Monthly Archives: August 2008

My stalker.

So I’ve had someone semi-stalking me for a while now. I find it absolutely hilarious. This person has created 22 different AIM accounts to keep stalking me when I ignore comments. I blocked a few then realized that if I stopped responding the person assumed the name was blocked. I know that one should never ever acknowledge trolls because it encourages them, but sometimes I can’t resist. I think this is awesome. I have a stalker! All of the names are some version of (strangeadjective) and salmon or trout. This is funny.

Right now I am asking him questions. He’s not answering very well. At this point I would like my stalker to hear and understand: hygiene is not the enemy. It’s ok to wash with soap.

Today he is EconomicalTrout. I wonder if he is feeling broke?

Yesterday was made of yay!

In no particular order:

*I got my hair dyed in colors I have always wanted to. That’s awesome.
*I spent less time actively parenting than any day of Shanna’s life so far. That was cool. (I left her with Noah for three and a half hours as I got my hair done. And she was happy to be held by Miss Laura for quite a while in the evening. w00t for increasing friendliness! Then Noah wore her for four hours on our long walk.)
*I walked 6.8 miles total yesterday. That’s awesome.
*Miss Laura brought a very cute monkey onesie for the munchkin. (oh–note to people who think baby clothes are cute. I appreciate more clothes quite a bit and would like to note that it would be a good idea to buy in 9 or 12 month sizes at this point because she is growing fast and has plenty in her current size.)
*We walked to Cold Stone as entertainment in the evening. It was a good walk (4.2 miles round trip) and it was fun with silly talking on the way there and back. We figured out that with that much walking the ice cream was only about 60 calories more than we burned. 🙂
*Another successful dinner happened. This time Noah made risotto complete with popping grease. Exciting food is awesome. 🙂 And I made parmesan chicken and he baked some pumpkin. It was rather tasty. Noah rocks.
*I managed to ditch my pissy mood. This was a very good thing.
*You may have noticed that Miss Laura came over. That was really awesome given how short notice it was.
*When I got back from having my hair done the munchkin was sleeping. Have I mentioned how funny I find it that most of our foreplay at this point is, “Hey… she’s sleeping…”?

I think that’s it. But that’s a lot. So yay!

I’m in trouble.

I don’t spend a lot of time shopping/browsing online. But I hang out in some places where people do. Today the kick was long skirts. So I’m saving the links here. I would like to just casually mention that I have a birthday coming up. 🙂

http://www.shukronline.com/womens-skirts.html I’m not into the corduroy, but I love the seriously flared ones.
http://www.etsy.com/view_listing.php?listing_id=10429562
http://www.tznius.com/cgi-bin/product.pl?productid=37&groupid=26
http://www.enwrapturevintage.citymax.com/30inchplussizesilkwrapskirt.html
http://www.justdenimskirts.com/

Books I will be reading in the next couple of weeks.

I will cheerfully arrange being able to read one (or more) to line up with the reading speed/level of someone else if anyone wants to read with me.

William Blake: Songs of Innocence and of Experience
Emily Bronte: Wuthering Heights
Edgar Allan Poe: Selected Poetry http://rpo.library.utoronto.ca/poet/262.html
Walt Whitman: Leaves of Grass 1855 version
Stephen Crane: Maggie: A Girl of the Streets
Frederick Douglass: Autobiography of Frederick Douglass
Joseph Conrad: Lord Jim
George Bernard Shaw: Pygmalion
Virginia Woolf: Mrs. Dalloway
Tom Stoppard: Rosencrantz and Guildenstern are Dead
Seamus Heaney: Beowulf

A shitload of poetry by: Auden, Yeats, Thomas, Frost, Pound, Eliot, Ginsburg

Along with ten other books I haven’t selected yet because I need to figure out which ones I want to buy. 🙂

(Have I mentioned that I hate poetry? Fully 10/29 things I need to read consist of masses of poetry. This is where I cry. Noah! Help!)

On my body, food, and happy mediums

Having a baby fucks with your body. No duh, I know. But it has fucked with my body in ways I didn’t anticipate. At the start of pregnancy I weighed 181. I had been steady at that exact number for a while. By the fourth month, after all the sickness, I was down to 169. At the end of my pregnancy I was 202. I was back to 181 by ten days after giving birth. In the past eight weeks weight started creeping on and I have waffled between 187 and 191. But I look different. My face and neck and upper chest and arms are the thinnest they have ever been in my life. I would say noticeably thinner than when I weighed 155. So all of the added padding is between my boobs and my knees. My efforts on google tell me that my breasts probably weigh about five pounds more than they did when I was at my lightest. This results in me having a noticeably padded middle and butt. Fair enough. I would mind more if Noah whistled less often. I’m sorta half-assedly thinking about size but mostly thinking about strength. I would like to get back into my size 12 clothes because I have more in that size and they are cute. Seeing as I care more about being smaller than about being lighter exercise is more important than diet, though diet helps. I’m walking at least five miles a week and feeling terrible that I’m not doing more. I’m doing the 100 push up challenge (damnit, I have to do week two again cause I’m such a wuss). I’m starting to do more planks and I’ve been doing alright with crunches. I should get in some heavier exercising, but it’s hard to do with munchkin. I want to start yoga but I’m too big of a pussy to leave munchkin for that much time at a go. I need to do more and I just haven’t yet.

Then there is that sex stuff. When we have sex I feel sore at the beginning as if I’ve been having tons of sex recently and uhhh we haven’t been having tons of sex. I would like that feeling to go away already. Orgasm is still inconsistent and not as amazing as pre-kid. I’m working on it. It’s hard to work on it when I don’t have a lot of time to spend on it though.

Then there is sleep. I am so tired. And before anyone thinks to say, “Well duh you are sleep deprived” no–you don’t understand. I’m not sleep deprived. I’m sleeping 8-10 hours a night and still napping during the day. I don’t understand how anyone can work with a nursing baby. I’m muddled and confused a lot of the time. And I don’t do all of the nighttime parenting–Noah changes as many or more diapers than I do. (Have I mentioned how much Noah rocks?) The munchkin sleeps for 5-7 hour blocks most nights. She starts waking up every 3 hours after the first big chunk cause she eats a little then falls back asleep. I really can’t complain about her sleeping though.

So, I don’t want to go on a diet. Let me explain why. Not that anyone really cares, but I like to babble. There is the altruistic reason: if you take dieting too seriously it compromises milk supply. I’m not going to do that. But let’s get serious. The reason I am not going to diet is because I am so fucking hungry if a slow moving cow went passed me I might clean the bones before it could get by. I wasn’t told that my own leg would start to look tasty. I’m hiding how much I eat most days because I feel sort of ashamed of how much I am eating. I went to eat with a friend last weekend and I didn’t finish off all the food on the table even though I wanted to because I felt gross. 🙁 I don’t actually think she would have any sort of negative thoughts based on that (and hell, she’s going to read this) but I’m really not rational in the moment. As a result of my constant ravenous hunger I am trying to increase the percentage of my diet devoted to vegetables. This is a struggle, but I’m doing ok. We are cooking a lot. I’m actually really proud of how much we are cooking. We have managed to cook at least five nights a week for the past month and some. Some of the nights we don’t it’s cause we have too many leftovers. 🙂 I’m eating out of the house about three meals a week. That’s really awesome when I compare it to pregnancy where I was eating out of the house 15+ times a week. So I’m all proud. 🙂 I’m cooking a greater variety of things than I ever have before (another yay for Noah and his cheerful encouragement of my efforts!) and Noah has been cooking things I’ve never had. I’m being GGG.

Let me tell you though. Cooking, shopping, meal planning, and clean up is fucking daunting. No wonder I never managed when I was working. I can’t believe anyone has the time to really do it while working full time. I realize that my epiphany is really lame, but I can’t believe that women are expected to keep up with this while working. And many relationships do have that expectation. I’ve always been spoiled (uhm rich enough) to not have to deal with it as an adult. And my kid isn’t additional work yet. My respect for working mothers is growing by the day.

I’ve made messloads of progress on the garage. It’s just about clean enough so that I can park in it. I have it in the back of my mind how much it will suck to load the munchkin into the car in the rain. So I’m working towards being able to use the garage. 🙂

So the happy mediums I am struggling to find: eating enough and trying to figure out how to have my diet be healthier than not, sufficient exercise to increase my strength faster than she gets heavy (oof lifting a toddler would be rough right now), enough sex to keep Noah and I both on a more even keel emotionally, keeping the house clean enough to not feel guilty while not stressing about perfection, and spending enough time reading. 🙂

Travel

I am coming up to Portland at the end of this month. We will be arriving on Friday the 29th of August and coming home on the 7th of September. The first weekend is fully booked (we are coming up for a wedding and then I gotta see a special girl) but after Labor Day we have lots of open time. I want to go up to Seattle for at least a day because I’m going to see my friend Jefe’s new restaurant. (Ok, not that new… but I’ve never seen it.) It’s Austin Cantina if you live in Seattle, go check it out. Tell him Krissy sent you. 🙂 Jefe and his wives have done a lot of work and seem very happy.

So uhm, yeah… anyone want to see us? 🙂