Mary Bellamy

I just wandered through Fred Meyer because I needed to get some cream to finish making a cheesecake for the auction tomorrow. Normally, not so newsworthy, right? But I was wearing insulated overalls, a giant purple Cookie Monster fleece and ski boots, since I had just come from a ski with my friends. This is what I love about Fairbanks: I can wander through the grocery store (which essentially serves as the town social center) dressed like that and no one bats an eye. I like it here.

Today I finally emptied a can of air freshener. Why do I deem this ordinary event to be blog-worthy? I bought that can of air freshener at KMart when I moved to Alaska six years ago. This makes me realize that:

a) I've been here for six years!
b) I'm getting old.
c) My roommates were still in high school when I bought that air freshener.

This weekend will be another busy one: a reading tonight, seeing one of Tom's plays tomorrow and hopefully some skiing on Sunday. Sunday is also the Ester Library Lallapalooza. I'm going to be bringing an item for the dessert auction. I put it out for some votes, and it looks like I'll be making Salted Caramel and Pecan Cheesecake. I have a thing for salted caramel lately.

Let's recap. 5K yesterday. 60 minutes of ATS dance yesterday. 60 minutes of hip hop today. 90 minutes of ATS dance today. 120 minutes of tribal fusion dance tomorrow. To say nothing of the 200 or so situps each day. I promise I won't run another 5K in the morning.

I was making plans to go skiing with a friend this weekend when I realized that I have not been skiing yet this year. It's a tragedy. One of my roommates saved my skis during the flood, but it looks as though my ski poles may have floated down the Chena to Nenana. Crap. And Play It Again Sports does not have any ski poles in my size. Double crap. And I refuse to shop at Beaver Sports because of their new towing policy for patrons of the Marlin. Triple crap. I think Tom has my old, a-little-too-short ski poles. Otherwise I'm heading out to Goldstream to search for ski poles. This makes me nervous to look around and try to guess what else might have floated away. I don't remember seeing my snowshoes anywhere recently....

I decided to be all goal-oriented this morning. Instead of running for a certain amount of time, I just decided to do a 5K. I have a feeling I'm going to regret this tomorrow. Everyone says that if you stretch after exercising, you won't be as sore. The problem I run into is that most stretches do nothing for me. It's the curse of being super bendy. I can get something out of my hamstrings, but my quads just yawn no matter what I'm doing.

I went to Joyce's house after work to practice improv. We'll be performing at Fruitcake's wedding in a few weeks, and need to get our improv skills up to speed. If you don't already know, I'm studying American Tribal Style bellydance, which is cued group improvisation. That means that one person leads and gives cues or signals to indicate the next move. When it's done well, it looks like choreography. Ours does not look like choreography, plus there's lots of swearing.

After I got home, I decided to make bread because, well, why not? It was chappati, a kind of Indian flat bread, which should go well with an Indian lentil stew I made on Sunday. Tom and I are trying to share some of our food, since we both cook big batches to eat throughout the week. I get bored eating the same thing all the time, so we are arranging for a little swap tomorrow.

Work is kind of sucky right now. We've got some big stuff coming up which means there is a lot of stuff to be done and not enough people to do it. It's just manageable as it is, but I know that someone will have a last-minute NEED. I don't think I'll be able to do much to help them. Debra and I worked out a good game plan to get everything we need ready in time. There's just not wiggle room to help people who didn't stop to consider that we might be otherwise occupied. Soon the panels will be over and I will be able to focus on the magazine and the web redesign again.

I'm tired and want to watch an episode of Big Love before I go to sleep. I'm happy that modern technology allows me to watch all sorts of TV without actually watching TV. I think if I had cable, I'd end up spending a lot of time just searching for something to watch. Without it, I only seek out things I specifically want to see, like polygamist drama, or post-apocalyptic sci fi, or bizarrely fucked up shows like Lost.

So how do you blog about your dating life when you know some of the people you are dating read your blog? I've been mulling this recently. That is the disadvantage of having a blog - it makes my life an open book.

I don't want to make this blog hidden, as its purpose is to be read by my friends and family (and some strangers). But I also don't want to give anyone any insights into what I think of them. Isn't the point of dating to discover all those things on your own? Sure, I Google stalk my dates to make sure they're not crazy, and I expect many of them to do the same to me. But I would run screaming if someone had me over for dinner and then served me Twinkie sushi for dessert because they saw it on my blog. Somehow I've got to figure out a balance.

In completely unrelated news, I've moved into new baking frontiers. We're talking rolled and cut cookies. I'm more of a drop cookie person (and I lovelovelove my new cookie dough scoop. Yes, you can live without one. But now that I have one, I don't want to.), but I've now rolled dough twice. It's a lot easier to do on a Silpat, though I still have to flour it to keep it from sticking. I may try my hand at some chappati later today.

My baking obsession will only increase because I gave my sister and brother-in-law a year of baked goods for Christmas. To make matter worse, I put a similar offer into a fundraising auction we had at work. Someone paid $180 for 11 months of baked goods. For those keeping track, that means I single-handedly brought in about 15% of the total for the auction. So now I have to bake at least once a month. I don't ever want to bake for a living, but I wish more people would just give me money and let me cook them random things.

On February 13 (several weeks early), Rachel introduced us to Clare Lohr Heilman. We shall continue to call her Jam.
The bow indicates that the baby is a girl. Because, frankly, you really can't tell at this point.

I now present you with baby pictures and video. Lots of it.



In my defense, I'm posting all this baby paraphernalia for the sake of Glenmore, who will meet his daughter in a few weeks. We wanted him to be able to see her ASAP! Good work with the genetics, G!



Had I known the baby was on her way out that morning, I might not have worn a cashmere sweater to work. Thank you, Jam, for not puking on it. Good baby!



Lest you think I have gone soft and changed my stance on babies (good for giving sugary treats, great for giving back to their parents), I offer photographic evidence that I am not afraid to back myself up on Joyce while holding another woman's baby.


And yes, I did get the hair clips from the baby section at Fred Meyer when I was supposed to be picking up little mittens for Jam.

Sickness. It's back. Soon I shall be proclaiming to the world that I am dying. For now, though, I'm just tired and have a Demi Moore voice.

Against my wishes, I will be skipping the gym today in favor of getting to work a bit early and therefore getting out of work a bit early. Last night I went to bed around 8 p.m., thinking that I would wake up extra early. I even ended a chat session to do this. Not so much. I slept until the alarm went off at 6:30. I still haven't mustered the energy to do more than put my contacts in, though. Maybe I'll make a nice, big breakfast and get the latest episode of Big Love downloading before I head off to work.

I'm sure this person didn't mean to describe their rental property as "specious."

I tried for a quiet weekend in. I only partially succeeded. On Friday I had dinner with a few friends, then one friend and I retired to my place to watch a movie and eat cupcakes. Saturday meant Sci Fi Saturday and BSG at Joyce's house. Afterward, I fell prey to the logic of going to the Marlin. In truth, I was hoping to run into a particular person who has a lovely vocabulary, but he was not there. But the band was rocking and I danced with many boys.

I threw a baby shower on Saturday. What? Just because I don't like babies doesn't mean I don't like a party. I attended a baby shower with Dara a few years ago, but it was one of those that was all baby-centric. We guzzled one bottle of champagne and went outside. That was where we found a mom cleaning up the mess from where her baby had shit on the porch. Seriously. On it. We took the other bottle of champagne and went back to the commune to drink alone.

But back to the shower....it was the very best kind of baby shower. It was baby-less (except for the one in Rachel's womb). Georgeanne of Cloud 9 Doula came out and gave us all fantastic henna tattoos.


My new art. I have been contemplating a new tattoo on this part of my body for a while now. I like to get henna as a placeholder to get used to the idea.


Joyce got a back piece done.


As did Jessica L.


Jennie has also been contemplating a tattoo. I think she wants hers on this part of her wrist. Maybe not so much curling down around her finger, though.


Rachel, the baby-momma, got an elaborate hand piece that conveniently kept her from helping with the food. I can't complain too much (too much more than I just did, that is) because she made me a batch of paneer the night before.


Last time we got henna, Georgeanne didn't want to do Liz's face. So after she left, I drank some more and then drew on her face with the extra henna. This time Georgeanne did it, and it looks much better.


As it turns out, we can all work together and make an Indian meal. This is a relief, as I loooove Indian food but don't like having to do all the cooking (and ingredient purchasing) by myself. Ellen has the gift of bread, and tackled the naan, which were fantastic. I made paneer curry, spinach chicken, ginger scallion raita and tamarind peanut chutney. Next time I really need to convince everyone of how easy it is to make the chutney and raita, and then I will only have to do entrees.


Liz chipped in with the dessert, and use my leftover rice to make kheer.

After dinner, we rounded out the baby shower with the presentation of a diaper cake and then all took turns coming up with names for the baby. Just kidding! We watch a Bollywood movie. As is so often the case, Joyce and I opened a bottle of rum at the start of the night and finished it by the end. Sorry, Glenmore! I hear you didn't like that rum anyway.