Obsession du Jour

A day in the life of Chez Obsession

ETA:  Turns out that even when I think I'm being uber clever, I am merely plagiarizing my friends. Dang, I guess now I can never be President.

-----------------------------------------------------------------------------

For a long time I thought that I was just being inefficient with my time, and THAT was why I never had time to knit\read\watch TV\call my friends.  That if I just wrote out my schedule, cleaned out the extraneous time-wasters, and got myself a good, clean schedule, I could start to have a bit more of my old life back.  So, a schedule. I can do that.

5:30 am -  Wake up

5:30-6:00 am  (6:15 if we're feeling lazy) - Nurse/Cuddle with WB

6:00-7:00 am - Pass WB to Dad to clothe, clean, feed and drop off at daycare; Get ready for work.

7:00 am - Catch bus ( please, please, please let my new scooter get here soon. please.)

7:45 am - 4:30 pm - Workity, workity, workity.  Crazy, flippin', too much work for a four-day work week.  100 miles an hour from the moment I arrive 'til the moment I slip out the back door to catch my train before someone can find another reason to talk to me.

5:30 pm - Pickup WB from daycare & walk home.

5:45 - 6:00 pm - Nurse\Cuddle\Chat with WB.  Reconnection and giggles.  Tis good.  Often the best part of the day.

6:00 - 6:30(6:45) pm - Make something approaching fast, simple, and edible for dinner while defending the grapes in the bottom drawer of the fridge, trying to convince him to just let me cook already, and fielding whiney cries of "Up, Mama"...."Down, Mama"...."Up, Mama"..." 'ood, Mama?"......"That?  That?  THAT? (while pointing at whatever I happen to be touching at that moment....hot pan...sharp knife....juicy apple...whatever.)  Oh, for the days when he would just happily hang out in the Ergo on my back, contented to simply watch the kitchen circus. Not so much anymore, but he still wants to be right in the thick of things.  Frustrating as hell, but also too cute to discourage.

6:30 - 7:15 pm - Dinner/Modern performance art involving multi-colored foodstuffs and an enthusiastic toddler with a joy of smearing.  I'm still unclear why we don't just feed him naked.  Oh wait.  Because he knows how to undo his diapers now.  Right.  That's a bad skill combo waiting to happen.

7:15 - 8:00 pm (if we're lucky) - Abandon dirty dinner plates and leftovers where they sit and head upstairs for Bath\Stories\Bedtime.  The Going to Bed Book, for those who might wonder.

8:00 (ish) - 9:00 (9:30) pm - Unload diswasher, clean up dinner dishes, swab down dining table and floor, quick kitchen clean up, put away the EXPLOSION of toys, misc chores; laundry (one load a day keeps the mountain away), sweeping, dusting, etc. So that a) we don't die of botulism, or worse, and b) weekends can be...weekends, and fun, not all workity, workity.  Fun like this:

9:15 - 930 ish - Collapse into a chair and stare dumbly at work email trying to decide which emails can be ignored (most of them) until morning, and which Need.To.Be.Answered.Right.Now. which is far more than I'd like.  Kind of hate people a little bit at this point.

9:30-9:45 ish(If I'm lucky in the email wars.) - Figure out which mindless thing to knit on while relaxing, think fondly about catching up with blogs.  Open Bloglines. (OMG! HOW many unread posts?  Holy crap!) Pick one at random. Spend 10 mins trying to read while knitting on a plain, unadorned, stockinette sock, drop a stitch, figure it out two rows later. Mutter some expletives. Stop reading. Fix dropped stitch. Try to go back to reading.  Fail miserably at forming some sort of coherent comments to all the really cool and interesting things all my imaginary friends are doing and making and....  Drop stitch.  Again.  On a plain sock.  Put sock away.  Too annoyed to cuss.  Close computer.

10:00 - 10:15 ish pm - Brush teeth, wash face.  Go to bed.

10:30 pm - Wonder briefly if child will ever get all his teeth\not be sick so that he can reliably sleep through the night. Decide it's best not to think about it. Go to sleep.

3:30 am - ? 

.

Hmmmm......OK, I give. What's the secret? I am certainly not the first person in the world to have a kid and face life balance issues.  Others do it, and many of you do it quite gracefully - without losing touch with friends & family, without missing birthdays, without a lot of drama.  I want to be one of you. How do you hold it all together and keep up with house, family, blog, work, hobbies, sleep - without going insane?   Do you save more time for yourself in the weekday evenings and just sacrifice some of the weekend hours for cleaning?  How do you manage that and still get good family time? Just set a time that's inviolate? Always?  No matter what kind of fun might otherwise be had b/c you need to clean the house? Pick one weeknight to stay up late to do chores and just let that be that?  Stuff cottonballs in your ears & ignore the waking child?  I'm kidding.  Mostly. 

But seriously.  How DO you do it?  What are your favorite coping mechanisms?  Tips? Tricks? Routines? I'm all ears.

.

.

.

The power of positive thought

Awhile back, I bought one of these from Caro:

....even though I almost never use my SLR anymore.  I felt a little foolish, since I was sure it would rarely see the light of day, but holy crap -- look at it.  How could I resist this?  Fast-forward a month or two to my birthday (Saturday), and shockingly ...

THIS showed up to keep it company!!!!  Woohoo!!!!  Please, for the love of cashmere, don't tell my contractors, OK?

I've been utterly insufferable this weekend, unable to go 5 minutes without it in my hands.  I'd almost forgotten what it was like to have a 'real' camera.  I gotta go, I can't type and fondle the camera at the same time, so instead I'll just leave a smattering of twenty-gajillion photos from this weekend.  Mostly - don't faint from the shock - of my kid.

Balloons!

Lunch preps

Bow wow wow wow

Coasters...not just for beer anymore.

Sexy Stitchy

Bowl-o-Rama

Shenanigans

Birthday Bouquet

Why not?

Who doesn't like a little blog fluff every now and then?  Like, say...on one's second day back into the blogosphere?

You Are An INFJ

The Protector You live your life with integrity, originality, vision, and creativity. Independent and stubborn, you rarely stray from your vision - no matter what it is. You are an excellent listener with almost infinite patience. You have complex feelings, and you take great care to express them. In love, you see relationships as an opportunity to connect and grow. You enjoy relationships when they are improving and changing. You can't stand stagnation. At work, you stay motivated and happy... as long as you are working toward a dream you support. You would make a great photographer, alternative medicine guru, or teacher. How you see yourself: Hardworking, ethical, and helpful When other people don't get you, they see you as: Manipulative, weak, and unstable

What's Your Personality Type?

Seriously though? Manipulative, weak, and unstable? I've been called many, many things by people who don't 'get' me, but weak and unstable aren't usually on that list.   Also? "Infinite patience"?  Maybe in the land of chocolate snows and hot fudge rivers.   Mostly, I just love how these things can feel dead on in many ways, and yet so dead wrong in others.  Sort of like a horoscope....but somehow less fun that a good 'star reading'.

OH! - and even more fun is this one:

you are khaki #F0E68C

Your dominant hues are red and green, so you're definately not afraid to get in and stir things up. You have no time for most people's concerns, you'd rather analyze with your head than be held back by some random "gut feeling". Your saturation level is lower than average - You don't stress out over things and don't understand people who do. Finishing projects may sometimes be a challenge, but you schedule time as you see fit and the important things all happen in the end, even if not everyone sees your grand master plan. Your outlook on life is bright. You see good things in situations where others may not be able to, and it frustrates you to see them get down on everything.

the spacefem.com html color quiz

Wow.  Khaki?  Could I BE more exciting than this?  I don't think so.  And how about all the ways these two contradict each other?

I LOVE the internets. 

Right. So...Where were we?

Hi.  Still alive.  Apparently, that wee re-commitment to the blog didn't stick, so I'm thinking to try again. 

What have we been up to?  Hmmm.....recap, in no particular order:

- An attempt to be involved in the 365 project on Flickr for both WB and myself, which was great and fun, but seems well and truly dead now. I did try, I did.  Sadly, I'm just not organized enough to manage all the daily tasks of this new mom paradigm, plus work, plus DAILY self-portraits of both of us.  I'm thinking I'd like to try to do a weekly version of this, but will miss the crew in my current Flickr group, thus cementing my conviction that it's not WHAT you do, but with whom you do it.  Inertia. It's what's for dinner. Flickr albums here and here if anyone is interested.

- Some knitting. Not much, given the craziness of the schedule we currently keep and the amount of both house maintenance and 'homework', but some.  Typically I get to knit on Monday nights at knit night and anything else is icing.  I do have a handful of small FO's and I'd like to get shots of those soon and get them posted, for the record. Oh, wait, here's one thing for which I DO have a photo:

Details here, such as they are.

- I got hit by a bus.  Not kidding.  Those details are here: http://www.flickr.com/photos/obsessiondujour/2571906788/in/set-72157604360064848/

I'm only just now getting all the MBTA stuff cleared up, and will hopefully be replacing the (completely totalled) scooter very, very soon.  Like....in the next week or so, if at all possible. 

- WB turned a year old.  It's surreal.  Of course, being this behind on the posting, now he's 14 months old and starting to talk. Er, I should say....he's starting to talk actual English words.  He's been carrying on conversations for months, only...well...sadly, we don't speak "babbleese."  What with the walking at 10 1/2 months and the talking, I feel like he's going to head off to college any day now.

- July was the month o' whooping cough at Chez Obsession.  Despite having been vaccinated, WB came down with it, and let me tell you: it sucks.  It was a month of sick + recuperation, and now it's taken us another month (AFTER the cough went away) to get back to that place where he is a) completely well (he seemed extra susceptible to minor colds for a while after the WC), and b) sleeping through the night again.  Only...now he's decided that he likes to get up at 5:00 am every morning instead of 5:40 am.  Me no likee this new schedule, but damned if I'm not getting TONS more done at work by simply getting in 45 minutes earlier.  'Tis a good thing too, since on-going employment is a good thing, and busy-season is a-coming.

- WB and I went 'a-vistin'.  We got to hang with some of our favorite peeps, and B got to take his first plane ride.  Wheeee!

- WB had his first trip to the beach:

How about you?  Whatcha been up to?

What is true love?

True love is:

Believe me when I tell you that I realize this makes me the single least romantic woman I know, but people....after three years of holding out against the temptation of a dishwasher because I wanted to wait until we renovated the kitchen...I am here to tell you that this dishwasher?  Best Anniversary Present EVER.  Of course, as you can no doubt tell, the kitchen still hasn't been renovated, but I now see the folly of my all-or-nothing ways.  I was wrong.  I REALLY wanted a dishwasher, and I was apparently willing to get pregnant just to justify getting one without sounding like I had sacrificed the strength of my convictions.

Nevermind that with the breastfeeding there's pretty much nothing that needs to go in this thing for a long time that has anything to do with the baby.  I won't tell if you don't.

Please excuse us.

We are currently experiencing technical difficulties.

Seriously.

I used to be such a technology geek and had myself all wired to the internets 15 ways from Sunday, and now?  Now I'm lucky if I even HAVE access to the internets.

First, last fall my super-rockin' email/web-browsing phone died, and the ability to be constantly 'in the loop' died with it.  I was connected in a bunch of other ways, though, so I just sucked it up and went back to an older generation phone that was still lying around the house.  Then, over the holidays, our laptop's power cord connector finally came completely loose, rendering it ......well....dead, and also unable to notice when it was hooked up to life-giving electricity.  So sad.  Poor little baby. Also dying with that connection was my ability to hang out in a comfy chair in the living room with my honey and also still keep up with all the happenings in the world of my imaginary (and not-so-imaginary) friends here online.   We hadn't really done anything about fixing that because we had some other priorities come up (ie: Hello? BABY!) and we DID still have my old, crochety desktop upstairs in my attic. This desktop is fine for 'necessary' access, but has certainly curtailed my time online for a whole boatload of reasons, not least of which is the banishment-to-the-attic issue.  And THEN?  Then (as of 3 or 4 weeks ago) the video card on THAT machine began the slow process of dying, one tiny crash after another, rendering any attempt at internet connection a frustrating game of Russian Roulette and leaving a long trail of lost emails and posts in it's wake.

I can't even BELIEVE that I've allowed this kind of technological backsliding to go on for so long.  I haven't been THIS connection-handicapped since the early, dark days immediately after college, before I figured out how to finagle my very own (used, office surplus)  "portable" computer and my KICK ASS 9600 baud modem from my first job. I know.......STY-LIN'!  Man....and I thought not having access to my listsrvs and newsgroups was bad.  Anyway, I'm DYING to get this situation ironed out because this is KILLING me.  And what little online time I can scrape together at work is simply not enough of a fix.  Soon, though, SOON this will get it's day at the top of the priority list and I'll be able to focus on rebuilding our technological bridge to the outside world. 

Meanwhile, I'll leave you with a little riddle to give you an idea of how we've been spending our time here at Chez Obsession.  What do you get when you cross one pregnant female (who started out more than a little compulsive to begin with), a house under renovation, a BAD case of spring cleaning fever, and some hard-core nesting instinct?

I'll let you guys stew over that one for a bit, and with any luck I'll be able to show you pictures of some of the results of that madness soon.

Also, maybe y'all can spare a few moments of sympathy for my poor husband, who has weathered this storm pretty damned well.  A lesser man might have killed me by now, or at least given me a less-than-complimentary nickname.  Oh sure, I definitely have a new nickname, but it could be worse, all things considered.  Mama Bird.   It's not like I can argue it, after all.

 

The plan continues apace.

For those of us following the progress of "When Knitters Rule the World", I now present this experience.

On Sunday, we were sitting in our natural childbirth class - to which I have, of course, worn handknit socks because....well.....because it's what we do, we knitters.  We wear our handknits, right?  So I'm hanging out in these, and while we're waiting for the teacher to show up I'm reading through the 'homework assignment' (that we had naturally forgotten we were supposed to do), when I realize that a couple of women nearby were chatting quietly about knitting (a conversation, they mentioned later, that had been sparked by the Jaywalkers). It made me smile, but I'm only half-listening because I'm trying to think up something to say when she gets there lest we expose ourselves to this group of dedicated folks what slack-assed parents we're destined to be since we can't even be bothered to remember to make a measly 5-item list when we even have an entire week to work on it, right? 

It's all going quite well until one of them says something quite funny, and I involuntarily laugh and totally bust myself for the terrible eavesdropper that I am.  Once the cat is out of the bag, I go ahead and look up a little sheepishly and get involved in the conversation, which, it turns out, includes fully half the women in our class.  Half.  Oh sure, it's a small class of 8 couples, but still.  Half the women.  I kid you not, there were three other knitters in the class, one of whom has also knit Hourglass.  I was mere microseconds from asking that one if she had a blog (because there was conversational evidence that she clearly knew what blogs were), but was saved from further embarrassing the husband by the arrival of our teacher. 

Just THINK how great it will be when that is representative of the whole world.  When fully half (or more) of the world can again be born into a family of knitters, the world will be a better place, don't you think?

And now?  A little catching up in photos:

 

WeeBeastie's first XC excursion, albeit probably his last naked skiing until he's at least 18.  I hope.  Please also note that this was the weekend before SPA, so.....what.....a MONTH ago?  Yeah.  It's bigger now.  This jacket doesn't even meet in the middle now, much less zip up.   24-week belly shot coming soon.

Remember those grow-your-own-crystals kits you used to always want to order out of the back of the comic books?  Apparently, our front steps are the perfect spot for our own lab experiments.  This is what happens to snow melt salts in the right conditions.   Look ma! Real science!

...and it's purty, too.

I also really, really, really wanted in on Ms. Concateknit's 'Day in the life of' contest (because I have seen the stash, and it is both covet and contest -worthy) but this was as far as I got in the photo-taking.

My street:

My train:

And then, because even sock yarn can't, apparently, beat the pregnancy-brain-syndrome, I completely forgot, not only to take any more pictures, but that I had even READ that post......until I saw her announcing the winners the other day.  8% less brain, people.....8%.  Don't ever let anyone tell you that we don't use ALL of our brains.  It's completely untrue.

Ch-ch-ch-ch-choices.....

(Warning: Long, rambling, sometimes controversial navel-gazing ahead.  No knitting.  You can't say I didn't warn you.)

I've been thinking a lot lately about choices, and how we have so many in our culture.  Sometimes I think that having all of these choices stresses us out, and sometimes I think it comforts us.  At any rate, for good or ill, choices are what have been keeping me distracted from the blogging recently.  We found out sort of late in our pregnancy (9 weeks - I know, don't ask, it will only scare you if you're trying to avoid getting pregnant.) that we were expecting our little weebeastie, and since we were a little ahead of our child-birthing schedule in our Grand Master Life Plan, we've had a whirlwind of catching up to do by way of testing and choosing and learning.  So much so that I forgot to share THIS with you.

This is weebeastie three weeks ago at about 16 weeks.  Freakishly fantastic isn't it?  It's just like something you'd see on one of the National Geographic channel's 'In the Womb' shows.  I had no idea that we normal people could actually get one of these 3d ultrasound pictures, so that was a fun surprise.  Another fun surprise relates to one of our first choices.  When we headed into this ultrasound/amnio, we were still unsure of whether or not we wanted to know the gender in advance.  We were sort of keen on it being a surprise, but recognized the beauty and simplicity of just knowing in advance.  It turned out that weebeastie had his own ideas about whether or not we should know, and only some sort of weird modesty is keeping me from showing you THAT particular ultrasound pic.  Suffice it to say that he made his papa proud.  ;)

So there you go.  Grumperina?  Hear that?  It's a boy.  Just like you wanted.

But I digress.  Choices.  We have lots of them, and it's both wonderful and scary.  For instance, now that we know we're having a boy, we now have to come to some sort of educated, negotiated agreement on circumcision, and regardless of what we decide (and for privacy's sake as well as to halt any vitriolic debate here in the comments, I'll not ever be announcing which way we're going on that), we were faced with making a choice, possibly even one that would be irreversible, for someone who cannot speak for themselves.  As my favorite uncle, Duke, used to say: 'MAN.....that is some heavy shit'.  And it truly is.  I've never actually pondered what it means to make these kinds of decisions for someone else before, and it only makes me even MORE glad that we waited until we were a little more mature before attempting this parenting gig.

And that's just ONE of our many, many choices., some of them obviously more important than others, but as examples, there's OB vs midwife; doula vs. no doula; natural vs medicated birth; breastfeeding vs. bottle augmentation vs. formula; co-sleeping vs. his own crib; cloth diapers vs. disposables; day care center vs. grandma vs. home-based daycare; Winnie the Pooh vs. Finding Nemo in the nursery; bassinet vs. moses basket; glider vs. Poang chair from Ikea; Yale vs. Harvard.....

OK, so maybe we're getting a little ahead of ourselves on that last one.  ;)

If it sounds like maybe we were getting out of hand for a little while, it's because we were.  Somehow in the last couple of weeks though, a switch flipped for us somewhere and we stopped looking at these issues as earth-shattering problems that we had to solve (did I mention that we're an engineer and an accountant?  that's what we do, solve stuff), and began looking at them instead as interesting explorations of our OPTIONS.  You know what happened then?  Miraculously, this became FUN.  Sure, much of it is still serious (and some of it really, really isn't), but it's been fun too.   It's fantastic all the things we're learning about ourselves AND each other.

It has also set me to thinking about how fortunate we are to live in a society in which these choices exist.  Starting first and foremost with the choice to bear children.  I have always been a vocal proponent and an active (some might have even called me militant at times) supporter of a woman's right to control their reproductive destiny, and am intimately aware of the value of being able to choose not to bear a child when one's situation isn't amenable for whatever reason. I will admit that in my mind, the biggest issue in this struggle has always been to insure that women retain the right to choose NO, if that's what they need to do.  I still do, but I've recently begun to deeply appreciate how priceless that freedom is even when the decision goes the other way.  For some stupid reason, I've never really understood the joy of knowing that the decision is being made, for lack of a better phrase, for the 'right' reasons.  In the midst of all of the insanity and changes that pregnancy and impending childbirth brings, it has made me feel very safe, centered and grounded in our decision to have this baby because we WANTED to....really wanted to....as opposed to being in any way trapped, either by our society or our beliefs.  This process has driven home for me the fact that what 'the right to choose' ultimately means is the the right to choose when and where to bear and raise a child so as to provide as loving and safe an environment as we can.   I'm not trying to start a firestorm here, and I am well aware that this is a complex and controversial topic, but for my part, I have never been more appreciative of the people out there who fight (and often lose) each and every day in the clinics and the health centers in communities everywhere to try to keep this legal right a practical reality for the women in this country.  So go hug your womens' health advocate today.....and write your congress person.   Or not.  Your mileage may vary, and these beliefs may not be yours.  I'm not really looking to debate the abortion issue here, just to express my thanks to people that I feel are doing something important.  If you feel the need to comment on this all I ask is that you be sensitive and polite.

And now, all of you who have, or have considered having, kids it's YOUR turn.  What are some of the choices you've faced/made/battled over and how have your solutions worked out for you?  Did you hate your doula?  Do you wish you'd started sooner\waited longer? If your kid never stepped foot in McD****'s again, would it be too soon? Do you really wish you'd chosen frogs instead of the little mermaid for your nursery wallpaper?  Do you think that Baby Einstein is the best thing since sliced bread?  Would you love to have kids, but feel like you're too young\strapped for cash\old?   Anything.  Everything.  I'd love to hear your stories, and they don't all have to be about The Big Issues.  What's the best brand of baby food, for instance?

But seriously, if you have the answer to the Yale vs. Harvard question, I'll take that one too.  ;)

Small annoyances...

Dear Typepad:

I recognize that in the grand scheme of life it's really not that big of a deal that I can't get notification of comments left on my blog, really I do, but seriously, can you DO someting about this already?!?!  At a minimum, could you find a way to let me know how to email those people who DO comment once I haul may ass over and read the comments manually? 

Also,  an appropriate response TO A CUSTOMER is not 'Could you maybe use a different email address?'  Um, hello?   NO.  Just how many email addresses should one need in life, eh?  How about instead you just fix your own shit?  It's just an idea.

Thanks,
Ms.  Obsession du Jour.

P.S. OH, and while you're at it, could you maybe back up your servers a bit more frequently so that when your service DOES go down, whole posts AND their comments won't be lost?  That'd be grand.

Who has a control issue?

You Are The Lovers

You represent ideal love: innocence, trust, exhilaration and joy. You demonstrate the harmony of opposites, two sides coming together. At times, you also represent the struggle between what is right and what is tempting. Control is an issue for you, especially when you don't know your reasons for choosing something. Your fortune: You have an important choice you need to make about love, and it will be a difficult choice to make. You are likely struggling between the love you crave and the love that is right. In the end, you will choose what you crave, even if it's bad for you. Because without what you crave, you will feel empty and incomplete.

What Tarot Card Are You?

Uh oh...I wonder if this means there are bunnies in my future?

Thanks Mafia, you know how I love these silly things.