Wednesday, March 31, 2004
Wednesday morning, and already I'm at the root of the very bad time that at least half a dozen people are having or will be having in the not-so-distant future. It's an asshat-rich week! Please follow along:
On Monday morning I had my bi-weekly update call regarding the status of a complaint I submitted about an asshat who shall remain nameless. It's partly a legal complaint, partly a human resources issue, and when the fur REALLY starts to fly it's gonna be quite ugly. Tip for The Stupid(TM): if you're going to send emails under a fake name and using fake email accounts, be smart enough to not (1) do this in such a way that your work IP address comes through in the emails, especially if you work for an agency that has pretty firm policies about misuse of agency property and might frown upon the commission of identity fraud on their time/dime, and (2) include in one of those emails a postal mailing address that can be traced to your real identity. Dumbass.
Monday evening, I talked with my parents and learned that my grandmother was finally given the background information about what started the nasty ongoing drama within my dad's family. Most of you have read about it here and/or heard about it during my pregnancy, which is what brought the simmering tensions to a head. To make a long story short, it was decided that keeping mum - what we considered to be "taking the moral high road" - was creating substantial PR problems for us by making a couple of people look like the victims of our hostilities, rather than the other way around. I feel awful about how this must be upsetting my grandparents, particularly since my grandfather's health is really heading downhill fast, but I'm also relieved to have the truth out in the open. Not that I think anything will change because of it.
I don't recall having a hand in making anybody miserable on Tuesday. It was a rare day. I spent it dreaming of the many ways in which I could be a nasty little meanie during the rest of this week.
This morning I called the lawyer handling my maternal grandfather's (Granddaddy) estate and questioned how he's approached some of the issues that have cropped up, particularly the "sudden discovery" that my grandfather jointly owned property with my grandmother (also deceased). My grandfather died in October 2001, with very little money remaining after healthcare bills and such were paid, YET the estate is not yet settled and the legal fees continue to add up. Moneygrubbing is not my aim; quite frankly none of us thought that there would be any money left, and I'm personally not desperate for a check. Who knows, my "share" of what's left of the estate might be a grand total of $7.83, in which case I will either donate it to the Democratic party or use it to buy Twinkies for fat people, both of which would have my grandfather flip-flopping in his grave. However, the entire family just wants to see this over and DONE so we can all move on. Anyway, after I talked with the lawyer (NO, I didn't threaten to sue him or anything, it was a civil discussion), I called my mom to let her know about the conversation. Her response: "You know the lawyer is going to bill the estate for that, right?" *scream* I guess there will be a few less Twinkies from Heaven.
At some point today, I need to call the flooring company who installed the laminate on our main floor last summer and share with them my opinion that it should not be falling apart a mere nine months later. It's a local company, and I suspect that I might need to speak slowly and use my loudspeaker voice to effectively communicate my perspective on the issue. Too bad I won't be able to use hand gestures for added emphasis.
# posted by Amanda at 11:59 AM |
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Tuesday, March 30, 2004
Good news! We now have a shared vision in mind for remodeling Cheezleton Manor! The proposed plan involves adding a new wing and moving around some of the existing rooms for a bigger kitchen, dining room and living room with a new bedroom on the top floor.
I'm not saying that this is something we're doing in the immediate future, just that we have an architecturally feasible concept for when we're ready to add.
In the meantime, heavy gardening and landscaping is on the agenda. Also, finding a permanent garden placement for these guys:
My collection of garden whimsy grows!
# posted by Amanda at 12:49 PM |
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Sunday, March 28, 2004
A Day Hour on the Farm
A pair of chickens with seriously punk rock 'dos.
Adobo, fricasee, deep-fried, stir-fried, cacciatore, pot pie, teriyaki, barbecue...chicken casserole, chicken burgers...yep, I think that's all the ways you can eat chicken.
She held chickens, she spontaneously KISSED chicks. We may have witnessed The Birth of a Vegetarian.
# posted by Amanda at 10:44 PM |
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Thursday, March 25, 2004
About a month ago, K brought me a giant container of something she called "Taco Pie". The bottom was a thick layer of piecrust, covered with an inch-thick layer of browned ground beef and onions, smothered with half an inch of sour cream and Miracle Whip and topped with chopped tomatoes and shredded cheddar cheese. With sliced black olives on the side. I don't eat beef and mayonnaise of any sort disturbs me (it is EGG and OIL, which sounds to me like a homeopathic vomit-inducer), not to mention my long-held policy of avoiding meat-based dishes called "pie", "loaf", "special" or "surprise", but I agreed to try it. By "try it", I mean that I eventually went on to eat the entire container. By myself. In about two days' time.
I have been craving it ever since. It is a craving with an intensity one might expect of a woman pregnant with septuplet wolves.
Yesterday I found a Bisquick recipe for Impossible Taco Pie and figured, hey, why not triple the recipe and have THREE TIMES as much taco pie yumminess?! Three pounds of taco-seasoned ground turkey, nine eggs, a quart of milk and an hour later, I had 18 to 24 servings of something that wasn't even close to what I had expected. It was something like taco filling suspended in a soggy quiche. After dealing with Sophie's cold all day, wet, runny food was expressly unappealing. Just looking at it glistening on the plate caused my stomach considerable distress. And then - for reasons perhaps known only to him, or perhaps for absolutely no reason at all - Sean wiped Sophie's nose and stuffed the used tissue under my plate. As if I needed a physical representation of the association that was already in my mind.
Shrieking at one's spouse, it turns out, is a gag suppressant. Dinner was immediately declared officially over.
Despite that fiasco, the craving for Taco Pie - the RIGHT Taco Pie! - has reached a frightening pitch. Allura sent me her recipe, and at some point I will hit K up for the recipe she used. The secret, I think, is all in the crust. Oh, and in avoiding recipes that involve the word "impossible".
# posted by Amanda at 11:21 PM |
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Wednesday, March 24, 2004
Greetings from Virusville, population 2! Today would have been my return to the office - huzzah! the right side of my head no longer feels like a fishbowl and I stopped coughing up chunks of lung! - but Sophie came down with a cold overnight. Parent-to-child and vice versa germ passing are guarantees of spawning, it seems, so it's no surprise that she caught the bug I had last week. When I pulled her out of her crib this morning, she was so lethargic that for once I didn't have to hog tie her to wrangle a fresh diaper on her.
Her fever this morning was at least 101.2, which is what the thermometer registered before Sophie's resistance of the temperature-taking effort paid off in her favor. We dosed up on infant Advil and headed to the pediatrician's office, where we received the diagnosis of "common cold". No earache, no sore throat, and the temperature is down to 99.3 now so we just have a cranky and somewhat listless baby with bad congestion.
And the runny nose? Lemme tell ya, within the first few months as a mommy, I had been drooled on, peed on (like a cherub water fountain, mind you, which the kid thought was absolutely hilarious), barfed on, pooed on, changed diapers containing substances that are quite possibly not of this earth (never, ever allow grandparents to feed a toddler copious amounts of kale "because she likes it"), and more recently I have even dealt with a two-part bathtub poo incident, but there is nothing that squicks me so much as the nose slime. It seriously makes me dry heave. It goes something like this:
"Com'ere, baby, let me wipe your nose [so you won't deposit that on your toys, the furniture, the dog or me]."
*dabs kid's nose, begins involuntary horking, runs to wash hands*
Now repeat that every 3 minutes or so for a picture of how the early part of the day has been.
I should add, though, that the tremendous upside to all of this is that I have a cuddly baby who is more than happy to sit on my lap and snuggle up to me while I work on office projects. Sick or not, it's wonderful to spend the time together just being a baby and a mommy.
# posted by Amanda at 12:51 PM |
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Tuesday, March 23, 2004
At this very moment, I'm sitting at my kitchen table pecking away at a work project and listening to Sophie singing to herself in her crib. First she makes up a little song about "Dada", then she switches to humming something that sounds like the first line of "Old MacDonald" and now she's moved on to a "Twinkle Twinkle Little Star" tune.
If we can put a dance beat to that and find low-rise pants in size 18 months, we just might be able to market her as a 14-month-old Britney Spears.
# posted by Amanda at 8:09 AM |
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Monday, March 22, 2004
Sophie had her first non-family babysitter yesterday while Sean and I went to lunch and a movie with K and her husband. The four of us hired a couple of certified teenage babysitters from a local family that has five of them to spare, set them up here at Cheezwerks HQ with both baby girls, various infant containment devices and a list of about 85 numbers to call in the event of an emergency, and departed for the glorious wonder that is a town with entertainment options. None of us mentioned being nervous or called to check in on the kids, but I noticed that K never let go of her cellphone while we were out.
We saw "Dawn of the Dead", and I think I can say with confidence that my viewing experience was not at all diminished by the fact that I could barely hear the movie.* Think abundant campy gore and you won't be disappointed. Willing suspension of disbelief disappears the moment the 9-months-pregnant character outruns zombies on her jeans-clad stick legs, so don't expect to have nightmares from this movie, except maybe those caused by the extremely lethal combination of the elderly, moving vehicles and chainsaws.
We made it back from the theater in record time (literally running stop signs, although I think it was unintentional on the part of our driver) and arrived to find everyone at home well-fed and happy. The babysitters were beaming so innocently when they announced that they didn't! even! have! to! change! anyone's! diaper! (meaning that neither of the babies was stinky) that we didn't have the heart to point out that 5 hours worth of pee is a tad much for a diaper. I'm told that Sophie was really playful and snuggly the whole time, which I would take as proof that she's fairly indiscriminate about who takes care of her, except that she ran and hugged me as soon as I walked in.
Verification of the special bond between mommy and baby, just $7.50 an hour!
*I ended up going to the hospital last night when I decided that going deaf from an untreated ear infection wasn't funny or ironic or bright. Mmm, Augmentin: it does a body good!
# posted by Amanda at 4:53 PM |
Wednesday, March 17, 2004
The flu that's going around? Vicious little bug. It starts with a general malaise and crescendoes to the point that blinking causes pain all the way through the lower extremities. If I ever find the person(s) who passed this germ along to me, I will run them over, back up, and run them over again, because that's exactly what I've felt like for the past two days.
My mother came over yesterday to watch Sophie while I laid about like roadkill. Mom, being the Goddess of All Things Organic, brought me some vitamin C and E after quizzing me about which vitamin supplements I was taking and tsk-tsking over the fact that I don't even drink orange juice. (I'm holding out for vitamin fortified coffee.) I call my mom the "Doom Lady" due to her tendency to send me clippings about Major Health Issues that scientists have just linked to common food ingredients. Yesterday afternoon, I saw her reading the labels on stuff in my kitchen cabinets, no doubt looking for disease-causing additives. I admit to reading labels on occasion, but usually just to avoid stuff made with disgusting ingredients like eggs or anchovies or obvious dyes. What exactly are mono- and di-glycerides, anyway? Glycerides of alternate sexual persuasions? I have a "don't ask, don't tell" policy as far as my food is concerned. Active yogurt cultures? Nice that they have a social life, don't wanna know about it.
My vitamin-deficient, preservative-gobbling self is hopped up on ibuprofen and back at work today. If you're battling the same nasty strain of virus, take heart: by about 48 hours after onset, you will have recovered enough to be able to smell the cheap cologne stink on the office temps.
# posted by Amanda at 11:58 AM |
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Ohhh, Google is so pretty today!
# posted by Amanda at 7:26 AM |
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Sunday, March 14, 2004
As promised, here's a picture of the new 'do. Please send gushing compliments.
No really. Tell me it's fabulous and totally worth the FOUR FREAKIN' HOURS I spent at the salon yesterday. (Long story involving two attempts at foil highlights and a solid half hour of tag-team combing out of wet hair and a somewhat ADHD stylist.) The cut is halfway between Holly Hunter and Jennifer Aniston, which makes it kinda Kristen Davis I guess, but the style feels lighter and fluffier...much like cotton candy.
# posted by Amanda at 11:33 PM |
Friday, March 12, 2004
Ooo, a reader poll!
Folks, the Janis Joplin hair (see below) simply must go. It's so long now that I keep shutting it in the car door (owie). I have a salon appointment Saturday morning and would like some advice on choosing a new hairstyle, pleeeeeeez!
Click here to take my Cheezwerks Hair Makeover Survey
Grazi, y'all!
Photo taken last weekend on the carousel at Columbia Mall. Sean captured me grinning like an idiot right about the same time that Sophie realized that all the other kids were on horses but her lame-o mommy had stuck her in a dumb ol' cart.
# posted by Amanda at 8:59 AM |
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Monday, March 08, 2004
Currently in bed, with laptop propped on my knees and large sluglike cat balled up at my feet. I'm too tired to be anywhere with hard edges, but just awake enough to cycle into yet another post-mortem of the day, the month, the year, the life. To my left is the book I just finished picking through: Surviving Saturn's Return: Overcoming the Most Tumultuous Time of Your Life. A friend and I bought copies a few weeks ago after another friend of mine mentioned the Saturn Return Theory in her journal. In short, the theory states that the couple of years before the Big Three-Oh is a profoundly and universally chaotic time for women. Also bundled in is the idea that a Radical Life Change can be expected to occur sometime between ages 28-30. Sometimes the change is for the best, sometimes it is not. As the book cites, Gwen Stefani dyed her hair bug juice pink during her Saturn Return phase; I'll let you come to your own conclusions there.
I'd say there's a fair amount of regrouping and reorganization going on in my life at the moment. Obviously, becoming a mommy was a huge gear shift both in lifestyle and in how I and others view me. Truthfully, though, most of the life debris that I'm sifting through is actually aftershock from the panic that set in as I approached age 27 - the "I'm in my LATE TWENTIES now, aaaaa!" freakout. Me, being the hurry-up girl that I am, got a jumpstart on my Saturn Return unrest so that by the time Saturn fully entered Cancer (where it was when I was born, and where it is now...hence, return) the self-inflicted craziness had mostly petered out to just dealing with the aftermath. And getting rid of any clothing that looked like a wardrobe item from Britney Spears' last tour.
When I picked up the book, I was expecting - or maybe just hoping - to find something in it to explain away every assy event from the previous three years and next one. At the very least, I wanted to have that "Eureka!" moment of pulling from the text some meaning that fits in a very personal way. Instead, not a bit of Saturn-in-Cancer seemed to apply to my present situation, save for maybe this gem: "Cancer needs lunacy and lunatics." (I'm not sure if I need those things, per se, but I sure do seem to attract them. In droves. Honestly, I'd probably miss them if they were gone.) I don't approach things cautiously from the side (prefering the blunt force trauma effect of front-end impact), I'm comfortable in my own skin but not to the point of hermitting, and I'm 100% sure that whether or not my mommy loved me enough is not the root cause of any emotional damage I may or may not have.
If there is anybody else out there who read the book with interest in Saturn in Cancer and got anything more than an ill-fitting crab analogy, would you be so kind as to email and enlighten me?
# posted by Amanda at 11:09 PM |
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Friday, March 05, 2004
*ahem* Your attention, please: hereafter, Allura will be referred to as "Trixie Honeybuns L'Amour". Update your address books accordingly.
# posted by Amanda at 10:37 PM |
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Wednesday, March 03, 2004
The issue of baby names came up in conversation with K again last night. (K, who not even 2 weeks ago started crying after about three minutes in the maternity clothing store! Full speed ahead now, folks.) Name selection, to me, is more of a sticky wicket than any other baby-related topic. Not only do friends, family, coworkers and total strangers feel the need to ask about your choices, upon hearing them they seem to think it's their right to offer opinions and suggestions.
With Sophie, even though Sean and I had really decided on that name in 2000 or maybe earlier, we kept our short-list of baby names a closely guarded secret with all but a select few. I practically had people sign a statement of Terms and Conditions of Information Sharing before I forked over our top name choices. Even so, there were a few slip-ups along the way, and a few people who I regretted telling - some immediately, such as the acquaintance who responded with not only her opinion but her mother's opinion as well. This was in clear violation of several of the Cheezwerks Baby Names Commandments, such as "thou shalt not divulge this information to anyone else" and "thou shalt not annoy me with your irrelevant opinion". Unfortunately, no smiting followed, but after that I responded to baby name "advice" with, "You wanna name something? Have your own baby or get a dog!" Did I mention that being pregnant with Sophie was 39 weeks of surliness and sarcasm that totally eclipsed all previous levels of Patented Amanda Crabbiness? I had a bad case of gestational rabies. Good times.
If you caught the "again" regarding discussing baby names with K, that's right, there was an earlier discussion. One in which I mentioned liking the name "Annabelle" for a girl, to which K immediately shot back, "That is a fat girl's name. And I think I know you well enough to tell you that I can't let you do that to a kid. No 'belle' names." Friends don't let friends give their kids "fat" names, apparently. Yeah, that Public Service Announcement will be popping up everywhere soon. Anyway, that pretty much soured me on that group of names...not that I'm under any pressure to come up with baby names right now. It's just a form of light entertainment.
That being said, I have been trolling the lists of baby names on babycenter.com and such, and hoping that we don't choose another name that is suddenly catapulted into popularity the moment we sign the birth certificate. Check it out: "Sophie" didn't even make the top 100 in 2002, but for 2003 it was the 71st most popular girl's name. Anecdotally, every time I read a newspaper or magazine, there's yet another picture of a little girl named Sophie. Thankfully, though, we didn't have a boy: if we had, his name would have been "Aidan", and he would have no doubt been one of ten Aidans in his class, as that name was the 2nd most popular baby boy name for 2003 (up from #41 in 2002!).
Anyway, I once again have a short-list of new-and-improved baby names, which includes a heaping handful of names that will never, ever appear on any Top 100 list. Go ahead, tell me what you think of "Axl Cheezleton", I dare ya!
# posted by Amanda at 12:34 PM |
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Tuesday, March 02, 2004
And the winner of the "Postcards From Penguins" Photo Contest is ...
# posted by Amanda at 8:59 AM |
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