hurts so good

In my quest to achieve a supermodel-fabulous* body, I’ve been going to this Pilates mat class at lunch and I love it. I went Monday and now feel like I’ve been beaten about the shoulders and rib cage by a vicious bat-wielding toddler. But in a good way! I’m sitting here slumped over at my desk, drinking coffee and eating a scavenged pastry from the meeting going on in the conference room near my office. What? You think the pastry might run counter to my fitness goals? Hmmm. I digress. Anyway, Pilates is happening again today so I will go, because nothing is more awesome than wearing workout clothes while contorting your body into compromising positions among co-workers.

*and by “supermodel-fabulous,” I mean somewhat less flabby around the midsection, with maybe a defined muscle in sight SOMEWHERE.

changes

So many things about parenthood are different than I expected.

I was never one of those people who adored everyone else’s children. Now, a stroller goes by and I crane my neck to catch a glimpse of the little person inside. (I’m a convert.)

I was afraid of the constant barrage of dirty diapers. I had no idea that soon, they’d be no big deal. Grab a few wipes, clean it up and move on.

I dreaded the lack of sleep. That actually did suck as much as I thought it would – but it was temporary.

I had absolutely no idea how simple developmental steps would blind me with awe. My reaction to watching my child learning how to knock on the door, climb stairs or take a bite of a pear has surprised me no end. The visceral sense of pride I feel every time he does something new is powerful.

I dreaded the lack of time to myself. But now I treasure the few bits of time that I do have, and enjoy them that much more.

I am naturally impatient, and thought I’d be intolerant of a toddler’s timetable. And sometimes I am. But most of the time, I enjoy sitting back and watching him do things on his terms.

I was afraid my house would be overrun with toys. It kind of is.

I didn’t know how much I would come to appreciate hand sanitizer.

I thought I would dislike all children’s TV shows – annoying! But now I find myself humming Wiggles songs constantly. Surprisingly, I don’t hate it.

I’m sure many people have waxed far more eloquently than I ever could about what it means to be a mother. All I can say is that it’s transformed me in more ways than I can count.

because cat furniture can be dangerous in the hands of a washed-up glam rocker

On Saturday night, we got a little crazy and rented a movie. Wild times at our house! My husband agreed to go in and pick it out while Evan and I waited in the car. He came back with something I’ve never heard of – New York Doll. I was skeptical.

It was a documentary about the bass player from the New York Dolls, Arthur “Killer” Kane. In case you don’t know (I didn’t), the New York Dolls was a glam rock band from the 70’s. Evidently my knowledge of 70’s glam rock is sorely lacking. Basically what happened is that the band broke up because someone died, and the other band members went on to further success in music, but Arthur became a Mormon and started working in the Family History Center in the Los Angeles temple. The only person I could think to compare him to was the Grizzly Man. He truly was the Grizzly Man of rock & roll! Even down to the haircut and the way they talked – very similar.

Even though I’d never heard of the movie and the topic was someone I knew nothing about, I ended up enjoying it. It had an incredibly bittersweet ending and he was a sympathetic character. I have to say, though, there was a redeeming moment of unintentional comedy (yet another similarity to Grizzly Man!) that will stay with me forever.

The thing with Arthur is that he was pretty bitter after witnessing some of his bandmates’ success. They illustrated this fact by interviewing Arthur’s wife, who told the story of when Arthur had seen one of his former bandmates in a role as a cab driver in the movie Scrooged. Apparently this sent him into such a rage that he drank a quart of peppermint schnapps and started (and I quote) “beating me with the cat furniture.” After that he jumped out of a window and fell through an awning and hurt himself pretty badly… yadda yadda yadda. The whole story was about him hitting bottom, which is what eventually led him to find the Mormon church and was therefore essential to the entire story. However, I really heard nothing after the comment about him beating her with the cat furniture.

I had never thought that cat furniture could be used as a weapon. We started musing on what type of cat furniture it might have been. A scratching post? One of those multi-story things with the individual cat platforms? Who knows? I may never feel safe in a cat owner’s home again.

B.E. vs. A.E.

Now that I have a child, it occurs to me how I recklessly wasted eons of time before he was born. What did I do with my life? I wonder this because somehow, I feel like I get more done now than I ever did before. For example:

B.E. (Before Evan)
7:45 am – slowly drag self out of bed, lounge comfortably on couch drinking coffee and watching Today show.
9:00 – get to work.
5:30 pm – leave work and go home.
7:00 – eat dinner.
10:30 – go to bed.

A.E. (After Evan)
6:30 am – hear child talking on the monitor. Get up and change dirty diaper.
6:35 – gather up a load of laundry. Throw in washer.
6:45 – play with baby, then get him dressed.
7:00 – take baby downstairs for breakfast. Make coffee and empty dishwasher while child eats.
7:10 – eat bowl of cereal.
7:15 – turn on Sesame Street to allow self to do breakfast dishes.
8:00 – leave the house to drop baby off at day care.
8:30 – arrive at work and do normal worky things.
5:00 pm – leave work, pick up baby.
5:10 – stop at store to get milk.
5:30 – arrive home and frantically pull together something for baby to eat for dinner. (meanwhile, lovely hubby making something for us)
6:00 – eat dinner.
6:30 – go for a quick after dinner walk.
7:00 – bath time!
7:15 – baby goes to sleep.
7:30 – Clean kitchen, pay bills, iron, throw the clean laundry from this morning into the dryer, whatever else needs to be done.
8:00 – blissful TV watching period, often involving consumption of ice cream.

I’m not sure how this happens, but I get so much more done in a day than I used to. It must just be necessity, I guess, but I sure look back and feel like I was a shiftless underachiever. My next challenge is finding time in above A.E. schedule for working out so I can improve my body to previously unknown levels of fabulousness.

Who am I kidding.

life & times

So I’ve been avoiding blogging because my life has been a tad boring lately. Well, I don’t think it’s boring, but there are only so many times you can post things like “on Saturday we took Evan to the park. It was fun. The end!” Because that’s how our weekends go down around here.

This weekend was, predictably, much the same. We did take him to the park. In fact, we took him to several parks! Sometimes I feel like my life is the eternal quest for the perfect park. There must be a large grass area, for proper baby exhaustion. There must be playground equipment safe for the little guys. And there must be a Starbucks on the way so that I can get a frosty iced coffee before we get there.

So anyway. We went to the park(s). We also got to go out to dinner on Saturday night to celebrate my husband’s birthday (which is actually today… happy birthday babe!). We went to Roy's, which was uber delicious. I had macadamia nut encrusted red snapper and a Hawaiian martini. Yum!

Also this weekend: I bought a new pair of sunglasses, I learned that Whoorl wasn’t kidding about the delicious cupcakes they have at this place, and Evan now knows how to say "turtle."

It was a winner.

covered

You know when you wear a pair of new shoes to work? And at about 8:05 a.m., you start feeling this painful rubbing against your heel? And then, you dig in your desk drawer for a band-aid and put it on, only to find that eight minutes later, after walking 12 feet to the conference room, your shoe has shoved the band-aid so that it rides up and uncovers the sore spot? Then, you go to the first aid kit in the kitchen and stock up on bandages so you can experiment with interesting and creative new band-aid placements. Like for example… the double. Or the perpendicular cross. Or, the configuration that I am currently experimenting with: the knuckle bandage placed over a standard bandage for more coverage. I am sporting this attractive band-aid mélange on both feet right now. Such is my life.

evan's dictionary

Here is a comprehensive guide to understanding the words that come out of my son’s mouth, listed in alphabetical order by pronunciation.

a-bah -> ball (said constantly and repeated multiple times when he spots any kind of ball)
ba-ba -> bye-bye
bwis -> books
cancake -> pancake
canket -> blanket
da mor -> good morning
down -> down (said repeatedly every morning when he’s awake and wants to be rescued from his crib)
gowah -> go for a walk
ice -> outside
kah -> rock (repeated ad nauseum when he sees a rock of any size… who knows, maybe he’ll grow up to be a geologist)
mo -> more
ni-ni -> night-night
pwis -> please (said sparingly)
yi-yo -> lion

Voila!

untitled

We are heading out of town for a couple of days and holy Hannah, we are going to leave Evan overnight for the very. first. time. We have left him many a time to go to dinner, concerts, movies, etc. but this is an actual overnight babysitting gig. Which means, we will not be sleeping one room away from him. In fact, we will be sleeping approximately 65 miles away from him. I think this is a great idea on the surface, but I’m sure I will talk about him nonstop in truly annoying mom fashion.

But fun! We are going to stay at a swanky hotel and it is going to be awesome. Happy 7th wedding anniversary to us.

i'm in love

Note that calcium has been added. It's practically a health food!

Delicious and nutritious.

It's a win-win.

cont'd

OK, so I may have exaggerated a bit in my last post. Thankfully, I did not end up spending $800 on my tires (phew!). $800 was what the stupid Ford dealer wanted to charge me for the exact same tires that I was later able to hook up at Costco for $500 (complete with a $60 discount for a set of four Michelins) . So yay for that.

HOWEVER, now my husband needs new tires too. Lordy.

Well, I'm sick of having to spend all our money on tires and air conditioning. But I am even sicker of complaining about it, so I hereby promise that I will attempt to refrain from this boring topic in the future.

And! It's almost the weekend. Ahhhh.

OMG

New tires: $800

New brakes: $500

Enormous tub of hot chocolate with mini marshmallows: $15

Me praying to all that is holy that I will stop hemorrhaging cash on various home and automobile repairs: PRICELESS

deflated

What was that I was saying about things falling apart around here? Well, apparently it extends to cars. This morning I had just dropped Evan off at day care and was merrily driving to work, feeling all smug and virtuous about having gotten up early to go to swim practice. All of a sudden… boom! I hear this thunderous noise and the car starts driving all bumpy. Grrr – flat tire. I pulled over, called AAA and waited almost an hour for the tow truck guy to come change my tire. He did and I was on my way.

But now! I have to get some new tires and my smug feeling? Gone.

I am currently sitting here nursing my wounded pride with a tall cup off hot chocolate with the mini-marshmallows.

bearca's formula for winning big $$ at the horse races

Here are two simple questions to ask yourself when betting on a horse:

1) Does the horse have a good/intriguing/unique/funny name?
2) Is the horse pretty?

If you have answered yes to one or both of these questions, then you have yourself a winner. Jockey? Trainer? Lasik? Blah! I’m all about aesthetics when it comes to horse racing.

We went to Del Mar on Saturday and this was my formula. May I say, it worked like a charm! We won the big bucks*. Well, enough to pay for our margaritas, anyway. And to me, there’s a successful day at the races.

* If by big bucks, you mean winning $24 on a $2 bet.

freon ain't free

We seem to be in a place right now where lots of things in our house need fixing. We bought the house brand new, and haven’t even lived in it five years, yet in the last two weeks we have had people out to service both our washing machine and our air conditioning. Cool! Spending money on fixing things that we completely take for granted is the best.

(palpable sarcasm)

Example #1: The Laundry Episode
A couple of weekends ago, I was doing some laundry. During one load, I was downstairs cleaning up the kitchen and heard my husband calling me upstairs. I go back up and hear a hideous noise coming from the washing machine. I stop the cycle, then find out that I can’t get it to spin, and that it WILL fill up with rinse water, but it WON’T drain. Picturing our clothes soaking in water for two days just doesn’t cut it for me, so I take each item out of the washer and hand-wring it out before putting it in the dryer, almost breaking the dryer in the process because the load was too heavy. Awesome!

I set up a service appointment for two days later. The guy comes to the house, shows my husband that it’s this little part under the lid, fixes it in 20 minutes and charges us $160 to replace a $30 part. You know, for LABOR.

Example #2: The Air Conditioning Caper
Last weekend (again over a weekend!?!) our air conditioning just stops working. The fan still worked, but the a/c unit outside just went dead. Lucky for us, Southern California is experiencing really nice weather, unlike the 112 degrees it was two weeks ago (and don’t EVEN think I am kidding about that number… it really was, I swear). Bottom line, though, since it’s only been in the low 80s, we can live with it for a couple of days until we can get someone out to fix it.

We find out through our next-door neighbor that a lot of people in our neighborhood have had problems with our air conditioning over the last couple of weeks. So on Sunday, we go door to door asking them what happened, who did you call to fix it, etc. One neighbor seemed to have the answer. It went something like this:

“Uh, yeah, it’s the switch behind the control plate. You just have to get in there and file it down with a nail file. But stay away from the rotogirder because it’s next to the flux capacitor, which holds 1.21 jigowatts of electricity. Hoo boy! Did I get a shock when I touched that!”

Did I hear a niner in there? We look at him blankly, and immediately and telekinetically agree that we are going to call a professional.

But guess what? All the professionals are already scheduled fixing everyone else’s air conditioning that was overused in the recent heat wave. May I remind you that it was 112 degrees.

So we end up calling this emergency air conditioner repair guy, who fixed our friends’ a/c recently and who also overcharged them for doing so. (We were warned.)

He came over today. First of all, he was this enormous bodybuilder with a very thick Russian accent. Who knows? Maybe they have excellent air conditioning trade schools in Russia. Anyway, he checks the fan. He checks the fuses. He checks the switch behind the control panel and the flux capacitor.

He comes back into the house and announces that we need a new conductor and some freon, and that will be $325 please. He fixes it in 10 minutes and is out the door with my check.

I tell my husband the whole story and he is shocked and horrified. And after looking it up on the internet, comes to the conclusion that he probably took me for double what it should have cost. Apparently the freon thing can be a scam – you really shouldn’t need new freon unless you have a leak. Damn Google. What’s that saying? Ignorance is bliss?

Anyway, the air conditioning works again, which is good, despite the fact that we are $325 poorer. Well, technically we are $485 poorer, if you count the washing machine.

Lordy I hope nothing else goes wrong for a while. I guess the moral of the story is, when your friends tell you that the Russian bodybuilder might overcharge you, he will.

baby action

I’m happy to report that the limp is finally gone! After multiple doctor visits and x-rays (all of which were negative), it just went away on its own after a few days. So now I no longer have to envision my tiny toddler dragging a leg cast around. Now THAT would have been sad.

And he must be fine, because he’s learned how to climb up on all the furniture! He’s also added the words “go” and “jump” into his vocabulary. He’s all about the action.

On that note, I will present an updated list of things Evan likes and doesn’t like:

Climbing furniture:
Good

Eating vegetables:
Bad

Walking independently:
Good

Being confined to a stroller:
The hatred is intense.

The Wiggles:
Good

When I take a forbidden object out of his hand:
The wrath descends.

That's all for now, peeps. I will leave you with only one further note, which is that my husband was called "girlfriend" by a not-heterosexual man at Banana Republic yesterday. Hmmm.

gimpy

Do you want to know what one of the saddest things I’ve ever seen is?

A 15-month old baby with an unexplained limp.

Yes, that’s my boy. We noticed he was limping on Friday night. It was barely perceptible on Saturday, but got worse on Sunday. We ended up taking him to urgent care in a panic, thinking somehow he had fallen and broken his leg without us knowing. (Or without daycare knowing, because you better believe that was the first phone call I made when I saw the limp. But my daycare is awesome. I digress. )

The other saddest thing is two parents holding a 15-month old limping baby down on the x-ray table. I could cry just thinking about it.

But after two doctor visits and a trip to the hospital for x-rays, they didn’t find anything – no apparent infection, no broken bone, no nothing! Just a 15-month old baby with an unexplained limp.

He's getting better though, slowly but surely.

an actual conversation that took place at my house

Me: “Evan, what does a duck say?”

Evan: “Kack kack!”

Me: (giggling uncontrollably at the realization that my son is a genius) “YES! That’s right! That’s exactly what a duck says!” (meanwhile I continue to quack loudly while making funny faces to encourage him to keep it up)

I’m all about sacrificing my dignity.

weekend festivities

Apparently, this is the time of year where it seems that I wake up in Florida every day. Enough with the hot! And the humid, OMG. This weekend was cray-zay. On Saturday it was literally 108 degrees at my house. I better start saving money to pay for my electric bill.

But apart from that it was a rather nice weekend. Swimming lessons continue to be awesome fun. Once we were done at the pool we retreated to the air conditioning and pretty much stayed there all day. My sister-in-law came to visit us so we headed to the mall for even more air conditioning. Then we watched Grizzly Man – highly recommended, very interesting documentary.

Yesterday afternoon we headed up to Fashion Island thinking that it would be a bit cooler with the ocean breezes. And Fashion Island, it never disappoints. It was ten degrees cooler, plus they have those funny fountains with bubbles of water that explode out of the ground and land on the heads of unsuspecting toddlers who dare to walk along their surfaces. Good fun. After the fountain, a ride on the carousel (Evan’s first), and an eyeshadow purchase from the MAC counter at Macy’s, we headed over to Bandera for a delicious dinner. It was there that we determined, lo and behold, that Evan enjoys artichokes! We were sitting back sipping our cocktails and saying la la la, our child is the best, he is so well-behaved AND he likes artichokes. Then when he was done with his dinner he began throwing Cheerios so we beat a hasty retreat.

We got home, put him to bed, went downstairs, watched Entourage and ate Drumsticks. In my opinion, Drumsticks must always live in my freezer. Always. Well, until they are eaten.

TGIF

You know what sucks? When you have a massive sneezing attack right after you've put on mascara.

Also, when you are lounging comfortably on your sofa watching the British Open and sipping your second cup of coffee and then you realize: it's not Saturday.

Ouch.

snippets

Hello peeps. Since it's been a while, I'll just update you with a few small items to start getting you up to speed on what's going on in my life.

1) Just got back from a business trip to Columbus, Ohio. It was hot there.

2) It's also hot here.

3) Getting home from Columbus was a nightmare involving multiple missed flights, ridiculous security lines, ground holds in Chicago due to bad weather, and whatnot.

4) The mommy & me swimming lessons are going great! We just had our fourth lesson on Saturday and we've gone from hysterical crying (lesson 1) to whining (lesson 2) to only whining when our face gets wet (lesson 3) to pure unadulterated joy at being in the water (lesson 4). Success.

5) I am once again obsessed with HBO's Entourage.

Because I have a lot of work to do at this moment, I must cut the list short. I promise to update again soon with more. Three-week blog hiatuses (hiati?) are for the birds...