Monday, February 28, 2011

Enough about the Oscars already

Well, we're back now from a week with my parents. I would have blogged about it at the time, but what with the house only protected by a pair of cats I thought it best not to advertise our absence.

The trip was pretty okay, plenty of Gangee and Pop Pop time for Marlo. Unfortunately there was also plenty of silent judging and failure to honor wishes done by a certain person who shall remain nameless. But I did get to go back to bed until nine or so most mornings, so I guess I should shut my mouth and quit complaining. And it couldn't have been all bad, since we're probably going back for another week in April.

I had lots of good ideas while I was away, so hopefully I will be filling this space with hilarity and witticisms soon. If I can remember any of my ideas, that is.

Tuesday, February 15, 2011

Rudimentary mommyblogging, Feb edition

It's been a while since I mentioned anything about the baby. I guess because this blog is more of an escape from her rather than a baby journal or place to brag about how I'm such an awesome mom, wife,  and housekeeper.

BUT. Some of you actually care about her more than you care about my views on the world. Shocking, yes, but true. So let me tell you a little about Miss Marlo and what she's been up to lately.

Basically, she's gone from a baby you can just set and forget to a baby who will follow you everywhere, crying and leaving a snail trail of snot behind her. She moves now, but she looks like a cripple because she wants to get on her feet rather than crawl on her knees like a normal baby. So she does this sort of hopping, dragging one leg thing that looks for all the world like she just got shot on the beach at Normandy and she's trying to drag herself behind a dune for cover.

She also learned how to sit up on her own, which means you can no longer put her down in her crib and walk away. Being able to sit up means being able to pull up to stand, and she is on her feet in no time. She spends most of her "nap time" now cruising around her crib, experimenting with throwing her pacifier through the slats, and screaming.

Oh yeah, and she also finally cut her first tooth. And then the second one within 24 hours. This tooth cutting happened not 24 hours from the first time she crawled, which happened about 48 hours from the first time she sat up on her own. The first week of February was big for this little girl.

Her last ride in her infant car seat, last Saturday

Thursday, February 10, 2011

Googling "Jim Henson"

Just to put a cherry on top of my week, I think I caught the skeevy Apple store guy's skeevy cold. I am so over being sick! I haven't been 100% since Thanksgiving.

I would say I've lost my will to live, but that would be melodramatic and completely the opposite of true. I've recently heard another one of those totally tragic stories about a woman dying young that reminds you that you should be totally and completely grateful for every second of life that you get.

I think I must be at about the apex of my susceptibility to those stories - being in my early thirties with a young child and whatnot. When you're 17 you're not really affected because you are young and invincible and it will never happen to you. When you're 50 you've probably heard a bunch of those stories, and some of your friends and acquaintances have probably died tragically already. But when you are a young mother you feel intensely vulnerable to tragedy and so hearing about one shakes you to your core. That's my hypothesis, anyway.

So that's my deep thought for the day. Now back to treating my illness with M&Ms and Bravo. Poor Marlo also has a runny nose. I am treating her illness with frequent trips to her crib so that I might implement my own treatment more effectively. Mom of the year!

Tuesday, February 8, 2011

Remind me to learn how to make cheese

I just ate an entirely unreasonably sized portion of spaghetti and meat sauce with cheese on top. It is justified, I reckon,  because Marlo is now in constant motion (physics!) and still dependent on me for 90% of her calories. I can't keep my pants up anymore.

All false humility aside,  my binge reminded me of a few points I want to make on that whole vegan thing I brought up the other day. Number one: I have nothing against veganism. Something against some vegans, yes, the condescending PETA-joiner kind, but that's beside the point. I think if you want to subsist on plants and plants alone, good for you. I couldn't do it. Nor do I want to.

I could probably be a vegetarian. I think that if I were forced with the choice to either go veg or raise and, um, harvest? my own meat, I would be unable to do it. I'm creeped out by eating plants I grow myself. (Fun fact: I'm kind of scared of plants. They creep me out that they are alive and breathing and whatever but completely silent. The way that they will move toward you and those vines that will grab you if you're not careful - yikes! But anyway.) Yes, I'm kind of sicked out by eating my own plants, so you can imagine how I would feel about eating livestock. That I actually saw, you know, alive.

But eggs, cheese? Not a problem for me. In fact I could never give up cheese, it is far to dear to me. So if everything goes to shit and we have to start raising all our own food, you can bet on me to be your friendly neighborhood cheese maker. I will probably barter you some for a steak, you heartless murderer.

Number two point: I get that the Veganist lady was trying to ease that family into it, what with the seven hundred dollars worth of fake meat. But I still think that is stupid. It is not going to solve any of our increasingly urgent problems to get America to "ease into" a diet that would be good for the planet via a diet based mainly on soybeans and corn. Oh wait. Ha ha. Based directly on soybeans and corn. I mean, I guess it cuts out the middle man of the cow, but we'll still die a slow painful death as the synthetic fertilizers deplete all the oxygen in our water systems and Earth turns in to Mars.

Have a nice day!

Monday, February 7, 2011

It's like a shower before your shift is against company policy

Remember how I was saying I was having a RAM shortage that was making computing difficult? Yeah, well, turns out it wasn't memory that was my problem. My problem was a sad old dying hard drive - but a hard drive that had the decency to crap out with three weeks left on my warranty! So that's the good news.

The bad news is that I spent three hours of my life that I will never get back in the Apple store on Saturday, working with a so-called "genius" to eke out whatever files I could from the old drive. Long story short: he did everything wrong, Time Machine is a piece of crap, and I figured out how to do it myself. Instead of standing in the middle of a store packed with people getting some free iPad time on a rainy afternoon, I could have done it all from the comfort of my own kitchen table, perhaps even in jammies. Minus the increasingly frazzled husband trying to navigate the chaos with the stroller.

Marlo of course thought the Apple store was fascinating - what with all the video monitors and unwashed geeks. She only started to fuss and cry well after I had already started to do so myself.

Oh, and by the way Motorola. Nobody wants your fake iPad. Thanks, bye.

Thursday, February 3, 2011

Suddenly, an intense craving for cheeseburgers

Funny that a theme in my little blogiverse this week seems to be the insufferability of preachy lifestyle people, because I just saw a particularly insufferable lady on Oprah. And it wasn't even Oprah! The preachy lady, aka The Veganist, cannot tell an animal his right to a dignified life is less important than her appetite.

Of course, the underlying message in this statement I have just paraphrased for you is that you are an asshole because you think your love of bacon is more important than Miss Piggy's right to frolic.

It was fun to see Michael Pollan sit next to this lady and try not to roll his eyes. I mean, seriously.  I struggle with the ethics of consuming meat and other animal products. We buy everything all organic and free-range and whatnot - although I have not yet bought one of those ridiculous $20 heritage chickens. The Veganist's argument is that not all Americans can afford to buy food responsibly like I can - so therefore they should go vegan.

Cut to the Veganist loading a Harpo staffer's Whole Foods cart full of probably $700 worth of Tofurkey products. Shouldn't someone who calls herself the Veganist have a better plan than highly processed meat substitutes? Is it really better for the environment to produce and consume fake meat? Is it really more cost effective? Am I just being insufferably obtuse and defensive of my elitist meat eating lifestyle?

Wednesday, February 2, 2011

Someday, I will be that crazy person

Sooo. The weekend with my mother in law. It was fabuu. Luckily she left yesterday, thus avoiding a weather-induced extension of her visit. I was able to spend extra time futzing around the internet and indulge in 30 minute showers, so all in all it was a good five days. We have two weeks to recover and then it's my parents' turn to test the bonds of our marriage.

In the mean time. Tomorrow is Marlo's first Kindermusik class, which is really more for me than her. I mean, if she learns sign language that's great and all, but mostly I like paying for an activity for which I have to get dressed and actually leave the house. Plus I'm hoping that she will pass on her sign language knowledge to her future sibling(s). Maybe I will have a miracle baby that will communicate by sign language at like five weeks old and then, THEN who will scoff at baby sign language class?

I'll tell you who. The old me. I used to be very anti-baby sign language. I thought everyone who did it was a moron or an idiot, probably both. Mostly because I knew a pair of idiot parents who thought every time their stupid kid pointed at something it was "her sign" for whatever that object was. If you see me start acting like that, please punch me in the face.