It's Mommyhood settling in.

I am a bore. I sit at home, rarely able to use the computer because I am the personal jungle gym of a 13th month old who cannot abide things with buttons around him unless he has license to pound. Little shitter.

It doesn't suck, it's just different.

It's keeping me up tonight

A crime of passion. A passion so compelling that it overtook a life tonight.
We live in a terrible world.
Hate and fear walk so closely together that it's hard to tell where one stops and the other begins.
These things consume.

I was not there. I did not witness. But the description of a blood-stained sheet exiting a house to an ambulance that has no need to run it's sirens or lights and the confusion and terror and anger and fear that permeated the air are circling inside of my head.

I want to cry and scream. I want to conjure up anger at this situation. But anger leads to hate. And I know that they are connected. And then there is fear, fear is the before and the after and the in-between. Fear births anger and hate and is also born of the anger and hate. How awful it is to live with fear, in fear.

I do not want to fear. And I won't. I know tomorrow I will carry the hope for myself and dozens of others. But tonight hope is a heavy burden and despair is settling in like a persistent fog. Because even if I don't give into the fear, others will, have, do and that is a dark hole to claw out of.

It's just knowing that I will never live this down.

Over Easter weekend I did something terrible to my husband.
He's never been good at accepting practical jokes. One time, many years ago in our first apartment, I played a practical joke on him. Actually, it was played on me first. The kids I nannied came over to my apartment for a visit with thier mom. Aggie was a great joker. She had been threatening to "get me" since my wedding where I all but thwarted all her attempts to play a trick on me. So I suppose she was looking for a good one and I provided a great opportunity. After making pudding with the kids and eating it, we put our dishes in the sink. I went back to the sink a few minutes later and there was pudding smeared everywhere inside the sink. So I instictively turned on the water faucet to rinse it out. Aggie had taped the spray nozzel handle down in the ON position, and left it in the cradle next to the faucet. The second I turned on the water my shirt was drenched.
I thought it was such a good joke that I called my husband over to get him too. But when he turned on the water and I laughed, he stormed into the bedroom and LOCKED THE DOOR. He growled when I tried to talk to him and was in general so upset that I felt like pooh.
I suppose I have felt pretty bad about this incident ever since and I use it as my basis for pointing out to him what a terrible sense of humor he can have when it comes to me.
But despite his sometimes aweful sense of humor, I still tweak his ears and flick his nose every once in a while just for fun. So a few weekends ago, over Easter break we were out to eat with his brothers. I was getting bored waiting for our food to arrive and pulling out my lighter, waved the flame near the arm of his shirt. And it CAUGHT ON FIRE!! I watched in horror as the wispy blue flames licked up his arm then his side. It was catching on fumes or little fuzzies or something because I swear that I did not actually touch his shirt with the flame. I was babbling and blubbering and watching my husband go up in blue flame.
He of course caught on and was able to get the fire out and in his efforts came really close to stripping in the restaraunt. And he was angry at me. And I figure that if a little water 5 years ago made him upset, then I am never going to live down catching him on fire.

it's shouting out innappropriate comments

I sat in a meeting a few weeks ago. Eight hours of training. And I have been so anxious and so stressed out at work that 8 hours of doing "nothing" to diminish my amazing pile of things TO-DO, I thought I was going to go crazy.
So I am sitting in this meeting doing nothing but tapping my feet and fingers, bouncing my knees up and down and suddenly it occurs to me that I can be texting! Hell yeah. Except I have only 1 friend who would even answer a text during the day. So we decided that I needed to shout out the word "Boobies!" in the meeting. I chickened out, of course.
Now I feel like I have missed out on something really important in my life. But I feel like i really need an incentive. So internet of 4 followers: will someone be willing to pay me to shout "BOOBIES!" to my boss in the next session of the 8-hour long training?
Let me know

It's fun to Stumble

Because i like to always be doing 2+ things at a time, I Stumble a lot.
And here is my disturbing image for the day:

It's because my husband cleaned the bathrooms

You won't believe how awesomely clean my bathroom is. Thanks to my husband. I consider this a chore that should be gotten through as quickly as possible. Fifteen minutes to clean our miniscule bathroom is all it usually takes me. Shove, swish, rinse, scrub rinse, wipe DONE.
Which is why I began to wonder if my husband got his arm caught in the back of the toilette or something nefarious like that 2.5 hours after he said he was going to be cleaning the bathroom.
Actually, he planned in advance, he went to the store to buy products before embarking on this ambitious adventure.
Buy this product. Firstly, it's cool as hell to apply to the inside of the toilette, and three days in, when the bathroom is usually back to its original state, the toilette bowl is still clean. And it makes the bathroom smell clean. All of the time.
Awesome

It's all in the obsession with him.

I don't feel like I have had much to post about lately. And I would like to conjecture that it is because of this failing of my memory. It's almost a certain thing that there have been things interesting enough to pose over. But I cannot remember them.
What comes to mind in the few hours I have been thinking about it today are the following: I would think that friends would tell me if I had a big orange(ish) line of makeup running across my cheek, but they didn't and now I am questioning if they are really friends. Because while the media has taught us that friends do not let friends drive drunk, I believe that friends should not allow friends to have food-in-teeth, bogies, unzipped flies, lipstick-on-teeth or a spot of mustard on their boobies, and certainly not allow them to go all day at work with a big unblended line of makeup running across their cheeks.
Next, that my mind is failing me to the point that I have requested that my staff excuse my limited ability to accomplish things and am just about to resort to kneeling at their feet and begging for forgiveness that I haven't followed through on half the shit I said I would. On the other hand, I am getting better about fessing up to said memory issues instead of lying about it.
Then, further ponderings about how that baby and the dog are alike. These ponderings are primarily due to the fact that I can't seem to get my son to roll a ball to me, but he will however crawl after it, bite it, and then bring it back to me with his mouth. He's gonna have f-ed up teeth if he continues to play fetch with all his toys.
And the last thing that I thought I was thinking about blogging about was how awesome the peach and white roses that my brother-in-law bought for my sister are. They are opening up in the most beautiful blossoms that have almost inspired me to sketch, paint or photograph them in the most trite and overused manner. I don't care how overdone the roses=love=beauty concept is. And THAT really freaks me out. I have no memory, no creative ranting/writing juices and now I am actually contemplating painting a picture of a dozen f-ing roses!! If you know me, you'll know that I am creative and original and make fun of vapid ideas and art and design concepts. So....I'm scared for myself.


Which leads me to my final bit. I decided that since there is no creative nodes traveling through my limited orbit, I would just post some pictures. And sorting through my photos, I realized there are not really any really original, inspired or exquisite photos.
The only pictures that I have taken that don't include people since buying my camera in August of 2008. And 25 out of about 1000 photos are not of my son.
The first photo are some flowers, I don't know the names. They bloom in August, indigenous to Maryland (Baker Park) to rule it down. I can paint flowers deliciously. Not roses, of course. At least not since middle school (snob). But I cannot seem to photograph them well. More on that another time.
The second is Daddy cooking pancakes. He still makes them when the family all gets together. Though I am not sure him and my mother have allowed carbs to pass their lips at breakfast for a few years now. He hasn't used a recipe in 10 or 15 years. He doesn't need to. He can tell when the batter "looks" right through each stage. That's fricking awesome.
The last photo are the cakes that I decided to make after watching 1000 hours of HGTV and Cake Challenge on the Food Network while on maternity leave last summer. They were the only two channels with shows that I can abide that have the added benefit of not offending my mother during her stay here. Then I decided that I too could make a fondant cake. I was right. These cakes were friggin awesome. I mean, they tasted common, but they look like masterpieces for a first timer!!

It's all because I had three glasses of wine

Crazy post-pregnancy hormones! I haven't been able to have a glass (or two) of wine since my child was born without feeling seriously inebriated. Thankfully, I always have a plan for getting home. (Thanks again Rachel for staying sober on countless occasions after inviting me out to your happy hour celebrations)
So it started many many weeks ago, after the first time that I went out to an HH-post Friday, post crappy week. I 'felt it' after one a glass and a half of wine. Now, months later, all it takes is loud background music, even louder girls to hang with, and a few juicy pieces of gossip to get me to drop almost all inhibitions. (almost all, I didn't flash anyone tonight, haven't ever yet.)
But the word vomit! OMG, does anyone else feel this is an instant symptom of wine? I talk too much. I say too much. I share way too much. I even gave major kudos for catching one girl grabbing another's boob(s).

PS. watching The Office again from last night. Loving it. Kev-skie has word vomit too - Boobs.

It's the memory of childhood dreaming.

Once upon a time.
That is where I lived as a child.
In a land of make believe.
Imagine a girl who was so in love with "Gone With The Wind" and the era of hoop skirts, that she asked for a hoola-hoop every year for Christmas so that she could pin it into the hems of her dress-up clothes.
That was me.
I wanted a hoop skirt so badly. I wanted to be Scarlet O'Hara.

There were these paper dolls that my mom allowed us to photocopy out of a paper doll book. There was one with brass tacks at her shoulders, allowing her arms to move. But what was really amazing about Constance the paper doll was that you had to make her dresses. She came with one, it was a gorgeous, full skirted ball gown with puff sleeves. I had to color the dress and cut it out. And then I went into ball-gown designing overload. I would trace a new dress, pinning the original template to the window and using that general outline, would recreate all of Scarlet O'Hara's gorgeous gowns. But that was not enough. Oh, no. I scoured the library's inventory of wholesome family movies for any movie set in the Civil War era. Anyone else remember "Harvey Girls"? On and on I would design gown after gown for Constance to wear, and then hats, parasols, cloaks and mufflers.
At around eleven or twelve years old my mom gave me a book to read: The Hundred Dresses by Eleanor Estes. A story about a poor young, Polish-American girl. She claims to have one hundred dresses, lined up in her closet. It is obvious that she only has one, as evidenced by her wearing a faded blue dress every day. Her classmates make fun of her mercilessly. One day she is suddenly not as school, but there is a letter from her father that the teacher reads alloud to the class. The letter shames them all for making fun of her. For she was poor, and she only had one dress to wear, but she had the talent and the creativity to have designed one hundred dresses all her own designs. And dreaming of those beautiful dresses was how she coped with her own poverty. The clincher in the book, if I remember correctly, is that she even drew her mean classmates into the pictures. The mean girls are wearing the gowns she designed. She sent them in the letter to the very girls that loved to make fun of her so.
I loved that book and that spunky but quiet little Polish-American girl. Really I loved that she made them feel so bad, killing them with her kindness.
Anyhow...After I read the story of Wanda Petronski I could not rest until I too had designed 100 dresses, all my own design for my flimsy, paper Constance. And so I did. Aren't I spunky too?

Well, all of these memories came up for me last week when I decided to devote a Saturday afternoon to watching the wickedly selfish Scarlet destroy her own life and chances at happiness. And everyone in my house made fun of me for it!

I won't let them kill my adoration for the hoop skirts. I'll show them. I think I will go and join a Civil War Re-enactment troupe. Is there such a thing? Can I be Scarlet?

It's just that he puts everything in his mouth

Friday evening I get home from work to the news from my husband that the dreaded event had happened. The baby made his way across the living room with his lightening fast crawl, and put a piece of doggy poop in his mouth.
Yep
My husband tells me about this, with a mild bit of panic in his voice. We discuss the need to call the pediatrician. Justification ensues, 'I don't think he got it down his throat', 'I think that I got it all washed out of his mouth' etc. But I couldn't help it, I just made fun of him.

Monday morning, and my sister-in-law's big, huge, massive, polar bear of a dog had been staying with us over the weekend.
Wait, let me back up: Koda had been lumbering around the house all weekend. Koda, roughly 250 million pounds, and kept trying to engage Murphy, 6 1/2 pounds soaking wet, in some playful banter. Oh, and then Gabriel had been using Koda as a personal, walking couch. He rubbed his face into koda's 5 foot long fur, grabbing fistfuls of it all of the time...etc. She's a big, awesome polar bear and fun for any little baby to nuzzle. So there's lots of fur literally floating around my house.
Okay, so back to monday morning; Gabriel playing on the floor, supervised by my husband. And after Friday's poopy incident, I'll use the work 'supervising' lightly. We knew that it was going to happen, maybe, eventually, that Gabriel would shove something disgusting in his mouth. Ok, but Monday morning, Gabriel crawls over to me as I am putting on my shoes.
He's coughing and there's a Koda-hair sticking out of his mouth. I grab it, and pull out an entire hairball!!

It's in the way that we say things

"Can I put my finger in your bellybutton?"
"eww...no."
"why?"
"because it feels weird and I don't like it."
pause
"Okay, but it's all that I can think about now. So...you better not sleep on your back tonight."
rolls eyes
"Then can I bite your ear?"

It's funny that this conversation ended in a 'who can kiss better?' battle.
To explain a little, we decided that we were going to find some quality time together dammit, and if that happened to be at the end of the day when we are sometimes too tired to function...well, this is going to be the result most of the time.

It's the way things happen around here that really gets to me.

Here I am sitting in my living room, contemplating the long evening in front of me. I watch my son struggling across the floor, three tentative crawls, then flop onto his belly. Then he pauses, and may or may not push himself up into a sitting position (new trick, just learned this weekend) and think about persevering to the object of his attention. He keeps going on. He is intent upon his goal. What really stinks about this whole situation is that once he finally gets there, and the doggy treat, doggy food, doggy pad or the dog itself is in his grasp, I very meanly take it away from him.
I keep explaining the logic of this to my boy. "See Gabriel, Murphy eats his own poop, and I don't want you putting his things in your mouth. Because they will have some leftover dooky on them." If my son survives his babyhood without e-coli, he is going to have some great antibodies in his system.
And then I realize that Murphy is the only model around this house his own size. So why wouldn't my 7 month old son pick up the same habits? They both chew everything, get around on all fours, and regularly seek out computer wires to gnaw on. Oh, and they both speech foreign languages. They're both adorable. Murphy in a: shaggy haired, impishly cute, tiny puppy forever sort of way. Gabriel in a: blonde haired, blue eyed, chubby extremities, expressive face, big-OH smile, baby way.
Husband is eating Chinese food. The baby is trying to eat the dog, the dog is watching husband eat Chinese. And here I sit with the laptop in my life, trying to immortalize this moment.