type, fingers, type

Because I can't be bothered with creativity today, I'm going to omit any sort of witty intro to this post and just admit that I had to steal my motivation from my sister-in-law's blog to muster enough gumption to try a post today.

Am I a Beautiful Babe today? Hardly.
I'm sure if I were Angelina Jolie in a $300 flowing summer dress and eighty dollars worth of glowing moisturizer on my cheeks and lips, I'd be tooting a different horn.

The reality of it is that I own three pairs of pants that fit me right now and they all include an ungodly amount of elastic around the waistband. Seriously, my five year old daughter looked at the adjustable elastic belt in my pants and said, "Those are just like mine. For growing."

Well played, young padawan. Well played.

My moisturizer, although tried and true, costs four-fifty a bottle. I apply whatever chapstick, lipbalm, gloss, or sticky stuff in a tube I can find by digging and scraping at the bottom of my purse while I'm driving the little girl to school and voila, I have the au naturale look every Calvin Klein model is sporting on the runway these days. (he still designs clothes, right?)

Don't bother wasting your breath on the "pregnancy glow" crap. I don't have it. I have hair that hasn't seen a drier in weeks and I can hear the cries of neglect from my mascara and eyeliner every time I pass by my makeup bag. If I'm glowing, it's the caffeine.

Which leads me to the second question...Am I a Healthy Her? Well. I walk to the mailbox when I forget to toss the mail key in my purse on the way out the door. I walk to the bench at the playground. And I bend down a hundred times a day to pick up the stuff I drop. Which is pretty much everything.

I drink one to two caffeine drinks a day, but I've cut down considerably and your judgements don't phase me. (Did you know a half-caf latte has less caffeine than a regular cup of coffee?) And I have switched from skim milk to 2% in my lattes. Along with caffeine, I've cut down on my alcohol intake. See, I do care. I only drink one beer a night or a glass of wine every other day instead of my usual two-margarita minimum. (Just kidding, people. I won't even be popping the cork on our vintage bottle of Dom for our anniversary next month.) I'm running on a natural high these days (and the lattes)...

So, am I the Queen of the World? Yes. I may be tipping the scales and exercising my right to be ugly in public, but I'm having a baby in a few short months. And although seventy-five percent of my current wardrobe is a spandex blend, my husband comes home from work every day and picks up the stuff I dropped and didn't have the energy to bend over and get. He's happy to stir the stuff in the pan, so I can take the umpteenth pee of the day without risking a culinary catastrophe and he can tell just by looking at me that I would feel so much better if he wrapped his arms around me and kissed me on the head at any given moment.

I'm pregnant. I'm not perfect. But I am, in the simplest words, a happy person. And I'll take that and hope for at least the same for the future. For now, I'll take the good days with the "eh" days and if I have to start looking thirty... so. be. it. It's the new twenty, right?

Tuh-day.

7:30 am - Cover head with pillow while the Mr. showers and gets ready for work. Sleeping in today while the ladybug's dad brings her to school. Sweet.

8:40 am- Emerge from pillow cave to kiss Mr. adios and let the little dog back under the covers.

8:40- 10:30 am- pretend to sleep since actual sleep is out of the question.

10:35am- bagel with cream cheese and hard boiled egg with salt. skip the olive "sprinkles" on the bagel just in case it all doesn't stay down. it's not worth the effort of chopping the olives if i'm just going to flush 'em in ten minutes anyway, right?

11:00am- weigh myself (!) , shower, gag over the toilet/brush teeth, maternity pants it up and pink striped tank top feels me sassy. a little makeup and i'm a pretty hot pregnant chick. not too bad.

11:45am- Convince ladybug that lunch will be more exciting than five more minutes on the school playground.

11:46am- Think of something "fun" for lunch.

12:00 noon- Settle for tacos and a cheese quesadilla from Tijuana Flats and play up the temporary tatoo that comes with the kid's meal...oooh funnnn.

1:00pm- Wander around Target trying to remember what was on the list left on the counter at home. Contents of cart: lint shaver, birthday card, dvd, christmas gift for aunt j, and some brownie doo-dads for tomorrow's dance christmas party.

1:15pm- Peel myself up off the floor at the register...$107? Was my lint shaver made of gold??

2:00-3:30pm- Decorate Christmas tree, hang stockings from Ikea shelf, clean mystery goo from certain ornaments, spend wayy too long "shaving" the tree skirt.

3:30pm- Snack time. Use two for you, five for me technique for serving peanutbutter sandwich crackers. I'm bigger, that's why.

4:00pm- Check email, facebook, myspace, friends' blogs...realize people actually come to this blog every now and then.

4:15pm- Stare at blank blog post page waiting for inspiration.

4:18pm- Cadence flings pink paint into my hair and on the computer screen from her all too close easel.

4:19pm- Move easel two feet from desk. Leave paint in hair. I need an updated look anyway.

present time: Feeling sorry for anyone who read this far. I promise next post will be more creative.

Setting Records

If being pregnant is cool, consider me Miles Davis. Never mind the fact that my electric toothbrush makes me gag and I actually had a whole ten minutes of sleep between trips to the bathroom to pee last night. My nipples feel like chewed-up bubble gum and all of my bras give me what my friends and I are referring to as "quad-boob". (That's extra boob popping out of the bra that holds the normal boob.)

I did set a record last night at work for most-food-eaten-during-one-shift. Adam marveled at my two pound Pita Pit delight.
Adam: Did you tell them you were pregnant or something?
Me: No, now give me some elbow room this isn't gonna be pretty.

Pita was at 8. Sabrett's Sausage with extra mustard was at ten. Adam was nice enough to go to the corner and get it for me so I didn't look like a porker to all three of the people sitting at the bar. Pretty girls don't eat sausages AND pitas.

I felt full. Satisfied, more like it. What the hell, I felt good. Especially after unsnapping my jeans. So why did I agree to a slice of cheese pizza at one a.m? Because I'm pregnant! And food is delicious. And I can eat pizza, pita, AND sausages if I want to!

Don't judge me lest ye be judged. And so on.

peace and sausage grease,
Mrs. G

Don't Judge Me or My Condiments

I only eat chicken nuggets because it's faux-pas to eat ranch dressing with a spoon. This fact applies to most things I dip. French fries and onion rings are mere vessels for the ketchup/hot sauce/honey mustard. I can't lie. Even crackers and chips would be horrified to know their only purpose is to get hummus and onion dip into my face.

I am not proud of myself. Not at all.

Dog-interrupted.

Or, My Newfound Respect for Dog Groomers
by Stephanie Gresham

It happened the other day. I'm not sure which one, because I am usually unaware of these sorts of things until they jump up and smack me in the face. Let's say I found out about it on Thursday because I like that Thursday is represented with an R on tiny calendars.
We are broke. As in, property taxes went through the roof and I still haven't had a bite on Careerbuilder.com. As in, my husband and in-laws got a giggle out of the idea that I may need to mow George-the neighbor's lawn for some extra cash while he's out truckin' this month. As in, yeah and why don't I do it in a bikini and set out a tip-jar on the curb while I'm at it?

Our household is now undergoing a major budget overhaul these days, which means I no longer get the luxury of having my own cell phone. (Apparently, it's just not a necessity to make phone calls these days when driving in the car or waiting in line at the market.) ((I am saying market instead of grocery store lately. Starting now.))

One way in which I've decided we can cut costs is by grooming the ol'dog ourselves. Ourselves really means myself, since I don't have a day-job. A fact that slipped my mind when I made the suggestion.

Today I drank coffee and then I took on the seemingly simple task of shaving off the excess fuzz from our ol'dog, Chope.

Because I'm an astoundingly intelligent and crafty gal, used the garden tub in the master bathroom for the job. The object was to contain the hair until the shaving was finished so it would be easier to trash and then wash the dumb dog. What I didn't expect was that my dog was carrying a whole other dog's worth of hair on herself. I had two for one this entire time and just wasn't aware of it. Now, if you don't have your own Chope, and I'm fairly confident you don't, you aren't aware of the flexibility and super maneuvering capacity that a Chope of age 77+ maintains in their golden dog-years.

There may be hair on the ceiling.

Side note: If you're one of my family members or if you were around the campus of Harvard at all during the graduation of the Business School during the summer of 2007, you know that my clipper expertise is not umm... marvellous. Please don't ask my husband. I'm pretty sure he's still mad about the back of his head looking, well, ridiculous that summer.

Any. Way.

Five minutes into the haircut and I had a new respect for professional dog groomers.
Twenty minutes into it, my hand was numb.
Forty minutes and Chope waded ankle-deep* in salt & pepper fur while my face and arms itched uncontrollably.
One hour and ten minutes later she was washed, dried, and looked slightly more fashionable than the ugliest pair of sneakers I own. If bald patches alternating with poofy gray fountains of hair is haute couture, she's in.

Chope has two modes. Sleeping and being awake while laying down at the same time. There's not a whole lot of standing, sitting, or walking on her afternoon agenda. And there's absolutely no running. Shaving her back was easier and shaving her stomach was impossible. Her elbows are poofy and I couldn't get the right angle near her itchy spots. Those places are bald now. Easier to itch, I told her. She licked the air in front of her nose and I'm just happy we don't have any mirrors hanging down low. The last thing I need is an ancient dog with self-image issues moping around my house.

Two out of three is bad enough.

Saving money is hard work. Where's my bikini?

stepping on top of the dog-

that’s not good taking care, I tell them
you yelling at me that way.

and the laughs they do make me madder
I huff and puff my chest up
arms crossed tightly

if I wouldn’t get into trouble for slamming my door
I would do it,
I would do it.

nobody even LIKES me!
I say it loud
the door won’t keep in my feelings.
I want them to know my heart hurts
my bones don’t keep out invisible monster-words.

I stomp a pile of crayons on the floor
then gather them up into their box
so nobody sees the broken pieces.

quietly I sit criss-cross
i’m sorry.
someone will come soon.
when they scoop me up and bring a tissue,
Now that
is good taking care.

I was on the back porch yesterday trying my best to stay out of the way of the man installing our new alarm system. The bells and whistles put my pets in a panic. So. To. Speak. The prickly straw of the hand-me-down chair I parked my rear upon poked inside me a memory of childhood.
I thought about the back door parlors of my past and how, for a Florida-born gal, they became the most important room in the house.
Particularly, the house on Third Street. It's three thousand square feet were sprawling, but the claim to fame was not in it's interior. The Third Street house boasted a large cement slab painted teal and was walled-in up to the waist on three sides with just a narrow void for escaping into the back yard. It's where my birthday party pinatas we're brutally ambushed by squealing friends whose names I can't remember and where my mother and step father retreated nightly to drink beers from cans and call each other names.
All the marathon Saturday morning garage-sale gems ended up here. A chalkboard fit for a schoolteacher's child, a tiny desk for official kid-business, and a pair of white high-top roller-skates with red wheels and Strawberry Shortcake posing preciously on the side came to mind. The chalkboard was green. Or black. I wish I could remember.
Across the deep-smelling canal was "the field". It's purpose was, of course, to grow weeds. And to be the final resting place for a summer's worth of white sand. A gift from my step-dad. A kid's dream in the shape of a mountain. A month's worth of ringworm.
In adulthood I have not grown graceful, but childhood summers were scab-filled and fantastic. Tiny badges of fearless adventure. Each bicycle wreck was a triumph, although a deluge of tears were it's right of passage. And that teal slab and it's roof were a haven to the bumped-heads and bruised shins of myself and my cohorts. A pristine Popcicle palace.
On my present porch I had hopes for my family. My dogs grinned sopping smiles on the shady concrete slab. I imagined it will live up to the the place that resonates in my own memories. It's few potted plants and the rusty barbecue grill may not be what my dreams are made of, but the future is a sweaty surprise. The breezes out here, temporary and frequent, are the beginning of a timeless love-affair with summer. I just know it.