Monday, September 17, 2007
all good things must come to an end
but it's time for me to pull the plug.
i've been putting this off for a while now. i really had all intentions of fulfilling the promise i made in my last post, and going out in a blaze of glory. but it seems that instead i'm destined to go out in a smolder of procrastination. oh well—less dramatic, more fitting.
why am i signing off, you ask? has the stress of wile-raising finally worn me down? nah. you may remember a while back that i mentioned that i finally had an inkling of what i wanted to do when i grew up? well, that inkling has become more and more real, and i need to give it all of my free time and brain cells.
if you're so inclined, you can find out more about it and follow it's progress here.
thanks for reading, y'all.
p.s. wile says bye too—and to check in with him at his site.
Tuesday, July 31, 2007
dress + promise + awesome
and i owe a big old post telling you what i've been doing for the past few weeks since i obviously haven't been spending a lot of time posting here. it will include thrilling tales of ozzie dogs, naked backhoeing, ice cream, king diamond cover bands, and toddler beer pong.
in the meantime, here's this:
Monday, July 23, 2007
pass the kleenex
saturday and sunday, i was consumed by the new h.p., and basically wept right through it. but that's not a spoiler! it wasn't all sad crying—some of it was happy crying, and most of it was just "dear god i've known these people for almost 10 years i can't take any more ups and downs and highs and lows and i am emotionally drained !" (i'm halfway through my second reading now, much less crying.)
then this afternoon wile and i had to cry together for a little while. he's still not napping yet still really needing the nap, and sometimes the afternoons get a little hairy. today gwen was here for a few hours, which was mostly fantastic. they laughed their heads off at everything, and were really sweet with each other—gwen patted wile's head when he bonked his knee, he always asked her if she was okay when she fell down. they also invented a new game, when wile was naked after he escaped me mid-diaper change, in which gwen would chase him around the house then tackle him onto his bed and tickle him in his happy zone, which she told me was called "tic tac toe penis." i cannot make this shit up.
anyway, the highest highs are, of course, ususally followed by the lowest lows, so by the time mona came to get gwen, wile was teetering on the brink of meltdown, and then jumped right over the edge. he wanted to read a book, but didn't want gwen touching it, which he told us all about very very loudly. so i told him we would wait till they left, but that wasn't the right answer. so i left him on the couch screeching while i said goodbye to mona and gwen, then had him yell for at least ten minutes about how he did not want me to say goodbye to them, how i should never do that again. i tried to take him upstairs to calm down, but he couldn't. and that's what he told me: "i can't stop crying!" that's when i started crying. partially because we were on minute 30 of screaming crying now and it was wearing on my nerves, and partially because i know all too well the feeling of not being able to stop crying from my intense pms days, and it's fairly awful, and hard enough to deal with when you're 20, but must be even harder and scary when you're 3. so i suggested we lie down, but no. then he bit his tongue and insisted that i put boo-boo cream on it. i told him that we didn't have any boo-boo cream that could go in his mouth. he told me we did, and that if i'd carry him into the bathroom he'd show it to me. okay. so when i opened the bathroom cabinet and he didn't find what he had imagined might be there, it took the crying to a new level.
finally he quieted down to the point where i could suggest food, and thankfully he said yes to that. then he wanted a bun. okay. i took one out of the freezer, and he started crying again. he didn't want it cold. could i put it in the microwave? no. toaster? no. what he wanted, and i quote, was "a bun from the warm frigerator!" the what now? apparently he would like us to have a refrigerator that keeps food warm, not cold. because he doesn't want food cold. he wants food warm. we spent a good 10 minutes on that one. i'm still not sure that i have him convinced that there's no such thing as a "warm refrigerator", but i think i at least convinced him that we don't own one.
he let me microwave-defrost the bun, ate it, then told me that he wanted to go upstairs and lie down. alright, then! we went up, he got into his bed. he asked me for his train to play with, i gave it to him but told him he had to stay in bed. he said fine. i told him to call me if he needed anything, and walked out of his room. he called, "see you later, mama!" half an hour later, around 5, he was asleep. here's hoping he doesn't wake up till morning.
i think i should be done crying for the week, though. the only thing i have on my schedule for the next few days is a few mets games, and as we all know.....
Tuesday, July 10, 2007
the way life should be
so as all parents know, vacation with a toddler isn't really a relaxing break. it's kinda like life lived in extremes. you get the very very good—seeing best friends! going to the beach! lobster and steamers and whoopie pie! four square! fun wedding!—alongside the very very bad—off schedule! sleeping in odd places! subsequent screaming fits!
i'm kinda braindead from the 95˚ and the hunidity, so i'll just hit you with the highlights:
going electric
ocean with jess
fried clams
lobsters
the world's biggest lobster bib
naked in echo lake
digging (what, you thought there'd be no digging?)
brunch
acadia
and, we're done.
Saturday, June 30, 2007
another old shirt rescued!
this was part of my college uniform:
not only is it ridiculously big (as all of my clothes were back then), it has developed some issues in the back....
.....and so has since been relegated to the pajama drawer (or, more accurately, one of the pajama drawers. i have a few pajama/loungewear drawers. some of my friends find this odd). but i never wore it, because i was afraid it was just going to keep ripping and fall apart. so, clearly, it was time to take it apart myself.
i started by removing the sleeves, then cutting across the back at the spot of the enourmous gaping hole, leaving me with this:
then i cut down the sides, making two pieces, and slit the part of the back that was attached to the front down the middle, comme ca:
i decided that those two pieces coming off the top of the front piece would become straps, so i trimmed them a bit to make them slimmer and hemmed the edges. i also turned the neckband under in the front and stitched it down to make a uniform hem all around.
then i put it all together: pinned the side seams (which, since i don't have a dress form yet, involved pinning the front piece of the shirt to my bra to keep it still while i held the back piece in place) and sewed them up, hemmed the top of the back piece, attached the straps to the back, and hemmed the front piece— which had ended up longer than the back—at the bottom. and this is what i got:
putting it on, i realized that the part where i had hemmed under the existing neckband stuck out....
...and i was going to fix it by turning it under one more time and re-hemming, but then i realized that i liked it the way it was.
the finished product definitely retained some of the pinholes and frayed edges of the original shirt, and i'm glad it did.
off to maine on vacation, more when i return!
Thursday, June 28, 2007
it is unwise to get only 5 hours of sleep before taking a 2-year old and an 8-year old to the natural history museum because
maybe you'll give a total parker-posey-in-dazed-and-confused bitchface to the 12-year old who snottily tells you that the reason the bell rang in the elevator was because you were holding down the "door open" button for too long.
maybe you'll give a slight hip-check to the pushy tourist who tries to bustle past you on your way out of the elevator.
maybe you'll not-so-silently curse out the stupid euro-tourists who walk up the stairways like they had specially reserved them for their own private use instead of staying to the goddamn right, goddamn it.
maybe you'll need to go to bed at 9:30. good night.