Thursday, June 18, 2009

fyi:

My uterus, the contents of it and the potential contents of it are not up for discussion, comprende? Contrary to what you may think, it is not polite or even socially acceptable for you to ask a woman, pregnant or not, if she is going to get her tubes tied. It is not nice to ask, "just how many of those are you are planning on popping out?" when talking to a pregnant woman, especially one who is carrying multiples. I'm not going to "pop out" anything, thankyouverymuch. For the record, I'm planning on having approximately 17,000 children, just to spite you.

It is not a good idea to tell a pregnant woman, as she is walking into Starbucks, that caffeine is not good for the baby. Yeah? Well my fist isn't good for your face either. Why, why, why would you purposely put yourself in harm's way? I'll claim self defense when they arrest me for making it so your nose touches your left ear. You were harassing me. For all you know, I am walking into Starbucks because I have a wicked hankering for an overpriced pastry. Don't judge me! Maybe I was up all night with back pain and leg cramps and bathroom trips and my Grande Iced Toffee Nut Latte is the one freaking thing I had to look forward to all day and now you just ruined it. BITE ME.

And as I'm lumbering my not so graceful body out of my van, do not whistle at me. That isn't nice. I know that's not a, "DANG! You are so hot and I want you to have all of my babies", whistle. That whistle was a, "DAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAANG! Should I call 911 right now because you look like you are going to DIE?", whistle and it was rude. Now beat it.

When I say I'm huge and look like I'm "ready to pop" because I'm having twins, don't ask me why I want to have twins, or choose to have twins when I already have 2 kids under the age of 4. Don't roll your eyes and tell me that it's better me than you or that I'm going to have my hands full. I know this. I know I am completely blessed to be having these babies, and even with all the pain and grossness of this pregnancy, I wouldn't trade it for the world but I didn't choose to have twins. I didn't ask to have twins. It wasn't like I got down on my knees and prayed to God every night, "Lord, please impregnate me with twins because my life isn't stressful and challenging enough. Please give me twins because I am so completely enamored with the first 8 months of life after my babies are born, breastfeeding issues, sleep deprivation, postpartum depression and all, that I think it would be so awesome to do all of that, times 2." No. That is not how it went. I didn't ask to have twins, didn't choose to have twins, I was blessed with them. It was out of my hands and thank goodness it was because while I would have never chosen this, I am so, SO incredibly happy that we are here right now.

At the same time, don't ask me if they are natural. All babies are natural. Have you ever seen an "unnatural" baby? Let me know if you have, because I'd like to see that too. Yes, of course they are "natural". Do you mean, are they spontaneous? Are you asking how they were conceived? Does it really matter? Thank you for not being like the lady in the waiting room who wanted all of the details about how these babies were conceived, time frames, positioning and more, but I'm still not going to get into it with you. I don't even know you.

I understand that people are interested in pregnancy and want to enjoy it with me, but there is a line that is quickly crossed between genuinely caring and downright rude and judgmental. For the most part, people just jump right over that line and dive head first into the rude and judgmental pool. Yes, I am much more sensitive than I normally am, but really, just keep your mouths shut people. The world, at least my world, will be a much happier place. And as long as mama's happy...

Monday, June 8, 2009

geek squad this!

Last night I was dorking around on the computer and the wireless internet went dead. Normally when this happens it is because it is windy out or the microwave has been on for awhile or it gets really hot. But it was 10:30 at night, no wind, no one was cooking and it was nice and the device was nice and cool. I went to check the settings and the computer told me that it couldn't find our preferred network, but it wanted to connect me to a different network named "Bruce's Network".

Now, this normally wouldn't make me think twice because I'm used to living in an area that has multiple networks you can steal bandwidth from. But we live in the middle of nowhere. When I say nowhere, I mean the closest neighbor to us nearly a mile away. There's no way we could be picking up anyone's connection, let alone have a full strength signal from them. No one here had messed with any of the settings... I don't think anyone here even knows how to mess with the settings, and there's certainly no "Bruce" here, so something weird was going on. I immediately unplugged the Airport (Mac speak for the wireless router thingamajig) and made my dad go look outside to see if there was some shady person in a car sitting outside our house, trying to jack our connection or hack into our network to get our info or something. Yes, I'm paranoid. He didn't see anyone and I didn't hear any cars and there weren't any signs of a person having been outside our house either. We decided to call it a night and deal with it in the morning.

This morning I woke up and plugged in the Airport, plugged in my computer and still, I was being told to connect to "Bruce's Network". Nope, not going to happen. I don't know who Bruce is or what he wants or where he came from. I called my brother, who is an unofficial Geek, and explained the situation and was informed of the obvious: "That's weird". Yeah, no duh. Thanks, Captain Obvious. So he and I went through all of the obvious steps to try to remedy the situation, but no matter what we did, Bruce wouldn't go away and our network wouldn't appear. After doing a hard reset of the device, we were finally able to get rid of Bruce and make our network appear. And then my brother said, "Wait, wasn't the guy who lived in that house before named Bruce?"

Yes, yes, his name was Bruce, and he died a year or 2 after my parents bought and gutted the house. As far as we know, he didn't ever have internet here. I can't believe that a dude who lived in a house with original 60's green shag carpet, orange counter tops and burlap curtains until the day he sold it would have internet, and wireless internet at that. I also can't believe that the electrical system that was in this house could even support a computer, but that is besides the point.

So unless someone sat outside our house last night, hacked into our wireless settings and changed it to be "Bruce's Network" and then drove off, all in the span of 3 minutes, Bruce is back to visit us. I don't know if he's mad about his house, or just wanted to come say hi, but he's made his presence known. I've lived with ghosts before, but they have never made their names known so this is new territory.

Last night was a full moon and the owls were going nuts all night and one still is even this afternoon, so I'm not sure if he's still hanging out, or if he left, but you can sure as heck bet that I'm going to be watching the kids very closely to see if they start talking to anyone or about anyone new in the house. And I might be sleeping with the kids, with the lights on, for the next couple of nights because the Airport is in my room and that's just a little too creepy, even for me.

Tuesday, June 2, 2009

fashionistas?

Ask most 2 and 3 year olds to go pick out their outfit for the day, and you will probably be frightened by the results. Before I had kids, I fully expected to be the mom who had the 3 year old boy who insisted on going out in a green dinosaur t-shirt and bright yellow shorts with his Superman cape and cowboy boots on. Or to have the daughter who wore nothing but tutus and plastic jewelry and striped shirts with polka dotted pants, and 2 different colored socks. I was ok with that thought. I think it is very important for kids to express their individuality and if they want to wear mismatched clothes and accessories, then awesome. But I will draw the line at expressing oneself through tattoos and hair color before the age of 16. After that, we will talk.

But somehow, I ended up with 2 children who have impeccable taste and can coordinate an outfit better than most 30 year old men (and some women) I know. You ask them to go pick out their outfit for the day and they will stand in front of the shelves, carefully choosing their shirts and shorts, making sure the colors match. Once they choose their outfits, they will go through their 19,000,000 pairs of shoes to find the pair that has the same colors as their clothes. Then they go to their bucket of sunglasses and pick out the pair that coordinates the best. CB will even go so far as to pick out a cloth diaper that best matches her outfit, or will pick a shirt and baby legs just to match her cloth diaper. If I pick their outfit out, often they will go back to the room to get a different pair of shoes that they feel matches better, and they are almost always right.

It can get pretty ridiculous at times, especially when they freak out if their sippy cup lid color doesn't coordinate with the color of their cup. They get pretty excited when their plate color matches their cups too. CB will constantly point out when my clothes are matching or not. Although, me matching is very rare these days because so few things actually fit and I stay in tank tops and elastic waist pj pants while we are at home because those are the only things that are even slightly comfortable. I am working hard to be sure she and W don't turn out to be like the 6 year old punk I encountered in the grocery store nearly 2 years ago who so kindly pointed out that my white flip flops didn't match my blue tank top. I am trying to stress that they are not allowed to give fashion advice unless 1) they are married to the person, 2) they are being paid to tell people what to wear or 3) one of their friends is trying to squeeze their size 10 booty into a size 6 jeans.

Truth be told, I'm pretty sure it is all my fault. Ever since they were born I have made sure their outfits have been coordinated, right down to the pacifiers and blankets. People used to laugh their butts off when they noticed that the binkie matched the outfit and jokingly say something about me doing it on purpose and I would say, "Um, yeah I did it on purpose!!" It's not like it is hard to put a blue binkie in the diaper bag. I don't know why I do it, and I know it drives my husband absolutely crazy. So crazy that I'm pretty sure he will go out of his way to make sure the kids' clothes don't match when he dresses them just to spite me. I know he can coordinate clothing too, he just thinks I'm a big fat freak show for caring. What can I say? It makes me feel good to see things in order. The rest of my life might be a complete mess, but if those sunglasses match that shirt, then life is just a little bit better. They are doomed, aren't they?