I got a job! It’s part-time doing web design and maintenance The money is great and they gave me a kick ass computer to use at home. This is like 600 times better than my own computer (G3 266 mhz). I’m so psyched. For so long I’ve been trying to find a steady gig working from home that also doesn’t happen to suck. Most of the freelance work I get is crappy production work which basically means doing the scut work that someone else is willing to pay for to avoid doing it themselves. Yick! This is so much better. Unfortunately, it’s a contract position and it will be over in July but until then, it’s mine, mine, mine!

Mmmmhmmm. That’s right. MINE!

An exchange in my house this morning…

Daughter: Are you not tired anymore? (to me after I finished working out)

Me: Well, I’m still tired but I’m less stressed

Daughter: (looks perplexed)

Me: Stress. It’s what makes mommy crazy

Daughter: (face brightens) Oh yeah!

Hello all! Have you De-lurked?

Monday

I took the kids to get a flu shot today. I had to go to the health department because their regular pediatrician doesn’t have the mercury-free shots. WELL WHY THE HELL NOT??? They started making them mercury-free specifically because parents were concerned about this neurotoxin being used in flu shots but the pediatrician, a doctor for children, doesn’t have them? This irritates me. Can you tell? Anyway, my son is 7 months old and didn’t even flinch when he got his shot. Not a whimper. Not a tear. He’s a big boy. I can only guess that his chubby leg somehow cushioned the blow. My daughter, age 5, climbed behind my chair and didn’t want to come out. I felt so bad making her get the shot but seriously, they were both sick the entire Christmas vacation. There was a lot of projectile vomiting, fevers, diarrhea, snot and sleep deprivation involved. The vomiting really sealed it for me. There will be no children sick with the flu in THIS house. Period.

Yesterday we made the pilgimage to the store from hell to buy a new carseat for the baby. Please…the next time anyone hears me say that we need to go to Babies R Us, just beat me senseless right then and there. It will save me a trip. There’s nothing on earth quite like BRU on a Sunday. Two hours and a lot of money later, we walked out tired, cranky and totally over it. And that was just the grown-ups. Frankly, I can’t believe my husband even agreed to go. He’s not a shopper. He won’t even go near a mall unless the words “food court” or “Apple Store” are involved. But he was a trooper and actually immensely helpful in navigating through the sea of carseat choices. I have only 2 real requirements in a carseat and those are that it must be easy to use and it can’t crush my boy’s ‘lil peeper. I worry about things like that. I’m not sure if that makes me a good mother…or a freakshow.

It’s been three days and the baby is still sleeping in the crib but he doesn’t sleep for long stretches like he did before (in our previous ridiculous sleeping arrangement) and likes to wake up at 3 or 4am, flatly refusing to go back to sleep. So what do we do? We put him in the swing. I know this is bad. I know it’s prolonging the agony but being up at that hour IS agony so whatever…he sleeps until 7:30am in the swing. Again, I’m getting half of what I want so I am only half as irritated but still twice as tired. *yawn*

And finally, I’ve saved the best and most bizarre for last ;-P

I don’t check my site meter all that often but boy when I do… Here is a small sampling of the more interesting words that people typed into Google’s blog search engine that led them to my blog, in some cases rather inexplicably:

exhibitionist
lost my virginity
Baskin Robbins
I feel so sexy
dreamed last night
school uniform fetish
stripper
virginity
HNT
fetish life style
my mom’s boobs

I leave you to draw your own conclusions ;-)

I was tagged (thanks Monica) so here it is.  It only took me a month…

1. I love Snapple Green Tea with Lime.

2. I love massages. If I ever become filthy rich, the first thing I’m doing is arranging for a daily massage.

3. There are three things guaranteed to make me cry: a wedding, a funeral and watching “A Baby Story” on TLC.

4. I’m hopelessly addicted to lip balms of all kinds and varieties. I cant go to bed without it. No. I am not joking.

5. People always tell me I look exactly like their sister, friend, half-cousin, a girl from back home, or someone else they know.

6. I’m adopted.

7. I found out by accident when I was 34

8. Turns out that a lot of people knew about it. I, of course, wasn’t one of them.

9. I found my birth-parents in less than a year. It’s a cool story.

10. I’ve also helped a birthmom find her daughter.

11. I love Slurpees and those disgusting nachos from 7-11

12. My uniform is pretty much jeans w/ fitted v-neck t-shirts and sandals or sneakers. If it’s hot, the jeans turn into shorts. I simply have no occasion to wear anything cute or trendy. Just so you know, I wasn’t always like this.

13. I really loved the show Thirtysomething. I live for the day that it might finally be released on DVD.

14. I also really loved My So-Called Life, Felicity and Freaks & Geeks.

15. I am powerless over cookies, donuts and pizza.

16. I think I’m the only person in the world that is not in love with Starbucks coffee. But their black & white cookies rock.

17. I used to smoke. I still think about it and miss it but the smell really bugs me now. It’s a love/hate thing.

18. I have an irrational fear that when my husband leaves the house, something terrible will happen to him and that by saying “I love you, be careful” I can somehow protect him. If I forget to say it, it nags at me.

19. I actually like going to the dentist.

20. I also like getting shots.

21. Yes, I know these things make me something of a freak.

22. I lost my virginity at age 16.

23. I think Jack Black is the funniest person on the planet.

24. I used to be really skinny but I always thought I wasn’t.

25. At this moment (1/2/06), I am 5′9, 160 lbs. The excuse that I “just had a baby” isn’t working for me anymore.

26. I refuse to take a side in the breast vs. bottle battle. I do both.

27. I am mostly Irish w/ a little Welsh and English. I intend to visit Ireland someday.

28. I LOVE taking baths. I take one whenever I have the chance.

29. I typically don’t use any bath salts or bubble bath. Just plain water and lots of reading material.

30. Making continual eye contact w/ someone while conversing freaks me out. It’s too intense. I stop being able to think.

31. My favorite candy bar is Kit Kat

32. My favorite beer is Guinness but I hardly drink since becoming preggo with baby #1 (6 very long years ago)

33. I have a tattoo on my waist, above my hipbone. It’s a sacred heart (heart w/ flames and flowers) w/ my husband’s name on it.

34. I have a pierced nose. Haven’t worn a ring in it since before baby #1. A nosering seemed to interfere with the search for gainful employment. Additionally, babies like to pull nose rings, which hurts like holy hell.

35. Manhattan is my favorite city. I really noticed how many brunettes there are in NYC when I last visited. I felt like I’d found my tribe.

36. I was shy as a child. Now you can’t shut me up.

37. I am a classic underachiever.

38. I used to have a Louise Brooks bob. Later I had Bettie Page hair, but that was merely a coincidence.

39. You may have deduced by now that I am a brunette. I like my naturally dark brown hair color.

40. Now I have almost one-length mom hair that is best suited to ponytails.

41. My children are both blonde. I’ve been mistaken for the nanny more than once.

42. My dream is to have a big, old house with a huge kitchen, a front porch and giant oak trees outside. I imagine raising my children in this home and that my husband and I will live there forever. If you knew me 10 yrs ago all of this would seem very out of character. Actually, if you knew me now it would, too.

43. My favorite ice cream is Baskin-Robbins chocolate chip mint

44. While I do like dogs, I am definitely a cat person. I think that people who don’t like cats just can’t handle that a cat will not submit to them the way a dog will and to me, that screams “I HAVE CONTROL ISSUES!!!!”

45. I was a vegetarian for 6 yrs. I feel a lot of guilt over eating animals. I always try to buy meat that comes from free-range, humanely-raised animals to make up for it.

46. I think people should be severely and publicly punished for abusing animals or children

47. I love to read. I’ll read almost anything.

48. My first baby was born by an elective C-Section. It was a bad decision.

49. My second baby was a VBAC (Vaginal Birth After C-Section) and everyone tried to talk me out of it. It was a total success (if you don’t count the episiotomy, hemhorroids and incontinence).

50. With my second child I went to an OB practice staffed mostly of midwives. I highly recommend it. (and for the record, I gave birth in a hospital with all the conveniences and benefits of modern medicine. I wan’t on the floor in my barn or whatever weird ideas some people have about midwives)

51. The birth of my second child was awesome. Even with 36 hours of labor it will always be one of the greatest experiences of my life.

52. My husband I decided to get married 4 months after we started seeing each other. I had known him for 4 years as an acquaintance of my ex-boyfriend.

53. Six years into our marriage I got pregnant and had a miscarriage at 11 weeks. I had to wait a week for the D & C.

54. A year and a half later, my husband wanted to try again. I got pregnant on the first try.

55. With baby #2, I didn’t think I’d be able to get pregnant. I got pregnant the second try. Ovulation scopes are a great investment.

56. I always planned on not getting married or having children and look at me now. “Man plans, God laughs”

57. Being a parent is harder than any job I’ve ever had in the outside world but now I can’t even imagine my life without my children. I love them more than life itself.

58. When we were DINC’s (dual income, no children) I was super lazy. But we also did things I only dream about now, like eating out all the time, napping in the afternoon, going out and having a social life.

59. I also experienced several episodes of clinical depression. All I can say is thank God for Zoloft.

60. I had postpartum depression after my first baby.

61. I used to always dream about my teeth falling out in all different ways.

62. I’ve never had a dream that I can fly but I have dreamed I could breathe underwater.

63. When I wasn’t yet 21, I used to have recurring dreams about losing my fake ID.

64. I’m slightly germophobic thanks to a Discovery channel show about microbes.

65. I love bacon.

66. I hate the time between 11am and noon. It’s hardly morning but not afternoon either.

67. I love horses. I miss riding so much. The ability to have a horse is probably the only thing that could convince me to move out to the sticks.

68. I can’t wrap my head around $400 shoes; especially not those super-pointy stiletto ones. They make your feet look huge. I can’t wait for them to go out of style.

69. I live in one of the wealthier areas of a large city. Our house is really small but the schools are great. Does this make sense? Sometimes I think it would be better to go buy and renovate a giant old house in a crappy part of town. Double my square footage while living in a “transitional” neighborhood or stay in a nice, safe shoebox…what to do, what to do? If you have any good advice, please share.

70. I hate grocery shopping and I hate cooking dinner every night but I really,truly believe that if I had the big kitchen I dream of, outfitted with lots of lovely, helpful goodies from Williams-Sonoma, I’d probably like cooking a whole lot more. I don’t think anything could make me like grocery shopping except maybe doing it on my computer and having it delivered. Hey — I said it was a dream.

71. In this house, you are guaranteed to have spaghetti at least 2x a month. Pot roast or pork roast at least 1x a month, meatloaf at least 1x a month and a Boboli homemade pizza at least every other week.

72. Domestically speaking, I am pretty much a failure.

73. But I am an awesome decorator. I have a great sense of style.

74. I can’t go to bed with dirty feet

75. My first car was a Maverick. It was fast. I got a ticket 10 minutes after I left the house the first time my parents let me drive at night.

76. I’ve met a lot of famous musicians. Only a few were truly interesting.

77. I can’t smoke pot. It makes me really tired and stuffs up my nose. If I have to actually go somewhere, paranoia ensues. Not good, not good.

78. I have a BA in Mass Communications.

79. Unlike most of the general population, I like the smell of patchouli.

80. I also like lavender but I loathe anything rose scented.

81. My favorite perfume is Angel by Thierry Mugler.

82. My favorite guilty-pleasure fast food is Arby’s Beef n Cheddar. Yes, I know how incredibly scary they are. No, it doesn’t deter me in the least.

83. Hats always give me a headache so I don’t wear them unless at the beach.

84. Inexplicably, I love all things Mary Engelbreit. Once again, if you knew me, this would seem odd.

85. I know what you’re thinking and no, I don’t have Mary Engelbreit stuff all over my house. I only have a notepad and some magazines.

86. I like going to yard sales and thrift stores.

87. I’m always on the prowl for mid-century and Danish modern stuff.

88. I used to collect it but now I just find it and sell it on eBay.

89. Unless it’s vintage enamel cookware like Copco, Le Creuset, Cathrineholm etc. I like to keep that stuff.

90. I have a school & office supplies fetish

91. I only wear white gold and silver jewelry.

92. I’m a night owl. So is my husband. Before kids, it was not unusual for us to be up until 4am on a weekend night without even going out.

93. I like my in-laws.

94. My favorite flower is a tie between irises and a tulips.

95. I want to move out of this state because of hurricanes. My husband wants to stay. Needless to say, this is a point of contention.

96. I want to live somewhere that is pedestrian-friendly and isn’t absurdly cold. Any ideas?

97. Fall is my favorite season and Halloween is my favorite holiday.

98. I frequently use my toes to pick things up..

99. I have pretty feet. Well, I used to. Baby #2 made them wider *sigh*

100. Except for my black toenail. I dropped something on it and it’s in the process of coming off. It’s pretty gross.

Go Back to Main Page

It’s National De-lurking Week! This means that instead of just coming and reading and leaving, you leave a comment and say hello or what have you. While you may think your comments are not important, I assure you that myself and most other bloggers really like hearing from you — so say de-lurk, dammit!

Oh, come on. It’ll be fun. Okay, it may not be fun, per se, but it would make me really happy!

3:45 pm
My son is sleeping in his crib. This may not seem like a big deal but I assure you it’s MAJOR! We’ve been trying to get him to sleep in his crib for a couple weeks and he does nothing but scream and we always wimp out because we are pathetic suckers. Okay. You’re right. My husband is not a sucker. It’s me. I’m the pathetic sucker.

Now I can’t guarantee that he will sleep for long but who cares? He’s sleeping in the damn thing. I wanted to regale all my pretend readers with more than this but I promised my real daughter a story and I’m gonna keep that promise.

6 pm UPDATE:
Okay, he only slept for about 45 minutes in his crib but that’s not bad. It’s about half of a regular nap. Seeing as I only got halfway screwed out of a nap, I’m still halfway psyched. My cup is HALF FULL, goddammit!

10:30 pm ANOTHER UPDATE:
I CAN FEEL HIS TOOTH! This @#$%&! tooth has cost me so much sleep; I thought it was never going to come out. But tonight he unclamped long enough to let me feel his gums and I felt the tippy top of it. It’s about time. I was starting to worry that he might end up being one of those babies that’s teething and fussy for an entire year. Anyone who knows me knows I don’t do fussy very well. I hope we’ve been granted a temporary reprieve from the torture of chronic irritability but as my husband so kindly pointed out, his new tooth is really sharp and now he’s probably going to bite my boobs. For nearly seven months I’ve not once thought about that and now I’m totally grossing out on it. Thanks, honey.

As promised, my opus is finally complete.

100 Things About Me: A Navel Gazing Extravaganza

Do you think it’s pointless to chronicle all the details of your life if you’re the only one reading it? That’s not rhetorical. I really want to know. I never cared for journaling all that much. I only enjoyed the part in my “Writing as Self-Discovery” class where the teacher read our journals aloud to the class. I am so NOT your classic exhibitionist, as the recent Glamour article on women bloggers suggests we all may be but I guess I’m some kind of exhibitionist OR… is it a case of looking for validation, as one featured blogger claimed to find via blogging? Or the search for a sense of community, as was also mentioned? Or is it all of the above?

Personally, I haven’t found a whole lot of any of that. Blogs are great for having an audience but not so good for two way communication. The comments section doesn’t really provide for that in a practical way. I wis they would make threaded comments.

Anyway, coming soon…the much anticipated “100 Things About Me.” No, I will not pinch you. But please try to curb your enthusiasm. You look funny with that drool on your chin ;-p