Self portrait
Originally uploaded by gretchen04401

My friend Amity takes a lot of sel-portraits, and so in between taking pics of Ingrid tonight, I turned the camera on myself. I’m so 32.

I guest lectured in the tech in ed course today, and busted a girl texting. Busted isn’t a fair word, it was a dark room, she was directly across from me and holding her cell up at eye level. But, listen up, when I’m talking, you put the damn phone away. Well, what I said was “Excuse me, please put the phone away, thanks. I love technology, too, but I’m talking right now.” She was both mortified and pissed, but, whatever, dude! I’m talking!

Funny how even though I haven’t been in front of a middle school classroom in two years, I still have it. Sadder still that undergrads aren’t far flung from middle schoolers.

Ordering windows now has me window-shopping in the traditional sense, not the literal sense, or whatever. Lots of things lined up that I am lusting after.

First and foremost, the Raynox DCR-250. It’s a snap-on macro filter, that is currently out of stock at all major camera operations, and only available on eBay. Of course. And new on eBay it’s more than B&H, but  . . . I looove it! And for $60 total, it really isn’t a bad deal. And before you say "ew, snap on filter?" check out the flickr pool for it. Way. Cool.

Speaking of flickr, and apropos of yesterday’s post, I also want to order some MOO cards, using the playground images at my bangorbaby flickr account (and making them bangorbaby cards — the email is fwded to my regular account, so it works as a contact info card for me as well, just makes them skip by my website first, really.) but those are $20.

Speaking of MOO cards, I saw this etsy store and love the wallet/moo card holder thing. I think. Wallets are hard to buy sight unseen, I think. I like the purple one okay on the fist page, and I liked this one in her sold items. $35, though, and I’m not sure I’d really like-like it.

I also came up with an interesting solution to the Darwin stairs — we still have no railing, because a railing means never getting anything in or out, ever again, and that’s just a pain in the ass. But! I had the flash of almost-genius of doing some sort of tall bookcase like thing, on a hinge, or bolted to the ceiling joists somehow, so that it provides a barrier, but is easily movable. Something like our friends’ secret door or maybe something like this mudroom thing from LLBean.  I’d also like to replace our two doormats just inside the door with one like this — not super pretty, but the jute one and bristly one suck. One that would keep the wood from getting shitty is what I’d like to have, screw cute.

But, what I do have is Ingrid’s christmas presents (table & chairs and easel from IKEA, these cardboard blocks from Lillian Vernon — total steal!), a roof over my head, an emergency propane heater (uh, Dave got a little freaked about the storm last night) and two! new! windows! coming soon. Yay!

Pumpkin is not yummy!
Originally uploaded by gretchen04401

Amity asked if I was doing NaNoWriMo this year. She knew me when I was more of a Writer, clearly. Instead, I thought I’d do a NaBloPoMo attempt, with the caveat that I get the 19th-26th off, because I will not have internet access, I’m quite sure.

Ingrid tasted some pumpkin. As I found out last night, she also ate some, which made for one of those “HOLY GOD, What IS THAT?” diapers. Blech. Still love ‘er.

Tomorrow, I get to be in an alternate reality. I’m going Away For a Night. In a New Car, Not Mine. ALONE.

I’m going to a conference on Wednesday, in a Boston suburb, and because of the way my employer handles things, I have to rent a car instead of taking my own. And because it’s so! far! away! I’m taking tomorrow to drive down. Leisurely. Stopping in places like Freeport, and Kittery, and wherever else I damn please. I’m going to go to IKEA (woohoo! Lame to be so excited about the IKEA, but there you go) and watch cable tv and take a bubble bath and sleep in a king size Cloud Nine (TM) Bed ExperienceALL BY MYSELF. No crying, lost pacis, blanket hogs, hand caught in hair, foot caught in neck readjust the toddler back to vertical OMG is it time to get up and go to work again? I’m going to get up and go to a conference where I’ll probably get a nice little plastic name pin and a free danish, and be All About My Brains for a day. I’ll drive home, maybe screeching in before bedtime, maybe not, and then I get to be a bit late on Thursday, because I have to switch rental cars.

Seriously. I keep reminding myself “I HAVE TO GO TO THE CONFERENCE.”

In 17 months, I’ve not been away from Ingrid, save for one night, when I was shuddering with fever after a shoot, and I slept fitfully in the second bed of my parents’ hotel room, where fever and parental snoring kept me from REALLY sleeping, and I had to hand-express in the shower to relieve engorgement. And even then, I was home by 8am. This is different — planned, with fun things to do on the way. Even driving alone sounds thrilling at this point, but then, I always was a road trip kind of girl. Still am, of course.

Today, I’m printing maps and confirmations and purchase orders and all of that, and daydreaming of the Hanna outlet and IKEA and debating on eating in my room, or finding someplace to eat at, both which have their appeal. Ahhhh.

A man from my hometown was killed in a car accident this week, and it’s been haunting me since I heard. It’s weird — I didn’t really know him, he’s a few years older than me, but he worked at the gas station and married a girl from my hometown, and that’s where they live. I haven’t seen either of them since high school, probably, but they have two kids, and just trying to imagine what it’s like to lose one’s husband, the father of your kids, that seems so totally horrible to me right now. Maybe adding to it is that it was on a road that I know well, and the accident was of the variety my mom was in a few years ago (and obviously, walked away from) or whatever, it’s just…. weird. I truly can’t imagine Dave going to work and not coming home.

Ingrid and I were home yesterday, as she had a fever of 104. What I’ve figured out, at molars 3&4, of course, is that teething for her sets her on fire, and she’s not actually SICK, she’s just wiped from the fever. She was extra cuddly, even took a little nap on me, like old times, and it made me miss nursing, again. Going to the Common Ground Fair this year was weird, because I remember last year being so certain I’d be one of those nursing my toddler, sitting on the grass, but Ing’s self weaning last month squelched that. It’s like when I quit smoking — both were such integral parts of who I was, you know? And I still dream about smoking, and now I’ve started dreaming about nursing. So odd.

The Y continues to go well — I added a second night of Group Power (aka “gay disco barbells”) to my schedule. Even though I’m on the waitlist, the instructor checked attendance records and saw that it hadn’t been at capacity yet, so encouraged me to just show up. Of course, then I worried that it WOULD fill up and they’d kick me out, but they didn’t. The instructor for Monday is the same instructor for my yoga/pilates class, and she started the class with “so, is anyone here new to group power?” and I swear, she looked at me, but I just looked around like “Nope, not me, I’m old hat with this, so BRING ME SOME SEXY BACK, okay?” The music changes in two weeks, and I’ll be interested to see what the new soundtrack is. I’m really totally blown away that I actually LIKE gay disco barbells, the moving in unison to Christina Aguilera remixes. It’s very alternate reality for me. I expected to suffer through it, and like yoga/pilates, but it’s just the opposite. I wish the yoga class were more meditative and less fitness-y, but oh well.

Work is great as well — I love my job, there are lots of cool things happening ’round here, and I really feel like I’ve landed in a good spot. I’m going to a conference next month, which is just a one day thing, just outside of Boston, but I’m looking forward to it. I’m also looking forward to having a full night’s sleep, the first in, oh, almost 2 years. Between pregnancy peeing, infancy, night-nursing, and partial co-sleeping (as in, when she wakes, she ends up in bed with us, and is now long and wiggly and prefers to sleep perpendicular to her parents with her feet touching one and her head and hands touching the other), I haven’t slept through in a looong time. Not to mention, alone. In a hotel bed, with lots of pillows and cable and no dishes in the sink or laundry on the guest bed. I’m even looking forward to the drive — it’s four hours each way, but I plan on stopping in Kittery, maybe, or Freeport (as I typically do) and going to IKEA, of course. Like a little tiny, one day vacation. So nice.

Detritus
Originally uploaded by gretchen04401

Here’s the thing. I see all these baby pics, and the rooms they are in are so beautifully maintained, and then I look at MY house and…. ugh. Tonight my neighbor dropped in for computer help, and I was just mortified since she walked in and it looked like this. (Not counting, the squash and syrup on the steps — for my mom! she’s coming tomorrow! she asked me to pick it up! — or my work bag just inside the door, or… everything else. But anyway.

On the plus side, really? when I look at it? Let’s see — blocks, books, and musical toys. No batteries anywhere. Not so bad. Yeah, the TV is on, and it often is, but no one ever watches it. It’s like visual radio in our house, I think. We watch the news and then drift away. Anyway. This is my hovel. My life is not picture perfect, but it is damn good.

Long time, no post, things are good — working, Y’ing, Ing-ing. But hey!

I’m going to be in Norwood, MA next month for a conference, which conveniently puts me next to the most Northeasterly IKEA. I’ve been to IKEA once before (hi, annemarie!) and loved it, but at that time I was restricted to what I could carry in one hand, as I was flying home. This time, I have a station wagon.

So, IKEA fans, I know that the website and catalog only show so much — the things I’ve already put in my mental shopping cart are one of those $10 green rocking toys, and probably a kids Poang (or table and chairs for Ing? Can’t decide on that one…) and some kitchen stuff – paring knives, and maybe some pillows or cushiony things. (I’m doing a ton of reading in bed lately, and my pillows are suffering.)

Ahhhh, consumerism.

I’d read about the side effects of weaning, some of them good (libido!) and some of them bad (plugged ducts! mood swings!) but the big one that has reared it’s ugly head is “massive downward spiral into bodyshame.”

I’ve written before, that pregnancy and nursing was the first time I felt really, really good about my body. It was the first time I did something RIGHT, I never once embarrassed myself with the wrong moves, I didn’t get stuck on the side of some hill, I didn’t go over the handlebars of gestation into a ditch. It was really amazing to feel confident in the way my body functioned, and hell, even the way it looked — I loved my pregnant body, more than any other version of my body to date. (Not counting looking back at old pics and thinking “wait, I wasn’t fat then! Why did I think I was?”)

I wrote about the Y last week, and this weekend was really great, except for two thoughts that kept running through my head, especially after seeing pictues from Saturday, which were a) “Oh god, I cannot end up as b-roll for “America’s Obesity Epidemic!” and b) “I bet people are looking at us and wondering ‘why is HE with THAT fat fuck?'” To the point that, yeah, by Sunday night, there were tears. Luckily, I married a good, good, man, and he is very reassuring and supportive and all of that (and even kind of flattered at B, which might be some sort of twisted libido thing, in that my husband suddenly looks extra yummy with his beard and band t-shirt and the baby on his back….) but still, an unhappy end to a great weekend.

And the anxiety about the Y this time is totally new — my big thing has always been not wanting to look like a fool in front of Real Exercisers, or feeling fat, or whatever, but now — fuck, I’ve nursed all over this town, with no embarrassment — even, gasp, pride! — so I’m kind of over that — but the big anxiety is measuring out my time away from Ingrid. I hate that time is so fleeting, so limited, but I also know that if I don’t improve my fitness, I’ll not be there later on, either. And Dave made some really, really good points, in that I get her for an ‘extra’ hour each day by picking her up at 4, when he gets home at 5:15, so with going 2-3x a week after work, I’d still see her more than he does. He’s totally a coparent, too, and doing dinner and baths and all of that doesn’t at all rattle him, he even looks forward to it. So, that’s covered. As it stands now, I’m going to sign up for the weight class, and I think the yoga/pilates thing, and try to do two weeknights, and one weekend class, while Dave and Ingrid do toddler swim class.

The other thing, too, is that I’m still learning that I’m not at a teaching job, where I’m ON for my entire workday. To that end, I brought in some sneakers, and want to ‘walk the circle’ — the main road around campus is a perfect circle, one mile long — 3x a week. I did it today, and it felt good to be DOING something, on time that isn’t being taken away from Ingrid, or Dave, or whatever. And, if increasing my fitness level leads to all kinds of good things like better sleep and more energy, maybe I could even transition at some point to taking early am classes, before work, that wouldn’t take away from Ingrid nearly as much. We’ll see.

Either way, I’m feeling good about stuff, mostly, and hoping that that rolls over into regaining some sense of not-shame when it comes to my own body.

Hrm, there’s a one day conference that I’d like to go to, that would be good for my own professional development, and conveniently enough, is 7 miles from the Stoughton IKEA. I don’t know why I have this obsession with IKEA, but I do know that a one-night conference would be awesome — I could sleep! all night! in a hotel! And take out the carseat and fold down the seats and flatpack my way to eternal happiness.

Or at least get a meatball.

(Testing my mobile settings — tried posting this on 7/31 from work, via email, and it didn’t take… let’s see if it works now…)

Seriously, right now? I’m getting paid to drink iced coffee and figure out how to get pants on my new Second Life avatar, and the best part? It’s for WORK. I’ve been kind of takeitorleaveit wrt Second Life, but more and more tech organizations are having meetings and conferences there, and so I figured I shuold be able to take advantage of it.

I can’t believe this is my JOB.