Bought meat like I said I would

The last ten days or so have been a total blur of parties and contractors and disputes in parking lots. I took the day off yesterday, with Marlo at her grandparents' house, and watched movies in bed. It was delightful. Today I feel like I've come home after an extended absence, and nothing is the way I left if or want it to be, so I'm overwhelmed all over again. Add to that the long weekend for which to prepare, and I feel stuck square behind the eight ball.

Let's see. Hearken way back to the day I was going to barbecue the pizza. I did, in fact, barbecue the pizza, and I remembered why it was I had a faint memory of there being some difficulty about barbecuing the pizza. It's because it tends to set the barbecue on fire. At least, it does if you use the pizza stone, which I do, because it is just silly difficult to put raw pizza dough directly on the grill. The pizza stone gets it all extra wicked-hot in there, and then any crud you have let accumulate catches on fire and you peer out the window to discover your grill has become a fireball and you are about to become That Idiot Who Burned The House Down With The Barbecue.

Bonus: After you get the fire under control and it burns itself out, you have a shiny clean grill!

Then we went to an auction and because apparently I think I am Mrs. Johnny Big-Shot, we bought a trip to Africa. It is a decision that seems slightly less wise without the complimentary white wine in me, but they auctioned off as many trips as there were buyers in the room for 1/2 off the list price. It seemed like too good a deal to pass up. It was Groupon psychology that a whole bunch of people fell for, including my sister and her husband, so at least we can all go together maybe. Wrench in plan: the trip has to be used within two years, and I was planning on getting knocked up in the Fall. Whoopsie! Looks like my second child will not be appearing on the cover of Time Magazine attached to my breast in May 2018.

Then it was Mother's Day and I got two cases of wine, one from my husband and one from my parents. I took a couple long looks in the mirror but mostly I'm fine with that. Giddy about that, in fact.

See, now this post is way long and I have only caught up to a week ago. Suffice to say I spent all last week running around getting ready for Marlo's second birthday party, which I was real smart about and only invited, oh, 12 of her little friends and their parents. I bought meat for that, in the form of a six month-old baby sized pork shoulder and some chicken. I really did think about trying to cobble together some party food out of the remainder of stuff in our freezers, but then my party hosting vanity won out and I bought the food to go with the theme. We have plenty of meat left. We are not going to finish it all before the month is out. I think that might say something awful about me. Time for more long looks in the mirror, I guess.

The reproductivity report

So. I'm officially at that point in the baby-wanting continuum where the, er, beginning of a new cycle is slightly depressing. Well, at least it is once it happens. Mine came five days later than expected this time around, and I would say the prevailing thought in my head over those days was  

ohcrapohcrapohcrapohcrapohcrapohcrapohcrapohcrapohcrapohcrap.  

Still, wistful or not, I don't see the "oh crap" reaction changing any time soon. I don't think I'm going to get to the point where I feel confident the time is right to commit to changing my family's structure FOREVER. I will probably have to get drunkenly knocked up if Marlo's not going to be an only child. Ah, I can't wait for my children to grow up and read that.

Isn't it weird how when you're trying with all your might to get pregnant, it seems like the most fragile thing ever? When I was first pregnant with Marlo I remember feeling some sort of cramping and instantly laying down with my legs elevated. I remember going on a boat ride and being terrified because the lake was super choppy. I went to a corporate dinner event and was served a salad with green papaya, only to read the next day that the last thing a pregnant lady should be eating is green papaya! You might spontaneously abort!

The opposite of this, of course, is when you are scared you might be pregnant and don't want to be. Then it seems like your cervix is a vault door from Fort Knox and whatever zygote you might be carrying is impervious to all manner of hostile environmental factors. You have Donna's boyfriend Ray from 90210 come over and throw you down the stairs, and still, your period won't start.*

But this month it did, so there will be no vanity baby for me this October. I would have been due three days after my birthday! That would have been sort of cool.

*was that totally wrong and offensive of me to say? I'm sorry. I couldn't resist.

But he wasn't in a shitty band

So, in the great baby-having poll we have three votes for a solid three year gap between siblings from people with one kid or less, and a vote for closer spacing from one person with multiple children. Interesting. I will take some time to evaluate the data before I go doing anything crazy. But I must say I am leaning toward the three year plan. Mostly because I'm selfish and hedonistic. I like the idea of having one more free summer, during which my parents will happily take Marlo for overnights and I can run around pretending I am young and carefree again. Of course that means that I will be stuck in Newborn Land two summers from now, but that is two summers from now Tori's problem. Besides, if the world ends a year from now, I'd be pretty pissed about spending the last months of my life knocked up.

I've got the TV on for background noise, and Jane Fonda just pulled some sort of flash mob on Anderson Cooper. Anderson just kind of stood there going, "wow. okay." I thought it was sort of off-putting for a moment, until I realized that is probably exactly the reaction I would have if Jane Fonda tried to impress me with a flash mob three years after flash mobs were interesting. Poor Jane Fonda and her pitiful attempt at relevance. I do hope to rock leggings and over-the-knee boots when I'm 74, however.

Speaking of awkwardness, I was getting my hair did today, when all of a sudden my high school boyfriend was sitting in the chair next to me. I have not seen him in, oh, fifteen years? It was horrible. I don't know why it had to be so bad. He was my Jordan Catalano. He even kind of had the hair.

To baby or not to baby

I went to a Christmas party last night, and made sure my champagne glass was never empty for more than a nanosecond. Which means I found myself wide awake at 5:30 in the morning, suffering heartburn and playing with the pregnancy app on my phone. It is just about to be 2012, and assuming that the Mayans were just out of room on their calendar and we are going to live to see 2013, it's time to start thinking about the dreaded Second Baby.

To say "dreaded" is to be a tad dramatic. Of course I want a new little baby every time I see one, or hear one squeak, or see my 18 month-old daughter try to get the attention of eight year old boys all night long at said Christmas party (for instance). She's growing up fast and will be screaming at me and slamming doors in my face before I know it.

I've been looking at all of my pictures of her lately and, while totally missing that tiny baby she used to be, I've also been reminded of how much my life used to SUCK when she was new. The random crying jags. The breastfeeding every three hours all through the night. The milk coming in and flowing unbidden all over the couch. Hanging out topless with super engorged breasts. Being fat and wearing maternity clothes well-post-partum and/or never getting dressed. The gigantic production of leaving the house. The lack of independent play ability. Carrying that effing car seat everywhere.

I love that kid and I have loved her every step of the way, but I'm gonna go out on a limb and say that the infant stage is not something that I enjoy. Sure, they are cute and snuggly. But they are also tiny little leeches that suck every ounce of your life force for their own benefit. I'm not real excited to go there again. But they say it's easier the second time, right? Right?

So I'm torn. I can wait to space them three years and buy myself a mostly independent, non-pregnant summer now, but be stuck with a brand new baby next summer and have six years to wait before both my kids are over three. OR I can be pregnant this summer and have them more like 30 months apart. Opinions? I'd love to hear them.

This sort of thing is why the empire is collapsing around us

Blah blah boring blah. There, does that count as a blog post?

Lately I've just not been in the mood. I have had a traveling husband and a lot of one-on-one kid time, and while you might think that would be a boon to my catalog of subject matter, it was really more of a boon to the malt liquor industry. Not really. But sort of.

Want to talk about my private lady business? Oh good, me too. I had the monthly visitor something fierce, so bad that I felt a lot like that lady raccoon I saw get raped in the street in front of my house a few months back. At least I sounded a lot like her, with all the hissing and spitting and whatnot. It was so bad that my husband - Mister Just Say No, never took a drug stronger than Motrin himself - suggested I might want to see if I could get a prescription for some medical marijuana. I think it says a lot that he would prefer me completely useless, eating Doritos and watching Cheech and Chong or whatever.

Actually what he would really prefer me is knocked up again, which is just absolute crazy talk. For at least another four to six months.

In which I perv on pregnant ladies

If you read my blog back in the days it was the baby pork chop blog, you know that my favorite part about being pregnant was the free-for-all on food. It was the first time in my adult life where it was okay to eat whatever, whenever and not worry a lick about the consequences. And so I put on 41 pounds with glee. I was actually proud of each and every weigh-in.

But yesterday at one of our save mommy's sanity  mommy and me activities, I noticed one of the other moms was pregnant. And like, way pregnant. Like, how have I not noticed this before pregnant. I hadn't noticed because she is a very stereotypical size 00 Japanese woman, but with a watermelon stuck under her shirt. Everywhere else - same old tiny! She still has a waist and everything. It is totally unreal and she probably wonders what sort of pervy psycho I am because I kept checking her out.

Honestly, I had the thought "I want to weigh three pounds and be pregnant." What if the next time I am all super healthy lady and eat whole grains and dark leafy vegetables and work out the whole time? What if instead of free for all I try to eat responsibly, like the pregnant law librarian I used to pity when I saw her eating fruit and drinking tiny cartons of milk?

Since body image during pregnancy was the theme yesterday,  I came home and (during Marlo's naptime of course) watched the Very Special episode of 16 and Pregnant with Kayla the anorexic girl. I can't even mock her for her poor decisions, seeing as the poor thing is sick and getting absolutely no support, but I really wanted to shake her. Which goes to show why I don't do social work.