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Sparing the Sugar Coating...
2007-09-06 20:46:00
Okay, there's no point in discussing how blissfully wonderful motherhood is. At 2 weeks and 3 days, it has it's upsides, but I'd be lying if I didn't say that I wish someone would come at about 7pm and take the little guy for the night. I've read other blogs talking about how hard it is to be a new mommy... And they always end with saying how wonderful it really is. But it's not, really. I'm not saying that I'd trade the little guy in, or give him back. I'm not saying I regret having him, though there have been moments where I asked Hubby if he thought maybe we made an impetuous mistake and ruined our perfect, selfish, fun lives. It's just that when I've always thought of myself as an independent career-oriented woman -- a go-getter, even -- suddenly I'm trapped in an endless loop of diaper changes, feedings, and consoling. It's fine for a few hours each day, and then I start to feel like I've been dropped into this bottomless black hole, realizing that motherhood mean...
More About: Sugar , Spar

The Matrix
2007-09-05 15:16:00
Babies have seemed totally indecipherable to me for a long time. I'm guessing that this is true for Hubby as well, since we both began this whole parenthood thing with the attitude that we'd figure it out and that it can't possibly be that hard. We based this last assumption on the fact that we see about forty thousand people daily running around with veritable basketball teams of kids of various ages, acting as if this was totally normal and easy. These people, who we see at Target, Lowes, and Burger King (the big destinations when you live in the middle of nowhere), don't appear to be more bright, capable or skilled in any way than Hubby or myself. And yet they've mastered the art of child raising, it seems, and have found it so easy that they've decided to have many many children. So it must be pretty simple, right? At 3am, when Tiny Guy is red-faced, screaming and undulating his tiny little tongue at me, nothing seems simple. Luckily, Tiny Guy doesn't have many inconsolab...
More About: Knocked Up , Matrix , The Matrix , Trix

Paranoid Mommy
2007-08-30 20:24:00
I didn't want to be this mom. But we've been to the doctor twice this week. It's tiny guy's second week of life. I'm going to turn him into a hypochondriac... Actually, the first visit was a "well baby" checkup since he was a whole week old. Today's visit was for some ooky looking little blistery things on his scalp that had me convinced he'd contracted a rare and horrible skin disease. Luckily, he has not. He has, however, gained 7 ounces in four days! Monday he weighed in at 6lbs, 15oz., which was down a few ounces from his birthweight. Today, he tipped those itty bitty scales at 7 lbs., 6 oz.! Holy cow my breasts make some seriously fattening stuff... No wonder I've dropped 20 pounds of my pregnancy weight while feasting on brownies, cakes and super rich meals (thank you military spouse network!). Soon I'll probably have to start trying to lose the rest of this weight... but for now, I think the brownies are doing us both some good!
More About: Mommy , Paranoid

What now?
2007-08-29 15:18:00
It's been almost two weeks since this tiny little person came to live with us. He has already taught us a lot about patience and love. Patience hasn't ever been an especial virtue of mine. I'm the first to admit that I've lived a pretty selfish life and that I don't usually allow people much space around what I determine to be right. For example, incessant crying for four solid hours in the middle of the night just doesn't strike me as rational. But the little guy doesn't seem big on rationality quite yet. He's tested me, certainly, but both husband and I marvel -- through our completely delirious haze of sleeplessness -- that even when the tiny guy is screaming his head off, making "angry old man" face with squinty little eyes, forehead wrinkles and wildly wavering tongue while kicking his teeny little legs and waving his tiny fists in the air, he is still absolutely loveable. And during the time he's been with us, I'd wager that I've spent at least a half of m...

Good Things, Small Packages...
2007-08-26 22:34:00
Sorry for the absence... been a bit busy this week!
More About: Knocked Up , Small , Things , Good , Package

The Many Uses of Febreeze
2007-08-16 15:28:00
So last night I made Indian food for dinner... Or actually I burned Indian food for dinner. I'm generally a decent cook, but I used a packaged paste and tried to follow the apparently-translated-from-another-langua ge directions, which led me to burn our curry. So my kitchen reeks of burnt curry, which surprisingly doesn't smell much different from unburned curry. The bad part of this is that my hair, which I washed yesterday (I'm on an every-other-day regimen, which would probably be okay as a once-a-week regimen, considering how often I have a good reason to leave the house, but my husband might decide to leave me if I adopted that one... plus lately I've begun thinking that I should make sure my hair usually looks decent since I will probably have a few days where I can't wash it while I'm in the hospital having this baby... and I hate seeing the after birth photos where the moms look like crap. ANYWAY...) I was not planning to wash my hair today. Especially since I had an 8...
More About: The Man

Could it be that easy?
2007-08-14 20:27:00
Not long after we have this little baby who is currently enjoying an evidently amusing game of "shove your feet as far into mommy's ribs as possible until she squeals or prods them out with poky fingers," we'll be getting orders back to California. When we moved out here to the Middle of Nowhere for hubby's job, we had planned to fly out ahead for a weekend to get the lay of the land and find a place to live. Luckily, a friend of a friend was trying to sell a place and figured that having people he kind of knew as renters might be better than letting it sit on the market. He sent us the listing and a virtual tour, and we said, "we're in!" Pretty freakin' easy. Since we knew we'd be here only about a year, we didn't want to buy, and it was great to find someone to rent to us who understood perfectly the duration of hubby's program here. We got really lucky.It would certainly be too much to hope that such a thing might happen again, going back the other way...
More About: Easy

The Final Countdown...
2007-08-10 17:17:00
Okay, so forget what I said about the cookies. It's still on. I can't stop. I don't care anymore. ARGH. In other news, one of my very best girlfriends gave birth last night to her first baby -- a little girl! We were going through all this together, with due dates just about a week apart... and suddenly I feel abandoned! I'm sure I'll feel better once I actually talk with her and hear about the total experience...though she's way more hippy Zen than I can ever manage to be about anything. I'm sure it all went great and she probably didn't need any drugs and the baby just slipped on out... But I still want to hear that story (in case the little guy might hear it too, and be able to influence the inevitable outcome of our own current situation.) Anyway, she was my soul sister through all the ankle swelling, BH contractions, flatulence and other disgusting crap that comes with this whole pregnancy process... and now she's moved on to the next phase! I feel so alone... How...
More About: Final , The Final Countdown , Countdown , Fina

Must Have.... Doggy....
2007-08-07 15:33:00
I guess I can wait a little while longer... but.... LOOK!
More About: Must

The Cookie Parade
2007-08-07 15:18:00
I've been warning husband for at least a couple months now that the constant appearance of sugary treats in our house would be coming to a quick end once this baby shows up. The other night I realized that I've turned into a pregnancy cliche. The kind that I just wrote a column about -- yes, in my other life I write a monthly fitness column for a small San Diego paper. I have become one of those women who, in the later stages of pregnancy, spends more time on the couch than anywhere else, often in the company of good friends like Oreo, Zinger and Ho Ho. I should say here that as a certified personal trainer, there have been times in my life -- most of my life, actually -- when my physique was in pretty good condition. 8 months ago I can honestly say that I would NEVER have bought any of these things at the grocery store. But the combination of knowing that I'm going to get bigger no matter what I do and having my mobility limited pretty significantly by the parasitic alien growin...
More About: Marriage , Knocked Up , Parade , Cookie

Kissing the last shred goodbye
2007-08-02 20:42:00
I guess I'd realized at some point that I'd be saying goodbye to any dignity I might still be clinging to as I approached the end of this whole prenancy thing. I'm accustomed now to being poked and prodded, having my shirt lifted repeatedly without much warning and having perfect strangers place their hands on my belly. I've accepted that my (lack of a) figure is now open to loud public scrutiny and that I will be discussed both in front of me and behind my back. (Is she pregnant? I sure hope so! Maybe she stole a basketball...) But I have to say that it was tough today, when I had to return a couple of ill-fitting nursing bras I'd ordered online at the Post Office. It wasn't as if I just handed the garments to the underpaid male postal worker behind the counter. They were properly stowed in a box. There was no reason he should have known, even, what was in the box, except that internet businesses often have different names online than they do in the "real world." An...
More About: Kissing , Knocked Up , Goodbye , The Last

Floating Hippo
2007-08-01 14:24:00
Sorry for my absence... I'm not blog-motivated lately, I guess. I'm still trying to figure out why I have a blog... I originally started it to back up my writing efforts, since I've been approached previously about blogging for various entities and they usually want to see that you have some familiarity with blog software and format... and then I was writing for Wine Sediments, and most of the bloggers there had their own blogs... But now it's mostly a personal journal sort of thing. Except that I'm hesitant to get too personal with the entire internet. (No offense, internet). I suppose I'm a hippocrite, because the blogs I most enjoy reading are extremely open and honest, and many of them call their family members by name and post pictures of people that are close to them. While I'm not sure I'd be opposed to posting a baby shot or two once the little guy arrives, there's something protective in me that isn't sure I want to reveal every ounce of private information to the...
More About: Knocked Up , Floating

PBtht
2007-07-26 15:37:00
Argh. I haven't written in a while... part of this is because I have begun to wonder why the hell I keep a blog in the first place. Maybe this impending motherhood thing is forcing me to evaluate how I spend my time. This isn't a cry for consolation, but I've realized (partly because I finally signed up for a Stat Counter for the blog) that NOBODY reads my blog. Except my mom sometimes. I don't know who I have expected to attract with random rantings about my own tiny little life. I don't know why I belived I had anything important to say... I'm not taking it down yet... I like to look at it sometimes, even if I'm the only visitor... Maybe I'm just bummed because I thought I was FINISHING week 35 of pregnancy (because that is true, according to my little fill-in-the-dates journal, "The Pregnancy Journal," which I have LOVED through this whole process). But my doctor this morning said, "oh no, you're just BEGINNING week 35. I guess you'll be pregnant one week...
More About: Knocked Up

Hot Water Bottles Cause Cancer and Other Beverage Fun
2007-07-20 22:52:00
My aqua 'robics class is made up of a quite a few older ladies who seem to view it as a social hour first and a workout second (or third or fourth). While I try valiantly to pay attention and work hard enough to get out of breath (of course, I get out of breath walking to the bathroom these days), these women are gabbing away, discussing everything from their youngest child's poor choice of body art to their next-door-neighbor's rampant shingles. One of these women chided throughout the entire class that our instructor was going to get cancer because she was drinking water from a plastic bottle that had been heated in her car all day. "It's true!" she cried. "I read an article!" Now, I'm not one to discount the veracity of things written in articles, since I spend a good deal of time writing them. But, uh, things get written in articles -- especially considering that many blog entries are loosely defined as "articles" these days -- that are just pl...
More About: Cancer , Water , Beverage , Bottle , Bottles

Forgive Me...
2007-07-20 13:39:00
I didn't mean to be such a complainer. It was just that I'd spent about 4 nights REALLY not sleeping. Practice, I guess, for when the little guy shows up. I don't think I"m going to be a very pleasant person for a while if he isn't a phenomenal sleeper right off the bat. (Yes, I hear you, experienced parents. Prepare for me to be unpleasant.)Anyway, last night I did EVERY SINGLE THING I could think of to ensure a good night's sleep. I put a light cotton blanket over our sheet in place of the too-heavy comforter that hubby always piles on top of me when he gets hot (making me extra hot, as if I'm not already dealing with these heat-generating extra 30 pounds, thanks...) I made sure the ceiling fan was on a gentle level. I turned down the house AC to achieve that perfect chill in the air. (I know this is wasteful. I'm pregnant. Leave me alone). I didn't eat a slice of the choco-coconut banana bread that I made yesterday at 9:30 when I really really wanted it, since I knew...
More About: Forgive

And Now for the Complaining...
2007-07-19 14:47:00
Okay, so it's been 35 weeks now. I have, for the most part, not minded being pregnant. It's been a little tough watching my body get bigger, since I've spent most of my life working for the exact opposite effect. Nonetheless, I think this has been a generally good pregnancy, and I'm really thankful for that. But yesterday a neighbor told me about her daughter -- who is one week ahead of me -- experiencing a very traumatic event that required the immediate delivery of her baby, who is now working at getting stronger in a NICU...and I began to worry. I'm not really a hypochondriac, but all night last night I kept thinking about the story, about all the many things that can go wrong and about how amazing it is that anyone EVER carries a baby to term when you consider how many tiny little molecular reactions have to take place in exactly the right order, at exactly the right time... and I couldn't sleep at all. I felt scared, sick and achey all night. And that was compounded by th...
More About: Knocked Up

2 words
2007-07-17 17:25:00
That's how much writing I got accomplished this morning in the first two hours of working. I spent 15-20 minutes reviewing the assignment and my notes for the project, and then I had to go downstairs and move the sprinklers on our lawn. I reset the time (20 minutes per section), and sat back down. I began formatting the document, and the phone rang. Unknown. I don't answer those. As soon as I'd walked (waddled) to the bedroom to get the phone and returned to my office, the office line began ringing. A number I didn't know. I answered. It was a recording. I love those. Hung up. Tried to finish formatting, the timer went off downstairs. Time to move the sprinklers again. Another 20 minutes on the timer. Finished formatting. Had to re-review my notes to get back into the right mindset. Typed the first two BRILLIANT words...the timer went off again. This is my life. Next place we live, we will OWN (if I have anything to say about it) so that I can have a DOG and a built-in sprinkler...
More About: Words

Houston...
2007-07-13 19:59:00
We might have a problem. I'm less mobile than I like to believe I used to be, with this expanding mid-section of mine, and I spend a fair amount of time watching TV. Okay, really, way too much. Unlike most American families today, we have just one television. I think it was made in 1990 or so. It's big. Not in a "wow, cool flat screen, dude, that thing is HUGE!" kind of way. More in a "how old is your TV, man, that thing must weigh at least 200 pounds!" kind of way. I think it's 27". And yes, it's color. I hadn't given much thought to the archaic nature of this beloved moving picture box until something odd began to happen to it. Now and then, the picture would start to shake. I fiddled with all the connections, and nothing seemed to help. I brought this up with my non-television-watching husband, and his response was, "huh." Helpful. After a week or so of shaking, the picture began to ocassionally shrink down until it was just one horizontal ...
More About: Houston

UN-Natural Childbirth?
2007-07-12 15:23:00
So...as a pretty darn pregnant person (33 weeks now, yikes), I have begun to focus more attention than I normally might on the topic of childbirth (as I understand that the inevitable result of this pregnancy thing will be some form of actually giving birth to the kid...should've thought of that about 33 weeks ago, I guess....) ANYWAY, there seems to be a great divide between the women who take pride in the fact that they plan to deliver "naturally" versus those of us who plan to desperately cling to and beg for help to anyone who appears remotely as if they might have access to any kind of pain drugs from the first second we enter the hospital -- "you're the janitor?? So you have all those keys, right??? Some of those must unlock some goddamned morphine around here somewhere! C'mon!" Evidently my early acceptance of the fact that I will, indeed, accept any and all offers of pain relief drops me into the "unnatural" category. Now let me ask you this....
More About: Natural , Knocked Up , Natur , Natura , Ural

Lay Lying Laid OUT
2007-07-12 15:22:00
That's right. I changed the layout. Deal with it. I get bored easily.
More About: Lying

WTFWeather
2007-07-10 20:13:00
I have lived on the east coast, and I've lived on the West coast. To hell with all those silly middle states, I say! Okay, no, sorry, I don't really not care about any of the middle states...I just haven't lived in any of them, and therefore cannot include them in the sweeping generalizations that I'm about to make. Someone please explain to me why super ridonkulously hot weather out east almost always means dark skies and threateningly ominous thunder? I'm sitting here in my 8th month stupor, recovering from an exciting trip to Target (my favorite store of all time and the only reason why I'm okay with living here in the middle of freakin' nowhere), and I keep thinking that the garbage man is awfully late today. Then I think I hear the construction crew working in our never-ending developmental sprawl, but wonder what the hell they're doing that's making all that rumbly racket. Then I wander around the house to see if the dishwasher is malfunctioning or something, and fina...

Lucky Sevens
2007-07-07 15:39:00
One of my very best friends is getting married today, and I just wanted to take a moment to wish her the very happiest of days. I've known her since we were about 13, and it's killing me that I'm not going to be able to see her actually tie the knot with he great husband-to-be. Have a wonderful day, Skeezy Lee! I'll be thinkin' about you! 
More About: Lucky , Luck , Sevens

Almighty Awful
2007-07-06 18:00:00
I've seen two movies this summer, both in the last week or so since hubby's been on vacation. He usually finds all kinds of ways to occupy himself and is one of those annoyingly productive types who doesn't like to sit still for two solid hours, so we don't see a ton of movies. I always jump at the chance to go sit in the movie theatre and be totally absorbed by something, so I'm usually the impetus for movie outings. But yesterday, I think hubby got bored. He suggested we see a movie, and he even said I could pick it! We have only 1 movie theatre here in the MON, so I checked the options and gave him 3 choices that started in our time frame and I'd be interested in seeing. He chose "Evan Almighty ." This movie is marketed as a comedy. It is not a comedy. It is a heavy-handed attempt at promoting a faith-based message through a pathetically predictable, boring and downright coma-inducing plot. The predictable digs at the republican political agenda (necessary in almos...
More About: Mighty , Awful

It only gets bigger from here...
2007-07-05 19:12:00
Well, as predicted, the babymoon was less than the romantic getaway that my pregnancy magazines had promised it to be. Considering that one member of the proposed romantic duo is sporting a beach ball-sized belly and starts having contractions with a walk around the block, we might've been doomed from the get go. Nonetheless, it was a nice time away from home. We lounged around our hotel room and around the hotel pool, where my tentlike bathing suit was a topic of speculation for more than one youngster. ("mommy, why is that lady's tummy so big?") Generally, it was very relaxing, and the hubby and I got to spend more focused one on one time than we ever do at home, which was great. I finished reading Khaled Hosseni's A Thousand Splendid Suns, which I really enjoyed. And I also began a book of essays about California, titled appropriately, My California. All the essays in the book were contributed free of charge by well known California authors to benefit the California ...

Take that, expensive camera!
2007-06-28 17:07:00
So I promised you a photo of the ice cream man... I give you: Ice Cream Man Series. Of course, these photos do nothing to convey the sinister attitude with which this massive truck creeps up and down the streets of my neighborhood playing the insipid Small World song over and over again. These pictures also do not convey the manaical look on the drivers face as he leers up driveways and into yards, constantly on the hunt for small children grasping dollar bills in their sweaty little fists. (I actually think these guys keep coming back because the construction workers that are ALWAYS in our hood working on SOMETHING or other are the ones who buy their goodies.) Anyway, you should be happy to have any pictures at all, even these bad ones. That's because two days ago I threw my beloved Nikon D70S from the 4th stair of our house, up into the air, where it made a lovely and majestic arc before smashing violently to the hardwood floor below. No, I didn't do this on purpose. I was carry...
More About: Camera

Not So Deep Thoughts
2007-06-26 15:08:00
Okay, so I'm 8 months pregnant now. Lately I've been thinking about the gigantic transition that my life is about to undergo. And that's it. I know it's coming...and I feel like there is some part of me that should be making some kind of incredible preparations, either mental or spiritual, to get ready for the responsibility of taking care of another human being. I feel like there should be BIG STUFF to do to get ready for his arrival. And I'm sitting around, totally ready and willing to do that BIG STUFF. But all I can think of to actually do is stupid little stuff like wash tiny little socks and clothes with baby detergent before putting them in the drawers of his dresser. Or set up the crib that he probably won't sleep in for a while anyway. I've bought diapers, and have started prewashing the cloth ones (we decided to go 50/50 for now. I chose these, which are ridiculously cute right now, in no way indicating what they will soon contain!)Anyway...shouldn't I be doing or ...
More About: Knocked Up , Thoughts , Deep Thoughts , Deep

The Ice Cream Man Must Die
2007-06-22 14:25:00
So, I'm supposed to be a writer, right? Or that's what it says on my business cards and tax forms and stuff, and in the ocassional byline. So that means that most of my time "working" is spent sitting in my office on the second floor of our house in front of the keyboard. I have a great setup -- a writing desk and a computer desk. And when I have less keyboard-intensive things to do, I'm sitting at my writing desk in front of a big window, looking out at our serene little suburban neighborhood. But I have a complaint. A big one. Something I never thought I'd be complaining about. The. Ice. Cream . Man. Must . Die...  Does this guy actually exist anywhere else? Or are we stuck in some throwback movie here in the middle of nowhere? We have not ONE, but TWO different ice cream men who drive their treat-laden trucks UP and DOWN and UP and DOWN our streets all freakin' day and night. One of the trucks plays a Scott Joplin tune that I used to like...but now it haunt...
More About: Ice Cream

If I just had a shell...
2007-06-21 15:35:00
I've always thought it strange that abstract painting took off like it did. I guess I'm not really an art afficionado, but I have painted enough to know that it's a lot harder to paint a realistic-looking scene than it is to smear some bright colors around a canvas... and yet, guys like Pollack and Kandinsky get a lot of respect. Hell, we even have this huge IKEA Kandinsky print framed in our house (doesn't everyone?) Maybe I'm missing something. I can admit that maybe I'm just uneducated in this realm. But I'm gonna draw the line at a turtle's owner commanding hundreds of dollars for his artwork pn eBay. Couldn't this in some way qualify as animal abuse? Does the turtle like getting all paint covered? I can only imagine the cleanup required here... Anyway, if anyone would like to bid on the painting I posted earlier in the week, I'll throw in shipping for free. And I didn't have to crawl all over the canvas to create it. (Maybe I should try that).  
More About: Shell

The Hazards of Parenthood...
2007-06-20 15:27:00
I may have mentioned previously that I'm a military wife. My husband is in the middle of a grueling school-type program that takes up a lot of his time and most of his patience. Typically, the spouses of the participants in this program form a little group of their own, mostly so that we'll have someone to bitch to, drink with and help us get crap done when we need an extra set of hands. While this social network is great to have -- especially living here in the middle of friggin' nowhere -- it has also been an eye-opener for the as-yet-childless among us in the group.  I'm one of maybe 6 pregnant chicks among the spouses, and many of the others have 1, 2 and 3 little people who follow them around most of the time. It is from these experienced mothers that I've learned quite a few things recently that have opened my eyes to the fact that this child-rearing thing can be quite messy... Last night I learned that babies smell nice when they're asleep, but that most of the tim...
More About: Knocked Up , Rent , Azar , Parenthood , Hazard

If you can't say something nice...
2007-06-18 16:43:00
Post a picture!I've been painting lately...or really I should say, playing with paint... Here is my latest creation! :) 
More About: Nice , Something , Thing , Some , Say Something