Thursday 19 July 2012

The things I miss the most

With just six more weeks of pregnancy left, I am definintely looking forward to no longer being a two-in-one person. There are some things that I have truly, truly missed during the past eight months. The way you miss things when you just want them to go back to the way the were. Of course, I'm worred that they never will - especially since the things I miss are:

1. My body

There are several large breeds of dogs that weigh less than I do. One of these is an exotic type of mastiff, known for its heavy musculature and massive head. In a nutshell, this is no poodle - yet put it opposite me on a seesaw and it will hover in mid air for several minutes.

This kind of bulk comes with its own misfortunes. Last night, I was trapped in my own car, in my own driveway, for several minutes. There is a special kind of claustrophobic hell that comes from knowing that the door to your warm, happy home is but two seconds away - but that you cannot access it. The thing is, my driveway is very narrow. I am not. When I opened the driver's side door, I realised that it simply would not be possible to slilnkily squeeze my way between my car and the neighbour's wall. Of course, I tried to suck my stomach in - or, maybe I didn't - since I no longer have stomach muscles, it's hard to tell. I even contemplated doing a parachute jump of sorts, standing on the seat ledge and preparing to propel myself forward. 'Propel' is simply a word that cannot be used in relation to pregnancy, and the result was that I just felt more panicked and trapped as I stood just 15cm above the ground, wondering how I would reach it. So, I thought I would try exit out the passenger side. Crossing over the gearstick to the next seat was an operation lasting almost a minute, during which I did things with my legs that would make a double-jointed porn star envious. Sadly, my efforts were in vain - the gap between my car and the house wall was even smaller on this side. At that moment, I felt true empathy for those peopel who were recently trapped by the Cape snows.

Of course, there are some parts of my body that I miss more than others. My small boobs, for a start. For a girl who hardly ever used to wear a bra, the sensation of having gigantic breasts resting on your stomach is a strange one. I'm particularly aware of it at night. So, I have developed a routine: after putting on my pyjama top, I have taken to fashioning my top into a small fabric shelf to swaddle my boobs in an effort to minimise the skin on skin contact.

And my bum. Now, I have never had a nice bum - or bums, should I say, since I appear to have been blessed with two of them. The first is your standard, common-or-garden variety bum. But underneath it is a little bum of its own, made entirely of fat and cellulite. It's not a great look, especially from profile, where the afore-mentioned cellulite stands out in liquid waves so that it looks for all the world like I have a lava lamp attached to my backside. Sound disconcerting? It was. Nonetheless, it was still a defineable bum, which is more than I can say for what is happening behind me now. I appear to have morphed into a giant human Tetris block - a large, lumpy square.

2. Freedom of movement
My husband's favourite game at the moment is 'beetle', a form of cow tipping. He waits for me to be sitting upright (usually on the bed, where I have to take rests between applying my stretch mark cream and putting on my pyjamas. This is, in itself, a major production, which involves me having to lean against the wall for support). He then gently prods me and watches as I fall over, and for several seconds more as I try to right myself.

Bathing is another activity that has become compromised. I have taken to having loooooong baths, not because I love them but because I can't get out without a show of Herculean strength as I have myself out of the water, usually with 'wooooooooooof' sound more commonly associated with arcade game characters that have just been punched in the stomach.

Sadly for me, just as my agility leaves, my clumsiness ratches a notch. I think this is because my hands are very swollen. To be honest, it's kind of hard to tell. Hand modelling was never in my future; my fingers appear to have stopped growing when I was 10, and when I say they are not slender, my point is best illustrated by an awkward moment when my husband was proposing and realised that he was hurting me a little as he tried to screw the reluctant ring onto my pudgy finger. Nonetheless, I think that swelling is the only reason there can be for me dropping nearly everything I pick up. Of course, things that have been dropped must be retrieved. In the past, this would have involved a simple little forward fold. Now, I have to brace myself, planting my feet in a perfectly turned out second position and bending down in a way that forces my bum far out, so that I bear an uncanny resemblance to someone who really wanted to be a ballerina, realised that she did not have the poise for pirouettes, and more sensibly took up sumo instead - but can't bring herself to let go of the illusion of grace.

3. Driving
Of course I can still drive. The thing is, though, that without my core muscles, I find it really difficult to turn and check blind spots. As a result, I have gently tapped two pedestrians in the past month. Please note that I say gently tapped and not run over. For the most part, they were very understanding - except for the first one who, to be honest, I felt could have been a little more sympathetic as he was a car guard and a gentle bumper bashing is surely as much an occupational hazard for him as paper cuts are for me.

4. My skin
I think it is very important for women who have never been pregnant before to know that it is not just your stomach that grows. Everything on your skin does, too. For example, I have a mole on my back that used to be a freckle - now it feels like I have a raisin or a dead fly stuffed down my shirt. Nice. Also, I am covered in skin tags, making me look like human velcro. Oh, and a rash of pimples has cropped up on my face. Most of these are along my hairline and, disgustingly, I have developed an obsession with monitoring their progress, so that I am constantly rubbing my head like an obssessive-compulsive ape after a shot of Red Bull. Also, my nose has gone from being unremarkable to a major landmark on my face. As part of this, the skin around it has developed a striking resemblance to tenderised steak - red and raw. Yup, I'm one pretty gal.

5. Food
Don't get me wrong - I eat. And eat. And eat. One doesn't put on 28kg from laughing at the fridge as you stride merrily past it on the way to your Pilates class, after all. Plus, I have managed to widen my horizons and find a deep love for foodstuffs I would never previously have contemplated; for example, it's not uncommon to find me sitting at my desk chugging from a two-litre bottle of milk the way an athlete who has just finished the Comrades would drain an Energade. But there are things from the pre-pregnancy days that I really do miss: that second cup of coffee, the one that gives you a tiny kick in the stomach. The salty, silky taste of blue cheese gnocchi. The 'pow' in your mouth that only salmon, soy sauce and wasabi can deliver.

This is why I have several 'new life' resolutions for when I am no longer pregnant: Whenever I see someone whose shoelaces are untied, I will bend to do them up, then bow deep and low when they say thank you, then triple check the blind spots in my car as I scoot off to have a meal of deep fried camembert.

Monday 9 July 2012

Fashion Man

I am the very first person to admit that I am sartorially challenged. My weird ways with clothes stretch back to my childhood, when my sister persuaded me to wear a skirt with an elasticised waist around my neck so that I could look exactly like a seal in a circus - and come on, who doesn't doesn't think that's a suave and enviable image?

It's not as if things improved as I grew older. The first time I was asked to a high school dance, I asked my mom to sew me what I now call 'the Victorian milkmaid slut' outfit - Victorian, because I insisted on teaming my dress - a black tube adorned with a giant white bow across the decolletage (and before you get too judgey, remember this was the 90s) - with elbow length gloves. Slutty, because the tube was stretched to its full capacity against my podgy 14-year-old frame and ended well above my knees (which were, I must mention, kitted out in sheer tights in 'Blackmail' - another contradictory touch, as this was the colour, somwhere between a daring black and a frumpy grey, favoured by middle aged women the world over as they yearned to go back to their more femme fatale years but didn't quite have the courage to dress the part). I daresay the outfit wouldn't have been too bad, were it not for those gloves - or perhaps the fact that the entire ensemble was made from taffeta, a fabric I will forever associate with Scarlett O' Hara but which at the time I loved because of the swishing, sea-like sounds it made every time I moved. Of course, now I realise the outfit's audible component was its very worst fault. The finishing touch was my hair - it being the 90s, I of course had to have an updo, complete with romantic escpaing tendrils. Sadly, my overzealous hairdresser left the curlers in my hair too long and the effect was rather less, "Oh look, you've just caught me with my locks tumbling loose after a day of picking wild meadow flowers" and rather more as if I had attached some Goldilocks pot scourers to each temple.

And then came university. The 90s was a forgiving time for fashion - you could stick on a crusty flannel shirt and be lauded as a grunge icon - ditto if you decided not to wash off your mascara for three nights running. I'm not saying that it was a particularly pretty time. Remember Buffaloes, for instance? Clearly, this was an era where 'elegance' was a dirty word. But, while my varsity friends embraced the excuse this gave them to wear whatever, whenever, I for some reason went all corporate. There I was, at South Africa's most hippie university (actually, the only place I know that has bungees and other people walking around in tie dye and dolphin shirts with dream catchers around their necks), stalking about in clunky platform shoes and Allie McBeal skirts with fitted turtlenecks. I like to think the look was not so much ugly as just age- inapropriate. What 20-year-old wants to look as if the next words out her mouth are going to be "I think that, before we unpack that, we should just take it offline?"

Hopefully, things have improved now. Although sometimes I get clear signals that they haven't. Like when I go to my exercise classes and everyone is wearing their streamlined Nikes with little secret socks and racerback vests and I am channelling Janet Jackson circa Rhythm Nation - yes, those are shuffle socks, and yes, they do terminate only slightly below the knee, leaving just a gap between what can only be described as giant gardening slacks.

Maybe this is why I don't get fashion men. I'm talking about guys who wear skinny jeans (especially in colours like scarlet and mustard) and scarves. Or who go without socks. The latter is a look I find particularly offputting. Is there anything more sad and vulnerable than a man's bony, white, hairy little ankle peeking out beneath the cuff of a rolled jeans leg? It just seems all neglected, like it wants desperately to be wrapped in a nice woollen sock and told that everything will be alright, summer will come again and bring with it a tan. Another reason I can't take this look is because it means that either the man's large, long-toed foot is sitting and marinating sweatily inside its clammy brogue. Or that it is snuggled inside a Secret Sock. Now, I thoroughly agree that Secret Socks are the only answer to summer days and synthetic shoes. We all have them. Yet there is something about them that reminds me of a bathroom where someone has tried to cover up a shameful event with a spray of air freshener (is anyone really fooled by this? Do manufacturers truly believe that is what pine forests smell like?)

Maybe it's the thought of men and Secret Socks together that doesn't sit well with me. This is where the word 'metrosexual' is going to raise it's head. While I am the first to recoil in horror at the sight of those people whose greasy heads means that their pillows have 'man smell', at the same time, I can't help but think nostalgically of the days when guys didn't have Hair Styles. They just had hair, and it sat on top of their heads. It didn't stray, artfully messy and playfully tousled, from one side of the parting to another. It just was.

Also, when the hair was in their pants, that's where it stayed. I'm all for back waxing - but surely going beyond this point is taking grooming a little too far? Grooming is something I hate. It's just another area for me to feel inadequate - as in my thighs are too big, my ass too lumpen, and my bikini line so far from Brazil it's like the unHollywood. But worrying about things like that is just part of being a woman - men are lucky precisely because they don't have to, and the advent of summer does not have to mean trying to sneak a surreptitious scratch at a flaming ingrown hair. So why would they do that to themselves? And more to the point, why would women want them to? At the risk of summonsing the 90s yet again, Dr Evil may believe a shaved scrotum to be quite breathtaking - but is that always a good thing? I just don't know how I would react if I were greeted by such a thing, but I am pretty sure there would be a lot of laughter.

Then again, I know that I am a complete anachronism. One that would cause any fashion-lover - male or female - to reach for a plastic bag so that they could let the hyperventilating begin.