My older cousin has just explained hot flashes to me—the need to suddenly tear off your clothes, she said, fling open the window and hang half-naked out into the wind in the wintertime. It feels like your blood boiling from the inside like it’s being microwaved without your permission, she said, wide-eyed. I am listening, laughing. We are sitting at…   …read more.

I wedge myself into one the seats with portable mini-desk surfaces coming out of one of the plastic arms. There is a room of them—black, hard poured plastic chairs—that support the backs and behinds of the students in this program, a class of faces I have never met. It is the first day of the fall session for a program…   …read more.

Recently, a blog has been circulating the internet that starts out with these words: “Marriage is not for me.” It’s a compelling hook, especially since the first few words of the blog identify the writer as a newly married man. We instinctively want to shake the guy before he’s even written his first paragraph in defense of his poor new…   …read more.

  *Written October 17th, Posted October 18th* Tonight is my last performance of the season…. and the next. There will be no winter shows this year due to this second round of baby-making. Tonight’s concert is the last until spring. Today’s show is making me think of a show two years ago at the end of October in the same…   …read more.

I am pregnant with a second child here in Beijing, China. In contrast, I am surrounded by a country of people who, if they have had a child at all, have only ever had one. This is the land of the “one child policy” and, since 1979, families have been relegated to this population control method. As a result, I’m…   …read more.

When our bodies start making another human body, the process is so complex that it’s no wonder we’re exhausted. As this is my second pregnancy, I’m surprised that I’d forgotten this fact. I’m currently 6 months along and so for the past half a year, I’ve found myself wanting to nod off at 10pm or falling asleep the moment my…   …read more.

I’d classify myself as an affectionate person. At least, I used to be. China seems to have trained it out of me. That makes me sad, I admit. Sometimes more sad that I can explain. Chinese people are just not very outwardly affectionate. That is, not in the ways you’d expect. There are exceptions, of course, and modern Western media…   …read more.

Well, this is probably the most embarrassing blog I’ve ever written. I’m a modest person at the best of times, but I am pushing myself through this because it’s something that I think pregnant women don’t talk about. And we should. So, it goes like this. In pregnancy, I have this problem. It’s my second pregnancy, so it’s the second…   …read more.

When I first met Guo Jian, he was one of the few Chinese people I’d come across who had a car—young people, that is. Especially in the world of musicians who make so little per gig, cars are rare here. He was working with a famous Chinese rock star at the time, though, and he had become pretty famous himself…   …read more.

Today, while talking to a dear friend on Skype, I was telling her how grateful I am not to be having monthly check-ups at a Chinese hospital. Who needs the constant probing, testing and ultrasounds when I know things are progressively normally? He’s swimming around in there and kicking me all the time. The second time around has its bonuses,…   …read more.