Binkytown

Random Bullet Points

I can't seem to pull it together today. Its so hot you could fry an egg on my head, although, please don't. I went for a run this morning, but shouldn't have. I went at 7AM, before it got too hot, or so I thought. Got home, slammed a bottle of gatorade, took a cool refreshing shower, packed up the little man's goods to take him to his 18 month checkup and suddenly found myself asking- why cant I stop sweating? why are my knees wobbly? Oh my god I think I am going to throw up while the Dr is talking to me and where will I go and do I snatch the baby in the diaper and boogie down the hall or do I leave him in here with the Dr and just take off, since he is probably more qualified to look after him than me anyway? 

Luckily it didn't come to that. I managed not to throw up and to casually chomp on a few rice chex and drink some water. Yes, I took the lid off the sippy cup and drank the water I packed for my son and ate his snacks in front of the pediatrician. I'm sure he thinks I'm kind of nuts anyway, since his nurse sat me down, handed me some pamphlets about PPD and told me she was very worried, but that was last year and you would have cried too if your son was covered in a hideous rash no Dr could identify and hadn't slept in two days. Where was I? See? I'm just crap today. Allllll over the place.

On to the bullet points:

• Last week I got pulled over for going 20 miles per hour over the speed limit. I DID NOT get a ticket. Don't let anyone tell you that being honest about the fact that you were speeding and blaming it on the fact that you were late picking up your kid from day care doesn't work. It totally does.
• I start my new job one week from today. What have I done?
• So BlogHer 07 is in Chicago. Sweet. What I want to know from any of those oh so fabulous lovlies is now that you've met who you wanted to meet and got those naughty things would do it again? Would you recommend it to someone who's never been?
• Little man's favorite new phrase: "No way". Sounds insanely cute and like one word= nowaaaaaay. Mr B says I say that a lot and I don't recall saying that ever, so what else am I saying that I don't realize? I guess I will find out soon enough.
• I just got one of these. So did my 9 year old neice on Friday for her birthday. I'm thirty (cough) five. When I was nine I got a Shaun Cassidy album and a tee shirt that said "Cute real cute". Is one of these now the 2006 equivilant of that?   

Ill try and write something that's not so sad and wilted once my carbs kick in. Till then, heed my advice. If you are already sweating - Don't go running. Lie down. Preferably in front of a fan.

What

did I just say????????

Sigh.

Hola!

Hooray Hooray! There is a wedding shower in my department!

We are having a mexican-themed food day even though the bride-to-be is of Egyptian descent. Why? Beats me. All I know is I get to eat tacos and therefore your mouth must be watering for the.....

                           July 2006  FOOD DAY AWARDS INTERNATIONAL

The award for best effort goes to: Cake bringing lady with the buttercream frosting. Nothing else can brighten up my afternoon like the sight of thick buttercream purple and pink frosting flowers.

The award for most lame effort is: Taco flavored day glo yellow shredded cheese bringing lady. I know it's expecting too much to hope for a light shredded white cheddar, but I would have settled for some monterry jack or even a co-jack blend. That stuff was nasty.

The award for best food day item: Guacamole lady. It was perfect.

The award for the least imaginative food day item: Taco dip lady. Been there done that.

The award for most clever food day participant: Shredded chicken lady. I was very pleasantly surprised to see you on the table, little shredded chicken bits.

The award for best food day beverage: Null and Void. Beverages were standard.

The award for the person that can't help slobbing on themself: That would be me. I'm wearing a V-kneck beige-y colored top with flouncy sleeves (the sleeves don't really matter to this, but it changes the whole image in your mind doesnt it?) I'm glad I'm not going to BlogHer because my social anxiety is always that when I'm eating in front of someone that food is going to fall out of my mouth while I'm eating it. Why? Because it ALWAYS happens to me.

I lifted up my taco and a bite sized portion of taco meat flew out the bottom and slid down my chest, nesting itself in that space you have in your bra that you would tuck a pencil in for later if you could. Right smack in the middle. I tried to play it cool but got up and excused myself when I looked down and realized the dark brown taco juice was soaking through my shirt from the inside. Wait....Yep. It's still there. A red bullseye. In the middle of my beige t-shirt. 

Time for more cake!

Let's get this out of the way.

Damn-it! I am not going to BlogHer. When I first started reading blogs and then attempting to start one of my own I saw all this BlogHer business, but thought going to a convention by myself? Where I didn't know anybody? To talk about blogs? How much fun could that be? HA. I had NO IDEA how many fabulous bloggers I would have met in a relatively short time span. So booo hoooo. I'm not going and I wish I were.

One thing I am good at is sulking so expect a fair amount of sulk beginning on Thursday and continuing through the weekend. ESPECIALLY IF YOU BLOGHER BLOGGERS START POSTING PICTURES OF YOURSELVES BEING FABULOUS WITH COCKTAILS IN YOUR HANDS AND LAMPSHADES ON YOUR HEADS WRITING DRUNKEN POSTS ABOUT HOW MUCH YOU LOVE EVERYBODY AND HOW BLOGHER IS THE GREATEST THING EVAH! Do you hear me? Just don't do it. Don't. I MEAN IT. Or I'll............ be even more jealous, but really, who cares about that, so party on, just don't have too much fun without the rest of us.   

HBM, the double sided sticky tape who holds us all together issued a BlogHer challenge for those of us losers not attending: Complete this questionnaire and she will  assign a Muppet guest star identity. How can I walk away from that? I don't know how that bad mother finds the time, but I can't wait to see comes up with. Enjoy:

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

1) What is the quality you most admire in a blogger? Devotion.
There are not enough hours in the day to blog and put something out there that's not total blabber and read other blogs and leave comments, but bloggers find a way to do that even if it means sacrificing things like sleep, clean clothes and work. I'm always amazed that so many women lead such busy lives and write such brilliant and funny and pertinent pieces and have time to drop by and chime in from time to time.   

2) What is your most marked blogging characteristic (or, how would you describe your blog)? Binkytown has a very conversational feel about it. As if you were talking to a friend you never get sick of. At least that's what I'm aiming for.

3) What is your greatest virtue as a blogger (what do you most like about your blog)? Most definitely the community of other women bloggers who I've met since starting it. Hands down.

4) What do you regard as the principle defect of your blog? I talk about my kid too much. I love bloggers like Jennifer Mattern who strike an excellent balance; you know she's a mom but she doesn't have to knock you over the head with it. She makes every day events interesting. I want to be her. Well, I want to be as cool like her. I don't really want to be her. She has ghosts in her bathroom.   

5) What character of fiction do you most wish had a blog?
Carmela Soprano. No nonsense smack talk and maybe even a kick ass recipe for gravy or rack of lamb.

6) What historical or real life person do you most wish had a blog?
Queen Elizabeth 1. Talk about some drama. Wouldn't it be interesting to know what was going on in her head? Blog Entry #314, I cut my hair today- what was I thinking? I hate it!

7) What is your present state of blog (present state of mind as a blogger)? Pissed off that I'm not going to BlogHer, but other than that, invigorated. I feel like I'm just finding my groove.

8) What is your blog motto? "On the map but still miles away from full-fledged motherhood".
Binkytown is an in-between place; having a strange sensation of having one foot in a life-before-baby and the other in a new place where literally everything has changed. Sometimes I'm lost but I like to think to I'm headed in the right direction.

If you are not heading to Cali this weekend- consider yourself tagged. Especially you and you.

Her name is

Leila Jo. SHE HAD A GIRL!!!! WOOOO HOOOOOO!

Welcome to the world Leila Jo. It's a better place now that you are here.

Love,

People everywhere

My husband needs a girlfriend

Mr. B needs a girlfriend. Slow down. I know what you are thinking. Not that kind of girlfriend.

Now that I've invited Mr B to my blog, we've had a nasty fight that I'm not going to write about because its so fresh I might say something I shouldn't. It doesn't happen to us often. It was a bad night, a bad chain of events transpiring. Bad things were said. Tears were cried. Apologies were given and accepted but I still came to work today feeling awful, just wanting to go back to bed. I did the first thing that I knew would make me feel better. I called Dottie.

Dottie and I met working at an Express store in the mall circa 1990. When we started working together we realized we had common friends. Friends we knew from clubs, which is where as college students, we spent a LOT of time. I did too much partying back in those days to really recall how we became so tight, but I know it happened easily and almost immediately. I remember her breaking up with a bad-boy boyfriend right before leaving town for a vacation. I ripped out a page out of a trashy women's magazine about how to get over a breakup and taped it to her apartment door. (I think it had ridiculous ideas like- paint your toenails a different color every other day, which is distracting and time consuming, but not as much as going out and getting hammered.) She thanked me and said that was exactly the kind of thing she would do for someone else.  That best sums it up. We have different personalities but we have kindred souls.

It's sixteen years later (oh my god that means we're old) and to say we are like sisters is cliche because we're closer than sisters, and I say that having a sister I love very much. To say that we share everything is an understatement because after all this time, we don't have to. We experienced so much life together that it seems trivial to say we share things. There have been mistakes and dreams and one bedroom apartments and camping trips and promotions and boy children, weddings and concerts and friends and clothes and sometimes brutal honesty, and antics in elevators. There are days we share nothing at all, other than the comfort of knowing the other is just a phone call away. We speak not with our own language, but in our own slang, a way of communicating that is unique and not widely understood because we don't have to fill in the blanks of why something is anything, if it's hilarious or sad or irritating. We just know.

I'm sure there are men that have this kind of friendship, but I am widely generalizing when I say I think women are better at it, having all these years of constantly having and expressing feelings. I wish Mr B had a Dottie, someone other than me to talk to about how he feels. Not because I don't want to talk to him, but I think it might be easier to talk to someone else because, well, we live together and that makes things complicated. You can't always say something out loud to your partner that you don't really mean without hurting their feelings. You can do that with a good friend, and they will know you well enough to know you don't mean it and you can feel better just having put it out there.

I'm especially feeling warm and fuzzy about Dottie today because she's in LABOR with baby #2 RIGHT NOW. She's five days overdue and at her checkup today learned that the baby is head down, and also one hand down so they sent her right over to be induced and monitored. Our first borns arrived three weeks apart and it was not planned that way, even though no one believes us. I'm so much more excited for her second baby. I now understand the joy on the faces of my family, who showed up at the hospital without being summoned, as they wheeled me out of the recovery room pale and shaken. The first time around I didn't know what was to come. I thought all this excitement for a baby? They don't even do anything. Now I know. It's a new part of the family. A new person. A new life. All that love.

There is added anticipation because Dottie doesn't know what she's having, she's always dreamed of having a daughter and this might be the last shot. Either way, I know she will be happy with a healthy baby, but if she could have a daughter, and that little girl could grow up and be as extraordinary as her mom and one day become someone's Dottie, that would be tops.

(And if it's a boy, maybe he'll play for the other team and be just as good at being a best friend. Ha. She's going to scold me for saying that! Not that there's anything wrong with that..)   

   

There is a first time for everything!

I'm all a flutter!

Kristin emailed me today to ask if I'd seen this. I had not! It figures, my freaky father and his fish head can't help but attract attention. 

Then- I got a wierd googler: Hot n*ked momma taking sh*wer. Since Im pretty sure most of you reading this are moms,  I think you will appreciate the humor in that. I pictured a saggy stretch-marked body and had a good belly-jiggling laugh.

Then- Last night Mr. B asked if I told more things to my blog friends than I did to him, which is

A) Not true &

B) One of the reasons I started doing this was so I had someone besides him to absorb some of my endless stream of mother consciousness. I was really trying to give him a break so I didn't tell him not to visit, but I didn't tell him it would mean a lot to me if he did. Today I sent him a proper invite and a link, so if you are reading this baby, Hi. I love you.   

Pssst. Pass it on. Couch cushions. 5 o'clock.

  Should I be worried about this? All of his matchbox cars parked in the cushions of my couch, forward facing? Is this exploratory or just......anal?

Meet the (totally whacked out) Parents II

Previously on Binkytown: My parents show up unannounced and begin to cause general mayhem:

While my mother starts scooping up broccoli off of the floor, I scoop up the little man and take him out on the porch, hoping something will catch his eye and distract him, hopefully stop the shrieking in my ear caused by the blond bombshell that is my mother. Only, she follows me out, talking to the little man over my shoulder, which is not working because she is what he is afraid of.

From somewhere, my dad appears, as does my dazed husband. Lets sit out here, I say, at least there is a breeze. That's a lie, but I don't want my mother to witness the mess that is my living room with my dirty dog blankets and shoes and dirty ice cream dishes and toys everywhere. So we sit. Sweating. Trying to make pleasant small talk.

Me: There is an airshow this weekend. Lots of traffic by the lake?

Mom: Oh yeah, lot's of (insert inappropriate slang term here for any ethnic group that doesn't look like my parents and have big houses in the suburbs. If it's not the one she used, it will be one she has used at some point in time.)   

Me: Redirecting conversation. So I got a new job at work. A promotion. I'll be working in the.. my voice trails off as she gets up and walks away, tuning me out and walking out after her grandson, which is her right as a grandmother, but ouch.

Me: Trying to engage my dad in conversation since they came to see us, but have little to say: I hear you had a good time at your competition last week?

My dad sings. In a group, actually a number of groups that perform barbershop. His chorus was competing last week.

Dad: Wow. It was so incredible. People were so jazzed up about us! Here, let me see your laptop. Ill show you pictures. (Ten minutes of awkward small talk goes by as my dad tries to bring up a website)

Here's the picture:

And another:

 

I look over at Mr B who is holding his breath so as not to laugh. Me, nothing about my dad's barbershop shows surprise me anymore. There were many more pictures to look at and ooh and ahh over, each one looking very much like the last. You have to understand that my dad is one of the most mild mannered men on earth in real life. But here he is in photographs, wearing an aqua marine tunic, full color makeup and a fish on his head. It's a juxtaposition that is completely and utterly absurd.

After my parents go into great detail about the hilarious antics on stage, the crawling turtles and the starfish and the bubble machines and the JAWS rip off, complete with DUH duh DUH duh movie theme music, my mom said, and my mom is always the one who says what time it is- Let's go..

As I breathe a sigh of relief I realize this is just the ramp up, there are trips to the 'potty', trips upstairs to see if the air conditioning really just works up there, many hugs and kisses for the grandson, a big smack on the lips for my husband, which totally creeps him out, sweaty hugs and then finally, almost an hour later, they were on their way.

I didn't freak out on them, as you might have expected. As I see it, they have plenty of freak already.

Meet the (totally whacked out) Parents

Installment one.. because there is just too much here to post at once. My head might explode.

It's  Saturday and it's HOT around here. Our old radiator filled house has an AC unit that only pumps air through the ceiling into the upstairs, which is perfect, if you ask me, because it's cold here 9.5 months of the year and I prefer not to spend the summer feeling like I live in a refrigerator, even if my shorts are stuck in the creases of my thighs and my legs are sticking to the.. well everything.

With the afternoon sun beating in downstairs, we closed up the ground floor and all headed upstairs for an afternoon snooze. Little man and I snoozed and Mr B watched sports, but no matter, I got a nap, a cool nap, which is better than good. At 5:30pm, we all returned to the extremely stuffy and stifling hot first floor. Little man is feeling kind of cranky, out of sorts and hungry. I'm just putting together a little sammy for him when I hear at the back door ..

knock knock knock

No one knocks on our back door. To get to the back door you have to walk down a long driveway, come through the fence gate and our screened in porch. What the...?

My mother walks in. Unannounced. I'm bra-less in dirty clothes, my house is trashed (it's really hot- too hot to do anything besides sweat) my baby looks like he has been transplanted from the deep hillbilly south, with unkempt curly nap hair and a saggy diaper. (I have hillbilly family- I love them, take no offense).

She is fully made up, in a dress, jewelry, the works. I tried to call your phone and your cell phone- you didn't answer so we thought we'd just stop by! She must have called while we were sleeping, but I still can't figure out, if I didn't answer, WHY DID THEY COME OVER? Wouldn't that tell you we weren't here? Apparently not.

She breezes into my house, surprising my husband, walks through, opens the front door and starts shouting to my father who is in the car, parked across the street, with the windows up and the air on. GRANDPA! GRANDPA! COME IN HERE! GRANDPA!Mr B and I lock eyes. I am so sorry, mine are saying to him, WT ever loving F is what his are saying to me.

I try and compose myself and get little man's dinner together and I turn my back for two seconds, distracted by the fact that my parents are in my house and because she has thrown off my rhythm, left the cord for the vegetable steamer (not yet used) exposed and little man is reaching for it ever so slowly. WATCH OUT! I hear my mother scream, as if to alert me that he has every kitchen knife in the world in his little sweaty fingers. I gasp audibly because she scared me so, little man pulls on the cord by reflex because he's jumped three feet in the air, broccoli goes flying.. one .. two .. three.. delayed scared shit-less screaming commences.

To be continued..