Archive for 2009

The More You Know

Author: Erika

Nov 9

Things I’ve learned from buying maternity pants:

  1. All pregnant women are rich, and therefore do not mind paying twice as much for their jeans.
  2. When you get pregnant, you magically shrink/grow and no longer require such frippery as sizes that come long/short.
  3. Pregnant women are not interested in looking attractive, and would, in fact, prefer their pants to gape as much as possible in unflattering places such as the hips and thighs.
  4. The only people who sell their maternity jeans to consignment stores are tiny.  Tall and/or larger women like to hoard their clothes.
  5. Pregnant women will get desperate to buy your crap once they get large enough, so never offer to sell your stuff on sale.  It shows weakness.  They’ll come knocking once their pants are biting into their rapidly ballooning mid-sections.

As you can see, it was a very informative weekend wherein I may or may not have found myself frustrated to the point of tooth-gnashing by the expensive and limited nature of maternity jeans.

What, if anything, have you learned from going shopping?

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Filed under: Opinionated much?

Focalized Numbness

Author: Erika

Nov 2

This sounds really dumb but I really freaking wish tough decisions weren’t so freaking tough.  Wes and I spent all weekend discussing what to do with our beloved Doc Holliday and are no closer to a decision today than we were last week when I wrote about it.

You all wrote in with some lovely comments about how he’ll let us know when he’s ready to go, and how I shouldn’t make any big decisions while insane pregnant.  All valid points, but that doesn’t make the situation any more bearable.

He’s still the same old Doc, but he’s shown us twice in the last two weeks how this injury is different.  He’s re-injured his leg twice and each time sets him right back to where he started, obliterating any and all progress he may have made toward healing.

Wes and I are handling the situation as best we can, though in diametrically opposite ways.  Doc’s injuries seem to draw Wes closer to the dog, giving him a desire to spend time with Doc.  My heart, however, bruised and battered as it is, seems to have shut itself off from the dog.  Kind of like an emotional circuit breaker has been thrown and my brain has taken my mind out of the running.

It’s un-nerving.  I feel a vague numbness toward the dog now.  When he falls, where my heart used to wrench painfully I can no longer feel anything.  I still feed him, and I’ll pet him if he asks me to, and continue to fulfill all my pet owner responsibilities, but my heart has decided it’s had enough.

It leaves Wes and I in a curious place.  He knows all about this of course, and while he doesn’t understand it he doesn’t think I’m a horrible person because of it.  We all have our breaking points, and I suppose losing my Dad while pregnant and then watching my dog slowly fall to pieces is mine.

Everyone handles the breaking point differently.  When I used to feel the numbness as a teenager, my reaction was often to cut myself or partake in something similarly self-destructive (I had a particular affinity for cigarettes).  Now, I see it for what it is and I know it won’t last (meaning no cutting or cigarettes or anything self-destructive).

It’s a focalized numbness.  I grow more in love with my son every day, and my love for Wes continues to burn bright and steady like a lighthouse.  It’s just my feelings toward the dog, this dog who has brought us laughter and light and heartbreak and gigantic vet bills, those have changed.

We still don’t know what we’re going to do about him.  Wes has given himself a self-imposed deadline of one week to make a decision.  In all likelihood we’ll wind up keeping him around until he outlives us all, and I’ll just have to break out all the nifty tools I picked up in therapy to cope with my emotions.

I’m just tired.  Very, very tired.  Tired, and heart-sore, and weary of crying about my dog.

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Filed under: Doc Holliday

My Brush With the Law

Author: Erika

Oct 28

I am one very fortunate little chica.

I was leaving work last night and, in order to get home, had to make a left turn across a very busy road.  The visibility on both sides was blocked on both sides by parked cars, making my left turn very hazardous indeed.

I found a window in traffic and gunned my Kia engine for all it was worth.  I made it to the other side safely, but not without (unintentionally, obviously) cutting off a police officer.

As soon as I got to the other side I knew I was busted.  I slowed down and waited for him to flip around and come chase me with his bright whirly lights.  I pulled over and turned off my engine, waiting with my hands folded like a good law-abiding citizen.

The young officer came up to me and said, “Do you know why I pulled you over?”

I replied, “Yeah, that was a really stupid thing to do.”

He asked me why I did it, I explained the dangerous lack of visibility thanks to the parked cars, and he said he could see my point.  I handed over my license and registration and watched as he took my license back to his car.

I could just feel the ticket coming, like the early days of congestion that precede a really nasty head cold.

He came back to my car and surprised the stuffing out of me.  After handing me back my license he said that he was letting me off with just a warning, owing to my squeaky-clean record (Heh. After my car accident last year and now this, is it really all that squeaky-clean? Should I even be driving at this point? Discuss).

I drove home and, as I put distance between myself and encounter, wondered how I got off so easy.  I was clearly wearing my wedding ring, and I looked frumpilicious with my ponytail and sweatpants.  I’m not so pregnant you can tell when I’m sitting, and I was definitely not hitting on him.

How the heck did I get such a nice police officer?  Clearly I am the recipient of some serious good blessings.  Quick, touch my sleeve and then buy a lotto ticket to see if the blessings are catching!

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Filed under: Just plain nonsense | Tagged as:

No NaNoWriMo For Me This Year, Thanks

Author: Erika

Oct 27

Would you like to know what’s shocking?  Many things, frankly.  The price for tiny baby shoes that never actually touch the ground, for one thing.  The wait time to get into the best steak restaurant in Issaquah, for another.

What’s shocking me right this second is the calendar.  Specifically, where we stand on the calendar.

Ladies and gentlemen, we stand on the cusp of the end of October, which means we are a mere screaming toboggan ride away from November.  Those of you who have been reading for awhile may remember that last year during the month of November, I embarked on a ridiculous journey.  A journey to complete a novel of at least 50,000 words from start to finish during the month of November.

That journey was NaNoWriMo.  It was difficult.  I was running two different blogs part-time in addition to my blog, and writing additional content at the same time for my novel.  There were times when I thought my very joints would keep me awake with their incessant aches, and somewhere right around 24,000 words I started wondering if I could finish at all.

But I did.  I crested that hill and the view was mighty indeed.  The novel’s pure crap, but it exists.  Thanks to NaNoWriMo I can say without hedging that I’ve written a novel.  It was one of the coolest things I’ve ever done, and I remember it with fondness.

The big question then becomes: What about this year?  November starts in four days, will November 2009 yield Crap Novel 2.0?

No, no it will not.

It breaks my heart, but a woman’s got to know her limits.  I’m not running more blogs this year than I was last year, but the nature of those blogs and of my work for them has changed dramatically.  When I worked for Qvisory, I wrote one post a week and merely managed the content for the other four posts that went live.

For Offbeat Mama, I’m writing 3-4 posts a week.  It doesn’t seem like a big difference, but when you’re writing for a large audience you want to make sure your content is solid.  My name goes on those posts, and I’d prefer it strongly if they weren’t crap.

In addition to the Offbeat Mama posts, I still write 3-4 posts a week over here in addition to one post a week for Bottle Your Brand.  In short, I’m already producing a substantial amount of content every week, none of which is for a novel.

I guess you could factor being pregnant in there somewhere as well.  I will admit that nesting has taken over an alarming proportion of our weekend to-do list, and whereas I used to fantasize about sitting down and writing during the weekend, now I distract myself by imagining which projects we can complete given our resources, budget, and weather.

In short, it’s just not going to work out this year.  That’s ok, though, because next year is only twelve months away!  And I’ll have an eight month old baby hanging around then, so that’ll make writing a novel in a month easier!

Ten bucks says my NaNoWriMo novel next year will be about a woman who eats nothing but potato chips and cheesecake during her pregnancy, gains 15 pounds total the whole time, and never misses a wink of sleep thanks to her miraculous infant who rarely fusses and instead just smiles and coos all the time.

Obviously it will qualify as a “Fantasy” novel.

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Filed under: NaNoWriMo, Work, Writing

(St)wrung Out

Author: Erika

Oct 21

I’ve kind of dropped off the grid the last couple days.  Sorry about that, it’s not really typical for me to skip posting two days in a row (unless I’m traveling or it’s the weekend).  We’ve just been dealing with some stuff over here at Casa de Mitchell and there’s not been much left in me to type out.

Doc hurt his leg (y’know, the bad one) getting into the bathtub for bath time on Sunday.  This is not atypical, jumping into the tub has always been a strain on his legs and hips.

He followed up the mild injury by taking a bad fall while trying to make it up the stairs.  This compounded the problem, changed it from a limp to a disability.

We kept him in his crate all day Monday and yesterday, letting him out for stretches, water, and bathroom breaks, but he struggles.  A lot.  The wood floors are challenging for him, and he’s so scared of slipping on them that he just stands in fear and refuses to walk on them.

His other back leg is in no great shape either, and the strain of supporting the weight of his back end on its own leads it to shake and tremble before betraying him and making him fall.

Wes and I spent half an hour trying to coax Doc out of his crate last night.  We wanted to take him out to the bathroom one more time before bed, but he wouldn’t stand up for us.  We tried enticing him out of his crate with treats and peanut butter but he wouldn’t.  He was more scared of falling than he was desirous of peanut butter.

We finally had to dismantle his crate around him so that Wes could lift him out from above and help him make it outside.  We’re keeping him out in his kennel now because the floor there is concrete and not slippery at all.

This whole episode has really thrown me off my game.  It tears me to pieces to see him struggling like this.  It’s not like this all the time, which is why we haven’t put him down yet, but knowing that this kind of injury is always just a bad run up the stairs away, well, quite honestly it makes me not want to do this anymore.

I’m not sure whether this makes me a bad person, or a bad pet owner.  Is it wrong to say I’m tired of watching my dog struggle?

Wes says Doc’s quality of life is normally very good, that he still plays with his toys and eats and gets affection.  I can’t quite see it that way.  When I look at Doc, I see a dog who loves being with his people but who otherwise has nothing else to look forward to in life.

I see a dog whose opportunities to run, play with other dogs, fetch, and swim were taken away by a freak leg injury that happened when he was less than a year old.  Yeah, he’s still happy to be around us but that’s the only thing in life he’s able to enjoy anymore.  The best it gets for him would barely even register for other dogs.

Especially coming off watching my Dad’s health decline, hating the cancer for every pleasure it took away from him until the only thing he could do that brought him enjoyment was use the computer and watch TV, I just feel spent.  Doc got injured right around when my Dad was diagnosed with cancer, so their health declines have thus far been eerily matched.

I really do wonder if it makes me a bad person for not wanting to do this anymore with my dog.  My heart, still so tender and raw and pained, rebels at the prospect of watching Doc get marginally better again, better enough to hobble around anyway, only to know with sick certainty that his next injury is simply a matter of time.

Wes argues that until Doc doesn’t want to live anymore we should continue to keep him as safe as possible, and that we’ll know he no longer wants to live because he’ll grow lethargic, unwilling to play, and unwilling to eat.

I argue that there’s only so much I can take, and there’s only so long I can keep watching my dog struggle to do normal things.  Like stand up.

Does this make me a bad person?

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Filed under: Cancer sucks, Doc Holliday
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