Sometimes you get what you need

Sturt Desert Peas - different species from the ones with black centres seen in Karratha

Rock lobster heads

These flowers smell just like grape popsicles - such a strong scent we can smell them with the windows up!

I was having a bit of a “poor me” episode about a week ago, brought on by sweltering on a beach for a couple of hours watching Eric surf.  Usually while he surfs, I get in my hour to an hour and a half of walking that I try to do most days, but it was just too stinking hot.  I hiked to the top of a big sand dune where I had a bit of mobile reception and attempted to call my sisters, but they were both engaged. There was a bit of shade on the edge of the dunes, but as soon as I sat down there, I was attacked by a swarm of mosquitos.  Given that mozzies in this area carry encephalitis that eats your brain on a good day or kills you on a bad one, that didn’t seem like a great option.  By the time Eric came out of the water, his telling me how awesome the surf conditions were pushed me over the edge into tears.

It’s not that I don’t want him to have a good time, or that I don’t want to be pregnant, but sometimes I wish he could carry the baby for a few hours while I go surfing…or do anything besides go for another freaking walk.  To be fair, 98% of the time I feel really lucky that I get to be the one who is pregnant.  I mean, feeling this little Sea Monkey kicking around in there is just amazing, and I'm fascinated reading about all the things that are going on in there.  Really, I think I was just feeling isolated, because as much as I love Eric, I need some girl talk now and again, and not with the 60+ crowd at happy hour.  In particular, I think I wanted to talk to someone in the same situation and hear that it’s normal to be apprehensive about what life is going to be like in a few months.

Being an engineer, beyond being supportive as he has been throughout this pregnancy, Eric immediately went into problem solving mode.  Fortunately, through our conversation, he realised that the best solution might just be a nice lunch at Whalers in town with a cheeky glass of refreshing white wine.  After we followed that up with a cookies and cream smoothie, I was most of the way back to sanity.

Although I don’t view food as an inappropriate coping mechanism, an even better solution dropped into my lap a couple of days later at happy hour.  Another couple our age from Melbourne rocked up who are a month ahead of us on the baby calendar with a little girl.  Not only that, but he lived in Denver for a time, and she lived in San Diego, although they are English and French respectively.  AND he is an engineer with a love for beat up old cars, and she is completing her post-doc in the social sciences.  Freaky really.

We spent the next couple of days sharing meals, snorkelling adventures, and sunsets on the beach, which was all lovely, but peripheral to the good conversation.  In particular, having a chance to hear the similarity of concerns for what this whole baby thing is going to mean was like pulling out a plug of black tar that let me breathe more freely.  They were only here a few days, but by the time they left, it felt like a weight had been lifted and I could get back to enjoying our lazy days instead of letting the anxiety gnaw at the back of my brain.  It was really like a nice, totally unexpected gift from the universe.

We’ve been so lazy in fact that I have nothing else to report for the last week or so.  I’m trying an experiment where I don’t eat any desserts except fruit or tea just to see if I can, but so far that hasn’t been sufficiently difficult to be interesting.   We just try to enjoy each day of reading for hours, punctuated by a walk or a snorkel or a bike ride and capped off with happy hour each evening.  It’s going to be strange in a week or so to hit the road again, although even then our major stressor is just finding a spot to camp for the night.