Once More with Feeling.

HOT WATER! WE NEED HOT WATER!! HOT WATER!!

This cutie pie...

is having her own cutie pie.....now-ish.

I saw Emily this past weekend and hung out with her on her due date (12/17).  Let it be known, that Emily's strengths do not lie in her ability to be, um, what's the word...patient. Child in belly or not. Now I know that the final push (heh) of carrying a child can make your average patient person a bit ..."WTF? WHY isn't he/she here? Is it personal? Is it me?" but I thnk Emily really and truly felt that her child would be prompt. 

Because I am the helpful, older sister and having read like, no books on the subject, I subjected her to my "tried & true" methods of getting the baby to "get wid it".

My methods included:

- 1 jumping jack, another jumping jack, 2 jumping jacks-back to back.

- trunk twists

- bending forward, bending back as far as she could

-jumping as I held her belly (my methods are very big on the jumping!)

- me thumping her belly ala a doctor's exam. Talking to kid.

-moving her belly around

- however, she drew the line as doing back bends/a bridge

- ditto putting her legs straight up in the air so that the kid would go back up the torso and then she stood up the baby would be able to carry that momentum to break through the barrier thing and break her water.

Unfortunately, these efforts yielded nada, and therefore it is my professional unprofessional opinion that she was mailing it in.  I mean, she had to be.   For these methods are TRIED! And also TRUE!  It was also of my non-expert experted opinion that Em wasn't giving her "house guest" a reason to leave; that the accommodations were rivaling that of a Four Seasons (excellent room service, a concierge on call 24/7 to name a few) so, yeah, why would she want to leave all that?  Of course, I did not say that.  What I did say was, "clearly you're not giving her a reason to live."   Thankfully she knew what I was going for with that gem and snarked at my fuck up so much so that she had to hold her belly  and brace herself on her dresser she was laughing so hard. Yes, yes - classy and charming am I.

Because nothing says "good time" to a woman at 40 weeks like "photo shoot", I whipped out my trusty paparazzi camera and forced one upon her.   In the spirit of "you only get one due date, you'll thank me later...probably MUCH later,...but you'll do this and LIKE IT, BITCH," I made her strike a pose. Many a pose. I was going for an In Style new mommies spread (yeah, you can suck it Leah Remini and Denise Richards).  I even picked out  her clothes (fitted tank, yoga pants) and did her hair & make up. 

"Jen, the concealer stick isn't supposed to be used like a magic marker."

"Well, maybe if you got some sleep and helped me out a little, I wouldn't HAVE to." 

"Jen, you're losing me...I'm getting tired of standing here."

"Oh, suck it up. GOD! You make everything so difficult when I am just trying to do something nice for you."

We love each other. Really.

Only a few are on Flickr but in the whole series - all of them ( ALL!) you can't hear it but there was a litany of foul words being hurled in my general direction through her gritted teeth and smile (always maintaining her smile tho!  She is nothing if not a professional! A moody professional, but a professional nonetheless.)

"Okay, Em, get down on the floor."

"You want me to go down...on the floor?!"

"Yes, I wanna take some shots there."

[Shaking head in disbelief] "Uh...oh-kaaaay, see if I can get there."

And just as I thought, they came out great. Really.  Yeah, I'm sure my Thank You note will be in the mail...yeah, I won't be holding my breath.

After her doctor's appointment yesterday, she was very upset because  in her mind, they were going to induce her.  Two days over - obviously an inducing is in order, right?  They told her if nothing by Monday, then they'd induce her Monday night.

This.....this was not what she wanted or needed to hear.  It was enough to cause a meltdown of sorts.  Lately, I have been calling to check in on her and "Yep, still pregnant" is how she answers the phone.  My call yesterday was met by Kris telling me she couldn't get to the phone as she was just getting through some hard crying.   

Four p.m. she wrote me an e-mail:

"sorry i didn't come to the phone earlier.  i'm sure kris filled you in i just had a mini breakdown and just needed a good ole' fashioned cry.  ya know the kind that makes your head hurt and your nose stuffed beyond belief and then you just fall off to sleep.  I'm just getting frustrated and i'm not even angry just defeated and sad.  even when they say "we schedule inductions and then most women go into labor" was not comforting to me.  hope you have fun at your christmas party.  we'll keep you posted if anything happens (but nothing will i guarantee it) "

Sometime that afternoon, Kris took her out for cheese fries to cheer her up. Awesome.

Around midnight, she was experiencing stomach pains.  Em had thought this was due to the cheese fries.

Nope.

Off to the hospital...and they confirmed that she was starting labor, but for her to go home for awhile as there was no dilation to speak of and to come back when the contractions were getting to the point where she couldn't talk or walk.  Em asked our sister Kate, "if I can't walk, how am I suppose to get there??"  I'm not sure if she was kidding.

Since they sent her home around 4 a.m., she's been sucking it up.  True to Emily form, she would NOT cancel the chimney sweepers.  As she's writhing in pain, there are strangers are in her house, cleaning the chimney.  "You know how hard it was to get them to come out here in the first place??" Later, we'd talk and I'd say, "I bet if Target sold  a contraption to measure dilations, you'd have bought one."  She would've, too. 

As of noon, they've admitted her.   

And so it begins...

 

Tears on my pillow...

Mr.Nice Ass is a Yankee now.

There are no words.

Why didn't I think of this before?

Tonight I got home at 8:30...p.m. As in, I clocked an almost 12 hour workday today.  It kinda sucked. Tomorrow doesn't look much better with a client dinner meeting to boot.  Wednesday I have my office Christmas party which I will probably be late for trying to keep up with work and deadlines and stuff. It'll feel like I'm in summer school while everyone else is at the beach.Thursday night I have my niece for an overnight and taking her to kids day for Friday (which will be the highlight of my week; I think I am just as excited as she is. To wit: she woke up this morning and her first words were, "Mom, today Thursday? Go to Jennie's house?") and like many of us procrastinators, still have Christmas shopping to do. Did I mention the buckets and buckets of work on my desk. Because for us insurance peeps, the rule is that December is the most stressful time of year what with a disproportionate amount of accounts renewing January 1. Seriously, you find yourself thinking, "why didn't I go into a less stressful occupation, like, I dunno, law enforcement?" The idea of getting shot at actually seems more appealing. Or at least a close second.

As I came home to find pizza and wings on the dinner table (yesss!) Mike said to me, "you're gonna be shopping on Saturday, aren't you?" to which I countered, "what's wrong with Sunday? There's gotta be a CVS open, right?"  He added, "yeah, fuck it, 'y'all getting Altoids!'"

This is why I love him. He gets me.

(The Mobil stations sell Altoids, too, right?)

Elephants? Playing soccer? You don't say!

But I do say!

One of my soccer buddies, Shua, went to Thailand over the summer and brought back these interesting pictures (yes, these pics are in lieu of an actual wordy post as work and Christmas prep are driving me nuts. be happy you're getting this! GOD!).  This kinda rates  in the "wouldn't have believed it if I hadn't seen it" category. Well, that and the fact that Shua doesn't strike me as a Liar Liar Pants on Fire.

Glad I don't have to play defense against these guys.  I'm afraid I'd be trampled to my death. As it is, I get pretty banged up when I'm marking a 200 pound dude.

"He shoots! He scores! GOOOOOOOOOOAL!"

Peace out in your treehouse.

Merry Christmas...a little early.

Thanks to Col's pics which she just e-mailed us, that Thanksgiving party just won't die.

If you are in need of a laugh, well here's 2 at my expense (so you can't say I never gave you anything):

"Wellllll I-iiiii.....HEAR THE MUSIC!"

Or....if you prefer:

Hill, you can't say I don't try. I think I almost wet myself when I saw this. Col, this is quite possibly the funniest picture I have ever seen of me. And this INCLUDES THE LAP DANCE ONES.

"She's FIERCE! She's got the INTENSITY! SHE'S A WIN-NAH!"

I have not yet stopped laughing.  Chris' expressions are also killing me.

Thanks, Colleen!

Free Will(imina)

With the recent talk about the women who came before us (hi Roo!), I was reminded of an old Nike print campaign from the early 1990s. These two-page ads which were part of a series that focused on women which had a "subvert the paradigm of what is a Goddess" bent.  It is probably no coincidence that this came around the same time that the US got their first Women's National Soccer Team, won the 1st FIFA World Cup (1991)and Mia Hamm became Nike's new poster girl.  Anyway, I remember reading one in particular and it really knocking my socks off. And at 18 or 19, still at the early stages of trying to figure out who I was and what I would become, it really hit a nerve. So much so, that I had even gone through the trouble of carefully copying  the ad out in perfect block lettering  in red marker and replicating the words that had been in bold or in all caps and posting it on my bulletin board in my bedroom (and later, my first cubicle).   But what I also remember is my mom seeing it and reciting the first half of line one which read in all bold caps, "YOU DO NOT HAVE TO BE YOUR MOTHER" and giving me  look that was definitely not one of pride and her getting irritated that I was apparently embracing this... this dogma which in short read, "Your Mom Sucks! Whatever you do, don't be Her!"  I at least had the presence of mind to call her on it, asking, "Ma, relax...read the whole thing. It's not what you think. Really."  It still didn't win her over or me any points but I didn't feel this need to apologize for having it displayed or the need to defend it either.  Agree to disagree, I guess. 

But I would have thought she would have seen it for what it really was and how it had and continued to apply to her 3 daughters.  See, my parents split came when I was age 12, and my sisters Kate, 11 and Em, six.  And for better for worse,  more or less, we became this self-sufficient, man-free household (unless we're to count my then 5 year old brother as a "man").  As a guy friend of mine called us, we were the "mini-MacGuyvers of Knollwood Drive".  Due to my father "getting custody" of his tools, we in turn got really creative in fixing things in and outside our house.  Hell, I was fixing our lawn mover in the 9th grade.  What I'm trying to say is that I see this as just one example illustrating our strength, our independence and albeit on a really small scale, of how our household was bending "what a girl can be" vs. "what a girl is supposed to be".  What I was embracing back in 1991 was the idea that neither my gender nor my maternal hierarchy was to dictate or predetermine who I was or would be, unless I wanted it to. Unless I chose it to be.

It is almost 15 years later and this ad still resonates with me. I'm pretty sure I have my handwritten version of this somewhere in a box of my old notebooks.

So, without further ado - the ad:

"YOU DO NOT HAVE TO BE YOUR MOTHER UNLESS SHE IS WHO YOU WANT TO BE. YOU DO NOT HAVE TO BE YOUR MOTHER'S MOTHER, OR YOUR MOTHER'S MOTHER'S MOTHER, OR EVEN YOUR GRANDMOTHER'S MOTHER ON YOUR FATHER'S SIDE. YOU MAY INHERIT THEIR CHINS OR THEIR HIPS OR THEIR EYES, BUT YOU ARE NOT DESTINED TO BECOME THE WOMEN WHO CAME BEFORE YOU, YOU ARE NOT DESTINED TO LIVE THEIR LIVES. SO IF YOU INHERIT SOMETHING, INHERIT THEIR STRENGTH. IF YOU INHERIT SOMETHING, INHERIT THEIR RESILIENCE. BECAUSE THE ONLY PERSON YOU ARE DESTINED TO BECOME IS THE PERSON YOU DECIDE TO BE."

For the Guy Who Has Everything.

My father's mother, Mary, has always been my favorite relative.  Because she lives in the Bronx and growing up we lived outside of Boston, we didn't see her as much as we saw my mother's parents who lived nearby. But I adored going to visit her as a kid.  She didn't have a bunch of fancy toys for us to play with or an awesome TV with video games, or a huge yard to play in or anything like that.  But she would let us me, my brother, my sisters and my cousins have free reign over her house. We would dress up in her clothes or play with her make up (consisting all of loose powder and Clinique lipstick and moisturizer), write on a 2.5' wide blackboard (for some reason, it was a huge deal to have control of the chalkboard), and play Nancy Drew/spy/detective throughout the house and side yard.  When we got older, my cousins and my siblings would make up dances in the basement or do comedy routines (well, truth be told, I'd be strong-armed by my cousin Lisa to do impressions for Lisa's amusement. Let's say Lisa could be kinda "convincing").  On occassion, she'd take us to the Bronx Zoo and on one visit during the 7th grade, took us into the city where I bought my first pair of non-"nerd jeans" at Bloomingdale's which were pink and not at all "bell bottom" which had actually gotten me my first compliments from a few classmates.

She's someone with a natural way around kids of any age - allowing us to be who were were- kids, but also treating us with a certain respect so that we didn't feel like we were being treated like...  children, if that makes any sense. We would sit with her and drink tea and have saltines and cream cheese and talk about whatever it was that was on our minds and she'd listen. 

While she's approachable, she's also no-nonsense.  During another visit in the summer after 8th grade, I stayed with her for a whole 2 weeks.  She is the only person on my Absolutely Horrifically Terrible, Rotten, No Good, Very Bad Orthodontic Record who has been able to get me to use my Waterpik, an "oral imperative" for this kid with braces.  I just didn't want to disappoint her or lie to her that I'd used it (which was my normal m.o. - and I tell ya, I'd lied my face off -literally- to both my parents). Looking back, I'm sure if my orthodontist could've had his way, he'd have the courts award her custody of me because I'm pretty sure he'd wept openly at the signs of progress I'd made at my next visit.

After every visit, I did my best to get my parents to stay longer.  Once, I'd even hidden under a blanket in the backseat of my uncle's car.  Eventually, I'd  be forced to make the 4 hour trip back to Boston and cry every. single. time. to the point of hyperventilation - I'd cry saying goodbye, and I'd continue to cry in the car as we made our way up the Henry Hudson Parkway.  To this day, when I visit her at the nursing home, nothing much has changed there other than that I have worked out the hyperventilating part.  And the lump in my throat now hurts twice as much.

In the late 80s, my early high school years, my grandmother suffered a stroke that left her paralyzed on one side of her body and therefore in a wheelchair and also unable to speak with exception of a handful of short words.  It truly kills me that I haven't been able to have a real back and forth conversation with her as an adult.  I'm not the best interpreter when she's trying to communicate either; it usually sounds of me going through lists, "Emily? Brian?  Kate?  Your glasses? They need to be fixed?"  as her vocab consists of "Yeaaaah", "No", and "No way, c'mon".  That's it.  And that last one is a catch-all phrase that can mean anything from I Love You to Let's Go to the Coffee Shop to I Have to Pee.  A few times my name has slipped through and it goes without saying that  has meant the world to me.

Last week, my grandmother called my father at his office. For the first time in 17 years, she said his name, "Steph-en, Steph-en, Steph-en, Steph-en". She said it about 4 times in a row.  My father tried to grab anyone near his office, his assistant, a colleague, to listen in on what was being said on the other end on the receiver. I can only imagine his disbelief and excitement.

And honestly, I couldn't think of a sweeter gift .

Snow Day

Sarah during the first snow getting ready "BY MYSELF!" 

BY MYSELF! is very big when you are three.

"I Probably"

Let's play the game "I Probably". I'll go first:

I probably shouldn't have called the first guy I heard with an Irish brogue "Seamus"...

...especially when his name is 'Gavin'

I probably shouldn't have told him, "and you can knock it off with the fake accent, we all know you're from Cincinnati."

Even if I had some superglue, a roll of duct tape, and a nail gun, I still couldn't keep this post together...

...but hey, it's not like that's stopped me before!

Post a la carte - enjoy!

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For the past few weeks, I have taken to doing some old fashioned weight training  excercises with those "Dumb Bells" things.  A trainer at my gym showed me a few new things, and voila! I am free weights friendly again. Since this began, while I'm watching television, I have had the occasional....occasional thought of, "too bad I don't have those dumb bells, I could rattle off a few sets during these commercials."  Hey, it's not like I got anything to do or anywhere to be during those 3 or 4 minutes.  So this week I headed over to Target and bought a pair of 10 pound weights (the same weightage as I'm using at the gym) and when I got home, tested them out, and damnit if they didn't feel heavier than the ones at the gym.

Let me try that one again.

The 10 pound weights from Target felt heavier than the 10 pound weights at the gym.

I mentioned this to Mike knowing full well he'd think I was looney.  He grabbed them out of my hands and with a surprised look, agreed that they felt heavier than their stated 10 pounds.

This lead me to the scale for further analysis.

Yes, I weighed the weights.

And yep, they're 10 pounds alright.

So if someone could please explain THIS ONE to me, I would greatly appreciate it as I am seriously contemplating going back and returning them for the 8 pound jobbbers.

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Last Saturday night, I headed over to my sister Kate's house with a bought of wine (the twenty dollar bottle that I'd accidentally bought - as in, "not realizing I'd bought a bottle over 15 bucks").  As we stationed ourselves comfortably in front of her TV, we flipped through the channels and landed on an America's next Top Model marathon. Perfect.  Okay, a bottle of wine, ...America's Next Top Model....yeah, you know there's a drinking game in out midst.

Since we started out the gate with the season's premiere episode, we decided the game was to drink every time  someone said, "Amazing", "Opportunity" and of course, my personal favorite, "Fierce!".  It goes without saying, the bottle depleted pretty quickly (Ep. 2, Kate? my memory is a little fuzzy).

I have a love/hate relationship with this show.  The judges never pick the girl I want EVEN THOUGH THEY KICKED ASS in both the shoots and commercials (my favorites were Lisa  and Kyle). Not only that but the criticisms made on this show often never make any sense ( it's like listening to Paula Abdul when she judges American Idol).  I think when they gave Kyle the ax, on her way out they offered her a helpful, "maybe you were too pretty? and that was not good enough," or some such shit.   Then there's"the pointers": "Be more aggressive, don't let the other models get in your way" but "don't give attitude, you have to be nice to everybody cuz it will get back to people," which, huh? No wonder why they're always confused. Also, I cannot stand The Tyra Whisperer, "you've been e-lim-in-ate-d" or the condescending and equally over-enunciated, "twelve beauuuuutiful girls stand before me, but only **ONE** can be America's next top model..." speeches.  Gag. Eye Roll. Just a Bag o' Awkward when you're forced to watch it every week. Thank God for the hot noted hot high fashion-photographer, hot Nigel Barker on panel. HOT. (and the accent doesn't hurt, either) (buddy, call me!)

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"If I Knew You Were Coming I Would've Baked a Cake"

This week, I baked some cookies. Like homemade:

Er, sort of:

Personal baking tip from me to you: never bake when you are sleepy. Sometimes you may wander into your room where your bed in conveniently located and take "a little lie down" and may forget about the cookies. And then they may come out a bit....crunchy.

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BOOBIES! EVERYWHERE!

I am not a mom but I guess the deal is that motherhood can and will mess with your goods, specifically, your, um,  chestal region ("chestal" is a word as of....now).  My sister Kate had child Numero Dos about 6 months ago. After Pumping up the Volume to a solid C cup, she went back down to her usual B. To celebrate she bought a bunch of new 34Bs...which as of a month ago are now all too big.  Yeah, pity that.  But hey! Guess who IS a 34B??

Ah, Christmas doth come early!   

That's about 9 bras (one worn by photographer at time of shot, not pictured).

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Speaking of my saucy bits, let's talk about The Spa experience of Tuesday night...

If you have the looked in the comments section of  the To Wear or Not to Wear Underwear? debate, you'd know I did in fact decide to "bare all".  Yes, I decided to lighten up (both literally and figuratively) and leave the 'pants in the locker.  It turned out to be a good call, I think because part of the massage included the lady (chatty little thing) using this move where she glided her hand along my butt and continued right up through my  back (and somewhere off in the distance I think I just heard Tim's head explode) and damn, if that did not feel great. Now, had I gone in with the underwears on, she would have had to "hop over" (I'm guessing) and skip that part.  Go 'head, think I'm pervy. I don't care. But you don't know what you're missing.

Before things even got started, I tried to give this woman a clue as to what she was in store for. See, I have very tight legs (I have never been able to touch my toes. Ever.) and mentioned that a previous masseuse had even said she could have spent the entire hour alone just on them. Her reaction was a bit "what-evs"  but confirmed that she would working on them however, that they didn't need the whole hour. Okay, first, not what I asked for and second, just thought she might want to know that it's one area that's really tight - heads (or legs, as it were) up.  I said something akin to "Duh, just mentioning it. " 

A few take aways from the experience:

1. Masseuse lady talked a lot. And was a bit corny. She also said things like "you poor thing" and "how did this golf ball get into you without leaving a mark?"  Speaking of, I swear I heard a noise when she went over that golf ball. Gross.

2. She pressed some pressure point on my hand  - a spot between my thumb and index finger, to "relieve stress"  or something.  I took such a sharp intake of breathe through my nose and nearly jumped off the table, I think I scared the shit out of her.  I believe this was when she realized who she was really dealing with.

3. She kept telling me to breathe.  Do you think I should be concerned?

4. Usually you can tell by where you hold your stress if you are right or left handed.  She couldn't with me. She actually thought I was left handed because that side was so screwed up and asked if I carried a lot of heavy stuff around on that side. (I don't - unless you consider a pocketbook/bag thing "heavy", which it's not)

5. There's NO WAY she didn't "see stuff", especially when she had my leg in the "tree pose" (for non-yogis, that's when you put your foot on your inner thigh, what would look like a #4).  But instead of thinking about IT, instead I had my mind conjure up Phoebe Buffet from Friends and the episode where she begins work for a incorporated, fancy Spa  which goes against everything she stands for ("But they give me things like medical! And dental! And a 4-0-onek!")  and Rachel end up being her client but Phoebe doesn't want her to know she's "sold out to the man" but Rachel knows that "Inga from Sveden" is really Phoebe because through the face hole, she can see her shoes and feet jewelry which give her away. You now the one? (man, I've watched that show about 20 too many times) So,as I was starign through the face hole, I kept thinking about how I might quiz the masseuse lady on all the details of Sweden so that I could bust her so and exclaim, "Man, you can lie a lot about Sweden!" and see if she'd get the joke.  I didn't - but it did take my mind of me being nekkid.

6. When she had me flip over onto my stomach, I didn't say anything more about the legs. Instead I just counted backwards in my head, "Five, four, three, two..." and then she announced, "yeah, you were right about your legs!"  Thank you, thank you. Thank you so much for acknowledging the fact that I might know a thing or 2 about my own body.  When she got to leg #2, I got a, "you weren't kidding." No dear, I wasn't.  But because I am all newly matured and growned-up, I did not say, "I told you so." Not once.

7. She suggested that I tell my boss that my massage therapist says to stop stressing me out. We laughed in agreement that it would just be impressive to drop "my massage therapist" in a conversation. Truth be told, I am actually pretty tempted to say that just to see what  kind of reaction I'd get.  "Hi, B. Can you stop stressing me out? My massage therapist is really worried about me and thinks you should stop. Thanks a bunch." 

The facial was nothing out of the ordinary, other than the fact that I think the girl thought I/my skincare routine was ridiculous. "You don't wash your face in the morning?!" (um, no, I let the water do its thing) "Oh, you didn't TELL me the moisturizer you were using was by Loreal." "You've got some really clogged pores here. I'm not gonna have enough time to get 'em all tonight." Apparently, my skin is going to hell over clogged pores.  No, truly, clogged pores are a one's one-way ticket to hell in these places. They're Satan's minions or something, I don't know.  It also kills me how they call face-pickin' "Extraction".  Dress it up any way you want Spa folks, but basically you're the human Biore face strip thing. 

So anyway, get this- she wants me to wash my face. TWICE  A DAY. (we won't even get into the exfoliation lecture I got)  Once in the morning and once at night. Like everyday - and to keep the schedule up no matter - - for like, the rest of my life!  Can you believe this girl?? Is this normal?? Next thing you'll be telling me dentists want you to brush and floss your teeth and visit them more than once every 2 years lest your teeth be falling out of your head at an alarming rate and it's dentures by 35.   

FINE. GOSH. I'll wash my face, too. Man, just ONE more thing I have to do now.

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It is really telling of your personality when you decide to go into work early, not telling this fact to the person you live with, and they come back from their morning gym visit to find you "missing" and think that you have been kidnapped cuz NO WAY you would forgo the extra sleep to get into work early.  He even searched "the entire apartment" (what, did he think I was hiding in the hamper?) and even checked through the back door.  Yes, it's true. I do not like to be early for stuff, especially work stuff unless it's short of a moral imperative i.e. flights to catch or meetings in which I have to drive out of state.  For those, I can be on time or even early (well, I mean, except for that one time I had issue with a flight but let's not talk about that). This week, I needed to get in early (by a whopping 45 minutes) for my own benefit  due to some training I was participating in all week and just didn't think to tell him. 

Me, kidnapped -more likely than me going into work early.

I am not sure what to say to that one.