Personal Blog of Author Kathryn Thompson
I am the soft home whose walls you snuggled up against and occasionally tried to claw through, with the loud laugh and the voice that went on and on almost without ceasing. I am everything that’s surrounded you for the majority of your life. I am your world as you’ve come to know it.
And now the world’s changed. [Read More at Parenting.com]
Today I wrote that one post, the one at the end of pregnancy where you’re actually considering removing the baby yourself by any means possible. It was 3.5 pages single-spaced in Word. It was whiny and self-indulgent and I meant every word of it. However it was also annoying and insensitive to all sorts of people who have actual serious life problems so I’m not going to post it.
Basically, my OB told me today that although I’m scheduled for an induction at 39 weeks due to the large size of the baby and how Magoo’s 10 lbs. 8 oz. did such a number on my body, it probably won’t happen because I’m not considered a priority to the hospital.
He said to be a priority you need to have the body of a woman, you know a body that’s capable of going into labor, all female-like. You can also be considered a priority if you or your baby is dying or showing signs of imminent death, if your blood pressure spikes or you suddenly grow a tail (this last part was not actually stated). The last way to become a priority is to go weeks past your due date. Since my mom’s coming to help with the baby a week early (because of my “scheduled induction”), if I go 2 weeks over, she won’t even get a chance to see that baby. What she’ll get a chance to do is push my pregnant butt around in a wheel chair and mop me up off the floor every couple of hours while I wait and cry.
I don’t go into labor, see? I don’t dilate. I don’t efface. I stay pregnant until someone at the hospital has mercy on me, which apparently is not likely. I’m having some of the worst pain I’ve ever had in my life and I’m discouraged, exhausted, ungrateful and not a little wenchy. A month from now I’m sure I’ll be over it but tonight… I’m not so much over it.
We sat down to eat some lovely Mexican lasagna for dinner when I decided I COULD. NOT. EAT. IT. without sour cream. I left the family sitting at the dinner table and ran to the grocery store to pick up that one thing. “I’ll be back in ten minutes. Time me.”
Well it’s a good thing that Dan laid down on the couch and decided to time me with the inside of his eyelids (not the most accurate of timing devices) because I completely lost all track of the time while pillaging the aisles of the grocery store.
Sudden cravings for anything unhealthy and remotely appealing took over my body. Along with the sour cream, I picked up yogurt, bagels, bread… frozen pizza, sherbet, popsicles, Jones soda, Cheez Whiz, sugar cookies and other things I haven’t purchased since probably college.
I sheepishly unloaded my purchases at the counter.
“I’m pregnant.”
Serious look from the cashier.
“Sometimes I just need things.”
Serious look followed by some sage advice, “Don’t eat it all tonight, okay? And when you’re done, go back to vegetables and other healthy foods.”
“I’ve only gained 4 pounds so far this pregnancy.”
Serious look.
When I got home and started unloading, Dan asked how my trip was. “Fruitful,” I responded. The Chief Cookie Buyer in our household stared at my haul with wide eyes. “Certainly was.”
Smart boy did not offer any sage advice. He mustn’t if he ever hopes to see another morsel of HFCS, Trans Fat or food coloring enter the house again.
I bought nectarines too, sort of to camouflage the rest of it. It was by far the most expensive and unhealthful tub of sour cream I have ever purchased.
We’ve got 2 months left and we still have no name for this little chica. We’re getting more and more creative with our names. We look for them everywhere. Movie credits are fertile hunting grounds for names, especially if you want to name your kid something like Ishi Tomahachigok Thompson or Matt “The Mutt” Thompson.
Driving back from our vacation we looked at road signs and business names. Wendy, Denny, Schwab, and Chevron could all be possible candidates. At one point I read aloud a sign that said, “Stay Off the Median.”
“Meedy-Anne,” I suggested, “That’s not a bad name.” Dan gave me the shifty eye-roll. Well, it’s better than “Rest Stop” or “Bump.”
Lately I’ve been referring to her as “the protuberance” although for no splickable reason I pronounce it “protRuberance.” It just sounds better and everyone knows what I’m talking about.
“I can’t push my stool up to the computer because of the protRuberance.”
“The protRuberance makes it difficult for me to cook without burning my navel.”
“My protRuberance is going nuts. Just look at it wiggle and jump!”
I work so hard to choose names for my kids that are beautiful to me but not popular in the general population. I want to be unique without being crazy. I’ve realized lately that almost everyone is trying to do the very same thing so if I find a name that’s really unusual and beautiful, chances are it will be THE name 3 years from now and my little Adeline will join a sea of Adelines heading into elementary school in the next decade.
What I should really do is stick to names that were so over-used during my childhood that none of the moms in our generation want to use them. Then my kid will be totally unique. Or I could just name her Protuberance. It has a nice ring to it, sort of like Constance only more visually evocative.
Since I don’t drink and rarely do anything that requires me to be over the age of 16, I have very few opportunities to be required to show identification. It generally only happens if I’m pulled over for speeding or if I’m at the grocery store buying wine for cooking.
Well yesterday I bought some wine for a risotto I was planning to cook and for the first time in history they didn’t ask me for ID. Maybe it was because the cashier knew me. Possibly it had something to do with the fact that I was toting 2 children along with me and waddling, very obviously pregnant with a third. I choose to believe that I’m starting to look as distinguished as befits my 30 years of age, despite the fact that this pregnancy has me breaking out like a preteen after a chocolate binge.
Then later that night Dan and I went to see the new Harry Potter movie, mostly to enjoy the air conditioning while cuddling child-free. When I purchased the tickets, the boy at the counter asked to see my ID.
“What is this Harry Potter movie rated?” I asked incredulously.
“PG-13.”
And I’m thinking, “This kid really questions whether or not I’m over the age of 13? From the way I feel at this moment, the baby inside of me is practically 13.”
“And you’re carding me to get into the movie?”
He looked confused. He stared at me in a way that only a 15-year-old boy can when confronted with the prospect of carrying on a conversation of more than two words with an adult woman.
And then it hit me as he handed back my credit card. He was checking ID to make sure the card wasn’t stolen. “You need the ID for the credit card, huh?”
He nodded uncomfortably, looking sort of down and away.
So yeah, if you want to get into a PG-13 movie anytime soon, pay cash or have your ID close at hand.
The FTC is in the process of placing new standards on bloggers who review products for compensation. They do not distinguish between monetary compensation and compensation by way of product samples. I’m not sure if product samples that are then given away as prizes will be included in this forbidden zone of review topics. I have done this several times in the past , reviewed a product for my blog and then passed along the review copy to my readers in the form of a giveaway.
I’m all about full disclosure. If Laylee were providing me monetary compensation to blog about how cute she looked in her ballet recital, I’d for SURE let you know. It’s kind of the other way around though. I think I paid about 3 million dollars to see her in that green tutu for 5 minutes and it was worth every penny.
If a company is compensating me to write about their products, I sure as heck am not going to act like I just happened to discover this lovely $200 set of maternity clothes by happenstance. Your trust is more important to me than that. But if I gush about it, the gushing is sincere.
This blog is primarily the documented journey of my life as a mother, a woman and an attempted humorist. Within those roles, there are often products I use and love and want to tell you about. Sometimes I do. Nearly every day I am also offered free products to talk about on my blog. I say “no” to the VAST majority of these offers either because I don’t think I’ll like the product, I feel like my blog is turning into something too commercial (It was never meant to be a “product review” site.) or because I just don’t feel like doing it that day.
My policy is this —
I will never review a product for monetary compensation. I personally believe that being paid cash to endorse a product on a personal blog is not in line with my values or the intent of this writing outlet.
I will never accept free product with the understanding that I will write a positive review about the product. First of all, I try not to accept a product unless I think there is a good chance I will really like it and want to tell my readers about it. On the few occasions that I have received a product I did not particularly like, I have either offered to send it back to the company, given it away with no review attached hoping someone else would like it, or given a review that points out its failings.
Where book reviews are concerned, I do not talk about books I do not like unless I’m trying to offer a buyer-beware type of warning. I do not always point out that a particular book was sent to me by Harper Collins or some other publisher as a review copy, because of the low price of the items and the frequency with which they are sent to me, but I only review about 1 in 10 books sent to me. I don’t want to waste my time talking about a book that I wouldn’t recommend anyway. Now you know. Some of the books I review are sent to me by authors, book publishers or publicity firms. I will give honest reviews regardless of how I obtained the book.
The practice of receiving something, reviewing it and then giving it (or one of its clones) away has three benefits:
1. I can give an accurate review of a product only if I actually get my hands on it and try it out. Isn’t it nice to hear that I wore those maternity clothes and washed them a ton and they still didn’t ball or pill?
2. When my readers get free stuff, I usually get a boost in readership, which I like.
3. I love to get great free stuff and therefore love to give it away. Isn’t it so much more fun to plan and pick out the gifts you’ll give for Christmas than to see what you’re going to get. I, like Oprah before me, really enjoy finding something great and giving it away to someone who’ll love it. I believe my serotonin levels rise when someone who desperately needs a stroller gets one for free because I was able to give it away on my blog.
So there you have it. All reviews and giveaways on this blog express my actual and true opinions. If I say I really like something, I really really like it. I do not pretend to be an expert in consumer safety so if your little Jimmy wins a trike on this site and then the handlebars fall off, resulting in catastrophic facial injury, I am not liable for his sad demise. I am not Consumer Reports or an independent safety testing agency. I did not, for example, attempt to light my maternity clothes on fire to see if they would burst into flame.
I just periodically want to tell you about stuff I like.
Maybe it’s just in the air. It’s definitely all around us and through us and it’s fun and LOUD and festive and at times obnoxious.
My mom always used to say that what she really wanted for Mother’s Day was well-behaved kids who were obedient and didn’t spend the whole day fighting. But what about these delicious red bath oil beads?! Surely they’re enough of a bribe that I can spend the rest of the day making annoying mouth noises and poking my sister in the arm until she begs for mercy.
Ah. I understand her so much better now. The kids were very excited and excitable, cute and AAAHHHHHH!!!!!
Dan is a good Mother’s Day husband. He’s actually quite passable year round but on Mother’s Day he knows how to bring it. All I want from him is a flower, a meal or two, something to unwrap, and the assurance that I don’t have to do anything resembling work for the day. Sure, I’ll read the kids a story or brush their hair, but only the fun parts of motherhood, not the ones that involve cleaning or bodily fluids.
Totally off topic but speaking of bodily fluids, Laylee’s current favorite song at church is called How Firm a Foundation and the last line of the first verse says, “What more can he say than to you he hath said, who unto the Savior for refuge hath fled?” She picks this song every time it’s her turn to pick a song and she sings it with gusto. I recently discovered why. She was sitting next to Magoo at our family night and finished, “…who unto the Savior for refuse hath fled. Hey, pst. Magoo. Refuse means poop and pee and stuff. Giggle.”
Um yeah. Upon further investigation, it seemed that she really did think those were the words to the song and hilarious words they were. She was so disappointed to find out what it actually said. Ah, the bitter realities of gaining greater knowledge.
Anyway. I did nothing today in a very deliberate sort of way. There were beautiful flowers purchased on Saturday and placed in the middle of the kitchen table with strict orders from Magoo not to look at them. He burst into my room this morning with a “HAPPY MOTHER’S DAY! Now you can look at your flowers!”
Dan got everyone ready for church while I slept in and he made my new breakfast obsession, steel cut oats, cooked to perfection.
The talks at church were upbeat and motivating and made me want to be a better mom… tomorrow… when I’m done laying about the house celebrating the fact that I am one.
Dan coached the kids well on buying me fun and thoughtful gifts and even put them in gift bags. He gave me a card with Michael Scott’s wisdom on parenting. He made dinner, did the hard part of bedtime, and cleaned the kitchen.
I feel refreshed and a bit spoiled and useless. I slept too much, parented too little, received too many presents and didn’t do enough for my own mothers. It was a good day but not a great day. I wish I’d played a game with the kids or spent some time talking with Dan while he slaved in the kitchen. Absolute slovenliness doesn’t really sit comfortably with me. In a way it was a good reminder that all these sick fat pregnant days when I feel useless at the end of the day, like I have nothing to show for myself, I’ve done more than I give myself credit for. In the future, I’ll just tell myself, “At least I got more done today than on Mother’s Day ’09. That was a doozey!”
It’s weird too because I got more praise, love and outpourings of support than on most other days of the year and it was the day I felt least deserving of it. Strange thing, this day of mothers.
If you order food at any Taco Bell restaurant anywhere in the country, and I know because I’ve been to at least 6 of them, the person wearing the Brittany Spears head set will ask you at the window if you’d like any hot sauce with your order. Every once in a while she will look you in the eyes and act as if she cares whether you want the spicy stuff or not. Most of the time she will mumble, “Youwantanyhotsaucewithat?” as she stuffs napkins and, get this, hot sauce into your bag.
I always, always say, “no,” not because I don’t like spicy things but because I don’t want one more opportunity for disastrous mess in my car. I repeat. I always say, “Negatory.”
And I ALWAYS get one, if not several, packets of hot sauce in the bag. ALWAYS.
The same thing happens at McDonald’s. When you order a sundae, they always ask you if you’d like nuts to go with it. Over the years, I’ve become intolerant of hard chunks in my ice cream. I don’t trust them. “Was that a peanut or a pill bug?” I ask myself.
So I say, “No thank you,” when they ask if I want the peanuts.
“Does she get peanuts?” you ask yourself.
Yes. Yes she does.
ALWAYS.
If you’re just gonna give me peanuts and hot sauce, why are you acting like I have a choice?
At the grocery store, when they say, “Paper or Plastic?” they then proceed to give you the style of bag you choose, even if you’re like me and choose your own handmade reusable, 100% recycled, free range, biodegradable totes.
I guess I’m not the only one who leaves her reusable bags in the car. I hope I’m not the only one who brings them in but then forgets to give them to the cashier.
Sometimes the red tape involved with medical care baffles me, especially when you see more than one provider at once.
Last week, my naturopath told me I looked like crap. She said it a lot nicer than that but basically she told me she was worried about the color of my skin and wanted my iron tested. So she wrote out a requisition for me to have my blood taken at a lab about 35 minutes from my house, the closest one in the chain of labs their clinic uses. She wanted me to do it this week.
I hate having my blood taken. I have bad veins and I’m frequently stuck multiple times before any blood comes out. Now it just so happened that I had an appointment to have blood drawn at the Magical Ultrasound Clinic of Joy this week. So I asked her if I could just have the Magical Ultrasound Clinic of Joy take a little extra blood and check it for iron.
She didn’t see why not so she told me to bring the requisition to the MUCJ and ask if they’d be willing to help me out. Well I was in a hurry this morning dealing with sick kids, sick me and sick Dan and I completely spaced bringing the form.
When I showed up at the MUCJ, I asked the nurse if she’d run the extra test and she said she couldn’t do it without consent from my doctor, without the form. As she gathered the vials and needle, I started to tear up a little. Without looking up, she offered, “I could call your doctor’s office and ask them to fax over a copy of the requisition while you wait out in the lobby.”
“No. It’s okay,” I answered. “I’ve got babysitting issues. My husband’s home sick with the kids and I promised him I’d be quick and home in time to make lunch.” I’ll just drive back out to the lab another day and get it taken again.
But she wouldn’t give up. She wanted to help. “I could take the extra blood and then see if I can get them to fax in the requisition and if they do, I could run the tests. If not, I’d just toss the extra blood.”
I thanked her profusely and headed home, making a quick stop to pick something up at a nearby store while I was in the area. My cell phone rang. It was the helpful nurse from the MUCJ. She said that the naturopath’s office would only use their specific lab, a different lab than the MUCJ worked with but if the naturopath’s lab was willing to send over a courier to pick up the blood, that would work just fine.
The naturopath’s lab has one person working in the office. The same person who checks you in takes your blood. I told her that I could not imagine them using a courier service. Again I thanked her but told her I’d just have to come back again another day and do the draw again. THEN she offered to drive the blood over to the lab herself when she got off work that day. Okay. Cookies, flowers, something. This woman’s got something coming to her.
“I’m not comfortable asking you to do that, but I’m still fairly close, I could come by and get my blood and drive it over to them.”
I asked her if there was any way I could avoid paying $4 again to park in their garage for 5 minutes while I ran in to get the specimen. (I love saying and writing “specimen”. It just sounds so creepish.) She said just to pull up in the roundabout outside the office building, call the office and ask for her and she’d run it out to my car… in the pouring rain. Bless this woman!
So I called my naturopath’s office and asked them if they’d fax the form over to the lab so my blood transport wouldn’t be in vain. No. They said they couldn’t do it because my doctor wasn’t in this morning. I asked if one of the other doctors in the practice could write one up since the information was on my chart. It’s not like I was calling up out of the blue asking for a prescription for medical marijuana. I just wanted to see if my blood had enough iron. Could a test like that ever be harmful? She said she’d check. After a few minutes she came back and said one of the other doctors was willing to do it.
Then I asked her if she had the address of the local lab for me. No. She didn’t have it. Apparently they normally use the Lynnwood lab so she didn’t have access to the address I needed. I visualized her sitting at her desk with her computer hooked to the internet unwilling to google for me and then visualized the nurse at the Magical Ultrasound Clinic of Joy who was willing to look up the address and DRIVE MY BLOOD OVER TO THE LAB AFTER SHE GOT OFF WORK and I asked politely, “If you don’t have the information for the local lab, how are you going to fax the form over to them?”
She said she was planning on looking it up in a couple of minutes.
“Could I hold until you get a chance to do that?”
She said I could and in 30 seconds she had the address for me. I thanked her and apologized for causing all this trouble. “I just didn’t think it would be this hard,” I confided.
“I know. It shouldn’t be,” she conceded.
When I pulled into the roundabout at the UCJ’s office and called up for my nurse, she was down to my car within 60 seconds, a smile on her face and a baggie of blood in her hand. I believe I professed my love for her. Then I drove the 3 blocks to the lab.
When I got there, baggie of blood vials in hand, I gave the lab employee the short version of my story and asked if she’d gotten a fax from my Naturopath’s office. No. She hadn’t.
I did sort of a “follow my eyes” movement over to the fax machine. She followed my eyes and reached the 18 inches to the piece of paper lying face down on the fax machine.
“Your last name?” she asked.
“Thompson.”
“Yeah. I’ve got it.” Then she smiled and said she’d get it taken care of and I suddenly liked her a teeny bit more.
My naturopath’s office is efficient and well run. They’ve stayed open late for me more than once so I could come after Dan got home from work and taken as much time as I needed. My doctor there is one of the most patient and empathetic medical professionals I’ve ever met. Maybe their office staff was just having a rough day today. It was the contrast in the two offices that was so startling.
I don’t think anyone was being malicious or trying to give me the runaround and one person went WAY above and beyond the call of duty. I know that different doctors’ offices contract with different labs. But I still don’t understand why it had to be so hard. Why can’t every person be as helpful and kind as the MUCJ nurse? Why doesn’t everyone get it? Why can’t we all just get along? Why can I keep down a McDonald’s hamburger but not rice?
These are the questions that trouble me today.