banned from the end of the world

maura @ 11:19 pm

Gentle readers, have you been waiting with baited breath, wondering how my owies are doing? You have? So sweet of you. Why yes, I’d love to share the gory details, thanks for asking!

(If you were here I’d show you the wounds, but you’re not and the camera is all the way in the other room, and my knee hurts, dammit!)

We’re now on day 6 post-idiotic-falling-while-running-accident, and I’m pleased to say that nearly all of my wounds have stopped oozing. Yippee! A glaring exception is my knee, which is still in pretty bad shape. But this morning Gus said, “Mommy, your face looks better!” He then proceeded to kiss my eyebrows (sort of his security blanket, my eyebrows), so I know he means it.

One thing about injuries, they provide a fantastic vocabulary-boosting opportunity. Did you know that the yellowish-white goo that oozes from an abrasion is called exudate? Did you? Well, now you do.

I ointmented and bandaged myself up on Monday and hobbled into work (damn those 50+ subway stairs), where I was instantly mortified by everyone’s sympathy (yes, I am an idiot, please don’t remind me!). BUT, I’d completely forgotten that one of my coworkers is a bicycle racer, and thus knows a thing or two about road rash. He had some great tips, chief among them this new, cool, cling-wrap-esque bandage that’s actually letting me bend my knee without excruciating pain. Thanks, Xavier!

However, my face, while mostly non-oozy (save for a tiny spot on the bridge of my nose), is still a sight. I now have 3 big and 2 tiny red patches where the ooze used to be. Luckily I can cover them with makeup now, since they’ve dried out (and luckily I still have some coverup from last year’s forehead carcinoma removal, the first of what I’m sure will be many forays into the land of skin cancer). But vanity, thy name is ME, ooh boy. If the carcinoma is any indication, these owies will fade to lovely pale white spots, paler than the rest of my skin. Thanks, Celtic heritage, for giving me that easy-to-scar skin. Off to the pub to drown my sorrows in a pint.

Or not really. Really I am drinking a glass of wine and wondering why I am still awake at 11:05pm. It’s Gus’ fault — he didn’t conk out til after 9:30 tonight, and I gots stuff to do, blogs to read, PTA tshirts to coordinate. Plus, after 11 days of evil heat (ending with a few days of the mid-90s, a temperature that I believe should NEVER be reached at this latitude), it’s a breezy and fabulous 70-ish degrees today. The house is airing out, and the piles of laundry I couldn’t stand to do in our apartment without an outdoor-vented dryer are all lined up for tomorrow morning. All is right with the world.

I suspect Gus, at 3 1/2, may finally be ready to give up his nap. The problem is that he goes to school every day and they nap there. So we have no control over it, really. I guess we’ll just move the bedtime stuff back a bit to accommodate his wakefulness. Drag, though, as that shrinks the evening grownup time evermore. Maybe we can get him to play quietly by himself while we check email. HA hahahahaha! I’m so funny.

in the corners of your mind

maura @ 9:37 pm

I did a hugely stupid thing today: while running to get the bus (wearing slip-on shoes and dragging the folded umbrella stroller beside me, duh) I tripped and did a giant face plant right on the sidewalk. My hands are abraded, my arm has a few scrapes, my knee is angry red hamburger, and my nose + mouth area looks like I got into a fight with sandpaper (and lost). Sigh. What a klutz am I. A friend/neighbor even walked by when I was sitting there on the ground, cleaning myself up with wipes. O, the embarrassment.

Then I had to surrender the day and sit at home with ice on my face + knee, ditching Gus pickup (Jonathan did it, I didn’t just leave him at school forever!) and our afternoon playdate, too. Sigh. I think I have the beginnings of a black eye, too. Gus said, “Mommy, your face is yucky. If I had those owies I would cry. I do NOT want to have those owies. No no no.” Thanks, kid. Luckily he followed it up with an offer of a hug to make me feel better.

And then he insisted that I paint the the toenails of my right foot with his blue nail polish (I’d already done the left foot yesterday). Yes, I recently purchased my son his first makeup: a bottle each of blue and pink nail polish. A little (boy) friend of his at school’s had toenail polish on recently, and Gus has been mighty envious. Of course, he is completely deprived in the makeup department, since I don’t really wear any (except face powder, which he occasionally asks to use and applies with a completely straight, serious face. It slays me.). So I bought him some nail polish. He’s been carrying the bottles around ever since, proclaiming his love for them. He prefers the blue, because it’s his favorite color, but pink is his second favorite.

Meanwhile, I am remembering from high school that, man, I hate nail polish. As my friend IMed me this morning, makes me feel like my nails can’t breathe. I’ve consented to do the feet but there is no way he’s getting that on my fingers, no way in hell.

Between the wretched heat (in the upper 80s with matching humidity here all damn week), some general grumpiness and today’s sidewalk mishap, it occurs to me that this has been a pretty crappy week. EXCEPT for the most excellent new Ivy CD, which Jonathan gifted me for my bday last week and which I really, really love. There are a few tracks that are kind of eh, but the good ones are really, really good. Of course I am doing that thing with music that I seem to not be able to stop doing lately, which is listen to it over and over and over again. Then stop, and move on to a different CD. Obsessive, much?

That’s pretty much it from my world. Tomorrow we are supposed to go to the Poconos with some friends/neighbors for fun + nature, but I might have to call it off if my face hasn’t improved. Drag, too, as I speedy-ordered a new bathing suit for river swimming, having been possessed by sudden and insane vanity this week. Which of course is probably why I did the face plant. See, it all makes sense now!

jump in, jump out

maura @ 12:41 pm

Ooh, I have a whole hour between now and when I need to pick up Gus from school, yay for free time! (And look, I’m getting a handle on that OCD thing by NOT cleaning the bathroom right now, even though it really needs it. Go me!)

Since our last chat, we’ve all been sick here. AGAIN. Last week Gus had an ear infection (Tu), double pinkeye* (Th) and strep throat (Sa) [AGAIN]. I did feel pretty bad for the poor kid — much of the time he just wanted to sit on my lap and watch videos, which he never does normally so he must’ve been feeling pretty bad. Then Jonathan got sick, some sort of strep-like bacterial throat thing, so now I am the only person in the house NOT on antibiotics (though I have a sore throat, too, but it hasn’t gotten worse than that). And of course now Jonathan has a cold. I’ve said it before and I’ll say it again: kids are germy.

* and here I would just like to point out that if you can love your kid when they have evil caterpillars of chartreuse (“a color that I have not seen”) goop coming out of the corners of their eyes, you pass the parenting test.

What was a huge drag about the sick thing was that my mom had come up over the weekend to have a sleepover with Gus, and Jonathan + I were going to have a hotel date (the first time we’d have ever been away from Gus overnight). But then he got sick, so those plans were scuttled. Instead we went out to dinner in Manhattan, which was a very decent alternative. We narrowly got a table at Prune, a new (to us, but really 3 yrs old I think?) place in the East Village. And it ROCKED. ComPLETEly lived up to our expectations. We had cocktails (Pimm’s Cup! I am so girly!) and sweetbreads (deep fried!) and suckling pig with garlic mayo and cornmeal poundcake with strawberries and braised lettuce, peas and artichokes in butter sauce. Yum yum yummy yum. And my new favorite summer wine ever, Ca’ del Solo’s Big House Pink. I’m going to make my neighbors go in on a case of it with us so we can make it our sandbox + baby pool wine this year.

Non sequitur of the post: someone at work got the new Pipas CD (yay iTunes shared library!). Thank you, baba alligator, whoever you are!

Man, am I actually out of things to say? How can that be? What can I talk about? How I read Unconditional Parenting again and it really has made a huge impact, yet even so Gus stuck an index card + a toy coin into the VCR last night, [temporarily, thankfully] busting it? I really want to get the apt. painted but I am too stingy to pay someone and Jonathan is too realistic about our moods to not pay someone? How I am already so very looking forward to our 4th of July visit to J’s parents in Indiana (Gus usually wants nothing to do with us there so we have lots of free time: last year I RAN OUT of books to read!)? How Jonathan’s been pretty busy with work lately so hasn’t had time to work on a new design for this, and I really should make one my damn self? How long my to do list is? Uh oh, I’m starting to freak the OCD again, I should go and load the dishwasher. Later.

the cruelest month

maura @ 8:53 pm

Oh yes, April sure was full, and only sometimes with fun stuff. In brief (and in order):

– We visited my dad in VT
– I got a really heinous head cold
– Me + Jonathan did the dinner/silent auction fundraiser at Gus’ school, which raised a lot of dough (yay!)
– Gus got strep throat and was out of school for almost a week
– I got an AWFUL stomach flu (plus fever!) for 3 days. My mom came up to help and she + Jonathan insisted I go to to the ER, which was actually sort of a nice break from Gus, who’d been a bit feral

And that was that.

Now it’s May and things are better. Finally it’s mostly warm out — Gus and I hit the botanic gardens yesterday after school with our neighbors to play in the pink snow (what he calls the piles of fallen cherry blossoms) and smell the lilacs (purple smell better than white, says he [and I agree]). This weekend our whole building is having a stoop sale which makes me very happy: I get to get rid of our old stuff, make a few bucks, and hang out with the neighbors for a few hours, fun!

I also got four (4!) books out of the library last week, so the great nonfiction drought is over. Powered through the Mamaphonic book* and am really enjoying Unconditional Parenting a lot, much more than I expected, actually. Of course, the problem with any book espousing a parenting philosophy is that what sounds good on paper is often hard to put into practice in the field, when your 3.5 yr old is throwing his shoes down the hall steps rather than bringing them into the house, for example. But I’m game if he is.

*Man I am a SUCKA for the mothering essays. A stone cold sucka. Maybe it’s because they sustained me during that very tough first year with Gus, the no-sleeping-painful-breastfeeding-fussy-baby year. Maybe it’s because I worry that my brain is completely atrophying, and want to reassure myself that other moms feel this way too. Anyway, I at least have stopped buying them — they’re the ultimate literary candy for me and it’s just way more economical to get them from the library.

And anyway, it’s not totally Gus’ fault my brain is mushy. That started before he was born. I’d planned to tell you all about it, but Lost and Alias are almost finished taping and I have a date with 2 weeks worth of unfolded laundry, so I’ll catch you later.

2 things

maura @ 12:19 pm

1) Recently I realized that often when Jonathan or I have to go somewhere at night, we tell Gus we’re going to a meeting. This is often legitimate, like last night when I went to a PTA meeting (I’m way too involved in this fundraiser thing). But other times it’s basically a euphemism for whatever fun grownup thing we’re doing. “Bye, sweetie, Mommy’s going to a meeting. At the BAR down the street, with her FRIENDS, to do some DRINKING.”

2) A very, very, very weird (in a good way) thing happened to me yesterday. Last weekend we went to visit my dad, and we took the stroller (which was stupid in the first place since you drive everywhere in northern Vermont and the damn thing just sat in the trunk of the car all weekend long). And, of course , we forgot to pick it up at the gate at JFK when we got home, DUH. It was just a cheapo umbrella stroller, no great loss, but kind of a pain since Gus is not quite ready to walk everywhere yet. My friend has a stroller that I really like, a little nicer than our old one, so I found a store that carries them and was going to schlep there yesterday afternoon. Except that when I was walking home from the gym yesterday morning the most amazing thing happened. Right there on top of a pile of garbage across the street from our building, there was the EXACT stroller I’d been planning to buy, make, model, color, everything, and seemingly BRAND SPANKING NEW! I unfolded it and rolled it home, and it seems to be in perfect condition. Jonathan wiped the invisible garbage cooties off and confirmed that it seems to be completely brand new, maybe used once. What kind of karma have I accumulated that the perfect stroller just fell out of the sky into my hands? (I guess the kind that don’t mind bitching, because I’ve been complaining mightily about all my work schedule changes the past few weeks).

Now Jonathan and I are convinced that it’s probably possessed, like the numbers Hurley used to win the lottery on Lost. Or maybe it’s just that Lost has been so great recently we can hardly wait til next Wednesday. You make the call.

time, but no mind

maura @ 10:38 pm

Our bags are packed + ready to go, the alarm is set for 6am tomorrow (oof!), and the car to the airport is reserved for our trip to visit one of our 4 grandparental households, which means that I actually have time to write here. I write spazzy little blog entries every freaking minute in my head, it seems, so why can’t I think of anything to say?

I’ve gotten sucked into reading the (mostly parental) blogiverse lately. It’s so easy to bounce from place to place, read about everyone’s kids and the adorable + infuriating things that they do. Let’s add something from my own day to the mix, shall we?

ADORABLE: Gus woke up from his nap today by saying, “I’m ready to wake up now because I’m not tired anymore”, ran out, Ringo Starr bedhead flying, into the living room, and plopped immediately down to play with his fire truck, as if he’d been thinking about it the whole time he was napping, that he Just Couldn’t Wait to get up and play with it again.

INFURIATING: So then our friends S (mom) and E (daughter) called and I invited them to come over to play, and suddenly he fell into a post-nap grump and said he didn’t want E to come over, which bummed me since we haven’t seen them in a while (and, since I worked at home today, I hadn’t seen another grownup all day besides Jonathan). So S and I chatted on the phone for a while, then suddenly Gus said “I do want E to come play with me,” by which point E had fallen into an accidental nap. Grrr. I believe the spirited kids book calls it “negative first reaction” + “slow adaptibility”.

Also, I am out of things to read (at least nonfiction things, which are my chosen things lately), which is my grownup infuriating thing of the day. Still waiting for a few requests to come in at the library, as well as being pissed off that I can’t get the Mimi Smartypants book or the most recent Ayun Halliday books there (a necessity since our puny leisure budget is pretty much all spent visiting child-friendly restaurants with playdates these days, for sanity’s sake [grownups to talk to, plus beer!]). If I had a laptop or miniPC-type thing I could read the blogiverse while Away From My Desk, but I’d rather hunch over a good juicy Why-America-Doesn’t-Support-Families or Anti-Consumerism tome these days. These are the kinds of books I’ve been into recently (minus the homeschooling stuff, I just can’t get behind that, but maybe that’s because Gus is such a huge spaz). Yes, I’m a humorless hippie, you can stop reading right now.

in my head

maura @ 1:36 pm

So I keep writing these Very Long Blog Entries in my head recently, but haven’t had the time or inclination to actually make an entry. We’ve had a bad sleeping week (restless-sleeping kid, too many late nights watching crappy movies [really, how could I even think I could like this? I hate all of those actors!], and insomnia flare-ups) and are still catching up.

At this point I would also like to say that, although I am a parent, and many posts here will undoubtedly describe the incredibly cute and/or frustrating things that my 3 yr old does, This Is Not A Parenting Blog.

That being said, Gus has decided this week that his chosen fashion look is short sleeved tshirt on top of long sleeved tshirt. It’s really cute, like a little teeny skater boy. I like it much better than the last, thankfully short-lived fashion look, which was monochromatic.

Weird kid question of the week: he came home from school yesterday with yogurt splattered on his BACK. How is that possible?

Still working on the design of this thing. All of the other sections are pretty much liberated from their annoying, so-last-millennium frames, and I have a temporary top frame solution to tide me over until Jonathan’s made me a nifty new top + left nav to wrap this all in. But I will need to learn myself some CSS — the spaceyness of this blog is wigging me out.

p.s.

maura @ 9:21 pm

Plus, we took the young master swimming today (read: he sat in a floaty and we pulled him around the pool) and thus I am tiiiiiiiired. Whine whine whine, already off to a good start in blogland.