I'm a Halloweenie

So, I'm kind of a wuss when it comes to Halloween. I used to love horror movies. Now, when I try and watch them, they keep me up all night. I actually wake up in the middle of the night convinced that whoever or whatever I watched attacking people on the screen 5 hours ago is in my bedroom, ready to pounce the second I move. (The exception here is the movie Jaws, which is one of the top two movies ever made. Plus, it would be really weird if there were a 25 foot man eating shark hanging out in my bedroom in the middle of the night... ) Terrance and I are very different, in that I don't like to be scared just to be scared. I find gratuitous violence completely unnerving. And anything that deals with possession, demonic or otherwise? Forget it! But I do love the concept of the costume. I've already got a list in my brain of all of the things I can do to Logan before he's big enough to stand up for himself. I'm sure Terrance will veto them all so that we can dress him up like a little zombie every year, but we'll decide that when the time comes and he realizes that I'm not going to back down. :) I like the idea of dressing up as something you aren't and getting to pretend for an entire day. We went to a Halloween party over the weekend and I went as Medusa - black maxi dress, some exaggerated eye makeup and snakes in my hair (I didn't get any good pics though). I couldn't really pull that off for work, so I went this route. I bought the shirt at Goodwill and had everything else. 1 brown shirt + white puffy paint laces = a football costume suitable for a pregnant lady! Plus, since it involved a really comfy skirt and some comfy shoes, it was by far the most comfortable thing I have ever worn to work. Win-win!

The Sartorialist

So, I have an issue with maternity clothes made for people my size. I'm a bigger person - I discussed my issues with that in my last post. But gaining weight quickly is tough enough without feeling like I'm dressed like a slob. I don't want to just drape fabric over myself and hide behind over-sized t shirts.  In an effort to make myself feel a little better everyday, I dress consistently nicer than I ever have. My goal is to look presentable and cute, no matter what. And, if I could toot my own horn, I feel like I've done pretty well! On a budget!  So I started taking some pics of my outfits - forgive the bathroom shots, it has the best lighting. 

                                                    

Ramblings

Being pregnant has done many things for me. I'm sure everyone who stumbles backward onto being ready for kids like I did goes through a bit of the same thing. It sounds awful, but if you aren't one of those women who were convinced from the time they could think about such things that motherhood was for you, it can be different than you are taught that it should be. I am happy to be pregnant. I am thankful that I have a healthy baby growing inside me. I am thankful I have a partner to go through it with that supports me and lets me be crazy when I need to be. I also feel like I'm missing a chip of some sort. I didn't get an emotional reaction when I took the test, when I heard the heartbeat, when we saw the ultrasound, when I found out "it" was a "him," when I felt him move for the first time. My reactions have been almost clinical and overwhelmingly along the lines of "is that normal?" Is that a normal heartrate? Is that a normal weight? Is his head a normal size? Is his cervical spine measuring correctly? Is there an abnormal amount of fluid there? I have no doubt that I will love my child. I just hope when he comes out, I want to know more about him than whether or not he is normal. 

Like most little girls raised in middle class America, I wanted kids when I was little. I played house. I thought having kids was normal. Somewhere along the way, though, that changed. Were kids for me? Am I a suitable parent? And, the one we're never supposed to utter because it makes us feel like selfish trolls - am I willing to give up my life and whatever dreams I haven't achieved yet to have a child and help them find dreams to achieve? And don't get me wrong, I understand that having children fulfills you in a way that a career never could. I also understand that my career isn't going to be stalled forever because of having children. The nice thing about the freshly minted MPH is that they won't take it away if I don't use it for a few years. But the vision of Terrance and I moving to New York or Boston or DC for a few years? That vision will probably remain a blurry in watercolor in my head. That idea I had of me getting an awesome job with an NGO or federal agency? Probably not going to happen. Because it's hard to move with kids. And it's silly to move from such an obvious family town so that I can have that experience. And it's downright irresponsible for Terrance to give up his good job and move to a place where his company isn't because of my dream. 

Still, despite what my previous ramblings might lead you to believe,  I'm having this baby and I am happy about it. And I am excited. I'm excited to see what he's going to be like. And who he'll look more like. And teach him things. And watch Terrance be a dad. Being pregnant has made me think about the world beyond my bubble and my dreams in a way that I never would have. And it's made me adjust my goals, but not give up on them. No, we might never move to New York or Boston or DC. Or maybe we will. Or maybe I'll end up doing something fabulous with my life here. Despite those who think you should be done procreating by the time you're 30 (lest all of your viable eggs dry up), I'm ONLY 32. If nothing else, I have like 35 more years until retirement. I can do a lot with 35 years. And now I get a child to be a role model for. To inspire. To be better for. 

Pregnancy has also made me confront some issues. Again, like most little girls growing up in middle class America, I have, from time to time, called myself fat. Except for me, it wasn't really from time to time. It was every day. Starting in about the fourth grade. And I'm the first to admit that there was a time when I was fat. The rest of the time, I've been just overweight - I've always needed to lose a few pounds. I've never been happy with my weight. I ran a half marathon last year, and when I looked at the pictures of me on the course, my first thought was how big I looked. It's always my first thought when I see a picture of myself. The rapid weight gain of pregnancy has been hard on my psyche. The stomach is the obvious problem area, but my thighs have grown at such a rate that I joke that Logan will get stuck in them on the way out. Unknowing people comment on my size - I've gotten more than one "are you sure there's just one in there?" and "you're HOW far along? Surely, you must be further - I mean, look at your belly!" For the record, these are things you should never say to a pregnant woman. 

So pregnancy has been an experience. Part of me feels like I'm going to look back and regret the amount of complaining I've done. I feel like I should be embracing it more. I guess after this, I'll have a baby to embrace and this will all just seem like a blink of the eye and a means to a wonderful end. 

In the immortal words of Meatloaf, “two out of three ain’t bad.”

Since my last post, a lot has happened. I graduated, we found out I was pregnant, and we bought a house! Well, sort of…

To start, after a marathon summer of late nights with my epidemiology text and feeling stupid after just about every weekly quiz, I managed to not only pass epidemiology, but I missed an H by 2 points (H means A in the somewhat pretentious word of UNC grad school grading. It stands for honors pass. It’s dumb system. If I ever become dean, I’m doing away with it). I never looked close enough to see if there was a curve, and frankly, I prefer to believe that there wasn't. I like to think that I’m just that smart.  So now I'm officially Kelly Bragg, MPH, CHES. The plan was to actually go to graduation and celebrate, but given my current state of gestating, that might now work out... 

Oh, yeah. So about that whole gestating thing, 3 weeks before I took my final, I went from being able to run 5-6 miles to not being able to go more than 2 without the very real fear that I would actually pee in my pants.  Combined with some other fun symptoms that I won’t get into, I deduced that there might be a chance I was “in the family way”. With Terrance out of town, I took a test. It was positive! Confirmed an annoying amount of weeks later by the doctor’s office who won’t see people until a certain point, no matter how neurotic they are and how crazy they must be driving their husband with “do you think this is normal?” questions. Fingers crossed the 3-6 cups of coffee and countless sodas I was drinking to stay awake enough to complete epi haven’t done major damage to the little one. We found out last week that it’s a boy. We’re naming him Logan James – Logan has been Terrance’s choice for a boy since the beginning and James is after my father. I’m trying really hard to make myself believe that Logan isn't Terrance’s choice because it’s Wolverine’s name. Those of you who know him know that it probably is, but, you know, keep those fingers crossed.

Since the baby is coming, Terrance and I started throwing around the idea of buying a house. Terrance's financial health hasn't always been stellar, but he's been working hard on getting it in shape. Since our entire mortgage from the Gastonia house is in my name and I have a load of student loan debt now, I sent him to the bank to see what he would qualify for. His hard work paid off and he qualified for a mortgage on his own. He got his preapproval letter, contacted a real estate agent, and we were off! We looked at about 6 houses and found one that we both sort of fell in love with. It is a 2 story, 4 bedroom, 2 bath brown stucco built in 1901 with a yard for the dogs. It’s on a great street. It also needs a bit of work, but both of us saw this as having the potential to be our dream home. After a small amount of negotiation, we seemed good to go. Barring any sort of major problem that popped up on the inspection, the house was ours. We went to the store to pick out flooring. We decided what kind of fence we were going to put in. I had the baby’s nursery all decorated in my head. Heck, I had the entire house all decorated in my head. Friday, Terrance went to the bank to get the paperwork started and something was off. Because of some sort of issue with our tax return, he suddenly might not be able to get the loan. I don’t really understand it all, but basically even though we want the house, and we need the house, there might not be any way we’re ever going to own the house on Lincoln Ave.

Because I stupidly plastered the fact that we were buying a house all over social media, I now will have to deal with questions – When are you moving? How’d the inspection go? When do you close? - when I don’t really want to talk about it at all. But that’s my fault. I admit I over share. Lesson learned.

Terrance feels like this is his fault. It’s not, of course. I want to blame the accountant for whatever is wrong with our taxes or the guy at PNC for giving us a preapproval letter that he could never follow through with. But not Terrance, who's just as upset as I am about it and tried everything he can do to fix this. I'm actually really proud of how far he's come. The cookie just crumbles the wrong way sometimes. I’m trying really hard to hide my disappointment. When I can’t hide it anymore and I start to cry, he tells me it’s not over. He hates to see me upset. He’ll do whatever he can to fix this and get us our dream house. The unspoken truth in the room is that there might not be a damn thing we can do about it. I've tried to tell him that I just need to mourn it – the visions I had in my head of us bringing Logan home to THAT house, sitting out in THAT yard with the baby and the dogs on a sunny day and watching the clouds go by, fixing THAT awful bathroom upstairs...

I know eventually, this won’t seem so bad. Eventually, I won’t be battling pregnancy hormones and this won’t feel like such a crushing defeat of our dream.  I know these are first world problems. I understand that we’re lucky to have a place to live and jobs and food on the table and a healthy (albeit hungry and huge) baby on the way. It’s a no brainer that, if I was forced to choose, out of the 3 major things that I have experienced in the last 6 months – graduation, baby, house – the one I would give up if I had to give up something would be the house.

But I didn't really want to give it up. 

Farewell

In the end, we demand that they stay with us. 

Our selfishness knows no bounds and as we look at him, those brown eyes so clearly filled with more pain than anything else, we're blinded by our own sadness.  Not wanting to let go, all we can see is the puppy that chewed up all of the wrong things or the look on his face when we took him to the ocean for the first time. Or the way, when you had a particularly rough day, he would put his head in your lap just so and remind you that everything would be OK (as long as you took a long walk, of course). The emptiness of coming home and not hearing the click of his nails jogging quickly across the floor to greet you eagerly seems unbearable.   We beg him for more time. One more week. Another day of awful, hot dog breath and sloppy dog kisses. Just one last walk. 

And then, with one loud yelp and legs that give way, the reality hits you and you know you have to say good bye. 




My parents got Sequoia when I was a junior at UNCW. Even though I lived away from home, we became fast, fierce friends. Once, when my house on Chestnut St in Wilmington got broken into, my parents loaned him to me and he stayed for a bit. Ever the protector. He was a funny dog who loved to chase cats and take car rides and go to the mountains. He liked his morning and evening massages and demanded a walk at 7pm every night. He loved his family.

My mother called this morning to give me the news. Saying good-bye sucks, no matter how necessary you know it is.  

Rest In Peace, Sequoia. You were a good dog. I hope they have car rides in heaven. 

No jokes today. Sad.

That was my facebook status today. Today the Boston Marathon got bombed. Today is Margaret's birthday. Today I am sad.

It started about a week ago. 1800flowers.com wanted to know if I wanted to send Margaret flowers for her birthday. My phone dinged and I read the email and thought about how Margaret would have loved some birthday daisies. And then I shoved it to the back of my mind, where she lives all the time now. Then this morning, facebook asked if I wanted to send her a Starbucks gift card for her birthday. And as a tear ran down my cheek, I smiled because Margaret would have hated that. She hated "the man." She would have loved a gift card to a small, locally owned coffee house that had an open mic night on Fridays. But she would have hated a Starbucks gift card  And then my day went on and I reminisced with myself on my lunch break about some good times. It's easier to feel her when the weather is nice. She loved to be out doors.

And then around 3pm, I checked my phone and buzzfeed told me there was an explosion at the Boston Marathon. No, two explosions. A bomb? And there were people hurt. Badly. And casualties. And I watched the story unfold with a detached awe that I feel like everyone in my generation feels.

We watched Columbine and Virginia Tech and Aurora and Gabby Giffords and Newtown.
We watched Oklahoma City.
We watched the Towers fall.

It happens so often and, while nothing of this nature has shocked me in a very long time, every time it happens, it punches me in the stomach. Every time it happens, I ask why. We post tributes online and Instgrams and we change our facebook profile pictures and we cry and we hope it never happens again.

Because what else is there but to do that and tell the people you love you love them and hope upon hope that its the last one?

I really hope this is the last one.

No jokes today. I'm sad.

#prayforboston

2013 Q1 Update

So, yes its been a long time since I wrote. I never claimed to be a regular blogger, so get off my back. Truth is, I've been too busy to pee lately, let alone write a blog. Which has created a whole other set of issues, but I won't get into those. This isn't a medical blog. It's just a blog blog.

School is in full effect. I forgot what it was like to stay up until 4 am. Now I remember. It sucks. As a refresher course in the life of KB, I am in graduate school, attempting to get my master of public health degree from the lauded  Gillings School of Global Public Health at the University of North Carolina. I'll root for the Heels against Duke, but other than that, I've never been a Carolina homer, but the Gillings School of Global Public Health at the University of North Carolina (you have to say it like that. Respect) is the second best public health school in these United States of America (better than HARVARD, y'all), so I will enjoy that diploma. If it ever actually becomes mine. Right now, even though I'm so close, it seems so far away. This semester has consisted of my big master's paper (like a thesis with less research rules and I don't have to defend it), comps (a big test that if I don't pass, this is all for naught), and a class - Intro to Environmental Health. I make it a rule to not speak on the internet about things I'll one day wish to take back if they are ever read by certain people, so I'll just leave it as I think my ENVR class is a little, um, intense for an intro. If I don't get my MPH because I don't get the grade I need in that class for the aforementioned implied reasons, there will be a thesis length rant on this here blog about my true feelings.

My paper is a bear, but very interesting. I ended up doing it on something that I didn't really have a huge interest in and now I'm, like, knowledgable on fracking. For those that don't know, fracking method of generating oil and natural gas from shale rock formations. There are questions surrounding the process and it releases some chemicals into the ground water and stuff, so its a public health issue right now. I don't want to say more because you should be able to preorder my debut novel, "Fracking and You: how to get oil from rocks without killing people" from amazon within the year.

Comps are an interesting little experiment the school likes to put us through. Not every school has comps. I considered transferring when I found that out. But then I wouldn't be getting my degree from the GSOGPH at UNC. You have to write 3 papers in 9 hours and then they make you wait a month to see if you passed. (a month is 30 days, just in case you forgot. 3-0 days. 720 long hours) And they basically tell you that, short of gathering up your notes from courses you took 3 years ago, there's no way to prepare. When I get diagnosed with the ulcer I'm sure has formed in my stomach, I'm naming it Comps. I took those on March 2nd. Even though they tell you that they will inform you by mail as to whether or not you passed, my new favorite hobby is to sit at my computer, log on to the comps site, and see if they slipped and posted the results. I spend an immense amount of time doing this. Staring at the screen and hitting refresh. Hitting refresh.... hitting refresh.

In other, non school related news:

I feel like this whole year has been a haze of moving boxes, leases, security deposits, and moving vans. In October or November of 2011, Terrance moved to Dayton (Miamisburg), I followed in March of 2012, but we moved to Springfield because it was between our jobs, then six months later, we settled in Delaware, OH, which is about 20-30 minutes north of Columbus. Life is better when you don't spend 20% of your day in the car. We live in the upstairs of an old house that's been converted to apartments. Over the last year, we have paid about $3300 in deposits, and moved about 1,000 miles (just broken up into 3 different moves). The original goal was to stay in Delaware for the year and then move on to Cleveland, but we're really liking it here. We can walk to shops and restaurants for little things we need and to go out, but Columbus is close for bigger stuff.  I have finally fulfilled my lifelong goal of being able to walk to work. Delaware is cute. You should visit, Internet.

Terrance has a few siblings he didn't know about and my sister had a baby, so I'm an aunt like 7 times over now. That's pretty exciting. God bless the internet. Also, my family continues to be functionally dysfunctional at every turn. I'm certainly not going to write the whole thing here, especially since I've sold the rights to Lifetime Movie Network and its been greenlit for a untitled project starring Tori Spelling and Harry Hamlin that is shooting in Vancouver right now, but every time I turn around, it feels like I've landed in Genoa City.

Another Die Hard movie came out. God Bless John McClane.

I'm running the Cooper River Bridge Run this year. I was doing really well with training and was basically on track to win in outright and then school got in the way and I am fairly certain I'm going to die. If I live, I'm doing the Indy Mini on May 4. If I survive that, I have epidemiology this summer, where I plan on growing Comps' brother, Epi the Ulcer.

There was other stuff. But its hard to remember. I should get back to work anyway. Hitting the books now. Have a midterm that's worth 40% of my grade to bomb. Deuces.