Birds and snakes and aeroplanes…

Don’t say I didn’t warn you.

Last night at bedtime, McPantses and I were talking about what all is going to happen next week when Third comes and her grandparents and her dad are here and Third and I are at the hospital because I want to be sure she’s had adequate notice when, out of the blue, she piped up with:

“Is the Earth going to be destroyed soon? Will all the trees and all the people die at once?”

I said, “Where did you hear about that?”

She said, “Nowhere. It’s just really been on my mind a lot lately.” (odd phrase for a 4 yr old, I think)

I said, “I don’t think you have anything to worry about.”

She said, “Are you sure? Because I think it’s really going to happen.”

Holy Cow.

So what I want to know is, who’s been reading my kid Revelations? Fess up right now, please.

I guess she’s pretty uncertain about all this new baby stuff. She had her first “real” nightmare last week–she dreamed about falling down a long tunnel. Usually her nightmares are about alligators or something (a little too much Pierre, perhaps?).

Sooooooo. If the End Times are upon us, you heard it first from Nostradamus McPantses. She was wrong about my addlepated grandfather dying, though, so don’t lock yourself in your root cellar just yet.

I am Methodist and was raised the same. My sister is Episcopal (college did it). We have both given up something for Lent since junior high. Usually it’s been painful: chocolate, caffeine, potato chips–or a combo of all three. The Sister is very good at making this sacrifice and I’m the one who tries to skate in by obeying the letter of the law, if not the spirit. I start bargaining about tortilla chips at Mexican restaurants, etc., whereas the Sister just gives it all up.

In 2001, the Husband and I gave up television for Lent. McPantses was a tiny squink and the Husband and I played endless games of Scrabble, Monopoly (he absolutely always beats me, always, even if he’s drinking heavily) and gin rummy (I absolutely always beat him) while holding McPantses or having her in the swing next to us. It was a nice, quiet time.

We lasted three or four weeks.

This year, I was torn about Lent. I’m already giving up alcohol (pregnant), every food item I crave (GD) and crack cocaine (parole officer thinks it best).* I can’t stay awake for an entire television show (sleep vapors, you know).

I decided to give up something internal. It seemed like a cop out at first, but honestly, it’s pretty hard because it’s something with which I am generally consumed. I gave up self-doubt about my business.

In the interim, I have screwed up three orders and fixed them at my expense or written them off entirely, which is just what one should do.

It’s hard to rid myself of the feeling that there will never be enough time in the day for me to have a normal life and to learn what I need to learn to be successful at a stationery business. It’s hard to concentrate on the fact that I can occasionally come up with a doodle that I think is outstanding.** It’s just all hard when I add in the family that needs my attention, the regular job that demands my presence, if nothing else, and the little things, like sleep and showering.

But I delivered an order this morning of 125 cards that I cut and folded last night (and this morning) with a mistake on them that I only noticed as (of course) I packed up the very last cards, because I never notice the tiny little mistakes that matter in the proof stage.***

I told the client that I’d made a mistake I find unacceptable and that his daughter would at least have the envelopes and some nice grocery list scrap cards. I will reprint immediately and ship on Monday (his daughter is away in college and was just home for a couple of days). I was honest, nice, self-deprecating and anxious to make it right and he was fine with it. I left with the first of three payments from him for a large order and an additional order requiring additional payment and felt great about how things turned out.

(I’m putting some pressure on myself to get things done before Tuesday.)

I have wasted reams of cardstock lately.

But I’m learning and doing it at my own expense.

On the way home from the client’s house–of course it’s completely across town–I listened to the New Radicals’ “Don’t Give Up.”

I love that song. It’s their only hit.

It’s a tiny bit easier to remember that I’m trying and that I can do this if I make the effort when I hear a girly-voiced dude bellowing “You only get what you give.”

Because it’s so true.

I’m still ordering a case of cardstock on Monday. I can only give until what I have in my hutch runs out, you know…

* Oh, come on.

** One of the things I am looking forward to about being home with Third for a short while is hanging out in the sunny breakfast area and trying to do some watercolors in between snuggling him. I’m sure things won’t turn out to be exactly that idyllic, but I can dream, right?

*** I could really use an extra set of eyes on the job here. Sadly, payment would consist of all the pre-printed scratch cardstock one could use (the stack is growing so much that I am starting to consider, gulp, throwing it out, by which I mean, of course, recycling it, although my friend is thinking of getting a paper shredder and using her mistake cardstock shreds to pad orders in boxes, which is a great, if messy, idea). I think my best potential employee audience for the pay range I could offer would be your average toddler, many of whom think scratch paper is the best. thing. EVER.

ETA: The daughter called a bit ago and says she would’t have noticed the mistake (!), but if I’m already reprinting and if it’s okay, can I make the border and her name a hotter pink? No problemo. Everyone’s happy and the order is almost done printing. I’m a little scared to look at it, to tell the truth.

**hums NR to self**

—–Original Message—–
From: The Husband [mailto:theselfishandneedywife@yahoo.com]
Sent: Friday, February 25, 2005 10:53 AM
To: TheHusband@thehusband’soffice.com
Subject: Re: Posted on the Husband’s obscure college football forum by one of the guys I
played gold with

The Husband@thehusband’soffice.com> wrote

I was asked by a girl one night where I was from.

“Alaska” I replied.

Her: “Wow.. so why did you pick this southan redneck state?”

Me: “Well.. actually my father is originally from this southan redneck state and went to school here but he moved to Alaska in 1958 during the land rush and bought an ice mine”

Her: “An ice mine?”

Me: “Yeah.. you know all the ice machines around here? Most of that ice is from my dad’s ice mine.”

Her: “Wow. thats pretty cool.”

Me: It sure is.

She told all her friends all night long that I was the “ice guy”. This was in 1987 at “The Getaway.”

***

So, to the Husband, I sez:

What’s “gold?”

The Husband wrote:

Something you aint getting on Tuesday.**

So I sez:

Sent: Friday, February 25, 2005 11:33 AM
To: theHusband@thehusband’soffice.com
Subject: RE: Posted on the Husband’s obscure college football forum by one of the guys I played gold with

But who would want gold when she can have:

1. IV fluids guaranteed to make her swell like bloated dead roadkill on a hot summer day for another two weeks past birthin’

2. a needle in the spine

3. her crotch shaved with an itchy razor

4. a catheter shoved rudely into her tiny urethra

5. major abdominal surgery in a freezing cold room

6. a 6 inch incision in her gut

7. a large infant human being yanked unceremoniously from her uterus***

8. her bladder, uterus and other important gut products laid out on a table next to her

9. her fallopian tubes cauterized/knotted/eaten by wild wolves/somehow severed forever

10. all while her ARMS ARE STRAPPED TO BOARDS LIKE SHE’S HAVING ELECTROSHOCK THERAPY

11. while her inlaws room and board at her house

12. and while she anticipates cracked nipples and oozing fruit-sized clots of blood falling regularly from her bruised, battered and swollen body for weeks to come?

WOOO-HOOOO, baby!

Gold, my ass.

I want Earth renamed for me.

and, really, is that so very much to ask?

You know, he still hasn’t told me what “gold” is.

* With thanks to Gwendolyn Brooks.

** 4 more sleeps! Also, the Husband must have missed the entry from a few weeks ago where I mention him shopping at the estate jewelry store.

waka waka waka

*** With the appropriate disclaimer that of course, of course, all this will be worth it once we see his cherubic countenance.

ETA: from the Husband:

I saw your blog. Gold should be “golf.”

You want me to go to the estate jewelry store?

***

GOLF makes sense. Golf. Now I get it.

How can I be 39 weeks pregnant and desperate with morning sickness?

HOW?

So. Unfair.

It’s my last day at work and I need to do a few things and all I want to do is go lay on the bathroom floor.

Add to this pleasant feeling some loverly contractions and you’ve got the whiniest girl on the block.

Happily, McPantses and I got over something this morning. On Fridays, she has ballet class at school and wears her tights and leotard and tutu (gotta have the tutu, people) to school. She HATES the tights and I asked her teacher to have Miss Jill-the-Dance-Teacher explain that they’re to keep her muscles warm (it’s still a bit nippy in the mornings outside here).

The kid is so happy in her ballet get-up, though. I want her to wear a white cardigan (or, hell, any cardigan, but she has an extensive white sweater collection) to school, at a minimum, because it’s cool outside. She can take it off when she gets into her classroom, but for McP, that ruins the whole grand entrance.

Seriously.

The kid will cry not to wear the cardigan.

I had one of those tiny motherhood enlightenment moments this morning during the cardigan argument. She was tugging on the sleeves most grumpily and I, lightheaded from nausea, said, “You know what? Don’t wear it if you don’t want to. It doesn’t matter. You might be chilly on the way to school, but you can decide whether or not to wear your sweater.”

Because it doesn’t matter, does it? She’s four. She can be cold if she wants to be cold.

When we got to school, she assured me with chilly bunny-pink nose and ice cold hands (”See! My hands are WARM AS TOAST!”) that she was very, very warm.

She was COLD.

But she made her entrance and she was happy.

I shudder to think what the minor battles of little kid-hood are working their way into. Mascara. Piercings. Staying out late.

You know you’re just a filthy P-I-G pig* when you enlist a bonded maid service to come clean your approx. 1900 sf house for a “maximum of $230 – $250″ (per the chickie on the phone a few weeks ago), only to have that number go up approximately $33 – $66 less than 5 minutes after the crew of 4 walks in your door.

They looked around and 3 women got to work promptly while one woman called home base and then handed the phone to me so I could talk to the woman on the other end of the phone, who told me it might take them 15 ($33) minutes to 30 ($66) minutes longer to clean my house than they originally thought.

I was mentally and physically unprepared to do battle,** which is an odd state for me, but I told the gal on the phone that was fine and I would pay whatever the cost ends up, as I am sure my house is that dirty, but if they’d told me when I asked originally that the maximum fee (about which I most certainly had inquired–and today, I had my check for $250 waiting on the counter because I know full well I’m paying the maximum fee they quoted based on dog hair tumbleweeds, alone)*** could exceed $250, I might have made inquiries elsewhere.

I was very nice.

I did not cry, screech, curse, flush, get stress hives or even raise my voice. There was nary an ounce of hysteria.

I told them to leave me a note about any extra charges.

They told me they’d be sure to get it done for the original amount promised.

I am happy.

We are bleeding money lately in $100 increments, it seems, but it’s not like we’re frittering it away on dog racing or equally wasteful things.**** The dog needs pills and a $56 (for 18 lbs, no less!) bag of food. McPantses needs a booster for every car. We hung curtains and got those damn doors in. We got a vat of diapers and I paid for McP’s fillings (well, the portion not covered by insurance, but I am thinking we might get that back). And on and on and on.

* Isn’t that from Animal House? REMAIN CALM!

** You’d be mentally and physically unprepared for battle if you’d taken two hours off of work to pick up your house before the maids got there too. It was hard effing work, but laundry remains the only pressing task (besides artwork) for the upcoming weekend, so that’s a nice feeling. We won’t dwell on the fact that every single thing everyone in the house owns appears to be unclean (UNCLEAN! UNCLEAN!) at once. Nope.

*** We vacuum those motherhumping tumbleweeds every other day, at a minimum (and in some places, daily), and they still gather and fester and tumble. Maybe I should just vacuum the damn dogs instead.

**** I will confess that I spent nearly $50 on two sets of these last Friday night so that I could bake these and these, but baking is a necessity, like breathing. And if you think it’s not, well, you’re just wrong and you can picture me stamping my inner-ankle-boneless foot at you and saying “hmpf” in the manner of a small, petulant child right now.

So there.

ETA: My hiz-ouse is clean as a

Ah, shit, I can’t stand that. My house is clean and they charged the price to which I initially agreed. Exxxxxxxcellent.

I love this.

Kudos to Penelope, one of the hosts of Illustration Friday for noticing it.

Penelope remarked that she especially likes number 5, which states that “you are responsible for your own experience.”

In my case, that would probably mean:

GROW SOME DISCIPLINE, YOU AGING CHILDWOMAN, AND GET YOUR HEAD OUT OF THE CLOUDS.

So, my mother is a labor and delivery nurse. She’s a great nurse: the epitome of kindness and caring, so all my friends who’ve had her as a nurse tell me. However, she was also freakishly grumpy until I became pregnant with McPanteses.

When she became a grandmother, my mom changed from her soul on out. It was a remarkable transformation and my father and sister and I have spent some time discussing it.

I knew, when pregnant in 2000, that I would at least attempt to breastfeed McPantses. My initial plan was to try it for six weeks and to work to make it to six months. I bought a pricey breast pump in anticipation of returning to work and pumping.

After the first few weeks of nursing I got the hang of it, thanks to the Husband, of all people. I had horribly cracked and bloody nips until one day he looked up and said, you know, this book says that if it hurts when you’re doing it, you’re just not doing it right. I screeched that he couldn’t possibly know what he was talking about and I might have burst into tears of outrage and misery, but he read further and explained that I wasn’t shoving my nipple far enough into McP’s mouth.

And he was right.

So, where’s the drive-by? It turns out that my mother uses me as an example for patients wavering on the breastfeeding front. I know that not everyone can breastfeed and that not everyone chooses to breastfeed, so get your knickers out of a twist right now if you’re in that category. I’m not talking about you. I’m talking about women who, like me, are a bit uncertain at first.

When we got past the cracked nipples, I said, oh, this will be fine. We’ll stick with it for a year.

My mother tells patients that I started with a goal of six weeks and ended up nursing and pumping for a year. She told me this some time after I finished nursing McPantses (and honestly, what a relief that was because pumping just plain ole sucks) and she told me that she was really proud of me.

I’m 32 years old. I shouldn’t need validation from anyone, let alone my mother. But it turns out that I do, and that I did. And I love it. I did something good for my daughter and in the process, I made my mommy proud.

Let’s not consider the fact that my mother might be drive-by-guilting patients into breastfeeding, okay? Because if she is, she might be using my experience as an instrument of guilt and that would bother me a titch.

Oooh, selfish pregnancy update: bag partially packed. I am adding more to it each day. Carseat still not installed, but nursery largely ready. The Husband has a closet to scrub. Massive spring cleaning coming tomorrow, via overpriced maid service. Considering sending dogs for bath, even tho they just had one a few weeks ago–Maggie T looks like a fur coat someone left out in an attic for fifty years and that’s not an attractive look for a golden retriever.

Six more sleeps until we’re off to the hospital to have Third. Happy, happy day.

Pound cakes (only 7 small ones instead of 8, for some odd reason) in the oven right now. They smell divine.

My ego deflates weekly. Despite the fact that I am steadily losing weight, per the nurses at my weekly appointments, I have developed, at 38 weeks, the first stretch marks to appear the entire pregnancy. They’re not protruding and itchy yet, but they’re lurking below the surface. They can’t glom onto the roadmap of leftover stretchmarks from last pregnancy, which are all below the belly button and covering asships and lower gut. Nay. They’re coming out above the belly button in an independent and new location. Sonofabitch!

Almost as bad: I just cleaned out the lingerie drawer and tossed all my old, weensy 34C Calvin Klein see-thru bras and miniscule thongs made of mere scraps of fabric from years and years ago that I have long hoped to wear again. Everyone says your breasts flatten out after nursing, but did I get my just rewards after a solid year of breastfeeding and pumping? “Experts” say you can increase your child’s IQ up to 9 points by nursing (what good is 9 points, anyway, when it comes to IQ?), but I say screw that noise and just give me my deflated bosoms. I earned them fair and square and flat.

Anyhoo, the Calvin bras had to leave.

The nursing bras marched in and took over like the steadfast, sturdy, thick white cotton warriors they are. They take up a lot more room than the wispy sex goddess things, too.

Post-nursing, I solemnly swear to purchase the good stuff, lingerie wise. I’m thinking Cosabella, but I’m not sure that (a) they sell it in my state or (b) that I am allowed to buy sexay lingerie whose name I can’t even spell.