liminal musings

2006-02-05T17:23:00.000-05:00

Blog Move

liminalmusings.com will be the new home. It still has kinks, but don't we all?

2006-02-04T21:49:00.000-05:00

blah blah blah

I'm flirting with WordPress so if this site is not showing up, it means something is going on. I'm not sure whether I will officially switch over but I feel bad because I've had liminalmusings.com for either a year or two now without doing much with it. I couldn't deal with MT (I installed it once on a family site and swore profusely that I wouldn't do it again). WordPress, however, is a bit of a mystery to me. Although it is incredibly easy to install, I need to figure out how to personalize it more. I'm rather fond of my random headers & I don't want to walk away from all the others (used and unused) that are in storage. ...................................... It looks like we will not be babysitting tomorrow. As I halfway expected, the cousins-in-law think that subjecting our chicken-pox-exposed yet chicken-pox-vaxed son to their own son would be too dangerous. Instead, they "imported" CC's aunt (cousin's mother) from Chicago for babysitting duty. Well, that's the cynical view. I think she probably wanted some only-grandchild time. ...................................... Speaking of the importation of Nai-Nais, CC and I had rather counted on his mother coming out around the time of newbie's birth. Heck, his mother had also counted on it - she seemed to be looking forward to making chicken broth en masse. However, CC's brother seems to want to bogart her. The weirdness started up again ever since we broke the ice over Thanksgiving. MIL has been up at BIL's house (six hours from her own home) for over a month now and now BIL doesn't want to let her go. He wonders if we "really" need her. WTF? His wife is whole, healthy, hearty, and not pregnant. Apparently if MIL leaves their house, they "have" to import SIL's mother from Taiwan so couldn't we please just let MIL stay in San Jose? Again - WTF? I just do not get the difficulty or the need. WTF?

2006-02-03T09:23:00.000-05:00

misanthropic musings

---I know I rarely write about current events here. Mostly because I know that more people have written about "it" far better than I ever will. But I do like to read. So, yes, I was rolling my eyes along with many others yesterday when I heard about the brouhaha regarding certain editorial comics in a Danish newspaper (amongst others). Another reason I don't write much about current events is that my reaction was also something along the lines of, "Mmmmm, a cheese Danish. I must have a cheese Danish." Stupid pregnancy. Pregnancy stupid. ---Every morning when I drive PonyBoy to school, I hate humanity. I hate jackass drivers. Road rage isn't very zen is it? I should do more yoga. ---But really, every morning I furher my theory that you can tell a lot about a person by how they drive. To give credit to humanity, most drivers don't even enter my consciousness so maybe most people are at least a little bit decent. But then there are the glaringly evil and stupid fucktards that ruin it for everyone. ---Bloggers. I've been reading blogs for a while - ever since Erica first jumped into the blogosphere and I started going through her links. It seemed pretty nifty so after a while I started up one of my own. (I'm nothing if not a follower, right?) There are a million or more blogs out there (I made that number up, but it's probably a very low-ball estimate). Everyone has something to say. My blogroll is every-changing as I try out new and different blogs that I may want to read (but I do try to keep it manageable). Sometimes people disappear or stop writing or just generally fade away from my must-reads. Whatever. My actual point was that I keep wondering more and more if real-world people are like bloggers. I mean, is what I read online a real cross-section of (people-with-online-access) humanity or a more self-selected bunch? Are posts really representative of how and what people think? Are blogs really representative of who people are? Because of course I could take some and leave some but if I have to ponder this much about it I think I need to stop reading random blogs quite as much.

2006-02-02T05:06:00.000-05:00

re "bleargh"

I haven't had a nice glucose post for a while. I have the "problem" mostly under control with diet and exercise (and the fact that it is a mild "problem" to begin with). However, as I wrote last night, I did fall off the bandwagon. I went to bed soon thereafter but woke up several times absolutely sweating and with a racing heartbeat. Finally I got out of bed at 3:30 to check my glucose levels. 171. In case you're wondering - that is not good. So I got rolled my exercise ball (possibly soon to be birthing ball) over to the couch and started bouncing around, flailing my arms, and surfing the web. Thank you, I'm down to 99. Good night.

2006-02-01T22:38:00.000-05:00

random stuff

--Bleargh. I am not feeling well. When I fall off the low-sugar-diet bandwagon, I fall hard. Bleargh. Plus I think the less sugar I have the less able I am to deal with it. Bleargh. --PonyBoy has now been exposed to the dread chicken pox twice in the last two weeks - once at the gym kid room and once at the church kid room. It must be going around, but that is a bit odd because most kids are vaccinated against it. PB is too, but then again I have it on good authority that the second chicken pox exposure came from a vaxed kidlet. Anyway, upon hearing of all this exposure I began rethinking my line of thinking in which the chicken pox vaccine is the stupidest vaccine known to man. Because, really, I don't want to be tucked away in my house with a slightly-to-very sick boy for a couple of weeks. Of course, if he takes after CC and me he wouldn't get CP until college anyway. I just wish that they'd perfected the damn vaccine a couple of years earlier so I wouldn't have had to go through the pox as an adult. I managed to go through puberty without acne scarring but just as I was poised to turn twenty I ended up with some glaring (to me) scars on my face from the damn pox. One small circle on my neck -maybe an inch and a half in diameter- contained over a hundred pocks of varying sizes. I had pocks in every imaginable orifice, including inside my ears and down my throat. Evil, evil chicken pox. I hope PB doesn't come down with it, like other vaxed kids have done. --My maternity swimsuit is disintegrating. I'm not surprised. It is four years old and saw me through at least two water exercise classes a week when I was pregnant with PB. When I pulled it out with this current pregnancy, I was well aware that it had lost nearly all of its elasticity. I am also pretty sure that the colors used to be more vivid. This week I've noticed three small holes on it in various places. It's going downhill fast. The problem is that I'd rather not cough up thirty-plus dollars to buy a new one when my due date is less than eight weeks away. By then a new one would be too screwed up to get rid of nicely (i.e.: sell to the maternity resale shop). However, I am not sure the current one will make it to the finish line. --Woohoo! Superbowl extra large! Oh, wait, that's just XL! Oh, wait, I don't care. However, one of CC's cousins seems to have won tickets to the game so I guess we'll be seeing him for the first time since our wedding. Am I so awful, however, to hope that it doesn't interfere with our plans to go to a Chinese New Year celebration this Saturday? --Bleargh. --I have a midwife app't tomorrow morning. For the first time, I'm not really looking forward to it. I really have to make a list of things to ask. --However, I am looking forward to meeting with the doula next week. She does two "classes" before the birth so I am curious to learn whatever wisdom she has to impart. --Otherwise, I'm just sitting here watching my belly being kicked from the inside. I haven't watched it much this time around. --Also, I am feeling (again) like a bad, bad mama. I did not take one picture of PonyBoy (or anyone else for that matter) in the month of January. I think that one picture on Christmas may have been the only December photo. I'm just not feeling the photo love ever since CC bought ~~the~~ my new laptop. I need our desktop for pictures.

2006-01-31T17:33:00.000-05:00

giftedness

Not to sound like every other parent out there, but I've always just assumed that PonyBoy would be "gifted." It's not some soppy "my pwecious, wecious little baby can do [something every other kid can do]" but rather just an assumption that his genetic heritage would prevail. Does that sound snotty? Sorry. My blog. My life. My time spent in GATE classes. 'Cuz, dude, when I say that I am not a member of MENSA, the "not" is by choice. It just is what it is. So I just figured that PonyBoy would be gifted. However, I stumbled across a forum in which some parents of babies-to-children discuss their kidlets' giftedness. And I just can't stand it. Part of it is my own parenting insecurities of course. Part of it is the fact that PonyBoy is not as extremely gifted (I would presume) as some of these wunderkind so it would feel odd to be an active participant in the discussion. Part of it is that I cannot stand some of the parents. But part of it is just that the things that PonyBoy does are not as in-your-face as an eight month old speaking in complete sentences. PB just did not develop early verbal skills, which is what most of these parents are using to judge giftedness. He understood from an early age. Maybe the whole bilingual thing threw him off track. Maybe all of his oxygen/breathing problems at birth have impaired his brain. I don't know. So I just go along and live life without thinking about giftedness too often, and especially not discussing giftedness with a bunch of other parents. It's a straw man in a way. Howard Gardner, multiple intelligences, and all that jazz indicate that "intelligence" encompasses many different modalities. People have deconstructed "intelligence" to such a degree that one wonders if "it" really exists. The same goes for giftedness. However, whatever singular or plural ideas great minds theorize about intelligence and giftedness, I think that there is something substantive there. Sorry, not everyone can be Einstein. Though just stating that in jest begs me to add that equating mere "giftedness" with Einstein-like genius is folly. So - back to the kiddo anecdote. Sometimes he just amazes me. (Yeah, I know - "Oh, gawd, here she goes with the pwecious itty bitty genius crap." No.) It's usually something much more subtle than the extreme (mostly verbal) precociousness that I read about on a certain gifted forum. It's a certain turn of mind or memory or logic than suddenly strikes me. For example, my common example of logical thinking happened when PonyBoy was just about two. I was drinking a frozen coffee beverage when suddenly I had one of those painful "brain freeze" episodes. PB wanted to know what was wrong when I started saying "ouch ouch ouch" so I told him something was really cold. He gave me a look like I was an idiot, handed me some napkins, and then demonstrated to me how to wrap them around the cup so my hands wouldn't freeze. Duh. Today, it was his memory that sort of freaked me out. His newest toy acquisition was the ne'er-do-well Diesel, from the Thomas the Tank Engine world. It has been over a year since he saw the movie featureing the villain, but he still loves the character. He was telling my mother about it on the phone, then segued into the fact that my young cousin in NJ also has a Diesel. Then that led to the fact that when we went to my uncle's house in NJ we had some special cookies with chocolate and nuts on top. ...A search back through the archives of this site will confirm that we haven't been to New Jersey since Thanksgiving of '04. Only after he mentioned the cookies did I remember them myself, mostly because my uncle is diabetic and was complaining about not being able to eat them. So do two anecdotes add up to the sometimes poltically incorrect diagnosis of giftedness? Of course not. I'm not off to enroll him at the school for the gifted up the street. But it does make me feel like maybe his brain wasn't damaged at birth and that maybe genetics will win out, even if he's not shocking strangers with his prodigiousness. PS: I think both CC and I are more relieved than not that PonyBoy does not seem to be following in CC's cousin's footsteps: he began college at age nine. All I've really learned about that experience is that medical schools really don't want teenagers to be doctors, Doogie Howser be damned.

2006-01-31T16:35:00.000-05:00

worn

As I was typing the title of this post I had an epiphany. The whole thing in my brain went something like, "I am so worn out. Blah blah blah. PonyBoy is acting up in a very bad way. Blah blah blah. CC has been gone for a week and a half and I can't wait until he comes home. Blah blah blah." Two things jump out at me: PB's behavior and CC's absence. Duh. I am thinking that the one may be caused (in part) by the other, as well as the fact that I am just worn out (which is a vicious cycle given PB's current trajectory). Yesterday afternoon I initiated a major house-cleaning campaign. All I wanted and needed PB to do was put away his damn toys. Seriously, I did need him to do it because I just cannot get down there to do it without pain. Sure, I'd given him too much "mess" leeway in CC's absence but the boy practices "put away" every single day at school. Plus, he's been good about cleaning up in the past. This time however, one block or tinkertoy would be put away and then a huge conversation between a block and tinkertoy or train and helicopter would ensue. This made me increasingly crabby ast the afternoon wore on. I told him that anything not put away would be put into a box for a week. In the end, PonyBoy took a nap (his first in weeks) instead of pick up the damn mess. By this morning I told him that everything he didn't clean up would be put into a box for TWO weeks. And I gave a time limit with several warning timer beeps at ten minute intervals. He did a little better but still there were toy conversations. So when the bell rang for the final time I went in there with the box and everything on the floor went into the box. This has made him very, very unhappy. Apparently, I must hate him. The thing that bugs me most is that although trains, tinker toys, and blocks went into the box of doom, he still has most of all three in their respective boxes. Now I'm wondering how developmentally appropriate it all was (no, he doesn't really know "two weeks" but it was a satisfying term to use). However, I am just cursed. By this afternoon I had to lie down after all the massive cleaning, furniture rearranging, and two exercise sessions I did yesterday. However, I am on the couch gazing out at the back room, which now has another set of blocks strewn across the floor, and the living room, which is now covered with a Thomas the Tank Engine-in-a-suitcase set that PB must have brought down from his room for the express purpose of driving me bananas. Meanwhile, he has been banished to his own room for yelling at me and whipping me with a toy measuring tape. Sometimes people just need time apart.

2006-01-29T23:20:00.000-05:00

the nameless

Yes, newbie is still nameless. I'm feeling like a bad, bad mama. Our front-runners are a) "L i a m" or b) "A i d a n" (I don't want to be google-searched with either of those) but the field is still somewhat open. What's the problem? Both of them sort of match PonyBoy's name (four letters- starts with R, ends with -an). "L" was the first name that popped out of my mouth when I called CC upon having the second ultrasound. "A" is a good match with all of our names (like PonyBoy's name, it has 3 out of 4 letters in CC's name but the "d" and "i" are in my name). Sadly, "A" is really, really, really popular these days. REALLY. PonyBoy's name is a top-ten name as well (but, dammit, it has been *mine* for decades because it's my mother's maiden name) but "A" is apparently even more popular. Gah! So we've been referring to newbie as di di (little brother) in the household. This, however, strips me of my longtime familial nickname. I hate the insipid nickname anyway and wish it would disappear, but it's a horrible meme that I can't escape even after moving thousands of miles becaue my husband met me through my good friend who began calling me that after hanging out at my house, where my parents called me the nickname. Husband, meanwhile, introduces me by the nickname and it would sound a bit uppity to ask that people instead call me by my actual given name that nobody can pronounce. Gah! PonyBoy, meanwhile, is quite happy being ge ge (big brother). He was pretty ticked off tonight when he found out that I'll be having the baby in the hospital. "Di di belongs at home." Great, now my three and a half year old son is a lactivist as well as a homebirth advocate. I didn't want to sound crass by saying that I just didn't want to spend three thousand dollars to have the baby at home, so I turned the conversation to PB's sad sojourn at the hospital when he was born. Tubes, oxygen tent, beeping monitors, and so forth make for a fascinating story. No wonder he doesn't want di di in the hospital!

2006-01-29T22:12:00.000-05:00

wallflower

I spent years cultivating a self-image of myself-as-a-wallflower, in a somewhat ironic sort of way. Really, I saw myself more as a fly-on-the-wall who gets to take in the lunacy of other humans and judge them accordingly. Ah- potayto, potahto. Yet invisibility has increasingly tended to piss me off. So, yes, person at Panera, we were in fact in the same parenting club for a couple of years. And, yes, person at the gym, we were in the same club too. Yes, I know I look vaguely familiar. There's a reason for that. P@P, you used to live down the block from me and have a son the same age as mine. P@G, your son is a year older than mine - he seemed so much older way back when. Oh, and OtherPerson at the gym, yeah, I know you saw me too (and I know for a damn fact that you would at least remember my name seeing as how we were on the damn board together). On the other hand, yeah, there was a reason I dropped the club from my social repertoire. Invisibility has increasingly tended to piss me off. Which brings me to this blog. I'm not unhappy having a nearly-invisible little corner of the web. I wouldn't want a big, popular blog because those tend to attract the attention of freaks while I'm just here blabbering away for my own amusement. I don't even want to tell you my husband's name or my son's name (though in the not-so-distant future I might have a little freak-out about lack-of-name for the newbie). On the other hand, I just cannot figure out the je ne sais quois that makes the big, popular blogs tick. I must lack it, however, because I generally cannot stomach reading those sites - the posts that don't interest me, the fawning of the commenters. Blah. (It probably doesn't help me that I've oh-so-subtly referred to the same person twice in this post.)

2006-01-28T20:52:00.000-05:00

Happy Chinese New Year

(It's tomorrow in China.) I have no idea what to do with the boy tomorrow. I told him it's Chinese New Year, but without CC to direct and accompany us I'm loath to actually "do" anything. I get weird enough looks when we have dim sum all together. Meanwhile, CC is visiting his Baba for the weekend and therefore gets to have real Chinese food (as well as his beloved $5 haircut). I am totally craving some green onion sesame bread, only available at Muslim Chinese restaurants (and probably not available within a hundred mile radius of my house), and a boba coffee beverage (that is slightly easier to come by, but the nearest place just doesn't do it right). Dude, we need a trip to Toronto. Cultural sights? Bah - we just go to eat in Chinatown. (PS: In China, it's just called "New Year.")

2006-01-28T12:30:00.000-05:00

not worth it

Today I could not get in a session of water exercising because the open pool hours do not correspond at all with the open hours of the gym's kid room. Instead, I decided to just do some time on the treadmill and a recumbent exercise bike. First of all - ouch. Walking at this point is evil but I figured I'd try it because my pelvis hasn't been too irritated recently. My back, however, hurt. I tried to go slowly on the exercise bike but that wiped me out as well, and my body was oddly contortioned so my legs wouldn't hit the newbie as I cycled around. When I finished my heart was racing, my Braxtons were Hicksing (sorry), and I could do nothing but close my eyes and lean my head against the monitor for thirty seconds. Damn, I used to do an easy ninety minutes of this but today's thirty minutes were rough. Heck, I was more wiped out than after 45 minutes of water exercise. I was sure that my glucose numbers would again be shining examples of greatness But first I had to rush over to the kid room in order to escort PonyBoy to his gymnastics class. When I finally pricked my finger for the "numbers," I was pretty dang disappointed. It wasn't a bad number but it was in the triple digits, which I never find after exercising in the pool. *sigh* I love the pool. The water doesn't hurt my back. My heart doesn't race. I get to move all of my limbs. And, in the end, it burns off more energy. ....................................... Addendum, hours later: OMFG, ouch.

2006-01-27T22:54:00.000-05:00

bits and pieces

-Last night, PonyBoy again joined me at two-thirty on the dot. Fortunately, no hysterics followed and I slept the rest of the night away. -My new exercise regime (splashing around like a whale for forty minutes) seems to be working well. My glucose numbers are generally great throughout the day. I still haven't gotten into the range I'm "supposed" to be in when I wake up, but my mother (the nurse) says that I'm in the range they use for normal people when fasting so I'm not too worried. -While I'm glad that CC made it home for my birthday last week, I am sad that he'll miss Chinese New Year with us. Of course, there's not a whole lot to do for CNY hereabouts. The biggest quasi-celebration seems to take place next week anyway. However, I did have a double-take moment today when I saw that one of PonyBoy's (non-Asian) classmates was dressed in a Chinese outfit for school. (Actually, all of his classmates are non-Asian.) -I really hate our local UPN station. Veronica Mars was finally new this week, but this dumb station just played sports. Bah! Sports! They were always doing the same thing with Buffy... I wonder what will happen next year when there is no more UPN. -Good double feature: Monk is followed by House, Friday nights on USA network. (Edit: Okay, tonight's House-in-syndication was not the best episode for a pregnant woman who will be birthing in a hospital to watch.) -I think the newbie is slowly making his way head-down. Weird pings are occurring and I felt kicks way up high for the first time today. Ouch. -Shamefully, I finally wrote thank-you notes for holiday gifts. Even more shamefully, I still have two boxes to mail out.

2006-01-26T21:07:00.000-05:00

last night

I guess I shouldn't feel offended that PonyBoy was begging to go upstairs to bed starting at six p.m. today. Although I'm sure that I am a boring, boring Mama, the reality is that he had a bad night last night. And, although he has reached the ripe old age of three-and-a-half, a bad night for a kid is a bad night for the parent. At around 2:30 in the morning, he suddenly appeared beside my bed so I let him crawl in. This is not something that happens regularly at all so I was mildly concerned... but too tired to think about it. He quickly fell asleep but tossed and turned for about an hour. So I suggested he return to his own bed. He rather happily complied, as long as I'd leave the light on for him, but just as I was fallling back asleep I heard the crying. His foot hurt. (This is the third time over the past six months or a year that he's cried due to a painful foot - growing pains?) I went into his room to massage the foot and soothe the crying. He quickly fell back asleep (that was the theme). I sleep-walked back to bed. Around five-something I awoke to more crying. This time I found him in tears whilst peeing in the bathroom. For what it's worth, he has a bladder of steel so rarely gets up to go in the middle of the night. When I asked him what was wrong, he started going on and on about how he doesn't like that his room is two colors. He wants it to be just one color. As of less than a year ago, the top parts of his walls are sky blue while the lower parts are rolling green hills. Ain't no way I am going to discuss making it all one color at five-something in the morning. So I took him back to bed with me. His prime concern before he fell back asleep was whether or not being in my room would mean he will not get his (future) bunk bed. I assured him that he would still get the bed and he quickly fell back asleep. As for me, I never quickly fall back asleep so the whole thing was rather painful.

2006-01-26T13:42:00.000-05:00

kick in the ass

If I can only get over my obsession about glucose numbers, I do think that the whole gestational diabetes thang will at least be a fairly necessary kick in the ass. Since the beginning of January the pool at my gym has had the perfect "open" hour for me while PonyBoy is in school. But I hadn't utilized it. Lazy. Lazy. Lazy. So I went this morning and it felt great. Moreover, the "numbers" afterwards were not bad either (though I'm sure I blew all that by ingesting something sugary afterwards). Now I just have to keep it up. ...................................................... Speaking of kicks in the ass, CC has been informed that the lay-off gestapo have been roving around the offices of his company to inform people of their imminent departure. (CC is in no-man's land so hasn't seen it with his own two eyes yet.) At one point this morning, one of his coworkers was in a room with a young temporary coworker (a program wherein hirees straight out of college rotate around in different positions for two years). As the gestapo agent entered the room, the main coworker's eyes met the agent's, and his life immediately flashed before his eyes. Then the agent turned towards the other guy and asked him to come chat... That just freaks me out even as a second-hand story. Meanwhile, CC has been feeling pretty secure (as much as is possible) but auditors questioned his boss about some expense report charges at a computer store. Dammit, they are not authorized to buy their own software so he'd better not have been out of line. Of course, the technical gadget he needed was needed thousands of miles from company HQ and in an emergency-ish sort of situation so it wasn't quite logical to wait around while tech support got back to him. Let's hope that common sense prevails and a $30 charge that looks like it could be software doesn't flush a job down a toilet.

2006-01-25T22:03:00.000-05:00

not so bad place

My mood has improved by several degrees over the course of the day. First, I had a nap. Then, our Maya Wrap arrived in the mail. Then, I made our first "birth class" appointment with our doula, who also helped talked me down from the high-glucose blues a bit. Finally, I went to my water exercise class while PonyBoy had a rip-roaring good time in the kid room (the kid room has been a bane of my existence since his birth - he runs hot and cold on it... currently hot but mostly cold). The exercise class kept my post-dinner "number" great so I'm hoping it won't rise dramtically overnight.

2006-01-25T10:06:00.000-05:00

bad place

As if it weren't self-evident from recent posts, I feel like I am entering a "bad place" mentally. My normal mental state is probably already more stressed-out for no apparent reason than most people. "What is so wrong with your life?" my husband has asked me repeatedly over the years. Seriously? I don't know. Massage therapists are amazed at the knots between my shoulders. I developed ulcers in second grade. Sometimes things help for a while, but then I lazily slide back into the familiarity of stress and anxiety. This pregnancy has been hard. Hormones? In the first trimester, I was a wreck but I do think that I had a few relatively calm months. Then the stress began increasing again from "invisible" things. My mother's attitude problem keeps me awake at night despite the fact that she's on the other side of the country. My grandfather's health problems sucked more positive energy right out of me. Heck, just having a three and half year old who will argue with me about whether his shoes are on the wrong feet sets me over the edge. Moreover, having a husband who would come down like divine wrath (on my side) if he overheard the conversation about shoes on the wrong feet is almost too much to bear. Oh, but he cannot overhear because he's on the other side of the country now. So the things - little and small, near and far - eat away at me. It would probably be better if I could sleep. Alas, I was awake for three hours in the middle of the night. Now, the biggest stressor in my life is this goddamned gestational diabetes diagnosis. Sure, my numbers fell into a gray area - some care providers would not diagnose and some would depending on which charts they use. So I was confident. Now, however, the readings I'm getting in the mornings are too high. I no longer have the "Hey, I was only three points too high on a conservative chart" attitude. The morning numbers are just too high. I have to call my midwife today because the number was in the "greater than" range (though, again, they are using more conservative numbers than what is printed on the generic sheet from the GD clinic). I just feel so betrayed by my body. I may have never loved everything about my physical being, but I have always trusted my body to be healthy overall. Now I feel like such a complete failure because I cannot even "do" pregnancy right. The first time around, sure there were aches and pains and vomit, but I was overall healthy. The first betrayal was when the doctors sliced me open to get the baby out. But after three years I must have gotten over that to some extent - I began to trust again that my body could birth naturally. I certainly didn't expect that something else would happen, other than aches, pains, and vomit. Now I feel like the extra stress of the diagnosis, with all that it entails, is probably making the numbers look worse than otherwise.

2006-01-24T21:42:00.000-05:00

rosasharn

When I was a junior in high school, my American literature class spent several epic months dissecting Steinbeck's The Grapes of Wrath. The imagery still... uh, haunts... me after all these years. Well, at least it comes back to me at odd times. Turtles, Jesus Christ, and wombs figure prominently. In the book, Rose of Sharon - a.k.a. Rosasharn - is very young, very married, and increasingly pregnant. When her husband leaves her, she goes through "womb imagery" by crawling in somewhere to stay and heal in a highly pregnant state. When she comes out, she is reborn as a strong mother and woman. Which brings me to last night's dream. In the dream, I remember hiding under a soft cream sheet in a fetal position over and over again between other mostly-unremembered parts of the dream. And really, that is what I yearn to do. Over the past months I've had an increasing sense of drawing into myself. I've yearned for a shell to crawl into. With the whole gestational diabetes thing, I've felt this even more profoundly. "My fault. My fault. My fault," whispers my brain with every step. "I'm not ready. I'm not ready. I'm not ready," flitters through my mind with every breath. "Why? Why? Why?" questions my heart with every beat. Sure, pregnancy sucks but I honestly cannot say the first few months with a newborn are spectacular either. I'm just not a "baby baby" person. When PonyBoy was nine months old, we went on a memorable vacation so I have specific memories of what he was like at that particular age. He cruised around the furniture. He happily ate the rice-and-whatever we fed him at restaurants. He scrounged stray bits of pineapple from our pizza box. He freaked out when he touched the sand on the beach and screamed bloody murder when we dipped his toes in the waves. He was a baby, but just about a toddler. We could see the wheels turning in his brain as he figured out the world. That was a good age. But I can't remember clearly how many months before that I would have called "good" versus merely "easier than the newborn age." I am scared. So I want to curl up in a fetal position and savor whatever respite I can find before the final countdown. of course, PonyBoy is always ready to jump on me so the respite is usually meager. To add difficulty to angst, living the life of a single mother for two and a half weeks now is both difficult and worrisome. I waddle. I can barely pick up the boy without feeling odd pressure where I'm pretty sure I don't want to feel pressure. I obsess about what my little glucose monitor will tell me (also, I cringe at every freaking finger-prick). I can't find it in myself to care enough about messes on the floor to actually bend down to take care of it. I don't feed my son a fully balanced diet (oh, my god, the guilt! only a few green veggies entered his bloodstream today). I obsess about food. I guess part of the problem is that I've always been in school during CC's travel season while we've been parents. For us, that has meant that his parents have come out to babysit and generally help out while he's been gone - a mixed bag altogether, but one with benefits. This time the idea didn't even occur to me until just now. They'll probably be here long enough when the newbie is born. To add an even more subtle layer to my anxiety, I am 31 weeks pregnant today. That gives me about nine more weeks before my due date, plus or minus two weeks to hit the range. However, I was born at 33 weeks for no apparent reason. In two more weeks, the newbie will be fully formed enough to be able to grow up like me - with no apparent difficulties from an early exit from the womb. Yikes.

2006-01-24T09:31:00.000-05:00

my mad city skillz

Today while parking my vehicle of eco-terror (SUV) on a crowded street to drop PonyBoy off to preschool, two people complimented my parallel parking ability. Mostly I was just being lazy because the rather tight space was right in front of the school, but I also enjoyed the challenge. It's not everyday that I get to parallel park here in the semi-urban 'burbs. But I'm thinking that most of the other parents dropping their kiddos off this morning never got to hone their parking skills in the driver-eat-driver world of the Bay Area.

2006-01-24T07:49:00.000-05:00

more sugar sugar

So yesterday was the "big day" - my appoinment with the dietician and nurse regarding the gestational diabetes thing. At first, I was pretty confident. The diet doesn't seem bad or anything (waaaay more carbs than South Beach, for example). The little sugar monitor was fascinating, despite the fact that I have to mutilate my finger to use it. The readings yesterday afternoon and evening were great - I was "normal" even for a "normal person." Then there was this morning. I woke up starving and curious to see what the reading would be, thinking it would be way lower than my post-eating numbers. Sadly, no. It was 110, which is 20 points outside of my "should be" range and the point at which if it is "greater than" I should call the midwife. Apparently some people just have high morning numbers. It seems I would be one of them. Usually I'll wake up at 4:30 or so to eat something but last night was one of the first nights I've slept through in ages. Maybe the insomnia is telling me something, like "EAT!" Blah.

2006-01-23T13:20:00.000-05:00

supah!

Your results:
You are Wonder Woman

Wonder Woman		83%
Green Lantern		80%
Supergirl		73%
Spider-Man		70%
Superman		65%
Hulk		55%
Robin		45%
Catwoman		45%
The Flash		45%
Batman		45%
Iron Man		35%

You are a beautiful princess
with great strength of character.

Click here to take the Superhero Personality Quiz

2006-01-23T10:48:00.000-05:00

stoopid michigan

This state has pretty much the worst economy in the nation right now. Houses have gone unsold for ages. A friend of mine may have to move to an entirely different state just so her recently laid-off husband can get a job. And my husband's company is going to lay off tens of thousands of workers across the world. It's scary. Although we mostly feel secure (*knock on wood*) that he won't be cut in the current round, there is a chance that the entire company could completely fail one day after sputtering along for decades. Because, really, outside of this area and my it-is-my-duty-as-an-American-to-buy-American-cars sort of family, who the hell buys American cars? Hell, I want a Volvo. (Trick - it's owned by an American company... but, shhhhh! don't tell anyone or they won't want it). But, hey, we "get" the Super Bowl this year so all's right with the world. It's great for the economy! People will get to see how wonderful Detroit is! Ha.

2006-01-22T15:53:00.000-05:00

that's why they call it the blues

This weekend, CC was home for about 29 hours, most of which coincided with my birthday. Now he'll be gone for about two weeks again. Januaries are rather blah with the traveling but at least he was here for my birthday (which has been missed twice in the past). As if that weren't enough to bum me out, the whole "gestational diabetes" (I prefer "glucose intolerance of pregnancy) thing still has me in a tizzy. I am not worried about my health because my "care providers" use such conservative numbers for diagnosis. Given the most common number charts, I never would have had to take the three hour test and if I did I would have come in under the diagnostic criteria. The diagnosis itself is problematic only because now all these damn protocols now have to be put into place, the most worrisome of which is that most "care providers" do not like women with this diagnosis to go past forty weeks pregnant. That one makes me sicker than my gray-area blood glucose levels. PonyBoy was born at 41.2 weeks gestation - not abnormal by any stretch of the imagination - despite weeks of questionable labor induction tries (the OB stripped my membranes three times, then there was the s-e-x with the husband, and certain gelatinous pills filled with "cervix ripening" substances placed in certain places)... all to no avail. The baby came when he was ready. Now I have some possible artificial deadline in front of me when most women with this diagnosis would be induced. Induction would not be fun, but my greater trouble starts with the fact that I am not supposed to be induced with artificial hormones due to the greater risk of uterine rupture when such hormones are combined with a previous c-section scar. Fun times! I could possibly allay my anxiety by just calling the midwives and asking them what's up with all that, but I'm also afraid that they would give an answer that would confirm my fears 100% or, more probably, just give me the "wait and see" speech that I anticipate (and that has me bummed at the mere prospect). Meanwhile, I am f'ing hungry. Despite looking up some sample diets online, I have no great idea what I ought to be eating and I have put off grocery shopping for nearly a week now. The midwife told me to watch out for breads and sugars and juices andall the usual suspects, but I think I've gone too far in the low-carb direction because I can feel a low-blood-sugar grumpiness over me. I have an appointment with a dietician tomorrow but that doesn't exactly fill me with hope either. That's just another protocol to make sure I can keep my glucose readings (four times a day!) in a range with which my "care providers" will be comfortable. If I make them uncomfortable, I will be punished... possibly by having my abdomen sliced open if I don't hit some arbitrary time limit. Right now I really hate my original obstetrician. Birth numero uno was such a cascade of fairly unnecessary medical interventions that snowballed into the freaking c-section, which is now a blade swooping down again upon my head. (One moral of this story: Don't get pregnant when you are at your highest-ever non-pregnancy weight. Stupid. Stupid. Stupid.) ........................................................... More suckiness here is that PonyBoy has a cold. He's going around saying he's having a really bad day. *sniff sniff sniff* *tear tear tear* Poor kid - it came upon him so suddenly. On Friday night we went out and he ran around in all health and happiness. He fell asleep while I was driving around so went to bed immediately (after waking up and brushing his teeth) but an hour later he was wimpering with an incredibly stuffy nose.

2006-01-20T22:17:00.000-05:00

three hours

The length of the newest Harry Potter movie? Yes. But no. How long it took me to read The Sisterhood of the Traveling Pants? Yes. But no. How long I was on the phone with medical-related people today. Yes. But... yes. It went like this: Call primary care physician's office to request referral to a dietician. Get told "okay" but to check with my insurance to make sure it's covered. Check with insurance to make sure it's covered. Yes. But, by the way, I'm now "high risk" and so need a referral from my primary care physician to my midwife's ob's office. Curse silently because my PCP will not refer to the midwife's ob's office (different hospital systems). Inquire about how quickly I can change PCPs and when the change will become effective. ....Go to preschool birthday party.... Call insurance to change to a primary care physician to one in the "right" hospital. Call brand new PCP (third in a year!) to request a referral... Get called back asking if I'm a patient. Burst into tears when person on phone tells me that I'll have to come in before they can give me a referral. Person checks on something and comes back telling me that I can have my referrals. Give information. Wait. Repeat. For an hour. Get disconnected. Give information. Repeat. Whilst on hold, call the dietician service on my cell phone to figure out how to get the "correct" referral to them. Give more information. Wait. Get told to call back in half an hour. Receive phone call five minutes later saying that the referrals are being faxed right then and that I must call the midwife's office and the dietician service to make sure it all goes through correctly. Call both. All seems to be okay. Blood pressure goes down slightly.

2006-01-20T05:02:00.000-05:00

insomniac musings

---I really should not reply to emails at four-thirty in the morning. My snark filter is too low in the middle of the night. However, if I haven't totally snarked my way out of an ebay transaction, I shall be getting a pinch-its-cheeks cute wool soaker (diaper cover) for the newbie. ---I really hate my insurance, but I'm afraid of change. After the brouhaha with my primary care physician last month I switched PCPs. Now I have to cold-call the office of the new one to request a referral. Honestly, that is giving me the most anxiety out of the whole lame GD diagnosis ordeal. According to the insurance website, the new PCP goes to the hospital (A) I'd want to go to for everything non-pregnancy related as well as the pregnancy-related hospital (B). Hopefully that means she'll actually give me a referral to the dietician with whom I already have an appointment at hospital B. ---And that reminds me that I have to pick a stand-in pediatrician from hospital B to look over the newbie when he's born. Hopefully we'll be able to switch over to PonyBoy's hospital A pediatrician asap. ---Does everyone have to deal with this stupidity? Am I just being too difficult? I am choosing to give birth in hospital B because 1) they have a much better birthing reputation, 2) they have the midwife/OB practice with a stellar reputation, and 3) hospital A's birth unit severely traumatized me with PonyBoy. However, I would not want the doctors at hospital B to, say, give me brain surgery because .... my good friend's husband went to medical school in the Caribbean and he knew too many people from that med school who did internships and residencies at hospital B. Sure, sure, they get to be doctors... but would you really choose to have a doctor who went to med school in the Caribbean cracking open your skull? ---And all of this really boils down to - what the hell am I supposed to eat when I wake up hungry at four-thirty in the morning? I know that the banana was not a great idea because it does have a lot of sugar. This is why the dietician was a bit upset that I probably could not make it in for an appointment today (Friday). ---All this rigamarole, and yet I'm pretty sure that I'm just jumping through medical hoops thanks to this article by Henci Goer. (She has great information.) ---Well, if anything good has come out of the ordeal, it is that CC now sees that I am not just being a brat when I limit my consumption of white rice and Chinese noodles. Somehow in all our years together I never imparted the reason, which is that white rice and white noodles (and white bread - but we don't really buy that) might as well be pure sugar once they hit the bloodstream. ---I didn't mention it previously, but I am further stressed by the fact that CC is gone at the moment and will be gone for the next two weeks (with about 29 hours at home this weekend as he goes from place to place, and to niftily coincide with my birthday). I am definitely hoping that the weather alert warning of possibly seven inches of snow by the time his flight is supposed to land tomorrow morning does not come true. ---And to further intensify my stress level, the (cough*maternal*cough) person who shall remain nameless is at it again. And by "it" I mean not friggin' listening to me and then getting-so-angry-s/he-hangs-up when I put my foot down on something that I've already said no to. So forgive me, (cough*maternal*cough) person who shall remain nameless, for not basking in the great news that you've cleared your schedule around my due date. That ain't gonna fly, for reasons too numerous to dwell upon when I've gone over nearly each and every one of them with you over the past several months (minus the one where my husband said "oh no no no" and I replied with "hell yeah, no no no"... 'cuz I'm nice that way and wouldn't want to hurt feelings). Obviously, I am way too subtle. Obviously I am way too optimistic that telling a certain person who shall remain nameless several times not to come around the due date would actually nestle down into his/her brain and then somehow hint to the person, as an inner voice of reason might, that clearing his/her schedule around my due date might not be the best option. Because now I'm suddenly the bitch again. I'm suddenly the bad guy. I'm the one who stupidly expects some change after decades of no change. But, of course, this all revolves around someone who shall remain nameless so you have no idea what I'm talking about...

2006-01-19T19:13:00.000-05:00

sugar sugar

Other than a sense of impending doom, I am feeling relatively calm about getting a diagnosis of gestational diabetes. Mostly I am either in denial or just hanging onto the fact that I only "failed" by three pesky points. In order to get the diagnosis, one has to fail two out of four of the blood draws - I failed my fasting by three points, the one hour by 20+ points, and passed the second and third hours with flying colors. So. Tomorrow I get to call my new primary care physician's office for the first time ever to request a quickie referral to a dietician, who will tell me to eat fewer carbs and teach me how to test my own blood sugar four times a day to start. Then we'll go from there. Because I was "almost" normal, I'm not too worried yet - eating healthier with fewer carbs is not going to kill me, obviously. Exercising more is not a bad idea. So. I am not freaking out yet. A friend of mine recently had a great VBAC with GD diagnosis, using the same midwives at the same hospital with the same (probable) doula. (I'm nothing but a follower, apparently.) However, then I was reading some message board that said one is not allowed to go past one's due date with GD. I don't know if the person was referring solely to her own situation with her obstetrician, but if the information is more generally applicable I think I shall cry right now and for the next (less than) ten weeks. PonyBoy came nine days past his due date so I've just been thinking that this one would go past the due date as well. If a medical practitioner were to see that date as some absolute, then I would have serious misgivings. To further mess up my life, I pretty much should not be induced to the previous c-section so I'm afraid they'd go right to scheduling a c-section for my due date if I'm not in active labor. What if. What if. What if. And so my confidence crumbles...

2006-01-18T23:10:00.000-05:00

ching chang chong

If there is one thing that really ticks my husband off (and, lord knows, there are many more than one), it is "fake Chinese" speaking. He's dealt with it for decades now. He swears some redneck little sh*ts (a.k.a. white trash little boys) have pedalled past our house while sing-songing "ching chang chong" to him. The mere possibility had him apoplectic. So you can imagine the burgeoning household crisis when our three and a half year old started in on the fake Chinese today. CC only heard it one time, but the second time I swooped in and questioned the poor boy until he felt quite interrogated. My fear is that some classmate of his may have done it to him at school today because CC was in charge of pick up and drop off (while I was off getting five holes poked into my arm). The thing is that I'm not sure how much of the story to believe because the story changed several times. The part that I'm most likely to believe is that Boy A said it, but I am inclined to think poorly of Boy A because he also talked some smack to my kiddo about bringing in a Cinderella book for sharing one time. Boy A is at least a year older than PonyBoy and more "socialized" in some ways that, for now, still fly right over PB's head. So my stance right now is just to tell PonyBoy to tell anyone who goes "ching chang chong"-like on him to say that they're being rude and then to go tell the teacher that he's being harassed (in essence). Or maybe it's just karmic payback - PB spent the first month of school telling me that "Boy A is black" (or, "my black friend Boy A...") a couple times a day. They're young, I know, and still figuring things out. But, dammit, I'm not ready to deal with these things.

2006-01-18T22:09:00.000-05:00

ouch

I am currently watching Penn & Teller's "circumcision" episode of their show Bullshit. (We don't get Showtime, but I bought the episode on ebay.) I love Penn & Teller. We saw them when we were in Vegas. They are brilliant. I do not love circumcision. When we did not circumcise PonyBoy, it was not any sort of political statement but more a general sense of "why the fuck would I cut off part of his penis?" Undoubtedly, it helped that my husband is not from this cut-happy country or any religious background that is pro-cut-happy. So... the Penn & Teller episode. Fuck. Ouch. Ouch. Why, yes, there is a segment of a real circumcision being performed on some poor newborn. Fuck. Ouch. Which reminds me - I cannot believe how many times I had to repeat in the hospital when PB was born to NOT circumcise the boy. The OB and pediatrician must have asked me at least five times, the scariest time being when the ped came in and said, "So I hear you changed your mind..." NO!

2006-01-18T18:22:00.000-05:00

"you are my brudder"

PonyBoy loves to hug his brother. Of course, with the bambino still in-utero hugs require exposing my great white belly in order to get as close as possible. This afternoon, PonyBoy has taken to singing to the baby. Right now I'm getting a belly massage while he sings, "You are my brudder. You are my brudder," over and over again. PB is a good ge ge to his di di.

2006-01-17T20:00:00.000-05:00

food food everywhere

And not a bite to eat. In other words, I have passed my "last call" before fasting for the next 15+ hours in honor of the three hour glucose test I shall have the pleasure of taking tomorrow morning. Also in honor of the "walk during the test so you burn off the sugar" line of thought, we shall be getting several inches of snow. ................................................... It's rather odd to be in our new and improved green living room. The change is a big one after seven years, especially because our last paint job in this room involved picking out the wild and crazy color of "contemporary white."

2006-01-17T09:56:00.000-05:00

dynamic

I am neither a dynamic nor high-energy person. I wish that I were but I can never find the energy. Or maybe I'm just lazy. Hypothyroidism runs in my family but despite some symptoms my THC levels always fall within the normal range. And I don't usually have the energy to question that despite prompting from family members to do so ("normal" is highly overrated). I can be perfectly content to take a few seconds out of my day to watch the air ripple in the convection currents above my pretty lamp. Or to just listen to the rain fall. I lvoe the sound of rain, especially in Michigan in winter when it should be snowing by all rights. So, perhaps making a resolution to be more high-energy and dynamic was not the right thing to do when I'm hobbling into the final stretch of pregnancy. .................................................. Speaking of pregnancy, I did finally give into more baby consumerism. I bought more cloth diapers online and a Maya Wrap on ebay.

2006-01-15T21:57:00.000-05:00

5 gallons of ugly paint

I'm going cross-eyed with disappointment and anxiety at the moment. We have five gallons of ugly paint. That's a lot of paint. Ugly paint. It started out innocently enough. I wanted a dark red color for our computer room. CC did not. We hemmed. We hawed. The paint was on sale - five dollars off each gallon bucket or twenty dollars off each five-gallon bucket. The five-gallon bucket was a good value. CC's medium-green color choices were fairly similar to what we'd wanted for the living room. So I said, "Let's get the five gallon bucket and paint the computer room and living room the same color." Between two choices, I recommended the lighter color because our living room is really dark - it faces east, towards a huge maple tree not far from the windows. The computer room is directly above the living room. The color I recommended is the first (lighter) color on the strip on which we had previously thought the second (slightly darker) color would do nicely. Five gallons of ugly paint. To add insult to injury, the whole sale ended up feeling like a bait-and-switch operation. When CC went up to order the paint, the guy said that he'd have to do five separate gallon buckets instead of one five-gallon bucket. Monetarily, that means we ended up spending about the original cost of one five-gallon bucket... which kind of begs the question of why we needed five gallons of just one color in the first place. If we'd known we couldn't get the five-gallon bucket (they were out of the tint base), we wouldn't have chosen the colors so hastily. Hell, we would have chosen two separate colors. Radical idea. Five gallons of ugly paint. To recap: we were screwed on the price, the paint color is ugly, and we didn't necessarily have to have five f'ing gallons of it. As for the anxiety: CC would like to make this all my fault because I "always" choose ugly colors. Our dark sage bedroom color is my one solo failure as far as I'm concerned... and that was equally a failure of color and paint finish (satin - too shiny, but good with kidlets). That color rather begat my "let's go with the lighter color" decision so it's all one big muddle of green mistakes. On the other hand, CC seems to have gone with the same finish we both dislike upstairs and could have changed the plans when the paint guy sent him/us into the five one-gallon cans tizzy. Does "light paint" always end up looking pastel? Ugh. Five gallons of ugly paint. And blame enough to go around. ............................. Update: we had it re-tinted to an acceptable color. The living room feels quite cozy though, as I had feared, the color is a bit too dark for our perpetually dark room. Especially since it's a rainy winter day. We need better lighting.

2006-01-14T16:14:00.000-05:00

babyness

Yesterday I got to hold three almost-newborns. The best thing about it? I was able to give them back to their mothers afterwards. Heh. I'll be "term" in about eight weeks (hit my actual due date a couple of weeks later), but for the most part I don't want to think about it. Unfortunately, my subconscious is goading me to action. Last night I had a horrible labor dream. In it, I was thirtyish weeks pregnant and suddenly in the hospital because I thought I was in labor. Then my husband disappeared. Then I remembered that I hadn't called the doula back... or had her allegedly wonderful birth preparations. Then I asked the medical people if they mightn't want to stop my labor seeing as how I was still quite far from my due date. But they told me to just keep walking around. So I hobbled out of the hospital trying to find my husband because I thought the whole thing was nuts. Hmmm, I may not have had a psychology class in ten years but the meaning of that dream does not exactly seem opaque. ---------------------------------------------------- At least I now have some interest in the prerequisite consumer orgy of adding a new consumer to this planet. Sadly for big, well-known corporations I am taking money out of their pockets by spending money on cloth diapers. Hopefully the landfills will have that much more space for other disposable crap. Like the two milk cartons we threw away today. If we really loved the planet, we'd either buy a cow or give up dairy. Right now I have the equivalent monetary value of three Costco boxes of Huggies in my shopping cart...

2006-01-12T14:34:00.000-05:00

fatigue

I am tired. In my normal physiological state, I am a person who neds more than eight hours of sleep each night/day to feel my best. In my pregnant state, I am sure that I need more. However, I am not getting it. Every afternoon around this time I get super grumpy because I need a nap but the three year old does not necessarily agree that naps are a good thing. And I'm too tired to argue. I am tired. Last nigth I had a water exercise class. I mourn for the prenatal water exercise class I took throughout my first pregnancy, but the gym no longer offers it. Instead I'm stuck with the general one, that is full of moves that I have to modify because they're not good for my body. Every night it's "Let's work those abs!" No, let's not. My abs are not meant to be worked that hard when they're stretched to the breaking point. Instead I go light on the abs and move my arms with extra vigor. What does that do? Tired arms. Ouch, oh-so-achy arms. Arms that don't even stir batter without aching. I am tired. I want a nap. I want a whole day to just sleep. In retrospect, CC's holiday vacation was nice because I could regularly sleep every afternoon. I am tired.

2006-01-10T22:50:00.000-05:00

neither rain nor sleet nor snow

Today was a bright day full of sunshine and 40 degree temperatures. However, the mail did not come. I am a bit peeved. Every once in a while, without preamble or excuse, this happens. Then we'll usually get a morning delivery followed by the usual late afternoon/evening delivery. The fact that we usually don't get our mail delivered until late afternoon or evening is another peeve, but after so many years there is no cure. I'm not expecting anything good. However, I am expecting the information from the obstetrical office about the 3-day diet in preparation for the 3-hour glucose test. At this point, it won't be done this week.

2006-01-10T10:45:00.000-05:00

"i see ~~dead~~ dirty people"

PonyBoy is really into imaginative play. He's had a miniature invisible friend named Max (after the boy in Where the Wild Things Are) for over a year now. Max is trouble. Max is constantly getting into dangerous situations. For example, the other day Max was not only sitting in the front seat of the car but also unbuckling the straps of his car seat. Bad Max. Max also regularly climbs onto our ceiling fans hoping to go for rides. But then he spins off - no match for centrifugal force. Max recently acquired a baby brother (via "MaxMaMa") who speaks Chinese. The baby brother's name is the alphabet. No, not Alphabet, but rather A-B-C-etc (or however much PB can remember at that time). So we're pretty used to one-sided conversations around here. And watch out if you try to eavesdrop! However, it was a bit much last night as PonyBoy was having a whispered conversation with Max and gazing out the back door into the dark night. "I see dead people," he stated. "What?!?" "We don't see dead people here." "Wait... what did you say?" "I see dirty people!" Oh, well, okay then. Apparently all he wanted was a bath.

2006-01-09T22:59:00.000-05:00

my jewish son

My son declared earlier today that he wants to be Jewish. Because he wants to celebrate Chanukah. Because he wants a menorah. As almost all schools do these days, his holiday indoctrination last month focused on the different holidays that people celebrate in December. He was particularly taken with menorahs. He talked about them just about every day. When we passed by a "menorah cake" at the grocery store, he begged to have on at his birthday party (in June). When we went to the UU holiday service, he was giddy when he saw the menorah up near the pulpit. You'd think it might have something to do with fire, but that menorah was not lit whereas its compatriots - an advent wreath and quasi-yule log - were flaming away. I don't know how the subject of menorahs came up again today, but he wants one. And, by gosh, he'll be Jewish if it means he gets one. Personally, I spent a half decade of my early years with a Jewish not-stepfather and I had no idea about menorahs. Latkes, good deli appreciation, bagels, and matzoh ball soup (mmmmmmm) were his contributions to my "religious" upbringing. (He also taught me to use chopsticks and appreciate teppanyaki because he'd lived in Japan as a child - a true multicultural experience.) I think his mother was fit to be tied when she came to visit around late December one year and saw the huge Christmas tree in the living room.

2006-01-09T10:54:00.000-05:00

bits & pieces

---Forty Dollar Daze I think I have a problem. Last week, I managed to spend about forty dollars every day: twice on groceries (though one trip to the mega-store also involved maternity pants) and once on gas. Three days in a row until I told myself not to spend any money on Friday. I didn't spend any money on Saturday. However, yesterday I managed to spend eighty dollars on the beginnings of a cloth diaper stash. Today, all I really needed was to buy some mittens. But, no. Forty dollars later and I have two mittens, a hat, some other kid clearance items, and some stuff for me. ---January in Michigan Speaking of mittens, January in Michigan can only mean one thing: there are hardly any mittens to be found. This is especially painful when you have a three-and-a-half year old who keeps losing his mittens. Target had nothing that would fit him. I was actually so ticked off about that that I abandoned my cart to walk to Kohl's. That store had almost nothing until I finally found a hat and mittens set tucked away amongst the big-kid mittens. For the record, three-and-a-half is apparently an odd age. The baby stuff is too small (though cute) and the big-kid stuff is too big (and dominated by licensed characters). I need to learn to knit. No, I dont' think I'd ever finish anything, but at least then I'd have some yarn to create some sort of mitten string like used to connect all my mittens through my coat sleeves. Why are these things not readily available anymore? ---Second Hand Kid I'm starting to feel a little sorry for Thumper. As the second born son, I have no impetus for buying anything new. Sure, there were some cute things in Target but then I just remember that we have cute newborn stuff at home (hopefully ~ I did send a load of clothes to CC's nephew when he was born). In the entire baby section of Target, there was only one thing that I was vaguely tempted to buy - a new Boppy because PonyBoy seemed to spend the entire first year of his life on the one we have. Dang, the new ones are so much fluffier. However, I just could not muster up enough "hey! new baby!" excitement to actually put one in my cart. The one we have is ... uh.... broken in. Yeah, that's it. (Of course, I am excited about the cloth diapers. I almost have CC on the fence instead of totally on the other side.)

2006-01-06T16:45:00.000-05:00

!&@*#@$@*!

And to top off the craptastic day of crappy crapitude, I found out that I "failed" my one hour glucose test and have to go through the three hour ordeal. The real pisser? I "scored" a 139. Every thing I've seen shows that 140 and above should require the 3 hour test, while some practitioners are conservative and use a cut-off of 130. But for some reason this office is using the magical number 95 (according to the person on the phone). WTF? ... Upon further reading, it looks like perhaps the person on the phone (POTP) possibly misread the "okay" number - 95 is a number when they just take your blood after you've fasted. They took my blood an hour after they made me drink something with 50g of glucose so that ought to have a higher number than 95. Oh, well. I shouldn't get too worked up over it. The test will be unpleasant (must fast beforehand, get punctured four times, sit still for hours, and drink 100g of glucose) but it shouldn't be the end of the world. There's only a 20 to 30% positive rate & if I do have GD then at least it will be known. Yep, that's me - calm, cool, and collected.

2006-01-06T09:20:00.000-05:00

dying

Okay, not really, really dying. It just feels like it. Yesterday I forced PonyBoy to take a nap with me. He hadn't reached his optimum sleep amount in several nights and was beginning to take it out on all of us. Plus I was quite tired of course. It was a wonderful two hour, mid-afternoon nap. Then I woke up feeling like a bus had run me over. I hate it when that happens. That's what I get for congratulating myself on not getting sick for a couple of months. Last night I couldn't sleep because my throat hurt so much. Then I remembered my mother's old trick for sore throats: gargling with salt water. For some reason, I usually remember that remedy a day after I get better. However, it worked pretty well. I gargled with the concoction every five minutes for half an hour & the pain subsided. Now if there were only such an easy cure for my head, ears, and chest...

2006-01-05T19:54:00.000-05:00

survived

Somehow I had a somewhat better reaction to the GTT today than with PonyBoy. I ate a high-protein, no-carb breakfast. (Can't remember last time - I might have fasted per their instructions.) I downed the evil glucola in apparently record time (both to get it over with and because I was damn thirsty). Then I had to wait about 45 minutes for the end of the midwife appointment before moseying on down to the lab, where I paced and sort of vibrated throughout the rest of my wait.

2006-01-04T10:55:00.000-05:00

odds and ends

---My grandfather is still in the hospital, but things are much more positive than in my previous anxious posts. ---My mother's back is still broken. Yes, my previous post seems a bit harsh but I'm worried about her long-term health. You can't just go around breaking stuff willy-nilly when you're more than a half century old. She is, however, on the mend. ---We're going on a play date today. I feel bad because I meant to bake some muffins or something because PonyBoy won't have lunch before we go & the playdate-holder has her hands full (literally - newborn twins). However, I managed to slice cheese and put some tangerines and crackers into a bag. Muffins would have been better. ---One thing I hadn't realized about CC having a two week vacation (and being on a business trip for ten days before that) is that I was getting better morning sleep than usual. When he gets up at his ungodly hour to go to work, I always have a rough time getting back to sleep. ---Thumper is strong. And he just has to thump just as I'm getting into bed. ---I have to take a glucose tolerance test tomorrow during my midwife appointment. Although I don't think I'll fail and I am not convinced of the "goodness" of the test in general, I'll take it because I have three risk factors for gestational diabetes. The first time I took it (with PonyBoy) I think I nearly fainted in the waiting room. I don't understand why. For those not in the know the "GTT" as it is given normally involves drinking a disgusting sugar syrup (usually in orange or lemon-lime) and then waiting and hour before having a tech draw blood, which will be screened for high blood sugar. If you fail, you get to take an even crappier three hour version of the test. With PB, I just remember sweating profusely and feeling alarmingly jittery during my wait. But I passed. ---Am I really crazy? I told CC that I'd like to make a foray into cloth diapers with the newbie. That had been my idealistic intention pre-PonyBoy but somehow having him shocked the hell out of me and I never did it. I hate doing laundry but I'm hopeful that I can get into it. ---PonyBoy has been eating at least five clementines a day for the past few days. It's a bit worrisome. He can help himself and peel them himself so by the time I look up (usually from washing dishes) he has a vast array of empty peels before him. But it's so damn cute - he has to break apart all the slices and arrange them into a line before he eats them. ---I've been assuming that Thumper would come after his due date (based on the fact that PonyBoy came nine days after his) but every pregnant person I've known recently has gone over a week early with their second babies. Some have even gone so quickly that only their husbands (and older kidlet) have been in attendance. CC wants to know what the boiled water is supposed to be for because he's getting scared.

2006-01-03T21:50:00.000-05:00

kiss the cook

And give her a hug. Today, I excitedly began washing and chopping vegetables at 3:30, in preparation for trying not one but TWO new recipes. Yeah, dinner sucked a great big hairy schlong. I want to be a better cook. I want to have some "good" recipes that I can count on in a pinch. I want to eat more vegetables. I don't want to have to eat the sort of cr** I produced tonight.

2006-01-03T12:41:00.000-05:00

gifts

I must remember to never get huge amounts of presents for PonyBoy for winter solstice-related holidays. Because I'm a sucker. A week after Christmas, I went and bought him a couple more toy-like objects. On New Years Eve we went over to friends' house, where we were able to observe the big, fun wooden kitchen and wooden food products that comprised the "big gift" of the season for their kidlet. The food was pretty nifty (Melissa & Doug) so I thought I'd check out Marhsalls, which often has M&D food products at good prices. This time there was no toy food, but there were plenty of other nifty M&D things... so of course I "had" to get them. Both things I bought are pretty educational in a sneaky way so that was my justification. But it was only a week after Xmas! CC is totally fine with that. He thinks that not giving PonyBoy presents (saving them all up for one special morning) is stupid. He's more of a "get what you need when you need it" sort. However, it did feel a bit strange because PB's birthday isn't for almost six months. My own birthday falls a bit less than a month after Xmas so the four weeks between the one and the other were always filled with gifts from my mother. I'm sure I wasn't lacking anything the rest of the year, but this time of year was always quite fun in a very materialistic sort of way.

2006-01-02T19:11:00.000-05:00

like the end of summer vacation

That's what my husband says it feels like as his nearly 2.5 weeks off of work are about to come to an end. Poor man. It's ironic that I am feeling a bit giddy about the prospect of a return to normalcy. (Normality?) I require a bit of daily solitude and quiet to function well. In the end, though, I'm proud of him. After nearly seven years of both of us hemming and hawing and being generally indecisive about how to paint the upstairs bathroom, I sent him off to Home Depot last week with my blessing to choose whatever he wanted. Despite some misgivings when he insisted that the towels and bathmat were "just blue" he managed to find a shade quite close to both those and the toothbrush holder. Then during a later expedition to Lowe's he managed to find a nice new light fixture for the clearance price of $20. I've hated the bathroom light fixture for (nearly) seven long years - it was just a white strip with room for six bare fancy bulbs. We usually just kept three in it because six was too bright. Now the fixture kind of looks like brushed nickel reindeer horns with four sconces that don't subject me to looking at bare bulbs. Yo, for $20 I'm in heaven. In further stunning clearance-aisle victories, he acquired two cabinets which, with a plank of wood, now form a computer desk... and a $24 clearance wood hutch to sit on top. (The old computer desk will now be up for grabs in the future theoretical yard sale.) In a step backwards, he now insists that the hutch and whole setup demands a flat-panel monitor. However, he probably saved at least that much money so it's a wash.

2006-01-01T22:12:00.000-05:00

ten years ago

Ten years ago, CC and I stayed overnight at my parents' house ~~for a night of drunken New Years partying while the parental units worked~~ so we could wake up early to go see the Rose Parade. The wind was howling in its Santa Ana fury, but no rain threatened so we were excited at what we figured might be our last chance to easily see the parade. We awoke to the noise of wind and no lights at all in the dark quasi-country corner at the edge of Los Angeles. The alarm had not buzzed but a quick glance at a watch told us it was time to hustle. It was a mere two years after the Northridge quake so flashlights were still readily available just in case of another rude awakening. Sadly, the Jerusalem crickets could not get out of the way fast enough in the dark and we ended up slaying one with a loud crunch in the bathroom. Jerusalem crickets are my own harbinger of doom. And they're just fucking gross when squashed. So, in a record amount of time we were out the door to the car. In the dark, a greater darkness loomed in the long driveway. Thanks to a nifty flashlight, I shone a beam of light ahead of us but still could not comprehend what I was seeing. Leaves. Bark. Leaves. Branches. An entire ancient oak tree had fallen several feet from CC's car. An entire ancient oak tree had fallen across the driveway, which was the only way to drive to the front of the property. Otherwise, a stand of dense foliage flanked a little stream that ran across the entire yard. We were trapped. There would be no Rose Parade for us that year, or probably any after. Later in the day, our neighbor helped us take down part of the fence so that CC could drive the car over to their driveway and get out. A few days later a bevy of men with chainsaws made short work of the tree, which then became firewood. ............................................... Really, I just think that CC and I have bad major-parade luck. ~~Last year~~ In 2004, we were all set to go the the Macy's Thanksgiving Day parade when PonyBoy spiked such a high fever overnight that I couldn't even wake him up. I spent over an hour rubbing him down with cool water (and forcing baby Tylenol into his mouth) before he finally seemed to settle into a normal only-slightly-feverish sleep. Of course we couldn't wake him up two hours later to trek to a mere parade. Or, maybe CC and I just have bad major-event luck. Seven years ago we tried to spend the New Years Eve evening in Times Square. We had a great place. But the weather was so far below freezing, with a wicked wind whipping through our coats, that we aborted our plan and headed back to his sister's place. Sadly, we fell asleep before we could even watch the ball drop on television. That's us - party animals.

2006-01-01T15:03:00.000-05:00

new year's organization

We need to have a ~~garage~~ yard sale. I have spent most of the day today organizing our kitchen cabinets. Sure, sure, I knew that acquiring a new toaster and a new KitchenAid mixer would throw things out of whack when we already have an old toaster and an old stand mixer. However, given the disarray that the cabinets presented to me, I could not just swap out the old toaster and the old mixer for the new ones. The result is the removal of a plethora of kitchen appliances that hopefully someone will buy later in the new year (rice cooker, bread machine, quesadilla cooker, indoor grill, toaster, mixer, coffee maker, etc., along with a host of other doo-dads and non-kitchen appliances). I also removed two garbage bags full of junk from a couple of cabinets and one junk drawer. I love getting rid of stuff. I've never had a ~~garage~~ yard sale before though, so I am filled with trepidation. .*.*.*.*.*.*.*.*.*.*.*.*.*.*.*.*.*.*.*.*.*.*.*.*.*.*.* Oh, yeah: Happy New Year!

2005-12-31T13:12:00.000-05:00

... step on a crack...

My mother broke her back yesterday. That is a pretty scary statement, but given its truth things are as well as might be expected. She was lucky. Her spine is intact and with a brace she'll even be able to work (as a nurse, in the same area of the hospital where she went for the diagnosis) throughout the healing process. Still. My mother broke her back yesterday. She fell off a horse. I've long been convinced that her damnanimals would kill her, and this is really just another step along that life/death path. The damnanimals are one of the biggest peeves I have with my mother. Despite what I thought as a child, it probably would have been for the better if she'd been able to have more human children than just me. Instead, as I grew older and closer to leaving the "nest" the damnanimals began multiplying at a frightening rate. We had two cats throughout much of my childhood. Then we acquired a couple of stray dogs when I was in fifth grade (we had moved to what was then the edge of Phoenix & people would dump dogs out in the desert, where we'd find them sneaking back in towards civilization). When I was in junior high, we took in a kitten from a former neighbor. That kitten turned out to be a real hussy so by the time I was in high school we already had an eccentric number of cats (after finding some others). Then my mother started in on the horses. But those had to live elsewhere because we lived in an apartment. One day a rare bird flew into our yard. My parental units could not find its owner. It was a nasty bird, but my mother was so sorry when it flew away that suddenly we had a fucking bird population explosion. When I went off to college, they had to consolidate their living/animal arrangements on one big piece of property so the horses could live at home. But the big piece of property suddenly gave way to a dog explosion. Evil, evil little male dogs would suddenly find their way to the front door. Probably they just meant to pee on it but my mother took them in so they could pee on everything else as well. I don't know how many of each kind of animal now exist in that household. I can't bring myself to count because it would drive me up the wall. I'd guess at least ten cats, at least ten dogs, at least ten birds (of the big, squawking variety), and four horses. The only good thing is that the worst urinators grew so old that they went off to the big pet yard in the sky. But, jumpingjehosaphat, that is an extreme amount of ill-mannered, loud, eating, pooping, peeing biomass. I. Hate. Them. My mother broke her back. That's just bad. However, if she's able to work through it then it won't be the worst financial/physical injury she's suffered at the whims of the creatures. At this point, one of my worst pet peeves when talking to my mother is listening to any sort of whining about money. It's so fucking obnoxious when the truth is that she makes decent money but chooses to pour it down the throats of all those creatures. Hundreds and hundreds of dollars a month. Then there are the "emergency" yet-cropping-up-all-the-time vet bills. She whines that she "can't" have nice things a breath after telling me how one dog or another destroyed yet another new comforter or pair of shoes. I. Hate. Those. Creatures. My mother broke her back. I'm glad she's alive and that they haven't killed her yet.

2005-12-29T09:01:00.000-05:00

plans dashed

We're all about ready to climb the walls over here. My perfect plan before getting out of bed this morning was to take PonyBoy out to a local community center that has an open gym with many preschool activities each Thursday morning. Well, "perfect" is relative. While it was indeed a great thought, the community center is closed this week. That seems to leave us with two choices: the hell of Caesarland (crappy pizza with hyper kids on climbing structures) or ... climbing the walls.

2005-12-28T09:50:00.000-05:00

cranky

Between round ligament pain, Braxton-Hicks contractions, random pings, and some "ouch my pelvis is separating" pains, I've been quite cranky these past couple of days. My new mantra: "Pregnancy is stupid." In the midst of all this, I seem to be in my third trimester now.

2005-12-28T09:47:00.000-05:00

purple!

I knew it...

Your Hair Should Be Purple

Intense, thoughtful, and unconventional. You're always philosophizing and inspiring others with your insights.

What's Your Funky Inner Hair Color?

as seen at Quinntillion

2005-12-25T17:38:00.000-05:00

low expectations

The secret to a successful Xmas is to have low expectations. Thus, I am quite pleased with the day. We began our celebrations last night by eating at La Shish. The Sampler Plate for Two is really quite enough to feed us all for both Xmas Eve dinner and Xmas lunch, and the baba ghannooj is absolutely addictive. When we arrived home, we watched A Christmas Story, a true classic. Today, PonyBoy slept in late. In fact, he slept in his own room for the third night in a row so CC and I shall take that as a Christmas present for ourselves. It's probably been a year to the week since he took up permanent nighttime residence in our room thanks to figuring out how to climb out of his crib. So, while I might have felt a bit bereft at having him so "far away" (not really) now, I also welcome the relative solitude. If this keeps up, we shall have to make a special Ikea run to celebrate by buying him his bunk bed. When he finally did get up he still didn't know that the cultural expectation is for kids to rush right down to the presents in a greedy madness. Instead, there was familial cuddling before we threw off the blankets to greet the day. In the interests of "low key" I had decided to forego the special waffles I was going to make in lieu of a store-bought canister of cinnamon rolls. PonyBoy took maybe an hour to get through all the unwrapping* of presents. Our contribution to his pile was 1) a collection of four dress-up hats (wizard, construction worker, crown, cowboy), 2) a set of traditional wood building blocks, 3) wood lace-up cards, and 4) a stocking full of small doo-dads (slinky, kaleidoscope, Chinese yo-yo, wood ball-and-cup thingamajig, etc.). From extended family, he also received books, an extreme amount of letter trains, a kid's camping set, a small mag-lite, and a small truck. Sometime during all of this unwrapping*, CC received what appears to be his favorite present of the day: a labeler. So he went off to play with that and has been playing with it pretty regularly throughout the day. I also gave him a a gift bag of spices (hot pepper, fancy black-and-white-and-red pepper, other "guy" stuff) so now our spice jars are well-labelled. Hey- no more wondering if the yellow jar is mustard or ginger! Me, I received a toaster from CC. No, really. It's not as bad as all that because it's a somewhat fancy toaster with a bagel-toasting option. It also apparently toasts frozen stuff with a special process. Hopefully this will put an end to the days of waffles that are crispy brown on the outside but cold on the inside. You see, the secret to being pleased with a toaster is to expect nothing (which wouldn't be an unusual Xmas present from my husband). Also, it's to receive lots of checks from my relatives (including a surprise one from my father) so that I can go buy what I really want without guilt. So, sometime around my birthday I should be receiving this (though I'd really have preferred it like this) also I'm also wearing something new and special in my ears. Dinner will involve now-frozen lasagna and salad. Easy. *"Unwrapping" in this house generally does not involve actual wrapping paper but rather cloth gift bags.

2005-12-24T20:03:00.000-05:00

the real reason to hate xmas

I can be somewhat cheery about the holiday season but - OH MY GOD - December 25th itself is such a drag because there is no escape from the house. Stores! Close! Restaurants! Close! One Xmas when I came to visit CC here in Michigan, he had basically no food in his apartment the evening of 12/24. We hungered by the next morning. The one open place - Denny's - closed before noon. Finally we were reduced to buying a can of tuna from 7-Eleven. Christmas has never been quite the same after that. It makes me feel claustrophobic. The one place that provides a good outlet - movie theaters - just have nothing that we could all go enjoy right now. On a brighter note: A real reason to love Christmas is the holiday tradition of 24 straight hours of A Christmas Story.

2005-12-23T15:39:00.000-05:00

unwhitened xmas

Irony: Incongruity between what might be expected and what actually occurs Ever since we came home after Thanksgiving there has been a blanket of snow covering our yard. While that was historically unexpected, I thought that at least we would have a white Christmas. Alas, it began raining last night. Icicles have been falling off our roof with deadly regularity all day. We can actually see the road surface. With tomorrow promising more of the same, I'm afraid that the past month of snow will all have been in vain.

2005-12-22T05:07:00.000-05:00

predictable

I'm not quite sure where my little "break" from my mother stands at this moment. She called me after receiving a birthday card informing her that her next grandchild would be a boy. We talked of light subjects (as always). She called again a few days ago. We mostly spoke of light subjects, however I was feeling quite mopey about my paternal grandfather's then-impending bypass surgery and she was a CCU/ICU nurse for ages. Have I ever mentioned that she is a fucking snot and a half when it comes to my paternal grandparents due to the facts that 1) they are her ex-in-laws (thirty years in the past) and 2) my grandfather made a possibly innocuous statement during my wedding at which she took GREAT offense (and was further incensed when, years later, she told me the comment and I was all like, "ookkkaaaaay... and?"). In contrast, my grandparents have been nothing but a steadfast, fair, loving, and supportive presence in my life for my entire life despite how their son/my father has behaved. Yet at this point my mother sees my love for them as an offense against herself. Of course, my mother is always quick to find an offense towards herself. If my in-laws come out to help with PonyBoy, it is offensive to my mother.. because she works and can't be out all the time helping. (Note: I am preparing for a major tantrum when I "remind" her ever more firmly that she may not come here immediately after Thumper is born because my in-laws will be here... actually fucking helping and all that. My mother-in-law is already preparing to boil a chicken a day for a month for my recovery. CC and I somewhat agree that a culture that has produced 20% of the world's population should be listened to when it comes to post-partum chicken broth.) But my mother doesn't listen. I'm sure she's already forgotten that I told her not to come for the first month. With PonyBoy, she was incensed when I put my foot down and told her not to come a certain pre-booked week right around my due date. First of all, my MIL had already booked an overlapping week. Second of all, they were both wrong date-wise because PonyBoy was born nine days after the magical "due date." Then there was her anger when I put my foot down over my very late spring wedding. During the autumn beforehand she mentioned that she was going to hire her own photographer so she could have professional pictures all to herself. I told her that wasn't a good idea that we had a more than competent photographer. Come mid-spring she again tells me about her photographer. I told her no way. She was, of course, incensed. She was even angrier when she finally saw our wedding album, that had the poor taste to feature photographs of my grandparents and other assorted members of my paternal family (because I don't have much in the way of maternal family & they never leave the East Coast). So this whole long spiel started out about "predictability." Fine, then, I shall take you back to the little snit fit that made me "take a break" from my mother last month. It was all about Thanksgiving and our two-week sojourn to California. I made the mistake of telling my mother that I might fly out to Arizona to visit her for some of the week before T-day, when CC was working in the middle of central CA. She ... complained (*gasp*)... that she had already taken off time during Thanksgiving week so she could do XYZ and that she had to work the week before. I didn't mention to her that Thanksgiving was out because I was planning on going to my paternal aunt's house (where my paternal family was gathering this year). I'm a wimp. So a couple of weeks passed, in which time 1) I learned that CC only had to work in the middle of nowhere for 3 days, 2) I learned that CC really, really, really thought going to Arizona in that event was a really, really, really bad idea, and 3) I could not get ahold of my mother. So when I finally did talk to her she tried some major guilt trip. "But I took time off the week before Thanksgiving because you said you were coming out." She doesn't listen. Maybe? Might? Whatever. The guilt thing turned me completely off and I didn't speak to her until a couple of days before T-day, when she called while we were at my brother-in-law's house and we had a brief conversation. I still didn't tell her that I was going to my aunt's house for Thanksgiving. That brief, stilted conversation was no time to break that horrifying news. Which brings us up to this week and our second conversation since Thanksgiving. My "blah blah blah" about my grandfather's health turned into a "blah blah blah" about the health of more paternal family members. What the hell was I thinking? Just, maybe, that she's known these people for multiple decades and has at least been friendly with my father's siblings (who have also all treated me better than my father and helped me/my mother out numerous times just by being there). So when my conversation landed on the fear that the aunt who hosted Thanksgiving might still have some cancer lurking in her body my mother finally got around to, "Didn't she host Thanksgiving again this year?" "Ummm, yes." "Did you go?" "Ummm, yes." Silence. "Okay, I've got to go." It's so predictable that it's almost funny. Why can't I have parents that aren't emotionally crippled? Are my kids doomed to ask the same question years from now? ......................................................... As for my grandfather's bypass operation: so far, so good. It was a triple bypass with a valve replacement (big stuff for a guy well into his 80s) but last I heard he had not had a stroke and was trying to breathe on his own.

2005-12-21T11:27:00.000-05:00

more random bits

---CC took this week off of work without telling me (though a few weeks ago it was mentioned in passing that he had a week left of vacation to take before the end of the year & that this was the only week he could take off). That was a bit of a surprise last Sunday night. By today - the first day he took PonyBoy to preschool (and last day b/c holiday break starts tomorrow) I was feeling more charitable. ...Until he made a grumpy remark about the dishes not being done while I did the "fun" stuff of wrapping xmas presents (note: while PB was in school and therefore not looking). I must say that when your stomach looks like this - D - standing at the sink is really, really not fun. ---During my non-dishwashing, non-present-wrapping time this morning, I have been perusing a book on cottage design. Some of these places are so cute that I want to just pinch their cheeks. Sadly for me, all of the pictures are from the SF Bay Area & many of them come from Berkeley. I say "sadly" because those were the types of houses that really informed my architectural/stylistic preferences. You can see it in bits and pieces around my house. The neighbor was aghast when we tore up a huge portion of our back yard's grass to put in a garden. The real estate agent was skeptical when we talked about our plans to put in a brick/cobblestone patio. These are still the things we actually like about our house but in a way, after seven years, we still feel like strangers in a strange land. Now if only we had a spare half million lying around to make up the difference between what we would pay for a house and actually buying a cute little bungalow in the Berkeley hills. (Nevermind, I don't want spare money lying around - be careful what you wish for and all that.) ---I finally got in touch with the recommended doula last night. She has a prior commitment during a week of the month when I'm most likely to go into labor so I'm crossing my fingers that her back-up person does not have a commitment during the same timeframe. The doula worked at the hospital as an L&D nurse for many decades. In conjunction with my main midwife, there is an 80% successful VBAC rate. My friend just had a great VBAC birth experience with this doula and one of the midwives from the practice. So, basically, I'm hoping to follow in those footsteps. And I'm keeping my fingers crossed.

2005-12-20T12:48:00.000-05:00

xmas scars

Sometimes it amazes me that I can manage to put together some holiday decorations and manage to garner some holiday spirit when, in reality, this can be such a sucky time of year. On the other hand, maybe because it can be such a sucky time of year I need to marshal some holiday cheer. The first xmas of extreme suckitude (in my memory) was when my uncle kicked my mother and me out of the only home I'd ever known on xmas night. He was an alcoholic. She had sold her half of the house to him to finance nursing school. He was pissed that she spent almost the whole day in bed instead of making the day merry for me. She had bronchitis from working with sick people and had to work again that night so she wouldn't lose money and, possibly, her job. The "solution" included a dead mouse, belongings thrown into trash bags, and a movie with lots of naked people in the basement of some makeshift babysitters down the street while my mother worked. Ho ho ho. Another xmas of extreme suckitude occurred twelve years ago. My mother and stepfather, at that point, lived in a house that scared the sh*t out of me at the very edge of civilization in L.A. The edge of civilization in L.A. means that the serial killers bury the f*cking bodies somewhere nearby while the bikers are probably busy cooking up some meth. That year my stepbrother had decided to turn his life around by moving in with the quasi-parental-units. On xmas day itself he disappeared with a friend. The next day he returned in time to go to work. That night he didn't return at all. I worried that he was dead in a ditch on the side of the highway somewhere... and I was pretty much right. Sucky sucky suck. Other xmases just flow together in one conglomeration of the memory of boredom while my mother slept after either 1)working the night before, 2) working the night of, or 3) both of the above. In fact, I will say that the xmas of two years ago - which we spent in a hotel room in Miami while I suffered from food poisoning - was almost pleasant. At least there was sunshine and no snow. So... What does this year have in store? I worry. My grandfather is suddenly in the hospital for the foreseeable future while awaiting a big bypass operation. Hopefully he'll be recovering in the hospital for a good long while afterwards as well.

2005-12-19T12:25:00.000-05:00

killjoy

Obviously, my children are going to grow up scarred for life whilst also scarring other children for life because I'm not giving into the Santa lie. Sure, PonyBoy knows some stories about Santa but only in the form of books that have been read to him. I'm not against that. Spare me the "magic of childhood" BS - if I wanted to raise my children to think the same as everyone else then maybe I'd bow down to the subtle pressure. Instead, we know that people like to pretend Santa. People also like to pretend that "Jesus" was (and, in the past, a plethora of other deities were) born on exactly December 25th. People like to pretend that it's okay to give into base consumerism and deep debt for one pagan-rooted holiday around midwinter. Thank you, no. The lights, they are pretty. The tree, it is pretty. The cookies, they are delicious. The presents, they are given by flesh and blood people. But I have never felt any imperative to give into cultural dogma and customs just for the sake of going along with the program. I could tell you that last night there was a Christmas celebration at church. What does that make you think? What if I also said that they lighted a yule log dedicated to the goddess; lit candles dedicated to love, peace, etc. on an "advent wreath", and pointed out that lighting candles on the menorah would be disrespectful because Hanukah does not begin for another week? All that and my agnosticism is still accepted? No, we don't do Santa. But I really don't care if anyone else does.

2005-12-16T16:12:00.000-05:00

call me smurfette

I had a little problem whilst tie-dyeing today. I dropped a bowl of blue dye that I was mixing/moving to another spot. My hands are blue. My feet are blue. My face is streaked with blue. My tongue and lips are partly blue. (Note: If you're ever in the process of dropping dye, do not open your mouth to gasp.) I think I cried blue tears for a bit. I was definitely spitting blue for a while. What a great way to welcome home the husband I haven't seen in ten days!

2005-12-16T10:37:00.000-05:00

screw the environment

Sure, most of the year I have deep-seated misgivings about driving an SUV. (It is, thankfully, much smaller than the Suburban on which I learned to drive.) Today, however, is the sort of day that provides one of main reasons for driving the scourge. Yesterday we received maybe six inches of snow. Add to that the snow-plowed pile blocking my driveway. (Do you see where I'm going with this?) I've gotten our sedan stuck in less than that even after I shoveled. Do I really want to shovel at this point? No. As we began pulling out, I warned PonyBoy that there would be no school today if we got stuck. "Okay, mama," he replied gamely as I plowed right over the snow.

2005-12-16T06:57:00.000-05:00

damn it, $tarbucks

When we were in the holy land that is California, I could not get over how many drive-through $tarbucks there were. Although it was not quite one on every corner, it was certainly coming close enough in some areas. My beef with this is multifold, and in no way disses the invention of drive-through coffee vendors: 1. $tarbucks, it's cold here in Michigan. I've got 1.5 kids who will shortly need to be carted around in two carseats. Why can't we have a drive-through? Come on, we invented the damn car culture. I live near the road that had the first stretch of real car-compatible pavement (if there is any such thing here) in the whole country, if not world. If I have to unstrap two kids from their carseats in 20 degree weather, I'm just not going to get my latte fix. 2. $tarbucks, do you put crack in the gingerbread lattes? I would certainly be happy to go to another cafe at any other time of year, but I just can't seem to stop at any when my brain whispers "gingerbread latte" every time I think of coffee. 3. $tarbucks, you've reached nowhere near market saturation in this area. Sure, Coffee Beanery and Panera offer free internet connections... but they don't have gingerbread lattes.

2005-12-16T06:55:00.000-05:00

weird

Every typepad blog on my blogroll (and, therefore, I assume the rest of them) are missing their posts from the past week. There will be a bunch of ticked off bloggers if that situation is not rectified.

2005-12-15T20:40:00.000-05:00

boy names

I never expected to have two boys, so I already used up my prime list of boy names with just one. Furthermore, that name wasn't any old name picked out of the ether but my mother's maiden name (which is also a rather too popular boy name these days). So, therefore, I feel a lot of pressure in picking out a new boy name. In the past I just figured that I could pick out another family last name but none of them are very aesthetically pleasing to me (Bailey? Douglass?) and none of them are, of course, as close to me as the name with which my own mother was born. So then I latched onto the idea of matching the brotherly names with number of letters & syllables. However, PonyBoy's name is a mere 4 letters long so that leaves me with a very small pool of names from which to pick. In the end - we've still got three months to decide... Edit: Five minutes after I wrote this CC called and read off bunch of names from some baby name chooser.

2005-12-15T09:46:00.000-05:00

xmas

I like writing "Xmas" because it makes some people apoplectic and then I can snicker at them in their ignorance. An explanation:

SYLLABICATION: X.mas PRONUNCIATION: krsms, ksms NOUN: Christmas. ETYMOLOGY: From X, the Greek letter chi, first letter of Greek Khrstos, Christ. See Christ. USAGE NOTE: Xmas has been used for hundreds of years in religious writing, where the X represents a Greek chi, the first letter of , "Christ." In this use it is parallel to other forms like Xtian, "Christian." But people unaware of the Greek origin of this X often mistakenly interpret Xmas as an informal shortening pronounced (ksms). Many therefore frown upon the term Xmas because it seems to them a commercial convenience that omits Christ from Christmas. [emphasis mine]

'Tis a lifelong amusement to study Western history in college, no? Tomorrow's holiday lesson: Why Osiris is the reason for the season...

2005-12-14T21:45:00.000-05:00

bits & pieces

---Apparently, I was a murderer last night. This morning I found the corpse - flat and frozen - on the driveway. What are the odds of hitting a mouse with a tire as you're parking? (Blech.) ---We may have up to six inches of new snow by this time tomorrow. Oh, joy. I've got to say that life has been hard since our return from California. Well, life has been cold. We've probably only had a handful of hours in which the temperature has been above freezing in the past two and a half weeks. It's not even winter yet! ---Blogrolling has been slowly failing over the course of this Autumn. Now a very low percentage of sites show when they were last updated. WTF? It is damned annoying. ---My hands look tie-dyed now. After pretty much ignoring all my dyeing supplies since I had the + on the pregnancy test, I decided that it was time to make some things for Xmas. (My niece *really* liked CC's tie-dyed pajama shirt - guess what she's getting?) ---I'm hungry. (Nothing new there.) I have never once craved pickles and ice cream, but I have had an frighteningly large amount of Arizona iced tea this past week (Target sells it by the gallon!). I have no idea why it tastes soooo good. ---I had my first unsuccessful gift-buying mission today. The problem was that I first saw "the item" a couple of weeks ago, but CC was there so I couldn't buy it. Then we went back to the store together last week. I certainly couldn't get "the item" that time either. This time it was all gone. I'm disappointed because *I* liked it.

2005-12-13T22:10:00.000-05:00

comfort zone

My husband is fond of saying that he has no ambition, despite historical evidence to the contrary. (The boy has a graduate degree from what is usually ranked the #2 or #3 academic program in his field in the country/world. Is that lack of ambition?) The "problem" is that he's become quite comfortable in his group at work over the past... geez, more than half a decade. Over the past few years, especially, he's tried to keep his head down as the members of the group were (sometimes unwillingly) whisked away to various other groups in the company. He likes where he is and didn't want to face a different boss. I understand because he and I are the same in our distrust of change. However, his company is having its semi-annual gasp for breath with the promise of laying off thousands of white-collarish workers next month. How considerate of them to wait until after the holidays! He's not seriously worried - thousands of people in this large company is a drop in the bucket (until it's you, of course). At the same time, however, his manager was promoted and will not be replaced... leaving his beloved "group" floating in limbo & waiting to be attached to some other group higher on the organizational change. Meanwhile, the years are quickly ticking down to when his not-bad boss will finally enter into retirement. What does all this mean? An end to the comfort zone. Sooner or later, it will come. Next week? Next month? A couple years from now? We don't know, but after more than six years of sameness the odds are that most of the sameness is already behind us. Life is never certain but all the recent changes and announcements have highlighted the uncertainty. Hanging over all of this the possibility that "someone" will decide to leave the company next month & take CC along to the new venture. Or not. But the person has postponed the leave-or-not decision over many months now and January is the target for a yay or nay. Maybe a shake up will shake up the avowed lack of ambition... whatever that means.

2005-12-13T18:07:00.000-05:00

f* dreamworks

Since CC has been away, I've been relying on the television providing me a much-needed respite in the middle of the day. Thank the flying spaghetti monster for the inanity of Bob the Builder - it lulls me to sleep while keeping PonyBoy by my side. Recently, however, we tried to branch out into some Dreamworks dvds (longer movie=longer nap?) such as Shrek2 & Shark Tale. However, their dvds just make me want to strangle an ogre or smack a shark. The problem? The f*ckers have disallowed me from "arrowing" past the many myriad advertisements for their movies that come on before the menu. Nor can I simply press "menu" to get to the menu. Rude rude rude! Dudes, I've seen Madagascar already - I don't need to see the preview each time I want to see Shrek (which is a far, far superior movie).

2005-12-12T23:03:00.000-05:00

the wisdom of generations

I just read a very interesting (short) article. The author asserts that one reason for all the "breastfeeding problems" that new mothers face is that we lost all the breastfeeding wisdom when one generation basically gave up in favor of substitute milk concoctions. Really, that's one of the reasons that I like La Leche League - it was an organized response to maintain and re-create the knowledge that women used to know and share. Newborns want to eat every two hours? Every hour and a half? Every three hours? Sure. Normal. My husband's grandmother raised about as many children as you can count on two hands. Her advice to my mother in law was to feed the babies when they were hungry. As I saw whenever she came out to help, she really doesn't believe in that. Just last month, she told* my husband that she never made enough milk because her kids were always hungry - they "needed" formula. No, she just didn't listen to her own mother's advice & went instead for the pseudo-science behind formula advertising. From the article:

Various studies and clinical experience show that many mothers give up breastfeeding earlier than they had planned. The StatsCan report says almost a quarter stop during the first month. The most common reason? Not enough milk. That’s a dead giveaway. In a culture that truly understands and supports breastfeeding, which ours does not, there is no way that one in four nursing moms would have an inadequate milk supply. That may be true for a small number of unfortunate moms, but the prevalence of “not enough milk” is overestimated in affluent Western cultures. This happens for two main reasons, both related to a lack of understanding about how breastfeeding works. First, something or someone interferes with the mother’s milk supply. For example, her baby isn’t suckling in the way that stimulates milk production, but no one spots the problem and shows her how to correct it. The other is that she actually has plenty of milk, but believes or is told she doesn’t. This can happen when a baby nurses more often than someone thinks is normal. Frequent nursing is normal in the early days — essential, in fact, for establishing milk supply. But many people who give new moms advice — including their own mothers (many of whom didn’t breastfeed their babies), husbands and, sadly, some health professionals — don’t understand that.

*This was when my husband was trying to convince them to boycott Nestle after we kept finding assorted Chinese foods that were actually produced by the multinational corporation.

2005-12-12T21:35:00.000-05:00

less introspection

Today I was in a cleaning-and-organizing mood. A morning trip to Target resulted in a plastic 3-drawer organization tool for PonyBoy's room. His Lincoln logs* fit perfectly in one drawer, his "upstairs" blocks fit perfectly in another drawer, and he was able to find enough toy detritus around his room to fill the last drawer. (*The Lincoln logs were actually my father's when he was a kid - 50+ years old and still... wood.) After we put away the toys, I turned to finishing the separation of summer-versus-winter clothes, with some culling of too-small outfits along the way. It's good to know that the bambino-in-utero will be able to use the clothes in years to come. While going through his dresser, I found a folder that was filled with the instructions from a variety of infant gadgets. 60% of the gadgets were so useless that I long ago rid our house of them so it felt good to get rid of the paperwork as well. Then I had to look at the boxes of clothes from former years. Geez, it's good the kid has a walk-in closet because the space is full. Our main problem is that I have less than half of our original stash of infant clothes because PonyBoy's cousin was born a year after he was and I was guilted into giving away all but my favorites. *sigh* However, the room looks less chaotic with more storage. I just don't know how to get the space set up for a second kid's belongings...

2005-12-11T23:25:00.000-05:00

writer's block

Once upon a time when I was four years old, the boy next door, with whom I was passionately in preschooler love, came over while I was sitting at the dining room table eating green olives. I also loved green olives. The boy told me that his family was moving off to Idaho the next day. The next day! I've never liked green olives since then. Once upon a time, I fancied myself a would-be writer. Which is to say, I liked to write stories. In elementary school my teachers and classmates thought I was quite good. In high school my teachers and classmates thought I was quite good. In college, however, I couldn't write my way into a creative writing class so I was quite defeated for a while. After college, I took a creative writing class and joined a writers circle. However, I just felt naive and shallow compared the older people around me. My content lacked depth and wisdom. Again, my confidence was shaken (though when a critic asked what "provolone" was I did wonder a bit if the older people themselves lacked depth of vocabulary). So instead I backed down and scribbled into notebooks alone. One morning when I had the day off of work, I sat down in my robe with a cup of coffee, pulled out my notebook, and turned on the morning news with the volume on low. Unbeknownst to anyone - including me - I was a few days pregnant. And the world was about to change. The date was September 11, 2001. I looked up at the television as Katie Couric preceded a commercial break by saying that a plane had hit the World Trade Center. I put down my notebook as visions of King Kong danced through my head. Then the commercial break ended. In all the years since then, I still haven't opened that notebook or any other. Sometimes I sit in front of my computer with a fresh blank Word page, but I'm never inspired enough to type much. Stories dance through my head but never find their way out. Will this ever end? There's a scene in The World According to Garp where the title character explains that he is just a reader, not a writer. I thought it was terribly sad when I first saw the movie but maybe I need to admit that as well... even if only to myself. By the way, I pondered this topic before I read today's Doonesbury.

2005-12-11T22:49:00.000-05:00

temperament

via Kat

You Have a Choleric Temperament

You are a person of great enthusiasm - easily excited by many things.
Unsatisfied by the ordinary, you are reaching for an epic, extraordinary life.
You want the best. The best life. The best love. The best reputation.

You posses a sharp and keen intellect. Your mind is your primary weapon.
Strong willed, nothing can keep you down. Your energy can break down any wall.
You're an instantly passionate person - and this passion gives you an intoxicating power over others.

At your worst, you are a narcissist. Full of yourself and even proud of your faults.
Stubborn and opinionated, you know what you think is right. End of discussion.
A bit of a misanthrope, you often see others as weak, ignorant, and inferior.

What Temperment Are You?

2005-12-10T16:57:00.000-05:00

pregnancy sucks & blows

I thought it was about time for another generalized pregnancy vent. Before becoming with PonyBoy, I thought my peasant bone structure meant that I would be the type of woman who could be out working in the field until it was time to pop, then just go off for a few hours to pop. Ha ha ha ha. Ack. Now the reason I will never have a girl-child is because I just will never do this again. Before pregnancy one, my answer to the how-many-kids question was "two or three." After PonyBoy, it was "one... maybe two." Basically, pregnancy hits my body like a ton of bricks. I puke. Sure, every hears about "morning sickness" but I really puke. I've got a thousand-dollar bottle of pills to stop it, but I hate taking pills so I still puke. Magical second trimester? No, I still puke. I think with pregnancy one I had maybe one "magical" month (or three weeks) in which I felt neither distinct nausea nor the later problems I feel during pregnancy. It would have been a glorious month except it was February and I live in Michigan. Now, the remains of nausea are overlapping with the later problems of pregnancy (the nausea having lasted longer and the later problems appearing, perhaps, earlier... though I guess not necessarily because I have less than four months to go). What are the later problems? Mostly, it's that my damn pubic bones want to stretch far apart from each other. Just like last time. What exactly does that mean? That means that standing on one leg (as one might do to put on pants) is painful. Rolling over in bed is painful. There's a general "discomfort" down there. And, I am so afraid that it will blossom into the really severe pain of last time. never again

2005-12-09T11:42:00.000-05:00

A moment of silence

* * * * * * * * * * * * As I mourn the lifelong assumption that I would someday have a daughter. Goodbye cute little funky non-pink dresses. Goodbye pig tails. Goodbye Nora. The good news: the boys can share a room (that makes me feel less bad because we weren't going to give up the computer room/office anyway), PonyBoy wants a bunk bed anyway, I already have most of a wardrobe, we've got the boy toys, etc. Plus, hell, my in-laws will secretly be pleased at another boy in the male lineage.

2005-12-08T20:59:00.000-05:00

angry buzz

One of my favorite scenes from Anne of Green Gables comes when Anne cracks her slate over Gilbert Blythe's head and subsequently has to write "Anne Shirley has a very bad temper" one hundred times on the chalkboard. She manages to regain her dignity by inserting the final "e" in her name when her teacher writes a mere "Ann." Now, I too have a very bad temper but keeping or regaining my dignity seems to be one area in which I am lacking. In fact, dignity and my temper are at far points in the spectrum of my life. The horrible fact is that when I get angry *and* frustrated I tend to... cry. *sniff* Oh, the embarrassment and shame! I really don't know how to pull myself together or keep it under control I mean, anger is one thing. Frustration is another. But so often the really angry moments are due to frustration. Watch out then. According to outward measurements, I am a fairly intelligent person but I think I'm a dumbass when it comes to that "EQ" (emotional intelligence) theory. I mean, there are so many things in this world that are illogical and/or unfair. I get tripped up with the "Hey, that doesn't make sense!" argument when I should really just be able to shrug my shoulders and say, "C'est la vie." Wouldn't that be a healthier response? On the other hand, thinking that the world is nuts is only logical in an insane world.

2005-12-08T16:36:00.000-05:00

a big f-you to the medical establishment

Here it is FUCK YOU M-Care. Yes, this particular F-word is for you, my dear HMO. Sure, you let me pick any obstetrical provider on your list without a precious referral, but you don't do jack shit if my primary care physician won't give me a referral for a second ultrasound. FUCK YOU Beaumont Doctor. Sure, the doctor was nice and human. I searched many pages of possible physicians to find a DO. However, this particular F-word is reserved just for you for not giving me a damn *medically necessary* referral because I committed the cardinal sin of not choosing another fucking Beaumont Doctor to deliver my child. I'd rather pay the three thousand (plus!) dollars out of pocket for a homebirth than to enter the office of another Beaumont Obstetrician or set foot in the fucking Beaumont Maternity Ward ever again. Oh, wait, here's another FUCK YOU for lying to me and telling me that I didn't actually need a referral if the u/s is done in the OB's office. The HMO tells me differently, assholes. Me? Fuck them all. I'll pay the goddamn money (though CC also gives a big "FUCK YOU" to the u/s tech for not looking at/seeing what she was supposed to look at in the first place) for one ultrasound. I'll switch my PCP's office (and, I suppose, I should tell them why in as bitchy a way as possible) for the duration of the pregnancy. But, goddammit, I know of far too many Caribbean Medical School doctors who found work in the hospital at which I'm choosing to birth this child to trust my health to that system long-term. So, to sum it all up, FUCK YOU to the whole fucking medical establishment.

2005-12-08T09:52:00.000-05:00

1 down, 8 to go

I hate to be a whiner about this but I really hate it when my husband travels for extended stretches of time. Aside from our eighteen months of having a long-distance relationship, I have spent the vast majority of the past 10+ years sleeping with him at my side. Therefore, sleeping without him has become a bit difficult because I am so stubbornly set in my ways. Add to that the increasing pregnancy discomfort with which I must deal and... well, I woke up every single hour last night. Plus I was awake for an hour and a half after a kiddo catastrophe. Bah humbug. Moreover, I decided to be so "on top of things" despite my exhaustion that I went outside to warm up the car ten minutes before we left. Heck, I even used our spare key so that I could lock the car door and spare myself the agony of someone stealing it at a most inopportune moment. However, I did not count on the fact that my usual key would be a bitch about unlocking the damn doors the old-fashioned way. Dude, I have a fob. Luckily, CC was already awake and willing to share with me the code that I always forget to unlock the door. We've had this car for 27 months: I really should remember the code. Furthermore, "they" are threatening us with up to six inches of snow tonight. What does that mean? Snow day tomorrow? What else? I have to take PonyBoy to my morning ultrasound appointment after I shovel the snow away? Joy. Please let the forecasters be as wrong as usual. I could handle an inch. It's why I have a vehicle with four wheel drive capacity. Anyway, maybe I'll have an actual gender to report in 25 hours...

2005-12-08T09:46:00.000-05:00

moronic

Ya know, I'm really kind of wishy-washy about the whole death penalty thing. Then some news story comes along and I think that maybe the world would be a better place with some selective reduction:

MEMPHIS, Tenn. - In an unusual case of mistaken identity, a woman who thought a block of white cheese was cocaine is charged with trying to hire a hit man to rob and kill four men. The woman also was mistaken about the hit man. He turned out to be an undercover police officer. Jessica Sandy Booth, 18, was arrested over the weekend and remains in jail with bond set at $1 million on four charges of attempted murder and four counts of soliciting a murder. According to police, Booth was in the Memphis home of the four intended victims last week when she mistook a block of queso fresco cheese for cocaine — inspiring the idea to hire someone to break into the home, take the drugs, and kill the men. ... Booth told the officer that any children inside the house old enough to testify would have to be killed, police said. A search of the home with the permission of the occupants revealed no drugs — only the white, crumbly cheese common in Mexican cuisine. ...

What the hell kind of person is so freaking stupid that she can't recognize cocaine even though it's valuable enough for her to go through the motions that would kill four men and any innocent children in the way? That bitch needs to be locked up and the key needs to be thrown away.

2005-12-07T16:48:00.000-05:00

first thing for baby

Again, I feel like this kiddo is getting gypped in the wow-baby department. Sure, I finally came up with a nickname for her/him but it's only a recycle of PonyBoy's fetal name - Thumper. But today we did manage a milestone: we bought the first baby gadget for this one. At some point a year and a half ago or so I sold off our infant carseat/stroller combo while vowing never again to get such a thing (the stroller was fine and dandy for a young baby but by the time toddlerhood roller around I was firmly in love with our light and spiffy MacLaren). I used the money from that sale to finance most of a jogging stroller. Win-win situation, yes? However, that left us infant-carseat-less for Thumper the Second. Because CC had the morning off (he's currently on a plane headed to the Wild West) and we had a $250 Sears certificate set to expire soon after his return, we spent our morning in Sears. You have no idea how hard it has been to spend that damn $250. Our original goal today (after several aborted attempts to spend the money) was 1) a deep fryer, 2) a nifty new toaster, 3) a powerful new blender, and 4) new cordless phones. Alas, the toaster and blender seemed like silly extravagances once we arrived at the store and CC wouldn't let me blow the whole certificate on a KitchenAid Artisan stand mixer. So we headed off to look at carseats. Somehow looking at carseats turned into an hour-long expedition weighing the pros and cons of getting just a carseat versus another combo stroller. As it turned out, CC rather liked plopping Cheerios into the front of our old combo so we went for it again. (Okay, and I liked the cup holder okay? There's nothing that feels quite so jaunty as sipping a latte that you can then slide into the cup holder of the stroller.) After getting that, we had just enough left on the certificate to get a set of cordless phones and a fairly nifty can opener (though we then had to add in ~$0.40 of our own money). So, basically, reckless spending pays off if you have a Sears "Reward" credit card: you can cash out for certificates that then will allow you to 1) protect your infant in the car, 2) talk on the phone, and 3) open cans. Ooooh. Aaaah.

2005-12-06T11:00:00.000-05:00

sorry barbie

But I'm really just so gosh-darn proud to be the current #2 Google hit for "swallowing Barbie heads."

2005-12-06T06:45:00.000-05:00

not from michigan

Part of the problem I've encountered living here in the cold white north is that there are problems with which I've not had to deal for my whole life. Oh, sure, I lived in a similarly frigid environment for the first decade of my life. I have happy memories of snow days and snowmen and hot chocolate. But then my family went off to live in the DESERT dammit. Snowmen and snow days were only magical childhood memories for most of my life. I don't remember the finer aspects of living in a snowy realm - like, for example, what we did with our snowboots in preschool. I do remember thinking it ridiculous right before I left California, when I was student teaching, when one mother insisted her daughter stay inside from recess if the temperature dipped below fifty. "It's freezing!" the kid would insist. "It is not freezing," I would reply, "It is above thirty-two degrees Farenheit." Alas, it fell on deaf ears. And, no, I wasn't happy about the situation because *recess* there meant that the rest of the school workers had their lawful morning break of fifteen minutes. But you can't leave a spoiled rotten little kid in the classroom alone to run to the bathroom. (Also, this was the kid whose mother just simply took her precious, perfect angel out of school when I worked my way into teaching the full day of class for the last two weeks of my stint there. Beeyotch.) *ahem* In PonyBoy's school, they wear the snowboots to their coat hooks and then put on their slippers. Until five minutes ago, I couldn't find PB's slippers so he's been going snowbootless. However, yesterday I knew I was potentially in trouble when I passed the other class on my way in to pick him up - 90% of the kids were outfitted in snow pants, hats, and mittens. It was 25 degrees, actively snowing (though not sticking much), and the wind chill was 15. "Ummm, did you go outside to play today?" I asked PB on our way out. "Yeah, but I didn't have snow pants so I had to stay away from the snow." Cue me feeling again like the rottenest mother in the state. Snow pants, huh? Whodathunkit? So today I got out of bed early to get us together. Slippers? Check. Snow pants with name written on the inside? Check. Snow boots? Check. Hat and mittens? Ummm... I think they're in the car....

2005-12-05T10:56:00.000-05:00

h u g e

In the past couple of weeks I've "blossomed" into a very pregnant-looking woman. Moreso in the past week than in the previous week. It's weird. The "blossoming" also corresponds with an increase in tiredness and general blechiness. I'm sure a lot of energy is being directed towards this growing bigness, which is in turn pushing harder on internal organs. Furthermore, the kiddo in there can hit/kick me in the bladder and way over on the upper side of my belly at the same time. At one point the other day, as I was driving in rush hour traffic in a nighttime snow flurry, PonyBoy was talking away while "Thumper*" was whacking away. All I could think was, "I need to concentrate on driving! Stop!" Also, "Hey, this one needs to be called Thumper." *"Thumper" is also the name we called PonyBoy before he was born so perhaps this one is more precisely "Thumper the Second."

2005-12-05T10:22:00.000-05:00

a bowl of rice

This morning I was ready to give my child up for adoption over a bowl of rice. Like most mornings before school, this one started out with breakfast negotiations. My child has not been a fan of breakfast for a while. On weekends, that's fine and dandy but on schooldays it does not work out very well because he turns into a raving monster by the time I pick him up. Yes, the school has snack but he does not always choose to participate because there is so much else to do. This morning's breakfast negotiation began with cereal and ended when he opened the refrigerator door and told me he wanted the rice. Rice? Fine. But he had to have turkey as well for protein. Then he went off to the bathroom. Upon his return, he claimed he was not in fact going to eat rice. Nuh-uh. No way. That sh*t isn't going down in this house. ---> That was my reaction. And it only devolved from there. My final word was that if he didn't shape up and quit messing around every single morning I'd send him off to Arizona with his father this Wednesday (note: business trip) and he could stay there until one or another set of grandparents chose to take him in. Yes, I know he's going to be in therapy over that particular threat for years but I've had enough. ENOUGH. I will not have my children turn into brats. As for breakfast, all of the turkey and half the rice was eaten (under duress) so maybe I won't be facing a monster child in an hour.

2005-12-04T05:01:00.000-05:00

moody

I need more sleep. When I don't sleep enough I get very cranky. Things go to hell. And that's in the normal course of events. When I'm pregnant I really need to sleep more. But of course my body conspires against me: "Feed me," *baby kicks,* "don't sleep on your back or the baby will die," *leg cramp,* "feed me." Now my birthday-sharing-boys are both a bit peeved with me. Tired, cranky mamas get no respect. But, hey, I'm the one facing a week and a half of single parenthood coming up in four short days. Chances are we'll have a blizzard during that time.

2005-12-04T04:54:00.000-05:00

ha ha

via Kateri

the Wit
(57% dark, 34% spontaneous, 21% vulgar)

your humor style:
CLEAN | COMPLEX | DARK

You like things edgy, subtle, and smart. I guess that means you're probably an intellectual, but don't take that to mean pretentious. You realize 'dumb' can be witty--after all isn't that the Simpsons' philosophy?--but rudeness for its own sake, 'gross-out' humor and most other things found in a fraternity leave you totally flat.

I guess you just have a more cerebral approach than most. You have the perfect mindset for a joke writer or staff writer.

Your sense of humor takes the most thought to appreciate, but it's also the best, in my opinion.

You probably loved the Office. If you don't know what I'm talking about, check it out here: http://www.bbc.co.uk/comedy/theoffice/.

PEOPLE LIKE YOU: Jon Stewart - Woody Allen - Ricky Gervais

The 3-Variable Funny Test!
- it rules -

If you're interested, try my latest: The Terrorism Test

My test tracked 3 variables How you compared to other people your age and gender:

You scored higher than 61% on darkness
You scored higher than 20% on spontaneity
You scored higher than 12% on vulgarity

Link: The 3 Variable Funny Test written by jason_bateman on Ok Cupid, home of the 32-Type Dating Test

PS: Did you notice the time stamp on this post? Pregnancy can suck. Move along.

2005-12-01T20:04:00.000-05:00

mother, daughter, gratitude, guilt

I'm taking a break from my mother. This may well be unforgivable, but that's not unusual I suppose in our case. I'm taking a break from my mother because I don't need any more bullshit clogging up my already fragile emotional pregnant state. Have I ever sounded on here like a woman who needs more bullshit clogging up her emotional state? If so, it was a gross misrepresentation. I'm taking a break from my mother because I don't need to get sucked into an emotional vortex. I don't need the drama. I don't want the angst. I'm taking a break from my mother because I am nearly thirty-two freaking years old and I always have to remind myself that I am an adult after I talk to her. Sometimes I wonder if I'm the only adult in the conversation. I'm taking a break from my mother because there really was a reason that I moved thousands of miles away without a tear. I'm taking a break from my mother because my walls are crumbling and she tears and tears at them. I'm taking a break from my mother because I'm tired. I'm taking a break from my mother because I'm selfish. ...So selfish that I dare think it's not all about her.

2005-12-01T15:13:00.000-05:00

appointment

Wheee... I get a second chance to try to look for this little future baby's gender next week. As CC and I noted after the first ultrasound, they didn't get a good look at the heart. I have a relative who has numerous possibly-genetic, possibly-not oddities with his anatomy & physiology so they need a good look. Otherwise, all looks good. I met with a different midwife this time. She's nice too so I'm not worried. There's only one more I have as yet to meet (though I think she may be located at a different office so it won't be great to go there if I have to do so). The appointment was scheduled a bit earlier than my previous ones so I had plenty of time afterwards to go Xmas shopping. Penzey's Spices --- niiiice, especially since they just opened a store a couple miles from my house (and right on the way home from the medical office).

2005-11-30T10:56:00.000-05:00

Feeling green

Although I did lose track there a bit during my vacation, I do think that I'm about 23 weeks pregnant at this point. This is definitely my second time around because I couldn't even tell you how long I have until the third trimester, though I do know I'm well into the second trimester. (Also, I schedule my midwife appointments as far apart as feasible - oops, another one tomorrow but I haven't had one since October.) My problem? Morning sickness. I'm not as constantly nauseated as I was in the beginning, but now when I begin to get that way there is a very high chance that I will in fact throw up unless I take some Zofran. This morning I really needed to go out and get some grocery shopping done - restock the fridge after our time away and all that. Do you have any idea how hard it is to shop for food when you're battling to keep breakfast down? Blech. In the end, Zofran helped me continue digesting breakfast rather than wear it but the frozen Coke cups at check-out were really fortuitous. While a blustery and snowy day does not immediately cry out for frozen soda, my stomach sure does. Blech.

2005-11-28T09:23:00.000-05:00

randomness

---Ouch! For the second time in a week, I've had to jump out of bed in excruciating pain due to a leg (calf) cramp. For a week before the first one, I could feel little twinges from time to time when I was in bed. I'm not sure whether to blame pregnancy or the lack of bananas (potassium source) during my trip. ---My house is an utter wreck & a bunch of people are set to descend upon us in twenty four hours and thirty five minutes. I'm almost too tired to care. ---Jet lag sucks. ---The crazy Iowa-based contingent of my extended family has pulled a coup and decided for everyone that all family reunions from now on should be in Iowa. 'Cuz, like, the family originated there and stuff. However, less than half of the people who would actually attend the reunion still live there and... for god's sakes it's IOWA. There's a reason most people left. Someone from the Iowa-based contingent also asked what there was to do in California when a California-based relative proposed that state for a family reunion. I haven't missed a family reunion in twenty years or more, but I'm not going to sign myself up for going to f'ing Iowa every other year for the rest of my life. ---Bilingualism in action. CC and I were beginning to despair of PonyBoy's bilingual abilities. He understands Chinese but rarely bothers to actually say anything in that language. However, we saw him make great strides in just two short days last week while he was playing with his cousins. His older cousin speaks English from school so could talk to him that way, but she provided some nifty peer pressure when she asked him if he could speak Chinese. For her, he did. ---I went to see the new Harry Potter movie yesterday sans child. I think it will be safe for him to watch on DVD at home because he can run into a different room during scary parts or just walk away for a while when it gets intense. However, I'm really glad I didn' take him to see it in the theater. It was so sad. But good. ---Hmmmm.... my house is still a wreck. Where are my maid elves?

2005-11-27T11:13:00.000-05:00

red eye

5:30 P.M. PST - leave Monterey via shuttle to SFO 7:30 P.M. PST - arrive at SFO relatively early due to fortuitous lack of traffic 7:37 P.M. PST - while checking in, realize I do not have my wallet. freak the fuck out 7:38 P.M. PST - realize I must have had my wallet to pay the shuttle dude. realize I have the shuttle service's number in the "dialed" portion of my cell phone. 7:42 P.M. PST - shuttle dude will be around in ten minutes from his short break 7:43 P.M. PST - nice people at Northwest Airlines counter check in the hysterical pregnant woman and the shocked preschooler 7:55 P.M. PST - can't find wallet in shuttle. shuttle dude finds wallet. 8:05 P.M. PST - pass through security while noticing that bookstore for which the preschooler has been given money is on the "unsafe" side of the checkpoint. mildly curse because there's no way I'm going through the travails of shoe-coat-bags-stroller-carseat security checks again 8:45, 9:05, 9:30 P.M. PST - am asked by people if the empty bottle lying three feet away on the floor is PonyBoy's. too late, come up with snarky response that losing a bottle is one of the lesser risks of not breastfeeding. 10:05 P.M. PST - boarding begins. husband phones from LAX to say that he too is boarding his plane. 10:15 P.M. PST - seriously disturb family by taking the (next-to-last) row that they thought would be unoccupied. ~10:40 P.M. PST - gaze down upon Berkeley wistfully ~10:50 P.M. PST - curse when I find out that the flying time is a mere 3 hours and 30 minutes ~time unknown due to no cell phone allowed - awakened every fifteen minutes by screaming baby belonging to family that tried pirating my row. ponder angrily when the father stands by my row asking the flight attendants for warm water in a bottle for formula that we would not be subjected to all this screaming if breastfeeding were the norm. 5:19 A.M. EST - touchdown 5:39 A.M. EST - finally manage to unbuckle the damn carseat from the plane's seatbelt 5:58 A.M. EST - meet husband, who has just gotten off his plane 7:00 A.M. EST - drive home. marvel at snow. 7:30 A.M. EST - arrive home. 8:00 A.M. EST - crawl under down covers of bed in attempt to get warm. 8:02 A.M. EST - joined under down covers by rest of family. PonyBoy intones, "Closer. Closer. It's so cold!" 1:17 P.M. EST - next bout of consciousness.

2005-11-17T17:54:00.000-05:00

"flip this house"

My husband and I spend way too much time watching home improvement shows. One of our more preferred types these days is where really stupid and annoying people buy a house and try to renovate it quickly before selling it for a profit. Part of the fun of such shows is watching such stupid and annoying people do stupid and annoying things BUT still make a $200,000 profit on the damn real estate transaction. Well, okay, maybe "fun" isn't quite the right word. One thing that the stupid and annoying people on one particular show all seem to have in common is that they "flip" their houses in southern California. Which brings us to my in-laws' house. I know it's wrong, but my husband and I cannot be in their house for more than five minutes without quietly going through list of renovations we'd make to sell the damn place. As we are going to sleep at night, we whisper our imaginary plans to one another. Basically, the house bugs us both. Imagine if you will a house that is stuck in a 1970s time warp. Yes, it sends chills down my spine as well: burnt orange carpeting upstairs, harvest gold appliances still barely chugging away in the kitchen, a sunken "discussion area" with pink carpeting in front of the never-used fireplace, quasi-Mexican tiles take up at maybe five hundred square feet running from the front door back to the eating area (which is decorated with TWO television sets), that timeless 70s type linoleum cracks beneath your feet in the kitchen and eating area, and upstairs a room of uncertain use is a certain death trap with a three-foot high wall that drops down to the sunken discussion area below. Almost no light enters the front portion of the house, which is only a holding area for all the formal Chinese furniture and decorations that are never actually used. The rest of the house... is the hodge-podge of somewhat functional things, questionable antiques, and dust-covered crap that one might expect of old people who have survived wars, poverty, and social upheaval to finally settle down in the third and final country of their lives. Who am I to judge, really, when I haven't even been able pick out a paint color for my upstairs bathroom after nearly seven years? Who am I to judge when my own little house's interior non-design never passes muster compared to real grown-ups? Still, a house with burnt-orange carpeting cries out for imagination. The frustrating thing is that the in-laws have no plans whatsoever to do anything about it although they do dream of selling their house. Like many people in their ever-more-expensive area, it's their pot of gold. It's pushing seven figures even with burnt-orange carpeting. And I don't know the actual market. CC and I may agree that we'd love to make it over, but we disagree about its habitability for future tenants: I say no one would move in as-is because it's such a fixer-upper while he claims that there are plenty more families like his parents out there who are just looking for the big house with a good school district. Sure.

2005-11-16T10:13:00.000-05:00

alive & well

My husband is da bomb. (Yes, I run hot & cold.) Today he left his computer HERE in the hotel that has FREE INTERNET while he goes off to work, commuting with his coworker so I HAVE A CAR. As for where "HERE" is - the lovely Bakersfield, CA, at the moment. No, there's not really anything much "to do" but about a third of a million people live in the city's limits so one can manage to get by. Yesterday, for example, we got by by swimming in the hotel pool, eating Carl's Jr, and shopping at Target (where I bought a book that helped me "get by" when I forced the young one down for a nap). And it wasn't a bad day. We spent last weekend with my in-laws in L.A. While there was more "to do" I did find that my ankles were highly swollen by the end of each day... so really I do need a break from that sort of vacation rat-race. We'll go back there on Friday and then drive up to the Bay Area on Sunday to visit my brother-in-law's family for a few days before heading to Monterey to spend time with my family. *yawn* I'm tired just thinking about it. Now for the problem: I like California. It's something that I choose to rarely contemplate when I'm off living my life in Michigan. I tell myself that it costs too much to live here. I tell myself that this stae has too many problems. But, dammit, I like California. I've lived in this state from San Diego in the south to the mountains of Gold Country in the north. I've lived in all its major metropolitan areas and in the quiet country filled with mountain lions and deer. And, dammit, I like California. I miss deserts and mountains and valleys and the ocean. Oh, I miss mountains.

2005-11-10T19:55:00.000-05:00

farewell, dear computer

Blogging will be light for the next couple of weeks. "We" have decided that "we" only need CC's work computer because bringing my beloved computer will be redundant. (Redundant my asssssss.) Why do I travel? I hate traveling. I especially hate traveling with my husband. Furthermore, suddenly the fact that his parents "deserve" PonyBoy-time has morphed into a "Hey, why don't you come to the middle-of-nowhere-California with me and hole up in the hotel room for four days?" Woot! ????

2005-11-10T08:26:00.000-05:00

thursday

We hadn't had PonyBoy's picture taken by a studio in a year. Yes, we're awful. This may very well be his last solo portrait session. At first, he freaked out - complete with tears. So of course the first pictures from when he calmed down are not good. This was the last one and it's my favorite. He didn't want the hat on either, but then it was a game. In other news - ha ha ha ha, I haven't begun to pack yet and we're leaving our house in a smidge over 24 hours. Ack!

2005-11-09T10:56:00.000-05:00

baby steps

I'm feeling less "blah" today because I started taking some baby steps again to get through my mental to-do list. Also, I'm sitting in our back room - the addition which has a primary purpose of being a sunnier room than anywhere else in the house. (Our living room drags me down because it's so dark - it only gets early morning sun & a big maple tree in our yard shades all but the first rays.) So far, I've accomplished 1. Finishing a report with a stupid acronym. 2. Finishing a write-up of something I didn't know I had to do but had to wait a week for a response to an email to find out that I did. (Make sense?) 3. Contacting a potential doula. 4. Receiving new carseat and the bulk of PonyBoy's Xmas presents in the mail (I was stressed they wouldn't arrive before we left). 5. Mailing out the "hold mail" form. (This was more difficult than it seems because the road was blocked and the detour through an alley was blocked by a Pepsi truck. ...I blame the Mormons.) 6. Freshly cleaned laundry (okay, I didn't "do" this. Having the ever-higher pile o' laundry growing in the basket was stressing me out, however. Unfortunately, I didn't want to try to pick it up due to last week's back problems.) Now I just need to 1. Explain to a friend that I am not really a horrible friend even though I'd signed up to make her dinner on Monday and forgot. (In my weak defense, I signed up three weeks ago.) 2. Pack!!!! 3. Write up some "nicetameetcha&hopetaseeyaagain" cards for an organization.

2005-11-09T08:25:00.000-05:00

writing off Detroit

I don't live in Detroit. I am not from Detroit. I only know the broad outlines of Detroit's history. Since the first time I visited Detroit eight years ago, I've felt profound sadness about Detroit. However, at first glance, anyone can see that Detroit is a city that began to decline and fall from its prime decades ago. Beautiful old skyscrapers are left to rot, with trees growing tall from their roofs. Graceful old houses lie dark with broken windows. Yet, I am not from Detroit. My family is not from Detroit. I do not live in Detroit. So it is not my place to give a mental bitchslap to the city for re-electing its mayor. From those broad outlines of Detroit history I do know, it's not the first time someone wholly unsuited for the job has kept the job. So I just shake my head and wash my hands a bit more of caring for the city's eventual doom.

2005-11-08T18:10:00.000-05:00

blah

As may have been apparent from some relatively recent posts, I've definitely been battling a case of the "blahs" lately. In part, it's the time change. Early evenings make me feel out of whack every year around this time. In part, it's every other thing in my life. Am I exaggerating? It doesn't feel like it. All I want to do is assume a fetal position in my bed and play my handheld solitaire game. That's how I spent a large portion of pregnancy #1 but I hadn't played more than five times since PonyBoy was born. If I'm downstairs, all I want to do is surf the 'net. It's horrible. It's such a mind-sucking waste of my life. Every once in a while I start to take some concrete steps to pull myself out of this morass but then I get sucked in again. Hey - I went to the Post Office last week, an errand that had been on my to-do list for over a month. But, on the other hand, I have yet to re-begin writing my damn thesis. PonyBoy's been in school for two months now so I've been putting it off for two months. There's no way I'm going to finish before the baby. On the other hand, part of me is thinking, "Fuck it, I need some time for myself before the baby is born." So I'm a lazy excuse-maker. Writing this doesn't even begin to touch it. It would be better just to turn the damn computer off. I could be napping...

2005-11-07T10:50:00.000-05:00

temptation

I must confess. I had a little dalliance with the Dark Side this morning. I bought a bunch of holiday-card making supplies. They were in the scrapbooking section. The road to hell is paved with pretty crafty doodads. Really, though, I am ambivalent about scrapbooking. I can definitely see the lure of it, but I don't want to get caught up in it. Money money money. It's so much money. Way back in the day when I was in the local moms club, scrapbooking was the big thing to do. There were five billion stamp parties a year and most craft nights were devoted to scrapbooking. Mother raved about taking twelve hours on some weekend day to just go out and scrapbook sans children. It was just too much. I think I mostly use those same impulses when I play with PhotoShop, but PS overall is way cheaper than buying scrapbooking supplies. However, I must admit that I do like making cards. I made my own wedding invitations beginning six years ago & am highly pleased to find that cardmaking supplies have bounded lightyears ahead of what I could find then. So, with four days at my in-laws house in front of me, I have cards to make and the will to do so. Hey... maybe I need a few stamps... and an embosser... and some more ribbon...

2005-11-06T22:31:00.000-05:00

second-child syndrome

By this time in PonyBoy's fetal development, he already had a name. Well, two names because we didn't know if he was a boy or a girl. So now I'm feeling guilty because CC and I haven't appraoched the whole naming subject much this time around. In part, that's because he's not fond of my very best thought-out girl name so I didn't want to discuss it enough for him to totally shut it down. In part, it's because I used up my one best boy name on PonyBoy. He has my mother's maiden name so it's kind of hard to figure out another name with as much significance. Moreover, I'm just no longer fond of our first-round girl name because it's twice as long as PB's name & too many people have it on their list. Actually, I was never extremely fond of it but it was a compromise. I brought the subject up again this weekend but I'm still getting negative my-girl-name vibes. *sigh* It's a name that has the same number of letters and syllables as PonyBoy's name *and* it shares 75% of the letters of his name. But it's not matchy-matchy. Now I must bide my time while cleverly pushing "my" name without being pushy.

2005-11-04T07:50:00.000-05:00

as big as the whole wide world

Perspective. Last night my husband decided to mildly lambast me about my (perceived) lack of perspective regarding the whole ultrasound disappointment that I feel. And I agree somewhat. I haven't expressed enough how pleased I am that the ultrasound tech had no looks of horror upon her face as she measured various bones and inner structures of the fetus. Of course, the results still need to be looked upon by someone else before all is pronounced healthy. So, yes. I "should" be pleased. He or she is probably healthy. I should also be pleased that I currently live in North America in the year 2005 instead of N.A. in 1805 (or, worse, 1905) or sub-Saharan Africa right now. I should be pleased that my family actually has medical insurance that pays for all but $20 of my prenatal care and all of the hospital stay (minus phone charges & any "extra" for a private room should I be lucky enough to have one). I should be pleased that my husband's employer picks up the cost of the insurance in full (for now). I should be pleased that in this state and in this area and with my health insurance I can have a midwife-attended (hospital) birth despite the previous c-section. I should be pleased that I seem to have trouble neither getting nor staying pregnant. So. I am pleased with all of the above. Does it make me an ingrate to feel disappointment that I couldn't really find out what I want to find out? (Here I'll insert that my husband is convinced of the XX-ness of the future baby & is also exasperated that I don't fully trust that we both saw girl-lines.) I'm not moping. Okay, yes, I moped on Wednesday. But I did not mope yesterday (we went to the zoo until I was too tired to mope). I do not anticipate moping today. However, I don't really feel like being Pollyanna Sunshine either. I never feel like being Pollyanna Sunshine even though I am always aware on some level that I am "luckier" than the vast majority of humanity. Psychologically speaking, it's not realistic to expect increased long-term happiness even when you're lucky. After the initial rush of joy, even lottery winners aren't happier than the common mass of humanity. New worries replace old ones. So, damn it, I am owning my disappointment.

2005-11-03T18:09:00.000-05:00

oh, happy day

Some people may think it's pretty darn materialistic (and perhaps a bit backwards as far as gender-role identity goes) to be as ecstatic as I am that the husband just gave the go-ahead to buy PonyBoy's next-step-up car seat. You see, I was adamant that we get another Britax for the boy but CC was hedging about it. Meanwhile, PonyBoy was edging ever closer to the height and weight limits on his current model. While, yes, all carseat manufacturers have to adhere to a minimal set of safety standards that make them mostly "safe," I just think that Britax goes above and beyond in the comfort and easiness department. The straps, they do not twist! And so, while the seat may look hella patriotic I will at least know that I'm in it just for the twist-less straps and extra peace of mind at a clearance price. Plus, I anticipate that the new bambino/a will be using the current model by summer. (I make big babies & grow them even bigger on breastmilk.)

2005-11-02T15:44:00.000-05:00

phooey

So, the ultrasound went on without a hitch. I don't know what happened re: the "two views" and the referral but all I had was the belly shot so that's just one view. And it's a ... baby that looks a lot like Skeletor. We're thinking of punishing the tight-legged little thing by naming it "Pat" or some such thing. *sigh* This is pretty much happened with PonyBoy so we didn't know that he was a he until the moment he was born. *sigh* I'm pretty darn disappointed. Why do my kids find it necessary to drive me crazy from in-utero? "Everybody" gets to know if they want. Heck, even the people who don't want to know can find out. Me, I've thought that finding out was a great idea long before I even really contemplated motherhood. Yet it's just dreaming the impossible dream for me and my stubborn, tight-legged kids. *sigh*