Sarah found my music! She’s my hero! (It was a stupid thing I did that moved something I shouldn’t have moved but it didn’t touch the actual music. I’m barely computer literate.)
This is me doing my happy dance cause I have awesome friends willing to do desktop support. 😀
Today I made dinner. It took pretty much all day. I made pasta, pasta sauce, strawberry mash, and shortcake–all from scratch. That kind of preparation is a pain in the butt. All of the fresh ingredients came from the CSA box, the farmers market, or my back yard. 🙂 I’m tired. I don’t know how people used to cook from scratch every day. This is a pain in the butt.
Yesterday I finished my tattoo. I want to do a full post about that very soon with pictures.
Shanna continues to astound me with her development. I’m thrilled that I have a willing sleeper. When she realized she wasn’t going to get me to go lay down with her “nigh-nigh” “I can’t right now Shanna” she more or less asked to be put on my back and she took her nap there. I’m extremely sore but she’s in a great mood thanks to sleeping and I got my chores done. w00t.
Tomorrow we are going to Friday Night Waltz! I hope to see many people there. 🙂
I should ping because I keep thinking about her. I’m obviously awesome at initiating contact though. Oy.
I’m at day 42 of my cycle. The stupid sticks I’m peeing on still say I’m not pregnant though. This is making me fret for a variety of reasons.
I’ve been ordered PT for my knee and a hearing test to get more of a baseline on my disintegration a la (insert accent mark) Meniere’s. I really like my Kaiser doctor. She said despite my eyes, ears, and knee I am in excellent health. She didn’t even blink hard in the direction of my weight and she told me that I should have a bunch more kids because obviously I’m a great mother. 😀 She thinks I have a great attitude about the Menier’s and I think there is no point in having a poopy attitude. 😀
My house is a mess and I have dinner guests showing up sometime in the next half hour. I should probably get off livejournal. 🙂 I get to see my Sarah! I’m excited. It’s been so long. 🙂
“Shanna, will you please get your diaper off the counter.”
She’s up on the stepstool watching me cook. She decided that it was a great time to take her diaper off. See, this is why I don’t like velcro.
So… would anyone like to spend some time with Shanna on the 28th? It would be best if it were at our house because the event we would like to go to starts around bedtime and it would be easiest on Shanna if she didn’t have to deal with being moved after she falls asleep. 🙂
So I tried to back up my computer. I’m told this is a good thing to do but it seems to cause me as many problems as it solves. Bugger.
So this time the problem is that my itunes library seems to be on the external hard drive but it’s entirely gone from my computer and I can’t figure out how to put it back.
Does anyone have any advice?
Note: I am friendslocking this because I think my journal can be searched via google and I am not yet confident enough about this subject matter to want to broadcast it on the internet.
Recently I’ve been thinking a lot about rape and rapists. I am close with more than one woman who was raped and who still has to deal with the person who raped her socially. In at least one case this feels even more personal and difficult and it has prompted me to do a lot of thinking. Not too long ago linked to a discussion about rape that made me think. How many people know rapists and don’t even realize that they do? No really–look around your circle of friends, you probably know a rapist and you may or may not be able to figure out who it is. That got me thinking more about my own history of sexual assault. I’ve written about my early sexual assault experiences here in some detail but I’ve skipped the last few sexual assault experiences entirely. Why? I feel like part of the reason is because they were all less physically traumatizing so I minimize them in light of the rest of my history. I mean, if I can survive being brutally sodomized when I was like nine years old, what is a date rape here and there between friends? I say that sarcastically but that is basically how I have treated this subject. There is a part of me that believes that given how “minor” the sexual assault was–no physical damage–I need to just get over it. There is that fucking phrase again. “Just get over it.” Fuck that fucking phrase with a fucking chainsaw. (Can you tell I like stream of consciousness writing?) There is another part of the issue that plays a much bigger part I have realized recently. All of the recent assaults touch other people in my life in some way or another. Two of them are still friends with people I am friends with. If I talk about the assaults I will name them. Naming them creates a situation where people might say, “Oh I don’t believe that ‘x’ did that to you”. How fucking awful is that. I have counseled dear friends to publicly name their attackers because otherwise the bastards get to continue to have squeaky clean reputations and when someone eventually says they are a rapist it will be harder to believe–if there is a history of it, maybe something will actually be done about it. But that means I have to put myself out there and make me vulnerable to disbelief and maybe even to losing friends. That is scary. Hey wait! I’m a counter-phobic six! It’s scary! Here I go.
Cut for length.
Continue reading
The internet is not giving me what I want. Stupid internet. I want to make a whole bunch of pasta sauce (I am now canning enabled!) and all of the recipes are for 2-5 cups of sauce. I know I can just multiply the recipe but I would feel safer knowing that a recipe was intended as a large batch one because sometimes you don’t really want to just multiply straight across the board.
Stupid internet.
If you are like me and you spend much time wondering if you are pregnant due to inconsistent cycles, trying to get pregnant, trying not to get pregnant, whatever, I recommend heading on over to: http://www.saveontests.com/ You can get pregnancy tests for as little as $.34/test if you buy 100 of them. 100 pregnancy tests sounds like a really lot but given how irregular my cycle is I am willing to bet I have used at least 40 or so in my lifetime and I’m not done with testing. I’ve only had these cheap things for about the last 20. That means I probably have already spent over $200 on pregnancy tests when I could have spent $34 for all the tests I will ever possibly need. Sounds smart now doesn’t it? Ok, technically they expire in about three years but still! I could have bought a bunch of these every three years and still saved a lot of money. 😛 You can buy them in packs of 5 for only $3.25. No really, that’s awesome.
I uhhh babbled a lot. Continue reading
Once again I’m obsessing about weight. This time, luckily, not my own. Shanna hasn’t gained a full pound in the last nine months. If she doesn’t gain some weight this month she will have fallen from the 89% to the 9%. If I stop and think about that real hard I feel like I must be doing something wrong. I’m not sure what I am doing wrong. I am giving her as much food as she wants. I nurse on demand (sometimes half the night). Should I stop letting her have water and replace that with something that has calories–like more milk? Should I stop giving her vegetables because they have almost no calories? She doesn’t really eat meat. At this point she is probably up to ten bites of meat in her life. She poops and pees well above what is considered the minimum for this age. She is getting taller like mad–that is still up in the 70-something%. She runs all day. She is meeting all of the developmental milestones months early, some of them as much as four months early.
I’m having a hard time feeling confident that her body is doing what is right. I want to believe it, but I feel really bad right now.
I love the sundresses that are popular right now. Very long, I’m good with showing some cleavage and most importantly: the straps are adjustable. However there is one big problem with these dresses (and most of the tanktops I own) they were not cut for women with large breasts. If I wear them without a bra I am in imminent danger of falling out entirely at any second. (No really. It’s not a great thing.) If I wear a bra with them they look retarded because my bras are gi-fucking-normous in order to contain the vastness of my breasts. (Anyone who says, “but you aren’t that big” can kiss my lily white ass.) I don’t exactly appreciate having the top/dress look like little triangles floating on the sea of my bra. It’s fucking ugly and tacky.
Maybe I should have stopped watering them a long time ago.
If I ever win the lottery (I really should buy tickets once in a while) my family would of course want money from me because they are thoroughly charming souls that way. It would be kind of cool to buy a piece of property outright that is not very built up and put a couple of houses on it for them. Specifically houses like these. They would have completed individual little houses. I would probably even build a “town hall” in the center of the little houses so that everyone had a big dining room/kitchen to hang out in when they wanted to get together.
It’s really not an awful idea.
Now that I was shown the wonders of wallpaper (previously I didn’t consider them because my experience with wallpaper was all really ugly shit in old people’s houses) I have some awesome choices to make. I am interested in something that encourages a variety of imaginative play. I would like something that isn’t too ‘baby’ because I’m not going to want to change it particularly soon. I would like something that does not dictate that my daughter ought to be a tomboy or a princess. She gets to be whatever she wants to be. And I would like something that is not strictly speaking ‘girl’ because then little boys will scorn it because little boys are trained to be retarded like that. (We have a really machismo neighbor with a little boy Shanna’s age. I expect they will play because I get along with the mom. I expect that his father will make cracks if something is too girly because he’s already made cracks about how I shouldn’t ever cut Shanna’s hair because girls should never be allowed to cut their hair.)
Idea #1 which I like because it’s a neat old library and that’s always fun. I’m not sure how this one would age with a kid.
Idea #2 I like this one because it is very open-ended and it lends itself to all kinds of neat imagination games.
Idea #3 I think this one would age particularly well. I worry that it could be a little spooky for a small child. Of course I do love my tree imagery.
Idea #4 also very open ended but in a slightly more realistic sort of way. This one seems to me to be more about adventure and less about fantastic, if that makes sense.
Idea #5 this is less open ended but really fun.
Idea #6 neat, but I’m not sure.
Today I am feeling happy because I have made a bunch of progress out in the shed. I am getting rid of the debris left from when the housemate before the last housemate was here. (I’m not complaining! Thank you for the roses!) This means I am able to organize the stuff I want to put in there. This kind of anal retentive organizing makes me swooningly happy. 😀
And I am going to squash my “I can do it myself!!!” attitude and gratefully accept help from the wondrous Taylor in finishing the garage. This way it will actually get done instead of me just bitching at Noah that I want it to get done. 🙂 Then I get to move on to feeling angsty about my lack of artistic ability. 🙂 That part will be easier to get done I suspect. I’m not sure exactly how I’m going to do the playroom yet but I feel a tantalizing array of options. 😀
Looks like trying to have more of a relationship with my family was a bad idea. 🙁 It’s time to withdraw from that again. Noah gave me some really good advice on how to do it without exploding a drama bomb.
I got into a really bad place for a while there where I was doing the martyr thing full time. That doesn’t help anyone least of all me. I need to knock that crap off. Noah can take care of his own happiness.
Shanna now, quite delightfully, says “owwwww sigh”. For those of you without children this means outside. It’s awesome. She loves her swing so much. I’m thrilled that I got the idea from and and I bought one. 🙂
I’m shifting things around in the house a lot more trying to figure out what arrangements will make me happiest long term because the long term is how long we are here. I really really want to make a cool playroom for the kidlet so I’m looking into that. I have a bunch of cool links that I might post later.
I’m feeling frustrated by the fact that people very very rarely initiate social interaction with me. Why is it that I have to do all of it?
My last tattoo appointment is on August 3rd. We’ll be stopping birth control after that. That means I’m taking advantage of the ability to drink. 🙂
Noah and I had a wonderful date on Monday where we had breathtakingly good food. Being married to a foodie is the best thing ever.
I’m not being good about exercise just lately. This is another thing I need to work on.
Urf and arf. Time to start walking towards the bus stop. I bet Shanna is going to love the trip on BART again. 🙂
Why haven’t I heard about the Harry Potter theme park?! (Site has obnoxious music.)
Maybe my want list just got longer. Screw Scotland. 😛
I was asked elsenet what I want right now that I won’t be getting anytime soon.
Clothes from this chick on Etsy.
I want to finish the front and back yards.
I would like to remodel our kitchen.
I would really really like another bathroom. (This is probably one of the least likely things.)
To hire someone to trim the tree in the front yard.
I want to finish the garage and turn it into a play room so that I can start sending Shanna out there to play. 🙂
I want to be able to travel more. I think it might be Scotland next.
I think that’s the money-necessary stuff I want at this point. What do you want?
I’m being asked a question I’m not sure how to answer. This website: http://www.thelocal.se/20336/20090629/ says that they are finding that DNA changes as a result of C-sections. My understanding would be that it would be as the result of trauma. The moms on a mailing list I’m on don’t understand how DNA can change. My understanding is that DNA can be damaged and damage is change. Am I wrong? I have found a variety of other articles documenting DNA change after trauma but I guess I’m just not explaining it well?
Not a baby anymore. She can now follow directions, sometimes with more than one step. Granted she doesn’t always want to but I think that is the battle of a lifetime. If she bangs on the door to go play out back I tell her, “You have to get dressed and put shoes on first” and she runs back to the bedroom and starts pulling out drawers or she hands me her shoes. When she is tired at night I tell her that we need to brush our teeth before we can go to bed and she heads straight to the bathroom. Oh, and she loves brushing her teeth. I think that is a little weird.
She’s dancing. It is the cutest thing ever. She likes dancing best when she can hold on to something like the table because otherwise she rocks her hips so hard she falls down. She likes to spin in circles.
She is starting to have dislikes about food. When she heartily rejected the eggplant I couldn’t blame her because I wanted to do it as well. 🙂 She is super into fruit. We are now having to deliberately limit sugar because she gets really hyper. I don’t do that with sugar so it’s kind of weird for me. We are now giving her meat occasionally because it was becoming too much of a pain in the ass to keep her vegetarian. Here come the smelly poops! It’s ok we’ve got a good system for dirty diapers.
She went through a potty pause and I haven’t gotten back on the wagon with EC yet. I’m starting today. She knows what her potty is for. She knows how to ask for pottying. It’s time to focus on that again. We are going through way too many diapers. I’m tired of the laundry.
She can sign: more, food, water (used for drink as well), milk, potty, all gone (she isn’t good with this one), and she’s trying hard for dessert. She can say: up, something that sounds a really lot like out (like outside), dow (down), and she mimics sounds a lot.
I’m having trouble with Picasa. I’ll try to upload pictures later.
I fixed my Quicken problem today. I did it all by myself. Go me! This resulted in me being able to load the last couple of months into Quicken. I almost wish I hadn’t.
The sad truth is that we need to not buy Christmas presents, not go on any more trips, and seriously cut back on what we are spending on food. That spiffy new roof has more lasting effects than my comfort. Money kind of sucks. But if we are really really good then we might be able to go on a trip next year. *cross fingers*
(Icon just because I’m posting naked. :P)