What if she's UGLY??

While eating breakfast this morning and admiring the fresh-cut flowers at the table, I made a stark realization.

The baby I’m having in a few weeks might not look anything like I’ve imagined her to look.

Ever since I learned that I’m having a girl, I’ve been daydreaming about the perfect genetic combination of Hunt and Teague. This basically means curly auburn red hair, perfect skin, bright blue eyes, and an hourglass figure. Really, something like this:

Imagining a perfect-looking child is a dangerous game and I’ve already rolled the dice.

I don’t know how to get out of it now. I’m going to try to spend the next few weeks thinking “ugly” thoughts about the baby. Like a girl with thin wimpy hair (like me). Or a recessed chin. Or not having defined waist or hips as a woman. Having one blue eye and one brown one. Having some sort of disease where she can’t grow any teeth. Resembling a squirrel. Having acne so badly that she has to go into hiding from age 13-16.

I’m hoping that by imagining the worst, even if she has one lame trait (like my lame hair), I won’t be angry about it. This morning when I imagined being handed my baby and not seeing red hair, my first reaction was to say, “Oh no! Look at your stupid hair! NOW what are we going to do?!??” Not exactly the picture of a nurturing mother.

I’ve been praying for three things for baby girl all along: 1.) that she be mentally and physically healthy 2.) that she lives her life for Jesus 3.) that she has JB’s beautiful hair.

We’ll see if I can go 3 for 3.

If not, I’ll try my best to bite my tongue.

Ponderous

First, readers, thank you for the overwhelming support about my Crap Cake entry. Your ideas have helped me to come up with a plan regarding both my work situation and traffic ticket situation. Yay! Un-Yay: now I have to take MORE time out of my life to deal with these things rather than just happily work on making drapes for my bedroom, painting a bookcase for the child’s room, etc. Ugh!

And now, for something PONDEROUS…

(By the way, does anyone remember that song from the early 90’s--This is Ponderous? I remember climbing my friend Sabrina’s spiral staircase to go to her room where we painted our nails or something and listened to Ponderous over and over again. The song was popular for about a week. Sabrina’s house was this old barn-shackish building typical for rural Michigan, but with a white metal spiral staircase that totally made the place seem glamorous to a kid. That staircase completely clouded over the fact that they shared their house with barn animals. Actually, looking back, her house was kind of ponderous itself.)

Anyway, I digress:

PONDEROUS…

Last week my coworker Shari was pulling into the Best Buy parking lot when she saw walking out of Best Buy’s doors,

…wait for it…

An AMISH man!

What on earth would an Amish man need at Best Buy???

Icing on the Crap Cake

I have been trying to have a good attitude lately about having this baby. I’m fine with having a baby, especially since she’ll be the most beautiful, well-behaved human being to ever grace the planet. I mean, you can’t deny that mixing JB and me together can only result in perfection, right? :)

But then the realities of a baby start rearing their ugly heads. Well, the main one is money. We cannot afford daycare for the baby, and we cannot afford for one of us to quit a job to stay home with baby.

JB and I have been exploring several options to try to make this work. And we keep hitting dead ends.

Every time I hit a dead end, I want to scream at everyone who ever pestered me about having a baby, or who told me that it was time for me to have a baby, or who said that babies aren’t that expensive. I want to scream at them for pressuring me into something like this. But I know that’s not right. I made this decision. I made my bed, and now I have to lie in it. I could have called around and gotten daycare quotes before I got pregnant. But I did not.

So anyway, my biggest child-care solution was to work from home two days a week. That would cut $440 off of our monthly child-care bill. Two other women in my office have done this, and this is a very family-friendly place. I wrote up a very professional proposal and shared that I could do all of my job from home, with the exception of handling front-counter patrons, which are very few and far between on the Mondays and Fridays that I had wanted off.

I thought that this proposal would be accepted. I am a very good worker, am very organized, and have a very nice home office.

Yesterday I was told that I cannot have 2 days. They don’t even want to give me 1 day, but they will let me try it. One of the main reasons they want me in the office is that I am used so heavily to back up other departments when people are gone, and they need me to be able to do that (which is not in my job description, btw—I do it out of the goodness of my heart). Also, if there is an emergency situation with a member, I need to be here. When I got home and thought about all this, I felt pretty aweful. Apparently I can be used as the office workhorse to cover everyone else’s butts, but no one will help ME out in MY job on a day when I’m working from home and an “emergency” may arise. It’s not fair.

So anyway, I was seriously up all night being sad about this (and dealing with other pregnancy ailments). I need to plan these difficult conversations with coworkers about my job, how I feel, how I don’t want to be covering for everyone else anymore unless I get compensated for it, how I feel unappreciated, etc.

I lost so much sleep that I called in two hours late to work. I needed to get SOME rest before coming to work.

When I finally get on the road for work, I find myself driving through this new construction zone on my route. I’ve been driving through it for a week and was making a mental note to find a new route to work (to avoid the construction) when I see a policecar ahead of me on a side street turn on its lights. I drive past and move over so he can pull over whoever it is he’s after.

He was after me.

For speeding in a construction zone.

I had no idea I was speeding! I was following the flow of traffic! I thought the normal speed limit through there was 55, and I was going through at 40, like everyone else, thinking that that was slow enough.

Nope. The speed limit right now is 25. He said there was a sign. I said that I was sorry, but I didn’t see it, and didn’t know I was going too fast.

He didn’t care.

So, after a horrible day yesterday after feeling unappreciated at work, and then not sleeping in the night and being late for work, the officer chose to slap some shit frosting on my crap cake.

Thank you, sir, for giving a very pregnant lady a ticket. For giving her what will be an enormous fine (construction tickets are killer) that will make her even more poor and not be able to afford this baby. For making her cry her makeup off her face before she even got to work (yes, readers, the girl who doesn’t ever cry openly wept). For singling her out of the line of traffic that was also speeding.

If I had your home address, officer, I would leave my crap cake in a bag on your front doorstep and light it on fire.

Shall we race? I think not

On my commute to work this morning I was challenged to race.

I was stopped at a light on the Beltline, this four lane divided highway, listening to a book on tape while trying to forget that I was heading to work at a job I dislike; when my reverie was broken by a revving engine. I glanced left and saw this sporty import whose driver was smirking at me. I’ve have no clue who this person was, but he had longer curly hair and he checked his head to indicate a race.

Why on earth did he think I would want to race? I was sitting in my “non-sporty” Ford Focus and he’s in a sporty import. Also it’s 11:30 in the morning on a busy road. WTH?!?

When the light changed he paced me until he realized that I wasn’t going to careen down the road in some desperate attempt to prove that I’m the alpha male. Beside I knew I didn’t have a chance.

Strange.

Baby shower #1 = Sweet Business

Well, I have to admit that after my first baby shower, I am starting to get excited about having the baby. I think it was the outfits. I got all these cool little outfits and I want to put someone in them! And dressing up Lucy just isn't the same!

This shower was put on by my sisters and mom. It was Cat In the Hat themed. My mother was the Cat in the Hat (fitting, as she was born the same year as the Cat in the Hat), Melissa and Krystal were Thing 1 and Thing 2. Anne did not claim a character, but she if I were to give her a name it would be "Work Horse" as she slaved away to make this thing happen. Rachel also gets props for her contributions.





Unfortunately, because I was the guest of honor and therefore busy, not many photos were taken. I got a few to post, however.

Notable things:

• Each table had a fishbowl centerpiece with two fish in it (for One Fish, Two Fish).
  

• My cake was pink with a boat on top (can't remember which Seuss book that was a throwback to), and there were cupcakes with blue frosting mixed with coconut, to symbolize the hair of Thing 1 and Thing 2.
• There was, of course, Green Eggs and Ham to eat! :)
  
• We played Dr. Seuss trivia.
  
• My little cousin Rex (the boy in the second photo, standing by the presents) tried ripping open my presents because he is not disciplined. Unfortunately, he is always a source of trouble. His mom, who was three feet away, did nothing to stop him. I got up and told him NO and took his hands away, which was useless. Finally awesome Heather got up and told him how it was. THANKS HEATHER!! My instincts said to scream at him, YANK him away, and lock him in the house for not being obedient, but I knew that that was overkill, so I froze. Thank you for taking action. I was so mad at myself for not being more like you. I am going to work on this. I don't have a problem kicking my own child's butt, but other people's kids are a different realm.
  
• I got a LOT of pink outfits. Not too much yet, but I'm nervous because I have three other showers coming, one of which is my work shower, where it's just a big 'ole, "Let's get her cute outfits!" party. I will try to get the word out that I'm already about 50% pinked out.
  
• I realized how many wonderful people I have in my life. Every gift was thoughtful and necessary and I am always amazed at everyone's generosity.

We're Baa-aack!

We have returned from our super-awesome vacation in da UP. I love going to the cabin and was very sad to leave it this morning.

The child in my womb has been furiously kicking my innerds and ribs, so I will have to write about our fun later. Here are some pics, though:

Sometimes I feel like, somebodys watching me

Creepy.

I just messed around with this site for about ten minutes. It was fun, then creepy, then boring, then fun, now it's just plain creepy. Creepy but interesting.