Then Came Baby

When life gives you lemons, squeeze them in life's eye

2008-11-18T23:00:00.001-08:00

Last time we caught up with our protagonist, she was sending her little letter-minions, her little agents of change, hurrying and scurrying via the internet ether into the world, into the inboxes of the world, sleepers until a click of a mouse set their contents disseminating, dispersing, like Pandora's little cyberbox but not so full of evil. She had strung a line, and her ass was on it, and let's just be honest--it felt a wee bit drafty.

She didn't have long to wait...it was coming, coming, coming and then: she got spanked. A smart little slap, with palm perhaps just slightly angled to produce that pleasing, fleshy smack sound. It was a "this is for your own good" spanking with a shot of righteous, injured indignation and chaser of "from now on, go and be a good girl."

Our heroine (oh, just humor me!) smarted. She frothed a bit of anarchy. The sting wore off and she stopped walking funny. "My, my" she thought; "my ass these days is rather resilient.

And then tonight...Life did it. It busted out with some goddamn lemons. A whole lemony little phalanx of acid reflux inducing, tooth-enamel threatening puckerfacing citrusy sonsabiches.

She thought about iced, cold lemonade. But It is Winter, even if It doesn't know It. She thought about saying "fuck it" and bailing. She indulged in rant therapy.

And then she went home and googled recipes for weaponry made of one simple household ingredient; stingy, stingy lemon juice.

She may have made a few lemon bombs. She may have tucked a few in Life's sock drawer.

Enough third person. I'm gunnin' for the Man now. Wish me luck.

Days All the Rest: LOTSA Letters

2008-11-16T19:26:00.000-08:00

Okay, so clearly I'm not up to the challenge of posting every day, even only for a week. I just can't get around to it. HOWEVER, you'll be proud to know this doesn't mean I didn't keep up with my self-imposed "Change Your Reality" challenge. I have sent a gripload of letters over the last few days, I promise, but I'm not going to post them here, because they are all variations of the same letter and you'd be bored. They all had to do with one thing: saving the Writing Center on our campus. I've been a tutor there for more than three years, and its been around for twenty...but now, it's one of the cuts scheduled for the end of this academic year. It's just one of the many answers to the state's mad, insane plan to cut more than 30million dollars (over 14%) from UNR's current budget. (Someone in the TA office altered a bumper sticker "Nevada: We grow things here" by adding "EXCEPT BRAINS." Looking at this state's financial situation, one tends to agree.)

This has been keeping me up at night. As you can imagine, I DON'T have time to be an activist. But somehow, I can't help it. Our Writing Center keeps 7,000 tutoring appointments a year...on a campus of 16,000. The numbers speak for themselves! And as a Writing teacher, I just can't let it go down without a fight. Partly because I worry about the students that will fail without this extra help; but more, because its a resource for the kind of success I wish for my students. In their first scared semester, I can say to my uncertain freshmen, "Look, don't be scared about your writing. If you don't believe in yourself, I'm going to try to build your confidence. And then, for the rest of your time in college, whenever you have doubts about your writing, or you just want to shoot for a high grade in a class or feel great about your personal statement for a scholarship or grad school, then here...there's this resource. Go there. There, someone will REALLY read your writing. They will spend 30 or 60 minutes with you (something few of your teachers will ever do) and they will do everything they can to help."

So, over the last few days I've written:
--The undergraduate student body president
--The Development Director for the Liberal Arts college
--The Provost of the University
--The President of the University
--The Dean of Liberal Arts
--The Associate Dean of Liberal Arts AND
--The Director of Core Curriculum

Now that all of those letters, sent via email, are out in the world, trying their little letter hearts out to change reality, I have to admit...I feel kind of queasy. I know no one can hold it against me for trying to defend something I believe in professionally. But still, for some reason, I kinda feel like it's my (naked, none-too-shapely) ass on the line. Putting yourself out there is central to trying to change the world, I guess. I just hope I don't get spanked.

I guess I could declare next week "When life gives you lemons, just say fuck it and bail" Week (thank you, Forgetting Sarah Marshall)...But somehow, I don't think that's going to happen.

Day 2: Thinking of Kitty

2008-11-13T23:50:00.000-08:00

Tomorrow, it's back to reality reality. But today, an attempt to deal with some of thoughts and emotions:

Dear Grandma,

Your oldest daughter, my mother, picked up your ashes this morning. It’s been two weeks since the rainy Thursday afternoon where my phone rang, and I knew what the news was. My phone cut out. My voice was already cracking when I called my mom back. I asked if you were gone, and she answered yes. And now, your body is gone; it is gone and then returned to us in the form of the gone. I will not see your face again; your face is gone. It was your wish—as it is mine—that what stays here on the earth is only dust to be dispersed.

It was never easy to know you, Grandma. I don’t know what you would think of us finding laughs in the minutiae of your death. After her first visit to the crematorium, my mom told me the story of being upsold on the receptacle for your remains. She hadn’t anticipated the complex logistics of design; do you choose the tube that is painted with pansies and has holes on top, so you can sprinkle the ashes out like garlic salt? Or the stately and lugubrious urn—because later, when its contents have been deposed, what on earth do you do with it? Ultimately, she chose a biodegradable box painted with an eagle which could be set free in water—this way, you see, no one need take chances with the direction of the wind. She and I got some mileage from the clever marketing of receptacle designers. She said you would “turn in your urn” if you knew what kind of money she spend on this cardboard eagle box. We laughed hysterically—perhaps too hysterically.

Our family doesn’t do funerals. That last act of letting you go will come long after you have gone. After we have tunneled into winter and passed under the change of a year, after we have emerged into cold early spring and then it warms, and becomes summer, perhaps we will let you go. Perhaps a few of us will gather at the ocean, and that tacky but environment-friendly container—it’s fitting, as it reminds me for some reason of the RV in which you spent more of our childhood away from us, living the cyclical life of a snowbird—will be gently set out from the back of the boat, its bobbing glide stately, queenly as you were, until its hard surfaces turn soft and the ocean begins the quick work of taking the thing apart. I see the glide and the gurgle, the sailing and the subsuming, the release and then the reclamation as the sea swallows the last soft dust of you.

The facts of your death seem real to me; it is the facts of your life that do not. The reality of a life’s end is the sorting, the culling, the remembering that takes place over boxes of life’s trivia which calls, now that its collector is gone, for some kind of order. Your things had hovered in the purgatory of things; you were never coming back for them. You lived, but forgot; you forgot the number of your children, the long shared life with your husband, your jewelry and your photographs and the yellowed documents which tug our heartstrings: certificates of birth, of degree, of death. You had forgotten them but they, your pictures, your papers, your kitsch, still has something to say about your life. We want to hear those things. We are not prepared to hear those things. We still can’t find the things we need to hear.

There were a lot of tears this last weekend, Grandma. Your three grown children (for a time, in the last couple of years, you asked about the fourth. We will never know what memory or missed opportunity might have been that second son to you, that third little girl) gathered here to make sense of what you’d left behind. It was a treasure hunt; there were tiny treasures. Your first born broke over your wedding vows. Your daughters hugged him hard. My sister found a box marked “Keep”—it contained cards we’d written you and craft projects we’d made you over the years. Somehow, I never knew you’d cherished these bits of us.

It is your art that breaks me. When I came to my mom’s house one night, she told me to look inside a photo album resting on top of the coffee table. In it there were photographs, blurry photographs of paintings, your paintings. Most of them, we had never seen. We had some beauty you left us; we didn’t have all of it or, we discovered, the best of it. There is such life in your mountainscapes. The pictures frame the paintings, images of images, and you are only in one of them. In it, you pose before a craft fair booth laden with your paintings. We never knew you were prolific. There are Oregon clouds or Washington clouds and your art and you, looking proud, looking like a queen. It hurts and it heals to know these pieces of your soul are somewhere, at large in the world.

I wish I had known you better.

Day 1: Mortgage Reality

2008-11-12T08:06:00.000-08:00

Here is my first letter for "Change Your Reality Week." We are in a rather drastic situation (as so many are) with our house. Our neighborhood is half empty, values have fallen more than I could have ever imagined, and we have an ARM adjustment coming up in far too soon a time, with no hope of being able to get out of it. This is a letter--a shortened version, as I took some of the more personal information--to our mortgage company asking if they might renegotiate some of our loan terms to make our situation better. I believe, numerically, that we would qualify for consideration, although to be honest I don't know what criteria they are using. It's going in the mail today.

Dear Homeowner Assistance,

I am writing to ask that you consider renegotiating the terms of our loan in an effort to help us keep our house. We have been advised to enter foreclosure proceedings, but have not yet defaulted on our payments, and sincerely hope that with your help we can avoid this.

We purchased our new construction home at was later became evident was the peak of our local market, July of 2006. When we opted for an ARM, even with my job experience in the mortgage industry I had no idea what a foolish decision that would soon prove to be.

With the loss of my job in the mortgage industry, my husband and I lost more than two-thirds of our income. Additionally, since purchasing our house, we have seen values freefall around us, with no bottom in sight. Multiple houses on our street currently stand empty due to foreclosure, and the builder has been unable to sell the remaining inventory. If the recent few sales are any indication, our home has plummeted well over $100,000 in value.

We have no way to refinance or sell, and it is becoming very hard to make our monthly payments. Up until now, we have been struggling to put every spare penny towards our principal balance (at the cost of saving for our daughter’s future or our own) but we are now too strapped to do even that.

Our financial advisor has counseled us that it would be better to begin foreclosure proceedings now, as we have basically no hope of being able to refinance or sell before our ARM adjusts, and the longer we let this go, the more we lose. However, we would vastly prefer to keep our house. We ask, therefore, if you might consider altering the terms of our loan to help our situation. Two changes would allow us to continue to make our monthly payment; a lower interest rate would make our payments more manageable, and converting our loan from a 5-year ARM to a fixed rate would give us the security of knowing that we will not inevitably lose our home, regardless of all of our efforts, to an interest rate adjustment.

In making these adjustments, you would help us protect your investment. Please consider this request.

Sincerely,
Crystal & Mario

Upcoming: Change Your Reality Week

2008-11-11T22:13:00.000-08:00

Where has the time gone since I've been able to post a post? It's been almost two weeks, I think, and although there has been so much to say I have not found the time to say it. It's been one week since Obama won the presidential election. It's been twelve days since my grandmother died--but only two days since my family, going through her stored-away things, found some hidden photos that showed us what a beautiful artist she was, and also how little any of us really knew her. It's been several weeks since I've plunged deeply into the fight to save my school and the things I care about there, with the unprecedented budget crisis facing the state of Nevada and threatening to devastate my future and the future of my students. It's been about twenty-four hours since my baby took her first wobbling couple of steps.

Things are happening, terrible and wonderful. The pendulum is swinging. I've been laughing and crying. I've been sick, then healthy, then sick again. I've been running. I've been drinking wine. My world has changed and I've been trying to change the world--but forgetting to blog about it.

I've been gearing up for a project with two colleagues that I'm so excited and honored to be a part of, a interview for publication in a scholarly journal (side note: publication = big deal) with a very important and foundational scholar in my field, Edward M. White. I've been reading some of his writing in preparation for the interview; a recurring theme in his work is power, particularly the power of a writer to change her world. This resonates because I've been writing, and the world has been answering. I email big names (rhetoric rock stars) and they write me back. I vote for a Regent one day; we email the next. Nevada's Chancellor of Higher Education (MY NEWEST HERO) will come to my campus if I invite him. I think I'd forgotten that the world responds when you address it directly.

And so, in honor of Ed White, who himself honors the power of the writer, I declare myself a "Change Your Reality Week." Every day for a week, starting tomorrow, I'm going to write and post a letter that in some way attempts to change my reality. Emotional reality, financial reality, educational reality--any and all of the above. I'll let you know, later, if any of it works.

Anyone want to participate with me?

GO OBAMA!!!!

2008-11-04T21:48:00.001-08:00

I am SO EXCITED. First, that I don't have to move to Canada. And second, that I actually will, for the first time in my life, have a president that I LOVE. I know he's got a tough road ahead of him, but tonight...I am just SO happy. Congratulations Obama!

1600 Miles Later...

2008-10-26T20:37:00.000-07:00

I'm going to share something gross with you. Come on now, I know you can handle it! Are you ready? Okay, here goes: I gotta tell you that when I see a rack of porn magazines, bearing titles such as "Asian Invasion" and "Pussy Parade," next to a soda fountain or a rack of sun chips and snack cakes, all I can think of is splooge. Splooge in the Ho-ho's, splooge in the Snowballs, splooge in my Diet Coke. And it really makes me lose my appetite.

Why, you may ask, were you in a place that sells such fine publications? Well, let me correct you: I was not in "a place" but actually SEVERAL places that sold them; and as to why, the answer is that sometimes you don't have much choice when you are trekking the 800 miles of highways and interstates between Reno, Nevada and Bozeman, Montana. Those are some stretches of road that cater heavily to the trucker population, as you may have guessed; and sometimes, especially when you are traveling with a baby who tends to poop at the most inopportune moments, you just can't hold out for a nice, clean, porn-free Chevron. You just have to pull over at the nearest combination truck stop/casino and try to overcome your reservations about splooge contamination--reservations that become especially plaguing when you are in Nevada and there is a mysterious series of numbered rooms at the back.

But enough about our fine state's penchant for illicit entertainment, and more about my own naughty activities. On this trip, I walked on the wild side and got caught. Yep, you guessed it--I got a SPEEDING TICKET. A rather hefty speeding ticket, as the cop caught me going 92 in a 70!! In my defense, we had just left a 75, and I had just passed a very old couple driving way too slowly and very erratically. I really hate passing on two-lane highways and our Rav-4 has a V6 engine, so I usally pass fast and hightail it back to my own lane. Unfortunately, the cop caught me on the tail end of my hightail, not slowing down fast enough. That was on highway 93, which goes from Wells NV to Twin Falls ID, and which I have labeled "The Bloody Road," in part in honor of the bloody ticket and in part from all the literal blood. 100 miles of road red from dead deer is about the creepiest thing I've ever seen. Driving it at night, which we did on the way back, was especially horrifying. Once I turned on my brights RIGHT before I came upon two deer in the road, allowing me to slow down in time; another time, we came upon a very fresh accident being partaken of by coyotes, also in the road. YUCK. Let's just say I was THRILLED to reach the interstate again!

Apart from the speeding ticket, and the fact that 1600 miles is an EFF of a long way to drive, we had a great trip. We enjoyed some beautiful scenery, especially on the border of Wyoming and Montana as we skirted Yellowstone. Scarlett, although she had some melty moments (translate: melting-down moments) was overall a VERY good girl, a huge change from her early days of being an absolute nightmare in the car. I loved Bozeman and had an all-around great time at the conference--I got a lot out of the presentations I attended, my own work was well received, and rhetoric rock stars cooed over Scarlett. I also enjoyed stopping at Smitty's Pancake House in Idaho Falls, which was started by my great uncle and is still owned and run by my second cousins, even though none of the family was on hand to visit with. All in all, it was a very enjoyable mini-vacation. But next time I get the brilliant idea to drive 1600 miles over the course of four days, just whack me upside the head, okay? Or better yet, drop me the one-word reminder sure to jog me back into a more logical frame of mind: Splooge.

Phyllophilia, OR, How to Decimate a Box of Phyllo in Two Days

2008-10-19T08:52:00.000-07:00

So no, I'm still not losing any weight despite Turbo Kick, Jillian Michaels, and Wogging; yes, I have fallen back into the evil dessert pit, and I am no doubt sabotaging myself through sweet calories that love me far too much; and yes, I will soon be creating a new challenge for myself because that seems to be the only way I can be reasonable. But, because I suspect you don't want to read about my baby weight struggles ALL the time, I'm going to address something much more fun in this post: Food. Specifically, food made with delicious, naughty phyllo dough.

I love to cook and bake, and in general (or so I am told) good stuff results. My main problem is that I can be terribly non-adventurous...I tend to get a recipe down pat, then throw it into a fairly limited rotation. Between Mario and I, one of us has class every weeknight, so that's a lot of "quick meals." My usual suspects are turkey or fish tacos, turkey kielbasa with veggies and couscous, turkey burgers, grilled chicken or fish, things like that. When I have a little more time, there is homemade chicken soup, coconut curry, chicken pot pie (Mario's favorite!), or perhaps turkey or veggie lasagna--and I just mastered seafood lasagna with white sauce. Actually, as my husband would attest, I have a kind of dangerous skill with white sauces. Creamy tomato with basil and pinenuts, creamy pesto, and pepperjack chicken pasta are among my naughty specialties.

Anyway, lately I've been a bit bored with my rotation and have vowed to be a bit more adventurous, and to keep better track of the recipes that work. First up on my list of things to try was Spanakopita. I love Greek food (Mario and I got a little too used to the real thing when we were doing our TEFL certificates on Crete) but Reno has a serious dearth. I am pretty much incapable of following a recipe exactly, so here is the Spanakopita recipe I patched together from various sources, and loved:

Spanakopita Crystal's Way

Ingredients
•14 ounce pkg frozen, chopped spinach
•6 oz package feta cheese
•4 large eggs
•1 bunch green onions
•¾ cup cottage cheese
•½ box of phyllo dough
•1 stick (1/2 cup) of butter, or maybe a little more
•Dashes of nutmeg and salt

Directions
1.Heat oven to 375. Have phyllo out of the fridge, still packaged, coming to room temperature.
2.Thaw spinach and squeeze dry.
3.Chop green onions finely. Melt a bit of butter in a frying pan, and fry them up with spinach until they are well mixed, just a few minutes.
4.In a large bowl mix feta cheese, cottage cheese, eggs, and nutmeg and salt until well blended.
5.Add in spinach/green onion mix.
6.Melt the remaining butter in a cup.
7.Line the bottom of pan of greased 9x13 inch pan with a sheet of phyllo. Using a basting brush (rubber works well), brush the sheet lightly with butter. Repeat until you have 5 or 6 layers of dough. (Note: Keep the roll of phyllo sheets covered as much as you can while you work, as it dries out fast. You can drape a damp paper towel over it, but be warned that too much moisture can make it gooey.)
8.Spread the spinach mixture, evenly covering the dough.
9.Cover with a layer of phyllo; brush lightly with butter. Repeat with about 6 more sheets.
10.Butter the top sheet generously. Using the basting brush, go around the edges and smooth them with butter, tucking them down.
11.Score the top lightly where you plan to make cuts.
12.Place in preheated oven and bake 30-40 minutes, or until dark golden brown.

Notes:
Delicious! However, after making this I would say more spinach could definitely be thrown in for good results. Many other recipes call for more eggs than four; four worked perfectly here but if you add more spinach, another egg or so might be a good addition.

Hmmm....a box of phyllo comes with two rolls, and I used about 3/4 of one roll with this recipe. I still had some to use up so it didn't go to waste. So last night, I had my sister over for dinner and utilized THIS delicious recipe. You'll notice some similar techniques with treatment of the phyllo:

Broccoli Chicken in Phyllo, Crystal’s Way

Ingredients:
•1/2 cup or so melted butter
•12 sheets phyllo dough
•2 breasts chicken, diced in small cubes, lightly salted and peppered
•1/2 package turkey bacon, diced small
•2 crowns or so fresh broccoli, cut in small pieces, steamed gently
•1 cup grated cheddar cheese
•1 cup grated jack cheese
•5 eggs
•1 cup heavy whipping cream
•1/2 cup milk
•1 teaspoon salt
•1/2 teaspoon pepper

Directions
1.Heat oven to 375. Have phyllo out of the fridge, still packaged, coming to room temperature.
2.In a frying pan, brown chicken together with bacon in a bit of butter
3.Mix in steamed broccoli. When it cools a bit, toss in both kinds of cheese as well.
4.In a large bowl mix eggs, cream, milk, salt, and pepper until blended.
5.Melt the remaining butter in a cup.
6.Line the bottom of pan of greased 9x13 inch pan with a sheet of phyllo. Using a basting brush (rubber works well), brush the sheet lightly with butter. Repeat until you have 5 or 6 layers of dough.
7.Pour in chicken/bacon/broccoli/cheese mix, spread evenly.
8.Pour cream mixture evenly over the top.
9.Cover with a layer of phyllo; brush lightly with butter. Repeat with about 6 more sheets.
10.Butter the top sheet generously. Using the basting brush, go around the edges and smooth them with butter, tucking them down.
11.Score the top lightly where you plan to make cuts.
12.Place in preheated oven and bake 30-40 minutes, or until dark golden brown.

Mmmm....good! But, still about 2/3 a role of phyllo remaining. Might as well use it up with a dessert recipe. I adapted this recipe from Athens Foods in the following way:

Banana Chocolate Phyllo Packets

Ingredients:
3 bananas, sliced up
3/4 cup semisweet chocolate chips
2 teaspoons cinnamon
1 tablespoon sugar
2 tablespoons Kahlua
12 sheets phyllo
1/4 cup butter, melted

Directions
1.Heat oven to 350. Have phyllo out of the fridge, still packaged, coming to room temperature.
2.In medium bowl, combine bananas, chocolate chips, Kahlua and 1 teaspoon of cinnamon.
3.In a small bowl, combine 1 teaspoon cinnamon and sugar.
4.Melt the butter in a cup.
5.Grease a 9x13 cookie sheet.
6.Take a sheet of phyllo. Brush ½ with butter and fold in half. Plop 1/6th of the banana mixture in the middle, and fold gently into a square packet. Brush phyllo with butter as you fold. Wrap packet in one more sheet of phyllo. Avoid breakage by working carefully and keeping phyllo you’re using buttered, and that you’re not using covered. This not easy, so likely your first couple will look a bit funky. That’s fine—they will still taste good.
7.Brush the top of packet with butter, and sprinkle with cinnamon sugar mixture.
8.Repeat 5 times for a total of 6 packets.
9.Place in preheated oven and bake 15 or so minutes, until they look delicious.
10.Serve with a bit of vanilla ice cream! Yum.

And there you have it. Phyllo gone, tummies (a little too) full, all happy. Diet tomorrow!

Seven Times Weird

2008-10-08T00:26:00.000-07:00

This week, I was tagged! For the first time, I think. Lauryn over at LauReality tagged me to share seven random or weird facts about myself. Since it's after midnight and I can't sleep after drinking my first Diet Coke in 10 weeks (note to self: 10:00pm is a bad time to break that particular streak) I am going to see what I can come up with.

7> My dad is a geologist, and my sister, Amber, and I both were named after rocks. I have been known to make the remark that it is AWFULLY good he wasn't a gynecologist!

6> I hate toenails. I really do. I cut mine super short even though they look dreadful because I can't stand the feel of them when they're long. I also hate it when my husband's get long and they touch me in bed. EW! Yet, I also don't like it when he clips his and I can hear that sharp, clippy sound. I yell at him to go somewhere else. Yes, he's got a tough life. I also have a weird, malformed little toenail on my pinky toe. And my feet are enormous; I practically have to shop at the tranvestite store. Okay, that's three things. Let's just say if I was invisible below the ankles I would be thrilled.

5) I talk fast. And I get shit for it constantly. And it REALLY bugs me when people call me out on it. For some reason, I am kind of sensitive about my speaking speed. I am always tempted to say, "I don't talk fast; your brain is just slow." Okay, I'll be honest...sometimes I actually do say it.

4> When I was in high school I had my wisdom teeth taken out...my FIVE wisdom teeth. I had four normal ones like everyone else but also a fifth, mutant tooth that no one could explain. I just like to presume that, la de da, I am just THAT much wiser...

3> I haven't eaten red meat or pork in 11 years. I went cold turkey one day while pondering the ickiness of dorm food as a freshman, and have never looked back. This is really gross, but something about flesh just seems so canibalistic to me. In fact, here's a quick recap of my meat rules if you haven't read them before: I don't eat anything too big, too cute, or two ugly. I also don't eat dark meat, things with skin and bones, or things that resembles an animal when it was in its living form. In short, I eat chicken and turkey breast and fish. Don't ask me--I don't claim to be logical.

2> I used to be deathly afraid of needles--I would keel over in a dead faint every single time I got a shot or blood drawn, without fail--but karma has taken things upon itself to fix me. After being bitten by a probably rabid dog and going through the entire rabies series while traveling Southeast Asia, and then having the World's Craziest Thyroid and having a baby, I have gotten MOSTLY past fainting mode. Now I just lay down the law with the vampires: Don't show me the needle, don't tell me what you're doing, and I have to lay down. And I normally stay conscious. But I still hate, hate, hate it.

1> Hmm, one more. Oh, there are so many to choose from. Let's see. Okay, this is kind of cool. I am the oldest child of an oldest child of an oldest child, and my child is the oldest too. All on both sides of the family. No wonder I am that damned bossy!

That's me. It's 1:00 am now. Let's go see if sleep is ready for me for reals this time...

There Goes the Neighborhood...For Real This Time

2008-10-06T13:17:00.001-07:00

This morning, I am out doing my normal three-or-four mile wog, baby in tow (actually, me in tow of the baby), minding my own business, when a passing woman stops me. I'd seen her a few times before--she walks to work at one of the downtown casinos, according to her uniform, and sometimes I pass her when I'm out with the baby. So she stops me, gestures to a house on the corner, and asks me if I know that a sex offender lives there. "No," I answer, shocked. She tells me that her kids found it on the internet, and now she warns everyone she passes so that they will be aware. I thank her and hurry home, shooting the house a dirty look as I pass it. Funny--there is a schoolbus stop right in front of that house, and I am always impressed that multiple parents are out waiting with the kids in the mornings. Now I realize there might be more to their watchfulness than I thought.

I stop to tell my sister that a sex offender lives right around the corner from us. She answers, basically, "So? They live everywhere." "SO" is not exactly my reaction. As far as I'm concerned, they should be living nowhere...they shouldn't be living at all. It's a NIABY not a NIMBY thing with me.

As soon as I get home, I hop on the trusty old internet to verify my friendly neighborhood watchdog's story, and yep, she's right. The guy in that house has been convicted of sexual assault and battery. Since I'm already on the website, I broaden my search and make the lovely discovery that twice every morning I go directly in front of not one but TWO sex offender's houses. A third lives just a block off my path. Both of the second two have been convicted of assault of a child under fourteen.

Seriously, I'm as liberal as you can get in most aspects. There is about one issue on which I'm conservative: treatment of sex offenders. I won't detail here, on this innocent blog, what I think should be done to them. But it's not something a "hippy-dippy" liberal would normally endorse.

What am I supposed to do with this information? The economy is collapsing, the earth's temperature is rising, and my neighborhood is peopled with the most awful kind of criminals.

Pepper spray, anyone?

A Day Like Any Other

2008-10-03T20:27:00.000-07:00

Take a look at this picture. That's me, on the left. Wait, let me be more specific: that's me six and half years, thirty pounds, and shitload of responsibility ago. I was tanned, toned, and free to change the course of my existence on a whim, on many whims. And I did.

This picture was taken on the beach of Pensacola Florida, which was a short hop away from where I was living, New Orleans. I looked this good because my life daily routine was something like this: Wake up, slowly, some time in late morning. Put on running clothes and leave the apartment. Walk the 17th street canal down to the Marina, and then start jogging. Run for miles, miles, along the path that followed the shore of Lake Ponchartrain. Run back. Walk a couple of miles cool down. Go tanning (yes, tanning, bad me.) Come home, shower. Head to the French Quarter for work. Wait tables; go out on Decator or Bourbon Street; or go home, and write poetry lying on my stomach on the floor (I had no furniture--literally, none). Sleep, deeply. Wake again and run again. And so on. Most days, I probably did 8 or 10 miles.

Looking back, I can't believe how great I looked at that time. Did I know then the extent to which my body was my currency? Oh, I could tell you some wild tales...if I was a book, I'd be banned! (That's somebody's proposal for the English Department T-shirt, and I have to say I love it). Hilariously, despite the story this picture tells about how I looked, I still thought I was fat!

I have a point in sharing these reminiscences, I promise. You all know that I've REALLY struggled with baby weight and that I gave myself a 70-day no candy, no dessert, no soda challenge to try to help with that. The last day of that challenge passed Tuesday, without any big hoopla. I had cheated a few times, mostly on things that I baked (one MUST taste test, right?), but I had made it! And I had lost about 10 pounds from my Hawaii trip, but still only 7 from post-hospital baby weight.

I am sort of befuddled about where to go from here. True, I learned to live through a day without constant sugar input. But I'm still not sure I have learned any restraint if today is any example--we had a bake sale for the English Graduate Organization, and I pretty much sampled all day, as if I had never quit. On one hand, I really don't want to fall back into my old patterns--on the other hand, I'm pretty sure the quality of my life is impacted by not eating desserts. I don't want to always be turning sweets down--but I suspect I'm an all-or-nothing kinda gal.

I'm writing about this because I need some advice. I don't know if I will ever look like that picture again, but I want to be fit and feel good about my body and my eating habits. I am still wogging most days, and also now doing Jillian Michaels videos (YOUCH!), and also about to starting taking my friend's Turbo Kick class two days a week, but I know none of those things will help if I don't eat right. What do you all think I should do? Should I make a new challenge, a new rule? If so, what?

San Francisco Wedding Pics

2008-09-30T21:44:00.000-07:00

So, here are a few of Mario's shots from my cousin's wedding: aunts, uncles, cousins--grandma, grandpa--sister, husband, baby, me--litchi-tinis--a little dancing, a little drama--beautiful everything--and a helluva party.

Not Happy, Not Happy at All!

2008-09-28T18:27:00.000-07:00

So, Mario, Miss Scarlett and I were away from home last night. On Saturday morning, we headed to San Francisco for my cousin Nikki's wedding. We had a great time staying with my Aunt Karen and seeing a bunch of our wonderful family members. The wedding was beautiful! The only bummer was that we ACTUALLY. MISSED. THE CEREMONY. How awful is that? San Francisco traffic was SO awful (on a Saturday? How do those poor people effing live?) that it took us TWO HOURS to get 30 miles. Actually, one whole hour of that was devoted to less than 8 miles! We arrived at the Flood Mansion as the wedding party was out from taking pictures...TOTALLY EMBARRASSING. I felt awful! But luckily the bride and groom graciously forgave us, and we managed to enjoy a beautiful night (a few pics soon to come).

I came home to rather troublesome news, however. The house on the right of us has been empty via foreclosure for almost a year now, and it just sold a couple of weeks ago. At first glance, I was rather pleased with our new neighbor selection...they appeared to be a small family (translate: four generations are not living with them, and they appear to own a mere two or three cars!) and, or so I thought, quiet?

Apparently not so. My sister's boyfriend told us they had a RAGER Saturday night. A RAGING PARTY that was still going strong after 1:00am. Cars parked in the backyard and everything. (Yes, this is the side of the house that Scarlett's room is on.) Pounding music, screaming people, utter madness.

Oh wait...it gets better.

According to Scott, round about 1:30a.m. an insane fight broke out in the street. Scott estimated 50 people gathered as fighters punched, kicked, and rolled in the street. He heard sirens wailing before he could dial the cops himself.

Yeah. LOVE-FUCKING-LY.

Cross your fingers that shit doesn't happen again, because you'd better believe I'm not letting it go past 10pm without a call to the cops! Yes, I'm an old fuddy duddy. Why, oh why, oh why, am I living in this ghetto ass neighborhood?? Oh wait...because we are 100 thousand plus upside down in this house and we are NEVER getting out from under it, that's why.

In other news, Scarlett is none too happy either. Her first tooth, the bottom right, is just about half way in, and already it's neighbor is breaking through her gums...and one or two of the top front teeth are coming fast on their heels! So she is getting either three or four teeth simultaneously! Yeah...if I was her...I'd be fussy too!

Sleep-sence Makes the Heart Grow Fonder

2008-09-15T21:50:00.001-07:00

(This picture taken by the fabulous EmilyPie!)

In the first few months of Scarlett's life, I loved her--unconditionally, consumingly, completely. All that parent love stuff that you hear about, you'd throw yourself in front of a train for them, leap in front of a bullet, yadi yadi ya...yes, I felt it all, and more.

But, I realize in retrospect, I also loved her stressfully. This was probably due partially to my lack of experience, partially to my hectic schedule, partially to the fact that Scarlett was not the world's easiest baby...but my immense love for her was tangled up with fear and frustration. Fear that she'd derail me, fear that I was doing the wrong thing, fear that things would never get better. Looking back, I'm actually kind of amazed I managed to appear so together in my daily life--well, at least I think I did. The truth was that I was barely staying afloat.

Lately, I've realized, my love feels different than it did, and I feel different than I did...in both respects, so much more light-hearted, so much happier. I'm sure a HUGE reason for the change is that fact that Scarlett is sleeping (almost) every night from 8:00pm to 6:00 or 7:00am. Also, now that she can sit and crawl I can set her down when I'm doing something, instead of feeling paralyzed by never being able to put her down without her being devastated. Sometimes I can even read or email while, a few feet away, she babbles and plays with her toys!

Whatever the reason, I suddenly feel healthier, more flexible about dealing with whatever baby drama she throws at me, and more positive in my belief that I CAN have kids and a succesful career and do them both well. I had been doubting something that before I had never questioned: that I was born to be a mom. These days I love hanging out with my baby and playing with her, and eagerly anticipate rather than dreading uninterrupted days of Scarlett-Mommy-time. Her personality is just so darling and fun...even though she still has her little-devil side.

The hard thing about this new more peaceful love is that being away from Miss Adorable is suddenly so much harder than it ever was. Even when she was only a few weeks old--yes, go ahead and condemn me as an unnatural mother for this--I would welcome the breaks and welcome the chance to immerse myself in school stuff, where I could glory in feeling like a moderate moron instead of an extreme one. But, because I was still breastfeeing, I went back and forth a lot and was rarely away from Scarlett more than four or five hours at a time.

Lately, however, it's been more like seven- and eight-hour days that she's with my mom and I am hammering away on a computer at school. As my husband pointed out, suddenly full time daycare doesn't seem like that much of a stretch. And I am so lucky--I have the absolute luxury of knowing that she is with her Grammy who loves her more than anything in the world (her own kids included!) But suddenly I find myself calculating hours, creating an equation of Grandma hours vs. Mommy hours. I never felt guilty before but I do now--isn't that weird? I think most moms are the opposite--the younger the child, the more the guilt. I am torn between wanting to be my child's primary caregiver and also wanting to get to a place where I have a career that will let me give her a good life, make me happy, AND--I hope--make her proud of me.

This is still an intense time in my life. And I am still worried about my ability to find this balance. But, on a positive note, I want to try to use this concern to motivate me. My new goal is to find better ways to be a student AND a mom, better ways to use my time more effectively and get more out of every day with my little one AND my program. The best part is that the new well-rested me actually feels hopeful that this is possible.

Speaking of...it's time for bed!

Pics from Portland Weekend

2008-09-07T09:24:00.001-07:00

Yes, I'm behind as always, but here are some tidbits from Labor Day weekend in Portland. I, by the way, HEART Portland. Not only do I love the city completely, but multiple friends are there, both from high school and from college. I love, love, love it. Every time I eat a fresh bagel from Noah's, drink a bubble tea, or wander through the shops on Hawthorne, I wish that I could move there. Come on, big job market in three years!

Anyway, the scoop. First, I got to have a baby-free night with the girls--I flew up Thursday; Mario brought Scarlett up Friday night--which involved drinking OF COURSE, a wee bit of dancing, overloading a poor pedicab driver, and having a great time at a gay male strip club--best invention EVER, by the way! Totally brilliant, to be able to freely enjoy delectable male bodies without having to worry about getting hit on by skeezey patrons! Sadly, no pics allowed, or this would have been a GREAT blog post! Ha.

Of course with all that WILD PARTYING (okay, that definitely counts as wild in my life!) I didn't get much sleep, and was hoping I'd be able to catch up later, but that didn't happen--Scarlett's amazing newfound ability to sleep through the night does not hold up in unknown places! Dammit. But although tired, we had fun on Friday--my friend Saundra, who just returned from Iraq, and I had fun kickin' it in downtown Portland and visiting my friend from high school Jennifer who also lives there. Mario and Scarlett came in late Friday, and I was happy to see them. I decided it is IDEAL to arrive a day before your husband and child on any vacation so you get enough independent time to be thrilled when they arrive!

Saturday we headed out to the coast, where we had rented a house in Rockaway Beach. The rest of the weekend was beaching, hot tubbing, eating, drinking OF COURSE, and enjoying deliciousness at the local cheese factories in Tillamook. Some pics:

Saundra with Scarlett

Allysa helping Scarlett walk:

Megan--my roommate from the dorms and for the next three years--flying a kite:

Denise and Scott--guess who they're smiling at?

Scarlett with Andrew and Alexis:

Mmm, Coffee on the Beach:

A little coastal character:

More:

Old college roommates: Megan, Saundra, me, and Denise

I-R-Exasperating as All HECK

2008-09-02T22:07:00.000-07:00

Nearly a freaking year ago…okay, maybe not quite, but it feels like it, we got a letter from the IRS stating that we owed them $2,000 dollars. After recovering from nearly fainting, I sat down to read the letter and discovered that apparently we owed this money for two reasons. 1) We had failed to report a $90 gain on one tiny account we never use and 2) because my husband had made $13,000 dollars more than we had reported.

Well, apparently we had actually forgotten all about the tiny account, bad us. But, as much as I would have LOVED to have been $13,000 richer, the second and far more major charge simply wasn’t true. I had to dig up the W2s to verify that we didn’t have any severe brain malfunctions while filing, and surprisingly, we hadn’t. (I say surprisingly because, knowing us, a malfunction would be more than likely.) We had filed exactly what we received which was exactly what Mario had made.

So, I wrote the IRS a letter explaining all this, wrote a check for the estimated $20 we owed for the missed account, stuck it all in the mail, and dusted off my hands, confident the situation would soon be resolved.

Weeks went by. Months, even.

One day, another letter from the IRS showed up, this one more threatening than the last. It thanked me for my payment, but informed me I still owed a big chunk from that missing income, and it had better be paid now OR ELSE--or else fatty interest and a paddling from Uncle Sam.

Irate, I went to my husband’s employers. They swore up and down that we had the right information, and they had reported the same information. I wrote another letter, this time with all the required documentation, stuck it all in the mail, and dusted off my hands-—which, this time, were slightly sweaty and red from being clenched.

Weeks went by. Months, even.

One day, ANOTHER letter from IRS showed up, this one even more threatening than the threatening one. The documentation wasn’t good enough. I needed to pay asap or be entered into official deficiency status. I called and suffered through a long, long, LONG hold. The Fresno IRS center swore they had an extra, separate W2 for the missing amount. My husband’s bosses swore they had no record of it. A tad more than irate, I wrote another letter attesting to the fact that whatever mystical documentation had been received by the IRS was apparently sent by mischievous aliens, had the employers print it on their stationary and sign it, stuck it all in the mail, and dusted off my hands. Or I would have, if they hadn't been balled into punching position.

Weeks went by. Months, even.

Deficiency notices began appearing in the mail. I ignored them.

Then one glorious day not too long ago, another letter arrived, this one stating that we had finally been cleared of all charges. Oh, glorious day! How joyous we felt to know that our rightfully earned and already overtaxed $2,000 would be staying right where it belonged, in our none-too-chubby bank account.

Just when I thought it was all over, a good nine months later, today a check shows up in the mail, a check for $20.43. Apparently, the breakdown explained, that was $20 for what I paid on the charge I WAS NOT disputing, and .43 in interest. What the hell is wrong with the IRS, I ask you? I guess I should take comfort in the fact that not only did those lovely tax people have to fork over almost a whole 50-cent piece in interest, but between the hundred pieces of mail they sent me during the course of this debacle, they piddled away at least another good 30 dollars.

I have to say, however, that it doesn’t much comfort me. After all, those are my tax dollars at work.

Would anyone care for some raspberries?

2008-08-27T09:17:00.000-07:00

Raspberries from Mario Colombini on Vimeo.

A New Lens on Life

2008-08-24T10:23:00.000-07:00

Thanks to the great recommendation of the fabulous photographer extraordinaire EmilyPie, I got Mario a new lens for our anniversary--I'm going to tell you what it is but PLEASE don't assume that means I know diddly about photography! In fact, I'm about to perform a little cut-'n-paste action DIRECTLY from the email in which Emily told me which one to get--a Canon 50mm f/1.4 USM Autofocus Lens. Basically this was a totally selfish gift to ensure that pictures WILL be taken of my angellically-still-sleeping-through-the-night and marvellously photogenic (clearly those are her father's genes at work) daughter Scarlett. I thought I'd share a few--he is still experimenting with this lens but I think they turned out really well. Not that I'm biased...at all...really...

Keep 'em coming, honey!

Why My Two-Year Anniversary Rocked

2008-08-20T15:06:00.001-07:00

Yesterday, August 19th, was Mario and I's two year wedding anniversary! That's probably the "Ball Point Pen" anniversary or something equally meaningless, but we celebrated anyway. It's hard to believe it's been two years since we, fancy (read: child) free--well, almost; we had just bought our house--said I do. So much has happened since then, not the least among them the advent of our little daughter.

We took this occasion to enjoy a great dinner out sans Miss Grab-Everything-in-Sight, whom my sister and her boyfriend Scott bravely watched. (I say bravely because it turned out Scarlett was a total shit and cried for three hours straight! Check ONE potential babysitter off the list!) Johnny's is a VERY delicious Italian restaurant in Reno that is always busy, and like a dummy I didn't make reservations, but we were able to get a table in the lounge, which is just as nice as the restaurant. We enjoyed a bottle of the Wine of the Month--an Antinori blend that I've already forgotten the name of--along with an appetizer of calamari, salad and bread, a plate of pesto gnocchi, and the crowning glory...Seafood Lasagna! (Cue salivation). This dish had come highly recommended by my sister and she definitely wasn't exaggerating...it was perhaps the most indulgent thing I have ever eaten. Perhaps it was the absence of Squidge and perhaps it was the wine--or more likely a combination of both--but it was a wonderful relaxing dinner.

While there, Mario and I gave each other our gifts...well, actually just pictures of the gifts, because neither of us are actually on top of it to have anything ready. I had ordered him a new lens and filter for his camera, but it was late in arriving, and he was planning to buy me the new NICER iPhone but wasn't able to get it yet. He told me he also had another present for me waiting back home which "wasn't very exciting," but he didn't want to tell me so I made him give me clues, and it took me forever. Here were the clues:

*It has to do with something he doesn't have at work
*It has to do with kissing
*It has the same size and mechanism as something one might purchase from an adult store
*I'm currently using it for free, but now I will have to start paying for it monthly
*Our friends Brandon and Emily have it, but we don't.

Can you guess? Probably not, as you would have to know something about his work and B&E's penchant for gadgets...it's an electric toothbrush! (He doesn't have dental insurance at work.) Now, granted, this may not be very exciting, but actually I've been wanting one for a long time.

But the best part of our anniversary was yet to come. Upon returning home, we picked Squidge up from my sister's house, where we sadly found out that she had been a devil and a half. By that time, however, she had cried herself to sleep, so we toted her next door and after a very little bit of feeding and cuddling, put her down in her crib. She won't stay on her back now, so she promptly flipped over on her belly and conked.

And there she stayed.
Without crying or fussing.
Without howling or moaning.
Without waking or playing.
Until SEVEN A.M.

(Cue music in the background: HalleLUJAH! HalleLUJAH! Hallelujah--Hallelujah--Hall-E-LU-
JAH!)

Scarlett's first night truly sleeping through the night! Now THERE'S something to blog about. Words cannot express how wonderful I felt this morning after having had a full night's sleep (never mind those several times I woke up and checked on her, worried because it's so unlike her to stay asleep!) I don't know when it will happen again, but couldn't have asked for a more fabulous anniversary present.

Sadly, Scarlett has followed up that halcyon night by being a little shit again today about napping...she is now crying in her crib as she does what she has been doing for the last two hours nonstop...fighting off sleep with all her pissy little might. SIGH. Our Department picnic is this afternoon and it would be a much more pleasant event if little Miss weren't crankier than the Grinch who Stole Christmas (before he reformed). But, I'll be honest...I wouldn't trade last night for anything!

My one hope: that it happens again BEFORE my next anniversary. Preferrably, tonight. But I won't count my chickens.

The Desire to Cheat

2008-08-09T15:11:00.000-07:00

As I've previously mentioned on this blog, losing the baby weight has not exactly been a piece of cake for me. In fact, I can't even say what it has or hasn't been for me, because it simply hasn't happened. Almost 30 weeks have passed since the birth of my little bambina, but the 30 pounds I have to lose (okay, would ideally like to lose...I still need to lose about 20 to get back to pre-baby, but not exactly svelte, status) haven't gone anywhere. I've tried a couple of times in the last three or four months to get some kind of regimen going, but it always seems to peter out. If it's hard to find time to exercise and eat right before kids, it is nearly impossible when they come along, particularly if they're not prone to chilling peacefully while Mommy attempts to take care of herself. (I know, I know...I'm not even to the days of dinosaur-shaped chicken nuggets, mac' n cheese, and popsickles yet!)

When we came back from Hawaii, where I had stuffed myself unrepentantly with mango pina coladas and Hawaiian cookies and cream pies, and I got on the scale, I nearly shit a brick. (Oh, would if I could...that would be a good few pounds gone instantaneously, right?) After months of seeing the exact same (horrifically high) number on the bathroom scale, the situation had finally changed...for the WORST! The number was 5 pounds higher than it had been!

That's when I had it. And that's when I had the brilliant idea to issue myself a personal challenge : 70 days of no candy, no dessert, and no soda. In addition, I wanted to try to write down what I ate, eat small meals every three hours, and exercise as often as possible. 70 days was a semi-random number. It's also semi-not-random, but I'm not going to confess my further reasoning right now, although I might do so in the future.

Now, I have NEVER stuck to any kind of resolution like this in the past. Several times I've exercised every day for a set amount of days--once in college I ran every day for 40 days straight, and a couple of years ago a coworker and I had gym-visit challenges that I always stuck to. And believe it or not, I have quit candy more than once--at one point, I stuck with it for months. But I have never tried to quit candy AND dessert (so yes, whenever I quit candy, I would basically just increase my consumption of sweet baked goods!) Those of you who are not born sugar fiends have NO idea how lucky you are. I hate when people says things like "It's easy! Just don't eat it." No. It's not easy. I freaking NEED sweets and I always have. It's a real curse and probably the one thing I would change about myself if I could. (Luckily this is my only real food curse or I would have to curse the unfairness of fate--oh, other than an inordinate love for carbs. But I don't like or crave fast food, or even fried food very often, and I only eat lean white meat with zero desire for fatty meats.)

But I'm doing it! This is the 19th day. The bummer is, I thought quitting is supposed to get easier after awhile, but that has not been my experience. For the first few days I wandered around proudly content to do without junk food. But gradually, thoughts of Whoppers and coconut cream pies and ice cream have infiltrated my head, and they don't seem to want to leave. Today it's particularly bad. About ten times I've opened the pantry, frigerator, or freezer desperately scanning for something sweet that I could eat without having to cheat, categorically. But nothing. Luckily an apple with a little peanut butter tided me over temporarily.

To be quite honest, I have semi-cheated twice in these nineteen: I confess to two illicit liasons with baked goods. Once was a week ago when I baked an apricot coffee cake for breakfast when Mario's parents were here, and could not stop myself from eating a piece. I rationalized that coffee cake is a strictly breakfast food (how often do you see it served for dessert?) and therefore not a direct infringement of the law. Then last Thursday I made a batch of zucchini bread, and although I gave one loaf to Mario to take to work and one loaf to my sister, I did have one--okay, several spoonfuls--okay, heaping spoonfuls of the very sweet batter.

But other than that, I'm on the wagon. When I weighed myself last Wednesday I had lost seven pounds from the (aneurism-causing) post-Hawaii weight. That means, actually, about 16 pounds to pre-baby-but-could-be-better status. Let's see, that's about A MILLION desserts and pieces of candy I will have to forego until then. Hmmmph. Moral support is welcome!

Break Through!

2008-08-06T21:37:00.000-07:00

Oh my god...I hesitate to make this pronouncement for fear that I'm wrong...but I think I'm right...we've turned a corner with Scarlett and the Evil Crib. The last few times I've laid her down she's either (halleluha! halleluha!) gone right to sleep or spent a measly few minutes crying, without any real force behind it. It's been about a week and a half that we've been putting her to sleep in her own wonderful bed, and it feels So Damned Sweet to have our bed back. (I did not want to be that parent who ended up having kids in their bed for eighteen years. Or ten. Or four. Or even two!) The first night was beyond dreadful. It took over a solid hour of Ferber method crying (that means leaving for 5, 10, 15 minutes with short visits in between, then starting all over) before she fell asleep, and then she woke up crying--I kid you not--about twenty times before morning mercifully broke. Naptimes during the day have been even harder...there was a day where she basically cried right through one whole morning nap time, skipping it, then when I tried to put her down for her afternoon nap she cried for another two hours!

I am sure I have no need to detail how traumatizing this has been for me. Up until this point, I really never let Scarlett cry much....okay...I never let her cry if I could at all help it. My only excuse for this is that everything I've read tells me that the first six months are all about answering a baby's needs and getting her to trust you. After six months, however, kids develop the power to manipulate and also the ability to understand cause and effect, so I was really waiting for that milestone to become a...da da da dum...Mean Parent. I was resolved when we came back from Hawaii to get starting breaking our little girl of some of her bad habits. But I really wasn't prepared for how hard it would be. Especially when I'd pick her up after an unsuccessful attempt at naptime and she would cling to me so sadly, her little body still heaving and hiccoughing and snivelling, like "Momma, how could you do this to me?" and my heart would just break. It felt like it would never end!

But...knock on wood...I think she's finally getting it! It's amazing to be able to lay her in her crib, wind up her mobile and switch on her white noise machine, kiss her on the forehead, and leave the room! It's amazing to plan on a bedtime between 8 and 9 and actually go get some stuff done after that! It's amazing, this stuff that so many other parents have been able to experience since their kid was born! (Okay, and I probably could have too if I'd been willing to really be tough, but again, I was hesitant to put my foot down before the six-month marker.)

The only thing that's not amazing...she is STILL not sleeping through the night. Some nights she still wakes up between six and twenty times, and now we have further to go to shush her. When we're lucky, she goes until 4 am or so. She doesn't need a middle of the night feeding anymore--she seems perfectly happy to eat in the morning---so I don't know what this is all about except that, crib trained or not, she is still a damned light (read: bad) sleeper. And, I have to face facts...at some point I'm probably going to have to buck up and let her cry in the middle of the night. I just haven't done it yet. I just hope it gets better soon. I did surprisingly well on insufficient molecules of sleep for six months, but I can tell you that my body is OVER it. Now, I drag...I yawn...I crash. I'm ready to go back to eight hours a night, please.

Um, NOW.

Things to Do in Hawaii When You've Got a Petite Bebe

2008-08-02T12:00:00.000-07:00

Okay, so I am back...and I don't know why...but I'm still finding it hard to make time to blog! Or maybe it's just that, on a sort of hiatus from school stuff and hanging around the house a lot, I don't have a lot to say (wow, that's a shocker coming from me! But I'm sure that will change soon.) Anyway, although I've been back for over a week, I still need to post about our Hawaii trip, so that's one I'm doing. I didn't have the same trip that some of my other family members had...I didn't kayak, snorkel, mountain bike, scuba or snuba, surf, or any of those other water-vacation-Hawaii-associated things. I hope to do some of that when Scarlett's a little older, but this trip involved a lot of trying to put her to sleep, waiting for her to wake up, getting her ready to go in the sun, then going in to avoid too much sun...you get the idea. Not that I'm complaining, because I had a beautiful, relaxing, and fun time. So, without further talk of what I didn't do, here's an overview of what I DID do:

Partied: Yes, I actually got some time to party with my cousins and the fam! In fact, that was the first I've actually been fully buzzed in...oh...about a year and a half. And I got buzzed about once per day on delicious pina coladas (and mangolinas, I drink I "invented" with fresh mango and pineapple, pina colada mix, ice, lime, and a healthy amount of rum). It was great having so many family members around because there was always someone to hold the baby when my hands were busy with beverages.

Went Swimming with the Squidge: She loved both the ocean and the swimming pool, although the ocean scared her a bit so I'd say she liked the swimming pool more. We took her in a bunch of times and she would kick her legs like crazy whenever she was getting in! So cute. It was really fun to swim with her. (PS I also had my first moment where mommy-life-saving instinct kicked in. One of the pools had this super slippery curved step, and one time as I was trying to pass the baby up to my mom to dry her off, I slipped and went under. I stuck my arms as far as I could above the water to keep Squidge from going under and totally forgot to even try to hold my breath, so breathed a ton of water. I'm sure it only took my mom one second to catch her, but it felt like forever!)

Enjoyed the fantastic scenery: It's hard to take a bad picture in such a beautiful location. Okay, most of these were taken by Mario, including the one below. But I did actually get a good snap or two in myself!
Threw my cousin a surprise shower: All of the gals in my family gathered at Tommy Bahama's (the guys did too, only we put them at a table by themselves) to surprise my cousin on the day before her wedding. (Note about me: I freaking love party planning. It's my Martha Stewart side that must emerge now and again.) The surprise worked (although my dad almost gave it away when he wandered into the restaurant late, and Michelle saw him!)--we even got a few tears! I didn't want to overdo it on the activities, but I did make a "The Story of Michelle and Jeff" Mad Lib for everyone to fill out--and then laughed my ass of reading them out loud. I also had everyoen write notes that I later put in a scrapbook for Michelle (putting it together kept me busy during above-mentioned nap times).

Went on a Sunset Cruise: This was one of the activities arranged by the bride and groom, and luckily there were enough takers to charter the whole boat! It was great having practically all the wedding guests aboard as we snacked, sipped alcoholic beverages (okay, I admit it, I wussed--Istuck with ginger ale made with fresh ginger after a touch of seasickness set in) and got to see an amazing sunset.
Ya-Ya'ed: My aunts recently decided that the women of my family needed to do something to show their solidarity and share their love and support for each other. So, prior to going to Hawaii, we each made elaborate hats and, in the spirit of The Divine Secrets of the Ya Ya Sisterhood, trekked down to the beach one night for some sparklers, some speeches, and some serious (ly wonderful) chic power time!
Enjoyed my Cousin's Beatiful Wedding: After the ceremony in the morning, we had fun taking gorgeous pictures at the Maui Prince Hotel. At the reception in the evening, we enjoyed fabulous food and entertainment including a conch shell blower at sunset, Hawaiian dancers, and a fire dancer! And of course, we got a little groove on ourselves.

So there's a few pictures and a brief overview of our lovely vacation. More blog posts to come soon...as soon as I have something interesting to say!

A Mid Week Picture Update

2008-07-17T14:40:00.000-07:00

Whee hee apparently we have internet! It makes me feel a wee bit better about being in Hawaii and not being able to do much of anything due to Squidge-alea! (That's her Hawaiian name. I am Crystalani! And then of course, there's Maui Mario.)

I can't wait to write more about my cousin's beautiful wedding--think Hawaiian dancers, a fire dancer, leis all around, fantastic food and cocktails, and a great party!--I thought I'd post a couple of pictures. They are from the surprise shower I threw for my cousin, the sunset cruise the night before the wedding, the wedding ceremony itself at the beautiful Maui Prince Hotel (the ceremony was in the morning, the party at night), and other general pictures of Scarlett being adorable.

Vignettes of Peevery and Joy

2008-07-13T11:14:00.001-07:00

I miss my blog. I don't know why I just can't find time to get to it. Okay, well maybe I do know why. Last week, I was frantically finishing up summer school, then frantically writing a conference paper, then frantically heading to Denver to attend the conference, then heading home, and now frantic again--we are leaving tomorrow for Hawaii, and NOTHING is done! No packing, none of the other tasks I need to accomplish. Should i be blogging? No. But, I've been away a long time, and will likely be away a while longer after this.

I have so much I could write about. So this will be a series of mini-moments:

* I survived my first (36-hour) absence from the bug! I admit to sniveling my pathetic way through the airport after saying goodbye, but once on my way I managed to enjoy my inordinate freedom quite extensively despite only having to pump like EVERY TWO HOURS, because for some unexplainable reason being away made my production factory kick into overdrive.

* Or perhaps it was the alcohol? I may have committed a petite conference no-no by getting quite buzzed (off of two glasses of wine!) after a very, very impolite and unprofessional person was rude after my presentation. Very occasionally people can be snide and nasty at conferences, but I was not expecting it at this time. People reassured me that my presentation was fine (retrospectively, it could have been better I know) and that she was in the wrong, but it still cast a pall on my experience, compelling me to drown my sorrows in house red, seek reassurance from everyone in our crew that I had done okay, and then proceed to babble shamelessly at strangers in the buffet line. It probably would have been in my best interests to be a tad more disciplined, yes. At least, when we continued to imbibe well into the night, we did it down on 16th street rather than at the conference hotel where the staid, responsible compositionists would not be mentally filing my name and face in the "Do Not Hire" file.

* At least the eatin' was good. I am telling you: Grand Hyatt, downtown Denver. Best conference food I have EVER had, hands down.

* And I got some really great ideas from some of the presentations I observed. Yippee! It's good to get pumped up with motivation and ideas for new projects!

* Speaking of pumping--That airline security guards should be total wankers and fixate on the most inappropriate and non-terrorist objects must be written in the job application. When I went to Seattle in May, I got crap for having a spoon in my purse (maybe I could cut out someone's heart with it?) and this time, I got it for...wait for it...you guessed it...MY BREAST PUMP. A snippet of the exchange:

Him (stopping the conveyor belt to peer at his little x-rays): You have a bottle in your bag.
Me: An EMPTY bottle.
Him: You have a small, plastic, bottle in your bag.
Me: Yes. There is nothing in it. There isn't even a lid on it.
Him: It's an empty plastic bottle? (in a tone implying suspicion of WMD)
Me: It's. My. PUMP. Because I'm. BREASTFEEDING.
Him: I'm going to need to take a look.
Me: Go ahead. Take it out. Fondle it. Embarrass yourself. Let me know when you're done.

Granted, breast pumping isn't exactly a thrill. But I am pretty sure that it would not be an effective terrorist threat. ("Everyone stay in your seats why we fly this plane into the National Bowling Stadium! Fuck with us and you WILL get pumped!")

* And while I'm talking about terror, I'm a little concerned Mario and I might be in for it with a little bully. Yesterday some good friends were in town when I got home last night, including a couple who had a baby about 12 weeks after we did, cute little Landyn with the most kissable, pinchable cheeks. And what did Scarlett do when we plopped them down together? Immediately, and multiple times, grab Landyn's plug out of her mouth and stick it in her own, leaving her to cry sadly. Sigh...we are really in for it!

Wish us luck in Hawaii. After twelve hundred tasks and errands today, we have to drive to the Bay Area tomorrow to catch our flight. Um, yeah...wish us LOTS of luck!

Trouble at the Pump

2008-07-01T20:58:00.000-07:00

Whew, sorry for the long hiatus from the Bloggosphere! Our internet router has been broken and then we were out of town. We could get little snippets of my sister's connection next door, but it was tenuous at best and not conducive to good quality internet time. Finally Mario went and bought another router today at Best Buy and we are back in the game!

It's probably good that I've taken a break, because I think maybe Scarlett has been reading my blog, and has seen some of the negative comments I've posted about breastfeeding. No wait...that would imply that she actually CARED what I think! Either way, she's up to something, and that something is rejecting the breast. Since last Thursday, she's been a total turd when I've tried to feed her. She'll eat for a minute or so and then start arching and whining and trying to look in the other direction. Feedings that used to be 15 to 20 minutes are now no more than four if I'm lucky. At first, I thought it might just be gas, or some other kind of pain, or a brief phase. But it's getting close to a week now and things don't seem to be improving. I can only guess that this is because a) now that she's having formula and baby food she's decided these new tastes are superior to mom's milk, b) she's such a busybody she hates been made to lie down facing me, away from the action, or c) she's just plain contentious and she's sensed that even though I only originally committed to six months of this, I had recently decided it was too soon to stop.

I have heard of babies doing this...just up and deciding they are done with breastfeeding. Apparently my sister did it when she was eight months (my mom was pissed at her because it was right before summer and she was hoping to have big boobies for bikini season!) and one of Mario's cousin's babies that we saw this weekend was over it at six months. I called the doctor yesterday and they said there is really nothing I can do except start offering her a bottle when she won't eat. I knew that would be the end of it, so I was reluctant to accept that suggestion, but I finally did it tonight, because of course keeping her healthy and happy is the most important thing. The little twit arched and whined on the boob but then sucked two ounces of formula down, sweet as pie, and afterwards scarfed half a jar of butternut squash.

Granted, this is probably the control freak in me being bummed because I'm not the one making the choice here. But I have to admit, I'm a little sad. Unless something changes pretty quick here, this is going to be the end of the road for the Milk Cow. For all my talk about looking forward to weaning her, I had finally come around in the last couple of months to understanding what some women rave about when they talk about breastfeeding. It was sweet to feel that bond with her, to have her want me and only me when she's hungry or needs comfort. Even though it's a huge tie-down, it's also been time when I have been forced to take breaks from my hectic life and just sit down to enjoy her, to soak myself in her infanthood, to marvel at the baby-soft feeling of her scalp and wiggle her little toes and stroke the soft skin of her arms and legs and rub her little back while she looked up at me, sucking away so earnestly.

Sigh.

Curses, Foiled Again!

2008-06-15T20:57:00.000-07:00

Rrrgh. Don't you hate it when you are finally getting into a solid exercise routine and something just comes along to knock you out of it? I have been quite the good girl for the last two weeks, wogging almost every morning (or doing a nice long walk on my days off) and all was going along swimmingly (strollingly?). Scarlett becomes the most lovely, mellow, contemplative baby in the stroller, and most days I've even been able to milk this rare mood--I've found if I shower as soon as we get back to the house, I can usually get 5-10 minutes scream-free! I've been gradually increasing my distance and the length of time I spend out, and have been feeling great. Runners Go Bragh!

Then (da da da dum) enter...the STUBBED TOE.

A stubbed toe is one of those frustrating ailments that garners you absolutely zero sympathy while being ridiculously painful. I got mine this morning by venturing recklessly through dangerous terrain I should have known to avoid...aka, my backyard, which as you saw from my previous post has become a war, I mean construction zone. (In good news, the veranda is looking AWESOME thanks to Two Daring Dads who weren't afraid to sweat and swallow sawdust on Father's Day--my dad and my husband. Pics soon!) There I was, carrying the Squidge out for a look-see at the progress, when BOOM went my toe into a piece of wood which had, I'm quite sure, not been there before. (My normal recourse in these situations, howling at my husband, was tragically not an option as this is one of his few Howl-free Holidays). It hurt at the time, but not really enough to slow me down. Over the course of the day, however, this injury has shown its true colors, which are black, blue, and puffy (okay, I know puffy is not a color, but it should be, don't you think?). Now, I am hobbling about like a gouty old lady.

Fudge. I have a sneaking suspicion this is going to mess with my morning exercise routine for awhile. Wish me luck that my dumb toe returns to normal proportions before I remember the joys of being a slug.

Okay, enough trying to eek out some meager rations of sympathy (it's not working anyway, is it?). I really should be lesson planning...tomorrow morning is coming much sooner than I'd like, and I'm not even slightly prepared. Sometime this week I will blog about the joys of teaching summer school to college fresh, fresh, FRESH-men--we're talking graduated high school Saturday, started my class Monday kind of fresh! Ah, how I love having impressionable young minds at my disposal. Kidding, kidding! Hope everyone's weekend was great.

Do the Veranda Pokey, and You Turn Yourself Around

2008-06-09T18:53:00.001-07:00

Here are Squidge and I in the aftermath of the construction war which took place at my house this weekend, which involved three/two men, enough tools to sink a ship (or perhaps keep one from sinking), a stack of wood, and a veranda which just refused to get built! My mom and I watched Saturday and Sunday slowly slip away as "the boys" (Mario and my dad, and Brandon on Saturday) fillibustered over plans until a project that was SUPPOSED to take one weekend ended in, well, the state seen in the picture above. We started singing "The Veranda Pokey," which went a little something like this:

You put the lag screws in, you pull the lag screws out,
You put the lag screws in, and then you throw 'em on the ground,
You drive off to Home Depot and you buy yourself some more,
And THAT's what it's all about!

Now I have to deal with THIS mess until next weekend!

Wogging, With Baggage

2008-06-07T20:53:00.000-07:00

Ooooh. Life with my new Expedition jogging stroller (yes, not as cool as the Bob, but then in all fairness, I really don't deserve a Bob at this out-of-shape juncture in my life) is...well...rather achy. Good Girl Crystal (while slacking off on eating healthy, ssshhh!) has been out on wogs (jogs with some walking involved) almost every morning this week, and is feeling that burn! The one morning I stayed in was only because it was cold and windy and yucky, and I didn't think it was fair to subject Scarlett to the atmospheric cruelties of my quest for firmer flab.

And flabby I am. As I was telling a friend of mine recently, in my heart I am a distance runner. In my legs and back and lungs, however, I am a post-baby rocking-chair potato, and it's pretty hard to convince those delinquent parts that my heart has the right idea. But I am trying. I have discovered that my neighborhood, which I normally spend a large amount of time complaining about (one must cross the railroad tracks, pass a trailer park, and venture through a neighborhood of manufactured homes to reach my subdivision, and in most of the houses around me dwell at least twelve people with sixteen cars between them, at least one of which "bumps" home sometime after 10pm each night, and hardly anyone takes care of their lawns), actually has a lot of quiet streets with wide shoulders, perfect for wogging. And Squidge is being QUITE cooperative...so far, she just hangs onto the stroller sides all sweetly and quietly absorbs the world until she nods off! I keep waiting for THAT worm to turn, because generally my pretty little devil is just not quite that angelic.

I believe, if I listen to my heart (and ignore my lazy butt, which would really like to stay in bed longer in the mornings) that I can regain my former distance-running ability. Okay, maybe not, although it is still my dearest goal in life to run a marathon someday while I am still reasonably young. The one thing that is gone, however--at least for now--is the fabulous feeling of freedom one gets by strapping on a pair of shoes, hooking one's key to one's sports bra, and heading out the door. No tire patching kits or tubes, no carabiners or special shoes, no paddles and life vests needed. Some call running boring, but for me there have been years of my life where I did my clearest thinking running miles and miles, me and the road and maybe a good hip hop mix. Now, however, it's me, the road, the hip hop mix, the stroller, the Squidge, the flowered blanky, the crazy peacock, the pull-toy monkey, the sucky, the cell phone...

The great thing about the jogging stroller is that packing this crap along is virtually painless, with all its handy little pockets. In fact, the only baggage that's giving me pain is that which resides on my chest. Pain of the "Bewbies," as my friend Jenna calls them, is apparently a fact of post-pregnancy running, and something I've never had to deal with before, given my girls' historic predilection for the "more than a mouthful" camp. And, let's be honest, breastfeeding may have endowed me a LEETLE more, but my B cups (B- and B+, depending on the side) are still by no means traffic stoppers. Yet that doesn't stop them from aching like a mofo after the most innocent little wog. Owwwwwwwww!

The IDEAL jogging stroller, I'm thinking, would have some sort of boobage support extending from the handle...I can see it now! It's going to make me millions...no? Okay, fine. Back to the drawing board. In the meantime, no one hug me too hard!

Precious Gifts

2008-06-01T22:43:00.000-07:00

From Mario:
A jogging stroller
Running clothes (hmm, wonder what he wants me to do!)
Cute Mary Jane Crocs
The greatest card ever (see post below)
An attempt at birthday lovin'

From my sister and Scott:
Pyrex dishes (much needed)
Promise of dinner and a movie, complete with baby-sitter (VERY much needed!)

From my mom and dad:
Half an iphone (email on the run, here I come!)
RX Crocs (I gotta admit it, I love me some Crocs)
Delicious Oregon berry conserves and jam (I'm looking forward to breakfast!)
A fantastic fresh seafood dinner

From my daughter:
Very, very, very early birthday wishes (beginning at 2:30 am, and continuing until well into the morning)
A nap that ended rather sooner than expected (use your imagination, but here's a hint: it corresponds to why the birthday lovin' was only an "attempt")
A gentle reminder that small portions are best (she kindly fussed and cried throughout dinner, preventing me from overindulging in above-mentioned seafood)
Plenty of drooly, barfy kisses, and big gummy baby grins!

Ahhh...nothing like a birthday, surrounded by those who love you best!

The Best Birthday Card Ever

2008-06-01T14:42:00.000-07:00

Happy Birthday to Me! The big Two-Niner, whew. Only a year left until the Roaring Twenties are over! So far it's been a nice day, but the best thing in it by far was this awesome card my husband made for me! (I love how it looks like I'm hitting him with the rolling pin. Surely THAT was no accident!)

The Running Tally

2008-05-30T21:40:00.000-07:00

Yesterday:
Mommy goes to the eye doctor--Baby is smiley and angelic in the waiting room while Daddy watches her--score Mommy.
Baby is quiet and happy on every drive around town--score Mommy.
Baby is charming and content through bank stop and grocery shopping trip and EVEN naps while Mommy unloads and EVEN wakes up smiling and amuses herself for awhile...

And the clear winner of the day is MOMMY!

Today:
Baby resists taking her morning nap for HOURS, sucking the day away--score Baby.
She squalls ear-splittingly every time she gets strapped in the carseat--score Baby.
At pizza lunch with Daddy, she deliberately reaches for and topples a full soda all over herself, the table, the pizza, and everything. When Mommy changes her outfit, Baby barfs all over it. When Mommy goes to rinse it, Baby (clad only in diaper) topples ANOTHER soda--Score Baby, twice over.

I guess it's clear who won today.

There's always tomorrow, I guess.

Didn't I See Your Boobs at RSA 2008?

2008-05-28T18:28:00.000-07:00

Aaahhhhhhhhh.

That, if you need a translation, was a long sigh of relief. We are back in Reno, both Squidge and I having survived my hair-brained plot to bear her along with me to my conference in Seattle. All told, it went considerably better than I could have expected. The flights both up and back went smoothly, with a bit of squiggly fussy boredom the worst reaction from Squidge. My aunt and uncle, who live in Auburn and who we stayed with, were kind enough to purchase a stroller and a car seat (there is another baby on the way in the family, so they were thinking they could pass it on after we used it) and that greatly reduced the amount of crap we had to lug along. My uncle had the carseat installed when we arrived, which was great, although we did end up spending an extra hour in the airport parking lot trying to adjust the stupid straps! Oh the miracles of modern engineering!

The conference was a big one, densely populated with, well, rhetoric rock stars. I always joke with one of my colleagues in the department that you know you're a rhet/comp geek when you get weak knees over the big names in our field, and at this conference, those were the people peeing next to you in the breaks between sessions. Those were also the people strolling by as I hurriedly breastfed my kid in the breaks between sessions. I am convinced when I go on the job market a few years from now, someone is going to remember me as the girl who had her boobs on display in the Seattle Westin!

The only reason the whole thing was doable was the generosity of my mom and her sister, my Aunt Mickey, who spent Friday and Saturday hanging out in downtown Seattle and popping back and forth to the Westin every couple of hours so I could fuel the little jet. Friday I watched some really great presentations, and Saturday I presented my paper, which (or so I think) went pretty well. Sunday I took the day off from the conference so we could see my cousin graduate from Pacific Lutheran University in Tacoma and spend some time with my mom's brother and his family--a lovely coincidence with regards to time and location. Monday it was back at the conference without the little bug, who went with my mom to visit one of her old high school friends. The weekend passed ridiculously fast, and now I am back in Reno with a Squidge who is just slightly more mommy-clingy...she missed her daddy but got a leetle TOO used to have me to herself. I need to get her converted back or I will never get a break.

Now onto the next big thing...I really need to start planning for the summer school class I'm teaching which begins June 9th, but thankfully Squidge gave me a good excuse to be a sack of potatoes today. She had a doctor's appointment this morning and another round of evil vaccinations, so we spent the day at home napping, snuggling, and nursing, doped up on Tylenol, having a Star Wars marathon (dorky I know. But somehow even though we own them I never had watched the new #2 and #3, so I remedied that.) As to the list of errands I need to accomplish, I quote from the original Scarlett..."I'll think about that tomorrow."

Once you go Misses…send Juniors Good-Bye Kisses

2008-05-21T20:07:00.000-07:00

Note to future mothers: everything they tell you about breastfeeding is pretty much a big fat fib. It’s NOT easier than bottle feeding, it’s NOT easy to always be busting out your boobs in public places, the pain does NOT disappear within a day or so, and one most certainly does NOT shed mad pounds as if the kid were some kind of live mini liposuction machine, slurping the cellulite right out of your mammary glands. Or maybe these things do happen, but only to those god-awful perfect people who have no cavities or traffic tickets and whose infants sleep through the night at, like, six days old. We all know I'm not one of them because four months into the infant game, I’m as baby-weighty as ever. I dropped about 20 pounds my first week home from the hospital but not much since. I still have about 15 more to get to my pre-baby weight (and about 30 to get to my ideal weight, which, let’s face it, is not going to happen in this lifetime or the next.)

I had big ideas that my fat was just going to peel away after Scarlett was born, week by week revealing my dream body in plenty of time for our Hawaii trip…but um, now that it’s only seven weeks from now, I’d better give up on that idea. I also was determined not to buy new clothes until I was a sight more svelte—I got gift certificates for Christmas, and have been hoarding them in anticipation of a skinny shopping spree. However, after a recent I-have-nothing-to-WEAR-I-mean-NOTHING-no-Honey-I-cannot-wear-THAT-and-YES-I-DO-look-fat-oh-GOD-can-you-PLEASE-GET-OUT-OF-HERE-and-STOP-LOOKING-AT-ME!!! breakdown (see previous post), I had to revise my hard line on the no-shopping thing. I decided that indulging in some fat clothes would be less destructive to my overall mental state than trying to prepare to attend RSA in my tatty, misshapen maternity clothes.

Luckily Kohl’s was having a sale today. Call it tacky and suburban-y, but I have recently found Kohl’s a mighty good place to shop. It’s got great nice-casual stuff and I find the sizing doesn’t make me want to write complaint letters to the designers (“How can you possibly call THIS a size 11? When you say that, do you mean it’s for an 11-year old who eats, what, 11 calories a day??”) Or at least it didn’t pre-baby. But there will be no more odd sizes for me, folks, now or (I fear) ever. I stubbornly made a half-hearted pass at the junior’s section today, but the dressing room revealed what my mind refused to acknowledge; I’m a Misses now, undoubtedly. I belong now to the world of what my friend EmilyPie refers to as Mature Woman shorts which come, uncomfortably, to my waist, not my belly button.

It’s the end of an era, long in coming, but the end none the same. The Junior in me is really gone. She has ascended to some Purgatory of Past Crystals to join my earlier permutations, the Crystals who waitresses and partied and roadtripped, who had roommates and heartbreaks and hangovers, who met guys in bars, who loved her a good hip-hop dance club and grinding on a solid rum-and-diet buzz in the haze of a smoke machine, who could move cities on a whim, change her entire life in a moment because there was never anything real to hold her down.

Correspondingly, I find my tastes evolving; suddenly, the Mature Woman clothes—shirts that don’t need to be tugged down, pants that aren’t a squidge too tight—rather appeal. I’m embarrassingly thrilled with the monstrous stack of Mature Woman clothes I came home with (sale + $100 gift certificate + opening Kohl’s card means I only spend $108 on FOURTEEN items!)

What is happening here? Will this sea change continue until all that makes me young has slipped away, and I am really this—a responsibility-laden mother, a wife, a boring graduate student, almost 30 (well, 29 in 11 more days), with ever-increasing grey hairs, the beginnings of lines around her eyes, and thyroid disease?

I am thinking of The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock, which I have always loved:

I grow old … I grow old …
I shall wear the bottoms of my trousers rolled.

But, perhaps a slightly different version:

I grow old...I grow old...
My belly fat is grossly rolled.

Shall I pluck my grey hairs? Must I count calories?
I shall wear Mature Woman clothes which cover my boobies.
I have heard the hot guys catcall "Baby, do me, please..."

I know they do not catcall at me.

I have seen them eyeing girls who stay eighteen
While I go unnoticed, no longer passionate and lean
Now matronly, no more a sexy thing.

We have lingered too long in the memory
Of twenty-one-hood, days partying on the town...
Till maturity catches us, and we settle down.

Finding My Neurotic Inner Parent, At Last

2008-05-19T12:57:00.001-07:00

And...she's BACK IN THE GAME! With my last paper in, I can move on to dwelling on new things now...

Last night Mario and I went with my Mom and Dad and my sister and her boyfriend Scott (aka The Bike Couple)on the invitation of my grandparents to the 9th Annual Best of Tahoe Chefs. This is the second time we've attended this event, a hospital benefit dinner where the best chefs from Tahoe/Truckee prepare a host of delicious/presumably delicious** foods, which are paired with an array of intoxicating/very intoxicating wines.

Last year when we went, I was carefree. I was about to graduate from my master's, and was pregnant but didn't know it yet, so could enjoy myself fully. Doubtlessly Scarlett can attribute losing at least two IQ points to the quantities of wine I consumed that night (although, ESP-ishly, I didn't drink nearly as much as I could have...)

This year, I was not pregnant (or GOD HELP ME if I am!) but instead had a new concern...leaving my baby, for the first time longer than an hour, with a non-family babysitter. Who better for the job than my dear friend EmilyPie and her long-suffering hubby Brandon? They kindly volunteered for duty, so (after a total panic attack when I realized, WAY too late in the game, that NONE of my semi-nice clothes fit my grotesque post-baby mom body, which resulted in an emotional breakdown and then a VERY late departure) we dropped off the baby and headed for Tahoe.

Now, prior to last night, I have prided myself on being a PRET-ty laid back mom. I had to start leaving Scarlett at one week of age for school, and was never neurotic about it. I travel (comparatively) light, let anyone who wants to hold her, and NEVER think about whether or not their hands are clean. So I really didn't think this would be a big deal.

But suddenly, within minutes of dropping her off, I realized why some of my friends with kids never go out. It's so much easier to stay home and adjust to becoming socially backward than deal with all the what-ifs...What-if she wakes up and thinks we've abandoned her? What-if I forgot to convey something important about her body language or how to tell if she's hungry or tired? What-if she's a terror and Emily and Brandon NEVER speak to us again? What-if I didn't leave enough milk? What-if she barfs chunks down Emily's cleavage?

Needless to say, my worries were for naught. Well, OF COURSE Emily got her cleavage barfed on, but other than that (unless E&B were telling lies to make me feel better) she was a moderately good, only mildly fussy baby, in great hands with our bestest friends. But of course, Scarlett was never at risk for not making it through the night...it was really me that was at risk of having a coronary from new-found mommy paranoia.

But I didn't. With the help of a few glasses of wine, I lived with no lasting damage other than being mildly humbled by the realization that I am just as much of a neurotic mess as every other new mom out there. Sigh... I might as well embrace it and face it now, because we've got our first plane ride (my Seattle conference) in less than THREE days, and my fears are mounting as to how the whole fiasco is going to go.

**I say presumably regarding the food, because the vast portion of the entrees and appetizers are things I don't eat, aka raw meat and meat in general. Okay, I know you are DYING to hear my freakish rules about the consumption of meat, so here they are:
One, I don't eat anything too big, too cute, or too ugly. That rules out pigs, cows, lambs, rabbits, ducks, snakes, eels, rats...You get the point. This basically leaves...chicken and fish.
Two: Bones, skin or any other feature that resembles something living are out. This leaves me with chicken and breast meat and fish filets.
Three: Meat is meant to be cooked. I really don't understand how one can hear about all the yucky stuff carried in uncooked meat (okay, all I can think of at the moment is trichinosis, but whatever) and then go out and consume vast quantities of raw fish just because someone decided to call it "sushi." Carpaccio falls in this category too, and yes, I know it makes all the fancy pants chefs rend their hair and swoon, but I like my ahi DONE thank you. "Pan-seared" is just a fancy way to say "undercooked" as far as I am concerned!

All of this said I pride myself on being a pretty good cook. I think I need to put out my own fancy chef cookbook for those who don't subscribe to the "if it's not raw, it's not gourmet" camp. It would be called "Living by Crystal's Freaky Meat Rules and Eating Well Anyway." So there.

Nothing's Right With the World...

2008-05-13T08:55:00.000-07:00

I feel this awful, gaping, sick hole in my stomach and my soul when I think about the earthquake in China, which has devastated the city where we lived for a year and a half. Not just lived, but loved, loved our life and loved so many of the wonderful, funny, unique, earnest students that enriched it while we were there. Mario sent out a bunch of emails last night to former students, and we got a response from one, Navy (their English names were all so fun), saying that she was safe in another province, but that her family was heavily affected. She wrote this (sic) about the city where we lived and the university campus where we taught:

"The situaton of Mianyang is very bad, especiall Beichuan county of Mianyang. More than 7,000 people died from the earthquake. It is hard to call the people in Mianyang. The headquarter of our company in Mianyang also suffers the damage cuased by the disaster. The server of our headquater is distroyed. And the internet, electricity, water supply were destroyed in Mianyang. So it is hard to contact the people in Mianyang. As the information we got from some friends in Mianyang this morning, SWUST is safer, but also damaged. I just got a photos of SWUST office building. You can have a look. A lot of citizen go to SWUST to avoid suffering, that can be cuased by tall buildings."

So it sounds like the campus isn't too bad off, but so many of our students and their families from the area around Mianyang were heavily affected, and I feel awful to think of how many people were killed, particularly so many of the students in collapsed schools...each the only child, the brightest future hope, of their families.

The worst part is, I want to do something so bad, hop on a plane and go there (although of course that is not possible as the Chinese government is not allowing it) or at least send money to the school, but there is no way to contact anyone right now.

ugh. It is very hard to focus on my last paper with this unbearable tragedy weighing so heavily on my mind and heart.

A Caveat to My Last Post

2008-05-12T17:21:00.000-07:00

I have to post a caveat to my last post, because I realize in my frustration with not knowing the right things to do with my little Squidge, I might have accidentally hurt some feelings. I need to make something clear I should have made clear before: I know that any advice given from my family is given from motivations of love, support, and desire to help, NOT from any motivation to make me feel bad. My sarcasm in my last post was really just a reflection of my own frustrated feelings, my own suspicion that there ARE things I could be doing to get Squidge to be okay with car rides, with being put down, with taking naps on her own, etc...all the things I am struggling with. Being as tired as I am, and as ready to be done with this very difficult semester as I am (TWO papers down, ONE to go!) I know full well that I am probably being far too sensitive. My wonderful family loves me AND my baby, and all the moms are capable and wonderful moms, they've likely got some things to say that I could stand to know. So, to all family members, please discount my new-mommy foibles. (And really, short of shock collars, I would LOVE any advice about how to get the kid to like car rides!)

The Bone-Crushing Weight of a Semester's End

2008-05-03T14:58:00.000-07:00

I HATE this point in the semester.

I am totally screwed on one of the 25-page papers I have to write, partly screwed on a second, and actually feeling moderately good about the third, which means my teacher will probably hate it of course. I just got my first-ever self-esteem ruining rejection to a conference that is not CCCC (the big conference in my field, very hard to get into--I get rejected regularly for that). And of course my abstract is due for next year's CCCC in, oh, six days, and I have vowed that if I don't get in this year I'm going to leave rhet comp to become a bus driver. But how am I supposed to research for it when I'm going to fail my systemic functional grammar class unless I can figure out what the rhetoric of natural disasters is YESTERDAY?

I am miserable. I have stuff, stuff, stuff do to up the wazoo. But the fact that I am feeling ANY stress of course means I'm luring around on the internet while I should be writing, reading, frantically trying to catch up on the research I should have been doing for weeks but was too busy trying to get. through. my. daily. baby-screaming. book-reading. earth-quaking. overloaded busy-as-hell insane pit of a life.

DAMMIT.

I just want to be done. Our yard looks like crap, our house is messy, I'm stressy, and pissy...it's just all bad. And of course only one of us can do something at any given point since we have had the good fortune to give birth to She Who Hates Naps and Will Holler if You Divert Even 1% of Your Attention for one Single Second, aka Scarlett, so Mario can't exactly work on any above crappy, messy, stressy or pissy problems without risking his eardrums (baby screams, and then my screams when the baby screams). In short, I'm sitting in a very dirty stewpot and I am not a happy chicken.

Okay, enough with the bad metaphors. Back to work. This is meant to be an apology for not being here and being boring and complainy when I am here. This will last...hmmm...eleven more days. Eleven days and nights of sheer and unrelenting torture until my last paper is due.

Unless I implode sooner.

"The Most Elegant Configuration a Hand Could Have..."

2008-04-24T11:33:00.000-07:00

This week was my Grandma Kitty's 83rd birthday, so my mom and I took her to lunch at Red Robin. My grandma is in the fairly late stages of dementia and lives in an Alzheimer's care unit at a nursing home here in Reno.

Confession: I am not very close to her, my mom's mom. Her memory loss makes it hard to hold a conversation. I don't see her as often as I should; I have never actually been to visit her at The Courts, the home where she lives. This is because I don't really know what to say to her...I never have. Things were this way even before her mind and her memory started to go. Growing up, we rarely saw her because she and my grandpa Jack, who died in 1999, had retired when I was very little to become "snowbirds," meaning they traveled the country in their RV, moving as the seasons cycled, gravitating to warmth. When I was little they would come through Reno once or twice a year, but as we got older my grandfather's lungs declined and he was unable to handle the altitude here, so we saw them less and less.

Even when we did get together, though, something about the relationship with my grandmother always felt stilted, formal, reserved, lacking laughter. Grandpa Jack was a little more fun--my memories of him are his unique laugh, at once a boom and a titter, and occasional practical jokes like the time he had my aunt's husband, who had never eated an artichoke, believing that the purple leaf-tips were deadly poisonous and that he had to eat around them with the greatest of care. But despite his humor he was still reserved, discipline-oriented in the old fashioned way which says children should be seen and not heard. So they saw my sister and I when they could, and heard us--which would be to know who we were--rarely, if at all. My mom talks a lot about this now, about growing up in a home where love was expressed via discipline and rules and distance. She made it her mission to make sure my sister and I grew up very differently.

Of course dementia hasn't strengthened the quality of our relationship. She's difficult to talk to much of the time--she swings from paranoid comments (she's gotten better about this though; when her mind first began to fall apart, she thought everyone was either after her or up to no good. She was convinced that her assisted living home was a front for a whorehouse) to nonsensical comments and then to even more nonsensical comments. Oddly, she never talks about my grandfather, but she does claim to have multiple husbands and giggles girlishly over certain men she encounters, including an unfortunate postal deliver. Even when she seems somewhat here, I just don't feel warmth toward her. There's love but not the warm love I would like to feel, not the warm love I feel I SHOULD feel. But sometimes I catch a glimpse, just a quick peep into the world of her, a woman-life she must have had but couldn't share, a loving heart beneath the reserve...

I caught a glimpse this week. My grandma has been very into babies lately; she often carries around a plastic baby doll and talks about him and to him like he's real. So we are in the restaurant. And she is facinated by my baby (whom she thinks is my mom's baby). And she can't stop looking at Scarlett, even when we try to talk to her about other things, she is utterly distracted. And then the moment: she is cooing to Scarlett and then about Scarlett and then, I think, about this baby boy that lives in her mind and then she is describing, from nowhere, the feel of a baby's hand on her cheek, she tells me he reaches up and touches you, so tenderly, his hand in the most elegant configuration a hand can have, and it is...

And then she derails, and it's gone. It's another subject--the little girl across the restaurant who has "sticks in her head" (she was wearing ponytails). It's gone but these words stay with me, stop my mind for a minute, and that warmth I'm wanting, there it is. It bubbles up because something about her eyes and her tone remind me in that instant that she is a mother and was once a young mother and she felt, once or a million times, that fierce and tender love in the softness of the tiny hands of her babies. She loved. Even if that love lost its voice as she grew older and they grew older and convictions and conventions told her you don't talk about that tiny hand, that love. But she felt it. And in that moment, so did I.

My screensaver this morning, a surprise from Mario...

2008-04-21T11:28:00.000-07:00

Gotta love a husband who can photoshop!

I'd Like to Propose a Toast: To the Meeting of the Gametes!

2008-04-19T09:19:00.000-07:00

Today is April 19th, a day which I feel deserves a special commemorative blog.

One year ago today I was standing in front of the sink--I have the vague impression that I was doing dishes, but god knows that doesn't happen often, as my husband can attest, so I was more likely in some stage of the cooking process--when I felt an unmistakable intense pain on one side of my pelvic region. Now, normally this is the type of pain that makes women roll their eyes, reach for their Midol, and bitch to whomever is nearest about the unfairness of being a woman, or perhaps if that person is male, pick a fight with him out of sheer irritation at the fact that men don't have ovaries.

But my reaction was different--it was one of tentative celebration, because if the pain was real-pain and not hope-pain, then I was ovulating. And THAT meant that the Clomid was working.

At that point in time, Mario and I had been trying to conceive for nine months. Granted, this is a LOT less time than many people spend strugging with fertility. We were lucky to already be receiving treatment that early; most doctors require that people try for a year before they will help. But already, I was afraid to hope. I had gone off NINE YEARS of the pill about thirteen months before, only to find out that my regular-as-a-clock cycles were completely birth-controlled; when left to its own devices, my body couldn't really be bothered with reproductive functions. My cycles came sporadically, only about every four months on average, making the possibility of conception rather slim. To make matters worse, while I was undergoing tests my doctor suggested that we have Mario tested too, just to rule out any problems there. Unfortunately, it ruled them in, possibly the result of years spent on a bicycle (he is an avid cyclist).

I was very depressed the day I found this all out. Drugs would possibly help me, my doctor said, but wouldn't address his problem. She didn't seem to have much hope for us but agreed to try Clomid, first 50 miligrams and the 100. However, if those dosages didn't work she would be sending us on to a nationally ranked but prohibitively expensive fertility specialist here in Reno.

So, Mario quit cycling, and I started first Provera to induce a cycle, then Clomid to prod my ovaries into production. Oh, the days of fertility drugs: they are days of montonously charting basal body temperatures, peeing on sticks and in cups, thinking of the calendar in terms of Days 1-28, having sex when you are not in the mood and having to abstain when you are. The first cycle made me hyper hormonal--mood-swingy, temper-tantrummy, hot-flashy, and didn't work for crap. My ovaries laughed in the face of 50 miligrams. "Ha ha," they said; "you'll have to come up with something a leetle more potent than that to get us off the couch. Pansies!" So we turned up the heat: 100 miligrams, the do-or-die-dosage. More accurately, the do-or-be-forced-to-start-thinking-how-far-into-debt-you're-willing-to-go-for-an-ankle-biter dosage.

Which brings us back to that day in front of the dishwasher. There was something about April; warming month, days of new life and cherry blossoms that appear and perservere through the last blusters of winter, it glowed in my mind. Before knowing the extent of our problems, I had confidently predicated to one of my friends that we would get pregnant in April. So when I felt those cramps, those cramps that said my ovaries were surrendering one little hostage ovum, I felt a fearful hope.

I carried that hope in my heart over the next couple of weeks until it was time to test, when it became a knot in my throat. My hands shook as I waited for the test to turn...one blue line...and no more. The test said I was not pregnant.

Devastated, I called my doctor. She said there was nothing more she could do; it was time to go on to the Big Fertility Guy. She made me an appointment several weeks from then, and I spent the interim days scrutinizing our bank account balance and researching IUI and in vitro and calculating how many rounds of each our life savings could afford...um, not many. I consoled myself that at least I could still drink at the party or two we attended over the next couple of weeks, including our friend's 30th birthday blow-out where Mario I actually CLUBBED for the first time in years, and did the requisite drinking...

A move that, of course, I would live to regret. Several weeks later I noticed something odd; I kept feeling like I was going to start (girls, you know what I mean). Hmmm, I thought. Maybe the Clomid DID work, it just worked late or something. Days passed with no sign of Aunt Flo, but I continued to feel that odd feeling, and then one morning, the day before Mother's Day, I woke straight up with one thought in my head: I need to take another test. I hopped out of bed, fished a test out from the jumble of TTC-related items under the bathroom sink, and aimed my first morning's doodle right at that stick. One blue line...and then another across it. Was this real? I dug up another test...that beautiful little cross again. I was pregnant. We told our families the next day, a very special Mother's Day, and on Monday I cancelled our appointment with the fertility specialist.

One year ago today, a reluctant little egg began a journey that would change its life, and mine; it would encounter a determined little guy with a wiggly tail and nine months minus three days later (an endless epoch; how can language even allow me to sum it up in a word, a sentence?) Scarlett Celeste Colombini would arrive in the world. Little cells, I salute you, the memory of you and what lives on now; I salute you and the miracle of meiosis. Thank you for making me a mom.

Putting My Foot Down...Then Lifting it Back Up

2008-04-15T19:49:00.000-07:00

So Friday I had this form I had to finish and submit. It was the last day (of course, I'm a procrastinator!) to file for reimbursement for travel expenses, and I will be heading to a conference in Seattle in May. The office staff in my department are...well...let's just say it is important to stay on their good sides. One toe out of line, usually, and the entire department gets a snide email about the evils of leaving a banana peal by the computer, clogging the copy machine, or, of course, being late with forms. Anyway, I had to get the form done.

And Squidge was NOT cooperating. She was tired and was fighting sleep as she always does and nothing would appease her, nothing. She was shrieking like a banshee no matter what I did. And it was then, as I was jiggling her around trying fruitlessly to finish the form while she screamed, that I cracked.

I picked her up, marched her to her crib, set her in it, turned on our fabulous video monitor (thank you EmilyPie!), shut the door behind me, and went back to my computer. I could see her screaming on the monitor...and screaming...and screaming...but I couldn't hear it.

I felt triumphant. I AM TAKING MY LIFE BACK, I pronounced to myself! See, I can let her cry it out! She WILL learn to nap in her crib. She WILL learn to be put down for TEN DANG MINUTES sometimes and entertain herself. I was strong. I was resolute. I called my mom and told her we are laying down a new law: no more cuddling and coddling to sleep--this is always what she gets and it's getting harder and harder! When she gets sleepy, she's going down for a nap. My mom applauded me taking a stand and promised to help. A while later I woke her up to take her to school, and she clearly wasn't too happy with me, but I was assured of my RIGHTness.

Well.

Then I started looking around on the internet (oh you bain and blessing!) for suggestions about how to get nap-hating babies to go down. And I started finding all these websites that say it's BAD to let babies cry it out...that it BREAKS THEIR SPIRITS.

And then I started feeling AWFUL. Scarlett has so much spirit...and I would be BREAKING that spirit? Like, cracking, fracturing, suppressing, breaking? Oh, what a terrible mom! How could I do such a thing? I want my daughter to be spirited!

So. Back to square one. No more letting her cry it out, at least for awhile. Instead I'm going to start putting her in her crib every time she falls asleep in hopes that she'll get used to it. My mom agreed...but I've already caught her cheating. Two days into the new regime. And, um...I've cheated too.

It's tough to be a mom.

Random Calculations and Scraps of News

2008-04-10T19:35:00.000-07:00

1) We rebooked our tickets for Hawaii (see post four or so back.) After losing our first tickets to ATA's bankruptcy, I was concerned our only option would be to fly out of Reno on crappy, expensive, red-eye flights, but I was totally wrong. We are flying out of SAN FRANCISCO on crappy, expensive, red-eye flights. That's eight hours in the car, which will probably become twelve, with the Screaming Bean screaming. Moreover, we will be taking these crappy flights IF and ONLY IF my parents can rebook their tickets too. They found out today that Southwest--who heroically promised they would rebook their customers in the wake of ATA's bankruptcy but have since realized the dangers of overcommitting oneself--is leaving them high and dry. Or low and nowhere near the ocean, if you will. If they don't go, we can't--they were going to let us crash with them in their condo, and there is no way we can afford our own. Is this trip beginning to seem cursed?

2) Squidge Bean is really beginning to get her hand-eye(-bowel) coordination down. She is starting to reach out and feel our faces, which is the cutest thing. This morning we were playing and she had one hand on either side of my chin so deliberately and was looking in my eyes and it was so endearing and then...she let one rip, long and loud.

3) For some reason, in the last hour or so of my functional grammar seminar (sounds mind-numbingly boring but is actually only mind-numbingly hard and rather fun--eg we often examine data sets that allow us to conclude that Bill O'Reilly is completely incoherent, while Sarah Vowell is brilliant. Rah rah liberal education!) I often get spacey and find myself strangely drawn to mathematical calculations. I usually play with our budget, but that gets depressing, so today I changed it up. My little number doodles revealed that Squidge is 85 days old today. This means I have fed her somewhere around 765 times, using a lowball estimate of 9 feedings a day (I am still waiting for the glorious time when she will habitually go more than two hours between feedings). Because I feed her for approximately 30 minutes a time, that means I have spent approximately 22,950 minutes feeding her in the last twelve weeks. That's 382 hours. That's almost 16 days. That's over 2 weeks, out of the last 12, that I have spent with a cute little parasite attached to my boobs...

4) ...Which apparently are creatures of the night. After twelve weeks they still get ridiculously full and sore when I'm sleeping, even if it's only been a couple of hours since the Bean last ate. In contrast, during the day I'm often fighting to get them to produce. It is odd finding out that your boobs are decidedly noctural while you are a day owl. Oh, and that you can smell like milk All. The. Time, even when you've just showered.

5) Apparently iPhones are amphibious: my mom dropped hers in the toilet today and it survived. Technology never ceases to amaze me.

The White of the Orange: Confessions of a Weird Eater

2008-04-08T20:36:00.001-07:00

I had another one of those stress days, where the weight of everything I have to do started pressing down on me, where the semester's end and THREE 25-page, publication-quality-or-very-near-to-it papers loom...But. I don't want to talk about that. I want to talk instead about what I will nickname, affectionately, WFT's...Weird Food Things.

I am inspired to talk about WTFs because I took the Squidge Bean over to my parents' house today so I could have my arms free to do some homework for awhile, and also so I could give my mom a break from trekking up here. When I walked in, there was a gigantic bag (I'm talking 20 pounds) of birdseed sitting open by my dad's armchair. Now, the presence of this bag was nothing unusual--he and my mom enjoy watching the birds in their yard, and my dad makes these birdseed cake things to hang from the trees. What was unusual was the location. In a flash, I turned to my mom and asked, "Has Dad been EATING that?" She burst out laughing and said yes, he likes raw seeds, and how on earth did I suspect?

Well, I suspected because my Dad is prone to WTFs. He is famous for eating the tails from tail-on shrimp--no, not the meaty part, the silicate shell part that normal people tug free and abandon on the rim of their plates. When we go to Thai food, he will swipe those suckers off your plate and pop them into his mouth like peanuts. Nothing really deters him in the way of normal food cleanliness or appropriateness (my husband shares this flaw. He claims old food is still edible even when it has practically started its own hair band in the cheese drawer. When we were traveling in Thailand, he once ate a grub). My dad is an avid red meat eater and recently, to make a point (to me of course, because I got aggravated that he was dripping raw meat juice on the cutting board where I was chopping veggies for a salad) he carved off a chunk of raw tri-tip and chowed it down. Raw. Fresh from the plastic.

Now, I have no WFT's with meat. I'm a white-meat-and-fish-only girl since 1997, when the revolting quality of college dorm cafeteria meat finally iced the cake of years and years where rare meat from animals whose dead heads hung on the wall was my only dinner option. But I do have my share of other oddities. I am a rather nutty eater of fruit. I scrape the white of the orange out with my teeth, and even stranger, I like to eat the skin off of orange seeds. Indeed, I enjoy rinds in general. And the skin of seeds in general. Yes, it's weird. That's why I call them WTFs.

I also confess a fetish for spoon foods. Particularly custard-y varieties of spoon foods like, well, custard, and tapioca, and flan, and rice pudding. In fact I get aggravated when people serve a spoon-friendly dish (like hot brownies topped with ice cream) with a fork. People, come on. It is just unfair to let all of that goodness escape through the tines. Forks are SO not pleasurable to eat with.

And, at the risk of sounding eating-disorder-esque, I can put away a whole bag of candy like there's no tomorrow. Lately I have a particular adoration for Twizzlers. Did anyone get that forward that's going around about how margarine is only one molecule away from plastic? Well, my husband says Twizzlers are probably ZERO molecules away. Honestly, they taste totally synthetic. When I consider them objectively, I don't even actually like them. But for some reason they call me and I buy them all the time and hide them in the pocket behind the driver's seat of the Rav and eat them unmercifully.

There are more...many more...but I can't think of them right now. So...anyone else want to confess a WFT?

The Video Camera is not a Toy

2008-04-07T10:22:00.000-07:00

Okay, don't look at this if you have anything against baby doody. But I had to post it just because I crack myself up in this video. (Cracking oneself up is a genetic trait from my mom's side of the family!)

green eggs and... from Mario Colombini on Vimeo.

Apparently, I'm totally going to be one of those parents that embarrass their children. I acknowledge that posting this video way worse than showing Scarlett's first boyfriend a picture of her naked in the bathtub with chicken pox, which is about the worst my parents ever did to me! Maybe I'll "forget" to tell her about this when she's older.

How to Get Smiled at by Strangers, for Dummies

2008-04-05T21:10:00.000-07:00

When I was pregnant, I got my fair share of attention from strangers, like most pregnant women (even if at the end, because I never got that big, I kind of felt like I was getting less attention than I deserved!) When I would go to the grocery store or the bank or what have you, strangers would often smile at me and ask me when I was due, what I was having, if it was my first, etc. The one place this rarely happened was a place I mildly hate to shop but do anyway because, well, it's cheap: WalMart. Fat, cranky, trundling pregnant women are no rarity there--in fact they seem to be a large percentage of the shopping population (the shopulation?)--and when I was one of them, I joined the other preggies in fatly, crankily, trundling around, ignoring each other.

Now, though, I've apparently I've found the formula for getting smiled at by EVERY person shopping at WalMart: wearing Miss Scarlett, facing forward, in her Baby Bjorn. I did this yesterday because she's generally just intolerable in her carseat these days, a total pill who sticks out her bottom lip petulantly and squalls at the sheer injustice of being safely strapped into anything. She likes the Bjorn much better because she can observe everything and get noticed by everyone. And man, did she. All of a sudden, I noticed that almost everyone I passed smiled at us. Old ladies squeezed her toes and called her a dear (and one very old man called her a boy, but we won't worry about that.) People stopped me in the vegetable aisle to ask how old she was. Other new moms gave me conspiratorial smiles and how-cuted her, obliging me to how-cute their offspring reciprocally. I started to feel like I was in a Mentos commercial, or one for deodorant, or something.

At the risk of sounding like a misanthrope or cynic, I'm not actually sure I liked this experience. Unless I'm in a gregarious mood, I usually enjoy doing my shopping in my own world. And as great as it is to hear Squidge complimented, I'm not used to having to exercise my cheeks so much with all those conspiratorial little smiles when I'd rather be silently pondering dog biscuit brands. Plus, it's rather taxing to answer "thank you so much" when people say how cute she is, as opposed to "I know, isn't she?" which is the answer that comes to mind. (This is not 100% vain/proud mother. This is only 75% vain/proud mother and 25% thinking it's nothing I did to make her cute, she's just cute on her own, and she's a real little person, so feels more natural to agree with compliments than to accept them.)

Anyway, I'm guessing my days of antisocial shopping are over, at least until Miss Scarlett's old enough to join in the "Mommy I want THAT" chorus that is sure to turn all those what a cute baby grins into what a spoiled little BRAT! glares. Won't that be heaven?

Mayday: Flight To Good Times, Going Down

2008-04-03T18:42:00.000-07:00

I woke up to the lovely news this morning that ATA airlines was throwing in the (little lemon-scented wipie) towel, filing for bankruptcy, and canceling all future flights with no regard or recourse for the many poor consumers who, innocently, began their day believing the good money they paid for tickets to Maui guaranteed that they would actually get to go to Maui. Now, normally the financial foibles of airlines concern me not a whit (okay, with the exception of the time that Reno Air went down. Reno Air had great prices, was hubbed in my own sweet hometown, didn't skimp on the snacks, and had stand-up comedians for pilots. Flying them was fun, cheap, convenient so of course they went out of business) but I happen to have vested interest in ATA. $1365 dollars of vested interest, to be specific.

Yes, I was one of those innocent consumers; I've been rudely awakened from dreams of papayas, pina coladas, and (pictures of) six-month Squidge in an adorable baby bikini, and dammit, I'm cranky now. Okay, make that downright pissed. Mario and I were looking forward to mid-July and my cousin's wedding in Maui, even though it was a difficult decision to go in the first place. On one hand, it was a great opportunity for a family vacation, Squidge's first...on the other, we are financially struggling, and common sense would dictate that extravagant vacations wait until that's no longer the case. But it meant a lot to my cousin, so we finally said good-bye to some precious savings and made the reservations. Apparently it was just our luck to have the Expedia roulette wheel land on the airline with the financial management skills of a plate of mahi mahi.

At least I paid with my credit card (ha ha, the pay-later mentality validated!) and Wells Fargo can refund me (hopefully) by pulling the money back from Expedia, who would have to have a valid reason to protest this retraction--and ATA's Chapter 7 should keep them quiet. But a preliminary glance at what's available now is pretty depressing. Tickets are hundreds more for crappy, too-early and red-eye flights (with a six-month-old? Don't think so.)

As sorry as I'm feeling for myself, I'm feeling more sorry for my cousin, dealing with all these de-flighted relatives. We aren't the only wedding guests who are going to have to consider stowing away on a pineapple freighter if we want to see her say "I do."

Poop.

Load Gun, Shoot Foot

2008-04-01T14:10:00.000-07:00

http://stuffwhitepeoplelike.wordpress.com/2008/03/04/81-graduate-school/

Oh god.

Falling into Disrepair

2008-04-01T11:59:00.001-07:00

Last night in my Writing Across the Curriculum seminar (very exciting, yes) I truly realized the state of neglect I have let my body fall into. I was, as usual, in heated discussion about something or other (the ethnography of thought, anyone?) when I realized I had an itch on my right elbow. I unthinkingly reached my hand up my sleeve to give it a good scratchy-scratchy, when I suddenly realized how my skin felt.

Desert. Cracked earth. I'm talking dragon scales, people. I took a peak at it when no one was looing, and shuddered in horror! I'm not just talking dry. I'm talking snake about to shed! And I suddenly realized how long it's been...ummm, since about the morning of January 15th (the day I went into labor, of course) since I actually took the time to rub lotion on my own body. Oh, I've rubbed it on Baby Squidge...but not on myself.

I have never actually done most of the things women do to keep themselves up. Think of all the possible maitenance--hair, eyebrows, fingernails, toenails, tanning, other skin treatments, waxing, shaving, plucking, working out, on and on...it makes me exhausted just pondering it. That kind of maitenance is a full-time job, and I usually have at least two of those already. I keep up with my hair these days--trim every six weeks and color every twelve weeks, because it gives me true please to have redder hair than nature gave me-- and that's about it. I miss exercise and am trying to do it when I can. But this is ridiculous. I hardly even look at myself these days, and most of the time I am in such a rush to get ready and STOP THE CRYING that I (here come confessions) rarely shave my legs, brush my teeth for too short a time, skip the floss WAY more often than I should, skimp on scrubbing in the shower...

In short, it's happening.

I'm letting myself go.

AUGGHHHHHHHHHHH!

But what can I really do about it? Last night when I came home I stole some of Squidge's Eucerin ointment and greased up the old elbows (yes, the left side was just as bad as the right.) My new-month resolution: to maintain human-looking skin, if nothing else!

Let's Do Away with Money

2008-03-29T16:25:00.000-07:00

I hate MONEY these days. It is the most frustrating thing in the world! For two and something years I have worked full time and gone to graduate school full time. This has been stressful and insane and exhausting, and I'm not really sure how I survived most of it. However, the one thing we never really had to worry about was the big M...money. We were able to save some while spending freely--not that we are extravagant by any means, but groceries, gifts, unexpected costs, and the occasional trip were never a big deal.

This is no longer the case, and I HATE it! Now that we have Miss High-Maitenance Baby aka Scarlett, and because I really need to focus on school if I want to be a rock star (which I do), and also because I am not actually supposed to have a second job with school, and because I would probably DIE if I tried to put any more on plate, we now have to rely solely on my husband's income and my meager Teaching Assistant pay. My VERY meager teaching assistant pay. (Since you could look this up for yourself on UNR's website, I feel free to reveal that it's only $14,000 a year! And we are FORBIDDEN to have other forms of income!!)

In my head, I had gone over and over our budget before I actually left my job, and felt certain that we could get by, even if we weren't saving anything. However, I didn't make any real attempt to monitor our spending until just recently, and now I find that, sadly, I was delusional. What I simply had no conception of was how much everything effing costs! How much we spend on gas! And groceries! And these damned incidentals that keep coming out of nowhere. We just got our registration paperwork for the Rav-4 we bought last year...$322 dollars! WHY?? We are already so in the hole just trying to meet our regular monthly obligations without crap like this coming up every five seconds!

I HATE thinking about money like this. I would so rather be busy than poor. I hate watching every penny only to realize that we are having to take out of our savings every month anyway--and knowing that I still have at LEAST three years left in my program, being forbidden to make enough to get by! I dread the idea of student loans and more debt. I keep going back and forth between trying to reassure myself that we have enough savings to make it, just barely, until I graduate, and absolutely panicking because I really think some savings in necessary in this world--too many unexpected things happen all the time to live paycheck to paycheck.

Why can't we just get rid of money and institute a nice system of trades. Like, I would be happy to make the people at the DMV some delicious raspberry cheesecake bars, or write them a silly rhyming poem, or utilize one of my many other skills in order to register the Rav. Why do they need $322 dollars, just to click a RENEW button in their system! They don't know it, but they would much rather have the cheesecake bars.

Dammit.

The Opposite of Spring Break

2008-03-27T18:28:00.000-07:00

It's been one of THOSE days.

One of those days when I panic at how much my life has changed and how unbelievably inefficient I've become.

One of those days when my hysterically crying child has ME in tears.

One of those days when I look back and admit it: I really had NO idea what I was getting into with this baby thing! People tried to warn me, but as usual I was so blindly overconfident (my motto: I'm just going to do what I do until I fall flat on my face) in my multi-tasking abilities that I secretly, deep down, believed that I was different.

Okay, say it with me, people: What cheek!

Ahhhhhhhhh. It's Spring Break, the very phrase which brings to mind images of fit bikini-clad girls partying in places like Destin, Florida, and calls up memories of my carefree college days and cathartic road trips, long gone. Everyone I know best--my mom, my sister, my Emily--are on vacation having lovely times. They are, respectively, getting home improvement projects done, getting amazing exercise, and getting drunk with great friends. I am on the inverse of vacation, the polar opposite of a road trip. My home is a mess, my body is untended and saggy, I am stone cold sober and all alone. Except, of course, for the one I love best in the world, my beautiful daughter, and a houseful and a mindful and an email inboxful of things that I have forsaken for her. NAGGING things. And I don't do them because she wants every atom of my eyes (to watch and laugh with her), my arms (to fly her around the house and support her while she, insanely ambitious two-month old, practices sits, stands, and jumps), and my patience (slowly. wearing. thin.)

And because she's an active baby and an energetic baby she has everything it takes to cry, loudly, lustily, FOREVER when she doesn't get what she wants. Like when she's in her carseat--and I'm in traffic. Or her stroller--and I'm halfway through a walk. Or her swing--and I'm starving and have to pee and my poor dogs need just an iota of love. People say let them cry it out. She DOESN'T cry it out. She cries ME out, every time. And note to certain father-in-laws who imply that this equates to SPOILING: she's a TWO MONTHS OLD. She needs to learn that her mommy is there for her. Besides, half the time I rush to her it's not for her sake (because I KNOW she's fed and dry and comfortable, and just wanting her way) but for the sake of ME and my dwindling Advil supply.

Oh god, the love of a baby is a beautiful, immense, hysterical thing.

The icing on the crap cake today--another long day alone with everyone who usually gives me a break out of town and my husband working long hours--was a trip to my parents' to water their houseplants while they are out of town. It look me thirty minutes to get there and Miss Baby caterwauled at top volume the whole way (I alternated yelling along with her, begging her to stop, and accompanying her with my own tears.) When I got there she would not let me put her down without more of the same so I tucked her under one arm and embarked on watering. As I filled, emptied, and refilled the tiny pitcher endlessly with my one free hand, I counted my dad's insane green progeny for the hell of it...FORTY EIGHT houseplants. (I have FOUR.) And that number doesn't even include the hundreds and hundreds of vegetables he is starting for his garden.

My arms are sore. I need a long, hot bath. I need a martini. I need a DO-OVER on spring break, please.

But even as I write this what I need most is my sweet little everything, the person who has replaced ME in my own heart (at least most of the time), and who OF COURSE is sleeping peacefully now that Daddy's home.

Site for Squidge

2008-03-17T21:39:00.001-07:00

My dear internetty friend EmilyPie helped me create a website for Squidge! I didn't feel like I could get away with shameless boasting and bragging on this site...you know, the kind that older relatives are okay with, but friends secretly get irritated with?...so now it gets its own webspace! Watch out internet. Just kidding. Here is the link if anyone is interested!!

http://www.babysites.com/sites/squidge/

Squidgy-O

2008-03-15T11:18:00.000-07:00

Untitled from Mario Colombini on Vimeo.

Re-Stancing

2008-03-12T09:55:00.000-07:00

Last night my husband and I "Skype-d" with that overseas friend of ours who is headed for monk-hood, the one I mentioned the post before last. (Skype, for anyone who doesn't know, is a lovely little free online messaging system that has voice and webcam connections. But probably everyone already knows that, because I'm usually the last to know about these techy kind of things!)

He talked a long time about the choice he was making before we said much, and then he asked us if we had any questions or concerns--almost like it was Mario and I about to make this choice instead of him. At first I was determined to uphold my state of stasis, to maintain my congratulatory tones, and keep any objections buried, subverted.

But hearing him describe the life he would be embarking on made me remember traveling in Southeast Asia and seeing the monks in Thailand walking the streets, with their shaved heads and robes the color of curry or saffron, and thinking about how they had to shy away from females that passed them. On buses, they would step carefully to avoid even the briefest, most perfunctory touch. The respectful world traveler in me, knowing the rules they abide by, was always careful when in proximity to give them space and distance. The mischeivous feminist in me, however, was always tempted to reach toward their bare arms.

So I asked our friend if he would ever be able to hug his women friends again. He responded that no, he would be able to hug Mario, but not me. In his new world, even the most innocent and friendly touch from a woman becomes something to be feared. What about your mom, your sister, I asked? He wasn't sure but said he would probably go ahead and hug them regardless of the rules. Then I asked him if he would ever be able to hold my daughter--at what age do girls become women and women become a threat?--and he didn't know that either.

Resentment was creeping into my voice at that point. Our friend--who has always been a bit of a playboy--responded to my tone by saying he would be learning to treat women as equals rather than objects.

But my heart rejects anything that forbids the loving hug of a friend, frowns on the cuddling of a cute baby girl, and constructs the female gender as such an insidiously evil threat.

I'll take my spiritually unenlightened life, thanks.

Incomprehensible

2008-03-11T20:25:00.000-07:00

We got the horrific news last night that a very, very close friend of my brother-in-law took her own life yesterday. I haven't known too many people to die in my life, and I have known even fewer to suicide, but I do know what a confusing melange of emotion it evokes. Sorrow...sympathy for those most affected, in this case my brother-n-law...confusion, lack of comprehension...guilt...and most of all anger and resentment. I know depression is not a rational thing (I don't know her reasons really, but I can't imagine anyone taking that action from a state other than depression) but to a rational person it is just...unavailable. Beyond some black curtain. I can't make my mind meet it. I just can't imagine how anyone could make that decision knowing there is even one person left in the world that loves you.

My husband was very upset last night when he found out--this is someone he has known for close to twenty years--so I came home from my class early to be with him. We sat in silence for awhile and held our daughter between us and I kept looking at her, at her perfect face and beautiful eyes and warm little body, and thinking that, years ago, this woman's mother held her the same way, loving her with all her heart, and dreaming her life where sadness happens but all the good things triumph.

If life were certain mothers could pledge never to let these things happen to their children, but it's not. It's not so I can only hope with all of my heart that my beautiful Scarlett, my sweet little love, will never, ever know that kind of wild despair.

The Road More Travelled

2008-03-10T12:36:00.000-07:00

A good friend of my husbands', who has been living and working overseas for the past two years, has just announced that he is renouncing his wordly possessions, as well as contact with Mr. Happy, to join a Buddhist monastery in Thailand.

And yes, he's serious.

To all of us, this news came out of left field, although I don't think any of us were really all THAT surprised. In the email he sent out announcing this, his reasons were very well laid out, pre-empting all the potential "but what about" questions that were guaranteed to come his way from those who love him (because of course when we love someone, we want them to live like us, to value what we value, right?) His time overseas has intensified his interest in spirituality and achieving some sense of peace and balance in the tumultuous world has become a priority.

Reading his email, I feel like my tongue was silenced...my "but what abouts" were stolen before they became words, my thoughts were shhh-d before they became objections. His absolute confidence that this is the right thing has put me in a state of statis where acceptance and doubt meet and invalidate each other. I literally have no response (very odd for me).

But I can't help thinking about the state of his life right now, and how it is at such a polar opposite from ours, mine and my husbands'. He will be giving up, while we will be trying to acquire. He will be foregoing worries, while we court them, worrying constantly about how we will live and support our daughter on way less income than we used to have. We, quite honestly, will continue to WANT money, sometimes quite desperately; it will (or should) cease to be of value to him. His focus will become entirely vested in the personal as ours has suddenly shifted to thinking incessantly about someone else, our daughter, and far less about ourselves and the state of our own beings. In fact, the time when we can seek silence to truly hear ourselves think will be long in coming, if at all. We will continue to eat after noon, will wake up at 4:30 only if our little one is crying for love and attention, and will beg food at the doors of others only if we need to borrow an egg or some sugar from my sister next door, which we will use to cook some delicious, unnecessary, indulgent creature comfort. We have a family now, and we will have love and companionship and comfort but not, in all likelihood, spiritual epiphany.

Our paths, here, truly diverge.

Interesting, isn't it?

Ode to the Best Idea Part II...with a Caveat

2008-03-03T13:37:00.000-08:00

(Warning: This post is perhaps a little TMI, so don't read if you are someone easily bothered by over-disclosure!)

As of last Wednesday, Scarlett was six weeks old. Which meant...da da da dum...time to resume MARITAL RELATIONS. This, of course, is according to The Official Rules for Post-Baby Conduct, as posited by some distant authority figure who was NOT a new mom, or if so was a miraculously fast-recovering one, because let me tell you, between lack of sleep and a lingering concern about the general state of things Down There, I wasn't exactly itching (hmm, perhaps a poor verb choice there) to resume such relations.

But, I have a husband. And he's a guy. And guys need loving or (we secretly fear) they will leave us for some younger, hotter model who is still adventurous and eternally in the mood and whose stomachs do not resemble a deflated beach ball and whose nether regions have NOT recently been violated by the ejection of a (albeit mini-sized) HUMAN BEING. Just kidding. But really--my husband is a great husband, and I knew it would mean a lot to him for me to give it a go.

So yesterday we carted the baby next door to my sister for an hour, because no way in heck would a) Squidge let us put her down for even the short (hey, it's been awhile) amount of time required and b) even if she did, no way would I be able to concentrate. (And there's my caveat: that's one time it would have been nice if babysitting hadn't been QUITE so convenient, but them's the breaks). When I came home, Mario took me by the arm and led me down the hall. I told him I felt like a sheep being led to slaugher, which earned me a swat and an "Oh, THAT's romantic."

Anyway, long story short: WE DID IT. And I survived. But I still think whoever set up that six-week expectation is slightly crazy. And at least we beat the stats, by a few days: I saw somewhere online that the average couple resumes that activity at seven weeks after the baby. So there ya go. We may be boring new parents who have no life, but now we are officially on the MORE wild and crazy range of that scale.

Still...I'm secretly hoping no one offers to watch the Squidge until AT LEAST next weekend!

Squidge Pics

2008-03-02T18:21:00.000-08:00

These were taken with my mom's iphone. Goodness, but that smiley one is cute! Too bad the last day hasn't produced very many of those cute faces...I didn't get to bed until after 5:00 last night, and crankiness seems to be the order of the day today as well. Good thing she's so cute that it makes up for it!

REALLY Multi-tasking NoW1

2008-03-01T12:44:00.000-08:00

Ha! I just figured out that I can nurse baby at my desk in the office (provided the window, which faces the street, has the shade drawn of course, or the neighbors would really get a show!) Don't know why I didn't try this earlier. So here I am, wearing a robe and underwear and not much else, with a baby propped on a Boppy proped on my lap, typing away! Score! Even better, I actually shaved my legs today since it's the weekend and my husband is home and that means I can actually luxuriate in my shower without having to feel guilty that Miss Needy is squawking pathetically beyond the glass, and crying REAL TEARS . Oh, life is good on a Saturday (or would be if I didn't have a meeting at 3:00pm for which I have nothing done!)...

I don't want anyone to see my baby today or they'll think I am a bad mommy...poor Squidge's face is all scratched up! Yesterday several of my relatives came to town to see her...several JEWEL-bedecked relatives. I don't know what it is about my dad's sisters and mother, but they are serious jewelry mongers, particularly my grandmother, a woman who trips around the world bargaining for stones and then comes back and has them set in solid gold, precisely to her standards. And, because they are all such gorgeous acquisitions, she likes to wear all of them at once! Anyway, like many women these gals are particularly fond of big stones set in non-baby friendly prong settings, and in the course of getting passed around and loved on, I'm guessing someone's ring or necklace snagged Squidge's little face. She never cried about it and I didn't notice the scratches until after the rellies were gone, and they are already fading, but it still makes me sad!

The good news is that she was amazingly sweet and happy for the whole visit and gave her great-aunties such big lovable smiles that they fell right in love with her. She is really starting to go through extended happy periods which are just beyond cute. Hopefully later today I'll be able to post some great smiling Squidge pics...my mom has taken some amazing ones lately and we're going to get them from her.

Okay...back to the stuff for the meeting I'm not prepared for...sigh.

Stoning in the Public Square

2008-02-24T17:38:00.000-08:00

EmilyPie recently blogged (albeit very esoterically) about a tragedy that happened in our little, suddenly crime-ridden town of Reno...the disappearance and death of a beautiful girl named Brianna Denison, the victim of an evil serial rapist who, as far as I'm concerned, should be caught and tortured. Like most of us around here, I haven't been able to forget about Brianna for a minute since this has happened. Campus just doesn't feel like as safe a place (I weigh far too much to fit the bad guy's victim profile but I see so many young, slight, long-haired girls walking around campus, and I'm sad for them and for all of us who have to watch our every step) and I think so much about her family and especially her mother...now that I have a daughter myself, I can't imagine losing my child in such a horrible way. I am pretty agnostic but when something like this happens I hope there is a heaven, and if there is, I hope that Brianna is there. And I also hope that karma exists, and that what goes around comes around, and that someone who could do something so depraved will get punished, somehow, somewhere.

Anyway, Reno is really a small town in so many ways. Everyone knows someone who knows someone. Not for the first time, today I heard some "insider info" about a potential suspect, and it has dominated my day. It is kind of crazy how information gets around, and considering how this kind of thing brings out a penchant for vigilante justice, one feels kind of sorry for anyone who fits the profile of the killer but ISN'T him--probably a fair number of men in the area. Because I'm sure lots of people in this town, whether they knew and loved her or just felt some kind of connection to Brianna after she disappeared, are envisioning very bad things for this criminal.

I am just hoping, for the sake of EVERYONE, that the bad guy is caught soon.

The Bummer of Being a "Yes Man"

2008-02-21T21:31:00.000-08:00

When we lived in China and taught at XiKeDa (Southwest University of Science and Technology), I was always unbelievably busy, and I was always complaining about it. We were supposed to be living the glamourous expat life but it was far from that; I could barely squeeze in time for a grocery trip, and while we managed to get some great traveling in on the long semester breaks, the weekend trips to local places that we envisioned never materialized. In fact, in a year and a half of living in Mianyang, we took one long weekend trip to Xi'an and...well...that was pretty much it. Countless times I stayed up into the wee hours reading papers, feeling that hopeless stress of knowing that there is NO WAT everything is going to get done in time. Not for the first time in my life, I felt beleaguered, bereft of personal time; my schedule, between teaching classes and prep work and grading homework and reading papers and showing up at additional events that were often requested of me. The job, and the duties associated with it, claimed my life.

As I said, I loved to complain about the state of affairs. And then one day, the husband of my friend EmilyPie pointed something out to me: I had a fairly awful habit of saying a certain word. And our department knew it. They gave me extra classes, requested me to pick up side jobs tutoring sons of friends of friends, and invited me to be the token foreign face at various events I really didn't have time for for one reason: because I said "YES." All. The. Time. I had the choice, B pointed out, to exorcise my right to negation. But I never did.

He also pointed out that this is really an inevitable part of my personality, and that as much as I may complain about being busy, the truth is that a) I do it to myself and b) on some level, I secretly like it being inconceivably busy.

Which officially makes me a masochist, by the way.

And guess what, I'm doing it again. When will I ever learn? Not a year ago I was taking three graduate seminars (the maximum number of credits, and considered a VERY full load in my department), teaching two sections of freshman English, trying to prepare my comps portfolio and defense in order to graduate my master's, working at the campus Writing Center, and secretly (because outside work is a big no-no, despite the fact that our stipends are not enough to support a houseplant) working a full-time job in mortgage. Oh, and don't forget trying to conceive with the help of fertility drugs. And SWEARING that I would NEVER do it to myself again.

So what am I doing? Taking three seminars AGAIN, as well as an internship, working at the Writing Center, applying for multiple conferences, participating on a publication project for one of my professors, and acting as a co-president for the graduate association. This, by the way, would be enough to sink anyone WITHOUT having a five-week old infant. Who, as far as I'm concerned, could easily be three people's full-time jobs. Strike that--three people's full time LIVES. Luckily due to the scholarship I received this year I have the year free of teaching, because I'd either have to die or dropout.

What is wrong with me? I endlessly regret the choices I make when I overload myself. I put so much pressure on myself to live up to what I perceive are the expectations on me that I do things like, for example, return to school full time when my baby is SIX DAYS old.

This condition is by no means rare among academics. One of my professors, who is basically an up and coming rock star in my field AND has twin babies, put it best when he said that when we spread ourselves so thin, we don't feel good at anything: we feel like bad parents, bad spouses, bad students, bad teachers (add bad bloggers to that list).

I feel like a bad everything. I half-ass my homework, and my time with Squidge is half-assed because I'm usually worrying about how I half-assed my homework.

And I'm SO unbelievably TIRED.

Okay, enough of this depressing stuff. Five weeks down, eleven more to go in the semester. I can do it, right? I'm going to keep thinking so until life proves otherwise.

Ode to the Best Idea We Ever Had...

2008-02-09T09:19:00.000-08:00

And no, I'm not talking about having kids...the jury's still out on that one. Ha ha, just kidding!

I'm talking about a decision my sister Amber and I made a couple of years ago. We were living in an apartment--well, Mario and I were living in an apartment, and because a short term can-I-stay-with-you-for-just-a-little-while-to-save-money thing had somehow turned into a permanent situation, Amber was inhabiting what we had once fleetingly hoped would be a guest bedroom. As crazy as my sister and I have always made each other, it is incomprehensible that we managed it in that apartment for a year. I'm not quite sure how it came to be that when we each decided it was time to buy a house, those houses would be next door to each other. I guess somehow making that GIANT PURCHASE together made it less scary, and somehow the circumstances just worked out...we found new construction we both liked, in a convenient neighborhood, for (what seemed at the time) a good price, and because we were the first to buy on our street, we were able to pick our (identical, but flipped) floor plans on the adjoining lots of our choice.

Cheesey, I know. But wow, is it great. This week I was reminded of how great it was. The other morning Mario went out, as he normally does, to walk the puppies on the large expanse of BLM land that we live next to. Squidge was being fussy, fussy, fussy, and it seemed like it was taking Mario forever to get back. The longer he was gone, the more pissy I got, really wanting him to come home and take the fussbudget off of my hands for a few minutes before he went to work. After awhile though, as the time he normally would have returned came and went, my annoyance turned into worry. As I sat rocking Squidge and worrying, all of a sudden at the front door I heard a little peeping noise. When I threw the door open, there was Xiao Gou...alone...without a leash...just sitting there looking pathetic.

Now, I knew he had probably somehow gotten away from Mario (he usually lets them off their leashes for awhile because there is never anyone around up there), but I couldn't hold back the fear that something had happened to my husband or our other dog Nika. Semi-panicking, I ran next door and plopped the baby into my sister's arms (she was thankfully willing to help even though she was about to be late for the class she teaches two days a week at UNR) and took off running up the hill calling for Mario. Thankfully, within a few minutes I could hear him across the canyon, frantically calling for Xiao Gou. It turned out that the pups had run off because they encountered a HUGE herd of deer on the hill...Mario counted at least 20!!!! A coyote was lurking around after the deer too. What normal dog could resist that kind of distraction? Xiao Gou had somehow gotten lost and instead had turned around and came home.

As Mario and Nika and I tramped home through the snow together (my burning lungs pointing out precisely how out of shape I am!), and as we retrieved Scarlett from my sister, I thought again about how convenient it is to have a close family member CLOSE, in so many situations. If she hadn't been there to help me, Mario would have been out searching forever, and I would have been completely panicked. There are a lot of things I have regretted about this house purhase. Buying at the height of the market...not standing up more to our jerk builder...certain upgrades...choosing a lot with the Great Rock Wall of Reno towering threateningly over us (we have a 30+ foot rock wall in our backyard)...but I have never regretted having my sister for a neighbor. Eventually, when I finish my PhD and go on the national job market, Mario and Squidge and I will have to move away and we will doubtlessly never have such an opportunity again. So in the meantime, I'm going to keep being grateful!

Back to Sleep? No Way.

2008-02-04T10:55:00.000-08:00

Whew, it is hard to find internet time! I have The Baby Who Will Not Be Put Down. I really do. Every time my family is around, all they can talk about is what a wonderful, calm, contented baby she is...and how much she sleeps! Which pisses me off because she does tend to save her really angsty fits for when no one else is around. But I finally realized that this is because when everyone is around, there is always someone to hold her, whereas when I am alone or just Mario and I are at home, there are times that we want to...I don't know...PEE. Or EAT. Or maybe, just maybe, internet for a minute. But no, Squidget will have none of that. We put her down at the risk of our eardrums.

This goes for nights too. Every day, my guilt grows about the sleeping thing. I KNOW I need to be trying to get her to sleep in the bassinet, and I KNOW she needs to be sleeping on her back. But how am I supposed to make that happen, when it seems like the only place she will ever rest for more than ten minutes is curled up on my chest? Literally, every night at bed time I have this total mental crisis of what to do tonight. If I try to sleep with her in the bedroom, she does not end up in the bassinet. She fusses and cries, and I am already so exhausted, that I have no fortitude to try to make her cry it out. Besides, she is so young I am not sure making her cry it out is even a good idea, as several of the books I've read say that for the first four months, babies have to be taught that they can trust you. Besides, when we stay in the bedroom with her, BOTH of us get no sleep.

The alternative, and usually what we end up doing, is for one of us to stay out in the living room, sleeping with her in the Lazy-Boy, where of course she sleeps on her stomach on my stomach. It just feels wrong to spend every night in a lazy-boy. I MISS my BED. Plus, she's sleeping on her stomach! Augh! When we try to lull her into sleep on her stomach...then ever-so-carefully transfer her to her back in the bassinet...yep that fails too. She has a sensor that tells her when she is not being doted on. And the sensor alarm sounds like this: WHHHHHAAAAAAAAA!

The other bummer is that I've recently realized that when Mario stays out with her at night, she actually goes four hours or even a little more sometimes between feedings, whereas when I do, it's every two hours still. Probably because she smells me and gets reminded of MILK. Now that I know this, it's like temptation, evil temptation to make Mario take ALL of the midnight duties...and he is such a great father and husband that he probably would! But I know that is wrong. Especially since he is the one who has to work all day, whereas I have some part-day obligations but get to spend a lot more time at home...rarely do I get to take a nap, but at least I don't have to be on my game, performing, productive.

R.I.P. Sleep. You've been reincarnated as Scarlett. I love Scarlett more. But Sleep, you will always hold a dear spot in my heart.

Oh, Xiao Gou Gou

2008-01-27T11:53:00.001-08:00

I met Xiao Gou on a cold, misty December morning in Sichuan, China. Mario and I were laboriously ascending the 300 steep stairs that spanned "The Hill" between our apartment on the XiNanKeJi (Southwest University of Science and Technology) Old Campus and the New Campus, on our way to conduct my final oral exams with our respective classes. All of a sudden, rapid movement caught my eye...a tiny ball of fur was catapulting down the stairs towards me. It was a puppy, probably no more than five or six weeks old. I caught him up, thinking surely someone would appear to claim him, but no one did. No one was around. No one came chasing down the stairs after him, and no calls echoed in the misty morning. The rest of the world was still and silent. It was as if he had sprung into being from a spiderweb, or fallen from the sky.

Now, I had never been a dog-lover. A lover of animals in general, yes, but cats had always been my forte. For some reason, no dog had ever been able to get its little pointy teeth into my heart. But then there was Xiao Gou (Little Dog, in Mandarin). He was so incredibly tiny. He would be roadkill or else dinner, I told Mario frantically, if we didn't rescue him. Making a quick decision, and ignoring my then-boyfriend's protests, I tucked him under my warm coat and continued up the hill to class, keeping an eye out for any sign that someone loved and wanted him back. There was none.

As he slept in the arm of my coat throughout my exams, I wondered what the heck I would do next. Aha, I thought--my friend EmilyPie, who was living and teaching in China at the same university with us, had been talking about wanting a dog! As soon as I was done with my students I hightailed it to her apartment to try to hawk my furry, snuggly wares. But, as cute as Emily thought he was, her husband had the final say. Now, you can always count on B to maintain perspective when the women around him are swaying like willows in fitful breezes of hormonal impulse. Wise to the enormity of adopting a dog in a foreign county, he put the kibosh on any idea of adoption.

Tragically, Mario and I had not such fortitude. We put up posters in Chinese looking for the missing owner, but with the passing days our hope that someone would call transmuted to relief that no one had. My family was amazed...I was falling for a dog. By the end of a week, Xiao Gou was Xiao Gou, and he was irrevocably ours.

Over the next 9 months we adjusted our lives to having a living, breathing creature with needs in our lives...stumbled down from our third-floor apartment for multiple midnight potty breaks, rushed home from dinners out to snuggle and take care of him, having him vaccinated and neutered (ugh, a god-awful experience in China!), arranged for doggysitters when we went traveling for extended periods. When it came time to leave our China life and return to the United States, there was no question of leaving him behind. With a ton of help from one of our students, Xiao cleared the extensive customs process and became certified to leave his mother country and become a US dog-izen. Enduring the sixteen-hour flight back, knowing our baby was kenneled somewhere beneath the plane in a dark hold, was probably one of the most traumatic experiences of my life, so I can only guess at how it was for him. But when we arrived at LAX, there he was by the oversized baggage claim, safe and sound in his kennel, yipping woefully for his mama and papa.

I don't know when the change occurred in his temperament. As a pup, Xiao Gou had always been a friendly if over-exhuberant dog who got super excited when people came over. But for some reason, back in America, he began to exhibit signs of aggression towards strangers in his territory, specifically lunging for and biting their ankles. It took Mario and I quite some time, and several bad situations, to adjust to the fact that this new side of the puppy we loved so much was real and dangerous, not just a fluke. While he has never, ever exhibited any signs of agression towards us or anyone he's familiar with, having people over has become something we have to be very careful about, either shutting Xiao away or keeping him on a leash until he's used to people. We never let him run free in a public place without a leash, and we never let strangers pet him. Unfortunately, several people suffered ankle bites, including Mario's sister and my friend Megan, before we realized exactly how much vigilance was required.

It's the weirdest thing, that he does this. At home with us, or with friends or family that he knows, he is the perfect dog, mellow and generally very obedient. When strangers appear on the scene, though, something snaps in his mind. I can see that he knows he's not supposed to bite, but where it's protectiveness or territorialness or both, something fierce comes into his eyes with the appearance of an unapproved party. We have always been well aware that this is cause for concern but have dealt with it mainly by trying to avoid the situations that provoke this behavior.

The other day, when my mom was over here babysitting Scarlett, Xiao bit her dog Whiskey. For some reason, Xiao has always had some issues with Whiskey, even though most of the time they play together fine. Xiao is usually either great with other dogs or disinterested in and fussily irritated with them, usually depending on their size, so the only reason I can think of for this is that Whiskey is the only dog he ever encounters who is not neutered. Whatever the reason, he has snapped at Whiskey multiple times both in his territory and Whiskey's, usually over cookies or food. 99% of the time, they are best buds. 1% of the time, Xiao has issues. Add this pre-existing problem to the disruption and displacement my dogs are already feeling because of the baby...not a good cocktail.

It was kind of a bad bite, and my mom dallied on taking Whiskey to the vet to have it cleaned, despite the fact that I begged her to go as soon as I knew about it. It got infected, as I predicted it would, resulting in him having to be rushed in the next day, and Whiskey almost lost his eye.

My family loves their dogs. Whiskey is my parents' baby, has been since my sister and I grew up and flew the nest. His injury has caused them to conclude that Xiao Gou is basically a threat to national security. They are leaving me intervention-style messages prodding us to get rid of him. I have been crying and stressin and not returning their calls.

I do not know what to do. On one hand, I am not trying to deny that Xiao's problem is real and dangerous and a possible liability. I really hate having to worry about having an aggressive dog. I adore having people over and would love, love, love it if Xiao could be the kind of welcoming sweet dog that my sister and my friends and my parents are fortunate enough to have. He has already caused problems with Mario's family--as I said, he bit Mario's sister, and she now (rightfully, I know) takes a "him or me" attitude which has spread to Mario's parents, even though Xiao is great around them, and they are constantly hinting about it, which in turn makes me defensive, and then I put out my lower lip and brattily tell my husband "I'd rather have him." (I will be the first to admit it--I am aggressive-aggressive, always have been, and passive-agressive approaches to things send me over the edge.)

On the other, Xiao is Mario and I's first baby. We have literally been across the world with him. He loves and trusts us. He is the absolutely perfect dog in our home environment--I have never felt threatened, for a second, by him. He has shown very little interest in the baby so far, much less than our other dog Nika or than Whiskey, and has not exhibited any sign of aggressiveness at all--and trust me, I've been watching. I do not believe that animals are disposable...I believe they are commitments for life. I would never, ever, for my entire life feel good about myself ever again if I just dumped him in a shelter or, god forbid, had him put down. And, not that I would ever encourage his behavior, but I do have to admit I feel safe at home alone, and especially now with the baby, knowing that if an intruder ever broke in, they would probably lose a limb.

Add this to the normal round of sore nipples and increasingly fussy baby and school starting and postpartum crap, and I am seriously in the dumps. I left a message at a local trainer to start arranging private sessions with us as soon as possible. Please everyone hope for me that training will help, and that the beautiful golden furball I have adored since puppyhood is fixable, because I will just die if having a baby means I have to break one of the innate tennets of my being, which is absolute love and commitment to my animals.

My Blown-Eyed Girl

2008-01-25T09:34:00.000-08:00

Isn't she the bomb? And I'm not talking about her penchant for exploding in her diapers, usually right in the midst of a change!

(Blown, by the way, is blue+brown...daddy's brown eyes are slowing evicting her mom's blue, but the change is happening, so right now they are an interesting mix.)

Life with Squidge...

2008-01-23T13:13:00.000-08:00

...is hectic, to say the least. Right now I am going to let what is very probably, by the sounds of it anyway, a diarrhea-stuffed diaper go for just a few minutes in order to get a little post up. That is, unless Squidget (my nickname for her, Scarlett + widget, after all she's not even six pounds!) has other plans. Am I a bad mom?

So, my daughter has now been on the planet for seven days. They have been seven days filled wtih joy and love and laughter, and let's be honest, more than a few tears (both on her part and on mine! Although Mario, rock that he is, has managed not to cry. I think he might, however, when he has to start working full time again next week! He is VERY in love with her and will use any excuse he can get to spend more time with her.) I feel great, now that my cold has mostly subsided, and feel pretty much 100% recovered. School started this week and I left my little Squidge for the first time yesterday for two hours for a meeting. I had to do it again this morning, and then my first class is this afternoon. My classes are four-hour seminars and I am not going to attempt more than half of each class this week. Maybe by next week, I will be ready to leave my baby for four hours....maybe now. I can managed two hours by feeding right before I leave and right when I come home, but four hours will necessitate a bottle feeding (I've already started pumping and building up my stock), so I'm a little nervous. Leaving's not as bad as I thought it would be, though, mostly because I get the thrill of showing off her pictures around my department.

(Booo-yah! My mom just came over and I've assigned her dirty diaper duty. Now I can post guilt-free!)

There's so much to say that I can't even think about how to focus, and what to write, so I'm just going to write about the status of two of my biggest post-baby fears, two fears that are not actually about the baby, but about my life. One is going pretty much as I expected: fear of loving my dogs less. I knew, because I'd been conditioned to know, that things would change for my poor little doglets after the baby arrived. They have been our children for so long, everyone told me, but suddenly they will be demoted to dog status. I made a vow that that would not happen, that I would not love them any less. And, I don't think I do. But it is definitely a challenge to make sure they get enough from me right now, and it's complicated by my fears of what their intense curiousity about/desperate fear of her could result in...right now Xiao mostly ignores her, but Nika tries to sniff her pretty aggressively, and even though I want to give them their space to get used to her, I can't help being protective, shoving them away. Yet as hard as it is to balance them and the baby, the other night I had a moment of profound gratitude for them. Squidge was screaming her little eyes out (evening and night are her favorite time for fits, surprise surprise!) and Mario was taking his turn trying to calm her. Xiao and Nika were laying on their beds, bewildered by the screams but behaving well, and I just laid down and snuggled them and thought, "Thank goodness for dogs...their love and their needs are so straightforward. Thank you for letting me love on you, silently!"

The other fear was my body. I have never had a "great" figure, so this fear was probably less than for many women who start from better positions! But, I had pretty much resigned myself to the fact that I would still look pregnant for a long time and might never be cute again. I don't know if I built it up so much that nothing could be as bad, but guess what...it's not as bad as I thought. It's not great by any means...I'm sure I'd be embarrassed if I had to wear a bikini...but, surprisingly, I already like my body again! This morning I was strutting around in front of the mirror and thinking, "I can deal with this!" So that's good news.

Okay, time to feed and get to class. More focused posts and more pictures, hopefully, soon...

The New Arrival

2008-01-19T12:57:00.000-08:00

I'm finally getting around to posting, maybe...we'll see how many hours from start to finish that it takes me to get this post up....whoop, it is already ten minutes from the time I started, as Scarlett decided to have a little fit after the first sentence. Obviously, my new arrival is to blame! Well, her fault, and the fault of the many people that have flocked to see her.

So, the story of Scarlett! Rewind to four days ago, Tuesday. Just when I'd gotten myself resigned to the idea of the Thursday induction, leaving off bag-packing and other crucial errands until Wednesday, this little girl decided that it was time to make her appearance. I guess I should have figured that that would happen...but then again, I'm sure if I'd planned on it, it wouldn't have happened.

So, the night of Tuesday the 15th, my parents invited me to have Chinese food with them and my sister and her boyfriend. Mario was working late, so I headed to the restaurant by myself to meet up with them. I was just digging into my dinner when all of a sudden I felt something unpleasant...wetness. I stood up abruptly and rushed to the bathroom, wondering if I really had finally lost complete control of my bladder. No, I was pretty sure I wouldn't have had an accident of that magnitude in the middle of a Chinese food restaurant. The pregnant woman's worse fear had transpired: my water had broken in a public place. Luckily I was wearing black pants, and the lighting was dim...I really don't think anyone would have noticed if my uncharacteristically garulous father hadn't decided to announce it to the restaurant at large. (He still takes full credit for Scarlett's arrival, which he attributes to the ginger he forces me to eat from the sushi plate.

My mom drove me to the hospital while Mario left work to run home and pack my stuff. At first, even though I was PRETTY sure that this was it, I really wasn't ready to believe it, and until then I was preg-zilla about letting anyone know I was at the hospital, which is ALL that my immediate family wanted to do--start calling everyone they'd ever met. It pissed me off that we were getting phone calls before I even had my lab results. Maybe it was unreasonalbe, but I just wanted a someone to tell me it was all medically real...after so much hoping and waiting, I couldn't get my "this is it" mentality before someone certified confirmed it. And about an hour after I checked in, my lab results were back...I wasn't incontinent. My water was really broken, and I wouldn't be going home without a baby! Whoo hoo. We also had the same nurse we had when I was sick four weeks before, and we liked her a lot, so we were ready to go. (I was, of course, super nervous, but trying to act like I wasn't.)

I began having little contractions as soon as I got to the hospital, at first barely noticeable. They started me on pitocin (and I'm pleased to say, after my first wussy IV experience four weeks before, I handled it much better this time. Our nurse Leann, who'd watched my blood pressure plummet after the first one, was very relieved.) What surprised me was that immediately the hospital staff began pushing me to have an epidural! After my birthing class where the teacher told everyone to keep an open mind about needing pain meds, I wasn't expecting the nurses to be such pushers! Even before I started the whole thing really started, they were all "recommending" it. At first, I said I just wanted to wait and see how it went. By midnight, because I was reacting to the pitocin with high blood pressure, and progress was slow (3 to 4.5 cm in 6 hours), they began really pushing me, and the pain at that point was getting just bad enough that I caved. And, as awful as it was to have needles stuck in my back, I was glad I did it. It kicked in around 12:30, and the next two and a half hours were pretty much pain-free labor and fast dilation. Mario and I were even able to doze off, although the stupid blood pressure thing on my arm kept me awake by squeezing the crap out of me every ten minutes.

Around 3:00 am I started feeling things again...ouch. I eventually called my nurse and she hit me up with more epidural...but it didn't help. She tried again...it didn't help! I am sure it was helping some, but not only did the pain continue to intensify, I could feel my legs and feet just fine, so I know the drugs weren't quite doing the trick. Luckily, I didn't have too much of that to endure...around 4:30am I was pronounced fully dilated and ready to push!

The only scary thing, up until this point, was that the nurse was pretty sure the baby was in the wrong position..."sunny side up" as my dad calls it. She kept coming in to have me change sides, hoping that the baby would turn...if not doctor could try to turn her...if not, perhaps the dreaded C-s-word. I just tried not to think much about that. However, by the time I was ready to push neither Leann nor the doctor (not my own doctor, but one from her practice that I'd seen before) could tell which position she was in, and regardless, they felt that I could push her out. And I did! It only took about 20 or 30 minutes (about seven contractions, if I remember right) before she was out! Of course it sucked at the time, but from a grand standpoint it was all very bearable, probably even easy compared to what many women experience. Even though she was in the wrong position, she was very small, so that probably made it work.

Thus, Miss Scarlett Celeste made her appearance at 5:07 am, weighing only 5 pounds 12 ounces and 18 inches long. Don't ask me how monster me could possibly have produced such a small child. Mario, of course, was a champ throughout the entire thing. And he is already well on his way to being the best dad in the world!! He is absolutely, totally in love with her and it's the cutest thing in the world.

Anyway, back to the hospital...overall, the delivery was great, and I felt pretty great right away. I was ready to slough off all of my medical attachments and get out of bed the minute she was born, although the nurses were having none of it. We had a good first day with all tests going well, and we were home by the next day. So far, recovery, has also been fine...I had a minor tear with two stitches, but it's not bothering me much. I did come down with a cold the day we came home, which is a bummer considering, clearly, I won't be able to sleep it off. Breastfeeding almost broke me down the first night we had her...okay, I lied. It did break me down. I bawled my eyes out when we didn't have much success the first day, and we ended up having to use formula. I felt like a failure, despite the fact that I've heard the advice a million times not to panic when things don't go smoothly at first, but now I understand why people DO panic. However, thanks to a handy dandy little device called a nipple shield, both Scarlett and I have decided that we can do this breastfeeding thing.

My house has full of relatives (Mario's family is here), so it's hard to get enough time with my girl! I'm trying to be generous with holding time. But it's hard. Right now, I'm still counting how many hours she's been on the planet (just under 83), and every minute is still a miracle.

Okay, three hours later (lunch, feeding, several bouts of tears, and a couple of needling comments from my father-in-law about mommy things I am not doing right)...this post is done. More good stories, less information dump, to come.

Holy Stitched Up Hoo-Ha Batman

2008-01-16T08:39:00.000-08:00

EmilyPie here...

Baby Scarlett was born early this morning! Crystal's water broke around 7pm last night (I'll let her tell the whole story) and she's been at the hospital since.

Both baby and & mama are healthy! Mario has a grin plastered to his face. One that I have only seen him wear before proposing and at their wedding.
Here are a few pictures to tide you over until Mama C can get around to posting her brith story...
at a mere 5lbs 12oz .......

A Dish-astrous Dog-tastrophe

2008-01-14T08:11:00.000-08:00

So, this last week has been rough on my poor dishes. My whole family has Sango dishes...I have Nova Brown, my mom has Nova Black, and my sister has Avocado. We are rather fond of them. But we've had a run of bad luck in the last few days...the handle broke off of my one of my soup bowls with a mere tap in the dishwasher, a tea cup cracked when I filled it with hot water...but last night was sheer devastation in Nova Brown Sango world.

It was about 10:30 and I was laying in bed sulking, as has become my wont when it hits me each evening that another day has come and gone without my daughter making an appearance. My husband was in the kitchen doing the dishes, because in my sulky fit I had complained about how they were stacking up. However, I had also taken my complaints back, because I knew he was tired, and told him several times to leave them for the next day. He insisted on doing them. (Which, of course, gave me the right to say "I told you so" when the impending disaster transpired...)

All of a sudden, the peaceful silence of my sulk was disrupted by the most horrific scream I have ever heard from my husband's mouth...although in real life it probably lasted ten seconds, it seemed to go on forever, and the scream was my dog Nika's name sevearl times in this terrified and panicked voice. To make matters worse, the scream was accompanied by the violent and protracted sound of things crashing and smashing and breaking and splintering...and I'm not talking about one little breaking noise. When I say protracted, I mean it went on AND on.

I leaped from bed, my heart in my throat, and ran out to the living room much faster than I thought I could propel my body these days, only to encounter a scene straight from the post-party hotel room of a rowdy rock band. Thankfully Nika was okay (I had honestly thought I might find her seriously injured or worse, the way my husband's voice sounded) although she was cowering in absolute panic as my husband tried to calm her. The kitchen and living room floors were covered, COVERED, with smashed dishes and reaking with a terrible odor. It was a true household apocalypse.

What had happened, apparently, was that Miss Nika (we don't call her Sneaky Neak for nothing) had decided it would be a good idea to sneak a lick or two off of the dirty dishes my husband was loading, and somehow had gotten her collar stuck on one of the plastic prongs that hold the dishes upright. When she went to pull back and realized she was stuck, she panicked and tried to run, pulling the ENTIRE FULL LOWER RACK out with her, breaking it and nearly every dish in it as she tore in terror across the kitchen and into the living room with the rack still attached to her neck, slamming into and dislodging the table and her kennel, and the whole while spraying (my husband assures me the correct verb was spraying, not dripping) anal leakage across the walls and linoleum and carpet. For those not in the know with canine secretions, anal leakage is not the same thing as poop. It's a glandular fluid of a particularly foul, pungent, and lingering odor. If you haven't ever smelt it, be thankful.

Needless to say, the clean-up process was intense, involving sweeping, mopping, vacuuming, carpet cleaning, and wall and window scrubbing...but my sweet husband took charge of it while I took charge of calming down poor Nika, who's skittish at the best of times, not that this was one of them. I think we're lucky our little girl puppy didn't have a heart attack.

Anyway, I'm hoping that breaking dishes doesn't have any of the same significance as breaking mirrors, because if it does, my household is in for it. I'm also thinking that if hearing that kind of screaming and breaking, and my subsequent panic, couldn't put me into labor, then there's not a thing on the planet that will.

On the upside, I have a new task with which to occupy myself: looking for replacement dishes.

Nest-peration

2008-01-12T09:18:00.001-08:00

I have to admit it: one thing no one would ever call me is a big neat freak. What's funny is that I used to do much more cleaning; I always helped around the house growing up, and kept my own places fairly neat...but then I met my husband. Somehow the rhythm we settled into included me doing most of the shopping and cooking and bill management, and he sort of naturally took over the cleaning. And after more than five years of this rhythm, my cleaning impulse has majorly atrophied, to the point that, other than laundry and putting things away, I depend on him for almost all housework. I think I've gotten so out of doing these tasks that now they seem rather monumental, instead of routine, and I get irritable when for some reason or other, I have to take care of them. I'm guessing that's not entirely healthy. But at the same time, I am endlessly grateful to have a husband who contributes so much to our domestic life, consistently, thoroughly, and without complaint. (Thank you, honey, for being so wonderful!)

But yesterday I woke up with energy to burn! And it was sunny and beautiful outside! After a six-mile walk with my mom (which left me embarrassingly, unreasonably sore!) I ran a few errands which included stopping at WalMart for a plastic drawer tower, whereupon returning home I (drum roll please!) cleaned out my den closet and organized my art supplies. I am a craft-rat, constantly gathering supplies for projects I usually don't have enough time for; I own more tubes of glue and glitter, more pads of scrapbook paper, more spools of ribbon than one women who is NOT a proprietor of a Michael's or Joann's should be proud to admit. And the beads, OH the beads! I am incapable of self control when it comes to those sparkly little objects. I literally own pounds upon pounds of them (ask my poor husband...I insisted on dragging them with us when we lived and traveled overseas for two years, and guess who ended up carrying them more often than not!) And until yesterday they were haphazardly scattered in multiple boxes in our catch-all closet. Accomplishing this task with my aching legs and back and monstrous girth was nothing short of ponderous. But I did it! And now I have a neat tower of easily accessible supplies (insert proud chest-puff here!)

Now, I know that many would label this odd behavior nesting, this phenomenon that's supposed to happen in the week or so before the baby arrives. However, I'm pretty sure no mere piddly hormones could encourage me to take on such a task. I'm kinda thinking that what people call nesting is actually just, pure and simple, desperation and boredom. I mean, I have exhausted the resources I have to keep insanity at bay. I've watched every movie I own, read until my head ached (guilty admission: but not, however, my books for school this semester, which I keep vowing to get a head start on), eaten at every restaurant I can think of, been to the theatre multiple times (including to see Juno last night, which I HIGHLY recommend! It was possibly the best movie EVER)...I mean, I am out of ideas here. At a certain point, there's just really nothing left for a girl to do to keep her mind off the stubbornly stuck baby and impending labor and the enormity of being a parent, except turn to the most abhorrent of household tasks (okay, maybe not the MOST abhorrent...I made my husband clean out the refrigerator last week!)

In the meantime, I'm trying every cocktail of make-baby-come remedies that I can. Thursday was sex, spicy Thai food, raspberry leaf tea, and an hour of the elliptical. Friday was the aforementioned 6-mile walk, sex, tea, and "nesting" tasks. (In a deep movie voice-over: What will Crystal do today? Can she find the right combination before INDUCTION this coming Thursday? Her desperation has already driven her to profuse sex and spicy food, but not to castor oil... YET! Stay tuned to find out how far she'll go!)

And let me just add that the news that BOTH Christina Aguilera AND Nicole Ritchie had their babies yesterday did NOT improve my morale.

On a Scale of One to Ten...

2008-01-10T16:12:00.001-08:00

I'm a THREE! Dilated to three that is!

Now, I know this is nothing to jump for joy about...many a woman is dilated to 3 and doesn't give birth for 8 years and 6 days or whatever...but right now, in my world, something is something! It's a great little "happy due date" present for me just to know that my body is at least pondering releasing this child! In other news, Scarlett's doing well as always--my doctor said her heartbeat sounded "happy." And, I have a slightly better "drop-dead" date than I did before--the 17th instead of the 18th. If I don't go into labor before then, I will be reporting to the hospital at 5 a.m. (!!!! ouch!) one week from today to be induced.

Above is a great visual from my wonderful friend EmilyPie to demonstrate my progress! (Ha, my first visual, and my first hyperlink too, hope it works!)

Getting my kicks where I can!

2008-01-09T18:34:00.000-08:00

5.5 Hours to go until it is officially January 10th...The Due Date. I fear it will pass without any sign of baby... SIGH! But I have vowed to fill it with as many tasks as possible to keep my mind off of what ISN'T happening. If only I didn't have a doctor's appointment tomorrow! For the last three weeks, even though I already KNEW it myself, just hearing my doctor's official pronouncement that no progress is being made has been enough to reduce me to tears (not in front of her yet, thank goodness, but each time I've had to make a quick pit stop in the bathroom for a few quick boo-hoo's before scheduling my next visit! Oh the joys of being a sappy, piddly pregnant lady!)

In the meantime, I have been extracting amusement where I can. Yesterday I was in a crowded elevator and someone asked me when I was due. I answered "Two days!" and everyone almost fainted! People literally backed up against the elevator walls and looked petrified. They all looked so scared that I had to rush to reassure them that the baby was not likely to slide out into my slacks anytime in the next few minutes. I suppose their heads were filled with the whole pregnant woman giving birth, trapped in an elevator scenario. Today it happened again at babiesrus; when a lady waiting behind me in line asked when I was due, and when I replied "tomorrow!" she literally took an involuntary step back away from me, looking petrified. The rest of the people in line looked none too at ease either. It was actually pretty funny. To her credit, when I was leaving the lady said "I hope you go into labor tonight!" She probably didn't realize that that is the nicest wish anyone could make for me right now!

So, I guess in order to take my mind off of the baby wait I should just start going around town and enjoying people's reactions when I tell them I am PAST my due date--as I will have to start doing the day after tomorrow! Apparently people see a 40-week pregnant woman as a ticking time bomb! Actually, I guess that's an apt metaphor. But really, do all of these people think I'd be traipsing around town if I were IN labor, for petessake?

At any rate, January 9th is almost over and the wait continues. I could well be imagining them, but I've been experiencing a little cramping today, more twinges than anything, and hardly worth mentioning in terms of pain, but hey...when you're in my boat, just about anything seems like a sign of progress!

Sad state of affairs...

2008-01-08T11:00:00.000-08:00

I haven't been blogging much because, and this is slightly shocking for me, I just can't think of anything new to say. The baby is still not here and still not giving me any hope that she's planning to come any time soon. And it's like waiting for her is sucking all of my brain cells along with all of my motivation and any ability I have to create humorous situations out of every day life. And every day, as we creep closer to the BAD TIMING side of things, I get less excited and more stressed about how I'm going to handle full-time (actually overload) doctoral coursework AND an infant who just couldn't be a LEETLE early to make my, and her own, life a tiny bit easier.

Okay I know that's a bad attitude. I want this child so much I would welcome her anytime. But this is such a depressing time, this waiting period, days with nothing to do (and where people keep calling and asking if I'm in labor...NO DAMMIT!) that I was really hoping could be special, unshared time with my little Scarlett. Instead these days are passing in this haze of unproductivity that I can't seem to break out of, time closing in on a new semester where my baby won't and can't be the only thing on my plate, where she will have to share space with commitments and responsibilities I just can't set aside...

I am trying to think positive, I really am! I've even been spending a few minutes meditating every day, and every night before I go to sleep I say to myself, well, at least I get one more night of good sleep! (That was like when we were trying to conceive...every time the test came up negative I would say, well, at least I can have a few more drinks!!) But I am bored, bored, bored in my house all day. I miss the social contact of work, and the enforced productivity it engenders. At the same time, I can't make myself leave the house. I've watched every movie I own and read multiple novels and napped and taken baths and exercised for an hour every day on my elliptical, but instead of feeling pampered and relaxed, I just feel lazy and headachy and lonely (and the lonelier I get, the less I want to talk to people!). I am surfeited with my own company. I want to get out and go for long walks but the sidewalks are icy and the weather is rotten. It looks like Siberia out there today...close white clouds and heavy winds blowing the snow everywhere!

This whole thing is making me realize what a creature of timing and schedules I am. I've lost my excitement because I can't sustain it for indefinite periods of time! I need a concrete event to direct my energies toward.

So here's hoping my concrete event will happen soon, and I can get out of this funk, and come up with something better to say!!

My troublesome penchant for the somnolent state...

2007-12-31T09:44:00.000-08:00

Ten days left until Scarlett is due...it seems so close, yet so far away! The closer it gets to her "due date" the harder it is for me to wrap my mind around her being here, because I've accepted that the whole timeline is useless. The big event could happen any day, or not for weeks still. Probably the latter. For the first time, I'm actually dreading rather than looking forward to my doctor's appointment this week, as I'm afraid when I hear "no signs of labor" again, I might burst into tears right in front of her!

Strangely, though, it gets easier and easier for me to sleep disgustingly long amounts of hours. I'm beginning to wonder what's going on here. Everything I read tells me that I should be miserably uncomfortable and tormented by insomnia. But my discomfort seems to have hit a kind of plateau lately...not much has cropped up in the way of new pain and most of my old pains have now plagued me for so long that I've just metabolized them as a part of life. And while I've had the occasional sleepless night in the past, lately I've been sleeping for ten, eleven, twelve hours straight (well, interrupted only by the occasional half-conscious stumble to the potty)! Is this unnatural?

On one hand, I know it's good to be well-rested before the ordeal of labor and then the sleep deprivation of a new infant. On the other, people say insomnia in the last trimester helps get you used to a new way of life. Does this mean I will be utterly unprepared for my new way of life? Maybe I should start setting an alarm to wake myself up every two hours?

Hmmmm...no, that sounds like torture. I guess I'll just let my body do what it thinks it needs, and maybe when my alarm clock is a little baby I love more than life, I'll have an easier time waking up!

In the meantime, I'm taking all the wise mommies' advice...going to movies, going out to eat, generally being unproductive and enjoying myself. Tonight is New Year's Eve. Other than having this child, I guess I'd better start thinking about some good resolutions...

Happy New Years to all!

This is one Emotional Rollercoaster...

2007-12-28T09:26:00.000-08:00

So, you know how about a week or so ago I pronounced that no longer had any agenda about Scarlett's arrival and that I would be happy for her to come on her own schedule?

Well, I lied. How quickly we forget! Now that the misery of being sick is forgotten and less than two weeks remain until my due date, my stress levels are climbing again, mostly due to my weekly doctor visit at which I was informed, AGAIN, that I had no sign of dilation or effacement. Well, the doctor allowed, maybe a TEENSY bit effaced. But she may have said that to make me feel better.

Now, I trusty-old-googled all this effacement and dilation stuff, and besides finding a really neat cartoon of a baby being born which I had great fun fast-forwarding through, making the baby shoot like a rocket out of the cartoon vagina, and informing my husband THAT's how it's going to happen for us!, I found some information that should make me feel better. Apparently early dilation and effacement is not a particularly sure sign of labor to come...some people can be dilated for weeks with labor still not starting, and for others it can happen instantaneously. Okay, that's good...

But I'm just worried that my daughter is going to do what I apparently did to my poor mother...according to her, I was SEVENTEEN days late. Now, let's be scientific about this. My mom, like me, had extremely irregular cycles; she wasn't aware for quite some time she was pregnant (although she found out earlier with me than with my sister, who informed the clue-ignoring woman of her presence with a big KICK right around 20 weeks!) and this was 28 years ago when technology could not have been quite as exact. So I'm guessing that my due date may have been off. One of my baby books says that probably 70% of late pregnancies are due to due-date miscalculations and variations in people's cycles.

But I, on the other hand, was taking Clomid, so I was on a SCHEDULE. I felt the pain of ovulation on that 14th day, and as instructed we did our duty on the 13th and 15th days, after abstaining for about a week before and a week after. So my due date, the 10th of January, has got to be pretty near spot-on, right? I'm just trying to justify reasons in my head for WHY THIS CHILD NEEDS TO BE ON TIME.

If she decides to be substantially late, the earliest and only date my doctor has available to induce me is the 18th! The bad things about this would be that my best friend Emily (whom I really want to be here) would be out of town, my in-laws (whom I really DON'T want to be here, just because I don't think I can handle houseguests too soon) would be IN town, and school would be starting only FOUR days later!! AUGH! The good things about her being late are....oh wait, NOTHING. Not a dang thing.

I know this is out of my hands. I know that a healthy happy baby is far and away the most important thing. I also know that for the next two weeks (possibly more! Yikes!) all I'm going to be doing is obsessing about this. Being a control freak is such a curse! So anyone out there, please send all tractor-beam, baby-coaxing emissions my way with wishes that sometime in the next two weeks, this little girl will decide, on her own, to get this show on the road!

Note to Self: Fishnets are Not Friends

2007-12-20T20:11:00.000-08:00

So, I'm not one who is normally prone to rants of morality. I have no religious background and am generally a live-and-let-live type. For some reason, today though (maybe it's due to the baby girl on board, and the fact that I realize some day she's going to be able to observe, and LEARN FROM, the world around her) I had a moment of severe irritation at the grocery store as a result of another woman's questionable ensemble.

First of all, I wasn't at a normal grocery store. I was at WinCo, the WinCo in the North Reno location. Now, if you haven't been there you may not be able to conceive of what I'm talking about here, but I feel like this is one of those places you can go to see, well, the worst of humanity. Why do I shop there then, you may be asking? Because we are about to welcome a bank-breaking baby, and also about to lose nearly 2/3 of our income as I leave one of my jobs, I feel compelled to start sincerely trying to save money (something I just as sincerely SUCK at, and I know this). Shopping at Winco probably, honestly, shaves 10-20 bucks per trip off the total. But man, is it overwhelming. I have to wrestle with myself mentally before I can make myself go there, try to convince myself that the savings is worth it. The one at the south end of town is purportedly a different story, but since the time and gas money it would take to get there negates the savings, I either buck up and go to this WinCo or wuss out and head to my favorite lovely, but expensive, Raley's.

How do I describe this Winco without sounding like a snot? It's always super-crowded with the kind of people who don't care, and don't excuse themselves, when their carts block the entire aisle. Most of them look beaten and bedraggled and many are lugging heards of kids or screaming babies, babies screaming the kind of screams that make you wonder Why, on earth, was I so excited to get pregnant. The last trip I made there, I heard a girl cussing like a sailor in the next aisle, and when I turned the corner I saw she was no older than probably ten, and her mother was standing right there acting like it was normal. For her, it probably was.

Anyway, today the older woman standing in front of me in line was wearing a teal fleece jacket that went to her butt, knee-high fringed black boots, fishnet tights, and NOTHING ELSE. I am not kidding. I am positive there was no really short skirt or shorts hiding up there. Fishnet-encased cheeks were plain to the eye. Now, I figure she was probably a casino worker that just got off work, but I don't care. Can't you throw on a kilt, or a pair of shorts, or something? Even if you march around all day in what basically amounts to a sequin-encrusted bathing suit and tights, can't you put on some bottoms before you go to a grocery store that's full of children and people who would really appreciate being spared the site of ass packed in fishnet? Not to mention the fact that its effing winter and cold as hell outside. Come on, that can't be comfortable.

Okay, I'm a bitch. I don't know what gives rise to this moral rant. It's probably really trite of me to be irritated by such a thing. But I couldn't help it. Would you prance around a grocery store in a jacket and tights and nothing else? Maybe it's just me being 8.5 months pregnant and bitter that I am barred from prancing of any sort, but if that woman were my daughter (even though she was probably in her forties) I would swack that fishnet-covered booty and send her back to her room to change!

The Evil of Stomach Bugs

2007-12-19T16:58:00.000-08:00

(This is a fairly gross post, so don't read if you've just eaten!)

Last night was supposed to be a happy night. I had just turned in my last final paper and was ready to CELEBRATE! Well, celebrate as much as a pregnant woman can, which means a virgin peach dacquiri and dinner at the Olive Garden with good friends. Unfortunately, as soon as we got there I started feeling a little funky. After losing my salad in the bathroom (and getting plenty of dirty looks from people who probably thought I was binging and purging!) but pretty much feeling fine otherwise, I was still thinking that this was just a random bout of nausea that would pass.

No such luck. After getting home I got progressively sicker. Soon my body was emptying itself of fluids in every imagineable way, simultaneously with all the other ways. Let's just say I don't think I'll be eating Olive Garden again for awhile. I kept trying to get to sleep but would wake up having to run to the bathroom, or by massively painful stomach cramps that maybe, possibly, felt like contractions. They were coming and going in regular waves, had peaks and lulls, and I did find that the breathing exercises I learned in birthing class helped.

Now, I was pretty sure I wasn't in labor. But I was scared and getting more and more hysterical because I, for the first time, got a taste of what real labor could be like--intolerable pain and violent sickness and fear for the baby all at once--and man did it freak me out. All I can do is cross my fingers that I'm one of the lucky ones who doesn't get nauseous because throwing up weakens me...I totally lose my perspective, my ability to tolerate pain. After several hours of progressively violent illness and crying, I began to get dizzy and faint. Finally around 2:00am Mario insisted that we call Labor & Delivery, who in turn insisted that we come in, and there it was: my first hospital admittance in my WHOLE LIFE, other than being born--one emergency room trip when I was little because my dad accidentally ran over my foot doesn't count. It was followed after awhile (we had to wait for me to be able to pee, then for the lab to lose and find my pee, from which even a completely non-medical person would have been able to glance at and diagnose dehydration) by my first IV ever. Even though I was to the point of not caring what the hell they did to me, I handled the IV about as well as I usually handle needles, meaning NOT WELL. Why am I such a wuss? The nurse told Mario to warn hospitals in the future that I something-down when I get needled, some medical terminology I can't remember for loss of blood pressure. My poor nurse.

They began dumping fluids and anti-nausea medication into me, whereupon I slowly started to feel human again. After that the only scary part of the process was when the baby's heartbeat got kind of erratic for awhile. Now I can see why people opt not to have fetal monitoring. Brief Doppler peeps give you the reassurance that all is good, but with fetal monitoring every fluctuation becomes evident and worrisome, and man, she was all over the place for awhile, up and down, and the volume was up so loud that all I could hear were these speed-ups and slow-downs that seemed so dramatic. But the nurse was watching her carefully and after awhile Crazy Scarlett calmed down...thank you Baby, because your mom really didn't need any more stress at that point

In the morning, I called my mom and she came to relieve Mario so he could go to work...not such a great thing for him after having been up the entire night. It was nice to have her there to chat with, although by the time they released me two bags of fluids later, around 10:30 this morning, I was exhausted, so exhausted that I didn't even shower (and you can imagine the state of me) before collapsing and sleeping the entire day.

I had to get up for a regularly scheduled doctor's appointment at 4:00 pm (the hospital nurse tried to cancel it for me but they insisted I come in) and here is the verdict at 37 weeks pregnant: No dilation. No effacement. Even after all that, my body is not showing the slightest sign of getting ready for delivery.

That's good news is that after last night, I'm not so sure that's bad news. A hospital visit is a nice cure for delivery impatience. I need some distance from the pain and fear of that experience before I go through it again, this time for real. So Scarlett, I know I've been pestering you to come early, but let me revise my request: come whenever you want if it means I get nausea-and-diarrhea-free labor, as painful as it might be, and you keep your little heart beat steady.

25 pages of solid gold...or pyrite?

2007-12-13T13:01:00.000-08:00

Deep.... Long.... SIGH!

I finally, after hours and hours and hours of messing with it, turned in one of my final papers this morning. It was one of those papers where I busted out the initial draft and then made it through the peer review without actually taking in (probably due to the tact of my classmates and professor, who didn't want to take responsibility for making a pregnant woman bawl) exactly how bad it sucked. Then I put it aside for awhile, picked it back up expecting to have some minor tweaking and polishing, and realized the whole thing needed to be rebuilt.

SIGH.

Because it was about pimps and hos, it was kind of a fun paper to write. And I have to admit...I'm actually kind of happy with it (which, without a doubt, means my professor is probably going to hate it, because I notice it's always the things I like most that other people dislike and vice versa!) But still, an immense feeling of relief settled on me when I dumped it in my his box this morning. That's ONE thing down...

If a fairy godmother appeared in my office right now (I know, I know, too much Enchanted with Emily Pie) I would wish I still didn't have two papers more to finish. I hate this point of the semester, any semester, but especially winter semester. Being almost done means I still have a ton of shit to do, but at the same time I'm rapidly losing my ability to discipline myself away from fun, as the need to indulge myself in social events, good eating, and shopping increases by the day. Christmas is creeping closer and closer and the days go by with nothing done...a bare tree in the dining room, ornaments still packed away, the only shopping done what I did online on Black Friday. No letters are written, no cards addressed, and no packages are sent. And now there are only TWELVE days left!

Then add the Imminent Baby to the mix. Every day I am stretched thin between work and school is another day I put off packing my bags for the hospital, finishing the last touches on Miss Scarlett's room, and getting the house clean (er than it is)--or, okay, let's be honest, making my husband do it. And the desire to holiday-socialize is compounded by the realization that, in all likelihood, I'm probably be spending a lot of time ALONE, cooped up in my HOUSE, over the next few months. I had a huge realization yesterday how hard it's going to be to stay at home, most of the time with no one to talk to, while everyone I know including my husband labors at jobs that don't allow them to linger on the telephone with lonely post-partum mommies! So now I feel like I should be spending all of the time I can with friends before a crying baby renders me a socially undesirable companion. After all, very few of our friends have kids.

And then there are the thank-you cards, oh the THANK-YOU CARDS, for all the lovely things my generous friends and family gave me at baby shower! I tuck the blank notes in my purse each day hoping to get to them, and then feel like a total shithead when I don't. Days pass into weeks, the guilt compounding with each of them, and the suspicion burgeons in my heart that everyone I know thinks I am an ungrateful wretch who is only using them for baby gifts, and still the notes sit in my purse! Ahhh! Okay, I might be overreacting about this a bit. I think I know too many of those lovely people who have a thank-you card in your mailbox exactly ten minutes after you give them something.

Do you know, the only thing taking care of itself right now, interestingly enough, is the actual baby. Thank god I don't have to be in charge of making sure she gains weight (other than stuffing my face, which comes all too easy!), and making sure my body is getting ready for delivery, otherwise I'd probably be causing delays in her arrival. It's nice, although quite freaky, that my body actually knows what to do without any input from me. That's what our childbirth class teacher told us, and I have to admit that this thought rose up in my mind: "What if mine doesn't?" But signs this week (some of THOSE THINGS they tell you might happen, probably too gross to reveal to the innocent blog reader) tell me that even my body, my pudgy, swollen, achy, body, probably has a pretty good idea. I'm pretty pleased with my body for that, and I know I don't appreciate it nearly as much as I should. So here's one thank-you note I can take care of right now:

Dear Body,

Thanks for not asking a lot of me right now. It's nice to know that with you, I don't have to be my normal control freak self, because I can actually trust you to handle your shit. I know the acid reflux you torment me with at four in the morning is really not your fault, nor is it your fault that for some odd reason I can't kneel due to strange pain in my knees. I know you are doing the best you can to prepare me for the amazing life-changing event of having an anklebiter, and that you're only making my pelvis ache because you don't want an episiotomy or a C-section any more than I do. Thank you also for finally fulfilling my lifelong wish for bigger boobies (although, if it's not too much to ask, can you please ask Miss Lefty to get with the program, as I'd prefer not to be lopsided for life?) I promise when the baby arrives to start taking better care of you via running and the elliptical and fewer fried chicken sandwiches (insert guilty glance at the balled-up wrapper in the garbage here) because I know you miss your former not-quite-as-blimp-like structure. And let's make a deal...if you can keep my pain during labor to a minimum, I will use every fiber of my mental strength to keep the anesthesiologist and his foot-long needle away from you. Sound good?

Thanks again, body. I know I don't say this enough, but you're kind of a superstar.

There, one thank-you note down, thirty to go. And don't forget those Christmas cards...and those last two papers...AUGH!

Now am I certified?

2007-12-08T19:29:00.000-08:00

Mario and I took an 8-hour parenting class at our hospital today, which, thanks to the fast-talking teacher (she rivaled me for blithering speed, and I loved every second of it!) only ended up going 6.5 hours. It was 6.5 hours well spent, I would say. The instructor was absolutely hilarious and we got to spend part of the time sacked out in bean bag chairs practicing relaxing breathing techniques. While I can't say I learned a ton I already didn't know, I did find out something valuable about myself: I am actually not grossed out by watching a baby be born! This is a great surprise to someone who has been known (on more than one occasion) to hit the floor, hard, while having an eensey bit of blood drawn. But three videos into the class, my fainting reflex was firmly in check and I was actually quite intrigued with the process. Wonders never cease. Hopefully I can maintain my newfound strong stomach when it's MY girly parts under siege. The only part I'm still pretty sure I'll avert my eyes for is the appearance of the placenta, thank you, but YUCK.

Scarlett kicked, hiccuped, and squiggled through the ENTIRE class. It was an unusually long period of continuous activity even for her. Wonder what THAT means....

Back at home, and trying to avoid the TWO 25-page papers I have due on Monday (I'll get them done, right? Never mind that all I have right now is about 10 pages of notes) I just googled my OLD name (I converted to my married name this week, finally, after clinging to it long past my wedding date) and look at one of the entries that comes up on the first page:

These Oscar de la Renta pumps are very showy. I think the crystal broch on the toes is a bit to flashy. I'm not the biggest fan of this style shoe.

Yes, I must agree that me on the toes would be a bit much...

My sister and her boyfriend got a new dog tonight! I am waiting impatiently for them to come home and introduce him to me and my two crazy pups. I am also waiting impatiently for my husband to come home from an emergency grocery store run with fresh pizza dough. I guess I learned my lesson on how long NOT to let WinCo pizza dough sit in the fridge...I opened a week-old package open tonight, all ready to bust out some fabulous spinach calzone, only to find that the yeast had taken their fermenting duties a leetle far, and the dough now reeked like booze. I did have to spend a fair amount of time convincing my husband that alcoholic pizza dough is a BAD thing...

Okay, back to work.

Just this once, baby-dropping is a GOOD thing...

2007-12-07T10:32:00.000-08:00

I am not sure (all those crazy doctor people who write what-to-expect books and go on and on about how first-time mothers instinctually know things need to shut up, because they are giving me complexes!), but I think Scarlett may be dropping a little...maybe. The night before last, on one of my frequent half-asleep nightly stumblings to the poor overworked potty, I noticed that I felt a lot more pressure in my lower abdomen then normal. All day yesterday she felt like a heavy weight down there instead of being more distributed as she normally is, and several people commented that my belly looked different (even my non-observant hubby, although he may have just said it because I planted the idea in his noggin). And for once last night, my ribs didn't feel like they were going to crack.

Is it possible...is she actually doing what she's supposed to be doing? I could be imagining things, but I hope I'm not. I haven't experienced Braxton-Hicks contractions (not a single one so far unless, again, I am an unnatural, instinct-lacking failure who just can't tell what I'm feeling) so I was beginning to fear this little girl is in no rush to emerge. Since she's due on the 10th of January, and school starts back up on the 22nd, I need her to be on time or (please, please, please, Goddess of Pregnancy and Delivery, I implore you) a teensy weensy, but still healthy, bit early. They say any time after 38 weeks is perfectly fine, and gee I would just love a tax write-off in the package (here I am, getting unreasonable again!), so I've been sending my little bun none-too-subliminal messages by rubbing my belly and intoning "December 30th, December 30th, you want to come out on December 30th!"

However--I'd better just be honest with myself right now--if she takes after me at all, I'm sure she has no intention of listening. "It's my way or the highway, Mom," she's sniggering; "and you'd better just get used to it."

In weather news, it's snowing, and so far showing no sign of stopping. And until it does, and until my street either melts a bit or gets plowed, I am not moving my happy, Toyota-Corolla-driving ass from this house. Work does not need me enough for me to risk getting in an accident at this stage of my pregnancy. So I am going to sit here with my two sleeping pups and my eggnog tea (yes, eggnog tea) and my Aristotle, and work on my final paper for History of Composition Pedagogies. Oh, and maybe internet a little...

(Yep, I'm milking it! In fact, I only have 34 days left until Scarlett's due date to milk it, so I'm thinking I'd better step it up even more. After all, pretty soon I'll just become the forgotten, dried-up cocoon while all of the attention focuses on the newly emerged butterfly! Hmmm, I'm thinking I'll make my husband fork over a back massage tonight, then maybe after our 8-hour birthing class tomorrow, he can take me to Thai Food and to see The Golden Compass. I only have just over a month before the "But I'm incubating your spawn!" ploy loses all power!)

Succumbing to the call of the blog

2007-12-06T19:11:00.000-08:00

I've given in, little by little, to the siren song of online posting, tempted by the seductive allure of fresh daily reading as presented by my friend's blog. Gradually I've found it less of an obligation to visit her page (the Queen Blogger in question knows how to give some pre-tty good guilt trips when one is remiss in one's commenting duties!) and more something to look forward to, to the point that I've been disappointed, lately, when her posts haven't been as regular. The inclination to blog myself seemed to follow on the heels of being a regular blog reader. But that wasn't enough...I needed one more push...and it came in the form of an email from the Queen, now my fairy Queen, who waved her magic wand and Poof! made me this page.

Now I have simply have NO more excuses!

This may not be a successful venture. I may find I have nothing to say ("Ha ha," most people I know would shout hysterically, rolling on the floor, if they ever heard that come out of my mouth!) even though I should have a lot to say. I am finishing up the first semester of a doctoral program in rhetoric and composition and, before the next one starts (hopefully, unless she decides to stay in there past her due date), I'll have a brand new baby girl, destined by my love of Gone With the Wind and her father's love of classic Bianchi bikes to be named Scarlett Celeste. I have big dreams at this point: to be a superwoman mom who comes (maybe, possibly, okay fine--just humor me here) epidural-free through a gloriously uncomplicated labor; to be blessed with an angelically colic-immune child who takes naturally to breastfeeding (as do my nipples), allowing me to go back to school two or three weeks after she is born; to continue to manage the heavy load I've always carried with my program, without having to sacrifice any of my involvements or commitments; and somehow, since I won't be able to keep working a full-time job on the side, to find a way to keep up with the mortgage and maybe, once in a while, even have some grown-up fun with my husband and our friends, without sacrificing diapers, wipies, or cute little outfits for Scarlett.

Feel free to laugh uproariously at my ridiculous overconfidence, right about...NOW.

On this site, if I can find the time to keep posting between final papers, kicks to the ribcage, and equally frequent trips to the bathroom and fridge, I'll post about my dances with academia, impending mommy-hood, and daily life.