All I'm Saying there's a joke in here somewhere

Dammit, not a true palindrome...oh well, I continue to try. Maribeth conveniently had a meme up for offer, so I grabbed it, as I have no current uterine news, nor any particular peevishness to report. Here goes:

5 Things Found in Your Bag/Purse
Truth be told, I loathe carrying a purse. I usually just stuff my checkbook in my back pocket and carry my keys in my hand. But in my work bag, I have 1) my Franklin planner, 2) a pocket knife (serrated 4 inch blade), 3) Burt's Bees lip balm, 4) a miniature umbrella, and 5) a couple of thumb drives.

5 Favorite Things in Your Room
1) Freya, curled up next to me and snoozing, 2) Matt on the other side, making me feel safe, 3) the ivory and burgundy quilt I picked up on our spring break, 3) my grandmother's cedar chest, 4) a picture of my grandmother as an eight year-old with her mother, her grandmother, and her great-grandmother (so my great, great-great, and great-great-great grandmothers, in addition to Grandma T), 5) Family Night, the framed picture Matt gave me for Mother's Day the year Freya was born.

5 Things You Always Wanted to Do
1) Go to Italy! (Target Date, June 2012), 2) Get chin implants (it'll never happen--I want to, but I wouldn't), 3) Learn to roller dance, 4) Punch my arch-nemesis from junior high and high school...and get away with it, 5) Get a hug from George Clooney.

5 Things You are Currently Into
1) Exercising 3x a week, 2) Phillip Pullman's Sally Lockheart trilogy, 3) Relandscaping the back yard, 4) Organic gardening, 5) Finding 50s-era Disney cartoons on YouTube for Freya to watch.

5 People You Want to Tag
As Maribeth did, I won't tag anyone. But let me know if you decide to use the meme, will you?

You'll remember that earrings and the associated holes gross me out. Well, here's another thing that makes me queasy: acrylic toenails.

I should say that feet in general kind of gross me out. My feet are beautiful and usually perfect. In fact, I used to be known for "Flintstone Feet" back in the days when I gave myself pedicures, which was explained to mean that my toes looked so perfect that they were practically drawn on. So maybe it is my own pedal perfection (hee hee) that makes me look down my nose at other peoples' digits. I'm really just kidding--it's just a foot thing in general. You can have the purtiest toesies in the world, and I'll still think they're ookey.

So that's the main reason that I don't get the new craze to get fake toenails put on your feet. I mean, aren't your toenails there for not particularly decorative purposes in the first place? I won't begrudge you some polish, but a whole fake set of nails that you pay God-knows-what to get put on in the first place, and then have to consistently maintain at a salon as they grow out? What's wrong with people?

Not to mention the fact that you wind up looking like you could climb a tree without using your hands...

We're looking at extending our patio this spring, so I've been getting some estimates from concrete contractors. Well, I should say that I'm getting estimates from whatever fly-by-night might have an ad up on Craigslist. One guy came out and bid it yesterday for $750, which seemed pretty okay. But you know--buyer beware and all that, so I've called a few more folks today.

I just got off the phone with one guy, and it was...really weird. The first thing he said was, "Are you at home right now?" and I had a funny feeling so I said, "Yeah, but now isn't a good time because I have to run out, so can you just give me a ballpark over the phone?" I told him the dimensions of the extension, and he said, "I'll do it for $300." Thinking that was $250 lower than my lowest estimate, my radar really started going off. I said, "So how long do you guarantee your work?" and there was a pause and he said, "Uh, ten years."

BWAHA. Yeah, sure. I'm not sure anyone (that isn't a complete fraud) would guarantee their concrete work for that long. Call me pessimistic. So I told him I'd talk to my husband, who would call him back.

Very strange. I rarely get an alarm over the telephone like that, just from the first few things a person has said. I'm guessing that before he could come over to give us an estimate, he'd have to pull the lotion bottle back up in the basket so that the poor girl stuck down in the hole in his basement wouldn't over-moisturize. "IT PUTS THE LOTION ON ITS SKIN!"

Freak show...

"Give two women who have never met before about 15 minutes in a room without any men in it, and they'll be discussing their periods in no time."

I'm up to eleven comments so far on that last post, and that's a pretty high count for me.

By way of update, I'm getting a little crampy here and there, but nothing too bad. I was able to do my regular hour-long workout yesterday afternoon (though I did abstain from the ab work because I'm still a titch leery about compressing the area just yet), and there was no discomfort or anything. And actually, there's been no breakthrough bleeding since the day I got it in. (Knock wood.)

Well, I went and got an IUD put in today. I got Mirena, which is a progesterone hormone device. All you ever wanted to know about what it feels like to get an intrauterine device (men, that goes into the woman's hoo-ha) is in the Extended Entry.

Fair warning. And in case you're wondering why I'd even post it in the first place, you'd be surprised at how many hits this site gets about other gynecological processes I've had, like the hysterosalpingogram or my laparoscopy. So I'm just putting it out there because there are people out there who really want a first-hand account of how some of this stuff feels and what the steps are. Satisfied?

Continue reading "Temporarily Disabled the Baby-Maker"

Well, being as I am a secretary administrative professional, this was a big day for me. (Did you even know it was Administrative Professionals Day? If you didn't and you have a secretary administrative professional that you work with, you're probably in deep shit.

I get a little extra buzz out of this day because my coworkers usually forget all about it and around 9:30-10:00, something may remind them of it. Then they scramble into a panic, and one of my favorite things about the whole thing is watching them pretend like their super special surprise was just unavoidable delayed, rather than utterly forgotten.

But they came through today. There was actually a bottle of wine on my desk when I got in this morning. (For lack of a cork screw, I mighta done a little day drinkin'.) And then I ended up with a couple of gift cards and...drumroll...a certificate for three paid days off.

Is that frickin' sweet, or what? And I'm going to use them all on myself--one here, one there. I will drop Freya off at school and I'll spend the day shopping or sleeping or maybe getting a spa treatment or something. Whoo!

Before reading the post, here's a YouTube video that was going around my office for a while a few weeks ago. It's cute/funny, but the first part contains a theory that has some resonance for me.

If you don't watch it, the guy's premise is that men's brains are full of boxes. Each box has one thing in it. All the boxes are neatly placed around the brain, and none of the boxes touches any of the other boxes. There's even one called "The Nothing Box" and a man can sit and stare into that nothing box for hours on end. Women just think they're watching TV.

Women, on the other hand, have brains that consist of big balls of wire. All the wires touch all the other wires, and information jumps across from wire to wire instantly. That's why women are good at jumping to conclusions about two points that (to a man) seem completely unrelated, and why women had total, instant recall about things that happened in the past.

Why do I share this with you tonight, other than that it resounds for me? Well, let me tell you.

A certain ex-boyfriend of mine works at another branch of my employer's. Our paths cross maybe twice a year at meetings or whatever. He's also a photographer, so I asked him to give me a photo for a project I've been working on. He obliged, and called me today to give me some info on what to say on the photo credit. We visited for a while, he asked about my job, and I described it as, "I'm the one with the shovel who follows behind the parade." He laughed, and then he said, "I always really enjoyed your sense of humor."

So then I was left with my big ol' ball of wire running connections for the next 15 minutes, wondering why if he was feeling retrospective for some reason. And then I realized that he had instantly moved on to stare into another box, probably The Nothing Box.

Same planet, different worlds.

In the event you have a little kid who is addicted to YouTube videos (like a certain someone in my household), here's a great one to share. It is from "Animal Playground" a CD from Putumayo Kids, and I am buying it for all my friends' children when they have birthdays. It's so fun, and it doesn't drive me crazy in the car.

Asheba, "No More Monkeys"

Okay, you want to know something about me that sort of mortifies my husband? And I already know I am going to get hate mail from someone about this someday. (Oh, and before you waste your energy, the e-mail address in the side bar is a hoax. It doesn't actually come to me because I don't own that e-mail address in the first place. But you might really piss off whoever does. Also, I can't remove it since it is essentially embedded into my blog design. I think.) Anyway. Here it is.

You know "The Diary of Anne Frank"?

I think it is a complete and utter hoax and I don't believe Anne Frank was ever a living human being.

*cue thunder claps*

I mean, come on. Come. On. There seriously was this little Pollyanna Sunshine of a girl who spent years trapped in an attic and kept on keepin' on because she had so much faith in the world? (The story of Sarah Crewe comes to mind as a better example of this, especially because someone sneaks in and fixes her garrett up into a lovely Arabian den.) And said Eternal Optimist happens to be a very compelling and lucid diarist, despite the fact that 100% of the other girls her age who put a pen to paper end up writing really crap poetry where the words "love" and "dove" and "glove" are the utmost in poetic irony?

I just don't believe it. Seriously. I think it is some kind of propaganda thing, and one of these days the truth will out and people all over the globe will hear me yell:

HA! I TOLD YOU SO!

You know what is difficult? Trying to have a conversation with your gynecologist's office during work hours, especially when you work in a 90% male office. The conversation went something like this...

Receptionist: Hi, this is Heidi from Dr. Y's office, calling to schedule your IUD placement.

Me: Hi, Heidi.

Receptionist: So I'm looking at your chart and you haven't had an annual exam at our office since...oh my, can it really be 2006?

Me: Well, sorta. I've been going to my general practitioner for that, so I've had "the exam" [a euphemism because I don't want to say "annual" at the office] yearly.

Receptionist: Oh, great! Well, can you get her to fax over a copy of your latest Pap results?

Me: Uh. Well, since I've never had an abnormal...result...we agreed to only do...that test...every other year. We didn't do one this year, but I can get you the results of last year if that'll work.

Receptionist: Oh. Well, so has she given you any kind of gynecological exam this year?

Me: Uh, yes.

***Continue the extended entry only if you're able to handle a discussion of my uterine function***

Continue reading "The Joys of Womanhood"

We had an exciting 20 minutes earlier this evening. After Freya helped me get dinner in the oven (mainly serving in a consultancy role, but she did do a yeoman's job in sprinkling the parsley into the casserole mix), we were over in the living room checking out some of her toys. Suddenly, she froze, moving hardly a visible muscle, but her face turned bright red and a vein stood out on her forehead.

It was a poop. And I could tell it was a big one.

She worked on it, and she worked on it hard. We waited, but then she started crying. I could tell she was having a rough go. So we went up to her changing table and Mommy got to take a look. I've got to tell you, Internet, I thought it was going to turn into a maternal digital extraction, if you know what I mean. That poopy was big, and it appeared to be breech.

In a flash of insight, I asked her if she wanted to try pooping in her little potty. She's sat on it a few times, but never manifested a Number in it. She has peed in the little toilet at school a few times (they have a real, toddler-scale toilet that is very cool and fully plumbed into the building). I should mention she was crying hard the entire time--it really was hurting her.

She sat on the toilet a couple of times and pushed, but kept getting up to stand. Finally, she sat and she PUSHED. And a poopy fell into her potty!

MY BABY POOPED ON THE POTTY, INTERNET!

We made a gigantic fuss about it, and now Daddy is making chocolate chip cookies (with lots of oatmeal for fiber) in them as a reward.

It's a big night around here.

Freya had her usual day home with mom in the morning and dad in the afternoon (I'm still working at home a half-day a week). While I was working, Matt decided to get out his turkey hunting goods, as the hunting season starts tomorrow. Freya played with his turkey call for a few minutes, but then adopted one of his inflatable turkey decoys as her steed.

Dinner tonight was Freya's second-favorite food to eat (and our favorite food to watch her eat): spaghetti. Here she is, demonstrating her technique and the ensuing mess.

She does love her spaghetti...

I mentioned a while back that we'd hired a horticulturalist to do our landscape design plan for the back yard, and we implemented the first part of it today. (Finally, we have some momentum going!) We had that semi-failed vegetable garden last summer, and I think part of its problem was that it got too much radiant heat off the side of the house, and believe it or not, too much sun. So we picked up our garden frames, moved them to the other side of the yard and away from the house, and then moved all the dirt over. We also added some steer manure, some old leaves, and some garden soil mixture with some amendments (organic) in it.

That was not exhausting enough, so we picked up some columbines for our front yard landscaping project that we share with the next-door neighbors, planted those, Freecycled a satellite dish, and I picked up some clothes that I wasn't able to sell at a consignment sale.

Whew.

Oh yeah, and Matt is making home-made pizza for dinner.

Mother's Little Helper is going to be a bit of a challenge to the gardening project. I got her a little set of gardening tools, and she loves them. That's great, but the down side is that she really likes digging...like right behind where I just planted carrot seeds. It is hard to not get frustrated with her, but she'll figure out how gardening works here before too much wreckage can occur. I think.

It's my last night in Denver (hopefully, as there is a winter storm supposed to be moving in tomorrow, right around the time my plane takes off--I do not need to get stuck here, thanks). It's been a really glamorous trip. I've worked out one night and then gone to dinner with some colleagues, last night I went to a sushi joint and came back to work on my laptop on a big project, and tonight I went to dinner with my brother-in-law and am back working on the same project.

I'm a real pistol, aren't I?

I will say this for me: there has been a complimentary Snickers bar on my work station since I checked in, and I haven't eaten it yet. Look, I can sort of* prove it.

* I realize all that really proves is that there was once a candy bar sitting on a desk somewhere--not necessarily anywhere near me, and not necessarily now. You'll just have to take my word for it. What are you, anyway? A lawyer?

I am, of course, planning on taking it with me. If that storm tomorrow is a doozy and we have to make a "rough landing" in the mountains and we get stranded for an extended period of time, I am sure I will heartily enjoy my Snickers bar after devouring one of my co-passengers. That will be a nice complement to the meal, I would imagine.

Ever want to say that to someone?

I've been dealing with a person the last couple of days who is the ideal recipient of the above sentiment. She's one of those people who can make any meeting or training session inifinitely more tedious. She's very big on asking questions, but doesn't wait to hear the answer because she's busy formulating her response and coming up with the next "Yeah, but..." and it is about driving me crazy.

(Aside: I had a history teacher who said "Yeah, but" was a cross between a yak and a rabbit. He was a big one for the snappy repartee', I tell you.)

Anyway, I think there's about to be an insurrection in the ranks. It has gotten to the point that every time this woman draws breath, the rest of the group starts to roll their eyes. Someone (not me) is bound to jump on her for it before tomorrow is out, I suspect.

Greetings from glamorous Denver! I can't seem to escape winter this year. (I think a lot of folks all over the country feel this way.) There was actually a little snow outside the training center I am at today. Temperatures are in the 40s and it is windy, and I stopped at Walgreen's and bought myself an umbrella because it is supposed to precipitate three of the four days I am here.

I wish this training had been in San Diego. I really do.

I talked to Matt and Freya for quite a while tonight, and while my little girl misses me, she's doing just fine. She actually slept very well last night. She cosleeps with Matt and I, but she's usually on my right, up against the bed rail and isn't generally in contact with Matt over the course of the night. Matt said that she stayed on that side until about 2:30 last night, but then woke up a little and performed about three full rolls to get over and cuddle up against him. She just needed some company, I think. (Awww!)

I'm holding it together. I shed a couple few tears at the airport, but then as I was going through security and pulling out my laptop, I gave myself a motherf*cker of a paper cut under the fingernail of my middle finger. That hurt quite a considerable lot, and distracted me from my emotional duress. Then there ended up being four other people I knew on the flight, including the husband of one of my girlfriends who sat right next to me, so I had to keep my shit together or suffer embarassment. So I'm doing okay. I'm so relieved that things are going okay for Matt and Freya that I can handle things all right.

So since weather has been crap in my world, I have to ask about the rest of you all. Is it like spring where you are yet? Are you so over this whole winter thing?

Dear Miss Mousie:

Another month older! You're sitting on my lap right now, watching YouTube videos. I'm amazed by how many songs you learn this way. You know about a million songs and when you are happy, you are usually either singing and/or dancing. We were in Lowe's with you last night and you were doing kind of a running dance step and laughing, and one man commented at how cute you were and you had any number of amused observers watching you as we went through the store.

I leave for Denver this afternoon, and you were just putting your head on my shoulder and telling me you didn't want me to go on my trip. I told you about the trip yesterday, and you've taken it fairly well so far. But I think you know it is getting close for time for me to leave, and you're getting anxious now. It's really important for me to be very honest with you and not try to fool you and pretend like I'm not going to be gone for a few days. We talked about how today is Sunday and you and Daddy are taking me to the airport later, and tomorrow is Monday and you and Daddy will go to the zoo, and then you will go to school on Tuesday, Wednesday and Thursday, and you and Daddy will come pick me up at the airport on Thursday when school is done. I think you sort of have an understanding of how the next few days will play out. And again, I think you'll do better with the separation than I will. But you told me a few minutes ago when we were talking about my trip, "I want to cry." I said, "I do too."

We went to Cracker Barrel for a family breakfast this morning (and to watch all the "NASCAR people" as Daddy calls the patrons of CB) and you enjoyed a bowl of whipped cream from off my pancakes, a piece of bacon, and two orange wedges for breakfast. You're really quite a hearty eater, but we've got to be careful to make sure you eat "growing food" since you really love junk. Thank goodness you generally consider apples, bananas and cheese to be acceptable. You really adore spaghetti, but your all-time favorite is pizza. You can literally eat a quarter of a pizza. Dad makes homemade pizza at least once a week, and we leave the toppings off 1/4 of it, and that's all yours, baby. It is astonishing to watch you pack it away.

Lordy, baby, I am going to miss you. But this trip will be over in a blink of an eye. All of my love, Sweet Pea.

Always,
Mama

(I think "be chill" is something Erica would say. No one in my real life speaks quite that way, and I think that's a shame.)

Anyway.

I am leaving to go to Denver tomorrow for four days. Did you notice I used a singular term there? Yes, that's right. I'm making a solo trip, which means this will be the first time Freya and I have been apart longer than the course of the average work day. I am partway to freaked out.

She's going to be mainly just fine staying home with Matt. She'll have a few periods of upset because Mommy isn't around, but overall she'll be fine. But me? I'm worried that it is going to be just so hard... We were going to all load up in the car and drive down there (I have a training session for work I have to go to), but after our California trip, we realized we just couldn't put her through that kind of a car ride again so soon after.

I am going to Alaska for work in June and she and Matt will be sans Mommy for nine days then. So maybe this is good practice for us all, huh?

Let's see if I can get this damned post done without the damned computer crashing on me...like it has done 5 times the last two nights as I finished writing the post...with long links. Freakin' computer.

So we arrived the following day in the Santa Ynez valley. My grandmother lived there for about 40 years, and my aunt had moved there in the last years of my grandmother's life to be near her. My grandma died about 6 years ago, and my aunt stayed there.

The first thing we did when we drove into town was stop at the Solvang Restaurant for aebleskiver, which are little round Danish pancakes served with lignonberry jam, and they are soooo delicious. I remember them very fondly as a childhood treat when we'd visit my grandma. (Not that she prepared them--she's the woman who invented Microwave Scrambled Eggs and her culinary skills topped out there.) After getting my aebleskiver swerve on, we caught up with my aunt, who took us to a miniature horse ranch outside town. The mares were in foal, and God those babies are cute! They're about the size of a medium-sized dog, but they look and act just like a big horse does.

After Freya's nap that afternoon, we loaded back up into the car and went to some wineries. The Santa Ynez valley was semi-immortalized a few years back in the crappy critically acclaimed movie, "Sideways." We went to several different places and bought wine, though we did very little actual wine tasting. We're too cheap, since they charge you about $10 for several glasses of wine, three-quarters of which we wouldn't have liked since we're not into dry red wines. It was really just wonderful to spend time in the sunny 70-degree weather, after our long Idaho winter.

And that night, we had crappy sleep again. (You'll notice a theme with that, related to Freya's cold.)

To be continued!