Early Nursery Pics . . .

At long last, I'm happy to show off a mostly empty, finally painted nursery!



This is the fantastico star blanket that Madame DeBarge made.
It is by far the coolest thing the kid has received; I'm grateful to have a car seat/stroller, a crib, and a metric ton of baby clothes - but this is the kind of thing you try to keep forever!

I have been hiding this blanket from all my pets, who have a knack for trying to take ownership of my favorite items (or anything I pay too much attention to, possibly depriving them of attention for more than three minutes). To their credit, I have purchased used knit baby blankets from garage sales for them to nap/shed on in the hopes that they spend a little less time shedding on my furniture. As you can see, Suki wasted no time whatsoever in trying to lay claim to the forbidden baby blankie - other than moving the frog hamper over to conceal my painting error, this photo was not staged, no cookie bribery was involved.



Note to self: paint chips lie. Yellow paint is always much more vibrant and bright on walls than you can possibly imagine. I was actually considering getting an even more intense color of yellow - thank goodness I opted for the slightly more subdued color! In person, the color resembles watered-down orange juice, and the dresser is the color of butter. Given that the wine-red carpet was not going anywhere, I'm quite pleased with how this turned out. All the same, I hope the yellow seems less intense once I've got more baby stuff moved into the room.

I had goldenrod/yellow shag carpet in my room when I was little, and one of the walls had fantastic gaudy yellow/gold/orange/brown flowers and vines on a white background. I can only guess that's why I'm inflicting this color scheme on my future baby?

Do you remember how your room was decorated when you were a tiny kid?

. . . and some coffee for my pregnant homies . . .

If you're able and inclined, drink some coffee on my behalf; _fresh coffee_, no fake creamer (eeeew, I swear that stuff is made of plastic), with a couple heaping spoonfuls of hot cocoa mix, and a little bit of vanilla soy milk -or- regular milk if you're feelin' drastic. Drink LOTS of this coffee for me - hell, go to Starbucks and see if they'll sell you a gallon at a time.

I'm still holding tightly to my "no caffeinated beverages while pregnant" rule, for reasons even I don't understand . . . wait, perhaps it's because my baby already kicks like a squirrel trapped in a sock? I don't want to accidentally trigger seismic activity in the Midwest? I'm already a bundle of nerves? I might fall off the wagon big-time and find myself throwing back multiple shots of espresso?

(That said - I'm still enjoying the occasional tiny serving of chocolate, blissful, sanity-granting chocolate . . .)

Why the fiending for caffeine?
My to-do list rivals the King James Bible in both length and complexity.

I may go into more ranting detail at a later date, but I'll try to summarize: I'm fighting multiple fronts:
WORK - multiple deadlines, far too many irons in the fire, not enough energy (still!) to put in full 40-hour weeks.
HOME - I need Mary Poppins, Martha Stewart, and a carpenter, STAT.
DERBY - "Volunteer Coordinator" is taking up waaaaaaaay more time and energy than I anticipated, but damn I love being involved with bout production.
FRIENDS - Some people need me more than before, some people are offering less support than before, and others are showing interest in becoming more involved, and I just don't have as much spare time as I'd like to invest in them.
FAMILY - Love 'em dearly, I'm getting tons of emotional support, I wish they were more physically present to do my evil bidding -I mean- help around the house.
BABY SHOWERS - I love parties, but don't like being the center of attention. That means I have to be on my best behavior, stay polite in the face of stupid comments, stupid circumstances, stupid people . . . blah blah.
ETC ETC ETC

In short (too late!) I need a couple days off just to putz around my house, sort stuff, pitch stuff, and re-set my brain. Unfortunately, those couple days just aren't available. Bleh.

IN OTHER NEWS: My blog-photo is no longer inaccurate; I've gone back to my old haircut! Until yesterday, I had enough hair to put in a twist, french braid, or ponytail, and my bangs were long enough to be tamed by a well-placed barette - it was low-maintenece and cost nothing to keep up, but I was starting to get ponytail-induced headaches nearly every day. I've found pregnancy to be heavily spiced with aches and pains I can't do a thing about - so I consider a drastic haircut to be a minor sacrifice.

Less bitching and moaning in my next post folks, thanks for enduring!

19 weeks

Not understanding the true sucky qualities of early pregnancy, I formulated a plan 13 weeks ago:

1) I honestly thought I'd have the kid's room cleaned out, repainted, and ready to fill with baby schtuff by the time I was half through my pregnancy.

2) I would have money saved up by now to pay all my hospital (birthing) bills so I'd have one less thing to be concerned about while recovering from the birthing process.

HAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAA.

Instead, the computer room remains a computer room, although much of the contents have been dispersed all over the rest of the house in a random manner. The bookshelves I planned on building by now haven't even been drafted up - I do know I'm using knotty pine with a linseed oil finish, that counts for something, except that mental plans don't hold physical stuff. Although I've hauled a few carloads of crap out of the house, it seems that the house is more cluttered than ever.

Peh. Money? It seems that soon as we tightened the 'ol budget belt we had more repairs than usual to make and new expenses began cropping up, drastically slowing the saving process. My most recent bitch is needing to spend $$$ on the crawlspace of my house, apparently they built 'em dumb in '78. Good news is that we don't have a mold problem yet, bad news is that the situation won't fix itself. If we knew for a fact that we were going to move away from this house in the next 5 years (not likely) and would definately find starry-eyed-newbie-dumbass-first-time-homebuyers (like we were) to purchase our house, we could let the situation fester. I guess it is important to focus on the positive; at least when we DO sell the house someday, we can say "crawlspace renovated in 2008". Sexy selling point, eh?

I highly doubt that I'm going to accomplish my stated goals within the next seven days, so I'm recalibrating my goals instead. Any suggestions??

by any other name . . .

My bloggie friend Alfredsmom recently asked me how Mr. Hubby feels about my plans to give our baby my maiden name.

First, I'll offer an explanation as to why I chose to keep my maiden name.

1) My father immigrated here from England as a young man, leaving his birth family behind. His older brother has two sons and three daughters, so the family name (ahem, one VERY common to England) is continuing on that side of the pond with no problem. I foresee my (handsome) male cousins' (handsome) male offspring having _no_ problem starting their own families.
Meanwhile, my father has two daughters, and my sister chose to take her husband's name when they got married. If I took on my husband's name, the "stateside" lineage of my father's family would lost, name-wise. And that would be a bummer.

2) Ever since I was introduced to the concept in my first anthropology textbook, I've been enthralled with the concept of matrilineal descent. It makes more sense: in this topsy-turvey world, when a child is born, one can always be certain of the mother's identity but not the father's. From a less clinical standpoint, it honors women's unique role in society, and I'm all about keeping women from under the collective male thumb.

3) I wasn't comfortable with changing my name in response to marriage. I really like my name, I find it melodic, and am comforted by the history attached to it. My official legal and spiritual union with Mr. Hubby changed many things about my life, but I really feel that as a woman, sharing the rest of your natural life with someone does not require that you change your name. Genetically, he "belongs" to his family, and I to mine.

* ~ * ~ * ~ *

On to tackling "what last name does the baby get"

I can't offer as organized a solution, I've come to my conclusion through my own bizarre logic and by carefully sorting my emotions. THANKFULLY, Mr. Hubby is completely comfortable with his progeny having my last name, and is honoring my wishes. Our offspring are no less "his" by having "my" name, and I'm the person putting myself in physical peril in order to bring our offspring into the world. (So nyeeeeeh)

(Besides, anyone who has ever met Mr. Hubby will likely recognize his (even newborn) child in an instant; between the two of us, we're in for an atypically cute kid with a big forehead, big eyes, a pointy nose, a goofy grin and probable lack of shyness.)

PROBLEM: If I were really diligent about swaying western tradition towards a matriarchy, (or at least help the concept seem more common) I would do a metric ton of research and sort though all documents possible to trace back to my earliest female ancestor possible. Except that most of those gals have their father's last names, and then you fall into the "are you really my daddy" quagmire all over again. What if my search takes a wrong turn because great grandma somebody had a thing for hunters?

POSSIBLE SOLUTION: Legally change my last name to "Eve".
-except-

I don't feel _that_ radical about it. I figure I'll see if I can start something with this generation and let my son or daughter come to their own conclusion. Perhaps I'll just piss off genealogists, perhaps I'm contributing to honoring women in our society. Who knows.

ON A SEMI-RELATED TANGENT:
I've played a HUGE part in naming all of our collective pets, and struck gold every single time. I'm very pleased to introduce you to my girls, Suki and Lydia.
(Please excuse my crappy camera)


Suki is "guarding" her kitty-sister from thunder. Lydia is terrified enough of storms to put up with being subservient to the dog - later that evening chaos resumed.

(a belated) Elvis Wednesday: replacing curse words

Hoo boy. I am apparently on a mission to make a neverending to-do list at work. Last pay period, I worked 44 out of 80 hours. I was either blissfully sleeping off a flu bug or spending time with my lovely sister so I don't regret my absense from the cubicle.

Apparently my cubicle wasn't feeling so amicable. Although I stopped by often enough to keep my plants and Betta (fish named Flipper) alive, my absence was noted.

There are tiny larve of some sort keeping Flipper company in his large glass vase and he's not looking his best. I'm going to have to find time to do a complete water change later on today, which is creepy because I don't have a spare fish bowl for Flipper to stay in while his vase is being cleaned. He swims in my giant mug/bowl I eat oatmeal out of. Also, I'm extremely paranoid that I'll lose him down the sink drain.

One of my peace lillies is now home to a swarm of tiny knats. I think I drowned out thier party pretty effeciently yesterday, but time will tell. My other peace lilly and Madagasgar Dragon Tree look forlorn. My spider plant has always protested living under flourescent lights, but looks really pale and wimpy now. I'll try to take some encouragement from 4 office plants who didn't seem to notice my absence.

I used my computer on Monday and didn't notice anything amiss, perhaps I was imagining the cubicle sabotage?

Nope. On Tuesday morning, before I could even see my deskI could hear my computer (that I'm pretty sure I turned off) whining like a cloud of mosquitos; a horrible, high-pitched EEEEEEeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeee.

Tech services swooped in to the rescue, and long story short, after 3 hours of tinkering (when I needed to be working to make deadlines) they've loaned me a temp computer and my harddrive is probably toast. I hadn't backed up my work, and I've got very little work stored on a shared drive. Losing 4 years worth of data? A very real possiblilty.

Fortunately, I was issued a new computer a couple months ago, and tech services has been too busy to wipe out my old hard drive, so at minimum, I'll get most of my data back, and will only
be missing the past few months worth of work.

The idea of loosing a few months worth of work is nearly enough to make me march into the local gay bar (cause the manly barmaid makes a strong mixed drink for $3.25) and announce "take me to your Rum". But, I'm keeping it in perspective, and decided to be creative rather than destructive with my rage.

At the same time, I'm on a mission to stop cursing, because it is neither ladylike, sportsmanlike or "rated G" to curse in a rollerderby situation. And since my team wants to sell lots of tickets, we want to be known for being family entertainment, as in not chanting "crap crap crap crap gonna fall" as you whiz around corners looking like a drunk moose on ice.

So, I present to you the ever-flexible phrase:"Elvis Presley on a stick"
As in

"Elvis Presley on a stick - it's cold out here!"
"Elvis Presley on a stick - my knees hurt!"
"Elvis Presley on a stick - my fishbowl has larve in it!"
"Elvis Presley on a stick - there's a knat condo in that potting soil!"
"Elvis Presley on a stick - that girl tries my patience!"
"Elvis Presley on a stick! Your fart smelled like cat poo!"
"Elvis Presley on a stick - I'm surrounded by nimrods!"

I'd present you with a clever Elvis Presley photo, but my failed harddrive ate it.
F*ckin' computer . . . .

COMMENTS (harvested from old account)
Madame D - 2007-02-28 23:23:17 Damn, I don't envy you cleaning up your language. My favorite all-encompassing term is "fuck!" right now, with the occasional "motherfucker!" thrown in. Not generally aimed at people, either. I tried once. Didn't really work.
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nikki - 2007-03-01 09:43:15 perhaps madame d, you could try "mother fucking elvis on a stick"?
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Catazon - 2007-03-01 09:45:08 I'll have to come up with a phrase myself, because I've started cursing a lot more now that MPOW has decided to block my league's website, houstonrollerderby.com. WTF???

a quick(ish) post

1) Yep, I'm alive and hopefully almost over nasty-cold-of-February-2007. I spent to last two days at home due to bad weather and feeling gross. I had the attention span of a knat, which is alright when you're mostly interested in sleeping all day. Also explains why I was such a space cadet at practice on Sunday and at work on Monday . . .
2) My apologies to the Wednesday-Elvis seekers, my home computer is frazzled by the task of uploading new photos. Again, I was interested in sleeping all day, not playing tech geek.
3) We _did_ lose electricity at our house for 6 hours on Tuesday, I must have slept through the first half hour or so. The crock pot was still warm, and thankfully, the water in our fishtank was still warm. I covered it with lots of blankets and the zebra danias and the snail colony survived. The live plants didn't seem aversly affected by the chill either.
4) I did lose some cactus plants but don't have the heart to put them out on the compost pile just yet. They still look alive-ish, but their innards are mush. Given that I have too many houseplants, it's not really a tragic loss, but is a bit of a bummer. Some of them were getting to be the size of submarine sandwiches, and I had raised them up from tiny little golfball-size cacti.
5) I skated last night (yeah, I know that people who are too sick to attend work from 8-5 shouldn't be well enough to skate from 7-9, but nyeeeeeeeh) and kicked some arse, at the expense of wiping out a few times. I learned the painful way that I was not wearing my hip pads in the right position. I don't think I did anything truly nasty to myself, but my left hip, and left shoulder have certainly felt better.
I'm feeling pretty badass about my injury because I earned it while trying to complete an intimidating task: skate 20 (or more) laps in 5 minutes. I wiped out about 2 minutes in and got back up quickly, then wiped out again after another 2 minutes and fell a third time as I was getting up from my second fall. In my defense, the floor was slicker than snot (something to do with cold temperature on the old basketball court floor) and I had no clue that I wasn't running behind. I managed 22 laps - happy dance!!! I still have to improve my "get around the turn quickly" technique so I can skate 5 laps in one minute, I missed that goal by 5(?) seconds. I didn't expect to make it, so I'm not particularly dissapointed.
I was so sad for another derbygirl who missed that goal by only 2 seconds, the look on her face nearly brought tears to my eyes. (I can be such a sympathetic wuss!) Later on, she did almost 25 laps in five minutes, so I know she'll succeed next time we're tested.
6) Gotta catch up on a metric ton of office work, probably won't have time to stop by other blogs since I'll be hanging out with my sister tomorrow. Hooray!!
smooches,
Betti