cardboard is evil

I hate cardboard because periodically it manages to give me crazy-deep paper cuts. Right on the tip of my finger. Where anything I touch will cause it to burn like fire. Curse you, evil hot chocolate mix box. CURSE YOU!

don't stand so close to me

Recently I'm eating lunch at Taco Bell aka Toxic Belch aka I-Wanna-Get-Explosive-Diarrhea-Immediately. I am attempting to pay the dim-witted girl who has just half-heartedly taken my order when 2 teenage boys saunter/slouch into the place. One of whom proceeds to approach the counter and stands SHOULDER TO SHOULDER with me. First of all, a lot of times I don't want my own family to touch me. Second, why is this AXE-saturated degenerate feeling comfortable/confident enough to saunter over to a 35 year old stay at home mom and rub elbows with her? I immediately poke my unexfoliated elbows in his direction and make unfriendly old person noises. This doesn't make a dent and I am forced to verbalize my displeasure, "Hey, Kid! Watch where you're standing!" I've never sounded so old.

pool frog

This slimy thing has been frequenting our pool hole. Trust me. He is fat and disgusting, and I'm fairly positive he leaves some sort of wretched residue in his froggy wake. Go away, gross froggy. Go away!

midwest extravaganza

Much of our time in Madison, WI was spent this way. See me in the background on the couch? That's about as exciting as it got. We did venture outside for a short while to jump rope with a TELEPHONE cord... Saying goodbye and heading to ChiTown The Windy City Minutes after the ceremony

good news

Got the genetic all clear from the Dr. the other day! Way to go Squishy of the Thin Neck Skin!

squishy makes an appearance

Here is the latest pic of Squishy. S/he is lazing away comfortably in utero. This was taken last week during an extensive exam I like to call "You're-Probably-Too-Old-To-Have-A-Baby-But-Somehow-You've-Gotten-Yourself-Preggers-So-We've-Got-To-Check-It-For-Genetic-Freakiness". I have yet to receive the thumbs up or down as to my newest offspring's genetic normality(or lack thereof), but the Tech performing the exam was quite excited by the thinness of Squishy's neck skin.

Maybe it's just because I'm the Mom, but I fancy I can make out a little nose and some more of the trademark Harris lips.

i shall call you squishy

It's officially real. Today we heard the baby's heartbeat. There were a few freaky moments before that fuzzy "wah, wah, wah" resounded over the speaker when it was hiding from us, and I was having all those fatalistic thoughts I'm prone to have. But suddenly it was there. Nice and strong and fast. I let out a sigh of relief and greeted my new squishy.

activi-yuck

The most recent commercial for Dannon's new poop yogurt kind of freaks me out. Have you seen this thing? It's the one were the two women are hanging out by the pool. The peppy one asks the clearly stopped up one, "Hey! You gettin' in?" The other responds basically with "No thanks, I haven't pooped in weeks; I can't swim." Okay. I talk about poop and pooping a lot. I have friends and family that love the topic equally as much. All this poop discussion has never led to a situation where someone is NOT getting in the pool because they have an over due b.m. Aunt Flo visiting? Yes. Explosive diarrhea? Check. Projectile vomiting? No brainer. But Can't Poop Syndrome? No. Never. Not once. Every time I see the ad it freaks me out a little more. Who is this product's target audience? Should I not be submerging myself in bodies of water every time I experience some intestinal transit slowness?

new diet plan

I have stumbled upon the best diet on earth. It's called The First Trimester Pregnancy Diet. It's super easy. All you've got to do is get impregnated. That where your work ends. There's no calorie counting, portion control, nada. About 4 weeks into it, your diet plan kicks in. You will no longer be able to consume dairy, most meats, sugar or just about anything else depending upon the day without violent vomiting and yes, even sometimes, diarrhea. It's truly amazing. Granted you will have to cope with almost constant nausea, but it's completely worth the 10 plus pounds you're likely to drop in a flash. And get this people, it happens with absolutely NO physical exercise. More than likely, you'll be required to increase your sitting on your ass and nap time exponentially because you'll have NO energy to do anything else. The downside, of course, is the fact that as you move out of your 1st trimester your urge to purge will be greatly reduced, and you'll most likely gain 25 to 50 lbs. Oh. That and the fact that your ob really frowns upon losing weight while pregnant and will even threaten to hospitalize you if you can't get it together.

bad mommy

The girls started a new year on Monday. Can you say, Thank the freakin' Lord? I did. Trust me. I took not one photo to document the girls' new adventure. I meant to. I thought about it the night before. I remember thinking about it as I was driving away from the school after having walked them to their line ups. I whole heartedly meant to take pics after school. I forgot about that too. Okay. So I'd just fib a little and pretend like today was the day and snap their smiley faces. I didn't happen. Bad Mommy.

joys of pregnancy: #1

Being in your first trimester, constipation is a pretty typical condition. It's one of those things you tend to forget about once you're out of the situation. But then you're in it again, and you're like, "WTF. How could I have forgotten this?" Part of life's plan, I think. To make you forget those little unpleasantries so you'll foolishly decide to do it again. Procreate, I mean.

It's totally common for me to go 3 go 5 days without pooping. I try not to dwell on my lack of bowl movements. It's just the way things are when you're pregnant. No big deal. It's just that when I do finally poop, it's kind of horrifying. Horrifying in that it's the color of creamed spinach, and it's taken 3 to 5 days to exit my system.

toilet shoe

See that little piece of floor, right there between the grimey bowl and the steel divider thingy? That's where my flipper became wedged in the Target bathroom the other day.

How in the world could that happen? I don't know about you, but I can't remember the last time I used my hand to flush a public toilet. Besides, it's a public metal. I'm not touching that.

So that is how I found myself, shoeless, struggling to unwedge my flipper out from under that public cesspool of germitude, slightly nauseous, balancing on my one stumpy leg, while trying to touch as little as possible.

Thankfully I was successful in my rescue of my foot gear. And yes, I did put it in the washer when I arrived home.

guess who's coming to dinner...in february

I'll cut to the chase and just type it. I'm pregnant. I can already hear the gasps in both surprise and ill-concealed disgust. I'm sure people have questions. Here are some answers.

Inquiring Minds: This pregnancy... was it planned or a surprise? Me: Freakishly enough it was planned. I even willingly made the appointment to have my iud removed. Even better? I tracked my periods and recorded my basal temp for 4 months! How's that for attention span? IM: Aren't 2 enough!?!? Me: Apparently not. IM: Okay. Forget about overpopulating the Earth, what about your age? Aren't you close to 50 already? Me: I'll have you know I'm just as close to 20 as I am to 50. Okay. Maybe that's not true since I'm on the downhill side of 35. But still, celebrities have babies at their advanced ages every day (okay, so not the Spears but didn't Halle Berry have a baby recently?). IM: What are you thinking? You were completely in the clear. Both in school, no diapers, everybody wipes their own ass. WTF?!? Me: I'd been getting so much undisturbed sleep since moving to Tucson, I figured I needed to inject some excitment into our lives. IM: Can you afford this? Me: Theoretically, no. Realistically, sure. It'll be fabulous. And no MJ, we won't have to sell the house or borrow cashola from you. IM: Is this Mitchell's last ditch effort for a boy? Me: Perhaps. As usual, he hasn't been super-specific about the brand of baby he'd like. He just seems happy that I agreed to a third. IM: Not that you don't deserve whatever comes your way since you got yourself into this, but how're you feeling? Me: Awesome! Similar to T's first trimester, I'm desperately ill. In a typical day, I'll puke 8 to 12 times. I have a headache most days and want to sleep constantly. The girls, of course, have other plans... IM: Hey yeah, what about the girls? How do they feel about this? Me: They are ridiculously excited. They're constantly trying to feed me and bring me drinks and kissing my stomach. DeeDee's especially thrilled to take a turn as a big sister. T's planning to babysit.

vomitous

The following items made me want to puke today:

• waking up
• cinnamon life and milk
• the smell of Mitchell's cologne
• DeeDee hopping all over the bed
• Italian wedding soup
• the smell of popcorn
• Mitchell making coffee
• iceberg lettuce & cucumbers
• standing up
• laying down
• sitting

sloth

I know I'm a lazy bum when I'm laying in bed starving. stomach audibly growling but suffering through it because I simply cannot face hauling my butt off the bed, down the stairs and into the kitchen to try to figure out food that would make the grumblies go away. Meh.

toilet terrorist

It goes without saying that cleaning the toilet's the worst. There are few things that beat its germ-ridden disgustingness. But it's that much more horrifying when a urine bandit lives amongst you. You know this villain, it's the mysterious anti-hero who's super powers include getting urine ALL OVER the toilet. Everywhere.

Like up on the rim under the seat itself. On the underside of the seat. On that back part where the seat screws into the bowl. Down the sides of the bowl where the toilet connects to the floor. Even, miraculously, horrifyingly on the f'ing wall next to the toilet.

I used to think my husband was the pee bandit. Now I'm not so sure. Granted, he's got the equipment that would best lend itself to the bandit's trademark leavings.... But now that we're living with a larger number of toilets at our disposable, I'm thinking Superdoodle's the culprit. Her bathroom terrorism has been known to reach epic proportions.

At times she can even get poop on the toilet's rim. Yes. Poop. I don't know how she does it. Just that she does, and it freaks me out. Her butt's so little and that opening is so open. It's come to the point that I've had to hold toilet lectures a la my father circa 1986, complete with wiping re-training and apparatus mount and dismount techniques.

So far, it's not working.

hold up

Don't you hate it sometimes when you get what you want, and then you're like, Oh wait, did I really want that?

reasons i hate summer tv programming

• American Gladiators: Really? Does the world really need this? I didn't like this show when it was on in the 80s. Additionally, I resent the fact that the show's promos capitalize on pseudo patriotism, like your a bad American if you hate these 'roided out freaks and the wussies who challenge them.


• TV's Most Outrageous Moments: First of all, I take issue with NBC running back to back episodes. Second, what's with the "INSTANT REPLAYS" for every, SINGLE freakin' clip. GAWD! In watching the show for 4 minutes I realized that the creators don't actually understand what the word "outrageous" means. In actuality, it should be entitled TV's Most Staged Moments. Boo.


• The Moment of Truth: I have nothing really to say about this show because I've never seen it, but that has to tell you something about how crappy this show actually is because I will watch anything. TV whore, remember?


• NBA Playoffs and/or Finals: Sports on tv sucks. They should only be allowed to air games on special sports related channels, such as ESPN or ESPN2 or whatever.

already

The girls have been home less than an hour and already T has had fit and stormed upstairs, shrieking and squawking, D has reverted back to baby talk and I am missing my quiet house.

yikes

Mitchell's face looks a LOT like this guy's today (minus the gauged ears and whiteness and non-receding hairline). He can barely open his mouth. When I asked him how he felt, he said, "Fine" through clenched teeth. When I asked him if he wanted some prescription grade ibuprofen, he refused (duh, why'd I even ask?). When I asked him if he had a dental appointment, he just looked at me with that dull, dead-eyed shark look he gets when I ask him a question he's not ever going to answer.

Anyone wanna take bets on how long it takes him to get to a dentist? I'm counting on at least a week, probably more like 2.