Rushed and Rainy

Academia: I stayed up past my bedtime to watch half the Oscars on Sunday night (seriously, at 10:00 I was beat; I didn't even make it to Best Supporting Actor. Lame.), so I woke up yesterday with just enough time to pull together an outfit and run out the door in the rain. It wasn't a bad Monday; it just got off to a bit of a rushed start.

Sartorial: On a rushed, rainy morning, I needed an outfit that didn't take much thought. I wore this to a baby shower for my sister on Saturday, so I already knew it worked. It's pretty much the same outfit I wore last Thursday, as you can see by scrolling down one post, but it kept me warm in the rain, it didn't squeeze my belly, and it looked marginally professional. I call that a winner.

Pregnant Looking-ness

Academia: This has been an exciting week in the world of being pregnant. You know, for me, not for all pregnant women. I feel like I'm finally starting to look pregnant to people other than myself and Cary (and I'm not sure how pregnant I've actually been looking to Cary up until now, since I spent a lot of time standing in front of the mirror and demanding of him, "I look pregnant, right? Right? RIGHT?" What else could he say but yes?). It's nice to finally be looking on the outside like I'm feeling on the inside.

Speaking of how I'm feeling on the inside, this week I started feeling the baby kicking! It was pretty amazing. I mean, I've known there was a tiny person in there, but it all seemed a bit theoretical before. Feeling that tiny person's arms and legs moving, controlled by a completely different brain than mine, makes everything much more real.

Sartorial: With all of this growing and flailing of teeny limbs, I'm feeling very pregnant, so one thing I'm completely sick of hearing is, "You don't look pregnant at all!" I've really been looking forward to looking pregnant, and being told I don't is always a letdown.

So to combat that letdown, I picked out clothes yesterday that do everything possible to emphasize my pregnant looking-ness. I got new maternity pants from Target, so no weird squishing of my belly - just stretchy goodness. I picked out a form-fitting t-shirt with horizontal stripes. I walked around with one hand on my lower back. And no one said I didn't look pregnant. So there.

Mental Fist Shaking

Academia: I think my university is the only public institution in the US that doesn't celebrate Presidents' Day. 364 days a year, I love, love, love working there, but on Presidents' Day, my alarm goes off, I look at my blissfully sleeping public schoolteacher husband, and I mentally shake my fist at the powers that be. And that's how yesterday went for me.

Sartorial: I'm also starting to mentally shake my fist at my wardrobe. I don't have enough maternity clothes to make a full wardrobe, but none of my pre-pregnancy pants or skirts fit comfortably anymore, so every day I just look at my closet and sigh. This in-between stage of pregnancy is killing my style mojo.

I felt better over the weekend when my friend Lilly, whose due date is one week before mine, said she was feeling exactly the same way about her clothes. She always looks really stylish to me, so that gave me hope that maybe I'm not looking as blah as I feel when I get dressed every day. I think a good solid hour of shopping for more clothes that actually fit would give my style mojo the boost it needs. I hoping that can happen this week; stay tuned for results.

I know I sound super whiny today, y'all. I promise I'm not fishing for compliments, and I hope to be back to my non-whiny self in my next post. Thanks for bearing with me.

Word Play

Academia: A lot of interesting things happened in my day yesterday, but the one that sticks in my memory most is the one that happened last. A student called late in the day, begging me to help him. Alarmed, I asked him what on earth was wrong. He had a horrible toothache and needed a dentist, he said. Okay, how much pain was he in, I asked.

"Emily, my tooth f*** me!" he exclaimed.

Ooooookay. What other possible response is there besides, "I understand and will find you a dentist immediately"? None that I could think of, so that's exactly what I said, and I found him a dentist immediately. And got him the number and address of an urgent care clinic, just in case. Because dang. Just dang.

Sartorial: When I was wasn't resolving crises of the tooth-f***ing variety yesterday, I was enjoying wearing the last, and maybe most favorite, of my new maternity dresses. Happily, our cold front has vanished (high of 80 yesterday, what what), so I got to try this out blazerless and blazer...ful? What? I have a master's in linguistics, y'all. I can make up words. 

Freeze Panic

Academia: It's Valentine's Day, y'all! I love celebrating love, and even more importantly for this blog, I love that it's Everybody Everywear Day. Okay, lame segue. I'm still trying to process Sunday's episode of Downton Abbey; my brain cells can only do so much at once. 

Sartorial: For Everybody Everywear today, everybody is wearing red or pink for V-Day. I was thinking about my red satiny shirt with the ruffly collar, or one of my new maternity dresses. I was going to be so cute. And then we had a freeze.

For those of you in colder climates, a freeze is probably not a huge deal, but for Floridians, cold weather is a cause for panic. We are a people incredibly poorly equipped for cold weather. There are actually very serious consequences freezes have for citrus farmers, but for the rest of us, we just don't have the clothes for it. I'm not kidding. When I was five, we went to South Carolina to visit my grandparents at Christmas, and my mom had to put plastic bags over my canvas sneakers to keep them from getting wet in the snow. Blazing, inferno-like heat we're good with, but cold makes us spend entire days sniveling, "Can you believe how cold it is? I can't believe how cold it is!"

The temperature we have to reach to go into full panic mode varies depending on how far south we live. Up here in north Florida, panic ensues at freezing; in Ft. Lauderdale and points south, anything below 70 degrees is cause for freaking out. Seriously. I went to the Keys in January a few years ago. When I left home in the morning, I had to scrape ice off my windshield. When I got to the Keys that evening, it was 65 degrees and people were apologizing for the excessive cold. 

I've found that sartorially, my fellow Floridians deal with the cold in two ways. The first way is to throw on all the warmest clothes we have, sometimes in multiple layers, with absolutely no regard for social context. Jeans and sneakers at work on a Monday? Yes, because it's sooooo cold! The other way is to pretend the cold isn't actually there, and continue to dress as though it's July. This is more of a "mind over matter" approach. If I'm wearing shorts, that means it's not cold, right?

I'm a multiple layers kind of girl, so this is what I wore to work yesterday. It was 30 degrees when I left home. This is my warmest sweater and my thickest jeans. Under the jeans are hiking socks, and over the jeans are boots. Over all of this I put a trench coat, a knitted scarf, and an old pair of gloves that I found in the back of our coat closet. And as I pulled into the parking garage, car heater blasting at 80 degrees, I saw a girl in shorts and flip-flops, willing the cold away.

Baby A-mazing

This is a picture of me with five of my favorite people in the world. This picture was taken at the Epcot Food and Wine Festival, about a month before I got pregnant.

Seriously, these people are the best, and I'm not just saying that because three of them (Cary, obviously, and Mike and Suzanne) are in my immediate family. They're all awesome, all five of them. Except now I can say they're all awesome, all six of them, because the first of our babies, Jose and Adrienne's Baby A, was born Wednesday night.

New babies are always wonderful, but the birth of a baby whose parents you know well and like a lot is especially amazing. Cary and I visited Baby A in the hospital yesterday evening and she is pretty badass. She was looking around and sticking out her tongue at us, and seemed completely fascinated with Cary. I mean, I know all newborns do that stuff (except maybe for being fascinated with Cary, since not every newborn is fortunate enough to meet him), but when the baby of our dear friends was doing it, she just seemed so advanced and cool. Best baby ever.

The next baby up is Suzanne and Mike's Baby F, due in April. Baby F is also my nephew, and therefore will clearly also be the best baby ever. And then our baby is due in August, and I'm sure we'll think s/he is the best baby ever too. So to sum up, we're having a lot of awesome babies around here, who will be so amazing that they might actually be the next step in the human evolutionary cycle. In your face, other babies.

Anyway, here's what I wore on Baby A's birth day. I didn't know she would be born when I put it on in the morning, but it seemed appropriately festive for what turned out to be a banner day for our little group.

If you look closely, you can see where my own superbaby is beginning to be visible. We're living in exciting times, y'all.

Rainy Day Tights

Academia: Two posts in a row! Yay! Yesterday was gross and gray and rainy, which was great when I was curled up on the couch with a warm rice sock on my back, but not so great when the fire alarm in my building went off and we all had to stand outside for half an hour. This happens all.the.time. in my building. Maybe someone keeps pulling the alarm or maybe a bunch of someones are really inept at microwaving. Either way, standing outside in the gray chill is not awesome, and warm rice socks are.

Sartorial: I've said it before, and I'll say it again: purple tights are designed specifically for rainy days. But not for lying on the couch. Sweatpants are better for that.

Anne of Green Gables

Academia: Things are quieting down from the beginning of the semester, for which I am sooo thankful. It's nice to be busy at work, but it's also nice to have quiet days after the busyness. Yesterday I had a few minutes to sit in my office armchair and put my feet up on my desk chair. It was delightful.

Sartorial: Another delightful thing that happened over the weekend is that my mom came and took me maternity clothes shopping! I thought everything would be too big still, but it all fit perfectly, so apparently I'm showing more than I thought. I can't tell y'all how nice it is to have clothes that look right on my body and don't make me feel like a sausage squeezed into a too-small casing. I got three dresses, two skirts, and a pair of jeans. And may I just say, why aren't all pants made like maternity pants? They're so stretchy and wonderful. A friend of mine called them "reverse Spanx." Instead of squishing you in, they just expand to let you be as big as you want to be. I must find a way to keep wearing them forever.


This is one of the dresses I got, and I feel so pretty in it. The ruffly collar and the flowers remind me of Anne of Green Gables - they seem so feminine and old-fashioned. Of course, Anne didn't get pregnant until book five of that series, and then I doubt her maternity dresses were 100% synthetic fabric (or that they even called them "maternity dresses" back then... they were probably just "dresses"), but I like to think that if Anne were not fictional and walking around today, this is what she would have picked.

Okay, I'm imagining a fictional character from an Edwardian-era novel shopping at Motherhood Maternity. It's definitely to stop writing and go to bed. I'll be back soon with more new maternity clothes and less rambly weirdness, I promise.

All for the Gators, Stand Up and Hope Saying So on the Internet Isn't a Mistake

Academia: Hey, y'all. It's been a while, hasn't it? Everything is fine here; this week just got busy and the blog got away from me a bit. But here I am now! I promise to do better with blogging regularly in the future. I have more energy now than I did a few weeks ago, so I think I can do it. I think I can, I think I can!

Sartorial: We're still having a ridiculously warm winter down here in the Deep South, but there was a coolish snap earlier this week, so I pulled out all the winter clothes that are languishing in my closet for this outfit. My poor tights, cardigans, and boots have been feeling neglected, I'm sure, so I was happy to take them for a spin. I liked all the bright colors together too; they felt very appropriate for a semi-tropical winter.

Also, check out my cute necklace! Cary got it for me for Christmas in honor of our alma mater, which I guess means the poorly-kept secret of where I work is now a not-at-all-kept secret. Oh well. If y'all promise not to e-stalk me, I'll send you a crate of oranges or an alligator burger or something. You know, because that's what everyone eats in Florida.

Anyway, if you like Florida (especially the University of), Daisygator Designs is the Etsy shop for you. I just got my soon-to-be-born nephew the onesie version of this t-shirt and OMG, it is so cute. Speaking of cute things, if you click on the link, there's a picture of Tim Tebow holding a baby. You're welcome. There is jewelry for a lot of other universities as well, even Florida State, which is quite the olive branch coming from a jewelry designer who named her shop after UF's mascot.

Okay, it's time to sign off, because now all my tired brain can think of is UF-FSU rivalry jokes. So I think I'll spare you that and go to bed. And maybe watch other people make UF-FSU rivalry jokes on YouTube. I mean, it's still funny.