The Other Side of Bliss.

There was an accident outside our community tonight. It was a white mini-van and a small white pick-up truck. When I saw the white minivan, I held my breath without realizing it, praying without realizing it, that it wasn’t our next door neighbor. When we passed by and saw the woman on the stretcher, maybe it was bad, but I breathed a sigh of relief that it wasn’t a neighbor we knew and my prayer changed to one that she would be OK.

Someone ran a red light in front of me the other day. His light had been red for at least 5 seconds before he sailed through. The guy next to me was so angry about it that he blared his horn at the person. Too late, of course, the law breaker was far on down the road by that time. I was just thankful that I had been checking my son in his car seat and hadn’t gone when my light had turned green.

I finally received my disability payment today from the state. They pay that stuff by issuing a debit card now, which I guess is supposed to be all hip and cutting edge, which is what I thought at first. But then I realized, it’s kind of a pain in the rear for those who already have bank accounts that they like, because then you have to create yet another login and password, initiate a funds transfer, which then takes up to 2 business days to complete. Plus, the debit card is issued in an account with Bank of America, which is not a bonus to me since I absolutely loathe that bank.

I caught a cold from someone last week and have been praying that William doesn’t catch it. If he manages to somehow avoid getting it from his main provider of food who breathes on him, and can’t avoid coughing on him, it will truly be a miracle. But then he’s a miracle, so maybe it’s not that far fetched of a hope that he remain healthy? I took some Children’s benadryl to try and help with my cold symptoms, but am being very careful about what I take as I don’t want my milk supply to suffer. As a result, I’ve had a couple bouts of insomnia this past week. Apparently, I’m one of those people that benadryl, instead of making me sleepy, has the opposite effect. Let me tell you, it really sucks to lie in bed listening to my newborn baby cooing in his sleep from his co-sleeper, hearing the house creak around me, knowing the minutes and then hours are ticking by and that everyone in the house is asleep but me.

I guess I should be glad I didn’t have any other orifices that stuff could come out of, because my ears are crackling, my eyes are red, my nose is dripping, my mouth is coughing out stuff that shouldn’t see the light of day, my breasts leak milk, my southern area is still working on recovery… and that just about sums up how I’ve felt this week.

The other night, I was nursing William and my nose was dripping. Rather than drip on my son, I shoved a kleenex up the offending nostril and just sat there, defeated, while William ate in blissful oblivion. I must have been quite a sight, because my husband walked by and stared for a second, told me how sorry he was for me, and then started laughing. Five minutes later, my mom did the same exact thing. They both apologized for laughing at me, but honestly, I can’t blame them. In fact, I almost wish I had asked them to take a picture of it, because I’m all about recording the reality of the moment.

Anyway, I think I’m on the mend, or at least I hope I am. My husband thinks he may be catching some form of something and is trying desperately to find someone to blame it on, but since his symptoms in no way resemble mine, I’m not allowing him to lay it at my doorstep. So far William hasn’t caught it, thank God, and let’s continue to pray that he stays healthy and strong. Because let’s face it, I would rather be the one with insomnia and sick than for it to be the other way around!

14 Comments

Filed under Gross Can Fascinate, I Worry A lot, Love/Loathe, Our Kid is Cute, Sometimes I Sleep

Savoring it All.

My time with him is so limited before I need to go back to work. Twelve weeks is what FMLA allows, and just over 4 of those weeks are already gone. Dissipated into the thin air that new babies demand.

Anyone who’s had a baby knows all about the endless nursing, endless diaper changes, baby clothes changes, laundry that includes more baby clothes than adult, baby butt baths, baby whole body baths, crying (both baby and mommy), squeezing in parental showers and parental nourishment.

Finger foods are my friend.

I find myself being intentionally selfish with William. Not wanting to share him with anyone outside of my immediate circle of family. I want to soak everything about him into my soul. He’s already growing, changing and doing things today that he didn’t do yesterday. It’s the new thing in my life, being grateful that he is healthy and sad that he’s even now growing away from me… and it started before he was even born! At 36 weeks pregnant, I remember looking at an ultrasound picture of him when he was 26 weeks and going back to his gummy bear ultrasound picture of 8 weeks and being sad that he had already been growing so fast.

So forgive me… rather than type one handed, I’ve intentionally chosen to simply stare in wonder at this marvel that I spend my days and nights with.

Speaking of finger foods, allow me to share a funny little story… the other night I was snacking on pistachios, we all know that pistachios, for some reason, are one of the snacks of the holiday season. It was late, and I was single handedly cracking the shells and eating them.

The next morning, Tony was doing a diaper change for William and in bafflement held up a green thing and asked me what it was. Excited, I exclaimed, “That’s the missing pistachio! I lost one last night when I was eating them… where’d you find it?”

Tony frowned slightly, and his eyes crinkled as if he were holding back a laugh and he said, “It was inside William’s sleeper, under his back. No wonder he was restless last night, he was sleeping on a pistachio!”

I scoffed and replied, “He was NOT restless, he slept the undisturbed slumber of his father. This is the story of the Prince and the Pistachio, NOT the Princess and the Pea.”

Although, now if I’m eating snack type foods that drop crumbs, I’ll look down and see this… and it makes me laugh and laugh.

Talk to the monkey paw…

…Or protecting himself from dropping debris…

9 Comments

Filed under Our Kid is Cute

Love Affair With An Elf.

As he nurses, he closes one eye… leaving the “upper” eye open to watch as his fingers dance a fine ballet, gently, lightly over the upper portion of my breast. Innocent and intimate, twirling, walking, from mole to mole. So gently that I can’t understand how he can even feel it, yet he coos in contentment. A connect the dots game that only a baby and his mother could find interesting.

Having a baby is such an earthy, innocent, intimate dance. I would have never thought those three words could be combined in one sentence, but it’s really the perfect and only description to me.

At the top of his right ear is just the smallest amount of lanugo. I know it will fall off all too soon, but for now I imagine that it’s all part of the proof that he’s our little elf baby, because it really does make his ear look like it belongs to an elf.

As the nursing session progresses, he will often time raise one of his blonde eyebrows, so different in color from all that hair on his head, and he’ll either fold his arms over his chest like he’s in a little baby straight jacket or he’ll put a fist up to his oh-so-soft cheek as if he’s really thinking about something while he eats his meal.

I don’t know how I’ll ever get enough of this child. This amazing 10+ pounds of elf boy goodness.

My only wish for you is that your Christmas be as overflowing in fullness as our hearts are this Christmas.

14 Comments

Filed under Best Husband, Our Kid is Cute

Home for the Holidays.

We would like to announce the arrival of our son.

He burst forth into this world on Thursday, December 8th, 2011 at 10:53 AM.

We named him William John, in honor of my father and both of our grandfathers (respectively).

He tilted the scales at 10 lbs 11 ounces, and measured 21 inches in length.

Our son is healthy and came out with the most incredible, perfect nursing latch, with a piranha like suction and ravenous appetite.

My husband is the most amazing labor coach and baby support person I could have ever asked for. He did and is doing an absolutely amazing job. I am so, so proud of him and so humbled to be able to share this new little person with him every day.

My doula was absolutely perfect with me, with us, and was a great guide through the entire process. She is also a lactation consultant and is continuing to guide me. I am so grateful that I found her.

My labor started at 4:11 AM, I called my doula at 6:00 AM, we left for the hospital around 7:15 AM. We had an incredible team in the room to help deliver him, from the labor & delivery nurse who had had her two children in home births and therefore completely supported my desire for a natural childbirth and assisted in getting this kid’s enormous shoulders out of me, to my doctor who did an incredible job making sure she followed my birth plan to every detail possible.

I am sore in my breasts due to our son’s aforementioned appetite, and in my forearms due to the labor position I used, but otherwise completely fine and “injury” free. Yes, that means what you think it means.

I’ve been told I am the talk of the hospital since I delivered such a large baby completely drug, epidural and intervention free. Truth be told, I’m pretty proud of myself, too. I worked really, really hard to be as healthy and strong as I could be — eating healthy, preparing and researching for natural childbirth in a hospital setting, lap swimming every day for an hour, even the night before I went into labor! I was even at work on the 7th, the day before I delivered.

Oh, who am I kidding? No one really cares about all that crap. So… on to the fun stuff. Pictures!

Going home from the hospital…

I don’t suppose it needs to be said, but I’ll say it anyway. We are completely, over the moon in love with this little boy.

27 Comments

Filed under Best Husband, I have Family, I have Friends, I Left Home for Awhile, Our Kid is Cute

Turkey and Stuff

Our Thanksgiving this year was perfect, awesome really, and I enjoyed it immensely. I’m so grateful for Tony’s family who has embraced me in their hearts and accepted me, quirks and all. The four days off from work were really nice, too, and spending them in my mom’s company made it a double blessing for me.

My contribution to the Thanksgiving feast this year was my standard sweet potato souffle. It’s an easy enough recipe that either Tony or I can make it, depending on who has the time available. Last year, he did it, this year I did it. This year I also contributed a green bean casserole quiche. It is different enough from the standard green bean casserole (which my sister-in-law makes) that it didn’t feel like we had doubled up on green bean things. Of course, my favorite dish of all the food was the turkey, but then I’m all about the turkey even when it isn’t Thanksgiving! In fact, I used money that was given to me for my birthday to purchase a broiler oven (like this one) so that I can easily make turkeys all year round if I want!

The hours at work are long, some days I’m there before 7am and usually leave after 5pm. Once work is over, the evening workout at the gym is done and dinner is eaten, there seems to be just enough time to prepare for the next day and get ready for bed. Under the heading of “Actions speak louder than words” I know my contributions at work are appreciated, because my boss relocated and now travels to the corporate office here in California a few days each month. This week he was here for three days. He spent one of the evenings he was here baking his seasonal batch of pumpkin bread just because I requested it. Now THAT makes me feel pretty special!

I’m also grateful for having a trustworthy mechanic in my life. Especially since it seems like there’s always something knicky-knacky going on with my car these days. For example, one of the tires in my car picked up a screw (insert various screwed jokes here) and I simply dropped it off on my way home from work and went and got it after they had closed. That minimized the inconvenience of the whole thing for me and they patched it right up at no charge to me.

My outside swim days are over for the season and the gym’s pool is my new haunt. While I’m not thrilled about it, it does serve its purpose and I’m grateful for that. Although it does seem as if the chemical levels in that pool are consistently wrong — I notified them last night that the chlorine levels are too high given that I went home one night and my swimsuit faded from black to grey in 24 hours and then last night I got home and discovered that the reason my skin was burning like I’d just been sunburned was because of a first degree chlorine burn (informational link) on the lower half of my body. I went back to the gym later that evening and did a “show and tell” with one of their female employees of the affected areas. She was stunned and promised to notify the gym’s manager this morning, which is good because I was uncomfortable last night feeling like I was sunburned on my butt (and elsewhere). In the whole scheme of things, though, my health is something I never, ever take for granted and I’m grateful that I am able to swim and eat and feel fantastic, healthy and strong.

My husband has already started putting up Christmas decorations on the outside of our house this week. He plans to finish it this weekend and I plan to decorate the inside of our home (as always) this weekend. We’re looking forward to that!

It should be a great weekend ahead with popcorn, hot chocolate and Christmas music playing while we decorate!

12 Comments

Filed under Life Encompasses Me, Mermaid Envy, We Love to Decorate

Through My Eyes.

I just thought I’d share some pictures from my world, taken over the last couple of weeks.

Halloween decorations are down. My work area is now decorated for autumn. Simple things like this make me very happy.

I can’t believe the trees around me actually have color. I know you Easterners are all, “Not a big deal, California chickie!” But in the most mundane of places reside these trees… the parking lot at my work place.

When we had a full moon last week…

When we went to the mountains the weekend after my birthday, we were coincidentally treated to witnessing the first snow of the season. We love that.

The mountain donkey was out for a visit.

I love Arby’s Jr. Roast Beef sandwich… Tony loves their Arby-Q sandwich. We both love the bag they give it to us in.

My albino fish has a weird something or other on her tail. I have no idea what it is. Her activity level seems okay, though, and none of the other fish seem to be infected. Just the strangest thing.

This is what I’m greeted with every morning now that the weather has turned cooler. That little green spot in the middle of the picture is our birdy’s butt. Lest you think she’s actually cold, remember she has a heated perch that she’s also sitting on.

My cat, Tug, found a sun spot to rest his front paws. That made him very happy.

Happy Friday to you and hope you have a good weekend!

10 Comments

Filed under Life Encompasses Me, Wordless (mostly) Post

Two Big Things

The first Big Thing around our house this time of year is Halloween (in case you’ve forgotten or couldn’t guess). Our tradition of decorating for Halloween (our home and my work space), carving our pumpkins while watching Charlie Brown’s Great Pumpkin DVD, and my annual Barbie Doll outfit are things that we always look forward to doing!

Tony changed things up a little bit this year with the decorations on our home. He set up the flashing light and scary sounds CD so that they broadcasted through the vent of our garage, instead of on our front stoop. That made it a much more pleasant experience for us while we carved our pumpkins and watched Charlie Brown. He also moved the scary grim reaper closer to our front door making it appear as if he wanted to welcome our visitors with a warm embrace. The motion sensor "Welcome" was a big hit (to us) because it scared my mom every time she entered the house. Gotta love that! ha

Even though I didn’t win the decorating contest at work this year (like I did last year), personally I think the decoration of my work space was BETTER than last year’s decorations… and I even baked a shit-ton of pumpkin cookies to bribe my co-workers! ha I think we waited too long to decorate this year, since my area doesn’t get the foot traffic that the other departments get. But, Tony and I had fun decorating and my mom had fun watching us. We all had fun taking it down yesterday!

Cookie bribery for co-workers — Pumpkin caramel chocolate chip, Pumpkin oatmeal raisin and Pumpkin date:

Tony getting ready to carve his pumpkin:

Me getting ready to carve my pumpkin:

Carved pumpkins… Tony did the werewolf pumpkin. I did the "Best Friends" pumpkin:

Last, but not least, I decided to wear my favorite Halloween t-shirt to work this year and go with the whole Boney Barney theme, with my work space, me and Barbie. This necessitated the creation of a t-shirt for Barbie that matched mine. As you may recall, I go through this every year and am usually up until the wee hours of the morning hand stitching a tiny outfit for her. I was quite proud of myself for digging out Barbie’s wardrobe and assessing the situation early this year, which enabled me to create a matching outfit with a little less stress in preparation that reaped a TON of compliments and amazement due to the tiniest details that matched.

Barbie’s outfit:

My outfit:

The second Big Thing is my birthday, the day after Halloween… or All Saint’s Day. Because I’m just that saintly!

If there’s such a thing as ordering up a perfect birthday, I somehow must have done so yesterday! With a quiet, relatively stress-free work day, getting bright autumn colored flowers from my bosses, briefly seeing my friend, Grace (always a bright spot, no matter how short the time), discovering that our community pool was still being heated last night, sweet birthday cards from my loved ones, and dinner at one of my favorite restaurants in the whole world with family… on a Tuesday night, meaning everyone felt I was special enough to come out and play on a school night.

Pretty birthday flowers:

Oh — and it’s not over yet, we still have a weekend in the mountains that we’re anticipating!

P.S. I know the pictures won’t display correctly — sorry! I’m posting by e-mail, so I’ll fix them later this evening.

9 Comments

Filed under I did something Special, I have Family, I have Friends, We Love to Decorate

Frightful weekend!

As it turned out, last weekend ended up being our weekend to participate in fun and special Halloween things! The local historical park just down the road from us has an annual Fright Night. Our calendars have never meshed in the past to allow us to attend, so we usually ended up attending Knott’s Scary Farm or Universal Studio’s Halloween thing on a different weekend in October. Plus, I didn’t figure the local event would be all that impressive. This year, we happened to be available, so I lowered my expectations for the event and ended up being pleasantly surprised.

True, it wasn’t nearly as scary as the "professional" places, but they did have creepy, scary people roaming around. Their attempts to scare me always make me laugh at them anyway, so I got lots of laughs. They also REALLY did a lot of work with their Halloween lights (which were everywhere) and creepy sound boxes and frightful decorations dangling around.

The old schoolhouse, lit up with Halloween lights:

Weird (headless) bride and groom on the steps of the church:

Lots of Halloween lights everywhere:

On Saturday, the same place had a family event, so we invited the family over for a BBQ and then headed down the hill. The decorations were still up, but the scary-creepy people were gone and the freaky sound boxes were turned off. They had a craft area for the kids, local vendors who were giving away swag, games, a little pumpkin patch, kid friendly mazes, a costume parade, storytelling time, and kid friendly characters, many of whom were handing out candy. Captain Jack Sparrow even showed up to take pictures and hand out candy!

All in all, I think it was really well done and I actually did end up being impressed!

The schoolhouse the next day, not so scary! And Harry Potter was inside talking to the people who were wandering through.
null

Captain Jack showed up. I have no idea who that kid is, I just wanted a picture of Captain Jack and his side kick!

I had purchased tickets through Groupon for one of the Queen Mary’s scary nights… and Sunday was the night. So off we headed for that! I was a little intimidated when we got to the area and the line to enter the parking lot was just ridiculous. Then the line to exchange the voucher for a ticket was ridiculous… more ridiculous, even, than getting into Disneyland on a busy summer day. At one point while we were waiting in one of those lines, I told Tony, "This event better not suck once we get in, because THAT would REALLY suck!" I know, I have a gift of phrasing things, don’t I?

Fortunately, the event was really fun and cool. There were a ton of people there and, as a result, the lines for the mazes sucked, but I never felt claustrophobic like I did at Knott’s Scary Farm that one year. However, if we do the event again (which we likely will), I think it would be worth it to spring the extra dough for the front of the line pass. But — they had live DJ’s in a couple different areas, one welcoming you into the entrance maze and one who entertained the line for another maze, along with some really cool pyrotechnics. They had a ton of creepy, scary zombie people who were really talented… better than the ones at Knott’s Scary Farm, I thought. One guy slid about 15 feet, sparks coming up off his knees, and stopped within inches of me! My response to him? "Whoa! That was cool!" He just stared at me. ha

We only had time to do a couple of mazes, and one of those went through the alleged haunted pool area of the Queen Mary. The whole thing was just a cool experience.

Queen Mary:

The “welcoming” DJ:

The haunted pool area:

Fortunately, the Groupon deal I purchased includes a day pass that we can use anytime through December 2012. I’m really looking forward to going back for that! This week it’s just been back to the usual… almost the weekend again!

(I’m trying out the post-by-email feature with this blog post. Hopefully it displays correctly…)

21 Comments

Filed under Entertainment can be Cheap, I did something Special

Living Life.

On my way home from work one day last week, my car sputtered when I took off from a start. Those dratted traffic monitor lights on the freeway on ramp only make people sit in frustration before they can get on the crowded freeway and sit in frustration longer… and I totally blamed the sputtering on that, even though I knew deep down it was something more. It did it again when I was driving home from dinner later that evening and I figured it was probably the spark plugs. I took it in the shop the next morning and the tech was able to get the check engine light to come on and pull the code: spark plugs.

So they replaced them, test drove it, and it ran like a champ… for them. Except the next morning, it sputtered again when I drove it. But I couldn’t get it to duplicate when I took the tech for a drive. Of course not. He told me to try and get the check engine light to come on so they could pull the code. Made sense, rather than chasing some random problem, to try and get a specific diagnostic code. The next day came and it got worse and worse. Stop and go traffic in a sputtering car is a hoot. I finally got the check engine light to come on — yay me! They pulled the code and it said “misfiring.” Well, duh. I could have told them that. Anyway, the saga finally ended (so far) when they replaced one of the ignition wires which was testing with high resistance. They are original equipment to the car, and I guess a car who’s nearly 10 years old does need this kind of maintenance.

Don’t you just love the car talk? Anyway, so I now have my car back, minus some $$ and time and inconveniences to my husband, his dad (we borrowed his car) and myself.

Then, another day this week, I plugged my primary external hard drive into my computer after using it somewhere else. It decided that it needed to run a check disk and, in the course of it, converted several folders to files that are now not accessible. According to what I’ve read, Microsoft just decided that they were going to be lazy and didn’t want to create an unconversion option, and I found an enormous three page step-by-step fix for it, but … really? Fortunately (if there’s a “fortunate” part of it), although it converted quite a few folders, my loss is only about three weeks worth of stuff because I back up my crap on a monthly basis.

Then, the day I left my car in the shop, we all played musical cars. My husband drove his dad’s truck to work and I drove my husband’s car. That morning I took a corner in his car at the speed I would normally take it in my car, but failed to factor in the fact that an SUV drives a bit different than a sports car. As a result, my lunch bag went tumbling top over bottom in the back seat. It wouldn’t normally be an issue, except in the mornings I put my travel mug of coffee in there for the ride so I can savor it when I get to work. I just knew it was dumping all over the inside of the bag. I grabbed it, righted it, and checked. As it turns out, the suction of the heat of the coffee had created a such a strong vacuum that it sealed that mug so tight that only a drip came out.

I thought to myself, “Well, it looks like things are turning around… a bit of luck!”

If you’re looking for it, sometimes the smallest thing or just an hour in time can make all the difference in the world.

Also, I finally used my “coupons” from the deal I bought a couple weeks ago at Whole Foods market. One of the gems I found there were a novelty grape called Holiday grapes. Good heavens, but those things are amazing. I highly recommend them if you’re looking for a special food treat for yourself!

10 Comments

Filed under Life Encompasses Me

Change of Seasons.

In our part of the world, I know fall is coming when Halloween City posts classified ad after classified ad for seasonal help in all surrounding cities. Who knew there were so many Halloween City stores? I didn’t.

Also, my HOA sends out notification that they’ll only be heating one pool in our community until October 31st. This year it’s the “upper” pool, which is good I suppose, since that nasty marijuana smell seems to be an intermittently regular visitor at the “lower” pool. So annoying.

Wonderful spice scented candles make their appearance in the stores, along with weird Autumn figures and freaky Halloween decorations, who stand at the end of aisles and stare vacantly at you as you pass them by.

Also, the days are warm but the nights are crisp and cool. Which always makes me want to bake cookies, but not enough to turn the oven on during the day. Quite a conundrum. So I usually end up mixing up the dough and storing it in the fridge or freezer until it cools off for reals.

During my “modified swimming” this weekend, there have been monarch butterflies fluttering around the upper pool. They are so pretty and I could happily watch them flit about all day, dramatic colors and carefree wind carried whimsies.

Beautiful butterflies, beautiful weather, in the sun swims, desire to create things in my oven — simple things I’m celebrating and giving thanks for tonight.

Praying for the safe travels of those I hold close to me (my husband and mom), on separate road trips, but traveling long journeys.

10 Comments

Filed under Daily Journeys:, Longbits