Archive for the ‘Random thoughts’ Category

Ugh


2010
02.25

I am a bad blogger. I started back to work this week after 4 months off and I am just a little underwater. You know those dreams where you are trying to get someplace but you can’t - either because you don’t have clothes on or because you can’t move fast enough? Well, that is my life this week. I have managed to put clothes on (dressy clothes! and high heels!) but I just feel like I am moving through jello. Needless to say this means I haven’t been posting anything on this site.

 

Life, work, 3 kids, dinners to cook, shirts to iron = one busy/tired mama. This is all I got today. Baby was up at 4AM and I never went back to sleep after that. I have now officially been awake for  almost 12 hours, 8 of which I have been wearing high heels. Good news is only about 7 more hours until bedtime….

Carmel


2010
02.12

One of the weird things about living here is that several times during the year the  traffic turns thick, like pudding, brimming with out of town license plates. People drive poorly around here as it is, as there is a preponderance of elderly drivers in really nice cars with big engines (not a safe combo, just fyi).  However, when the tourists show up and you add the congestion to the senior driving it is just plain ridiculous. Accidents everywhere and lots of middle fingers.

The last town we lived in wasn’t exactly in a tourist destination - people don’t travel to Turlock…they just end up there. Big difference. Anyway, when you live your normal life in a place where people come to celebrity stalk and play, you can get annoyed with the tourism pretty quick.  Just driving to pick up your dry cleaning turns into a snarl of traffic and people trying to figure out which exit will get them to Clint Eastwood’s house. (answer is: he no longer lives in downtown Carmel but in a gated community in Carmel Valley, your search is futile)

So, you try really hard to just ignore these major events that make this normally sleepy town into a busy anthill filled with Lexus’s and digital cameras. However, the AT&T National Pro-Am is not an event you can ignore. It is a golf tourney at Pebble Beach that pairs celebrities with professional goflers. I think there are something like 25,000 to 50,000 extra people in town (5,000 of that is Justin Timberlake’s entourage). Some of the visitors come for the golf but I think most come to celebrity watch/stalk.

We aren’t attending the Pro-Am this year though, we had fun last year and I did get to stand right next to Justin Timberlake (wow) but things are just too busy this year to fit it in. Instead I will just deal with all of the traffic and tourists looking for directions to this place or that. I have to say though, waking up this morning to a picture of Justin Timberlake playing golf on the cover of my local newspaper was a treat. Part of me just feels good knowing that he is sleeping probably less than 2 miles from where I live. Yikes, that sounds creepy. What I meant to say was, he is close, I can feel it. Wow, that was worse.

Okay, really I’m just going to end this post now before I get labled a stalker…again. (the last time was just really a mix up, not sure why Justin had to get all formal with the police and what not).

Labor Part 2, kinda


2010
02.02

So, I wanted to write all about my experience with birthing Elijah. I had a great story to tell about how the anesthesiologist was just like the doctor from Knocked Up and how he told me that I have scoliosis just as he was shoving the needle in my back. I also wanted to talk about the hospital experience as a whole but then I remembered…..

 

I am on maternity leave from THAT HOSPITAL. The one which provides me and my family with a regular paycheck and insurance. So writing about my experience there, should it be anything less than perfect, would be….stupid. And my friends, I try to limit the stupid in my life to the weekends only.

 

Instead I will tell you that I am not good at pushing out babies unless there is pitocin involved and where there is pitocin….there are epidurals. After 13 hours at a 4 and lots of walking, massaging, and praying I finally gave up my vision of a natural birth and once the epidural was in, baby was out in 1.5 hours. In case you are wondering if you choose to wait until right before you push to get an epidural and you have your baby at 2 am in the morning…you will still be numb at about 12 noon the next day. Super.

 

He was so perfect, just like they all are when they’re born. The air gets sucked out of the room and you feel like angels are siting on your bed, watching you welcome a little miracle into your arms. I hate pregnancy, sorry peeps but it is true. I turn into a hormonal maniac. However, giving birth is magical and completely worth 9 months of cankles, crying and horrible clothes that all somehow involve bows and or things that tie.

 

Eli will be 3 months old on Friday and I am just weeks from returning to work. He is an amazing baby, all smiles and coos - he is just what I always wanted him to be. He sleeps like a champ and looks just like his brothers (that is to say, just like his father). While I am still bitter that I never birthed a dark haired, dark eyed little portuguese baby I am still in love with all of them.

 

To all of you that have inquired about the website and why I haven’t been writing - honestly the transition to 3 children was really overwhelming. Joshua had an extremely hard time with the change and required a lot of my time. Also, since having Eli we entertained for Thanksgiving (I fed 13 people), we did Christmas (again 13 people) and we moved to a new house the week after Eli got over pneumonia. Really, it hasn’t been a barrel of monkeys at our house these days.

 

We are however, settled and I am intent on enjoying these next few precious weeks before I go back to work and experience yet another transition.

 

Here are some pics to make you smile….

 

newborn

 

newborn2

Better late than never?


2009
11.08

So in case you can’t tell, when I get stressed out…I stop writing. So from week 33 until week 38 (aka delivery week) I haven’t posted a darn thing.

 

After multiple threatening emails and comments (ha ha ha) I have resumed writing. Baby Elijah Harris was born on the 5th at 2:39 AM and he weighed 7lbs 9oz and was 20 inches long.  (was kinda hoping he was closer to 20 lbs - thus explaining my 40 lbs weight gain but alas, it was the ice cream…not the baby)

 

He is doing great and the other two lovely little men are adjusting. I promise a full story, including my water breaking at the local park in front of a lady whom I had recently flipped off in a fit of pregnancy road rage - I showed her! And the part about  how mixing pitocin, personal stubbornness unmatched by any human and an unreported (until now) case of scoliosis will make you turn into the lady Satan herself. Oh people, the story is good.  So are the pictures. However, my usb cable is currenly MIA so I can’t get the pictures off the camera just yet.

 

Tomorrow the children go to school and I will have 5 minutes to look for the cord and begin telling my story. In the meantime, thank you for your patience…regularly scheduled programing to resume soon!

Just Write


2009
08.18

Writing is my passion, my release, my salve. If I could find a way for it to pay the bills, I would. However, if that were the case there would be no such use for the term “starving artist.” Actually, I have never fancied myself to be artistic. I can’t sing, paint, draw or manage to create anything crafty beyond the 2nd grade level. I guess I’ve discounted writing as art, my brain housing only one definition of artistic and writing wasn’t in the small print. It is time for that definition to change.

 

When I was little and unbound by my definitions, I used to be very creative. I would make collages, I would build houses filled with happy people out of construction paper and old shoeboxes. I would marvel at my handiwork. I would spend hours hunched over a desk, no use for a clock, creating. As I grew, I looked around and saw that others were better than me at drawing, creating tangible art. I assumed that meant I wasn’t artistic or destined to be creative. I put down my markers, my colorful paper. I spent the next twenty years, hidden away in other peoples creative visions - books. I was friends with librarians, I would read 50 books a year. I learned to love words and how they can be spun together like wool to make a story that covers you, if only for a moment.

 

I would hide my visions away in notebooks meant for my eyes only. I called them journals and I wrote to no audience in particular. Fiction wasn’t for me, the story was always the same. Telling life as I see it, looking for the turquoise blue in my hands full of  life’s sea glass, that came natural. Still, until I started this blog, it was only for me and I often judged the quality of the words before they spilled onto the paper.

 

Yet, when I think about what has always driven me, what has always inspired me and filled my soul, the answer falls like silver coins from a slot machine and fills the floor around me: write. There is art in words. I am an artist.

Stop Counting


2009
07.08

Okay so I took some belly pictures last night and I promise to post them tomorrow so you can laugh. No really, go ahead and laugh at my expense. It’s okay.

 

Wow I sound grumpy. I’m not, just officially feeling very preggo. You know the, up 6 times a night to pee -hard time getting off the couch-out of breath- kind of preggo. Worst part about this is that I haven’t even reached what I like to call, “serving the baby an eviction notice stage” which generally occurs for me around week 32. I have 9 plus more weeks to that stage. Yeah!

 

Anyhow I thought you all should know that last night I wasn’t really hungry. This is a big-ish thing for me considering I ate a  burrito the other day the size of a puppy and an hour later was all “what’s for dessert?” So, not being hungry is a new thing for me. Kevin made some breakfast for dinner concoction and I had a few bites of that and then decided to take a bath. Sometime between hefting my belly out of the bath and landing back on the couch, I became well, let’s say “focused” on having some ice cream. Warm and cozy from my bath and feeling smug for “not eating dinner because I wasn’t hungry” I decided that a little ice cream wouldn’t hurt anybody. I grabbed a pint of Haagen Daz Double Chocolate Chip and padded to the couch to watch Tori and Dean. I have talked about this show before and I will say it again, Tori isn’t who you think she is so stop judging her. She is my friend. Well, she would be if she met me. I am convinced of that and it doesn’t at all make me a stalker. Not really. Anyway, me and the ice cream sat down and managed to bring an extra spoon for Kevin. (He indicated that  me sharing the ice cream was the only way he would be able to tolerate watching that show, and I obliged.)

 

It took about 20 minutes. In case you were wondering. Just 20 little minutes to FINISH THE ENTIRE CONTAINER. Yes, I had help. But still, do you know how many calories are in a pint of that ice cream? I do. When I got up for the 6th time to pee last night, the caloric content of Haagen Daz was rolling around in my head like a marble in the Hungry Hippo game so I went to the garbage, pulled out the container and did some simple math at 3 in the morning.

 

1050 calories, divided by 2 = 525 calories.

 

So, on my “I’m being good I didn’t eat dinner” bandwagon, I managed to take in the calories of a Whopper with cheese. Yeah Jenn.

 

The worst part about all of this is that sometime in late November I am going to be crying about how fat I still am even though the baby came out and I am going to be all “I dont’ know how I got like this, I didn’t even eat dinner every night!” Sob, sob. And then a little  flicker of a memory, a chocolate chip…an empty container…Tori Spelling. It will all come back to me like a dairy deluge and I will know, exactly how I “got like this.”

 

So now I have two options, stop counting calories (wicked habit developed doing weight wacthers) or see if I can get Will Smith to come over with that little memory zapper from his movie that I can’t remember right now because my brain is filled with chocolate chips, and get rid of the ice cream memories so that can drown in post-partum self-pity  like every other pregnant woman I know. Why only these two choices? Because we both know I’ m not going to stop eating ice cream.

Mirror, Mirror on the Wall


2009
07.02

My littlest sister moved in with us a couple of weeks ago. She is going to start college in August and be our part time nanny for the boys. So far it is going well. However, having a teenager in the house takes some getting used to. It has forced me to look at how I view life. Obviously, a lot changes between 17 and 32 and learning to relate to the person in your house who sees the world through those 17 year old eyes can be trying.

 

The other night we were sitting on the couch and Kenna asked me if I was happy. Seemed like an odd question so I just looked at her blankly. She then proceeded to tell me that I appear as though I am unhappy, or not really enjoying my life.

 

Yikes.

 

I realize that my personality lends itself to the “all business” attitude most of the time. I like projects and I always have multiple on my mind. Whatever I am doing, even if it is changing Joshie’s diaper, I am thinking about the next task I have to accomplish. I think this type of living has led me to have a fairly clean house and an organized life. But am I really living? Does one really “live” when you are managing a full time job, two children, a household and a pregnancy? Am I really “managing” any of these things or is that just an illusion?

 

Clearly her off handed comment about how I appear to the outside world wormed its way into my brain and laid eggs. I don’t know that it would have, had I not heard this comment from multiple people over the years.  Now,  I can’t stop thinking about the fact that I appear unhappy. I want to be happy, I want to be the kind of person who other people consider fun to be around. I think I am just too busy for that. Or too serious. Or too determined to get everything done. With most things that bother me, I find a solution and get about changing course. However, with this one I am stumped. How do you appear more happy or joyful? I guess the answer is to BE more happy and joyful. What if that just isn’t me though? What if my personality just doesn’t lend itself to that type of outward expression? Is that why I have so much gray hair?

 

I guess the real question is how do I take my very real responsibilities to children and my husband and house and let them go enough to take time to enjoy life? I am content, I love my family, I love our life. However, I realize I let me get in the way of having fun a lot of the time. They say that having children under the age of 5 is one of the most stressful times in a woman’s life. I believe it. I am living it. When I really think about it though, I was kinda like this in college, long before Isaac or Joshua were even a thought. I mean business. I can laugh too, I can even be funny but it has never been really natural for me to be footloose and fancy free. I am not the person you call for the last minute road trip to Las Vegas. I am the girl you call to help plan your very scheduled baby shower.

 

The question beating in my head like a drum is… did I become this kind of girl over time or did I start out this way? What if I had a conscious choice? Would I still be this way? Would you?

Karma Chameleon


2009
06.18

Well folks, it appears we only know how to make them with boy parts around here. However, he sure is cute:

 

 

 

baby-1

 

 

baby-22

 

baby-3

 

I am thrilled to be having another baby boy in my life. Yes, I was hoping for a girl but this little man is what I am meant to have. So I will hug him, and love him and call him George.

 

PS - not really, I won’t call him George. Unless he looks like a monkey.

 

PSS - Isaac kinda looked like a monkey and I called him Walter so, I’m not really sure that even if he looks like a monkey I will call him George.

 

PSS - I think until we have an official name for him we shall call him “Baby that is not George” OR “Boy that is not George” - BOO-YA! (see how I did that with the title? I am wicked smart!)

Still Alive


2009
06.17

Okay this doesn’t count as a real post because it is just an update on my status: I am still alive.

 

Things got crazy, then really busy, then I got the flu and then I got a new job. So much to tell but I don’t have time on account of the lingering flu and the new job. Good news is I will be obligated to post tomorrow because…

 

We have the big ultrasound appointment tomorrow!!!! So, sometime tomorrow afternoon we can hopefully announce whether we will be having Jumanji or Darjeeling. Stay tuned!!!

Single Parent


2009
06.01

Kevin out of town for work this whole week - let the whining commence.

 

Basically, I am a single parent for the week and I don’t even want to go into the amount of things outside of our normal routine that are going on this week, thus adding to my stress of having to do it all alone. Needless to say, posting will be light because I will be busy both bringing home the bacon and frying it up in the pan. Normally I am the queen of multitasking but this little thing growing inside me, that shall not be named Jumanji, has taken my brain and turned it into pea soup. You know those dreams where you are supposed to be at the prom but you can’t find your dress? Or you have a meeting and you can’t find your car to get there? That is my life. I swear the contents of my normally intelligent brain have been rendered useless. I went back into the house to get things I forgot FOUR TIMES this morning before I finally left. I left my office today at least 3 times not remembering why I even got out of my chair in the first place. So, the challenge of working, being the sole provider for 2 children, gestating a third child and the extra curricular junk we have going on this week all add up to ONE HOT PREGNANT MESS.

 

Bottom line: if you see me driving down the street with my car door open and my coffee mug about to fall of the roof of my car, just keep driving.

 

*Addendum to bottom line: However, if you see a 5 year old chasing after my car because I left the house without him, do me a solid and pick him up. Make sure to tell him Mommy loves him, she just isn’t herself right now, on account of the hormones.


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