The City of St. Louis Would Like to Thank the Rain

I have to say, in my view, the wet field in the new Busch Stadium won Game Four.

But Game Five was all Weaver, Eckstein and Pujols (did you see Pujols throw that ball on his back? Damn).

Don't Tempt Fate

While reading this post over at Mamalogues I thought to myself, "Gee, I sure am glad my son almost never throws up."

So, guess what happened last night? All over the dinner table? While we were eating dinner?

Yeah . . .

Discombobulated

I am sorry; I just can't seem to write here right now. My head is full of things to write about, but I can't seem to bring my thoughts together coherently enough lately to post. I would say I haven't had time to post lately, but that's not entirely true. It is true that I have been terribly busy over the past two weeks, but I have left a couple of marathon comments on other people's blogs over the last couple of days and I could easily have spent that time posting here instead. But for some reason, I nearly always find it easier to respond to other people's thoughts than I do to organize my own. And the truth is, I enjoy reading and responding to other people's work a great deal more than I do composing my own.

I am not giving up; I will return. I have just been under a lot of stress lately, with a new work project, the prospect of buying a house, and all sorts of other random challenges popping up lately, as they are wont to, where I least expect or want them.

(For example, my glasses malfunctioned the other day. One of the lenses, which has never been quite secure since I got this pair a few months ago, popped clear out. I tried to fix it with my trusty screw kit, but the lens wouldn't stay in. So I took a trip to the not-so-close store where I'd gotten the glasses, and tried to get them fixed there. They fixed the lens, but in the process, they obviously scratched my not-cheap designer frames. When I complained about this, the technician who had made the error proceeded trying lamely and rudely to minimize his mistake, attempting to make fun of me by saying, "Do you actually need glasses if you are going to notice a scratch that small?" It was two scratches, and they were not small. After I glared at him he agreed to try to fix them. He made them even worse. The new gouge in my frames was so bad, he rushed out of the lab to search the inventory surreptitiously for a replacement frame, and then, realizing they were out, sheepishly offered to order me new frames before even showing my old ones to me. It will take two weeks to get new ones. Then I will have to risk my expensive, "you're so blind we have to send out to the out of state lab for your prescription, and that will take three weeks" polycarbonate lenses in the hands of this assclown or one of his associates once more. Joy. All sorts of random things like that have been happening lately).

(Wow, I just wrote a lot there, didn't I? Does this count as a post? I guess so. There you go, fans.)

(Now I am going to sleep, because it is already morning, and I have 50 billion things to do tomorrow).

You May Already Have Seen This

But if you haven't, take a look.

Why You Want to Be My Sister

Remember why you wanted to be my friend?

Being my family is even better.




Pumpkin Spice Cheesecake with Cinnamon Apple Almond Topping




Chocolate Chip Tuxedo Cheesecake with Oreo Crust and Fresh Strawberry Topping


Happy Birthday, Little Sis.




(Oh, and by the way, if you're reading this on Bitacle? Bitacle's lying, thieving ways are why I'm not posting the recipes for these beautiful concoctions today. If you want to know how to make them, you'll have to visit The State of Discontent at its real home on Blogger at http://jaelithej.blogspot.com and ask me.)

Chopped Liver

Today was my second half-day working in the office, and Isaac's first day alone with our new babysitter.*

I was worried that he would cry when I left this morning.

He didn't.

He did cry when the babysitter left this afternoon, though.



*John happened to have the day off of work the first day I went into the office, so Isaac stayed home with his dad that day.

Blub. Glub.

Ahhhhhhhh . . . applying for mortgage . . . searching for houses . . . sewing costumes . . . drowning in work from new project . . .

My latest project isn't even writing, you know. It's Search Engine Optimization Research.

I know, sounds fancy, right?

It involves spreadsheets. That is all I am going to say.

Anyway, if you don't see around me for a while, I probably:

1.) Pricked my finger with a needle and fell asleep for 100 years.

2.) Moved to some desolate unclaimed spot of land in the desert to build my own house out of adobe and straw.

3.) Got eaten by Excel.

But that doesn't mean I don't love y'all. Really.

By the way, did you notice that yesterday was my one year blogiversary? I should so have written about that, shouldn't I have?

Well, there's always next year . . .

The Way Things Work

This evening after dinner, Isaac started begging me to go outside.

"It's almost dark outside already," I told him, showing him through the window. "We'll have to play outside tomorrow when it's daytime."

He sighed in resignation and hung his head. Suddenly, he perked up, and asked, "Mommy, where does the sun go?"

My first inclination, honestly, was just to tell him the sun was going to bed. As he would be shortly.

I mean, how do you explain the reason for sunsets to someone with minimal language skills and only the most basic, mostly subconscious understanding of things like spatial relationships and geometry? Who doesn't have the foggiest idea he lives on a giant (how big is giant?) spherical (what's a sphere?) object called a planet (what's that mean?) that spins around as it hurtles through outer space (where's outer space?) around a much, much more giant flaming (huh? why? what lit it?) ball of nuclear (what?) fusion?

So, yeah, I was on the point of making up a clever one-sentence fairy tale (or, okay, let's face it, stealing one made up by some mother of antiquity whose precocious two-year-old decided to ask her the same flabbergasting question), when I thought about a conversation I had earlier today with Andrea about how amazed I've been at the volume of convenient fabrications that have come out of my mouth since I became a parent

("If you don't eat that turkey right now, I'm going to eat it all myself!" Says the vegetarian mother.

"Thomas and Percy are too sleepy to play. They want to go night-night in their cozy plastic box now."

"Mommy can't stay next to your bed reading to you for another hour and a half because she has to go potty right now. Right now! I can't wait! Sorry! See ya later! Good night!"

"Turkey? Oh, no. That's not turkey. It's white ham!"),

and then Andrea asked if I'd read any of the discussion quasi-recently over at The Mom Trap about whether deceiving children for convenience's sake undermines a parent's credibility, and I replied that that when it comes to getting my child to eat I am willing to say just about ANYTHING

("Thomas and Percy LOVE to eat turkey. Didn't they tell you?")

but that I had in fact read that discussion, and the whole "never lie" idea was an interesting theory, really.

So, when Isaac asked me where the sun goes, in a moment of guilt over my no-good dirty lying parenting ways, I grabbed a big blue exercise ball and an enormous flashlight and attempted to demonstrate the basics of planetary motion for a pre-schooler.

I don't think he understood a word of it.

But afterward, he kept pointing the flashlight at the ceiling and saying ecstatically, "Look Mommy! I made the sun!"

Which really cheered him up after the whole not going outside deal.

'Scuse Mama While She Gets Political for a Minute

Things that do not turn a person into a pedophile:


-Being a drunk. I suppose being a pedophile might turn you into a drunk, though.


-Being gay. Most scientific studies on the subject indicate that 98-99% of child molesters identify as heterosexual.


-Having been molested as a child. (According to multiple surveys, something like one in five women in the U.S. report they have been sexually assaulted at least once before the age of 18. Are 20% of adult women in the U.S. pedophiles? Uh, no.)


This has been a public service announcement. We now return you to your regularly scheduled fluffy little Mommyblog.

Pardon Me While My Head Explodes, Metaphorically

Hey, so, apparently my post about evilly destroying my son's avant-garde temporary art installation was deemed by the talented authoress of Bub and Pie to be worthy of a Perfect Post award for September.* What can I say? I'm verklempt (and I'm not even Jewish). But I didn't get the button up until today, because, DUDES. I am busy this week.

I have started a new contract project. I am trying to arrange a workable schedule for a (*GASP*) regular part-time babysitter so I can actually finish the parts of said project that require me to spend a couple of hours a week in an office. With grown-ups. Wearing office clothes. And makeup. And heels. All at the same time.

I have to train said babysitter tomorrow in the art of attempting to feed a severely underweight child with SI disorder who hates 95% of food.

I have been trying to work out some sort of crazy insurance issue with Isaac's OT provider. My insurance company is currently claiming the office Isaac's OT works out of is out-of-network, when in fact, the office is in-network, and has the current paperwork and network-provider number to prove it. Hmmm . . . Either way they are claiming they will only cover 20 visits per calendar year.

(Like I am going to let them get away with claiming my underweight child with severe eating issues only needs to see an OT to help with his eating for half an hour once every two-and-a-half weeks? When the OT herself wants to see him at least weekly right now, and his PCP agrees?

I don't think so, insurance bitches. Tiger Mama is now officially on the prowl. Tiger Mama eats deep-fried meaningless medical bureaucracies for breakfast, and often enjoys a refreshing frappe of the strained egos of ineffectual call center lackeys afterward to wash away the annoying aftertaste of red tape. I'm sure all my mothering readers out there have met Tiger Mama, so you know what I'm talking about.)

This week I have also been researching and calling several different financial institutions, because I am trying to find a fantastic deal on a first-time mortgage, preferably with low interest and low closing costs, despite having only average income and only decent credit, without paying tons of money to a broker.

(Stop laughing already.)

As part of this whole trying to get a great mortgage deal process, I have also been trying for weeks now to get one of the three major credit bureaus to admit 1.) that it does not know how to spell my maiden name, and 2.) that I, being an erstwhile bearer of such name, do in fact know the correct way to spell it. I spell my name correctly. Not them. Me.

(I told you to stop laughing, didn't I? Are you going to make me whip out my ruler, class?)

And, oh yes. I am still shopping for my very first honest-to-goodness, no shady landlords cuz I own it and that's that HOUSE.

I am looking for a three-bedroom, two-bath with a full basement, a garage or carport, and a fenced yard, with no major structural defects or health hazards, in a halfway decent neighborhood, for, oh, I don't know, less than $150,000?

Oh, okay, you can laugh at that one.

Or cry, if you live on either coast of this country, because that's actually POSSIBLE here in the Midwest! Ha! So there, you blue state suckers! With your five-star restaurants, and your critically acclaimed theatres, and art galleries, and good schools, and congressional representatives who don't enable child molesters, and . . .

(*Sigh*)


*Okay, so, apparently, she actually liked a post I made back in August better, but, hey.