Times be changing, yo.
October 22, 2010
At 4:00 CST this afternoon, I will be retired.
Maybe not forever, but for the forseeable future.
And that’s an exciting DAUNTING truth.
I will be a mom and a wife.
And not much else.
No longer a… whatever I have been these past few years.
Expectations that I’ve had for myself throughout the years are changing daily.
I’m nervous. I’m scared.
I’ve been hired for a ‘job’ that I can’t fail at.
And oddly enough, in this case, I’m the only one qualified for it.
So.
Goodbye, steady paychecks, timecards and filing.
Hello… whatever comes next.
Art Appreciation. Or, Thoughts in spurts.
October 1, 2010
Lawyers of the world,
You suck big, huge, donkey toes.
Light yourself on fire.
My sweet baby girl,
I love you more every day.
Always stay the same.
Baby Gigantor,
I’m really tired of peeing.
Move off my bladder.
Ms. Lady Lawyer,
You’re appointed to my daughter.
So HELP already!
My dear husband,
Five bicycles is too much
For any household.
Dear knitting project,
I wish you could knit yourself
My elbow is tired.
To my beagle girls,
Stop barking at 2 a.m.
Or prepare to starve.
Dear Memphis traffic,
Turn signals will not kill you,
Texting will. Stop it.
Co-workers of mine,
No more candy temptation!
Damned diabetes.
And following September…
September 28, 2010
I went for a walk last night.
The weather has cooled off – down from the three digit temps into gorgeous Fall weather temperatures that reward me for surviving yet another summer in rural Mississippi.
The trees are just starting to turn and everything, including the sunlight, is this gorgeous golden color that you only see this time of year.
I love Fall.
I love October.
I often confuse the two – I’m convinced October is a season unto itself. It smells different and feels different and is full of good times and memories and happiness the way no other season is.
That’s why I got married in October.
My daughter was born in October.
It’s just the best time of the year.
The smells in the air have convinced me that the season is upon us.
My walk was perfect. Two miles at a brisk pace, but nothing escaped my notice. I live in a gorgeous rural area and the lack of cars and power lines and noise mean real relaxation that urbanites just can’t understand.
I won’t have it for much longer and so every outing I make has me reacting like a sponge, soaking up as much as I possibly can so I can weather the winter in Minneapolis.
I sat on the front porch for a long time when I got back.
I could close my eyes and be a million different places all at once.
At my grandmother’s before she passed, getting ready for Thanksgiving, family all around and the smell that only her house held. So comforting.
My aunt’s for Halloween. Before her divorce and my grandmother’s death. When we all still joined together for family events – like her Halloween party – when I was young and so excited about the ghost-shaped cookies and trick-or-treating.
On my wedding day, seeing my husband face to face for the first time before the ceremony – knowing that I was marrying someone I could count on – someone I loved – someone I could trust.
Remembering when my daughter was born and how everything I could have ever wanted from life changed in that instant – the world became entirely about her – and still hasn’t changed.
Thinking of the way my mom’s perfume smells and how much I’m going to miss her and my father when I move.
Thinking about what home and family feel like; what they mean.
Things both happy and bittersweet.
October, you see.
I’m so glad I get this one last fall in this area.
I needed it.
Things are swirling around so fast that it feels as though my feet barely touch anything steady.
Walks and silence help, give me a chance to search, if not find, perspective again.
Moving
September 15, 2010
Though rarely talked about here, work is tangling up my life with it’s responsibilities and demand for me to stay awake when the baby demands I nap.
Pregnancy has changed how I view my job and while I still love the knowledge that I gain on a daily/weekly basis, I no longer care about using it.
Let me explain.
Now that we’ve decided I’m going to be a home mommy I’m DYING to start preparing the house that we don’t have yet.
There is nothing that occurs during the day that I can’t directly relate immediately to my husband or two children and while that can be attributed to Pregnancy Brain, it can make for quite a boring conversation if you have the misfortune to run into me.
Our office is also in the midst of moving cross-city… and we’re a large office combining two large offices in some hodge podge cataclysmic event that has everyone scurrying – including me. All day long I’m packing boxes, organizing 20 years’ worth of gizmos, and basically exhausting myself.
Combining that with my propensity to drink and retain water like a camel, let’s just say that these aren’t my most favorite days that I’m having in my pregnancy.
Where I should feel like this:
By around 11am I feel like this*:
I do tend to wear a maternity belt to help with the weight of this tiny baby and my 400 pound ovaries, but by the end of the day I’m limping and stabbing people in the face with my laser-eye glare.
What worries me about this is that I’m moving an area of space that is smaller than most public restrooms (if you want to know why that’s a frame of measuring reference then YOU get pregnant) and bordering on homicidal.
What am I going to do when I have to move a household full of stuff across country?!!
(Note to self, try to remember to take a picture at the end of the day so that your husband has sufficient warning in the coming months…)
All in all, I’m definitely looking foward to the end of this phase in my life.
Phases.
Moving.
Pregnancy.
Finance.
Filing.
*Yes. I did type this entire entry JUST to be able to use this photo.
Buyer’s remorse.
September 3, 2010
Let me just start by saying that they shouldn’t allow me in Best Buy until at least a week after I get paid.
And by they, I mean my husband.
And yes, I fully expect him to fly from Minneapolis and bar the door in order to prevent certain things from happening – like spiders and soap scum.
I bought $50 iPhone headphones.
I felt justified because my husband has the same exact pair, but now I have buyers remorse because they’re $50 HEADPHONES.
They go in my EARS, they don’t cure cancer!
And the little devil on my shoulder is waxing on about how I could have just bought the new iPhone (that my husband is going to buy me for our anniversary… the 1st is the iPhone anniversary) that comes with free headphones and saved myself -$200, but NOOOO.
And the headphones came about because I needed a car charger for my phone and something about the car charger made me need to spend money on my phone.
Because iPhones are such a gimmicky bit to own that they require their own blankets, pillows, food and shelter… all found at your handy dandy Best Buy in a handy dandy section that they line with quicksand.
But late last night, when I tucked in Mac Jr. into his pretty little blanket-lined nightstand drawer and turned out the light, I swear, though I didn’t have my glasses on to be sure, but I swear his little screen lit up with the words “Thank you, Mom.”
Maybe those headphones weren’t such a bad buy after all.
I signed up for WHAT?
September 2, 2010
Preparing mentally for becoming a Stay At Home Mom (yes, that should be capitalized and perhaps even shouted!) has been one of the most challenging things I’ve ever had to do.
Mainly because 1, I never thought I’d be in the position to be a SAHM and 2, everything about baby #2 is a surprise – including that I’m having a baby #2.
After all, my first child is a teenager and only minutes away from riding off into the sunset with a college diploma in one hand and the world on a string in the other.
Being faced with this upcoming change in circumstances has caused me to question a good many things I know about myself.
My eating habits, for instance. You could say that I’m a person to whom eating a balanced meal means eating a plate full of junk food balanced properly on my lap.
With the last year addition of my husband, Healthy Hunk, this meandering version of nutrition no longer flies as acceptable behavior. He wilts if he doesn’t have enough good food in his diet and nobody wants to see a giant Italian man wilt in their presence.
Plus, apparently Italian babies require meat, potatoes AND vegetables in order to grow large, strong Italian eyebrows. And who am I to stand in the way of the Bert-like eyebrows my child’s heritage so claims as her DNA-like right?
And Laundry.
Laundry, for me, is a very necessary evil punctuated by bouts of wrangling jeans over door frames for maximum drying capabilities and separating anxiety when faced with the prospect of washing too many new clothes without the salt-filled pre-soak.
Adding this stereotypical notion that Laundry will now be part of my Official Duties as a SAHM has thrown me – even though I rarely will allow anyone else near the stacks of dirty laundry for fear that they’ll do it their way and NOT mine.
How many other stereotypes of SAHMs are there that are waiting to bite me on the toe?
Cleaning? I’m to take care of a helpless ankle-biter AND keep the house spotless? Time travel truths must rest in the arms of all of the Stay At Home Moms that accomplish this task, because my memories of newborns don’t include the many hours of inactivity needed to maintain a spotless house with 2 dogs, 1 husband and 2 children.
Regular meals? People like to eat REGULARLY? And I’m to cook those? Have any of you seen what cooking for me entails? Long shopping trips, fresh herbs, homemade ingredients and 2 hours of preparation? And I’m to do this over and again? Not just for special occasions and holidays? BALANCED MEALS?!!
And I’m supposed to do this and maintain the household without catching anything on fire, chopping my husband into stew, losing the baby in the laundry pile, hanging the dogs by their toes or stuffing a teenager into a trash compactor?
I seriously hope my husband can pay me enough for a post-work-day massage.
Adventures in finance. Or, why the country’s banks are going to Hell.
September 2, 2010
Co-worker: Could you fax my mom a blank legal sheet of paper?
Lish: Sure… can I ask why?
Co-worker: She’s trying to print out a legal form but doesn’t have any legal paper.
Lish: (Blink. Blink.)
A sign that pregnancy limits oxygen flow to the brain. Or. How I kept myself giggling for two hours this morning at work.
August 31, 2010
(To the tune of ‘If you’re happy and you know it’)
If you’re pregnant and drinking water
European.
If you’re pregnant and drinking water
European.
If you’re pregnant and drinking water
Then it goes straight through your bladder
If you’re pregnant and drinking water
European.
A few thoughts
June 1, 2010
1. I will not be sick. I will not be sick again. I will not be sick all of the time. Oh wait, yes I will. But not right this second. Or this one. Or this one. Or this one.
2. I miss my daughter. My life is a bit of a nothing when she’s gone for the summer. Not that I can’t have fun, but it’s a bit purposeless if you don’t count the activities from #1.
3. It’s hard to be excited about a baby that makes you throw up your toenails. Not that I’ve eaten them, just that this pregnancy is a force of nature.
4. My mom is down helping clean up the oil spill. I think the oil spill is horseshit. I’m glad their stock is going down. Someone ought to punch someone else in the nose. A bar fight doesn’t count. I don’t like my mom being gone.
5. The power going out for no good reason in the middle of the night apparently still makes me convinced we’re being assaulted by a massive burglary ring right at that moment.
6. I’ve already lost 10 pounds with this pregnancy. A fact that brings me the only small amount of happiness I’ve had so far since the hyperemesis kicked in. I know that this method of thought is sick and twisted.
7. I don’t like anyone that’s healthier than I am right now.
8. I am a world class vomiter.
9. If I ever get pregnant again, it will be because the sperm is housing some DNA for a future superhero that can swim past any and all barricades.
10. I have nothing interesting to say for #10 because I am once again concentrating hard on not throwing up.
11. Oh! Why is it that I NEVER want to talk about bathroom poops and whatnot, but have no trouble describing anything and everything to do with my so-called vomiting life? weird.
Ice Cream might grow on me.
April 25, 2010
Bruster’s has Key Lime Pie ice cream.
Not quite as good as the Key Lime Pie martini I had in Newport… but. a worthy addition to my Key Lime Pie obsession.
yes. Key Lime Pie is ALWAYS to be capitalized.
It deserves that much.
sniff.
sniff sniff.
