A Perfect Day

Where did the last 10 days go?! I actually started writing this post on Sunday, when my thoughts were fresh and I was feeling good about the day I had just spent with my boy, but then the week got away from me, I didn't get a chance to develop my ideas, and this post fell by the wayside. All week long I've been wanting to post here, but either work or one of these headaches-from-hell would get in the way and keep me from expressing myself coherently. Wednesday was particularly hard -- I woke up feeling like a mack truck had run over me, and I dragged myself into the kitchen to have breakfast with my boyfriend, who had been awake for over an hour already and was as CHIPPER as a chipmunk. Have I mentioned before that he's more of a morning person?! And my bad influence has led him, on occasion, to stay in bed much longer than he ever did in the past when I first knew him. In any case, the poor thing had to tolerate my grumbling as I tried to get some coffee down my throat and figure out why my head felt like it was going to explode. Was it these supposed allergies? The bizarre weather? The wind, the humidity, the mold? Who knows... But it kept me in a nasty mood most of the day, and I still don't know how I made it through work at the office. And I had colleagues telling me how NICE I looked that day -- what's up with that?! Oh, the irony, I tell ya! Obviously I should have been flattered, yet somehow I was a bit suspicious... But they're convinced that this pregnancy is making me look as healthy as a freshly-bloomed spring flower, so I guess I should take it while I can get it...

[As an aside, my trip home in the RER on Wednesday night was kinda grueling -- I literally tried to coach myself as I walked up Avenue Hoche beforehand, muttering that for once I needed to be assertive and simply say, "S'il vous plaît, je suis enceinte, pourriez-vous me laisser une place ?" And yet once I was confronted with the situation, I stook there stupidly, with my coat hanging open, my admittedly small belly hardly noticeable to most people around me -- especially those who were markedly choosing to ignore me in the first place. I managed to score a seat after one stop down the line, but only because a few people got off the train. What a daily struggle!]

I'm officially in my 2nd trimester, you see -- actually, I'm officially five months along as of this week! -- so where in the heck is that wonderful energetic period I'm supposed to be experiencing?! Why am I STILL so tired all the time? I can only guess that part of the reason is this crappy March weather, and the fact that I'm desperate for warm spring weather to get here, that and the fact that I haven't been exercising much lately... Of course, I've never been the best about fitting in a regular exercise routine en temps normal, but somehow I think it would probably do me a lot of good. I've been putting off ordering a prenatal yoga video from Amazon for weeks, and yet I put it in my shopping basket ages ago... I have a colleague who swims at a local pool regularly, and she was very emphatic about the beneficial elements of swimming, both during pregnancy as well as any other ol' time. I already know how much my boy loves swimming, how much relaxation he gets out of it, but I tend to prefer the ocean to the chlorine of a strangely-lit public pool. Plus I'm just plain stubborn -- and lazy I guess! I should just bite the bullet and give it a try, though, because I need all the possible energy-producing solutions I can get my hands on, and I keep reading all over how good swimming is for us pregnant gals.

So that's one of my plans for tomorrow: to squeeze in an hour or so at a nearby pool with my boyfriend. He tries to go on a regular basis, but he's been a bit tired himself in recent weeks and has had a hard time motivating himself too. I'm going to try to convince him that it will be good for BOTH of us tomorrow... Even if last Sunday we were thrilled to stay home and just lay around and be our lazy selves. You see, last Sunday was the perfect day I'm referring to in my post title -- last Sunday was the day that originally inspired me to write this post...

When my boyfriend mentioned to me on Saturday evening that we might take a day trip on Sunday, I was torn between feeling excited about the potential of getting away for a change of air and the disappointment of once again missing the opportunity to prepare my long-delayed rabbit recipe... But somehow I should have known that the potential vague plans for "getting away" wouldn't probably pan out, either because of our bad habit of getting up late on Sunday mornings or because of the crummy gray weather -- in this case, it was a little bit of both! So we woke up well-rested around 10:00 (yes, I know, a luxury we need to enjoy while we can, given the fact that in less than five months' time those lay-ins will be over... and a distant memory!), had a leisurely breakfast (one of my favorite things to do on a Sunday) and then proceeded to rest and relax all afternoon long. I was relieved that we didn't have to rush anywhere, and I DID finally get to make that rabbit -- the recipe turned out to be ho-hum, though, which was a bit of a disappointment after all that anticipation, so I think I'm going to turn back to one of my tried-and-true recipes this weekend, one I'm sure to pull off with flying colors. I also managed to salvage some apples that were on their way out, slicing and dicing the suspicious parts in order to prepare a late-afternoon crumble. We watched From Here to Eternity on TV -- random chance, and believe it or not I had never seen it in its entirety! -- and then a DVD or two... It was SOOOO nice to just lay back and not think, just really RELAX and enjoy our time together. It was truly one of the nicest days I've spent in a while, and just thinking about it makes me smile. We just enjoyed each other's company, we were both in good moods -- it was just perfection!

I know, that's pretty pathetic -- an uneventful Sunday afternoon, full of nothing but laying around, watching movies and baking apple crumble constitutes the perfect day for me, right?! Yup. That's about it in a nutshell. Heck, I love to go see a show, visit a museum or spend time with friends as much as the next gal, but sometimes a weekend just calls for some real laziness. And last weekend was one of them.

This weekend promises to be about as uneventful, as my boy has to work on Sunday, which will probably guilt me into doing some more housecleaning. If I'm feeling inspired, I may just try to bake Clotilde's chocolate raspberry cake from her book, so I'll keep you posted! We will also be visiting some friends who just had their first baby, wee leetle Zoé (I love that name!), and I plan on taking lotsa photos! My boy seems a bit reticent, and I suspect it's because he's fearing the reality of holding that tiny one in his arms and realizing that if all goes well we'll be experiencing something very similar in a very short time.

Oh, and by the way, I think I felt the baby for the first time on Monday! I still can't quite describe the feeling, but words wouldn't do it justice anyway... It was odd, unexpected, surreal and comforting all at the same time -- the complex signs of so many more emotions to come...