I think I'd look great with Vulcan ears

I wish I was a Vulcan. Cool. Dispassionate. Not given to emotions. Logical. Awesome pointy ears. I know I'm a girl, and that's precisely why I want to be Vulcan. Have you ever broke down crying when your boss yells at you? Being a girl can suck.

I've noticed a new wave of emotions since having a baby. It could be hormonal, I suppose. I had normal girl hormones before and pregnancy is like adding five new ingredients, turning up the heat, and stirring the pot rapidly. Childbirth is where that mixture explodes and your body and hormones may be similar to the ones you had before, or you may carry an eternal aversion to vinegar and a higher propensity to get canker sores and cavities. I'm still sorting out the damage. (Men. Be thankful you are men.)

So I'm not sure if my body is trying to kick start back into normal gear and keeps hitting me with these random emotional spikes, or I am the new owner of a set of supercharged mom emotions, but I keep crying over the littlest things.

I went and watched the Warcraft movie within a few weeks of Genevieve's birth. It's a high fantasy movie based on the high fantasy computer game World of Warcraft. So there are orcs, but they aren't Tolkien's orcs. They do tend to be violent and bloodthirsty, but they are a strong tribal society valuing family and clan and the honor of a good fight. One of the orcs is pregnant and her and her husband go with an invading force, and when they turn against the wrong of their fellow orcs, both her and her husband are killed. The baby, still very young, was in a basket on his mother's back, and, Moses-style, he is cast into the river to save him. And he makes all these little baby noises that I knew now being a new mom and I almost started crying in the theater.

I heard a story of missionaries in China during the Boxer rebellion and when they came for them, the mother hid her six-month-old daughter with a note on her explaining what had happened, went out, and was executed. The baby was found alive two days later, but I cried thinking of the baby all alone, nobody to hear her cries or feed her or change her diaper.

I got mad watching Maleficent and seeing the incompetent pixies give the baby princess carrots to eat by plopping them in her bassinet and then all sleeping that night, deaf to her cries of hunger. FEED THE BABY!

This happens with startling frequency. A baby lives in my heart and so my heart bleeds for babies. I already had this weird protective streak that although I didn't want children for the longest time, something would stir in me whenever I heard of them being hurt or abused or their innocence stolen and childhood ended long before they actually grew up. It's a noble sentiment, but I hate breaking into uncontrollable tears. I hate crying. I hate the weakness of emotions.

So the thing that set me off yesterday and continues to make me cry whenever I relate it to anyone was a stupid .gif on Facebook that was clearly meant to be funny. You could say it "triggered" me. It looks like and old-style painting of a woman stirring her pot on a stove. She moves like a paper doll and lifts her spoon out of the pot. And then, out of the pot, comes a little hand, chubby, fingers spread, reaching, searching. The women then uses her spoon to poke the hand back in the pot.

I stared in shock as the .gif replayed, the hand continuing to reach, the woman continuing to cook. It is supposed to be funny, I tried to tell myself. A woman cooking a baby is supposed to be funny. Tears started rolling down my cheeks. I know I have a problem with over-analyzing everything, but HOW is this funny? Is it the flagrant disrespect for human life that is in imagining a helpless infant being literally cooked alive? Is the baby reaching out for help, or are we pretending that the baby is actually somehow fine despite the flames under the pot and the baby is just reaching playfully? How many times has my own baby lifted her chubby little hand, fingers spread, to my face to touch it?

Every time I've recounted my horror at this .gif, I've started crying. I'm crying now. It makes me want to cry out to God for forgiveness for our country as we've allowed ourselves to forget that babies, even ones not yet born, are lives, souls, people.

Bah. I hate crying. Even when the situation seems to deserve it.

We're sorry. So sorry.

Michael Moore posted this on Facebook. I know because friend of a friend or something.

1. Hello rest of the world! My fellow Americans are asleep right now so I thought we could talk privately and maybe I can explain what happened yesterday.

2. Hillary Clinton won the election on Nov 8 by 2.8 million votes over Donald Trump. Which is to say, she lost. You are correct, this is not a democracy.

3. Back in the 1700s, in order to get the slave states to join the USA, the founders gave those states "extra votes", letting them count their slaves but not let them vote.

4. So yes, it is ironic that this racist idea called the Electoral College has, 225 years later, ended up benefiting the candidate who spewed racism hate.

5. Trump is not president until he's given the oath of office at noon on Jan 20th. So we will continue to fight and hope to find a legal, nonviolent way to stop this madness.

6. Ok, people are starting to wake up in the US. I wish I could give u better news. As bad as it seems, I'm sorry to tell you, it will be worse. We are a broken country at this point.

There seems to be a lot of stupid in this and it bugs me so much that I want to address it.

1. Obviously you know that posting it on Facebook in English hardly makes it private from your "fellow Americans" so the whole framing of the post is just a story you're telling yourself. Got a lot of the rest of the world following you on Facebook, Moore?

2. Clinton did not win the election. She got more votes. And no, it's not a democracy. It's a Republic. "A democracy cannot exist as a permanent form of government. It can only exist until the majority discovers it can vote itself largess out of the public treasury." It's purposeful.

3. I don't know of the validity of this. I would think that since it's population based, it would be current to today's population? Anyway, just because something has bad origins doesn't mean it's a bad idea. The slavery part aside, that doesn't mean the electoral collage is bad.

4. Ironic. And irrelevant.

5. What are you going to do? I know leftist think that Obama was the best thing since sliced bread, but you know some of us felt like the world was ending under him and we didn't throw a hissy fit. I hope you think he is bad enough to rip the country apart over, because denying our laws and process and a valid election (Russia may have tried to change your minds, but they didn't reopen the investigation) would destroy our civilization.

6. It's funny that you think the rest of the world is sitting around with bated breath being like, "Will Clinton, the defender of LGBTQs, abortion rights, and everything good in the world manage to make a comeback or will the evil racist narcissist Trump get into the White House?" Because, point #1, you aren't actually talking to the rest of the world, you're telling a story to America. And this is a Facebook post... you have plenty of space to spell out "you."

But the one idea that really strikes me wrong is the idea that the rest of the world cares. The rest of the world is somehow comprised of bleeding heart liberals who are appalled at those right-wing Republican Trump voters. Ah yes, we, the kind and gracious leader of the world were corrupted from inside. We are no longer worthy of you following us.

Maybe there's a few countries like that. I don't know which ones they are. But a lot of the world doesn't give a crap about LGBTQ rights and abortion rights and whatever is in the liberal agenda for today. A lot of countries are very racist. They treat women as second class citizens. They practice female genital mutilation. They kill dissidents and protesters and journalists who publish articles disagreeing with them. And LGBTQs. I'm sure they're all torn up about it.

Don't get me wrong, the US drives me crazy sometimes. I think taxes are just short of theft and our basic rights, including the right of association, are being quashed. We're reaching the level of thoughtcrime with our PC patrol of speech.

But this is one of the best places to live if you are a woman. Or a Christian. Or black. Or Jewish. Apologizing to the other countries for that?

Most of them probably only care what's in it for them. Can they pay enough money to buy out Clinton? Can they "make good deals" and have Trump give their evil a blind eye? We're sorry, we're sorry, some people are against trans people using the bathroom they want. Think that goes over in Saudi Arabia? They're all tore up about it.

Syria and Iran and Ukraine probably care. The US has their fingers really deep in those pies, so it does directly influence them. I wonder who they actually rooted for.

Why yes, I would like some cheese. And definitely some wine.

This isn't a "mommy" blog. I don't have some grand conclusion that affirms all your hard work or decisions or whatever. I don't have beautifully lit photos of baby shoes or whatever.

I could get you a video of her polka-dot butt rocking around in her crib as she fights a nap.

This is real. This is raw. This is beautiful. This is a sad baby who doesn't like naps.

Basically, I'm just here to gripe.

I'm past the days where I wish I wasn't a parent. I have entered the days of wishing I could take a break. You know, maybe use a vacation day, take the day off, go away for the weekend, or even just have her take an hour and a half nap instead of a forty-five minute nap.

I fantasize about it, about giving her to Grammy for the night, but to be honest, if Genevieve doesn't wake me up by like 03:30, I wake up on my own and worry until she does. So I won't be getting any sleep if I gave her away for the night. Which I've already made pretty much impossible by exclusively breastfeeding anyway (partially a desire to give my baby the best, partially pure laziness cause it's super easy). And if Grammy does take her for a few hours, gradually my mind won't think about anything else until she's back in my arms. Heck, if she's in bed asleep for a few hours before I go to bed, I'm already kind of looking forward to her waking up and nursing her.

Until she actually does wake up, of course. What, it's not even midnight! Seriously, baby!

The past couple of days, she's seemed extra fussy. She'll play with a toy until she gets frustrated and throws a fit and nothing makes her happy except to be carried around bounced. I, of course, try and find the reason. Stomach troubles? Teething? Wonder week? Tired? Or, worst of all, a highly opinionated baby with no attention span who needs to be constantly entertained and will be like this for the rest of her life?

That's about the time I want to check out. Pray about it, is advice, but God is probably getting sick of my "please please please let her take longer than forty-five minute naps." He certainly hasn't done anything about it. Although, she has also lived through every night, so he's answering some.

It's just, this Friday, it's hard to have her scream in my ear and know I have to deal with it. Until nap time. Until bedtime. Until tomorrow. Until next week. Until next month. Until next year. Until high school graduation. I don't get to tap out, I don't get to take the weekend off.

Oh sure, "it gets better" and "this too shall pass," but honestly unless it gets better tomorrow, it might as well be high school graduation for me.

Things have gotten better, way better since the beginning. Dang it brain, I wanted to just complain, why do you have to bring that up?

Whatever. Basic point, Princess Fussbudget is hard to deal with and it's too cold outside to go on walks and I want the weekend off. With whine, wine, and cheese.

Edit: I think her naps are getting shorter.

The Two Evils

I posted this on Facebook:

It's almost funny (if it weren't so sad) how every new Clinton cover-up or Trump being disgusting seems so shocking to everyone from the other side. We all know by now that Clinton is a lying corrupt crook and Trump is a crazy chauvinist pig. Good luck convincing the die-hards, they don't seem to care.

I admit, I have voted the lesser of the two evils before. It has a twisted, compelling logic. But this election, I can't stomach either candidate. They are both simultaneously the worst possible candidate ever. I don't share ideals with Clinton (and don't think she's honest enough to enact anything that doesn't benefit her at the moment) and while Trump occasionally says something useful, he tends to change his mind several times and forget he ever said anything to that effect and is also untrustworthy (and very dangerously thin-skinned).

So I can't vote for either. And I urge everyone else to vote their conscience. The two-party system uses and abuses it's voters for their own ends and if we swallow our pride and morals and keep falling in line with the party we think might align the closest, we both lose our integrity and strengthen the stranglehold the parties have over us.

If one of these candidates represents you, like you really actually agree with or like them, then go for it.

But the only way we'll ever escape this trap of huge political parties dictating down to us, giving us "democracy" while depriving us of making choices we actually want to make is to take the power from them. If people stop going along with the corruption and start voting third party or getting involved locally or writing letters or something else to make a change, we might eventually get through to them. Eventually topple the giants. It might not happen this election. I think the Republican party could be mortally wounded and the Democratic party has lost faith with many of their followers. But say we pour our votes into other candidates. Maybe one of the crooks would still win. But they'll see the trend. They'll see we are starting to question what they always told us. Maybe they'll soften back toward their base. Maybe they'll tighten their grip until we slip from them.

I also urge you to vote for someone actually running for president. If you feel the need to write in a candidate, if nobody really matches, then go ahead and do that. But I think that if other candidates surge, if enough of us throw our support behind them, it will make more of an impact (of course, Mickey Mouse could end up being president this year).

I've seen Gary Johnson's name tossed up a lot. I'm a libertarian by philosophy, but not part of the the Libertarian Party, and honestly I've heard he's not that good of a libertarian, so I probably won't support him.

Jill Stein is running for the Green party. Not my party, but it could be yours.

Evan McMullin is a name I've heard and he seems pretty good on some of my issues and seems level-headed.

Darrel Castle is running for the Constitution Party. I agree with the Constitution, but their key issues seems to be a little narrow in focus, leaving off some other issues I care about.

I don't know, there could be others. Find them. Read about them. Maybe still vote for Mickey Mouse or Ron Paul or Bernie Sanders or your pastor or your dad. But I'd like to at least start showing the two-party establishment that we're not always just going to bow our heads and go along when they get farther and farther away from representing us.

Oh, and I'm not part of the Republican Party. I only joined back up to vote in the caucuses and left again. It will not be my fault if Trump loses. It will be Trump's fault for alienating so many people and being so seriously flawed.

Non-Facebook, now. I just wanted to add that this election might seem dire, close to apocalyptic. Certainly the commentators and newscasters and candidates themselves try and sell that line. But, like my father always said, "Christ and the Church." Volunteer locally. Spend time with your family. Attend church. Do God's work where you can. Pray. PRAY. Christians have been through much worse and we've been blessed to have a country so aligned to our ideals for these past couple hundred years. If it comes to an end, know it's been bad before, it could be bad again, but our faith is not up for election and Christ will not cease to be if the "wrong" person gets elected. See the beauty in the fall leaves and pray.

Why did babies get a startle reflex and not a sleep one?

Naptime with the swaddle:
Ginny: I'm so sleepy...
Me: Let's wrap you up and put you to bed.
Ginny: No, I'm fine! I don't want to nap.
*give her the pacifier and place my hand on her chest*
Ginny: Pacifier is fun. And woah, I'm tired. Actually, here's the pacifier back. My eyes aren't opening anymore. Zzzz...

Naptime without the swaddle:
Ginny: I'm so sleepy.
Me: Here is your crib.
Ginny: No, I'm fine, I don't want to nap!
Me: Umm... here's the pacifier?
*tries to give pacifier*
Ginny: You're doing it wrong. Let me hold it. And hold your hand. With both my hands. And wait, I can roll over. *rolls over* I don't want to be in the crib! *cries*
*tries to give pacifier*
Ginny: Hmm, pacifier. Let me hold it. No, wait, I'm on to you. I don't want to be here! *cries**gets head up, moves head to the other side* I don't like this side! *cries**gets head up, moves head to other side*
Me: Pacifier?
Ginny: I hate your stupid pacifier! And now my sheets are wet! *cries*
Me: They wouldn't be wet if you stopped crying on them. *moves baby*
Ginny: I don't want to nap! You can't make me! *cries*
Me: You sound completely exhausted...
Ginny: But I hate sleeping! *cries*
Me: Let's try your back.
Ginny: Hey, you moved me. Am I getting up?
*put hand on her chest and offer pacifier*
Ginny: Oh, that pacifier thing again. Nah, I want to roll over. Your hand is holding me back. I want to roll over! *cries and struggles*
*remove hand*
*rolls over* Man, I'm so tired. I'm so tired it makes me upset. *cries*
Me: You need to sleep, little girl.
Ginny: I don't know how to sleep! I'm so tired! *cries*
*pats back ineffectually. Offers pacifier*
Ginny: I don't want it! I'm too tired! *cries**blinks heavily**starts just fussing* This sucks! *cries hysterically, pushes head up*
*stands there ineffectually*
Ginny: I'm so tired I can't sleep. *cries exhaustedly**cries hysterically**cries exhaustedly**cries hysterically**cries exhaustedly*
Me: *cries*

23:30... why...

First off, in response to my last post.

There. Headband. Only way I could make it more obvious is to put a stamp on her forehead that says "girl."

So it is 23:30. And I'm awake.

Last night, I couldn't get to sleep. I was just falling asleep at 02:00 when Ginny woke up for the first time. I must be going through a sleeping regression. And here I thought Ginny was the one who was supposed to get those.

It's bad enough when Ginny manages to sleep until like 03:30 or 04:00 and I wake up at 03:30 and worry that she died in her sleep or something which negates the point of her sleeping for seven to eight hours in a row. Clearly I'm not ready for her to sleep through the night. If she would only get to the point where she would actually go to sleep at bedtime and then only wake up once during the night at like 03:30... Perfect. Almost. Perfect for me at this time.

Or whatever stage of life I was in before last night. So last night I couldn't sleep and I was super sleepy tired all day today. Ginny has a sixth sense about when I leave the house or need a nap and she shortens hers accordingly, so my daughter took mostly short naps all day and as a result, I didn't get a nap. And there's nothing more disappointing then almost falling asleep and then hearing a baby cry and knowing you have to get up for it. First world problems, I can't deal with it.

I'm like, "Hey, tonight I'll crash. It will be good."

Well...

I don't know, my throat is kind of scratchy. It keeps drying out when I breathe in and that's super irritating. So instead of tossing for three hours, I got up and made myself some echinacea tea, which I generally just refer to as "immune boosting tea" because I can't pronounce echinacea, after googling if it was safe while nursing of course. I was going to add honey and lemon for throat coating, but my lemon juice expired like three years ago, so I just added honey and honey in tea is gross.

My tea is gone now. I guess I'll go and try and sleep again. Seriously, if I don't get sleep, I'll be like the walking dead tomorrow and that's no good way to take care of a baby.

On the appropriate color coding of infants

On Sunday, my child wore this:

It's a bit blurry because my husband is bouncing her. She has to be in a constant state of motion or have something to look at while awake.

It's basically a white onesie with ruffled sleeves with pink on the edges, light pink pants, and pink-striped socks.

And she got mistaken for a boy twice.

David says people always assume babies are boys.

Hence all the pink.

Look, there are two reasons I dress my child in pink even though I do not like the color and I don't particularly like that girls are always assigned pink.
1) I want to communicate her gender accurately more than I dislike that social shortcut.
2) Most of her clothes were given to me and are, as a result, pink. Heck, even some of the stuff I bought was pink. But with cute little foxes on them.

Anyway, I don't want people to think she is a boy, largely because I highly value clear communication. And then I feel obligated to correct them whenever they assume she is a boy, or at least head off the question. Kids her age don't have a whole lot to their identities other than their first and middle name, family position, gender, and amount of hours they sleep at night. Cause that's what everybody asks.

Sidetrack for a moment. Why does everyone ask if she is sleeping through the night? I've heard people ask the mother of a two-week-old if he was sleeping through the night. At two weeks, they generally advise you to wake the baby up like every four hours to feed if they aren't waking up on their own, so it'd be a bad sign if they were sleeping through that! I never asked anybody that until after I had a kid, and the reason I ask is for polling data. How does my child measure up to the norm? Are other people in my boat? He still wakes up three-plus times? I feel your pain.

In case you're wondering, no, she isn't sleeping through the night. Generally though she wakes up an average of two times and goes back to sleep after nursing pretty easy and doesn't wake up for the morning until usually after seven. Could it be better? Much. Would I prefer it better? Definitely. Livable? Yes, way better than 0-2. So given the options, I'll take this.

Where was I? Ah yes. The proper color coding of infants.

I like dressing her in stuff that is either girly-styled or girly-colored, although preferably not too much of both at the same time.

I tend to like things that use bold colors, like orange and turquoise, patterns like arrows, or girly up an outfit, like a lacy onesie under blue denim overalls. Feminine touches to gender-neutral things.

Sunday's outfit was a vague reflection of mine as I didn't feel like wearing a skirt and so wore khaki capris. And clearly, I failed in my attempts to communicate (through the liberal application of pink) her gender.

Why do I care if people think she's a boy? Why do I need her to look like a girl? Gender is fluid?

No. I'm not even getting into that. We're talking about when the world was normal.

At any rate, I prefer it when other people dress their kids in something that at least hints as to their sex so I can use the proper pronouns when talking about him or her. Asking "is it a boy or a girl?" can be construed as insulting (especially if the child in question is older).

And so I am failing. I guess the pink pants were too light-colored. I need to up my game. More frills? Skirts? Headbands? Earrings? A label on her forehead?

On headbands... I've never really gotten into those for babies. I mean she doesn't have hair... so what's the point? I have seen some babies with impressive full heads of hair and headbands look cute on them, but on my baby's bald noggin?

Ah well, if it's for communication... anybody know some cute, yet comfortable headbands that are about as obvious as a label maker?

Behold the baby glory.

No, she's a girl.

I can't keep a plant alive and you expect me to raise a kid?

Two months in to motherhood and I live in fear of one particular thing. Well, two if you count Princess Fussbudget's bad moods.

I am afraid of the eternal Forming Bad Habits. It is the specter that lurks behind every decision I make, the start of every day, every time I get up in the middle of the night. It is the nightmare that haunts my plans and dreams of the future.

So The Books say to put baby on a routine. Not a schedule, mind you, a routine. A schedule says they eat at 10:30, stay awake until 11:30, and then nap until 13:30 and then eat again. A routine says that they eat when they wake up, stay up for about an hour or whenever they start showing tired cues, go down for a 1 1/2 to 2 hour nap, and when they wake up, they eat again. If they get hungry in the meantime, really actually hungry, you can feed them again instead of holding off until the clock.

A routine is the greatest thing for babies, the best thing since sliced bread. Touchy babies are comforted by routine, babies are build for routine, they like knowing what comes next. Routine routine routine. It will save your sanity, your sleep, your marriage, your life, whatever. Eat/wake/sleep routine is where it's at. Or so they tell me.

So I want wakeup time to be 07:30-08:00. What do I do when she wakes up at 06:30? What about 07:00? Feed her and put her back? Consider it her getting up? Let her cry it out? If I get her up, won't that reinforce her bad habit of waking up early?

So I feed her at 02:30. What do I do when she wakes up again at 04:00 and wants to eat? Babies can go a lot longer than that without eating, but that's what she wants. Do I spend half an hour trying to calm her back to sleep (to sleep or just to drowsy?) or do I feed her and let her fall asleep on the breast in fifteen minutes? Feeding her again so soon, that probably forms bad habits of waking up too much and letting her fall asleep while nursing is also a no-no, so I'm committing like double sin or something. But it takes fifteen minutes and often I don't even have to go back in to get her back to sleep. Then I get to go to bed. And I like my sleep.

Often during the day she asks to nurse maybe a half hour to an hour after I fed her. She doesn't need it. I'm relatively sure she isn't actually hungry. She just wants to nurse, for comfort I assume. That's not part of the routine! I'm sure nursing her all the time will form a bad habit.

What about when I put her down for a nap and she wakes up forty-five minutes later and wants to nurse (nursing after waking up is the part of the routine she seems to agree on)? Probably a bad habit.

I had been putting her down for naps in her crib (after she no longer seemed to be able to sleep on the couch) and those worked fairly well for a couple of weeks. I would go in and unswaddle her to encourage her to wake up at the end of two hours. It was great, everything seemed to be working, I got things done. 'Course, at that point I worried about putting her down to sleep too soon after her waking up, but I swear she was yawning a bunch and then getting fussy. Now, she seems to wake up in her crib after forty-five minutes to an hour, but if I let her fall asleep in her bouncy chair, she can sleep for two hours easily. She rouses from time to time and I just keep bouncing her with my foot and she'll put herself back to sleep (kind of like while I'm typing this). Is letting her nap in her bouncy chair a bad habit? I'm not sure what it's enforcing... getting used to being bounced, or not getting used to her crib.

There seems to be so many bad habits to try and avoid and the girl is only two months old. I can only imagine how much I'm going to mess her up by the time she hits three. Or thirteen. Or eighteen. And I'm sure it will be some sort of blowback from that time I let her sleep in the bouncy chair as a child. Wait for a psychologist to bring that up someday.

Look at all the evil sleeping habits she's been infected with:

I'm sure it's my fault when she doesn't sleep at night.

I have a theory...

My baby (or LO) turns two months tomorrow.

I don't actually know what LO means. I presume "Little One?" It's a shorthand I see frequently on stuff like the Birthways Breastfeeding Support Facebook group and the Ames Babywearing and Beyond group. I don't get it. I mean, it's fine calling your baby "Little One," as its a nice gender-neutral non-specific-age term of endearment, but why abbreviate it? While, yes, it takes about half a second longer to type out little one than LO, this is a PC with a full keyboard. I'm not texting. Heck, autocorrect even made abbreviations old fashioned. Seems weird. It's also another one of those random things that I've learned since becoming a mom. Like you have no idea how many new words I learned that relate to breastfeeding...

Anyway, that's not where I was trying to go with this.

I frequently have questioned how on earth people could have more than one kid. Like I said, my "LO" is turning two months tomorrow. During those two months, I have been cried at, had to get up multiple times a night (usually three, not counting all the times fifteen minutes later to calm her back to sleep), had to spend inordinate amounts of time bouncing, can't seem to take a minute to myself to dress or eat breakfast unless I wait for her nap time, have to watch my alcohol consumption and timing, been pooped on, changed multiple diapers, can't get away for more than a couple hours, and let's not even talk about how I haven't slept for more than four hours in a stretch and usually no more than six a night for those two months and not even a smile in repayment from a super-demanding tiny individual. And this was all after the traumatizing birth (that also kept me up all night) that ended with me in the operating room with a third degree laceration. Why would people repeat that? I love my little girl, but man, why try this over again?

People all tell me it gets better, but can you truly forget all of this within a year or two?

I have discovered the answer: sleep deprivation. Oh, you think it's a bad thing? Well, yes, it's a bad thing. There have been days where I have been dead on my feet and nights I cry in desperation when I hear her start to cry again after I had just begun to drift off, clocking only three hours of sleep by 3am. Sleep deprivation sucks. BUT, sleep deprivation brings memory loss.

Sleep-deprivation based amnesia. That must be the answer. For example, I honestly cannot remember how many times I got up last night. I know she woke up at 01:30ish, and again at 03:00ish (which is stupid), but I can't for the life of me remember if she woke up at 05:00ish or not. I thought she did, but examining that idea more closely, I found I couldn't link any memories with that specifically. Kind of like how you sometimes can't remember if you brushed your teeth because you've done it so dang often that it all seems the same and you can't tell if your teeth-brushing memory is from this morning or yesterday morning or a week ago.

So in six months or whenever she hopefully starts sleeping through the night and I start getting normal amounts of sleep, this whole episode will fade to the murky consistency of a dream. Kind of like how right after she was born, I'm like "If this is the way childbirth goes, I am never doing it again," and then I was sleep deprived because labor had started at like 22:30 (not when I would choose to run a marathon) and then it was exhausting and then I was drugged for the OR and all groggy and I haven't had a good night's sleep ever since. And I talk about "next time."

Well, it's either the sleep thing or kids get a lot more fun later on. Hard to imagine at this point (this week, she's cut her nap times in half).

(Ironic onesie)

The answer is out there, somewhere.

Another reason I haven't posted much is that I don't know the direction I want to take this blog. Not like it had a perceptible focus before. Looking back on my posts, it seems mostly just my ruminations about news stories, happenings where I live, and politics. But now I have a baby. It seems there are plenty of successful "mom" blogs out there, and I don't really feel like I have anything to add to that discussion, especially since I'm the one going to those blogs looking for answers.

But, at this point, how can I think of anything else?

I have a fussy baby. I am still in the diagnostics phase. Is she lactose-intolerant, frequently overtired, wanting to nurse more, spirited, high-need, touchy, etc (or normal and I'm just a first time mom and wasn't prepared for this level of fuss)?

Also, did you know my way of coping with stress was the research the hell out of it? David has taken to yelling, "No more books!" whenever a new book on parenting shows up from the library. But it seems like a problem to me, and problems can be fixed, or dealt with. Or at the very least, maybe I could prepare myself for an 18-year battle of the wills after which she will move out of the house, get a tattoo, and date a jerk for a while before maybe realizing that Mom was right some of the time.

Genevieve likes: bouncing, nursing
Genevieve tolerates: sling rides, stroller rides
Genevieve dislikes: most things that are not bouncing or nursing, including diaper changes, being put down, being held while not bounced, car rides, baths, and so on.

What do I do?

"Just love her," says my mom and David.

But I'm sure I'll find some sort of clear definitive answer in a book or on the Internet somewhere that will give me clear strategies on whatever it is Princess Fussbudget wants and how to deal with her.

Unless dealing with her involves constant bouncing. I'm not sure which muscle groups are involved in bouncing, but I expect they'll be magnificent in short order.

Onesie says "I speak Wookiee."

Eat, play, sleep, repeat. Right?

I'm reasonably sure my few (very few) readers have noticed I haven't been updating. They also know why.

If you want to guess, it's rather obvious from previous posts: I've had my baby. And really, how does anyone have anytime for anything for the next twenty years?

My idea of a schedule, based on the E.A.S.Y. routine of Eat, Awake (play), Sleep, You time (which is the same time slot as sleep):

08:00 - Wake up when baby wakes up. Change and feed baby. Play with baby.
09:30 - Baby goes down for a nap. I can then eat breakfast and clean the bathroom and clean up the kitchen.
11:00 - Baby wakes up. Feed, then change. Play.
12:30 - Baby goes down for a nap. I eat lunch.
etc.

What actually happens:
06:04 - Baby wakes up. Feed baby, coax her back to sleep. Then try to sleep, but can't because baby, even sleeping is making a lot of grunting noises and it's light out. Try to get a few things done before she's totally awake, like brushing my teeth. Discover David cleaned up the kitchen (Hurrah!)
07:25 - Baby wakes up again. Change baby, feed her, play with her. Try to get dressed.
08:45 - Baby very fussy. Go for a walk. Baby calms down, but remains awake for the next fifteen-twenty minutes of the walk instead of falling asleep in the sling. Gets fussy again at the end, so I return home.
09:00 - Coax baby to sleep on the couch (cause we're both too warm at this point) with a pacifier (dang it, I didn't want to use that thing). Contemplate being productive. Start process to clean the bathroom.
09:30 - Baby wakes up. Bathroom not clean (shouldn't have checked Facebook). Nurse the baby. She proceeds to have two blowout diapers. Nurse again.
10:00 - Baby gets fussy. Walk around the house in circles with the sling (or it would be circles, except the dining room has tiles all over the floor. So more like crescents)
10:30 - Baby nods off. Take a quick walk around the block.
10:40 - I contemplate my options of things to do with a baby on my chest. I try blogging.
10:45 - I get warm and my back hurts, so try and ease baby off with sling. Baby wakes up, but seems to be falling asleep.
10:46 - Baby cries. I use pacifier again (dang it!).
10:54 - Blogging my excuses for not blogging.
11:13 - Download Dropbox and use GIMP to resize a picture so I can use it on my blog.

So as you can see, I have a very hard time finding time to be actually productive. And sleep when the baby is sleeping? Nice pipe dream. I have other things that I need to do. Anyway, I can't sleep in the morning.

And they're only supposed to be awake more as they get older. How will I be able to do anything!? I can see why parents invented bedtime.

She is pretty cute though.

I should probably go clean the bathroom.

Edit: 11:19 - Baby wakes up...

Other changes that are wrong.

Also, making Captain America a member of Hydra is wrong.

http://www.ew.com/article/2016/05/25/captain-america-villain-hydra-nick-spencer-tom-brevoort

I'm an equal opportunity anti-change grump.

Seriously, Marvel?

To my unborn daughter

21-Apr-16
Dear One,

Did I mention I was terrified? It is starting to strike me randomly, flashes of fear as I ponder your arrival. I ask myself, "What am I doing?" How did I think reproducing would be a good idea? Am I going to vaccinate you? What will I do when you are crying and I've tried holding you, feeding you, rocking you, changing you, and nothing works? How am I going to punish you when you misbehave? Praise and support you when you are good? Shepherd your hear and soul toward the truth that ultimately matters?

Of all the souls in the world, suddenly yours matters most, because it was given to my care and keeping, and I am responsible for it, as much as I am your life and well-being.

How will David and I nurture your soul and guide you ever to God? Encourage you to ever walk in his love and truth?

And in this world where we are not only discarding Biblical values and norms, but traditional norms and even reality, how will I as your mother train you to be a woman in all the glory that God made us?

The modern feminist seems set on tearing down men, and abandoning all things uniquely feminine in order to take men's place. I style myself a feminist. I believe in equal rights, voting, and representation under law. But don't be fooled. Equality does not mean the same. We are equal to men under God, little one, our souls just as precious, our hearts just as dear, His love just as great. We are made in the image of God, just as men were, and we represent a part of God men do not. We are different from men, and that is beautiful.

So how do I convince you of your value as a woman in a culture that can't grasp the inherent beauty of women as God has made us? We are lionesses, the huntress who still lets the males eat first. God has made us softer and physically weaker, but with grid iron at our cores, giving us strength beyond what seems human, used for child-bearing, marriage, even fighting as a mother bear protecting her cubs. We were created as helpmeets. There is a saying that behind everyone successful man, there is a woman. As I am able to more look beyond my selfishness, I am beginning to see that I am to support, counter, complete, and help David. That we are a team and his rise is both of our rise, that we aren't competing, we are one. And I could fight him for his job, or I can use my unique differences to raise him beyond what he can achieve on his own.

And he does the same for me, encouraging me in my strengths and supporting me in my weakness. He has given my heart a safe place from which it can fly.

What if you don't get married? Fine, you are still a woman with the unique beauty therein, and God still has a calling just for you and your talents.

I don't want to raise you in all the stereotypes that people think mean girl, but I don't want to force your way either. I want you to be able to like blue and math and engineering and kickboxing if you want without questioning your femininity or abilities, but if you like pink and Barbies and English and ballet, then more power to you. I don't consider myself girly, but I liked all those things too. Except ballet, never got into that.

In short, I want to give you all the confidence to pursue the things you love or are skilled at, secure in your womanhood without feeling the pressure of culture to prove anything about your femininity.

Dear Lord,

Please soothe and take away my fear. I thank you for my little one and the blessing it is to carry her and raise her. Please protect her heart. Draw her soul to you, save her and writer her name in the book. Please guard her from our culture where we have so lost our way and let her be secure in her identity in you. And please help those of us who the truth to guide and witness to our culture, and point them back to the only Way, Truth, and Life.

I need to stop reading Twitter hashtags

Maybe you've heard of the "Give Elsa a girlfriend," or more accurately #GiveElsaAGirlfriend trend. "Because we want our daughters to know it's ok for a princess to love another princess."

I'm rather hoping this Frozen nonsense will be over before my daughter is old enough to have opinions. Yeah, the movie was amusing, but the resulting explosion of Frozen related stuff was way unexpected. By me anyway. We already have a full set of Disney Princesses, why is this one this popular? I like Mulan better. And the original story "The Snow Queen" that Frozen was, well, not based on. Maybe more like a mild nod in the general direction of the title of the story. It's a good story, though.

And I really don't want to reach the point where my husband is going to have to explain to our daughter why she can't watch Frozen, or dress up as Elsa, or whatever. Cause it's going to be David explaining that.

Why? I personally don't care what consenting adults do with each other, although if you wanted what I believe is moral or right, we'd have to look at the Bible, which seems pretty clear on the subject. Is it a sin? According to the Bible. Why is it a sin for two people to love each other? I'm sorry, culture, I didn't write the rules. Regardless of how you or I feel on the subject, the Bible is clear. We might think we've evolved beyond it, that the Bible is outdated, or unreasonable, or something, but the Bible is clear, our feelings notwithstanding. I don't understand everything God has told us, but it seems a bit pretentious to be like, "Oh, this doesn't make sense to me. God and His word must be wrong." Take it or leave it, but don't try and blur it or outreason it.

What starts to bother me is when it goes beyond consenting adults who "just want to love each other in peace" to what we currently have, which is a huge cultural push to have their actions validated by larger society. All of society. It is no longer, "just let us love in peace," it is, "If you don't approve of or validate our love, you are guilty of thoughtcrime and should be punished." And in this agenda push is a focus on messaging that admittedly seems created to cram the "approved" opinion down the rest of our throats. "It's ok for a girl to love a girl."

So Elsa didn't have a love interest in the first movie and it somewhat makes sense they'd give her one down the road. Whatever. I'm sorry, daughter mine.

Today I was on Twitter and I saw #GiveCaptainAmericaABoyfriend. There was also #MakeMarioKissWario, so I'm like, is this a joke? I clicked on it. It was not a joke.

The argument is that Captain America and "Bucky" from the movies should be a thing. I haven't seen Civil War yet, so I don't know where that goes (and hopefully it ain't there), but I was rooting for Captain America because he represents the libertarian freedom ideal from the founding of America, not the American Government. I'm sorry, Iron Man. I guess you get to play the bad guy again.

Ok, look. I am against things that fundamentally change the nature of pre-established characters. I've mentioned this before. I am against Thor being a woman. I am against Captain America being black. I am against Superman being from Soviet Russia (although that was an entertaining read as an alternate reality). I wasn't even sure I was for recreating Catwoman to not fight in heels. It's part of her charm. If you want to create a new Norse god who is a woman, be my guest. If you want a new defender of libertarian limited government foundational American ideals to be black, be my guest. Don't go changing the ones that already exist because they are important and beloved by people for who they are and that includes how they look, their race, their gender, their personality, their sexual orientation. They are imaginary characters. Go imagine some new ones for your agenda.

"Anyone against this is a homophobe. It doesn't matter at all if Captain America is bi." If it doesn't matter, why are you trying to change him?

Because this movement is trying to force anyone who doesn't agree with them to be bullied until they all go and hide away from the PC crowd and let the PC crowd run the show. "Take our opinion and like it." And eventually, all the narratives will say the same thing, all opposition will be whitewashed away to hide in shame and the PC crowd will have the total victory they were asking for. How can you commit thoughtcrime when there are no words for it?

They can't have their own heroes because ours still stand on their own. So they have to change ours, taking away the things we care about, any difference in opinion, any last bastion of our values until they have infected everything.

Never... someone.

Ted Cruz dropped out. "Suspended his campaign," which is more or less the same thing, leaving Donald Trump to be the presumptive nominee. Really the only reason he wouldn't be is if the non-Trump delegates go to convention and make a stink and suspend the rules and basically burn the party to the ground. Not much to gain beyond a temper tantrum.

Me, I'm just quitting the party. Again. I was going to do it after I finished being a delegate anyway, and now there's no point in going to state convention either. I don't care about the Republican platform and committees. They aren't my party. Hopefully, things will change after this and something will break the back of the two party system, but that seems optimistic.

As far as this election season went, I am disgusted. Trump is a horrible human being and yet he is the favorite, and Ted Cruz was a strong conservative with very few negatives and he was character assassinated severely. I remember thinking, "Ugh, Ted Cruz, well, he's better than Trump," and then trying to figure out why I had a bad feeling about Ted Cruz. Most of what people were saying about him was a lie or gross exaggeration. Trump has been calling him "Lyin' Ted," for months without solid proof that wasn't just Trump bloviating, and this coming from the man whose positions on issues could change hourly. Cruz's character was so much a part of his appeal that they couldn't let it stand, and they had to destroy him on his strongest pillar. And frankly, I find that revolting. Any speck, any spot, and people would write Cruz off and dump him, whereas Trump could probably "shoot a man in the middle of a street" and it wouldn't change people's opinions of him one bit. It's disgusting and unfair.

And these extended to completely unfounded and stupid arguments, such as sorting Cruz into "Slytherin" and other idiotic Facebook-graphic style attacks that apparently need little in the way of logic or proof. A lot of our reasoning is being reduced to comics, memes, and pathos-based anecdote, and that is a scary scary way to form opinions and make decisions.

On the other hand, Cruz was not libertarian enough for me, but I felt that he would have been a decent president, a constitutional conservative, that might have prevented the implosion of our culture and civilization for another four to eight years. His foreign policy wasn't good, but at least he realized our interventions and meddling could do harm and Assad, although also not a good human being, had positives over unknown radical who would replace him if we toppled him. So, I'm sorry, Cruz. I went as far as I could in the system for you. I'm sorry that America rejected you. I'm sorry that apparently our majority is motivated by and believes in something I just don't understand. Don't blame me for this one. I can't figure it out. Apparently, I still had faith in humanity. I should have known better.

So where do we go from here? I read a comic that said, "I'm still undecided between Never Trump and Never Hillary," and that appears to be where maybe half the country is sitting. Remember, even though Trump is the "winner" of the Republican Nomination (most likely), he rarely got over 50% in any given state. That means over half the state didn't want him, so please, stop telling me that this is "the will of the people." Plurality is not majority, and under half of the voting Republicans in most of the states voted for him. He represents them, not the other +50%. And the Democrats are having their own problems on that front, with a lot of passionate people going for Bernie Sanders and watching the system keep them out. The Democrats are slightly more advanced in their ability to manipulate their outcomes than the Republicans. That puts probably more than half the country watch their options diminish to the worst case of "lesser of the two evils" that I have ever seen.

I do not believe I could vote for Trump. I'd say "Never Trump," except there is one tiny tiny chance that won't happen that could influence me: if he made Ron Paul either vice president or secretary of state. Then at least someone I trust would be having some influence on foreign policy.

But aside from that, why would I vote for Trump? Just to avoid Hillary? They're both terrible options. Really, who is worse? Hillary is a leftist warmonger crook. And Trump is a... [unknown][unknown]crook. Seriously, we don't know what Trump would do. His answers to things have deviated into taking both sides at the same time. If Russian jets buzz a US ship, will he call Putin to ask him to stop or shoot it down? Both, apparently. Some libertarians think that siding with Trump will delay World War III. Optimistic lot, they are. I don't know if it will. Obama was supposedly a candidate of peace, and he's expanded the ability of the president to wage unlimited war like nobody else before him. The office seems to have that corrupting influence, and Trump's positions are rambling and confused enough that I think it would destroy even his "good" ones.

Hillary would elect leftist judges to the Supreme Court. Trump would... well, he wouldn't elect another Antonin Scalia, he'd probably elect middle-to-leftist judges to the Supreme Court. So much different in outcome. Hillary would continue funding Planned Parenthood. Trump would... I forget, is he punishing the woman for having abortions, changing the Republican platform to included exceptions, or praising Planned Parenthood on all the other "good" things they do? Hillary would increase the minimum wage to $15 an hour.  I don't know Trump's position on that one. Hillary would wage war. Trump would... well, is he going to make "good deals" or is he going to destroy ISIS and show the world who is "winning" again? Basically, we're trying to choose between a bomb that is visibly counting down, and a bomb that may or may not have a lit fuse. Some stinkin' choice.

And either way, we're probably going to get more trans bathroom bills, the draft extended to women, and continued abortion.

It's like in Independence Day where David is drunk and hopeless and kicking over trash cans to try and pollute the planet in hopes the aliens will give up and leave them alone. His father is trying to comfort him and tell him that they still had to be thankful. David asks, "What is there to be thankful for?" Julius seems stumped for a moment, then adds, "Well, you've still got your health."

Cause that's going to do a lot of good when the aliens finish eliminating all life from the planet.

I guess I've still got my health. Hey, maybe I'm being overly melodramatic. Maybe it's not quite the end of the world. I guess we'll see.

Internet Ghosts

As long as we have an official legal presence, we always leave remnants when we die. I bet some deceased people still get junk mail and phone marketer calls. I've heard of social security still paying out benefits to deceased people.

There's sometimes bills to pay, property to deal with, services to inform. I've never had to do it, but I would guess it is similar to trying to prove your last name is different, which usually takes a copy of my marriage license.

But the Internet makes it weird to another level, where people set up a shade of themselves without much accountability. I probably still have a MySpace account, but for all they know, I've died. In trying to find an email address I like, I went through several, or set up anonymous email addresses, and forgotten all the passwords. Those could still be floating around somewhere. I don't know Hotmail's policy. Is Hotmail still a thing?

I play World of Warcraft. In one of my guilds (voluntary online community within WoW), there was a man whose avatar's name was Wrecker. He was older, and I can't honestly say I knew much personally about him, but he was involved online and a pretty good warrior. I'm not sure who in the real world passed it to our guild leader that Wrecker had passed away. But WoW doesn't delete accounts, and his name still sat there in our guild roster. Out of respect, our guild leader moved it to the position of assistant guildmaster (ousting the person holding that position without so much as a by-your-leave, but I'll refrain). For all I know, that account is still there.

Someone showed me a news story about a girl who committed suicide. It was sad, she'd gotten in some minor trouble for underage drinking and a talking-to from her parents. I'm guessing there had to be more, because underage drinking doesn't have a lot of stigma unless you kill someone and her parents didn't even seem off-the-hook upset. Which still shouldn't warrant killing yourself, pretty much nothing should do that. And there was a link to her Facebook page and I asked what it was if she had passed away. The person who showed it to me explained it was sort of a memorial where friends left memories.

I'm experiencing that now. An old family friend of ours, known fondly as Uncle Manny, who I haven't seen in a long while, suffered a heart attack and had a triple bypass. Over ten days later, he still hadn't woken up and his family, who had time to gather, decided to pull the ventilator. All of us were kept appraised by his wife on his Facebook, and each post was flooded with prayers and comments and well-wishers. And people started posting pictures, writing stories. It was weird, knowing he wasn't awake, but seeing pictures of him pop up on my newsfeed. It was surprisingly intimate, not so much with the posters, but with Uncle Manny himself. I often didn't read who put the story up, but I relived some of my memories, and enjoyed some of other people's memories, expanding the view of the man in his final hours.

What happens to our Internet shades when we die? They're just fragments of ourselves, like finding a notebook we wrote in or a treasure we stashed and forgot, but at one point they stood in for our actual presence, and sometimes they continue to stand unsupported, even though the person behind them is gone. Someone said if they hadn't talked to a Facebook friend in six months and saw a birthday notice, they'd check their Facebook before commenting, to make sure nothing had happened to them. Because Facebook will still keep telling you their birthday.

Goodbye, Uncle Manny.

PSA: Instagram

Public Service Announcement: I started an Instagram account.

Ok, so you don't care. But I feel that I should explain my reasoning.

My reasoning: Baby photos.

Doesn't really sound like me, does it? So I have friends (or at least "friends") on Facebook who have babies, and I actually really enjoy watching them grow and seeing cute pictures. I probably started enjoying that, oh, about the time my pregnancy test came back positive. Otherwise, I don't think I cared. I don't remember, apparently I was a different person then.

I tell you, being pregnant changes your brain. I would say "in a good way," but being pregnant, I'm also not sure I'm qualified to comment on that. I just started an Instagram account, for pity's sake.

Anyway, I want to have photos of my baby and have that sort of record, but we are in the digital age, so probably not the traditional photo album. That's a lot of work, what with taking the photos, editing, printing (ink costs!), and then actual cutting and arranging. Let's be honest: I'm not going to do it. Back in my parent's day, they developed film and the like. You could see the progression in effort as well. Firstborn had the biggest photo album, second was slightly smaller, third, smaller, fourth, smaller yet.

So digital. I can't promise the albums will all be consistently sized as I am not much of a photographer, but I do have a cell phone camera. And now an Instagram account.

Anyway, as far as digital goes, I discovered I really didn't want to share all that on Facebook. I know most of the people I'm "friends" with, but that doesn't really mean they're the type I really want to bombard with baby photos. Watch those few plead in vain for "belly pics." I don't do that.

And privacy. Some level of security. The Internet can be a scary place.

So a private Instagram account. Where I can choose my followers and have a digital chronological record of the pictures I take and post. Apparently, there is still some effort involved, but I am trying to do better about creating records and I am preparing myself for a stage of life where time passage is inconsistent and memory is tricky. Best I start recording things.

So friend me, or follow me, or whatever the terminology is for Instagram. I might approve you, if I know you.

Or I'll completely forget. Scrapbooking isn't really my thing.

Safe Search for Self Esteem?

I was trying to find a gown for labor, one that opens in the front with buttons, is long, and has short or no sleeves. Not seeing what I was looking for on the image search, I Googled "swimsuit cover ups."

Now I feel fat.

Tropical Smoothie Cafe

Let me let you in on my most recent addiction:

Tropical Smoothie Cafe

They cropped up on Lincoln Way right next to a laundromat, surrounded by cheap restaurants that I normally do not patronize. It's like the greasy part of Ames' food market with a Culver's, Little Caesars, Taco Johns, Dairy Queen, KFC, Burger King. The nice restaurants are either on Duff or elsewhere, but few in this area. There was a Long John Silver's, but that went out of business. Me and Ames KFC don't talk. I mean, the last time I went to a KFC in Ames, it was the one up at North Grand (long out of business) and the experience was bad enough I never went back. I only go to KFCs on road trips, outside of Ames. Anyway, you want good fried chicken, you can go to Pizza Ranch and also get pizza and cactus bread.

So I wasn't sure about some smoothie place. I mean, we had a Coldstone and an Orange Leaf. But I noticed because it was right there on Lincoln Way and the logo was eye-catching, bright and trendy on an otherwise greasy street.

And then I started hearing about it. Apparently they had food. And the Assistant City Manager said that he introduced his wife to it and now they might have to take out a loan to support their food habit.

So I went once with David, his brother, and his brother's girlfriend. It was bright and cheerful on the inside as well, despite the fact they're right on Lincoln Way, I don't really notice on the inside. And they have food. You don't really know from the name, but they do have it and I thought it was pretty good, things fresh like tacos, salads, sandwiches, flatbreads, wraps. I got a half-a-sandwich-half-a-smoothie combo, which seems a good way to go. You can also add a smoothie on to a meal for three dollars (normally five).

They have so many types of smoothies, and a bunch of supplements you can add, things like vitamin c, immune complex, probiotics, protein. They have a smoothie happy hour, 7am to 9am if you like smoothies for breakfast, it's 50% off.

I thought it was charming the first time, but not anything to write home about.

It's within walking distance of City Hall. And for some reason I went back. And it started to grow on me. I wanted to take my mom, it's the type of place I figured she'd like. The food isn't greasy or heavy, the atmosphere is upbeat and bright. Being there makes me think of spring (seeing as how we just got to the end of winter. Hopefully). They play Bob Marley music. The food and smoothies are really fast.

I always get the flatbread Baja Chicken (hold the peppers) and add on the Avocolado smoothie. I love this meal.

Mom wonders how anyone can drink a 24oz smoothie by themselves. We usually split when she's there. Well... maybe I'm just Superwoman.

At my birth class group, Tropical Smoothie Cafe was brought up, and the instructor was enthusiastic to say the least. She had cards for their text club, which I hadn't joined yet because I figured it would only make it more tempting.

I was right. I joined the text club and instantly got a coupon for one smoothie at $1.99 for a 24oz, expiring the next day. That's 60% off!

I took a break that afternoon. The Avocolado smoothie is avocado, lime, coconut, spinach & kale, and pineapple. I was suspicious at first, since avocados are suspicious, but it tastes amazing. And I like to think that I'm getting my baby healthy things, like coconut, omega 3s and healthy fats, iron and greens. It just happens to also come in a tasty tasty green package.

Have I said enough on how much I love this place? What am I going to do when I don't have a job?

Oh the conventions you'll go...

This last weekend was the Republican District Convention. We foolishly made it a family affair, as Dad, Uncle Dean, David, and I were all delegates. Carpool! We spent the car ride up discussing the platform. I am more or less indifferent on the platform, as when I am not a delegate or voting in the caucus, I tend to not be a Republican.

I'm just waiting until this delegate business is over and I'm switching my registration back to NP. I think that means No Party, but I could be wrong. It's whatever party you get when you say you aren't part of a party.

Could I be part of the Libertarian Party? Well, yes, but I think libertarian ideals and philosophy stand by themselves, and having a party subscribes to their version of it and I don't always agree. If the party ever gets big enough to be a threat to our two-party system, maybe I'll reconsider.

The convention was at a high school. I always look around to take in the foreign sights. High schools look just like the movies!

Anyway. The guy credentialing us, or giving us our name tags, whatever, commented jokingly, "If you go into labor, do it quietly." I stammered that I had no intention of going into labor. Apparently, sometimes when people don't know what to say, words still come out. Also, that makes second person who knew without asking I was pregnant. I really must be showing these days.

We had folding chairs this time. A downgrade from the cozy theater seats from the county convention. Also unfortunate is that apparently some people from the last convention were also delegates.

One guy in particular. He's the guy who proposed in the county convention to replace the party platform with the junior delegate platform. We thought it was a joke, but actually had debate about it, I think because a bunch of us wanted to forgo the platform discussion. But the discussion on that took way too long for what most of us considered a joke.

So anyway, this guy had his moustache waxed into points and was wearing a suit. But he's the type who talks out loud, loudly, talks to and looks for approval in anyone who will listen to him, and argues points of rules just to win, not because he cares. Kind of reminds me of that guy from The Island who tried to calculate the lottery winnings. This guy also would not pay attention, and then assume that he didn't know something because it wasn't said, not because he missed it.

And then, in a move that made pretty much all of Story County facepalm, he recommended we replace our platform with the junior delegate platform.

A bright spot in the day was the chairman, Matt Windschitl, apparently a state representative. He had this great deep voice, efficient command, and enduring sarcasm. "Is that a serious motion?" He asked. "You seriously want to replace the entire platform with the junior delegate platform?"

Some bozo seconded it, but thankfully, nobody spoke for it. It was voted down with a resounding no.

Moustache guy was heard saying loudly something about how the junior delegates were the future of the party and we should honor them. David tried to talk him down, telling him it was an admirable sentiment, but probably not the right move. Unfortunately, moustache guy now knows our faces.

Another highlight was clickers, those little electronic remotes that can record and post responses from a lot of people in a matter of minutes. We only had to take one paper ballot, which took us like an hour and had the ballot counters threatening the county heads that they would have to read their own county's handwriting next time.

Moustache guy asked loudly what amendment we were voting on, and was about to call "point of order" to ask. The woman the row behind us was trying to get his attention to explain and when he started talking, she audibly smacked one hand on the other. I think the rest of Story County was losing patience as well, with one gentleman commenting to moustache guy's neighbor that he needed to "reign in his dog."

I got to see what Trump supporters looked like. Oddly enough, they look like Trump. Or act like him. The guy selling t-shirts gave off a used car salesman vibe, and one of the women running for delegate yelled "Trump Trump Trump!" while pumping both fists into the air at the end of her speech.

Someone called the people voting for Cruz supporters (informed by text messages) sheeple... Look, I'm not here for democracy, I'm not here to "represent the district, " I'm here to win. I think anybody following Trump is a sheeple. So just tell me who to vote for to get Cruz. I can't soundly vet everyone in a two minute speech, so I rely on someone else who supports Cruz to do it.

And that's another highlight: I think we won this round.

Shows Me

You know how you always see how other people manage their pregnancy/finances/children/spouse/lives/etc and say to yourself, "Pft, I'd never do that." "That's silly."

I wonder if that makes God laugh or He's bored of that one yet.

I have a few to add just from being pregnant.

Pregnant girl at deli while placing order: Well, I'm pregnant, so...
Me thinking: Pft. What does being pregnant have to do with delis? I'm not going to be so particular when I get pregnant.

Turns out, listeria. Apparently pregnant women are more likely to contract listeria and it can have harmful effects on the baby. I found this out after I mentioned that I asked my mother-in-law to bring a bottle of merlot to the hospital and another woman said she asked for a Jimmy John's sandwich.

"What? Why Jimmy John's?"

She hadn't eaten deli for nine months.

Me later: And, could I get my sandwich extra hot?

I just finally explained it to the deli guys (who had heard of it before) that I wasn't just being really picky/weird. They hadn't known I was pregnant because there's a wall between us that comes up to my chin.

By the way, heating pre-cooked meat until steaming makes it safe.


Pregnant girl: After the glucose test, I couldn't get him to calm down!
Me thinking: Pft. What are you going to do to calm down an unborn baby? Sing to him? Rock him?

And then, some other time, you find me rocking my hips, singing "Rock me mama like a wagon wheel..." to my belly. Or wrapping an arm around it because Genevieve doesn't understand the idea behind bedtime and I can't sleep.


Pregnant girl: Usually, it only takes me ten minutes to get ten kicks on my kick counter, but one day it took closer to an hour. I was worried, but thankfully we had an appointment that day.
Me thinking: Pft. He's moving, isn't he? Clearly still alive.

Me a month later: Ginny hasn't been very active today. I mean, she has the hiccups right now, but she hasn't been moving as much as the day before. I hope everything is all right...


Pregnant girl: My baby loves my yoga practice, I can feel him kicking and moving with me.
Me thinking: Why does him pummeling the sides of your internal organs indicate a preference for yoga? Maybe he's moving because he hates yoga... Seems silly to assign preference to someone who can only express in unseen flailing.

Me later: She stops moving when I sing. Maybe it calms her down. Maybe she likes it?


Maybe being pregnant has finally crept up and infected my brain?

Ouch

I'm afraid I may actually have to stop jogging.

The part that keeps me up is the question, "If I had jogged more often during the winter, would I be in better shape and able to jog now?"

Currently, I am insanely out of shape. Or something. Last year, I didn't jog much during the winter (rule is it has to be at least 40 degrees or jogging is just no fun), and I started jogging again in the spring and surprised myself with how easy it was. Oh, I was still out of shape, but I thought I'd have to start from near-scratch and I was able to go 5k right away.

Maybe I also just expected myself to be able to do that again this year, but I basically did the same thing over the winter. I jogged until decently late last year, and then it got cold and I would go a full month without jogging. I tried to pick it up again this spring. Oh, I can still go a half hour without stopping, but it is a slow pace and I feel like I'm fighting my body the whole way.

Mental fortitude.

I know the ability to jog doesn't take that long to lose and I wanted to keep doing it because it's really good for stamina and someone mentioned once that might be helpful for childbirth.

Anyway, it seemed to be getting harder or more uncomfortable every time I jogged, which seems like the opposite of getting in shape. It could be because I am getting further in the pregnancy as time goes on, but the medical people said I could jog until it was uncomfortable and I figured running is uncomfortable, so I ignored it. I wanted to be one of those people who jogged all the way to the end, so this kind of breaks my heart.

I went out jogging on Tuesday and it was hard, as usual, but whatever. Around twenty minutes in, I had to detour back to the house. I noticed then that the tendons at the tops of both legs hurt. A lot. But I only had like seven minutes left on my Zombies, Run! mission, so I went back out and finished it.

I about cried during my cooldown walk. I was literally talking to myself, trying to motivate myself to get across the kitchen, telling myself, "You can do this." I don't know how I made it to work later. I know I was mentally singing the song from Santa Claus is Coming to Town that goes, "Put one foot in front of the other... and soon you'll be walking across the floor..." I caved and asked David to pick me up because I was having trouble coping with going across the office, much less walking all the way home. I did manage to limp all the way out to the car. I couldn't walk normal, or even fake it, I was in so much pain. It was quite possibly the most sustained pain I have ever been through. Obviously, hitting your head on something sharp can probably hurt more, but that usually fades pretty quick.

I've never broken a bone, thank God, so I can't compare.

Now, a few days later, I still can't really walk normal, but much of the pain has gone away. My brother said it was my hip flexor, and hip pain is pretty common during pregnancy. But what I really can't get is that this happened from just running. I was jogging. That's all. I've done it before, many a time. I think I went jogging last week.

A nurse told me that the third trimester tends to be when your body gives you muscle and tendon relaxants to allow the hips to spread in preparation for childbirth and it could be the addition of that stuff is what caused my normally fine-but-slow runs to all of a sudden contain a time-bomb of pain.

Maybe I could jog fifteen minutes? Or maybe, if the potential recovery time is going to be in days, it simply isn't worth the risk anymore.

My mental fortitude is crying.

Driveby shame

Scrolling through Facebook (I know, a colossal waste of time) I tripped over an image that a guy I knew in driver's ed like 12 years ago liked that was shared by another person from one of those pages that is a cause, not a person. It was titled "casually racist whites bingo."

I'm guessing you could figure out what sort of stuff was on it, from alllivesmatter to reverse racism to "I don't have white privilege because I'm poor." It's an interesting rhetorical method where they don't even have to address any of the arguments, they can just group them up and shame them all together by inclusion.

One of the squares that tripped me up was the one that said "has 'dreadlocks' or defends whites with dreads." I'm Caucasian. I have dreadlocks. Not "dreadlocks" thank you very much.

So, am I being casually racist? I guess I don't even know. I try not to write about racism because in reading about it, it seems like there is no place to stand and discuss any of it without somehow being offensive to someone, save abject apology for white privilege or whatever.

But dreadlocks? I know we consider them as having come from Africa and being part of that culture, especially related to Rastafarianism, but historically, they're multicultural. There is evidence for dreads from ancient Greece, Islam, Hinduism, and Africa. Obviously some hair types work better than others.

I get mixed reactions to my dreads. A lot of people, of differing backgrounds, say they love them. Some just stare, or seem disbelieving.

So how am I being racist by how I do my hair? I didn't weave in fake dreads, it is my real hair and it really is locked. Is it just seen as co-opting someone else's culture without knowledge or respect for it? Like wearing traditional African or Indian clothes without the matching heritage? I guess some people might find that offensive, but I feel trying to put a total lockdown on a style is potentially overreach, especially if it isn't done in a mocking or offensive manner.

And trying to claim a multicultural hairstyle that really anyone can wear (albeit with some effort) as a baseline racist thing seems like casual overreach of this bingo game. Or is it arguing that just because I'm "white" and not Greek, Muslim, Hindu, or African, I can't wear dreads. Multicultural except for my background?

All in all, it's a hair style. And I did it because I thought it looked cool and didn't want to pay for haircuts anymore, or brush and style my hair. As far as I can tell, I did it without stealing from anyone or demeaning anyone else, but that's where all this gets tricky, right? So many times this argument is framed entirely in the eye of the beholder. But I hardly owe it to a bingo game meme.

My Impending Unemployment

I always figured I'd be a stay-at-home mom when the time came. The reasons range: Mom did it for us and I'll eternally appreciate it. Daycare costs money. Kids are only young once and why would I want to spend the time they're growing up attempting to eke out a career?

On that last one, it might have been at least tempting if I had like a good job that I actually liked, but I've had a lot of bad experiences. I've had jobs that pay decent and were awful, and jobs that were fun, but didn't have the hours to make them full-time/sustainable for daycare, and I've had jobs that weren't fun and didn't pay much.

I always figured I'd settle down and start my writing career from home or something.

But now with the little one doing yoga or something somewhere in my abdomen, I am pretty aware that come June, I probably won't have the time or flexibility to do much in the way of work. As far as my current job as a production assistant, I could probably arrange for a few hours here and there, but that would not make me the most reliable employee ever. For practical reasons, I gave my nine-month notice a long while ago and asked to be replaced by an intern.

Either that, or Ginny might help edit from time to time.

As a side note, I really hope this baby takes well to being flexible, and my random spontaneity.

What I'm getting at is that I don't make much because of hours and I'm about to make even less. David always says that it's fine, he'll provide (and if he won't, God will), and not to worry. I just don't like the decrease in income and while I know I won't be able to go out and do what I want or really hold any steady job, I will most likely have some free time somewhere in there. I think. I'm pretty new to this kid thing.

So what's left?

I found this blog while Googling "ways to make money from home" called The Penny Hoarder.

It's weird and has articles from all sorts of topics covering really odd jobs, hobbies, spending statistics, savings loopholes, store super-sales, etc. And while most of it might not apply to me, such as Boston being the cheapest city to buy groceries, it stretches my mind. So I can't hold a nine-to-five or an hourly part-time? The Penny Hoarder has all sorts of ideas to earn a spare cent or two.

This new-found financial fervor also is a side-effect of taking Dave Ramsey's Financial Peace University in connection group. I'm a spendthrift and miser by nature, but I also hate budgets because budgets constrict freedom. I'm the "free spirit" in Dave Ramsey's terminology. In normal life, this plays out by me wanting to be able to eat out or buy that little thing or whatever without thinking about it, but if someone costs more than $40, there is pretty much no way I'll buy it. Maybe with someone else's money... which seemed like all the rest of "our" money that wasn't in my account.

FPU had the beneficial effect of making me view the budget and all as more of a partnership and group quest than that random law that decided to rear it's ugly head every time I wanted to get pizza.

Don't mess with the pizza.

So now, looking at the budget, I can see a map, a strategy, for getting us both where we want to go. And I'm trying to devise ways to still contribute, or get us there faster.

All of a sudden I'm looking at coupons to see what's on sale. We're considering what things lying around we've had or won at company picnics or whatever that we don't use and might be worth a buck. And I'm trying to find ways to make money from home.

I'll let you know how that goes.

And no, pregnant women can't donate plasma.

Eyes Wide Open

Originally, I laughed at Trump. Then I started to get annoyed with him. I was wrong. Now I'm scared. And not so much of Trump, but of what he spawned.



WORLD Media Player

PSA: Cold vs Flu vs Stomach Flu

Since becoming pregnant, I have felt an overwhelming urge to look up any and all symptoms of pretty much anything in What to Expect When You're Expecting. As a result, I have discovered that I didn't actually know the difference between the flu (influenza) and the stomach flu. And more surprising, I discovered that most other people don't either.

It started with my boss's family contracting the stomach flu, that 1-3 day thing that involves nausea, vomiting, and general misery. As a concerned pregnant woman knowing that the flu was bad to get when expecting, I ran to my book to see what the exact problem was. And my book told me that stomach flu was basically just miserable for me, not my baby. A relief, I suppose. I didn't get it, probably at least partially because my boss warned me away for at least a day after he had it. He told me not to come in to work. Also, I believe in vitamin D.

Now, in my book, there is also a section on telling colds from the flu, and the flu vaccine. Unrelated to the so-called stomach flu.

I know what a cold is. Sore throat, stuffy or runny nose, coughing, and usually no days missed work. I get about one a year and proceed to pop vitamin C drops and drink tea. But the book actually had to differentiate between a cold and a flu.

Which is how I figured David probably had the flu when he started feeling bad on Monday, and then was down and out for the next four days.

Apparently, influenza is like a super awful cold. It involves sore throat, coughing, muscle pain, fever, fatigue, and can last a week to two weeks. It can include nausea and vomiting, but usually not in adults. Exactly what David had. But when I mentioned to people that David had the flu, they all thought that meant he was throwing up. Confusing it with the stomach flu.

Which utterly baffles me because a majority of Americans get the flu shot every year. And apparently don't even know what it is they're trying to avoid.

Not that I would recognize measles or smallpox or polio... but I'm not getting yearly shots for those. I'm not hearing advertising every year about how you need to go and get your flu shot. We're constantly being told the flu is bad, and I guess we're willing to just take that at face value because we don't even know when we have it.

So this is my public service announcement. Go forth and be educated.

Cause now I feel like I have to explain the difference to everyone when talking about it, which gets pretty tiresome.

I. Am. Bored!

I'm soooo bored. It feels like I've been bored forever, which probably means only three days.

Why am I bored? I don't know. I still have computer games that still have things to do, but I'm not interested. I could catch up on My Little Pony: Friendship Is Magic, but not really feeling it.

Are you judging? Stop. Don't judge.

I could finish the Harry Potter series for the second time, or I could borrow the second book to Starcrossed that I've been meaning to read. I could read helpful books like Sacred Marriage, Mingling of Souls, or A Writer's Journey, but I'm having a hard time getting into them.

I could write more blog posts... but honestly, this is because I'm trying to be consistent, not because I actually wanted to write it.

Yes, you're all welcome. How I slave for you, my three readers.

I think it's a combination of a few things going on.

One. The weather. I never realize how much I miss nice weather until it makes brief appearances, taunting me. It got to 50 degrees the other day.

Spring! Come to me, spring! And then swiftly bring me summer! And sunshine and swimming and jogging and biking and wine and music and heat!

Maybe you're recalling what I don't want to remember, which is the date. It's only February. Ugh. I hate winter. David doesn't even notice, I think, unless he has to shovel the driveway. He goes from climate controlled house to climate controlled car to climate controlled office and back again. I plan pretty much every day around the temperature. Is it going to be above 32? I can bike. Below 32? I can walk if I bundle. Below 10? Maybe I can still walk... 40 or above? Jogging! 50 or above? Biking for recreation! My life basically grinds to a standstill if it is below freezing. And it's almost sort of nice out, making me really yearn for the days when it is actually nice out.

And Two. Also with summer comes Genevieve. And while I understand I should enjoy these last peaceful days I'll have for the next twenty years, I'm really bad at waiting. I rather want to meet her. Although I don't want her to come early. I just want time to shift forward.

I'm doing Ginny-waiting things while I wait, like collecting children's books, finding things for my registry,  planning the nursery, prenatal yoga, signing up for a Bradley method class, and getting kicked. But some of those things have stalled, some of those things I have to wait for, and some, like picking a brand of diapers, I really don't want to have to deal with. I have a hard enough time in the chip aisle.

I'm still bored. I'm going to go, I dunno, add all the Jan Brett books to my registry or something.