Morning Blues

My closet has become a land mine, with hidden bombs and pitfalls. I put on an item of clothing that fit me just last week, and suddenly there's a huge gap between the buttons. Shirts that fit snuggly before now barely cover my belly. And then there's our morning routine. "How does this look?" I'll ask, trying on my fifth top. Adam will look me over and say, "Um... It's...okay." Back to the closet. He'll say, "Try on that red shirt." So on it goes and he'll look and say, "That's fine," but when I go to the only full-length mirror in the house downstairs in the guest room, I'll see an outfit tight enough that I wouldn't wear it to a bar, never mind the office. Why the problem you ask? Why not wear all the cute maternity clothes I bought? Because it's freakin' May and the weather is currently in the 40s. I've spent many years in the Northeast. I know May weather. It's not 47 degrees. It's lower 60s. Sometimes 70s. It's sunshine and sun showers. Northeast May is not chilly. Seattle weather is. Today's high in Seattle is 58. Here, it's 55.

Our mornings tend to follow a similar pattern, right down to our morning banter. I get up about a little more than an hour after Adam, who gets up at 5:15. I weigh myself with a loud groan. Adam bounces in (I mean this literally--he's hyper and alert in the mornings) and acts like a goofball while I prepare to shower. Generally, this is where we have our inane conversations of the day, which are frequently more of a monologue by whichever of us is more awake (this morning it was me: I started babbling about the signifying monkey. I don't know why, but Adam used the word "signifying" [not in the literary sense], and it sent me off on a tangent about how I had studied the signifying monkey in grad school and had I known Adam at the time we would have found that amusing--Adam's a big fan of monkeys--but I was dating a boy who wasn't very funny, so there was no humor in my study of the signifying monkey). After my shower I try, on average, six outfits on to see what will fit and what I will be warm in without panty hose (I loathe panty hose). This is the torturous part of the morning, and invariably Adam will say, "Who is going to drive me insane?" and I say, "You? Who's driving me insane?" to which he'll respond, "Do you think I like this?" And it ends with the inevitable, "You are the one who put this parasite into my body so you will deal with it!" Dressing now takes me almost a half hour. Then I head to my computer to check e-mail and occasionally blog, and he cuts up carrots for me to take in my lunch. Off to school for him and off to work for me.

Do you feel like you know us that much better now?