Month: June 2006

antsy for a good show

let’s go to a show
and be entertained all night
and sneak in reese’s

My antsy-ness (antsiness? antsyness?) is manifesting itself in a strange and powerful way all of a sudden. I’m craving the thea-tah.

Specifically, I want to go see The Intergalactic Nemesis Trilogy. I want to see it really, really badly. And I want to see all three parts of the trilogy, even though you don’t need to see them all to enjoy yourself (so they say). If I miss it now, I can catch it just before my birthday in September when they kick off their national tour by playing one more show in Austin. But I wanna go now!

I also want to see I Love My Dead Gay Son: The Musical (as it’s inspired by Heathers, and its original music is by a group called the Baby Jessicas, which is just a flat out awesome name. [Where were you when Baby Jessica fell down the well? I was in a hotel in Orlando, right next to Xanadu: Home of the Future. My family was going to Disney World the next day, but my sister started running a fever and we went home instead. All I got to do was peek in the windows of Xanadu, watch baby Jessica drama on hotel TV and try to avoid my sister at all costs so I didn’t catch whatever dread disease she had.])

I also want to see The Bunkbed Brothers, especially now that their theatre flooded and they’ve moved the show to a bigger venue and hope to raise money to fix the mess.

And I want to see Requiem (it’s like a dance performance but performed among and within the 120 foot concrete columns of the Intel shell. The dancers use ropes and bungee cords and trapeze bars – it’s sounds awesome.)

And I want to see Savion Glover. And Carol Burnett. (But both of these shows aren’t happening for a while, so they don’t really count.)

And this doesn’t even count all of the bands that are coming to town or any of the ongoing shows we have, like Esther’s Follies and the shenanigans at the Alamo Drafthouse.

Alas. I don’t imagine getting out to see any of these, but I sure would like to, asshole pelvis and all.

losing it, lost it, bye-bye, it’s gone

O, Super Cranky
you are my alter ego
and you really suck

Well, so, I’ve hit Crankiness, and I’ve hit it with a full head of steam. I am irritated with everything. The only thing I can do that doesn’t cause pain or old lady groaning is to sit in my chair. The problem with that lies in the fact that I’m very, extremely antsy. I cannot read a book, I cannot watch a full TV show, I cannot write anything coherently, I cannot concentrate on one task longer than five minutes.

What I can do is: yell at the dog, yell at the wee one, yell at my husband, yell at the weatherman, yell at my car, yell at my pelvis, yell at random people who call me, and cry.

As you can see, this doesn’t make me the most popular person in the house right now.

I think that if there were less crap on the floor and on the table and on the countertop, if the nursery actually had a crib in it, if I could go buy some nursing bras, if the hospital bags were packed… all of these things might make me feel better. But since many of these tasks require actually moving from my chair and asking my pelvis to do miraculous and unheard of things – like moving my legs without excruciating pain – well, shucks. I’m just stuck being irritated.

The good news is that I’m now 3 cm dilated and 75% effaced, with the wee-er one at a -1 station (not yet engaged, but firmly planted in my aforementioned crack ho bitch of a pelvis). So perhaps we can get this show on the road. Or not. I know you can stay at 3cm for weeks. Gah. But at least I know some progress is being made, which is more than I can say for the state of my health code violating household and my sanity.

You know, my mom was here a week ago, and she kept everything so nice and neat and clean and we all had food to eat. I’ve forgotten how nice it is to have a mom at home. Except that I AM THE MOM and, good grief, I am not making it nice at all.

Sigh. If I could just fix the assmunch pelvis from hell I could grab a Magic Eraser and go crazy. The good kind of crazy. The crazy that starts labor. Until then, though, I stay in the chair to keep my legs from falling off. Huzzah.

weeeeeeee’re allllll goooooooiiiing craaaaaaaazy

took a break today
now we’re back on the star wars
that’s SO not better

For the past week or so, the Wee One has been trying to communicate with whales. This was totally fine by me, and due in fact to my taking the Wee One to the 3D Deep Sea Adventure movie at the Imax for his birthday. (Well, it’s also due to watching Nemo.)

So for days on end now, he’s been talking like Dory: "Mooooooommmyyyyyyyy. Leeeeet’s goooooooo plaaaaaaaay ouuuuuuuutsiiiiiiiiiide." This is not because I’m a whale (but may be because I look like one now. 40 pounds I’ve gained in this pregnancy. That’s 10 pounds less than before, but I still have three weeks to go. Lord.)

At first this whale talk was endlessly amusing, especially when it migrated to the bathroom. Now he only talks like a whale while going potty. This adds in some grunts and whines which seem all the more authentic to me. But like I said, it’s been going on for a while now, and it’s starting to get a bit annoying. Plus, the Wee One reported that a teacher had to come into the bathroom at school to tell him to please be quiet because he was waking the babies from their naps. (And the babies are not whales.)

This morning, in something of an effort to stem the whale talk (but in a more likely effort to stem the flow of cartoons before coffee), the Wee One’s daddy decided they would watch Star Wars.

Now let me say that Star Wars has been strictly forbidden from our TV for a few months because of the non-stop Star Wars talk and questions about whether or not there are other Yodas, why Luke and Leia are brother and sister, how does Darth Vader eat, etc. These are all great questions, but when they are shouted at you in the car over and over EVERY SINGLE DAY for endless amounts of time, you have to go to X-TREME parenting and forbid Star Wars from the TV – at least for a while.

So this morning Star Wars was welcomed back into the DVD player. And chaos ensues. Because, not really thinking this through, the return of Star Wars coincides with the Wee One getting a sword (from a third party) for his birthday. This morning has been one of thrashing and slashing and loud humming of Star Wars music and torturing of the dog and torturing of the mommy and accidental whacking of the self in the head.

In an effort to stop the madness I allowed the Wee One to play with some blue stretchy stuff I was using to put up some of his artwork on the wall. It’s not really made for playing with, but it did briefly distract him from Star Wars. In fact, it distracted him long enough for me to mention something about going to Target to possibly pick up some Silly Putty.

"Sticky Pud?!" the Wee One asked excitedly. "That sounds GREAT!"

Now he’s humming the Star Wars song, swinging a sword, and hollering "Sticky pud! Sticky pud! Sticky pud!"

Why must my best efforts always end in vain? And WHAT are the teachers going to say when he’s yelling "sticky pud!" in the bathroom at school.

We should have just embraced the whale talking. It wasn’t so bad now that I think about it. Cooooooome baaaaack whaaaaaale taaaaalking. I miiiiissss youuuuuuuu.

hunger. and sphincters.

breakfast tacos rock
it is so worth the reflux
like having seconds!

*** ADDENDUM TO YESTERDAY’S POST***

Even though it’s the day after my doctor’s appointment, I have to
admit something. You know the best part about having a weekly date for
your doc to rummage around your cervix? You get to go to the Taco Shack.
I’d trade a little cervix-rummaging right this very second for a couple
of Taco Shack egg, potato and cheese tacos. With salsa. And maybe
bacon. Alas, I have to settle for a bagel from my own kitchen. Stupid suburbs with your stupid affordable housing and your stupid chain stores forcing me to forgo yummy homegrown foodstuffs sold out of places with no parking. Hmph.

***AND NOW ON TO SPHINCTERS***

So here’s the thing. I’ve been reading Ina May’s Guide to Childbirth, and there’s this fabulous chapter on the Law of the Sphincter. At first I found this pretty much the most hilarious thing I’ve ever read, because, even though I’m nine months pregnant, I am really a 6th grade boy. But once I delved past the whole "poop shoot" thing I really learned a lot. Ina May Gaskin makes these wonderful points about how people have a hard time peeing and pooping with other people in the room because it’s hard to let your various sphincters relax when other people are watching and/or just standing around and/or expecting something from you. She says it’s the same thing with childbirth – your cervix acts as a sphincter, and you need a quiet, relaxing, private environment to allow it to do its job. Now that sounds pretty common sensical, but think about it… when you’re in the hospital, you never know when a nurse or a tech or a doctor is going to barge in, and you’re surrounded by people expecting great things from your sphincter… it can be stressful. And maybe this is the reason so many births have to be augmented with Pitocin because they stall. It’s an interesting idea to think about. And, though I know I’m having a hospital birth, and I know the door on my room won’t have a lock, I now feel a bit more convinced to work on some relaxation exercises and that sort of thing.

Anyway, I was gonna make fun of sphincters originally, but now I’ve gotten all serious on you. Perhaps my 6th grade boy personality is nesting. Except that every time I write the word sphincter I still giggle. So there’s that.

And so it begins…

a baby coming
in a few weeks or days
better choose a name

I had all of these hilarious and insightful ideas for a post today, but I’ve forgotten them. All of them. Probably because I’m distracted from my doctor’s visit where it was reported that I am 2 cm dilated and 50% effaced. That doesn’t mean the baby is coming today, but it does mean she’ll be here soon enough. I don’t even know if I remember how to hold a newborn!

Oh, the Law of the Sphincter! THAT’S what I wanted to talk about. But now I have to go. Stay tuned, my peeps, and we’ll talk about spinchter laws and babies arriving. Are you in?

Shew!

robot birthday done
no stitches, just two meltdowns
another success

Too tired to go into all of the details, but here are the highlights from the Wee One’s birthday party today:

1) Oscar statue pinatas can be successfully morphed into robot pinatas (at least well enough to please four-year-olds)
2) Aluminum foil makes excellent camouflage for chip-holding bowls that don’t match
3) Seven kids dancing the Robot to TMBG’s "Robot Parade" is certainly the most awesome thing I have seen in years.
4) For some reason, when you get a bunch of four-year-olds together, the room begins to smell like popcorn even though there is no popcorn. Anywhere. Within 5 miles.

And the cake! It turned out super duper bad ass (click to enjoy it in a ginormous state):
Robot_cake