Vie de Li

Blog move

2011-05-04T20:20:00.000-04:00

Don't hate me, but...

New blog here.

I've actually been blogging at the new blog for a while and was planning to just not say anything to anyone, but P outed me to Mare and Diane, so...

There you go. :-)

"Poor" me

2011-04-20T21:54:00.000-04:00

I miss being able to afford vacations.

Here is a partial list of places I'd rather be right now:
- Paris
- St. Martin
- Canada
- Disney World
- somewhere new-to-me out West (California, Grand Canyon, Hawaii, wherever)
- somewhere new-to-me in the Caribbean (Barbados, Curacao, Bermuda, St. Lucia, wherever)
- Tahiti (a girl can dream, right?)
- spending the weekend at a fancy-ass hotel in NYC
- Amsterdam
- somewhere new-to-me in Europe (Italy, the UK, Ireland, Denmark, wherever)

Basically, I'd like to not be here. I haven't had a REAL vacation since 2008 and it sucks.

And yes, my reaction to finding out that I have to come up with $1000 in the next 11 days to pay my malpractice insurance premium is to start wishing desperately that I were ANYWHERE else.

The personal is political

2011-03-23T23:12:00.001-04:00

Lightning crashes, a new mother cries
Her placenta falls to the floor
The angel opens her eyes, the confusion sets in
Before the doctor can even close the door

Lightning crashes, an old mother dies
Her intentions fall to the floor
The angel closes her eyes, the confusion that was hers
Belongs now, to the baby down the hall

That was the song that came on the radio as I was driving to pick up Nora from school today. It was dark outside - so rainy and dreary that it looked like night at 3:45 PM - and cold, cold, cold. And with the weather, and with that song on the radio that was just a little too appropriate for the day's events, I burst into tears in the car, trying desperately to sob silently so that Isaac wouldn't hear from the backseat.

At the risk of co-opting pain that isn't mine, let me tell you why.

There's a woman from my online mom's group who lives around here, in another suburb of the same big city, about 15 minutes from me. She attends one of the Unitarian churches that we were looking at attending a while back, so she and I chatted about that several times in personal messages outside of the main group forum. We also emailed a bit while coordinating a care package for another woman whose daughter was very sick.

I can't claim to know this woman well, but I know her well enough. I like her. She's a nice person, we live near each other, and we have some stuff in common. No big deal.

This woman has been trying to get pregnant for years. Years. She and her husband finally got off the infertility roller coaster and began making plans to adopt, and while in the process of preparing for that adoption, she got pregnant. And she was, of course, thrilled.

A few weeks ago, she went in for her routine 20-week ultrasound. She and her husband were excited to see their so-long-awaited baby and find out the sex.

And then she got some devastating news. The baby had a severe deformity, which could be the result of a chromosomal abnormality. She immediately went for an amniocentesis and scheduled a follow-up visit for a more detailed ultrasound to determine the severity of the deformity. A few days later, she and her husband received the amnio results, which were clear - no identifiable chromosomal defects. They breathed a huge sigh of relief and waited nervously for the follow-up testing to figure out what kind of situation they'd be facing with their baby, what surgeries he might need (they had learned they were expecting a boy), etc.

Well, when they went in for the follow-up, the news was grim. Despite the absence of any chromosomal abnormalities, the baby had very severe defects, more than were discovered on the original ultrasound. Their desperately longed for, desperately wanted baby would not live for long after birth, if he survived to term at all. Not wanting to live through the nightmare of another 17-19 weeks of pregnancy with no chance of a good outcome, she and her husband made the painful decision to end the pregnancy.

They decided, with their doctors, to induce labor rather than to have a traditional abortion. She wanted a little more time, a few more days to come to grips with what was happening, to grieve, to say goodbye to her little boy.

But she couldn't have that time, because our state severely limits abortions after 23 weeks of pregnancy, allowing them only when the mother's life or the mother's health is directly threatened. Because in this case, it was the baby who was in danger, no abortion would be permitted after 23 weeks.

So, with a heavy heart and a feeling she described as "horribly hurried and rushed," she went to the hospital today to be induced. On this cold, dark, awful day, this woman and her husband had to say hello and goodbye to the baby they fought so long and so hard to have. And they had to do it before they were ready. The hardest, most awful thing that could happen to them had to be rushed along because our state thinks that this - this awful, heart-wrenching, steaming pile of shit that no one should ever have to face - is their business.

Like I already said, this is not my pain. This isn't my life to politicize. But I can tell you that this woman - this mother - is suffering a world of hurt right now. The anti-choice lobby in this country has done a very effective job of painting a picture of late-term abortion that demonizes the lazy, birth control avoiding, slutty harlot waiting until her baby is viable to decide to kill it. But that's not what's going on.

The vast, vast, VAST majority of abortions in the United States happen during the first trimester. Most of the rest happen very early in the second trimester, well before viability. The women who are having abortions in the late second trimester and in the third trimester? They're not doing it for convenience. They're just not. They're doing it, almost entirely, in situations like these. They're doing it, almost exclusively, in situations where they face an impossible choice, where they face a choice between super-shit, extra-shit, and shit-supreme. They're doing it when they could die, when they could suffer serious health complications, or when their babies could die or face horrible, awful, short lives full of suffering and pain. They're not doing it, statistically, because their babies aren't wanted. In nearly all late-term abortions, the babies were very much wanted. Frankly, if they weren't wanted, they would have been aborted earlier.

And so I cried. I cried in the car for this woman, for her husband, for their son. I cried for all of the other mothers and fathers facing these horrible choices. I cried because I remember the pain and the exhilaration of labor all too well, because I could picture this woman's face as she rides out contractions and pushes her adored, desperately-wanted, but very sick baby boy into the world, for the first and last day she will ever spend with him.

I cried for this country, for punishing women who are trying to do what is most compassionate, loving, and motherly for their babies, in the best way they can, when nothing they do will ever be enough to save them.

Fuck every last person in this country that believes they have the right to tell another person what the "right" thing to do is in these situations. Fuck every last person that believes they ever have the right to tell any woman what to do with her body and her life.

And fuck my state especially, tonight, for denying this lovely, wonderful, devastated woman and her husband the extra few days to feel their son kick, to feel him swim inside of her, to figure out how in the world to say goodbye to the baby they've spent years waiting for. Fuck my state really fucking hard.

Nobody deserves that kind of infantilizing, especially when facing something like this.

Lightning crashes, a new mother cries
This moment she's been waiting for
The angels open her eyes, pale blue colored iris
Presents the sun and puts the glory out to hide, hide

Oh, now feel it comin' back again
Like a rollin' thunder chasing the wind
Forces pullin' from the center of the earth again
I can feel it

Proud

2011-03-07T22:51:00.000-05:00

P just started a respiratory therapy program and he is totally rocking it. He's working his butt off and has the grades to show for it. I'm super proud of him.

And I just wanted you all to know how much he rocks. :-)

Food issues

2011-02-09T23:10:00.000-05:00

We have major food issues in our house.

For starters, I'm a really picky eater (and yes, I can admit it). I've gotten better over the course of my relationship with P as he's encouraged me to try new things, but I still have serious texture issues with some foods and don't like strong or unfamiliar flavors.

Nora has inherited my pickiness and then some. For dinner, she will pretty much only reliably eat pasta, pizza, broccoli, and rolls/bread. She will occasionally surprise us and eat something else (usually plain vegetables), but not often. She would eat PBJ sandwiches or macaroni and cheese for lunch every single day if we would let her. Breakfast is nearly always cereal or waffles. We put the kibosh on super-sugary cereals a while ago, so she now eats mostly Special K Red Berries, Kix, Multigrain Cheerios, and the like. For snacks, she prefers yogurt, but will usually eat fruit (especially bananas or strawberries) if we force the issue.

The dinnertime battles were getting so bad that we instituted a rule that dinner is dinner and no alternate foods will be provided. If she doesn't want to eat her dinner, she can eat again at breakfast. You'd think that this would encourage her to eat her dinner, but... you'd be wrong. She's the stubborn child of two stubborn parents and she's not generally very hungry at the end of the day, so there are many, many nights where she picks at her food and holds out for breakfast. And breakfast is usually not her healthiest meal, as I pointed out above, so... yeah.

Rounding out the food issues are the fact that dinner needs to be made quickly most nights (I get home with Nora between 5 and 5:30 and dinner must happen by 6:00 or Isaac gets cranky and screamy), the fact that Isaac tends to throw food on the floor when he's done with it, and the fact that P and I are both trying to lose weight.

Mealtimes in our house have become boring (due to my own pickiness, trying to accommodate Nora's preferences so that she'll at least eat something, trying to keep calories within check, trying to make things that can be made quickly, and trying to figure out what Isaac is most likely to eat without dumping on the floor). None of us are eating an ideally balanced diet. Too much quick-cooking processed food has found its way in. Too few fruits and vegetables are being consumed. I find our food pretty unsatisfying and tend to periodically go crazy on sweets or savory foods, derailing my diet. P has the same problem, albeit to a lesser extent.

In sum, our family food situation isn't working and needs to change.

I've recently been reading a lot about nutrition and I think we need to move to a more fresh food-based, less processed diet. Duh, right? I mean, that's the ideal situation health-wise... but how many people really manage it? Have you ever read the ingredients list even on a loaf of bread or jar of spaghetti sauce? Not-food is everywhere and very hard to avoid unless you have vast reserves of time, energy, and desire to cook. That isn't me. It isn't P either, I don't think (although he's probably closer than I am). But still... I think it must be done.

So... baby steps. My tentative plan: (1) working on eating mostly whole foods at breakfast; (2) once that habit is set, working on eating mostly whole foods at lunch; (3) once that habit is set, working on eating mostly whole foods at dinner; (4) once that habit is set, working on eating mostly whole foods for snacks; (5) breaking the diet coke addiction and switching to mainly water (or tea when I need caffeine). Why start with breakfast? Because Nora eats a lot of it after picking at her dinner and it seems like the best place to start trying to improve nutrition. Also, it's easiest - eggs, oatmeal, etc. are all easy, real-food breakfast options. I want to start by setting myself up for success.

Also, my plan is to make progress on improving our family diet, but not to be perfect. Perfection is unrealistic because (1) life happens; (2) old habits are hard to break; (3) I have no desire to be an insufferable asshole or to raise insufferable assholes who can't handle eating at restaurants or other people's houses without asking a million annoying questions about what's in the food; and (4) I like cake and cookies (and ice cream and candy and... umm... anything sweet, really) and I have no desire to cut them out of my life completely.

This is going to be a complete pain in the ass, but it must be done. I'll try to provide periodic updates here so you all can cheer us on / laugh at us as we stumble through this / be bored to tears by my latest hair-brained scheme.

Recent reads

2011-02-08T14:39:00.000-05:00

A mishmesh of thoughts on some books I've read recently:

Abortion & Life: Fabulous, fabulous book about how the pro-choice movement needs to embrace the complexities of the abortion decision in order to maintain legitimacy. One of the best books on reproductive rights that I've ever read (and as someone who wrote her senior thesis in college on abortion, I've read many!).

Hard Time & Nursery Rhymes: A Mother's Tales of Law and Disorder: Memoir written by a criminal defense attorney and mom of three girls. I couldn't put this book down - so much of it rang true to my own experiences and my own life. There was one section about the author's maternity leave where she so eloquently captured the feeling of being crazy in love with your baby but desperate for adult interaction... it really hit home. I highly recommend this.

In Defense of Food: An Eater's Manifesto: Terrific book about the pitfalls of the Western diet. I was expecting this to be pretty dull and I put off reading it for a while, but it was actually extremely interesting, well-written, and thought-provoking. I'm planning to use some of the book's suggestions in the near future as I work on revamping my own boring, ho-hum diet, but I'll write more about that in a future post.

Room: You know the woman in Austria who was locked in a basement for years and years, repeatedly raped by her captor, and bore his children? This is a fiction novel that draws heavily from that story. This book is written from the perspective of the 5-year-old son of the victim and the abuser. It is chilling and creepy and fascinating and horrifying all at once. I liked it, but it also made me very, very uncomfortable. I guess that was the point, right?

Origins: How the Nine Months Before Birth Shape the Rest of Our Lives: I just started this, so I can't give a full review of it yet, but so far it's fascinating. It's about the effects of the prenatal period on individuals' future health and lives. And describing it that way makes it sound really boring, but it's not! I'm loving it so far and really wishing that it had been published prior to my pregnancies.

A People's History of the United States: This book is awesome, but very dense. It's the history of the people in the U.S. that the history books gloss over - the lives and experiences of Native Americans in the time of Columbus and early colonization, indentured white servants, slaves, women, etc. I'm learning so much and really enjoying it, but I find that it's a lot to absorb and I can't read very much of it at once. I'm actually breaking my usual rule of not reading multiple books simultaneously to read this in bits and pieces along with the other stuff I'm reading (I figure it's okay because it's kind of like reading a textbook, although not really). I would definitely recommend this to everyone, even though I haven't finished it yet.

Of assholes and Facebook

2011-02-02T21:47:00.001-05:00

Do you ever look up people from your past on the internet?

I do. I do it even when I know it's a bad, bad idea. I do it even when I know that there's a reason that these people are in my past rather than in my present.

P thinks that my tendency to look people up on the internet comes from the same place as my love of reality TV. Voyeurism. Train wrecks. He's probably right.

In any event, earlier today, against all of my better judgment, I looked up my estranged father on Facebook.

He had 945 friends, which I find hard to believe. I don't think it's actually possible for there to be 945 people in this world that don't think he's a giant asshole.

His listed interests include Angry Birds, bass fishing, and Danica Patrick, among others. He neglected to include his long-established hobbies of drinking excessively and abusing women.

He has many family members listed. Through the Family feature, I learned that he has six siblings and half-siblings (that appear on Facebook, anyway) - brother Paul and sisters Marian, Darlene, Cynthia, Joelle, and Denise. A quick Google search informs me that he also has a half-brother, Charles, who is not on Facebook. Some of these names are vaguely familiar to me; some are not. He was never very close to his family, so even when he managed to see me as a child, I rarely saw them or heard him talk about them. The exceptions are Darlene and Denise, with whom my mom was friendly way back when, and Paul. I knew Paul reasonably well because he was my cousin Michelle's father. Michelle and I were very close as kids, but she died in a bike accident shortly after her 11th birthday, and after that I never really spoke to her father again. I doubt he'd remember me if I were to make contact with him today.

Nevertheless, these are my aunts and uncles. Aunts and uncles that I don't know, that I never really had a chance to know because my father is a giant asshole.

Through the Family feature, I was also reminded that Paul has another daughter, Chelsea. I knew that, but because she was so much younger than Michelle, I never really knew her. I think she was a very young infant when Michelle died. I also learned that Joelle has three children - Derek, Chris, and Jodie. Cynthia also has three children - Erin, Sarah, and Courtney. Marian, too, has three children - Lee, Elliott, and Amanda. Denise and Darlene don't use the Family feature on FB, so I don't know if they have any kids. But these are my cousins, and I don't know any of them. I doubt very much that my father has ever mentioned my existence to any of them, even if he is in contact with them (which I'm not sure he is).

Noticeably absent from his Family list? Me, his daughter Emily, and his son Ted. I'll give him a pass on Ted because he's not on FB. But I think it says something about him as a person that he has three kids (that I'm aware of) and isn't in contact with any of them.

Asshole.

Ughhhhh, why did I bother with this? It was SUCH a bad idea.

And considering that I'm the one that cut him out of my life, I don't know why this is bugging me so much.

1_3.5

2011-01-21T09:51:00.000-05:00

Made it with a day to spare! (My pre-pregnancy weight was 1_4).

Now on to the unemployment weight... :-/

Sparkly!

2011-01-17T12:01:00.001-05:00

My engagement ring fits again!

Okay, so fits may be too strong of a statement... perhaps "can be forced onto my finger without causing me to lose circulation" is more accurate. But it's on, in any event, and it makes me smile. I've really missed wearing it!

As for my goal of being at my pre-pregnancy weight by Isaac's birthday... I have 1.5 pounds and 6 days to go. Doable, but I'll have to be very disciplined this week.

(And then I'll eat yummy party food and cake and gain .5 pound back, but I can live with that!)

2011

2011-01-02T21:45:00.000-05:00

Happy New Year, friends. I hope this year brings wonderful, life-affirming moments to each of you. And for those of you that have been going through hard times, I hope this is the year that things get better. (I hope this for myself, too).

Typical

2010-12-28T11:09:00.000-05:00

1) My stepfather is an asshole.
2) My mother is an enabler of assholes.
3) I wish my stepfather would drive himself off a cliff.

And that's about all I have to say about "Christmas" with my family. I'm so glad we didn't see them on the actual day.

Help save a child's life this Christmas

2010-12-20T21:56:00.002-05:00

This post just about broke my heart. We have no spare money at all right now, but I just donated a few dollars anyway. Will you?

SAD

2010-12-09T15:14:00.000-05:00

SAD as in Seasonal Affective Disorder, that is.

Winter is always the worst time of year for my depression and anxiety. The limited hours of sunlight really screw with my mood and make me feel tired all the time; combine that with frigid cold that makes me want to hide out under a thick pile of blankets for days at a time and... yeah. I feel immobilized, then I start thinking about all of the things I should be doing, which makes me feel even more immobilized, which triggers my anxiety about all of the things I'm not getting done...

Yikes.

Last night I watched all three episodes of Glee that were saved on the DVR. To be honest, I enjoyed every moment of it. And you know, once in a while, that kind of night is fine. But the fact that if it were up to me, I'd spend every night until spring sprawled out on the couch watching cheesy television... well, that's not so good.

And that diet that I just wrote about the other day? Let's just say that no weight is going to be lost if I don't get off my butt and work out once in a while. The fact that the cold makes me crave hot pizza and cheese-laden pasta dishes isn't helping, either; I haven't actually eaten those things yet, but I've eaten plenty of other junk in my attempt to stave off the cravings. And did I even so much as open my food tracker today? No. No, I did not. Bah.

SAD can suck it. I hate feeling so blah.

Ten tids and tads

2010-12-06T22:52:00.000-05:00

NaBloPoMo is over and now I have no idea what to write about again! Clearly, I need guidance; I can ramble indefinitely if someone tells me what to ramble about, but on my own, I've got nothing.

I want to update more frequently though, so here's a random what's-in-my-head post:

1. I finally finished Middlemarch after months of struggling through it. Torture! I have this rule for myself that once I read a full chapter of a book, I have to read the rest of it. Usually that's not a big deal, but twice in my life, I've ended up reading really long books that I couldn't stand because of it. The first was Atlas Shrugged, which I finally finished while I was in Africa... because really, when I was stuck in my hotel room at night after 10-14 hours of interviewing and paperwork, what else was there to do? Middlemarch was the second, but without the "no TV, no internet, no phone" environment that I had while working through Atlas Shrugged, it took me much, much longer.

2. I'm now reading A People's History of the United States, which is amazing and disturbing all at once. I'm ashamed at how little I've researched the stuff they don't teach you in high school history class! This book will be required reading for my kids when they're older so that they don't get to be as old and uninformed as me.

3. Speaking of books, Nora has this children's dictionary that P's parents bought her while they were in India. It was published in New Delhi, but all of the kids pictured in the book are white. I find it really weird. Also, it's a dictionary, but the descriptive blurb on the back is grammatically incorrect and makes no sense (and yes, I spent too much time studying this book while P read her bedtime stories tonight).

4. Nora has taken to bringing P's reading light into bed with her and looking at books for a little while before she goes to sleep. Is it wrong that this makes me feel like we've succeeded as parents? I keep meaning to pick up a reading light of her own for her as a stocking stuffer for Christmas. I need to remember to do that soon.

5. I'm hungry! I'm hungry because I'm now back on the weight loss bandwagon after an unfortunate detour. (Slight TMI ahead...) Let's just say that my first postpartum period coincided with Thanksgiving, which was... ahem... not optimal for weight loss. I have about 6 pounds of Isaac baby weight left to lose, which I'm hoping to have off by his birthday in January. Of course, then I have to lose the unemployment weight, then the Nora baby weight, then the hated-my-job weight... but I'm getting there. Slowly. Maybe someday my nice clothes will fit again and I won't look like a walking poster child for Old Navy. (Relatedly: Am I the only one who thinks of my weight in terms of the periods of my life rather than in terms of pounds? Yes, my name is Lisa and I have an emotional eating problem. ("Hi, Lisa!")).

6. P keeps trying to get me to lift weights with him. The fact that I hate lifting weights is not deterring him. I'm open to any and all arguments for helping to convince him that this is a terrible idea and he should just let me do pilates in peace.

7. Christmas lights make me happy. Christmas music also makes me happy. I don't know why, but I'm really into Christmas this year. Maybe it's my darling 3-year-old's enthusiasm, or maybe it's just that this year has been so rough that I need Christmas this year... but I'm really feeling it for the first time in a while. It's a nice change.

8. Nora is currently enrolled in a gymnastics class at the YMCA. What this means for me is that once a week, Isaac and I hang out in the hallway outside the gym for 45 minutes waiting for her. There's a woman (girl? I'm not sure how old she is) with Down's Syndrome involved in the class after Nora's. She usually arrives about 10-15 minutes before Nora's class ends. She is CONSTANTLY touching Isaac and trying to pick him up. It drives me nuts. Today she gave him her water bottle to play with, but the cap wasn't screwed on all the way and he pulled it off and started to put it in his mouth. I gave it back to her and explained that the cap was a choking hazard. She took the cap off and handed the bottle back to him, which he then (of course) put in his mouth and tried to drink. It's cold and flu season, lady! I never know how to react to this situation because I don't want to be the asshole telling the probably-well-meaning woman with Down's Syndrome to get her hands off my kid, but seriously... I wish she'd keep her hands off my kid!

9. Relatedly, this same woman started groping the belly of one of the other moms waiting in the hallway and asking if she was pregnant. Luckily, she was (because seriously, how horrifying would it have been if she was just feeling up some woman with a belly pooch?!). What's really interesting about this story is that this woman - who already has a 3-year-old and an 8-month-old - is 5 months pregnant. I cannot even contemplate what it must be like to find out that you're pregnant again when your second child is only three months old. Until I had kids of my own, I never realized what a superhuman feat it must have been for my aunt to raise three kids that were all a year apart. Props to people that can handle that. Personally, I would die.

10. The only bad part of Christmas lights? Needing to go outside in the frigid cold to unplug them before going to bed. Yeah, yeah, we should put them on a timer... but we didn't. So outside I go. Goodnight!

NaBloPoMo, Day 30

2010-11-30T06:00:00.000-05:00

Day 30: Your aspirations.

Here it is: my last NaBloPoMo post! Thanks to those of you that have participated / are still working your way through the list in this. I've really enjoyed reading all of your posts. Same time next year? ;-)

Anyway, my aspirations. I used to have a million aspirations. My main aspiration now is to get my life back under my own control, to reclaim my confidence and passions and hopes and dreams. It makes me sad that this is all that I can aspire to at this point, but it's a matter of survival for me. I need to focus my energy on making absolutely sure that this particular aspiration comes to pass because I absolutely CANNOT handle the idea that the rest of my life will look like my life looks right now. Daydreaming about anything bigger seems crazy unless and until I can get things back under control.

That said, I've always wanted to go into politics and I still hope to do that someday. I'm not sure on what level or on what scale, but even if it's just something local, I hope eventually to make it into elected office. Of course, I'd prefer something bigger than local... but let's not get ahead of ourselves!

It feels like a pipe dream right now, with everything as crazy as it is, but that's what I really hope to do someday.

NaBloPoMo, Day 29

2010-11-29T06:00:00.001-05:00

Day 29: Your favorite food/drinks.

My favorite drink is diet coke with lime. I love it so much more than I can possibly describe. It has been my faithful companion through years of sleep deprivation - discovered first when I was getting up at 5 AM to commute from Delaware to DC for school and not getting home again until after midnight, then powering me through as I studied for two bar exams and planned a wedding at the same time, then giving me an extra boost to get through my longer-than-long BigLaw days, then helping me survive the sleep deprivation of two horribly-sleeping babies in a row. Alix Olson describes diet coke as "liquid steel" and I fully concur in that assessment. I am a total addict.

My favorite food? Hmm. Anything Italian, I guess. And ice cream. I love ice cream.

NaBloPoMo, Day 28

2010-11-28T06:00:00.001-05:00

Day 28: Something that you miss.

Something that I miss: sleeping in until noon every weekend.

The trade-off of having my two happy, active, wild monkeys is absolutely worth it, but ohhhhhhhh, how I miss sleeping in.

NaBloPoMo, Day 27

2010-11-27T06:00:00.000-05:00

Day 27: Your favorite place.

This one is simple: Laying in P's lap on the couch, cuddled into his arms in bed, resting my head on his shoulder in the car...

I crave warmth and love and comfort these days, and I can always find it in him. I'm very lucky.

Template fixed (for the most part)

2010-11-26T22:28:00.000-05:00

I finally determined that the heart I added to the end of my "favorite memory" post was screwing up my code and causing the template issues. The heart has now been removed (along with the video in my job post, which I tried removing first to no avail - bah!) and the sidebar is back where it should be, but the destruction wreaked by my previous attempts to fix the issue remains. Specifically, all of my customized sidebar content is gone... and I still have an ugly background! Look for these things to get fixed soonish, but probably not until after the hearing I have scheduled for Monday.

Oh, Blogger...

NaBloPoMo, Day 26

2010-11-26T06:00:00.000-05:00

Day 26: Your fears.

My biggest fear is that our lives are always going to be as hard as they are right now. That we're always going to have to worry about money, that we'll never be able to regularly go out to dinner or buy stuff for ourselves or go on vacation ever again, that bill-paying time every month for the rest of our lives will be a struggle. It seems like that can't possibly be true with two college-educated people, one with a graduate degree, both willing to work our butts off... but if you'd asked me two and a half years ago if I thought we'd still be struggling now, I would have said no. I didn't think it was possible for things to be this bad for this long.

That's my biggest, deepest, darkest fear. I try not to think about it too much because dwelling on it puts me in a really bad place, but it's always there, lurking just under the surface.

NaBloPoMo, Day 25

2010-11-25T06:00:00.000-05:00

Day 25: Your sleeping habits.

I looooooove to sleep. Before we had kids, I was a 9-10 hour a night girl. When that wasn't possible (like during the work week), I made up the deficit by sleeping until noon on the weekends. Sleep is seriously one of my favorite things in the world.

Also, I'm a natural night owl. In a perfect world, I'd stay up until 1 or 2 AM everyday and sleep until 10 or 11 AM. As far as I'm concerned, early mornings do not have a single redeeming quality.

But.

The kids get up early. Nora will stay in bed until 7 AM if Isaac doesn't wake her (and this took MUCH TRAINING, let me tell you), but... he nearly always wakes her. He's up in the 6:00 hour on a good day and in the 5:00 hour on a bad day. And obviously, his nighttime sleep is not at all compatible with my desire for 9-10 uninterrupted hours.

I'm getting through these early childhood years of lousy sleep by telling myself that (1) they'll eventually be old enough to get their own breakfasts and amuse themselves while we sleep in and (2) their teenage years are going to allow me to return to my preferred sleep schedule, at least on weekends.

And what a joyous occasion that will be. *yawn*

NaBloPoMo, Day 24

2010-11-24T06:00:00.001-05:00

Day 24: Something that makes you cry.

Four words: my checking account balance.

/Fin/

NaBloPoMo, Day 23

2010-11-23T06:00:00.001-05:00

Day 23: Something that makes you feel better

Like P, seeing the smiles and hearing the giggles of our kids nearly always makes me feel better. They bring so much joy to my life that I can't even express it in words.

But if the kids aren't around, or if it's something so upsetting that even their smiles can't snap me back to reality, some time alone and a good cry will generally do the job.

NaBloPoMo, Day 22

2010-11-22T06:00:00.001-05:00

Day 22: Something that upsets you

I wasn't sure what to write for this one. Lots of things upset me, some more than others. A non-exhaustive list:

Injustice.
Racism, sexism, homophobia, and other -isms and -phobias.
Violence against women and/or children.
Hypocrisy.
Uninformed people that spew rhetoric without bothering to fact-check.

I mean, you guys know me. I'm not one to hide when I'm upset. I don't think I really need to expound on the items on the list, right?

NaBloPoMo, Day 21

2010-11-21T06:00:00.002-05:00

Day 21: Your job and/or schooling

I'll talk about both.

School: I attended a public high school in upstate New York, which I loathed, followed by small women's liberal arts college near Philly, which I loved. Women's colleges aren't right for everyone, but for me, at that point in my life, it was exactly what I needed to become my best self. I'm so glad that I went there.

After that, I went to law school at Fancy Pants Law in DC. This video pretty much sums up that experience: [video deleted to see if it will fix my blog's sidebar problem]

Work: I worked for 3 years for an evil firm in Philly. Then, one day, I stopped working there (and most of you already know the back story on that). Then I was a stay-at-home mom for a while, while I was looking for another job. I also did legal consulting for P's family business during that time. Earlier this year, I started a solo law practice. I have a few clients, but I desperately need more. I should have an actual office soon, instead of just working from home, which will (theoretically) make recruiting new clients a lot easier.

I hated my BigLaw job, but I have to admit that there were times when it was intellectually stimulating. During my time there, I worked on several important appellate briefs, some involving very obscure issues that few people know much about. I didn't always (or even often) agree with the viewpoint I was being paid to argue, but it was challenging and I was damn good at it.

The work that I'm doing now isn't remotely intellectually challenging. However, it's all very important on a personal level to the clients for whom I'm working, which is a nice change of pace. Still, I don't know that staying in solo practice will be a long-term sustainable thing for me because of the lack of intellectual challenge. I really need to be using my brain on a daily basis to feel satisfied with my work, and right now, that just isn't happening. Building this practice is vitally important for our financial situation and my work-life balance right now, but once the kids are older and in school, I will almost certainly be looking for other opportunities.

NaBloPoMo, Day 20

2010-11-20T06:00:00.001-05:00

Day 20: Your morning routine

Sometime between 5:30 and 6:30 AM: Wake to the sound of Isaac chirping in his crib over the monitor. Kick P and tell him that Isaac is up for the day.

Five or ten minutes later: Hear Isaac crying to get out of the crib. Kick P again and ask him to bring him to our room to be fed. Nurse Isaac.

While nursing Isaac: Greet Nora, who has inevitably woken up from the sounds of Isaac yelling and cooing. Move over so that she can climb into our bed... along with her frog, 1-3 other stuffed animals, and a blanket from her room. Mumble incoherent responses to Nora's chatter.

Five or ten minutes later: Give up on sleep when Isaac starts (a) throwing our tissue box at my head or (b) banging on the framed picture over our bed. Kick P and tell him to go change Isaac. Stumble to bathroom, then help Nora get ready.

7-something: Stumble downstairs with the kids while P gets in the shower. Procure caffeine, pour Nora a bowl of cereal, and toss some cheerios on Isaac's tray. Feed myself and spoon-feed Isaac a fruit puree or yogurt at the same time.

8:00ish: Begin making Nora's lunch (if it's a school day). Stop repeatedly to remove Isaac from the stairs, pull him away from the trash and recycling, and retrieve him from under the kitchen table. If there's time, make P's lunch for him. If it's not a school day, I watch the kids play while sipping my caffeinated beverage during this time slot.

8:30ish (on school days): Brush Nora's hair, cajole her into getting her socks and shoes on, and help her into her coat. Give hugs and kisses goodbye to Nora and P. Wave to them from the front window as they pull away, at N's request. If it's not a school day, I play with the kids during this time slot.

8:45ish: Check email to make sure no work crises have come up. Try to check personal email and Facebook with varying degrees of success. Give up when Isaac starts banging on computer.

8:50ish: Play with Isaac (and Nora, if it's not a school day) until his morning nap time. I don't get a shower at least until he's napping, although more often I wait until he gets up from his nap to avoid any chance of waking him up.

And that's my morning in a nutshell!

NaBloPoMo, Day 19

2010-11-19T06:00:00.000-05:00

Day 19: Something you regret

This is an easy one: The biggest regret of my entire life is going to law school.

I wanted to be a prosecutor. I honestly thought I could work in a firm for a few years to pay off the loans and then transition to being a prosecutor. But that's not how it works. People don't really transfer from private practice to prosecution. And I was in no way, shape, or form prepared for the hell of being stuck as a cog in a huge, corporate machine. It destroyed my soul and made me hate life for the entire three years that I did it.

I have very little undergraduate debt thanks to my college's generous financial aid packages and my parents' assistance. My debt load from law school was/is well over $150,000. It's the biggest drain on our finances under normal circumstances (I currently have an economic hardship forbearance, which postpones my payments until April of next year; but under normal circumstances, my monthly loan payments are approximately equal to our monthly mortgage payment). Now that I no longer work for a big firm, I don't have the slightest idea how I'll ever manage to pay it off. Plus, I really hate being a lawyer.

I wish I'd taken a few years off to work at a non-profit or something after college. I'm certain that, had I done that, I either would have gone back to school for a teaching certificate or entered a Ph.D program in political science with the ultimate goal of entering academia. If not for my student loans, I would do one of those two things now.

Instead, I'm stuck under a mountain of debt from getting a useless degree in a profession that I actively dislike being a part of.

Yup, that's my biggest regret. Hands down, no question.

NaBloPoMo, Day 18

2010-11-18T06:00:00.000-05:00

Day 18: Your favorite birthday

My favorite birthday was probably my 21st. P and I were living in NYC for the summer and I was interning for a non-profit. The executive director called a staff meeting for that afternoon, which bummed me out because P and I had dinner plans. When I got there, it turned out that our usually very aloof and all-business director had actually called the meeting for the more or less sole purpose of busting out a bottle of champagne in my honor. After work, I headed home to find that P had decorated our entire apartment in balloons and streamers. It was so cute!

We went to dinner that night at a small, cozy Italian restaurant called Teodora. It was our first time there, but we loved it so much that it would become one of our favorite restaurants in the years to come - and was, in fact, where we ultimately had dinner on the night that we got engaged. After dinner, P and I got lost on the subway due to a mess of construction-related line switches - which doesn't sound like very much fun, but we were laughing so hard at the ridiculousness of being on the Z train (which was not even close to our usual subway line) that it was actually a fun adventure.

That was the perfect 21st birthday for me. I'm not remotely a party girl and it wouldn't have felt right to go to a club or a bar, but I still felt like the rather momentous birthday was being celebrated and honored. I loved it.

What the...?

2010-11-17T09:58:00.003-05:00

FYI, I have no idea why my blog template is suddenly all screwed up - I didn't change anything! I'll look into it, but probably not until later. In the meantime, sorry for the messiness.

Edited to add: Changing the template didn't help. Now I have an ugly template and everything is screwed up. I'm really frustrated right now.

Edited again to add: Well, the ugly template at least had a solution to the problem, so we're all going to have to live with it for now. I'll try to get my old template or a prettier one up soon, but I don't have time right now to deal with it. The site is readable, so good enough for now!

Edited AGAIN to add: And now it's broken again, without me having touched it. Blogger FAIL. I have no idea what the problem is.

NaBloPoMo, Day 17

2010-11-17T06:00:00.001-05:00

Day 17: Your favorite memory

I have a bunch of favorite memories. Some are obvious - our wedding, the births of each of our kids, etc. But I'm going to post about one of my not-obvious favorite memories.

P and I started dating during my sophomore year of college. During my junior year, for our one-year dating anniversary, we went to NYC. It was such an awesome day. We took ridiculous pictures in Central Park - one was set up to make it look like I was eating the passing cars; another was set up to make it look like I was doing something lewd with a statue. Just very immature and fun and silly. We went to see Les Miserables on Broadway - my first time at a Broadway show. We went for a carriage ride. And P bought me a rose from a street vendor.

We went out for a very late dessert at a huge restaurant in Times Square and left just as it was closing for the night. As we walked away, I suddenly realized that I had left the flower P had bought me on the table in the restaurant. We went back, but the doors were already locked. I banged on the door until a staff member opened it and then asked, very politely, if I could please come back inside to retrieve my rose. He graciously allowed me to do so, even though I'm sure he thought I was a crazy person.

And I still have that rose to this day.

NaBloPoMo, Day 16

2010-11-16T06:00:00.000-05:00

Day 16: Your first kiss

My first kiss was the summer between 9th and 10th grade. I was introduced to a boy named Tom, who was a year younger than me, by some friends that used to go to school with him. We decided to go out on a date - paddle boating and hanging out on the beach, then going out for pizza with my parents. Romantic, huh?

Anyway, the pizza place was next to a lake, so we went out to look at the water while we were waiting for our food. While we were out there, he kissed me.

It wasn't that great, to be honest, but I was glad to have my first kiss "out of the way."

And then he found out a few days later that he'd failed 8th grade and would be staying in middle school, so that was pretty much the end of that from my perspective!

NaBloPoMo, Day 15

2010-11-15T06:00:00.000-05:00

Day 15: Something you love about yourself

As I think I've said 800 times since NaBloPoMo started, this is not a good time in my life. Depression, anxiety, various career and financial difficulties crushing my self-esteem, blah blah blah. So this is a hard topic for me to right about at this particular juncture.

In general, though, the thing I love most about myself is my passion. It gets me in trouble sometimes; I am totally that girl that will argue about politics at the dinner table, for example, and an ex-boyfriend-turned-friend hasn't spoken to me since our blowout fight about him voting for George W. Bush. But I love that I've managed to figure out which issues matter most to me in life (e.g., reproductive rights, gay rights, education) and made it my life's mission to stick up for what I believe in.

The passion extends beyond politics and activism, though. I am fiercely passionate about - and protective of - the people that I care about. I will stick up loudly for my friends and family if anyone tries to mess with them. I'm extremely loyal to the people I love.

So yeah, passion. I think that's my best trait.

NaBloPoMo, Day 14

2010-11-14T06:00:00.000-05:00

Day 14: Where you live

I live in the Philly suburbs and I love it here!

Before college, I lived my entire life in a small town in upstate New York, just outside of Albany. I never really cared for it. There was no diversity - of race, religion, or most importantly, thought - and there wasn't much to do. Plus, it was COLD!

When it came time to apply to college, I knew that I didn't want to go anywhere local. I applied to five of the Seven Sisters, early decision to one. I got accepted early decision to the one near Philly (trying not to be too specific because of Google...) and headed off without a second thought.

Coming here for college was the turning point of my life. I LOVED my college and everything about my experience there. Going to school where I did enhanced my life in a million and one different ways. Things haven't turned out as I would have liked career-wise, obviously, but inevitably, whenever I have gotten interviews and such, it's been my college that has opened the door for me (rather than my fancy-pants law school). It was very academically rigorous and it has an excellent reputation, but it was also fun and engaging and challenging and friendly and completely awesome. It changed me as a person, for the better, and I'm so glad I decided to move away from home to go to school there.

I also met P while I was in college, which made it hard to leave the area when it was time for law school. I got into Penn Law and really thought I'd go there so that I could stay in Philly... until I went to visit and the level of pretentiousness made me cry. I ended up going to Fancy-Pants Law (again, trying to outsmart Google...) in DC instead.

I hated DC for the first year, then moved to a better neighborhood my second year and started to like it better. Still, it always had a weird transience about it (hardly anybody is actually from DC originally, and with the political scene, it feels like everyone is always just passing through), plus it wasn't where P was! The summer before my third year, I moved in with him in Delaware (where he had moved in the interim) and arranged my schedule so that I only had to drive down 2-3 times per week for classes. They were loooooong days, but it was worth it to be with P.

Still, Delaware was... Delaware... and P or not, I knew it wasn't where I wanted to be forever and ever. When I got pregnant and we started looking at houses, we looked exclusively in the western suburbs of Philly. We ended up buying in the same town where P's parents live and where he went to high school, oddly enough.

Our town is fine, although there isn't much happening. It's safe and it has good schools, good community programs, a Starbucks, a few restaurants, a yoga studio... all the stuff we need to feel happy living here. But the real benefit is the proximity to Philly. Having grown up in an area without much to do, I LOVE being near the city and having its museums, sporting events, parks, restaurants, etc. at my fingertips. Plus, Philly has a definite identity that DC doesn't - an attitude, some might say - and I love it.

I'm really happy here and it definitely feels like home.

NaBloPoMo, Day 13

2010-11-13T06:00:00.002-05:00

Day 13: Your mode of transportation

I drive a Mazda5.

I used to drive a Scion tC, which was fast and sporty and got great gas mileage. I loved it. Unfortunately, the tC was a 2-door coupe and it was nearly impossible to get Nora in and out of her car seat. We also knew that there was no way it would ever work with more than two kids, and our plan has always been two kids for sure with an option for a third.

When it got to the point that I couldn't deal with the car seat struggles anymore and we decided to trade the tC, I looked specifically for some kind of crossover vehicle. We knew that a sedan wouldn't be big enough for three kids - not with the amount of long-distance driving we do, anyway - but I didn't want an SUV (too big) or a minivan (too soccer mom-ish). There were exactly two crossovers on the market at the time - the Mazda5 and the Kia Rondo. I didn't really want a Kia because I'd heard bad things about their reliability, so we went to test drive the Mazda5. Luckily, I liked it, so we bought it.

It's been a very good car, for the most part. Well, leaving aside the fact that it's currently subject to a recall for a power steering issue and the company doesn't have the parts to fix it, so I'm driving it around everyday hoping that the power steering doesn't drop out... but hopefully that will be fixed soon! It fits the two kids very well, but if we do actually decide to have a third someday, we'll definitely need to invest in a roof rack for our longer trips.

That said, it looks pretty much like a minivan, even though it's not "officially" a minivan. It may have made more sense to just swallow my pride and get a damn minivan for the sake of the extra space and easier access to the third row. If and when P decides to replace his car, a minivan will likely be one of the options on the table.

But overall, I love my car and I'm very happy that I bought it!

NaBloPoMo, Day 12

2010-11-12T06:00:00.002-05:00

Day 12: What's in your bag?

Answer: I have no idea. Let's clean it out together and see, shall we?

Outside pocket:

Keys

Cell phone

Comb

Tissues

Receipt for a Christmas present I bought for Isaac last week

Pens (4)

Baby spoon (that can probably go back in the kitchen, huh?)

Hand sanitizer

Ponytail holder

A wayward penny

Random pieces of gum (3), one of which fell out of the wrapper (eww)

Ponytail holders of Nora's (2)

A barrette of Nora's

Main inside pocket:

Wallet

Change purse

iPod and case

Birth control pills (7 inactive "period week" pills) leftover from when I went off the pill to try to conceive Isaac (yes, really... into the trash they go!)

Old, faded receipt from the kids' pediatricians' office

Business card for the stylist at the last place I got my hair cut

Brochure of services for the same place

$5 off coupon for my next cut at the same place (score!)

Another ponytail holder

Two restaurant.com gift certificates that expire today (but I paid next-to-nothing for them and knew they were there and about to expire, so it's okay)

More tissues

Inside zipper pocket:

Hand lotion

More hand sanitizer

Lipstick (2)

Chapstick (2, one of which is empty)

Lip gloss (2)

An empty tube of Blistex

Tube of sunscreen for my lips

Tinted chapstick

An old, broken barrette of Nora's

Key code in case I ever need new keys cut for my car

Another wayward penny

Another pen

A wayward dime

Not the most interesting blog entry ever, but thanks to the birth control pills, we now all know that I haven't cleaned out my purse since at least January 2009 (I went off the pill a few months before we tried to conceive to get my cycles back on track). For whatever that's worth. :-P

NaBloPoMo, Day 11

2010-11-11T06:00:00.001-05:00

(Hey, some of you are abandoning me in this! I was enjoying reading all of these entries... hint, hint!)

Day 11: Your siblings

I grew up as an only child and still identify as one, more or less. My biological father and his (now ex-)wife had a baby girl, E, when I was 12 and a baby boy, T, when I was 14, but they moved to New Mexico after E was born, so I only knew her as a baby and never met T at all.

A few years ago, I decided to look for E and T on the internet. I found E on MySpace and we've spent the last couple of years exchanging messages and getting to know each other. It's interesting because even though we're only half-sisters and even though we grew up across the country from each other, we're pretty similar in a lot of ways. We look quite a bit alike, we're both avid francophiles, we're both pretty liberal, etc. The age difference is apparent (because let's face it, there's a BIG difference between the life of a 30-year-old and the life of an 18-year-old), but we're in fairly regular Facebook contact and have exchanged cards and gifts (not for birthdays and Christmas, but she got gifts for the kids when Isaac was born and I sent her a graduation gift when she finished high school). It's been a nice, slow process of connecting - and occasionally really weird, to be honest - and I'm glad I decided to reach out to her.

I haven't yet spoken to T at all, which I guess is probably weird. He doesn't have a Facebook account (as far as I know) and making an effort to reach out to a 16-year-old boy kind of scares me. I can't imagine having much in common with him just yet, and given that he knows about my contact with E but hasn't expressed any interest in speaking to me himself, I assume he's not interested right now. I'd like to get to know him too, eventually, but the time doesn't feel quite right yet.

A point of note: our father is not a part of their lives either. My ex-stepmother left him right after T was born and according to E, he hasn't had any contact with the kids since E was 2 and T was a newborn. They don't even have his last name anymore; their mom legally changed their last name to her maiden name when the divorce was finalized. I think it would be much weirder to be in contact with E if she were also in contact with our father, given my own estrangement from him. Starting from that mutual place of "wow, he's an asshole" made it a little easier to start getting to know each other; it provided an initial point of commonality, you could say.

NaBloPoMo, Day 10

2010-11-10T06:00:00.000-05:00

Day 10: An inspiration

I had a really, really hard time figuring out what to write for this entry. The truth is, I'm not inspired by much these days. I've been battling depression for the better part of 2.5 years, my life is far from what I'd like it to look like, and I have trouble imagining things getting better.

But everyday, despite my desires to the contrary, I get out of bed. I work at trying to grow my business. I work at losing the ridiculous amount of weight I put on while pregnant with Isaac. I work at being a good mom for my kids and a good wife for my husband.

So I guess you could say that P and the kids are my inspiration these days. I get up and keep going for them, even when I can't force myself to do it for me. I want their lives to be good. I want them to have a healthy mom/wife that can live to a ripe old age and always be there for them. I want them to - someday, eventually - be financially comfortable again. I want the kids to have good memories of their childhoods.

For right now, that's my main inspiration to keep going. I hope desperately that I'll someday return to a place of being inspired to be the best at something, to change the world, to make a mark. For this moment, in this season of my life, I'm inspired by my family to just... be.

NaBloPoMo, Day 9

2010-11-09T06:00:00.001-05:00

Day 9: Your beliefs

"I believe in survival of the fittest... if you're ranking members of a gym. But if you're talking about the human club, you gotta let everybody in." (Alix Olson)

Beliefs, huh? You really want to go there? Okaaaaay. Advance warning, though: this may offend some of you.

My family is Catholic - but Santa Bunny Catholic, not hardcore Catholic. I grew up going to church on Christmas, Easter, and if my more devout grandmother happened to be at our house on a Sunday morning. I liked it fine, I guess - the music, the stained glass windows, and all of that were nice - but I didn't ever think that any of it made even a bit of sense.

In elementary school, I started attending religion classes to prepare for my first communion. I asked too many questions and it clearly made the instructor uncomfortable. After my first communion, I told my mom I didn't want to go to religion classes anymore and she didn't make me.

From that point until my senior year of high school, I tried to talk the talk of being Catholic, but I did a lousy job of it. When I accidentally got pregnant my senior year of high school, I struggled a lot with the idea of God. I prayed every single night for God to help me, but of course He never did. I wrote in my journal about being angry with God for letting it happen when I was a pretty good person trying hard to live a good life. I tried to force myself to believe in heaven and angels. The morning of the procedure, my mom asked me if I was sure I wanted to go through with it, basically begging to me to reconsider because it was "against [her] religion." I remember thinking, at that moment, "but it's not against mine." I guess that's the point at which I officially disowned Catholicism.

When I went to college and started actually thinking for myself, I began to really doubt the existence of God. It just didn't make any sense to me. Nevertheless, I went home for Christmas that year and dutifully went to Mass with my parents. The priest at Mass decided to use the Christmas service to preach his politics - the Catholic Church's politics - from the pulpit. It made me rage inside and I stopped going to church with my parents after that point, even on Christmas.

I spent the next several years not really thinking about religion at all. My senior year of college, it became interesting to me again, but purely as an academic issue. I ended up writing my senior thesis in political science on how the Establishment Clause of the First Amendment could be used as an alternative legal rationale for reproductive rights.

Around the time P and I got engaged, I started thinking a lot about what kind of religious affiliation our family should have, if any. We talked about it quite a bit, especially with respect to kids' religious education, and settled on a "to each his/her own for us, but expose the kids to everything" position. What "my own" would end up being wasn't really clear. We decided to use a Bible reading as one of the readings at our wedding, but not for religious reasons so much as because we liked the message. We mentioned coming together "before God and our assembled families and friends" in part because it was important to P and in part because I wasn't sure what I believed and wanted to cover all the bases. However, I still wasn't really sure what I believed.

For the last 5 or 6 years, I've spent a lot of time really thinking, reading, and trying to pin down what it is that I believe about God and religion. I've read parts of the Bible (but not all of it because it bored me to tears). I've read a lot of analysis of the Bible from both believers and non-believers. I've read memoirs and blogoirs of believers talking about how they came to believe. I've read a lot of Richard Dawkins and Sam Harris, talking about why they don't.

And after all of that, I think I've settled at being a comfortable agnostic / uncomfortable atheist. I believe that science nearly completely disproves the existence of God. But because it hasn't been 100% disproved - and probably a little bit because that Catholic guilt is deep and ingrained - I don't generally call myself an atheist. I will most likely continue defining myself as agnostic until definitive proof exists in either direction.

I have started going to Church again, but mostly just on Christmas. What can I say? I like Christmas music. I also think that the Christmas story is an awesome piece of literature and I enjoy talking about it in much the same way that I enjoy talking about Santa Claus.

However, I now attend a Unitarian church where I can be 100% certain that no one is going to start spouting bullshit political rhetoric from the pulpit.

For what it's worth, I don't much care what other people believe about religion. I accept that others feel and believe differently and I don't begrudge anyone the right to worship (or not worship) however they see fit. I cheerfully attend my friends' church weddings and their kids' church christenings. I attend church funerals. My kids have both had Hindu "baptisms" (for lack of a better word) because it was important to my husband as a cultural matter. We've worked out a comfortable "this is what Daddy believes; this is what Mommy believes; other people believe x, y, and z; you need to decide for yourself" spiel for when the kids start asking about religion, although it hasn't come up yet. I don't think of myself as an evangelical agnostic/atheist, but I don't hide what I think if someone asks me directly.

Also, I firmly believe that religion does not have a monopoly on morality. I believe that we're obligated to each other as human beings - obligated to care for the sick and less fortunate, obligated to treat others with the respect and love we'd want from them in return, and obligated to be kind and compassionate to all living creatures. Those are the values that I'm trying very hard to instill in my children, whether they ultimately decide to embrace a religion or not.

NaBloPoMo, Day 8

2010-11-08T06:00:00.000-05:00

Day 8: A precious item

This is a picture of my engagement ring (and, umm, the commercial outline I used to help prepare for the bar exam back in 2005... but let's be realistic here - that's not precious to me in the slightest).

I love my engagement ring.

I miss my engagement ring.

You see, whenever I get pregnant, the first thing that happens is that my hands and feet swell up like balloons. When I was pregnant with Nora, I left my rings on until such point that I couldn't get them off and my finger developed purple bruises underneath them. I probably should have cut them off, but I didn't, and I'm damn lucky that I didn't do any permanent damage to my finger.

Having learned my lesson after the first time, I took my rings off very early in my pregnancy with Isaac. Good thing, too, because the swelling was much worse with him than it was with Nora. The problem is that I also gained a crapload of weight while I was pregnant with Isaac, so after I gave birth and the swelling went down, I still couldn't get my rings back on. I've been working my butt off to lose the weight for the last nine months and was finally able to get my wedding ring back on a few weeks ago, but my engagement ring still doesn't fit. It's the same size as my wedding ring, so it's weird that one fits and the other doesn't, but that's the situation at the moment.

I can't wait until I can wear it again. P worked his butt off at crappy retail jobs while we were in college to save for that ring and I love everything about it. I miss having it on my finger like you would not believe.

It is definitely precious to me.

NaBloPoMo, Day 7

2010-11-07T06:00:00.000-05:00

Day 7: Your best friend

I don't know how to blog about my "best friend" because I find the idea of a best friend completely arbitrary and weird. I don't like to rank my friends!

To be honest, P is my BEST friend. I married him because he's my favorite person to talk to, my favorite person to laugh with, my favorite person to hang out with, and just my overall favorite person. No one else holds a candle to him, and that is - in my opinion - how it should be. What good is a marriage without a strong base of friendship?

But I'm lucky to also have several very close female friends that could be called "best" friends in the more traditional sense - B and L, who have been dear friends of mine since 6th grade, who know all of my dirty secrets from middle school and high school, and who remain two of my favorite people to this day; and M, who has been an awesome friend since the summer before we started college together, who knows all of my dirty secrets from college, and who I still hang out with, laugh with, and over-commit with all the time. I love you guys. :-)

NaBloPoMo, Day 6

2010-11-06T06:00:00.000-04:00

Day 6: Your hobbies

I'm sorely lacking in hobbies at the moment, which is why my blog has been so boring for so long!

You see, Baby Boy doesn't sleep. I think I've mentioned that a few times (*snort* - yes, I realize it's all I ever talk about). I have gotten more than 5 hours of sleep in a row ONCE since he was born, and that's when I was violently ill and P got him to take a bottle. Most nights I get 2-3 hours of sleep, nurse him, then get another 2 hours or so, nurse him, and then I'm up with him or listening to him scream while P is up with him every 1-2 hours until he gets up for the day around 6:30 or so.

I'm too tired for hobbies, y'all.

Some of you may remember that I tried to do the Couch to 5K program. That totally crashed and burned. Too tired.

I like to go to yoga class, but exhaustion and money issues limit how often I can do that.

Before Isaac was born, I tried to take up knitting. I was enjoying that while it lasted, but I'm still a novice and so it requires a lot of concentration. I don't have the fortitude to devote that much concentration to a hobby right now.

I love to read - and hey, cool, that's something I've actually managed to stick with since Isaac's birth! Except that I'm now reading Middlemarch, which I hate; and I don't believe in abandoning books that I've started, so it's taking me forever to trudge through it. I have a bunch of good books on deck for whenever I finally finish it, though. I'm looking forward to starting Get Me Out: A History of Childbirth from the Garden of Eden to the Sperm Bank and A People's History of the United States. I've been big into non-fiction in the last few years for some inexplicable reason.

Hmm, what else? Politics. I love me some politics. Unfortunately, I'm currently lacking the time and energy to keep myself as informed as I'd like to, but I try to maintain at least a base level of knowledge.

I love to travel, but that's out for all kinds of reasons right now - trying to build up my business, lack of money, two small kids that would almost certainly not appreciate spending hours upon hours at the Louvre...

I'll be brutally honest. The only hobbies I'm really, truly managing to keep up with these days are watching trashy TV and reading trashy celeb snark sites. My basest of base hobbies. The ones I'm embarrassed to admit to. P and I watch Dancing with the Stars every Monday night. When that ends, you know I'll be watching the Bachelor - same time, same station. I have subscriptions to Perez Hilton, TMZ, and Celebrity Baby Blog in Google Reader and check them faithfully. Want to know why?

Because trash doesn't require me to be awake enough to think.

(He has to sleep SOMEDAY, right?)

NaBloPoMo, Day 5

2010-11-05T06:00:00.000-04:00

Day 5: Your definition of love

Someday, 50 or 60 years from now, I suspect that P and I will look back on these few years as the toughest ones of our entire marriage.

I don't write much about our struggles in here because they really have nothing to do with us as a couple and everything to do with the circumstances in which we've found ourselves. Being broke and stressed about money all the time would be rough on any relationship, and ours is no exception. Trying to prioritize which bills to pay (because we can't possibly pay all of them on time), not being able to afford babysitters or date nights, not being able to afford to take a vacation, having to restrict the number of fun things we can do as a family... all of these things are stressful. All of them - sometimes - cause conflict. Things are tough right now and all we can do is work our butts off, hope that they get better, and try to stay respectful enough of each other that we don't cause any irreparable damage in the meantime.

When we got married, someone told me that the secret to a successful marriage is to never fall out of love at the same time. I didn't really get it at the time, but now I do. Life happens. Hard times happen. No marriage is a bed of roses 100% of the time (and if someone tells you that theirs is, they're either lying or their shitty time just hasn't come yet). Being in love, to me, means starting out with a strong foundation of friendship and shared values, respecting your partner and expecting respect in return, being willing to sacrifice your own desires for the greater good when times are hard, being able to apologize when you're being a jerk, and laughing together as much as humanly possible.

No offense to any other men that may be reading this, but I'm married to the single greatest man on this earth. He makes me laugh every single day, which is no easy feat at this point in our lives. His arms are my favorite safe, cuddly place. He's smart, keeps himself informed of what's going on in the world, and challenges me to think about things in new ways. He's romantic, kind-hearted, and sensitive. He's also as passionate and stubborn as I am, and while that can cause some explosive bickering from time to time, I wouldn't have it any other way - it would be horribly boring to be married to a doormat or to a yes-man. He's the greatest father on the face of this earth and I fall more in love with him everyday while watching him with our kids. He makes me insanely, ridiculously, incredibly happy.

My definition of love: knowing that the person you're with is the only person you'd want by your side as you wade through the lowest points of your life. And to me, that's what P is. He's my rock, my strength, my best friend. And even when things aren't perfect in our lives- even when things are far from perfect - he's the perfect partner for me. I feel very, very lucky - every single day - to be married to him.

NaBloPoMo, Day 4

2010-11-04T06:00:00.000-04:00

Day 4: Your music

Ahhhh, music. I mostly love music with lyrics to which I can relate. Ani DiFranco and Dar Williams are my mainstays; I can nearly always find something from them that fits my mood. I periodically love the Indigo Girls, but they're not as much of a guaranteed fit as Ani and Dar. When I need to channel my inner pain and deal with it constructively, Tori Amos usually does the job. When I'm feeling enraged, a little bit of spoken word poetry with a backbeat can generally get me through, and that's when I break out the Alix Olson.

Fiona Apple, Garbage, and Alanis Morrissette were the emo musicians of note for my teenage years and every now and again, I go through a phase where I need - need, from the depths of my soul - to revisit them. There are also some songs from Green Day and the Smashing Pumpkins that fall into that category, although not as many.

But here's my dirty little secret: There are times when I just love ridiculous pop music. I listen to more Katy Perry and Lady Gaga these days than I'd like to admit. And I have a real, truly embarrassing, honest to god, inexplicable fondness for early 90s gangsta rap. Yes, my name is Lisa; I'm an unabashed, hardcore feminist; and I have Snoop Dogg, Tupac, and Dr. Dre on my iPod.

(Please don't tell Ani. I think she'd disown me as a fan).

NaBloPoMo, Day 3

2010-11-03T06:00:00.000-04:00

Day 3: Your parents

When I refer to "my parents," I mean my mom and stepdad. My biological father is kind of a shitty human being and this December will mark 13 years of me not speaking to him. I haven't missed him at all, to be brutally honest. His abuse of my mom caused their divorce, he was relatively absent during my childhood (except for trying to buy my love with ridiculous birthday and Christmas presents, which were appreciated but never made up for him ignoring me the rest of the time), and he tried one time too many to interfere in my life as a teenager, despite his general absentia. The final straw came when I got into my dream college early decision and he had a hissy fit about the cost of it, insisting that I go to community college for two years and then transfer to a state school. I finally stood up for myself with him and explained that that would not be happening, he started yammering about how I needed to respect him, I blew up at him that respect needed to be earned... yadda yadda yadda, giant fight, better off without him.

He still lives in the same town as my parents, so I hear news of him periodically, but I have no desire to be in contact with him. He knows of at least Nora's existence (he heard about her from his realtor, who knows my mom, and then asked my mom about it when he ran into her at the supermarket once). I don't know if he knows about Isaac, nor do I particularly care. He won't be having anything to do with my children, ever, as long as I'm alive to prevent it, so whether he knows that they exist isn't really my concern. He's an asshole.

Anyway, my parents.

My parents are good people. My stepdad and I have never been particularly close and butted heads a great deal as I was growing up, but now that we're not being forced to live under the same roof, we get along okay. My mom and I have always been pretty close, and even though our relationship is far, far, FAR from perfect and she drives me totally crazy sometimes, I love her very much.

There's not really much else to say about this topic, so I'll just let it go with that.

P.S. Please, please, please join me in NaBloPoMo! Without some of you joining in, it just feels like I'm yammering about myself. If some of you do it too, it'll feel less like yammering and more like reminiscing and chatting over tea. C'mon, you know you want to...

NaBloPoMo, Day 2

2010-11-02T11:13:00.000-04:00

Day 2: Your first love

Does this really need to be the topic of day 2? Blargh. I suppose for most people, this question would bring up a huge wave of tenderness and nostalgia, but for me it mostly makes me want to throw up.

Nevertheless...

I met M on the internet in March (I think) 1996. Maybe it was February... I don't really remember. AOL was the big thing back then and we spent lots of time chatting and IMing, then moved to phone calls and letters. We actually exchanged pictures by letter because neither of us had a scanner and digital cameras weren't remotely popular back then, if they even existed. I was completely enamored with the cute older boy from NYC who was taking an interest in me, and even more enamored when I learned that he would be attending college that fall in the area where I lived.

He wanted to come up to look around the campus, so we decided to meet while he was up here. I met him at the Greyhound station and my heart completely skipped a beat. He was 6'3 with dark hair, dark eyes, a big smile - even cuter in person than in his pictures. My mom - who was apparently not remotely concerned with internet safety, oddly enough (or didn't show it if she was) - dropped us off at the university and told us she'd pick us up in a few hours. We walked around, holding hands, talking non-stop, and had a very pleasant day. He kissed me for the first time in a doorway on campus and it just completely knocked me off my feet. I felt like I was living in a modern fairytale.

Over the next several months, we ran up huge long-distance bills and huge AOL bills and saw each other every few weekends. We went to a carnival together. He was my date for the sophomore formal at my school. In June, he came up for several days and we had an incredible time together. It was all very innocent at first.

He invited me down to the city for his high school graduation, so I took the bus back with him after his June visit. The first few days were amazing. It was the beginning of my love affair with NYC - an affair that continues to this day. I met his friends. He showed me around his high school. I watched him play basketball in Central Park, in the shadow of the Met. I learned the subway system. One night, we had an awesome adventure. We started off at a pool hall in the Village and spent the evening wandering all the way uptown. His friend met us outside of the New York Times building where he worked and joined us for the rest of the night. They taught me about the city and about Chicago Bulls basketball. I taught them how to do the Macarena in the middle of a crosswalk on 5th Avenue. We finally wandered across the bridge and got back to his apartment in Queens around 1 or 2 am. I felt very cosmopolitan.

The next day was his graduation. I went with his parents on the subway while he took a cab because he was running late. We went out for lunch afterwards. We watched a movie at his apartment that night. I felt like a part of his family.

The next day was his 18th birthday. I don't remember many of the details of the day. I remember the night well, too well, and I wish I didn't. To this day, I don't understand what happened. I don't know what changed. I don't know how my sweet, charming boyfriend turned into a monster overnight.

But that's another post, I guess. This one is supposed to be about the love story.

Did I really "love" M? No, probably not - not the real, grown-up, mature love that I've been fortunate enough to experience as an adult, in my relationship with my wonderful husband. But I certainly gave him my heart. I certainly loved the idea of being in love with him. I loved the attention lavished on my small town, self-conscious self by the probably-too-confident/tending-towards-conceited city boy. I loved reading him my angsty teen poetry while he rubbed my back and whispered sweet nothings in my ear. I loved hearing his Queens accent on the other end of the phone and being reminded that there was a whole big world out there and I wouldn't be stuck in my small town forever.

I was swept away, in other words. Swept away by what it represented, what it meant to me for Someone Like Him to be interested in Someone Like Me. And in the end, that turned out not so great for me, obviously. But when I force myself to isolate the After June 23rd from the Before June 23rd... I can force my memory into fondness.

Because at the time, for the first few months, before it went terribly wrong... it was the most incredible thing that had ever happened to me.

NaBloPoMo, Day 1

2010-11-01T20:18:00.000-04:00

Thank you all for your feedback in the last post. I appreciate knowing that people are reading here and that you don't necessarily care what/how often I write.

Given my lack of ability to update here in recent months, I decided to join National Blog Posting Month this year to try to get back in the habit of regular blogging. I found a list of blogging prompts here, set forth as follows:

Day 01 - Introduce yourself
Day 02 – Your first love
Day 03 – Your parents
Day 04 – Your music
Day 05 – Your definition of love
Day 06 – Your hobbies
Day 07 – Your best friend
Day 08 – A precious item
Day 09 – Your beliefs
Day 10 – An inspiration
Day 11 – Your siblings
Day 12 – What’s in your bag
Day 13 – Your mode of transportation
Day 14 – Where you live
Day 15 – Something you love about yourself
Day 16 – Your first kiss
Day 17 – Your favourite memory
Day 18 – Your favourite birthday
Day 19 – Something you regret
Day 20 – Your morning routine
Day 21 – Your job and/or schooling
Day 22 – Something that upsets you
Day 23 – Something that makes you feel better
Day 24 – Something that makes you cry
Day 25 – Your sleeping habits
Day 26 – Your fears
Day 27 – Your favourite place
Day 28 – Something that you miss
Day 29 – Your favourite foods/drinks
Day 30 – Your aspirations

I have almost zero ability to come up with my own topics lately, so these seem as good to write about as any. I hope some of you will join me with this; I think it would be fun to read your entries on these topics too.

So, Day 1: Introduce yourself.

This is easy because pretty much everyone reading this blog already knows me! But if you happen to be one of the few that don't...

I'm Lisa. I'm 30. I've been married to P for a little over five years, but we've been together for 10.5 years. We have two kids, Nora (3.75 years old) and Isaac (9 months old), and a cat named Denby. I'm politically liberal and fairly crunchy (especially in my parenting practices), but I stopped being hopelessly idealistic long ago. Sometimes I greatly miss my former idealism.

And speaking of my lost idealism... I've been a lawyer (mostly of the disgruntled variety) since 2005. I started a solo practice this year and spend most of my time these days trying to figure out how to make it profitable. I work from home for now, with Isaac underfoot everyday and Nora underfoot twice a week, but should have an office in the not-too-distant future (albeit an office where the kids will remain underfoot, at least until I'm making enough money that putting Isaac in daycare and extending Nora's preschool schedule makes financial sense).

My baby boy doesn't sleep, which is important to know if you're going to be reading here because it's basically THE defining thing in my life right now. I'm perpetually exhausted. If he ever sleeps through the night, I plan to throw a rocking party, but in the meantime I get by on copious amounts of caffeine and a daily ration of sweet baby snuggles. He's totally worth it (which is not to say that I'm happy when he only sleeps for 1.5 broken hours from 2 am onward, like last night... no, on those kinds of nights, I'm not happy at all... but he's still worth it).

So... that's me. Your turn!

A mishmesh of thoughts on the past, the future, and blogging

2010-10-27T10:16:00.000-04:00

My parents just moved out of the house in which I grew up. Until I left for college, it was the only house that I had ever lived in. I never particularly cared for it - it was too small, too old, and too weirdly laid out for my tastes - but for 18 years, it was home. It's weird that the next time I visit them, they'll be living somewhere else. Their new house is much bigger and a much better fit for them (and frankly, the size and layout will make it a lot easier for us to visit with the kids), but it's still going to take some getting used to before I'll be able to think of it as my parents' house. It's going to be odd to visit a place so unfamiliar, where I'm not used to any of its quirks. Strange.

Anyway, while they were in the process of packing, they discovered all kinds of things of mine that I didn't realize they still had. Some made me smile (so that's where my Hell Week "stuff" has been all this time! I thought it was lost in our basement somewhere!), some made me roll my eyes (well, hello, high school track uniform... why did I never return you to school at the end of the season like I was probably supposed to?), and some... well... some I could have lived without seeing again.

My sophomore year high school yearbook started off in the "makes me smile" category. Wow, we dressed horribly in the 90s! And what was up with our hair?! I paged through it, laughing at myself, laughing at the fashion, and remembering people I had long since forgotten about. It was hysterical.

And then I got to the very last page.

"Dear Lisa,

Because of what time of year it is I am used to signing the yearbooks of graduating seniors from my own school. But since you are so sweet and adorable I think I can make an exception and go on to tell you that you are definitely a person that I will never ever forget. When I first met you I never thought you would end up being so nice. Thank you for being there as a friend, a person to talk to, and for putting up with me so long. Its ok I know its not easy. I can't wait till I start school here so that I can see you more often. Much more often. Until then I promise I'll never stop thinking about you.

Love always,

[Dickface]"

Punch. Straight in the gut.

And you're probably thinking, "aww, tender, teenage puppy love." Except not really. Not so much.

We must have gotten our yearbooks in May or June, so that little note couldn't have been written more than a week or two before its author held me down in a bedroom at his friend's apartment in Green Point, Brooklyn, and raped me. And proceeded to rape me, over and over again, for the next three months, all the while destroying my self-esteem and brainwashing me to think that I couldn't live without him.

And then dumped me, but proceeded to meet up with me periodically until the following February for pretty much the sole purpose of raping me.

I almost killed myself over this boy.

I almost lost all of my friends over this boy. I couldn't admit what was really happening, what he was really doing, so I made up elaborate stories about all kinds of other things to try to get the support I desperately needed without having to admit what was really going on.

To this day, I don't know what the fuck was wrong with me back then. I know that a couple of you reading this blog knew me when all of this went down and I am thankful every single day that you didn't abandon me when I finally came clean. I needed you all more than you could possibly know. You guys literally saved my life.

Anyway.

That was an unfortunate little trip down memory lane.

Moving on...

Next topic: this blog. It's the latest incarnation of a blog that I've kept in some form or another for at least 6-7 years. I moved it here thinking that I could write about what I was doing rather than what I was thinking, and that maybe that way I'd update it more often.

Well, it turns out that I don't do much of interest, so this blog is quickly going the way of my other ones (read: straight into the Land of No Updates). I guess I've gotten boring, but right now my life is pretty consumed with (1) the kids (dealt with in my other blog) and (2) trying to get my business off the ground and the attendant stresses that go with that (which I'm pretty burned out on by the end of the day and don't usually feel like rehashing). So this blog sits here, not being updated, and I'm sort of starting to wonder what the point is.

I think that microblogging killed blogging, to some degree. Most of what I used to write whole entries about can now be summed up in the characters allowed by Facebook or Twitter and isn't really important or interesting enough to be rehashed here. I have lots to say about the kids, but I already have a blog for that stuff - a blog which was started on the premise that not everyone wants to read every little detail about my kiddos, natch, so copying that stuff here seems kind of pointless and silly. I don't really know what to do about this blog, to be honest. I can see from my stats that there are several regular readers (some that I recognize by location, some that I don't), but why you all continue to come here and read my drivel is really beyond me.

I'm not shutting down - not now, anyway - but I'm not really sure how to proceed. For now, I guess this will just continue as it's been going; i.e., it'll get updated when I feel like it with whatever randomness I feel like sharing.

But I'm curious, so: You 31 people that Google Analytics tells me have visited in the last month - why? What are you getting out of this? Many of you visited more than once; several of you visited more than ten or fifteen times; a few of you visit everyday. What do you guys think I should do with this blog?

I'm open to any input you may have. If you're going to spend time visiting here, I'd like it to be interesting for you.

One wild and precious life

2010-10-13T10:58:00.001-04:00

I'm loving this poem (by Mary Oliver) today:

"Tell me, what is it you plan to do

with your one wild and precious life?"

10-minute transformations: the living room bookshelf

2010-09-21T21:43:00.002-04:00

This was the result of my work last week:

I forgot to take a before picture, but that's probably for the best. Some of you have been to our house recently and have seen the mess that had accumulated there - books strewn all over the place; stacks of papers that needed to be sorted; the photos hidden by memory boxes, papers, books, and random crap. In fact, in the interest of full disclosure, I'll share that this was not really a 10-minute transformation; it took me 45 minutes to clean up this bookshelf. The only reason I was able to get it done was because Nora was home to distract Isaac. It was a complete freaking mess.

It's not completely done - I need to add a picture to the heart frame on the top and two pictures to the Family frame next to the memory boxes (there are some random people on display in our living room at the moment...)... but it is SO MUCH BETTER. Seriously, I sometimes just sit and stare at it because it looks so tidy and pleasant. Ahhhhhhh.

Who's in?

2010-09-17T12:52:00.001-04:00

Pick your poison:

Rally to Restore Sanity

March to Keep Fear Alive

Either way, we'll be in DC on October 30th. Will you?

Never mind

2010-09-09T09:49:00.005-04:00

I had a post up about someone that was making me angry, but now I've thought better of it. I'm still pissed off, but I've decided to save my bitching for a more private forum.

In honor of tonight's casting announcement...

2010-08-30T13:02:00.000-04:00

The new cast of DWTS will be announced tonight, and since the buzz on the internets suggests that it will be disappointing, I thought it would be fun to blog about my dream cast and see how it stacks up against what's ultimately announced. For maximum realism, I'll be using the "categories" of stars that they most often draw from. There will be 12 couples this year, so I'll also list 12.

Token NFL player: Terrell Owens. The NFL stars tend to stick around for a while, so you want someone entertaining who isn't likely to be a totally cringe-worthy dancer. I think T.O. would be amusing to watch. Ideal partner: Cheryl Burke.

Token Olympian: Beach volleyball star Kerry Walsh. She had a baby a few months ago and is probably taking a break from training, so why not? Ideal partner: Maksim Chmerkovskiy.

Vapid model that no one has heard of, female: Former Miss USA Kristen Dalton... because at least then there'd be a chance of spotting her boyfriend, Reid Rosenthal, in the crowd. (Note: She recently bought a condo with Reid in Philly, but she's been tweeting for the last few days about her move to L.A., so I have hope for this one!). Ideal partner: Tony Dovolani.

Vapid model that no one has heard of, male: Jason Lewis (Smith Jerrod from the Sex and the City movies). I never like the male models, but at least this one is vaguely familiar. Ideal partner: Anna Trebunskaya.

Old, old, OLD star: Betty White. She's the "it" old person right now, yes? Besides, she's hilarious. Ideal partner: Corky Ballas.

Nostalgia factor star: Bill Clinton. Remember economic prosperity? Yeah, me neither... because we haven't seen it since the Clinton administration. Besides, he's got rhythm! Ideal partner: Kym Johnson.

Reality trainwreck: Khloe Kardashian. Just because I enjoy chicks with attitude. Ideal partner: Louis Van Amstel.

Disabled/adversity-overcoming star: Michael J. Fox. Who doesn't love Michael J. Fox.? Ideal partner: Edyta Sliwinska.

Washed-up actress: Mayim Bialik, aka Blossom. If they're going to make us look at a washed-up actress every week, why not a home-birthing, babywearing hippie like MB? Ideal partner: Mark Ballas.

Former boy bander: Jonathan Knight from NKOTB. Because what we really need is a boy bander who acknowledges his homosexuality. Ideal partner: Karina Smirnoff.

Conventionally attractive pop singer: Jessica Simpson. Can you imagine her trying to keep all of that ballroom lingo straight? Hysterical. Ideal partner: Derek Hough.

Pundit of some kind: Perez Hilton. Because he would CRACK ME UP. Ideal partner: Lacey Schwimmer.

Who do you want to see on DWTS?

Yoga

2010-08-18T22:44:00.002-04:00

Tonight I went to yoga class for the first time in almost a year and a half.

I am very out of shape. Very, very, very out of shape.

And that's all I have to say about that.

Time machine

2010-08-10T10:36:00.000-04:00

While visiting my parents last week, my mom handed me several bins of my old stuff to sort through (my parents are moving soon and she's trying to wade through all of the junk). There were treasures in there - books I loved as a preteen, my *ahem* special stuff from Hell Week in college, embarrassing high school photos of me and my friends acting stupid. There were also things I wish I hadn't found, like pictures of one old boyfriend in particular that dredged up some not-so-good feelings in me.

But the most interesting thing, by far, that I found was a journal that I kept from January 1998 through October 1999 - from the middle of my senior year of high school until early in my sophomore year of college.

I don't even remember keeping a journal during that time, but I was fairly prolific in my writings in it. I must have blocked it all out! The journal is basically a detailed account of my up-again, down-again relationship with my most serious high school boyfriend. It starts out all earnest-like, with grand proclamations of how perfect we were for each other and how our love would never die, and progresses to disgusted indifference with his idiocy and long tomes about my lust for someone else. The last entry, written about 4 months before I ended things with that boyfriend for good, aptly concludes with the phrase "so fuck it."

I didn't write about much other than my relationship, but there's an interesting section in there chronicling the period where I first suspected that I was pregnant, my decision to have an abortion, and the aftermath of that decision. My memory of that time is hazy, so it was kind of crazy to see it all written out like that. Apparently my biggest struggle with the decision arose from the fact that my then-boyfriend was adopted; I was afraid that he'd be angry with me if I made the decision to have an abortion, given that he wouldn't have been alive if his mother had made the same decision. And until I read that in the journal, I'd forgotten ALL about that. It was an interesting read. And I was surprised, too, by the fact that the procedure itself was more or less a non-event as far as my journaling was concerned; I spent some time discussing the decision process, then there's an entry from a few weeks later that says "I had the abortion yesterday," and then that's it. A few entries after that where I was clearly forcing myself to try to feel bad about it - because "bad" is what good Catholic girls should feel if they have an abortion, you know (which is one of many reasons why I'm no longer Catholic!) - and apparently we named the fetus (?! - I'd forgotten all about that!), but then it was right back to bitching and moaning about the boyfriend. All very interesting, though, and maybe I'll type some of them up to share here at a later date (perhaps for the next Blog for Choice Day, in January 2011). Or not, because seriously, my teenage puppy love is strewn throughout and makes me want to gag.

The thing I find most hilarious, however, was that I had a very clearly thought-out life plan back then that involved having five children between the ages of 23 and 33 and then running for President someday. Clearly, even as a teenager, I wanted to believe that I could have it all. *snort*

(And can I just say how much I hope my parents never read this journal?)

Heartbreak

2010-08-02T10:12:00.000-04:00

I found out this morning that a friend's 3-year-old was sexually abused at his daycare.

I don't even have the words to deal with this. I don't know how to help them. I don't know what to do or say. N had a play date with their little boy a while back and he was so sweet and joyful and kind and full of positive energy. And now he's having a very, very rough time. He's clearly in a lot of pain. I'm dying inside for them.

I know that P and I need to have a conversation with N about this stuff. We haven't done it because I've wanted to keep my head in the sand, wanted to believe that it wasn't necessary, wanted to keep her innocence. But this is the second time recently that something like this has happened, the second time recently that something like this has hit just a wee bit too close to home.

We all want to believe that we're making the best choices for our children, that the people we trust to care for them would never hurt them. That's not reality, unfortunately, and it's time to address that with her. But how in the world do you even start a conversation like that with a 3-year-old?

I wish we didn't have to.

Emo song of the day: Wish I May

2010-07-26T21:39:00.002-04:00

i'm losing my love of adventure
i'm losing all respect
for me and myself tonight
i wonder what happens if i get to
the end of this tunnel
and there isn't a light
i've worn down the treads
on all of my tires
i've worn through the elbows
and the knees of my clothing
and i'm stumbling down
the gravel driveway of desire
trying not to wake up
my sleepy self-loathing

do you ever have that dream
when you open your mouth
and you try to scream
but you can't make a sound
that's everyday starting now
that's everyday starting now

dont tell me it's gonna be alright
you can't sell me on your optimism tonight
it's a stiff competition
to see who can stay up later
the stars or the street lights
and all they really want
is to be alone with the darkness
no more wish i may
no more wish i might

it takes a stiff upper lip
just to hold up my face
i gotta suck it up and savor
the taste of my own behavior
i am spinning with longing
faster then a roulette wheel
this is not who i'm meant to be
this is not how i'm meant to feel

i don't think that i'm strong enough
to do this much longer
god, i wish i was stronger
this song could never be long enough
to express every longing
god, i wish it was longer...

(Ani DiFranco)

Pool!

2010-07-25T22:53:00.000-04:00

I just want to give a big, public shout-out to my amazing husband, P, and our good friend, M, for working their asses off this weekend to make our new pool functional. They spent all day Saturday leveling our backyard by hand/shovel, in 95-degree heat that felt like 115 degrees once the humidity was factored in. They are awesome, awesome people.

And... the pool is now filled! Evenly! We're chlorinating it tonight (the thunderstorms earlier today got in the way of doing it sooner) and it should, hopefully, fingers-crossed, be ready for swimming in by some point tomorrow. N is very anxious to get in there, so everyone send good vibes for no chlorination mishaps!

The problem here is that I lack balls. Like, LITERAL balls.

2010-07-22T12:15:00.000-04:00

There are currently two unrelated projects underway in our backyard. The first is a pool, like this, purchased for me by my mother as an early birthday present. Our yard isn't completely level, so we've been refilling and draining the pool as we try to get the darn thing to fill evenly. To avoid flooding our neighbor's lawn, P rigged some long tubes to empty the water into a sewer drain at the edge of our property. The second, unrelated, project is the installation of a fence to hide our back neighbor's disgusting compost pile and trash shed from our view. My father-in-law and his minions are installing the fence for us.

Today as I was getting ready to shower, I heard a door slam in the driveway. It was FIL and one of his minions. They hadn't told me they were coming today, and as I was already naked at the time, I proceeded with my shower before going outside to say hello. By the time I got outside, the tubes P had been using to drain the pool had been removed and thrown into the back of FIL's pick-up truck.

"We actually need those tubes. We're using them to drain the pool," I explained.

"That's not the right way to drain it," FIL replied.

"Well, we're trying not to flood the neighbor's yard and that's the way [P] set it up, so could you please put them back for now?"

"No, that's not the way you should do it," he answered.

*rinse, lather, repeat for 5 minutes*

Then FIL interrupts me mid-sentence, says, "That isn't the right procedure. Thank you very much, bye," and turns away from me to speak to his minion about the fence.

To recap: FIL showed up at our house without warning, removed something having nothing to do with the fence project from our yard without asking, and then refused to put it back when I told him to because he didn't agree with our method of draining the pool.

The hell?

I would have retrieved the damn tubes from his truck myself, except that they're heavy and I already had one arm engaged in holding onto my 18-pound baby.

I am so pissed off. Not so much that he took them in the first place, but because he wouldn't give them back. If P had told him to put them back, I'm sure he would have. It's like he thinks he should have more of a say in what happens at my house that I do, because after all, I don't have a Mighty Penis (tm) to guide me on the good and right methods of pool drainage.

I am so fucking annoyed right now. Feel free to help me feel better by sharing your own pushy/crazy in-law stories in the comments.

Emo song of the day: The Pointless, Yet Poignant, Crisis of a Co-ed

2010-07-15T12:34:00.000-04:00

I'm not a leader, I'm not a left-wing rhetoric mobilizing force of one,

But there was a time way back, many years ago in college, don't laugh,

But I thought I was a radical, I ran the Hemp Liberation League with my boyfriend,

It was true love, with a common cause, and besides that, he was a Sagittarius.

We used to say that our love was like hemp rope, three times as strong as the rope that

You buy domestically,

And we would bond in the face of oppression from big business and the deans,

But I knew there was a problem, every time the group would meet everyone would light up,

That made it difficult to discuss glaucoma and human rights, not to mention chemotherapy.

Well sometimes, life gives us lessons sent in ridiculous packaging,

And so I found him in the arms of a Student Against the Treacherous Use of Fur,

And he gave no apology, he just turned to me, stoned out to the edge of oblivion,

He didn't pull up the sheets and I think he even smiled as he said to me,

"well, I guess our dreams went up in smoke."

And I said, "no, our dreams went up in dreams, you stupid pothead.

And another thing, what kind of a name is Students Against the Treacherous Use of Fur?

Fur is already dead, and besides, a name like that doesn't make a good acronym."

I am older now, I know the rise and gradual fall of a daily victory.

And I still write to my senators, saying they should legalize cannabis,

And I should know, cause I am a horticulturist, I have a husband and two children out in

Lexington, Mass.

And my ex-boyfriend can't tell me I've sold out, because he's in a cult.

And he's not allowed to talk to me.

- Dar. Of course.

Devastation all around

2010-07-13T23:09:00.000-04:00

I'm not in a good mental place lately. I feel depressed and sad and short-tempered a lot of the time. I feel dark inside. There's just so much BAD happening - not to me, but around me - that it's shaking me up and making me crazy.

I'm not dealing well with the fact that this is the last month of my 20s. I'm turning 30 in a few weeks and I'm decidedly not where I want to be in life. I never in a million years imagined that on the eve of 30, I'd have no meaningful career to speak of, no money, a ton of debt, and no certainty about what the future holds. The money situation is obviously getting worse - it's always, every month, getting worse - and the constant stress is wearing on me. It's wearing on my husband. It's wearing on our family. I need my new practice to succeed, and quickly. I need a part-time job to complement it in the meantime, at a time that won't require putting Isaac in daycare (which we can't afford). I'm bitter, bitter, bitter that I racked up almost $200,000 in law school debt and am now looking at working weekend hours at a bank or doing data entry or (fuck me if it comes to this) waitressing to make some extra cash. A few years ago, we had five figures in our savings account and were paying out of pocket for our trip to Paris, and now I'm almost 30 and may have to go back to scraping half-eaten food off of other people's plates. Why the fuck did I go to law school, exactly?

So yeah, I'm bitter. I'm angry - at myself for going to law school in the first place, at my old firm for being such a shithole, at the economy, at the world. I feel like a failure and a fuck-up. Yay, me... almost 30 years old and still borrowing money from my husband's parents to make ends meet. I was raised to be independent and used to consider myself extremely independent, so this whole situation kills me inside. I hate it so much. I keep trying to tell myself that there has to be a light at the end of this tunnel someday, but what if there's not? As it is, I never in a million years expected it to go on for this long. It's putting so much stress on me, on P, on our marriage, on our families. I find myself getting annoyed with the kids and I hate myself for it. They're 3 years old and 5 months old, respectively - they've done nothing to deserve a snappish mother. I'm just running out of emotional reserves. It's been too long.

And then the devastation - all around, the devastation. This week it's a 14-month-old with cancer. Last week it was a 30-year-old spouse dead from a heart attack. The week before that... oh god, I still can't even go there. Devastation, everywhere, for what seems like everyone in my life.

Every year, twice a year - on New Year's Day and on my birthday - I hold out a little bit of hope that the new year or my new age will bring about a change. That it will be a turning point. It never is. If anything, things seem to get worse every year. I don't know how much more of this I can reasonably be expected to withstand.

It's all getting too hard.

Pause

2010-07-06T14:57:00.000-04:00

In the last few weeks, I've been sitting around processing a string of terrible, awful things that have recently happened to people I know. There have been deaths - of spouses, children, unborn babies - and things that are almost worse than death that I can't bear to write about here. These aren't my losses and the grief isn't mine to bear, but it's been hard for me to just carry on as normal in this blog, griping about politics or taking pictures of mundane household tasks, when people that I care about very much are hurting.

I'm still trying to wrap my brain around it all, so this space may be quiet for a bit longer. I haven't disappeared; my mind is just elsewhere. I'm sure you all understand.

Sexual abuse of young girls = not okay

2010-06-17T12:57:00.001-04:00

That should be a no-brainer, right? SHOULD BE. But for researchers at Cornell University, apparently it's a grey area. Hell, not even a grey area; they think it's science.

Female Genital Mutilation at Cornell University

For starters, there is nothing - NOTHING! - even remotely okay about chopping off bits of the clitorises of girls who aren't even old enough to have absorbed society's twisted messages about what is or isn't an appropriately-sized sex organ. Girls who aren't even old enough, in many cases, to understand what sex is, much less the mechanics of masturbation, intercourse, and orgasm. There is no excuse for systematically mutilating the genitals of children - children! - without giving them any say in the matter. It's cruel, it's disgusting, and it violates multiple international human rights treaties.

(And for the record, I know what I'm talking about on this issue - I spent the spring of 2004 working with a team of law students here, human rights attorneys, and legislators in Uganda to draft a human rights report and proposed legislation to ban FGM in that country - legislation that was only recently passed. I thought it was atrocious that it took so long. Naively, stupidly, I never in a million years thought it would be tolerated to inflict the same kind of horror upon young girls in my own country. Live and learn, I suppose).

But then, on top of the horror of dismembering the sex organs of children, there's the issue of the nerve tests. The sick fuck conducting this "study" is performing annual "exams" on these children - CHILDREN - to see if any nerve damage was done while chopping off parts of their clitorises. The exams consist of the researcher stimulating the children with a vibrator while their parents watch. If the creepy old guy down the street was applying a vibrator to a 5-year-old's sex organs, we'd call it sexual assault. If the creepy old guy in a lab at Cornell University is doing it, we apparently call it science? NO. Just... no.

This is an outrage. An OUTRAGE. I am sick to my stomach that this is happening. I'm about to contact Cornell's Institutional Review Board to tell them exactly what I think of this and I encourage all of you to do the same. Their contact info can be found here.

This should not be happening here. It shouldn't be happening anywhere, but it certainly shouldn't be happening here.

Edited to add: It occurred to me after posting this that someone inputting nefarious search terms into Google could come across this page. Just so you all know, through the magic of analytics, I can see the IP addresses of anyone who visits any of my blogs (including my linked mommy blog), and if I see anyone who's made it here from such a search, I'll be reporting the IP address to the proper authorities.

10-minute transformations: the top of the china cabinet

2010-06-10T13:40:00.000-04:00

Before:

After:

The top of the china cabinet, aka where holiday candy goes to die. I cleared out both old Easter candy and old Halloween candy (blech). The associated Easter and Halloween decorations that were living up there have been moved to their proper homes. Empty birthday gift bags have been put away. Other stuff that was living up there: a never-inflated pair of Sixers game stix, multiple candles, and a pacifier. Umm, and Isaac doesn't take a pacifier and Nora is almost 3.5, so that should give you an idea of the last time that particular spot of the house was decluttered.

Yeah.

10-minute transformations: the dining room windowsill

2010-06-08T12:47:00.001-04:00

Our house is cluttered. It's home to two busy adults with too much stuff, two adorable children who are the only grandchildren on both sides (and gifted with toys, clothing, and stuffed animals accordingly), and one spoiled cat that has more cat toys than he'll ever use. Trying to make room for the kids' toys has pushed all of the adult and cat stuff... everywhere. And the lack of time we've had to organize with two little ones in the house... yeah. It's a mess. Our whole house looks kind of like a college dorm room gone horribly wrong.

It's been driving both my husband and I crazy, so today I decided that I'm going to work on it little by little, in whatever amount of time Isaac will entertain himself while he's awake - usually 10 minutes (his naps are reserved for my business-related stuff and my sanity breaks).

Today I tackled the dining room windowsill, aka the "well, it doesn't really belong anywhere else" place:

Before:

After:

It's far from perfect - the windowsill and the windows themselves both need a more thorough scrub-down than what I had time for today and the whole area could use a new coat of paint after several years of junk wearing the old paint down - but it's an improvement. And that's really what I'm shooting for here - improvements.

The stuff that was there still needs to be dealt with, too; for now, I just moved it all to the most approximate home I could find (books are stacked on the basement bookshelves to be organized later, P's miscellaneous items are on his desk to be sorted, my half-finished knitting is in the closet with my knitting supplies, etc.). I'm hoping that over the next several months, 10 minutes a day of decluttering will make a big difference. *fingers crossed*

An actual, non-cryptic update

2010-05-27T16:14:00.000-04:00

I haven't posted much lately, huh? Except for emo song lyrics and quotes, anyway.

I've been really busy trying to get the law practice up and running. Working on a website (which will hopefully be done this weekend), dealing with a seemingly endless stream of Verizon-related hassles so that I can have working phone and fax lines (still not done), researching business cards and stationery (to be ordered once I'm positive of what my phone and fax numbers will be), preparing form documents, rejoining the state bar association and coming up with a networking plan, etc. I've also been working a bit on a pro bono case and trying to get everything together to start working on some real cases for P's father and business. It's been busy! And I admit, I've been a bit overwhelmed with the logistics of it all - everything from how to get stuff done on days when Isaac won't nap to how to do things well when I'm so sleep-deprived (the answer: lots and lots of proofreading and to-do lists) to how in the world I'm supposed to find enough clients to bill the 20 or so hours a week that I need to be billing for us not to need to borrow any money from my in-laws anymore.

I've been just a wee bit stressed.

In the midst of that, we've had illnesses (colds all around), Isaac's first extended road trip (to my parents' house for my grandmother's memorial service), and even more baby sleep regressions (up every 45 minutes one night, up for two hours in the middle of the night another, up for the day at 4:30 AM another, etc.).

Needless to say, my diet and couch to 5K ambitions have suffered. A lot. I'm working on getting the diet back on track (harder than it should be when I'm so tired and Isaac is nursing constantly from the heat - I just want comfort food, the more filling the better!), and then next week (read: when it's hopefully not 100 effing degrees outside anymore), I'm going to try to get the couch to 5K stuff back on track. Hopefully nothing else comes up to get in the way.

So that's what's up. Sorry for the lack of posting!

Quotes I'm chewing on

2010-05-26T12:26:00.003-04:00

"This generation has given up on growth. They're just hoping for survival."

- Penelope Spheeris

"I thought how unpleasant it is to be locked out; and I thought how it is worse, perhaps, to be locked in."

- Virginia Woolf

"If we lose love and respect for each other, this is how we finally die."

- Maya Angelou

Emo song of the day: This Is Not the House that Pain Built

2010-05-18T15:18:00.001-04:00

My house is hard to find, but I'll give you directions;
You can visit sometime, down where all that I built surrounds me.
Just make sure your car's got good shocks;

There's steep hills, there's potholes, there's rocks.
I work in the garden, my son plays around me.

Close the gate behind you, there's a horse that can't get out.

I will see you first, is that all right?
And can you remember, can you remember?

This is not the house that pain built.
This is not the house that pain built.

I was drowning in something; I jumped in the rift.
And you knew me back then, when I spat on my gift, but no.

It's tough and it's tiring when you go it alone.
I learned about wiring, I learned about stone.
The building is done but the work's never through.

And I won't give up, no how, it reminds me of who I am and where I am now.
I remember myself, that's the work that I do.

On a spring night when the snow is melting,
You'll see two sets of footprints walking.
Look at all the stars, and turn around, and walk home,

Slowly walk home.

This is not the house that pain built.
That is not a house that pain built.

My friends all think that I holed up and hid,
But I tell them I didn't, you know I don't think I did, no.

And this is where I let my pain go.
This is where I let my pain go.
This is where the footprints dance in the snow.

- the illustrious Dar Williams

It's a metaphor, yo.

Happy Mother's Day!

2010-05-09T22:11:00.001-04:00

My wonderful family was awesome to me this Mother's Day. P let me sleep in until 11, at which point Nora came bounding into our room with chocolate. I ended up having said chocolate for breakfast, at her insistence, and they also got me flowers, adorable cards, and a gift certificate for two yoga classes at the local yoga studio. P and I took the kids to the Please Touch Museum for the afternoon, then we went out for an early dinner (where both kids actually sat quietly and cheerfully through the meal - heavenly!). It was a fabulous day. I love my sweet husband, my sweet girl, and my sweet baby boy. They're the best.

All of this was also a nice respite after a rough week. I got sick, as expected, so I didn't do my runs and my diet went up in smoke. I usually weigh myself on Mondays, so I don't know yet what the damage is, but I'm certain it'll be the first time since early March that I've gained weight instead of lost it. Eh, well. I'm feeling better, so I'll just get back on track with my diet in the morning and back on my Couch to 5K schedule this week. No big deal.

I hope you all had a lovely Mother's Day!

Confession

2010-05-02T20:27:00.000-04:00

Here's my confession for the night: the vast majority of the time, I feel like a completely incompetent parent of a 3-year-old.

Nora can be a sweet, delightful, fun, funny, sassy girl. I'd even go so far as to say that most of the time, she's a sweet, delightful, fun, funny, sassy girl.

But she can also be - at times - moody, stubborn, defiant, rude, disrespectful, and disobedient. Worse, the last four of those traits seem to be directed entirely at me. She'll do whatever her dad or her teachers tell her to do (if not at first, then at least once discipline is imposed), but for me? Not a chance. I get the bulk of the meltdowns. I get the bulk of the defiance. I get the bulk of the disrespect. Basically, I get the bulk of the... three.

Because that's what it is, really. Nothing about her attitude is developmentally abnormal or inappropriate, as far as I've been able to tell from reading about the issue. It's just part of being three. People talk to you about the terrible twos, but around here, two was mostly fine. However, three? Three is kicking my ass. Three is kicking my ass so much that the bad times are starting to vastly overshadow the good in my mind. I know that she's delightful a lot of the time, but I feel like other people only ever see the moody kid and the stressed-out, high-strung mommy. And then I think they're judging me and think that I'm a terrible mother, and that in turn really colors my own feelings about myself as a parent. Hence the above-mentioned feeling incompetent most of the time.

Tonight, after a particularly horrendous bedtime (following a particularly moody morning and a mostly okay afternoon), I ordered two books - a positive discipline book focusing on preschoolers and a book entitled Your Three-Year-Old: Friend or Enemy. I'm hoping that they'll help because, truthfully, I haven't been the parent that I want to be since we hit this rough patch. I need some better strategies.

Specifically, there's more harsh speaking in our house than I'm comfortable with lately. My stepfather was a yeller and my main parenting strategy all along has been I don't want to be like him... but sometimes, when she's pushing every last one of my buttons and none of my other discipline strategies are working, yelling happens. And I feel like shit about myself every single time. She's so little still, and I don't want to yell at her. No matter what she's doing, no matter how much of a pill she's being at any given time, I consider it 100% my fault when I lose it and yell. Yelling happens when I'm out of tools for addressing her (infuriating but perfectly developmentally appropriate) behavior. Yelling happens when she needs 800 returns to the time-out chair while Isaac is crying and needs to go to bed. Yelling happens when she starts shouting "no" and slamming doors when I'm trying to get her to just use the damn bathroom already, and no amount of counting to five or taking away privileges makes it stop. Yelling happens when I feel out of ideas. I'm hoping that these books give me some more ideas.

So there you go. My name is Lisa and I can't control my 3-year-old. Who wants to volunteer to call Supernanny?

Sick kiddo and hungry mama

2010-04-28T20:46:00.000-04:00

Nora is sick. Fever, cough, runny nose, headache, the works. If she hadn't been vaccinated against both H1N1 and the seasonal flu, I'd be sure that she had the flu. It must be a virus, but still... yuck. The poor girl is miserable. She's been home from school all week and I very much doubt that she'll be well enough to go tomorrow. I feel horrible for her.

P and I have been trying really hard not to get sick ourselves and - even more importantly - to keep Isaac from getting sick. Isaac seems okay so far; he's coughed a little here and there, but that's just as likely a result of gagging on his own drool as anything else. P and I both feel like we could be coming down with something, but it hasn't hit either of us too hard yet. We're dousing ourselves in hand sanitizer, downing vitamins, and trying to take it easy. I haven't done any of my running workouts yet this week because I didn't want to stress my body out even further, but if I'm feeling okay tomorrow night, I may give it a go. We'll see.

In addition to trying to stay healthy, I also just started an elimination diet to see if we can pinpoint the cause of Isaac's eczema. For the next two weeks, I have to stay away from dairy to see if it helps his skin. This is hard! As a vegetarian, a whole lot of my protein intake usually comes from milk and cheese, so finding ways to get in enough protein is proving difficult. I can still eat eggs, but... ehh. I can't scramble them with milk, which is my preferred method of cooking eggs, so they don't have much appeal at the moment. I foresee a lot of soy in my immediate future. I hope that something else turns out to be causing it so that I don't have to give up dairy for the next 9+ months until he's weaned! Obviously I hope it's something easy to treat, but seriously... how about eggs? Peanuts? Anything other than dairy, soy, or tomatoes, please! Those are the staples of my usual diet.

Book review: Spiritual Midwifery

2010-04-27T11:30:00.001-04:00

When I'm tired - which I am a lot these days, with the incredible non-sleeping three-month-old in the house - I tend to crash on the couch in the evenings and watch a lot of TV. It's a bad habit, but one that I find really relaxing. However, I've been trying to make it a point to also read a lot during this period so that my brain doesn't completely atrophy from the amount of bad reality programming to which I'm subjecting it. I thought it might be fun to use this blog to periodically talk a bit about the various things that I'm reading.

So.

I just recently finished Spiritual Midwifery by Ina May Gaskin. This book was a Christmas present from my friends M and M, but I didn't get a chance to read it before Isaac was born (and then I felt like I needed a break from the baby-themed books for a bit - you can see from my 2010 reading list in the sidebar that I was going a little crazy with the birth books just before he was born - so it took me some time to get back to it).

Now, I love me some Ina May. Because really... hardcore hippie midwives? Just my cup of tea. I read Ina May's Guide to Childbirth both when we were trying to pregnant with Isaac and again right before his birth and I loved it. It was chock full of really helpful natural childbirth techniques and yes, I totally found myself blowing raspberries in the shower during my labor with Isaac and repeating to myself "a loose mouth makes a loose bottom, a loose mouth makes a loose bottom, a loose mouth makes a loose bottom," ad nauseam. I was expecting Spiritual Midwifery to be similar and it... wasn't.

Okay, that's not true. It still had tons and tons of helpful information. However, the majority of it was written more for midwives than for pregnant woman, so it was more scientific in its approach in that respect. On the other hand, it was even hippier (hippier? is that a word?) in its tone than Ina May's Guide to Childbirth, and not always in ways that worked. Like, reading instructions written for midwives on how to deliver a baby that interspersed Latin medical terminology with words like "pee hole," "butt-hole," and "taint" was just... weird. I don't know how else to describe it. It was just really strange.

What I loved: Like Ina May's Guide to Childbirth, Spiritual Midwifery started with a big section of natural childbirth birth stories. I love reading birth stories, so that part was awesome. The scientific explanations for things that aren't typically done in hospitals were also really interesting to read; for example, she included a detailed guide to how to deliver breech babies vaginally, which was just really cool to read. There was also a lot of discussion in this book about the energy of childbirth, which is something that the Guide to Childbirth didn't discuss quite as much.

What I didn't love: This book focused more on the religious underpinnings of the Farm and on how those beliefs have guided their midwifery practice over the years. As an agnostic-on-the-best-of-days, I couldn't relate very well to that part of the book. Also, the folksy terminology was just a bit much. It's fine to tell me to do a kegel, Ina May... I don't need you to phrase it as a reminder to "exercise [my] coochie."

All in all, it was a good book. It appealed to the part of me that likes to pretend I might someday want to be a midwife (you know, until I remember the amount of blood and sticking-hands-in-strange-vaginas that would be involved). It appealed to the feminist natural birth advocate in me. But as a book for pregnant women... well, let's just say that I'll continue to recommend Ina May's Guide to Childbirth to pregnant friends looking to read about actual childbirth techniques.

Couch to 5K update

2010-04-26T14:00:00.000-04:00

I survived week one of the Couch to 5K training. It wasn't bad, all things considered. If our neighborhood weren't so hilly, I think it would have been fine; with the hills, it was still doable, but somewhat tantamount to torture. Of course, it was cold and/or rainy for each of the latter two workouts, which didn't help matters.

So, onwards and upwards to week two! It's supposed to rain all this week, too. Joy.

(In case you were wondering, I'm mainly posting about this here so that you can all yell at me if I don't see this thing through. Seriously... yell at me, okay? Must. Run.).

Two hours

2010-04-25T22:03:00.000-04:00

I'm on the steering committee for the alum group of the birth center where our kids were born, and today I left P home with Nora and Isaac while I went to a meeting of said steering committee.

In the time I was gone, P fed Isaac and put him down for his nap, put together two chairs from IKEA, made Nora's lunch, got Isaac up from his nap, and entertained both kids while rewiring the speakers in the basement.

I was gone for less than two hours.

On the other hand, on the two days a week that I'm home alone with both kids, I consider it a victory if I manage to empty and reload the dishwasher and take a shower before P gets home from work.

Clearly, the wrong one of us is the stay-at-home parent.

Moving my lazy butt

2010-04-20T21:33:00.000-04:00

In my online moms' group, a bunch of us were recently talking about losing what one woman termed our "layers" of weight gain over the years. For me, there's a Depressed BigLaw Lawyer layer, followed by a Baby #1 Baby Weight layer that I never fully re-lost, followed by an Unemployment Eating Spree layer, followed by a Baby #2 Baby Weight layer, followed by a Bored on Bedrest for Baby #2 Eating Spree layer. That's a lot of weight gain over an approximately 4.5-year period!

I've been watching what I eat for the last month or so, and between that and breastfeeding, I've managed to get off most of the Bored on Bedrest layer. Now I'm working on the Baby #2 Baby Weight layer. Sometime in the course of losing this layer of weight, my wedding rings will hopefully start to fit again.

The sad fact is that this weight isn't going to come off through the magic of breastfeeding alone. I'm going to have to start moving my lazy butt if I want the numbers on the scale to keep dropping. I've been avoiding this for weeks, honestly; I kept planning to start a regular workout regimen, but the realities of life with the incredible non-sleeping baby (and the resulting exhaustion) have kept me glued firmly to the couch. Until now.

I just got back from my first workout in the Couch to 5K running program. Running is how I lost a bunch of weight before our wedding, way back when, so it seems like a good way to go about losing the latest layers of flub. My goal is to run in one of the 5K fun runs taking place in a nearby town this July.

What I learned from tonight's workout: Holy hell, I'm out of shape. Also, our current neighborhood has way more hills than the trails I used to run on when we lived in Delaware. I could barely breathe by the time I got home tonight. And tonight's weather was pretty much ideal for running! It was in the 60s, no humidity or rain. I can't imagine running these hills in the summer, when it's 95 degrees and humid as all get-out. But I guess that's why there's a training program, right? To increase my endurance and make it possible for me to run even once the weather turns soupy?

Right.

Once I lose this weight, I'd like you all to redirect me to this post if you ever see the pounds start creeping back up on me again. I'd like to never be this out of shape again, please.

About this blog

2010-04-20T14:57:00.000-04:00

Welcome.

Most of the people reading this blog have probably been directed here from my old Wordpress blog, so you already know who I am. Thanks for following me to yet another URL for yet another go-round at this blogging thing. After seeing my blogging commitment issues play out over the past few years, you may all be wondering the same thing that I've been wondering myself:

Why does this chick keep blogging if she isn't going to stick with it?

I've had a blog for years and years now, but since the dawn of the Facebook and Twitter age, I've realized that most of the mundane topics to which I devoted entire blog posts in years past can actually be communicated fairly well in 140 characters or fewer. My motherhood-themed blog has survived (both because my kids are awesome and deserve more than 140 characters at a time and because no one on Facebook or Twitter wants the play-by-play on every aspect of parenthood), but the various iterations of my general life blog haven't fared so well. They've mostly been neglected, and when they haven't been neglected, they've been boring.

I recently took a hiatus from general blogging and took some time to think about whether it would be worth it to try again. The fact is, I'm well aware that I'm not so interesting that people need or want to read my every thought. On the other hand, I've kept a journal in some form or another since elementary school, so just not doing that anymore would feel... weird. And blogging has been my main form of journaling since at least 2002, if not earlier than that, so reverting to a paper journal would also feel weird.

What I've decided is to keep blogging, but to have my blog focus more on the various things I'mdoing rather than on how I feel about this, that, and the other thing. I'm sure that posts about feelings will crop up here and there, but I don't want that to be the focus anymore. Expect more posts about my attempts to lose my baby weight, the start-up of my solo law practice, and things that I'm reading and fewer posts about my frustrations with politics, my assorted anxieties, and the myriad of ways in which I'm annoyed by x, y, and z.

Hopefully, a focus on what I'm doing rather than on what I'm feeling will both help me to keep this thing updated on a more regular basis and keep all of you from being bored to tears from reading the same things over and over again.

If you've somehow stumbled onto this blog from elsewhere on the internet, hello! I hope I can amuse you for five minutes with my ramblings. If you think you'll be coming back again, feel free to leave a comment (and a link to your blog, if you have one) so that we can get to know each other.

Enjoy.