A decision

Here's what's happened on the house situation since I last posted:

1. Husband and I went over to see it. It is as lovely inside as I remembered, except for the kitchen. Which is way more stunning than I remembered. It was all I could do to keep from standing there agog at the thought that the kitchen could just possibly be all mine. It is very spacious, has polished granite tile counters, stainless steel appliances including a gas stove, a huge butcher block kitchen island with 3 stools, a bumped-out sunny window sill in which you could grow an entire herb garden, many white cabinets with stainless steel knobs, and a walk-in pantry. (Oh please please PLEASE don't let anyone else have this kitchen!)
2. I called the neighbors the next day to tell them that we wanted to make them an offer on the house next weekend, and they were enthusiastic, telling us that they were in no hurry. I took this to mean that they wouldn't put it on the market or talk to an agent until we did so. I hope that's true. The husband of the couple is in the Army Reserve and is being shipped off to Iraq again sometime next week. He said he wants to spare his wife a lot of work selling the house on her own and so will hopefully welcome a chance to get the house dealt with while he's still here. Cross your fingers for us.
3. Husband went off to Atlanta to attend an elderly uncle's funeral, and so we've done nothing else in the way of researching, talking about finances, or that sort of thing.
   
4. I can't sleep for imagining our new lives in this lovely house. Not to mention the new gardens I suddenly feel just fine about planning and planting there.

I'm occasionally trying to rein myself in here, trying not to wish TOO much that this will happen for us. And then I'm also thinking, 'No, I should want as hard as I can and maybe the Universe will bestow this dream house on us, dammit! We love this house! Want! Want! Want! Love! Love!"

It's going to be hard to wait this week.

Big question

Something came up yesterday. One of our neighbors who lives one street over from us told me that she and her husband and 3 kids were going to be selling their house. She thought we might be interested since she'd seen us looking at another house for sale on their street. (This was when Husband was tossing out the idea of buying a bigger house, and I wanted to get a sense of what our options were.) I've had opportunity to look around in this house before because this neighbor has a daughter Sister's age and they've had playdates together. The house is very nice, with glowing wooden floors, lots of windows and light, and a warm feel to it. And it's big.

So I'm asking myself this question again. Could I leave our little house for another one, after all the time and work I've put into the garden? And listen, I HAVE PUT SO MUCH WORK INTO MY GARDEN. But just for the sake of thinking through this, here are the potential plusses to moving to this other house:

1. It's only one street over, so we'd still be living in the exact same neighborhood, with the exact same friendly neighbors.
2. We already know that at some point we would be building onto our current house. If we bought this other house, we'd save ourselves the expense and what would likely be a lengthy disruption of our regular life.
3. This other house has a HUGE screened back porch. If you don't live in the South, you may not understand the importance of the screened porch in this climate. Mosquitoes, y'all. Thick clouds of them for most of the year.
4. The kitchen in this other house is on a par with our extremely big and fabulous kitchen here. No small thing given how many of the kitchens in this neighborhood are original to the late 60's era in which the houses were built. Plus, if you haven't already figured this out, I cook a lot.
5. We could bring all of Husband's parents' things from the storage unit, and this would make Husband very, very happy.
6. Betcha that house has a dryer in it. Yes, our current house has no dryer, and if we wanted one here it would have to go outside in the utility room because that's the only place to put one.
   
7. Might I hope for a sewing/craft room? I think I might, and I am practically breathless at the thought of it.

The disadvantages to moving into that house?

1. I love my garden, and it would be hard to walk away from it. Especially if the new owners, like, cut it all down to install a fucking lawn or something. Which morons will do!
2. I like having a small house. It feels cozy to me, and there's not as much cleaning to be done. Have I mentioned how much I hate to clean? I really hate to clean.
   
3. When we did decide to add on to this house, we could add on just as we pleased. It could be funky, we could use green building materials and solar panels and shit like that.
4. We'd likely have to buy more furniture for that other house, and what if we couldn't find it all on Craig's List? Expensive.
   
5. And just our spending in general would be tighter. We have a nice chunk of equity in this current house, but still. The other is substantially more money than we spent on this one.
6. I'm just really attached to this house. It's our first house! We planted a dogwood tree when we first moved here in honor of Husband's mother! Husband built a treehouse for Sister here!
   

It's a tough question. I'll keep y'all posted on what transpires. If anything does, it's likely to happen quickly because these neighbors want to act once school lets out in 2 weeks. This is a lot to think about...

Bonus Sister conversation

Sister: Mom, what would you do if you had unending money?
Me: Hmmmm....I'd probably try to feed everyone who was hungry.
Sister: Yeah. (pause) You know what I would do?
Me: What?
Sister: I'd give a million billion trillion jillion scrillion dollars to the poor. And then I'd make sure I had some things for college and good shoes and things like that that I need.
Me: (beaming with pride at her priorities) I think that's great, honey.
Sister: (long pause) And then I might go to the store and see if there was something nice.
Me: Mmm.
Sister: (another long pause) And I'd probably buy a limo.
Me: (startled out of a warm motherly reverie)
Sister: And a pool. And a nice house out in the middle of the forest. But also a mansion. And of course I'd get about a million pets!

The list went on for the rest of our dog-walk. But at least her first instinct is to be helpful, huh? Funny girl.

Myself again

Ladies, I lost those 5 pounds I gained over the weekend. But before you hate me for my amazing success with the miraculous 5-day no dessert/no drinking diet, let me hastily assure you that it was only because it was 5 pounds worth of PMS bloating. Which I'd almost forgotten about given that it's been almost TWO YEARS since I experienced it. It has been a long time since I was this happy to have a period, but let me just say here that I am damn happy to have a period! It gives me the most cheerful, optimistic feeling that I have my body back to myself again. I AM still nursing Bean, but only two times a day, when she wakes up and as part of her bedtime routine, and I plan to wean her completely by July. My boobs are totally shrinking back to their miniscule, non-nursing size. I can wear things during the days that don't require access, fer chrissakes! Feel the love, y'all. This is worth having itty bitty ones again.

Baby talk

My sweet baby Bean could walk at 10-months old, earlier than Sister who took her first steps at 10-1/2 months. Sister then followed up this gross motor achievement very quickly with words, talking in small sentences by 12-months old. She is still very verbally adept, spending her free time dreaming up and writing stories, complete with accents and dialect from the characters, even. She keeps a little poetry notebook that she likes to scribble in throughout the day and read to me from at breakfast. Oh, and she talks. A lot.

Bean? Not so much. I know that Bean is only 13-months old, but forgive me for feeling like it's a little late for her not to be talking, given Sister's verbal prowess. The thing is, I think that Bean is perfectly capable of talking, but just doesn't want to for some reason. Here's a list of all the words that she has said over the last month or so--and some she's said a few times--never to be repeated.

Mama
Papa
doggie
kittie
banana
nursing (Well, actually "nuh-nuh." And o.k., now that I think about it, she does still use that one to mean nursing and food in general. Don't stand between that child and food.)
yeah
that
uh-oh (Spent a whole day saying that one after hearing a little boy her age saying it, but after that? Nope.)
her sister's name
you go (as in "Here you go.")

She has said all these things, and it's like she wants to make sure we know she CAN say them but just doesn't feel like it again today. Or tomorrow. Or really ever again for that matter.

Bean understands and will follow requests that we make of her (usually). She's quite enamored with just screaming at the top of her lungs right now, thanks very much, so maybe she's just working on that little trick. She communicates very clearly with hand gestures and facial expressions, so maybe there's simply no incentive to talk yet? I don't know what's going on with this one, but I can't help but be a little impatient...

Sister the Brave

On our walk to school this morning, Sister and I found a freshly dead squirrel in the road. Here was the ensuing conversation:

Sister: Ewww, Mom! His eyes are gone and there's just blood there!
Me: Yeah, I think the eyes are usually the first thing to get eaten when an animal dies. The birds come and peck them out.
Sister: Gross! Eating eyes! If I were an animal I would NOT eat eyes.
Me: No?
Sister: No! If I were an animal and I found that dead squirrel, I would pick it up and then go put on my human disguise. Then I would go to the store and buy a grill and some charcoal and I would grill it and invite all my wolf friends over to eat it with me.
Me: You'd have a squirrel cook-out?
Sister: Yeah.
Me: You know, back in the old days people used to eat squirrels just as part of their regular diet. Like squirrel pot pie and squirrel stew and stuff.
Sister: Oh. Hey, Mom! I have a great idea!
Me: Oh yeah? (warily)
Sister: Yeah, for one of our camp weeks this summer we can have science camp. (She's talking about our home "camps" we do with one of her friends.) If we have science camp, we can get some gloves. This part might be a little disgusting, Mom. We can get gloves and then...and then we can...then we can...disinfect that squirrel!
Me: Do you mean 'dissect?'
Sister: Yeah, we can dissect that squirrel! Just cut it in half and dissect it!
Me: Hmmmm. (noncommittally)

God love my fearless, unperturbable daughter. I will miss these conversations very much when she outgrows them.

Fear and loathing in Chapel Hill

Is there any more sure route to a wretched wallow in self-loathing than spending the weekend in South Beach among hordes of perfect, thong-bathing-suit-clad, 20-something, smoothly tanned, utterly cellulite-free, Eurosluts? And then coming back home, stepping on the scale, and finding that you have gained 5 pounds over a weekend? I mean, if there is please tell me now so I can avoid it like the plague. Or like allowing my husband to EVER book us a room at a South Beach hotel again. For the next month, no drinking for me! No dessert! I must exercise regularly! And eat fruit and vegetables as snacks rather than snarfing down half a container of homemade strawberry ice cream or double handfuls of praline pecans!

But other than temporarily despising my puffy, lumpy, splotchy 35-year old body, it was a good trip to Miami. Have any of you ever been there? I spent the first 10 years of my life there, but feel now that it's like visiting another country. Everyone speaks either Spanish or French or maybe Portugese in addition to English. Mostly Spanish though, and you would do well to brush up on yours if you'd like to avoid the tourist trap-type places and try some rockin' authentic Cuban food while you're there. You cannot escape the techno and Latin beat soundtrack blaring at you from hidden speakers and window radios. The music is everywhere.

Children are adored, and every busboy, waiter, hostess, and shop clerk to a person fawned over my Bean, chucking her under the chin and cooing at her to make her grin and grab their fingers. But changing tables or children's menus? Not a single one. I'm not kidding. Nor were there any vegetables to be had at any of the restaurants we went to--only meat and fruit and maybe some pasta. Is that the South Beach diet? Because did I mention that I gained 5 pounds in a single weekend?! I'd steer clear of the South Beach diet if I were you.

The landscape is completely foreign to anything you might know here in the regular South, and certainly to anything in New York or Canada or the like. It's perfectly flat and menacingly lush with huge-leaved vines that can bend metal railings and take down limestone walls. Dozens of types of palms with lizards sunning themselves on the trunks, eyeing you beadily as you approach. All those annuals that we gardeners plant in our flower pots and in our borders every year come from there, where they spread huge, swallowing up highway medians and spilling into sidewalks. Giant ficus trees drip branches to the ground where they root and become huge trees themselves, twisting up their parent tree like dysfunctional, eternally glomming children. Seriously, they're fascinatingly grotesque.

Husband and I visited the Fairchild Botanical Garden where Dale Chihuly, a famous glass sculptor, was exhibiting some incredible works. Once Husband gets our photos uploaded to Flickr I'll link to them to you can all see how amazing his stuff is. Oh, and did I mention that we also got to see (and sniff!) the blooming Amorphophallus? So stinky!

Leaving town

"Blog" is one of the things on my extensive, pre-trip to-do list today. But I'm in such a hurry to get other things done before the baby wakes from her nap that I'm not even sure what to write about. I know I had something last night before I went to sleep, but it escapes me. So I give up.

Blog? Check.

And now off to the land of the 20-something Eurosluts of South Beach. I'll be the one by the pool in the old lady skirt suit. Ciao, y'all!

Approaching 35

I've just become aware that I am advancing into another age bracket on surveys. In just 2 months, I will no longer be part of the 18-34 party crowd. I'll be joining the 35-54 geezer set. What's more, I have only a couple more months to do any egg donation to help infertile couples if I were so inclined. They don't want 'em anymore after you hit 35. But really, do I need any more proof of my advancing age than the fact that I bought a bathing suit with a skirt on my annual bathing suit shopping trip the other day? And that it was so comfortable and I felt so sensibly covered that I, in fact, bought two of them? Sigh. When did this happen to me?

Intermission

Just a brief break from gardening here while I rehydrate and wait for the lively Miss Bean to finally fall asleep...

We're going to Miami this weekend because Husband has a radio interview. I'm just tagging along for fun, seeing as how it IS the city of my birth and all. WhatI care about is that there will be ocean, there will be tasty food that I didn't cook, and there will be no house full of beasts at my heels. Heavenly.

Sister isn't going, but I just want to say here that my darling older child has been so sweet to me lately. 3 examples of her wonderful new attitude:

Example 1: A couple of weeks ago, Sister told Husband that she thought he was mean. When he inquired why, she told him it was because I did all the work. (Holy crap, someone is noticing!)

Example 2: I was gardening the other day while Sister hung out at my side, idly picking through dirt clods for worms and interesting bugs. She looked up at me while I heaved shovelsful of clay out of a hole and remarked, "If I was going to marry someone it would be you. You're such a hard worker, Mama." Awwww!

Example 3: Rats, I can't think of the 3rd thing at this point. I'm still pretty sleep-deprived, so my brain sort of shorts out sometimes and I'm feeling around in a mental black pit. But at any rate, Sister has been solicitous in the extreme, offering to help me when I'm carrying groceries, my purse, and a 24# baby into the house, volunteering to entertain Bean when it is the witching/dinner-preparation hour and Bean is beginning to fuss. She politely asks for things and doesn't stomp and whine when I say no. She clears her plate--and glass and dirty napkin and even a condiment or two--without complaint.

The new and improved Sister. God love her.

Joy to the Mamas!

I want to thank all of you who offered me such kind reassurances yesterday. I know intellectually that I'm not alone in finding being a mama sometimes really, really hard, but it is SO helpful to hear it from real-live mamas out there. Thank you.

Husband informed me last night that this is Mother's Day Weekend. Granted, the context was rather raunchy and a thin excuse for what Husband hand in mind at that moment, but I'm going with it! I'm going to take the weekend off from blogging and throw my mama-weight around while I've got the chance. Ask for some things to get done around here! Sleep in! Go shopping for a bathing suit on my own! Have some tasty cocktails!

In the meantime, I hope all of you mothers out there have a lovely Mother's Day. Hope you are all showered with love and presents from your respective children and spouses. You deserve every last bit of it.

The dark side of being a mother

As should be pretty clear now after a whole week's worth of grousing here, things have been kind of rough for me lately. I've been having fantasies for the past few days of starting a secret blog that would contain only posts about my worst moments, my darkest thoughts, the stuff I don't REALLY want regular readers of this blog to know about. Things like how the dog's shrill and frequent barking during the course of my day make me so pissed off I want to boot his little 10-pound body across the kitchen. Or the shitty things that come out of my mouth sometimes when Sister is talking to me about her father or her grandma. Or how absolutely enraged I get when Sister is jerking my chain deliberately and the baby's screaming at me and I'm so damned sleep-deprived. About how I sometimes lose it and yell. Or how sometimes when I can't figure out how to help Bean stop crying I'll just give up and let her sit there and cry and make myself a cup of tea and not look at her.

Motherhood can get ugly. I can get ugly, but I seldom talk about how really bad it can get, and most of the rest of you mamas out there don't either, I don't think. I, for one, am not that brave. The rest of you are either the same way or not nearly as bad-tempered as me. That's what's different to me about blogging and journalling, I guess. I don't know most of you out there, but I've come to care what you think of me anyway. Besides, there's something a bit scary to me about keeping a sort of alter ego/evil twin blog. If I regularly indulge and express all that dark stuff, would it become more valid or stronger? Maybe. So I probably won't do it.

Or if I did, I wouldn't let any of YOU know.

An off kind of day

My timing is completely off today. Bean was up for 2 hours last night, for the second night in a row. Oddly, I'm still in a decent mood and don't feel tired at all. Which is fortunate, because I scheduled a friend to come over to play with Sister today after school and it would be very sad indeed if I was being bitch-mama-from-Hell again.

Bean slept in til 8:30 this morning to make up for her lost sleep, so I squeezed in some errands after breakfast, knowing she wouldn't nap for awhile. We went to Target to shop for canned goods for a food drive and school supplies for the school social worker's supplies drive. Then over to the fancy gourment mega-mart for one measly $4 can of smoked paprika. Never heard of it? Me neither, til I ran across it in a new cookbook. It's going to make its way into "Smoky Turkey Shepherd's Pie" or something like that tonight. Smoke-flavored dinner with a mashed potato crust ought to be something everyone will be happy about around here. They haven't been totally down with the lamb loin chops and the rosemary-prociutto corn cakes and such lately, God love 'em. Anyhow, I got some laundry done, some lunch eaten, some tidying about the house, blah blah blah. And then I was all ready to go get Sister from school. Except that she doesn't get out for another 2 hours. Strange.

I cut out another of Bean's nursing sessions so that she's down to nursing just 3 times a day now. My boobs are about to explode at the moment, but that's not the only reason I'm kinda sad. I find myself not quite emotionally ready to wean my sweet baby, who so clearly loves to nurse. She just loves to be close to me and I know I'm going to miss that when it's over. Being the primary caretaker does mean that I am the preferred parent, so if I've been complaining a lot about it lately, I should also go on record as saying this gig isn't all bad.

Why I want

As a recently-created stay-at-home mom, I think a lot about gender roles these days. Our household is pretty traditional in some ways--my Husband works to support us all, I stay at home with the baby and take care of all the cooking, cleaning, errand-running, etc. We made the choice to do this and in general I'm happy to be able to do it. I think of myself as still a pretty modern woman and my Husband as an enlightened kind of guy. Then I realized that on some level we're maybe not as enlightened as I assume.

Example #1:

Husband goes out running with his buddies nearly every Saturday and Sunday. These are his long runs and he's usually not home til close to 11:00. (We get up at 6:30'ish, so that's half the day for us.) Plus, he'll often run an errand or 2 while he's already out--maybe he'll pick up a dozen bagels from the bagel shop, or run by Radio Shack to look at fancy new radios to replace our old kitchen model. I'll find out about the extra stop usually after he comes breezing back home.

Contrast this with the following typical conversation:

Me: "Honey, would it be o.k. if I ran out for an hour tomorrow to go get a haircut? Would that give you enough time to get a run in? I could go ahead and give the girls lunch..."
Husband: "Sure, I'll be home at 11:00. Do you want to make an appointment for afterwards?"
Me: "O.k., they could probably do that. And I'll feed the girls."
Husband: "Great."
Me: "Oh, good! I've been needing a trim for a month now! It shouldn't take long." And then when I return home I thank Husband excessively and, still feeling a little guilty, take over watching the girls so he can get on the computer for a couple of hours or maybe leave again to go sock shopping or whatever.

Example #2 (which, pathetically, happens every morning):

Me: "Honey, can you keep an eye on Bean while I go use the bathroom?"
Husband: "Sure. Come here, little Bean!"
Bean: (squeals)

Contrasted with:

Husband: (silence as he walks back to the bathroom)
Me: (playing with the baby)

Now, don't get me wrong. I feel no resentment for Husband not seeking my permission for a visit to the bathroom. Nor do I resent him for going on runs every weekend and having that time with his friends outside of the house. It's something important to him, and I only wish I was that disciplined about getting in some exercise. I DO wish I didn't think twice about seeking free time for myself. I resent maybe just a little that I am the primary caretaker of our girls, even knowing that's how Husband and I chose together to set up our life.

I remember that the first year of a baby's life is the most intense from when Sister was a baby. Bean has just gotten through her first year and it's getting easier, but I'm feeling like I REALLY need a break now. I'm just not even sure what would make it better at this point, but I think it would have to be something big. A good night's sleep only works for the next day, and otherwise my bad attitude is just unfixable. What's a burned-out mama to do?

Today, I want...

Well, today I want nothing actually. My hair looked good and I also slept 9 hours. (Yes, I said 9 hours!) The clouds and rain have begun clearing, Sister was being a sweetie, Bean took naps and ate proper meals and tried several times to say "Mama." I've now got a cocktail under my belt, Husband has the kids playing outside, dinner was a tasty lamb dish I've never made before from a new cookbook, and all the dishes are washed up already. This was a good day!

I thought about maybe wanting a coffee table since our old, chewed-by-cats one was sold at our yard sale. And one of those media center-thingamabobbies with doors would prevent Bean from mashing all the buttons on the stereo components and throwing CD's to the floor several times a day. But I don't feel all sullen because we don't have those things, or even that I have zero chance for a little peace and quiet or a clean living room or any of those other things I've been wanting--nay, feeling ENTITLED TO--this week because, dude, I'm a stay-at-home mom who nevertheless works her ASS off. I'm feeling pretty content at the moment, if the truth be told.

But tonight I'll get only about...oh, 6 or 7 hours of sleep or thereabouts, because I'll push my luck and invite Husband to watch a movie and have another cocktail and a bowl of ice cream with hot fudge sauce and then maybe some married luv. We'll do all those things and by morning I'll forget how nice this day was because of the not-enough-sleep thing, and I'll no doubt be back to my pissy old self tomorrow. Kind of sad, but also kind of reassuring that I am THAT predictable to myself at this point.

More want

Another thing I want: silence. I'd like maybe a half-day of silence around here. No dog hysterically barking at the growling, ferociously screaming cats. No baby yelling if I put her down. No one asking me for cookies or popsicles or yet another granola bar or more Easter candy or playing outside 30 seconds before I put dinner on the table. No one contradicting me when I answer a question put to ME, dammit. Just everyone being quiet for a little while. Maybe the windows would be open and there'd be a breeze blowing through the screens and I could hear the wind chimes out on the front porch. Like that'll happen anytime soon, but a mama can say she wants it, right?

Week of Want

Husband asked me last night what I wanted for Mother's Day. Ha! I am a veritable cess pit of want, but my Husband doesn't REALLY want to hear about all the things I want that would make my life better or easier or more glamorous or what have you. So I told him that all I wanted that day was to be able to sleep in and then have pancakes and bacon for breakfast. Which is definitely something I want, but by no means EVERYTHING I want.

So I'll let Husband and the girls take care of the sleeping in on Mother's Day for me, but I find myself still wanting to confess all the other things I want for Mother's Day, dammit, frivolous though this may be! And if your dear spouse is anything like mine and doesn't really want to be troubled by the yawning abyss of your wants then all you mamas out there, please lay it on me here in the secret comment cave. I promise not to be offended or panicked by your needs so hanker away! Better yet, post about your desires on your own blog and tell me that you did so in my comments so I can check it out. As far as I'm concerned, this is our week to long, to need, to lust, to daydream! Yeah, I said a whole week. One day is hardly enough to celebrate all our mama-fabulousness, y'know?

And just to start things off before the baby wakes fully and I must rush off to lunch-and-entertainment duties, here's something I want. I want very, VERY much for all the piles and boxes of Husband's papers and magazines and mail, both opened and unopened, to be cleaned out of our living room! I want them to be dealt with, filed, tidied, tossed, burned, shredded, made into an origami mobile, whatever! I just want them gone. That would be a fabulous Mother's Day gift for me.

What about y'all?

I.B.T.C.

Oh good! So I'm not the only one who knows that the above acronym stands for "Itty Bitty Tittie Committee!" (Hey, Pie Maker, I wish I could say that 27 years had changed MY membership in that illustrious club, but sadly it hasn't.)

Well anyways. So yeah, since I'm feeling in a tell-all mood today, let it hearby be known by all of you out there who don't know me personally that I've got itsy bitsy leetle tiny boobies. And I don't care what pervert out there knows it. In fact, I don't MUCH care that they're that small anymore. They are, if you must know, not even a cup-size A. Seriously, I've gone bra shopping before, purchased an A-cup, and found that it's all puckered and baggy when I get it home. On the other hand, I've nursed 2 babies just fine. They are fully functional as far as I can tell. And--get this!--they haven't begun sagging yet in my mid-30's because they're just not affected that much by gravity. There's not much there TO be affected by gravity.

Bra-less, then, I have historically worn black and dark blue, or maybe dark-patterned, clothing items up top. You can't see through them, see, to tell that I have no bra on. At least that's what I tell myself. Lately, though, I've become enamored with the idea of wearing COLORS. Y'all take that for granted, don't you? That you can wear a bra and then any colored shirt on top of it that you want, right? For members of the I.B.T.C., though, it ain't that simple. And don't tell me 'wear a camisole,' by the way. A camisole is a layer, and I'd like to see YOU wear 2 layers of shirts during one of our 100-degree summers. Meh.

This leads me to my big confession, which I must share with SOMEONE, since I'm too mortified to tell this to my husband yet. I decided to just suck it up and go bra shopping once and for all the other day. Did I go to one of those famous bra shops where no-nonsense salesladies claim to be able to fit anyone? No, I did not because they don't exist down South as far as I know. (Plus, how embarrassing would THAT be?)

No, I went to Target. To the training bra section of Target. Where next to underwear in my almost 8-year old daughter's size, they also carry bras in what is apparently MY size. My size is 36. Just 36, okay? No cup size at all, thanks. Just a stretchy panel with straps that is 36 inches in circumference, and it fits my nearly flat torso perfectly.

I am alternately mortally embarrassed that I am nearly 35 and still wearing a training bra, and just thrilled that this summer I will get to wear white shirts. A whole new color palette awaits me! Just, you know, please don't mention this to my husband.

Still here...

I haven't blogged in nearly a week, but I still exist! I AM still among the living--though just barely lately, it feels like. Bean is sick again and sleeping poorly indeed. I also just have so much going on these days. I'm not getting to bed til close to midnight, and with getting up at least a couple of times a night before waking up for the day around 6:30, I.am.wiped.out. And I can't figure out why my days are so much longer now! I mean, you'd think I was working a full-time job outside the home, but, well, I'm not. I'm still doing household chores after the kids are in bed--and I'm not talking about optional stuff like dusting and scrubbing toilets. (Um, yeah, scrubbing toilets IS optional in this household, thanks.) I'm talking about packing Sister's lunch for the next school day and folding laundry so we all have clean underwear--that sort of stuff. But maybe I should take a look at my domestic priorities. Perhaps my standards for cleanliness and orderliness have risen now that I'm staying home and see this place all the time. We can't have THAT now, can we? Oh nononononono.

Anyhow, I'm probably preaching to the choir. Or complaining to the equally domestically oppressed. Or whatever. So I'll stop my whining now. I've had a post about the I.B.T.C. simmering in my head for the past week, and maybe if I can manage to go to bed early enough tonight it will all come out in lightly amusing, crystal clear prose tomorrow.

So until then...oh, wait! 10 points for the person who can say what the I.B.T.C. is. I'll give you a hint--it was a terrible club to be in back in junior high school...