Sunday, October 31, 2010

Blunt Squash Trauma. With Charlie Brown.

Wendy and I were on our own for Saturday fun yesterday, and rather than sit around and stare at each other with our thumbs up our bums, I thought it would be a good time to pumpkin it up.

We fired up "It's the Great Pumpkin, Charlie Brown" on TiVo, munched on some pumpkin bread, and dug in. There were pumpkin guts...



...with absolute disgust over looking at pumpkin guts and the guts all over my hands and the suggestion that she touch the guts as well. Good. Grief.

Her trepidation may or may not have something to do with how I dramatically scooped the guts from the cavity and brandished them at her, going Boogity-Boogity-Blahrgh. (PS: what fun are kids if you can't traumatize them good now and then?)




With much coaxing, she ventured in with a big spoon that allowed her to scoop up to three seeds at a time whilst not making actual skin-to-revolting-pumpkin-flesh contact. Thanks for the help, kiddo.



After a great deal of discussion and sketching, we (I) carved them up. I opted for a moon-and-stars lantern, and Wendy went with a "happy but scary face with teeth and mad eyebrows."

Self-portrait in pumpkin, by Wendy:




We don't have newspapers in our house for under the pumpkin mess. I did find that this was a great use for the random Victoria's Secret catalogues that are hanging around. You know, besides lamenting my fading youth and hotness, and expanding Preginstein anatomy that no longer fits neatly into ANY Vickie's bra sizes.

After carving up the pumpkins, we lit them up in the darkest, scariest room in the house: the laundry room.


Then we toasted pumpkin seeds, ate dinner featuring baked pumpkin (enjoyed only by me), and watched Kiki's Delivery Service. Fun was had by all.

Happy Halloween!

Wednesday, October 27, 2010

All the Better To-

For the past few years, Carl and I have had this conversation:

"What are we going to be?"
"I don't know. Are we going to parties?"
"Yeah. I want to. Do you want to? What Are We Going To Be?"
"Aren't we supposed to be smart people? Who are at times funny? And smart?"
"No, the baby ate that. So what are we going to be?"

There is added pressure this year, because how often do you get to be a giant preggo in a costume? Really. But, true to our procrastinating form, we left it til the last minute. Saturday morning, about eight hours before there was a party to go to, I decided to pick a lane and go with it.

Behold, our whipped-together semi-lame, semi-amusing Halloween:


I can't decide what amused me more; the perpetual pained look on the wolf's face, or the basket full of condom treats. These are better pictured here:



(Hey there Little Red Riding Hood, you sure are lookin good...you're everything that a big bad wolf would want...to impregnate....ahooooo!)

Monday, October 18, 2010

I Want to Believe. Don't Ruin My Illusion.

Dear Past Self,

When you see that I have done the thing I said I would not do, try not to be a jerk about it. I know you won't believe me, but it's going to be okay. It's a different time, a different place. It's hard to wrap your head around it, but it is not, in fact, a horrible idea to own not one, but four pairs of leggings, one of them being purple.

Seriously, though.

When you are an already fashion-challenged and now awkwardly lumpy pregnant chick, THIS:



...will look pretty damn cute to you.

Plus, you get to wear all of the long sweaters that you already own...AND the rad boots that Steph brought you many moons ago, and they look freakin awesome. (Rad? Oh god. It's like I've reverted to my 80's childhood. Like, dude. Somebody club me with a tiny Olsen twin. Like, totally.)

Let's stick with cute. Not pregnant girl in overalls and pigtails cute-but actually cute...well, as close to cute as you can get right now.

You will wear leggings because you can buy them for $8 at Old Navy, instead of buying $45 maternity jeans. You will also curse yourself out for not owning a full-length mirror, then get a charlie horse trying to get a picture of your cute boots, then get your leg stuck in the sink about four feet higher than someone of your configuration should really hoist one's leg...and then you will curse some more.

Don't hate. Buy a full-length mirror. Just do it.

Love,
Future Self

Wednesday, October 13, 2010

Public Service Announcement. For You.

(If you have or plan to ever have a kid younger than two.)

You know what was fun about the glucose tolerance test yesterday? No, not the needle-wielding crazy nurse who seemed nice, but then jabbed me so hard my WHOLE ARM STILL IS FALLING OFF...no. Not her. Although, she was super.

Fun yesterday was being trapped in the lobby of the hospital lab area for an hour with a stack of Fancy Nancy books, a water cooler, and a three year-old. Plus several older folks tottering in and out, judging my parenting. Now that I think about it, those old folks were probably waiting for me to haul off and whack the tantrum out of her, rather than silently daring me to do so, so they can go ahead and call social services.

These are the peeps that will totally condone going old-school on a kid intent on peeling everybody's face off with her shrieks of fury. (You see, I wouldn't let her get another Dixie cup full of water to spit at the window. Because I don't want anyone to have any fun ever.)

Instead of avoiding eye contact with the nice grandmotherly lady with the giant floral handbag, I should have turned to her and said, "Edna, would you like to handle this one?" And then Edna would have called her pals Flo and Helen for back-up, and they all would have opened up a can of whup.

Here is the announcement part. This is like how no one wants to tell you about how you might pee or worse on your doctor while you deliver your baby. Or the hemorrhoids during/after pregnancy. Or the fact that babies are only, like, 15% fun, and the other 85% consists of boring and jerk. But there is something else you should know.

The idea of the "Terrible Twos" is a sick joke played on new parents by moms and dads of three and four year-olds. Whoever first said "terrible twos" said it sarcastically to a wide-eyed mom of a two year-old who was mischievously chasing the cat around, as this sarcastic person's own four year-old dressed the cat in a Rocky Horror getup and then set it on fire. And then ate it. While laughing maniacally over the sleeping forms of her once-innocent parents.

Later, when that mischievious two year-old turned three, then four, then feral, the mom got the joke. HA EFF-BALLS HA. She felt that her life was now harrowing and dismantled enough that she was justified in passing this joke on to moms of younger kids.

Your kid is two?? Oh, yeah, that can be the pits. Tsk. Tsk. Just terrible.

Tuesday, October 12, 2010

How to Fail Labs and Impress People

I have a glucose tolerance test in about an hour. What do you want to bet that I'm gonna fail it? I'll bet you ten dollars.

They tell you "don't fast or deprive yourself, but don't eat sugary things or a lot of carbs before this test." Then they give you a sugary soda-drink, and test your blood an hour later...and if you fail, they tell you you have gestational diabetes and an 17-pound baby is going to come ripping out of your delicate lady parts in a few months if you don't DO SOMETHING NOW FOR THE LOVE OF GOD!

I had mashed potatoes for dinner, with apple cider and a glass of 7-up, and Honey Bunches of Oats for breakfast with about half a cup of coffee this morning before I remembered what I was doing today and what I was not supposed to ingest.

Balls. Great, sugar-coated balls.

SO...I'll let you know.

Tuesday, October 05, 2010

Only Partially Regarding Potatoes

October at my house means three things this year.

1. I lose my mind and make thirty thousand pirate outfits for kids and hawk them online like a twitchy artist guy hawking five dollar t-shirts outside a Britney Spears impersonator contest. This is what happens to interesting, creative people who used to have their shit together, and have been totally side-tracked by things. Like meth. Or stripper girlfriends. Or families.

(You get that I'm the one with the family, and the artist guy is with the meth and the strippers, right? Cause that's what I meant.)

This also means that I harass my kid into modeling pirate outfits until she runs shrieking from me whenever I come at her with a handful of eye patches and stripy fabric. Note the complete and utter boredom-tude. Surely Top Model material. Is she smizing? Or just rolling her eyes? I can't tell, Tyra.

2. In PA, it rains a lot in October. And then the spiders come. They come up from the basement, through the cracks in the floor. They sneak in around the leaky old door jambs and invade the windows from which we (still) haven't moved the air conditioners. They come seeking warmth, fleeing their lairs in the sodden earth. Giant, land-roving wolf spiders with furry bodies and fangs. From beneath you, they devour.
EEEE! EEEEE! EEEEE!

A week or two ago (probably more like a month), I dumped our four buckets of blocks into the tub in our laundry room to give them a good soak in bleach. Then I procrastinated about getting them out to dry, because that seemed like it would be a pain in the ass.

The other day, I noticed this fella just chillin in there. I have explained to Wendy that demon spiders have now crawled up through the drain and infested her blocks, and sadly, we can't play with them until Spring banishes them back to whatever hell they came from. She totally understands.

She is also probably totally scarred for life.

Like when my mom thought it would be cool to show Alien to my sister and I when we were like, ten and seven, and we spent the rest of our lives in absolute certainty that tentacles were going to unfurl themselves from the back of any toilet we ever encountered.

Look at this thing. He totally took out that block dude and ate his face off. Come to my house, and he'll eat your face off, too.

3. I am now 26 weeks pregnant.

On me, 26 weeks pregnant looks like this---->

Apologies for the dark picture. Also, for the goofball look on my face. You don't need to see that.

This pregnant, for those of you who don't know, means spending all night having to pee every hour, while being smothered in your sleep by the weight of your baby pressing up against your diaphragm. Fun stuff. Happily, it also means that you have crossed the line from "no-sure-if-that's-your-beergut" pregnant, to "oh-don't-you-look-cute" pregnant. This is a good thing. Look forward to next month, when I am tired of being cute, and wish people would stop touching/talking to/looking at my lumpy potato body.

For right now, I'm cool with it. I'm less potato, and more lush and fertile fields. Full of potatoes. I think I need to throw a baked potato into the oven. Yeah, that would be freakin good.
TO POTATOES!