Drops of Awesome

I am a firm believer in the power of lists. Long before I saw an article in Real Simple Magazine about lists and their wonderfulness, I had been using lists to organize, schedule and catalogue my life.

There are the lists of the number of times Dan has kissed me in the rain. Those are short lists. Some longer lists could contain data such as the types and colors of lint I have pulled out of Magoo’s mouth and the number of things we’ve told Laylee “princesses always do” to get her to do them.

Here are a few of the real lists I keep that help me maintain order and sanity (“Ha ha,” you say.) in my life. Most of these I keep on my PDA so I can pull them up or add to them anytime, anywhere.

1. All of the gifts we have given to family members for the past several years for all occasions — this one keeps me out of trouble. Giving the same type of gift to the same family member two years in a row is embarrassing. “Oops. We’d better return that one to Canada. It says here we got Papa a jade grizzly bear LAST Father’s Day.”

2. Menu plans — saves choosing what’s for dinner every night and makes number 3 easier.

3. Shopping lists — I keep a separate shopping list for any store I go to more than a couple of times per year. If I think, “Next time we’re at Marvin’s House of Bait and Breakfast Foods, I’d better get fish hooks,” I create a list for MHBBF and write down ‘fish hooks’.

4. Vacation lists — this one I’m stealing from that Real Simple article from some time last year. The idea is to make a Vacation 100 list at the end of your adventure. If you’re like me, you’re too busy having fun on vacation, or cleaning sand out of small people’s crevices, to keep a travel journal. When all the sand is put back in the ocean and you’re safely back in your living room, get the family together and make a list of 100 memories from the trip. It can be a bullet-style list. Some can be long and some just a few words:

-Magoo touched the ocean for the first time, not that impressed
-Rita’s Water Ice (pronounced ‘wudder ice’) was delicious and we discussed opening a franchise in Washington.
-Laylee screamed whenever a wave came up to her
-Magoo met Papa for the first time.
-There was a street named after Mom.

5. Books to read

6. Books I have read

These lists allow me to throw away many little scraps of paper and stop me from asking the questions, “What did we say we needed? Who gave us that nasty fruit cake ule log last year and how are we gonna retaliate next December?”

What lists do you keep and why?

Somewhere there was a clog in the pipeline. Somewhere between the executives at Focus Features and the millions of screaming female fans across the country, somebody clogged up the works.

We want repressed passion. We want it in our living rooms. We want it in widescreen and we want it yesterday. When Pride and Prejudice was released on Tuesday, I rushed to the store to pick up my copy.

Okay, I did a whole bunch of stuff around the house, took Magoo for his nine month checkup, wrote a blog post, played with my kids, fed them a meal or two, put them to bed, left them with Dan, did the grocery shopping and THEN rushed to the store to pick up my copy.

By 9pm on Tuesday night, there was nary a copy to be had. All the stores around here were sold out. I tried again and again throughout the week and NADA. Then on Friday, Dan the beloved husband found me a copy at Best Buy and the peasants rejoiced. I’m so glad he’s secure enough in his manhood to walk in there and demand his Pride and his Prejudice.

I have now shared the joy with Laylee a couple of times and if you ask her now, she will tell you how much she likes Pride and Predadiss. She especially likes the dancing where they all “dress up like princesses.”

I did not always have this love of the Austen. For years I resisted her Jane-ness. All the girly girls in high school LOVED her and I was so entrenched in my role as a tomboy that I refused to read her books or watch her movies.

Working one summer during college at a camp in the Florida Keys, I found myself with a lot of time on my hands and a great bargain bookstore a few islands away. I purchased anthologies of Dickens and Austen and read Pride and Prejudice for the first time as I baked and fried away my afternoons in the greasy kitchen.

I fell instantly in love with her writing style. She has such a dry sense of humor and such an amazing gift for sparse and witty dialogue. Her characters are so rich and appealing. I was actually disappointed that I liked her so much. I have always struggled against the mainstream, having to be literally force-read Harry Potter the first time because I didn’t want to like a book that had such a huge following.

I prefer to discover secret treasures.

But, secret or no, there’s a reason people like Jane Austen and I’m very comfortable in my seat on this bandwagon. How comfortable? Well, here’s a picture of me gettin’ friendly with Jane at her museum in Bath, England — pronounced Bawth.

A shout out to the Jane-a-nator…and to Dan for sending me to visit her in England and bringing her to visit me in my living room.

I think Laylee has her first crush. She has become increasingly impressed with the musical stylings of a certain Michael Bublé. Every time we get in the car, the radio comes on and she says, “I wanna listen to The Quando Quando Guy, the guy who says ”quando quando.’”

She LOVES his duet rendition of Quando Quando Quando with Nelly Furtado. I’ll even play other songs from the disc and she says, “That’s the Quando Quando Guy! Why isn’t he saying Quando Quando?!”

“I don’t know. Maybe he’s from Canada. Canadians are like that.”

Lately she’s been asking to “look at” the Quando Quando Guy while listening to him sing the Quando Quando song. This involves me handing her the CD case so she can gaze lovingly into his face and periodically laugh a flirtatious little laugh and say to him, “Oh. He he he. It’s the Quando Quando Guy,” and clench the case fast to her bosom.

Speaking of bosoms, particularly nursing ones, I’ve been getting requests for plus size Daring Young Mom T-Shirts so I will do a separate order of the pink Adult Women’s T’s in various sizes, same price as the ringer T’s. Again, email me your size preference and when I get all the orders together the end of next week, I’ll send you payment information.

Phew! I made it through our medical marathon with nary a tardy on the family chart. In the past 2 weeks, we’ve been to the pediatrician 6 times, the ER twice, and a little visit with my therapist, just for a boost.

I also got a boost in the form of an Immunity Boost at Jamba Juice. When they asked me which type of “free” boost I wanted (I love when they call something free when you just paid $4 for some whipped bananas and pineapple sherbet), I asked myself the same question I always ask when faced with a major decision in life — What would I do if I were on Survivor?

Fiber? Protien? I don’t think so. Immunity please.

Well, they can take their Immunity Boost and gently place it where the wheat grass don’t grow because I’ve been fighting a raging head and chest cold for three days. (I was actually sick when I got the Jamba Juice and sort of hoping it would act as a life restoring elixir so I do not blame Jamba Juice or any of their subsidiaries for the large chunks of phlegm currently lodged in my body cavity.)

You’ve already heard about the ER visits and subsequent checkups so let’s give the HIPAA people a heart attack and divulge the rest of our medical history online.

Magoo’s 9 month checkup went well. He was so crazy, 90th percentile-like, and mobile during the visit that when the doctor left, she said “I’ll see you at his 15-month checkup.” I said, “Don’t you want to see us when he turns one in June?” She said she had completely forgotten that this wasn’t his 1 year checkup.

She recommended a book that she said contains a list of age-appropriate stages for boys, things that are annoying but “normal” because they’re male. It’s called The Wonder of Boys and I scored parenting brownie points by telling her I’d already picked it up at a garage sale for 50 cents but hadn’t gotten around to reading it yet. I think it’s time to start.

My therapist told me it was fine to bring Magoo to my appointment this week. I haven’t been in to see her in months and either he’s changed a lot or she’s recently filled her office with objects of chaos and destruction.

He pretty much ransacked the place, eating dirt from her plants, finding an old balloon to suck on, smacking a small fan on the ground, turning on the fan, unplugging the fan, turning the lights off and on by unplugging them and plugging them back in, drooling on furniture, emptying trashcans, etc. She was very sweet and said it didn’t bother her but that our sessions might be more productive without him. I would be less distracted. Um, yeah.

Today we finally had Laylee’s 3 year checkup. She weighs exactly 30 lbs and is just over 3 feet tall. She appears to like the number 3. She did not like the shot quite so much, so we went for some consolation ice cream.

It was at the beloved DQ where I gathered evidence for why I would be the best person to replace Shannon as the Blogger Who Most Makes You Want To Have Kids should she be unable to fulfill her obligations for any reason.

Laylee was dressed as the Snow White (named in part for her white beard and mustache of ice cream) with bright orange psychedelic-print stretch pants underneath and pink clogs. Magoo was an avacado-encrusted-melon-headed-jail-breakin’ specimen of the “wonder of boyhood”, knocking over ice cream and lunging repeatedly towards Laylee just to see if he could make her cry and drop her cone. I looked like a SAHM cliché, wet hair in a mommy-tail, no makeup and clothes just one step above pajamas (I seriously considered wearing the PJs and claiming The Plague as my excuse).

With all of this going on at our table, the DQ employee still could not get enough of Laylee and Magoo. She even went so far as to say, “MAN! I wanna have a baby so bad.”

Disclaimer: DQ offers no “immunity boosts” of any kind, free or unemancipated.

…when you drop it on the kitchen floor and you need to use it to get dinner out to your dinner group members in a few hours and would rather eat nails than go to Target and buy another one because you’re sick as a flippin’ dog.

It shatters into a million tiny pieces all over the kitchen floor and all over the hall carpet. Just a little scientific fact to make your day more enjoyable. I should submitt something to Wikipedia about that.

Another piece of info — Due to Karen’s latest tragedy and because I like you all so much and am so grateful for the way you “shared the love” in last month’s awards, I’m gonna do a bulk order of the Daring Young Mom pink Ringer T’s .

The small writing on the shirts says “Dare to love without limits. Dare to adore your job. Dare to be Fabulous.”

The normal price is 17.99 plus shipping. If I do a bulk order and then mail them out myself, I can drop that down to $17.00 total, including shipping. Of course, I then make no money for my vacation fund, but I’d just like to see you all decked out.

If you want one, please email me your size preference and I’ll include you in the order. They are basically juniors sizes so buy one size up from what you would normally wear.

(ex. An extra large is still a little more “daring” than I’m comfortable with on a person who’s a 35F — yes that’s a real size according to Wanda-with-the-tape-measure-and-the-chart at the local breastfeeding supply store)

Oh, and in case you’re wondering, there’s no geeky web address on the back. I’m not asking you to be a personal billboard for my site. I just want you to look and feel as Daring as you are!

I’ll leave the order open for a week before I send it in.

02.28.06 Babysitter-Free Date Nights

02.21.06 Losing Weight – No Crazy Diets

02.14.06 Repressed Passion Movies

02.07.06 ALL Day LONG

Before proceeding with Tip Tuesday, I would like to address some questions on your minds lately:

1. Do we really have Daring Family Freestyle Rap Battles?
Answer: Yes, we do. We just did. Don’t get me wrong, yo. It’s no 8 Mile over here. There’s very little graffiti and people hardly ever get shot. We don’t even wear bandanas or hoodies most of the time. It’s just some good old fashion rhythm and rhyme. We let the lyrics fly when we feel so moved. We do take turns though so it’s more like a Freestyle Rap Cooperative.

2. Am I writing a book?
Answer: Yes. I’m working on a few, actually. My NANOWRIMO project pretty much bit rocks so that’s on the back burner, the way backburner, the burner on our camp stove that we’ve never used out in the garage.

I’m also working on a few other fiction projects but my main project is a non-fiction book written in my blogging style about setting up shop as a new mom, organizing your life and finding ways to be easier on yourself and make life more enjoyable for everyone. I’m pretty excited about that one.

So, the tips, the tips. Today’s Tip Tuesday is brought to you by Susan of Friday Playdate. She has asked for ideas for fun date nights without a babysitter.

I’ve got a couple.

1. Go on a scavenger hunt in your own house. See who can find the most Barbie shoes or puzzle pieces in the course of an hour. Every time you find enough pieces to make a complete puzzle or enough shoes to fill Oprah’s closet, you get a free 10 minute back massage from your spouse.

2. Drive to the best make-out spot in town, your own garage. Who cares about the view anyway, really? Although it’s fun to pretend. He sneaks his arm around your shoulder as you admire the vista of canned chili and disassembled Exersaucers from the backseat. You then re-enact your fateful first kiss. Depending on the size of your house, most baby monitors will pick up a signal from within the car, if you want to invite the kids along on your date (or at least listen to them stuffing their mouths full of marshmallows when they know you’re not looking).

3. Play a board game as a team so there are no hurt feelings when someone loses. For the other player? Just use Loganov. You can borrow him from my family. He is the imaginary player in any game where we don’t have enough players. The human players take turns drawing a card or whatever for Loganov and he aaaaalmost always loses.

What do you do for a fun date night when you don’t have the time, money or planning skills to hire a babysitter?

*Random sidenote. Please go look at my dad’s blog today. He cracks me up and I miss him when he posts stuff like this. OKAY, I miss him all the time.

Like nearly everyone in America, I’m trying to lose weight. You may have guessed this from last week’s Tip Tuesday or from looking at the lovely pictures I post of myself on the website. Anywho, not much success happenin’ around here.

Lame excuses for this:

1. I’m slowly weaning Magoo. My body is still used to eating bigger portions but I’m burning fewer calories.

2. Emotional eating — I’ve made no secret of my PPMD junk and when I get stressed or excited, I grab something to munch on. (No. It is not carrots.)

3. The BLOG — I’ve heard people say their blog makes them fat. Who said that? Tell me so I can credit you. Anyway, sitting around typing and reading things online is not active. When I’m on the computer, my kids wig-out. When my kids wig out, I get stressed. Please refer to excuse #2.

4. I like to sleep and hate to exercise, until I’m actually doing it.

So, today I slept through my gym workout window. I decided to have a dance party this afternoon with the kids to get some cardio in. We rocked. We grooved. It was a blast.

Laylee prefers to “dance” while being held in my arms. I can only do this for so long before I have to put her down. That girl is HEA-VY.

What hit me as I was repeatedly telling her she was too heavy and putting her down was that I have more weight to lose than her total body weight. I am essentially carrying extra weight equal to the total weights of both of my children around – at all times – every day. I’m seriously surprised I can walk at all. Saturday’s little scare also got me thinking about my heart and health.

The dancing was so fun that I decided my reward for losing the first 25 lbs will be to take a Hip-Hop or Jazz dance class for big fat clumsy dorks adult beginners. I told DYD my plan and his exact response was “Kat-izzle in the Hizzle! Yeeee-aaahhh!”

Very supportive as you can see.

So I may or may not keep you all updated on my progress. When I win, you’re all invited over for some sweet dancing. I’m sorry that I WILL dance better than you…the class and all….

Goal Progress 0 (This is the number of lbs lost. Bigger numbers mean YAY!)

I was recently talking with a friend who said she was suffering from “blogger’s block.” I told her that all she had to do was continually embarrass herself in public and she’d have plenty of blog-fodder to spew forth.

Scene:
It’s yesterday. I start experiencing sporadic tightness and pain on the left side of my chest. I don’t worry too much about it. It’s more annoying than painful and besides, I’m too young to have a heart attack, right?

For a bedtime story, Dan decides to read to me about Richard Feynman and his romance with his terminally ill wife Arline. It’s funny, sweet, poignant and thought-provoking. The thoughts it starts provoking are, “Am I terminally ill? What if I die in the night and they ask DYD if I was having any symptoms and he says ‘no’ so they never find out what was really wrong with me? I must tell him about the chest-pain.”

So, as he kisses me goodnight and rolls over, I say something like, “I’ve been having chest pain off and on all day. It’s on the left side so if I don’t wake up tomorrow, tell them to check for heart disease or something. Goodnight.”

He rolls over with this crazy look on his face, has me describe the pain and asks if I’m okay. I say I’m fine and I feel dumb for bringing it up but I just thought he should know. We go to sleep.

I wake up this morning, still the tightness, only now it’s constant and gets worse when I breathe in deeply. So what do I do? I breathe in deeply as frequently as possible, just to make sure it still hurts. This starts to freak me out. Dan and I decide to call the nurse hotline at MegaCorp and ask their advice.

They calmly ask me several questions and then tell me to hang up and call 9-1-1. I laugh.

“I’m sorry. I can’t do that. They’ll make fun of me. There’s really nothing wrong, I’m sure.”

The nurse then makes me promise to go into the ER. I so swear. So, we pack up the kids and all head off for a day of fun at our favorite house of sickness. I’m humiliated. As soon as we get there, I get the distinct feeling that nothing’s wrong with me and it’s all I can do not to flee the building. But we’ve driven this far and I made a blood oath and all, so I start filling out paperwork.

I beg them not to bring me a wheel chair and they relent. They walk me down a hallway full of people wearing gas masks and moaning. Everyone looks horrid and I’m just bouncin’ along.

So, 4.5 hours, several tests and multiple consults later, they release me with a diagnosis of musculo-skeletal discomfort. I love when they come up with big words to make you feel better about wasting an entire afternoon and an ER visit on a strained pectoral muscle.

I say, “Okay. That’s weird since I don’t even remember doing anything to it.”

Nicest ever ER Doc says, “Oh, sometimes you don’t realize you’re straining something. It could be as simple as that you were standing in a funny position when you sneezed.”

There you have it. I sneezed funny, straining a muscle and I went to the ER because I thought I was dying. If that’s not embarrassing, I’m not sure what is. The worst part is, we were JUST IN THERE.

(An Update – We’ve been back to the pediatrician every couple of days since the burn but as of this weekend Magoo is officially bandage-free and doing well. We check back in with them early next week.)

I am really really not one of those people who wants to go into the ER all the time, hoping something’s wrong with them. What that X-Ray guy diagnosed me with in the Urgent Care may be a real sickness but I got over it in second grade.

Now I have a goal to make it a full year without going in to the Urgent Care or ER. I just don’t want to become the “Norm from Cheers” of the ER, “where everybody knows your name.”

I can see it now, “HEY! It’s Kathryn! What’s wrong this time, Daring One? Did you break your femur while stubbing your toe on a My Little Pony? No, no, let me guess. You have really bad pain in your left pinky finger so you want us to check for cranial failure?”

There was a highlight, though. This came unexpectedly from the most patient man I have ever known, AKA my husband. After dropping me off at the emergency loading doors (Rush, rush, rush. We’ve got a sneeze-strained-musculo-skeletal incident here!), he drove around for 2 hours with the kids sleeping in the van until Laylee woke up and had an accident in her car seat. He calmly changed her into the outfit I had put in the diaper bag, cleaned up the car and then brought both kids in to see me.

From the second I saw her, I could not stop laughing. I had almost not packed those pants as the spare outfit because they were bordering on way too small for….MAGOO, who is now wearing 12-18 month clothes. Laylee was wearing a very cute pair of capris, AKA 6-9 month boy’s jeans.

We needed some humor to brighten up our day and there it was.

Another laugh came when Karli sent me this:

I was gonna go to the website and have it changed to say “Daring Young Mom is a Hypochondriac” but that still hits a little too close to home.

I just wrote a post. I really liked it. It is gone. My computer has committed suicide, taking the post with it. It was a longish post. It was a post about being in the ER all afternoon. It is gone. All gone. Everything is gone. My computer is gone. There is nothing, nothing but tears.

That is all.

[note from DYD: DYM’s hard drive is dead. I tried the freezer trick. Nothin’. We do have everything backed up to last night, so she only lost today’s post. So sad, but it could be worse.]