Waiting, Updated

My mom has a brain tumor. The only thing we know is that it's big. Surgery is scheduled for Friday.

Surgery has been moved up to Thursday, 9am PST. It's also my Dad's 65th birthday.

F is For...

Since August I have baked, from scratch, and sent in no less than 5 separate recipes on 5 separate occasions. I could have purchased Walmart bakery crap like the majority of the other parents, but I didn't. Nope, not once. And I even liked doing it.

Last week the Cracker's teacher sent home a family project: "prepare a recipe of bread" that represents your culture to be sent in and shared with the class Turkey Day style. (The kids are making butter -- I sent it heavy whipping cream for that already.) Discuss with your student ahead of time why this bread is important to your heritage, do a little write-up, and make sure your student is prepared to present it to the class.

I'm sorry, but did you just ask me to bake bread? Do you know how much I find active dry yeast a royal pain in the ass? Culture? Heritage? The same week as Thanksgiving? Seriously?

My mom suggested Swedish Limpa bread, which I have made, but it's a Biotch.

My dad suggested I go out and buy a loaf of Wonder Bread. Because, yeah, we're white. (Tee hee hee! Dad!)

Have I mentioned the altitude? That I live a mile above sea level and I assume that all sea-level recipes will fail the first time around because they always do? That standard tweaks need recipe specific tweaking? That every Texan who has ever visited the metro area has a "I went to New Mexico and got altitude sickness from hiking a quarter mile" story? That edible won't happen on the first try? That I'd have to try, like, more than once?

Someone finally suggested (San Francisco) Sourdough: I think it was J, and I think he was joking, but I took it and ran. I ran all the way to the store and bought a loaf of not San Francisco, not generic either, but "Swiss" Sourdough, whatever the fuck that is, sliced for sandwiches by a machine and obviously not homemade.

Now for the write-up = J's problem. He has the Cracker write "Sourdough bread is from San Francisco and so is my mom." Done! J doesn't even remind him to write his name. Grrrr. So I help add that it makes us think of fog and goes nicely with clam chowder, blah blah blah.

F is for FAIL.



























Proof I bake! (And a super cute picture of O-Mo as well.)

Discuss Amongst Yourselves

My Boy

"So tonight you're in Arizona, and tomorrow you'll be in New Mexico? Hmmm...I think you're where John McCain lives..."

That'll Learn Ya

Cracker takes jacket A to school and doesn't bring it home. Mom lectures and sends note to teacher. Mom sends Cracker to school the next day with jacket B, and explicit instructions to bring home jacket A and B and OMG it's Friday and jackets need to be home for the weekend. So, naturally, Cracker comes home jacketless. Mom loses her shit. Mom lectures, a lot.

Fast forward two weeks.

Jackets *always* come home. And for good measure, Cracker now brings home other kid's jackets too. Friday Mom sent him with one and he came home with three. I shit you not.

How I Get My Kicks

Me, holding up a shipping box that would fit my very large head if it were ever to become detached from my body: "Guess what's in here!"
"What?"
"My DivaCup™! Size 2! Because I'm not only not under 30, but I've birthed you some big-headed babies!"

(Anyone else wondering about the circumference difference?*)

(The box also had these, and this in purple, and finally this, which is what I came for because everyone else is out of ribbit. Must have another ribbit. And maybe a pair of Zutano pants for O in red bird print. I've always been a sucker for birds. Sadly this is what I got for myself with my birthday money, and yes, my birthday is still weeks away, but my mom is weird. And I'm actually going to spend a portion of it this year instead of saving it all, because being in trouble for saving money meant to be blown sucks.)

Anywho, ta da the DivaCup™, a surprisingly thick silicone funnel made in Canada, eh, with gradations to measure your flow in ounces AND milliliters. Jackpoooooot! Also included: a kicky DivaCup™ lapel pin, score, and a purple DivaCup™ pouch that I assume is for storage rather than transport as it is not...um...liquid proof. Yeehaw!
























*God bless the internet. A size 1 is 42mm wide vs 45mm, though according to Wikipedia, other brands vary by as much as six gaping millimeters! Crikey!

The One About My Boobs

I am not a tall woman. I am also not a toothpick. A package of toothpicks? Yes. A single toothpick? Nooo.

What I'm trying to say is that I am not a six foot tall woman who weighs 110 bitching that a size x-small is too short in the torso; I am a 5 foot 6 woman who is not going to tell you her weight but will admit to being a size large, sometimes x-large, and when they fuck with the sizes to make you feel smaller than you actually are, a medium.

Are we clear?


Ahhh...fall! Fall is my favoritest season of all, not only because of the pretty colors, and the pumpkins, and apples and their by-products, and the pumpkins, and the crisp air, and the pumpkins, but because I can begin to hide my body in layers if I so choose. You know, it's not that I'm carrying around a more than a few extra pounds of people, it's the fabric yo! And maybe, just maybe, after some Jazzercise and a little dieting I could emerge in the spring from my black fleece cocoon all skinny and shit.

So I totally splurged on this cute jacket back in early August when it was still 85 degrees that was totally admittedly frivolous because I thought it was sassy and maybe even stylish and it gave me hope that fall was really coming because cold weather clothes had been in the stores here in the desert since June and that this amazing jacket might distract from my ill-fitting frumpy mom jeans and make me feel sexy because it fit ever so nicely over my boobs and elegantly and deceptively made it look like I was wearing a size large not because of my gut flub but because my boobs are bigger than yours and it was so interestingly stylish that you couldn't help but notice it and not my ass and not my thighs and it's brown and I'm trying to infuse some color into my black, white, and gray wardrobe and hot damn was I really excited about this jacket. Now fast forward through the conventions and Sarah Palin and debates and the freakiskly late fall weather finally arrives and I rip off the tags which I had left on just in case I got flu and lost 15 pounds and then kept it off or because the flu had killed me and J could return it for cash and buy formula and have a pizza delivered because he would have no use for a women's sassy brown jacket in size large because he's been such a good husband that I wish for him in such a scenario a new wife two-thirds of my current age and half my current body weight without cellulite that loves to swallow and has big nonleaky boobs. I threw those tags in the trash and washed my sassy jacket which you know means it's not that sassy or that stylish because it isn't dry clean only and then it wasn't returnable because it had been washed and I put it on and fuckity fuck fuck fuck gotcha because if you thought Tina Fey's Palin impression was spot on you haven't seen yet seen her do it in my sassy jacket. (I would send it to her but she's probably a small.) So I immediately started whining to J who assured me that it yes he remembered the jacket and no it wasn't a Sarah Palin jacket and that a jacket is just a jacket which meant jack shit since he is even more clueless about fashion than I am but only because he is a boy. Determined to continue the funk, I went and put it on. "See?" Bahahaha, yes it is a Sarah Palin jacket! OMG! It totally is! You're not going to wear that are you???

This is actually not the story I meant to tell, but it naturally found it's way here, and as you can see it needed to be told.


Going back...me, anxiously awaiting cooler weather because my arm fat looks better when my tank top is covered by sleeves. However, I had conveniently forgotten that last fall I was preggers, and the fall before that I was in a short lived lowish BMI phase. (I will always have hips, thighs and ass at any weight. Yeah me!) So I don't have any clothes that fit. Throw another "fuck" on the pile.

So I try shopping. Because finding pants isn't hard enough, finding tops is even harder. If it fits the breast feeding boobs and doesn't cling like saran wrap to my muffin then the shoulders are about a gazillion times too big and would also fit a 300 pound man. It's hard not to feel like the most disproportioned woman in the world.

My problems became intensified when I went shopping for an off-the-rack (stunned, I know!) and very specific Halloween costume. In retrospect, sewing one would have been easier, even though I'm quite busy these days screening my MIL, writing check after check after check to the PTO instead of selling breakfast burritos at the ass crack of dawn, teething an infant, schlepping to Saturday soccer, Tuesday/Thursday/Saturday swimming, Wednesday hockey, tearing my brain and the house apart looking for kindergarten-worthy sharing that begins with the letter X (seriously, 3rd week! obviously retaliation for 1 week one: the letter O producing a classroom full of Optimi Prime, and week two: the letter M is for Megatron!), running into town to Costco to buy fully cooked just reheat meals that I don't even try to pass off as my own anymore because my husband is just glad that there's food period, Facebook time suckage (which I know I'm supposed to hate and throw virtual tomatoes at since you are not allowed to post breastfeeding pictures for random people you went to high school with, but whatever, honestly I'm okay with that because being friends and exchanging pleasant twitter commentary and (Lil) Green Patch requests with someone I had sex with pre-husband when I was young, horny, experimenty, and a 32A and being all mature about it is enough for me), scrubbing cat barf stains off the carpet because you know how fish-shaped red/yellow/brown dyed food is all they'll eat... Seriously, taking up learning to sew for a Halloween costume would have been totally easy.

Here we go again, this time with the Halloween costumes, with my long ass torso trying to fit a poorly made one piece. And again, my boobs are always in the wrong place. But I've found a costume, and it's not perfect, but I know I will not do better, and the price, while outrageous, is less outrageous as everything else. So I pivot left, and I pivot right, and I'm sucking it in, hoping that somehow I can make it work.

And then my light bulb moment...

I reach in from the top, grab a boob, lift, pull top of dress down, and release. Repeat.

And wouldn't ya know, it's not that I have a long, hard to fit torso, it's that I have sad, super saggy boobs.

I'm guessing that if I go out and buy, like, a bra that it might be easier to find tops. Two years and counting a breastfeeding leads me to believe that the damage is irreversible.

Yeah, I don't feel so much better now.

Smitten.

Thirteen Pounds of Personality



























Five months, three weeks, and one day old. Unbelievable.




















Soaking in the babyness



























Five years (and seventeen days) apart




















My Little Cracker

Letters Home From School

From the Cracker's teacher:

"If you are sending something in your child's lunch that requires cooking in a microwave, please note that we only have time to heat things up that take a minute or less. We cannot cook noodles or other meals. We can only heat them."

Noodles? Other meals??? WTF are people sending? Hot Pockets?

Harder Than You'd Think

I am looking for a Heidi costume that does not include the words ho, wench, sexy, or Playboy-licensed in it's description.

Ollie's First Greens

Peas? No. Green beans? No.

Fistfulls of grass. At soccer.

Lovely.

Is it too late to add a few more wallets to my order?

Quick! It's picture day! You're a 5 year old boy. What do you do?

You trip over your own feet, land on your face, on the way to school, at the bus stop, that exact morning. Your nose swells up and you bleed and bleed and bleed.

Oh yeah, it's picture day alright.

(This was taken this evening, swelling gone, second clean shirt of the day. Wanna do my laundry?)

Ollie on Rolling

Rolling from back to tummy is fun, until you realize that once there it's self-imposed tummy time. Scream. Like. Hell.

(Don't try to roll back or anything.)

I Give Him Credit for Trying

I am not buying that when the Cracker's teacher said to dress up for picture day she meant wear your Halloween costume.

It's a good thing we found each other because no one else gets us

Me: Flossing.
Him: Drawing himself a man bath.

Me: "Are you using lavender baby wash?!"
Him: "It's all we have. AND much better smelling than stewing in my own sweaty ass juice!"

Someone really needs to add bubble bath to the shopping list.

Wordless Monday

Proud Mama

Cracker: "I'll be the Dad, you be the Mom, and you be the kid."
Boy @ park: "But I'm a boy. I don't want to be the Mom."
Cracker: "That's okay, we can be a family of two Daddies!"

Jason on Ollie's Squealing

"Somewhere bats are saying 'Whaaaat?'"

To Know Her is to Love Her

Beeeeeep.

"Hi honey, it's Mom. Your father and I just wanted to let you know that we'll be sending off more of your inheritance to Obama later today..."

Recycle, Reuse, Renew!

Sometimes I think I'm rather clever. Sometimes I crack myself up. This is totally one of those times.



















Amidst a sea of McCain minivans in the pickup line at our (public) school (that has uniforms...gah) (that refuses to teach evolution, even though it means they lose government funding...double gah) I brand this my own crazy politico version of Intelligent Design.

Kindergarten: Day Three

"I'm so glad you're here!" Cracker runs up to friend and gives him a big old hug.
"PDA! PDA! NO HUGGING ALLOWED AT SCHOOL!" yells a chorus of older children.

And then I had to pull aside my sweet little boy and try to explain that while hugs are wonderful, they are not allowed at his new school.

I understand why, it's just, well, you know, the sad world we live in that hugging = possible suspension.

Kindergarten: Day Two

"Something really bad happened at lunch. These two little girls, one was five and the other one six, they spilled all my cous cous!"

Kindergarten: Day One

"We played outside on the playground, but not so much inside. I'm not sure what's up with that."

Shoe Whore

Just in case you were wondering, I still really like ugly shoes, and I am in desperate need of new shoes, since my silly feet grew even bigger with Ollie. Seriously, it's not that I want shoes, I need shoes. Ask my husband.

(Okay, yeah don't.)

I wasn't in any hurry, but then there was this 20% coupon with free shipping, including free return shipping, and I accidentally stumbled upon these and I had to go to another site to get my size so there wasn't any coupon and they are back ordered but promised they will send them right off to me as soon as they get them and OMG I will die if they renege because I simply cannot live without these shoes shoes.

Voilà Converse (PRODUCT) RED Chuck Taylor® All Star® Lil' RED Riding Hood









Seriously...little orgasm. The only thing that could make them even better is if they were tax deductible, but the Converse site volunteers that they are not. (Even though I know better the thought had crossed my mind for a split second.)

Oh? Those aren't ugly? Just strange? Maybe even kinda cute? (I know! They're seriously just plain awesome, right?)

Then what about these? They're made in Sweden (sweet!) and we love apples and there was that darn 20% off coupon and I've been looking for the right whimsical clogs ever since I missed out on the Dansko Dalmatians and my son is going to kindergarten on Monday and yes I seriously ordered these.









And our 11th wedding anniversary is coming up in September and I'm pretty sure that the traditional gift is shoes so if you know of any others you think I might need please do drop me a line.

So. Excited.

We knew this day would come

Found: 1 dismantled alarm clock
"It's okay Mommy. I'm fixing it!"
Dude, it wasn't broken.
J: "Don't say anything. It's what boys do."


Found: little pieces of drum kit littered across the bedroom floor alongside a dozen plastic tools.
Me: "You're beloved computer may be next. Am I allowed to have that chat with him now?"