I'm in Salt Lake City, probably until New Year's. I finally decided that the "gas pains" I have been feeling are actually the baby kicking.
Cute little fart.
The Greeks are feeding me (as usual) and wanting to buy baby stuff with me. I always have a great time when I'm here. These are good folks and I'm glad I married into their network.
Now if only they'd stop chasing me around with the lamb eyes.
Christmas was a nice blend of commercialism, poignancy, and awkwardness. As it should be, I imagine. More on that later.
Andrew was swimming in toys. It was really shocking how many new toys this kid got. 95% of them beep or light up or vocally demand attention from you.
The only non-makes-me-want-to-garrote-myself noisemaker was a Woody doll from Toy Story. You pull the string coming out of his back and he says “Thar’s a snake in mah boots.” Heh.
My house now contains the ENTIRE Power Ranger collection of action figures and their associated mega swords and shadow sabers and shit, amounting to about twenty figurines of varying plasticized whoop-assiness.
It just so happened, however, that Andrew was upstairs with nary a Ranger and needing distraction. I quickly glanced across my desk and my eyes rested on my Buddy Jesus figurine. “Here, Andrew. Play with Jesus.”
Andrew, noticing that Jesus had his hand in a pointing gesture, interpreted it as a gun, and he flew Jesus around the room with a SSSSSSSSSHHHHHHHHHHOOOOOOOMMM and a WWHOOOOOOOSSSSSSHHHH and shot at invisible enemies with a PEW! PEW! PEW!
It was fabulous. It was totally Ezekiel 25:17 (as misquoted by Jules in Pulp Fiction):
And I will strike down upon thee with great vengeance and furious anger those who would attempt to poison and destroy my brothers. And you will know my name is the Lord when I lay my vengeance upon thee.Posted by Jen at 8:51 AM
Fist one: Lowe's blew my secret and told dad what he was getting for Christmas. I TOLD the mulleted man that the garage door opener was a Christmas present, meant to be a surprise, and you're SURE you won't call him until after the 26th?
AAAAAAGGGGGGGGGGHHHHHHHHH
Fist two: I have always had resounding success with ordering stamps online. I ordered stamps online for my Christmas cards so I didn't have to mosh my way through my local post office. The stamps didn't show up until today, so everyone is getting his and her Christmas (and Hanukkah) cards late.
AAAAAAGGGGGGGGGGHHHHHHHHH
I try to keep this blog a family show. I refrain from using profanity, sexual euphemisms, and I never discuss genitalia. Ever.
But I am afraid, dear friends, that as voluntary readers, you will be subjected to content unbecoming a blog as snow-white as this.
Let’s talk vomit.
My nausea is compelling evidence that God is choosing to get back at me for opening Christmas presents two weeks early when I was ten years old and subsequently re-wrapping them before anyone was the wiser. This is retribution for inadvertently (I swear!) mocking a student’s recently dead-from-cancer father. I thought that I had made amends for revenge puking in Kim Speicher’s shoes in Girl Scouts.
Although I will get a child out of this, and everyone says that it makes up for all the misery yadda yadda yadda, here is a short list of things that will forever remind me of this god-forsaken cycle of renting my ingestible nutrients:
Eggs
Toothpaste
Raw meat
Half-cooked meat
Meat in non-patty or non-nugget form
Cat Food
Trail Mix
Sunny Delight
Peanut Butter
The pregnancy propaganda books all SWORE that I would stop heaving the gorge at three months. They are all DOODY-HEADED LIARS. I’m sitting on five months and can’t possibly picture ever scrambling my own eggs AGAIN. Five months. That’s 60 days of more spewing than is expected for most women. 60 days of daily urp-fests.
I have a call in to my dentist to see what effects all this hurling the baloney will have on my teeth. I hear about bulimic girls who barf their teeth right out of their noggins.
Look, I’m sorry I opened the Christmas presents early, God. But Shannon did it, too! Can’t you rain toads on her or something?
It’s true that a body can get used to anything given long-term and regular exposure. People, given enough practice, can swallow swords or feel no pain when holding hands above candle flames. I used to think that throwing up was the most disgusting thing a body can do to itself...
...but then I ate lots of spinach in one sitting.
I’m used to the daily heaving now. It’s not pleasant, but I find myself trying to accentuate the positive. This morning’s affirmation was “well, it’s been a few hours since I’ve eaten anything, so there won't be any chunks.” Of course, that also means that since my body had little food to return to the sewer gods, it made up for the lack of baloney sandwich with an extra helping of stomach acid.
I hope that last sentence gave you all the sour grapes face. I cannot be alone in this.
Another upside: if I drink sunny delight, I am unsure of the acid/delight ratio. It’s all one.
So God, if you are a blog reader: I’M SORRY THAT I HURLED IN KIM SPEICHER’S SHOES AT GIRL SCOUT CAMP. Even if she was a skanky little elitist cow, she didn’t deserve to slosh her way to the outhouse.
Maybe I just should have fed her lots of spinach instead.
Andrew's vocabulary increases by leaps and bounds. The kid is a sponge/parrot/ape whatever. In any case, I have to be verrrrry careful when I stub my toe around him, if you know what I mean.
He went through a "Why?" phase for about three weeks. Everything you said to him got a "why?" response.
Go to bed.Why?
Because I said so.
Why?
Shit, you got me there, kid.
Shit! Shit! Shit!
Dammit, don't say that word.
Why?
Because.
Dammit! Dammit! Dammit!
*sigh*
Now he's going through a "what" phase. Every sentence gets a what, but here's the thing: it doesn't always mean that he wants you to repeat what you said. It's not always "What?" but often a very declaratory and emphatic WHAT.
I haven't quite figured out what (heh) he means by it when it's not a question. I have found that you can't write off nonsense words with this kid. He always attaches meaning to everything he says. He doesn't really babble.
Maybe he saw some British kids show. ("I say. I think I'll go to Highgrove for tea and a jolly good rogering, what, what.") Maybe he's working his way through the interrogative pronouns so he can get to his "whom" stage. Who knows?
I was looking at Target for a cute little pink bib that says "I love my daddy." I thought that it would be a cute stocking stuffer for Dim for Christmas.
No luck. I found a ton of I love mommy, I love my big brother, I love my grandpa, I love my lawn guy, and I love my accountant bibs, but not one I love my daddy bib.
So let's interpret:
Option A - a.k.a. The Glass is Half Full Interpretation - Major retailers regularly stock children's items that celebrate responsible fatherhood, but the Christmas shopping season has wiped the shelves clean of such a product
or
Option B - a.k.a. The Glass is filled with Razor Blades and Bourbon Interpretation: While smaller niche markets may offer such products, the major retailers realize the futility of offering a small niche population a product that takes shelf space away from the much BIGGER market of need-to-please-gardeners.
I'm hoping for option A but I think option B is more likely. *sigh*
Bad: Waiting on hold for ten minutes
Worse: The hold music is a stupid radio station
Ugh: The radio station chooses that time to do a test of the Emergency Broadcast System and then play an interminable set of CELENE FUCKING DION CHRISTMAS MUSIC.
Dude - Celene Dion singing Feliz Navidad is the funniest and most pain provoking experience of the season.
The weekend was relatively uneventful.
Friday - Holiday party for Dim's company's client's company. It was at Battista's Holie in the Wall, a restaurant that has mysteriously remained open for three decades despite having rather mediocre food.
Their main claim to fame is that the wine is included with your food. Hoo boy. Hold me back. I have the vapours from the shock of it.
Growing up in Vegas, it didn't occur to me that you bought alcohol. I thought that the Strip propprieters offered it as a matter of courtesy. Sure, dad would buy beer at the grocery store, but that was beer. And it was American beer, besides. But liquor, that was something that was handed out freely as a matter of hospitality.
So I won't complain about a free meal, but I will say that last year's party at Roy's was much better.
Saturday - Tried to go see Narnia. Went to the wrong theater. Ended up at home watching television. Met a long awaited, but not-exactly welcome boyfriend of Athena's. All parties were much better behaved than I was expecting.
And Sophie called my baby her grandchild. Whew.
Sunday - Church, picking up wedding photo albums (finally!), and watching Blade: Trinity in bed with Dim. Church was good, the photoes are great, and Blade was a dud. Two out of three ain't bad.
I hate progesterone.
It's murder on my contact lenses.
See, I cry at the drop of the hat and, while it seems like a perfectly rational reason to cry at the time, later on I feel like a giant ass (with a giant ass) and have a ruined pair of contacts to go with it.
Last night's tear duct explosion was about Sophie and her insistence on calling my soon-to-be daughter her "child" instead of her "grandchild." Also her habit of opening the door to greet me by telling me I look tired before she tells me hello. If she tells me hello.
Should I do the adult thing and tell her to stop those things because they offend my excessively delicate ego? Should I explain to her that, while she shouldn't have to walk on eggshells around me, common courtesy dictates that telling an almost-5-month-pregnant woman she looks terrible and then minimizing her role in the pregnancy by calling the kid yours instead of hers is bound to end in a) tears or b) a black eye? No, I'll blubber like an idiot in the sushi restaurant...and in my car parked in my garage...and in my bedroom during a recorded Law and Order.
Poor Dim doesn't know what to do. Defending his mother only makes it worse. Reasoning with me gets him nowhere. He's taken to huddling up against me and saying nothing until I quiet down and saying "How about we restart Law and Order?"
I'm going to go change my contacts now.
If you haven’t read any of Bill Bryson’s work, you are a fool, a hermit, or a socially unacceptable combination of the two. I HIGHLY recommend his audio books. Hearing him read his own work is a snigger-fest. I think he's the fuddy-duddy (but charming) professorial version of Dave Barry.
I'm reading one of his grammar books (he writes travel, science, and language books) for the umpteenth time. You have to love a book that opens:
Any language where the unassuming word fly signifies an annoying insect, a means of travel, and a critical part of a gentleman's apparel is clearly asking to be mangled.
Excerpted from The Mother Tongue: English and How it Got That Way by Bill Bryson:
“...The richness of English vocabulary, and the wealth of available synonyms, means that English speakers can often draw shades of distinction unavailable to non-English speakers. The French, for instance, cannot distinguish between house and home, between mind and brain, between man and gentleman, between “I wrote” and “I have written.” The Spanish cannot differentiate a chairman from a president, and the Italians have no equivalent of wishful thinking. In Russia there are no native words for efficiency, challenge, engagement ring, have fun, or take care...
...On the other hand, other languages have facilities that we lack...Portuguese has words that differentiate between an interior angle and an exterior one...The Italians even have a word for the mark left on a table by a moist glass (culacino) while the Gaelic speakers of Scotland, not to be outdone, have a word for the itchiness that overcomes the upper lip just before taking a sip of whiskey. (Wouldn’t they just?) It’s sgriob And we have nothing in English to match the...French sang-froid, the Russian glasnost, or the Spanish macho, so we must borrow the term from them or do without the sentiment.”
Other terms we lack:
schadenfreude - (German) Delighting in another’s misfortune
sgiomlaireachd - (Highland Scottish) the habit of dropping in at mealtimes
