I'm like superwoman

I don't know if I've mentioned this before, but somewhere along the way Sam decided that when my hair is down I'm Mommy, but when my hair is up in a rubber band, I'm Beth. I keep my hair relatively short, so I don't put it up that often. When it does happen to grow out a bit and I do put it up, Sam always looks at me happily and says, "Oh! You're Beth again!" I don't know if Beth is better than Mommy or what, but right now I just think it's funny.

Also, Sam calls hairbands "ram-bands." Don't know why. I'm sure Chris will beat that out of him just like he does all Sam's other adorable mis-statements.

Today, when I was going crazy trying to find the car key that Chris had in his pocket at work, Sam was helping me look. He found a ram-band and asked if he could put it in my hair and make me be Beth.

I don't know what goes on inside the heads of my children, but it's funny sometimes.

Small accomplishments

I made the most perfect check mark the other day. I do a lot of assessments so I make a lot of check marks and my check marks, like my handwriting, are big and weird. But the forces of the cosmos came together and I made a check mark so beautiful it could be used as the font for check marks. This is the check mark against which all other check marks should be compared. I should take a picture and make it my new facebook profile picture. It was so pretty I got distracted from the task at hand. This was the first in a series of 70-odd check marks I have to make and I was trying really hard to duplicate my perfect check mark but, alas, that check mark stands alone in my history. Also, the kid was kind of dumb so instead of check marks I had to make a lot of x's. No perfect x's either.

I didn't really mean it for real

The day I wrote the post asking somebody to shoot me in the face, I saw this Oprah where this lady's husband did, in fact, shoot her in the face and I take it back. I don't think that improved her life at all. And then she had to have this face transplant and everybody was all excited about the first successful face transplant and I was watching and thinking that that technology has yet to be refined. I am a hideous puffy beast with beady eyes and bad skin, and yet I don't think the face transplant industry has anything better to offer. Maybe someday. And then Angelina Jolie will die and I will get her face. Because I think that Angelina is an organ donation kind of girl, don't you? That would be pretty sweet to have Angelina Jolie's corneas. Well, I guess if you needed new corneas, anybody's corneas would be sweet.

Visited a new doctor this week. She prescribed me some medications to take to help the nausea and that is making my life significantly more bearable. Fortunately that happened the day after my parents took all my laundry to their house to clean and fold it. I'm sorry they had to rent a truck, but I'm grateful. Of course, now that they have my dirty laundry and have not yet returned the clean laundry I'm dressing for work in things from the very back of my closet. Tomorrow I'm going to break out my wedding dress.

So I'm feeling better, and that's good. And I'm getting all my laundry cleaned for me, and that's good. Things are looking up around here!

There have been some rumblings recently. That maybe this blog has become a little pathetic . . . “whiny,” even.

There seems to be some suggestion that maybe this used to be about the kids, and world events, and now it’s all Me, Me, Me.

“I’M dying.”

“Call ME an ambulance.”

“Could somebody please shoot ME in the face?”

I’m sure you are all thinking, boy, she used to be funnier before she got pregnant.

Well you know what?

You were funnier before I got pregnant, too.

You are letting me down, peeps.

Doing the morning thing this morning. Sam climbs up next to me on the couch. A few minutes later, he turns to me and, with an expression of mild disgust, says, "I don't know what you smell like."

And then, just in case I was confused and thought maybe he didn't know which flower I smelled like, he said, "But you smell stinky."

People. You cannot rely on my three-year-old to save me from myself. You are all adults. If I am stinky, you need to tell me. Because while, so far, I've been able to shower everyday, I will admit that many of my clothes are being "recycled." From the floor.

I'm struggling, folks. You all know that. But my efforts to accomplish the bare minimum in maintaining functionality have apparently failed, and nobody is telling me that I shouldn't wear Chris's clothes to work except my son. And that's a joke, because Chris doesn't have any clean clothes, either.

To be honest, I really don't want to hear it. But if Sam thinks I need an intervention, maybe you shouldn't leave him on his own to organize it, because then he will get balloons and pupcakes and sing happy birthday and I will MISS THE POINT. The thing is, unfortunately, I still have to go to work everyday, and interact with society and stuff like that. So while it is unnecessary for you to supply the word "beast?" when I get distracted while saying "I am a hideous puffy . . ." (thanks, Chris), you can feel free to point out when I have crossed the line in letting grooming slide.

It has a head, but no penis. Yet.

So, it looks like everybody who reads this has figured out that I'm pregnant. With Satan, apparently.

Had my first doctor's appointment this morning. He did an ultrasound so I actually got to see that it was a for-real baby, and not a tumor or something like that. It has a head and two legs and two arms that it was waving. Crazy. Nine weeks along, the size of a grape, and the thing was moving around. PEOPLE, LIFE IS A MIRACLE.

Just thought I'd throw a little original, profound, thought your way today, guys.

Anyway, I lied about dates so that he would push the due date back a week to increase my chances of a VBAC, but these fancy ultrasound machines are now smarter than people. Honestly, I don't even know why they asked because he frowned a bit, double-checked and was all, "Well, my measurements here indicate that you are 9 weeks, 3 days. Or thereabouts." Jimminy Cricket that is SPOT ON. Who knew they could measure that closely? So my lying was for naught.

Also, he could not have cared less about my morning sickness unless he, himself, had morning sickness this bad and knew what it was like to really not care about anything. He suggested I stop eating and start drinking more water. What the hell kind of advice is that? He recommended I stop eating until I feel better, but I believe that would be about three weeks from now (please, god) and by then I would be dead of not eating.

So he was over an hour late to the appointment, caught me lying, and didn't care one whit about my morning sickness WHICH IS SAPPING MY WILL TO LIVE. But he is, theoretically, cool with me trying for a VBAC so it wasn't a total failure.

Further proof something has gone VERY wrong inside me

Somebody brought a plate of homemade brownies into work yesterday. In the old days, I would have been obsessed with figuring out how many I could eat before other people would notice.

But yesterday the very sight of them repulsed me. I couldn't even stand to have them in my line of vision.

Part of my brain remembered that chocolate used to bring me joy, but it was like remembering that time you stubbed your toe; you can remember that it happened, but not at all what if felt like.

Where is the joy in life when homemade brownies are repulsive? What's next? Butterflies are annoying? Sunshine giving me a migraine? World peace turns out to be boring? IF YOU CAN'T COUNT ON BROWNIES, WHAT CAN YOU COUNT ON?

But seriously, don't have me committed. That's not cool.

Things I care about right now:

1) Food. I am constantly thinking about food, and what kind of food my body might be willing/interested in eating.

2) How I feel. What is my currently level of misery? Intense? Moderate? Dying?



Things I don't care about right now:

1) Everything. Is this what it is like to be depressed? Because it blows. It's hard to get anything done when you feel awful and don't care anyway. I don't care that the house is a disaster. I don't care that we are quickly running out of clean laundry. I don't care that there are rotting leftovers in the fridge. I don't care about work. And you know what else? I don't even care about FARMTOWN anymore. That's how bad this is.

Global Climate Change appears to have struck our spending freeze

THUD. Ouch. That wagon you see rolling away? It is our spending freeze and we appear to have fallen off.

I mean, not entirely. But we ran a tight ship there for two months and what with how awful I’ve been feeling recently and how awful it feels to not spend any money ever, we’ve just been losing our grip a little bit.

Here’s a look back at the month of August.

Just so you have a little background, Chris and I do not have a joint account. Not because we split finances or anything, but because we just never got around to it. We both have our paychecks deposited into our separate accounts. He is responsible for daycare and most of the bills, I am responsible for mortgage. That’s just kind of the way it works our around here.

So, I spent a total of 435 dollars (not including mortgage) in August, which is a significant decrease from the average of $1100 a month I had been spending. But still, not exactly a “freeze.”

The biggest chunk of that was my yearly $240 premium for life insurance. Of the roughly $200 left, $141 is groceries and diapers. Now, that could have been less, but I am dying here with the sickness and I’m buying whatever it is I think I can get my body to accept. Other than that we have a $28 expenditure for a doctor’s visit and antibiotics for Owen, a $5 movie ticket for me, a $13 bill for lunch out with coworkers (see, because they don’t know about the spending freeze I still have to do things like that) and $8 for parking for jury duty.

Yes, there are some things that could have been cut there, but we’re not trying to be weirdos that grow our own food and raise our own chickens and medicate our children with prayer. But man that insurance payment was killer, wasn’t it?

That statement doesn’t even reflect the beginning of September, which includes the trip to Dunkin Doughnuts ($9), Sam’s emergency dental visit ($25, $30 including the trip to McDonald's that came after), or whatever the heck Chris has been doing because lord know that man can fall off a wagon harder than anybody else I know.

I’m sure we’ll regroup. And in the plus column, we have subjected our children to a vaccine study which should net us about $400. Sweet! And all I have to do is risk the health of my children on an unproven vaccine! I’m kidding people. It was a phase 3, open-label study with no blood-draws . . . I believe in vaccines, especially since this one is supposed to help protect against some of the new antibiotic-resistant super bugs. So I probably would have done the study anyway, but now we can justify buying the children new shoes.