain things - and I am more than happy to as well.

However, while I try to stay healthy (or keep from becoming nauseated, more like it) my husband has tried his best to make sure that he enjoys the good things in life for the both of us. For all three of us, in fact. Take a look:


And while he enjoys things that I once enjoyed (will I ever enjoy them again?!!!), I continue to struggle.*


*To be fair to Chris, he has been amazing. He's been so sympathetic during my pregnancy so far and I am ever thankful and humbled by his care and love. I have made him eat his stinky, stinky dinners on the opposite side of the room (at least I didn't send him out of the room!). He hasn't had fish and chips and a curry for 3 months. If and when I let him cook onions for dinner, I make him put the exhaust fan on full blast so that we're practically deaf for about an hour before and after dinner. And he still tells me I'm beautiful, as I safety-pin my ever-shrinking pants together at the start of the day.

I don't know when I'll be back to my "normal" self again, but I just hope that it's soon. For now, I'll keep complaining and whining and Chris will continue to take care of me.

I'm milking these 10 months for all they're worth, baby. (ETK)

The Stomach Always Knows

The most visceral way to know that you're in a strange and new place is walk along the fresh produce aisles of the local grocery store. Ah, the stomach always knows! And so the other day, we bought a selection of fruit that we've either never eaten, never heard of, never seen, or only eaten as a processed ingredient in another food product.

So: on the far left, the ruby-colored egg-shaped little fruit is a red tamarillo. It's also called a tree tomato. According to various sources online, this South American fruit tastes like a cross between a passionfruit and a tomato, which seems like an unusual (and potentially unpleasant) mix of flavors to me. At the bottom of the the photo are two hard dark purple passionfruit. Who knew they looked like that? Everybody? Oh. For some reason, I didn't. After consulting some online sources, we now know that we have to wait until the skin is wrinkled before they're ripe. So, these fellas have a long way to go.

At the top, resembling a firm and voluptuous miniature pumpkin, is a persimmon. Pleasantly orange, and $3US for a kilogram, this is an affordable fruit. Once ripe, persimmons can be stored for months at a time in a dark closet. The plural: Is it persimmons, or just persimmon? Maybe it's persimmi. Who knows? Tropical syntax. Finally, on the right, we have a feijoa. Also South American, the feijoa is an important cash crop here. It's a very popular flavoring and additive, and is on shelves as a fruit in its own right. In the grocery stores, there are shampoos with feijoa extract, breakfast cereals with dried feijoa, feijoa flavored ice cream, health drinks with feijoa juice in them. Feijoa everywhere! From a distance, it resembles a lime but it's nickname -- pineapple guava -- probably says more about its flavor.

Wait a second ... feijoa. Feijoa. That's a nice name for a girl. (ck)