Wednesday, December 16, 2009

My little grease monkey

Enough with the NaNoJoMo and DePhoMo already! I cannot possibly read all these entries, even though I want to. I take one look at my (freshly-trimmed) bookmarks page and am so overwhelmed I just don't read any of them. People, it's exhausting.

(Of course you can do whatever you want with your own blog, but there are people like me who just never read because it's too much.)


The Child has dandruff. This is just super. What does one do about baby dandruff? I don't think it's true dandruff, just dry skin. Apparently she inherited my scaly, dry winter skin. This is not a hydration problem. The Child drinks more water than a crocodile.

Another reason this is super is that she has crazy drool rash. So I have this otherwise-adorable baby whose mouth and cheeks are red and scaly and whose hair is covered in little white flakes. Doesn't that just scream, "AWESOME PARENTING HERE!!!" Vaseline or lanolin on the cheeks has helped. But we can't exactly put Vaseline on her scalp. Well, we could, but she looks greasy enough with it all over her face.


James's work has a yearly wellness seminar. This is the third year. The first year, I was pregnant. The second year, I had recently delivered a baby and was nursing (which meant I still had the baby weight and was still eating like a half-starved hippopotamus). This year, I am very pregnant. None of these conditions is conducive to feeling good about the answers you put down in their questionnaire. I filled mine out a month or two ago, before the magical second coming of Champion Sleeper. Also, I'm still dealing with near-constant food aversions, and my diet consists mainly of whatever I can put in my mouth without gagging. Yesterday, for instance, was two pieces of toast, the end of a summer sausage, and a whole bunch of pasta (at least it was Barilla Plus, which has a good bit of substance).

This has been great for keeping my weight in control, probably not so great for actual health. And don't get me started on exercise. I had to stop swimming because I can no longer breathe while I swim. What's left is walking, and it's so cold here right now I can feel my eyebrows shattering every time I walk outside. Furthermore, when you're pregnant, you're not supposed to make any significant changes to exercise; starting swimming was probably more than my doctor would have recommended (I don't care; I felt REALLY good for a few weeks).

Anyway, this questionnaire is riddled with fun questions like, "How many servings of green vegetables do you eat per day (you disgusting slob)?" "How many hours of sleep do you get each night (you disgusting insomniac)?" "How many hours of vigorous exercise do you get per week (you disgusting slob)?" "Do you plan to start exercising more in the near future (your disgusting slob)?" "Do you plan to start sleeping more in the near future (you disgusting insomniac)?" blah blah blah. Also, they wanted to know my weight, which is actually good for being very pregnant, but of course they don't actually factor pregnancy into these evaluations (even though they ASK if you're pregnant), which is a level of stupidity I can't even comprehend.

And the questions that I could answer with pride, like blood pressure (extremely low, always) and cholesterol (extremely good, always) ask me for specific numbers that I don't know off the top of my head, so I have to answer, "I don't know," which makes me look even more like I don't take care of myself. They need to have a comments section at the end, where I can tell them all these things. I would probably run out of lines.

Or they could have a bunch of questions that almost anyone could answer with pride and scatter them through the entire thing. "Do you like puppies?" "Would you ever harm a kitten?" Things like that. It would relieve the relentless beat-down of the health questions, and I bet people would even answer more honestly.


So, we've lived here for over a year now, and we STILL don't know any of the neighbors. We wave and smile at each other, but I think it'd be nice to have a little more than that, if only so we can ask someone to retrieve our mail and feed the cat when we're gone.

Shirtless Yardwork Neighbor Man and his wife used to be very friendly with us, but since we had them over for dinner LAST DECEMBER, we've hardly seen them at all. I'm still trying to figure that one out. The soup I made was the kind of recipe that only a mentally challenged puppy could screw up. We didn't pick our noses or talk about religion. The ONLY thing I can think of is that we prayed before the meal, but... this is small town Wisconsin, and they've lived here all their lives. That's what people DO, even people who are only nominally Christian. If they're weirded out by that, they must never leave their houses.

The neighbors across the street are friendly. The lady has even wandered over to say hi a few times when Grace and I have been in the front lawn. This is where having a knack for baking would be very handy. I could bake some fun Christmasy things and drop them off at the nearby houses. That's a friendly-but-not-TOO-friendly kind of neighbor thing to do. But I'm just about the worst baker that ever baked. Every time I think, "Oh, well, it's been a while! And you're good at cooking! Just give it another shot," James and I end up gnawing our way through a couple of hockey pucks before giving up to go nurse our poor bleeding *gums back to health.

*Dear Firefox, I am CERTAIN that there is no way you can explain to me how "gums" is not a word.

There's an older lady a few houses away who is VERY sweet, but she's selling her house, so who knows how long she'll be around? And then the lady next door, who plowed out the end of our driveway last week when it was covered in chunk of ice and snow the size of my enlarged torso. We didn't even ask her; she just did it. She's never home, though.

So it's not that these people aren't friendly (except for Shirtless Yardwork Neighbor Man and His Wife; I think there's something weird going on there, can't put my finger on it), it's just that there's this weird resistance to anything more than surface friendliness. James and I were thrilled when we first moved here. No one brought us pie, but everyone was so friendly; we were sure we'd had friends in no time. But... nothing. Not even in cases where we've tried. It's very strange. I almost prefer Madison, where almost everyone was unfriendly, but if they were friendly, you knew they meant it.


A while ago I downloaded a whole bunch of Dean Martin songs on iTunes. I love Dean Martin. His voice makes Frank Sinatra--whom I very much like--sound like a goat in heat.

But he's kind of a sleaze ball. Behold, the lyrics to "100 Years from Today" (which I realize he did not write, but still...):

Hey don't save your kisses - just pass 'em around
You'll find my reason - is logically sound
Who's gonna know that you past them around
A hundred years from today

And why crave a penthouse - that's fit for a queen
You're nearer heaven - on mamma Earth's green
If you had millions - what would they all mean
One hundred years from today

So (Hey) laugh and sing - make love the thing
Be happy while you may
('Cause) There's always one - beneath the sun
Who's bound to make you feel that way
The moon is shining - and that's a (very) good sign
Cling to me closer - say (that) you'll be mine
Remember baby we won't see it shine
A hundred years from today, a hundred years from today


Doesn't that just remind you of someone's dirty uncle?

It does me.

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