biblio-ADD and other things

Hello from the land of Burt's Bees Lemon Butter Cuticle Cream. I finally cracked and decided $5.99 for a giant container of lovely smelling cracked-cuticles preventative. We're talking years of ghastly nail care here. I don't require bright, shining, enviable nails, but merely an un-ravaged set. Clean, neat and healthy, or as much as they can be taking into account my daily channeling of anxiety into "evening" them all out. With my teeth.

I'm in Book Purgatory once again and it's a terrible, terrible place to be. M. Rescue me. Somebody! The terrible thought entered my brain the other day that I no longer even like books, that they all suck, a waste of time. I cannot even believe the neurons and synapses conjured that assessment, however brief. But nothing is holding me. For months now, I haven't finished one single thing. The next book club selection, which happens to have a fabulous cover of a women flashing a field of cows - midwestern breast cancer story - turned out to be a self-published abomination wherein the "author" copy/pasted her CaringBridge journal into a single document and called it a book. Reader comments and all. Bah. Everything else, meaning the real books I've checked out from the library to try, have failed to hold me. Too dark, too fluffy, too predictable, too copying of the latest popular thing.

Getmeoutofhere.

And I get that death is a part of life, but lately there seems to be a surrounding wave. Excessive hearse sightings. News of passings-on that have been both expected and not. Two and three degrees away, rather than the usual five or six. I don't know what to make of it all except to take in the beauty of remembrances, grieve with the most closely affected, ponder the great beyond...

***
Okay it's days later and that clearly was the middle of a thought or even a sentence.

I did find a book! That so far I like, maybe 35 or so pages in with no ship-jumping thoughts or anything. Thanks, RHE, for being that engaging of a writer. Your thoughts on Martha Stewart's Housekeeping Handbook alone earn a gold star. I'm on exactly the same page with those daily, weekly, monthly and yearly checklists and am totally living in squalor, too.

I've had "Happy Blog-iversary" in my head since Friday at least. Haaaaaaaaaaaaappy Blog-iversary. Woo! Nine years seems both impossible and completely accurate. I do miss the pre-FB, pre-Pinterest, pre-Tumblr days of blogging, when the writing/content took center stage. Now it's all popping in occasionally whenever we can spare a moment away from the mini-micro blogs that are tweets and FB posts. Onward, as ever, but I'm always given pause by the question of, what did we lose?

Also, if I were to create a pie graph of personal energy spent each day - well maybe I should do that. Graph it. Because maybe I'm not really aware of where it's all going. I suspect stressing over failed expectations? Like I'm not doing enough, ever, or whatever I do accomplish somehow lacks. Which is frustrating because I'm doing the best that I can? And it's not only my voice that I hear putting forth this assessment. And some distant part of me is also aware that were those voices to be silenced, I'd probably a whole lot more energy, even creative energy, to expend.

Moving on from that entirely subjective thought strand, let's wish one fourth of our readership a happy birthday! Yay, AA!

The weather-cooling brought on by the formidable Karen-storm occurred behind schedule but is here at last. Windows are thrown open.
A field trip to the farm tomorrow with a group of tiny people is on tap. (Their parents will all be present, too.)
Yesterday I did a 1-mile walk in the sun to help stop hunger - a much different experience than last year's chilly gray 5K walk. I brought a puppy and a 5-year-old with me, so a mile seemed wise.
Today I folded laundry and made ribbon dancers for my preschoolers while watching ProRun. Queue the Helen Meltdown in 5-4-3... I'm so glad TimGunn told her to suck it up in his TimGunn way. And I love Heidi's charming attempts at Americanisms, like "the dangling sausage," and "hitting it on the nail." Also, some surprisingly kickass looks? I'm a little bored of the whole inevitable duking it out among the lower-ranked, but whatever. Still do NOT agree with the Kate oust... rooting for Dom maybe, ultimately? We'll see.

Ah, behold our blog-look. Behold us! I await the questions from another quarter of our readership. I will make it a point to blog just about BUGS next post.
For now - sleep.
xoxoxo to you,
pen

preggotory

There are approximately 6 weeks left until this baby, Baby N.Lo, arrives. Could be more, could be less, but thereabouts. Am I ready? Mmm, yeah, sure why not. I have to buy diapers, still, the little teeny-tiny ones that are at the same time adorable and incomprehensible. I've got plenty of clothes, a year or more's worth, really, thanks to a gracious friend of mine who loaned me everything for a boy. The room's painted, the crib's got a fresh sheet on it, even, and of course has been evacuated; Bug will have nothing to do with it ever again. Bug herself is about as aware as a 19-month-old can be that she's going to have a baby brother soon. She knows there's a baby in her mommy's belly, though frankly, she thinks there's also a baby in her belly, in J.Lo's belly, and occasionally in my boobs. Ah, Bug.

As far as mental preparations, I'm getting there. My biggest hangup at the moment is labor, because though I've been through it once and it wasn't as horrifying as anticipated, you just never know. Whenever I thought about it in the moments leading up to it, the first time, I thought I might end up dead. But then when I actually went through it, I kept waiting for the contractions to feel more painful than putting in your contact lenses the morning after cutting up jalapeno peppers? And they never did. Although I did have an epidural, which helped immensely, despite it also being the freakiest part of the whole ordeal. Supposedly, labor and delivery for subsequent pregnancies is easier than the first time around, but I feel a healthy amount of fear is just that: healthy. And being prepared for complications, or whatever. Or even having one of the doctors you don't like being on call that day, that would suck, too.

So I've got to start reading, just to refresh. Although nothing in a book can truly prepare you for the actual experience, it does at least help to know the different phases of labor, which I have, as a defense mechanism, completely blocked out. And I have to pack, although at this point I'm running out of clothes that fit, so it seems to me that whatever I'd want to wear at the hospital, I'm going to need beforehand, right? I'm still puzzling over this one. Especially the underwear: I am totally running out of underwear that fits, and I am too cheap, too lazy, too stuck in the principle of the thing to go out and buy more.

In the meantime, it would be lovely if someone could paint my toes. And I can't wait to be able to roll all the way over, or even just side to side without feeling like the bottom half of my body is going to crumble away from the top. Oh, and the Tums, I won't miss popping those like Pez out of my giant Costco bottle all day and all night long.

All in all, I feel pretty ready for this baby to be here now, though I know in truth that it's trading in one set of problems for another. Heartburn for sleep deprivation, agility for patience and sanity, etc. A Bug who's frustrated because she can't have 12 popsicles a day versus a Bug who's frustrated because she can't have undivided parental attention all day. Hmmm. It's going to be interesting, that is the only given.