Peevish

There are a few things in this world that really, and I mean *really*, rub me the wrong way. Try as I might I just can't get over my annoyance when these little thorns pop up.

In no particular order, a few of my least favorite things...I feel like I've written this before...

* When you are filling out a form, be it an application, a survey, online or in hard copy, whatever, and you are asked to select gender, why is it that "Male" is always listed before "Female?" Alphabetically, it doesn't make sense and if it's just random, well, those are pretty great odds to come up male all the time. I think we all know the answer to this one - it's so entrenched that we don't realize it anymore, but it's because men are thought of as superior to women. I really hate that.

* When people find out I gave birth to my healthy daughter at home they immediately ask one of two things: a) how far away do you live from the emergency room (because birth is an emergency, right?) or b) what was your backup? I want to say my backup is my midwife who was there by my side. (I've had to delete the rest of this paragraph because apparently I was feel pretty rageful when I wrote it and not only was it snippy, it didn't make as much sense as I thought it did).

* When people don't wave when you let them in front of you while driving. I just don't get this. I wave emphatically and have even been known to flash the peace sign for an exceptionally kind let-in.

* When people try to hook up my kid. No, she doesn't already have a boyfriend; no, I don't want her to meet your strapping eight-month old lad. She's a BABY. Let's let her be one, shall we? I'm not pimping out my daughter.

* Myself when I don't get back to a good friend. I hate it when I do that.

* Bad spelling and poor grammar, because I am a nerd. Although sometimes these are the things I find the most hilarious, because I am a nerd.

Here come yum yums!

For Christmas I received "A Homemade Life," written by Seattle's very own Molly Wizenberg. I have to admit to a bit of a girl crush, here, as Molly, at least what I know of her through her writing, is the type of person I thought I would end up becoming. At the very least, I know we would become fast friends were we to ever meet.

Anyway, I finished the book a few days ago (I don't get much time to read these days). I get most of the recipes I make and my ideas for meals from magazines and books. This book has already found it's way into heavy rotation in my kitchen.

In the last three days, I have made from this book the red cabbage salad with lemon and pepper, the tomato soup with two fennels and the mega-yummy custard-filled cornbread (hence, the photo of the half-empty pan).


The cabbage salad? Gone. The soup? We've had it for two meals and I see a revival for dinner tonight. The custard-filled cornbread? Well, we had it for breakfast this morning and it's already half gone, so I don't think it's long for this world, either.

Before the baby was born, we cooked and baked ALL. THE. TIME. We made our own bread all the time (like, for realsies - we did not buy bread at the store for anything, sandwiches, toast, whatever). When baby showed up, the cooking (and for that matter the regular meals) kind of went by the wayside. We'd dappled here and there in cooking, but once she turned six months old I had an epiphany/breakdown. The baby honeymoon time of screwing around, not cleaning the house and eating like garbage was over and it was time for us to start making meals that normal people would recognize. And that would go onto a plate before going into our mouths.

Although she'll never read this, I would like to send up a heartfelt thank you to Molly Wizenberg for the kick in the pants I needed to start looking forward to meal prep and grocery shopping again. For me, cooking and baking are where I feel creative and sane and I'm pleased to have both back in my life.

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Okay, so what is with me being all serious for an entire blog post?

How I am

Any time in my life I have tried to keep a journal it goes fairly poorly. I won't write in it for months and months and then, when I get a hankerin' to jot down my thoughts, I open the journal, realize I've been negligent and attempt to write down everything of significance that's happened since I last wrote. Once I finish that, I'm overwhelmed and my hand hurts so I put the journal back down and don't pick it up again for a few more months...wash, rinse, repeat.

So I'm going to avoid the urge to cover the happenings of the past five and a half months in chronological order and just go forward from here.

In online, too pressed for time to type out the whole thing, soooo 2010 parlance, I am now a SAHM (stay at home mom). In fact, when we bought our new car recently and *I* was filling out the loan application, the car seller guy told me to list my husband first because I was a HOMEMAKER.

I almost became a dealership burn downer after that.

To be fair to myself, I am just starting out on my own as a "contract communications consultant" (I came up with that term in order to be prepared for all the cocktail parties I am going to these days). I have already completed a few jobs and am looking for more. So I will be making some money.

Just not as much as I used to.

Which means that we have a whole budget situation to rejigger.

When the bacon arrives in the bank account, do we each get a bit that we can spend on whatever? Does it all go toward shared expenses and we no longer get to do the whatevers? Does hubs only get to do the whatevers now that he is the one bringing home said bacon? How am I going to pay to get my hair cut?

What about when I buy stuff for the baby during the day, or go grocery shopping? Do those purchases need to have pre-approval because I am not the one who gets the paycheck?

How do people work this out? More importantly to me, how do smart, professional, forward-thinking, similar-minded women who are in my boat (because I know there are a lot of them, more than you would think) work this out?

I am used to having my own money that I can spend on my own things - if I buy new mascara because I read about it in a magazine and then it makes my eyes water, I don't want to feel bad about buying a different tube of mascara the next day. Nor do I want to suffer through and wear the eye-watering mascara.

So what do I do about the mascara now?

Breast Abscess

Get that shit checked out but pronto. Six hours in the emergency room overnight is a less than restful experience, especially when you are trying your almighty best to keep your baby out of the hospital and away from germs and sickies.

On the plus side, the Percocet took the edge off.

Baby Steps

Today marks the end of day two of being at home along with the baby. True, husband has come home both days to see his little girl and to kick his shoes off, put his business-socked feet up and watch a little crappy daytime reality tv (I know, redundant), but still, this has been two days of full, 100 percent responsibility for another life for more than two hours.

Yesterday, I had goals. Call the doctor about my trip to the emergency room to have the abscess that had set up shop in my right boob taken care of, call my midwife to let her know the same story, walk around the neighborhood once and pick up my prescription of Percocet. Check, check, check and check.

Today, the adventure for the day was to get to afore-mentioned doctor's office, making it the first car trip with me and baby on our own. The preparation was intense. In an effort to keep the vocalizations ("Why am I in this damn car seat again you know how I hate it why is this blanket hanging over the car seat so I can't see a thing you know I want to be fed right now and I am making a poopy diaper as we speak unnnnnnn..." (that's the pooping sound)) down, baby had third breakfast right before we left the house.

Plan was to give her a bottle with the breast milk that I have only days ago started pumping. Get bottle out of fridge, run hot water to warm it up...remember that the one with the boobs shouldn't give the bottle to avoid confusion and isn't breastfeeding hard enough anyway without confusion, so back goes bottle into fridge, shirt comes off over the head, bra comes off, baby comes to boob and she eats. Baby usually eats for five to six minutes at a time, so I'm thinking we have time. Yeah.

For the first time in a while, she eats for close to ten minutes, meaning I make the call to settle for peeking in the leg of her diaper to see if a changing is needed and skip the outfit change all together. She's five and a half weeks old, Eau de breast milk is IN this season.

Finally she's buckled into her car seat. As she expresses the appropriate amount of displeasure at her current lot in life, I sherpa myself up with a diaper bag, purse and car seat and head out to to the car. Being baby's first trip in the Beetle, I'm not prepared for the leaning forward past vertical position that the passenger seat has to be in in order to make room for the car seat. I take this as another sign that I will never, ever get my old life back.

Drive to doctor's office was fairly uneventful - took advantage of new baby-ness to call the doctor's office and let them know I was running late because this was the first time I'd traveled on my own with the kid.

Doctor's office visit also fairly uneventful - got another shot of lidocaine so that they could pull this "wick" (tape-like piece of cotton gauze) out of me and put another one in to keep soaking up the shit that abscesses when you have an abscess. Great news, we know this hurts like a son of a bitch but please pull it out a little bit each day and your boob will heal behind it as you go.

Drive home fairly uneventful as well.

Get in the door of the house, the dog has pulled stuff down off the counters and the table, I see the breast pump boob part on the ground, baby is fussing to eat, so I go to my default mode and cry. Get baby out of car seat, take her upstairs to eat, see that I forgot to put up the gate on the stairs so the dog has also pulled down my basket that I carry with me for breastfeeding, dirty laundry from the hamper, condoms (I know, hopeful) from the nightstand, the Twilight Turtle from the table and dirty baby mitts from the baby laundry basket. Default mode now is pissed off.

After a quiet but very pointed "bad dog!", I get her (the baby, not the dog) changed and fed. While feeding it becomes clear that someone needs to changed again, so we change again and then feed again.

When all that is done I know I should pick up the stuff the dog has strewn all over the house but that would entail putting baby down and putting bra and shirt on so instead I wait for hubster to get home so he too can see that awful awfulness perpetrated by our dog and make me feel better by agreeing that the dog is so bad and knows better. And maybe he'll pick it up.

Battle of the Bulge

There comes a point in everyone's life where they are given cause to take a step back and reflect on their own "deal" - their life, their mission, their relationships, the direction of those relationships - and make a true turning point decision.

That time has come.

First, some background:

I have a (several?) clogged milk ducts in one of my boobs. This happened once before in the other boob and it developed into a low-grade breast infection that landed me with a fever and directions to take echinacea and vitamin C to fight the infection, make and eat a shittake mushroom soup made with (ancient Chinese medicine) astragalus root and a clove of garlic added each time you dish up. Also, nurse the baby with her nose and chin pointed toward the blockage as much as possible and apply castor oil with heat before taking a warm shower and massaging the oil in. Worked. Plugged ducts became unplugged, lah dee dah and off we go.

Because I am not one who likes to keep a good thing to herself, a week ago there's another lump, this time in the other boob. Shit. Only a slight fever this time that I'm able to knock out pretty quickly, but the lump, on the other hand, is hanging around. I've done the soup, the castor oil, the echinacea, vitamin C and now I'm taking a lecithin supplement to make the ducts "slippery." Babe is feeding with her nose pointing toward the blockage every night when she feeds side-lying.

Here we come back to the point - the time for pause.

The midwife said that I can also have dear hubster...nurse...because he is easier to manuever around and I can tell him if he's hitting the right spot. I love LOVE my midwives - I will cry when I have my last appointment with them - and the following should in no way reflect on how much they mean to my life.

We have been all for the natural, traditional way of doing things during this pregnancy and, for the most part, during this baby's life. Homeopathic rather than western medicine, no medical intervention, hospital birth, etc.

However, and this is a big however for me personally, when all is said and done I love my husband for more than just his hippie tendencies (luckily, not bathing is not among them) and I want him to love me back for the same reasons. Hence, the reason I will continue to wear a bra during the day even though I'm breastfeeding and why I will not ask him to nurse on me. My relationship with my daughter is vitally important to me, but my relationship with my husband is sacred, in big part because it allows my strong relationship with my daughter to grow and flourish. I want to be able to return to that relationship with him at some point.

Feminism is...

Following up to the last post, the end of this article has a pretty nifty, short description of feminism: Drunk on Not Working.