I had another post all lined up until I saw these pictures my son took with my Canon EOS. While it’s a pretty-dummy proof digital (I also have the 35mm version), my son apparently doesn’t need the the help. Maybe it’s because I have a hard time overcoming the innate part of me that thinks everything should be squared off while he just puts the camera to his eye and snaps the picture just as he is, just as the subject is. Of course, anything my son can do that doesn’t involve the mind-numbing Nintendo DS or the Wii is genius.

A few weeks ago, I read this news story about a woman whose daughter became a victim of international parental kidnapping 12 long, harrowing years ago in which time she hasn’t seen her little girl since:

Janet Greer can remember with devastating clarity the day that her 3-year-old daughter, Sarah “Dawsha” Elgohary, was supposed to return from a weekend visit with her father. And when Sarah didn’t show, she remembers the exact moment when she realized the child’s father, Greer’s Egyptian ex-boyfriend, had stolen the child away from her.

“Right then, I knew my life was over. I knew he had her. I fell down on the ground. I fell down, because I knew she was gone,” Greer told “Good Morning America” before beginning to cry uncontrollably, just as she had that day. Greer’s ex-boyfriend, Magdy Elgohary, had, without a word, taken the girl to live in Egypt.

She has kept every one of Sarah’s toys but cannot bear to look at them. Her little girl may not even speak English anymore, she said.

“I didn’t see the baby teeth come out. I didn’t see the first day of school. I didn’t do Mother’s Day. Nothing, nothing at all,” she said. “He took that all from me, and he robbed it from her too. He robbed her of her mother.”

It breaks your heart, doesn’t it? If you are a parent, imagine what you would feel if your child was taken from your side and moved to another country where you probably could never see them again. The country’s political system does nothing but throw out red-tape and excuses. They may even cite “what’s best for the child” as a reason to not reunite the mother with her child.

Guess what?

It happens here in the U.S. as well.

Last week the Nebraska Supreme Court ruled that Maria Luis, an illegal immigrant from Guatemala, should not lose custody of her children after she had her rights as a parent terminated when she was deported back to Guatemala in 2005 . . . WITHOUT her children, an infant girl and a then 6 year old boy:

In Luis’ case, the Supreme Court said it was not enough for the state to argue that the children would have fewer opportunities in Guatemala. The state also had to prove that Luis was an unfit parent — a burden the court said the state had not met.

The record showed that the state made no efforts to reunify Maria and the children, largely because the State Department of Health and Human Services “thought the children would be better off staying in the United States,’’ the court said.

“But so long as the parent is capable of providing for the children’s needs, what country the children will live in is not a controlling factor in determining reunification.”

Again, I imagined myself in that situation. My son is 7 and of course ZGirl is still just a baby. After five years, my son might still know me. My daughter? She not only wouldn’t know me, but she certainly wouldn’t be affectionate towards me. She wouldn’t understand me as she would speak a different language. I would miss seeing XBoy grow into a young man. I wouldn’t have experienced my daughter’s first laugh, first steps, learning to skip…just IMAGINE it, that total sense of loss would be perpetuated every day you were apart as well as every day after you were together. These little strangers you had loved all your life who may never love you back.

How could this have happened? The foster system will give every allowance possible to a biological mother and/or father  who breaks every agreement, every promise, even the law, just so that the system can do “what’s best for the child”, which is reunification with the bio parent(s); and yet it was this same system who on their high-and-mighty moral pedestal believing that any third world country’s mother simply could not be better than one of our own born and bred citizens of this United States of America acting as a foster parent.

The state’s argument? the children’s American foster parents could give them a better life than they would have in Guatemala.  

We are so fucking full of ourselves, aren’t we? Somehow automatic lawn sprinklers, disposable diapers and video games trump a the bio mother who fought the State of Nebraska for five years to get them home to be with her and her two older children. And hell yeah, she beat the big boys and will be (if it hasn’t happened already) reunited with her children.

She is said to be ecstatic about their final return, but will her broken heart ever heal after having her children ripped away from her at so young an age for so long? In Echoing Greer’s statement in regards to what her ex-boyfriend did to her, the state and the system’s overinflated by ego robbed these children of their mother. Care to guess who will pay the ultimate price for a county judge’s original ruling – no doubt based on prejudice and little else? It’s sickening and probably no one on behalf of the state learned a damned thing.

After drafting what feels like a dozen posts (OK, just 7) about that fun topic secondary infertility with all kinds of emotionally charged nonsense and lame attempts at woe-is-me blithering, I’m instead going to share a couple of my blogging observations…and then the blithering.

• The majority of primary infertility (PIF) blogs I began reading in 2005 did finally become pregnancy, and even parenting, blogs.
• Ironically, most of them went from PIF to oh-my-god-I’m-pregnant-with-baby-number-two-and-junior-isn’t-even-one-yet blogs.
• Of the minority that did not, and are still blogging, they are now blogging about how they finally now “get” what shit secondary infertility is.
• Of those not still blogging after having their first baby, I’ve received a smattering of emails telling me they finally “get” what shit secondary infertility is.
• Bloggers who are blogging through PIF, and who even occasionally stop by – or use to –occasionally let it slip that SIF isn’t infertility at all.

I encountered the latter attitude in small doses when I started blogging four years ago. There was probably way more, but I made sure to surround myself with either those who were going through SIF or who made a genuine attempt to understand what we were going through.

But what happens when someone you hold in high regards – and have for over two years – and is going through PIF, and told you that they felt that many of the emotions and experiences you were going through were so similar to theirs that they realized that the “secondary” was for the most part, irrelevant, and could appreciate that SIF pretty much sucks, too; but then they end up posting something that basically scoffs the idea that anyone who has one child could even be infertile??

Well that’s what happened over a month ago and it’s been eating at me ever since. I left a very diplomatic comment (me?? I know!) about it and I was surprised I didn’t get a response. One could say in their defense that maybe they didn’t notice (this blogger is rather popular and had a bunch of comments on the post which wasn’t actually about SIF or PIF at all), and basically that’s what I thought so I went back to the post to reread it, to see if I had misunderstood, or maybe to find a reply via comments – you know, like I do – and the post had been edited to remove the reference that inspired this post.

I guess that’s why it’s taken me so long to write AND publish a post since it has no real point, no real reference and serves no purpose whatsoever except allow me to gripe about a blog, because according to some people I do happen “to enjoy it a bit too much.”

And here this paragraph starts 24 hours later than the prior paragraphs and I wonder all over again why is it I’m upset by this? My pain is my pain; your pain is your pain; why don’t we call the whole thing off…

Yes, there are different degrees to infertility, and it only really becomes relative when we read about how our situation is somehow minimized. If I said that you’re not really infertile if you can get pregnant on your first cycle of clomid, then any one of you that did get pregnant on your first cycle of clomid would take offense – or at least you should, because YOU owned that experience and pain, I didn’t. I have no idea what toll that took on you emotionally. I shouldn’t judge, but it’s seriously hard not to, if next to impossible for me. However, if nothing else, I know what infertility was…AND IS. It shouldn’t matter if I have one or five kids. I’ve cried more over the past four years than I have in all the years leading up to it, so yeah, I get a little pissy when I think someone might be making light of SIF.

Infertility scarred me very deeply and left an enormous swath of bitterness that I really want to heal. I get close. I tell myself that I don’t have to be miserable or defensive anymore. I don’t have to read infertility blogs anymore. I don’t have to blog anymore. So why do I?

I have so many things here to say and I’m running out of time and energy to say them. I don’t care about standing on the soap box as much as I use to. I give it a try occasionally (like with this post), and once I step up on it, the view is not as good as it use to be and the wood is soft and creaky from being left outside in the rain, and those willing to listen are there for the free punch.

*end metaphor*

**end blithering**

***end post***

Our rabbit, Potter, lives in a large cage – a rabbit run, if you will – and has a covered hutch inside of it that he sleeps in. Every couple of days (or once a week if you are me), the hutch needs to be cleaned out since it doubles as his outhouse.

The other day, I made an unpleasant and very odd discovery when I lifted the lid off his hutch.

On top of the straw, just inside the little doorway, was a dead baby bird.

Granted, above the cage, there is a robin’s nest, so you can easily deduce where the bird came from. For whatever reason, it had fallen out of the nest and into the rabbit’s cage. It would have easily dropped through the wire on top but was prevented from falling through to the ground by the much smaller spaced wiring used on the floor of the cage.

But that’s where it gets odd. You see, the baby bird had fallen inside of the cage. There’s no way it could have fallen into the hutch because it has a lid on it, and the cage’s lid is positioned over that. The baby bird, if it had been alive when it had fallen, also could not have crawled its way into the hutch because there’s a lip on the doorway that keeps the bedding inside the hutch. The only logical explanation for how the baby bird ended up inside the hutch is that Potter had carried it into the hutch.

I would like to believe that Potter found the distressed baby bird and some kind of instinct prompted him to take it inside his hutch to keep it safe. It’s unlikely, but heck, you never know. It wasn’t because Potter had decided to try a miniaturized version of roast duck, either, because the baby bird’s tiny body showed no outward sign of injury in the way of bites or scratches.

To me, it was a bit of a sad discovery, and really pretty irrelevant, but thought I’d share it with you anyway.

Matthew, Matthew, Mathew *shaking my head in disappointment*

You are one f-i-n-elooking specimen, but seriously? You. Is. Stoopid.

…And as anyone who’s lost a parent can tell you, when a loved one like that ‘moves on’ – after grieving, one looks for some inspiration from the loss, some lesson to learn, something constructive to take through life in their absence.”

He continued, “For me, it was a few words, that became a sort of a personal mission statement: j.k livin. Where the j is for just, the k is for keep, and there’s no g on livin’, because life is a verb.”

“…there’s no g on livin’, because life is a verb.”

What does that even mean??!

Hey, eyes over here. No matter how hard you stare, the cropped area of that picture is not going to drop.

Whatever you do, Matt, do not stop working out, and maybe, juuuuust maybe, you might want to take a break from the ol’ wacky weed.

And speaking of having gorgeous genes but limited brain function, I almost gave myself a seizure rolling my eyes after reading this about Megan Fox:

She’s quite happy to discuss drugs, sex and even flatulence but take this example of her discussing her ‘Brian’ tattoo – dedicated to on/off boyfriend Brian Austin Green.

She said: ‘I wouldn’t regret the tattoo if we weren’t together. I can always have a kid and name him Brian. There are options.’

Megan, where were you after Angelina and Billy Bob broke up??! What a brilliant suggestion! I like the way you think. *winking and tapping finger to forehead*

A final quote from an article on People.com on the latest divorce fiasco with Jon and Kate:

The couple said they would keep the Pennsylvania house they share with their kids – twins Cara and Mady and sextuplets Colin, Hannah, Leah, Joel, Aaden and Alexis – and take turns living there, and take any other measures necessary to minimize the disruption in their children’s lives.

“…take any other measures necessary to minimize the disruption in their children’s lives.”

I’m just guessing here, but I’ll bet that does not include cutting back on their show’s production. Do Jon and Kate really not know who Danny Bonaducci is? That is what the future holds for all eight of those kids.

What a couple of hypocritical narcissists.

I made tentative plans to go to BlogHer in Chicago this year. For those of you that have been living under a rock, it’s in one month exactly – July 23-25.

I booked the hotel; shopped for flights; forced myself onto a handful of other bloggers before finding one who took pity on me and agreed to allow me to shack up; and researched blogger card designs. Oh, yes, I was falling into the BlogHer line and getting pretty damn excited about it. It was to be my vacation, the first one in three long, arid years.

And then I lost my job to the body and soul snatching hospital, Faithless.

My husband said I should still go. We would make do, but out of guilt, I put any further plans on hold, hoping things would normalize.

And then my FIL got a wild-hair up his ass and made plans to visit his brothers in New England. My husband would have to be his chaperone/nurse maid. Guess what weekend they chose?

So I turned over my reserved hotel room where the convention was being held, to Aurelia. Apologized profusely to her for leaving her high and dry and sleeping solo. Fate was telling me, “DD? You and BlogHer weren’t meant to be this year.” Like the past three years, actually.

And then my FIL had surgery on his leg. His obesity and failure to follow the doctor’s instructions lead to complications, including a nasty viral infection. My husband, who also started making tentative plans for that weekend, doubted that he’d be making the trip. FIL insisted: yes, dammit, we are still going!

And then!…one of FIL’s brothers ended up with his own scheduling conflict. The weekend of the 25^th was officially OFF the table. The announcement came this past weekend.

And THEN???

Oh, hell, I don’t know. Shit. You fill in the blank. I just don’t have the energy.

What XBoy said: Today dad’s the boss since it’s Father’s Day.

What I heard: Mom is the boss the other 364 days, so let’s give dad a pity day.

Yes, this was me. 12 years ago today. Yes, this was intentional. If you knew how thin and fine my hair is, you’d realize that this is nothing short of a godalmighty miracle, getting my hair to look like a lion’s mane.

It also ended up in a the much quieter and simplier updo for our wedding a few hours later. You can refer to the past posts regarding my wedding here, and here, and of course, here.

Some of you have known me for almost four years now. Some of you are new here. How ever long you’ve known  me, you certainly can appreciate the patience and love and ultimately, the thick skin, it takes to put up with me every day, all day, for not just the twelve years of marriage, but the additional five years it took for me to get him down the alter.

Especially when there are days I wake up looking like that, WITHOUT the help of professional.

Happy Anniversary, Mr. DD. I love you more than ever.

Mr. DD is the hardest working person I know. Bar none, as the saying goes. Yes, I have (and will continue to do so) complained about his inability to shut cabinet drawers and doors; wring out a dish rag; throw his clothes into the hamper instead of dropping them on the floor, but none of those things are because he’s “lazy” per se. Just bad habits.

He’s also very methodical when it comes to doing the job right. Prep and carry through on step A correctly and step B will be easier and step C will be easier still. It’s why he’s so good at his job at auto-body repair and painting.

Now if you have just an inkling of the type of person he is, take that to the nth degree. That’s Mr. DD.

We have been on the lookout for an old shed to move to our property to use as my gardening getaway. Sure, we could build one, but I want something that has rustic character. Something that wasn’t perfect. I want weathered paint, old wood, Character. A couple weeks ago, my husband received a call from a friend who was razing some dilapidated houses in town, and did Mr. DD want one of the detached garages? If so, move it and it’s yours. You bet!  My husband responded.

It was a one car garage approximately 12×21. It would easily park the old golf cart that had been converted into my garden mule and implements of destruction as well as a plethora of pots, garden art (minus a garden gnome, yet to be acquired), and boxes and tubs of poisonous fertilizers, weed killers and slug bait. All these things were taking up space in the garage, his shop and our basement. With them spread out like that, it makes it hard to find something when I need it. Don’t even ask me how many hose sprayer attachments I have (six, seven, maybe?).

After inspecting and subsequently approving it for structural integrity, Mr. DD set to work on getting my future gardening shed prepped for its move from cracked and warped foundation to its new one on our property.

He bought a pickup truck-bed full of lumber: 12×2s and 4×2s and nearly 100 lag bolts. He rented a roll-off as he decided it would be best to strip the building of all its nasty sheetrock and useless rolled insulation. He would spend every night after work stripping the walls and filling and refilling the dumpster; jacking up its four corners so he could get a sawzall to cut the nails and bolts that originally secured the building down; and finally creating a support structure that a trailer could be backed under in order to lift the building in whole and release it forever from its foundation.

For two weeks this went on. He was too tired by the time he got home at night to eat supper. He barely saw XBoy and ZGirl during that time as they were usually in bed an hour or more before he’d walk through the door. He wanted to make sure that everything he did was perfect. He didn’t want anyone to get hurt because he took a shortcut. He was so worried about safety, that he didn’t even want me to follow him in my van with the kids when it came time for the actual move, for fear that we might be the ones that something would happen to.

He drove the route several times to make sure there were no low hanging trees, no electrical wires. He took the flattest and least traveled streets. He called the county to get the permits. He called the city for an escort inside city limits. He called on his friends to be his escorts outside of city limits. And finally earlier this week, the move was on.

I imagined how I would arrange all my stuff. My. Stuff. The way I wanted it – on the walls. Finally, my shop, while much smaller, would be ALL mine.

I stopped in town with the kids to take a picture of the garage before its move, went out to eat with them and before heading home, detoured off to the planned route Mr. DD was taking to see the progress.

Oddly, I did not encounter him. I didn’t think we had eaten that fast or that he’d be traveling that slow…but since I had received no phone call from him indicating otherwise, I assumed all was well and headed back home to wait for him there.

Over an hour later, he still was not home. I was dying to call him, but knew he’d never hear the phone if he was sitting on the tractor he was using to haul the trailer.

Finally, my phone rang. It was Mr. DD and he said, “You won’t be getting a free garden shed after all,” and silence. My first thought was that he was ticketed and handsomely fined for some kind of improper permit detail. Oh how I wish.

He went on, “We didn’t get five blocks away. I was going through the intersection and it had a small dip in it. The back end of the building was ripped off when it bottomed out on the depression.”

He went on to explain how he had to cut away what was dragging as the city police refused to let him continue on, and rightfully so. His friends used the chains to reinforce the straining walls enough to keep it safely on the trailer. They picked up the debris the street. And then they returned to the start of their all too short trip and set the now leaning and collapsing garage back onto its original foundation.

When he finished telling me all that had happened, his voice was cracking. He wasn’t near tears. He was in tears. All that work and time, utterly wasted. The time he could have spent with XBoy and ZGirl. Time he could have spent in the back yard when the soil was dry, but now saturated with a week’s worth of heavy rains. The money frittered away on lumber and supplies and rentals, while not excessive, was enough to add insult in injury. He was – he still is – gutted.

No, there is no way to salvage it. In fact, we were surprised that the morning after a nasty thunderstorm with strong winds and hail went through, to find it was still standing. Probably because of all the reinforcement Mr. DD put in it but was unable to recoup safely.

And next week he scheduled his vacation with plans to pour a foundation and setting the shed permanently in its new home. This, he had told me, was to be my anniversary and birthday gift . . . and now?

And now, I told him, you can take a week off and do what YOU want to do and if that’s nothing? then do nothing. I remind him that yes, while it sucks what happened, I am so very grateful that neither he nor anyone else was injured, even though his pride and confidence took a heavy beating. Letting him take the time off without throwing a list of honey-dos a mile long will be my gift, my much too small and insignificant gift compared to what he was trying to do for me, to him.

Some days it hits me like a bolt from the blue that we administer a controlled substance daily to my son. A drug that addicts have killed for – have died for. Methylphenidate, the active ingredient in his patch, produces many of the same effects as cocaine or the amphetamines.¹

It was one of many reasons we were reluctant to start XBoy on meds in the first place. The side effects, like most drugs, can be frightening and it amazes me that so many kids are on ADHD and ADD drug therapies. I would think many parents would decide against it for fear of those affects.

It’s easy to forget and to take lightly the fact that we keep a dangerous and addictive drug in our home (yes, it is locked up and away from both kids), especially since it’s kept in such an innocuous form like the patch. It’s not injected. It’s not swallowed. It’s just a matter of peeling off the plastic layer and sticking it to his skin. Bu sometimes we are careless. Sometimes I find a tiny triangle of that plastic on the floor. Just the right size, and oh so tempting piece of shiny for ZGirl to pick up and put in her mouth. I don’t know how much residue is on it, but when your doctor and the drug company specifically warn to wash hands after handling, it’s enough to be measurable.

XBoy experiences many of the common side effects from the patch. When we first started the therapy, he was an emotional wreck. For example, he would cry if there were only 3 pickles instead of 4 on his hamburger. His teacher called us in to meet with her after his first week of treatment to discuss how he teary and sad he’d been recently. It was only then that we told her about starting him on the drug as we didn’t want him to have that stigma – just another kid on Ritalin. Keeping it from his teacher allowed us to find out if there was a change in his behavior without anyone suspecting why.

He has since adjusted to the dosage, and while we still find he overreacts on occasion, he’s better. Now my concern has focused from his emotional response to the physical. Last year at this time I was worried about his sudden weight gain between his 6 year check-up and the first time I took him to the ped to discuss his behavior, which was almost 10lbs in six months. The clothes I had bought for school were too tight even before he wore them once. In August I was scrambling to find him uniform-wear in husky. And by the time he was weighed by the school, he was up 14lbs to the grand total of 64lbs. He peaked at 65lbs, which we discovered when he started wrestling and had to weigh in. It was also when he started his meds. That was January.

It is the beginning of June, which means he’s been on the daily patch for a solid four months. The other day he came to me and complained that he now weighed only 58lbs after using our bathroom scale, and frankly, that scares me.

I knew he was losing weight. Pictures from last summer show a round, full face. He sported a bit of a “pot” belly in his swim trunks. He was squeezing on his favorite pair of sweatpants. Now? The belly is gone. His collar and shoulder bones are prominent. He is not gaunt, but thinned out considerably. He’s still in a normal weight range for boys his age and height, but for how long?

In the morning, when he doesn’t want breakfast – “I’m not hungry!” – it takes all my willpower not to say, “If you don’t want to lose any more weight, you’ll need to eat breakfast!” since I can only imagine that since he’s already suffering from a chemical imbalance that produces ADHD, he would be just that much more susceptible to experiencing an eating disorder of some kind or another. So I say nothing, but encourage him to at least drink a glass of milk. Paranoia is my master in parenting decisions, apparently.

It’s not like his eating habits have drastically changed. He definitely doesn’t eat as much, but the kid could really put it away a year ago and of course then I worried that he was eating too much. But I watch more carefully when he takes his plate to the sink with food still on it. I don’t grouse as much when he asks for a treat (a brownie, chips, candy, etc.) because I welcome the chance for him to put calories – even empty ones – into his body.

I worry to the point of going sleepless about what will happen in a year knowing that he will still be on meds. I worry about the future in five years; ten years from now. Many kids “outgrow” ADHD. Will he? What if he doesn’t? What long-term emotional affects will he have from a decade of stimulant use? What about the physical? I’ve had family and friends wave away my concerns like I’m making a big deal of out nothing. “Lots of kids have ADD/ADHD,” they say dismissively. I always find it funny how the ones who tell me this don’t. 

¹ http://www.usdoj.gov/dea/concern/methylphenidate.html

This is our house (pix from two years ago, before our “yard” was in). I think it’s rather nifty.

It sits smackdab in the middle of 10 acres (OK, a bit towards the southern property line, just in case any of you ever visit and decide to split hairs with me).

My husband’s “shop” was constructed towards the northern property line. There’s a line that runs between the house and shop: the lane.

Everything on THAT side of the lane is husband’s.

Everything on THIS side of the lane is mine.

So as a favor to a co-worker to Mr. DD’s BIL, he offered up HIS bit of property to “store” a POS Chevy truck (redundant) over the winter. Store, as in park the obnoxious garbage next to the shop. I bitched and moaned, but finally a compromise was struck, yes, he may park it, but it better be gone by spring (April).

It’s June and while the POS has been moved from one side of the shop to the other so he could mow, it is still here on HIS side of the property, but only barely.

I called the BIL myself and told him that his buddy needed to get the truck by the end of June or I’ll  have it towed away under the guise of unclaimed property, regardless of cost to me. Don’t care.

Two days later, the buddy calls Mr. DD and says he’ll be over to get the truck. You have the spare key, right, he asks, because he can’t find his. Mr. DD replies that yup, sure do, just moved it.

Guess what Mr. DD can’t find since he moved the POS?

DAMMIT.

I’m just waiting for the day I wake up and a band of rednecks have decided to squat on HIS side and celebrate with a case of Schlitz, funyuns, and pickled eggs after they throw a crappy couch in the bed of the truck to sleep on.

Mr. DD will be joining them.

I wonder if this can be supersized for my van?

I also wonder if this can be shipped in time for a one year old’s birthday party next month. Take that and put it in your skull bong and smoke it, Cozy Coupe.

Thanks, Picture Is Unrelated – WTF Pictures!

I’m going to try to make this as succinct and as uncomplicated as I possibly can. However, you know me, and I probably will fail miserably.

Last weekend, I took XBoy to see the Pixar movie, Up in 3D. Loved. It. Loveditloveditlovedit.Yes, so did XBoy, but just so you know, I personally enjoyed it for me. If you saw the movie and you also loved it, please do not read the rest of this post. Trust me, OK? If you haven’t seen the movie, and you don’t want to find yourself focusing on one ten second – at best – part of the movie, please do not read the rest of this post.

This past week I’ve seen a couple of posts in passing about the movie, and mommy bloggers are giving it rave reviews…almost.

This is what Maria Young at Blogher wrote after seeing it:

I adored the movie. It celebrates life and love and adventure. There was one thing in particular about the film, a piece of the silent vignette spanning the relationship of Carl (who’s seen during the previews as the crotchety old man) and his love Ellie that made me go ‘huh? in a kid’s movie? who approved that?!’ but it went over my children’s heads as I’m sure it did most kids’.

I had a good inkling of what she was referring to, but waited until someone would give it away in the comments. Someone ALWAYS does.

And lo!

Momtrolfreak* included in her comment:

I totally cried though. Especially during the miscarriage part? Seriously, who greenlighted that?  

and then she included a link to where she did a movie review for Momicillin* and expanded that thought with this:

In keeping with the longstanding Disney tradition of RIPPING YOUR HEART OUT AND STOMPING ON IT (Bambi, Dumbo, Lion King, Nemo) UP includes the longest flashback montage everrrrrrrr of the entire life of a sweet married couple, which culminates in the funeral of the wife. It includes what I believe to be (I am not kidding here) the first ever miscarriage portrayed in a children’s film. We see the young couple dreaming of babies. Then decorating a nursery. Then in an exam room—wife in chair, face buried in hands— while the doctor speaks to them, shaking his head.  Sweet fancy bananas, I thought, please oh please don’t let my kid ask what is going on right now. (He didn’t.)

But wait! There’s more! Maria was full of all kinds of juicy links. Another one was to Motherhood in NYC*where Marinka wrote:

So, I’m watching this movie and give me a fucking break, Pixar. We have to deal with a miscarriage in the first ten minutes? I mean, they’re children. Why not have a few rape/torture scenes too, while you’re at it, you know, to build momentum?

In the comments?

I also thought the infertility thing was an outrage and it pissed me off. Then I was crying 2 minutes later cause of the end of that little life vingette.

Wow.

Just…wow.

Who knew having a miscarriage was so…offensive? So…disgusting and ugly and ironically, so child- and family-UNfriendly, whereas (spoiler alert) the old man falling to his death from his dirigible after his failed attempt to cut the old hero in two with a sword was perfectly sanitary; or when the dogs acting as their master’s minions burst out, sharp fangs and all, towards the audience so abruptly in one scene (remember, 3D) that I heard a little kid start screaming in fear and crying inconsolibly a few rows up from us? Yep. Those are scenes of pure family-fun entertainment!

You know what I saw when they played the couple’s vignette (spoiler alert) and the doctor is with the couple in his office and the woman is distressed? I just thought to myself that he’s explaining how, sadly, the couple weren’t going to be able to have children. That’s how I would have explained it to my seven and a half year old son if he were to ask, which he didn’t. An educational opportunity, really. It’s not like there was any inkling of realism during the scene: no cartoon feet in stirrups; no soulless ultrasound tech holding a condom covered wand; no grainy ultrasound of a baby with no heartbeat. Yep. It was totally unrealistic compared to my four experiences.

Now I’m offended.

*Apparently all mommy bloggers must have to have the moniker “mom” in their blog names. Maybe I should change mine to “Mama Said Knock You Out”, which would keep me in line with my completely irrelevant boxing theme.

PS: I rarely ever, EVER, step on another blogger’s toes openly, but given where I am right now emotionally? Fuck’em.

I think a lot about how far Mr. DD, XBoy and myself have come over the years. I am so focused on ZGirl, the here and now, that thinking of the past makes me wonder, did I really think or say that? All I have to do is go to my archives for proof.

Here’s a post from 2006 when I took some time off from work to purge our storage of all baby items that we had held onto with the assumption we would have another baby. It’s important that you go read it and the comments with it.

I did save those dinosaur pajamas. I couldn’t bear to part with them. My daughter is wearing them this very second, asleep in her crib. That’s her in an earlier picture on the left. A picture of XBoy is in the link.

I’m having a difficult time explaining how it makes me feel to see her in them. Yes, of course joy since it means that all those years we waited for it to be our turn once again, came; but I also feel a bit of heartache since I know that in just a couple of months she will have outgrown it as well and I’ll have to wash it and fold it for the last time. Sure I can save it for the ages it will take for me to maybe become someone’s grandmother, but will it survive another 20 years?

My meloncholy mood was significantly deepened when I read the comments.

Kath was still waiting to stay pregnant for the first time back then. Now? She’s had baby girl #2.

K&M’s blog is gone. She’s reinvented herself in a new pwp blog after the birth of her son.

Angela’s blog is gone, but she stops in occasionally and we cross paths on facebook.

Karen, after a couple months of silence has just started blogging again. I missed her terribly.

Leggy is now Clover, but she’ll always be Leggy to me. She’s had boy/girl twins since then.

Baggage has noticeably been absent here, but I also see her updates on facebook.

Kellie stops in still, and I am grateful for her continued presence.

Donielle…she had a blog, but it is also long gone. I haven’t heard from her in ages.

Julie. I feel my heart constrict a bit when I think of Julie (Sisyphus) because I miss her soooo much.

Erin has been a constant friend, but quieter now that she brought home her son from Ethiopia.

KarenPince also had a blog, which is gone now. She recently had a baby boy.

Trish. Former Nebraskan. She has a daughter who is terminally ill, but I don’t see updates from her anymore.

Cricket, who I never thought would become silent, has. She has an art blog and saw a recent update, but I haven’t heard from her since January.

Tuesday is still blogging. After her miscarriage of triplets, she had another baby boy.

Jess…I wish I could remember more about her other than she stopped blogging ages ago as well.

Josie and I non-stopped emailed each other for a while there. I even met her once, and it’s already been a couple of years ago. She finally brought home her son from Ethiopia as well just a short time ago.

Michelle is thankfully still out there. Her surprise pregnancy mirrored my own (non-surprise) with ZGirl.

Midori has gone through hell these past few years. No longer keeping a public blog but I do get to see pictures of her new life on Flickr and see updates on facebook.

Long time sista. My former best friend.

Kati stopped blogging some time ago after suffering several miscarriages during her SIF. I miss her sweet ways.

Rachel went through her pregnancy during her husband’s deployment, but she hasn’t posted in a year.

Menita, darling Menita. We also cross paths occasionally on facebook and I get a silly little zing when I see she’s checking in on me.

Catizhere. That’s all I need to say about lovely Cat. She is still here. Thank god.

Spanglish and I had a falling out, except I don’t know why.

Alli also stopped blogging about a year ago.

Jenny is now the infamous Bloggess and has left me in the dust.

Kellie from One Mother’s Journey deleted her blog years ago. I see someone else took the domain name.

Her Bad Mother also moved onward and upward.

Soralis is still blogging, but at a new site under a new name after she had her baby girl.

TB took a very long hiatus after the birth of her son over a year ago. She has posted since then, but not often enough IMO.

Nico went on to also give birth to a second son and a different blog.

Every one, not just my daughter, is growing, evolving. However, the difference between my daughter and these blogs and their owners is that she is growing up – eventually to grow away; these long lost bloggers…? Is the rate for extinct bloggers really that high, or do I need to only look in the mirror to find the answer?

Anyone else see a resemblence to Chuckie the Doll in a couple of these pictures?? Not a good look.

This is an approximate mock up of how things look when I sit down in front of my lap top. Except I really have darker bags under my eyes and not glow-in-the-dark teeth. Plus, I hope I don’t look nearly as insane in person. Photoshop is a bitch.

Have a great weekend.

Since most of us are pretty tuned into the fertility and infertility stories about the web, I’d say then that you probably have already heard/read about Elizabeth Adeney in Britain who at 66 is 8 months pregnant with her first child after seeking treatment in the Ukraine.

Full story hereor you can google it and find a wealth of blahdeblah stuff.

What I wanted to highlight was the last paragraph of this story; a quote from Dr. Allan Pacey which sums up his feelings about older women getting pregnant:

“Most people feel uncomfortable about the idea of providing fertility treatment to women beyond the natural menopause. In some ways, setting a cut-off point of 50 is arbitrary. But when you combine the welfare of the child, the health of the mother, and, indeed the ‘yuk’ factor of society, I think that is a reasonable place to end up.”

Contrary to what my husband believed when he read the quote, “yuk” refers to the “ick” factor, not the “ha-ha” factor. Obviously, a man who watches too much comedy TV.

So how’s this for Yuk:

Mel Yukson

Mel Gibson, who is 53 knocked it out with his girlfriend who is going on four months pregnant just six weeks after the divorce papers were filed. Not just yuk, but let’s add in douchy leper. Freak.

Not yucky enough?

Tony Yukdall

OK. Then there’s Tony Randall, who at 77 became a father for the first time after impregnating his 27 year old wife. For those who worry about older women not seeing their children reach adulthood, Tony’s oldest child was 7 when his dad started farting up dust.

Larry Yuking

A younger new dad was found in Larry King when he was only 67. I, however, have added exponentially a yuk factor to that union based on Larry King’s looks alone. Seriously? Who wants to look up at the ceiling’s mirrors and find that troll hunkering between your thighs? *shudder*

Nanu Yukogi

All these men are just spry young men when you look at the world’s oldest new dad. Nanu (nanu-nanu!) became a new dad at 90 back in 2007 and plans on having more babies with his oldest son’s widow well until he reaches triple digits.

So that yuk factor? Funny how it seems to apply only to women when it comes to making into a news story’s quote.

Do you ever go through a phase (or two, or twenty) where you feel as if there’s a conspiracy against your right to happiness? Or that you are self-sabotaging yourself because you just don’t know how to be happy?

I’m in that phase right now.

I think it hit when I found out that my new job wouldn’t be my new job after all.

And it’s just gone downhill from there. It’s a feeling of being displaced, I think. Of not knowing where I am or where I’m going or if I’m going anywhere at all. What I want to do more than anything this summer is just stay home with ZGirl and XBoy, but unfortunately, it’s the very last thing we can afford to do, and maybe that’s why I find it so depressing. Always with the Want-What-We-Can’t-Have syndrome, whether it was in getting and staying pregnant or playing soccer mom.

I’m also feeling disconnected from my husband, but not in the Jon & Kate way. It’s a feeling of guilt for letting him down by losing my job in the first place; by having to cancel plans this summer whether it was as grand as a family vacation or as mundane as installing the retaining wall.

Add to that the announcement this weekend that Mr. DD’s other niece is pregnant again. It’s like Dueling Uteri with my SIL’s two girls: Niece 1 pregnant. 1 year later Niece 2 pregnant. 1 year later Niece 1 pregnant again. Now another year later, Niece 2 pregnant again. How nice to enjoy evenly spaced children to fit in with your sister’s children. The news didn’t sting like it had before, but still…it’s a phantom kind of heartache.

And finally, I have acquired some new readers over the past few months that are all just a little too close to home, both literally and figuratively. At first I panicked a bit when I saw the IP address from my current employer and while it’s a bit strange to see it pop up in my stats almost daily, I’ve realized that I’m probably nothing more than a novelty factor to that person. Funny, too, that on the other hand I haven’t seen my stalker from Faithless Hospital’s IP show up in a while.

Of course, then there’s the relatives (sisters and nephew’s wife) who check in on me occasionally. Again, I was like, CRAP! and then, hmmmm – whatev.

I suppose if I could share stories about my uterus and semen analyses and sore boobs with strangers, I could share my life about a newborn, unemployment, and ADHD with friends and family, right?

I’m looking for some shoes for ZGirl (yes, even though I know she doesn’t really need them since she can’t walk and really what is the point except no girl should ever leave the house dressed to the nines without a pair of bitchin’ shoes to complete the look even if she is only 10 months old) on eBay and this morning, this ad popped up:

RIGHT SHOES ONLY…

I asked Mr. DD why in the world would someone have JUST the one shoe? And why would you EVEN try to sell it on eBay? Wouldn’t that be something more in line with Craig’s List??

So he tries to make me feel like an ass by suggesting that maybe the baby had a prosthetic and only needed one shoe.

OK, sure, but where would one go to BUY just one shoe? (Yes, obviously – eBay. Smartasses.)

And let’s say that you really do only need one shoe and you go to eBay and voila! someone has just Right shoes…why in the world would you want two RIGHT shoes of the same style where one is new and the other is used (details in ad)??

Why am I even asking you all this?

Because it’s still really early in the morning here and I’ve got no one to talk to except my shoeless baby who is wacking herself in the head with a spoon. Silly baby.

Yeah, yeah. She looks cute (or like a mini clown, which is kinda creepy in a way), yada yada yada, but the reason I’m posting this picture is BEHOLD!! It has a copyright on it!!

I did it allllllll by myself.

Yep. 10 months after my husband got me photoshop for Christmas, I actually figured one option out. I have to give props to the 1 credit course I’m taking at the local college (I won’t even go into how I want to reach across the work station and punch the kid in the neck who’s a totally obnoxious, non-stop talking, loudmouth dolt who is there only to get himself out of financial probation by taking a “pud” course).

Alright. That’s all I wanted to show you. Move along now.

Did you hear about the woman who had twins, each with a different father? The partner was concerned about the boys not looking like him so he demanded a paternity test, and then when he finds out that ONE of the twins is not his, he’s all, oh hell yeah I’m cool with being their dad I’ve been their dad since they were born.

If he was alright with being their dad, then why did he order the paternity test in the first place??

He’s only cool with it now because the birth makes her some kind of medical freak show marvel and not only the proverbial cash cow, but the literal one as well – at least for a while. And that claim to get married some day? Yeah, right. I won’t be holding my breath. At the rate she’s going, she’ll be on Baby Number 8 (she’s halfway there!), the cash flow from the hoolabaloo will have petered out and, and current partner (Baby Daddy No. 3), won’t be so willing to claim another man’s kid(s) as his own when she’s demanding child support.

Some of you may have noticed a change to my Flickr account, which I allowed previews to be displayed here on the sidebar of my blog. I’ve made the decision to set the photos specifically of XBoy and ZGirl to be more private so only my contacts via Flickr can see them.

I’m not a particularly paranoid person, especially since I’ll still post pictures here occasionally, it’s just I feel as if I have a bit more control on my blog than I did in my Flickr photostream.

There’s a couple of photos that I really like and I’ve wanted to get them printed larger to have framed. One was a picture of my husband with his sister on a beach in S.C. during our last vacation. He’s always liked it so I thought I would surprise him for our upcoming anniversary.

Flickr offers this option. I used this option. I received one of my completed orders this week. I won’t be using the option again.

Part of it is my fault as I don’t think I formatted the picture with the right dimensions so when it was blown up to an 8×10, they cropped it rather poorly, right into the subject matter, in fact.

I’ve had some success with simply taking my portable card with me to Walgreens to get prints made for my mom, but I figured that if I was using Flickr’s service, with which I have a paid account, that the final quality would be significantly better.

So, yeah, I’m disappointed and instead of anticipating my second order, which was a collage print of XBoy’s first year as a baby for my mom’s birthday, I’m already prepared to be un-dazzled. If it comes out better, and the first print was a fluke, I’ll be sure to let you know.

After a couple of weeks wondering do we or don’t we, I received a letter confirming that we would qualify for the COBRA subsidy.

This is where you can go ahead and move to the next blog in your feed because I’m going to share some information about this subsidy, and since most of you lucky bastards still either have jobs, or your spouses still have jobs or you are independently stinking-filthy rich and don’t have to worry about such trivial matters like “paychecks” and “health insurance coverage” or “shit-canning”.

I was fired in January, conveniently planned so that my first full pay period check in 2009 had been deposited, which was my way of accepting that all information for year was correct, and with the loss of my job that I had had for 9 years and 11 months, I had also lost the health insurance coverage, and any other benefits that come from a large employer, for me and my family.

At the time, the subsidy bill hadn’t been passed, so accepting COBRA benefits was not an option at $1,000 a month to continue coverage without worrying about pre-existing (specifically my asthma and XBoy’s ADHD) conditions being excluded through a private health plan. Unfortunately, at the time, independent insurance it was all we could afford so we made the appropriate steps to get signed up.

Words of warning here: if you have suddenly lost employer paid health insurance, DO NOT delay finding a replacement, whatever means necessary. After filling out stupid forms, and talking to reps on the phone to get details of our health issues, and general delays with reviews and more required signatures, we JUST got a letter from the independent insurance company that we were eligible for coverage effective at the beginning of May as they will not retro the effective dates of coverage. If this COBRA subsidy thing hadn’t happened, we would have been without coverage of any kind for 3 months, even though I was ball-rolling back in January.

It was the middle of February when the COBRA subsidy was passed by Obama. I contacted my former employer’s HR department as well as COBRA carrier for more information on qualifying and they were as useless as tits on a boar, as the saying goes. Actually, NO ONE seemed to know any details, since I was googling the hell out of it and finding nothing. The U.S. Government is great at passing shit before they have figured out how to actually make it work. Kind of like what they’ve done to Medicare.

The skinny on the subsidy is that if you lost your job involuntarily (you didn’t quit of your own accord) or you weren’t fired because of gross misconduct (peeing in the office coffee pot), you qualify for the 65% reduction to your COBRA premiums.

The sucky part is that the actual reduction in premiums didn’t become effective until February 17th, for anyone. What does that mean? If your employer requires the premium payment in monthly installments, and you have to pay a month in advance, you’ll be paying full premium until March 1^st. In my case, that meant that I only had to pay February’s full $1,000 premium, and now for nine more months, I’ll only have to pay $350.

In theory.

Since my employer was being douchey about my eligibility and delaying this and delaying that, I have already had to pay three months in full premiums. $3,000 is hard to come up with when one of the family coffers contributors is suddenly making 75% of the annual wage, which is considerably more than 0% since I was lucky enough to find temp work quickly, but still. It sucks in a limpy, cold, stinky kind of way. THAT level of suck.

So if you lost your job in September? Full premium for you until at least February, March at the latest.

For us, we’ll be riding the coattails of the subsidy through 2009, but hello! It’s already June Eve! I’m making sure that everyone gets their check-ups done, prescriptions are refilled, and that I get the most out of my reduced premiums while I can.

Right now, that’s more important than ever.

You see, this week I also found out that the position with the law office has fallen through. I wasted three months of job hunting because I hung my hat on a “sure bet”, and any bet is a gamble. I gambled and lost and didn’t hedge my bets elsewhere. I’ve got that flutter of panic deep in my guts once again since the temp position is dwindling down to a handful of weeks and I’ve got nothing but more potential temp work to fall back on. I feel like that grasshopper in the fable that failed to prepare for the harsh winter, and I’m about to get my green guts shmooshed by the fickle foot of fate.

I have another, and thankfully much shorter, PSA about Flickr to follow very shortly.

I remember at different times reading or hearing this question from parents:

How do I keep my baby still when changing their diaper?

And I always thought, wow, you’re an idiot because you’re an ADULT and the squirmy individual in question is a BABY. Good lord. You outweigh them by a good 100 lbs at least.

Remember, I’m Judgey McJudgemental, or something.

ZGirl loves being on the changing table. When she was a newborn, she could be hungry or tired or whatever crankification overcomes newborn, but once we put her on the changing table she always calms down.

But…and you knew there had to be one – or should I say – Butt…

That girl will have quite a career in wrestling if she can keep up her current physical abilities or at least, be able to wipe the floor up with XBoy when the sibling rivalry takes on a physical manifestation.

I can have her laying (lying??) on the floor in front of me for either a dressing, an undressing or a diaper change, whatever, and have a firm hold of one leg and the little snit can twist herself over to her front like she’s preparing for a wheelbarrow race before I can even position a diaper under her little behind.

I now have to snug up my legs on either side of her body so she can’t roll over. Obviously this is when the latent banshee comes out. I’ve even had to go so far as putting her down in front of me so I could position one leg over her chest while I work on the other end.

Post-bath is the worst time. Pajamas? Bitch, please! Diapers? They’re for babies pussies!! It’s Happy Naked Time and I’m not going to let you take away the “naked” and if I have to, I’ll give you UN-happy. So by the time I’ve been able to wrangle one teeny tiny Tasmanian devil into a diaper, especially if I’ve failed to amuse her for the one eternal minute with something shiny (my necklace even though she broke it) or crinkly (plastic bags are dangerous, dangerous, dangerous, but holy hell, they can offer 30 seconds of quiet zoning) or her favorite distraction – a wipe that she will tear up into little pieces and eat – I feel as if I should throw up my arms and look at the timer while I get my horse.

What? You have no idea what I’m talking about? Then you need to watch this short little google video that demonstrates what Baby Wrangling is like. You can skip the first 40 seconds and just watch the last 20, if you’re in a hurry.

And while my daughter makes a complete fool out of me and my inability to keep her still for just a few minutes, I will still mock you if ask how to keep your baby still during diaper changes. Because I’m a bitch, that’s why.

For the first time since ZGirl was born last July, I suggested to Mr. DD that we should talk to XBoy about the donor.

Because XBoy is 7 years older, I really feel that it’s important not to wait until ZGirl is two or three before approaching the subject with him. I fear that he may look at the first couple of years with ZGirl with something akin to deception if we wait that long. Maybe in not such a definitive manner, but later when he’s reached teen and adult age, he may use it as an excuse or a way of lashing out.

I also know that his exposure to peers in school will introduce him to the concept of sex before I’m ready to deal with it myself, and I just think it would be more prudent for him to know that sex is more than dirty talk between a group of boys and a way of teasing girls (I didn’t tell you how XBoy came home the other day from school and asked me what “gay” meant. Of course I tried to explain it means happy, but he knew that the way the kids were using it, it was derogatory and clearly they were not calling him “happy”.).

Mr. DD doesn’t think telling XBoy about ZGirl’s conception is a good idea. He worries that XBoy will run his mouth about it to both friends and family. While I don’t care so much about his friends, since who’s going to give much thought to a 6 or 7 year old trying to repeat something another 7 year old told them, especially about “eggs” and “embryos” and “donor gametes”? However, I am concerned about this information becoming family table fodder.

I believe that as long as we don’t make a big deal, (It’s a secret! Don’t tell anyone!!), or that the information is a topic of contraband, and that we keep it very, very simple, XBoy should walk away from the discussion as if we had just told him that we were going to repaint the living room.

For me, that means keeping the birds and bees out of the conversation as much as possible. Instead I thought I would just use the approach that women have eggs that can become babies but sometimes those eggs are bad. In those rare cases, couples can sometimes use the eggs of other women to make babies…and that’s what we did in ZGirl’s case. Is that a too simplistic way of broaching the subject of donor eggs for the first time with a 7 year old? Of course we would welcome the questions as they are asked. I just feel, and maybe I’m wrong about it, that this is something that should be trickled in for assimilation and not dumped.

Other questions for you: Do you think I should wait until ZGirl hears it first? Do you think Mr. DD might be on to something as to XBoy spilling the beans prematurely to family (BTW, I’ve intentionally started planning this to coincide with the summer break)? Am I providing a disservice to my son and taking the chickenshit way out by not talking about intercourse and ovaries and gonads and penises and vaginas and sperm (oh, my!)?

Everyone just needs to stop emailing me and begging for my next post. Here’s a list of those of you who were wondering if I was OK and inquiring as to my writing schedule:

• ______

Yeeaahhhh.

OK, so three days doesn’t seem like an inordinate amount of time to some of you, but for me? I’m wondering if my keyboard has been laced with crank. No, not the crank I emote. The crank you snort, silly.

ZGirl is going to be 10 months old this week. She’s already been showing some early signs of toddlerhood (the pitching a shitfit kind) and I am so not ready to give up my BABEEEEE!

XBoy came home from school a couple Mondays ago and said, “We missed the school’s Spring Concert yesterday.” (insert pouty face and sad eyes). “Oh, no!” we replied. How could this have happened?? There was no note from the teacher. Nothing on the school’s website or the calendar. I emailed his teacher about it. She replied:

I did send home notes with the students on white paper, however while we were making stars to use as decoration for the concert XBoy told me that he wasn’t going to be able to come so when he wasn’t there, I didn’t think twice about it.

BUSTED. And like how.

He confessed that he didn’t want to go so I did what any mom would do in that situation. I made him feel like shit by saying that he only gets one Spring Concert a year and this was the only one he’d have as a 1st Grader and mom and dad and grandma are very sad that we didn’t get to see him sing with his class or see his artwork hanging (combo Spring Concert and Art Show). He was appropriately shamed.

The rabbit still lives.

Now that I’ve typed that I wonder how many of my readers will think I’m pregnant when someday I post, “The rabbit died.”

My friend’s ovaries have been bitch-slapped out of their coma and produced 3 follicles after her 3rd round of increasing dosage of clomid. The first two rounds were bust. I’m really, REALLY hoping for her.

I have had a post about secondary infertility in my drafts for a couple weeks now. I don’t know if it will ever come out of there as I’m struggling with my desire to work out some aggravation as opposed to my ever present sensitivity to my faithful readers. Yes, that was sarcasm. Gold star for you.

I am NOT writing a book. You can relax now.

This is an awesome response to a babysitter who was in serious need of a Nunya Smack.

I hate Period Poops, don’t you?

Don’t you miss the good ole’days when telemarketers were human?

It’s not satisfying in the least to hang-up on a souless recording. I mean, where’s the angst as to whether you should hang-up on some poor sap just trying to make a living on minimum wage as opposed to snarling, “No thank you!” when having your evening meal that you spent all evening preparing (by taking it out of the bucket and putting on paper plates) interrupted?

It was not a weekend where I was served waffles with strawberries and whipcream along with a venti cup of mocha with a splash of raspberry nor did we venture out once refreshed from a 10 hour snooze to a brunch replete with mimosas. Nor did I wake to find that my son had skipped out to the lilac bushes and plucked fragrant blooms to arrange in childish innocence and flair in one of my colorful copper glasses for the table.

Oh, no. Mother’s Day was heralded in when, while sitting at the counter snarfing up my egg and bacon sandwich and noting that my son had already christianed the spot as I stuck my hand in a cold dollop of yellow egg right after I stepped on an errant cheerio, Mr. DD handed over one of these as if he was presenting the crown jewels on a plush velvet pillow:

Nothing says “thanks for bearing bearing the fruit of my loins” like a sawzall.

He obviously did not recall the email exchange that turned into this post on how to make a body disappear.

I can also assure you, it wasn’t because we are into experimental sexual adventures (SFW but it will make you wish it wasn’t).

Nope. It’s because I am the resident groundskeeper (I prefer Garden Goddess, thank you), and we live on an acreage where the only “native” trees are either Cedar Weeds Trees or Russian Olives.

Lord, are they ever ugly.

Yep, they pretty much look like this:

So in an attempt to take some eyesores and turn them into landscaping points of interest (rather than yank them out one by one for the rest of our natural lives), I will be attempting to creatively prune them. A chainsaw would be a bit much, both for the branches which are no more than 7″ around and for me, with my puny, yet flappable, wussy-girl arms.

If I happen to accidentally take off any limbs NOT belonging to a tree, you’ll be one of the first to know.

Also, I can’t say my son totally blew me off on Mother’s Day. In fact his class worked on a little book that the teacher provided the first half of a sentence as an impetus to the least imaginative-challenged beings on the face of the earth with such openers as, “My Mom is the prettiest when…” or “I like it when my Mom…”, except my adoring son left all of the pages blank. Not one had a completed sentence, so I was justifiably bummed. However, what I did get a chuckle from was on the cover page, he had written Happy Mother’s Day.

Why did that bring a smile to my face? Well, since XBoy is occasionally reversing his letters, I got this instead:

Haggy Mother’s Day? A Freudian slip from a seven year old? It very well could be.

My mom will never read this. She doesn’t have a computer much less know what a blog is.

Let me tell you a little about her.

At three years old, my mom’s mother died in surgery. Ether poisoning. Her father, my grandfather, eventually remarried and my mom became part of a step-family. While she had step-brothers and -sisters, she always claims to be an only child with few living relatives. For a long time, I imagined her step-mother and step-sisters to be just like the ones in Cinderella, just because of the way my mom talked about them. I’m just now learning that it was my mom who cut herself off from them, not the other way around.

My mom slapped me. Once. I don’t remember why and I was pretty sure I was in my tween years, but I’ll never forget that later she came up to me, pulled me into a tight hug and apologized.

My mom is very conservative. The first time we talked about the birds and the bees it was after I got my first period and she found my stained (white) jeans in the laundry. She just told me where she kept the sanitary pads. The second and last time? On my first date when he showed up to take me out, just as I was heading for the door she said, “Now you know, you don’t have to do anything. You know that, right?”

My mom is terrible at spelling. Notes from her are purely an exercise in deciphering.

My mom is a latent bigot. I grew up hearing the word “n*gger”. Finally in junior high, I told her not to use that word as it is offensive. She then started to say “darkie”. Like that is somehow better.

My mom also says “Old Timers” (Alzheimer’s), “cousits” (cousins), “WalMartz” (WalMart) as well as starting almost every sentence with, “Anyways, …”

My mom use to have a little sliver of gold between each of her teeth in the top row. The original Grill.

My mom loves to tell the story of how when she moved from one little town to where she is now that she use to have her black hair braided into two pigtails. The other girls at the Catholic school all had fashionable curls and they would tease her relentlessly. One day after school, my mom had had enough. She popped the ring-leader of the teasing in the nose. About a decade later, that girl was the Maid-of-Honor at my mom’s wedding.

My mom still decorates the house for each Holiday even though no one may be coming home. However, if you did happen to stop by, there would be something in every room of the house that would be indicative of the holiday de jour.

My mom has the patient of a saint and the tolerance of Jesus himself. I remember one time at church how I was teasing my little sister and she slapped me soundly across the face. Soundly as in loudly. During the Homily. My mom didn’t even acknowledge the incident. I’m guessing now it was because she had hoped that anyone who had turned to see what the commotion was about wouldn’t see my mom’s inflamed face and realize her horrid little daughters were smacking each other around uncontrollably in church.

My mom either smells of onions (from peeling) or bleach (from cleaning). I now have an abnormal love for the smell of bleach.

My mom will crush any bug within reach with her bare fingers. There’s no screeching or reaching for a rolled up newspaper. It’s just “smoosh” and “crunch” and the bug is flat.

My mom is fearless. When we use to milk cows and a new heifer was introduced, we would leave the breaking in to mom. She’s five foot nothin’ but she could easily subdue a kicking cow with cleverly placed leverage and persistence.

My mom knows how to prepare blutwurst.

My mom knows how to clean a chicken. I don’t mean by giving it a bath, either, unless you count dunking the headless corpse of a chicken into a steaming hot bucket of water to make the plucking of feathers easier. Her favorite parts of the chicken to eat, even though she’s seen it at it’s absolute worst? Gizzard and heart.

My mom has this call that we all refer to as her “Yoohoo”. Since dad would always be in the field or the machine shop, it wasn’t convenient for mom to drive out to get him and of course, there were no cell phones. So she somehow learned to Yoohoo. Our neighbors, who live a couple miles away? They can hear her Yoohoo. She even can vary the Yoohoo enough so that dad can tell the difference between Yoohoo! (dinner/supper is ready) or YooHOO! (haul ass to the house, there’s an emergency!!).

My mom is almost 80 but when she comes over, XBoy is so excited! She will go in the basement and shoot nerf guns, play ball, throw the frisbee, play pool, etc. Whatever XBoy wants to do, she does it. Of course, this also means that when XBoy wants ice cream at 9:00 a.m. or wants a Ho-Ho for lunch, she does that as well.

My mom makes comments that are quintesentially passive-agressive. When we were building our home and we would proudly walk her through the construction, she would just shrug her shoulders and say, “I’ll never have anything as nice.”

My mom? I could go on and on and on, but you would never really know her. I still don’t know her completely. While she doesn’t hold back on her opinions, she’s an enigma. She loves her children and grandchildren fiercely but fears we don’t return that love.

Mom? I love you fiercely. I always have.

I always will.

Happy Mother’s Day.

Happy 4th Birthday, Vivienne Elise.

Doesn’t it drive you nuts when you try to find something in your blog archives that you are just SURE you posted about and cannot for the life of you find so then you start to wonder if you ever blogged about it all but actually may have just vented IN PERSON to someone for so long that it just seems like you blogged it and now that you can’t find the original post to refer a new post back to the new post doesn’t seem as relevant or as important to bother posting about?

Meh. It’s never stopped me before, so here goes.

About a year ago I received in my office mail an interdirectory envelope and inside was a print-out of one of the hospital policies for the dress code. Highlighted in the pages was the section that stated hosiery or socks shall be worn at all times. In other words, no bare legs/feet.

The envelope had been sent anonymously of course, since whoever had sent it must have surely known I would have applied such a vicious purple-nurple that their nipples would have twisted off and then I would have had to staple them back on in an attempt to “make nice”. I think I was more insulted that they didn’t even bother adding a note that may have taken the edge off if they had just said, “Just concerned that you may get in trouble for not following this policy…in case you didn’t know…” ~signed A. Hole.

You see, I was struck by edema during my last trimester and found all legwear uncomfortable so I went to my supervisor, informed him of my issue and received his official blessing that during the remainder of my pregnancy, I could go without. We didn’t think it was necessary to announce to the entire facility and it’s 1,000 employees that DD now had exemption from the one clause of the dress code policy so the fashion police could back off.

Fast forward (god, yes, please!) a year. I heard that they just updated that policy. Hosiery/socks were no longer a requirement. I was so angry and actually hurt over that stupid stunt and now? I can only hope A.Hole felt enough smug satisfaction and superiority this past year to make it all worth while.

I thought I would try subscribing to the twitter feeds through google.reader so I can keep up on the oh so funny things you all are saying and not feel like Bucktooth Betty up on the bleachers in my peter pan collared dress and puffy sleeves.

As my mama would say: It don’t work so good. I can’t even describe the slight feeling of either motion sickness or schizophrenia I have when reading the updates, which include ALL of your replies to many twitterers that I don’t subscribe to so then I feel like I’m eavesdropping on conversations and then I start wondering if it was all code for how you were making fun of me. Because I’m paranoid like that.

See? My eyeballs were softening just enough to allow brain matter to ooze out.

Today I had to unsubscribe. I like by brain matter. And my eyeballs. Both right where they are. They keep my head from looking like a deflated grapefruit.

I got invited to my first GNO last night (GNO = Girl’s Night Out. I didn’t know, either).

Yes, it involved a combination purse AND happy chef (or something) party, but it also included margaritas! Alcohol! In someone ELSE’S house!

Alas, it was a bust. Why? Because Mr. DD had to work late and I had to clean out a rabbit hutch and feed my two rug rhinos.

Rabbit? What rabbit?

Uh, yeah. I volunteered to take my brother’s rabbit, who was housing it on behalf of his grandkids who no longer wanted it. I was told when we went to visit the quads that they were going to turn it loose this spring. One fat, brown, bunny, hand-raised by four rambunctious kids wouldn’t make it an hour in the “wild”, and since I have a soft spot for widdle bunny wabbits and “sucker” tatooed to my forehead, I am now the owner of an utterly useless pet named Potter who I was able to get onto the property under the guise of being Xbox’s pet in spite of Mr. DD’s vehement protests, “Don’t ask me to take care of it!” and “You’re not putting it in the shop this winter!”

When he’s not looking, I just roll my eyes and make the yak-yak-yak motion with my hand.

Did you know rabbits can be housebroken? Too bad Potter has been housebroken to crap in his covered hutch and not out in the open area because now I have to lift the damn thing out (the hutch that is, not the rabbit) and carry it out past the yard and dump the contents of poop pellets and urine-soaked sawdust in the field, all the while trying not to gag when the smell of ammonia hits my sinuses. Meanwhile, ZGirl is screeching in protest in the playard that I had to carry downstairs and set up without screaming “motherfucker!” when I pinched my finger, and XBoy is wrinkling his nose in distaste and poking Potter with a piece of straw.

Once the hutch has been scraped out and freshened with new bedding, I have to carry ZGirl back upstairs; come back downstairs, curse some more under my breath some more while I try to break down the playard; and then carry that back upstairs.

All I can add is that rabbits were much more fun and cuter and didn’t smell as bed when I was a kid and my mom took care of them for us; and I don’t get nearly enough GNO* to make up for the fact I have to clean up rabbit poop for the next five years or so.

* Maybe it’s just me, but do you read that as “gyno”?

Said last night by XBoy while I was tucking him in:

ZGirl makes me happy.

I can now die happy, but I hope I don’t (just in case you’re listening, karma).

I’ve mentioned before how Mr. DD can be a real asshole when it comes to what I loosely term as “parenting” XBoy. Before I rant about it, I will say that most of the time he’s great. It’s just when he’s not, he’s really not.

This morning? Mr. DD hit one of his low points.

XBoy has a hard time in the mornings. It’s not because he’s still tired or sleepy. He just can’t seem to focus on what’s important, which is to wash up, get dressed in his school uniform, and let Dad know what he wants for breakfast (I’m usually getting ready for work and dealing with ZGirl, but I have to overhear the inevitable arguments). It’s not unusual to find XBoy in is room half-dressed and playing with something instead of taking to task. We understand that he’s 7. We understand that his room is full of tempting toys. We understand ADHD. We understand that it can take up to an hour for his meds to take hold. But it tries our patience to the limit since this is something we have dealt with every.damn.school.day for the last three years. It infuriates Mr. DD. Granted; it pisses me off, too.

On this day, XBoy was looking for some money he was given by Mr. DD’s hobby group members for helping them out at the track. He wanted to bring the money to school and buy something at the book fair. Mr. DD had picked it up off the floor last night after XBoy had went to bed, and was peeved at his carelessness and instead of giving the money back to XBoy when he asked where it was, he simply told him that he might get it later, after XBoy had gotten dressed and had breakfast.

Unfortunately, XBoy got upset. He started to cry. And whine. Two things most hated by Mr. DD. He told XBoy to “dry up” and then he did something I’ve never heard him do to XBoy: he started to mock XBoy by mimicking him. Even when Mr. DD is being a total prick to XBoy, I try not to intervene openly. Instead I’ll glare at him or give him the finger across the throat sign for “That’s enough!” without XBoy’s notice. If crying and whining are the sparks to Mr. DD’s anger, me undermining him in front of XBoy is fuel.

I was in the bedroom during this most recent exchange so I could only listen and feel my own face burn in embarrassment and anger on my son’s behalf. After things settled down, I called Mr. DD into the bedroom under the guise of needing help with something. When he came in, I had him follow me into the master bath where I proceeded to rip him a new one.

“Did your parents mock you like that?!”

“Hell, yes!” he responded as if that an everyday occurrence with him (and knowing his parents like I do, it probably was).

“Then that’s YOUR problem. Don’t make it XBoy’s. He’s already got issues with you as it is (hinting at the comments XBoy made about his dad in counseling). Stop comparing him to his classmates (he was doing this after XBoy’s poor behavior in church, “Soandso was saying the Lord’s Prayer! Soandso was sitting still! Why can’t you? Etc. etc. blah blah blah.”) He’s not Soandso. He’s Xboy! How would you like it if I said, ‘This Boyfriend did this for me,’ or ‘That Boyfriend did that for me,’ when you’re being a total Fuck to me, huh?”

“You mean, why don’t I beat you like That Boyfriend did?” he replied.

*screech!*

Oh, yes. He did.

And yes, I did have a boyfriend who I would have to call abusive. If  I had stayed with him after he slapped me – once – in anger. But when that happened, I packed my shit out of his apartment and was gone before the end of the day. And completely irrelevant to anything but purely a knee JERK (can I say “literally” here or that pretty much implied?) response from him!

After he walked back out, I thought of several things I could have said to make matters worse (like, “Was your Mom sober when she verbally abused you??”), but I bit it all back. Move on, I told myself. But I’m pretty angry about it because we’ve had these kinds of discussions before. XBoy doesn’t take criticism well (who does?) and we are impatient parents to a child that needs infinite patience.

It’s a total sonofabitch to want so badly for your child to mature into a responsible, caring adult if the adults raising the child can be sonsofbitches. It’s a volatile mix.

A list of 10 things I openly ridicule and/or loathe but secretly covet and/or envy:

1.) gladiator sandals

2.) maxi-dresses

3.) lobster tail

4.) thong underwear

5.) pierced baby ears

6.) pregnant Wal-Mart shoppers

7.) 2-seater sports cars

8.) tans

9.) tattoos

10.) the number of pictures of myself

I’m pretty self-conscious about sharing updates on ZGirl’s development simply because I don’t want to hurt the feelings of those who find those kinds of posts upsetting. Like I did before I got pregnant with her. Actually, I still would at 8 months pregnant even though I could almost convince myself that I might – just might – have a baby.

However, with time slipping by so quickly and updating her non-existent baby book has been impossible because, duh, I don’t have a baby book. I remind myself that this blog will someday be the embarrassment of my children when I hand them each a paper copy for their graduation.

ZGirl is quickly approaching 10 months old. At her 9 month check-up she was taller than 9 out of 10 babies her age and heavier than 3 out of 10. All her chocolate, wavy, baby hair is gone. It’s been replaced by sandy-blonde hair, straight and fine, much like my own. Poor girl. Her eyes are still the loveliest blue-gray. XBoy inherited my eye color and his dad’s long, dark lashes. ZGirl’s lashes almost disappear in the light as they are as fair as her hair.

Only a couple weeks ago she was desperately trying to master crawling. Now she cruises easily and confidently along all vertical surfaces including the walls. She’s become so aware of her balance that she knows she can lean into something with her body so she can grab at whatever’s within reach. Boxes of Kleenex are her crack, pulling them out one-by-one only to drop them on the floor. She also enjoys eating said Kleenexes, paper, and her butt-wipes (homemade from paper towels).

Speaking of eating, cheerios are still her snack of choice. We are constantly stepping on errant pieces of cereal and have nicknamed the ones that hit the floor O-Bomb-A’s (Obamas – get it?). Those pricey “puffs”? She takes them in but a moment later they are being ejected much like a bad CD in a drive. Five cans of puffs were delivered free of charge to the daycare for other babies to enjoy, and I created more space in my pantry. I’m pretty sure XBoy was sporting a nice set of teeth by 10 months whereas ZGirl is just now getting her third. The daycare feeds her a “regular” lunch as she prefers table food over that sissy baby food.

She’s still very much a Mama’s Girl. If grandma is spending the day with her, I have to make sure to leave the house before she wakes. If I don’t, she pretty much cries throughout the morning until after her first nap when of course, the day starts over for babies. When I pick her up from daycare, if she’s playing with something, I just need to say her name and she will look up, beam, and crawl quickly to me. After I pick her up, she seems to hug me by burrowing her face into my shoulder, and then she’ll look into my face, grin madly, and burrow back in. The simple action makes the whole world and its problems completely fade away.

ZGirl loves the feeling of wind on her face and will bounce in my arms and kick her legs in excitement when I carry her around outside. I can’t wait for it to get hot so the three of us can go to the pool and play in the water, which she also enjoys.

Her personality is wonderfully tolerant (with the exception of the odd stranger or two). I can set her down in front of her stash of toys and walk away knowing that as long as her diaper is fresh, her tummy is full and a nap just moments behind her that she’ll play and explore contentedly by herself. If XBoy is putting together some legos, I will get the “MOM!” holler since she wants to play with whatever and wherever he is. Sadly, that part will get old quickly.

I’ve mentioned that she pats and slaps herself in the head when she’s tired. She still does that as she’s taking her bottle before nap or bedtime. Otherwise, when she’s having a bottle, she’ll reach up and play with my hair making me regret that I cut it off as it requires me to lean over quite a ways for her to reach anything. She also takes the time to explore my face with her little fingers. I shake off the finger up the nose so she’ll move on to something else. For example, she is fascinated by my eyelashes and strokes them gently, almost by instinct, back and forth when I close my eyes.

She seems to laugh more now, too. I wouldn’t necessarily call it giggling; more of chuckling to herself, soft and low, if one of us does something to amuse her. She smiles easily and broadly. She screeches in excitement and chatters in play. Her favorite noise is made when she clicks her tongue in her mouth, and it’s our cue that she’s awake in her crib when we hear it over the monitor.

Don’t get me wrong, the girl can be quite whiney and fussy at times as well. Any crying is almost always accompanied by real tears, but it’s because something hurts. It could be her head where she clonked it on the side of the cabinet or when mommy lifted her carelessly out of the high chair and caught her leg under the tray (yes, I felt this {-} big). When she’s not in the best of mood, she’ll crawl over to me, pull herself up by grasping carefully at the fabric of my jeans and smack my leg with an open hand. Whatever I may be doing, it’s forgotten when I look down and see her tiny face and those lovely eyes begging to be picked up.

She lifts her arms when we ask, “Up?” She claps when we say, “Yahoo!” She waves her little hands and arms in a “wax on” mini Karate Kid imitation when we say, “Bye Bye!”

Every day I impatiently watch the hours and minutes until I get to pick her up from the daycare. Every week is a countdown in days where I look forward to the weekend and spending the short time I get with both my children. I drink in the smells and sights and words as if the next day was my last because every day that passes is a day that I will never get back.

My mom is always clipping articles out of the home-town paper to give me that feature one of my former 40 high-school classmates. At first it was engagement and wedding announcements, which I took as a passive-aggressive reminder of my own “spinsterhood” since I was a month shy of turning 30 when I got married. Aside from a couple of other classmates, who were either gay or a few cards shy of a full deck, I’m sure I was one of the last to submit an engagement picture to the editor of the paper who may or may not have doubled as the fire chief, the motel manager and bar owner. The type of newspaper who could take the highest quality photograph and make it look like a wanted picture from 1885.

From there, the articles she would clip would be the assorted birth announcements (many before I even graduated from college), travels “abroad” – you know – to Kansas, and even the tiny postage size blip that was published weekly of persons hospitalized back before HIPAA took away that spot of joy from every retiree who ever subscribed to the paper solely to snoop in on their neighbor’s colon issues via the printed word.

Twenty-five years later, she still shows up with clippings and I’m wondering if she’s rubbing my face in the accomplishments of my lame-o classmates or if she’s under the impression – a highly mistaken one – that I give a rat’s ass what any one of them are doing (unless of course it’s being booked for indecent exposure).

The most recent was an article featuring one of my classmates that I hung out with quite a bit before I suddenly dropped off the face of the earth and never heard from again once I realized that ohmygodI’vebeenlivinginavacuum! and that people really did do something with their spare time other than park on a low-maintenance road and indulge in keggers until the county sheriff came by to drop off his daughter break things up.

My “friend” had been awarded Nebraska’s Young MOY (Mother of the Year, don’t you know?) according to the blurb under the picture of her, her husband and five children. Good for her *yawn*. The article sat on the counter for a couple of days and one morning I read the full article as I had actually put away the cereal box,  effectively leaving me with nothing to read.

It was a blah article, to say the least, but by the time I read through it, I found myself annoyed deeply. Why? Because the article listed the requirements necessary to be nominated for MOY of this organization, with this one standing out in particular:

Has been married to her husband, a man, in a legal ceremony.

Of course! Why, you can’t be a good mother if you’re a single parent or have a husband (do they come in any other form than “man”??) through common law, don’t you know?! And heaven forbid ~whisper~ a lesbian might be a mother, much less one that is an excellent mother! No awards for you since only women in hetero relationships qualify as good mothers (that should bring some interesting google hits).

My mother’s innocent attempt to keep me somehow connected to people I haven’t talked to in two decades only reminds me of why I cannot maintain contact with those who won’t see beyond their white-picket fence lifestyles. I can’t even imagine how they might react if their moms clipped an article about me if I was ever outed as a blogger, an infertility blogger, a donor-egg-recipient, infertility blogger! I can see their June Cleaver aprons curling up in horror now.

I couldn’t figure out how the National Infertility Awareness Week slip by me or how come I didn’t ever recall it being this close to Mother’s Day when that was the due date of my first miscarriage back in 2004….

Oh. They moved it. That was nice of them to tell me. So it’ll be a couple weeks of emotional schizophrenia. Thanks.

So, this is my post dedicated to NIAW. First review this post and come back to the picture below as I’m not sharing it with you to impress you with my obvious housekeeping skills. You’ll have to come up with your own poetic waxing as I’m too mentally fried to do so.