Scared of what I’m going to post???

QUICKIE:  Vincenzo and I were playing Turtle Delivery today and I pet his head.  He said, “Mom, you need to go wash your hands now.  You just touched a turtle.”
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Dooooooodzzz…I am so sorry about yesterday’s post.  I’ve never drunk-dialed before, and now I know what it feels like.  It’s not that yesterday’s post isn’t true, it’s just that when I wrote it I was feeling rather (surprise) depressed, and when I’m having one of those hours, I forget that there are actually some hours of the day–and even entire mornings or evenings–where I truly feel happy-with-a-touch-of-nausea.  I don’t want to undersell what I wrote; depression totally sucks and I am mucking through it right now; but in my depressed state I might have made my depression sound more all-encompassing than it actually is.  My house is decorated with pink feather boas for Valentine’s Day and I still live for the spit-soggy bottoms of Vincenzo’s sprinkle donuts, so I haven’t gone off the deep end yet.

I was overwhelmed by your calls, comments, and e-mails and want to thank all of you personally.  But depressed people are exempt from thank-you notes, right?  So here’s a picture of Kevin from high school.  It’s a little thanks from me to you.  I love you man!

P.S.  Wasn’t Kevin’s girlfriend HOT??!

Is this post half empty or half full?

QUICKIE: Aunt Jnet spent a lot of time playing pretend birthday with Vincenzo yesterday.  He woke up from his nap and asked, “Mom, am I four or five?”  I told him neither; he’s three.  He waited a minute, then asked, “So…was that just a pretend birthday party earlier?”
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We’ve spent so much more time at home now that I’m pregnant.  I just don’t have the energy to go to the store or set up play dates.  Staying at home has a couple drawbacks.  Vincenzo now knows what, “Mommy is feeling understimulated” means, along with the phrases “mind-numbing,” “overqualified for this game,” and “leaking spinal fluid.”

For example, his favorite game now is Turtle Delivery.  He climbs in a laundry basket; I secure him in with a bungee cord and cover him with a blanket.  I wait for the pretend mail to be delivered while contemplating the meaning of life and I am likely doing in an alternate universe at this minute until the turtle starts making noise.  I open the box, am surprised to see a turtle in the mail, and read the tag to see who it’s from.  The turtle gets out and says, “Let’s do it again.”  The whole game lasts about five minutes–the kind of five minutes usually associated with the dentist drilling a hole in your tooth.

Staying at home isn’t so bad when I’m my normal self.  Usually there’s something to stir on the stove, or I sneak in a scrapbook page, or I put Vincenzo in the stroller and walk to Starbucks.  I just don’t feel like doing any of that now.  In fact, now that we’ve stopped the cat butt-licking charts, my days don’t have any fuel to them.  I don’t know how many people reading this have ever been truly depressed, but here’s what it’s like:

I wake up at 7 and wait for it to be 8.  It finally becomes 8, so then I wait for it to be 9.  Then I wait for it to be 10, and so on.  I find ways to distract myself throughout the day but the distractions are just like rocks skipping across the top of a deep, murky, stagnant pond.  When finally it becomes night and I’m tired enough to sleep, I crawl into bed feeling like the day was a week long.  I stare at the wall and imagine myself as 90 years old, and it doesn’t feel any different than it does now.  The things that used to make me happy–cooking and fancy restaurants and going on adventures with Vincenzo and traveling and scrapbooking and romance–those just seem like gruel.  Everything I do is just a way to kill time.  And I have six more months to kill time before I can go back to being myself.

Sorry to get down on you again.  I’s just trying to be real.

Kevin gets licked

Kevin and I have been having a debate for quite some time.  I think our cat has a problem.  He doesn’t.  Finally, to settle things for all times while also proving once again that it’s impossible for Kevin to win an argument against me, I started a chart. 

Reminder: this chart was to document the cat, not Kevin.  Please note that the first column was originally titled simply “LICKS BUTT,” but Kevin started getting technical so we had to add the clarification.  The chart itself is hard to maintain as the cat spends 3.75 of its 4 waking hours under our bed, so this is a week’s worth of tallies.  As you can see, it appears he licks his badonkadonk (thank you, Internet) twice as much as his other cat parts, which is pretty amazing considering he has such a large variety of other cat parts to choose from.

But that’s not the most disturbing part of our non-scientific study.  THIS is:

For some reason, the minute you start petting Clyde, he starts licking you back.  In the middle of the night he hops on our pillows and attempts to groom our heads, even clamping down on imaginary fleas and ticks to wrangle them out.  I think he once ate a mole off Kevin’s neck.

Anyway, now I know that every fourth time Clyde licks me, he has most recently been polishing his end piece.  Buttering his biscuits.  Brown-nosing himself.

Help??

Q is for…practically nothing

QUICKIE:  My husband walked by Victoria’s Secret and saw a sign for “Underwear 75% Off!”  He couldn’t stop giggling.  *********************************************************************************************************************************************************************************************************
Q week was rather, well, quiet.  While it would have made sense to follow up P is for Princess week with Q is for Queen week, we decided to stick with something more gender appropriate.  I’m talking about quilting, of course.  Vincenzo did not pick out these squares for his quilt, nor did he put glue on them, nor did he stick them on the paper.  He did bring me the phone book to set on top it while it dried, so he gets at least partial ownership.

Vincenzo’s favorite restaurant happens to start with the letter Q, so we went there for lunch several times this week too.

Seriously.  If we want to go out for dinner and we ask Vincenzo what restaurant he wants to pick, he always answers, “QFC.”   Fortunately, he still has 15 years to broaden his horizons before prom night.  Unfortunately, I don’t think there’s much hope.

The makings of a prom king

QUICKIE:  Vincenzo to Grandpa: “I have a turtle named Nickschlopps.”
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Thank you for all the love notes yesterday, and sorry if they felt solicited.  It felt really good to get that off my chest (now in a size B!).

So most days I have to eat dinner by 4:00 because I feel so vomity/hearburny after four that I have to leave the room when Kevin so much as gets Vincenzo a milk.  But yesterday I felt well enough to go to the Keg for a baked potato at 5.  A little too early for the happy hour crew, we parked between an Oldsmobile and a Buick Century and joined everyone’s grandparents for a nice supper.

Now here’s a fun “fine dining” activity for any of you who have kids.  Pretend it’s your child’s prom and imagine you are his date.  Once you get over the fact that your prom date took you to the Keg for your special day and that he ordered chicken strips off the children’s menu, ask for a booster seat for him.  He may refuse to sit in it, but at least you get points for being the female equivalent of chivalrous.  When your prom date sticks his finger in the honey mustard sauce, makes a face, and yells, “I DON’T LIKE THIS!” look around to see if any of your friends heard.  Feel relieved that you’re at the Keg and absolutely none of your friends are here.  Try not to notice that your date is sitting on his knees, keeps lying down in the booth, and has eaten salt straight from the shaker.  And when, at the end of the meal your date crawls underneath the table and says he is a turtle and can he please have your shoes, quietly slip out of the booth and ask the waiter if he’s free for the evening.

Now go make a reservation at The Olive Garden, grab your nearest child, head out for dinner, then come back here and tell me how your faux-prom date turned out.

The inside scoop

I am so relieved to be able to write this post.  I don’t think my blog has been up to par for the past couple months, and I can finally come out with what’s REALLY been going on.  I’ll make a list and let you do the inferring.

1.  I started hating coffee
2.  I started hating all food
3.  Except salt & vinegar chips
4.  I started hating all smells, too
5.  I feel like puking all the time
6.  I spend most evenings lying on the couch, crying

Yup, I’m pregnant. 

Now before you type a congratulations, you should know that my standard answer to a cheery, “Congrats!” is, “Well, we’ll see.”  I spend a lot of my time thinking about dead babies and imagining full-blown scenarios where my baby dies.  It’s like General Hospital 24-7 inside my head.  Sometimes my baby dies of a chromosomal problem, like Angelo; sometimes of an infection; sometimes of a random heart defect; and every day of cord strangulation.  That’s the scariest one to me because there’s no way to know it’s coming, and no test can prevent it or even cue you in that something might be wrong.  It just happens, and it could happen next month or it could happen the morning I go into labor.

I am not good at pregnancy.  In fact, I suck at it.  I get sick early on and the sickness lasts until the day after I give birth.  Heartburn started up weeks ago.  I’m depressed.  I can’t cook because even the smell of an empty oven turned on gives me fits.  I don’t scrapbook; I barely exercise; I can’t rough-house Vincenzo.  I won’t go to the mall or Chuck E. Cheese or anywhere that’s not in my house because everywhere else STINKS.  And being trapped in my own house for months stinks, too.

When I went to the doctor for my 10-week appointment, it didn’t help that they decided to overrule my carefully charted ovulation calendar and declare I was only 6 weeks pregnant.  This (still) pisses me off to no end, as it means my nausea set in at 4 weeks instead of the usual 8, and also that it knocked me back to the beginning of 1st trimester instead of almost out of it.  When I went in for my 12-week appointment this week, I felt like I was pleading my case to a grand jury–I brought even more evidence this baby is more cooked than they say, but the doctor wouldn’t budge.  I think I’ll bring a lawyer to my next appointment.

The good news is that she said that they’re going to “pull the plug” on the baby at 39 weeks due to a blood clotting condition I have.  That’s great news to me because I feel like as long as the baby is in my body, his or her life is in constant danger.

Anyway, I do want to issue a huge apology to anyone reading this who is trying to get pregnant–especially if you’re having trouble.  I know you’d trade places with me in a heartbeat and I should be grateful, and deep down I am.  The problem is that for me, pregnancy does not equal baby.  It does equal sickness, depression, strain on my marriage/family, and did I mention depression?  But I just can’t physically crack a real smile until, if I’m lucky, I am holding my own newborn baby this August.

So sorry if my blogs haven’t been up to par.  I just need to get a few more of these Eyore posts out of my system and I’m sure I’ll be back.  Thanks for bearing with me!  (No pregnancy pun intended.)

P…P…P…what begins with P?

QUICKIE: Vincenzo: “Mom, what shape are Oreos in?”  Me: “Circles.”  Vincenzo: “When will it be circle week?”
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It was P week, and to the great disappointment of some of my readers (you know who you are) and of my husband, we did not focus on a certain part of male anatomy all week.  At least, not anymore than usual. 

We started off with an indoor picnic where we ate peanut butter, peanuts, pistachio pudding, and potato chips.

Later we made pudding paintings, and as I used chocolate pudding, at first glance one might guess the paintings were made from something else that starts with P.  We actually did make poop paintings later in the day, but we used them for thank-you cards so I don’t have any pictures.

In less crude news, Vincenzo actually did his art project independently and without complaint this week!  Never mind that it was clearly a Special Ed kind of project where he just put polka dots on a paper–my son is an ARTISTE.  And he still has all his fingernails.

Like father, like son

QUICKIE: Vincenzo had a friend over for lunch, and she took a minute to scratch her bum.  Ever the gracious host, Vincenzo started scratching his own bum and said something like, “Every time I eat I have to scratch my bottom too.”
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Despite my public ridiculing of my husband’s effeminate tendencies, I noticed last week that he changed out his standard “Irish Spring Soap for Straight, Burly Men” for the “Dove Body Bar for Sensitive Skin and People Who Menstruate.”  That female brain book really messed him up.  So I bought him a new one to read.

This should help him with the inner struggle he’s having as a working dad who has to leave his child at home with his wife all day, in a society where men are supposed to do it all and have it all, and to do it all and have it all in size 32 jeans.  Talk about unrealistic expectations.

You know how kids pick up on their parents’ habits?  Well Vincenzo spent an evening playing Sleeping Beauty with his friend, and the next night he watched a movie about princesses that immediately became his favorite movie.  He laughed so hard he nearly fell off the couch a couple times, and Kevin and I commented that he must be watching a completely different movie than we were.  Afterwards we realized he had watched a different movie when he told his grandparents he had watched “Princess Diarrhea.”

The evening ended with this conversation:

Vincenzo: Daddy, will you play robots with me?
Kevin: Sure.  Am I a robot?
Vincenzo: No; you’re the princess.

Switching cable companies

QUICKIE: Vincenzo, out of the blue yesterday: “Daddy, would you like a little rub from Mommy?”
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I consider myself a well-educated and fairly smart person.  I know a lot about a lot of things.  Ask me to recite Maslow’s hierarchy of needs: no problem.  Want me to conjugate “You stink” into the pluperfect tense in Spanish and I’m there.  Want to know the difference between a roux and a bechamel sauce?  I’m your girl.

But ask me where the cable card is or where the cable jack is or if the downstairs TV even has cable and the most response you might get out of me is a string of drool.  As the two installers walked around my basement looking for a cable jack I decided it would be polite to help them.  So I nosed behind couches and the piano until I finally had the nerve to ask, “And how will I know if I’ve found what we’re looking for?”  I hadn’t felt so dumb since the time in high school when a cop pulled me over for a burnt out taillight and I asked sweetly, “Can you show me which ones are the taillights?”

The good news is the guys figured it out on their own and we can now watch channel 1,951 in the comfort of our own home.  It’s tough; channels 1,717 and 996 are also so good!

I’m wondering: is it harder or easier to be famous in today’s world, when there are approximately 1,951 separate shows playing on TV at any given moment?  By sheer statistics, I’ve probably already been on TV a handful of times without even knowing it.  It’s funny, though; I don’t feel famous…

Show me your unicycle

We saw the Peking Acrobats last weekend but I didn’t take pictures and therefore have nothing to say.  Except that when the one chick was balancing 4 tiers of wineglasses and 16 lit candles from a bite plate in her mouth while climbing up a ladder, I kept wanting to pull the fire alarm, just to break up the tension in the room.  Then I noticed her assistants in the wings looking like this and changed my mind.

(I have no idea where the bra came from.)

One act involved a guy trying to chop two bricks in half with his head.  He rammed his head into those bricks full-force, only to bounce backwards without having broken a thing.  I used to teach junior high English, so I know just how he felt.

The show was 2 hours long.  During the first hour, a dozen girls came out twirling 10 plates on long sticks while contorting their bodies and I thought, “WOOOOWWWWW!  That’s impossible!”  During the second hour I knew I had become desensitized when a guy got 30 plates spinning all at once and I turned to my husband with an I-could-totally-do-that look on my face.

All mockery aside, the Peking Acrobats are a blast and a half and you should all go buy tickets.  If that’s not feasible then you should all sit around feeling guilty that you haven’t bought tickets yet.  I will leave you the same way the Peking Acrobats left me: with a girl riding a unicycle atop a parasol being twirled by some guy.

(Sorry; apparently Windows Live Search doesn’t have any such image, but this squirrel pops up when I search for “unicycle + parasol image.”)