Go, Shorty

Occasionally one is tasked with ordering one's own birthday cake. Fortunately, one easily entertains oneself.

DL on PiG

In summary, I have been very busy getting stupider. I just caught up on a couple of old blog friends from my blogroll there. Damn, I miss you all, and the too-short blogging heyday. That was a good run.

Miss Thang is seven. SEVEN. Fuck me, that went fast. (Well, the first year didn't. The first year was slow as fuck, what with all the colic and reflux and INABILITY TO SLEEP.) Fortunately, I adore her with the core of my being, even while I annoy the very core of her being. She is going to be an excellent teenager. I am upping my wine game even as we speak. (Falsehoods. I suck at drinking these days. BUT I HAVE AMBITIONS TO IMPROVE.) Point is, Miss Thang is fabulous, smart, savvy, highly sensitive, and kind. 

Cupcake is about to be three. She is a pile of cuteness, rolled into a ball of skeelz. She is competent, and competent at kindly manipulating everyone to her will. She says it all with a sweet smile, and a bat of her unfairly long lashes, and then she's like, "Please can you get my water?" referring to the bottle that's LITERALLY touching her toe while you are in the process of cleaning up cat pee upstairs, wearing nothing but a towel, because why would you ever get to finish a shower peacefully? 

I still don't get enough sleep, and it is still the bane of my existence. I mostly enjoy being a stay-at-home mom, and while it's a lot of work, it's also a lot more trips to the farm than I ever took as a non-kid-having adult, and you know, I love the farm. They have goats there. (That's still a thing! So, you know. Continuity! Plus, I don't really think you have to have an exceptional IQ for goat herding.)

The Funasaurus is pulling a weird Benjamin Button thing, lost a bunch of weight and runs a 5K once a week, and works out other days, started wearing nice clothes made this decade, and looks hot AF. Which is great for me. I am on the regular trajectory with time, and body-after-babies, and so maybe I occasionally feel a little intimidated, but mostly I am enjoying having a hot husband, and occasionally make him take me out on a date into the real world where he converses quite smoothly, what with it being the world he works in, while I attempt to totter around in shoes that are not fuzzy slipper boots, and wear non yoga-pants and talk about not-poop things. (Poop's still a thing, too.)

All that to say, I still don't have much to say. But I am going to write about it more.

I Know My Options

Given the choice between getting some fresh air and being productive or sitting inside eating processed foods and panicking about the current state of the world, I will choose Oreos every time.




FYI, abyss! *mwah*

A Poem for Today

While I was outside
Hanging ten
(Little onsies
Clean and fine
Upon
The clothesline)
The fucking cat
Shat
Upon
The bath mat
Again

* * * * *

Spanx for Nothing

Yo!

I had a baby, she is so cute and calm and I don't know what to do with a baby who actually eats and sleeps, it's so easy and I know the other shoe will drop someday, but holy do I know to enjoy it now. So I am. Enjoying every piece of her, minus the recent cold she picked up, which is so sad and pitiful, but still she is as sweet as a cupcake. I admit to having got a little too comfortable with the reclusive lifestyle. We had to quit a lot of Miss Thang's activities while I was on bed rest, and she didn't seem to mind, and neither did I. Then I had a baby, and sweet or no, newborns are tricky to trot around on a whim, they require much accoutrement, including your naked top half of a recently-savaged body, which, while great for some people out in public, I prefer in the privacy of my incredibly messy home. Where I don't have to wear a fucking Hooter Hider, because yes, that exists.

Going out means the schedule gets disrupted, and I LOOOOOVE our schedule, deeply, with all of my being. I know when my Cupcake is going to eat and sleep, and I can go through four diapers at a time if she continues pooping after I change her once. I know which books Miss Thang likes to read, I know which TV shows she likes to watch (because all of my ideas about progressive parenting and very limited screen time went out the window like a caged bird the second I had another baby, shout-out to you, Sesame Street, and your hour-long episodes!) and I like walking around with my muffin top holding my Cucpake, encouraging Miss Thang to PAINT MORE PICTURES OF RAPUNZEL LANTERNS! (read: watercolor splotches.) while I graze on avacados and embarassing amounts of pepperoni because Cupcake happens to disagree with all things dairy, so I am now dairy-free and that has led to a vegan diet plus lots of meat.

Someday maybe I will write the post about my re-occuring dream about eating pizza, full of its cheese-y, dairy deliciousness, and feeling wretchedly guilty about it.

But, inevitably, the real world demands your presence in the form of birthday parties and preschool end-of-the-year (say WHAT?!) potlucks. And so I have attempted, a few times, to become somewhat presentable. Not to the extent of shaving my legs, or anything like that,



but I caved and bought a control-top something-or-other for the first time, just because the muffin top is still kind of extreme, for which I am not apologetic but self-conscious anyway and I gave it a whirl today. The stuffing the sausage dance to get the thing on was horrifying enough, the result was kind of what I was hoping for, right up until I sat down and the whole thing rolled down to create some sort of muffin top enhancer belt. Purpose: utterly defeated.

My question is this, why why why do those things exist? You can have a smooth belly assuming you don't sit down or walk too much? How is this different from a corset? I did kind of feel like I was going to faint. Verdict = never again. I just won't ever leave the house again ever, and that suits the hermit version of me just a little too well. Send wine and possibly a muumuu.

A Detailed Report of My Couch

If I thought I was boring before...oh. I laugh at my Starbucks-going, yoga-y, traveling old self. I WAS LIVING SUCH A LIFE!

Now I mostly rotate between my bed and couch. I am on modified bed rest because I have an irritable uterus. Which mostly reminds me of Charlotte's depressed vagina on "Sex and the City," and I wish my doctor would prescribe Xanax for my effing uterus, but noooo. I am to drink lots of water and rest, which is easier said than done with a normal four-year-old and a Funasaurus who is currently traveling weekly for his stupid job.

So far, I am having lots of contractions but they don't seem to be changing anything other than my mood. Baby is safe, and that is a relief, but I am getting a little annoyed that going all the way to the bathroom causes my stomach to seize up. Getting Miss Thang to preschool requires an hour or two of recovery time from the tightness.

I do try to appreciate that I otherwise have a healthy pregnancy (did I tell you it's another girl?) and a great support network.

Sometimes I still like to kvetch.

We moved Miss Thang upstairs to her big girl room over the weekend. That was a project that I mostly participated in from an ordering-pink-and-purple-decor from my phone stance, seeing as how I could not really help with the heavy lifting or even the climbing of stairs. It turned out to be very Lisa Frank-inspired, with the bright colors (Miss Thang does not do pastel, which is a fairly accurate description of her personality, as well) but she is happy, so we are happy. Then The Funasaurus left for a work trip and Miss Thang keeps calling me to come check on her. I told her through the monitor that I could not climb the stairs again so soon after she kicked me out, when I tried to lie down in her room. She wailed. I failed. But now she's asleep and I am nursing some Halloween candy and trying to type this from a reclined position. Here's hoping she sleeps through the night.

It's really too easy to buy shit from your phone these days. I have about doubled our Christmas ornament collection whilst simultaneously contracting arthritis in my thumb. Also, I know a lot more about celebrity gossip than I ever did before. I need to go back to a simpler time with a clunky old Nokia phone that is only capable of making phone calls and a stack of trashy magazines.

I read a good book called Quiet: The Power of Introverts in a World That Can't Stop Talking and would recommend it to anyone, although after 368 pages I am still not sure what I really classify as. I think it boils down to, do you draw your energy from being around other people, or do you recharge by being alone? Because apparently there can be some very gregarious introverts and shy extroverts. The problem is, I would have to answer "yes" to both of those questions. I miss social contact desperately, but then I get out and around occasionally and I find people annoy me more now than they ever did before. I believe bed rest is turning me into a certified curmudgeon. Get the fuck off my porch, ruffians, and please come back with Starbucks and a witty recounting of what those ol' Kardashians are up to these days.

That's all I've got. I am lame but grateful to be healthy. There is no reason I shouldn't be updating this thing daily at this point, except for the whole, I'VE GOT NOTHING to write about-thing. But when did that ever stop me before?

What I Did Over MY Summer Vacation

Hmm. So. Guess what I did.

I went and got myself in a family way, again.

!

I swore I'd never do that, but the parental amnesia is strong. You forget all the tears, all the scary trips to doctors, and pediatric ERs in the middle of the night, you forget the sleep deprivation (or, I think possibly the sleep deprivation fucks over your memory completely and forever), the annoyances, the poop in the carpet. YOU FORGET IT ALL, and you're like, my kid is so awesome with her coloring skeelz and ability to hold a fork now, we should totally have another!

So off we go on this little adventure. The Funasaurus is psyched. Miss Thang is (fortunately) psyched. I am getting psyched-er, having intentionally gotten myself in this way but then spent the better part of July either prostrate on the couch or barfing into the nearest convenient container, and kind of had a little, "What have we done?" moment. But YAY, that seems to have mostly passed, now I can just look forward to the heartburn and cankles.

I haven't had many other symptoms, no weird cravings or uncontrollable bathroom issues. And I have mostly stayed sane, leaving my crazy craze channeled solely into a neurotic compulsion to avoid the microwave and turn off my phone at night, lest the magic, invisible ray-things that come out of said electronics do unhealthy things to my baby, and also a family of birds that took up residence on our porch. Mom and dad were vigilant with the nest, mom sat on those eggs for so long, and we weren't sure anything would come of it. Then Miss Thang spotted the babies, and we watched mom and dad take turns going to get food and watch over the youngsters. Mom would sit on them, tuck them in tightly, all paranoid, until the last second. Dad would often chillax on the side of the next while they doodled about in the nest, and I don't speak bird, but I believe he got a stern Talking To once or twice from mom. I agonized over the feedings, it looked like one baby was more aggressive about getting the worm vomit from the parentals than the other, and I was afraid the other was getting neglected and hungry, but they both grew well and got chunky and fluffy. Then one day this week both parents were gone at the SAME TIME. I had never seen the babies unattended. I fretted that they were abandoned. Then dad came back with food and all was well. Until the next day when one baby and half the nest was missing. I didn't know what to make of it, DEAD BABY? Or all grown up? Effing teenagers. Mom came back with food and tucked the remaining baby under her, in what was left of the nest, and that was quite a feat because the baby is pretty big, honestly, and as a I mentioned, not much nest left. And then yesterday they were all gone. I CRIED. They grow up and fly away forever and WHAT IS THE MEANING OF IT ALL IT'S SO SAD.

Fortunately Miss Thang demanded I come wipe her poop, so that was a...distraction, and I am recovering from the trauma of it all.

And that's me. How are you? Is there any you left?