Happy Halloween from Phookie

Ol' Phook wishes you a Happy Halloween. She looks so chubby cheeky cute in the picture, she hopes you don't notice that her dad looks like a maniac in the background, carving his pumpkin 9 minutes before the trick or treaters are supposed to start arriving.

Yet another classic image

So I decided to start posting photos to this here blog, and it turns out that I can think of all kinds of things to say when we throw images in the mix. Here we have a special photo:


Does this kind of weirdness take place in other homes? Do other people come around the corner into their living room and find their husband (clothed in a polo shirt, boxer briefs, and a hand-knit pumpkinhead stocking cap, no less) trying to teach their month-old, 9 pound, potroast/infant how to walk? I don't know, but I swear that I happened upon this scene unexpectedly, and was luckily able to grab a camera only because I have go-go-gadget arms now that I am a mom. The House of K is a zany place. Our kid is totally gonna be a paste-eater.

P.S. I just noticed that the Bulb Syringe of Death can be spotted on the coffee table, just to the left of Big K's ass cheek. A sign of the coming apocalypse, to be sure.

Something you don't see every day

Here we have a picture of 5 generations of my family:

Man, all I have to say is that if I am still kickin' in my 90's (unlikely since I loves me some bacon), I want to look like the great-great-grandma in this here photo. She's lookin' good. And obviously so are great-grandma and grandma. Most of us are probably familiar with the MILF and even GILF concepts, but is it possible that my family contains the sole GGILF and GGGILF on the planet? (Ok, I am aware I just crossed a line.)

Anyhow, Phookie was baptized on Sunday. A few weeks ago, I would have defined stress as being responsible for a $15 million dollar proposal that needed to be on a FedEx truck that was tooling up the corporate driveway as I sprinted through the halls of a garden gnome decor filled office hell trying to wrestle a signature for a cover letter out of a megalomaniac CEO who is refusing to sign because the paper is not of high enough quality. Now I would define stress as hearing the sounds of your child shitting in her 55-year-old sheer baptismal gown while your neighbor's elderly brother decides to randomly plow his enormous riding lawn mower through your yard, sheering approximately 60% of your lawn down to the dirt and blowing lawn clippings all over your sidewalks and patio (leaving the rest of your rather beloved yard, in random patches, untouched), while crockpots full of the food you have been slaving over for 3 days bubble over in your kitchen, your twin brothers-in-law show up and distract your husband (who you really need to be attentive to your needs at this moment) with an obnoxious conversation about XBox games, people pour into your house at random and start yammering about their impending rotator cuff surgery, the child starts yowling to be nursed (and you attempt to nurse her for 4 quick minutes before you MUST leave for church, whipping out a meaty breast in front of a lot of people who don't need to see it), and you are sweating buckets because a) your face is shocked by the weight of unexpectedly being asked to bear the weight of foundation b) your neck is upset by the unusual sensation of being touched by un-ponytailed hair and c) you are wearing a damned blazer. And church starts in 12 minutes.

So I nearly had a panic attack before church started. It was probably my most stressed moment since having Phookie, actually. But the baptism proper went off without a hitch. Phookie, being an infant prodigy, seemed to understand she was being consecrated into the hands of the Lord, and behaved accordingly. A lovely photo of Big K, Big W, Pastor, Phookie, Auntie (godmother) Hode, and Cousin (godfather) E:


The luncheon afterwards at my house was very nice, and peoples seemed to enjoy the food, which was all I really cared about. People who love Big W did the vast majority of the cleanup, and unbeknownst to pretty much everyone except Auntie Hode, I went outside and laid down on the nice, cool concrete driveway for like 8 minutes during the festivities, and that was really awesome.

And now I'm gonna tell you about my Paula moment (yes, I mean Food Network Paula, duh). So at approximately 7 a.m. the morning of the baptism, I was assembling the last of the foodstuffs, which happened to be a dish called "Creamy Hash Browns." I was making this because Big K suggested we needed a potato option, so I went to my massive slow cooker cookbook bible and literally selected this dish based solely on the fact that it claimed to provide the largest number of servings of any of the 476 potato recipes. And then I doubled the recipe. (Look, you've got 25 chubby Wisconsinites coming over, you do what you gotta do.) Anyhow, so I'm standing there assembling the "creamy" part of said hash browns in the crock pot. And dude, just the "creamy" literally filled that pot to the brim. I filled a pot solely with fats in the form of cream soups, shredded cheddar cheese, sour cream, bacon, and butter. But there was some onion in there, so in the spirit of Paula, I was "getting my vegetables." Anyhow, I just loved that I filled a whole crock pot with fat, and then stirred in 4 pounds of frozen hash browns. I made sure I made Big K look at the pot o' fat and appreciate my Paula-ocity. (It turned out to be tits, by the way, as you might expect from a fat-based side dish.)

So, we survived a major milestone in Phookie's life and a major influx of human in the House of K. And today, I nailed the trifecta of Big W happiness: a nap, a walk, and leftovers. So we're recovering nicely.

Animals

I'd like to share some random animal shots that I find enjoyable. Some include Phook.

Uncle Growler is very tired, so he decided to nap on the printer:

Uncle Growler and Big Chuck take a morning siesta in the sun, and one day Phookie decided to join them:
Every now and then, you have to dress up your cat in a shirt that reads "Bone Collector." Unlike other cats, who would walk all funnylike and basically panic if you clothe them, Uncle Growler enjoys being outfitted:

Sometimes your husband wears a SpongeBob shirt, and a bunch of animals find him extra attractive:

Sometimes, even though he has access to about 16 nice cat beds, Uncle Growler likes to sleep in a box of junk:


Sometimes, dads, cats, and babies like to snuggle:

The end.

A couple things

1. Yesterday, Phookie turned 4 weeks old. Can you believe it? I can't. Anyhow, I had been clinging to a little pre-Phookie something, on purpose. It was my toenail polish. Not a bottle of polish, but rather the actual polish on my toes that I was wearing when I birthed the Phook. It was pale pink (no wonder she was a girl) and trust me, after 4+ weeks, there wasn't much of it left. For some reason though, it was really hard for me to remove it. I've been thinking about it for a couple weeks actually, and just couldn't bring myself to take it off. It was like the one pre-Phookie part of my person. But yesterday being the 4 week mark, I realized I was being irrational. So I sat down on the bathroom floor and removed the little remaining shards of the polish that witnessed it all, and from a pretty interesting vantage point, I might add. I didn't weep or have a horrifying moment or anything, but I just found it notable that its removal was so notable to me. (In a related story, I have a bag of Hidden Valley Ranch flavored Wavy Lays chips that I purchased after the failed Phookie labor induction that I can't bring myself to eat or throw away either. How could I attach emotional significance to a bag of chips? Good question.)

2. I have approximately 25 yahoos coming to my house on Sunday for the celebration of Phookie's baptism. Since I've been staying at home with Phookie, my house has been pretty tidy. Between nursing the child and nursing the child, I put stuff away and dust on occasion. So it's not like the place is in shambles, but when you have that many people coming over, including a man of the cloth, you want your house to be clean. I also have to make the majority of the food for this event. I selected a menu that lends itself to making stuff ahead and I feel like I have it in hand. Plus, Grandma J is coming over on Saturday to offer Phook-sitting and sous chef services, so I'm not hyperventilating about the event. But today, I was looking at my kitchen and noting some areas of clutter that I found problematic. Like the top of the fridge, the little area around the microwave, the top of my pizza oven: places that are cluttery in a lot of houses and, in all honesty, aren't really that noticeable or important. But today, Phookie was napping in her swing, so I took the opportunity to de-clutter the 3 aforementioned places. It was fun, in an "I'm deeply unwell" kind of way. And then tonite, I was making some air-popped popcorn for my viewing of Grey's Anatomy (which turned out to be a rerun, angering me greatly), and I was rooting around in my spice cupboard for my popcorn salt, and it took me like 8 minutes in that unbelievable cesspit of spicy disorder to find it, and I got to thinking how much I'd like to organize that cupboard. I was thinking alphabetical. Or maybe by spice genre, if you could come up with such a thing and then remember what was included in your genres. However, this is probably about a 30-45 minute project no matter how you slice it, and what with the stuff I need to do to prepare for the upcoming event, I probably shouldn't spend that kind of time dealing with an area that no one will see. And then I got a little cranky, because I realized that would have been a GREAT project for a crazy pregnant lady with a nesting instinct. I had actually kind of been looking forward to the nesting instinct, because then I'd have an excuse for undertaking totally ridiculous projects like organizing my spices. My husband would have just chuckled about my hormones instead of seriously questioning my mental health. But because of the bed rest, I totally got jobbed out of my opportunity to harness the nesting instinct. What a crock of shit. I felt the nesting instinct, oh, I felt it, and I had to keep myself tethered to the couch by sheer force of will, whispering chanted phrases like "Do not endanger the health of your unborn child in exchange for a tidy sock drawer. Do not endanger the health of your unborn child in exchange for a tidy sock drawer" until I grayed out. Man, I would have been the best crazy nesting fool to ever dangerously haul her giant belly up a step ladder. Bed rest! Argh! You robbed my ass. You robbed me of my destiny.

Prepare to be disturbed

So Phookie looks quite a bit like Big K. I have noticed that she looks most like him in the middle of the night when she is sleepy and having snack. Sometimes, I get a little freaked out, and I think, "God, it's like I'm nursing my husband." So I was telling Big K about this last night, and he seemed amused. And then he said, "What would you do if you woke up some night and I was having a snack?"

I'll just leave you with that.

I had an accident

So I've spent a lot of time (okay, like 9 minutes) debating whether or not to post about this pretty disgusting topic. I've decided that it falls under the Phookie category, because it's totally her fault, and everyone who knows me knows I'm not really the most censored person on the planet anyhow, so I'm just gonna write about this. This is what happened to me today:

Yeah, I pissed myself. Now we all know moms who piss their pants when they sneeze or laugh really hard or whatever. They're generally, like, older. Well, in ye olde childbirth education class they do warn you about your "pelvic floor muscles" getting "stressed" by childbirth. They're not joking. Since I had the Phook, I've noticed that when I need to go to the bathroom, I generally feel that I need to get there pretty quickly. Usually, I can. Today, however, Old Phook and I were out on a walk, and she was tolerating it nicely, so I just kept walking. For a lot of miles, all over The Woods. When I was about a mile from home, I felt nature calling. I walked faster. As I got closer and closer to my house, I realized that my "stressed" pelvic floor muscles were getting pretty tired from holding back the floodgates of my urine. I came around the corner of my block, and things became compromised. At this point, I am basically sprinting with my damned stroller down a steep hill, bouncing my poor Phook and doing god knows what to her retinas and shit. This had the dual purpose of getting me home faster and jostling my angry bladder. I made it to my back door with just a little, shall we say, leakage, but as I opened the door to my house, the taxation of my weakened she-parts became complete and my bladder emptied itself fully just as I got to my toilet. Of course it did. Of course I made it just to the toilet before the piss RAN DOWN MY LEG!

So I'll be doing more of those godforsaken exercises of the pelvic floor than I was previously remembering to do. I've gotta get myself potty trained before I return to some form of employment.

I'm sorry this post was horrifying. I know it was too much information, and that I shouldn't have shared this. But how can you be me and piss yourself, and not tell all your friends and relatives about it?

Anger CAN be productive

Last night Ol' Phookie got a little cranked up. She kind of had a rough afternoon, cluster-feeding and fussing (which was awesome for Mom). After a short break during which Phookie and Big K worked on the concepts of rolling over, much of the evening provided more of the same. After a number of hours of nursing that I won't disclose here, she just kinda started howling a bit. During this time, Big K handled her, and I passed out on the couch as Horatio stared menacingly at evildoers on CSI: Miami. After I woke up, I learned the following:

Phookie is developmentally advanced. This is why I woke up, actually. In the midst of her angry howling, she managed to apply the concepts learned in her training session with Big K, and she freaking rolled over. From her stomach to her back. I was woken by Big K's piercing cry screaming my name. I thought he'd dropped her or something, but no. She had simply hit a 2-3 month old baby milestone at 26 days of life, and all without a moment's exposure to Baby Einstein. Take that suckas. She'll be talking by Christmas. Maybe.

Babies really know how to "puke 'n rally." One of the things that happened during Phookie's feeding frenzy is that she spit up. This marks her 4th lifetime spit up. She was nursing and all of a sudden she popped off and was demanding boobage again, but was having trouble accepting said boob, and all of a sudden she chuffs. I mean, just a little bit, really, but it was a definite chuffage. After we handled that little mess, she instantly demanded boobage again. She, like Auntie Hode, really knows how to puke 'n rally.

Phookie likes Audioslave. Given that the Phookinator used to be-bop in my belly when music was heard (favorites included "Dude Looks Like a Lady," which made her really jam out and please her Mom at a mere 4 months gestation, and some Little Richard song on the oldies station) we decided that a little concert might help her calm down. Now Big K, being the technological genius that he is, has convinced his new XBox to speak wirelessly to his laptop which is is networked to some server or something that stores a lot of K Family music (or something like that). So he can use the XBox controller to access the music and play it through the speakers, with some swell graphics playing on the TV all the while. So he's choosing various tunes, and Phookie decides to quiet herself and settle in for the evening to the strains of Audioslave's "Like a Stone." Good choice, I say. Chris Cornell's haunting vocals are apparently BabyMagic. I'll note that she also liked Christina Aguilera's "Beautiful" and Shine Down's "45" (acoustic version). I'll also note that while this was happening, Big K kept grabbing random cats, inverting them, and singing into their tails, like microphones. But I digress.

So, that's what we learned last night as the product of Phookie's anger. Fair enough.

love

Last night, I handed Phookie to Big K, and as soon as she's in his arms, he says, "Aw, Phook" in a way that conveyed that he had just experienced a wave of love for her. I said to him, "Yeah, sometimes it just really gets ya, doesn't it?" And he said, "Sometimes it just blasts me."

That's the best way to describe my feelings for my new creature. Sometimes I am blasted by love for her. For no real reason, other than a little twitch of her face or sniff of her hair, if even that, I am kicked in the teeth by the most profound waves of love I have ever known. I am similarly blasted by waves of love for Big K. Something about watching your husband become a father, and a good one, is about the most amazing thing on the planet. I mean, 8 years ago this New Year's Eve, Big K was filling up Big W's plastic beer cup with something noxious from a keg in a nasty basement in the middle of The Woods. And now we have Phookie. You just don't imagine your mutual parenting experience as you're standing in the nasty basement comparing the size of your impressive calf muscles, half hamcocked. I've been reflecting on that lately. I was 19 when Big K and and I began our courtship. 19!!! I felt really old and mature (and, well, I was and am the latter), but 19-year-olds are kids no matter how you slice it. So in the span of my relationship with Big K, I went from being a kid to having a kid. That's crazy. I am so lucky. I have Big K, and I have Phookie, and I am regularly blasted with love. This is as good as it gets.

My personal opinions on a select group of Food Network personalities

Again, I'm going to deviate from my Phookie-centric stated blog purpose, and just yammer about something. I hope people are comfortable with this.

I guess it starts with Phookie though. During my confinement (a.k.a. pregnancy), I watched a lot of TV, especially as things got ugly at the end. Food Network was a big favorite. But who am I kidding...I watched a lot of Food Network before I was impregnated too, and I'll continue to do so until we can no longer afford our Dish Network subscription. I don't consider myself a foodie, although some people here in The Woods may think I am because I am aware that parmesan cheese can be obtained in a format other than the green can. I love to cook, I love to bake, I love to eat, I love to garden, I love to preserve foodstuffs, I love to poke around in specialty food stores, I love to purchase and read cookbooks, incessantly marking things that sound good, etc. So, yeah, I have a hearty obsession with the food world and about 80% of my hobbies are food-centric, but I'm no gourmet or elitist. I don't think good food comes on little white plates with a tiny stack of uncooked fish and baby arugula surrounded by an artful swirl and 3 dots of wasabi. I think good food comes in a CrockPot. So that's my position on food.

I would like to share my thoughts on the people I've spent so much time with of late...some of the hosts of Food Network shows.

Rachael Ray. Here we have a perky person. Perky being the politically correct term for someone who is always high on street drugs. Auntie Hode and I theorize that she is taking the crack, and we're not kidding. There is no other explanation for her personality. I respect the fact that she has developed her own nomenclature ("garbage bowl," "EVOO," "sammies," "stoup," etc.) because I have developed my own nomenclature for personal use as well (I'll probably post about that some day). However, I HATE her nomenclature! Every time she uses one of her personal terms I want to kick the TV in. I will never make a "sammie"!!! (Interestingly though, I once read that college students had developed a drinking game in which they drink every time she uses own of her Rachael-isms. Sounds like a surefire way to get hamcocked.) Ok, so regarding the food she makes. To be honest, a lot of it looks good to me, and the 30-minute thing is appealing. The trouble I have with it is that it is not pantry-centric food. Almost everything she makes requires a trip to the store for several major ingredients, and a lot of her ingredients are actually pretty tough to find, especially here in The Woods. But the weird thing is that you are not ultimately making a complicated or fancy dish. It seems like you are just on a treasure hunt for exotic ingredients in order to make macaroni and cheese that just so happens to have something hard to find in it. I mean, I generally make a shopping list and plan meals in advance and all, but she just demands that I acquire chorizo or swordfish a little too often. I guess it's the disparity between the 30-minute concept and the sophistication of some of her ingredients that I find problematic. Many people would probably say she's hitting some culinary sweet spot, but I disagree. However, she once said "I'm sweating like Nixon," and that one comment cemented her in my mind as someone worthy of tolerance, at the very least. Anyhow, despite my critique, I own one of her cookbooks.

Emeril. I've got to admit that my love affair with the Food Network started with Emeril. Way back when I lived in my apartment in The Non-Woods, I started watching Emeril. This was like 4 years ago, before the entire audience would scream when he mentioned garlic. The thing I liked about him was how excited he got about his food. I'd like that he said a recipe needed a little beer and then dump in 3 bottles. He has a pudgy belly, which makes him trustworthy. And his food looks tasty. And I just had a soft spot for him. Now, in the years since then, my enthusiasm for Emeril has waned. He's too much of a brand. And his "Essence of Emeril" show, the one without the live studio audience, is like watching paint dry. I don't really watch him anymore. Still, I own one of his cookbooks.

Sandra Lee. If I could sentence one Food Network personality to 5 minutes in the woodshed with Satan, it would be this clown. I despise this woman. She is the "semi-homemade" lady. Now, I'm not opposed to time-saving measures in the kitchen, but you cannot convince me that EVERY dessert (hell, every meal) needs to start with a boxed cake mix. No. Nor can you chop up a single jalepeno, commenting about how important it is to remove the ragingly hot seeds and membrane, and throw it in a can of drained fruit cocktail and call it SALSA! NO! You cannot tell this to me, the person who home cans like 50 pints of REAL salsa, with homegrown tomatoes and peppers, annually. In fact, you can probably say really bad things about my grandma and anger me less than you would if you called fruit cocktail and a neutered jalepeno salsa. In addition, her set needs to be discussed. Every show features Sandra wearing some horribly themed ensemble that matches her horribly thematically-decorated kitchen. Her tops match the shit on her shelves, every episode. In addition, she finishes the episodes by sharing ideas for "tablescapes" which also match her clothing and the crap in the kitchen. I do not want to go to the craft store and get florist's foam and paper doilies every time I cook dinner so my friends can really experience the themety-theme-theme-theme of my meal. No, Sandra, I do not. In addition, Sandra herself is worthy of discussion. I think she has like 14 hairs on her head, which some poor stylist has to try to make look fluffy before every episode. The result is that when she turns around, the back of her head looks like bedhead because all the hair is ratted and teased forward in order to giver her the appearance of normal hair from the front (failing miserably, I'll note). She also looks like a Beauty Queen. This is not a compliment, but rather a reference to my opinion that every chick in pageants looks like you took pretty and then put it in some major appliance until stuff sort of melted and got banged up and came out basically resembling itself, but irreparably damaged nonetheless. She looks like that. I do not own a Sandra Lee cookbook.

Bobby Flay. I didn't always like Bobby. I kind of thought he was a goon. But Auntie Hode has an affinity for him, and over time, she wore me down and I became a Bobby fan. I'm willing to overlook his Man Boobs. (They're small, but they're there people.) I like his southwest flava. I respect his salsas, be they overly mango-ed at times. I think I'd eat anything he makes. But here's the thing about Bobby. He's got a nice attitude, I think. It seems to me that many celebrity chefs are pompous dicks. Bobby may be confident, but he doesn't ever strike me as a dick. I feel good about that. On his new show, Throwdown with Bobby Flay, he goes and battles strangers over their expert food, including highly specialized items like wedding cakes and chowders and chili and other stuff that cook-off champs are rabid about. And he almost always loses. And he is a very jovial, gracious loser, always congratulating the suburban housewife on her award-winning goat burger or whatever. I like that about Bobby. He's also very flirtatious, with both the men and women judges, on Iron Chef America. I like that too. I do not own a Bobby Flay cookbook, but I'd like to.

Giada De Whateveriis. Ah, Giada. Giada, Giada, Giada. I don’t know. I have a love-hate relationship with her. I think I’m just going to have to throw it out there that her show probably does make me salivate the most of all the Food Network shows. I think it’s my carb-love colliding with the fact that all her episodes include pasta, but whatever, she makes good looking food. And I think it's pretty highly make-able food. Big K finds Giada herself rather problematic though, in the sense that he screams about the size of her head whenever she’s on TV. He thinks her head is disproportionately large for her body. I try to defend her and say it’s just the big pile of hair on her head, but I can’t fundamentally disagree with him: she is a very slight woman with a very large head. I also feel a little uncomfortable with Giada’s overuse of words like “light,” “crunchy,” “fresh,” and “delicate” to describe foods. And the fact that she prefaces every use of heavy cream with the caveat that this recipe is “not for dieters.” Well, no shit Sherlock. And the fact that she was raised in the U.S. but still uses proper Italian pronunciation for words like prosciutto and pancetta. I mean, she does speak Italian and is legitimately Italian, but it still seems a bit forced to me. Then again, I’m from The Woods and it’s probably in some way ethnically insensitive of me to suggest that she bastardize her perfect Italian pronunciation to make me feel more comfortable. Despite all this, I think she’s probably a nice person in real life, and that ultimately wins me over. Anyhow, I own one of her cookbooks.

Alton Brown. Alton Brown is a high quality individual. He has an encyclopedic knowledge of food and all things food preparation. He educates and entertains on his show Good Eats, during which he highlights a food (usually just something basic, like rice) and teaches us all about it from a scientific perspective. He explains stuff about preparing the food that is actually useful. And he’s smarmy all the while. I also really like him as a commentator on Iron Chef America. He talks about what the battlers are preparing in his same educational tone. He draws illustrations of wild boar on a chalkboard and explains which boar cuts of meat come from which boar part. That kind of shit. He’s just a good cat. I don’t know if he has a cookbook, but if he did, I’d get it.

Ina Garten. I always think of her as “In a Garden.” This woman owned some fancy food store in the Hamptons and is dripping in legitimate wealth. I saw her Chefography so I know this. The woman is upscale. She is a hydrangeas-on-every-flat-surface type person. I kind of want to hate her, but I don’t. The thing I like about Ina is that she is a beautiful fat person. She is a very large lady, but her face is just so charming and beautiful. There is something about a legitimately fat person who is beautiful that makes me happy. I think it’s because our society suggests that fat people cannot be attractive, so when you see someone who is indeed fat and gorgeous, it’s like they’re getting one over on the man. So I like that about her. Her food always looks really good too. Tasty stuff. Upscale-ish stuff but still accessible. She also has a great wealth of gay friends with useful talents, like florists and interior decorators and fishmongers and shit. They always come over to visit and she makes them a meal in exchange for their talent. I like that part of her show too. It’s kind of like how I know people who can fix cars and do drywall and fix roofs, and I invite them over and feed them casseroles in exchange for them fixing my broken shit for free. Anyhow, I don’t own one of her cookbooks, but I’d like to.

Paula Deen. I have saved my favorite, my love, my Paula, for last. I love Paula Deen with an intense passion. She is a silver-haired goddess who would sooner sever her own arm than throw away the gold that is bacon drippings. She loves butter and fat in all their forms. And I love her. This woman is from Savannah, GA and she knows the value of well-seasoned cast iron. Damn, I love Paula. She is just the cat’s ass. I love how she garnishes a pile of cheesy mashed potatoes with a sprig of parsley and says, “There, now I’m getting my vegetables.” I love how she says she’s inviting her friends over and that she’s “Gonna put 10 pounds apiece on those heffers.” I love how she looks at the camera and says, “Excuse me ya’ll while I make love to my taters” and then takes a giant bite. I freaking love her. She is a genuine, butter-loving, diet-ruining queen of good, home-cooked food. She has dogs (one named Gertie, which I love) and they often snore through her shows. Who wouldn’t find that charming? I just like watching her because she makes me happy. I want to go over to her house and hang out. I don’t own one of her cookbooks, but I think I’m going to go to amazon.com right now and order one. Love the Paula.

So, anyhow, I realize that this post makes me certifiably mentally ill, but that’s ok. I’ll note that it took me like 4 Phook-feeding sessions to complete this little novella, so I hope you find that it makes the world a better place.

In my image?

So yesterday Miss Phookerson and I decided to make a journey to a purveyor of cheap foodstuffs, miscellaneous necessities, and the exploitation of Americans. Yeah, we went to Wal-Mart. It's about s 50-mile roundtrip journey from The Woods to the Wal-Mart, so it's kind of a big undertaking when you consider shopping time, loading up stuff time, whatever. I was real nervous that Phookie would demand a feeding during the trip, so as soon as she finished chowing down yesterday morning I threw her in her car seat and threw on some pants, and dashed out the door.

Since this is pretty much the closest place to The Woods where you can get stuff, it's a pretty safe bet I'm gonna see people I know there. But I was thinking I might be able to be incognito in my heinousness, given that it was a random mid-day time on a mid-day Thursday. No. I'm trolling around the baby aisles, looking for a product that it turns out doesn't exist (long story), and I see a fellow Woodsian, who happened to have a baby 10 days before me. This girl went to my high school and was a couple years older than me. We weren't friends, but I was friends with her little brother, and when we see each other we generally exchange relatively quick pleasantries. This girl is The Beautiful Girl. I'm talking beautiful. Always has been, always will be. She's just beautiful. The kind of beautiful that a lot of chicks hate, but I've always been basically okay with her because she's been decent to me. So, anyhow, she too is in the baby aisle, and is looking beautiful. She is wearing slim-fitting jeans, a green top, and a stylish fitted courduroy jacket. She is also wearing one of those beautiful circle of diamonds necklaces. And she is of course perfectly made up with a lovely hairstyle. I am wearing dark gray cotton pants that are about 3 inches too short, a hot pink fleece jacket, mauve tennis shoes with double laces (one set mauve and one set white) from Payless, glasses, my hair is seriously unkempt in a pile on my head, and I am rocking a large red zit on the nose that rests between the two purple zones known as my under-eye area. I seriously look like hell, even for me. So, I've had this experience a lot in my life, given my propensity for elastic waistbands and flannel, and I'm generally pretty comfortable looking nasty in public and running into people I know. So this is where it gets interesting. Beautiful Girl proceeds to show me the outfit of her Beautiful Daughter. The child is wearing a camel-colored sweater, a blue jean skirt, tights, and freaking brown suede boots!!! The child is less than 5 weeks old, and she is seriously rocking baby runway shit. Phookie is wearing a white and pink sleeper and has snot all over her face, due to her cold and the fact that her nose faucet cranks up at the exact moment I run into this girl. Beautiful Girl and I had a very nice conversation, and she was very nice and pleasant to me, and we talked for about half an hour about our mutual birth experiences and other random baby crap. I really did not detect any judgement from her. But crap, I felt kind of bad that I allowed my daughter to be as big a slob as I am. I mean, I know she's a wee baby and she has a cold and babies with colds who are dragged to Wal-Mart should be allowed to stay in their pajamas in my opinion, but am I doing her a disservice of some sort?

Now, of course, folks who know me know that I have already answered this question for myself, and that I of course concluded that Comfort is King and that it takes a nice, positive self-esteem to be able to confidently rock the jammies in public when you're pushing 30, and that's something Mommy wants to pass on to Baby. And Phookie does of course already have a large wardrobe of nice things, which her Mommy will dress her in as needed. But if you had been a fly on the wall watching me look back and forth between Beautiful Baby's suede boots and Little Phookie's snotty face, you would have laughed pretty hard.

I am more than a little mad at Oprah

This post has nothing to do with Phookie, but I felt the need to speak out and vent my rage.

So if Phookie wants to eat in the 4:00 timeslot (which is a decent bet), I generally turn on Oprah. Am I proud? No. But, whatever, there isn't much else on and I do find some of her shows mildly entertaining. But today the woman was vastly inappropriate and I want to find her and beat the crap out of her.

Here is the scenario. She's doing a show on people's addictions/mental health issues/etc. She has a lady with bulimia, who she generally treats with respect. Then she has a lady with OCD. The little vignette (is that the right word?) they show of the woman in her home includes many shots of her cleaning obsessively, talking about how she stashes slippers all over the house for specific purposes and paths from one place to another, how no one can touch her after she showers (including her husband and children), and how no one can come on her side of the bed, including her husband. She expresses extreme pain and basically self-hate over the fact that she knows this no-touching business is hurting her children and her husband. Cut to the woman onstage with Oprah. Oprah starts out by commenting on how patient her husband is for not being allowed on her side of the bed. Then she asks the woman about how she reacts to other people touching her in public, and the woman says she tolerates it because she doesn't want people to know about the OCD, but that she comes up with excuses to go wash her hands, and if people touch her in certain places, especially her hair, she needs to shower ASAP. Oprah then grills her about not touching her husband and kids unless they're clean, not letting them touch her, etc., and keeps asking "Why? Why? What are you afraid of? Do you think they have germs or something? What do you think is going to happen if they touch you when they're "dirty"?" And the woman couldn't really give much of an answer. She just kept saying she was afraid, she couldn't explain it, her grandmother had OCD and she was raised around these tendencies, etc. And Oprah would not leave it alone. She's like, "I'm not a psychologist, I can't figure this out, but I just want to get to the bottom of this for my audience." At this point, I'm getting seriously angry. If this woman was exhibiting rational, explicable behavior, she would NOT BE ON OPRAH. Clearly, we have a serious mental health issue on our hands if we can't hug our children. And the woman knows this and is torn up about it. But Oprah keeps screaming like a harpie, being very condescending, howling for some rational explanation of what this lady is afraid of. Dude, that's like demanding that a schizophrenic explain why they hear voices. It's a freaking mental illness. The woman needs therapy, meds, compassion. There is no rational answer...because if there was, she wouldn't be sick!!!

Ok, and here is the worst part. As the segment is winding down, Oprah gets up to hug her or whatever and with both hands MESSES UP HER HAIR! Then she insists the kids and the husband come up and hug her and yells "Group Hug!" The lady seemed like she was taking it okay, but she had said at the beginning of the interview that she can suck it up in public and then freaks out later. I was SO MAD!!! If this woman said she had a seizure disorder triggered by blinking lights, would Oprah set up the damned strobes??? Does she think that because she's Oprah, she has a free pass to touch this lady's hair and not bother her? Or that a group hug will magically cure her? Man.

I mean, perhaps my rage here is indicative of spending the majority of my time talking to a toothless 8-pound pot roast in a onesie, but boy was that crazy megalomaniac out of line today. I hope some mental health advocates go crazy on her and make her apologize.

A Romantic Evening

10/18 was the 3rd anniversary of the Big K family entering a matrimonial state. 10/18 was also the day Phookie turned 3 weeks old. How do you think a couple with a 3-week-old creature celebrates a day typically reserved for romance and appreciation of undying love? Let me tell ya, cats, we really did it up good.

First, we very romanticallly spent 10/17 discussing whether or not to get each other cards/gifts. Now, any marital therapist will probably tell you that the road to spouse-hate starts with forgoing any celebration whatsoever of your freaking anniversary, so we (probably wisely) ended up deciding to do a little something for each other. Of course, living in the Land of No Consumer Enterprise makes it a bit difficult to whip up an anniversary gift on 12 hours notice (more on this later).

Then, on our actual anniversary, we decided to reap the benefits of allowing everyone in the county to hold our infant daughter, by ringing in the day (by which I mean midnight of course) with the discovery of Phookie's first cold. 3 weeks old and we already managed to get the innocent little creature sick. Now here's the thing about babies - they can't blow their noses. It seems to me that she'd be totally fine if she could just blow that damned nose, but she can't, so she makes snorting, sucking, clogged-nose sounds. I mean, yeah, I have one of those most horrific of inventions--the bulb syringe--and I did try and use it to evacuate her nose on a regular basis yesterday, but snot starts up higher than that little m-f-er can reach. So it was pretty useless in terms of providing her with relief, and just succeeded in providing me with a reason to want to poke my eyes out, knowing the contents of the bulb of hate at the end of that thing.

Then I debated the merits of making tacos for Big K (since the man loves them) and I went so far as to chop up tomato and lettuce and dig out a can of some high-class sliced olives, but then I realized it was my anniversary and I was willing to go no further down that road. So I called Big K at work and innocently inquired about his desire for a calzone from the one local establishment where you can get something hovering around edible food in this town. He was all over that like white on rice, of course. So he came home, and we ordered the calzones, and he went and picked them up, and we ate them at the coffee table. Since I'm lactating and it's my anniversary, I went fucking batshit crazy and ordered some jalepeno poppers too. You only get 4 in an order, and I ate 3 of them. So we had a romantic coffee-table meal while admiring the wonder that is SportsCenter on our television. We put Phookie in her swing in the other room, so it was really romantic and date-like.

We then decided to exchange gifts. Now it's kind of hilarious that we essentially did the same thing for each other, which was simultaneously thoughtful of us and very indicative of the limitations of acquiring a reasonable gift when you live in The Woods. We made each other gift certificates to be redeemed at a later date. Mine were handwritten. Big K's was done on the computer. (Mine would have been done on the computer, but I went in there to do it earlier in the day and didn't want to change from the photo paper to regular paper, so I wrote mine on index cards.) Anyhow, Big K gave me a little gift certificate for one night's hotel stay in Chicago and dinner at Ruth's Chris Steakhouse. This is a great gift under any circumstances, but it bears special significance for the Big K family, because we once stayed in Chicago early-ish in our courtship in a hotel that was attached to this (unbeknownst to us, very pricey) steakhouse, and spent like 2 hours considering whether or not to go in in our sweatshirts because it looked like it might be kinda nice. We were then nearly kicked out before saying we were staying at the hotel, at which point we were promptly seated, and had the hugest laughing jag of our lives after seeing bitches come in there in fucking furs and shit and realizing that we were at a place where a baked potato is $8 and we were wearing Nike swooshes on our chests. I also remember that I ordered a vodka and cranberry at this place (what the hell?) and the waiter asked me what kind of vodka I wanted and I said, "There are kinds?" Anyhow, it was a lot of hilarity for college students Big W and Big K and we often remember it fondly. So it was real nice of him to come up with this gift. I really hope we go. For him, I made index cards redeemable for things like a foot rub, get out of chore free, favorite meal, etc. I also got him a real gift certificate to this computer place online. So my gift was kind of a suckier version of his gift. So that 5-minute part of the evening was legitimately anniversary-like.

After this, I went upstairs to get a humidifier for Phookie's poor nose, only to discover the damned thing was irreparably broken. So I called the Grandparents J and asked if they had one. They only had the relic known as "The Vaporizer" and I went over there (this being the first time I have not been under the same roof as Phook, I'll note) and picked it up. The thing is like 36 inches across, 70's brown, holds like 9 gallons of water and makes the same sound as a weed-whacker when activated. When we plugged it in, I was instantly transported to the illnesses of my own childhood. I swear I could smell the damned Vicks VapoRub and taste the flat 7-Up. Anyhow, we got that handled.

By this point Big K is pretty close to cashing out on the couch (it's 7:00) and I realize I must have some kind of date for the anniversary, so I suggest we watch a movie. We chose Stand by Me. Now, that is a good freaking movie. It's been like 10 years since I saw it, so it was almost like watching it for the first time. I love the kid Vern. I feel so bad for him when he's running from the train. I love that movie. It is a great movie. So anyhow, we watched that while Phookie alternately noisily napped and noisily ate. Yeah, it turns out that stuffy babies are REAL LOUD while they are suckling. Something about the mouth being occupied and the nose being smooshed to the boobage and then you add nasal blockage and you get a lot of unsavory sound effects.

For the grand finale of the evening, we remembered it was "bath night" for Phookie. We only do this every 3 days, which is kind of on the edge of acceptable anyhow, so we knew we shouldn't push it to 4 days, given that she does indeed shit herself all day. We decided to put her in her infant tub for the first time (rather than a sponge bath). We filled it with some nice warm water and nervously dipped her in it. And, man, I gotta say, watching her fucking chillax in the tub was honestly the highlight of my day. She didn't even make a strange face when we stuck her in there. She was just like, "Warm. Nice. Rinse me copiously." So we did. The little tub seat is at an angle not unlike your standard chaise lounge, so with her big baby belly poking out she did just resemble a vacationing middle-manager with a stogie. It was awesome.

Ok, so that's about it. The evening proceeded normally, in the sense that I fed her, she sharted, I slept lightly for 9 minutes, what have you.

Oh, I forgot one thing. Somewhere between ordering the calzones and discovering the broken humidifer, we tasted breastmilk. We'd been discussing that we should taste it since before Phookie was born, and what with it being our anniversary and all, we decided the time was right to take that step together. I just acquired a breastpump (which probably warrants its own disturbing entry) during the day, and I had a tiny little container of the liquid gold sitting in the fridge. I was showing it to Big K and said, "Let's taste it." I don't know why I was compelled to do this, especially given that I consider myself fully weaned from cow's milk, but I just felt the need to taste it. I dipped my finger in it (thereby probably desanitizing it and probably meaning I should chuck it out (yeah, right, would you dump liquid gold down the drain?)) and tasted the shiznit. It basically tasted like sugar water to me. I then of course demanded that the Big Man do the same, which he very tentatively did. He pronounced it's flavor similar to my own assessment. So, we screwed the cap back on the stuff and proceeded with our evening. Now, when I was telling my sister (a.k.a. Auntie Hode, a.k.a. http://fromthedeskofmisslippy.blogspot.com) about this, she basically started screaming and freaking out. I said, "It really wasn't a big deal." This only raised her hackles further, "It's NOT A BIG DEAL? You ate a biological product of your own body!!! etc., etc., etc." She might be right, but it just wasn't a big deal. Only one thing can be extrapolated from this fact: We've crossed over to the dark side. There's no turning back now, kiddies.

Playing nice with others

Some folks may have noticed that I've become a bit of a hermit over the past 5 years. I noticed. I thought it was just the way that I was aging - that I preferred to stay home and have conversations with my cats. However, I'm going to go right ahead and admit that it was a bit more problematic than that. You may have noticed that I have not been real good at returning phone calls for the past 5 years, and I certainly haven't made very many calls unprompted. Or that I'm slow on returning e-mails sometimes. Or that I didn't go to some of the events you invited me to. What you probably couldn't see was the fact that I literally screamed 90% of the time the phone rang, and sometimes didn't answer it at all. Or that I was viciously angry this year because all of Big K's friends were turning 30 and their wives were throwing them surprise parties that he wanted me to go to. Or that the sound of a knock on my door, even when it was FedEx and I knew it, made me feel a bit queasy. I mean, once I actually got on the phone with someone, or went to an event, or accepted a visitor, I was happy to be interacting with said person. I just had a real hard time initiating anything of the sort on my own.

So anyhow, since Phookie was born, I have accepted countless phone calls and visitors, gone visiting a great deal myself, and generally reconnected with many, many peoples. Today, I went to a mom get-together with 4 other moms, 3 of whom were old friends from high school who I have not hung out with since graduating 9 years ago. This is the kind of invitation I would have kindly said "maybe" to and then disregarded before Phookie was born. But today, I went. I have basically spent more time with other people in the last 3 weeks than in the previous 3 years. And you know, it's been good. I've enjoyed it. When the phone rings, I answer it without my pulse accelerating and breaking into a cold sweat. When I hear a knock on the door, I am simply curious about who it is. I think I might like people again. I allow for the possibility that it's just a temporary thing because everyone comes over here and adores my daughter and makes me feel good, and that'll certainly fade, but I just feel better about the fact that I have to share the planet with other humans.

So I've done some thinking about this phenomenon. Many of you may be aware that for the past 5 years I have had a rather high-stress, unpredictable, time-consuming, chew you up and spit you out job that also includes a 160-mile daily roundtrip commute. To make things more interesting, during all of 2005, I decided to do an accelerated teacher certification program in my "spare time" that required volunteering many hours in schools, a weekly 4-hour night class, and about 20 hours per week of homework. During all of 2006, I was pregnant, which makes you a little tired. I think I've been dying for the past couple years just a little bit more than I was prepared to acknowledge. I realized that I couldn't return phone calls not because I didn't want to talk to people, but because I couldn't. There was just nothing left in the tank for anyone else. I needed to interact only with my cats because they didn't really want anything from me other than scratched ears. It's not that I didn't love you...I just didn't have anything left to give to you. So, strangely, meeting the insatiable demands of newborn has been strangely renewing for me, and has curiously left me with a little something in the tank to share with other people. I'm certainly tired, but I'm not empty like I was. It feels good to have my gauge a little bit above E.

So that was kind of a serious post, and I'm sorry for it breaking from my general tone of amusement. But it's important for me to get that out there, 'cause I'm sorry for spending half a decade trying not to die, and being something of a shit in the process.

I had a dream

Last night was an evening of reasonable feeding on the part of Phookie. I got two stretches of sleep in the 3-4 hour range, which was awesome. During one of these stretches, I was able to enter whatever sleep state is required for dreaming for the first time in a real long time. And dream I did. About beer. Now, my associates know I'm not much of a drinker. Some may also be aware that I yearned for alcohol like nobody's business during the Phook's incubation. I wanted a mojito, I wanted a margarita, I wanted a Bloody Mary. Even the drink mix aisle made me want to start clawing at myself like a meth addict. Since Phookie's exit from my body cavity, I suppose I could technically have a little nip of something and it would be ok. But the cravings have actually calmed themselves, or so I thought. Well, last night I had an incredibly vivid dream about beer. I was at the Great Dane, and I sauntered up to the bar, and I ordered a Crop Circle Wheat, which is one of the only beers I legitimately like the taste of, because I'm a sally. And I drank it, with love. I could taste the beer during that dream, I swear. Strangely, my sister was with me, and was 20 rather than 24, and was carded and told she could have no beer. But she was mysteriously hamcocked already even though we just got there, and the bartender let her sit with me and gave her a glass of water. So that part was a little zany, but whatever. I seriously drank a beer in my sleep, and it was so good. That's my basic point.

It was inevitable

This morning, it happened. It. The thing I knew was going to happen at some point during Phookie's young life. The thing I was really hoping I could magically avoid. The thing. It happened.

The child spit up on my face. Copiously.

So little Phookster is not a spitter-upper. Prior to today, she had done it two times, both after jostling walks. Since she doesn't make a habit of spitting up under "normal" circumstances, I'd gotten a little lenient with demanding a burp from her after she ate. I mean, she's groggy and shit...do I really want to wake her up by pounding on her back? No. So this morning, she had just consumed a hearty helping of morning boob (the term I coined for the large meals I am able to provide her after she sleeps a good stretch, thereby not taxing the boob's precious lactational resources and allowing them to multiply into something quite bounteous) and she was all nappy and I didn't want to beat a burp out of her. So I didn't. I just laid her down next to me in bed with what I can only assume was a ridiculously full stomach. And then I put my face right next to hers and stared at its immense cuteness, thinking motherly thoughts about the little miracle I created. And then I saw it, all in slow motion-like. Her nostrils became two enormous faucets and her mouth a giant waterfall...and spit-up came projectiling out of them and I had nowhere to turn. My face took the hit. Badly.

Now, rather than vomiting myself (like I always thought I would when I imagined this baby chuff scenario), my right arm simply shot out and grabbed the burp cloth that I can mysteriously locate without the assistance of visual confirmation of its existence, and my left arm had her sitting up to drain the remaining offending matter from her orifices. I wiped off my face, and that was that. The inaugural "puke in Momma's face" has been handled. I feel like motherhood should come with a set of patches you earn for these types of events, not unlike Boy Scouts or whatever. I want someone to give me my "Puke in Face" patch. Or something.

I may have let myself go

So the other day we had some family photos taken, all professional-like. This required me to deal with myself, in the sense that I styled my hair and put on make-up beyond cover-up on the under eye purple-age. Later that evening, Big K spontaneously started chuckling when he looked at me and said, "You look funny with make-up on." Now, he didn't say this with any meanness or hidden agenda (that I'm aware of), but I kind of realized that I haven't exactly been paying much attention to my beauty regimen of late. I mean, as I've mentioned before, there was the month of bed rest prior to the birth, and I didn't exactly feel the need to bust out the hair dryer for Oprah and Dr. Phil. So, I believe I did indeed simply look funny with make-up on for the first time in two months.

Other evidence I have let myself go includes my sudden ability to collect a magnitude of unidentifiable stains on my person. I look down and I'm covered in grape juice, only I don't think I had any grape juice. I can't keep anything I eat off of my body - I am just a stain magnet and it all collects somewhere on my clothing. Perhaps this is preparation for when Phookie turns into a solid food eater and starts chucking it and chuffing it at me. I don't know. I'm just always covered in stains now.

So, there you have it. Just wanted to report that I've hit rock bottom in the personal appearance department. That's pretty bad for a person who has no qualms about taking the "no dress code" situation at her workplace to the extreme that is wearing flannel pajamas to the office.

Feline Reaction Report

Inquiring minds want to know how the cats are handling this baby thing. Strangely, people who I know only vaguely seem to know I have a lot of cats and ask how they are doing. Am I that much of a cat person that near-strangers are aware of my cattitude? Apparently.

Anyhow, here is the (surprisingly upbeat) report:

Big Chuck. Big Chuck is our alpha-cat. He is a vain, butler-like animal. Very proper. He trounces on the other animals in this house when they need it, but gives them love and protection as well. He has responded quite positively to Phookie. He sniffs her occasionally, and requests that we pet him while holding the baby. Some have theorized that this means he's a little jealous, but I don't interpret it that way. I think he welcomes the child and simply thinks they can receive love simultaneously.

Lucy (a.k.a. Gatette, Shib, Schnauzer, Shibonium, Donkey, etc.). This cat has a lot of pseudonyms. She is our baby cat, the one with the heart condition that gets a lot of extra love. We were the most worried about her, because she is accustomed to spending several hours per day/night on a lap and/or snuggled with a sleeping human. She seemed a little put off at first, but has bounced back quite nicely. She will even snuggle with a human while the human snuggles with the baby. (For all you yahoos who believe the old wives tale that cats can "take a baby's breath away," shut up, that's just dumb.) This cat has howled a few times with a request to go nose around in our nasty basement, but that's about it in terms of aggression. Overall, we are pleased with her handling of the matter.

Joey. This is our unfriendly cat that hisses at all well-wishers and responds positively only to me and a Cat Whispering co-worker who stopped by last month and mysteriously charmed the animal within minutes. We thought she'd be quite cranky with the addition of Phookie, given that she gets quite cranky with the addition of a new roll of paper towel. Wrong. The cat loves the baby. Big K theorizes that Joey had an unfulfilled need to become a mother (this being the source of her near-constant anger) and she can now be a mother to Phookie and is overall a much happier creature. He's taken to calling her "Momma Joe" (I should note she is female). This cat sits on the arm of my recliner while I nurse the child and generally seems pleased every time she sees the baby. Weird.

Snoot. This is our cat that has the brain function required to regulate his breathing and and heartbeat, and no more. He is a brain stem and fur. The cat does not make sound decisions in terms of things to put in his mouth, things to run his face into, etc. We weren't really worried that he'd have an adverse reaction to the child, because he's not really capable of anything other than glassy-eyed happiness. We were correct. He regards the child positively on occasion but generally just goes about his business. We have taken to calling him "Uncle Growler" though. The cat has weird vocalizations so I'd been referring to him as "Growler" for awhile before the child was born, and it just seemed natural to change it to "Uncle Growler" when the kid showed up. (I have a problem sticking to one name for an animal. I'm really trying hard to call my daughter by her given name, but the same phenomenon seems to occur for her as well. Phookie and variations therof, Nugget, Piglet, Chublet, Sweet Pea...the list goes on and on. What is my problem?)

Ok, so there you go. All the animals and the Phookster are happily co-existing. May you all rest easily now.

Scratch and Sniff

I've heard a lot of jackasses talk about how much they like the scent of babies, and how there is nothing like it in the world. I always thought that was bogus. Who wants to sniff someone who doesn't have bladder or bowel control?

Well, I do. The smell of little Phookie is like catnip to me. I sniff her constantly. I think my nose is affixed to the top of her head at least 4 hours per day. She just smells so good. I'm addicted to the scent of the child. I think it's a little like poking the smot, only legal.

I still don't think I want to sniff other babies, but I sure do like the smell of mine.

My baby reads this blog

So after my passionate post about the woes of a cluster feeding infant, my child apparently snuck online and read it. She sent me the following note last night:

Dear Food Source,

You know, I read your post about cluster feeding, and I got to thinking, that really is a crock of shit. I mean, you harbored me as a parasite for like 9.5 months, and then I go and demand 6-hour feeding sessions. I realized that is patently unreasonable. Tonite, I'll eat at normal intervals, and sleep well in between. How does 8 p.m., 11 p.m., 3 a.m., and 7 a.m. sound to you? Sorry for the inconvenience I've caused you.

Love,
Phookie

P.S. Don't count on this reasonable feeding behavior recurring ever again.

Thank you, Phookie, thank you.

Satan was a cluster feeder

Fair warning: This is a post about breastfeeding. Continue at your own risk.

Ok, so the current wisdom on breastfeeding a newborn from your friendly neighborhood lactation consultant, the American Academy of Pediatrics, and lots of other yahoos who theoretically are qualified to comment on such matters, is to "demand feed" the little marmots. This means that whenever the little vultures display "hunger cues" such as sticking out the tongue, eating their own hands, rooting around, giving your husband a hickey from misguided sucking, or whatever, you latch the kid onto your boob-unit and settle in for some indeterminate length of quality time being milked.

Here's the thing. Some babies are what they call "cluster feeders," which means that they cluster a lot of their eating into one part of the day, wanting to eat constantly or near-constantly for a long ass time. And if you try to deny the child the boob when they clearly still desire it, bad things will happen. Trust me. So despite a few days when this behavior was not exhibited, Phookie has indeed cluster fed on the majority of days she has been in existence, generally in the evening. That all sounds very charming, but for this child, cluster feeding does not mean an hour or two of intense snacking. No, this child's current record for near-constant nursing is 6 hours. That's right, I have submitted to a 6-hour suckling session, as well as a 5-hour marathon and several 4-hour feeding frenzies. Last night was the 6 hours. The child ate from 6:30 p.m. until 12:30 a.m. At around midnight, I told Big K I wanted to put her out on the porch and let her fend for herself. It was sleeting out when I made that comment, and I knew it. I didn't mean it, of course, but it seemed like a decent enough idea that I had to throw it out there.

Now, I'm not totally stupid. I realize that she is not doing a lot of actual eating after that kind of frenzy. I realize that I am a human pacifier, and she just wants to suck. I broke down and offered her an actual pacifier, but it only works for about 9 seconds before she demands flesh again. I'm going to keep trying with the pacifier, and I hope she learns to love it. And then I can bullwhip all the grandmas in the store who tell me that "pacifiers only pacify the mother." Actually, I think I'm going to print and make copies of recent research indicating that babies who use pacifiers have a reduced incidence of SIDS, and then bitch-slap people with it. I know I'm imagining a scenario in which I am judged and pre-emptively getting angry about it, but I feel natively defensive of everything I do with her. I'm not opposed to getting advice, it's just the judging. So, yeah, I hope this child learns to love the pacifier to preserve a certain part of my person as well as my sanity.

The thing is, she generally rewards her mother with a big batch of sleep after a cluster feed. Like maybe 5 or 6 hours, which is just insanely long I guess for a 15-day-old baby. So I generally get a pretty nice chunk of sleep in return for these marathons. It really sounds "worth it" and by the numbers, it should be. But I start wishing I would just have a sweet, painless aneurysm after 3 or so hours of a cluster. Every time. Breastfeeding sounds like a passive act, where you just latch the kid on and let them do the work. But for some reason, it's not. At least not yet, for me. It takes something out of you, seriously. I feel like I could go to Old Country Buffet and set world records for consuming tubs of that gross, processed, buffet macaroni and cheese while I am breastfeeding. It makes me voraciously hungry and thirsty too. Trouble is, I don't have access to OCB. I eat a granola bar, at best, and I only have those stupid 100-calorie ones, so they are midget granolas too. (Perhaps this phenomenon is linked to the "I'm dissolving" post from the other day...) And the other thing is that in 4-6 hours, your body wants you to take care of its functions. And the other thing is that it really starts to hurt my back. And the other thing is that Big K gets to play Tiger Woods Golf on his new XBox (which his thoughtful brothers purchased for him a week after Phookie arrived...I almost killed those chodes) and I get to feeling a little bit more than a little resentful. So, no, I'm not sure that it's "worth it." I think breastfeeding is an absolutely insane commitment to the child. I made it, and I'm gonna stick with it for as long as it is feasible, but it is the hardest part of this motherhood thing for me. During the day, when she eats at relatively normal and reasonable intervals, I kind of enjoy it. I'm not grossed out by the process as I thought I would be while she was in utero. It seems like a normal thing to do. She makes little happy sounds and gets all nappy when she's done and gets all warm and her hair gets a little mussed and she looks like a little drunken sailor when I burp her, and sometimes I read her stories and we do all that bonding shit and it's good. But then she unleashes the Beast of Suck in the evenings and I'm praying for that aneurysm. It's weird how every night I think I'm gonna die and every morning I'm still alive. I suspect that condition may be permanent with the parenthood.

That's all I have to say about that.

One item off of my to-do list

Prior to having Phookie, I was on bed rest for a month. I watched a lot of TV. One of the channels I watched a lot (TLC? Discovery? A&E? Court TV? I can't remember which one...) frequently runs an ad for Countrywide, some financial company. I absolutely HATE the guy on this ad for reasons outlined below. Every time it came on, I seriously kinda freaked out. I kept saying to Big K that I was going to write them a letter and tell them how much their spokesguy sucked. Well, I just did it, via their customer service website thing. This is one of the weirder things I've ever done in my life. Anyhow, here it is:

You may find this totally weird, but I feel the need to provide you with feedback on your television advertising. Specifically, the spokesman you use in your "Combo Loan" advertisement. Something about the man's mouth makes it look like he has several rows of teeth, not unlike a shark. I kind of freak out and yell "shark tooth" every time the ad comes on. I just wish you'd find a different guy to promote your products because I find him so disturbing. I remember that you previously had a chipper red-headed woman on your ads, and even though she was annoying, I did prefer her. But she was clearly weird too. I think you should consider hiring a new advertising agency to handle the selection of the individuals in your commercials. It would make me much more likely to consider Countrywide products.

Despite the crazy nature of this e-mail, I am a normally functioning member of society, and I apologize for the weirdness I've expressed here. I just hate your shark guy so much that I had to tell you, regardless of how mentally unstable it may make me seem.

and then there were two

Extreme suckiness. Big K just left to go back to work for the first time since Phookie was born. He spent the last hour holding her and looking sad while they watched ESPN together. When he handed her to me to leave, I started bawling and he got teary too. I just wanted him to stay home and play house with us forever. I wish we were cavemen or something, so I could just go gather some nuts and he could just maul the occasional wild animal, and we could spend the rest of our days just huddling together for warmth. Of course, if that were the case, a dingo would probably eat Phookie and that would be bad, but whatever. God I wish he didn't have to leave. Everyone who sees him with Phookie comments on how we have a "daddy's girl" and it is so true. The man is just fabulous with her. The other day he was combing her hair and he says, "Do you think she wants it parted? I do. There. Now she looks like Kylie Minogue." I didn't even know he knew who Kylie Minogue was, but he successfully applied her hairstyle to our daughter.

Within 1 minute of his exit, a cat vomited on the kitchen floor (and more specifically, vomited up a grape I had just washed that it had stolen off the kitchen counter), the dryer buzzed indicating I needed to fold some shit, and Phookie started crying for food. I hope I grow some more hands. Or something. This is hard. I'm actually pretty sure the now-deflated "It's a Girl!" balloon on my entertainment center is sneering at me, a symbol of the newness getting washed off my motherhood. Anyhow, everyone says, "nap when the baby naps" but how the hell do I nap when there is so much to do? My sleep switch can only be activated when the obsessive compulsive within me is satisfied and/or when I am within 2 hours of death from sleep deprivation. I need to work on that, obviously. It's not like I am up at 3 a.m. cleaning the toilet with a toothbrush or straightening the fringe on floor rugs, but there is just crap all over my house and it makes me queasy. Baby gifts, groceries to put away, Big K's sundry items. And there is a coating of cat hair on my floor thick enough to make a cat-down comforter. That needs to be handled. Yesterday some friends with a baby came over and we had to wash her pacifier like 96 times because it kept getting furry. It's weird how I don't notice the fur really until people come over and start picking it off of themselves or their offspring. Then I feel like a seriously dirty bird.

Ok, so now Phookie is fed (while I typed the above paragraphs, no less) and asleep and I have to decide if I want to a) go for a walk b) fold that laundry c) make the fruit salad the grapes were destined for d) vacuum up the damned fur or e) take a nap. Check that, my dad just drove in the driveway. I am f) accepting company. That'll do.

Evening update for those concerned about my mental health: We lived through the afternoon and Big K is home. He was going to work until 5:30 but came home at 5:10 because he dumped about a gallon of coffee on his shirt and had to get home to pre-treat the stain before it set in. (I of course know this to be complete bullshit, since prior to having a daughter at home he was prone to coming home with what looked like the pureed remains of a bison on his shirt and would simply toss it on the floor.) As for the tasks, (a) and (e) did not happen. I got Big K to do (b) and a tentative promise to do (d) before he goes to bed. I did (c), and it's tasty. I also invented some new tasks in there, like putting some stuff in Phookie's baby book, putting away 56 other loads of laundry, making a list of other crap I need to do, having phone conversations with 2 friends, and making some dinner to go with that fruit salad. Tomorrow's goals definitely include doing (a) and (e). I wish I was a centipede; those multi-handed bastards can probably get some shit done. (So I just realized that this update did nothing to bolster anyone's confidence in my mental health, but whatever.)

I'm dissolving

All right, so this is probably not politically correct to mention in circles of women who have recently given birth, but something really strange has happened. Yesterday, I got on a scale, and I weighed 7 pounds less than I did when I got pregnant. That's 11 days post-birth. I should have known something strange was occurring when I was able to button my regular jeans 4 days post-birth. Now, rest assured that I am still teetering around 2 bills, so we are not talking about a thin person by any stretch of anyone's imagination. And there is definitely some excess skin in the abdominal zone, complete with some hot stretch marks, which Big K very generously calls "baby marks." So I look like crap, basically, but I am definitely dissolving. I knew that the breastfeeding was supposed to help drop baby weight, but Christ. I didn't know I would be able to shove peanut butter cups in my face while saying, "I'm working out," and be serious. How ironic that so many skinny ladies of the world freak out about the seemingly permanent weight gain of pregnancy and Big Fat W just up and dissolves. Score.

The Poo-zooka

This is my last post of the day, I promise. (This blogging shit is like writing for fun. Given my profession of writing/editing drivel for pay, I forgot that I liked this! Why didn't I start this a long time ago?)

Ok, so this is a stupid story probably, but I learned an important parenting lesson, so I thought it was worth documenting. (Note that prior to last Wednesday I always hated it when parents talked about their children's bodily functions with such a strange mix of pride and amusement, and briefly considered having a tubal ligation to avoid succumbing to this syndrome, but now that Phookie is here I find myself telling poop stories with a stange mix of pride and amusement. Apparently after a placenta has exited your body, you can't help but fall into this horrific and socially awkward trap.)

So yesterday we had to take Phookie in for a weigh-in (since these babies like to drop ounces after birth and you gotta make sure they gain them back). So we blissfully set out for Backwoods Hospital with the Phookster cutely dressed in her FIRST EVER girl outfit, which was a very nice pink and purple striped onesie and some pink socks, and a nice blanket. She was in the nice brand new infant carrier part of her extravagant "travel system." We show up at the doctor's office and we hear her shat herself. (It takes about 4 seconds of having a kid to figure out the distinctive sound of shatting.) Oh, ha ha, Big K and me and the nurse all chuckle. So then I go to remove her from the carrier. I see poo on her leg. Not a good sign. I pull her out and her entire leg, the whole back of her cute little girl outfit, and the seat of her carrier are covered in that special yellow mustard that is the highly volatile substance known as newborn feces. I was horrified in front of the nurse, but she was jovial about it. (Big K had changed the diaper, but he has changed 95% of the diapers so far without incident, so I couldn't really complain about technique.) So I peel the soiled items off of her and we take her to the baby scale in the hallway. I remove the diaper as needed for the weigh-in and start to try to wipe off her various sullied parts. In the middle of this process, a little more poo comes out and the 3 of us have a little chuckle. No big deal. I begin the clean-up process again. And the child absolutely, positively fires a poo-zooka the likes of which I could not have previously imagined. At the speed of light, a halacious quantity of mustard squirted out of my child, onto my hand, onto her wipes, across the entire baby scale, and onto the clinic floor. The nurse laughed heartily and said she'd never witnessed that kind of poo velocity in her entire career. Impressive. I laughed but I was a bit horrified, mainly by what was roosting on my hand eating the flesh from it.

And here's where we get to the parenting lesson. Big W was such a moron that she thought she could leave the house with 2 diapers and a little pack of wipes shoved in her regular purse. Stupid, stupid, stupid. Babies are prone to much larger accidents than a mere fresh diaper will fix. I had no change of clothes for poor Phookie, and I wasn't going to put her back in a completely soiled garment, partly because that would be gross and partly because I am an inept baby-dresser and I knew I couldn't maneuver it over her head without getting her hair and other pretty parts covered in the offending matter. So Big K shoved the little outfit in a rubber glove (he thought it was noxious enough that this was necessary), and I put her in her wiped-out and forever stained carrier in nothing more than a little diaper. Once we put the straps over her she looked like a little naked cowboy stipper with suspenders on. We covered her up with the blanket and slinked out of there. Boy did I feel like an asspie.

Today, we left the house again. I had a diaper bag stocked with more supplies than it would take to outfit a set of triplets for a week-long trip to Vegas.

A Note on Lunchmeat

So despite the fact that I imbibed the slightly-more-than occasional caffeinated beverage, sucked down a few (doctor prescribed) hydrocodone, kayaked within 2 feet of some enormous manatees, fell out of a hammock, and drove through Toledo in order to see Punxsutawny Phil (the groundhog) during my pregnancy, I strictly followed the advice that the pregnant ladies should not eat cold cuts/lunchmeat during the incubation period. (You can eat it if you heat it to a certain point I guess, but that's not my scene.) Now, I wasn't an enoumous lunchmeat fan pre-pregnancy, but I did have a thing for sun-dried tomato turkey breast and a friendly association with thinly shaved ham. I missed these items during Phookie's gestation. If you were around me enough, you may have heard me comment on it. A real nice vegan I work with even went out of her way to provide me with some meat-free cold cuts, but as much as I deeply appreciated the gesture and intended to eat the stuff, I just couldn't.

As we were getting ready to leave the hospital, I asked Big K if he thought it would be ridiculous to stop and get some lunchmeat on the way home. One thing led to another in terms of putting Phookie in her car seat for the first time and I kind of forgot about it, but the next day I sent the man out to fetch the lunchmeat. He came back with a pound of honey ham and some salami. I immediately asked for a handful. I kind of like my lunchmeat just as a little snackie, not necessarily in a sandwich. I ate that ham like it was manna from the heavens. It was so good. It makes me want to deprive myself of some other random item for 9 months just so I can appreciate it again.

Anyhow (now this is the best part), later in the evening I was lying (Note: I have a problem with laying/lying despite the English degree so I'm sorry if I misuse them constantly) on the couch with my brand new 3rd-day-of-life Phookie and I requested another handful of lunchmeat. Big K brought me about a quarter pound of the honey ham on a napkin. And then I laid it on my baby. And ate it off of her like she was a buffet table. Yes, I rested my ham on my swaddled child. I just thought that was hilarious.

P.S. Since then I have consumed 2 pounds of the sun-dried tomato turkey and the entire pound of honey ham. Big K sucked down all the salami though. If you're looking for a Christmas gift for me, look for a "Lunchmeat of the Month" club subscription and send it my way.

Some Commentary on Childbirth

Ok, so people who have had children seem very interested in the specific, excruciating details of my birth experience. People who have not had children look like they want me to implode if I mention words like "dilate" or "delivery room." So I'm debating the merits of how much detail to give here. Here we go. Read at your own risk.

So basically, my doctor wanted this kid outside of my body because of my high blood pressure. I went in on a Thursday to be induced. 30 hours of mild contractions later, I was back home and still pregnant. Those contractions continued throughout the weekend, and we went back in the following Tuesday to be re-induced. They gave me some more of the same medicine I had had at the previous induction. I wandered around for a couple hours and didn't feel much. They checked me and I had actually dilated to 1 cm, so they started Pitocin, which is an ass-kicker contraction-inducing medicine. It, um, worked, in the sense that I wanted to slit my own throat about 20 minutes after that IV hell-drip began. It turns out that if you're in a lot of pain, your blood pressure goes up. Not good when you are already on bed rest for high blood pressure. So, I had to stay in bed on my side. Ok, I like to squirm around like a fiend when I'm sitting in an uncomfortable movie theatre chair, so being forced into stillness during LABOR was suck-a-licious. At one point, I decided I'd pissed myself during a really strong contraction. I mentioned this to the nurse, who did some things and determined that my water had broken, and now I was "in for the long haul." This was around 2 pm on Tuesday. I laid there and died for a couple more hours and my blood pressure went up and up and when they checked me I had not made any "progress" in the cervical sense of the word. My doctor then essentially ordered that I have some pain meds because they have the helpful side effect of lowering blood pressure, and she theorized that my body would get the hint and do some shit that is favorable for birthing if I wasn't in so much pain. Well, in Backwoods Hospital, they have like 1 person qualified to administer said meds, and that person was tied up with some chode who was having problems in the recovery room coming out of anesthesia, so it took about 4 more hours for them to get to me. During this time, I did not use the F word, probably because my vocabulary had been reduced to animal sounds only. It was fucking bad. So, finally, anesthesia boy shows up around 6 p.m. and administers his magic shit, and I started to feel better. I felt better for a couple hours, and then the shiznit wore off on one side of my body and I started dying again. He came back, administered some more crap that didn't work, and I proceeded to die some more. At some point my teeth started chattering and I started shaking uncontrollably even though I wasn't cold, and I asked Big K for a blanket. He had been quasi-snoozing in a chair, and jumped up a little too quickly, only to find that one of his legs was completely numb and to fall down on the delivery room floor. I started yelling his name and the nurse came running in to ask if everything was ok. He said only his pride had been injured, but I saw him bang his big head against the side table. He then said something about being in the "living room" rather than the delivery room and I knew the guy was getting weary. But he was ok. So, around 9 p.m. they came and did another check of things and I had dilated to 5 cm....half way. They also decided at this point to do "internal monitoring" of both my contractions and the baby's heartbeat, because both had become hard to trace with external monitoring due to my shaking. This means they screwed something into my kid's head. I'm glad I couldn't see it. At the point, the doctor also felt her and said "Something feels funny. Is that a butt?" My head almost exploded at that point, but they hauled in the ultrasound and it revealed that she was not breech, but was rather "sunny side up." Now, sunny side up may sound cheery, but it is code for "this kid is doing bad things to your tailbone and you are having back labor and no amount of meds can touch the mystery that is bone-on-bone pain." So that pretty much solved the mystery of the inadequate pain relief. Ok, so at this point I went into badass back labor that I thought was going to kill me. Now, 9 days later, I can't actually remember the pain, and I sure am glad that the body has some defense mechanism that provides this type of amnesia, because I do remember it sucking something fierce. I just couldn't stop shaking and they gave me some oxygen, which was kinda helpful. So this carries on until about 11:30 pm, at which point I am checked and I have dilated to 9.5 cm. Half an hour later, I was all the way dilated and the nurse said I could push. At that point, pushing was not optional anyhow. So then I got to do this magic thing called pushing. Now, I have talked to a lot of crazy bitches who have said things like, "I liked the pushing...I could work with the contractions." Fuck that noise. Pushing out a child was by far the most painful and difficult thing I have ever had to do in my life. After one set of pushes, I was pretty sure I couldn't ever do it again. But somehow I did. There are not words to describe this pain, but if I had to try, I'd say something about giving birth to my own tailbone through my back and a sensation of conflagration that I'm sure cannot be matched in the non-birthing human experience. After about a half an hour of this party, they called my doctor. When she showed up, she threw on the gown and after a few more sets of pushes I successfully birthed a child. It was instant relief of the aforementioned "discomforts." As soon as she shot out, I knew she was a girl for some strange reason. I loved her instantly, and I don't know if it was because I finally saw her or if it was just because I wasn't in pain now that she had exited. But anyhow, I loved her instantly. She was perfectly perfect. I got to hold her for a few minutes, and then they did all kinds of things to her and there was a blur of post-birth mayhem. About 1 minute after her birth, at 1:35 am, there was the hugest crash of thunder I've ever heard. I say it was God welcoming her.

Now, that was a lot of detail, but I left out some highly disturbing biologically detailed parts of this tale, I promise.

One other thing. I need to say that my husband was an amazing rock star during this whole process. I had theorized that he'd either gray out and not really be present or he would say things like, "It's not that bad...I broke my kneecap in half" but it turns out that whatever he did was the right thing because I did not yell at the man or even get annoyed with him for 1 second. Given that in our daily lives sharing a household I get annoyed with him at 20 minute intervals, this was quite a feat. He was just a champ and I couldn't have done it without him. And right after Phookie was born, he was with her the whole time, talking to her and touching her and generally making her feel better about being in the big world, I think. My doctor even said he was a "Top 10 Dad" of all the dad's she's seen in the delivery room. So thank God for that.

Ok, so that is the story of Phookie's birth. I recommend having a baby, but I don't recommend giving birth to one. However, I've gotta say what all the moms say, which is of course that it was worth it, and you forget the pain.

Why?Why?Why?

So I had a kid and it turns out this is a time consuming enterprise. People seem interested in what's going on with said kid, and I'm not good at making or returning phone calls, and I'm only slightly better with the e-mail. Hence, I thought I'd start this wee blog to yammer about her and the goings-on in my household. For the purposes of this blog, I'm gonna call the kid by the nickname I gave her, which is weird. Yeah, I'm calling my kid Phookie. Enjoy.