The Death of Vanity

Here's the belly from about 2 months ago. I am now much, much larger, but you get the idea. Oh, and now I'm also now sporting a lovely swirl-shaped set of stretch marks that cascade around my belly button.

I've heard that pregnancy, or at least labor, is the death of vanity. I'm not a makeup wearer, I'm not really a girly-girl who gets all quivering for shoe sales or new fashions.... I like to be comfortable and understated... BUT... I was probably about 4 months pregnant when I first read in one of the "you're having a baby" books that your belly button tends to stop being an innie (if it ever was to begin with) during pregnancy.*** Now, I never realized it BEFORE the pregnancy, but I guess I did have a minor vanity point about my perfect little innie belly button. Not that the BELLY was perfect or anything... just the belly button. So, when I read about innies popping out to outties, well... that was the first time I was honestly horrified in the pregnancy.

Labor pains? Psshaaaw.
Weight gain? No biggie.
Frequent urination? Piece of cake.
Stretch marks? Dealable.
Outtie? YIKES!!! Um... I don't THINK SO!!!

So, of course, because the outtie was that which I feared the most, I naturally drew it towards me. By the time I was 5 months along, my innie had totally disappeared. Within a few weeks after that, it popped right out and now, even other pregnant women I've encountered at child-birth classes, etc, have commented on the extent to which my belly button sticks out. I did try, once, putting a band-aid over it, just to see if that would minimize the amount it stuck out through my clothes, but all that ended up doing was giving me a little band-aid outline over the poking belly button and later, after I'd taken the band-aid off, it made my belly button REALLY itchy.

I've finally succumbed to the existance of my outtie. I can't fight it, so I embrace it. It also helps that I am so big that I can't even see my outtie when I'm standing up, since it's on the other side of the crest of my belly, down over by the sea of tranquility. What cracks me up, however, is that the baby has discovered this little spot as one of the few areas where there's flexible space for her and she regularly uses the inside of my belly button as a place to put her elbow or foot or knee and stretch a bit, since it has a bit of give. Therefore, if I'm sitting and she's moving around, the place you are most likely to see wiggling is my protruding, obscene outtie.

*** The books all allege that the belly button WILL return to its previous state after the baby is born. Fingers crossed... They offer reconstructive plastic surgery on belly buttons, don't they? ;-)

Jesus Camp

I cannot wait to see this movie...

The Witch is Dead!

Picture dancing munchkins - no, not the kind you get at Dunkin' Donuts... the kind of freaky type from The Wizard of Oz.

I just finished reading the most recent article from SF Gate's "Surreal Estate" series and all I can say is that I am STOKED!!! This week's entry is entitled "Out, Out Damn Spot" a la Lady Macbeth and is the first solid indication I've read that the San Francisco Real Estate Boom is officially over.

Now, this isn't "new news" or anything. A smattering of articles have been cautiously hedging and edging and tip toeing around this subject for months. Perhaps it's been the result of a rare moment of journalistic integrity, wherein the fourth estate has decided not to hurl the local realty market into an abominable tailspin by openly stating what has been easily observable for months - the party's over for the flippers and unwise investors. On the other hand, maybe the lack of bold pronouncements of realty doom and gloom has been spurred on by the fact that local journalists are, themselves, property owners with much to lose in a market crash. Either way, the silence has been odd in the same way that you wonder why nobody's mentioning the elephant in the living room.

Mr. Barbellina & I have been going regularly to open houses for the past year or so, in search of a seemingly modest piece of property - a 2 bedroom condo in the city, outside of bullet range from the projects, with parking that's near a dog park. This has proven to be a highly frustrating endeavor that has been mostly depressing. In our pursuit, we've even come to consider buying into a Tenancy In Common. One thing we haven't budged on, however, is our rule about not entertaining the idea of purchasing property that was involved in an Ellis Act Eviction, which is commonly employed as a method of evicting the elderly and vulnerable in order to flip a property for gross profit. Mr. B and I just believe that, when the Ellis Act is abused (as it frequently is), it is unconscionable and this would be the equivalent, to us, of investing our money in the tobacco industry... sure, you can make money, but at what spiritual / karmic cost?

We are very fortunate to have decent rent where we live and a fantastic apartment, so even though we live in a one bedroom that will be somewhat cramped with the baby's arrival, it will be possible to stick it out for a while where we are. It's a blessing that we don't HAVE to move immediately, which takes a lot of pressure off, but all the same... It has been depressing even just looking at the market. It's disheartening to analyze your financial situation, go through the first flush of "wow, we can really afford THAT much!?!??! We are SO together" and then discover that what you would normally percieve as a veritable embarassment of riches is actually considered, in this market, to be a scoffable pittance that you should feel lucky if it managed to wrangle you a junior studio in a neighborhood where you'd have to kick the used needles and chipped vials aside to clear the doorway entrance every day.

Last year, when we began going to open houses, we were naive enough to presume that a property that was LISTED in our price range would actually SELL in that range. We quickly learned that this was not the case... sleazy realtors would intentionally list properties for easily $30,000 below their expected range in the hopes of sparking a bidding war. Listing descriptions would include snotty little notes from the agents about how "offers will be accepted at noon next Tuesday (after the place would be on the market for a week) and will close accepting offers by the end of business Wednesday." The tone and attitude was that you'd better belly up and fast with a fat check in hand and pray that your offer would be accepted. Adding insult to injury, many realtors made it a practice to openly mention that they would entertain "pre-emptive offers" before the accepted bid date wherein the buyer could put in a bid so ridiculously over the asking price that they could hope the seller would jump on it without having to go into a bidding war with other interested parties.

After a few quick spins on this dizzying dance floor (you swiftly get caught up in it and find yourself making mental compromises like "we don't need a bathroom large enough to sit on the toilet without having your knees scrape the wall"), Mr. Barbellina and I took a deep step back and have become veritable wallflowers at the prom... We're still in attendance... but we're mostly observing for now. We both knew this market couldn't continue forever, and even if the prices don't end up dropping, at the very least, we'd prefer to be buying our first home in a sales environment that allows for contemplation and discussion and even, possibly, a little give and take between the buyer and seller... We don't want to feel pushed into handing over a down payment that is the size of some small nations' entire GDP on a home that we're not completely satisfied with.

Now, however, the moment is over... In the past few months, as we've gone to open houses, the crush of potential buyers has thinned significantly. Showing agents are actually... dare I say it... affable and friendly... hell, even outgoing. They no longer preside over their showing with the casual unsouciance of a 20-something retail whore working the counter at Diesel Jeans, wherein, despite their lack of education and the fact that they're making minimum wage, the clerks behave as though you should feel fortunate to shell out $150+ for some slabs of denim and they'll get to giving you some gum-snapping, black-nail-polish-blowing "service" when they're good and ready.

In addition to the showing agents' newfound sparkle for treating potential buyers as, well... humans, the listing descriptions now include such encouraging phrases as "recently reduced" and "new, lower price," and only the most horribly out-of-touch realtors will mention anything about offers being accepted between "X" and "Y," as though the agents are so harried with their precious time that you'd better accomodate their schedule to offer up your life savings as a meager gesture to the realty gods. Most encouraging of all, the properties that we're looking at these days which are listed in our buying range are actually probably going to sell for around what they're listed at AND they're actually places we'd consider living in...

Upon reading today's Surreal Estate, I was just so encouraged because within the article, Carol Lloyd refers to the market as being a "buyer's market" in an almost casual, it's-always-been-this-way tone. No, there hasn't been a loud pronouncement that I've seen that the boom is over, and perhaps that's for the best... It benefits nobody within our economy to have prices plummet in freefall overnight. However, those of us who are seeking to get into the market without employing such risky propositions as reverse mortgages and interest-only loans, can finally see a light at the end of the tunnel.

All hail!!! Ding Dong, the witch is dead and we may someday soon be able to afford a home without tremendous risk!!!

Here's her head...

We just had another sonogram this past Tuesday and got a pretty good shot of little Miss Thing's head. This is her at 32 weeks... Other stats of minimal interest to people other than myself and the Mr... I've gained 22 pounds (low end, but totally acceptable, for this stage of pregnancy) and my uterus measurement is 34 cm, which is 2 weeks' ahead in length. The OB says it's looking like this is going to be a LARGE child.

The Baby's Foot

Here's a scan from the sonogram that captures her foot pretty well. Yep, that's right, she's a "she." If you have any suggestions for names, put them in the comments section! We definitely appreciate suggestions. So far we like Twila, Millicent / Millie, Eloise / Ellie, Grace / Gracie, and Rose / Rosie.

Great Pranks #2

The B.L.O.
aka "The Barbie Liberation Organization"

The B.L.O. has been culture jamming since the early 1990's. This brilliant commerce jam was an early RTMark project that caught a lot of press and, while not as prevelant today, still has some practitioners. The project involved purchasing Teen Talk Barbie as well as Talking Duke GI Joes, switching their voice boxes and returning them to store shelves (shop dropping) to be re-purchased by unsuspecting shoppers.

The original version of Teen Talk Barbie was so sexist that it even included a phrase "Math Class is Tough." Mattel kept this ridiculous phrase in the doll until the American Association of Univeristy Women took a stand against the doll, causing the toy company to reconsider its decision. In the meantime, however, the Barbie Liberation Organization had begun its work. Just in time for the holiday shopping season, the group managed to get as many as 3,000 of the toys' voice boxes switched abd back on the shelves, leaving children with GI Joes that said the likes of "Let's go shopping" and Barbies that said "Vengeance is mine!"

One of the original creators of the B.L.O. later became a part of the The Yes Men.
To learn more about the Yes Men, here's a good Mother Jones article.
If you'd like to reverse engineer a Barbie / GI Joe voice box here's how: Barbie Liberation Organization PDF

Scary Bad Chicken

Just because you "can" doesn't always mean you "should." This is another oldy (like the Sanity Test), but in this case it's for evil not humor. Big Guns posted today about the new creepy Burger King commercials. This reminded me of another brilliant and freaky BK campaign, the Subservient Chicken.

Does this really make you want chicken tenders with a little honey mustard sauce? Enough said.

Things That Do Not Engender Confidence in Your OB #2

This is an entry in a series related to things that I find annoying / questionable in the way my OB/GYN practice is run. Being in my first pregnancy, I'm particularly clueless and therefore worried and anxious, and really want to see positive signs that my health and my baby's health are in good, caring hands. Although I really dig my doctor, I have doubts about the practice...

The Phone Tree
No matter when you call this practice, even during business hours, the phone is never answered by a real, live human being. Instead, for the sake of efficiency (on behalf of the office) or annoyance, this mid-sized (8 doctor) practice makes you run the gamut of the phone tree. In case you haven't made a phone call to a business in the last 15 years, a phone tree is an automated system you encounter when you call in. Most businesses, particularly larger ones, implement this modern evil as a means of deterring you from actually getting help. Occasionally, some poor misguided small-to-mid-sized business will be inspired to put in a phone tree, which effectively contributes to the shortening of their customers’ lives due to a low-grade rise in blood pressure. In the case of the OB practice's phone tree, the system goes something like:

"Welcome to the XXXXXX practice, where we really value your patience our patients! Please listen carefully, as the following menu options have changed. If you'd like to be on hold for five minutes and then randomly hung up on, please press 'one.' If you'd like to learn where to send a payment, please press 'two' where you can immediately speak to one of our representatives. Si se gustaria escuchar a este message en espanol, por favor, oprima el numero 'tres.' If you have an emergency and would like to speak to a human being, please hang up and dial '9-1-1.' Thank you and have a nice day."

Here's why this is disconcerting to me... Either:

A) The practice lacks the funds to be able to pay someone to answer the phone and route calls during business hours. This is a problem because this is an alledgedly popular and busy San Francisco practice and such a lack of funds would indicate either

A1) An exorbitantly high amount of money is being paid to malpractice insurance premiums due to successful claims against the practice's doctors in the past
--- or ---
A2) Someone is embezzling funds from the practice which means that there's a possibility it could go bankrupt between now and when I go into labor. It's never a good thing to show up for a third trimester check-up only to discover that the electricity has been cut off at your doctor's office due to lack of payment.

---OR---
B) The practice isn't interested in investing in hiring a person to answer the phones because it doesn't highly value communications with its patients.

Of the two options (low dough versus low priorities), I find the latter more likely and more disconcerting.