how the mighty have fallen...

...so in love! so in love with this little baby! oh yeah people, you read that right! there's a baby cooking in there and things around casa carlson are about to get CRAZY! (or CRAZIER to be truthful and accurate).

there was a time, not so long ago when i simply did not want a baby. i wanted to be free, without limits, without a poopy, whiny, needy, utterly dependent human being, who had me at his or her every beck and call. no thank you! give me freedom, glorious freedom! freedom to travel the world with my love. freedom to come and go as i please. freedom to sleep in. freedom to get in the car without thirty plus travel accessories for a baby. freedom to go shoe shopping. freedom to come home from work, ignore my starving husband, and sit on the couch watching reality tv. real housewives and kettlecorn for dinner. does life get any better than this? and so years before husband and i got married, i flat out told him, i do not want children. i do not want limitation. and i do not want to share you (with anyone cuter than me!)

but then it hit, like a monster truck. i needed a child. in fact, genesis 30:1 may have been quoted to the husband after months of "not preventing" - when rachel said to jacob: "give me child or else i die!" and the need just got more and more desperate as each month progressed with a mostly regular visit from an unwanted visitor. and then we shifted gears from "not preventing" to "trying." let me tell you, the only thing less sexy than telling your husband he's a duck-billed platypus mid make out session, is bounding into the bedroom from the bathroom, positive ovulation test in hand, announcing, "babe, i'm ovulating. get naked." oh the brutal, unromantic, unsexy truth about planned baby-making. but still month after month went by, negative pregnancy test after negative pregnancy test (good thing i ordered them in bulk online over a year ago!) and inner creeping accusations of infertility got louder and louder - or maybe that was me imagining momma chiang saying, "i told you to get pregnant earlier, have a baby earlier." and with each passing month, another friend would call or text with her own joyful news of pregnancy. so when, in july, a close friend told me she was pregnant with number two, when they weren't even trying, i completely lost it. it was my all time best elohi elohi moment.  that night, i lay in bed, and wept, as my husband could do nothing except put his arms around me and tell me - lie to me maybe? - that it was ok. and i summoned my remaining energy to whisper to my God, "Lord sometimes, i only want You for what You can give me. so please give me a baby."

but honestly, i had started to stop believing it was possible. i had started to stop believing in a baby  nathan adrien carlson. i had begun to resign myself to many many more months of a stressful sex life with continued negative pregnancy test results. in the process i learned, there are simply things outside of my control. all the best laid plans, all the scientific timing, and still i could not arrange my life into producing something i wanted. and although i could not quite let go of my desire for a baby, i realized, accepted a little bit, that i couldn't be in control of everything. i couldn't prevent every kind of trial and suffering. somethings just don't come so easily. sometimes, it is just hard. hard to go through and hard to accept.

and then five days later, i pulled my sad, pathetic, self-pitying body out of bed to face yet another day, when in the midst of brushing my teeth, i felt a sudden urge to vomit. and immediately genesis 30:22 came to me: "Then God remembered Rachel, and He listened to her and opened her womb."

i fumbled through my web supplied pregnancy tests and peed with a new sense of urgency and quite frankly, hall of fame worthy aiming skills, all the while trying to tell myself not to be disappointed. i had done this before, been here before. and when for five seconds there was no second line, oh the expected disappointment hit. alas another month. but then, that magical second line appeared and i couldn't believe it. i cried, this time, different tears. because finally, God remembered gracie.

if you look closely, you'll see, baby BOY carlson is due April 8, 2013!

on what NOT to say...

when three good friends have agreed to bring a truck, and help your husband and you move a rather heavy, antique-y, upright piano, here is what not to say:

as your husband and one of your friends are trying to squeeze through the back door and down a step with the heavy piano, it is most certainly not the appropriate time to shout to your husband, "baby you are so sexy right now!" (good intentioned as it may have been for encouragement) because your friend will almost drop the piano laughing. lesson learned. next time shout, "baby, you and friend are both so sexy right now!" there problem solved!

and without further ado, here is my newest collector's item: (and the best part - it was free!!!)

9.11.01

oh the labor over labor day weekend

thanks to my nascar-like driving skills, the husband and i spent all weekend going from car dealership to car dealership. as it turns out, car shopping is not nearly as fun as clothes shopping. or shoe shopping for that matter.

armed with our limited budget in hand we traipsed up to maryland and back into virginia. and these car dealers just would not budge. generally, i think that car dealers need us more than we need them, except in this case, i happened to have wrecked our only car, so we had a little less bargaining power. but i guess the good thing about not having money is if they were not going to come down on their price, well we did not have much choice, but to walk away.

but we were undeterred. on sunday night, we found the perfect used car - at some point we decided we simply must have the subaru forester because we plan on going off-roading this winter in the snow and ice.  we searched high and low for certified pre-owned subaru foresters in our area. there are only four in the washington, dc metro area. so on sunday night, after a day of venturing out to maryland and coming home without a car, we were thrilled to find a subaru, pre-owned certified (the only way to go when buying used!) 2012 forester with only 756 miles on it for just a smidge over budget. we were pumped for monday to roll around so we could check this baby out. but honestly, we were pretty much ready to buy it, what with the warranty on a certified pre-owned, plus the low mileage and the fact it was practically new for much lower than what a new car would cost. who cared about amenities? if it was a stick shift, i would have learned to drive a stick shift for that price!! come monday morning, we were  excited, high-fiving each other down the 1, all the way in the boonies of alexandria, when we pulled up into the dealership to find out that it was closed on labor day!! can you believe it?!?! closed!!!! what car dealership in its right mind closes on labor day?? well too bad for them, because we needed a car, so we google mapped the next closest dealer and off we went. five and a half hours later, we drove off into the sunset with a brand new 2012 subaru forester. our first real grown up purchase - at least our first real one after which we had no regrets! and the cherry on top of it all, we got it in a manly black, because let's be honest, a subaru forester is barely a step above a station wagon, so we had to do what we could to man-ify it. and my new favorite thing about this forester? whenever a dinky car cuts me off, i like to scream, "i can monster truck you in this thing if you don't get out of my way!"

and because husband is a fabulous researcher, after we got home with our new car, he hopped on the computer to make sure we got a good deal. folks, we got the best deal in the entire area, lower by a significant amount than the next lowest price on a new premium subaru 2012 forester. oh yeah, we high-fived ourselves all the way into sweet dreams-ville that night.

hi. my name is grace. and i'm an asian woman driver

i never really believed (or wanted to believe as husband would say) that i'm that asian woman driver. but as it turns out, it would seem, i am exactly that asian woman driver.

as i was kicking-off my friday evening, driving down lee highway, i saw a red light and began to break, when suddenly the light ahead turned green. so naturally, i eased my foot off the break, because cars are supposed to move when the light turns green.

only the cars must not have moved. clearly they didn't move fast enough. and i just did not process the car that was literally right in front of me and boom, i rear-ended a red acura right in the middle of rush hour. but honestly, it wasn't like i was doing my make up or talking on the phone. my mind just went blank. it was as if what my eyes were seeing was not being accurately translated in my brain. and then impact! you think the car that got hit was shocked?! i was shocked. how could this have happened? i just don't understand it.

and as i was retelling husband the story, giving him the play-by-play, i said, "babe, i just don't know how this happened." to which, my ever truly supportive husband replied, "babe. you don't know how this happened? [eyes rolling] you're an asian woman driver! do you want me to recount all the driving stories??"

NO! that's not necessary although husband is suddenly itching to do a few guest posts.

here's my handy work

and because there just is not a more appropriate way to end this post, in the wise words of dwight shrute:

p.s. momma chiang, if you're reading this post, we may be in the market for a car loan soon.
p.p.s. momma chiang, we're thinking of defaulting on the car loan we used to purchase the above wrecked car. feel free to repossess.

"man day"

i have a few more hours before 12 a.m. when i will lose husband for 24 hours. you see, when the clock strikes 12, husband will turn into a pumpkin. bibbity bobbity boo! POOF! he'll be gone. not really becoming a pumpkin but off to scale the adventures of "man day." he's been looking forward to man day for what seems like weeks. what is man day you ask? well i guess you could say it's when a friend - a married friend, whose young daughter and five months pregnant wife leave town for a a few days - emails your risk loving husband about jumping off cliffs into cold water below. and then he further sweetens the deal by adding the redskins-colts preseason game to the "man day" agenda. well how is a risk-adverse wife supposed to compete with that? she can't. i can't. so instead, i'll be making a pit stop at the bank tonight. withdraw me some cash and go on my own adventure tomorrow that will most likely involve buying jewelry at eastern market. he day - she day. fair is fair.

happy friday and enjoy the weekend! man day pictures to come (hopefully!)

my matthew 27:46 solution to all serious problems

back during my law school years, i went through some hard times. you might even say i was depressed, except i'm asian so we like to be in denial about any mental "weakness". rather, let's attribute my suffering to a lack of character, as in, i just was not mentally strong enough to will myself out of bed each day and face another harrowing day of life as i knew it.  but basically i was depressed.  nothing was working out as i had imagined it would.  i felt alone, like i had been  abandoned in a deep well and all i could do was look up at the small dot of light so very far away.  things got so bad that big brother bankrolled a trip to barabados so i could get away and get some sun and feel alive.  so you know it was bad if big brother republican was willing to put me on his dole for the entire week!  and it worked for the week i was in barbados. but eventually i had to come back to real life.

i don't like talking about this time in my life because i feel like my super past self, as in the elementary school, high school, and college versions of me, as well as the today version of me look at the law school version of me and wonder who that person was. how did i become so drained, so exhausted of living that i actually despaired of living?

it was during this most despondent of times, or as the ever wise anne shirley would say, at the time when i was "in the depths of despair," that i really hated and yet loved the LJ. the thing is, i am a child of the Lord. i have no doubts about that, but i have had serious questions about what the LJ has ordained for me, and during this time, and still every now and then, i question the LJ's heart towards me. is it really good? because sometimes it genuinely and intensely felt like He had abandoned me in that well. i felt forsaken, left in the deep pit to survive by subsisting on grubs or simply give up and die. i think we all know me well enough to know that i went with option #2.

one night, during a particularly intense moment of grief, bewilderment, and sense of abandonment, when my increasingly fragile soul could bear no more, i laid in bed weeping. in retrospect, it really was kind of pathetic. luckily it was just me in all my glorious loneliness, emotionally naked before the Lord. as i was asking the LJ, why this, why that, before i even knew it, i found myself laid out in crucifix position, and a cry ripped out from deep within my crumbling soul: "Eli, Eli, lama sabachthani." because let's be honest, who hasn't felt completely forsaken at one time or another, or possibly constantly? because i have. and to this day, "Eli, Eli, lama sabachthani" in crucifix position is my tried and true way of conveying the depth of my trauma to the Lord. afterall, who can understand this sentiment more than He?

years later, it occurred to me that the LJ didn't abandon me to go through my suffering, my situations, my thoughts, my feelings alone. He was there with me, suffering with me, bearing the oppressive tides of confusion, fear, and sadness with me - each step of the way.  but still, when i am feeling especially needy, alone, forsaken, scared even, i turn to matthew 27:46, to sound the alarm for the LJ - "take your positions. it's gonna be a doozy. please don't forsake me."