On Father’s Day, when we went to the zoo, Not So went camera crazy and took a bunch of pictures of me. This is one of the things I love about him: the way he sees me. The only problem is I can see me, too, and I? I am the size of a house.

I used to love having my picture taken, but I don’t look like me anymore, and it’s disconcerting. Whenever I see pictures of myself now I feel like I’ve just discovered a big clump of spinach between my front teeth. I went out like that? Why didn’t anyone tell me? Over the course of the last year I’ve gained, I don’t know, a metric ton. My chin is indistinguishable from my neck, and I have the beginnings of a hump from slouching over the stroller or holding the baby or something, I don’t know. I look like a troll. I mean that literally.

Women in my family (the Italian side of it, anyway) become…somewhat larger in their 30s. Family gatherings tend to look like an episode of Higglytown Heroes, only with somewhat less wobbling. I was always skinny, and I assumed I’d take after the crack-fiend thin relatives on my mom’s side, but apparently having a baby activated my “Rubenesque Italian Mama” gene. Unfortunately I still have the pointy features of a borderline anorexic, so I look somewhat like I’m being swallowed by my own fat. It’s not pretty.

So I’ve decided to be proactive for once, and started charting my food intake at The Daily Plate, a diet and fitness site. It’s in beta, and you know how I love a good beta. I’m kind of a geek about stuff like that. Makes me feel like I’m ahead of the curve.

So far, according to their ever-so-handy little calculator, I should be consuming around 1900 calories a day to lose a pound a week. I might need a bit more, since I’m breastfeeding (and there’s no “nursing mom” check box), but something in that vicinity should be good. I entered all the food I ate yesterday and it came in right at 1900 calories, but I suspect that’s because I skipped lunch. Which, you know, isn’t the best idea ever.

Writing down everything I’m eating is at least making me more aware of what I put in my mouth, and that’s always a good thing. Maybe this week (since we’re poor right now anyway, with the whole “putting down a deposit on the office” thing and what have you) I’ll eat like a normal person and lose a few pounds. It sure would be nice to have a chin again.

technorati tags:diet, weight, chin, fat

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I would just like to say upfront: I am not a stage mom. I mean, yes, I wanted to be a model when I was a kid (and a teenager, and an adult…) and yes, I have the totally unbiased opinion that my kid is the most gorgeous thing under the sun…but it is utterly without agenda that I brought him to an agency today to see if he has a shot at being a child model. He’s a big old ham, and he loves having his picture taken, and he loves people, and he loves dressing up. And seriously, my kid? Extremely attractive. I figured I’d give the baby modeling thing a try, and if he doesn’t like it we’d just drop the whole thing. If he does, then yay, right?

Except that once the agency chick actually got me into her office, I began to get the feeling it wasn’t exactly what I was going for. First, she seemed strangely effusive for someone who screens applicants. Somewhat more like a salesperson than a talent agent. What would she be selling, you ask? Representation, of course!

“The fee isn’t for representation,” she said. “It’s for the classes and complimentary test photos.” Non-negotiable classes and test photos, but who am I to judge? Other than the sucker who’d be handing over the money, of course. $295, due in two installments (a week apart – I don’t know, either). The woman’s eyes glistened ever so slightly when she talked about all the wonderful things my fee would be getting me. Classes! To learn how to take head shots! And then head shots! But not a comp card: that I would have to create myself. Hence the classes. She handed me a binder full of ads featuring children represented by the agency, and then she told me again that my child looked very alert.

“I bet he gets fussy on the bus, though, right?” The woman couldn’t get her head around the fact that we don’t have a car. When I first told her that, she said it would be a problem: “How will you get to shoots? On the bus?” as though I had suggested that we would be traveling via skateboard. She kept coming back to the fact that we take mass transit everywhere, repeating several times “You must really be smart to figure out all the buses! You must really know what you’re doing!” Perhaps she feared that a woman who can navigate the bus system would be savvy enough to realize that any agency that charges a fee for representation – excuse me, classes – was not what we in the know like to call reputable.

On the way home Ellison was doing his usual flirting routine with everyone on the bus, and I thought to myself again the kid’s got something. I think I might just call a couple more agencies. You know, just for fun. We might not want to pay for representation, but we still think it would be neat.

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All of my favorite mommybloggers drink. I do not drink. I am bad at drinking. I have, you know, two cocktails and then feel all sick and stupid and loquacious, and I tell stories about my dead brother, and I go home and probably puke. Also, I have no tolerance. None. And I dislike the taste of alcohol, so my drinks of choice are usually a) weak and b) made primarily of lemons. So, yes – Cranky Mama is a cheap date, but also boring as fuck. It’s a compromise.

But then I read about the clever thing Mimi Smartypants said (“…from now on whenever anyone makes a gesture or sign that I don’t fully understand, I will pretend that it means “what do you want to drink.” And I will answer them cheerfully. And they will either give me beer or walk away shaking their heads”) and once again I feel like I have missed the bus by not ever learning how to like drinking. It’s much the way I felt in high school. You know, back when you thought you’d have one beer and suddenly become all floozy and loose and life-of-the-party-like, but then you actually had a beer and it kind of tasted like socks and didn’t make you feel at all like taking off all your clothes and dancing on a coffee table, not even a little? But, whatever. I’ve tried. Believe you me, I have tried. And there are only so many times you can justify giving yourself a mild case of alcohol poisoning doing something you don’t even enjoy before you’re all whatever, I’d rather have some ice cream. Which is probably at least part of the reason I weigh roughly five thousand pounds and still appear to the casual observer to be three months pregnant. The ice cream.

My point is, I want a beer right now, and I don’t even like beer. I want some sort of mildly self-destructive hobby during which I can’t possibly be expected to wrangle a small child or perform any higher brain function. Not So is currently asleep upstairs after an afternoon of sake bombs with his coworkers, and I? I am jealous. Not of the sake bombs, but of the ability to check out. I had a job once where we were only allowed the requisite two fifteen minute breaks per eight hour shift, but since the supervisor was a smoker she would let us have unlimited smoke breaks. I don’t think I’ve ever smoked as much as I did in that job, because, seriously. Breaks = good. Not taking breaks makes people crazy.

Perhaps this would be a good time for more ice cream.

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I didn’t post on Father’s Day, but I want to share a picture of my boys at the zoo:

Happy first Father’s Day, Not So Cranky Dada! *smooch*

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Hung out with Actual Moms yesterday. One of the Actual Moms came to my actual house for a while, which was probably an actual mistake because my house? Not guest-ready. For one thing, there are boxes. Have I mentioned the boxes? Because – funny thing! – they do not unpack themselves. Also, skipping laundry for the weekend because I have reached the end of my tether with all the not-sleeping the baby’s been doing resulted in charming little piles of clothes in every room. Because we don’t currently own any hampers. Actually. But none of this occurred to me when I was all “I’m tired of sitting on wet grass. Let’s go back to my house!”

So because I believe in quaint homilies like better late than never, I spent this morning unpacking to a soundtrack of the Screaming Baby Symphony. He’ll tolerate being put down nine times out of ten, but that tenth time he’ll scream as though I am stabbing him with wee little knives. Not that I stab my child with knives; I’m only guessing that’s what it would sound like. Good parents do not stab their children. You can quote me on that.

My cleaning binge was short-lived (and in my head I’m pronouncing that the right way, just so you know) but nominally fruitful. There is a path to the kitchen now! Praise be! I also discovered some broken stemware, which is always exciting, and found that my lovely circular magnetic board is now covered in rust and scratches, thereby rendering it unsuitable for my continuing admiration. This? This is why I hate moving. But at least now I can walk to the kitchen to drown my ire in food. Yay!

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Took a while to snuggle my kid and think about how little he still is, even compared to how little he was when I got him. From the baby store. You know.

I don’t want to ever be able to say that I wish I had spent more time snuggling him. I mean, I snuggle him sort of constantly, but I’m talking deliberate snuggling, as opposed to circumstantial snuggling. It’s hard, because he’s very wriggly. He wants to be held, but he wants to be doing stuff while he’s being held. Unless he’s sleeping, in which case he wants me to not be doing stuff, including putting him down so I can use both my hands in tandem for a purpose other than baby wrangling.

He’s always all smiles when he wakes up in the morning, and sometimes I open my eyes to find him staring at my face. When he sees that I’m awake his face breaks into a huge grin, like I’m the best present he’s ever gotten. Of course, other times he’ll prompt my waking by pulling my hair or smacking me in the arm, but the grin’s still there, and every time it just turns me to goo.

No matter what else is going on, I love being his mom.

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This has been an exciting morning, if by “exciting” you mean “awful.” Following on the heels of yesterday’s bank debacle (I’d suggest you see yesterday’s entry, but – ha! – I didn’t post one. The gist is that I am such a poor credit risk that I cannot possibly have anyone else on my account because we will surely TAKE OVER THE WORLD VIA OVERDRAFT, or something) I woke up with a horrible headache and half an hour until the landlord walkthrough. I fed the kid, got sort of dressed (sweats are totally clothes, yo), tossed another load of laundry in, gathered up all the rest of the dirty clothes and hid put them in an unobtrusive pile, moved all the unfolded clean laundry into the closet, closed up all the closets, picked up all the detritus that inexplicably ends up everywhere we are, and went downstairs with roughly 30 seconds until 10 (which was the early end of When The Landlord Might Arrive) followed by two cats who should know better. To find that the kitchen was a mess, the living room weirdly full of boxes which had been almost entirely unpacked but then stacked, carefully, as though the three screws and a single figurine needed a huge box to keep them safe from their enemies, and random toys and things on the floor.

Now, you’re probably asking yourself two things: 1) why did I not deal with this last night? and 2) why am I noticing all the things that aren’t done instead of all the things that are? The answer is simple: I suck. Or, wait, maybe it has something to do with the fact that Ellison had his six month shots yesterday and spent last night wailing and clinging and generally refusing to let me do anything that did not involve snuggling him and nursing, a lot. And since I had such a good time with the bank letting me know I’m a bad credit risk, I wanted to avoid a similar situation with the landlord (i.e. him coming in and seeing how horribly disorganized our house is and reneging on our lease, or something). So I’m looking at the house and seeing it through the eyes of someone who dislikes people like me (and possibly also has a splitting headache and needs a cup of coffee), but for the record: Not So, thank you for dealing with the unpacking last night. The hallway looks great, and that was the really important thing. Anyway.

So I’m freaking out, doing the pursed-lip cleaning thing I do when I’m anxious, the cats are yowling and underfoot, the baby is wailing because clearly the Pack ‘N Play is some form of baby torture. So naturally I start yelling, because that will make everything better. Funny thing: shouting at cats? Does not help. Especially when all they want is more food. I did get the momentary mean-spirited satisfaction of them running out of the room (“We’d better go! Mom’s crazy!”), followed by the inevitable guilt of someone who has just bullied her pets. I? I am not a nice person.

Anyway I fed the cats, made some coffee, and emptied out the dishwasher (all to a chorus of wailing baby, yay), to find the third surprise of the morning:

That’s our brand new Snapware, which I tossed in the dishwasher to get rid of the plasticky smell. Turns out that wee little note on the box that says Do Not Put In Dishwasher is actually true. Good to know! Also: FUCK!

The best part of all of this? The landlord didn’t even come in. He and the builder just asked if we had any problems, and when I said we didn’t, they left. Ha!

technorati tags:anxiety, snapware, dishwasher, housework, disorganization, suckage

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