The other day I was stocking palmolive dishsoap on the shelves at work and I noticed something odd about the bottles. Namely, the ones I was putting out looked smaller than the ones on the shelf. I glanced at the label. The ones on the shelf were 13 oz. The ones in my hand: 11oz. The price was the same, $1.79.

Inflation, anyone?

Seeing that it’s been occuring since the dawn of time, pregnancy seems like something that ought to be the same across cultures around the world: woman gets pregnant, woman gets big, woman gives birth, violá! baby!

Not quite.

Every country, it seems, has their own different view of how childbirth and motherhood fits into their culture and how it is treated. Since I don’t have experience with most European countries and my husband is Finnish, let’s take a moment and compare how these two countries view pregnancy:

1. The Prenatal Vitamin:

In the US, women who aren’t pregnant but of are “childbearing age” are seen as pre-pregnant and are advised to take either a daily vitamin or a prenatal vitamin “just in case.” Prenatal vitamins are chock full of good things like folic acid to prevent spinal bifidia (probably spelled that wrong, but I’m not looking it up) and you’re expected to continue taking it throughout your pregnancy. The standard reasoning is “because no matter how good your diet is, you’re probably missing something.

In Finland, the advice is completely opposite. In the blog “From Start to Finnish,” which I discovered a few months ago, the mother there discusses how when she went to find out about prenatal vitamins, her caregiver told her not to worry; in Finland, mothers should get all they needed for a healthy pregnancy from their diet. The underlying assumption, it seems, is that Americans need the prenatal vitamin because we eat so unhealthily–all that soda, all that McDonalds. The one exception to this rule is probably Vitamin D–due to the lack of sunlight in Finland for 6 months of the year, everyone is strongly encouraged to take vitamin D supplements. If you don’t, no worries. Everything is fortified with it, anyway.

2. Social Benefits.

In the US, if you get knocked up and you’re poor, you get free medical care, free formula, and some money and food stamps to see you through for a certain period of time. If you get knocked up and you earn money, you don’t get anything. The end result is that we have a relatively high rate of teenage pregnancy (though could our abstinence only sex education also have a role to play in this?) because we’re subsidizing people who behave irresponsibly. Condom: $5, birth control pills: free from planned parenthood. Cost of raising a child you can’t afford: hundreds of thousands of dollars.

In Finland, everyone gets benefits! You get paid maternity leave. The government forces your company to let you have time off for your new baby, and then give you your old job back once you return to the workforce. The end result is that it’s a lot harder to get hired if you’re a female of childbearing age, especially if married, and it makes having a lot of employees really expensive in Finland (among other reasons), but it also makes having a child easier. You get a certain percentage of your pre-pregnancy income from a social welfare office, but don’t make the mistake of thinking it’s tax free–you’ll be taxed at the same rate as before you were pregnant. You also get free medical care (which is standard and why you have such high taxes). Additionally, every expectant mother gets the choice of 140 Euros to buy things for their baby (or booze, whichever) or the äityspakkaus, which is a box that contains “everything a baby will need for it’s first years,” including some diapers, clothes, rattles, breastfeeding manuals, and condoms so mommy and daddy won’t make the same mistake twice. The box it comes in has a mattress and is designed to be baby’s first bed.

3. Alcohol

In the US, the rule is none, whatsoever, absolutely not, no questions asked, okay fine, you can have that glass of wine but that’s IT. They’re really strict about it, and I think that has something to do with the fact that drinking has never been a big part of what American culture is about.

In Finland, the Finnish state-owned Liquor store published a pamphlet about drinking while pregnant and suggested that pregnant women limit their alcohol intake to no more than 10 drinks a week, and try not to take them all at the same time, mm’kay?

Of course, this is their alcohol company. I’m pretty sure that their midwives would have a different opinion.

4. Transportation:

In the US, pregnant women drive. I rarely see a heavily pregnant woman walking anywhere, or riding bikes, etc. I did see one working out at the gym a year ago, but that was different.

In Finland, it’s not uncommon to see a heavily pregnant woman riding a bike…in the snow. This is because car ownership in Finland is extremely expensive, with car taxes that can double the cost of your car, and that’s not including insuring it, buying gas, or anything else. That’s just BUYING the car. This puts owning more than one car out of reach for many Finnish families and in many cases, owning a car is out of the question. It’s public transportation, walking, riding your bike, or staying home.

Two more days and I’m headed off to good ol’ Wichita for a family visit and an early taste of Spring, which has considered visiting New Hampshire, but isn’t entirely sure if it it’s worth it. Our weather here ranges from high 30s to high 40s, going lower during the night. In Wichita, it’s in the upper 50s and upper 60s. Am I jealous? Completely.

So I’m heading out, and I can’t wait. My sister offered to give me some of her baby stuff and any of her maternity clothes that I can fit in and my mom has begun to gather the same stuff. Of course, I can’t take that much back with me, seeing as I’m not a pack mule and I’m flying, but it’s nice to know that if I were living in Wichita, I wouldn’t have to buy one damn thing. My sister and I will also go shopping for maternity clothes–I’m going to need some new pants, I have about 3 pairs that I can still fit in and only one pair I fit in without undoing the top button.  Having her come with me will ensure that I actually buy maternity clothes (instead of ending up in the nearest bookstore…) and that it looks good. So that should be fun.

Other than that, I’m doing fine. I had another prenatal appointment last week, where we discovered I had gained one pound (that was hardwork, too) and heard the heartbeat again. It was a lot easier to make out this time than last time, and was quite the relief to hear it. Pregnancy has turned out to be so boring and run of the mill that a lot of the time I seriously start doubting that I’m actually pregnant. I’m not showing. I don’t feel any baby. Aside from being disturbingly hungry ALL the time, I don’t feel that pregnant. Hearing the heartbeat is like getting a monthly confirmation that yes, I am pregnant and no, I’m not making it up.

We’ve only bought one thing for the baby so far, our sling. I got it from Didymos, a German company, and it was extremely expensive because it’s all eco-wool, weaved in Germany, etc.  That sort of thing annoys me, but I bought it because their slings look way better than most American ones I’ve seen with no garish flower prints and you can tie it in a variety of ways. Besides, it came with a little packet filled with testimonies from all sorts of Prof. Drs. and Prof. Dr. Meds. and so on and so forth. You can tell it’s a German company when instead of testimonies from customers, they give you testimonies from experts. Why would you trust some dumbass customer?

My sister thought I was dumb to order it so soon, since I’m not having a baby for months, but it’s a good thing I did because it’s going to take me a while to learn how to tie it. It’s extremely LONG and has an excess of fabric, making me thing maybe I should have gone for a size 5 instead of a size 6, but whatever. I’ll just have to get creative and deal with it.

When I was filing for my husband’s visa, I had a rough time emotionally. I was worried constantly that I might make an error on one of the forms that would give us an RFE (Request for Evidence, if you’ve forgotten), that our paperwork would get lost somewhere, that they would decide that we were lying and reject the application outright. But at the same time, I knew that these things happen fairly rarely, that most people do manage to get their spouse visas and have a happy end. I never really feared that I would go to jail, or would get fined tremendously, or anything absolutely horrible would happen based on those applications.

Fast forward to last  September when I accepted a position as Treasurer for New Hampshire Coalition for Common Sense Marijuana Policy. Part of this position involves filing for Non-profit status with the wonderful Internal Revenue Service. I figured, hey, piece of cake. I filed for a visa with the USCIS and got it without making a single mistake, filing for non-profit status with the IRS can’t be much worse, can it?

Oh, sweet naivete…

I never realized before just how far reaching and how personally the IRS digs into things. It’s downright creepy. Personal tax returns are bad enough. It’s bad enough that no matter where in the world you live, you must pay taxes on all your income both inside and outside the US if you are a US Permanent resident, or if you’re a business that performs any business inside the US. My husband’s welcome packet to the US spent most of its time explaining this to him and letting him know that until he renounced his permanent residency, his ass belonged to the IRS (so to speak…). No other country in the world does this!

Then there’s going through and trying to figure out what the heck the IRS means by everything. First I thought I had to fill out a Form 1023, but after a couple of months of trying to figure out why the heck that form didn’t jive with the form I already had, I realized that Form 1023 was only for 501c(3) companies and we were filing for 501c(4) (which would allow us to lobby for legislative changes, which we want to do). Oh, that makes things so much easier. The problem is that while there is ample help for filling out Form 1023 online, there are no similar websites for Form 1024. Form 1024 is a lot more complicated than Form 1023. The good news is that most of it you can ignore based on what kind of 501c(4) company you’re filing for. The bad news is that it takes a while to realize you can ignore these. My life got a whole lot easier once I realized that the IRS had actually published instructions for this form. Then it got harder when I found out that the questions I had regarding it weren’t actually addressed by the instructions. Curse you, IRS!

Then it gets more complicated. Since I procrastinated, I realized late March that tax season was upon us and I should probably look into filing taxes or finding out what kind of taxes I had to file on behalf of our organization, which is currently organized as a state non-profit corporation, but until we get non-profit status from the IRS, means pretty much zilch. Or so I thought. So I went through various corporate forms and found one that looked like the one I had to fill out.

And that’s when I decided that I am never, ever, ever starting my own business. Unless, of course, I can afford my own accountant to go with it. That form made almost no sense to me. Fortunately, our finances are made very simple by the fact we don’t have a lot of money. However, I still had no idea how to figure Cost of Goods Sold when we weren’t selling anything. I also had no idea where the schedule was that I needed to find and fill out in order to deduct business and start up expenses and that sort of thing.

And then I found out that these taxes were supposed to be filed by “The 15th Day of the 3rd Month after your accounting period ends.” Well, shit! Our accounting period ends December 31. That would mean March 15. We were late, I realized. Delinquent! Tax evaders! Evil doers! Federal IRS agents could be banging down our doors any minute! We were totally screwed. Yea, I went into full-blown panic mode. I found I could file for an extension, but that these were (according to the IRS) “usually filed by the day taxes were due.” Well, fuck. The Executive Director of our org gave me a lawyer’s number to call and arrange an appointment with him to figure this whole mess out and I kept looking online for advice on filing taxes while you’re really a non-profit and just haven’t quite gotten around to filing the form to get non-profit status.

And then I found a paragraph posted on some website that had taken it direct from the IRS. I don’t have it in front of me now, but it basically stated that upon notifying the IRS that we intend to have non-profit status, we would have exempt status (or our taxes would be considered exempt) for the 15 months previous, but if we didn’t notify the IRS of our intent, our asses would be theirs. You notify them by filing the Form 1023 or 1024. Yay! We were saved! All I had to do was file our Form 1024 and then file the form that non-profits have to file each year with the government and let them know that our application was pending and we would be, to use New England parlance, “all set.”

So, I’m putting the final touches on our application together. And it will, hopefully, be mailed out this Friday. And then we wait for a couple of months until the adjudicate it. And then, hopefully, we party when it’s approved.

It’s been fairly pleasant in New Hampshire the last couple of days: Wednesday was sunny, 58 and would have been a beautiful day if it hadn’t been for the extremely strong wind. Thursday was the same, with no wind and life was great. Customers coming into our store would remark on the beautiful weather and how more would be coming, it was only just the beginning. The general consensus was “Spring is here, at last!”

And then I woke up this morning to get a snack and saw big, fluffy snowflakes coming down. Noooooooooooooooo!

The snow had just melted in our backyard and off the deck! And there it is, again! This isn’t fair, dammit! When are we going to get our chance at Spring?

For those of you thinking of moving to the Granite State, I’ll just let you know that this is by no means unusual. It snowed last year mid-April (then again, it snowed last year, mid-April in TEXAS, so bear that in mind). I’m pretty damn sure it snows every year here in April, but no native seems willing to admit that, though they will say they used to hunt Easter eggs in the snow when they were kids, and their kids do, too.

Sigh. Spring can’t be too much farther away…can it?

Nationally, Edys and Breyers Ice Cream have  decreased the size of their ice cream containers from 56oz to 48oz (1.75Qt to 1.5). Look next time you’re at the grocery store*. The price, naturally, is the same.

*they’re also selling through the larger ones first, so if you’re quick, you can still get the larger containers!

One of the great things about living in New Hampshire is its proximity to foreign lands–Canada, a maximum four hours away, readily available to anyone who has a passport. Despite the fact that I’ve lived up here for a year and a half, I had yet to take the time to go up there and pay our northern neighbors a visit. Last week, I noted to Lasse that I had two days off in a row, wouldn’t it be fun to go on an impromtu road trip?

“Yeah! We can finally go to Vermont,” he said enthusiastically.

Vermont? There wasn’t anything in Vermont worth seeing, I thought. “How about Canada? We can drive through Vermont to Canada. Besides, then we can find out if their coke has high fructose corn syrup in it or not.” Avoiding high fructose corn syrup has become a bit of an obsession with my husband. He absolutely loathes the fact that you find it in damn near everything in the US. It’s in the soda. It’s in the ketchup, it’s in the candy, all because of our subsidies to the corn industry and our tariffs on “foreign sugar”.
Lasse hesitated. “Isn’t that 8 hours away?”

“To Toronto, maybe, but Montreal is only like 4 or 5 hours away, depending.”

That settled it, we’d go to Montreal. We printed out directions from mapquest, loaded up our Vermont/New Hampshire/Maine map (which conveniently has the southern part of Canada on it as well) and left last Saturday, around 8am.

Our first pit stop was in Hillsborough, NH, to visit German John’s Bakery, the only place in New Hampshire where it’s possible to get German bread. We aimed to arrive there around 9:30 when it opened, buy a selection of bread, cheese and wurst to serve as provisions on our trip. We got there at 9 and walked around the town a bit, taking pictures by the Coontoocook River, which was bursting at its seems from snow run off and rain.

When the bakery opened, we learned to our dismay that there wouldn’t be any bread available until 11:00, at least, due to the amount of bread the baker was baking. Just so you know, a REAL German bakery would have started baking at 1am, and there would have been a ton of fresh bread available at 6:30 in the morning. There were some Brötchen available, however, and we bought one of each kind, much to their surprise. It made 7 in all. True to form, I didn’t take pictures of the bakery or the Brötchen. Sigh. I suck when it comes to picture taking.

We continued our journey after this and headed straight for Vermont. Vermont is about what you would expect. That is, it’s a lot like New Hampshire, except it’s more sparsely populated and, suprisingly enough, has fewer trees. There were places where the land was so clear I felt like I could have been back in Kansas. You could see for miles in some place: such clear land! The towns we passed through were small collections of buildings, surrounding a central church, nestled among the Green Mountains, giving Lasse and me flashbacks to southern Germany and Austria. It had that exact same flair to it.

We thought about stopping in Montpelier, being that it’s the capitol, but upon seeing the typical collection of buildings and nothing really of note, kept going. Burlington seems to be THE major urban center in Vermont, and we drove through there, too, and it was the only place we saw that actually had a city feeling to it and even then it was more like a large town.

From there we went straight up north to St. Albans, where we pulled off the Interstate and proceeded to drive around. What were we looking for in such a small town a stone’s throw away from Canada? Why, the Vermont Service Center, of couse. I really wanted to see the place where our I-130 had sat for so long and where all of this stuff we have to do in the future (filing for removal of conditions, filing for citizenship, etc) will take place. Alas, we couldn’t find it. I rather expected to see signs saying “Vermont Service Center,” this way! But nothing. I probably should have looked up the address before hand.

We did, however, find memorials to the great Civil War Battle of St. Albans, in which Confederate Soldiers snuck over the border and robbed a bank. I’d show you a picture of it, but we never actually stopped driving and my husband was in charge of the camera, so most good shots we could have had we missed due to the fact the shots were standing still and we were going at 35 miles an hour (the pictures we took from the interstate we were going 65, so they’re even worse).

The Canadian border was about 12 miles away at that point and we gave up our search and got back on the Interstate, finally seeing signs that ticked off the miles to the Canadian border. Then finally, the border station. Lasse was supposed to have taken pictures of it, but I can’t find any and now wonder if he really didn’t. I wanted pictures because 1) I’ve never crossed a land border before and 2) Why the hell not? He didn’t want to take pictures because 1) They usually don’t like people taking pictures of such things and 2) He’s afraid of getting in trouble. As it stands, there were no signs prohibiting picture taking and I see no way they could have found out if people took pictures or not.

The border itself was fairly deserted. I had expected more people crossing, but I guess 1pm on a Saturday isn’t prime border crossing time. There was one car in front of us and a few behind. That was it. We pulled up to the place where we had to stop and waited to be signaled forward. We held our passports at the ready and were finally waved forward by the Canadian in the box.

I remember reading an article in National Geographic when I was a kid about the Canadian-American Border being the longest undefended border in the world and how it was a border of friendship, etc. and how people regularly went from one side to another, no problems, happy, happy, love, hippies, etc. My own family shares in that history. My maternal grandmother lived on a farm in Alberta, but was American because she was born on that side of the border and later moved to California. My maternal great-grandmother, however, was Canadian, though she, too, spent the later years of her life in the US.

While all of this about the Canadian-American border may have been true at one point in time, it most certainly isn’t now. Now you need passports to get from one side to the other–a birth certificate or driver’s license isn’t enough. Furthermore, the Canadians themselves have turned into hard-asses.

We handed our passports to him through the window and waited. “Where are you headed?” “Montreal.” “Purpose of trip?” “To see Canada.” He looked at us, perhaps wearily. “How long are you staying?” “Just today.” Another look. “Where are you coming from?” “New Hampshire.” Pause. “You drove ALL the way from New Hampshire to go to Canada for a DAY?” I stared at him, wondering if I should point out that New Hampshire is RIGHT. OVER. THERE. And that I knew a ton of people who went to Canada for a day. Why not? It’s RIGHT. THERE. North of us, looking rather inviting as a foreign country and all. “Well, yeah, we wanted to visit Canada and I had today off, so we figured why not?”

That turned his attention to my job. “What do you do?” “I work retail.” He then turned his attention to my husband. “What’s your status in the US?” “Immigrant.” The dude in the box frowned. I sighed. “Permanent resident. Honey, give him your card.” I should note to any new immigrants to the US that leaving the US before you get your Green Card would be a Bad Idea. Despite the fact the visa was in his passport, Dumb-Dumb the Border Guard didn’t bother looking for it. He wanted to see the Actual Green Card. We handed it over, and the questions continued. “How do you know each other.” We answered at once, “We’re married.” No, he’s actually my pimp, and we’re crossing into Canada so as to internationalize our prostitution ring. The fact that our surnames are the same on our passports is just a fancy trick to distract you. Ha ha!
“What do you plan on doing in Canada?” “I don’t know; sight seeing, shopping?” “Do you plan on leaving anything behind in Canada?” I had planned to empty our trash bag there before we headed home, but after that, decided maybe I’d take it all back with us. “No…” “Is this your car?” “Of course.” He then wanted to see what routes we would be taking to Montreal and we had to dig out our mapquest directions, which I proceeded to read allowed in a confused fashion. A few more moments of silence and then he handed our passports and Green Card back to us and sent us on our way. We were both of us a bit disillusioned. The only other time I’d had such difficulty getting across a border was in Iceland and even that experience wasn’t nearly as bad as this one. Lasse had never had such an experience. Usually people see a Finnish passport and just let him through. Everyone knows Finns are harmless. But apparently a Finn crossing over to Canada from the US with an American driving the car makes him a threat to national security. As an American, I’m beginning to get the feeling I should expect more of the same treatment no matter where I go abroad.

We then drove off into Canada, and everything turned to French. The first few signs were in French and English, the first one told us that radar detectors were prohibited and the second that the speed limit was posted in Kilometers, not miles, and the speed limit was 90km, about 45mi. After that, it was French and nothing but French.

I know that Quebec is the French speaking province of Canada, but I had no idea they took it so far. In Finland, the areas with Swedish speaking populations still have signs with both languages–they do censuses to see how many Swedish-speakers there are compared to Finnish-speakers and then post the signs accordingly. If there are more Swedish-speakers, Swedish goes first and Finnish second. If there are more Finnish-speakers, the opposite occurs. It’s all an exercise in futility though as Swedish speakers still speak both languages.

Not so in Quebec. Their independence movement is a lot stronger and, since visiting, I’m quite surprised they’re still part of Canada. Each of the towns we drove through was named after a St. Somebody with a French Name and I found driving in French so intimidating that the first major town we came upon (which turned out to be St. Luc, not Ibardsville–or whatever–as I had thought), we pulled off and went int search of a bathroom, bank, and shopping center. Bank was the easiest to find and I took out $40C and then we went to a Burger King where Lasse ordered a burger. In English. Afterwards, he expressed his amazement at her English. “It was so POOR! I expected there to be an accent, but she couldn’t even find the right words to speak English! It sounded horrible! I thought they would be more bilingual than that!”

Then we drove around the town some more, noting that in Quebec, traffic lights are horizontal, not vertical. I would show you a picture, but in our nervousness of driving in Canadian street traffic, we forgot to take a single one. basically the lights go like this:

red-yellow-green-yellow-green.

It’s bizarre and I was always glad not to be in the front of a traffic queue; I would have had no idea how to proceed.

We found a grocery store a little while later and, yes, it was entirely in French. Avacados, I should mention, are extremely cheap in Canada: $1.99 for a bag of 5. They’re that much for a single one in New Hampshire. Strawberries are also rather cheap. I was tempted to buy some, but decided not to, which turned out to be a good thing: you have to declare all fruits and vegetables you are bringing over to the US at the border. Instead, we wandered around, looking for the soda aisle.

Finding out if Canadian coke has high fructose corn syrup in it is a bit of a challenge. They don’t label their bottles as having sugar or high fructose corn syrup in them. Instead, they merely put glucose/fructose on the bottle, which basically means it could be one or the other and they’re going to lable it vaguely to cover their asses, just in case. We also found some swiss cake rolls (an off brand, not Little Debbie) made with sugar, some candy and to our amazement, ketchup made with real sugar! Who would have thought? It’s damn near impossible to find in the US–even in “natural” food stores they tend to use high fructose corn syrup.

At first, we bought only small bottle of coke, to try. Lasse opened the bottle slowly in the car and the smell of coke filled the air. He laughed, “I think it’s sugar–I can smell the sugar!” He tasted it, slowly. “I think it’s sugar–it’s hard to tell, drinking it from a bottle, I’d have to pour it into a cup to be sure.”

“Give me a sip.” Since getting pregnant, I haven’t had any soda at all–it tastes cloyingly sweet to me and I always end up thinking how much better water would taste and drinking that instead. But I took the coke and drank some. It fizzled nicely on my tongue and left no horrid after taste as high fructose corn syrup would. “It’s sugar. Want to get more?”

Lasse hesitated. “I don’t know.”

“Oh, come on, it’s a lot cheaper here than getting Mexican Coke in New Hampshire. Besides, we drove all this way!”

“Alright, Alright, we’ll get a few more bottles.”

In the end, we bought 3 1.5L bottles of Coke and realized that they all have a 5 cent deposit on them. “We’ll have to bring them back next time we came,” I teased Lasse.

“Oh, yeah, because drivivng 8 hours to return 3 bottles will definitely save the environment,” he complained. Our lack of a deposit is one of the things Lasse really likes about New Hampshire.

After that, I pulled into a gas station and bought about 8 or 9 liters of gas at $1.27C. It wasn’t much, but it would be enough to get us back to New Hampshire, I hoped and I wasn’t entirely sure how gas prices would be in Quebec compared to NH. I think I paid about $4 a gallon, roughly.

After that, we debated continuing on to Montreal, but noted that Montreal drivers were crazy and that it was already 3pm. We decided to head back to the US.

Going into the US was an interesting experience, too. Creepier than the Canadian one, as soon as we pulled up to the border, they took a picture of our car. “They took a picture of us!” I cried. “I know!” Lasse answered. How freaky is that? If your paranoid, or trying to live off grid, don’t go to Canada. That border is creepy.

The border guard was decked out in a Homeland Security uniform and gave me Orwellian chills. He himself was friendly, in marked contrast to his Canadian counterpart. He asked where we were from, I said New Hampshire. He asked where we were headed, I said back to New Hamsphire. He asked what the purpose of our trip was. About this time, 5 border guards exited the booth and stood there buy the car. We stared at the them. What the heck? From the conversation we heard, they were Border Guards in Training. I immediately began to worry we would be used as a training exercise and they would search our car. Ugh, talk about aggravating. They didn’t, though, and headed off elsewhere to continue their training while I contemplated how low you have to sink to want to be a border guard for a living, especially working for the Department of Homeland Security.

I answered the border guard’s question, explaining to him that we wanted to see Canada and find out if they had high fructose corn syrup in their soda or not. “Do they?” He seemed to find this quest amusing. “No, at least it doesn’t seem like they do.” I explained the problem with the labeling. He asked us if we brought anything else back. “Just other stuff without high fructose corn syrup.” “Any alcohol?” Alcohol? Who cares about Alcohol? “No.” “What’s in those bags?” I frowned, and turned to look in the back seat, where two brown paper bags were. “Oh, that’s bread we brought from home for the trip.” The German bread, to be precise. He then turned his attention to my husband. “Where are you from?” “New Hampshire,” Lasse replied. Obviously, this answer wasn’t good enough, and we handed over the Green Card. “That’s what I was looking for,” the guard said with a smile and ran the Green Card through the reader thingy. After determining that Lasse was not an illegal immigrant and was no being smuggled over the border, he let us go and we were on our way back to NH.

While the trip was fun on the whole, it made me feel a bit depressed. How more to feel caged in than living near a border and trying to see the other side? Both sides like to make it feel like the human desire to wander is some sort of crime and the general attitude I get is “how dare you want to leave? Aren’t there enough places for you to visit in your own country?” I don’t remember this attitude before September 11, but then again, my travels were limited before then. But now they’re building the border fence near Mexico and apparently one Senator has suggested building a similar border along the Canadian one. What are we so afraid of that we have to fence ourselves in from the rest of the world?

We had our ultrasound last week and finally, after weeks and weeks of waiting, got to find out what we were having.

And it’s a boy.

I’m a bit relieved about that, though Lasse and I had wanted a girl (he because he thought girls would be easier to raise, I because my family’s only had boys so far), because I have a lot more experience with boys. I’ve helped raise them before. Besides what would I do if I got a really girly girl? I’d probably go insane. Lasse had a bit more trouble coming to terms with it and for about three days afterwards would sit there going “So…we’re having a boy…” but he’s better now. And it helps that he, too, has gotten to feel him kick.

In any case, the odds of us getting a girl were slim, not only because more boys are born than girls, but also because we’re liberty-minded folk. I’ve noticed that most families I see that are liberty-minded tend to have boys; any girls that pop up can easily be described as flukes. Then again, I do know some that have more boys that girls or even all girls. Perhaps I should really be reconsidering whether they’re really liberty-minded or are just faking it ;).
We also learned at the ultrasound that our baby does have only one head, the heart is in fact four chambered (good–no amphibian), and that everything looks normal. Hooray! It was such a relief for me to get to see the baby and get confirmation that it really is there (though the movements and serious kicks I’d started feeling a while before then should have been confirmation enough. And it was more of a relief that everything had gone right during his formation. I’m not really worried so much about genetic diseases affecting our children because 1) Neither Lasse’s family nor my family have histories of genetic diseases and 2) we’re both young, which cuts out a lot of the risk. Mainly what concerned me are the random screw ups that happen randomly across a population. Like a baby being born without a brain, for example. That’s completely random. Sometimes it just happens and there’s nothing you can do to stop that. Sure, it is rare, but you have exactly the same odds as everyone else when it comes to “will it happen to me?” But that wasn’t the case for us, and both of us are really relieved.
The technician also confirmed that our baby is really, really active. When I first started feeling him, it was generally in the evening when I’d be sitting down or reclining in bed. Now I feel him moving pretty much all the time. When I get up and eat, when I’m just sitting there reading, when I’m standing still, etc. etc. Considering the fact that Lasse was diagnosed with ADHD, we’re thining of starting our kid on it in utero…you know, just in case ;).  Fine, fine, I’m kidding…but we’re definitely going to invest in a leash for the little sucker when he gets older…I get the feeling the only reason he’s still in utero is because he hasn’t quite figured out where the exit is. And that development he has to finish, too.

We don’t have to worry about him getting bored in there, though, because luckily he’s found his first toy: his penis. Ah yes, more confirmation it’s definitely a boy! It took the technician a while to finally be able to confirm his gender because his hand was jammed between his legs and he took the longest time to move it.
The good thing is that there’s no doubt on this topic: we’re not going to think we’re having a boy and then end up having a girl, so we can safely start looking into names and start fighting that out.

We’re approaching the sixth month of Lasse being in the US, he’s still unemployed, and the clock is ticking. Not the baby clock–we’re fine on that one. It’s more the “Family is coming to visit in 3 weeks and we don’t have our own apartment yet because we don’t know where we’ll be living” clock. Gah!

The good news is that he has employment possibilities. There are about three positions that look promising at the moment. The first one he did a phone interview way back in March for, but the company appears to be moving at the rate of frozen molasses when it comes to actually hiring someone. They’re a non-profit and get a lot of funding from New England state governments, so I guess that explains that. They’re located in Concord or will be. The second one is an econ job also located in Concord that definitely plans to have someone hired by early June. Lasse hasn’t had an interview with them yet, but when he called up there Monday before last they recognized his name, said that his resume was good enough and they had forwarded it to their hiring staff. They then asked him to submit some examples of his economic writing, which he did and they told him he would hear from them “in the next few weeks.” Hopefully for an interview, because he would be absolutely perfect for this job.

Then last week he got an interview for a job that came out of the blue and the company was absolutely eager to interview him and wanted to set up an interview THE VERY NEXT DAY. So, Lasse went there without much time to prepare and came home absolutely embarrassed and said it didn’t go so well. I think it went better than he thought it did, but I still don’t think he’ll get this job. He applied for it with a bachelor’s degree and left off his two masters but then told them in the interview he had two master’s…way more than they wanted and they immediately concluded he would get bored doing that job. It’s located in Merrimack.

This week he got a call and did a phone interview with a company located in Lebanon, NH and he feels that that interview went extremely well. It’s for a market analyst position and the really great thing about this job is that not only does it pay well, but they’re also willing to pay to relocate the right person AND they have an apartment set up for this person. Whoa, right? Hopefully his interview went as well as he thought and he’ll get another one. The lady said he should hear from them by next Friday. So…we’re waiting. Again. For another position.

It’s the waiting, really, that’s the worst. The fact that we’re finally getting all these leads is great, but the fact that they’re all coming now when we have 3 weeks time to actually get something settled and all of them involve someone contacting us in the “next few weeks” is positively nerve-wracking.

The sad thing is that every time my husband gets an interview or something positive happens in his job hunt, he gets really happy and excited because surely it won’t be long now! We’re going to know where we’re going to live! We’ll have his income! Things will be settled! Horray! And then…nothing…happens…and he slowly descends into a semi-depressive “I’m never going to get a job, everyone else finds a job faster than I do, you’re not  going to be able to work much longer, we’re not going to have an income, we’re going to eat up our savings, and once that’s gone we’ll just be poor, and living on the streets.” Seriously. He was like this in the morning before he got the call from the company in Lebanon. I looked at him and said “How long do you think you’re going to be unemployed??” “I don’t know! 3 more months? 6 months? A year? Two years!” And then he got that call and was on friggin’ cloud nine the rest of the day while I spent half of the rest of the remaining time brooding over the fact that I’m the pregnant one, and his mood swings are worse than mine.

In any case, hopefully he’ll get the econ job in Concord or the analyst job in Lebanon. The econ job would be great because it would be in Concord, would be in economics and would hopefully enable Lasse to launch a career as an economist. The Lebanon job would be great because it pays well (t’s, oddly enough, the only job that has mentioned what its pay rate is…the rest don’t even bother), they would pay for relocation and apparently have an apartment lined up. The downside is that it’s in Lebanon and if you’re not familiar with New Hampshire, let me show you why:

Lebanon is 1.5 hours from Manchester. I currently live 30 minutes away from my job. No big deal: he could always move to Lebanon while I finish up the last few weeks at my job. The bigger problem is the midwife. It’s 91 miles away…almost 2 hours driving time. Hmmmm. Guess we’ll have to see about that one…

In any case, I hope he gets one of these jobs…and soon. Maybe I should start a pool? “When will Lasse get a job…and where?”

Alright, so since this blog is rather messed up (you know, the whole issue it has with not actually showing the most recent post and instead either showing the very first one from two months ago), I’ve decided to move my blog hosting. It also helps that miy blog is currently being hosted on my husband’s site in Finland and he wants to stop paying for it and as my blog is the main thing on there that is still actively updated, it needs to go. This should be up for a while longer until we figure out how to import all the files into my new blog, but after that, it’ll be gone.

The new blog website is at: geistdesfritz.wordpress.com

Or you can just click here 

I haven’t actually posted anythign there yet, but I will probably copy over the post I posted here today, tomorrow, and then go from there.

Toodles.