You are cordially invited

Phookie's Having a Party!

When: November 30, 2006, 2:56 a.m.

Where: My parents' bed

Who: Mom, Dad, Phookie, and several cats

Why: I survived my first shots, so I'm going to celebrate life!!!

The details: I, Phookie, very bravely endured some heinous pain inflicted upon me by two needle-wielding assclowns in brightly colored smocks. I plan to sleep it off for many, many hours, but then wake up around 3 a.m. to celebrate! I am going to stare at the ceiling fan and the shadows cast on my parents' bedroom ceiling by my night light, and I am going to think they are the most hilarious things on earth! I am going to smile, chuckle, chortle, shriek, wiggle, grunt, snort, and fart for several hours. I plan to wind down around 6 a.m. See you there!!! Bring your own breastmilk!

pain

The summer before my freshman year of high school, I broke my thumb catching a softball. The ball hit the top of my thumb and broke the bone and pushed it down on top of itself. At the ER, I was referred to an orthopedic guy. Three days later, I went and saw him, and he determined that the thumb need to be rebroken...something about my growth plates not being closed and blah, blah, blah. So this man jacked on my thumb for about 9 minutes before he was able to successfully re-break it. He told me to hold onto this teddy bear because it was going to "hurt a little bit." It hurt a lot more than a little bit, and I still remember it as one of my most painful experiences ever. I would endure that experience over and over and over again if I could avoid doing what I had to do today. That would be watching Phookie get her shots. I freaking knew it was going to suck based on what other people had said to me, but I had no idea it would be this bad. They put her down on the table and had Big K and me each hold one of her hands, and they brought in two nurses, one to stab each chubby little baby leg. For the first nanosecond, she just looked confused, but then her face broke into the most horrible expression of pain I've ever seen. I saw the bottom of her tongue for the first time, because she curled it up during her yowl. And then there was a 3rd shot, so the process repeated. Tears sprang to my eyes and rolled down my cheeks and I felt the most intense sensation of overprotective love that is humanly possible. Big K said, "Geez, I had no idea it would hurt me that bad." I picked her up and she cried a cry I have never heard from her before. You see, I don't think she's ever experienced pain before. And boy do I not want her to have to experience it again. How am I going to handle it when she's learning to walk and she bonks her bean on the coffee table? Or when she's learning to ride a bike and she skids out and fills her knees with gravel? Presumably, parents get desensitized to this stuff. Yikes, yowza, crap. Right now, my guts are still twisted and I feel like I need to go to bed and sleep it off. The jury is still out on how she ultimately does with the vaccinations, but boy oh boy am I not looking forward to the 4-month checkup. Perhaps they could give me a sedative next time?

Ah, I almost forgot the stats. She weighs 11 lbs. 13 oz. (up from 7 lbs. 9 oz. at birth) and is now 23 inches long (up from 20.5 inches at birth). All is well in terms of her health. So I am going to try to focus on that. Too bad her howling pain face is burned into my mind and I can't focus on anything else. I need to go find a snack or something.

Phookie goes hunting

Some blaze orange clad gun nuts abducted my kid. She didn't seem to mind.

Two months old!!!

I blinked. While my eyes were closed, I acquired a two-month old. Let's simply celebrate by admiring Phookie's awesome cuteness.

I just have to say this

I would like to share another little part of our day and log a little public service announcement. This afternoon, Big K's Mom called and asked if we wanted to go with her to visit Big K's Grandma in the nursing home. This Grandma has had a bunch of strokes and bone breaks and stuff and is mixed up upstairs to the tune of a completely cogent statement followed by a statement about how she needs to leave to get back to Milwaukee because she has to work at the hospital in the morning, which she hasn't done for decades. The kind of shit that is hard to see if you're say, a sensitive guy like Big K who has a lot of fond memories of this lady. So we hadn't taken the baby to see her yet, because we're like every other busy young couple in America and we make stupid choices about how to use our time, and that includes doing things that make us happy instead of things that make us sad, even though those things might make other people happy. So anyhow, we finally decided to go over there. This is a very nice nursing home, brand-new, basically. Lots of resident-friendly homey ammenities. But it's still a nursing home. It's not the decor that is the problem, but rather the humankind dotting the hallways and community areas. It is so sad. Wheelchairs all lined up, full of loneliness. We found Big K's Grandma, and she held the baby. She smiled at her and kissed her, and we wheeled her down the hallway so she could show off her great-granddaughter. You should have seen their faces. "Look at all that hair!" "How old is she?" "What's her name?" "Oh, you look so good with a baby!" "What a sweet little angel!" You get it. You get what I'm saying. If you have a baby, take her to see the people who need to see a baby. Because babies are freaking magic. Even if you don't have a relative in a nursing home, and you're feeling kind of crappy about parenthood, I suggest you pack up your kid and haul them to a nursing home and just show them off and let people tell you how sweet they are, because they will, even if you have a bald, weird-looking baby with a misshapen head that hasn't grown into its giant nose yet. Maybe that's a ridiculous thing to suggest, but I bet that if you did it, you'd walk out of there glad you did. They'll remind you how much you have to be happy about, and you can give them a little happy in return. Okay, stepping off my mental health initiative soapbox now.

That went over like a fart in church

Man, just when I think I'm running out of stuff to blog about, something like this happens. Today, being a Sunday, landed the K family in our local house of worship. Phookie has been a swell churchgoer so far, what with the combination of her cheery morning demeanor and her tendency to nap in the mornings. Plus, we're always packing a bottle of liquid gold, so that contingency is covered. I'd gotten quite pompous about the whole thing, not even bothering to work up a sweat when we entered the House of the Lord like any new mother should when taking her infant somewhere quiet. Ha! Today, Phookie started out the service asleep, but she was stirring quite a bit. As things progressed, she started "dactyling" which is the term we use to decribe her pterodactyl-like sleep sounds. This was pretty noisy, and her eyes were sneaking open too as she ground the back of her head around in her carrier. I was thinking she was having trouble getting comfy, and would settle into sweaty-baby slumber mode if placed against my shoulder, so we extracted her from her carrier and I held her, and she was instantly completely awake. Oops. No problem, I thought, she's cheery in the mornings, and if she gets snacky, we gots the gold in the bag. Wrong. Miss Phookerson decided to get noisy, just as the sermon started. It started innocently enough with some "eh" sounds and some other basically charming baby sounds. That lasted about 9 seconds. Then, she began to grunt. Now, Phookie is a big fan of the grunt, and in the privacy of our own home, it's kinda endearing. In the 6th pew in a very large church where the only sound is supposed to be the Word of Lord, it sounds like your kid is working on the hugest crap in the history of crapping. That's right, friends, Phookie made horrific, grunting, working-on-a-crap sounds for the entire sermon. We offered the bottle, which she was not interested in. We offered a bouncing knee, which held no charm. We offered pacifier, which lasted its standard 7 seconds in her mouth. She would have none of it. She simply wanted to go, "Mmmm. Hghhh. Arghhh. Hmmm. Hmm. Hmmm. Mmmm. Arghhh," for 20 minutes. All right. As you may have guessed from the "open" nature of the posts on this blog, I am not easily embarrassed. Let me be the first to say that that general rule does not stand up to the test of my kid making crapping sounds in a giant, silent room full of a couple hundred worshippers. I was sitting there, and I was praying, oh, I was praying all right. However, I wasn't praying in the type of devotion you might expect someone to engage in during a church service. No, I was chanting in my head to the good Lord above, "Please don't let her shit, please don't let her shit, please don't let her shit." (For the record, I think God is okay with profanity of this nature because it is just an English word that has no sinlike value differentiating it from the word "toad," for example. It's the G.D. and J.C. variety that I think is a bad call.) Anyhow, I basically turned red (according to Big K) through the entire sermon, and just held my breath, waiting for the horrific rocketfire poo to come ripping through God's house. Thankfully, it didn't happen. (I know my readers are disappointed, I know. But boy would I have run my head through a stained-glass window if she would have cut a juicy poo right through my pastor saying something that I'm sure meant an awful lot to the several hundred people who were listening to him.) Instead, the sermon ended, and Phookie promptly passed out. Of course she did. Why do kids have such hilariously terrible timing with everything they do? If you were a very serious person, how could you parent? I really want to know how museum-house-having, khakis-are-the-casualware-you-put-on-after-work people handle the crapping sounds of their kids. I really want to know. Because if I've learning one thing in 8 weeks and 4 days of parenting, it's that if you didn't laugh, you'd be doing an awful lot of cryin'. Out.

Hell hath frozen over

Phookie slept through the night. 9:30 p.m. to 6:30 a.m., in bassinet. Rejoice, my people, rejoice!

That's all.

I ate a lot today

I housed about 36,000 calories today. I started with a light breakfast that was a Diet Snapple iced tea and a leftover biscuit from last night's dinner. Then I went to Big K's grandma's house and ate the traditional Thanksgiving meal, followed by a slab of my world famous maple pumpkin cheesecake (I gag on pumpkin pie, but it turns out that if you turn it into a cheesecake, pumpkin is the shiznit). I also had a can of diet cola (truly, "diet cola" as it was one of those generic sodas) and a can of Pepsi. I'll note that I was a Pepsi drinker throughout my adolescence, but switched to a Coke (particularly of the cherry variety) preference in adulthood. However, the occasional Pepsi makes me happy. Okay, so then we went over the river and through the woods to my grandma's house, where I ate 2nd Thanksgiving dinner, which is more of a buffet-style leftovers/snacks/dessert type meal. I put away some quantity there to the tune of a lot of chips and dip, about 5 slices of baby swiss cheese, a few random salads, and another slab of the aforementioned cheesecake (a separate cheesecake for the separate family though, because Lord knows I am not hauling a half-eaten cheesecake to the second family). Here, I also had 2 Ruby Red Squirts. I don't know if you've had this kind of pop, but it is a rare find. My grandma knows that I love it though (and I am pretty sure I have another cousin who digs it as well), and she always has it on hand for us, which is just the sort of grandma-tastic thing I love. Anyhow, that was awesome. Do you know how much I love pop? Have I ever mentioned this before? Well, pop is my favorite food. I love it. I'm not one of those cats that has a particular kind that they drink, or a strict pop regimen that they follow. I love all pop. I love carbonation. I love it. Now I know that pop is the key to my fatness and about the stup, stup, stupidest thing you can put in your body. But I love it so much. I try to drink diet, and I'm pretty successful in that regard, but when I'm feeling sad and blue, it's a full-flavored Dr. Pepper or Cherry Coke that cheers me up. Boy do I love pop. So today was a great pop day. Okay, so now I'm getting to the gem in my "I ate a lot today" post title. We were on our way home and we stopped at the local convenience store so I could get some cash from the ATM for a minor excursion I'm planning tomorrow, and I saw the movie theater all lit up across the street, and I exclaimed, "Popcorn sounds good! Mmmm, we should get some!" So Big K, being the swell gent that he is, volunteered to fetch me a bag. So he did...a big bag. So I sat here and ate buttered up movie theater popcorn after the standard Thanksgiving binge. Man! I'm a cow. I have my post-kid checkup next week and I was feeling all proud about how I'd step on that scale and weigh notably less than when this childbearing adventure began, and I may have just sabotaged it with my popgorge and popcorn. Ha!

Other notes on the day:

• Phookie was held by about 584 people today. Ok, that's a lie. But a serious estimate, between the two families, is that she was held by 25 people, which is kind of a lot of handling. I'm ok with that. I'm not paranoia mom in that regard. But here's the thing...do you know how many people's smells rubbed off on my kid? Like every kind of perfume commercially available is now stinking her up. (I'm not pointing fingers at any particular bad perfume or anything, it's just the commingling of it all.) So tonite when we got home, I was sniffing her as per usual, but my sniffer was all confused and she doesn't smell right and it's pissing me off. Is this like if you touch a baby bird and its mom rejects it? I'm gonna have to hose her off first thing in the morning to restore the purity of her scent.
• Grey's Anatomy. Did you watch it? Given the previews, I was honestly expecting more. I thought they were gonna have Burke kill George's Dad in surgery. But of course that's what they wanted you to think, and I just bought into the hype. And for some reason, when they said it was an extended length episode, I assumed 2 hours. But they throw an extra 10 minutes on there - lame! And I'm not happy with the axe falling on the Christina/Burke relationship (even though I am mad at Isaiah Washington (a former crush of mine, whom I used to lovingly refer to as "Manwich" for some insane reason) in real life for his allegedly homophobic remarks toward George/T.R. Knight). I'm thinking that they couldn't keep those two together AND have Meredith/McDreamy together, because then there would be too much harmony, and it's time to mix shit up again. Also, McSteamy is fucking hot.
• Phook did something really weird tonite. As I've expressed before, she does generally go into snacking/fussing mode in the evenings. For the past 4 nights, she has mostly skipped the fussing, and been a bit more reasonable on the snacking. Positive, obviously. But still, she generally hasn't been smiley or playful in the evenings. However, tonite after we got home from the day's events, she hit a smiley period at about 8:15, which is unprecedented. She was doing the morning-style smile/shriek gig for about half an hour. We put her in her bouncy seat for awhile during this time, and she batted at the giraffes hanging off of it, which was also a new development. So that was a nice Thanksgiving treat.

All right. That about wraps it up here from Thanksgiving in The Woods. Hope ya'll had a swell one, and no matter who you like to thank, you thanked someone for something good.

Simply the best

All right, people. I've wanted to write about this for awhile now, but I was holding off until I had photographic evidence. Miss Phookie has been smiling since the day we came home from the hospital. At first, it was in her sleep of course. Then little smiles would sneak up out of nowhere, and you'd wonder if you really caught her smiling or if you were imagining it. Then if you worked really hard you could get a smile out of her. But for the last week or two, she has been hosting a full throttle smile-a-thon every single day, starting the moment she wakes up in the morning and continuing for hours. And it is the best thing that has ever happened to me. I know I'm more entertaining when I'm whining about the perils and misadventures of motherhood, but I am telling you that the smiles and the random shrieks of delight and the cooing and the "ah-guh" sound she makes are just unbelievably joyous and amazing and fantastic and wonderful and heart-warming and magical and I swear tears run down my cheeks every morning when I am getting her dressed because I am so madly in love with my smiling, shrieking child. I know that it has become quite popular to be open about the deep, dark, secret, horrific thoughts that creep up on you about your innocent little baby when it has been screaming for six hours, and I'm glad that it has, because I think it's a lot healthier to be open about that kind of crap than to bottle it up until someone gets hurt, and that despair does crop up in all of us at least to some degree. But I want to say that for me, being Phookie's mom is 99.9% pure joy. I love being her mom and I knew from the moment she flew out of my body that I was born to do this. I do not want to go back to work, ever. I want to be the good-for-nuthin' valedictorian who moved back home and turned into a baby factory. I want to make babies until people openly question my sanity. And I want to stay home with them and make cookies and let them throw dough at each other until we all laugh until we cry. That is what I want. It's not what I'm going to have, given the economic realities of my situation, but that is what I want. I am sorry to overly sentimentalize motherhood, and perhaps I am trapped in some extended honeymoon period and I am sure to shatter like glass at any moment, but I am telling you that right now, I am happy. And that is a hard thing to be in this world.


So thank you, little Phookster, for smilin' at your Mommy.

A happy little development

This may come as a shock to those of you who haven't nursed an infant, but there are formal nursing "positions" in the playbook of breastfeeding. For example, the cradle hold (basic position you always see), football hold (kid to your side, sneaking up on your boobage kinda from below), etc. Now, I don't know about other moms, but getting the kid in position for its snack did not come all that easily to me. I mean, kids move. They rip at your tender body parts with their sharp little baby talons. They don't necessarily come out of the womb knowing about the nursing playbook, and they have to get used to getting into position to eat too. At first, Big K would have to physically restrain Phookie's hands and I'd do all manner of things in order to get her latched on in one of the aforementioned positions that was workable for us both. After maybe 10 days, we had this basic stuff down. Big K was no longer needed after I grew my extra mom hands. Now, I've commented quite a bit on my kid's voracious appetite, which of course means I spend a lot of time sitting still with the kid in one of these positions. During the day, I am almost always in my recliner with my beloved Boppy pillow, reading your blog or writing mine, while simultaneously ingesting some Dr. Phil or something and eating trail mix. So this is a pretty comfortable setup, and it doesn't cause me much in the way of pains or strains or anything like that.

Now, at night, we have a different story. Phookie generally sleeps between Big K and me (not the arrangement we planned on during gestation, but the one that has resulted in the most sleep and happiness for all members of the K family). Recently, she has been starting to sleep more and more in her bassinet, which is approximately two inches from my face. So she's right there, either way. Once she's down for the night, she is a pretty great sleeper. Big chunks of sleep, reasonable length meals at reasonable intervals. But I still have to feed the little vulture in the middle of the night, which is crapalicious. I am probably up for 1.5-2.5 hours each night tending to this issue. Sometimes more, sometimes less, and probably not worth complaining about to parents with day/night confused babies, but enough that I could probably make the argument that I have done nothing but nap for the past 8 weeks. When I feed her, I wake all the way up. After I'm done feeding her, I generally go downstairs to use the facilities, and I'm awake enough that I take care of random personal hygiene tasks that I don't have time for during the day. For example, I have plucked stray eyebrow hairs, shaved the 4 hairs that grow on my right big toe (not the left, as it's bald), moisturized my elbows, and probably some other weird things during my post-Phook-feeding bathroom break. (I've never mentioned this to anyone, even Big K. I probably shouldn't have mentioned it, now that I think about the extreme weirdness it reveals, but blogging brings all kinds of shit out of the woodwork.) Anyhow, whatever, I am just trying to illustrate that I wake up to the point where I could do things that require a significant level of consciousness, and this is what makes my nights more like naps than an actual real night of sleep. Generally, when I am being woken up by the little "neh, neh, neh-ing" piglet in my bed, I want to die. Or cry. Or at least will her back into my uterus. Because when it's 3 a.m., the body just wants to sleep. It is so painful to drag myself into consciousness. It physically hurts. When we first brought her home and she would only sleep for 2 hours at a time, and I was just disgustingly tired from having birthed her, I would try so hard to master the elusive side-lying nursing position. We couldn't pull it off. So I would try all manner of weird nursing positions to try and stay as close to lying down as possible. I would be hunched over, legs propping me up against my dresser, pillows jammed everywhere at some weird angle, just doing anything in my power not have to sit all the way up. Ultimately, this just resulted in a cranky and unfed baby, and after a couple weeks, I resigned myself to the fact that I needed to essentially duplicate the daytime nursing posture, which is to say I had to sit up in bed, prop up pillows behind my back (because our headboard is really cold metal), get the Boppy, pull the covers up on my frozen legs, bat some cats out of the feeding zone, get the kid positioned on said Boppy, latch her on, and then rest the back of my head against the drywall until she's done eating. Hence the consciousness. Now, not to be a whiner, but a mattress is not a chair for a reason. It is not ergonomically cool to sit on a mattress. My tailbone hurts. And, oh yeah, did I mention that I have had disc/bone surgically removed from my lumbar spine, and that gets a little aggravated, too? (I guess I could go hang out in the nice glider rocker in the nice nursery that's right next door, but my goal here is for me and the kid to remain as close to ASLEEP as possible during the night, so that's not happening while she bunks with us.)

Now, when doing some responsible research on the benefits and perils of the controversial co-sleeping setup, it was frequently touted as the best way for Mom to get sleep, because you would never really have to wake up, as the kid would just fuss and you would come together in some nursing/sleeping synchronization and the child would snack itself back to sleep while Mom just lies there and lets it all happen. And before you know it it's morning and everyone is well rested and well fed and no one, no one, has plucked their eyebrows in the dead of the night. That's for damned sure. So I felt seriously pissed that I could not get the child to provide me with this benefit of co-sleeping. I had abandoned my contortion-laden attempts at getting her to nurse while I remained prone so long ago now, I almost forgot it was even an option, to be honest. And then last night, I was so tired when she woke up for snack, I thought I would just fold over on her and crush her under the heft of my bosom and end up a really sad headline and the subject of extensive blood tests checking into what particular cocktail of meds/illegal drugs/booze had caused the tragedy. So rather than go there, my fogged brain decided to just roll my old bones onto my side, and see if the voracious suckling would accept snack in this manner. Dude, she did. She did. She did. She did. She was on her side and I was on my side in some state of magic nursing synergy and she was eating in a complete hands-free mode and I DID NOT REGAIN FULL CONSCIOUSNESS!!! I didn't even look at the clock...I have no idea when this magestic feat even occurred. Do you know how exciting this is? Do you have any idea? Man, it made my life. Just to prove it had actually happened and could be duplicated, we repeated the feat for first breakfast. Rock! Dude. Dude. Dude. This is a major victory and I have just been a chipper fool all day.

(I know that all my childless comrades who read this blog are weeping at what I have become and rejoicing in their childfree life choices. So, friends, I am glad you can celebrate too!!!)

A stark realization

Everyone knows by now that I'm a little bit obsessed with food. I like to think about it, make it, eat it, annotate cookbooks, eat it, think about it some more. I am always happy to take menu suggestions from those I am feeding. I want to make you want you want to eat. Every time I am browsing through a cookbook or making a grocery list, I say to Big K, "What are you hungry for? What sounds good?" And every time, he says, "Whatever. You always do good." The thing is, he really means it. The man really and truly never requests anything. And he heartily and thankfully gobbles up 99.9% of what is set in front of him, whether that be a fancy schmancy meal or leftovers. (The only known exception is potatoes au graten, which he won't eat because his father once called them "potatoes are rotten" when he was a two-year-old. I'll note that if you just say you're serving "cheesy potatoes" he will eat them. So I guess that means there is no known food he won't eat. Oh wait, I just thought of one. Guacamole. He won't eat guacamole. (Poor, misguided soul.)) Anyhow, it was yesterday, and I was sitting there wielding a pen over a grocery list, and he was in the office and I hollered my standard "What are you hungry for?" He of course stated that whatever I thought of was fine, as per usual. I decided to take a stand and insist that he come up with a meal suggestion. He still couldn't think of anything, so I said, "How about you just pick a meat, then?" He thought about this for awhile and then said, "Okay, I'm hungry for ring bologna. And how 'bout we have it with tater tots?" I started screaming. The first time the man ever requests a meal, and this is what he comes up with!!! Ring bologna and tater tots? I mean, I will eat this - I'm not gonna be a snob about it. But given that I am willing to make him a 9-course meal, should he ever request it, and he knows this, and his first meal suggestion in the history of our relationship is ring bologna and tater tots, I realized something. My culinary ambitions are totally wasted on this man. Don't get me wrong, he is a joyous, non-picky Hoover of an eater. But I realized that if I was serving him ring bologna and tater tots, I would get the same happy, drooling golden retriever reaction I get when I present him with a homemade truffle. I think I'm going to cry, and dry my tears with the torn pages of cookbooks.

Randomness

I don't have a great Phook adventure to post about, so you get randomness today.

Item #1. Have you seen the television ads or received printed marketing materials from jewelry stores promoting the "journey" diamond necklace? I have, and I think it's hilarious. Now, don't get me wrong, I like jewelry. A lot. I have one of those upright jewelry boxes that is basically a piece of furniture, and it's packin' some heat, since I have asked Big K to pick me out a piece of jewelry for every birthday, anniversary, and major holiday for the past 8 years. I think it's a safe bet that my female heirs will secretly be a little happy when I die, 'cause then they get to pick thru Granny's jewelry box. Anyhow, I think the concept of this journey necklace is a real knee-slapper. Why, you ask? Well, do you recall the marketing blitz that occurred over the past several holiday seasons promoting the 3-stone diamond ring/necklace/etc.? This is the jewelry that commemorates your past, present, and future, with each of the 3 diamonds of course symbolizing one of those concepts. Now, if you happen to be immune to marketing, allow me to inform you that they hit this hard. I would guess that a substantial portion of American women now own a 3-stone diamond jewelry piece, 'cause they are even available at Wal-Mart. So anyhow, I laughed heartily when I first saw this "journey" necklace advertised. Essentially, it is a necklace pendant that has multiple diamonds in it (probably 6 or 7 or perhaps more) that are linked together in a winding pattern, with each stone getting larger. And the voice-over on the ads informs you that this fabulous item is to symbolize how "your love grows over time." Ok, this just kills me. I can so perfectly visualize a bunch of diamond honchos sitting in a room, lamenting that every ho on the planet had already gobbled up the "past, present, future" concept, and that this holiday season looked grim. And then some clown jumped out of his seat and said, "I've got it! I've got the way to start a whole new diamond frenzy!" And thus the concept of the journey necklace was born. Now, if Santa put one under my tree, I wouldn't exactly complain. But I just find this development to be particularly choice in the humor department if you like to laugh at our consumer culture while participating in it fully, which I do.


Item #2. There is some advertisement for some financial company currently airing that features Dennis Hopper. I think he might be standing in a field or something. Anyhow, I was noticing that his voice reminded me of some other famous person. This was weird, because Dennis Hopper obviously has a unique voice, speech pattern, what have you. So I thought about it long and hard and realized that it's the Wilson brothers, as in Owen and Luke, who also have an interesting way of speaking. And then I realized that not only do they speak similarly, but there is some physical resemblance too. I've come to believe that Hopper is the original Wilson. (I realize I am asking a lot of my readership by sharing this crackpot theory.)

Item #3. Yesterday, I took a trip to the "grocery store" in The Woods, with Phookie. I was procuring some lunchmeat from the deli counter (I'm still not over the joy of being able to eat it again), and the store's owner sees me with my offspring. He says she's cute and then inquires about her name. I give her first name, which is not actually Phookie (more on that later). He repeats it with a question mark at the end, so I give her middle name, and he looks bewildered. So I give the last name, which of course sparks recognition (what with 9 or 10 different surnames in the entire community), but still some confusion. So I share my maiden name and who I am married to and it all comes together for him. So he starts chatting me up, and somehow (I can't quite remember his word choice) he inquires about my age. I share that I am in his son's class, which means I am coming up on my 10-year class reunion in the spring. He starts freaking out and is like, "Whoa, it was about time! You were pretty late getting started there, yikes!!! You know, I knew this lady once who was in HER THIRTIES when she had her first child. Can you believe that?" I was speechless, for probably the second time in my life. How do you respond to that? I mean, I was 26 when I got pregnant. That's not exactly petrified egg territory. Anyhow, I thought that little exchange was indicative of the climate in which I live, so I'm sharing it.

Item #4. Do you watch Grey's Anatomy? If not, you should. (Okay, I guess that this post is TV-centric, which makes it slightly less than random. I'm kind of embarassed and I know I have a friend in NC that is cringing at this evidence of my sedentary lifestyle. Lady, I promise I walk 3 miles per day, I promise.) Can I just say that this is the best show in the history of television? (Okay, that is a ridiculous statement, what with me not having been alive when many classic shows were airing. And what with Grey's being a soap opera.) Anyhow, I love this show more than I love 95% of my relatives. Like if someone said to me, "Either you shoot your cousin with this taser, or Grey's goes off the air," I would not hesitate to tase my own flesh and blood in the majority of circumstances. (Not you, Wendell.) Last night's episode was excellent. I liked when McSteamy said to Addison, "Do you want my pickle?" I also liked when McDreamy said, "Good morning, Addison" and she said, "What's that supposed to mean?" Now, if you don't watch the show, you're probably like WTF?, those are the most benign statements on the planet. But no, not on Grey's. They are fully-loaded nuggets of humor and tension and wonder that make me swoon. The episode was also very close to my heart, with its underlying theme of parenting and balancing that with work. (This whole issue, which is making me throw up in my mouth about every 3 minutes these days, probably warrants its own heart-wrenching post.) Anyhow, did you see the preview for next week? I literally got a piss shiver when they showed it. To some people, next Thursday may be Thanksgiving. Not to me, man. Next Thursday is merely a countdown until the magic hour during which I celebrate all that is good in the world. (That sounds oddly like Thanksgiving, but no.)

Item #5. I don't think my child is learning her name, and it's my fault. Readers may think that Phookie is a clever pseudonym I use to disguise my child's identity online. True, but it's also used heavily in real life. Very heavily. I also call her "Chubbly Bubbly" and "Nugget Bugget" and derivatives ("Chubs," "Bubs," etc.) thereof on a regular basis. Auntie Hode calls her T-Bone and Walter Matthau. I rarely use her real name, which is rather beautiful, in my opinion. (Which is why I picked it, of course.) So I have 4 cats, 3 of whom do not know their real names because of this very same problem. But it is probably slightly more important that an actual human being knows their name, huh? I need to work on this. Shit.

Item #6. I want to go to the movies. I love the movies. So much. What with Big K being a teetotaler for the past 5 years, and me being lame to begin with, we have always been pretty heavy movietheatergoers. We sometimes would even concoct our own double or triple features and spend a whole night or afternoon watching movies. I really love the popcorn, even though I know that it's an express ticket to a quadruple bypass. I like renting movies and getting pay-per-view movies too, but I really love going to an actual movie theater. I know it's overpriced and blah, blah, blah, but I like it anyhow. (And it's not overpriced in The Woods. Our single screen theater has all seats, all shows, all ages, for $3 per ticket. And the snacks are in line with that price range too. I mean, you need to go to the chiropractor after sitting through a movie in one of the wooden seats, but it truly is one of the more charming things The Woods has to offer.) Anyhow, it's always been a nice escape for me, as it is one of the few places I've been able to go over the past several years and actually be able to forget the stress of my stupid job. Since Phookie arrived, no movies of course. I think this is a common new-mom lament. My doctor gave me the advice to see some movies when I was in my 8th month. This hilarious new mom also comments about movies quite a bit. I think it's because although you can justify hauling an infant to a restaurant or a store and disturbing other people with their existence, you just can't wreck somebody's movie experience, especially if you know it to be sacred escapist time. So anyhow, I need to find a babysitter and go to the movies. I want to see a lot of movies. I think the one I want to see the most is Bobby. If you missed this, it's about Bobby Kennedy's assassination and has like 20 major stars in it, and Emilio Estevez is getting major props for its very existence, as far as I can tell. In addition to being obsessed with today's celebrities, I have a major, major, major Kennedy obsession. I have read about 9 billion books about the Kennedys, ranging from trashy tell-alls to more scholarly works. I can provide a complete oral history of the Kennedy family, beginning with the ancestral Kennedys' arrival in the U.S. from Ireland and wrapping up with Arnold and Maria Shriver's kids. Whatever, I really want to see this freaking movie. I hope I get to go.

Item #7. This blog is hogging my brain capacity. I think about it all the time. As a writer, I have always cooked up shit that I wanted to write about while I am in bed at night, or zoning out in some other context. When I used to have the emotional bandwith to write poetry, I'd write the whole poem in my head and then get up in the middle of the night and actually write it down. A lot of my blog entries are created the same way. I'm up at night, providing nourishment to a little tater head, with a giant tater head slumbering next to me wearing his sexalicious CPAP machine, and I think about shit I could blog about. I think of funny phrases I want to use. I write little anecdotes in my head. They don't all make it to the blog, and I'm pretty sure some pretty funny stuff has been drained out of me via my milk ducts, but whatever, despite my sleep deprivation, sometimes I can't sleep at night because I'm too busy mentally writing shit for this blog. Does that make me deeply unwell?

Item #8. My cat Snoot is doing leg lifts right now in his sleep. I'm not lying. He is passed out, flat on his back in front of the TV, and his back legs are flopped open and his big belly is poking out. And despite the fact that he is in a Kat Koma, he is rhythmically raising his back legs from the floor to about 3 inches above his belly level every 15 seconds or so. It might be the weirdest cat thing I've ever seen. And I am a lifelong observer of weird cat behavior. This is weird. I wish Big K was home to witness this.

Ok, I think that wraps it up.

Phookie's vacation photo journal

Hi everyone,

This is a note from Phookie. I wanted to share some pictures of my trip to visit Auntie Hode.

Here is a shot of me roosting in the carrier they imprisoned me in all day on Saturday. To retaliate, I of course shit myself in a restaurant as noted in my Mom's earlier post.


For some reason, the bastards propped me up in this giant papasan chair. Even though it is covered with a giant doilie, I have it on good authority that this chair lived with Auntie Hode in college housing, which of course means that it is covered in unmentionable human byproducts. I felt dirty.


Luckily, Auntie Hode and Mom gave me a bath. At first, the morons dunked me in a big green bowl, but they forgot all about water displacement and that made a huge ass mess. So they threw me in the sink, which was acceptable. I should note that that's Mom's giant forearm in the picture - Auntie Hode isn't some weird kind of three-armed circus act.

On Saturday, we also tooled through a real nice state park. We saw this giant deer, and it was amazing. I was a little groggy, but I could swear I heard Auntie Hode say, "I want to get out of the car and take that thing down with my bare hands." Thank goodness this weekend is the opening of deer season, so Auntie Hode can satisfy her killer instincts without breaking the law or offending my Mom (who in my opinion has an unhealthy obsession with animals) any further.

Mom and Auntie Hode also climbed a giant lookout tower at the state park. It was cold as shit out, so they left me in the car with Dad. He's a bitch tit anyhow when it comes to heights, so he wouldn't have climbed it, no matter how you slice it. So, here are my two favorite ladies (they took this themselves, so they look kinda big-headed and weird, and you can't see my mom's best feature, which is of course her milk-filled funbags...but other than that I guess it's worth posting):

Later that night, I was saying "Neh" and they were ignoring my real needs, so I decided that to get my hunger across, I needed to show my desperation, and I latched on to my Dad's nose (it's really too bad he has a policy of not showering on weekends, 'cause his hair sure does look greasy in this picture):

The next day, Mom and Auntie Hode decided that they should apply some beauty products to themselves. Eternally proving that my Dad's balls are in my Mom's purse, he not only did Mary Kay's "Satin Hands" product, but he submitted to the application of a pore-tightening facial mask. I don't know if you can tell in the picture, but he even wore a headband to keep his hair out of the product! He really did glow afterwards. Now if only he'd agree to more frequent showers, we might be able to turn him into a metrosexual after all! (Note that although I look asleep in this photo, in actuality I am simply in a trance-like state so I don't start laughing my ass off.)

Well, that's it. Hope you enjoyed the recap!

Love,
Phookie

Neh

Knowing that I have a "good" baby, I've been reluctant to pen a bitchfest about her evening "fussy time," but that's what I'm gonna do now, since it's really starting to chap my ass. Essentially, Phook is a charming little nugget who rarely makes a peep during the daylight hours, other than her standard pterodactyl-like sounds, the random joyous grunt, and the occasional "guh" sound of happiness. Peachy. During the day, she eats at unpredictable but basically reasonable 2-4 hour intervals, with each feeding lingering on for between 30 minutes and an hour. However, in the evenings, the child is insatiable. Now, avid readers may remember my cluster feeding post during which I discussed the marathon nursing sessions Phook likes to partake of. I'm a little hazy on the dates, but at some point several weeks ago, I decided that she wasn't actually hungry, but rather just wanted extensive suck time during these cluster feeds, basically using me as a human pacifier. So I began the journey of trying alternate ways to soothe her. This means rocking, wandering around the house discussing the shit hanging on my walls, making shooshing sounds in her ear until I think she might be going deaf, holding her while she freaks out, whatever. Being a "good" baby, it's pretty easy to keep her from breaking into an all-out wail about 95% of the time. Rather, she just flails around like a lunatic, refuses to sleep, and makes an agitated "neh, neh, neh" sound. So although this is obviously preferable to a child with raging colic or a chronic propensity for chuffing up its last meal, it prevents me from sleeping, which is badness. (I should note that the weight of sleep deprivation has landed squarely on my shoulders, and I am now officially tired. It may have taken 7 weeks to hit me, but let me just note that the adrenaline is gone and I am now seriously wanting to sleep.) In addition, it is a workout. Now, Big W, at her pinnacle of fitness (which was admittedly awhile ago) could leg press over 700 pounds. I walk around on two giant 35-inch inseam tree trunks of muscle. But this baby jostling/toting/rocking gig, when it goes on for hours at a time, makes my legs burn like fire. I cannot be asked to work out from 6-11 p.m., okay Phookie? (Phookie doesn't care.) In addition, I'll note that I have tried a pacifier essentially every day of Phookie's existence, and on the odd days she'll actually suck on it for more than 30 seconds, it actually works her up more. She sucks harder and harder until her face turns purple and she is essentially screaming at the pacifier, and then she spits it out after a maximum of about 7 minutes and is more agitated than when the pacifier went in. So the pacifier gig is not working. What does work is more nursing - like a couple hours of it. Or a giant bottle of liquid gold, if Big W is threatening to do herself bodily harm and Big K takes the child and insists I go to bed, dipping into my frozen milk stash while I inwardly freak out about my potential freedom being wasted on a merely fussy child. So, yeah, despite a lot of people thinking I am inventing this cluster feeding shit in the name of hippie attachment parenting, it appears that she does not want to just suck. She wants to fucking eat. What the hell??? Does she have Prader-Willi Syndrome? (Big K is going to kill me for lightheartedly bringing up a serious genetic disorder in this context, what with him having been a social worker for someone with this syndrome back in the day. Sorry Big K.) So anyhow, after the binge is over, she sleeps. For an average of about 6 hours. The she wakes up in the wee hours of the morning and eats a reasonable meal, and the next day is all smiles and farts again.

Now, here's the thing. Up until the other day, I thought she was bullshitting me. I thought the hunger cues (the rooting, the hand-eating, the tongue-sticking-outing, the suckling on Big K's hairy man chest, etc.) were an act. Like she needed something else other than food, but was just pretending it was food. And then Oprah (who I am mad at anyhow, as noted in an earlier post) bitchslaps me upside the head with her baby language shit. Did you people (who sit on your asses at the 4 o'clock hour) see this? Oprah has this strange audio savant on her show, who has determined that all babies in all cultures speak the same 5 words, and that these words have distinct meanings. From what I can remember, they are the following:

Owh: I'm tired.
Eair: I have lower gas (a.k.a. have to fart/shart)
Heh: I'm uncomfortable
Eh: I have upper gas (a.k.a. have to burp)

AND:

Neh: I'm hungry.

It sounds highly bogus, but she makes the convincing argument that these words are based on reflexes that all babies have. The sounds are based on what the mouth is naturally doing in various situations and are best distinguishable in the pre-cry time (before the kid seriously howls). For example, if you are tired and your mouth is in a yawning, circular position and you make a noise, it will come out making an "Owh" sound. If you are a baby and you want to eat, and therefore suck, your tongue is in a certain position for sucking and your sound is "Neh." Neh. Fucking Neh. Do you know what Phookie's favorite evening word is? Yup. It's Neh. She Neh, Neh, Neh's through the entire evening fussy time, while I am chanting swear words at her in soothing tones and repeating Auntie Hode's instructions for making a great sandwich ("You start with a little Oat Nut, layer of mayo..."). She Neh, Neh, Neh's through it all. And I'm thinking, "No, she can't possibly really be hungry. I am just an inept mom who can't find what she really needs, so I'm gonna try all this shit for a couple hours, but I'll just ineptly end up pacifying her with boobage, never knowing what it was that was really pissing her off." Yeah, she's really hungry. So since I saw this show a couple days ago, all I hear is this word, this Neh, that she is actually speaking to me, and which makes it a lot harder to justify swinging her around the room when I know the Neh's will continue and it will just ultimately end in me either nursing her some more or sacrificing more liquid gold in the name of sleep. It sucks man, literally. Because after nursing for that long, guess what? There ain't no milk left. The keg is cashed. I think that's why it takes so long. I actually think she is maxing out the evening boobage capacity and has to nurse forever to get full. Do you know how bad I want to go to the Formula Store and buy a big fat vat of thick and chunky formula? Oprah's barren ass having educated me on my child's needs, I just want to throw my breastfeeding commitment out the window and add a Big Gulp of formula at the end of the day. Must stay strong. Neh.

Who's the boss?

Let us begin with some gratuitous Phook shots:



The visit to Auntie Hode's was highly successful. Old Phook traveled 3.25 hours in the car, not once, but twice, without howling. Impressive shit. She also tolerated being dragged into various shops and orchard markets without incident. However, she did make quite a scene at a restaurant. We had been all out and about for several (4-ish) hours, hauling Phookie around in her carrier, and decided at about 3 p.m. to go to a restaurant. Big K and Auntie Hode suggested we go to Hode's apartment and feed the child first, but I was starving and feeling belligerent about it, so I said we should go to the restaurant and gamble that she'd not freak out. Ha! The place was semi-nice bordering on nice. Probably an inappropriate place to drag your infant. Luckily, it was empty at the 3 o'clock hour. So we roll in there, and Phookie immediately woke up and began demanding chow. I had a bottle of liquid gold we'd been toting with us all day in the cooler, so I gave it to Big K to go run under warm water in the bathroom (since Phookie likes her milk at 98.6 degrees). Big K ambles off and Phookie gets angrier and angrier, wondering why I'm not disrobing and giving her her snack. Standing in a restaurant rocking a howling child, time is distorted, in that every second feels like 5 minutes. So even though Big K had been off doing whatever he was doing with the bottle for probably 2 minutes, it felt like an eternity, to the tune of me screaming in the direction of the bathroom door, "You'd better be having an aneurysm!!!" and "Don't make me whip a tit out!!!" (I don't think he knows I did this.) Anyhow, he eventually rolls out with the not-so-warmish bottle and says that the warm water didn't really work, and he was waiting for it to warm up. I put on a happy face and handed him his spawn. So he starts feeding her, and, of course, she shits herself. So Auntie Hode and I grab the diaper bag and head off to the bathroom. This is not the type of place with a family-friendly Koala Bear Care Station (or whatever those germ stations are called), so we put the changing pad down on the cold bathroom floor and all piled into about 4 square feet of bathroom. I took off her pants and unsnapped her onesie, and as I pulled it up her back in order to clear the area for diapering, I realized that my hands were covered in shat. I started screaming, Hode started screaming, and Phook just looked irritated. So I go to wash my hands off, and Auntie Hode tries to pull her onesie over her head, further coating both the child and Auntie Hode with shart. Auntie Hode has a seriously active gag reflex (Big K says, "Hode, you vomit in a stiff wind" and she literally vomits on the side of the road after getting in a fender bender), so she starts gagging, like for real. I said, "If you vomit, I'll never speak to you again." So then we both started laughing, and I was in a squatting position on the bathroom floor, so I of course took the opportunity to start pissing myself. Which made us laugh harder. So now we're laughing and pissing and not paying attention to naked Phookie, and her head rolls off the changing pad and onto the cold, nasty bathroom floor, and she starts howling. And there are garments covered in shit everywhere. And then the waitress knocks on the door and innocently says, "Lunch is served." Fuck! I open the door and she's like, "Oh, um, lunch is served." I'm like, "Ah, we'll be out momentarily." I'm thinking, yeah, lady, I just want to spend my lunchtime in your nice restaurant rolling around your stupid little bathroom covered in poop. Yeah. So, eventually, we got her dressed in her spare onesie (yes, I had learned that lesson at least), and went and scarfed down our chow. Strangely, both Hode and I had ordered something called the "Malibu Club" which involved turkey and avocado and was listed as being served on toast. We were both quite surprised to find that the sandwich was indeed a club sandwich for some strange reason, despite the descriptive nature of its title, and that the toast in question was just fucking white toast. For some reason we thought it would be on focaccia or something and would not have the middle bread layer. How's that for being joined at the brain in idiocy? Being all looped up on baby poop, we started laughing our asses off at that too. So, while snorting, we quickly housed our surprising sandwiches and hauled Captain Poop Chute out of there just as they started getting patrons for dinner. The moral of the story is that despite her otherworldly goodness as a baby, Phookie was sure to let it be known, by the power of her excrement, that she is the boss. Noted.


P.S. Okay, I have a confession to make. I'm sort of at fault for this whole diaper disaster. I sort of accidentally bought too many of the size N diapers, which are meant for newborns up to 10 pounds. Although Phookie hasn't been officially weighed since her 2-week check-up, I have it on good authority (and my parents' bathroom scale), that she is way the hell over 10 pounds. But I've been cramming her in the size N's rather than upsizing to the 1's in the closet for at least 2 weeks too long because I don't want to be wasteful, and I don't want to store them for the next baby. So I stretch the diaper in every which way before putting it on her in order to get it to maximum size, and, you might be shocked to find out, it is still way too small. So I admit it, I am at fault for this scene in every way. I should note that as of this writing, there are 4 size N's to go. And she just ripped ass, so I'd better log off now.

I just keep getting crazier

So the Family K is going to visit Auntie Hode this weekend. Tomorrow morning, actually, since Big K has the day off for Veteran's Day. I wanted to make and take some snacks and other savory foodstuffs along, so I made some arrangements yesterday with Big K for me to run to the oft-mocked grocery store in The Woods after we had our dinner last night. Trouble was, Phookie wasn't quite done having her evening snack, and my window of opportunity before the store closed was quickly disintegrating, so I de-boobed her and angered her greatly. And left her with Big K. (There was liquid gold in the fridge if she got really insistent - don't worry.) So I did my business at the store, and was pretty timely about it with the exception of about 9 minutes spent in the canned vegetable aisle looking for diced green chilies, only to give up and then discover them in the "Mexican Foods" section. So I was leaving the store, and the weather was just so ridiculously, unseasonably, gloriously nice, I just wanted to howl at the moon or something. So I loads up my groceries and gets in me car, and I rolled down the window, and once that beautiful air hit my face, I knew I couldn't go home. With much guilt, I decided, once I hit our town's lone stoplight, to go left instead of right! Ah! I drove up past the Grandparents J homestead, and went around another block or two too. I had the radio up real loudlike and my face sticking out the window to sniff up that warm air, and it was awesome, awesome, awesome. There wasn't a baby in the carseat! Ah, such freedom! But I felt really guilty. I honestly considered calling Big K to tell him I was out cruising, to confirm everything was ok with Phookie and to make sure he wouldn't worry. I thought long and hard about it, and mentally hemmed and hawed over what a bad mom I was for cruising town like my high school self, knowing that she was probably still cranky and still wanting to spend more quality time with the boobage. But I just kept driving, until the guilt overwhelmed me. And then I drove home. And looked at the clock. It was 7:08 p.m. I had left the grocery store at 7:01. People, I was gone for 7 minutes, and it would have taken 3 if I would have gone straight home. You've got to be shitting me, I thought to myself. I experienced all that fresh air and freedom and guilt...in 7 minutes. What the hell is wrong with me?

Ok, so fast forward through several hours of Phook-crankiness (it was her 6-week birthday, and she must have known that her mother's voracious reading of parenting materials had yielded the gem that infant crying peaks at 6 weeks). Now Big W is asleep, Big Daddy K having successfully calmed the child and convinced her, for the first time ever, that her bassinet was an okay place to sleep for more than 20 minutes. And Big W is dreaming. In the dream, I am going to work. I am in my workplace elevator. I am wearing a tight, robin's egg blue top and a short black skirt. Very strangely, I am my normal giant 6-foot tall self, only instead of being my robust self, I am like my hot self. I am all skinny and shit, which may explain the outfit, which looks nothing like the flannel pajama pants I normally wear to the workplace. And I have a giant set of hooters. Maybe they're not actually any larger than my real hooters, but they look really huge on my Barbie body. So anyhow, I am in the elevator with like 3 random co-workers that I don't know, being my hot self, and all of a sudden the elevator gets stuck. So I'm trapped in this elevator for several hours, and all of a sudden, my boobs start to leak breastmilk. I'm not talking a trickle, I'm talking the whole front of my tight shirt is drenched in milk. I am totally horrified. Finally, after hours of continuous milk leakage, the elevator is unstuck, and I exit into my workplace completely sopping with milk. So then I wake up in real life and see that it is 5:45 a.m., and I have been basically asleep for over 6 hours (a very long time), and my real shirt is wringing wet with breastmilk (at a certain psi, the containment valve on the boobs just becomes totally compromised and unleashes the precious contents, and this had obviously happened). So I wonder, is this like the dream where you wet the bed, and then realize that you really did? What the hell? And why was I hot in the dream?

Just a little bit about politics

I am not a political person, but I am pissed at Wisconsin for doing this and this, particularly the former. I'm not gonna write a big angry post articulating my thoughts on these matters, but I just wanted to note I'm a little cranky this morning at my fellow Sconnies. Every day on my trek around The Woods, I fight the urge to kick down "Vote Yes" signs, and today they're gonna be gloating at me. Maybe I will kick them down today.

I am just going to share that I found myself riveted to CNN last night watching election returns. For some reason, we do this for every major election. For '04, I made a giant vat of food called "Bean Pot Medley" in the crockpot and we sat and ate beans and wept. Anyhow, here are things about last night's election coverage and our viewing of it that I thought were funny:

• Big K noted that the various commentators were wearing red or blue ties in accordance with their party affiliations, and Anderson Cooper was wearing a combo. We thought that was funny, that they were color-coded and shit.
• There was a bumbling idiot wandering around after Wolf Blitzer and he always seemed to be in the way and not know when it was his turn to speak, and actually muttered about screwing up the "choreography" a couple times. That was weird and I bet the producers really gave him the business afterwards.
• Another funny moment was when they called Nancy Pelosi the "presumptive" Speaker of the House, and Big K said, "Yeah lady, now all we need is for Cheney to shoot Bush in a hunting accident and have a heart attack, and you're President." (That's probably only funny if you dislike the current administration and are comfortable with death humor.) Anyhow, yeah for Nance.
• Someone called Rush Limbaugh a gasbag. I like that term and thought it apt.

So those are my thoughts on the election.

P.S. I am going to watch The View now and laugh at Elisabeth Hasselbeck's pain. That girl sucks.

I am not comfortable with this development

You may have noticed that I have been exceedingly complimentary and positive about my husband in my posts. Yammering about what a great dad he is, sharing funny anecdotes, etc. I haven't mentioned that he has a dark side. He's a fucking gamer, and not a casual one. The man has an addictive personality, and gaming is his current and most enduring addiction. When we first started dating, it was Madden football on his Playstation. Then computer games entered the mix. There was some first person shooter game that scared the shit out of me (that was a short phase, thankfully) and I think there was some monster type game that held his attention for quite awhile. Then we entered the horrific and ongoing phase that is his addiction to this game called Eve. I don't remember how long ago this obsession began, but it feels like an eternity. It is a roleplaying game that, as far as I can tell, is the sort of thing 35-year-old virgins play a lot. I know that his "corporation"--the group of punks that he has banded together with online--knew about Phookie's implantation in my womb before our families did. I'm not shitting you. I know that his online existence is worth several hundred dollars if he sold it in the gaming black market. I know that he "runs missions" that are very intense and cannot be interrupted for anything less than a severed extremity. And probably not even my severed extremity. It would have to be Phookie's. I know that he mines space ore. Ok, you get it, right?

Now I know that games can be fun. I was addicted to good old Tetris back when I was a tender youth. And I distinctly and fondly remember saving the princess on my Nintendo on my 13th birthday. We have a GameBoy Advance that we purchased on our honeymoon, and I occasionally play Ms. Pac-Man on it. So, yeah, games can be fun. But I do not understand gamers. If I have any gamer readers, and I think I might, I'm sorry. But I just do not get these immersion games that people become so addicted to that they abandon all social niceties, outdoor activities, and sense of normalcy in order to master. I hate to say it, but I think Big K has at least dabbled in that category. We've had a lot of "discussions" about this matter. As in, I've thrown shit a few times while "discussing" his gaming. Now here's the thing. The man is a social worker in The Woods, which means that rather than dealing with one kind of hell in the social work world, he gets to party to the tune of investigating child abuse and neglect allegations and being the cop for all the county's juvenile delinquents. He has a stressful gig. So I understand why he might want to immerse himself in gamerland, which is why, despite my bitterness, hatred, and general feelings of resentment towards his gaming, I ultimately try not to be an asshole about it. Various members of my family seem to seriously think that he needs therapy, but I do basically try to defend his honor because I know he needs the escape. Oh, and the other reason he games is because he has had 3 major knee injuries and surgeries, including snapping his kneecap completely in half and having it screwed back together, in the span of 1 year. So his other former hobby, athletics, is sort of on the shelf. Ok, so I've justified his occasional neglect of me enough. Now I'm gonna mock him. Dude's freaking twin brothers bought him an XBox for his birthday (I think I mentioned this before). For some reason, I think it was that he would be "more accessible to the family," he decided to hook it up in the living room, rather than one of his designated nerd areas, such as his nerd basement, his nerd office, his nerd toy room, etc. So now, what with me being tethered to my trusty rusty recliner by the virtual handcuffs of breastfeeding, I am forced to sit and watch him game. He has Tiger Woods Golf, Oblivion (apparently also some roleplaying game that could get ugly should he ever catch that particular bug), and Marvel Ultimate Alliance. The latter is apparently a game in which you assume the identities of various comic book heros and then battle evil. Now, the twin rats, who live 40 miles away, also have this game. And the "cool" thing about the XBox is that you can get online with your fellow no-sex-havers and game together. You can actually chat in real time and slay evildoers in tandem, no matter where you may be on the globe. So let me describe the current scene in my living room:

Me: In recliner, child on teet, innocently "surfing the web" via laptop. Of course, I'm actually typing this. I am unkempt, but that's not really worth noting at this point.

Big K: Wearing nice pants, dress shirt, and tie, having spent the afternoon in court, presumably incarcerating naughty teenagers and/or their parents. He is still in the work garb, because he is on the City Council here in The Woods, and he has to go to a meeting soon. (Yeah, I'm a political wife. You should check out the blond beehive I don during campaign season. Just kidding.) So Koucilman K looks quite professional. Except for the fact that he is wearing a damned headset that allows him to communicate with outer space...er, his brothers. So they're trying to get this link of lameness initiated, and it begins with me hearing my brother-in-law's voice come blaring through our home stereo system. Talk about a panic attack. Luckily, that was rectified, and he was eventually speaking to Big K directly in his earpiece. So here I sit, watching my husband battle Marvel comic villains and listen to his end of the conversation with his partner in said activity. This is not my idea of fun. So I decided that to pass the time, I would innocently transcribe statements he was making to his brother for my blogging amusement. Here are some choice excerpts:

• "So I shouldn't get in that lava, huh?"
• "He's totally made of fire."
• "That's why I get a B too when I'm shooting."
• "I've got a spear. What the hell do I do with it?"
• "I'm person X."
• "We already wiped out all these hosers."
• "So did I ask you if you found that sword? I couldn't find the fucker."

This is pretty much the low point in my association with Big K as gamer. Being welded to the chair, watching this horrifying drama unfold before my very eyes. If we ever end up in therapy, it will be because of this. Some people have road rage. I have technology rage. Why did this need to be invented? Apparently going over to your lame friend's house to game together in his basement was too much social interaction for the gamer world. No, you must be able to be alone, and yet together in the brotherhood that is gaming. I hereby vow that Phookie will not be a gamer. I don't even want her playing educational computer games, because then she might make the association between gaming and good. Not on my watch, suckas.

Let me tell you about my vacation

Even though I think I am in relatively good mental health for a new mother (no crying jags, no irrational fight-picking with husband, no lying on the kitchen floor breathing into a paper bag, and only one half-hearted threat to put Phookie out on the porch in the sleet), Grandma J apparently determined that 5.5 weeks of relative houseboundness was enough for Big W, because Friday morning brought a two-pronged invitation for outings: a) Friday night fish fry and b) some shopping on Saturday. It really hadn't even occurred to me that these types of things were options, so I found myself quite excitedly accepting after placing a courtesy call to Big K to confirm that he was amenable with the plans. He was, what with him being an amenable chap and all.

So on Friday night (Okay, that's a lie...I requested a mealtime of 5 p.m. so we could hopefully be home in time for our evening fussy time/cluster feed.) So on Friday evening, Big K, Big W, and Phookie packed 'er up and went downtown to the local supper club to meet the Grandparents J for the fish fry (I'm tellin' all you city slickers, get your ass up to The Woods for a fish fry) and were escorted promptly into the dining room to join the 4 blue-haired couples who were eating that early. Ol' Phook roosted in her carrier quite nicely for the first 15 minutes or so, and then stirred and requested a meal. Being the magic baby ninja that I am, I had a bottle of semi-warm liquid gold (read: pumped breastmilk) at the ready, and Big Daddy K hooked her up with some snack while Momma W housed a large chicken breast (a natural part of the fish fry, of course), a hearty helping of fish, some cole slaw, some french fries, and a GLASS OF WINE (I'm not even going to tell you what kind of wine I like, 'cause it's just embarassing and I know I have at least one oenophile reader). So anyhow, we ate at a restaurant, and it was good. The child did not cry, and neither did I. Successful mission.

Now Saturday was the big m-f-ing extravaganza. I woke up and got dressed in pants with a zipper and made my husband promise about 673 times to take good care of Phook and kind of hemmed and hawed and freaked out about how particularly cute she was looking that day and whatnot. Grandma J eventually got me out of the house and we sped off into the wilderness. Big K called me to tell me she was okay about 2 minutes later, to mock my nonsense upon leaving. We drove to the mecca of OshVegas (my cousins' codeword for a town here in Wisconsin that has the magical amenities of a Target and an outlet mall - yeah, I have to drive an hour from my home to find these wondrous treats). We went to said Target and I cruised around looking at shit at a leisurely pace. I bought some really exciting crap, like cat chow for my flock of marmots, some hazelnut coffee for the Big Man, and breastmilk storage bags, to help facilitate future outings. I did pick out a real nice outfit for Phookie that is striped and fleecy, and I felt good about that, since I've never really bought her anything, but rather rely on the charity of others (while thanking the gods that she is the first grandchild on both sides, with no apparent prospects for others in the near future). So we wrapped up our noise there and rolled over to the outlet mall, because I wanted to go to Carters to scope out the kid shit. I managed to drop $77 there on 4 wee outfits. It's probably a good thing I live so far away from civilization, because otherwise, I'd, like, shop. Okay, so then we decided that while we were out in a big city, we might as well go crazy and go to Fleet Farm, since they have such cheap birdseed. (No, I'm not shitting you.) So I bought some birdseed, and a bird feeder (since the structural integrity of one of mine had become compromised and the birds were really taking advantage of my generosity by draining it in about 40 seconds), and some white chocolate covered pretzels. Then we rolled westward through the state to another little hamlet nearer The Woods, and went for some lunch at this house converted into a restaurant named after some guy's dog. I had a sandwich titled the "Shroom Bird" which was a grilled chicken breast and shrooms on rye. Oh, and I think there was some cheese on there. It was real nice and leisurely, what with that being the first meal I've consumed sans Phook since she was, like, born. After this, we went to a little shop we likes called The Gables. They sell the kind of country bumpkin shit we like to decorate our houses with. It didn't yield much, but it was nice to poke around. I also successfully restrained myself from spending $34 on this wire turkey Thanksgiving decoration that I really, really wanted. So that was personal progress for me. I still want it though. But that's okay. After this, we went to the bestest place of all...this brand new fabulous grocery store. Now, you may be imagining that there is sarcasm in the previous sentence. There is not. I believe I have commented previously about the lack of foodstuffs here in The Woods. I am telling you that our local grocer carries one kind of lettuce. That would be iceberg. I am telling you that our local grocer carries one kind of pork. That would be chops. I could continue with sorry examples, but I will not. Now, there are few things I enjoy more than grocery shopping. I just like sniffing around a grocery store. I like imagining what I am going to make. I like impulse buys that make me feel all excited for the great snack/meal I'm going to have later. Whatever. I'm a nerdlet and I like grocery stores, and I haven't really been to a nice one for a very long time. And this store is legitimately nice. They have a separate temperature and humidity controlled room for their cheeses, which is not the kind of thing you frequently see around here. They specialize in the meat though. I have a meat problem in that I like to eat several varieties of it, but I cry (real tears) when I see a truck carting animals places. Big K tells me they're going to their new farm, but I know he's lying. So, anyhow, whatever, I have a conflict there but I eat meat, and I purchased quite a quantity of it. I got lots of other stuff too, but the fun part was just leisurely sniffing around that place. Talk about a vacation. It's amazing how you take things for granted before you have kids, like the ability to take your sweet time rolling around a grocery store. When you're all checking for signs of ovulation for 15 months (not that I'm familiar with that particular brand of hell or anything), you are not thinking about how the actual conception is going to result in you sprinting through a grocery store, forgetting half the shit you wanted, praying that your kid isn't gonna wail. I think eventually you get comfortable enough in your parenthood that you don't give a shit if your kid wails, but I'm not there yet. I am fucking sprinting through those aisles. Anyhow, yesterday I was strolling, and it was tits.

Tits. Now that's another part of this story. By the time Mommapalooza was over, I'd been without my little suckling piglet for about 8 hours. While she was happily at home snacking on the liquid gold from her daddy's bottle, she was not nursing from my bosom. Now I had taken the breastpump along, but I was feeling ok and not like going to the trouble of finding a place to pump until a certain point when I was feeling not ok, but like we were close enough to being home that I could make it. Fuck. Ok, by the time we got home, I am surprised I could walk upright given the weight of my rack. And can we discuss what the actual boobage feels like when it is this full of milk? We probably shouldn't, but let us nonetheless. Rock. We are talking granite. And this is a really horrifying image and I have no idea if other people have experienced this, but it is almost like the boobs have edges or corners or something. It is no longer a soft, pillowy place where babies like to rest their little noggins. No, it is an angular contraption of bulging ducts filled with molten lead. And it feels like fire too. Flaming, square boobs that weigh 46 pounds each. Ok, so now you can kind of imagine the hell, and you've probably thown up in your mouth, at the very least. So anyhow, after unloading everything into the house and quite uncharacteristically leaving frozen foodstuffs on the floor, I ran to the bathroom and set up the milk machine for some dual action pumping. And then my teets unleashed the fury and expressed enough milk to feed an impoverished nation for several weeks. I felt better but I still felt the need to lie topless on my living room floor for at least 15 minutes to air out the pain. Today they're still a little angry about the whole thing, to be honest. Apparently it is a bad idea to abuse the lactating breast. Noted.

So that is the story of my vacation. My first big day without Phookie. It sure was great, except as described in that last paragraph. I sure love Phookie, and I sure love Grandma J.

Some scholarly input from Phookie

The Phookinator has finished her study of the Bard. She concludes that he is "one funny bastard" and asked that we host her 1st birthday party at APT.

She also reported that she found my comments in the margins "really sophomoric."

Special bonus amusement for co-workers and former co-workers: Can you spot the gift from our pal JF in this photo? I never read it, I swear.

Lunch Hour Treat

So Big K, being a local social worker here in The Woods, frequently has the opportunity to come home for about half an hour for lunch. Today, we had a really exciting time. No, you sick bastards, I'm not talking about a nooner. I'm talking about baby shit. Now, I already kind of stated my position on talking about my kid's bodily functions in my Poo-zooka post of 10/6, which included a quasi-apology for the subject matter, so I'm not gonna go into that again. I'm just gonna tell you my story.

The Phookinator had not sharted in 4 days. Having consulted the Oracle of Google, I was reassured that around this age, breastfed babies' poo-zookas can slow down and they can take to sharting only every few days, or even as little as once a week. Phook had been an intake = output pooper for the first few weeks of life, happily firing her 'zooka at or around every meal. The last two weeks or so though, she had toned it down to about one shart per day, so I was detecting a general trend of decreased activity. Well, we had started to get a bit concerned about the lack of bowel activity, despite the Google reassurance, and I was trying real hard not to call the doctor, because I don't want to be one of those crazy doctor caller moms. But not to worry, my fears were calmed this afternoon. I was effectively reassured that the child's bowel is quite fine.

I had just fed her, and the Big K Mobile was pulling into the driveway for lunch, and I had Phook propped up on my chest for a burp, and all of a sudden, my poor butt-patting hand was rocked with a 'zooka fire that I am quite sure registered on the Richter scale. Yes, we had a seismic event. It also stunk unbelievably bad. Several people have commented to me, "Breastfed babies' poop doesn't stink." I don't know who they are smelling, but that's bullshit! I covered my face with her receiving blanket and started screaming, knowing that Big K was about to come in the back door. He entered and I said, "Oh, Daddy, we are so glad you're home." He instantly knew that the much-awaited shart had arrived. I invited him into my den of stink and handed him the child. He put her on the changing tray part of her Pack-n-Play and de-diapered her. I was watching with great interest. It unveiled a sizeable quantity of poo, which looks exactly like mustard, but in all honesty, I was a little disappointed. I thought that after 4 days, it would have been the biggest poo ever. I said as much to Big K. He then proceeds to grab her legs and flex them up toward her belly, claiming that one of his friends "swears by" this technique for getting the remaining poo out. Well, it fucking worked. He had no more than finished that prophetic statement before the mustard mobile shot another load all over Big K's hands and her changing pad. Big K then grabs a wipe to clean her up again, and she sharts another equally huge quantity into the wipe. Big K starts screaming, and then she pisses all over his hand for good measure. He then gives up with trying to clean her, letting her just lay there with her ass cannon exposed to the world, and she fired the 'zooka 3 more times, just blowing horror all over her changing pad. I was alternately screaming, howling, and throwing myself on the floor with laughter as more and more shart came flying out of the child. Eventually, we got a diaper on her nasty ass and the changing pad is roosting in its Oxyclean bath. Oh, and here is the extra funny part. I am not kidding, the yellow garment in the photo below is the shirt I am wearing today, procured from the Mt. Horeb Mustard Museum:

Yeah, I am decked out in mustard gear. No shit. How's that for being in tune with your child?

Extra! Extra!

I did not realize that if you start working on a post with this here blogger, and then save it as a draft and finish it later and eventually publish it, it will be posted under the date you started it rather than when you actually post it (perhaps there is a setting that allows me to change this - if so, let me know!). Anyhow, don't miss my cat photo extravaganza post titled "Animals" that is posted on 10/30.

I bought myself a present

Okay, so what with Phookie arriving and all, Big W has not been buying herself presents like she used to. This has been okay, since I'm a little preoccupied with motherhood and not so much my sweater collection. But I was cleaning up a stack of catalogs in preparation for the baptism (okay, so maybe I am doing a little belated nesting), and I found a catalog I'd been saving for a very long time, with a very special page earmarked. I decided that the time to hesitate was through, and I ordered this product. Dudes, I bought myself a sweet tits composter. Big W loves the gardening, and it has long been a point of consternation that I didn't have any of that magic black gold that is compost. Plus, Auntie Hode, who is environmentally responsible and shares her thoughts on the matter with me frequently, has really been on my jock about composting. So now it shall be done. The composter arrived yesterday, and I also went all batshit crazy and ordered the optional rodent screen. I'm so excited. I want to go buy a bunch of produce and trim it, just so I can compost that shit. I am the portrait of lameness.