Monthly Archives: July 2009

Oh –good to pass on

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If you are like me and you spend much time wondering if you are pregnant due to inconsistent cycles, trying to get pregnant, trying not to get pregnant, whatever, I recommend heading on over to: http://www.saveontests.com/ You can get pregnancy tests for as little as $.34/test if you buy 100 of them. 100 pregnancy tests sounds like a really lot but given how irregular my cycle is I am willing to bet I have used at least 40 or so in my lifetime and I’m not done with testing. I’ve only had these cheap things for about the last 20. That means I probably have already spent over $200 on pregnancy tests when I could have spent $34 for all the tests I will ever possibly need. Sounds smart now doesn’t it? Ok, technically they expire in about three years but still! I could have bought a bunch of these every three years and still saved a lot of money. 😛 You can buy them in packs of 5 for only $3.25. No really, that’s awesome.

Slightly paranoid

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Once again I’m obsessing about weight. This time, luckily, not my own. Shanna hasn’t gained a full pound in the last nine months. If she doesn’t gain some weight this month she will have fallen from the 89% to the 9%. If I stop and think about that real hard I feel like I must be doing something wrong. I’m not sure what I am doing wrong. I am giving her as much food as she wants. I nurse on demand (sometimes half the night). Should I stop letting her have water and replace that with something that has calories–like more milk? Should I stop giving her vegetables because they have almost no calories? She doesn’t really eat meat. At this point she is probably up to ten bites of meat in her life. She poops and pees well above what is considered the minimum for this age. She is getting taller like mad–that is still up in the 70-something%. She runs all day. She is meeting all of the developmental milestones months early, some of them as much as four months early.

I’m having a hard time feeling confident that her body is doing what is right. I want to believe it, but I feel really bad right now.

Fashion issues

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I love the sundresses that are popular right now. Very long, I’m good with showing some cleavage and most importantly: the straps are adjustable. However there is one big problem with these dresses (and most of the tanktops I own) they were not cut for women with large breasts. If I wear them without a bra I am in imminent danger of falling out entirely at any second. (No really. It’s not a great thing.) If I wear a bra with them they look retarded because my bras are gi-fucking-normous in order to contain the vastness of my breasts. (Anyone who says, “but you aren’t that big” can kiss my lily white ass.) I don’t exactly appreciate having the top/dress look like little triangles floating on the sea of my bra. It’s fucking ugly and tacky.

Maybe I should have stopped watering them a long time ago.

Random thought exercise

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If I ever win the lottery (I really should buy tickets once in a while) my family would of course want money from me because they are thoroughly charming souls that way. It would be kind of cool to buy a piece of property outright that is not very built up and put a couple of houses on it for them. Specifically houses like these. They would have completed individual little houses. I would probably even build a “town hall” in the center of the little houses so that everyone had a big dining room/kitchen to hang out in when they wanted to get together.

It’s really not an awful idea.

Wallpaper ideas

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Now that I was shown the wonders of wallpaper (previously I didn’t consider them because my experience with wallpaper was all really ugly shit in old people’s houses) I have some awesome choices to make. I am interested in something that encourages a variety of imaginative play. I would like something that isn’t too ‘baby’ because I’m not going to want to change it particularly soon. I would like something that does not dictate that my daughter ought to be a tomboy or a princess. She gets to be whatever she wants to be. And I would like something that is not strictly speaking ‘girl’ because then little boys will scorn it because little boys are trained to be retarded like that. (We have a really machismo neighbor with a little boy Shanna’s age. I expect they will play because I get along with the mom. I expect that his father will make cracks if something is too girly because he’s already made cracks about how I shouldn’t ever cut Shanna’s hair because girls should never be allowed to cut their hair.)

Idea #1 which I like because it’s a neat old library and that’s always fun. I’m not sure how this one would age with a kid.

Idea #2 I like this one because it is very open-ended and it lends itself to all kinds of neat imagination games.

Idea #3 I think this one would age particularly well. I worry that it could be a little spooky for a small child. Of course I do love my tree imagery.

Idea #4 also very open ended but in a slightly more realistic sort of way. This one seems to me to be more about adventure and less about fantastic, if that makes sense.

Idea #5 this is less open ended but really fun.

Idea #6 neat, but I’m not sure.

More cheerful

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Today I am feeling happy because I have made a bunch of progress out in the shed. I am getting rid of the debris left from when the housemate before the last housemate was here. (I’m not complaining! Thank you for the roses!) This means I am able to organize the stuff I want to put in there. This kind of anal retentive organizing makes me swooningly happy. 😀

And I am going to squash my “I can do it myself!!!” attitude and gratefully accept help from the wondrous Taylor in finishing the garage. This way it will actually get done instead of me just bitching at Noah that I want it to get done. 🙂 Then I get to move on to feeling angsty about my lack of artistic ability. 🙂 That part will be easier to get done I suspect. I’m not sure exactly how I’m going to do the playroom yet but I feel a tantalizing array of options. 😀

Bits and pieces to get them out of my head

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Looks like trying to have more of a relationship with my family was a bad idea. 🙁 It’s time to withdraw from that again. Noah gave me some really good advice on how to do it without exploding a drama bomb.

I got into a really bad place for a while there where I was doing the martyr thing full time. That doesn’t help anyone least of all me. I need to knock that crap off. Noah can take care of his own happiness.

Shanna now, quite delightfully, says “owwwww sigh”. For those of you without children this means outside. It’s awesome. She loves her swing so much. I’m thrilled that I got the idea from and and I bought one. 🙂

I’m shifting things around in the house a lot more trying to figure out what arrangements will make me happiest long term because the long term is how long we are here. I really really want to make a cool playroom for the kidlet so I’m looking into that. I have a bunch of cool links that I might post later.

I’m feeling frustrated by the fact that people very very rarely initiate social interaction with me. Why is it that I have to do all of it?

My last tattoo appointment is on August 3rd. We’ll be stopping birth control after that. That means I’m taking advantage of the ability to drink. 🙂

Noah and I had a wonderful date on Monday where we had breathtakingly good food. Being married to a foodie is the best thing ever.

I’m not being good about exercise just lately. This is another thing I need to work on.

Urf and arf. Time to start walking towards the bus stop. I bet Shanna is going to love the trip on BART again. 🙂

What do you want?

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I was asked elsenet what I want right now that I won’t be getting anytime soon.

Clothes from this chick on Etsy.
I want to finish the front and back yards.
I would like to remodel our kitchen.
I would really really like another bathroom. (This is probably one of the least likely things.)
To hire someone to trim the tree in the front yard.
I want to finish the garage and turn it into a play room so that I can start sending Shanna out there to play. 🙂
I want to be able to travel more. I think it might be Scotland next.

I think that’s the money-necessary stuff I want at this point. What do you want?

Hey smart people

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I’m being asked a question I’m not sure how to answer. This website: http://www.thelocal.se/20336/20090629/ says that they are finding that DNA changes as a result of C-sections. My understanding would be that it would be as the result of trauma. The moms on a mailing list I’m on don’t understand how DNA can change. My understanding is that DNA can be damaged and damage is change. Am I wrong? I have found a variety of other articles documenting DNA change after trauma but I guess I’m just not explaining it well?

She’s a kid

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Not a baby anymore. She can now follow directions, sometimes with more than one step. Granted she doesn’t always want to but I think that is the battle of a lifetime. If she bangs on the door to go play out back I tell her, “You have to get dressed and put shoes on first” and she runs back to the bedroom and starts pulling out drawers or she hands me her shoes. When she is tired at night I tell her that we need to brush our teeth before we can go to bed and she heads straight to the bathroom. Oh, and she loves brushing her teeth. I think that is a little weird.

She’s dancing. It is the cutest thing ever. She likes dancing best when she can hold on to something like the table because otherwise she rocks her hips so hard she falls down. She likes to spin in circles.

She is starting to have dislikes about food. When she heartily rejected the eggplant I couldn’t blame her because I wanted to do it as well. 🙂 She is super into fruit. We are now having to deliberately limit sugar because she gets really hyper. I don’t do that with sugar so it’s kind of weird for me. We are now giving her meat occasionally because it was becoming too much of a pain in the ass to keep her vegetarian. Here come the smelly poops! It’s ok we’ve got a good system for dirty diapers.

She went through a potty pause and I haven’t gotten back on the wagon with EC yet. I’m starting today. She knows what her potty is for. She knows how to ask for pottying. It’s time to focus on that again. We are going through way too many diapers. I’m tired of the laundry.

She can sign: more, food, water (used for drink as well), milk, potty, all gone (she isn’t good with this one), and she’s trying hard for dessert. She can say: up, something that sounds a really lot like out (like outside), dow (down), and she mimics sounds a lot.

I’m having trouble with Picasa. I’ll try to upload pictures later.

Real life is really annoying.

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I fixed my Quicken problem today. I did it all by myself. Go me! This resulted in me being able to load the last couple of months into Quicken. I almost wish I hadn’t.

The sad truth is that we need to not buy Christmas presents, not go on any more trips, and seriously cut back on what we are spending on food. That spiffy new roof has more lasting effects than my comfort. Money kind of sucks. But if we are really really good then we might be able to go on a trip next year. *cross fingers*

(Icon just because I’m posting naked. :P)

A resolution.

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We just got back the appraisal as we are working on a home refinance. Well. We aren’t underwater but the house is less than Noah paid originally. This means that regardless of other preferences we are staying in Fremont basically permanently because we would have to make money on this sale for a move to make sense. So I need to work on my attitude about living here. My resolution is to stop being negative about where we live.

Things I like about Fremont:
-I have a great food system worked out. I have a milk co-op just a couple blocks away (I sometimes walk with the order if it isn’t too huge).
-I really love our weekly walks to the farmers market/store. It makes me feel more like I am living in a community.
-I like that I am getting to know my neighbors and that there are a lot of kids in my neighborhood.
-I appreciate the good Thai/Chinese/Mexican/Lebanese/pizza all within walking distance that are local independent places.
-Even though Fremont is far from many of my friends, I’m still in the bay with all the benefits that entails.
-I’m close to BART.
-Even though I am not yet a good gardener and my yards still have a ton of work left before they are awesome–I can do that work at my own pace and I have a decent amount of room in which to work.
-This house is a really good size for us at this point. I appreciate how much time it takes to keep the house (not much). I like that we have way way more storage space than we need.
-I have awesome solar panels on the roof and with the recent reroofing our house is cool and comfortable even on very hot days.
-It’s not going to be hard to finish the garage to create a playspace when my kids are a bit bigger.
-Our mortgage is fairly low and about to get lower. This allows me to stay home without any financial pressure while still doing awesome travel.

One of these days I’ll have to figure out a name for the house that I like. 🙂

More crap from mom

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My mom is in town. The 4th was ok. She had a whole big box full of stuff for Shanna. Some of it I appreciate: the hand-me-down hand knitted/crochet dresses that have been through multiple generations of our family are wonderful. Outside of that… not so much. I can see that we are once again going to have the trampy clothes war. She used to try and put me in awful clothes that I wouldn’t wear. She likes daisy dukes and super short skirts on young girls. She thinks they are cute. I think they are grossly inappropriate. I kind of want to make nasty comments about how she also thought it was fine to send her daughters off with a child molester but that might be pushing the point a bit hard. So yeah. I’m getting rid of the slutty clothes with the tags still on them. I’m not thrilled about the nauseatingly pink clothes either. Pink isn’t evil, I like pink. There is a difference between pink and frilly pepto bismol ickiness. I also don’t think Shanna needs to have jeans that are lace trimmed and covered in little pink hearts. Oh, and she doesn’t need cheap scratchy pepto bismol pink towels either. And she doesn’t need plastic attempts at soft covered books. And the ugly little plastic figurines? Not necessary either.

I’ve told my mother repeatedly that I don’t want her buying a bunch of crap but she won’t listen. She says, “Well it was cheap.” Yeah. It looks like it. Thanks. Save your money. In fact, save the money and pay me back the money you borrowed.

Social issues

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So there is a weird situation in my life. There is this guy I’ve known since high school. Many of the people I am still friends with from high school hang out with him quite a bit. They really wish I would “get over” my issues with him and come hang out with the group because it would be fun. They think I should give him another chance.

But you see, the problem is that he tried to rape me. He was physically pulled off my kicking and protesting body by another friend. I’m really not interested in finding out if he is an awesome guy these days because I will never ever trust him.

So it’s all awkward and shit. I get the impression that folks think that since I wasn’t actually raped it’s no big deal. But it is.

That’s what grief is

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Yesterday I had my second session with this new therapist. We spent an hour going over my history so that she would have at least some idea of who I am before we got into the fresh stuff.

It was amazing. I’m sad when talking about the old stuff because it is all sad stuff. But when we started talking about Francesca, when we talked about my child, I sobbed. That’s the difference. That’s what I’m struggling with. That’s grief.