Then, every time someone would ask about my other two children, they would always say, “Well, you already have one of both, so it really doesn’t matter.” But for me, that just wasn’t true. My one girl Little A is really enough girl for me. I enjoy having a special relationship with her as a girl. So quite honestly, I really didn’t want another girl.

But I hesitated a bit to say what I did want – a little boy. I love the relationship I have with my oldest, and I think the balance in our family would be just right with some more boy energy. But I didn’t want to tempt fate. Pregnancy is a time, for me, of emotional vulnerability. At the end of the day, I really just wanted a healthy baby. I felt selfish asking for more than that.

Well, the Lord knows the yearnings of your heart even if you never vocalize them. And one day, I just got a feeling that this baby was a boy. Before the tech even asked me if I wanted  to know, I said, “It’s a boy, right?”

Right.

And he’s beautiful. I am so blessed.

19 weeks

I don’t think I ever told my readers over here what’s been going on, but here’s the big news: I’m pregnant! 119 days in, 147 days to go. In other words, about 19 weeks. Yes, this was (semi) planned. Yes, I have a gender preference. Yes, I’m going to find out the sex (tomorrow!) Yes, I’m excited to be a mom three times over.

But no, I don’t feel good. I could go into a lot of stuff, but really, what’s going on right now is that I feel like a humongous cow. A beached whale. An elephant on steroids. I’ve already gained 21.5 pounds. At this point in pregnancy, I should have gained only about 12 pounds. If I gain a pound a week, as I should, from this point on, I’m going to go over the 40 pound mark. With the other two I gained 25 and 30. Jesus, take the wheel.

Today, I went into Macy’s thinking I was going to buy some more maternity clothes because all my pants – which are already maternity – are too tight. Big mistake. As soon as I started to undress in the fitting room, under those horrendous florescent lights, I regretted taking my clothes off. The cellulite on the backs of my thighs and the bottom of my ass hanging out of what are already granny panties made me want to cry. And when I put my clothes back on, and looked at my butt again, what I saw made me cringe.

I know I’m pregnant. I know that I’m not going to be the cutest chick on the block. I know I’m not going to look like Heidi-effing-Klum when she was pregnant.

Or Beyoncè. (I mean, really?)
But I didn’t expect to loathe my body this much. I don’t need to look great naked – my husband likes me just fine. But with clothes on, I at least want to look decent. Presentable. Like the young, hip mom I am. I have two other kids to run after, so I’m not going to be wearing mini-skirts and heels. But yoga pants making my legs look like poorly stuffed sausages? C’mon son. It’s just not right.

I thought I looked pretty good the last two times around. But like they say, every pregnancy is different. Whoever they are, they ain’t neva lied.

Yesterday, I had an awful headache so I came home after my classes were done, around 1:45pm. I laid down, and had some peace and quiet for about an hour until Hubby came home with the kids at 3pm. I stayed in the bed though, because I didn’t think they really needed me.

That’s when the shenanigans started.

I could hardly believe my ears. The way they treated their father was AWFUL. They yelled and screamed, complained and whined. I could hardly believe that they were my children.

Because see: they don’t act that way with me. Not that they are perfect angels, far from it, but they know I. Don’t. Play. That. Yell at me? Oh hell naw. Complain? Then you get nothing. I’ll throw it in the trash with the quickness. Whine? Go and sit on your bed. And consistently do what you want instead of what I said? Well, then, I go old school.

My husband inherently has a gentler nature than I do. He just doesn’t do mean very well. He gives a lot of warnings, but not a lot of consequences. He also seems to think that this is just how the children act.

Um, no.

But when he gets fed up, he goes from 0 to 100 in an instant, and doesn’t have a middle ground. So on the rare occasions that he gets fed up, I’m horrified by his methods. I’m reminded of the episode of Modern Family where Phil and Claire change places, with Phil taking on the role of the bad cop. My husband, when given the go ahead to be harsh, is like Phil, the good cop turned bad. “Have the kids eaten?” “They don’t deserve food!” “Did you read them a book before bed?” “Books are treats!”

Well, it’s not as bad as that, but kinda close. So it means that I have to be the (consistent) bad cop, which I don’t really mind being. It’s a tricky balance: I want my kids to be respectful and nice to be around, and I guess I want them to like me. Consistency goes a long way toward both of those things, b/c they know exactly what they are going to get from me. On the other hand, while I’d like my husband to be more consistent, it’s just not in his nature. And I don’t want my husband to be driven to torture them.

They were playing with, or doing a math lesson with, coins one day. The teacher said that he came up to her to show her his money – money that he had washed and made nice and pretty, something that I told him he could do when he found a dirty penny outside one day. The teacher asked him where he’d gotten the money.

That’s when the lies started.

When I came to pick him up, the teacher looked at me as she always does and says, “Big A, right?” as if she doesn’t see me every single morning dropping off my child. When the story got to me, the teacher wanted my son to tell me what had happened. I wasn’t convinced that he really got the significance of what he’d done. He said he told the teacher that he’d “found” the money, which in his head might have been sorta right. He “found” the money that they’d been using for the math lesson. The issue wasn’t that he “found” money, it was the fact that he then put it in his pocket.

I tried to explain to him that there is no such thing as “found” money, unless it’s a penny on the street. All money belongs to someone. Unless somebody gives you money and tells you it’s yours to keep, taking money from anyplace is stealing. I think he heard my words, but I don’t know if it really seeped in. To him, money is just another thing, like a rock on the road or a stick. He knows that money can buy things, but the special significance just hasn’t hit him.

I really wish his not telling the truth had been about something other than money. I remember the teacher saying to him, “I wasn’t mad that you took the money, but that you lied about it.” I feel like she should have understood that he wasn’t necessarily trying to steal the money; in fact, he came and showed her what he had. But I’m sure his felt need to lie stemmed from the fact that he could see she was angry about him having the money.

I hope I don’t sound like one of those parents that make tons of excuses when their kid does something wrong. I, of course, didn’t discuss this like I’m telling to y’all right now. But it bothers me that the little black boy has now been seen as a liar and a thief. Especially to a teacher that can never seem to link me to my child.

Today, my good friend and I took my children to a vigil for Troy Davis. They are only 4 and 5, so they did not fully grasp what was going on. I told them that we were there to pray for a man that the government was going to put to death because he made a bad decision. I told them that I didn’t think that was the right thing to do, and that’s why we were there.

I didn’t tell my children what to think. I let them know that this man was accused of killing someone. I let them know that many people do not believe that this man had done this bad thing.

I wasn’t there to indoctrinate my kids. I was there to let them know that when they see something happening around them that they think is wrong, that the right thing to do is to speak up. I told them that standing by while bad things happen is not an option. I told them that we cannot just go on with our lives as if nothing is happening. I told them that we are all responsible for the things our government does in our name.

I think they got that message. I think they watched me practice what I preach. I think they learned that actions speak louder than words.

Troy Davis will probably be executed tonight, before many of you even read this message. Don’t let his death be in vain. DO SOMETHING.

When you are in the midst of dissertating, trying to round this last bend, I cannot express how disheartening a list like this is. The work of black sociologists clearly is not considered “good” or “compelling” or “parsimonious.”

A part of me wants to feel angry, because I know there are so many works by black sociologists that could have made the list (and this is just what I can think of off the top of my head on little sleep). But a bigger part of me, the part that doubts and gets anxiety about my work, just wants to go back to bed.

Where the best you can come up with is “the sun didn’t come out soon enough today”?

Where people being who they are – who they always have been – irritates the hell out of you? Where they do the same inconsiderate ass shit as they did last week but last week it wasn’t inconsiderate – it was just them – but this week it has gotten under your skin?

And today you just want to kick and scream and throw the hugest pity party for one ever planned and executed, complete with a pinata and Eyeore-themed party favors?

No? Well, f@ck you.

</tantrum>

*And just so you know, I linked to this video because I like the song, not because my period is on (for those who don’t know, this song is thought to be a quasi-commercial for “feminine” products.) Every time a woman is having a bad day does not mean she’s PMSing, okay? OKAY?

my neck

I saw the chiropractor again today, and we went over my x-rays. I knew my back was jacked upped, but he did tell me things I didn’t know, things outside of the scoliosis. From the x-rays I could see that the scoliosis had gotten worse since the last time I’d had x-rays, about 10 years ago. But he also had I had degenerative disc disease in my cervical spine (the neck). That’s not so uncommon, but still. Damn.

my scoliosis

Insurance only pays for about 1/5 of what he charges for what he thinks I need done over a six month time period. He offered me a deal to pay about 1/2 of what he usually charges, which still comes out to be about $2500 over 50 visits. $50 a visit is not so bad, but it’s money that we were going to use for other things. I’m kind of tired of having to spend so much money on my health, especially for this, something that we really don’t know if it’s going to help me or not. What if after six months I’m still in pain? Or something happens to me – manipulating the spine is a serious matter, and there are risks.

my low back

I really don’t know what to do. Doing nothing means staying like this, and being in pain. Doing this means spending a sh!t-load of money on a hope and a prayer. This is a sucky choice.

What would you do?

My dad always said that chiropractors were quacks. I’m not sure how he knows b/c I’ve never seen my dad actually go to any doctor, except the time he broke his toe playing in his job’s basketball tournament, but that’s another discussion. But me? I’ve always been into alternative medicines, especially ones that are about systemic solutions to systemic problems.

Although I didn’t know chiropracticors were actually about systemic solutions. Did you? I thought they only worked on the back. And that’s partially true. They do work on the back. But they work on the back because they believe that in fixing the back, or more precisely, by aligning the spinal cord correctly within the vertebrae, that the nerves that are connected from the brain to the rest of the body will work correctly. So if you have stomach pain, or headaches, or bladder pain, or foot pain, that can all be caused by abnormalities in how the spine and its nerves are positioned in the back.

For someone like me, this approach is really appealing. I have been to urologists, neurologists, gynecologists. I’ve seen doctors for my back, for my migraines, for my allergies. I see a psychologist and a psychiatrist. Every day some part of my body hurts.

But I had been sort of done with the doctor thing. I was starting to come to a place of acceptance, a place that was thinking that perhaps, even if this state of being was not normal, it was my normal. It was the best I was going to get. It was what I had to deal with in my life, and whatever the systemic issue was, I wasn’t going to find The Answer. So I surprised myself by agreeing to go see this chiropractor.

But I have to say, the “quackiness” of the specialty jumped right out at me as soon as I stepped into the office. First, the doctor was behind the desk, but acted like he couldn’t help me until “Fernando” got back from walking a woman across the street. <side-eye> When Fernando got back, he sat with me in the room as he explained each form, one by one, and had me sign them, one by one. With a less sophisticated customer, that is an incredibly intimidating practice, to have someone sit there while you are being asked to sign a long form in which you are signing away some of your rights. It took us an HOUR to get through that part, mostly because I was not appreciative at all of how they did that. They were very nice, but almost too nice – being nice like a salesman. I don’t like salesmen.

Furthermore, during that hour, the doctor must have seen at least 10 patients. TEN people in 60 minutes. Spinal adjustments in less than 10 minutes a patient? And he’s charging patients/insurance how much?

I allowed him to take x-rays as part of the deal they gave me (an exam and x-rays with followup for $30), but I refused to give my insurance information because I’m pretty sure that after the follow-up, I won’t be coming back. It bothered me that they even asked.

I’ll probably be sticking with yoga as my wellness routine. I don’t think there are any duck poses.