Thursday, September 29, 2011

I have the diet of a six-year old...

If anyone follows this, its been a couple days since I last got my blog on. I haven't been feeling really well lately. I think I have a bug. I've just been physically and mentally exhausted and my stomach has been upset. I know what you are thinking, and the answer is an emphatic NO. I think it might have to do with six months of my body playing catch-up - not getting enough sleep, but being too tired to work out - combined with my diet of granola bars, toast and Diet Pepsi...although I did get spoiled this week with my delicious KC Chiefs birthday cookie cake purchased at 7pm on my birthday from Price Chopper. Yeah, my cookie cake did not say Happy Birthday - it said KC Chiefs. Festive.

The other day I got a wild hair up my ass (read: I got bored sitting at home and decided to go shopping) and went shopping for Halloween decorations. I got some really awesome stuff that I had to return 12 hours later due to the backlash from the Financial Gustapo. I shouldn't say that - my husband's frugality is going to make us millionaires in about 50 years. With me not working outside the home (notice the emphasis on "outside the home") I can't just go nuts at the mall, ya know? Necessities - sure that's understandable. But try convincing your husband that your $200 7 for All Mankind Rachel Zoe bellbottom jeans are a necessity.

*Sidenote- I did come up with a very compelling argument. An argument so compelling that he was left speechless and decided to let me keep them.

Unfortunately, I couldn't really come up with a convincing argument for why we needed the black crushed-velvet pillows with skeleton faces embroidered on them. I appreciate his fiscal responsibility, mostly because I don't have much myself, but I'm not too excited about finally being able to spend a lot of money on stuff I have always wanted when I'm senile. Somehow I don't think the entire J. Crew cashmere collection will look as good on me when I'm drooling and have my boobs tucked into my jeans.

Luckily we have all the Halloween decorations I bogarted from my mom last year, or we would have the sorriest decorations on the block.

Must go. The velociraptor beckons. By the way she is cutting her first tooth on the bottom left side...yesterday I could just feel it, and now I can see it coming up. Thank God I stopped nursing. She's already a dinosaur and a Vietnamese nail tech - I don't think I can handle vampire.

Monday, September 26, 2011

Birthdays and New Years - Yuck

I've never been a huge fan of two annual events. Both are supposedly monumental events that we build up in our fantastical minds to be the greatest day and night of the year. Both fall short of our expectations every time.

New Years Eve is precisely one of these huge letdown causes. I have never woken up on New Years Day and felt like I had done anything worth remembering or looking back on with the foggy fondness that you experience the morning after a really amazing night. Typically I spent those few minutes before and after midnight with my head buried in the toilet, or holding back the hair of a good friend whose head was buried in the toilet. Most likely, I was walking around with one high heel, crying about something I couldn't recall the next day. I never fell in love with a tall dark and handsome stranger at the stroke of midnight, I never had any kind of revelation about my future as the ball made its descent.

Speaking of balls making their descent, the other huge letdown event is birthdays. You never wake up the morning of your birthday and think to yourself, "This is going to be a great day! I feel wiser, enlightened!" If you do, I hate you. I've never wanted for anything in my life, and for that I am very grateful. All I wanted for this birthday was to take a nice, long relaxing nap. I was hoping that I would wake up feeling refreshed, and that Clayton would have taken it upon himself to do the laundry, do the dishes, clean up the kitchen (which stays clean for a grand total of 10 minutes after I clean it), ya know? Vacuum. I told him not to wake me up for anything. My exact words were, "I don't care if the house is on fire, don't wake me up. I'll go down with this ship. Just don't wake me up."

My nap went a little bit something like this. I laid down, fell asleep. About an hour later I hear the neighbor kids outside on the big wheels and 4-wheelers, racing around the street like a goddamned Nascar track. The dog is standing on my bed, in between my knees, barking nonstop. Downstairs I can hear football loud enough to give Helen Keller a headache, along with a 6-month old blabbering on, sounding like a Vietnamese nail tech. After about 45 minutes of trying to gently kick the dog off the bed and perhaps knock him into permanent muteness, I decided to give it up already and I go downstairs. The only evidence I have that Clayton moved from the couch is the open jar of Gerber prunes and a crusty bowl of baby cereal sitting on the kitchen table, some of it smeared on the kitchen table. Good. Thank God. I was concerned that he spent the whole time fermenting on the couch.

Last night we watched another shitty movie. What is with us and picking shitty movies? We need to have a movie-picking intervention. We watched The American, with George Clooney. Basically he's a mysterious American living in a small town in Italy, is making a gun for his boss who actually is planning on killing him. Meanwhile he makes friends with a priests and takes a couple hookers to Pound Town. In the end, I was more entertained by the straining faces Collins was making in her Exersaucer as she tried desperately to poop. Have you ever watched a baby and known instinctively that the baby is currently pooping in her diaper? Its actually really funny to watch...she bears down, grunts and her faces turns all red for a few moments. Then she lets up and carries on with her toys. Until she realizes that she isn't done, and she continued this trend on until I thought, "Hey it's been like 10 minutes, I'm pretty sure the coast is clear to change her diaper." You have to wait out the grace period to make sure that all dumping has been executed. You never want to open up a diaper mid-dump. Well that's what I did. I'm in the middle of changing her diaper when all of a sudden, BOMBS AWAY. "Happy Birthday Mommy! I poo on you!"

Sunday, September 25, 2011

Six Days till the Halloween Decorations Go Up!

If I had it my way, my house would be perpetually decorated for whichever upcoming holiday is closest. It would be amazing. But to save my neighbors the stress of being "That House," I decided its appropriate to decorate only 31 days before the event. That makes spring and summer pretty boring in terms of decorating (Memorial Day, 4th of July, Labor Day - its all red, white, and blue) so this is my favorite time of year. October 1st I will begin decorating my house in spooktacular fashion, hopefully scaring the living shit out of every kid on the block. I wouldn't be upset if I saw tears in the kids' eyes. Then November 1st, I will proceed with Thanksgiving, then Christmas, then Valentine's Day! I get giddy and tingly inside when I think of how much holiday decorating is on the horizon.

Something strange has happened the past two days. Middle school and high school-aged boys having fundraising car washes. Why they would choose to have a car wash is my first question, my second question is why they would want to have it in September, when all their tans have faded and they just look like scrawny pre-pubescent boys with back-ne. I mean, who do they think they are? I can tell you who they aren't: Chicks (although they sound like girls, being as their voices haven't changed yet), and thus they are also not an organization who is going to make any money.

Everyone knows the cardinal rules of fundraising car washes.
1.You pick a date in the mid-to-late summer...summer meaning before school resumes in August, preferably a Saturday that there's some sort of citywide function going on, ie. Kearney Cruise Night. Every retard with a car older than 10 years old thinks he has to spruce up his "classic" 1997 Monte Carlo and cruise down the strip with a trashy looking girl in the front seat, wearing a halter top, jorts, and a really tight pony tail held in place by a scrunchie. Bonus points if their illegitimate child is in the backseat. Extra bonus points if she's drinking a Mike's Hard Lemonade. For some reason that I cannot comprehend, the entire town congregates downtown to watch this trainwreck. The people who are cruising the strip think that the people pointing at their cars are impressed by their sweet ride, but really people are pointing out douchebags to one an other. Much like the slug-bug game. Point is, don't do the 3rd weekend in September. Its chilly, it rains every third day. And let's call a spade a spade: No one wants to play the "Is it a goosebump or a whitehead?" game.

2. I don't care if your fundraiser is to support your boy scout troop, you never ever EVER have boys wash the cars. A car wash hosted by boys is going to attract one specific type of clientele: Their moms. Their dads won't even go, for fear of being labeled as a creepy pervert who likes young boys who don't have any chest hair. They would be more likely to just hand their kid a couple dead presidents or write a check to this doomed organization and skip the car wash altogether. Is it sexism? Sure. But is it true? Absolutely. No, I am not a lesbian. I am just being reasonable and honest, fair and balanced. Because no one goes to a car wash to get their cars washed. Guys go to a car wash to see a bevy of beauties shake their stuff, hoping to witness their lifelong fantasy of girls sudsing their car windows with their boobs and spraying eachother playfully. Then ending the day with a rousing down-feather pillow fight in white cotton bras and panties. It's a pedophile's dream come true. Thus, car washes hosted by girls is likely to attract a wider array of clientele. Moms, dads, sisters, brothers, sistas, brothas, boyfriends, band geeks, and registered sex offenders all come out of the woodwork in hopes of donating to the Kappa Alpha Theta Spring Break in Cancun fund. Did I contemplate having a car wash to help pay for my spring break trips? Yes, but only during the summer that I subsisted only on Barton's vodka and baby carrots and ran 5 miles a day on the treadmill at the Kearney YMCA while following the Natalee Holloway coverage on Greta Van Susteren. I didn't actually do it though. Somehow I convinced my dad that I badly needed and deserved a vacation from my strenuous life as a CBA student - basically that's equivalent to a narcoleptic complaining of needing a nap.

By the way, the odds of me shelling out cash money to an organization full of boys whose car wash signs are attached to their gold chains is slim to nil. There was one young fellow in particular who had this look in his eye like, "I'm totally stealing her Jeep factory-grade rims." That's how they get you. They steal your rims, take your donation, then sell your rims and like, quadruple their earnings. So clearly they understand the ideas behind profit generation, but they need to go back to Marketing 101. Good luck earning money for your boy scout trip to Deanna Rose Farmstead.

Wednesday, September 21, 2011

Does the Carpet Match the Drapes?

That would be a no. We don't have drapes yet. However we have carpet. We have 70s porn star carpet. All over the house. The only difference is that instead of high-pile black carpet a la 70s porn stars, we have cheap. builder-grade white carpet. I just want to know who the asshole was who thought white carpet would ever be an acceptable idea - Powder? Was our house built by an entire team of agoraphobics? I don't even have to go outside to track dirt in. In fact, there is a spot on the carpet underneath our sofa that looks like someone was brutally slaughtered. There's chalk outlining the body, seriously. I just don't know what to do about this dilemma - well there is no dilemma. The dilemma is finding a way to deal with this heinous "used-to-be-white-the-day-it-was-installed" carpet until we can afford to do something different. I'm one of those people who goes insane when I can see particles and shit on the floor. Can someone shake me? No matter how often I vacuum, it still looks like someone sprinkled crap through a flour sifter. I guess I just think that white should be white. Red should be red. Black should be black (I'm talkin to you Sammy Sosa). I'm going to have a nervous breakdown.

To add to my imending nervous breakdown, I have been outsmarted by banana bread two times in one week. The first time, I followed my Nana's recipe. This woman is like the King Midas of food. Everything she makes is delicious, so when it came out and tasted like cardboard, I figured this cookbook must have had a misprint. So today, I try a different recipe, and I'm really stoked about it. I don't even want to get into how badly I got owned by this loaf of banana bread - let's just say that the center of the loaf looks like what got the Chilean miners stuck.

I'm not a complete idiot. I'm actually a really good baker. By a really good baker, what I mean is that I can follow a recipe really well. I could never make up my own recipe, nor do I care enough to even try. I'm a crappy cook, but a good baker/recipe-follower. I'm just really pissed off about this. That's 4 cups of flour, 4 eggs, 3 cups of sugar and 6 overripe bananas WASTED. I don't get it. I'm stumped, but at the same time I don't really care. Eating banana bread isn't going to help me get back into a size 6 months.

Speaking of size 6 months, I saw Dr. Phil's teaser for his interview with Taylor Armstrong that airs tomorrow. That poor woman. The teaser MADE ME CRY. Granted, I have been extremely hormonal for the past week or so (who am I kidding, I have been hormonal for the past 25 years or so), so I'm not sure if I was feeling worse for Taylor, or for her poor lips. Those babies have been inflated to within an inch of their life. They are like a giant bounce house at a kid's birthday party. I would hate to see what they would look like if they suddenly deflated. Can you imagine? Like my mom said last night, the skinnier she gets, the fatter her lips get. Her abusive husband is dead now, so the only logical explanation for these fat lips is injections or one hell of a yeast infection. I'm not meaning to be hateful. I just am. No, I seriously feel for this lady and for her daughter.

And for her lips.

Collins is blabbering on , and she's just so sweet. I love making her laugh. Kid's got the greatest belly laugh.

What a Pinteresting Day...

Why, oh why, did I ask Emily what the hell Pinterest is? Half a dozen people had sent me shit from this site, and everytime I looked at Pinterest.com, my head started spinning. Literally spinning around on my neck, my eyes would bug out of my head like stretched out springs, and then my head would fall off my neck and slam into the keyboard. It was just too much stimuli for me to handle.

When Emily told me that she spent more time on Pinterest than Facebook, I knew that was the kiss of death. I don't have enough hours in the day for both. I thought I would check out Pinterest with the kind of skeptical disillusionment that usually accompanies my first experience at an over-hyped new trend.

Um. I was wrong. Somehow I am going to have to create like 6 more hours in the day. This is awesome. Its like a virtual vision board - or "liking" a whole lotta shit. You can create different boards and pin all sorts of crap to them. I am pretty sure I neglected my kid for like most of the night. Well, luckily she's been asleep. We are past that first few months of continual doting on my sleeping angel, sighing with contentment at how effing perfect she is. Now I try to use that time productively - facebook, browsing piperlime.com, and of course webmd.com (my foot hurts). Adding pinterest to that just really complicated a lot of stuff. Although it was really fun to make a board depicting my style...well...my style before I became a stay-at-home mom. I used to be decently semi-cute. I at least made an effort. My current style is a pair of baggy Theta sweatpants and usually a tee shirt - currently its my red periodic table of the elements shirt. Tomorrow it will probably be my Oregon State "Beaver Fever...Snatch It" shirt that I would like to be buried in.

Clayton is in Tuscaloosa, Alabama for a career fair. He's out having drinks with his coworkers that went too. Working hard. I guess I thought companies had HR people do the dirty work like this. WTF. I'm not pleased. Its a lot of work caring for a 6 month old and a dog the size of a ferret. That bastard has to pee like every 15 minutes. You don't get a 15 minute smoke break in the morning and afternoon, followed by a 60 minute lunch break. You get NO breaks. I'm a trooper - I can handle it from 7a-7p...But from 7a on Tuesday till 11p on Wednesday? If anybody needs me, I'll be in the garage...with the car running and the windows down...I'm totally joking and I know that's totally not funny. I think to even out the score, I will take him up on his passive-aggressive, insincere offer to watch the baby for the weekend of the Ohio State game so I can go on a bender with the girls in Lincoln - ummmm yes please.

Watched the premiere of Glee tonight. I don't know if it was the sound of my retarded dog barking at the falling leaves, the sound of my baby girl constantly spitting out her pacifier and then wanting me to put it back in her mouth, or a really dumb storyline, but I just could not get into it. I think Lea Michelle's faces when she sings are just painful to watch. And how she generates that one tear to fall perfectly on cue during the final note of every frickin song...like, why? She could be singing Bootylicious and she would still have that one sole crocodile tear roll down her face.

Speaking of shows that kind of sucked, watched Public Enemies the other night. I decided to give Clayton the opportunity to redeem himself after his failed attempt at picking a good movie for our anniversary. He picked Captain America - F*** Yeah! I think every guy in the theater got a hard on for this comic book movie with crazy (read: completely unbelievable and farfetched) special effects. Too bad we were at the theater on the Plaza, TSA searched my bag and confiscated the razor I was going to use to slit my wrists. That would never happen in Leawood. They don't have to employ TSA in movie theaters on the Kansas side. The riffraff tends to stay on the Mizzou side.

Well anyways, Public Enemies sucked also. I love Johnny Depp, and I love Christian Bale. I think the problem is that I would rather look at them than hear them act. It was slightly disturbing that Collins was in her Exersaucer, watching it also. And she was engrossed. Jaw slacked, eyes glued to the TV. I think we have a budding bank robber on our hands. If anyone needs ideas for Christmas gifts for Coco, I think Baby Einstein: Learning about Bank Heists would be the perfect gift.

Monday, September 19, 2011

Jumping on the Blogging Bandwagon...

I'm following in the footsteps of my already-blogging friends. Call me a sheep. I've never been a trendsetter.
Insomnia is the bane of my existence. Seriously, right when I fall into my ever-so-light slumber, I am awoken by the sound of jabbering 6 month old on the baby monitor. The funny thing about this age is that Collins has found her voice, and she really likes it. She likes experimenting with volume, tone, inflection, tempo, the whole bit. I was in the middle of a great dream about me and Don Draper when I suddenly hear my baby delivering MLKJR’s “I Have a Dream” speech. She was freshly diapered and fed 2 hours ago and now sound asleep, here I am wide awake.
I think the problem is two-sided.
1. I haven’t started taking my Adderall yet since I just stopped nursing. I know what you are thinking, “You were a straight-A student until college! You do not have ADHD.” Yeah well a monkey with finger cymbals could get straight A’s in high school. Basically you show up, and count on an open-book test. I have a dream…that no child shall be left behind…
My mind is like an air-show. It’s like I’m watching jets zoom by, very quickly. Then an entirely different jet zooms by, all the while I’m getting whiplash and have thought myself into oblivion. I just hope this particular air race my brain is in, is not in Reno. Too soon? Also, I’m obscenely obsessive compulsive. Unfortunately it’s not in the “scrubbing the grout with a toothbrush” kind of way. More in the internal kind of way. That’s a lot of fun. Not being able to turn off my brain – or at least channel it into some sort of productivity - is a nightmare.
I haven’t been able to take my Adderall since before I got pregnant. So it’s been roughly 14 months of nonstop ZOOOOM…ZOOOOM…ZOOOOOOOM. Apparently if you take it while pregnant, you run the risk of some serious birth defects. Personally, I did not want my daughter to be born with a unicycle for legs, perpetually juggling fiery bowling pins while a carnival tune plays everywhere she goes – so I took one for the team.
B. Instead, my prescription-happy doctor gave me Ambien, which was AHHHHHMAZING. I had a good 5 minutes left of consciousness once I downed that little pill. On the downside, I would wake up with evidence of sleepwalking. And by evidence I mean replies to mysterious nonsensical emails I sent in the middle of the night, as well as this kiss of death, “So-and-So has accepted your friend request.”
???!!!
Seriously, like I told Emily Bahe this weekend, if you’re going to sleepwalk, do something cool. Go streaking. Bring your green hat. Go planking. Plant marijuana in your backyard at 4 am. Don’t facebook. That’s the coolest thing I could come up with? What a loser. By the way, the thought that I was friend-requesting people makes me sick to my stomach. I hardly EVER friend request anyone, ok? Bitches come to ME. I don’t scour the People You May Know section and add people. I’m way too standoffish and aloof for that kind of friendly, olive-branch behavior.
Anyways, point being, this is proof that I need to take care of moi, and if that means formula for the baby and Adderall for mommy, then so be it. Plus, not only will it help me focus my life and give the proper attention to everyday things like laundry, dishes, vacuuming, and trimming the lawn with a ruler and Fiskars, I’m hoping it will help me get down to my goal weight of 6 lbs 7 oz. I would love to be able to share clothes with my daughter. She has a few onesies (we all know how I love onesies) that escaped being poop-stained that would look really nice with my receding hairline, deflated boobs and stretch marks.
Clearly I am trying to rationalize stopping nursing, and obviously I’m feeling a great deal of guilt about it. Whatever, I was formula-fed, and I am a borderline genius and an all-around All Star. And humble, to boot! And except for the recurring kidney stones and previous chronic bronchitis, I have been very healthy my whole life.
Speaking of kidney stones – got the Estimation of Benefits from Blue Cross Blue Shield the other day, regarding my ER visit last month. They hooked me up to an IV, took some blood, and gave me enough pain killers to make being lit on fire feel good.  All in one hour.  I appreciated that. What I didn’t appreciate was the $8500 bill – thank God for insurance, or I would surely be turning tricks in every gated community in Leawood. I’m obviously kidding. But in all seriousness, for $8500 you think they could get rid of the thing (which by the way looks like a sea urchin or the spiky-ball on one of those medieval war weapons), or hell at least offer a reach-around, geez.