The Queen's Rambles

Just a bunch of random stuff that I’ve mentioned or people have asked me about.

1) The sonogram results: I have a cyst. Duh. How many times do I need to be diagnosed? I am going in for another one in October to see if it is growing or changing. The doctor doesn’t want to do surgery if it isn’t bothering me, but it is bothering me quite a bit. I am trying to hold out for October when Elsa is six months old. She won’t take a bottle so I am concerned about needing to be in the hospital a few days and pumping and dumping.

My sister is concerned that I’m having an abortion and thinks it is a terrible idea. She’s very pro-life and doesn’t understand that even though the cyst has body parts it isn’t a baby and doesn’t have a body. It doesn’t matter how long it grows, it will never develop a body. It doesn’t have a brain. It isn’t anything like a baby. She’s still concerned and thinks I’m a terrible person for even considering “getting rid of it.”

I can’t imagine all the horrible people real women who get abortions have to deal with. I’m not even having an abortion and am getting this BS! Maddening. Truly maddening. I’m not even going to go into my views of abortion (pro-choice) or what’s wrong with this world because it will wind me up too much).

2) I found a charger for the GameBoy at Overstock. I am hoping it gets here by Saturday (we leave in the evening). I’m sure it will. We already got one game. I specifically ordered it from a vendor in Maryland hoping that would help speed it up. The vendor turned out to be about five miles from our house so my evil plan worked.

3) I love, love, love my new DIAPER BAG. It’s beautiful. And functional. And perfect in every way. I didn’t understand the stroller strap option, but now that I understand I want to know why all bags don’t come with such a thing. Basically you hook these two loop things onto your stroller then you clip your bag on when you go somewhere and it hangs nicely.

4) I am losing all my baby hair and it is beyond annoying. Yesterday I started crying when one of the hairs was white. Solid white. Noooooo!!!!!!!!!!!! When did that happen? I thought I was going to be spared the monthly dye jobs that most of my friends have already started, but I guess not.

5) We have a new store for big busted women at our mall, Bastien’s Foundations and I love it! I hadn’t looked in it before because I’m nursing, but I noticed a sign that said they carry nursing bras. They don’t have a huge selection, but any selection at all is better than nothing. I was shocked when the gal took my measurements and said I was an I cup. That would explain why my boobs are falling out of my swimsuit. Honestly, I don’t think she was that accurate, but I was able to buy a bra that fit really well and felt fabulous. They even had some sexy bras, but not sexy nursing bras. I hope they are still in business when I’m done nursing. I looked at their website hoping to direct you to your local store, but they only have one brick and mortar location. If you are big busted you’ll have to come visit me and we’ll go bra shopping. They even have a nice little waiting area for your boyfriend/husband/kid.

I filled out a survey thing to get coupons and was laughing at one of the questions. They wanted to know if I would be willing to mentor a big busted teen with self-esteem problems due to her big bust. I circled maybe. A store with a social conscience is nice. I’m not sure what to say to a big busted teenager other than telling them that foundation garments are key and scoop necks are not your friend.

6) I smell sour milk. I fear it is me.

7) I did my 31 Things for 31 Days list for my moms club newsletter (thanks Bethany!) and now am trying to do something off the list with Erik every day. It’s hard to be fun and educational every day. Everything seems like so much work, even the small things. Why can’t we just take a nap every day? Of course, my main problem is that I don’t want to go outside. It’s disgusting out there. The humidity is so thick you can see it. I can’t wait to get to Oregon.

8.) I was going to have a “no spending money day” yesterday and failed miserably. We had a traveling salesman come to our door, which was the first sign that my goal was doomed to failure. I ended up buying a set of kid’s encyclopedias. I fondly remember my grandma’s set and am sure this set will see a lot of use over the years.

Then I thought I would be smart and go to the consignment store and use my credit to buy Elsa a new baby play pad (the one we have is pretty lame). Turns out I didn’t have any credit and they had a really cool pedal powered go-kart that Erik had to have. We got it home and he totally freaked out and refused to use it. When I have time to work with him a little I’m sure he’ll love it and it will see a lot of use through the years. Plus, I got a much better play pad for Elsa so it wasn’t like it was totally frivulous stuff. I was going to get a play pad anyway so I suppose I did save a bit of money.

I decided I couldn’t spend any more money so I sent Mike to the karate school to deal with the hard sell. It turns out to be a better deal than swimming lessons, so Mike signed Erik up for six months (starting in Sept) and we got a free birthday party out of the deal. I am so glad I don’t have to plan a party. I’ll still have to do a lot of the food/favors/invites planning, but I won’t have to build an obstacle course, dress like Indiana Jones, or run myself ragged entertaining 10 four year olds for a couple hours. Being the party runner is exhausting.

I think I am insane. Last night I was planning out a whole big cooking class co-op idea. Then I woke up and decided I didn’t have the time or energy for something like that. In my planning it only would have gone on for 6-8 weeks, but still. Who has the time?

Instead, I talked to the people at Romp ‘n Roll about their cooking class. I decided it is much too young for Erik (ages 2.5-5 in one big class? No.).

Tomorrow we have a (free) private karate lesson, then I suppose we’ll get the hard sell about enrolling. I think it is the best option of all our choices (and believe me, in this area we have choices out the wazoo). Erik is desperate for a dance class, but every single place I’ve called said I am welcome to enroll him but he’ll be the only boy. I don’t want to be gender biased and all that, but I don’t think he would really enjoy a class full of girls. I’ve talked to him about it and he says he wants a boy dance class. Guess that’s not gonna happen.

We had a very long afternoon today. Elsa was hysterical, something that really hasn’t happened before, and Erik and I are both pretty worn out. He kept telling me to get the baby away from him because he was tired of listening to the screaming. He doesn’t remember that he screamed like that every single day for hours and hours.

The worst was that she would get even more upset when I would try to nurse her. When I hear a crying baby my inclination is to stick a nipple in their mouth. That would always calm Erik down, at least briefly. Basically, she hasn’t eaten since noon. Not like she’s going to starve. Yesterday I had a lady ask me if she was 9 months. She weighed more than this ladies tiny little one year old.

She finally fell asleep, so hopefully she will be happier when she wakes up.

Erik is getting back into a peeing of the pants mode. It makes me crazy. I think I’m going to try Beck’s idea of randomly checking is pants throughout the day and giving him a reward if they are dry/on. I don’t know though. As I said before, I have a really hard time with reward systems. I can’t stand the whining for a sticker and the manipulation. Make no mistake about it, Erik is one manipulative little guy. He is sweet and fun and smart, but he can play the system like the best little con man in the world. The rule would have to be that he gets a point taken away if he asks for a point. Not sure how well that would really work, though. I was thinking about giving him points or quarters with a goal of working up to a new Wii game. Not that I want him to have another game, but it would certainly motivate him.

Either that, or I’ll just send him to time out every time he pees his pants. I know you aren’t supposed to punish kids for potty issues, but it sure is tempting when you know the problem is that they refuse to stop what they are doing and go when they need to go.

My fantasy book forum is supposed to be reading a book by a self-published author. The author offered to send us all free books and some people voted for him. I guess the rest of us should have gotten together and made a plan to all vote on the same book. With the exception of my friend Jolene, I refuse to read self-published books. I know there are probably excellent ones out there, but the ones that I’ve read? Hoo boy. They make me want to poke my eyes out. It’s hard to break into publishing, but there’s a reason people want to read books that have been vetted by a professional book editor.

I got my copy of the book and don’t see how we are going to do a book club with it. I read the first three paragraphs and don’t think I can read more. I was hoping it wouldn’t be too awful since the guy can write a nice forum post, but it is just terrible. And how do you totally bash it when you know the author is going to be reading the conversation? I try not to be that big of a bitch, but I can’t think of anything good to say. It’s painful.

First things first. It has been almost ten months since I migrated over to this new blog. I just realized I should add some links to my blogroll. If you read me and you want a link, please let me know! I am very lazy, otherwise.

We went to a really fun birthday party at a karate studio this afternoon. I’ve been trying to think of the perfect party for Erik’s birthday and karate may be the answer. After doing some simple kicks and punches, they did a bunch of different obstacle course type things. Erik wants an Indiana Jones party. I was planning on doing that at home or the park and basically just doing a bunch of obstacle course type things. Could this work? Would I be willing to pay the price (I didn’t see any pricing information).

The strangest bit of all: there was a boy named Indiana at the party. His dad was obsessed with the movies. Erik was very put out that the kid got to have that name and he didn’t. I am a former Indiana Jones lover myself, but I don’t think it ever occurred to me to name a child Indy. The kid will have a lot to live up to.

I am quietly freaking out about going to Oregon. It will be the first time we’ve been back since my grandma died. I think we’ll be there at the one year anniversary of her death. She died two weeks after we got back from our last trip so that adds up. It will be so strange not to visit her and listen to all her crazy talk. She drove me up a wall, but I loved her. She always meant well even though she obviously had a lot of issues to work through.

It makes me sad that she never knew we were having another baby. We thought we were pregnant in April thanks to those cheap Chinese tests my friend gave me and it was really hard to tell her we weren’t actually having a baby since she was so excited.

We visited Oregon when Erik was four months old and Elsa will be four months old on this visit. I just remember Grandma getting so angry at me because I wouldn’t let her feed Erik any pudding cups and she’d bought a bunch especially for him. Every time I was there with Erik we’d get into big fights about the food. She’d try to give him ice cream sandwiches at 9 in the morning. Why didn’t I just let him have that last ice cream sandwich?

Erik’s been talking about her and saying he’ll see her in Oregon even though we’ve explained many, many times that she died and we won’t ever see her again. He says that he is going to fly into the clouds and tell her to open her eyes and help her fly back to Oregon. I haven’t really disabused him of that notion. Honestly, I have no idea what to say except to keep repeating that she is asleep forever.

I was going to order or buy Erik a Nintendo thing for the plane, but then I remembered that Mike used to have a Game Boy Advance. He just found it but can’t find the charger. I found some cheap games to order and can probably order a charger, but will they get here in time? It’d be way cheaper than a whole new system.

Did I ever tell you my new bag arrived? And it is totally beautiful and everything I hoped it would be? It’s very “me” and all kinds of fancy. I was feeling semi-guilty about buying it until my friend pointed out that I would spend more than that on an outfit for a fancy night out and it would only be worn once, but this bag will be used every single day for at least two years. Kinda puts things in perspective.

Also, I just sold a couple of things and someone wanted to put an ad on my old blog so all that covers the cost of the bag. Blog ads are such weird things. They wanted it on my old blog, so I know they were really just paying for a link. I had to drive a hard bargain to get what I wanted and then I thought I was going to have to cancel after all because they asked me to do something a bit shady. I don’t do shady. I don’t mind having ads on my blog as long as they are clearly identified as ads. My readers are smart enough to know what’s an ad and what’s not an ad. I refuse to try to use my blog to trick people into doing things for my own monetary gain. Not that I’m popular enough to get any offers of items to review, but if I did I would clearly state that was the case.