is it just me?

Thursday, November 29, 2007

 

stick people

just before my aerobics class on Tuesday (is it soooooo dorky that I take aerobics? be honest!) there are a group of people that practice a martial art that involves very long sticks. they wear funny pants and take the whole thing very seriously. they look at us aerobicisers with a great deal of contempt. I will admit, following some peppy undergrad while doing pointless moves is definitely not the coolest or most exciting way to burn calories, but it works for me. someone makes sure that I don't get lazy and that I exercise for a full hour, and more importantly someone else decides what you do. it's brainless. anyway, the stick people. I know they think that they are achieving some higher level of being with their sticks, and that we are foolishly wasting our precious moments here on earth step-tapping, but seriously: get over yourselves. I used to do martial arts. while I lived in boston I kickboxed. not cardio kickboxing, real kick and punch a solid object kickboxing. we only sparred on fridays and that was my least favorite part, but really wailing on something with a solid right cross is super fun. And I'll admit I was in the best shape of my life (which is not saying all that much). But anyway, I get tired of the way they look at me and make a big production of putting away their sticks. So the other day a bunch of them were walking out as I was walking in and one of the women had a huge, serious, stick- shaped bruise right across her cheek. oi. that's a good reason to do aerobics. who's sorry now, stick lady?

I told you
we love the Packers. on my way to the gym today there were no fewer than 20 people standing on the stairs of the Hygiene Lab (which is located just next to my building and which I suspect is decidedly unhygienic) wearing Packer wear and having their picture taken. Some were in sweatshirts, some in jerseys, and one guy was in a Packers tie! You know when you want to try to have everyone dress in matching and you pick something like jeans and a white shirt, or some other generic garment that everyone has? well, here in Wisconsin you pick Packer wear. I dropped of Baby Lizard this morning and the only other girl in her class was wearing a Packer jersey for a player I had never heard of. heh. If we get Baby Lizard a jersey it will almost certainly be Favre. that guys is the Lazarus of football and deserves to be immortalized on the tiny back of my child. We were discussing not being able to watch the game last night and my husband suggesting bringin the kid to a bar with us to watch. the sad part is, I bet not one person would give us a funny look if we did. go Pack go.

locker rooms
so, you know I am obsessed with locker rooms. my lesson from the locker room today is: there is no reason to wear saggy underwear. seriously, ladies, they make them in all sizes, including yours. there is nothing sadder than saggy deflated underwear, so if you are wearing some, get your butt over to the department store and invest in some new drawers. have some self respect.

Wednesday, November 28, 2007

 

On Wisconsin

My two alma maters faced off last night in the ACC-Big Ten challenge. Since I love college basketball, having my two teams play each other was very exciting. In the end I was kind of cheering for Duke, though it was sort of an involuntary reaction to watching a game in Cameron. I kept forgetting that those were my Wisconsin Badgers. Unfortunately, the Badgers got killed, and I was hoping for a better game but oh well.

Anyway, during the first few minutes of the broadcast, they showed a somewhat heavyset, middle-aged woman with a cheesehead on. At first I thought, come on – can’t we find a somewhat more flattering representation of this fine state? But upon further consideration I thought “Yeah, it’s kind of like that.” As I have mentioned before, once I moved here I realized that Wisconsin is one of the go-to places when you need a random reference in movies or tv. It is the flyover zone between the two coasts. It is not next on the list of terrorist targets. But it’s a nice little place where the people are relatively friendly and the weather is bad and the food is fattening and the beer and cheese are delicious. Just the other day I was leaving our parking ramp and I held the door for someone behind me. I had to wait a few seconds, no big deal. When he gets to the door he says “Thank you! I apologize for dawdling so! I am not quite with it yet, it is Monday after all.” And I thought – who talks like that? Dawdling so? Seriously. But people in Wisconsin do. All the time.

On the radio this morning they were talking about the tally from deer gun hunting season. The gun season here is only nine days long, which always seems short to me, and means there is a LOT of shooting in those nine days. Seriously, you cannot engage in outdoor recreation anywhere with a tree during those nine days. We mistakenly went out to a state park with our dog during the season last year and now he owns a blaze orange vest. Haha. So, how many deer were killed in nine days? 343,644. I am not kidding. Three hundred and forty-three THOUSAND deer killed in nine days. That’s more than 38,000 deer per day. (I was a math major.) That is insane. This is reported on the news, along with the number of hunters killed. On the radio one DJ was saying that at another station she used to work at they had a pool about how many hunters would be killed and “heart attacks didn’t count”. Haha.
Also newsworthy in Wisconsin this morning: the fact that you will not be able to see the Packers game in Madison if you don’t have NFL network. People are outraged. We already can’t see anything but national coverage of UW football and basketball, and now no Packers. People here are serious about the Packers. They paint their houses green and gold. They dress the entire family in packer gear and take pictures. We LOVE the packers. So people are not happy. Not happy at all.

One final note, at my ten year college reunion I had to tell lots of people that I live in Wisconsin. Since I went to college on the east coast, with lots of other people from the coasts, this is unusual. Most people said “Really? Why Wisconsin?” But several people said to me “Man, everyone lives in Wisconsin!” which I thought was strange because I don’t know anyone else from college here. But it turns out that one of the nicest, prettiest girls in my whole class lives here. You know the girl - everyone knows her. I bet you could ask almost anyone in my graduating class about this girl and they would say “Oh, she’s so nice.” I would say that and I have never even met her. Seriously. So she was there, and everyone was talking to her and hearing that she lived in Wisconsin which became ‘everyone’ living in Wisconsin. Haha. Unfortunately, since I am not the person that everyone knows she does not know me so we aren’t friends, which is too bad because it’s hard to find anyone who cares about Duke around here. Oh well.

If you meet someone and they are from Wisconsin, I would suggest not asking them about cheese or cows. It gets old. It’s not quite as irritating as living in Boston and having people say “do you pahk the cah in hahvahd yahd?” but it’s close.

Round and round
Last night was a rough night with Baby Lizard and no one got enough sleep. She woke up late this morning, meaning I had to try to throw her in some clothes and get out the door. But trying to rush a 15 month old is about as easy as herding cats, and several temper tantrums, a smashed banana and much whining later we were out the door, more than 20 minutes behind schedule. I currently have a CD of kids’ music in the car that, while kind of annoying, makes the little Liz very happy. During the break between songs she immediately says “more?” which of course there always is. But as I was singing how much “I like to oat opples and bononos” just minutes before I was due at the office, I was thinking: today I don’t know if I can do this. Being a working mom is hard. It is hard to switch gears. I have don’t have much trouble completely devoting myself to my child when at home, but I do have trouble completely devoting myself to work when I am away from her. It is hard to be singing kid songs, then come in, set your bags down and make phone calls to update someone on a new impact evaluation project in Kenya and balance a budget. But I think some days I do really well at being a mom, some days I do really well at being a worker, some days I am great at both, and other days I fail miserably at both. Today, unfortunately, falls in category four but the good news is there is always tomorrow to wake up and try again, hopefully on more than 5.5 hours of sleep. Until then, the wheels on the bus still go round and round, all over town.

Monday, November 26, 2007

 
allegedly my in-laws spent 18 hours cleaning their house before we got there. if this is true, and we will assume that it is, I am completely terrified of what that place looked like 18.5 hours before. the house that we entered was not what I would have described as clean. but after spending three days there, what is even more hive-inducing is the complete and total lack of organization. there are some lessons here: there is a reason why people do not put coffee filters and spoons in the same place. shelves are your friends. refrigerators are for food. it is better if the food is visible and not encased in seven old plastic grocery bags. people have trash cans for a reason. you know, that kind of thing. and while my less than stellar housekeeping is well documented here, my house feels like an effing shrine to Mr. Clean after that place. That said, the visit was not half bad. I was a little afraid when I casually asked on Thanksgiving morning how long it took to cook a turkey and my stepmother-in-law first looked at me as if to say "hmm...that's a good question!" I had visions of us sinking our teeth into some raw turkey at 8 o'clock that night, but no, salmonella-free Thanksgiving was served at 5 pm sharp. And the food was good! Yay for that, since bad food on a holiday that is all about food is really a drag.

On Friday evening we had a little birthday celebration for me and my sister-in-law, as our birthdays are recent and a week apart. My grandmother-in-law (GIL) was put in charge of the cake. Making the frosting for the cake was the big event of her day, and we spent quite a bit of time discussing it. She also kept saying that she wanted 'the girls' (that's me and my SIL) to decorate it. My GIL is 85 which means she lived through the depression which means that she is violently allergic to wasting anything, throwing anything away, and spending more than $20 on anything for any reason. She thinks Wal-Mart is fabulous because it is very cheap and she is from Arkansas, as is Wal-Mart. She loves to tell you about the cheap phone cards she gets at Sam's and the pie she found on clearance for $1.48 (mmmm....). She made a behemoth of a cake. It involved three BOXES of cake mix, which are made into sheet cake and piled on top of one another. This thing was massive. Finally it was frosted and ready for decorating, and she brought out no fewer than five tubes of Cake-Mate frosting, mostly unopened. My SIL started cutting them open, and while that stuff is pretty nasty when fresh, you could tell that this was not new frosting. It had taken on many of the characteristics of cement, and did not appear to be even remotely related to a food product. So my SIL discovers that this frosting may be SIX YEARS past the expiration and wisely decides that perhaps we should not put it on the cake. My GIL is somewhat devastated by this news, and inspects it. You can tell she thinks we are being foolish and wasteful. My SIL offers to throw away the toxic cement but GIL says she'll take it home because "they have too much trash already". But I know the truth: she is going to take it home and she is going to use it. Because she paid good money for that frosting, and there's no need to throw it away. Never mind that she bought it on clearance while Clinton was in office, that is perfectly good frosting and she will just whip up a cake for her friends and that will be that. Having lived to the age of 85 we can only hope that is not what kills her.

GIL also bought a present for Baby Lizard. It is a doll that makes really scary noises. GIL thinks it is fantastic that the doll makes a sucking sound when you put something in its mouth. I find this totally disturbing, even more so since that rotates with crying, laughing, and this scary little mutant saying 'mama'. eek. So, we showed it to Baby Lizard who isn't really very interested in dolls. She immediately put the fake bottle in her own mouth, but fortunately she did not seem very interested in figuring out how to make the doll make noise. So, yay for that. It is worth noting that on her last visit GIL bought Baby Lizard a weird little stuffed red wing blackbird that 'sings' when you squeeze it. Apparently weird electronic noises really strike her fancy! Fabulous.

I was back at work today and everyone wanted to ask about my Thanksgiving which really has to be one of the most boring holidays to discuss. So, like a good Midwesterner I spent a solid portion of my work day talking about driving through snow on the way to Iowa. And I got to hear about strawberry "salad" which apparently involves jello, some cream cheese (?), frozen strawberries and something else. Trust me, nowhere on earth is the word 'salad' used more loosely than in Wisconsin. Nowhere.

In other Wisconsin news, a Milwaukee police officer was recently deported since they figured out that he had assumed his dead cousin's identity in order to pose as a citizen. Funny, I guess I always figured that background checks for police officers included investigating things like whether or not you are alive. I feel so safe now. While it seems like he's a good guy, I would have to say that entering public service on a fake identity has to, in retrospect, seem like a poor decision. good night.

Wednesday, November 21, 2007

 

a fork so clean

you could eat off of it. or maybe not. there is a student lounge in my building which is nice because it has a microwave and a coke machine. the microwave is pretty gross, but at least your food doesn't have to touch that other cooked on stuff. there is a refrigerator but it is pretty much a toxic waste dump and I do not store food there. and then there is the sink. you know, kitchen sinks are gross. we clean them at home with a good amount of regularity, so we forget how nasty they are. but the one here does not get cleaned. it is equipped with a prehistoric sponge that must be so contaminated with germs that it might actually kill you if you sniffed it. there is also some dishwashing liquid, but people just keep filling the thing with water since it ran out in 2004 and no one has bothered to buy more, so now the water is basically just water with maybe 2 suds in it. today I was debating whether my spoon actually got dirtier just by being held under the running water (no sponge or dish liquid) in the vicinity of this travesty of a washing place. I decided that maybe I should just throw it away.

today I am going to see my in-laws for Thanksgiving. I will promise you that no fewer than 4 out of 6 dishes will have dog hair in them. yum. it will be interesting to see how the human swiffer does in such an environment.

happy thanksgiving.

Tuesday, November 20, 2007

 

ok. I care.

I know I said I didn’t care what I looked like in my driver’s license photo, but you know what? I lied. Because it is a truly, truly terrible picture and I hate it. I spent the entire drive home trying to figure out a way to ‘lose’ my license so I could get a new one without a lot of hassle. I appear to be approximately 300lbs and am smiling like Fire Marshall Bill. However, in my defense it was not poor shirt selection or lazy showering that got me into this mess. I blame the photo taker. I think they purposely found the most distracting person in Madison and got him to take the pictures just so everyone looked even more terrible. Now, I am all for equal opportunity hiring, and I think it is quite clever the way a person with no hands (no kidding) can operate the camera. He has a hook on one hand, and nothing on the other, though he uses a partial thumb to type. He has one of the craziest mullets you have ever seen, with short puffy jet black hair on top and then brushed out curly hair that hangs most of the way down his back. PEOPLE. How am I supposed to look natural while staring at this guy who calls everyone “Miss First Name” (“Miss Marcia? Here we go Miss Marcia. Now I want you to look right at that flashing yellow light. Thank you Miss Marcia. That will be ready in two minutes!” ) has somewhat crossed eyes and warring teeth and apparently cannot bend his knees? Truthfully, by the time it was my turn and I had watched five other people go through this I was so driven to distraction about how I was going to retrieve my license, which he serves to you on his non-hook hand like a waiter holds a tray, without accidentally grabbing him, that there was no way in hell I was going to look good in that picture. And yes, I am totally going to hell. But I am taking that driver’s license photo with me so it can burn.

Call me whatever you want

There is a lovely woman in our neighborhood who is really friendly and has a really friendly dog and I see her all the time and I have no idea what her name is. I mean, we don’t really know each other but we sort of act like we do, which I guess is weird, but kind of neighborly. Anyway, the other day she was out in her yard and my dog stopped to sniff her dog and her husband came over. She said “Have you met my husband Ishmael?” to which the answer is: no, I have not because if I had ever met anyone named Ishmael I would certainly remember. Haha. The funny part is that she calls him Ish. Though, if you think about it, running around calling anyone Ishmael all day is probably more than a person could take.

Tradeoffs

One of the extremely unfortunate characteristics of my office is that it is right next to the men’s bathroom, which means both a lot of of coming and going and overhearing things that I am not particularly interested in overhearing. Anyway, yesterday two guys were having a conversation in there while using the restroom, and I thought to myself: while I DO sort of envy the ability to pee standing up, I do not envy the possibility of having to talk to my co-workers while doing so.

Lose the lbs in just 30 days!

I saw a little online ad the other day telling me that they had discovered Oprah’s diet secret. However, my scrupulous weekly reading of gossip magazines tells me that her secret is a thyroid condition. So, I am not exactly sure how they are ‘selling’ that. However, I am sure it will have you looking terrific in your new neon bikini in a matter of days.


Friday, November 16, 2007

 

picture day

I need to renew my driver's license today, since it expires in one week. So this morning I was thinking that maybe I should give at least a little, tiny bit of thought to what I was wearing since I will have to look at it all the time for the next eight years. But then I realized that I actually have NO IDEA what I am wearing in my current driver's license photo, which I have had for at least three years. And then I thought that I should probably try to get my hair to look good, and then I realized that I really don't care. When did this happen? I mean, I think I used to care. Part of it is that now that I am old enough that I rarely get carded (waaah), I don't show my driver's license that much. I mostly focus on it when I am at the airport, but at that point I am much more focused on how I am going to most efficiently take off my shoes, pull out my computer, fold my stroller, show my shampoo and all that other b.s. at security that I don't really care about my license. Though, the nice old security guy at my local airport LOVES to comment. He looks at mine and says "you grew your hair out!" which I did. Maybe this is how he passes the time? Anyway, I have realized that I care more about being warm than I do about looking dorky in a snow hat, and I care more about not being late than I do looking like a spaz running across the street just ahead of the light. And maybe this is just because I am getting old and maybe it is because when you work and have a kid you don't really have that much time to worry about lots of things like that. You are happy if you make it to work in mostly clean clothes that fundamentally match (usually I do even better than that!) at a reasonable time with no major snafus. And sometimes I worry that all these years in an academic department in the Midwest are taking their toll on my sense of style and self pride in how I look, but then I also think: until I go somewhere else there's really no point in worrying. No one here is going to notice anyway, so I might as well keep it easy and basic and focus on, you know, showing up.

Tuesday was Baby Lizard's first ever "school" (daycare) picture. This is funny to me, since she is only 15 months old, but whatever. She woke up very late, and therefore did not get a bath before pictures as I had intended. Oops. And as I was taking off her jacket I realized she had yogurt in her hair. nice. So now, her first picture, which we will dutifully display proudly and save forever, will show her that not only had her mother let herself go, but she was the kind of mother that let her child go to her very.first.picture.day.EVER with yogurt in her hair. And while I feel bad about it, I also think well, you might as well know that you were not the child who was always in perfect matching outfits with not a speck of anything on your face and pleasant smile. Sadly, that is not you. There is only one other girl in her class. On picture day she was wearing an adorable little purple corduroy dress with a matching shirt and patent leather shoes. Baby Lizard was wearing a brown t-shirt and some blue jeans, and while I think she looked adorable, she looked quite regular. oops. I guess I forgot about the dressing up part. And I feel bad because really she is too young to already not be caring how she looks, but since she can't really care on her own behalf that is one of my primary responsibilities as her mother. to make her looked well loved, well cared for, clean, etc. I mean, she still dresses better than I do on a daily basis, but I feel like I am dropping the ball. oh well, the good news is that apparently she handled the photo shoot like a professional, and I can only hope that the photo will capture her inner fabulousness and you won't even notice the rest of it. if you are very good perhaps I will post the pic, yogurt and all.

Tuesday, November 13, 2007

 
I was traveling this weekend which is usually the source of quite a bit of fodder for me, but I must admit that traveling alone with a 15 month old really impinges on one's ability to people watch in an airport. however, since I am an excellent multi-tasker (just ask my resume!) I did catch a couple of things. while playing in the kids' area in Cincinnati, exposing my child to as many transcontinental germs as possible, I got to enjoy two people have a conversation for my benefit. You know the type, they are talking a little too loud for it to be just for their own benefit, and they are trying to make something that is probably kind of boring sound interesting. This woman was telling her husband that "they just need to pay us the $10,000 that they owe us" which would have been interesting had it been followed by "for killing his wife" but was less compelling since it was actually followed by "it's making the whole division look bad". But I could tell she was hoping I was paying attention. Her slightly unruly 3 year old was busy getting the face of (and scaring) my midget, and her mother was too busy trying to impress to notice that she was spilling doritos everywhere and generally being a menace. A cute menace, but still. Actually the little girl said something that piqued my interest much more than her mother's (clearly very important) business dealings. Her mother told her to ask me where we were going, and when I asked where SHE was going she said "To where my mom lives." Really? Interesting. I mean, it was clear that this child was not the genetic production of the two people on the sideline, but I had sort of assumed they were her parents. The woman even said that the girl was the same age as my little one the first time she was in that play area, indicating a long history. I would have loved to get the whole back story there, since it would have been more interesting than plopping the baby lizard at the top of the 8 inch slide for the one billionth time, but somehow I didn't think it was appropriate. On a side note, when the woman stood up to leave I could not help but notice she was wearing one of the most unfortunate pairs of pants in the history of the universe. Hopefully those people will give her her $10K and she can use it to buy a decent pair of pants.

Anyway, I had a lovely weekend in my hometown, including a visit with an old friend who I have not seen in nearly 15 years. I dealt with the awkwardness of this as I do with many such situations: by drinking. Really, there are some things that just require alcohol consumption, and this was one of them. I survived, but have since been wallowing in a weird sort of anti-nostalgia time warp which I am hoping to snap out of soon. It actually started before this weekend and I seem to keep adding fuel to the fire, which must end before I am dressing in oversized clothing, watching 90210, and sulking around like it's 1993.

We had a bit of a snafu on our return trip which involved three hours in the airport before taking off on our first flight, which caused us to miss our second flight. Just what you need when traveling alone with a young child. After nearly two hours of letting her stuff her piehole with the myriad of bite sized carbohydrates I had in my bag, climb on chairs, push the stroller, etc we were getting low on tricks just in time to get on the plane. So then you have to hold and entertain a cranky child in the space allocated to you, which is approximately the size of a Japanese tanning bed only vertical. good times. At that point I was thinking "I would kill someone for a diet coke" but alas when they ask you if you would like anything to drink you say no, thanks, since said diet coke would be a sparkly temptation which you could not offer your child which would then become grounds for screaming as if your toes were on fire until you were finally handed the can which would, inevitably, end up all over everything in a five foot radius. sigh. despite my wishful incantations of "time for night night?" it was clearly not time for anything as boring as night night, so the baby lizard kept sticking her head in the aisle and waving to the stewardess, who would not crack a smile. I'll be honest: I have a cute kid. This is not bias, it is scientific fact. And if a really cute kid who is not yelling and doing other unseemly things on your airplane is playing peekaboo with you and waving and you cannot bring yourself to smile at her, you really REALLY should not be in a customer oriented job.

And so, we continued our journey doing the best we could. I completely lost my dignity somewhere between the time that I ate the prelicked goldfish cracker that was stuffed into my mouth and saying "look! do you see the airplane?" in my super breathy mom voice that is specifically designed to induce excitement about thing that are not exciting. At that point, success was measured in number of seconds that BL was not crying. And so, as I stuffed myself in to the Little Tikes playhouse at Gate A23 at 10pm last night, playing round one million of peekaboo through the shutters, I really didn't care what anyone thought. Which is probably good, since I am not a small person and those playhouses are designed for small people. And so ended another chapter in the book Things that Are Not the Same with Kids. Chapter 15: Airport Delays.

I don't like you either.

Today I am back at work, and ran out for some lunch. There's a new place across the street and the food is quite tasty, though it is really slow. This means that if you order takeout you spend a lot of time loitering looking at a TV which is on mute and does not have closed captioning, and (if you are me) covertly eavesdropping. This restaurant was recently opened by some people that sort of seem too young to be doing something like running a restaurant, but whatever. It's a couple, and the girl is always the one to take your order and your money. For some reason, she is not very friendly to me which is kind of foolish because I go there often, and they need my money. But today I figured it out: she doesn't like girls. We all know those kind of girls. The ones who only like to deal with boys. This was cemented for me when she was being friendly and joking around (see below) with the guys in front of me, but then I come up and she is giving me tight lipped one word answers and keeping our exchanges as short as possible. As I am waiting, a guy comes up to get a refill on his coffee, which she does not charge him for, and the exchange goes like this:

shopgirl: how were the tacos?
customer: pretty good (sounding unenthusiastic)
shopgirl: good? good!
customer: the chips were good
shopgirl: well that's what we like to hear! thanks so much for your honest opinion!
customer: *thinking cute shopgirl must be flirting with him* well, it IS taco Tuesday!
shopgirl: it certainly is! have a great day. *gives death stare to wiscolizard*

I am not kidding you. Come on. The guy says he likes the chips? They're from a bag! You didn't cook them. And you thank him for his honest opinion and give him free coffee? Yet for me you have nothing but to dump my change into my hand without a word? Bitch. I wish there were more good places to go for lunch so I could cross you off my list.

Maybe I was still bitter from the first exchange I witnessed:

Guy #1: I'll have the tacos
shopgirl: hard or soft?
Guy #1: hard
shopgirl: *faking a laugh* gawd, that sounds really bad doesn't it?
Guy #2: sounds good to me

Whatever, Beavis.



Thursday, November 08, 2007

 

you're my idol.

holy hannah I just realized that I went to college with the Canadian Ryan Seacrest:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ben_Mulroney

he lived in the freshman dorm next to mine. haha! the world is a funny place. other illustrious members of my graduating class include the longsnapper for the Chicago Bears, and a Temptation Island vixen. I love it.

 

what do you mean 'we'?

I was walking in to daycare this morning and ran in to the mother of a little guy who is about 7 months younger than baby lizard, but was in her same classroom for a couple months before she moved up with the big kids. I have no affinity for this particular child, since when I saw him on a daily basis he was this squalling little blob of a thing who was always really shiny because he was covered in some weird ointment due to some skin affliction. ew. and I think the mom is really annoying. However, I am polite, and I said "wow! he's getting so big!" Though I was thinking "and less shiny, though he still looks kind of red and crusty." She says "He is! We're walking now. Are you guys walking?" And simultaneously all of my irritation bells rang out. 1) I hate when people refer to me and my child as a unit, particularly when asking a question like "are you walking?" Clearly *I* am walking. I mean, you can say "are you guys going to the zoo this weekend?" but not "are you guys eating solid food?" 2) I maybe have been a bit extra sensitive because my child does not walk. This is a bit unusual, since most children do walk by her age. But I am getting tired of people asking and even more tired of people looking at me with a very judgemental and totally fake smile and saying something meaningless like 'she'll get there!' And truthfully, it is not really good parenting that determines when your child does things like walk, so really just go ahead and get off your high horse.

So of course this lady tells me that her kid is only 8 months old (which, for those of you without kids is a ridiculously early age to walk and is really nothing to be excited about) and implying, with that same stupid smile, that clearly her child is superior to mine and maybe I should just go ahead and put the baby lizard in a group home and save everyone a lot of heartache. But what I wanted to say is "she may not walk, but she is so much cuter than your kid it should be illegal." And let's be honest, down the road those big eyes are going to get my little lizard a lot farther than being able to tell people she could walk at 8 months.

Wednesday, November 07, 2007

 

you missed a spot

After I went back to work after having a kid, I finally got my husband to agree to let me hire a housekeeper. I have never been much of a housekeeper myself. I keep my house picked up and neat, but when it comes to things like scrubbing toilets and washing floors, I leave something (everything?) to be desired. so now that I had both limited time and a constant human swiffer (my crawling daughter) I decided the moment was right to bring in professionals. I mean, it was one thing to have somewhat less than sparkling floors when the only creature that ate off of them was my dog, and let's be honest, dogs have very low standards about these things. But one thing (out of many, if I am being honest) that dogs and babies have in common is their desire to explore with their mouths. Fortunately this is something that humans grow out out. I mean, if you find something suspicious, isn't putting it in your mouth the LAST thing you will do with it? You will smell it, inspect it closely, perhaps show it to someone else, but you will really only ever put it in your mouth if you are basically positive that it is a food product, and even then you'd kind of rather not. But not babies. They put everything in their mouths, which becomes like a continual white glove test with the added adventure that you could be killing your offspring.

So, I had some people come out and give quotes, and at some point a sort of unremarkable woman came to the house and for reasons that are still a bit unclear, I hired her. Before she came to my house the first time, I cleaned it. I mean, I didn't wash stuff, but we put everything away and made sure the place was looking good. She came in, we paid her a bunch of money, and to be honest, it looked like an only slightly cleaner version of how we left it. We chalked this up to all the prep work, which we dialed back for subsequent visits. But we have now come to the conclusion that this lady is really a terrible housekeeper. She doesn't make beds, or clean under them. She doesn't really dust much. The cobwebs are left intact. She doesn't wash the shower floor. I mean, these sort of seem like basics, no? I'm not asking her to scrub anything with a toothbrush, but cleaning the dog hair off of all of the stairs (last time she got four out of seven) really doesn't seem like too much to ask, especially not for $65 every two weeks. Just three days ago I found a spot on the bathroom floor which certainly can be attributed to my dropping an entire bottle of infant's motrin in a moment of motherhood induced hysteria which included a screaming child paired with a call from my mother in law. This happened BEFORE she came the last time, which means she did not even wash the entire bathroom floor, which is saying something since my bathroom has about three square feet of floor space. Really, I am not all that demanding. But this is ridiculous, and so I must fire her. But this presents a large problem for me because I hate confrontation. A lot. I loathe this about myself, but alas have found no cure. So, like any good modern coward, I will do it via email. (More self loathing ensues.) In fact, I think I will even lie and tell her we're just not going to have a housecleaner anymore. I know. It's awful. I hate myself, but seriously, this woman is no better a housekeeper than I am, and lord knows no sane person would pay me to clean their house. In fairness to me, when she had someone call me for a reference, I was brutally honest. I said, if you really want your house clean, this is not the person for you. She is nice, and she is reliable, and she will not steal your shit, but she should not be in a job that kind of calls for attention to detail and, well, cleanliness. Because she is not all that great at either one.

no, you don't

yesterday I was eavesdropping on a conversation between my boss and his wife. This is very easy because there are some weird acoustics on my hall which result in everyone being able to hear everything which is fine except for somehow I continuously forget that this also applies to me. whoops. Anyway, he has this very funny way of greeting her on the phone. Instead of the usual "hey, it's me" between married folk he says "Hi Mary, Tom." (those aren't their names, but whatever.) I mean, he identifies himself by name, after addressing her by name. I find this very odd. Anyway, it is clear that they are discussing some medical news about someone who appears to be related to them, but I don't think it's her (hard to say). He's acting kind of distracted, but says relevant things like "oh, so it's just a cyst?" And after a fairly short conversation he says "well, I have to run. I have people waiting for me." pause. "No. I DO care." Said in the voice of someone who absolutely postively could not care less. haha. And there is nothing worse than someone telling you they care when clearly they do not, especially when that person is your husband. So, on my way out of my office I called my own husband and made him promise that we would never deteriorate to the point where we had to 1) accuse the other of not caring and 2) lie about actually doing so.

Monday, November 05, 2007

 
hello? is anybody there? well, it's been more than a year, a year spent primarily trying to figure out how to keep my head screwed on after the arrival of baby lizard, who is now old enough to wear corduroys and say really insightful things like 'all gone' and 'flower'. very exciting, I know. so what has possessed me to come back after all this time, after all three of my readers have long since forgotten me? was it the middle aged ladies in my workout class that were lusting over ROTCs in the locker room? my need to discuss a coworker's suspicious behavior with a student? the lady in the grocery store who weighed 300lbs and had not one but two flavors of marshmallow pies in her cart? perhaps all of the above. for my rage at the universe has not subsided. one might think I would be softened by motherhood, but alas I am just as judgey as I always was. maybe a teeny, tiny bit less judgey about parents than I used to be, but not much. because of course I am doing a better job of parenting than, well, everyone so it's hard not to see the mistakes of others.

I think my husband will be very happy to know that I have resurrected this thing so he doesn't have to listen to me complain about whatever random topic is my fixation for the day. If you're reading this that means at least one person has found their way back to me. And otherwise I will just pretend that someone is paying attention and keep drinking plenty of wine.

it's hard to know what to put in the first post in 15 months, but we'll start here: two Sundays ago I went to yoga. Just before yoga there is a class called Zumba which is an aerobics class based on latin dance. While I think my gangly white butt might fare slightly better in this class than in hip hop, I still think the results might be somewhat unfortunate for all involved. As the class is letting out I see the peppy instructor from my strength class, who I sort of imagine is named Jen. I ask her if she teaches Zumba, and she says no, but she just got instructor training. So, making conversation I ask if she went to the teacher training the week before (stick with me, I swear this story has a point) and she says, peppy as ever, "Yeah! Were you there?" I mean, it was sweet of her really, to intimate that I maybe, possibly could do something as fit and coordinated as teach a Zumba class, but seriously...that is never, ever going to happen. And anyone with two functioning eyes who has seen me do any sort of athletics-related activity would definitely know that. But I just smiled and said "No way." I suppose I should be flattered that after weeks of watching me lift my little 6lb weights in a room full of middle-aged secretaries that she thought I might be qualified for such an endeavor. but let's face it: the lizard teaching aerobics is about as good an idea as the movie Jersey Girl. Enough said.

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