Category Archives: updates

On the mend

Posted on December 8, 2008 | Comments Off on On the mend

Amoxycillin is a wonderful thing. Took the Hatchling to urgent care and only one ear was infected but it had also ruptured – OUCH – and she had a lot of lovely congestion to boot. She haaaaaaaates the medicine (can’t blame her: it’s “orange dreamsicle” flavored) but we’ve been getting it down her gullet twice a day and she’s already feeling much, much better. Last night she only woke up once, a drastic improvement over the past three days. We’re lying low today but I think we’ll actually make it.

I have to say, I did not handle this sickness well. Usually I’m pretty good with the coddling and cuddling that goes with a sick kid, but for some reason – I’m guessing because I’m already low on energy reserves due to my fetal enhancement – I was going OUT OF MY MIND this weekend. I don’t think the Hatchling picked up on it (though poor Mr. Squab did) but by last night I was just losing it left and right. Part of it was the lack of sleep, but even more than that was the feeling of no escape from the sick kiddo. She was literally attached to me for 85% of the weekend – couldn’t sleep unless she was in bed with me, couldn’t be awake unless she was right up next to me on the sofa, and if I had to get up to, you know, pee or get something to eat, she would start mournfully moaning “oh, no … OH, no … OH, NOOOO!” in escalating tones until I came back. I could not get anything done, and even if I could have gotten away for a moment I was too damn tired to accomplish anything. It was just making me totally nuts – and, like, how churlish is that? Christ, it’s not her fault she’s sick. And as Mr. Squab truthfully observed, in a few years I’ll WISH she’d snuggle with me on the sofa for the whole day. But it wasn’t helping this weekend. And then I started thinking, crap, she’s basically just behaving like a little baby … and we’re having one of those soon … and what if THAT makes me crazy like this is? ACKKKKK. Because, you know, that kind of worst-case-scenario thinking is so incredibly helpful at all times. Ahem.

Anyway, I got some sleep last night and Mr. Squab put up some Christmas decorations and cleaned up the kitchen and rubbed my back and tried not to laugh at me for bursting into tears whenever anyone looked at me crosseyed. So today things are better. Onwards and upwards, right?

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Posted in parenting highlights, trials and tribulations, updates

I’m baaaaaaaaaack

Posted on November 20, 2008 | Comments Off on I’m baaaaaaaaaack

Did you miss me? I had a great time in Knoxville; for one thing, the weather was what November is SUPPOSED to be like (40s and 50s, damp, rainy) as opposed to the pre-winter crap we get in this godforsaken state. And for another thing, that baby is CUTE. Hoo. Plus my mom was there, too, so she basically catered to our every need. It was a good trip, and I sure do wish I lived closer to my sis, but it was really, really good to get home. I can’t think of a better way to be greeted at the airport than by an ecstatic tow-headed two-year old running toward you with a mile-wide grin yelling “Mama!! Hi, Mama!! I so gwappa SEE you!” and then giving you a hugey-ginormous hug. That’s just plain good stuff. Mr. Squab had even fixed her hair in a pony tail with barrettes. (Little girl hair-dos are not his strong point. He characterized his first attempt at a pony tail as an “epic fail.”) He’d also done a bunch of laundry, hung the outdoor Christmas lights, cleaned out the back porch, and put insulating plastic on the windows while I was gone. This sort of pisses me off, because hell if *I* have the time or energy to tackle those kinds of projects when I’m singlehandedly responsible for the Hatchling. Where does he get off? But then, I also benefit from his industriousness, so, you know: I keep my mouth shut.

Hope y’all had a good week.

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Posted in travel, updates

A matched set

Posted on October 30, 2008 | Comments Off on A matched set

We got our big ultrasound today, the one where they measure all the baby parts and check the heart and weight and fluids and tell you what flavor fetus you have in there, if you want to know.

Which we did.

So they told us.

OK, OK … it’s a girl! She was squirming around so much in there I was afraid they wouldn’t be able to see the requisite parts, but they checked and double checked and triple checked, and sure enough: female parts. Mr. Squab will officially have a harem come March. She has all her parts, and we got the results of my quad screen (one of the tests for chromosomal abnormalities) and they were “just great” according to the perinatologist – she said my results were better than a 25-year-old’s, which just proves that I’m really, really immature young at heart. The kid weighs about 12 oz., which is right on track for this stage of pregnancy, and relieves my fears that my recent belly popping was an indicator of diabetes-related hugeness. It’s not; it’s just a second pregnancy. So all is well, at least on the inside of my uterus. Which is a good thing, because if this baby is going to put me through this level of discomfort, the least she can do is be healthy.

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Posted in announcements, updates

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tap-tap-tap … Is this thing on?

Posted on October 28, 2008 | Comments Off on tap-tap-tap … Is this thing on?

Wait … I have a BLOG? Holy crap, why didn’t anyone tell me?!?!

OK, I know it’s been about forever since I last posted. I can always tell that it’s been too long when I start getting concerned emails from friends and family with carefully worded greetings along the lines of “oh, hi, hope everything is ok! Sure do miss those blog posts! I’m sure you’re just really busy!” but where the subtext is clearly “JESUS CHRIST, ARE YOU ALIVE? POST SOMETHING, FOR FUCK’S SAKE!”

So, you know. Message received. And sorry to be the cause for concern. Why have I not been posting, you ask? Lord, I don’t know. Part of it is that I’m busy. I can’t really post when the Hatchling is up, because if she sees the laptop open she either requests, repeatedly, to watch “bee-yos” (videos) or wants to “push button” which results in very distracted, if not illegible, blog posts. When she naps, I nap, so no posting then. Tuesday, Wednesday and Thursday nights I’m either teaching or at meetings or rehearsals, so that’s out. Which basically leaves weekends, Monday nights and Friday nights as possible blogging time, and lately I haven’t had the gumption those times to do much more than catch up on TV or read novels. Which brings me to the other reason for the lack of posts: no gumption. I’m not depressed, exactly. I *am* motherloving tired All. The. Time. And … have I mentioned how I don’t enjoy the pregnancy thing so much? Yah. I really, really, really, really-to-the-nth-power do not fucking enjoy being pregnant. Love the result, hate the process. I just feel shitty all the time, and I’m having a hard time keeping my blood sugars where they should be, and I’m already sick of restricting my diet to diabetes-approved items and I’m already HUGE and I cannot find a comfortable position to sleep in so I don’t get much sleep and I still have like five months to go and it’s just going to get worse. And what’s even worse than the physical discomforts – which are legion – is the guilt for not being able to pull my weight around the house. Seriously, I think I’ve cooked a meal, like, once in the past two weeks. Mr. Squab does ALL the laundry. I almost never have the energy (or, increasingly, the coordination) to pick up after the Hatchling, so Mr. Squab typically comes home from a day’s work to a dirty kitchen, a hyper toddler, a living room that looks like it’s been hit by a smallish tornado, and a wife who’s cranky he couldn’t get home earlier and feels like she needs a break. God, it’s demoralizing. And the sense of guilt makes me even crankier, so I don’t always even say thank you or otherwise show some semblance of gratitude. Not because I’m not thankful, but because acknowledging the huge imbalance is so painful. Which … is just really not a nice way to behave. Mr. Squab never complains about it (though he did say the other day that it’s a good thing I’m cute when I’m pregnant because otherwise he’d never make it), and my friends all keep reminding me that, hello, it’s not like I’m not doing anything – I’m growing a freaking human inside me! – and I know this is true. And, like my sister says, it’s not as if this is our whole marriage; this is just a brief moment on the long timeline of our relationship, and there will no doubt come a day when I will have the opportunity to repay the kindness. It’s just hard to feel that way when you’re in the middle of it, you know?

So anyway, blah, blah, blah, whine whine whine. This is the kind of stuff on my mind lately, and it’s just so BORING to be so pissy all the time. And if even *I* find it boring, I don’t feel like I should inflict it on my lovely blog readers. Who am I to waste your valuable blog reading time? However, I will try not to take unintentional week-long hiatuses (hiati? hiatae?) anymore. After all, not everything here in squab-land is dismal. The Hatchling is being an extremely awesome little trouper about having only a partially-functional mama, and is keeping us entertained with her various weird pronouncements and activities. (We have decided that 2 1/2 is the age of weird; I’ll have to post more specifics later this week.) I have an amazing set of friends who help keep me afloat, doing everything from giving me huge bags of hand-me-down clothes for the ever-embiggening Hatchling to offering me housekeeping and massage (!!!) services when I’m feeling particularly beleaguered. And this week – on Thursday – we’re going to find out what flavor of baby we’re having, which will be exciting. Plus it looks like Obama’s going to win (knock wood, cross fingers, throw salt over shoulder, etc.), so that’s, you know, good. And stuff.

Anyway, that’s my update. And how are all of YOU doing?

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Posted in trials and tribulations, updates

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Grump

Posted on October 8, 2008 | Comments Off on Grump

I’ve been in a royally bad mood for the last 5 days, and bad moods are not conducive to blogging, I find. Partly I’m in a bad mood because I feel like crap ALL THE TIME, whether from the nausea – which is not going away because apparently nobody told Bubba that he or she is supposed to knock that shit OFF in the second trimester – or constipation, or allergies and sinus headaches, or fatigue, or whatever. It’s a fucking feel-like-crap cocktail over here, and I’m good and sick of it.

And then last Thursday night, I got into Cherry Ames to go to rehearsal, and saw that some person or thing had hit my windshield, hard, with a pointy object, resulting in a big crescent of cracks on the lower driver’s side. Y’all, I can’t even describe how PISSED OFF this made, and is still making, me. I am so fucking OVER living in a neighborhood where I cannot park my car on the street outside my house without some asshole crashing into it, vandalizing it or breaking the windshield. (All things that have happened to family cars in the three years we’ve lived here.) I am sick of the gunfights, and the stuff being stolen from my yard, and the break-ins, and the graffiti, and All. The. Shit. I mean, Christ! I know I live in an urban area – and I’m committed to that, I have absolutely no interest in living in the suburbs. I value city living, and being in a neighborhood where white is not the dominant skin color, and where kids from families from different income and education levels all play together at the local playground. These things are important to me. But I am getting real close to my limit on destruction of my personal property and use of violent weapons in my immediate vicinity. Not that my limits matter a good goddamn, because what are we supposed to do? The housing market is plumb saturated in this town, and I highly doubt that we’d get even what we paid for the place, much less making a profit on it. Not to mention that there are still some improvements to be made before it would even be worth putting it on the market in the first place. And even LESS to mention that I have negative interest in moving while pregnant – I did that last time and it’s, you know, no good. So we’re stuck, and I just have to suck it up and deal with it, just like I have to suck it up and deal with the nausea, etc. If anyone knows of an available donor for an attitude transplant, y’all let me know. I sure do hate being grumpy all the time.

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Posted in outrage, trials and tribulations, updates

Not Dead.

Posted on September 26, 2008 | Comments Off on Not Dead.

Just so, so tired. Also looking forward to having really COLD milk tomorrow. But mostly tired.

And the nausea? Definitely getting worse. We are NOT having more than two kids, y’all.

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… really?!?!?

Posted on September 14, 2008 | Comments Off on … really?!?!?

Did I mention that Mr. Squab has been out of town for business since the wee hours of Friday morning? Not getting back until late tonight?

And that the Hatchling came down with a really bad cold this morning, and just barfed all over my bed after an extremely abbreviated nap?

And that I’ve run out of my nausea medicine because my clinic didn’t call in the renewal soon enough?

Yah. AWESOME weekend.

(I swear, I will try to post something positive tomorrow.)

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Posted in parenting highlights, trials and tribulations, updates

Autumn with a vengeance

Posted on September 9, 2008 | Comments Off on Autumn with a vengeance

This week definitely feels like the start of the school year. This is true mostly because it IS, in fact, the start of my school year – I start teaching my classes Tuesday and Wednesday nights this week – and also of the Hatchling’s school year, with a new ECFE class beginning tomorrow morning. But there are other signs as well:

1. The weather is doing a perfect imitation of Real Fall Weather. Autumn is my favorite season, so I’m perfectly happy with the cooler temps, only knowing Minnesota this likely means that we’ll be getting snow in a week or two, to which I say GAH!

2. I suddenly have like a million things to do and places to be. This morning, for instance, I had TWO doctor’s appointments. You will be happy to know that my blood pressure is right down where it needs to be, and I saw the Bubba via ultrasound and he/she actually has a face and hands and stuff now. Which is a relief, because faceless babies with no hands are nowhere NEAR as cute as the other ones.

3. While I’m still fighting the fatigue factor (alliteration!) I do feel a bit more brisk than I have for most of the summer. Maybe it’s the cooler temps, maybe it’s having more to do, but whatever it is, I’ll take it.

4. I’m up right now at a quarter to one in the morning, finalizing my syllabi and course materials. Because I am a procrastinator of EPIC proportions. (And also I somehow had convinced myself that my new school is on the quarter system, only to realize tonight that they’re on semesters, thus necessitating the revision of all my schedules. Why? Why am I so dumb?)

That’s it for me. Are you all in an autumnal place, or are you still clinging to the last vestiges of summer?

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Posted in Academe, updates

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Is that I light I see at the end of this tunnel?

Posted on July 12, 2008 | Comments Off on Is that I light I see at the end of this tunnel?

1. A woman at the Atlanta airport kindly patted me on the back, told me my tag was sticking out, and fixed it for me. I’m a sucker for random acts of kindness like that.

2. Unbeknownst to me, that blessed woman who checked me in to my THREE HOUR delayed flight this morning also put me in first class for the leg from Atlanta to Jacksonville. I had never flown first class before, and I was all aflutter.

3. As soon as we got in, we headed right to a down home seafood restaurant where I gorged myself on fried catfish, cheese grits, hushpuppies, slaw, and sweet tea. Can I get an amen?

4. Although I got in too late to visit Mimi today, I did find out something that’s really making me look forward to seeing her tomorrow. She’s in a two person room, and apparently her roommate’s name is … wait for it … Peculia Burg. PECULIA. Y’all, this is why it is so awesome to have a southern heritage. You are NEVER going to meet someone north of the Mason-Dixon line named Peculia.

So things may be looking up.

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Posted in random tidbits, travel, updates

This day is already full of FAIL

Posted on July 11, 2008 | Comments Off on This day is already full of FAIL

It’s 8:21 am, and I’m sitting in the Delta terminal of the Minneapolis/St. Paul International airport, waiting to fly out to south Georgia to visit my grandmother, who is dying. This must be the summer of the dying grandmothers or something, because I have like 5 or 6 friends with terminal grannies. Mine, my Mimi, is suffering from (among other things) rapid-onset dementia. In the past three months, she’s gone from a little absent but basically competent to seriously confused and unable to be cared for at home. My dad and stepmom went down there for their annual visit about a month ago, and ended up changing their tickets to stay until she could be stabilized and moved to a nursing home. (My blessed aunt had been taking care of her, but it had gotten to be simply too much for one person to handle.) Mimi has always been something of a personality – a spitfire, sharp-witted (and sometimes sharp-tongued), deeply religious, deeply conservative, steel magnolia. She loves (loved?) to dance and sing and is (was?) hands-down the best storyteller I ever heard – especially when she was cracking herself up so much she could hardly speak for laughing. It is, frankly, going to suck major rocks to go and see her as a shadow of her former self. She’s hardly eating now, and sometimes barely speaks above a whisper. Her short-term memory is rapidly vanishing, to the point where you can visit her in the morning and she’ll more often than not forget that you were ever there by the afternoon. We don’t know how much longer she’ll last – though I honestly hope not much longer, because who wants to live like that? – so I thought I’d better get down and see her while the seeing is good. Also, I can say without undue immodesty that I’m good in hospital/nursing home situations. The atmosphere doesn’t freak me out the way it does some folks, and I can let people be as crazy or in pain as they need to be and just be there with them, or rub their feet and hands, or sing, or whatever. So I thought maybe I could help out with the exhausting schedule of twice-daily visits that my parents and aunt have been keeping for the last month.

So anyway, it’s not going to be a fun or relaxing trip, but that’s actually not what’s pissing me off right now. What’s pissing me off is that it’s now 8:38 am and my flight was supposed to leave at 7:45. Due to yesterday’s, um, activities, I neglected to check the flight stats before I left (though I did sign up for mobile phone alerts THAT NEVER CAME) so I got to the airport at an ungodly hour of the morning only to find out that my 7:45 am flight will not be leaving until 11:06 am. The reason? CREW REST. For real. Now, I get that crews need to rest and all, and I don’t want a tired pilot flying my plane, but is this not something they could have worked out in such a way that I don’t have a THREE HOUR DELAY? Seriously? Of course, this also means I miss my connecting flight out of Atlanta, so instead of getting into Jacksonville at 1:46 pm I will now be getting in sometime after 5. There goes my whole “get an early flight and have some visiting time today” strategy. Also, this means that I made my BFF and her kid get up at a crazy hour to drive me to the airport FOR NO REASON. Grrrr.

Seriously, I don’t know what I did in a former life to merit this run of bad karma, but whatever it was, I’m SORRY already! Can we just call it even? Please?

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Posted in trials and tribulations, updates