P.S., I Also Heart This

Probably one of the best writings on marriage I have read. Amen, sister.

Once in a Blue Moon

It's been a while since I posted, and I don't know where to start, so let's just dive in, shall we?   Off We Go   We were off for a week in the tremendous, incredibly gorgeous, pictures-don't-do-it-justice Maui at the end of June. Highlights of the trip: Cily's first two teeth made their appearance (and continue to torture her and by extension, the rest of us, but that's a different story), Viva jumped off a boat and went snorkeling in the open ocean with sea turtles and schools of fish, I caught up on my sleep and read a whole book, and Sweet Dub took 800 million pictures, none of which I have managed to upload yet. Oh, and rainbows. Scads of them, because it was periodically rainy while we were there. You know, rainbows have become kind of cliché, but when you actually see one arcing across a pale gray sky, flanked by silhouetted palm trees and a gentle drizzle as the sun struggles through, it's kind of mystical.   And We're Back   Other highlights: since our return, Cily has said her first word ("Da-da," of course) and has begun self-feeding*, and Viva has started camp, which she love love loves. Have I mentioned that she loves it? The camp director stopped me during drop-off on the second day to tell me what an amazing athlete she is and how she is really competitive. I fully concur on both points. In fact, we have frequent conversations with Viva about the importance of good sportsmanship, with mixed results. She hates to lose, at pretty much anything. The likelihood of her flying into a rage is inextricably linked to her level of fatigue. She seems to handle losing better (say, at a game of Crazy Eights) when she is well-rested and fresh, and she actually makes it sound sincere when she says, "Good game," followed by, "Let's play again," so she can try and beat you.   Bad Mama Blah   Oh, Viva. She is at a phase when things are difficult and sometimes I have to force myself to list her good qualities so I don't flip out and strangle her. She is a wonderful child – so bright and so sweet and so loving – and yet there are times when she just throws all that to hell and chooses the side of Darkness. We are the meanest parents ever: Sweet Dub because he won't just let her win every game they play, and me because – well, I have many failings, but currently the biggest one is that I won't buy her sugary cereal. It is So Unfair that her cousins get to eat it Every Day and she has to eat things like Gorilla Munch or Honey Nut Cheerios (that is the sweetest I will go) or God forbid, regular Cheerios.   I am a horrible person, and yet Viva wants to be with me all the time. It is kind of exhausting, God love her.   Inhale, exhale, be patient. I do love her so.   Grease is the Word   Something about vacation made my skin break out. Was it the "Faces" sunblock? Was it the daily free greasy bacon and eggs at the Ohana Bar and Grill? Who knows, but I am having horrible flashbacks to adolescence, and now I have all kinds of '80s music skimming through my head. At the moment, this is taking the form of Billy Idol dancing with himself. Let's sink another drink, 'cause it'll give me time to thi-hink… Does anyone remember Pernox? My grandmother swore by it back in the day and insisted I scrub my face raw.   In hindsight, the benefit of having somewhat oily/combination skin is that at 40, I am not wrinkly and I'm not obsessed with Botox. Do you care? No, probably not, and thus ends one of the most self-absorbed ruminations ever.   * The self-feeding is a post in and of itself, and lands with a solid thump in the land of Over-thinking It Mommy Blogging, so I don't know if I want to go there. Long story short: Cily can't abide anyone coming at her with a spoon. With my fantastic expertise in all Internetly things, I did an exhaustive, three-entire-minutes search and discovered Baby Led Weaning. Huzzah! And all was well in the Kingdom of Blah. Baby feeds herself table food, eats what she wants, as much as she wants, and the jars of organic baby food languish on the shelf. And they all lived happily ever after.

It is To Laugh.

I may have mentioned that my 84-year-old grandmother was hospitalized a few weeks ago. Turns out she had pneumonia, and other ailments which we won’t detail here. Of interest is the bill she just got from the hospital for her three-day stay. The bill, my friends, was for $31,000 and some change. Here now I paraphrase for you the conversation my grandmother recently had with the billing specialist:

Grandma: Hello, yes, this is Mrs. C___ and I’m calling about my bill. It says here that I owe the hospital thirty-one thousand dollars.

Smooth Operator: Let’s see here, Mrs. C___. Yes, I’m showing that you do indeed owe the hospital thirty-one thousand dollars. Is there anything else I can help you with?

Grandma: Well, I don’t have thirty-one thousand dollars. And I have insurance, so I don’t understand what this bill is all about.

Smooth Operator: Well, ma’am, we tried to bill your insurance carrier, Blue Cross, but they refused to pay.

Grandma: I don’t have Blue Cross. I have PacifiCare.

Smooth Operator: Oh. Duuuuuuuhhhhhhhhhhhhhhh…


Oh my God. Health reform now, health reform NOW. For heaven’s sake!

Economic Downturn Hits Home

We had layoffs at work yesterday. One person in my department, a really good friend, got laid off. She handled it amazingly well (far better than I would have in her place), was very gracious and professional. Stayed until 7:30 to tie up some loose ends and then wrote a very moving farewell email message.

I am really fricking depressed. I pulled into my garage after work and sat there crying for a few minutes. I wish I could say that made me feel better, but it didn’t.

There’s more, but I can’t.

UPDATED TO ADD: Trying to stay positive, have emailed all my professional contacts to get the word out and help her find a job. Still sucks.

Vague and All Over the Place

That was a very long hiatus.* For those of you who might be concerned, nothing was wrong aside from the everyday life with an infant (sickness every other week! Explosive foul-smelling poop! Curse you, gastrointestinal skullduggery!) and craziness at work. Seriously, taking work home and working until 1 AM and then the baby waking up at 5? Not my favorite thing ever. Probably one of my least faves. Yeah.

Yesterday was the culmination of weeks of work (mostly not mine, despite what the previous paragraph may lead you to believe) on a huge event at my job. There was a lot of sugar and caffeine to get us going, and then a lot of rich catered food afterward to thank all of us for working so hard. Today, I feel really “fat,” and I put fat in quotes because I know I’m not actually fat but I feel bloated and just – I don’t know, overdone. I don’t look cute today, my clothes don’t fit right, etc.

For lunch, I decided to have a salad and iced tea while working at my desk (I know, stop me, I’m crazy! What will I do next?). And I was feeling pretty good about that, typing away, until I heard a buzzing noise and turned and saw a fly in my food. I am on the third floor of a high rise with windows that don’t open. How on earth?

That ruined everything. I picked out a whole section of the salad where the fly had landed, along with a good 1-inch diameter around it. It’s my favorite salad. I went out of my way to get it. I managed to eat most of the rest of it. Nonetheless, now I’m feeling a little queasy. Damn you, Musca domestica!

Time for a little Internetly investigatin’! A brief search reveals that the common house fly is “often a carrier of diseases, such as typhoid fever, cholera, dysentery, and anthrax. The fly transmits diseases by carrying disease organisms onto food. It picks up disease organisms on its leg hairs or eats them and then regurgitates them onto food (in the process of liquefying solid food).”

Oh my precious God. I think I just threw up a little in my throat.

In other world news, Sweet Dub is out of town for a few days for business. His job has really accelerated and one of the reasons I have been so busy is that he has been so busy. At any rate, it’s weird being home without him (more on that in another post – I feel like I am a much worse parent when he is gone). But one benefit to him being away is that both kids sleep with me in a big snuggly warm pile when he is gone. There are few things on my all-time List of Wonderfulments that are better than sleeping in between my two girls, with Cily’s forehead pressed right up under my nose, and my legs entangled with Viva’s. Ah, the love.

I envisioned this time as a great opportunity for Sweet Dub to get some time to himself, which I don’t begrudge him in the least. Nonetheless, in the morning, I’m packing up the kids and driving to Palm Springs to join Sweet Dub in the hotel (with multiple pools! And room service! And miniature golf on site!). He says he misses us. He says he wants to drive home tonight and pack us up and take us back with him. He is sad and lonely. I laughed at him when he called this morning at 6 to say all this. “I wish I had time to miss you,” I teased.

But you know? I have a feeling that I would feel the same way, waking up alone. And I just realized he’s never spent a night away from Cily since we brought her home from the hospital. Maybe he’s going through withdrawal.

What do you think, Cily?


Yes, definitely.

* In retrospect, not really. It felt like I hadn't posted in a couple of weeks, and then I discovered that I had. So...I think the sleep deprivation is translating into general absent-mindedness, which in the overall scheme of things is, I think, kind of a lovable trait, yes?

A Change Is Gonna Come?

So busy at work, so tired at home, so not blogging either way.   But then I read about this, the latest in a string of racist hoaxes thrown together by the likes of Susan Smith, Chuck Stuart, and most recently Ashley Todd (how quickly we forget).   Wow. I love Post-Racial America. Thank God we've gotten past all that uncomfortable racial mess.   I have so much more to say but I'm having trouble concentrating. Why do some people think it's a good idea to have a conference call on speakerphone with someone on a cell phone (which means both sides have to scream to be heard) in their office and not close the door?   Will try to update later.

Cheap Entertainment

I'm moblogging today. I think.   Just a quickie. Overheard while Viva was trying to distract Cily from crying (teething, teething, OH THE PAIN):   Viva [singing energetically]: Oh Celia my Celia Lou, how much I do love you, you're smarter than a monkey, smarter than a sock, you're smarter than my mom who's an astroNAUT...   I think I'm an astroNOT. And I'm pleased that Viva thinks her sister is smarter than a piece of clothing.

Gratuitous Cuteness

Hey, guess what? My “newborn” will be seven months old tomorrow. She’s awesome:

I like to squish her and kiss her and all sorts of unspeakably embarrassing things. My voice gets very very high, because that makes her laugh. Here is what she is doing now: lots of talking (even in her sleep), rolling over, sitting up on her own for increasingly longer periods of seconds, grabbing everything within reach, and screaming with frustration when she’s on her stomach – because she clearly wants to crawl, even if she doesn’t know what that is. She adores her big sister, and if I haven’t mentioned it yet, let me say how impressed I am with how much Viva loves her baby. A few weeks ago, we assembled the long-awaited crib and located it in Viva’s room, and now – minor miracle – Cily spends most of the night there. Viva is thrilled, because now it's two in one room and two in the other* (until the 4 AM feeding. I am lazy and cold and sleepy at 4 AM. Did you know that baby experts consider sleeping 5 hours straight “sleeping through the night”? Yeah. What do they know?). Viva wants Cily in her room. She wants her in her bath:

She wants to read bedtime stories with her, and sing to her, and she wants to watch the NBA playoffs with her:

At any rate, as we all know, babies grow. And they grow quickly. And we're all just enjoying having her around, so small and warm and sweet-smelling. So huggy. She bounces into little spasms when she sees me, and beams. It is like a drug. I have to be around her. As does Viva. And her daddy? Also has a pretty bad case of Wrapped Around Her Little Finger. Seven months? Pretty damn near perfect.

* You know, she likes things to be even. And fair. And prior to Cily, Viva would often protest loudly that it was unfair that Dub and I got to sleep together, while she had to sleep in her room all alone. Now all is right with the world...for five minutes.