Hooray for blogging! And hej da! And happy 4th!

Via Magpie Musing and Lands’ End, we were the delighted recipients of a bathing suit, cover-up, and towel giveaway!

Here’s the reluctant model (the pictures are out of focus since I don’t know how to use my husband’s camera, which was the only one I could find):

Wonderful! Thank you!

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We’re off to Europe later today. Didn’t sleep too well last night, unfortunately; had an anxiety dream about competing with Amy Winehouse for a job working in a library. She got it. Baby is aware and possibly excited that tonight, at night night time, we will be getting on an AIRPLANE! and will get to eat SNACKS! and watch VIDEOS! and go NIGHT NIGHT! on the AIRPLANE high in the sky! We’ll see how that plan works out.

Preamble ramble

Lots of things haven’t been going my way lately (see last post). It’s probably me that’s off. We leave for Sweden Friday night, theoretically at 8:30 PM, an hour after bedtime, and I’m anxious. Make that Anxious. I feel like I’ve been packing for weeks. I also feel like I’ve written this post before, last year right before we left for Sweden. I was so optimistic then, though; so naive. Now I know flying will suck and no one will sleep; I have no illusions. Fortunately, I also know the flight will end after a minimum of 10 hours. Of course then there will be five hours of driving. And then two weeks of living in a house with many other people and one shower located in the basement (when we’re not at the allegedly electricity- and plumbing-free lake house) and no privacy or control over my plans. At least this year Husband won’t be miserable with nerve pain from Bell’s palsy.

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I made dinner last night. The part that I didn’t accidentally drop onto the floor was burned. I also broke the apparatus I was using to cook. See? Told you I am off.

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It’s not just these thoughts weighing on me but my work has been giving me trouble. Without going into a long story, I’ll just note that other people are idiots. I’ve basically convinced the office, though, that Sweden doesn’t have the internet, so I hope not to hear anything from them while I’m gone even though the thing I have been working on launches while I’m gone. My part is done (so far as I could, what with the aforementioned idiocy of others). Also work-related: I do my work at night. During the day I don’t think about it at all. But sometimes I have do participate in a conference call during business hours. I work very hard at remembering these calls. They’re on the calendar. I walk around telling myself “call tomorrow at 1, call tomorrow at 1.” And playdates, story times, other people’s kids’ napping schedules–all that I can remember. But the last two conference calls I completely flaked out. I just didn’t call. Both times I wasn’t even busy–we were home, playing, doing laundry, whatever. Fortunately, for the last one, apparently nobody else remembered, either, so we rescheduled it for Wednesday at noon. I have put reminders everywhere because if I don’t make this call, I’m sure my co-workers will be posting on their blogs how idiotic their co-workers are.

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Oh, the Babies Can’t Wait people called about the nonexistent speech delay. I told them we weren’t interested. And we aren’t. Baby’s been speaking some Swedish (soooooo cuuuuuute) and using some present progressive verbs and putting two words together and everything.

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Baby’s little buddy Z, with whom we’ve had trouble before, is in a big hitting/kicking/toy stealing/non-sharing/screaming phase. I dearly love spending time with his mother, but we just can’t see them right now. a) I don’t like Baby to get jumped on or physically hurt, or have her feelings injured, and b) she gets the screaming bug from him and then it takes about five days to get her to stop. I can’t let her renew that right before the flight. And normally I’d be straightforward with Z’s mom about this, but lately she’s been telling me how hard it is that this other friend of ours is avoiding her because of Z’s behavior, so I’ve been doing some dissembling a bit. I feel bad about this. But isn’t this more win-win?

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Baby has suddenly decided to call me Mommy instead of Mama. It sounds so grown up. Too grown up.

Things I could dress up for, but don’t

Saturday was our fifth wedding anniversary. We had a babysitter lined up and had possible dinner, movie, and toddler toy shopping plans, but decided to cancel the sitter and have Baby join us at a family-style Italian place that specializes in serving foods you can dip into garlic butter, preceded by the same toy shopping agenda. Baby so loves to eat, and eat out, and we do enjoy her company, that it didn’t feel like we were missing out. It was quite nice.

Today, though, when Baby and I were playing dress-up, she with my scarves and shoes and me with my wardrobe of unworn Nice Clothes, I was surprised and delighted to discover that I can now fit back into a lot of my clothes from high school, despite still being almost 20 pounds heavier. I was able to get into three prom dresses (apparently I went to several proms, of which I have little recollection), an elaborate burnt velvet number I bought on the street in San Francisco, the dress I wore to my senior year piano recital, an astonishing number of beautiful suits, and several other fun and dressy things. Now that I know I can wear them, some things even flatteringly enough I could actually leave the house in them, it’s a little sad to think that, nevertheless, I won’t. What do I do that requires dressing up? It’s enough to make one consider a fancy corporate job in New York, or divorce and dating, or running for political office, or taking up flamenco, or even attending worship services just to get some use out of these very lovely garments.

Hometown visit

We (meaning me + my progeny) just took a little trip to my hometown to visit with my mother and grandparents. While there we dropped in on various people, 75% of whom were not home for our drop-in visit; we had fun with the other 25%, me doing impromptu slogan translating for their upcoming missions trips to Honduras, Baby investigating their stacks of magazines.

It’s funny; when we talk about social customs in the U.S. in my ESL classes, I always stress to my Hispanic immigrant students that Americans don’t like drop-in visits, but then I myself force people into panics about the states of their houses with no compunctions at all. Mostly I just do this when I am back home and know where everybody lives (my old piano and Spanish teachers, my childhood friend with two little kids, my grandparents’ neighbors, my high school best friend’s parents; that variegated class of people) but I don’t know their phone numbers and even if I did it would be next to impossible for me to coordinate a visit beforehand what with my grandparents’, mother’s, and child’s various schedules. So we pop in.

My grandmother’s Alzheimer’s is mostly stable. She knows who most everyone is and is able to fake very well knowing where she is and what she is doing. She clings to my grandfather; this morning Baby and I were supposed to “sit with” (i.e. babysit) her while my mother and grandfather attended to some business, but she much rathered (I know that “rather” is not a verb, but apparently this is how I would speak this phrase, and in talking about my grandparents I tend to get very Southern, and I think using “rather” in a past-tense verb form like this must be a Southern thing, so I am keeping it for ambiance) go with him than stay with us. But she and Baby equally enjoy a rousing game of peekaboo and had a nice enough visit; Baby impressed my grandparents, as always, with her wide and sustained interest in food. I was reading an article that mentioned that the brain of someone with advanced Alzheimer’s in many respects resembles that of a one-year-old in terms of the lack of transition of memories into the long-term. My grandmother’s social and verbal skills are rather more advanced, however.

Upon our arrival, my grandparents were so excited to get back into the house to visit with us that they apparently knocked each other over in the doorway. My grandfather, who is on blood thinners, broke open a wound on his forehead that he’d gotten weeks earlier in the removal of a basal cell carcinoma. The day before he’d gotten his pacemaker’s battery replaced. My mother is exhausted taking them to all of their various doctors’, lawyers’, business partners’, and so forth appointments, keeping them fed and dressed and medicated, all with no help as they won’t accept any–even (probably especially) from me. And soon she will return to full-time work. I just can’t see how she can do it all. At this rate she will overwork herself and die before my grandparents, and then where will the family be?

Jeans

I realized several other things I need to accomplish before going to Sweden (e.g. get a haircut, select books to bring, get wedding ring fixed [ran out of time for this], mail shit) and another was to buy jeans. In the winter here if I wear pants it’s corduroys mostly, and in the summer it’s skirts, dresses, or my one pair of shorts (that I bought a month ago). But the summer in Sweden is more pants weather, and I wanted something casual, and had nothing. My khakis are ruined in several ways. My jeans are all too big. Poor me. I had to go jeans shopping.

Besides the obvious fit requests people make, I needed pants that don’t stretch too much in the waist. I can’t figure out why jeans usually seem to fit fine but then migrate downward all the time. I don’t want to have to wear a belt because that makes me feel like I should tuck in my shirt and tucking in, well, no. I have to pee way too often for that. Thus I was delighted to find a pair that was the right length, a decent color, fit fine on my bottom and did not accentuate my c-sectioned tummy, and had a non-stretch waist that keeps the pants in the correct location. What’s more they were 70% off! 12 dollars!!! Unfortunately, I have also realized since wearing them today that they are probably what everybody is always deriding as “mom jeans” though I’m not too sure. I think these are what I got:

I never wore jeans growing up. I am no jeans sophisticate. I got my first pair my sophomore year of college and have worn them irregularly since. What about you?

Things that have to happen before we go to Sweden for our vacation

Yesterday I got an email from my father-in-law asking me if there’s anything he can do to prepare for our trip there, as we leave in 19 days. That means today makes only 18 days left before we go. Two weeks and a half, people! How did I not realize that? I am freaking out! I have so much to do! For example:

1) Solve the riddle of Baby’s possible food and/or environmental allergies and/or sensitivities
2) Make arrangements for the crazy-expensive pet sitter who will come twice a day to keep everyone fed and watered and let the dogs in and out and do the litter box
3) Get out the clothes from the fall for Baby so she won’t be too cold like she was last year. Oddly, summer in Sweden isn’t the same temperature as summer in Georgia
4) Purchase and/or gather and then wrap gifts for Swedish relatives, including but not limited to: father-in-law, mother-in-law, sister-in-law, other sister-in-law, brother-in-law, other brother-in-law, Baby’s multitude of cousins and second cousins, my sister-in-law’s parents, my sister-in-law’s cousin’s children, my sister-in-law’s friends (Why have I gotten myself into the tradition of getting presents for my not-blood-related-to-my-husband sister-in-law’s family and friends? Why, I ask you?)
5) Find a way to pack all of these gifts, plus our own clothes and equipment, into just two suitcases as Baby does not have her own seat and thus cannot check a bag
6) Try to re-learn the stupid airline rules about liquids
7) Get Baby off the bottle and used to not drinking mostly formula so I don’t have to bring those
8) Select and/or purchase entertainment items for Baby on the plane and find a way to pack them efficiently
9) Freak out about how much it will suck to fly with a toddler, especially one who doesn’t have her own seat (I curse my cheapskateness!) and has a phobia of the sounds of airplanes. I also need to fret about sleep in Sweden with its nearly 24-hour sunlight, sharing a room with Baby, and that goddamn fold-out couch we’ll have to sleep in that folds up with you in it if you shift incorrectly in your sleep
10) Give up being a vegetarian temporarily (I’ve been a vegetarian in Sweden before and it wasn’t pretty, so I am trying to ease back into meat in advance so I won’t make disgusted faces at people’s plates while we are there. That’s just not friendly.)
11) Complete ~80 of work in my free time in order to meet a deadline for an event that will occur towards the end of my trip to Sweden (as I sure as hell am not doing any work while there)

That’s not too much, right? I can do that, right? No problem?

Division of labor

Now that I’m working more than thirty hours a week at two jobs and use no outside childcare, I am beginning to get a little annoyed that I’m the one who does all the laundry, dishes, cleaning, pet care, most of the yard work and the bulk of the childcare. The other night, when I was working (which I do seven days a week for three to eight hours a day largely when Baby is in bed), I was in the middle of a very mentally-engaging task when the buzzer on the dryer went off. I had to interrupt myself to take out the laundry, bring it upstairs, and put it away so that it wouldn’t get wrinkled (it was my husband’s work clothes).

When the buzzer first went off, I looked meaningfully over at Husband, but he was too engrossed in his computer to notice. Perhaps he is unfamiliar with the import of the dryer buzzer? I got up and didn’t say anything because we’re still celebrating his birthday (at our house you get your way for the entire week before and after your birthday; since Husband was away for one of his weeks for work, this means I have to be nice to him for three weeks total which is, it must be said, something of a challenge.)

It’s not that I expect we should be completely equal like some people, but my only time to work is when Baby is sleeping. He gets to work all day long at a nice, clean office and then come home and sit around (and do homework and fix things and take care of emergency work problems and cook dinner and run errands and care for Baby, but in this post we are being biased in my favor, okay?). I’ve worked in office environments, so I know that it’s not as though they’re entirely free from distractions (people popping by, meetings, the incessant email; one nice thing about working at night is that I don’t get totally irrelevant emails popping up all the time.) So maybe I can’t expect to be free of them, either?

Hm, as I write this I am feeling less annoyed. I am home all day. It’s not like I sit and stare at Baby; I can run the household, too. I don’t actually mind, really. It’s enjoyable to care for my little family. But I do wish Husband would take my work a little more seriously. Whenever I say anything negative about it, he mentions how I didn’t have to take it. The fact that it was optional doesn’t mean it’s not real, though!

What’s the division of labor like at your house? How do you feel about it?

Binding fabric

Wanna know a highly effective way to get a ton of emails fast? Offer a bunch of baby clothes up on Freecycle. Wow, those people are rabid.

I have a few bins of outgrown clothes of Baby’s. I’ve gone through them a few times, but I have the hardest time parting with anything. Toys and equipment I seem to have little trouble lending or giving away, but with clothes, if I can remember Baby in it, or even more so, if I have an adorable picture of her wearing it, I just can’t pass that outfit along. Or if it was a present. Or if it didn’t work season-wise for Baby but it’s very cute, I want to keep it, as they say, “just in case.” As you can see, I have multiple reasons for hoarding a bunch of spit-up stained teeny tiny clothes on the offhand chance I do someday have another baby and that baby is a girl and the seasons match up, etc. etc. The stuff I gave away was composed of vaguely itchy-looking items, any outfit with a character on it (e.g. Pooh, Minnie–I hate advertising for free), clothes I don’t think Baby ever wore, socks and shoes with escapist proclivities making me hate them, and an excess of hats, so I wasn’t too sad to see them go.

It doesn’t really hurt anything to keep the bulk of the clothes, I guess, though it does feel silly to lock them away when others could enjoy them. But there’s just some indefinable quality they have that binds them closely to me; maybe it’s that they’re tangible reminders of a sweet baby past or, I have to admit, little emblems of optimism about a sweet baby future.

A quite distant future, I hope.

What’s your approach in this area?