Bah

I dreamed I was screaming for help while being killed, and nobody came. In movies you trust that the hero will either rescue or be rescued in the nick of time, proof that wholehearted trust pays off. I remember when Christmas used to come with that feeling of real magic, as certain as stepping through a wardrobe into snow, and I remember finding and trusting my One True Love with every nugget of my heart. I miss that. Christmas and True Love are similar; they still exist after you find out about them, you can enjoy them and conjure up wisps of that old feeling, but it isn't all-encompassing, and it isn't here to stay.

Yes, it's official: I'm having the holiday blues. It's the feel-sorry-for-yourself time of the year, where despite all the cookies, music, hugs, and family, it's still easier to notice all the people who aren't writing or missing you, and to wish for month-long holiday vacations while working on Christmas Eve and scarfing down cheap chocolates in the staff room. I will not give in! I will fight, with rolling pin and candy thermometer and costco bag of cocktail weiners! I can do this.

x-mess

Little man turns 6

As usual, Gavin's birthday was kicked off by the hunt for Thai food, paying our respects to our dinner on the night I went into labor. This year I drove up and down the winding jungle roads, grumbling at both of the closed-up roadside Thai food stands and ending up at the farmer's market picking up basil and cilantro. After popping cake pans in the oven (with batter in them) I made a stir-fry that we called Thai, and Gavin ate canned ravioli. Not quite capturing the original moment, but the kid was pleased, and Leif got a handful of rice.

The advent calendar coughed up a 5 dollar bill on his birthday morning. In the afternoon, I carted up a couple boxes of chocolate pudding and a giant can of whipped cream up to his classroom for distribution. I peeled lids and swirled cream onto 24 cups for eager little kids who has no problem shoveling birthday pudding into their faces while snarking insults at Gavin for being too old for kindergarten. They paused to ask me if I would squirt cream into their mouths. Which I did not. After I had wired them up, they moved on to their favorite pastime; tease the redheaded girl. The little thing sat with her thin ankles crossed and ate her pudding on the sidewalk curb by herself. She got an extra swirl of cream.

The boy had requested an R2D2 cake, and so I channeled my inner Food TV cake decorator and had at it. Now I appreciate why everyone uses fondant; icing is stupid and stupid. I had used photographic reference, but when I finished Gavin said, "He needs lines across that button." I thought he was being artistic, but no, I saw today that R2 does have a grill across that button. I wonder about his use of brain powers sometimes.

My mom joined the party as a floating head on the laptop, and we stuck her on a table with a view of the present chaos. Gavin wastes no time anymore, ripping and flinging paper. Satisfied with his haul, he emptied about a billion Star Wars legos onto the floor while Mike stared at the two-book manual for assembly. I bounced the baby and was glad nobody expected me to do it.

This week gave us a Christmas program and parent/child gingerbread house event, both of which we barely managed to attend as first-time parents of a schoolkid. I sat with Gavin this morning in the school cafeteria, slopping frosting and graham crackers onto a milk carton with a hundred other kids and parents. The little redheaded girl sat alone two seats down, evidently the child of other first-timers who didn't get the memo, so our table pulled together to get her house built and picture taken. It was a nice morning.

In other news, I somehow lost 3 pound this week even though I have been living solely on birthday cake, chocolate biscuits, and mini liquor candies. It's easy; eat enough of candy and you don't have to worry about calories because you get too sick to hold any in. Broke into the 140's, only 10 lbs to go.

The presents have been bought, the liquor stocked, the baking started, the floors cleaned. I'm happy with life, if a bit spotty on the magic still.

Oh Tannenbaum

It's the small things

Yesterday I turned off the dvd player and sat back, feeling encouraged by the crime documentary I'd seen. It's not so odd, people get back with their old partners all the time! And hey, Mike didn't even blind me with acid. Bonus.

X-mess tree premature erection

December came barrelling in like a truck, and I barely dodged the wheels. The advent calendar was ready to go, the tree was purchased (dismembered and crammed into a cardboard box in the trunk), and the cat has been having a harder time wedging herself under the bed between the presents. On Monday, Gavin and I fluffed and mangled the plastic tree into as natural a shape as it could withstand, pulled the cat out of it, decorated it, pulled the cat out of it again, swept up the broken ornaments, let the cat have at it, and finally sat down to eat the ceremonial box of chocolates and listen to kitschy christmas tunes in its glow. Mike was happy that the tree was too small to fall on him this year, and frowned sadly into his absinthe, the Most Disgusting Drink Ever, which cost him $20 and was made worse by adding diet soda.

Oh no, is she blogging about her cat?

When I say "the cat", I do, of course, mean Sookie. I've had a piercing infection from her slobbering into my ear and chewing on my studs. At night she oozes across my neck to suck on the baby. Last night she leaped into the bathtub onto Gavin. This morning she buried a poop nugget in his shaggy rug. The two other cats spend their days avoiding her; Maura hides in the basket of the stroller, and Po thinks nobody can see her behind the curtain in the bedroom window ("curtain" meaning the old head-shop tapestry that we hung up because curtains are too effing expensive and nobody bought me a sewing machine for my birthday). Twice a day, Po comes out to eat, gets run around the house by Maura, who is being run around the house by Sookie, and then they all scramble back to their hiding places. Both Maura and Po looked like cannonballs with legs after their quarantine periods, but the constant threat of Kitten has started to run the fat off, and their saggy bellies wag when they run about. Much like me.

Hint hint

I finally yanked apart the old jumpy baby seat some well-meaning patron gave me and stuffed it in the trunk so it would stop embarrassing my office. Despite our idealistic handmade-by-earth-mother notions about toys, Leif loves the oversized plastic bucket adorned with baby busy balls and boob-eyed kangaroos (one a large stand-up rattle thing which sets off a musical jingle that makes your ears cry). Loves it. Yesterday he went into fits of laughter every time Gavin slapped the kangaroo in the head. And so the jumpy seat stays, while I plot its retro-punk makeover with plastic sprays and vinyl fabric... if only I had a sewing machine.

Thanksgiving 2008

My birthday came with wind and rain. I heated the oven and got busy making pies for Thanksgiving, sneaking in some Christmas songs disguised as winter classical music. 

As the pies baked, I swept and mopped so the place would be ready for my mother's visit, and Mike watched me from where he stood bobbing the baby to the music. 

"I know I screwed up this week," he finally said, "But I'm really happy." He indicated the music, the house, the baking, our family. I walked over and hugged him. The sun suddenly beamed down through the skylight onto us, and he kissed my forehead with our baby pressed between us. Sookie stood on her hind legs on the table behind us and scratched at my back, so we stuck her between us, too. 

 Feeling like we had made up, we went about my birthday. Mike worked through the baby-napping hour while I went to pick up Gavin from school, we spent 2 hours in the car with Leif squawking, I got to see Twilight by myself and screamed a little when I saw myself in the restroom mirror afterward (120 minutes of airbrushed immortal teens + 29 year old with baby weight and spitup shirt = 1/3 life crisis) , we ran through the grocery store and paid too much for cranberry sauce, picked up my mom and Po at the airport, ate Thai food, and drove home with a crying baby and yowling cat. My mom gave me presents (a statue of La Danaide, nice), and we crashed into bed at 10:30. A day thoroughly spent. 

Thanksgiving

I baked, I mashed, I whisked, I grated. The family watched the parade, Gavin colored with grannie, Po went outside and got lost for 8 hours, Mike drank lots of eggnog, and Leif nailed himself in the face with a spoon. 

All in all, nice day. 

Pictures

I finished Leif's stocking (just have seaming left):

   

 

Fatty Fat Fat (tomato and cheese pie) was had:

   

 

Feasting was had, with more enthusiasm than we are showing here:

   

 

Sookie tried to eat my mother's face:

   

I am starting to forgive the past couple of years. I'm trying, anyway. 

Onward, to X-mess.

Holidays

This weekend the storm flooded the roads to town, so Thanksgiving will be a day-long Quickfire Challenge; make a holiday feast using only eggs, an uncarved jack-o-lantern, and a can of haggis - go!

I should be able to pick up food when I drive down to the airport to get my mom on my birthday. A good thing, if I want a birthday cake (read: box of Krispy Kremes).
 

diet talk -
Yesterday I dug around for the jeans I had stolen from my mom after my last visit, and when I pulled them on they fit a bit more snugly than I remembered. I had a moment of dismay (did I somehow gain 5 lbs in a week?!) but they did fit pretty well anyway, and my butt looked ok in them, so I made the best of it. Today I found out they were not the jeans I had stolen from my mom, they were Mike's - the same pair I couldn't button up a few weeks ago. I win! Unfortunately, when I told him, he told me he accidentally tried to put on my old jeans and couldn't get them over his legs. Damn. Still a ways to go.

The week in brief

Two books on my desk. From their descriptions:

"Cormac McCarthy sets his new novel, The Road, in a post-apocalyptic blight of gray skies that drizzle ash, a world in which all matter of wildlife is extinct, starvation is not only prevalent but nearly all-encompassing, and marauding bands of cannibals roam the environment with pieces of human flesh stuck between their teeth. If this sounds oppressive and dispiriting, it is."

and

"Little Joshua Barker is in desperate need of a holiday miracle. No, he's not on his death-bed; no, his dog hasn't run away from home. But Josh is sure that he saw Santa take a shovel to the head, and now the seven-year-old has only one prayer: Please, Santa, come back from the dead."

It's important to be balanced. Now, I tried reading Cormac McCarthy a few months ago, when forced myself through No Country For Old Men and finally tossed it aside two chapters from the end (they all died except the sheriff, right?) so I'm not sure about reading another one. The new trend in grim realistic fiction is to leave out punctuation and plow through the dialogue with no hints about who's speaking or distinctions between speech and thought. (how i live now is another example.) Yes, I understand why, yes, it's effective, and yes, it irritates the crap out of me. Same with post modernism. And scrapbooking. But hey, The Road won the Pulitzer, so let's give it a try.


Leify update:

Leif grabbed his first object on Halloween almost 3 weeks ago, and now manages to get things (toys, cats, etc) in his mouth with fairly consistent success. And on Sunday he rolled over! Yep, unassisted, from back to front and front to back. It's wobbly work, and those pesky arms keep getting stuck under him, but the boy has discovered mobility at just over 3 months. He also laughs now, at just about everything. He likes it when we pinch his legs and say "Who's got ham?" He sings when we play music. (He has my voice. Or possibly the cat's.) And the other day he sang, "Ohhh, yummm mom." I am yum!

Gavin update:

The kiddo turns 6 in a few weeks; he's reading, making elaborate Lego spacecraft, and sprouting ankles out the bottoms of his pants. Sometimes I try to cuddle him up on my lap like my baby again, and he's a lumpy knob of knees, elbows, and ribs. He's obsessed with Star Wars, and wants a Nintendo DS (wtf?). Santa's got the hook-ups on that one, and another one of our parenting ideals flutters away. Conversation from yesterday:
"Mom, when me and Leif grow up, could we marry the same girl? Then our kids can have two dads."
"Well, most people want a person of their own, they don't like sharing."
"But I aaaalways wanted two dads."
"Really? Should I marry someone else?"
"Yep."
"Got anyone in mind?"
"Mmm, no. You can pick."

(I didn't.)

Postpartum update:
 

I'm officially within the healthy weight range for my height again. On the more nuts-and-bolts side of things, I'm having trouble with numbness in my hands again, and my right shoulder has painful range-of-motion issues, but at least my knees are holding out this time. I think my hair has stopped falling out, and I'm not entirely bald, so now I can relax and wait for that attractive chia pet 'do as the new crop grows in. Halfway considering chopping my hair off and letting it grow out again; my mother did last week, and she is cute.

Holidays bearing down like a big scary thing, and I have barely bought anyone anything. My birthday is next week, and I got a present early; a box of broken glass which contained the remains of "ripped" and "frogged" pint glasses from Ravelry. One survived, at least, so I will have a toast to myself this weekend. With sad diet soda.

Coughsniff

The head cold that had been throbbing between my eyes for the past week moved down into my lungs overnight. Leif may be in store for his first illness. Up until now we have been blissfully basking in his night-long sleeping; two or three times he starts getting twitchy and I roll over and pop him on the boob, and we all snooze on. Last night, though, he started making snow angels in the sheets, and I opened my eyes at 4am to see a big gummy smile aimed at me in the moonlight. When I said "hi, there", my voice came out a wheeze and a croak, so Mike scooped him up to play in the livingroom for a bit. At this point I fell dead to the world, dreaming that I was a flying, time-traveling Buffy, kicking butt in leather pants in the future, when evidently all manner of chaos was erupting in the livingroom with a diaper blowout, cat running across the baby's head, and screaming that woke up Gavin. At 5:30 Mike deposited a sleeping infant beside me and staggered away to sleep with the kiddo. We snuggled down to snooze another hour, and the kitten curled up between our heads to join us. Sweet, right? Wrong. 5 minutes in, Sookie let off a cat fart so rank and thick that Leif started gagging and coughing and popped awake again. And so the day was begun.

Friday. Fridayfridayfriday.


Still trying to stuff self with holiday magic. Currently reading: The Stupidest Angel, a heartwarming tale of Christmas Terror, by Christopher Moore.

Also I am knitting a sweater for my tea pot.

Humbug

Dear son,
Please do not put cat toys in my knitting basket.

Dear cat,
If you're going to be in my knitting, at least finish the stocking for me. Also please stop crawling across my neck at night to suck on the baby's eyelids.

Dear stocking,
You suck. Fix your own damned stranding.

Dear work,
Not a fan right now.

Dear sink at work,
Exploding is not funny. Well, it kind of is, but not when the water is boiling hot and I have no witnesses. The grimy stuff I found in the bottom of my tea cup is especially not funny - that had better not have been lead in the water.

Dear Christmas,
Disenchanted with you since 2006.

Dear birthday,
You, too. You can go sit with Christmas in the corner and think about what you've done.

In fact, I can't think of a single holiday without bad feelings attached to it at this point. Except maybe Martin Luther King Jr. Day (because THAT'S a happy story /s). Should convert to something with different holidays.

Anyway -

Dear scale,
Out the window you go. You don't get to have 7 lb fluctuations unless it's lower.



Stupid week.

work trip

152 (-28, 17 to go)

Friday. Stranded at my mother's house. Looked for lunch, found leftover Halloween candy and cans of pork 'n beans. Ate my candy with the pork and beans before realizing what I had done.

Interesting week. Went for drug training, stayed for the weekend to attend a Friends of the Library meeting.

Spent almost 5 days out with the baby, with only 3 bottles and no breast pump, which made babysitting interesting for my mom.

Arrived at training and walked in on the burly middle-aged presenter topless, with a tank-top tan. He pulled on an aloha shirt and turned out to be an important Human Resources person. He used "I" instead of "you" while making up hypothetical scenarios: "So I use a lot of meth and decided to admit it, but that didn't get me out of the reasonable suspicion drug test." Bold move.

Saw gruesome drunk driving police scene photos. Wondered why they were all of South American accidents, according to the captions. Maybe so there's less of a chance they're using someone's family members over here. Also saw pictures of drugs but no explanation on how to use them. What kind of training is that?

Stole a nun.*

Got my leg stuck in the back seat of my mom's car.

Got sick.

Bought new pants in a size smaller.

Discovered a yarn I hate. Too bad I have 5 balls of it.

Leif hit 3 months old; rolled from back to front in his sleep, and has started having success getting his hands on his toys and the toys to his mouth.

Sat next to a dad with a baby the same size as Leif, but 3 months older and crawling. Leif is so big.

Failed to buy X-mess presents. I used to live for the holidays, but after the December divorce and then last year's holiday barfiness, my feelings for the winter months have ended. I'm trying, though.

All in all, exhausting but good trip. Capped it off by flying home with a stomach flu and an infant and driving home for 2 hours in the dark, which went as well as it could, with only a little crying (mostly from Leif).

Ready to hibernate until spring now.

* the nun was very interesting, a registered nurse practitioner from the leper colony on Molokai. I gave her a ride and she told me medical and supernatural horror stories. I had to give her back, though.

Halloween 2008

Last year we had 3 kids show up for trick-or-treating at the apartment complex, so it was nice to return to the huge crowds of kids at my mom's house. Gavin was 3 the last time we walked the neighborhood with cousin Chris, now he is nearly 6 (how? We were only gone one year!). It used to take 20 minutes to wear the kids out and come home with a half-full bucket of candy, but now the boys can power up and down the street for an hour. We saw a haunted miniature village, Gavin accidentally dumped his candy on the sidewalk, the boys squawked "pencils!?" at one house, and they both avoided the fog-machines and plastic corpses. I left Mike to finish trick-or-treating with the boys and went home after an hour, loaded down with sleeping infant and costume accessories that they didn't want to carry. Two Halloweens ago, in the middle of our divorce, Mike had decided to dress up as V. When you have just found out that your husband has been leading an adulterous double life, you do not want to see him in a stupid wig and creepy leering mask. I was dressed up as Starbuck from Battlestar Galactica, and really wanted to kick him in the nuggets. Last year was a bit quiet and uncomfortable, and this year was mostly okay again. I still didn't feel like dressing up, though. My mom jammed Gavin's old mouse ears onto my head and stuck Mike in a novelty tattoo shirt, and that was it for us. Still, it was better than the last couple of Halloweens.