17 Weeks –
I had to go into Babies R Us yesterday in order to buy a baby shower gift for a friend as I have many times before in the past. However, this time, as I looked over the giant list of things she had registered for, it began to dawn on me. I, too, am having a baby – and babies need things. LOTS OF THINGS. Diapers, cribs, strollers, bottles, high chairs, swings, bedding, special soaps, powders, little clothes… the list goes on and on and on! It’s mind boggling! How are we going to buy all of these things? (And not only that, where are we going to PUT all of these things in our tiny two bedroom house that’s already at its bursting point?) I had to quickly buy something and run out of the store before I melted into a quivering puddle of panic in the middle of a Graco stroller display.
Have I mentioned that we also need to buy a new car before the baby is born? Otherwise we’ll be taking our newborn home from the hospital strapped to the roof of my VW Bug and I doubt that will win us any parenting points. And to think that we eventually want to buy a house, too? In CALIFORNIA! HA! Where on earth will all this money come from? As my father always said, money doesn’t grow on trees (even though I’ve fervently begun to pray that it will). Everything I think about now as far as the baby is concerned has dollar signs attached to it and to be quite honest, it’s really starting to FREAK ME OUT.
Wednesday, September 29, 2004
Tuesday, September 21, 2004
Why Women Take So Long in Public Restrooms
My mother emailed me this story and I thought it was so funny that I just had to share:
My mother was a fanatic about public bathrooms. When I was a little girl, she'd take me into the stall, teach me to wad up toilet paper and wipe the seat. Then, she'd carefully lay strips of toilet paper to cover the seat.
Finally, she'd instruct, "Never, NEVER sit on a public toilet seat. Then she'd demonstrate "The Stance," which consisted of balancing over the toilet in a sitting position without actually letting any of your flesh make contact with the toilet seat.
By this time, I'd have wet down my leg and we'd have to go home to change my clothes. That was a long time ago. Even now, in my more "mature years, "The Stance" is excruciatingly difficult to maintain,especially when one's bladder is full.
When you have to "go" in a public bathroom, you usually find a line of women that makes you think there's a half-price sale on Bloomingdale's underwear in there. So, you wait and smile
politely at all the other ladies,who are also crossing their legs and smiling politely. You get closer and check for feet under the stall doors. Every one is occupied.
Finally, a door opens and you dash in, nearly knocking down the woman leaving the stall. You get in to find the door won't latch. It doesn't matter. The dispenser for the new fangled "seat covers" (invented by someone's Mom, no doubt) is handy, but empty. You would hang your purse on the door hook if there was one but there isn't - so you carefully but quickly hang it around your neck (mom would turn over in her grave if you put it on the FLOOR!), yank down your pants, and assume "The Stance."
Ahhhh, relief. More relief.
But then your thighs begin to shake. You'd love to sit down but you certainly hadn't taken time to wipe the seat or lay toilet paper on it, so you hold "The Stance" as your thighs experience a quake that would register an eight on the Richter scale. To take your mind off of your trembling thighs, you reach for what you discover to be the empty toilet paper dispenser. In your mind, you can hear your mother's voice saying, "Honey, if you would have tried to clean the seat, you would have KNOWN there was no toilet paper!"
Your thighs shake more. You remember the tiny tissue that you blew your nose on yesterday - the one that's still in your purse. That would have to do. You crumple it in the puffiest way possible. It is still smaller than your thumbnail.
Someone pushes open your stall door because the latch doesn't work. The door hits your purse, which is hanging around your neck in front of your chest, and you and your purse topple backward against the tank of the toilet.
"Occupied!" you scream, as you reach for the door, dropping your precious, tiny, crumpled tissue in a puddle, and sliding down, directly onto the insidious toilet seat. You bolt up quickly, knowing all too well that it's too late. Your bare bottom has made contact with every imaginable germ and life form on the uncovered seat because YOU never laid down toilet paper-not that there was any, even if you had taken time to try. You know that your mother would be utterly ashamed of you if she knew, because you're certain that her bare bottom never touched a public toilet seat because, frankly, dear, "You just don't KNOW what kind of diseases you could get."
By this time, the automatic sensor on the back of the toilet is so confused that it flushes, sending up a stream of water akin to a fountain that suddenly sucks everything down with such force that you grab onto the toilet paper dispenser for fear of being dragged off to China.
At that point, you give up. You're soaked by the splashing water. You're exhausted. You try to wipe with a gum wrapper you found in your pocket, then slink out inconspicuously to the sinks.
You can't figure out how to operate the faucets with the automatic sensors, so you wipe your hands with spit and a dry paper towel and walk past a line of women, still waiting, cross-legged and, at this point, no longer able to smile politely.
One kind soul at the very end of the line points out that you are trailing a piece of toilet paper on your shoe as long as the Mississippi River! (Where was it when you NEEDED it??) You yank the
paper from your shoe, plunk it the woman's hand and tell her warmly, "Here, you just might need this."
As you exit, you spot your hubby, who has since entered, used and exited the men's restroom and read a copy of War and Peace while waiting for you. Annoyed, he asks, "What took you so long, and why is your purse hanging around your neck?".....
This is dedicated to women everywhere who have ever had to deal with a public restroo (rest??? you've got to be kidding!!). It finally explains to the men what really does take us so long. It also answers their other commonly asked question about why women go to the restroom in pairs. It's so the other woman can hold the broken door and hand you Kleenex under the stall.
My mother was a fanatic about public bathrooms. When I was a little girl, she'd take me into the stall, teach me to wad up toilet paper and wipe the seat. Then, she'd carefully lay strips of toilet paper to cover the seat.
Finally, she'd instruct, "Never, NEVER sit on a public toilet seat. Then she'd demonstrate "The Stance," which consisted of balancing over the toilet in a sitting position without actually letting any of your flesh make contact with the toilet seat.
By this time, I'd have wet down my leg and we'd have to go home to change my clothes. That was a long time ago. Even now, in my more "mature years, "The Stance" is excruciatingly difficult to maintain,especially when one's bladder is full.
When you have to "go" in a public bathroom, you usually find a line of women that makes you think there's a half-price sale on Bloomingdale's underwear in there. So, you wait and smile
politely at all the other ladies,who are also crossing their legs and smiling politely. You get closer and check for feet under the stall doors. Every one is occupied.
Finally, a door opens and you dash in, nearly knocking down the woman leaving the stall. You get in to find the door won't latch. It doesn't matter. The dispenser for the new fangled "seat covers" (invented by someone's Mom, no doubt) is handy, but empty. You would hang your purse on the door hook if there was one but there isn't - so you carefully but quickly hang it around your neck (mom would turn over in her grave if you put it on the FLOOR!), yank down your pants, and assume "The Stance."
Ahhhh, relief. More relief.
But then your thighs begin to shake. You'd love to sit down but you certainly hadn't taken time to wipe the seat or lay toilet paper on it, so you hold "The Stance" as your thighs experience a quake that would register an eight on the Richter scale. To take your mind off of your trembling thighs, you reach for what you discover to be the empty toilet paper dispenser. In your mind, you can hear your mother's voice saying, "Honey, if you would have tried to clean the seat, you would have KNOWN there was no toilet paper!"
Your thighs shake more. You remember the tiny tissue that you blew your nose on yesterday - the one that's still in your purse. That would have to do. You crumple it in the puffiest way possible. It is still smaller than your thumbnail.
Someone pushes open your stall door because the latch doesn't work. The door hits your purse, which is hanging around your neck in front of your chest, and you and your purse topple backward against the tank of the toilet.
"Occupied!" you scream, as you reach for the door, dropping your precious, tiny, crumpled tissue in a puddle, and sliding down, directly onto the insidious toilet seat. You bolt up quickly, knowing all too well that it's too late. Your bare bottom has made contact with every imaginable germ and life form on the uncovered seat because YOU never laid down toilet paper-not that there was any, even if you had taken time to try. You know that your mother would be utterly ashamed of you if she knew, because you're certain that her bare bottom never touched a public toilet seat because, frankly, dear, "You just don't KNOW what kind of diseases you could get."
By this time, the automatic sensor on the back of the toilet is so confused that it flushes, sending up a stream of water akin to a fountain that suddenly sucks everything down with such force that you grab onto the toilet paper dispenser for fear of being dragged off to China.
At that point, you give up. You're soaked by the splashing water. You're exhausted. You try to wipe with a gum wrapper you found in your pocket, then slink out inconspicuously to the sinks.
You can't figure out how to operate the faucets with the automatic sensors, so you wipe your hands with spit and a dry paper towel and walk past a line of women, still waiting, cross-legged and, at this point, no longer able to smile politely.
One kind soul at the very end of the line points out that you are trailing a piece of toilet paper on your shoe as long as the Mississippi River! (Where was it when you NEEDED it??) You yank the
paper from your shoe, plunk it the woman's hand and tell her warmly, "Here, you just might need this."
As you exit, you spot your hubby, who has since entered, used and exited the men's restroom and read a copy of War and Peace while waiting for you. Annoyed, he asks, "What took you so long, and why is your purse hanging around your neck?".....
This is dedicated to women everywhere who have ever had to deal with a public restroo (rest??? you've got to be kidding!!). It finally explains to the men what really does take us so long. It also answers their other commonly asked question about why women go to the restroom in pairs. It's so the other woman can hold the broken door and hand you Kleenex under the stall.
Wednesday, September 15, 2004
Ode To Cheese
15 Weeks
I’m finally starting to get rid of the nausea and for that I’m eternally grateful. But now that the nausea is gone, an intense hunger has taken its place. It absolutely amazes me how ferociously hungry I can get without any warning at all. One minute I’m sitting down minding my own business, and the next minute, if I don’t get something to eat IMMEDIATELY, I feel like my stomach is going to drown me in acid and I’m going to die a slow, painful death. (And yes, it is that dramatic!) Along with this new found hunger has come a whole host of interesting cravings. I haven’t started craving pickles and ice cream yet, but I have started an intense love affair with cheese. Cheese is a wonderful thing. You can eat it cold or hot, on top of other food or by itself, and it comes in a wide a variety of flavors and textures so you never have to get bored. You just can’t go wrong with cheese. I’m so infatuated with cheese that when I saw a truck go by with a giant picture of some cheddar cheese painted on the side, I thought to myself, “Wow, I LOVE cheese!”, and didn’t realize I had actually said it out until my husband started laughing at me. Sighhhh, he's just jealous.
I have to admit though, that it’s really hard to give myself permission to eat all this food, even my beloved cheese. Every time I step on the scale, I dread the number that I’m going to see flashing up at me, even though I know that I have to gain weight. It’s a very difficult thing for me. I’ve struggled with my weight all my life, including a bout with Bulimia, and had just finally leveled off at a weight I was happy with, and then WHAM, pregnancy happened. I have this deep rooted fear of looking like one of those rolly-polly Little People toys that wobbles from side to side around the room. Even when my doctor told me at my appointment last week that I need to gain MORE weight, I just looked at her like she was nuts. I feel like I’ve gained a ton of weight already (okay, maybe just a few pounds, but on someone as short as me, it feels like a LOT!), but I know I’m really only at the beginning of the body ballooning process. If I keep thinking this way, I’m going to feel like a whale through my entire pregnancy. Hopefully, by the time I truly start to show, I’ll be so enthralled with the growing baby in my belly that my growing body won’t be such a big deal anymore.
And now I’m off to have a piece of cheese…
I’m finally starting to get rid of the nausea and for that I’m eternally grateful. But now that the nausea is gone, an intense hunger has taken its place. It absolutely amazes me how ferociously hungry I can get without any warning at all. One minute I’m sitting down minding my own business, and the next minute, if I don’t get something to eat IMMEDIATELY, I feel like my stomach is going to drown me in acid and I’m going to die a slow, painful death. (And yes, it is that dramatic!) Along with this new found hunger has come a whole host of interesting cravings. I haven’t started craving pickles and ice cream yet, but I have started an intense love affair with cheese. Cheese is a wonderful thing. You can eat it cold or hot, on top of other food or by itself, and it comes in a wide a variety of flavors and textures so you never have to get bored. You just can’t go wrong with cheese. I’m so infatuated with cheese that when I saw a truck go by with a giant picture of some cheddar cheese painted on the side, I thought to myself, “Wow, I LOVE cheese!”, and didn’t realize I had actually said it out until my husband started laughing at me. Sighhhh, he's just jealous.
I have to admit though, that it’s really hard to give myself permission to eat all this food, even my beloved cheese. Every time I step on the scale, I dread the number that I’m going to see flashing up at me, even though I know that I have to gain weight. It’s a very difficult thing for me. I’ve struggled with my weight all my life, including a bout with Bulimia, and had just finally leveled off at a weight I was happy with, and then WHAM, pregnancy happened. I have this deep rooted fear of looking like one of those rolly-polly Little People toys that wobbles from side to side around the room. Even when my doctor told me at my appointment last week that I need to gain MORE weight, I just looked at her like she was nuts. I feel like I’ve gained a ton of weight already (okay, maybe just a few pounds, but on someone as short as me, it feels like a LOT!), but I know I’m really only at the beginning of the body ballooning process. If I keep thinking this way, I’m going to feel like a whale through my entire pregnancy. Hopefully, by the time I truly start to show, I’ll be so enthralled with the growing baby in my belly that my growing body won’t be such a big deal anymore.
And now I’m off to have a piece of cheese…
Thursday, September 09, 2004
Welcome to Your New Job
The first few weeks at a new job are never easy. You’re trying to learn your way around, remember everyone’s names, get a feel for the office culture and figure out exactly what’s expected of you all at the same time. Add being pregnant on top of that and you’ve got one exhausted person on your hands.
I also have the pleasure of having a new boss that is somewhat of a disorganized mess and I’m quickly learning that if I want to get trained in how to do things, I’m going to have to figure them out myself. I figure it’s because she’s been doing her job for 14 years now and she forgets that I don’t just know things the way she does, which is understandable, but it can definitely cause problems. Take for example this recent conversation:
Boss: Stacy, can you put this away in that black box in the U.C.?
Me: Uh, sure… what’s the U.C.?
Boss: You know, that place we were in yesterday.
Me: Which place? One of the meeting rooms?
Boss: No, the place with the black box.
Me: What black box? I don’t think you’ve shown me that yet.
Boss: Well, you can’t miss it when you get to the U.C. Gotta run to a meeting. See you in a few hours!
Okay, not the most productive conversation of my life, to be sure. What the heck was she talking about? It took me an hour of discreetly asking around to figure out that the U.C. is actually the cafeteria, but because it only has vending machines, some people call it the “Useless Café” or U.C. Once I got there and found the mysterious black box, I realized that I needed a key to get into the darn thing, which my Boss of course had forgotten to give me. Why do I have this feeling this is something I should get used to?
But wait, it only gets better….
Today, when my boss couldn’t get an LCD projector to work correctly during a meeting, she burst into tears and ran to her office while yelling obscenities (yes - OBSCENTIES!) down the hallway, and then began hyperventilating. Very professional, don’t you think? To be honest, I was afraid to ask anyone if this happens often. I’m not sure I really want to know.
Sighhhhh, new jobs are SO much fun.
I also have the pleasure of having a new boss that is somewhat of a disorganized mess and I’m quickly learning that if I want to get trained in how to do things, I’m going to have to figure them out myself. I figure it’s because she’s been doing her job for 14 years now and she forgets that I don’t just know things the way she does, which is understandable, but it can definitely cause problems. Take for example this recent conversation:
Boss: Stacy, can you put this away in that black box in the U.C.?
Me: Uh, sure… what’s the U.C.?
Boss: You know, that place we were in yesterday.
Me: Which place? One of the meeting rooms?
Boss: No, the place with the black box.
Me: What black box? I don’t think you’ve shown me that yet.
Boss: Well, you can’t miss it when you get to the U.C. Gotta run to a meeting. See you in a few hours!
Okay, not the most productive conversation of my life, to be sure. What the heck was she talking about? It took me an hour of discreetly asking around to figure out that the U.C. is actually the cafeteria, but because it only has vending machines, some people call it the “Useless Café” or U.C. Once I got there and found the mysterious black box, I realized that I needed a key to get into the darn thing, which my Boss of course had forgotten to give me. Why do I have this feeling this is something I should get used to?
But wait, it only gets better….
Today, when my boss couldn’t get an LCD projector to work correctly during a meeting, she burst into tears and ran to her office while yelling obscenities (yes - OBSCENTIES!) down the hallway, and then began hyperventilating. Very professional, don’t you think? To be honest, I was afraid to ask anyone if this happens often. I’m not sure I really want to know.
Sighhhhh, new jobs are SO much fun.
Thursday, September 02, 2004
My Deaf Husband
A funny thing happened the other day. My husband and I had just driven home from a short weekend vacation in Pasadena and had parked my little red VW bug out front. We were trying to rest a bit but our house is so darn hot (we have no air conditioning) that we were having trouble relaxing. We had just opened up the front door to try and get some air circulating when I heard a woman riding by on a bicycle yell to her kids "Slug bug!". Well, immediately, Hoby jumps up out of his chair and goes storming out of the house and starts yelling mean things at the woman as she rides away. I was totally shocked. What on earth was WRONG with him? I kept asking him what he was yelling about and all he would say was "How dare she!". Finally, I said "Honey, she only said 'Slug bug!' Haven't you ever heard that saying before? What the heck is wrong with you?!" and he gets this funny look on his face and says, "Slug bug? I thought she said 'SLUT BUG!"
At least he was defending his woman, right? Oye!
At least he was defending his woman, right? Oye!
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