Baby brewing is a strange business, and already it’s leading me to do things that I never ever thought I would do. Because I honestly never thought that I would ever eat another package of Ramen noodles* ever ever ever again. And yet in the past month I have not only consumed one, but many packages of Ramen, much to my own chagrin.

I pride myself on eating well. I try to eat locally. I buy organic whenever I can. I prefer homemade to store bought and pre-made. Yet here I am eating Ramen because I can’t manage any cooking processes more complicated than opening a plastic package and pouring hot water into a bowl. Though the Beard cooks for me almost every day, some days he’s at work. Left to fend for myself, I know that if I didn’t eat the Ramen, I wouldn’t eat anything at all. It’s a matter of survival really, and come the zombie apocalypse you can bet I’ll be the one eating all sorts of nasty things in order to survive. It’s in my nature.

During the worst of the nausea puke fest of “morning” sickness, food stopped looking like food. I would look down at a plate of salad or chili or noodles or whatever—foods I normally would have enjoyed and inhaled—and it would look like it was something absolutely inedible, like all the food in the world was suddenly made out of stone or wood, just a ruse to fill my plate. Eating became an enormous hassle, and when I discovered that I couldn’t stomach big meals anymore (that is, normal-sized meals to the rest of you) and that six or so small meals a day would result in a lot less indigestion and mildly less nausea, I started to feel desperate. Eating was all just so much work. I started talking to my food. “Well hello there darling. You look delightful. Meet me again out by the bushes in half an hour?”

Which brings me to the waste. I don’t even want to think about all of the food I’ve thrown away in the last two months. Not counting all of the things that ended up regurgitated in the bushes, there were plates and plates of perfectly good food that I simply could not eat and, once they eventually turned, was forced to throw away. Meal after meal lovingly cooked by the Beard, and nothing but a burgeoning compost heap to show for it. If I could only manage to stay awake past 10 pm I could go dumpster diving and at least stop throwing out heaps of money at the same time.

Yesterday I didn’t throw up once. I enjoyed eating, and, despite massive indigestion, did so with abandon. I took my vitamins and didn’t throw them back up. I didn’t look at people enjoying their dinners with envy and wonder and disgust. It is the first time I have had a completely puke-free day since mid June (on a good day I average in at six visits to the bushes, on a bad day the number approaches fifteen). People have told me about morning sickness lasting until the fifth and sixth months, or (and I don’t even want to say this for fear of a jinx, but here goes) the full nine. Excuse me while I Google knot tying. I want to get this noose right the first time.

And yet this is a normal part of pregnancy. Doctors have no fucking clue what causes it exactly, but the general theory is that the hormonal overload over-stimulates the part of the brain in control of vomiting. That plus the fact that the digestive system slows down, your sense of smell speeds up, and that your mouth starts making inordinate amounts of spit, and ta-da, you have the wonders of morning sickness. Still strikes me as a stupid way to spend the first part of a time when you want to be eating the best you can, but considering all the shit a pregnant body has to cope with, I suppose I can forgive it. Superheroes, after all, do not exist.

Today the nausea returned, and after lying in bed all morning (and most of the afternoon) nibbling on mixed nuts and dried fruit, I dug out a package of Ramen and put on the kettle. I am not entirely sure than anything in a packet of Ramen qualifies as real food, but I have to admit, since finishing the bowl, I’ve been feeling better.

*For those from Germany, Yum Yum, and for those from everywhere else, cheap-as-fuck instant “soup” with noodles requiring you to “just add hot water.”

This week summer returned to us for one glorious, sweaty, sunny day. I immediately packed my backpack and went to the nearest outdoor pool. The tragedy of Mainz is that there are no swim-able bodies of water close by. And don’t suggest I swim in the Rhein. Though many of my friends who do so enthusiastically tell me that “it’s a lot cleaner than it used to be,” I still am not willing to put my health in the hands of the Nestle factory upstream.

When I lived in the United States we would drive a little over a half an hour to a beautiful out-of-the-way beach on Lake Sacandaga. There were rarely ever any other swimmers, and the water wasn’t overly murky. (When swimming in murky lakes I am always overcome with paranoia that something I can’t see is swimming just beneath me, about to grab my leg and pull me under.) There was nothing on the banks of the lake besides trees and sparsely spaced houses.

Now I don’t consider driving a half an hour to get anywhere close or reasonable. Not to mention the fact that I do not own a car and am technically not legal to drive in Germany because of infuriating beaucracry details. There are several lakes that could be reached by a combination of trains and bikes, but with train prices what they are, getting to them and back would cost me at least twice the 3 euro entrance fee at the local pool, which I can walk to in fifteen minutes. And so it’s to the local pool that I go.

It’s a pleasant place, if not often crowded, with reasonably priced French fries and water less chlorinated than what comes out of the tap in most American cities. There are two run-of-the-mill square pools—one about waist deep, one about three meters deep—a slide, and a small round pool with waves. And if you’re quick and careful, the heated pool and whirlpools are just a fence jump away.

When we found these, we took them with the intention of bringing them along on our tour in Holland so that we could make proper fools of ourselves in the eyes of the natives. But alas, we forgot them, and were limited to only making fools of ourselves through the made up Dutch that several band members who will remain nameless spent most of the trip speaking. “That’s supposed to be Dutch?” one friend said when she heard them. “You sound like Belgians to me.” If only we’d had our trusty wooden shoes along.

Found in a town not far from Mainz when we went on a big-trash-day van adventure, which you can read about here.

Weeks and weeks have slipped by without a blog and without my really taking in how much time has been passing into the nether. Yet things have been brewing. Summer has been playing at fall for weeks now, and I have spent most of the rainy days in bed reading, sleeping, and trying not the throw up. The cat is finally completely out of the bag, so without further adieu I’m here to tell you at long last that the reason I’ve been absent and feeling like shit is that I am pregnant. Baby gorilla here we come.

Being pregnant is, in my short 29 years, the weirdest experience I’ve ever had. And while I lay around trying to ignore the nausea, my body is building a human. What the fuck!? And I don’t even have to lift a finger, which is, of course, a relief. I may have managed to re-build this trailer, but I don’t think I could have ever managed something as complicated as a nervous system. And yet, without even knowing it, I am. Fucking crazy. This is something I would very seriously file under “real magic.”

Meanwhile my body is in total hormonal shock, and I have incredibly horrible morning sickness, or more accurately, all-day-long sickness. I have also developed a Grenouille-esque sense of smell, which also makes me throw up. Things that just smelled mildly unpleasant before now smell so horrible that they trigger the repeat viewing of breakfast, lunch, and dinner. Oh, and so does too much time between meals; excessive movement; getting up quickly in the morning; riding in buses, trains, or cars; and brushing my teeth. Eating has become a chore, and I can no longer stand the taste of eggs. It’s a bit like, after having spent over a quarter century fine tuning the maintenance of this bag of flesh and bones and feeling like I had finally figured out what worked, suddenly waking up in an alien vessel in which I am now expected to continue to live as if very little had changed.

Other mothers have promised me that there is a time later in pregnancy when I will feel better than I ever have in my life. I hope they are right and that that time is just around the corner. I’ve tried every remedy there is, but nothing has changed the situation. Except perhaps, the passing of time, and possibly the B-vitamin cocktail that my doctor recommended. Of course most of the time I throw up the vitamins and who knows if it is really them that has bought me a few more nausea-free hours a day for the past week or the fact that this shit is supposed to end with the end of the first trimester. That is to say, if I turn out to be textbook, at the end of the week. Please cross all your fingers and toes that it’s true.

So I ask for your patience if in the next couple of weeks posts continue to be sparse. When I feel like emotional shit, my creative drive excelerates. When I feel like shit physically, it comes to a screeching halt. Add to that the fact that my home internet is still broken (meaning I have to leave the house to go online, something I haven’t been doing much lately in light of the pukiness), and I feel like I have to win a triathalon in order to get a few meager words to you. Which should all be changing in the near future. At the very least, I can finally tell you the stories from the Black Diamond tour, which wouldn’t have had much to do with the actual experience if I’d had to leave out the fact that I spent all the time between our shows throwing up and/or trying to sleep in the van.

And, as one reader-friend pointed out when she heard: while this probably means that I’ll be rambling about child-related things a bit more frequently–like how at your first preggo doctor’s appointment they give you a “present” which is just a big plastic sack full of advertisements, assholes–I will also have quite a few things to scavenge, build (we’re already looking for a smallish Bauwagen for the Peanut, as I have been referring to the babe since seeing it’s kidney bean/peanut form on the ultrasound a few weeks ago), and tell you about. New projects abound. Talley-ho.