Sweaty sunshine and random musings

Dear peeps and GSO'ians out there reading...

Sorry for all the Internet silence.

I miss you too.

The sun came out yesterday and again today. I think I understand why ancient people might have been afraid of the sun. It is so powerful and when you haven't seen it in like 36 days, it can really freak you out! Just kidding. But I don't think the seasonal depression is just going to silently wash away with the first drops of summer sweat or the faint heat of a minor sunburn.

Since I've written last, I had a birthday. No biggie. I'm still in my mid-30s and believe me, I cannot WAIT for the 1st season of Thirtysomthing to come out on DVD in September. I feel like if I can just watch that show NOW (as opposed to when I was addicted to it in my late teens and early 20s) it will unlock some true secrets of personal success and happiness.

This morning my car's odometer read 171717. And at that exact moment in time, the "trip mileage" (which I had just reset at the beginning of my work commute) read... wait for it...

17.7 miles!!! (I.shit.you.not!)

I don't know what this means, but despite how my desk at work looks, I love symmetry and order, and isn't that it's own reward?!? Not to be too pessimistic, but I'm sure that means the car will die soon.

Katy is pregnant.

For those of you that just fell off your chair, you need to read the GSO more often.

For those of you that are like, "yeah, we know that..." What I mean to imply with uncapturable inflection, is...

No.
For realz.
She. Really. Pregnant now...

She is waddling, belly out-to-here, swollen, all "don't-you-dare-touch-me-and think-that-type of-RELATIONS-is going-down-after the-word-cankle-came-out-your-mouth"...
She is adorable
and...
uncomfortable.

And I just try to walk the yellow line; expressing love and support, but not too much love or too much support, if you know what I mean; cause I don't want to be any more annoying than I have to be. With all my breathing and sleeping (right there in the bed and not even getting a leg cramp) and with my flip flops still fitting me and all... I mean she's got a point, that must get annoying!

IBO and husband and the baby (LABO) are doing really well. It is a relief and I will fully exhale in about 2.5 weeks when he is 36 weeks gestation. As an extra slap in the ass for them, A tornado touched down in their neighborhood and left a trail of destruction. Fortunately, (they are eternal optimists) they just went and slept at the hospital with their baby- since there was no power at their house.

I'm working on a newsletter. For those of you that are counting the missed months, Katy and I agree that JB is old enough for this to become a "quarterly" newsletter and not a "monthly" newsletter. So really, I have not even missed a deadline! He's done some super adorable things in these last few months, so stay tuned!!!

BONUS BELLY SHOT:

"My Morning view" 29 WEEKS:

Rain, rain, moldy brain

It has been raining, forecast rain, off and on raining, no end in sight soggy for weeks now. April showers brought May flowers and May monsoons and June deluges. I'm afraid I'm not weathering it very well. Pun intended.

Today was a day that I spent the better part of trying not to burst into tears.

My body is showing signs of break down. I've got some bad tendinitis. They call it tennis elbow, though I haven't had any tennis anywhere near my elbow in a few years at least. Bottom line, I'm in a lot of pain. I'm wincing every time I pick up my son, every time I forget and use my left hand to lift a glass of milk to my lips, every time I roll over in bed. It's pathetic, but it's impossible to rest or avoid and it hurts like a mo-fo.

My car is in the shop. It needs new brake pads and a break flush, and several belts and caps that will supposedly make the AC run again. Oh that's right, my AC shot it's wad in the middle of June. I'm one of those cheapskates who might drive around for a while on the highways with the windows down. But if it's going to RAIN EVERY SINGLE DAY!?!?! I can't expect people to understand if my kid is arriving at day care soak and wet...

Today started with JB taking a tumble on the stairs.

On my watch.

He likes to "walk" down now the stairs now, facing forward, holding on to the railing that is just barely within his reach. If he pays attention, he does really well; though he does look (in his quest for the banister) like a kid who's arm is being pulled straight up into the air by a parent who is trying to lift him our of a puddle with one hand. He did 5 stairs tolerating my constant pestering, "Pay attention, look at your feet..."

Then, as if he was sick of hearing all my advice, he turned around and crawled down backwards (he never does this). We were 3 stairs from the bottom, I took my eye off the ball, thinking we were home free, and he flipped around, trying to take the last few like the two-legged creature he is. I knew it was coming but could not react in time. I was in front of him and as he fell toward me, I locked my knees effectively bouncing him into the wall but preventing him from rolling past me. Before I could swing him up onto my impaired left forearm, he was wailing and the bruise and bump had already formed. Katy swears what she meant to say was, "What happened, is everyone alright?" But what came out of her mouth as she sprinted to the stairs was, "How did this happen???" I felt like shit about it the rest of the day. I know this child will have many more falls and bruises in his lifetime, but this one could have and should have been avoided. Mommy should'a been on point.

A few minutes after that drama, when JB's tears were dry but I wasn't sure if I might still need to cry about it, our doorbell rang. We scheduled an early AM appointment to price out refinishing our floors. The old dude arrived and clearly could not figure out what 2 women were doing in a home with one baby and no man in sight at 7:55 in the morning. He measured the rooms and took stock of the hard wood and just before he wrote out the quote, he tipped his head to JB, smiled, and nodded toward me, "Is that your grandma?"

blink.blink.blink.

I looked down at my breasts (saggier than they once were for sure but not too shabby in this high priced bra) and tried not to scream, "ARE YOU FUCKING KIDDING ME, OLD MAN?" It might not have been so bad if my birthday wasn't coming up, but I couldn't help thinking all day that the older you are, the younger other people usually look. This guy could have fathered Noah. I should have looked like Miley Cirus to him... But I guess where he comes from, if 2 ladies are living together, there must be a shared bloodline and generation separating them.

I spent much of the rest of the day running late and feeling anxious and wanting to run away and sleep (in the impersonal rental car that has temporarily taken the place of my crap-filled-forester).

I spent some of the day thinking about our house and what it means that we have not sold it yet. Why are we meant not to move before this baby will be born? Why has the amazing energy that we have experienced in this home not drawn some other family to it?

I spent some of the day thinking of racism and power and "otherness".

When I got to work at 1pm, i felt like I had been crying all day, even though I hadn't shed a tear.

Katy and I went to Ikea tonight to buy some furniture to set up a big boy bed for JB so that he won't feel misplaced by the bean v2.0. Twelve weeks and counting...

A few minutes ago, I went in and stroked the sweaty, bruised head of our son and for about the million and first time today, felt tears choking up inside of me. They were sort of love-drenched, sappy tears, but also sort of disparate, fear-filled, sad tears. How are we going to take our baby out of that crib?!?!? How am I going to keep him safe from all of the ways he can get wounded in this world?!? I know I can't, but how am I going to be able to stand there while it all happens to him? Doesn't adding another little boy to the mix just mean there will be more chances to cause inadvertent bruising??? Or not make the catch when they need me to???

My tears never fell. So they are just kind of stuck inside of me. Just kind of heavy and dank, and freaking me out. But it's okay I guess, there's enough water saturating the land right now to cause a tiny puddle in our basement... what we don't need right now, is more ground water...

In a family way

This morning, the alarm went off and Kt brought JB into our bed.
As has become an occasional routine, I scratched and tickled his limbs, his hands and feet, his head and back. If you tickle any part of his body that is one of a pair, he will hold the other one up after 30 to 60 seconds and say, "Other one". Back and forth. Back and forth.

Katy was on the other side of Jake, warm from the excessive mitosis. Her pregnancy has brought out a feverish state. Lately when her normally-ice-cold hands touch me, I startle with a flash of concern that we will die from swine flu. Then I remember BEANv2.0 and all the dividing and dividing and the dividing and the ATP that releases

Just because time is flying by...

I'm too tired at night to blog about all the things that I think about during the day.

But so much has happened in the world lately:

1. Sonia Sotomayor - nominated for to be justice of the SCOTUS
2. Prop 8 upheld by the California Supreme Court
3. The gays have taken to the streets as a result
4. Dick Cheney has taken to the airwaves (This guy hid in a secret location and wouldn't confirm or comment on even his own name for 8 years, now he seeks the spotlight like an Elvis impersonator in Vegas.)
5. Dr. George Tiller (a Kansas doctor that spent the better part of his adult life a target of violence; having been shot in both arms in 1993 and attacked when his clinic was bombed) was gunned down in his church last Sunday. He was one of only 3 abortion providers in the US who was trained and able to perform an abortion beyond 21 weeks gestation.
6. New Hampshire just joined Maine, Iowa, Vermont, Connecticut, and Massachusetts to become the 7th state to enact marriage equality for Gays and lesbians. (California was the 2nd, but the advancement was reversed when a slim majority passed proposition 8 last November, adding a constitutional amendment that defined "Marriage" as only between "one man and one woman".)
7. Miss California's 15 minutes of fame seems to finally be up.
8. Newsweek Magazine has totally fucked up its entire format and where it used to be my little weekly news candy, is now exceedingly distasteful to me, like a fungus that has grown on my big toe
9. Nine houses have sold in a 1.5 mile radius of our property in the last 4 weeks
10. Our house is not one of them.
11. Softball season has begun.
    

I have a lot of feelings about most of the above items. I would like to write a post on each; but I will likely not get to it (You're saved.)

I have a lot to write about how much JB and katy are changing. He with stronger language skills and a higher capacity for cognitive analysis of the world around him... She with the belly and "bean v2.0".

I will find the time to write about that, but not tonight.

I leave you with 3 of the funniest Internet snippets I have seen in a while.

One about a slippery slope:



And one about understanding the religious history that has brought us to the place where that slippery slope is a constant fear for some in our society.



And one is for geeks everywhere:



Think about it!