8/14

I've been slowly losing my mind for the past two weeks, which might explain why I haven't been blogging as much. I got a call on Thursday morning from the daycare saying that Z. had broken out in a full body rash. They wanted him to be picked up - pronto. I arrived a little before lunch time and the kids at the refugee camp were spread out on the floor, looking like they had been left in the exact positions they had fallen. Zac was in the lone crib in the room, designated for the one baby that hasn't started walking yet. That's my son - the non-walker, in the crib. He was laying on his stomach, hands and feet curled into his body, staring vacantly out between the bars of his crib. He looked miserable.

The only place I could get him into the doctor was down in south Houston, where my parents live. On the way down, my air conditioner decided that since I had a kid in the car with a fever higher than the temperature outside, (Z = 102, Houston = 97) it would be a good time to stop working. By the time I got him to the doctor's office, it looked like he was about to burst into flames. The sweat was rolling down his body, off his hair. My Mom tried to distract him with pieces from a wooden puzzle. It worked for a little while, until the doctor started pulling on his ears and looking in his throat.

Apparently, babies can get rashes when they have viral infections. I had no idea that this was the case. Baby immune systems are so foreign to me. If I had broken out in a full body rash at the end of being sick, I would be in the hospital - either because I needed to or just to make me feel better that I wasn't dying. There was a scary moment when the Doctor asked if I was up-to-date on Zac's MMR immunization (measles, mumps, and rubella). I'm not. We're one month behind, which left me to agonize, "MY PARENTAL NEGLECT GAVE MY BABY THE MEASLES!!!" Turns out, it didn't, and Z. is getting his immunization this Friday.

So, Z. spent the weekend with Grandma and Grandpa, who are also both sick. Fun was had by all, I assure you. I spent 2 1/2 hours at the Saturn dealership, waiting for an 'estimate'. Finally, after I complianed long enough, they called the repairs into the warranty folks and I got a rental car and left.

Sucks, sucks, sucks.

Car is fixed now and Zac's internal temperature is back below the boiling point for mercury.

For P., the supplier of all great oneies, a poop story:

Just to round out my insanity, the great Houdini pulled a good one on me this morning. He woke up in a great mood, sitting in his crib, playing with the stuffed rabbit that the FOB's Mom had given him for Easter. I picked him up and went to change him on the changing table. Looked around. Realized that the ointment for his very, very sore butt was downstairs in the living room, which was the last place I had tried to lasso him into a diaper and some clothes.

I put Zac on the floor, sans diaper, went downstairs, grabbed the ointment, came back upstairs. I was gone for less than 60 seconds. I open the door to his room and see him sitting next to a giant pile of yellow and green poop. He was just sitting there so sweetly that it took me a second to realize that the poop had actually come from him. Large, firm turds were scattered around, like he had been crawling and pooping at the same time, and then sat down next to it, looking guilty. I cleaned it up, diapered his poopy ass, and realized that I may never be sane again.

8/09

This morning sometime, I definitely started questioning some of my choices regarding how I live my life. It isn't anything that I can put my finger on, it's just that at the end of most days, I'm not sure how I'm going to make it through another.

I can hear my Mom's voice in my head telling me that I need to establish a routine and everything will be better once things settle down. My life is in a giant transition now: three more days at my old job, one week of vacation, and then starting my new employment. Nothing that I thought was solid is actually what I thought. It's like stepping off the sidewalk onto the ground, only to find out that an unseen hand has switched out the ground for something else. The announcer in the background whispers to the unseen audience in a conspiratorial tone of voice: "Now ladies and gentlemen, let's watch what happens as Ms. Not-so-Pregnant goes about what she believes is an average, ordinary day. Little does she know that we've secretly replaced every solid surface with marshmallow fluff. Let's see what happens!" Some days, the ground has turned to Jello, which is nice because I can bounce back up. Some days, it's a cloud, or worse, a gaping precipice that leaves me free-falling until the next morning.

Zac was sick yesterday with a high fever and I was home from work taking care of him. Last night, or rather this morning, the combination of illness and separation anxiety led him to only fall asleep on my chest. Anytime that I tried to put him back in his crib, or at least move him off my chest, the effort was met with pitiful howling. I laid there, rubbing his back, thinking about the last time I had listened to someone's heart beat, been comforted by a presence, or laid my worries down in another's arms as he snored softly.

8/07

It's starting to get embarassing. The number of bad blind dates that I go on is starting to make me wonder: is it me? is it them? Am I not ready to date or is everyone I meet off the internet really that weird? Most of the time, I meet great, charming, wonderful men that I have ABSOLUTELY NO romantic chemistry with. Oh, we can flirt over e-mail and even the telephone, but get me in front of someone and they usually start to wonder if they've spilled sour cream on their shirt. I'm that bad at eye contact. It's just that - I'm shy. There. I've said it.

SHY!

No one ever believes me when I tell them that because I write everything that comes into my head on this blog and have the most up-front, straightforward conversations with my friends that usually involve the phrase, "Well, don't sleep with her until you get her tested!" Honestly. My willingness to submit myself to the torture of blind dates only seems to counteract the fact that I consider myself a little bit reserved in person until you get to know me. What? You were expecting pole dancing and body shots?? That's the second date, people. I go on many first dates and very, very few second ones.

Anyways, I'm going to give you all a little break from my dating (mis)adventures. I met a nice man today (Hi DarthD!) for lunch and I'm looking forward to getting to know him better. Much to SJ's chagrin, I will not be going on a date with a blind cowboy anytime soon, although I did get to spend some more time with her crotch fruit this weekend. Ellie climbed up in my lap, pointed at my shirt and said, "Prettty," so clearly, it's not me that's the problem with this whole dating thing. If a two year-old thinks I'm pretty, then I'm golden. She even grabbed my boob later and exclaimed, "Boobie!" with a glee that I haven't heard in relation to my breasts since before my pregnancy with Zac.

Lately, I've been really getting into some more "controversial" (read: feminist, proud-female) websites. The one that everyone has been talking about in blogs is http://www.shapeofamother.blogspot.com/. Check it out, it's pretty amazing.

There has also been a recent "controversy" involving BabyTalk magazine. BabyTalk published a picture of a woman breastfeeding on the cover of their magazines. A full 25% of their readers (of freakin' BabyTalk!!!) feel that it's inappropriate to publish pictures of women and their "giant boobs" nursing. I wish I had a picture of Zac and I that I could post, but the only time my family usually saw me breast feeding was after Zac and I had fallen asleep on the couch, with my right boob hanging out and some of mama's milk drooling out the side of his mouth. It doesn't really lead the picturesque kind of shots that you want to share with the 'Net. Anyways, some women have posted great responses to the BabyTalk cover, most notably Kateri and Joy Unexpected.

All I've got to say to those folks that "object" to pictures of women breastfeeding is: Bite me and my formerly lactating tit!

8/04

Last night I decided to unpack some of my things in my bedroom. I've lived in my apartment for four months and there are still piles of things to be sorted and put away. I don't really have any 'away' places, but at least now I can see the top of my hand-me-down dresser. There has to be some good energy in that. Some kind of feng shui, lightness of being benefit to settling into a home. Yes, it has rusty water that stains my clothes, my tub, and the bathmat. Yes, the ants have set up a colony in Zac's bedroom where I left the baby yogurt on the windowsill after one helacious night of teething, crying, madness. And, yes, the apartment complex and the surrounding streets don't have handcap-accessible sidewalks, so getting a stroller down into the parking lot takes an act of God and a patient toddler. It's mine, though.

Sometimes people (well - usually Moms with parnters), "How do you do it? How do you do everything around the house AND take care of Zac?" Short answer is: I don't. I can't tell you how many times I've gone to put Zac's bottle in the microwave to heat it up, only to realize that I forgot to put the milk in. I've even started the microwave with nothing inside it, the bottle of cold milk on top of the appliance. I did the dishes last night to avoid the smell of things best left unsmelled permeating my entire apartment. The laundry only gets moved from the washer to the dryer when I start worrying about mold and then sits in a basket until I need to wear it again. It's my way of coping. Well, that and watching bad reality television like, "Design Star" and the marathon of, "America's Next Top Model," on VH1 (Damn you MNS. I really didn't need to start watching that show!)

I also have one HUGE benefit to being a single parent and that is, I have no one to tell me when I should or shouldn't do something or even how something should be done. Vacuum at 10:30pm? Ok. Do the dishes at 4am when Zac wakes up? Sounds good. There is no one complaining when I forget to rinse out my container of yesterday's breakfast of oatmeal and bananas. No one is there asking why I'm so inconsiderate or harping, "Why don't you ever do anything for me?" Everything is exactly in the same place it landed, last time it was touched. Nothing moves unless I move it. I know when I go home tonight, my hair brush will be in the same place on the counter next to the sink, right next to the screws, q-tips, old bottle of nail polish remover, and last week's paycheck stub. Right where I left it.

8/03

I did gymnastics for a looooong time when I was growing up. While learning tricks and new moves on different pieces of equipment, I would crash, horribly. I mean, it was so bad that my parents weren't sure I was going to make it to puberty. Once I was in puberty, they weren't sure I was going to last through high school. There is one fall in particular that I remember right before Thanksgiving break, my sophomore year in high school. I was on the balance beam, practicing my leaps and combination moves (a jump to a acrobatic). I did a hitchkick into a roundoff, landing squarely on the slender four inches of faux-leather covered wood. In a hitchkick, your left leg goes up first, followed by your right. You land on your left leg to prepare for the acrobatic move. Since I'm right-handed I always led into a tumbling move with my right leg.

It was the last practice before Thanksgiving break and I was excited because we were driving down to see my sister in college. My arms were above my head and my left leg was preparing to land on the beam. Except it didn't land. It glanced off the right side of the beam, causing my leg to cross in front of my body with my right leg still in the air. If you imagine a contorted pair of scissors, falling perpendicular to the horizon, you have some idea what I looked like. I instinctively tried to put my hand out, to stop the inevitable fall. My back hit the beam first and crushed my hand, which was trapped underneath my body. My entire left leg was scraped in a giant raspberry and I had bruises forming on my forearms and elbows. My head ricocheted off the beam, whiplash style, and I fell like a rock to the mat below. I laid there and tried to clear my head and force air into my lungs. I had severely sprained my right hand and broken one of my fingers. I still can't completely straighten it to this day. I have my own version of "the claw".

Immediately after Thanksgiving break, I was back up on the balance beam. In gymnastics, you know that the best cure for fear is to get back up and do it again, and again. You do the move so many times that your body will find the beam without your mind. You do it so many times that your body forgets its fear.

That is what dating is like for me now.

Blind Date #10: T. a.k.a.: Larry the Cable Guy

I met T. at a Mexican restaurant close to my work. He lives in way, way north Houston (really, this city is so sprawling that parts of Houston are almost in another county), but he said that he would drive into to meet me.

He works as a commercial construction foreman. He owns his own business and makes his own schedule. We had only talked over IM and e-mail a couple of times, but he had lived in my home town, not just Seattle, but the actual suburb that I grew up in, for six years. He also has two kids and an ex-wife that he didn't seem unbelievably bitter about.

I was very surprised when he started talking to hear the strongest, thickest Texas accent come out his mouth. It wasn't just the accent; it was the words he was using. He sounded just like Larry the Cable Guy. Here are a couple of examples of actual sentences: "I wodn't too smart in school. Well, shoot, if my Coach hadn't a been my history and math teacher, I don't think I woulda grad-uated," and "Sheee-it, I ain't never been out of the country before."

Yep, I was out to lunch with a redneck. He tried to tell me that he wasn't a redneck; that he just sounded like one. I asked him if he liked hunting, fishing, and Nascar (the penultimate trilogy of redneck sports). He said yes to two out of the three.

I'm a little bit afraid that there might be a shot gun in my future if don't agree to go out with him again.

8/02

Today is my 200th post on this site. Much like Zac figuring out how to extract urine from a toilet, I'm not sure whether to be proud or horrified. This time, I'm going to go with proud...

...I've recently been inspired to keep a personal general ledger of all of my accounts payable for the house. I blame Amanda D over at the Naked Ledger for the inspiration and the idea that not only could I share my (lack of) lovelife with friends, family, and random strangers - I could share my finances. We can just sit back and let the hilarity of the situation wash over us. Who needs to try and think of something interesting to say when you have $22.83 in savings!?! While trying to raise a kid! HA!! And trying to lose weight and date! And make every third sentence rhyme!! HA! Let the raucous laughter ensue I say!!!

I have never, ever been able to (read: wanted to) keep track of everything that I have going into and coming out of my bank account. Throughout my college and post-Peace Corps years, I've struggled with not bouncing checks, only to bounce them when my landlord held onto them for three months before depositing them, or having to frantically call my parents and ask for money (again!).

Really, it was a combination of factors that led me open up an Excel spreadsheet, keep track of my receipts, and balance it against my online bank account. The results of this experiment made me a little queesy, at best. I'm posting only the expenses that I have any kind of control over. Rent, car payments, car insurance, utilities, credit card payments, student loan payments, and daycare are included in my total expenses for the month and not posted here.

July 2006 Expenses, Naked Ledger style:

Expense: Budget/ Actual

Food & Hygiene: $200/ $213.17
Gas: $160/ $160.32
Misc: $100 /$350.62
Clothes: - /$95.96
Entertainment: - /$58.01
Gifts: - /$68.24
Savings: -/ -

Total: $460 /$946.26/ (-$486.26)

First of all - let's go with the positive. How much do I rock for accurately predicting how much food and gas Zac and I would use in the month? The food & hygiene expense is EVERYTHING that I purchased at a grocery or drug store, including: diapers, wipes, baby food, cleaning supplies, shampoo, milk, bread, etc. At first, I was a little shocked at how much I spent in that category until I realized how many supplies for the house and for Zac's butt I pick up at the grocery store. The actual feeding and keeping us healthy part is really only an afterthought during those trips. The gas prediction was really just a lucky guess on my part.

What killed me were the unbudgeted and miscellaneous expenses. It was a really unrealistic budget to imagine that I wouldn't spend anything on clothes, gifts, entertainment (eating out, going out, anything else that might be done 'out'), or miscellaneous items. Since this was my first crack at budgeting and recording my expenses, I'm going to forgive myself this month. Try not to vomit all over your computer when you think about how much money I'm spending, though.

8/1-2

The real August 1st...

Update on Blind Date #9: J2

He finally called me this morning at 9:30am to tell me that he was sorry he blew me off like that. It was nice that I got to ask him if was ok, which he was. Turned out that he fell asleep putting on his shoes. If he was that tired, he shouldn't have volunteered to come over.

We still haven't met. He thinks that I'm too interested in being a single-party girl. Ha! Double: Ha!HA! I laugh in that general direction. I was honest with him about going out with a couple of friends on Saturday and he completely lost it. I'm not exactly sure what he wants me to do, especially considering that WE'VE NEVER MET!!!

He thinks that I went looking for 'attention and affection' and he 'had hoped that I wouldn't be that needy'. Well - I'm not. I wasn't looking for anything other than a laugh and some companionship. I spend a lot of time alone. I work in front of a computer, alone. I live alone (Ok: with Zac I concede, but has anyone ever tried to carry on a conversation with someone that just wants to put your fingers in their mouth and hold them when they get tired? Maybe you shouldn't answer that. Come to think of it, I've had a couple relationships like that, but you get my point). Even when I'm in public, like dropping Z. off a the daycare or in the grocery store, I'm alone in my own head. I just exist in my own world.

I want someone to come in and play with me; in this world I create in my head. Right now, it feels like J. broke down my defenses and is now behind enemy lines, causing a ruckus.

Here is the embarassing part (there always is with me), I want to sit down with him over a cup of coffee. I want to see the man that has judged me so harshly that it made me cry at work. It's not fair what he did and I want him to know that.