The Queen's Rambles

Just a few minutes ago I started searching frantically for the tab that had my in-progress post and couldn’t find it. Oh no! I knew I must have had one going because I remember doing a lot of typing, even though I had no idea what I was typing about.

Then I noticed an open e-mail tab.

I’d been typing and typing an e-mail to my friend and had forgotten all about it. Even though it was what I’d been working on for the last 20 minutes.

I blame the lack of sleep.

Erik came in at some point and was crying because he was having a bad dream. Some nights I am able to be the stern, strict mother that makes him go back to his own bed. I always lay with him until he goes to sleep, so I guess I’m not too cold-hearted, but it still makes me feel guilty. My baby is scared! He needs his mommy! Must not let my baby be eaten by crocodiles!

Last night he was so pathetic that I couldn’t send him back to his room, even though it would have been best for both of us. I then spent the next several hours with a naked kid shoving his face into my armpit while his sticky, sweaty body stuck to me. Great call. How on earth did we ever co-sleep for three years?

Well, for one thing, he was still wearing pajamas when we were co-sleeping. I kind of laugh when the Sprout commercial for giving poor kids pajamas comes on. Every child deserves a good night. That’s the tag line and I don’t disagree. I’m sure many of those children really do need pajamas to sleep comfortably and keep warm. It just cracks me up since my own child refuses to put them on. We are very lucky to have easy, on-demand heating and cooling so he doesn’t freeze. I know there are many children who aren’t so lucky. But I still can’t help giggling.

Btw, thank you all so much for your advice about the ebay situation. I didn’t realize sellers were no longer allowed to leave negative or neutral feedback for their customers. Nor did I realize PayPal had such a good dispute system.

What else?

I was creative at dinner tonight! A miracle, since I didn’t even cook.

Erik informed me he would only eat purple punky dunky monkey for dinner. I inquired as to what that might consist of and got the total teenage punk “Duh, mom, DINNER” treatment. How can a four year old be so very teenagerish? We have swung back into the crazy stage and I miss my little angel. This time it’s complete with the promised stuttering, shouting, clumsiness and temper tantrums. Yay!

Anyway, a few weeks ago I stumbled upon a whole network of mommy blogs that made my skin crawl. Nary a bad thing was said about any of the little angels. The moms seemed to be in fierce competition to see who could make the cutest lunches, the most elaborate crafts and otherwise be Super Mom of the year. Nothing wrong with cute lunches and elaborate crafts, of course. Except it was all so sugar coated that it made me want to gag. You know I can’t handle cutsie.

But I was inspired! I had a set of Ikea forest animal cookie cutters that I’ve never used (because honestly? Am I ever going to roll out sugar cookies again when THESE SUGAR COOKIES are the most amazing sugar cookies you will ever taste and you just have to drop them? No. No I am not. It always sounds like fun to decorate cookies, but in reality it sucks the life out of me with the stirring and mixing and rolling and stirring and did I mention mixing and rolling? I am not a patient person. I need things that go quickly.)

Hmmmm. I wonder were my son gets his impatience?

Ha! I was just about to hit post when I relaized I went off on a paranthetical tanget and never explained what I did with the cookie cutters. Nothing terribly fancy. I made a sandwich and cut it into shapes, then made some really flat apple slices and cut them into shapes, but that didn’t work as well b/c of the core and seeds. It seemed to satisfy his desire for something different, even though it was the same old food we always have.

I bought a new crockpot tonight, so am hoping to make something exciting for Crocktoberfest and my boys tomorrow.

This being Old Lady Pregnant is interesting. I spent 2 hours at the doctors’ office today. The majority of it wasn’t even waiting, though there was certainly enough of that to last a lifetime.

First I saw the genetic counselor who explained the tests (nuchal translucency ultrasound and blood tests) and what, exactly, the results would indicate, and what numbers we were looking for. I knew in general what the test was all about but really had no idea how they interpreted the results.

Then it was time for the ultrasound. I guess I was expecting it to be quick since I just thought they were measuring the neck, but it took a full thirty minutes. The tech measured all kinds of things and was very good at explaining everything to me. According to my dating ultrasound I should be at 12 weeks exactly. According to this ultrasound I am at 12w5d. According to my highly scientific charting I should be at 12w3d. They say it is better for a baby to measure bigger than expected than smaller than expected. Erik was 8 lb 13 oz and five days late, so a big baby would not be unexpected.

Part of the reason it took so long was because the baby wouldn’t cooperate. It was rolling all over the place, kicking with its feet, sucking on its hand, and having a fine time swimming all around. Hopes of having a calmer second baby? Dashed.

Then it was time to consult with the doctor. He basically repeated everything the first woman said, then carefully went over each ultrasound capture with me and explained what it all meant. I really, really liked him and wish he was my OB. My insurance would never cover that since he is a high risk pregnancy specialist and I am not truly high risk.

He did tell me that he thought my chances of a successful VBAC were good since Erik’s c-section was due to him being wrapped in the cord. I sort of laughed and told him I would prefer a planned c-section. With Erik I felt like I should want to experience child birth even though I didn’t really want to. With this baby I have no such qualms. I was in labor 45 minutes. It SUCKED. Never, never again.

Lastly, they took five drops of blood from my finger. They do some fancy equation with the mother’s age, history, weight, two blood proteins and the nuchal measurement. Assuming the blood proteins are good, we are on the safer side of things (never any guarantees, of course). They want the nuchal measurement to be under 3.0 mm. The baby’s was 1.9 mmm, so that makes me pretty happy.

I’m really glad we went ahead with this test even though almost everyone I talked to thought I was crazy. I guess I am just a cold hearted bitch, but if the baby had one of the trisomy defects that the test looks for, I would want to know and terminate the pregnancy. I’m not sure what I would do about Downs, but the other two defects are horrible. The baby is not expected to live past a year. In fact, in most cases it only lives a few minutes or days. I can’t go through a pregnancy, give birth and have that as a result. I have heard of women who knowingly do it and I’m not sure where they find the emotional resources to deal with that. I know I couldn’t.

I have the big anatomy scan scheduled for Dec. 1. I can’t wait to find out the sex! Then we can start our knock down, drag out name finding mission. Sorry to say, but we won’t be telling anyone any of our name choices until the baby is born. We learned that the hard way last time.

The day went into a downward spiral from there. When I arrived at the babysitter’s Erik had a total and complete temper tantrum meltdown. You think a toddler temper tantrum is bad? You ain’t seen nothing. I can only assume it gets worse and worse as they get older. I suppose it is good that he likes the sitter, but holy crap. I didn’t think I was going to be able to haul him out to the car without injuring one of us.

We had to rush to the gym for his class, but we made it in time. I did 30 minutes on the elliptical but had to cut my workout short because some lady who ate way too much garlic got on the machine next to me. I tried stick it out, but I really thought I was going to vomit so I had to run away.

On the way home I got pulled over. I had no idea why, so was pretty relieved when he told me the tags were expired. I thought I would just get a warning and be told to get them renewed.

Nope. Got a ticket. Not a bad one–only $60–but it still wasn’t my favorite way to spend a chunk of money. The best part was when he told me he was being nice because some officers would have towed my car and arrested me for driving an unregistered vehicle. I’d really like to meet an officer who would arrest a mom with a kid in the car for being six days over due. We are so diligent about taking care of things like this that I’m not sure how it slipped through the cracks. I came straight home and we paid the fee on the website. They had a little temporary tag I printed out and taped in my back window.

When I got home I found out my dad has been admitted to the hospital. It all started when his scrotum started swelling up. Just what you all wanted to know? Listen to this. As my sister is talking to me, she’s telling me “His balls were as big as a grapefruit!” She turns to her friend in the car “What do you think, Susie?” Susie shouts out “No! They were as big as a cantaloupe!”

Why on God’s green earth would my sister and her friend even be looking? I am so disgusted I may vomit. My sister said everyone was looking because they were just hanging out. Have I ever mentioned that I am so, so very glad to live across the continent?

Apparently he has major swelling everywhere and a valve in his heart isn’t functioning. They are hoping to have him lose at least 50 pounds in fluids in the next five days, then they are taking him to the neighboring town to put a stent in his heart.

My sister was crying pretty hysterically because she thinks he is going to die since grandma was in the hospital just two months ago and never came home. I don’t know if he will die or not. It wouldn’t surprise me. It is easy for me to distance myself from it since I’m not there. He’s had a death wish since he was a kid so I don’t know what to say. Everything in his adult life has flown in the face of medical advice and common sense. You don’t drink 20-30 cans of beer a day if you’re concerned about living a long, healthy life.

In other good news, I’ve been reading the most excellent book I’ve read in a very long time: The Guernsey Literary and Potato Peel Pie Society by Mary Ann Shaffer and Annie Barrows.

I’ve heard of it, of course, but never really had an interest in reading it because I couldn’t figure out what it was about. Basically, it is about a writer in London who strikes up a friendship with a group of people who survived the Nazi occupation of their island during WWII. It was very hard not to cry in the waiting room today! It was also very hard not to laugh out loud. It has a major feel of L. M. Montgomery, only the later years when she allowed a little more darkness into the books. You will cry. You will laugh. You should read this. It’s excellent.

I checked it out of the library, but now I’m thinking I need to own a copy. I was worried because it was a new book so you can’t renew it. I guess I was thinking it would take me forever to read it, but I started it this morning and only have about 30 pages to go. I didn’t even look for my computer when I got home today. I finally had to find it to write an entry, but that’s the extent of my computer time. I’ve been way too obsessed with this book, which is a good thing! Tomorrow I’ll have to make an effort to be a better mother.

Virus protection is enabled, but I still am a little worried. Just a few minutes ago I was having a major problem. Whenever I would hit enter, the battery saver control panel would open. Then half my keys stopped working. Weird. Scary! I rebooted the computer and things seem fine, but it has me a little freaked out. The virus protection is up to date, so I hope it really works.

I am also really confused because the computer has started sending regular e-mails to the spam folder. If I hadn’t gotten a group reply to a very important e-mail I never even would have thought to check. Grrrrrr.

Anyway. . .

We went to order Erik’s birthday cake today and now I’m scared. As I feared, the book had no outer space themed cakes, which was a little irritating since HELLO! Little boys love space! I didn’t see any pirate themed cakes either. The Safeway book was pretty threadbare, unless you are interested in the most popular shows on television. Too bad the Safeway cakes are about a million times better than Giant. Costco has the best cakes, but we don’t have a Costco membership and I’m not going to buy one just for birthday cakes. I wouldn’t mind having a membership if the store wasn’t so flippin’ insane even during weekday mornings.

I’ve been sort of worried about finding an outer space cake, so I had a couple of plans running through my mind. I bought some little space figurines the other day and was thinking I could put them on top of cupcakes or something. But making and frosting cupcakes? Meh. I don’t want to do any work.

I also looked up outer space cakes and found some examples of homemade birthday cakes. Some looked great, some looked horrible. I know me. Mine would be right in line with the horrible ones. I do not have good fine motor skills.

Another problem? I need to feed about 25 kids and adults with this cake. I need 1/2 a sheet cake. I don’t want to deal with that at home.

I have, perhaps, hit upon a solution.

Star Trek is a popular show, yes?

They had a Star Trek cake. It was very spacey looking with a plastic USS Enterprise and the plastic words Star Trek plopped on it. I asked if they could just leave the Star Trek stuff off, while still airbrushing the cake to look spacey. Then I can put some astronauts and robots around on the cake and it should be good enough.

The baker was very confident that this would work, until he started writing the directions to whoever the baker will be on Saturday morning. I’m hoping whatever they come up with with work. I am going to pick it up about five hours before the party, so we should have time to do damage control if need be.

Anyone have any great space themed game ideas for a four year old’s birthday party? We are doing pass the planet instead of pass the parcel. We also have the pinata, but I was at that park today and have no idea how we are going to hang it, unless we hang it off the monkey bars. How much would the other park patrons hate us? Probably way too much. All of the trees in the park are so old and huge that they don’t have any lower branches that would be reachable, even by a ten foot ladder.

I saw a picture of a guy holding a pinata off the end of a fishing pole, which could work if we had a fishing pole (and very little fear of four year olds with baseball bats).

Mostly, the kids are just going to play at the park. Erik is getting to an age where he really enjoys organized games, so I want to do a little something to make the party more than “play in the park, eat cake, go home.” I wouldn’t want to go overboard, though. No bounce house or astronaut clown for us! Ha. Maybe I can get Mike to dress up like an astronaut clown. I should ask him. At the very least he’ll laugh so hard that he’ll turn bright red and look like a clown. An alien clown. Because human clowns are chalk white. Right? It all makes sense in my head. Stop looking at me like that!

First, I want to highlight an excellent post by one of my old college friends.  Isn’t facebook weird?  I knew Eva my senior year. She was a freshman, so I didn’t know her well (esp since I was student teaching the first semester), but we did hang out in the same general group.  I always thought she was a lot of fun and knew she was smart, but didn’t realize she was brilliant.  Brilliance was not a requirement for admission at our small little Christian college.  In fact, it was quite rare.  The school was the best place for me and gave me a very safe place to get to know myself, but it was not exactly prestigious or challenging.

Anyway, Eva now has a Ph. D. in something science based (I remember reading about it a few years ago in our alumni newsletter) and has tackled a big issue:  Evolution from a Christian perspective.  I know a few of you would find it really interesting, so I’m posting the link here.  I gave her the link to this blog a few weeks ago since I felt kind of guilty for lurking around a sort-of-IRL person’s blog. 

It is uncanny how similar our views are on things, since our views are mostly completely opposite from the views of our conservative Christian college.  Of course, the main difference is that I am not longer a Christian.  I grappled with several issues for years, but in the end I came out on the side of “there is no God, at least not as identified by any religion I know.” 

If I were still a Christian, this post explains what I would believe.  Heck, it was what I did believe for a long time, though I never could have stated it so intelligently.

Well, wasn’t that just a little walk down memory lane. Or something.

Anyway, we had a nice weekend, sort of.  It was absolutely gorgeous weather out, but Mike and I were both queasy.  I think Mike had food poisoning, not the stomach flu.  We did manage to each take a two hour shift at various parks in the area.  Poor kid needed some sunshine and exercise.

I was actually feeling pretty good on Saturday until I made banana bread.  The first slice was so good I had to try a second.  That’s when things went very, very wrong. 

Just what you all want to hear about.

Tomorrow Erik starts his weekly lunch bunch at school.  I don’t know exactly what it is all about, but I know I pay extra and take him an hour early every Monday with a packed lunch.  I was looking at the sign up sheet and noticed it was all boys.  I couldn’t help but laugh. All us boy mamas have to get our kids out of the house. 

I feel kind of guilty about that, but then I see all the arts and crafts and things that my friends with girls do with their kids.  They are able to sit at a table and glue things or color or paint for awhile and have a nice, calm time.  I guess.  I don’t really know how that works.  There is rarely a calm moment in our house.  When I try to get him to do arts and crafts, he wants me to sit and draw or color or whatever, while he goes and watches TV.  Not exactly what I’m going for. 

I have made a new commitment to myself to limit his TV time.  It requires me getting off my ass and going down in the basement.  I limit the number of toys upstairs, so the basement is like a kid’s dreamland of toys.  He’d really rather just sit on me all day and use me as his personal jungle gym.  This weekend I’ve spent a lot more time in the basement and he has spent a lot more time playing with his toys.  I’ve got to keep it up. 

I also have to order a cake this week!  Yikes!  His birthday party has snuck up on me, even though we’ve been talking about it for a <s>month</s> year.  I just hope next weekend is as glorious as this weekend.  Or at the very last, I hope it’s not raining.  We have ten confirmed kids counting siblings.  We’re doing it at a park, so at least we don’t have to clean up the house.

Why, why, why do I buy things off ebay? I sometimes score a decent deal with a good seller, but usually I am at least a wee bit disappointed.

This time I am massively disappointed.

I bought what was supposed to be a really beautiful maternity coat in my size. Problem? It is not really beautiful. The person had the “retails for” spiel on the listing, but I’m SURE she was lying. It was new with tags, but the price part has been ripped off. Big tip off there.

It doesn’t fit. It is too narrow through the shoulders, so even though I can get it on I can’t button it. Even if I liked it it wouldn’t work.

It reeks of smoke.

The seller is totally snarky.

There is a return policy, so I e-mailed her as I was instructed to do to find out the return procedure. She said I was probably wishing I would have actually read the listing (WHAT????) and that I could return it, but she thought it would be a lot easier for me to just resell it or give it as a gift. Because I know a lot of plus sized pregnant women in need of a maternity coat. Ok, so I know a couple, but sorry. I don’t like any of you enough to spend that much on a maternity coat for you!

Also, it is “TRULEY IMPOSSIBLE” that it smells like smoke because it is a “NONE smoking wharehouse”.

UGH. I checked her feedback before I bought, of course. It was 100% positive with thousands of transactions. I hate how ebay works. The feedback system is good in theory, but when you feel like they can hold your feedback hostage if you tell the truth about what happened, it really sucks. I don’t know what the answer to that would be. I guess they are doing the best they can with the system, but when people can just post a negative for a negative it doesn’t work out all that great.

So now I have to decide if I want to send it back anyway and use my merchandise credit for something else from her store or if I want to try to sell it myself. I don’t want anything else from her if she’s going to be such a snarky bitch and things are going to reek like smoke. How can I sell this coat for the same price I bought it? It is not worth that price at all. GRRRRRR.

And now Forest Gump is on and I don’t know where the flipper is and I HATE THIS FREAKING MOVIE!!!!!

I could be a little grouchy.

What else?

I got a flu shot today. Thrilling! Mike has the stomach flu. Even more thrilling! I really, really, really, really, really, really hope it is food poisoning and not actual stomach flu.

Anyway, I was hoping they would give Erik a flu shot as well, so I prepped him for the possibility. The ped’s office said to never call it a shot; call it an injection or vaccination. So I did and I told him it would feel like a pinch in his arm.

Then they wouldn’t give him one. I sort of expected that and was kind of relieved that I wouldn’t have to deal with his screaming.

Except he started crying when he realized he wasn’t getting one. “Please, Mommy! Please just give me my flu shot!” I don’t know why he was calling it a shot, since I was being oh-so-careful to use the less scary terms.

I told him I would call the doctor and make an appointment, but he wanted to go right away. Then the doctor said he could just get it at his 4 year check up in a couple of weeks, so he was freaking out even more. I finally had to distract him with ice cream. Isn’t that backwards?

I have to admit, I had a major freak out in the hospital when I was five years old because the blood tech wouldn’t let me watch him draw blood. I guess my son is a freak like me. Poor kid.

At least it means I am not squeamish about all the blood draws I’ll be doing in the next several months. They took five vials yesterday, which seemed a little extreme. By the end the vein was hardly pumping and the woman had to massage my arm.

I have an appointment next Tuesday for the nuchal translucency (sp?) screening. I’m excited to get another ultrasound, but not so excited for the reason. I’ll also have to see a genetic counselor. Things sure do get more complicated when you hit that magic number 35. I was telling my mom about it tonight and she started freaking out. I wish she wouldn’t do that. I don’t think there is much reason to freak out. I guess things could go wrong, but I’m much more zen this time. With Erik, I was convinced something would have to go wrong. There were just so many things that it felt like the odds of getting a healthy child were slim to none. Silly, now that I think about it, since the majority of kids are obviously healthy, but when you are reading all the statistics it gets a little overwhelming.

Guess I better get to bed since I will most likely be a single parent again tomorrow. Poor Mike. I’m just glad I am feeling a whole lot better. I puked my guts out on Wednesday and after that I felt about 80% better.

Erik tells me that tomorrow we are going to make a quilt–a big square one with yellow triangles and spots. We’ll see if he remembers that tomorrow.

I am very tired of my blog not working!  It is down more than it is up.  The weird thing is, all the other blogs and sites I have hosted through the same company always work.  I’m going to experiment and see if a new URL and database will improve the situation.  I am not in the mood to get everything all prettified and put together.  Most people are reading from a feed reader anyway, yes?  I know I won’t be able to leave it be for long, but for the moment I don’t want to be messing around with it.