Wednesday, March 21, 2007

My migrating belly button…

By far one of the most fun things about my pregnancy to date has been watching my belly button. That may not sound like a whole lot of fun to most of you, but I’m having a great time with it!

I have a few scars on my navel from where it was pierced (two separate times, and three little scars). It used to be that you could only see one of them, because the other two were buried deep within the tunnel of my “innie.” Now, though, it seems like the scars creep a little further up my abdomen every day. The migration has become my measuring stick for how far along in my pregnancy I am and how much my bump is growing. Looks good so far. Of course, the fun will end when my belly button pops out like a turkey timer. And I am a little bit curious as to how the scars will look after Maggot is born.

Our little aging boy racer (Pedro the wonder car) has developed a little bit of a leak in the radiator area. We have decided to re-christen him Mr Widdles, since his embarrassing problem is kind of like incontinence in an old man who used to be a big Don Juan. He’s been taken to the shop today though, so hopefully we will have our sleek little man back soon. It’s getting a little bit tiresome filling the radiator every other time we drive the car.

In a bit of freaky weather news, it snowed here yesterday (and a little bit this morning). I think today is the first day of spring (either today or tomorrow), and it doesn’t look like spring for the first time in a month. On Saturday it was blazing sun shine, hail, rain, and snow all within about 30 minutes.

I am enjoying other aspects of the solstice, though. Living near the ocean is cool for that—especially where we live. Barton is right on the banks of the Humber River Estuary (where the River Humber meets the North Sea). The estuary is probably about 2 miles wide where we are, and the river is tidal. In very still weather you can see the river current flowing out and the tide coming in. It looks very cool. The water level drops by a good 15 feet at low tide, but the spring tide is amazing! Every morning I drive to work on top of one of the ancient dikes along the river (about 40% of the land in Lincolnshire is reclaimed. In its natural state it is mostly salt marsh). Right now, the river is higher than the fields on the other side of the road when the tide is in. Very groovy.

An interesting tidbit for any Discovery Channel fans. Every year at the spring tide, you have a few places that experience what’s called a “bore tide.” This happens on tidal rivers that narrow suddenly, when a really high wave comes in. The wave is too big to be contained by the river banks, and you can get a really massive wave that travels for miles inland. The biggest one in the world is in China, and the second biggest in the world is on the west coast of Great Britain (on the River Severn). The bore is usually about 2 meters high (just shy of 10 feet, for the metrics-challenged), and people come from all over the world to surf it. The record holder surfed the wave for one hour and 18 minutes straight!

Sorry if the bore tide tidbit was a bit of a bore for anyone.

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