It’s me: Chelsea! Here I am!

All right, first thing I have to tell you is, this blog is gonna be as trite as I want it to be, which sometimes is going to be trite as hell. Something novel might slip in occasionally, but it will probably be unintentional, and you probably won't notice it among all the descriptions of pregnancy and momliness so similar to ones you've read fifty-seven times before you'll wonder if it's straight-up plagiarism (but it won't be).

Now let's talk about me for a little bit (or for a really long time).

I'm an animator, or I would be if I were working right now, which I'm not. Okay, story time.

Once upon a time, about a year ago, my husband and I (this is where I come up with a cute nickname for my husband, like The Dude, or Hoopy Frood, or maybe I should just go ask him what he wants to be called. Okay, he wants to be called "Pip," presumably short for Pipi Lime, which is what he goes by on his blog) – I mean Pip and I – graduated from college, finally, with Bachelors of Fine Arts degrees in Production Animation. Pip had a job immediately, from having done an internship during senior year, but I, foolishly, had focused on my school projects and therefore had fuck-all lined up, work-wise. Thus began my vaguely epic jobhunt!

I applied at pretty much every game studio in the entire universe. And got no replies. Like, I don't even think I got any rejection letters, which is pretty damn rude, I think. So then, one magical day, I got an e-mail about a health and wellness web start-up looking for a Flash animator to do clickable maps and animations. So I applied for that, and actually got a response! I was amazed. They told me they worked out of someone's house, so I was expecting a regular house, you know, with rooms and maybe a driveway? What I wasn't expecting was a mansion with an indoor swimming pool, tennis court, and a garage the size of the house where I grew up, with mahogany garage doors. I believe I used the word "surreal" five times during my interview. I struggled to keep a straight face when the CEO said she wasn't out to get rich, and that they didn't have much money to pay me. For some reason, they hired me, and I worked for them for a while, mostly holding my tongue when they said racist, classist bullshit (although I recall a particularly ridiculous meeting with a powerpoint presentation where poor people of color were compared to intestinal parasites, yeast, and bad bacteria, and rich white yuppies were compared to probiotics. Gentrification of the colon, hooray! When I spoke up in protest, the guy who made the presentation was like, "Well, whatever, but think about it. Who would YOU rather have living in YOUR colon?")

Things went on about like this until December, when two things happened pretty much simultaneously. Our self-imposed start-date for trying to make a baby arrived, and Pip lost his job. Pip made A LOT more money than I did. Approximately 3 times as much. In fact, his job paid for our rent, groceries, car expenses, basically all our living expenses, and mine paid for our student loans. So clearly the reasonable thing to do would be to put off our babymaking plans until either Pip found a new job or my boss suddenly decided to quadruple my pay rate (ha!). We're maybe not the most reasonable people in the world, though, so we were like, "Nah, it'll be fine, babies bake for nine months! We'll be ROLLIN' in dough by then." Thus began Pip's vaguely epic jobhunt! It went sort of like mine, except that he hasn't found a job yet.

Then all life stuff happened, I got pregnant on our first try (TMI: like, we only even did the intercourse once that cycle, mostly because I don't really like that as much as other sexytime things), my parents majorly pressured me to come home, Pip's mom had to have hip replacement surgery, and my job became less and less reliable a source of income. All of this resulted in our begging a bunch of money off our parents, packing up all our stuff in Redmond, Washington (Microsoft land), driving a u-haul down to Oklahoma to deposit our stuff in my parents' basement, taking a bus up to Minneapolis, and being driven an hour or so North of Minneapolis to Pip's parents' farm, or farm-like piece of land with horses. We'll be here helping out with horse chores, cooking, cleaning, and miscellaneous tasks until mid-June, at which point we're going back to Oklahoma, where Pip will find a job and I will finish being pregnant. Then I'll have the baby in early September, and lots of adventures will ensue!

Oh, Geese, here's the part where I tell you about my pregnancy, birthing, and parenting choices. This is always scary for me, because I'm not doing it the mainstream way and I'm really sick of people telling me I'm doing it wrong and/or putting my baby in danger. I assure you, I've researched this shit extensively. If you still want to give me flack about it, I may very well delete your comment (or I might just be overjoyed to even have a comment, and print it out, frame it, and hang it in my bathroom). That's just the way things go. Anyway, here's my list.

I am:

• using midwives for prenatal care and birth
  
• not taking that damn glucose test where you basically drink a glass of corn syrup, or getting routine ultrasounds (which also means I'm not finding out the sex)
  
• using hypnosis for childbirth (hypnobabies, specifically)
  
• giving birth at home
• eating soft cheeses if I feel like it, and raw milk (although I'm probably not brave enough to do it in a state where it's not legal, and therefore not regulated), and sushi, and prosciutto, but not tuna, or any of the high-mercury fish
  

I am going to:

• keep my baby's genitals intact
• delay vaccines
  
• breastfeed for a long time (this one will piss off Pip's parents something fierce)
  
• use cloth diapers as a back-up for elimination communication
  
• babywear
  
• give my child access to and examples of a broad spectrum of gender expression options, and try to create a safe space for them to grow with as little pressure to fit a mold as possible
• actively discuss race, class, gender, ability, and sexuality issues with my child in an age-appropriate way
  
• unschool
  
• practice consensual living
  
• probably fuck up a whole lot
  

I'm planning to work once the initial period of "holy shit, I just had a baby, what the hell do I do now?" is past (so, what, 18 years from now? HA), but only from home. The place where I worked before has said I could telecommute and continue working for them, which seems like a good option, and I'd also like to start painting again, which I haven't done at all since I graduated. I've heard people sell paintings online sometimes, so I could maybe do that. We're in this incredibly privileged situation of having no rent to pay right now, and I am very grateful that my parents have the resources and the desire to help me out by letting my little family live in their basement until we can afford our own place.

So anyway, that's it! My introductory post! It was long and possibly boring, and had no pictures, but – oh here, let me add a picture.

I tried to sell these shoes on Craigslist, but no one wanted them. There. Now my first post is perfect.