The Po Show

I'm So Psyched on Myself!

I used code! Specifically, I copied and pasted code into my blog template.

CommentThis! died, apparently, so I needed an alternative. HaloScan seemed to be used by people I know and read and trust, so I signed up and just successfully changed my template code.

So please leave me a comment! Now that you can :)!

Reach out and touch someone

Like many of my internet-inclined compatriots, I am phone phobic. I would choose to deal with people through email or order something online rather than in person, any freaking day of the week. I don't even like calling my friends, let alone strangers.

But yesterday I sucked up my courage and made three phone calls, trying to set up a playdate for my children. None of them were home, so I left messages (those delightful "Umm, hi, babble babble babble..." messages). Finally, since it seemed that no one was around for a playdate, I told the kids we were going to see Curious George.

Of course, just as we were leaving, one of the moms called me back. Now we were no longer free for the afternoon, so I suggested tomorrow (which is now today). She thought they might have plans, but would call me back in the afternoon to let me know.

We went to the movie, did some shopping, and came home. There was a message on the machine from another one of the moms. She invited us over to their place tomorrow (which is now today) and asked me to call her back. Well, I couldn't call back, since I was waiting for the first mom to call me back.

Mom #2 called me at 8:30 this morning. I apologized for not calling her back and she said "That's okay. So are you coming over?" I explained that I was waiting for Mom #1 to call back and before I could say "So if they can't come over, we'd love to come to your place," she said "Okay, some other time then. Bye!"

Mom #1 eventually called back and said they did have plans, but maybe afterwards if that was okay with us? I said that was fine. It's 2:47 and I'm still waiting for a call.

THIS is why I don't use the phone!!!

Geek Love

This was supposed to be posted the day after Valentine's Day, but as usual I'm behind schedule. That's the problem with me and topical writing; by the time I get around to sitting down and writing it out, ummm, not so topical anymore.

Anyway, VDay was nice. I have greatly reduced my expectations of Valentine's Day, not just since having kids, but since living too far away from family who could come and babysit while Ross and I went out to dinner. After Matthew was born, VDay and our anniversary became the two nights a year we went out to dinner as a couple. Now we have some nice stuff from Whole Foods at home and hope the kids let us eat in peace.

Ross came home with a beautiful bunch of tulips on Friday night (since flowers go WAY up in price closer to VDay. I'm totally okay with that). He got me a book (which didn't arrive till the day after VDay, but that was no problem) and cards from himself and the kids. I personally feel that VDay is for couples, so I don't get him cards from the kids. I gave him a tie ($4.99 at Banana Republic!) and a box of Choxie. And a card, which prompts this post.

On the front of the card is a huge blackboard with a million lines of calculations, with two geeky guys standing in front of it. One says, "And that, in simple terms, is the secret to love."

I loved this card. Inside, I wrote something to the effect of (I'm too damn lazy to get up off my butt and go see exactly what I wrote) "Geek love is the best kind of love, and I'm fortunate to have found the best of the best in you."

As I was writing it, I suddenly got a little concerned that he might find this slightly insulting. "Hey, you're the biggest geek I could find!" But that's totally not what I meant. Well, actually in a way it is, and it's a good thing.

I love geeks. I love witty, self-deprecating, slightly ascerbic geeky men more than any other kind of men in the world. You can keep your hunked up, pretty Brad Pitt types. Sure, they're nice to look at, but for a man you want to spend your life with, on a day to day basis for fifty or more years, give me a geek.

Geeks come to you with a past that has contained a lot of personal hurt. Geeks went through high school having girls tell them how wonderful they were "as friends." Geeks watched the pretty boys get the girls, trash the girls, and have more girls waiting in line. Geeks knew they could do better by those girls, but usually weren't given the chance. Geeks have so much love in their hearts, and want to give it, and when you finally give them the chance, oh my god, and that love is unbounded, geeks make you feel like the most loved person on earth.

My unwritten novel (the idea has incubated in my brain for about 7 years now) is called "Geeks Don't Leave." Sure, I know there are plenty of geeks out there who've loved, and then left, but I'm here to testify that mine has stayed. And I love him with passion and gratitude and fresh, open ardor.

Sorry to Leave You Hanging

Sorry I never came back to update on my hormonally induced madness. I actually thought about it, something along the lines of

"My period started yesterday. I cried into my pillow last night. Not much ambivalent about that."

But I didn't.

I actually told Ross after the fact that I had thought I might be pregnant, though I figured there was no way I really was, and that I was very, very sad that I was not. I applied all the appropriate caveats of "I know it's crazy...." and the requisite "and I know it's for the best...," and ended with "But I'm sad."

Insert tear filled eyes and twisted smile...

Oh well, it's past. And as he said, "But I thought you were barely managing with the kids you have."

We're coming off two housebound days (where were *you* during the Blizzard of '06?), with tons of snowfall yesterday and a snow day off school today. Yes, a baby added to this mix would have been stressful.

It's not meant to be, and it won't be. When will I stop being wistful, and sometimes downright sad, about that? When I'm done with menopause? When I'm on my deathbed? Will there ever be a time that I'm not sad I didn't have one more child? If I'd had one more, would *that* have been enough? Or would I have been wistful when the third child got older?

We always quote "Raising Arizona," my all time favorite movie. Frances McDormand and that guy that was on the Tracy Ullman Show are this awful couple with this slew of horrible bratty children. The guy asks the Nick Cage character how he and Holly Hunter got an adoptive baby so fast, since "something went wrong with my semen" and he and his wife want to adopt another baby.

He says, "Me, I don't really need any more kids, but Dot says these ones is getting too big to cuddle."

Tessa still crawls into my lap several times a day, and even Matthew still snuggles up next to me on the couch and rubs his head against my shoulder, but yeah, they's getting too big to cuddle. I would love a baby to really cuddle. But once again, it's not a good reason to have a baby. That one would get too big to cuddle too.

So we live this life, the one we have, and I'll focus on the joy my babies give me, and will always give me, irregardless of their cuddlability. I'm blessed beyond words.

Ambivalence

I feel like I might be pregnant.

I'm almost certainly not, since there is the matter of Ross' vasectomy four years ago. Yeah, I know they sometimes reverse themselves, but it's very highly unlikely.

Still, my skin broke out last week in the most zits I've had at one time in years. I've been absolutely hormonally sodden for over a week. I want to cry at the drop of a hat. I bawled like a, well, baby, watching that footage of the baby in Brazil in a plastic bag being fished out of a lake. Okay, I'll give myself that one, but there have been at least a dozen episodes in which something I heard on the radio or something I thought about has made me choke and tear up. Now that's NOT normal for me. I've also been snacking uncontrollably, which is also not at all normal.

Plus, I've got the feeling. I've got that sort of warm internal (for want of a better word) glow. That special feeling that makes you want to hug your arms around yourself, and grin, and radiate.

I really think it's psychosomatic though, which has me feeling ambivalent. I know I really want a baby. But what are my real reasons? I know it's in our best interests as a family for us not to have another baby. But what are "best interests" anyway?

Well, first of all (I seem to be doing the cons first here), it's in our best interests not to have an already overwhelmed and frazzled mommy get even more overwhelmed and frazzled. Being the solo parent for most of the hours in the day, there never seems to be enough of me to go around as it is. The plan has been that I am going back to work ("back" being a sort of strange term here, since I'm hardly going back to the place I used to work, and the what and where of this hypothetical work is way up in the air) next year when Tessa starts kindy. I've been looking forward to this for so long, to get back into an adult environment again and try to get some semblance of my former intellect back.

Another con: Ross really doesn't want another baby. He loves ours, and he's a great dad, but he is done with the time consumption babies require. Our kids are so super high needs that this is understandable. Plus, he's already, in the last year and a half, fallen so far out of the loop regarding their everyday lives and the minutiae of their needs (being gone 13 hours a day does that). He doesn't want to fragment the kid time he has available even more.

I have to examine my own desire for a baby too. Why does the desire fill my heart to bursting? Why do these "symptoms" fill me with hope that it might be true?

I realize that the fact that we found out a few weeks ago that Ross' SIL is pregnant is definitely a factor in my ambivalent freak out (that's a WHOLE other story. This is Ross' only brother and his wife, whom we used to hang out with a lot, but who totally cut us out after we had Matthew. They didn't come see Tessa till she was over a month old, and the SIL got all uncomfortable and declined when I asked if she wanted to hold her. We honestly didn't think they'd ever have kids. And then Ross' brother tells him about their pregnancy in an email with the subject line "College funds needed." Anyway.)

Bottom line, I love babies. I was a good baby mom. I was really good at it. Perhaps I am at this weird crossroads now, looking 40 in the face, and I know I have to start reinventing myself. Well hell, that sounds like a lot of work, so wouldn't having a baby be a great way to put that off another six years? But that's just not a good reason to have another baby. In fact it's a pretty shitty reason.

Um, were there pros? It's all so hypothetical anyway, since I can't be pregnant and couldn't get pregnant unless Ross had his vasectomy reversed and he's not going to want to do that. Plus with my fertility history, getting pregnant at 40 would be questionable at best.

I guess the pro would be that despite all the reasons we shouldn't have another baby, I am insanely happy at the thought that I *might* (with some .0000000000000001% chance) be pregnant now. It's genuine, that feeling. I believe in it. And though I'm ambivalent, I can't deny it. I would love another baby in my arms. I can see Matthew and Tessa with a new baby sibling to love, and they would be thrilled, and I would be thrilled to see their happiness.

Negative feelings? They sometimes reverse themselves, just like vasectomies.

My Advice for the Day

Never go to Costco when you're hungry.

Especially when your pants have been getting tight again and you've vowed to stop snacking so much.

Because that HUGE bag of potato chips with sea salt and that mondo tub of granola chock full of yummy cashews and almonds probably isn't going to fit into that vow very well.

And one of the Costco crew opened up a container of the hot, freshly made ribs they sell, and people were helping themselves, so I grabbed me one big old saucy rib. Best sample I've ever had at Costco, hands down!