Category Archives: Blah-blah-blah

32

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Today is my birthday.

It’s weird that it’s been kind of a non-event on my mental radar. I’m really excited about Cate’s first birthday in a couple of weeks, so I kind of keep forgetting about mine. Strange how that works, isn’t it? Besides, it’s not like 32 is some big landmark number.

Looking back at my blog entries from last year, I see that I forgot about my birthday last year as well. Of course, that was because I was so preoccupied with feeling miserable and wanting my pregnancy to be over and done with.

I do have a couple of nice birthday things going on, though. I went shopping yesterday and got myself some jeans, thanks to my sister. I’m getting a massage and a facial, courtesy of my parents and Dave, respectively. And tomorrow night, I’m having dinner with Kris. So it’s definitely a lot better than last year – if nothing else, I’m at least going to get out of the house.

Plus, Cate is at daycare today and I don’t have any major pressing deadlines going on at work (at least not right now), so I can kind of enjoy some Mommy Downtime. I think I might take a bubble bath and a nap. Happy birthday to me, indeed.

dull dream post

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I try not to write about my dreams too often, because I figure it’s probably really boring for other people to read. And honestly, I have no idea if anyone is going to think that this is funny other than me. But here goes.

Sunday afternoon, Cate and I took a nap together in my bed. (Dave is totally going to call me out for saying “my bed” instead of “our bed,” because I say “my” in reference to lots of things that technically belong to both of us. But he wasn’t there, so in this case, use of the word “our” makes it sound like the bed belongs to Cate and me, and it’s just confusing. Whatever. We were in the king-size bed in the master bedroom. Sufficiently overexplained? I thought so.)

In the dream, we lived in this enormous old mansion. It was at least four stories tall, and had all sorts of weird hidden staircases and rooms in strange places. Sort of like the Winchester Mystery House, I guess. I knew it was haunted, but I knew where the haunted areas were, so we just stayed out of those parts of the house, and figured we were ok.

Oh, random aside: Dave wasn’t Dave in the dream. The guy playing the role of my husband looked familiar, and I knew his voice, but I couldn’t place him. Finally it clicked and I said (in the dream), “Oh hey, look, I’m married to movie star Keanu Reeves!” Not just Keanu Reeves, but Movie Star Keanu Reeves. Like his middle name is Keanu. It was just kinda funny, is all I’m saying.

Anyway, at some point I had to go into one of the haunted parts of the house. No reason why, just dream logic, I guess. I left Cate with my brother and sister because my husband Keanu was off doing lord-knows-what. I walked into the haunted room, and suddenly I felt something pressing against my back and I felt a hand grab ahold of my hair. I had a split-second of absolute terror, where I was convinced that the ghosts had gotten me…

Then I woke up. And I realized that what I felt in my back were Cate’s feet, and she was the one pulling my hair, trying to wake me up. Yeah, it’s weird, I know. It was just funny/strange to go from feeling completely petrified to waking up and realizing that, in fact, the “ghost” is your 11 month-old child who has declared that naptime is officially over.

Oh, and while we’re talking about dreams, I also keep having lots of childbirth dreams lately, but I think that’s because Cate’s first birthday is coming up later this month. You know, big milestone thing, the brain starts thinking about what was going on this time last year, etc. Still, I wish that my subconscious would knock it off, because they’re kinda freaking me out.

summer doldrums

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There’s a whole big mess of stuff swirling around my head lately, but I’m having a hard time putting it into a string of coherent sentences. And trying to find the time to sit down and write is sort of a problem for me right now. I’d use the fact that Cate is demanding as an excuse, but actually, everything is a problem right now. I seem to be going through a lazy phase. My parents are coming in a week, and normally I would already be starting the Big Clean-A-Thon that I do prior to any family visit, but I just can’t seem to make myself get off my butt and do it.

Just to clarify: My parents don’t actually give a flip how tidy the house is. They are coming for one reason only, and that is for a week of Grandbaby Love. As long as the house doesn’t smell like cat pee, I doubt they’ll notice anything else. The cleaning spree is just something I do before people visit. I’m sort of nuts like that.

So… yeah. More stuff later. Right now it’s time for our (Cate’s and my) mid-morning nap. Whee!

oh no they di-n't

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It’s been hours, and I am still so angry about this that I could spit.

This afternoon, I went to the grocery store and brought Cate along with me. I’m going to start painting tomorrow, so I want to make sure that we have all of our essentials (diet coke, bread, etc.) so I don’t have to run to the store covered in primer.

So, grocery store, blah blah. We finish shopping and head out to the parking lot. There’s a white sedan with four teenage boys who are just hanging out. They see me with the baby, one of the boys jumps out of the car, and throws one of those firecrackers on the ground that explodes when it hits the pavement. He jumped back into the car, and they all laughed and watched me to see my reaction.

Are you freaking kidding me? These little punks throw a firecracker to see if they can scare my baby? For the record, Cate was sound asleep in her car seat and didn’t even flinch at the explosion, but that’s so not the point.

I glared at them and reigned in my initial impulse, which was to either give them the finger or shout some obscenity across the parking lot. (Good mommies don’t scream profanity in public, do they?) I gave them the hairy eyeball while I was loading the groceries into my car. Meanwhile they moved on to their next target. Some guy had a souped-up restored antique car (don’t ask me what it was, I don’t know; it was purple, does that help?), and as he was driving away, they shouted “faggot!” at him. Note that they yelled this as the guy was driving away. Yeah. Scaring babies and yelling slurs at people who can’t hear you. Clearly these are some big, bad-ass, brave characters we’re dealing with.

But you know, I was so pissed about the firecracker that that little bit of hate speech just sent me over the edge. I was about to put Cate back in the car, but then that happened, and I was all, “oh heeeell no!” I put Cate back in the cart and stomped back inside.

Now, the woman at the customer service desk… how do I explain this woman? I think she’s in her 40’s, but she could just as well be 70 and I would have no idea. She has dyed jet-black hair that is permed within an inch of its life, a big wall o’ crispy bangs, she wears about a pound of black eyeliner on each eye, and she’s got some severe smoker’s teeth. Every time I have ever been to our local sports bar, I have seen her there, and she is always drunk. Right on.

So, I tell her about the boys in the parking lot, and when I get to the part about the firecracker, she’s all, “They tried to scare the baby?!?! Where are they?!” And off she stomps out the door. I was glad it was her and not one of the nice customer service ladies, because this woman honestly would’ve scared the crap out of me if she’d gotten angry at me, so I can’t imagine what she’d do to a bunch of spineless teenage boys.

I guess the kids figured out when they saw me head back into the store that I was going to rat them out, so they were gone by the time Scary Lady got there. Oh well. I gave her a description of the car and she said she’d keep an (heavily lined) eye out for them.

I just can’t believe that anyone would intentionally try to frighten a baby. I know they’re just teenage boys, which automatically means that they’re stupid and inconsiderate. It’s just… wow. That’s a whole level of stupid that I was not expecting.

If this ever happens again, I am totally going to go over there and tell them to go home to their mamas. And I might throw in some profanity for good measure. I just hope I don’t haul off and smack them, because while good mommies might occasionally curse, they definitely do not get arrested.

my space or yours?

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I finally got a MySpace page, mainly because Kris and a couple of other friends bugged me about it. So fine. Here’s my page – if any of you are on MySpace, please be my friend? Right now I only have a few people, and it looks really sad.

It’s weird, though, ever since I set up the account, I’ve been obsessively looking for people I used to know, and I’ve found so many of them. Heck, I have relatives on MySpace, and I didn’t even know about it until I just happened upon their pages. And virtually every boy I’ve ever had a crush on? They’re all on MySpace. Including the guy I lost my virginity to. Yikes! I emailed him, but I have no idea if I’m going to get a response. It was almost 12 years ago, and I’m guessing I probably scared the bejeezus out of him with my little “Hi!! Remember me?” note.

There’s also an ex-boyfriend of mine I found, who I’ve stayed friends with over the years, so I wasn’t surprised to find his page. But apparently he doesn’t read this blog, and he hasn’t seen me in the past six or seven years, so he was all, “Daaaaamn! You look great!” Which… yeah, ok. He’s a nice guy and things didn’t end badly between us at all, but that was still a nice little “HA! So there!” kind of moment.

Yeah. I know, I’m a freak.

a photo blog

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Behold!

Isn’t it cute how they put those little score marks on the cheesecake to indicate how big one slice should be? I find those hilarious. Two slices then? Yes, please.

I also decided to go ahead and fire up the Dyson for the first time today. And oh my god, y’all:

Is that not the grossest thing you’ve ever seen? I was kind of expecting the cat hair. And I knew that lots of my hair would be in there, since I’m in that fun post-partum hair-falling-out stage. (Lucky me!) I tend to forget that living in the country means that there is always dirt in your house. But that was only the first floor and the stairs – I haven’t even gotten to all the bedrooms yet. I’m terrified.

Catie says: “You people expect me to learn to crawl on that filth? Are you insane?”

The one thing I don’t have a photo for: earlier tonight, the teenager across the street (the one who kitty-sat for us last week) called to let us know that she had just seen a coyote heading up our driveway. I promptly freaked, and ran outside to call the cats inside. I never saw the coyote myself, and all of the cats are present and accounted for, so it all ended well. But that was quite a little moment of panic that I had there.

And it reinforced the thing I’ve been nagging Dave about for ages: I hate the country and I want to move. You know, just in case he didn’t hear me the first ten thousand times I said it.

random wednesday

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I forgot to mention the other weird thing at church on Sunday: the woman sitting behind us made a big fuss over Cate – oh she’s so cute, how old is she, etc. Then she asked if she could hold her. Um, how exactly is one supposed to handle this type of situation? I said, “oh, I’m a little germaphobic, and it’s cold season, so I’d rather you didn’t…” And she seemed fine with that, but I felt so rude saying it. What I meant was: dude, you are a total stranger. Yes, we’re in church, big happy community of Christians, blah-blah-blah, but hell no, you cannot hold my baby. Of course, it turned out that she was one of the people who passed around the offering plate and directed traffic for communion, so I had to make eye contact with her two more times after that. Argh. Awkwardness.

The only other time anything like that has happened was once when I went to this deli place for lunch with my friend Janet. We were standing in line, and the guy in front of us turned around to talk to Cate (who was in the stroller). Then he reached in and grabbed her hand. I resisted the urge to scream, “UNCLEAN!!!” But just barely. My only guess is that these are people who don’t have kids themselves, so maybe they don’t know that this is inappropriate? Or am I a big weirdo for worrying about strangers’ germs?

Of course, it occurs to me that one week from today, Cate and I are going to be on an airplane, and that I just might have to hand her off to a flight attendant if I need to use the bathroom. Because seriously, what else am I supposed to do? So I guess it’s a bit hypocritical on my part – I’m ok with strangers holding my baby when it’s for my own personal convenience. But I also figure that flight attendants probably wash their hands a lot, since they handle people’s food and beverages. I know that if I had that job, I’d be a total Purell addict. (I’d also probably have a drug problem, since I usually need either a cocktail or a Xanax to not freak out when I fly.)

Speaking of the airplane, I am really looking forward to visiting my family next week (and getting to meet a couple of bloggers too! How cool is that?). But I am dreading the flight. The idea of having Cate on my lap for six to seven hours in a tiny cramped airplane seat doesn’t sound like that much fun to me. I’m sure it’s better to do it now than when she’s a toddler and needs constant entertainment, but still. I imagine that she and I are both going to be good and cranky by the time we get to Mississippi.

Total topic change: As for that full-time job that I wrote about last week – I did update my resume and send it off to the recruiter, but I haven’t heard anything about it since then. The more I think about it, though, the more I think that I really don’t want it. I know there are a lot of working moms who love what they do, and I think that’s fantastic. I’m just not sure that I’m one of them. I could see myself getting miserable really quickly if I was doing the whole 40-50 hour work week again. But you know, I’ve never been all that passionate about my career to begin with. It was just something I did to make money, so I could afford the lifestyle I wanted. And sure, I liked it ok, but I’m totally fine without it too.

So I’m now kicking around the idea of some possible freelance writing and work-from-home options, in addition to sticking a few ads on this site. If that works out, I imagine I’ll still need to find some sort of part-time baby-sitter or daycare for Cate, because I don’t know how Dave and I could possibly both be working and taking care of her all the time. But I think that maybe some type of Mother’s Morning Out program, just a couple of days a week, might be sufficient.

Total topic change, part two: Does anyone else watch “The Riches”? Did the dentist in this week’s episode make you really depressed? Because I almost cried for him. I know I’m still a big hormonal mess, but god, that was sad.