ohioana

Crazy Teeth

2009-11-03T13:20:44Z

I just finished reading a book called "Devil in the White City" about the 1893 Chicago World's Fair and the serial killer who built a hotel nearby so he could kill his female tenants. It's a factual book, which made it creepier and more interesting. (I learned a lot about different buildings in Chicago, which I really like since I lived there for a summer.) At the end the serial killer gets caught and is convicted of killing three children, and it's known that he killed at least one more child. The mother of the three kids he was originally convicted of killing identified them by looking at just their teeth and hair. The rest of their bodies had started to decompose, so the coroner covered everything but teeth for her to see (and in the case of the hair, it had become detached from the head, so they just showed her that alone.) I am a little bit shocked that someone could identify even their own child just by looking at the teeth. I know identification via dental records is common, but I'm not sure I could pick out anyone in my family just by looking at their teeth. Maybe that was easier before the days of braces?

All Done

2009-10-01T20:54:37Z

I'll be 38 weeks pregnant on Monday, and I am really ready to be all done. This last leg of pregnancy is always the hardest for me. I'm not sick, but I'm really tired of being fat, awkward and otherwise restricted in my normal activities. Of course, now I know a newborn restricts your activities a lot more thoroughly than (most) pregnancies, but at least I will be on the road to feeling physically normal after delivery.

Anyway, because I know how a baby manages to totally wrap you around her little finger while keeping you from accomplishing much of anything, I decided to try to get all kinds of things done. Today, I washed the windows (we live on a relatively busy street, and they get really dirty.) That was my last "project" before I considered my major housework done. Now, I just have to get through my friend's shower on Saturday, and I'll have fulfilled all my obligations. It's weird because I really want to go to the shower and support my friend. After how hard I worked on it and how stressed I've been by it at times, I have to say that I think it will be a really nice party, and I know she wants me there, and I want to be there to cheer her on as she opens up her loot. On the other hand, I'm so done being pregnant, I'd like to go into labor right now. Hopefully Sunday afternoon, I'll be posting pictures of my baby girl. Keep your fingers crossed for me.

Let's Make a Deal

2009-09-27T00:44:41Z

As far as intellectual milestones go, there were a lot that were much more subtle and took longer to reach than I expected, starting with sippy cups. At first, Zoe would drink out of one only if you held it for her. It wasn't enough to put it on the floor near where she was playing (this was before she could walk.) Even though she had the basic motor skills -- or so I thought -- to take a drink if she wanted it, she still needed help. Today, we hit a new milestone that I think will be every bit as useful as her ability to take a drink whenever she's thirsty provided she can reach her cup.

She can now negotiate.

We were taking a walk, and I put a water bottle in the back of her stroller for me and a sippy cup of water for her. Normally, I would just have shared the water bottle between us, but she has a cold that has lasted the better part of a week, and I'm just not up for any viral nonsense at this late date. From the moment she saw the water bottle, she wanted to drink out of it. I'm sure it seemed weird to her that we kept refusing this pretty innocuous request. (2 1/2 is still too young to really get it about germs.) When it was time to start heading home from our walk, she demanded that I carry her, which is also not an option I'm willing to entertain a half a mile from my house and nine months pregnant. (My ligament pain is finally under control, and I'm not messing with that.) After a minor sidewalk tantrum and a lot of frustrating cajolling, I asked her if she would ride in the stroller if I let her have the water bottle. She immediately giggled and said "Yeeesss." Sat in the stroller the whole way home too. It worked so well, and I'm sure it wouldn't have even 6 months ago. So glad we discovered this trick before adding an extra child to the house!

It's 5:02 A.M. and...

2009-09-22T09:07:24Z

...I am awake. Thanks to this insomnia, I can't stay up much past 8:30 at night, and I feel like I haven't talked to my husband in an age. Also, if I push it and stay up in spite of the exhaustion, I get visited by mild nausea and crazy/scary Braxton Hicks contractions. On the up side, I think all these weird symptoms might mean that this kid is coming out soon.

Our cat door is malfunctioning again. It drives me crazy that it doesn't just work. The cats are not such fans of this situation either.

In a bit of good news, the shower meeting went well. The budget I was so worried about was only off by about $30, which is basically nothing when you split it over three people. At this point, we are drama free and sailing toward a nice party. It's a good feeling. Now if I can just stay pregnant till after the party, we'll be in good shape.

Irritated at 3:56 a.m.

2009-09-20T07:58:59Z

A list of things getting on my nerves right now:

I am awake. Thank you pregnancy.
Final shower committee meeting in about 13.5 hours. Budgets have not been respected. Diplomacy is harder when you are sleep-deprived.
That's pretty much it. Oh, that and I can't get back to sleep in spite of an hour and a half of trying. Good thing I have the internet.

Update

2009-09-16T13:47:35Z

There is lots of nesting going on at my house. Somehow, I always decide to purchase and rearrange furniture during the last trimester of a pregnancy. This happens whether or not purchasing furniture is in the budget. (To some extent it can't be avoided because my mom LIKES to buy baby furniture, but I always pitch in too. Last time with a couch and love seat; this time a bookshelf and a "free" swingset that cost us a couple hundred bucks to rehab.) Anyway,  the baby furniture is in and is as assembled as it's going to get until after the baby is born and my mom is done using the double bed in her room. (She's coming over for a week to help out after Amelia arives.)

After fighting with Lowes for two or three weeks over getting hardware and swing seats for the new set, I have officially been refunded close to $100, purchased swing seats at Home Depot and the set is done! Our neighbor actually came over the other day to say how nice it looks, which made me feel good. The service actually at the Lowes store was much better than I expected, but their website was terrible. They never sent me a confirmation email, even after I emailed them requesting one. They also had me expecting a phone call from my local store when my merchandise arrived, but most of what I ordered was in stock already, so there was no phone call. They were just waiting for me to show up and pick that stuff up. So that's another website I will never order from again. That puts two on my list, and makes me feel like a crazy old lady.

Also making me feel like an old lady is the fact that I can't get a flu shot soon enough and it's bugging me a lot. I'm due in mid-October, and I want to get a shot in time for the immunity to be passed on to the fetus. My OB/GYN reccommends the shot but doesn't give it. My family doc. isn't going to start giving them till late September/early October, which takes me out of premmie land and right into likely delivery time. I think they're waiting till they have the H1N1 vaccine in, which is fine.  I don't want my newborn sick with any flu, and I sure don't want the flu with a toddler and an infant to take care of. On the other hand, I'd rather be protected from just the regular flu vs. no flu protection at all.

Finally, potty training was a bust at our house.  My cousin, who has a kid who actually pees in the potty, reccommended buying Zoe some regular underwear and giving her three days to get the potty idea. We ended up just letting her run around naked from the waist down. She made progress, but as soon as we put her in underwear and pants, she started going just like she was in a diaper. No potty success whatsoever. After a week total, I got pretty sick of cleaning pee out of the carpet, and even more sick of the smell of pee in my house. So I sprinkled baking soda all over the carpet and got the pull-ups back out. We'll try again whenever I am well-rested enough to give it another go.

Dexter Season Three

2009-09-09T14:12:11Z

We've been watching Dexter Season Three on DVD the last few days. It's by far my favorite season so far. There was one scene last night where there were three serial killers in the Miami Metro PD station. It is a fascinating show, but it cracks me up that there was basically a serial killer convention on the episode we watched last night. How does anyone who's not a predator survive in the Miami depicted on that show?

Homicidial Pregnant Chick

2009-08-24T01:20:52Z

I'm at the point in pregnancy where I could probably make a daily list of things that are irritating me. I've tried to resist the urge, but here goes:

My paper shredder broke after just about a year. I hate paper shredders in general and have pounded on this one a bunch because that is the only thing that ever made it work. Yesterday my husband insisted on getting a new one (he pounds on things less than I do.) So I went to Wal*Mart today -- on a Sunday afternoon. I almost died from the crowd there. Too freaking many people in the office aisle. I hate shopping.
The soap dispenser in my dishwasher has been F-ed up lately. The little compartment inside doesn't open to let the soap tab out. The last two loads of dishes ended up being four because I had to rerun the stupid thing with the soap already dispensed. This is especially irritating because I spent $400 on that appliance just about a year and a half ago.
Planning baby showers irritates me. I have two partners on this project and they are both TERRIBLE at returning phone calls. I want some help paying for stuff and doing decorations, but damn, I also want phone calls returned. I did manage to talk to them about a decoration budget, so I'm no longer worried about being spent into poverty by someone who has no concept of how to manage money.
Paying ridiculous shipping to get the baby shower invitations I want. Cards = $27 Shipping $15. I shopped around A LOT, I couldn't get a better deal than that. Sometimes the cards cost more, sometimes the shipping, but it was always right around $42, and no place had them in stock except the freaking internet.
Ligament pain -- can't go more than 2 days without it, can't get to the pool as often as every other day.
I keep waking up at 5:30 in the morning, even on days when I'm not going to the pool, and it sucks. The only way I can get back to sleep is on my back, which the doctor thinks may kill me.
My kid has nightmares now. This doesn't so much irritate me as upset me (and her -- a lot)

In contrast, here are some things that make me happy:

Zoe is showing a new interest in the potty, and gets excited to sit on it. So far, she mostly sits on it in her diaper, but she will go bare butt if she's about to get in the tub. I never wanted to spend money on pull-ups (I know about a million people who claim that their kid finally learned to use the potty when they stopped buying those things) but I think they may help her. She's still attached to the idea of diapers, but she likes the potty too. If she could easily pull down her diaper, she'd use it a lot more readily, I'm sure.
My handyman is all done refinishing the bedroom set we are passing on to my cousin. It looks tons better, and I think my grandma (the original owner) would like that it's going on to help my cousin the way it helped me when I moved out on my own.
Amelia's room is coming together nicely. It's going to be overstuffed with furniture till my cousin comes to get the old bedroom set, but it's better to have too much than too little.
We got a new bookshelf this weekend. It has doors on the bottom. That's one whole room I know my baby won't mess up by pulling all the books off the shelf. Two more bookcase upgrades, and we'll have a house where all the adults' books stay on the shelves.
I'll be 32 weeks tomorrow. That means only 5 to 8 more weeks of pregnancy, and then boom! baby.

Temporary Pool

2009-08-18T11:51:40Z

Today I swam at my temporary pool for the first time. Overall the facility is nicer than the one I normally use. It's newer, the locker room is much bigger, the showers have little shelves for shampoo etc., the temperature control actually works, and the pool itself seems newer/cleaner. Still, I miss my normal pool.

For one thing, the pool I swam in today is outdoor, which feels nice, but there are no rafters to keep my straight when I swim on my back. Therefore, I kept hitting the lane divider or swimming into my lane-mate's space. That was very bad because I was sharing with a guy who swam pretty fast. It's always embarrassing to ram another swimmer because you're totally out of your own space, but I actually thought it might be dangerous between his speed and my pregnancy. Fortunately, he managed to swim around me or I realized that I was way out of my half of the lane before we rammed each other. It was probably funny for the life guard to watch me realize I was on the wrong side of the lane, try to stand up, realize that this pool has a deep end (unlike my normal one) and sputter back over to where I was supposed to be. As a result of this problem, I only swam on my back about half as much as usual. Very sad since the back stroke is a treat for me while I'm in the water.

Another thing I didn't expect to even notice was the depth of the shallow end. My normal pool is about 4 ft. 6 in. deep all the way across. This pool is a foot shorter in the shallow end, which made a big difference for my mid-swim and final stretching. I really like stretching in the water, and it was weird to have a foot less of water around me while I worked my back.

On the upside, I really liked watching the sky change color as it got lighter out, and it felt good to be in outside air as I swam. Also, everyone I encountered at this pool was really friendly, and there were no water aerobics classes going on while I was there. I hate the way those old women swarm the locker room after their class, and it was nice to skip that irritation today. Also, this pool is closer to my house than the one at the Y, so that's a plus too. We'll see if it's weird to switch back to the normal routine in three weeks.

What's Up

2009-08-16T19:11:41Z

So here's what's up in the Hunter household lately:

Both the lights on our fairly new (less than 1 year old) garage door opener went out simultaneously. Also, I saw a wire hanging out of it. So I called and found out it was still under warranty, and asked the guy who installed it to come back out. When he got here, he told me the one bulb had come unscrewed from the motion of the opener and the other one was just blown. Then he told me that the wire was supposed to be hanging down (it's the antenna) and lightbulbs aren't warrantied, and that he had to charge me $70 for a five-minute service call. I called his boss and said I thought it was a little extreme to charge me $70 to put in two light bulbs, especially after I confirmed that the warranty was still in effect etc. The boss got really irritated, told me to "just forget it" and hung up. So I got the visit free. While I was on the phone, the tech noticed a loose hinge on the garage door and insisted on tightening all the bolts and spraying lube on the door tracks before he left. That made me feel kind of crappy since I wasn't paying, but now everything should work for a while longer, and it was free.
Our cat door (also less than a year old) broke too. It's an infrared one that is designed to keep animals other than your pets from coming in the house. It's great when it works, but the collars the cats have to wear to activate it break with alarming regularity. Usually I go back to Petsmart to replace the collars, but this week they were out. So I ordered one from Amazon, and khslinky taped the little tab that keeps the door from opening for unwanted animals down so the cats could get in and out without our help. When I got the new collar in the mail and put the batteries back in the door, it beeped and beeped. Zoe, who was supposed to be napping, pointed out that "There must be a siren." Eventually I figured out that the door had to be programed to recognize the collars, and it was beeping to let me know it was ready for that. So I fixed that with no help.
We've been to the pool twice in the last week. No one looked at my boobs, but I did manage to get Zoe out of the sand and into the water, which was a major accomplishment.
Baby shower madness is starting. Gifts have been purchased, remain to be purchased and I think I need to talk to my bff's little sister to make sure she isn't spending mad money on decorations for that shower. I'm obligated to pay for a portion of all that stuff, and I respect my budget, even if my friend's sister hasn't ever heard of one of those before.
Lots of ligament pain at my house. I might buy some kind of a maternity girdle, but I'm going to try getting more sleep. It seems like that helps all the little aches and pains that go along with producing a new life.
My exercise pool is closed for 3 weeks, so I have to swim at a different place. That's going to cause some scheduling difficulties because I don't want to bother getting Z used to a new nursery. So I'm going in the morning before khslinky leaves for work. Hope that works out because I need to swim now more than I usually do.
khslinky has decided to jog on the mornings rain is so likely that he can't ride his bike to work without being overly concerned about getting soaked on his way there or on his way home. That is going to make swimming an extra challenge.
That is all.

Dollhouse Revie

2009-08-16T18:47:42Z

We finished up Dollhouse the other night, and I really like it -- in spite of all the extra ribs on display. Personally, I find the premise more interesting than Buffy (They were both made by Joss Whedon), and it's nice to watch a show about more adult characters. In theory, all the dolls or actives signed a five year contract that states they are willing to have their personalities erased and replaced with whatever personality a client wants them to have. They are all gorgeous and able to assume whatever traits they have assigned to them.

Eliza Dushku (Faith from Buffy) is the main character, and generally people were concerned that she wouldn't be able to play a different character every week. She actually does a pretty good job assuming different roles for short periods of time. The supporting cast is fantastic too. One actress is half Tibetan and half Australian, which makes her very interesting to look at, and she has a great command of accents. Another actor on the show has a very Russian/Slovic/something-like-that name, but grew up in the U.S. He's also very good at assuming different accents. This puts their performances a little above Dushku's just because part of making a character convincing is getting all that voice stuff right. However, she does a passable job with the accents, and it's fun watching her every episode and seeing who she'll be.

Of course, the plot thickens because Dushku's character (Echo) and the other two actors I just described (Sierra is the woman's character and Victor is the man's) are all gradually building some awareness of their actual selves throughout the first season. Even though they signed up for the program, they all resent it too. And there's the ever-present question of why a person would sign up for what amounts to a pretty extreme type of voluntary slavery, and why (other than money) a brain-wiping technology would be developed. These things are explored in the first season, but the writer's leave plenty more questions than they do answers, which makes the prospect of season two pretty exciting.

Of course, there are some flaws. There's at least one fight scene in every episode, which seems unnecessary given the plot. Also, people tend to get stronger once they get shot, hit ridiculously hard etc. By the end of the season, I was cracking jokes about how shooting one of the dolls or the FBI agent who's out to expose the dollhouse only ensured the shooter's demise. My husband thinks Buffy did a much better job of accounting for this kind of thing because there was magic involved, and violence was a more necessary part of the premise. He has a good point when he says that the straight sci-fi format makes the flaws stand out more. However, I like the way the show wrestles with the nature of humanity and the importance of personality. I think it's worth the trade-off, and I'll be interested to see if the flaws become less noticeable as the show matures.

F U Babies R Us (and also JCPenny)

2009-08-12T18:43:13Z

I know a lot of people who are pregnant right now, a couple of them for the first time. So I've been spending more time (and money) browsing registries online. Also, I am in charge of planning a baby shower, so I am perhaps a little over-involved with that friend's registry process. We just end up talking about her shower a lot because we're both excited about it.

After a lot of exposure to the whole process of registering over the last couple years, I'd like to flip the bird to the people who design retail websites.

My friend wanted to register at both Babies R Us and Penny's. Should be no problem, Penny's sent her a catalog full of baby items, and she decided that was the bedding she wanted. So she walked into the JCPenny store, and asked how to register. Turns out you can only register/shop a baby registry at Penny's online. That's the dumbest thing I've ever heard. It is especially dumb given the email I got from them a couple weeks ago that showed me items I couldn't click on to purchase. Nope, if I wanted grown-up sheets, I had to drive to the store. Baby sheets are in some other category which requires you to shop online only. My husband refers to this as a "poorly integrated" web/store prescence. I'm more inclined to call it dumb-assery. Raise your hand if you think it's very likely that some grandparents, great aunts etc. won't walk into Penny's expecting to buy a baby gift and leave totally confused and sure that my friend didn't actually register there. (I'm planning to make a note on the invitations to reduce this effect, but I'm sure someone will still be utterly confused.)

Babies R Us is better, but still highly irritating. My friend registered there yesterday and asked me to look over the items she'd chosen so I could point out anything I thought she'd need but didn't ask for. Somewhere around half of the items on her registry are available only in the store. They don't bother to picture those items and they only sometimes tell you the price. For big things like strollers not letting people buy online *maybe* makes sense, (the cost of shipping would probably keep most people from buying), but for things like bottles and dishwasher baskets, it's really frustrating. Especially when you are shopping for someone who lives out of town, as I did for another friend last night. I don't even like the stuff I got her all that much, but I ordered it because I could just click and be done, and because I know she wants it.

In conclusion, I know very little about logistics, website design, or registry design, but I know that somehow, somewhere, someone screwed this up royally. I'm sure there's a marketing guy out there congratulating himself on driving people into his store because he made so much stuff unavailable online. Hopefully he's about to retire because he is an incompetent old man. Also, I now appreciate Amazon a lot more than I did this time last week. Site works, relatively little B.S. Makes me happy.

Fainting Away

2009-07-31T16:16:26Z

We were watching Doll House on DVD last night, and I noticed that the main character had a lot of ribs showing in her chest. I used to be able to see two or three when I weighed 135 pounds. At that weight, my vision went black if I worked out too hard, and I occassionally fainted. Then we switched to eating a ridiculously healthy diet, I gained ten pounds and boom, I could do normal physical activity without becoming pasty white, losing vision for a few minutes or actually passing the fuck out. It was a big improvement even though I didn't look as cute in my jeans anymore.

Seeing that actress, who is thin in a way I never was thanks to my hips, astounded me because I counted at least five ribs showing between her neck and her boobs. I didn't even know there were that many bones in that span of chest. Anyway, it made
khslinky and me wonder if there are women just fainting all over Hollywood all the time. If being at the medium-low end of what's considered a healthy weight for someone my height made me faint, imagine how often those little waifs must just drop over. Anyone in California notice a silent epidemic of fainting actresses?

Quotation Marks

2009-07-25T11:34:48Z

I picked up Andersonville at the library early this week. I'm about halfway through it, and it's fascinating if not uplifting. It's about a prison camp in Anderson, Georgia during the Civil War. (I always cringe when I find out that there's another book on the list of Pulitzers about the Civil War. It is a BIG DEAL in our history, and they have all been extremely well done, but damn, it takes a lot of emotional energy to revisit that topic over and over.)

Anyway, aside from teaching me a lot about prison and why I'd probably die inside one, the book has no quotation marks. This is not the first Pulitzer I've read without any. (It's amazingly easy to tell when people are speaking even when the only notation is a new paragraph.) So khslinky did a little quick internet research for me (he was already logged on) and discovered that quote marks have been in common usage since at least the 17th century. I wonder what stylistic quirk made at least two or three Pulitzer authors drop them sometime between the forties and the sixties. Also, I've decided not to try that for myself. It's tolerable because the books are so good, but it really doesn't do anything to draw the reader in or change the experience of reading for the better. It's just a weird adjustment you have to make while you get into the book.

Stupid Correct Advice or How Nesting Almost Killed Me

2009-07-20T14:39:14Z

Last time I was pregnant, I kept hearing about how I shouldn't let my nesting instinct actually make me do anything other than possibly decorate the nursery. My windows should remain unwashed, my refrigerator disgustingly dirty, my oven a wreck and my garage a home for every stray leaf in the neighborhood. I headed that advice and spent the better part of a year (from about 6 months of pregnancy to Zoe's six month mark) or a little longer looking at all the dirty stuff in our house, and wishing I had cleaned it when I had some freaking time. This time around, I decided to go ahead and nest. That instinct is there for a reason, why fight it?

Well, I found out yesterday afternoon. My in-laws came and spent a really nice weekend with us. Their visit combined with my natural need for cleanliness got me to clean closets and all the other stuff listed above. Then my kid hardly slept while they were here. Who knows why, but my sleep was cut short by a couple hours every night. Yesterday afternoon, the in-laws left and I found myself crying on the toilet because the pain in my side would not go away. I called the doctor on-call, who obviously wanted to be doing something else, and determined that since I wasn't bleeding or contracting, I'd probably pulled a ligament (seems like I should've noticed when that happened and not hours later while laying on the couch). So I popped a couple of Tylenol and promptly checked out of all parenting duties for the rest of the night.

Turns out some of what you read is true. Nesting is evil. So is sleep deprivation. Yeesh.

Awkward at the Kiddie Pool

2009-07-11T12:24:20Z

This summer, Zoe and I have been spending a lot of time at the local water park. It's largely designed for kids, with a big sand area and lots of wading area. (More wading area than I've ever seen at a local pool before to tell the truth.) My kid loves the sand area, which is sad for me because I like hanging out in the water.

Yesterday we were in the sand area, as usual, and we came across a kid who was buried up to his head in sand. Even though he was pretty well trapped, his friends kept piling the sand on. I watched for long enough to be sure that he was happy to be so buried. (I was sure he agreed to it to begin with, but sometimes you change your mind once you're immobilized.) One of the younger kids kept talking about how he was going to bury his head and kill the nice boy who had agreed to be buried. The other kids stopped him though, and the kid in the sand didn't seem too bothered by it. Eventually though, (as the only adult who was hanging out in the sand underneath the playground equipment), I did tell the bratty little kid to stop dumping sand in the buried kids hair and I had to tell another boy to NOT sit on the buried boy when he wanted to get up. That was probably the first time since Zoe was born that I just took advantage of the fact that I am now obviously an adult with authority over kids. I didn't even know any of their names, but I felt totally justified bossing them around. Still, I kept expecting one of them to point out that I wasn't in charge of them and I should leave them alone. My back up plan for that eventuality was to go tattle to a lifeguard.

Even more awkward than bossing a bunch of pre-teen boys around was when I retreated to a nearby bench. There was a fine coating of sand all over me, and I was giving Zoe a little space to keep messing around in the sand/water area. So I'm sitting there obviously pregnant, and a kid who had hit puberty but was still too young to know how to handle it came over and sat down next to me on the bench and announced that every time he comes to the pool he digs a big hole by the bench. I asked him if he wanted me to move, and he got really uncomfortable and said he just had wanted to tell me about his hobby. Then he went a few feet away and started digging a big hole, like a much younger kid would've. Nothing about this story makes it clear, but I'm pretty sure, he just wanted to talk to me for a second so he could get a better look at my very enlarged, pregnant rack, which was glittering with sand. It was kind of hilarious because I feel totally unattractive at this point, but it was awkward too. Now I'm planning to adjust my swimsuit to cover a little more.

Reading and Shopping

2009-07-09T18:05:26Z

Lately, I've been reading magazines a ton. This is because joining a book club ruined my novel reading habit. I always read the book for the club, and then think I will pick up whatever the next one is after our next meeting. It seems like a good idea, and like a way to expand my reading list (because I have to read some stuff I wouldn't normally.) In fact, my book club is extremely flaky (this is a theme with me and clubs.) We only managed to meet about 1/3 of the time we are supposed to, so I go long periods of time with no book to read. Today, I finally went back to the list of Pulitzer winners I was reading my way through when I joined this club, and requested one from the library. (On a related note, I found out that HBO is looking at making a series based on Middlesex, which I'm really excited about. That was a fantastic book.) Anyway, now I should have something to do with my down time that doesn't involve the internet or waiting desperately for the mail man to show up with the latest batch of magazines.

Aside from increasing my ability to look down my nose at all the people in the world who've never even attempted to read every Pulitzer Prize Winning Novel out there, I'm hoping this will help me fight the urge to shop. Once the internet runs out, I always end up wanting to buy something I don't really need. It would be a lot healthier to have a book to read instead. Also, it would make my husband happy if I didn't just sit around thinking up stuff to buy.

All Pixar's Fault

2009-06-22T12:40:30Z

Most of our TV time is now spent watching kids' videos. Zoe likes just about whatever we put in for her, but we have to be a little bit careful to choose videos that don't scare her. The first half of "Finding Nemo" really gets to her, and so do various scenes in "Shrek." Instead we end up watching things like the "Little People" and "Bob the Builder."

In "Little People", the characters are mostly children, all of whom are very nice, but have few other personality characteristics. The adults they interact with treat them almost as equals and everyone is exetremely dumb. We joke that the black kid in the show is the only smart person in all of Little People world. It shows because he speaks very, very rarely. We assume that he realizes that everyone around him is a total idiot, but as the only smart person, his best option is to just keep his mouth shut and pretend he doesn't notice. On the other hand, maybe the writers were a little racist and just didn't give him any lines.

"Bob the Builder" is a little better, but the adults in the show sometimes suffer from fears and misconceptions that no adult would really entertain. They also spell out their reasoning in a way that makes them look dumb. Of course, this is so kids can relate to them more easily, but it's really startling from an adult perspective. We know we are watching a kids' show, but we expect the characters to be believable from our own point of view. I totally blame Pixar for this state of affairs. They make everyone else look bad in comparison.

Baby Post

2009-06-12T17:41:50Z

Most people know by now that the new baby is a girl. I was predicting a boy and thinking of the baby as "Sam" (short for Samuel not Samantha) whenever I felt her move. It made me really happy that we had the ultra sound. It only took me about six hours to switch over to thinking of her as Amelia. For the record, I'm always happy to bring a baby girl home from the hospital. I was convinced this kid was a boy because my morning sickness was manageable this time -- not because I'm one of those crazy women who want to avoid daughters at all costs.

Now that we know we're having a girl, I'm getting geared up to get the room ready. We picked out some girlie border to make the green room seem less neutral. Then we'll get some furniture (via my overly generous mother) and have some curtains made. There's a lady I found who makes baby blankets for about $50 a pop, so I'm hoping she'll do curtains for a similarly reasonable price. All this rearranging of things is making me want to spend tons of money on other furniture/stuff for the house. I'd love a new bookshelf for our room, so we could move one of the little ones into Amelia's room. Also, I think it'd be nice to put ceiling fans in the kids' rooms (they fascinate and calm crying babies), update the other two we already have in the house and get new curtains for our room too. A conservative estimate for the cost of completing all these projects at once is $1,200. Unless I make the stock market really work for me, the fans will have to wait -- especially since khslinky is sick of spending money on this house.

In extra baby news, my best friend is also pregnant. So I'm planning her baby shower too. She's due only about a month after me, and I'm a little afraid I will be in the hospital delivering Amelia on the day of the shower. I've recruited another friend of hers and her little sister to help with the planning and execution so the party can go on without me. This is a fine plan, but I'm not very good at group work. I really prefer just to do things myself if I'm able. We're meeting up tomorrow to make a plan. I hope it all goes smoothly because the thing I most hate about group work is having to diplomatically tell people that their ideas are dumb/expensive or otherwise unworkable. I should feel better after our little get-together tomorrow.

Home Again, Home Again

2009-05-26T01:55:32Z

We went to PA for the first time since Jan. for the long weekend. It was easily our best trip back in a couple of years. It's hard to say exactly what made it so good, but we all really enjoyed ourselves. Some of it is that Zoe is traveling better these days. She slept reasonably well (though not quite normally) at her Grandpap's house, and she remembered being in Pittsburgh before. That means she was excited to go back and eat the cookies and hot dogs that Grandpap always stocks up on for us.

Another key to such a successful trip was not overscheduling ourselves. We saw
khslinky 's best friend for an evening, and we went to his aunt's house for a picnic. That meant we got to see the whole family in one fell swoop. For a short trip, that is ideal. Then this morning we went up to the elementary school and let Zoe play in the playground for a while before we packed up and left. Perhaps the nicest moment of the whole trip was when I saw my husband (who had been showering when she asked to go up to the swings) come up the hill waving to let me know he was at the park.

The final key to such a nice trip was that I managed to keep all political discussions brief and calm. Instead of talking about things I know bring out disagreements, we played cards a lot. That was more fun for everyone, and I am convinced it helped me look more reasonable and less silly than normal.

After having such a good trip this time around, I am excited to go back for the Fourth of July. However, it makes me dread our first trip in with the new baby a little extra. It's going to be tough to go back to hauling a ridiculous amount of stuff in between houses and having to deal with the havoc of a baby off its regular schedule again. Of course, I have some hope that our experience as parents will kick in and things will go more smoothly for baby2, but that really remains to be seen.

Planet Earth from the BBC

2009-05-16T17:46:19Z

Kent recently bought me the Planet Earth series from the BBC, and I'm addicted. I have learned a lot of interesting facts, seen some astoundingly beautiful photography and been fascinated by at least one aspect of each episode so far (I'm about half way through the series.)

Anyway, here are some things that have struck me about the series so far:

Motherhood is a bitch. This is a universal truth. It's also wonderful, but the sacrifices animals make to reproduce are life threatening in most cases. As near as I can tell from this series almost all bears, some whales, and a variety of birds drive themselves to near starvation so they can give birth/have their young hatch in areas that are free of predators. No predators generally means no food, so while the mothers are nursing their young, they are totally unable to hunt. This will go on for MONTHS. Polar bears lose half their body weight while they're denned up with new born cubs (males do the same during the bad hunting season, but at least they eat baby bears if they see them rather than nursing them through that time.) Hump back whales give hundreds of gallons of milk a day to their young, and eat nothing for 8 months. Then there are the penguins. That's a mess of starvation and crazy travel for both males and females.
Panda bears suffer from some of the dumbest evolution out there. The next time some creationist whack job tries to tell me that God has to exist otherwise nature wouldn't be so efficient and beautiful, I'm throwing the giant panda in his face. The only food they eat is bamboo, which is so nutritionally useless they cannot build up fat reserves. That means they can't hibernate or even leave the very specific elevations where the bamboo grows. It grows high up, so for a lot of the year, they're just hanging out in crazy cold temperatures trying to eat enough to sustain themselves. Almost all the other animals at their elevation either switch their diet in the winter or go down the mountain, but not the Panda. It just suffers. Also, they are giant, but they give birth to tiny tiny offspring (a process which takes hours), and then spend crazy amounts of time raising them because their milk is so poor (on account of their crappy diet) that the baby grows very slowly. If God's so great, He should have done better by the panda.
It is crazy how much more sympathy I have for mammals than other creatures. I wouldn't expect my loyalty to extend much past primates, but mammals of any kind outrank fish, reptiles, spiders, insects etc. I felt terrible for the bat that fell into a colony of a billion coachroaches and got eaten,and I hated watching seals get eaten by great white sharks (although it was an impressive sight). I was torn watching lion take down an elephant. I felt terrible for the elephant but glad that the lions got to eat. On the other hand, when they show fish being hunted, I just think it's interesting animal behavior. And I flat get tired of the birds, even though many of them are neat to see. I just don't care about them that much.
At the end of every episode they give you a behind the scenes look at filming the most difficult segment in an episode. At first I was really impressed by the quality of the equipment they use. Their cameras are super fancy -- some of them are attached to helicopters, but have enough stabilization software in them to create truly gorgeous pictures. However, the rest of the operation looks kind of like a Rube Goldberg operation. In the episode where they filmed a shark jumping out of the water and slowed it down to 1/40th of it's actual speed, they used a camera that constantly streamed footage into a computer, but the guy holding the camera was held in the boat by a bike rim secured to the boat from two sides. (They had to go fast to catch up to the sharks, and he wanted to be sure he didn't fall in.) Also, the camera was jury-rigged with a doorbell button that he pushed when he wanted the camera to remember what it had just filmed. A door bell added to a camera that may be worth more than my house.
Yesterday Kent mentioned that it's crazy how much Zoe knows about animals that live a thousand miles or more from her (she watches kid videos about animals, and will sometimes even watch this series.) That got me thinking about how much more interested I am in episodes about things like deep caves, rainforests and shallow seas than I am about more familiar surroundings. It's weird, but I'd almost rather learn about something I'll probably never see in person than I would about the kind of forest I could easily hike through near my house.

How It's Going

2009-04-26T11:34:37Z

So here's a quick list of how it's going at our house.

We had the yard chemically treated for weeds for the first time. I hate putting chemicals down to kill dandelions and thistles because I just don't think they matter that much. (Also, I'm convinced that treating my lawn killed half the frogs in North America thanks to several articles I've read, including one in a recent issue of National Geographic.) However, the yard looks tons better and the neighbors probably hate us a little less now.
There is sand all over our house, thanks to the sand box and the fact that starting at 2T most shorts have pockets in them.
My dining room smells like play doh.
Yes, I'm planning to clean tomorrow.
My morning sickness is mostly gone, but I wear out with ridiculous ease and that brings it back.
I remember a friend of mine telling me that pregnancy sucks because it is like a diet...you can never stop thinking about it. This is really true for me this time around. I'm so frustrated that my stamina is down. I really like being able to get stuff done!
My kid just woke up. Time to start the day!

A Bunch of Lists

2009-04-05T12:45:57Z

Things That Scare Me

skamille 's back muscles...okay not really, but that's mostly because we live far apart, and I'm not sure I could find her at all without a fair amount of help. However, I am very impressed by how strong she is. I recently read an article for women about how to begin strengthening their shoulders, and I thought, "Skamille could kick this article's ass." It's an opinion I'm willing to stand by.
Komodo Dragons. This one is for real. Pregnancy seems to implant me with random fears as well as a small ball of cells. Komodo Dragons somehow got to be the main fear this time around. And it seems legit to me too. Check out these facts: Komodos will actively hunt people, they run fast, AND they can climb trees. I'm pretty sure their bites are poisonous and that they don't have to be starving to hunt a person. They just do it if we're available. Also, I'm pretty sure the Cincinattie Zoo has a couple of those suckers in captivity. What if they get out and come to my town?!!!
I am very afraid lately that I will always regret my educational and career choices. I do have a plan to re-enter the workforce, and that helps some, but I wish I'd been more focused on making money from the get go. And when I look back at my post-college jobs, I feel like I always ended up being a glorified secretary whose main job was making my boss look smart, when in fact I was much brighter than the person in charge. (There is one exception to this, but there was no room to grow in that job.)

Things That Irritate Me

Morning sickness. I know lots of people go through it, but I am starting to feel my arm muscles weaken from lack of swimming. This stage is super irritating because it means I've been too sick to exercise for a few weeks, and I still feel too fragile to get back to normal activity. So frustrating. (Here, I must give tonapah a ton of credit for being a trooper during her bed rest, which would make me triple crazy, I'm sure.)
A toddler who is no longer napping well. I had resorted to taking her on a car ride everyday to get her to sleep, but the last two days she woke up when I pulled into the garage. I really need that midday break thanks to my stupid morning sickness. I think her sleep is moving to the night, which is going to be rough on me, since Kent was watching her from 8:30 on. If she starts going to bed at 8:00 with no nap, well that's about two extra hours of kid-duty for me.
All the things I want to do, but don't have the energy for. My house is still a wreck, my flower beds need to be weeded, and I've basically stopped writing. Not my normal MO at all.

Things That Make Me Happy

Our first ultrasound is on Thursday. I love seeing the baby for the first time.
We've been seeing a fair amount of sun lately, which I love. And most of the stuff I planted last year looks like it lived, which is exciting! I've never managed to successfully plant anything and have it survive before.
The fact that my husband lets me take naps on the weekends. Even if the kid is not sleeping, he lets me grab a little extra rest. So nice!

Crazy

2009-03-18T00:17:10Z

Tonight Kent and I were talking about my morning sickness, and I mentioned that I was a hundred times worse last pregnancy. He said, "Really? I wouldn't have said that at all."

To be clear, I almost died last time. (I didn't actually even have to go to the hospital for hydration, but it was awful.) For 18 weeks straight I felt like a cancer patient. My mom was in chemo at the time and we were neck and neck for symptoms to complain about. I slept all the time for weeks because sleeping was the only relief I could find. I rarely threw up, but I wanted to every day, and I seriously almost died.

And yet, somehow, my husband -- who is very supportive and kind to me -- hadn't noticed that this time was better, what with the hours I have every day where I feel pretty normal. The fact that I smile occasionally didn't tip him off either. I guess that just goes to show you how much childcare he's taken on this time around. This pregnancy feels a lot harder to him in spite of the fact that I am not just a member of the living dead.

My Fetus Is A Health Nut

2009-03-08T13:39:06Z

I love junk food. Chocolate, ice cream, the occasional quarter pounder with cheese, and just about anything else the clogs arteries and widens rear ends. Normally, I keep my desire to eat terrible food in check by not having any in the house and indulging only to lift a terrible mood or because the opportunity arose when I was out somewhere.

Apparently that is not enough for my fetus. This kid, who just recently developed an opening where his/her mouth will be (but has not lips yet), makes me pay for any junk food I eat. I had a Happy Meal from McDonald's a couple weeks ago. I was sick for two days. Cake and ice cream at a kids party, and I barely made it through the evening.

As long as I eat both constantly and relatively sensibly, I seem to do okay on the morning sickness front, but you know fatty foods are appealing. My mom is probably making some yummy roast for dinner tonight, and I'm half afraid to eat any because it might set off a full day of horribleness. The two exceptions to this rule are Sprite and hard candy discs (like cinnamon or butterscotch.) Both of those calm my stomach and leave my mouth tasting ridiculously sugary.

The upside is that this new very strict version of what I try to do for myself anyway will probably keep me from gaining too much weight in the first trimester. (So far, I don't think I've gained any in spite of the constant eating. It's a little weird too because my belly looks like it did in month four last time.) The downside is that I am really, really tired of all the food we have in our house. I eat probably 30 pretzels a day, not to mention toast, crackers and whatever other bland food I can find in the house. I know this will be over soon, but I really miss regular food.

Now, I am off to make butter noodles for breakfast because that sounds oddly soothing. At least it's not another freaking pretzel.