Posts from — January 2009

Bug recently told me that he couldn’t wait until he was twelve.  This seemed like an arbitrary age to yearn for, so I bit and asked how come.  “Because then I can drive a car,” he informed me.  I suspect the look on his face after I told him it would actually be four more years from then is a preview of the one we’ll see after the tragic but necessary There Is No Santa conversation.

He’s already wishing he were older, bigger, faster, stronger.  And he will be, sooner than I will believe possible.  I’ll blink, and then it will be January 12, 2021 and we’ll be handing over the keys to the family car with trembling hands.  He’ll be sixteen, almost a man, deep-voiced, all knees and elbows, tall and dark like his dad. He’ll look down at me.  He’ll shave.  He’ll like girls and they’ll like him back.  Or they won’t.  He’ll have his heart broken.  He’ll realize sometimes life is hard.  He’ll realize sometimes life is beautiful.

But today he is four.  He plays with matchbox cars.  His voice is high and lovely.  He hugs me around my waist and watches his dad shave.  I am the girl he likes best (next to LG) and I love him back something fierce.  He is only just beginning to ask about the hard parts of life.  And the beautiful ones.

He is curious and confident. Energetic and ebullient.  Wise and wonderful.  He is beautiful.

He is the root of all he will become.  And I love him exponentially more each year.

Happy birthday Bug.

I now have in my possession two DVDs (recommended by Linda of Bodies in Motivation) that will be kicking my ass into shape over the next months: Hip Hop Abs and The 30-Day Shred.  I’ve done Hip Hop Abs once and have yet to summon up the courage to brave the slightly menacing face of Jillian Michaels and break the seal on the second. Remember, I’m working with baby steps here.

Hip Hop Abs is a great work out for two reasons: one, it really gets my heart pumping and seems like it will focus on the parts of me I most want to work on (read: MY DOUGHY DOUGHY MIDSECTION).  Two, have you seen me dance?  Specifically, have you seen me dance hip hop?  If you haven’t, go ahead and try to picture it.  Yes – IT IS THAT AWKWARD.  And as it turns out, doubling over in spasms of laughter every 30 seconds is also a good ab workout, so it’s like I’m getting two workouts for the price of one.  Added bonus: sometimes Bug joins in the booty-shaking!  Turns out I’ll be sporting a six pack sooner than I thought.

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Speaking of Bug, January 12 is nigh upon us and if you don’t know what that means, just bend over and put your ear to the ground.  Those vibrations you feel are the uncontrollable quivering of a soon to be four year old as he tries patiently to count down the seconds to his Superman birthday party.  Every day it’s: MOM. How many more days now? I. CAN’T. WAIT. UNTIL. MY. BIRTH. DAY. PARTY. Supermancakeicecreampresentsbleeearrrrgghh!!  Today he asked me: did I know that his birthday was actually the tenth?  Mom, it is! DADDY TOLD ME THAT IT WAS.

Silly me!  Off by two days!  In that case we’d better have the party earlier!  And also increase the cake size and double the presents!

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Speaking of birthdays, Bug attended a friend’s party last weekend and came home with the usual goody bag of refined sugar and plastic crap, including two Spiderman bouncy balls.  These were clearly the favorites of the birthday loot and he carried them around for most of the weekend, rolling them and bouncing them and generally losing them in public places which required us to crawl into spaces that clearly no human has ever seen or ever should see to retrieve them from the fossilized french fries and dusty condom wrappers.

After lunch on Sunday he decided that the safest place to keep his new toys was in his back pockets, and as we loaded into the car he discovered that his plan had a flaw.  “Uh oh, Mom! I SAT ON MY BALLS!  It hurts when you SIT ON YOUR BALLS, Mom!” And the whole way home, there was no relief for Lorso and I as we tried mightily to still our shaking shoulders and choke back snorts of laughter while enduring an earnest and unending commentary about the trials of sitting on your balls.

And I have no segue after that.

One of these weeks, you’re going to look over to that little side bar calendar and ALL FIVE of the weekdays will be shining back at you in full blue array.  Unfortunately it will not be this week.  My trusty Apple laptop is away for some much needed servicing, and this means that LG’s mealtimes no longer serve as my one-handed finger pecked writing sessions.  This is to my chagrin, but I’m pretty sure LG is elated to have a break from all the jostling and accidental detaching while I balance the computer precariously on my legs and pound away at the keys during her lunch.  Sometimes I swear she looks up at me as if to say “God, can’t a girl get a decent MEAL in this place?”

The laptop being gone also means I am without access to my photos, and photos are my number one copout saves for No Time To Post days.  So instead you get a gray date, like yesterday.

I’ve also gone back to work now, so the sliver of time I had to myself (and by “by myself” I mean “with only one kid”) has been shaved ridiculously thin and I’m having to be very stern with myself about going to bed at a reasonable hour instead of finally getting to surf the web mindlessly or read a book (like Twilight, which is like the crack cocaine of books.  I mean, I read it in the dead of night with a tiny vision-ruining book light to get a fix.  And maybe also one time in the car at a red light.) late into the night.

LIKE RIGHT NOW OMG.  Young Lady, you get your ass in bed THIS INSTANT.  Don’t make me say it twice, or there will be CONSEQUENCES.

To bed!……………….

I CAN SEE THAT FLASHLIGHT.

Damn.

Saturday night just before bed, Lorso started sniffling and shuffling around the house on my heels in a general state of malcontent.  Sunday morning he felt no better, and I was set to go on a road trip with LG to South Carolina to visit friends I hadn’t seen in a long time, so I felt a little anxious as I packed up the car to the sounds of his snorfling and occasional moaning.  I pondered staying. But the friends I was going to see were ones I hadn’t seen in ages – one was here on a rare visit from the West Coast, and one had a baby a month before LG was born as well as an older child I’d never even met, so I really wanted to make the trip.  Also, there may have been outlet malls along the way.

So I drove away feeling slightly guilty about my fun girls trip (me and my girl, out in the world!) and called to check on him at various points in the trip.

The next morning as I prepared to meet my girlfriends, I called for the update and discovered that Lorso had called in sick to work and was laying on the couch.  “I made a doctor’s appointment.  I’m just feeling so bad, you know?”  It sounded more serious than I’d thought.

To be fair, Lorso does not get sick often.  He generally falls under the “As a Horse” health category.  So I thought it must be something horrible – a sinus infection? The flu? Man mastitis? Ebola virus? The possibilities were staggering.

After a too-short session of I’m So Glad to See Yous and Look At Your Sweet Babies and OMG Did You Hear About So-and-sos with my friends, I packed LG back into the car and headed home. I rang Lorso up, eager to hear what the experts had to say.

Through the sounds of SNIFF and SNORF and SNUFFLE I received the report of the diagnosis.

It was A MAN COLD.

Poor little bunny.

(P.S. I really do hope you feel better soon.)

Despite the seemingly hundreds of Facebook friends I have whose statuses included words like “Veuve Cliquot” and “hair of the dog” on New Year’s, celebrations around these parts were embarrassingly tame.  As in we ate spinach dip and watched episodes of “Freaks and Geeks” until flipping to Ryan Seacrest and Kellie Pickler at 11:55. PAAAARRRRRRRRRTAAAYYY!

To make up for our lameness we kissed at midnight. On the lips. FOR MORE THAN FIVE SECONDS.  It was hot.

In other news, I’ve been having some sort of odd sensation these days, like a giddy excited stomach kind of feeling.  I think it might be happiness.  Although I’m not ruling out gas.  It seemed to start after I passed the ominous barrier of Turning Thirty and after a steep plunge around, oh, THE LAST TWO WEEKS IN OCTOBER, it shot back up to previous levels and has been rising ever since.  It turns out that depregnating myself seemed to be a pretty big upper.  See also: cute baby.

But I think it’s more than that.  Boring as it was, marking the shift into 2009 makes me feel hopeful and anticipatory.  I’m not entirely sure about what.  Kind of everything.  I have some personal goals that are energizing: a goal to get into better shape, and a goal to write more and often, the latter of which is sort of fresh and new for me.  Because as much as I have resisted using the word “writing” when it comes to this blog, I’ve come to realize that that is exactly what I’ve been doing.  And I’ve stuck with it, and I even…enjoy it.  No one is more shocked about this than I am, believe me.  But I think that when you take time to do something every day (or almost every day), you can’t help but find some groove in it.  You can’t help but get a little addicted.

So I guess I’ve decided to rip off the patch and throw away the gum and just admit that I like to write.  THERE.  I SAID IT.  And now I will probably get the biggest chunk of writer’s block in the history of the written word and write the shittiest bunch of turd posts you’ve ever read.  GREAT.  ENJOY THE EXCREMENT.

Now that I’ve revealed mine, I want to know: what are your goals for 2009?

(BESIDES NEVER MISSING A DAY OF YESTERTIME, OBV.)