I WON!!!!!

My wreath project is going to be in the holiday issue of ReadyMade magazine!!

Hi!  Sorry for the blog lull. I had to suspend my blogging for a little while to rush off to Washington to fix the economy. Sadly, economy-fixing turns out to not be my strong suit. Mea culpa.

As a friend of mine so eloquently put it earlier this morning “Jeez, am I gonna have to boil up a shoe for dinner soon?”

(Mmm… shoe.)

Anyway. Last week we found out that our health insurance plan is going up $400 a month. Not up TO $400 a month… up $400 a month from what we are already paying. (!!!???) They are trying to subtly phase out our particular health insurance plan and encourage us to switch to one with less coverage by not paying boofuckdiddley for it anymore. (They are all about the subtlety.) But of course, if we wish to pick up the slack ourselves, we are by all means encouraged to do so. Arms and legs are considered acceptable forms of payment, since they are worth more than American currency these days, anyway.

The week before that, we got a reassuring email from HR that even if AIG went under, our retirement accounts with them were still perfectly safe. No, really. We will not be spending our twilight years in a van down by the river. They promise.

HR is totally off my Christmas card list this year. Even more so that the HR department at my old company that used to have us all come in to work at 7 in the morning sometimes for company breakfasts to “improve morale.” (If you want to improve my morale, you can start by not asking me to come to work at 6:45 on a Tuesday morning for rehydrated eggs and weak coffee and morale-boosting. I’m just sayin’.)

Also, I bank with Wachovia. Well, I used to bank with Wachovia. Now I apparently bank with Citigroup, although we are considering switching to the First National Bank of Mattress Stuffing. Luckily for me, I spent pretty much all my money on gas, so if they do collapse and take my life savings with them, I won’t lose much sleep over that $14.67.

I wonder if anybody still makes conversion vans? Those are pretty comfy, with the blinds and all. I bet you could have a real nice retirement in a conversion van.

Dars Bar. Much better than it sounds. Much, much.

We have survived another bedtime and a stock market collapse, and there is merlot and also brownies.  So it’s not all bad, right? Even if AIG does go tits up tomorrow and they can’t fix Texas, the brownies have walnuts and there are three more bottles of merlot in the wine cabinet. Geez, the news is bad these days.

Babynews: Cherry can sit up by herself.  So we lowered the crib mattress and she immediately used the crib bars to pull herself up to a standing position. Not sure what good can come of that, but we are going to get her a metal cup to bang on the bars and maybe some dry crusts of bread and teach her some of the songs from Les Mis. At naptime today we hadn’t lowered the mattress yet, and just in case she got it into her head to to a half-gainer out of bed I put three pillows and a featherbed topper on the floor next to the crib and told her to try to stick the landing. We have also pressure-washed most of the nursery from last week’s great poo debacle. Thank you for the onesie tips. She usually does wear onesies, it’s just that last week she had a bit of a heat rash on her tum so she was kicking it like a sumo wrestler for a couple of days. That’ll teach us.

Nonbabynews: I sent in a submission to the MacGyver thingie in this month’s ReadyMade. Cross your fingers. I mean, I won’t win, I never win anything, but I am eternally optimistic.

Okay, this is not true. Once in the eighth grade I won a t-shirt from a local radio station in Philly and they went off the air two weeks later. Also, I won a “leatherette” business card file once at work. No, I don’t know what leatherette is, either. It was tan, and the plastic sleeves weren’t the right size for business cards.

But! Optimism, yes?  The objet of the month was prescription bottles, and luckily for me between childbirth, foot surgery, neck injury and Sneaky Pete’s acid reflux, boy did we have a load of those things rolling around here. When life gives you lemons, right? I made a wreath. If I don’t win, I’ll show it to you.

I am reading a very interesting book about math. I know. I am as surprised about that as you are.

poomageddon
pooh•muh•ged•din /n./

A cataclysmic event occurring when a baby that has been put down for her morning nap removes her diaper and then decides that last night’s butternut squash and corn do not agree with her digestive system.

(See also: shit storm)

Today is the second anniversary of that time we got married!

It is also the one year anniversary of the first time we went to our favorite barbecue restaurant. Slightly less romantic, I admit.

The first time we went there was for dinner on our first anniversary. I was five months pregnant and could barely fit into the booth.  It was also the first restaurant we took Cherry to, when she was about a month old and we were still too new-parent scared to take her out in public very often in case she exploded or something.

We celebrated by going out to breakfast this morning, since Sneaky Pete works on Tuesday nights this semester and I have an illustration job due on Friday. So since this evening he will be teaching calculus and I will be drinking tea and drawing monsters, we went out for pancakes and coffee.

He gave me a beautiful light green kimono that he got in Kyoto that has wedding cranes embroidered on the back. I gave him two yellow walls. We started sharing an office after Cherry came along and started taking up a whole bedroom by herself. I wanted an aqua work space so it would be calm and peaceful. He wanted a yellow work space so it would be cheerful and energetic, but he said if I wanted it to be aqua that was fine with him.  The room was originally a kind of a taupe color that ended up looking battleship grey and was really depressing to work in. (I don’t know what I was thinking. That’ll teach me to try to be classy. I am just not a taupe kind of girl.)

So I split the difference, and while he was gone, I painted my corner aqua and his corner yellow. I was a little worried that it would look like a circus, but the two colors ended up complementing each other and it turned out to be a very happy little room. I left one wall open with no furniture on it except for Cherry’s play yard so we can slide her back and forth between us while we’re working. That’s her office. She rolls around in there and bites things. It’s a tough job, but those plastic keys are not going to bite themselves.

He also got me this teensy little bobblehead doll, which now lives on my desk:

He says it’s a Cherry action figure, and darned if it doesn’t look just like her. I mean, apart from the pig suit. And the funny little palm tree.

It’s been two awfully nice years.

a road.
September, 2008
(I know, I do see some awfully exciting scenery, don’t I?)

This morning I went and had some blood taken for some lab work for my new doctor. I don’t remember what all they’re testing for, but it’s nothing exciting… thyroid, cholesterol, making sure I’m not a Vulcan, that sort of thing. My new doctor’s office is right across the street from my old doctor’s office. We broke up because I found out he’d gotten into some trouble with the DEA. Something about over-prescribing controlled substances, which just makes me mad as a wet hen because that is Wrong, and also because the man never prescribed anything stronger than vitamins for me. And chromium supplements. He was big on the chromium supplements. Alternative medicine in general, actually. Sneaky Pete spent six months once drinking turmeric milkshakes at his advice, which were both pricey and distasteful, and as far as I could tell mostly all they did was turn his lips orange.

The dueling doctor’s offices are in the middle of a whole bunch of nothing. You drive down a little two-lane highway for a while and then there’s a little patch of doctor’s offices and kudzu that springs up out of nowhere. I’m little worried that I am going to run into my old doctor in the parking lot, and it’ll be like when you run into your old boyfriend when you are out with your new boyfriend and everyone feels awkward because you know he knows you’re getting your blood pressure checked by somebody else who maybe has a bigger blood pressure cuff than he does.

Or maybe that’s just me.

While I was driving home, one of the cars in the other lane flashed its headlights… you know how people do, to let you know that there’s a cop up ahead of you somewhere? And sure enough, I went around a curve and there was a police car tucked up under the overpass. I wasn’t even speeding, but I still wanted to go “Aha! I KNEW you were there, you sneaky little sneak-cop, you!” I felt like I’d outsmarted The Man or something. Me in my little blue Corolla, going forty-three miles an hour in a 55.

And it made me think how much I love that people do that. Warn each other to slow down and drive carefully, I mean, not drive like old ladies. I love that sometimes people will do something just to be nice to somebody else that they don’t even know. It’s one of those rare moments that make ya feel like we’re all in this together and looking out for each other instead of knocking each other over to get to the finish line. And I really needed that little pick-me-up moment this morning.

Have a nice weekend, and try not to get any speeding tickets if you can help it.

I’m thinking Minnie is gonna be right ticked off when she hears about this.

Just because Colleen did it, (and because it is usually good for a giggle) this morning I looked up the Google search terms that have brought people around here recently.

(In no particular order)

- things thing that happen when you get nervous  

- peeing in pants  (May be related to above?)

- doctor asked me to pee in bucket for 24 hours  (Wow. Hope you stocked up on juice.)

- i’m tired (Me too!)

- i need a vacation (Me too!  Also, I think maybe I need to quit complaining so much. Maybe.)

- damespanty  (…?)

- i am so tired of my family (Geez, and it’s not even the holidays yet.)

- person with 2 butts (…?!)

There are some peculiar people rolling around on the internet, you know that? Possibly with more than one butt.

Rice crackers and peanuts and shrimp! All friends! In a bottle!

I would say something here about weird foreign foods, but the other day I was checking out at the grocery store, and the woman in front of me had four 6-packs of Oreo flavored Jello Pudding cups in her cart. And four bottles of Sunny Delight. Also, many “Lunchables.” Since I do not actually believe that any of those things are made of food, I do not think I have any room to cast aspersions upon the eating habits of the Japanese.

I guess I’d rather eat a bottle of shrimp rice nuts. At least then you know what you’re eating.

So here we are, some weeks later and my neck appears to have recovered. Every now and then I get a twinge that feels a bit like the startings of a charley horse, but so far a good hard stretch and some prodding and poking (I guess you could call it “massage” but that would imply that it felt good, instead of like prodding and poking.) seem to be keeping it from kinking up again.

I have saved up a few valiums, just in case. You never know when you might need to suddenly calm down.

Anyway, hi internet! How have you been?

This week is an exciting adventure.  The husband has gone off to Japan to Do Important Sciencey Things and also Bring Me Back Some Bento Boxes, and I am alone with the baby.  (Insert scary, doom-impending noise here.)  I have to admit to having some trepidation about this week, by which I mean I was a little bit scared shitless, but honestly, so far it has been (HI! I AM KNOCKING ON WOOD!) just fine. Provided I go to bed at a reasonable hour, it’s not been bad. Cherry wakes for the day at 7:30, so I set the coffeepot to wake at 7:15, and we are all getting along splendidly.

Okay, Fuzz the dog is completely depressed. When I pet her, she gives me a halfhearted wag and a morose look because although I do provide food and outdoor access and treats and love, I am just not Him.  But other than a depressed schnauzer, it’s going well. I even remembered to take out the trash and recycling on trash and recycling night, so I will not have to chase down the garbagemen in my pajamas in the morning yelling “Wait! Wait! Come back! My can is full!!”

(Take that as you will.)

I even went to my first official business engagement with the baby, which I was really nervous about. The upside of being able to work at home is that I get to work my schedule around Cherry’s, but the downside is that sometimes I have to be able to take her along with me to work. So today was Baby’s First Press Check, and we went to the printer to look at some proofs.  I was really nervous about it, but after getting some pointers from a good friend who’d taken her baby along on press checks, I went ahead and did what she said (which was to just go in and act as if it was the most natural thing in the world to have a baby with you, and that nobody would bat an eyelash, which is pretty much exactly what happened) and the sky did not, in fact, fall down on my head.

(Actually it did. Dude, we must be getting close to the end of the drought in Georgia, right?  I was afraid we were going to have to start lining up two by two.)

I wrapped Cherry up in a beach towel, since it was way past the point where an umbrella would have done us any good, besides which, I can’t carry her with one arm because she weighs 22 pounds (at six months, thankyouverymuch hyperactive prenatal vitamins).  She thought the whole thing was tremendous fun, and spent most of the time we were there checking out the big wall o’samples and was lovely and quiet and patient and just a complete gem of a baby, for which I was immensely grateful and because of which I decided to forgive her for that whole 3-in-the-morning-klaxon thing she’s been doing lately. And also for the impossibly large dump she took right as I dropped her father off at the airport that I got stuck cleaning up in the hourly parking deck at Hartsfield.  (Two words: Containment Breach.)