Youth, Interrupted.

He's definitely my son...

2008-08-21T01:00:00.004-04:00

So, the Infant Fatale I.R.A. started solid foods today. Make that "solid" foods, as there's nothing remotely solid about the gluey gruel better known as Gerber Rice Cereal. I mean, as if it wasn't hateful enough that we've all been sitting around stuffing our faces with veal meatballs and mahi mahi steaks while the Spawn gazed longingly up from my boob for the past few weeks, but when the time finally comes to expand his breast milk-centric diet... we give him that shit?! Damn.

Actually, you would've thought it was pureed caviar on a mother of pearl spoon the way he inhaled that mess. And when I was too slow with it, he took matters into his own pudgy little hands. Literally. Spoon be damned, he was gonna get his fix even if that meant tugging it to his mouth and scraping off every delicious morsel.

Needless to say, he was totally into it. Sure his doctor was all, "We now recommend waiting until six months to start infants on solid foods," and whatever. But, A. the little binge eater's been giving the side eye to every loaded fork that enters his line of sight and bypasses his mouth for a while now, and B. I've been giving the side eye to his pediatrician ever since he suggested getting Ian on the formula when he was having some issues with the whole nursing thing-- the DAY after he was born. So, yeah, he can pretty much kiss my breastfeeding and rice cereal pushing ass. And in all honestly, I was starting to worry about being gummed to death in my sleep if I pulled one more handful of (insert food item that has no business being in a four month old's mouth) out of Ian's grasp. Um, he growled at his great grandmother today when she had the audacity to drink a glass of tea in front of him without offering any. Yeah, I know, the nerve. Anyway, It was shortly after that last display of food related aggression that I decided to try a little change of pace. All the books say that one of the biggest signs that your precious hellspawn is ready to try the whole solids thing is an noticeable curiosity in what you're eating. "Noticeable curiosity", "borderline desperate desire to cram into mouth"... potato, po-tah-to.

But before you know it, I'm going to be picking green flecks out of his pasta in restaurants and slapping together pb&j's like it's my job. So for now I'm gonna enjoy these lovely, simple times of breast milk and the occasional spoonful of vaguely food like sustenance before they're gone, because once they're gone, God knows I'm going to miss them.

...And besides, solid food poop is such a bitch to clean up.

With love and gruel,
a.

And now for a little showing off...

2008-08-12T18:24:00.007-04:00

The Mister & The Spawn.
Good morning, indeed. Lucky bitch that I am, this is what I get to wake up to every morning. Well either this or a very tiny pair of feet wedged all up in my ribcage and a lightly snoring and totally useless husband sleeping through the first loaded diaper change of the day.

Action Baby on the move

Okay, so the while he's quite the competent little roller, the whole crawling thing is still a little out of his leauge. Instead, he prefers to do this bizarre face-plant-and-drag move that leaves his cheeks rosy and his mouth full of carpet fuzz. Don't judge. And anyway, who gives a crap when you look this good doing it? As Our Lady of The Runway, Ms. Banks, would say, "He's smiling with his eyes."

The littlest skeptic.

Now listen-- Nobody mention his (lack of) hair. It's been falling out for the past few weeks and ~~I'm~~ he's very sensitive about it. As a matter of fact, so has mine. Between the two of us, the sheets on our bed look like a barbershop floor. Ah well, so much for the Maddox Jolie-Pitt faux-hawk look.

It could be worse, I could've become a republican...

2008-08-12T17:11:00.002-04:00

So. I just got off the phone with my first grade teacher. Nevermind how I came to be on the phone with my first grade teacher 1,000 miles away and thirteen years later in the first place-- I just was. And after exchanging about five minutes of catching up (yes, she's still married to that firefighter, no, I haven't gotten much taller) I hung up feeling warmly nostalgic and, truth be told, more than a little bit embarrassed.

Everything's relative, right? So if I was from some little podunk town in Kentucky where neither of my parents got much past tenth grade and everyone became a grandparent by 35, my being married and a mother at 20 with a quarter of a college degree under my belt and all of my teeth would be nothing to sneeze at. Hell, I might even be considered the "together" one in my family. But when all you're life you've been the smart one, the golden child, the award winner, the (insert braggy-type adjective here), the kid that everyone just knows is going to do something, be someone.... well marriage and motherhood just isn't all that impressive. Worse than that, it's downright disappointing. Sure, I knew my parents would be disappointed. I was ready for that. But what I wasn't ready for was the queasy feeling that I get every time I have to talk to somebody I haven't seen in awhile. Every high school friend, every out of touch cousin,
the guy at the dry cleaners, my old agent, and, yes, even my first grade teacher.

It's like regardless of how happy I am (very) or how sure I am in the decisions I've made (completely), I feel like all they see is a whole lot of wasted potential. Maybe it's just me projecting how I feel on some level onto everyone else, I don't know. But either way I still can't bring myself to get over it and introduce either the Mister or the Spawn with the wholehearted enthusiasm and pride that I really feel. There's always the traces of an embarrassed smile playing on my lips when I do, and the rush of justification and reassurances that follow along right after. People probably think the Spawn's name is "Ian-Rhys-it's-definitely-not-where-I-saw-myself-this-soon-but-I'm-really-really-happy-I-swear-and -did-I-mention-that-I'm-actually-married-to-his-father-too?"

Anyway, I really am fantastically happy and I really am proud of myself for stepping up to the plate and taking on all these new roles with all the confidence and enthusiasm I could muster. I just want to know how long it will be until I stop feeling the urge to apologize to everyone for being something other than what they expected.

I don't know. I'm working on it.

With love,
a.

Hot child in the suburbs...

2008-07-23T14:51:00.003-04:00

Today, it is hot. Hot hot. Surprising damp spots in places you didn't even think had sweat glands hot. Actually, it's supposed to be the coolest day this week, but a lot that means when you live in the bowels of florida and your air conditioner is on the fritz. 85 degrees inside might as well be 185 to people who never let the thermostat climb above 73. And add on ten degrees for the poor souls like myself who spend at least half their day with a warm blooded creature suckling at the teat.

Ugh.

In my desperate attempts to keep the spawn and I from melting, I'm pretty sure I've broken just about every rule in the Mommy Guidelines. They say you're really only supposed to bathe 'em every other day or so, right? Which means, technically, Ian should be good on soapless cool water baths until well into next february. They say you should aim to stimulate baby's senses with fun, age-appropriate activities. Staring into the sole box fan we've had blasting on us all day and playing "moss" probably doesn't count. "Moss", for those of you who don't know, is when you and baby compete to see who can lay completely still for the longest amount of time, only instead of taking it easy on a couple of logs, you stretch out on an unmade bed and stare at the ceiling. In fact, I'm even letting him sleep on his tummy, which (this year, anyway) is the cardinal sleep sin. SIDS scares be damned, the boy is happy and quite frankly it's too damn hot to have to cuddle him back to sleep when he wakes up screaming from my trying to roll him over into a more American Academy of Pediatrics-friendly position. Yeah you heard me-- suck it, Spock.

Does this make me a terrible mother? Probably. But for the time being, I'm a cool one. So now I ask you, oh legions of child rearing readers (god, i love a good overstatement), what do you do to help your tiny folks beat the heat when frozen margaritas are, unfortunately, out of the question? Overheated minds are dying to know.

With love and a cool washcloth,

Moo with me...

2008-05-22T20:59:00.002-04:00

Breastfeeding, A Haiku.

Baby is screaming
Tits start leaking everywhere
Just call me Daisy

Oh, the magical bonding experience of having a squirmy, ten pound leech sucking the life out of you through your surprisingly stretchy nipples. Riiiiiight. Now don't go telling those La Leche League Nazis, but sometimes... breastfeeding kinda sucks.

Like when after the little man finally falls asleep after a 45 minute suck-a-thon and you finally get the chance to pee, throw his daily collection of spitup encrusted onesies into the washing machine, pull out a box of Stouffer's lasagna from the freezer-- aaaaaand he's crying again. What the hell?! Where two boobs-ful of milk can go in the hour and fifteen minutes since he last ate is one of the great mysteries of infancy. Either way, he's screaming like he hasn't eaten in a week and the two rapidly spreading wet spots on my t-shirt are telling me it's feeding time at the Anglim Zoo. Fabulous! Seriously, I don't even know why I bother with a shirt half the time. You know? I should just wander around topless, bambino swinging from one boob... very National Geographic.

Don't get me wrong, most of the time the whole experience is pretty sweet. He's awfully cuddly and I've been lucky enough to be spared some of the brutal horrors I've heard about from other new mamas. Cracked, bleeding nipples? Tiny gnawing gums? Yeesh. And on the bright side, I've gotten pretty damn good at one handed, well, everything. And by the time Ian's finally on solid foods and sippy cups I'm gonna be rocking Madonna guns! Sweet!

Just for once I'd like to feel more like a mommy and less like a freaking dairy cow. Ah, a heifer can dream...

With love and lactation,
a.

Blog, Interrupted...

2008-05-13T15:05:00.006-04:00

It goes without saying that I am a completely shitty blogger. It's been over a month since the spawn arrived, and all I've managed is one measly little post consisting of one sentence, a photo, and an assortment of baby stats. Lame. But whatever, I'm a stay at home mum with an infant. And that's my newest favorite excuse for... well, everything. Couldn't manage to get my teeth brushed before three pm? I have an infant! Haven't cleaned out the refrigerator since my eighth month of pregnancy? Sorry-- newborn! Basically given up on ever finishing all these thank you cards? You get the picture.

Ugh. It's not that I don't want to write, it's just that when faced with the choice to either eat or write a 500 word essay on my labor experience, I'm going to go with the former every time. And anyway, I can sum up the whole childbirthin' experience like this: 1-7 centimeters dilated? Cake. 7-10? Murder. In fact, that gives me a really good idea. Since I'm working on borrowed time right now (never know when Mini Musselini is going to wake up), I'm just going to give single sentence opinions on a bunch of baby related topics and h

Labor: 19 hours of mild to moderate cramps, 2 hours of "kill me now" mind blowing agony.

Ian's first 30 seconds of life: "Eww-- He looks like an alien!"

Ian's next 30 seconds of life: "Oh, my God he's beautiful!"

My post baby body: Skinny again, but made of jello.

Breastfeeding: Huge boobs, happy baby, happier husband.

Diapers: From poop to powder, changes are now clocking in at under 60 seconds.

Sleep: Ha, just kidding.

And as for the baby himself, well... he's awesome. Like seriously. Great hair, good sleeper, high tolerance for unnecessarily loud voices. He can also already hold his head up, reach for toys and laugh. And he's figured out how to text message in his vote for Dancing with the Stars, but, you know, I don't want to brag. Personality-wise (yes, newborns have personality. In fact, wee man has more personality in one of his wet diapers than the entire cast of The Hills combined.), he's surprisingly mellow with the most expressive face I've ever seen. Who knew month old babies could emote "disgust" or "indecision" or "passion"? Okay, well "indecision" might actually be just gas... we're not exactly sure. Either way, he's endlessly entertaining (if you're into poop explosions and endless hiccups, like me) and even has a definite set of likes and dislikes. See below:

Likes

boobs, Dalí posters, headbutts, bath time, off track betting, the sound of the blender, rocking out.

"Sweeeeeeeeeeet."

Dislikes
loaded diapers, socks, the proposed gas tax holiday, car seats, Law & Order C.I. episodes featuring Chris Noth

"Where the hell is D'Onofrio?"

Speak of the little devil, I hear him now. And singing the opening verse of "Largo al Factotum", no less! I think. Then again, he might just be crying. You know us new parents...

With love and gloating,
a.

2008-04-28T14:59:00.001-04:00

Ian Rhys Anglim

4.6.08 5:36pm 6 lbs. 4 oz. 20 in.

Updates and pictures to come.

Be careful what you wish for...

2008-03-26T17:09:00.002-04:00

...Because you just might get it. "It", in this case, being third trimester bed rest. Somewhere around my second or third month of pregnancy when I was misera-- excuse me, when I thought I knew what misery was, I may or may not have mentioned to the mister (and anyone else who'd listen) that I'd really kill to be put on doctor mandated bed rest. At the time, being required to keep my feet up for the majority of my day sounded like a much needed respite from daily chores and, you know, life. I daydreamed about afternoons spent curled up on the couch with a pint of mint chocolate chip ice cream and a Platinum Weddings marathon on WE and not a soul to call me lazy. I imagined evenings with my feet up, reading classic literature while Mister A toiled away in the kitchen whipping up dinners. But being perfectly healthy, the midwife pretty much laughed me out of the examining room when I mentioned my dreams of sloth.

Cut to last week when I complained about sharp, shooting pains all up in my womanly parts at my prenatal appointment and was informed that between my mushy cervix and the fact that Baby Bat Boy was already hanging way low ("No wonder you're uncomfortable, you've got a baby in your butt!"), I should prolly be on modified bed rest, keeping my feet elevated for a good chunk of my day. Finally! BED REST!! I could hardly wait to get home and kick my heels up.

Stupid stupid me. Less than a week later, here I sit, grouchy, bored, lonesome, and achy. Oh, sure, I guess it's for the best seeing as how I haven't been able to throw myself into preterm labor after a particularly vigorous floor scrubbing episode (as my mother feared)... but God help me, does it suck. Turns out that contrary to popular belief (or at least the belief of the entire program scheduling department at VH1 and MTV), there really are only so many times that you can hear Tyra Banks whisper, "The girl whose name I do not call must immediately return to the house, pack her belongings, and go home." before being overcome with the overwhelming urge to fling yourself out a window. Equally frustrating is when Mr. A gets home and asks, "So, do anything fun today?" and the best thing I can offer is what boils down to a five hour program listing from Bravo. That or a detailed description of what I found at the bottom of the washing machine after failing to check his pants pockets before doing the laundry. Yeah, thrilling stuff.

Anyway, it's only for another week or so when I finally hit 37 weeks and can go into labor without fear, but I can guarantee that it's going to be one of the longest weeks of my life. So, for those of you who haven't got anything better to do (or actually do, but realize that you may well be saving my last shreds of sanity) feel free to swing by with Slurpees, assorted cheeses, seedless red grapes, Klondike bars, or cupcakes and make my little stint on house arrest that much more bearable. I promise I'll even shower for the occasion!

With love and bedsores,
a.

Three things you didn't need to know...

2008-03-23T09:13:00.006-04:00

1. I'm drowning in my own mucus. Tasty! For some reason, I'll spare you the biology lesson, pregnancy equals nasal issues. In the first few months, that meant I was squirting Afrin like a fiend and snoring like a beast because I was so stuffed up I could hardly breathe. But now that I'm here at the end of the road, it means I'm dripping like a faucet and running through about a box of Kleenex a week. Lucky for me, who doesn't love the honking symphony of clearing one's nasal passages every ten minutes? Good times.

2. I need to up my daily Kegel count. To keep things hot in the bedroom? No. To help avoid tears during birth? No. Because it's a great way to pass the time when being bored to death during one of the mister's rambling stories? No. I need to up my daily Kegel count because I am now afraid to laugh, cough, or sneeze without being within three feet of a restroom. Yeah, that's right. I leak. Shut up, it's just a little! So far it's only happened twice, and (until I brilliantly decided to go public just now) no one was the wiser, but that's two times too many. Think I'm gross? Well, you're right. But then so is every other pregnant lady in town. In fact, there's even a chapter in one of my pregnancy books called, "Urine for a lot of fun!". Yup, nothing like having six pounds of fidgety baby bouncing on your bladder to bring on the incontinence. God, I miss having control over my bodily functions.

3. I'm mushy. Not in a Hallmark channel movie of the week sort of way (I'm having a baby, people, not a lobotomy), but in a "Hey, you're a centimeter dilated!" way. "Mushy" was my midwife's exact choice of words when describing what she felt while elbow deep into my lady bits and poking around like they do. And in case you were wondering, this is in fact a good thing. Ten centimeters is a whole lot of dilatin' to get through... any little bit helps. So let's just hope my cervix isn't on the fast track to baby birthing and I end up dropping foal like a horse in the middle of the mall. Ew.

Yeah yeah yeah, don't thank me for all this unnecessary and slightly disturbing information. Pregnancy isn't always pretty in case you haven't yet caught on. I'm just trying to keep it real. And if this is the stuff that I was actually okay discussing, imagine what kind of craziness I've chosen not to share with you? Actually, don't, you'll make yourself sick. But whatever. I'll be 36 weeks along tomorrow... which means that within one to five weeks, I will have a baby. A real, live, eating, shitting, screaming little person of my very own. And then the bitchefest will move out of body and you'll get to hear all about my fun with exploding diapers and what it's like to live on 3 hours of sleep a day! Excited yet? You know I am.

With love and fart (typo, but I'm keeping it) too much information,
a.

2008-03-20T19:51:00.002-04:00

Happy Birthday to Me
Finally twenty
So now I'm just "pregnant"
Not a teen mommy!

Ikea, easier said than done...

2008-03-16T17:32:00.001-04:00

The couple that builds together, stays together. Usually because their names are then forever intertwined in a headline that also includes the words, "Murder/Suicide", but you get the point. Having been a veteran of Ikea's baffling wordless directions and fondness for allen wrenches, I was prepared upon toting out 25 pound Box O' Table home for a three hour ordeal peppered with a liberal dose of profanity. But it was great fun watching our marriage teeter on the edge of dissolution over whether illustrations of wood with dots on the edge was or was not meant to be a representation of it's unfinished nature. FYI, I'm kidding. Also, it is. I don't know what it is about do it yourself home furnishing projects that tends to bring out the worst in people, but I think it has something to do with men's Manly Mr. Fix-It fantasy slamming up against the bleak reality of bad instructions and a nagging wife. Not fun. But either way, we finally cooled off, split a six pack of Red Stripe, pulled it together, and got the TV stand set up without actually coming to blows. Oh, and don't mind that pile of screws... they must've included extra!

With love and a screwdriver,
a.

An open letter to my son, The Fetal Ninja I.R.A...

2008-03-13T09:22:00.005-04:00

Dearest baby,

Hey there, mother here. You know, your mother? Oh, right, you haven't any concept of what a mother is just yet, have you? Well let's see if i can't put this into terms you'll understand. You know that toasty warm wading pool of amniotic goodness you've been kicking it in for the past 34 weeks? Right, well that would be my womb. You may also know me by the sound of my voice. The one singing bad 90's pop medleys and occasionally yelling obscenities at the TV screen. Oh, and the one way trip you'll be taking into the great big world in 42 days? You'll be traveling courtesy of my vag canal. You, parasite. Me, host. Does that clear things up? Fabulous.

Well, bambino, the reason I'm writing to you is because it would seem that we're in the home stretch here-- stretch marks and stretched patience factor in pretty heavy these days-- and so I think now is a good time to lay out a couple of ground rules for once you actually get here. Now, up until this point, I realize that we haven't exactly been on the same page in regards to the whole "parental authority" thing, but be forewarned... once you're on the outside, no one's going to smile and coo when you decide to pummel the shit out of me. Out here, mommy abuse does not equal cute. It equals a psychological evaluation and a bottle of Ritalin. Out here, you're in my house. We play by my rules. And number one is Thou shalt listen to thy Mama.

First off, I'm gonna need for you to figure out the way this whole day/night thing works. Daytime is for playing. Nighttime, sleeping. It's a pretty simple formula, really, but one that has baffled you tiny set and frustrated the hell out of your long suffering parents for centuries. Now, I know that as you'll be an breastfed baby, you'll be getting up a few times a night wailing your head off to get back on the boob. And that's okay, your father does the same thing. Ditto for diaper changes. I know you're going to need them, lots of them, and they won't be pretty and they won't stop at midnight and resume at a more sensible hour. But again, I'm prepared for that, so no worries. What will not fly, however, is you deciding to develop colic. At three weeks old, your life is fucking beautiful, okay? You sleep when and wherever you want, you've got these two people obsessing over you night and day like you're the second coming of Christ, you're never wanting for cute hats with ears on them, you don't even have to wipe your own ass, and you know that not three hours will go by without someone waving a boob in front of your face. Do you know how many men would kill to be in your ~~shoes~~ tiny socks for that reason alone? So screaming to the heavens four hours on end like a pocket sized banchee is just not cool. Yes, your crib may not be as cozy as the womb you've been wallowing in for the first nine months of your existence, but mommy didn't spend $300 on stupid, overpriced, trendy Dwell bedding so that you could have a conniption fit ever time you're laid on it. And yes, I know it will suck to be somewhere new and not have anyone understand a word you're saying. But hell, you'll have had nine months to pick up the language and you're gonna get out here and bawl your eyes out because I don't understand you? You've gotta be kidding me. So do us all a huge favor and get the whole idea of colic out of your head. You have nothing to be that pissed off about. Well, except for circumcision. That's definitely gonna suck. Sorry. But once that heals, I don't want to have to deal with that kind of senseless misery and self pity again until you're 13 and locked in your room in your girl jeans and studded belt listening to GlassJaw. Got it?

Finally, I know it's going to be a crazy first few months getting to know each other and all doing all the million firsts that are in store ("What is this delicious snack you call a 'thumb'?!"), but I want you to understand now, before we're even formally introduced, that I love you. I've loved you since I saw your little alien head bobbing around on the sonogram and I'll love you until I kick the bucket (Or, you decide to become a republican. Kidding!). So when those firsts include "The First Time Mommy Forgets Me in the Carseat", "Baby's First Trip to the ER Because Mommy Seriously Believes I Sneezed and Therefore Must Have the Avian Flu" and yes, even "My First Weekend Alone With Daddy"-- when you will undoubtedly be dressed in mismatched clothes and drinking chocolate breastmilk from a miniature beer hat-- please understand that we were trying our best. Just like you'll be mystified by your own reflection for at least a good six months, we're going to be mystified by the BabyBjorn and every new freckle and scratch on your little body. But I promise we'll get it together soon enough. And I guarantee you that while we may never really become June and Ward Cleaver, we will do everything in our power to make sure you're the happiest, most well adjusted, and well loved little critter around.

With Love Love Love and an Iron Fist,
Mother.

The man, the legend...

2008-03-06T15:59:00.005-05:00

So I was thinking about the roughly bajillion things that are giving me the b-day jitters-- just the word "episiotomy" starts me twitching-- and it occurred to me that there is one thing that I'm not completely freaked out about: Mr. A. From boyfriend to babydaddy to husband and sole breadwinner, there hasn't been a title that life's thrown at him that he hasn't taken on with freakish enthusiasm and complete dedication. Seriously, there are guys twice his age who can't get their shit together when it comes to impending fatherhood ("Scott Baio is 46... and a Complete Idiot", anyone?) and here's Mr. A talking strollers and health insurance and Braxton-Hicks contractions like this whole thing didn't just come barreling down the pike at him fifteen minutes ago. And on top of all that, he still rolls over in the middle of the night and says, "You two are the best thing to ever happen to me." (True story. And then, I cried like the puddle of hormones I've become, natch). Anyway, suffice it to say, he's a legend and I'm impossibly lucky. But shameless husband bragging aside, the point I really wanted to make when I first started this post was that I really think that Mr. A is going to make an incredible father. Oh wait, I'm still gloating, aren't I? Whatevs. Deal with it. Besides the fact that he's one of those people for whom "good with kids" isn't just a throwaway line in a personal ad-- after spending less than 24 hours with my 9 year old sister when we visited new york last christmas, she's been known to call him on my cellphone just to chat, the little traitor-- the other thing working in Mr. A's favor is the loads of daddy training he's been getting just taking care of me. Turns out, infants and pregnant women are a lot alike.

For instance, they both whine and fuss when hungry and, occasionally, for no discernible reason at all. Ditto for when sleepy and/or in desperate need of a poop. Both preggos and babies also have serious difficulty sleeping through the night, often rousing at all hours to alert the entire household that they have to (or just did) pee again. Then, in order to make up for their lack of sleep, both are known to fall asleep anytime, anywhere, many times in the middle of eating. Also, both are at stages of almost complete vulnerability. Infants due to their lack of basic control over major muscle groups, preggos due to their inability to walk more than six steps without tripping over their own swollen feet.

So, judging by the way Mr. A's been handling me-- colicky, needy, sleepy me-- I think it's pretty safe to say that by the time Little Lord Anglim gets here, he'll be an old pro. Okay well, he'll still have to figure out the whole diapering thing on his own, but methinks even bathtime will be a cinch. I mean, once you've mastered shaving someone else's slippery legs in the shower while they threaten to tumble over and crush you with their newest thirty pounds at any moment, wiping down a grimy baby is nothing. Sort of like learning to pacify a wailing newborn when you've been consoling your wailing wife for the past nine months. It's easy. I'm pretty sure babies don't need to be snuggled and reassured after bursting into tears when they realize they've outgrown the onsie that "I swear to God, fit last week!!!"

It's nice to know that while there may be a million and one things to freak out about between now and when Ian graduates high school, there's one thing that I've got all the faith in the world in-- his father.

With love and one hell of a lucky break,
a.

February in a nutshell. A really, really big nutshell...

2008-03-04T09:51:00.003-05:00

So, alright, I'm pretty much the shittiest blogger around. Did anyone else notice that the entire month of february passed without so much as a snarky comment from my end? Whoops. I'm sorry! It's just that once you skip a week you start putting off writing again because there's so much you want to say but you just don't have the energy. And then a week becomes two, and then all of the sudden you've flipped the page in your calendar, you're married, you're working on a double chin, and you haven't seen your blog since you last saw your vagina*. But after I posted yesterday, I remembered how good it felt (to be a shameless navel-gazing, self-obsessed chatterbox) and decided to make a promise to myself to keep it up at least until the baby's born. Or, you know, my arms are no longer able reach around the bump and to the keyboard. Whichever comes first. Anyway, let's get you up to speed.

Biggest thing to happen in february? (Drumroll, please) I got married! Rings, kiss, and license officially, in what may be the most awkward ceremony of all time on the cheesiest day of the year while wearing the most unintentionally short dress in history. Long story short, we hit up the courthouse on v-day-- solely because it was convenient-- and listened to the most painfully halting rendition of wedding vows read by what I can only believe was the perfectly cast stereotypical hispanic cast member of a hidden camera show. I reaaaally hope that literal tongue biting to keep from going into hysterics doesn't somehow affect the validity of our marriage. Or wearing a dress that was subject to Lindsay Lohan episodes of passenger side seat panty flashing.

Some other new developments: I'm suffering from an ever increasing list of wacky pregnancy woes. I spend roughly six hours of my day in, or en route to or from, the bathroom. It's like my Kegel muscles have been replaced by Silly Putty. At this rate, by the time the babe's born I'll just have to switch over from maternity drawers to straight up Depends. Sexy. Oh, and speaking of sex, I want it. Now, half an hour from now, after lunch, before dinner, between bathroom breaks... I'm a thirteen year old boy dripping with hormones, and trapped in the body of a beached whale. With boobs. Seriously, the mister looks at me the wrong way and I'm halfway to the bedroom, tearing at the industrial strength elastic of my maternity jeans. But here's the catch-- actually having sex has become a nigh on impossible feat of epic proportions, requiring the strength, stamina, balance, and flexibility of a Czech gymnast. A healthy sense of humor helps, too. And some Tylenol. Also on the list of Reasons Pregnancy Sucks: heartburn. The scorching, searing, don't-burp-near-flammable-objects-unless-you-have-really-good-
homeowners-insurance kind of heartburn that can only come from having a stomach squished to the size of a peach pit and constantly being used for kickboxing practice by the fetal ninja. The other day, I made the mistake of laughing in the mister's face. He no longer has eyebrows. Add to this, endless backaches, achey ligaments, the mass death of brain cells (Unbeknownst to me, they had a suicide pact. Which helps to explain why I didn't realize that I'd left my purse Panera yesterday until three stops and forty-five minutes later.), the almost complete inability to sleep through the night, and the return of the senseless mood swings. I recently had to lock myself in the bathroom for ten minutes when the mister came home because he made some offhand remark about getting ready for the baby, and I was so overwhelmed with ~~love~~ raging, sob inducing hormones, that I burst into tears when he left the room. Five of those ten minutes were spent silently blotting mascara off of my cheeks. The other five I spent being disgusted in myself and trying not to vomit. So yeah, needless to say, pregnancy has officially lost it's luster. I'm tired and grumpy and this close to picking up some Pitocin on the black market and getting this labor started already.

Anyway, other than that, life's been mostly a series of naps and snacks and doctor's appointments. Which, by the way, have been going really well. For those of you that care, the bambino's made the transition to full-time bat mode, with his big ol' baby head locked and loaded in the correct upside down position right on top of my long suffering bladder. I've gained twenty some-odd pounds (and counting), and I've had buckets of my blood and piss stolen, tested, analyzed, and charged for. I owe Quest Labs about three hundred bucks, but I'm apparently quite healthy. So, yeah, february was a good month. Shame you missed out on hearing about it. I promise I'll do better this time. It's not like I'm much for hauling my fat ass too far off the couch anymore, anyway.

With love and a pinky swear,
a.

* I'm currently suffering from the female equivalent of Dickydo syndrome. Feel free to laugh and/or cry. I do.

It's like I've swallowed a time bomb...

2008-03-03T09:40:00.003-05:00

Seven weeks. I was seven weeks pregnant when Christian stumbled out of the bathroom, in a fog of disbelief that wouldn't lift for another week, and told me it was positive. Life was flying full speed ahead, and we decided to climb on board, holding tight by the threads of our good intentions.

Now, there are only seven weeks left, maybe less. We're strapped in, backs slammed flat against the seat, totally helpless as this roller coaster climbs to it's dizzying peak. Nothing to do now but squeeze each other's clammy hands and wait. Wait for the split second of motionlessness and then that gut wrenching, heart dropping, breath stealing plummet into the unknown.

I have never been so terrified.

Somehow, thirty three weeks have shot by, and we still haven't even bought a carseat. Decided on a pediatrician. Gotten our membership to Costco. Taken a Lamaze class. Set up the bassinet, read The Happiest Baby on the Block, packed a hospital bag, stocked up on diapers, chose a nursing bra, arranged for time off, learned how to swaddle, picked out birth announcements, gone on a vacation, unpacked the baby clothes, ordered the stroller-- Looking back, I'm amazed we've managed to get our health insurance together. Hell, I'm amazed we've even managed to pick out a name.

And this, this shit is just the preparations we've yet to make. When I try to wrap my mind around the actual birth, the fact that when all is said and done, they will hand us this helpless little stranger and entrust his life to our hands. Four hands, might I add, that until fairly recently were nearly incapable of washing dishes without shattering a glass or two. How do people do this?

It's only a little comforting to realize that even the people who've been shooting up fertility drugs since I was in middle school and had the nursery professionally decorated before they even heard a heartbeat, the people who sat for professional pregnancy portraits and pre-ordered a lifetime supply of Huggies after the first ultrasound, those people... in reality, they're in for just as much of a shock as we are once their little bundle of whatever actually gets here. Not just when dear baby unswallows a stomachful of organic formula all over their $100 cashmere receiving blanket thirty seconds after they get them wrapped up, but the minute that they get them home and realize that all the parenting books in the world and all the planning and preparation you can squeeze into forty weeks is nothing in the face of a real live baby.

Parenthood, the great equalizer. We're all reduced to a puddle of nerves and love and hope and terror at the feet of our children. Without the help of a full time nanny, it's all on the job training, and we will screw up.

So, maybe Ian will still grow up to be a perfectly healthy, fully functioning member of society, despite the lack of matching crib bedding in his youth. Maybe stressing out over choosing a "parenting philosophy" (and then doing the requisite reading and buying the follow up dvd set) will just take away from actual parenting. Maybe he won't suffer developmental delays and be whisked away by social services after I inevitably bump his head on the door of the car when I'm trying to get him strapped in. And maybe, just maybe, I need to take a deep breath and recognize that if we trust our instincts and aren't afraid to ask for a little help when we need it, Mr. A, our spawn, and I will be just fine.

...But we've really got to get a carseat.

With love an crossed fingers,
a.

And in this corner...

2008-01-29T13:43:00.001-05:00

I'm beat. Literally and figuratively. Ian Rhys (née The Squatter) has begun a very rigorous training regimen for what I can only believe will be his intended global takeover following birth. It's either that or he's somehow gotten a hold of a Richard Simmons VHS and is happily sweatin' to the oldies. Whatevs. Regardless of what he's actually up to in there, one thing's for sure-- he's kicking my ass all the while he does.

Yet another thing that I'm quickly learning isn't what all those Clear Blue Easy commercials make it out to be, is the magic of feeling baby kick. Having never been host to a squirming fetus before, I can't tell you how anxiously I awaited feeling those first "flutters"-- that's what all the baby books call them. At thirteen weeks when I was supposed to start feeling the "gentle sensation of butterfly wings", I'd sit for ages with my hands on my stomach, willing the baby to make his presence known. Sure, I wanted to experience the overwhelming, breathtaking surge of maternal warmth that I was sure would overtake me... but mostly I was just thinking, "Don't be dead, don't be dead, don't be dead..." See, one of the hardest parts of the first few months of pregnancy is the fact that you're at your highest risk for miscarriage and unless you were neurotic (and extravagant) enough to buy your own doppler heart monitor, you really have no way of telling what's going on with the wee one floating round in your uterus. So when fifteen weeks rolled by and I still hadn't felt the telltale "quickening" (pregnancy books are full of euphemisms), I started to get a little worried. Little did I know that deep within my womb, Young Master Anglim was alive and well, gathering his strength and waiting patiently for the right moment to unleash the power of the Fetal Ninja. Quickening came, for me, with not a flutter but with a fight. Apparently of the belief that all that gentle butterfly wing shit is for pansies, Ian's first movements were a combination of kicks to the bladder and elbows to the kidney. With a strength, speed, and natural ability that would make Mr. Miyagi weep tears of joy, Ian has declared war on my internal organs. What was the rogue uncomfortable jab a couple of months ago has become an hourly onslaught of tiny limbs jostling for space in my womb.

Some of his favorite moves? The Flying Squirrel, a slow stretching of (what feels like) all his limbs at once, ending with me whimpering, back arched and cursing all those stupid ribs of mine. The Short Man Shuffle, a fast, swishy feeling back and forth across my midsection that may or may not include a three minute pause at one side of my uterus leaving me with a wackily misshapen belly. The Made You Look, a sudden extension of one leg (usually a few inches above my belly button) that's so sharp and intense that I inevitably yank up my shirt, convinced that there will be a tiny foot shape poking out of my stomach. The Low Blow, a sneaky move that involves throwing all of his weight back onto my bladder (totally undetectable to anyone on the outside) , sending me running to the bathroom while onlookers point and laugh at the little woman waddling to the restroom with her hands holding onto her crotch for dear life. And this isn't even counting the Braxton Hicks contractions baby hiccups, and squirmy convulsive fits that have me convinced we're actually having triplets. Basically, I've become home to the one man mosh pit.

But like many things baby related, just when you start to think, "Good God this has got to stop before I lose my mind," something happens that reminds you in a flash just how lucky you are to have every one of those insanity inducing moments. Like a few weeks ago when I noticed a little après-rapport sexuel spotting and I had one of my increasingly frequent mini panic attacks (complete with guilt-laden sobs) out of terror that we'd somehow hurt the wee man. Let me tell you, I've never been so happy to feel one of his little fists of fury to my liver. Even if this one seemed to say, "Eff y'all bitches, always bothering my ass when I'm napping!" So, when my ribs are getting pummeled and I can't get to sleep because someone's practicing his capoeira on my side, I just remember that it's his only way of letting me know that he's alive and kicking (literally) and I can't help but smile. Well, it's really more of a grimace... but I love it just the same.

With love and a right hook to the gallbladder,
a.

A T.M.I. fairytale...

2008-01-19T10:07:00.000-05:00

Once upon a time, there was a prissy little snot named Alex. Alex lived for the better part of her life believing that she shat vanilla ice cream out of a platinum asshole. Unlike the dreadfully common people with whom she shared this world, Alex knew that she was perfectly unsullied in every way and entirely above the many disgusting practices and behaviors of the average man. Eventually, Alex found herself involved with a young man named Christian who, though wonderful in nearly every way, was extremely open about each and every one of the intimate details of his physical being. Alex was shocked. With frightening regularity and shameless abandon, Christian would belch in her presence. He would scratch and "adjust" himself in broad daylight, oblivious of the passing public. He announced his intestinal distress and would pardon himself for suspiciously long stretches of time in order to seek relief in the men's room. And most disturbingly of all, it wasn't that Christian was simply unaware of how appallingly common his behavior was, but that he simply did not care.

Despite his awful lack of modesty, Alex fell in love with Christian and promptly moved in with him. With great effort, she managed to maintain her facade of perfect hygiene and total control over bodily functions for months. She would excuse herself from the room in order to blow her nose, she ran the faucet in the bathroom sink whenever she needed to relieve herself (lest he hear the tinkling noise of her stream), she brushed her teeth religiously before daring to speak in the morning, and she exerted every bit of control to hold off on all other bodily functions and releases until he was away at work for the day. But Alex was pregnant, and with each passing month the facade became more and more difficult to keep up. The mounting pressure of a growing fetus on her bladder forced her to make frequent, sudden dashes to the bathroom. The soaring amounts of progesterone coursing through her body caused her digestive system to slow down, resulting in mortifying bouts of uncontrollable gas. Mucus membranes in her sinus cavities began to swell and cause her to snore noisily through the night only stopping after a liberal squirt of decongestant up her nose. The fluctuation of hormones in her system led to excess saliva, which she inadvertently sprayed at everyone with whom she spoke. With alarming speed and growing intensity, the list of vile side effects grew and grew until Alex's modesty had all but evaporated into thin air, in exchange for the comfort that can only be given when one's truest discomforts are brought to light.

But nothing at all could prepare Alex for the final blow to her ego that came in her 26th week of pregnancy. This coup de grâce came with deadly accuracy, forever removing Alex from her ivory tower of carefully constructed modesty and throwing her onto the streets of the common man, at the mercy of Christian and the entire staff of the local CVS. Evil mistress that she is, pregnancy- once responsible for Alex's bountiful bosom and beautiful nails- bestowed upon Alex her most humiliatingly uncomfortable gift yet. Alex... got--

-- wait, did you really think I was going to tell you? Come on now, drooly, hairy, and gassy as I may be, I've still got a little modesty left. Suffice it to say, I've been suffering something awful these past couple of days and I finally had to break down and tell Christian so that he could go and get me the miracle cure that I've been dying for. Unfortunately, in exchange for this, I now get to suffer an even worse injustice... his mocking. Oh, the relish with which the mister has been enjoying my agony. Denied the pleasure of watching me battle constipation (another common pregnancy woe, which I've so far avoided with a healthy diet of high fiber foods), he's taken this opportunity to really let me have it. Prissy little Alex is human?! Hooray! Let the games begin! To celebrate the occasion, the mister has given me a nickname, taken to answering the phone as a drug company spokesperson when I call, used my ailment as an excuse for being late to work, and spent the better part of the last 24 hours making me want to curl up in the fetal position and die of shame. And the worst part of all? I'm feeling too damn wretched to fight back. God forbid he decides against going to CVS for me tonight! So, here I am, sucking it up, six shades of miserable and anxiously awaiting salvation-- served up with a side of humble pie.

With love and woe,
a.

Anyone want to take in a family of three?

2008-01-16T16:44:00.000-05:00

Revenge: A Haiku.
Just cleaned the kitchen
Scrubbed up his big, greasy mess
Then peed on his shoes

- a. grizzle

Okay, fine, I didn't really pee on his shoes. But I certainly should have. Let's just add it to the list of things that I am tempted to do to our roommate on a daily basis. Also on the list: Pee in his closet, pee in the pile of dirty laundry he's left in the laundry room for the past three weeks, pee on his car, pee in his car... and it goes on like this for another three pages. Besides my bizarre obsession with soaking his things in my urine, I'm seriously troubled by the behavior of our thoughtless-inconsiderate-good-for-nothing-lying-cheating-toilet-paper-snatching-
son-of-a-bitch roommate. Now, granted, I've never had the extreme displeasure of having a roommate before, but I'm pretty sure that the number one rule in The Common Sense Guide to Peaceful Coexistence is something along the lines of "Thou shalt not maketh thy roommate want piss all over thy stuff." Or in other words, don't be a douche bag.

I guess Ty (that would be his name) has not yet cracked open his copy. So, instead, a good portion of my day is devoted to coming up with clever solutions to deal with his increasingly obnoxious behavior. When I first moved in, this meant just sucking it up and washing one more sink full of slimy dishes, folding one more dryer full of clothes, or learning one more dirty ho's name when she knocked on the door at one am for an impromptu booty call. My logic was, he'll notice my stepping in to handle his shit, appreciate it, and then make an effort to pick up his slack. HA! Not exactly. Instead, Ty simply chose to believe that if he came home to find a stack of neatly folded shirts on his bed, or found the onions that he'd left in the fridge for three months (a study on micro-organisms?) disposed of and the goopy puddle they left on the shelf cleaned up, it was the work of magical helper fairies. Or maybe a troupe of bored forest gnomes. I don't know if thinks he's the second coming of Snow White or what, but the one thing he sure as hell didn't think was that it was necessary to toss so much as a thank you in my direction. So after a couple weeks of that masochism, I moved on to Strategy no. Two: Just let it go.

Okay, you've got to figure that any rational person will only wallow in their own filth for so long before they start to gross themselves out (or run out of clean undies) and have to do something about it. So I figured I'd just wait him out. Maybe, in my neurotic, lysol obsessed haste to keep things up to my particular standards, I had simply been beating him to the punch and cleaning up after him before he had the chance. So, the next time he made a big dinner for him and one of the skanks and couldn't be bothered to clean up after himself, I didn't fret, and assumed he'd get to it in the morning. Jump ahead four days. The stove is still a Jackson Pollock of splattered grease and hot sauce, all but two forks and a wine glass are piled into a tepid pool of dishwater in the sink, and various pots and pans full of that dinner's leftovers are sitting abandoned on their burners (and the counter tops, and lidless in the middle of the refrigerator...). Four. Days. Later. Who knows, maybe his gross out epiphany would've come at day five. But there's a good chance that it might have actually come at day thirteen, and quite frankly, I didn't feel like waiting around to find out. My personal gross out point had long passed, and I was terrified that left there any longer, the whole kitchen would become a bio-hazard and be taken over by the Mold Creatures of the deep. Or something. So, I rolled up my sleeves, pulled on my gloves, and scrubbed the hell out of that kitchen. Then I sat down and attempted Strategy no. Three: The Passive-Aggressive Note.

this note is for visitors and residents alike:
THIS KITCHEN IS CLEAN,
LET'S TRY AND KEEP IT THAT WAY.

If you make a mess, clean it up. If you use it, put it away.

I promise that it will save us all a lot of time and frustration.
Thanks!

Now that worked. In fact, it worked so well that Ty stopped using the kitchen for more than two minutes at a clip altogether. Sure he may have been extra surly with me for the next few weeks and one of the hos gave me the stank eye whenever she came over... but it was worth it. For about a month I could use the fridge without having to shove past entire pizza boxes that held only one slice of pizza and half a container of garlic sauce (hand to God, that was in there once), my dishes were as clean and usable as I'd left them, and the whole apartment stopped smelling like a garbage can. Mostly. But go flippin figure, eventually Ty stopped giving a rat's ass and now I'm back at the start, grouchy and forever slipping on little puddles of raw chicken juice (helloooo salmonella!) So now what, you ask? With a baby on the way and but a teensy scrap of patience left in me? Well I took a page from the Brady Bunch book of space sharing and have started up with the whole "line-down-the-middle-of-the-room" thing. (Didn't Marsha and Jan do that at some point?) The only thing missing from this increasingly elaborate scheme (which has grown to include separate couches, dish drying racks, silverware, dishes, hidden supplies of paper towels and toilet paper... oh yeah, it's gone there) is the actual tape line running through the apartment. But, alas, I know that this too is only a temporary solution. Eventually I'm going to get tired of hiding my lotion (he once snatched a bottle right off our bathroom counter top and decided it would be better off in his room. No, seriously.), and a kitchen that's only half clean is still kind of grody. But until the mister sits him down for the talk that we should've had back when I first moved in about what we expect of each other as roommates, besides a check for the rent, it will have to do.

Well, it's either that or I start getting used to living with the smell of my own stale urine.

With love and a leak,
a.

What the fuzz?

2008-01-14T19:16:00.000-05:00

You know, in the early days of my pregnancy, I was just so happy about my new long, strong nails and thick, lustrous locks. But then things took a turn for the sci-fi and now, where once was smooth, innocent skin, now lies a carpet of fine, silky hair. Now this would be one thing if I was referring to somewhere that normally gets covered in hair say, around the same time you sprout a pair of tits and meet your dear auntie flo. But oh no... the gods of fertility giveth and, oh baby, do they taketh away. And in this instance they have seen it fit to take away my sublime femininity and replace it with unnecessary patches of... chest hair. Yeah, you heard me... chest hair. And belly hair. And nipple hair. And lower back hair. I'd blame them for the mustache, too, but I've been working that since back in the day and my puerto rican genes are taking all the credit for that insult to my girlishness. Seriously though, what the hell?! It all started innocently enough, too. First a couple of rogue black hairs sprouting up around my nipples-- a few yanks of the tweezer and I was good to go. But now, it seems like every time I step out of the shower I happen upon a new soft, downy spot on my body that makes me question my gender for the first time since I saw The Notebook and realized I was the only woman in that theater dry eyed. Granted, it's not the wiry sort of hair that's on the mister's chest and it certainly won't ever puff my shirt up under the collar or get tangled in my jewelry, but the fact remains that it's hair. And it's on my chest. More accurately, it's just below each of my boobs and in a faint, patternless swirl across my belly, but does it matter?

Besides the fact that it's bizarre and, in my opinion, kind of gross, my biggest problem with it is removal. At first I figured, as Priscilla Queen of the Desert as it was, I would just shave it all off. But two days later when it was growing back with a vengeance, I realized the only thing that could make me feel more like a full fledged transvestite than shaving my hairy chest in the shower, was having a stubbly chest in bed. And I'm sure the mister agrees. So, for the next three months just call me Mr. Williams (as in Robin, not those tennis playing brothers Venus & Serena... although, i bet they're some hairy bitches, too) because I'm officially giving up the good fight. That's right, kids. I'm gonna let it g(r)o(w). Okay, okay, not all of it-- pain in the ass as it's become to shave my legs, I still make the effort to deal with it at least once a week. And much as I've been feeling the urge to burn these too tiny bras recently, I'm not enough of a women's libber to give up on my underarms-- but definitely the new stuff. I figure, you can't really see it and as long as it doesn't start feeling like the mister's... what's the harm?

Pregnancy Sucks, reason. no. 52: Unwanted Body Hair
Pregnancy Rocks, reason no. 43: Not having to give a shit.

With love and tweezers,
a.

Life's A Bitch: An abridged list of why I'm grumpy...

2008-01-11T15:58:00.000-05:00

1. My back hurts. Sure it was cool when he was a wild and swingin' bachelor living in a teensy studio, but the whole bed on the floor thing is just not working anymore. And because, in an effort to go all Ty Pennington, Mr. A decided to build a bed frame (of sorts) and nail it into the box-spring, when it came time to move into our new digs, he figured it would be easier to scrap the whole thing and just bring the mattress. The mattress that then fell off the pickup truck in transit and now bends at an alarming 15 degree angle on one corner. The very mattress I now have to twist, roll, drag, and wobble off of every morning and gracelessly squat and tumble onto every night.

2. Laundry. We are only two people with only four arms and four legs between us. So where the hell are all of these clothes coming from? How can one man run through an average of eight articles of clothing every day? And that's not counting the handful of pieces I find myself discovering under couches and between the closet door and the hamper, daily. Or the endless bath towels. Or my own rotating wardrobe of fat pants and oversized t-shirts. This, coupled with the fact that both our washing machine and dryer are preciously miniaturized versions of proper appliances, means that I spend at least a couple of hours every day in our laundry room just to keep Mr. A in clean work shirts. This isn't to say that I'm any good at it. I can't tell you the number of times I've had to rewash a load because I forgot them all day in the washing machine, or how often I open the dryer only to realize that I never even turned it on.

3. The Postal Service. As you read this, at least three known packages addressed to me are collecting dust on a shelf somewhere in Orlando, Florida. Apparently, my address might as well be somewhere within the Bermuda triangle. Either that, or the only qualification for becoming a Winter Park postal worker is having a pulse. Make sense out of this one: "As of today, your package is currently in transit out of Jacksonville and is scheduled to arrive in Orlando on December 24th" Today is January 11th.

4. This excerpt from an email from my mother. Re: the flowers for her upcoming third wedding: "As far as flowers are concerned, I'm looking for THE simplest bouquet...pretty much anyone can make what I want. Salmon and Gold roses, surrounding a heart shaped cluster (or not) of the Peachy Pink roses Glenn gave me for my birthday. I want that with Ivy vines and crystals (tiny, like dewdrops). No baby's breath." Explanation 100% unnecessary.

5. My bladder. More accurately, the wee child resting on top of it so that his slightest kick or jab sends me running to the bathroom. I've been keeping count, and today I've already gone to pee six times. Six. I'm like that leaky pipe guy from those incontinence commercials, only fat and wobbly and cursing all the way to the toilet.

6. No, seriously, did you read number four?! And let me point out that this will be her third wedding. Which she has asked me to plan. Completely oblivious to the possibility that I might be just a little bit bitter considering the fact that she's flitting around like a schoolgirl in heat, gushing over wedding dresses and flower arrangements for a wedding to a guy she hasn't even known a year-- while I'm six months pregnant and about to get married for the first time in a stinking courthouse. They are in their forties and she is a two time divorcee. They should be the ones having a quiet, simple ceremony that reflects their situation, if they are so desperate to go bolting down the aisle. But hey, let's not let Debbie Downer get in the way of their dream wedding.

7. Being wrong. Apparently my lost packages are only lost because, genius that I am, I never bothered to update the shipping address on my baby registry when I moved. So my packages got here all right, only to sit around for a few weeks at my old apartment and get shipped right back. So now I'm on hold for the seventeenth time with these crazy cats at Target Bombay (sorry, Mumbai) trying to convince them to please, for the love of all that is good and right, just send me my flipping Boppy Bouncer!!! Which reminds me: what the hell is with bad hold music? It's bad enough being on hold for 22 minutes, 39 seconds and counting without having to listen to some scratchy, halting nine minute long recording of "Electric Dreamers (Jillian's Theme)" on flute and Casio keyboard. Make that number 8. Really Shitty Hold Music.

...You know, I thought that somehow having a bit of a vent would do me a world of good. But now I'm just double pissed off and feeling dangerously close to murdering the next person who so much as looks at me without first offering a snack. Oh yeah, and I'm STILL on hold.

With love and what is that, Kenny G?
a.

Happy New Year!

2008-01-07T11:25:00.001-05:00

...Now bust out the snowboards and ice skates, my friends... Hell has frozen over.

I am absolutely, blindingly, sickeningly, maddeningly, and overwhelmingly in love. Usually, this would be the part where I turn from the computer, overcome with sudden intestinal distress and puke my brains out into the wastebasket. But, hand to God, I haven't so much as gagged, let alone let loose the vomitous flow that would usually follow such a nauseatingly sentimental statement. I'm tempted to blame my raging hormones... but something tells me that this may run a bit deeper than that. This isn't me bursting into tears because I can't fit my pants over my thighs anymore or flying into a rage because, "How many more days are you going to walk by the kitchen sink before you remember that that stinking pile of dirty dishes is yours and wash them already you self obsessed, inconsiderate, oblivious, slob?!" No, this is me about to sign my freedom and last name away under the belief that, unlike countless couples before us, we will make this work. Come hell, high water, a fat ass, or a receding hairline, we will stick it out. We can do better than our parents, our grandparents, and Pam Anderson. We... are obviously batshit insane. Anyone who gets married would have to be.

But we owe it to ourselves and to that rapidly growing bump in my maternity jeans that will one day be our legacy to at least try. And not try until something better comes along, or until it gets to be too much work, but really try. When after four sleepless months of being at the beck and call of a ten pound tyrant, the reality of what it means to be a stay at home mom hits and bitterness creeps in when I see Christian heading out the door to work and a few hours of freedom... When a few years from now I look around at all my friends and feel a heart wrenching ache for the newness of their adult lives, the freshness of their marriages, the endless possibilities still spread out in front of them... When we're at wit's end and it seems like the only way out is by with a liberal sprinkling of rat poison in the mashed potatoes. That's when we'll have our work cut out for us. That's when we will have to remember all of the reasons we're together to begin with and step back far enough to see the big picture. But I think we've got it in us. Enough love, determination, and hope to do it right. It's also very comforting to see that his father still has almost all of his hair.

So yeah. This month, Mr. A and I are going down to city hall to make an honest woman out of me. I should be terrified. Without the fanfare and distraction of a big, fouffy wedding, you'd think I would be reeling from the seriousness of it all. The commitment. But the truth of the matter is, I've already made the biggest commitment of my life. One that no amount of time, number of screwups, or team of lawyers can ever truly break. So marrying his father, well that just seems like a no-brainer.

The other day, I pulled a fortune from a cookie that said, "You will stumble into the path that will lead your life to happiness." ...Talk about a smart cookie.

With love and marriage,
a.

"Deck the halls with boughs and folly..."

2007-12-21T09:03:00.000-05:00

Um... quick question. How in the hell did Christmas sneak up on me this year? Seriously. I just looked at the calendar and apparently, it's like four days away. You know, if it hadn't been for the fact that the mister and I finally got around to making solid holiday plans, I get the feeling that we would've woken up at noon on tuesday and not even remembered that it was Christmas until we flipped on the tv and were confronted by It's a Wonderful Life marathons on six different channels.

Coming from a holiday-mad household, I never realized how incredibly easy it was to entirely skip out on Christmas. This year, with every penny earned being stashed away for diapers, or doctor's bills, or a breast pump, it was pretty obvious that we'd be scaling back on the holiday festivities. But what was amazing was how fast we went from "scaling back" to "what's... Christmas?" It started out simple enough. No tree. Trees mean moving furniture and buying lights and ornaments and one of those stupid tree skirts and all the rest of the crap that comes with it. And as I'm not one for frugality, there would be no 99 cent store waxy faced angel on top or some sorry assed Charlie Brown tree to put it on. So, skip the tree, save a wad of cash. But no tree begot no wreath. No wreath begot no house decorations. No decorations begot no holiday parties... and on and on and on it went until just like that, we had about as much Christmas cheer as the local Jewish Community Center.

Of course this slow crawl towards grinchdom was not entirely without incident. You have to understand, I come from the kind of family that felt it was not only appropriate, but entirely necessary, to festoon every square inch of our home with as much tinsely, shining, sparkling, cinnamon scented decorative schmaltz as was physically possible. We sang Christmas carols from 12:01 am the friday after thanksgiving until the tree finally got lugged out to the trash at the end of january. We sent Christmas cards by the dozen and made spiced cider by the gallon. Not only do I know what figgy pudding is... but I have eaten it, my friends. So it is entirely understandable that I actually wept a few silent tears when I found out that the mister didn't even know the words to Deck the Halls (see: the title of this entry). And that I've secretly been reading The Night Before Christmas to the squatter, lest a general apathy towards the holidays is genetic and he's got his father's genes. But besides a few mini meltdowns in the face of the Williams & Sonoma holiday catalog and nearly every Kay Diamonds commercial that comes on... I think I'm handling it pretty well. Or I was, anyway, because now even without stockings hung by our chimney with care... I'm having a proper Christmas!

That's right, my darlings, the mister's gift to me this year was a pair of round trip tickets to new york so that I can have the holiday I so richly deserve-- I mean we. We so richly deserve. Anyway, the hubby, the squatter, and I fly down on Christmas eve, the mister flies home alone on Christmas night (quelle tragique), and then I follow him about a week later on new year's eve. The only thing that could make this whole plan better would be if the mister didn't have to rush home 24 hours after we get there to be at work the next day. But "the man" that's keeping him down is also "the man" who's paying for our mini vaca.

Shit! I wanted to wrap this up all cute and tidy and say happy holidays to all and whatever, but there's a pound of fetus doing a little softshoe routine on my bladder and i have got to--

And on and on she goes...

2007-12-07T18:56:00.000-05:00

Hiya, Kids. It feels like it's been an age, but I've been suffering a serious bout of pregnancy brain this week and just haven't been my usual self. Twice I got out of the shower without rinsing the shampoo out of my hair. Twice. So yeah, it's been like that. Anyway, I'm gonna try and make this post as coherent as I can, but something tells me that's just a nice idea that's not gonna happen, due in large part to the fact that I'm also watching the 75th Annual Tree Lighting and Random Artist Album Promotion Spectacular on Bravo. But you can bet your sweet ass I'll try, babies. Just for you.

(Random Thought No. 1: Shawn Kingston (performing with Natasha Betyourass, or whatever) has the BEST obnoxiously large and extraordinarily expensive shiny thing on a chain ever. It's a flipping box of crayola crayons. The sixty-four pack! Now that's gangsta.)

So this is cool: Yesterday was a major pregnancy milestone for yours truly. The cashier at IKEA actually asked me if I was expecting! Shut up. I know it's not as exciting as, say, that one time the mister and I got caught with the gimp in a Denny's bathroom, but it's huge for me. I'm carrying pretty small (I'm halfway there and unless you know me, I look like most of you prolly did directly following thanksgiving dinner, meaning bloated but not necessarily pregnant) and I'm still kind of sensitive about people just thinking I'm rocking a serious beer gut and not give me the fawning attention that we pregnant bitches so richly deserve. So last night I was all kinds of stoked when she actually called me out on my knockedupedness. Although, looking back, she could've just been reacting to the ginormous heap of Swedish snacks that we brought to the register. Technically, I'm only supposed to be eating for, like, one and an eighth... but recently I've taken the liberty of eating for an small third world country. Just another reason I wish I looked more pregnant-- it would stop all the damn stares I get when I'm ordering at dinner.

(Random Thought No. 2: Did you know that the tree this year is the first "green" one they've had? I love when shit is "green". I rarely fully understand the concept behind it (the tree's lighting involves solar panels and like, witchcraft or something, I think) but having anything to do with it makes me feel like a better person. Or it makes people think I am, anyway, which is really just as good.)

In other news, the mister and I are driving down to Fort Meyers Sunday night to meet his fam. Or so he says. Ha, we'll see what extenuating circumstances keep us from getting there this time. And to make an already awkward situation even awkward...er, we're spending the night down there before coming home on monday. Oy. I've always dreaded this situation, even before I met Christian. Every romantic comedy I've seen seems to have the dreaded "meet the parents" scene that involves a really uncomfortable sleeping arrangement discussion that ends with me sleeping in his little sister's room where the boyfriend in question then knocks on the door, begs for a little secret nookie, and we both end up caught with our pants around our ankles when mummy comes in with fresh towels. Okay, maybe not every romantic comedy... but you get my point. And seeing as how Christian's parents still refer to me as "Christian's girlfriend" (No joke, when I met his mom and sister, after spending the entire day with them his mom turns to his sister and says, "Well hopefully Christian and his girlfriend will come by for thanksgiving later this month." While I was standing there. Named my Alex. Apparently, I just haven't earned the right to be called by name yet), I get the feeling it might be even more uncomfortable than that. Or, I'm just being ridiculous and am going to have a fantastic time and they're going to love me and it's going to be beautiful and happy and wonderful and warm and welcoming and--

(Random Thought No. 3: Ashley Tisdale is the worst performer I have ever seen. It's like one of those creepy baby pageant contestants grew up, lost the bouffant, and has decided to lip sync her way through the Pro-Am section of the competition. I think I'm going to be ill.)

So... wait. What the fuck was I going on about, again? Whatever. I should prolly go wash dishes. I've got to keep up this facade of being totally domestically competent for the mister. Yeah right. He's totally on to me-- The other day I forgot to dry an entire load of laundry and I haven't made the bed properly in like a month.

Anyway, with love and... and... oh, I don't know,
a.

(Random Thought for the Road: You think when I finally pop out the squatter I could become a Rockette? No. Seriously, do you? Let me know...)

I'm just on a roll tonight, kids...

2007-12-04T22:32:00.000-05:00

So since I'm already spiraling downward into the abyss of utterly lame mamahood (you know damn well I've already showed those sonogram pics to every sighted person in the greater orlando area and every unsuspecting facebook friend, instant messenger buddy, and blog reader that I've managed to accumulate), I think it's time for a confession.

I.... am.... a.... "Nestie".

Not to be confused with a "nasty", which i also happen to be occasionally (see: this past week when I realized that shaving my legs has become far too much effort and have more or less given up on it). No, a "Nestie" is the cloying nickname given to women who have joined the online community The Nest, a spinoff of their original wedding-centric website, The Knot. While I've managed to avoid The Knot and all its doves and diamonds trappings, somehow I've gotten sucked into the pastel wonderland that is The Nest's other offshoot, The Nest Baby.

A sweet idea in theory, I quickly learned that the NB is actually an underground cult of fetus obsessed broads who devote a staggering amount of their time to such incredibly important conversational topics as, "Window Treatments for Jillian Marie's Nursery-- What Do U Think? :-) " and "Mean People Suck (long vent!!)". Think I'm kidding? Here's an actual message board topic posted earlier today:

Subject Line: "Wal-Mart Stole my Baby Name!!!"
Body: "I was watching a commercial for Wal mart the other night. It was about a mom getting her little girl an iPod. The mom says something like, "Why do I choose Wal Mart? Because of Mackenzie Lynne..."

THAT'S MY BABY'S NAME! Well, it will be if it's a girl! I thought that was too funny! I've never heard the combination of names before, and I thought I was being all original!"

Seriously. These are the women with whom I hoped to find solidarity. Turns out the only thing I have in common with 97.3% of them is the fact that we're knocked up. Hooray for us. But until I pick up the glue gun and get to work glitzing up my 400 page Pregnancy Journal, or finally order that belly casting kit from PreggersParadise.com... well we simply won't have much to discuss. I guess it doesn't help that a good chunk of these chicks have at least ten years on me and have been shooting fertility drugs since before i graduated middle school, so this is a superhugeohmygodthankthelordhallelu! sort of event for them (which would explain the sparkly shrine erected around their pregnancy test) and should, therefore, be treated as such. But for me, excited as I am, lucky as I feel, I just can't muster up that kind of unbridled enthusiasm for crib bumpers and breast pumps.

But I say all this to show you just how insane it is that a few weeks casually browsing through people's nursery photo albums and soul crushingly dull blogs ("Ate a slice of chocolate cake today :0 !! And I've been soooooo good so far!! Oh well.")... and now I think it's starting to suck me in. Not only do I keep a blog there-- actually, it's this blog with a few minor omissions and additions. c'mon i'm a lazy shit, remember?-- but now I actively post and respond on that damn Second Trimester message board that they've got. Next thing you know, I'll be uploading pictures of Christian and I wearing matching santa hats with his hand on my belly and referring to the due date as the Blessed Event!! (two exclamation points). Grody.

However... lucky lucky lucky for me, I have managed to draw a few of the saner women out of the woodwork with my snarky commentary and liberal usage of profanity. So now, when I want someone to complain to about how wretched this heartburn is and how I'm this close to peeing my pants every time I sneeze, they'll be there with a witty reply and a refreshing lack of emoticons and exclamation points. And maybe, if I'm lucky, some Tums. I guess some sisterhood isn't all that nauseating, afterall. Anyway, sure beats the hell out of trying to talk to my eighteen year old middle school crush about leaky nipples. Trust me.

With love and-- "Ew, did she say leaky nipples?!"
a.

Filthy hypocrite...

2007-12-04T13:14:00.000-05:00

Okay, so I know I voiced some pretty loud opinions against people showing off their stupid sonogram pictures... But I am nothing if not shallow. And a hypocrite. So here, for your viewing pleasure (fat chance), are two more pictures from Little Man Anglim's first authorized photo shoot.

This one is entitled, The Quiet Rage of the Unseen Child

I call this one, Real Thugs Suck Thumbs*
(subtitled: Fool, do not make me pop this thumb out my mouth and bitchslap yo ass)

So there you have it, folks, the undeniable proof that I'm not just fat. Sure, that could still be just an enormous mound of undigested chocolate chip cookie dough... but if that's what's kicking around in my uterus, I've got far bigger problems than my binge eating.

With love and a wee little pecker,
a.

*That hovering mass to the right of his nose is not some partially developed sister growing out of his eye socket (as I feared), but his other hand. The pimp hand. Way strong.

Survey says...

2007-12-04T12:48:00.000-05:00

<--- That, my friends, is a penis.

Baby's first encounter with the paparazzi...

2007-12-03T15:37:00.000-05:00

First ultrasound tomorrow. Finally.

But what is it with people and their sonogram photos? With the exception of those nifty 4d ones (which to be honest, I still don't need to see, thanks), for the most part it's like looking at a Rorschach test. Oh how adorable! A motorcycle! A hamburger? A prairie dog wrestling with a laundry basket? Oh it's a girl! I'm sorry, of course it is... and there's her darling little-- wait, is that a... a... is that a tentacle?

Spare me, alright? I promise I'll spare you. Well unless you're my mother, who's so desperate to get a glance at the little squatter that I'm surprised she hasn't simply tipped me over and shined a maglite up my choch' yet. I'm fully aware that precious few will be as interested in my grainy blob of a black and white fetus as me and the mister, so I will not be going for the 12 wallet sized photo option, and I will not yank the damn thing out of my purse every time someone so much as glances at my belly. Their confused, polite smile as I attempt to outline what may or may not be a pair of antennae is not needed to validate what I already know-- this kid's going to be hella good looking.

Anyway, the only thing I'm really concerned about is whether this kid's got all his bits in the right spots. I'm about as dipsy with my prenatal pills as I was with my birth control ones, and I'm hoping that a lack of supplemental folic acid hasn't somehow produced an extra limb or something equally disturbing. Clearly, I have no working knowledge of vitamins. Or fetal development. Either way, the only emotion I'm looking forward to tomorrow is relief when I can see for myself that the squatter isn't floating upside down at the top of my uterus like a carnival goldfish five minutes after you get it home. Also, I'll hopefully be finding out whether I've been accidentally creating a flaming homosexual or just a girl with dreadful taste in music by swapping out that Mozart for Embryos crap for The Best of 80's Pop One Hit Wonders. What?! I've got to listen to it too, you know.

With love and Wham!

My grandma will kick your grandma's ass any day...

2007-12-01T18:24:00.000-05:00

So, yesterday was the first time I've seen my grandmother since I broke "the news". Bum bum buuuuuum!! And true to form, we both did everything in our power to avoid even the slightest allusion to not only my pregnancy, but pregnancy in general, infants, babies, toddlers, children, their parents, the circle of life-- basically, anything that could even begin to remind her that I was knocked up. Which made it all the funnier that somewhere between Africa and Dino-Rama we had this exchange:

Grandma: Digs a pen out of her purse to mark one of the two straws in their large coke with an A for Alex.
Alex: Um... You know it's not contagious, right?
Grandma: Yeah. (Beat) But slut is.

And then for about three minutes we laughed so hard we couldn't breathe. This, my friends, is why my grandmother is amazing. Also, why everyone in my family is terrified of her.

See? It's in the genes.

With love and hereditary cruelty,
a.

File it under t.m.i...

2007-11-29T16:32:00.000-05:00

...But I am one lucky fucking lady. Emphasis on the profanity. Oh yeah.

Listen, when the time comes for you crazy kids to finally settle down and get married and all that lovely shit, girls, have your man talk to my man first. Seriously. Don't go signing anything until you've sent him over to our place with a notepad and a tape recorder, because I guarantee you... he will learn something.

You want to talk about foreplay? Last night, dear husband made dinner, cleaned the oven, rubbed my feet, watched Project Runway with me, AND gave me a back massage. Let me tell you, I needed a new pair of panties before we even got into bed. I don't know when he did it, but apparently he's taken an advanced crash course in "Being a Phenomenal Husband". Okay, granted, the class seems to have skipped a few fundamental lessons, like "Ten Places Wet Towels Don't Belong" and "The Art of Food Shopping", but what's a soggy bath towel in the middle of the living room floor when you're eating spinach and provolone stuffed flank steak and discussing tacky menswear with the hubby and Tim Gunn? Exactly. (Ooh, and on a completely unrelated note, what in the hell did Sweet P. do to that shirt last night?! I've seen chimpanzees with Down's syndrome put together better made pieces with a handful of leaves and a pile of their own poo. I mean, really.)

Anyway, see? Just cause i'm always moaning like the grumpy little shit I am, doesn't mean that I don't have plenty to be happy about, too. Like the sex god husband. And these fresh baked cookies I've been munching on all day. And the fact that the squatter's recently decided to take up in-utero Capoeira (cutest thing ever). That's right, kids, right now I'm on a hormonal upswing and life is simply b-e-a-utiful.

With love and peace and rainbows and starry ski-- okay, now I'm just being a twat,
a.

2007-11-28T19:14:00.000-05:00

Addendum:

6. I am a entirely too cranky for someone who's entire day revolves around VH1 reality shows and snacking. Note to self: Inquire about prescription mood elevators at next prenatal appointment.

Five things I realized today...

2007-11-28T18:57:00.000-05:00

1. The trash in the bathroom will not take itself out. Nor will anyone but you ever do the honors. This is a fact entirely unrelated to how overstuffed it is.

2. There are few things in this world as immensely satisfying as a Nathan's hotdog.

3. You cannot sleep off a headache-- No matter how many hours you devote to the cause (I think. I gave up after four).

4. Roommates are God's way of letting you know that he hates you. The messes they leave all over the kitchen are their way of showing you how much they agree.

5. Jodie Foster is the big brother of that precious little Efron girl from Disney.

Thank you, that is all.

(Editor's Note: Number five is not actually true, but the humble opinion of the writer who feels very strongly that a. Zac Efron has not only a purdy lil' face and an unhealthy love of the pancake foundation, but a vagina; b. Jodie Foster is a man; and that c. The two talented (albeit gender-bendy) actors are related. Look at them, for Christ's sake. They're nothing but a y chromosome and 20 years from being the same person.)

This is so much cheaper than therapy...

2007-11-26T10:52:00.001-05:00

So it turns out I have virtually no friends. Alright, I also have absolutely no license (yes still, asshole, but that's another story. Fucking cones...) which makes it an understandable pain the ass for the handful of remaining friends I have to come see me out here. But let's disregard that fact for a moment and focus on the real problem at hand (besides the DMV's insane obsession with the health and safety of its cone collection): My precious few friends and I are rapidly losing all common ground. Okay, besides the fact that a couple of them also have vaginas and one of them is even brown (the girl, not her vagina. Although that prolly is, too-- I've just never had the privilege of seeing it), it seems like more and more, all the stuff we had in common is going the way of my virginity, my waistline, and my youth.

It was a whole lot easier to relate in the first trimester when we could fondly recount late nights spent blowing chunks into the bushes outside of Burger King or tell stories of early mornings curled up in the fetal position in bed, totally drained of energy and fighting a skull pounding headache. Sure, their misery stemmed from one too many games of flip cup while mine was the direct result of being knocked up... but at least we had something. Now, it seems like there isn't a single part of our lives that matches up. I'm practically married and don't even own a box of condoms anymore. While most of them are still hooking up with whichever slightly attractive finance major stumbles past their dorm room door or whatever cute skirt wanders into their job at the mall. My typical weeknights involve food shopping and reruns of Mystery Diagnosis while dear husband checks the fantasy football stats. Theirs include classes, parties, rehearsals, and frequent outings to various clubs across the orlando area. They work lame jobs while pursuing big careers and blow their paychecks on movie tickets and going out clothes. Me? My job includes baskets of someone else's dirty drawers, researching lactation counselors, and the occasional nap. And pay? Ha. Just an entirely bill-free existence and the occasional big, sushi dinner date.

But would I change the way I'm living? Of course not. I'm incredibly happy and I don't regret a damn thing about the way my life's turning out. It's just... well it's kind of lonely over here in Grownup Town. I long for someone under the age of thirty to talk to about weird new hairs and sex with a bump or husbands who work a lot and fear of skidmarks in the laundry. All the pregnancy books say that the best thing to do is join a support group for pregnant bitches... but something tells me that the kinds of women who join those groups are the very last kinds of women I want to be friends with. You know the ones. The ones with "Matty's Mom" bedazzled across their velour track suits, the ones who will eventually save their kids crusty umbilical cord stump for the enormous baby book that they've been working on since before the pee dried on their pregnancy test, the ones who tear up at Playskool commercials and have already furnished and decorated their nursery's complete with a "Whimsical Farmyard" theme. Those pregnant bitches. Ew. What I want is a support group for pregnant bitches who are more upset about not being able to have a drink (or three) after a particularly long talk with yet another advice filled nosy neighbor than the fact that there were no more spots open at their local Mommy and Me. The kind that still swear like a sailor, even in Baby Depot because "Holy shit, $3,000?! It's just a fucking crib!" The kind that haven't registered for Lamaze class yet and only felt guilty about deciding against cord blood banking for about thirteen seconds when they realized that kind of money could buy them a much needed solo vacation to Tahiti for the kid's first birthday.

So quick, somebody find me a group like that and I promise I'll stop driving all my friends mad with endless anecdotes about what I learned on a Baby Story and how saline nose spray saved my sex life. Otherwise, I'm just gonna have to start poking holes in all their condoms and switching out their birth control pills for mini Altoids.

...See if i won't.

With love and a side of bitter resentment,
a.

Bright eyed and bushy tailed...

2007-11-25T00:15:00.000-05:00

The only thing worse than not being able to sleep is laying, wide awake, next to someone who can. And is. And has been for an hour. While I, on the other hand, am flip-snap-flip-snap-flip-snapping my phone open and shut and rolling back and forth on my side of the bed like some kind of autistic insomniac. Which, come to think of it, isn't really that far off the mark. Maybe, I'll crack open the window and pray for a late night visit from that trippy, radioactive Lunesta butterfly. He's like Santa, but for the prescription drug abuser set. My winged hero in dayglo green.

...Only, I'm at a complete loss in regards to what kind of treats one leaves out when trying to court an animated, phosphorescent, lepidoptra. Something tells me that cookies and milk aren't exactly the way to go.

With love and a butterfly net,
a.

ps.
Can you fucking believe I spelled phosphorescent right on the first try? I totally did.

On why I'm not a healthy eater...

2007-11-24T12:04:00.001-05:00

A scene from my morning, featuring the Squatter (also known as the the
"Take-take-take-never-give-back-nothing--but-a-punch-to-the-pancreas-
darling-unborn-babe-of-mine"):

Me: Hmmm... I'm getting hungry. Now what should I have for lunch? Man, I am seriously craving some chocolate chip ice cream and a grilled cheese sandwich. But I should probably have something healthy. Like a nice, big green sala-- Ouch!

Squatter: A salad? Bitch, how about a roundhouse kick to the bladder, instead? You know I don't want no goddamn salad. I ain't no goddamn rabbit. Yo, you got any Ho Hos out there?

Me: You know what? I think I'll have that grilled cheese sandwich, after al-- Ow!

Squatter: And some Ho Hos!

Me: And some Ho Hos.

About as warm and mushy as a freshly used wad of Kleenex...

2007-11-23T15:52:00.000-05:00

In case you were wondering, Thanksgiving didn't suck the swinging testicles I expected it to.

Mostly, we holed up in the apartment tangled up on the couch and wallowing in our own grime-- which, as it turns out, is actually pretty enjoyable when you have Boston Market takeout, bad reality tv marathons on VH1, a freshly baked (previously frozen) pie, and the cutest little hundred degree fountain of snot laying across from you looking all appreciative and shit. But we even managed to pull it together towards the end of the day and head out for a spell to go meet my mom's future in-laws and eat half our weight in apple brown betty. Okay, that last part was just me. Eventually we said our goodbyes and practically crawled back to our couch-- him because he was running a fever again and me because I was now carrying around roughly fifty pounds of mcintosh apples and cinnamon in my gut-- and fell asleep in front of House reruns so that we had to be literally carried off to bed in a sugar coma. Actually, again, that last part was just me, but I digress.

Anyway, all in all a lovely day that filled me with thankfulness for three of my very favorite things: Sloth, gluttony, and-- of course-- my family. But um... next Thanksgiving? Well alls I'm saying is somebody had better bring the goddamn caviar.

With love and tryptophan,
a.

Potato, po-tah-to...

2007-11-22T00:17:00.000-05:00

Would hunting down and murdering all the painfully vapid twats that have ever been featured on My Super Sweet Sixteen fall into the "ends justify the means" category? Yes, I will have committed murder... but more importantly, I will have rid the world of one (okay, 30) more squealing, giggling, shrieking, crying, and (apparently) rap obsessed ingrates. We already have a Paris Hilton, and I'm quite sure that we'll be well enough without a gaggle of equally entitled, brainless, and rhinestone encrusted new ones popping up in pink bmws all over the country.

You say serial killer, I say American hero.

(... I also say that maybe I should cut back on the tv for awhile.)

With love and a gun to the back of the frosted, blonde head,
-a.

Thanks-sucking. (Wait, was that even clever?)

2007-11-21T15:31:00.000-05:00

I'm going to start this post off by listing the things I'm thankful for. This way, when I start moaning about how shitty this Thanksgiving is actually going to be, I don't have to worry about being bitched out for being a wretched ingrate. So here we go:

Scrub pants. My mother finally being complaint-free. Mint chocolate chip ice cream. Dear husband. The fifteen Law & Order marathons that were on tnt this year. My squatter wombmate. The new orlando IKEA. Not having to work. Seedless grapes. Knowing I'm going home for the Christmas hols. Williams & Sonoma catalogs. Valet trash service. Oh. And not having been disowned by any memeber of my family for being a teenage statistic. So for all that, thanks, God. Thanks, Mom. Thanks, Sweden.

Now then, that out of the way-- FUCK ME, THIS THANKSGIVING IS GONNA SUCK.

No, seriously. While the rest of you lucky bastards are going to be comatose in front of the tv, picking bits of turkey out of your teeth and basking in the warm glow of familial love, there is a good chance that I'm going to be in a mighty sulk, balled up in the corner of the couch, waiting for my extra large pizza stuffed crust pizza to get here (Pizza Hut does deliver on Thanksgiving, right?). And dear husband? Undoubtedly snoring miserably in bed with a fever. That's right, the poor sap went and got himself sick two days before we were supposed to make the hike down to Fort Meyers Beach to turkey it up with his family.

Okay, so it might have been a painfully awkward affair meeting his father and his good ol' boy grandpappy all in one fell swoop like that-- not to mention the three hour drive there and back in hellish traffic... but there would have been FOOD! Lots and lots of free food. And people! People to talk to! ...Oh my God, I'm tragic. But come on, there's no shame in admitting that I'm a little starved for socialization or expensive hors d'ouvres (these people just bought a recreational army tank... I'm sure they'll spring for something sprinkled with caviar), is there? Whatever. I don't care. We're probably not going, anyway. Apparently, Christian's grandfather's health is in such bad shape that the chance that Christian might pass along whatever bug he's fighting off might just be too much for the old man. And I guess no number of fancy pants appetizers or adult conversations is worth putting the poor old guy in jeopardy.

So instead, I get to play Florence Nightingale with my darling, wretched, snot nosed husband. Hot tea and toast Thanksgiving feast for all!

...Man, that little punk's lucky I love him. Even with the snotty nose.

With love and chicken soup,
a.

Now I Lay He Down to Sleep...

2007-11-20T00:21:00.000-05:00

Alright, so my ass is getting so big that the state's considering offering it its own zipcode, I'm hairier than Robin Williams after a Rogaine bath, and I haven't really been able to thoroughly brush my back teeth since the first trimester (major vomitage)... but have I really lost ALL of my sex appeal?

Apparently, I have. Despite my very best efforts at looking appealing-- for god's sake, I shaved my legs today!-- this evening, I was brutally alerted to just how unsexy I've become. Tonight, my dear babydaddyfiance (heretofore referred to as "dear husband", as it's a lot fewer letters), fell asleep on me. Well, technically he fell asleep under me, but you get the point. There I was straddling him with all the grace I could muster while trying to simultaneously keep my protruding roundness from getting mashed between us and keep from squishing his delicate bits with my ample arse, having a bit of a playful romp. A little ear nibbling, a little kiss kiss, a little... Hello? Are you with me? And friends, he was not. In his defense, he snapped awake and insisted that he was "good to go". But when said reassurance is slurred... well it isn't tremendously reassuring at all. Long story short, I finally convinced him to give up the charade and just go to sleep. In my second trimester, it seems like I'm always up for a roll in the hay, but it really loses its appeal when it's more like dragging a corpse through the hay to have your way with it.

Which leads me to wonder... Have I really lost the sexy? Already?! I mean, I sort of assumed that the sexy would be one of the first things to go after dear husband witnessed birth up close and personal. You know, after the magical freak show that is crowning. After the "bloody show" and placental delivery. But no... It looks like the sexy has left the building. Right along with my love of Taco Bell and my ability to breathe through both nostrils at once. I mean, how else can you explain how a perfectly healthy and fully functioning 22 year old would fall asleep mid-makeout, with a pair of newly enormous boobs swinging not five inches from his face? I mean, not to toot my own horn(s), but right now my rack is kind of spectacular. Man. Either I'm sleeping next to the missing cast member from the Golden Girls, or I've got to start tweezing my eyebrows again.

With love and celibacy,
a.

The Good Wife's Guide...

2007-11-19T15:58:00.000-05:00

In my endless quest to become the best domestic engineer/stay at home wife/lazy-pregnant-woman-with-excessive-amounts-of-free-time that i can be, I stumbled upon this supposedly real article from a 1955 issue of Good Housekeeping Magazine entitled, simply, "The Good Wife's Guide". Guide to what, you ask? Guide to being homicidal, suicidal, and hopelessly bitter by your 3rd anniversary, I think.

But either way, those dipsy dames over at Good Housekeeping seemed to think that they were doing all us Stay at Home-rs a favor by laying out some ground rules for navigating the tricky game of Housewifery. Unfortunately, their advice is starting to look a little faded at the edges and worn at the seams and in an overall need of drastic updating. So, I've taken the liberty of reproducing their article here... along with my suggested updates to make the whole list a little more relevant. The original point is marked with an asterisk, and my suggestions are preceded by a pair of hyphens.

(Editor's Note: After reviewing my commentary, it occurred to me that the said updates are, in actuality, changes that would need to be made in order to make the original advice more relevant to one particular lazy bones, tv obsessed, milky way bar loving lady in particular... who during her pregnancy has found herself less and less inclined to spend hours in her rubber gloves scrubbing the tub, vacuuming the blinds, and then dashing off to reapply eyeliner in time for Darling Husband to return home from work.)

- - - - - - - - - - - - - - -

* Have dinner ready. Plan ahead, even the night before, to have a delicious meal ready on time for his return. This is a way of letting him know that you have be thinking about him and are concerned about his needs. Most men are hungry when they get home and the prospect of a good meal is part of the warm welcome needed.
-- ask dear husband to call when he's on his way home from work so that you can properly time microwavable french bread pizza to be finished by the time he's walking in the door. or, greet him with suggestions as to where we'll be going for dinner tonight.

* Prepare yourself. Take 15 minutes to rest so you'll be refreshed when he arrives. Touch up your make-up, put a ribbon in your hair and be fresh-looking. He has just been with a lot of work-weary people.
-- simply try and remember to brush teeth before key is heard in door. if couldn't be bothered to shave today, throw on long sleeved sweater.

* Be a little gay and a little more interesting for him. His boring day may need a lift and one of your duties is to provide it.
-- show dear husband new patch of pregnancy hormone spurred hair i found on tummy. certainly kept me fascinated for a good twenty minutes when i got out of the shower, anyway.

* Clear away the clutter. Make one last trip through the main part of the house just before your husband arrives. Run a dustcloth over the tables.
-- track down all evidence of earlier milky way and pizza hut craving, gather wrappers and boxes and bury under the topmost layer of trash in the bin. remember laundry that was taken out of the dryer before falling prey to America's Next Top Model marathon this afternoon, stuff back into dryer. try again tomorrow.

* During the cooler months of the year you should prepare and light a fire for him to unwind by. Your husband will feel he has reached a haven of rest and order, and it will give you a lift too. After all, catering to his comfort will provide you with immense personal satisfaction.
-- hide remote and light a candle. wonder when promised "immense personal satisfaction" began to rely on husband's ability to drink beer and scratch balls by firelight.

* Minimize all noise. At the time of his arrival, eliminate all noise of the washer, dryer or vacuum. Encourage the children to be quiet.
-- stop washing machine, pray he doesn't accidentally wander into laundry room and find all work shirts stewing in their own dirty water. enjoy convenient new excuse to avoid vacuuming.

* Be happy to see him.
-- check.

* Greet him with a warm smile and show sincerity in your desire to please him.
-- sincerely promise to let him change the channel just as soon as law & order is over... unless there's a new I Love New York on afterwards.

* Listen to him. You may have a dozen important things to tell him, but the moment of his arrival is not the time. Let him talk first - remember, his topics of conversation are more important than yours.
-- while waiting for your chance to speak, keep yourself entertained through rambling stories from work by singing theme song to Green Acres in your head, composing a mental checklist of celebrities you'd like to shag, and attempting to nod and smile at appropriate intervals without actually listening to a word he says.

* Don't greet him with complaints and problems.
-- a warm, "Hello, Dear!" works wonders when placed directly before a list of grievances.

* Don't complain if he's late for dinner or even if he stays out all night. Count this as minor compared to what he might have gone through at work.
-- instead, console yourself by throwing his now ice cold dinner of stouffer's lasagna at prized big screen tv and locking bedroom door before going to sleep.

* Make him comfortable. Have him lean back in a comfortable chair or lie him down in the bedroom. Have a cool or warm drink ready for him.
-- Scooch over on couch, share corner of blanket, and offer tired, swollen feet (yours) for a massage. at some point during the day, make sure fridge is still running so that beer is cold when he goes to get himself one.

* Arrange his pillow and offer to take off his shoes. Speak in a low, soothing and pleasant voice.
-- arrange his pillow? if there's a pillowcase on it, you've done your job. if attempting the shoe removal move, it is imperative that you do not gag and/or vomit when foot found in shoe is a sudden, rank reminder that someeeebody's been on his feet for the past twelve hours. should you be unable to contain your sickness, use a low, soothing phone sex operator voice to apologize.

* Don't ask him questions about his actions or question his judgment or integrity. Remember, he is the master of the house and as such will always exercise his will with fairness and truthfulness. You have no right to question him.
-- which is precisely why we own a 65" tv, a lifetime subscription to Sports Illustrated, framed posters of both Bob Marley, Kurt Cobain, Led Zepplin, a pool table (still in pieces and in the middle of the living room floor), and tickets to this week's car show... but no blender.

* A good wife always knows her place.
-- absolutely: on top.

(Editor's Note: Proving just what a lazy twat I am, I totally ripped this entry from my facebook where I posted it yesterday as a note. Whatever.)

The Rundown...

2007-11-19T10:00:00.000-05:00

So. There's nothing quite like being told by your trusted doctor that coming off of the Depo Provera birth control shots will give you a 6-10 month delay in your return to fertility only to find out a month and half later that you're pregnant. Apparently, shit does indeed happen. Estimated due date: April 24, 2008. And the countdown to the end of the wild and crazy times of my youth begins... now. Oh, who am I kidding. My youth was about as wild and crazy as Tuesday night bingo at the senior center-- a little truth that has a lot to do with my decision in regards to said KnockedUpness, to be honest.

Okay, so I'm sure you're near salivating for details. Or you're only mildly curious and I'm just too egotistical to comprehend how this news could be considered anything less than earth shattering by the rest of the free world. Either way.

Me: 19. 20 at the time of baby birthin', so will not be considered "teenage mother" and relegated to wandering local Wal-Mart in house slippers, with dirty faced baby on hip, looking utterly tragic and buying store brand white bread. Currently resides with baby daddy slash "oh-fuck-it-let's-just-get-married-since-we-were-going-to-end-up-doing-it-
eventually-anyway"-fiancee in a tasteless little three bedroom apartment with the afformentioned's roommate. Will be moving out shortly after christmas into new, roommate and Kurt Cobain poster-free flat to start proper adult life with husband and baby.

Him: 22. Inexplicably level headed and responsible for a former frat boy and avid fantasy footballer. Has financial advisor and eats lots of fiber. Spends good portion of his nights propping up snoring, gassy baby mama so she can breathe and can often be found trudging to the store for jars of relish and rasberry seltzer water. Works 70 hours a week to pay for everything and still has the good humor to call unshowered, nappy haired, bathrobed and pukey woman, "beautiful". He's a saint and I'm one lucky bitch.

As for everyone else (heartbroken parents, dumbfounded friends, and the like), well they're pretty much irrelevant. Kidding! They're all terrifically supportive and loving and excited and blahblahblah. They're all also responsible for furnishing our nursery and showering me with gifts. I love them bushels and pecks.

Anyway, now that we've been formally introduced, I invite you all to pop in from time to time and have a laugh with me (or more probably, at me) while I make a fool of myself and a mockery of the noble art of housewifery and motherhood with my decidedly ridiculous behavior and affinity for salty language.

Kisses,
a.