Trisomymommy

Neighborhood politics

Okay, let's just say you don't like your next-door neighbors all that much.  You get along fine, you try to keep the peace, you participate in reciprocal favors -- an egg here, a tool there -- and have them over or go to their house for the occasional neighborhood gathering, and while you like the wife of the couple just fine, you find the husband to be the biggest bully you've ever met in adult form.  He is the self-appointed enforcer of all local standards and customs.  He is like a 14-year-old girl in the degree to which he relishes trashing everyone else behind their backs.  He didn't like the looks of some new guys who moved in down the street (renters, gasp!) and so he went over and gave them a cake.  In his police uniform.  Just so he could introduce himself, welcome them to the neighborhood, and let them know that they were being watched.  I think this must be the most aggressive welcome cake ever given.  Sometimes he'll mow the little patch of grass in front of our house if it gets too long for his taste.  Trust me when I say that this is not a gracious gesture.

So, it turns out that we and the neighbor plan to vote for different presidential candidates.  And while I respect his right to put a campaign sign in his front yard, I am flummoxed by his decision to put three (3!) out there and to put one of them just an inch from our property.  It kind of looks like the sign is in our yard.  It faces our yard rather than the street.  It seems aimed at antagonizing us. 

I could go put up a campaign sign to establish my true political identity for the neighborhood, but I hadn't planned on advertising like that and I resent being bullied into it.  So, I'm trying to figure out some way to humorously comment on his un-neighborly behavior without leading to some kind of escalation. 

Here are some ideas I'm toying with:

1.  Put up a sign that reads, "That is not my sign," with an arrow pointing to his sign.  This draws attention to his childish behavior, but seems kind of petty.

2.  Put up a sign that says "Policemen for (my candidate instead of his)"  and try to make it look like it is in his yard.  Such a co-opting of his identity seems too direct and likely to raise more ire than I care to manage.

3.  Put up a sign for Che Guevara or some other un-American red commie bastard, just to mess with him.

4.  Put up a sign with a gay / lesbian theme.  Because he is homophobic.

5.  Keep the peace.  Do nothing.  Practice deep breathing exercises when approaching the house.  Remind self that this will all be over in about six weeks.

I hereby solicit your advice and ideas. 

Ultra busy

I'm in the midst of a brutal work crunch right now, so I won't be around much between now and Labor day.

In the meantime, here's an embarrassing anecdote for you.  I've had many, many, many ultrasounds over the years, and I have this weird science-geek fascination with the ultrasound machine.  Often I'm baffled looking at the images on the screen because I just can't figure out how they correspond to what I'm feeling on the inside.  I always wish I could take a turn with the machine and just play around with it for awhile until I could figure it all out.  Now, what usually happens at my practice is that some technician does a scan, then leaves me on the table for about 15 minutes until the doctor comes in to take a look and talk with me.  In that 15-minute interval, I'm always left there alone with a gooped up belly, lying right next to the ultrasound machine, and I am always tempted to give it a whirl myself.  Who knows?  Maybe being an ultrasound tech is my true calling in life and this would be my chance to find out.  At the last scan, I was a little irritated by the tech because she kept making weird little uninterpretable sounds in the back of her throat.  I couldn't tell if she had a cold, if it was a nervous tick, or if she was reacting to something shocking on the screen and just barely suppressing her horror, and so it made me tense and annoyed.  Then I got to thinking that this would probably be my last ultrasound with this pregnancy, and maybe the last prenatal ultrasound of my life, so before she left the room, I just blurted out, "Can I play with that while you're gone?"  She was clearly appalled and gasped an emphatic "No" and left.  Okay, fine.  So I'd just pissed off the throaty ultrasound tech, I didn't really care.  But then the doctor came in.  My favorite doctor in the world.  Whom I admire and respect and want to be like someday.  She said, "So... I hear you wanted to scan yourself."  Suddenly I started to feel sheepish.  She gently but firmly explained how valuable the machine was and what it would cost if I dropped the hand-held part ($20,000) and how important those tools are to them and she continued explaining, in so many words,  why this was such an outrageous request until I wanted to just go hide my red face in the very womb we were watching.  I guess it was rather impertinent of me.  I'm sure there is a note about this in my file and that I'll never be left alone with expensive medical equipment again. 

The moral of the story?  It's better to ask for forgiveness than permission. 

In the end, one measurement was off and suggested a small chance of a bowel problem that would require surgery at birth, so I have to go back for another look in a few weeks.  They assured me this was very, very unlikely so I'm trying not to worry about it.  (Yeah, because I'm SO GOOD at that not worrying thing.) 

Oh, and she's a girl!

Back

I'm back.  Well, not back at home, but back with the 'rents, having made it out of wacky fake resort hell.  I was so ready to get out of there that I left way too early for the airport and ended up sitting around for over two hours before my flight. I kind of appreciated the airport's honesty.  It was just being an airport and nothing more.  It made no attempt to be a climate controlled rainforest with boat rides on fake rivers and piped in music.  All is WYSIWYG at the airport

B suffered no injuries in my absence.  I was actually concerned about this.  I even left her insurance card with my mom, just in case.  She is trying to pull up on everything and cruise now, even without edible incentives, and yet she's still unsteady.  Two days before I left, under my father's watchful eye, she tried the ambitious move of transferring from a chair to a bookcase and fell headfirst into the bookcase, getting an impressive bruise on her forehead.  (Dad stood there dumbfounded, not realizing that his next move should be to pick her up and pat her back and sing the Miss B song to make her stop crying.)  The next day came the injury I'd been expecting and dreading for weeks now, and this one was on my watch.  She was cruising at the coffee table and fell, bumping her chin against it on the way down and biting her tongue.  The tongue is always out, and the teeth are always sharp, so it was only a matter of time.  It stopped bleeding within about 5 minutes, so it wasn't nearly as bad as it could have been, but it made me a little more nervous about leaving.   Anyway, she was fine in my absence and seemed very pleased to see me when I returned.

Tomorrow I will be 19 weeks along in this pregnancy and all is well.  I love the second trimester.  I have a normal amount of energy, food tastes good, I am able to concentrate again, and I seem to have acquired the liibiido of a 15-year-old boy, which is great fun.  I like this version of me. 

The problem is that now the big deadlines are looming and I have to pay the price for how I spent my first trimester -- strung out with worry and exhaustion, and leaving work early to cook fancy lasagnas or nap.  I will miss at least one deadline that I'd set for myself.  The two more important ones will be met, but I will be rushing and the work may not be as good as it should be.  Oh well, it's not as if my entire career is at stake.  Oh wait, yes, it is.  Sometimes I think that getting fired wouldn't be so bad, and then I remember how much I like my work, and getting paid, and having health insurance.  T could cover some of those things, but his work is much less stable than mine, so I'd rather not depend on that. 

Wow, this has been a very long nap for the B, which kind of makes me wonder if the monitor is really working.  I'd better go check.

Heroes

I had this dream that during the State of the Union Address, the president of the United States hailed the inventor of Baby Einstein as a national hero.

Oh wait... was that was real?

 

Boobs...not!

Sometimes I look at this blog's stats to see how people are finding me.  I'm especially curious about the folks who come here from a search engine.  The vast majority of people who have found me through google have been searching for boobs.  Move along you -- there's nothing to see here.

Off to the Rockies -- see you in a week.

Wheeze

I really appreciate the positive comments on my mothering.  I don't know if I'm doing any of this right, but at least I have not knocked my baby off of a pile of rocks.  Well, not yet. 

Today I went to the gym.  At 4 months postpartum, I'm still about 10 lbs over my pre-pregnancy weight.  I'm not obsessive about weight or anything, but I would like to fit into my favorite jeans again, and whoever told me that lactation would just wipe the extra pounds away appears to have been lying, so I've been trying to work out more.  Anyway, going to the gym is a welcome baby break for me, so I look forward to it.  On my way there I was listening to All Things Considered and they were doing this new feature where people call in with recordings of sounds from their environments.  They had the sound of some electric gardening tool, the sound of someone's squeaky door, the sound of a buoy, and then... the coup de grace... the sound of the Medela Pump In Style.  Wheeze.  Wheeze.  Wheeze.  I can not get away.

Doh!

Because nursing Miss B is a struggle, and because I like T to do his share of feedings, I usually pump.   I get up in the middle of the night and sit at my computer with the cones of the snazzy, faux leather-clad Pump In Style wedged between my boobs and forearms so I can type.   (In fact, I'm pumping right this minute.)  Last night I got up in a complete daze, grabbed the pump parts and started going at it.  I can't say how much time passed, except to say that it was way too much, before I realized that I had neglected to attach the bottles to the cones and milk was running down my legs and onto the floor.  You'd think that the sensory feedback of milk running down your legs would clue you in pretty quickly to the mistake, wouldn't you?  Yeah.  You would.  And to add insult to injury, the dog was nowhere to be found, so I had to clean it up all by myself.

Dear reader, have any Doh! moments to share?