is it just me?

Tuesday, December 16, 2008

 

there's a new baby lizard in town

which means not much posting. not for lack of time, so much, but when your life consists of sitting home all day with a tiny alien that just eats and sleeps it's really not that interesting. I can tell you that tv during the day is really horrible. I mean, truly awful. Though, I insist on watching Martha Stewart just to make myself feel bad about my total lack of holiday craftiness. In fact, as proof that I am a totally broken mom the one big present I was going to get for baby liz #1 I finally got around to ordering and now it won't be here in time. Good job, mama. Seriously.

Want to know why having a baby in December in Wisconsin is a bad idea? Because on the day you are supposed to go home from the hospital there will be a huge snowstorm. And then it will get so cold that it sounds like your house is going to shatter into a million pieces, and just when you are contemplating actually leaving the house you will realize that it is 13 degrees and snowing and you will think "fuck it. we can use dish towels as diapers if we have to." and you will promptly sit your butt back on your couch and watch some bad tv show with a baby attached to you. good times.

Thursday, December 04, 2008

 

don't bite your friends

That is a song in a crazy new show that Baby Liz is obsessed with. I really have nothing to say about it aside from the fact that it seems like relatively sound advice.

the usual
On Fridays the student union has a tuna melt special. I eat it every Friday. I am not really the kind of person that does the same thing every week, but for some reason the tuna melt just gets me. I think it is because you can only get it once a week so I feel like I need to seize the moment. Or something. Anyway, last Friday I went in, as usual, and as I stepped up to the counter the girl said "tuna special, right? with diet coke?" Oi. They know me. I am a regular. This is bad. Very bad. In fairness to me, I always go to the same cashier, not because she is my lucky cashier or anything, but because she always has a short line. I don't know why, but she does. So, I go there for practical not creepy reasons. Secondly, in my current condition I am slightly more memorable than your average person, you know what with being as big as a house and all. So, maybe that's why? Yet I remain deeply troubled by this.

Here's why: there are other people that I see there every Friday, and they are weird. There is this really REALLY short (I mean, she can't be 4'6") woman with this long skinny rat tail braid thing that runs down her back. And if her physical appearance was not weird enough, she always has to place a special order for an "extra brown" tuna melt. mmmhmm. This is not really a special order kind of place. It's a dining hall. Whenever I hear her order I remember when I used to take the kids I babysit to McDonald's and I would order one of them a hamburger with only ketchup. People at McDonald's, they don't like special orders. It goes contrary to their entire global empire. They made a fortune on assembly line food. So it sends them into a tailspin pretty much every time. Anyway, I digress. First she special orders. And then she sits down, puts a book in one of those little wooden holders that keeps it open for you, and eats. Really? A book holder? Are you trying to be as conspicuous and weird as possible? If so, you are doing an excellent job. My congratulations to you. Then the other day I saw someone else eating a tuna melt with their book in a special holder. Mercy. Look at the company I keep. I think tomorrow I won't eat a tuna melt just so I feel normal.

Who am I kidding. See you there at noon, crazies.

craigslist
I hear many good things about craigslist. I found a nanny on there but it didn't work out. But when I realized there were a couple baby items I needed, I thought 'what better place?' And in terms of quantity of stuff on offer, I was right on. Lots of people are selling now probably to get some cashola for the holidays. So, it is a veritable baby shit bonanza. However, most of it seems kind of overpriced. (really? you want $30 for something that is $35 in the store? And you used it? And I have to deal with you and drive to your house? That should be at LEAST a $10 discount. At least.) And lots of it looks dirty. Or people post a picture from a website "just like this one!" but then you don't know if it is stained or has a hole or whatever. But I got over that part and found some stuff I wanted. I emailed the ladies who posted and that is when it got weird. All of a sudden I felt like I was in some weird stay-at-home-mom drug ring. People asking me to meet them at Toys R Us parking lot at 9am. Seriously. First of all, I have a job and therefore find it difficult to be random places at 9am on a Tuesday. Secondly, what the hell? It seems so sketchy. One woman had this thing I really wanted and she was only asking $12 for it, so after refusing to meet all the way across town at lunch I met her after work one day at a KFC (her choice, not mine). I drive in looking around for a "light blue minivan". Of course she has a light blue minivan.

I realized on the drive over that I had $15, and not $12, and that I would need to get change. I decide to just run in to the restaurant and get a drink. First of all, this was even more horrifying than I had imagined. This place is not in a nice area, kind of close to the highway. The clientele is sketchy (but there are a lot of people in there for 4pm on a weekday). There are two women in front of me who appear to me a mother and daugther. The mother whispers to the daughter and the daughter orders. Neither seems quite right in the head. At one point she orders two sides when she is only entitled to one, so they tell her this and ask if she wants to pay extra. She has this explained to her two more times and still just keeps repeating her order. Finally she catches on and says "is that extra?" At this point I feel my head might explode and I have to buy a drink I don't even want while I wait for a minivan in a parking lot. But, finally, I got my overpriced soda and got the hell out of dodge.

My other adventure involved going to the apartment of a family who has been here for school and is moving back to China. I had to talk to the wife, and all the communications were a little unclear due to some English issues. But we finally agree that I will go and pick up what I want. When I arrive, her mother, who smiles in the way that only someone who speaks no english and is therefore desperately hoping not to be addressed directly can, is taking a kid outside. I walk in to this tiny apartment, and the husband is there on the phone, the wife is putting a little baby in a snowsuit and there is more baby crap stuffed in there than anyone can possibly imagine. It was funny, because the ad said "Item was used no more than 15 minutes at a time three times per day". Apparently their baby was on some weird rigid schedule of exersaucer time or something. But judging from the amount of stuff they had laying around, it was in some form of baby entertainer all day (no more than 15 minutes at a time!) It was nuts. Anyway, she was kind of charging too much but at that point I was way too tired to deal and kind of just wanted out of that overheated apartment. At one point her husband got off the phone, introduces himself saying "You can call me Luis." HAHAHAHA. Really? It is quite common for Chinese people to pick non-Chinese names when they come here. I don't really know why they feel they have to, but they do. But Luis? You're going to pick a Mexican name? There was a guy in my department from China who said his name was Jason and his wife was Nicole. Riiiight. Pretty much we ignored them, got them to teach us how to pronounce their real names and moved on with our lives. Anyway, I gave Luis and Mrs. Luis my money, took that chair and was glad to have concluded my foray into craigslist.

Save Ferris!
You know those little ribbon magnets that people put on their cars? They used to just be for the troops but now they are everywhere? This morning in the parking lot I saw one that said "Support Hedgehog Rescue". Really? Hedgehogs? I mean, they are cute enough I suppose, but I just can't imagine devoting my charity dollars to rescuing them. Is this really a big problem? Are there lots of hedgehogs to be rescued? More importantly, is anyone else a little disturbed by the fact that there are enough people that feel strongly about it that they made car magnets?

Congratulations!
These days I send lots of emails to people telling them that soon I will be out of the office and they will have to deal with someone else. These email messages are fun to write, because I get to dwell on the fact that all the crap I deal with on a daily basis will, at least temporarily, be someone else's problem. And inevitably when you send one of these messages you get some peppy reply telling you congratulations! how exciting! blah blah. But the best was the reply from a hotel sales rep who said "Congratualtions from the Hyatt Crystal City!" Heh. An entire hotel is excited about my baby. Yay for that.



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