My absence, by the numbers

Number of Comcast complaints filed with various agencies: 3

Stitches removed from R’s head: 5

Tears and/or noises made during stitch removal: 0

Popsicles sweetly requested of nurse following stitch removal: 1

Unsolicited Strawberry Shortcake stickers offered by nurse: 3

Visits to pioneer village: 1

Days she allowed Band-Aids to be applied: 3

Days Band-Aids were supposed to be applied: 7

Cases of Hand, Foot and Mouth contracted by R: 1

Days missed from work by me due to HF&M: 3

Temper tantrums thrown due to inability to eat, walk, pick things up: INFINITE.

Number of times during this period that I may or may not have referred to my child by using a naughty word: 2

Hours of sleep lost: countless

Theme parks visited: 1

State fairs visited: 1

Pigs petted: 5

Sheep petted: 3

Cows petted: 0

Rabbits petted: 1

Horses petted: 10

Hours husband spent teaching kids to fish at state fair (what a sweetie!): 4

Fears I (temporarily) overcame to accompany R on various fair rides: 3 (spinning, heights, moving fast with no safety accoutrements)

Hours spent watching women’s gymnastics at R’s request: approximately 5

Times R articulates that she prefers the Chinese women to the American women: at least 2 a day

Pictures taken for church directory: 10

Acceptable pictures taken for church directory: -1

Ice cream treats purchased for R for good behavior during church pictures: 1

Ice cream treats eaten by R for good behavior during church pictures: .25

Times I considered abandoning blogging altogether: 3

Decisions reached on the issue: 0

Third birthday parties attended: 1

Fellow birthday party attendees bossed by R for the entire two hours: 1

Adorableness of R in her party hat: unquantifiable

Brand new professional football stadiums toured: 1

Somersaults performed by R on new turf of new stadium: 3

Freakouts by R when she realized she was covered in rubber pellets from the new turf: 1

Times R peed in her diaper at day care yesterday: 0

Times R peed in the potty at day care yesterday: 5

Times R peed in the potty at home yesterday: 1

Times R pooped in the potty at home yesterday: 0

Times R pooped in her diaper at home yesterday: 1

Times R peed in her diaper at home yesterday: undetermined, but more than a few

Times I actually ran… outside… for exercise: 3

Open letter to Comcast

Dear Comcast,

I used to like you. You’ve provided me with hours of entertainment in front of my television (love the OnDemand!) and my high speed Internet was always reliable. We had some slips, some bumps in the road, but I never contemplated leaving you before. Now, I think we might have to break up. It’s not me, it’s you.

See, a few weeks ago, we switched to your VOiP service, which was great. I was excited! I was moving into the future! We had to change our phone number, which is always a hassle, but I was willing to do it for you and that sexy bundled discount. I even paid our home security fee, required with any change of number and the switch to Internet phone, without complaint. And for the last few weeks, it’s been great. No problems.

Then all of a sudden we have no dial tone yesterday. And my mother-in-law calls us to tell us that someone else is answering our phone number.

So I call you to get to the bottom of it. The local people have no record whatsoever of our ever having telephone service through you. That’s impossible, I say – we’ve had a phone for weeks. We’ve been paying our bill. They give me another number to call. By this time, I am livid.

Something you should know about me, Comcast, is that I hate confrontation. But when I’m jerked around and my phone number is given away, I can be just as irate as the person who lives to call your customer service reps to complain. That is not me. But that is also how I was treated. Maybe I deserved it, because I was angry. But maybe there should be a better explanation then “I don’t know what happened.”

While I am grateful that you got someone out to my house first thing this morning, I am angry that we have to have a new number, which will require more money spent for our home security system, more hassles for the woman you gave our number to and more inconvenience for us as we change our number for the second time in less than a month. This is unacceptable to me.

Also unacceptable to me was your customer service rep’s explanation that “This happens a lot.” That doesn’t make me feel like you are committed to giving me the service that I pay for. It makes me feel like six weeks from now, we may be going through this all over again.

So Comcast, my husband and I will be having a discussion about switching to a different provider for all of the services you currently provide. Thankfully, such a service is available to us.

 I hope you will provide some sort of compensation for the incredible screw up. This isn’t any way to treat a loyal customer.

Sincerely,

One less member of your fan club

Mother of the year, part three

Hey everybody! Remember this?

Here’s a little visual refresher:

That was July 2007.

Now, July 2008, we have this:

 

My poor baby had to get stitches Monday after an incident at day care. And what did I do when the call came in? Well, of course I was on the phone with someone very important I’d been trying to talk to for more than a week, so I sent it into my voicemail. And when I saw Dave’s cell phone three minutes later? Same thing. I’m a really good mom.

When I arrived at the emergency room about half an hour later, she looked up at me, all tiny and bloody in the adult-size bed, and said, “Hi Mommy! I hurt my head.” I wanted to gather her in my arms and sob, but knew that would freak her out, so I settled for a breezy, “I see that honey! Does it hurt?”

And when the nurses finally came in to see her, I asked if they needed insurance information. Of course not, they still had it from last time.

So she’s okay, gets her stitches out in the morning and will likely have a small scar for the rest of her life. I took Thursday off work so she wouldn’t have to go to school and watch all the other kids frolic in the sprinklers. And hopefully she won’t remember this a year from now – just like she doesn’t remember the broken collarbone.

She’s still my little fighter. Look at her “strong face.”

Miss Bossy, social butterfly

 

Pop Quiz, Hot Moms

So you’re at a minor league baseball game with your no-nap toddler, when she poops her diaper. Upon reaching the not-crazy-clean restrooms, you discover:

1. You’ve forgotten to pack wet wipes in the transfer from small diaper bag appropriate for church to large diaper bag appropriate for baseball.

2. The poop is not the solid, easily handled by a paper towel kind. It is the runny, seedy, already crusted-on-her-butt kind.

3. The changing table, on which you have already partially disrobed your child and opened her diaper, has no safety strap.

4. She’s already taken off her shoes and dropped them to the floor.

What do you do?

What I did was disgusting and involved saliva and two extra diapers. And a good cleansing when we got home. I won’t elaborate. It even makes me a little sick to my stomach.

Even the bottled water is called “quench”

So I’m in San Diego, and I’ve never been here before. And I’m about to expose you Big City Dwellers to my charming Midwestern naivete because MYGAWD this hotel is fancy/trendy/CRAYZEE. We are staying at the W San Diego, which is kind of like having a role as an extra in an episode of Private Practice or Nip/Tuck.

Everything is fancy and modern  and shiny and mostly black and white with pithy little names like “wet” (the pool) or “sweat” (the gym, closed for renovations) or “wired” (business center). Instead of a picture of flowers or some picturesque countryside in my room, there is a chalkboard. Should I leave a nice note for housekeeping? The elevators have actual real floormats that have to be physically changed according to the time of day. Right now, they say “Good evening.”

I have a down pillow shaped like a beachball in my room and am currently playing my ipod through the state-of-the-art system that is ipod compatible. Each room has a dvd player and small dvd library, with rentals available upon request. There is 24-hour room service (which provided me with a Kobe beef cheeseburger at midnight this morning), and I was a little self-conscious taking a shower because the door only goes halfway across the shower… and it’s clear glass. The girl who checked me in was wearing a half-shirt.

Everyone who works here is constantly saying things like “everyone at the W is a VIP” and “whatever/whenever!” Seriously. The customer service is phenomenal. PHENOMENAL, I SAY.

The hotel bar, from whence I just arrived, is called beach (lower case) and purports to have heated sand. I stepped in the sand and inquired Jeremy the bartender about its temperature. He exposed the hotel managers for the lying bastards they are, telling me that the sand was only heated for the first two weeks the hotel was open, and then they turned it off because it was crazy expensive and kept shorting out the power to the kitchen. HA!

So Jeremy supplied me with my second rather-large pomegranate martini (expense account! which also paid for my split of champagne at dinner!) to carry up to my lovely room with the view of the harbor, and here I am, missing R and Dave and wanting to go home. As always on these trips.

This was the first trip that R truly understood that I was going away. She begged me not to get on the airplane. She didn’t want me to go “play with Diego” (San Diego). She wanted me to stay there and eat hot dogs and play with her new Barbie horsie with her.

But she’s doing great with her dad. It’s great that they have this time together. And good that I have a chance to get away, too, I guess. But there’s only so much loneliness that champagne, a Padres game and two pomegranate martinis can take care of. Even if I do get to listen to my ipod in my hotel room.

I-L-L…I-N-I

Jennie often writes passionately about her love of her alma mater, Texas A&M, and how, as a child, she hadn’t imagined herself becoming an Aggie.

I graduated from the University of Illinois ten years, six weeks and four days ago. In some ways, it doesn’t seem like that long ago. In other ways, it seems like longer. I loved my time in Urbana-Champaign. I spent three years at the Daily Illini, the last year as campus editor. I made some wonderful friends there.

I spent two years entangled in a difficult and sometimes abusive romance with a man who I thought I might one day marry and who broke my heart a little bit every day we were together and for a good year after I got the strength to tell him we shouldn’t be together anymore.

I spent my senior year with my best friend, a woman I felt such a connection with I just knew we would be friends forever – until she became involved with the man who was still breaking my heart.

Senior year was joyful and complicated and bittersweet. I was on my own – no roommates, no boyfriend, no parents directing my every move. That was when I found myself, found who I really was; found the girl who could stay home on a Friday night to write papers for her English 300 20^th Century American Women Authors class and play Flip Cups with the hockey team and  flirt with the goalie on Saturday night. I found the girl who believed passionately in President Bill Clinton and the injustice of a mascot that parodies Native Americans. I found the girl who learned to love herself for who she was, not who she was with. I found the girl who was a loyal friend to a fault. And I discovered the girl who loved cold white wine on a hot summer night, the Chicago Cubs, Old Style beer and the Beastie Boys.

For some reason, I was thinking about all this last night when I was pushing R around the neighborhood in her stroller, her little blonde curls bouncing as she urged me forward, forward, further away from home – don’t go home Mommy! Don’t go home! Someday she will go to college (sob!), but I hope I can put her on a path to independence before that. I hope I can teach her to find herself – and love herself – before she turns 21.

She’s already on her way.

Sex and the old married ladies

So, I finally saw the Sex and the City movie last weekend. I know, perhaps the last woman on the planet to have seen it (of those that want to see it). I found myself tearing up several times during the film, which really says very little about its quality because for God’s sake, I cried during “Runaway Bride” which I believe might be the worst movie ever made. At the very least, it’s the worst movie Julia Roberts ever made.

While I don’t have much to say about the actual film – other than I liked it pretty well but thought that it wasn’t as good as the series – I was really interested in the audience. When I walked in (alone), I saw another woman my age, perhaps younger, toward the front. Another solitary woman sat all the way in the back, she was a little older than me. Two girlfriends sat in the middle of the theater. A few minutes after I walked in, two additional older women came in, each by themselves. One of them sat behind me.

Now, I haven’t seen a movie alone in nearly ten years, though I used to do it a lot in the late 90s. And Sex and the City seems like a friend kind of movie, the kind of movie women go to see in packs. So why were so many of us alone?

I know I was drawn to the friendships in the series – the kind of friendships that are like a marriage without all the paperwork. I haven’t had a friendship like that in a long, long time, unless you count the one I have with my sister. Seeing it on screen, even though I know it wasn’t real, made me a little sad. Some people do have friends like that.

I have struggled with making friends since moving here. My problem is I don’t have the time to devote to a friendship like I used to. I can’t go out for drinks after work or out dancing on the weekends. I can’t spend an hour on the phone at night or Saturday afternoons at the mall. And what’s left? What do I have to give?

I sipped my Diet Coke in the darkened theater and listened to the other women laughing in the theater around me, and I wondered what their stories were.

I like things the way I like them. End of discussion.

I was tagged by Vixen at Vixen’s Den.

The Rules:

• Link the person who tagged you
• Mention the rules on your blog
• Tell about 6 unspectacular quirks of yours
• Tag 6 fellow bloggers by linking them
• Leave a comment on each of the tagged blogger’s blogs letting them know they’ve been tagged

 

 My quirks:

1.    I like to drink milk out of these blue glasses we have. We drink milk (skim) every night with dinner, and if there is just one blue glass and then the rest clear glasses left, I always take the blue one. If Dave does the milk pouring and gives me the clear glass, I am slightly irritated. But I can’t say anything. Because it’s weird.

2.    I only wash my hair every other day, which means I only get on our elliptical machine every other day (then wash the sweat out immediately afterward). I am fairly upset if this routine is disturbed. My hair is color-treated (what? You thought I was really a blonde?) and gets really dried out if I wash it too much. Zoot finally gave me the courage to admit this publicly.

3.    I hate the texture of mushrooms, especially on pizza, but eat them because my daughter loves them. And I’m too lazy to pick them off.

4.    I hate shopping, except grocery shopping. I think this is a function of having no money to spend at the mall. I have a feeling that if I could buy whatever I wanted, I’d like shopping a lot more.

5.    I am nearly thirty-two years old and I still sleep with the same blanket I’ve had since I was in third grade. Whenever I go on business trips – or leave the house for an extended period – Dave washes the blanket. I hate that. It is falling apart. I sew it. Soon it will disintegrate and I’m very worried about what I will do. I sometimes wish I could have my blankie at work with me so when I get stressed I could rub its silk edges and calm myself.

6.    I can flip my tongue over completely, a hereditary trait from, I think, my father. I can also wiggle my ears (not the ear lobe, the entire ear), which I think I got from my mother. I hope I didn’t confuse which parent passed on which oddity. That would be embarrassing.

 I tag:

Mandy at Piaku

Erin at The State I Am In

Christina at Rockin’ the Suburbs

That’s only half the required number. I suck.

 

Potty training, part one of what will probably so many parts you never come back here again

R will be 2 ½ next week. We’ve been potty-training her in a casual sort of way for a few months now. I’ve had a pretty laissez-faire attitude about the whole thing – all my friends say it will happen when she’s ready, it will be sudden and then it will be done.

We have a little bit of history here – she showed some interest early last fall, and we got a potty and started sitting her on it with some regularity. Within six weeks, she developed a bladder infection, kidney reflux and sustained some damage to her kidneys. She’s now on medication that supposedly makes her urine sterile. After that episode last October, we backed off on the potty training.

We’ve recently started again with some vigor – sticker charts and prizes for using the potty. Last Saturday (on the fateful trip to Target), I bought a second potty to keep on our ground floor and some Little Mermaid and Dora panties that she picked out. She went diaperless from late afternoon until bed time Saturday, with no accidents. Sunday morning, I took off her diaper and she continued to use her potty… until she pooped her pants. (When I showed her what happened when she pooped in her pants without a diaper on, she instructed me: “Mommy, you clean it.”)

Because it was Father’s Day and her grandparents were in town, I cleaned her up, dressed her in a pretty sundress – and a diaper.

Now, when I went to pick her up yesterday, she ran to me with joy and jumped into my arms. But she was followed by some of the kids in the four-year-old class who were chanting “Baby Poopypants” repetitiously and wagging their fingers at her. I was horrified.

I looked down at these children and told them, particularly their leader (a little blonde boy in an orange basketball jersey) that calling names wasn’t nice and they could hurt people’s feelings. He immediately justified himself by saying he wore underwear and she wore diapers and pooped in her pants. I told him he was a lot older than her and that he used to wear diapers too. He didn’t care, and the trio went back to chanting. I walked away, wondering a little bit where the teachers were.

R seemed okay, and we played and had a nice evening. Then, when her father was putting her to bed, she said, “Daddy, C called me a big baby and said I pooped my pants.” She remembered. It made an impression. Dave told her that if he did it again to tell him that wasn’t very nice and she wasn’t going to play with him anymore. I thought that was good advice.

I wanted to kick that kid. I wanted to call his parents and tell them what a bully he was being. I wanted to demand that the teachers step in and do something. But I didn’t do any of that. Dave’s advice – letting her handle it – was perfect. And I hope it works.