Profound Motherhood Moments

I don't have much to say these days. I know this is not news, as it's pretty much what I've said at the beginning of every not-really-a-post post I've made since we brought Z home. That said, I do occasionally post an update to Facebook, and I have successfully managed to do a string of these on the topic of motherhood. Since all I've got of the publishable variety these days are profound thoughts in 140 characters or less, I strung a bunch of 'em together to make this list. Enjoy!

Profound Motherhood* Moments

* I call them Motherhood moments because I am a mother. If you are a Father, you probably have experienced some of these, too. Though a few of them are quite specific to Motherhood, feel free to think of them as Parenthood moments if that makes it more fun for you...

1. (On Dec 29, just 14 days into motherhood...) I just spent 20 minutes (over coffee) trying to remember if I've showered since Christmas. (I have.)
2. I had someone else's barf on me three times between 6 and 10 this morning, and I was more worried about her than me or my pajamas
3. babies will sneeze without regard for what else they are doing. Like nursing, say.
4. the cuteness of baby sneezes is potent enough to de-horrible horrifying things, like snot in your cleavage.
5. You can't be your kids' friend because sometimes you have to pick their noses. And as we all know, you can pick your friends...
6. all but 1 of my PMM's has been about wearing snot, and that one was about wearing barf. #gamechange
7. Installed see-the-baby mirror in car. Driving is now COO-fest instead of waa-fest. Zoe is definitely a social critter now.
8. I'm proud of my daughter for figuring out how to suck her thumb. She has been working daily on taming her spastic arm motions and refining her "gig 'em" for three months to arrive at this milestone! You can remind me of this in three years when I'm trying to get her to STOP sucking her thumb.
9. Zoe slept 7 hours straight last night (and counting!). And just like all my friends said I would, I woke up in a panic to make sure she was still breathing...
10. She pulled my hair this morning. Take me down to the Ponytail City...
11. she fell asleep on her tummy and woke up on her back. She doesn't get to lie on the couch again until she can climb onto it her own self.
12. I know I'm a grown up because I just did my laundry BEFORE going to see my folks..
13. Zoe is sleeping in her own crib. How did she get so big?!?!
14. I just let Zoe grab me by the hair, pull me close, and chew on my nose. Insanity IS hereditary, you get it from your children...
15. Greenies: Puppies:: Smashed Bananas: Babies. Truefax.
16. Frozen cookie dough is a totally legitimate short term coping skill.
17. I can stop tears of frustration, pain, loneliness, boredom, and general grumpiness by picking her up and hugging her. I will cherish this superpower every day while I have it.
18. No matter how much chicken gravy or sweet potato you amend it with, pureed chicken feels like pureed chicken on your tongue. Especially when it's hiding under a tempting blob of apple sauce on a baby spoon.
19. the kids' song about how the little one said roll over - I'm crowded/I'm lonely was totally written by some one whose baby had a cold.
20. You know a nursing session with a newborn is done by counting how long between the baby's swallows; you know a nine month old is done when she zrbtts you.

she of the abnormally long legs...

Rose and I went by the local army surplus store this week to pick up extra camo pants for our upcoming roadtrip. I used to be in the Air Force, and I fell in love with the camo uniforms while I was there. I found them to be the sexiest uniform item, like, EVAR!!!1!

Ok, not really, but they're so damn functional I forgive them for being unsexy. If you're looking for sexy, you might think about flight suits. I know they don't look like much at first glance, but they're a short zipper away from being silk boxers and combat boots - silk scarf optional. What's not to love?

So these camo pants have giant pockets, the fabric breathes WAY better than denim, and they're reinforced through the butt and the knees, should you ever find yourself in contact with the ground. Hopefully you won't, but even if you did, the cargo pockets are so big you could probably store a trauma team in them to get you back on the road before the next day's breakfast. Why the next day's breakfast? Well, most bikers seem to have this crazed 'kickstands up at first light' philosophy that, had I known about it ahead of time, might've kept me from pursuing the pastime. See ANY of my posts tagged coffee for an explanation.

In short, they make perfect riding pants. We had ordered some extra-long pants for me because the merely long pants were, as you can see below, about three inches shy of being long enough, even when i wore the waist around my hips (which actually does a lot to improve the sex appeal of the pants). I was walking out of the dressing room holding the special order pair of extra-longs when the manager spied me for the first time and said, "You must be the Extra-Long Pants I ordered!" Yep, that's me, Giant Amazon!




Unfortunately, the Extra-Long pants were only available in a waist size that is... skinnier than your resident Giant Amazon. So the next time I post some decadent food item that I've cooked or eaten, feel free to leave me a comment reminding me to go jog that off. Until then, I'll be wearing slightly short, but hip-skimmingly sexy pants in the larger waist size. Maybe I could stuff a personal trainer in one of those cargo pockets?

coffee... must have... coffee...

you've seen, i trust, those cartoon sequences in which a character crawls across the hot burning sands of the sahara chasing a mirage that looks like water? and then all the infinite commercial variations in which they bump into something completely improbable in the sahara, like a coke machine? improbable, but utterly satisfying.

i would be utterly satisfied if i could go crawling down to my kitchen and find a mug of hot coffee waiting for me. rose had a meeting this morning, and she had to jump up and run to it without making coffee first. she's a lot smarter before her first cup than i am and therefore infinitely more qualified to operate complex machinery like a coffee pot. although i'd LOVE to have a coffee pot like the one below, i fear i'd only be awake enough to use it after my 3rd cup. and then only when i wasn't on some cold medicine that warns you not to drive or operate heavy machinery under its influence...



EDIT: i ventured down there to make coffee, rationalizing that if i was smart enough to write this, i was also smart enough to make coffee. i spilled grounds all over the counter and i poured brewed coffee on my yellow dog. i made coffee, but with absolutely ZERO points awarded for style.

it's finally happened...

i've been recognized by the staff of my local starbucks. they know who i am and make conversation with me and recommend drinks i might like based on the variety of drinks i've ordered before. not being a creature of habit, i never order the same thing twice. well, unless it's early in the morning. early in the morning, i just stumble in clutching my travel mug and ask them to fill it up with whatever is on tap and has the most caffeine. that in itself probably ingrains me in the memories of the morning shift, but i'm not much for making conversation at that point in my day.

this recognition was by the night shift. this whole event probably has been delayed by the fact that i travel as much as i do, but i had hoped to avoid becoming a "regular" at starbucks. i suppose it was inevitable, though, given how much i love coffee. and the internet. and coffee.

not smart enough without my coffee

i often joke when i go refill my coffee cup, that i'm "off to get another cup of brains." and people laugh, because it's kinda silly to think of a person's intelligence coming out of a cup.

today, we have proof that i'm not COMPLETELY joking when i say these things. i started to pour my first cup of coffee this morning and got halfway into it when i realized i was pouring it onto my oatmeal instead of into my mug! i had coffee and brown sugar oatmeal this morning, which was not half bad.

Alamogordo, Tucson, Phoenix, Bakersfield, and San Francisco

for the next three days of our trip, we weren't tourists. we were riders. we just pounded out the interstate miles gettin' where we had to go. at our first gas stop out of New Mexico, we pulled off the freeway to get gas and gatorade (the staples of desert riding!) the convenience store operator was also a rider himself and had a fabulous route suggestion that would save us time and miles getting into Phoenix, it bypassed Tucson and covered some prettier miles on the old US highway route. ordinarily, we would both have leapt on the opportunity to get off the freeway, save time, save miles, and see Something Pretty. unfortunately, rose was experiencing an intermittent microphone problem with her CB, and that meant we couldn't take the cool route because we had to go to Tucson.

Tucson, you see, is the headquarters for J&M, the manufacturers of our CB units. so we glued our wheels to the interstate and pushed on into Tucson. it was hot as blazes, but the kind folks at J&M fixed the microphone free of charge and got us back on the road quickly. they even gave us good directions that bypassed the nasty interstate construction and traffic logjam attendant thereon. the directions were perfect, too. as we approached the freeway on-ramp from the city street, we could clearly see TRAFFIC NOT MOVING on the freeway. we figured we had been led astray. we'd have to sit in NOT MOVING TRAFFIC for a couple of miles until we got out of town and out of the construction. i'm not sure i can adequately express how miserable NOT MOVING TRAFFIC is when you're in the desert, straddling a 6-cylinder engine, wearing a black jacket, black gloves, black helmet, and deprived of any mechanism of air cooling aside from the hot exhaust coming out the tailpipes of the NOT MOVING TRAFFIC in front of you. but lo, as we accelerated up the ramp, it became clear to us that the on-ramp joined the freeway about 50 feet past the end of the construction zone. the traffic behind us was still NOT MOVING. we, on the other hand, were MOVING. yea!

we stayed over with friends in Maricopa, AZ which is just south of Phoenix. the next day we stopped off at a really unique little diner in Gila Bend, AZ for breakfast. The place was called "The Space Age Diner" and it was all decorated up to make you feel like you were in a space ship. Or, like you were in what people in the 50's thought space ships would be like, really. It paid tribute to all sorts of space stuff, both the historical and the fictional, the decor was fun and funky and the waitress kept the coffee coming. my girlfriend, the NASA groupie, loved it. i couldn't ask for more, especially at that hour of the morning. i'm literally rendered mute without coffee, and if i'm not i should be.

one of the other staples of desert riding is Getting Up At The Crack Of Dawn.
at that point in the day, the temps are relatively low but you can still see well enough to ride safely. so we did. those of you who know me know that i am more the Getting Up At The Crack Of Noon sort of girl. so mornings are all a little blurry in my head, but they mostly involve lots of coffee and me squinting at the horizon and asking "is that what sunrise looks like?"

sometimes the answer was "no, that's a power plant" or "no, that's a big truck with lots of yellow lights". eventually, i'd get it right. the sun would come up, and then it would be, as my friends in college liked to say "Africa Hot."

so, when you're powering out the miles on the interstate, there's not much to see. it goes like this: "oh, look! a... well, i'm not sure what it was. it went by so fast." but we played silly motorcycle games and we took pictures of each other. so for three days, the ride looked like this:
Riding with friends


Me on the Valk


Africa Hot

i HATE snow.

just in case i've never mentioned it, i hate snow. i don't hate snow angels, i only hate snowballs when i'm in a bad mood, and i actually adore it as a medium for skiing. furthermore, it makes for a nice decorative feel on an otherwise bland landscape. so, why do i hate snow? i'll tell you...

i hate snow because you've gotta scrape the shit off your windshield. that means that while your coffee is sitting warm and dry in a cupholder inside your car, YOU are standing out in the weather that produced the snow (i.e.: cold, wet weather) with a ridiculous plastic tool in your hand, scraping the icy shell off your car so that you can see out to drive. the main reason i tolerate snowballs is that i can, with reasonable precaution, avoid most of them. if i'm in the mood for them, however, i can indulge. NOT SO WITH WINDSHIELD SCRAPING. good mood or bad, running late or on time (and let's not kid ourselves about how often i am the latter), healthy or ill... snow has to be scraped off the windshield.

seriously, yo. i'm in Gillette, WY, the self-proclaimed Energy Capital of the Nation, on account of their cold-bed methane mining operations. couldn't they convert just a little bit of that methane into a giant blowdrier, just like is used to give you a spotless finish at the car wash, but with a little heat added? you just roll your car through the dryer and voila! the ice is melted away and the water blown off so it doesn't re-freeze when you park your car for a day at work. i think those should be installed on all hotels in Gillette, WY, and i mean forthwith.

Hooray for toddlers!

That's me and my tiny niece, sitting on my motorcycle. She wasn't very keen on the whole thing at all until i made the horn go "BEEP!" After that she was pretty interested, but still wanted back in Momma's arms and away from the crazy chair. Her twin sister, ordinarily much more reserved and not usually the first one on a new trend, was ALL OVER the SHINY. They're a lot more fun now that I can do stuff like this with them and I know they're just going to get more so as they get older. They walk all the time now and are starting to do some talking. Soon, it'll be bicycles and BB guns... I got to hang out with them this weekend while my folks were there visiting. I cooked Papa James' "Deuces Wild Chili" in my sister's kitchen and we munched and giggled the afternoon away. Dad was taken with the bike, he even got to sit on it and mash all the buttons and stomp on the gearshift and everything. He was one happy redneck!

Eventually, we made it out to some of the Halloween parties we were supposed to be at. My costume was a disaster of internet ordering. I shopped for it in August, I ordered it the first week of September. They finally shipped part, but not all, of it late last week and that arrived today. Just in time for me to not wear ANY of it for the Halloween festivities this weekend. Stupid internet. Sometimes, I swear it's just broken. In the end, we didn't bother with costumes at all. We just went to hug our friends, freeload off their cookies and cokes and delightful (but gruesome ) confections, and drag our lame arses home at midnight. I'm a self declared, devoted, lifelong night-owl and I couldn't stay out past midnight to celebrate Halloween. Clearly, sleep is a drug to which I am addicted. Weaning shall commence immediately. Either that, or a stepped-up coffee regimen. You get to guess which one I'll choose.

The entire point of this post was just to show you how damnably cute my nieces are and I did that in the first five lines. So I'm off now. Hooray for toddlers!

I wonder if there are any good song lyrics about Vancouver?

So the Convention Center in Vancouver has a roof reminiscent of the one at the Denver airport. It's one of those masted ceilings with canvas strung between the masts and from the underside it's all swooping wires that maintain the tension of the canvas, keeping the thing watertight. Apparently it rains a lot here. I've seen nothing but sunny skies, but there was a complimentary loaner umbrella in the closet of my room. I'll take it as proof that they DO rather frequently have call to lend them out. As it is, I travel with a compact umbrella in my laptop bag because... well... you can't look professional giving a demonstration or standing in front of a class if your pants are dripping rain onto the floor.

Another feature of my hotel, which I have to say I adore at this point, is found with the in-room the coffee service. Ordinarily, there is nothing remarkable to say about it. Ordinarily, one gets a basket of junk alongside the in-room coffee maker and part of the junk is the packets of powdered non-dairy creamer that I secretly believe were the mysterious white substance found in John Cornyn's office this morning. Really, it's virtually indistinguishable from anthrax spores and it tastes bad, but not quite as bad as bad coffee does. So I use the stuff, though I loathe it with the loathing of a thousand thousand dogs loathing a thousand thousand thousand escape-artist cats. At this place, they provide LIQUID creamer. In those clever little plastic tubs with the peel-off foil lids, just like you would get in a diner. And really, since I don't want a uniformed roomservice attendant disturbing my slumber to bring me fresh cold creamer in an insulated pitcher every morning, nor do I want to pay the $5 they would charge for the one mug of coffee they would bring me, I can hang with the plastic tubs just fine. Really, room service prices make Starbucks start to look economical.

Speaking of... I've gotta get my things packed and into my car. There is a Tim Horton's on the walk to the Convention Center from my hotel, and I am bound to go. I need some timbits and a tall double-double. And maybe a Maple-Glazed while I'm at it. Road food is bad for you... But it tastes good!

camping foo!

i had such an outstandingly good weekend last weekend, it's just taken me a couple of days to process the photos and get around to writing it up.

friday night was our last softball game of the season. what's that you say? you didn't know i was playing softball? aha! i'm a woman of many secret talents... /me trails off mysteriously
anyway, i played 2nd base, as i always do. the thing that has flummoxed me over and over this season has been the infield fly. i know... they're easy. and i ALWAYS get under them and i ALWAYS catch them, but either because of bad technique, or bad luck, or a stiff glove or one of a million other reasons that's been suggested to me by many wise and caring onlookers, i USUALLY drop them. the ball hits the pocket of my glove, bounces out, and hits the ground. this happened to me TWICE!!!! during friday's game.

now, we play co-ed city league with some rule variations that are intended to facilitate a league schedule, and some that are intended to level the playing field for men and women. we play with a clock, for one thing. whenever time runs out, you finish that inning and then the game is over, no matter how many innings you have (or haven't) completed.

friday, we were up by 4 with three minutes on the clock when what should've been our last at-bat came around. we tried (unsuccessfully) to run the clock out, but there was still about a minute left when i was thrown out at first base for our 3rd out of the inning. so we had to take another inning in the field. our right-fielder made a really bad error wherein she ran down a ball after it landed near her and rolled off (afraid of the ball, doesn't attempt to catch it) and threw it backward (is too nervous to throw overhand, tries an underhand pitch to first) over her own head. by the time she'd recoverd the ball and managed to get it in to first, what should've been a single was a 3-run homer, and we were only up by 1. somewhere in there we got two outs, and with the clock dead if we can get a third out before they score again we win. at this point, an infield fly comes to me at second base... do you have ANY idea how bad i wanted to catch and hold that damn fly ball? well, as these things go, i DID catch it and hold it. i must've had the most triumphant look on my face, i probably looked like i'd just won an oscar or accepted the enemy general's surrender or something... everyone cheered, people clapped me on the back... it was great.

so then i went home to pack for camping. yea!

p and i got up (fairly) early in the morning and loaded up my truck with coolers, tent, sleeping bags, dog, and selves. we drove up to lake murray in oklahoma (not far from turner falls) and met up with some lother chicks to camp out. our site was literally atop a cliff overlooking the lake, with an easy boulderfall path down to the water, so we ambled down there and molly fetched her fool head off. some of the other women had brought their (older) dogs who were doing their all just to get down to the water and prance along the shore. molly, on the other hand, didn't stop swimming until nightfall. she was blissfully exhausted.

around sunset a guy who'd been fishing a little ways down decided to pull up and go home, so he offered us his catch: a catfish and two bluegill. i spoke up for them, but then that meant i had to clean them! i went looking for a fish-cleaning station, but none was in sight. one of the couples we were with had given me their big cutting knife, which was utterly unsuitable for the task. the blade was too flexible and too dull. if it'd been that dull and pretty stiff, i coulda used it ok. if it'd been flexible and sharp, it woulda been perfect. anyway, i was having so much trouble with the catfish, i eventually took p's swiss army pocket knife and finished the job with it. i'll spare you the gory details, but i got the fish cleaned on top of a flat rock, by the light of a coleman lantern, using a swiss army knife. i felt so dyke-y i could've popped!

we had delightful kabobs with marinated chicken and peppers and onions. we roasted marshmallows over the fire and smooshed them atop homemade brownies (the knife-providing couple had brought them from home. we didn't actually bake over our campfire). we told stories and drank beer until all of 10:30 when sunbaked exhaustion and full bellies and early rises took their toll and we all crawled off to our sheets.

so sunday dawned and i woke to find coffee brewed (in a percolator over the fire!!) and "mess" made. "mess" is some kind of breakfast mashup made from grits, eggs, and bacon. it was great! thank you, s, for making coffee and making breakfast and for letting us all sleep until a decent hour. in short, thanks for being a morning person, and for realizing that not everyone shares that particular orientation.

we struck camp and went down to the marina to rent canoes. we canoed out with the dogs and paddled around for about an hour. we played a little "bumper canoes" and had some adventures when molly decided to jump out and swim. she had a hard time getting back in, of course, and ended up swimming to shore. everyone (but me) was afraid she was going to try to kill the fledgling geese that were on the shore, but she ignored them utterly and went over to a picnicking family to lick them and see if they had any gooshyfood. they didn't, so she came back to the boat and i hauled her in. p managed to keep us balanced so we didn't flip over while i did that, and i kept a foot firmly planted on molly's leash for the rest of the ride. no more swimming for her!

we lunched and drove back home in time to clean up, nap, wash dishes, and fry up those fish! (you'd already forgotten about the fish, hadn't you?) they were yummy! and now, my girlfriend knows how to fry catfish.

many thanks to my dad for the tip on frying the bluegill whole and lifting the filets off after they were cooked. it worked perfectly!