Crazy Busy FunTime Now?

I'm insanely busy. 3 tupperware parties in as many nights, and one of them I need to drive 3 hours west for.

So... I'll hopefully be back sometime Saturday night/Sunday morning. And maybe even will continue the tale of Rick.

E.

Cheese

So you wanna make cheese, eh?

This recipe was passed onto me in the truly medieval tradition - orally. There's very little supporting documentation for this being a 'medieval' recipe, but considering how easy it is to make, I think that it probably didn't make it into cookbooks because everyone would have known how to make it. It's absolutely delicious, and you can flavour it to make it even better. The small amounts of documentation I have found for this cheese are assumptive - recipe books refer to 'cottagers cheese' or 'home cheese' but don't offer a recipe for it.


You will need:

• 1/4 to 1/2 cup of vinegar (I use apple cider vinegar, but it doesn't really matter)
• 2 litres (quarts, I guess, for my American friends) of milk - the higher the milk fat, the greater the yield. I use 18% table cream, which yields about 2-3 cups of cheese.
• cheese cloth, or a large piece of prewashed, clean linen (or, if you have a jam bag, a jam bag will work) and a colander
• spices for flavour (my favourite is garlic and oregano, Beaker loves it with honey added, the difference being that I use mine to make a noodle dish, and he uses his on toast)



• Bring your milk/cream to 185 degrees on the stovetop, stirring regularly.
• When your milk has reached temperature, add 1/4 to 1/2 cup of vinegar and remove from heat. Let it sit for about 30 seconds, then stir it. Kurds will form. The more you stir it the smaller the kurds will be, so I like to give it one or two big swooshes, and then leave it be.
• lay your cheese cloth in the colander in the sink (unless you want to save the whey, then put the colander and cheese cloth in a bowl). I always do this while the cheese waits. Makes nicer kurds.
• Pour the contents of the pot through the cloth. I let the whey go down the sink because I hate the smell of it, but there are lots of recipes that call for whey in them, so if you want to save it, go ahead.
• Mix in your spices with a spoon. I never manage to get the spices thoroughly mixed, then again, I'm usually in a hurry and not terrible worried about that.
• Tie up your cloth and hang it for 2-4 hours. 2 hours will make a softer harder-to-cut-and-spread cheese, 4 hours will make a harder nicer-to-cut cheese (neither is soft or hard really, and they're both quite crumbly and not terribly easy to spread)
• Enjoy!!

We use this cheese in a medieval dish called Makerouns, on toast, in salads, on top of pasta dishes, with fruit... it's very versatile and nummy.

Things

1 - You shouldn't have to wait 40 days to find out you are not pregnant. Were I Mrs. Noah, I would have stopped my period, got on a nasty stinky ark, gotten progressively more murderous, disembarked joyously on dry land and immediately have needed to figure out what to use in lieu of a maxipad.

2 - When you wait 40 days for your period, it shouldn't arrive, rather inconveniently, the same day that your husband arrives home for a week.

3 - My homemade cheese? Rocks.

4 - Tupperware? Going well.

5 - Punkin got really upset last night when she peed in the bathtub as the water was draining from the tub. We whisked her onto the toilet, where she finished peeing, clapped and then wiped her own bum. I'm raising a freakishly smart child, I fear.

6 - Punkin looked at me this evening, grabbed her crotch and said 'crotch wet'. Once I stop laughing, I need to find out who taught her how to identify that as a 'crotch'.

7 - We attempted to destroy an anthill last night. Cross your fingers.

8 - More later. I'm exhausted from the 0500 wake up call for Beaker to catch his flight back to The Patch

Punkin at 17 months

It's hard for me to believe that little girl is only 17 months old. She's so tall, and so childlike already, instead of staying mired in toddlerhood. She's already made a big transition into girl-dom.

She needs only to see her Mommy or Daddy (or anyone, really) do something once and she can figure out how to do it. She can open the fridge, take out the eggs without dropping them and bring them to Mommy to tell me what she wants for breakfast. She can tell which flavour of yogurt is in which container, so it's no great wonder to me that all the banana are already gone.

She has no fear. Her Gramma taught her to climb down the stairs backward, and at Gramma and Poppa's house, she happily half-climbs-half-slides-on-her-belly down the stairs. Except when Mommy is at the bottom of the stairs, and then she just throws herself off the top stair, so confident that Mommy will catch.

She jumps off the couch, and jumps in her bed, and jumps down the hall in big bounding leaps. She loves zippers. Whether it's the couch, or a guy or a girl, if she sees a zipper, she's going to whip it open and explore what's underneath. We warn people to wear t-shirts under their sweaters these days.

She's not all rough and tumble though, there's a good dose of princess in her too.



She tries very hard to be ladylike when she's dressed up. She's not always successful - it's hard to be successful when you want to run and play with the boys. But she has her moments.

She loves books. She has three shelves of books we've had to confiscate because they are big kid books, and she loves them a little too roughly right now. But we rarely see her without a board book or a cloth book in her hands. First thing in the morning, she gets up, and flings her cloth books all over the living room. Then she settles in for a read and will move across the living room looking and playing with each book. When she's done with the cloth books, she carefully chooses a few of her board books and brings them to Mommy. She doesn't care what story she's told, or whether it matches the pictures. She points at the pictures and asks "What's that?" when she gets lost.


And she loves to dance. We always have music on in our house because I want her to grow up like I did, loving music. We usually have the radio set to the Sirius Supershuffle, so she gets a good range of music from the seventies through to now.

When a song with a good beat comes on, she does this funny sort of squat thing, and shakes her bum and waves her arms. I have no idea where she learned it. Maybe from me.


And she sings. She sings along to the radio, she sings herself to sleep. She sings in the bathtub, she sings in the kitchen, she sings when she's into mischief, she sings when she's reading books. She sings all the time. If she isn't singing, she's babbling away, explaining to universe to a bunch of idiots who haven't figured out how to speak Toddler yet.


Last night we celebrated Beaker's birthday a few days late. I'm not pregnant, so I got into the BBQ spirit and had a couple drinks. While I was flipping burgers on the deck, hanging outside with my Mum and Beaker, Punkin came rounding the corner to visit too. And I looked at her, with her sprouts coming off the back of her head, and her carhardts to match her Daddy, and I thought.

She's enough. If we can't have another, she's enough.

My friend is a powerhouse

One of my best girlfriends ever has three beautiful children. One of them has type 1 diabetes. Sara is a tireless crusader to finding a cure. She recently posted this on her facebook profile(it's a speech she either just gave or will be giving as part of her paticipation with telus's walk to cure diabetes), and it brought me to tears.

This will probably be the cause I ever ask people to donate to. Please support the Juvenile Diabetes Research Foundation and help us find a cure for Mikayla's disease.



I brought my daughter home from the hospital a happy, healthy baby. She was pretty easy as far first babies with frantic first time parents go. When she turned about seventeen months old things started to change. Mikayla was crankier than normal. She was thirsty and wetting through her diapers. She was hungry, all the time. She wasn’t interacting with us the same way she usually did. She seemed to be drained of energy.

Of course, it might seem obvious to you, because you know that this is about Type 1 Diabetes. But I didn’t know what Diabetes was. I had never heard of a child with what I thought was an old persons disease. I didn’t know there was another kind of Diabetes, a separate disease, all its own. I didn’t know my child’s body had turned on itself, that her immune system had attacked her pancreas. I thought she was entering the terrible two’s early. I thought she was hungry and thirsty because she was having a growth spurt. I thought she had a cold.

When I put her to bed on March 11, 2005, a day that will be forever etched in my mind, I called the nurses help line. I asked the nurse what was going around and what could I do to help Mikayla feel better. I said her chest had been wet sounding all day and she was so tired she couldn’t stop rubbing her eyes. The nurse told me to call 911. I thought she was crazy. 911? For a cold?

When we arrived the emergency room Dr. took one smell of Mikayla’s breath and our lives were never the same again. She told my husband and myself that Mikayla was seriously ill. She said Mikayla had diabetes and was in Diabetic Ketoacidosis. The wet sound was Mikayla’s lungs filling up with her own melting body fat. Mikayla was rubbing her eyes because she couldn’t see. Mikayla was dying . She told us that there was significant chance our baby would not survive the night. Everything went into slow motion. She kept asking if I understood what she was saying. Of course, I didn’t. Diabetes? From where? How? I could tell you exactly when and what candy she had eaten in her short life. It was on our trip to the Queen Charlottes Islands and it was a blue whale. Obviously, I didn’t have a clue about type 1 diabetes.

Things sped up quickly when I held Mikayla down for her first I.V. I didn’t know it then, but it would be far from the last time that held down her while she pleaded for my help. While she looked at me in confusion as I sang her favorite song into her ear.

The staff at PGRH worked hard and through a long night filled with words like coma and brain damage they saved my child’s life.

Mikayla’s is a common story among the parents of these kids, but I always stop here and think about the parents who’s children didn’t survive diagnosis. Type 1 diabetes is a very misunderstood disease and my familys hope is that sharing Mikayla’s story might stop another parent from putting their kids to bed only to have them never wake up again because they didn’t know the signs of this disease. If it hadn’t been for that casual call to the BC Nurses Help Line I would have one of those parents who’s child died.

The reality of living with Type 1 Diabetes started the very next day. Mikayla started off using injection therapy. It seems ridiculous to me now to remember how long it took me to stab myself with a needle. I thought they were nuts to think I could do this to my child. But, I did. Mikayla knew I didn’t like it. Even as she flinched away she would pat my arm and say “Okay Mommy, okay, okay“. The food charts and carb counts and insulin ratios were overwhelming. Mikayla took to sleeping on her hands to hide them from the blood sugar monitor. It broke my heart to watch a toddler trying to protect herself. From her Dad. From me. From the diabetes tools we always carried.

Eventually we purchased Mikayla an insulin pump. The pump has given Mikayla the closest thing she can have to a normal life but it hasn’t been easy. Mikayla is afraid of the site changes and fights with all the vigor a four year old can muster. My husband has to hold Mikayla down, every three days while I insert the inch long needle under her skin. It hasn’t stopped the wildly fluctuating blood sugars or prevented the low blood sugars. She has been hospitalized three times in the two years she has been using the pump and low blood sugar has caused Mikayla to lose consciousness twice putting her serious risk of seizure, coma and death. My child has been sick from high blood sugar so many times that when it causes her to throw-up she will step over it and keep playing. Twice this year she has stopped absorbing carbohydrates after a round of the stomach flue, leaving her in a continual state of low blood sugar for up to eleven days.

Every year kids die from what is known as “Dead in Bed Syndrome”. We put our children to bed healthy with good blood sugars and they don’t wake up.

Insulin is not a cure and we need to find one. The long term implications of heart disease, amputation, kidney failure and blindness combined every day struggle of living with this disease demand one.

Diabetes is never-ending. It’s every day. All day. All night. No break. Mikayla, who is sweet, funny and empathetic has been living with this disease for more than half her life. She doesn’t know life without it. She deserves to know what its like to eat without counting and measuring food, to play without worrying about low blood sugar and to look forward without planning every detail. She deserves to know what childhood is supposed to be like.

If you walk with us for a cure, or pledge your co-workers you will be helping Mikayla get one step closer to knowing what its like to live free of diabetes. Our family and the others like ours are immensely grateful and thank-you for any effort you can make in helping us give our kids the best future possible.

Thank-you..



The link to donate is on the right side of my page - that beautiful little girl's picture will take you right to the Walk to Cure Diabetes website. Once the walk is over (in 10 days), I'll change the way the link works, and it will take you right to the JDRF and you can donate that way too. But until we find a cure - that link will stay there.

Chatty McGee

Beaker's flight arrives in a little less than 2 hours. I should probably be frantically cleaning the house but you know? It took me 2 hours to scrub the floors yesterday. And today I wanted to work on Punkin's memory quilt. So I did.

I still have a million things I need to do before the weekend, but they'll get done. None of them are vitally important (except for the housecleaning part).

Punkin astonished me today. Maybe it's because I spend so much time with her, and because I refuse to succumb to the urge to speak babytalk to her, but her language is above and beyond that of an average child her age. She was bellowing from her room to indicate to me that naptime was over.

When I walked in the room to open the curtains, she looked at me, grabbed her crotch and clearly said,

"I peed Mummy."

Now, normally, I would say 'I think she said...', but this one, today, was clear as if an adult had said it.

"I peed Mummy."

She's currently running around the living room yelling "Laaaaaaaaaaaaaaah! Laaaaaaaaaah! Maaaaaaaaaahh! Baaaaaaaaaaaa!" so I'm not quite filling out the university applications. And even though it's her most frequently given command 'up' leaves something to be desired.

And even though she knows how to say 'juice', she prefers to employ the 'scream my head off until Mummy finally realizes I'm wildly gesturing in the general direction of the fridge' method of telling me that she's thirsty.

But she's been saying "What's that?" for a long time. She added 8 new words in the last 2 weeks, including 'shoes', 'please', 'bum', 'poop' and 'change'. I'm pretty impressed with her vocabulary and I think Beaker will be impressed too - if she chooses to share her words with him. Right now, she's a little motormouth, but only when I'm around. She clams right up around anyone else.

For Beaker's sake, I hope she babbles his ears off this week.

I think I'll have a stiff drink

Because I am not pregnant. Again.

And by the way, universe and uterus? It would be a lot f***ing easier to take if my period hadn't been so gawdam late.


*off to search out the vodka*

Movie Review: P.S. I Love You

Either this movie was grossly mislabeled as a romantic comedy, I am pregnant or having the WORST PMS ever in the history of my life. I cried the entire movie. Not just at the end. The whole freaking movie.


I can never decide if I like movies that make me cry. The strong, stubborn never emotional part of me feels violated by being so easy to read, that Hollywood has taken me on a date and copped a feel in the backseat of its mother's car. The sappy chick-flick-loving, trashy-romance-novel-reading part of me thinks it's okay to cry every so often.

When I first heard about the movie I was very excited - Gerard Butler. And Jeffrey Dean Morgan. And Spike!

Yeah. Now that I have that headache you get from crying and I feel like an utter tool? I'm looking for excuses. Coupled with an absent menses (4 days now), I'm liking the odds that maybe I'm knocked up, even though the clearblue easy tonight said no. I could still be too early, I think?

Slimdown Saturday: The May Long

This weekend always marks a turn around in the weather here in Hometown - it's the Victoria Day long weekend. Victoria Day is a holiday where all Canadians celebrate the birth of a long dead queen of England by going to the lake, BBQing, and putting in their gardens.

This morning I was awakened by a neighbour mowing his lawn. It wasn't the rude awakening you would think, the lawnmower sound is one I welcome, as it is a much more reliable indicator that Spring has indeed sprung than say, stupid birds who trusts their migratory instinct and then wind up back here while there is still snow and sub-zero temperatures.

Lawnmower guy inspired me. We have a HUGE backyard. Behind our yard is a small greenbelt loaded with cottonwood trees (the source of my three week long headache, I've discovered. I forgot I was allergic to the $%#&@* things). My backyard was covered in leaves. I've been making half-hearted attempts to go out and rake, and I think I mentioned, I had finished the easy half of the yard. Today, I mowed the 'hard half'. (Edit: I also mowed the rest of the yard, lest it looked completely stupid. And the front yard too. Just the hard half left me dirty)

I am covered in mulched up leaf debris, I'm sneezing like crazy, and if the amount of sweat pouring down my back is any indication, I've definitely had my workout for the day*. And my feet are filthy.

But my backyard is starting to look a little less white trash, and a little more 'somewhere Punkin could play'. I still need to figure out what to do with the firepit that apparently rusted out in the winter, and maybe roll the stumpy log bits away from it so I can get at the leaves in the fire circle.

I also spent at least a half hour picking up random chunks of scrap metal from my backyard. And have bagged up a garbage bag so heavy I can't lift it. The previous husband in this house restored an old mustang. Apparently he gave it a chassis reinforcement worthy of a tank. Now I just need to clear up the recycling that fell out of the bags that rotted (we had pop up bags made from corn husk outside. Because we didn't know they were made from corn husk. Yay biodegradable, Boooooooo falling apart whilst being used to hold empties) and it will truly look a lot classier.

Also on the yard planning:

• Better recycling system. Right now I have rubbermaid totes outside for sorting. But it looks.... messy and nasty. (decided it works for what it's for, and will be downsizing it a little to make it more manageable - smaller rubbermaid totes will be moved from the shed)

• Figure out a way to kill the ants in the backyard. (figured out how. Will put evil plan for ant destruction in motion tomorrow). The back 1/4 of our yard is an ant hill. Did I mention my yard is huge? That makes for a ridiculously huge ant hill. I need to figure out how to kill the ants as they are biters. **
This has become a huge priority, as there is a MASSIVE ant hill swarming in the back of the neighbours yard. I am going out when Punkin wakes up from her nap to get some badass ant killer and then I'm going to ask the neighbours if I can hang out in their backyard for a bit killing the hill

• Build a worm composter (order parts from Lee Valley)

• Build a big open composter for yard waste. Like all the &%$#@ leaves from the stupid @$#%$* cottonwoods

• Edit: I'm going to weed-n-feed the yard first, so seeding might be a few weeks from nowRe-seed the lawn where the mustang lived (3 different places) and dripped oil. Stupid man.

• Build in the underneath of the deck so Punkin won't be tempted to play down there.

• New cement pad beside the deck.

• Repair or replace the gate

• Dig out the 'water feature' (aka Mosquito Bordello) beside the other side of the deck**

• Install an umbrella clothes dryer in the umbrella clothes dryer post along the side of the house**

• Clear out underneath the front stretch of deck, which seems to have accumulated a skeezy amount of crap through the winter.**

• Dump and recycling run.** (Dump is scheduled for tomorrow, normal recyclables are gone and empties are scheduled for Tuesday, as that is the next time the stupid depot will be open).

• Start digging out the front garden in anticipation of Beaker getting home, as he is the big gardening weirdo. (tilled and aerated as of 2023, Saturday).**

• Cruise the local nursery for cool plants. And for medieval medicinal plants too. Figure out what plants we'll be separating in Mum's garden to bring over here**

• Empty the firepit ash into the compost pile, turn compost pile.**


I don't know how much I'll get to this weekend just because it's really humid, and I only do humid heat in short spurts - made shorter by the fact that the backyard is just not ready for Punkin to be romping around in it while I'm working in it. But we'll see. Also, I wish they made Wellies for people with fat calves. I'd be much happier mucking about in my compost if I had wellies on.



* Thus fulfilling the requirements of a slimdown post ;)
** Things I want to get to this weekend

Searching for intelligent life.

It that time again... There's enough weird (not necessarily stupid this time) google searches to warrant another post.


•tomatoes and bowels - *snerk* uh... what is this person looking for? It sounds like a weird indy rock group. In fact I have a 'synth' in my basement being stored for a friend right now, maybe I'll start my own group. It'll be an 80s tribute band, but everything will be punked up a bit. Yeah! And I'll dye my hair pink and green!

•cute doctor + calgary - cute doctors are not all they are cracked up to be. Particularly when it's time to have your vagander, or worse, a rectal exam. Cute doctors are way more disconcerting in those situations. Additionally, I cannot help you because I've never lived in Calgary, and remarkably, it's one of the few cities I've visited that I've never been admitted to the ER. So... sorry. No help. But find yourself a good ugly doctor.

•do infections in incisions smell? - see? Sometimes people google smart questions - here's my answer: In my experience, yes, they do. They smell kind of like bread dough, or fermenting beer, in the initial stages. Then they get worse and are very vile and dead animally. Yuck. I'm one of the few people I know of, however, who can identify and early infection by smell. Not exactly the gift I would have picked had I been given a choice, but it certainly has come in handy.

•medieval sleeping bag - There's these amazing inventions, called blankets. As zippers hadn't been invented in the period, you can bet your bottom dollar that blankets were the 'sleeping bag' of choice. And were likely called a (wait for it) 'bed roll' or 'blankets'

•who is ella? - Oh... Well... You flatter me. Ella is a pseudonym I use. I am a 30-something Canadian stay-at-home-mum starting a Tupperware business. I have 1 daughter(Punkin) and my hub, Beaker, and I are trying for a second, who we are currently calling Future Fetus, but will probably be assigned another veggie name once we're certain I'm actually knocked up. I have a BA in English Lit, and a diploma in nursing.

•hangy downy thingy in the back of your throat - while I commend you for actually typing 'hangy downy thingy', because that's what I call it when learning people, it's called a Uvula. Not to be confused with Vulva, which is an entirely different body part, and will make me laugh at you if you confuse them in Anatomy and Physiology class.

•foul smelling boogers - sign of infection. And Dizzzzzzzgosting!

• best friends make the best spouses - I agree. Beaker is my best friend. No one else comes close. I must be his best friend too, because he will actually spend more than 3 minutes at a time on the phone with me, and he does so every day. I'm not sure Beaker even knew what a telephone was before we got together.

• foaming from the mouth of elderly patients - are you sure they aren't rabid zombies?

• keratosis and diet coke - this one actually made me google it on my own - I was suddenly hyper-aware of my diet coke addiction and how horrible my keratosis is, so I thought 'ooooooh! Maybe there's a relationship between the two, and I'm going to need to go to diet oke rehab!' (clearly those aren't happy exclamation marks). But alas. All I found were references to people's excema covered scrotums (scroti?) and nothing medically referenced about a correlation between diet coke and keratosis. (For those not in the know, keratosis is a genetic skin condition marked by the body's inability to slough dead skin from within the pores of the skin, which leads to bumpy, raised and sometimes red spots, usually on the arms and legs, but in extreme cases, all over the body. A lot of people call it 'chicken skin' because sufferers look a mite like a plucked chicken. You're supposed to outgrow it when you're in your early 20s. Mine has become worse as I've got older)

• puberty boobs exploded! - Now that's something I'd pay to see. Exploding boobs indeed.

FlackBack Friday - My first mother's day

I spent this mother's day with Punkin. Beaker was (is) away at work, and so it was a pretty low-key day. I didn't even realize it was mother's day until my Mom called to invite me over for dinner. Considering what my first mother's day was like, I hope we aren't fixing ourselves into a cycle of bad mother's days, but I somehow think this is never going to be as important a holiday as I'd like it to be in our household.

Last year, in about March, we realized we were going to have move from where we were living in Alberta. Beaker's company was wrapping up the contract there, and the next jobs all sounded like they were 'camp' jobs - spouses and children don't tag along when the guys are going to be living out of Atco trailers. We had to option to stay in Alberta, and I would have had a job to go back to (full-time, benefits, etc), but honestly? We were close friends with 1 couple in the area, and they lived 45 minutes away in a small community to the west of us. Not exactly 'emergency contact' material, if I was going to be alone there with Punkin.

So we started talking. I was jonesing for Edmonton, just because the shopping would be better, and I would have no problem getting a job there either - but then of course, we'd still be alone when Beaker was out for work, and while we knew (strangely) more people in Edmonton than the town we were living in, we still didn't know anyone well enough to designate them 'emergency contact' material.

Beaker has always wanted to settle in Hometown. He made that clear before we got married. His ideal situation was a job, house and settled in Hometown. I love Hometown. In fact, Hometown is more my hometown than it is his - he grew up on Vancouver Island, and his Dad wasn't transfered to Hometown until Beaker was a teenager (his dad was a mountie). I, on the otherhand, had been born in Vancouver while my parents were on summer vacation - not because they lived there, but because they deliberately planned to be in Vancouver for my birth, so they could be near Mum's family. I spent my entire childhood, with the exception of 3 years when I was very young, in Hometown. I had moved to Vancouver, tolerated it for 6 years, and then followed my smalltown heart back home (which is ironic in itself, as Hometown is not a small town, but actually an average sized city, but I digress).

Anyhow, Beaker suggested we move home. It took me 2.2 seconds to realize he was freaking brilliant. We had 4 grandparents in Hometown - built in day-care! My parents, who we have a fantastic relationship with - right there in the same city. We were completely excited by the idea. I resigned myself to crappy shopping, and started thinking about when we should list the house. We decided that since Beaker had been told the job was going until August, we'd list the house in June, and head home to find something once it was on the market.

In May, I was wanting to head home for a visit. There was a medieval event happening, so I thought that might be fun to combine visit with Mum and Dad and Beaker's parents with a visit with my medieval friends. Beaker had to work, so I drove down alone, somewhat oblivious to the date - when I got settled at my parents house, and called Beaker to let him know I was safe, he said, "Do you realize that Sunday is Mother's Day?" Dang it! Beaker was going to just get the tail end of Mother's Day, as I was driving home on Sunday.

I got up fairly early, and got Punkin fed, and clothed and ready to go, and headed home, knowing I'd make it there before Beaker was home from work.

We got home in near-record time, and other than some creepy woman touching Punkin's head while I was breastfeeding at the A&W when we stopped for lunch, the trip was uneventful.

Beaker looked like a broken man when he walked through the door that afternoon.

"I just got laid off."

"What?"

"They were told by the contractee that they had to downsize the operation in anticipation of the job ending, and I was one of the 10 guys they laid off today. I'm done at the end of the month."

I burst into tears.

One frantic call to my mother later, I was somewhat calmer. All our money was wrapped up in our house, and I didn't know what we were going to do - talking to my Mum settled me - she swore they wouldn't let us fall apart. Beaker and I worked through some financial stuff - he was making enough each paycheque that we actually didn't need to worry about money too much - he still had 2 cheques coming before he'd be out of work. I determined that I would spend the rest of the month getting the house set for a realtor to come in.

As we snuggled into bed that night, Beaker pulled me close to him and kissed my shoulder.

"I know it was crappy, but happy mother's day."

***

The next afternoon, Beaker walked in the door, practically bouncing - they'd extended him for the duration of the job after one of the journeymen on the job had announced he was heading home to Newfoundland. Beaker had been their hardest choice for the layoff, and had really only been laid off because he was an apprentice and therefore had less seniority onsite, so they were thrilled to ask him to stay. In fact, we were settled in Hometown for a couple of months before he finished up that job.


Visit other FlashBack Friday participants at 42.

Diapering

One of my friends has a son who is turning one on the weekend. When she was pregnant (some of the time overlapped with my pregnancy), she was determined to be what she called 'an Earth Mother' and went out and bought cloth diapers, and a poop bucket, and was all ready to be gloriously cloth.

I, on the other hand, was all "eww?! Pewps! In my house? Where I have to clean them? NO WAY!" And embraced the disposable diaper with a near fanatical zeal.

My friend lasted 2 days with cloth diapers before she boxed them all up, and hid them in a closet and demanded disposables. I gave her all the secrets about Pampers Points, for getting free toys for your kid, and patted her consolingly about the cloth diapers.

To be honest, part of my concern with cloth diapering was that Punkin, inevitably, would wind up with skin like mine (ultra-scary-sensitive), and would get bad diaper rash from cloth diapers. I mean, let's face it - 2 drops of pee in a cloth diaper and the sucker is wet.

In the end, Punkin did wind up with my skin (poor kid). But apparently disposables haven't come as far as we all thought - whatever they are made of was causing the same nasty diaper rash that disposables caused on me when I was a baby. After cutting dairy, putting her on soy, using 2 different kinds of prescription butt pastes on her - it turns out she's just ultra scary sensitive to whatever is in diapers, and whatever is in disposable butt wipes.

The wipes were the first thing the pediatric dermatologist recommended go. I diligently made up a stink bucket in the laundry room and sure enough, within days of the change to cloth wipes, her butt was healing. When we saw the pediatrician for follow up, he mused, "I wonder what changing to cloth diapers would do for her."

Well, it just so happened that my friend with the box of cloth diapers? She wanted them out of her house. So I traded her a diaper genie for her cloth diapers (that's about $150 in savings!). Turns out, her diapers were just a smidge too small. But I was a woman on a mission.

I hit Sears (the only place in town with affordable cloth diapers) and to my utter delight, found out at the cashier that my clothies were on for 20% off! I came home, washed everything up, and tried her out.

The last of the rash cleared up in 3 days. She's had a smooth, pretty little baby bum for about 2 weeks now. I sometimes still put her in disposables (like tonight, when she's going over the Beaker's parents to be babysat), and inevitably, the red returns, but never as bad as it was - she doesn't overnight in disposables, which makes a huge difference.

I still think it's completely disgusting to deal with her waste, but I'm trained as a nurse and I'm not working as one right now - so she's my ick factor right now. And I'm okay with that. Thanks to some awesome advice from CableGirl, I've got a routine for cleaning figured out, and I'm even making the most environmentally sound choice for cleaning too (the smell of lemon juice, even mingled with poop, is more pleasant than the smell of bleach and poop).

Cloth diapering has given me a much happier daughter. A happier daughter means a happier house. Her bum is healthy for the first time since September of 2007 (scary? yep), and other than her annoying tendency to try to unfasten the velcro, she's adjusted really well.

There's also the feel good factor that I wasn't anticipating. Yup, those diapers are disgusting. But the poops are finally going where they belong (to sewage treatment) and I'm not loading up the landfill with the nastiness of the Scary Blue Tube of Poop anymore (what we called the leavings from the diaper genie). It feels good to make a green decision like that.

I will say this though - I need more diapers, because 21 is not cutting it.

Lessons from a dusty kitchen

#1 - Don't use vegetable shortening in sugar cookies. They don't taste right. Butter = better

#2 - Don't use your brand new stoneware cookie sheet when testing to see if shortening cookies are going to work.

#3 - Don't let your 16 month old "help"


I'll be back when my kitchen recovers...

Waiting

I wanted to write about something interesting today, but I just don't have a single thing for you.

Instead I'm going to whine about waiting.

My period is due tomorrow. I took a pregnancy test yesterday, and it said I wasn't pregnant. Part of me wants to say 'whatever, it's too early, look at your presumptive signs!', but really? My presumptive signs are just as indicative of my period starting as they are of pregnancy.

I'm starving. Constantly. I think it's worse than usual, as I've averaged 5 'meals' per day in the last 3 days, but it could just be that I'm doing that pre-menstrual pig out that I do every couple of month.

My stomach aches and I'm perpetually nauseated - but that could be from all the food.

I had a big fat hypoglycemic attack at the swimming pool the other day - thank goodness one of my girlfriends was with me with her kid too - all I had to worry about was whether I was going to faint in the change room, which would be a lot safer than fainting in the pool with Punkin in my arms. A death by chocolate cookie later, I was feeling fine. I can't explain this one away, actually. It randomly happens every so often (like, every 6-8 months, maybe), but I don't think it's related to my menstrual cycle.

I've got that 'wish I could puke' feeling in the mornings that I loathed loved so well when I was pregnant with Punkin. I sometimes feel that way just before my period starts though because my period, for whatever wacky and joyful reason, interferes with my gastric function.

My boobs don't hurt. They usually hurt like hell right before my period - and go up at least 1 cup size (like I need that kind of help?) and look like I've become my own personal flotation (okay, how is that spelled correctly?!) device. The absence of boobular pain is disconcerting.

There is not enough water in the world for me to drink. This is usual right before my period starts.

I've been cramping for a week. Some claim that implantation can be crampy and uncomfortable, but so are menstrual cramps. If this is implantation, that kid is more alien than human and is trying to burrow right into my intestines.

My kidneys hurt. This is because there is not enough water in the world for me to drink right now, and is my usual state before my period starts. But my kidneys also ached for 13 weeks with Punkin, so who knows.

I have a bizarre stabbity pain in my left side. See the cramping paragraph.


No one warned me how much trying to get pregnant was going to suck. I completely live by the calendar. I found out last month that my cycle is 33 days long instead of 28 - which I'm reasonably sure is an anomaly, but as I've never bothered actually tracking it before, I don't really know - I track it enough to know that ever since we moved home from Alberta and Beaker started working in the oil sands, I usually get my period when he's home, so that seems pretty 'standard 28 days' to me. Ever since the 'Oops' in March, when my cycle reset, it's been wonky.

A 33 days cycle sucks. It means that in one cycle, we'll be back to unable to conceive while he's in town. *whine, bitch, complain*

Because we weren't really trying, in the strictest sense of the word, with Punkin, I'm treading new ground here. I went off birth control in order to 'prep my body' to become fertile in 2-3 months, and found myself pregnant before my first 'off the pill' period. I noticed my period was late, took a test, and the faintest of faint lines gave me my result. So I know enough to know if my period isn't late, I probably am not going to 'pass' a pregnancy test.

I just didn't realize how emotionally draining the waiting would be. I'm 2 months into this 'trying to conceive' game, and I'm already losing hope. When I think about those people I know who've tried for a year, 18 months, or even longer before they've conceived, and I think of the roller coaster this last 2 months has been for me - my heart goes out to you, and I respect and admire you all the more for not giving up.

Because the waiting? She sucks.

Doh!

Beaker is away, and Punkin isn't old enough to read a calendar...

I didn't realize it was mother's day until Mum called this morning.


Happy Mother's Day!

Slimdown Saturday: Spring

It would seem that Spring has finally decided it has sprung here in Hometown. There's some sort of bulbed flower sprouting in the nasty little garden in the front of the house, there's kids playing in the cul-de-sac and the last of the snow is finally gone gone gone! It's time to start taking Punkin outside to play!

With the recession of the snow, however, a new yard complication revealed itself. I never raked last fall. Keeping in mind that last fall, before the snow fell, Punkin was 10 months old and couldn't be left anywhere except in her bed - she shouldn't help out, she couldn't do much. She was a semi-mobile lump of danger-attracting cuteness. So I didn't rake.

Despite not having a single tree in our yard, you can't really see the grass back there for all the dead leaves. There's a stand of cottonwoods just past our fence in the World's Strangest Greenbelt, and they shed every single on of their leaves, it seems, directly into my backyard.

The initial plan was to leave them down, and mulch them with the lawn mower for fertilizing the lawn. But every three or four days, it's been raining. And at that rate, those leaves will never dry but just sit, a soggy, stinky crust on top of my lovely grass.

What does this have to do with Slimdown Saturday?

I spent about an hour yesterday doing some heavy raking. I got the easy half of the yard raked into neat tidy lines. When I say easy, I mean the half with the fewest leaves. When I was sweating like a pig and just on the safe side of an asthma attack, I headed back inside. My brain had been percolating an idea as I raked, which all started with "what the crap am I going to do with all these friggin' leaves?". I googled and sure enough, you can build a composter out of a garbage can. So I had a plan for the afternoon.

I headed out to Canadian Tire and picked up the other things on my list first before trying to find a garbage can that was cheap enough to drill holes in it. $25!! I turned to my right and saw it. The grail.


It was the only one left, and I hurried to stuff it in my cart and get it home. At which point I realized I wouldn't have time to assemble it until at least Sunday.

Anyhow, later last night, as I assembled some furniture from IKEA that arrived sometime last week (we're slow here. And by we, I am talking about the royal we), I noticed a funny tinge in my thighs. When I stood up to move the table to it's 'storage area' beside the loveseat, I felt positively elderly. I tried to lift the table (it's about 100 pounds. seriously. that's what the box said) into place, and my left side snarled. My thighs protested and my shoulders giggled in disdain.

Who would have thought 1 hour of raking dead leaves would leave me feeling like I'd run a marathon? Even my big walk last week didn't leave me with stiff muscles.

(also, here is the new table:)

A Thank You!

So this morning I awoke to a lovely note in my inbox from Aims of Big Blue Barn West letting me know that David of Authorblog had listed me on his Post of the Day post again. This is my third time being nominated, and I'm both flattered and touched that he keeps coming back for more - he also steers a goodly amount of traffic my way those days.

So thank you, David, for reading my blog and for liking what I write :D

Also, thank you, Aims for nominating me the first time - you rawk!

And for those of you who don't have these 2 blogs on your feed reader? You are missing out because they are both fantastic.

FlashBack Friday - Immerse This

There's not much I remember about my education prior to grade three. I'm not really sure why, but there just isn't. But there are a few things I do recall.

My parents split for a few years when I was about 2-3 years old. They got back together when I was 5-ish. I don't remember exactly when, but I know there was snow on the ground in Hometown so it had to be at least late October when we moved back from Vancouver.

I'd been going to kindergarten in North Vancouver. Or West Vancouver. Somewhere on the North Shore, anyhow. And I apparently was in French immersion. Or maybe I wasn't (vague enough for you?). At any rate, my Mum and Dad thought it was a brilliant idea to enroll me in French immersion in Hometown.

Right. English kid, from Vancouver, in French immersion in Hometown. Sounds like a stunningly brilliant idea. It was just after French became an 'official language' and I think my Mum might have had a wee bit of a crush on Pierre Eliot Trudeau, so maybe that's why it struck them as brilliant. Regardless of the reasoning, I was Immersed.

The more I think about it, the more I figure I was in regular (English) kindergarten. I arrived to school for my first day - it was not the first day of school, it was already well into the school year - and the principal escorted my Mum and I down the hall to French Kindergarten. I was invited into the room by a cheerful, sort of plump young woman with a sweater vest (I remember that sweater vest really well). She nodded and assured my mother (in English obviously) I would be fine, and closed the door softly after my Mum left the room.

It was, strangely enough, a kindergarten/grade 1 split class.

Madame said something to me in a flurry of French. I stared blankly at her.

"Pardon me?" I'd been taught to be polite.

"En Français!" She barked, her smile gone. I was at a loss. I didn't even know what that meant.

"Pardon?" I was nervous and scare. She must have felt that was good enough, and shot her initial command at me again. I still had no idea what she wanted.

"Pardon?" I was starting to get upset. It was my first day at a new school filled with kids I didn't know and my teacher was yelling at me! Finally a little boy whispered to me.

"She said sit down crosslegged."

"Thanks." I remember whispering back.

"En Français!" Madame snarled at me. I fell down onto my bum and crossed my legs.

***

It was colouring time. We'd all been given a gendarme (policeman) to colour, and to my surprise, and puzzlement, everyone was colouring their policemen blue. I couldn't find a red crayon, and honestly, didn't even know the word for red, so I picked up an orange crayon and began colouring my policeman's coat.

Madame smacked the crayon out of my hand.

"Ou est le bleu?" She snapped.

"But policemen wear red!" I explained. In English. The only policemen I'd ever seen in Vancouver had been in red serge, at Stanley Park. Madame cuffed me upside the back of my head.

"Non! Bleu!" She crammed a blue crayon into my hand and forced me to conform. It wasn't the first time I cried in her class. And it wouldn't be the last. Not surprisingly, I learned quickly that stupid sounds the same in French as it does in English. Just with an accent. I was the class idiot.

***

I somehow managed to pass kindergarten. I even, apparently, spoke plausibly passable French by the end of the year. Grade 1 was to be a new experience of hell though.

I started hanging around with the actual French Canadian kids in immersion. They spoke French all the time, and it helped me to learn more. They tolerated me, but weren't good friends to me. I was their scapegoat and the butt of many of their jokes. But I was learning French, so I continued to follow them around.

Then I met Kelly and Greg. They were also English kids, and struggled in and out of the classroom. Because we were in a predominantly English programmed school, there were constant battles between the English classes and the French classes. Every recess and lunch hour. And we were always stuck in the middle, as we were technically English, but stuck in French immersion. When the taunts of French Fry met with English Muffin, we were always kind of stuck in the middle of the strangest unhappy meal there was.

I was in a grade 1/2 split that year, and the new Madame was slightly older and much much thinner than kindergarten Madame had been. I flew under the radar a lot of the time because the French kids helped me out a lot, but she didn't like me. She didn't like me because I was English. She hated Greg and Kelly too.

Madame took me by surprise one afternoon with a question. I hadn't really been paying attention, and I asked her to repeat it. To my horror, she strode down the aisle and slapped me across the face. When I told my parents after school, my Dad denied it could happen.

"Teachers aren't allowed to hit students. I would lose my job if I hit a student." Dad couldn't believe for one moment that there could be teachers without the same integrity he had, and so he presumed I was lying. I was sent to bed without dinner.

One afternoon, I brushed my bangs out of my eyes for the third or fourth time. My Mum had booked me a haircut for after school, as my bangs were really ridiculously long, and Madame had complained to her about them, claiming they distracted me. The movement of me brushing my bangs out of my face sent Madame over the edge and she stomped down the aisle, pulled me to the front of the class and announced that when naughty girls distracted the class they needed to be punished (It is a true testimony to how well immersion works that she said everything in French, but when I recall it, I think it was in English - I was that fluent, that quickly). She took out her craft scissors and while I cried that my Mum had an appointment for me that afternoon, cut my bangs to above my eyebrows. She eyed them, critically, and tried to straighten her cut. By the time she was done, my bangs were less than an inch long.

My mother was savage, and suspected that my story about being slapped might be true as well - after all, a teacher who would cut a child's hair to punish her for pushing it out of her eyes could just as easily slap a child (but it wasn't until I was in grade 12 when someone in my class whose mother knew my mother independently corroborated my story that either of my parents actually truly believed me though).

She'd had enough. In the 2 years I'd been in immersion, I'd ceased being capable of reading in English. My math was worse than when I'd started kindergarten, and I'd had two terrible teachers. It seemed hasty to me, but I didn't complain when my parents demanded my registration be transfered to the English grade 2 class at the end of the school year.

***
Despite the trauma of French immersion, I went on to excel in French throughout elementary and high school*. I never had lower than 90% in French. I even, briefly, entertained studying it in university. But all through high school I ensured I took French from Monsieur, rather than Madame. I figured it was just safer that way.



You can FlashBack with the rest of the usual suspects over at CableGirl's recently moved and redesigned 42




* From grade 5 until grade 8, in BC, when I was in school, you didn't have a choice about whether or not you took French. You had to. And as most Canadian universities expect you to have a foreign language at the grade 11 level for admission, and Russian (which is what I wanted to learn) isn't taught in high school, French it was.

Oops?

I sometimes forget that I'm flirty by nature. Most of the time, it doesn't matter as my friends are aware of my personality quirks (whether they love them or hate them, they are aware) and all the men in my life know I'm wildly in love with my husband, and so if they think I'm flirting, they know I'm flirting in the true meaning of the word (to court triflingly or act amorously without serious intentions). I never flirt with any intention to follow through - for a number or reasons - not the least of which is that I respect marriage vows, whether they are mine or someone else's.

Anyhow, I forget that I'm flirty. It's such a part of my personality that I'm not even aware of it*. Part of it, I think, is that I enjoy verbal wit, and flirting is an excellent arena for wittiness to come into play. Part of it is also my own self-conscious nature - if I can't woo a man with a swing of my vast hips, at least my brain is charming and attractive. Regardless of why, flirting is part of my nature.

It wasn't, however, part of my nature when I was an insanely insecure 17-year-old crazy about the arrogant hockey player in her English Lit class (clicking this link will take you to part 4, and you can start at the beginning from there.) My wit ran more to the aserbic bitch end of the spectrum. So I should have realized that André wouldn't know it was part of my nature. And considering the number of people I'm still in contact with from high school is a whopping 4, it's not like he could have known.


Enter Facebook and its new (and completely evil) chat function. One afternoon one of my girlfriends asks me for some info about mortgages and house-buying. She lives in Vancouver. André is a mortgage broker in Vancouver. I see that he's online. I message him, asking how to send her to him. He sends me his contact info. We chat a little, I promise to forward my friend (whose name, ironically is Andréa. I know. Weird) to him. End of interaction.

Or so I thought. He messaged me this morning, and let me know she hadn't contacted him yet.

Here is a transcript of our conversation:

A: I haven't heard from your friend yet, El

E: Oh. Want me to follow up for you? aside: I had a bunch of tupperware follow-ups to do, so it was one more email/phone call, not a biggie

A: That would be awesome!

E: Maybe I should have said 'not only can he get you a mortgage, he's SMOKIN' HAWT'

A: That's false advertising, El.

E: No it's not. You are smokin' hot.

A: You think I'm hot?

E: Always have, sweetie.

A: Really?

E: Really. For Reals.

A: I don't know what to say.

E: Thank you is a good start

A: Right. Thank you.

E: You're welcome. You have a nice bum too. At least, last time I saw it, it was.

A: See, now you're just torturing me.

E: How is stating fact torture?

A: Because you're there, and I'm here.

E: Huh?

A: I really want to see you, Ellybean.

E: We can always do coffee next time Beaker and I are in town. Why, yes, I am clueless.

A: I meant just seeing you, El.

E: Uh...

A: Ella, you have to know. You've been flirting with me as much as I've been flirting with you.

E: But... André, the whole meaning of flirting is that it's meaningless. I don't flirt with intention of follow-through.

A: So you've been leading me on?

E: Okay, I'm sorry if you think I've been leading you on. That's not the kind of person I am. But we haven't see each other since high school, sweetie. You couldn't have thought I'd want to hook up and cheat on my husband with someone I haven't seen in 15 years.

A: I feel like a complete ass.

E: Don't. It's my fault. I'm not really the same now as I was in high school. If this were us 15 years ago, you'd probably already have me willingly cornered near the zamboni. But I'm a happily married, semi-confident 30-something now.

A: It's not your fault.

E: Okay then. It's both our faults?

A: Sure. But you have to promise I have dibs on you if something happens with Beaker ;)

E: Oh honey, that's a promise I have no problems making. So long as you aren't a psychotic killer who's going to track him down and kill him now that I've said that.

A: No. Not a murderer. Just a lonely divorced guy hung up on the girl who should-have-been a long time ago.

E: Such a romantic. Does your fog coated memory of things that were have my butt smaller than it was in high school?

A: No. I loved your ass.

E: Oh please!

A: Really. I especially loved those ratty levi's you wore all the time.

E: Okay.... Uh... I should probably leave you with your fantasy of my much much smaller ass then - Punkin is just waking from her nap.

A: Sure. I should get back to work. I mean it though, El. I miss you.


I don't know whether to be bemused or amused. I do feel a little guilty, as I can see now that with him unaware of what I'm like now, that I was totally leading him on. Poor guy probably thought I was stuck alone in Hometown with an absentee husband, lonely and miserable and looking for a little action on the side. Oops.

Part of me is secretly thrilled that someone as cute as André would still be interested in me, considering. I thought Beaker was one-of-a-kind in the whole 'smitten with Ella's dimensional abnormality' thing, but apparently there's room in the fan club for a VP.





*for the record, I'm not a touchy feely flirt. I hate physical contact with strangers. I'm not even terribly 'huggy' with close friends, or family.

Ella Brown's Day Off

Um, she's sick. My best friend's sister's boyfriend's brother's girlfriend heard from this guy who knows this kid who's going with the girl who saw Ella pass out at 31 Flavors last night. I guess it's pretty serious.


Accomplished:

• Bought Punkin night clothing that she can't unsnap and strip off
• Got a birthday present for a wee birthday boy who is turning 1 on saturday
• Got Punkin a tubtoy she really didn't need, but had to have because DUDE! Castles!
• Missed Punkin so much I phoned to check up on her, and I made an excuse to go to my parents house to check in on her a couple hours later. She was sleeping.
• Attempted to make sugar cookies, but couldn't because the dough was so rock solid cold that I couldn't pry it out of the bowl
• Tidied the living room (gasp!), kitchen and dining room
• Showered and wore nice clothes out!
• Discovered that Ghirardelli (the chocolate people) make Chocolate Raspberry coffee!
• Picked up some of Punkin's bedroom mess
• Bought 3 trashy romance novels for some excellent therapeutic escapism
• Chatted up my Tupperware director about stuff - she has party leads and recruit leads for me! YAY!
• Practiced my Russian folk song for the bardic competition at the next medieval event I am attending

Not Accomplished:
• Laundry
• Scrubbing toilets
• Cleaning my room
• Putting away my clean laundry that's been piling up for 2 weeks now in the spare room
• Beating myself up about my bad parenting after 12pm today

All in all - my day off was perfect. I did only what appealed to me, and nothing more. Sure, the laundry is climbing up the wall in the spare room, and I didn't make my cookies for tomorrow night's show, but I'm relaxed, rested and feeling much much better about life in general. I no longer feel like the worst mom on the planet, and I no longer think I'm an idiot for wanting another baby.

And I really missed Punkin, so obviously she hadn't quite got on my last nerve yet. Maybe my next day off I'll go for a pedicure and haircut.



Thank you - each of you - who reassured me, and virtually held my hand today.

On Motherhood

Today I am on a 'day off' from Punkin. Which I desperately need.

So far, I've visited with my Mum while we waited for Punk to wake up from her nap. Then I visited with a friend who popped by the pick up a Tupperware catalog (and who is really struggling with her Pampered Chef business now that her first month is over).

Then I sat down and tried to think of what I wanted to accomplish today, and entered a couple of blog contests for free books.

I responded to some emails, including one inquiring after the state of my uterus:

"El -
You knocked up yet?"

"Sack-
Not sure"

"No wine tonight then?"

"Martini Cookies. See attached photo"



And now I'm thinking it's time I got into the shower and headed on my day of errands, most of which include doing something for Punkin.

Which leads me to my musings.

I've found the last few weeks exhausting and hard. Emotionally, I am at the end of my rope. I'm cranky all the time, and I'm not experiencing the joy I used to feel at being a Mom. I'm so tired. All the time. I've had a headache for over a month now, which I suspect is due to dehydration, so it's my own damn fault, but still.

Punkin is in this stage, which I'm not sure is normal, where she SMACKS all the time. She hit me hard enough yesterday twice that she knocked my glasses across the room. Both times I stumbled blindly into her room, deposited her in her bed, shut the door and walked away (and then crawled around looking for my glasses, because I am SO blind). Last week she did it, and without even thinking, I slapped her back. Not hard, but hard enough to scare her, and hard enough to break my heart.

While in the throes of despair and exhaustion, I complained to someone the other day about something she was doing that was making me insane. Said person's response?

"Why exactly do you want another one?" The disdain in her voice - I don't know if I imagined it, or if she was serious. There was an accusation there - whether she intended that accusation, or I was making it up, it was still there - I'm a terrible mother, why would I destroy a second child's life? I know that question is mine, and no one elses, but it makes me wonder.

Why do I want another child? Another child means no anti-depressants while I try to conceive. No anti-depressants while I am pregnant. And none while I'm nursing. Can I do this unmedicated? Am I stupid to think I can? It's a 2 year commitment to alternative therapies. Therapies that I know, from prior experience, only work for a while. 2 years of bad sleep, erratic emotions and comfort eating.

Am I crazy, on top of being depressed? Why do I think I can do this? If I need mini-breaks from my one child, is it not completely stupid to want a second to add to the mix?

I've always seen our family with 2 children. It's what Beaker and I dreamed about when we were first talking about marriage. Beaker is a great dad, and when I'm 'on', I'm a really good mom. I think we both have a lot to offer as parents, and we've made a nice family so far. But when I sink so low that I need a day off, I wonder if maybe it's stupid to want another. It took me a whole year after Punkin was born to consider getting pregnant again - my pregnancy with her was hellish. And now I know, without a shadow of a doubt, that I want another. But I'm having a hard time answering why.

*sigh*

Music Monday: The A Train

My Poppa was a musician. I don't know why I often forget this, maybe because he's my Mum's Dad, and my Dad's family seems to think they have the monopoly on musical talent in our family. But Poppa was a musician. He played accordion in a swing band in the late '30s, and he also played piano and organ. He preferred his old organ to his newer keyboard that he purchased shortly before he passed away when I was twelve, but either way, he was one hepcat.

The summer before he died, Poppa bought a new Yamaha keyboard. It had this weird playcard system, where you ran a magnetized card through the slot in the back and it played the song on the card. The idea was that it was going to revolutionize teaching keyboard to people who couldn't read music.

I remember Poppa ripping the plastic off his cards excitedly. He was one of those revoltingly talented 'play by ear' kind of people and was really looking forward to learning some new music, and maybe even learning to read music properly.

He slipped the playcard at the top of the stack through the mag-stripe and sat back. And his face went from eager excitement to rumpled disappointment.

"Well now, Ellybean. That's not a very good version of this song."

"No?"

"No. It should sound like this." His fingers danced across the keys and my heart swelled with pride and a little envy. Poppa was remarkable. And then he started singing. His voice was rough, as 50 plus years of smoking will do, but it was smooth, and strong, and most importantly, in tune.

I've been thinking about Poppa a lot this spring. I don't normally focus on him in the spring, but I think this year it's because I see so much of him in my own father (his son-in-law).

And so it just seemed fitting that this be my song today, as it was the last song I ever heard him sing, or play.




For other music monday participants, see Soccer Mom in Denial's blog

Slimdown Saturday: Meh

As Beaker and I are now actively trying to conceive, I am no longer attending Weight Watchers. We made this decision, together, for 2 reasons.

#1) I had gestational diabetes with Punkin. I will, in all likelihood, have it again with Future Fetus. I'd like to enjoy a little Kraft Dinner and Ice Cream in the meantime.

#2) As soon as I get pregnant (erm, discover I'm pregnant, I guess), I'm going to start carb counting and minding my sugars, which means no Kraft Dinner and Ice Cream.

So yeah. As a result? I haven't really wanted to eat any Kraft Dinner lately, although my sweet tooth is through the roof the last few days. I want meat and sweets. Which really? Means nothing because I'm usually like that before my period too, and I've given up trying to understand my body. Those of you who tried to conceive for months (and years) on end? I salute you. I am already feeling bummed, and this is month #2, and I don't even know if I am or am not pregnant yet.

Anyhow, I also lost a crapload of weight whilst pregnant with Punkin, which I'm looking forward to keeping off this time around (now I'll gain like crazy). I lost between 45 and 60 pounds, depending on whose scale you believed. I chose to believe my scale, which said 45. My doctor's said 60. I guess constant nausea will do that to you.



Anyhow, even though I've meandered away from WW for now, I do have this to offer, in my unending quest for a smaller bum:

I walked 2.2 kilometers today.

One of my friends just split with her husband, and bought a new house. It's on my side of town, and so this morning, it was gorgeous and warm, and I decided to go visit her. So I packed Punkin into her stroller, and off we went. Before we left, I dug out my good walking shoes, prayed that my hip wouldn't give out halfway up the hill of doom, and checked google maps to make sure I wasn't insane to consider walking to her place. 2.2 kilometers seemed a really long way for me, as I am lazy and out of shape. I also have bad knees and a weird foot and a hip that randomly pops out of alignment, causing me to fall and scream cuss words. (Yes, really, I have to body of a 90 year old. And I have had it since I was about 12. Minus the hip. The hip is a souvenir of Pocket Nurse at Punkin's birth).

So understandably, I was nervous about walking. But my hip was fine! I can handle anything my knees throw at me these days - I've had the knee problems for over 20 years now, so if I can't manage that pain there's something wrong with me - in 2 ways.

The big surprise was my left foot. I find it aches sometimes in the morning. I've always assumed it was a 'well, you're fat' issue. And I don't go to the doctor when I know the answer to my complaint is "well, if you lost some weight..." because DUDE. It doesn't come off overnight, and you need to treat it in the meantime. Oh, and you want to treat it with ibuprophen? Sure. Let's do that. And I won't bother wasting your time again because clearly this is my punishment for being a lardass, and I just need to cope. [/rant]

Anyhow, I've never seen a doctor about my left foot because I thought it was weight related. After today, I'm not so sure. About 3 houses down the street, the sharp pain in my arch that I get the instant I put anything other than Crocs on increased. By about .5 of a kilometer, my pinky and 'ring' toe were numb. Then my 'middle' toe, and 'pointing' toe went numb about halfway there. And then my big toe went numb. And then the pins and needles started. By the time I got to my friend's house, I was limping.

I described the pain to her and she smiled and nodded, and her nurse brain kicked into gear.

"Plantar fasciitis."

So I looked up the symptomology, and sure enough, that looks right - (one of the causes is being overweight) - I think I need to actually see the doctor and say "yeah, I know, lose weight....how do you expect me to do that with a foot that won't work?" (For the record, my doctor ROCKS, and has never told me to lose weight.)

Sometimes it sucks when all your friends and family are nurses. But I was talking to my MIL tonight (a retired nurse) and she agreed with my friend's suggestion. Apparently Plantar Fasciitis is really common in nurses. Despite the fact that I'm not working right now, I've have this problem for years, and it's always worse when I'm on my feet a lot. *grumble*

Anyhow, in spite of the pain, I walked today. I walked 2.2 kilometers. And when I succumbed to the urge to eat ice cream tonight, it was this kind:

Absolutely delicious, sweetened with splenda, and only 22 carbs. I'm in love.

Finding My Groove

One of my friends, who lurks in these parts, made a comment to me the other day with regards to this post.

She said, quite wisely, that there's more to being at home than making cookies. And I agreed, wholeheartedly (and I don't think she was disputing that I knew that, for the record).

But she also said something that put my heart at ease, and gave me a refreshed sense of perspective (particularly since I can't seem to make cookies without burning them anyhow).

"You are responsible for taking the child you were given and making her into an incredible person."

After the panic attack, and nausea, and heart failure abated, I realized how right she was. I have been given the responsibility to raise Punkin into a confident, thoughtful young woman. That's a huge responsibility, and it's not something I think I can do part-time. I know that in those times when I am working, I will be able to count on The Grandparents to help with making Punkin an amazing person (because I think Beaker and I are pretty decent people), but really, the burden of responsibility is ours, and because Beaker is often away, mostly mine. And that's a lot of responsibility.

And having that new perspective makes me completely unashamed of the path I am choosing. I would kill for Punkin. I would die for Punkin. So why should I be ashamed that I am choosing to stay home with her?

So thank you, Sara-who-needs-no-pseudonym. Thank you for sharing your experiences and perspectives as the mother of three amazing children with me. Your insights always prompt introspection in my life, and I am grateful that you share them with me so often. Because if there was ever a Mom I'd like to emulate, it is you.