Good and useless

So. I am sick. Dave got a cold last week and brought it home and, though he tried dutifully not to spread it (by staying upstairs for days at a time), I caught the damn thing.

Now, in an effort to avoid passing it to Dessa, my Mom has taken the baby for the day and I've been lazing around the house. First stop? Sleep. (Actually, first stop this morning was a quick trip to our lawyers for some paperwork required to refinance our house. I was, through sheer determination, able to get through to a loan agent during last week's "mini-run" on the banks when the fed lowered the interest rates by 3/4 of a point. There was a window of about 5 hours where damn fine rates could be found. I got me one.). Anyway. After sleep, I hit the internets for some amusement and found me some of that too.

I give you Flight of the Hamsters. It is tricky at first, then amusing, then it leads to obsession.

You have been warned.
Posted by GoddessKristin on 01/31/08 at 03:29 PM [link]

Usually I don't really like poetry, to be honest

Summer 1983

None of us remembers these, the days
When passing strangers adored us at first sight
Just for living, or for rolling down the street.
Praised all our given names, begged us to smile.
You, too, in a little while, my darling,
Will have lost all this, asked for a kiss will give one,
And learn how love dooms one to earn love
Once we can speak of it.

- Mary Jo Salter
Posted by GoddessKristin on 01/18/08 at 01:01 AM [link]

And it's your business because...?

Before we had Dessa I thought I knew what the rudest question a person could ask was. The lead-in was always the same. "Do you have kids?" someone would ask, which is innocuous enough. It's a conversation starter thing and that's OK as far as it goes. (Although I have to tell you, for the year we were trying and the months after the miscarriage it was a painful question. I got to the point where I wanted to reply, "Dunno. Ask God," but I never did because I'm actually not that nasty in person). So after they'd ask I'd have to say no, we didn't and then invariably the killer follow-up was some variation of "Do you plan to?"

And what, pray tell, business is that of yours?

There are only a few ways that can go, if you think about it. "No, we don't plan to" leads to "how come?" and then I really get annoyed because we've gone way into Nosey-ville. There's no reason to have to justify such a decision and it's rude to raise the point.

"Yes, we do," leads to "When?" which is also inappropriate, especially if, say, you're trying monthly and waiting pleaseohpleaseGodletthisbethemonth for that damn stick to turn pink, or you're having some more critical difficulties reproductively speaking. Since presumably I don't go around advertising the state of my own plumbing or my husband's, please consider that you might be stepping on some very sore toes with your queries.

Then there's always "We haven't decided yet," which makes people look at you like you've got two heads because how did you get married without knowing if, when and exactly what genders of kids you may or may not have wanted?

The day of my father's memorial, a friend of the family cornered me and very pointedly demanded to know when I was going to give my mother a grandchild. In her opinion it was high time we got on the bandwagon, especially now that my mother had lost her husband. It was the closest I ever came to hitting one of my elders. "When are you going to have kids?" is even worse than "Do you plan to?" if only because it implies that there's something very wrong with you for your childless state. First of all, there's nothing wrong with it. Nicer people than I have gone that route and been very happy there, thank you very much. Worse, consider that such a state may not be a choice - may, in fact, be exactly where the person you are haranguing does not want to be. Your helpful reminders may very well be rubbing ground glass in the face of your conversation partner, metaphorically speaking.

So I hated that whole line of inquiry.

But there's one that's even worse once you do actually become a parent. People now feel it's their job to determine my familial plans for years to come!

"Do you have kids?"

"Yes, a seven month old."

"Oh how nice! Do you think you'll have any more?"

THUD Why do they ask this? Is one not enough? Do I look like I couldn't if I wanted to? Are you going to call someone and report me? Are you worried that I am populating the planet with my seed (a legitimate but, I assure you, wholly unfounded concern)?

I have been asked this on more occasions than I can count and it never fails to trip me up. First off, I've been in a cast for 3 months and if you think that's been Sexy Time, you my friend have never been in a cast. Also? The cast? Has NOT made it easy to care for the kid I already have. The first thing on my mind has not been, "How can I make my life even more difficult than it already is, what with the inability to go up and down stairs, the dependence on everyone else and the impossibility of driving to the store for even the simplest products (at Christmas no less). Oh I know! I'll have another baby!"

You can see where I'm going here.

So... people ask if I'm going to have another baby and I am perplexed. I haven't really even considered it. I am still recovering in a lot of ways from having the one I have. And I'm completely spellbound by her so that the idea of another one... doesn't really come up.

I dunno. I suppose it's a conversation problem in the sense that some people don't know how to make conversation. I swear to God I've never asked anyone any of these questions and I never plan to. I just don't see how it's helpful. I can and do understand asking someone if I have kids but beyond that it's just not right. Why I don't, when I will, if I can... these are the sole and only concern of me and my partner. Trust me, if I want to share, I'll share. I'm good at it, when I want to be. Just ask anyone who's bought me a martini before dinner.

Just don't buy the drink and then ask about my baby plans. I'll dump the damn thing in your lap.
Posted by GoddessKristin on 01/15/08 at 03:47 PM [link]

Too Clever by Half

Hi! I'm back! And, in even more exciting news, so is my computer! Yay! Huzzah! Yippee! I am so happy to have it back that I can hardly tell you. So I will tell you about something else as words fail me regarding my joy with the computer.

Dessa is in her crib throwing a fit at the moment. I can't say as I blame her and I feel like sort of a creep right now, but this is one of those Mommy moments where you know you're doing the right thing but brother! It's a bitch to do it.

She's gotten relatively mobile for a kid who can't crawl. She scoots around on her belly (usually backwards) or pushes herself on her back by scrunching up her knees and propelling herself, head first, towards her goal. This morning we put her down for her AM nap and went downstairs. Our routine has gotten pretty predictable these days, napwise. She's gotten very good about going down drowsy, fussing for a few minutes and then drifting off to sleep. Occasionally, when she's very tired, she doesn't make a sound before she's out and then I have to go in after a few minutes and make sure she's OK because I worry like that (silent, adorable sleeping baby within 20 seconds of putting her down? Something must be wrong).

This morning, after a few minutes of quiet, I heard what sounded like the mobile being pushed. She's played with it before so we now shove it out of the way during sleep time. I asked Dave to check on her and when he did I heard him laughing so I went up to see.

The kid had been put in her crib on the lower half of the mattress. Now she'd scooted up to the other end of the crib and was playing with the buttons that turn on the mobile. Within a minute, she'd pushed the right button to turn it on.

We laughed, we marvelled, we took the requisite photo

and then... we took it all away from her.

We've been saying for weeks that we need to take the mobile down. Dessa is over 7 months old now and pretty soon she's gonna use the darn thing to pull herself up, which we can't have. We've already lowered the crib mattress because she was grabbing the mobile and trying to pull it to her mouth, so the next step had to be removing the spinning part of the mobile itself. The music box part is seperate and can stay attached to the crib for a while because it's secure. She likes the music and it's familiar so we kept that part.

But she was pissed.

All smiles and jolly while we moved the crib, took the thing apart and reattached the music box, Dessa's face crumpled into the agony only an infant's can when she looked up and realized her beloved Suessian mobile was gone. Then the screaming started. And kept up.

It took her a good 15 minutes to calm down, but she's sleeping now. I don't know if she'll remember the mobile when she wakes up.

God, I hope not.
Posted by GoddessKristin on 01/10/08 at 11:42 AM [link]