Everything in Care Bear Terms
It was inevitable. Despite all the well-meaning people (thank you!) who showed up with coloring books, sticker books, learning books, activities and books in general, Sassy has become quite addicted to the TV during her three weeks of hanging out in a full leg cast. More specifically, she is addicted to our Wii system and the Netflix that comes along with it.
The sticker books are filled. The activities are all completed, and the coloring books are mostly finished too. Finished also? My brain cells, which have been so overly subjected to Wii Party music that sometimes it’s all I hear, even when it’s not on. There’s also this song from her favorite Care Bear movie that she plays over and over again, that goes something like this, “I like you, I like you. I like you. I like you.” It’s enough to make you bang your head into a wall until you thankfully lose consciousness.
This week, Mr. BBM had a very untimely business trip to Raleigh NC. I told him that he was probably looking forward to getting away from us. He protested. “Of course not!” I mean, why would he want to get away from his 5-year old daughter who has to be carried everywhere, including to and from the bathroom? Why would he want to leave this house where every smell sends me running to the bathroom and I can’t even cook because the smells of cooking and looking at certain foods, send me nearly over the barfing edge.
“You’ve got to be kidding me!” I told him. “You mean to tell me that you’re getting a week away from ‘Hop-a-Long’ and ‘Pukes-a-lot’ and you’re not happy about it???”
Mr. BBM laughed hysterically and then said he is concerned, because clearly, if I’m creating nicknames like that, I’ve been watching entirely too many Care Bear movies. He is so right.
Please say a prayer this cast comes off next Monday; because if it doesn’t, I’m going to require a long-term visit from Cheer Bear, stat.
Too Much to Ask?
On the day I found out I was pregnant, one of the first thoughts that popped into my mind was coffee. How would I live without coffee to get me through the morning and the rest of the day. Sometimes, on days when I'm up really early, I need that afternoon blast to get me through evening swim practice. Mr. BBM looked up the recommended daily caffeine intake and told me I could still have a cup a day. I did that for the first two days. The next day, I woke up and the smell of coffee made me feel like I had to hurl, instantly.
We have a house with a very open floor plan and the smells from the kitchen go straight up to my room. I wasn't even awake yet, and I felt sick. Giving up coffee would not be a problem.
The problem though, is that Mr. BBM has not given up coffee. On weekends and on the two days a week that he works from home, the house reeks of it and I can hardly stand it. On the mornings when no coffee is made, I feel better. I can get through my day better. During each and every pregnancy, I've had a horrible time with smells and this one is no different. I can smell someone smoking in a car 14 cars in front of me on a highway. I can smell body odor from a quarter mile away (which made teaching high school really difficult, back in the day). Even perfume, body washes and fabric softener can send me over the edge. It's similar to the reaction Mr. Cullen has to a werewolf. It's repulsive and it turns my stomach upside down.
This morning I woke up and instantly smelled the coffee. It made me reel. I haven't actually puked yet, but this morning is the closest I've been so far. I had to stand in the bathroom and decide whether or not it was safe for me to leave the room. My mouth was watering something fierce.
The problem with the whole coffee thing is that Mr. BBM doesn't get it. I've asked him to make the coffee in the garage or even in the basement. I have hinted that the smell of tea doesn't make me nauseated. Would it be too much to ask him to switch or stop for a bit? Am I being unreasonable?
Whenever I start to think that I am, I think about this: here I am, after celebrating many 29th birthday anniversaries, pregnant with number three. This body, that I've been working so hard on, to get in shape, to get flat abs, is changing already. Parts of me are becoming softer; parts are becoming bigger. Soon, I'll have a visible belly and it will only get bigger. Those abs I've been working so hard on. . . back to the drawing board.
I've given up caffeine which means I can't even have a soda unless I'm at home. No restaurants have caffeine free diet anything. I've given up my Thursday night "Wine & Whine" night with my neighbor. And trust me when I tell you that it's not the same when you're sipping water.
In the fall, I won't be able to teach my classes because I'll be giving birth and nursing a newborn. The spring semester might not work out either. When you're nursing, it's a full time job.
I've felt nauseated for the past two weeks and have found it difficult to eat any type of food more than once. I'm seriously running out of options. Because of having gestational diabetes last time, I've already put myself on the gestational diabetes diet, which means I'm counting carbs at each and every meal and snack. Do you know how much fun it is to count out exactly 18 potato chips when that's all you're craving? Or 1/2 cup of pasta. It's not fun.
Things have drastically changed for me in the past few weeks and the changes to come will be even more grand. I asked Mr. BBM how his life has changed and he said that he will have another mouth to feed, another child to support. But actually, for the first year, all that feeding pretty much comes from me anyway.
I'm not complaining about all the changes that are already happening and the ones to come. I've been through this before. I know it's part of the process and that the reward is amazing. . . but is it too much to ask that Mr. BBM gives up the coffee, at least until I'm not feeling so sick?
Am I being unreasonable???
If You Take a Pregnant Girl to a Club. . .
Last night was our annual "celebrate the February birthday girls" night out. It started out with a huge reservation to a hibachi restaurant, which actually went quite well, considering my three days straight of near constant nausea. I think it had something to do with the ginger dressing and sauce that I drowned my food in the whole time I ate.
When we were finished eating, half of our crew headed home. The rest piled in the mini-van and we were off to one of the newest night clubs in the area. Last night, they were featuring some big-name DJ that I've never heard of before who is famous for some song that lets the world know that he likes "her a$$ big and her face down low." He also wore a large gold cross around his neck. I don't know, maybe it's just me, but it seemed like a bit of a contradiction. The other "exciting" news of last night is that Vinny of the Jersey Shore reality show was making an appearance.
The DJ himself brought an entire entourage of scantily clad girls wearing hooker dresses and a bunch of goober guys wearing either wife-beaters with rosary beads or striped sweatshirts and receding hairlines. One totally passed out like 20 minutes into the night and then rose up miraculously and started fist-pumping. It was pretty messed up. They all stood around on stage, holding up their cell phones, videotaping the crowd. I was kind of raging from pregnant hormones last night so I had a deep temptation to just look directly into their little phone cameras and give them a giant middle finger, but I held back. This time anyway. At one point, the DJ demanded that everyone put their arms up. I sent him a mental telepathy note that said, "Don't tell me what to do."
What struck me about the club, besides the fact that one of my former students from several years ago walked in looking like a street-walker, was that the ratio of men to women was completely out of whack. There were at least 30 women, maybe more, for every guy there. And let me tell you, the pickings for both sides were abysmal.
At one point, a trio of very drunk guys started dancing beside a water-sipping-completely-sober-pregnant-hormone-raging me, and one guy began bumping and leaning into me continually. First, it was the quick succession of elbows to the boob. If you've ever been pregnant, I need to say no more. I was instantly in agony and enraged. Then, he raised his arms up in the air and as he brought the one down, he decided he would lean the entire weight of his body, through his elbow, on my shoulder. I had already told my group of friends I was going to kill him soon. This was the final straw for me. I removed his arm from my shoulder, pulled my elbow into striking position, angled it as his face, and told him to "watch it!" in the meanest tone I could muster. He quickly walked away. I think even being as drunk as he was, he recognized a woman who meant business. It's really hard to refrain from wanting to kill someone when you're pregnant and there is boob contact involved.
When we went to the restroom later in the night, we had to wait in a line 20 girls long, and loaded with more spandex and stiletto boots than the movie "Pretty Woman." When I finally got in there, two girls were grinding each other into the wall. Back on the dance floor, more of the same. At one point, a girl who looked like she was about 12, wearing a get-up that barely covered her butt and with boots up to her thighs, had her face shoved into the crotch of another girl while some guy grinded behind her.I felt like breaking out into a session on girls and self-esteem, right there in the middle of the club. I'm sure it would have been well received.
But I just don't get it.
When I was younger and single, I went out dancing all the time. I never dressed like a hooker and I never simulated sex on the dance floor. Is it possible in this day and age to just dance without looking like a desperate hooker? Perhaps the ratio of men to women makes young girls these days feel like they have to seek attention by dressing like a total ho. But I'd like to let those girls in on a little secret. Dresses like that look good on no one. I never had a problem finding a decent guy to dance with at clubs, and I didn't have to look or act like that. Maybe when I went out I was looking for a guy who was attracted to me, but also someone who wouldn't just see me as a giant sex object. If a guy started grinding up on me, he usually got an elbow to the gut. I didn't need some strange weirdo getting on me to make me feel worthy.
What seems to be lacking in young girls these days is self-respect. No self-respecting young woman would act like that. Not a single one of those girls last night would want their mother to see them dressed like that, and it attracts the wrong kind of attention, the kind of attention that could get a girl in serious trouble. There is a world of difference between dressing sexy and dressing like a slut; and I swear, if I ever see one of my girls with an outfit like any of those I saw last night, they will be padlocked in the basement until that phase passes.
Maybe next time, I should just stay at home and dance to my IPod mix, which is a thousand times better than what the guy played last night. Plus, at my house, there wouldn't be some egotistical DJ blaring out the words over top of a decent song, wrecking it. Perhaps I'm just getting too old for this club crap.
What NOT To Do
Filed under: Back in the Classroom, Mental Strain for Mama
Last week, I realized that my "clicker," also known as a wireless presenter, was missing its USB plug-in-thingy. Yes, technology and I are close friends. Can you tell? Then, I promptly forgot about it. . . until yesterday afternoon.
Today is the day in class where I stand up and show the students I know what I'm talking about. I perform a eulogy speech for them. It serves several purposes. First, it tells the students a little bit about me. Second, it shows them that I can deliver a decent speech so therefore, if they just pay attention and do what I tell them, they will also (at some point) be able to produce a decent speech themselves. Finally, it serves as a fantastic example of how to have a power point presentation that supplements your overall presentation without taking over your presentation.
In theory, that's what it's supposed to do. Every other semester that I have done this (all five), it has worked perfectly.
Today? Not so much.
I told Mr. BBM that my wireless presenter thingy was gone and he told me he had a solution for me. Rather than going out to buy a new one, he dug out this wireless computer mouse thing and told me it would be just like my presenter (except not really like it at all, even slightly. No).
I arrived a little early for class, brought my slide show up on the computer screen and tried it out. It worked! Sweet success! Yes!
I took my place in the center of the room, near the podium, and began my speech. I held out my hand to click to the next slide and nothing. I moved closer to the computer. Nothing. I moved right on top of the computer and finally it clicked. . . through the next three slides. This was going to be a problem.
I will spare you (and therefore myself, again) the embarrassment and nightmarish awfulness that occurred over the next few minutes. I would get it to work, click through four slides and be unable to click back. I'd have to hit "esc" and go back to the main screen again. Then, sometimes, the little message would appear on the screen, right smack in the middle of the slide that would have a little menu like "next slide, previous slide, etc." Except here's the thing, when you clicked on that, it didn't work. And then I did what I always tell my students NOT to do. . . I apologized.
I finally gave up on the wireless mouse working and just clicked the regular old computer mouse to get from slide to slide. If there was ever an example of working through it when everything technological is going wrong, I was it.
When I finished, they clapped and I shook my head in disbelief. "That was what NOT to do," I told them. "Don't ever apologize, even when you're flustered. Don't ever assume your husband knows what he's talking about when it comes to wireless mouse things either."
They laughed and I laughed at myself. What else could I do?
I normally like to give them an example of what TO do, not the opposite. Today, I hope they learned just as much by me having a major screw-up of a day. One thing that is for sure? My favorite office supply store will be selling another wireless pointer this week. This was one lesson I don't care to repeat.
My Very Own Horror Story, “Blood” and All
I've been taking care of Finny the cat this week while my parents are away on a trip. Tuesday was one of the days I had to go over there, and after the horrible weather we had in the morning, it had to wait until after Big I's orthodontist appointment in the afternoon.
While we were still contained within the walls of the orthodonist's office, she seemed fine. After sucking it up for over an hour while they put the braces on her teeth, she was even smiling a bit. But when we got in the car and started driving to my parents' house, the drama began.
"I want to kill myself," she said. "I look awful. I look like a teenager."
I told her how ridiculous it was to say something like that, and used it as a lesson to talk about the implications of committing suicide. When I was finished with my diatribe, I think she realized how silly it was that she said that. I thought the drama was over.
We arrived and I sighed. No kind neighbor had come over to snowblow their driveway. A good two-three inches of snow and ice were piled up on their steep and long driveway and on all of their sidewalks. Big I and I made our way down through the snow, not wanting to slip on the ice and I asked her if she could take care of Finny while I started shoveling.
As we were making our way to the front door, Big I pointed to a red spot on the snow. "Look Mommy. It looks like blood."
I looked at it from a distance and thought the same. I glanced down at my knuckle thinking maybe the cut I had opened back up again. It hadn't. I shrugged it off, went in the house and showed her what to do, before going back outside.
Back outside, the weather was brutal. Freezing rain was coming down slowly but surely and I nearly broke the plastic shovel because the snow and ice were so heavy. I found a metal one and started the long process of shoveling the windy sidewalks and the plunging driveway.
Then I started noticing something.
There were little red stains on the snow everywhere. They were in front of the house, across the sidewalk, across the driveway and even down near the stream. My imagination started going wild. I imagined some criminal, injured in some way and bleeding, hiding out in the woods surrounding the house. I realized that it was super quiet and that perhaps this criminal had taken shelter and snuck inside the garage while I had my back turned. My stomach tied itself into a knot as my rational side told me to calm down and my martial arts side told me that if my gut felt something was wrong, then I should trust it and figure out what to do.
And then I heard the screaming.
It stopped me in my tracks, but I couldn't quite figure out where it was coming from. It had definitely been there and loud and then it was gone. It didn't take long for it to start up again. I started to move towards it as quickly as the ice underneath me would allow as I made my way to the house. I took a mental inventory of what I could use to defend myself and fight off an attacker. I had my keys and I had a metal shovel.
I made it to the only locked door at the house and looked in the window. There were finger marks and what looked like fresh steam marks from breath on the window pane. And there was Big I. . .
She was face down, sprawled across the sofa, her feet still on the ground. It looked like someone had taken her and turned her at a 45 degree angle and thrown her across the sofa. She was screaming. I fumbled with my keys (it's a deadbolted door) and scanned the rest of the room. Where was the attacker? Who was doing this to her? I screamed her name and she sat bolt upright.
She ran to the door screaming and crying, "I couldn't get out. The door is locked" and then burst into drama-laden tears again.
Still convinced there was more to this story and scanning the house, I mean, there had to be right??? I screamed at her, "Are you ok?" I expected her to tell me the attacker was coming back. He was in another room. . .
"I just hate these braces," she yelled back at me, as she covered her face and assumed her 45 degree angle position again across the sofa, careful to leave her feet on the floor, lest my mother find out she was putting her feet on the new sofa.
Then it dawned on me that the front door and the garage door were both unlocked. She could have gone out either one of those doors, yet she chose to stand at this door and scream the scream of someone being ripped limb by limb, completely apart. I turned around for a minute to compose myself because I was seriously ready to kill her myself and that's when I noticed another red stain in the snow. . . this time with a half-eaten, bright red berry beside it.
I breathed a sigh of relief before turning around and telling her what I thought had been happening while she screamed ridiculously from inside the house. I then pointed out the two very unlocked doors, which had been only steps away from her.
"Oh," she said.
Oh.
Perhaps the orthodontists of days gone by were onto something when they chose to put braces on older children. Perhaps, certain 9-year-olds aren't exactly prepared for the brace-face that will greet them in the mirror. Maybe they haven't learned proper coping tools this young in life.
Maybe this 9-year-old just saves the best possible, ridiculous, scary, nightmarish drama for her mama.
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