piecrust promises

We haven't got a clue.

Me: I think I'm starting to develop a bit of a crush on Steve.

Joel: Is it the green striped shirt?  The pleated khakis?  His musical range?  His love of animals?

Me: I'm not sure...I think I really just want to show him my Blue's Clues.

Joel: I don't even know what that means.

Me: Me neither...

...

Me: But he certainly wouldn't be able to do the Mail Time dance for at least a few weeks after.

It's Official: I'm My Mother.

So my mother and I have, what you might like to call, a so so relationship.  We've mostly gotten over that span of about six years when I did a lot of drugs that she didn't know about my rebellious teenage years. She hasn't accepted my lack of the Catholic religion...but she's dealing with it. (Or at least she's stopped openly talking about the baby spending eternity in purgatory and me burning in hell.) (I once had a nun explain purgatory to me like this....it's like having all the pancakes you could ever want, but with no syrup. The pancakes are still good...but not quite what you wanted.) (This is why I am so fucked up...my formative years were spent with a bunch of loonies comparing eternity to breakfast foods.) (Side note...Hey JD! Sister Myra told me that...remember her?) (Moving on.)

My mother and I have a once-a-week, 15 minute max, standing phone call.  It's like taking off a bandaid...you don't want to make the call but you know you have to...and then you do it as fast as possible with the biggest grimace on your face...but you keep saying out loud that it's no big deal.  So these phone calls generally consist of filler...like what she watched on TV that week, which one of my wonderful full members of the Catholic church elementary school classmates she saw in the Safeway, what the baby has been doing (with mumblings suggesting that maybe the kid wouldn't climb the bookshelves or keep stealing the remote if she had a bit more of the Lord in her), etc.  This past week she was talking about something that she heard on the radio...something that she heard on MIX 107.3 to be exact.  This is a station that I know well...non-offensive Top 40's with a little bit of cleaned up pop from the 70's, 80's, 90's, and today!  It was all I was ever allowed to listen to when I was a kid.  It's the quintessential Mom station.  And it's the type of station that I've been avoiding for years...heaven forbid my dial land on that sort of station!  Oh the embarrassment!  Or so I thought...

So I'm driving in the car this morning...and I'm listening to the morning show that is a blend of some music, some talk, some news, some contests...and then I hear it.  "You're listening to MIX 105.1!"  I'm listening to a mix station.  I'M LISTENING TO THE FLORIDA EQUIVALENT OF MY MOTHER'S RADIO STATION...FOR WEEKS! And I never noticed.  There I was every morning...laughing along with freaking Scott and Erica!  Playing along to the $25 Pyramid!  Yelling about how Florida is full of idiots...obviously the category is "Alternative Names for Wombat Dung!"  Singing along to Leona Lewis (KEEP BLEEDING! KEEP KEEP BLEEDING!) and fucking Daughtry.  DAUGHTRY...as in AN AMERICAN IDOL WINNER! WHY DO I EVEN KNOW THAT!? And the entire time...my sweet, innocent, naive child sitting in the backseat...dancing and clapping when they play the pick-me-up song of the morning...laughing at mama yelling at the voices.

When did I become a pre-menopausal woman?  I don't even consider myself to be a woman yet...I refer to myself as being a girl...not a woman.  Women are old and wrinkly and serious and listen to mix stations.

Now I've been struggling with this whole age thing for a while...but this seems like the beginning of the end.

And then this lead me to another line of thought...everyone has a musical expiration date...a time when you stop keeping up with current music and you just stop liking anything new.  New music sounds like noise..."those damn kids don't know what good music!" is you say...and you mean it.

I think I've hit this time period.  I used to listen to all sorts of music...now I just want to hear things from 1994. I've been trying to pinpoint when my musical preferences stopped evolving...luckily iTunes is good at helping out with this sort of thing. 2002. 2002 was the end for me. I pretty much stopped adding in anything new in 2002. I was only 21. I peaked musically at 21.

How soon before I peak at everything else?

So tell me...have you reached your musical peak?

Excuses! Excuses!

Yeah...I know.  It's been a while...ok ok...a very long while since I came and paid attention to you all...and I've got lots of excuses ready and waiting for you.  I know these excuses very well because I've been making them to myself every time I thought about posting again.  I'm too busy, too tired, too depressed, too happy, too bored, too whatever the opposite of bored is...and on and on and on.  Turns out though...none of those things are actually correct...I just didn't know that until today.

I've been too frustrated to write anything new.

It happened a few weeks ago...or whenever my last post was.  I came home from work in a big huffy mood and I pounded out everything that had happened during an incident at work and I felt oh so much better about it.  But then...just as my mouse hovered over the publish button...I realized I couldn't let it out into the world.

It contained too much information about what I really think about a few choice people...people that I give big giant fake smiles to every morning, people that I make idle chit chat with, people that I have to deal with and work with every single day.  People that I can't afford to piss off or offend.

And that's just about the most frustrating, depressing, ridiculous thing I can think of.  I'm not the type to give a shit what others think...and I've rarely been able to keep my mouth shut.  I'm generally known for having a constant case of verbal diarrhea.

So what's stopping me?

Yeah...her.  Again.  I know, I know.

When you've got someone tiny who likes to eat and have a place to live...you don't get to give the big fuck you around the office anymore.

And that's been a hard one to swallow.  And in classic Dana tradition...I overdid it on my thought process and reaction...I felt censored and bitter and frustrated over having to act like I know when to zip it...so I gave the big fuck you to writing this blog instead...only I didn't know that...I thought I was just being lazy.

But I'm over it...and I'm back.  Let's see who has stuck around with me...and who gave up.

Whew...I needed that.

I laughed until I cried at my desk today because of this.

Best Weight Loss Solution Ever!

I've found the secret to easy weight loss...just follow these 7 simple steps:

1. Have baby.
2. Send said baby to daycare.
3. Wait for baby to accumulate all sorts of nasty viruses, bugs, and other assorted germs. 
4. Bring baby home.
5. Give baby tons of smushy kisses and let her feed you Goldfish crackers.
6. Contract ridiculously awful stomach virus that makes you pray to the porcelain gods so many times that you start to wonder if the bulimics have some sort of annual award for most vomit in 24 hours.
7. Lose 8 pounds (EIGHT! POUNDS!) in twelve hours. 

As an interesting side note...when we first moved to Florida I decided that I wanted to get the real behind the scenes at Disney...and since we weren't doing anything else...I got a job at Disney and worked there for a total of four days before deciding that Disney Cast Members are simply poor souls bound for sainthood and I quit.  But not before getting to do 2 days of Disney's "Traditions" training where they tell you all of the secrets and you get your engraved name tag and get to eat lunch at the Subway that's in the underground tunnel at Magic Kingdom and you learn all of the Disney lingo...including the phrase "Protein Spill" which is code for someone just tossed their cookies.  (I suggested they use some variation of "tossing cookies" and I got all sorts of dirty looks.)

So after a hellacious 24 hours...I'm sort of back in the game...except for the fact that I haven't eaten any actual food in two days and I look like some sort of Living Dead reject.

For a more complete weight loss plan you can send 4 3 easy payments of $19.99 to me...and I'll send over my child for a few hours...guaranteed to make you miss at least two days of work!

The Spaghetti Incident?

Amelia has been charged with a crime...a very serious felony charge.  Meatball murder.  I don't know why they think she's guilty...what evidence do they have that such a sweet, endearing child could commit such a heinous crime?!

Oh...that evidence.

And on a somewhat separate news story...I am simply delighted that people searching for Guns N' Roses' fifth (and worst) album (sorry! It's a cover album people...COVER ALBUM!  COVERS OF CRAPPY SONGS FROM GLAM ROCK!  GLAM ROCK PEOPLE!) will stumble upon a meatball murderer. (Allegedly!) But at the same time...her Mama is now worried that the two readers will think she's some sort of Guns N' Roses superfan...and that simply isn't true. I promise!

And no...there isn't going to be a Monday Night Confession about me lurving freaking GNR...it was a clever title!  Get over it!  Geesh...maybe you should stop obsessing over it and help me clean up this baby.

(Incidentally...she got a hold of the dogs right after this picture was taken...I think she was trying to frame them as accomplices.  Just saying...)

Famous!

Finally!  After submitting three hacks that all turned out to be previously submitted (so much for all that pride in my own personal originality) I got a hack approved and posted on Parent Hacks!

It's like I'm officially an intelligent parent now.

Vindication!

Plus...Parent Hacks is one of my favorite parenting sites...it's saved my hiney on more than one occasion.

(Yes...I used the word "hiney" I've got the worst potty mouth...and I'm afraid that either "crap" or "shit" is going to be the next word Amelia says...so I'm trying to clean it up around here...all part of those official intelligent parent duties.)

Go!  Check it out!  Be excited!

UPDATE!

I just checked the site and it's up.  I literally squealed and pushed Joel off the bed with excitement.

You'd think I was on the cover of freaking Time Magazine the way I'm acting...

Mother's Day Edition

So I've never made it a secret that I'm not exactly "mother-of-the-year" material. These last 14 months have been some of the most exhausting, defeating, stressful months of my entire life. Throw a healthy dose of postpartum depression on top of normal new mother worry, fear, and self-doubt...and you've got a mama who doesn't feel like she's done that great of a job...hell...you've got a mama who has wondered how long it will take Child Protective Services to find out about the crappy job she's been doing.

Luckily...the fog has been lifting in recent months...and I'm finally starting to connect to this little person...something I had been ashamed to admit...that I was having trouble feeling anything for my own child...that I felt more like a long term babysitter than a mother.

But slowly...Amelia and I have started to find common ground. Maybe it was because of all the time that she had to deal with some weepy lady who spent more time looking at her fearfully from across the room...or maybe it's because the child is so damn like me...but Amelia has never been a cuddly baby. From the very beginning...she would only tolerate a few minutes of of being held before starting to wiggle free. And the bigger she's gotten...the more insistent the wiggling. Even when she's hurt...she doesn't have time or patience for kisses...she's right back at it...trying again...doing it alone.

Last night was the first night without a night bottle...we've finally been doing good all day with her sippy cup...and it seemed like the time was finally right to say goodbye to it.

She and I went through our normal routine...bathtime, jammies, brushing our hair, bedtime story. But then we went downstairs for a few final minutes of playtime and goodnights and what was now to be a bedtime snack rather than a bedtime bottle. I handed her that cup and immediately she gave a shriek of indignation as if to say, "What is this crap woman!?" And then the angry tears started.

And with far more patience than I thought I had at the end of the day, I explained that there was no more nighttime bottle, we just had our cup...I told her that growing up is hard...but that I loved her and that we would do this together. And she looked right at me...tears now silent...still a look of complete anguish on her face at the thought of having to say goodbye...and I knew that she understood.

Without another sound...she climbed into my lap...and for the first time in 14 months...she let me hold her for longer than a minute.

Here was this little girl who is normally so independent...finally making me feel like a mother.

Joel came back from his nightly run thirty minutes later to find Amelia snuggled in my arms...both of us silently weeping...her over her beloved bottle...me over finally getting to experience what most women experience in the delivery room...an insane amount of love and hope for a tiny soul.

Happy Mother's Day.

Goodbye Dignity.

So I knew that when I became a mother I'd be giving up a lot of my former rock and roll life. I had no clue how far that would go...

You know you are a mom when you can successfully take a shit with 1) the bathroom door wide open, 2) a one year old alternating between playing the drums on the trash can and squealing with delight with every tug of the toilet paper roll, 3) one dog barking and running in circles around your legs, 4) and another dog trying to sit on your lap.

The best part is when you don't even flinch when your husband comes in and starts asking you about where to find the hidden rolls of blue painters tape.

Sigh.

Down with the sickness...

So I am sick. Again. Since Amelia was born, I've had five ear infections, countless runny noses, three upper respiratory infections, and a nasty two day stomach virus that made me experience one of my biggest fears (vomiting) multiple times. (Vomiting is just wrong. It's your body defying the laws of GRAVITY. Listen here vomit...gravity is the law for a REASON.)

I've basically become the destination for busy viruses and infections looking to get away from it all. The baby is obviously selling timeshare property in my upper respiratory track. And all these viruses are telling their friends and bringing their Aunt Mabel and their cousin Howard on these visits, because I am SICK ALL THE TIME.

There is only one upside to all of this sickness...Dr. V. at the walk-in clinic in Clermont. Now this particular walk-in is totally out of the way for me to go to...but the one closest to me is ghett-o. So take my advice women of Central Florida...go to the Clermont Centra-Care. It's totally worth the trip...hell...I might be feeling down enough to mosey on over there today...

Oh Dr. V...if only we didn't have to meet with mucus acting as a chaperone. Sigh.

Even Joel agrees that he might just be the dreamiest doctor he has ever been to.

I don't know exactly what it is about Dr. V. Maybe it's because he let me sob all over him when I was pregnant and had the flu and he wouldn't prescribe me anything because of the slightest chance of harm to the baby. Or maybe it's because he actually looks at you when you are talking...even when you've got pink eye and have all sorts of goopy shit on your face. Or perhaps it's just because he's so tall and handsome. Who knows...my fantasy dreamland doesn't need to be rational.

So at my last visit that was fueled by an abundance of mucus (I wrote and rewrote that line at least four times...trust me here...there is no good way to talk about snot)...I finally got up the courage to do something I almost never do...ask for help.

And here comes the confession. I'm a (wait for it...wait for it...) smoker.

Since the age of 16 I've chugged down at least half a pack a day of Marlboro Menthol Milds...and then after I had the baby...I slowly returned to being a half a pack a day smoker. Somebody call the bad mother line...we've got a live one. I don't know what it was...getting to have a ten minute break away was what I needed...and before I knew it...I had a habit again.

So I asked my beloved Dr. V. about what my options were...I'd already tried the patch, the gum, my own crappy willpower...I was ready to turn to the sweet world of pharmaceuticals.

That was when Dr. V. informed me that I would need to speak to my primary care doctor about that. What? But Dr. V....you are my primary doctor...hell...you're my only doctor!

And this was when Dr. V. and I broke up...if he couldn't see how hard this was for me...well then I just didn't think we could make it. And just like that...my doctor fantasy went poof. (Well...mostly...I am the forgiving type you know...next time I've got more boogies than I know what to do with...Dr. V. and I might have a little rebound action.)

So now I'm off on my quest to find a primary care physician! Know any good ones in the Orlando area? I especially like the ones who never have cold hands...and ones who don't keep you waiting for forever...and if they happen to give out lollipops that's a plus too. Not that I'm picky or anything.