Having a wife around could be a really good thing

And I don't mean for the manwhore. I wouldn't mind having an extra wife around here myself, at times. Case in point: There is a woman who post on my mommy board that just had a baby and just so happens to be a lesbian. Her partner spent the last 9 months (not really, but at least 3 or 4) taking hormones and using a breast pump on a daily basis to induce lactation. Baby can now breastfeed from both moms, although at least right now, the bio-mom is making a bunch more milk than the non-bio-mom. Still, her supply will likely catch up if they keep this up.

I'm thinking that has to be like the coolest damned thing evah. It would totally rock to be able to hand the baby to your wife and say "I need a nap, to pee, to eat, to do something besides have this demanding creature suck on me for the next hour." Yeah sure, you could pump and hand the baby to dad, or grandma or someone with a bottle and make a run for it, but lots of women don't get much output when they pump. You could do formula, too, but that shit is expensive and stinks and lots of women just don't want to use it.

So, you could have a wife that is also lactating and share the duties. I would have killed to have had another woman, that I trusted, to help me nurse the girls. They were preemies and had trouble nursing, and with some time to devote one on one to each of them, we could have gotten over the hump. As it was, we ended up supplementing and then fully on formula. Not the end of the world, but it caused me a lot of stress and anguish at the time. Unfortunately none of the women I would ever consider trusting to nurse one of my children, and not be squicked out by nursing one of theirs happened to be lactating when I was, and it won't ever happen. Ce la vie.

I'm bored

I've done laundry, supper is simmering on the stove (chili for a chilly day) and while I could be cleaning something or writing, I don't wanna. I wan to be entertained, but I don't know what with. And the kids are whining and fussing. Wah.

I nominate myself Queen Hover Mother Supreme

There is a little boy in the girls' class that apparently raised a shitpot of money for the school fundraiser (yay for his parents' hard work). His prize is that he gets lunch with the principal at Chili's, a limo ride to get there, and he gets to invite a friend. That friend is my daughter Em. (The manwhore says she has her first date, at 5 yrs old. lol)

Queen Hover Mother Supreme realizes that her precious baby big girl daughter is going to be riding in a car. Must. Have. Carseat. So, I call the school. Um. They've never had to deal with carseats before, because no one has ever said their kid had to ride in one. WTF? Like I'm going to let my 32 lbs 5 yr old ride in a regular seat belt, or no seat belt. (Polishes crown.)

So, I will be schlepping a booster seat to school and fetching it back again tomorrow. Yay me. See my pretty crown?

I feel more like a real writer now

I went to my very first Romance Writers of America, Music City Chapter, meeting today. The women there were all very nice, and it was lots of fun. They had someone to give a little talk on using setting in your writing, and lots of chitchat about this and that in their lives and the romance industry. I will definitely be back next month. Eventually, I'll fork over the mulah to join. You have to join the national group as well as the local group, all of which costs about $100, so not this week. You get three free meetings before you have to pay up.

Someone give me a hole to crawl in.

And make it big enough for me to take my children. Today, amidst the fun of their first field trip and returning library books and practicing their letters, my children had a lockdown drill at school. A threat drill, they said.
What do you do during a threat drill? asked I.
Everybody goes into the bathroom and you leave the light off and stay completely quiet. Mrs. D stands with the door cracked just a little bit so she can see, Em told me.
Why do you do this? I ask.
If there is a stranger in the school that might hurt us, was the horrifying response.

My babies are practicing lockdown drills. I want to weep that our society has reached the point where this is even necessary. I mean, I'm glad they are doing it, I think. But I wish it weren't needed. I wish that no one had ever walked into a school with a gun or a bomb and hurt people and that schools were still thought of as a safe place for children to be. They are safe, I think, still, but we have to face the possibility that at some point, it might not be. And I have to trust their teacher and other adults that I don't know to keep my children safe from gunmen and bombers or other psychos that might take a notion to roam around their school.

Fortunately their school seems fairly safe in terms of people being able to get in, and the classrooms on the kindy wing all have doors to the outside, so they at least have an escape route.
But bloody fucking hell, lockdown drills.

Donuts are not breakfast.

Candy corn is not a snack. Donuts can be breakfast and candy corn can be snack, but they aren't healthy ones. They are not the ones you are going to feed our children. Yes, I'm talking to you, oh manwhore of mine. We pack lunches instead of buying lunches because of the crap they serve in the cafeteria. And you send them to school with a donut and candy corn. WTF? I had two girls complaining that daddy forgot to pack them a snack.

And puh-lease do not give me that line about there not being anything here to send. There is tons of food here, most of it bought with them in mind. Apples and cheese and peanut butter and crackers and cereal bars and yogurt and and and....


And yes, I know that candy and donuts won't hurt them occasionally, but they need something remotely nutritious to start the day and something filling for a snack. Besides, they were hungry! Our skinny little, bottom of the growth chart, kids were hungry at school, all because they had candy corn for a snack.

I bet the teacher was hating on you a bit, too.

A bit of self therapy

So, I'm readying the Intuitive Eating book and one of the things they talk about in giving up the diet mentality is giving up your scale, and I'm just not ready to do that. I think that I don't yet trust that I will actually lose weight this way, so I keep the scale and weigh myself to see if the process actually works.
I remind myself that it is all about little steps. Right now it is enough that I am doing well with my eating, and most of the time choosing stuff that is healthy and stopping when I am full, etc. I actually threw away some cake tonight. It just wasn't that good, so I didn't eat it. That is like a major break through for me.


Also, in other bits of self therapy, I was thinking about why I get so mad when the manwhore has to work late. I mean, I realize that he doesn't like being there until 6 or 7pm anymore than I dislike it. So why the hate on? I've realized that part of it is I just flat out miss him. He has changed his schedule from 7am-4pm to 8am-5pm so he can take the girls to school. So, he's home an hour later in the evenings than he used to be. That is less time that we have together in the evenings, and I miss him.
The other realization that I've had is that I sometimes wonder if he's having an affair (I've actually thought to myself that it's a good thing he's calling from his desk phone and I can see it on the caller id). Sad, huh? But, it has occurred me that I've been with two other men that were cheaters.
My first real boyfriend in high school, James, was dating someone else and I was "the other woman." In retrospect, I wonder what the hell my mother was thinking, because it wasn't a good thing for a 15 yr old girl. Then there was Chad. He was the last guy I dated before I met the manwhore. I thought he was so shy and whatnot that he would never cheat on me, even though we lived in different cities. I was IN LOVE with him, and thought I was going to marry him. He dumped me in an ugly, painful way and I found out later that he had been cheating on me.
So, two guys that I was in love with, both cheaters. And now, even though I have no reason to ever think that the manwhore would ever cheat, I have a fear of him cheating on me. He's shy and a bit nerdy like James and Chad, and they both cheated, so I've transfered that fear to him. Hence, the anger when he has to work late, I think.

The psyche is an odd thing, I do believe.

22 miles

That is how far I have walked and biked this week. 3 walks averaging 3 miles per walk and 2 times on the bike at 7 and 5 miles. And I'm in a groove with my eating and just generally feeling good.

I'm reading a book called Intuitive Eating, and it's all about listening to your body, etc, and giving up the diet mentality. I'm finding that rather hard to do, and hard to trust that when I listen to my body, I will actually lose weight. I haven't given up my scale, yet. I can't quite bring myself to go there. But, I'm doing really well with eating when I'm hungry, eating what appeals to me, and stopping when I am full.

People who have never been overweight sometimes don't understand the difficulty of stopping when you are full, but it can be really hard to do. I am an emotional/waste-not eater, so I eat when stressed and have a problem throwing food away. I also feel guilty about spending "too much money" at the grocery store, even though I am not the only one to eat the groceries. Odd, I know.

So, I'm working on my eating habits and trying to develop normal relationship with food. While this is not a diet, the idea is of course that once you do so, you should return to a normal weight. Yay. Except it is a slow and frustrating process, because I want to be skinny like yesterday.

Patience, my dear self, patience.

I should add

that it did have a nervous breakdown. It got a paper jam and when I cleared it, it started printing in a gigantic font on only half the page. Stupid thing.


Also, my sister in law, who I think reads this, will be happy to know that El quite gleefully told me that after they went swimming, Aunt D put her shorts on over her wet swimsuit and it looked like she peed in her pants. Followed by gales of laughter from both girls. lol

They had a blast, though and are looking forward to visiting again.

My printer is going to have a nervous breakdown

I'm printing off a copy of my book so I can attack it with a pen. A red one if I have one.

221 pages to be printed. I don't think the poor printed has ever done more than 2 or 3 pages at a time before. I think I hear it cursing me.

7 years of wedded bliss

Yesterday was our 7th wedding anniversary. In some ways, it seems like just yesterday. In others, it seems like we've been together forever and I can't even remember what my life was like before the manwhore and the kids and all of this.

We celebrated on Sat, and had lunch and saw a movie. Nothing special, just a few hours with just the two of us.

Buddy Boy stayed with his grandma, and the girls were all the way in Athens, GA with their aunt, the manwhore's sister.

They stayed with her for 3 nights, and I think they wore each other completely out. We met halfway to pick them up yesterday, and all three looked exhausted. The girls told me they wanted to ride with us this time instead of Aunt D.

But, they had fun, and Aunt D wants to have them down again sometime. I think she wants to continue brainwashing them to be UGA fans. Apparently, a highlight of the visit was taking the girls to the multitude of bulldog statues around town and taking pictures with Uga.

Today, the girls are back to school, and I have to email their teacher, because I totally forgot they had a little bit of homework. Whoops. Bad mom.

See what happens when you try and be healthy?

We went to the park today, and I decided we should walk. It is 1.5 miles down there, so 3 miles round trip. I put 2 in the wagon and one on a tricycle and figured they could switch up. I expected whining, and I got plenty of it.

What I didn't count on was forgetting to bring any blasted diapers or wipes. Which pretty much guaranteed that the Buddy Boy would crap in his diaper. He did. So much so that he had a blow out. Yum. Smell of rank poop for the 1.5 mile trip home.

I can't wait for this kid to potty train.