girlfiend

Things that have come out of my mouth this week:

Just let him play with the tin foil.

I don’t care if he eats the paper.

Give the baby the fork back.

Why isn’t there an okay for the environment, non-toxic dishwasher detergent that gets my dishes clean? I am fine using vinegar and baking soda with some lemon juice and salt for all of my daily cleaning tasks but dishwasher detergent is a no go.

Throwing the shower curtain liner in the washing machine is no more work than (and a little bit cheaper than) throwing it out and buying a new one.

I can’t quite get sourdough bread right. The first batch rose, but was totally raw in the middle. The second batch was flat as a board, but cooked through and delicious despite the fact that it was way too dense. I decided a break was in order before I try another loaf. My starter is still bubbly and active. Let’s hope it stays that way.

Frozen cream cheese does not work if you want to make cream cheese frosting. It is lumpy and gross.

The tantrum tonight was unfuckingbelievable. It made this afternoon’s tantrum look like a tea party.

We still don’t have a Christmas tree. But tonight after we lit the Chanukah candles we had bacon-wrapped filet mignon and latkes with sour cream and applesauce for dinner.

I hate my kitchen floor.

This was written November 3rd and never finished or posted.

I know I need to be more generous since my mother has put the Fiendling to bed three nights in a row. But she’s slept here three nights in a row, and it’s hard for me to keep my irritation in check. She’s like a child. Raisinets ground into the couch, half empty cans of Coke everywhere, eating nothing but the Fiendling’s Halloween candy all day long. Then of course there’s her dog: hogging the couch, peeing on the baby’s playmat, and growling at the Fiendling and my mother-in-law.

Just now she looked wide-eyed around the room and gasped, terrified “Where is the baby?” as though I put him out with the trash. He’s napping. It’s 8 and we’ve been awake for hours. I didn’t sell him to the gypsies, I put him in his room.

Since she got here on Friday she’s been telling me all of the things I need to buy. According to her I need “fresh” t-shirts and underwear. And a housecleaner. I hate her.

Since then she’s put the Fiendling to bed without changing his diaper, a diaper that was sitting ON TOP of his pajamas and that was her only babysitting task. She was to change him and put him to bed. She’s also left her shoes on the couch. Not on the floor next to it, but on the arm. I have pictures.

She supervised the Fiendling while he painted, then washed his hands and took him upstairs leaving all of the paint and the brushes out on the table to harden. I incorrectly assumed that she at least would have thrown the brushes in the sink and crumpled up the newspaper and threw the brushes out with it.

There’s so much more, but this is enough for now.

I swear I wrote something here a few days ago but it seems to have disappeared. It’s not even in the drafts. Maybe I posted it someplace else by accident.

A few things about my postpartum recovery now that it’s been 7 months. (which reminds me, I’m skipping monthly updates this month.)

1. Pushing for 4 minutes instead of 2 hours makes all the difference. I was up and walking around as soon as they let me and we were walking around the neighborhood our first day home.

2. Breastfeeding still hurt like a motherfucker the first few weeks but I didn’t have the same sense of panic and I only got mastitis once instead of god knows how many times.

3. I lost 30 of the 37 pounds I’d gained in the first 6 weeks. I don’t know how. Probably a combination of never being truly able to relax, never eating a full meal, and chasing a 2 year old all over the place.

4. I lost the rest of the weight not too long after. Right now I actually weigh less than I did before I got pregnant with the baby. In other words, I weigh less now than I did 18 months after the Fiendling was born. I’m sure I’ll never weigh what I did before I got pregnant the first time, but back then I had the time and motivation to work out five days a week.

5. I look better now than I have in years. Since July of 2006. Yes, I’m exercising, but I really think it’s more about my metabolism than it is about the time (maybe 45 minutes to an hour/ 3 days a week) at the gym.

6. I have been pregnant and/or nursing for more than 40 months.

7. I really miss working. I’m not going to up and put the kids in daycare any time soon, but it’s going to be a long winter stuck in the house every afternoon while the baby naps. As nice as it is being home with the boys, and as shitty as my last teaching job was, I like teaching. And even though I have a few years to go before I’ll actually return to the classroom I’m already trying to figure out where I want to go.

It’s much easier to wear a belt than it is to walk around hiking up your pants all day long. It had been so long since I fit into my belts I’d forgotten.

Chickpeas and pasta is a pretty good combination.

People who were annoying in grade school are just as annoying on Facebook.

I can rationalize the purchase of wine if it comes with a $5 rebate.

Knitting is much easier when you’re not doing it wrong.

My big, white hippie sweater looks great with a purple shirt underneath.

The bad thing about hosting three dinner parties in a week and a half (two in two days!) is that the house is still a mess. The good thing is that there’s plenty of food and wine leftover. We just polished off two cupcakes, there’s half a carrot cake in the fridge, dinner for tomorrow night is taken care of,  and the leftover loaf of Italian bread will do for sandwiches for most of the week. I am currently drinking pink wine.

The children (for the time being, anyway) are sleeping and I am using a new to me computer that moves faster than the pony express. E brought me a computer he rescued and refurbished so I’m no longer stuck using my state of the art circa 2000 HP with the recurring “virtual memory is low” error message. Thank you, E!

I seem to have misplaced my knitting and my camera cord (found!). The bread I mixed earlier today didn’t rise enough and the brown butter sugar cookies didn’t come together the way they should. I have two batches of chocolate chip cookie dough in the fridge waiting to be baked or frozen and two dozen pumpkin cheese muffins in the freezer. The wheat thins I made didn’t turn out too well. I’ve got a spicy cheddar cracker recipe to try next. I really need a new rolling pin. And these storage containers.

I brought a bunch of change to a coinstar machine and got two $40 gift cards that came with rebate forms for $10. The rebates will come in 6-8 weeks in the form of two $10 gift cards. I love holiday promotions. The Christmas shopping is almost finished. The Chanukah shopping was finished a while ago. The baby is getting yet another tooth. The Fiendling climbs into bed with us every night around 3 in the morning. Sometimes he wakes us, sometimes we just find him there in the morning.

Things are okay for me right now. Robin isn’t doing so well though. He’s been left for dead in the potty.

Because I’d been coughing for over two years I tried to make an appointment with a pulmonologist. But the pulmonologist wasn’t seeing new patients until November so I started seeing an ENT. I’ve seen him several times now, and Boyfiend’s aunt works in the office so she and the other women who work there watch the kids during my appointments. When they  call to remind me that I have an appointment they ask if I’m bringing the kids for them to watch. The one time I didn’t they were disappointed.  They give the Fiendling candy to eat and crayons and stickers to play with. He has a blast and the baby is so good natured he’s thrilled to be with anyone as long as they keep him entertained. The ENT is a good guy and just about everyone in the family has seen one of the doctors in the practice for something.

The ENT gave me a few different nasal sprays which helped the coughing a bit, but eventually I saw the pulmologist who confirmed my asthma diagnosis and gave me a bettter inhaler. I’ve been cough-free since I started the new inhaler early in November. It’s awesome.

I am so happy not to be coughing. Aside from the fact that coughing sucks, I will now be overly honest and tell you that if you’ve had two babies the good old fashioned way your pelvic floor muscles don’t recover no many how many fucking kegels you do. When you are coughing uncontrollably you will pee.  Every time. Every night I would wake up coughing and every night I would pee in my pants. I always thought those enormous, boat sized pads were for the elderly, but really they’re just for women who have had babies and have bad coughs.

Anyway, I had an appointment with the ENT today just to check out my post-nasal drip. (I am so sexy.) The doctor asked if my face hurt  and I said yes, just the left side, without thinking anything of it. Turns out I have a sinus infection and didn’t even notice it. I was so ecstatic not to be coughing and so excited that I was no longer peeing all the time that I didn’t even tell an Ear Nose and Throat doctor that I’ve had green snot and painful sinuses for a week. Really, the snot and painful sinuses are just a non-issue compared to the cough, so it didn’t even occur to me that it was a problem. The doctor just shook his head and said, “If you were a man you would have been crying about the pain.”

Two years ago, after knitting a sweater for my soon to be born niece, I started knitting another sweater for the Fiendling.  I’m still not done.  It may not fit him by the time I’m done, but I’m going to finish the damn thing even if my head explodes. However, for the sake of my sanity, I think I’m going to omit the cute teddy bear ears.

I hate knitting.